“Give me the truck keys.” My brother flipped Christmas dinner onto the floor when I refused, while Mom screamed that I had “made him do it” and Dad ordered me out. Gravy dripped down the wall as Trevor called me selfish. I didn’t argue. I called my accountant and canceled every bill I paid. Then the real panic finally began....

“Good,” I repeated into the receiver, stepping off the porch into the biting bite of twenty-degree Ohio air. “Because if you tell me you bought an animal, Trevor, I am hanging up and putting my phone in the blender.”

“I didn't *buy* an animal, Oscar,” Trevor’s voice cracked over the speaker, oscillating between defensive whimper and cornered badger. “I acquired short-term stewardship options on forty-two miniature fainting goats.”

I paused with my boot hovering over the frost-crusted concrete of my parents’ front walk. Snowflakes were drifting down like shredded receipts. Behind me, the house was a glowing terrarium of holiday dysfunction. Through the frosted glass of the front door, I could see my father’s silhouette aggressively gesticulating toward the dining room floor, where twenty-four pounds of organic, basted butterball was currently oxidizing into the floorboards.

“Stewardship options,” I said carefully. “On fainting goats.”

“It’s wellness-adjacent agro-therapy!” Trevor shouted. He had apparently yanked the front door back open, standing in the frame in his stuffing-smeared snowman sweater, his phone still glued to his ear even though we were less than twelve yards apart. “The corporate sector is burnt out! People will pay two hundred dollars an hour to have a small ungulate collapse from panic near their ankles! It lowers cortisol!”

“You want my F-250 to haul forty-two goats into suburban backyards.”

“They are stacked in crates, Oscar! It’s modular! It’s turnkey!”

I didn’t answer. I reached into my coat, tapped the screen, and ended the call. Then I brought Priya Shah back up on my other line. She had remained on hold through the goat revelation, her background noise humming with the crisp clatter of mechanical keyboard switches and what sounded like a crackling fire in a very quiet, very sane apartment.

“Priya?”

“I heard the goat part,” she said smoothly. “Your Bluetooth transmits high frequencies with remarkable clarity. Does the apocalypse package include the municipal water district, or do you want them to have indoor plumbing through the weekend?”

“Water stays on until January first,” I said, opening the door of my truck. The diesel engine grumbled to life with a deep, steady rumble that felt like the only reasonable thing in a five-mile radius. “I’m not a monster, Priya. They can brush their teeth. But the electricity, the cell family plan, Dad’s comprehensive policy on the Buick, the high-speed fiber, the grocery card transfers, and the seasonal maintenance disbursements—kill them tonight.”

“Consider the carotid severed,” Priya replied with the grim satisfaction of a certified public accountant who had watched an honorable client bleed seven figures over nine years. “The scheduled transfers have been aborted. The virtual cards assigned to their service accounts have been frozen. By midnight, your checking account will cease to function as the Bennett Family Municipal Trust.”

“Thanks, Priya. Go drink some eggnog.”

“I’m drinking single malt, Oscar. You should too. Drive safe.”

I dropped the phone into the cupholder, shifted into reverse, and backed out of the driveway. In the rearview mirror, my mother had joined Trevor on the porch. She was clutching her cardigan closed at her throat, her mouth moving in silent, operatic syllables that I knew by heart: *How could you? On Christmas? Your own flesh and blood?*

Behind them, my father stood under the porch light, arms folded over his flannel chest, staring at my taillights with the defiant scowl of an emperor who had not yet realized his palace was built out of borrowed plywood.