Christmas Storytime

[wulfboy.livejournal.com]

Cross-posted from my own journal. It's a little rushed as the deadline is fast approaching for even minorly Christmas-themed stories. It is not short. I'd apprecaite feedback. I'm especially dubious about the "mad insight" bit at the end.

( Lean Season )

Xmas Ghost Story - Can you guess the song / lyric?

[maleghast.livejournal.com]

The figure at the end of the bed had not disappeared despite my attempts to ignore it. When I had first detected its presence I had assumed that it was a figment, a shard of dream poking into my waking world as I emerged from sleep in the darkened room. I had attempted to ignore it; rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but I could sense it's baleful glare staring into me even as I lay there with my back turned.

In the end I rolled back over to look at it and decided that whether or not I was going crazy the only way to rid myself of its unsettling presence would be to engage it. I was, of course, expecting it to disappear when I asked;

“Who are you?”

I had not been expecting for a dim light to slowly start to build around the figure, illuminating an indistinct visage and a crooked smile;

“I am the ghost of Christmas Never Come, and I am here to show you the life that you will never know that yet you could have known.”

I flinched, suddenly feeling a little uneasy as to what shameful memory I was torturing myself with, tot he extent that I was imagining a visit from a quasi-Dickensian ghost. The ghost reached out a hand towards me and despite all of my instincts to the contrary I leaned forward and took its cold hand in my own.

Suddenly the word began to fold in on itself and I was catapulted from one reality to another, and I was back in the house on Dremmond Street. The house was full of light and sound, and as I stood there in my pyjamas watching Gilly and Robin opening presents from under the Christmas Tree as a younger looking me filmed them with a camcorder that I didn't recognise and Tabitha watched from the doorway. My heart leapt up into my mouth as I realised that this must be in the past, a scene I had forgotten; after all Gilly and Robin would have been in their late teens by now. I opened my mouth to speak to them all and the ghost tapped me on the shoulder as I realised that I could not make any sound. In my mind I could hear the ghost speaking to me;

“You cannot speak to them. They cannot see you, they do not know you are here. This is not a scene from your past, William, this is a scene from the past if things had been different, but then a part of you knows that, don't you?”

Suddenly I was back in my darkened room, the ghost was gone, and in the back of my mouth there was a familiar metallic tang as I started to re-live the moment when I woke up behind the wheel and the car was already tumbling over and over along the road, my family all around me.

Christmas Story x-posted from journal

[littleonionz.livejournal.com]

So there I am, watching Cathleen pour another corpse stiff cuppa that I know I don’t have time to finish. I slip a pound in shrapnel onto the scarred melamine. The ipod drowns out the cancer rattle ‘thanks duck’ that she blesses me with. Right then I love her so much I just want to climb over the counter and fuck her; make her forget the last thirty years of stirring tea and enduring the torment of knowing there is more to life but not for the likes of her. Alas, there isn’t time; it’s Christmas Eve and I have a job to do. Before I leave I catch myself in the tinsel shrined mirror; eyes too blue, lips too full, hair too damn lustrous, such a waste. And yes, vanity is a sin. I count the steps out of the café to the car, each one bringing me a little closer to salvation. Engine on, mirror, signal, floor it.
The chrome fortress is back lit by a silver dollar moon; I head towards it at fuck you miles an hour. The steel gates fold around the car like origami. Bones snap, flesh shreds, but not enough to slow me down. The first one steps out of a doorway, and while Bing Crosby is singing White Christmas in my Skull Candy, I flick the cards I habitually carry, into the goon’s face. The joker’s on him, as he waves the fluttering deck away, I gut him. The air fills with the smell of iron, reminding me of times past, when such an offering would have given me a hard on, but not now; I am penitent, and I really don’t have time to enjoy this. He tumbles back; cuddling his offal, the house loses. We’ll laugh about this later, but for now, I must press on. Behind me the car goes nova, the heat feels good, then something automatic spits fire from the darkness ahead of me. I make destruction an art form, the walls my canvas, that I paint in shades of flesh and blood, then I get in the lift. Once inside I eat everything I managed to score yesterday, then I ring the police and scream and spit and drool about love, the end of days, and how hard my cock is, and when the doors finally open, I am burning like the sun. After I burst the first three rent- a- goons, the rest scatter, muttering prayers and curses with equal fervour. I hear myself screaming scripture, nice touch, I think, I think, but that could just be the drugs. Then I rip the door to his office out of the wall.
The siren’s scream and chopper whirr sing through my wired flesh; it’s so beautiful. I’m crying with joy as I crush his skull under my heel then I throw his carcass through the window. Something 50 calibre flavoured puts me on my arse. The chopper lights are as bright as the sun, but I can see the gleam of a barrel as tracers stitch the air. They can’t see the smile on my shattered face, and nobody alive will know how close Mary Rose McCarthy and her unborn came to being taken down in the crossfire when, in about two hours time, Mr No head here, would have ordered that her bad debtor boyfriend Joe, was made a messy example of. I’ve done my good deed of the century, saved three, not insignificant, lives and worked off a bit of my own bad debt, giving the meek another chance to inherit, what they probably don’t deserve.