Forever Christmas

“Rosco, get off. Get off me! Get off, you crazy pup!” My mangy mutt wakens me with a slobbery good morning before getting in a round of zoomies. I love him, but I’d also like to murder him. Before I do though, I should really brush his teeth I think as I wipe off the sticky goop on my cheek. 

“Hey, hun, are you awake?” Lorraine, my wife, pops her head in the door, a festive robe tied around her. Wait, it’s Christmas!

“Covered in dog slobber. You forget to shut the door?”, I chuckle. 

“Oooops.” She smiles back, the same one I fell in love with 11 years ago. I’d been a bit cynical about the whole true love thing in my youth, and then Lorraine bashed down all resistance with one glance. 

“Can you watch the kids for a sec? They’re already going crazy waiting to open presents.”, she says.

“They’re not the only ones!”, I reply. Then, lowering my voice so as not to ruin the magic that is an old man slithering his way down your chimney, “I can’t wait to see the look on Nick’s face when he unwraps the Falcon.”

Lorraine slides over to me and kisses me. “Merry Christmas, baby”, she whispers in my ear. It brings an overwhelming sense of comfort, but somewhere in me I feel an unusual pang of despair. She slaps my butt and tells me to get up. The feeling retreats as I roll out of bed and throw on some loungers, excited to rile up Nick and Lily.

I stomp my way downstairs. “HO, HO, HO! Merry-yyyyyy Christmas!,” I say giving my best Kris Kringle impression.

“Daddy!” They both scream out, their mother’s smile plastered across their face. “Look under the tree”, shouts Nick. “Daddy, Santa ate all our cookies,” counters Lily. 

We’d spent yesterday designing and baking Gingerbread cookies for Santa. It is Lily’s favorite. Since she was three we’d all designed a dozen Gingerbread cookies, five of which were subsequently judged to be the plate cookies by Lily. She would walk confidently around each tray, carefully inspecting each cookie, letting out a scientific mmm every now and then before carefully selecting a cookie from each tray. One tray would have two cookies selected from it, upon which Lily would congratulate that person as the winner. 

“Did he, Lil?” I pick her up and place her on my shoulders and skip into the kitchen to check myself. “Well would you look at that. The man didn’t leave a crumb behind.” 

After wrapping all of the gifts, Lorraine and I always share a glass of wine and share the plate cookies. Lorraine, cookie in mouth, glass in hand walks around to inspect my wrapping, criticizing my bungled tape job.

“Well we’ll just have tell the kids that Santa had the elves in training work on these ones,” she teases.

“Oh, c’mon. I’ve gotten so much better. Look at that one in the center, it’s pristine,” I say. 

“Honey, that one is mine.” She kisses me on the cheek, and curls up on the corner of the couch with me after snagging the last cookie from the tray. 

“I was gonna have that,” I say. 

“Cookies are for those who can wrap, sorry.”

“You better give me that cookie right now,” I say. 

Lorraine gives me a side eye before taking another bite. I wrap my arm over her shoulder and try to grab it out of her mouth, but she dodges me and scooches her way to the other end of the couch. 

“Don’t you take one more bite.” She moves it slowly toward her mouth, opening wide. I grab her ankle and pull her toward me. Lorraine erupts with a giggle, still managing to hold the cookie out of my reach. I grab her arm and crawl toward her until I can pin her arm down and lean over to take a bite of the cookie while it’s still in her hand. 

“Mmm. Thank you, babe.”  I lean down and take another bite. 

“Fine, you can have it. Just let me go.”

I grab it from her and retreat to my side of the couch, making a show of eating the cookie, smacking my lips and swishing it down with a swig of wine. 

Lorraine kicks at my legs, smirks, finishes her glass of wine, and leans back into me. The house is silent, the kids long asleep. Wind sweeps gently outside as snow continues to fall as it has throughout the day. Stockings hang above the lit fireplace, cane-shaped m&ms, paint sticks, and  Hot Wheels cozied up inside waiting to be spilled across the floor tomorrow before being tossed aside for the next gift. Rosco huffs in the corner, clearly displeased that we’re up past his bedtime. 

Lorraine and I stay wrapped around each other, enjoying the silence that is so rare during the holiday season and doze off until we awake sometime in the middle of the night and mozy to bed.

The peace and warmth I felt last night feel so much more distant and I get an urge to hold my wife. Lily is still staring in amazement at the empty plate. Something about it looks off. The red is no longer a merry holiday red, rather a crimson blood that paints Santa’s sleigh and dyes his bag of presents. The plate clatters to the floor, Rosco jumping in fright, bumping into Lily and knocking her to the floor. Lily starts to cry out as Lorraine pops into the kitchen behind me.

“Hey, sweetie, did daddy drop the cookie platter?”, she says, sweeping Lily up in her arms. 

“Are you okay?”, she asks me. I realize I’ve been standing frozen, my mind empty, frigid. I shake it off. 

“Yeah, sorry. Sorry, Lil, I didn’t mean to scare you”, I say, planting a kiss on her and then Lorraine. 

“Why don’t we open presents?”, I say. That illicits a roar from Nick in the other room, and Lily surges back, wiping her tears away. 

“Now, before we open presents, you all know the drill.”  I set up the tripod and we all huddle in front of the tree, the kids wrangling in Rosco.

“We crushed it again, gang,” I cheer, the stored image coming through my LivEye, projecting the family photo through my retina. I quickly flick through the Christmas album, looking at the years past. Two years ago poor Rosco was stuck with a cone on his head. Five years ago was Lily’s first Christmas, seven was Nick’s. Eleven years ago was our first Christmas married in this house before we adopted Rosco later that year. Scrolling through now, the same wish every father has hits me; please don’t grow up. The thought causes a pain to ripple through me, erupting in a powerful headache. 

“David, are you okay?”, my wife asks. 

I click out of the LivEye screen, turn and face my family but they’re blurry. Hazy may be a more appropriate word for it, like a memory faded overtime. 

I reset the device, and close my eyes. My heart is pumping, my head aches. Something about this moments feels off. A thought beats at the back of my head, but like a weighted box it refuses to rise to the surface. By the revulsion coursing through my body, I’m not sure I want to know what’s inside. 

The device resets and I open my eyes. I exhale. The beating in my head subsides. Lorraine wraps her arm around me, no longer in a haze. 

“Sorry, I just got the worst migraine. Things went blurry for a second,” I admit. 

“There’s some aspirin in the kitchen, I’ll get you some,” she says. 

“No, it’s okay. It’s gone. My LivEye may have glitched.” I grab her arm and pull her back in toward me. “Okay, what are wevwaiting for, let’s open these presents.”

The day flashes by in a flurry of ripped up shreds of Candy Cane and elf decorated wrapping paper, cut plastic ties that restrain action figures in their boxes, and chocolate-greased candy wrappers as the kids fuel their excitement with sugar trips. Lorraine works at preparing a late Christmas lunch, Rosco providing assistance mopping up the floor. I spend the morning putting together racecar tracks, helping Lily begin her Lego Dollhouse foundation, and clearing the mess of my critized wrappings that inevitably cover the floor in pieces.

“Dad, I want to fly the drone,” says Nick. The highlight of my morning was watching Nick unwrap the gift he’d been talking about all year, a Falcon-1 Safety drone. It was a beginner drone with limited flight range and capabilities, designed to spark kid’s interest in flying and racing. Parental controls enabled limitations on range, so we could limit flying to just our backyard and at a relative minimum altitude. I already planned on breaking those rules, but for his mother’s sake they provided assurance that he wouldn’t crash into the neighbors window. Fair. 

“I know, buddy, but it’s missing a part. We’ll have to go to the store.” I help Lorraine set the dining room table, my stomach growling at the aromas drifting in from the kitchen. I can’t help but feel like I haven’t smelled a home cooked meal in some time, and I almost get emotional when Lorraine sets the ham down in the center. This isn’t my life. This life is filled with love and hope like the Hallmark holiday movie that plays in the background. Something rattles internally, the box, weighted down, chains jangling screaming to break free. I swear I hear whispers, someone calling my name, penciling. 

“I can take you tomorrow. I need to pick up your sister's glasses. But we have to go early. David you’re still good to meet with the guy coming to take a look at the leak tomorrow, right?”, asks Lorraine.

“Um, sorry?”, I ask, startled back into the moment. 

“The leak. You can stay here, while I take the kids tomorrow morning. We need to get it fixed before Aunt Janie comes to visit.” 

“Oh, yes, sorry. I’ll be here, don’t worry.” I say. She gives me a look of concern, and I get a feeling again like this moment is almost right, but not quite, as if someone shoved a couple of pieces of a different puzzle into this one, so that from a distance it looks correct but up close it’s clear the image is tainted. 

I down a couple of glasses of wine as we dig into the feast which seems to ease the lingering tension inside me. The rest of the day is spent in a shower of giggles and roarous cries, spending the night ramping Hot Wheels with Nick, and drawing pictures with Lily. We cap off the night with a board game frenzy. Nick wins twice at Candy Land, Lorraine and Lily team up to take Nick and I down at Srabble Junior, and I win Sorry. I feel as if I’ve won an Olympic Medal when my final piece lands home. There’s a crack in the board across the word, imitating my own feelings. Looking at it causes the box to rattle more violently, and I’m relieved when Lorraine tells the kids it’s bedtime.

I stay downstairs while Lorraine gets the kids into bed. Christmas Stories for Kids lays on the coffee table. The night was suppose to end with me reading it to the kids, before slowly backing out of the room, exhausted from the day but overwhelmed with the sense of comfort and security only family can provide. It ended with me crawling into bed with Lorraine, already sound asleep. It ended with a Sorry board in pristine condition, a puzzle appropriately assembled. Tonight, however, it ends with me falling asleep on the couch. 

“Rosco, get off. Get off me! Get off, you crazy pup!” Rosco’s covered me in droll again. I must have made my way up to bed in a sleepy stupor last night. 

““Hey, hun, are you awake?” I glimpse Lorraine’s festive robe…it’s Christmas. A crippling pain erupts in the center of my head. Whatever weighted down my box shakes free with the eruption, and it begins to rise to the surface. I’m scared of what’s inside. It remains closed, the pain increasing as it continues to rise. Whatever’s inside is shaking, begging to escape. It knows that this reality is wrong, tainted. The rogue puzzle pieces pop out, disgusted in their attempt to disguise what is real. The box shakes with such violence now that I swear it jostles my own body. 

“David, David can you hear me? Let’s get a…” the voice trails off, but the hand attached to it touches my arm and it’s only then I realize it is my body shaking. I’m trapped between two realities, but my mind refuses to accept either. The box is almost to the surface and it’s now I realize it contains death. I plead for it to remain unopened. I feel a pinch in my arm, a physical pain barely perceptible in the mental torture about to be unlocked. 

Then, a warmth starts to spread, outward from the pinch, up my arm and through my chest. It makes it to my head just in time to weigh the box back down once more. I’m trapped in limbo. One direction tortures me with what was. Another tortures me with what is. Time passes. Voices fade in and out. 

“...appreciate you accommodating us on short notice and during the holiday.” 

“Yes, well, it’s been disturbing how many cases are turning up. Anything we can do to help you combat it we’re happy to help.”

“This is him?”

“Yes, David Groggins, age 43. Police found him unconscious in Reynoldsville three weeks ago.”

“Medical tested him, then. He consumed it?”

“Yes, Trepodiezalethol was found in his system. Heard they’re calling it Glitch on the streets, is that right?”

“Glitch, bug, defect, crash. It seems to only have found its way into methamphetamines at the moment and we hope to keep it contained. Easier to track one drug supply over many.”

“I read his file, history of drug abuse ever since his family died in a car crash. Day after Christmas, no less.” 

“Well, if your reports are accurate, it certainly helps us understand this drug’s intent a bit more.”

“Yes, additional testing is needed, but we’re 90% sure he’s been reliving the day before the crash. Christmas Day. 4 years ago tomorrow.”

“We’re not quite sure how it works. The drug causes a malfunction in the LivEye system, essentially trapping a person in a continuous memory loop. We suspect it may attach itself to particularly powerful memories, like in this case, though we cannot confirm at this time. We were able to perform an autopsy on one victim a week ago. Damage to the hippocampus and frontal lobe were observed. Preliminary reports suggest those affected might know they’re trapped in a memory. That they may experience what may be described as glitches throughout the memory itself.”

‘“For this man’s sake, I hope he doesn’t know. Tomorrow’s Christmas. Let him have Christmas with his family again.”