Gift-Wrapped & Toe-Tagged: A Melee of Misc. Holiday Anthology

by Dr. Freud Funkenstein, ed.

  "I didn't exactly say I was her grandson. Not in so many words, at least, but that was the implication. I wasn't trying to trick her, though. It was like a game we'd both decided to play - without having to discuss the rules. I mean, that woman knew I wasn't her grandson Robert. She was old and dotty, but she wasn't so far gone that she couldn't tell the difference between a stranger and her own flesh and blood. But it made her happy to pretend, and since I had nothing better to do anyway, I was happy to go along with her.

  "So we went into the apartment and spent the day together. The place was a real dump, I might add, but what can you expect from a blind woman who does her own housekeeping? Every time she asked me a question about how I was, I would lie to her. I told her I found a good job working in a cigar store, I told her I was about to get married, I told her a hundred pretty stories, and she made like she believed every one of them. 'That's fine, Robert,' she would say, nodding her head and smiling. 'I always knew things would work out for you.'

  "After a while, I started getting pretty hungry. There didn't seem to be much food in the house, so I went out to a store in the neighborhood and brought back a mess of stuff. A precooked chicken, vegetable soup, a bucket of potato salad, a chocolate cake, all kinds of things. Ethel had a couple of bottles of wine stashed in her bedroom, and so between us we managed to put together a fairly decent Christmas dinner. We both got a little tipsy from the wine, I remember, and after the meal was over we went out to sit in the living room, where the chairs were more comfortable. I had to take a pee, so I excused myself and went to the bathroom down the hall. That's where things took yet another turn. It was ditsy enough doing my little jig as Ethel's grandson, but what I did next was positively crazy, and I've never forgiven myself for it.

  "I go into the bathroom, and stacked up against the wall next to the shower, I see a pile of six or seven cameras. Brand-new thirty-five-millimeter cameras, still in their boxes, top-quality merchandise. I figure this is the work of the real Robert, a storage place for one of his recent hauls. I've never taken a picture in my life, and I've certainly never stolen anything, but the moment I see those cameras sitting in the bathroom, I decide I want one of them for myself. Just like that. And without even stopping to think about it, I tuck one of those boxes under my arm and go back to the living room.

  "I couldn't have been gone for more than three minutes, but in that time Granny Ethel had fallen asleep in her chair. Too much Chianti, I suppose. I went into the kitchen to wash the dishes, and she slept through the whole racket, snoring like a baby. There didn't seem any point in disturbing her, so I decided to leave. I couldn't even write a note to say goodbye, seeing that she was blind and all, so I just left. I put her grandson's wallet on the table, picked up the camera again, and walked out of the apartment. And that's the end of the story."

  "Did you ever go back to see her?" I asked.

  "Once," he said. "About three or four months later. I felt so bad about stealing the camera, I hadn't even used it yet. I finally made up my mind to return it, but Ethel wasn't there any more. I don't know what happened to her, but someone else had moved into the apartment, and he couldn't tell me where she was."

  "She probably died."

  "Yeah, probably."

  "Which means that she spent her last Christmas with you."

  "I guess so. I never thought of it that way."

  "It was a good deed, Auggie. It was a nice thing you did for her."

  "I lied to her, and then I stole from her. I don't see how you can call that a good deed."

  "You made her happy. And the camera was stolen anyway. It's not as if the person you took it from really owned it."

  "Anything for art, eh, Paul?"

  "I wouldn't say that. But at least you put the camera to good use."

  "And now you've got your Christmas story, don't you?"

  "Yes," I said. "I suppose I do."

  I paused for a moment, studying Auggie as a wicked grin spread across his face. I couldn't be sure, but the look in his eyes at that moment was so mysterious, so fraught with the glow of some inner delight, that it suddenly occurred to me that he had made the whole thing up. I was about to ask him if he'd been putting me on, but then I realized he'd never tell. I had been tricked into believeing him, and that was the only thing that mattered. As long as there's one person to believe it, there's no story that can't be true."

  "You're an ace, Auggie," I said. "Thanks for being so helpful."

  "Any time," he answered, still looking at me with that maniacal light in his eyes. "After all, if you can't share your secrets with your friends, what kind of a friend are you?"

  "I guess I owe you one."

  "No you don't. Just put it down the way I told it to you, and you don't owe me a thing."

  "Except the lunch."

  "That's right. Except the lunch."

  I returned Auggie's smile with a smile of my own, and then I called out to the waiter and asked for the check.

  James Valvis

  THE REAL STORY OF FROSTY THE SNOWMAN

  FROSTY THE SNOWMAN was a fairytale they say.

  But they lied.

  He stood by a fence with a corn cob pipe dangling from the place where he had no lips. So the pipe was useless. And his button nose was no better. It was attractive, but it made smelling things difficult. And his two coal eyes! Useless, utterly useless. He was as blind as a bat.

  Nevertheless, every once in a while, he would dance around. Nobody was more surprised by this than Frosty. It had always been his dream to be a ballet dancer, but he didn't see how. He was after all a ghetto kid and he didn't have any legs besides. All he had to stand on was a big flat snow base—'and even that was lopsided. When Frosty was honest with himself, he admitted he didn't so much dance as kind of bob in place. Without moving.

  It was the hat that made Frosty start thinking. Before the hat, he was just a pile of slush that some lonely street kids piled together. Now he could think and he had to spend the winter ruminating. He didn't like it. He would have preferred they never put the hat on his head. But he couldn't remove it. He had no arms. No movable parts whatsoever.

  Frosty hated kids now.

  Frosty's scarf was getting on his nerves. He thought, why bother? He was snow—'so he was always cold. That's the way those kids made him. Now he had to be cold or who knows what would happen. Maybe it would be like the time they tried to light his pipe and his lips melted off. A scarf? Bah. Blasted kids. It was like a hangman's noose, this scarf. Frosty would remove it if he could. But he couldn't.

  He wanted to get to the North Pole and made plans about what he would do if he ever managed to get there. He would meet with more like him. A whole army like him. Then come next winter, they would march on the city. He would lead them through the streets of the town right to the traffic cop. And he wouldn't pause for nobody, neither.

  All winter long he grew increasingly nervous. He thought of other ways to get to the North Pole. He knew he had to get there. It was the North Pole or the sewer drain.

  Now he could feel himself dwindling in the sun. He decided it was now or never. He bobbed using all his strength. He bobbed again. Then he was moving! Moving to his right!

  Falling!

  He landed with a splat and hit his head on the fence. His head dislodged from his body and rolled away, though the hat remained firmly attached.

  After that, he lay on the ground in pieces, and for the rest of winter he made some more halfhearted efforts to dance and run away to the North Pole to start his army. None of which worked.

  Jackie Myers and his small gang of eighth grade hoodlums were walking by the fence when they saw the snowman lying there. “Well, lookee here," Jackie said. “It's Frosty."

  “Yeah, hug, hug," said Ronny Coleman. “It's Frosty, hug, hug, hug."

  “I hate snowmen," Jackie said. He pulled off Frosty's eyes and button nose and put them in his pocket. Then he extracted the pipe and placed it into his own mouth. But when he tried to take off
the hat, he found it was frozen on. “Dang hat won't come off," Jackie said.

  “Dang hat, hug, hug," Ronny said.

  Jackie kicked Frosty's head. It rolled, but the hat made it skip. Jackie kicked it again. Thumpity, thump, thump, the head rolled. Ronny and the others ran to catch up. The boys took turns kicking the head again and again. Thumpity, thump, thump. Thumpity, thump, thump.

  “Look at Frosty go!" the boys shouted.

  James Patrick Kelly

  THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER

  AUNTY EM’S MAN was not doing well at all. He had been droopy and gray ever since the neighbor Mr. Kimura had died, shuffling around the house in nothing but socks and bathrobe. He had even lost interest in the model train layout that he and the neighbor were building in the garage. Sometimes he stayed in bed until eleven in the morning and had ancient Twinkies for lunch. He had a sour, vinegary smell. By midafternoon he'd be asking her to mix strange ethanol concoctions like Brave Little Toasters and Tin Honeymoons. After he had drunk five or six, he would stagger around the house mumbling about the big fires he'd fought with Ladder Company No. 3 or the wife he had lost in the Boston plague. Sometimes he would just cry.

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  Begin Interaction 4022932

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  "Do you want to watch Annie Hall?" Aunty Em asked.

  The man perched on the edge of the Tyvola sofa in the living room, elbows propped on knees, head sunk into hands.

  "The General? Monty Python and the Holy Grail? Spaced Out?"

  "I hate that robot." He tugged at his thinning hair and snarled. "I hate robots."

  Aunty Em did not take this personally—she was a biop, not a robot. "I could call Lola. She's been asking after you."

  "I'll bet." Still, he looked up from damp hands. "I'd rather have Kathy."

  This was a bad sign. Kathy was the lost wife. The girlfriend biop could certainly assume that body; she could look like anyone the man wanted. But while the girlfriend biop could pretend, she could never be the wife that the man missed. His reactions to the Kathy body were always erratic and sometimes dangerous.

  "I'll nose around town," said Aunty Em. "I heard Kathy was off on a business trip, but maybe she's back."

  "Nose around," he said and then reached for the glass on the original Noguchi coffee table with spread fingers, as if he thought it might try to leap from his grasp. "You do that." He captured it on the second attempt.

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  End Interaction 4022932

  · · · · ·

  The man was fifty-six years old and in good health, considering. His name was Albert Paul Hopkins, but none of the biops called him that. Aunty Em called him Bertie. The girlfriend called him sweetie or Al. The pal biops called him Al or Hoppy or Sport. The stranger biops called him Mr. Hopkins or sir. The animal biops didn't speak much, but the dog called him Buddy and the cat called him Mario.

  When Aunty Em beamed a summary of the interaction to the girlfriend biop, the girlfriend immediately volunteered to try the Kathy body again. The girlfriend had been desperate of late, since the man didn't want anything to do with her. His slump had been hard on her, hard on Aunty Em too. Taking care of the man had changed the biops. They were all so much more emotional than they had been when they were first budded.

  But Aunty Em told the girlfriend to hold off. Instead she decided to throw a Christmas. She hadn't done Christmas in almost eight months. She'd given him a Gone With The Wind Halloween and a Fourth of July with whistling busters, panoramas, phantom balls, and double-break shells, but those were only stopgaps. The man needed cookies, he needed presents, he was absolutely aching for a sleigh filled with Christmas cheer. So she beamed an alert to all of her biops and assigned roles. She warned them that if this wasn't the best Christmas ever, they might lose the last man on earth.

  · · · · ·

  Aunty Em spent three days baking cookies. She dumped eight sticks of fatty acid triglycerides, four cups of C12H22O11, four vat-grown ova, four teaspoons of flavor potentiator, twelve cups of milled grain endosperm, and five teaspoons each of NaHCO3 and KHC4H4O6 into the bathtub and then trod on the mixture with her best baking boots. She rolled the dough and then pulled cookie cutters off the top shelf of the pantry: the mitten and the dollar sign and the snake and the double-bladed ax. She dusted the cookies with red nutriceutical sprinkles, baked them at 190°C, and brought a plate to the man while they were still warm.

  The poor thing was melting into the recliner in the television room. He clutched a half-full tumbler of Sins-of-the-Mother, as if it were the anchor that was keeping him from floating out of the window. He had done nothing but watch classic commercials with the sound off since he had fallen out of bed. The cat was curled on the man's lap, pretending to be asleep.

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  Begin Interaction 4022947

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  "Cookies, Bertie," said Aunty Em. "Fresh from the oven, oven fresh." She set the plate down on the end table next to the Waterford lead crystal vase filled with silk daffodils.

  "Not hungry," he said. On the mint-condition 34-inch Sony Hi-Scan television Ronald McDonald was dancing with some kids.

  Aunty Em stepped in front of the screen, blocking his view. "Have you decided what you want for Christmas, dear?"

  "It isn't Christmas." He waved her away from the set, but she didn't budge. He did succeed in disturbing the cat, which stood, arched its back, and then dropped to the floor.

  "No, of course it isn't." She laughed. "Christmas isn't until next week."

  He aimed the remote at the set and turned up the sound. A man was talking very fast. "Two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese …"

  Aunty Em pressed the off button with her knee. "I'm talking to you, Bertie."

  The man lowered the remote. "What's today?"

  "Today is Friday." She considered. "Yes, Friday."

  "No, I mean the date."

  "The date is … let me see. The twenty-first."

  His skin temperature had risen from 33°C to 37°. "The twenty-first of what?" he said.

  She stepped away from the screen. "Have another cookie, Bertie."

  "All right." He turned the television on and muted it. "You win." A morose Maytag repairman slouched at his desk, waiting for the phone to ring. "I know what I want," said the man. "I want a Glock 17."

  "And what is that, dear?"

  "It's a nine millimeter handgun."

  "A handgun, oh my." Aunty Em was so flustered that she ate one of her own cookies, even though she had extinguished her digestive track for the day. "For shooting? What would you shoot?"

  "I don't know." He broke the head off a gingerbread man. "A reindeer. The TV. Maybe one of you."

  "Us? Oh, Bertie—one of us?"

  He made a gun out of his thumb and forefinger and aimed. "Maybe just the cat." His thumb came down.

  The cat twitched. "Mario," it said and nudged the man's bare foot with its head. "No, Mario."

  On the screen the Jolly Green Giant rained peas down on capering elves.

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  End Interaction 4022947

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  Begin Interaction 4023013

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  The man stepped onto the front porch of his house and squinted at the sky, blinking. It was late spring and the daffodils were nodding in a warm breeze. Aunty Em pulled the sleigh to the bottom of the steps and honked the horn. It played the first three notes of "Jingle Bells." The man turned to go back into the house but the girlfriend biop took him by the arm. "Come on now, sweetie," she said and steered him toward the steps.

  The girlfriend had assumed the Donna Reed body the day before, but unlike previous Christmases, the man had taken no sexual interest in her. She was wearing the severe black dress with the white lace collar from the last scene of It's A Wonderful Life. The girlfriend looked as worried about the man as Mary had been about despairing George Bailey. All the biops were worried, thought
Aunty Em. They would be just devastated if anything happened to him. She waved gaily and hit the horn again. Beep-beep-BEEP!

  The dog and the cat had transformed themselves into reindeer for the outing. The cat got the red nose. Three of the animal biops had assumed reindeer bodies too. They were all harnessed to the sleigh, which hovered about a foot off the ground. As the man stumped down the steps, Aunty Em discouraged the antigrav, and the runners crunched against gravel. The girlfriend bundled the man aboard.

  "Do you see who we have guiding the way?" said Aunty Em. She beamed the cat and it lit up its nose. "See?"

  "Is that the fake cop?" The man coughed. "Or the fake pizza guy? I can't keep them straight."

  "On Dasher, now Dancer, now Comet and Nixon," cried Aunty Em as she encouraged the antigrav. "To the mall, Rudolf, and don't bother to slow down for yellow lights!" She cracked the whip and away they went, down the driveway and out into the world.

  The man lived at the edge of the biop compound, away from the bustle of the spaceport and the accumulatorium with its bulging galleries of authentic human artifacts and the vat where new biops were budded off the master template. They drove along the perimeter road. The biops were letting the forest take over here, and saplings of birch and hemlock sprouted from the ruins of the town.

  The sleigh floated across a bridge and Aunty Em started to sing. "Over the river and through the woods …" But when she glanced over her shoulder and saw the look on the man's face, she stopped. "Is something wrong, Bertie dear?"

  "Where are you taking me?" he said. "I don't recognize this road."