Hark! the Herald Angels Scream

by Hark! the Herald Angels Scream (retail) (epub)

  The little boy began to weep.

  “Be that as it may,” said the cashier, “those pennies don’t even cover the sales tax. Maybe your mama could meet Jesus in something from the clearance aisle?”

  The tears made little clean trails in the dirt on his face. “I just want her to look beautiful.”

  “If she’s in the final stages of cancer, new shoes aren’t going to do the trick. She could have passed while you are here standing in line. How are you going to reconcile the guilt if your mother dies while you are trying to scam your way into a pair of shoes? Your intentions are good, son, but I’ll be honest: you didn’t think this through.”

  The little boy looked back at me with his wide, soulful eyes. “Mama always made sure we had a nice Christmas,” he said with a sniffle. “She never cared about herself. She’d say that the best present we could get her was to buy something for ourselves, which we did. I just want her to have a good Christmas on the night she goes to Heaven. Without these shoes, she’ll die screaming, I know it.”

  And as I stared at that boy, something happened to my heart. No, it wasn’t a cardiac arrest; it was…the Christmas spirit. This was what it was all about. This was why Christmas was the champion of all December holidays.

  “I want your mama to look beautiful, too,” I said. “And I’m going to pay for those shoes.”

  The cashier shrugged. “That’ll be $139.57.”

  “Oh, no, no, no,” I said. I knelt down beside the boy. “I know you love your mama, but I’m sure there are shoes that will make her very happy for about half this price. Go find another pair. Get them quickly,” I said.

  He left. It did briefly occur to me that I could hurriedly pay for my stuff and get out of the store before the kid came back, but I decided against it. Instead, I stood there feeling great about my generosity.

  The replacement pair was $99, which seemed pricey for shoes that were basically just going to be lying around in a casket, but the people behind me in line were getting annoyed, so I paid for them without protest.

  “Merry Christmas,” I told him.

  “Thank you, mister,” said the little boy. “Now my mama will be beautiful. She won’t be disrespecting Jesus anymore. Thank you so much.” He hugged the box of shoes to his chest and ran out of the store.

  I began to cry. I’d never known I was such a wonderful person. The world was a dark, ugly, selfish cesspool of misery, but I’d done my part to shine a ray of joy upon it. With only a credit card, I’d made the universe a better place.

  The man behind me was crying as well. “I’m going to call my mother,” he said, taking out his cell phone.

  “Could you do that after you pay?” asked the woman behind him. “Some of us don’t have all night to wait in line.”

  The man glared at her. “I waited for him to buy shoes for the cancer lady, so you can wait for me to make a damn phone call. God, you must be one of those ‘Happy Holidays’ people.”

  I ignored the grinches and walked out of the store with smiles flowing through my arteries. I’d saved Christmas! Maybe not for the entire world, but regionally, I’d shown that Christmas could be about kindness and compassion and benevolence.

  As I walked to my car, I whistled a merry tune.

  It was a catchy tune, made up on the spot.

  Maybe it could be an actual song.

  Maybe it could be a song about…me.

  If my selfless act could touch my own heart, maybe it could touch the hearts of millions! “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town” could bite my ass. I was going to write this song tonight!

  I sped home. Yes, I ran a stop sign and caused an accident, but the joy I’d bring to humanity would outweigh a hundred car accidents. I couldn’t stop crying tears of happiness. I bet that little boy was putting those shoes on his mother’s withered feet at this very moment.

  When I got home, it occurred to me that I didn’t have time to write, record, and distribute a song in time for Christmas, since that was tomorrow. It would have to be a holiday classic for next year. That meant I didn’t need to do any creative work tonight; I could sit at home and bask in my glory.

  The next year, on December 23, I wrote my song. It was called “A Precious Young Child’s Wish for His Terminally Ill Mother to Have New Shoes to Die In, and How I Granted That Wish One Magical Christmas Eve.” It’s not my place to say that it was a masterpiece, but I will say that I cried the entire time I was writing it.

  “What’s wrong?” asked my new wife, Candi, walking into the garage.

  I strummed my guitar. “Listen to what I’ve created,” I said.

  I played her the song. By the end she was weeping.

  “Did it fill you with the Christmas spirit?” I asked.

  “So the kid’s mom died?”

  “Well, presumably, yeah.”

  “I thought there’d be a twist ending where Jesus healed her.”

  “No, it’s not a song about Jesus. It’s a song about me. Those are tears of holiday joy, right?”

  “They are tears of being completely bummed out. That song has literally ruined my day. Why did the father let that kid go out by himself on Christmas Eve? Maybe the last conversation his mother ever had was with the police about how her son had been abducted!”

  “This isn’t a song about child abduction,” I assured her. “It’s a song about the true meaning of Christmas.”

  “Lingering death?”

  “The death doesn’t happen until the song is over. It’s supposed to be heartwarming.”

  “It’s the opposite of heartwarming. I can’t even cope with it right now. I just…I can’t…I don’t know what to…I can’t…”

  Candi took out a gun, shoved it in her mouth, and pulled the trigger.

  I shouted something very un-Christmassy as a significant portion of my wife’s brain splattered against the cement wall. Her knees buckled and she fell to the floor. I stood there, gaping, watching the pool of blood expand.

  I didn’t even know she owned a gun, much less carried it around with her while we were relaxing at home.

  This was not at all the reaction I’d been going for.

  I felt a little silly calling 911, since, let’s face it, even the best-trained paramedics can’t do much for somebody who’s blown their brains out. But I was pretty sure it was the law.

  While I waited for them to arrive, I tried to figure out why the reception to my song had been so poor. It seemed pretty goddamned inspirational to me. Did Candi have psychological problems she hadn’t divulged before our wedding? We had a prenuptial agreement but it had never occurred to me that she should sign an affidavit of mental health.

  If I seemed dispassionate about the death of my bride, I should point out that we’d been married for less than three months. That’s not enough time to get truly invested in a marriage. I was glad I’d found this out about her before I got too used to having her around.

  The paramedics, of course, asked if I knew why Candi had taken her own life, and I told them about the song, and they seemed to think there was more to it than that, and I agreed.

  There was a lot of paperwork. But I wasn’t a murder suspect or anything, and I had some free time the following evening. Despite the unwelcome response from my wife, I was proud of the song and wanted to play it in front of an audience to gauge their reaction.

  To clarify, I was not a professional musician and I apologize if I gave that impression. I was just a guy who liked to write the occasional tune on his hand-me-down guitar. I knew a place that had an open mic night (by which I mean they left a microphone unattended and you could get in a quick song or two before the bouncers dragged you away) and I was anxious to give my musical gift to those who would cherish it.

  I walked into the bar. It was filled with the kind of people who would be in a bar late on Christmas Eve without bein
g Jewish. These dozen or so people needed me. It was time to squeeze the lemon of Christmas spirit over the halibut of their loneliness.

  “Hi,” I said, standing in front of the microphone. I’d learned from previous experience that it was best to skip an introduction or lively banter and just go straight into the song.

  I played like my soul depended on it.

  When I got to the part where I paid for that little boy’s shoes, yeah, I wept. Not a day had gone by for the past year where I didn’t think about what I’d done for him, and it always filled me with deep emotion. I thought about how happy he must be, even with his mother presumably long-dead and buried. Hell, it had brought a tear to my eye on my wedding day, which Candi thought was me being sappy about our nuptials.

  I finished the song and stood there, basking in pride.

  “What the hell was that?” asked a large man seated on a stool.

  “That was a true story,” I said, though to make the song more dramatic, I’d given the mother kidney stones as well.

  “That sucked away my will to live!” the man told me. He lifted his shirt, revealing both his enormous gut and a revolver tucked into his jeans. He took out the gun, pressed it against the side of his head, and pulled the trigger. Red goo sprayed all over the counter and the woman next to him. He tumbled off the stool and landed on his head, making the exposed portion of his skull even larger than it already was.

  “He’s got the right idea,” said a blond woman, breaking her wineglass against the table and then slamming it deep into her throat. There was no shortage of spurting blood.

  Another guy picked up the first man’s revolver and flipped out the cylinder. “He’s got five bullets left,” he announced. “Line up. First come, first served.”

  Several people got up and hurried over to him.

  “Wait!” I said as he shot the first person in line. “This isn’t—” Bang! Another one dead. “—necessary! Why are you—” Bang! One more body dropped. “—doing this? My—” Bang! Another corpse. “—song was an inspiring tale of Christmas generosity! I don’t get why you’re all killing yourselves!”

  “Sorry,” the guy with the gun said to the last person in line. “There’s only one bullet left, and I need it for myself.”

  “Well, couldn’t you beat me to death with the gun first?”

  “It’ll hurt.”

  “Not as bad as I’m already hurting.”

  “All right, yeah, sure.”

  It took about three minutes to beat the man to death, during which time I kept protesting on deaf (well, mangled) ears. Why did they feel this behavior was necessary? Even if they didn’t like the song, why be so extreme about it? I’d heard plenty of songs that I didn’t enjoy, and you didn’t see me putting a bullet through my head. Honestly, it was ungrateful and rude.

  An elderly woman stepped over the corpses and shook my hand. “I don’t care what they thought. It was a lovely song. That poor woman might be burning in hell if it wasn’t for you.”

  “I know, right?”

  “All my life, when children have asked me for money, I’ve told them to fuck right off. But you’ve taught me that there’s a positive side to charity. Thank you.”

  She gave me a hug, which I’ll admit went on long enough that it started to get creepy. Finally she broke the hug and walked out of the bar, some brain matter trailing behind her shoe like a piece of toilet paper.

  “What did you think?” I asked a man who sat alone in a booth.

  “Oh, I’m not into violent death,” he said. “I just took a whole bottle of sleeping pills. Hope they kick in soon.”

  I left the bar, feeling that my first public performance of the song had gone below expectations. Was it really such a bummer? Did people not understand the message of personal awesomeness? If somebody else had written this amazing song, I’d rush right out to buy the single from iTunes, if it weren’t readily available on a file-sharing site.

  It saddened me to think that my hard work and life lesson might go to waste, but I could not in good conscience continue to perform a song that made people kill themselves after they heard it. I’m not trying to be a social justice warrior, but I believe that even one grisly death over a song is too many.

  I vowed to never play the song again. If I could sacrifice money for shoes, I could sacrifice my art.

  I didn’t call the police. I should have, I know, but I wasn’t up for another round of questioning. What if they decided I was some thrill-killer who made the murders look like song-related suicides?

  When I got home, I sat next to the Christmas tree. I hate to sound maudlin, but I missed Candi. I knew she would have wanted me to open my presents from her, so I did. One of them was a pair of socks, which reminded me of the shoes I bought for that little boy, and it made me cry again.

  I fell asleep in my chair, though I kept being woken up by fireworks, or something that sounded like them.

  The next morning, my cell phone rang. The display said “Ex-Wife.”

  “Hello?”

  She was crying. “That song!”

  “Which song?”

  “The one that was uploaded to YouTube last night! You were singing it in a bar! Everybody killed themselves after hearing it!”

  “Not everybody. One old lady had very nice things to say about it.”

  “I’ve never been so depressed. Not even the sight of our beautiful innocent children happily opening their Christmas presents can cheer me up. Good-bye.”

  There was a bang as she set off a celebratory firework.

  Somebody had uploaded the video to the Internet? It seemed like there could be quite a downside to that. I’d dreamed of having a viral video, but I couldn’t help but feel that maybe a cat video would’ve been better right now.

  I turned on the news. “—thousands of unexplained suicides,” said the announcer.

  They were unexplained ones, so this wasn’t necessarily my fault.

  I switched to another station. “—apparently after hearing a terrible, terrible song,” said a different announcer.

  Well, damn.

  They cut to the video of me performing the song, which struck me as a mistake.

  Okay, this was not going to be my merriest Christmas ever. Legally I didn’t think they could hold me liable, but with thousands of deaths across the nation, I was sure some lawyer would try to find a loophole.

  I was screwed, all because I tried to do something nice for somebody.

  Thanks for nothing, Jesus.

  And that little boy sucked. Dying mama this and dying mama that, while not giving a rat’s ass about those of us who stood to suffer from his self-centered footwear fetish.

  I could hear sirens in the distance.

  Yep, I was boned.

  I figured I could buy myself some time by playing the song for the officers that tried to break into my house, causing them to commit suicide before I could be apprehended. But I couldn’t sing forever.

  Though I could play the video on a loop…

  As it turned out, that wasn’t very effective, and only about eight cops killed themselves before I was taken away in handcuffs. You may think that they didn’t blame me for the holiday carnage, but that’s because, unlike me, you haven’t had every last drop of optimism squeezed out of you. Oh, they blamed the hell out of me. I could’ve gone on an ax-murdering spree in a Santa suit and had less negative energy thrown my way.

  So, yeah, my good deed landed me in prison. I don’t expect you to sympathize with my plight if you’re one of the many people who lost friends or loved ones during the mass Christmas suicides of last year, but I’ll bet the rest of you are shaking your heads right now at how badly I was treated.

  Anyway, I hate to end this on a cynical note, but if you’re ever doing some last-minute shopping and a dirty little ragamuffin kid asks
you for shoe money, kick him in the face and run. Trust me. Good deeds just aren’t worth it.

  To those of you who haven’t quit celebrating, merry Christmas.

  IT’S A WONDERFUL KNIFE

  CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN

  Cassie hated Christmas parties in L.A. It wasn’t just the weather, though she’d grown up in Wisconsin, where snow days were more plentiful than holidays and ugly sweaters were more than just ironic fashion statements. She remembered building whole kingdoms out of snow, sledding down streets closed off to traffic, and those first romantic snowstorm kisses with her high school boyfriend on a white Christmas Eve.

  Still, it wasn’t the weather that put her teeth on edge at an L.A. Christmas party. It was the fakery. The festive decorations, the ornamentation, the wreaths and bows and cheery Christmas music, the unneeded scarfs and crystal punch glasses full of eggnog. So fucking fake, like so much of this city, like the smiles on these faces. Even the house they were all meandering through, this mansion in the hills, surrounded by trees and green lawns and enough land that it was hard to imagine she was still in L.A….Even the house seemed like a set on some studio back lot, like they were all extras in some faux 1950s holiday film.

  James Massarsky had come up in Hollywood the way few people did these days. He’d quite literally started in the mailroom and worked his way up through the industry to become head of a studio. After a few glory years followed by one catastrophic summer box-office season, he’d been bumped out to make room for the next scapegoat, put out to pasture with a producing deal. In time, he had become an independent producer with more power than most of the studio heads he worked with. Massarsky got movies made. He got shit done. But he’d earned his reputation as a ruthless, narcissistic shitbag.

  Nobody cared. His reputation, his behavior, his divorces and scandals…they didn’t matter. The crowd at his Christmas party laughed and drank and sang along to holiday tunes. They kissed beneath mistletoe and paused to watch curved-screens silently showing scenes from the greatest hits of both animated and live-action Christmas films. On one sitting-room screen, George Bailey stood up to Mr. Potter, and Massarsky’s guests watched without a trace of irony.