by R. E. Vance
She doesn’t try to take it. “Remember our first Christmas?” she says. “As man and wife?”
She waves her hand and the beach that we stand on fades away, its grains of sand coming together to form a hard, uneven wood floor. The water of the sea rises up and becomes four walls covered in terrible, pastel wall paper.
She has transformed the beach into our first apartment, the one we lived in right after the gods left. The world was in turmoil during those days and we were broke, afraid of what the appearance of Others meant for our world and unsure what the future would bring. And I had never been happier.
An old foldout poker table sits in the middle of a living room. On the table are lit candles and a red-and-blue polka-dot tablecloth. “What? Where did you get this from?” I say, rubbing the cloth between my fingers. “I lost this thing years—” I stop myself. “You have it because this is a dream and you are a figment of my imagination built from my memories of you.”
“Bingo,” the dream of my Bella says.
“So what else will my subconscious conjure today?”
“Oh, don’t be like that,” she says. “Such a cynic. Tell me, are you happy to be here, with me, now?”
“Yes.”
“Then just because this isn’t real doesn’t mean you can’t be happy to be here. Besides, reality is overrated.” She gestures for me to sit down. “And I say we indulge the lie for as long as this night lets us.”
She pours me a glass of wine and picks it up, sipping. Even though I can’t taste it, the memory of that cheap, supermarket wine floods back to me. It’s bitter, bordering on vile. And I love it.
She balks at the taste, passing me the glass. “I’ll never know how you could drink glass after glass of that stuff.”
“Just gets better with age.”
“Or inebriation.”
“Indeed,” I say, lifting the glass. I look over at the love of my life and suddenly I feel a vast emptiness come over me. I miss her. And dreams, as pleasant as they are, will never be enough.
“What’s wrong?” she asks.
“It’s been tough and I don’t see it getting any easier.”
“I know. But you can take it, I know you can.”
“Can I? I know I made you a promise to keep the hotel working and always open for Others, but…” I shake my head.
“Jean-Luc,” she says, her voice carrying with it a kindness that makes my soul swoon with comfort, “I would never ask you to do something you couldn’t handle. You know that.”
“I do, but still…” I take a deep breath, then put down my glass and exhale with a sigh. “Bella, can I ask you something? A Christmas gift of my own, if you will.”
“Of course, anything.”
“Can you free me?”
“Of what?”
“My promise.”
“But Jean-Luc,” she says, giving me a curious look that I have never seen before. “You think I’m a figment of your imagination. Following that logic, I can’t free you of anything.”
I mull this over. “Maybe. But you behave exactly like Bella does, so in a very real way, you are her. Tell me, if she were alive today, would she free me of my promise?”
This seems to hurt Bella’s apparition, because she looks down and she bites her lower lip. I honestly don’t know if she is upset because I don’t see her as my wife or because I want to be free of my promise.
She sits silent for a long moment before getting a smile on her face. She stands up and walks over to the hole-in-the-wall that once passed as our kitchen and pulls out a tray of cookies. “I made these for you. Your favorite. Chocolate chip and macadamia nut.”
The memory of freshly baked cookies whisks into the room as she places the tray in front of me. I pick up a cookie but don’t eat it. “You didn’t answer my question,” I say.
“What good would an answer be?”
“I need to know that, if I walked away from this, she — ah, I mean you — would understand.”
“She — ah, I mean I — would want to know why,” she says, her voice mocking my cadence.
“Because they cause me nothing but misery.”
“They’re lost. Refugees on a planet that doesn’t want them. Our culture is so foreign to them and—”
“So what?” I say. “They should learn. Adapt. Evolve.”
“They’re trying, but it takes time.”
“Again, so what? Why do I have to suffer because they’re slow at catching up.”
“Because no one else will do it. You have fought in their corner for so many years—what’s suddenly changed? What’s going on?”
“What’s going on is—” I throw the cookie back on the tray. “—is that I can’t do it anymore! Yeah, I fought for them, but that was because of you. You were my strength. You were – are – the best part of me. But you’re not here anymore. You’re dead, killed by them.”
“Jean-Luc, you take that back right now,” she says, anger rising in her voice. “Penemue, Astarte and my mother had nothing to do with my death. Lumping them all into one neat little package is not only wrong, it’s irresponsible. You know that.”
I lift my hands in surrender. “Yes, yes, I do. I’m sorry. It’s just that lately it’s getting harder and harder to hold onto you.”
“But Jean-Luc… I’m here every night.”
“No, the memory of you is here every night. You’re dead.” I point at the tray. “And this… None of this is real.”
As if to accentuate my words, there’s a thudding noise that causes one of the walls to come crashing down. “You see?” I say. “That’s the real world knocking. Probably Penemue drunk, or Astarte throwing some wild orgy and Judith complaining about it.” Another thud, followed by another wall falling. “Answer my question, please… Before I have to face another day of this, please answer my question.”
She gives me a look that says, patience.
“No.” Another wall comes crashing down. “Not this time. I need an answer.”
“Do I relieve you of your promise?”
“Yes?”
“In answer to your question, I say… Wait a day. Wait a day, and if you still feel like you’re done with it all, then the answer is yes, you are free of your promise.”
“Thank you.”
The final wall comes crashing down and reality replaces my dreams.
↔
I woke with a jolt to another thud on a door. “Coming,” I said, pulling off my blanket.
Light streamed in from the window and I looked over at my clock. It was one in the afternoon. I guess I did manage to sleep in after all.
Another two knocks, and with a bitter “Yes, yes… I’m coming,” I readied myself for whatever drama waited for me on the other side of that door.
Chapter 3
But succubus, angel and ghost alike,
Know not what are Jean-Luc’s preferred delights.
Each ponders and pines and wonders and plans.
What gift to bestow on this frustrated man?
Astarte knows lust would not entice;
If anything, Jean-Luc wants her to play nice.
And as for Judith, once flesh and bone,
She does not like her son-in-law’s tone.
The twice-fallen angel, now sobering up,
Knows not what Jean-Luc prefers in his cup.
With a wave of his wand, a flick of his hand,
Good ol’ St Nich’las helps them under—
“Stand still,” Astarte said in a British accent that would have made Jane Austen proud. “You’re going to mess them up.”
I looked over at Astarte, who was wearing a Victorian dress complete with bodice, a crinoline skirt and white lace gloves. She was carrying a little parasol. “Oh, like they did a good job on you?” I said, overemphasizing my sarcasm in hopes that she would detect it.
She didn’t. “Exactly. They did a perfect job for me, and if you’ll only stand still, they’ll do a perfect job for you.”
Ten minutes a
go she had knocked on my door dressed like an extra in a Monet painting. That threw me off. I was used to her being barely clothed, often completely naked and, on more than one occasion, in the throes of passion. If Astarte sensed my confusion, she made no show of it; she daintily lifted her hand in my direction and said, “Shall we?”
“Shall we what?”
“Why, prepare for Christmas dinner!” And with that Astarte had simply taken my hand and led me to her room, where four pixies greeted me with scissors and needles in hand. They tore off my clothes, which, considering I was still in my pajamas (in other words, T-shirt and underwear) wasn’t much. Before I could protest, they immediately started fashioning a suit over my body. Talk about bespoke. It felt like high fashion’s equivalent of being in a NASCAR racing pit.
Soft wool was sown over my legs to make my trousers. Egyptian cotton was measured, cut and sown over my torso to make a shirt, complete with pleats. More soft wool, lined with silk for my jacket. Hell, there was even a dwarf in the corner cobbling my shoes.
In less than twenty minutes I was in a three-piece suit, complete with a red silk tie.
“Ah, they forgot my underwear,” I said.
“They didn’t forget.” She rolled her eyes. “Come on, Jean-Luc… You can only stop a leopard from mounting its mate for so long.”
“I don’t think that’s the expression.”
“Is it not?” Astarte lifted her hand and guided me out of her room and down the stairs.
↔
The One Spire Hotel isn’t big. Once upon a time, it was a hostel for backpackers who made their way through Paradise Lot to wherever was next on their trek. The One Spire Hotel was built to be small yet fit lots of people, so it was efficiently designed for sleep and nothing else.
But amongst those unshowered young trekkers, it was considered “upscale,” simply because it had a small room in the basement that was used to serve breakfast. Now that room was mostly abandoned, only used by Miral, the local doctor, to throw her weekly “Coping with Mortality” seminars.
A table was set up in the middle of the room, and Judith stood at the head of the table with a carving knife and a smile. I hadn’t seen Judith smile since, since… Well, since forever. I looked at the big knife in her hand and gulped. That smile wasn’t helping, either.
But before I could say or do anything (like run away, perhaps), Judith clapped her hand and two fairies flew into the room. They guided Astarte and me to our chairs, placing napkins on our laps and pouring us each a glass of wine. They buzzed off and returned with turkey, cranberry sauce, three kinds of potatoes, Brussels sprouts and stuffing. Judith’s smile widened as she started to carve the turkey, asking only one eerie but oddly appropriate question: “White or dark?”
“Both,” Astarte said, with a sultry moan that implied she wasn’t just talking about turkey.
“White,” I said, still unconvinced that this wasn’t some kind of trick or dream or trick in a dream.
“And dark for me,” Judith said, unable to resist throwing Astarte a judgmental look before shaking it off and smiling again.
The fairies started serving us the trimming. Once they were done, they fluttered out of sight.
I took a cautious bite… It was good. Better than good. “Judith, did you make all this?” I asked.
Judith nodded.
Astarte took a bite of cranberry and said, “This is almost as good as what the hobgoblins of Sherwood would make. Back in the seventeen hundreds, I spent a lot of time in their woods and—”
“Astarte,” Judith said in an admonishing tone, “it is not polite to compare a hostess’s meal to that of other cooks. We promised to try.”
I braced myself for one of their typical full-blown rows. But instead Astarte took a deep breath and said, “You’re right. How silly of me.”
This day was getting weirder and weirder.
Awkward silence followed, and I took several bites before wading back into the conversation with, “Where’s Penemue?”
“Who knows?” Judith smirked. “We knocked and knocked on his door, but he didn’t answer.”
“I believe the human expression is ‘sleeping through it’, ” Astarte mused.
“Actually it is ‘sleeping it off’,” Judith corrected.
“Off?” Astarte tilted her head at this. “Humph, I guess that makes sense. In ancient Assyrian, we used to say, ‘Sleeping until the carp passes through’.”
We both gave her a blank look.
“That makes little to no sense,” Judith said.
“Well,” Astarte said, “it is a rough translation and in my culture carp are sacred and… Yes, it makes no sense. But then again neither do so many of your human expressions. ‘Hammered’: I have heard you refer to Penemue as such with nary a hammer in sight. ‘Sloshed’: yet there is no liquid in which he wades. ‘Sleeping it off’: what is on him that needs to fall off.” I thought Astarte was goading Judith into a fight, but the succubus was smiling as she spoke and I realized she was making a joke. I’ve never seen Astarte make a joke. Well, not clothed at least…
Judith laughed. I mean she actually laughed.
“Regardless,” Judith said, wiping away a tear. “We figured a hungover, annoyed angel would ruin lunch and we wanted to… You know.” She nodded in my direction.
“Well, this is lovely, thank you,” I said.
“Yes,” Astarte said. “I have never enjoyed an event without sex until now.”
“Well, maybe this is the start of a new life for you,” Judith mused.
Astarte nearly choked on her wine. “I doubt it,” she said with a sultry wink.
“I don’t know… The occasional party that isn’t punctuated by moaning and groaning—”
“Wouldn’t be a party at all. Not for the Queen of Lust that is,” Astarte pointed at herself.
“Astarte, remember we said we’d try. Trying means—”
“I said I’d try today. Once today is over I will—”
“Trying doesn’t last for one day,” Judith said.
“Well then, why don’t you try my way for a while?” Astarte purred. “A poltergeist’s rage can really shake things up when—”
“As if I would ever—”
“Here we go again, questioning my ways. But have you ever considered that maybe it should be I who question your ways? After all, a chaste life is a boring one.”
“ ‘Chaste?’ Just because I don’t fornicate with everyone that I see—”
I slammed my hand on the table. “As nice as it is to go back to what makes us comfortable – namely ripping into each other’s character – I was actually starting to enjoy the peace and quiet.”
Both Judith and Astarte looked at me, evidently remembering their promise to be good for a day.
So Judith smiled and Astarte became conservative again, and we enjoyed our meal for exactly three minutes before Astarte muttered, “I know how to make that smile more permanent… After all, someone without legs can be quite—”
“Astarte,” I said.
“Why, you sex-obsessed—”
“Judith, please,” I cried out.
“Have you ever slept with a ghost? You never know what you can go through and what you can’t—”
“Both of you, please shut up!”
But it was too late: Astarte and Judith had returned to their old ways.
I was considering flipping the table, perhaps throwing gobs of meat at both of them, when a giant THUD! shook the entire basement.
We all ran upstairs, followed by a flurry of fairies, and out the front door, where we saw a friggin’ eighteen-foot pine tree standing in the middle of the road. On top of it was Penemue, striking a majestic pose as he balanced on the topmost needle – a single angel on the head of a pine.
“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed.
The twice-fallen angel cocked an eyebrow before saying hesitantly, “What you asked me to do?” He returned to his regal stance.
“I don’t remem
ber asking you to uproot a tree and—”
“I beg to differ. You said that all you wanted for Christmas was for me to act like an angel. It’s Christmas. What is more angelic than an angel standing atop a Christmas tree?”
“He has a point,” Judith said.
“Get down from there!” I said, slapping my head. I could just see the police report: unauthorized kindling in a city street. How much would the fine for that be? “Now!” I screamed.
“Oh, Human Jean-Luc, you are being quite ungrateful,” Astarte cut in. She was selectively ripping off pieces of her Victorian dress in what can only be described as a reenactment of an 1800s burlesque show.
“I’m being ungrateful?”
“Indeed. Look at us. Judith is being polite. For you. I am dressed like a… a… I don’t know what I’m dressed like. All I know is that I tried,” she said, removing her glove. “And as for the angel… He only did as you instructed. Don’t you see? We’re all trying very hard to give you a very merry, merry Christmas.”
“This is a ‘very merry, merry Christmas’?” I said. And then it hit me: Judith standing there, her lips pursed so tightly together that her lip line was (quite literally) whiter than a ghost, Astarte in her dismantled Victorian dress, and the angel Penemue on top of a GoneGodDamn Christmas tree…
It was too much. It was too… “Ridiculous,” I muttered to myself. As the word came out of me, so too did the months and years of my life pour out. The relentless Other drama, the absurd situations that they put themselves into, the hilarity of this new GoneGod world. It was all too much.
I did the only thing I could do when faced with lunacy: I laughed.
And laughed and laughed. I laughed until my guffaws were chortles mixed with titters and snorts. I laughed until my sides hurt and my eyes had no more tears to shed. I laughed until I was dizzy, as my soul emptied of rage and filled with mirth.
I laughed until I started seeing things. For in the blur of bliss, I could have sworn I saw Santa’s sleigh fly over Penemue’s Christmas tree.
The sight of it only made me laugh some more.
I laughed and laughed because in the end, Astarte was right. They did give me a very merry, merry Christmas.