Merry Nemesismas

Scarecrow-thin and leaning on a harnessed reindeer, he limped from the mist. A blood trail paralleled his footprints in the calf-deep snow. "Well, we had a good run, Dancer." His breath misted in the cold, and blood ran from the wound in his side, dark on his red-furred coat. Santa fell. Dancer knelt, and the old man lay against him. "I figured I would die in the snow." Santa watched the swirling constellations of falling flakes from the moonlit sky above. Dancer looked away. "But I never thought it would be the frost that killed me. Ey, Jack?"

A boy swathed in white appeared from the shadows. "I got you, did I?" Jack leaned in close to Santa's face. He listened to his belabored breathing, felt the heat of his bloody wound, saw the mourning in the reindeer's eyes. "I did!" Jack jumped up. "After all these years of.... I got you!"

Santa coughed blood. "You couldn't stop this year's gifts."

"Who cares? This is the end! Finally, winter is mine! All mine!" Dissolving into a snow flurry, he blew away.

Santa smiled. He switched off the stage blood's pump and closed his eyes for a nap. "Merry Christmas, Jack."

The Savior's Sacrifice

The invasion was subtle. Aliens from beyond the stars, they had come to Earth secretly, quietly, over millions of years, until they numbered millions, billions. Then the Earth natives discovered them, fought back, killed them. First a few at a time, then in great numbers. It seemed like the humans were methodically sweeping them off the planet. People of Earth used the invaders' corpses for crafts, incorporating them into vehicles and weapons, works of art and forms of communication. Horror swept through the remaining alien population, and they feared extinction.

Some of the humans called for clemency, to allow the two species to live together in greater harmony. Few listened. The massacre only grew worse, the aliens' ichor sticky on the hands and weapons of their oppressors.

A savior appeared. Having grown among both the aliens and the humans, the alien knew how to appease the natives of their adopted planet. It gave itself up to them, a sacrifice to honor the humans' craft and power. The savior's sacrifice granted the aliens a respite, but the humans demand more sacrifices year after year. The aliens still fear.

And now you know where the tradition of the Christmas tree comes from.

Catmas Tree

"Oh, come away from there," Janet said. "Come on, shoo!" Mr. Kentridge the Third gave her a withering look, then sauntered away as only a cat could. Janet fiddled with the low-hanging Christmas ornaments, but the cat hadn't done any harm. Christmas Eve, Hannah yelled from the living room to the study. "Mom, he's doing it again!" Sighing, Janet saved her work and walked to where Hannah tried to move Kentridge away from the Christmas tree. He evaded each grab, keeping his tail plumb upright and vibrating toward the tree.

"Oh, God, don't spray the tree." Janet moved to the cat's other side to trap him. Just before she caught him, he lay down and curled up. Carrying him out of the living room, she said, "I don't know why the tree gets him all worked up. But I swear, if he sprays it or knocks it down, I... I'll... grah!"

A rumbling sound woke them early Christmas morning. Rushing toward it, they saw Kentridge perched in the tree. A hatch they hadn't known about opened in the roof, and fire and smoke belched from the tree's bottom, launching it into the false dawn sky, with a single farewell meow.

Concavity of Life

"Have you ever thought that life is concave?" My sister was in one of those moods again. "I don't even know what that means," I said.

"Well, yeah," she said. "But have you thought it?" She was lying on her back on her bed, staring at the ceiling of the room we shared.

"I... just.... No," I said, "I haven't. Have you?"

"I was thinking it just a minute ago," she said, "but I'm not now." My sigh filled the room and prompted her to go into greater detail. "I was thinking that everything is sort of orderly, having a sensible direction, habits and suchlike, and people come along and scatter everything all over everywhere. Like a lens."

"Nature's more chaotic than that," I said.

"But an orderly chaos. It makes sense. People brains are way too complex to just follow rules of instinct and all."

"Don't lenses scatter light in a predictable fashion?"

She hummed as she mused on that for a few moments. "You're right. We'll need a sort of optics that results in a chaotic system for this analogy. Maybe an oil-water mixture, spinning... go get some oil."

I sighed again. This would be a long night.

Marks the Spot

The map read, "X Marks the Spot," and so a group of adventurous twenty-somethings went looking for the spot. The coastline looked a bit like a corner of Italy, so they took a train down the boot and bribed the polizia into letting them dig. They dug through sand and rock, but they found only seawater. Years of intermittent research and real living later, one discovered the map looked remarkably like it edged on a lake in Maine. The group of now-thirty-somethings hopped the pond and trespassed into someone's woods. They dug through weeds and dirt, but they found only mud.

Over the years, they visited the Amazon, Lake Titicaca, and the Yangtze. Each time, they found nothing. Back at the hotel garden after another failed expedition, one of them ranted.

"We travel everywhere for this stupid map." She waved it about. "We spend thousands hunting, and we come away with nothing."

"Actually," said another, "it's kept us together and taken us around the world. Maybe that's the real treasure." Others nodded.

"Hmph!" The first threw the map to the ground and thrust her shovel through the X.

Clunk, came the sound of the shovel hitting buried wood. Everyone stared.

Queue Up

I was walking through the city minding my own business when I came upon a line of people stretching all the way down the block and round the corner. Men and women, kids in groups and families, some stood there waiting while others chatted in animated fashion. Vendors walked up and down the line selling drinks and street foods. "What's this for?" I was in the middle of the line, and a woman waiting on her own turned to answer.

"It's tickets for Bruce Springsteen," she said. "Oh, I just love the Boss!"

"Wait a minute," said a hipster twenty-something, "I thought we were waiting for the new iPhone."

"Does the iPhone come with Springsteen tickets?" the woman asked. The hipster shrugged.

"You're totes wrong," said one of a passel of teenagers. "We're in line for the new Halo," said another. "I thought it was the Destiny expansion?" another added, and the lot of them devolved into rapid bickering.

"Maybe the Springsteen tickets come with the new iPhone?" said the hipster.

I went looking for the end of the line. Whatever we were waiting for, I didn't want to miss it. I was hoping for a deal on widescreen TVs.

Police State

"Want to join the Free Association, huh?" Her hat and sunglasses obscured her face enough to foil recognition by the train station's ubiquitous cameras. Sitting with his back to her with his nose in a magazine, Dan mumbled, "Yeah. I can't take any more of this police state."

"Stating the obvious," she said. "I'm Ella. C'mon."

He followed her through a door labeled maintenance into a lounge. It was incongruously comfortable beside the terminal's dingy tiles and loud advertisements. Several people read books or played video games on a big TV, and a woman lay on a couch with a newspaper over her face. Ella grabbed a book.

"So, are you guys, uh, the resistance?"

"Resistance is futile!" said one of the game-players.

"Resistance is feudal!" said another, with a laugh.

"Feudal is as feudal does," said the third.

Dan blinked several times. "Ella, should we have a little conversation—"

In an Elvis twang, she sang, "A little less conversation, a little more action please!"

"Your pleas do not fall on deaf ears," mumbled the woman under the newspaper.

"Oh, god," Dan said. "This is the wrong kind of association!"

"Club," muttered a man in an overstuffed chair. Dan fled.