Xmas Spirit (2 page)

“More like everyone regresses,” Charlotte said under her breath to Eric.

“I’ll do it as soon as I’m done, Gary,” Rotting Rita said kindly, shaking her head and causing rotting flesh to sprinkle onto the branches like a decayed snowfall.

Charlotte watched Prue hoist a giant-sized Kringle head in the courtyard like some ancient colossus.

“Off with his head!” Prue yelled, tugging the cord to signal the others to lift it into the air.

CoCo had organized the whole thing to perfection like an A-list event planner. She stood over a set of design boards she’d created especially for the season and, satisfied with the way it was going, gave Metal Mike the signal via Call Me Kim, who was busy chatting away with an imaginary friend about the evening’s activities.

“Heads up!” Mike yelled, shredding the fret board of his air guitar manically with excitement.

The Santa head rose in the frosty darkness, a creepy sight to say the least, and was levitated into position like a Macy’s Parade float on Thanksgiving with the enthusiastic assistance of Simon and Simone. Virginia, whose eyes were appropriately shut tight like those of an expectant child waiting for Saint Nick to arrive, waited impatiently.

“Everyone’s happy out there, Charlotte. There is no suffering here, no pain, no need. No jealousy, no longing for anything. It’s the way it should be.”

“And no life, either.” She paused walking to the window. “Look at them out there. All scurrying around, pretending to have a holiday to celebrate. Christmas is about hope. And without life, there is no hope. We are dead, and nothing can change that, not even Christmas. There’s no hope for us, Eric.”

“So it is PMS after all—Post-Mortem Syndrome. Wow. I thought that was over and done with.”

“The Christmas before I . . . came here was so cool,” Charlotte mused wistfully. “I saw Petula, Damen, and The Wendys getting their picture with Santa in the mall, and I stood right outside the velvet rope that keeps everyone away
who can’t pay for a picture and I took one of myself in the foreground with them and Santa in the background—you know, the way you do when you don’t want a celebrity to see you taking their picture.”

She was rambling, and Eric was getting angry.

“You know what’s sad?” he observed. “That
this
is the biggest smile I’ve seen on your face in weeks.”

“Why are you taking this so personally? I’m just telling you how I feel.”

“Right, you’re telling me how you feel about
me
, about all of us here. For some reason we’re still not good enough.”

“That’s not fair.”

“You’re damn right.”

Eric crossed his arms and pursed his lips. He was closed off. It was the coldest shoulder she’d ever been given.

Charlotte tried to lighten the mood a little and leaned in, singing sweetly and tickling Eric with her long, crooked, pale finger under his stubbly chin.

“You better not pout, you better not cry . . .”

“Stop it! Don’t treat me like a child. I don’t need to be comforted. I get what you’re saying.”

“Are you jealous? Is that what this is about?”

“It’s always Scarlet this and Petula that. Hawthorne High. Blah, blah. And Damen, Damen, Damen. You are stuck in the past!”

“Those were my friends, Eric. Can you blame me for missing them, especially at Christmas?”

“Your friends? You’re kidding, right? They didn’t even know you were alive when you
were
alive. Shit, they practically killed you, if we’re being honest. Driving you to do all kinds of stupid stalker things, right down to choking to death on that gummy bear.”

“That was a long time ago. They’ve changed. I changed them.”

“People don’t change. They are what they are. Just like we are what we are.”

“That’s not true. People can change.”

“Really? Well, you fooled me into thinking you had, but it’s just the same old stuff.”

“Fooled you? I can’t believe I’m in love with someone so cynical.”

“And I can’t believe I’m in love with someone so insensitive and delusional.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation with you anymore, Eric.”

“Well, what
do
you want?” he asked, standing there with his Santa hat on.

“What I want you can’t give me,” Charlotte said, verbally stinging Eric. “No one can.”

They stared at each other for a moment, each awaiting an apology, but none was forthcoming. Eric walked toward the door, stepped partially out, and turned his back to her. They had both said things they couldn’t take back.

“Well, Christmas Eve is tomorrow, and I hope all your wishes come true,” Eric said as he slammed the door shut behind him.

Charlotte stood there for a minute and decided to walk home. She was upset and unable to concentrate on work. Suddenly, she heard a high-pitched toot piercing the Christmas chatter. Unlike the harmonies that floated through her office window, she definitely recognized these sounds. It was Pam, whistling as Silent Violet conducted.

“Hi, Charlotte,” Pam said, greeting her BFF warmly. Charlotte could still hear the sounds of the phantom piccolo radiating from Pam’s throat, the one she swallowed all that time ago, even though it wasn’t there anymore.

“Hey, Pam. Hey, Violet,” Charlotte replied, less than enthusiastically. “Feeling all Christmasy too, I see.”

“Look around, who wouldn’t! We’re practicing carols for the party later tonight. You’re coming, right?”

“Probably not.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, just work.”

Violet frowned in sympathy.

“C’mon, Charlotte, where’s your Christmas spirit?” Pam joked. “Shouldn’t be hard to find around this place.”

“Very funny,” Charlotte said, moping. “I’m not feeling it right now.”

“Why don’t you and Eric just come to the . . .”

“We’re fighting.”

“Oh, no. Again?” Pam said.

“We both just said a lot of things and . . .”

“Don’t stress. This is your first Christmas together. I’m sure you guys will make up. Just let him cool off and then you will talk it out. Same as always.”

“I don’t even know where he is right now, to tell you the
truth.”

Violet extended her arm stiffly above her head and pointed upward.

“What?” Charlotte asked.

Violet poked her finger upward even more forcefully, drawing Charlotte’s gaze in the direction she was pointing. There was Eric, at the top of her apartment building holding the end of a long string of lights that encircled the entire complex. It dipped and draped over everything as far as the eye could see. She and Eric made eye contact for just the briefest moment and looked uncomfortably away.

“Okay, everybody! Are you ready?” Eric wailed, giving his most primal rock-and-roll shout-out.

“Yeah!” came the response from every corner of the Great Beyond.

“Then let’s light up this joint!”

The countdown in unison began. Charlotte reached for her ears, trying to shut Eric and Christmas out.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three!”

Eric shoved the plug into his mouth and made good on his Electric Eric nickname. He lit up like a Christmas tree, the studs on his jacket and boots blinking away. The entire place glowed warmly with multicolor flashes.

“Heaven or Las Vegas?” Charlotte grumbled, eyeing the luminous spectacle that surrounded her.

Prue walked over and greeted Pam and Charlotte, the smile on her formerly sour face as bright as the holiday spectacular firing up all around them.

“Now that’s what I call Christmas,” Prue said.

“Not me,” Charlotte answered tersely.

“Let me guess. You guys are fighting.”

“He’s just showing off for you, Charlotte,” Pam said. “Don’t be so grumpy.”

“Why are you taking his side, Pam?”

“I’m not. It’s just that it wouldn’t hurt you to get out of your own head for a minute.”

“She’s got a point,” Prue interjected.

“You too?”

“I’m just saying.”

Charlotte was steaming. She ran for the front door.

“Have fun, you guys,” Charlotte cried. “Without me.”

“Wait, Charlotte,” Pam called after her.

“I wish I never died!”

Charlotte went into her room to lie down. The bed felt a little harder, the room a little bit colder than usual. As she watched the shadows from the blinking lights dance across her ceiling, she stayed perfectly still, eyes fixed and wide open, but her mind was running a marathon. In a circle. To the one thought she kept coming around to, unavoidably, inescapably. She whispered, with phantom tears rolling down her face, “I wish I’d never died.”

2
Home for the Holidaze

My Favorite Things

Romanticizing the past is the easiest thing to do. Like shopping with a new credit card without a spending limit, we get to choose whatever we like from a lifetime of ups and downs with little consideration for the emotional price tag on the memory. Once our cart is full, however, we need to head to checkout, where the bill will ultimately come due.

Charlotte was awakened
by a full-blown coughing fit.

“Could I be getting . . . sick?” she wondered as she stared up at the light on the ceiling, unsure what could be happening to her. “Maybe that’s why I was so moody yesterday.”

She was perplexed. How could she be coughing again, getting sick?

The light was bright and painful, and it was difficult for her to see anything at all.

“Ugh. Damn Christmas lights still on?”

But it wasn’t just the light that was making her uncomfortable. Charlotte’s back was suddenly killing her.

“The mattress did feel extra firm last night, but this is crazy.”

She felt around for her nightstand for something familiar to hang on to, to lean on as she stood up, but there was nothing, nothing but tile.

“I couldn’t have fallen out of bed—I mean, I would have felt that, wouldn’t I?”

And then she figured it out. She must have been pranked. Payback for all of yesterday’s bitchiness.

“Okay, you got me. Joke’s on me. I guess I deserved it.”

She waited a beat or two for someone to pop in through the door, laughing their dead ass off, but there was nothing.

“Eric? Pam? Cut it out. You win.”

Charlotte’s nerves began to fray just as her eyes began to clear. There was a light on the ceiling above her that was never there before. And as she rose to a sitting position, she spied a door that was the wrong size and in the wrong place, though not entirely unfamiliar. The door wasn’t the only thing in the wrong place, she thought. She was too. Could she have been given some sort of otherworldly time-out for dissing Christmas?

Charlotte approached the door tentatively and leaned forward toward the glass. It was dusty and difficult to see through, but she was still able to bring a long empty corridor into focus. A hallway lined with . . . “LOCKERS!”

“Hawthorne!” Charlotte gasped. “I must be dreaming.” Like one of those
I never graduated
or
I didn’t do my homework
or
I can’t find my class
kinds of nightmares that her perfectionist self suffered from, even in death.

She placed her hand on the glass and reflected silently for a second. This was the last place she ever really was. Ever truly existed. Damen had walked away from her down this hallway
as she’d choked to death: the last thing she ever really saw with her two human eyes.