Holly Jolly

A story a day until there’s a sleigh! This holiday season, I’m sharing a new flash fiction piece inspired by a holiday song every day of December until Christmas. Today’s story is inspired by A Holly Jolly Christmas.

Holly Jolly was tired of waiting. She’d spent nearly an hour underneath the giant faux mistletoe hanging in the foyer of the Forest Park Mall Macy’s expecting her so-called secret admirer.

Max the plain clothes security guard whose mustache couldn’t hide the fact that he was a retired cop had already passed her twice on his rounds and was now approaching for a third time.

“If you’re so desperate for a kiss, sweetheart, all you gotta do is ask,” he said, puckering his lips at her.

“I told you I’m waiting for someone,” Holly shot back.

“Yeah?” Max said. “What’s his name?”

That was the thing. Holly didn’t know.

“I’m waiting for none,” she said instead.

“You’re waiting for a nun?”

“I’m waiting for none of your business!”

Max clasped his hand to his chest like he’d been wounded. “For a girl named Holly Jolly, you sure are mean.”

“Get out of here, Max,” Holly said.

The last thing she needed right now was for some wise guy to tell her she wasn’t jolly enough. It was bad enough being named Holly during the holiday season, but the expectations for a Holly Jolly were too much for any one woman to bear, especially for this fifty-something divorcee who couldn’t remember the last holiday season she didn’t want to gouge her brains out by time the calendar rolled around to the 25th of the month. It didn’t help she worked in retail.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Todd Pendleton, a frequent customer in the home goods section where she worked, approaching. He wore a gray wool coat which matched his close cropped hair. Holly thought him handsome, and more than once, she’d taken longer than strictly necessary to ring up his purchases in an attempt to string out their conversation. Could he be her secret admirer?

“Can you help me…uh…Holly,” he said, obviously looking down at her name tag. “I can’t seem to find the perfume section.”

False alarm. Holly pointed him in the right direction and then returned to her waiting. Whoever this secret admirer of hers was, he sure had some nerve not showing up on time. Her shift had ended over an hour ago, and she was due back at six in the morning for a double on the much dreaded Saturday before Christmas.

The notes from the secret admirer had first started coming in late October. Holly had found the first one on the keyboard in her check out station early one morning. It was addressed to Ms. Holly Jolly and asked if she was looking for a partner for “cuffing season.” Emma, a college student who worked part time at the Macy’s, assured Holly that this wasn’t a threat but rather a sexual overture.

The missives from her secret admire came infrequently at first, and Holly thought it best to ignore them in case they were, as Emma had described it, “an elaborate catfishing scheme.” But the past twelve days the notes had come every day, and each day, they included a drawing.

The first day it was a pear tree with a man sitting in it who closely resembled David Cassidy (a.k.a Keith Partridge from The Partridge Family). The second day the picture was two doves whose wings came out from under turtle shells. On the third day, Holly found three hens in berets, one holding a baguette and another smoking a cigarette. Today she’d received a picture of twelve drummers drumming, all wearing Ringo Starr glasses. The note had said to meet her admirer here after her shift right under the giant mistletoe.

Another man, a stranger, approached, causing Holly’s heart to stir, but like Todd Pendleton, he too was looking for the perfume department. Holly silently judged him for his lack of originality while telling him where he needed to go.

Holly’s feet were aching from the long day of work. Waiting around like this was ridiculous. She started walking toward the escalator but heard a voice call her name out behind her.

There standing under the mistletoe was Greg from Men’s Suits. He was easily twenty years her junior, and Holly had never considered herself the cougar type, but she walked back under the mistletoe anyway.

Greg leaned toward her and pecked her on the cheek.

“You’re my secret admirer?” Holly asked.

“What? God no!” Greg said, taking a step back from her. “I mean, no I don’t know what you’re talking about, but Max, he told me I should come give you a kiss on the cheek.”

At the mention of Max’s name, Holly blew up. Of course this was an elaborate catfishing scheme. Max and his security buddies were probably up in the office with all the security screens laughing their stupid heads off at her expense.

Holly stormed off toward the escalators again and took the one going down. As she descended, she caught site of Max at the base of the escalator.

“You have some nerve, buddy!” she yelled, attracting the attention of the Macy’s shoppers riding the escalator: a mother with two young sons and a group of teenage girls.

“Holly Jolly, listen to me,” Max said as she stepped off the escalator.

“You played me for a fool. It isn’t funny.”

“I swear, I didn’t,” Max said. “Here look.”

From the pocket of his khaki pants, he pulled out a piece of white paper folded into fourths and handed it to Holly.

She unfolded it and saw a picture of the giant mistletoe with her and Max underneath it embracing with their lips nearly touching. He was her secret admirer.

“Look, I know I talk a big game,” Max said. “But I’m a shy guy, Holly Jolly. I wanted to do this big gesture, but then I chickened out. I’m sorry I made you wait.”

“I was up there for an hour,” Holly said. “You kept coming by.”

“Yeah, but you don’t take me seriously,” Max said. “You kept looking for some other guy. Anyway, I won’t bother you with this stuff anymore, okay?”

Max tried to pull the paper from her hand, but Holly Jolly kept hold of it.

“How about we go get a Cinnabon?” she asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Max replied. “I love cinnamon rolls.”

“Me too,” Holly said.

Maybe this would be a holly jolly Christmas, after all.

Love is on the way

The pain felt like death–probably because it was death. Margaret’s kidneys were functioning at 20% capacity. Without oxygen, she gasped for breath. With oxygen, her breaths were gurgled with acid reflux rising in her throat. Her wrinkled skin was tinged corpse gray.

“Organ failure,” the nice doctor had told her during one of her lucid moments. “We’re looking to make you comfortable.”

Margaret pumped the button on her opium drip and felt the rush of relief swelling up like a dream–her worn and battered body resting on a cloud.

She wondered who would come for her. Her mother had seen a great aunt. Her father had been visited by his own father. “Daddy,” he’d called out like a little boy. Her sister had been ushered to the beyond by their grandmother. “Granny’s here” were her final words.

Margaret thought most likely her brother, Jim, would be the one to come to her. He’d been killed in action in France–blown apart by German shrapnel–when Margaret was just thirteen leaving a void in her heart.

The last of the family left living, no heirs of her own, Margaret was technically dying alone, but she believed in her heart she wouldn’t be for long.

Love was on the way.

The Gap

A story a day until there’s a sleigh! This holiday season, I’m sharing a new flash fiction piece inspired by a holiday song every day of December until Christmas. Today’s story is inspired by Linus And Lucy.

Darryl knew this about himself–he could keep a beat with his hips better than most Christmas light displays set to electronic music. His sense of rhythm kept him confident on the timpani in the orchestra and, so far that night, confident on the dance floor of the Starry Brook High School Winter Formal.

But in his most vivid dreams, and he had many at that age, he could have never imagined his confidence resulting in this: the rear of his long time nemesis, Cindy, bouncing to and fro, mere inches from his own gyrating pelvis.

Sure, Cindy had yet to say hello to him nor had she looked him in the eye once, but over the course of the evening, as one bad pop song wove into the next, she’d drawn closer and closer, starting at first across the gymnasium and then one dance group over from his, then across from him in his circle of orchestra friends, and finally, when couples had paired off, she’d backed up to him like this–reversing like a truck to a loading dock.

She danced close enough that Darryl may have been able to smell her shampoo if it weren’t for the fact that he was covered in his own sweat and other crusted on funk. Yes, he was definitely regretting not taking his mom’s advice to “maybe shower once this week, Darryl.”

One song ended fading seamlessly into another with a similar bump and grind beat. Cindy didn’t pause her hips but threw a look over her shoulder at him. Darryl swallowed hard. His body wanted desperately to close the gap, but his mind was focused on the many ways Cindy might reject him if he was reading the situation wrong: calling him a litany of names like she often had when they were younger.

Despite his misgivings, he edged closer to her, turning inches into centimeters and still making sure no part of him touched her–a torture as delicious as spiked egg nog pie.

In the end, it was neither Darryl nor Cindy who bridged the gap, but the indirect force of a fumbling flautist, who’d indulged in one too many shots of Peppermint Schnapps in the parking lot. She tripped over a discarded stiletto and careened into Daryl who was thrust forward so that the entire front of his body connected with the backside of Cindy. The flautist fell to the floor, but Darryl and Cindy stayed upright and connected as if by hot glue straight from the gun.

The bump and grind song ended and a slow one came on. Cindy turned toward him–the moment of truth, but instead of calling him a butt head, she said only this, “Merry Christmas.”

It certainly was.

Silent Night

Franz sat upright in his usual spot behind the organ, his back straight as a conductor’s baton, watching in horror as the two guitarists dressed in their Christmas finery mounted the steps to the altar. The musicians stopped midway up the stairs, faced the crowd, and started strumming in unison. The choir rose, and Franz didn’t know whether his heart could bear their betrayal. Not one of them would meet his gaze.

Father Joseph, a young upstart from a neighboring region who Franz would never have chosen to lead the parish, beamed from his elaborately carved wooden chair on the altar and spoke to the crowd.

“And now an original song in honor of our Lord, Jesus Christ, whose entry into the world in a manger centuries ago marked a new phase for mankind and brought hope to all.”

Instinctively, Franz channeled his anger onto the foot pedal of his organ, the organ he’d been playing for every mass for nearly thirty years. He pushed his foot down hard on the pedal and water gushed out, soaking his leather boot. The floodwaters had been cleared out of all other areas of the church in time for the Christmas mass, but poor Franz’s organ remained in disrepair because “there wasn’t time.”

The choir began to sing, “Silent Night. Holy Night.”

Franz smashed his foot down against another organ pedal. He knew there was nothing holy about guitars! They were but the most pedestrian and secular of instruments!

More water spurted out of his battered organ, and riding along the wave of liquid, like a surfer, was a small mouse.

Franz suppressed a shriek but the mouse quickly scurried toward a row of pews where the Schmidt sisters, all five of them, sat with matching dresses and pinned back braids. One by one each of the girls squealed and jumped to their feet, rustling their skirts to discourage the wayward mouse from climbing up their undergarments. Their mother, a weathered woman, worked to quiet them while their father gently brought his boot down on the mouse and then toed the body under the pew in front of them.

The commotion temporarily halted the guitar players and choir, but once the Schmidt sisters sobs turned to muffled tears, the guitarists began strumming again. Father Joseph had risen, but he sat back down in his chair, his oversized robes and the sheen of the wood making him look like a smug boy king on an oily throne.

Again the choir, true Judas’s each and every one of them, began signing, “Silent Night. Holy Night.”

Only the music wasn’t the only thing Franz could hear. The painful strumming of the guitar and the no longer angelic voices of the choir were accompanied by the high pitched squeaking of the dying mouse, who must have been only temporarily stunned by the smash of Mr. Schmidt’s boot and then escaped to somewhere else where it could lend its voice to the dreadful hymn.

There was only one instrument in the church that could have drowned out the mouse’s moans, but it sat in front of Franz inert, a true sign from on high, if there ever was one, that God did not regard guitars as holy.

I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day

This week I’m sharing original flash fiction (ideally 500 words or less, this one’s longer) inspired by some of my favorite sad Christmas songs. Here’s one based on I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.

Jacob’s knees ached from being pressed so long to the wooden kneeler. He prayed his Hail Mary’s and Our Father’s aloud, no priest on the other side of the grating of the confessional booth to hear him. He kept mixing up the wording, and then even worse, forgetting what number he was on, so he’d have to start over. Outside the church, the sun was setting, sinking the cold Christmas Day into night. There was no power in the church so the confessional grew dimmer until everything faded into shadow.

He’d been assigned this penance long ago by Fr. Ruiz, twenty Our Father’s and thirty Hail Mary’s for calling his mom a ho. He hadn’t even known what the word meant then—just that it seemed to capture how angry he was at her for giving him a used Atari for Christmas when he’d asked for a Nintendo.

Like the other boys in his class, he hadn’t taken Reconciliation seriously, eavesdropping on the confessor stationed in the box on the other side of Fr. Ruiz, a girl who’d punched her sister, rather than completing his own sentence. But time was running out to find his way back into God’s good graces in this locale. St. Paul’s was due to be demolished the day after New Year’s.

His penance complete, Jacob emerged from the confessional booth into the dark church. There were no prayer candles to light, he’d checked when he snuck in, so he switched on his phone flashlight and aimed it at the sanctuary where a giant crucifix had once hung and where he’d served as an altar boy, watching from behind the scenes as Fr. Ruiz turned bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ.

Along with the crucifix, the church had been stripped of its statuary, baptismal font, polished pews, padded kneelers, altar, old pipe organ, and steeple bells—everything of value sold off to keep the diocese out of debt. Even the stained glass windows were gone with wooden boards sealed over the gaps left by their absence. Aside from the ceiling and walls, the only thing that remained was the scent of incense, accumulated over a hundred years of burning.

Jacob approached the five marble steps that separated the sanctuary from the main part of the church. It was on those steps nearly forty years ago he’d performed in a Christmas pageant his mom had directed. He thought he’d be a shoo-in for Joseph, but she assigned him a roll as one of the three kings. When he’d complained, she told him he wasn’t the Joseph type—like the three kings, he’d always be roaming.

She was right about that. He’d been on the other side of the country in California when the church had closed three years ago. It’d sat vacant since then except for the occasional funeral, his mom’s this past October being one of them. When she’d fallen sick, the demolition of the church had already been announced, and it seemed to Jacob his mom had hastened her own demise, refusing certain therapeutics, with the hope that her funeral mass could be performed at St. Paul’s.

On the steps, Jacob stared out at the dark chamber where the congregation had once gathered. The year he’d played a king, the one who brings the myrrh, his last line had been a cue for the choir to erupt in Angels We Have Heard On High and for the church bells to be rung.

Surely today our Savior is born, he shouted, trying the line again now.

His words echoed off the empty walls but only silence followed.

Gary the Snowman

This week I’m sharing original flash fiction (500 words or less) inspired by some of my favorite sad Christmas songs. Here’s one based on Frosty the Snowman.

She knew what kinds of things the other kids in her class would say if they saw her running in her yard like this.

Amelia, you’re gonna cause an earthquake.

Whales can’t run!

Don’t fall. You’ll break the ground open, and end up in China.

Little shits, each and every one of them, although Amelia didn’t describe them this way—that’s what her mother called them. Amelia thought of her classmates as bullies or popular people or sheep who went along with whatever everyone else was doing. One or two would make fun of her, and the rest would bah in agreement.

Now, thanks to Christmas break, she was done with those dumb idiots for two whole weeks, and it was just going to be her and Gary, who she’d brought into existence the weekend before by mounding him up from freshly fallen snow. She’d made him as round as she was, packing on more and more snow, despite the fact that the moisture soaked her knit gloves right away and her hands were numb within minutes.

Her backyard edged a small wood where she’d found the sticks she needed for Gary’s arms. His necktie she’d swiped from her father’s dresser along with an old pair of heavily rimmed black glasses. She’d found the supplies to make his face in the kitchen—walnuts in their shell for his eyes; a carrot for his nose, the baby kind; and red licorice for his lips, which made him look a like a clown but she took him seriously.

See, when she made Gary, she’d only been trying to distract herself from her parents’ fight about where they were going to spend Christmas, but then, once she’d created him, it became clear to her: she and Gary were meant to be the lead anchors of the Local Action 7 News. And any self-consciousness Amelia might have felt as a twelve year old playing pretend, she discarded in the privacy of her own backyard, the pine trees their only audience.

Together they covered a wide range of stories—sports, the weather, local and national politics, the feel good stories of the holiday season, and even an international crisis or two. They bantered. They said, back to you, and closed every show with that’s the way it is. Sure, they bickered off air, but together they were a great news team.

That day’s broadcast was due to start in twenty minutes and there was a developing story about a mall Santa that Amelia wanted to talk over with Gary, hence her run to the backyard, but as she neared him, the sun shining down on her, she discovered to her horror that Gary was headless—his glasses and necktie crumpled together on the ground in front of his melting torso—his edible facial features in a Picassian disarray. The show would be cancelled.

Amelia plucked a walnut from Gary’s remains and hurled it into the woods. Sometimes the way it was sure sucked.

Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

This week I’m sharing original flash fiction (500 words or less) inspired by some of my favorite sad Christmas songs. Here’s one based on Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas (the original Judy Garland version).

All I’m saying is you could be more jolly, Mother. That’s all.

Mrs. Hubert Huddleston heard her daughter’s chastisement, but as with much of what Bess said, she let the words roll by her like tumbleweeds in the vast expanse of West Texas where she’d been raised. It was her husband, dead now five years, who’d brought her and the children to this valley in California in hopes of paid work or fecund soil. Though he’d found little of either at first, he’d managed to make a better life for the family before he passed.

Bess kept her attention on the silver tinsel, draping a piece over the branch of the balsam tree just so. She would set each strand by hand like this, a practice she’d learned from her mother, who now sat rocking by the wood stove, the familiar squeak-squeak-squeak of the chair more rhythmic than the holiday ballads playing over the radio.

Her mother was prone to fretting. For years, she’d fretted over the tinsel, admonishing Bess for sloppy workmanship, eventually withholding the box from her. These days, though, her frets were defined by the frequency with which she received Hank’s letters, often at first during his training, still somewhat regularly while he was stationed in England, and rarely since he’d stormed the beaches of Normandy in June. No word since November.

The lights strung on the balsam tree, half thumb sized bulbs of blue, green, yellow, and red, burned hot. Bess worked carefully to avoid scorching her wrist. Like her mother, Bess’s moods were often dictated by letters.

She’d received one that morning from Robert. In it, he’d told her of the Christmas present he’d be bringing home to her—a wooden clock with a bird inside that cooed the hour. He said he intended to hang it in their house after she became his wife.

Surely there was cause for joy in that vision Bess had thought when she’d shared the news, but her mother had remained stone faced and inquired after whether Robert had said anything of Hank. To which, Bess repeated yet again that they’d been apart since boot camp, and to which, her mother, as usual, replied that the army had done a disservice separating two such fond friends as Robert and Hank.

When it was time to put the angel on top of the tree, Bess sought out a chair from the kitchen, pulling it in as close as she could to the side of the tree without knocking off the thin metallic ornaments that would shatter if they fell. The tree’s branches were wide, and the top tall, so Bess had to stand on her tip toes, extending her arm fully in attempt to reach the angel’s skirts over the head of the tree.

Mind you don’t fall, her mother said.

And Bess wouldn’t have, if not for the knock at the door that sounded then.

Last Christmas

Over the next week, I’m going to be sharing original flash fiction (500 words or less) inspired by some of my favorite sad Christmas songs. Here’s the first based on Last Christmas by Wham!

There are two truths applicable at any snow filled chalet gathering. What goes up must come down—that’s the basic law of skiing—and the last two people left awake at a cocaine party are going to sleep together.

Robert and Janet had experienced the former on the slopes that morning—he, a black diamond aficionado, and she, a sensible enough downhill skier to know which passes she could handle. But this same sensibility had been discarded when she found herself in the latter situation—the rest of the party passed out upstairs or retreated to their rooms for holiday trysts—her left alone with Robert on the bear skin rug in front of the dwindling fire.

He poured her another glass of gummy red wine and swiped a small box from the stack of presents heaped on either side of the tree. The name Cindy or Lee or Frasier was on the tag, but Robert discarded it with deft fingers, blood pumping through his veins like the Polar Express.

Merry Christmas, he said.

You didn’t know me before yesterday, she said.

I had a premonition my life would change this weekend, he said. I knew I’d meet someone special.

The star patterned gold wrapping came off without tearing—the thick paper creased in perfect straight lines and tight angles—signs of the wrapper’s care, likely a professional stationed in one of those basement booths at the department store.

She let the paper fall to the floor, no one recycled back then, and opened the velvet box revealing the glittering brooch, a simple bouquet of a sunflower and a daisy—flowers she associated with girlhood but made womanlike rendered in white sapphires. Her breath caught at the words on the note tucked inside.

I love you.

How long had she been waiting to hear those words and now they were being fumbled on to her by a stranger. A Robert. A man she’d met only yesterday,

You knew you would love me, she asked.

He answered with a kiss, arms encircled bodies, and they tugged back and forth until finally he eased her on to the bear skin rug, fur warm from the fire. And then she felt taken care of, and then he felt like the conductor on a wintry night train bound through long tunnels blasted from pure granite.

Afterward, he grabbed a knit blanket from the leather sectional and covered them up so they could slumber there on the rug, resting until they were awakened by the lover of Cindy or Frasier or Lee who demanded to know why his present had been opened.

I’m terribly sorry, Robert said to Janet.

She looked at him stricken, you said I was someone special.