Not a (Christmas) story
The new toy was big, bright and beautiful. The boy got cautious. He did not come near her.
- He doesn't like her, - Mum's husband said.
- He will. He just thinks she's not real. But he will come 'round.
That was true.
It took him quite a time to get used to the new plaything. All this time the boy and the doll kept ignoring each other, she with her cold blue eyes, he with jumps and pranks all around her. For a small thing like him it was not yet the cause for a bitter self-reassessment.
Then it happened, finally. But not until the new mate got smeared with a coffee-stain, due partly to accident, and partly to mischief. Stained, she managed to look real to the boy. So, he started to acquire her, like any boy would. Dragged around and abused she was plenty. The lot of all his former lovelings. They were in a heap upstairs, torn and useless. They were all crap.
Terribly upset he was not when upon ripping her open the boy discovered the cheap junk inside her. Junk was the unseen inside knowledge, or some equivalent of it. They were all junk, he thought, every one of them. On the outside they looked like weapons, the curse and the purpose of which he was yet to find out. Weapons are for fighting. Assault and defense. None of them could do either thing.
It is a rather consuming task to depict the feelings of one who wakes up to find oneself dead. I leave it to a knowledge more profound than my own.
Dead is just a moniker for a thing different from life. And nothing more.
At midnight…
- What, - I hear the reader say, - is this a horror story?
Oh, no. This is just a short story made shorter by telling.
All stories fall into categories. The best of them are those that amount to nothing when told. If there is nothing at the end, then the story has been cut as it should be cut. If there are questions and controversy, then the story has never been told with anything like br-br-brains.
At midnight, when a person like you, or me, wakes up to find himself in the midst of a ghostly roundabout affair, that is proof enough that the story is in the telling process. There is still time to kill.
But it is one thing to find yourself a story, and quite another to see your contents strewn all over the floor.
A horde of strange specimen were standing around her talking:
- Not breathing. Dead.
- Quite useless. Good for nothing.
- Body's hollow. Let's stuff her.
And she felt a tiny prick, sharp enough to set the doll on her feet again, like fire to a match.
- Stand back, - she said, - or I shall kill you all!
She heard many voices laugh.
- We are dead, - said a voice, - and you, too!
- There's no hope. Let's hop.
And they all started to hop, the sound being that of many felt boots hopping. Isn't it a madhouse, the girl thought, isn't it a lunacy story? I can't stay with the madmen on their own turf. I have to get away from here.
No sooner had the thought left the doll's head, than a yellow cab drove up blowing a horn, cabman and all.
- Take me some place, - ordered the doll, - I want to eat.
- One must sew up one's belly first, - was the reply.
- You all talk too much, - said she, - the truth's not in the belly, it's in the…
- Enough said, - replied the cabmen with some disgust, - don’t I know it!
The doll adjusted her short and skimpy dress, and got on the cab. The cabman was a small man with a Hitler moustache.
He drove her. Then he rode her. He mounted her. He split her legs, and he addressed the split. He blew his horn, and let her go. The doll readjusted her things, and got out.
At the dump she made quite an impression. They thought she was a drunken virgin college student celebrating. She was passed around like a joint, smoking. One waiter fucked her for the hot onion soup, and another for the meat course. The bartender fucked her for brandy, and for a second brandy, she fucked him.
Of course all of this was in a dream, and this can't be a fucking story anyway.
Sometimes storytelling is like going back on a dream. If you have a good dream, then you can return the moment it all started, and get into the swing once again. A good story retold gains.
But, what if your dream was really quite a bad one? In this case retrieving also helps. You may arrive at the starting point, or some intermediate phase in the story, and stay there as long as you like, letting people and events swirl around, and over, and past you, like the water of a tide. Then you might think of a plot, or character, or writer, who would think you up different.
But for this, you have to be the head, and not the belly.
The doll with the ripped body went back just in time to be able to catch that very first sensation of a prick going under her skin. Then she knew where she was.
She brushed away the prickly object.
She said:
- Move this thing sideways more a bit. Sew me up. More fun if the inside is where it belongs, not on the outside.
That put her back in the toy factory department with a Mexican girl in a tired blue apron. The hands of the working girl were neat and tidy.
The manager came over and watched her work. He said:
- I'm giving you a rise.
And the girls smiled.
If you don't see this here is a hell of a story, Christmas or not, then smile.
A good smile is better than a story. It gets you up like a rollercoaster, and brings back an ocean.
Fish for a smile, it's in there.
- Wait a minute, - I hear the reader say, - it's all very well with the girl, but what about the original boy? He sort of got drowned in the ocean, didn't he?
Oh, he got drowned all right, just a second before finishing high school. That's the entire point of the ocean. You can't have something as big as an ocean roaring and banging about in your story for no reason at all. You can't have things pop up, and go down, for no explicable purpose.
So, the boy went fishing in the company of beer and friends. Then a storm happened. Every one else landed safely, but for this one boy. That was his punishment for cruelty to creatures and living dolls.
- How absolutely cruel.
- Well, like I told you, this was not a Christmas story.
- But couldn't you please make it just a little bit more Christmasy?
- Why should I? After all, Christ himself had to walk it till the bitter end. What hope is there for an ordinary boy to escape his fate?
- How intolerably cruel. You are the meanest storyteller I have ever encountered, also the ugliest.
- All right, don't get cross. I'll try to think of a, hmm, hmm, happy ending. How about this: the boy gets washed onto the shore, and a pretty red-head runs across the body while strolling around the beach in her bikini, just like some Laura Palmer on vacation? She suddenly sees agent Cooper lying prostrate on the sand, and she…
- But that's another story, you silly! And?
- And she handcuffs agent Cooper!
- You just said she was bikini-clad. What did she handcuff him with?
- Her bikini, of course.
- Now I understand that you are as sex crazy as anybody else is.
- But not as sex crazy as Laura Palmer. She hasn't had any sex for I don't know how long. So she jumps on the poor agent Cooper, all handcuffed and helpless, and she rapes the man in most peculiar ways. Some are so peculiar that I wouldn't dare tell you.
- Why do you men always bang about sex?
- We have to. It's a lame duck of a story that doesn't have a sex line in it. Sex sells. Big boobs in a see-through come off much better than big ideas you can't see or touch. I could show you how it works. But, sadly, your own boobs are beebs.
- What do you mean, beebs?
- Let's leave it at that. Developing a dream doesn't require the presence, less the participation, of the dream-weaver. I…
- Stop it, stop it, - everybody was crying out, loud and angry.
So Uncle John had to stop.
- I have heard some lousy Christmas stories, to be sure, but this one bottoms them all, - Aunt Mary said.
And we all agreed, with some relief.
2015.