Marley’s Holiday

by Rudi Dornemann

The darkness was a balm to Marley, hiding from him the life in which he could not participate, either to join in the happiness of the living or to ease their misery. The cold, the wind, the frost — all of these were the most congenial companions in his wanderings.

As the days turned darker, the mass of humanity, in whose company Marley was doomed to move, all those people who could not see him and whom he could not touch, they turned their attention to one over-illuminated spectacle after another. The light burned, it pierced him like knives. First Diwali, with its colors and lights, as strange to him as Guy Fawkes, which followed soon after with its searing bonfires, was familiar. A respite then, as winter gathered, but too soon came Hannukah, with each night more piercing than the one before, and the solstice, with more fire and light. And finally Christmas, the holiday he knew from his time alive, with its lighted trees, its parades and blazing storefronts tormenting him in the waning days of December, when he wanted nothing more than to be only another aspect of winter, another sign of year’s deathlike ebb.

The clink of commerce did less to assuage him that one might have thought — even the most mercenary of exchanges held undercurrents of fellow-feeling that stabbed at him like remorse, he, who could only watch and pass on through. There was one moment, however, toward which he looked forward expectantly.

He never knew exactly when the apparition would appear, a ghost as insubstantial as himself but with the warm glow of sunrise: Scrooge. Bearing the same gift he’d carried on this night for nearly one-hundred and fifty years: a bit of potato, still half raw.

“Happy Christmas, you old figment,” said Scrooge.

For the space of a thought, the powers that would not permit any gift that might dispel Jacob Marley’s allotted suffering did relent, just enough that the old spirit knew his existence had not been entirely without consequence — he was remembered, he had changed a life, if not his own.

Lunch in Mongolia

by Luc Reid

I didn’t think about it until weeks later, when Meg was doing the bills. Even then I didn’t think about it until she walked in the living room, where I was flipping through an automatic car brochure with the dog sleeping on my feet. She trailed a little hologram of a credit card bill behind her as she came, and she’d put a red orbiter around the offending item. Trouble.

“Honey,” Meg said. Our real endearments were “baby” and “whiskey” (long story). “Honey” was a pretend endearment, like a mother using a kid’s middle name. “Honey” meant “you are screwed.”

So … “Honey,” she said. “Did you go to Mongolia?”

“Oh,” I said. “Didn’t I tell you about that, whiskey?” Weak, but what else did I have? “It was just for lunch.”
She frowned such a tight frown that her lips went pale. She looked madder than I’d ever seen her. Madder than when I got drunk on our first anniversary.

“You asshole!” she finally shrieked.

“Oh come on, baby,” I said. “Everybody teleports these days. I’m sick of being stuck in a backwater while everybody else goes wherever they want, whenever they want.”

“What do you think teleportation is? What do you think it is?” she said. Her voice was so loud it hurt my ears. “It’s not you at the other end. It’s a copy of you. The real you gets destroyed. The real man I married is dead! Who the hell are you?”

“You don’t have to make a big deal out of it, whiskey–”

“Don’t call me that!”

At that moment the front door opened, and we both froze. The door was on auto-lock, and it only opened for me and Meg and her parents and maybe the police or something. A figure emerged from it, a figure with recent burn scars and most of his hair singed off, wearing a hospital giveaway suit. A figure that looked like … me.

“Baby!” she cried out, in a strangled voice. “What happened?” And she ran to him and threw her arms around him.

He shook his head, wincing at the pressure of her hug on his injuries. “Malfunction,” he said in a raspy voice. “It didn’t clear the original.”

“I hate you!” she screamed, and she began hitting him on the chest, but she was crying, and he gathered her into his arms, and she stopped. All of a sudden I felt like a third chopstick.

The dog woke up and started barking at me.