The Last Temptation of Christmas
Over the last few years, I’ve found myself writing more poetry than short stories. That wasn’t always the case, but increasingly, I find that when I put fingers to keyboard, it’s poetry that comes out.
When I used to run The Final Carrot (an online writer’s collective that I cofounded around 20 years ago), there was one technique I’d sometimes use to overcome writer’s block, and that was to open up a favorite novel at a random page, and take the last sentence as a starting point for something new. The following short story was seeded with a random sentence from Kate Atkinson’s ‘Life After Life’.
Thanks, Kate!
Photo by Chad Madden on Unsplash
The Last Temptation of Christmas
Her heart was knocking in her chest, and each breath was hard to come by. It wasn’t just her heart that was knocking. So were her knees, and even her ankles. Her eyelids fluttered, her lips trembled, and her fingers twitched. It was like her heart had staged a lightning strike, and the rest of her body was coming out in sympathy.
Talking of lightning, it did feel like her body had been struck by it. Not that that being struck by lightning was anything that she’d ever experienced, but she imagined that if she had, it might feel like something like this. It was like a strange energy force was surging through her body, causing neurons to fire indiscriminately and hormones to surge, like a storm tide was about to breach her defenses. Come to think of it, her defenses did feel like they were about to be breached. She felt like she was lowering her drawbridge, and was torn between raising a white flag or laying out a welcome mat.
She forced herself to pause for a moment. She took a step backwards, and tried to think more clearly about the situation. If she did this, there would be no going back. She would be doing something that couldn’t easily be undone. She could hear the voice of her favorite teacher in her head – “actions have consequences, young lady… make sure to think with your head, and not just your heart”. How many times had she heard those words in her teenage years? How many times had she sensed the deep disappointment in her teacher’s voice?
“I’m better than this”, she told herself. This time, it wasn’t in her head. She was saying the words out loud, in the hope that they’d carry more conviction, and that she might actually listen to them. “Innocent people are going to be hurt, if I do this… my kids are going to be hurt, if I do this… when I do this”.
She decided that she needed a distraction. Anything to take her mind of the craving that was building in every fiber of her body. Maybe she could keep herself busy by reorganizing the kitchen, or there was that online French course that she’d been promising to tackle. Remembering that it was Christmas Eve, she wondered if any of her friends might be available for a festive ‘Zoom-A-Friend’ call, to help talk her down from the ledge that she found herself on.
Slamming her laptop shut, she realized that she’d made a decision, consequences be damned. She stood quickly and decisively. She was going to do this. She’d deal with the fallout, later. Right now, in this moment, it was all about satisfying her needs. Crossing the room in fewer steps than she normally took, she reached out for the object of her desires. It felt warm and firm to her touch. Momentarily pausing, she realized that there was still time to turn back, but she knew that she wouldn’t. This was her time, her moment, and nothing was going to stop her.
Thinking once more of her kids, resigning herself to their disappointment, she bit off the head of the ginger man that they’d baked together, which was meant to take pride of place on their Christmas tree. As she’d tucked her kids into bed earlier, she’d promised them that she’d hang it on the tree, once it had cooled a little. She’d really let them down, she knew. They were going to be really upset in the morning, and she felt her spirits sinking as she thought about that. What was she to do? Well, maybe the cookies and milk that they’d left out for Santa would make her feel better.