A CHRISTMAS PARTY

Emalina scowled at the Christmas do email.  It looked like something more fitting for Hallowe’en; dinner at a theme park hotel after a ride on the ghost train.  Alice who was into all that nonsense had been the organiser. 

 

The sound of giggling trickled round the open plan office as the team read the email.  Emalina looked up sharply and everyone went back to what they were doing, except Natalie who was approaching, a determined smile on her face.

“Excuse me, Emalina, I was wondering if you could spare a moment?”
“If it’s to listen to an idea you have about making the company more money or a sales contract you’ve brought in, I’ve got all the time in the world.  I’ve noticed you haven’t been as productive as when we first employed you.  Don’t get too comfortable will you?”
“Actually, it’s about a sponsored sky dive I’m doing in January – I know brrr! - for the children’s charity I raise money for.  I was wondering how much I could put you down for.”
“Nothing.”
“It’s a centre for child victims of domestic violence.  It gives them and their Mums a safe place to stay and …”
“The men are aggressors and the women are fools,” Emalina interrupted, “their children will grow up to be one or the other, why should I help?   Alex, you’re staring at me.”
“I’m admiring your strong stance, Emalina,” Alex replied smoothly as Natalie hurried back to her desk, “are you going to the Christmas do?”
“Yes.  I need to keep an eye on you all,” Emalina got to her feet and walked slowly into the centre of the office.  Once she was satisfied she had everyone’s attention, she added; “At the Christmas do there will be no wine on the tables, no free bar, it will be a teetotal affair and it will finish before 2230 hours.  Gloria, you’re an intern, you don’t get to come.”

 

On the day of the Christmas do, Alice, Alex, Natalie, James and Lucy walked to the theme park from work.
“If we’re not there directly she’ll suspect we’ve had a drink,” Lucy said.
“I’m walking as fast as I can,” replied Natalie tottering on her high heels.
“So awful about Ashley, fired before Christmas,” Lucy continued.
“And she’s told Gloria she’s got to work tomorrow, so she can’t fly out to her family for Christmas Day.  The poor girl doesn’t even get paid!” James added.
“Our intervention will save them,” Alice stated, dressed in white as always and looking ethereal.
“Your intervention,” Alex said, “sounds like weird shit to me.  James, she said she didn’t like that Christmas tie, take it off.”
“I’ll put it on after she’s been on the ghost train,” James said because he had faith in Alice.
Emalina was waiting at the theme park entrance, looking round anxiously.  When she saw them, her face hardened; “What time do you call this?”
“I was slow in my heels,” Natalie replied.  Looking around she could see why Emalina had been rattled, a dark, deserted theme park, with the ghost train and restaurant open for one winter evening just for them.  Alice’s friends ran the place, but there was no comfort from knowing that.

A man approached the theme park gate and opened it; his face was hidden in the hood of his raincoat.  Despite this, Alice recognised him; “Hi Kevin.”
They followed Kevin past the deserted rides, to the ghost train.
“This looks rather neglected,” commented Emalina, “are you sure it’s safe?”
“Yes,” Kevin replied.
“I don’t want to get on it,” Lucy shivered.
“Anyone who doesn’t get on it doesn’t go to the meal,” Emalina stated, “I assume you all decided among yourselves this was what we’re going to do, so you can all suffer the consequences.”
Her staff got into their separate cars, each with a different kind of creature of the night on it.  The last carriage had a vampire, Emalina chose that one.

 

One by one the cars were spat into a dark tunnel, Emalina heard the screams of her staff, Lucy’s and Natalie’s sounded particularly frightened.  Good.  Emalina’s carriage jolted, interrupting her thoughts and she hurtled into the dark.  She couldn’t see anything at first only feel spiders’ webs caressing her face.  Then she saw her mother just as she remembered her with her limp blonde hair and watery eyes, a weak and cowed woman.  Towering over her was her father, barrel chested and brawny, dirty from working on the farm.  He was shouting that his dinner had been burned, he smashed a fist into her mother’s face and her mother fell knocking over the Christmas tree, banging her head on the hearth.  She saw the tiny form watching from behind the bannisters, calling; “Mummy?  Mummy?”

“Shut up, Emalina!” roared her father, aiming a kick at her mother’s prone form, then he thought better of it and knelt down; “Marion?  You OK?”  But her mother was not OK.
The carriage rattled past, showing her all the places she’d lived in as she’d grown up in care; the Henleys who had made her do all the housework, the Bensons who had told her she’d never make anything of herself and the Crockets who were lovely alcoholics.

The carriage roared round a corner into blazing light and Emalina saw her own front room.  Her husband was sitting on a sofa with Patricia the woman who lived next door, they were kissing passionately.

“She’ll be late home, she’s got this Christmas do,” her husband was saying, “she’s working tomorrow too but I’ve got the day off.  We can see each other…”
“But not Christmas day,” Patricia had the cheek to look disappointed.
“That’s the only day of the year the bitch doesn’t work.  We can text though and I’ll see you again Boxing Day, she always checks the accounts then.”
The carriage continued, Emalina saw her children tucked up in bed, oblivious to what was happening downstairs.  Her youngest son was awake; “Mummy, want Mummy,” he was whispering in the dark.  Emalina reached out her hand to touch his, but her fingers went right through him.
The carriage careered on and Emalina saw the living room of a cheap flat and the body of Ashley hanging from the light fitting.  A note was next to his body and she caught the words ‘Losing my job was the last straw …”, before the ride whirled on.
Then she saw Gloria’s kitchen, the intern was unloading her shopping; turkey for one, Christmas pudding for one, a mini bottle of bubbly …

Gradually the present faded into the future.  Emalina was at her own funeral – Alex and James were there, nobody else, but the mahogany coffin was beautiful and the flowers, oh the flowers!

“Well, at least the bitch is getting the send-off she wanted,” Alex said, his rich voice still the same, even though his hair was white.
“Yeah, all these flowers.  She left it in her will, don’t give any money to charity, buy me flowers,” James shook his head, “she never changed.”
“Did she leave you anything?”
“Not a penny.  You?”
“Nothing.”
“But you were her PA all these years!”
Alex shrugged; “I got paid for it.”
The carriage moved on, Emalina saw her sons, successful and sharp suited, in her empty house, sorting through her possessions, counting what they would inherit, satisfaction honeying their voices.
“I hate funerals,” Edmond was saying, “Mummy won’t mind us not going.”
“No,” agreed Eustace, “and she was never there for us, so why should we be there for her?”

 

The carriage hurtled its way back into the theme park and Emalina could breathe again.  She alighted from the ride, face flushed.  She could see the eyes of her co-workers upon her and she smiled genuinely for the first time in years.

“How was it?” Alex asked.
“Very good,” she replied, “a very personal experience, I wonder how that was done.”
“I didn’t get a personal experience,” James stated.
“Well, you’re not very important, are you?” Emalina said, “right, what time is it?  Eight o’clock, let’s get this dinner over with.  Remember what I said, I want you fresh as daisies in work tomorrow, I know it’s Christmas Eve and in past years you’ve expected to leave early, but let me re-iterate it’s a day the same as any other, you come in at eight, twelve hours from now and you leave at six with half an hour for lunch, so no going to the pub.”
Her staff looked so disappointed; Alice especially looked as if she might cry.
“Well, you’re getting Christmas day off!” Emalina said.
At the table in the hotel, Emalina made sure she sat next to Alice; “Alice, tell me how you managed to make the ride so relevant? “ She raised her voice, “Do you know what everyone?  I’m proud of myself.  I didn’t have the best start, but I’m a self-made woman.  Sure, I’ve made some ruthless decisions and perhaps there have been casualties, but you can’t be successful and not cause some collateral.  My sons are going to grow up to be fine, independent men - especially after I’ve made a few adjustments at home.  Great heads up about my husband, Alice, I’m impressed.  James, take off that dreadful tie!”

SAMHAIN

Every year I'm the zombie.  I get tired of it, but as they point out, I'm tall and have a slight twist in my back that makes me loom in a sinister way.  Lily is the vampire, type cast also, but she seems to relish it. She looks beautiful in her red dress, her black hair flowing down.  James is our axe wielding ghoul and Alice with her crooked nose and piercing eyes is the witch.
"Are we ready?" she asks us and we nod.

At precisely midnight we hit the street to blend with the raucous students and the shop girls who've been wearing their fancy dress and drinking cider all day.  We don't stay among them, we are looking for a fancier place.
"It's this way," says James.
"I've looked forward to this," Lily adds.
We enter and walk by the concierge who doesn't even look at us.  The carpeted corridor leads to the lift and the lift takes us to the penthouse.  We knock on the door and hand the youth that answers a bottle of wine, he invites us in immediately.
"See anyone you know here?" Alice asks with a low chuckle.
I nod smiling, thinking how funny it is that they're having the same conversations.  Jason Derrin is discussing property with Phillip Timpson in the usual Derrin versus Timpson portfolio competition.  There is Caroline Bundy on and on about the yacht her Daddy has bought her.  The Bundys always spoiled their children.
"Hey!" she cries coming over to me, "that severed head you're carrying looks real!"
I put it carefully on the table, reach forward with both my hands and snap her neck before she can protest.  Then I turn on her friend.  Screams and cries fill the room, but no-one comes.  Lily is flying about, tearing throats with her teeth and James is cutting heads with his axe.  Alice has done her part, her magic has sealed the doors, no-one can get in and no-one can get out.

I remember being a lad and asking Cora Bundy to play with me and she refused because I wore rags, was poor, was not good enough.  I recall Josh Derrin running poor Lily down with his horse when she stepped in the road to beg for money to feed her children and how Paul Timpson accused Alice of being a witch when she'd refused his advances.  Off to the gallows she had gone, her family having to pull at her legs to end her suffering.

It's funny how so little changes, money stays in the same families and guising still gets done, although they call it trick or treating now.  What they call Hallowe'en is Samhain to us, the night when the partition falls away and the dead come from the dark.  Tonight we came looking for the blood of those that hurt us and we found them the same as they've ever been.

THE PINES

Not even my mother knows where I stayed last night. It would break her heart if she did. It’s true what they say about my husband, he was a hard working man … If I’d got kids, if I was respectable someone’d take me in, but here is where the punished go to sleep.
I see him in my dreams, his jacket buttoned to his neck, a weary look on his face as he follows the long steel railway line trying to come home.  He doesn’t know he’s dead.  Sometimes when it happens sudden like that, they don’t realise and they search for the familiar. He’ll walk that line forever …

The dark of these woods is comforting, no light can penetrate, I’m able to peacefully reflect on the hot summer sun, the man I took comfort with, his lips on mine and the sweat of our skin to skin.  Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw my husband stood quietly at the door, but when I looked again he was gone. I tell myself it was my imagination, that it wasn’t because of me he was walking on the railway line when the accident happened, but because he saw some debris there and went to pick it up.

 The wind is getting up, somehow it manages to chill through the woods, it shakes the branches and weeps and mourns like a lost thing. I walk up the hill to where the trees break and the railway line stretches on and on between the pines. In the far distance, I swear I can see a figure walking along the tracks towards me.

THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED

In sleep you know this house well, it’s every quirk and corridor, its ancient furniture, the dust and mustiness.  It’s because you’ve been here before, every night since you made the decision and nights previously, from far in your past that you’ve blocked out.

You’re in the bedroom, a close personal friend has texted you to say that this house is haunted, that this place is cursed.  You text back; “Don’t be daft!  I don’t sense anything!”  But you are slightly unsettled and the feeling grows as the evening stretches on.  You’re starting to feel your aloneness and hear the creaks, bumps and footsteps along the corridor.  Somewhere nearby, a door slams.  You turn the key in the lock to shut out the ghost.  When the key falls to the floor, you grab it quickly before it can be dragged underneath.  You pull a chest of drawers against the door, struggling with the weight of it.  You gasp for breath.  Safe again?

Then the lights begin to flicker and suddenly you’re plunged into darkness.  You realise your error.  You haven’t barricaded the ghost out, ghosts can walk through walls.  You flick the switch desperate for light, but nothing happens, you can’t see anything, but you can sense that something in the room close to you wishes you ill.

Waking, you deny me, you bury yourself in work, relationships, parties.  You’ve kept yourself busy since the decision, haven’t you?  Since you pulled the rug out from under your own feet?  Is there a reason for that, I wonder?  Well, you can’t escape me in sleep.  I am the haunted house, the sense of menace, the ghost that creeps up on you.  I am your intuition and I’m trying to tell you something very important about a choice you’ve made.  Ignore me at your peril.

THE FIEND

We were on holiday and I believe we were wandering around Sienna. We’d had a couple of bottles of wine between us at the restaurant and subsequent bars. Earlier on, we couldn’t have been more in love, congratulating our good fortune in meeting each other ten years ago. At a subsequent stage of the evening, however, you resorted to sarcasm and I took to overreacting. That’s right, you were walking and it was me who was wandering, getting left behind with each drip drip drip of sarcastic comment; plodding slower and slower until suddenly, I saw them, the footprints on the tarmac. Black, the colour of tar, long and narrow with talons at the end and I recognised them. Last seen ten years ago, the evening I met you.

Could I have drawn them to your attention? No. Only I can sense The Fiend and then I can only perceive its traces – footprints behind you, shadows in the bedroom with us, a soft mocking laugh when I whisper that I love you. There was nothing I could do, except make the last of your time with me as nice as possible. After all, you couldn’t know that with each passing day, wherever you went, around on holiday, then back home, those footprints followed and each time I checked they were a little closer behind you...

The evening you returned from work with the footsteps just one pace back from yours, I took a little time out to remember the parties, the laughter, the good times, the love making and the sound of your key in the door. Then I quietly put those things away. I sat in the corner of the living room, watching the big black shadow rear up behind your armchair. You made the mistake of turning round, your eyes widened with fear and you screamed. Only, no sound came out because your head had disappeared inside the blackness, your torso followed, then your legs and finally your feet. I didn’t cry, because you no longer existed to me.

“All right?” the new man is leaning over me in bed.

“I’m fine,” I whisper, “go back to sleep.”
He does so. I switch on a bedside lamp and glance round me. A different room, but the same handwriting is on the wall. I get up and rub it off before he can wake again. These men I’m sent always come with instructions. I must adjust and comply, because the moment I relax, switch off or lag behind, is the second the Fiend’s footsteps will appear and I will endure the horror of failure again.

ONE OF THOSE 'OUSES

“Right you are!  You’ve made an excellent choice. Yeah-yeah-yeah, good little buy,” Jason, the estate agent said smiling at Mr and Mrs Baynes standing in front of him.  They’d been the first people to look round the house and they’d offered the asking price immediately having fallen madly in love with the property.  Now they were showing it to their three children, all aged under seven years.  The kids tore round the rooms, yelling and shrieking, shattering the peace.  Mr and Mrs Baynes did nothing to check their behaviour.
“Children should express themselves,” Mr Baynes told Jason, while Mrs Baynes nodded in agreement.
“We never discipline them,” she added.  “Did the Underwoods give you an indication of when they’re able to move out?”
“These things usually take about eight weeks, don’t they?” Jason replied easily, “is there anything else you’d like to ask, see or measure?”
“Everything’s perfect,” the Baynes beamed at him, while their youngest child sat in the middle of the living room and began crying because the eldest was kicking her.  The piercing wails gave Jason a headache.  He wished they’d go, but they remained, gaving him a lecture on the benefits of Permissive Parenting, while their middle child sat and stared at the wall, rocking from side to side.
 

Once they’d gone, Jason sat on the Underwoods’ dowdy sofa to take a call from his wife.  “I’m at 19 Anne Street, the one I’ve sold - twice now - sold it ten years ago to the Underwoods – you know the couple with the adult children who wouldn’t get jobs.  Neighbours’ll be pleased to see them go, the rows they ‘ad!  Mind you, this next lot don’t seem any better.  Believe in the no-discipline approach to parenting!  Intellectuals, they are ... Yeah, people just seem to snap this ‘ouse up.  It’s funny ‘cos there’s a property exactly like it at the end of the street that’s been on the market for months, but number 19 – it’s One of Those ‘Ouses, ain’t it?  Nice atmosphere, despite ‘oo’s lived ‘ere.  Sells the minute it goes on the market, doesn’t even need a For Sale sign.  One of life’s mysteries ‘ow some places sell and some don’t ... yeah-yeah-yeah, I’ll be home for seven ... ‘bye love.”  He cut the connection and sat, massaging his temples.  “Never empty, are ya?  Always someone wantin’ ya.  Bet you’d ‘av appreciated a bit of peace and quiet,” he said and laughed at himself for talking to the house like it was a person.

At that precise moment, the nice atmosphere at number 19 changed.  Jason felt the hairs prick up on the back of his neck.  The living room got colder and he suddenly felt stifled and fearful.  It was almost as if he could hear the screaming rows the Underwoods had had and the family before that and the family before that and the family that was to come.  He felt the ups, the downs and the daily grind of human misery upon him.  He picked up his briefcase hurriedly.

“Couldn’t get out fast enough, that ‘ouse 'as baggage, it needs space,” he was to tell his wife later, after a few glasses of wine.  The other thing he told her quietly (and he never told anyone else) was he could have sworn blind that he only tugged the front door shut lightly, but it slammed with a resounding whack behind him.

TITSZZZ

The office Christmas party started when Josh opened a bottle of Moet, tools were downed, glasses found, cakes taken from the fridge and party poppers let off.  It was Mad Friday and by 6pm the judgement of Josh, Simon and Derek was completely skewed.  When they went on a perfume sniffing mission, involving them burying their heads into the décolletage of every female, the office manager promptly suggested the three leave for town.

On their way out, they noticed a whisky bottle in the kitchen and decided to take it.  They piled into the room laughing at their audacity.  The cleaner, in an extremely bad mood, was putting glasses into the dishwasher.

“Hello darlin’!” shouted Josh, looking at his mates giggling, “I’m gonna sniff the cleaner’s tits!”
She straightened to protest, but he swept her slight frame up, sat her on the counter and buried his head in her tiny chest; “Peanuts!” he yelled.
“That’s what she smells like?” Simon laughed.
“Soap is what she smells like, peanuts is what she has.  You need a boob job, love!”
Simon thought it was hilarious, but Derek intervened, pulling Josh off; “Town,” he said and mouthed an apology to the cleaner.
“Wait,” she said, without hesitation, “there are women with better tits at eibmoZ Club.  It’s where WAG’s and models end their night.”
Simon handed her his smartphone, “Plug the postcode in, sweetheart.”

Later, they found themselves in a graveyard.  Puzzled, they suspected it was a joke, but were willing to see it through.  Then they saw a crypt with fairy lights round it and a neon sign – eibmoZ CLUB.  The bouncer wore a hooded coat that rendered his face invisible.

“You can’t come in,” he grunted at Derek, “you’re drunk.  You two are welcome.”
It was a fair call, probably was Derek’s home time, he stumbled away, while Simon and Josh entered, walking down steps into a wall of thumping R&B music.  The club was dark, but they could see females in silhouette writhing on the dancefloor, long haired, thin with huge tits and curvy behinds – perfect!

They skipped the bar because they still had the whisky bottle and headed straight to the women; “Wanna sniff your t ...” Josh stopped mid sentence, staring at the redhead in front.  She was wearing a mini skirt and low top, but her flesh was hanging off her thin arms and decaying, her rib bones stuck through her exposed midriff, her face was slack and her tits were huge lumps of silicon yellowing with age.  She grabbed his head and pulled it against her, the overwhelming smell of corruption causing him to puke.  The music stopped; Simon, aware they were surrounded, pulled Josh up; “Ladies, excuse us, it’s the end of the night.”

“The night never ends here,” they chorused.
One of them pulled up her skirt to flash her silicon enhanced bony behind; “We’ve been waiting for lads like you!”
There were too many too push past, Simon and Josh gave up and let the wall of surgically enhanced women in various states of decay close in.  At least these girls were up for it.

Outside the cleaner leaned against the crypt wall, sharing a large cigar with the bouncer.  She gave the starlit sky a contented look and said to nobody in particular; “Merry Christmaszzz.”