the_gene_genie | OOM: Ghosts of Christmas

"Someone has a high opinion of himself."

The young woman -- well, girl -- well, neither, really --

Anyway, the figure in the room, who is also the light in the room, comes three steps closer, and along the way, gets four inches taller and then seven inches shorter, her dark hair changing to gold and back.

"Hello, Gene.

"I am the Ghost of Christmas Past."

His jaw drops slightly.

'...I could've been talking about her.'

He nods towards Alex who does, in fact, have naked shoulders. But no matter. It's hardly the pertinent point at the moment.

'What're you on about?'

"Your welfare," she says. "What else?

"I'm hardly here for my health."

It's never about her and her siblings, not really.

"Come along."

Gene would never admit it, not for a million years, but he has, in fact, read this book. And also seen the 1935 movie, and the more recent - for him - BBC adaptation. Also, a couple of cartoon versions.

What can we say? He likes films. And Christmas.

It doesn't stop him staring, and looking more than a bit sceptical. But it also makes him curious enough to actually consider leaving this bed.

He looks at her, then down at himself.

'Turn around. I haven't got any pants on.'

The Ghost laughs, but she turns around, and hums "I Saw Three Ships" while she waits.

He pulls a face at her back for that laugh, and slides out of bed as noiselessly as he can. He doesn't want to freak out Alex. He pulls some jeans on, and his cowboy boots, and a shirt, glaring at the back of the ghost's head all the time.

'This take long? I don't want her waking up on her own.'

She tends to think he'll disappear if he goes without saying anything.

"It takes the time it takes," she says. "But never past dawn.

"Are you ready, Gene?"

'Suppose,' he grumps, mainly to conceal his curiosity.

'What do I have to do, click me heels together three time?'

"Wrong book, Gene," she says mildly.

Then again, if you can't play fast and loose with your own literary tradition . . .

She reaches out and takes his arm. In her other hand, she is suddenly holding an umbrella -- complete with duck-head handle.

They float serenely up and out of the window and into the night sky.

'Bloody...!'

There's an automatic flail - during which he nearly lets go of her entirely - and a lot of swearing. He barely registers that this really shouldn't be possible, even at Milliways, or the fact that it's not as cold as it should be.

By the time they start to float down, he's stopped flapping about. He's staring around instead, though he'd recognise this city anywhere, even from above. They touch down on a street that's cobbled, though the steeper edges have long since worn away from the stones. The houses are all of red brick, and every single one has the lights of a Christmas tree twinkling out at the window.

He finds he's not at all surprised to discover they're outside the door of number twenty. There's a sniff, and he glances at the ghost.

'Bit predictable, aren't you?'

'Do we get to go in?'

"I prefer traditional. Possibly even classic."

But predictable would not be inaccurate.

She extends her free hand toward the door.

"After you, Gene."

He won't even need to open it.

He raises his eyebrows at her, and then glances towards the open door. This is...interesting. He can't decide if he's really happy about it or not.

But it seems clear he has no choice but to carry on. So he does what he always does when he's nervous, which is to square his shoulders, and march straight towards whatever's making him uneasy. And it's not as weird as it maybe should be, walking into this house. His mother still lives here, after all. At least in his world. So it hasn't been that long since he's seen it.

There's no one downstairs. He glances towards the back, where there's a tiny dining room, and a kitchen at the end of the hallway. No signs of life back there. So he leans on the door jamb of the front room - it's exactly as he remembers every Christmas of his childhood. The tree by the window, with a few things wrapped in brown paper underneath it. A fire crackling away, filling the room with a faint smell of smoke. It drowns out the ground-in fag smell he's never been without his whole life. There's a small table next to his dad's armchair, with an ashtray on it, and a coaster ready for the beer he'll open as soon as he gets in. A few Christmas cards hung over the fireplace, and a couple of toys on the floor by the threadbare sofa. Christmas carols waft out of the ancient wireless in the corner, in the little nook under the shelves that hold pictures of the family. Him and Stuart, rarely smiling.

He smiles a little bit now, though there's no joy in it, and little nostalgia. The happy kind, anyway.

There are voices coming from upstairs. He registers them vaguely; once he has, there's no getting away from the desire to go up and see. he glances at the ghost first, though.

'They won't be able to see me, will they?'

"No. Nor hear you.

"Shall we?"

It's not really a question.

'S'pose.'

He takes the stairs carefully, either reticent, or somehow afraid they might break under his weight. He gets this feeling even now, visiting his mother; that the place has shrunk around him, an invisible yoke he wears around his shoulders.

He's pulled up short on the landing. The first thing he sees is himself, standing in the doorway of his bedroom, clutching a toy police car.

'Bloody hell!' he whispers, just in case they can hear him after all. He wouldn't want to explain what he's doing here. But there's no reaction from his four-year-old self. And the voices are louder - one female, worried; one boy, who can barely be heard even up this close.

'This is when me brother had mumps,' he says, because she's bound to be hovering around somewhere.

'I thought he was going to die.'

It would certainly explain the fear on his own small face, and the white fingers gripping the toy.

"Hovering around somewhere" is kind of her modus operandi.

She nods, but doesn't further interrupt his observations, spoken aloud or otherwise.

Gene edges around the figure in the doorway, holding his breath when his shirt brushes near the boy's hair. But there's still no reaction, and he doesn't want to look too closely at his own face. He looks over to his mother instead, currently pressing a damp flannel to Stuart's naked back.

'I'm sorry, luv, won't take long.'

Stuart mumbles something in return, and the elder Gene shuts his eyes, and tries to remember this.

'He kept saying he was sorry,' he says, though he doesn't expect the ghost to care. 'For years after, I thought getting sick was something you had to apologise for.'

Though their mother never forced them to feel that way. Gene looks at her closely for the first time, and immediately feels like a cold blade has been slid between his ribs.

She looks different to how he remembers. Different to the version living in his world. Because, of course, this was then. This was real. He swivels, and looks at himself. Different too, slightly. Easier to see how that kid grew up to be the ghost that haunts him when it suits.

He feels sick. But Stuart's apologising again, and he turns back to watch.

'Sorry, mam. Didn' mean...'

'Well. You'll know better next time.'

Gene frowns. That doesn't sound like a thing you say to someone with mumps. He glances at the Christmas Ghost.

'Everything you show me is stuff that did happen, for real?'

Given that he's recently found out that everything he thought was real is actually a figment of his subconscious, he doesn't feel stupid in asking the question.

"Yes," she says simply.

Or else she'd be the Ghost of Christmas Fiction.

"It happened as you see it happening."

Her siblings show the scenes that are not yet fixed in stone.

The details of her visions were hammered out long ago.

He sits down on the bed he slept in for nineteen years. It feels exactly as he remembers.

Stuart's got big lumps on his face. Gene frowns, and tries to remember what he knows about the disease. He had it young, so it's hazy. But he's pretty sure it's the glands that are supposed to swell up, not the cheeks and mouth. Not leave bruising all over the back, and what he knows perfectly well are welts from a belt.

He sighs, and rubs a hand over his face.

'Don't know why you brought me here,' he mutters. 'Nothing I haven't seen before. Or had meself.'

But he hadn't seen it, had he? He's four years old, over there in the doorway. And yes, he remembers knowing that if you weren't quiet around his dad - or even if you were, sometimes - you tended to get a smack. But not like this.

'Sorry,' Stuart says again, and their mother sighs.

'Nothing to be done, Stuey. You just lie here and get better.'

'Yeah, but...'

'Enough.'

Out of the corner of his eye, Gene sees his young self's head raise at the exact moment his does. Both surprised, but the lad actually flinches. Their mother is scowling, sponging Stuart harder now, enough to make him whimper.

'You knew very well that if you cheeked him, he'd do this. And you knew very well I'd get it too. You keep doing this, Stuart, he'll start on Gene as well - is that what you're trying to do? Pass it on to your brother?'

'No! No, I didn't-'

'Well, it's going to happen anyway. Bloody young idiot. Stop saying sorry, and start bloody behaving yourself.'

Gene feels the blood draining out of his face. He doesn't remember this conversation, but it's not like he couldn't have heard it. Maybe he was too young. But he knows now, and it feels like a punch in the solar plexus. For a second, it's hard to breathe.

In his world, his mother is...his mother. Even since he found out the truth, he barely questioned his version of her. But if this is the reality - this woman, looking more pissed off at the thought of what's going to happen to her, than having sympathy with her beaten son - then it's nothing like the woman he knows is living back in Manchester.

'Shit,' he says, under his breath. It's mainly to mask the twist in his chest.

'Shit, shit, shit.'

The Ghost stands in the doorway, behind the four-year-old Gene, her hands not quite resting on his shoulders, and her eyes on scene in the room.

Because if you're going to force people to watch things like this, you do rather have an obligation to watch them as well.

Stuart's crying.

How did he not remember that?

Stuart never cried. He was the one who wiped his tears, until he got old enough to learn how to hold them in.

It's a lesson he's on the verge of forgetting right now. He always preferred to remember Stu as he was when he was a teenager, before the drugs got him. In those golden years when they'd both grown old enough to take their dad, and dish out some of what they'd been taking from him for years. Those few years when they weren't afraid any more, before Stu broke, and tried to hide in chemicals.

Before Gene went to work one day, and got his head blown off.

He presses a hand to his forehead now, and closes his eyes to ward off the ache behind them. It's all in the past. He knows it. He knows it. There's nothing to be done. Except now, he has to face the fact that his mother might not be what he wants her to be either.

'Stop that,' she says, sharp, and Gene's hand falls away from his face. Only she wasn't talking to him. She's talking to Stu.

'Stop it, Stuart. He'll be back in a minute, and you know how he gets if you cry. I've got to get the turkey in, I can't be...Gene, come here.'

The boy walks forward at once. He's unresisting as the car is taken from him, though he does look at it longingly when it's chucked on the bed. Their mother pushes the flannel into his hand.

'Look after your brother. He'll tell you what to do. I need to sort dinner, unless you both want cheese sandwiches for Christmas?'

She doesn't look back as she walks out. Gene watches himself standing there helplessly, and yes, OK. He remembers this bit. He doesn't need to see any more.

'I want to go.'

He stands up, and rounds on the ghost.

'Take me back.'

Edited 2012-12-09 01:06 (UTC)

She doesn't apologize. She wasn't created to be sincere in her apologies for what she forces people to face, after all.

She simply extends her hand to him again.

As soon as he takes it, the bedroom and the boys in it simply melt away, and they are back in his room in Milliways.

She makes no move to release his hand, though.

Not yet.

And for a moment, he lets her. Not because he feels any particular affinity with her - he wouldn't have had to learn that if it weren't for her, for one thing. But she's awake, and here, and feels real enough for the moment. It's better than nothing, and he's not going to wake Alex to tell her about it.

Just a moment, though. Then he lets out a breath, and runs both hands through his hair, locking the fingers behind his head when he's done.

'What was the point, then?' he asks, though he might have done so already.

'Why show me stuff I can't change?'

She starts to fade, slowly growing dimmer and fainter as she speaks.

"Because you needed to see it."

Not, perhaps, a very satisfying answer, but the only one she has.

"As to why you needed to see it . . . that you must suss out on your own, Detective Chief Inspector.

"With a little help from my siblings, perhaps.

"The next of us should be along shortly."

There's nothing left but her voice as she adds, "Happy Christmas, Gene."

'Yeah,' he says, with no inflection.

'Happy Christmas.'

But she's gone by then. And he's left empty, and suddenly exhausted. He doesn't want anything else to figure out. He's been figuring this shit out for months now, and he's tired. Tired physically, mentally, and any other way that lesser men than he would admit to feeling. He just wants to crawl back into bed next to Alex, and forget about it.

He doesn't. He hates this stuff, hates his past, hates what happened - but he doesn't run. He lights a fag instead, and pours a hefty Scotch.

If there's going to be two more, bring them on. he can put up with it for one more night.

Gradually, a warm glow begins to fill the room.

Gene may find that someone has set a small plate of Christmas cookies in easy reach.

"Oh, honey. You look like you could use these," the Ghost of Christmas Present says.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject