The Alone Absorbed on Christmas Mourn

George's cigar smoke twirled thick through the light of his porch. Shouts of children playing could be heard far off, rippling across the diluted night where fresh powder absorbed their details and vibrations.

Another puff. George’s brain was foggy. Sounds became as if they were right next to him, calling him not by name, but with a sense of camaraderie. And every night while under the influence, he followed the calling like a lost puppy through the darkness, only shown the way by the moon.

George’s feet crunched on the ground and fossilized weeds into interweaving patterns in the powder. He held no fear on the path to the lake.

When he reached the base of his simple dock - wood slabs on metal stilts - strangely, all the voices seemed pushed back behind the glow of the frozen lake, and laughs combined into each other. George moved to the dock’s very edge and wrapped his gloved hand around the cold pole. It held steady in the frozen lake. The tips of his toes brushed the lake's icy surface - the rubber slid with ease.

Snow dust spun in tornadoes at the lake’s center, and then, a hollow thump shook his dock. Now, there were no sounds. He scooted back towards the land slowly. Something seemed off - that tingle in his spine lurched his chest. Lights shone around the lake. He hoped others that he could not see were sharing this sudden fright.

The snow tornadoes spout high, mixing with the starry sky. Then, just as soon as they reached the above the pines they shot down, not just to the ice, but below it. Cracks spread and reached the dock in seconds.

George was at the precipice between land and his dock. He backed up more, but dared not turn his back. The lake was of liquid water, not ice, as if it were a hot July day. But it didn’t stop within the eroded land where it was meant to stay. George had to run. His fleet of foot was not graceful on intoxicated and wobbly legs.

The flow gurgled with the sound of shoes suctioning from mud.

He stumbled on his porch’s first step. His knee slammed into the second. He pulled himself to the flat landing, then lay to breathe in the night air. Everything was but what it was - the night’s condensed moans and the shifting of the land settling into sleep beneath a warm blanket. The still of the cabin’s insides called him.

Have a tea, curl up in bed, and let sleep calm you. Tomorrow will be Christmas Day, he thought.

And tomorrow would be Christmas day - alone - like last year and the three before that.

*****

George gulped his cheap Folders. The world of his self-imposed prison pumped into his ears and eyes with the morning light. Thoughts of mornings past, of good times when Uncle Bob played pranks at the breakfast table, Aunt Helen discussed her favorite holiday reads, his brothers wrestled for loose wrapping to wad and throw at each other, and his parents still in their robes doing their best to stay awake after a long night of board games and the ‘not-fooling-anyone’ whiskey spiked egg nog.

Sitting at the cabin’s table seemed extra harsh this year, but he supposed it was just as tough as the previous four. The present is so immediate and flustering. He was thinking about last night, too, but of course it was just a dream. He’d drunk and smoked, but what he saw was impossible.

"This is all your fault." The air pushed from his thinly opened mouth and rippled on his coffee. It felt good to say out loud, not that it would change anything. Too late for that, but perhaps just perhaps, the straightening of his back and puffing of his chest would give him the courage to finally face the orchestra building in him all these years.

Mug in one hand and the other on the handle, he hesitated, flinched, but shook it off. All was quiet outside.

Of course it is, you idiot. It’s Christmas morning.

His mind drifted to all the lovely mornings inside the houses lining the lake.

The air chilled his lungs. Snow fell overnight, and fresh powder cupcaked the branches. He made new footprints on his way to the dock.

The quiet ceased as he came into the opening - the calls of children perhaps done unwrapping presents. But the sounds weren’t the normal inaudible flutters sucked in by the snow, trees, and lake.

Good for them, he thought. Perhaps he was the only lonely person around this lake this morning.

“'Tis the season to be jolly.”

Carols. He smiled at the sweetness churning across the lake.

“Follow them in merry measure.”

A family emerged from the opening of their yard.

“Sing we joyful all together.”

Another family…then more. They marched in structured walks to their land’s edge.

George mimicked and went to the edge of his dock. The ice around it quivered. White veins covered the metal stilts. The carols continued.

“Strike the harp.”

The ice broke apart.

“And join the chorus.”

Every plot had a family on it.

“While we tell you of yuletide treasure.”

Last night was a precursor of a bad thing about to happen to a bad person - a person who shut the world out and reclusively withdrew. He knew who every person standing was - every chance he hadn’t taken, every gesture he hadn’t returned, and every day he said he’d do better but failed to addiction instead.

“Hail the new year, lads, and lasses.”

The lake opened, just as it had last night. Shards of ice moved towards him, only they weren't ice. Bones - rib cages, arms, legs, skulls, hands - they all fast approached. The bottom of the lake revealed itself: murky depths with shiny weeds and rocky outcroppings, blanketed with dead fish.

“Fast away the old years pass.”

Deck the Halls, but the lyrics were different - directed at him. Taunts.

His dock collapsed, and within seconds, the bones surrounded and suffocated him.

George fought in flailing panic as he was pulled below the murky surface.

“Follow us in merry measure.”

Mud tangled with his eyesight. The last words heard, one final chorus, were, “Fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. Off to see the blazing yule below us.”

His eyes sank below the Earth before he could even shed a tear.