Like Peter Pan and Wendy they hurled through the final scene of A Space Odyssey. For the Ghost of Christmas Past this free fall through time and space was routine, and she smiled wide, but for Peter it was skydiving agony, the skin rippling his face fat and ballooning his mouth open in a dumb grin.
The Ghost of Christmas Past gracefully touched down atop a snowbank on a dark and snowy night. A perfect en pointe landing. Peter, close behind, clipped his skull against a streetlight and cartwheeled into a dumpster. Concussed he rose up, checking to make sure his neck wasn’t broken. The Ghost of Christmas Past seemed positively giddy about what was going on.
“Look at all the Christmas shoppers!” she cheered. “So many presents! Everyone’s so busy!”
“Hey! This is just last week!” Peter said.
Out from the gates of the J.C. Penny he saw himself and Kevin exiting into the snowy night. Peter was shocked at just how dour and negative he appeared. Hands stuffed in pockets, hunched over, and stomping around in winter boots. His expression looked like he wanted to murder someone.
“My god, do I seriously walk like that?” Peter, suddenly aware of his posture, straightened his back.
Along came the car, bass boosted Mele Kalikimaka thumping from the stereo system like a portable nightclub, and Peter cringed at the horrible knowledge of what was going to happen. Without warning, his past self mounted the passing car and began madly bouncing and dancing on top the roof, screaming all sorts of holiday related obscenities.
“This sort of behavior does not give the good cheer, does it?” the Ghost of Christmas Past said.
“They deserved it— probably.”
“What were they guilty of but enjoying Christmas while you were not?”
“Hey, I got stood up on a date, and there’s like… a fifty percent chance it was one of them.”
“Fifty percent?”
“At the time it felt more like ninety-nine percent, but now maybe… I mean, she made eye contact with me and laughed! That’s practically an admission of guilt!”
Past Peter jumped down off the car and kicked the windows like a SWAT agent breaking down a door. In a panic, the passengers inside babbled and plead for him to stop.
“I may have gone a little overboard.” Peter shrugged.
Along came the security truck with its flashing orange lights, and past Peter dashed off and away into the parking lot depths, pursued by his victims. He felt a little relief knowing he no longer had to relive this embarrassing moment.
“Maybe an apology is in order?”
“Yeah, I’ll apologize,” Peter said. “I’ll apologize as soon as that cunt that catfished me apologizes! Which is never going to happen.”
“Two wrongs don’t make the whole world blind, Peter.”
“What?”
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“Come. Let’s go to another Christmas. Perhaps you can gain a little more perspective, perspective, perspective, perspective…” There was no actual echo, she was merely repeating the last word with a quieter and quieter voice.
The world dimmed to black, until it was just Peter and his Victorian era prom date ghost in a spotlight of falling snow, and it seemed as though all the world were a dark void. His eyes searched the dark for something to hold onto, and out in the shadows he saw a chair, the very same chair that his parents kept in the living room, an ugly winged Chesterfield purchased from a garage sale long before he was ever born. And sitting in it was himself, younger, shorter, his hair a more brilliant shade of blonde, tousled and uncombed after a long night. Around his pajama-clad former self, the rest of the living room bled in, along with his family, and the Christmas tree. His two younger sisters bounced around in footy-pajamas and did the RPG dance from TikTok, like a pair of sugar-addicted, aspiring J-pop idols. His dad was an unshaved corpse, dragged out of bed at dawn and suffering from a midnight mass hangover. A fat goblin with a Hillary Clinton haircut aimed a massive, shoulder-mounted video camera at everyone and everything, narrating every second like a psycho.
“That’s Peter! Say merry Christmas, Peter! And that’s the tree this year! Ooooh! So pretty! And there’s Meredith and Mary-Beth! Dance for the camera, girls! And there’s Mr. Sleepy-Head! Good morning, Mr. Sleepy-Head! Rise and shine! Tee-hee-hee!”
Clad in a pink bathrobe, the matriarchal paparazzi squinted into the viewfinder and archived everything on betamax— an obsolete format even back then. She laughed maniacally when the twins panted excitedly like dogs and clawed the wrapping off their gifts in a Christmas induced frenzy. When it was Peter’s turn to open a gift the goblin queen pounced up onto the table for an ariel view and then crouched down and shoved the camera up his nostrils, shrieking, “Oooh! What is it, Peter?! What’s inside?! Who’s it from?! Open it! Open it!”
Peter tore through the wrapping with his finger, and as he did his mother cackled and asked why he was unwrapping so slowly like a crazy person, and when he sped up she shouted at him to slow down so she could get it all on film. Peter held up the gift so everyone could see.
“It’s uh… contact lens solution. Thanks, mom and dad.”
Two hours of Christmas chaos continued. Peter and the Ghost of Christmas Past spectated the insanity from a safe vantage point. Twirling ballerina helicopters from Mattel flew across the living room, their propeller arms seeking out Peter’s jugular. The floor flooded with wrapping paper shreds and bows. AA batteries were hunted down and crammed into urinating, defecating dolls— because dolls do that now. Meredith used her newly recalled Fritz Haber™ Science Kit to manufacture mustard gas and stain the ceiling yellow with a toxic cloud. Peter’s mom worked up a sweat, dashing crazily back and forth, her pink bathrobe chasing after her. All the while Michael Bublé belted out Christmas songs at an uncomfortable volume like an auto-tuned Frank Sinatra.
It was young Peter’s turn to open another gift, and his current self wondered what kind of stuff he got back in whatever year this was. These toys that seemed so important to him back then, he could hardly remember now. How much his heart had changed in ten years. He didn’t care at all about owning things anymore: plastic trinkets, merchandise from intellectual properties, vacuum formed together in sweat shops, cheaply assembled, hastily spray painted. None of it mattered to him anymore. All of it seemed so utterly meaningless compared to what he wanted now— romance. A real connection with girl who valued him as much as he valued her. A hand to hold. Watching a movie under a blanket together. He looked at his younger self and felt a strong urge to go up and slap him on the face, shake him a bit, and tell him he was wasting his time with action figures and remote controlled cars.
The box unwrapped, current Peter looked down at what was in his younger self’s hands. It was a box for a video game, Dungeon Keeper 2. The box art was a little risque, with a woman bound up in chains in a gothic dungeon. A fiery skinned caricature of Satan with teeth like a wooden rollercoaster smiled back at him. Rated M for mature.
“Hey, I remember that game!” Peter said. “That was a good game. It was like Roller Coaster Tycoon but in hell. You could slap imps around to make them work faster, and you could demonically possess a chicken.”
All the holiday cheer drained from the goblin queen’s face. Her beloved camera plummeted and slammed onto the table. A silence cut through the room. Even Michael Bublé kept his perfect Canadian mouth shut.
“What’s that?” she whispered.
“It’s uh… Dungeon Keeper 2. It’s a game.”
“Yeah. I can see that it’s a game. I’m not stupid. But what is it?”
“It’s an RTS game. You build dungeons—”
“You build dungeons? Like sex dungeons? You chain up women in these dungeons? Is that a fun game to you? And I know what RTS means, young man.” She didn’t know what RTS meant.
“No. You build dungeons to attract monsters and you form an army.”
“Yeah? Monsters? Monsters? Because I don’t see any monsters on that cover. All I see is poor girl who’s about to be raped. Is this a rape simulator? Did you ask for pornography for Christmas?”
Young Peter looked away. “No.”
“Peter Humphry Sowerbutts!” Oh! Did you hear that? She pulled out his middle name! On Christmas! She was going for the throat now! “Don’t lie to me on Christmas! Look at what you’re holding! Can you see that poor girl’s nipples? What’s wrong with you? Why would you ask for such a disgusting game— for a pornography game? Why can’t you just be normal?”
“This is… a pretty normal game.”
“No it’s not! It’s not normal! Normal boys don’t play video games like that! It’s rated M! That means there’s disgusting, perverted stuff, and violence, and swear words! Words you aren’t old enough to hear! Why would you even want this?”
“Well…” Peter took a deep breath. “Kevin had it and I—”
“Oh so Kevin has it too, huh? Kevin is keeping sexy naked girls enslaved in his computer, so that means it’s okay for you to do it too, huh? Let’s all just ask Santa for pornography! Because who cares about having a nice Christmas free of degeneracy? Not me!”
Mary-Beth giggled, “Peter likes pornography.”
“Shut up.”
“Don’t you tell your sister to shut up! She did nothing wrong! You are going to apologize and we will have a nice Christmas together! And I am not going to let you ruin it with your perverted fantasies!”
Peter put the game down on the table and reluctantly retreated from the room. The Ghost of Christmas Past paused the scene. Peter sighed heavily, glad the cringe-fest was finally over.
But the Ghost of Christmas Past's journey through Christmases of olde was not yet over. You know they say everything comes in threes, and we had but seen two Christmasses from Peter's past. Hidden in her sparkly bodice was her ace in the hole, a flashback so powerful it was sure to get Peter's blood pumping in ways apathetic teens couldn't even imagine. And then she would spring her trap. Her sparkling, ghostly trap.