Guest Post- Brett S. Arnold IS BACK!

I know I said last week that there would be no more Guest Posts till New Year's Eve... I lied. Brett S. Arnold of Cat Facts fame has decided to drop off a little Christmas treat. Be warned this story is a little more adult than what you usually see on this blog so read with caution.

A Christmas Miracle -by Brett S. Arnold

For children, Christmas and the “holiday spirit” come as naturally as being born. It’s in them, chemically, somewhere deep in the marrow of their bones. Thanksgiving is a nuisance, something to be half-celebrated, only partially paid attention to, before the real season can begin. “We must celebrate this first, then we can listen to Christmas music and get a tree,” the parents will say. But the children can’t help but want it now.

I was in my twenties, and like so many others, I felt myself grasping for ways to get into the holiday mood. I genuinely wanted to be excited, but as to where Christmas was always just there before, now I had to make an effort. In my car, I had to seek out Christmas music, if that’s what I felt like listening to at all, and there were so many movies to watch—did I really want to see Jim Carrey masquerade around as the Grinch again?

One of the last mysteries provided for the holiday season was a door on the bottom floor of my parent’s house that my dad had taped shut with a note: “Do Not Enter, You’ll Ruin Christmas.” It wasn’t exactly an uplifting in its rhetoric, but alas, it did add back some of that mysterious holiday magic. What’s in there? Presents, no doubt, unwrapped and sitting, waiting, unprotected on the floor. I was watching my parent’s house, as they were suddenly out of state on business, though they would be back on the 20th.

I tried other things too, of course, to get in the spirit. My girlfriend, sister and I went so far as to drive 45 minutes south down to Laguna Hills. There was a house there that my sister found on the internet where the lights went off and on within 1/20th of a second of each other, set perfectly to the tempo of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” and pretty much the entire Vince Guaraldi cannon. Apparently, in full-blown f*ck-all adult-hood, getting into the season includes buying thousands and thousands of colored LED lights on miles of strands, covering your entire house with it, and programming all of this in no less than one thousand hours, beginning all the way back in August. Every year.

I was feeling desperate. Yes, the house could be seen from space (probably). Yes, the neighbors outside passing out home-made apple cider was a nice touch. But was this where I was heading? Was this the amount of effort it would take for Christmas to feel completely, overwhelmingly and instinctually amazing as it did in childhood?

Back at my parents, I was in a panic. Everyone was asleep, and the only thing holiday-related on the DVR was this year’s Glee special (good lord, this will be part of some kids’ holiday tradition, won’t it?) I walked up slowly—tiptoed—to the mystery room. Do Not Enter, You’ll Ruin Christmas. I slowly peeled away the tape, and turned the door handle, all the while listening for any movement in the other rooms. Silence. I slowly pushed the door ajar, and though it was pitch black the stench hit me like biology class on dissection day. I swung aimlessly for the light switch. And there he was. My first thought, he’s real, was followed so closely by my second thought, within 1/20th of a second, that an omniscient 3rd party might not be able to distinguish the two, and he’s dead. The blood, red as his coat, congealed in the center of the bed—sunk low under his enormous body. His beard was yellowed from a sort of bile that had at one point secreted from his mouth, but was now dried and flaking from his bloated, now purple- toned flesh. I’m sure, looking back on all of this, that I must have screamed. But I can’t remember now.

Christmas was ruined.