The exercise:
I hope you all had a safe and happy Christmas Eve, preferably with people you're fond of nearby. Our countdown to the big day hits its penultimate note with: The Nightmare Before Christmas.
If you didn't see that one coming then you probably weren't paying much attention.
I'm really looking forward to tomorrow, more for it being Max's first Christmas than for anything I'm expecting to receive myself. Glad to have a lot of family here to share it with, though I wish my sisters could be here too.
I will admit, however, that if they'd been able to make it as well, I'm not sure I could've handled that level of chaos. What we've got here right now is plenty, thank you.
Mine:
The Christmas tree is on fire but no one else seems to notice. Why isn't everyone freaking out, forming a bucket line, calling the fire department, or something? This is a hurricane level holiday disaster here!
Oh, maybe it's because all the presents were already stolen. I suppose that makes the fire a bit less of a concern. Has someone at least phoned the police about the robbery?
No? Too preoccupied with the turkey turning charcoal black in the oven? And I guess making sure the gravy tastes like mushy cardboard takes a lot of focus as well.
What's that? All the wine bottles are empty? Sounds about par for the course at this point.
Surely this is a nightmare. All of this cannot be going wrong all at once. I'll wake up any second now.
Any second. Come on. Here we go. Any... second...
2 comments:
Merry Christmas! I hope it's all been good fun and party-like for you :) I completely sympathise with you about the levels of chaos increasing with each new guest – and it's exponential, not linear too! I hope you managed all the people without any difficulty.
I rather like your nightmare, how each disaster is overshadowed by the next one in turn. Nicely constructed :)
The nightmare before Christmas
Jerome looked tired; there were dark circles around his eyes and he kept yawning whenever he thought no-one was looking. Tradition in his family meant that, as the eldest child, he was doomed to have three nightmares before Christmas, each darker and more scarier than the last. If he survived all three and woke up on Christmas morning then Christmas could happen.
He yawned again. He now hadn't slept in fifteen nights now, and it was nearly the middle of January. He knew that there was only one more nightmare to go, but forcing himself to stay awake – coffee, Red Bull, energy drinks and never lying down – just seemed more preferable.
"Why won't you sleep?" said Sarah, who was sitting next to him and looking grumpy. "We all can't have Christmas until you give in and get some sleep."
"Because of the nightmares," he said. "Because you don't know what they're like."
"It's just a bad dream. You're so selfish. You've always been selfish. I hate you."
Jerome sighed again and stood up. He yawned heavily, and wondered if sitting down was now too dangerous too.
"You just don't know what the nightmares are like," he said as he walked off.
Greg - yes, definitely exponential.
That seems like a miserable little tradition - I'd avoid sleep if I was him too!
Actually, I probably would have started avoiding it after the first nightmare...
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