The exercise:
With just two days to go, we write words inspired by the movie title: Black Christmas.
Yeah, I wouldn't bother clicking that link if I were you. Just... stick with the title and start writing.
Today was a day for arriving family. Kat's dad brought her brother and his family home from the airport just in time for a late lunch, and then my parents pulled into the driveway shortly after dinner (but still in time for dessert).
Now the gang's all here and the oohing and aahing over babies has commenced!
Mine:
We hated spending Christmas holidays with Aunt Penelope. There could not have been a festive bone in her frail little body!
No lights decorated the outside of her home, no carols ever managed to successfully escape from her stereo. Talk of Santa was strictly forbidden, as were stockings, candy canes, and speculation on the ability of reindeer to fly.
There was no holly, no jolly, no nothin'.
The blackened, shriveled up thing she insisted on calling her Christmas tree looked like it had been pulled out of a forest fire. About two weeks after the blaze had run its course.
Not only was I convinced that this was an accurate assessment, I was also pretty darned sure that Aunt Penelope had started the fire herself.
2 comments:
You've got your full house! And two small children to cause no end of excitement and anxiety over the holidays! :-P I hope it's a very merry time for you all :)
Love the "no holly, no jolly" line; I wish I'd thought of that one first. Damn you. And I like the way Aunt Penelope is not actually seen, but we know all about her for when she hits the stage!
Black Christmas
Judy looked at herself in the mirror, this time peering over her shoulder to see the back of her dress. It still didn't quite look like it fitted her, she was sure it had looked better in the shop. Maybe she'd listened too much to the shop-girl but when you're in your fifties and some little skinny twenty-year old is saying nice things about how you look, you listen. Even though there's a tiny, spiteful voice in the back of your head saying that she's paid to say these these things.
She turned again, twisting this way and that, trying to recapture what she'd seen in the store, and finally gave up. She sat down heavily in her chair and picked the invitation up again.
"It's a very merry Black Christmas!" it read in big, curlicued letters. "Dress like your inner home-boy or -girl!"
She sniffed. She wanted to find it tasteless and racist, but it was best friend Anna's party, and she was black South-African and as sassy and proud as anyone Judy had ever met. Of course, now she was wearing this dress, which she was sure didn't fit, and might well get her branded a racist by any of her white friends... well, you just couldn't win, could you?
She stood up, determined to be as proud as Anna, and picked up the neatly-wrapped glittering Christmas present. Time to be herself again!
Greg - thanks very much! I hope your Christmas is much hollier and jollier than the one I wrote about :)
Haha, that's quite the take on the prompt! I did not see that one coming at all. Sounds like quite the party!
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