The Trials Of Ebenezer Scrooge, Part 5

The foetal position was one which Scrooge had never felt a need to crawl up into before, yet on this feral evening he found himself completely hunched up around his bed-sheets, sore and fearful. Last year he had been visited by four Spirits from the other side which had given him an eye-opening experience which changed the way he viewed the world forever. He had been a miser, a cruel grasping moneybag with no passions or loves in his life, and in the space of one night these spirits had fixed his mind and made him a decidedly nicer person. He helped people, he gave charity to those who needed it, and he went on his way with a song in his heart. The whole experience had been helpful to him, and he had become the nicest man in town. There was an obvious purpose to the visits.

This time, there hadn’t been.

When he had been visited tonight, the spirits had shown him visions of a Christmas which was filled with so much kindness that it hurt people, but Scrooge couldn’t believe that their purpose was to make him meaner. That would be against the very spirit of Christmas, surely? And the less he remembered about the vicious sexual assaults he had received from his best friend and the spirits who were respectively child-like, female, and dead, the better. He didn’t feel particularly festive at all today, which is why he was so surprised when he heard a knock at his door in the morning from a well-wisher.

“Good morning, Mr Scrooge,” said Bob Cratchit from behind an enormous laurel wreath he was holding. “I hope you don’t mind, but my daughters wanted to donate this wreath to your household, as there is no space for it in our dwelling. And a Merry Christmas, sir!”

“Merry Christmas, Bob,” Scrooge said with tired eyes, tired eyes which his colleague immediately picked up on.

“What’s wrong, Scrooge?”

Bob could see that his friend was clearly in some form of distress, and so he pushed his way inside the house and headed on up to the drawing room, where Scrooge usually received his guests. If he were to get his friend to open up about whatever had traumatised him so, it would happen in this room. Heavy footsteps followed him, and he knew that Scrooge was right behind him – as always. Once they entered the room Bob turned and faced down Ebenezer.

“What’s happened?”

Scrooge immediately broke down under the weight of questioning, and he told his friend absolutely everything that had happened to him over the past night – sexual scenes included as well. At the end, he lay down on the floor in that now-familiar foetal position, as Bob leant over him.

“Scrooge? I know exactly what the moral was, here.”

Scrooge froze. “What was it?”

“You shouldn’t do everything a Spirit asks you to do.”

Scrooge paused for a second, and then burst out laughing. And then Bob, drawn in by the infectious guffaws, began to laugh himself. The door opened and members of the town wandered in, and started laughing too. It was, after all, the most hilarious thing they had ever heard.


The End.

The Trials Of Ebenezer Scrooge, Part 4

The house was filled now with light and warmth, as Scrooge hurried round the various little rooms and switched on every gas lamp and fire he could find in an attempt to feel more secure in his own home. The visits of the previous three ghosts had all shook him to his very core, and he found that he couldn’t sit down properly anymore; a very horrible discovery indeed for this poor fellow.

As light bounced off his wooden walls, Scrooge sank into his favourite chair and tried to distract himself from the present by focusing on the invoices he had yet to complete before the year was out. It was a failing tactic, but the former miser knew that he’d need to do something to tear his mind away from disturbed thoughts about what lay under the robes of the final Spirit – a Spirit, he reminded himself with a sigh, which was synonymous with death.

He was sat before the grand fireplace, which had been laid at his personal request and which had been quite hugely expensive for him. It was a bourgeois monument to his former pomposity, an elaborate foundation which set the scene for an elegant and overdone room. Everything about the fireplace was of appalling taste and design, but it blew in hot streams of coal that set the room alight with warmth, and Scrooge had grown fond of the thing. It was while he looked into the flames that the Spirit arrived, and the arrival was signalled by the instantaneous transition of the hearth from a crackling orange to a darkened, purple hell-brick. The flames grew black and cold.

Scrooge turned and the Spirit was stood behind his chair. The Spirit looked at Scrooge with a sad radiance, and slowly pulled off the evanescent robes that covered him. With a sigh, Scrooge got out of the chair.

The Trials Of Ebenezer Scrooge, Part 3

A thin bead of sweat fell down Scrooge’s brow as he sat on the windowsill of his house, looking calmly over the frozen rooftops of London town. At this dark eve all the windows were shut tight against the westerly wind, and the lights extinguished so the little ones would be able to get to sleep, excited in the belief that presents would await them tomorrow. As they would, of course. A thin veil of magic permeated the skies of this Christmas-infused township, and Scrooge hung on to that thin branch of hope with all he had left.

The windowsill began to melt beneath his feet and he slowly stood up as the entire frame descended down the side of his house until it settled gently amongst the snowy road. Looking about, Scrooge found himself stood in front of a young woman dressed entirely in grey. “Who are you?” he asked the figure, but already the answer was clear.

“I am the Spirit Of Present Christmas,” she told, and then walked off on her own down the street.

With no other idea what to do, he followed after her and pulled at her robe. “Where are you going, Spirit?”

“We are going to see an image of what is present in the World,” she replied. “Didn’t I just tell you that?”

“Alas, Spirit, you simply wandered off without me.”

“Oh darn. I always forget in which order I should be telling and showing items of interest. I am the Spirit Of Present Christmas. Have I told you this previously?”

Scrooge decided to not cause a row. “No you did not. Continue from that part, Spirit, and we’ll be caught up entirely.”

The Spirit looked at him with dazed and cofused eyes for but a moment, but then swept away. “I believe that’s all of it. Now harry after me, for I have an image to show you, which is most important on this Christmas evening. I am to lead you to the house of Tiny Tim, because something very interesting is happening even as we speak.” The Spirit swept off luminously, and Scrooge had to run in order to keep up with her quick pace. They turned corner after corner, and under bridges and over beggars, as the route to the house was undertook. Upon finally reaching the small building which Bob called his home, the Spirit walked through the wall and Scrooge followed her.

“You mean we could have gone through all the buildings and ended up here in a much quicker time?” he complained, but the Spirit said nothing. She merely pointed over to the fireplace, flickers of smoke still stuck to the brick framework, and to the small figure knelt up by the dying fire. Scrooge almost broke the silence by asking who the child was, but he already knew the answer as soon as the thought crossed his troubled mind.

Tim was shivering, and his hand quickly broke free of the ball he was huddled in and circled to the floor in an involuntary spasm. With a succession of coughs and moans he got up and hobbled to the thick thinking chair Scrooge had donated to the family. As the small child sat there, he coughed once again, but this time he found blood decorated on the small side of his handkerchief, and shuddered. Tiny Tom covered his face with his hand and started crying.

“What’s wrong, Spirit?” cried Scrooge. “Why is Tiny Tim so unhappy?”

“It’s your doing, Scrooge. You are the one who is extending his life through prescribing drugs, even when said drugs do not improve his health in the short-term.”

“So what?” Scrooge said, with a note of desperation. “You think I should have left the family alone?”

“That is not my place to say, Ebenezer Scrooge. However, please remove your trousers now.”
Scrooge stared up into the soulless eyes of the Spirit. Then, with a sigh, he did as she ordered.

The Trials Of Ebenezer Scrooge, Part 2

The clock struck eight, and Scrooge rubbed his hands together to try and gather warmth. With the fire burnt out, and the windows shattered from the mind-blowing sodomy, the cold of the night-time air whizzed through from one side of the room to the other, and chilled Scrooge to the very bone. His only option was to retreat to the warmth and safety of his old four-poster bed, the one he’d been in that fateful night last year when four ghosts had visited. As he trod the old floorboards they groaned under his burdened weight, and he fell heavily into the mass of quilts and blankets that made up his loyal bed.

The return of Jacob’s ghost had shook Scrooge to the very core, and his wellbeing was severely threatened by the unexpected nature of the visit. Surely Scrooge had already learnt his lesson and become a better man for it, so why did the spirits continue to vex him with their deathly pallor? As he climbed beneath the covers and pulled them tightly over his old shoulders, he shuddered at the thought of three more visitors arriving at his home later on in the night. He hoped the other ghouls would be more forgiving that Marley had been. There had to be some point to Marley’s actions, but Scrooge couldn’t think of but one reason for why he had done what he had. There was no point to it at all.

Never mind, he told himself. Tomorrow was Christmas, and he needed to get as much rest as he could in order to be all the brighter in the morning. Tiny Tim would be expecting him, and if he was to impress the boy with hope this year he would need to be in good spirits. The turkey, he dreamt, would be the largest the townsfolk had ever seen, and he’d carve it whilst giving a great speech to the Cratchit family about the wonderful benefits of sharing and being merry. Not that they would need it, of course! Everyone knew that they were the most content family in town.

From under his covers, Scrooge became suddenly aware of a bright light shining from the centre of the room, and he tentatively pulled down the covers from over his face, to find himself face to face with a ghost that was neither male or female, old or young, but with a glowing crown of light atop it’s head. It was the Ghost of Past Christmas. “Good evening, Ebenezer,” it squeaked merrily. “Come with me.”

Scrooge knew better than to challenge the orders he was given by this spirit, and he left his bed presently and came over to where it was stood, floating, in the centre of his room. It lifted a spectral hand to him and he took it, and as he did so the fireplace crackled back into life. With a snap of it’s fingers the ghost transported Scrooge away from his room and into a visionary image of his past. He was stood in the middle of a street, a street he vaguely recognised. He looked around, and found himself drawn to an alleyway round the back of an old theatre. With confusion, he turned to the ghost. “Where am I, spirit?”

“You are sixteen years old, and about to do something heroic, Scrooge.” The spirit pointed offwards towards a small figure huddled at the end of the dead end alleyway, wrapped loosely in rags and coughing with splenetic weakness. The child was sick, perhaps suffering from a venereal disease or seasonal flu. As Scrooge watched on the child, another boy – this one much older, perhaps a teenager - appeared behind him and walked with a cocky strut over to where the young boy was sat, and put his hands on his hips.

“What are you doing in my father’s town?” the boy asked, kicking the crouched infant as he smirked a victory.

“I’m just trying to find somewhere warm to rest myself until…”

“Until your fat momma dies and you can use her as a blanket?” the boy sneered, and Scrooge winced at the awesome burn. He recognised this situation, and knew now what was to come.

“Please, spirit,” he begged. “Don’t show me any more of this event.” But the spirit was tight-lipped, and continued watching as a third child appeared, this one clad with a jaunty hat and a long red scarf. It was the young Ebenezer, walking through the town he lived in as a boy.

“What are you doing?” he shouted, as he caught a glimpse of the other two boys in the alleyway. “Is this some sort of game?”

The teenage boy laughed, and kicked the coughing boy to the ground. “You could say that.”

Scrooge leant against the wall for security as he allowed the rest of the scene to unfurl. His younger self charged at the teenage boy, seeking to right the wrong here, but was promptly tripped and attacked, and received a bloody nose for his trouble. With one last laugh, the teenage boy ran off, away from Scrooge’s life forever. There was a black flash and suddenly everything was set in his humble bedroom again.

“What was the point of reminding me of this?” Scrooge asked The Ghost of Past Christmas, who looked stern for a second but quickly came to a conclusion.

“Get on your knees, Scrooge, and I’ll show you.”

The Trials Of Ebenezer Scrooge, Part 1

A Christmas Carol

Scrooge rubbed his hands together with a chilly disdain, and moved over to the fireplace. Working the embers with a fan, he began to pump up the flames, and tenderly restarted the fire which had burnt out so long ago. The tendrils of fire slowly winded out of the ashes and began to lick eagerly at the long, thick logs of the fireplace, and after some careful moments there was a roaring, flickering fire going.

Partially satisfied, Scrooge warmed his crackled fingers against the heat, rubbing his arms to instil a little more warmth into them. It was going to be a long night indeed, he knew. The night before Christmas Day was when Scrooge worked his hardest, toiling away with his books as he whittled away the hours until the sun rose up above the smoky rooftops and signalled the beginning stages of Christmas itself.

Only last year, Scrooge had been visited by four deadly spectres, ghosts of life and death who had opened his eyes to the World around, and showed him visions of past, present and future. The experience had left him shaken, but he’d vowed from then on that life should never be as it was before. He would change his ways and live life to the fullest, as much as possible, celebrating human life above fiscal profit. It had given him a new perspective, and his business had gone into administration shortly afterwards, putting everyone out of work.

Scrooge had taken this as an opportunity; he could finally devote his life to the things that had eluded him thus far. Joy, happiness, a swelling in the heart which signified love. Above all, he wished to celebrate Christmas to the fullest – and his acts of kindness had sounded around the walls of this broken town here and back again, ringing in support of his changed ways. He was a beloved figure, and he’d done it all within the space of a year.

He still took up some small pieces of work to keep him busy; chief among them the running of Bob Cratchit’s finances, which were in a dire state last year but now thrived like never before. With a little application and work, anything could be bettered – a statement which, he reflected with a wry humour, was accurate for himself as well. Those three ghosts – past, present, and future – had fixed him, too, in a way. He’d never felt as alive and merry as he did now, and he looked back at his past sins with an intense regret. That was a different him, a man who was corrupted by money and ambition which blinded his senses and…

“Ebeneeeeeeeeeezer,” said a familiar voice.

An icy chill summoned across the room, and winds whipped in from the east window, which had swung open. “Marley?” he asked, his voice as timid as the grave. “Marley, my old friend, is that you?”

There was a knock at the door.

“Jacob Marley, I’m not opening the door unless I can hear your voice. Is that you, returned from the grave once more?”

There was a second knock at the door, and Scrooge stood up out of his chair to judge the situation. The fire spittled out, fizzing into nothingness once again.

There was a third knock, before the door smashed open into splintered, breaking into pieces as the parts of wood fell to the floor with a hollow crash, and Scrooge found himself stood before Jacob Marley for the second time since his old business-partner had died. Marley hadn’t changed. There were less chains holding him back, but he was still weighted down by them as they hung over his neck and shoulders, pulling his body into an awkward, inhuman contortion. He was ghastly, pale, and covered with a dry pain which seemed to radiate out of his heart.

“Ebenezer, I have come to deliver to you a warning. Again.”

Scrooge tentatively moved forwards. “What is it, old friend? Haven’t I done well this year, and heeding the cautionary visions you gave me previously?”

“You did indeed, and it was a great release to me that you managed to free yourself from the heavy chains which you were forging for yourself. However, there is still one more thing that you need to do, Scrooge, in order to free yourself.”

“What is it, Marley? I’ll do anything, anything!”

Marley’s face looked stern. “Bend over, Scrooge.”

The Da Vinci Toad

Part 1:

“Dash it all” and “gosh confound it” and “fiddlesticks to spring cleaning” the mole thought to himself. “I don’t even know what season it is above my house right now, now is certainly not the time to fritter away my time doing all of this confounded spring-cleaning!” With a groan, he threw down his duster and scrabbled himself a small hole to the world outside, popping out into a European, continental breeze which cooled his face. Sniffing the fresh air with joy, the mole went off for what he felt was a long-deserved walk along the fields of the countryside. He made sure to sniff every flower and enjoy every new breeze which blustered past him, until he suddenly happened upon a river.

“Oh now, Ratty is going to be terribly upset to have missed out on this beautiful stream,” the mole said. “I’ll have to try and remember the way here so I can give him directions later. What a jolly old stream this is! It seems like such a delightful place for a boat-ride.” The mole scampered down to the bank of the river, and wandered along in perfect happiness. It was such a decent day, and to think he’d been cooped up in that smelly old home of his for so long!

There was a sudden parp of a horn behind him, and the mole jumped in shock as a bicycle whizzed on by him, occupied by a rather fat young creature dressed in full outfit and accessories. “Wheee!” shouted the creature. “Oh I say, wheee!”

The mole would recognise that high-pitched exclamation anywhere. “Toad? Toad, is that you?” he called out after the bicycle, but by now the toad had gone entirely out of hearing, and pedalled away furiously into the distance. “Well I wonder where Toad is going to in such a rush?” the mole asked himself. “I hope this isn’t going to be another of his hare-brained fads that he gets so excited about, before he moves on to the next thing. I had rather hoped he’d gotten over such silly hobbies.”

Forgetting all about the toad, he walked curiously away from the river and towards an odd new sound he could hear from beyond the willows. It was a dashed confounding sort of noise, like the sound of a hundred ants marching one-by-one in formation, a spectacle which the mole had long become used to down in his burrow, but which seemed completely out-of-place in the outside world. He pushed his way through the bull-rushes only to find that the hill dropped away sharply without any warning, and he soon found himself tumbling down the side of a hill, turning up over heads and under tails and all around in a bizarre fashion. Luckily he managed to steady himself once he reached the bottom, and he brushed the dust off his waistcoat. “What a silly mole I am!” he exclaimed. “Now I feel quite dizzy.”

He staggered forwards, but the sight in front of him made him stop and stare in awe. A large Thing, completely see-through and standing formidably against a line of buildings the like of which he had never seen before, was blocking his way forwards. Although he could see straight through the triangles, the mole found that when he tried to walk through them he banged his face on some unknown barrier. As is the very nature of moles, he cried out aloud when faced with such a new sight, and he burrowed underground then and there, tunnelling forwards enough that he would gain some strong distance between him and the Thing.

One the mole had calmed down, and this took him quite a while, he resurfaced again but found himself in an old building which reminded him somewhat of his own burrow, which he started to miss terribly. “What have I got myself into this time?” he wondered out loud, only to be stopped in his tracks by an entirely familiar-sounding voice:

“Don’t take one more step, old boy.”

The mole turned round with excitement, and confirmed that it was, indeed, his old friend the rat stood there in front of him, although he had forgone his traditional blazer for a long beige jacket and deerstalker cap. “Rattie? Is that you?”

The figure gasped audibly, and moved into the only light of the dim room, to get a closer look. “Mole, my dear friend, I don’t believe it! However have you managed to get to France?”

“France?” the mole squeaked, astonished. “I’m in France?”

“You are, old bean, you are quite in France. What a curious but welcome twist in proceedings! I could do with having a voice of reason here to help me show these fuddy-duddies who’s boss round here. What do you say, Mole? Fancy lending me a hand?”

“Oh, absolutely, Ratty!” the mole squeaked, clapping his hands together with enthusiasm. “What do you need help with?”

The rat turned slightly and nodded down at the floor, and the mole followed his friend’s gaze downwards to see a bloated figure stretched out on the floor, hands spread out in a star formation. It looked curiously familiar to the mole, who walked forwards timidly towards the body, only to blanche as it became clear to him what he was seeing. The corpse, lying flat on his back and with an odd carving scraped over his stomach, looked straight up at the ceiling in bulbous surprise. The rat walked over to put a hand on the mole’s shoulder in comfort.

“It’s Toad, Moley. Someone’s dissected him.”

FRIENDS Week: Fanfiction

Joey kicked the last of the cardboard boxes aside in part of the frustration he’d been feeling for weeks now. Building box fortresses just wasn’t fun anymore. He could feel himself growing up, and now he wanted… more. He was tired of having to clown around for everyone all the time, and wanted to finally give up on his childhood and become an adult. Not that he didn’t enjoy being silly from time to time – it was part of his character now – but he could feel time starting to grab him and change him, not just mentally but physically too.

Over the past few weeks he had broken up with two different girls on the same night, tried it on with one of his co-workers and seduced a girl in the laundrette – they’d done it in the coatroom. It’d been hot, but he was starting to feel that something was missing from his life still. If this was all that life had to offer him, then Joey wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted it anymore.

“Hey, buddy!” cried Ross hysterically, walking out of the bathroom, having washed off most of the red facepaint that his Indian had been wearing. “What are you doing to our fortress?”

“Ah, I’m sorry Ross, I just don’t feel like playing cowboys and Indians right now, y’know? I think I just want some time to myself for a while.”

“But I was winning!” Ross squealed, in that girlish voice he rose into whenever he was defending himself. Joey looked across at his friend, still wearing the feathered headdress, and smiled. Ross had always been there for him, over all the years, no matter what had happened. Although Chandler was his best friend, and always would be, there were certain things he trusted Ross with more, and as he sat down on one of the remaining cardboard boxes he decided to ask Ross the question he’d been holding back for weeks.

“Ross, do you ever feel lonely?”

“Why sure I do, Joe. I think everyone does. What’s up?”

Ross walked over and sat down next to him, put a hand on his knee. Joey looked down, but didn’t brush him away. “It’s just, I-I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, man, you know what I mean? I feel like don’t know what I’m doing with my life!”

“Ah come on now, you’re an actor! You go out there and do the thing you love day in day out! The way I see it, Joey – you’re living the dream.”

Joey looked into Ross’ eyes and saw something he’d never seen in them before. A burning fire, passion, ambition, all rolled into one. He sat there transfixed by those eyes, until Ross moved forwards, towards him, Normally Joey would push away from being so close to another dude, but this felt right. Ross brushed the hair out of his face, and Joey could see his friend wanted this to happen too. He started to move forwards as well, but just then the door opened and Chandler walked in.

“Hey guys, I was just wondering, if a girl tells you to drop dead and die, just how much does she dig yo-” He stopped as the box collapsed under the weight of Ross and Joey, and they fell to the floor in a heap.

Chandler ached his eyebrow. “Could my timing BE any more appropriate?”