'Tis the Season
Aaron Wibright was not the kind of man who read the newspaper over his morning bagel.
Print was a dying artform, of course, drowned out by the internet, and ever-more-sophisticated phone technology, but - that wasn't the reason Aaron didn't read the newspaper. No, the death of the morning rag was just the
metaphor as to why he didn't read it.
The City of the Future. San Fransokyo was a town that moved at the speed of technology. Its streets and buildings were a complex circuitry, powered by the pulse of humanity that cycled within, day in, day out. Its sky was shaped with neon signs, the passage of clouds too sluggish, too pedestrian, to hold attention. Superhero and supervillain attacks were single sentences around the office water cooler. The newest, shiniest advances in computational power trampled each other in their mad rush to stay ahead of the pack. Each day was its own racetrack in the rat race, its own maelstrom of circuitry and high demand.
New York, they said, was the city that never slept. But 'Sokyo was the city with one foot in the following morning. A city that outsped even the Earth's rotation, a city quicker to get to tomorrow than even time itself.
The City of the Future.
And the problem with everything moving so quickly was that there wasn't enough time to do anything, anymore.
Aaron couldn't slack his stride for anything. Not pets, nor toys. Not friends, nor family. Not a breakfast more substantial than a bagel with cream cheese and lox. Not yoga classes, nor new movie releases, nor art museums, nor even Christmas Day. Not something as small as the sunrise, nor the sunset in turn.
Certainly not the morning newspaper.
Not if he wanted to keep pace.
If the daily news really needed to reach him so badly, then it could catch up to Aaron all by itself. After all, nothing and nobody could ever slow this city down.
"Filthy creatures! You cannot kill the Huntsclan. We are more than men, we are an idea. And as long as one of us lives, we will never stop hunting you."
It was Christmas Day, Anno Domini two-thousand and sixteen, and all of San Fransokyo had stopped in its tracks.
Aaron had been walking home from the office, equal parts pride that he'd been one of only three people to volunteer to work the holiday, and rueful dismay that his warm, warm apartment was still six blocks away. He'd been trudging, more than walking, honestly, the freezing wind and sludging snow dragging his frozen feet backwards, but he'd been walking, nevertheless. Always moving forwards, always striving to keep up.
And then he'd caught up.
He was far from the only person who'd done so. The street in front of the store display was crowded, six people to a television or sometimes more, and crowding further still. Statues, each and every one of them, slightly slack-jawed. All huddled together, yet all pressed apart in solitude, each soul uncaring, for the moment, of the biting cold.
Because they weren't really in San Fransokyo anymore, after all. Aaron, and all of them, and all the rest of the world, was in New York, right now.
Aaron was watching. He was watching, as guns and claws and battle cries only a thin hair from something literal, and beyond mere horror, cut through the crowd. He was watching, as humanity was swept aside, replaced only with beasts in human skin. He was watching, as open warfare overtook crowded streets, loomed over fearful eyes. He was watching, as holly wreaths and Christmas lights burst into flames, ignited by passing laser fire.
He'd been watching for twenty minutes, now, unable to tear his eyes away.
Bloody fangs.
Monsters were attacking one of the greatest cities on Earth. Clever wordplay fails to describe the scene further.
Mr. Wilbright stood, alone as the rest of the crowd, unable to comprehend. Unable to fathom. Too fast most days for his thoughts to catch up with him, and now all he could do was think. To wonder. To spiral. To bear witness, and for that witness to be borne upon him. To try and grasp at the truth standing just outside of everything he'd ever known.
"Is this Armageddon?" Aaron murmured, half-forgotten Sunday School lessons, and knew that not a single person in the crowd would bother to answer.
"The Holy Trinity blesses us, brother!"
Mr. Wilbright, paging Mr. Wilbright, you've left your lights on, and also, somebody's stolen your car, Mr. Wilbright -
Mr. Wilbright jumped, breath stuttering in shock, and turned to his right, blinking hard, to see who'd broken tonight's spell.
And.
Oh.
Great.
One of
these religious nutjobs; the kind that passed out incomprehensible pamphlets about their ideas of God, or whatever-the-hell. The kind of people that New Age wackos would scoot over on the subway about. Getting more and more common around 'Sokyo; most days you couldn't make it to a corner cafe on your lunch break without having to walk a little faster about things. Probably fancied themselves mild and approachable in their literal red cloaks and one-eyed insignia. Cultist weirdos, the kind you tried your best to just ...
... to just forget about.
No one
else sure seemed to be paying the two of them attention, at the moment. Not that Aaron could blame anyone about that;
he sure wouldn't be talking to this guy if he hadn't talked to him first. Honestly, it was probably for the best if Aaron pretend he hadn't heard, was just another face in the -
The crowd screamed, on the TV. Something raw, and full of terror.
"...I ain't your brother, mac," Aaron said, not unkindly, turning back to the "show."
"Ah, but look how we've arranged ourselves!" Red-cloak replied, arms spread out, looking without looking, features shadowed by hood. "Gathered around the television set. Searching desperately for a hint of something unreal, something that could make it all better. All of the same mind, all ignoring each other." He chuckled. "What could better describe a family than that?"
Aaron snorted, despite everything. "Alright, ya got me, maybe we
are related."
An explosion, a country across, right in front of their faces.
"Perhaps we all are, tonight," Red-cloak said, arms dropping.
"Happy Holidays, bro," Aaron commiserated. Then, after a moment's hesitation: "Merry Christmas."
"And a Happy New Year."
"That, too."
Red-cloak laughed. "Oh, apologies, brother!" he said, "I did not mean it as an admonishment!"
"Spoken like
true family," Aaron smirked, a little.
"A wound?" It sounded like Red-Cloak was smirking, too, even if Aaron could not see his face beneath his. "I have just met you, and you already draw me so close?"
Aaron laughed outright. "Not my fault you sounded like my grandma," and wasn't
that the reason why he never called. "Seriously.
Uncanny."
Red-cloak laughed too. Something low and soft, but musical - the echoing of drums. "These holiday gatherings are the worst, aren't they, brother?"
Aaron kept laughing. "Preach it, man, preach it."
"I need not preach what is self-evident," Red-cloak scoffed, purposely haughty. "One merely need look around."
"We're all terrible!" Aaron half-shouted, all too wild.
"We are," Red-cloak said.
A Gargoyle's wild howl split the air.
"The worst," Aaron said, more quietly.
"We are," Red-cloak said, just as soft. "But that is the point of a family, is it not?"
Aaron looked at him, the question unsaid.
Red-cloak didn't look back. "That we are all terrible
together."
And it occurred to Aaron, all of a sudden, that in a desperate attempt to find humanity in a situation where he could see none, he'd been having a very different conversation than the man standing next to him had been.
That he should have been scooting away.
"Right," Aaron said, slowly turning away. "Yeah. Right."
"That is why I came over to meet you," the cultist said. "Mister ...?"
Aaron Wilbright swallowed. "Mr. Packard."
"Brother Packard," the man said, heedless of the rising of Aaron's heartbeat. "I had overheard your distress, you see. I don't know whether you'd
meant to ask your question aloud, but ... I couldn't leave you be." Still, still, still, he did not look at him. "Not when I might offer you succor."
Ohhh boy. This was ... this was getting sticky. Probably best to run? Probably best to run. Get outta there ASAP. Only problem was, Aaron couldn't seem to move. Like something had crafted him a mouse, and this conversation a cat's paw.
"I bring you good news, my fellow man," the voice of molasses, dark and slow and drowning, carried onward, heedless. "I bring an answer to your question. You see, when I wished you a Happy New Year, it truly wasn't an admonishment."
"I believe you," Aaron said, not certain of what he was saying. "I'm not ... you don't gotta convince ..."
The camera swerved away at the last possible moment from one of the cloaked figures - the Huntsmen - firing a plasma blast, point-blank, at the back of a Gargoyle's head.
"I meant it as a celebration."
Aaron wanted to throw up.
"This is not an Armageddon, my brother," the pit full of dark continued to say, "No, not an ending at all. Have you not heard the tales? Seen the signs?" A small chuckle. "Watched the Hallmark films?"
"Can't ... say I have."
"Why, it's Christmas, Brother Packard," the voice continued to speak. "The day of birth. The end of an epoch, yes. But more than that -"
The figure breathed in deeply, as though the smoke could fill his lungs from across the United States.
"...a new beginning."
"I'm not -" Aaron stopped all at once, trying to will his question out of existence, trying to make this guy
forget, "I ain't never been much a believer, to be honest with -"
"Should we not celebrate?" the man with the evil eye asked. Casually. Almost off-hand. "Should not there be eggnog? Mistletoe? Good will among mankind? Why..." Slowly, he raised his arms, indicating the television, and his hands poked out of his sleeves, the first hint of humanity -
His fingers were blackened, and cracked, and bleeding. Frostbitten almost straight through.
The man in the red robe did not seem to care.
"...have we not received a gift, today, brother?"
There was a wailing, of a baby. Not on the screen, this time. Here, among the crowd. It seemed to snap everyone, everyone there, out of their trance, and they began talking with each other, sound and fear so thorough one might call it a storm.
They, Aaron and the man of pretty words, there at the silent eye.
"What do you want from me, man?" Aaron asked, trying to keep his voice steady. Tears freezing at the corners of his eyes.
"What any teacher wants from their student." Blood froze upon the man's knuckles. "Understanding."
"Then ... I get it, okay?" Aaron ... bargained. Bargained was the right word. "So, just ... I gotta, go, y'know? It's Christmas. I ... I got family, and -"
"I worry," the demon lowered his arms at last. Slow, unbothered, unhurried. "That you do not understand the shape of the Earth."
Aaron laughed, only slightly hysterical. "You're -" he coughed. "You're one of those flat-Earth types? That's what this is all about?!"
"You truly do not understand," came the gentle, patient reply. "I do not speak of the shape of the planet. I speak of the shape of the
world."
Oh, God. Oh, God. "Please don't ..." Gunfire echoed from the television, and the baby further cried. "Please. Don't."
"The world is a box," the blood-red darkness crooned. "And our lives are trapped within it, you must understand. Not the breath, and the muscle, and the sinew, no - the
soul of us, the real of us, beneath the blood and bone, is something that is given to us from the outside. Wrapped up in a neat little bow."
All Aaron had to do was walk away. Just, leave. Leave and not look back. Put this out of his mind, forever. All he had to do was what he always did, was move, so why
couldn't he? Why couldn't he
just move?!
"We cannot see within our gift," the hooded man continued, "For that is the nature of the box. Oh, but the truth is so, so much worse - in truth, my brother, we cannot even see the box!" His head shook, as though sorrowed, just the hint of movement beneath the hood. "The gift is so nicely prepared, so neat, so thoughtfully arranged, but only a
fool would claim that wrapping paper is what we are meant to receive!"
"What are you talking about?" Aaron asked, despite himself.
"You see these neon signs," the preacher preached. "You see these streets, paved by ingenuity and proper planning. You see the law, the calendar, the rules of polite society. The very laws of physics themselves." The noise of the crowd was still there, but it seemed to vanish, somehow, as the tone of the voice deepened, deepened further still. "These are all wrapping, Brother Packard. It is all pretty, and thoughtful, and may even be enjoyed for a time, but none of that changes that in the end, the wrapping is meant to
hide the truth."
"That the world is a
box?" Aaron said, trying to wrap his head around all this, if only ... if only so that this "man" might
let him go -
"Of course not," the figure scoffed. "The most unthinking dullard can see the shape of what they've been given. A box is a box; paper and ribbon will not hide that." Fire crackled. Blood spilled. "Yet this entire world has convinced itself, despite the shape of things, that wrapping paper is all there is to us."
"I ..." Aaron started, and stumbled. "What are you saying?"
"Gargoyles," the man responded, "Witches. The Loch Ness monster. Aliens and bigfeet and other worlds than these. The arcane and extraordinary, the magical and mysterious." A chuckle, heavy, like the collapse of a circus tent, more the end of the celebration than the cause. "The wings, the talons, the staves, the hunters. The chaos of the city, underneath its long-worn mask." Genuine anger soaked these words - yet all seemed to disappear. All at once. "Tell me. Is there
truly no box beneath what people call 'normal'?"
Aaron couldn't say.
He could only stare.
Wings. Claws. Staves. Hunters. Blood.
"But even that is a disguise for the truth, in the end." Almost wistful, now, the words. "The joy. The
purpose. The soul of the matter. The greatest gift any person could ever receive. Tell me ... is the point of the gift the ribbon? The wrapping?"
"No," Aaron said, mouth dry.
"Then is it the box? Do we delight in the packaging; is the cardboard what we long for?"
"No."
"So what could it be, then?" the leading question, well. Led. "What is the important thing, here? If not the wrapping, if not the box, then what could it possibly be?"
"The gift," Aaron said, less like a response and more like inevitable gravity.
"The gift," the prophet repeated the message. "Indeed, the gift. The fulfillment of the promise. The font of joy. The truth within the truth. The ceasing of rules and boundaries, such as expectation or responsibility or time itself, and the end result! Freedom! Joy! Purpose! And further freedom still!"
Icy air passed from beneath the figure's hood in a cloud. Aaron watched it dissipate, slowly, backlit by open war, in the evening air.
"But how can we obtain our present?" the words moved quickly, for all that they were said slow. As though separated in time from every moment that ever came before, or after. "What cause have we to call this a new beginning?"
The man in the red robe turned to him, at long last. Slowly, yet all at once somehow, like the first overnight snowfall, and yourself waking up to it. No threat, but no
warning, just a seeming-sudden change.
"You must ...
unwrap your gift." Silken. Smooth. Calm as anything. "You must
open the box."
Plagues of locusts. Guillotines and gravestones. The spread of fire, and cities screaming in pain. Scissors, and boxcutters. The man in red stared with bloodshot eyes, that look he held in them even louder than his words.
"And brother, after it is all said and done, and you have received your blessing?"
And his smile? Wide, dimpled, genuine, perfect teeth? Oh, louder yet.
"Why, what else is there left to do ... but be
thankful?"
It was nothing more than the smile - the simple, eager, joyful smile - of the child on Christmas morning.
