The Original Story

© 2022, 2024 Duleigh Lawrence-Townshend. All rights reserved. The author asserts the right to be identified as the author of this story for all portions. This story or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expressed written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a review or commentary.

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A KRISSYMAS KAROLE The Original Version

In Prose.

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Being

A Ghost Story of Christmas

.

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Prologue:

A Christmas Carol has been retold and re-written so much it became a saccharine sweet fairy tale that lost its bite. For my entry in the 2021 Winter Holiday Contest, I wanted to put the bite back into it, to return a Christmas Carol to its roots. I wanted a story to scare the literal hell out of people. Instead, it scared me. As I wrote the backstory of the characters in the novel,

We're A Wonderful Wife

, I found I couldn't publish the original version of this tale; I had fallen in love with my characters and I couldn't do this to them. I hated what I created, so I re-wrote it days before submitting it to the 2022 Winter Holiday contest while I published the serialized backstory.

Unfortunately, the re-written version lost the bite, the scare, the horror. Now that We're a Wonderful Wife has been published and the characters are safe and happy, it's time to release the original version of my take on A Krissymas Karole. I'm sure you'll agree that this truly belongs in the Erotic Horror category. Without further ado, the original version -

Stave 1

It was a dark, cold, and wet Christmas Eve in Northern Colorado and Karole sat fuming in the back seat of the Uber, an older Toyota that wound its way through the icy, slushy streets of Greeley Colorado. The car was in fairly good shape; it was clean, but it stank of takeout curry and the odor was making Karole gag. She used to love curry, but in college she lived on it, and now, to Karole, there was nothing worse than the aroma of curry. "Hey driver, y'all ever wash this thang out? God dawg, this thang reeks." Whenever she gets agitated, Karole Krigbaum's southern accent comes back with a vengeance.

"I've never had a complaint about an odor before," said the driver, who had introduced himself as Jake when he picked Karole up. He had just finished a large DoorDash order to a Christmas Eve party, and the tip was significant enough to overcome the smell of any food. The scent of the curry, however, was making him hungry.

"It's nauseating," grumbled Karole, as she crossed her arms and stared out of the right-hand window. This is ridiculous, she grumbled to herself. Her pickup truck was making expensive noises, so it was in the shop while she had to Uber to and from work. Her dealership wouldn't provide a rental car or a loaner, so here she was paying Uber to haul her around. "Ah, better git used to this," mumbled Karole. She was one more missed payment away from her truck being repossessed.

The snow was wet and slushy as they threaded their way out of town and out to where she lived. Karole and her fiancé had moved out into the open countryside, where they could raise a family. Things were looking good for Karole, until the day not long after they moved into their new home, when she came home from the doctor's office with exciting news and found him, and all his clothing, and all their money gone. Three months from their wedding, this jerk takes off on her and the new life growing in her womb. He took their paid off car, leaving her with the new pickup and the payment book, so he could enjoy a life with a pimply skank hoe and all the meth he could want. Her perfect life was destroyed by a meth-head. At least he went and got his stupid ass addicted to meth before they got married.

Now, years later, Karole is still picking up the pieces. The failed wedding cost her thousands of dollars in unreturnable deposits, and the money he cleaned out of their joint account shattered her financially. She lost her job just weeks after the birth of her daughter. Her ex told the DEA that his meth lab was in Karole's garage and the investigation killed her license to practice, which destroyed her medical career. She's now paying student loans on an education for Physical Therapy, the job she lost because of her shithead fiancé. Now here it is Christmas eve, working a schlep job at a bill collector's office, and any extra money she had went to her daughter Krissy's few Christmas presents.

Krissy was the center of Karole's universe and, as far as she knows, her only living relative. Karole's mom was long gone. She drowned in a drunken boating accident while Karole was in college. All of Karole's childhood Christmas mornings were spent picking up the beer bottles emptied by Karole's mother and the redneck she was fucking at the time. So as far as Karole was concerned, fuck Christmas.

Here it is, 5:00 PM on Christmas eve, and in Karole's house Christmas will be over in 24 hours. As soon as Krissy goes down for her Christmas day nap, the tree goes down and everything gets put away for next year.

If Krissy wants more Christmas, she will get it over at Mr. Don's house. Don and Lanh are her next-door neighbors, and they are the only thing that besides Krissy that has made this entire shit-show of what is now Karole's life any form of bearable. Don is the only father that Krissy has ever known, and Lanh dotes on Krissy like a second mom. Hell, Lanh was Karole's birth coach, but Lanh was late and Krissy was early, so Lanh's husband Don, who was pacing the waiting room like an expectant grandfather, stepped in for Lanh and filled in as birth coach until Lanh arrived. Both Don and Lanh were there for Krissy's birth.

Don and Lanh opened their home to Karole and Krissy, feeding them when money was scarce, housing them for weeks at a time when the power was shut off in the cold Colorado winter. In return, all they asked for was the opportunity to help even more. Don and Lanh had no children, and Lanh told her she couldn't bear children. When Karole asked, "Why don't you adopt or foster?" Lanh's eyes teared up and after several long moments, she said, "That won't happen," and excused herself from the table and fled in tears.

Although Karole is absolutely in love with Don and Lanh, one small part of their lifestyle drives her nuts. Don and Lanh are Christmas crazy. Their decorations go up on the day after Thanksgiving and don't come down until January fifth, which Don calls "The twelfth day of Christmas." Their house becomes a romance channel Christmas movie set; it is always festooned with lights and garlands and pine boughs and trees, a Christmas railroad threads its way through a Christmas village at the base of their perfectly decorated Christmas tree, their mantle over the fireplace is an explosion of holiday spirit with candles and pine boughs and holly and ornaments and stockings for Mr. Don, Miss Lanh, Marissa (Lanh's goldfish), Maxwell (Don's beta fish), and of course Krissy and Karole. Every doorsill in the house was adorned with holly garland and red ornaments, illuminated with the tiniest white lights that Karole had ever seen. Even the paintings and photographs on the walls were removed and replaced with Christmas themed artwork, the frames of which looked like they were hand carved by a German wood carver that overdosed on peppermint schnapps, eggnog, and holiday cheer.

It was as if Santa Claus had puked on their house, and they liked the effect, so they kept it.

Lanh was a doctor of speech pathology and worked at the Children's Hospital and taught at Northern Colorado University. Don didn't work. He said he was retired, but neither of them look old enough for that. Don would be a great stay-at-home dad, but they don't have kids. Instead, he and Lanh shower Krissy with love and little Krissy just loves her "Mr. Don" and "Miss Lanh".

Karole never pried into the past of Don and Lanh Campbell, but the way Don acts, dresses, and cuts his hair told Karole that he was military. Occasionally he complained about his back and Karole saw him walking with a cane, and on a couple of occasions, on crutches. His wife Lanh was the daughter of Vietnamese immigrants. She was a tiny, highly intelligent, and incredibly beautiful woman with a delightful lilt in her voice that came from learning Vietnamese before she learned English. She once confided in Karole that Don had a terminal case of "Yellow Fever" when she met him, and after being married to her for years and working in her family's restaurant, she was sure he was now completely cured.

Don confided in Karole that he never had yellow fever, he had Lanh fever.

Karole and Lanh became best friends immediately after Karole moved into the house next to Don and Lanh, which shocked Karole. Karole was a self-described "Hot Mess" whose list of lifetime best friends begins with her college roommate and ends with Lanh and has nobody in between. She never was able to make friends easily, being raised by a drunken single mother who terrified anyone that got near their trailer, insuring that Karole grew up depending on herself and no one else.

Lanh and Karole often hung out or went shopping together and they made an interesting looking pair, Lanh was short, and slim with light skin and jet-black hair and coal-black eyes, while Karole was over six feet tall (if asked she'll say she's five foot fourteen inches tall), with large breasts and skin that will go to a deep tan in the summer, light green eyes, and natural platinum-blond hair. They could spend a day shopping together, buy nothing, and come home to a sleeping Krissy whose face was covered in any sort of sweet mess, and Mr. Don cleaning the kitchen from his baking extravaganza with Krissy.

One day, while looking at purses that neither woman had the money or intention to buy, Lanh broached a question that had been sitting on her mind since Karole moved in next door. "Don tell me you hate, but you

really

hate being call Christmas Karole or just being grinch?" Her light accent was now highly pronounced. Tell came out 'taew,' and call came out 'caw.'

"Your husband is a wise man," snarled Karole. This was early in their relationship, so at this time Karole wasn't aware of the fact that Lanh was fully aware of word tenses, "called" rather than "call" and "told" rather than "tell" and a hundred grammatical errors that a speech therapist would concentrate on, but all of that went out the window when she is feeling emotional pressure. Karole continued, "I despise being called Christmas Karole, especially when singing is involved."

"Oh," but Lanh continued fearlessly, "then I should not ask you about how you and Krissy make a Krissy-mas Karole?"

"No, you should not." But it was so silly that Karole broke up laughing, and when Lanh realized she would not be pummeled by the buxom blond amazon, she began laughing as well. It was probably the only time in recent memory when someone called her "Christmas Karole" that Karole didn't respond with a vehement "Fuck you."

The memory of that long ago shopping trip came up as a buffer to drown out the Uber driver's nonstop prattle about the horses he raises at his ranch. Jake was a skinny old weather-beaten guy who wore an equally weather-beaten cowboy hat as he drove, and Karole could easily picture him working on a horse ranch. The sky darkened and Jake turned on the windshield wipers as an icy rain fell, which dampened Karole's already dark mood. As they pulled up to Don and Lanh's house on Weld County Road 45, Karole saw her pickup truck parked in Don's driveway. "What the f...." started Karole, but as they swung into the driveway, the truck faded from sight. The sight surprised her, but she tried to pass it off by pretending the sight was caused by something she ate at lunch that disagreed with her.

What disturbed her more was that Lanh's SUV was not in the driveway. Lanh's mom Mai was in town and Lanh and her mom went shopping earlier today. They should have been back hours ago, regardless of long lines of last-minute shoppers. Indecisive shoppers are no obstacle to Lanh if they should foolishly choose to stand between her and the bargain she was hunting. Karole was skipping the company Christmas party because she wanted to spend time with Don, Lanh, and her mother. She doesn't consider skipping the party a significant loss because she hates her job and her co-workers... but the free drinks? Who doesn't like free Margaritas at Don Pollo's Tacoria and Margarita Bar? Her pathetic boss, Bradley Davis, was probably drunk already.

Jake put the car in park and turned around to Karole. "I have a message for you which is pert near important, so you need to listen up." Normally Karole would have ignored him, but there was something made of iron in that western twang of his that caused her to stop and listen. "Now," he continued, "You're going to be visited by three spirits, and... no, that's not right." He thought for a moment, "three ghosts... no, that's not it either, it's..." suddenly his face brightened, "two spirits and a ghost, yeah, that's it. So..."

"Wait, what? Two spirits and a ghost? Are you shitting me? Are you sure it wasn't a goat? Sheep Dipper?" Karole grabbed the door handle, but the door was locked, and she couldn't unlock it from the back. Jake clearly engaged the child protection locks. "Let me out!" She yanked the door handle as hard as she could. She knew she couldn't open it, but she hoped to break it and cost this jerk some money.

"I'm sorry, ma'am, but I promised her that I would deliver this message."

"Her? Who?" By saying "her" this Uber driver just narrowed Karole's search down to half of the population of the world.

"I don't know ma'am, she didn't give me her name, but she was quite upset and hard to understand, she had a funny accent."

Karole went silent. Lanh? Her Vietnamese lilt would blossom into a full-blown accent when she was upset, just as Karole's southern accent would return with a vengeance when she was angry or drunk, and when she was both, she was untranslatable. There was that time that Don cut himself... Karole could barely understand what Lanh was saying. Poor Lanh was so upset, she was terrified of the blood thinners he was taking and worried that he would bleed out. Karole calmed when Jake implied it was Lanh's message. "What did she say?"

"She said that you would be visited by two spirits and a ghost and without their visits, you cannot hope to shun the path we tread. Does that mean anything to you?"

Karole knew immediately what it meant, having been forced numerous times by teachers that thought they were witty in assigning Christmas hating Karole a book report on Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." She read the book many, many times and knew the message quite well. It was a paraphrase of what the ghost of Jacob Marley said to Ebenezer Scrooge, but Marley said, "the path I tread," not "the path we tread." She heard the "chunk" of the rear doors unlocking, but she sat thinking for a moment before she got out. "I'm not sure what she means," Karole finally said as she opened the door. "I'll just swallow this and be tortured by a legion of hobgoblins, all of my own creation," she said, quoting Ebenezer Scrooge. "Hey Jake, your name's not Marley, is it?"

Jake suddenly broke into fits of laughter. "Oh, heck no," laughed the Uber driver. "That's a darn good guess, though. My buddies used to call me 'Marlboro Man', but when I quit smoking, they shortened Marlboro Man to Marley. Why do you ask?"

Karole suddenly felt icy cold. "Merry fucking Christmas," she muttered and got out of the car and stepped toward the house, still surprised that Lanh's car was not in the driveway. Lanh and her visiting mother had planned to do some last-minute Christmas shopping up in Fort Collins in the morning, then they were planning an early barbeque dinner at Nordies with Don, Karole, and Krissy when Karole was done with work.

One more question popped into Karole's mind. "Hey! When did Lanh call you?" she called out, but as she turned, there was no car in the driveway, there was no car in the street and just like that, the freezing rain turned to snow, light and fluffy. She looked around. There was no hint that Jake/Marly and his curry stinking Uber were ever there. "Humbug..." she muttered under her breath and trudged up the driveway.

The snow swirled around her like being in a snow globe. "Don will love this," she thought as she stepped toward the front door. "He'll call this Christmas snow." Smiling for the first time today, she suddenly felt a sudden shock go through her. Not an electric shock, but like someone bumped her back a little bit. It was followed in rapid succession by ten more jolts, and then someone appeared next to her.

"Ok, let's get this started. We need to get this right; this is the last chance we get," said an apparition with a familiar, haunting appearance.

Karole's eyes rolled back in her head as she slumped to the ground, unconscious.

Stave 2

Karole returned to consciousness and slowly sat up. "What happened?" she groaned.

"Same thing as always happens," muttered a voice behind her. Karole heard the distinct sound of chewing and the popping of gum.

"Same thing as what always happens?" demanded Karole, without turning around. She patted the back of her head and checked her hand for evidence of blood.

"You turn, see me, scream, and faint. Every time, like clockwork. I can't believe I became such a wimp."

Karole turned and saw a young woman dressed like a country western version of Cindy Lauper. She was wearing a Garth Brooks concert t-shirt, over that a man's plaid work shirt tied off below her boobs, blue jeans, cowboy boots, a sweater tied around her waist, and enough cheap necklaces for a full Mardi Gras parade. And that hair, Ugh! A fluffy she-mullet with the last four inches of her platinum blond tresses dyed neon purple. She was leaning against the house playing with a familiar-looking phone. "That's my phone," Karole grunted as she tried to get her feet under her, but the walk was slippery with the suddenly new fallen snow.

"Correction, it's OUR phone. They don't have cool stuff like this in my time yet." The young woman finally looked down at Karole, and Karole froze; that voice, the hair, the attitude, it's Karole 12 years ago. The young Karole looked at her and grinned as if waiting for something. She finally hefted her large firm boobs and asked, "Do these things ever stop growing?"

Karole's head spun. She was a "late bloomer" as her mother called her. When she hit the age of 16, none of the promised secondary sex characteristics had appeared, but within a year they struck with a vengeance. She was buying a new bra every month and her so-called friends in high school accused her of "stuffing" until they saw the changes that occurred to her body in the gym locker room, then they accused her of "silicone poisoning." She would be in college when her body finally settled down, but not after growing several inches in height and settling on a 34 DD bra.

This child that stood before her had all the ear marks of an 18-year-old Karole, right down to the shoulder length platinum blond hair with the final four inches died neon purple. "Who the hell are you?" Karole groaned as she tried to stand again, but her feet kept slipping on the slushy snow.

"Honey chil', ah am you," grinned the girl. "You 'n me, we all are one, did'n that peckerwood Marley tell you ah'd be coming?"