Page 3 of Scary & Bright
He pushed his hat down over his eyes and snickered. If he was having trouble choosing, why not leave it to fate? Why not just let his own intuition guide him on this selective journey? The Spirit, now shoddily blindfolded, held a mittened hand over the List and flicked it quickly to the left, sending the pages fluttering in a gust of ghostly wind. He allowed his mitten to hover over the open page, trying to judge if this page felt appropriate.
It didn’t.
So, he flicked again. This one, however, felt perfect. He held his hand over the page and smacked it down with certainty, only lifting his hat over his brow when he was certain he was prepared to see the name selected for him by pure random chance.
With his eyesight returned and his hat all off-kilter, he excitedly gazed down to where his hand was held against the page.
Without a single doubt, he had chosen well. The Spirit’s grin curled up at the corners like a vintage jack-in-the-box. Santa Claus would be so proud, and he was, for the first time, flush with confidence. To be sure, he flipped back to the center of the List just to double and triple check to confirm that this particular, perfect name was in the appropriate half of the book.
And it was. On both the second and third checks.
To him, it was like the name was popping off the page with a metallic, gold glow, leaping up at him.
Hollis Nash.
The Spirit slammed the book shut, carefully placed it back on the pedestal, closed the glass case, and locked the tiny silver lock, sealing it inside. Now that his target was set in his mind, the Christmas Spirit stood atop Santa’s sturdy wooden desk and shook out his limbs. Then, as if he were preparing to cannonball off a diving board, he plugged his nose, closed his eyes, and leapt off the desk, disappearing into thin air.
1
HOLLY
There wasn’t any concrete proof in my theory, and I knew every mathematician and scientist on the planet would call my hypothesis nonsensical, but I was absolutely certain that time began to move slower the moment I clocked into my job. No matter how hard I tried, and no matter how hard I worked, it was like every three hours, only thirty minutes had ticked by. At least, that was how it felt. The line of people needing goat milk soap bars, fragrance sprays, little lotions with shimmer glitter in it, and fun-sized pods of hand sanitizer never seemed to end, and the Christmas season only exacerbated the constant stream of people asking a thousand questions and blaming me for their expired coupons being, well, expired.
But such was life managing Peace Lily Soap Company, Briarwood Mall’s exclusive one-stop shop for all things fragrance and body care related: long hours for barely a couple of bucks over minimum wage and a crew of high school students ready to call off at a moment’s notice because literally anything is better than coming to work. I couldn’t really blame them, though. If I didn’t have bills to pay, I sure as hell would have flexed my call-off skills as well. Who wants to sell a scent called Enchanted Whimsy? Or Marshmallow Pine? Why is every holiday scent some inane dessert and pine, for god’s sake?
The good news was that on the evening of December fifth, the store was cleaned up, organized, and prepped for the next day. We had gotten our mad rush earlier in the day and were blessed to have slowed down to a crawl in the last hours of business. So much so, in fact, that I sent home the girl who was working with me. My boss was always harping on me to cut down on payroll whenever I could, so I figured, why the hell not? She was more than happy to go. All I had to do was patiently wait until the clock struck eight in the evening, and I could pull down the steel gate, turn off the big overhead lights, count the drawer, and get the hell out of there.
The bad news was that on the other side of a work shift, no matter how remarkably boring and awful, there wasn’t much for me to look forward to outside of a bottle of red wine and an evening full of trashy television. In a perfect world—one that existed outside that of Peace Lily Soap Company—I was supposed to be getting married that Christmas season, but that went downhill just like everything else in my life. Oh, well. I had plenty to do with that relationship falling apart and had zero interest in reflecting on how I could change my life for the better. I was content being pissed off all the time. The walls erected around my mind and heart kept people out, but they also kept me safe. I’d rather be bitter than hurt.
Just as I was about to allow myself to begin the rapid descent to wallowing in the pits of my own despair, the overly friendly electronic ding alerted me that one of our esteemed guests had just wandered their happy selves into the storefront. I immediately put on my very best customer service smile, the one that showed off the asymmetrical dimple in only one of my cheeks, and I tucked my long blond hair behind my ear to ensure I looked especially attentive.
“Hello, there! Welcome to Peace Lily Soap Company!” I announced as if I were an airbrushed talk show host. “Just to let you know, we are getting ready to close up here in a few minutes, but is there anything in particular I can help you with this evening?”
I tried to drive home the point that we were reaching the end of our sales day without being too rude or obvious. I genuinely had no interest in helping her, but retail is a lying game. I just didn’t want to get caught with my tail between my legs if she tried to pull the “oh, nobody told me it was closing time!” card.
The customer, or “guest,” as corporate preferred, was exactly the type I knew would be a problem whether I was prepared for it or not. She was a woman, in her late forties if I had to guess, wearing a leopard print blazer on top of a fitted black tank top, which showed off the damage to her skin from over a decade of regular tanning bed usage. Her dark hair was highlighted with streaks of bright blond and red and teased in the back for the illusion of fullness. For some reason, she kept her sunglasses on, even inside, and walked on a pair of black stilettos that peeked out from under a pair of fashionably worn jeans with holes in the knees.
“Yeah, actually, you can,” the woman said in a nasal tone between smacks of her gum. “I saw online that you have one more of these available.” The woman pulled her phone out of her bedazzled back pocket and shoved the screen in my face. “I need it. It’s for a Secret Santa thing at my work, and of course, I waited ‘til the last possible moment to shop.” She let out a laugh that reminded me of Fran Drescher.
Without even looking at her phone, I knew what she was likely looking for. I wasn’t sure who was behind marketing these stupid things, but they were doing an absolutely bang-up job. The things were flying off the shelves like water in a drought. She was looking for one of the Peace Lily Soap Company advent calendars—a cute little cardboard calendar that counted down the days until Christmas. Every day, you could pop out a little cardboard flap in the calendar and reveal a special, travel-sized sample of all sorts of self-care goodies in our seasonal scents. The thing had everything. Tiny lotions. Itty bitty lip balms. Miniature body sprays. The whole nine. They were such a hot commodity, in fact, that we could not keep them in stock to save our lives.
And she was right. We’d had one more of those available… two hours ago. My mouth went dry. I knew I would have to let this woman down gently and pray to the retail gods that she would take it well.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am, but you just missed it.” I sighed apologetically, drooping my shoulders and putting on a retail-friendly pouty face to show her that I really was sympathetic to her plight. “We just sold the last one a couple of hours ago. Sometimes our website doesn’t update immediately. I really do apologize for the inconvenience.”
“So…” The woman put a hand on her hip and tilted her weight to the side. “So, you’re telling me you don’t have these little ‘adment’ calendars? The website is wrong?”
“That’s right. I’m sorry to say we sold the last advent calendar just a little while ago,” I repeated, being absolutely sure to emphasize the correct pronunciation and already feeling my patience begin to wane. To think I almost made it out of the store scot-free. Freedom had been only a few minutes away when this woman had to come in and muck it up for me.
“Wow, so you’re telling me I came all this way for nothing?” the woman asked, like the store being sold out of the calendars was some sort of impossible atrocity that was done to ruin her day personally.
“Well, it doesn’t have to be for nothing!” I said with a plastic cheerfulness.
At the very least, I hoped this woman wouldn’t complain to corporate. My less-than-savory attitude at the state of my life this holiday season hadn’t exactly done wonders for my survey numbers. In a last-ditch effort to impress this woman, I directed her to our display of all our other stocking-stuffer, holiday-themed items.
“We’ve got all these options as well,” I announced cheerfully. “If your Secret Santa is a fan of ours, I’m sure they’d appreciate any of these.” I reached over to the display and plucked a perfume bottle shaped like a candy cane off the shelf.
“This one is my favorite,” I lied. “Mint-er Wonderland!”