Carol for Another Christmas by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

talked to my ’puter ’cause it was the only one I could count on not getting divorced and moving out on me.”
    â€œThat’s touching,” Curtis said, nodding. “That’s very touching. I grew up in the International District and my father really wanted me to go into importing.”
    â€œThat’s your tragic story?”
    â€œThat’s it. Except, when I was a kid, we never got into Christmas as much as I always wanted to, because we were Buddhist. I really think the old man was just too cheap.”
    â€œMy mom left us and my dad drank,” John said.
    â€œI kept wishing my mother would leave us.” Harald sighed. “But she never did, so I have to drink.”
    â€œHey, we’re talking serious childhood traumas here,” David said. “Speaking for myself, I was just so damn brilliant, nobody in my family ever—sobs here, deep sobs—understood me.”
    â€œSorry,” Harald replied. “I’m an insensitive brute. I know that. It’s spoiled all my Christmases.”
    â€œAhem,” Scrooge said. “There is, as you see, only one door.” He pointed to the portal that had opened up under a sign that now said, “Christmas Past, continued.” “Shall we?”
    They did and were whisked immediately into a maelstrom of activity. People in the briefest possible costumes scurried to and fro bearing sacks and gift-wrapped packages while the sun beat down mercilessly upon their heads.
    â€œI don’t understand,” Scrooge said. “Where are we?”
    Miriam had paused at a machine that dispensed newspapers. “We’re in Seattle—that’s perfectly obvious—in the middle of Westlake Plaza between Nordstrom’s, the Bon, and the Westlake Mall. You can tell by the fancy brickwork here. See, Scrooge? They don’t let cars drive here.”
    Scrooge had by now taken in the cars rushing along the nearby streets and found them a bit unnerving.
    â€œWhat if one of them—ahem—should disobey? Would we all be killed instantly?”
    Miriam shrugged. “Nope, but he’d get a hell of a ticket. Look here, guys, this is so bogus. We’re not in any Christmas past at all. This is last July.”
    Melody shrieked, “Eek! I knew it!” Everyone looked where she was now pointing, much, Scrooge remembered, as the bony hand of the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come had pointed at his own gravestone. There, in front of the plaza, was another Melody, this one clad in a red velvet costume of the utmost brevity, paradoxically trimmed with fur, long, green-banded stockings that stopped about a foot short of the hem of her garment, and curly toed slippers.
    â€œOh, is that the elf gig you were telling me about?” Sheryl asked her with a giggle. “You’re right. Gruesome in the extreme.”
    â€œI don’t understand at all,” Scrooge said. He was not happy about this. He was almost certain neither Marley nor any of the dignified ghosts that had attended him had been subjected to large groups of people who spoke their own language—rather like being a tour guide in a country stranger to you than to those you were guiding, it seemed to him. Not entirely cricket, that.
    â€œIt’s Christmas in July, old man,” Harald said, attempting to clap him on the ghostly shoulder. Didn’t work.
    â€œI distinctly remember that Christmas arrives in December, on the twenty-fifth to be precise,” Scrooge said.
    â€œAh, maybe in London, old bean, and maybe in the long ago, but in America, we have better merchandising schemes than that. Christmas in July is a fine old retail custom that capitalizes on the prime emotion Christmas awakens in many middle-class working Americans.”
    â€œJoy?” Somehow, Scrooge knew that wasn’t the right answer.
    â€œTerror,” Harald said. “Terror of being so stressed-out you won’t do anything right; terror of