The First Chapter
'Twas the Night Before Hearth's Warming
By SwiperTheFox with help from Vic, Josephdalepony. and other friends
As John rose from his bed, his body let out a noise that seemed like a cross between a dejected cow and an energetic seal. Pressing his hands against his cheeks, John looked over at his mirror, seeming more or less as sickly as he’d been for the past few weeks. He looked much older than merely being seventeen. Still, the scene outside of his window, only partly open with John’s cheap grey blinds somewhat stuck in place, appeared as sweet as what he’d had seen in Hallmark advertisements.
John walked over, feeling somewhat better as he made step after step out of bed, and smiled a bit. His eyes moved along from the tall kid walking her fluffy golden retriever to a set of three short children making a fat-looking snowman to a pretty-looking teenage guy with a cute butt leaning against a snow-coated lamppost. “Well, I may not feel much better,” he murmured, sensing about the same toxic mix inside of headache, fluid-filled ears, inflamed sinuses, and mild depression that he had tried to fight off for weeks, “but I should make the best of things.”
Christmas had come, after all. Although far from being a fanatic like some of his friends, John couldn't help but sense that holiday cheer in the air. He then picked up his smartphone and slid his fingers around the applications, and he saw that he had no messages. The date and time on the smartphone's default menu read: ‘John Connor's Phone: Dec. 23rd / 3:30pm’.
“That wasn't much of a nap,” he said, moving over to the bathroom and cleaning himself up a bit. As he slid his huge comb along his hair and straightened out his somewhat fancy-looking collared shirt, he kidded himself that he looked real smooth. “At least I’m not feeling worse.”
Nice enough for Caelyn, at least? Gosh, I can’t believe what she sees in me. As John moved over to his kitchen to get a glass of water, he thought back to the previous few months. As much as life had gotten pretty tedious from the routine of internet silliness to work to video games to movies to sleep to more work and the same the next day, the fact that she somehow found John’s cheeks, hair, and overall features to be ‘kawaii’, especially wanting John to rest his cheeks on her during hugging, had brightened things up so much. What an angel! If she didn’t live over a different part of the country, she’d be perfect for him, especially with her sharing so much of his taste in music, books, and the like.
John shook his head, trying to snap back from dreamy memories to reality, and he glanced over at his pretty empty-looking refrigerator. “Well, damn it,” he muttered, leaning up against the dishwasher. Stomach grumbling, for of the time of day, still hasn’t rattled his body yet. But he knew that it would be there at any moment. “I guess…”
Venturing back to his room, he picked up his wallet. Thumbing through two fives and a one, he ran his right hand along his cheeks. What the hell? Might as well go out to eat.
The few moments it took to put on his jacket, slide his keys into his pocket, and everything else seems to go by like a shot. John slides into his plain-looking sedan and carefully checks all over to make sure that no little kids are close by, ease into the nearby street. Although the area is bathed in various fast food places, the idea of stopping by one of them again makes him nauseous. “So, where to?” John asks himself, without even thinking turning the radio up a bit.
“And so, don’t forget to check out the metroplex’s most popular children’s event,” declared the announcer from some commercial as John drove about idly, checking out the pretty-looking decorations among the houses, “My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic’s Ice Show! Use the special code ‘WRR 103.9’ to get a full 15% off! See the magical royal princesses take on great evils while having fun for the whole family!”
“Princesses,” John repeated, zoning out a little. Images of seductive white curves leading to shimmering manes and angelic-looking faces flashed inside of his mind. “Yeah.” he found himself feeling warmer and warmer as he pictured Luna and Celestia cuddling besides each other on a huge bed, a brilliant red comforter sliding magically along their shapely flanks and long hooves as the horses made such pretty eyes.
Dirty clopper! Snapping back to attention on the road, John attempted to push the thoughts out of his mind. In all honestly, he didn’t feel an ounce of guilt feeling intense attractions towards the candy-colored fictional equines. Like the bikini-clad hentai-like model holding power tools on the billboard above himself, advertising Home Depot with the adjacent slogan ‘Got Wood?’, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna both seemed to be ‘drawn that way’, made to be gazed at with love. Or something like ‘love’... at least sexual lust with caring. Ever since that fateful day when Caelyn had Skype-messaged John to say that she’d come over for the holidays, tagging along during a family touring trip, he couldn’t shake the sensation that lusting for other women, even of the magical equine variety, formed something kind of like cheating.
A familiar exit popped up to John’s right. “Hell, forget all this,” he remarked, slapping the dashboard, “I’ll go to my favorite Chinese place.” He nodded to himself, for whatever reason, and he slipped the steering wheel over.
A few minutes later…
“Ah, here we go,” John muttered, feeling a vibration in his pocket. Glancing over at the empty plates that before had contained sweet-tasting strips of mandarin chicken with fried rice, crispy french fries, and popcorn-like tiny pieces of orange chicken laying inside of them, he took in a deep breath. God, this was a good idea. I wonder who the heck is messaging me. Maybe my parents? John abruptly sensed another vibration down below.
Caelyn? The teenager scratched his head. The message simply read: ‘Call me’. Clicking about on his smartphone, He idly looked about at the various families and festive decorations all over the restaurant where he sat. While other Chinese places seemed to either pick between serving Americanized, frankly bastard-like, versions of Chinese cuisine made fast food fashion or uber-expensive authentic cuisine, this fantastic restaurant decided in schizophrenic-like fashion to do a bit of everything-- expanding the menu and broadening eater’s tastes while keeping prices low. He felt amazed that they still seemed in business. As Celestia or Twilight would say, it might be magical.
“Hello, cutie pie,” John remarked as he pressed his phone to the side of his head, and he couldn’t stop from help from smiling. Images of the pretty yet nerdy pegasister with her perpetually curly dark brown hair and braces-filled smile flooded his mind. “What’s up?”
“I’m sorry!” Caelyn moaned back, gasping for breath as well apparently.
“Ahh, sweetie, you haven’t even told me what’s wrong so that--”
“I’m so very sorry! Please forgive me!” Caelyn interrupted, still gasping.
The gravity of the situation began to dawn on him already, with his stomach starting to harden. “Please just tell me exactly,” he replied, sounding far quieter now.
“My parents said ‘no’, ‘no’ way!”
“They said… but what? Why? You said that they had planned this trip for weeks and weeks with you able to drive over with them to visit me!” John felt something like a dozen long ants crawling up his arms and legs.
“Oh, God, it’s… so…” she muttered, and he heard her trying to take a deep breath and calm herself, “first of all, I lied. Sorry.”
“Lied?” He ran his smartphone along his temple side to side as he tried to keep himself sane.
“This wasn’t a big plan. There was no trip to see you. They didn’t pack or anything. No Christmas thing in the works after all. Sorry, sweetie, I lied. They just thought it up one evening, and I figured that if I pestered them that they’d make mere thoughts of a trip into a serious plan.”
“But--”
“You kept pestering me about meeting up with you in real-life,” she interjected, “and I had to make you feel better.”
“No, I didn’t!”
“Yes you did, she retorted, sounding desperate, “you did it constantly! You maybe didn’t said it out loud, but i just know you were hinting at it.”
“You should stop and listen to yourself,” John groaned.
“But, look, hold on a moment,” she went on, “that’s not the big part.”
“What is?” John asked, burying himself into the cozy chair. He shuts his eyes and slides one of his hands against his right arm, trying to keep from crying. The inky blackness that just had crept up before now seems to spread all through his insides.
“They found my clop.”
“Your parents… caught…”
“Me having ‘clop’ on my computer, yep,” she commented, sounding like she would sob at any moment herself, “I just left to go use the bathroom, but I had a gigantic image of Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo both riding Big Mac’s John-know-what plastered across my desktop without even knowing it. Dad walked into my room to see if he had left his bottle of Windex there by accident, and he flipped.”
“Can’t he…”
“Sweetie, no,” she moaned, “it’s over. My parents set me down for a good hour or so giving me a lecture about how Jesus’ birthday is here, how Jesus doesn’t want my soul to go to hellfire, how Jesus weeps when he sees me not being a ‘good Christian virgin’ with ‘virgin’ eyes until my parents pick my husband where he alone, and blah-blah-blah. They’re going to tighten my leash on tighter now, not letting me now go anyplace ‘inpure’ and ‘non-Christian’ when I’m at neither work nor school with their permission. They showed me this ‘Make your Family Biblical‘ checklist paper from Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition and make me sign it like a legal contract.”
“Tell them to piss off!” John barked, feeling like he just couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“Sweetie, my mom and dad go to church every single Sunday. They both wear crosses on their necks. They don’t believe in ‘love’ or in ‘forgiveness’. They believe in ‘sin’. I’m lucky that they didn’t catch me with doing something sexual for you rather than some stuff from mlpchan, or else they’d probably give me the belt again. They emphasized Jesus’ words about ‘sparing the rod’ in my little lecture.”
“So, what does this mean?”
“It means that we’re… we’re...” she began, but she broke down and cried. After a long moment, she went on. “Honey, we’re through. You and I. It’s gone. Dead. Finished.”
“Oh, my…”
“Happy Jesus’ birthday,” she spat out. And then, with John lowering his hand without even thinking, the call ended.
John found himself just lying down on the table, sniffing loudly. A beep from his cellphone caused him to peek over at it. He had neither a message nor a call coming, but, instead, an e-mail from a contact.
John peeked at the e-mail, seeing it as a relayed news report. “What is this?” A NPR application automatically popped up into view when he slid his finger about.
“Catholic Hospital Succeeds in Case Barring Gay Injured From Christmas” began the news report. John read on to see that: “Delta Hospital Chief Administrator George H.W. Palin applauded the move to allow his hospital complex to kick out both gay injured patients and their families from planned Christmas celebrations, remarking simply that: ‘[T]his is a major victory for freedom of religion in this state. Mary Bachmann of the Christian Mothers’ Association, protesting in support of the hospital, remarked bluntly: ‘Let the filthy sodomites celebrate this holiday in the gutter where they belong.” Closing the application, John slid the cellphone away from him and just tried to zone out, still laying on the table.
“Why do some Christians always ruin Christmas?” he sobbed.
Later on…
“I haven’t seen you this depressed since Darth Maul was named ‘Worst Jedi’ on your website’s poll,” said an older, calm-sounding voice above John.
“Yeah, seriously, he had so much potential! So what if Lucas screwed up this treatment?” John pounded the table below him for a second. “It’s just--” He suddenly stopped, rubbing his temples, and he leaned back in his chair. “Oh, hello Mr. Chong,” John said, pressing a hand against his neck to wake himself up more.
“You were only out for about twenty minutes in your little mini-nap, Mr. Connor,” Mr. Chong remarked, and he moved over so that he stood right in front of John at the edge of the restaurant booth. John looked up at Mr. Chong’s wrinkled-covered face, still conveying a deep sense of caring and mischievous fun that he had come to really like over the past few months. “So, don’t worry.”
“Alright,” John murmured. You’re a cool fellow. And yet I don’t even know your first name.
“How were the fries?” the elderly man inquired, putting a hand on John’s shoulder, “We’ve gotten some mixed results on the whole new ‘extra crispy’ side option.”
“Oh, awesome,” John responded, looking up, “and, well, before I forget to say: Happy holidays!”
“To you too,” he happily replied, and he motioned John to get up with him, “and, tell me honestly, what happened?”
John followed, awkwardly rubbing his hands on his leads, as Mr. Chong leads him over to the counter with the cash register. “Long story short, girlfriend issues…”
“Oh, goodness,” he replied, leaning up against the huge grey register, “let me guess: Turns out you’ll be alone for this Christmas, despite big plans?”
John nodded his head.
“Hmmm, well, how about something,” he muttered, and John saw him moving over to a large Buddha statue at the other edge of the counter. He leans over and makes a bunch of clanking and scraping noises, clearly adjusting some kind of cabinet set from behind the counter.
“A nice Merlot so that I could drink myself stupid first and then drink myself asleep?”
Mr. Chong chuckled before he stood back up, carrying something in his hands. John focused forwards at the small object, looking something like a laboratory beaker with a small top enclosed with a black rubber stopper. Inside of it, a mysterious solid white creamy liquid, something like a mix of milk and vanilla yogurt, splashed around.
“The hell is that?”
“Ever look up ‘lucid dreaming’?” Mr. Chong cryptically asked, cocking his head to the left.
“Sure,” John said, thinking back to when he had went through a bunch of college classes in human biology, “it’s like how some people have mundane dreams, some people have really odd ones, and some people, sometimes by deliberate effort, have dreams that are like being a character in a real-life movie with things being uber realistic like.”
The unfortunate resemblance of the white material in the bottle to a certain male-produced substance went unsaid. John idly brushed his pants and shirt off a little as Mr. Chong suddenly leaned his head into the open kitchen hallway besides the counter. I wonder if this is like one of these ginseng or like multi-vitamin filled sleep aid things he’s trying to sell me… kind of questionable and sketchy, even if he’s a friend, since I should like see a doctor first, I guess.
“Anyways,” he commented, coming back and leaning a bit closer to John, “let’s just say that this sort of thing is powered by, well, an ‘ancient Chinese secret’.”
That brought John to buckle down and laugh hysterically.
“Think of it as a hyper-powered sleeping pill, but it’s in a potion form in which it lets you turn idle thoughts into a serious sleep sensation, so lucid,” Mr. Chong went on.
“What the hell,” John replied. I’ve had such a damn hard time sleeping with this winter illness. I’ll try anything that’s at least safe once. What’s there to lose? As Mr. Chong smiled, John reached over for his wallet. “How much do I owe you for this stuff?”
“How about this,” Mr. Chong responded, sliding over a small scratch card. The top of the advertising-looking, credit card-sized thing read ‘New Deal: Instead of full meal price, pay _____________”.
John took a look, slid his body against the counter, and rubbed the top of the card with a dime. “This is a discount card, though. I don’t get how--”
The card now read: “New Deal: Instead of full meal price, pay [20% More]”.
“Damn,” John murmured, “did you ever actually think of using these instead of you regular discount cards?”
Mr. Chong responded, “Just on March 32nd.”
“Wait, but there’s no such thing as March 32nd, that’s April--”
The two men looked right at each other.
“So, we have a deal?” Mr. Chong asked, “that in exchange for the lucid dream potion?”
“Okay,” John remarked, "but, gosh, I'm still feeling frustrated this Christmas. I know it’s kind of whiny, but for all of the times to break up with someone, why not?”
“You know, when I was little, my father told me this ancient Chinese proverb. To be precise, he showed it to me. It was written on sacred parchment passed down through thirteen generations and kept in a hidden location deep inside of our house. You could only ever read it with candlelight on the seventh day of the seventh month as well.”
John nodded as he gazed forwards..
“And, when I saw my father hold the candlestick over, I gently recited the words into the air, “Mr. Chong went on, “It read: ‘Assholes gonna asshole.’”
John buckled in place.
“I can see it across your face, John,” Mr. Chong remarked, “just go home and get some sound sleep. It does the body great.”
“Makes sense,” John replied, turning around although he then stopped moment, “I’m curious, what are you doing on actual Christmas day?” I wonder what the hell my own family plans post-presents.
“Oh, my wife and I will be together mostly all of the time. We will go to this local buddhist association ceremony first and then to my wife's holiday ceremony at her church called ‘Catholics of the Valley’.”
“Wait, are Catholics of the Valley part of that Christian Mothers’ Association thing?”
That brought out a hearty laugh. “Oh, of course not, we all know that those people are nuts. And the Buddhist association pretends to act like a religious secret society or whatever, but we mostly just drink and play ping pong most of the time. If you’re bored, head to the Dar Mal Building off of Oak Street. Now get the heck out of here and sleep for once.”
Clutching the potion, John shrugged as he walked out of the restaurant. He glanced about, seeing that it had already gotten pretty dark outside. It only took him a short moment to walk over to his car.
Later on…
“Here goes nothing,” John murmured. He slid his head back and sniffed along the open top of the bottle. Not able to pick up anything, he closed eyes his and just drank the potion. Salty… creamy… so white… He really didn't appreciate having to rub the sticky material with his fingers from his lips to suckle up the last drops, but he figured that he might as well.
Thank Celestia nobody saw that! Sighing while scratching across his back, John flipped the nearby light-switch. Some slight sensations of creamy warmth seemed to go down his throat and into his belly, which he didn't enjoy one bit. Gosh! He fell down upon his bed and tried to take a deep breath, sliding in pillows between his legs. Slowly closing his eyes, he finally felt his mind slowing down a bit. It somehow didn't take long until he drifted off completely.