Chapter 5
Margo’s eyes were twinkling with excitement. Casey sighed. Was she really going to explain her humiliating circumstances to a spirit who may or may not be a figment of her imagination?
Apparently, yes. “Two Christmases ago I became a meme, and now every holiday season my face starts doing rounds on the internet again. This will be its third Christmas, and it’s already popped up numerous times on my Insta news feed. I’d hoped it might fizzle out eventually but apparently not.”
Margo clapped her hands delightedly. “Wonderful! It’s not easy to become a meme, I know plenty of people who’ve tried. Please, do tell me how it all came to pass; I can already sense that this is going to be good.” She leaned forward and rested her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hands.
Casey took a deep resigned breath and went back to the beginning. “I was in a serious relationship with a man named Sam Moon, and I will totally admit that I went in as a fixer. When we met, he was still cut up about his ex.”
“Say no more.” Margo nodded knowingly. “A sad man is like catnip to a seasoned fixer. I take it you’re emotionally colorblind; can’t tell the red flags from the green?”
Oh great, I get the apparition with added sarcasm. “He didn’t seem like a bad guy,” Casey said testily.
“They never do, dear.”
“He was sweet and caring, in touch with his emotions, super demonstrative…but no matter what I did or how hard I tried I never seemed able to match up to his ex; she’d set the bar so high that I was never good enough.”
“Of course you weren’t. And in the meantime, he’d never had it so good. It’s one of the oldest forms of manipulation in the book. You were the donkey being both beaten with the stick to make you work harder while chasing the dangling carrot of his undying affection. Silly donkey,” Margo said dryly.
“Thanks. You’re managing to make me feel even worse than I already did.”
“Sorry. Occupational hazard: Break them down so that they can build themselves back up again, blah, blah, blah. Do go on.”
“Well, anyway, after two years, we split up…”
“Two years?!” Margo spluttered. Casey gave her a look. “Sorry. Sorry. Perseverance is an excellent and underused quality. But so is self-preservation,” said the spirit. “Can I ask what finally led you to see the light?”
Casey felt her teeth clench. Even after all this time, it made her feel sick to her stomach.
She took a deep breath. “There was this literary agent speed-dating event being held at a bloggers conference, where you book a slot with an agent and you have ten minutes to pitch your book idea to them. The spaces always run out fast, and I’d missed out before, but this time I’d got one.
Only, Sam had an audition for a small part on a soap opera on the same day and he got a sudden attack of nerves, and he said he needed me there with him and he couldn’t do it without me.
” She ran her hand through her hair and sighed.
“He had a way of making me feel guilty that was…Anyway, the long and short is that I went with him to his audition. He suggested I give my slot to my friend Liz from my writing group, which I did. Sam got the part and immediately dumped me, and I mean immediately; we hadn’t even left the studio.
He said he wouldn’t have time for a serious relationship now that he had a role in a TV series. ”
Margo’s mouth was hanging open.
“That’s not even the worst part,” Casey went on.
“I don’t know if I can take much more,” said Margo in all seriousness, and Casey smiled despite herself.
“Liz got an offer of representation from the literary agent slot I’d given her, and I might have been happy for her had it not transpired that she’d started sleeping with Sam weeks before he’d ended things with me. She took my agent slot and my boyfriend.”
“Sweet reindeer testicles!”
“Yep. Anyway, the TV role fell through, and he and Liz split up, and Sam wanted me back.”
“Huh!” Margo barked out a laugh. “What a cringing little cock weasel. That’s the trouble with some people—always wanting what they haven’t got, chasing their dicks around the town square and whining about how bad they’ve got it while ignoring the amazing person standing right in front of them until it’s too damned late. ”
“Are spirits allowed to say things like cock weasel?” she asked.
Margo laughed raucously. “I’m nearly four thousand years old. I can say whatever the fuck I fucking like! What happened next?”
“He got a bit stalkery. I threatened him with a restraining order, and he asked if we could meet for dinner to straighten things out. I thought if we met in a public place, I could tell him to leave me the hell alone without having to worry about a scene. A meal out would have been a lot cheaper than a solicitor’s bill.
Only, when I got there, he got down on one knee in front of everyone and proposed. ”
“Eurgh! The desperado proposals are the worst! And what did you do?”
“I said no, obviously.”
“Good girl.”
“Yeah,” she said in a flat voice. “Someone filmed it and posted it online and it became a meme. Now each year it rears its ugly head again like the bloody winter flu.”
“Oh, that is priceless!” Margo exclaimed. “I have to see your meme.” She was practically bouncing on her chair with glee.
“It’s not ‘my’ meme, I have no control over my image being used. If I did, I’d have stopped it!”
“Just show me already!” Margo screeched.
“Oh, for god’s sake!” Casey pulled out her phone and typed ungrateful Christmas proposal girl into the search engine.
The screen instantly filled with thumbnails of her and Sam.
She clicked on one to enlarge it. A Christmas tree in the background, Casey with her long hair—now cut short to aid in her disguise—pulled up in a messy bun and an expression on her face that was a cross between sucking on a lemon and pooping her pants, her mouth halfway open like she was about to scream or vomit.
Sam, handsome in a suit looking up at her with big hopeful eyes, a giant rock in a box balanced in his praying hands.
The optics were not in her favor. The tagline ’Tis the season to be less this… ran across the top.
“Oh dear!” Margo’s expression was far from sympathetic; Casey would go as far as to say she looked delighted. “Are there more?” she asked.
“Plenty, unfortunately.”
“Are they all as bad as that?” Margo asked hopefully.
Casey almost smiled—but not quite. It would likely be another decade before she could genuinely see the funny side of this shit show.
She pulled up more thumbnails of the same image with different taglines: When your boss asks you to work Christmas; Tell me you’re an ungrateful cow without telling me you’re an ungrateful cow; I said I don’t want socks!
Margo chuckled merrily and then saw Casey’s expression and coughed to cover it. “Hmm, yes, I quite see…Not funny at all!” she squeaked.
“I think you’ve seen enough,” Casey said, taking the phone and pocketing it as Margo pouted. “And she dreaded Christmas forever after and would probably die alone, the end.” Casey folded her arms across her chest.
Margo’s mirth dissolved, and she suddenly looked affronted.
“A little thing like that shouldn’t put you off the festive season.
Goodness knows there are precious few windows in the calendar year that genuinely promote goodwill to all.
You humans should be making the most of it; you need all the goodwill you can get. Trust me, I’m in the know.”
“It’s not that I don’t like Christmas,” Casey replied defensively.
“It just makes me anxious. I don’t want to see my face taken out of context splashed all over the internet.
It’s humiliating. When the meme first went viral there was a crazy amount of media attention.
” She shuddered as she recalled. “I didn’t want any part of it; I didn’t want to be a laughingstock.
I thought if I ignored it, it would eventually die down. ”
“But it didn’t?” Margo guessed.
She shook her head. “It kept on growing because Sam was always in the papers stoking the fires. He became this heartbroken-heartthrob character, and because I didn’t give any interviews to defend myself, I got cast as an evil wench.
” Her heart rate galloped in panic just thinking about it.
Sam’s newfound celebrity had made him popular with female Z-listers and suddenly he was being papped striding out of all the right clubs with all the long-legged women on his arms. And while he was getting laid, Casey in her continued silence quickly became a figure of national revilement.
“Sam got an agent. I got death threats. I wish it had never happened,” she said quietly. “I wish I could make it all go away.”
“Why did you never give your side of the story?” Margo asked.
Casey huffed. “I thought silence would protect my dignity. By the time I realized that wasn’t the case, it was too late; peoples’ opinions were set in stone.
If I’d tried to set the record straight, I’d just look like a vengeful cow.
And now it’s nearly Christmas again, and the meme is back, and Sam Moon is going to milk it as much as possible just like he has the last two years. ”
“Examples of the ‘milking,’ if you please,” Margo pressed. Casey groaned.
“Well, the year the meme went viral he brought out a gimmicky Christmas single called ‘Casey.’ ”
“Fabulous!” Margo’s eyes were wide with glee until she saw Casey’s expression. “Ahem, for him, not so much for you.”
She smiled grimly. “He’s done a bunch of reality shows, most notable was probably Cupid Cabin, which is essentially Love Island but in a Swiss mountain chalet and they wear marginally more clothing.”
“Sounds delightful.”
“And this year, he’s brought out his memoir, Hopeless Romantic. Not only that, but Liz…”
“Liz of literary agent taking and boyfriend shagging?” asked Margo.
“Yes, that one. Her debut novel published at the same time, and she and Sam have teamed up to do a book tour together.”
“Well, isn’t that a kick in the mammary glands!”
“It is rather, yes,” Casey agreed.
Margo leaned back in her chair. “So, we’re both in hiding—festive fugitives!” she exclaimed excitedly. “Think of the fun we’ll have!”
Casey frowned. All she wanted was to get through the season with as little stress as possible.
Babysitting a fugitive spirit did not sound stress-free.
“Except,” Casey began reasonably, “that nobody would notice my absence because I’m nobody, but you are the Spirit of Christmas Present.
You will be missed, and I don’t want the spiritual police force ransacking my place of work looking for you. ”
Margo gave her a withering look. “Firstly, nobody is ever nobody. Everybody is somebody, and every someone is an intrinsic part of the universe. Every person creates ripples that change the course of the world for better or worse every single second of every single day. So we’ll have none of that ‘I’m no one special’ nonsense, thank you very much.
You are as fundamental to the space-time continuum as oxygen is to breathing.
And secondly there is no spiritual police force, not one that ransacks department stores at any rate. ”
“Oh,” said Casey. That was a lot to take in. “What about your colleagues? Can they save souls without you?”
Margo waved a dismissive hand. “Past and Future will just have to make do without me this year. Pam took a decade off after 1947 due to melancholy; dwelling in all those devastating human regrets took its toll on her. And Fliss missed most of the 1660s because she couldn’t face another plague—it was hard to convince people to change the course of their lives when their futures would likely end in buboes and pus. ”
“I can see how that might be a tough gig,” Casey agreed. Was she in psychosis? Is that what this was? It seemed real. Then again, she had been under stress for a prolonged period of time…
Margo continued speaking. “I’ve persevered through it all for the greater good, and now I’m wondering what it’s all for.
Why should I always be the jolly one, eh?
People think it’s all cornucopias and merrymaking, but the present is the toughest gig of all.
The past is set in stone and can’t be changed, and the future isn’t set at all, it’s all possibility and conjecture.
I’m the one stuck in the present, dealing with the shit show in real time.
Nope. I’m done. This year they can do without me; it’s my turn to burn out.
The billionaires and narcissists will have to save their own damn souls.
” Margo was a spirit with a lot to say, and she didn’t shy away from saying it.
“But aren’t you all, you know, magical and stuff? Couldn’t Pam and Felicity sort of cast a spell to find you?”
Margo blinked slowly in a way that conveyed her disdain at such a question.
“Without going into the quantum physics of it all, let’s just say that there are occasional blind spots in between the veils, anomalies in the universe’s fabric that, should one be in the know, can provide places into which one can slip and disappear for a while, and this happens to be one of them. ”
“Like when things slip down the back of the sofa.”
“Sure, let’s diminish the awesomeness of the universe to the back of a crusty sofa.
” Margo rolled her eyes. “All you need to know is that Coopers and Co. is safe as houses, and no one will think to look for me here. I’ve been sneaking cheeky weekends about these halls for decades.
In fact, I was visiting this site before the store was even built.
Now, I’ll be staying until midnight Christmas night,” Margo continued.
“I’ll be no bother. You won’t even know I’m here. ”
Casey doubted that very much. Margo slapped a hot dog into a bun from a street cart that had sprung up in the corner where the shredder sat, then proceeded to heap on fried onions and squeeze a wiggly line of yellow American mustard down the length.
She bit into it with gusto, causing a glob of mustardy onions to shoot out the other end and plop onto the office carpet.
Casey was a woman uncertain about many things, but of this she was sure: Margo had to go.