My Secret Santa's Secret Baby

Returning to my desk I got out the Absinthe. A gift from Inga the previous Christmas, sent over by her parents in Germany. I knew it was sacrilege but I needed relief and didn’t much care, swigging the powerful witches brew straight from the bottle. It was almost frightening how quickly the light green liquid disappeared. The last thing I saw before the world went dark was the image of Skye crying at her desk on the computer screen.Chapter Twenty-Four - SkyeThe clock ticked like a countdown to something. My mind flashed back to an old British comic-book as I lay in the dark. I had found it by accident in the library while looking around one day. I was a bit surprised to find the publication date from the late 1980s, convinced at. That time that the wold had basically started the day I was born. A bit of arrogance I would soon be relieved of the more history I read.

The cursed clock ticked in my head, more maddening than Captain Hook’s crock or the Tell-Tale Heart. I would have had a modern, digital design but y parents were worried I might electrocute myself. They basically had an Edwardian’s knowledge of electrical gadgets. Generally of the opinion that technological innovations should have stopped with the electric light.

I’d tried counting sheep but stopped after I got to a million. Besides which the baaing had become distracting. Even worse than the tick of the doom clock or the baaing of the flying sheep, was the sense, like the presence of a ghost, of Simon holding me from behind. It was the first night I had slept without him, at lest in the house, in what seemed like forever. Love could do some strange things to your sense of time.

I had slept so well with him. Drifting right off and waking up usually only when prompted. Having my master with me, even downstairs, made me feel safe on a deep and essential level that let me surrender to the night. Something I was never really too good with, having orderliness insomnia most of the way through elementary school. Certain something terrible would happen if I dared to go to sleep. What exactly this might be I had no idea but the risk of it was still enough to keep me up at night. It took years of trying different things to be able to sleep and even then it had never been really well. There were pills I could take to be able not to dream but my parents wouldn’t get them for me. Medication being for weak wiled losers in their opinion. Truly strong people prayed for strength and healing and those who were worthy got it. A tune which in no way changed when my paternal grandfather died from cancer. They didn’t even attend the funeral.

I was back where I’d been before. Laying awake fearing something terrible. The fact that I was alone in what felt like a big empty house didn’t help much. The bigger irony was that if that weren’t the case, something terrible might well have happened. I knew Simon would want to stay with me but that might not be possible if we got fired. I guess he had savings, but they would only go so far. While I was confident he would want me to live with him and support me, I didn’t what to put that kind of pressure on him. Meaning basically, at least in my reductive 18-year-old mind, that it came down to a choice between breaking up with Simon and maybe staying in the city, or staying with him and possibly going home to my parents. Truly a choice between poisoning or stabbing but I still knew which one I preferred.

Somehow, though the aid of unseen forces, I’d managed to get myself into work on he bus. My tummy was rebelling but I figure it was because of the combination of stress and no breakfast.

“Oh dear,” Sam said, as I signed in, though making no further comment.

It had been a couple of weeks since Simon and I decided not to see each other anymore. I really thought it would have gotten easier but it didn’t. The pain fresh every time I happened to see him. I tried to focus on why we had decided to do it, so the sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain.

It came on like a freight train. I’d been at work for maybe an hour. There had still been a gift there, as there had been the last several days. It was part of the office culture after all and it would have looked weird if they had just stopped. Besides which, Simon wasn’t nearly that vindictive.

It felt like a punch in the belly and I knew I was going to puke. The bathrooms were outside the office space, out in the hall with the elevators. I only counted myself lucky that they didn’t need a key. Completely losing the breakfast I never ate, I zombie walked back into the office feeling as dead as I must have looked.