A Christmas to Remember

Jesse’s POV

“Life has come to an end,” I said as we walked out to our car.

“Why? It’s the holiday time, and I’m feeling very cheery,” replied Danny.

“That’s why. And we are also going to the bay. To do what? Crawl up and die? That sounds lovely!” I said, unenthusiastic.

“Actually, we are going to see lots of neat things!” Stephanie said happily.

“Sounds great... not,” D.J. replied, making sure she said the last part in a whisper.

“Will you guys please stop your complaining? Just get in the car,” Danny said, holding open the car door. Stephanie and Joey seemed to be the only ones happy to go sightseeing. The rest of us got in, much to our complaint. Soon we were off to the bay.

“It’s a long car ride, so smile,” Pam said from up front. Stephanie, who was already smiling, made her grin wider. She looked possessed with her huge smile and bugged out eyes… almost like Linda Blair’s character Regan MacNeil in the 1973 film The Exorcist. Luckily, D.J. and Stephanie had never seen that film, as it was too scary for them.

Luckily, DJ ended it for me. “Steph, you’re scaring me. Stop.”

“Wow, I have the power to scare DJ!” exclaimed Stephanie.

“Now that we can use to our evil needs,” added Joey, who rubbed his hands together with an evil grin.

“Hey, little bro, this reminds me of that one Halloween we had when we were kids. Do you remember?” asked Pam from up front.

“Oh yeah. That was a good time,” I said, trailing off.

“What’s the story, Jess?” asked Danny. The others asked too for the story.

“All right, all right. I’ll tell you. Well, one Halloween, Mom made us go trick or treating. It was a full moon night, and most of the kids were dressed up as werewolves. Pam dressed up as the Wicked Witch from The West (and I couldn’t agree more), while I was Frankenstein, as I couldn’t find an Elvis costume. So, it was about 9 and it was pretty dark. Pam said it would take another 30 minutes for us to reach home, so we should take a shortcut through the words. I agreed quickly; my legs were starting to ache. We went in the woods and walked for about 2 minutes before we heard a howl. I asked Pam if she had heard there were wolves in the woods; she said there weren’t any.

"We kept on going, the howls growing closer. I asked Pam about werewolves, and this made us both freeze. Some tree branches blew in the wind and made scraping sounds. The snapping of a twig sent us running for our lives. We were about to reach the edge when a hairy werewolf jumped out of nowhere. It walked towards us. Out of defense, I grabbed some hard gumballs and chucked them at the werewolf. Then I threw some peppermints. Pam held up her broom in defense. Then, the werewolf took off his mask. It was a Halloween costume. He said, ‘Hey, no need to harm me. I was coming to ask you about that howling.’ We still don’t know about the howling in those woods.”

I think they were about ready to die of fright.

“Some good times back then. Right, bro?” Pam said. I nodded and laughed a little, and Pam laughed also.

“Remember that one Halloween where we told a scary story and freaked everyone out?” Danny asked.

Joey laughed. “Oh, yeah. That was some adventure we had.”

“What’s the story? I told you ours, so what’s yours?” I asked, eager to hear about what happened to Danny and Joey. It was possibly something stupid these two probably did.

“Well, Danny and I were heading to a party when we were both 11. It was hosted by a guy named Sean. After dancing around a bit at the party, we started to tell scary stories. Danny and I had done this story a million times, so I volunteered first. The story was, there was an old lady who, whenever she got scared, would put her hand under the bed for her little dog to lick. One day it was raining, and she heard a noise downstairs. Walking downstairs, she saw the window was open, but she didn’t open it. She closed it and heard a noise upstairs. She went upstairs and saw that window was open too. She closed it. Getting scared, the old lady put her hand under the bed and the dog licked it. She went downstairs and heard another noise. She walked up and saw these words written in blood: Humans can lick too. The old lady and dog were never seen again.

"What Danny did is, he grabbed some pillows and turned off the lights. Then he got a flashlight and came in and said, 'I found the dog’s body! The murderer is here!’ Everyone was screaming and screaming. It took us for what seemed like forever to convince them that there was no evil dog murder. No one turned off the lights or went near the beds all night, though,” Joey finished.

“OK — either I’m going insane, or it’s supposed to be Christmas and not Halloween,” DJ remarked.

“It’s Christmas, D.J.,” Stephanie murmured from behind her arms, which were covering her face.

“We just like to share stories about old times when we were kids and did silly stuff sometimes,” I explained.

“Why don’t we share Christmas stories?” suggested Pam.

“That’s a good idea, Pam. And speaking of which, I recall such one good story from when I was little, although I don’t recall how little, however. Basically, I’d cooked up a plan to see if I could catch Santa. I stayed up all night with a net, a glass of milk and a plate of Santa cookies. However, I got hungry and ate the cookies and drank the glass of milk. I stayed like that all night. As a result, I was so tired the next morning that I fell asleep on the presents. They were comfy,” Danny said. We all laughed at him.

The rest of the car ride went by with us sharing happy memories. I even forgot the horrors of going sightseeing — until we got there.

Stephanie’s POV

I kept on checking over my shoulder as we strolled down the bay, checking to see if werewolves or dog murders were there. There were none; it was safe.

D.J. noticed me doing this. “What are you doing?”

“Making sure we don’t die,” I explained.

“Oh, well, thanks… I guess?” she replied. I noticed that she sounded unassured.

After a few minutes, I began to check out the view in front of me. I got some coins from Daddy and put it into one of those little microscope things. I saw a lot of ducks and other birds. From my point of view, it was pretty awesome to look at — as well as hopefully write about later (so I could remember it). When lunchtime came, we stopped at a seafood restaurant overlooking the bay.

As we sat down, Uncle Jesse asked, “What’s the point of this? I live in Cali. You usually don’t sightsee your own home.”

Joey looked at him. “I don’t know. I once gave tours around my room for the trash collectors so they wouldn’t get lost.”

D.J. looked at me and mouthed, Wow. I simply nodded in agreement.

For lunch, I ordered a small salmon while D.J. got some lobster. Dad got a lot of fish, Mom got grab and Joey got squid, while Uncle Jesse got something called lobster torelluni. In my point of view, they all looked gross. I could’ve sworn my salmon was still swimming in my throat.

The rest of the day was fun. We shared some more memories, and I couldn’t help laughing at D.J.’s embarrassment when Dad mentioned something she did when she was little. Luckily, I was never mentioned!

On the car ride back home, I annoyed everyone by listing all of the animals I had ever seen in my whole life — in alphabetical order, of course.

I was on the L’s when Uncle Jesse got some tape and put it over my mouth. The rest of the car ride was quiet — boring for me, but not for anyone else. How rude!