PodCastle

* Authors : Tim Pratt and Heather Shaw
* Narrators : Jen R. Albert and Dominik Parisien
* Host : Summer Fletcher
* Audio Producer : Peter Adrian Behravesh
*
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PodCastle 658: The Cursed Noel is a PodCastle original.


Rated PG-13.
The Cursed Noel
By Tim Pratt & Heather Shaw
It was supposed to be a Very Zoom Christmas, but the internet went out on Christmas Eve, and out here, it usually took a couple of days to get going again. Travis didn’t expect things to happen any faster during the holiday. He could get a bar on his cell phone if he stood in the right spot in the cabin, but that wasn’t enough for a video call. He could always drive into town tomorrow where the service was better, but sitting in some parking lot in the cold, looking at the thumbprint-sized faces of his mother and sisters and cousins on his phone, all broadcasting from their own places of pandemic isolation, didn’t exactly sound festive.
Travis went to the window in the kitchen and looked out at the whitened evergreens. Loneliness settled onto him, like the weight of all that snow on those branches. The smell of his morning coffee was already dissipating in the chill air. The original plan, back when everyone thought the pandemic would surely be under control by the end of the year, was to fly to Chicago for the traditional giant gathering, but the Midwest was even more ravaged by the virus than everywhere else. So he was staying here instead, wintering for the first time in the cabin in the North Carolina mountains he’d inherited from his grandfather, and only used as a summer place before. The isolation hadn’t bothered him much so far, but like the snow in the song, the pandemic didn’t show signs of stopping, and it had all become a bit wearying.
He was on sabbatical, working on his next book, which was mostly about epistemological nihilism. His editor wanted to call it Knowing and Nothingness; he preferred Cogito, Ergo So What? Since he wasn’t teaching at the moment, Travis had been spared the necessity of navigating the whole remote-learning thing, though it looked like he’d have to come to grips with it next year, at this rate; he couldn’t imagine teaching a Philosophy 101 class or even a senior seminar through a screen. The whole point was engaging with other thinkers, and doing that remotely would spoil the flow of conversation he cherished so much when teaching. But, he supposed, life was about making adjustments.
Not seeing his family for Christmas wasn’t an adjustment he’d wanted to make, though. The life of the mind was all well and good, but he also wanted the life of the eggnog, and Christmas carols, and spiked apple cider, and twinkling lights, and presents he could actually present in person.
Looking out at the trees, he smiled. Adjustments. Okay, so, he couldn’t join his people for the holidays. That didn’t mean he couldn’t be a little more festive himself. The junk his grandfather had left in the back room included strings of Christmas lights and the most unloved family heirloom ornaments and the metallic tang of out-of-fashion tinsel. He had an axe. He owned two acres, positively infested with pines of all sizes. He would by God go out and cut himself a Christmas tree, decorate it, get a fire going, pour some rum into something (maybe just into a glass),