Presents
When the first snowflake floated down from the gloomy skies, Ebenezer Scrooge
remembered the night his mother was murdered on Christmas Eve.
Scrooge stared out the window from his office on the forty-eighth floor of a skyscraper
overlooking Central Park in New York City. He worked as a hedge fund manager for the
highly successful firm, Cratchit and Dickens. Down below, some eight million people
swarmed the streets of New York City, running around like chickens with their heads cut
off to complete their last-minute Christmas shopping. If only they were chickens with their
heads cut off. The thought brought a rare smile to the grouchy old man’s lips. Vehicles sat in
a jam, moving every few seconds, appearing like crawling ants from the bird’s-eye view.
Scrooge enjoyed his office view, which closely resembled the same view as his apartment a
few blocks away. He considered it a live look at the economy in action. All those cars and
people going about their lives. Earning money. Spending money. Driving up the stock prices
of various companies, where he could then capitalize and make himself even wealthier.
This time of year was best, too. Gift shopping. Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, and whatever
other holidays he couldn’t think of. All that shit equaled a ton of dollars spent. The retailers
benefitted the most, but everyone else did, too. Out shopping? Why not stop for lunch?
Passing by Broadway? Why not grab a couple of tickets to a show to treat yourself after the
long stressful day of shopping?
For Scrooge, gifts were a waste of money. He’d never given a gift in his life, nor had he
received a meaningful one since he last celebrated Christmas over sixty years ago.
Christmas itself was a sham. A dick-measuring contest where everyone tried to one-up
each other with the most ridiculous presents. He’d received an annual gift from the firm for
the past decade. Silly things like company branded robes, mugs, and tote bags. Things he
didn’t need. Not in this life. Not in any life.
Scrooge dreaded the entire month of December. The interns always decorated the office
with tinsel and Christmas trees, and the whole damned place reeked of peppermint. And
don’t get him started on the Christmas music playing in the lobby. That was the stuff of
nightmares. Just hearing Mariah Carey made Scrooge want to jump from his office window.
But the fuckers didn’t open, so he had to pop Tylenol in the mornings just to prepare his
brain for the mess of noise that awaited.
Worst of all, so many people took time off work. Traveling. Relaxing. Eating all the cookies
and eggnog like they were jolly Saint Nick himself. The fuckers. Time off meant missed
opportunities to make money. And who didn’t want to make money every single day? It
drove Scrooge mad every Friday afternoon, knowing the stock markets closed for the
weekend. Absolute bullshit.
He grew up poor and without his father, who left before baby Scrooge had even drawn his
first breath out of the womb. It was just him and his mother, living in South Bronx, where
she worked as a concession stand operator at the local bowling alley to get them by. The
paychecks were measly, and his mother often came home in tears, carrying a bowl of
nachos from the alley that she put on the table for their shared dinner. She only ever took a
couple of bites, letting Scrooge eat the rest.
Young Ebenezer never pieced together his mother’s misery when he was younger. But he
reflected back and understood just how poor they were. The thought made him shudder.
With how often crime caused local businesses to shut down in South Bronx, it was a
miracle the bowling alley stayed open throughout his childhood. If it had ever closed, they
would have surely ended up on the streets.
He was never allowed outside past dark, where crackheads and gun fights sang the chorus
of the night. And so he stayed inside, making fake money with green markers and a pair of
rusty scissors to contribute to the family income. He’d make a stack of ten one-hundred-
dollar bills and hand them to his mother.
She always grabbed them with a wide smile and said, “Thank you, Ebby. This will help us
eat and keep the lights on.”
And while he didn’t know his fake money was useless, the lights always stayed on, and he
never missed a meal, no matter how light it may have been on certain evenings.
It was at this young age that Scrooge grew an appreciation for the value of a dollar. “Work
hard and the money will come,” his mother always said. And he now realized she was
actually talking to herself. Giving herself that tiny shred of hope to push through the next
day.
And so they lived like that for the first nine years of Scrooge’s life. Until that fateful
Christmas Eve. ...
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