We Haunt Each Other

On Christmas Day, dad opens the window, looks outside and asks, what day is it, and I hope that he’s changed, but dad never does. Silent night, holy night, Christmas ghosts, the point is that by Christmas morning miracles must have already happened and we are supposed to have learned our lessons. Dad fools me at first. He smiles and laughs and I think that’s it, the three spirits have finally changed his heart. But then he makes a joke about Christmas, about how naive people fall for a silly holiday, he repeats the joke as a lecture year after year, about how people feel they have to be kind to each other for a day or two. I can fake it for that long, he says and laughs, and mom laughs, and in the past, I used to ask, dad, aren’t we kind to each other all year long, but I don’t bother now, I only hide inside my mind looking for a place I have never been to, but I already belong.

Dad says that Ebeneezer Scrooge wasn’t smart enough. I say, dad, Scrooge was greedy, and he rolls his eyes like he knows better, like asking, in real life, aren’t we all? Dad wants me to be more like him, to turn me into a vampire, but I don’t want to, vampires are bad, they feed on the blood of others. He doesn’t use this word, he knows vampires are nasty and that the happiest vampires are those who forget they are vampires at all, he only says, someday all this will be yours, and I know he doesn’t mean it as a threat but it sounds like a threat to me, dad thinks he sounds tender and loving, like he cares for his people, for mom and me, but I don’t feel loved at all, instead I feel like he’s kicking me out of his heart, the place I should belong.

Dad hasn’t changed yet, because Christmas ghosts don’t exist. Nor do vampires. I’m old enough to know, but also young enough to still believe in Christmas magic. Because we make the magic we need and we are the ghosts that haunt the people we love, we haunt each other, not only after we die, but also in life. And I will haunt Dad every day, not only on Christmas, to change the shadows of things that I won’t let be, to make his heart bigger and brighter, large enough to fit the whole world, the home where I belong.

 

Mileva Anastasiadou is a neurologist, from Athens, Greece and the author of We Fade With Time by Alien Buddha Press. A Pushcart, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction and Best Small Fictions nominated writer, her work can be found in many journals, such as the Chestnut Review, New World Writing, Milk Candy Review, the Bureau Dispatch, and others.