13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days

Gift of the Magi 2

This is one of those stories that seems like it should take place in Dickensian England or a forgotten corner of America’s Gilded Age. But it takes place today. It is important to remember that these sorts of stories still happen.

Tommy and Brenda were poor and in love. He worked long hours driving for Uber. She was a teacher, who had to give up her side hustle at a local pub when it closed because of the economic downturn. It was almost Christmas.

Every morning, Tommy woke up and wiped a strand of Brenda’s long auburn hair from her eyes, kissed her on the head, and told her how life would get better once he saved enough money to go to coding school at night. Brenda ignored him because she was a tired middle school teacher who needed every last minute of sleep. Then he’d grab his only valued position, his grandfather’s Mickey Mouse pocket watch, its leather strap fraying and always on the verge of disintegration, hold it up to her and together, she with her eyes still closed, they’d say “Look at the time. Look at the time.” And he’d head off to drive people around town in his own car for 12 hours. She’d go to school, where every few months she did a fundraiser on Facebook for supplies.

The landlord had raised their rent. Uber started a new incentive system that said if you drove for 14 hours straight you could get a 20 dollar bonus. Tommy’s car broke down on hour 11. He took what little money he had squirrelled away for Christmas and bought a new transmission. The ebbs and flow of the holiday season made Brenda’s Facebook fundraiser come in a little low. She used what she had saved to buy books for her students. They agreed to do without presents.

“Maybe I’ll go to J.C. Penny and sing about wanting to buy Christmas shoes for my dying mother,” Tommy said one weekend morning, while waiting for his car to get fixed. “But I’ll give the shoes to you.”

Brenda smiled at him from over the homework she was grading. She wished his references were a little more literary, but she liked that he tried.

“That would be unethical sweetheart,” she said.

“Maybe I’ll put on a green suit and steal you a present from all the little children of Whoville,” he said.

Brenda didn’t look up from the homework. She thought about what it would be like if teachers got paid for all the work they did on weekends.

“If you do that, I’ll divorce you, honey,” she said.

“What if I go to the store and get the worst tree on the lot,” he said. “But we dress it up with a blanket and sing Christmas songs and shoot down the Red Baron’s plane?”

She put her homework down.

“I think you’re confusing your Peanuts canon,” she said.

He looked her over.

“Do you have any convoluted pop culture related schemes to save our Christmas?”

Tommy rarely got Brenda’s references. She read a lot of books and wrote poetry in her free time that Tommy tried his best to read, but never had the attention span for.

“I’ll sell my hair to buy you a new chain for your grandpa’s Mickey Mouse pocket watch,” she said. “And you can sell your pocket watch to buy me a set of ornamental combs.”

Tommy looked at her quizzically. Brenda sighed.

“You can sell your dinosaur doll to get me crayons, but I’ll sell my coloring book to get you a helmet for your dinosaur doll,” she said.

“Nice, like on Rugrats,” he said.

“It was from a book before it was on Rugrats,” she said. “By the master ironist, O. Henry.”

“Like the chocolate bar,” Tommy said.

Brenda smiled.

“Yes, honey,” she said. “Like the chocolate bar.”‘

Tommy’s phone rang. It was the mechanic. The car was ready. He told her was going to try to drive for a few hours, to make enough money to buy her a nice dinner at least. She told him she’d make ramen.

She watched him leave, then went outside and waited for the bus into the bad part of town.

Earlier that week, she had picked up a copy of the free alternative weekly newspaper and perused the classifieds for ways to make money. She scanned past dozens of ads asking for escorts until her eyes settled on a small box in the corner of the page. It was for a pawn shop that would let you trade your hair for Christmas presents. She laughed out.

“It’s probably just a reference to the O. Henry story,” she said. “But I should at least check it out.”

She got off the bus at a little cobblestone alley in the bad part of town. She walked past several shuttered storefronts until she found an old wooden door, covered in cobwebs. She pushed it open, went up a set of stairs and pushed open another, even older wooden door. She entered a dimly lit green pawn shop. A man with a goatee stood behind the counter. Various wares rested on shelves behind the man and in the glass display case in front of him.

“May I help you find what you seek?” the shopkeeper asked.

“I’m looking for a place to sell my hair,” Brenda said. “I’m trying to get my husband a new chain for his grandpa’s pocket watch. I know that sounds — ”

“Like a classic tale of comic irony,” the shop keeper said. “Yes. It certainly does.”

She turned to leave.

“This was a dumb idea.”

“No,” he said. “Sit down. I’m sure we can make a deal.”

“I read that you do that kind of thing here,” she said. “In the classifieds. Of the free newspaper?”

The shopkeeper looked her over carefully.

“I haven’t placed an ad in the free newspaper for years,” he said. “Print is dead. Why didn’t you use Google?”

She threw her hands up.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I feel like if no one reads those things they’ll all go out of business.”

The shopkeeper rubbed his goatee.

“I’m afraid we don’t offer Christmas gifts in exchange for hair anymore” he said. “This isn’t Dickensian England.”

“O. Henry was actually American,” Brenda said. “And that kind of story can still happen today. The levels of income inequality in this country are at 50-year highs.”

“Well then I suppose you are able to see why I, a humble shopkeeper, cannot accept payment in the form of your auburn locks,” the shopkeeper said.

Brenda got up to leave.

“I knew this was pointless,” she said. “It was obviously just a weird literary reference put in by the freak who lays out the classified page at the alt weekly.”

The man turned around and grabbed a plain wooden box from inside his display case.

“Shame,” he said. “I think I may have exactly what you’re looking for.”

Brenda turned back from the door.

“What’s that?” she asked. “A box that when I press a button ‘Someone I don’t know’ on the other side of the world will die. And if I press it, you’ll give me $100 , but then you’ll tell me the box will be passed on to ‘Someone I don’t know’? Do you also have a monkey’s paw?”

The man looked taken aback.

“No,” he said. “That’s barbaric. And wouldn’t I offer you more than $100 to do something that cruel?”

Brenda rubbed her forehead.

“Do you not understand what the economy is like right now?” she asked.

The man ignored her and opened the box. Inside was a gleaming gold chain, perfect for Tommy’s pocket watch.

“So this is a Gift of the Magi store,” she said, grabbing a handful of her hair. “Here. Please. Cut away. I wanted to get a pixie cut anyway.”

The man shut the box.

“As I told you, I will not accept payment in the form of your hair.”

“I have fingernails,” she said, holding up her chalk-stained teacher hands. “And blood.”

“That’s disgusting,” he said. “What kind of store do you think this is?”

“Well is there another box back there. And I can press a button on that box and someone will die and then you’ll give me the chain?”

The man again stared at her in disbelief.

“I already told you that’s completely absurd,” he said.

“Why would you show someone the exact product she wants when you know she has nothing to offer you?” she said. “That makes no narrative sense.”

“This isn’t about a narrative,” the man said. “It’s just business.”

“It’s not business,” she said. “It’s just being mean. Where did you even go to business school?”

“Oh, the school I went to closed down a very long time ago,” the man said.

“OK cool,” she said. “Well I went to Wesleyan. And now I’m a teacher. So I have a ton of debt. And that’s why I can’t afford to give you any actual money for the chain. So now I’m gonna go home and look at Pinterest and try to make my husband something for Christmas.”

The man got a glint in his eye. Brenda pretended not to notice.

“Perhaps you could offer me something more valuable,” the man said.

“I already offered my blood,” she said. “I’m not going to sleep with you to get my husband a Christmas present. I wanted O. Henry irony. Not ‘Indecent Proposal’ irony.”

The shopkeeper grinned.

“I was thinking, perhaps, your soul?”

Brenda looked at him. She was spiritual but not religious, so she did kind of believe in the soul. What she could not believe was that she hadn’t seen this offer coming.

“I pride myself on being pretty good at following narratives,” Brenda said. “I really should have seen this coming.”

The man looked at her.

“This is a very real offer,” he said. “I assure you there is nothing neat about this narrative. If you agree to give me your soul. I will give you the chain. But you will suffer a half life from now until your death, at which point you will be damned for all — ”

“I was literally willing to press a button to kill a stranger to get the chain,” she said, cutting him off. “Obviously I know I’m damned for all eternity. Frankly, I don’t think a woman can have a soul in this economy.”

The man nodded.

“Your husband means a lot to you,” he said.

“We’re poor but in love,” she said. “We’re all we got.”

The man pulled out a long piece of parchment paper.

“Sign here,” he said.

“Oh nice touch,” she said. “I thought you’d do like an incantation or something. Contract though. Very official. Parchment. Nice touch.” She signed her name in big loopy letters “So are you, like, actually Satan? Or just like a regular evil dude?”

The shopkeeper looked at her uneasily..

“You don’t seem to be taking this seriously enough,” he said.

She finished signing and stepped back. She had to admit, she felt a little emptier. She looked behind the counter at a small wooden box she hadn’t noticed before.

“What’s that,” she asked.

The shopkeeper sighed.

“It’s one of those boxes that you press a button and ‘Someone you don’t know’ will die.”

“I’ll press it for 100 dollars,” Brenda said.

The shopkeeper nodded.

Brenda knew she should have used the 100 dollars to pay the rent or buy something for Tommy or purchase supplies for her classroom, but something compelled her to treat herself. She went to a fancy salon uptown and cut her hair into a super short pixie cut.

She walked into their tiny apartment, eager to show Tommy what she’d done with her hair. She forgot all about the gold chain in her pocket.

Tommy started laughing when he saw her. He laughed so hard he started to cry. She couldn’t understand his emotion.

“Don’t you like my haircut?” she said, a little offended.

Tommy wiped away a tear and pulled out a little box from his pocket.

“I felt bad about thinking that literary reference you said yesterday was from The Rugrats,” he said. “So while I was driving around I listened to a free audiobook of the O. Henry story on YouTube. It moved me so much, I went right to a pawn shop to sell my grandpa’s pocket watch and buy you a set of ornamental combs. But now your hair is short. It’s just like the story. Did you sell your hair to buy me a chain for a pocket watch?”

He started laughing again and put his arms around her. She felt cold.

Brenda reached into her pocket and fiddled with the gold chain. She saw no reason to give it to him because she had no soul and thus could no longer understand irony.

“I just went to the salon,” she said. “I forgot to get you a present.”

“I love you anyway,” he said, hugging her tight. “You’re my soulmate.”

“Yeah,” she said, looking out the window. It was a perfect December evening. Snow was starting to fall. She saw nothing poetic about any of it.

The only rule of 13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days is that the story must be posted the same night I started writing it.

Previously on 13 Ghost Stories in 13 Days:

2020:
Day 13 A Very Kaboom Halloween
Day 12 Save the Cat
Day 11 Vampire Weekend
Day 10 What We Drink at Brunch Besides Mimosas
Day 9 Lightbulb Moments
Day 8 Gift of the Magi 2
Day 7 The Hook
Day 6 Die School Musical
Day 5 The Viscount’s Supporter
Day 4 Eternal Necromancer
Day 3 Right Now
Day 2 Good Bones
Day 1 The Girl with the Green Mask

2016:
Day 1 The Ghost’s Girlfriend
Day 2 The Girl with the Puka Shell Necklace
Day 3 The Time I Went to the Old Church Later Than I Should Have
Day 4 Ride Scare
Day 5 Miranda, Who Appears as a Portent of Death
Day 6 A Halloween Carol
Day 7 El Mariachi de los Muertos
Day 8 Death on Demand
Day 9 The Ballad of the Cursed Mudville Maroons
Day 10 Officer Mac’s Last Day
Day 11 Chad vs. The Genie
Day 12 Luigi’s Coins
Day 13 Somewhere Beyond the C