Boughs of Holly
She hovered over the deep green leaves before deftly pricking her finger on a spiked edge. Turning it over, she found only emptiness where blood once welled. Sighing, she lifted the heavy sack and continued her ordeal. She had known, before, why the leaves were so important, what the lack of blood meant. But the repetitions of menial labor--lifting, carrying, climbing, driving, lifting again--had worn her mind smooth, and the memories, unable to catch on anything, slipped away into the darkness.
She knew it had something to do with this body, this cursed, round, hairy body. Male, obscenely. White with years she didn't remember. Heavy with food she never tasted. Others ate the cookies, of course. They weren't part of her punishment. She knew the body was, vaguely. Something about her vanity, her rapacity. She felt flickers of her old self in the deep green of the holly: reverberations of the color in fabrics, echoes of the word through extravagant halls. She could only ever catch the first, tantalizing, syllable: "Ho-," she sometimes said aloud, as the remainder of her name caught on her lips.
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The more she grasped at the memories, the more quickly they fled. It was her penance. She could no longer feel the soft caress of luxuries, only their weight as she carried them for others. Never-ending toil, hauling gifts to house after house after house, year after year after year. She trudged back to the sleigh slowly, shivering in the cold of hell.
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, December 24th, 2020
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Boughs of Holly by
Jenna Hanchey.
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