A Christmas Time Travel Story (Short Fiction)

The screeches of young children reverberated through the corridors of the mall like gulls caught in a wind tunnel. Stacey closed her eyes and rubbed her temples, trying in vain to make the migraine stop. The echoes and banshee-esque shrieks from the hallways never seemed to end and often over powered the terrible Christmas muzak that would play in her store. It was only the first of December, but the Christmas music had already been playing for the last thirty days. Is this what hell sounds like, she would often ponder to herself during the more depressing moments of her retail job.

Stacey was absolutely exhausted. It wasn’t a typical tired feeling; this was the type of exhausted that only happens after a decade of late nights and depression. She had tried it all: black out curtains, not looking at her phone before bed, using special light bulb, melatonin supplements, and even a bougie magnesium oil spray from a celebrity lifestyle store. Stacey’s brain felt like an old sponge, repeatedly rung out and dried up until little specks of foam were beginning to fleck off onto the kitchen counter. She had always dreamed of ending up rich, famous, or both. Why did so many women on Instagram seem to have the perfect life, but not her? She deserved to be happy as much as they did. It was untenable that she was a thirty-something working retail. After all, she was attractive enough and spent countless hours trying to manifest her best life. Yet, where were the party invitations? Where were the job offers? Sometimes she worried if the universe wasn’t going to make her a hashtag boss babe, then she’d always be stuck with her boring life.

“Are you okay?” her manager asked, startling Stacey from her existential thought spiral.

“Sorry, I…” Stacey trailed off, “ — haven’t been sleeping.”

“Whatever is going on with you, I need you to snap out of it soon. You know we’re short staffed and next week things should really pick up for the holidays.” Stacey nodded once to appease the store’s manager, who quickly returned to the store’s back office, presumably to continue watching Stacey on the security cameras. After several years of working here, Stacey knew that the store probably wouldn’t see more than a few extra customers next week; now that natural beauty products were trendy, hardly anyone was buying this store’s artificially scented garbage for their loved ones.

Stacey worked in an overpriced cosmetics store in the mall. One of those stores that you can smell before you see. Usually, Stacey would blame the fake essential oils for causing her headaches, but the ones she had been experiencing recently were different. Ever since Sarah had died two months prior, Stacey had felt even more stressed. Sarah was Stacey’s best friend, or former best friend, rather. They were inseparable through out high school — Stacey was the Ashley to Sarah’s Mary Kate, the Dion to her Cher… All self-deprecating jokes about being second fiddle that Stacey found oddly hilarious to make. Stacey would wonder aloud in therapy sessions if her friendship with Sarah could fall apart so easily, that perhaps she was simply destined to be alone. Her self-pitying attitude actually annoyed two therapists enough to fire Stacey as a client, which she then proceeded to joke about to anyone who would listen. Usually, she forced the comments on unwitting customers whose expressions would change when Stacey answered their niceties honestly “Why ask how I’m doing if they don’t really want to know?” She would often rationalize to herself.

Sarah’s death happened so suddenly — a car wreck, according to Facebook — that since the event, Stacey had been stuck in a loop of sorts. She didn’t exactly miss her friend though as Stacey had already mourned the loss of Sarah as a part of her therapy several years prior. Her second therapist even had Stacey stage a mock vigil while she was instructed to light a candle to let go of the past. The ritual would have been all sorts of creepy if the then-very-much-alive Sarah had known about it.

Despite that, Stacey had always held out hope that one day things might change, that somehow, they would reconnect. But now that she was dead, that would be impossible. “As impossible as it was before, since time travel doesn’t exist anyway,” her third therapist had told her a week prior, an in attempt to abate another batch of Stacey’s self-pitying thoughts. The therapist also suggested Stacey find another job. One with less time to think. Maybe manual labour, or something with puppies, but that was neither here nor there. She was far too stressed out to make a change like that, but was considering trying a fourth therapist. Stacey tried explain that the thing that was haunting her wasn’t actually Sarah’s death, but how suddenly life could end for anyone at any minute.

Stacey saw herself as a rational person and could accept death. It was the circle of life. It happens. The universe was never wrong! But it wasn’t supposed to happen like that, out of no where. It was supposed to happen in old age, or after a bout of cancer. People weren’t supposed to just, die without a reason though. The thought of sudden death without having ever gone on a proper vacation disturbed Stacey in a way that she wasn’t prepared to deal with in her thirties. What if she died as a retail employee who hadn’t yet made her mark on the world? She knew she had influencer potential, and felt sick at the thought of life ending before all of her plans worked out.

“Hey, are you okay?” a woman gently asked Stacey, who had apparently spaced out again.

“Oh! I am so sorry!” Stacey hastily apologized as she rang up the customers special Christmas scented metallic tubes of hand cream. According to this store’s scent designers, Christmas smelt of chestnuts, cinnamon, and vanilla, with hints of the medication sitting in the back of your grandmother’s medicine cabinet.

“I’m sorry, I um… I lost someone. A friend. And my mind has been all over the place.” There she went, verbally purging all of her emotions on to another customer. Sometimes Stacey even annoyed herself. Shockingly though, this customer didn’t grimace like the others. In fact, this customer’s face softened as she listened. Stacey wondered if perhaps this person would be her friend. God, she really was pathetic sometimes.

“I am so sorry. I lost someone last year. Granted, they were much older than your friend must have been, but it doesn’t make it hurt any less,” the customer confessed before looking over her shoulder, to see if anyone else was listening. “Give this number a call. The owner helped me a lot when I was struggling. I think he’d be able to help you too,” she said while pulling a worn business card out of her small Chanel wallet and sliding it across the counter. The customer gradually began to look familiar. Was she a health influencer? Maybe someone from social media? With her perfect hair, perfect skin, and perfect clothes, Stacey couldn’t understand what she was doing buying this most likely toxic cream.

“Thank you,” Stacey said, as the customer-turned-possible-guardian-angel walked away.

The plain white card read:

Northern Pole Spa — A place for healing and introspection. The address was hand written on the back.

“L-O-L. I bet Gwyneth Paltrow is just trying to get you to join one of those multi level marking scams. They always prey on sad looking women,” the store manager piped up from the back office, clearly having eavesdropped on the entire conversation.

Stacey tucked the business card in the back pocket of her black work pants, and looked at the clock in the corner of the cash register. Thankfully her shift was nearly over, as her migraine was starting up again.

Northern Pole Spa was located in an unmarked office at the very backside of a row of nondescript beige industrial units. As someone who consumed a lot of media, Stacey was genuinely surprised by how cliché the location was. It was as if she was on set of a Netflix show about human trafficking. Because Stacey, like far too many women her age, had a predilection for true crime, she decided to text her location to a friend. Her finger hovered above the name of an old contact that she couldn’t bring herself to delete: Sarah. No. She couldn’t text Sarah, her now-deceased friend that she hadn’t actually spoken to in years. What if the phone number was now assigned to someone else? Stacey would have to have that entire “oops wrong number” conversation and she just didn’t have the energy for that. She stopped for a moment and realized for the first time that all of the contacts in her phone were either business numbers or acquaintances and that none of them would care if she actually did go missing. Stacey added that depressing epiphany to her mental list of things to bring up to her next therapy session, placed her keys between her fingers like a Wolverine claw, and marched on ahead. Safety first, Stacey thought to herself while accepting the irony that the safest thing to do would be to not approach the questionable building in the first place.

She cornered the building where she was confronted with a chain linked fence. She flipped over the cold latch metal latch, her warm fingers sticking slightly to the frozen metal, and made her way to the spa. The door was imposing; solid steel, with a peep hole in it. That seems redundant, Stacey thought, as she noticed she was also being watched on at least two separate cameras.

“Who referred you?” a slightly nasally voice asked from over the intercom.

Stacey paused. Shit. She didn’t get the woman’s name. She paused for a moment.

“Who referred you?” the voice repeated, now annoyed.

“Uh, Gwyneth?” Stacey said.

There was a buzz, and the metal door creaked open.

Wait. That was really Gwyneth Paltrow? And also, did she just expect me to know who she was? A million questions flooded through Stacey’s mind as she entered the spa. She wasn’t sure if she should be fan-girling, terrified, excited, or all of the above.

The interior of Northern Pole Spa was certainly not reflective of its exterior appearance. The large white lobby was filled with relaxing music and what appeared to be gentle rays of sun light. Since the spa did not seem to have any windows though, Stacey realized that the sun was probably actually an LED. Either way, if the lobby was this beautiful, she could only imagine what the rest of the facility was like. A lone poinsettia sat on the front desk. As an exhausted retail worker, Stacey appreciated that this place hadn’t gone overboard with Christmas decorations.

“And you are?” the same nasally voice from earlier asked. It belonged to the receptionist, a woman roughly twice Stacey’s age and half of Stacey’s height, who was clearly fighting a cold and perhaps not annoyed with Stacey after all.

“Hi, yes… I’m Stacey — ” she paused for a moment to take in how exciting it felt to casually name drop an A Lister, “ — Gwyneth Paltrow sent me?” Stacey slid the card across the desk to the small-statured receptionist.

“Sign this,” the receptionist said while pivoting on her boosted office chair and sliding an iPad towards Stacey, which she signed unquestioningly. “Doctor Kringle will see you in the back,” she said while gesturing towards a door in the back corner of the waiting room.

Stacey paused for a moment.

“It’s allergies, okay? They’re from this stupid plant,” the receptionist snarked.

“I don’t care about that. I just… Don’t you need to know why I’m here? Like, what services I want or anything?” Stacey asked while internally pondering if the politically correct term for the receptionist was dwarf or little person. However, now clearly was not the time to ask.

“Everyone comes here because of one reason,” the receptionist said, while blowing her small nose in a tissue and proceeding to squeeze hand sanitizer into her left palm. She awkwardly gestured to the backroom while rubbing her child-sized hands together.

“First and foremost, I legally need to let you know that I’m not technically a doctor, so don’t sue. Ho ho ho…” a paunchy looking man said with a sing-songy chuckle while putting on a red lab coat. His name tag read: Doctor Kringle, accented by two stickers on each side: a reindeer and a piece of holy. Stacey couldn’t notice that the despite his aging body, the doctor still had a certain je ne sais quoi. His eyes had a unique twinkle to them, perhaps reflecting a childhood innocence of sorts. Or he was on cocaine. Stacey was a terrible judge of character. Regardless, the room was so cramped that Stacey had to maneuver around a coat wrack as she walked through the doorway. “Although you couldn’t sue anyway, since you already signed the waiver…” the doctor trailed off while reading something on a tablet.

This room was much smaller and much less impressive that the lobby of the spa. Not only was the claustrophobic room filled up by a large desk covered in many poinsettias, someone had managed to squeeze in a giant Christmas tree which was partially concealing a giant white tank in the corner of the room. Unlike the previous room’s clean white aesthetic, this room was clearly decorated by someone who loved the holiday season. Thick multicoloured strands of Christmas lights were hung around each corner of the room, and pieces of garland were wrapped around the legs of the desk.

“You did sign it, right? Ah yes. Here it is. It’s nice to meet you… Stacey…” he said while briefly adopting a more professional demeanor. “Now, what you’re about to embark on is… Experimental in nature. I mean, it works. I promise. But it’s not government approved or anything,” Doctor Kringle prattled on, waving his fingers around sarcastically at the words “government approved.”

“But you don’t even know why I’m here?” Stacey pressed, trying her best to remain polite.

“Of course I do,” Doctor Kringle retorted matter-of-factually. “You’re here to experience the Christmas miracle of time travel.”

Stacey wasn’t sure how to respond to this.

“That is why you’re here, isn’t it? Didn’t my assistant out front go over any of this with you?” Doctor Kringle asked. Just then, she sniffled and realized how congested she had become since entering the spa; it was as if she was allergic to Christmas.

“Ah, yes, my assistant Melinda has that problem too,” Doctor Kringle said, while retrieving a tissue out of his lab coat pocket and offering it to Stacey. “But you can’t have Christmas without poinsettias, can you?” he said while gesturing towards the rows of potted plants. “I was planning on putting these out around the lobby, but Melinda said no, so well, now I don’t know what to do with them…”

Stacey put two and two together and realized that she was currently in the back room of a sketchy building, in a questionable spa run by some potbellied weirdo who was going to help her time travel. It was a lot to take in. “But,” she thought to herself, “If Gwyneth Paltrow recommends it, I’d be stupid to pass it up.”

“You’re not much of a conversationalist, are you?” Doctor Kringle asked with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m just really tired,” Stacey conceded.

“It’s okay, we’ve started pumping the tanks with peppermint oil. That’ll wake you up,” the faux doctor said, while gesturing Stacey to a previously unnoticed change room off to the side of the small room. “You can get changed in there. Once you’re ready, eat the tablet that will be sitting on the table next to the tank — I’ll leave some complimentary cookies out too in case you’re hungry — then climb on in and close the lid.”

“Wait,” Stacey interjected with a burst of concern induced confidence, “What is in the tablet? Why am I getting in a tank? Where am I time traveling to?”

“Didn’t Melinda go over any of this with you?”

“No.”

“Ba humbug. I knew she was still mad after our fight about the decorations — which she WON I might add — but this is ridiculous,” Mister Kringle trailed off (Stacey no longer felt comfortable mentally calling him a doctor). He took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s a simple rundown of what’s going to happen.” He cleared his throat. “You’ll swallow one of our special patented time travel pills — ”

Stacey didn’t like how he used air quotes around “special,” “patented,” and “time travel.”

“Don’t worry, the pill is gluten free. I know how you people can be.” Stacey raised her eyebrow, while Mister Kringle continued to ramble on: “After that, you’ll hop in that nice sensory deprivation tank in the corner, and then it’s jingle all the way! You should be aware though that we can’t control where you’ll travel to, only you can do that. Usually, people will travel to periods that they associate with strong emotions. Often it will be a period of regret. So, try your best to think positive thoughts. You’ll only be there for a few hours though so if you get stuck some place horrifying, just hang on and it’ll eventually pass. That rarely ever happens though.”

“Makes sense…” Stacey said while nodding, even though it made zero sense. However, as she didn’t actually know anything about time travel, she figured it was best to trust this man, no matter how sketchy the situation seemed. Afterall, she was already there.

“Just remember, you can’t change anything,” Mister Kringle said while turning to leave the room.

“Got it,” Stacey confirmed. Not changing anything was the one thing she did understand about time travel; you never want to disrupt the timeline or like, Hitler could come back as a baby or something.

As Mister Kringle exited the room, Stacey swore he pulled something out of his coat pocket and put it to his mouth. It was either a candy cane or a vape pen, neither of which seemed reassuring. Doing as she was instructed, Stacey went into the small curtained off change room, undressed, and stepped back out into the room. As promised, a small pill and two sugar cookies were waiting for her next to the sensory deprivation tank. She picked up the pill, which had a surprisingly delightful cinnamon taste, and held it in her mouth as she walked over to the large white tank. She placed her hands on the tank and prepared to lift up the lid, when she noticed that Christmas music was being played through speakers in the tank. Already undressed and committed to this experience though, Stacey did her best to tune out the music as she submerged her legs in the warm water, carefully laid down, and swallowed the rest of cinnamon flavoured pill. Just as she began to wonder if how she was actually supposed to time travel — was there a button she was supposed to push? — Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas began to play and Stacey was sucked into a vortex.

“Hey Stacey, have you seen my hair straightener?” a familiar voice beckoned from the other side of Stacey’s bedroom door. Stacey froze, unable to answer. One second she was laying in the sensory deprivation tank at the Northern Pole Spa the next she was… In her old dorm room? Holy crap, it worked.

She frantically reached down for her phone to check the date and time and pulled out an old — new — flip phone. Oh my old Nokia, how I missed you, Stacey thought to herself while also wondering if it would be possible to bring the phone back with her when the time travel ended. No, that would be ridiculous. Suddenly, it was as if Stacey’s very existence glitched; her vision faded in and out, and she suddenly felt winded as if she was having a panic attack. It had been nearly a decade since her last one of those though, so Stacey rationalized that it was clearly an effect of the time travel. Recalling her earlier conversation with Mister Kringle, she remembered she would only have a few hours in this timeline so she needed to act fast to make amends or whatever it was that she was sent here to do. She also remembered Mister Kringle’s other instructions about not being able to change anything. Suddenly, Stacey found herself frozen with choice paralysis; it was like the panic of trying to find an outfit in the morning, only much worse. Was she here to make amends? Or just relive the day as it had already happened? Since that existential glitch seemed to happen when Stacey had briefly considered bringing her Nokia back to the future with her, she figured it would be best to play it safe and live out the day exactly as she had over ten years before. But what day was it?

“Are you even listening? I asked you, have you seen my hair straightener?” the voice called out once more, this time with a hint of annoyance.

“It’s uh — ” Stacey quickly scanned her surroundings and re-familiarized herself with her dorm room. The furniture was sparse but every free inch of the room was filled with wrinkled clothes, Red Bull cans, and text books, with the occasional cheap Forever 21 party dress sprinkled around. With a zebra print comforted strewn across the tiny dorm bed and My Chemical Romance posters tapped to the walls, Stacey’s dorm room reeked of the 2000s. Her eyes landed on her sticker covered desk, which was luckily home to both the missing hair straightener and a desk calendar. Apparently, Stacey was going to a Christmas party tonight.

“Right here!” She said while picking the straightening iron up. Stacey caught her reflection in the illuminated make-up mirror that was in the center of her desk. In that moment she realized the truth about not knowing what we have until it’s gone. Her skin was perfect. Her hair had a youthful bounce. But at the time, she thought she was hideous. Stacey let out a sigh with the realization that the perspective that came with age could be oddly cruel. She had also noticed that, for the first time in months, her migraine had stopped.

“Thanks,” the familiar voice replied while taking the hair iron from Stacey’s hand. It was then that Stacey finally realized the voice belonged to Sarah. Not the recently deceased and long incommunicado friend Sarah from Stacey’s timeline, but the very much still alive B.F.F Sarah from whatever year it was now. Stacey stared at her friend in amazement. It really was a Christmas miracle.

“Uh, hun, are you okay?” Sarah asked, made uncomfortable by Stacey’s staring.

“What? Oh! No, sorry. I just, I’ve had a lot on my mind lately,” Stacey retorted, anxious about replying in a way that would upset the timeline. She had no idea how precise she needed to be with her words and actions. Time travel was such a bizarre experience; having her current, or rather, future experiences and knowledge but being back in a freshman’s body was like being an alien in someone else’s skin and trying to act normal. An alien with perfect skin. Sigh.

After several outfit changes and several shots of that terrible liquor with the gold flecks in it, Stacey and Sarah hobbled out of their dormitory and to the Christmas party at, well, the neighbouring dormitory. The building was probably only one hundred feet away but it might as well have been one hundred miles and the two young women awkwardly teetered across the icy sideways in their too tall shoes and too short outfits. Holy crap it’s freezing, Stacey thought as she clung to Sarah’s bony arm for balance. The thirty-something brain in Stacey’s eighteen-year-old body wanted to suggest that they both dress warmer, or at the very least wear tights under their fast-fashion skirts, but alas if she did that, she would just disrupt the timeline. She also wanted to suggest drinking something other than shots of Goldschläger but again… the timeline… Stacey figured she might as well do her best to lean in and embrace her sloppy teenaged past. Distracted again by both metaphorical and literal naval gazing — Why did I ever let Sarah convince me to wear this? — Stacey fell head over four inch heals on to the icy sidewalk.

As Sarah helped Stacey up and both of their thin cold hands with self-done manicures met, Stacey realized just how young eighteen really was. Unscarred, unwrinkled, unweathered by the realities that another decade will bring, their hands were both so youthful. In that moment, it really hit Stacey how much she missed her old life and how she wished she could have a true second chance. She knew if she could have just been more likeable, her entire life would be somehow different. Maybe she wouldn’t be so alone as an adult.

“Hey, are you guys okay?!” a panicked and slightly tipsy sounding male voice called out from the distance.

“Yeah babe, we’re fine. Stacey just bit it,” Sarah said while letting go of Stacey’s hand and leaning towards the young man for a kiss. Stacey couldn’t help but notice that Sarah was oddly dismissive of her. Had she always been that way? The young man was Jacob, Sarah’s high school sweetheart who applied to the same university just so they could be together. It was a classic love story. Stacey thought it was a bit intense for him to do that. Sarah reminded Stacey that she also applied to the same university as her but Stacey rationalized that it was different for friends. Besides, boyfriends never stuck around like friends did, Stacey remembered saying at one particularly awkward outing which resulted in Sarah dodging her for the rest of the night.

It was then that Stacey realized why she was sent to this timeline. It took her a while to make the connection between Doctor Kringle’s statement about time travel being connected to strong emotions and regret, but then Stacey figured it all out: this was the night that she would try to sleep with her best friend’s boyfriend. Try being emphasized because she failed miserably. Somehow that had always felt even more pathetic to Stacey than if she had succeeded. Her first therapist had suggested that this was merely a drunken faux pas and not nearly as important to the dissolution of Stacey’s friendship with Sarah as she had convinced herself it was, but Stacey was convinced otherwise.

As an eighteen-year-old, she felt so jealous of Sarah, of her looks, of charisma, just, of her. She thought that by hooking up with Sarah’s boyfriend that it was a way to be more like her. To be more like anyone other than Stacey herself. It was never sexual; it was about her own inadequacy; Stacey could thank her second therapist for that revelation. A sense of dread washed over Stacey as she knew that once again, she was going to need to hurt her friend, irreparably harm their relationship, and once again put herself on her path towards a friendless-future. “Hey, do you have anymore of that gold shit?” Stacey asked, while the three of them made their way into the Jacob’s dormitory.

The Christmas party took over an entire floor of the dormitory. The kitchen, living room, and somehow even the bathrooms, had all been overtaken by groups of awkward college freshmen all eager to get into the holiday spirit or each others clothes. The party had split off into various groups pretty early on in the evening: there were the true partiers, challenging each other to beer pong on the wobbly kitchen table; the philosophical types having intense conversations about Nietzsche and Marx; several couples occupying various corners who the other groups did their best to ignore; and then, the randoms, which included Stacey, Sarah, Jacob, and several others, who had migrated into the kitchen to bake some terrible frozen pizzas. A couple of bottles in to whatever they were all drinking though, no one seemed to care how bad the pizzas tasted. And not a single person asked about food sensitivities. Run DMC’s Christmas In Hollis was blasting from the CD player on the kitchen counter, and all was right in the world. As Stacey tried her best to take in the scene, she couldn’t help but notice that each time she approached Sarah, eager for a conversation — any conversation — that Sarah drifted to another part of the room.

“This all feels so real,” Stacey slurred to no one in particular while eating a piece of pepperoni flavoured cardboard.

“What are you going on about?” Jacob asked from behind the kitchen counter where he was pouring a bag of chips into a bowl.

“She’s fine Jacob, she just went a little overboard on our walk here,” Sarah piped up from the other side of the room.

“Hey, do you want some water?” a noticeably attractive young man in an ironic Christmas sweater asked while approaching Stacey with a sealed bottle from the fridge. He was Stacey’s exact type: tall, athletic, and clearly had a great sense of humour since his sweater read “This is my ugly Christmas sweater.” It was if she had dreamed him up.

In another reality, Stacey would have accepted the guy’s bottle of water and probably flirted with him for the rest of the party. But alas, she was determined not to change a thing. What if she messed something up and her current life had turned out differently? It was too big of a risk to take. “No, no, I mustn’t disrupt the timeline…” Stacey mumbled as she decided to check out the beer pong competition that was happening across the room. If she recalled correctly, she needed to play and lose three rounds of the game.

After losing so badly in beer pong that the other players joked about her trying to fail, Stacey sat down on the old dirty dorm couch, trying her best to recall how the night had originally gone the first time. What was supposed to happen next? Being close to blacking out, it wasn’t easy to remember what had happened yesterday, let alone ten years ago, which was now, or was it… It was all so confusing. “Are you okay?” a recognizable voice asked.

“I’m as good as I’ve ever been,” Stacey mumbled, turning towards the owner of the voice. It was the guy in the Christmas sweater that had offered her water earlier.

“Well, uh, that’s a relief,” Christmas Sweater responded.

“Did we talk the first time around?” Stacey asked.

“Did we… what?” Christmas Sweater asked, confused.

“Sorry, uh. Have we met?” she clarified.

“We are in Psych 100 together, but we haven’t actually met yet. I’m Ryan,” Christmas Sweater said while awkwardly extending his arm for a handshake. “You’re Stacey, right?”

“I’m going to keep referring to you Christmas Sweater, if that’s okay,” Stacey said while scanning the room, realizing it was about time for her to repeat her horrible mistake.

“Uh, okay?” Christmas Sweater said, slightly hurt. “I’m sorry, I thought, since you were sitting alone, and… I don’t know. My friends ditched me earlier so I was just looking for someone to chill with. You seem really funny and I’d like to know you better.”

“I’m sorry, Christmas Sweater. In another timeline, I’d be all about that,” Stacey said awkwardly, while gesturing at his face and torso. “There are things I need to do though.”

Christmas Sweater remained on the couch, puzzled, as Stacey stood up and wobbled towards Jacob. “This part is going to suck…” she thought to herself while bracing herself for the inevitable impact.

Jacob placed his hands on his hips as he stood proudly in front of the large tray of unholy coloured neon shots of liquor which had been stacked to look like a Christmas tree. It took him approximately an hour to build — granted, he wasn’t exactly sober while working on it — and involved about 50 plastic shot glasses. It was a true work of beauty. If this was a few years later, he certainly would have pulled out his phone and posted a picture online. It was during the 2000s though, which meant Jacob had to enjoy the current achievement for what it was without the ersatz-validation of virtual likes and thumbs up.

“She’s a real beauty,” one of his friends said while passing by, placing his hand on Jacob’s shoulder in a congratulatory manner.

“Thank you,” Jacob replied proudly. Jacob had a bit of an arm tremor. It was a genetic issue he had grown accustomed to though, so he was confident that, with care, he would be able to carry the tray of shot glasses across the room to where his friends were waiting. He gingerly placed his fingers under the brown plastic cafeteria tray and began to lift his creation up, as if it was baby Jesus himself. Once it was lifted up, Jacob found himself holding his breath, being as careful possible as to not knock over his magnificently trashy Christmas tree. “Careful…” he muttered under his breath.

“Oh wow! Look what Jacob made!” Beer pong players and philosophical conversationalists alike called out in awe of the shot glass Christmas tree.

“Must not… Disrupt… The timeline…” Stacey drunkenly muttered to herself as she attempted to time her steps so that the next event would play out exactly as it had in the original version of the past. “And, one… Two… Three — ” She braced herself for the splash, only this time, Jacob someone pivoted out of the way at the very last moment. The crowd of party-goers gasped and then cheered in unison.

“Oh my god, babe, that was so close!” Sarah called out, running over in an attempt to help Jacob lower the tray to the table. She was too late though, as Stacey, ever determined to not change the future, fell forward.

“Oh noOoOoOooo….” She sarcastically let out as she slowly fell onto the tower, spilling the drinks everywhere. It wasn’t so much a trip, as it was a flop. She tried her best to make it look accidental, but there was no way that it looked believable to anyone other that the drunkest of the partiers, which thankfully Sarah and Jacob were.

“My baby!” Jacob cried out in a shriek.

“Stacey, you clutz!” Sarah called out.

Stacey sat on the floor, drenched. It was then Stacey realized that her apparent best friend cared more about the spilled drinks than whether or not she was okay as she sat on her ass on the cold dorm kitchen floor. “I’m going to get cleaned up,” she mumbled to no one in particular as she kicked off her too tall heels and stood up barefoot. Looking around, she wondered if anyone at the party actually cared about her. “Hey Sarah, is the sweater you borrowed still in Jacob’s room?” she asked, simply going through the motions. Sarah didn’t answer. Stacey picked up her heals and stumbled down the hall to Jacob’s dorm where she knew she would find several of her outfits that Sarah had borrowed and forgotten about.

Dried off and now only moderately smelling of the sugary liquor that she had been soaked in, Stacey was feeling much more at ease in her hoodie and jeans which she had found at the bottom of Jacob’s closet. It was a good thing that Sarah had borrowed a comfortable outfit; there was no way Stacey would have been able to bring herself to put on another cheap polyester dress, timeline be damned. She paused for a moment, looking in the smudged body length mirror which hung crookedly over Jacob’s closet door. There was something about her face that she hadn’t noticed earlier; there was a certain sadness in her eyes. Previously blinded by her perfect complexion, she now wondered if she always looked this depressed when she was this age, or if it was only in this moment. If only she could have a true do-over… Then she would prioritize herself more. She would also definitely stop lending Sarah her clothes (at least her favourite pieces). And she’d certainly make better decisions. Just then, Jacob entered his dorm room also soaked in the remains of his Christmas tree tower and Stacey remembered the last part of this terrible night.

“Don’t mind me, I just need to change into something less… Schnappsy…” Jacob said while rooting around through a pile of clothes at the foot of his bed.

Ten-ish years ago, Stacey made the horrible mistake of drunkenly throwing herself at Jacob. She cringed, desperately not wanting to repeat that embarrassing mistake because of the timeline, blah blah blah. It’s not like my current life is so great though, maybe a change to the timeline could be a good thing? What if I changed just this one tiny thing?

“Jake… Could I ask you something?” Stacey said, sitting on his unmade bed. Why were everyone’s rooms always so messy?

“Uh, sure?” Jacob replied while fixing his hair in the mirror.

“What do you think of me?”

“Honestly, you’re hella lame,” Jacob replied nonchalantly.

Well, that was painful. Stacey wasn’t expecting such a blunt reply. “Why would you say that?” she asked, trying her best to remain straight-faced but failing miserably.

“I guess it’s because you’re just always sort of there. With Sarah. You know? Like. You never do your own thing. I guess I don’t really know who you are, as your own person,” Jacob responded.

“Good to know, good to know,” Stacey mumbled. “I guess I shouldn’t deviate too far from the timeline though — ”

“What?” Jacob interrupted, confused.

“Oh, uh. Nothing. Hey, want to make out?” Stacey asked in a haphazard attempt to salvage this timeline.

“You should leave…” Jacob trailed off, clearly extremely uncomfortable.

Hey, now things are back on track, Stacey thought to herself while leaving Jacob’s room. The walk back to her own dormitory was a bit of a haze, but once she was back in her own bed, underneath her tacky leopard print bedspread — Wait, wasn’t it zebra print before? — Stacey felt oddly at peace. Sure, she wished she could have made some changes, but it felt oddly freeing to know that everyone had been mean to her this entire time. She wasn’t a monster; she was the victim in all of this! It was such a relief. Just as Stacey started to drift off to sleep, she swore she could taste cinnamon and smell peppermint.

And then, as suddenly as she found herself in the early 2000s, Stacey was back in the sensory deprivation tank right as Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You faded into the next classic carol, Britney Spear’s My Only Wish This Year. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with that familiar peppermint scent. Rather than experiencing any sense of Christmas joy though, Stacey found herself at a loss. Time travel was meant to be fun but all she ended up doing was reliving old mistakes and realizing that her only friend never really liked her much.

She got dressed and returned to the lobby of the Northern Pole Spa, where Doctor Kringle was helping a festively dressed man, roughly the same height as the pint-sized receptionist, Melinda, load the spa’s vast collection of poinsettias into a large red station wagon. Just as Stacey approached, Doctor Kringle shook the short man’s hand while handing him keys to the red car and sent him on his way. Turning to Stacey, he eagerly asked with a wink “So, how was it? Did you have a holly jolly time?”

“What? No! Not at all! Why would you send me back in time and not let me change anything? I was just forced to relive my sad life all over again. I think I actually feel worse now,” Stacey blurted out, close to tears. It felt as if a vacuum had sucked all of the positive energy out of the room.

“Wait. Do you mean to say you went and relieved all of your past mistakes? You didn’t have any fun at all?” Mister Kringle responded as a somber look of realization erased his previously jolly expression. He gestured to Melinda to pass him the iPad with the contract which he began to skim over. “Could you please clarify what or who led you to believe that this was a real time travel experience?” Mister Kringle asked while adopting a more serious tone.

“Um, wasn’t it?” Stacey replied, increasingly angry.

“They never read the contracts…” Melinda spoke under her breath to Mister Kringle. “She signed it though, you’re in the clear.”

“Stacey. Please sit,” Mister Kringle said firmly while gesturing towards a while couch in the corner of the lobby. Stacey hesitated for a moment, before taking a seat. “As outlined clearly in the contract, what you experienced was a time travel simulation. You didn’t actually go back in time.”

“But I was there! I saw my old friends, my old room… I even played beer pong!”

“All thanks to the amazing tool known as your imagination, and this little guy here — ” Mister Kringle said while retrieving a small pill from the breast of his red coat, “Our special patented time travel pill.”

Stacey stared, incredulously. “I thought that it was like… I don’t know… To relax me or something?”

“Oh, no, no, no!” Mister Kringle chuckled. “This little guy here is pure LSD sourced straight from some friends of mine at the CIA, combined with a little of my own special Christmas magic.” He hunched towards Stacey and whispered, “His kids were on the naughty list, so I pulled some strings.”

“You drugged me?” Stacey stammered.

“It’s all in the damn contract!” Melinda replied exasperatedly from a few feet away.

“They why did you tell me I couldn’t change anything?!” Stacey replied as a hot wave of anger washed over her.

“When did I say that? Wait. As I left the room?” Kringle replied. “I didn’t mean that you can’t, as in shouldn’t. I meant that you literally can’t since the entire experience would be in your head. People love to ‘go back in time’ and live out the stupid experiences they always regret not doing. You mean to say, you thought you went back in time, and decided to played it straight?”

Stacey sat for a moment in silence before responding. “You mean, I could have imagined that I fixed everything? I, I — ” she stammered, “I could have even hooked up with that hot guy?”

Mister Kringle nodded, “You could have done anything you wanted, it was your fantasy.”

“Your generation is so boring. Jesus. I can’t believe Mrs. Kringle got this one wrong,” Melinda called out from behind the front desk. It looked as though she was organizing paperwork and beginning the end of day operations at the spa.

“Excuse me?” Stacey called out.

“Sorry, Gwyneth,” Melinda said with an eye roll.

Stacey turned to Mister Kringle, who inhaled deeply and let out a long sigh.

“To keep her true identity secret, my wife, Cathy Kringle, takes the form of one of your generations most influential women, Gwyneth Paltrow, in order to spread Christmas joy to women ages thirty to forty-five. Recently, the two of us have started a ‘pilot program’ where she seeks out adults who look like they need the most help getting into the Christmas spirit — usually retail workers — and gifts them with the magical experience of reliving their youth. No, it’s not real time travel — time travel isn’t possible, don’t be ridiculous — but Cathy, err, Gwyneth says that this is the ultimate form of self care. After all, what could be more cathartic than imagining you’re young again, hanging out with friends, and righting all of your wrongs… Or telling all of the naughty boys and girls to go to hell?” he said, clearly tired by the long explanation.

“I’m sorry, I, I didn’t know — ” Stacey tried desperately to apologise as she felt her migraine return.

“Well congratulations, you are the first person to squander their Christmas miracle. Cathy is going to be so hurt,” Mister Kringle said while standing up and beginning to lead Stacey to the door.

“Can I… Can I go again?” Stacey asked sheepishly as she was being escorted out of the spa.

“Can I… Can I go again?” Mister Kringle mocked. “I swear, your generation is so entitled. I don’t get why Cathy tries so hard to help you. I guess she’s just nicer than me. Anyway, merry Christmas or whatever,” Mister Kringle said as he closed the door to Northern Pole Spa in Stacey’s face. And with that, the spa vanished. Or it might as well have, since it was behind a nondescript door and all of the units looked the same.

Stacey felt her back pocket just to be sure her old Nokia hadn’t suddenly appeared; it had not. She was going to have so much to discuss at her next therapy session.

Author Bio:

Ashley Good is a writer and independent filmmaker from British Columbia. While most of her projects are comedic, she occasionally likes to exercise her darker writing muscles through irreverent and horror-adjacent short fiction and films. Ashley is also the director of the annual Foggy Isle Film Festival, based out of Victoria BC. To learn more about her work, visit ashleygood.ca.