Night Off
The fat man turned to his wife and hocked up a gob of phlegm.
“No ho ho,” he said.
“You’re staying home tonight,” said the fat man’s wife. “I’m not letting you go out like this. Face it, you’re sick.”
The fat man groaned. When he coughed, his belly shook like a bowlful of jelly.
“We’re going to have to find someone to fill in for you,” she said.
“Whoa ho ho,” said the fat man, waving his fat hands in the air.
“Yes,” she said, “and it’ll have to be quick. Midnight’s only two hours away.”
The fat man coughed again and rolled over onto his side. He wheezed and his lungs rattled. A few thousand years of being overweight had caused innumerable cardiac and respiratory problems, but the job demanded it.
“Who can you think of to cover you?”
The fat man pondered for a moment, then said, “Lo ho ho?”
His wife frowned. “Now surely you can think harder than that. You know Loki would just cause a mess, and probably light some children on fire. Who else?”
“Pro ho ho?”
“No, Prometheus is on holiday, touring the Greek isles. Next.”
The fat man’s eyes abruptly lit up, and as he smiled, his wife could see the remains of a bag of Cheetos in his teeth and beard.
“Bo ho ho,” he said.
The fat man’s wife straightened up and adjusted her spectacles. “Do you think he’d do it?”
The fat man nodded enthusiastically. “Go ho ho.”
His wife rushed from the room and into the voluminous kitchen. She picked up the telephone and made several complicated signs in the air. The connection rang seven hundred thirty-seven times before a tingly feeling traveled from her ear to her toes. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, completely serene.
“YES?” boomed a voice from the other end, so low that the floor vibrated under her feet.
When she was able to regain her breath, she said, “Nick needs a favor.”
Little Richie Spencer waited in his bed with his eyes closed, listening intently for the sounds of sleigh bells and reindeer on his roof. He had been lying there for three hours already, and was finding it increasingly difficult to stay awake. He sang camp songs loudly in his head, had imaginary arguments with his big brother, replayed his last Little League game. Luckily before he drifted off, his ears popped from a soft implosion of air near the foot of his bed, and he opened his eyes.
Floating two feet above his sheets in the lotus position was the Buddha, highest of all the bodhisattva. Richie recognized him from the small shrine at his friend Ravi’s house, and squeaked in surprise.
“Hello,” said the Buddha.
“Hello,” said Richie, “you’re not the fat man I was expecting.”
“I know,” said the Buddha. “Saint Nicholas has fallen ill tonight. I am filling in.”
Richie sat up and stared at the Buddha’s smiling face. “So, did you bring me presents?”
“No. Something better.” The Buddha leaned down and touched Richie lightly on the forehead with the tip of his finger. Richie stiffened, then instantly relaxed. He forgot about his conflicts with his older brother. His poor batting record no longer mattered. His need for material possessions bled away into vapor. A smile as grand and beatific as the Buddha’s grew on his face as Little Richie Spencer achieved enlightenment.
All over the world, children awoke to the Buddha’s touch. When they went downstairs in the morning, they politely refused their Christmas presents, announcing that they would be donating all their toys to charity. Those children’s parents were forced to return the gifts, creating in one day the worst holiday sales season in history. Stores went bankrupt, but the owners didn’t seem to mind.
Enlightenment spread quickly from the children to the adults, like the most communicable virus. As the need for a consumer-based economy plummeted, governments from democracies to imperialist dictatorships fell. Each person contributed to society enough to gain the basic needs of food, clothing, and shelter, and spent the rest of their time meditating. A new world was born.
“Nicholas!” called the fat man’s wife. “Where are you?” She had been looking for him for nearly an hour, astonished he had managed to get off the couch. She found him in the attic, swinging from a noose, his face bloated and purple. She put her hands on her hips and exhaled loudly.
“You come down from there right now,” she said. “This can’t be helping your cold.”
The fat man opened his eyes and looked at his wife. His vitreous capillaries had burst, replacing the white in his eyes with red.
“Why did you even bother with this?” asked his wife. “You know you can’t die.”
The fat man burst into tears. “Woe ho ho.”
His wife looked him up and down and said, “Well, now that you’re out of a job, I can finally put you on that diet.”
The rope around his neck creaked softly.
“Shit,” he said.
“Night Off” was originally published in Four Seasons in One Day, a chapbook (with Janet J. E. Chui) of fiction, artwork and poetry which was launched at the 2003 World Fantasy Convention in Washington D.C. by Two Cranes Press.
Jason Erik Lundberg is a graduate of the 2002 Clarion Writers’ Workshop, and is currently working on a novel. His fiction has appeared in Electric Velocipede, Intracities, and Zoran Živković’s Serbian sf magazine Polaris.
Copyright © 2003 by Jason Erik Lundberg.
