Chains (The Untold Christmas Carol)

"Decades went by and although our sexual trysts continued, the time we spent together became more and more empty. I tried to talk to her but she never let down her guard. I could use her body but that was all. She would never again open up to me. As I aged, my longing for physical pleasure waned and it was for laughter and friendship that I yearned. What was done was done however and I tried to satisfy myself with being her lover. I also fooled myself into believing she must care for me. After so many years of giving each other pleasure, I told myself, how could she still hate me?

"I understand now that if anything, her hatred for me grew. I found just how much when finally, as an old man, I lay on my deathbed alone in an empty house. My last threads of life expired and I tried to get up. I couldn't. I was paralyzed.

"Estella walked up to me and she spoke. 'Now you are the one who is powerless.' She held her arms out and chains grew out of the ground like weeds. They slid around my body, embracing me. I begged her to stop. She said nothing. Once my body was enveloped in these chains she left.

"I screamed for help and struggled against the chains but nothing worked. I knew nothing about the afterlife and what methods she had used to imprison me. All I knew was the feel of the chains boring into my flesh. Estella was revenged.

"The time I have spent in chains is slow time. It has felt like an eternity. I imagine it has been many years but who can say for certain. Estella never came to visit me. Not even to gloat. All I have had to keep me company is silence and memory. It has been torture but in the end, it is those very memories that save me."

"What do you mean?" Charles queried.

"One day, amid my endless sequence of tormented days, I was remembering the first night when I stood naked in the pentagram and summoned Estella. Suddenly I was there. I was still bound in chains, but I was lying a few paces behind my naked younger self. The vision lasted a few seconds and then disappeared. I was once more in limbo. I quickly figured it out what had happened. I had traveled in time. Estella had told me many times about her journeys through time. Somehow, I had gone backwards.

"I could not repeat the feat at first but time was something I had in abundance. I tried myriad different approaches until eventually I succeeded. Through experimentation I began to understand the limits of my time travel. Estella had mentioned going back as far back as Ancient Rome. I still have no idea how she did that. I have only learnt to travel back to moments of my own life. Still, I realized that might be enough to save me. I have practiced and honed my ability to travel to the point that I can now pinpoint any moment in my life. That's how I came here, to the beginning. To the night I met Estella for the first time. I picked the perfect moment. Around half an hour before Estella found me crying in my room I had heard rats running around the basement and went to investigate."

Charles gasped in disbelief. "But that would mean..."

The ghost nodded. "I am you and you are me."

"But...?"

"This future does not have to be Charles. Your flesh does not ever have to feel the bite of these chains. Do not try to kiss Estella Charles. Find someone else to love. And do not learn to use the arcane arts from Fagin. Start this Christmas night and set things right. Do not let this future come into being."

The ghost began to fade.

"Don't go," Charles said.

"I'm not disappearing because I want to. I think that now that I have told you what will happen you have decided not to make the mistakes I made. The future is changing even as I speak. I am disappearing because I no longer..."

The ghost was gone. Charles was alone in the dark basement. He stayed there for a long time and then eventually he went back to his room and he waited Estella.

It will be different this time. He told himself. We will just be friends as we always should have been. We will laugh and play and that sick reality will never come to pass. I will make up for the things that other me did. I vow it.

Charles waited but Estella did not come.

Why? Charles wondered at first but then he figured it out. Estella never came to comfort him because when he came up from the basement, he had not been crying. The opportunity was lost. They would never meet.

The next Christmas morning the Charles who woke up was a changed man. All who spoke to him said he seemed older and wiser than he had seemed before. The fingerprints of selfishness he had once borne were gone. He was in all ways a diligently considerate and compassionate man.

He continued to see ghosts for the rest of his life and he conversed with a many of them over the years. This time, he did not learn the incantations to compel and control ghosts. Instead of a sorcerer, he became a listener to the lives and woes of the dead. Some of their tales he wrote down, others he melded with imaginings of his own and fashioned new tales.

Charles quickly gained a reputation as a master storyteller and his fictions made him famous across England. He married as well and he made more friends than any man needed. The old man Charles became was happy and truly blessed.

Part of him always wondered though. About Estella. He still remembered her face and he still remembered how it had felt to make love to her. Part of him always wished he would wake up one morning and find her, dressed as always in her wedding dress, waiting at the edge of his bed. He thought about her often and sometimes he pretended. He pretended he had never met his ghost. He pretended he had cried that night and she had comforted him. He pretended she loved him as he loved her.

THE END