Ashenoel
A Yuletide Tale
Hello there! I got a subscriber, which reminded me to post here—I apologize for abandoning this blog. I post more frequently now at Snide Hustler. I intend to keep this page for any sci-fi and fantasy writing I have.
This year, most of my time has been dedicated to a longer fiction manuscript at about 25,000 words. It’s slow going, but I hope to have it finished sometime in 2025 or 2026, and then I will try to get a literary agent.
Anywho, here is a quick flash fiction I wrote this afternoon. I’m going to try and get at least a few posts here in 2025. I was inspired by TiF’s Dark Tidings series here on Substack [check it out below] and A Los Campesinos’ Christmas being uploaded on Youtube. Here we go!
It was a warm Yuletide, one for the record books. The mid-40s Fahrenheit heat turned what should have been a New England white Christmas into a Christmas Eve torrential rain.
The deluge was welcome. The wildfires raging to the North had coated the entirety of town in a thick layer of ash, black underneath white. I trudged through the sludgy paste of acidic rain and ashfall, leaving a wake of swirling black-white-gray ankle-high sludge behind me. What was once white snow turned to grey. The LED lights festooned around houses and shops illuminated my way home.
The smoke had limited visibility to a few feet and plucked the start out of the sky. They were instead hung from rafters on high, indicating a residence here or a coffee shop there. Navigation of my small town had become an exercise in memory adorned in 80s sci-fi wireframe pastiche.
The months of seeming apocalypse hadn’t dampened spirits, however. Faced with oblivion, all you could either do was die or be reborn. Most people chose reborn. Carolers sang hymnals in the distance; I couldn’t see them, but I knew they had to be Church of the Flaming Star members. Obstensively an offshoot of Charismatic Protestantism, they had grown in popularity over the last few years, following in the wake of the worst natural disasters. Through communion with the angels, they preached salvation from drought, wildfire, and polio outbreaks and the divine knowledge to bring about a golden age from the ashes of disasters. They called it divine retribution and divine rebirth.
I figured that some of the disasters were started by their itinerant band of unvaccinated preachers with penchants to light their clothes on fire in rituals of public worship, but who was I to prevent forest fires…or rubella?
Speaking in tongues, flagellation, carving stars and flame icons into their flesh, running about preaching in torched clothes or nude, and intense prayer for salvation from the Lord of the Flaming Star were all par for the course. Some had even tried to graft vulture wings onto their bodies, with what seemed to be limited success. I never got close enough to get a good look.
Hell, I barely even left the house anymore. My birthday was two weeks ago and I hadn’t made it out for it.
I was only going across the village to get to my parent’s place. I had telegraphed to them I would make the journey. Mom wasn’t doing well; it was probably the last one. I missed regular cell service but didn’t miss being home often.
The few miles of buffer was enough space to keep peace between everyone and keep it apolitical. Janice and her kids moved in with mom and dad after Toronto got real bad, it was safer down here. It would be good to see them again. Keeping the power running down at the generators kept me busy nearly daily.
The streets began to narrow as I got closer to Mom and Dad’s; this let the Christmas lights illuminate more of the yards and road. Kids had made snowmen out of ash, giving them noses and hats with old winter clothes—no one was wearing winter coats and hats anymore anyway. I could almost swear the eyes of the ashen armies followed me as the distant forest flames shifted across the grayscale evening sky.
The English holly outside the Cape Cod house you grew up in was in full bloom, blossoms as white as a lily flower and berries as red as fresh-drawn blood. Organ music from the Church a block or two over was merry gospel music that echoed and reverbed across the hills around town. The smoke and high-pressure dome made the noise louder and mingled it with the choir from down the road. It seemed to harmonize more beautifully than I could expect.
I unlatched the gate to the back and walked down the alley; I could hear playing and scolding. Janice was correcting Hank, her younger child, for playing too roughly with his older sister.
“The boys a cherub, let him be!” I exclaimed, announcing my Christmas arrival.
“It’s you!” Janice ran over to hug me and then introduced be to Hank and Marie.
“How’s Mom doing?”
Janice gave you a grim look. “She’s in the bedroom; you better go see her.”
I made my way there; Mom was nearly gone. We had never been a religious family, but I found my head bowed and muttering a prayer of salvation—“kindle a flame in her heart, kindle a flame, kindle a flame in her heart…”
I wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but Dad nudged me from my silent reverie. She was gone.
“The Church is coming to take her away,” he said somberly.
I made my way to the living room to prepare for whatever wake there would be. I paused for a second to wonder how the Church knew she had passed, but I was too tired to care. Despite the mask, my lungs were still burning from the ash, and my head was throbbing like the worst of hangovers. It’ll be lonely this Christmas.
I plopped onto the old floral couch my parents had kept since what must have been 40 years ago. I rubbed my eyes and blinked; when I opened them to survey the room, an unlit Christmas tree stood before me. Odd. It had been lit when I walked in.
I turned to look out the bay window to the front. Darkness. All of the lights were out. Shit! The generators down by the river must have blown. What happened to the guys on shift there?
Then, from around the corners, flames. Chanting. It was the Church, and behind them, the hills and valleys were also ablaze. You knew it. In a moment, the ice-cold water rush of realization broke across me, and I began to weep tears that could have melted snow if it wasn’t so damned warm it was pouring rain. I went to the back, and they had already encircled the backyard yard, chanting and singing hymnals and banging makeshift percussion instruments with the fervor of the zealous. You had no idea where Janice and the kids were. No place, no place to go.
“It’s better like this. Believe me when I say I wouldn’t have it any other way,” you heard Dad say behind you.
I sighed and walked out the front, starting down the road the way I came. I knew it was fruitless; the throng of acolytes formed a red rover line around me, and I was getting closer. Some winged ones had climbed trees for a better look, angles teetering atop a tree, firebreathing as if vomiting from vertigo in some sick worship.
I was sure it was the flickering of the flames, but some of the wings seemed to work to beat the fire and smoke they spouted in a stoking of oblivion.
The funeral procession had reached me. I couldn’t meet their eyes, but I could finally hear their song.
New Year to November
It’s looming near, it lingers close
Into December
When Christmas comes, what’s lurking goes
New Year to November
It’s looming near, it lingers close
Into December
When Christmas comes, what’s lurking goes
I felt a tightness in my chest; a heat kindled in my heart. This wasn’t just the smoke. There was a pa-rum-pum-pum-pum drumming in my chest. I fell to my knees and rolled over to look up at the sky. Had the smoke cleared? I could see a star, singular and bright, beautiful and terrible. It seemed to pulse in time with the beating in my chest. And then, blackness.