Mother and Son, Ghosts of Christmas

With all of the ornaments she bought him through the years weighing heavily on her heart as it weighed down the branches, if only he was still here, she'd be so happy. Wishing it was all just a bad dream that would disappear as soon as she awakened, if only his death was a nightmare but it wasn't. Too much of a loss for any mother to bear, every day she faced the same, sad reality of living her life without him. She tried killing herself with sleeping pills but unable to go through with it, she called 911 before losing consciousness. With them grilling her, hounding her, restraining her, and medicating her when she suddenly turned violent, she spent 30 days in a mental hospital for observation.

* * * * *

Like mother like son, Daniel loved Christmas too. He loved Christmas decorations, ornaments, and Christmas music, especially Christmas music. Every year, before he went away to college for four years, the day after Christmas, they'd go to the local Hallmark store to buy Christmas ornaments at half off their retail price for next year's tree. Always forgetting about the ornaments they bought last year after Christmas, opening the new, unopened ornaments was always a welcomed surprise. For the last four years, picking out ornaments that she thought he'd buy, she's been buying ornaments alone. Only this year, when she opened the ornaments that she bought last year, she cried. Memories she'll never forget and that will always haunt her, she remembered how excited he was over this ornament or that ornament that he bought years ago as a child.

Music that once made her so happy now made her so sad, too sad, so very sad, and too sad to play. She used to love Christmas music and even though she relented in putting up the tree to keep herself busy, she just couldn't bring herself to play Christmas music. Now, instead of sleeping and instead of getting up to make the best of another miserable day, she preferred staring out her bedroom window at the peaceful quiet of nothingness and emptiness. At least with the snow, she had something else to look at other than darkness. She enjoyed watching the snow falling, the bare branches swaying, and the snow drifting higher to the commanding orchestration of the wind. She remembered how she used to watch him playing in the snow in the backyard from her kitchen window, and now he's gone. All her fault, he's gone forever.

She wished she had died in that car crash instead of him. There must be nothing, absolutely nothing when we die. She imagined that's how it must be to be dead. Suspended in time, she imagined death must feel the same as it does before we're born. How awful to be dead? How awful for her to lose her son so soon, too soon? Covered with snow, the cemetery where he's buried must be so cold. She imagined him shivering in his coffin, only he's dead. He sees nothing, hears nothing, and feels nothing. He's not there. He's gone hopefully to Heaven.

With him having just graduated college, she'll never see him work at his chosen career. She'll never welcome the new house he'd buy one day with a house warming gift. With him not ready to take a wife, with him not even steadily dating anyone, she'll never see the grandchildren he may have had. With her having already lived much of her life, she wished it was her that died that day in her car and not him.

Yet, even though there was no music playing, startled awake to mindlessly stare out her bedroom window at the snow falling, for some reason, Jingle Bells played through Christine's brunette, pretty head. With her radio not on, having already heard the song a thousand times before, perhaps she was just imagining Burl Ives singing the song. As if she had been magnetized or hypnotize to react to the sound and to the song of Jingle Bells, she sat up in bed to listen. As if the music was far away, the sound was haunting. Whether the music was imagined or real, she distinctly heard Jingle Bells. Only, instead of putting her in a good mood and in a good place, Jingle Bells was the last song she heard on the car radio before the crash. Now, wishing she were dead, the imagined music put her in a foul mood and in a bad place.

With everything so stilly quiet, always at this early hour of the morning, there was an eeriness in the air as if there was someone here with her and watching her. The bewitching hours between 2 am and 5 am, she looked at her nightstand clock and it was 3:33. The feeling that there was something or someone there in the dark watching her made the hair on her arms stand. Sensing a presence, she looked at every familiar shadow in her room while imagining that it was something else or someone else. Fearing the unknown, the afterlife, and/or the nothingness of death, she was afraid of every sound she heard in the dark. While allowing her imagination to get the better of her, she imagined every sound she heard was something different than it was.

What happens when you die she wondered? Is there Heaven and is there Hell she wondered? With this moment her reality now, she feared what evil may lurk in the shadows of her bedroom while watching her. She signed herself and said a silent prayer for her son before saying a prayer for herself to Saint Michael to protect her from evil, from harm, and from the Devil.

Now too afraid to sleep, wide awake, she was done sleeping. A year of sleepless nights, she hasn't had a good night's sleep since her son died. Once, a beautiful woman, who looked ten years younger than her age, with the bags under her eyes and with her no longer having an appetite for food, looking drawn, thin, haggard, and tired, she looked ten years older than her age. As far as she was concerned, without the joy in her life that her son brought, her life was over. If she didn't fear death, the unknown, and if suicide wasn't a mortal sin, she'd kill herself.

Only, as she rubbed the sleep from her eyes, even though she still felt a presence, whatever it was, she didn't feel evil. Fearing whatever it was in the beginning that made her so afraid, she didn't feel fear now. Even though she knew there was something or someone still there with her, she wasn't afraid. If anything, with her no longer alone, she felt more at peace.

Call it her mother's intuition but she suspected that the presence she felt was her son. She felt her son. She could feel her son's energy. He was here in the house with her now. She knew he was. Did he come home for Christmas? Was this his last visit before saying goodbye to her forever?

She heard that ghostly spirits hang around for a year before they disappear to their final resting place. Then, there were those ghosts who never found their final resting places. Maybe he was one of those ghosts. Maybe he'll be hanging around her until the day she dies. Maybe he's here to accompany her to Heaven in the way that he accompanied her to her tragic office party.

* * * * *

It was always the small things and her personal choices that so affected her life and that made her happy. Oddly enough, sleeping naked was one of them. She briefly married when her son was a toddler. After she was married, she always slept in the nude. Sleeping in the nude made her feel sexy. Sleeping naked always gave her husband the go ahead signal that she was available for sex and ready to make love. Only, even though he professed he loved her and told her that her having a child by another man didn't bother him, obviously her baggage did. After her divorce and with her charged with the sole custody of her son, she stopped the practice of sleeping naked.

It wasn't until Daniel went away to college that she returned to the habit of sleeping naked. After he graduated college and returned home to live with her, she slept in a nightgown again, albeit a sheer, sexy one. Able to sleep in the nude again now that her son was gone and she lived alone, sleeping in the nude made her feel alive when she's been feeling so dead with the death of her son. Sleeping in the nude made her feel something other than nothing. Sleeping in the nude made her feel sexually desirable and horny again, horny enough to masturbate herself again.

Imagining someone seeing her walking around her house naked, a peeper perhaps, her skin always tingled when she slept naked. Whether it was the sheet or the covers that caressed her body in the way she imagined her son sexually, incestuously, and inappropriately touched her as he did that night in her car, her naked body made her feel something other than death, grief, and sadness. Only, she wished she had a man sleeping naked with her. Ideally not just any man, she wished she had her son in bed with her. Having seen the way he stared at her, she wished she had given Daniel what he so wanted, her naked body before he died. Such a loss and such a waste, adding more proof to the saying that the good die young, he died too young. He died after experiencing so little of life and so sexually little of her.

Suddenly uncomfortable roaming the house naked as she usually does since her son died, Christine slipped on her bathrobe before heading downstairs to investigate her sense that there was someone in her house. Making her feel more comfortable, even though she knew it was the presence of her son she felt, a ghost who would never harm her, she turned on every light in the house as she went. With her normally walking around the house naked in the morning but for her slippers, she turned on all of the lights as much for her son's benefit as she did for her own feelings of safety, comfort, and security.

Only whoever was out there in the dark could see her flitting around the kitchen and making coffee in the nude. Wishing someone would see her naked, she needed some kind of excitement in her life, sexual or otherwise, even if it was unwelcomed violent or sexual excitement. Ever since her son died, going through life as if a zombie, she died inside too. If she was unable to make herself happy, maybe she could make a peeper happy by flashing him her nude body.

What her son couldn't see of her in life, she hoped he could see of her in death. She imagined he could see her naked body and it made her horny to think that he could see her from his world of the dead to her world of the living. Yet, now that she felt his presence, she felt incestuously wicked and embarrassed that she was exposing herself to him.

Still she felt guilty from that fateful night with her causing him to crash and die. After exposing her naked body to him before attending the party and sucking his cock after the party while allowing him to feel her breasts and finger her nipples, feeling that she was without redeeming qualities, she suddenly felt like an incorrigible whore. Now, instead of walking around her house without her clothes, she felt more comfortable with her robe than without. Maybe it wasn't his spiritual energy that she suspected she felt but an intruder.

There was a feeling, a mysterious energy from whoever was in the room with her that controlled her being and held her mind hostage. Then, for no explicable reason, the Angel poised at the top of the Christmas tree, his favorite ornament, suddenly moved as if the Angel had mysteriously and animatedly come to life. In a house so quiet that she could hear the ticking of the clock on the mantle, the sudden rustling sound of the Angel made her stop to look at the Christmas tree. She stopped moving about the room to listen to the quiet.

Was he there standing by the tree? Was he happy that she decorated the tree just for him? By making the Angel ornament move, was he telling her that he was an Angel? Again, the hair on her arms raised up as if her forearm was a brush charged with static electricity that caused her hair to stand.

Expecting to see him as if he was the ghost Marion or George Kerby in the old situation comedy series, Topper, she stared at the Angel as if expecting to receive a message from God or from her son. She stared at the Angel as if there was a ghost there taunting her, teasing her, scaring her, and/or trying to get her attention. She stared at the Angel while saying a silent prayer that her son would forever rest in peace. With his death all her fault, she prayed for his forgiveness.

* * * * *

"Who's there? What do you want? I have a gun," she said suddenly afraid that an intruder or a peeper, instead of her son, was watching her while planning his next move of attack.

Only, call it a mother's intuition, she knew that it wasn't an intruder or a peeper. She knew that whoever was there with her now wasn't of this Earth. Wanting to believe it was Daniel, she suspected that the spiritual energy was that of her son. It gave her some modicum of comfort to know that her son could transgress two worlds, going from the world of the dead to the world of the living. It gave her some modicum of peace to know that her son was there with her now.

The lights dimmed for a second and the decorations on the tree jingled as if the dog's tail had bumped the tree but the dog had just gotten up from sleeping in his bed when she came downstairs. Consumed by an eeriness and an uneasiness, she looked about the room for a sign that Daniel was there with her. The dog, standing beside her and nowhere near the tree, was always first to know when a spiritual visitor was here with her. Buster seemingly wasn't as flustered as she was. Only, instead of making her feel safe, the dog's focused stare made her feel nervous, ill at ease, and suddenly afraid again.

As if her son was up on the ceiling looking down at her, Buster looked up towards the ceiling. Then staring straight ahead, he seemed transfixed with the top of the wall. As if he recognized the spiritual visitor and the visitor was holding a cookie, his tail was wagging. Then, he sat as if having been given the command to sit.

A spiritual visitor was a much better and a more descriptive term to use than a ghost, especially when referring to her son's energy. How can someone she so loved be a ghost to her? Much more than paranormal activity, he was more than just a mere figment of her imagination. Whether dead or alive, he was still her son. With the dog unnerving her, needing to be alone with her son, she put the dog outside to do his business in the snow.

Seemingly unable to leave her and not resting in peace, if now that he's here, she suspected that the energy must be that of her deceased son. She suspected her son had some unfinished business before he could rest in peace. She suspected she knew what his unfinished business was. Based on their last time together, when she was giving him a blowjob in the front seat of her car, just before he had his fatal automobile accident, she suspected that her son's unfinished business was her.

The best Christmas gift she could hope to have, she enjoyed having the thought that her son had come home for Christmas. Obviously, her son had returned home for her. Only, she didn't know what he'd be able to do to sexually satisfy her or himself with him being dead. Dead, dead, dead, he was dead and what she was imagining wasn't real. Only, she could feel him as if he was still alive and was there with her now. She really could feel his presence and, with nothing to lose, she decided to try and contact him by speaking to him.

"I'm sorry Daniel. The accident that killed you was my fault," she said bursting in tears, after realizing that she was talking to no one but herself. "Your death is all my fault. Please forgive me."

* * * * *

With the Christmas music playing in the background everywhere she went, especially at the mall, even though she forced herself to put up and decorate a tree, she wasn't in the mood for Christmas. As if it was all static noise in her head, with people everywhere and the television screaming Christmas commercials at her to buy things she didn't want and didn't need, she just wanted to stay in bed and pull the covers over her head. It was painful to be constantly and continually reminded of his favorite holiday without having him there to share in the holiday celebration. Unable to even grieve because of all the guilt she felt, it was too soon to forgive herself for killing her son and too soon to forget the tragic, traffic accident.

She still can't believe he'd dead. He's gone. He's gone forever. Seemingly as if it happened yesterday with the nightmares, the voices in her head, and the headaches she had preventing her from getting a good night's sleep, the accident that took her precious son had only been a year ago. She still can't believe it. The one person she loved, the only person she truly loved, is gone from her forever.

Thinking about all the things that she could have done to change the outcome of that fateful day, she wished she hadn't been drinking. If she had been sober, she would have been driving. If she had been driving, she wouldn't have been sucking her son. Only, something came over her that night. Sexually frustrated for so very long, after showing him her naked body before she left the house and after dancing with him all night, she was so very horny.

Then with him busy driving the car, he was her sexual prisoner for a time, until they made it home. She remembered how he looked at her when she flashed him her naked body. With the alcohol removing her sexual inhibitions, her inebriated state gave her the courage to feel her son's cock through his jeans while he removed one hand from the steering wheel to reach his hand over to her to feel her breasts through her blouse and bra. Sadly, what was once so beautiful is now so painfully hard to live her life without him.

Passively encouraged by him not swatting her hand away and/or telling her to stop and to behave, once he started feeling her nipples through her blouse and bra, she unzipped him, and stuck her hand inside his pants. As if fingering her nipples was her signal to go wild, all he ever needed to do to sexually turn her on was to finger her nipples. Of course, it would help for him to finger her pussy but from where he was sitting while driving the car, there was no way he could reach to masturbate her while driving. Yet, she could masturbate him while he drove.

As if their sexual encounter happened last night, she remembered fondling his quickly emerging erection through his thin, white, cotton briefs. With him sticking his hand inside her blouse and down her bra while continuing to feel and fondle her breasts and finger her nipples, he immediately had an erection. Not wasting any more time with her indecision, should she or shouldn't she, she unbuckled and buttoned his pants, pulled down his underwear, and exposed his cock. Oh my God, she remembered being so very sexually excited.

With his prick a beautiful part of his sublime body, she stared at his cock before touching his cock. With her knowing she was doing something so wrong, but not caring that what they were about to do was forbidden, she wrapped her fingers around her son's stiff prick. The fact that they were about to embark upon a sexual relationship made it even that more exciting. Going way beyond the point of no return, they had both crossed over the incestuous line.

With her wanting to give him a very special Christmas gift, she began to slowly stroke him while looking up at him to watch his reaction to his mother not only seeing his big prick but also stroking his big prick. She gazed down at his engorged prick while he one handedly unbuttoned her blouse to expose her bra clad breasts. He looked so very much like his father and with it having been so long since she held a cock in her hand, she stared down at his penis to examine his stiff prick. Then, she did what no mother should ever do to her son, wanting him to cum, she stroked him faster while looking up at him. With him paying more attention to his cock in her hand and her tits in his hand, she had to warn him to watch the road.