The Last Christmas Present
December 30th, 2007 by 
Rory Harper
Back sometime in the mid-to-late 1980’s, Steve and John-Tim and I took a winter holiday road trip. Steve’s parents had loaned him their motorized camper, and we were off from
Around 2 a.m. that night, I was asleep in the bunk over the driver’s cab of the camper, when I was awakened by a sense of serious Wrongness. The ride had gotten abruptly much bumpier and slidier and maybe more sideways’ish and sort of high-speed terrifying’ish.
Steve had been driving too long and too late, and had run out of uncut powder cocaine to keep him awake.
…. Just kidding. Steve has never, ever taken drugs. Seriously. His issue was always the sex addiction, not the drugs. Though, perhaps if he had been snorting uncut powder cocaine that night, he wouldn’t have
FALLEN ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL, DEPARTED FROM THE HIGHWAY AT EIGHTY A HUNDRED MILES AN HOUR, AND SLID A QUARTER OF A MILE INTO THE MIDDLE OF A PASTURE HIGHWAY MEDIAN OUTSIDE OF AMARILLO, TEXAS !!!!!
:
:
…I’m okay now….
…The flashback has subsided….
Steve and John-Tim and I are the only people who have ever skied
As you know, we did not all die that night. It’s flat like a table, around
The highway was far off that-a-way, behind us. We were upon a largely friction-free surface.
John-Tim and Steve and I pushed the motor home to the highway, with a little assistance from the actual motor. (EDIT as a result of Steve’s comment: And a passing-by Good Samaritan…)
I was going through my decade-long struggle with a couple of deteriorating spinal disks. The boys tried everything short of knocking me down and sitting on me, to keep me from ‘helping’ with the pushing. But I was (and am) a Guy, so I was completely unable to act sanely in this sort of situation.
I threw my back completely out. I could not stand up. I have a vague memory of watching them have fun going up and down the slopes for the rest of the week. I think John-Tim smashed into something and hurt himself badly. Steve, the Bastard, was completely unscathed throughout, if I remember correctly.
I took lots of Vicodin, because it hurt, really, really bad to be alive right then. I spent most of my time in the cold, dimly lit camper.
During that time, I wrote this story that I’m about to make you read. It’s only 5,000 words, so it won’t hurt all that long.
It’s unique in a couple of ways. It’s the only Christmas story I’ve written. It’s so sweet and sentimental and icky that it makes me want to vomit even now.
And it’s my only real zombie story. So far.
Uh, it’s not unique in my oeuvre, in that it’s got some four-letter’ish words in it, and some steamy R-rated naughty bits. Probably not entirely safe for work.
And a very merry Undead Holiday Season to you all:
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Posted in Dammit!, Fiction, Holidays, Horror, Personal History, Rory, Steve, Writing, Zombies | 
18 Comments »
December 31st, 2007 at 4:01 am
thanks for the Last Christmas Present, it was a happy story….
December 31st, 2007 at 12:07 pm
Awww. Nothing like a little gore to leaven the sentiment.
Got to confess, though. It’s currently impossible for me to read anything without doing mental line-edits. (I feel so dirty when I want to take commas out of Robertson Davies or Gene Wolfe…) When Gloria thinks “This is perverted in a way that doesn’t have a name,” it yoinked me a little. The perversion does have a name. No, not necrophilia.
Marriage.
December 31st, 2007 at 12:48 pm
Rory, you Zombie Softie!
Happy New Year to you and the Awesome One!
December 31st, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Thanks, guys! I hope the story was an easy read for everyone.
Sean – ‘Marriage’ is as good a name for it as any, I guess. It can’t be necrophilia, of course, since that is what you call it when you initiate sex with the dead. I don’t know of a word for when the dead initiate the sex.
December 31st, 2007 at 1:34 pm
That’s right, point out my ignorance and send me to the dictionaries. Go ahead. See if I care…
… huh. My midget OED skips straight from necrophage (Wouldn’t that look great as the title for a superhero comic?) to necropolis. Webster’s states that necrophilia isn’t the act, it’s the attraction. A nice and pleasing distinction.
Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world if I learned not to go lipping off when I don’t really know what I’m talking about? Boy, that would be a magical lollipop kingdom if ever there was one.
December 31st, 2007 at 2:51 pm
My bad, Sean… I didn’t know that you suffer from catagelophobia. I’ll try to be more sensitive in the future.
And, yeah, it’s the attraction, not the act itself.
Like, for instance, I have a fair case of acrophilia.
But I’ve never actually, you know, Done It with an acrobat.
December 31st, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Aaargh!
Back to the dictionaries. (Isn’t it lovely, having all these readily accessible levers and buttons?)
Sigh. Wouldn’t mind being a pommel horse.
January 2nd, 2008 at 9:27 am
It’s sad about Rory’s memory. We were going to Red River and Angel Fire (at the other end of the state from Cloudcroft) and we ended up in the median, not a meadow, and if that camper could’ve done 80 miles an hour, I’d be astounded.
But he pretty much had the rest of it right. Some guy towed us out of the snow after we tried to push it out.
It was probably the vicodin. Or the zombie action that made him misremember.
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:06 am
It was an interesting trip. Any slide off the road that stays upright is a good slide. Any slide into the pylons holding up the ski lift is not so good. I remember Rory offering to share his Vicodan.
Thanks, Rory, I wish I’d taken it now.
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:08 am
Darn. I’d like to blame the Vicodin, but it’s probably the Alzheimer’s…
Yep, it was Angel Fire. And I was deliberately being a bit hyperbolic regarding the departure speed. I think I probably never knew exactly where we ended up when the camper stopped. It was just cold and dark.
But I have absolutely no memory of anyone towing us.
January 2nd, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I just edited the original post for accuracy, in the face of Steve’s withering critique.
And, as I continue to consider Sean’s points, I think we still need to find the right words for Actually Doing It With the Dead, rather than merely Liking Doing It With the Dead.
And, in the case of my story, distinguishing between having it initiated by the living partner vs. initiated by the dead one.
Damn this OCD…
January 2nd, 2008 at 10:36 pm
Lovely story. Thank you
January 3rd, 2008 at 12:40 am
Thanks, marty!
I appreciate your reading it.
January 3rd, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I enjoyed it too, I must admit. Squick! Squee! *sniff*
January 3rd, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Thanks, Morgan!
Incidentally, John-Tim, it’s never too late to check out the Vicodin to help with that old skiing injury….
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Way to edit it.
January 7th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
One of the many things I find disturbing about necrophilia is that it is apparently common enough to have a Medicaid code for billing. Serious.
Having worked with the dead, I just can’t fathom it.
Only YOU could make zombie sex even remotely palatable. How DO you do it?
January 7th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Thanks, Becca! Cool to know about the Medicaid thing. DSM-IV kinda tucks it away with other Paraphilias.
Dammit, necrophilia deserves its own DSM code! And Twelve-Step programs.
“Hi, I’m Dan, and I’m a necroholic. I haven’t had sex with the dead for 10 days now.”
“Hi, Dan!”