Surviving in a Winter Wonderland

9
Surviving in a Winter Wonderland

I'm taking a break from writing about my pas exploits for the moment as I'm just getting to the horrible bits. So instead I'll tell you what I did today.

It's Christmas... well, at least according to the official Gray Republic Calendar it's Christmas, and it looks like it's going to be a White Christmas as it has started to snow (deadly deadly snow)

Celebrating Christmas, like any festivity, is usually not a good idea as it distracts you from all the things that are trying to kill you. I went to a wedding, and that ended stickily for all involved! But I've come to the end of my tether with the world as I know it so I figured I'd try and have as traditional a Christmas as I can get in a post apocalyptic land of death.

Of course, I'm on my own these days. The cats, my friends and my long suffering lady wife Louise (or what's left of her) aren't here with me, so I'm feeling pretty lonely. Now I know how the guy out of Mud was feeling!

Before the end, they used to say that the holidays are the most depressing time of the year. Now add to that fact that the world I now live in is depressing all year round, which makes the holidays even worse than they were before The End. But there's still a part of me that tries to add some semblance of normality to the ever confusing world that is now my day to day life.

As I don't have anyone to give presents to (they're either dead, insane, or held captive as of writing), I decided to skip that part of Christmas, and instead focus on decorating the abandoned shack that I am currently calling home. As most things that run on electricity try to kill you thanks to some strange artificial intelligence they have inexplicably developed (seriously, a toaster nearly killed me once) I didn't really fancy lighting my shack up with fairy lights, also lighting may advertise my presence to those who are after me, which wouldn't be a good thing.

Instead, I thought I'd start with getting a tree and maybe some tinsel to throw about the place, so I set off for some trees that I had passed earlier, armed with a fire-axe that I had found lodged in a friend's corpse not so long back.

Up to this point, I had thought the expression "Tree's have feelings too" was just something hippies used to say, however when I swung my axe deep into the trunk of a tree, it cried in pain and began to attack me. Not many people can say they've fought a tree to the death, but I can now add that to the ever growing list of things that I've done that should never have been. The tree didn't really have much power behind it, what with the huge gash in it's midriff, and it didn't take me much effort to finish it off with the handy fire axe.

After murdering the tree, I dragged it back to my abode and propped it's corpse against the shack's one good wall, whilst a pool of sap formed at the trunk's base. I'll be honest, the fact I had to kill the tree in cold blood kind of took away a bit of the magic of Christmas for me.

Thanks to Blue Peter (a person I met, not the old TV program) I knew how to make Tinsel from clothing, so used my last good pair of underwear (good is a great overstatement) to create some pretty dull tinsel. It looked pretty awful, so I used some broken glass for baubles and put a dead bird on the top instead of a star.

It was the worst Christmas tree in the history of Christmas trees, but it was my Christmas tree.

The tree brought me some happiness, but deep sadness at the same time. I shouldn't be alone, I should be with my friends and family, none of this should have happened, but crying about it wasn't going to help, especially as the scent of tears attracts the Darkness.

I was hungry, and no Christmas would be complete without a turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Unfortunately turkey are one of the deadliest birds in the world as I know it, I mean, I've seen a Turkey take a man's arm off and then beat him to death with it. Poor old Jon.

So with that in mind, I took my hunting gear out and went in search of something to replace the deadly festive foul. After a few hours using all my hunting and tracking abilities, I was able to catch... a rat. Yeah, I'm still pretty shit at hunting to be honest. I was born without the ability to stalk and this particular rat was actually already dead.

I got home and prepared the rat, by skinning it and spinning it round over a cigarette lighter. When it came to the trimmings for my Christmas feast, Vegetables are all but inedible so I had to make do with a can of mushy peas I found. (when I say found, I mean took from a neighbouring hermit's corpse)

So there I was, sitting in front of the dead tree, eating un-dercooked rat and mushy peas, hoping the snow wouldn't gain sentience again and try to kill me like last time. I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflection of one of the glass shards I used as baubles, and realised that this was the most depressing Christmas I have had up to this point.

If anyone is reading this, I hope that you aren't alone whenever you decide to celebrate whatever festival is important to you. Life is fleeting, and you can have all the tea in what used to be China, but you've got nothing if you've got no one to share it with. Grab a friend, grab a loved one, hell... grab a stranger as long as they aren't totally deranged, and revel in companionship, because that's all the counts at the end of the day, something I painfully realise now.

If I'm alive after Christmas, I'll continue my journal, if I died, then be happy that I'm at peace and with any loved ones that I had to put out of their misery. But either way, I wish you a very merry Christmas, and I hope you're safe and well.