A Fahey Christmas Carol

It is late afternoon on Christmas Eve and most of the snow covered shops of the old town are preparing to close their doors, all except for the old Ebenezer Fayhey place that is.

Inside this small ramshackle building Billy-Bob Cratchit sits slaving away over a slew of legal papers at his plywood desk. Looking at the limbs of time annihilating his very life from the countenance of his pocket watch, he wipes a blurred eye and sweaty neck and resumes his acrid work.

Suddenly the shop door flies open so forcefully as to almost rupture the wooden frame. From the spatial void, in walks a man in a Gucci suit and leather top hat completed with Zebra feather. Looking like a yuppie pimp, the man is none other than Ebenezer Fayhey. Upon entrance, he focuses his sneering repellence on Cratchit, who promptly shivers at the dark blue of Fayhey’s ocular scan.

“Are those papers finished yet?” bellows Fayhey. Cratchit’s mousey nod of negativity causes Fayhey great pains, and his jowls tremble with a great rumble producing an immense efflux of steam, which instantly results in the fire evanescing into nothingness. Fayhey sits down at his throne-like desk and commences scrutinising a file of notes.

Eventually Fayhey arises from his stupor and tells Cratchit to go home for the night for he is tired and wants to get home in time for Frasier. Before he reaches the door Cratchit about-turns and says, “Oh, Mr Fayhey, I almost forgot, but my family and I have bought you a gift.” He hands Fayhey a small box wrapped in old newspaper. “It’s not much, but we wanted to show our appreciation at this time of giving and goodwill to all men.” Fayhey contemptuously takes the box and rips off the exterior to reveal a DVD of Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace. “What the fuck is this shit?” he yells, “Why what sorta fucking Jobe is that...huh, cunt?” Fayhey scornfully holds up the DVD, “Ya see this? This is what I think of your fucking Lawnmower Man 2: Beyond Cyberspace.” He then proceeds to remove the disc and chomp it with his teeth, and then throws the shattered remnants into the furnace. A downtrodden Cratchit wallows out the door, leaving a raging Fayhey whose eyes have now become a dark red such is the fury osmosing his entire character.

Cratchit arrives home and is met at the wall-hole (they can’t afford to have a door) by his son, Tiny Timothy Dalton. Tiny Dalton inquires as to how well received the family’s gift was, but Cratchit simply wipes a rain-cloud of tear off his eye-lid and walks on into the house. Tiny Dalton looks morosely at his webbed feet and sits down on the doorstep.

Fayhey drives up to his mansion in his Rolls Royce classic, listening to Killing Joke, but still pulsating with vexation at the insolence and incompetence of his subservient clerk.

Fayhey washes up and then takes residence on his sofa surrounded by 200mg packets of Doritos and containers of Pringles, as he eagerly awaits the start of the Frasier marathon on Paramount. He notices he has two minutes before the comedy commences, and so takes himself off to the lavatory for he must piss. He stands there battling the piss shiver but still enjoying the relief, when suddenly the ghost of his late business partner Ken Foree emerges from the cistern. “Fuck sake, can I not piss in peace!?!” yells astounded Fayhey. Foree apologies and lags himself out to the hall where he waits sulkily. Finally Fayhey finishes up, leaves the bathroom, and in the hall asks, “Well, what do you want?”

“I’ve come to warn you that Sketch Artist 2: Hands That See is on the other channel, and you will miss it if you to continue with this mad Frasier facade,” replies Foree. He goes on, “Do not make the same mistake I did, I passed up a watching of Scorpius Gigantus to watch Friends, and now I’m cursed to watch the same repeats of Friends over and over again, if I have to watch The One in Vegas again I’ll go fucking crazy!”

Fayhey looks at his swollen hands, and then at Foree’s cloudy phantasma, and he says, “Fuck you Foree, you’ve caused me no end of pain with your goddamn surname pronunciation, be gone with yee!” At this point Fayhey starts to feel around his fireplace for his bellows, but before he knows it Foree has vanished whilst in mid-speech, something about ghosts he was saying. He shakes his head and goes back to his exalted sitting arena.

Following six hours of Frasier, Fayhey hobbles up to bed mumbling something along the lines of, “Oh that Niles...” while chuckling a little to himself. He gets into his four poster bed and instantly his consciousness is ripped from him by our old friend the sandman.

Fayhey snoozes and snoozes until he is awakened by a vociferous whooping noise. He looks up from his slumber and sees a specter in the shape of Nietzsche. Fayhey asks, “Why are you in the shape of Nietzsche?” The spirit replies, “That’s cos I am Nietzsche, you opulent nancy boy!”

“Oh,” muses Fayhey, “well what can I do you for.” “I am the ghost of Christmas past, and I’m here for some revelatory shit.” “What’d I do?” says Fayhey. “Well for one don’t ya know that Psycho 3 was on three Christmases ago? Of course you don’t, what were you watching? Was it Roseanne? I think it was.” Suddenly Nietzsche grabs Fayhey’s arm and they go flying out the window, only to reappear in Fayhey’s lounge of three years ago, and there is Fayhey sitting watching Roseanne. Present day Fayhey proclaims, “Aww but c’mon, it was the Christmas special, look at DJ, he’s so young!” Nietzsche shakes his head, and without warning Fayhey is back in the present sitting on the end of his bed.

Fayhey starts to retract his blankets, but before he can finish he is confronted by another ghost, this time it’s the apparition of Ratt guitarist Warren DiMartini. DiMartini points harshly at Fayhey causing him to fall off the side of the bed where he was previously sitting precariously. “Do you know what is on right now?” questions DiMartini. “Aye, Sketch Artist 2 ain’t it?” “NO, that was earlier, fucker. Johnny 2.0 is on right now, and what are you doing? Not watching it that’s for fucking sure!” And with a scaly hand digit DiMartini launches a lightning bolt directly into the TV screen causing it to come on, and Fayhey moves towards it for a closer look, but to his surprise it’s not the aforementioned movie but a shot of Fayhey standing in his room, bent over, peering into a TV screen. “What is the meaning of this?” shouts Fayhey. DiMartini squints and says, “It’s you not watching that goddamn movie, your present, motherfucker.” And as soon as that last syllable was expelled from the wraith’s gullet he was gone.

Fayhey stands upright and still, and gives the non-existent ghost a thorough tutting. Before he is aware, a third and final spirit is sitting on his shoulder. Fayhey jumps when he realises the situation and runs under his bed in hammer-blows of fright. “Who are you?” Fayhey demands to know. “Why I am Sonic Youth guitar feedback, the spirit of Christmas future.” “Oh,” replies a perplexed Fayhey. “Now take my hand and come with me,” says the spirit. “But you have no hands.” “Then take my discordance.” “Oh ok.” And the duo disperses into the ether.

It is a dark world where highways intersect with crash cymbals, and large portraits of varicose-veined eyes line the sky. Fayhey and his guide reintegrate beside a flaming Porcupine having sex with Bodger, this is indeed a mad world. As Fayhey stands looking at the chaos surrounding him, alphabet spaghetti starts to rain down from the sky. “What is the meaning of all this?” he asks the feedback. “Well,” it replies, “this is what will happen if you continue with this propensity to miss classic films at Christmas.”

“What can I do?” Fayhey says with burgeoning blue in the eyes. “Well, Darkman 3: Die Darkman Die is on tomorrow on Fox.” “But I don’t get Fox.” “But you know who does, that verifiable carpet of yours, Billy-Bob Cratchit.” Fayhey looks on as a sixty-foot Denis Hopper eats a bus. “Very well then, I will change.” Suddenly he is back in his bed.

Fayhey wakes up the next morning a Fahey, eyes more blue than ever before, and the wildest blonde hair this side of Jupiter. Fahey gathers as much food as he can carry from his kitchen, and proceeds to run down into town, circumventing his motorised transport. He arrives down at the Cratchit residence and knocks at the wall. When Billy-Bob comes into sight, Fahey yells a boisterous, but unthreatening, “Merry Christmas!” Cratchit, surprised, welcomes him in. Fahey then asks, “Are you and your fine family going to be watching Darkman 3: Die Darkman Die today?” “Fucking apt!” replied Cratchit.

And so it was, Fahey spent Christmas day playing games with Tiny Timmy Dalton, eating the wondrous food of Mrs Cratchit, and finally, enjoying the seasonal showing of that classic piece of cinema whilst basking in the loving glow of his new extended family.