I Shall Seize Every Opportunity of Testifying That Love I Bear You
A collection of oneshots focusing on how each of the poets’ spends their Christmases after Neil survives his suicide attempt. A midquel to He Best Deserved the Name of Father (etc), I would recommend you read that first if you haven’t already.
Steven K.C. Meeks Jr
Steven, your grandparents are here.’
Meeks looked up from the book resting against his thighs– a copy of “The Body in the Library” by Agatha Christie. He had been curled up in the bay window of his bedroom for two hours, bundled up in a thick blanket knitted by his paternal grandmother. His cheeks glowed with a rosy tint from the contact with the icy glass, which kept the snow storm out of his parents’ Massachusetts manor.
Ms Agapov, or Ms Aggie, as he and his older brother and sister called her now they were out of her full-time care, stood in the doorway of his room. She wore her familiar black dress with a white smart shirt beneath the pinafore, and her greying brown hair was held up with a black scarf. Her freckles were hidden behind a layer of pale, thin makeup, yet it didn’t quite cover up her wrinkles. Her lips lived in a perpetual state of a frown, and her eyebrows pinched together, making her seem constantly angry.
Meeks simply shrugged his shoulders and kept his head low, turning the page of his book. He wiped his running nose on the back of his hand.. ‘I’ll be down in a moment.’
Charles F. Dalton
It was the fifth glass of wine that did it, although Charlie himself was far too drunk to keep count of how much he’d had to drink. He hadn’t even realised he was about to throw up until it was rushing through his throat and splattering across his nice shirt, alongside the dining room tablecloth and everything occupying it.
‘Charlie! What is wrong with you?!’ His eldest brother, Maxwell, shouted at him, standing up from the table and tripping over his own feet in an attempt to get away from the splash zone. Charlie opened his mouth to snap back something snarky, but another round of pink stained vomit gushed onto the table, and over what was salvageable of his Christmas dinner. He could just make out Jill’s appalled stare from the seat opposite her older brother.
‘I told you that you shouldn’t have let him have that next glass,’ his mother snapped from her place to the left of the head of the table, where his father was sitting with a pipe cupped between his lips. The lean man didn’t respond, instead he simply shrugged and blew out a grey cloud that distorted his face from Charlie’s wobbly vision. The stern man muttered something under his breath, but the tired grumbling didn’t quite reach Charlie’s hazy brain.
Gerard J. Pitts
Pitts had never noticed how many plays and dance routines his little sister tried to put on around celebratory seasons. It didn’t matter if the event was Christmas, Thanksgiving, Birthdays, or Easter, even the fourth of July wasn’t safe from a small tap performance by Kathleen Pitts. He’d never really cared about them, he thought it was just a little girl doing little girl things on the few occasions that her whole family was together…she was bold like that, not afraid to force the attention she knew she deserved.
In a way, she was unlike him. In fact, Kat was almost the exact opposite of her big brother, with long curly red hair, a short stature and the small layer of puppy fat she was yet to shed that their mother couldn’t help but bring up on the daily. Pitts had always been tall, thin and brunet, just like his father. Just like they’d always wanted him to be.
Despite his lack of interest in her pretend theatre, Pitts had been prepared to watch Kat’s seasonal performance– an eight-year-old’s take on “A Christmas Carol” where– from what he’d heard –their two cats and the neighbour’s rabbit had unfortunately been roped into the roles of the Christmas spirits. He sat in the living room with his legs folded on the couch, listening to the carols from the radio perched atop a side table, next to what Pitts had never realised beforehand was an extremely ugly lamp with its frills and floral patterns.
Todd A. Anderson
“Jack Shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill; The man shall have his mare again, and all will be well” Puck, Act Two, Scene Three, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare.
Todd rubbed his cold thumb over the same line for the fourteenth time, Neil’s voice reading the quote back to him over and over again. He turned the page after the fifteenth and continued to read, the voices of the cast of Henley Hall’s production bouncing against every wall of his skull as his eyes flicked over the information. The flames dimming in the hearth of the mantle piece licked at his exposed shins like an excited puppy, sending a slither of warmth to combat the ice in his veins. A tear slipped from his soaked cheeks and imprinted on the book, soaking Puck’s name in a salty circle of damp, which seeped through to the next page, and potentially the next.
Todd pressed his lips together– tongue lapping at the skin in an attempt to stifle his chesty sobs. He turned the page again, and again, his mind slowly slipping away from the text unless Puck’s name appeared, and– in turn –Neil’s face sprung to mind, angled cheeks and wenge eyes complimented by his woodland crown. Todd looked up at the dying fire, the hissing of a thousand embers filling the quiet of the empty living room. The wind was rampant outside, rattling window frames and delicate tree branches in the yard. A dog barked in the distance…
Knox T. Overstreet
‘Knox! Get off the phone!’
Knox couldn’t tell which of his older sisters was yelling at him from the hallway, and he didn’t care enough to crane his neck ninety degrees to find out either. All four of their screechy voices had all blended into one after seventeen years of living under the same roof.
Chris’ sweet, melodic, giggle bubbled through the other end of the receiver, and for a moment he was certain he could smell her perfume in its company; vanilla and peppermint infused with the laughter of cherubs and an angel’s halo. He wasn’t sure how long they’d been on the phone; as soon as the dinner plates were cleared from the table and their father had dismissed them, he’d almost fallen over himself in his attempt to get to the landline in the study.
‘I’m talking to my girlfriend!’ He shouted back, twirling the grey cord between his thumb and middle finger. He lounged across the plush, black, chair seated beside the phone table, his right leg thrown lazily over the arm, while the other hung towards the floor.
Richard S. Cameron
Cameron sat under the large oak tree in his backyard, heavy clumps of snow smacking against his freckled cheeks as the wet branches folded under wintery pressure. He didn’t brush it away, instead he let the flakes roll down his face and curl into the crevice of his exposed clavicles, which in turn chilled him to depths of his core so deep that he hadn’t known they existed. The cold and damp seeped through his coat– which he was using to sit on –and soaked into his pyjamas, freezing the pale skin on the back of his thighs. He wiped his nose on the back of his shirt sleeve, dusting aside some of the snow from his face.
The frozen air felt like a heavy compress against his large lip. It was still swollen from Charlie’s bitter punch.
His nose had bled upon impact, but his lip had taken the brunt of the idiot’s sharp knuckles. His stomach boiled, a fire lighting in his belly that– for a moment –he thought was heartburn. Cameron hated Charles Francis Dalton, always had, and always would. He’d never prayed for an idiot’s downfall more than he had on Charlie’s. He’d been lucky enough that they hadn’t roomed together in their first year at Welton, or one of them would probably be dead. Instead, Charlie and Neil had shared a room, and so had Cameron and Peter Stick.