A Christmas Carol For America Stave 4

STAVE 4: THE LAST OF THE SPIRITS

The Phantom slowly, gravely, silently, approached. When it came near him, Trump stretched again to his full height with all the dignity he could muster for his favorite Il Duce pose despite in the very air through which this Spirit moved it seemed to scatter gloom and mystery.

The Spirit was shrouded in a deep black garment, which concealed its head, its face, its form, and left nothing of it visible save one outstretched hand. But for this it would have been difficult to detach its figure from the night, and separate it from the darkness by which it was surrounded.

Trump felt that it was tall and stately when it came beside him, and that its mysterious presence filled him with a solemn dread. He knew no more, for the Spirit neither spoke nor moved.

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” asked Trump.

The Spirit answered not, but pointed onward with its hand.

“You are about to show me shadows of the things that have not happened, but will happen in the time before us,” Trump pursued. “Is that so, Spirit?”

The upper portion of the garment was contracted for an instant in its folds, as if the Spirit had inclined its head. That was the only answer he received.

Well used to ghostly company by this time, Trump pulled a driver from a nearby golf bag. The Spirit paused a moment, as observing his condition, shook his head in despair of saving this man.

But Trump was all the worse for this. It thrilled him with a vague glib joy, to know that behind the dusky shroud, there were ghostly eyes intently fixed upon him, while he, swung his golf club in a practice swing.

“Ghost of Christmas Future!” he exclaimed, “I know you claim your purpose is to do me good, and as I hope to live to be proven right, I am prepared to bear you company, and do it with a friendlly heart. Will you not speak to me?”

It gave him no reply. The hand was pointed straight before them.

“Lead on!” said Trump. “Lead on! The night is waning fast, and it is precious time to me, I know. Lead on, Spirit!”

That night Trump viewed more scenes of the future than is possible to record here. As he stood triumphant, Trump witnessed nuclear explosions destroying cities on the west coast of the USA and along the other side of the Pacific. He witnessed starvation on the streets of New York and in the states of Alabama, Oklahoma and Kansas. He visited children suffering horrible diseases without the help of doctors or hospitals, but with too few volunteer nurses and neighborhood “do-gooders” to pity them. He witnessed black oil coating the fields of the Midwest and deep black scars across the land formerly set aside as sacred to the memory of a pristine America.

“Fake News,” grumbled Trump as he teed up a golf ball.

Trump was better than his word. And it was always said of him, that he knew how to call anything, “Fake News” as he relentlessly abused the Spirit of Christmas, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that never be said of us, any of us. Instead, as Tiny Tim, a character otherwise left out of this story due to its horror story rating, observed, God bless Us, Every One! And God bless the United States of America.

THE END

Satan had no idea who he was messing with.
Mary wasn’t your ordinary unmarried pregnant teenager. This kid had moxie and connections in extremely high places.

In Fulfillment, the secret concerning the baby in Mary’s womb attracts evil spirits, a woman-hating ancient Israeli monster named Lilith, a king, soldiers and a would-be lover all bent on destroying her. Mary’s journey, while steeped with betrayal and the foul stench of the ultimate demon, is a setup for an even bigger story. She discovers a lost love found, the promise of a newborn king, and a wealth of new friends from a dwarf with the heart of a warrior to the young mother who loses her husband and children in a bloody massacre. Laugh, cry and gain new insights into the Christmas story as you read Fulfillment.

“The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.”
Revelation 12:4b

Click here to choose the paperback or Kindle version.

Paperback copies make excellent Christmas presents, especially for those who enjoy an original horror story. Tell them it's like Stephen King or Frank Peretti visiting the first century.

Click here to visit my author page on Amazon. 

A Christmas Carol For America Stave 3

STAVE 3: THE SECOND OF THE THREE SPIRITS

“You have never seen the like of me before!” exclaimed the Spirit of Christmas Present who resembled the very image of Jimmy Carter.

“Never,” Trump made answer to it. “Yet you somehow appear familiar to me, Spirit.”

“Touch my robe!”

There emerged from scores of bye-streets, lanes, and nameless turnings, innumerable people, suffering from injuries and diseases.

“Spirit,” said Trump, after a moment’s thought, “I wonder you, of all the beings in the many worlds about us, should desire to cramp these people’s opportunities of innocent health care.”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You would deprive them of their need for physicians and medicines, often the only way on which they can be said to heal at all,” said Trump. “Wouldn’t you?”

“I!” cried the Spirit.

“You seek to close off these persons from health care providers solely because they cannot afford health insurance,” said Trump. “And it comes to the same thing.”

“I seek!” exclaimed the Spirit.

“It has been done in your name, or at least in that of Christian charity,” said Trump.

“There are some upon this earth of yours,” returned the Spirit, “who lay claim to know the Spirit of Christmas, and who do their deeds of passion, pride, ill-will, hatred, envy, bigotry, and selfishness in Christ’s name, who are as strange to the true spirit of Christmas, as if they had never lived. Remember that, and charge their doings on themselves, not Jesus.”

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Trump, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Trump stood tall with his best Il Duce expression of triumph on his face. Having the children shown to him in this way, he said, “They are fine children,” for Trump could think of no reason to not lie. “Spirit! are they yours?”

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city in the distance. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And bide the end!”

“Have they no refuge or resource?” cried Trump.

“Is minimum wage sufficient to live on?” asked the Spirit, turning on Trump with his own words. “Will tax cuts of the wealthy few and the great corporations trickle down to the poor and needy that haunt our cities and towns?”

The clock bell struck twelve.

Trump looked about him for the Ghost, and saw it not. Lifting up his eyes, he beheld a solemn Phantom, draped and hooded, coming, like a mist along the ground, towards him.

“Looks like the Spirit of Fake News,” said Trump.

To be continued...

Satan had no idea who he was messing with.
Mary wasn’t your ordinary unmarried pregnant teenager. This kid had moxie and connections in extremely high places.

In Fulfillment, the secret concerning the baby in Mary’s womb attracts evil spirits, a woman-hating ancient Israeli monster named Lilith, a king, soldiers and a would-be lover all bent on destroying her. Mary’s journey, while steeped with betrayal and the foul stench of the ultimate demon, is a setup for an even bigger story. She discovers a lost love found, the promise of a newborn king, and a wealth of new friends from a dwarf with the heart of a warrior to the young mother who loses her husband and children in a bloody massacre. Laugh, cry and gain new insights into the Christmas story as you read Fulfillment.

“The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.”
Revelation 12:4b

Click here to choose the paperback or Kindle version.

Paperback copies make excellent Christmas presents, especially for those who enjoy an original horror story. Tell them it's like Stephen King or Frank Peretti visiting the first century.

Click here to visit my author page on Amazon. 

A Christmas Carol For America Stave 2

STAVE 2: THE FIRST OF THE THREE SPIRITS

“Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Trump when he awoke at one a.m. to find a visage of Abraham Lincoln beside his bed.

“I am!” The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly high and screeching, as if instead of being so close beside him, it were at a distance.

“Who, and what are you?” Trump demanded.

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past.”

“Long Past?” inquired Trump: observant of its tall stature.

“No. Your past.”

Trump then made bold to inquire what business brought him there.

“Your welfare!” said the Ghost.

Trump expressed himself much obliged, but could not help thinking that a night of unbroken rest would have been more conducive to that end. The Spirit must have heard him thinking, for it said immediately:

“Your reclamation, then. Take heed!”

It put out its strong hand as it spoke, and clasped him gently by the arm.

“Rise! and walk with me!”

It would have been in vain for Trump to plead that the weather and the hour were not adapted to pedestrian purposes; that bed was warm, and the thermometer a long way below freezing; that he was clad but lightly in his slippers, pajamas and robe; and that he had a cold upon him at that time. The grasp, though gentle as a woman’s hand, was not to be resisted. He rose: but finding that the Spirit made towards the window, clasped his coat in supplication.

“I am a mortal,” Trump remonstrated, “and liable to fall.”

“Bear but a touch of my hand there,” said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be upheld in more than this!”

As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall, and stood upon a television studio. “Good Heaven!” said Trump, clasping his hands together, as he looked about him. “I was a TV star in this place!”

The Spirit gazed upon him mildly. Its gentle touch, though it had been light and instantaneous, appeared still present to the old man’s sense of feeling. He was conscious of a thousand odors floating in the air, each one connected with a thousand memories, and hopes, and joys, and cares long, long, forgotten! 

“Here you fired celebrities for no other reasons than ratings and you had the power to do it without question,” said the Ghost of Christmas Past.

“Fake News!” cried Trump. “I fired them all because they were incompetent louts unworthy of their own star status. They needed firing and I fired them because I was a good man of business.”

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands. “Mankind is your business. The common welfare is your business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, are, all, your business. The dealings of your investments and businesses are but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of your business!” 

“Fake News,” cried Trump.

To be continued...

Satan had no idea who he was messing with.
Mary wasn’t your ordinary unmarried pregnant teenager. This kid had moxie and connections in extremely high places.

In Fulfillment, the secret concerning the baby in Mary’s womb attracts evil spirits, a woman-hating ancient Israeli monster named Lilith, a king, soldiers and a would-be lover all bent on destroying her. Mary’s journey, while steeped with betrayal and the foul stench of the ultimate demon, is a setup for an even bigger story. She discovers a lost love found, the promise of a newborn king, and a wealth of new friends from a dwarf with the heart of a warrior to the young mother who loses her husband and children in a bloody massacre. Laugh, cry and gain new insights into the Christmas story as you read Fulfillment.

“The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.”
Revelation 12:4b

Click here to choose the paperback or Kindle version.

Paperback copies make excellent Christmas presents, especially for those who enjoy an original horror story. Tell them it's like Stephen King or Frank Peretti visiting the first century.

Click here to visit my author page on Amazon. 

A Christmas Carol For America Stave 1

WITH APOLOGIES TO CHARLES DICKENS: A parody is a humorous or satirical imitation of a serious work of literature or writing. This is my parody of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in which I replace Scrooge with President Trump. I borrowed most of the copy from Dickens’ original text while changing, deleting and adding things to reflect the current political times.

STAVE ONE: THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S GHOST

Once upon a time—of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve—old Trump sat busy in his White House after the close of Presidential business and his staff abandoning him in favor of the holiday. The Oval Office door flew open with a booming sound, and then slammed shut. Trump heard loud footsteps coming straight towards his office.

“It’s fake news!” said Trump. “I won’t believe it.”

His color changed though, when, without a pause, the loud noise came on through the Oval Office door, and passed into the room before his eyes.

Trump refused to believe though he looked the phantom of the Obama Administration through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; he fought against his senses.

“How now!” said Trump, caustic and cold as ever. “What do you want with me?”

“Much!”—Obama’s voice, no doubt about it.

“Who are you?”

“In life I was your predecessor, the Obama Administration. You don’t believe in me,” observed the Ghost.

“You’re fake news,” said Trump.

“Why do you doubt your senses?”

“Because,” said Trump, “a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the Congress makes them cheats. You may be an unrepentant bit of the justice department, a blot of FBI files, a crumb of left over democracy, a fragment of underdone party loyalty. There’s more of the knave than of the grave about you, whatever you are!”

Trump was not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre’s voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.

At this the spirit raised a frightful cry with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Trump held on tight to his chair, to save himself from falling in a swoon. Trump fell upon his knees, and clasped his hands before his face.

“Mercy!” he said. “Dreadful apparition, why do you trouble me?”

“Man of the worldly mind!” replied the Ghost, “do you believe in me or not?”

“I do,” said Trump. “I must.”

“Hear me!” cried the Ghost. “My time is nearly gone.”

“I will,” said Trump. “But don’t be hard upon me!”

“You will be haunted,” resumed the Ghost, “by Three Spirits.”

Trump’s countenance fell almost as low as Hillary’s on election night. “Is that the chance and hope you mentioned?” Trump demanded, in a faltering voice.

“It is.”

“I—I think I’d rather not,” said Trump.

“Without their visits,” said the Ghost, “you cannot hope to shun the place your path inevitably leads. Expect the first to-morrow, when the clock tolls One.”

“Couldn’t I take ’em all at once, and have it over?” hinted Trump.

“Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of Twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has passed between us!”

Trump tried to say “Fake News!” but stopped at the first word. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the Invisible World, or the dull conversation of the Ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, and fell asleep upon the instant.

To be continued...

Satan had no idea who he was messing with.
Mary wasn’t your ordinary unmarried pregnant teenager. This kid had moxie and connections in extremely high places.

In Fulfillment, the secret concerning the baby in Mary’s womb attracts evil spirits, a woman-hating ancient Israeli monster named Lilith, a king, soldiers and a would-be lover all bent on destroying her. Mary’s journey, while steeped with betrayal and the foul stench of the ultimate demon, is a setup for an even bigger story. She discovers a lost love found, the promise of a newborn king, and a wealth of new friends from a dwarf with the heart of a warrior to the young mother who loses her husband and children in a bloody massacre. Laugh, cry and gain new insights into the Christmas story as you read Fulfillment.

“The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.”
Revelation 12:4b

Click here to choose the paperback or Kindle version.

Paperback copies make excellent Christmas presents, especially for those who enjoy an original horror story. Tell them it's like Stephen King or Frank Peretti visiting the first century.

Click here to visit my author page on Amazon.