Who Wants to be Alone on Christmas?
"Deck the halls with boughs of Holly…" Tyler Archer sang an upbeat tune to himself as he busily helped his parents hang a shimmering string of garland up around the walls of their modest, but cozy home. The Christmas tree already stood in the far corner near the TV, decorated with blinking lights and ornaments of all shapes and sizes. The snow gently falling to the ground outside the window perfectly completed the image and atmosphere of a very warm and inviting holiday home.
"Bah-bah-bah-bah-bah, bah-bah-bah-humbug." Abigail Archer grumped in tune to the song from her position on the couch, clicking through TV channels with one hand on the remote control, her shoulders slumped carelessly underneath the thick blanket she had draped over her shoulders.
"Oohhh, I think someone has a case of the Scroogies." Their mother shook her head with a tender smile. "You know you only get the Holiday cheer that you give to others, dear."
"Yeah Abby, give a little get a little." Ty agreed with a warm smile. "Come help us decorate, that's got to make you feel better."
"I feel just fine." Abby grumped.
"You don't sound fine." Their mother pointed out.
"Well I am!" Abby stood up from the couch abruptly, dropping the blanket to the cushion behind her.
"Now listen here young lady, we will not have THAT kind of attitude so close to Christmas. Unless somebody doesn't want Santa to bring her anything this year." Her mother warned.
Abby rolled her eyes with a grunt. "Moooom, I'm too old to believe in Santa Clause."
"Well then he's definitely not bringing you anything with THAT kind of attitude." Her mother huffed.
"Fine, that's fine, who needs dumb old presents anyway?" Abby turned to march through the house toward the front door.
"Abigail Archer, you come back here this instant. Abby!" Her mother called after her, but Abby ignored her, marching to the front door and snatching her thick winter jacket off the hook by the door before slipping outside without another word.
Once she was gone her mother's expression softened into one of worry as she turned back to her husband and son.
"I'll… go see if I can talk to her." Ty bit his lip worriedly and hustled to follow his sister, rushing out the door after her while yanking his own coat off of the rack.
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Abby Archer marched down the sidewalk, clutching her thick coat around her thin shoulders, her eyes darting back and forth across the snow-covered streets. Her boots stomped a path through the white powder, which was glittering softly in the light of the full, pale moon that shone through the scattered clouds overhead. It was beautiful, Abby thought to herself, but it did little to brighten her sour mood. It seemed like every twinkling Christmas light she saw made her want to punch something, and she wasn't sure why.
There were a few families walking around in the streets, along with several small groups of teenagers, many of whom were walking arm-in-arm down the brightly lit sidewalk. Abby found herself glaring at them as if they committed some personal affront to her as they passed, her eyes narrowing until they wound out of sight further down the street. When they were gone she turned to face forward again, seeing the small Christmas Tree the town had set up to celebrate the holiday sitting in the middle of the small park nearby.
"Hey, Abby!" Abby had expected Ty to come after her eventually, but she hadn't expected the girl who ran up to her from behind the tree in the park, smiling and waving, her eyes sparkling from behind the thick, wide-rimmed glasses that were perched on the end of her nose. "Abby, can I show you something?"
"Sure, Naomi." Abby replied with a sigh and turned toward her. Naomi was the girl Ty had had a crush on for a while, and they had even gone out a few times already. She wasn't sure why, but thinking about it made Abby want to sock the girl in the nose, though she restrained herself. "What do you have for me?"
"Well, it's not really for you." Naomi giggled and reached into the pocket of her thick coat, pulling out a small case and cupping it in both hands. "I got it for Ty, but I thought since you're his sister, you'd know if he'd like it, or if I was being… I guess, kind of stupid."
"I'm sure you're not stupid, Naomi." Abby forced a smile. "Let's see it."
Naomi nodded and reached up with one hand, pulling back the lid of the small jewelry box. Inside of the box was a small silver bracelet with a square two-sided picture frame attached to the top of it. Inside the frame was a picture of Naomi, while on the other side was a picture of Ty, both with broad smiles on their faces, and apparently both from the same picture they had taken together.
As Abby's jaw dropped, Naomi let out a nervous giggle. "Is it… is it too much?"
"No, it's… wow." Abby took the jewelry box, holding it carefully in both hands. "I just didn't know you guys were THAT close."
"Well we're not… yet." Naomi blushed. "I was going to ask him to go steady when I gave it to him. Be honest, is it going to freak him out?"
"I…" Abby stuttered, feeling uncharacteristically speechless. She wasn't sure how to respond. She wasn't sure how Ty would respond either. She knew he really liked Naomi, so it was doubtful he would turn her away, but he was still nervous about girls in general. Part of her wanted to warn Naomi not to give it to him anyway, while another part of her had the strange urge to scream and throw the bracelet in her face.
"Hey, that's pretty nice." Ty's voice spoke from beside them.
"Thanks." Naomi responded. "It's a gift for…. TY!" Naomi snatched the box from Abby and snapped it shut, hiding it behind her back. Her face was flushed bright crimson as she turned to face Abby's little brother. "Wh-what're you doing here!?"
"I was looking for Abby." Ty stepped back in surprise and raised his hands. "That's a nice piece of jewelry there, I bet it'd look great on you."
"It…" Naomi stumbled over her own tongue. "It's not for me…"
"Really?" Ty lifted one eyebrow curiously. "Who… wait." He blushed deeply. "It's not… for me?"
"Hehe… I wanted to wait until Christmas… but…" Naomi brought the box out from behind her back and opened it again, holding it out to him. "It's… it is for you. Surprise…" She gulped nervously.
"Ugh, get a room you two…" Abby grumbled to herself sourly and turned to give the two some privacy. Neither of them seemed to notice her departure, too wrapped up in their own private drama. That was just as well she supposed, she had the urge to be alone right now… though somewhere deep in her mind, she realized that was exactly the opposite of what she wanted. Did she really want to hang out alone on Christmas? With no one special to share the evening with?
She stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk after a few blocks, staring blankly ahead. No, she realized. She didn't. Unlike Ty, though, she wasn't seeing anyone she could spend the time with. She could go to Lab Rat of course, but while she thought of him as a friend and a capable partner in the Bureau, she wasn't about to consider a more intimate relationship with him. She had nothing, nobody, except her family. She didn't even have any other friends…
"Abby…" She heard a voice whisper on the cold Winter wind. She jerked in surprised and looked around, sure at first that she was imagining it, but the voice returned a moment later, erasing all of her doubts. "Abby, please… help me…"
"Who's there?" Abby rushed forward quickly, her wide eyes scanning the snow in front of her.
"Abby… please…" The voice whispered again, vaguely familiar but still too soft and distant to make out.
"Hold on, I'm coming!" Abby rushed ahead faster, moving past the houses toward the edge of town, where she approached the solid cliff face that separated the town from the forest above. At first she looked up the cliff face to the forest, then she caught a trace of movement out of the corner of her eye. A blanket lay on the ground nearby with a lump hidden underneath. Strangest of all, the snow around the lumpy blanket had all melted, as if the blanket was a powerful heat source.
"Are you okay?" Abby approached the blanket cautiously, keeping a sharp eye out for any sudden movements.
The blanket moved up and down, and the sound of rattling lungs could be heard struggling to draw breath. "Abby… I knew you would hear me…" The voice was wispy and soft, barely louder than it had been before, but now Abby's eyes widened in recognition.
"Kid Rot?" Abby stepped back, recognizing the voice of the boy who had attacked her twice before, and even attempted to destroy the world by rotting it down to its very core. "Is that really you?"
"Kid Rot… is gone…" The figure under the blanket coughed. "On the mountain…the Rot consumed me, inside of me… it rotted away the parasites that took control of my mind…"
Abby blinked and stepped forward again. "Ch-Chester? You're okay?"
After another moment of silence the blanketed figure lifted one hand, revealing it to her. Abby gasped, her eyes widening at the sight of the sickeningly green, rotting appendage. "The rot… did not just consume the parasites, Abby… it's still consuming me… please… I need help…"
"Of course!" Abby rushed to his side and wrapped her arms around the blanket. She grimaced when the blanket sank into the bulk of Chester's body, as if she was clutching at a sponge. "Come on, we have to get you to the Gag Lab. We isolated the parasites, I'm sure we can cure the rot. Just don't give up." She yanked Chester to his feet, holding him against her chest as she pulled him through the streets, feeling him stumbling along the sidewalk beside her. Wherever he stepped, a trail of greenish brown sludge remained, and the snow was melted clean along their path,
************************************
"I can't believe he's still breathing." Lab Rat shook his head as he stared sharply into the lens of one of his microscopes. He stood up straight after another moment to stretch out his back with a pop. His little assistant, Hermes the rat, jumped up on his shoulder when he was able to. "The rot has spread through 75% of his body. His powers must have given him some ability to cope with it, but there's no way he can last much longer."
"Isn't there a way to reverse the effect?" Abby asked.
"Reversing decomposition? It might be theoretically possible, but nobody's ever been able to discover the secret. Believe me, if anyone figured out the secrets to doing THAT, you would've heard about it by now." Lab Rat pointed out.
Abby turned toward the small glass room in which Chester was encased, lying on his back, still wrapped in the thick blankets he'd been hiding inside on the streets. She placed her hands against the cool glass, then blinked when suddenly something clicked inside her head. "Wait, didn't Chester say a long time ago that he was working on a way to prevent decomposition? What if the research he started can lead us to a cure for this?"
"Yes, he did say that… but he also said that very research CAUSED this." Lab Rat pointed out. "It was a failed experiment."
"But if we get hold of his original research, maybe we could use it to find a cure fast enough to save him!" Abby jumped and clasped her hands in front of her. "We could finally help him!"
"Or we could do this to ourselves." Lab Rat put a steadying hand on Abby's shoulder. "Do you want to be a walking rot monster, controlled by internal parasites into trying to destroy everything you come into contact with?"
"No, of course not…" Abby shook her head. "But I don't want to sit here and watch someone decompose into nothing. I'd take the risk for you or Ty… I'd do it for anybody. If you don't want to do it then don't, but I am going to continue his research."
Lab Rat rolled his eyes and shook his head. "This is insane, Abby, trying to recreate an experiment that caused THIS…" He gestured to Chester inside the glass box. In a moment, though his expression softened and he lowered his hands to his side. "But you have a 50% better chance of actually pulling this off if I help, and I sure don't wanna see you rot… so I'm in. Just give me a second, I should be able to pull up his original research through the Bureau networks." He turned to head to his computer.
"Yes! Thank you Lab Rat!" Abby turned back to the box with a confident grin. "Don't worry Chester, this time I'm not going to let you out of here without curing you. You're going to get the help you need, I promise." She clenched her hands into determined fists on the glass, then turned to rush after Lab Rat, who was just beginning to bring up the necessary files.
Chester had done an astonishing amount of research into the properties of rot and decomposition, and specifically the enzymes that cause it. Even Lab Rat had to concede that the boy had been extremely thorough in his research, so thorough in fact that despite spending the next three hours combing through his files, they couldn't figure out where the experiment had gone wrong. According to all of the numbers Chester had come up with, and which Lab Rat confirmed, the experiment should have been a complete success. There was no reason for the explosion that caused his transformation.
"I don't get it." Abby scratched her head with a yawn. "It should have worked… it really should have."
"There must be something we're missing." Lab Rat commented. "Perhaps an outside contaminant was spilled into the mixture, or was already in his beakers when he filled them. School laboratories aren't known for being extremely sterile, not like the Gag Lab."
"If that's the case, we should be able to recreate the experiment as it is and get the cure." Abby suggested.
"Very bad idea. If we're wrong, we'll just be infecting ourselves." Lab Rat shook his head. "It's way too risky. I'm not even going to consider it."
"But Lab Rat-" Abby was cut off.
"I'm not budging on this one, Abby. I came this far because I wanted to help, but I'm not going to sit here and watch you blow yourself to kingdom come. I'll do my best to find another way to help him, but as far as I'm concerned, this is a dead end." Lab Rat turned to walk to Chester's glass case, looking inside at the lumpy blanket.
"Well I respectfully disagree…" Abby climbed to her feet, silently pulling one of the Goop Shooters off of Lab Rat's desk and slipping her hand into it. "I think it'll work if we just give it a chance."
"Well we're not going to find out. I'm your friend Abby, and while I respect you I-AAUGH!" Lab Rat yowled in surprise as the goop stream knocking him to the floor, sticking him to the polished metal like glue and pinning his arms to his sides. "Abby!"
"Sorry Lab Rat… we don't have time for more research." She glanced at the glass case, seeing the blanket growing thinner by the moment, a puddle of putrid, liquid rot growing on the ground around it. "I'm going to do it." Abby slipped the goop shooter off of her hand and set about gathering up some of Lab Rat's beakers and materials.
"Abby, please, don't do this." Lab Rat struggled futilely against the goop. "I don't wanna have to stop you if you go crazy too…"
Abby ignored him, taking great care to follow Chester's research and plans just as he had written them out. It was an extremely complex mixture of chemicals and enzymes, carefully mixed and intermingled to create a substance that would, hopefully, act as sort of an anti-rot agent, the same way white blood cells worked against viruses. It was an ingenious idea formed by a clearly brilliant mind, which only made it sadder that that mind had been taken over by Kid Rot.
It took her the better part of an hour to make the chemicals, and then the mixed enzymes that would come together to finalize the agent. She gripped the combined enzymes in a set of thongs and carried the beaker over to the beaker of enzymes, holding the precious liquid carefully with both hands. She positioned it over the second beaker, taking a deep breath.
"If you do this Abby, there may be no helping you. You could go crazy just like he did…" Lab Rat gulped. "Please reconsider. I'm begging you Abby… don't do it…"
Abby hesitated a moment, then glanced inside the glass box. The blanket was looking smaller and smaller, with only the slight rising and falling with Chester's breath giving any sign of life inside. He'd been alone ever since the incident on the mountain……. No, he was alone long before that. He had been a scientist, working alone toward a noble goal, but never really having his interests accepted by those around him. Even before he became Kid Rot, he'd been alone… just like her.
Abby set her face in a grim line and turned back to her beakers. "Not anymore…" Without another moment's hesitation, she lifted her beaker of enzymes, and tipped it over the beaker of chemicals.
For an instant it was like time stopped, the drops coming down into the second beaker with all the urgency of syrup dripping onto a pancake. Neither Lab Rat nor Abby seemed to be breathing, all of their being focused into watching that happened inside that tiny glass jar that could save Chester… or destroy Abby. She realized in this instant that she was placing her future in Chester's hands… but she didn't regret it. She knew it would work, it had to…
The droplets fell into the beaker of Chemicals… and began to swirl into it, mixing into a fine pearl-white color that settled calmly into the bottom of the beaker. Abby continued to watch the beaker for several moments, as if just waiting for the thing to spontaneously combust and set her on fire, but it just sat there immobile and decidedly non-explosive.
"Abby… I think that's it! That's the enzyme Chester was trying to make!" Lab Rat snapped her out of her trance. "Give it to him, quick!"
"Right!" Abby snatched the completed enzyme off of the desk and rushed to the glass box, pushing the door open with one hand and rushing up to Chester's beside. Squinting against the sight, she threw back the covers that had concealed Chester's body and dumped the enzyme into the forming green and brown liquid that had been consuming him. The pearl potion faded into his body, vanishing amid the putrid rot and for a moment, seeming to have no effect at all.
"No… no…" Abby shook her head as the rot began to drip even more quickly off of the table, dropping to the steel floor below in great clumps that splashed disgustingly at her feet. "Chester, no, I'm sorry, I didn't mean…" Abby put her hands over her mouth, watching Chester's body seem to wash away… but then on his shoulder she caught sight of a pink lump underneath the layer of falling rot. As she watched the rest of the rot began to fall away, revealing more pale and pink lumps underneath, which themselves were frail and thin, but still holding firm as the rot dripped free from Chester's whole body clump by clump.
"Chester…" Abby's hands clutched together tightly in front of her chest as she watched his body revealed piece by piece in front of her, frail and weak-looking, but whole underneath the layer of rot that had threatened to dissolve him alive. As the last piece of rot fell to the floor at her feet, she reached out with one hand, placing it against his bare shoulder and giving him a gentle shake. "Chester, are you still there?"
"Mngh…" Chester's eyes opened slowly, no longer tainted by the darkness that had signified the presence of Kid Rot. His eyes turned toward her, locking on hers. "Abby… you saved me…"
"Nuh-uh…" Abby smiled and shook her head. "You did that… it was your research. It was all correct, you didn't make any mistakes… you just used a dirty beaker."
"My research… worked?" Chester's eyes widened in surprise.
"You did what nobody has ever done before… you'll be famous." Abby smiled.
"Famous…" Chester smiled, his eyes still staring into hers. "Think I'll be popular now?"
Abby chuckled. "I think you'll be extremely popular."
"Ahem…" Lab Rat coughed. "I'm happy for you both, but I have this huge crick in my neck from being trapped here for the last hour, if nobody minds…"
"Right, right…" Abby rushed to help her friend and partner in the bureau up from the floor, cutting the goop off from him and helping him climb to his feet while Chester sat up to watch, still looking weak, but smiling like she'd never seen him smile before. It was almost heartwarming she thought, to see him alive, well, and so pleased… but she knew one more thing that could really help him along on the life he'd just regained.
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Two sets of footsteps tromped along on top of the snow, clad in thick snow boots that protected them from the bitter nighttime chill. It was well after midnight, and Abby knew that she would be in huge trouble when she returned home, but she didn't regret it for even an instant. To see Chester walking alongside her, clutching her hand like he would fade into madness again if he dared to let go, was more than enough reward to make her efforts and sacrifices worthwhile. She liked seeing him smile.
"How long has it been since you've stopped and looked at one of these?" Abby turned the corner around the block and led Chester toward the park, in the middle of which the town Christmas Tree could still be seen twinkling. Few people were around at this time of night, those who were, were huddled close together around the tree, snuggling together and watching it silently, as if entranced by it and each other.
"Whoa." Chester breathed with a wild smile on his face. "I don't think I've ever seen one that big…"
"Yeah, it's pretty nice. You came back to us just in time for Christmas, you know." Abby told him.
"Pretty lucky for me, if I had anyone to spend it with." Chester forced a chuckle.
"Who said you don't?" Abby gave his hand a gentle squeeze. Chester looked down at their hands, then up at her face again in time to see her put a broad grin on her face. "Come on… if you don't mind, you could always come over to our place… my mom always makes way too much dinner and stuff."
"That… sounds nice." Chester nodded nervously. "It's late though, I bet you should get home…"
"Eh, I'll be in trouble either way…" Abby tugged his hand toward the tree and walked toward one of the benches with him. "I'd rather spend a little more time right here, if it's all the same to you." Chester didn't argue again.
Abby felt rather serene somehow, after a day of feeling intensely irritable and angry. She hadn't been able to figure out why, but now that she had someone to spend her time with besides Ty, she was sure she'd figured it out. She was tired of being the weird science nerd who happened to be good at sports, she wanted someone to spend time with, someone to call a friend. Maybe someday she could have something more than a friend… but one step at a time. She had all the time in the world, after all, and she could think of no better way to spend a Christmas night than with a new friend who just helped make the world a vastly better place.
THE END