Author's Note: I'd originally thought to post this at 12:05 in the morning, but then I fell asleep reading a book given to me by a very ironic friend: Fangirl, by Rainbow Rowell, about a girl who's eighteen-years-old and stuck in a rut with her own original writing because she's so obsessed with fanfiction. A little bit too reflective of my own life to be wholly amusing, seeing as I'm an eighteen-year-old girl who's stuck in a rut with my own original writing because I'm so obsessed with fanfiction :/
On a higher note, I also got a MASH 4077 t-shirt for Christmas!
Clockwork
1952
She's eight years old and it's the day after Christmas. She's got a new dolly and a new pink dress. Scott has a bicycle. The gingerbread house is missing its roof. Her mother's got a telegraph that says their daddy's dead.
Later they learn in a letter from a doctor that he died because they couldn't save him. 12:05, December 26th.
1953
She's nine years old and it's the day after Christmas. The war ended in the summer but her daddy isn't home. He isn't ever coming home. They don't celebrate Christmas that year.
They visit his grave, a name on a stone in a row of others and her tears are hot on her cheeks being battered by the icy wind. It's too cold out to leave flowers in the snow.
1954
She's ten years old and it's the day after Christmas. They hang a wreath with a black bow on the front door.
There isn't much money to buy presents this year, but her mother knits her a new scarf and gives her a little red book to write in. Scott gets a pair of socks and a basketball that used to be their daddy's.
She puts one of her daddy's old letters in the book, one that wasn't just for her mother or to the whole family, but to her. So many times she opens the book and writes Dear Diary at the top of the page and then gets caught up reading her daddy's letter again. The ink fades with her fingerprints and the paper grows tattered and thin, and the little red books gets filled up with Dear Diary and nothing else.
1955
She's eleven years old and it's the day after Christmas.
She and Scott got a puppy, who gets hit by a car a month later and she realizes for the first time what death really means. The permanence and cruel, abruptness of it, no fireworks, no fanfare, just one minute life and the next death.
And her daddy still isn't there and he isn't ever coming back. They burry the dog in the frozen, ice covered earth in the backyard and she doesn't think she can ever celebrate Christmas again.
1956
She's twelve years old and it's the day after Christmas.
It was a cold Christmas, with mounds upon mounds of snow, coming out of the sky like powdered sugar. She lays her cheek against the cool window pane and watches her breath fog on the glass and the snow fall and the Christmas lights on house across the street.
She wonders if they ever get snow in Korea, and if it had been snowing when her daddy's heart had stopped, five minutes after Christmas ended.
1957
She's thirteen years old and it's the day after Christmas. She can't sleep because her head is full of the sound of ticking clocks and trickling sand, of heartbeats pulsing and fading.
She watches the minute hand on the clock above her door jerkily move toward the large black number one. She can hear her mother in the living room, sitting on the couch, staring into the crackling fire with the now empty stockings hanging on the mantel, perhaps imagining what it used to feel like, having an arm around her shoulder and a chest to lay her head on.
The minute hand ticks passed the number one and she breathes quietly through her nose. She can hear Scott turn over in his bed, his room right next to hers.
1958
She's fourteen years old and it's the day after Christmas.
Her mom's got a new job and a new boyfriend whose name is Tim. He's nice and takes Scott fishing and kisses her cheek and gives her a flower out of the bouquet he gives her mother and drives her to school.
He doesn't dance with her feet on top of his. He doesn't read her bedtime stories. He doesn't build her doll houses and twirl her in the air. He doesn't life her on his shoulders so she can put the angel on top of the tree.
She's too old for dolls now and she gets a pair of shiny black shoes for Christmas and pink nail polish.
1959
She's fifteen years old and it's the day after Christmas.
Her mom's married Tim and they live in a new, bigger house with bleached white siding and a red door where they hang a wreath with a green bow.
It was a merry Christmas that year. There were cookies baking in the oven and Bing Crosby on the radio and plenty of presents under the tree. Her mom sits on the couch with Tim's arm around her shoulder and Scott smiles with a mouth full of candy cane.
She's taking biology in school now and knows that a bullet to the brain can't be survived, no matter what a doctor does. She thinks about those five minutes a lot. She thinks about how short they are, how insignificant, how they are gone so quickly in the shifting sands of time, like the fleeting, passing years, lost to everyone but her.
It's still too cold to leave flowers by her daddy's grave but she doesn't have to worry about that until tomorrow, and she thinks maybe those five minutes are the biggest miracle she's ever seen.
End.