Silver Bells

There is a time honored tradition for some that comes with the holiday season. It's the lights, the warmth, the people … the pushing, and the shoving. It's the name calling, the anger, and the sweaty nightmares that will still haunt retail employees six months from now. That is of course, the last minute shoppers. They were a group of the everyday, the mundane, and the working middle class. They were the idiots who bought all the presents and forgot to get his sisters tampons. They were the morons that forgot that Christmas was this week, not next. And of course the suicidal daredevils that believed without fail that corporate America was holding out on them, and the best time to shop was on that fateful eleventh hour, when prices would be scratched down to nothing … which they're not wrong, just that there's nothing left in the aisle to get. So the conspiracy continued another year.

This kind of ultra-violence, vicious hand to hand combat was what John Connor was anticipating when he pulled into the department store parking lot. Fighting machines and mutant hybrids was one thing, a neurotic grandmother convinced that she had to outdo her daughter in-law or the children will "Stick her in a raisin farm" someday because she has nothing left to offer, was a different war all together. Sadly it was just a war he couldn't get too.

"I could do it, you know …"

"Yeah, by all means mom. Go break into a car in a crowded lot and move it out of the parking spot … no one will notice."

"Not with that attitude."

"Okay. Let's play it your way, Martha Stewart. So no one sees you, right?"

"Tends to be the idea."

"Where are you going to park it, genius?"

"… Shut it."

"That's what I thought."

Sarah Connor was unbuckled and right up to John's ear from the back seat. The man imagined that if he was a captain of an old world galley and his mother was in the crow's nest, she would somehow still be as unhelpful as she was pressed to the side of his head. From the third circle through the jam packed parking lot, the lean golden haired woman had decided to take a first-hand account of the situation. For two passes since he had endured his mother pointing out false positives right in front of his face and snarling unpleasantly in his ear when he "Screwed around" when trying to pursue them. She was still quite offended when John made it clear that he would not "Mow down a nun on a charity drive" for her "autistic" need for a festive bird. "I'm not saying to do it, John. It would just be nice to know you're willing for my sake." She spewed venom aggressively afterward.

To add to the frustration mounting in John and Cameron's car, it was Cameron's turn for the radio. So since then, it had been Disney animated music. It would seem that there was a psychopath out there bent on tormenting John. This man's choice of weapon was psychological warfare, and his methods were showing Cameron the Little Mermaid. For the last thirty minutes John was starting to feel like everything was better down were it was wetter as long as it was an opportunity to drown himself. Between "Be our Guest" for the sixteenth time and Sarah Connor in his ear he was about to howl to the Blue Corn Moon himself.

"There's one."

Derek sounded desperate as he called out from the back seat. If they were explorers on the high sea, John might have ignored his "Land Ho" call. The younger man was at his wits end with the women in his life, so it only stood to reason that his uncle was beyond this plain of sanity. Being locked in a car for two hours with Cameron was bad enough, but the constant bickering with Sarah, and all to Walt Disney's greatest hits … the scurvy dog should be suffering from cabin fever at this point. But John was however surprised to see that there was a spot about to open up in a very strategic placement just on the other side of the line of cars to their right.

"Thank god …"

But Just as John was angling to make the round, Cameron spoke. "That red mini-van is going to take it." the soldier rolled his eyes as he turned his head. Not only because the synchronization with Sarah made them look like they were two heads on one body, but because the van in question with an anti-war and "Coexist" sticker on the bumper was going the wrong way, opposite everyone else.

At that moment the man saw red. A rant began to boil inside him. A rant that would connect the lawlessness of the common soccer mom to the heinous crimes of a Judgment Day never to come, and the horrible machine bred degradations within the hellish foundations underneath Century.

Suddenly Sarah was ripped back into her seat, and Derek strode in between John and Cameron. Both looked surprised by such a desperate act from the usually coldly reserved man. The future officer grabbed the former commando leader by his leather coat collar. "It's time for the Road Block maneuver." He didn't suggest, he ordered of his nephew and the cyborg.

John's eyebrows hit his hairline. Afterward, he did a double take. "Don't you think that's a little extreme, Derek?" He shared a dependent look with a calculating Cameron who in turn moved her predatory tracking gaze to the mini-van that they were about to race.

Derek's focused eyes had never been more intense. He reached forward and turned up the volume. There blasting from the refurbished speakers was "A tale as old as time" for the thirtieth time. He turned back to his nephew. "Is it, John?" He asked angrily. "Is it?" He questioned again with a dangerous edge.

The younger man nodded, rewarding his uncle with his point. He turned to Cameron with a look of concern in his eyes. "You think you can do it?" He asked seriously. The beautiful girl didn't take her eyes off the trajectory of the candy apple red minivan being honked at as it made its illegal weaving turns toward the prize.

"It's possible." Cameron was cold and stoic as if plotting a murder most foul.

It only took John a split second to make his decision. To some, considering what they were about to do, it might have seemed rash. But to anyone who knew the man, his clockwork mind was already going through the scenarios since the maneuver was mentioned. With a long sigh, John relented with a nod. But before anything happened he rounded on both Cameron and Derek. "Hey …" He pointed between the two of them. "It better work this time." He warned grudgingly, memories of the trial run still bothering him.

"It will." Derek confirmed.

"It better."

"It will." Cameron answered this time.

"Because I'm not breaking into anymore goddamn hospitals!"

"What the hell is going on?"

From the back seat Sarah looked from her former fiancé, to her child and his cyborg companion, then back and forth in confusion. There was a seriousness that had over taken all of them. It was an anxiety that grew in the warrior beauty's belly over words such as "Maneuver", "Extreme", and "Hospital". In that moment Sarah Connor was not for the first time, and God knows not the last time, thoroughly confused about what was going on in her child's car.

John and the rest of the future war veterans ignored Sarah. With a deep breath the soldier began nodding his head in rhythm, quietly counting. Sarah watched Derek tapping on Cameron's leather seat as he tracked their mark from his window. Her angry eyes flashed back and forth again.

"On three."

"What's on three?"

"It's going to be okay, mom."

"Ready …"

"John, what's on three?!"

"It's going to be okay!"

"Steady …"

"Someone tell me what the hell is about to go on?!"

Cameron turned back to Sarah. "Hyper Alloy Combat Chassis." She opened her door.

"Go, go, go!"

Before the mother of the future could snap about the cyborg girl's cryptic answer, the car slowed just enough for Cameron to exit the cab. Derek dove forward to shut the door as John gunned the accelerator.

Irina Dunham hated Christmas. To her traditional family, this was a season for giving and the birth of their Christ. To her and the rest of her feminist group back in college, all this holiday was, was a disgusting oppression of other religions around the world. She hadn't thought so before she went to college. But once her professor showed her the truth of the world, she couldn't believe she used to be one of these automatons. Blissfully ignorant of the oppression their consumer lifestyle placed on the less fortunate. All she was doing was trying to convince her family of the truth shown to her by her professors, when her mother sent her from the family mansion to get "a few things".

Well, if her mom thought that she would shop at those upper crust stores near the hills, she thought wrong. They may believe the same way she does, think just like her, but they weren't the "real" revolutionaries. They didn't grow through the struggle like she planned to do once her major in "Women's Studies" was done at Berkley.

She scoffed at all the horns honking and people shouting at her as she drove her van through the parking lot. It gave her an uplifting feeling, hearing the anger. It fueled Irina onward, made the college girl feel proudly dangerous. Yeah, she was a badass bitch, a badass bitch that didn't respect the rules of this oppressive, sexist, and racist society. If their consumer, capitalist evils were more important than humanity, than she would break all the laws. Jail was only for the martyrs.

CRACK!

Irina swore she didn't see the girl as she rushed by. Oh my god, she didn't see her. One moment she was thinking of a manifesto, of leading a great revolution. The next thing she knew, a girl, no older than sixteen or seventeen was planted on her hood. Oh god, she's white. She killed a gorgeous teenage white girl. They're going to send her to jail, she's going to be lambasted as the second coming of Helter Skelter.

Irina jumped out of her van and put her hands on her head. The girl in the pretty dress, knee high black boots, and purple leather jacket just lay there unmoving, wrapped around her fender. This was Irina's worst nightmare, she had become a killer, and her life was over. She was going to do so many things. But now she had become the monster of her own story.

Behind, there was a squeal of tires as an old black mustang with chrome finishing, sped into the parking spot that Irina had her eye on, rather than the road. She turned back and cursed the man that drew that line when this store was built. She cursed her life, cursed her posh upbringing, and the struggles of being a woman in such a harsh society. The college girl only turned for a second when the sleek vintage car gave two honks of the horn.

When she turned back, she gave a shriek. Her knee was brought up to her abdomen, her hands over her mouth. The dead ballerina that Irina never actually lamented had somehow peeled herself from the hood. The teenager was standing only a few feet from the girl now. She looked completely unblemished and unhurt, watching Irina with an innocent tilt of her head.

"Humans are animals and thus are irrational." The ballerina began as if nothing was amiss. "Your primal nature makes you aggressive and unable to coexist, thus there is no end to conflict and war. Your stance is illogical." She explained.

Irina's eyes were bugged out as she watched the girl began to stride away with a mechanical grace, like the hypnotizing beauty of the precise workings of a well-engineered machine. But before she continued on to the black Mustang, she turned back for only a second. She gave Irina a beautiful disarming smile that seemed out of place considering what had just happened.

"Merry Christmas."