Another Christmas

*******************"Christmas isn't a season, it's a feeling..."*********************

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"Wen Bell!"

Wen Bell turned. Her Boss had come up behind her. Her boss was a fashionable lady past her middle age who kept her gray hair gray as a fashion statement.

"Doing overtime on Christmas eve?" She asked Wen Bell with concern. This Boss who always reminded her of deadlines and targets was acting like a completely different person on Christmas eve. Was this the magic of Christmas?

"Hehe Boss... I'll take off after I finish this draft," said Wen Bell.

"But we can put it off till the end of this week dear..." said Boss lady.

Christmas magic again! Thought Wen Bell. Even the rule that said they should complete the first draft within three days was being relaxed in the holiday season. But Wen Bell was in the mood for work today. If she went home she would become depressed as hell. Ever since her parents divorced and went their separate ways she had been spending her Christmases alone. No boyfriend, no family....such realizations came to her with much more force on Christmas eve. At least if she stayed up in the office to work she wouldn't feel so bad. But here was her Boss who was finding it difficult to let her stay over in the office for Christmas. Was she afraid of being called Boss Scrooge or something?

Wen Bell sighed. She emailed the completed document to her colleague, and closed the laptop. She got up reluctantly, donned her jacket, picked up her sling bag, and made her way out of the office. After taking a few steps she went back to her boss who was closing the office.

"Merry Christmas Boss!" she said with a smile.

"Have a Merry Christmas Bell!" her boss wished her back.

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Wen Bell turned the TV on and sat down in her one-bedroom apartment, wrapped in a blanket and sipping hot chocolate. At least the noise from the television would kill her loneliness. In one corner of her room, the Christmas tree stood illuminated in lights of various colors. The lights turned from yellow to green... green to purple...purple to yellow...

She did not remember when she had fallen asleep but when she was coming back to her senses she could distinctly hear the news reporter reading out the weather reports...

"An intense round of lake-effect snowfall is expected to follow a multi-faceted storm in areas around the west coast road. Public information bureau has issued warnings of dangerously low visibility and road closures in sector 47, 59,64..."

Wen Bell got up. What was that noise? Someone was ringing her calling bell.

"You have a delivery." said a deliveryman and she opened the door... Wen Bell signed and took the large parcel somewhat surprised at its size. It looked like a Christmas gift. Woah! Who would send her something like this?

She hurriedly opened the box after closing the door. It revealed a Christmas card on top and another smaller box inside. She opened the card to read a message.

(_______________"A fight in snow, roses bloom, blood is shed, I know not when this would end."

She read it repeatedly trying to make out what it meant, more importantly, this hand looked familiar...her Grandpa had died five years back..why now....it could be that someone is pranking her....but the handwriting was indeed her Grandpa's.

The smaller box looked like a tiny locker with a passcode. What's the code? She had to fill in six digits. A birthday date? Wen Bell tried various combinations. Wait, this could be a prank...Let's just make sure...She went into her bedroom and dug out the various cards her grandpa had sent her every Christmas.....reminders of the time when she was once so precious, so much loved...She hurriedly compared them to the note that was in her hands, the handwriting was precisely the same...damn it...let hell be...if someone had planned this elaborately to prank her, then she might as well fall for the trick...

Unable to hold in her curiosity any longer, she shook the box violently, she was going crazy for some reason....as if she had no time to crack the passcode...She should just crack the box open with blunt force! So she threw the box down with all her might and it opened! Christmas magic yeah!

When the box opened something fell out of it, something like a radio, it was playing the famous song...

"..Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul.

With a corncob pipe and a button nose,

And two eyes made out of coal..."

Wen Bell stared at the old-fashioned radio and she felt a chill creeping up her body....When did she turn off the heater...Why was it so bloody cold.....But the music on the radio kept playing...

"....Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale, they say,

He was made of snow but the children know,

How he came to life one day..."

Bell tried to turn it off, but her hands were visibly shaking from the cold. She tried pressing various buttons."Damn it...why wouldn't it stop?"

The song grew louder and louder and suddenly the windows flew open letting in a cloud of snow and before Wen Bell knew it, everything had blacked out...