Chris grumbled unhappily as he looked out his window at the fresh snowfall coating that was once against coating his walkway and more importantly his driveway. It had been a long time since snow had been a thing of magic and glory, so long ago that he hardly believed that he had ever been that naïve. Snow wasn't a wonderful once a year event that meant time to go outside and build snowmen and get hurl snowballs at friends and neighbors. No, snow was the stuff that trapped you in your house and had to be shoveled out of the way, and forced you to salt your walkways. Something Chris had simply refused to since he didn't have anyplace pressing to go and wasn't expecting anybody to come over.
That was probably the real reason why he was so cranky around the holidays not that he'd ever actually admit it to anybody. His work had moved him out from sunny southern California to snowy Maine, literally the closest person he could consider a friend was a little over a thousand miles away in Chicago.
And that was only by using a fairly generous term for what a friend was, in reality Lara was a long time role play buddy stretching all the way back to the AOL chat rooms of lore, though these days they mostly played on the forums of Literotica. He'd seen pictures of her, they even exchanged gifts most years (this year he'd gotten her a PS4 with Assassin's Creed, her gift had yet to arrive, not that he'd open it until tomorrow morning.) spoken to her on the phone a handful of times but they'd never even met face to face. Every few years they would talk about how this was the year that they were finally going to meet face to face but that's all it really was. Talk. Neither one of them really meant it anymore than people really mean it when they say that this is the year that they intend to go backpacking around Europe. If you'd really intended to do it you wouldn't be talking about it, you'd be packing your bags and you'd just be there.
"Stupid fucking snow." He grumbled. It was only five in the afternoon but it was already dark especially with the fat grey storm clouds that had swept in two days before and threatened to bury him and the entire north east beneath its angry snow. So he'd given himself permission to get into the rum and eggnog already and was settled in for a marathon of stupid Christmas specials on Cartoon Network.
That was one thing that never seemed to suck about Christmas. Ever since he could remember he'd watch most of the same specials. Frosty the Snowman, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, He-Man and She-Ra Christmas special, Johnny Bravo Christmas and a personal favorite in Ernest Saves Christmas. They were fun to watch with the family, especially the kids who'd never seen them before and with older friends and family that honestly couldn't wrap their minds around the thirty two year old curling up with an oversized mug of hot cocoa (he had a recipe for 151 hot cocoa that would knock you on your ass and got him invited to lots of Christmas parties back home and kicked out of one when the kids had unknowingly gotten into it. He'd personally found it absolutely hilarious to be honest and had a bitch of a time not laughing) and settle in for hours and upon hours of cheesy Christmas stories.
This year it just wasn't quite working and he suspected that part of it was the constant driving snow outside. It was just dreary and unending. "Whoever is dreaming of a white Christmas has either never had one or has a very good reason to appreciate being snowed in for days at a time. It wasn't a subject he was ever going to broach with his own parents but he'd long suspected that it might not be a coincidence that nearly every member of his family was born in late July through early September and they'd originally been New Yorkers.
Chris quickly lost track of time, eventually the combination of rum and overall dreariness of the day drove him to a point where he was randomly passing in and out. It wasn't the way he would have chosen to spend the holidays but that was what he had to work with and the sooner the days went by the happier he'd be.
The doorbell woke Chris up and he could only grumble looking at the time. It was barely nine in the morning. Way too fucking early for him to be up, too early for people to be coming to his house. It was Christmas morning, who the fuck would even be out? The doorbell chimed again. "I'm coming!" He shouted angrily pulling himself up from his spot sprawled out on the couch and pulling on a sweater.
"Are you Chris Jacobson?" A delivery man dressed in the drab brown uniform of his company asked thrusting a clip board out. He was standing next to an enormous box. It was easily six feet tall.
