For those outside of the Detroit area:WNIC is an easy-listening station 11 months out of the year. For the entire month before Jesus' birthday it changes its format to nothing but Christmas standards.
James Christmas is a man with only two days to live.
He has hated his name, and hated Christmas since he was a teenager. All the bad things in his life have happened to him on Christmas; things like his wife leaving him.
Like losing his dream job at the linen pencil sharpening center.
Like his best friend becoming a Mooney.
Like the time he asked for Optimus Prime and was given StarScream.
Further, all these bad events have become associated with particular holiday tunes in his head, so that every Christmas song makes him relive another terrible moment in his life. Since his doctors tell him he is going to die within two days, and it is Dec 23rd, Jimmy Christmas has only one more bad thing to have happen to him on Christmas: his own death.
WNIC's wall-to-wall Christmas music is such torture to him, he wants to live his last few days in a world without it. So he has snuck into WNIC's offices with some antlers he stole from his father's wall. They have been sharpened to needle points, and he has strapped them to his head. He resolves to gore the program director to death with his horns of good cheer.
He wears a black turtle neck sweater, black dress slacks, black dress socks, black wingtip shoes, and a black knit cap. He is bald underneath. He has painted his face with black shoe-polish. His jolly set of sharpened antlers are strapped to his head with linen strips tied firmly under his chin. There is a stopwatch ticking down the seconds to Christmas clutched in his sweaty hands.
Rick Peterson is a program directory at WNIC during the holidays:
Rick has always been a Christmas kind of guy. The veritable opposite of Ebeneezer Scrooge. He keeps Christmas in his heart all year long, making weekly visits to Frankenmuth to buy various Christmas-y knick-knacks. His office is coated in Christmas stuff, and he spends days poring over gift catalogues deciding what perfect gift to give each of his friends. He takes great pride in always picking out the perfect gift, just so that the person receiving the gift will feel ashamed at their own inadequate reciprical gifting.
So he finds much joy in programming the Christmas season at WNIC. Getting rid of the watered down, insipid, terrible, light-weight pop music for a few weeks and replacing it with inspirational and musically invaluable selections such as “Do they know its Christmas,” “Rockin Around the Christmas Tree,” not to mention selections from “A Very Hanson Christmas” and his all time favorite: “I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas”.
He is looking forward to a late night of work, and is humming “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer” under his breath.
He wears a holiday print, baggy Heathcliff Huxtable style sweater, a pair of dockers, christmas print socks and two penny-loafers: one blue, one red.
Rick's Office:
Rick's office is technically an outside, window office, but his window overlooks an alley and some darkened windows in the building across the way. Small, with a desk covered in Christmas print contact paper, with silver foil snowflakes hanging over it tied to the drop ceiling braces with fishline, there is a sign on the door admonishing visitors to “be good, for goodness sake!” and a fake highway sign is hung on the wall next to his clock that says “Reindeer Crossing” accompanied with the requisite silhouette of a reindeer flying.
There is a closet here, and in it is our friend, Jimmy. Rick sits at his chair, jolly snow-man coffee mug in his hand. He has a radio on his desk tuned in to the studio, listening to the music. As the music tracks change, he knods in satisfaction and recognition: he is making sure his program selection is running its course properly. The radio has Christmas decals liberally pasted all over it.
The tableau:
Jimmy will attempt to kill, but each piece of Christmas music will cause a flash back to a bad time in his past. When he finally charges Rick, he misses the dodging Rick and stabs the radio, getting electrocuted while Bruce Springstein sings, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” Last words? “Ho, ho, ho. * die *”
¶ 6:08 AM
