Dasher & The Dancer - Christmas In Aspen [a specterverse christmas special]

Chapter THREE

🦌DASH🦌
Dasher Delacroix

... Christmas Eve - One year later...
~A stroke before midnight~
~Northside~

I fucking hate Christmas, I always have for as long as I can remember..
Everything about the holidays and the commercial bullshit that comes with it fills the pit of putrid disgust that sits low in my stomach.. I hate seeing the smiling couples, all happy and kissing under the mistletoe that is hung above every door. I hate hearing the cheery fucking carols played on repeat in every store.. I hate the smell of pine and mint choking me everywhere I go and the dumb decorations plastered all over the place..

But mostly, I hate the fact that it reminds me of a shitty childhood spent with a junkie single mom who never once put her needle down long enough to buy me a fucking present.. She never made me cookies or pretended that Santa Clause had come.. There was no tree in our living room and no cheer in our home..

Nah, my memories of Christmas are filled with vomit soaked into carpet from when she'd OD and I'd have to roll her into her side to keep her from choking.. I remember cigarette burns forming scabs on my arms from asking too many questions and being an unwanted little bastard.. I remember her shitty boyfriends who'd beat me simply for existing..

What I don't remember is a single good day..

Jezabelle Yule, my mother, was a fucking mess, right up until the night she died, just the way I always knew she would with a syringe hanging out of her vein..

And just like her, I grew up to be a piece of shit.. I might not be anything like her, I'm not a junkie and I don't have a kid to mess up.. But somehow I'm just as worthless as she always knew I'd be..

After spending the last eight months in prison for a stupid parole violation of criminal association, I am almost wishing I had stayed on the inside to miss this insidious season..

I fucking hate Christmas..

Or at least.. I did..

My thoughts wanders back to this same time twelve months ago, when like a fucking idiot I had thought the year ahead was going to be different, better somehow..
That was the night I met her..
The most beautiful girl I'd ever seen..

Shit.. I couldn't understand why she chose me that night.. I don't even know why she wanted to talk to me let alone why she would let me fuck her on the roof of the Chinatown strip club..

But for some crazy fucking reason she did..

The gorgeous girl with eyes the colour of warm honey, hair like chocolate silk and the kind of body that could bring a guy to his knees.. She was funny and warm, bright and sunny, sarcastic and strange..