Being a Barrow - A Sequel to Barrow's Boy

'Tis the Season

'Tis the Season

A Barrow Boys Christmas Special

     He had meant to be productive over this journey, but the page in front of him remained the evidence of his failure, the blank page laughing at his many attempts to make words emerge from his tired state. 

    Emmett tossed his pen onto his notebook, leaning back and running his hands over his face. He had less than twenty-four hours to make this work, and all he had was a genre and a hint of a violin intro. He was positively screwed. He'd had this deadline since September. He should have something more than a vague idea of Christmas.

    It wasn't his fault, not really. Every single topic he could write about was taken. I want you for Christmas, done. Christmas tree farms, claimed. Even wanting a damn hippopotamus was sung and known. And here Emmett was, needing to bust out a Christmas song by the time his flight landed in-

    He turned over his phone, tapping the screen to check the time. 12:30 a.m. His phone wouldn't have adjusted as they flew over time zones, so, with some basic math, he figured he had around two and a half hours before they landed. A soft purring from under his seat brought Emmett's attention down to the small cat that had been happily sleeping since they were at the airport. 

    "At least one of us is resting," he muttered, nudging the pet carrier with his foot. Wilde stayed asleep, though Emmett wasn't surprised.

    "I have a cat," Emmet sang under his breath. "I got him for Christmas a couple of years ago. This isn't a good song. My record label is going to hate me."

     It was no use. He was getting nowhere. Desperately, Emmett pulled his headphones out of his hoodie pocket, putting them on and grabbing his phone again. He could call it inspiration if nothing else.

     He knew that Christmas music wasn't his brand. Nobody listened to his music with the hopes of it bringing joy. Emmett wrote the kind of music you needed when you were crying in the bathroom. The music for quiet car rides in the rain and trauma-induced anger after visiting your family. Emmett wrote music like the songs that he listened to while lying on the rug of his bedroom floor. But, he had thought, or maybe hoped, that he was past that now. He'd been working on a more upbeat album over the past few months, and he was happy with it so far.

     As he turned up the volume on his phone, blasting music into his ears- not Christmas music, he'd listened to that for the first hour of the flight- he turned to look out the window. Everything was dark, unsurprisingly, and he could see his face reflected in the glass. 

      One Christmas song. That was all he needed. So why was it so hard?

     Turning back to his notebook, Emmett flipped through some of the other lyrics he'd written, focusing on the ones meant for his next album. He stopped on one, eyeing it for a moment.

   I once thought to mend my gashes

   I must burn the bridges, keep the ashes

   The fall of snow on my lashes

   Say I'll be alright whatever happens

     No, he couldn't take one line about snow and try to justify it as a Christmas song. It was like people who claimed that Die Hard was a Christmas movie. Emmett was adamant that it was not.