The Christmas Effect

Christmas was supposed to be a time for fun, family, and other cute heart warming things like that.

For Morris Jenkins, it meant playing his guitar out in the cold, hoping some people had some loose cash they'd be willing to dole out to the guy with the too weird hair bundled up in the too weird clothes with no one to spend Christmas with. 

He was glad some people decided to be saints for the holidays or some sort of cutesy world peace crap some people spewed out when it was less than 30 degrees outside and lights were hung on every vertical object at least three feet tall. Scratch that, there were lights on that fire hydrant. Because that's smart.

It was only five in the afternoon but it could've been eleven at night and he wouldn't have known the difference. For some reason, people were still doing a mad dash for presents two days before Christmas, but who could blame them, this place was great.

Morris was playing in the square of one of the smartest marketing techniques to ever grace architectural design. It was part shopping plaza and part super mall, directly linked to the rest of the downtown city where there were even more places to shop. 

It was carefully plotted out so that once you were roped in, you couldn't get out until you've walked past nearly each and every store, guaranteeing sky rocketing sales, broke customers, and stolen items and valuables.

Which was why playing in the square that is directly linked to every starting point of the maze was a score. The square was made almost for wannabe musicians and panhandlers because it's at the point where people have started to shop and "could spare a few dollars" and it — somehow — had great acoustics.

He had no idea how much money he had gotten, but with all the people who had come up, it sure was a lot. There were all sorts of people who passed him and he found himself immersed in his favorite game: people watching.

There were all sorts of people who directly interacted with him. There were the people who smiled and gave him a few dollars and greeted him with "Happy Holidays". He liked those people, they were genuinely nice and as hard as he tried, you can't hate those people.

There were the kids whose parents told them to give him money. They were tricky. Some were completely uninterested in giving him money and just rolled their eyes. There were others who smiled at him as they dropped the money. Others, he saw, had asked their parents for money to give to him, but that was rare.

There were the jerks who scoffed and rolled their eyes at him as they passed, as if trying to make some money by playing music meant he was lazy and didn't work. It's not like he doesn't want a job, people, it's not like he wanted to stand out here and play his fingers off.

There were the nice people who tried to strike up a conversation. Morris was a bit awkward, so those were hard, but some people appreciated his dry sense of humor and sharp wit. 

There were those who gaped and gawked at him, as if he was actually pretty good.

There was that group of teenage boys who saw him and began nudging one of their friends, all laughing and giggling together because they somehow were able to fend off the cruel, harsh reality of life and be happy.

Then there was that little girl who had been watching him from a bench for almost two hours. 

She had shown up at one point to give him money. She had stood there to listen to him for about a minute before going back to wherever she had come from. Then she went to sit on the bench near him, but not too near him.

He had been playing almost non-stop for almost half an hour, so he took a break and drank some water. Well, it was all frozen at this point, but he tried to nonetheless. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the little girl jump down and walk over to him. He just kept drinking his water.