The Ghost of Five Minutes Ago

*NOT FOR MINORS. EXPLETIVES THROUGHOUT.

I am not sure if there are rules / guidelines on mature themes / expletives here - if there are, then I of course will oblige, even if it means removing any uploaded material. However, assuming its OK and as there is a disclaimer, then here we go: this story is a rather earthy and expletive-littered take on the eternal favourite Christmas Carol / Scrooge.

The Ghost of Five Minutes Ago

Ebenezer Scrooge picked himself up from the bedroom floor, unravelled the frantic gatherings of blankets, quilts and bedcurtains from around his person, chuckled and went to the window, throwing it wide open onto the streets of London on this glorious Christmas day. Cold, granted; a chilly wind for sure, snowing heavil— sod it, the weather was bloody awful, ok? Let’s crack on. . .

“Boy!” he shouted down to some festive waifen stray out on the street below.

“Me, sir?”

“You, sir! Oh, what a clever boy, an intelligen—“

“Ahem!” came a sound from somewhere in the bedroom.

With the boy looking up, mystified, but only for a few seconds before he ran off to mug the pigeon lady and steal her Christmas takings; she only usually ate once a year, but now … well, we won’t go there, too sad.

“Who the bleedin’ ‘ell are you?” yelled Scrooge, angry to be distracted from his showing the world his newfound belief in the spirit of Christmas; not only that, the interloper was the strangest person, or thing – he’d seen so far in this last twenty-four hours. Before him stood a man with a frizz of unkempt ginger hair, a matching moustache of Catweazle proportions, and wearing a doublet and hose which Scrooge could just make out below a rather moth-eaten dirty-red robe, a ruff, rather faded and tatty and filthy, so we’ll call it a roughruff, and a pair of bright green boots.

“Let me introduce myself,” the man said with a smile. “I am the Ghost of Five Minutes ago. Pleased to meet you,” he added, as he offered his hand to a very puzzled and still angry Ebenezer Scrooge.

“Oh, Friggin’ ‘ell! I’ve just got rid of yer bleedin’ pals! I was told that was it. What the bleedin’ ‘ell do you want?!"

“Ah, well . . . you see. . .” began an embarrassed and flustered ghost. “Bit of a cock-up . . . upstairs,” he ended in a wispy small voice, leaning over to Scrooge and pointing in a conspiratorial manner upwards. “I usually do castles and graveyards, maybe the odd stuffy museum or library, but – it’s the admin Christmas party, boss’s special day today (he said this with a cheesy grin); you know the score, pissed by noon on that mead Zeus sends over, then someone asks – ‘what’s the roster for this, what’s the list for that,’ then someone answered someone else’s question, “Five minutes ago!” they shouted, must have been asking where Jude or Rita were, hopeless cases, the pair of ‘em. Anyhoo (he said rather pretentiously), Gloria from the Christmas Ghosts – All Regions Liaison Office, misunderstood, and thought a new post had been created, and, well … here I am, a bit late, I know, but, there it is. . .”

“Bloody friggin’ ‘ell! I wish I’d stayed a bleedin’ atheist!” yelled a now outraged Scrooge. “Well, yer ‘ere now, and— hang on! Did you say — Ghost of Five Minutes ago?”

“Yes, that’s right, brand new position, all the perks, and look — my shiny new badge!” gushed the ghost, holding out his lapel as if he was about to play the-carnation-which-is-really-a-water-pistol-joke.

“Stuff yer badge. Get out! If you are the Ghost of Five Minutes ago, yer time’s up, in fact well over it. So go on, get lost – hop it!"

“Ah, you don’t quite understand, that is my job, yes, but I am to do it for an hour, not a minute or even a second more, not a minute or a second less.”

“Oh bloody bloomin’ friggin’ marvellous! An hour in the company of Ali Bongo’s bleedin’ great-great-grandad! Let’s get on with it then, what is it? A friggin’ sand-dance; a bleedin’ parade in the middle of the night right round to that tossser Cratchett’s house? I’ll get me coat. . .”

“No, no need. Just hold on to my robe.”

Scrooge reluctantly touched the ghost’s robe and went to climb out of the window.

“What the frig do you think you are doing?!” yelled the ghost. “If you survive the fall, you’ll die of bleedin’ hypothermia, it’s friggin’ freezin out there!”

“Oh – don’t we. . .” said Scrooge, filling in the blanks with a Superman-style flying gesture.

“Ha ha ha! You really thought my oppos made you fly?!”

“Well … er –– oh fuck off, let’s get on with it,” said Scrooge, climbing back down and stood next to the ghost, still touching his robe. “What, then?”

“Ok, hang on a mo,” said the ghost, as he took out a brass starter watch and pressed a button. “We’re on the meter now. Now – we view your life as it was five minutes ago.”

“You know what it was like five minutes ago. You were ‘ere, pestering me.”

“I can’t help that, now let’s watch.”

They stood over the just-stirring but five-minutes-younger Ebenezer Scrooge. They watched him struggle to free himself from the blankets; as he passed, he banged straight into Scrooge the Older.

“Ouch!” said Scrooge the older.

“Shit! What was that?!” yelled Scrooge the older to himself while rubbing his aching shoulder.

The Ghost of Five Minutes Ago yanked Scrooge the Older out of the way.

“Sorry about that, another cock-up I am sorry to say, they haven’t totally separated the time-schisms, so just be careful.”

Scrooge just tutted and lifted his eyes to the Heavens.

“Listen … Mr – er – have you thought this through properly? If it’s all to do with five minutes ago, and you are here for an hour, that means this room will soon be full of mes, thirteen in all, and thirteen of you, and if we all share the same space, then, it’s going to get rather full in here, isn’t it?”

“I am aware of it,” said a rather huffy Ghost of Five Minutes Ago. “But it’s only an hour in your life, I think you can manage it, don’t you?”

“If you say so,” replied Scrooge, miserably.

As time went by, Scrooge the older now eldest was backed further and further over to the side of the room. For him, the scene never changed, his newer selves were wrapped up in the bed-gear, then freed themselves, went to the window, and were distracted by the later Ghosts of Five Minutes Ago.

Soon, it was what could only be called maelstromic chaos, one other thing which had not been tied down as neatly as it should have been was sound across the skewed time-frames. The noise was so loud that it became a self-propagating affair, with the volumes increasing as both Scrooge and Ghost, across all timeframes wanted the other to hear him. And there was much shuffling across the room and sidling along the walls, as each new Scrooge realised that many of his other selves were rather over-crowding the room.

The Ghost of Five Minutes ago made no attempt to talk to his later selves, Scrooge wasn’t even sure if this would have been possible or not, but Scrooge did notice that the Ghost was as close to him as could be and yet still remain decent. He was soon to understand why. Suddenly Scrooge thought about yelling to one of his later selves, the Ghost sensed this, and put his hand over his mouth.

“No! You’ll only make it a million times worse! Before the hours up, most of you would likely drop dead due to the decibel levels being so dangerous they would be ear-shattering!”

The Ghost removed his hand from Scrooge’s mouth, and Scrooge immediately spoke up.

“What about you just then?! That will happen repeatedly too!”

“I am aware of it,” said the once again huffy ghost.

“And stop being so friggin’ huffy! Eh, huffy!” said Scrooge.

Once the routine had set in, the Ghost of Five Minutes Ago lightened up and began to talk about things ‘upstairs’.

“What did you think of old pressy-kecks then? Still full of shit?”

“That fat bastard? Pissed as a fart and asking if I’d like to get to know him better?”

“The very same,” replied the Ghost of Five Minutes Ago.

“A friggin’ big turd, ‘im, in fact the whole bleedin’ lot got on me nerves. The first fella, blimey, took me out in the friggin’ freezin’ cold. An’ wait until I tell you this. You know I ‘ated school, don’t yer?"

“I am aware of it,” said the ghost, but with a smile, which Scrooge caught just in time.

“Yeah, well, he only took me right back there, didn’e? The shit. What do you think of that?”

“I am—“ he went to say, but the joke was now laboured. He sighed and said, “Always was the airy-fairy one ‘im, ‘you shouldna done that, you should a done this,’ gets on me tits, to be honest. What about old Future-boy then? Was he on stilts and wearing a big black robe, ‘orrible scaly mask on his face?”

“Stilts! A mask!” yelled Scrooge, ‘Yer jokin’, he scared the shit out of me! An’ it’s all fake?!”

“Yep, his name is, or was, perhaps, Franco Lazarino, acrobat and stilt-walker from the ChipperBarn Circus. He died when the place was modernised; some idiot borrowed three inches off his left stilt to make a door decoration. As you no doubt saw, he just says nowt and sticks out a joke skeleton arm from the joke shop and points everywhere. Oh, listen to this: one year, he forgot to point to the cemetery, and instead points to the Nag’s Head; come the morning, pissed as a fart – him and some spooky fella called Edwin Drood, wasted his life in opium dens or summat.”

“What about them two kids in his coat? They looked real,” said Scrooge.

“Ha! The kids are his own – his two youngest. They’re on rollers tied to their arses, and just travel along under his robe. Mind you, he starves them and doesn’t let them wash come each December, so that’s bad, but, the kids seem to love it. Young Wanty can be a right little bastard though, you have to watch him.”

By now the noise was tremendous, but the conversation was interspersed with manic laughter as each generation of ghost and Scrooge overheard the same things they had said to each other over and over again.

Scrooge then gave a great big yawn. Noise or no noise he’d had enough and had decided to ride it out in bed, until late morning.

“Night, then, Ghosty, or day, rather; but I'm friggin' knackered so I'm goin' back to me kip. Thanks, for. . .” as he couldn’t think of a single good thing to finish his retiring speech, he didn’t bother. 

“No, you can’t!” yelled the Ghost of Five Minutes Ago. But he had some pride; as Scrooge yawned again at the same time as giving the Ghost of Five Minutes Ago a two-finger salute, and not in the style of Churchill or Ringo Starr, the Ghost of Five Minutes Ago just couldn’t help it. He collapsed in a heap of laughter. It was soon to become obvious why . . .

 “What the . . . ! Get out of my fucking bed, you pervert! Oh, frig, here’s more of ‘em! Fuck off out it, go ahhn!!”

Soon the bed was that jam-packed with Ebenezer Scrooges, that it collapsed. Scrooge the Eldest, followed by Scrooge the second eldest, followed by . . . you get the idea – marched back over to their respective Ghosts of Five Minutes Agos, and ranted and raved while all thirteen ghosts collapsed on the floor in a fit of manic and rather painful laughter. They would have died – if they were alive in the usual sense, but as they were not, they didn’t.

*

It was all over, bar the shouting. If you’ve ever wanted to see what the residual shouting is all about in relation to otherwise ceased and desisted activities as per the maxim, then please read on. . .

Scrooge the eldest and now –– thankfully – the only Scrooge, stormed out of his house, pushed over anyone in his path, this included an elderly parson still recovering from a broken leg after a slip in the snow the previous year, well, not really a slip, a certain person had pushed him over then, too.

“You bastard!” yelled the parson, as he sat on the frozen ground with his leg once again at a very unnatural angle.

Scrooge reached the not-too familiar door in Camden town, which was opened by Bob Cratchett, all smiles and aprony. He wiped his hands on the apron, and held out his hand to his boss.

Scrooge looked at Cratchett’s hand, looked at Cratchett, and said— “You are so fuckin’ fired!” and stomped back off home.

The End

 

Tags: humor, weird,