Peace on Earth by Elizabeth Murphy
I bought a Dollarama Christmas card for my mother, one that plays Jingle Bells when opened, except it won’t stop playing closed or open, jingling my nerves, Batman smells looping in my tired mind, oh what fun it is not, especially since, most of the time, those type cards don’t play the music though that’s what you paid for and yet Dollarama won’t accept returns, not even from people like me, nearly driven to tearing out my eyelashes, stuffing la-la-la mufflers in my ears, I the #1 despiser of the not-so-sacred holiday season, too sweet for my sour personality, too long for my razor-thin patience, too sentimental for my year-round bah-humbug attitude that will now be more bah because of that card in need of an exorcism, squeaking out the tune like a chorus of chipmunks on steroids with noses pinched for added effect, the pitch grating me in litigious-worthy proportions, my fingernails bitten to the quick, molars ground to half their size, eyeballs bulging, forced to do something such as placing it on the balcony until summer when, with doors and windows open, the neighbours will rush to petition the building super because, finally, they’ll have something truly worthy of a complaint, or else, why didn’t I think of it before, I’ll simply place it underfoot, stomp on it with the heel of my cowboy boots and smash it into a gazillion jingly bits, peace on earth, at last.
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Elizabeth is the author of the novel The Weather Diviner (Breakwater Books, 2024). Her short fiction has appeared in Quibble Lit, Nixes Mate Review, MoonPark Review, Jake, Crow & Cross Keys, Underscore Magazine, Tiny Molecules, and others. She is a retired academic originally from Newfoundland, now living in Nova Scotia, Canada.
@ospreysview.bsky.social
Purchase The Weather Diviner from Breakwater Books – here
Image and sound courtesy of Elizabeth Murphy
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