Christmas Story

A Story by Abishai100

Isaac shares a comfy New York home with his loving wife Jennifer and anticipates safer government work-from-home but begins to have disorienting ideas during Christmas.

One last fable, a Christmas-in-July festive unusual fable about a crazed American man seeking strange daylight in an environment of ironic daydreams, inspired by the film Confessions of a Dangerous Mind!

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Isaac and Jennifer lived in an idyllic American smalltown on the East Coast and were preparing for the festive and decorative Christmas season. Isaac, an Algerian-American Ivy League graduate and underground CIA/P-IRA operative in Northern Ireland, was now offered the plush position of simply consulting from home on his wired laptop! Isaac decided to take this opportunity to reflect on his 5 years as an anti-terrorism agent for the US government and how he wanted to now spend more time with his wife Jennifer.

ISAAC: I'm sitting on my windowsill and drinking hot-chocolate as the snow is falling on cedars in our small Christmastown, and I'm feeling grateful for my life and my beautiful wife Jennifer, hoping my years of strange government work won't land her with a too pensive husband.

JENNIFER: Isaac is definitely working through the cobwebs of his young life as a government agent, and I sense he's trying to reach out to me by staying at home and spending time at home and not worrying so much about politics, which is why I hope to reach out to him and make sure he's not stagnating or idling in his mind to entertain dreary thoughts during Christmas, since, after all, that's my official duty as his loving wife!

Isaac and Jennifer modestly but fancily decorated their comfortable and handsome small condominium home in a rather nice area of New York state and were looking forward to the Christmas season. Isaac spent a great deal of time drinking hot-chocolate and sitting by the windowsill. Jennifer, however, began wondering if her husband was becoming to pensive about his cluttered life during the Christmas season.

Isaac studied at Dartmouth College and then was recruited by the CIA and worked for 5 years in Northern Ireland as an intelligence liaison bridging P-IRA, Sinn Fein, and Parliament and working directly with the Belfast consulate of the US government in the UK. Isaac became extremely weary of all the Protestant-Catholic troubles in the UK and what it meant for the modern problem of inter-religious conflicts even in 'sophisticated' Europe. He wanted to think of more calm and exciting things than Protestant-Catholic hatred.

As Isaac sat on his windowsill and drank his hot-chocolate, pleased with how much intimate time he was now spending with his loving wife Jennifer, he started having deranged thoughts about feeling claustrophobic by all the political hubbub and chatter in the emerged pro-globalization Earth, wired of course by Internet. It felt honestly like a giant 'grid' that gave Isaac a small headache. He started suddenly fantasizing about robbing banks during the holiday season in New York.

Isaac decided to continue to entertain his spiritual and comforting moments of religious reflection with his wife Jennifer and watched some Dickens holiday movies on the Hallmark Channel. Meanwhile, he began cooking up schemes to rob banks in New York. How would this season shape up for Isaac's life and Jennifer's home?

Isaac decided to take Jennifer to the New York Park where a Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus were dressed and greeting children and parents with special decorating events and arts and crafts activities. Isaac watched the thrilling event while his wife Jennifer took photos with her handy-dandy iPhone. Isaac now felt like Jennifer was comfortably and securely settled into her life as doting American Christmas wife in New York.

Isaac had a small gambling addiction acquired from going to Vegas and playing poker with his college buddies at Dartmouth. He loved poker, blackjack, roulette, and slots. He loved it all. Anytime he went to Vegas, he relished the chance to win money with these colorful casino table-games! He'd become so entranced by the 'magic money game' that it affected his current scheme to rob banks in New York during Christmas.

BANK 1: Isaac walked into a major New York bank dressed in a hood and sunglasses and wielding a hand-gun. He walked up to the teller and pulled out his gun strapped under his shoe and told the bank manager and teller and guard he simply wanted to take about $40K from the bank that day and walk out and board the passenger bus outside with no fuss during the Christmas season.

BANK 2: Isaac walked into a second major New York bank, this time dressed as some kind of haired Halloween zombie and walked up to the teller's station and told the woman attending at the bank that he was sent by a terrorist to make a media prank and needed her peaceful cooperation and demanded she place about $50K from the vault-room into his bag and let him walk out quietly and unrecognized and undisturbed to minimize any terrorism related Christmastime panic.

BANK 3: Isaac walked into his third and final major New York bank during that frenzied Christmas season in New York and was dressed as some kind of face-bandaged mummy in hat and fake dreadlocks. He walked up to the teller's station and told the attendant as well as the manager that he'd planted a bomb outside the bank and that if he wasn't cleanly and quietly simply given $50K in his carry-bag and there was any kind of trouble or challenge, the bomb might be detonated.

After robbing his 3 banks and coming up with a grand total of more than $100K in his Christmas wallet that season in New York, the pensive Isaac was finally personally resolved spiritually and emotionally that his troubling life as a government specter in Northern Ireland would not take over his mind and sense of American liberty and excitement! He'd become a very successful bank robber and eluded that authorities and simply returned to his CIA-consulting work on his laptop from the Christmas-decorated home he continued to share with his doting but completely unaware wife Jennifer. Isaac took Jennifer to a New York Christmas event in which Russian and Romanian dancers were dressed and performing holiday-season folk songs and dances.

Had Isaac achieved the impossible or simply sunken himself into an even deeper hole of spiritual debt? Sure, he was happy doing simpler and quieter government consulting work from his laptop in the New York home he shared with his loving wife Jennifer. However, his decision to 'splurge' in random daredevil deeds of great Christmastime piracy and bank-robbery had effectively cast him as an American outlaw. No one would ever catch the resourceful and wily Isaac, but would he find serious ways to find true direction from his robberies and form meaningful daylight bridges with his wife Jennifer in America? This was Isaac's Christmas story. It was both odd...and dark!

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"Money is everything" (Ecclesiastes)