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Cars as far as anyone could see ahead and as far behind. This was to be expected, a tax for driving. Three or four snuck through on green when the signals changed but only to the next stalled stack, never to open road. Although we had all driven here deliberately, nobody wanted to be in this place long enough to look at it. We wanted it behind us. With clear highway ahead we might have felt less vagrant, but stuck on hot black asphalt between a service station and a comically cheerful liquor store at the intersection of who can remember and please don’t remind me, we couldn’t pretend we were headed anywhere. The car to my right was so close I could hear the driver grinding her teeth. The driver to my left was spinning his steering wheel pointlessly back and forth. We sat through two light changes without moving. I had spent a small dog’s lifetime trying to follow a metaphorical map, rushing without looking through years as forsaken as this crossroads. Now, sitting here in a sealed container which, because it wasn’t moving, had become my world, I was gagging on my own spent breath. A driver pulled into the intersection with nowhere to go and shut his engine off. His one car going nowhere by choice amid hundreds of cars going nowhere out of necessity seemed thrilling and defiant. Otherwise people get killed, I thought, when drivers with tempers feel trapped and blame other drivers. I shed my seat belt and pulled myself up through the moon roof. Standing on the seat with my shoulders, head, and chest released from the car, I squinted toward my destination and tried to picture myself happy there, climbed out, left the engine idling, and walked away from it all.
Michael’s face was red. “OK, then, gun to your head,” he demanded, “what’s the best Christmas movie?” Though his tone suggested he might actually have put something to my head, he hadn’t. Well, first, I told him, with a gun to my head I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on movies; second, the category’s too broad: Christmas comedy? Christmas love story? Is Die Hard a Christmas movie for taking place on Christmas? “Completely irrelevant,” he said. “Best is best. But anyway, it’s a trick question. They all suck because they all lie.” I knew better than to take the bait but I told him anyway that all movies lie. “Well, I know actors wear makeup and play make-believe,” he told me, “but they do that to tell a truth; Christmas movies lie to lie.” He put his mug down hard as if he wanted to tenderize the coaster. Glasses clinked down the bar. He’d been pounding me the same way since we sat down, which was common, but his red face was not. He cared about this. I watched his eyes and waited. A string of lights twinkled behind his head. “You think Santa Claus is universal,” he told me,“and that finding out he’s your parents is a primal disillusionment. That’s Hollywood bullshit. Kids have dads who bring out guns on Christmas Eve and put them to their children’s heads one by one,” he said. That can’t be right, I told him. “One by one and pulled the trigger,” he told me, “year in and year out, and made them wonder if one year there’d be bullets. Why have I never seen that in a movie?” I waited until he was finished. Why are you telling me this, Michael? I asked him. What the hell are you telling me?
This work by davidbdale is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at davidbdale.wordpress.com.
Very Short Novels 
Thank you so much, anhinga, but I wouldn't want to try it without the other 199. —David
Why, thank you, brother. It's wonderful to see you here. :) —David
All you need is 100 words to make an emotional impact. Touching.
Brilliant, brother. Just simply brilliant.
This Very Short Novel has a strong resemblance to Simple Lessons of War from almost 20 years ago, but is…