Page 46 of The Scrooge Effect

“There’s something you’re not seeing.”

What more was there to see?

“Watch.”

And I did. My old man picked me up by the shirt collar and dragged me across the room to the corner where a shitty Christmas tree stood no higher than three feet. He tossed me at the base of it and kicked a single present under the tree.

“Merry fucking Christmas, you brat.”

“That was Christmas Day…” I remembered. “I’d forgotten…”

“Forgotten or blocked out?”

I didn’t know. Probably a little of both. “That was the first time he’d ever really laid a hand on me.”

“Before that, he only went after your mother,” Fox said, appearing beside me.

“Why are you showing me this? To remind me how much I hate Christmas?”

Fox turned to me, his eyes dark and unforgiving. “We all have pieces of our lives we’d rather forget. But they shape us into who we are.”

“Yeah,” I choked out. “I can’t even stand to be around my family at Christmas. How the hell did this help me?”

“You’re allowing it to rule your life instead of putting it in the past,” he said.

“Yeah? Like you did?” I snapped. “Going around and killing people like that sick fucker did to your mother?”

“I take justice for those who can’t. I ease the burden of the past by freeing others of their chains.”

“You murder people,” I snapped. “That’s no fucking different.”

“What would you do to change the past?” he asked.

“What? You can’t change the past. You can’t fix what’s already happened!”

“But you can learn from it. What does this memory tell you?”

“It tells me my childhood was fucking shit.”

“And?”

“And what?” I snapped. “What the fuck do you want me to do? Run home and cry on my wife’s shoulder? Do you think that’ll fix anything?”

“It’s not about fixing the past.”

“You’re just talking in riddles,” I snapped. “This whole fucking thing is a joke.” I turned to Zoe. “Did you get your film sequence? Did I give you all the juicy material you needed?”

“None of this is for me,” she said, cocking her head at me. “It’s a film of your life.”

“I already have it on replay every fucking night. I don’t need a film made about it.”

I stared at both of them, wishing they would just end this whole fucking thing so I could go home.

“You can’t move on until you let go of the past,” Fox said just as a gust of wind came rushing in, freezing me to the bone. “Let go of the past.”

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