PodCastle 766: Lockdown Around the Christmas Tree

* Authors : Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt

* Narrators : Shingai Njeri Kagunda, Eleanor R. Wood, Matt Dovey, Devin Martin, Eric Valdes and Sofía Barker

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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PodCastle 766: Lockdown Around the Christmas Tree is a PodCastle original.

Content warning for loss of a loved one due to COVID-19

Rated PG-13

Lockdown Around the Christmas Tree

by Heather Shaw & Tim Pratt

What a colossal crapstorm of a year, the third year of infinite garbage in a row, ever since the lockdowns started. The walls came down around Mischa in March 2020, and here they were, still standing, tall and impenetrable, for Christmas 2022.

Then the man in red showed up, and made his offer, and everything changed . . . but before you can understand all that, you need to understand how Mischa ended up alone for the holidays, when seemingly everyone else in the world was out kissing strangers under mistletoe and drinking from communal punch bowls and breathing unventilated indoor air with all their out-of-town relatives again.

Mischa had gotten a kidney transplant in January of 2020, donated by their cousin, which meant they were alive, so that was great, but they were also immunocompromised, which meant when everyone else decided to play pretend that the pandemic was over, Mischa didn’t have the option of joining the game. They had to keep living in reality.

And what a reality it was. It turned out Mischa’s partner didn’t like having a sick lover-slash-housemate-slash-best-friend who’d need help in recovery, so she bailed right before the surgery (and right around the holidays), meaning when the pandemic lockdowns started two months later, Mischa was living alone, taking immunosuppressants, and stewing in a constant broth of anxiety and fear and loneliness. Getting sick and dying alone had been abstract worries for the far future, but now they seemed like immediate possibilities. Mischa’s family lived thousands of miles away, and though their Mom offered to come out and help, Mischa could tell it would be a hardship for her, and lied and said they’d be fine. Then the plague hit, and Mischa was glad they’d declined.

Mischa lost their job in the wave of office shutdowns, but at least there were unemployment checks with a boost from the federal government, and they could get groceries delivered, so buying beans and rice didn’t require going to a grocery store and literally risking their life. They bought a stationary bike and played a bunch of Animal Crossing, baked bread, and got into gardening in the tiny plot out back — fleeing the latter whenever the couple in the other half of the duplex came out into the shared space. (Hearing them kinky-sex their way through lockdown on the other side of the wall didn’t do much for Mischa’s mood either.) Most of their local friends were pretty good about social distancing, and some of them went for “social distance hikes” where they wore masks and tried to keep six feet apart, but that felt too risky for Mischa. They did the Zoom thing for a while,