I look up. “So I can just say that I want more time, and...?”
“Correct.” He leans ever forward, a touch of mania in those otherworldly eyes. They’re the color of peeled grapes. “Do it.”
Most of my ideas are bad. I ignore this. “I want more time.Make my wish come true.”
Hall grasps my hand, there’s a flashbang of light, and we’re barreling through a black hole, audibly ripping through the fabric of the universe. We’re falling backward, my skin sucked tight against my bones, every single one of them on the verge of crushing into powder, into molecules. Gravity pulls at my hair, my fingernails, stripping my socks off. The speed at which we’re traveling forces my mouth wide open, all moisture on my tongue and lips evaporating. My teeth rattle and the pressure against my eye sockets is unbearable, but all I can do is take it, I can’t do anything, not even shout—
We both slam, hard, into a cold floor. As I drag my eyelids open, my vision crosses but I make out twin blurs of Eileen’s withered fiddle leaf fig.
Hall groans nearby, rubbing his head. I think he smacked it on the microwave. “Ohhhh, that was bad. I did not enjoy that at all.”
My response is a woozy “Errff.” My mouth’s the Sahara, lips cracked. That fierce wind is still in my head, howling between my ears. I clap my hands over them, tears pricking my eyes. “Make it stop.”
Singing abruptly fills the room at a clamor that could wake the dead. It’s BTS, and they’re coming from every speaker. They’re coming from the microwave. From a battery-operated Billy Bass fish on the wall that is wearing a Santa hat, which I did not putthere. My desiccated throat manages a pathetic, barely audible “Eghh.”
“Sorry,” Hall rasps. “I accidentally made it pop instead of stop.”
The noise dies at once, but Billy Bass’s tail is still flapping. Now he’s singing “A Holly Jolly Christmas” in Michael Bublé’s voice.
The all-consuming, disorienting pain from moments before is replaced by a full-body ache accompanied by weird visions bursting in my mind’s eye. An enormous pecan pie. Mountains of curled silver ribbons all over the living room floor, my own hand pointing, and Hall hanging his head like a shamed dog. “Oh my God,” I groan. “What kind of fairy godmother are you?” I throw up; it’s mostly cocoa, and it burns my nose. “What is happening?”
Hall retches, too, although I don’t know if his retching is because of how he feels or if it was triggered by the sound of me retching.
I anchor my hands flat on the floor, eyes closed, trying to keep my breathing even as an endless stream of visions batters me upside the head. I see shaving cream all over my bathroom, and Hall crouching on the floor, putting the finishing touches on aHome Alonediorama. It includes tiny bricks for dropping onto Marv’s face and a working staple gun the size of my pinky nail.
“I’m having psychic visions,” I whisper. “You gave me superpowers.”
I’m like Dr. Strangelove or whatever he’s called, with the cape. My first thought isHow do I abuse these powers for personal gain?
“I’m so thirsty,” I mutter. “I need something to drink.”
A cup appears, levitating level with my mouth. Hall’s magic is on the fritz, evidently, the cup wobbling, shifting color from orange to yellow. I peer inside, croaking, “Is this tap water?”
He blinks. “Uhh. I don’t know.”
“I only...” I slump onto my side upon the unforgiving floor, eyes clenched tight, dying of thirst. “...drink... Evian.”
He tips the cup against my lips, confirming my worst fears about the source of this water. It’s inhumane, the atrocities I have endured today. Or...?
“Is it yesterday, then? Did it work?”
“I think so. What you’re seeing in your head are memories of things youshouldhave done and said and experienced if time had proceeded as usual. And alternate possibilities of those memories, too. I just envisioned myself eating four possible breakfasts at Denny’s, which is handy information, because now I know I want the fried potato tower.” He coughs. “It’s off-menu. You have to ask for it.”
“You knew about these side effects?” I try to swat at him, but my arm flops uselessly.
“I knew that it might feel bad, in theory. But I was hoping to be an exception, in practice.” He tries for a smile. “Sorry. I really wanted to flex those time travel powers. Never done it before.”
“Never doing it again,” I retort darkly. “Not with me, anyway.”
“I would never do it with anybody else. I’m committed to you.”
My eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”
“You’re the one who conjured me. I’m yours. And I am here to fill you with the holiday spirit.”
I raise my eyebrows, smirking.
Hall flushes. “Not likethat!” He’s so distressed that he starts knitting a tinsel scarf, which he completes with remarkable quickness, and drapes around the shoulders of a life-size Father Christmas I didn’t know was behind me, and which I’ll be seeing in my nightmares tonight. “Obviously, you brought me here because you need holiday spirit, right?”
