“From everyone here at KBC, I wish you a Merry Christmas!”

The television announcer pulled a party popper, shooting out a handful of confetti in the air, alongside her colleagues, the anchor beamed with the brightest smile I’d ever seen on her face.

“Christmas is a magical time of the year! And although most of us are confined at home, there’s a surprise that we can all look forward to! From our forecasts, snow is expected today! It has been quite some time since we had snow on Christmas!”

Snow on Christmas? The woman’s right; it has been a while since we had snow this early. Even my hometown, which was further north, rarely snowed during Christmas.

I continued watching the program in earnest as the news anchor continued to chat merrily with her co-workers. Due to the pandemic, they had been separated by a plastic divider, but that didn’t dampen their cheery mood. It must be the magic of the festive season.

Speaking of the festive season, this confinement had given me much more time to prepare some of the dishes that I’d never made before. I squeezed a wedge of lemon onto the seafood paella that I’d prepared and poured myself a glass of eggnog.

Normally, I wouldn’t have made these two dishes, even in my spare time. It was just too cumbersome to make, and they were both loaded with calories.

But, as the announcer said… It was Christmas! I could afford to gain a kilogram or two.

“Mmmm smells delicious.”

The citrusy aroma of the lemon morphed with the pungent fragrance of the spices. I couldn’t smell the seafood, but the colouring of the paella was impeccable. I pushed my metal spoon into the paella pan and dug out the good stuff. The crispy and delicious socarrat. The fact that I’d made a perfect layer of socarrat meant that I’d done a good job in making this traditional dish.

Not bad for my first time.

Placing a sizable portion onto my serving plate, I brought my meal down from the kitchen island and onto the coffee table facing the television.

I’d fasted all day for this scrumptious meal, and I couldn’t wait to just wolf it all down. However, just before I could take the first and best bite…

Brrrttt… Brrrtt… Brrttt…

My phone rang at the most disturbing time. At this time, there was only one person I knew who would disturb me. Sighing, I dropped my spoon reluctantly and answered the video call.

“Merry Christmas!”

“Sup, what do you want?”

“Ayyy, don’t be that cold. I’d even taken time out from my Christmas date with Sienna to call you!”

“Not interested. You’re interrupting something, so if there’s nothing, I’m going to hang up.”

“Interrupting something?! Do you have a girl over? Oh my, you have a girl over, don’t you?!”

This nosy motherfucker… Why does his brain always go in that direction?

“That’s right, I have an exotic Spanish girl that’s super hot over. I’m about to devour her, so do you mind?”

“OHOHO! My little Desir is finally climbing the stairs to adulthood at twenty-six! I knew that this day would come! Wait… Spanish?”

“Right, want to meet her?” I spun the front camera of my phone around and pointed it to the paella dish on the table. I allowed Len to take a few seconds to admire my cooking before turning the camera back around. “Quite the beauty, isn’t she?”

Len pouted: “Not what I’d expected, but she really is a beauty. Hey, can I eat her as well?”

“If you can somehow teleport back, I wouldn’t mind letting you taste some.”

“How cruel! You know that I can’t do that! Damn, it really looks delicious, though. Far better than the food I had. Urghhh, I’d known that we would go into lockdowns, I wouldn’t have agreed to come here...”

I could sense that our conversation would take some time, so I repositioned my phone and laid it against a tissue box. I sat back down on the coffee table and took one bite of my mouth-watering paella. I couldn’t help it. I was just that hungry.

“Are you tempting me?” Len scoffed from the other side of the phone.

“No, no. This is my first meal of the day, so I couldn’t resist. Anyway, tell me, what’s going on?”

“There’s nothing to do here, of course! We had an itinerary for travelling to ski resorts or relaxing in the hot springs, but it was all cancelled because of the lockdowns! So now I have to spend every day at Sienna’s old house.”

“With your in-laws?”

“They’re not my in-laws yet, but yeah...” Len dropped his shoulders and hunched backwards. It was as if he had been walking on eggshells the entire time, and it was finally time for him to relax.

“Visiting Sienna’s parents is fine and all, but after a day, things become awkward. There’s a limit to how much we can converse about being a generation apart. Have you ever had a conversation where someone would repeat the same question thirty seconds apart?”

“No...”

“That happened just now! Sienna’s mother asked me about my parent’s health, twice in thirty seconds! It was super awkward!”

“Wow… Sounds tough...”

I kept my ears open as I continued to gobble down my delicious paella.

“Yeah, it’s just unlucky timing. If not for the pandemic, I could have been skiing on the hills or soaking in a mineral-rich hot spring. Ah, the misfortune...”

“You know that people are dying from the pandemic, right? It makes sense for the government to close down businesses for a while to curb the spread of the virus.”

“I know that. I’m just complaining for the sake of it. I’m not actually mad that they closed the places down for safety reasons.” Len stuck his tongue out in defiance. He might be a little loose with his words, but Len was mature enough to understand the current situation.

“Anyway, that’s enough about me. What’s going on with you? How’s your first Christmas without us faring?”

“Going perfect, as you can see,” I lifted my spoon filled with paella up. “Delicious food, warm house with electricity and healthy as can be. My Christmas couldn’t be any better.”

“No, it would be a hundred times better if I was there!”

“Yeah… It would be...”

“Hey, what’s with that tone?!”

The two of us continued to joke around for a few more minutes. Len was trying to relieve some stress after staying with Sienna’s parents for so long. At the same time, I was happy to have a face-to-face conversation, even if it was via the phone.

“Alright, I’ll get out of your hair. Remember to cook me some paella when I get back.”

“Okay, stay safe.”

The call ended, and was I able to finish my delectable meal unimpeded. I don’t know whether it was the ingredients or was my cooking really that good, but I rated that seafood paella dish a nine out of ten. It was truly one of the best things that I’d made in a long time.

After cleaning up the mess I’d made, I continued watching the drama that I was binging with, continuously sipping on my self-made eggnog.

It was a simple luxury, and it was bliss.

So what if I was alone on Christmas? I was one of the more fortunate ones.

I still had a job during this period of peril. I had the money to make a delicious meal for myself. I had a warm home that I could binge-watch shows in. It was a perfect life, in my opinion.

And it was just about to get a little bit better.

“Ah, it’s snowing...”

Just as the pretty news lady forecasted, white fluffy cotton balls dropped down from the heavens. The snowflakes swung down with no specific direction, like feathers floating in the wind. They eventually rested on my balcony window before immediately melting away, as if they were a fleeting dream.

Seeing the snow, I repositioned myself closer to the balcony. If I were a kid, I would have opened the sliding door and attempted to play in the snow. Alas, I was more fond of the warmth of my home than ephemeral snow.

Placing my back against the cool glass, I took a picture to send to Len and Sienna. Combined with the paella I’d made, I had plenty of good pictures to post on social media as well.

A snowy Christmas, huh? A beautiful day during a period of uncertainty.

“Ah, there was that story that mom used to say.”

Back when I was young, mom used to tell me many bedtime stories. Some of them were fairy tales; others were her originals. There were so many that I had trouble remembering them all. However, I did know one story that centred around a snowy Christmas.

Every Christmas Eve, Santa Claus would lead his sleigh of reindeers to deliver gifts to young children. However, on one snowy Christmas, the blizzard was too strong for Santa to navigate. So, he used his youngest and bravest reindeer, mocked for a shining red nose, to lead the way.

“The Tale of the Red-Nosed Reindeer...”

Haha, it was a nostalgic story. When I was still an innocent child who believed in Santa, I would worry about Santa losing his way in the snow. Mom would reassure me that even if there was a blizzard, as long as I was a good boy, the Red-Nosed Reindeer would find me.

Naturally, I didn’t believe in such fairy tales anymore. Still, it was a pleasant memory from the past.

I watched silently as the snow continued to fall unobstructed from the heavens. It really was a beautiful scene. Watching the snow mix up with the luminous city lights. Everything looked so ethereal and yet… so lonely.

And as if the heavens had heard my call…

BANG!!!

A loud thump could be heard from my front door. I broke free from my delusions and immediately snapped my head towards the entrance.

“Is someone there?”

At this time, there weren’t many people who would be at my door. Neither could it be the wind since my front door was electronically locked. Perplexed by the source of the noise, I walked over to my door and carefully opened it up.

And then, I saw it…

The horrifying sight of a young woman lying right outside my apartment.