Heartless

Heartless - Chapter Ten

HEARTLESS

CHAPTER TEN

It was Christmas day. All around the city, people had shut themselves inside their homes – fires sparked and crackled inside elaborate fireplaces, children played with toys that they had opened at the crack of dawn, and families sat down at laden tables, ready to eat their way through a weeks worth of food in one sitting. But in our flat there was no sign of Christmas at all. The room was cold, quiet, and dark, no wrapping paper lay on the grimy floor, and two cans of soup sat by the oven ready to be heated for when we were hungry. Luna and I sat on the couch in our comfiest clothes, wrapped in duvets, our faces lit up by the flicker of the television screen in front of us as we watched repeats of old sitcoms.

“We’ve watched this one like ten times before,” Luna complained.

“It’s still good,” I said. “This series can never get old.”

“It just did. Change the channel.”

I rolled my eyes. “Okay, okay.”

I picked up the remote from beside me and flicked a button, changing the channel. The image of the screen switched from the bar scene we’d been watching to a snow covered street covered in glowing decorations.

“Next channel,” Luna said immediately.

I’d changed channel before she’d even finished speaking. This time we saw a man dressed as Santa Claus, urging his sleigh forwards, and inspirational music burst out from the speakers.

“No,” we said together, and the music cut off as I flicked over to the next channel.

Every network seemed to be showing the same basic thing: Christmas. We skipped through a few more before giving up hope. I changed the channel back to the one we’d been watching before. On the screen the men at the bar were laughing to each other over huge glasses of beer, still enjoying some kind of corny joke.

Luna sighed heavily.

“Don’t blame me,” I said. “There’s nothing else on to watch, unless you’d like to take part in the Christmas cheer.”

“I’m going to heat up lunch,” she grumbled. “You want me to do yours?”

“Sure,” I said, already turning my attention back to the TV screen. I was trying to remember which character was which, and if their back stories from a few episodes back would actually factor into the plot at some point. It was good enough to keep me entertained and my mind off things for the next few hours until I could go back to sleep or out hunting.

It was a small mercy that Joseph had gone out of the city to visit his parents. This way he wouldn’t be able to spring some sort of surprise visit on me on Christmas day. I couldn’t bear to face him, especially after telling the hunters everything that had happened. Somehow them knowing about how I’d tricked Joseph made it seem more wrong. Now it was out in the open, at least in part, people were able to judge me about it. What was once a secret between Luna and I had been told to at least five others. It made me nervous to think about how weak my cover was getting.

Of course, if Joseph could’ve seen me at that moment, wrapped in a duvet with a scowl on my face as I tried to ignore Christmas, he would’ve probably broken up with me then and there. I was almost certain that his family was probably the kind that squashed around a large table and laughed with each other like they were on one of the TV shows that Luna and I hated so much.

I listened as Luna turned the gas on with a hiss and the slopped the contents of the two soup cans into a pan, the liquid hitting the pan with an unappetising splattering sound. She stomped back into the room and collapsed back down next to me.