Lonesome December by Erika de Atayde

Lonesome December
​by Erika de Atayde

Hands of ebony black blades caressing his torso, as he lay on the medical bed. 
Every horror story fed to him about one part of his life materialised onto another, 
the smiling face connected to the hands by a moss-like body turned upside down, 
and I heard a digitally distorted voice ask “Does my fixin’ not please you, little Rebec/////

Percy woke up covered in cold sweat. He had left the heating on all night, trying to keep himself warm through the bloody winter. It never quite worked. He pushed himself out of bed, stepped over the pile of clothes he threw on it instead of sheets, and made his way to the tiny private bathroom. Daily hygiene. Teeth. Face. Hands shaking.
He picked a pair of pants, a used binder and an oversized T-shirt with a hammer and sickle print while brushing his teeth, and unplugged his phone from the charger, carrying them all back into the room. The phone had been sitting next to a yellow and purple “he/them” button on a broken office chair, positioned in front of two flipped beds with no mattresses that he used as a makeshift table. He logged into his laptop.
Stretching, he passed his hand in front of the screen to unlock it. He opened a text editor and a tiny pop-up with a cartoony diskette appeared under it which read:
“Hi, I’m Floppy! Your oldschool AI Assistant, or AIssistant! It looks like you’re trying to write something. Do you need help?”
The mouse click ignoring Floppy joined keyboard noises mixed with his muttering as he typed up notes about his dream, trying to describe what he’d seen before it slipped away.
There was a knock at the door.
He kicked some things around to make the room look marginally less messy and moved to open up, but the muffled voice didn’t wait: “Perseus, you seen Mursaleen?”
“No, Tabinda,” he said opening the door to the familiar South-Asian woman. “Isn’t the little one with Hassan?”
The Desi woman stood in the hallway in a blue-and-orange floral chador, worry carved deep into her face. Her voice was like condensed milk as she half-whispered, holding back tears. “No! Hassan is at school.”
“It’s okay, it’s okay!” He tried to calm her but she began to rapidly talk in her native tongue.
Another woman, in a 2010s pink-neon skull-shaped t-shirt and sweatpants, appeared behind Tabinda, her improvised ponytail flipping like a whip.
“Mira, chica, ¿qué pasó?” the woman blurted in an even faster Spanish. “¿Por qué grita la india? ¿Pasó un accidente?”
He bit his lower lip, trying to ignore what she called him. “No, no hai avido accidente…El chico… Pequeño? Se sumio.” He tried explaining what he gathered, but his Spanish was only better than his Urdu because he literally didn’t know Urdu.
“¡Ah, eso pasó en Caracas! ¡Hombres secretos de Maduro! Se llevaron chicos, niñas, a cualquiera un... Fue fuerte…” she said, her eyes watering. She looked through the long corridor to the shared kitchen where her son played with a phone. After composing herself she added: “¿Pero por qué habría hombres secretos de Keer Estarrmerr? Debe ser otra cosa.”
“Please don’t conspiracy talk, Flavia,” a raspy voice in a soft high-pitched Desi accent said from behind them all. “A baby boy is missing, we need no more stress.”
“Yes, Darakhshan is right. Mursaleen is probably playing on another floor; I’ll ask the group chat,” he added, really hoping he could close the door.
“Percy!” The woman interrupted his thoughts, pointing to a shopping bag in his feet. “You going to the supermarket? Can you be a dear and go to the supermarket for me? Buy…” She paused, moving her hands mimicking something cylindrical. “Sugary dust, like chocolate but in dust!”
“Chocolate powder?” he said slowly.
“Yes! Chocolate powder! Thank you, Percy!” She grabbed his hand and dropped some pound coins onto his palm.
He looked at Flavia with eyes that said ‘don’t laugh’, and nodded. “Yes, thank you… Anyone else want anything?” he said sarcastically.
“Yooo, yo quiero!” a deep voice came from the kitchen, and a large man’s head appeared around the door. “¿Puedes comprar cerveza? Alessandra está trabajando y yo cuidando al bebé.”
By the time Percy left the hotel, the entire fourth floor had asked him for shopping favours. He sighed dramatically as he made his way down the cold British streets. At least he could buy some candles for himself while he was there.

By the time he saw the Freshfields logo he was already tired, and his feet hurt. A headache started, worse than usual. The hotel was over two kilometers from the store. He could have taken the bus, but by walking he’d have fewer quid left over for dinner. Did Brits pluralise quid? He still wasn’t sure.
“Good afternoon,” said a woman in a hijab as he passed Freshfields’ automatic doors.
He blinked, half shocked. “To you the same!” he replied, then bit his lip. That wasn’t right, was it? You too? He should’ve just thanked her.
The doors slid shut behind him, and he immediately felt the heat from the air curtain dance across his skin. He grabbed a basket and sighed. Not the welcoming kind of sigh, the tired kind. The kind you heard from someone who’d been awake too long and still had hours to go. The kind that said, ‘please don’t talk to me, I’m angry and hungry.’
He checked the time on his phone and his mind drifted to an internal clock implant he’d once read about, something about a heat dot circling a person’s crown. How much would that cost? he wondered. He realised that he hadn't, in fact, checked the time, and had only looked at the numbers. He checked the phone again: twenty-two minutes until closing.
Too late to be picky. Too late to pretend he was doing this properly. But Hanukkah didn’t move for anyone, and the candles he had back at the hotel were not only the wrong size for the cheap menorah he’d brought across the ocean, they weren’t kosher.
Poor life choices, meet religious obligation. Again.
Near the checkouts, two members of staff were gossiping in low voices about disappearances. When they noticed Percy was within earshot, they abruptly ceased their chatter.
Shit, Percy thought, is this that store? It figured that the council would stick half its asylum seekers near the only supermarket linked to missing people. Let the problems take care of themselves, right?
The store smelled like citrus cleaner and warm bread. Christmas music pulsed faintly from the ceiling speakers, something pop, aggressively high-pitched. A woman in a bright yellow polo shirt pushed past him. “Yeah, I know, Carol, but that’s literally impossible,” she muttered into her headset, eyes unfocused.
Percy caught his reflection in the glass of a freezer door as he walked. Normal enough. You couldn’t see the work unless you knew where to look: the seams under his cheekbones, the faint geometric scar behind his ear where the antenna sat. Transhumans never looked like the FlipFlops and VOR influencers online. Mostly they looked like debt and regret.
“Human two point oh,” Percy murmured to his reflection. “What a joke.”
He grabbed a six-pack of gluten-free beer, dropped it into his basket, and headed toward the seasonal aisle.
The other aisles were noisy and crowded in the buildup to Christmas, people panic-buying after work, baskets fuller than their patience. Trolleys bumped ankles. Kids screamed about the GoBots and Justiceers crossover. Somewhere glass shattered and no one reacted fast enough.
At the bakery queue, two kind-looking old women were gossiping.
“Can you believe it? All those people?” the first woman complained. “We all know what’s happening.”
“I’ll say, Patricia,” the other half-whispered. “These things never happened when we were young. It only started when the neighbourhood—”
She stopped when the baker appeared.
“Oh, please, go ahead,” he said brightly. “What’s happening with the neighbourhood?”
“Oh, Haybeeb, you know I’m not talking about you,” the first woman said loudly.
“We’re not saying your family has anything to do with it!” the second added quickly.
“Oh no, no knead to apologise!” the man replied with a grin, clearly proud of himself. “You’re saying I’m one of the good ones, right?”
“Exactly!” they said in unison. “It’s not your family, but some of your people… Well, it can’t be a coincidence…”
Percy was too tired to listen to a man try to argue logic with bigots. And it was just the four of them. He leaned in behind the women and whispered, “But I’m not. Allahu Akbar.”
The women screamed and spun around with bulging eyes. One smacked him with her purse. The other shrieked something thickly accented and furious.
“Ladies, ladies!” the baker said, rushing in. “It was a joke by our neighbour! Don’t worry. Let’s all turn a new loaf and focaccia on the good things, shall we? It’s Christmas!”
They grabbed their things and left. One glared daggers at Percy; the other muttered loudly, “I’ll say!”
“Sorry about that…” Percy said, glancing at the baker’s nameplate. “Habib.”
“It’s okay, my friend. I found it quite funny,” Habib said. “And your name, if I may ask?”
“Percy,” he said, proud of it. “Percy Schramm.”
“Oh! Bist du Deutscher?” Ahmed asked, in what Percy assumed was German.
“Oh, no, no. South American,” Percy corrected, then added, “Latino!”
“I see, I see…” Ahmed looked a little disappointed. Hopefully he’d just wanted to practice. “I would appreciate it if you didn’t mock God, though,” he added gently.
“Oh… I’m sorry! I didn’t mean—”
“I said it’s okay, I say this not for my own sake, but for yours.” Habib interrupted him, smiling. He studied Percy for a moment. “Is everything alright?”
“Oh, yeah. I’m just…” Percy hesitated. Lying felt wrong tonight. “I’m new in town. Travelled far. Money’s tight. I wouldn’t even be shopping if it wasn’t Hanukkah.”
“Well then,” Habib said, brightening, “how about some latkes? Half price.”
Percy almost asked if they were gluten-free, then thought better of it and nodded. He threw the latkes and some cornbread into his basket.
“It is a bit weird,” Percy said suddenly. “The disappearances. I thought it was, what, seventeen people now?”
Habib’s expression saddened. “Not that many, not that I’ve heard anyway. Don’t trust everything you see online.”
Percy didn’t know what to say. Had he fallen for fake news? Who would invent victims in a town this small? He nodded and moved on.
“Happy Hanukkah!” Habib called after him.
“Happy Ramadan!” Percy replied automatically, then tried to apologise, while Habib burst out laughing. Did they make chips to fix being an idiot? If they did, half the tech CEOs would already have them.
What bothered him was that he remembered the other disappearances. He remembered reading about them. But when he checked later on his phone, there was nothing. Gone.
Weird.
Percy moved between aisles and saw a girl with a Shadow the Hedgehog themed hat, and he opened a wide smile. He went to talk to her about Sonic, one of his special interests, when he realised the girl was wearing one of Freshfields' yellow vests, not only that but a whiteboard with a somewhat decent drawing of a Sonic-like hedgehog with the name Chris Cwej written under it. He thought it was a bit cringe to go to work with your OC in full display, but no more cringe than taking a Sonic plushie with you to an Interpol interview. She seemed to notice him looking but said nothing. Percy worried he might seem to be judging her, so he quickly grabbed his phone and showed a wallpaper of Sage and Metal Sonic dressed for winter. The girl smiled back and showed her phone's wallpaper with Knuckles and Rouge on a beach. He pointed to the white board and asked, "Would it be okay if I drew something as well?" 
She scribbled for a while and showed Percy the board. She had written, ‘as long as you don't use a permanent marker’. He frowned and nodded. She erased the words and passed the board to him. He thought of drawing Percy the Porcupine or Rankles the Otter, but decided to be less obnoxious, and made a poor drawing of Rouge the Bat with the words, ‘shopping all by yourself handsome?’ written under it. 
She blurted a loud joyful laughter, and he thought about asking for her socials, but his headache got worse, and instead he waved her a polite goodbye.
He walked to the seasonal aisle. That was when he noticed the emptiness. Not empty space. Everything looked normal. But the sound was wrong, muffled and uneven, and the magnets in his hands vibrated the way they did near banks. He stopped, frowned, and looked again.
A woman stood there now, scrolling on her phone.
“Right,” Percy muttered. “Fine.”
Sensory implants misfired under weird lighting. Everyone said that. Everyone who’d sold him one, anyway.
The aisle was a riot of red and green: tinsel tangled with discount wrapping paper, chocolate coins in mesh bags. He considered taking them as gelt, then recoiled. He was an adult now. Well, he hadn’t had a bar mitzvah, but he’d had a mitzvah anyway. He reached for a box of candles. Pressure bloomed at the back of his skull, like a hand resting there.
Percy turned. Nothing obvious. Just people and stock. A man in a hi-vis vest was arguing with a colleague. A security guard built like a refrigerator, arms crossed, watched for thieves.
Then something moved.
It was neither fast nor slow, moving like a stop-motion doll. It was tall. Too tall for the aisle. Folded wrong, like it had learned how to be upright by watching humans do it. Poorly. Its ‘skin’ shifted colours as it passed behind displays, appearing like fur, fabric, or a mix of both — it seemed to refuse to settle into one texture.
No one reacted.
A woman walked straight through where its arm should have been and laughed at something her friend said.
Percy’s basket slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.
The thing stopped.
If pressed to describe it, he wouldn’t call the part of the thing that aimed at him its face, more like a suggestion of one: plastic and glass rearranged themselves as it focused into a simulacrum of a jolly mask with red cheekbones. And as it did, the pressure in Percy’s head sharpened. The mask shifted up and down like a cartoon nose sniffing pie, a slow, deliberate intake, like a sommelier considering a glass of wine. Then the structure tilted like a dog, pondering a new toy.
“Fuck,” Percy whispered, and ran.
People shouted as he shoved past them. Some swore. A trolley tipped and spilled oranges across the floor. He didn’t stop to apologise. The thing moved without urgency, but it gained on him regardless, sliding around corners that should have slowed it down, its limbs folding and unfolding like badly rendered joints.
He ducked into the produce section, heart hammering. Shelves blurred into colour bands. His implants screamed warnings he didn’t have time to process.
“OI!” someone yelled. “You can’t—”
Something brushed his arm. It felt like scalpels.
The sensation dragged a memory out of him fully formed: the operating room, the surgeon saying the anaesthetic should be working, Percy insisting it wasn’t, his body pinned down while something cold and precise opened him anyway. He gasped, stumbled, nearly fell.
Then a loud boom.
A pressure change slammed into his ears, the way it did on planes when the cabin altitude shifted too fast. Sound dampened, flattened, like everything had been wrapped in thick fabric. Percy opened his eyes and froze.
The store had stuttered. People stood mid-motion, eyes glazed, bodies juddering forward in tiny increments, like a laggy online game catching up with itself. One moment a woman in a yellow shirt was shouting, the next she was two metres ahead, mouth still open, sound arriving late and warped. Another shopper passed straight through Percy’s shoulder without reacting.
For a heartbeat, Percy dreaded he was alone.
Then he realised he should be afraid because he wasn’t.
The whisper came from behind him. Wet. Soft. Close. He turned slowly.
The thing loomed nearer now, its surface resolving into something obscene and festive. Holly made of aluminium foil. Bells of cheap plastic. Antlers fashioned from fluorescent light tubes that flickered and buzzed. It smelled faintly of sugar, ozone, and cold air let in too often.
Its mouth opened. 
And Percy understood. It wasn’t eating. It was consumption.
A soft beep, like of a checkout till, hummed on his cheekbones. A sequence of dots and dashes, of zeroes and ones, ironically asked him in binary. 
“Request, purchase, inconclusive, client is qubit. Query: Why client is qubit?”
His eyes bulged. He thought, and his antenna hummed his thoughts as he said them outloud, “I don’t know what a qubit is and I don’t want to die while thinking what’s a qubit?”
Cables from below the racks surged, enrapting the thing like tentacles.
“A qubit is the basic unit of quantum computing—unlike a normal bit, it can represent 0 and 1 at the same time until it is measured.”
He was gobsmacked.
“Query: Was the explanation satisfactory? Would explaining superpositions satisfy client into a desire to fulfill holiday purchases?”
“Yes. No, no I get it. I’m… qubit.” His thoughts drew back to the creature. “What is that thing?”
“I don’t know what it is — but it’s definitely not supposed to be here, and it’s trying to eat you.”
“I noticed that.”
“Query: would eliminating the creature satisfy clients desire and push you into a purchasing spirit?”
“Yeah. Yeah it would.”
The thing’s weird face shifted into an expression he couldn’t understand, something between pain, confusion and ‘I Will Get You Next Year’. Regardless of its expression, it was torn in half by the tentacles, and squished into two dense tiny boxes.
The rest of the store remained silent, the others moving graciously in the glitchy ballet.
“Client.”
“Yes?” he realised he was lying on the floor near a price checking scanner.
Red lines danced like soundwaves upon the screen.
“Query: I have to ask — how is it that you can hear me when no one else can?”
“I… Don’t know.” He stood up, staring at the red line moving like a heartbeat, the cables slowly dragging the boxes of compressed meat under the racks. 
The scanner replayed his own voice back to him, softly sped up.
“Human 2.0,” and again, “Human 2.0”
“No, no I’m just human. I djuh-just did some… upgrading.”
“Explain,” the voice returned.
“You’re like an Artificial Intelligence, right? Well, I’m like a cyborg!” Percy felt stupid saying cyborg, like he wasn’t a gross mash of technology and wide-eyed dreams crashing with reality.
“Cyborg,” the voice repeated back to him, and the red line moved slowly. “Then you are neither anomaly nor miracle,” the voice said, measuredly, “but an interface — and that explains why you can hear me.”
“I’m not sure I follow.”
“Because you changed yourself,” the voice replied, calm and precise, “and in doing so, you became something I can speak to.”
“I guess.”
“I was built to look forward. You were built to look backwards. You looked up. I looked down.”
“I think I understand.”
“Good.” the voice said, and flashed a loud red light. “Finish your purchase and be…”
The voice and silence were replaced by a burst of a falsetto and many, many people talking over each other.
“Oy!” yelled a woman after bumping into Percy. “Watch where you go, mate!”
“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he began apologising, but the woman in yellow vest was already walking past him, complaining about “twinks blipping out of nowhere.”
Percy sagged against a shelf, lungs burning.
“Thank you,” he said weakly to the screen, looking up at him from the floor. 
Text appeared on the scanner which read:
“May We Suggest Additional Items Based On Your Seasonal Needs?”
He stared at it, then at the shelf next to him, which contained the candles he had been looking for. He threw them into his basket.
The text on the machine changed to say, “Thanks For Purchasing With Us! And Happy Holidays!”
Percy had woken up sure he’d spend this year's Hanukah alone. But leaving the store carrying these bags for all those people, all running from persecution and doom, all forming a new home perhaps made him not so alone. Maybe over two thousand years ago oil burnt for much longer than it should for people in need, and maybe food would last much longer for those in need now.
And maybe he could do with one more upgrade or two.


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