Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #21 December 2015 | Page 52

Xmas in Virtual
Reality
By Marol
There was something unsettling about the
professionally wrapped present under the big tree in
the hallway. It looked harmlessly decorative. It just
emanated a malevolent presence, which presents
didn’t normally do.
It made Max uneasy to look at it, but that is
just what he ended up doing. Like everything else
in the house, the Christmas tree, the marbled halls,
and enormously high ceilings were over the top.
The classically sweeping stairway looked like it had
jumped out of a Hollywood antebellum drama from
the silver screen; the giant tree thrust up into the
empty space of airy hallway.
If you looked carefully you could see the faint
shadows of where large furniture used to stand.
Over the days since the red packet had been
taken out of its travelling cardboard brown, Max felt
that it was watching him, in the same way that people
in portraits hanging on the wall sometimes seem to
follow you around the room.
It was troubling.
More so, because he was responsible for it
being there. And he knew that there was something
wrong about it. It just felt wrong, but for some reason
he did nothing about it.
It was his fault. Just like the business going
under was his fault. He put it in a vulnerable position,
and that corporate raider he caught humping his wife
Nichole turned him over. It was payback for throwing
him down the stairs, and chasing him through the
electric gates, and down the street the local taxi
drivers called ‘Millionaires Row’, every CCTV
camera on every security gate catching his naked arse
being kicked.

It went viral on YouTube.
That was his fault. Well, sort of.
Nichole was bored because he was away
on business all the time, trying to keep her in the
fashion she thought she would like to be kept. She
wasn’t born to it. Nor was he. It had been hard graft
building up the business, and sacrifices were made
as a result. Including their relationship and their
marriage.
And that was his fault.
But their boy Jack. At five years old he
didn’t know anything of the growing pains of his
Dad’s working life, or the high-tension strains on
his domestic relationships. Nichole was convinced
Max was having an affair. He was never there. And
she was lonely. She didn’t have any friends, only
rivals in Millionaire’s Row.
She was not to know that the man who
charmed her with forgotten attention was Max’s
biggest rival. All he wanted was a little bit of inside
information, but what he got was an emotional
outpouring that gave him exactly the weapons he
needed to flush Max and his seventy nine loyal
employees down, and out onto the streets.
Back to Jack; he was great, the apple of his
Mum and Dad’s eyes. A little weird sometimes.
Never out of a Spiderman or Avengers costume.
But his latest passion was this Valhalla Gang they
show on Nickelodeon. Max couldn’t stand it.
Even Nichole had a problem lasting the full thirty
minutes of each episode. It was one of those goofy
American shows, with lots of joshing about, tons of
canned laughter, and stereotyped cardboard-cutout
characters that brained each other with clubs and
hammers when they couldn’t think of anything to
say.
This did not count if you were under
eight years old. For them they were cult heroes of
enormous proportions. And the Valhalla Gang of
Norse gods putting America to right, from their

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