A Kinney Christmas Carol
Julesmonster


Chapter One: A Ghostly Visit

“Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.”

No, wait, that’s a different tale than the one I wish to impart to you, dear readers. That tale has been told a million times over in more ways than I can conceive. No the tale I want to tell is not about the dead Jacob Marley or his living counterpart Ebenezer Scrooge. There is no Tiny Tim (with crutch or ukulele) nor is there a fat Christmas goose to be shared in the concluding scenes.

Instead, there is Brian Kinney, the stud of Liberty Avenue. Much like Scrooge in Dickens’ tale, Brian was a miserable bastard, especially around the holidays. He was alone by both circumstance and choice and he told himself that he preferred it that way. But I am getting ahead of myself. Where was I? Oh yes…

Jack Kinney was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Brian Kinney signed it. And Brian's name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Jack was as dead as a door-nail. (Hey, if I’m going to steal from Dickens, I may as well steal right and proper!)

Brian knew he was dead. How could he not? Jack was his father and Jack had taught Brian all of his miserable ways. Jack preached about how relationships and family ripped the soul out of a man and Brian learned those lessons well. It became inevitable, enforced with a fist and harsh words upon a young and impressionable mind, that Brian would become exactly like his father. Brian liked to believe that because he fucked men rather than women, because he avoided the trap of marriage, because he allowed a chosen few to grace his life with the moniker of friend that he wasn't anything like his father. In truth, the sex of the partner was irrelevant; just like Jack, Brian used others for physical release and then tossed them aside. Just like Jack, Brian refused to be a part of a healthy loving relationship. Just like Jack, Brian held his friends and family at a distance and let no one inside of the walls around his heart.

Even after Jack died, Brian continued to live his life in such a way that would have made his bastard of a father proud. Cold-hearted bastard was a title that Brian relished as much as the title of stud. Unlike Jack Kinney, however, Brian had made something of himself. He had worked his way through school and then had worked his way to the top of his chosen field. He owned one of the best advertising agencies in the country because he had worked his ass off to make it the best.

As hard as he worked, however, Brian played just as hard. He drank, drugged and fucked his way through the lonely nights so that he could avoid admitting just how lonely those nights were. He had fucked half of the gay men in Pittsburgh at one time or another. Never the same man twice and never allowing an emotional attachment to form. There was only one exception to that rule… but again, I am getting ahead of myself.

Brian was ruthless in his business and ruthless in his personal life and he was just fine with that. He had more money than he knew what to do with and was never wanting for a trick. He was the ultimate gay man, as far as he was concerned.

Of course, the Christmas season was one time of year when Brian was forced to face his solitary state head on. With all the media hype about families and friends, all of the ads he himself put together to reinforce the propaganda in order to sell more shit that no one could actually need, Brian was unable to escape the fact that he was alone. It was for that reason that Brian Kinney hated Christmas. It was also for that reason he made a point of going somewhere—anywhere—else for the actual holiday. Each year, once the last minute changes had been done for his various campaigns, Brian boarded a flight for somewhere warm and refused to return until all the ‘holiday shit’ was over.

Brain wasn't a particularly greedy man. He was happy to give to the charities that he felt were worthy as long as they were willing to keep his name out of it. He was especially fond of supporting gay rights. But no one would ever know that he supported these causes because Brian was so adamant that they not know. No one would ever know that he slipped a hundred dollar bill into the kettle any time he saw a Salvation Army bell ringer. No one would know that he quietly paid for the new roof at the Vic Grassi Hospice. No one would ever know that he was the driving force behind the new daycare center at the GLC. No one would ever know that behind the walls Brian had erected around his heart, there still beat the heart of a child full of hope and love.

It was that child’s heart that reached out past the stony barriers when his son Gus was born and latched on never to let go. When Brian refused to sign over custody of his son, everyone said it was because he was a heartless bastard, but in truth it was because he could not. He could not give up that one tie to the boy who had claimed his heart. So while Melanie ranted and raved and called Brian every kind of bastard she could think of, Brian had simply ignored her and clung to his son.

Gus was the only person Brian would ever allow to see him vulnerable. He was the only person who could make Brian show true and genuine emotion. And yet even Gus, now five years old, could not make Brian stick around for Christmas.

“Please, Daddy,” Gus pouted. “You’re never here for Christmas. I want you there when I open my presents from Santa.”

“Sorry, Sonny Boy,” Brian said gently. “But this is something I have to do. You and your mommies will have a great Chanukah and Christmas without me just like you always do.”

“But I’m going to miss you,” Gus said. “And the mommies have JR now so they don’t really pay attention to me anymore.”

“That’s not true,” Brian said. “They love you just as much as ever. And so do I. I’ll be home in a couple weeks and then you and I can spend a whole day together. No girls allowed.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Gus said, but his tone was subdued for the rest of his visit.

The days leading up to Christmas were just as hectic as ever for Brian on this particular year. In fact, it seemed like they were even worse. Almost every one of their clients had some last minute emergency that needed his attention, so instead of flying out of Pittsburgh on December 21st, Brian was still at his desk on Christmas Eve, working his staff into the ground.

“Brian, everyone is exhausted,” Cynthia complained. “It’s after five and, unlike us, they all have families to go home to.”

“Cynthia, we have four commercials that are scheduled to be in the Super Bowl this year. With all the shit that happened this Christmas, we are almost a week behind schedule,” Brian said. “I’ll be gone for two weeks—well, a week and a half now—and much of the staff will be taking vacation time as well. I think they can afford to work a few extra hours today.”

“They've all been working extra hours for the past two weeks,” Cynthia said. “For fuck’s sake, Brian. It’s Christmas.”

Brian leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Fine, let them go. Just make sure they understand that they’ll be working their asses off on Monday morning. I may be in Maui, but there’s a perfectly good internet access at my hotel.”

Cynthia rolled her eyes. Only Brian would work while on vacation in Hawaii. “Sure thing, Brian.”

Brian grumbled to himself as Cynthia left his office and he went back to work. There were still a million things to do and none of them had anything to do with some overblown holiday propaganda. When Cynthia returned at seven, he was still buried in his work.

“It’s seven and I’m going home,” Cynthia told him.

“Seven?” Brian looked at his clock and swore. “I’m going to miss my flight.”

“I wouldn't worry about that,” Cynthia shrugged. “Have you looked outside lately? It’s snowing like a bitch out there and it’s supposed to continue for the next twelve hours. All flights have been cancelled for today and most of tomorrow. Looks like you’ll be home for Christmas for once.”

“Shit,” Brian sighed. He quickly checked online and sure enough, the airport had closed. There was already four inches of snow on the ground and the forecast called for up to 18 inches before this thing was done. Brian spent a few minutes on the phone with the airline before giving up getting a flight out before two days after Christmas. He was well and truly stuck. Sighing, Brian cancelled his ticket and called the hotel to cancel his room as well. If he was stuck, he might as well stick around and work on the Super Bowl ads.

Shaking his head in defeat, Brian cleared his desk, taking as much work home with him as he could fit into his attache case. It took fifteen minutes for the taxi to arrive, but Brian had no choice but to wait since he had left his car at the loft in anticipation of going directly from work to the airport. The trip to the loft took twice the normal time and Brian tipped the driver generously despite the man’s annoying habit of chattering and playing those awful Christmas carols on the radio.

“You made it just in time,” the cabbie said before Brian could climb from the car. “Dispatch just said that the city’s been shut down. Only emergency vehicles allowed out tonight. Guess I’ll get to spend Christmas Eve with the kids after all.”

“Right,” Brian said tersely. “Good for you.”

The cab drove off and Brian carefully made his way from the cab to the front door of the Building on Tremont that he had called home for more than ten years now. He had bought the loft in his first year at Ryder, using the bonus from his first big campaign as the down payment. Since then, he had bought up and paid off the other condos one by one until he owned the entire building outright. He still rented out the apartments on the lower levels, but he felt more secure knowing that he had the security of having a home that could never be taken from him.

The light by the door flickered a couple times before finally settling on a faint eerie glow that barely gave any light at all. Brian made a mental note to have the super take a look at it after the holidays. It was too bad people felt the need to make such a big deal out of a single day. It wasn't like the world stopped just because the holiday gods declared this one day special. Work still needed to be done.

The door, so familiar to Brian that he hardly ever looked at it any longer, was made of frosted glass with a Celtic knot in clear glass in the center of it. Brian had the design custom made when he had finally paid off the last of the apartments. It was a design that his Grandmother had shown him when he was a child. She had been a quilter and had stitched the design into the quilt that had graced the bed Brian had used the one summer he was allowed to spend with her. She had told him it was a love knot and that there was no beginning and no end, just like the love she felt for him. It was one of the few happy memories he had from his childhood.

In the dim light, however, Brian looked at that Celtic knot and didn't see the knot but the face of his long dead father. Brian paused to stare at the likeness but in the time between one blink and the next, the face of Jack Kinney had disappeared and been replaced again with the familiar Celtic knot.

It was with a shaking hand that Brian unlocked the door and let himself inside. He refused to believe what his eyes had seen. Further, he refused to put his still shaking hands down to that moment of disturbing illusion. Instead, Brian chalked it up to having been too many hours since he had grabbed a quick bran muffin for breakfast. Low blood sugar could do some pretty strange things to a person.

He took the elevator rather than the stairs up to his fifth floor loft and let himself inside. He ignored the uneasy feeling inside that told him that something was different tonight than every other night he found refuge in those walls. He went up the three steps to his bedroom and quickly shed his clothes, carefully hanging his suit up and discarding everything else to the laundry hamper in the bathroom before stepping into the shower.

Half an hour later, dressed in a comfortable pair of jeans and a black t-shirt, Brian went into the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat. He knew that the refrigerator was basically empty of everything but beer and condiments, but he found a few cans of soup and grabbed one randomly. It only took a couple of minutes for his dinner to heat in the microwave and soon he was seated on his expensive Italian leather sofa flipping through the channels on his television attempting to find something that wasn't holiday related.

The phone rang just as he settled on an old rerun of one of those police procedurals that seem to plague the cable stations. “Yeah.”

“Merry Christmas to you too, asshole.”

Brian sighed. It was Debbie, his friend Mikey’s mother. “What’s up Deb?”

“Since I know you can’t fly out to whatever gay resort you had planned for this year, I thought I’d invite you over for Christmas dinner tomorrow evening,” Debbie said. “Michael, Ben and Hunter will be here all day and Lindsay and Mel will be bringing Gus and JR over in the afternoon.”

“Sounds scintillating, but I think I’ll pass,” Brian drawled.

“Listen you asshole,” Debbie said sternly. “Your little boy wants to see you for Christmas. And so does the rest of your family. Get off your ass and get here for dinner. We’ll eat at six.”

Brian didn't have time to tell her it would be a cold day in hell before he showed up for a family Christmas because she hung up on him. Brian sighed and went back to his now lukewarm soup and room temperature beer.

“Merry fucking Christmas to me,” Brian muttered. He had no intention of going anywhere tomorrow. He’d sleep late, something he rarely had the opportunity to do, and then do some work. Maybe he’d stop by the munchers’ place the next day to see Gus, but Gus was going to have to get used to the fact that Christmas was just another day.

Brian shut the television off at 11:30 and washed up his bowl before heading to bed. It was early for him, but he felt inexplicably drained. He stripped off his clothes and climbed between the sheets. Soon, only the light from the street through the front windows illuminated the room. Brian spent a few moments contemplating the fat wet snowflakes as they fell to earth.

It was as the bells from the church two blocks away began to ring, announcing the start of Christmas, that Brian heard another sound. This sound was much closer. In fact, it was coming from his kitchen. Very carefully, Brian grabbed a heavy marble book end from the shelf near his bed and crept towards the sound.

There was a man standing by the refrigerator, rooting around inside. But as Brian stood there watching the man, he could see the empty refrigerator through him.

“What the fuck?” Brian snarled.

The apparition turned and gave him a smile. “Hey Sonny Boy!”

“Pops?” Brian muttered in disbelief. “What the fuck? You’re dead.”

“Got that right,” Jack said gloomily. “Can’t go back and fix things now. It’s too late for me, but it isn't too late for you. That’s why I’m here.”

“Too late for what?” Brian wondered. “What the fuck am I doing? This has to be a hallucination. I must have drunk too much.”

Jack looked into the fridge again. “Nope. Just one beer missing from this six-pack, and one bottle in the recycling bin. You should really get some food in here.”

“I usually order in,” Brian muttered as he went back to his room to grab his jeans and t-shirt. When he walked back down the steps, Jack had left the kitchen and was sitting in front of Brian’s television.

“I still like the set up you have here, Sonny Boy,” Jack said. “Nothing like that piece of shit house I had when I was alive and living with the warden.”

“Funny what a college education can buy you,” Brian said. He sat in the chair across from his father and turned on the reading lamp. “What the fuck are you doing here? If you were going to haunt me, I’d have thought you would have done it before now. It’s been four years since you died.”

“Couldn't get back before now,” Jack shrugged. “The-Powers-That-Be kept me busy showing me where I went wrong.”

“The-Powers-That-Be?” Brian asked. “Don’t tell me that Mom was right and we’re all going to hell.”

“No, it’s not like that,” Jack said. “Boy, are all the religious nuts surprised when they get there. There’s no great and terrifying God. No heaven or hell. It’s more like karma and past lives and stuff. When you die, you go to this plane where the cosmic forces show you where you fucked up in the hopes that you’ll do better on your next go ‘round. The worse you fucked up, the longer you have to stay. I've been here longer than most, and I know I've still got a while left before they let me be reborn.”

“What’s it like there?” Brian asked.

“Lonely,” Jack said softly. “More lonely than you would ever believe. I can see other spirits, but we can’t touch or communicate. And they keep replaying all the shit I messed up and showing me the way I fucked up other people. I hurt you the most, though your mother and sister were close in the running. That’s why I’m here. I need to try and get you fixed so you don’t end up like me, and so your son doesn't end up like both of us.”

“Gus? What’s Gus got to do with anything?” Brian all but growled.

“They don’t tell me everything; I just know that if you keep on the path you’re on now, you’ll end up just like me and Gus will end up just like you,” Jack said. “The-Powers-That-Be don’t want that to happen, so they arranged this little intervention. I think they have plans for Gus.”

“This is all bullshit,” Brian muttered. “You aren't really here.”

“Keep telling yourself that,” Jack said. “But you’ll change your tune when the spirits come to visit.”

“What spirits?” Brian asked and then it dawned on him. “No. Please tell me that my life hasn't turned into a fucking Dickens Christmas special.”

“Sorry,” Jack said with a chuckle. “They have a strange sense of humor. You know the routine. Three Christmas spirits, past, present and future, will visit you tonight. Listen and learn, Sonny Boy. You come from a long line of Kinney men who can’t figure out how to love. You’re the only one who can break the cycle.”

“Whatever,” Brian said with a roll of his eyes.

“My time is almost up,” Jack said sadly. “Before I go, I just wanted to say… I’m sorry for what I did to you. I know sorry doesn't change things, but… Well, I do love you and I’m proud of the things you have accomplished. I’ll be even prouder if you can break the cycle that my great grandfather seems to have started. You’re a strong man Brian and if anyone can do it, it’s you.”

Jack seemed to fade into nothingness before Brian’s eyes. He didn't even have a chance to respond to his father and he was gone.