Xmas Spirit by Tonya Hurley

a little short on cash, that’s all.”
    “We? Are you trying to say The Wendys are empty-handed too?”
    “Empty-headed is more like it,” Prue said, laughing manically.
    “Don’t worry! We have a plan,” Damen said.
    Petula crossed her arms and tapped her foot impatiently.
    “The Christmas clock is ticking, Damen.”
    “Not just for you, Goldilocks,” Prue murmured under her breath but loud enough for Charlotte to hear.
    “What’s your strategy?” Petula demanded.
    “It’s a surprise for you,” Damen said. “I can’t tell. I promised.”
    “You know my motto?” Petula informed. “Promises are meant to be broken. You will tell me.”
    Petula nearly assaulted him, rubbing her body against his, gripping his face and shoving her tongue down his throat as if it were an intubation tube.
    “She’s going Guantánamo on him,” Charlotte murmured. “Take me away from here.”
    “Don’t you want to see how it ends?” Prue asked slyly.
    “I think I know how it ends.”
    Prue whisked Charlotte away once again, this time to the center of town. Charlotte couldn’t help but choke on all the black smoke as it cleared.
    There was Scarlet, looking as if she was about to enter a travel agency.
    “Where is she going?”
    “Probably planning her escape from this hellhole like everyone else,” Prue rasped, eyeing Charlotte with disapproval. “Well, almost everyone.”
    Scarlet stopped, looked in the window of the agency, mulling over a creepy poster for what looked like travel to Poland, but didn’t enter, instead continuing to the indie record shop next door, carrying a sack of CDs and vinyls. Charlotte andPrue followed. The shop was small and dingy but neat, sectioned off by genre, condition—used or new—and format: vinyl, CD, and even cassette. Vintage concert posters papered the walls, and retro re-creations of record and tape players decorated the shelves, reminders of another era. “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight)” by The Ramones blasted through the speakers. A few classic Christmas albums displayed at the register were the only other nod to the season.
    “Hey, Scarlet,” the hipster cashier said.
    “Hey.”
    “What’s up?”
    “Just selling a few things.”
    She handed over a stack of vinyl and compact discs.
    “Nice stuff. Good taste as usual,” he complimented. “Must be hard to let them go. It’s like your past, right?”
    “It always is,” she said. “But some of them aren’t as good as I remembered them—you know what I mean?”
    “No.”
    “Sometimes you just have to move on.”
    “Wise words,” Prue said.
    Charlotte just looked on, transfixed by her friend.
    “Besides, my sister, Petula, has been ‘borrowing’ them, and she brings them back with all kinds of funky stains on them,” Scarlet complained. “I don’t want to provide the sound track to her sex life.”
    “Yeah,” he said, and cringed. “I guess you can just load them up on your phone anyway.”
    “I could, but . . .”
    “You won’t. I know. It’s not the same.”
    The cashier did the calculations and gave Scarlet the best deal he could. He handed the money over.
    “That’s it?”
    “Best I can do,” he said, shuffling through the vinyl. “Nobody cares about these anymore. Not much value.”
    The clerk’s words had a familiar ring, and she felt a twinge from deep in her childhood rear its ugly head.
    “Except to me,” Scarlet said. “Oh well. Tough to be an analog girl in a digital world.”
    “Time waits for no one,” he offered.
    “Definitely not.”
    Scarlet put the cash in her coat pocket and started to leave.
    “Christmas shopping for someone?”
    “For myself,” she replied. “Maybe.”
    Charlotte was intrigued.
    “Cool,” the guy responded.
    “Isn’t it crazy the shit people do for Christmas?” Scarlet mused. “Things they wouldn’t even do for themselves.”
    “Word,” he said. “So much pressure.”
    “Get this. Petula’s friends are planning