December 25th Repeats

I wake up to bells.

Not church bells—those stopped ringing years ago—but the cheap electronic chime of my alarm clock playing a distorted version of “Jingle Bells.” The sound drills straight into my skull. My eyes open before I can stop them.

December 25th.

Again.

The red numbers on the clock read 6:00 a.m. exactly. They always do. Outside my window, snow falls in slow, lazy spirals, catching the orange glow of the streetlight. My breath fogs in the cold room. Everything is exactly where it was yesterday.

And the day before that.

And the one before that.

I lie there, staring at the ceiling crack shaped like a lightning bolt, waiting for the scream. It always comes within the first minute.

“Merry Christmas!”

My wife’s voice floats down the hallway, bright and warm, like nothing bad has ever happened in this world.

I close my eyes.

“Please,” I whisper. “Not again.”

But December 25th doesn’t listen.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve lived this day. At first, I tried to measure it—marking tallies on the wall, tracking changes, memorizing patterns—but the numbers stopped mattering once the deaths began to pile up in my head.

The first time, it was my father.

He collapsed at the breakfast table, hand clutching his chest, coffee spilling across the snowman tablecloth. I screamed for help, called an ambulance, performed CPR like I’d seen in videos. He died anyway, eyes wide, mouth half-open like he was about to say something important.

I woke up the next morning to bells.

The second time, it was my neighbor, Mrs. Calder. Slipped on the icy steps while carrying over cookies. Her neck snapped at a wrong angle. I held her hand until her eyes went dull.

I woke up to bells.

The third time, my son.

That was when I understood this wasn’t random.

Evan ran into the street chasing a new toy car. I saw it happen in slow motion—the headlights, the scream, the red spray against white snow. I remember dropping to my knees in the slush, howling until my throat tore open.

I woke up to bells.

I screamed then. I smashed the alarm clock against the wall. I tore through the house, shaking my wife awake, sobbing, trying to explain. She smiled gently, touched my face, told me I’d had a nightmare.

“You’ve been stressed,” she said. “It’s Christmas. Try to enjoy it.”

I tried everything after that.

I kept people inside. I canceled visits. I locked doors. I hid keys. I unplugged appliances. I followed everyone like a shadow, heart hammering, eyes scanning for danger.

Someone still died.

A gas leak. A stroke. A choking accident. A fall down the stairs. Sometimes fast. Sometimes slow. Always final.

And every time, I woke up again.

The worst part isn’t the deaths. It’s the way people look at me before they die—like they expect me to do something. Like they know I’ve seen this before.

Over time, patterns emerged.

The day itself never changes. The snow falls the same way. The radio plays the same songs in the same order. At 3:12 p.m., a dog barks down the street. At 5:40, the power flickers for half a second.

Only one thing changes.

Who dies.

I tried to cheat it.

One year, I drove out of town before dawn, tires screaming over icy roads, determined to get as far away from everyone as possible. I made it twenty miles before a drunk driver crossed the median and wrapped my car around a tree.

As I lay bleeding in the snow, lungs filling, I remember thinking: At least it’s me this time.

I woke up to bells.

That’s when I realized the rule.

It can’t be me.

I am the witness.

I started noticing something else, too. Subtle at first. Easy to dismiss if I hadn’t been paying attention so desperately.

Each death felt… cleaner than the last.

Less chaotic. Less accidental.

More deliberate.

One year, my brother drowned in the bathtub while sober and healthy. Another time, my wife cut her hand while cooking and bled out before help arrived, staring at me in confusion as if I’d pushed the knife into her palm myself.

People began dying closer to me. In rooms I was in. Sometimes while I was holding them.

I tried asking for help.

Doctors said I was dissociating. Priests said it was grief. A therapist smiled kindly and asked if I’d ever considered medication.

No one believed me.

No one ever remembers dying.

Except me.

Last time—the time before this one—Evan died again.

He was older this time. Older than he ever gets to be in the real world. Ten years old. Sharp and observant. He watched me all day with a seriousness that made my skin crawl.

“Dad,” he said quietly in the afternoon, while my wife napped on the couch. “Why are you so scared?”

I swallowed. “I just want today to be perfect.”

He tilted his head. “You say that every year.”

My heart stopped.

“What did you say?”

He frowned, like he’d said something wrong. “Nothing.”

That evening, just before dinner, he looked straight at me and said, “It’s not supposed to be me this time.”

Then the tree fell on him.

It wasn’t loose. It wasn’t unstable. It simply tipped, crushing him beneath lights and ornaments and tinsel. His small body twisted wrong. Blood soaked into the presents underneath.

As I screamed his name, he looked at me—not scared, not confused—just disappointed.

I woke up to bells.

So now it’s this morning.

Again.

I don’t get out of bed right away. I lie there, staring at the ceiling crack, listening to my wife hum in the kitchen, listening to Evan’s feet thump down the hallway.

I know something now that I didn’t before.

It isn’t choosing randomly.

It’s choosing carefully.

The deaths are becoming more personal. More painful. As if the day itself is learning me, studying what hurts the most.

And I think I know why.

Because there is one death it hasn’t taken yet.

At breakfast, my wife laughs at something Evan says. My father pours coffee. Everyone is alive. Everyone is safe.

For now.

I make a decision.

I spend the day being… kind.

I hug longer. I listen more. I apologize for things I never apologized for. I tell my father I love him. I tell my wife she saved my life more times than she knows. I tell Evan I’m proud of him, over and over, until he giggles and tells me to stop being weird.

At 4:00 p.m., I sit alone in the bedroom.

I know the timing.

The death usually comes around dusk.

I lock the door.

I sit on the bed and wait.

When the pain hits, it’s sudden and blinding. Like my chest is folding in on itself. I gasp, clawing at the sheets, heart stuttering wildly. The room tilts. My vision tunnels.

So this is how it does it, I think dimly. Making me watch all those years so I’d be afraid to choose this.

I fall onto the floor, breath coming in wet, broken sounds. Somewhere in the house, I hear laughter. Dishes clinking. Life continuing without me.

Good.

As darkness creeps in, I feel something else—relief.

The bells don’t come.

When I open my eyes, the room is still dark, but it isn’t night.

The alarm clock reads December 26th.

For the first time in longer than I can remember.

I sit up slowly, heart pounding—not in pain, but in disbelief. Sunlight spills through the window, bright and ordinary. The house is quiet.

Too quiet.

I rush into the hallway.

No humming. No footsteps.

I run into the kitchen.

Empty.

The table is set exactly as it was yesterday morning. Coffee cold in the pot. Plates untouched.

A chill crawls up my spine.

I hear something then. Soft. Familiar.

Singing.

From the living room.

A Christmas carol plays on the radio, low and gentle. The tree stands lit in the corner, ornaments perfectly still.

And beneath it, on the couch, lies my body.

Eyes open. Skin gray. Mouth frozen in a silent scream.

My family stands around it, unmoving. Watching. Waiting.

The radio crackles, and the song changes.

It isn’t “Jingle Bells.”

It’s a carol I don’t recognize.

And then I hear a voice join it.

Mine.

Singing softly, endlessly.

December 25th has finally let me go.

Now it keeps me.