OptionalFiction

I'd been in a bookstore today and had spent some time reading the backs of all the Christmas books they've got on display now. They were all very cliché and I couldn't believe the uninspired plots summaries. “Margret wants nothing more than to paint nutcrackers and meet a man. When her first customer asks her to go sledding with her she can't believe her luck...” or whatever. That all was the basis for today's text. I was surprised at how terrible the stepfather turned out to be. I wanted to stay with the jolly Christmas-y “we all can learn to love each other” bullshit, but the dynamic between the two had already started out really bad and I'm too cynical to allow a quick turn of heart. At around the middle I was already playing through the idea of the father's death in my head, but then I tried to veer away from that again, toward something “nice”. Didn't work.