Stave One
“Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that,” he read out loud from the first page and then shut the book closed. He exhaled, a puff of frozen breath forming in front of his mouth and said, “And this is supposed to be a fairytale? How morbid.”
He held the book in his hands, a real, physical print of “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. It was only a mass-produced cheap copy but it was vintage enough in this time and age. His late partner had left it on his desk, with a handwritten dedication for him. Scrooge never figured out why.
His name wasn’t really Scrooge of course. He was John.
People just called him like that, and the nickname stuck. It was just that every Christmas Eve since his business partner’s death on the exact same day, he was remi
