Prometheus is a Christmas Movie
by Kyle Seibel
It’s a stupid thing to fight about but we’re giving it to ourselves as a gift.
We can’t keep arguing about the same thing we’ve been arguing about for the past two weeks, which is, of course, the woman who refuses to leave the standalone unit in the backyard of the house we just bought.
That’s something worth clinking glasses over.
The house buying part, I mean.
It’s everything we said we wanted that day in Big Sur when we met Michael Cera on the beach and each of us listed the one thing that had to be in our dream house and you said built-in bookcases and I said big backyard and Michael Cera said home gym.
At least we thought it was him.
He was wearing a hoodie and we were on acid, so who really knows for sure.
And I’m pretty positive the situation with the unit out back will resolve itself in time.
Afterall, that’s why we made a condition of the escrow to vacate her ass with extreme prejudice and what I mean is that the authorities will take care of it.
If she continues to be unreasonable that’s when the gloves come off.
I’m sorry, but California real estate is a full contact sport and you are married to motherfucking Dennis Rodman.
You just can’t stay in a house that someone else owns.
Especially considering she stopped paying rent.
Especially considering we don’t want her there.
Don’t care that she’s old.
Don’t care about all her patents.
Her PhDs and prototypes.
She won’t be our tenant.
It won’t get to that.
I made the agent promise.
We are not responsible for any part of her situation.
Not one part.
Listen.
Listen, goddamnit.
I’ll drag her out by the boney doorknobs in her ankles.
If that’s what it takes.
I’ll dump her garbage in the ocean.
I don’t give a shit.
I don’t care where she lives.
She can go live with her sister.
Or my sister.
Or your sister, or oh Jesus, what a mess.
We agree on that much, but on Prometheus, less so.
You say that the movie happens during Christmas, which isn’t the same thing.
I say, What about that scene where Idris Elba decorates a tree while smoking weed?
That’s our tradition and since traditions have meaning, that means it’s a Christmas movie and you say it’s not a good movie but that’s another fight.
Anyway, that’s the point I’m making when the agent calls.
Good news, he says in a weird voice because “good news” is a weird way to put it.
There’s been a development which solves a big problem.
Solves it in a way we would never have wished for, not in a million years, but of course we did, just never out loud and the agent tells me that the lady who refused to leave the unit on the property of our new house was hit by a car in the middle of the night riding her bike along a busy street and she was gone by the time someone called it in.
Hit and run.
Agent says it’ll be a few more weeks, but everything should be back on schedule.
He says to not worry because he’s got an alibi.
He’s laughing so I’m laughing.
I don’t know what to say so I say thank you and he says thank you and I hang up and tell you the whole story and after, we sit in the living room of our rental without talking, surrounded by moving boxes, lit only by tinsel.
What kind of scientist was she, you ask.
I think they’re supposed to be archaeologists, I say but we’re not talking about Prometheus anymore, as much as I wish we were.
We’re not talking at all, actually.
Just sitting.
Occasionally drinking.
Reading each other’s minds.
Trying to decide who’s more to blame for getting exactly what we want.
***
Kyle Seibel is a writer in Santa Barbara, CA. His stories have appeared in trampset, HAD, and Bending Genres. His tweets, which mostly suck, can be found @kylerseibel.