Marley was dead: to begin with. This was a good thing because he clearly hadn’t been pulling his weight if he had the time to muck about kicking the bucket when there was work to be done and money to be made.
“Good riddance,” muttered Ebenezer Scrooge, a man with a sound business head on his extremely wealthy shoulders.
“Mr. Scrooge? Would it be possible to have tomorrow off?”
That was Bob Cratchett, Scrooge’s clerk. Apparently, Mr. Cratchett thought money grew on trees.
“No,” replied Scrooge. “You’re fired. Get out.”
And quite right too. Scrooge wasn’t a charity.
That night, Scrooge ate some cheese by candlelight in his freezing cold house and then went to bed. A bed, by the way, that he’d bought with money he’d made by working his boney old fingers to the bone. He hadn’t been given a free bed by some do-gooder because he was too bloody idle to work for a living.
“WoOOOOooooOOOOO,” wailed the Spirit of Christmas Past. “Ebenezer Scrooge! I am the Spirit of Chr-”
“Bugger off!” shouted Scrooge, grabbing his blunderbuss. He shot the spirit right between its eyes. This sent the following signals to the rest of the spirit world:
- He was not interested in any of their nonsense.
- He needed to get some sleep because he had work in the morning.
The spirits got the message and didn’t bother him again.
The next day was Christmas Day. Scrooge didn’t care about this because he was a very busy man. Meanwhile, over at Bob Cratchett’s house, him and his scrounging family were turfed out on their ear by the landlord’s agent and replaced by a family who didn’t think it was acceptable to live on handouts. The landlord was Ebenezer Scrooge. Twenty minutes later, the Cratchetts died of hypothermia. This was more than they deserved.
“Why?” croaked Tiny Tim, as the last breaths escaped his workshy body.
Why, Tiny Tim? I’ll tell you, shall I? Because your mother and father decided to breed like RABBITS without putting a moment’s thought into how they were going to provide for you and your freeloading brothers and sisters. A lesson for you there, my boy.
Anyway, that night Scrooge went to bed a contented man. His agent had informed him earlier in the day that he’d kicked out a family of grasping thieves from one of Mr. Scrooge’s properties, and this had made his Christmas.
“God bless me,” Scrooge said to himself. “Every one of my properties is occupied by people who pay their way, not by sponging wastrels and cripples who don’t know the value of a hard day’s work.”
THE END
Napoleon's Landfill 