Smashing in the New Year
by Lene MacLeod
Horrific Scribes Extremity Rating:
Stella felt the impulse to use the twenty-dollar bills, punch them to bits. An irrational thought, like what sometimes flashed through her mind when she finished painting a watercolor and had the urge to tear it in half, even if she was pleased with the result.
The stacks of money were stashed in a desk drawer in her office. Ian had come home the week before with the bundles of bills declaring no one would be able to buy anything come the New Year, but they’d be all set. On January first, 2000, the instant tellers wouldn’t function, nor would the systems in the banks themselves if you tried to get your money from a real live teller.
Stella thought it was nonsense. She grabbed some sheets of pink printer paper, leaving the bills, and proceeded to click away at them using her three-hole punch. Homemade confetti to ring in the New Year.
Next up were the party hats. Stella and her daughter sat at the round kitchen table with craft supplies and soon gave up on the notion of cones, settling for cut-out crown shapes they’d wear with the aid of a bit of string. Three crowns, one for Stella, one for Morgana, and one for Jesse, who’d fallen asleep on the family room couch.
“I want red,” Morgana said, pushing aside the blue and silver paints.
“Maybe there’s something we can use downstairs.” Stella headed to the basement with her daughter following.
The wide shelves were laden with cans and boxes. Food and sundries gathered over the past year. Not because of the new millennium threat but due to the fact the winters could be harsh up here, and with Ian working an hour to the south he often didn’t make it home, choosing instead to stay in the city. It was a challenge to grocery shop with two kids and no car in such conditions. All year round they had to watch out for power outages. The grid in their neck of the woods was outdated, so they always had a good supply of bottled water, thermal blankets, gasoline, lanterns, and a small generator.
The shelves continued down the length of the basement, past the emergency supplies, and on to the assorted junk that Ian had picked up over the years. Everything from boxes of rubber gloves and painter’s masks to pipes, car parts, old radios, and unidentifiable masses of metal, wires, and plastic.
Stella grabbed a box of food coloring. A few drops of red in the silver paint might be enough to satisfy Morgana.
“Come on, then. Let’s get back upstairs. Can’t leave your little brother too long.”
“He’s asleep! Spanky can babysit him,” Morgana said.
The big black mutt did like to keep an eye on the kids.
“And Mom, can I have this?” Morgana asked. She stood in front of the junk shelves and pointed to an old portable turntable.
“I don’t know if that thing works.”
“Please?”
So, they carried the old record player upstairs and set it up in the kitchen. There was even a dusty vinyl record on deck, and it spun as they painted.
When I was twenty-three
I dreamt I was sitting on the
living room sofa and you
emerged from the bedroom
The scratchy voice emitted from the vinyl disc.
Pallor so white and
your skin so waxy
you could not see me.
I thought you were dead—
“What is this?” Morgana said, “it isn’t music!”
“I… don’t know.” Stella hit the off button, grabbed the disc, and read the label.
“It’s poetry, I guess. Says, Poems from the Edges by Lydia P. Robert. That first track is called ‘Doppelgänger.’”
She set the disc aside. “Maybe your dad has more records. We can take a look downstairs later.”
Morgana shrugged, and when she heard Jesse talking to the dog, she sprang up, heading to the family room.
“You want mermaids or dinosaurs?” her voice traveled back to Stella, followed by the booming of the television playing whatever video they’d decided on.
Stella sat in the dimly lit front room, sipping a cup of coffee and gazing upon the snowy landscape of the front yard. Picture-perfect, this location on the edge of town was, with its view of a lake in the distance and the woods edging toward the sidewalk to the left. She had the thought of throwing her cup through the picture window, just to see what the spray of glass would look like, how it would sound, a loud smashing, or a tinkling, like icicles breaking and falling to the frozen ground. As always, she stifled the urge.
The sound that did seep into the room at that moment was one of far-off voices. Stella stood at the window, and in moments the parade of people passed by. They were dressed in light-colored garments, mostly white, but some appeared pale blue or purple in the minimal light. Coats and gowns and flowing robes. They each held a thick candle lit with a dancing flame.
What in the world?
There’s nothing north of here but the countryside. The sidewalk turns to gravel two houses up, then disappears where only woods run along the two-lane road. So, where could they be going?
“Spanky! Come, Spanky!” Stella called as she pulled on her boots and grabbed a jacket. She leashed the dog and shouted to the kids that she’d be back in a minute, that Spanky needed a walk.
She’d look less like she was trailing them this way, just a lady and her dog going for a New Year’s Eve walk. The air felt damp, moist, still warm as it had been all day. Yet bursts of a cold wind blew. Typical mix of strange weather they received here on the edge of the lake.
The crowd had stopped just past the last house. They gathered in a semi-circle around a tree, each sheltering the flaming wick of the candle with their free hand. On the tree someone had hung, or stuck, a large picture. Stella couldn’t make out the image as she lingered on the fringes of this gathering. A vigil of some kind, it seemed, but for whom?
The people didn’t speak; they only hummed. An odd tune. It sounded ancient. Like “Greensleeves,” but not.
Stella edged around them, pulling Spanky away each time he attempted sniffing someone or jumping up. Finally, she found a spot with a view.
It was not a photograph stuck to the tree. It was a mirror, the kind that is a thin film of reflective finish over a flexible plastic, not glass. The kind she once saw in the institute where her uncle lived. Shatterproof.
The group had arranged themselves in such a way that they could all peer into the mirror, and they hummed as they stared at themselves. Their faces were strained and sad. They seemed to be saying their final goodbyes.
Spanky growled and Stella backed up.
Finally, someone spoke, a gravelly-voiced woman, “Rest in peace. Forever in our thoughts. For our thoughts will linger. Our thoughts will live on. In memory of us!”
“In memory of us,” the crowd murmured. Then they turned to return the way they’d come, jostling around Stella. Spanky growled, but no one paid heed. They left silently.
“That was weird!” Stella said, watching the trail of figures move on.
“I’d say,” a familiar voice said. She turned back, and there was her husband, walking toward her.
“Ian! What are you doing—”
Except it wasn’t Ian. This man looked almost identical to her spouse, but he stood before her, several inches taller than Ian. He was also dressed in ragged clothing, and he smelled bad.
“Who? My name’s Jackson. I was just trying to walk into town, ‘cause…”
“I’m sorry, you looked familiar. You even sound like…”
Stella turned back toward home, but the man continued speaking to her.
“I want to see if there’s a shelter in town. I’m a bit worried about tomorrow, you know, the computers and everything. Well, not like those wackos with the candles, but I better be near people who might have food and shit.”
“What?”
“Food and stuff. You know I’m just living in an old camper up there in the woods. Just for now. I should get a job soon, or I will if the computers don’t fuck everything up. Then I can get my family back.”
His family? Stella didn’t want to ask. They were now before her house, but she thought twice about letting this man know where she lives. How well could Spanky protect her? They’d never trained him, and the mutt loved everyone.
She kept walking. When they reached an empty lot, she pulled her pet to a stop.
“Okay, then, good luck. My dog just needs to do his business. Goodbye.”
The man looked at her and grinned. “I’ll wait. Maybe you shouldn’t be out here alone.”
“Oh, well,” Stella said and laughed. “I live just around the corner, and I have this wolf here. He won’t let anyone hurt me.”
The man grinned more and reached a hand toward the dog.
Please, boy, please, she thought.
Spanky’s doggy sense kicked in, and he barked at the man, baring the entirety of his chompers.
“Whoa, okay boy,” the man said. He turned and left without another word.
“Good boy, Spanky, good boy,” Stella said and headed home.
Before she even had the door open, she heard the wailing.
She jumbled the key in the lock and dashed in, leaving the door wide open, to run to her screaming children.
“MOM! The TV won’t work!” Morgana said.
Jesse sat on the floor crying.
The picture on the television was all lines and intermittent snow. The lights on the VCR were flashing. What did that mean?
“Okay, okay I thought y’all were dying or something. It’s just a movie,” Stella said.
Stella unplugged the VCR and turned the TV off then on again. That did the trick. Sort of. The picture was clear at least, but the VCR was dead. Stella flipped through the channels, trying to find something for the kids to watch.
Spanky barked from another room, and Stella went to investigate. The dog was barking at the front door that Stella had failed to secure. She grabbed the knob and had to push it closed against the wind and the snow that now whipped about in violent eddies.
Stella went back to the kids, instructing them to pose on the sofa for a photograph. She placed the erasable drawing board between them, on which she’d earlier written ‘Goodbye 1999’. If nothing else, they’d have this memory of the big event, the only new millennium they’d ever see. After capturing a half-dozen images, she put the sign and camera away. Then shut off the television.
The kids were yawning. It was too much for them to stay awake another two hours, so they did an early New Year’s celebration, standing in the kitchen, wearing their crowns and tossing pink confetti in the air, shouting “Happy New Year!” while Spanky sat there looking confused. Then off to bed the kids went.
Stella wondered about Ian. Was he at work? At his mother’s house? A friend’s? It would take much long-distance calling to find out. Not to mention the embarrassment. What do you mean you don’t know where your husband is on New Year’s Eve? He’d call her if he could. He always did. Eventually.
She still felt shaken from witnessing the strange candlelight vigil and the encounter with the man named Jackson. Doppelgänger. She placed the odd poetry album back on the turntable and sat down at the kitchen table to listen to the scratchy voice of the poet.
Pallor so white and
your skin so waxy
you could not see me.
I thought you were dead
You turned the lock, walked
out of the apartment
through the doorway, not the door
you were not a ghost
then the other you walked out of the bedroom
Looking Lively
Our daughters and I (and the dogs) slept after
tossing pink, punched-paper circles in the air
at midnight
alone I created fun for them
your fun was your demise
So, I was forty
and did not dream, but
You were a ghost
You came not to haunt, but to taunt
You used my arm as your own,
laid it, so heavy, across my belly
I lifted it and pushed it – away
I walked out of my bedroom,
Looking to Live
Pink punched paper? It was just a coincidence. Besides, they only had one dog, one daughter and one son, not two girls. They tossed confetti in the air at ten p.m. not midnight. She was not forty. That birthday wasn’t due for another six years.
Stella had the urge to bang the vinyl record against the edge of the countertop, smashing it to bits. Instead, she grabbed a broom to sweep up the paper confetti mess.
“Spanky? What is it boy?”
The dog was sniffing at the basement door, whining.
Stella held onto the broomstick and opened the door. Spanky dashed down the stairs. Stella ran after, into the sounds of barking and yelling from someone.
There, cowering in the corner near the supply shelves was Jackson, Ian’s doppelgänger.
“What are you doing here!”
“Please, call the dog off!”
She didn’t need to. Spanky went to her and sat by her side, all the time staring at the man and growling. “Don’t move,” she said.
“I only wanted a few things. I would have asked you, but you seemed scared.”
“Wonder why! You broke into my house!”
“I looked back, saw where you went. Then I saw the door wide open. I figured it might be better to just get some supplies without bothering you.”
“Then what?”
Jackson gave a tell-tale glance at the old couch at the end of the room.
“You thought you’d just hole up here huh? Where’s this so-called family of yours?”
“You’re prepared. It’s real, isn’t it? You’re prepared for the end,” Jackson said.
“The end? End of what?”
“Computers run it all. Everything. There’ll be no shipments, no food, no trains, no buses. No banks. Hospitals will go back to the Victorian era. There’ll be no deliveries of medical supplies, of fuel—”
“You’re crazy. Again, why aren’t you with your family then? Your wife? Husband? Kids? Dogs? Cats?!”
Stella had the broomstick pointed at Jackson as if it were a rifle.
Jackson grabbed a large can of tomato juice from a shelf and lunged it toward her. It hit Spanky. The dog made no sound but collapsed at her side.
Rage overtook any semblance of thought as Stella held the broom down with one foot, snapped the broomstick with the other and ran at Jackson. The jagged pointy end of the stick ran straight into his abdomen. Stella pulled it out and jabbed the bloody point at his face. Then she grabbed another can from the shelf. She banged him over the head with it. Again. Again, until he fell in a heap.
Spanky was at her side. He was okay. He licked her hand. She stood back and was repulsed at the bloody sight before her. She grabbed an old tarp that was against the wall and tossed it over the body. She went upstairs, washed her hands, and refused to think about what had just occurred.
Midnight came, and she was all alone to officially celebrate the new year. The new millennium. She couldn’t stand it anymore. She picked up the receiver from the kitchen telephone, planning to dial Ian’s work. There was no dial tone.
The panes in the kitchen windows shook with the force of the howling wind. She flicked on the backyard lights and gazed out. The snow swirled violently. There was a rumbling, followed by a great flash of light between the bare treetops. Lightning? Oh, yes, thundersnow. A rare phenomenon in most places but one that occurred at least once most years here by the lake when the warm and cold air collided during a winter storm.
Stella watched the storm for a while, failing to notice the kitchen lights had gone off until she turned back to the room.
When she awoke in the morning, the power was still off. There was not a soul to be seen outside, and she wondered if the Y2K threats had been real. Was this it? Had the world as she’d known it come to an end?
She tidied up the kitchen table as her children ran into the room looking for breakfast.
She did a double take of the cardboard crown in her hand.
“Morgana? Why’d you write this on your crown?”
Morgana glanced at the silvery-red piece and the numbers she’d painted upon it. “What? It was for the new year.”
“But that’s not right?”
“Sure it is. If New Year’s Eve was 2005, that means the new year is 2006! It’s 2006 now, duh!”
Stella looked at the other two crowns. Both also said 2006.
In a daze she filled bowls with cereal and poured juice. Her children hadn’t aged. That meant she had their birth years wrong in her head. How? She had been there. She turned knobs on the radio until finally there was a crackling sound. There was power. She found a station and listened to the news, all about the storm, the supermarkets being ransacked and running out of toilet paper and bottled water, and a horrific, gruesome discovery just west of town, where a doomsday cult had been found, its members deceased, frozen in the woods, each one clutching a candle nub.
“It was one hell of a New Year’s Eve, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the dawn of the new millennium. Let’s hope 2006 brings us all better luck and peaceful times,” the newsman said.
The newscast reminded her of her own violent night. She’d have to do something with the corpse of Jackson.
There was a knock at the front door. The kids had already settled in the family room, finding cartoons to watch on the television. She walked to the door. Policemen. They’d found out! Someone had seen Jackson enter her house. They knew. Somehow. She eased the door open to face the music. What would happen to her children and Spanky?
“Hello?” Stella said.
“Good morning, ma’am. We are officers Springer and O’Reilly. May we come in for a moment?”
Stella held the door open but didn’t move. Spanky sat at her side.
Standing in the foyer she heard the news. About a fatal accident involving her husband. He was walking on the highway after his car broke down. Walking through the storm, apparently drunk as hell according to witnesses, and he was shouting about getting his family back. Had to find them, get his family back. Then he got hit by a big rig.
She couldn’t tell the kids. Not yet. She stumbled to the basement, ready to clean up her mess before she could fathom the new mess of her life.
The tarp was pushed against the wall, just as she’d found it last night. There was no pulverized body. There was no blood. Only tomato juice in a puddle by the smashed open can. Had there even been a man named Jackson? If yes, when was he? Back in ’99? Had the computers done this after all, or was it her mind that tripped on a ripple in time?
Stella stood in the living room gazing out at the white world. Now that the storm had passed everything looked new. New like the year. She grasped the handle of her coffee mug until her knuckles turned white. Then she whipped it at the picture window. There was no twinkling of icicles, only a smash, and the cold, clear air of her new world hitting her in the face.
Want another gripping story from Lene MacLeod? Read “Slippers from Hell” in Horrific Scribes, December 2025.
| SPECIAL EXHIBIT 2: Return to “Prepped“ | Continue Coming Soon to a Civilization Near You, Gallery One: New Year’s Endings and read the next attraction, “January“ |