NOTE: Chapter 1 and Chapter 12 will be written by Harold. Chapters 2 through 11 will be written by separate guest writers in order to create a fresh, improvised, and unpredictable Christmas story. Want to write the next chapter? Contact us on social media or email! First to volunteer will be the confirmed writer for the next chapter and we will not be editing the STORY of any submissions (just small grammar/spelling msitakes), so give your best effort, but take the story wherever you want to take it. We welcome the chaos. The chapters should be between 500 and 1,000 words.

Christmas in Coweta 

CHAPTER ONE

written by Harold Lees

It could’ve only been 10 minutes, but it felt like Lima Lee was relieving her entire childhood as she stood under the looming shadow of the big brick wall with Alan Jackson painted across it. She hadn’t been back to Newnan since Christmas 2017, years before Hollywood hired Michael Bay to create COVID and before Donald Trump Jr purchased that Donald Trump Muppet to take over in The White House once his father had died of “Too Much Butter.” So much had changed, especially about her hometown. She hardly recognized it. Considering she promised she’d come back as “Lima Maybeans: The Next Dolly Parton,” she had hoped they wouldn’t recognize her either. 

“Mural? More like immural,” she said to herself. 

She knew she wasn’t being fair to Alan. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t create her failure of a country music career. He just inspired it. She ran her fingers across the bricks, paying special attention to his angel-hair-pasta-styled hair and the way the bricks near his crotch just felt smaller. The attention to detail was exquisite, as if the artist had slept with Alan themselves–or at least slept with a brick wall or two.    

Bzzzzz. Bzzzzz. Lima’s phone started hugging at her bottom from the back pockets of her Wal-Mart George jeans (the most action she’d gotten there since her first night in Nashville) and she knew who would be calling without even having to look. It’s mama. And mama ain’t gonna be happy that mama wasn’t Lima’s first stop in Newnan. 

Lima glanced at the notifications. 17 texts. Seven missed calls. One incoming. Truly not as bad as she’d expected. Lima let it slide for now. Lima still had one more place she had to visit before she could handle seeing her parents: the Waffle House, where she held her last job. Craig would be there. He promised he’d be. In her hand with her cellphone, she also held the receipt where Craig wrote his promise: “The perfect girl deserves the perfect waffle. I’ll be there when I’ve made it. I love you all around the clock.”  

Lima pitched the phone and note into one of the shopping bags slung over her forearm, hoping she didn’t just break one of the delicate “Handmade Ornaments” she had bought in Downtown Newnan at a store she’d never remember the name of (or shop at again). Lima disappeared from the gaze of Alfred C. Jackson (the C stands for Country) and rolled back into the Uber, shaking awake the driver she had asked to “pull over by the homoerotic cowboy painting” almost two hours ago.

“My apologies,” Lima said with a drip of sincerity that didn’t get past the driver’s big kitten yawn, “can we still make the Waffle House stop?”

“I need the money. We’ll get you anywhere you wanna go, Ms.”

Lima was back on track! Nothing was going to stop her from seeing Craig again. Nothing would stop her from telling him what she should’ve said so many years ago.  

CRASH!

“Lima? Lima Lee? Lima Kathleen Lee!? Young Lady!” 

Lima knew that voice as she began to wake up, so a tiny part of her hoped this was all just a bad dream. But no. Lima was not at the Waffle House. She was back home. Not in Nashville in her two-bedroom apartment with three roommates. She was in her parent’s guest bedroom. And that voice? That was mama.

“Arnie! She’s awake! She’s not dead! Santa didn’t kill her!”

Santa didn’t… what?

“Lima? Lima Bug? Lima, you alright? Li-Lee?” Her father’s voice carried into the room, bouncing off everything in the house, so strong that it was impossible to know where he was in their historic downtown home. Though considering she was in a car crash with (apparently) Santa, maybe this was a sign of a concussion. 

“Oh, Lima,” her father said as his bear-claw-bear-skinned-bear-warmth-hands took over Lima’s, “what were you doing riding through downtown during the Christmas parade? Were you trying to kill Santa or just the Christmas spirit? You little Scrooge.” 

Lima was opening the gift of context, and she couldn’t be more embarrassed, though right now, she was irritated with a particular snooze-brained Uber driver more than anything. She took some pleasure in the idea he was being questioned by Newnan’s finest while she was in a warm bed, even if it made her several steps off her original plan.

“I’m OK, dad.”

“Well, good,” said Lima’s mother with a harrowing sense of gratitude that only meant one thing was to follow…

“Because maybe now you can explain why you don’t love me or your Father enough to answer Our calls?!?!”