BeforeChristmas

Negaduck’s Nightmare Before Christmas
Kilthalia
*Ring* A cheery voice answers, “Hello! F5HQ, bah humbug to ya! What can you do for us? Uh, huh, yeah! Well, looks like I’ll have to confer this to Da Big Boss. Please fork over one thousand dollars and submit a written document of your inquiry. Turn them in at the second basement, past the flesh hungry Dobermans and we will get to you as soon as we feel like it. Good-bye!”
“So, whooo was that?” Quackerjack asked, leaning smart alecly on the corner of her desk.
“God I hate the pay!” she said to herself. “Oh, that was just Ham.”
“Oh. Say, you wanna go out for dinner and a movie after work?”
She incredulously looked up at him through her bangs. Megavolt rushes into the main room and is about it hide himself in his office. The secretary snatches the papers from under the jester’s hand and goes to block Megavolt from his door. “Hi,” she says dreamily.
“Uh, hi, what?”
“Here’s the schematics for that SHUSH contraption you wanted,” she says in the same voice. She reluctantly gives them over, just savoring the closeness between them.
“Uh, thanks. Say, you feeling well? You’re acting kinda weird.”
“Oh, I’m perfectly fine,”
Quackerjack walks up to the two of them and jealously says, “I think she’s got the case of the love-bug!” The secretary lets him get to his door.
“Yeah, whatever,” And Megavolt disappears as he shuts the door.
Quackerjack has his hands on his hips and looks at her suspiciously. “You like him more than me!!!”
“Yeah, isn’t he great?”
“You’re weird!” They part on their own ways. She sits herself down behind her desk and Quackerjack is on the other side of the room leaning in the red cushioned bench and takes out Mr. Banana Brain. Talking to him, he keeps his scowling eyes on the girl. “I don’t get it Mr. Banana Brain! I try everything and she still goes absolutely nutz for that rat!”
A few moments pass then Negaduck opens the large double doors to his office and stomps out. Quackerjack straightens out his posture and the secretary turns her attention to Negaduck. All he does is signal her with his finger to enter his office. He doesn’t look pleased at all. The secretary obeys and hurriedly walks into his office. He closes the doors behind her.
“You wanted to see me sir?”
“Yes. Now, you’ve been with us since we opened the business?”
“Yes,”
“Well, I noticed that the income we’re getting has decreased since then.”
“Mmmm, yeeaah? But people don’t want to pay what you ask. They think it’s too high!”
“If those losers want my help, they’ll pay for it! So, I have an idea. For Christmas this year, why don’t you take a vacation? An extended vacation?”
“W, what??” she says weakly and sad.
“Oh, and before you leave,” He holds a sack. “The least you can do is my laundry and make your worthless life useful!” He gives her the sack. “Merry Christmas,” he snarls.
He lets her leave in her misery. Quackerjack sees her crying and rushes over to see what’s the matter.
“He f, fired meeeeheehee!” was all she can sob out. The jester leans her down to his shoulder and he scowls at Negaduck’s doors.

‘Twas the night before Christmas and all through the hideout, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. (A mouse dare not live there!) Then all of a sudden the door to the large office slams open and closed as a very victorious masked duck dropped his loot in the middle of the floor. “God, do I HATE this city!!! No matter what I do, the cheery mood NEVER SEACES!!!” He walks around to the fridge and bends over to get at a tall bottle. He stands up, slams the fridge door closed. Grabbing the cork with his teeth he proceeds to yank it out and spit it out then chugs a few gulps. He feels better after he stops and leans on the fridge and looks at the label on the bottle. “Now there’s some good stuff!” Taking the bottle with him, he goes to retrieve his loot and sets both on the large desk.
All that night, he goes through counting the wealth in front of him and occasionally takes a slug of the bottle’s contents. He is starting to get groggy, but still sits where he is and continues to count. By now he is quite intoxicated and there comes a knocking at his door. Negaduck retrieves his shotgun and cautiously asks who it is.
“Aw! Don’t you remember me, Negaduck??!” comes a voice from behind him, inside the room! He whips around and is about to shoot but stops himself because he knows this fellow, or at least he knew him! “One Eyed Willy??!! B, but you’ve been d, de….” He can’t continue.
Willy continues his sentence, “Dead almost ten years now. How’ve you been?” He looks around and finds the bottle that Negaduck was drinking out of. “You mind?” He takes swig of the stuff and it goes through him! “Ahh! That hits the spot!”
Negaduck is thoroughly creeped out now! Willy turns back to Negs and says, “You know, you’ve been too cruel to some people how have been very good to you. I don’t really want to do this, but you’re going to be visited tonight.”
“And what??! You don’t count??!”
“No, I’m not one of them. They made me do this! Oh well,”
“Oh well??! That’s it??!”
Willy ignores Negaduck and continues, “You are going to be visited by three representative ghosts: Past, Present, and Future. Bla, bla, bla. Just take my word for it and try to listen to them. You’ll rest easier in the afterlife if you do, Negs. Believe me, I know. It’s been fun, we should do this more often, but ta-ta!” And Willy fades out.
“Willy, wait!!”

*************************************************************

Midnight approaches and the evil duck heads home. Out of nowhere a fog rolls in. Then a car pulls up behind Negaduck and waits. “Hey Buddy!” calls a deep, gruff voice.
Negaduck turns his head to look at the driver of the old yellow cab. It had a checkered stripe along the sides. Funny thing was, they didn’t make those cars anymore! It was from the 1950’s or so. The driver was a gruff Bulldog, smoking heavily on a putrid cigar and his teeth were ruined.
What do you want?!” the masked duck snaps.
“Ya wanna ride?”
Negaduck thinks a minute and proceeds to the car. He gets in the back. “Take me to the docks,”
“No prob,”
They were driving for a few minutes when Negaduck realizes that the driver passed the turn for his destination. “Hey, you know you passed the turn?!”
The driver ignored him.
Negaduck saw that the doors locked. He tried to wind down a window to possibly escape that way, but both handles on either door broke off in his hands. “Hey!!”
The driver says, “Oh, don’t you wanna go for a little joy ride?” He laughs maniacly. “Ya mind if I smoke?”
“I could care less if you hand lung cancer! Aah!! Watch out!!” They almost hit a moving vehicle that was in the middle of the road.   The driver laughed, amused. Negaduck, now terrified looks to the driver’s ID: Ghost of Christmas Past.
“Uh, oh,” Negaduck says to himself. “Hey, where are we going?!”
“You mean when are we going. You’ll see, just hold on,” And with that the car zooms through the streets of St. Canard the time-meter spinning out of control. They can’t see where they’re going because of all the smoke in the car. The driver was having a blast, but Negs was not amused; in fact, he was petrified.
The car stops and the driver turned around and said, “We’re here, everybody out!”
Negaduck looked at the time-meter and saw that it fell on the year 1959. “Great!” He escapes from the car and sees the neighborhood that they’re in. “Hey! This is where I grew up!!”
“Precisely, genius!”
“Where do you think you’re going?!!” The driver was walking up the stairs of the only undecorated house in the neighborhood.
“C’mon! I wanna show ya something!”
“This is my house….where I grew up! Why are we here?! I thought I tore this old thing down!”
“Remember, Negsie, we’re in the past!” The ghost goes through the rusted metal door. Negaduck tries it, but flattens his beak to his chest. He backs up and rubs his bill.
The ghost’s head pops out from the door “Ha, ha!!” Negaduck punches the door as the head withdraws. Grasping at his hand Negaduck sees the ghost open the door and Negaduck walks in.
The cockroaches scurry from preventing being stepped on.
“Damn it’s cold in here!”
“Negaduck, you lived in poverty! You had no money to pay for heat!”
“I thought we had a fireplace!”
“Well you did, until your father bricked it up so you couldn’t play in it anymore! Remember?!”
On the floor, Negaduck spots a little duckling of about 4 watching the television closely. He looks thin and underfed. His mother was sitting in a corner hand sewing something.
“ ’Nother god damn day at work!” a gruff angry voice said as he came in the house and plopped down on the beat couch.
“What the…” Negaduck exclaimed.
“Don’t worry, they can’t see or hear us!”
The father, which looked just like Negaduck, was filthy and had worn and tattered clothing on.
“Damien, don’t curse in front of Drake!”
“You shut up, you witch!” he pointed at her, threateningly.
“Dad, when can I come see you work at the power plant?”
“Never, you little wretch! You’ll mess everything up and get into things you’re not supposed to!!”
“Damien, he’s only 4! And it’s Christmas, let off!”
“The only thing I’m going to let of is this!” He throws a wristwatch at the boy. “Picked it offa dead body today. ‘ rather sell it. Why don’t you sell it!? It’s your Christmas gift!”
“He can’t read time yet!”
“Tough luck on him!”
“But Dad! I wanted a P38 for Christmas!”
Turning to the boy he said, “Well why don’t you go out and get yourself a P38!?? Alright Dork, what are ya gonna give me fer Christmas?!”
The boy seemed to panic. Without a word, he gets up and gives back the watch. “Smart boy,” the father pats the boy’s head, as the lad flinched.   “Get away from me!” he shoved the boy back down on the floor.
Negaduck seemed humbled watching his younger self the way life was for him.
Drake’s mother yawned then got up and as she walked up to the boy, she dressed him in the sweater she had just finished. She pat his head then walked toward the stairs. “Don’t sit too close darling, you’ll strain your precious eyes.”
“Yes momma,”
“Good boy. Good night darling.”
“G-night momma.”
“I love you.” She blew the boy a kiss.
“I love you too, momma.”
Then she headed up the creaky stairs. As she passed Negaduck, you could see the tears in his eyes and his lower lip quiver slightly.
“Niagara Falls,” the ghost said.
“Huh?! Oh, ‘course not! Just had something in my eyes!” The masked mallard wiped his eyes.
“Ha! Sure; and that’s not a cockroach crawling up your leg,” the ghost walked through the door as Negaduck looked down and shook off the bug.

Back in the old cab, Negaduck asked, “Can I go back now?”
“Not yet, we gots more stops.”
“Joy,” the masked duck said sarcastically.
Negaduck watched the year-meter speed to 1968 as the cab whizzed through the streets of St. Canard.
“Alright, take a look out your right window now,” the driver directed Negaduck.
He looked, unamused. His gaze is on a small boy gathering up his courage to talk to a girl.
“That’s……me,”
“Yes it is Negaduck. Do you remember her?”
“Uh, Trinny.” He turns to see the ghost. “But what does this pointless event have anything to do with anything??!”
“Look again,”
Negaduck turns to look and saw the two older now and snuggling. A bigger kid stomps up to them and grabs the younger Negaduck self and throws him away. As he landed the bigger kid makes his move on Trinny. Young Negaduck, wincing, gets up and takes out a large gun and points it at the bully. He fires the weapon. The backfire of the weapon thrusts the small lad back and on his duff. When he opens his eyes again he sees the bully run off and Trinny laying on the floor, not moving, hand on her chest and bleeding.
“No,” Negaduck says disturbed. He sees the lad cry at his lost companion for just a second. Then he realizes who’s fault it was and sadness turned into rage and he went after the bully, gun in hand.
The window goes black and Negaduck turns to the ghost. “I didn’t mean to kill her!!”
“Of course not, but what of this?” The ghost of Christmas Past took
the cab out of park, then shifts gears and takes off like a bat outta hell. The scenery whizzes by as fast as light.
Five more years of Negaduck’s history past and the ghost of Christmas Past slowed the car and parked in the St. Canard High School parking lot.
“C’mon!” the driver told his passenger.
“Why are we here!?”
“Prom night, genius! You remember what happened?”
“Like yesterday!”
“Great, cause when all this is over, it will be yesterday!”
That comment disturbed Negaduck a tad. They entered the high school gym where the party was. Stupidly enough there was a stage in this gym.
“Wow, what a dump!” the ghost commented. Negaduck glared at him from the corner of his eye.
Negaduck spotted his high school self. It looked like he was up to no good. Well, of course! He was spiking the punch! Negaduck noticed his younger counterparts attire. It was a tacky yellow blazer with a red shirt and black buttons were on both. It almost made Negaduck want to hurl. He saw his younger self’s date. They kissed and Negaduck knew what was going to happen in the not too far future and it almost made him sad. Then he saw that the younger self went behind the curtain on the stage. No one saw him go. Negaduck was going to follow, but the Ghost stopped him.
“You know that part, watch what happened while you were busy back there.”
Negaduck stayed where he was, cross-armed, and watched nothing happen. Minutes later a brand new Negaduck came out from behind the curtain in a puff of red smoke. “I am the Terror that flaps in the night! I am the microphone that gives you feedback! I am Negaduck!! No one move!! This is party’s a bust!!” The new Negaduck was dressed in the same tux, except that he adorned a red fedora and a black mask and a black cape. He took out a magnum and started shooting at people. Everyone dodged and ducked for cover. The older Negaduck even dodged the bullets. The ghost just stood still, puffing on his cigar as the bullets went through him.
Then, without warning, the gymnasium doors swung open to reveal a rat with the most wicked afro wearing a yellow jumpsuit, gloves and boots.
“Who the hell are you?!!” the new Negaduck demanded.
“I am Megawatt!
“Hey man, that’s the name of my band!”
“Oops! Sorry. Then I shall be called Mega…Volt!!”
“Oh boy!” both Negaducks’ rolled their eyes. The one on the stage started firing at Megavolt and the rat dodged and fired electricity at the duck. There was a battle and when the gun had no more bullets left, then the young Negaduck used other means of destruction for this electrical rat that he was fighting with. He threw the spiked punch at him, but Megavolt quickly hopped up on the stage as to not get electrocuted. The rat fired at the duck and he dodged the bolts. But, unfortunately for the young Negaduck, he landed next to his date.
“Hey babe,” the younger Negaduck said to his date. But she was scared and was confused so she hit him with her bag then retrieved a glass from the table above and hit him over the head with it. The young Negaduck was unconscious.
“Alison! No!! Why’d you DO that??!!!” the older Negaduck yelled at her, but not in anger, more like in anguish.
The cops showed up and took away the party crasher, leaving Megavolt to linger in his glory.
They head back to the cab, Negaduck has his shoulders haunched, disappointed with the outcome. Then he saw his younger self, struggling with the cops as they tried to get his into the cop car. The older of the two ignored him and got into the cab.
Without another word the Ghost takes off through the streets of St. Canard. The ghost takes a sharp turn and oddly, Negaduck is flung from the vehicle. He falls and when he recovers, his hand is to his head. When Negaduck opens his eyes he sees an older kid of himself, dressed as Negaduck, holding up a family of four in the dark alley. The younger self shot all of them in cold blood, stole their few valuable possessions and fled.
“Ug, whatever,” Now he goes over to see if his younger self left anything for his to scavenge. All he found were photographs of a very large happy family in the man’s wallet. When he looked up he was at the funeral of the deceased and all the people were crying. Some were talking about the young children, some saying that the husband was the kindest man in the world, others saying, “What about the orphanage?! What of it now?! Milly’s dead!”
         “Oh boo hoo hoo, like I care!” But no one could hear Negaduck. He starts to turn to walk away but when he looks in front of him he sees a brick wall of the outside.
Then he hears screeching tires and he turns to see himself fly into sight on The Trouble Maker and land on a car. The car swerves, scared, and the duck on the motorcycle races off, laughing. The car smashes into a building and there isn’t too much of it left.   He goes over to check out the situation. There in the front seat are two adults, a man and his wife. The driver, the man, is already dead with the impact and being impaled. Negaduck looks at the woman in the car, she’s barely alive.
“T, tell my daughter, m, mommy loves her. Oh, G, Gosalyn.” and she dies.   Negaduck is drawn back in shock. His younger self had killed his adopted daughter’s parents! How ironic!, the masked mallard thought to himself.
Negaduck walked on, pondering how to get back to his own time. A thick fog bank engulfed him, as he thought. Now, unable to see where he was going, the notorious Negaduck tried to find some wall or something to help guide his way. “Damn it! Where is everything?!” He couldn’t find a wall to a building on this city street. He didn’t know what was more terrifying, not being able to see, or not being able to find a brick wall in a city!
All of a sudden, Negaduck hit something, hard. He fell back, not expecting that to have happened. Rubbing his beak, Negaduck opened his eyes and found that he was in his own hideout!! He walked into a wall!! Hope no one’s here to have seen that, he thought, or else that’ll be the last thing they’ll ever see!

*************************************************************

Somewhere a clock chimes and a glowing sphere floats toward the window to the building where Negaduck sleeps. Passing effortlessly through the old glass a person takes form. She’s a bigger form of a fairy clad in a poofy pink dress and has wild-out-of-control red hair. She gains her bearings and looks around. “Well, looks like they finally got the address right! And look who’s sleeping like a baby!” She tiptoes over to Negaduck. “Time to wake up, Negaduck!” she whispers making sure to annunciate ever syllable. He doesn’t hear her. She results in violence and takes her wand and plays golf with his head. “*Whap!!!!* Four!!”
“Aaahh!!”
“WAKE UP NEGADUCK!!!”
“Witch!” he says to himself. “What do you want!!?”
“I am the ghost of Christmas Present!”
“Oh great!” he grumbles to himself.
“Come! We have SO much to do and so little time!” She says in a too cheery a voice and starts to go through the window.
“Thanks, but no thanks!! I’m staying here!” he whips out a bazooka.
           She stops and tiptoes over to his and pinches his cheek really hard. “Oh, little Negyducky scared to go visit his dismal life?” she asks all cutsie.
“Leggo!!!” He shoves her away. She counter attacks by snapping a bear trap at his hand.
“Gees, you’re dangerous!”
“Hee, hee, hee, hee!!! Come on! We have much to cover!” She grabs his cape, choking him and hops out through the closed window, and Negaduck follows, banging into the glass. The ghost tugs a little harder at his cape and he breaks through the window.
Dangling at the incredible height, Negaduck takes the window frame off from around him and throws it away, watching it plummet to the ground far, far, far below. Choking to death seems a better offer than plummeting to his doom. He grabs at his collar to breath, but had not too much luck. All without warning, she lets go of his cape. Screaming, Negaduck falls like a rock. Just when he was about to hit bottom he lands in a muddy puddle and a red car roars past, spraying more cold gloppy slush on him. He got up and shook his fist and curses at the driver. Wringing out his soaked clothing the Ghost Christmas Present floats down smoothly. “Oh, did Negyduck have a rough landing? Perhaps I should give kiss and make all better?” She plants a tiny kiss on his bare brow then uses her wand as a golf club again.                                                                                                             Negaduck hits a window hard, but the glass does not shatter, instead he looks in and sees the conditions in which his former secretary is living in. It’s a rundown apartment and rats and bugs scurry about on the outskirts of light from the homemade campfire in the fireplace. There’s nothing for her to eat and she is sitting on a crate and is crying. There is also a large sack with something in it and a pot boiling.
“Is that all she’s got to eat fer Christmas?”
“That’s your laundry!!”
“Oh.”
“Negaduck, it’s Christmas Eve. You ruined her life by firing her.” The ghost says sadly, for once.
“What about the apartment I gave her?! Huh, smarty!?”
“You took that from her as well.”
“Oh,” he said to himself.
“ ‘Oh”? ‘Oh’!!? Is that all you have to say for yourself??!!! She’s sitting there cold and hungry because of you!”
“I’ll make it up to her! Ok?!! I’ll give he an apartment to keep and everything!”
“You going to hire her back?” the ghost said threateningly.
“Yeah, yeah, sure I will!” Negaduck turned back to watch her some more, through the window
“Well that’s good!” the ghost of Christmas Present said.
Unexpectedly, she uses two garbage can lids as symbols and right on his head. His world vibrates and his vision goes all blurry.
“Ahh!! I’m gonna kill her!!!” Negaduck gets up to see his daughter Gosalyn, sadly, playing with her cold soup. Unexpectedly, she slides off her chair to go to the fridge and she takes out a hunk of meat and went to the back to throw it to the Dobermans. As they ate she pat one of their heads and said, quietly, “Merry Christmas, Spike, Duke, Killer, Spade.” And she went back inside and sat back down in front of her soup and played with it some more.
“Not too happy a little girl, is she, Negaduck?”
“Ah, who cares!”
“She’s starving!!!! How would you like it if your parents starved you?!!!”
He glared up at her from under the rim of his hat, “They did.”
“Oh, well did you like it when they did?”
“No.”
“Then don’t treat Gosalyn as your parents treated you. She deserves better than what you had.”
“I deserved better than what I had when I was young!!!!”
“That might have been so, but don’t repeat the cycle that your parents did to you. They were probably starved when they were young, so they did that to you and now you’re doing it to your daughter!”
“She’s not my real daughter, dummy!!”
“It doesn’t matter!! You’re her designated guardian and you can do better than what your parents did to you!!”
“Alright!! Fine!!” He turned around to leave the room. Then he saw the Ghost of Christmas Present stretching a slingshot, nailed to the doorway with a toaster as a projectile.
“No,” Negaduck barely says. “No!!” But then she lets go and the toaster is launched at his head. It hits with a hollow metal sound. Next thing he knows he is outside again, in yet another puddle. “Witch, I’m going to kill her!!” he rubs his head where it was hit with the toaster.
Gaining his balance Negaduck realized that he was outside the Old Haunt. He went inside and saw the Fearsome Four comforting Quackerjack. He seemed sad and hostile all at once. Negaduck listened in and learned that the jester was upset that Negaduck had fired their secretary and how he wanted to get back at him for it.
“I’m gonna kill him!! I swear I will!!!”
“Aw, Quacky, you won’t.”
“You’ll kill him as assuredly as we will!”
“Ha!! Well I mean it now!! I’ll do it tomorrow! I’m gonna poison him, then I’m gonna stab him, chop him up into itty bits and feed him to his dogs!!”
“Little hostile there, aren’tcha Quacky?” Negaduck commented, sitting down next to him.
“You really going ta do it?!” Megavolt asked.
“You bet I am!! I’m the most psychotic of all of you! You know I can!!”
“I’ll help ya!! I hate it when he calls me Sparky!!”
“Yeah! And I’ll get him back for tying me into knots and calling me names!!” Bushroot adds.
“He never appreciated my introductions or my help!!” The Liquidator finished off.
“Uh, oh!! They’re plotting against me! Again!!” Negaduck exclaimed. “And all for the welfare of a girl! Ug!”
As Negaduck is about to pass through the swinging doors to the entrance, he hits what feels like a wall. He back’s up a pace and looks to see a black cloak. Then he looks up to see The Ghost of Christmas Future.
“Well?! Let’s get this over and done with so I can get some sleep for another day of crime!!” The Ghost makes no move.
“Move it, ya lug!” Negaduck pushes his way past the man mountain and out of the building. All of a sudden, a fog envelopes them. “What’s going on?! Enough with the stupid special effects!!”
The mist clears to reveal Quackerjack as crime boss of St. Canard, now that he did away with Negaduck and all other villains see him as superior. “Oh, this is hokey!! Like that would ever happen!”
“What do you mean you couldn’t take over Japan?!!! I don’t want to hear that!” And with that, Quackerjack shot the unsuccessful agent dead.
“Whoa.” Negaduck said shortly.
Quackerjack continued, “Whatever my darling wants, my darling gets!” Their former secretary was sitting in the other thrown and the jester, ruler duck looked at her dreamily. She blushed and hid half her face.
“That is sick!! Quackerjack likes her??!” Negaduck grimaced. Then he put the puzzle pieces together. “Quacky likes her…and I fired her…and he said he’d kill me for that… uh oh.”
Then the mist enveloped them again. As scenes changed, Negaduck turned to the giant ghost and pleaded, “Alright, to save my own skins, I’ll hire her back, and I’ll treat her nice, alright?! I really mean it this time! I swear!”
The scene changed and they were standing in a demolition zone; the ground covered in mountains of filth, no matter how high. There were boulders of once tall skyscrapers and the cranes that were used to take it down were rusting to their abandonment sites. Newer vehicles were being burned and there were filthy people running around as if this were a battle. Negaduck started to walk around, enjoying the chaos, the ghost gliding silently behind him.
Negaduck went closer to the rusted metal frame of what once used to be the tallest building in St. Canard. A boy in raggedy clothes ran past and stepped on something that went crunch under his weight. Negaduck looked down at the site where this happened; odd how only this one spot crunched differently than the others. Here was a rag where the boy stomped. It looked big and was filthy. To get a better look at the seemingly familiar cloth, Negaduck up the filthy article and realized that it was his outfit!!! He dropped it, horrified, and backed up to the ghost. The black robed ghost signaled Negaduck to look again and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Negaduck went back and lifted the collar up so that the clothing no longer was on the ground. Three things fell out of it: a bone and a wristwatch and a used bullet. What else fell out was the particles of once were his bones, crushed by the trample of feet and time. Negaduck dropped the rag and went for the watch. He recognized it. He had seen it once before, earlier that night. It was the same watch that his father threw at his younger self, whom gave it back.
He dropped this too and fell to his knees in anguish. “No, no, this can’t happen! I’ll change if this will all be erased. I can’t live, knowing that I’ll die this way!”
Then a large dark gun barrel was in Negaduck’s sight aimed at point blank right at him. He looked up to see the ruler of this world.
“What does it take to kill you?!!!!” The once jester, now wearing leather.
“You can’t bring your self top do it, Quacky.”
“Wanna bet Negaslime?!!” He fired.
The ghost summoned the fog again and nothing could be seen.

*************************************************************

When the dawn broke, Negaduck opened his groggy eyes and realized that he had finished the bottle. “Ug, maybe it was all a dream,” He checked the time on his wristband watch and it was the same one that his father threw at him. Negaduck threw it off and panted. It was real. It was all real!
He hurried out the door, just as the Fearsome Four were coming in for work.
“Boss! I need to-”
Quackerjack was cut off when Negaduck pushed past him. Negaduck stopped and slowly turned to see Quackerjack, with terrified eyes. Negaduck ran the rest of the way.

She was asleep on the hard, wooden floor, the rodents and bugs crawling over her, her fire out. Negaduck broke through the door and scared the varmints away, picking up her body. “Sirque! Sirque, do you hear me??!”
She moaned. “Oh, thank god! Wake up, Sirque!”
“Boss?”
“Hi! Listen, I don’t suppose you’d like your old job back, would you?”
“Wha??”
“I had a change of heart. I can’t run Pro Blame-O without you! Will you come back? Please??”
“Sure, boss. I’d be glad.” She tried to get up, but she couldn’t.
“Now, you don’t do a thing. I’m gonna give you a ride back to your apartment.
“But I thought you reclaimed it?”
“Well, I’m giving it to you, Sirque! It’s yours! Forever!”
“Wow, thanks!”
“I’ll even make you breakfast,” he paused to lift her up to carry her to The Trouble Maker. “How does that sound? I come from a long line of great chefs!”
“Really? Cool!” Then she thought of something. “Oh, and I finished your laundry,”
“Heh, it’s ok, I’ll do it from now on. Thanks.”
He did as he had promised, took her to her home and cooked her her meal. As she greedily ate, she offered him some, but he only watched her in happiness. “Why don’t you recuperate, Sirque, I’m sure you’re tired and hungry. I’ll give you off as long as you need.”
“Thanks boss, but I think after this day, I’ll be fine.
“Are you sure? You not going to take the week off?”
“Positive! I’m a tough harbor chick, remember?”
“Yeah, I remember.” He chuckled. Before he left, he added, “Sirque, if I were you, I’d pay more attention to Quackerjack.”
“Why?? The guy’s a creep!”
“That may be, but the others are ignoring you. He’s not. I’d take the chance just to have a companion. You’re young, have a little fun. You could always break it up with him!”
“Oh alright. If you say so.”
“Thank you. Oh, and Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas, sir!”

Then Negaduck proceeded home to his daughter. He found her asleep in her cold room, under the raggedy blankets. “Gos,”
“Yes Lord Negaduck, dad, sir?” she said sleepily.
“Come, I cooked breakfast for us,”
“She got up and headed downstairs after her father. What she saw was: milk, orange juice, pancakes with butter and syrup, grapefruit, bacon, real silverware, and cloth napkins.
“Wow!”
“You like it?”
“Lord Negaduck! This is wonderful!”
“Well? It’s not art, eat!”
Both sat down to eat all the delicious food. When their tummies were good and happy, Gosalyn went over to her father and hugged him. “Thank you for breakfast, it was very good. Merry Christmas, Dad.”
“Merry Christmas, Gos,”
The End