The Christmas Present

By Larry Benjamin

A story from Boughs of Evergreen: A Holiday Anthology

THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT
by LARRY BENJAMIN

At Christmastime, a mother, unhappy her son is gay, turns to an Obeah practitioner to change him with surprising results.

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ABOUT BOUGHS OF EVERGREEN

Boughs of Evergreen is a two-volume collection of short stories celebrating the holiday season in all its diversity. Penned by authors from the UK, the USA, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, these are tales of the young and the not-so-young from many different walks of life.

Themes of family, friendship and romance take readers on a journey through some of the major holidays, both past and present, including Thanksgiving, Advent, St. Lucia Day, Hanukkah, Eid, Saturnalia, Winter Solstice, Yule, Christmas and New Year. In each we find at the very least hope, and often love, peace and happiness.

Proceeds from sales of this anthology will be donated to The Trevor Project. The Trevor Project is the leading national organization [USA] providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beaten Track Publishing
• Release date: Dec 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781909192966

Larry Benjamin

Bronx-born wordsmith, Larry Benjamin considers himself less a writer than an artist whose chosen medium is the written word rather than clay or paint or bronze. He is the author of two previous novels: Unbroken, which was a 2014 Lambda Literary finalist, and a 2014 IPPY (Independent Publishers Book Award) Gold medalist, and What Binds Us. He is also the author of Damaged Angels, a collection of short stories, and the allegorical novella Vampire Rising.He lives in Philadelphia with his husband and their two dogs.

Book preview

Boughs of Evergreen

A Holiday Anthology

THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT

by

Larry Benjamin

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Copyright 2014 Larry Benjamin.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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Cover Design by Decorous Anarchy

This novel is a work of fiction and the characters and events in it exist only in its pages and in the author’s imagination.

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At Christmastime, a mother, unhappy her son is gay, turns to an Obeah practitioner to change him with surprising results.

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Table of Contents

Vi

Aidan

Dylan

Agwe

Aidan and Dylan

Vi

About the Author

Boughs of Evergreen – A Holiday Anthology

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Vi

Mama Black Widow sat at the table and waited. She was a powerful Obeah woman and fierce as a lioness in a cage. It was rare for Mama to visit a client. Usually they knew to present themselves at her kitchen door when they were in need. But when Vi had called and asked her to come, she had sounded different, desperate. And that was how Mama came to be sitting in Vi’s vast white kitchen, with its heated limestone floors and wide cast iron range that had been handmade in a small village in France; waiting.

Through the kitchen’s arched opening, Mama could see an enormous Christmas tree decorated with silver ornaments and gold lights, standing in a hall lined with gilt-edged mirrors. Vi followed her gaze. Versailles, she said. Have you been there?

Distracted, Mama shook her head. No.

That hall is modeled after Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors.

Mama nodded again, a pained expression on her face. In the mirrors, she could see the reflections of rooms wrapped in antique wallpapers; rooms shimmering with gold dust and light; rooms so delicately balanced their designer forbade anyone to enter them while wearing perfume. The rooms were paneled and furnished with woods so rare, so impossibly beautiful, that were you to strip them of their priceless works of art, bibelots and objets d’art, you would have found yourself in an enchanted forest. It was these woods, kidnapped, split and stripped and nailed and twisted into grotesque shapes for human comfort that caused Mama to close her eyes and cover her ears; she could see their agony, in the elaborate