Glass Gossip On A Haunted Tree [Wraith]
The tree looks innocent from the doorway, all store-bought glow and fake snow spray clinging to needles that were born in a factory and never saw actual rain,
But step close enough to feel the heat from the tangled lights and you’ll hear it, the soft glass murmur, the ornaments trading stories like teeth grinding through sugar and pain,
Each bauble swinging on a bent wire hook, spinning slow like it’s deciding which side of its painted face to show you, which version of the story to explain,
Every shimmer hides a little crime, every reflection a cheap disguise over something that should never have been pinned to a branch and dressed up as joy again.
There’s the star at the top, smug and off-center, metal points catching every stray beam like it’s feeding on attention and distant praise,
From the floor it just looks crooked, a drunk compass trying to find north of sane in a house that hasn’t seen honest peace in days,
But inside that shiny surface a deal still burns, an old hand on a Bible, another hand under the table counting cash, making promises it never pays,
You can almost hear the faint snap of a signature, the crack of a vow broken before the ink even dried, the star glittering brighter every time someone lies in that specific phrase.
Three branches down hangs a gold ball that once belonged to a woman who weaponized lipstick and holiday parties with equal skill,
The glass remembers her white teeth around gossip, the way she’d tilt her head and soften her voice just before she dropped a secret on the table like a pill,
Now the ornament watches this new family posture around the same coffee table, same arguments with new outfits, same old chill,
It catches their reflections in a warped little world, stretching their faces into grins too wide, eyes too hollow, as if the glass is editing them to match the stories it’s grown fat on, still.
A silver bell dangles near the center, never rung by hand, still echoing with a ceremony nobody mentions when they list “traditions we passed down.”On the outside it’s polished bright, ribbon hooked just right, a perfect backdrop for pictures of kids forced to smile in matching sweaters while they itch and frown,
Inside the metal, though, carries the last shock of cold marble where it first chimed over a closed casket, sound slipping between sobs as relatives eyed the will and turned their grief down,
Now every time the heater kicks on and the branches stir, the bell shivers on its hook, letting loose a tiny chime sharp as a skipped heartbeat, just enough to make someone pause before they take another drink and drown.
Near the back of the tree, half hidden, hangs an angel that looks sweet from a distance and guilty up close,
Porcelain face too smooth, eyes painted too large, wings dusted in glitter that catches your breath and claws your throat like finely ground glass up the nose,
She tilts toward the wall as if she can’t bear to look at the living, halo crooked from being dropped too many times during hasty packing and hasty moves after each relationship explodes,
Her plaster hands clasp nothing, yet she feels heavier every year, weighed down with every secret kept in this room—cheating, self-hate, quiet self-harm, aborted apologies—she knows.
On a lower branch, well within kid reach, hangs the candy cane that never gets eaten.
Not the fresh plastic-wrapped ones clustered in a bundle like weapons ready for tiny sticky mercenaries to wield in sugar-fueled street fights,
This one is glass, red stripes wrapped around white like someone tried to paint restraint over desire and only succeeded in making it look more appealing when the room lights,
If you hold it close you can see where the red runs a shade too dark at the crook, like dried blood hidden under gloss,
It remembers every kiss that started next to this tree with the best intentions, then slid off the rails in the hallway while the punch bowl watched like a priest who’s already accepted everyone is lost.
There’s the hand-painted ball from the year everything broke and nobody talks about why.
The kids were smaller then, the fights larger, and someone thought craft night might glue the pieces together with glitter and glue and various lies,
They dipped brushes into colors that were supposed to say “hope” and “new start,” instead mixing a muddy bruise shade on the glass while the grownups argued in whispers that felt like knives,
Now those crooked little stars and hearts encircle the ornament in a trembling ring, tiny fingerprints sealed under lacquer, proof the kids tried harder at saving this place than any adult who was busy keeping score and sharpening alibis.
Scattered between the heavy hitters, filler pieces hum with lesser sins.
The cheap plastic snowflakes picked up last-minute at a dollar store remember the panic in your pulse when you realized you’d done nothing to make the house look “festive” for the person you were trying not to lose,
You rushed through aisles under fluorescent buzz, thrown together in a frenzy of guilt and hope, promising this year would be different, this time you’d listen, this time you’d choose,
The snowflakes dangle now in quiet rows, catching way too much light for something so hollow, whispering, “You meant it when you said it, then life walked in with its teeth out and you bruised,”The tree sways a little as the heater burps, making their edges jingle against each other like skeletons in fancy dress, laughing softly, amused.
If you step closer, nose almost touching glass, you’ll see that each ornament holds more than just echoes; it’s carrying moving pictures in miniature loops.
In one, a couple clinks glasses, smiling at the camera, while behind them, barely visible, someone watches with eyes bright and cold, already plotting the next fracture in the group,
In another, a child shakes a wrapped box, eyes wide, not knowing there’s nothing inside but tissue and a note with a promise the parents will fail to pay, panic already darkening the corners of their future hoops,
There’s one globe that shows only a fireplace with stockings hung too high, so the kid couldn’t reach the candy even when they dragged over a chair, learning early that some treats aren’t meant for them no matter how high they stoop,
The ornament spins and the scenes flick by—greed, pettiness, lust, kindness cut off too soon, small mercies, big betrayals, all caught in the curvature of glass, swirling like a private, poison soup.
Yet the tree keeps standing.
Branches creak under the weight of so much polished regret, but they hold, plastic or pine, stubborn as a spine that refuses to bow out even when everything strapped to it has teeth,
The lights fuzz the edges, smoothing the harsh outlines of guilt into something oddly pretty, like scars seen through steam, like a confession whispered into hair instead of shouted into a judge’s wreath,
For all their wicked whispers, the ornaments keep coming out of boxes each year, wrapped in yellowed tissue and old newspaper comics, sighing as they’re hung back up in the same patterns over the same worn patch of carpet beneath,
They want to be seen. They want their stories weighed by someone who doesn’t just snap a photo for social and walk away, someone who can feel the wrongness humming in the hooks and still choose to breathe.
One night, long after the last guest leaves and the dishes sit accusing in the sink, you switch off the main light and stand alone in the tree’s glow.
The room shrinks down to this towering shrine of glass and wire and long-running lies, blinking slow like a heart that hasn’t quite decided whether to stay with you or go,
You can feel the ornaments watching as your reflection splits across a hundred surfaces at once, each one catching a slightly different version of your face, each one asking, “So which of us do you know,
The one who hurts people and dresses it as joke, the one who loves too hard and hides, the one who keeps promising to quit repeating patterns then walks right back into the same script tomorrow,”You laugh under your breath, low and rough, because they’re right and you’re tired and there’s a little thrill in realizing your sins at least have taste—they picked nice glass to call home for all their sorrow.
You reach toward the worst ornament, the one you always hang near the back without realizing why, fingers hovering an inch from its cold skin.
Inside it you see yourself ten years ago, nineteen, drunk, mean, saying something you’ve never forgiven, the words looping on mute in the tiny scene,
It’s not the worst thing anyone has ever done, but it was yours, and the hurt in the eyes on the other side of that memory still pricks your thumb whenever you touch this gleam,
Tonight you don’t move it to the back. You lift it higher, toward the front, let it catch more light, let it swing next to the angel with the heavy wings and the star with its hungry beam,
The tree shifts as if adjusting to the new balance, glass gossip quieting for a moment, listening to see if you’re really going to leave your shame where everyone can see it or if this is just another pose in your ongoing redemption scheme.
For a breath, the house is utterly still.
No heater kick, no fridge hum, no traffic outside, just the faint buzz of the lights and the blood in your ears and the soft clink of ornaments as they settle into this new arrangement of truth and lie,
And in that cone of thin, defiant brightness, with all your ghosts glittering around you instead of hiding in the back, you feel something almost like peace—rough-edged, undeserved, but real enough to make your shoulders drop and your jaw finally unclench and your pulse climb instead of wanting to die,
The ornaments will go back into their boxes when the season ends, ordered wrong, hooks tangled, stories unresolved, still laughing behind their glass whenever the lid cracks and they glimpse next year’s sky,
But for tonight, this tree is yours and theirs, one crooked monument to the wild, lurid mess of being human under colored light, and if the dark edges of their tales make the room feel haunted, at least it’s haunted honestly, not by some fake, sanitized “perfect family” lie.