“Nine… Eight… Who The Hell Had The Remote?” [Wreath]
The cheap champagne is already sweating on the coffee table, sweating worse than any of us,
half the snacks are gone, the other half are crushed into the carpet like offerings to some hungry couch god,
and the TV is still on that dumb movie you “just wanted to finish real quick” an hour ago,
while the entire living room has turned into a chanting cult of half-drunk time worshipers.
Someone in the back starts the countdown too early, like they’re speedrunning the year out of pure spite,“Ten!” they yell, and half the room panics, grabbing whatever drink is closest and checking phones,
while you realize the ball drop is on a different channel and your whole body turns into cold static,
a single thought blaring louder than the surround sound that isn’t even on yet—Where. Is. The. Remote.
You pat your pockets, jacket first, then jeans, then hoodie, in a frantic rhythm that feels more like a bad drum solo than a search,
your fingers smearing salt from potato chips across the denim while the kids shriek,
half of them screaming the countdown numbers, the other half just screaming because this is the loudest the house ever gets,
and somewhere under all that noise the dog decides this is the perfect moment to steal an abandoned meatball and vanish under the table.
“Nine!” roars the chorus, off-sync but committed,
someone claps on the wrong beat like their hands forgot they’ve seen rhythm before,
your aunt is already crying and nobody knows if it’s happiness or the fact that the sparkling wine tastes like carbonated regret,
and you stand in the middle of the chaos, frozen, scanning the room like it’s a crime scene and the remote is the missing body.
The couch glares back in smug silence, cushions puffed up with secrets,
throw pillows stacked like smug little witnesses who won’t talk without legal representation,
the coffee table is a graveyard of snack bowls and empty cups, hiding spots everywhere but none of them right,
and the TV glows with a different countdown—the last twelve minutes of some rom-com that no one actually cares about.
“Eight!” the room howls, overlapping with “Nine!” and “Wait, are we early?” and “Someone check the official time,”and every voice jabs straight into the part of your brain that’s terrified of missing the exact second a number flips,
as if your entire life will fall apart if you don’t kiss someone on the same televised moment as the rest of the planet,
as if the universe is keeping score based on how accurately you sync up with strangers in another city.
You drop to your knees like you’re proposing to the couch instead of the person next to you,
fingers diving between cushions that feel like they haven’t been moved since the last century,
pulling out loose change, a missing sock, enough crumbs to feed a small nation of ants,
a receipt from three apartments ago, and pride you didn’t know you’d lost until you held it in your dirty hand.
“Seven!” someone yells, right beside your ear,
and you slam your head on the underside of the coffee table hard enough to see your own personal fireworks,
a small constellation of pain blooming behind your eyes while everyone else keeps chanting like a cult that never rehearsed,
and you can taste the year’s entire mess in the metallic tang on your tongue and the laughter exploding around you.
Your best friend leans over the arm of the chair, phone up, filming this disaster with far too much joy,
yelling, “This is going in the group chat forever, keep digging, mole man!”and you mutter something loving and obscene back while your hand brushes something smooth and plastic,
the kind of texture that could be salvation or another abandoned toy dinosaur.
“Six!” floats over you like a war cry and a dare,
as you squeeze your arm deeper into the couch’s throat, body twisted sideways,
half of you on the carpet, half on someone’s foot, your dignity somewhere under the recliner,
and you feel that unmistakable shape, those buttons worn just enough to be familiar, the holy relic of modern panic—you’ve got it.
You rise from the floor like a low-rent messiah clutching a plastic cross,
hair full of static, confetti stuck to your shirt from some earlier, premature celebration attempt,
everyone sees the remote in your fist and erupts into cheers louder than the eventual fireworks,
because nothing unites a room like the threat of missing the one moment they pretended would fix everything.
“Five!” erupts from the room, numbers smearing together now like wet paint on cheap paper,
as you jab the power button with a thumb that suddenly feels too big,
the TV goes black for a heartbeat that lasts a week,
then blazes back to life on a commercial about insurance and colon health,
and a wave of groans rolls through the room like low thunder over spilled drinks.
“Wrong channel!” someone shrieks,
as if you personally betrayed the country, history, and fate all at once,
so you stab the input button, the volume button, anything that looks important,
while the screen cycles through HDMI options like a taunting slideshow of your poor life choices.
“Four!” hits, overlapping with “Three!” from that one cousin who’s apparently working off the clock on their phone,
your thumb finally lands on the right number, screen flashing to the familiar chaos of a city you’re not in,
confetti already swirling over strangers in heavy coats,
a giant glittering ball hovering over them like a promise no one really believes but everyone still chants toward.
“Two!” blows out of a hundred throats, counting both here and there,
and for half a second the whole mess syncs up—this living room, that crowded square,
your heartbeat, the ticker on the screen, the stupid remote still clenched in your hand like a trophy,
and all the broken pieces of the last year stack themselves into something almost bearable.
“One!” shrieks the room, and it’s kissing time.
Someone knocks over a cup lunging toward a partner they’ve already seen ugly-cry a hundred times,
someone else kisses the dog who clearly did not consent but accepts payment in cheese later,
your lips find the one person who managed to stick around all the way to this countdown,
and they taste like cheap bubbly and stolen frosting and every near-miss you survived together.
Outside, fireworks punch color into the dark,
inside, someone’s sock slides on spilled champagne and they go down laughing,
your aunt hugs everyone in reach until someone gently pries her off the coat rack,
and the remote, now abandoned on the couch again, stares up at the ceiling,
already plotting its next vanishing act for next year’s panic.
The TV keeps shouting about new beginnings and limited-time offers,
but the important part is smaller, quieter, crammed into this stained living room with its lopsided decorations,
where people yell the wrong numbers and still manage to land in the same new minute together,
breathing, bruised, ridiculous,
and you realize the real countdown isn’t up there in lights—it’s right here in every shared mess, every fumbled ritual, every stupid scramble to catch a momentbefore it disappears into the cushions with the remote.