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  Scrogged:

  A Cyber Christmas Carol

  A Ghost Story of Christmas Past,

  Present and Yet to Be

  By Carole Nelson Douglas

  A WISHLIST BOOK

  www.wishlistpublishing.com

  By payment of required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this eBook. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented without the express written permission of copyright owner.

  Please Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The reverse engineering, uploading, and/or distributing of this eBook via the internet or via any other means without the permission of the copyright owner is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  Copyright ©2004 by Carole Nelson Douglas.

  First Kindle edition ©December 2011

  SCROGGED: A CYBER CHRISTMAS CAROL was originally published in the Death By Dickens anthology, March 2, 2004

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

  Cover design by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Author photo by Sam Douglas

  Cover images ©iStockphoto.com

  www.carolenelsondouglas.com

  Author’s Note

  This novella’s e-book publication marks the ten-year anniversary of the devastating financial scandal that was a prophetic prelude to the Wall Street scandals of the Great Recession of 2008. It was written in 2003 in reaction to the November 29, 2001 collapse of Houston corporate energy giant, Enron, long before the recent Wall Street crash and Occupy Wall Street movement.

  “Scrogged: A Cyber Christmas Carol” appeared in the Anne Perry-edited Death by Dickens mystery anthology and was reprinted in Six More of the Year’s Best Crime and Mystery Novellas.

  Corporate greed devastates the ordinary person and society, but so often pales into ancient history within only a decade after shocking financial devastation. English novelist Charles Dickens offered searing portrayals of social injustice and the lot of the poor, but when A Christmas Carol debuted in 1843 and cruel miser Ebenezer Scrooge underwent a dramatic change of heart, Dickens became “the man who invented Christmas.”

  A Wall Street Christmas Carol, a new short novel inspired by this novella, was published Nov. 23, 2011 and is also available in e-book: On Christmas Eve, 2011, Caleb Gould is the most hateful and hated man in the world… can a modern billionaire match a nineteenth-century pinch-penny for ill will and the capacity to change?

  About “A Cyber Christmas Carol”

  “In the pages of his novels, Charles Dickens railed against injustice in all its forms—the miserliness of Ebenezer Scrooge, the indifference of the aristocracy... He captured the bitter unfairness of the class system and the violence that erupted between rich and poor. Now, today’s masters of mystery [offer] new stories inspired by Dickens and his immortal classics. . .

  Three spirits visit a modern-day Scrooge to save his soul—and solve a murder—in Carole Nelson Douglas’ ‘A Cyber Christmas Carol.’”

  —The Best Reviews

  ~

  “‘Scrogged: A Cyber Christmas Carol’ by Carole Nelson Douglas, has the same upbeat feeling to it, but the flavor is modern, tongue-in-cheek, and rips along at a wonderful speed. The ghosts are superbly inventive, all the elements are there, and the moral message is just as clear and as timeless. And of course it, too, has a very present-day murder solved by skillful detection.”

  —NYT bestselling author, Anne Perry

  ~

  “A different comparative approach is the comically written tale by Carole Nelson Douglas entitled ‘Scrogged: A Cyber Christmas Carol.’ This is definitely an original version of the Scrooge tale but with strong ties to the Enron scandal and the executives. Ms Douglas’ tale with Ben Scroggs, who strongly resembles Scrooge, as an Enron accountant is a wonderful combination of the past and the present… even though the reader should know how this will end, there are enough new twists to keep the reader deeply enthralled with this tale.”

  —Reviewing the Evidence

  ~

  “notable reads include… a retelling, with sly winks to contemporary society, of Dickens’ beloved holiday story (‘Scrogged: A Cyber Christmas Carol’ by Carole Nelson Douglas.)”

  —RT Book Reviews

  ~

  “Newly re-imagined versions of Mr. Pickwick, Miss Havisham, Scrooge, and other familiar characters from the novels of Charles Dickens enliven… this anthology. They range from thoughtful pastiches of the great master to a hip modern Scrooge. [Among] the most memorable [is] Carole Nelson Douglas’s hilariously updated Christmas Carol with Scrooge as a nerdy financial officer caught in an accounting scandal at a megacorporation in Texas.”

  —Book Loons Reviews

  Scrogged: A Cyber Christmas Carol

  by

  Carole Nelson Douglas

  Stave the First: The Ghost in the Machine

  “A bark as bitter as any gall”

  —The Holly and the Ivy

  Marlowe was dead, that much was certain. Dead certain.

  The TV news channels had harped on that fact for almost a week now. Dead by his own hand.

  Ben Scroggs could hardly believe it, although much that was shown on the TV news was pretty unbelievable these days.

  Marlowe dead. Killed instantly when he threw himself from the balcony atop the three-story entry hall in his Rivercrest area mansion, his brain smashed to smithereens on imported Italian marble, a brain that had been so agile in life, so admirably ordered.

  Not that Scroggs had been a particular friend of Marlowe’s.

  Scroggs had few friends at the company. Better not to get involved in office politics during off-office hours, especially the frivolous socializing that led to overdrinking and sometimes even adulterous affairs. None of that nonsense was for Ben Scroggs.

  And, of course, if he had been a particular friend of Marlowe’s, it would be his figure the news cameras would be tracking as he left the police station after questioning, instead of his higher-ups. How silly they looked, dashing in and out amid clusters of high-powered lawyers, their Society Page faces now hidden beneath hasty tents of Armani cashmere trench coats and Houston Chronicle Lifestyle sections.

  No, Ben Scroggs was a very small fish in the corporate shark tank, thank Anderson Accounting, and dedicated to doing his job (and saving it) by getting small notice. That strategy—and, honestly, it was more a temperamental preference than a strategy—stood him in good stead now that the nation had its hungry eyes on Axxanon and its executives and all their works. And especially all their workings.

  That was why in this dread new era of unprecedented corporate accountability, Scroggs the quintessential accountant still sat at his old mahogany desk, enduring among the husk of stricken employees and absent executives that Axxanon’s self-important skyscraper had become.

  He was working this Christmas Eve as he had all the others, even while the lower-level employees scurried away like mice. They thought their foolish materialistic celebrations honored an infant, but instead honored only the Bottom Line that is the true heart of all business and industry in the civilized world
as Ben Scroggs knew it.

  His own “personal assistant”—What a ludicrous and largely untrue title! Scroggs allowed no one to become personal with him and no one could assist him to his satisfaction—was just visible through the open office door, her broad back clothed in loathsome Kelly-green polyester.

  She was on the telephone, as usual, and on a personal call, as even more usual.

  He shook his head. Why would a woman in these enlightened days allow herself to become the mother of four young children with no legal father—or should he say, fathers?—in sight? Small wonder one of them had been born with some exotic disease she was forever on the phone about. She was, of course, the politically “correct” profile for a corporate personal assistant these days: black and female. At least the pittance they paid her reflected reality.

  “Sir,” she was beseeching some harried banker, as was most of the Axxanon support staff these days, “there must be some way to save my 401K.”

  Four-oh-one Kayo, you mean! Scroggs summed it up mentally.

  What did these financial dunces know, except that the Company was supposed to bail them out of their own ignorance? Scroggs felt no pity for them. He hadn’t opted for employee stock options or any of that slippery nonsense. He kept what he had squirreled away where only he knew about it. None of it was in get-rich-quick schemes, even if they were disguised as a corporate pension program.

  “Merry Christmas!” cried a voice in the outer office.

  What? Did some idiot still remain in Houston who could possibly think there was anything to celebrate this December of 2001?

  With chagrin, Scroggs recognized the upbeat voice: his own dead sister’s son, a ne’er-do-well as seasoned at it as her late husband, the trailer trash from Biloxi. Bah! Nephews.

  The fool came barging into his inner sanctum, again spouting “Merry Christmas!”

  “Screw Christmas!”

  “Say uncle, Uncle! You don’t mean it! The kids love it.”

  “I don’t love the kids, so how is it my affair? Christmas is social extortion, and you ought to know it, Jimmy Joe Scroggs. It’s a scheme to keep the poor thinking they have a future, and spending it on gimcracks of the season. A great business strategy, but a worthless sentiment. What a scam! You and your naive wife from the wrong side of the tracks are some of the poor who happily will be plucked buck-naked as a turkey this season, all in the name of that ancient invitation to bilking the public, ‘Merry Christmas.’ ”

  “Aw, Unc, have a heart. You’re welcome to come over and eat brisket with Bobbie Rae and me and the kids. “

  “Brisket! I can’t believe they chose to serve that low-brow stuff at Disneyland France. Meadow Muffins! Might as well sit in a pasture and chow down what the bulls put out. Eat barbecue with sticky-fingered brats and their stupider parents? I’d rather rot in hell first. And a Happy New Year to you too, Jimmy Joe.”

  “I know this scandal must be freezing your pumpkin patch, Uncle Ben—”

  “Do not call me by that commercially compromised brand name! No pumpkin pie for me, either, overrated slush! Out of my sight! I’ve bigger things to tend to.”

  “Nothin’s bigger than a time when people reckoned themselves small in the face of a miracle. I’ll still lift a home-brew in your honor on Christmas Day, Uncle, for my maw was your sister and she was all right through and through. We’re sorry for your trouble. It can’t be fun to be an Axxanon employee these days. And I’ll say it again, ‘Merry Christmas!’ We’ll keep the hot sauce warm for you tomorrow besides.”

  At this the jean-clad young man was on his way, pausing in the outer office to produce a yellow rose hidden in his Astros jacket and plant it on Loretta’s desk.

  “There’s a pair of idiots.” Scroggs offered his opinion to the air. One was about to be goosed and loosed by her employer, and the other had no employer, not even a defaulting one, to speak of. Odd jobs as a career, indeed.

  He was appalled to see two more holiday mendicants entering against Jimmy Joe’s departing tail wind: a pair of Houston society grande dames, lacquered and enameled and furred to their spa-applied single eyelashes. They looked like Carol Channing moonlighting in a Star Trek movie. But Seven of Nine they were not.

  “Mr. Scroggs,” one said cheerily, entering his Holy of Holies. “How reassuring to see you at work on Christmas Eve, even though the house around you falls. We have no doubt that your sterling reputation will survive the current Deluge, and a bit of prominent local charity could only burnish your community standing.”

  “My house is perfectly fine.”

  “Oh,” said the other, “Chantelle wasn’t speaking literally. We just realized this was the perfect time for you to put your house on display for charity. Interest has never run so high in executive Axxanon residences. It’s a ‘New Hope for the New Year’ tour at the end of January, and the Children with AIDS project needs support.”

  “Better their parents had supported them by having the discipline not to have them, or what led to having them!” Scroggs grumbled.

  He was pleased to see Miss Personal Assistant Lorettah Craddick stiffen at her desk. Overpaid and underfunded. All this indignation over lower-level employees’ losses was bleeding-heart liberalism. What about his investment of every minute of his life in the company? What was he to get out of it but early retirement?

  “But they are here, and suffering, Mr. Scroggs,” said one of the interchangeable socialites.

  “Send them back.”

  “To where? They did not ask to be here.”

  “To wherever this foul disease originated. Not in my house, I assure you, ladies. Good day.”

  “It is a good day,” one called back as she was ushered out by Scrogg’s determined advance. “It’s Christmas Eve and I know that there will be happy children tomorrow morning under every Christmas tree in Houston, no matter how poor.”

  “‘The poor ye have always with you.’ Forget changing things! Good-bye and remember, Christmas is not merry, it is a marketing opportunity!”

  Scroggs retreated to his den of an office. When Axxanon was not being besieged by the media, it was having its bones picked by do-gooders. No doubt someone was already on eBay, coveting Scrogg’s Aeron chair, not that he had wanted the blamed thing, an obligatory Axxanon office toy, more like a blown-up mesh kitchen implement than a seating piece.

  A looming presence on the threshold to his office interrupted his reverie.

  “Everything’s done, sir. I was hoping to leave a bit early.”

  Scroggs regarded what passed for secretarial help these days. “Four-thirty P.M., Lorettah?”

  “My sitter has family and Christmas doin’s of her own. I thought—”

  “If you thought, you would not still be in such a menial position. Why should you go home while I remain working at the office?”

  “You don’t have much family, sir, and I do.”

  “And that is what’s wrong with society! You have an armful of brats that a high-earning man like me must pay taxes to support. All right, but I don’t have to let you short-sheet the company and I won’t, even though it’s sinking like a stone.”

  “I lose a lot too. My job, my pension—”

  “Piddlely winks! Nobody’s put in more hours than I have. That’s the key to success. And will you be in the day after accursed Christmas, asking for more handouts?”

  “I’ll be in, sir. This is the only job I’ve got.”

  “For now. Go on, then! No one has diddly dedication any more. There are K-mart trinkets to shower on your brats, no doubt, and I wouldn’t get half a minute’s attention from you anyway.”

  She paused before stiffly saying “Thank you,” then turned back in the doorway before she left. “There’s no one waiting at home for you. I can see why you’d be reluctant to leave. Still, I wish you . . . joy of the season.”

  She had scooped her overstuffed cheap purse from the desk and left the outer office before he could muster a retort: “Joy is not a seasonal thing, it’s a
delusion!” .

  He muttered it anyway, fully deserted, by the highest and now the lowest of his fellow employees.

  And so Ben Scroggs drove home in the December Houston mist, cursing traffic and department store Santas and vehicles with last-minute trees tied on top by fools who should have saved their dollars. . . and cursing bottom lines that had somehow became lethal when they were only pretty numbers, all in a row, like Christmas tree lights.…

  No!

  There was nothing likeable about the Christmas season, a ridiculous concept in Houston anyway, he thought as he motored through neighborhoods sodded in dry yellow grass. Strings of Christmas tree bulbs draped houses like ersatz icicles. Their glow outlined every gabled, over-designed detail on each massive façade (which is what Axxanon had proven to be, a massive façade of the business sort) until his exclusive gated community seemed a gingerbread development inhabited by witches awaiting gullible Hansels and Gretels.

  “You kids will get sick on Christmas,” Scroggs shouted at the upscale mansions as he tooled by in his Volvo. “You will all overeat and die!”

  But the kids in Royal Ridgecrest had never died yet, and still overran his lawn in summer and shouted names at him all year ‘round.

  Scroggs hit the remote control for his driveway gate and drove his elderly black station wagon through. The other Axxanon executives had sniggered at his modest choice of vehicle, but he had never risked a car jacking in it. No, he had been immune to all their easy and obvious temptations now so much in the news: expensive cars, clothes, houses, women, and wine.

  Still, he had been forced to buy a home in the “right” neighborhood. His corporate peers and superiors wouldn’t have tolerated that much eccentricity. Yet his house was a remainder of the days before the land became ‘Royal Ridgecrest.’ It had been built in the 1930s, and the only pleasure Ben got out of owning such an overpriced property (for its neighboring estates were worth multimillions) was equipping it with all of the high-tech devices his computer nerd’s heart desired.