Author’s Note: This is a short story. Heat up your hot cocoa, put on some fuzzy socks, and settle in. A Christmas tale is about to begin.
Once upon a time, in the snowy suburban landscapes of New Jersey, where the chill of winter had settled on every strip mall and painted the Panera rooftops white with frost, the few remaining pine trees stood like silent sentries, pointing to the city’s night sky, all the stars obscured by the Big Apple’s adjacent smog, except tonight it wasn’t completely dark—something strange hovered above. What was it?
Lucy watched the sudden and mysterious unknown aerial phenomena from her bedroom window, with her AirPods glued to her pierced ears, and her cellphone running a TikTok livestream of a girl selling remote-controlled raccoon toys. Beside her, the laptop screen was all a glow with an artificial fire crackling, but outside, bright red and green lights shot across the sky. Something magical was about to unfold.
“Mom!” Lucy yelled as she moved closer to the window. “There’s some crazy lights in the sky!”
But her mom was binge eating gingerbread cookies in the bathtub with a giant glass of white wine and her headphones on too, listening to a Ruby Dixon barbarian Christmas romance book, and didn’t hear her teen daughter’s cries.
Lucy turned back to the window as more lights gathered above like aerial ambulances flashing, hovering over the backyard pool, now all covered for winter. She squinted and craned her neck, but couldn’t figure out what they were. The flashing lights weren’t from planes, because planes wouldn’t stay in one place. She opened the window and leaned out to get a better look. The cold air stung her cheeks. Were they drones? No, they looked too big. They were the size of cars. But that couldn’t be… That was too nuts. Above her, the strobing crafts bounce around—red, green, and yellow lights blinking in random patterns like the screen of the antique LightBright she used to play with at her Grandma’s house.
“Mom!” She yelled again.
But instead of her mom, Lucy’s brother Max arrived at her bedroom door. Age 6, and already quite gay, or so Lucy had decided, he was dressed for bed in a fuzzy red pajama set. “What’s going on?” He asked, excited. Max loved drama.
“Come see.”
He rushed to her open window, and with rosy cheeks, they watched the night sky fill with even more flying lights.
“Who are they? Do you think they're spying on us?" Max asked, his eyes wide with curiosity and a hint of fear.
"Nah," she replied, “If they were spying, they wouldn’t want us to see them.”
"Maybe they're Santa's new helpers!" He exclaimed, “Or his reindeer! Maybe he got remote control robot reindeer this year.”
Lucy laughed and rolled her eyes. “No way dummy. You’ve been in Roblox for too long. Santa’s not even real.”
“Yes, he is!” Max pouted.
Their conversation was interrupted by their doorbell ringing. They froze. Who could it be at this hour? They were supposed to be in bed.
“Should we get it?” Max asked.
She didn’t answer. The doorbell rang again.
“I’m getting it! It could be dad!” Max said.
Lucy rolled her eyes again because she knew Dad was never coming back. “No, don’t get it.”
But Max was already running downstairs. She was compelled to follow him, for his own safety.
It was Mr. Yang, their quirky neighbor known for his love of gadgets, cats, and weekend pressure washing. He had a gleam in his eye. "Kids, is your mother here?” He was dressed in a gray ski outfit and carrying two large, black briefcases, one in each hand.
As if on queue, their mother called from upstairs, “What’s going on? I’m coming down.” Then she appeared in a pink sweatsuit with wet hair and a frenzied look in her eyes, her thinning lips stained cherry red. “Is everything okay?” She asked. “You kids should be in bed.”
“Have you looked outside?” Mr. Yang replied. “I've been tracking these drones. They’ve been spotted all over the city and now they’re above your backyard. Please, can I go out to your pool and film them?"
“What? Drones?”
“Yeah Mom, they’re in the sky!” Max piped in, tugging on her arm. “We saw them!”
Curiosity piqued, Lucy, Max, and their mom joined Mr. Yang outside as he set up his camera on a tripod and aimed it at the flying lights.
“What are they?” Lucy’s mom asked, her voice tinged with apprehension. “Are they…”
“Ufos? I don’t know.” Mr. Yang dropped to his knees and opened his other briefcase. "But this is our ticket to understanding the visitors in the sky.” He pulled out his own drone. “But I must hurry before they leave! Stand back! Better yet, go inside!”
They did and through the window they watched as Mr. Yang tried to crash his drone into one of the vehicles above, still flashing their Christmas-colored lights, but each time he got close, the alien crafts dodged him.
“This is crazy,” her mom said. “They aren’t aliens. Probably just some dumb kids. We can’t do this. You all have to go to bed. I’m gonna tell him he has to leave.”
“No, mom, no,” Max begged and cried. “Please let me stay up, please! There’s no school tomorrow. We don’t have to get up, pleeeeeaaasssseee?”
“I said no,” their mom snapped, and sent them both to bed.
But Lucy couldn’t sleep. Instead, she went back to the window and livestreamed Mr. Yang trying to crash his drone into the aliens on her secret TikTok account until her eyes went blurry. By midnight, she’d gotten a million viewers. Her mom was wrong. Being a streamer wasn’t for fools. I don’t need to waste time studying for the SATs, she thought. I’m going to be a streamer! Like a female Mr. Beast, the subruban egirl version of Kai Cenat! Spending all my time on Twitch, TikTok, and YouTube is finally going to pay off! She imagined her whole future as a famous streamer with her own house and the cute little toy pomeranian that her mother wouldn’t let her get.
Then, as suddenly as they’d arrived, the drones disappeared. Lucy said goodnight to chat and the last thought she had as she climbed into bed was, “I’m gonna be so famous.”
But famous she was not. The next day at school, the last day before Christmas break, no one had even seen her video. They’d all been asleep.
What happened instead was journalists showed up at her house. They’d found the location through the video and the position of the stars and other landmarks and they wanted to buy the footage.
“Well, I’d be mad,” her mom told her, “But they’re paying, so luck is on your side.”
“Paying how much?” Lucy asked.
“Enough to keep you from getting grounded for not going to bed and for having a secret TikTok account.” Her mom raised her eyebrows. “Now, help me wrap the presents for your cousins.”
As soon as the presents were all wrapped and dinner was done, Lucy raced to her room, locked the door, and hopped back onto the Internet, where her real friends were.
Everyone had different theories about the New Jersey drones. Some thought they were UFOs. Some said government contractors, like Peter Thiel’s defense company Palantir. Others believed it was spies from Iran. Another streamer said it was the U.S. Government looking for nuclear activity. One of her TikTok friends claimed it was AI gotten out of control. The AI had escaped the U.S. Army, occupied a bunch of drones, and gone rogue. The skeptics said they were just airplanes, or guys like Mr. Yang, flying store-bought drones.
Lucy didn’t know what to believe. They definitely weren’t planes, but they looked bigger than Best Buy drones. She sort of hoped they were aliens. She wouldn’t mind getting beamed up. The New Jersey suburbs sucked, anyway.
As the days got closer to Christmas, there were more and more sightings of the drones. Videos proliferated online. TikTok filled with speculation. The local government officials demanded answers, and Lucy’s brother Max continued to believe the drones were actually Santa Claus, doing advanced location scouting in preparation for Christmas deliveries.
Christmas Eve
December 24th finally arrived with a fresh blanket of snow, the kind that made the world look soft and perfect, at least on the surface. Lucy watched from her window as the glow from a nearby inflatable Grinch on the neighbor’s lawn cast odd shapes across the white powder. Despite the holiday vibes all around her, she felt the same restless boredom creeping in. Especially after the big drone drama, Christmas seemed anticlimactic. If only they would come back, she thought. If only they had been aliens… Plus, all she’d really wanted for Christmas was an iPad Pro, so she could have another screen for her streams, but her mom had already told her there was no chance in a snowball’s hell (and her mom never said hell). They’re like 2,000 dollars, her mom had balked. No way.
I’m gonna have to get a real job, Lucy thought, feeling bummed. Other kids had dads who bought them iPad Pros, but her mom didn’t even have a boyfriend buying her anything, much less a husband. Lucy vowed to do better when she grew up.
Her mom sent another text from downstairs. “Come on, let’s read Twas the Night Before Christmas on the couch.”
Lucy sighed. She had to please her mom, but she really didn’t feel like it. But, she would, because, well, it was Christmas… She dragged herself downstairs and fake smiled. Max had already put out cookies and milk for Santa by their Christmas tree and as she walked by she reached for a cookie to tease him.
“No!” he shrieked, “Those are for Santa!”
Her mom gave her a dirty look.
“Just kidding, gremlin,” she said and fluffed her little brother’s hair as she joined them on the sofa.
With their well-loved, 1950s copy of the classic Christmas tale in her hands, her mom began: “Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house—” but a loud siren interrupted the tale, blasting alarms through the air.
“What the fuck!?” Lucy blurted out.
“Lucy! Language!” Her mother exclaimed as she shot to her feet, Christmas classic still in hand.
Red and green bright lights filled the room through their big bay window. Lucy froze on the sofa and her heart raced faster than the time she’d snorted her friend’s boyfriend’s older brother’s Adderall in the middle school bathroom.
Max ran to the window shouting, “Santa!” And her mom lunged after him. As Lucy reached to cover her ears, to block out the horrible, loud sounds that surely signaled an alien arrival, the sirens suddenly turned into a song. What the…
It was Jingle Bells.
“They’re back!” Max yelled with delight from the window. “Santa and his electronic reindeer! They’re back! They’re back! This is fabulous!” He was already dancing around amidst the lights in his red pajamas like it was a game of Just Dance.
“Is that Jingle Bells?” Her mom looked so confused.
Lucy unfroze herself, grabbed her puffy white jacket off the coat rack, the one with the faux-fur hood, and followed them out to the kitchen deck. Likewise, Mr. Yang hadn’t missed a beat. He was already in their backyard again, setting up his camera, having come through the side fence from across the street. “You’ve got a better view,” he called to them. “I figured you wouldn’t mind! Merry Christmas.”
He had three briefcases now and was wearing expensive-looking night vision goggles. I bet he can afford an iPad pro, Lucy thought with envy, but she couldn’t dwell on the thought for long, because above them, an extraterrestrial rave ensued. The orb-shaped craft swirled in the New Jersey sky shooting out beams of light in every direction and blasting jingle bells in video game beep beep bop music on a loop.
“Are they aliens?” Her mom yelled to Mr. Yang.
“I think so!” He shouted back.
“Santa’s an alien?” her brother asked, his brown eyes filled with wonder and his cheeks flashed green and red in the spectacular holiday light show.
Indeed, the orbs looked like nothing she’d ever seen. They were the size of reindeer and the shape of basketballs and didn’t even seem to have wings, just a dazzling luminosity. She pulled out her phone and started another livestream and this time her mom didn’t even say a thing. Her mom looked like she’d seen an elf; jaw agape, she kept shaking her dyed-blond head and moving her lips but no sounds came out.
Then the drones moved closer and formed a giant Santa Clause face, smiling. Then Santa’s arm appeared and waved at them. As it swung back and forth in glowing mittens, blinking red and white, something fell from the sky. Actually, Lucy could see now that many things were falling. The drones zoomed around, spreading across the landscape and dropping things into people’s yards.
Mr. Yang yelled, “Look up! Look up!” And as she did, a small, dark rectangle fluttered above her. Was it a piece of paper? It looked like a credit card falling. She ducked to the side in a moment of fear and the thin object dropped into the light dusting of snow on the deck. Her brother jumped on it and her mother shouted, “No! Don’t touch it.”
But it was too late. Max had already picked up the object, which appeared to be a card. He stared at it in his bare hand with a dazed expression.
“What does it say?” Mr. Yang yelled from below. “Is it a message?”
“I don’t know,” Max said.
“Is it in another language? What language? Hold on I’m coming up!” Mr. Yang called. “But wait, it’s spelling something. Is that?” Mr. Yang stopped mid-sentence.
Lucy looked to the sky once more. The drones were forming another shape. They appeared to be letters now—a T, then an E.
Max passed the card to their mom who was visibly shaking as she took it from him. Then she scrunched up her face and said, “You can’t be serious.”
“What?” Lucy said. “What does it say?”
Her mom turned the card over in her hand, then looked up, first at Lucy, then at Max. “It’s a $5 Temu gift card,” she said.
“A what? What’s Temu?” Max asked. Her mom didn’t know either and Lucy didn’t feel like explaining.
Above, the red, green, and white drones continued to flash their lights. Now the words made by the drone show were fully visible. They said, “Temu Wishes You Happy Holiday.”
Lucy was too flabbergasted to respond. She continued filming her TikTok live, aiming her phone at the sky. “OMG, IT’S A TEMU AD!!” …she gushed. “And it’s in my yard!” … “This is insane!” The next wave of hearts poured in, and her chat filled with excitement. Everyone was going outside to see if they got a Temu card too. Jokes and creeps filled her screen with comments about how she must be “real nice.”
From below she could hear Mr. Yang now cussing and kicking the snow.
“Guess it beats a lump of coal,” she told chat and said to her mom, “I’ll take that.” She plucked the gift card from her mom’s pink fingers and held it to her phone’s lens. Chat exploded into gift package, coin purse, and dollar bag emojis.
And with that, the Temu orbs dispersed and rose higher into the night sky. In a synchronized wave, their lights faded out into the distance, heading north, replaced by a few stars still visible amidst the urban light pollution. The echo of “Jingle Bells” lingered in the cold Jersey air a moment longer, and then everything fell silent, except her livestream chat, which kept popping off.
I’m definitely getting famous for this, she thought again. This has already gone viral. Forget the TV news, all I want for Christmas is a lucrative TikTok/Temu brand deal… Then I can buy my own iPad pro…
Though she had to admit, it was a little disappointing that it wasn’t aliens.
THE END
Haha, thanks for reading if you made it this far! And Merry Christmas!
And if you liked this, don’t forget that I have a wild Christmas book on Kindle Unlimited, in paperback, hardback, audiobook, and in all the places! Acid Christmas!
Read or listen to Acid Christmas now.
Now You
What do you think was up with the New Jersey Drones this month?
What Christmas present are you hoping will be dropped on your lawn?
Ha, Temu ad lol great story :)
Happy holidays!