THE NORDIC CONCEPT
A vast, silent space. Polished concrete walls. A poured resin floor the color of an overcast sky. The furniture is low, angular, upholstered in a fabric like recycled oat sacks.
In the center of the room stands a NOBLE FIR. Eleven feet tall. Perfect, dense, and utterly devoid of spirit. It looks less like a Christmas tree and more like evidence.
JULIANNE (40s, sharp, severe, draped in an oyster-colored cashmere loungewear set) stands before it, arms crossed. She is perfectly camouflaged against the room.
Her voice is flat, swallowed by the room's acoustics.
DAVID (40s, a warmth suppressed by weariness) sits on the edge of a sectional sofa, swirling a glass of GIN and ice. It’s 2 PM.
Julianne steps closer, her socked feet making no sound on the resin floor. She squints, evaluating.
He takes a sip of gin. Julianne ignores him, her mind elsewhere, calculating lumens and Kelvin scales. She reaches out and flicks a single, imperfect needle from a branch.
Julianne freezes. Her hand hovers mid-air.
David allows himself a small, malicious smile before it vanishes.
Julianne turns slowly. Her expression is one of pained tolerance, of finding a hair in her macrobiotic salad.
She gestures to the room around them.
Before David can argue, a sound VIOLATES the silence.
SCRAPE. DRAG. SCRAPE.
SOPHIE (8), a vibrant splash of life in a BRIGHT PURPLE hoodie, drags a battered cardboard box into the room. The box is held together with duct tape. Scrawled on the side in David’s handwriting: ‘XMAS JUNK.’
The scraping is a beautiful, jagged noise.
Julianne closes her eyes. Inhales the faint, HVAC-pumped scent of eucalyptus. Centers herself. Exhales.
She rips the duct tape off. The sound is a GUNSHOT in the quiet room.
ETHAN (15), lanky and disconnected, shuffles in. Noise-cancelling headphones hang around his neck like a yoke. He glances at the tree, his mother, the box.
She moves to a side table and retrieves three flat, white boxes embossed with a Danish design logo. She opens one. Inside, nestled in black foam, are six GREY SPHERES. They look like fossilized planets.
Sophie ignores her, digging into the cardboard box with glee.
Sophie holds up a glass ornament shaped like a diseased cucumber. It is shiny, green, and hideous. It is the most beautiful thing David has seen all day.
David stands, setting his gin down.
He takes the ornament. It feels cool and smooth in his hand. He remembers buying it at a petrol station in 2012.
David slips the pickle into his pocket.
The decorating is a surgical procedure. Julianne directs from a few feet away, squinting, using hand gestures like an air traffic controller.
Ethan, holding a fuzzy grey teardrop, lets out a loud SIGH.
David watches from the sofa. Observer status. Sophie sits on the floor, surrounded by the rejects from the ‘XMAS JUNK’ box. A plastic Santa. A red wooden soldier. She arranges them in a circle. A pagan ritual of kitsch.
Julianne freezes. She retrieves a separate, sleeker box. From it, she pulls a geometric structure of welded brass rods. It looks like a model of a virus. A caltrop.
David retrieves a sleek, aluminum stepladder. He climbs. His knees CRACK audibly. He takes the brass virus from Julianne.
He reaches up and places the spire on the leader branch. The branch SAGS immediately under the weight.
David fumbles, securing the brass spire. It looks like it’s crushing the tree’s spirit. He climbs down.
Julianne steps back, hands on hips. The tree is a masterpiece of restraint. Elegant. Tasteful. Utterly, profoundly depressing.
Julianne claps her hands once. A sharp, dry sound.
The family, now in matching oatmeal-colored linen shirts, stands before the tree. A perfect tableau. Julianne adjusts a tripod, a ring light.
The phone's camera CLICKS.
She checks the screen, satisfied. She begins dismantling the tripod.
Sophie looks at her circle of treasures on the floor. Her lower lip trembles. A quiet, crushing defeat.
David sees it. He looks from his daughter to the cold, perfect tree.
Julianne looks up from her phone.
Julianne looks at the tree. At Sophie. She lets out a long, suffering SIGH that seems to deflate her perfect posture.
Sophie doesn't wait. She grabs a MACARONI STAR—a monstrosity of pasta glued to cardboard, painted a violent, acrylic yellow, shedding glitter.
She runs to the tree. Not to the back.
She hangs it on a low branch on the side, visible from the hallway.
The branch dips. The yellow clashes horribly with the grey. Glitter falls onto the resin floor like dandruff.
She smiles. A real smile. The first one in this room all day.
Julianne watches, her face a mask.
But she doesn’t move to take it down.
The house is silent, save for the low, expensive hum of the HVAC system. Moonlight filters through sheer blinds.
David comes downstairs for a glass of water. He pauses in the doorway of the living room.
The tree is a shadow. The brass spire catches a glint of light, sharp and cold.
He walks over to it. Reaches into the pocket of his pajama bottoms. He pulls out the green glass PICKLE.
He looks around. The aesthetic police are off duty.
He finds a spot, right in the center, nestled deep near the trunk. He hangs the pickle. It’s invisible from the outside, buried in the dark heart of the tree. A secret.
He steps back. He can’t see it, but he knows it’s there.
He takes a sip of water.
He turns to leave. Stops.
A faint reflection in the window catches his eye. A passing car’s headlights sweep across the house. For a microsecond, the light hits the macaroni star.
The violent yellow paint glows like real gold. Warm. Messy. Alive.
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