Pandora

Little nine-year-old Iggy Pierce wakes up at close to a quarter of four, only a few hours after he fell asleep while reading the second chapter of his Madeleine L'Engel book, the one that begins, "It was a dark and stormy night," the one present he was allowed to open on Christmas Eve.

The rest would have to wait until morning, his mother said. Tradition, she said, and Iggy knew it well. The Pierces spoiled their two sons, partly out of affection but mostly to keep up with the yuppie Joneses among whom they lived, who similarly heaped small mountains of gifts beneath and around the Christmas tree, mountains which appeared to double in size come the morning of December twenty-fifth, after Père Noël had deposited his usually wished-for -- or in rare cases unwanted -- cache of presents sometime in the night before slinking away like a benevolent phantom and leaving only trace cookie crumbs and half-drunk glasses of milk as testament to his visit.

This is unbearable to Iggy, an annual test of will. He knows he's not alone in his torment, that millions of children feel likewise. There's homework, trips to the dentist, waking up early on Sundays to sit through boring church sermons, department store shopping with his mother, long car rides cross country to see his grandparents; in all, a lot of waiting and a lot of unpleasant tasks. There's a pot of gold at the end of this particular rainbow, Iggy knows, but still it's unfair. He understands, has been told by his parents, teachers, and MTV, that there are kids in Ethiopia and other places who don't get Christmas presents because it's too hot or too far away for Santa to go there, kids who go days without food or water even, and he feels bad for them, he does, but he's only nine, and he's grown accustomed to the way things are here in Moncton, New Brunswick, not so far from the North Pole, not too far for privilege.

Mostly it's his heart beat. Rapid, excited. The butterflies in his stomach, too. Minus the cottonmouth, he feels physically the same way he does whenever he has to make a speech at the front Mrs. Meyer's third-grade classroom, the same way he feels when he's sent to the principal's office or his bedroom and awaiting a scolding (Principal York) or a spanking (Steven Pierce). This is how Iggy understands irony.

His mind is likewise jumpy. Fidgety. Darting from one unfinished thought to the next like an obese lady hastily taking bites from every foodstuff on a buffet table. He speculates. He tries to stop speculating, but the attempt is folly, like wishing water into wine. It's a miracle that he was able to fall asleep, really. An aberration.

Iggy Pierce is going to go downstairs, to see his gift-wrapped bounty, but first he has to pee. He stands, waits, shivers, then shakes, mindful not to flush so as to avoid waking his snoring parents or the ghosts of his forebears who occupy the attic above which creaks and moans on hot summer nights and icy winter ones alike. The first mission of his campaign completed, he sneaks downstairs and into the dark living room where the Christmas tree stands and his treasure awaits like an undiscovered ore of childhood lust, the Christmas lights adorning the bushes outside his sole source of illumination to guide him.

He checks his stocking first, a fat sock full of sugary, chocolatey allure. Greedily, he eats two Ferrero Rocher and a giant Toblerone triangle the size of his palm. He thumbs through a book of crossword puzzles and opens a Life Savers Christmas Book to espy its riches. Butterscotch. Beautiful. When the stocking's contents are stuffed for the second time today into its wool casing, it resembles the gangrenous limb of a wounded man, bulging at the top and skinny at the bottom.

Iggy Pierce's eyes then feast upon the prodigious mound of gifts stacked neatly to the left side of the tree, a magical ejaculation of boxes from the beige carpet, a pyramid of fulfilled wishes that resembles the tree in its tiered conicity. Here and there are cards fastened by Scotch Tape that he'll read begrudgingly, "out of tradition," prompted by the dictators of a falling regime.

At first light, Iggy sets to work. Like his father, he can't wrap a present worth a damn, and he knows that opening each one -- quietly and carefully picking at myriad applications of tape like a grunt in a bomb disposal unit -- to reveal its hidden joy will hence result in a feeble attempt to rewrap it, but he doesn't care. His plan is to open them again in a few hours' time fast, before his folks can see the crumpled mess of piss-poor repackaging beneath each. This makes perfect sense to the smart boy.

The first gift he opens spoils the surprise of the one three levels beneath it, but Iggy is far from upset at the revelation. It's a video game cartridge, Kung Fu, for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The second is a Transformer, the one that turns into a gun but not Megatron, the guy who's stationed on Cybertron, the one with the cyclopean eye. This is turning out to be the best day of Iggy Pierce's young existence.

A box three feet long in width and four in length is the foundation of Mount Iggy, and this is to where the lad next turns his attention. Because it's big. The biggest. That doesn't always pay off, he knows; there might be a knitted sweater and a pair of ugly slacks inside, but in life young and old size hints at grandeur. The promise of expansive greatness.

This time, Iggy rips the gift open top-wise, consequences be damned. There's something in that box akin to enlightenment, he feverishly believes, an unseen blessing of beauty, a map to Heaven, perhaps.

Beneath sheer gift paper, coiled like an extension cord, is an angry serpent. A king cobra. It welcomes its liberator no more warmly than it would its captor, lunging at Iggy's wrist and biting hard. The boy recoils in pain and terror and dumbfound indignity, clutching his wrist and holding it to his breast in an expression almost resembling pride, not pain. The snake crooks its caped head over the box then slithers to the carpeted floor like oil poured onto water. It studies its offender then strikes.