The Olivia Tremor Control - Christmas With William S

(The Olivia Tremor Control - Christmas With William S),
"The snow came down sideways on Ruston Avenue, and William hadn't left his apartment in three days. The walls were covered — not in wallpaper, but in tape loops. Actual magnetic tape, pinned in spirals and figure-eights, catching the colored light from a strand of Christmas bulbs he'd draped over his reel-to-reel.
It was Christmas Eve, and someone was knocking.
He opened the door to find a cardboard box on the welcome mat. No name, no return address — just a sticker of a sun with too many rays. Inside: a toy kaleidoscope, a cassette labeled Side C, and a note in handwriting he almost recognized.
"Play it backward at half speed. Merry Christmas. — O.T.C."
William threaded the tape into his machine. At half speed and reversed, it wasn't music exactly. It was the sound of a room — chairs creaking, someone humming off-key, glasses clinking. A party he'd never attended but somehow remembered. Underneath it all, a melody surfaced like something rising through water, simple and warm and slightly wrong, the way a dream version of a carol might sound.
He held the kaleidoscope to his eye and pointed it at the Christmas lights. The fractured colors multiplied into a cathedral of geometry — hexagons nesting inside hexagons, shifting with each turn.
The tape clicked to silence. The snow kept falling. William sat on the floor among his loops and splices and smiled for the first time in a week. Whatever the message was, he understood it the way you understand weather — not with your mind, but with your skin.
He rewound the tape. He played it again."