December 32

flash fiction

 

December 32

By

Dick Noble

 

 

 

It was one of those spontaneous conversations that men have while waiting for something to happen. The words just tumble out like spilt popcorn two guys sitting in a duck blind waiting for the evening flight to start, a father and son sharing time.

“I ‘m never going to die at Christmas”

 

“What did you say Dad?” asked the son sipping his coffee.

 

“I won’t die at Christmas, I just won’t do it.”

 

“That is a helluva thing to say. Whadda ya mean? Is there something that you have not been telling me?”

 

“No, nothing like that son, I am as healthy as a horse. But your grandfather died on Boxing Day, you were too young to remember that, and your great grandfather, my grandfather, died on December 23. It was what I remembered about Christmas for years.  The black and grey crepe bunting draped among the red ribbons and green holly. Every year those memories came back and I had a hard time not spoiling Christmas for everyone.”

 

“I always wondered why you were a little grumpy at Christmas”

 

“Yup I was.  But no matter how badly I am injured or what disease may be eating my body I will not die on Christmas or anywhere near there. Maybe January would be okay.  Yeah that would be fine. So whatever you do don’t pull the plug on me until January regardless of pain or what the doctors tell you.

 

“Geez Dad that is pretty morbid.”

 

“Fact of life son, fact of life. Here come the ducks, let’s take’em”

 

There were twenty more years of duck hunting with his son and later grandson before the leukemia arrived

 

While a chemical stew kept his body alive and the pain low enough to tolerate, he floated in an out of consciousness. Time was vague with one dreamy dream moment melting into another. Not here, not there.

He remembered his son visiting him in a Santa suit and his wife wearing her Christmas dress but he could not remember if that was yesterday, last week or last month. He wanted to let go but this was not the time, not yet.

He always asked his son the same question “What day is it and his son always answered December 31 Dad.

 

He smiled at that and drifted back into his chemical dreams. Tomorrow, his time was tomorrow.

It had been December 31 every day for five years.

 

 

End

Author's Note

nothing is sacred

Reviews

[mickeroo]

The first thing I noticed was the title (obviously). It reminds me of the first line of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and is very intriguing.
I’m going to try to stick to grammar (which means I’m going to be mostly pointing out mistakes). When there’s dialogue though, for the most part, I’m going to leave it be. People don’t speak with perfect grammar.
In the second line, there should be a comma after popcorn to create a slight pause. In fact, there are a few places where you could put commas to create pauses, especially in dialogue.
First line of dialogue should be I’m not I ‘m
With the characters saying things like “helluva” and “whadda”, it seems strange that they don’t use contractions. They don’t have to, but I feel like it should be “That’s a helluva thing to say.” It seems more in line with the non-formal way that they’re otherwise speaking.
Great-grandfather should be hyphenated.
You left off periods on the ends of several sentences. I counted at least four.
At the end of the penultimate paragraph, you need more punctuation. … same question, “What day is it?” and his son always answered, “December 31st, Dad.”