THE PERFECT CHRISTMAS STORY

Christmas day story

Dick Charlesbury sat in front of his typewriter and frowned to himself. It was Christmas day and he wanted to write the ultimate Christmas story, but he was stumped for ideas. On the rug by his rather inadequate fire sat Timkins his cat, staring at him diffidently.

Dick Charlesbury snorted.

It wasn’t that he liked Christmas much. In fact, if he asked himself to peer deeply into his own mind he would realise that he hated it. He abhorred the Santa Claus nonsense, parents the land over spending more than they could afford on rubbishy toys and then making out that a fat man who knew how to defy gravity had delivered them. And down a sooty chimney at that!

Then there was the virgin birth stuff. No such thing ever happened and the ancients had pinched the idea from any one of the ancient Pagan religions that competed with a crucified hippie for the faith of the world, and added it as a back-story for the man they loved because normal origins didn’t seem right for him, some how.

So deep down he didn’t like Christmas, but he was a writer and writers just had to be jolly and contribute to the evermore worldly story of the day.

There was a rattle on his door knocker and spirited voices started singing about first Noels, whatever they may be, and then another knock whilst the singing grew louder. And here was he trying his damnedest to create a piece of joy on paper, with words. He clucked to himself and stood up, went to the door.

Half a dozen faces looked at him expectantly and he tut-tutted. He’d teach them a few truths before he let them go, let them know what it cost him when silly little tuneless choirs interrupted his deepest concentration whilst he was writing his story for them. Yes: for them. He didn’t write for himself, for goodness sake, did he? Of course he wrote for them!

“Do you know what you are?” he shouted in between third and fourth verses, “you’re a load of interfering prats who have stopped me writing the most beautiful Christmas story that you’ll never read because you’ve suffocated it before it was born!”

The small choir of scarf and hatted children looked sadly at him and a pretty girl at the front started crying.

“That’s it,” he spat at her so that her tears increased in volume, “cry all you like, it’s only Christmas!”

And he slammed the door until it rattled and snorted his way back to his typewriter.

“Damned noisy cheek!” he scowled, and slid a fresh sheet of paper between the rollers before winding it on.

“Now for the most perfect Christmas story, the one that will have the world weeping and gnashing their teeth because I thought of it first,” he said, “ignoramuses, the lot of them!”

He glowered at the machine before launching a few well chose words at it. Once upon a time he typed, and the front door was knocked again.

“If it’s those tuneless b******s back I’ll give them more than a piece of my mind!” he raged, and stomped to the door, opened it, and glowered, careless of who might be there.

It was a jolly-faced man in a red suit and with an obviously fake white beard and allied whiskers.

“Well?” he demanded.

“Ho ho ho,” began the red-coated man, “I’m collecting on behalf of the poor souls who have nothing, who have been uprooted in their own countries and suffered huge indignities and dangers as they wandered across an unsympathetic world until they found themselves half-drowned on our doorstep,”

This infuriated him. What on Earth had refugees of any flavour got to do with him? Why was this fat idiot spouting his nonsense on his own doorstep, and on Christmas day? Didn’t he know what day it was and, more importantly, whose work he was interrupting?

“Tell them to go back to where they friggin’ belong, to fight their own battles on their own streets, because I want to write a story that will move the whole of mankind to tears at Christmas, and how can I do that with interruptions like this getting in the way?”

And he slammed the door and slouched back to his typewriter.

Someone had added to his four words! Yet there was nobody else in the house, for he lived on his own (through personal choice, which had involved him getting a wife to divorce him and his oldest friend to seek comradeship elsewhere), so there was nobody to touch his precious typewriter.

But it quite clearly said Once upon a time there wjkgjk.yucnmjkh

He tore the paper from the machine and inserted a second sheet and scowled at the cat.

“Did you do that?” he asked.

But the cat knew better than to reply.

And there was yet another knock on the door.

He opened the door and a very obviously pregnant young woman was standing there, desperation on her face and in her eyes, the very image of what Christmas Day shouldn’t be.

“Help me,” she said in the veriest whisper, “please help me, I’m so cold, and it hurts…”

And she slowly slipped to the ground clutching her stomach and pale as the snow that should have fallen that season, but hadn’t.

“Go away!” he snarled, and slammed the door.

“Of all the bloody cheek,” he grunted to himself, “interruption after interruption and I’ve not even started writing the perfect Christmas story, the one that will bring me, along with fame, a great deal of fortune! Oh yes it will, when I use my command of the written word to evoke tears from the eyes of the proletariat and joy in the hearts of the young.”

He sat again at his typewriter and frowned. Far off, at another door down the street, The First Noel whispered towards him and entered the darkest recesses of his brain, and he wished that he’d chucked a bucket of water over the brats. That would have given the silly girl a reason to cry, wouldn’t it? Then he heard the faintest possible ho ho ho from two doors down and closer, much closer, the sudden sound of a baby crying.

What was that? A baby at the door? His door? Impossible!

He went one more time to see who could possibly be whimpering and disturbing his concentration.

Ha! He had his perfect Christmas story!

The mother was dead, and so, he thought, was the baby, on his own doorstep and on Christmas day, and far away like the sound of angels a whisper on the wind sang away in a manger...

Back at his typewriter he slowly typed the end as Timkins retched and vomited on the rug…

© Peter Rogerson 25.12.20