THE NIGHT BEFORE THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

It was during the night before the night before Christmas that Sharon’s life came to an end. Not dramatically, like lives can be when they terminate, but almost silently, though the memories dragged from seventy three years of life might have been anything but silent.

“Are you awake?” whispered Andy, by her side.

She didn’t answer him, which meant that she was asleep. Or dead, though he didn’t consider that possibility. After all, he didn’t think she was anything but in perfect health. Why shouldn’t she be?

But for her the story soon ended. She flickered through her life with a mental agility that covered decades in mere moments, and then nothing.

She liked it like that, able to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time, and look down on herself lying so still and peaceful that she at least knew she was dead. Poor Andy though, she thought or if it wasn’t her thinking then something was, poor dear Andy and his endless love for her,

Then she was gone. The room, her Andy lying half awake on the bed they had shared for so many years, her nightie falling from whatever was left of her like a whisper of nothing on a summer’s night despite the season, and on her way to the stars.

No, not the stars. They were pin pricks of light all right, but didn’t have a single twinkle between them. And everything was warm. Too warm to be the space between the stars, where she believed everything must be frozen.

“At last,” boomed the voice, “I’ve waited long enough in this dreary place and you’ve taken your time!”

“Who…” She tried to ask who the voice belonged to and decided it must be the one deity she had never believed in. So God had been waiting for her, had he? But wait a moment, the voice that had boomed should be a man’s voice, and all the religions had it that God was a man, or if not an actual man, he was male even if he didn’t have a penis as such. But the booming voice was as feminine as she was.

So, “Who?” she repeated silently.

“Never mind the who or what of things,” the voice chastised her, “it’ll come to you soon enough!”

“Miss Smidgen!” exclaimed Sharon in a burst of understanding, and she knew she was right.

Miss Smidgen had been a harridan, a cruel headmistress of the Junior school she had been forced to attend even though she had reckoned that she hadn’t learned one darned thing during the four years she had gone to the place. And Miss Smidgen’s slipper! A huge flexible rubbery thing that she used on innocent bottoms, turning sweet young flesh from pale pink to rosy red, and stinging worse than a swarm of wasps.

“Stop remembering!” snapped the voice, “and you deserved every wallop of my size fourteen!”

“So are you a sort of Goddess?” asked Sharon, getting the gender right, or so she hoped.

“I was.” The voice had suddenly become sombre, thoughtful, even regretful. “I did my best to teach you brats right from wrong and in the end almost succeeded. And now I’m here waiting for you, the goody goody little Sharon Whatsername with her pink knickers and smarmy smile!”

“Don’t” mouthed Sharon, silently, “where am I?” And pink knickers?

“Not in Heaven, you can be sure of that little miss goody goody, but you’re here in the dead second.”

“What’s that?” she almost demanded, though her voice was less than a whisper.

“You’re dead, but not quite,” sniggered Miss Smidgen, “you’re in the eternity that lies between your heart stopping and your brain shrivelling to nothing! And here you will have me and my slipper to keep you company until the universe comes to a welcome end!”

“Oh,” muttered Sharon, “but if my heart’s stopped… you know what I mean… you must have lived to be really old because I was a child of six when you were a witch in her, what? Forties?”

“My heart failed me in my early fifties and I’ve been waiting since then to sort you out, little Miss Perfect!”

“Then you can’t be anything,” decided Sharon, “just a voice in my head reminding me of the sound of evil…”

“Don’t!” shrieked Miss Smidgen, “I was the best teacher that I could be! And my reward for all the efforts I put into my life and my work is to meet the sweetest and cleverest pupil in my care and be kind to her as she flickers into the nothingness of time!”

“Reward for cruelty, you mean,” breathed Sharon, suddenly feeling brave and totally fearless. After all, wasn’t her body going cold on her bed next to Andy? So what did she have to fear?

“I taught you how to love…” The voice was barely audible. Or maybe it was audible but Sharon could no longer hear it.

“Love?” scoffed Sharon, “You taught me what pain is like when you wield an oversized piece of footwear onto a young backside!!”

“I sat you next to the Birches boy,” The shape of Miss Smidgen’s words were barely visible in the black warm air of nowhere.

“Andy.. my Andy…” Sharon shivered.

“So I taught you what love truly is.” Could it be that the silent words were smiling as they filled the void of nowhere..

“And you want me to thank you?” asked Sharon.

“Your gratitude is the gift I’ve waited an eternity for…”

“You beat me more than once, Miss Cruel Smidgen!”

“I caught you touching the repulsive little boy…”

“It was Andy… and it was no thanks to you that we got married when we were old enough, and have lived in happiness together ever since then! Had our family, brought the up right though I sent them to a different school...”

Was that too much information?

But then…

“Wake up, Sharon, I can’t do this for much longer!” shouted Andy, who was leaning over her and pummelling life back into her as if there was nothing more important in the Universe than CPR.

And there wasn’t.

Miss Smidgen dissolved into the ceiling and the light was on.

“Andy?” she spluttered.

“Thank goodness…” he wept, “Oh darling, darling Shaz, I thought I’d lost you…”

“On the night before the night before Christmas?” smiled Sharon, “never in a million, million years, my sweet love, so kiss me!”

And he did. For eternity, while Miss Smidgen looked on and smiled.

© Peter Rogerson 11.11.24

xxx