The Night Before the Christmas Before I Was Married & Other Festive Tales Read Free Page B

employer. You will be hearing from us in due course.

    A long time later, many months after I got out of the hospital my wife and I returned to the old house. It was November, maybe early December. I’d grown used to wearing the patch over my eye. We stood, the cold biting at us, my arm around her as she snuggled in for warmth and we looked at the house.

    After a couple of minutes my wife said, ‘Come on darling, it’s freezing. Can we go now?’

    I smiled and nodded, kissed her brow and a kid ran out of the open garage wrapped up and ready for the cold. He ran past us, did a double take and stopped.    

    ‘Mister,’ he said, staring at me wide-eyed. ‘Are you a pirate?’

    I laughed and shook my head.

    ‘Wh-?’ he began but the sentence stalled.

    ‘You have to be a good boy at Christmas time,’ I said, leaning in close to impart secret knowledge to him. ‘I was a bad boy and Rudolph did this to me with his antlers…’

    I lifted the patch. The kid screamed and ran. To destroy the good name of Rudolph was one of the things I enjoyed most.

    My wife and I turned our backs on the incident at number 18 and went to find a bar we used to drink in.

Widow Twanky's Revenge
    C hristmas wasn’t the best time of year for me. I don’t mean I’d be on the phone to the Samaritans, but after what happened I always approached the season with a sense of unease. Perhaps that’s why I’d started with Meals on Wheels, to face my fears in a round about sort of way. I’d been delivering for around five years, ever since my Gran became ill and I had to look after her. People didn’t realise the importance of Meals on Wheels, especially at this time of year its the lifeline to those who otherwise wouldn’t be able to cook a decent meal for themselves. To be honest, I didn’t ever think I would stop delivering until I was the one who needed food delivering to me. Last Christmas changed all that. Really stopped me in my tracks. For good this time.

    You may say I’m callous, heartless, uncaring, believe me I’ve heard it all before. I couldn’t tell anyone about it for months but you can’t keep it inside forever so I might as well tell you the whole sordid story from beginning to end. I’m not saying you’ll sympathise, you probably won’t but at least it might go some way to help you understand. I don’t know.

    It all began in early November, I had my usual round on the Palace Estate but one of my colleagues, George, had broken his leg and wouldn’t be back until after Christmas. As he was a good friend I offered to do his round for him. At the time it seemed easy, so very easy, just an extra quarter of an hour a day to help those less fortunate than myself.

    Mr and Mrs Moon were always first on my round, closest to the depot and some of the nicest people it has ever been my privilege to meet. Then Mrs Jones followed by Mr Balofski, onwards and northwards until the end of my route at Mrs Hughes house. This time, however, I continued on through Mount Grove to take on four more deliveries culminating in a drop in Battlefield Road at Mr Grimwald’s house.

    I remember there was a cold but deliberate breeze throwing the remnants of the autumn leaves around the front garden of the house. It stood around twenty metres back from the road, a respectable, detached, Victorian-looking house, seeming much too big for a solitary old man in the twilight of his life. The windows all glittered with condensation and somewhere high above me I thought I saw the twitching of curtains.

    The house must have see more generations pass through it that I cared to imagine. Although from a distance the appearance was semi-Victorian, the closer you came to the house, the older the brickwork seemed to be. As I opened the gate to the garden goose bumps rose on my arms and neck despite the thick layers I was wearing. The house itself was symmetrical with a single door in the centre flanked on each side by a bay window. This in turn was