Fri 26 Dec 2008
Submitted by YOUR NEW REALITY
A fresh piece of short fiction, A Christmas Story, is up here for you to read.
An excerpt :
He walked down the stairs, the rest of the house below sat quiet and still. The only noise in the whole house was the steady sound of his son slowly tearing long strips of paper, in his bedroom, upstairs.
It was dark in the lounge room. He moved through the flickering shadows cast by the bright lights outside. Pink, yellow, blue and green lights glowed across the street. It was the neon-drenched Christmas display covering most of his neighbour’s house that had drawn a steady stream of family-packed cars every night for two weeks. Most had stopped to admire his handiwork for a few minutes, but there were many who’d parked their cars and walked into his yard to really explore his Christmas creation. His neighbour had greeted them all, and welcomed them.
He knew his neighbour wouldn’t be able to pay the astonishing electricity bill for this year’s festival of Christmas lights, when it thudded into his mailbox in February, because he knew his neighbour wouldn’t be there to get it. His neighbour had already packed up the larger pieces of furniture and valuables and moved them elsewhere, so when the bailiffs turned up and let themselves in one day to tally up the assets, they’d find nothing of any real value, all of it long gone.
He stood at the bay window, and noticed for the first time, of the many nights he’d stood there, beyond midnight, staring at the lights, just how much the softly-blinding illumination lit up the surrounding houses, his own house, his front lawn. It touched everything around it in the dark, and made it glow with colours. The Christmas illumination that his neighbour had sometimes worked through the night to complete was something of rare beauty, a piece of temporary public art, and he wished he spent more time enjoying it than resenting it because his own home Christmas decoration attempts seemed so futile in comparison.
The thousands of dollars of lights and waving, smiling dioramas and glowing reindeer had cleaned out his neighbour’s bank account and credit cards over three afternoons of madness in late October. Making something beautiful, if only for a few weeks, had become an obsession for him…
It was only now, tonight, that he realized his neighbour hadn’t gone mad, that he had given the people of this devastated street something beautiful, a flood of light, a place to stand and be awed in the dark by dizzying, dazzling colours. It was a gift to the friends and neighbours that remained, and something free and wonderful for families from across the city to come and see, experience, share.
When other fathers who visited asked how much it all cost, his neighbour had always grinned and declared, “Nothing!”
His neighbour had nothing left, so he had nothing left to lose.
He wondered, briefly, how long it would be before his family joined the exodus from the neighbourhood. Another month or two, maybe less.
From upstairs, the sound of ripping paper ceased. His son would soon be asleep.
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