All I Want For Christmas
By
John Porter
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(One short story in a series of ten by the same author)
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SMASHWORDS EDITION
Published by
John Porter at Smashwords
All I Want For Christmas
Copyright © 2012 John Porter
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
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Introduction
Christmas – a time for the kids to have fun, play with their friends, open presents and eat too much. A time too, for parents to pretend that the gifts their children wrapped with sticky, grubby hands are exactly what Mummy and Daddy wanted.
It’s also a time to consider those less fortunate, and when June decides to give Mr Blake a gift and a food hamper, things in her household begin to go from bad to worse...
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All I Want For Christmas
In a semi-detached, hedge-guarded, middle-class home on the slightly more affluent outskirts of the great conurbation that surrounds the nation’s capital in England’s south east, preparations were underway for what, to the children, was the single greatest event of the year.
To June and Wilson, their parents, the time was fast approaching when they could relax a little after the mad rush to find last minute gifts for obscure relatives and near neighbours; the last of the Christmas cards had already plopped into the letterbox at the end of the road.
The decorations had been up for over two weeks already, mainly to stop the two children nagging about all the tinsel and baubles in their friends’ homes. Wilson had carted home a prickly Christmas tree slightly taller than himself, and was still suffering from the itchy rash it had caused on his arms.
Then he had foundered around outside in sub-zero conditions through the thick snow for well over two hours on the front lawn, as his ten-year-old son Luke instructed him on the best location for a heavy plywood sleigh filled with heavy plywood presents, being pulled by three heavy plywood reindeer and driven by an overweight cut-out Santa.
His daughter Shanti, two years her brother’s junior, had remained indoors with June, trimming the tree with dozens of glass balls and fairy lights, whilst he and his son had risked frostbite to erect the seasonal outdoor display, even though it was a concession to the mother and daughter that the monstrosity was being set up at all.
They had christened their girl Shanti in a fit of wishful thinking. It meant ‘the tranquil one’, but the screams and tantrums that accompanied any refusal to conform to her wishes were anything but tranquil. Wilson was usually able to cope, but when, as in this case, his daughter was backed up by her mother, the situation became untenable, and he had conceded to saw out the Santa sleigh for the kids to paint.
The fact that it resembled more a black-stained coal-truck filled with geometric lumps of coal, being tugged along by three milking cows in pyjamas, was of little interest to him. At least the bloody thing was up, and he’d get some peace on earth.
He had originally made four reindeer, but for some reason Shanti had decided to cover one of them with a sausage design, and the resulting image was of a milking cow covered in realistically painted dog turds. He had drawn the line at that, and promised to put the forth animal in place when it had been repainted, but Shanti had thankfully lost interest in the project by that time and just wanted to see the sleigh in place. So now it was.
Santa sat, inexplicably in a green and pink suit, with a vaguely blue face, like some fat, partly asphyxiated pervert. Saint Nick surveyed his cow’s pyjamas with an apparently contented, if somewhat manic grin on one side of his face, and what appeared to be blood running from the corner of his scowling mouth on the side that was seen from the road.
Wilson and Luke stood back and studied their handiwork – the son with great pride, and the father with an equal amount of embarrassment as he spotted several curtains move on the other side of the street, as the neighbours surveyed his efforts. He led his son inside and put the kettle on for a cup of coffee.
The payoff for having to make Santa and his sleigh had been that the kids would have to stop nagging him to get them a dog for Christmas. He didn’t like dogs much – never had done – he’d been bitten by a Chihuahua when he was in his teens.
Wilson had had a gardening job in the school holidays and one afternoon when he knocked on the door to ask for his pay, the owner’s tiny pet had launched itself from the top step and landed with its fangs in his scrotum, where it had dangled for a few moments before dropping to the ground and running off. His employer had apologised and paid him what he was due for his four hours work, but he had never returned, and had never been keen on dogs since.
The memory of it still caused his testicles to contract in fear whenever he saw even a sausage dog or a toy poodle.
Luke and his sister had stopped asking for a dog, but had cunningly converted their demand to a far more general generic request, and the words ‘Please Daddy, can we have a pet? Please Daddy. It’s Christmas’ had continued to ring in his ears, until he’d finally given up and promised them that if they shut up he would buy them a pet.
They had agreed, but had been most disappointed when they found he had decided on a goldfish. He pointed out to them that a deal was a deal, and they had to be content and shut up. At last they had stopped pestering, and later that day they all drove the few streets to the pet shop in the centre of town to choose the newest addition to the family.