THE FIRST YEAR
She has never understood why, of all the ways to enter a house surreptitiously in the dead of night, her family opted for the chimney.
The chimney.
Most houses don’t even have a chimney.
It’s not that she’s particularly...large, or even slightly large, but it’s not exactly a pleasant way to spend one’s Christmas Eve, shuffling through people’s chimneys like a goddamn caterpillar.
Or something.
“Shit,” she hisses when a thread of the old sack gripped in her right hand gets caught on a brick. She tugs at it, but to no avail. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she growls, pulling a little harder. “I hate everything,” she mumbles when it doesn’t budge.
Anna dislikes being stuck three-quarters of the way down a chimney. She really does. Not to mention, she’s still going round North America, and there’s, like, three continents still to get through in about as many hours.
Summoning up all the strength she has left, she gives the bag a final heave, and almost sighs in relief when it comes free – only to let out a screech when she realises – a little late – that it will come crashing down on her.
It does. Both her and the bag end up in the fireplace. Again.
“You’d think this would get a little easier after forty-one millionth time,” she moans in despair, standing up and rubbing her backside with a wince.
“Hello?”
“Oh, damn,” Anna whispers, then clamps a hand over her own mouth when she realises that speaking isn’t going to help her chances of getting out of this unscathed and unnoticed.
“Is anyone there?” The voice belongs, presumably, to a male (or a female with very strangely developed vocal chords), and Anna can catch the slightest quiver in it. She backs away from the source of it instinctively, only to end up walking straight into a cabinet with a lot of knobs that really aren’t helping with the sore state of her butt. “Ow,” she squeaks. “I mean – oh shit, oh shit – ” Several things start clanging to the ground around her, and she remembers that she has a sack slung over her shoulder. Anna settles for squeezing her eyes shut and staying very still until the noise recedes.
When she opens them, a tall, broad-shouldered blonde towers over her, armed with what looks like a baseball bat gripped in both hands. Anna tries to make out his features in the soft darkness, but to no avail.
Instead, she manages to choke out a feeble: “Please don’t knock me out.”
The boy studies her for a few moments more, still poised to strike, before hesitantly lowering the bat. She can just catch sight of his eyes, narrowed and dark with caution.
“You have one minute before I call the police,” he announces, baseball bat still by his side and very much in the picture.
“Uh, I’m not breaking into your house! Or anything! I swear!” she blurts out. “Well, I kind of am – but not for anything bad! Like, I’m not stealing anything or – ”
“Oh, yeah?” he raises an eyebrow, and nods towards the rather large and admittedly suspicious looking bag slung over her shoulder. “What’s that, then?”
YOU ARE READING
Twelve Ways To Spend One's Christmas Eve
Short Story"Anna dislikes being stuck three-quarters of the way down a chimney. She really does. Not to mention, she's still going round North America, and there's, like, three continents still to get through in about as many hours."
