THE LAST YEAR
She thinks that now she understands why, of all the ways to enter a house surreptitiously in the dead of night, her family opted for the chimney.
It’s not for any complicated reasons, and not for any to do with physics or angles. No, Anna muses as she shuffles down the aforementioned structure. Her family chose the chimney because no one else did. Therefore, who’s to expect them?
Even so, Anna thinks frustratedly as she struggles her way down, aren’t there some other unpredictable entrances to a house? Ones that aren’t lacking in space and don’t have gravity as a fatal factor?
The bag is stuck, caught between the two walls above her. Anna scowls and tugs at it. At its refusal to budge, her frown deepens. “Déjà vu, anyone?” she growls. Gathering her strength, she gives it one more pull, and thankfully, it does move, but not so thankfully, it moves onto her.
Clearly, my family could not think of an entrance that did not have gravity as a fatal factor, Anna answers her own question as the sack makes contact with her chest and both of them are sent plummeting downwards. She lands heavily in the fireplace, the wind being blown out of her with a heavy oomph, and the sack follows suit, hitting her straight in the gut.
“Ouch,” Anna groans, lying flat on her back and squeezing her eyes shut in an attempt to dispel the stars swimming in her vision.
“Are you alright?”
Kind features and blonde hair come into her line of vision, and even lying down and observing him the wrong way up Anna can recognise him. She sits up quickly, ignoring how dizzy it makes her. “Jonathan,” she breathes.
“Hello, Anna,” he replies, and now, when she can see him a little better, she can make out the hint of something in his eyes. Maybe sadness. She isn’t sure.
“Hi,” she chokes out. They stay like that for a moment, Jonathan standing over her while she sits and thinks about how grown-up he looks, then he shakes his head, as though jolting himself out of a trance, and offers her his hand.
Anna stares at it for a second, then slowly reaches out her own to take it, letting him pull her up to his height.
“Hi,” she repeats quietly, eyes are still the same.
“I, uh...I haven’t seen you in a while,” he says, shifting a little, and suddenly Anna sees a younger Jonathan, twenty-five and kneeling over his brother’s broken body in the snow.
Just go!
“Are you okay?” He’s a little closer now, a concerned expression on his face, and before she knows she’s doing it, Anna takes a small step away from him, not missing the hurt that blooms in his eyes when she does so.
“Fine,” she breathes out, then clears her throat. “I’m fine.” There’s a long silence. She wonders how they got here, two strangers who love each other, one who gets older and one who doesn’t. “How’s Cassie?” Anna asks eventually, her tone quiet.
Jonathan’s eyes widen. “You know about Cassie?”
“I, um, I mean – yes,” Anna fumbles. “Did you two, you know...” she trails off when her eyes land on a framed photograph on the mantelpiece that answers the question she couldn’t finish.
“She looks beautiful,” she says, voice soft. Jonathan follows her line of sight to the photo, and understanding seeps onto his face as the two of them survey a younger Cassie and Jonathan, beaming at each other in wedding attire.
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."
