Fictional Ramblings

Chocolate Ice Cream. (genre - love; christmas) #notallareheroes

"Chocolate, please. Two scoops." The old man replied, his voice a mere whisper and could be hardly heard above the chaos of the parlour.

"Why don't you bring Mrs. Alfred along one day? She has been eating the ice cream of your choice since three decades. I think she deserves a choice as well." The shopkeeper was chatting again, his words etched with humour.

The old man grinned back, "Oh, she loves to have what I choose. And chocolate is her favourite."

The shopkeeper let out a teeny laugh and said, "Then let it be," He handed over a packet after carefully packing the two ice cream scoops. "Merry Christmas and Happy Anniversary, Mr. Alfred. Convey my greetings to Mrs. Alfred as well. And I sure would love to meet her one day."

The old man, or Alfred, as he was called, collected the packet and courteously whispered again, "Thank you. And Merry Christmas to you too."

Then he was back on the streets again, so was I. Now, I knew a lot more about the old man 1) He was Alfred. 2) He stole money to buy his wife ice cream. (What on earth?) 3) He and his wife has been having ice cream since two decades, bought from the same shop, on their Anniversary.

He was intriguing me more, each passing second.

He was walking again and I was quite sure my spying business would stop the moment he would reach his house and go in, and I would never catch the man who stole the black suited man's wallet.

But then, I didn't want to do it anymore. My thoughts had drastically changed in the ice cream parlor. More specifically, I was following now not to catch him, but to see his lovely wife. Yes, I could become quite weird sometimes. But I would love to get a husband who bought me ice cream every Anniversary, even when he didn't have money, just to make me happy. I wanted to see that extremely lucky woman.

To my surprise, the old man never entered a house, and I never met his wife. He walked straight into a graveyard, tightly holding onto his ice cream packet.

I saw the watchman of the grave stare at me creepily when I followed the old man in. By the time I spotted him, he was kneeling by a grave stone and placing the ice cream packet, now unveiled, on top of a grave.

My heart was suddenly beating faster. I walked forward, kneeled down near the neighbouring grave and tried to hear and see what was happening.

The grave stone read, "Joanna Alfred (1925 - 2003)." And for one second, air got stuck in my windpipe and I forgot to breathe.

Alfred was talking to the grave, "Happy 50th Anniversary, Anna. It has been fifty long years, baby. Can you believe it?" He was whispering and shivering at the same time. My hands had started to tremble too.

"I am pretty sure you would love this time's flavor; it is Chocolate!!" His speech had a certain joy to it and didn't sound like he was talking to a dead person. "I know you are angry at me for going selfish and buying my favourite flavour last time around, but what a wonderful way to pacify you this time, don't you think? I BOUGHT YOU CHOCLATE ICE CREAM." His voice grew louder than I expected it to, and I was merely shocked to see he had this much energy left inside him to speak for so long.

"You know, Max kind of took me to the old age home, and now I live there. Those people are really good but they said they couldn't give me money to buy ice cream. I had to really work hard to earn this time's money." He coughed once, and continued to speak."But then , its chocolate and it would make you so happy! What else do I want?" His voice grew into fits of coughing again and I could feel his hands trembling.

He grew silent for a second and when I couldn't hear his voice anymore, I tilted my head a little to see what was happening.

He had started sobbing; that kind of sob which automatically comes, no matter how hard you try to keep it in.

"Do you miss me, Anna?" He whispered again. From being cheerful and happy, he had grown sad, as if reality had finally seeped in. "Sometimes it makes me glad that you are beside God and he is taking better care of you than I ever did; but the next second, I can't help but miss you so much. I feel so alone, Anna. Can you come back?" His words had become undecipherable at this point, stuck between sobs and laughters and grins, but he continued to whisper on and on, oblivious of my presence, or the watchman's or anyone's at all.

Between sobs and weeps, he kept asking, "Will you come back, Anna? Will you?"

And I thought to myself, maybe love did exist.

I had started to cry.

December 25, 2004.

I walked into the gravestone, an ice cream packet held in my hands, and a small smile plastered onto my lips. The grave man was staring at me as creepily as he had started at me last year.

I finally have something to do on Christmas, I thought to myself and sighed.

"Happy Anniversary, Mr and Mrs. Alfred," I opened the packet and put down the ice cream scoops onto two graves - the man who changed my life's and his wife's. "Don't want to break a tradition, do you?"

I smiled the biggest smile I could possibly muster and quietly whispered to myself, to the wind, to God, and to them, "Thanks for teaching me how to love."

A/N

So this is my entry for the Christmas Contest and I know its written nowhere near to how I wanted it. This was a written in a hurry and when I have been struggling with a writer's block.

My intention might have been to make you cry or touch your heart and I don't know how much have I succeeded, but the story personally touched me when I was thinking about it.

Love does exist in various forms around us and even when we don't realize it, it continues to influence us someway or other. Also, some 'right' lies behind every wrong; we must try to find it before we jump into sudden conclusions.

That being said, Merry Christmas to all of you. I love you guys. Wattpad is awesome!

Thanks hepburnettes for this contest!

Lina!