Wintertide Surprise

Fantasy Short Story

“Wintertide Surprise” copyright 2007 by Ann Hasseler De Carrasco, first published in Reflections Edge as the featured story for December. Edited by Sharon Dodge. All rights reserved. 

“Wintertide Surprise” copyright 2014 by A. H. De Carrasco on Wattpad.com All rights reserved. 

Cover photo stock, depositphotos.com; artist: majcot

Wintertide Surprise

There wasn’t much to be done with it. It was supposed to arrive by five p.m. so Gary said, but here it be half past eight and every post office or drop off station was closed.

“Dear gods, Gary, why’d you agree to a five p.m. delivery?” Mrs. Ethel Finn Porter thought out loud. The matronly woman who still had a fire in her eye, a lightness to her step, and a quick wit that fed her fast tongue, spoke with uncharacteristic panic. But it was a muted panic--the edge to it had softened since six thirty. Now it was just a dull throb of a fear--a worry--an inevitability. What would they do if the package didn’t arrive tonight?

It is impossible, she realized. There’s no way. It being the holiday season and all. Ugh. What will the kids say?

“You know you shouldn’t have let Gary handle this,” her other self disparaged. Ethel’s twin companion, EthelOS, shook her gray head with sympathetic regret while wiping water-wrinkled hands on her holiday apron. “The grandchildren will be devastated. And you know nothing is coming tomorrow, either. After all, that’s Wintertide Eve.”

Ethel fairly whimpered to herself as she opened the front door for the twentieth time in that many minutes and poked her head out, her pert nose piercing the motionless presence of icy air and catching a subtle whiff of apple cider from the fireplace logs of neighbor Talbot’s homestead across the way. Talbot was just staggering up to his door and now turned haphazardly, pitching to the left to shout out for Mrs. Talbot to open the door. “Eight o’clock indeed?” the missus shrieked from the windowsill above him.

Indeed. “Bollocks.” Ethel muttered and slammed the door.

*****

“Hum-dee-doo, it is me,” Gary Finn Porter sang softly to himself as he walked back to his homestead after a night’s jaunt from his office and a detour to the town’s finest liquor-soaked establishment. Ah! Indeed. He was fairly wet from the last round of the honey wheat lovelies. Inspecting his soaked shirtfront, he grimaced over how he could not close his jacket for his beer-loving belly barred the buttons’ path. He lifted his hand from his round stomach, sniffed and rubbed his red nose. “Ah! These wet clothes. I fear a bit o’ the cold coming on, I think,” he whispered conspiratorially to his other self. As he had fairly imagined, his other self was having a go at the snow drifts and kicking up the white stuff. Gary shivered as a blast of icy pellets fell over him. “Mind yourself,” Gary warned. 

His threatening tone was in jest. He did not mind GaryOS’s antics in the least. In fact, he thoroughly enjoyed his other self--his better self as some might venture to mutter, thinking his ears as bad as his eyesight. His other self kept him young, reminded him of the joys in life, and also reminded him of what he shouldn’t do. Gary looked at his mirror image’s belly and down to his own unbuttoned jacket and beer-stained paunch. Like drink too much. Ah! He smelled like a brewery. He could hear Ethel say it as if she were in front of him. Best to be on his very best behavior, and he warned his other self the same. The gods only knew what his dear missus would do if the two of them dripped slush over the polished wood floor.

“Hmmm, but a breath away from my dear moonfaced Ethel,” he sighed. “Lovely, lovely as the day I first mooned her.” He snorted at the thought--he a drunken sot even then. He fancied her boot mark was still imprinted on his rump, should be for how many a time she had repeated the action, reinforcing its lithographical outline.