The Christmas Night

Lieutenant Dave was a man of forty nine, twenty years ago. Knowing the brutal fact that he had lost his youth and had spent his youth doing terrible things, he could take the revenge on the young men training under him. These young men had just been married or were yet to be .Counting the number of men the lieutenant killed were like counting the number of grey hair on his head (quite impossible!). Even though he did not have any cruel intentions, he just pushed them beyond the limits that they snapped like a stick in the end.

                       Twenty years later, he lives a man alone in a green walled house with nothing but memories to live with. His house was so like him, so old. House had well trimmed ivy creeping along the entrance arch. Everyone kept changing with time but this man never did, well some strange lines did appear on his forehead. He remained the man who did not like young men and women living their life to the fullest, it was quite natural.

           It was Christmas time, in fact it was Christmas day. He was not quarter as happy as the others were, it was just a normal day except Miss Goodwyn had baked him a cake. The sun went down and the moon came out, he slipped into his night wear, turned out the light and got into his bed. Different scenes.. a lady waits for someone...a dead body lies under a familiar bridge... an old lady curses....gunfire.. blank. He wakes up to find it wasn't morning yet, he went out of his room. Suddenly the radio turns on and “ Joy to the world “ starts playing, he decides to go downstairs to check . He starts stepping down the subtly spiral staircase which starts from his room and leads to his kitchen. As he is a very old man it takes him quite a lot of effort to climb down one step.

He realized that that he had been climbing down the stairs for a long time.At last when he reached the bottom of the flight, the kitchen where the stairs were supposed to lead to suddenly turned into the room where the stairs lead down to. It was like a continuous flight of stairs. It was never ending, it was hell. He tried climbing down fast, he stopped for a while thinking that he was hallucinating, but whatever he did he ended up in his room. He decided to climb up and finally reached the kitchen. By the time he reached he was sweating and was terrified, something is definitely wrong with the house, he thought. He rushed to where the radio is and turns it off... and suddenly the whole house started shake the television fell off the stand and the cutlery from the shelf fell on the floor, random shadows started to appear. He burst out crying letting go of years of repressed feelings, realization dawned upon him making him feel guilty for all the horrible deeds he had done. When the shaking stopped he rushed to get the house key, as he opened the cupboard a corpse of a lady fell out of it. He grabbed the key and headed toward the entrance. He ran across to Miss Goodwyn’s house, as he rang the bell he turned around to see his house in flames. Soon she opened the door and found him terrified, he yelled “look fire!”  And he turned and saw his house perfectly fine. He told her that the house was shaking and everything fell down, that a corpse fell out of his cupboard. She accompanied him to the house, nothing seemed out of normal. He suddenly shook her and said “It is them! They are back to take revenge! Please help me! “ . She knew right away what he needed, leaving her family on Christmas night; she drove him to a friend of hers who was a psychiatrist.  After the session, officially on a Christmas night Lieutenant Dave was declared mentally ill.

                 Years later after he was completely cured we met during Christmas time; he sat right beside me on an eight hour flight. When I told him I was a writer he told me that he wanted me to write his story somewhere, so he told me his story. We parted exchanging phone numbers and that Christmas night he was found dead on his bed. It wasn't natural death; the forensic officers couldn't find even a bizarre reason to reason out his death. They said it was like someone sucked the soul right out of him.