A Fantasy Story
Password Protection
Gary was a four time loser. He had lost his job, his wife, his friends and his house. He contemplated his surroundings in the doorway of a high street shop of Ladies underwear because it was the only shop that had a door away from the pavement area. His comforts were a flask of Chicken soup supplied by the Salvation Army who were doing the rounds looking for lost souls. Not only had he been supplied with nourishment, but they played a selection of carols that he’d remembered from his youth as he had been a member of Sunday school. His parents had insisted he should attend as it would broaden his horizons.
He looked around the two windows either side of him as he surveyed the window’s display of scantily designed versions of knickers and bra’s and the shop’s lighting brightly lit the displays and stopped him from his much needed sleep. He tried to find comfort on three sheets of cardboard he used as a groundsheet against the coldness of the ground but they were inadequate.
He was pleased with the sleeping bag that someone had given him but still the ground temperature was penetrating through the fibres of the specially woven cloth. At midnight the lights of the shop went out and Gary started to build his fortress of cardboard at the entrance. He noticed there were no stars showing and the night seemed blacker than normal. Suddenly the wind had picked up and heavy snow began to fall and soon a carpet of snow lay and crystallised itself with the coldness of the wind. Gary stepped over his barricade of cardboard and the snow crunched beneath his feet. There was a strange eerie feel in the air and it was very quiet. It was not a normal situation. There was a blinding flash and a thunderous explosion as Gary’s eyes were fixed in the glare of something he just couldn’t believe. Was this a visitation by God or was it the beginning of the end of the world?
Trying to come to terms with what was happening was probably Gary’s downfall in the first place as he witnessed first hand the events that began when a large figure of a man sporting a very long white beard and dressed in a red robe and hood stepped down from a sledge with eight reindeer that somehow hovered about a foot off the ground. The man greeted Gary by name.
He stared at this figure, fighting back fear as he had been told when he was a child that there no such person as Santa Claus, he was a myth of someone’s imagination. There was no snow falling as Gary soon realized that a giant bubble had formed itself round where he was standing with his visitor.
The man said ‘Would you like to come with me, Gary?’ Gary half turned and looked at his shop door space. There was somebody else climbing into his sleeping bag. Gary shivered and said ‘Yes.’ It wasn’t the fact that someone else had taken over his sleeping space, it was more than that. He wanted to know if what was happening turned out to be true. After all, his attitude to Christmas had been Scrooge like and he had denied his wife and children many of the joys of Christmas like receiving gifts or the right to enjoy the Christmas spirit since his days were shattered by his parents telling him that there was no such person as Father Christmas. Gary hadn’t realized the date was the 24th December, Christmas eve. The figure in the red robe and hood stepped up on the sledge and beckoned him with outstretched hand and Gary stepped aboard the sledge.
* * *
Gary awoke suddenly and found himself sitting at his desk in front of his computer at work and found himself watching the pulse of the mouse’s arrow blinking, waiting for him to enter his password to protect his computer content from being read as he was the anti Christmas Campaigner and had written a top secret letter about Christmas and the myth of Father Christmas. Gary was going to send his letter to the North Pole and Christmas as everyone in the Christian world would cease to be.
No one would be praising God and there would be no Easter to mark the birth of Christ, and it would mean he wouldn’t be born as Gary Ploughman, he would be someone else and what he had experienced might happen to him should he go ahead with his letter.
He hesitated and he gazed at the glass bauble that someone had unthinkingly placed on his desk. It was a distraction and he couldn’t tear his eyes away from this round glass object with Father Christmas and sledge and reindeer and a figure of someone else sitting by his side inside the globe. Gary picked up the globe and saw himself; he was waving. Gary instinctively waved back. The shock of seeing himself made him drop the globe and it rolled harmlessly across the office floor. It was picked up by one of the men who probably worked on another floor in the building. Gary didn’t know him. The man replaced it on his desk and said, ‘Wonderful things these, you give them a shake and it snows! I’m Father Christmas this year.’ The man sporting a white beard dressed in a red robe and hood went out of the office. Gary chased after him and met somebody else coming the other way.
Gary said, ‘Did you see someone dressed as Father Christmas come this way.’
‘No Gary! Sorry no one has passed me!’ Gary walked back to his desk in a daze.
He suddenly remembered the office party when drink got the better of him and he fell asleep. This was as far as his memory stretched. The computer mouse blinked incessantly as he erased the letter and pressed the “ENTER” button and gave his password protection on a file with nothing written in it. The password was “Father Christmas.”