The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3091 by Angharad Copyright© 2016 Angharad

---

This is a work of fiction any mention of real people, places or institutions is purely coincidental and does not imply that they are as suggested in the story.
*****

I left organising the Christmas meals to David, I just didn’t have time to spit let alone do anything more complicated. The police came and wanted to know how we’d found the two girls. I could have told Andy Bond the truth but not the other plod. I did think about suggesting they had tracking devices on their persons, but they’d have asked why I didn’t use it in the first instance when it would have saved a large amount of money and time.

In the end I told them sort of the truth. “I have such an affinity with Danielle that I can almost sense where she is.”

“So how come you couldn’t have sensed her earlier and saved us and them a lot of grief?”

“Because it doesn’t always work.”

The inspector wasn’t too impressed not that it worried me. We had the two girls back safe and sound and I hoped a potential future pain in the bum would be out of commission for some while. It would remain to be seen if she remembers when she comes out of prison, where we lived. If she turns up here, I’ll have her hanged, drawn and quartered before she can say sorry.”

The police left after four hours of questioning. I was glad to see them go. I had shopping to do—okay, the major presents were here locked in my bike shed but I had little things to get which no one could get for me because I didn’t know what they were. I almost followed the plod down the drive because I couldn’t have been more than five minutes after them.

The town centre was a nightmare and I elbowed and pushed my way through hundreds, probably thousands of mindless morons whose sole purpose appears to be to get in the way. Some do it so consistently you could almost think they’d been trained to create maximum nuisance. I mean, I was behind this one rather portly woman who stopped so regularly, it appeared she could only walk about ten feet in between stops. I know there are disabled people like that, but she had no obvious disability apart from lack of brain power. At one point I nearly pushed her over because I became that frustrated. Then I managed to edge my way round her, you know, once round her twice round the gasworks and was able to make a few yards progress before I went into a shop and bought something. When I came out she was in front of me again. I’ve had the same happen on the road when driving, usually the offender is a farmer with a long trailer, but not always—say about 0.0000000001 per cent of the time, they’re not. Occasionally the holdup is caused by cyclists but, I never say anything to them—you know what they’re like, self righteous and full of cheek.

I began to wish I’d had Simon with me to carry all my parcels, but half of them were for him, including the Superman underpants. At one point I felt someone sucking the energy out of me, when I had room to look around, I had an old chap with some form of terminal disease walking alongside me—goodness he looked ill. I let him stay up with me for a couple of minutes in the hope it would enable him to have his last Christmas, but in the end I had to walk away, he was taking too much out of me.

According to the New Testament, the guy whose birthday we’re supposed to be celebrating, used to challenge anyone who tried to take his energy—usually rewarding them with a full healing once they told him why they were doing it. He didn’t live in Twenty First century Portsmouth, where asking someone something like that would probably get you beaten up or stabbed.

In New Testament days there weren’t Middle Eastern terrorists running around killing people, just the Sicarii—terrorists who ran around killing people—oops.

The three hours I’d been shopping felt like twice that. I’d got everything I wanted and some other things as well. None of it was perishable so I left it in the car for later when I might be able to sneak it in, or sneak the wrapping paper and labels out to my workshop and bring in the finished product. I didn’t buy expensive paper as usually they simply destroyed it in milliseconds, sometimes it appeared to only take nanoseconds, the object in their grubby paws before they seemed to start opening the paper.

Because there’s so many of us, we fill a bin bag with wrapping paper if not two of them and you can’t burn it because it often doesn’t burn very easily. Of course, if someone carelessly throws some on the fire it catches light then floats up the chimney threatening to set fire to that as well. I did think of buying reusable boxes but watching the locusts destroy one or two that contained gifts, I was glad I hadn’t bothered.

Some people unwrap their gifts carefully as if they contemplated reusing the paper, which is certainly an ecological thing to do, I suppose I was nagged so much as a child to do just that, though not for ecological reasons, more one of cost control, I do carefully unwrap things and smooth out the paper then Trish comes along with a black bin bag and screw it all up and throws it into the rubbish.

It was after ten when I escaped to my workshop with half a dozen assorted rolls of giftwrap and matching tags. It was nearly midnight when I carted the last of the presents into the lounge and left them under the Christmas tree. I looked at it shimmering in the LED lights that covered it, then remembered the first one I’d had in this house and how I nearly got pine needles up my bum when I fell on top of it. Only I could do something like that.

Simon was flaked out on the sofa in the dining room when I shut the lounge door, or at least I thought he was and I was asleep before he came up to bed. We had an agreement, no expensive presents this year—I’d have been happy with a donation to buy a donkey or a goat for someone in the third world in lieu of a personal gift, as I didn’t need anything myself and I was sure he didn’t either.

Reflecting on it before I slipped into sleep, I wondered if being comparatively wealthy, meaning I could afford almost anything I need or want is less fun than being poorer and having some of my needs met at Christmas. Thankfully, I fell asleep before I reached any decision.

For a while I dreamt that my parents bought me some new clothes for Josephine, my dolly and I awoke almost crying with joy needing a wee, when I remembered he’d only returned the doll to me when my mother died and they’d never have agreed to give me a Christmas gift like that when I was young, even though I’d have loved it more than almost anything else.

As I snuggled into Simon I thought I heard someone say, ‘We do love you, you know.’ I sat up in bed and switched the light on waking Si who blinked at me asking what was happening. It disturbed me enough to keep me awake for half an hour before I drifted off again, the next thing I knew was bodies pushing into my bed all armed with icy hands and feet and they giggled. Now I knew we were doomed.