The Twelfth Day - a short story
Image description: a christmas present tied with red wool on top of pine branches and a dark wooden table
This is my short story, The Twelfth Day, which was shortlisted and originally published by the Australian Writer’s Center here.
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The Twelfth Day, a short story by Liana Black
TThe drumming began, drilling into my skull one rom-pom-pom at a time. Orange sunlight poured through the venetian blinds of my bedroom window, the stench of manure and pond scum curdling in the thick Brisbane, December air.
What is it today?
My pyjamas clung to my clammy body as I peeled myself from the sweat-pooled bedsheets and edged toward the window. Fingers shaking, I lifted a slat in the blinds and closed one eye to focus my vision through the small gap.
The moo of a dairy cow bellowed. Dozens of white wings flapped with fright.
When will this end? How will it end?
“Carol!” A man’s voice cried out, loud enough to wake the neighbourhood—just in case the drumming drummers or the mooing cows or the squawking flock of feathered foe hadn’t pulled them from their holiday slumbers already. “Merry Christmas Eve, my love!”
My body hit the floor.
I crawled to my bedside table and reached for my phone.
“Triple Zero – Police. What’s your emergency?” The operator’s calm tone was angelic amidst the farmyard insanity roaring outside my suburban home.
“I’m being stalked. He’s outside right now.”
“Your name?”
“Carol Sings.”
“Carol, do you know this man?”
“No.”
“I’m sending a unit to your location. Does he have a weapon?”
“I don’t know, but he has a whole aviary and a herd of cattle in my front yard.”
“Cattle?”
“It started eleven days ago with just a pot plant on my doorstep. I thought it might be an early Christmas present from friends, but there was a toothpick stuck in the dirt with a note. ‘From your true love’. When another arrived the next day, I thought it might be a shipping error. But then there was a third and these three fucking chickens in my yard. And if I’m being honest, they had a bit of an attitude.”
“The chickens?”
“Luckily, my neighbour’s sister has acreage at Gatton, so she took them away. But again, the next day, another tree and three more chickens. On the fifth day, at least there was some jewellery, but the day after that, he’s back at it again with more birds. Six geese. Then, seven swans.”
“Carol, I’m going to request an ambulance as well. Have you been going through a stressful time lately?”
“I’m not crazy. You just don’t know what I’m up against here. Saturday, I wake up and there are EIGHT COWS in my front yard. So, I’m ringing the RSPCA like, do you guys take COWS? They trampled my Christmas decorations, shat all over the garden.”
“Have you taken any drugs recently, Carol?”
“But that’s not the worst of it.” I swallowed. “The last two days, he’s brought a…”
“A what?”
“A flash mob. People dancing and leaping in the street.”
“I’m sending all units.”
“Now today, it’s a marching band of drummers, and he’s actually here, declaring he’s my true love. I’ve never met him. I’m not even straight.”
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This was what the selectors had to say:
“We’re going to start off by saying that yes, we KNOW that the traditional twelve days of Christmas start on the day itself and go till early January, but we certainly weren’t going to let that get in the way of a great story! Here, in true retail sale fashion, this exhausted narrator (with the great name of Carol Sings) has a suitor who has been love bombing her for the twelve days leading up to Christmas. We join the action on the final day as drummers are rom-pom-pomming poor Carol awake and it's clear she has had quite enough. As the emergency call escalates, we learn of the famous gifts her mystery admirer has been bestowing upon her. And really, when you think about it, it truly is quite maddening how anyone would WANT all these gifts. (Leave the gold rings, take the rest!) Add to this the juxtaposition of a Northern song touching down in a hot Brisbane December and it’s chaos of the very best kind!”
