Fictional Ramblings

Chocolate Ice Cream. (genre - love; christmas) #notallareheroes

C H O C O L A T E I C E C R E A M

a christmas one shot.

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December 25, 2004.

The crisp snow cracked below my boots, as I stalked along the heavily snowed road, clutching onto my woolen bag. Everything around me was covered and coated with a piece of sheet-ed snow, let it be the roofs, the trees or the children's boots.

I had never been someone to spend a Christmas outside. I was rather that lazy person who slept till noon on Christmas days, for just this matter, that there was no one to wake me up with a blood-curdling 'Merry Christmas' scream or pyramid my bed with their glittery wrapped gifts.

Then why today? You might be wondering.

Because, sleeping peacefully inside a house, where your best friend is making love with her boyfriend in the very adjacent room, is gross. Love is gross, in fact. No offense to anyone, but nothing exists that is called 'love'. Everything is lust, or infatuation or physical craving.

The oh-s and ah-s from the adjacent room, let it be my imagination or whatever, wouldn't let me lie down, let alone sleep. So I was, against my physical will, taking a walk in the blood curdling cold on a Christmas morning, through a street where people were blindly drowned in the spirit of Christmas.

Where I was going, even I didn't know. I was just walking, with a long train of thoughts running through my mind, and the cold chilling my spine.

Then, the incident that changed my life happened.

The thing about Christmas was, on that special day, only on that special day, people seem to develop a non-care attitude. Someone stole their wallet, let it be. Someone fell from the building, let it be. Someone broke their leg, let it be.

Its Christmas, damn it.

So, when that old man stole the perfectly dressed man's wallet, he didn't seem to notice. He walked away, chatting excitedly to his wife/girlfriend/mistress or whatsoever.

I could safely assume I was the only one who saw it happening; I was the only one who seemed to notice the man with the white beard walk across the black-suited man and quietly, very inefficiently pick-pocketing him, in broad daylight.

And, I was not the one to let it go. I had always been a fair, law-following, against-stealing person. I couldn't let a heinous crime happen right before my eyes and behave like I saw nothing.

So I decided to catch him, get him arrested, retrieve the stolen wallet and return it to the evidently-careless man. I could have done it then and there, but everything happened in the blink of a moment and when I managed to register and interpret all of it, both the old man and the victim were far away, almost disappearing in their separate horizons.

And I followed the criminal; because, well, my instincts told me to do exactly that. I was intrigued to see, what an eighty-plus man barely-capable to walk, wanted the money for.

He was walking really slowly and panting heavily; it was obvious he was using every bit of energy that was left inside him to take every single step. His face, which was half covered in a torn shawl, had beads of sweat forming at his temples.

He walked quarter a mile and then entered an ice cream parlour, and I followed him in. He was intriguing me very much. Who steals money to buy an ice cream?

I stood beside him on the counter and heard him talk to the shopkeeper, while pretending to read a menu upside down.

"Hello Mr. Alfred. I was sure expecting you," The shopkeeper was greeting him, a wide smile plastered across his lips. "Which flavor would you want this year?"