Building up to Christmas with Dusty the Demon Hunter - A Blast from the Past - Santa’s Little Helper - Part 2

As I mentioned yesterday, Christmas traditions arrived and became embedded without us realising. When Trev and I first set up home together on our own, we were expected to run around between our family's separate Christmases - and of course we did.

Trev also went in to work on Christmas morning and we never knew what time he'd be able to get away - and even then, he was on call and would have to go back if needed.

Our first Christmas in our own home started with him leaving for work at around 4am and me getting up at around 8 to sort out Nina, our new puppy.

I sat on the sofa watching Nina poddle around. Suddenly, she had a massive burst of energy and raced back and forth, around the back of the sofa, leaping on and off the sofa in death-defying bravery.

Then, to my surprise, Trev arrived home. As I said, still on call, but he'd left the phone numbers of my grandparents with the guy that had to stay at the coal mine so if anything happened, he'd be able to contact him (no cellphones then).

That year, Trev bought me lots of cocktail paraphernalia because that's what I was into just then. I remember waiting for him to come home before I opened the presents - lots of little presents - the smallest boxes he could find, filled with little knick-nacks to sit on the edge of glasses. One present I opened was a box of sardines. I looked at him and he said to open it. Thankfully, it wasn't a tin of sardines, it was more cocktail umbrellas.

That first year set the template for lots of Christmases - lots of running around, back and forth - hectic, not at all relaxing, and deeply stressful, trying to please everyone and not quite managing to please most.

More tomorrow.

Santa’s Little Helper

A Dusty the Demon Hunter Story

By

D Michelle Gent

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The next line wouldn’t come.

She knew that she knew it but it was evading her. At one point she thought it was coming, she had an image of someone at a window but before the words could form, they scattered and were lost.

Then she heard a noise outside, it sounded as though there was something large rooting about in the bins on the front yard but that couldn’t be right, her granddad had put the bins in the garage for the Christmas period, there wasn’t going to be a collection over the Christmas break, so they may as well be in a more convenient place.

Dusty got out of bed and went to her window. The next lines of the poem arrived in her head just as she pulled back her curtain:

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
tore open the shutters and threw up the sash.

Though there had been weeks of heavy snow the previous year around this time, this Christmas was proving to be one of the mildest in her lifetime and when she opened the curtains to see what was disturbing the peace outside, Dusty had the shock of her life. There had been a massive snowfall in the half an hour since she had gone to bed and another couple of lines of the poem popped into her head.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen snow
gave the lustre of mid-day to objects below.

Dusty was beginning to become concerned. This wasn’t normal. An unexpected and un-forecasted snowfall and a phantom Christmas rhyme rattling around in her brain. Something wasn’t right. Dusty waited and sure enough, the next line was in her head. It seemed as though someone was reciting the poem and she just couldn’t shut it out.

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear,
but a miniature sleigh, and eight tiny reindeer.

Dusty pressed her nose to the glass and looked up into the sky. There were no clouds, but millions of bright twinkling stars.

With a little old driver, so lively and quick,
I knew in a moment it must be St Nick.
More rapid than eagles his coursers they came,
and he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

What was going on? Dusty was beginning to get worried. She could remember the next lines of the poem and those were the only lines that had not been put in her head. She had a horrible feeling in the pit of her stomach and she closed her eyes and wondered if she was going mad. Then she spoke the next words that were in the poem out loud, she spoke quiet yet clear but it didn’t seem to matter that her grandparents might hear her, she knew for almost absolute certainty that they would not.

*"Now Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! On, Cupid! on, on Donner and Blitzen!

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