A Christmas Story
(With apologies to Oscar Wilde)
There was once a Giant who lived in the middle of a town in an high-spec, architect designed home with semi-detached lodge for guests (though he rarely entertained, he mostly just used the lodge to get his head together,) and though his home was minimalist, he used objects from his travels to express his style: an antique Japanese kettle that General MacArthur had once peed in, a Victorian, steam-powered dildo called Danielle Steele, and a bust of Ayn Rand killing an eagle with her bare hands. The giant had made all his money from hedge funds.
The Giant also had a large, lovely garden. It had been designed by a Swedish landscape-artist known for his ability to create the illusion of space in restricted urban environs. Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant's garden."How happy we are here!" they cried to each other.
One day the Giant came back. He had been away in Thailand on "business". When he arrived home he saw the children playing in the garden. "Get out of my Dutch elms!" The giant said in a very gruff voice, and the children gaily soiled themselves.
Then the giant built a high wall all round the garden, and put up a notice-board.
TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
MURDERED
He was a very sucky Giant.
Now the poor children had now nowhere to play, except the local youth centre - which was full of drug dealers and smelled of pee. They used to wander 'round the high wall when their lessons were over and talk about the beautiful garden. "How happy we were there," they said to each other. "Let's set fire to it!" But the wall was made of stone and the giant had installed thermal sensors.
Then the Spring came, and all over the country there were blossoms and birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant was it still winter. The birds did not care to sing there as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. The only people who were pleased were the Snow and the Frost. "Spring has forgotten this garden," they cried, "so we will live here all the year round."
Spring never came, nor the Summer. The Autumn gave golden fruit to every garden, but to the Giant's garden she gave only grapefruit. "Enjoy your weird, shitty-tasting fruit," she said. So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees like annoying theatre people.
"I cannot understand this," said the Giant, as he sat at his vast window, on his beloved Eames, and looked out at his frozen meditation pond. He wondered if he was dreaming, but the Giant never dreamed. "Dreaming is for pussies," he often said to himself. "I can't think why winter would be localised exclusively to my garden, but I'll need further evidence before I can leap to the absurd conclusion that this kind of weather event is caused by human activity."
One morning the Giant was lying awake in his king-size Japanese memory foam bed when he heard some lovely music. It was a little linnet singing outside his window. "I believe the Spring has come at last," said the Giant, and he jumped out of bed and looked out.
What did he see?
Through a little hole in the wall the children had crept in, thereby evading his motion sensors and laser-guided tranq-darts. They were sitting in the branches of the trees. In every tree that he could see there was a little child. The birds were flying about and twittering with delight. Only in one corner it was still winter. It was the farthest corner of the garden, and in it was standing a little boy. He was so small that he could not reach up to the branches of the tree, and he was wandering all round it, crying bitterly.
And the Giant's heart melted as he looked out. "How selfish I have been!" he said. "Now I know why the Spring would not come. I will put that poor little boy out of his misery, and then I will knock down the wall. So he crept downstairs and went out into the garden. But when the children saw him they were so frightened that they all ran away, and the garden became winter again. Only the little boy did not run, for his eyes were so full of tears that he did not see the Giant coming. He was basically a sitting duck. The Giant stole up behind him, licking his lips, but at the last minute he changed his mind and put him up into the tree, and the tree broke at once into blossom, and the birds came and sang on it, and the little boy flung his arms round the Giant's fat neck. Then the other children came running back, and with them came the Spring. "It is your garden now, little children," said the Giant, and he took a great axe to knock down the wall, but the children saw the axe and ran away, and it immediately became winter again, and the giant thought, "This is getting ridiculous." But they soon returned, and when the people were going to market at twelve o'clock they found the Giant playing with the children in the most beautiful garden they had ever seen.
All day long they played, and in the evening they came to the Giant to bid him good-bye.
"But where is your little companion?" he said: "The boy I put into the tree."
"We don't know," answered the children, "he has gone away."
Every afternoon, when school was over, the children came and played with the Giant. But not the little boy whom the Giant loved. "How I would like to see him!" he would say.
One winter morning he looked out of his window as he was dressing for work. He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that by opening his heart he had made Winter his bitch.
Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonderment. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.
Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child, and when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, "Who hath dared to wound thee?" For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on his little feet.
"Tell me, that I may get some of my associates to hurt him!"
"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."
"That's weird!" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play once in your garden, but to-day you shall leave this world for another garden, a garden of fire!"
And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms. The little boy explained to them: "For years this giant ran a complex and clandestine Ponzi scheme with several of his buddies. My Dad gave him our savings, and the giant lost it all. Because of that, Christmas in our house has not been a time of joy; it has been the suckiest no-present suck-fest you could ever imagine. Don't even get me started. Today I came to take my revenge on the giant, but it seems as if some of his imported cactuses have leached into his drinking water, causing him to hallucinate that I was Jesus, and that Winter was only happening in his garden, and ultimately to die of a cardiac arrest. It's funny how life works out, isn't it?"
And the children all agreed.
THE END
Posts
