Santa's Surprise

• Jessica Honan, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2013

Torrential rain pelted down, as it had been for weeks now. When was it going to end? The rivers were gagging out water, and everyone was on flood alert. It always rained during summer in the remote, outback town of Amethyst, but never to such an extent. Christmas Eve celebrations had almost been cancelled due to this downpour, and the community had been fretting. Normally they loved floods; the grass their cattle ate would flourish. But Christmas was the most prestigious celebration in the year.

The celebrations went ahead anyway, to everyone’s delight. Main Street became alight with festive ornaments and Christmas trees as everyone arrived that afternoon, drenched the second they exited their Ute. However, this didn’t seem to bother them, and the celebrations were memorable. Everyone sang carols in the rain. Sunset dawned on Amethyst; a gleaming orb-like moon replacing the fiery sun which sunk down into the desert bordering the town. Later into night the annual karaoke competition was held, and to no one’s surprise Lydia Swan won - for the fourth year in a row. Lydia was severely pregnant, awaiting her ninth child. Everyone predicted this baby would be a boy, as her other eight had been.

Eight o’clock came, which was meant to be the arrival of Santa Clause from the ‘neighbouring’ town Garnet. He failed to deliver, however, and left all the young children upset. Midnight struck, and there was still no sign of Santa, but everyone was now too busy yelling their "Merry Christmas"’ and swapping presents with any silhouette in the pitch-black street, to care. In their bliss, no one saw Lydia and her husband leave the celebrations in a rush. It appeared that their baby was about to be born…

Amethyst had no hospital, and Lydia was certainly not keen on giving birth anywhere but a hospital, so James, (Lydia’s husband) drove his wife to Garnet. Garnet’s population tripled that of Amethyst. That really didn’t say much, though, because Amethyst only had a population of around 300 people. Garnet was a three-hour drive from Amethyst. Lydia didn’t think their son wanted to wait three hours, even though he wasn’t due for another week.

“James!” cried Lydia “Pull over, he’s coming!” The family was two hours out of Amethyst, on open highway through the bush. As instructed, James pulled off the road. Lydia was right: their baby was coming. But James wasn’t confident in how to deliver a child. Bright headlights appeared from the abyss, and quite surprisingly, Santa appeared from his sleigh - or badly decorated Holden Ute. He pulled over to see what was wrong with the family, and quite ironically he was Garnet’s vet, and knew how to birth cows, and guessed humans couldn’t be that much different.

Eventually Lydia’s child was born, and Santa drove the exhausted family back to Amethyst, to present their child to the township. Everyone was ecstatic to see Santa, they just weren’t expecting a baby girl as well.