Happy New Year

• Cassandra Mutton, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2014

A wicker lounge cradles an elderly man as he awaits the arrival of an intense sunrise that lingers beyond the silhouetted treetops. The distant hollering of the morning Cockatoos ring in yet another January 1 with pride. The man yields a cigarette from the near-empty pack sitting on the table beside him and the sound of his lighter reverberates tersely against the walls enclosing him. An ambient hum, reminiscent of distant zephyrs and the day’s awakening rings idly in his ears as he expects to hear the calling of a phone he knows will never ring.

The man fumbles with the lighter’s spark wheel as he stares down at the house directly across the street from him. A singular amber glass pendant lamp shines down upon its clinker brick porch, indicative of a night that was simply too fun to remember to switch it off. The car parked in its driveway bears a family of stickers that proudly accentuate that household’s fecundity. Beside it, a garden strewn with toys and dead stubble grass provide a humourous discordance to his own front lawn, where he grows perfect Peace Lilies and beautiful Birds of Paradise; immaculate Ivy and handsome Hydrangeas.

To the man, that garden is a sacrosanct realm. Every vibrant petal is a vindication of his isolation. He spends his days wandering its perimeter, fraternising with the Frangipanis and coddling his Coriander. He ignores the absence of a visitor’s car in his cracked and forgotten driveway. In the New Year, all that’s left of his sanity is found at the bottom of the empty whiskey bottle perched on the table beside him.

A golden sun flitters upon the horizon, casting an illustrious glow onto the receding darkness. The gum trees rustle with pleasure as a gentle breeze waltzes through the air, pecking the man’s astute face. He purses his face in the briskness, and the lines and heavy wrinkles carefully etched by time and loneliness appear. They grant him with an endearingly wise physiognomy.

The embers at the end of the man’s cigarette crackle with a tranquil silence take one last fiery breath and extinguish. He glances down at it and sighs, as if bidding the ultimate farewell to lifetime companion. He cranes his neck and peers into his kitchen, where an inanimate telephone is suspended upon the wall. Beside it, a picture of his son and his granddaughter hangs askew within its bronze frame. It was the perfect stimulant for irrational hope.

Exhausted by the morning’s indulgence in whiskey, the man rises to his feet and slowly hobbles inside, aided by a his gilded cane. He passes a potted fern, which rustles softly in his wake with a deceptive insouciance. He reaches the telephone and detaches it from the receiver, holding it up to his ear. The monotonous hum of the dial tone sings. With a bitter disdain, he slams the telephone back. It rings.
‘Son?’ he croaks.
‘Hello, Valued Customer! We’re just calling to say Happy New Year!’