‘The Christmas stranger’
(Another day in Paradise)
(A short story for upper- intermediate learners)
It was a cold Christmas night when the wind was screaming with rage and the thick snow covered the ground like a white mantle.
The streets were almost empty and nobody was walking, except some drunken people who would mutter some unintelligible lines.
After a while, a group of young people came out of a dark pathway laughing and screaming with joy, while singing some Christmas Carols, when suddenly they came across a young boy covered in rags, almost shaking with cold.
He was sitting on the side of the street, having his head down, while projecting his hand to ask for some help.
He was young; you could tell it from the shape of his body and his height and was skinny and dirty. The young people looked at him but the child did not raise his eyes. ’Merry Christmas’ he uttered, while still extending his skinny hand. The guys passed him by laughing and the boy still stood there waiting…
It was not too long after that, when three beefy guys appeared at the far end of the dark street.
Once they saw the child, they headed straight away towards him and once they reached him they started yelling at him, calling him names and finally beat him up.
The child would not react but just stutter ‘Show mercy!’ while still keeping his head down, without moving. At some point, they thought they had killed him and once they tried to poke him to see if he was still alive, the child raised his bruised head, showing his hands which were bleeding. ‘Find love, fight hate!’ he said and suddenly a bright light covered the place and the tough guys ran away in terror!
The child stood up and walked on his way until he disappeared into the dark…
‘It could have been Jesus Christ!’ a passerby said the other day or just a human soul, in need of some healing…
Happy Christmas
Christos Emmanouil
English teacher, consultant, author
christosemmanouil@hotmail.com
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