Hark! A Christmas Miracle!

By Marie Foulk
Word count: about 400 words

Ten minutes to midnight. A woman sits on the trunk of her mangled car by the side of an endless road and has sat there for over an hour, stewing in her thoughts as she waits for the tow truck to arrive. Because of course this had to happen, getting stuck in the middle of God-forsaken nowhere, on the side of this damned frozen road, because she skidded on some damn black ice and slammed her junk car into a God-damned cow fence!

And all the tow trucks are backed up because it’s Christmas Eve, because of course it has to be Christmas Eve. She supposes some might consider it a Christmas miracle that she survived unscathed, but she can’t help but think that she would have been at least marginally happier right now if she had not crashed at all.

It’s a cold clear night with the stars shining overhead. And how dare they be so bright and magical, over the ground covered in a smooth glittering layer of snow while the freezing wind stings her face and cuts through every sweater and blanket that she’s managed to scavenge from her luggage. And as though the universe wants to rub it in, she’s so far out from civilization that she can see the Milky Way!

As a child, she used to believe Santa traveled by the Milky Way and that reindeer were powered by stardust, and every Christmas Eve she would try to find the Milky Way, not that she could see it in the city. But she would make a poorly educated guess and hold her breath to make a ‘Christmas wish’, because apparently she didn’t understand the difference between a fairy godmother and an omniscient, immortal, gift-giver of questionable discernment. Then again, there might not be that much of a difference after all. And now, here she is, finally staring at that great smear across the sky, stranded and freezing her ass off. I wish that damn tow truck would get here already.

There’s a clear sharp tinkling in the distance, like the ringing of bells, or maybe it’s just a ringing in her ears, but she looks up. The landscape is incinerated by a pair of radiant lights, like that of two ascending angels, coming over the hill. 

“About damn time,” she mumbles, struggling to get off the car.