She woke with a killer headache and instinctively felt between her legs.

Daisy stiffened slightly as she realised there was someone sitting on her lap.

‘An I wanna x-box, anna zap gun anna–’

‘Who’s Anna?’ she asked with Donnie’s voice. Well, that sorted the gender thing out. ‘And who are you?’

‘I tol’ you. Jason is my name. Except it’s spelled with a K instead of a J and a Y instead of an O. And it’s got a U and an M instead of an N. An I want a whole bucket of chocolate an–’

Donnie zoned out momentarily, trying to work out how the child’s name was spelled and how to actually pronounce it. The child continued to talk, going off like a junkie on speed.

‘You listening Santa?!’ screamed Kasyum (pronounced Jason).

Santa?!

Oh sweet prophet of choice!

He glanced past the child and his shoulders dropped

‘Oh no.’

There were forty or more children waiting in line, and it wasn’t even close to closing time.

The midday rush was in its third hour and counting. The signs screamed:

Donnie rapidly examined the parts of his body that hadn’t fallen asleep from the pressure of a junk-food addicted child sitting on them. Padded belly, fluffy beard, fizzy-drink red jacket and matching pants.

Jesus.

Standing beside him was a scantily-clad young woman, pushing all of sixteen, grinning like a maniac.

Perhaps, mused Donnie, she’d been forced to superglue her lips back and use the remainder to stick her teeth together as a condition of employment.

Her smile was like a searchlight across the faces of the thirty and forty-something fathers. They beamed back, presumably wishing they could sit on her knee, or that she could sit on their –

‘I think Santa sucks,’ screeched the dyslexically named child and jumped off Donnie’s knee, not before the one bony part of his body collided with Donnie’s nethers.

Donnie gasped and screwed his eyes up while his legs instinctively pushed together.

The child ran over to his parents, who handed him a container full of fizzy-drink and a toffee-apple.

‘Happy Christmas,’ he wheezed, and glanced up at his assistant. ‘Does that hurt?’

© Lisa Sinclair 2004-2009 All Rights Reserved

The Grand Adventures of Daisy Donnie by Lisa Jane Sinclair is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Australia License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.daisydonnie.com/contact/. 9ae3f9335452f165d38cf62b412d20be (38.107.179.211)