Up the Chimney

He’s stuck.

He knew he’d eaten too much this year. Knew he didn’t exercise enough.

It’s dusty in here – and hot. He’s sweating like a … well, like an idiot. An idiot in a polyester Santa suit who decided to climb down the inside of his old Queenslander’s chimney and surprise his children on Christmas morning. Just like Santa. The looks of disbelief and happiness and respect would be the greatest gift.

But it didn’t happen like that, did it? He’d dug out the original house plans and checked the chimney’s width and height and measured his belly with his wife’s tape measure and figured he’d just make it. He’d climb down on the protruding bricks – inserted a century ago to support the now-removed stovepipe – and although he might emerge black and sooty, it’d be worth it.

He didn’t take into account, however, the extra inches of the suit’s faux fur. And now he’s descended, only a few feet, and is wedged in a particularly narrow flue, barely able to move, his feet clumsily teetering on a jutting brick. He can breathe – just – but the air is grimy and thick. His throat aches – he’s screamed his wife’s name a dozen times. He heard the kids rush to the Christmas tree at dawn – by then his growing fear had killed any idea of surprising them – and he’d called and called them.

But none of them heard him.

His youngest found his rubber boot that had plunged into the fireplace’s hearth. The kids laughed with delight for a time, then they quietened and he though he couldn’t understand his wife’s words he could hear her unease. He screamed again and again, and realised he was urinating. Please god, he prayed, don’t let the piss soak the loungeroom. Or wet the kids. Or drown the cat.

He dozes; dreams of long white beaches and fields of canola. The pain in his elbow wakes him and he begins to weep. After a time his brain switches into something like sleep mode. He can’t remember where he is. His spine is in crooked agony.

But the thirst is the worst. Though one arm is crushed against the bricks he can slightly wiggle his hand slowly inside his jacket to the small flask of scotch he’d sipped from on the roof. He’d been skittish up there – he hadn’t realised how high this old house stood – but the scotch had helped. He swallows only a mouthful – though he’d love to scull the bottle – he has to make it last.

A grey streak of sunlight on the upper chamber reveals midday slinking around. The streak moves away, the chamber darkens, as does his mind. Drips echo; time creaks past.

A deep voice from below, then another, rouses him.  Night threatens. He yells and yells, tries to bang the half-glass-half-plastic flask on the bricks without breaking it, but he can’t twist his wrist enough. Listening he realises the voices belong to police. Blighted words like ‘missing’ and ‘twenty-four hours’ waft up. There’s a thud as the front door slams, then he hears his wife clearly. She’s sobbing, saying his name over and over.

How can they not hear him? When he can hear them? Was it the plastic ledge he’d inserted to stop the birdshit dropping onto the hearth?

He jabs at the wall with his socked toes in the hope the bricks might crumble, scratches his back against the bricks to make them fragment. At first he feared that if too much of the wall collapsed the whole chimney might cave and he’d tumble to his death.

Now he doesn’t care.

Kicking at the brickwork, swearing at the whole rotten house, his socks rip and his torn toes bleed But finally – finally! –the edge of a bulging brick disintegrates and cement bits hit the hearth and resound like dynamite up the shaft.

He holds his breath, listens. Surely that noise would alert the whole household? His dust-filled eyes, gritty and stinging, glue to the thin street light unfolding from above as he waits, straining his ears, holding his smarting lungs.

Nothing.

He moans, wails, shrieks. The chimney darkens and he sings nursery rhymes to himself, counts bricks, imagines tables of ham and ice cream and steak and honey and takes another mouthful of scotch. The jacket’s surface is tattered, his pants are full of shit. Literally. He can’t bear his own stench. Suddenly his forehead is deliriously itchy and he will do anything – anything! – to scratch it. Twisting his neck he claws his face against the brickwork until the itching ceases. But blood – and what feels like small flecks of flesh – dribble into his inflamed eyes and the pain is so intense he smashes his forehead again and again into the stone until all is black.

*

Days have passed, he guesses. Only a drop of scotch remains. As he wiggles his hand inside his jacket for the flask he realises that his hip is moving – he can almost crouch down. He’s no longer stuck between the chimney’s narrow four walls.

He grips at the protruding bricks above him and tries to climb, but the cuts on his fingers and feet are excruciating. He jiggles his shoulders, lifts his knee. And looks down.

He can see the hearth.

He can see light from the loungeroom.

He’s lost weight.

Slowly he lifts his feet from the brick ledges and steps like a suicidal jumper into what has now become an abyss. As he falls the cement and stone shred his flesh even more, but the exhilaration is the greatest he’s ever known. The seconds he tumbles feel like hours, but he smashes the plastic ledge, hits the hard hearth, hears bones snap as more skin is shredded from his cheeks and arms.

But he’s home.

He catches the shrieks from his wife and children, then the silence. He rolls towards them, slightly.

Happy New Year, he croaks.

Photo by Natalya Shmeleva on Unsplash