Flibbertigibbet
Definition
: a silly flighty person
Flibbertigibbet is one of
many incarnations of the Middle English word flepergebet, meaning
"gossip" or "chatterer" (others include flybbergybe, flibber de' Jibb,
and flipperty-gibbet). It is a word of onomatopoeic origin,
created from sounds that were intended to represent meaningless chatter.
William Shakespeare apparently saw a devilish aspect to a gossipy chatterer; he
used flibbertigibbet in King Lear as
the name of a devil. This use never caught on, but the devilish connotation of
the word reappeared over 200 years later when Sir Walter Scott used Flibbertigibbet as the nickname of an impish
urchin in the novel Kenilworth. The
impish meaning derived from Scott's character was short-lived and was laid to
rest by the 19th-century's end, leaving us with only the "silly flighty
person" meaning.
The village ahead was quiet and still. There had been a record amount of rain, and therefore flooding, around here the week before and then the temperatures had plummeted so quickly afterwards (the bead in the weather thermometers had dropped so quickly most people were surprised it hadn't just smashed through the bottom of the glass vial in its attempt to flee the warmer temperatures at the top) that the flooded areas had frozen over, turning the small village into some sort of frozen, modern abstract art piece. the village itself was mostly deserted, the inhabitants that could leave having fled already to throw themselves on the mercy of relatives in warmer habitats - or at least those with decent central heating.
For those of the villagers who were, more or less, alone in the world due to either simply outliving most or all their closest relatives, or possessing a naturally somewhat aggravating nature which led invitations to become 'lost in the post' or simply a long standing feud over what your Aunt May said about our Sharon that time at Paul's wedding, no such escapes were open to them and they were therefore stuck in this frozen landscape until the thaw.
Little Rosie Parker, left in the care of a rather elderly maiden great aunt, was the unfortunate soul who happened to tick all of the aforementioned reasons for a lonely Christmas. Even more unfortunate was that all said reasons were not, in fact, her fault. they were in fact the fault of her closest living relative, her mother who was currently living in up in the south of Spain with her new boyfriend, having burnt every single bridge with all of the relatives who could have taken care of Rosie, save the elderly maiden great aunt she was currently staying with. And that was only because said great aunt was as deaf as a doorpost and her mother's insulting and condescending remarks (which so infuriated the rest of the family) quite literally fell on deaf ears.
Whilst Rosie was extremely grateful that she wasn't spending Christmas abandoned under some lonely bridge somewhere (Rosie loved her mother, but she wasn't deluded enough to believe her mother wouldn't leave her with some friendly seeming cave trolls if they promised free child care) however, kind and gentle though her great aunt was, she was also exceptionally old and had no idea what kids liked. Plus she went to bed at 7.30pm every day and she was so frail that Rosie was terrified that she would die in her sleep - particularly with this cold snap going on and her great aunt's refusal to put on the central heating for longer than two hours a day, saying things like such luxury as putting it on for, say, three hours was the devils temptation. Suffering builds character she said.
Rosie sometimes thought to herself that, if suffering did indeed built character, then her character must be pretty darn solid by now and perhaps it would be quite nice to have a time out from suffering now and again.
It was late. Her great aunt had gone to bed ages ago and wouldn't wake til morning. She had checked on her to ensure that she was still breathing (she couldn't decide if it was a blessing or a curse that her great aunt didn't snore and had taken to checking in on her several times in the night, just to make sure she was still alive - an act which would probably cause a ruckus if her great aunt ever woke up and caught but she always remained sound asleep until 6.00am the following morning.) and, having confirmed she was, had spent the rest of the evening idling about the house, flicking listlessly through the channels on the small TV in the living room and seeing if there were any further books to be read. (She had red most of the ones available in the house when she first arrived - her great aunt apparently not being a great reader. She had caught sight of another bookcase in her great aunt's room, but when she asked if she could read these, her great aunt, with a faint blush on her old cheeks, said that they were in no way suitable for children and that was the end of the matter.)
She was almost starting to wish she had been left under the bridge to stay with the trolls, as at least struggling not to be eaten would have given her a way to pass the time, when a small cloud of soot tumbled down the chimney.
This was immediately interesting, not least because of the fact that, ten seconds before, her great aunt's two bed little semi hadn't even had a chimney.
Flames coloured green, gold and purple leapt up and crackled in the new fireplace, casting dark and savage shadows, suggesting sharp claws and sharper teeth. even the sound of the flames didn't seem quite normal, instead of the usual cheery crackle and spit of a normal flame, if Rosie listened closely, she almost thought she could hear tiny, tiny screams.
"Cool." Rosie thought to herself.
The clump of soot that had first drawn her attention to the sudden appearance of a fireplace, tumbled out of the grate. It bounced a few steps onto the carpet, then shook itself, revealing four tiny paws, a tiny lizard like tail and a very, very, very large mouth, full of layers upon layers of shark like teeth.
It grinned at her, as only a giant mouth full of sharp teeth can, and deep beneath its coal black, scaly skin, she could see a glow of the same shade as the spooky flames.
"Cool." She said again, this time accidentally out loud.
"What are you?" She asked the creature, not even pausing to wonder if it could understand her.
It cocked its tiny body at her. it didn't even appear to have a head - just a giant mouth directly situated in its torso. In some ways, it kinda reminded her of the tiny tadpoles she had seen her classroom at school - the ones that were trapped halfway between frog and tad.
"What do you think?" It asked cheekily, not bothered that it'd been caught at all.
"Ummm." she said uncertainly.
"I'm part of the vanguard." It strutted around the living room proudly, leaving tiny delicate sooty footprints over her great aunt's carpets. "I'm investigating right, checking out the situation prior to the big night."
"What big night?"
It looked at her scornfully, how it managed to without a face to even make the expression with, Rosie didn't know. But oh, it definitely scorned.
"Uh, I don't know, what big night is held every year at midwinter? With the turkey and the pudding and the tree and people falling asleep in front of the telly after stuffing their gob til they burst. Ring any bells with you?"
"You mean Christmas?" Rosie asked, excited.
The thing shuddered. "Yeah, that's the one."
"So.... are you an elf?" She asked, rather doubtfully. Definitely didn't match what she'd seen in the big shopping mall her mother had dragged her to just before Christmas when her long dormant conscience had kicked in its sleep and she'd decided the power of money was just the thing to soothe it back to consciousness. Santa's helpers then had been bipeds for a start, with pointy ears and shoes and brightly coloured waistcoats and stripy stockings.
And their teeth had definitely not been this...prominent.
It laughed, a hoarse gravelly laugh all out of proportion with it's diminutive size.
"Do I look like one?"
She shook her head. Chuckling to itself, sounding like a meat grinder that a small, careless child had dropped lego down while the parent's behind them were sobbing at the ruinous expense of said lego being mercilessly and wastefully ground down, it wandered off again, the flickering light from the fireplace casted strange angles making it seem bigger and smaller than it was.
The fireplace.
"Why do we suddenly have a fireplace?" She asked the creature. "It wasn't there an hour ago."
"Tradition innit." the little thing said, somehow managing to convey a shrug. "Gotta keep up appearances - even though it don't really lend itself to the whole 'stealth' thing we've got going on."
"So, if you're not an elf, but you're to do with Christmas, what are you then? You're not a reindeer."
The thing scoffed. "Definitely not one of those elitist snobs - you know they shun anyone who's not perfect right? Rudolph was the least of it - and they only let him join in when it's foggy out. Bunch of wankers."
"So what are you then?" Rosie persisted,
The thing grinned at her. "Satan's Little Helper of course."
Rosie blinked, sure that the sentence she'd just heard was subtly incorrect.
From somewhere the thing whipped out a giant list. It rolled out along her great aunt's faded flowery carpet.
"You Rosie Parker?" It asked her, checking his list.
"Uh, yeah. Um, you did say Santa just now, right?"
"Nah, Satan."
"But, why is Satan's Little Helper going round on Christmas?" Rosie asked, equal parts horrified and fascinated.
"You wrote to us."
"No I didn't."
"Yeah, you did. We got a letter from you saying 'Dear Satan' and everything."
Rosie went quiet. It was true she was quite badly dyslexic and normally this never really bothered her, she could work things out given enough time after all. It was just when her teachers praised her for doing basic things, or made a fuss about her working with a handicap that she felt both embarrassed and stupid. So she hadn't asked anyone to proof read her letter to Santa.
Rosie thought a strong word that her teachers and her great aunt would have been shocked that she knew. Her mother, not so much, as it was a favourite word of hers and she used it regularly with gusto.
"Have you been naughty or nice?" The creature, Satan's Little Helper, asked her, holding the world's tiniest charcoal pencil in its paw.
"Does it matter?" The words were out before she had a chance to consider them.
"To us, not so much. I mean, we really don't care either way." It shrugged, "But, you know..."
"Tradition." Rosie finished for it. She thought about this year, the different boyfriends of her mother, the people at school, how she had been abandoned with an elderly relative she barely knew and how little she had complained about it, even if she didn't simply because she knew there was no point.
"Nice." She said.
"Cool." It said, making a mark. "About your request." It glanced down. "Umm, wow. Aiming for a Little Match Girl moment or what?"
She scowled at the creature. Yeah, she knew it was a pathetic wish - another reason why she hadn't shown her letter to anyone, but it still didn't give this soot ball a right to smirk about it.
It put its two front paws in the air. "Ok, ok, sorry, just kidding around. Sensitive or what."
Rosie hunched into a ball. "Laugh all you want. I know it's an impossible wish."
"Oi." It said, straightening up indignantly. "Hey, don't diss the Hell department like that. I mean, we've been granting the wishes of mortals for millennia - well before that fat old man starting up his racket. I mean, yeah, we made people pay for theirs, but fair's fair right? Gotta get remuneration for the effort you put in."
"So you can grant my wish but i'd have to pay for it?"
"Nah, Christmas is like a freebie sample thing y'know? To draw in future customers in. It's been working out for us quite well I have to say - sometimes marketing does appear to have a brain between them."
Rosie thought this through - advanced economics were a little out of her league, but she did get the general principle of investing in a potential client base that clearly indicated they were already interested in what you were selling.
But more importantly...
"You can grant my wish?"
"East peasy!" It said grandly. "I mean, all you put was that you wanted company right? No problem. I mean, had your great aunt not just died right now, we wouldn't even have to do anything because you would already have company in situ so to speak."
"My great aunt was not really the kind of company i meant - wait what? What did you just say?"
"About your great aunt? She's just died in her sleep. All peaceful like." It added hastily, catching sight of Rosie's expression.
Rosie dashed out of the room and then returned moments later, completely downcast. She slumped on the floor in front of the little creature.
"She's dead." She mumbled, almost incoherently.
"Well, yeah. I did say."
She started to cry, big tears rolling down her chubby little cheeks. "What am I going to do." She sobbed. "There's no one who can take care of me and i don't know when mum's co-coming back or if she's even coming back. I've got no-no-one. i I don't kno-know what to do."
the little soot creature was hopping about beneath her, dodging the salty tears falling from her eyes, worried they'd penetrate his sooty exterior and extinguish the embers of his life force burning within.
She did not look like she was going to stop crying and, truth be told, he felt sorry for this little girl whose first word upon seeing a minor insignificant demon such as himself had been 'cool'.
"How about you come to Hell with me." It blurted out desperately.
Rosie was so shocked she stopped crying immediately. "Sorry?" She asked.
"Well, your wish. All you said was 'company' - you didn't say for how long or what type of company you wanted. So if you came to Hell with me and stayed there with us, that would technically be fulfilling your wish. Unless you'd rather stay here of course - I reckon I could get Children's Services here within the next day or two if you wanted."
Rosie thought about what would happen if Children's Services (nice people who she'd met on several occasions) came to get her. The same thing that happened every time she supposed. She also thought about having to stay in the same house as her dead great aunt for a few days, on her own.
"I'd like to go to Hell please." She said politely. She paused in thought for a moment. "Do i have to be dead to go?"
"I don't think so." The little creature said thoughtfully. "Not if it's a wish fulfillment. I'm not sure if there's a lot of precedents for people wanting to stay in Hell. The Big Man will know though, he'll sort you out either way. Dying a problem?"
She shook her head. "But i'd prefer it if it didn't hurt."
"Fair enough." It said cheerfully.
"Is it nice in Hell?"
It tilted its body, thinking. "I'm not sure what human's definition of 'nice' is." It said eventually. "It seems to change depending on who you ask. But i like it. It's much warmer than here at least."
"How do I get there?"
"Same way I did." It said proudly. "Through the gate."
"The chimney?" She looked at it doubtfully. "I don't think I'll fit."
The creature grinned. "Watch." was all it said.
The fire suddenly leapt up, filling the entire back wall of the house. The chimney disappeared and instead the green, gold and purple flames pulled aside like a set of curtains, revealing a long black road leading off into the distance. Bright stars filled the night sky and a gigantic crescent moon filled the world below with a silver light. Bare black skeleton trees bordered the path and their branches were filled with glowing balls of the green flames.
"Ready?" The creature asked.
Rosie bent down and carefully picked the creature up, cradling it to her chest. It was warm and the little claws on its paws pierced the multiple layers of jumpers she was wearing with ease.
"Ready." She said.
They walked into the hell fire together and little Rosie Parker was never seen again on the mortal plane.
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