Gifted

Armitage Shanks could never simply present a gift to a friend. You’d think that—the selection of the gift aside—it would be the easiest thing in the world. ‘Here is a box with coloured paper around, now unwrap it and receive a reward for your efforts’.  

But no. 

Not for Armitage. 

His first failure was at the age of twelve. In his hurry to give his best friend (at the time, at least. They have since drifted apart.) a rather splendid plastic Tyrannosaurus Rex, he’d tripped over the remains of a bobbing-for-apples apple core. This sent the hard pointy tail of the toy directly into his friend’s nostril, and the momentum had carried the thing three knuckles deep. The toy was stuck fast and required a cluster of paramedics to remove it. 

Thankfully, as a nostril is already a hole, his friend didn’t wind up with an extra, superfluous orifice. However, it did increase the diameter of said nostril by a good ten millimetres and unbalanced the symmetry of the poor boy’s face forever thereafter. 

His second failure occurred at the age of fourteen. This time at Christmas. The family had all gathered for a game of Secret Santa; a potluck game in which you couldn’t know who had gotten the present or who the present was for. Unfortunately, an autocorrect error in the text message he had received had informed him the family would be playing ‘Sexy Santa’. 

Armitage did not question it and found a suitable gift. The device which had had procured at great personal embarrassment (and which will not be named here) had been wrapped and placed elegantly on top of the pile. When it came time for it to be unwrapped—by Armitage’s grandmother no less—the reveal of said item caused the elderly woman’s heart to make the discomforting decision to retire early. 

Armitage’s teen years carried along in much the same manner, and he received fewer and fewer offers of invitation until he had no parties to attend at all. It also appeared that a strange, invisible void grew out around him wherever he sat, as though his presence poisoned all chairs in close proximity. 

There was also the unfortunate fact that he was named after a toilet. To be fair, his parents hadn’t known at the time of naming, although when pressed on the matter his father did say he wasn’t entirely sure where the name came from and in fact, the more he thought about it, the more he came to the conclusion that yes, actually. That is probably where he got it. 

Safe to say, Armitage did not a single friend make. 

Until his final year of high school.  

A new student had transferred to his class, a girl named Minty Breathless. With a name as unfortunate as that, Armitage felt he finally had a chance. She was long and gangly, and above all, clumsy. It didn’t take long for the other kids to count her out of any social circle. So, it wasn’t a surprise that not a single person accepted her birthday party invitation. 

Except Armitage. He was the only one. He had to.  

It was the only invitation he’d gotten since Dennis Manfield’s Year 10 formal after-party during which Armitage brought a six-pack of beer that he’d smashed onto the wooden floor after tripping over the cat by the front door. Dennis himself had been streaking through the house and hadn’t noticed the broken glass. Nor the slippery puddle of pooling beer … (you can put two-and-two together, right?) 

But this, finally, for Armitage, was a birthday invitation. He didn’t want to screw it up, he couldn’t screw it up. The gift he brought would have to be perfect. 

Armitage thought about it, long and hard. What gift should he get Minty? He thought about it over breakfast. He thought about it while walking his dog. He thought about it while brushing his teeth after he showered each night until finally, he could bare it no longer. Dejected and without answer, he slumped against the bathroom wall in a dramatic show of sorrow. 

Only it wasn’t the wall, it was the window. And with the full weight of his anguish, and the full weight of his weight, pressed against it, the window stood no chance and shattered. You might not think a second story fall is all that much. But it is. 

His towel caught on the shards of glass and as it whipped away from him, it sent him into a spin like a whirligig, and he moved with such speed everything else became a blur. He couldn’t tell where the ground was. 

Turns out it was right below his face. 

Also turns out he’d managed to hold onto his toothbrush. Well … it was in his mouth. 

Was. Until it wasn’t. 

Until it drove down into his throat and lodged in his neck. Hard to breath with a toothbrush clogging everything up. And so there on the ground, naked and broken, lay the sorry corpse of Armitage Shanks, the world’s worst giver of gifts.