The key under the orange
These five stories are fiction; their characters and association are imaginary. On Christmas Eve, the association’s secretary discovered that every member had brought food and nobody had brought the key. They gathered beneath an orange tree, holding bowls like offerings. Marta accused the treasurer of excessive security. The treasurer accused his coat of inadequate pockets. Then the oldest member lifted an orange from the windowsill. Beneath it lay a key and a note: “I knew you would forget. Start without me.” They waited for her anyway.
The poster that stayed
Luis arrived with a new poster for the cannabis association: elegant lettering, silver stars, not a wrinkle. He intended to replace the faded sheet above the noticeboard. But behind it he found twenty years of handwritten Christmas messages. Someone had drawn a dog. Someone had announced a recovery. Someone had written only, “Thanks for leaving the light on.” Luis hung his beautiful poster on the other wall. At midnight he added a small message to the old one: “There is still room.”
Radio Valencia
The radio refused every Christmas song. Whenever Elena tuned it, a football commentator appeared, furious about a match that nobody could identify. The association’s holiday meal continued to the soundtrack of disputed penalties. Finally, Ramón opened the radio’s battered case and found an old recording device attached inside. The voice belonged to his late brother, rehearsing a childhood dream of sports journalism. Ramón stopped repairing it. For the rest of dinner, every disputed goal received a standing ovation.
The borrowed chair
The association had twelve guests and eleven chairs. Clara borrowed one from the tailor next door, promising its return before morning. The chair was so uncomfortable that its occupant kept getting up to refill glasses, carry plates and welcome late arrivals. By dessert, everyone had called him the perfect host. When Clara returned the chair, the tailor smiled. “That one belonged to my father,” he said. “He always believed a good gathering needed one chair nobody could settle into.”
The visitor at closing time
As the cannabis association’s Christmas gathering ended, a woman knocked carrying an envelope. She had mistaken the address for a neighbour’s and apologised for the interruption. Inside was a photograph of the street forty years earlier. The members crowded around it, identifying shops, windows and a vanished cinema. Nobody could identify the child waving from the corner. The woman could. “That’s me,” she said. They put the kettle back on, and the evening acquired a new beginning.
General information, not individual legal or medical advice.