At last Christmas Eve arrived. The Sheep Man got a dozen donuts of the twisty variety, without holes, from the donut shop, and packed them in a knapsack. This was the extent of his sack lunch. Finally, he put his wallet and a small flashlight in the breast pocket of his sheep suit, and closed the fastener. At 1:00, he snuck around the house and was engulfed in total darkness. There was no moon and the stars weren’t out, so he could not even see his hand in front of his face.
“It must have been this dark the night the Most Holy Sheep Saint fell into that hole,” the Sheep Man murmured, as he searched for the hole with his flashlight. “It’ll be 1:16 soon. What if I can’t find the hole, and have to wait until Christmas Eve next year? That would be awfuuuu...” Just as he said this, the ground beneath his feet suddenly wasn’t there. The Sheep Man had fallen into the hole.
“Someone must have removed the cover during the day,” the Sheep Man thought as he fell. “I’ll bet is was that nasty landlady. She always hates everything I do.” But when the Sheep Man finished thinking this thought, he realized something very strange was happening. “The hole I dug was only 203 centimeters deep. Surely, after falling for so long, I should have hit the bottom by now.”
Then suddenly, with quite a thud, the Sheep Man hit the bottom of the hole. And, although the hole was fearfully deep, he was peculiarly unhurt.
After shaking his head a little, the Sheep Man tried to shine the flashlight at his surroundings, only to find that the flashlight wasn’t there. He surmised that he must have dropped it when he fell into the hole.
“What’s this, goddamit?” came a voice out of the darkness. “It’s only 1:14. You’re 2 minutes early, goddamit. You’ll have to climb back up to the top and do it again from the beginning.”
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t see very well because it was dark, and I fell into the hole by accident,” the Sheep Man said. “But I’m afraid there’s no way I could climb to the top of a hole that deep.”
“You got to, goddamit. Jeez, a little bit earlier and you could have flattened me. I thought you were coming at 1:16, goddamit.”

The Sheep Man's Christmas by MURAKAMI Haruki
http://www.sendspace.com/file/myhbs4