Merry Christmas! Thought to see this Silly Season through with a Santa and Krampus Flash Fiction ... right in time for the Big Guy in the Red Suit to show. Can't beat irony...
enjoy!
Ever get that
feeling that the life you’re living now is just all made up to keep you in
line? I have for about a year now.
But that’s not the
reason why I hate Christmas.
That’s not the
reason why I can’t stand the sight of all the Santa Claus’ at the shopping
centres asking kiddies what they want for Christmas.
I hate this time of
year because I’ve worked for the very man himself…
I knew you’d start laughing.
I work in a huge
place which stunk of sickly sweet sugary foods with hundreds – no, thousands –
of other children he happily call his ‘little elves’ for a long time. It didn’t
matter that some of us are beginning to wonder exactly why we are all working for some
old, morbidly obese man who only work for one month a year – and yet he knows
everything about every kid around.
And oh, yes, his
cousin, Krampus, shows up with the ‘Naughty & Nice’ list in around October.
I’m tellin’ ya, that dude is fugly, but don’t tell him that, he’d only gloat
about it. Santa? Well, he tries not to be too hard on Krampus – not after last
year when Krampus turned him into a version of himself… yuk! Scared the crap
out of all the youngest elves around the township, I’m tellin’ ya!
But … oh hang on.
I had to put a candy
cane in the swear jar. I forgot that we’re not allowed to swear. I’m
technically not even allowed to be writing in this diary. I just hope he doesn’t
find out I’m doing this.
But he will.
And anyone who ‘turns
against’ him are usually demoted to the stables; which is never good, because
those reindeer aren’t as cute and cuddly as you think. Comet kicks you when you
least expect it. Blitzen bites. Donna is addicted to those stupid candy canes
and the rest spit, throw up and poop everywhere but the stables.
But how I ended up
here in the North Pole is a complete mystery to me. And why my folks haven’t
come looking for is another. Is there a blind spot that this horrible man who
dresses in the same dreadful, red, smelly suit every year casts a spell and my
folks suddenly forget they have a second child?
This doesn’t mean I
don’t know what work is. We all work seven hour split shifts with two one hour
breaks. We get paid with free accommodation, free food, free clothes (when we
need it), and if we get sick (which ironically, is almost never), we have free
home care doctors. But none of us are allowed to leave this place. If we do, we
either disappear forever, or we go back to our families with little to no
memory of what we’ve been through here.
I’ve heard some of
the ones let go from here don’t survive very long out in the real world either.
They end up in institutions or they try to come back here and fail… and end up
dead.
I have asked to go
home, but the longer I’m here for, the less I remember of my family. I think it’s
something in the food that makes us forget our family and the outside world.
The more I eat and drink it, the less I remember my… um… siblings and I have a
mother, I think. Damn! (another candy cane for the swear jar).
This is disturbing
and depressing me, and yet I can’t tell anyone. I have tried to talk to the
home doctor, but he just stands there looking at me with a questioning
expression on his face with his bag in his hand. I can’t tell him how much I
hate this place, because he will report it back to the Big Man and he will
assess the situation and…
The sharp smell of
disinfectant invades my nose and eyes snapping me awake. Restraints hold my
arms in place as a doctor sits by my bedside reading through my green diary
with a red and white spine.
Looking up, he
smiles, “Hi. Do you know where you are?”
I shake my head, “He
didn’t like what I wrote, so instead of sending me to the stables with Comet
and Blitzen, he sent me…” I look around and see it’s not snowing outside, “He
sent me home.”
“He? Who’s he?” the
man places the clipboard with my diary on top of it on the table at the end of
my bed.
Tears fill my eyes
as I struggle to look at him, “I can’t tell you… he’ll know, I’ll be punished
with coal in my stocking at Christmas.”
“You’ve been missing
for over five years, Beth. You showed up at the local police station dressed
like an elf.” He said, “We’ve been trying to convince you that you’re not one,
but your ears. How did your ears get that way.”
I tried to cover them,
but the restraints stopped me, and I blushed instead, “We all become elfish in
the end, when we figure out what has happened to us.”
“You were kidnapped.”
He said, “You were taken from your local park when you were only seven years
old.”
“And I’m how old
now?” I ask.
“Thirteen.”
“And nobody found
me?” I cast a stare straight at him, “Has is ever crossed your mind why that is?
And why there’s so many children who have gone missing and have never returned…
and yet, nobody has found them?”
“Well, you mention
the North Pole in here.” He picked up
the book.
I looked at him. I
knew he had been naughty all year. I knew why I had been sent home. It was
punishment in a way… I still worked for Santa, but I also worked for Krampus. I
could see this man was no doctor. He was impersonating one, “You’re not real.”
“Of course I am.”
“No… you don’t
understand. You’re not a doctor.”
A laugh bubbled
nervously from his mouth, “How can you prove that?”
“Because, I know why
I’ve been sent away from the Workshop.” Looking down, I order the restraints to
let me go. As if the leather heard me, it unbuckled. Sitting forward, I pick up
my diary, “I’m here to find out who’s Naughty and Nice. I don’t work for Santa
anymore; I work for Krampus. And you, ‘doctor’ haven’t been nice to anyone this
year.”
