by Yolanda Sfetsos
By the time Bow decided it was time to emerge from the cozy darkness while riding the sleigh packed with presents, the gray sky overhead threatened more snow.
Great. He’d been hoping for a clear night.
He sighed as he jumped out of the sleigh and instructed the skeletal reindeer to stay.
A soft, chilly breeze rustled the leaves above his head, shaking the snowflakes from the branches until they settled on his green felt hat. The ground below his pointy boots felt slippery and wet, so he took his time across the uneven, cracked concrete. He was careful not to slip, not after what happened last year. His right leg hadn't felt the same after that fall, and probably never would.
Months later and he was still in pain. If it wasn’t for the spiked gingerbread cookies his dealer provided, he wouldn’t have made it through the agony. A good sprinkle of crushed painkillers was almost as good as the morphine the crafty baker mixed into the spicy batter.
A little fix was the only way elves could endure the shit they were put through every day of every fucking year. Making toys, crafting wrapping paper, designing cards, and all the other countless festive crap everyone else took for granted was hard work.
He made his way across the icy ground, limping a little as he approached his destination.
“I really hate this time of year,” he muttered to himself, because no one ever cared about what he had to say. He spent most of his existence blending into the crowd, never heard or seen by anyone. Not even his fellow elves.
Bow couldn’t lie. He preferred things that way, which was why this gig sucked. Doing this meant filling out forms and attending several meetings to report about the status of their puppet. All exhausting in their own way, but necessary to keep Santa in line.
Why did I get stuck with the horrible job of having to drag Cranky Pants out of his annual slumber?
No matter how many times he grumbled about it, he knew the rules. He’d drawn the short straw and this awful task would be his for a total of eighty years.
Bow had become an alarm clock and, even though he was sick of it, he still had seventy-eight long years to serve of this freezing crap.
He paused at the unmarked grave and sighed, hated how the snow melted on his clothes. His breath misted in front of his numb face but didn’t obscure the details.
The ancient and worn headstones that reminded him of crooked teeth were everywhere. The patchy grass hidden by the snowfall reflected the neglect.
Only one of these gravesites was clearly marked.
The freaky Santa hat dangling from the short rusty fence around the unkempt sepulchre always made him feel ill. That horrid thing was still shiny. No matter how many seasons came and went, the hat with its fluffy pom-pom tip never faded while facing the elements.
The gross item sat silently, swaying in the breeze, taunting Bow.
He shivered, and it wasn’t because of the cold. His thin hat and clothes might be wet, the flimsy boots caked with dirt and ice, but he was reacting to the anger and resentment. The disgust curdling the sugar plums he’d scoffed before leaving.
The person he was here to rouse from slumber, the owner of the freaky red hat, was often described as a jolly, old man with a big white beard, jovial laugh and a round belly hidden behind the familiar seasonal outfit. Kids loved him, parents used him as an excuse to make their offspring behave, and all of them—whether young or old—looked forward to receiving gifts from him once a year.
Yet, the reality was a fucking nightmare. What remained of the bright imagery projected onto the masses was a haggard shell. Children didn’t realize that the impostors in shopping centers posing for photos were a more worthy option than what was left of the real St. Nick.
In his younger years, Bow was assigned to several stints as Santa’s little helper, but couldn’t stand the Christmas shopping rush or those annoying festive carols. He preferred the haunting lullabies that filtered through the speakers where he resided. The ones designed to keep every elf calm. No one ever started a revolution while listening to lullabies.
He raised a hand and tapped his windblown knuckles against the concrete slab, careful not to rub away the skin. Of course, he could’ve worn gloves, but he hated those wretched things.
Silence greeted him, which was the usual response.
He rolled his eyes. “Santa, wake up! It’s that time of the year again.”
No response.
The useless bastard was ignoring him. Santa liked to play games at the beginning of their annual meeting. But in the end, they both knew he had no choice but to accept his responsibility.
“Father Christmas, come on. It’s cold out here!”
“What do you want?” a tired voice called, crabby and dry. A year of quiet and slumber always stole more of the small intelligence he had left. “Can’t you see I’m sleeping?”
Although there was no doubt the worms burrowing between his ears affected his hearing, Bow hated how St. Nick always pretended he didn’t know what the annual summons meant.
“It sounds like you’re awake now.” Bow hoped this relic wouldn’t totally decompose during this stint, and accidentally lose a limb in someone’s living room. He didn’t feel like adding cleanup of decomposing body parts to his list of duties.
“Well, I’m not.”
“You know it’s that time of the year!” Maybe raising his voice would get the message across. “There’s no use pretending otherwise.” It felt good when he screamed, and his squeaky voice echoed around the barren landscape.
No one, but the unluckiest elf in the world, ever visited this part of the cemetery. Most of the corpses buried here had been dead for so long their relatives had perished too.
He scanned the collapsed and faded tombstones around him. Everyone here had died over a hundred years ago.
“Are you sure it’s that time of the year again?” Santa shouted back. His voice echoed beneath the stone covering.
“Positive.”
“It feels like only yesterday, when I was handing out those stupid presents!”
Bow hated to admit it, but he agreed with the old man for once. It did seem like only yesterday when they’d clambered onto the shabby sleigh and ordered the skeletal reindeer to fly them around the world to deliver the colorful presents.
He rolled his dark eyes anyway. This routine was going to be the end of him. It was the same thing every year. Whenever Christmas rocked around, Santa Claus prolonged stepping out of his comfortable grave for as long as he could. Bow supposed it gave the old man some sense of control, because he had none.
“Just get out here,” Bow whispered.
The sound of concrete scraping against concrete broke the silence and he spotted a bloated hand popping out of the hole in front of him.
“Help me with this, will you, son?”
Bow leaned forward and wrapped his frozen fingers around the rough edge to help push the heavy slab across, just as the jolly dead man did the same from below. When they’d made enough room, the white-haired Santa rose out of the grave like a zombie greeting a new dawn.
He groaned and yawned, was a sight for sore eyes. Barely had any teeth, but the few that remained were oozing pus, his patchy scalp was bleeding, and the rot-eaten flesh smelled as much as his filthy red coat. There was a reason he delivered presents under the cover of darkness.
“I’m getting too dead for this.”
You and me both.
Santa’s foul breath almost knocked Bow over. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to sympathize with this creature. Not when he had the chance to sleep peacefully all year while the elves worked tirelessly.
“The reindeer are ready, and the sleigh is full of cra—toys.” Bow sighed. “There’s also a bottle of rum waiting for you. It’ll help warm your insides.” But not your dead spirit.
“If those damn kids hadn’t cursed me for an eternity, I would actually be getting some well-deserved rest!” Santa climbed out of his hole in the ground and bits of skin flaked off his face and hands. He didn’t seem to notice, and instead shambled towards the red hat, shoved it over his lopsided head, and spat on the ground. “I’m sick and tired of doing this. There’s no rest for the wicked, is there, son?”
Bow shrugged. “Well, I guess I’ll be going now.”
He turned away, and took a hasty step back that sent a sharp pain up his leg. All he wanted to do was reach the tree that would give him passage back to the underground North Pole bunker. Having to walk wouldn’t be as comfortable as sitting in the sleigh, but anything was better than spending another minute with this oaf.
“Hey, wait! I need your help. You know I’m too busted up to jump down any bloody chimneys.” The old man wiped down his decayed outfit. Unlike the hat, it didn’t shine with life anymore. It looked as dead as Santa.
Bow hated being his ‘assistant’. All the magical and wonderful things this jerk was known for were always performed by a trusty elf sidekick. This man had never valued those who helped him, and Bow despised him for it. Last year, he didn’t even thank him after they returned here.
But even worse than that, Santa didn’t share the cookies and milk the devout left for him. Santa scoffed every crumb and drank every drop. It was how he powered himself along the journey. Even though all he did was eat and read the notes.
Milk, cookies and devotion—fuel for the undead.
“Are you sure? You can use the door or windows nowadays. Most people—”
“Of course I’m sure, you idiot!” Santa rubbed at his brittle and wiry beard, wiping a chunk right off his chin. He looked at it with distaste, before throwing the clump on the ground. His once rosy cheeks were now covered in thin spidery blue veins, visible beneath his translucent, dead skin. “Now lead the way to the damn sleigh so we can get this over and done with.”
This fucker belongs in Halloween, not Christmas.
Bow hated spending time with him, but had no choice. It was his job, and fighting back was forbidden. Too much was at stake.
All the elves hated the whiny fool that was Santa, which was why he’d been cursed into this position of delivery puppet in the first place. But if one of them dared to destroy him, they would pay the ultimate, nightmarish price of taking his place.
I definitely don’t want that curse.
He swallowed his pride and said, “Yes, Santa.”
“I’ve really got to find a way to reverse the curse the children of the world damned me with.”
Bow stared at the disgusting undead zombie standing a few feet in front of him, and he couldn’t help but smile.
At least he was glad that this shitty corpse didn’t know the truth. Santa Claus would spend an eternity condemning children for this curse, when his elves were the ones responsible for casting it shortly after killing him.
That was the best day of my life.
“You’ll help me, won’t you?”
“Of course. We’ll definitely find a way to free you one day,” he lied.
Santa took another shaky step and stopped in front of Bow. “You, and every one of my devoted elves, are so kind and wonderful to me.”
Bow almost gagged because St. Nick stunk enough to make his eyes water, but he still managed a small, wicked grin because this ancient idiot would never figure out the truth.
“I owe you my life.”
You most certainly do. That’s why we took it and turned you into this, you useless fool.
_____________________________________________
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
I wrote the original draft of this shortie ages ago for an online writing contest. I actually ended up winning the HORROR-WEB Chilling Tales Grave Xmas Contest. ☺️
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment