by H. M. Mann
On the day that Santa watches the young bucks’ first flying lessons. Clarisse flirts shamelessly with Rudolph, showing a lot of hoof. One look at Clarisse’s legs and Rudolph really does fly, partially because of the vicious Arctic crosswinds that day, but mainly because of the fumes from the glue holding all that mud onto his nose. Santa is impressed, laughing and shaking his morbid obesity so much that a glacier the size of Texas falls into the Arctic Ocean a thousand miles away causing former vice president Al Gore to make a movie about global warming, and Elvis, I mean, the elves, oh, I mean, the diminutive height-challenged wearers o’ the green all fall down on the job at the sweat shop, I mean, toy factory. The elves will later go on strike for unfair labor practices. I mean, who works on Christmas Eve besides pizza delivery drivers?
When Rudolph plummets to earth, the mud flies off his nose, and his nose starts to shine like a strobe light. The other reindeer—the cool and confident and normal-nosed reindeer, with their Volvos and trust funds and shaggy hair and clothes trendily bought at the thrift shop and lifelong addictions to Ritalin—stay away from Rudolph mainly because of his name, which is so … not Chad or Flip, or Tipper.
Rudolph runs away and hooks up with a blond wannabe dentist named Shermy, and a red-bearded prospector named Yukon Cornelius, who has somehow wandered about 2,000 miles from the Yukon. The three go on a long journey and eventually end up on the Island of Misfit Toys, soon to be a new reality show on Fox to be copied by every other network and beaten to death for a few years. The Island of Misfit Toys is a sad place where discarded toys hang out pining for children to smear boogers on, mishandle, and abuse them. The three meet and talk to Rubik’s Cube, Etch-a-Sketch, Mr. Potato Head, Sand Art, the entire cast from Toy Story, Mr. Bucket, board games like Monopoly and Sorry and Operation, decks of Old Maid, Pit, Rook, and Uno, assorted telescopes, an Easy-Bake Oven, several ant farms, Spirograph, a chemistry set, a Red Ryder BB gun, 500-piece puzzles, and model trains, planes, and automobiles. Their former child owners had kicked them to the curb because they didn’t have buttons to push, computer chips, or nifty sound effects. Children shoved them into closets or under beds or simply threw them out because they actually required imagination, manual dexterity, and thought to use.
These misfit toys had obviously scared the children.
The three friends leave the Island of Misfit Toys, which is as depressing a place as any standard pizza joint after closing, and run into the Abominable Snowman, nicknamed “Bumble,” yet another misunderstood being with bad hair, who terrorizes them because he really has no self-worth or anyone his size to play with. He had had a lonely childhood in the Himalayas, and yet, somehow, he ends up at the North Pole 10,000 miles away.
Rudolph’s parents, worried about losing their tax break, and Clarisse, in a rare show of physical activity other than singing a sappy song, go off into the night to find Rudolph. They run into the “Bumble,” who plans to eat them because he just cannot make friends without his stomach rumbling and saliva dripping from his mouth. After a stray icicle knocks out the Bumble—as if he couldn’t see a huge ice dagger the size of Connecticut falling on him—Shermy removes the Bumble’s teeth to save his friends’ lives, as if the “Bumble” cannot inhale or gum them to death in his rage afterwards.
Yukon Cornelius and the Bumble then go skydiving into a crevasse, and Rudolph thinks they’re dead. But they aren’t.
That would really scare the children, as if a fifty-foot-tall hairy, toothless, cannibalistic abominable snowman isn’t scary enough.
Yukon Cornelius and the Bumble will miraculously reappear in the last silly moments when the Bumble puts the star on Santa’s tree. Evidently, Bumbles bounce. They also like to roll bounce and have hydraulics on their sleds while listening to Latino dance music, but that’s another story.
A terrible worldwide blizzard ensues, threatening to cancel Christmas. A worldwide blizzard? Even at the equator? Is that even possible? Snowball fights in the Sahara? Global warming is a hoot, isn’t it, Mr. Gore? And isn’t having a blizzard at the North Pole redundant?
Rudolph, fresh off being a hero, shoves his flaming red nose into Santa’s face, and Santa decides he can save Christmas by using Rudolph’s beak to lead his sleigh through the blizzard, as if a single two-inch-wide red nose will do any good during an Arctic storm. I mean, how far could that light shine anyway? Five inches? Ten inches? Without GPS, Santa’s sleigh would have run into the first two-story house in Greenland.
Mrs. Claus decides to fatten up Santa, which is as redundant as an Arctic blizzard, and Rudolph with his nose so bright helps Santa deliver presents including the old school toys from the Island of Misfit Toys. What a waste! They’ll only get blown up or stomped or put on sale at a yard sale or auctioned off on EBay as a “collectible” or ignored all over again!
But that’s another story.
And we wouldn’t want to scare the children, would we?
Johnny hesitated running the story by Gloria because it would prove he hadn’t been working a lick on her story, and here he was again not writing the ending to her book.
Johnny knew the book would be total crap, but that was all right, too. He didn’t mind that the mice seemed to be doubled over laughing. At least I think they’re laughing. I hope those last saltines weren’t too stale. “No really,” he told them, “this is about to be one hundred percent, grade-A dung. I’d have to be crazy to submit this to anyone with a pulse.”
But, he thought, I do like hearing Gloria laugh, and after she reads it, I’ll pop the question and put that ring on her finger.
The mice seemed to applaud.
I have definitely been living here too long, Johnny thought. The mice are beginning to read my mind.
He clicked on the shortcut icon for A Thorn for Emily.
Now where did I leave off? Oh yeah. Here goes nothing …
… Gunn was still full of angst. He was also full of corn and undigested red meat.
He and Thais had been trying without success to have a baby. His seed had found no purchase in Thais’s sexy Brazilian uterus. What am I doing wrong? Gunn thought. What? What are we doing wrong? What? Why? I’ve stopped riding my bicycle, I wear boxers, and I don’t hang out in hot tubs. I take vitamins that make my pee bright yellow and smell like cabbage soup. What else can I do to put a bun in Thais’s sexy Brazilian oven?
Littlest did Gunn know, that although Thais had reconciled herself to loving Gunn, she drew the line at making babies with the infidel. I may be a traitor to my family, my religion, my real country, my sister, and women throughout all eternity, she thought, but I will not muddy the purity of my family tree with an enemy’s offspring.
As a result, Thais was full of angst. She was also full of corn and tofu, and they made her feel like a veg.
She also felt hemorrhoids. They were the pits. I mean, having to go to the proctologist’s to hear him or her say, “Hmm, uh, er, are you having trouble voiding?” And you there on all fours on the ice cold table wondering what “voiding” means. So you ask for an explanation since “voiding” sounds illegal in every state but California and the upper crust parts of Manhattan, and the proctologist pulls out his handy thesaurus and embarrasses you in front of your grandmother, who’s staring at your kiester and comparing it to your Uncle Gene’s kiester, the same Uncle Gene who had a little “lip” removed from “down there” because his “dirt” was spilling all over the toilet like an “outdoor sprinkler.” The good doctor then grunts, “Do you have difficulty defecating, emptying your colon, target shooting Milk Duds, or dropping your kids off the bus?” To which you reply, “No, I poo-poo just fine.”
Gunn felt Thais’s angst and found it rough, scaly, and in serious need of moisturizers, so he took her on an around-the-world tour that did little to relieve their collective angst. They walked around inside Big Ben in London, and Big Ben didn’t blink. They climbed the Eiffel Tower in Paris and didn’t enjoy the view since it was freaking France full of freaking French people who h
ad let the Germans waltz to Johann Strauss over and through them like stinky brie. Thais flowed like the Amazon on the Nile River after contracting dysentery from an imported Guatemalan fig that looked suspiciously like a man named Hector, Hector who dreamed of flooding numerous Egyptian hemp farmers and random archaeologists and other grave robbers with his patented pizza sauce. They leaned on The Leaning Tower of Pisa instead of each other, snoozed at 200 miles per hour on the bullet train in Japan, napped during their voyage in the Chunnel, and putted along at 60 kilometers per hour on the Autobahn.
But nothing relieved Thais’s angst, Gunn’s angst, Thais’s hemorrhoids, or Gunn’s longing for an heir …
… until Emily Benderdondat showed up at the back door of Gunn’s mansion on Christmas Eve wearing a delightful cinnamon red and spearmint green dental floss necklace, a marvelous cat suit, and flip flops.
Emily claimed to be lost.
“I’m lost,” Emily claimed. “Could I use your phone and a preferably new or near-new toothbrush?”
“Oh Gunn, can we keep her?” Thais said possessively. “We could raise her as our as yet unborn daughter, Rafe.”
“We don’t even know her name,” Gunn said evenly.
“That never stopped you before,” Thais said haltingly.
“So we should just adopt her without her consent?” Gunn asked, adopting a consensual tone. “In probably one hundred percent of the countries on this planet, that would be considered kidnapping or the beginnings of a really bad movie starring a little red-headed girl and a dog.”
Emily then lifted her bright red bangs and showed them a pudgy pit-bull puppy and a barcode tattooed on her forehead.
Luckily, there had been a sale on point-of-sale scanners at a going-out-business sale for Fill-In-The-Blank Corporation, a company that had failed because of the fiscally irresponsible banks that needed a bailout from financially angry American citizens who elected fiscally irresponsible politicians to give the fiscally irresponsible banks the money. Thais had picked up a scanner for a song, and she sang “My Country ‘Tis in Debt Up to Its Neck” so beautifully that they gave her a twenty percent discount and tickets to see an off-off-Broadway show starring the aging cast of The Love Boat.
Thais scanned Emily’s barcode, and “$19.99” flashed on the screen.
As I suspected, Thais thought, Emily is nothing but an “As Seen on TV” product being hyped loudly by an abnormally creepy guy who believes we actually need his ridiculous crap.
Fascinated by the glowing red light and the idea of there being so many barcodes, so little time, Thais left Gunn and Emily alone so she could scan every barcode in the house because she liked to hear the beeps.
“It is about time we were … a-low-un,” Emily said, using some of her dental floss necklace to, well, floss between her molars and incisors.
Gunn instantly recognized Emily’s voice. “Cat, is it you?”
Emily was amazed. Her own sister didn’t recognize her voice or the pit-bull tattoo on her forehead. She was hurt, and she felt angst.
Gunn grabbed Emily’s shoulders and shook her until her eyes spun far back into her head. “Cat, is it really, really, really, really you?”
“We need to talk,” Emily/Cat said needlessly.
“Not this again!” Gunn howled like a howling animal that howls.
“But we really need to talk, Gunn,” Emily/Cat said really, really cattily and Emily-ly. “Your life is in danger.”
Gunn stood in a spotlight that appeared miraculously from the ceiling as a disco ball threw shiny disco beams all over the room, the echo of the Bee Gees’ “Night Fever” warming up the night. “My life has been in danger from the very millisecond I was born. There has never been a moment in my life where danger wasn’t somewhere nearby, taunting me, calling me ‘Gunn the Ton’ when I was a hefty little fat kid who had to wear husky clothes. Danger was there to laugh at me when I had that unfortunate bicycle accident where I imagined my bike was a horse and leaped only to realize too late that the bicycle seat was missing. Danger is my first name, my middle name, my last name, and even my imaginary friend’s name. Yes, danger knows full well that I am more dangerous and loathsome and vicious and cruel than danger is. I am not afraid of danger.”
Emily/Cat fell asleep.
Gunn slapped her awake. “So you’re not dead?”
“Obviously,” Emily/Cat said obviously.
“But I buried you!” Gunn said with an obvious dig.
“Yeah, about that,” Emily/Cat said. “Being buried alive really, really, really sucks. I mean, there I was, not dead, mind you, and pretty angry because my sister, the wench you’ve been dragging all over the planet, shot me full of holes while you were at your so-called secret hideout crash pad whatever, which isn’t so secret because you have a wooden sign on the door that reads, ‘Gunn’s Top Secret Crash Pad,’ and I was angry they buried me in a lime green dress, I mean, come on, does this body belong in a lime green dress, and anyway while I’m lying there mostly dead, and it’s actually kind of peaceful what with no sound like one of those sensory-deprivation chambers though not as creepy or wet—you should really try one of those chambers but make sure you don’t drink the water—and like I said, I’m ninety-four percent dead when a single thorn pops through my casket, and I’m like, who invited you here, you stupid thorn, and did they have to pay extra for this or what since this casket cost more than a freaking house which is such a scam, like a dead person is going to care if it’s silk-lined or mahogany wood or them there are real brass fittings, Missy, and this thorn hurt my arm, which surprised me because I thought when you were ninety-four percent dead you weren’t supposed to feel anything, but I guess you have to live and learn, and like I said, the thorn hurt me, so I cussed like a trucker high on BC Powder and cut off in traffic by a Honda Civic Hybrid doing at least eighty, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a car that gets good gas mileage if you asked me, and instead of crumpling to the leg end of the coffin—where’s there’s scads of legroom, by the way—and like I said instead of crumpling like Whitney Houston’s and Bobby Brown’s collective careers, those poor, misguided kids, I used that single thorn to cut a hole in the casket—it took about two weeks, give or take, since I kept breaking my nails and had to wait until they grew back—dig six feet up, escape the hole, take a Greyhound and nobody looked twice at my emaciated, nearly-dead body because all they care about at Greyhound is if you pay with American money, and go to Tahiti for a while, you know, because I’ve never been there and it’s really, really hot, and it’s like completely on the other side of the earth in the middle of all this salty water, and then I went to Beverly Hills where they cut me every which way—and loose as a goose, as you can see—so I could come back to warn you disguised as the poster redhead for dental flossing, which I can tell that you don’t do very often so you’ll get gingivitis for sure, that Thais Knotts means to kill you dead.”
And she said all that in one breath, Gunn thought breathlessly. They must have implanted an extra lung inside her. Isn’t medical technology great? I mean, just fifty years ago it would have been a waste of time to put “organ donor” on your driver’s license. Oh sure, you could have donated your organs, but who would have taken them? Besides the IRS and maybe Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies, I mean—
“Gunn, you’re in danger!” Emily/Cat purred dangerously.
“What should I do?” Gunn duly asked.
“Act casual,” Emily/Cat said casually.
Gunn struck up a casual pose, looking eerily like a mannequin at Old Navy. “Now what?”
“Look more casual,” Emily/Cat said more casually.
Gunn struck up another pose, looking exactly like Mel Gibson only not as handsome, outspoken and insensitive, hairy, or Australian.
“I hear you’re trying to have a baby with Thais,” Emily/Cat said in a baby’s shrieking voice.
“How did you know?” Gunn asked knowingly.
“You said we were having fifteen kids once, r
emember?” Emily/Cat reminded him numerically.
“Oh yeah. Fifteen. I’d settle for one right now.”
“It takes nine months,” Emily/Cat said.
“I didn’t mean ‘right now’ as in ‘right now,’ Gunn said rightly. “I meant I’d settle for a baby … You know what I mean.”
“Do I?”
“Do you what?”
“Do I know?”
“Know what?”
“Do I know what you mean?”
“Do you?”
“Do I?”
“Do you what?”
“Do you know?”
“This is pointless.”
“Like those little silica packs in your clothes that they tell you not to eat but then they spill out of your pocket and onto the floor for the cat to lick up days before the cat expands to the size of a bus and eats the neighbor’s Rottweiler.”
“Like that extra button they give you for a shirt, as if anyone can keep track of it or has a needle and thread handy to put that sucker back on.”
“Like the proof of purchase doo-hickey square on Ritz cracker boxes, as if I’d ever need to use it anywhere.”
“Like your appendix.”
“Or your gall bladder.”
“Or your tonsils.”
“Or ninety percent of your brain.”
“Or politics.”
“Or ninety-nine percent of a politician’s brain.”
“What did you want me to do?”
“I said,” Emily/Cat said, “for you to act casual.”
“Wait,” Gunn said.
Emily/Cat waited. She even hummed to make the wait almost fun and full of frolicking frolic.
“How should I actually act?” Gunn actually asked.
“Casually,” Emily/Cat repeated for the umpteenth time.
So, Gunn acted all uninterested and aloof and detached and remote and standoffish, even though Emily/Cat smelled of cinnamon and spearmint, and found himself humming show tunes from Broadway shows that still had some gumption and get-up-and-go like in the Cole Porter and George and Ira Gershwin days as if he were in the elevator or in a doctor’s office full of snot-nosed kids digging for gold.