by Voss Porter
Devin wrinkled her nose. “Humans?”
Her companion appeared vexed and narrowed a set of deep, onyx eyes. She had dark freckles along her cheeks and on the bridge of her nose.
“Look,” said the stranger, putting her hands on her hips. “I’m trying to be nice here but… I’m not getting what you’re not getting. You’re clearly a human. You know what humans are. This isn’t neuroscience.”
She was speaking like this was some run-of-the-mill, mundane conversation to be having on Christmas Eve, discussing the parameters of mortality. She was speaking like this was no different from a casual conversation about the weather.
Devin stuttered. “Y-you’re clearly human.”
“Am I? You really think so?” The bizarre lady beamed and then looked down to inspect her outfit, but was somewhere between cartoonish and Halloween. “I never know what to wear to things like this.”
“You’ll fit right in at the parade.” Devin felt like her life was off kilter.
She scanned the bakery. It was the same bakery she knew like the back of her hand. She knew the bricks and the cement and the counters and the pictures. She knew the light switches and the molding and the pots and the pans. It was all so familiar. It was everything she had ever known. But it didn’t feel that way.
The other woman blew out a frustrated breath. “Why would I go to a parade? I hate parades.”
“It’s the Christmas Eve parade,” Devin said, confused. “Why would you be dressed like that and not go to the parade? Who are you?”
“Tonya,” came the unabashed answer. “I’m Tonya and you’re Devin Knight.”
“Tonya…” Devin led, hoping her new friend would add a last name. She knew several people named Tonya. Not a single Tonya she knew was crazy or dressed like Santa’s cashier from the Pine Ridge Mall. “Tonya what?”
“It’s just Tonya,” the aforementioned Tonya explained. “I don’t have a last name.” “Everybody has a last name,” Devin corrected.
“Not Cher,” Tonya argued.
“Are you Cher?” Devin was growing agitated. This situation was spinning out of control.
“No,” Tonya cut her eyes. “I just told you, I’m Tonya. I’m not Cher. Cher is my cousin.”
“Cher is your cousin… And your name is Tonya.” Devin used the opportunity to sit all the way up and really look at her guest, or the perpetrator of her attempted murder.
For her part, Tonya wasn’t too fazed by the inspection. “Right. I’m Tonya, the elf.”
“Jesus Christ,” Devin gaped. “Did I die?”
Tonya reached over and pinched her, hard. When she winced and jerked backward, Tonya smiled. “You felt that, right? Not dead. You’re not exactly alive, but you’re not dead either.”
“I’m in limbo?” This wasn’t happening. This was… An elf?
“It’s not exactly limbo. It’s more like… A Universal Time Out.” Tonya picked at dirt beneath her fingernails.
A Universal Time Out? Devin heaved out a thick breath. I have gone insane. I am crazy. This is psychosis and my life and my career are over. This is it. This is the end.
Absently, it registered that, after all of her hard work to make the Knight Bakery as successful as her father had dreamed of it being, there was no one, except maybe Miranda, for her to bequeath it to.
She reached out, without thinking, and touched a strand of Tonya’s ebony hair. With lightning quick reflexes, Tonya swatted her hand away. It burned like a bee sting.
“I’m not that kind of elf, you idiot,” she snapped, rising to her full height—an impressive six feet. “Now come on, we’re wasting time.”
“Wasting time?” Devin was having trouble tracking the ins and outs of this conversation.
Devin was having trouble tracking the conversation, as a whole. One moment, she was looking for Christmas adornment in Miranda’s wasteland of mirth. The next moment, she was staring up at a woman identifying herself as an elf. Why had she fallen in the first place? And what loony bin did this Tonya person escape from?
“I thought elves were short,” she declared, trying to catch her associate in the blatant untruth.
“You thought wrong,” Tonya said, nonplussed.
“I thought wrong?” The words were thick in Devin’s mouth.
“Stop repeating everything I say.” Tonya was irritated. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I hate it when you do that.”
“Then stop lying to me,” Devin bargained.
If they were going to come to some understanding (prior to the police escort), communication had to improve on both ends. Plus, as long as I’m dreaming, I may as well make the best of it.
“You’re not dreaming,” Tonya pouted. “And I’m not lying.”
“You really want me to believe you’re an elf?” Devin rubbed a kink from her neck. Whether she got it from the fall, the floor, or the work she’d been slaving over, she couldn’t deduce. Her life was coming a bit unhinged at the moment.
“I do,” Tonya acquiesced. “It’s the truth.”
“It’s ridiculous—” Devin began.
“I don’t come into your job and tell you that you’re ridiculous,” her unlikely acquaintance completed. “You’re being rude.”
I’m being rude? You pushed me down. For all I know, you attacked me, Devin wanted to say but wisely did not. Now you’re telling me you’re an elf.
“I am an elf,” Tonya reintroduced herself. “I’m Tonya. I didn’t push you down and I didn’t attack you.”
“Are you reading my mind?” Devin was aghast.
She blinked and tried to change mental channels. This was a dream. She could control it—
“It’s not a dream and you can’t control it.” This Tonya could be quite aggressive.
“You’re not an elf,” Devin said, emphatically.
“Fine, okay. We’ll do this your way.” Tonya stuck her hip out to the side. “Don’t call me an elf. Call me… An… Operative of fate. Is that better?”
Meekly, Devin nodded. On some level, her psyche began to entertain this experience as legitimate.
“I’m Tonya. You’re Devin Knight and you’re complete human right now, you’re just in a Universal Time Out.” When Tonya said it so calmly, it almost made sense.
Almost.
“On Christmas Eve?” Devin pondered.
“Um, duh, on Christmas Eve.” Tonya said that like it was something Devin was already supposed to know. “I’m an elf, remember? Christmas Eve is kind of my thing.” She then made a big show of checking her watch, a diamond-encrusted beauty wrapped tightly around her left wrist. “But Universal Time Outs aren’t permanent and we’ve only got, like, forty more minutes left.”
“Christmas Eve. Universal time out. Forty minutes,” Devin babbled.
“They don’t last for forty minutes, they last an hour. You just took a long time to wake up after you passed out on the floor.” Again, Tonya explained like these were regular details that Devin should have known and processed and memorized.
“I passed out?” That’s how I ended up on the floor!
“You didn’t just pass out, you passed out-passed out,” Tonya snickered. “Most people pass out but you realllyyyyy went down. I was worried.”
“Um, thanks?” Now that Devin could really study her, there was something otherworldly about this Tonya amalgam. Her skin was so pale it was nearly translucent and her movements were graceful in a way that Devin wouldn’t ordinarily notice.
That didn’t mean she was really buying into this Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future nonsense. Not yet, anyway. Elves were the stuff of movies and cable access Christmas films. Devin was a real-world woman. What’s more, she was a real-world woman in Pine Ridge. Pine Ridge was literally the most boring town in the country.
“You don’t believe me,” Tonya declared, flatly.
“I didn’t say that,” Devin deflected.
“You don’t have to. It’s written all over your face…” Tonya seemed to pick he
r next words right out of the air. “And I wouldn’t say Pine Ridge is literally the most boring town in the country. It’s kind of picturesque.”
As she spoke, Tonya moved to the giant plate glass windows rimmed in fake snow and looked out on the Christmas Eve Parade beginnings. Laughter drifted in through the cracks.
“It’s not picturesque,” Devin refused.
Although, if she looked out… It was kind of picturesque. Light-up angels were affixed to the stoplights and light poles. Wreaths were artistically draped on every storefront. Carolers moved from door-to-door. The whole thing was very Norman Rockwell, minus the snow. It rarely snowed in South Carolina.
“This is only wasting more time, Dev.” Tonya stomped her foot. “Arguing over it, not believing it—you’re wasting something most people never get.”
“You mean I’m wasting a Christmas miracle?” Christmas miracles were for children and Miranda—
“Call it whatever you want,” Tonya growled, “I don’t care. Just take advantage of it. Let me show you what I came to show you.”
“Oh, you came to show me something? Not turn my life upside down?” At least Tonya wasn’t boring to be around. She was confounding and a little unbelievable, but not boring.
“I came to show you what you can be, what you can have…” When Tonya offered her hand, despite the fact that Devin was convincing herself this whole thing could be a fever dream, she took it and let her weight be lifted off the ground. “Hold still.”
Devin blinked and rubbed her eyes.
She opened her eyes.
She was outside.
How did I get outside?
On all sides of her, the Pine Ridge Christmas Eve Parade was in full swing.
Only, it wasn’t the Pine Ridge Christmas Eve Parade from before. It wasn’t…
Devin scrunched her nose. Where were the carolers? Where were the light-up angels? Where was the new bank, built when they knocked down the old car lot? Why was the library brown? The Planning Commission painted the library in 2003, when they added the gazebo and the clock.
“What…?” she mouthed something but the words fell away as the marching band tromped onward, blaring the rudimentary notes of “Frosty, the Snowman.” Pine Ridge High School didn’t even have a marching band anymore. A float rolled by, decked out with Pine Ridge High Cavalier decals all wearing Santa hats.
Pine Ridge High School cheerleaders hung over the sides, screaming “Ho, ho, ho.” One was wearing a loose ponytail and a sweatshirt with Class of 1999 scrawled on it.
“Remember her?” Tonya smirked, and pointed to a tiny girl with a mountain of tangled, dark hair, running, no-holds-barred, through a gathering throng of watchers. “December 24, 1998?”
Devin smiled at the image of her childhood, of her little body dragging those white sheets all over the wed, soggy ground, icing coloring her face.
“This is the Christmas before my mother died,” she said softly. She felt the tears threatening to spill, felt the dam she built around her heart threatening to break. “This is the Christmas before she got sick.”
Cancer was such a thief.
“She loved you so much, you know,” her operative of fate prompted. “She loved your father, loved the life they made together.”
This was a dream Devin didn’t want narrated.
“You don’t have to tell me. I saw it,” she said, effectively cutting Tonya off.
“Did you?” There was a knowing sweetness in the elf’s words. She wasn’t rubbing it in or demanding. She was just asking, redirecting.
“They…” Awash in memories that were bittersweet, Devin was wrapped in the familiarity of family that she thought she lost. It reminded her of spiced apples with nutmeg and vanilla ice cream over brownies. She cleared her throat. “They used to hold hands a lot.”
“Like that?” Tonya gestured.
Devin followed her hand and felt her heart leap up in her chest. There were her parents, her real parents, holding hands on the sidewalk. They weren’t pictures or memories, they were living, breathing people, connected to one another by a tangible tie. Her mother was laughing, her hair shaking around her. Her father was—
Devin couldn’t breathe.
Her father had given up his life to raise her after her mother’s death. Her father had sacrificed so much, put her needs before his own. He put her needs before the bakery.
“They sent me, just so you know.” Tonya tried to sound casual. Or that’s how it seemed to Devin. “They’ve been watching you, worrying about you.”
“Worrying about me?” Devin wiped at the tears on her cheeks, tears she didn’t know had escaped. “I’m fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”
“You’re lonely.” Tonya shifted her weight from one foot to the other. Her face belied a hatred of shoes, or perhaps one of all human trappings.
“I’m not lonely,” the stalwart baker lied.
“You’re right. You’re lonely and you’re stubborn.” Tonya squared her shoulders. “How long has it been?”
“Since what?” Devin knew precisely what Tonya was asking of her. She just didn’t feel comfortable discussing the intimate details of her private life with a snarky elf on a crowded street.
“The horizontal mambo?” her cohort blurted. “The dance with no pants? Geez, what do humans call it? Sex?”
Devin reddened and stared at the ground. Her parents were barely three feet from them. In a perverse twist of fate, she was barely three feet from them. “This is a delicate subject for an elf at a Christmas parade.”
“Elves aren’t Puritans,” Tonya guffawed. “I make toys for a living, I don’t carry on the sacred rights of Holy Communion—”
“Fine, okay, whatever,” Devin divulged, to shut her up. “It’s been a while.”
“Can’t remember, huh?” the operative of fate poked fun, as men dressed as toy soldiers trampled over the gravel of the blocked-off street, arms swinging in time with the music from the Nutcracker blasted via portable CD player.
God, I haven’t thought about portable CD players in years…
Probably since the last time I had sex.
“Look,” Devin snapped, “I told you it’s been a while. Aren’t you supposed to tell me how to fix it?” Assuming she put any stock in the idea that her dead parents sent a cosmic being to put her in a Universal Time Out and seek to rectify her loneliness, said cosmic being would need to put her on a path to nookie… Right?
Tonya grabbed hold of her arm and cast a worried glance around. “Finally. I thought you’d never ask.”
Three
A second later, the two were milling about in the corner of a store.
Wait. They weren’t milling about in the corner of just any store. They were milling about in the corner of Summer Sun Soap, a boutique with handmade bath products, local honey, and custom jewelry.
“This is right down from me.” Devin looked around. The logo jogged her memory.
The space was identical to hers, as well, with a small space for display and two big windows and a kitchen or stock room in the back. The only noticeable difference was Summer Sun lacked a window that married the two areas together. Devin’s grandmother had engineered that bit of construction for the bakery, said it created a warmer environment.
“This is your neighbor, I know,” Tonya dismissed and yawned. “Three stores down on the left, run by a Cady Brown.”
“Cady Brown…” Devin tried the name out.
As if on cue, a woman appeared from the back wearing an apron very similar to the ones Devin and Miranda wore. She had waist-length red hair, curled in ringlets and tied back with a brown elastic band. Against the russet brown of her holiday sweater dress, it shone like a campfire.
“That’s Cady Brown,” Tonya enlightened her.
“And this is her store?” Devin was a bit flabbergasted. All the years she’d been running up the block in the bakery and she had never noticed this woman?
To be fair, she’d rarely noticed the store. She h
ad seen the signs and the flyers. They had wine tastings in the summer months, and block parties in the fall. But it never occurred to her to go inside.
“Yeah, that’s kind of the problem…” Tonya said, drolly.
Cady had a box of soap in her hands, all green and red and tied with Christmas bows. She hummed a bit as she snatched up some necklaces from a display and added them to the collection in her arms.
“She’s getting ready for the parade,” Tonya expounded. “The two of you actually have a lot in common.”
“Maybe emotionally,” Devin gasped.
Everything she was physically, this smaller, rounder, softer woman was not. She was easy and charming and…
Cady leaned up to capture a snowflake ornament hanging from a rafter. Her eyes were fiercely green and danced in the glow of light.
“She’s beautiful,” Devin’s words came out in a rasp.
Cady Brown was stunning, one of the more attractive women she’d noticed in years. Probably because my head is always down and my hands are always covered in flour.
“Excellent assessment,” Tonya jested.
Devin made a disgusted face. “What could we possibly have in common, me and Cady? She’s probably not even gay.”
“You think an elf would show up in the store, take you into the past, and then introduce you to someone to cure your loneliness without checking that out first?” Tonya shrieked. “How crappy do you think I am at my job?”
Okay, that makes sense. “Fine.” Shyly, Devin looked at Cady again. The tuck of her waist was intriguing.
Tonya kicked at a nonexistent rock on the ground. Her countenance gave an air of superiority, like this wasn’t a conversation she ever thought she’d be forced to endure.
“Alright, I’m sorry,” Devin sighed. “I’m sorry. You’re not bad at your job. Clearly, you’ve brought me here to meet this woman and you would know if she’s gay. I trust you.”
Tonya was unconvinced and bitterness seeped into her words. “She’s also a small business owner, obviously. She’s also the last of her family.” Cady was close enough to touch, but seemed not to notice either of them. Instead, she reached between them and snatched a broom from a hook. “She works too hard, spends her nights alone. Her friends think she should slow down… She does have a cat, which you don’t, and her taste in television is far better than yours.”