by Jordan Krall
The sugarplums that were hit fell to the ground, wounds gaping multicolored blood and fruit viscera. The scurrying survivors flew into the air and surrounded Shaw as he swung his second chain hook over his head. A sugarplum with an appendage that resembled an axe flew directly at him, but Shaw managed to duck just in time. He swung his weapon and managed to hit a dozen more, sending chunks everywhere.
One of those chunks landed right in Shaw’s mouth and slid down his throat.
“Goddamnit!” he said, nearly choking. It only took a few seconds for it to take effect.
As he stared at the room full of sugarplums, the colors grew brighter until everything was overly saturated. The walls turned to liquid, the sugarplums turned to fiery monster faces, and furniture made of chicken legs appeared in the middle of the room. A table shook, the grains in the wood cracking to form a mouth. It said, “Come have a seat, have a seat, have a seat.”
Shaw closed his eyes. Using only his instinct, he swung both chain hooks while spinning in a circle, hoping to kill each and every sugarplum or talking piece of furniture in the room.
He felt his hooks hit things but couldn’t tell what they hit. Finally, he dropped to the floor in exhaustion. “Just fucking kill me,” he said. He felt a sugarplum crawl onto his face and fart, sending poison gas down his throat.
The Elf Piercer was dead.
XXII.
While his partners were fighting their own battles, Aleph walked through the front part of the house. He tried to keep telepathic communication open but could only hear muffled voices.
The room he was in looked like it was decorated by a madman or in this case, a madwoman. Wigs of every color and style were hung on the walls and dozens of model airplanes dangled from the ceiling. The furniture consisted of large metal barrels covered in lacy throw pillows.
Aleph held his sword poised for action.
This assignment had really turned sour. When he was first asked to join the Elves of Fuck, he was eager for the adventure. Correcting infidelities through surveillance and violence seemed like a fun way to earn money. Aleph had always taken his job seriously, but he was starting to lose the passion and heart he’d had in his early years with the company. To make matters worse, because of recent budget cuts, he felt it was harder to justify the hard work
with the meager salary.
This will be the last job and then I find something else. I take care of this crazy bitch, rescue Santa Claus, and then I’m out.
As Aleph walked into the next room, he saw Santa Claus standing against the wall, smiling.
“Santa?” the elf said. “Are you okay? Your wife hired me. I’m here to rescue you.”
“Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!” Santa said. He took a few steps forward and that’s when Aleph smelled the peppermint.
The woman must have been standing there the entire time but Aleph hadn’t seen her. For the first time in years, Aleph felt himself aroused by the sight of a human woman. She was beautiful. Simply beautiful.
He was eye-level with her massive breasts. They called to him. Bury yourself in us...Lick the sweat from underneath these mountains.
Aleph shook himself loose from the woman’s mental grasp and ran forward with his sword. The woman dodged out of the way like a sexy cheetah.
“Oh, look. It’s a naked little elf,” she said, sending a fist to the back of Aleph’s head. Again he slashed with his blade and managed to cut Kay across the arm. Her blood fell to the floor with a splat.
The blood bubbled and grew into several chunks of hairy, black flesh. They rolled in front of Santa Claus, who was still grinning like an idiot.
Kay said, “Oh, look at what you’ve done, you dumb little thing.” She punched at the elf again but Aleph blocked the attack with his arm.
The woman was strong. Aleph’s head hurt like hell but he still slashed several times at Kay, missing each time. She was fast, too.
Finally, he said, “What the fuck did you do to him?” Kay laughed. “Whatever do you mean? What makes you think I did anything to him? He and I are lovers, you know. Have been for years. Who are you to get in the way of true love?” She walked over to the chunks of flesh and spat on them.
Aleph was about to rush her again when he saw the chunks start to grow until they were the size of infants. The pieces of hairy flesh formed into miniature apes with red faces.
Kay proudly stood next to them. “Here you go, little elf. Meet the red faces of god!”
The apes ran to Aleph, grunting and pounding their little fists in the air. He slashed down with his sword, catching one of the creatures in the head. Its split skull opened up and spat out sugarplums. Another slash of the sword and two apes were decapitated. Their tiny heads rolled to Kay’s feet. She screamed.
“How dare you!”
Seeing her rage only made Aleph more determined to hack his way through the angry apes. One of them got to Aleph and grabbed his penis. It pulled and pulled while the elf pounded the ape’s head with the handle of his sword. “For fuck’s sake, get the hell off my dick!”
The red-faced ape grinned and pulled harder. Finally, there was the tearing of flesh and Aleph’s penis was ripped off and in the ape’s mouth.
Kay laughed. She jumped forward and grabbed Aleph’s neck. Face to face with the woman, the elf could smell her sweet peppermint breath.
“Oh, you’d fit perfectly in my bitch-box. You want to be my bitch, dear?” she said. “Drink my piss, eat my—” Kay screamed.
Aleph hadn’t seen Gimel walk into the room. He hadn’t seen the elf take his giant bone-penis glove and shove it up Kay’s skirt. But that’s what happened.
Kay’s hands dropped from Aleph’s neck and she fell to her knees with Gimel’s hand still inside her. “Get the fuck out of me!” she screamed.
Gimel was in a trance. He pushed his fist in, pulled it out a tiny bit, and shoved it in again, deeper and harder than before. Kay let out a howl like a dying baboon.
Once he got his bearings, Aleph brought his sword up and brought it down on the woman’s neck.
Kay’s head rolled over to Santa’s feet. Her neck gushed sugarplums that smelled like peppermint and menstrual blood. “Fucking hell,” Gimel said.
“Yeah.” Aleph dropped his sword and fell over, exhausted. He looked over at Santa. The jolly, fat man was still staring into space, grinning like an idiot.
XXIII.
“He’s a goddamn zombie!” Diana shouted. “Look at him! He just sits there all day, drooling and mumbling about that woman!”
Smitty listened to Diana as she vented. It had been a week since Christmas and Santa showed no sign of getting better. “I know, Diana. I’m sorry.”
“All day I have to hear about her beautiful tits, her delicious spit, her heavenly piss. I swear if I have to hear about it one more time, I’m going to kill myself.”
“Take it easy, Diana. Aleph’s going to be here any minute. He said he’d see if there was a way to help Santa so let’s just wait and see. No use getting more upset until we
know if there’s anything we can do.”
Diana sighed. “Yeah, I know.”
There was a flash of light and Aleph stood in front of them, naked and with a bandage over his crotch. “Hello Mrs. Claus … Mr. Smitty.”
“What’d you find out?” Diana said.
“Well,” Aleph said. “Kay, the woman who kidnapped your husband, we couldn’t find anything more on her even after we did the initial search of the house. But here’s the weird part. A few days later we went back to the town, only to find that the town had.. .disappeared.”
Diana’s jaw fell open. “What are you talking about?” “The town .I knew there was something strange about it, but I didn’t think it was that significant. I thought it was limited only to Kay. But now it’s as if the town was never there.” Smitty said, “Maybe you guys weren’t checking the right place. Maybe you got lost or something.”
“No,” Aleph said. “The city of Tusk never existed, at least not in that
form. We did find some other information...about a small village named Tusk from the fourth century. It may or may not be related to our situation.” “What? What about it?” Diana said.
“Nevermind that. It’s not going to help your situation.” Aleph didn’t want to go into detail and risk having a vengeful wife on his hands. “I do have good news, though.” Diana’s face got considerably less upset. “What? Is my husband going to get better?”
“Well, yeah. But it’s a good news, bad news sort of thing.” Smitty spoke up. “What’s the good news?”
“The good news is Mr. Claus will go back to his old self.” Diana looked hesitant. “And the bad news?”
Aleph sighed. “It’s going to take about five years.”
XXIV.
Diana handed Smitty a bottle of beer. “So, did you think about it?”
“Yeah. All night.”
“So?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t made a decision,” he said. “What do you think?”
“It’s not the type of decision I can make for you.”
“I know.” Smitty drank the beer in one gulp. “But a squidfoot delivering Christmas presents? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.”
“But it’s only for five years.”
“Ha! Only for five years,” Smitty said. He threw the beer bottle into the trash and started to pace back and forth.
“You like kids, don’t you? You always say you like seeing them happy?”
“Yeah__ ”
“Well then?”
Smitty sighed, his tentacles drooping to the floor. “But what if I’m no good at it? What if I ruin Christmas for everyone?”
Diana stood up and put her arms around him. She gestured to a large box in the middle of the room. “Then I’ll put you in my bitch-box.”
Smitty laughed and kissed her back. He put his face into her hair and inhaled her scent. His nose wiggled.
Diana had always smelled so nice, but there was something different this time. Was it a new shampoo? A new perfume? What was that smell?
Was that … peppermint?
AND YOU SHOULD BELIEVE IN SOLAR LODGES
Sometimes I fall asleep to the sound of ominous spheres rolling down the hallway outside my door. Sometimes I awake to the sound of spherical doom opening and closing doors in the hallway outside. Sometimes I sit and listen to the soft babbling of my empty room as it smears interrupted silence on the surface of my gloom.
But more often than not I pinch the skin between my thumb and index finger until the pain pushes me into blackness for I do not want to hear anything but my dry skin cracking. That is what brings me those dreams of hiding in an industrial park.
Never mind that. My dreams are not important. No one’s dreams are important. All dreams are bastard offspring of babbling brains. They try to escape to the dusty corners of the ceiling where cobwebs catch them, ingest them, and wrap them in plastic to sell in five-and-dime shops where frugal housewives buy them for their children so the little pests won’t cry.
It was a Friday afternoon when Casey asked me if I wanted to drive up to his college with him. “It’ll be fun,” he said. “We’ll just stay in the library and read.”
“Why do you need me for that?” I asked.
“I like company when I read,” he said. “Besides, we won’t have a lot of distractions there and I know you wanted to finish up your little project.”
“Okay.”
And so I drove up to the college with him. As soon as we approached the campus I knew I had made a mistake. It had been years since I had stepped foot anywhere near that place and I now remembered why that was so. The college seemed to suck all the psychic fluid from me until there was nothing left but a crude construction of bones topped with a sentient prune inside a pale cranium.
“Something wrong?” Casey asked. “You look like shit.”
“Nothing’s wrong. I’m just........... ” I said but I never finished the sentence. Instead, I
opened the door to the library and started up the flight of stairs that would bring me to the third floor.
“Why do you want to go to the third floor?” Casey asked.
“I don’t know. Why not?”
“I don’t know.”
We found a table in the corner and sat down. I set my bag down on a chair and went off looking for a book. Casey had already picked one up on the way. It was a seemingly random choice but knowing Casey, it might have been planned weeks in advance. I don’t remember the exact title but I recall it was something about antler jelly.
I left him at the table and walked to the far corner of the room. The books there were dusty and looked untouched. It was as if college students didn’t read anymore. I almost expected the books to be mere props. I ran my fingers along the spines, pushing them inward to feel the weight of them, just to make sure they were real.
After a few minutes of perusing I found a book that interested me.
I sat down on the floor and started to read. Sitting next to Casey wasn’t something I had really wanted to do. He moved his lips while he read. He also had mild body odor like cheese. Besides, my little project required unconventional reading environments and the library floor seemed to fit that description.
What was my project?
By now I cannot even remember.
Casey touched me on the shoulder. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m reading,” I said. A sound on the other side of the shelf made us both turn our heads. It was the sound of a heavy sphere rolling through sludge. Then: doors opening
and closing followed by wordy dreams being sucked through brown cotton until they scrap the dull paint on my walls and form bulbous pyramids of black glue.
“Let’s go,” I said. “I’m going to check this book out.”
“You can’t.”
“Why not?”
“They’re closing the library at the end of the semester and they want all the books in. You can only read them in here or...................................................... ”
“Or what?” I asked.
“Or you can steal them.”
“I have no problem with that.”
Casey nodded. “Didn’t think you would.”
We walked quickly down the aisle, turned right, and went down the stairs. Dizziness set in. I saw a janitor mopping a floor. A librarian was leading some young freshman up the stairs. A dog barked in the distance.
I ducked into a corner and opened the back of the book where they keep the security sensor. After a minute of impromptu surgery with my ballpoint pen, the sensor was out and I was free to adopt the book as my own.
Once we got outside I noticed how cold it had become. Normally I don’t notice things like the weather but this time the temperature slapped me in the face. Casey grabbed my arm and led me to the next building. “In here,” he said.
“Why?”
“I gotta show you something.”
I stood in front of the door to the new building and looked at my reflection in the glass doors. The library was no longer behind me. It was an industrial park filled with 18- wheelers hauling merchandise, pallets of plastic-wrapped boxes, and stocky, sweaty workers operating worn-out forklifts.
Casey opened the door for me and I walked inside.
In front of me was a vending machine offering candy bars and potato chips. I dug in my pocket because I usually kept a little bit of change on me. This time, however, I was broke. “Got some quarters?” I asked Casey.
“Nope.”
“Dollar bills?”
“Nope.”
“Well then....” I said, disappointed but understanding. Casey was usually broke. I don’t even know why I had expected him to have any money.
We walked down a hallway that was lined with brick walls and trophy cases. Occasionally there was a framed picture of some obscure aspect of biology or architecture.
“What building are we in?” I asked.
“Building Three.”
“No, I meant, like........... ” I started but stopped when we approached an elevator.
The doors opened revealing an extremely large but empty elevator. There was a sound like someone punching a bag of rice. I used to eat a lot of rice when I was in college. White rice with processed American cheese melted on top. I had probably eaten that for five out of seven dinners each week. The other times I ate a few bowls of some generic cereal. It was never extravagant but it’s all I was able to afford and to be honest, it’s all I really wanted to eat.
We stepped into the elevator and Casey pressed the button for the third floor.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“I have to drop something off.”
“Where?”
“Third floor.”
“No, I meant, like........... ” The elevator started and then stopped quickly. I almost fell
over. It was then I noticed my bladder was full.
“There a bathroom on the third floor?”
“Probably,” Casey said. “Yes, I’m pretty sure there definitely is.”
The doors opened and we stepped out into a bright hallway that did not look like a college. If I had known better I would have said it belonged in some sort of office building in an industrial park.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“Down here,” Casey said, leading me down the hallway and then down another corridor to the right. This hallway was darker than the first and smelt like cheese being cooked in a microwave.
“What’s that sound?” I said. It was like a tin sphere being attacked with spoons. “Dunno,” Casey said. “I’ve never been here before.”
“Where? The third floor?”
“No.”
“This building?”
“No, this college.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never been here before.”
We reached the end of the hall. The burning cheese smell was stronger and so was the sound of sphere versus spoons.
The door was barely visible on the brick wall as if drawn in chalk. But indeed it was a real door because Casey opened it with a slight push to the center.