I look up as a giant head turns to face me. It bobs up and down on its coiled neck.
The jack-in-the-box doesn’t have the usual clown head, nor the pointy hat and pointy nose. Its head is a grotesque collection of body parts, frozen together into the shape of a head. I can see coffee birds swimming within its pinhole eyes.
Unibrow Elf and I run away from it as the head hisses and slurps at us with the dismembered torso it uses for a tongue.
It swings its head and the box jumps off the ground towards us. My daughters scream inside, as it begins hopping across the room. Unibrow Elf turns around to see how far away it is. The jack-in-the-box locks eyes with him and then speeds up, hopping three times hyper fast and then up high. Unibrow Elf cowers on the ground as the box smashes down on him, flattening him into a black sticky paste that oozes out from beneath the cage.
The girls scream high-pitched as the jack hops after me. I stop and turn back. It locks eyes with mine and then charges at me. It hops three times fast and then goes up high over my head, covering my vision in shadow. But I roll out of the way behind its back before it gets me.
I run for Skull Tattoo Elf’s body and remove his backpack. The meaty jack doesn’t realize that it didn’t crush me. It bobs in the corner of the room, basking in its supposed victory. Once I get the backpack on, I flip the vacuum’s switch and it whirs up.
The Frankenstein head jerks at me and hisses. I see inside of its mouth and realize that there are a dozen hands at the back of its throat. Since the jack doesn’t have any vocal chords, the hands rub their palms together really fast to create the hissing noise.
The jack charges at me, but I circle it with my vacuum pointed up. Black liquid drains out of its eye sockets towards me. Coffee Birds attempt to flee from the jack, but the vacuum has them in its pull. The jack attempts one more jump at me, but I hop cartwheel out of the way. When the sockets are sucked dry, the chunky head drops against the side of the box, its torso- tongue dangling out of its leg-lips.
The girls cheer and clap for me.
I do a moonwalk dance for them with gun-fingers pointing in the air. Then I do another cartwheel. It’s easy to do acrobatics when you’re small.
I help Nora and Angelica out of their cage.
“Why are you so short?” Angelica asks.
“Elf magic,” I say.
“You’re smaller than me,” Nora says.
“I’ve always been smaller than you,” I say.
CHAPTER NINE
CLOCK SAUSAGE
I take my daughters downstairs and exit the grinding station.
Outside, there is a giant battle going on between an army of snowmen and an army of Dungeons and Dragons elves. Boon made it. He regrouped the scattered elf ships and brought them here safely.
The shredded remains of zombies are sprinkled through the snow. Decapitron must have annihilated all of them. I scan the battlefield, but I don’t see antlers on any of the warriors. I can’t spot Boon, Santa, or Burt Reynolds Elf either.
I hold out the vacuum to suck up any coffee birds that might be lingering in the zombie parts, just in case. I’m not taking any risks when my kids are involved.
“Well?” Nora says.
“What?” I ask.
“Well, go fight,” she says.
“I’m guarding you,” I say.
“Cowards guard,” she says. “Heroes fight.”
“You didn’t think I was a coward when I saved you back there,” I say.
She rolls her eyes at me like I don’t know what I’m talking about. The growth on her head pulses with the movement of her eyes.
I see Tea near the corner of the grinding station. She’s stabbing at a snowman with a spear, but it doesn’t seem to be doing any good.
“Come on,” I tell my kids.
I sneak up behind Tea and vacuum the coffee bird out of her opponent.
She turns around.
“You!” she says.
“Hi,” I say.
“Why aren’t you using your cabbage suit?” she asks.
“Nobody told me how it works,” I say.
“You should be fighting Frosty with Santa,” she says.
I shrug at her.
“I was rescuing my kids,” I say.
“Here,” she says, pointing at my vacuum weapon. “Give me that. I’ll look after your kids for you.”
She tells me how to use the cabbage suit and then points me in the direction of Santa and Frosty. Before I go, Angelica gives me a kiss on the cheek.
“I can reach you now!” she says, happy with my new height.
I snap a gun-finger at her and groove my way into the battlefield backwards.
Backwards!
I mean, how sly is that?
Dodging through snowmen armed with icicle swords and ice cube shields, I make it into a large intersection of the city where Santa and Frosty are battling out their final showdown.
Burt Reynolds Elf is nearby. He’s kneeling against a building, holding his wounds. Black blood drips over his fingers.
“Where’s my wife?” I ask him.
He points behind me.
Decapitron is staggering towards us, dragging her candy cane sword through the snow. Her latex outfit is all sliced up with deep gashes in her chest and shoulders. One of her antlers is missing. As she arrives, she leans all of her weight on my shoulder and nearly crushes me. She’s almost twice my size now. I can’t hold her up anymore.
“How’re the twins?” I ask.
I go behind her. The boys are gurgling at each other. They look down at me and smile. I smile back and wink at them. I go to give Matty a cootchy-cootchy-coo on the bottom of his foot, but there’s nothing there. His foot has been cut off.
“What the hell?” I cry.
“What?” Decapitron moans.
“His foot’s gone!” I cry.
“So,” she says, annoyed with me. “He’ll live.”
“He’s just a baby! You got his foot cut off!”
She shrugs. “It’s fine.”
“What kind of mom are you?” I say. “You fight zombies with your babies on your back!”
“What kind of dad are you?” she says. “You’re four feet tall.”
Burt Reynolds Elf laughs. He doesn’t seem to notice he’s about the same height as me.
“I’m the kind of four feet tall dad who just saved his daughters,” I say.
She makes a farting noise with her lips at me. It’s almost as if she’s drunk. She only acts this way towards me when she’s drunk. Then I notice a large wound on her head where the antler used to be. She’s probably got a concussion. She isn’t thinking straight.
I turn back to look at the battle.
It looks like Sausagey Santa must have gotten his nerves back after the reinforcements arrived. He is sliced up, dripping meat paste in the snow as he fights. His hat and white hair are missing, leaving just a balloon of sausage for a head. In one hand he fights with a large saber and in the other he has one of those vacuum weapons. He cuts at Frosty and sucks at his black soul liquid as well.
But Frosty is in good shape. Whenever Santa cuts off any of his snow flesh, he just replenishes it with the snow from the ground. Whenever Santa vacuums some coffee out of his eyes, there are always more coffee birds in the air to join the pool inside his head. But when Santa gets hit by Frosty’s large sickle arms, the sausage that is lost cannot be refilled.
Santa’s going to need my help for this battle. I pull my arms inside of my cabbage suit and find the controls, hoping I remember what Tea told me to do.
“Hmm . . ” I say to myself, trying to find the right buttons without being able to see them.
A scream fills the air as Frosty cuts Santa in half.
Sausage legs wiggle on the ground as Santa’s torso crawls away from the snow man. He still sucks at him with his vacuum, but he’s lost his sword.
I better help him now.
“Hitler was a wussy vegetarian!” I scream at Frosty.
There was nothing else I could think of to say to get Frosty’s attention, but it works.
I step away from Decapitron and groove into the middle of the street, the empty sleeves of my suit dangling at my sides. Frosty just snarls at me as I center myself.
Okay, here it goes . . .
I push one of the buttons and the suit curls my body up into a ball. The cabbage skin ignites around me and then I launch myself at Frosty.
I can hardly imagine what I must look like out there. I am a big fireball rolling through the snow at 70 miles per hour, melting everything in my path. On the control switch between my legs, there’s a little monitor. I see Frosty’s mouth open wide with shock as I plow into him, dissolving his bottom ball. Rolling around and coming back towards him, I see him trying to reform the snowball with the snow from the ground but I hit him again. He explodes into powder.
Meanwhile, the upper half of Santa is vacuuming up Frosty’s coffee birds. But he doesn’t get all of them as Frosty’s consciousness leaves his body and enters a nearby snowman. The new snowman retrieves the sickle-arms and the Hitler mustache and becomes his old self, good as new.
But there’s no stopping the sly man. I melt his new body just as quickly as the last one, rolling in circles around the intersection. Santa sucks up more of his coffee birds.
I roll and I roll until all the snowmen in the area have turned to liquid and all of the coffee birds have been sucked away.
By the time I finish rolling in circles and figure out how to make the suit get out of fireball form (Tea didn’t explain that part to me), I find myself in the middle of a crowd of elves. They explode with cheers for me. They hoot and applaud and cheer.
“Hooray for the sly guy!” they sing. “He’s the greatest! Sly Fry’s number one!”
Santa gets restuffed with old clocks. It’s not sausage, but it’ll have to do for now until the elves find the rest of his meat goop that’s been splattered all over the South Pole. He recovers his bag of toys and then the elves build him a new sleigh out of Tea’s squid ship.
“Arrr, ye know what?” Santa says. “I might just be able to save Christmas this year.”
The elves cheer for him.
“Sorry, laddie,” Santa tells me. “No time fer thanks and pleasantries. I need to deliver toys to the rest of the boys and girls of the world.”
“Can we come with you?” I ask.
“Can we, Santa?” my kids cry. “Can we?”
Santa looks down at Nora’s bloody growth dripping into the snow.
“Nay . . .” he says. “The elves will give ye a ride home.” “But Santa . . .” Angelica cries.
“Please?” I say.
“Well . . .” Santa says. “You know what? . . . it’s really late and I really don’t have time for this kind of bullshite right now. I know ye saved me from the forces of evil and all, but come on, man. I’ve been cut in half and most of me guts have been replaced with clocks for Christ’s sake. I’ve never had a worse Christmas in all me life.”
Before I can say another word his squidy vehicle blasts off, leaving me in cloud of snow.
Boon leads us towards another ship so he can give us a ride home.
“Don’t worry,” he tells me. “I’m sure he’ll leave you something special under your tree tomorrow.”
CHAPTER TEN
PRESENT WORMS
Christmas Morning:
I wake up at home, alone in my bed.
I’m not sure how I got here. I don’t remember the trip back from the South Pole.
It was so all so much like a dream. I would think none of it really happened if it wasn’t for the distance between my feet and the edge of the bed. Being elf-sized, our queen bed feels bigger than a king.
It’s already the afternoon. Not really Christmas morning anymore, it’s Christmas Day. I get up and put on a robe. Then wander into the bathroom.
Boon is standing on a stool, grooving to a tune in his head while shaving in the mirror.
“You’re awake,” he says.
I groan.
“You’ve missed out on all the presents,” he says.
I shrug at him and urinate into the toilet. My brain feels sore inside my head.
After I’m done I just stare at him for a while, watching him shave.
Then I say, “What are you doing here?”
He waits until he’s finished shaving to answer me.
“You know how I said Santa was probably going to leave you special presents under the tree for Christmas?” he says, hopping off of the stool.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Well, he’s decided to give each member of your family the gift of your dreams,” he says. “And he’s here to give them to you personally.”
Boon leads me out of my room and takes me downstairs.
As I look over the balcony, I see all the surviving elves lounging around on my furniture. Above them, Angelica is flying around the living room with chainsaw angel wings. The chainsaws buzz as her wings flap.
“Angelica?” I say.
She opens her mouth in excitement when she sees me and flies in close. “Look at me, Sly Guy! I’m a real angel! Look at me!”
“See,” Boon says. “She got the gift of her dreams. She can now fly like an angel.”
I wish I would have explained to Angelica that angels don’t really use chainsaws for wings.
I go down the stairs and pass the twins. They are running around the dining room table. Well, one of them is running. Matty is hopping on one foot.
“What did they get?” I ask.
“They were given the gift of free movement. They were sick of being strapped to your wife all the time. They wanted to be able to run and play, but couldn’t. So that’s what Santa gave them.”
“Did Nora get her brain chip?” I ask. “Or, no, if she could have anything I bet she’d want her growth removed . . ”
“No,” he says. “That’s not what she wanted.”
“What did she want, then?”
“She wanted to become the dictator of a small third-world country.”
“Sounds like Nora,” I say.
“So, what did I get?” I ask. “I see I didn’t get my old height back. That’s all I really want. Please exchange whatever Santa gave me with my old height.”
“We’ll see,” he says.
Tea barges between us, wearing one of my old shirts as a dress and drinking out of my favorite coffee mug.
“Santa has your present out back,” she says.
Then she continues on her way. As she passes, she purposely rubs her breasts against me. They feel nice. I check out her body as she walks away. F or some reason, I find her pretty sexy now that I’m at this shrunken down height. She doesn’t creep me out like she did at the North Pole. I don’t feel so bad about being raped by her anymore.
My path outside is blocked by a giant robot.
A big transformer toy is standing eighteen feet off the ground in my backyard, leaning against the side of the house. I guess my wife wanted a real transformer for Christmas . . .
Boon and I squeeze through the transformer’s legs. It is a big female transformer with torpedo boobs.
“Sly Fry,” Boon says. “Let me introduce you to your new wife. The Decapitron.”
“Decapitron?” I ask.
“Hi, Fry,” she says. Her voice is electronic, but it is still her voice. Her mouth doesn’t move, but a light flashes on and off when she talks. “Check me out.”
She transforms. The noise she makes while transforming is the same as the noise from the cartoon show. Then she is a big nuclear submarine in the backyard.
“Pretty nice, huh?” the submarine says.
It isn’t all that big of a submarine, but fills a good portion of our yard. The hatch on top of the submarine opens up and Burt Reynolds Elf climbs out.
He waves at me.
Just great. Not only am I permanently elf-sized, but now I’m married to a giant robot. Sure Decapitron always had the personality
of a giant evil robot, but now she looks like one too.
“Ready for your present?” submarine Decapitron says.
Burt Reynolds Elf helps Sausagey Santa out of the miniature nuclear submarine and they climb down to greet me. Santa is still worn and tattered, with clock-filled thighs.
“Merry Christmas, me boy,” Santa says, handing me a very light present about the size of a shoe box. “Ye shall love it, I’m right sure.”
I doubt I’ll love it.
I rip off the wrapping paper, which is strangely covered in pictures of plump German sausages with big red bows tied around them. It is a shoe box. I open the box to find that it is empty except a small yellow piece of paper on the bottom of the box.
The paper has two words on it: turn around.
So I turn around.
HOLY MOTHER OF FUCKING CHRIST. Oh, my fucking shit . . .
Can it really be?
Can it?
Is it real?
NO WAY!!!
In my backyard . . . MY backyard. They’re here . . . SPELUNKER!!!
The band Spelunker is on a stage in my yard. All five members. They are even wearing their awesome adventure gear. One of them is wearing mountain climbing gear, one is wearing snow gear, one is wearing scuba gear, one is wearing desert camo, and the singer is wearing jungle survival gear with a machete.
They pick up their guitars and wail on them.
“This is for the sly guy, Matthew Fry,” says the singer, Maxwell Stone.
I point guns at him and bob my head.
HUGE smile on my face.
Then they play “Canyon Kayaking Danger Team,” my absolute favorite song!
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