micro-fiction friday : dec 20

cw: christmas cheer, very mild child endangerment.  this is a pretty G-rated story. a couple swears in here.

It was my father’s opinion that Elf on the Shelf trained children to live, complicit, under fascist conditions, and to treat those conditions as both normal and expected.
It was my sister-in-law’s opinion that Elf on the Shelf was a fun game to get children into the Christmas spirit.
It was my opinion that because I was childless, I really had no skin in the game.

Or I hadn’t, at least. This year was different.  I was with child this year.  Two childs.  My brother’s children.  My parents had organized some bonding thing with my brother and sister-in-law– which honestly sounded worse than coal in terms of ‘gifts’, but to each their own– and the lucky kids got to spend Christmas with their Auncle (like Aunt and Uncle blended, it’s pronounced ‘ankle’) instead.

After we had waved good-bye to our respective parents, the kids looked up at me, and I looked back down at them.
“So now what do we do?” I asked.
“Why would I know that?  I’m nine!” my nephew responded. Fair play to him. He was nine.
“Okay, did you want to go sledding or something?”
He and his sister both started jumping on the spot, clapping their hands.
“Sledding!  Sledding!  Sledding!” they began to chant.
I looked up at the clock hanging on the wall, hoping it would provide some reprieve.  This was going to be a long three days.

Sledding completed. Alphaghetti cooked and consumed.  Moana watched.  Suitcases unpacked, jammies on, teeth brushed.  It was now bed time.

“What about Ralphie?” Carter, the aforementioned nine-year-old, asked.

“Who’s Ralphie?”

“The Elf on the Shelf!” Maya, six, informed me. It jogged my memory, my brother had mentioned something about that.

“I’m sure Ralphie is going to bed now too.  Maybe you can look for him in the morning and see what he’s been up to!”

“Or we could find him now!” Maya exclaimed, ready to start the hunt. Ah, shit.

“Let’s try and find him in the morning instead, okay?” I said.

“But–”

“Sorry, door’s closing, can’t hear you!  It’ll have to wait until morning, okay, love you, night night!” I said, jogging down the stairs.  

The kids stayed up a while yet, the sounds of hushed giggling floating down from upstairs.  Whatever.  A few days wouldn’t hurt them.  And apparently I now had a task before bed: find this stupid elf.

It wasn’t much of a task at all. I found the elf before I’d gotten a chance to start looking.  Ralphie sat, patiently waiting, next to the tree, his head posed upwards so it looked like he was admiring my parents’ decorating job.  I couldn’t hold that against him, the tree did look nice.

I picked him up and brought him over to the couch with me.  I flicked on some B-movie about Christmas and settled in for a night of playing on my phone, and enjoying the peace that came with my niece and nephew finally settling in for the night.

It was a movie about the Holly King.  He engages in battle with the Oak King, and wins, and plunges the world into winter.  Here’s where it starts to diverge from the actual folklore: in order to secure his victory forever and keep the world in an eternal winter, he begins to freeze the hearts of children while they sleep so they never wake-up. This is about where I started to doze.  I curled up on the couch, cuddled Ralphie up with me, and let my eyes start to droop.  A few long blinks later, I heard a noise.  Like boots on the wooden floors.  I whipped my head around confused, and was confronted by a man in my kitchen.  

In a heavy overcoat lined with fur, a man stood, his skin hung gaunt and hollow on a bony frame, his beard long and unkept, ice white, like the weight of it was singularly dragging the rest of the man’s face down.  Lips chapped blue and white, a cocktail of hypoxia and frostbite.  It extended down to his fingertips and, I presumed, his toes.

“I…” his voice boomed.  Instinctually, I threw a pillow at him, shushing him. I looked up to the children’s door. All remained quiet on the western front.

“I…” he tried again, a little quieter. “am the Holly King.” The reverberation of his voice was intense, despite his efforts.

“Okay?!” I sputtered.  “What are doing in my house?”

“I…” he started, “honestly, I thought you were asleep already.”

“Okay?”

“It seems you are not.” 


“And?”

“When everyone is asleep, I start the heart-freezing.  I wait until the whole house is sleeping.  It’s sort of a rule.”

“Well, I was almost asleep until your loud-ass boots started clip-clopping through here. Now I’m awake again.”

“For now,” the Holly King chuckled, maliciously. The gloating was quite unbecoming.

“I guess.”

“You’ll sleep eventually.  Then it will be my time to strike.”

He was right.  Those kids tuckered me out.  Children are exhausting. Maya and Carter’s insatiable love of sledding was going to literally be the death of me.  I felt my eyes begging to close and let me rest. I tried to fight, but each blink was getting longer, and every time, the Holly King got closer.  

When he was mere inches from me, I knew we were done for.  My niece and nephew were going to die because I had prematurely turned into an old man and couldn’t stay awake past nine-thirty.

I have to stay awake,  have to stay awake.  Someone needs to be awake and it has to be me.

… Did it have to be me?

An idea struck me.

I looked into the cradle of my arms.  Ralphie, the Elf on the Shelf, looked back up at me, his eyes unblinking.  The Elf on the Shelf was always watching.  

I thrust Ralphie at the Holly King.  

“The whole house isn’t asleep!” I argued.  “Ralphie is always watching, so he must be always awake.  That makes us immune!”

“Oh Jesus, are you serious?”

“Begone from here, foul King!”

“Jesus Christ, that has gotta be the stupidest technicality.” The Holly King began walking back towards the patio door before unlocking it, opening it, and letting himself out.  I ran upstairs into the children’s room, and set Ralphie up on the bookcase.

Was the Holly King real?  Maybe just an imagination from an overtired mind?  I wasn’t sure, but what I did know was that the Elf on the Shelf was always watching, would always watch.  A silent protector.  A dark knight.

I could rest easy in that knowledge.