I’ve been working another original blog post lately, so stay tuned for that. Until then, enjoy this Christmas themed short story I wrote during December. Just in time for Easter.
My heart was aflutter with yuletide machinations, and my esophagus was mildly scratchy with wonder and awe, and also strep throat. I lay snuggled as the proverbial babe underneath the silken sheets, too exited by far to drift away to slumber as the thoughts of my extensive wish list passed softly through my brain’s spongy gray corridors. Would jolly old Saint Nick creep softly down my chimney tonight? Would he bring along his sheepskin wish sack to fill my living room with crisp, piney scent and color bound capitalism cubes filled to the brim with a gooey, materialistic center?
As it turned out, my young heart need not want nor wonder for the jolly celluloid elf’s sweet passing by, as at this very hour there sprang from the living room such a din as would keep the dead from rising for fear of permanent damage to their boney ears. I threw the covers from my pajama clad frame and dashed swiftly onwards towards the soft shining of the room beyond my hallway. I turned the corner and slid with my dirty red socks along the polished brown hardwood, propelled, rocket like, into the Christmas fray.
The chimney shook something awful with the vigorous entrance of the red man Claus. My heart leapt when, with one last concerted push, a blob of red and green fell with a thud and a plop from the confined chimney space. Upon a further eye full, however, it was revealed to me the alien nature of the gelatinous being that swayed gently before me.
“Hey, guy, what’s the situation? Are you an amoeba? Some kind of weird fish?” I called out to the gently swaying emerald blob.
“Yeah, the amoeba one.” The mound responded casually.
An awkward silence ensued. The blob coughed several times, followed by a period of vigorous throat noises. I couldn’t think of anything to speak, in fear nor in friendship, so I pretended to notice something underneath my fingernails, which I proceeded to pick at slowly. Finally, the amoeba’s soft voice cut through the growing tension.
“So, umm… I gotta put presents under the tree and junk. You wanna, like, Sleep or whatever?”
“I… So… Are you actually Santa, or what?”
The beast moved slightly, seemingly calculating its reply thoroughly.
“Yes. I am.” It said simply.
“Ahhh. So, like, out of curiosity… You look a little different on Coke cans…” I said.
The blob shrugged, I think, and then replied.
“Yep, artistic liberties and all. Apparently giant amoebas aren’t ‘marketable’, or whatever. But look, it’s cool. I still have gifts and junk.”
At this I brightened. The materialism that flowed through my red American veins showed me the upside to the situation, such obviously being the plastic bounty I was to receive on the dawn of the morrow. I nodded my head solemnly, and receded into the black, angular shadows of the hallway. As I climbed into my soft, twin size palace, bliss washed slow across my contracted tendons, releasing them and sending a sigh through my stomach and out my mouth.
I awoke suddenly to the gooey touch of a frantic pseudopod, jostling me awake with it’s rhythmic motion. I jolted up, and by the bed sat the warped, bubbly Santa beast I had previously spoken with. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.
“Oh, hi, uhh… Santa… thing… What’s up?” I said, groggily.
“Oh, nothing much…” It replied. There was silence for a few seconds, then,
“Oh, yeah, except for how I accidentally opened a portal to the fringe dimension Veenue.”
I jumped out of bed and bolted for the living room. Inside was a massive, purple crack that I assumed was in time and/or space, and flopping gracefully from it’s recesses was a rather unhappy looking snail person.
“Hey.” The snail person said.
“Sup.” I said.
Blob Santa shuffled in from the hallway and rolled up to the portal.
“Yeah, so I was trying to get back to the North Pole, but I overshot it and accidentally expanded the universal rift to encompass the left most corner of the Veenue fringe dimension. Whoops.”
“Oh.” I said.
The snail person glanced from me to the blob, and then back again.
“Look, I have an appointment at three… Can we hurry this along?”
The Blob pulled a little black box out of one of his cargo pockets and tapped a few buttons. The portal rippled, but stayed it’s anomalous course.
“Aww, crud. Well, I’m out of ideas.” Said the yuletide mince pile.
“I have an idea!” I shouted in earnest discovery.
“You guys can come to my family Christmas get together!”
The snail person glanced upwards, deep in perpetual snail thought.
“Yeah, a’ight. My name is Snail Samantha, by the way.”
The blob wiggled slightly in what I can only assume was an emotion of some kind.
“Okay.” It intoned, monotone.
I smiled.
“Cool Cool”.
That Christmas there was prepared such a feast as would satisfy the cravings of many a man, or Snail person. There was mash stew, and a lovely white castle burger tray topped with the finest shavings of 18th century collard greens. The colors, huzzah! The aromas, huzzazzah! The glorious and numerous hunger growlings which fill the gold tinged halls, huzzazzazzazah!
Snail Samantha raised her glass and tapped it gently with her salad fork.
“Hey guys, I just want to say that the true reason we gathered here today isn’t because of presents, or food, or trees, or even snail family, although those things are all pretty good. It’s because Jesus Christ was born 2000 years ago to save his people and snail people from their sins.”
“Amen!” Said Blob Santa.
“Boy, Snail Samantha, you sure know your, uhh… stuff and all.” I said, impressed.
“Yeah, I’m writing a thesis to graduate from Snail Seminary.”
“What’s your minor?” asked Blob Santa, In the spirit of polite conversation.
“It’s in North Snailmerican literature.” She said, happy he had taken an interest.
“I’m studying books that end abruptly without any coherence.”
Shanty Town 