Krampusnacht: Twelve Nights of Krampus by Mark Mills, Kate Wolford, Guy Burtenshaw, Jill Corddry, Elise Forier Edie, Patrick Evans, Scott Farrell, Caren Gussoff, Lissa Sloan, Elizabeth Twist Page A
Authors: Mark Mills, Kate Wolford, Guy Burtenshaw, Jill Corddry, Elise Forier Edie, Patrick Evans, Scott Farrell, Caren Gussoff, Lissa Sloan, Elizabeth Twist
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cameras kept flashing.
Kandi grabbed Santa tighter, snuggling in, smiling brilliantly for the cameras as she spoke.
“You’ll be proud of me, Santa, because I don’t want any toys for Christmas this year,” Kandi said. “All I want is for you to break someone’s ankles.”
“Ho! You’re pulling Santa’s beard!”
“Hardly. Cyndy Symmons is the only kid in town who’s almost as good as me at jazz-tap, and we’re both auditioning for the Home Wholesalers commercial on Boxing Day. But she’s anorexic. I would be too if I didn’t retain water. The producers will think she’s prettier than me and she’ll get to play the dancing twist mop and I’ll be stuck playing the car tarp.”
The fog, recovering from the camera flashes, was thickening again.
Kandi was batting her eyelashes. “You don’t want me to be typecast as a car tarp for the rest of my career, do you, Santa, baby?”
Santa blinked his own eyes several times, but he couldn’t blink away the fog. “You—you say you want a car tarp for Christmas?”
Kandi’s lip, covered in frosted pink lipstick, curled.
“Are you, like, dying of Alzheimer’s? I said I want you to break Cyndy Symmons’ ankles.”
Her voice sweetened again. “I was only going to ask for one ankle, but you called me fat, so now it’s two.”
Santa was speechless.
“It’s only fair, after all. I have a seven octave range and Cyndy only has six.” Suddenly Kandi belted out a jingle. “Home Wholesalers—your home is our home toooo!” On the last word she hit a G-sharp seventh that felt like a scalpel piercing Santa’s eardrum.
He leapt to his feet, howling in pain, tossing Kandi to the floor. “My scoliosis!” she screamed—in a G-sharp sixth.
Rage squeezed her face down to the size of a pimple as her hand made a rattlesnake strike at Santa’s arm. Four long, frosted-pink fingernails dug into the bare skin of his wrist just above his glove. Surely the child was only trying to hoist herself up. But Santa shook her off and staggered back, behind his throne. Kandi crashed down to the floor of the Enchanted Castle again.
Santa had four bloody quarter-moon fingernail marks on his arm.
He ran. He ran through the back door of his cardboard castle and into the mall, shoving shoppers aside in his panic. He threw open the Staff Only door at the far end of the corridor, closing and locking it from the inside.
Dr. Spectra was there. She was eating a watercress sandwich with the crusts removed. Her long, thin fingers, emblematic of her entire frame, were prying open the center spread of a celebrity gossip magazine she’d found on the table, its pages stuck together by the spilled soy sauce of some lunching mall worker. Spectra was Caucasian, but she wore her long brown hair in a Japanese-style double bun. It was her trademark, a carefully cultivated eccentricity, along with her little red satin Chinese slippers and the flowing flower-strewn silk pantsuits she always combined with a billowing flowery silk scarf.
She looked up at Santa, a watercress leaf pasted to her incisors, and said, “What happened?”
“Gnh!” Santa uttered through gritted teeth before gripping his belly in agony and toppling over.
* * *
Months earlier, in late summer, Mrs. Claus had spotted the signs of a relapse on the toy assembly line. Santa had designed an action figure called Sergeant Payback whose gun fired tiny plastic live rounds, and, when disrobed, showed signs of torture by the enemy. L’il Sailor Mouth was a baby doll dressed in a pink sailor’s middy top who uttered a different obscenity every time you squeezed her belly.
Santa had no memory of making these toys. He blamed the elves, and in a terrible rage stuffed his three foremen into the cellar freezer for a sentence of 40 years in suspended animation. This left Mrs. Claus unable to access her supply of frozen chicken-flavored soy burgers without having to snap off an elf arm to get at them, which is something a
Kandi grabbed Santa tighter, snuggling in, smiling brilliantly for the cameras as she spoke.
“You’ll be proud of me, Santa, because I don’t want any toys for Christmas this year,” Kandi said. “All I want is for you to break someone’s ankles.”
“Ho! You’re pulling Santa’s beard!”
“Hardly. Cyndy Symmons is the only kid in town who’s almost as good as me at jazz-tap, and we’re both auditioning for the Home Wholesalers commercial on Boxing Day. But she’s anorexic. I would be too if I didn’t retain water. The producers will think she’s prettier than me and she’ll get to play the dancing twist mop and I’ll be stuck playing the car tarp.”
The fog, recovering from the camera flashes, was thickening again.
Kandi was batting her eyelashes. “You don’t want me to be typecast as a car tarp for the rest of my career, do you, Santa, baby?”
Santa blinked his own eyes several times, but he couldn’t blink away the fog. “You—you say you want a car tarp for Christmas?”
Kandi’s lip, covered in frosted pink lipstick, curled.
“Are you, like, dying of Alzheimer’s? I said I want you to break Cyndy Symmons’ ankles.”
Her voice sweetened again. “I was only going to ask for one ankle, but you called me fat, so now it’s two.”
Santa was speechless.
“It’s only fair, after all. I have a seven octave range and Cyndy only has six.” Suddenly Kandi belted out a jingle. “Home Wholesalers—your home is our home toooo!” On the last word she hit a G-sharp seventh that felt like a scalpel piercing Santa’s eardrum.
He leapt to his feet, howling in pain, tossing Kandi to the floor. “My scoliosis!” she screamed—in a G-sharp sixth.
Rage squeezed her face down to the size of a pimple as her hand made a rattlesnake strike at Santa’s arm. Four long, frosted-pink fingernails dug into the bare skin of his wrist just above his glove. Surely the child was only trying to hoist herself up. But Santa shook her off and staggered back, behind his throne. Kandi crashed down to the floor of the Enchanted Castle again.
Santa had four bloody quarter-moon fingernail marks on his arm.
He ran. He ran through the back door of his cardboard castle and into the mall, shoving shoppers aside in his panic. He threw open the Staff Only door at the far end of the corridor, closing and locking it from the inside.
Dr. Spectra was there. She was eating a watercress sandwich with the crusts removed. Her long, thin fingers, emblematic of her entire frame, were prying open the center spread of a celebrity gossip magazine she’d found on the table, its pages stuck together by the spilled soy sauce of some lunching mall worker. Spectra was Caucasian, but she wore her long brown hair in a Japanese-style double bun. It was her trademark, a carefully cultivated eccentricity, along with her little red satin Chinese slippers and the flowing flower-strewn silk pantsuits she always combined with a billowing flowery silk scarf.
She looked up at Santa, a watercress leaf pasted to her incisors, and said, “What happened?”
“Gnh!” Santa uttered through gritted teeth before gripping his belly in agony and toppling over.
* * *
Months earlier, in late summer, Mrs. Claus had spotted the signs of a relapse on the toy assembly line. Santa had designed an action figure called Sergeant Payback whose gun fired tiny plastic live rounds, and, when disrobed, showed signs of torture by the enemy. L’il Sailor Mouth was a baby doll dressed in a pink sailor’s middy top who uttered a different obscenity every time you squeezed her belly.
Santa had no memory of making these toys. He blamed the elves, and in a terrible rage stuffed his three foremen into the cellar freezer for a sentence of 40 years in suspended animation. This left Mrs. Claus unable to access her supply of frozen chicken-flavored soy burgers without having to snap off an elf arm to get at them, which is something a
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