Christmas with the Calvins

Chapter Thirty-Five

"It's nice having you home for breakfast." Jess smiled. Her hands were wrapped around a warm morning mug of hot chocolate.

"And it's nice being home." Bernard assured her. He kissed his wife on the forehead and picked up the dirty plate that she was now finished with. The rest of the dirty dishes had already been cleared away and the kitchen sink was full of hot water and dish soap. "Though, if you don't mind me asking why did you insist on having cold pizza for breakfast?"

"Don't know." She shrugged, finishing the last of her hot coco. "Just had a craving for it. Ooh you know what sounds great for dessert? Peanut butter-peppermint cookies. Do we have any of those?" She opened the small fridge to search for the cookies in question.

"That sounds disgusting. Are you feeling alright?" Bernard glanced over at the fridge where his wife was standing with a half-eaten pickle slice dangling from her mouth.

"Yeah, ihm-fine." She mumbled before taking another chomp out of the pickle.

"Really, because I don't think I've ever seen you eat a pickle before." Bernard put down the plate he was washing.

"Really? I wonder why I've never tried them before. They're delicious." Her eyes shined like a kid on Christmas morning as she pulled the full jar of pickles from the fridge. "Do we have an peanut butter?"

"Jessie, maybe you should stay home from work today." The head elf dried his hands on his pants, a rare occurrence, and put a hand to his wife's forehead. "You don't have a fever. Are you dizzy? tired?"

"I'm fine!" She swatted his arm away. "Just a little hungrier than usual. Hakuna Matata." She kissed her husband on the cheek, breath reeking of pickles, before sauntering into the bathroom for a shower.

"I don't know what that means!" He yelled after her, but it was too late; the shower water was already running.

I'm sure she's fine." Curtis sighed as he and Bernard sat talking at his desk. He really didn't understand what Bernard was so concerned about. So Jess was eating some weird stuff that morning? It happens. He ate weird stuff all the time!

"Curtis, I don't think you understand. Jessica, my Jessica was eating pickles. This is the same woman who three years ago told me that all pickles smelled like feet."

"They kind of do." Curtis agreed with a wrinkled nose. "Hey maybe she's has been replaced with a Toy Jessica too!" The head elf rolled his eyes. This conversation was going nowhere, obviously. So he decided to change the subject.

"Speaking of Toy Santa..."Bernard was about to ask Curtis exactly how he planned to get rid of Toy Santa when his wife came barging into the office.

"You two better fix this, now!" She was glaring daggers at the pair of them, and angry fire dancing in her eyes.

"Why? What's happened?"Bernard asked jumping to his feet.

"Santa has decided that we are not giving out presents this Christmas. He's stopped all toy production." The fuming Jessica Calvin explained.

"He can't do that!" Bernard and Curtis followed her out of the office. The three of them witnessed Toy Santa standing above the workshop bellowing his new orders.

"The children of the world don't deserve these presents!" He insisted. "They are running rampant with naughtiness! So this Christmas, we're going to give those greedy selfish little kids exactly what they deserve!" Toy Santa reached into a giant maroon bag that someone had placed at his side. From the bag he pulled out a large piece of coal. an uproar arose from the elves. They weren't happy. No one wanted to give the children coal. They loved making toys and the children of the world hadn't done anything to warrant coal!

"What the hell are you going to do?" Jess hissed. Bernard and Curtis were both looking from Toy Santa, to the Elves and back with gaping expressions. "Oh you two are useless!"

"DAD!" She hollered, pushing her way through the crowd of elves. The others let her through in hopes that she might talk some sense into Santa. "Don't you think this is a little extreme?"

"JESSICA, my beautiful little snowflake!" Toy Santa reached out and cupped her chin with his hand. She winced as the cold plastic touched her skin. "The children need to know that it's not nice to be naughty!" Another murmur of fear echoed around the workshop, but Toy Santa just shouted over them. "Quiet! ALL OF YOU QUIET! We have to focus on the goals ahead. And just to make sure that that happens..." Imposter Santa produced an air horn from somewhere and squeezed down on its trigger. No one was prepared for what happened next.

Doors on the first floor of the workshop burst open. It was the doors that led to the Pantograph room. From theses doors close to a hundred tin soldiers began marching out. The problem being these were not the tin soldiers that were typically produced at the North Pole. Someone, most likely the Not-Santa, had enlarged the toy soldiers to stand six feet tall. This meant they could do some pretty serious damage to the child-sized elves. Even Bernard who was the tallest.

"Stay where you are!" The head elf commanded. He couldn't bear it if one of his elves were trampled because of Curtis and Scott's menacing idea. Of course Bernard had said this was a bad idea from the start. But had anyone listened to him? No. No they hadn't. Now here he was left with a crisis and the real Santa was nowhere to be found. "Don't be afraid!"

Curtis was doing his best to help. He worked quickly to push elves out of the way and make sure no one got hurt. Jessica stayed rooted upstairs next to Toy Santa. Part of her was too afraid to move. If something happened to any of the elves, especially Curtis or Bernard, she might be of more help high above the workshop. At the time she also toyed with the idea of pushing the fake Santa right off the balcony. In the end she decided against it because it wouldn't exactly be safe for the elves down below. Plus there was no way of knowing how the now sentient soldiers would react to their leader being offed.

"I was up late last night." Toy Santa explained as he soldiers marched into their positions. "I couldn't sleep. Milk wouldn't do it. Coco was a little sweet so I decided to make an army of Toy Soldiers. HAHA!" Toy Santa chuckled. "They don't have a good sense of humor like me. I would do what they ask you. Which is pretty much what I'm going to tell you!"

"DON"T LISTEN TO HIM!" Bernard hollered from his spot at the center of the workshop. "THIS GUY'S NOT SANTA!" The elves were whispering, shrieking and crying once more. If that wasn't Santa who was he? What had happened to the real Santa? Bernard tried hard to explain over their interjections. "HE'S A TOY! HE HAS A RUBBER FACE!"

"BERNARD! LOOK OUT!" Jess tried to warn him, but it was too late. A pair of gigantic soldiers had appeared at either side of Bernard and they started to cart him away.

"DON'T LET HIM RUIN CHRISTMAS!" Was his final cry before he was dragged out of sight. Fear began to wash over the elves. If an important elf like Bernard could be sweat away so easily what would be their fate if they tried to resist?

"Thank you for those kind words Bernard!" Toy Santa bellowed. His voice was as void of emotion as one would expect from a plastic dictator. "Well now that we all have an understanding, Have a joyous and MERRY CHRISTMAS!" With the flip of a switch the toy production line was filled with large tumbling piles of coal. From conveyor belt to conveyor belt dark black rocks swallowed the colorful toys and holiday cheer.