Chasing Santa |Pushing Daisies Christmas Story|

Chapter One: The Stunned Piemaker

Chapter One: The Stunned Piemaker

At this moment young Ned was ten years, five weeks, thirty-six days, twelve hours, and nineteen minutes old.

Instead of making pies, a hobby Ned quite enjoyed, he watched the other boys from the Longborough School for Boys play in the snow from the boy's dormitory window.  Although he had the comfort of warmth, he couldn't help but feel a chilling loneliness.

It was not unusual for him to feel this way, but this time the cold loneliness seeped deeper within him with every thud of a snowball hitting against the window glass.

Ned, however, did not leave from his place. Instead he watched as each boy was picked up by their parents and was escorted away to their homes for the holiday break. Most of them would be leaving.

Actually, all would be leaving, except Ned.

But nonetheless he stood like a statue waiting with the last sliver of hope that he would not be forgotten on the week of Christmas. It was the only thing he had asked for from Santa, even though he knew all the boys believed him not to be real. But all Ned had was to hope, that maybe, just maybe he was real and that he would come through. But as night fell and the time for pickup passed, he too lost faith in the round old man who only carried presents of disappointment in his red sack.

Now, at this time, after twenty-two years the Piemaker had found the holiday fast approaching, but this year it was different from all the rest.

He had Chuck.

Charlotte Charles was a different sort of woman, and I do not mean different because of her wit and character. I mean to say she is different because she had once been dead but was brought back to life by her boyfriend Ned.

Ned had a very special and powerful gift, something he saw as both a blessing as a curse. He had the ability to bring the dead back to life. There were two restrictions to this gift, however. He was only able to bring the dead back to life for a whole minute, otherwise someone would have to take his place.

Random selection.

The final restriction, and possibly the worse, was that if he ever touched that person again, they would return dead again for good.

First touch: Life.

Second touch: Death.

The blessing of this gift was that he was able to bring his childhood sweetheart back from the dead, but the curse meant that he would never be able to touch her again. But he did not regret bringing her back to the land of the living; not in the slightest.

He was quite fond of their plastic-wrap kisses.

It was later in the morning and the Piehole was thriving with customers. Ned and Chuck rushed to fill empty glasses with coffee, bring another order of a slice of pie, and all the while beaming at each other and swiftly avoiding from bumping into each other. Digby, their golden retriever, laid off in the corner on the floor keeping watch for any possible collisions.

At a calm in the day, Chuck sat down at one of the green stools at the counter with a tired sigh and exclaimed. "Only a few days 'til Christmas!"

Ned was cleaning up crumbs off the counter from a previous costumer, but looked up and smiled because of her excitement.

"What are you hoping Santa will bring you?"

His body immediately tensed. He hated when he did that, it made it impossible to hold  anything back from her. Not that he was able to not tell her thing, before long anyways.