“I can’t sleep. Tell me a story.”

“Once upon a time there was a beautiful unicorn in a green glade and zombies shambled up to it and ate its brains.”

“The End?”

“Oh no, while getting past its horse-like skull, one of the zombies grabbed its horn in order to burrow his undead face past the bone into the delicious brain-meats. The horn healed the zombie, returned its life and its memories of love and the sun on its face. For a moment, he realized that he had to put the horror of his zombie existence behind him in order to live.

“But then, the other zombies smelled the fresh life coming off this ex-zombie and they stopped feasting on the unicorn long enough to bite him and turn him back into a zombie. He dropped the zombie horn and it still lays there in the grass to this day.”

“The End?”

“Oh no, now we have a unicorn zombie on the loose.”

“Wouldn’t it just be dead? If a zombie eats a person’s brain it is just dead but if it get’s bit it becomes a zombie….right?”

“Maybe. I have no idea but a unicorn zombie is too much damned fun.

“There was a little girl in a field near her home and across the field, out of the forest shambled the unicorn zombie. It was a special zombie and only ate virgin girls. For a moment, the little girl saw the zombie unicorn from a distance she thought for a moment it was a living unicorn but its gait was wrong. It had this awkward four-hooved shamble.

“The little girl hoped that maybe it was just a wounded unicorn but she knew something was wrong, right up to the moment when it bit her skull with its tremendous horse teeth. The little girl’s brains nourished the unicorn and it rose from the dead, the first of a little girl zombie horde that would come to follow the unizombie across the earth, wreaking hell.”

“The End?”

“Yeah, I think so. The End.”

Bret’s always writing neat anecdotes in his blog and Janaki once commented that I don’t write enough stories in my blog anymore.

So, this is for Janaki and Bret, behind the cut

This is stuck in my head:

The Sun gathered her army of shadows at noon. The Moon had paid for the mercenary stars to rally behind its softly glowing banner, promising a world lit only by their twinkling eyes.

Would they meet on the fields of Twilight or Dawn?

*phew*

I just needed to type that sucker out.

And I’ve got some kind of a story about Captain James Hook and his kid brother, Peter. Jim becomes his arch-enemy when he abandons their pirate ship to become a grown-up because he fell in love with a girl.

I think a story about Hook’s childhood’s been done but from what I read about it, I like mine better.

Santa’s Log 12-26-05

The Season’s over but the sled revved, still on the tarmac. The reindeer are munch on fresh oats, their fur is steaming, Rudolph’s nose is blazing.

Now its just snipe missions, little trouble-shooter fly-by’s and mistakes. It was a good night, a solid night. Americans are very aware of their air space nowadays, in the Post-9-11 world; it isn’t like the old days when I could just fly through America willy-nilly, flashing my North Pole clearance and ho-ho-ho’ing to the various towers. Radio shows have been assuring children all over the states that I in fact have dispensation from the president to fly here. Its a different era.

An F-16 got radar lock on the sled not once but twice, once over Missouri and another time over a bit of restricted air space over a Nevada desert that I was flying over due to elf-error (damned heathen Odinists). If Mrs. Claus knew that I was a button push away from being on the receiving end of a missile, she’d spew nog.

Its nickel and dime stuff from here on in, the sugar plum dreams are over, the world as I know it is filled with wrapping paper and under the trees are just nativity scenes and downed tinsel.

As always, the Pole has begun to buzz about the New Year’s Even party. All of the regulars will be there: Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Elijah, and the Unknown Soldier (truth is, there’s three of ’em). Elves are beginning to make plans, ask dates and put their outfits together.

On New Year’s Day I’ll tuck Mrs. Claus in to bed and do my yearly ritual. I will go into the bathroom and run a sink of hot water. My straight razor is as sharp as the line between autumn and winter. With it I’ll shave my beard, take it right off. Sure the belly and the button nose would be enough if you were looking for me but until next year, you aren’t.

I’ll head south, into the world and disappear for a while, chill in Amsterdam, maybe finally make my way to my brother Pete’s place on the bottom of the world.

I can’t wait. Heavy is the face that bares the beard.

V: This is Virginia here on the North Pole to bring you the Holiday News. I’m here with Chief Elf…what was your name, sir?

?: We have no names, Santa gave them away as presents years ago to a good kid who asked for them.

V: That’s horriffic!

?: *shrug* That’s life on the North Pole, sweetie. In the Big Man’s defense, the kid was really, really good.

V: *smiles* What is the atmosphere like on the North Pole right now?

?: Honey, its go-time. We Elves are at ground zero of a- ::phone rings:: – hold on…Yeah?

V: We are witnessing an emergency phone call to the North Pole’s Chief Elf on the 23rd of December.

?: What – – What does the vet say? – I don’t care if their hoof is up their sugar plum, they are flying in *checks watch* less than 24 hours now. No more reindeer games. You tell him I said that, use those exact words to that red light prima donna. *hangs up, phone*

V: Problem with Rudolf?

?: Nothing that a little elf magic won’t fix. Anymore questions? I’ve got work to do?

V: How do you respond to accusations of this holiday becoming less about giving and the religious under-pinnings and more about consumerism.

?: Eh, we don’t listen to that stuff. Listen, if it weren’t this, it’d be something else. We cater to a specific cultural clientelle. No one gives the Tooth Fairy grief for leaving cash and he’s a bitchy supernatural queen who wears a dress of children’s teeth! Even if you are open-minded about his lifestyle choices (which we here at the North Pole absolutely are, no anti-gay grinching here) that mini-dress he wears is just creepy.

Suddenly, we’re responsible for every long line at Best Buy? If you don’t like the crowds at the mall, stay home and make your loved ones’ gifts with your own hands; that’s the way to go. If you don’t like the season, don’t celebrate.

Matter of fact, I challenge you all, try to only give people gifts next year that you can make with your hands. Give that a shot, see how it flies. Look at this gig with an Elves’ eyes next year.

V: Just one more question, please. How about the notion that Christmas is under attack?

?: Listen, folks, when you don’t get a job because you say that you celebrate Christmas or are forced to wear little yellow badges with crosses on ’em, believe you-me, the Jolly Fat Man will come with a sack full of rifles and grenades. But this notion that you are persecuted because of some nation’s idea of church and state being seperated (which us Elves endorse, by the way, since we are all Pagan Odinists) is nonsense.

When they’re feeding your children to lions, then you are persecuted but its been a snowy long time since they did that.

V: Thank you for the interview.

?: Virginia, always a pleasure, dear.