Santa came after me, blubbering and huffing, and climbing over filled sacks as I darted between and around them. The reindeer were still flying out of control. The apprentices woke up; they started screaming and tried to crawl up front to calm Rudolph and the rest down. Santa bounded over one sack and came down inches from Fritz’s head; he was close behind me, his hands almost around me when I suddenly saw a tiny opening between two bags. I dove through it, scooting around to the right.
I found myself face to face with Santa’s rear end.
I froze there in surprise, the needle held out before me, when suddenly the sleigh lurched ahead and I fell into Santa and the needle hit the bulls-eye. He yelped once, went stiff as a board, and fell over backwards.
I quickly untied Fritz as the two apprentices managed to calm the reindeer down and get them flying in a straight line again. Fritz examined Santa, nodded his approval, and then, at his instructions, we took Santa’s suit off and tied him up with the rope that had bound Fritz.
When he finished, Fritz looked up into the night sky. “We have about two and one half hours of darkness left, Gustav,” he said. “I suggest that if we are to save Santa’s good name you put this suit on and go up front and take over.” He then told me his plan, and I balked and screamed, but finally gave in. The suit was forty sizes too big, but I put it on anyway and climbed into the front seat; we were soon heading at top speed back to the North Pole.
When we touched down in the courtyard everything was dead quiet. We were expecting the worst from Momma Claus, and while Fritz ran over to try to find another syringe in the wreckage of the infirmary I climbed out of the sleigh and cautiously began to look around. My feet kept getting tangled up in the too-long legs of Santa’s suit, and I kept falling down. I looked in the toy shed, but found no one. When I tip-toed into the sleigh shed, hiking the suit up around me like a skirt, twenty-five elves jumped out of every crack and corner in the place, yelling like bandits and pummeling me with rubber toys. They wrestled me to the ground and had wound about two hundred feet of rope around my neck before one of them saw my face and shouted, “It’s Gustav!”
They helped me to my feet, and I stood panting for a few minutes before I told them to go out and get Santa. They carried him off like triumphant hunters bearing a huge wild boar. I found Momma Claus already bound and gagged in their cottage; she’d passed out after drinking an uncounted number of bottles of claret while making everybody dance the rumba out in the snow. Good old Shmitzy had then rounded everybody up and set up the ambush for Santa’s return.
After making sure the two of them were safely salted away, I got everyone together and quickly told them what had to be done. Their eyes all went wide, but they moved like jackrabbits. In fifteen minutes the sleigh, already packed solid, was piled twice as high with great sacks filled with toys. The Toy Shop was emptied. We harnessed a couple of back-up reindeer—Dentzen and Pintzen—to the rig for extra power. Fritz informed me that we had about an hour and a half to succeed. I pushed Shmitzy and the two apprentices who’d gone with me the first time into the front seat, and we made our take-off.
It was quite a ride. Everything went by in fast motion. The reindeer, though obviously straining under the mountainous weight, didn’t offer a squeak of complaint as they moved like lightning from rooftop to rooftop. We hauled two bags down each chimney—one filled with toys and one filled with stolen goods.
I’m almost sure we got all the stolen stuff back in the right place, though somebody probably ended up with an extra golf bag or can opener. If something looked like it didn’t belong in a particular place, I put it with the Christmas presents.
The only time we came close to being caught in the act was in one of the very last houses when a little girl walked sleepy-eyed into the room where I was madly stacking gifts. She took a long look at my baggy suit and dark beard, and stared suspiciously at me. “I’ve been dieting,” I said, and darted up the chimney.
We finished as the first crack of orange sunlight broke on the horizon. I tumbled into the sled, and the reindeer just barely managed to pull off the last roof and into the sky. Shmitzy and the two apprentices fell dead asleep in the rear, and I had to fight to keep my eyes open to guide us home.
When we touched down at the North Pole there was a cheering welcoming committee waiting, but I stumbled through them with a tired smile on my face and went to my office and fell asleep on top of my desk for twelve straight hours with the red suit still on, the legs and arms draped over the desk like a tablecloth. When I awoke it was broad daylight, and the North Pole had been pretty much cleaned up—at least, all the wreckage had been swept into high piles. I was proud of my elves.
Santa and Momma Claus, just as Fritz had predicted, awoke late in the day in apparently normal condition and were appropriately astounded by what they had done. Santa seemed quite depressed for a while, but I gave him the thumbs-up sign a few times and kept patting him on the back and before long he was rubbing his belly merrily once again and giving booming “Ho ho ho!”s that made me cringe. We drew up tentative plans to rebuild the North Pole.
We had a long conference with Fritz, who explained all the psychological implications and convolutions and repressed reasons why all of it had happened. None of us had the faintest idea what he was talking about, but the upshot was that he thought he understood why it had happened—why it had—and that there was nothing wrong with Santa and Momma Claus. He assured us that according to all the scientific data he had it shouldn’t happen again for at least another eight hundred years; he even said it might be possible to offset its happening again by the use of encounter sessions, mind expansion, and other ego-soothing measures.
“I am positive the effects are not cumulative, and that once this so-called volcanic gush of bad feelings is expelled, it will not build up again for centuries. And I believe that by using precise psychological techniques we can bleed off these feelings before they build. I am certain of this.”
His lecture finally ended, Fritz gathered his notes together and prepared to leave.
Momma and Santa had sat very still through all of this, but when it was all over they nodded slowly in understanding. I saw them turn to one another and smile sheepishly, and this was all very touching until Santa’s smile suddenly widened into that horrible toothy grin and both their eyes went big and white. I could swear I heard Santa say “Heh-heh-heh.” But it was all over in a second, and Fritz missed it, and the two of them were as normal and healthy as one of Momma’s pies again. The sheepish smiles were back, and they even kissed and held hands.
I thought I’d imagined it until we were all leaving and Santa suddenly turned to me and winked, flashing his fangs. “Everything back to normal for another eight hundred years. Right, Gustav? All in my head, eh?”
I gulped, gave him the thumbs-up sign, and scooted by him as he whacked me on the can. His smile had turned back to normal by then.
That’s why I’m getting out of the North Pole tonight while the getting’s good. I’ve told Fritz and the rest of them, but they just won’t believe me. They think everything’s back on track.
Maybe I’ll buy a house in Florida.
Wherever it is, it won’t have a chimney.
Baby Boss and the Underground Hamsters
A Feature-Length Cartoon
By Al Sarrantonio
REEL SEVEN
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“Stop drooling!” Baby Boss snapped, in a fierce whisper. “You’re always drooling! And keep quiet!”