Page 6 of Scary & Bright
“I genuinely don’t want to discuss it,” I scoffed, taking the alert as my signal to get back to the castle. “At the end of the day, the great folks in the North Pole don’t think about us, or care about us… They just want the job taken care of.”
Mister stayed silent for a while as I dusted the light covering of snow off the seat of the sleigh, then moved to give my single reindeer, Coal, a pat on the nose. Coal was the only gift I’d ever received from Santa Claus, and I felt certain he was a gift borne of necessity more than anything. The pitch-black reindeer couldn’t fly, and I was sure he was an eyesore for the appearance-focused Northerners, but he suited me more than fine.
“Although, I suppose we could find a silver lining in all this,” Mister finally added once I was seated in the sleigh and getting us moving back down the mountain. “It is sort of nice to have company… If only for a short while.”
“Maybe for you and the rest of the toys,” I responded. “I’d rather they never came at all.”
Mister sighed a quiet sigh. I knew there was a lecture brewing in him, and I could tell he was trying to decide whether it was a good time to let it spill out of him. The teddy bear was a natural caretaker, always trying to do right by me, even when I actively avoided taking care of myself. However, his constant presence wore me down, and he had built a niche for himself as my closest friend. I knew he had my best interests at heart, but it was a routine between the two of us every single year. He would try to drag out a lightness in me that I doubted ever existed to begin with, and I let him try before gently letting him down. Year after year, it was all the same.
“But since they did send them quite early this year,” Mister added, “surely it wouldn’t hurt to try and, I don’t know, connect? Let yourself be reminded how it feels to be kind to another? Perhaps even remind yourself how it feels to have someone—besides me, of course—be kind to you in return?”
“For what purpose, Mister?” I said sternly. “Only to have the task harm me that much more after the fact? For my turmoil to fester and grow rather than remain stagnant? What would be the point in igniting something only to extinguish it in the end?”
The teddy bear adjusted his seat on my shoulder. “But I have tried to explain so many times, Krampus, if you’d just listen—”
“I don’t want to listen, Mister!” It was almost embarrassing to listen to myself speak to him like this. I felt like a stubborn child, and I knew I certainly sounded like one. Even Coal let out an exhausted bellow as he pulled the sleigh along, clearly sick of the bickering. “And besides… Look at me. You and I both know the chances of any human being genuinely kind to me are next to none. I’m a monster, I’ve always been a monster, and I’ll always be a monster. There’s no changing that.”
It was more than that, and I was certain Mister Bear knew it as well as I did. Just like a woodsman’s hands after a season of felling trees, my heart was calloused. The callouses came from years and years of accepting my nature and my purpose, and I was horrified of what would become of me should I remove the barrier I had created. Mister had his theories, and he had shared them with me more than once, but they were just theories.
The balance was and continued to be a proven necessity. Santa Claus took care of his half, and I took care of my half. Centuries of calm but reluctant compliance meant Christmases filled with warmth, magic, and love for all the children of the world. I’d be an even bigger monster if I did anything to prevent that. So, the balance became my burden, and as impossible as the burden had become to bear, I did it anyway.
The bell jingled again, reminding me that the evidence of my fate was waiting for me as I steered Coal and the sleigh into the stable.
“Krampus…” Mister started, gently trying to get my attention after a length of silence. Even that name, title, label, or whatever the word had become to me occasionally cut my soul like a hot knife. Krampus. “Would you like me to come with you?”
The bear's fuzzy body flung itself off my shoulder and landed on the stable floor with a mild squeak. If I weren’t so caught up in my doom and gloom, it might have been funny. Despite believing himself to be this impressive voice of reason, Mister was still just a teddy bear, missing patches of fur and one marble eye that had been lazily replaced with a button.
“No, I’ll be fine.” I sighed as I unhooked Coal from his sleigh harness and led him into his stall. “I already know there’s going to be at least one or two toys down there as it is. I keep asking them to leave things alone, but nobody listens to me.”
“That’s because you’re soft, Kramp.” Mister chuckled, happily snagging the opportunity to tease me, undoubtedly hoping he would be able to drag me, kicking and screaming, out of my well of self-pity. “You can act like you’re this monster all you like, but I don’t see Santa Claus providing a safe and comfortable place for old toys.”
“First of all,” I shot back, ready to defend my position that I was, in fact, a horrible beast, “Santa is way too busy stroking his ego and being the face of all things happy and cheerful to consider anything that isn’t new and shiny and fun.” I hung Coal’s harness from a hook beside his stall. Being that he was the solo reindeer, there was plenty of space for the sleigh to stay in the stable full-time. “And second of all, it’s not like I asked for all you beat-up toys to show up here. You all just did. I don’t know how or why, but you guys kept coming, so what else was I supposed to do?”
“Still doesn’t explain how you make a lot of empty threats to the toys,” Mister said as he followed me back into the castle via the long covered walkway that ran between the front end of the stable and a side-castle entrance. “Your bark is certainly worse than your bite.”
I shoved open the castle’s heavy wooden door, feeling the rush of warm air welcome me in from the cold. In one swift motion, I shrugged off my cloak and hung it on the iron coat rack beside the door. My collar jingled again, and the sound against the cool stone walls of the castle sounded that much more terrible. As much as I would have preferred to keep the banter up between myself and the teddy bear, there was a much more pressing issue at hand.
I turned in the direction of the dank stairs leading into the basement, where I knew my prize—if it was really a prize at all—would be waiting for me and said, “That’s because you’ve never seen my bite, Mister.”
3
HOLLY
I woke up with a throbbing headache and without remembering when or how I’d fallen asleep. My eyes fluttered open slowly, shutting again several times as the light hurt my eyes. I didn’t recognize my bleary, half-lidded surroundings and was half-convinced that I was still asleep. It wasn’t until I heard a clear voice, which was narrating my every move, that I realized I was very much in the real world.
“Oh! I think she’s awake,” the voice said. It sounded like it was trying to whisper and failing horribly at actually being quiet. “But maybe not. I can’t tell. Her eyes keep opening and shutting. She sure is pretty, huh? Oh, she’s opening her eyes again!”
There was no way I could ignore it any longer, even if I wanted to. The reality began to set in that I was not lying on the hand-me-down couch in my apartment’s living room. In fact, I wasn’t in my apartment at all. I forced my eyes to stay open and realized abruptly that I was on a cold, dirt floor. My eyes finally scanned my surroundings fully before I moved to sit up, trying to catch a glimpse of where the voice was coming from, but I didn’t see anyone.
I did see, however, a wall of iron bars separating where I woke up from the rest of the… basement? It certainly looked like a basement. There was a dirty stone floor, as well as walls lined with long wooden shelves, all of which were covered in the kind of tools and various knick-knacks one might expect to find in a basement. There were old cans of paint, jars of nails, hammers, axes, and an ancient sewing machine. Perhaps I was in some sort of workshop, but that wouldn’t explain the iron bars.
Was I in jail? Was this the basement of the local prison? That would be weird if it were, but the last thing I remember was losing my temper at that horrible woman back in the mall. Maybe I blacked out and was given a one-way ticket to the shittiest jail cell in the county.
“All right, she is definitely awake now,” the voice said again, this time shriller. “Hello! Good morning!”
I still didn’t see anyone, so I was forced to sit up and brush the dust and dirt off my face to investigate. Sitting up made me immediately light-headed, and I had to stop for a moment to allow my head to catch up to my body.
“There you go!” the voice continued in a sort of singsong tone. “Shake it off. I know the trip can be kind of a doozy.”