'Twas a Dark and Delicious Christmas

by Stacey Espino

  Dressed and ready to go, she opened the door to a crowd of people cheering. Panic and confusion raced through her body. “What is going on?”

  One of the elves replied, “Your theory was correct! We’re connected to the humans through intimacy. And now our computer is overloaded with orders that need to be completed.”

  She saw Natalie and Holly shouldering through the crowd. Natalie made it through first. “Carly, you did it! You saved Christmas!” Natalie hugged her tightly. Alex looked at Carly and mouthed, “Saved Christmas?”

  She tried not to laugh, but was unsuccessful. “It’s a long story.”

  “I like long stories.” He flashed a sexy grin and winked.

  Carly couldn’t contain her excitement. She swung her arms around his neck and kissed him deeply and then she whispered in his ear, “I could tell you all about it back at my place. Please say you’ll come home with me.” She held her breath, waiting for an answer.

  “Love, just try to make me leave you.”

  She smiled, her heart pounding. “Are you saying I’m stuck with you?”

  “If you’ll have me.”

  He gave her such a wicked grin, she melted on the spot. Alex was hers and she was his. Funny how holiday wishes come true.

  “Yes, I want you.” It was the perfect ending to her night. “Now, let’s go home so I can unwrap you under my tree.”

  The End

  Kingdom of Sweets

  Copyright © 2010 Gigi Brevard

  I knew I was dreaming because of the snow in my hair. I hadn’t seen snow since Germany. I hadn’t seen Germany since May.

  I turned around slowly. A frozen lake stretched out before me, a deep shade of indigo beneath the star-studded velvet blackness of the sky. Pale lavender snow sat in silent, stoic piles on the shores, higher than I’d ever seen. If I were to take just a few steps forward down the slope, I’d fall right through. But I wouldn’t be cold. For some reason, even in the flimsy charmeuse silk nightgown that clung softly to my skin, I felt as if I’d never be cold again.

  The line of evergreens behind me rustled without making a sound. From it emerged a young man in the red-and-white uniform of a long-forgotten army.

  He approached me. He was a full head taller. His shoulders were perfectly symmetrical, his posture perfectly straight.

  The soldier raised a hand to my face. My eyes snapped up to meet his. The space between us was so slight that barely any snow fell to block his enormous blue eyes from my vision.

  His fingers left trails of searing heat on my cheek. Then he cupped his hand and held it there. I felt the cloud of warm, moist air between his palm and my face.

  “Clara,” he said, “you have to wake up.”

  A white gash tore through the sky behind his head.

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Clara,” he repeated more forcefully, “you have to wake up. Now.”

  The white gash spread, obliterating the snowy, purple-tinged landscape, obliterating his hand on my face, obliterating him. I felt beads of sweat pop up all over my body, so many that I wondered if my roommate Jess had thrown a glass of water on my face to wake me up. Then I realized it was just hot as balls in here.

  “Clara, my family is waiting,” Jess whined.

  “Oh. Okay.” I rubbed my eyes. “Do you think maybe we could turn the AC on? Just for a little while?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s like the nicest day of the year outside. Sunny, high seventies, little bit of a breeze. You can’t tell me you’d rather breathe the moldy recycled shit the AC cranks out.” She went to the open window and leaned outside, like Cinder-fucking-ella about to sing to the birds or something. As a Florida-raised surfer girl, Jess was nuts about the outdoors; in my little Bavarian hometown, you couldn’t even walk to the corner grocery at this time of year without suffering frostbite.

  I groaned and rolled over to face the wall.

  “We have to get going anyway,” Jess continued.

  “Now?”

  “In ten minutes, yeah.”

  “I told you to give me an hour to get ready.”

  I felt Jess sit heavily on the bed. I rolled halfway back and craned my neck to look at her.

  “Why would I do that, Clara?” Her eyes were wide. She knew she was walking on eggshells here. The next thing she said would be extremely offensive if she didn’t phrase it just right. “It’s not like…I mean, you know,” she struggled. “You’re just dropping me off. I don’t care if you brush your teeth or whatever. So I thought I’d just let you sleep.”

  “But I asked you to get me up. Isn’t that reason enough?”

  I tried to hoist myself into a sitting position, but Jess shoved me back against the pillow and rolled her eyes. “You’re so funny.” She got up, walked to the kitchenette section of the apartment, and poured herself a cup of coffee. “I don’t know how you do things in Germany, babe, but here in America, no college kid on winter break takes an hour to get ready. We just throw on our sweats and go. This is your vacation. Besides, you’re not even getting out of the car.”

  I resisted the urge to throw my pillow at her. What a control freak. She had no idea what my plans were after I dropped her off. For all she knew, I had a hot date.

  My brief flash of anger subsided, and I reached for the cleanest jumble of denim I could spot on the floor by my bed. Jess was right—no point in dressing up. I had no plans, and she knew it. All our friends were off visiting their families. Florida Tech was practically deserted. Hell, even Jess was deserting me. I was dropping her off at her parents’ place so she could spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with them. It was right across the causeway, a twenty-minute drive. My family was so far away I couldn’t even afford a plane ticket to go home for the holiday.

  “Be ready in ten, okay?” Jess urged, chugging enormous gulps of coffee.

  I sighed. “Yes ma’am.”

  * * * *

  Jess’s family lived in one of those houses that we don’t have in Germany; a newish structure with sheer stucco walls, small square windows with tinted glass, and no flowers in the yard despite the lack of snow. It was a big house, tucked between two others just like it in an opulent gated community. When I pulled up to the security guard in my shitty Volvo, he swaggered up with a taut jaw, determined not to let me pass. Then Jess leaned over and waved. His face cracked into a smile of recognition. He stepped back into his booth and pressed the button to lift the gate.

  “Okay, if I have to spend one more minute with my Glenn-Beck-loving family than necessary, I will vomit up my figgy pudding,” Jess informed me as we pulled into the driveway. “So please be here to pick me up at seven tomorrow.” She clicked her seatbelt open and shot me a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry again that the Mercedes is in the shop. I really wanted a vintage car for my sixteenth birthday, but now that we’ve got our own place and I keep having to bum rides off you, I guess it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. I’m gonna try and ask Dad for a new one. Anyway, this must be your worst Christmas Eve ever.”

  I shook my head. “It’s okay. It’s not your fault.” Just get out.

  She did, dragging two overnight bags with her despite the fact that she was only staying one night.

  I backed up and drove out the way I’d come, dodging big happy families out on their holiday walks.

  Maybe this was my worst Christmas Eve ever. But that’s only because I had last year to compare it to. The year my life changed.

  I shook myself. I’d never told anybody. It seemed too incredible. That a nutcracker could come to life and sweep me off my feet and carry me away to a winter wonderland full of sweets and dancers…that he had promised to return again this year once I’d reached the age of consent, and bring me back to rule that fantastical kingdom at his side forever and ever…had to be a dream. No, tonight would be just like any ordinary night. Except there would be nothing good on TV. Maybe I’d rent a movie and curl up on the couch with a carton of ice cream. One of those pint-sized ones you
can eat all in one sitting.

  I pulled out of Jess’s neighborhood and drove awhile before slowing to a stop at a traffic light. As I did so, I looked over to the left side of the road toward GleasonPark, where I occasionally went jogging. I felt safer there after dark than in the seedy area around Florida Tech. That’s what I’ll do tonight. Go for a jog. Clear my head.

  * * * *

  I never masturbated before I turned eighteen. I know, they say everybody does it and then denies it, but I really didn’t. My parents were very strict. When I showed an aptitude for math at a young age, they started running me ragged, prepping me to attend a good college—preferably in the States—and become an engineer. A typical day for me consisted of an hour of track practice before school, then school itself, then homework, then two hours of violin practice, then dinner, then more studying…until I was so exhausted that I had to go to bed despite their indignant proclamations that I hadn’t studied enough. I didn’t have any friends to speak of, much less any time to explore my sexuality.

  So when I moved to Florida in August…well, I guess you could say I went crazy with it. I developed something of a sex addiction. Whenever Jess wasn’t home, I’d sit on my bed in front of my laptop with my skirt hiked up or my pants down around my ankles, masturbating frantically to whatever free porn I could find.

  As I dressed for my jog, I couldn’t help wondering how I would explain this to my nutcracker prince. Here he was making a grand romantic gesture, waiting a whole year before he could come back to this world for me. Would he be horrified if I told him that I had already lost my virginity to my own fingers a thousand times over? Or that one of the main reasons I wanted to see him again was pure, selfish lust?

  It doesn’t matter. He’s not coming back. That whole thing was just a silly dream, the delusion of a girl whose parents pushed her so hard that she didn’t have a social life.

  I caught a glimpse of that girl in the mirror. She wore shorts and a sports bra. I walked a little closer to scrutinize her. That skin was so milky pale, so German. And even though she jogged regularly, she carried a little extra weight around her hips and bust. She looked more substantial, more present, than those skinny beach babes like Jess, who exuded the standard of beauty by which Florida residents were invariably judged. Could a girl like that— a pale girl with exaggerated curves and a seriously slutty porn addiction—ever hope to be compatible with a straight-laced, romantic soldier?

  Provided he existed in the first place?

  * * * *

  The park was well-lit when I pulled in. It was the opposite of my cool-hued dreamscape. Streetlights cast circles of garish orange light, like from a deep fryer at a fast food restaurant. The roughly paved parking lot was hard and flat in stubborn juxtaposition to the soft deep snow of my fantasies. And the pond here was far from frozen. It lapped up against the grass with an obscene smacking noise.

  There were no other cars, but I locked my doors just in case. Then I clipped my key onto my sports bra and walked to the trail that wrapped around the pond.

  The day’s heat had finally dissipated. The breeze coming off the pond felt cool and pleasant. Now that those ugly orange lights were behind me, it even looked cooler. The pale light from the full moon made tall black silhouettes of the pine trees. I began to jog.

  As I settled into a comfortable breathing pattern, I couldn’t help but think of my nutcracker again. What if he really did exist? What if I had seriously wronged him by masturbating so often, and so unabashedly? What if he was my one true love?

  For the trillionth time since the previous Christmas Eve, I humored myself by recounting the story.

  My eccentric uncle Drosselmeyer arrived with a sack full of toys, including vintage wooden soldiers for my brother Fritz and a nutcracker for me. At that time, the nutcracker was still as inanimate as any I’d ever seen. I considered myself far beyond the age of active play, other than to humor Fritz and his friends. Still, I knew he was special. From the moment he emerged from his whimsical candy-striped box, those wood-carved blue eyes beckoned to me, calling me near like a siren calls a hapless sailor. At dinner, I placed him on the table as a centerpiece and continued to stare into those eyes throughout the meal. I thought of nothing else.

  Then Fritz grew fidgety and decided to see how big a nut he could fit inside the nutcracker’s mouth. I watched in horror as that thin, delicate, expertly carved wooden jaw snapped. Though he still didn’t move, that was the moment he came to life for me. I swore I could see the pain in his frozen expression.

  Uncle Drosselmeyer has a workshop, but he wouldn’t be able to return to it until after Christmas; so as a temporary mend, I wrapped a cloth napkin around the nutcracker’s face to hold his lower jaw on. It looked quite humorous to everyone but me, and my family had a good laugh at my expense.

  Night fell, and I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking of my poor nutcracker with his kind blue eyes and nothing but a pitiful cloth napkin as a sling. So I crept downstairs to see him just once more before morning, when everyone would be awake to tease me again.

  As I reached the ground floor, our old grandfather clock struck midnight. That’s when weird shit started happening.

  The first thing I noticed was our Christmas tree. It grew taller and taller until I feared it would burst through the roof. Then I realized with a start that the roof was getting further away, too. Everything was growing. Or, more accurately, I was shrinking.

  The sensation became too much. I had to close my eyes to keep Christmas Eve dinner down. When I opened them again, I had stopped shrinking at roughly the size of a Barbie doll. Roughly the size of my nutcracker.

  He approached me, gallant in his red and white uniform. He was younger now. His white cotton beard had vanished. But more impressive than his reverse aging was the fact that he had transformed from a mere doll to a flesh-and-blood human being. Those carved wooden features that so fascinated me had given way to a pair of real blue eyes, high cheekbones covered by a taut stretch of skin, a flesh-and-blood smile.

  “Clara,” he said.

  I blinked, certain I was dreaming.

  And maybe I was, I reminded myself, veering from the path around the pond to take an unpaved route into a stand of trees.

  The cool weather didn’t seem to deter the mosquitoes any. I picked up speed, slapping at my bare arms and cursing. I don’t like to go too fast because it hurts my boobs when they bounce around. Great. Add that to my list of pains. And to the list of events that contrasted unfavorably with last year’s.

  I remembered the way my nutcracker met me, striding across the polished wooden floor that seemed to stretch for miles around us. He drew up close to me, reached out his arms. And I fell automatically into them, collapsed against his chest, careful to avoid snagging my hair on the piece of cloth that cradled his broken jaw. Everything about him was real. The warmth of his wool soldier’s coat, the sound of his heartbeat. He must have been real. How could he not? Why, after all this time, would I still remember a silly dream so vividly?

  “Thank you,” he murmured. “Thank you for fixing my jaw.”

  I laughed. “Drosselmeyer will fix it better after Christmas.”

  “But still, you were the only one at that table who cared. I owe you.”

  “Don’t say that. You don’t owe me anything. I’m just so happy you’re here.”

  We rested against one another, breathing in our aura, trying to memorize every detail.

  And then came the kingdom of snow that wasn’t cold, a castle made of gingerbread, enchanting people…any one of whom would have had the compassion to fix my nutcracker’s jaw. But even though his human soul spent most of its time here in this absolute paradise, he felt incomplete. He needed me. We were destined to be together, he said. And he swore that we would.

  The pain in my bouncing breasts got to be too much. I slowed to a walk. To my surprise, the mosquitoes didn’t descend on me. I heard no droning, felt no tiny wings brush my skin.

  In fact, there w
asn’t much to be heard or felt here. I was deep in the woods, but no wind moved in the trees. My own heartbeat in my ears was muted. My breath didn’t tickle my nose hairs on its way in or out. The temperature was finally so perfect I couldn’t feel it.

  I looked around. It was dark. I was far out of range of the streetlights. The ground peeking out from under a thin blanket of oak leaves and pine needles was sandy, so it glowed white in the moonlight. Almost as white as…

  Church bells began to clang.

  I didn’t know what time it was. I stopped walking to listen.

  One. Two. Three.

  The rest of the world was silent. No owls hooted. No rabbits scampered through the undergrowth. It was just me, all alone here in the woods.

  Four. Five. Six.

  I thought of Jess, at home with her family. Was she asleep? Or helping her parents play Santa Claus to her younger siblings?

  Seven. Eight. Nine.

  I thought of my own house in Germany. Midnight had already come and gone there. What if my nutcracker’s soul had returned to its wooden body, only to discover that I had ditched him to pursue an engineering degree halfway around the world?

  Ten. Eleven. Twelve.

  I took a deep breath and held it. The hairs on the back of my neck stood straight up. I waited.

  Nothing happened. The trees didn’t grow as my Christmas tree had the year previous. The world remained still, except for that last clang of church bells, fading into oblivion.

  He’s not coming. You’re just under a lot of stress from school, and you miss your family.

  The truth hit me so hard I doubled over. Tears welled in my eyes. I tried to blink them back, but they got the better of me. I squeezed my lids shut so I wouldn’t have to watch them tumble through the air, sparkling like tiny jewels in the moonlight, looking for all the world like diamonds from unwanted engagement rings.

  Something touched my shoulder softly.