(To read this story from the beginning, click here.)
Back at home, I wake to find three dead mice at the foot of my bed. Across the room, tucked inside my bookshelf, Klink is nestled between Atwood and Eggers.
“You serious?”
“What? It’s in my nature.”
I rise in the morning chill and scoop up her captors in a plastic bag, disposing them in the garbage outside.
“You’re just going to throw those out?”
“What would you have me do?”
“They’re delicacies. Savour them.”
(To read this story from the beginning, click here.)
O flash of light
O moment lost
O time forgot
without care of cost
(To read this story from the beginning, click here.)
The Hall erupted in cheer, as did I (for a moment) until I saw Klink skittering between Santa’s boots, and my jaw dropped open—there she was again. I could not escape her.
Santa took his throne after a jolly speech, and began calling children one by one to his lap.
When he called me, he picked up the silver and blue box that Klink was sitting on and put it in my lap. I smiled and nodded and carried my gift and friend back to our table. She simply sat there, staring straight at me with her signature smirk.
“You’d better enjoy this,” she said. “This is his last year.”
I frowned.
“Santa’s retiring.”
My jaw dropped.
“I know, terrible timing.”
And sure enough, the following autumn my parents told me some sap story about Santa not being real. They’d be taking over his duties. I could send my requests to them now.
(To read this story from the beginning, click here.)
Each year Klink reappeared, in a moment, in a song, in the twinkle of lights and the slow rise of the morning.
She was there the first time I saw Santa in the flesh. We were singing carols at a Rotary breakfast, my grandpa belting loudly over my grandma’s soft choir voice. It was a mid-December Saturday and Santa was expected with some early tidings. I could see the nameless presents under the big tree at the front of the Hall, waiting so much more patiently for Santa’s distribution that I.
I jittered, I moaned throughout breakfast. “When? When?” Soon.
And sure enough, before the French Toast had even begun to digest in my tummy, Santa burst through the double-doors shouting “Ho ho ho!”
(To read this story from the beginning, click here.)
I did not scream. What filled me was not fear but wonder: I knew this being. It was utterly familiar. It closed its eyes and purred.
I took the box beneath its feet and crawled back into the light.
