A Christmas Story

Christmas again. A thought that both surprised and bored Claudia as she pondered it. The surprise was in how quickly it came, as she remembered her childhood Christmases and how long it seemed to take for that precious day to come her way. The boredom came from...well, Claudia didn't know where that came from. Call it maturity, call it cynicism, but now Christmas gave her the same ennui any other day gave her. So off she went to find the root of this feeling. She was a caribou, and caribou were sorta like reindeer, so shouldn't she have some Christmas spirit? Then, she thought, bollocks; if anything, Christmas is promoting the slavery of her brethren, glorifying the image of them pulling the sleigh of some fat git. It was a depressing thought, but still one that made her giggle a little.

Then she remembered that little incident, when she was still working at the Caribou Kitchen, around Christmas time. It concerned Tom the Tortoise, that nice old waiter that worked with her, and loved greens so much. A little on the slow side maybe, as Lisa the Lemur complained, but still a joy to have around. It was at a time when the restaurant was all decked out in tinsel and holly, where she had begun to worry about him. It wasn't like him to be late. A quick visit to his happy home confirmed the worst: he had died in his sleep. Such a thing seemed unbelievable; Claudia was certain that tortoises had a longer lifespan than most animals, and this led her on to wonder if Tom had been involved in anything he had not been telling her about. She remembered attending the funeral in December, and noticing how things weren't the same without him.

She didn't really have the heart to replace him, which was why Lisa promised to do twice as much work...about a month before she up and quit. After that, Penny the dog offered her services, but she didn't do much; she was usually caught chatting on her mobile when she should have been serving (apparently Larry was her brother, go figure). It didn't really matter all that much, because, with factors like the new Starbucks across the road, the Caribou Kitchen started losing business. Claudia and Abe kept working, even when nobody came, but when some yobs burst in and wrecked the place, they knew it was time to call it quits.

Recalling such an event left her with what felt like a huge black hole emerging in her gut, which she found herself trying to fight. Still, she felt tears dripping from her eyes, and tried to deny their existence. Sure, Tom was such a good friend, but everyone dies whether we want them to or not. For all she knew, she could die the next day and it wasn't like she was clinging on to her life anyway.

Maybe she had only herself to blame for her lack of Christmas spirit; who thinks about death at Christmas anyway? Once again, she laughed to herself - laughed at herself. You silly old thing, you. It's Christmas - lighten up! What's not to like about it? Abe will get you a nice Christmas pressie, you'll give him that gift certificate he doesn't mind getting, and either go round to his place or stay at home making merry herself. It was the latter option this year, so she felt she might as well make the most of it. She should be happy - no, not just happy. Silly.

Silly is fun.

From under her desk, she took the little Christmas gifts she bought herself: a four-pack of store brand cola and a CD of cheesy covers of cheesy Christmas songs. She might as well make some noise, as she could clearly hear some pounding and idiotic guffawing from the room next to her. Plus, she found that, while not as addictive and beckoning as beer, cola always seemed to make her happier. In no time at all, as another rendition of 'Another Rock and Roll Christmas' played on her radio, she gulped down the entire bottle, and, though it may have had more to do with her hopes than the drink, she felt much happier and...sillier. In fact, she turned off the radio and thought for a minute that she should create her own Christmas entertainment, and she started by singing Christmas carols on her own. Silly Christmas carols:

Jingle Bells,
Darkwing smells,
Launchpad laid an egg,
The Thunderquack burned and crashed,
And Quackerjack got away!

She couldn't help but sing it thrice more, as there was something about how the words that filled her with glee. Sure, she knew singing Christmas carols with words like these were childish, but that was part of their charm. Just as she was about to sing the song about shepards washing their socks, she thought of another way to bring herself some festive entertainment. She'd write a story.

Yes, in fact, this was something she needed to do. There was a novel she had been procrastinating on, and maybe this was the way to get the juices flowing. She'd write a goofy Christmas story, have a few laughs, then regain herself to work on the novel, which she still hadn't thought a bloody title for. After grabbing a piece of paper and a pen, she scribbled what came to mind.

Randolph the Deformed Reindeer

The title made her chuckle, and she thought the thing would write itself.

One Christmas Eve in Santa Land, the reindeer were all happy and cheering, for their rounds were over at last! They were all sick and tired of pulling that lardass around, and they even had to deliver the presents while he just stood around, hogging all the glory. But now their rounds were over and they were ready to hit the bar and get drunk and party like there was no tomorrow. In ten minutes, all the reindeer were drunk, dancing around on the pool tables and hitting on the female reindeer. One particular reindeer, Blitzen, managed to successfully hit on a cute girl called Vixen, and managed to take her back to his stable for some 'reindeer games'.

Unfortuneately, there was no protection, so Vixen ended up pregnant. She wanted an abortion, but Santa wouldn't let her; he thought that it would ruin the jolly nature of his land. So, she spent an unhappy nine months until she gave birth to a son, who was born horribly deformed. His deformity? A big red nose! It shone real bright like neon and passing aircraft crashed due to it blinding pilots. So, due to this, he became a social outcast, with his schoolmates dunking his head in the toilet and cornering him in the school hallways to deliver a beating..."

Claudia stopped for a minute, as she remembered how she was treated back in her school days. So, was the story a failure, as it was supposed to make her forget reality? Claudia immediately decided to try and remedy that by putting in the first thing that came to her head.

Thankfully for Randolph, he could use the light of his conk to blind his enemies, satisfying his sadistic urges. Yet it was still not enough for him; he wanted acceptance and respect. He considered corrective surgery, but Santa had gotten rid of that in his realm as well, in case a lesson in tolerance needed to be taught. The fat git was a sucker for morality tales, but, sadly, Randolph's classmates were not.

So one Christmas Eve Eve, Randolph vowed that he would show his peers how he really was. He would go out and perform a daring feat of bravery, and he knew just how to. He knew that Santa had a list of places that he vowed never to visit, so Randolph thought if he stole that list and delivered presents to all the places Santa was afraid to, the other reindeer would see him as a hero.

Snatching the list and a sack of toys, Randolph set out, using his reindeer powers to fly all over the world to find the places Santa feared to tread. His first stop was at a trailer park, where he sang a carol in hopes of rousing up some Christmas cheer.

"We wish you a Merry Christmas, we wish you a Merry Christmas..."

"Shut the hell up!" came a voice, followed by a beer bottle right to the face.

"Well!" said Randolph, "You've been a naughty boy, here's some coal!" And he got that piece of coal shoved right down his throat. Upon hearing a rather plump woman try to hit on him, he flew off, hoping he'd have better luck on the next place on the list...

Realising a smidgen of reality had seeped into her work, Claudia thought of something outlandish: It was the house of a doctor. Randolph was confused at first, thinking doctors were good people, until...

"Ah, brilliant! The perfect subject for my experiment!"

"What?"

"I have a theory that reindeer entrails are the perfect fuel for my peanut-destroying laser gun! I never trusted those peanuts..."

Randolph quietly snuck off to the next place on the list. The thought to give this up occurred to him, but the desire to prove himself made him press on, even if doing so meant going to the home of famed aristocrat Lord Snootington.

"I say, how amusing! A reindeer with a nose like a lightbulb! What a freak of nature! Ha ha ha!"

"That's gonna get you a lump of coal, you know."

"I don't mind, because I'm fabulously wealthy! And you're not, nor will you be! Ha ha ha!"

Deeply hurt, Randolph thought of quitting, but decided, no, he had to show that he was more than just a freak of nature. So after breaking Lord Snootington's neck, he travelled to his next destination.

However, he'd wish he had given up when he found out his next stop was SUPERJAIL!

Poor Randolph met up with a creepy robot who knew that he had stolen the sack of toys from Santa, and thus had to be taken to Superjail! "Oh goody!" squealed the warden, "I like a good variety of species in my prison!"

Before the top-hat wearing one could lock him up however, Randolph escaped, and, still driven to prove his worth, flew to the next stop on his list, where he was mugged and forced to hand over the sack of toys to a group of punks (who tried to get high from burning the coal they were given).

Head hung low, Randolph returned to Santa Land, where Santa waited for him with a furious look on his face. "I'm not always jolly you know..."

"So, how does Santa punish Randolph? Maybe with a chainsaw? Or maybe now the world explodes! Or maybe Randolph turns into a robot and...oh, damn it." Claudia's sudden burst of joy seemed to fade as she felt self-doubt attack her, making her think the same old 'is this what I've become' feelings. Those feelings no longer tore her soul apart, but annoyed her. 'Oh, Claudia, being born deformed is a serious issue and your crappy story trivialises it...' Well, it's not like anyone else's going to read it and she had fun, isn't that what was important, especially at Christmas? She wanted to have fun, but those damn bad feelings always got in the way. They're worse than Larry and his limericks.

Looking at what she had written, accompanied by stick figure drawings of the characters, she decided to fold it up and place it in her coat pocket. Maybe it'll make her feel better on bad days, or maybe not. With that, she spent an amount of time doing nothing, before going to bed to wait for the inevitable.