As Peter ate he looked out over the room, at the vast tables lined in rows, each seating a hundred hungry elves. There were more smoking hot chicks in this room than a Kentucky Fried Chicken kitchen fire. He was mildly disappointed that none of them wore the curled shoes or court-jester garments that they always wore in movies and cartoons. Their attire was far more regal, their uniform a velvet midnight green with golden buttons.
One elf in particular stared intensely at him, not eating or drinking, only looking and looking and looking. When Peter noticed her she smiled and winked at him. Unsure what to do, Peter winked back. The elf jumped in her seat giggling and the others eating beside her asked confusedly what had happened. Another elf at another table waved to Peter, a timid look on her face, and when Peter waved back her heart exploded in excitement. Peter felt as though he had just discovered a super power. Somehow he was able to reduce the girls of the North Pole to flustered idiots.
Just an hour ago, Peter had completely given up on life, and clinched his eyes shut, and thrown his hands up to let Jesus take the wheel and guide him straight into a jack-kniving semi-truck and a fiery death. Yet somehow, it seemed, the vehicle that was his life began driving itself with supernatural precision. This was beyond all measure of good luck. His mind couldn’t comprehend it.
The elf sitting beside Peter cleared her throat to get his attention.
“Welcome to the big kids table, Peter. I’m Yuina. Master Elf in charge of programming electronics and formatting movies and video games. I’m very smart, as you can see from my glasses.”
Peter greeted Yuina and introduced himself, which was redundant. Yuina was beautiful in her own way as well, although not quite like Yuna the dentist elf or Yumeka the French maid elf. Although all three elves Peter had met so far, and all the elves dining before him, were blonde, they were different shades of blonde: blonde like a lion, blonde like wheat, and blonde like a ray of sunshine. And while they all had blue eyes they were different shades of blue: blue like an atoll, blue like a Stellar’s jay, and blue like Neptune. He really hoped he wasn’t going to have to remember every name and face he came across. Yuina’s hair was cropped about the shoulders and braided about the crown. That was Peter’s plan to remember her. Hopefully she didn’t change her hair style often.
“You see that one not using any utensils? That’s Yukina, she’s in charge of sleigh maintenance and the reindeer.” Yuina pointed past Peter and Santa to one of the master elves seated at their table.
Beautiful and alert, Yukina munched away in a uniform of white and grey reindeer furs— not regal, like the furs an old lady wears to an opera, but smart and practical work furs. She was the only girl in the hall wearing a hat— a strange fantasy-like ushanka. She mopped up au jus from her plate with a torn bread roll, savoring every calorie.
“Next to her is Yuzuka, she’s in charge of hunting.”
Even sitting down, Yuzuka stretched above the other elves, but she wasn’t gangling. Yuzuka was all muscles, like a volleyball player with pointy ears. Without her green hussar jacket, and with blouse sleeves rolled up, her forearms and biceps flexed as she strangled a pepper grinder to death over her meal. Along with her forks and knives rested a pair of antique revolvers.
“That empty seat is for Yuika, she’s in charge of cookies and sweets and all the food we’re eating right now. You’ll meet her later. That’s Yechel…”
Compared to the other chipper elves, Yechdel seemed wound up. Blonde hair securely fastened in an a bureaucratic updo. Her eyes scanned the room like a Terminator as she ate. There was something off about her.
“What’s she in charge of?”
“Uh… it’s not important.” Yuina shifted and pointed to the girl beside herself. “This girl with the human ears and the green dress is Pyatr. She’s very famous— she composed the Nutcracker ballet.”
“But that was composed by Tchaikovsky.”
“Yes, Pyatr Tchaikovsky, that’s me.”
A gaunt and anemically pale girl leaned forward in her seat and smiled at Peter. Her eyes were strikingly dark and ringed with sleeplessness, the hallmark of an insomniac who spent late hours scribbling away with pen and paper. Her hair was chocolate brown and wild, tied together loosely behind a slender crane-like neck. She stood out boldly from the ocean of blonde elves.
“But wasn’t the Nutcracker ballet composed in the 1800s?”
“1892,” Tchaikovsky said. “Yes, exactly right, Peter. You see, because of my contribution to Christmas with my little ballet, I was reincarnated at the North Pole as a cute girl. Now I get to live out eternity here with Santa Claus and all these wonderful elves making new compositions in honor of Christmas.”
“That’s… what?”
“It’s a Christmas miracle!” Tchaikovsky held up a glass of the purpleish wine and said, “За любовь!”
While Peter sat dumbfounded, taking in that Pyatr Tchaikovsky was not only still alive, but also a girl now, another elf sitting far away, deep in the crowd, caught his eye. This one had formed her fingers in the shape of a V and was wiggling her tongue between them. Peter dropped his fork and wondered if that gesture meant the same thing in the North Pole as it did in his home country.
“You know, Peter,” Tchaikovsky leaned over Yuina and planted her hand firmly onto his knee. “I composed a song for your arrival. Come to my bedchamber and I’ll play it for you.” Her hand caressed its way up his thigh, and then continued upwards. He looked over at Santa for help, but she continued politely eating, eyes forward. Tchaikovsky’s hand slinked upwards until there was nowhere else to go. Peter jumped out of his seat, clattering the dishes. Dining halted as all eyes turned on him.
“I’m sorry. I thought I saw a mouse.” He sat back down.
“Anyway,” Yuina said. “The only other master of this table is Jumeau, down there at the end.”
Far and away at the furthest corner of Santa’s table sat a girl who wasn’t an elf, with not a figurative porcelain complexion but a complexion of literal porcelain. There she sampled a little bit of everything, each on an individual plate, with every sauce in a tiny individual saucer. Yet she didn’t eat. She only cut the food up, brought it to her lips, and then put it back. One after the other. Again and again. Her dead eyes locked forward.
When Peter closely studied her hands he saw that her fingers were jointed with ball and sockets like a doll. And her hair was that of a doll, and her jingle-bell’d witch hat and starched-stiff accordion ruff collar were that of a doll, and when she slowly turned to look at Peter he felt his blood run cold with horror. Like a stalker from a Halloween movie she mechanically stood and approached Peter, and he felt cold sweats trickle down his body.
“And what does she do?” Peter asked.
“She’s just a doll,” Yuina said.
“Yessssss, Peter, helloooooo.” Jumeau’s lips did not move as she spoke in her prepubescent voice. She towered over him in his chair like a gangling monster. Santa calmly picked away at her chocolate lava cake, but Peter secretly begged her to intervene and save him. “So nice to meet youuuuu.”
Jumeau brushed her icy cold porcelain fingers on his cheek.
“Oh my, your flesh is so soft. Yesssss. Soft and supple. Yessssss. You must take good care of your flesh, Peter. You must not let anyone harvest it. Is that understooood? Your flesh is very dear. Very dear, indeeeed.”
“Thanks, Jumeau.”
“If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to return to my seat and pretend to eat some food. You see I don’t have organs like you do, but I like to pretend that I do. Pretending is fun, isn’t it?”
“Yes it is,” Yuina said. “It’s very fun.”
A spider crawled out from under Jumeau’s witch hat, scuttled over her expressionless face, and vanished between eyeball and eyesocket. Peter stared with morbid disgust at the last spider claw wiggling into her skull when she said, “Toodle-loooooo!”
And Jumeau tiptoed back down the table to her seat. Peter didn’t realize it but he was sweating with fear and hyperventilating.
“Jumeau is uh… she’s…”
“She’s lovely, isn’t she?” Yuina said.
“Yeah. That’s the word…”
For the first time in the course of the meal Santa turned to Peter and handed him a diminutive glass with a richly hued fortified wine within. She stood up and motioned for him to do the same. “Thank you all, for a hard day’s work. And thank you to Peter, for joining us tonight. Ave!”
Peter took a baby sip of the wine while Santa downed it in a single gulp, which outside of the North Pole was not how fortified wine was meant to be drunk. Peter pursed his lips tightly and didn’t say anything, but the disapproval was clear on his face. As he watched the elves toast, he spied one in the far back who was sticking her chest out, cupping and rubbing her breasts in her hands while making aggressive eye contact with Peter. Mid-sip, he choked on his wine and started beating himself in the chest and coughing.
“What the fudge is wrong with these girls?” he muttered to himself.
“Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!” Santa clapped her boots together and shot out one arm in a Roman salute. The other elves followed suit. Peter couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Peter said. “Don’t do that.”
“This is how we say goodnight,” Santa said.
“But that salute has… very bad connotations where I’m from.”
“When in the North Pole, do as the elves do.”
Peter hunched his shoulders and reluctantly unfolded his arm. It was straight for only a moment before he dropped it down to his side. If anyone snapped a photo of that second he could never run for president— maybe the prime minister of Canada, but definitely not America. Santa Claus took her red general’s cap and placed it atop her black tresses, then guided Peter out the room. As he left the grand dining hall he looked back at the dapper and oh-so-horny elves to see if he could catch one last lewd gesture from the crowd.