My Girlfriend is Santa Claus & Together We Must Stop the Christmas Apocalypse Based on a True Story

Drowning is not a very pleasant experience, dear reader. In fact, one might say it’s among the worst ways to die! Right up there on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Misery with incineration, vivisection, and vore-ification. And recovering from it is not much fun either, believe me! For when Peter awoke he found himself crowdsurfing upon the dainty and slender hands of two dozen elven girls, and promptly vomited his lungs empty of arctic ocean water all over his poor lifeguards.

His lips a deathly shade of blue and shivering like a crack addict, his saviors rushed the barely conscious Peter through many a gingerbread Victorian corridor and into a dark and grand bathhouse. Its architecture square and black as coal— only brass lanterns dimly lit the elven girls, like shadowy specters. Up above there was no ceiling, only clouds and snowfall, and it was as if Peter were at the very bottom of a massive square well. His waterlogged cable-knit sweater pulled up and caught over his face, he was promptly waterboarded with scalding hot water.

“No! The water’s too hot!”

“Quick, get him into the baths!” a girl shouted.

Take note, you Boy Scouts and future adventurers, for this is how one shouldn’t treat a hypothermic victim of Jack Frost. A lukewarm bath with your sexiest best friend— clothing optional— is the best way to raise your core body temperature after a disastrous dip in deathly frigid waters. However, the elf girls, in their lust-driven haste, were too eager to crank the water to its boiling point and begin chest compressions when he was already breathing. And so Peter only felt torturous pain.

Suddenly Peter’s jeans were yoinked right off his legs along with his boots, and he lay on the ground in naught but his boxer-briefs. A cry of excitement rose from the girls around him, as if they had discovered something amazing. He felt hands gripping his arms— and fingers in his hair— and hands caressing his chest— and then a spray of steamy water directly into his face. He shut his eyes and turned away and struggled to breathe as water poured into his ears and silenced the madness around him.

“Quick! Get his underwear!”

Instinctively Peter grabbed at his waistband and held onto it with all his might. Yes, they too were stretching like taffy off his body.

He opened his eyes and looked at the ravenous faces of blonde elven girls all around him, soaking wet in their hussar jackets, eyes aflame with a madness— aflame with passion! They shouted and rushed around the humid room, grabbing showerheads as if franticly extinguishing a fire. A deluge of boiling water smothered him! His skin turned red with the blistering heat!

“Peter!” An elf clutching the bottom of his underpants shouted. “This will be a lot easier if you just lay back!”

A million hands pinned him down! And the fondling! The squeezing! He drowned in an assault of showerheads and a storm of perverted gropes!

“Stop!” he shouted.

“Peter! You’re hypothermic! We need to raise your body temperature!”

“I can’t breathe!” he spat.

Before Peter could break free a blonde girl in a white labcoat sat down on his stomach, said “Open up!” and stuffed a candycane shaped thermometer in his mouth and clamped it shut. A red mercury stripe spiraled up the peppermint flavored device, accompanied by a slide whistle.

“Mmmmm,” she said. “You’re mildly hypothermic. Drink this tea. It will raise your core body temperature.”

She yanked the thermometer out from under his tongue and held a hot cup under his nose.

“Tea? Give him hot chocolate, for pity’s sake!” a girl shouted.

“That’s bad for your teeth!” she barked.

“Are you a doctor?” Peter coughed.

“Yes.” She smiled proudly.

“She’s lying! She’s just a dentist!”

“Dentists are doctors!” she shouted back.

The elven doctor or dentist grabbed his wrist and studied his finger tips, then clinicly squeezed each finger as if testing fruit for ripeness. She lightly pinched his ears and tapped on his nose.

“Does this hurt? Or this? Or this? Or this?”

“No.”

“Good. You don’t have frostbite.”

“Is he going to be okay, Yuna?”

The lab coat elf stood, looking flustered, and bowed before Santa Claus. She gave her diagnosis, explained the treatments, and Santa thanked and dismissed her.

The faucets squeaked off. The pandemonium of gushing water silenced. No longer blinded by showerhead attacks, Peter could now take in the dark and steamy bathhouse. He sat up and slicked back his dripping hair. Santa stood before him like a prison warden.

“Hello, Peter. Let’s try this again. I’m Santa. This is the North Pole. We need your help.”

“My help with what?”

“The Christmas Apocalypse is coming. A day of wrath, a day of mourning, Christmas trees and gingerbread houses in ashes burning. We have to stop it. But before we can do that, we have to solve the mystery of Christmas Eve.”

“Christmas Eve?”

Santa nodded.

“You mean December 24th?”

Santa’s eyes went wide. She glanced at the elves to her right. The bath filled with hushed whispers and confusion.

“You’re saying Christmas Eve is December 24th? It’s a date?”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “You didn’t know?”

The room erupted with the cheers of a hundred giddy elves hugging each other in celebration. “He’s solved the mystery!” “He did it!” Santa covered her mouth in astonishment. Champaign bottles popped and corks rocketed off the walls.

“Are you guys serious? You didn’t know what Christmas Eve was?”

“Peter,” Santa put her hand on his shoulder. “The fact that you do know proves that you are the one meant to help us.”

“But everyone knows what Christmas Eve is!”

“It was foretold long ago that one day a human would solve the mystery of Christmas Eve, and he would deliver us from the Christmas Apocalypse. It’s you, Peter. You’re that person.”

“Okay? And what exactly do you expect me to do?”

“You must stop a great evil. An immortal creature stronger and scarier than any living thing that walks on this Earth. If unmatched, it will destroy Christmas forever. We call it the Luminous One, but in your culture it’s called the Holy Spirit.”

“The Holy Spirit? You mean like the father, and the son, and the holy spirit? From Christianity?”

Every elf girl in the room slapped their hands against their ears and sang nonsense as if avoiding spoilers to their favorite tv drama: “La la la la la la la!” “I can’t hear you!”

Santa leaned in and whispered, “We don’t invoke the trinity here. It makes people nervous.”

“This doesn’t make any sense at all.” An elf girl interrupted Peter by tipping his cup up against his lips and making him drink. “Christmas is a Christian holiday. It’s a celebration of Jesus’ birthday. Why would the Holy Spirit want to destroy it?”

“A Christian holiday? Does any of this look Christian to you?” Santa gestured vaguely at everything around them. The snowfall from the open ceiling, the sparkling Christmas tree steaming in the center of the room, the innumerable elven girls all around them. The room shrunk, but it was not the architecture that was closing in around Peter, it was the girls themselves closing in.

“There are no pine trees in Bethlehem!” an elf shouted.

“No snow in Jerusalem!”

“No reindeer in the middle east!”

“Chestnuts are European!”

“Gingerbread is French!”

“Elven ancestry is Nordic!”

“Our architecture and clothes are European!”

“So if you’re not Christian… what are you?”

The girls looked about confusedly. “Pagan, right?”

“Aren’t Norse and Pagan the same thing?”

“No— they’re different.”

“Are you sure?”

The elves became lost in a babble of discussions over definitions and dogma. Aren’t all Norse pagan? But not all pagans are Nose. Technically their religion didn’t have a name, since it was the one true religion until the Romans invaded. Who were the Romans? The mohawk helmet guys, remember? Sort of— no, not really.

“We follow the laws of Odin here,” Santa said.

“Wait a second, Odin? Like Norse god Odin? And you’re all elves? Real elves? Pointy ears? Long life spans? Incredibly beautiful? And you’re Santa… And the Holy Spirit, the actual Christian God, He’s real too? Is there anything else I should know about? Do vampires exist? Is that something I should worry about? Do I need to carry garlic with me now?”

“Wow, you must have hit your head pretty hard in that fall,” Santa said.

“Everything I know is a lie,” Peter muttered to himself, astonished. “I’ve been living in a fantasy world all this time.”

“Come on, Peter. It’s time for dinner. And eat heartily, because tomorrow we begin your magic training.”

“Wait, magic is real too?!”