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

Celebrations upon endless celebrations! Life exploded into the very air of the bathhouse with a whirlwind of a juh-billion confetti butterflies! Not a single pocket of breathing space evaded the flittering origami storm! Accordions squeezed out polkas, trumpets blazed in fanfare, flutes and piccolos fluttered triumphantly! Ejaculations of laughter rang like bells from elvish lips as they skipped and twirled toward the exit in a grand parade, gaily flinging poinsettia petals in the air.

Throw your cap into the air and shout “huzzah!” dear reader! All but Peter followed that stoic, ponytailed Santa out of the room— the only girl among the revelers who would not prance or cheer.Like a Napoleon in red she marched off. Peter remained behind, a confused observer, white confetti collecting on his head and shoulders. When the doors clasped shut, the room died. He was alone. All was still. The floor littered with the remnants of their jubilee.

“Okay then…” His voice echoed in the emptiness.

An elf in a frilly French maid outfit dried Peter off in a changing room. As she stood on her tippy toes and massaged the towel against his hair, he admired her black and white skirt, the intricate lace, and then her slender legs and arms.

He studied her adorable face, with her button nose, and saw from her darting, doll-like eyes and pursed lips that she wanted to say something but couldn’t, and that she wanted to look at him but she was too timid, and this cute girl in a cute uniform cutely unable to look him in the eye was all an overload of cuteness for Peter, and it pierced his heart and made him want to shout out how adorable she was, but teenage boys must walk the line between romance and accusations of sexual harassment, and so instead of giving her a justly earned compliment, he instead said, “W...what’s your name?”

“Yumeka.”

“That’s a c…” He cleared his throat. “That’s a… cute name.”

Yumeka’s eyes flashed with surprise, and then she fought to stop a smile from pulling at her lips, but when she failed at that, she pulled the towel down over Peter’s eyes and turned away. Before he could say another word, she thrust a pile of folded clothes into his hands, and as Peter took them her fingers brushed intentionally over his flesh, as if she wanted to touch his hand.

“Please change into these.” And she walked out, her frilly skirt swish-swishing with each turn and step.

Peter unfurled the garments to figure out just what he was given. Yumeka had handed him an outfit from a queer and forgotten time period, one before the invention of zippers and belt loops. He looked confusedly at silk hose, a black doublet, breeches, a short cape, wooden shoes with a heel that looked oddly feminine.

“Are these pantaloons?”

Peter stepped out into the corridor wondering why Yumeka had given him clothes belonging to a musketeer, and thinking maybe it would be better to just wear his frost covered blue jeans. When Yumeka saw him she began the task of adjusting, tying, and buttoning everything that Peter had failed at.

She frilled out the vertical slashes in his sleeve so it ballooned like a fabric pumpkin, tied his cape around him and skewed it over his shoulders so it was just asymmetrical, and then when he was least prepared for it, she topped his head with the most enormous pirate hat he had ever seen, with a feather that cut across the entire width of the corridor when he turned his head.

“Why am I dressed like a pirate?”

Yumeka’s laugh was like a bell. “Because you’re a cavalier, silly.”

Peter repeated what she had said in his head a few times.

“What the fudge is a cavalier?”

A choir of angelic voices erupted, accompanied by a thunder of horns and drums. Peter stopped at the entrance in awe. Before him stretched the dining hall, a cathedral of candlelit tables and benches, packed with elves singing triumphantly in fortissitissimo. Yumeka guided him through the room as the elves took out antique twin-lens reflex cameras and snapped photos of him mid-song.

The girls waved to get his attention and tempted him to do strange and embarrassing poses, the meaning of which was lost on him. What an overwhelming senstation it is to be the guest of honor in a new world, dressed in strange and foreign clothes, and to have all eyes on him. It was simultaneously frightening, exciting, and embarrassing.

Steady your appetite, dear reader, for the amount of food porn we are about encounter is one that would make even the most extra extra extra anorexic individuals salivate with greed. For you see, at the North Pole the innumerable elves must be fed thrice daily, and what are these selfless tinkerers of trinkets given but the very finest cuisine in the entire world— North Polian cuisine. Colloquially known as füd, these dishes cannot be found at even the grandest Parisian restaurants such as Tour d’Argent, nor can they be enjoyed on any continent inhabited by men. There was whole roast penguin, deplumed and charred black, glazed with hoarberry, and you truly haven’t lived until you’ve bitten into a freshly cooked, juicy penguin leg, famished reader.

There were plates of polar bear paws, baskets of sugarplum bread, barbequed arctic eel in a reduction sauce with sweet aurora wine, steamy soups of fermented puffin liver, savory tarts filled with beluga bacon and reindeer-milk cheese, reindeer stewed in sorghum syrup with smoked snow pumpkin, even an aged woolly giraffe leg— and the pies, oh sweet Christmas, the pies! A cornucopia of pies of every berry and fruit to be found growing within the arctic circle perfumed the air: hoarberry, azimuthberry, snowberry, pomme de boreal, rime fruit, and hyemal fruit, open faced, lattice crusted, double crusted, crimped, fluted, and perfectly browned.

At the pinnacle of the room stretched a grandiose table where Santa sat along with several other distinguished elves. Yumeka guided Peter to a chair beside Santa, pulled it out for him, and when he was seated she lay a napkin over his lap. Then when Peter saw everyone else was still standing and watching him he jumped up to match their etiquette. Yumeka poured a glass of wine and handed it to Peter, and it looked oddly purple. With the singing done, Santa raised a glass, to which the thousands of elves in the room mimicked, as did Peter, and she said, “To Peter! Who will free us from the bonds of the Christmas Apocalypse!”

“Sláinte!” The elven voices thundered.

Everyone drank, and when finished released a simultaneous “Paaaw!” Peter sat down alongside Santa and flattened his puffy sleeves and removed his gargantuan pirate hat, and thought about putting it on the table, but there was no room amid the dishes and flutes and gravy bowls, and so he thought of putting it down on the ground but didn’t want to sully the velvet material, and so he had no place at all to put it, until Yumeka took his hat from him and crowned it atop his throne’s backrest.

“You look very nice.” Santa, fork and knife in hand, operated delicately on the cuisine before her and took a tiny precise bite.

“I feel like a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Peter said.

“What do you mean?” She did not turn to look at Peter as she spoke.

“I’ve never worn anything like this before.”

“There’s a lot you haven’t done. Our way of life may seem strange to you, but you will adopt to it.”

Peter didn’t know what else to say, so he just said, “Thank you.” Santa handed him a basket of bread, and he added, “And I’m sorry I shouted at you. I kind of have a short temper.”

“I know. You’ve been on the naughty list since your first Christmas.”

Maybe it was the matter-of-factness in Santa’s voice, or because she was being so kind now— much more kind than he deserved— but her words caught him off guard. He pondered them silently for a few minutes.

“Yeah, I definitely earned it this year.”

Peter ate the mystery courses as they were handed to him. He could safely assess that meat was meat and vegetables were vegetables, although their exact identity eluded him. Was this a piece of penguin or a hunk of polar bear? But then there were other things that he couldn’t even distinguish as meat or vegetable. Strange jellied things, stringy bits of sinew like crab tendons, deep fried enigmas, milky formless things. Sometimes Santa could tell Peter was puzzled and would answer without him asking, “That’s gluttonspak.” And when Peter would ask her what gluttonspak wasshe would look off into the air and try to think of the ingredients and how it was prepared, but come up emptyhanded and say, “Try it. It’s good.”

Now and again Peter would glance at Santa, overwhelmed by her beauty. Her eyebrows were like two black marker streaks— thick. They emphasized every expression no matter how small— but mostly they were at rest, emphasizing a stoic and perpetual boredom.

But enough about her! There were other girls at their table as well— elven girls! Santa’s right hand elves, to be exact. Cultural ambassadors of Christmas, they were. Each one more amazing than the last in their yuletide knowledge. But alas this chapter is far too long already, and so their introduction must wait— wait until the story can begin again!