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

A gazillion years ago, ever since the first monkey-man picked up a heavy stick and used it to wack his monkey-man enemies in the face, humanity had an affinity for weapons. Even now in our modern age, the doughiest, most cowardly, overweight, suburb dwelling tween can pick up a wrapping paper tube and feel the blood of his samurai ancestors coursing through his veins. Not because of humanity’s natural desire for violence, but because only those who enjoy the terrible power of holding an assault rifle were deemed evolutionary fit enough to survive dinosaur attacks, Viking raids, and school shootings— anachronistically speaking, that is.

So Peter sat on the floor of his cozy Amish bedroom, his enormous nickle-plated rifle disassembled before him like a lethal contrabass flute, with a copy of Barrett M62s for Mouth Breathing Idiots open, and practiced assembling and disassembling it. Like a child piecing together a deadly Lego set, he grew accustomed to its fittings and designs, so that if it ever jammed mid penguin massacre he could fix it instead of fumbling dumbly while Yuzuka watched.. If he was going to use this thing to shoot the Holy Spirit, his life depended on this familiarity.

During this self-imposed exercise, a pair of elves burst through the frozen door, their eager eyes a little disappointed to find him fully clothed. With the giddiness of someone offering a truly adored gift, they dragged a grand chest of old clothes in behind them. The two elves smiled and bounced as Peter unfastened the patinaed latches. When opened the box gasped out an ancient odor of dust and antique leaves, followed by a small fluttering moth. Within were heaps of voluminous fabrics, knit and crochet, fluffy and silky. Fashion of a bygone era.

“We thought you might want a fresh change of clothes,” one of them said.

Peter lifted up a garment. It looked like a sweater his grandfather would have worn. Smelled like it too.

“Yeah, thanks.”

The two elves held out their arms as if expecting a hug, but turned their heads away and shut their eyes in embarrassment. Peter stepped in and hugged the first elf, and she let out a cry as if she were surprised that her plan had worked, and quickly squeezed his body between her arms. When Peter moved onto the next elf he felt her nose dig deep into his nape, and then he felt her wet lips kiss against his neck. The two elves than skipped out the door covering their blushing faces in her hands and laughing.

Peter returned to the chest of clothes, wondering if there was anything normal for him to wear. He felt a little gross wearing the same sweater and jeans since he arrived. He found a pair of long johns, off white in color, billowing in size, and returned it. Deeper into the chest he found a strange, hard disk, velvety to the touch. When he turned it over in his hand, it sprung open like an airbag into a top hat. Another useless article of clothing he wouldn’t be caught dead wearing. Not even with a tuxedo. The only thing he could possibly do with this was put it atop a snowman’s head.

So without much thought, and frankly tired of configuring the rile back together, Peter threw on his Santa cosplay jacket and snow boots, and went out to build a snowman. All around the workshop was flat arctic tundra, without a single landmark save for the icy mountains off in the distance. He imagined the elves going about their day and coming across his snowman mid-chore. It would be a pleasant surprise. They might wonder who had built him and when. So he spent an hour or so rolling a snowball across the ground until it was too big to roll any further. Then he strained his back, lifting a second, slightly less heavy snowball for the torso. Then he topped it with a head. Then he hit a snag. He really should have a carrot for a nose, and stones for the eyes and mouth, but he didn’t have any. In fact, there was nothing around him to use as a substitute but snow. He looked around in the dim glow of the workshop for anything, when he saw icicles hanging from the roof of the workshop. So he he stuffed that in for a nose and poked some holes with his thumb for eye sockets. Then he placed the top hat atop his snowy bald head.

A strange, oddly warm breeze caressed Peter’s face. A magical glissando of wind chimes haunted his ears. Was he hallucinating? His heart thumped irregularly, as if his inside and his outside were separate beings. The ground beneath him rumbled as if a crevasse were going to devour him. The snowman before him lurched, as it had a skeleton within it, and its face began to change. Its icicle nose shrank and its hollow eye sockets filled with life.

“Peter!”

Yuzuka came running out from behind the smokehouse, a flamethrower in her hands. She was a female Rambo, charging right for him, prepared to gun down all who stood in her way. Peter was about to call out to her when suddenly he was on his back— a blizzard swept up from nowhere and cocooned him and the snowman in its wintery winds. Trapped in the eye of a hurricane, within its eerie silence, he gawked up and above at clouds spiraling dangerously.

The snowman was gone. In its stead was a woman, her skin a scintillating white, and sparkling like a Mormon vampire. No longer the tubby, rotund stack of snowballs, she was now slender, limbed, and humanly proportioned. Her hair was a crystalline glacier blue, and despite all this beauty she held, Peter was terrified. This snow woman grinned a psychotic grin and impaled him upon her deranged gaze. Buck naked and on all fours like a cat she crept towards Peter when a burst of fire spewed through the storm of snow. Peter shut his eyes as he felt his tears instantly evaporate. The snow woman cried out and dove into the solid ground as if it were a pool of water.

The flames sucked back into Yuzuka’s flamethrower.

“Golly gee gosh gloriosky, Peter! You’ve doomed us all!”

“I was just making a goddamn snowman!” Peter said.

Yuzuka tossed him a blowtorch, an antique contraption that looked half brass coffeepot half gun. It was so strange and arcane she might as well have handed a candlestick phone to a zoomer. Clueless and confused, Peter started twisting random knobs to see if he could draw the flame out.

“That’s no snowman! That’s a Snow Witch! Do you have any idea how difficult those things are to kill? Where did you even find a magic top hat?”

“One of the elves gave it to me. I thought it was a regular top hat!”

“Can you seriously not tell the difference between an old silk hat and a magic one?”

“Apparently not! Fuck me, right?”

Yuzuka aimed the flamethrower out into the dark abyss of snow, she swept the nozzle left, then right, and saw nothing out there. The Snow Witch was gone. Out into the glittering darkness, her elven eyes searched for a pair of demonic frosty irises looking back at them, but there was nothing. She pulled the trigger and out poured screamed a laminal flow of yellow flames and light.

“We’re not safe outside,” Yuzuka said. “We have to go warn the others before she attacks.”

“Attacks? Why is she going to attack?”

“I don’t know, Peter. She’s made of snow. Why does snow do anything? It gives people frostbite, hypothermia, blindness. It buries people in avalanches and it kills. For no reason. That’s just what snow does. What accessories did you give her?”

“I don’t remember!”

Yuzuka retreated backwards to the workshop, still anticipating an ambush, while Peter shook and fidgeted with the antique blowtorch.

“Think, Peter! A Snow Witch’s accessories determine the scope of her powers. A carrot nose for motherhood and fertility. A scarf for hypnosis. Button eyes see into the future, coal eyes for x-ray vision. And so on.”

“I didn’t give her any accessories!”

“Good!”

“Just an icicle nose.”

“Peter! That’s death! You just made a vicious serial killer out of snow!”

“Oh lucky us!”

While trudging back to the safety of the workshop, Peter’s entire leg sank into the ground, down into a great emptiness below. When he tried to twist himself out, he felt icy fingers gripping at his calves. He looked up at Yuzuka confused, but only briefly. An explosion of snow flung him into the air like a ragdoll strapped to a rocket. A pillar of ice caught him far up above, and like a freight train, Peter was carried off and away into the furthest reaches of the North Pole. He screamed and heard Yuzuka roaring back, her flame thrower erupting like a volcano but growing dimmer and dimmer as he was whisked away.

Above him was the Snow Witch, beautiful and terrible as the night. She cradled him and cooed softly, her eyes a spiraling vortex of madness. Her fingers were not fingers, but long and spindly claws of ice, with a touch so cold it burned. Somehow between now and thirty seconds ago, she had clothed herself in an elegant icicle headdress— like an Eskimo war bonnet— and some strange lingerie gown— a fantasy princess out to hit the club.

“I found you.” She grinned yanderely.