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

It was immediately clear to Peter that this monarchy operated not by royal blood or divine right but conventional standards of beauty. If the mouse girls were cupcakes— sweet and petite— the queen was an opulent wedding cake— something to be carefully carried into the room while an awestruck audience took photos. She was the tallest, the most ample, not as rail thin, and instead of the child-like eyes and button noses of the mice girls, she had a stern malevolent glare.

Her royal gown was asymmetrical, leggy, and stitched from bits of scarves, bits of burlap, bits of sweater, thrifted together and dyed an ashen gray. Her hair was black like the others, but instead of a simple and straight hime cut or bob cut, it was voluminous and gravity-defying. On her head she wore a crown of bent and twisted golden safety pins and sewing needles. Although immaculately beautiful, Peter wasn’t into older women, and preferred the skinny mouse girl who he first spoke with, and even the one legged girl, over the mouse matriarch.

They were surrounded by hundreds of mouse girls, peering down from the rafters, standing at the entrance to every portal. Their voices lifted in one as they shouted, “Hail to thee, Dommy Mommy Mouse Queen! Hail to thee, Dommy Mommy Mouse Queen! Hail to thee, Dommy Mommy Mouse Queen!”

And then there was silence. The mouse girls pushed Peter down onto his knees.

“You know there are none who have seen the dominion of the mice and lived to tell the tale.” The Mouse Queen crossed her stockinged legs.

“Except for the mice, I presume,” Peter said.

“You will speak when spoken to!” the Queen roared. “If you want to get out of here alive you must swear allegiance to me, your one and only Queen!”

“Do I have to?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, fine.”

The Queen jumped down from her rickety throne and strutted towards Peters, sashaying the long slit in her skirt to show off her thigh. She struck a pose and pointed one leg out towards Peter.

“You will kiss my foot, and be enthusiastic about it, servant!”

Peter looked down at her foot. What a missed opportunity it was that he did not find feet attractive. He looked back at the mouse girl who kidnapped him and she nodded as if to tell him ‘just do it.’ Peter got down on his hands and hovered his face over her human like toes. They appeared to be clean and well kept. But then he stopped himself and looked up.

“Does it really have to be your foot?”

“Yes!”

The Queen kicked Peter in the chest and sent him reeling onto his back. She then stepped on his face, toes digging into his cheek and pulling his eyelids open.

“Submit to me, your Mouse Queen, and kiss the royal footsie!”

“If you’re going to shove a body part in my face could you please use literally anything else other than your foot?”

This was not sexy, and also not very comfortable, but Peter puckered his lips and give an audible smooch to the underside of her foot. The Mouse Queen immediately leapt off of Peter, grabbed her foot and giggled like a little girl from the ticklish sensation. Then she recomposed herself and returned to her dark mistress persona.

“Good boy. My spies have told me that you went through the entire workshop and burned all the mouse traps, leaving the kitchen defenseless to our nightly raids. You’ve also been hand delivering clean, uneaten food to us. I want you to know…” The Queen clutched onto Peter’s shirt and pulled him close, so they were face to face. “We will not fall for your wretched trickery!”

“What?”

“For centuries the glorious mouse kingdom has been at war with the Christmas elves! They have trapped us, poisoned us, starved us, drowned us— one time they even built a tiny mouse-sized roller coaster that dumped us into fiery ovens!”

“No!”

“We know that you are plotting against us! Trying to get us to lower our guard so we are vulnerable to another attack! We won’t fall for it!”

The mice erupted into angry cheers.

“I’m not plotting against you,” Peter said.

“Then why did you destroy all the mouse traps? Why deliver food to us?”

“I didn’t give the food to you. I gave it to her.” He gestured to the mouse girl beside them.

“Why?! I demand you tell me!”

“Because she’s cute.”

All eyes fell upon the mouse girl. A thousand stares looked her up and down like a puzzle to be solved.

“Her? What’s cute about her?”

“She’s skinny, she has long black hair, and she has nice legs…” As Peter spoke the mouse girl’s face flushed redder and redder until her pale complexion was glowing. “I like her ears and her tail…”

“Oh, so you’re a tail guy.”

The mouse girl kicked him hard in the knee and shouted, “Okay! We get it!”

“So you’re in love with her?” the Mouse Queen asked.

“Love?” The thought had not crossed his mind. He had thought of her more as a wild animal, or a pet, more than anything else. “I don’t know anything about her. I don’t even know her name. But I do want to protect her. I guess I’d like to protect all of you. That’s why I removed the traps.”

The Mouse Queen released Peter and ascended her throne— which was not easy. In the graceless climb she slipped and banged her knee, cursed to herself, and then plopped down on her royal mousy buttocks.

“I will make a deal with you, Peter of the Christmas elves. You are to return to Santa’s workshop and you will continue to bring us untainted food, every day. Enough to feed the entire mouse kingdom. If you do this, I will grant you one wish.”

“Like immortality?”

“Yeah, sure, whatever.”

“You can seriously do that?”

“I said I could, didn’t I?”

“Holy shit, yeah. You’ve got a deal.”

“Good.” The Mouse Queen reached deep between her perfectly spherical breasts and from the magic pocket that was her cleavage took out a notepad. She licked a finger and flipped through the pages. “Tomorrow you will bring us a loaf of sour dough bread and a loaf of pumpernickel along with a stick of butter and some preserves. Azimuthberry?” She turned to her servant to confirm. “Who wants azimuthberry preserves? Raise your hands! One, two, three… okay, yes, azimuthberry preserves. We also want a rack of lamb, some gruyère cheese, and for dessert we want citrus fruit. Tangerines would be preferable. My mouse subjects need the vitamin C to prevent scurvy. And bring us a bottle of red wine!”

“Do you want fries with that?” Peter asked.

“Perhaps another day.” The culture of ordering take out and Peter’s joke was lost on the royal mouse. “Bring enough to make three meals for every mouse tomorrow. We will provide you with a list each day. Fulfill them, and you will get your wish. But be forewarned! Should you betray us, we will shrink you down again, and your body will be lost within these walls forever. Now be gone!”

The blushing mouse girl escorted Peter back through the dark and unpainted halls of the mouse kingdom. He wondered if their daily food demands would put a strain on Yuika’s pantry, or if it was truly as endless as it appeared to be. He also wondered if the Mouse Queen could actually make him immortal. If she could, he would have nothing to fear when the apocalypse came. But could she really? Were the arts of mouse magic limited only to shrinking and growing things?

They passed by a mouse hole, and Peter looked out into the workshop and saw a long empty corridor. No light was offered from the extinguished sconces. The doors were shut. A clock tolled the advent of true darkness. Sleep enshrouded all the elves upon this hour. But then a door unlatched, and with great caution it creaked open. A shadowy face peered out to make sure the coast was clear, and then out stepped a slender girl. She held no candles nor lantern, and crept out from the room, easing each step onto the ground to ensure not a sound nor squeak emerged from the floor. She seemed to move in slow motion, as if the night air were thick and she swam through it like a dream. Peter thought this person, whoever she was, looked awfully suspicious. He stopped the mouse girl and together they watched the mysterious figure.

“Let’s see what she’s up to,” he said.

Before the mouse girl could grab him Peter stepped out into the workshop. From the perspective of a rodent, the Victorian architecture now took on an otherworldly character. It was more like an ancient wooden cathedral, or the hall of a mountain king. Peter and the mouse girl scurried along the walls, their tiny footsteps completely silent in the night. He followed the giant into the adjacent room. There she knelt before a fireplace, wrapped up in the heat and orange light of the fire. She whispered to herself, and her voice was strange. To Peter’s tiny ears, her voice was abnormally baritone, and not feminine at all. He tiptoed from the door to the foot of an armchair and hid in the shadows to get a closer look. The mouse girl followed after him.