Chapter 43 — Concerning the Many Red Flags of the Snow Witch & Peter’s Secret Rendezvous with Her
At breakfast, while Peter picked away at his plate of pastries, preserves, and pain perdu, his phone exploded with a slew of selfies from the Snow Witch. Her snowy skin glittered in each glamorous photo. Pouty lips, cute winks, tosseled hair, dynamic angles, various states of undress—she really hit all the hallmarks of risque self-portraiture. He glanced over to Santa’s seat, which was unoccupied, then over his shoulder, to ensure no one silently stood behind him.
— Good morning! ( ˘ ³˘)
Peter quickly tika-tappaed back a good morning, hit send, and resumed stuffing his face hole with his diabetes inducing breakfast. Mid-chew his phone chirped out a newly received message.
— Why do you never say good morning first? T_____T
Peter scrolled up through the days and read the times the messages were sent.
— You always text me at 6 am. I’m sleeping. :P
— Don’t you care about me? (ಥ﹏ಥ)
Peter kneaded his head in frustration.
— Don’t text me at 6 tomorrow. I’ll say good morning first.
Ellipses…
— Wai! ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶
Peter put his phone upside down on the table and whispered, “Oh my fucking god…”
That afternoon Peter and Yukina were busy hitching a pair of reindeer to a sledge for their daily riding lesson. Yukina hugged and pat one of the bullies telling her that they were going to go out for a happy little run, while Peter adjusted the snaffle bit. His phone chirped. With winter gloves between his teeth, he pulled out his phone and read another message from the Snow Witch.
— Can you come to my evil ice palace today? °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖°
— Sorry, I can’t. I have apocalypse stuff to take care of. :^(
— It’s been forever since you last visited! I’m dying of loneliness! Dyyyying! T______T
— I was there last week!
— No! That was 8 days ago! More than a week! (╬≖_≖)
— I’ve got important stuff to take care of. I’ll visit you when I’ve got free time.
— More important than me? (￣ε￣＠)
— The apocalypse. It’s important. :P
— What are you doing right now? (￢з￢)
Peter looked over to Yukina. She was cooing, “Who’s a good reindeer? Who’s a good reindeer? You are! Yes, you are! Do you want some chin scratchies?”
— Reindeer riding lessons.
— You can come tonight after work, can’t you? ɿ(｡･ɜ･)ɾ
— I don’t know. You live so far away.
— I can come to you!
The thought of his long distance relationship with his least favorite girlfriend intermixing with the girls at the workshop shifted gears in his heart and stomped on he accelerator, then switched on a JATO rocket of fear.
— No! Don’t! Remember, the elves want to kill you.
“Who’s that you’re texting?” Yukina asked.
Peter juggled the phone back into his pocket and zipped it shut.
“Santa.”
“She texts you a lot.”
“Yeah.” There was annoyance in Peter’s voice.
“That means she must care about you a lot.”
Or she’s bipolar, Peter thought.
At night, a zombified husk of whatever remained of Peter shuffled into the bedroom. Yumeka placed the candelabra down on a table and knelt down in front of the fireplace to breathe some warmth back into the room. Peter face-planted onto the bed. With a fire roaring, the maid elf went around the room, pouring a pitcher of scalding water into his wash basin and closing the curtains.
“Would you like anything else?” she asked.
Peter just groaned.
There were no footsteps indicating Yumeka had left. Peter wondered what she was doing, when suddenly a whisper intimately breathed into his ear, “Goodnight.” Then he heard the door shut and her departure. The background of silence gradually deepened. Peter thought that maybe he would just go to sleep in his boots, half hanging off the bed like this, rather than spend what little energy he had left to change and get under the covers. Then his phone came to life with sounds and lights. He answered it.
Before he could even say hello he was greeted with anguished sobs, the Snow Witch struggling to inhale the tears were so great. Peter snapped to attention and sat up. An avalanche of sorrow poured out of the phone and buried him under twelve feet of feminine dread.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Y-you d-d-d-didn’t text muh-muh-muh-me like you said— you said— you said you would!”
“I just got back to my—”
“I waited! I waited and I waited and I waited! For hours! Bu-but you never texted! But you promised!”
His posture melted as the Snow Witch continued crying bitch-tears into the phone. Maybe he could have sent her a courtesy text after dinner, or at the very least a flirty emoji after dessert.
“You know, when you’re sad it makes me sad.”
Could the Snow Witch even hear what he said? Inconsolable blubbering drowned out any words of comfort he tried to cram in, and the entire night decrescendoed into misery. But rising from the abyss of sadness came his moment to be the ultimate boyfriend. His first boyfriend test, if you will, to quell the Snow Witch’s molten hot sorrow. It was the asshole boyfriends, the ones who wear wife-beaters and man-spread on the sofa, who would listen to this call for about five seconds and then hang up. Peter was not one of those. He had waited his whole life to prove it.
But it’s easy to imagine oneself as the perfect boyfriend, especially when you project your devotion to a perfect girlfriend— a girlfriend with supermodel hair, sixpack abs, and farts that smell like Cinnabon. It’s another thing entirely to be the perfect boyfriend to a less-than-perfect girl— especially when she is a demonic, bi-polar, Snow Witch with an insatiable appetite for affection.
“I wish I was there with you now,” Peter said. “If I was I could hug you.”
“Really?” The Snow Witch’s words came out like hiccups. “So – then – you’ll – come – visit – me – to – night?”
“Oh fuck,” Peter whispered to himself.
So Peter doused the fire and climbed out the window onto the slippery rooftop of Santa’s workshop. Inside the stables he found the sexy reindeer bullies wrapped in blankets and sleeping in heavenly peace, all cozy and protected from the howling wind outside. He pulled a sledge off the wall, lit a seal oil lantern, and said, “You and you, we’re going to the Snow Witch’s ice palace.”
“Tomorrow?”
“No. Tonight.”
“No,” said a reindeer girl with a green beauty mask laid over her face. “I don’t do overtime.”
“You don’t do anytime,” Peter said. “All you do is sleep and eat all day.”
“I’m not going.”
“Yes, you are.”
“You can’t make me.”
“Oh yeah?”
The stable doors burst open. Out pranced two reindeer girls screaming and shouting “Ow, ow, ow!” and “Stop it! I’m going!” as Peter whipped them across the shoulders and the butt with the tine. They fell forward and magicked themselves from half girls into the furry quadrupeds necessary for the trip. Strapped into the sledge and ready to go, Peter jumped onto the runners. With a flick of the wrist, the tine whispered through the air, and Peter said, “Hak hak! Koos koos koos!”
A somber light diffused through the clouds, and the snow fell in great big flakes, like lumps of weightless cotton. The sledge aimed off into the night, towards some towering glaciers, which was the vaguest direction of the ice palace. Once at a good speed Peter jumped into the cargo bed and bundled himself up in a blanket.
“Wake me up in an hour!” he shouted over the wind.
“You’re sleeping?” the incredulous reindeer shouted.
“Yeah!”
“You woke us up! You have to stay up too!”
“Fucking make me, motherfucker.”
Peter yawned and folded his arms. As he lowered his head he saw the two reindeer whispering to each other. His eyes were closed. Hoofs drummed in the dark, and then the clear, calm mirror of his soul was shattered as the two reindeer sang the most annoying Christmas song ever recorded. A nightmare melody of holiday cheer sure to permanently burn itself into his mind. More childish than Frosty the Snowman, more annoying than All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth, sung with an enthusiasm even more ghoulish than Barbra Streisand’s rendition of Jingle Bells. Seriously, have you heard Streisand’s version of Jingle Bells before? When you hear that big jazz band starting up, you’ve got about five seconds to throw your stereo system out the window before her voice shreds through your brain.
“Hey! Chingedy-ching!Dominick the Italian Christmas Donkey? Is this a real song or is the author spewing more idiotic bullshit? Oh it’s real. Very real. Look it up on Youtube yourself and despair at the bottom of the Christmas song barrel. Peter looked up and saw the two reindeer skipping along to the melody. Their tails sashayed mockingly in his face as they belted out this long forgotten flop of a Christmas jingle. Peter whisked the tine through the air and the reindeer jumped.Hee-haw! Hee-haw!
It’s Dominick the donkey!
Chingedy-ching!
Hee-haw! Hee-haw!
The Italian Christmas donkey!
La la la! La-la la la-la la la!
La la la! La-la la la-ee oh da!”
“We’re just going to sing louder!”
The two reindeer had bested him, and they rode in misery together late into the night. Peter remained awake, fuming with indignation, pulling his furry ushanka down over his ears, all throughout the expedition.