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"Is that how you want to play it then..." Santa's eyes were bulging now. Pheobe's shoulders raised instinctively.
"FINE!" He shouted, throwing his enormous sack onto the floor. The sack hit the bedstand, spewing toys of many colors all over the floor.
"FINE" he screamed again, more shrilly now, and tore his hat off his head.
Pheobe was visibly shaking now, fully realizing that she had enraged not only an adult, but an archetype.
Santa was stomping back and forth across the floor, and tearing his gloves off with such fire that it seemed as if the room would shatter with each exertion. His face was bright red. The whole face, not just the rosy cheeks and nose. Pheobe experienced a sensation she would not experience again for another eighteen years, during a near fatal car accident. Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and Pheobe began to see the giant red man with a scrutiny generally reserved for those at an objective distance. She began to notice the unkempt hair in his beard, tangled with bits of food. The veins in his forehead. She felt detached, as if watching the spectacle on television. She became entranced in the curiously poor stitching of his trousers, and the bad patch job done on the elbow of his coat. This was a creature that had not been tended to in some time.
"BE A BABY THEN! SEE IF I CARE!"
His words shook her back into pace. He was standing in front of her, wearing a bringt red union suit. It was filthy, and there was a sour smell of wet leather. His face was sweating and his hair, still wet with snow dripped small greyish drops down his forehead.
"I'M DONE. YOU CAN HAVE ALL THE TOYS FOR YOURSELF, YOU BIG BABY!" He almost squealed these words. Santa turned and stormed out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Hearing him stomp away from her room, Pheobe regained her voice.
"No...wait...no Santa, wait!" She cried and opened the door, but he was gone. There was a wisp of smoke and a smell, not unlike matches.
Pheobe turned, and looked at her room. There was his clothes, soaking wet and smeared with soot. There were the toys scattered across the floor. They were odd, crude things made of paper mache, and pieces of driftwood. The magic seemed to have left them, and the garish appliques looked as if they had been painted on minutes before.
Pheobe had ruined Christmas again.
Date Written: March 27, 2004
Author: Ferucio P. Chhretan
Average Vote: 3