Mayer Hawthorne & Santa Claus

I took a tiny vacation from this and went to LA to visit my cousin Sinbad and cousin-in-law TML. It was very refreshing and I had a wonderful time which was highlighted by a free concert by my music man of the past few months, Mayer Hawthorne at the Getty Center. What a talent! He wore chrome-colored kicks and sang beautifully! My friend Maria and I think his face is delicious. Check out his album Strange Arrangement. I recommend downloading/ listening to "Maybe So, Maybe No" and "Ain't Gonna Work Out".

Anywho, the story I posted below is my 4th for Parameters. Enjoy! Please comment!

Parameters
- Santa Claus
- hates his job
- xenophobic (has a fear of foreigners)
- ethnic elves

The Anti-Votary (written 11 May 10)

The snow pelted against the window as Nikolai started to feel faint. It was 358 ½ more days until he was back in that god-forsaken sleigh. It was a painful feeling, one that has given him many ulcers over the years, stomach and mouth. The New Year had started and he banished himself to his study. He sat at his solid oak desk with the piles of lists that have already accumulated over the past week. With his head in his hands, a migraine throbbed and grated at the back of his eyeballs.
“Jiminy Christmas…” he whispered to himself, “I’m going to kill myself.”
Astrid, his assistant sat on the leather couch against the wall to the left of him. She wore a white mohair turtleneck emphasizing her bountiful chest, and a pair of brown corduroy overalls. She was barefoot and her stubby legs, which fit nicely on the couch cushion, were crossed at the ankle. She ran her tiny hands over her frosty blond hair chignon and onto the digital notepad in her lap.
“Oh stop it, boss,” she said in her perky voice, “You say that every year.”
“Nope, I mean it Astrid. I mean it this time!” he said with a deep grunt as he pulled at his beard.
“Boss, you’ve been at this job for centuries and you’re good at it.”
“Good at it? GOOD AT IT?”
He groaned and hit his head on the desk repeatedly.
Astrid leapt off the couch, notepad under her arm and swiftly onto his desk. The lists did not even rustle. She stood arms akimbo in front of him. She pulled him by his thick head of pure white hair and into her ocean blue eyes.
“You’re having a break-down right now like always and we need you to be focused!”
Nikolai shut his eyes tightly then pushed her hands from his head. His migraine began to throb more intensely and he stood up with an uneasy wobble. Astrid sensed that he was having a dizzy spell and snapped her fingers. In a gingerbread-scented cloud, she produced a huge, warm cup of herbal tea and forced it into his hands.
“Drink,” she said.
He hesitantly put the cup to his lips and drank. Astrid readied her digital notepad and perked her pointed ears. He felt a fervent tingling in his temples. He was suddenly alert.
“Okay, tell the horde to begin on those lists after you organize them into the sectors and gender,” he said with wide eyes.
“Do you prefer a certain order, sir?” she replied quickly, clicking away at the notepad with her stylus.
“No” he said with a grimace, “The results of their labors both brand name and generic should be ready by mid-November for inspection in the Hot Chocolate Room on the long mint-marshmallow table.”
“Consider it done, boss.”
He walked over to the large window overlooking the workshop floor. An uncomfortable grumble floated in his stomach as he looked down at the brown, beige, yellow, and red-skinned imp-structured mass of people undulating with energy down below. He called them “the horde” and they were at his command, some of the time. Each of them brought via orphanages around the world that gathered gnome-like children for his exclusive collection. They were the outcasts of their prospective societies just for their outward appearances – fully formed mentally but different in proportion, all of them either came up to Nikolai’s hip or his upper thigh as adults. He rarely communicated with the horde. Communication between him and them falls on the delicate shoulders of Astrid.

*****
She has been in Nikolai’s service since the age of 5, when her grandmother became too ill to care for a child with “special needs” after the fire of 1887 destroyed most of her town of Lulea on Sweden’s northern coast. The child awoke to her grandmother sobbing loudly in her room and then a hand, non-calloused and smelling of sweet ginger cookies, went over her mouth. They were here to relieve the old woman of her burden. A blindfold was placed over the girl’s eyes then she was wrapped in a thick fur pelt and put into the rear seat of a one horse open-sleigh. She felt the wisps of the crisp wind and snow against her face. She did not cry. During her long journey east, she removed her blindfold. Her companions/ captors were a duo of a young man and woman, both Nordic in complexion and height, dressed warmly in ermine capes and snow leopard pelts. They spoke in hushed tones and never looked over to check on her. The girl found that strange but maybe they knew she was not going to escape.
When they arrived at Nikolai’s large compound in, what she found out later were the Finnish mountains of Lapland, they had to enter through a towering wall of ice and snow. Her companions waved their hands and a gap opened in the wall as if they cut through it with an invisible saw. The grounds, which consisted of a palatial main house – known as The Workshop – surrounded by hundreds of tinier bungalows on each side of it. She was in awe. Once in the Workshop, and out of the hands of her captors, she was examined for any medical defects by an apple-cheeked elderly woman known as The Missus who wore a long, puffy green dress and white pinafore. The woman gave the little girl several doses of what was called “The Syrup Combination”, spoonfuls upon spoonfuls of liquids that caused her tiny stomach to tingle and tumble.
“Oh, don’t be afraid of the medicine, dear. It’s good for your survival,” the woman said in Swedish with a lilt in her voice, “Kristoff and Lumi should have prepared you.”
“I guess,” the child said softly, “I feel funny and a bit nervous.”
“That will go away soon after initial voiding,” the woman assured her, putting a weathered hand onto the girl’s abdomen, “It might be uncomfortable but it will be magical”
The girl was given the assigned name of “Sjuttiova”, the number 72 in Swedish as was customary for the newest arrivals for the horde. This name was sewn into her clothes and the lacy bonnet she needed to wear at all times. Sjuttiova was a hard worker who never shied away from the most menial tasks. She aged slowly like the rest of her kind, owing to her annual dosage of syrups, and found out that this also enhanced her walking speed, strength and stamina. She had a confidence unlike other young children her age and the jolly, rotund man with the cotton-ball beard did not seem to be as repelled by her as with some of her colleagues, especially those who were darker in features and spoke in languages unknown to him. He seemed most comfortable around those who possessed facial features like him: long head, light skin and hair, and light-colored eyes.
The confident, wily girl gradually grew into a headstrong young woman with elegant pointy ears, a syrup side effect, whose self-reliance and affability earned her the respect of the horde. When she turned a youthful 150 years-old, he personally chose her to be his personal assistant. A position vacated, when his former helper, a 500 year-old Norwegian of Viking blood decided to run away. For her new assignment, she needed to endure a yearlong preparation program. Her childhood captors, Kristoff and Lumi were to be assisting her in this task. The young lady had not seen them since they took her. They had not aged since then and still spoke in hushed tones as she arrived for her first day of assistant training.
“Well, well. You have grown up, the one they call Sjuttova,” Lumi said as she folded her slender arms onto her chest.
”That’s great to know,” she sarcastically replied, “I can only grow up.”
“Within your hereditary limits and your yearly Syrup Combination,” Kristoff quipped, looking down at her.
The young woman stared up at him with her faint cerulean eyes and chuckled.
“Sí, dentro de mis límites,” she repeated in a tongue foreign to them.

For a long and excruciating year, they revealed to her many secrets of The Workshop: hidden passageways; maintenance guidelines; reindeer control; ancient procedures and protocol. She quickly adjusted to her new role with the speed of a sponge to water but most importantly, Kristoff and Lumi trained her to emphasize the importance of, what was informally known as “the hierarchy of the horde” of which she was at the zenith of.
The horde was divided into five sectors. Four of them according to directions: North, South, East, West, with the fifth being known as “Sektè Nan Senk”. Due to Nikolai’s fanatic and infinite xenophobic tendencies, each sector had a leader chosen solely by the Missus. The directional sectors were led by four ragtag but trustworthy members of the horde while “Sektè Nan Senk” was led by the mysterious entity, Zwarte Pete.
“If there is one piece of advice that should remain constant, little one,” Kristoff said, “is that you should mind Zwarte Pete, always.”
The young woman had never met this individual for the entire time she had been in Nikolai’s service but the name sounded familiar for it was only spoken of during times of slumber and silence. She shrugged it off and took it as Kristoff trying to frighten her. She soon found out the hard way in the upcoming years that name was not to be taken lightly and needed to be minded, always. She absorbed all of this inside knowledge and adjusted to her new role quickly.
For her first yuletide initiation, the novice assistant was returned her original first name: Astrid and a new wardrobe with her name hand-stitched into each article. It was an elaborate initiation with the same fanfare as the crowning of a queen. The majority of the horde gathered in the courtyard of the Workshop in their best tunics and tights. Astrid survived her preparation and took her place, large notepad in hand, as the right hand elf of Nikolai, a.k.a. Sinterklaas a.k.a. Santa Claus a.k.a. Father Christmas.

*****

Nikolai leaned his head against the large window and rolled his forehead side to side. His mind was brewing with anxiety. Astrid, mind focused, tapped away at her digital notepad and leaned the entire side of her body against his tree-trunk of a leg. Her head rested on the thick of his hip.
“Okay, boss. Your request has been sent to all of the sectors except for ‘Senk’ obviously. The foremen will be coming up here within ten minutes to collect the lists,” Astrid said as she tapped the “send” button on her screen.
Being a lover of languages, she was able to converse in both speech and composition using the Romance and Germanic languages. She knew each one with precise fluency and found them very necessary when communicating Nikolai’s assignments especially when the foremen or leaders of the sectors spoke differently from one another. She pushed herself off of the jolly one’s leg and made her way to the lists on his desk. She once again leapt then landed on the tabletop and waved her hand over the paper towers. They flew into the air in a gust of cinnamon scented mist and magically separated themselves into four different piles on the corners of his desk. Astrid adjusted a stray hair that fell onto her forehead and said, “Here they come.”
The sound of footsteps filled Nikolai’s ears coupled with the low murmur of clicking, chattering tongues drew closer to him in his mind. His palms began to sweat and his eyes shut tightly. As he dug his left fists into his hip and pulled at his beard, he slowly made his way to the adjacent restroom and shut the door. The anxiety was upon him. Sweat, forming on his forehead, dripped down into his eyes and blinded him. Astrid was accustomed to this and shrugged it off as she always did. She heard his sobs echoing through the walls and sighed. At that precise moment, two heavy-set, swarthy-skinned males and two lean, Asiatic females arrived, each holding a large wicker basket. They lined up in front of her and held the baskets close to their chests. She waved her hands in the air in a curlicue motion toward the lists. The heaps of paper flew in unison into their assigned baskets. They condensed tightly into the baskets in a cloudy tornado of peppermint powder. Astrid thanked each of them in their respective languages. They smiled back at her and bowed their heads. One by one, they turned on their heels and strode out of the study, the door swiftly closing behind them. The horde had their assignments. Astrid clicked away at her notepad and made a few electronic memos. A dark form with a bulky head of steel wool textured hair loomed above her and she could see its reflection on her screen.
“Alo, ti fi Astrid,”
The greeting was delivered in a raspy voice in a thick Creole accent from above her. Astrid stiffened but she was not startled. She looked up and grinned.
“Alo, gwo nonm Pete,” she replied.
His skin was the color of raging smoke and his teeth were the color of the purest pearls so when he smiled his mouth would contrast with the rest of his face. He sat upside-down with his thick posterior on the ceiling.
“I have come to collect my list,” he said, “I need time to check it twice.”
Astrid snapped her wrists and two parchment scrolls appeared in each hand. She threw them at him and he caught them with vigor. He opened the scrolls and clicked his tongue against his porcelain-hued teeth.
“So many bad ones!” he croaked, “Mèsi, I will fire up the coal starting tonight. It will be a beautiful sight.”
“You’re welcome, Zwarte Pete,” she said.
Then with a snap of his fingers, he disappeared in a puff of licorice All-Sorts.

After a few moments, Astrid opened the bathroom door to find Nikolai on the floor in a supine position, belly up. His red overcoat lay beside him along with his broad, black belt and shiny boots. His undershirt was soaked with his sweat and his suspenders undone. A puddle of perspiration formed around his head and he was heaving with all his might. She knelt down next to him and sat him up.
“You’re in the clear, boss,” she said reassuringly.
He put his hand on the top of her head and showed her a tired smile.
“You’re my lantern of hope,” he said with a twinkle in his eyes, “Ho, ho, ho.”