#BadElf

11:44AM PST, Dec 12, 2009

[ed, #badelf “Bad Elf: A Dark Christmas Serial (Killer)” comes from the happy mind of Samuel Montgomery-Blinn @montsamu]

12:00PM PST, Dec 12, 2009

I tried to be a good elfâ€"really I didâ€"but everything turned out wrong. Sharp-edged toys. Jack-In-The-Box demons. That kind of thing.

9:00AM PST, Dec 13, 2009

Everything changed the year I canceled Christmas. It had started innocently enough, drugging and gagging a cute young elf or two.

10:00AM PST, Dec 13, 2009

The other elves tried to give me other jobs more suitable to my gifts. Like reindeer euthanasia technician and pest exterminator.

3:00PM PST, Dec 14, 2009

It ended in my banishment from the Workshop, a year without Christmas, & the explanation behind Rudolph’s untimely, gruesome death.

8:00AM PST, Dec 15, 2009

Ernst came looking for me, nosing around about the missing elves. I told him to “get packaged.” He came back with Santa in tow.

10:00AM PST, Dec 16, 2009

I narrowed my eyes at Santa. “You want me to tell Mrs. Claus about that Christmas in Bedford Falls? With Mrs. Robertson?”

10:30AM PST, Dec 16, 2009

I was as shocked as Santa when the jolly old elf clubbed me with a miniature Louisville Slugger. I woke to darkness and burlap.

11:00AM PST, Dec 17, 2009

“Let me out of here you gnomes! Or I swear to Claus I’ll carve you & eat your livers!” No response. Elves have no sense of humor.

10:00AM PST, Dec 18, 2009

I was being dragged across the snow. Through the burlap I could start to smell the familiar offal & manure of the reindeer butchery.

9:00PM PST, Dec 18, 2009

“That’s enough struggling.” Ernst said. He would have to die. Soon. My fingers closed around the scalpel I kept in my elfin boot.

9:00PM PST, Dec 19, 2009

As soon as I heard the iron bars lock shut, I cut through the burlap and burst onto the red-stained concrete. The other elf had a crowbar.

9:00PM PST, Dec 20, 2009

Ernst shouted for help, but in the Christmas rush, every elf was on the Lines. We circled, him sweating, my laughter echoing wildly.

5:00PM PST, Dec 21, 2009

I cackled & slashed out with my scalpel, snicking his jugular. Ernst was a fountain, stumbling backwards, hand clenched to his neck.

10:00AM PST, Dec 22, 2009

The dying elf collapsed onto a floor switch, opening a slaughterhouse cell. Rudolph, rabid as a werewolf, snorted into the open.

10:00AM PST, Dec 23, 2009

Grappling, tongue out to taste the madness in Rudolph’s breath, I stabbed him in the eye and hauled his carcass to the grinder.

10:00AM PST, Dec 24, 2009

The resulting encephalitis outbreak caused the worst stoppage in the Lines in 200 years. Dozens dead, Christmas was cancelled.

8:00AM PST, Dec 25, 2009

“I know we’ve all suffered a tragic loss.” I could hear Santa’s memoriam as I trudged away from the Pole. “But accidents do happen.”

4:00PM PST, Dec 26, 2009

I ruminated upon what I was giving up, leaving the Workshop, the only home I’d ever known—but the elves frowned on mass murder.

4:00PM PST, Dec 27, 2009

Oh, the memories! Elk tipping; that Christmas when one of my toys got past QA and little Timmy lost an eye; happy, happy times.

4:00PM PST, Dec 28, 2009

I’d miss the reindeer games, the narwhal riding, & the plentiful, innocent smiles. But the singing & Santa worship? Good riddance.

4:00PM PST, Dec 29, 2009

My path lit dimly red by the nose on Rudolph’s severed head, my mood lightened. Maybe New York would be my kind of town.

4:00PM PST, Dec 30, 2009

I traveled by iceberg, penguin flotilla, and finally hitchhiked across the border, passing for a poor, lost circus performer.

5:00PM PST, Dec 31, 2009

Amidst the bedlam of the ball drop in Times Square, I knew I had found my new home. Everyone here was just as demented as me.