“Are you nuts!? You knew you weren't hauling fatass around today! Look at me! I'm 9®@ pounds soaking wet! You almost flung me out nine times! I almost wound up Landing in a sheep farm outside Inverness! Argh! Do you even know what they do to sheep up there? All alone on those fields with no one else around. There's a reason those guys wind up on the naughty list. Imagine what they might have done if they'd found my skinny, elven butt!"

He stood and watch her give the reindeer what-for, with each of her little pokes making its nose glow a shade brighter. The animal lowered its head in obvious shame, and she left him to think about what he'd done wrong. Walking back towards Randall, her demeanour instantly changed from outright ferocity to pleasantly cheerful.

“You're an elf," Randall surmised, his eyes growing very wide all of a sudden.

“Wow, you sure catch on fast." The sarcasm was laid on thick, but the friendly smile remained. "I'm an elf. That's Rudolph. There's an overturned sleigh over there. Now get ready for the big one, buddy. You are the next Santa Claus! Woohoo! Right?"

She threw her hands up into the air and gave a little celebratory hop.

Randall demonstrated just how “woohoo” he thought it was by losing consciousness and landing face-first in the frost.

The elf looked down at him, clucked her tongue, then placed her hands on her hips before glancing back to Rudolph and the other reindeer

“Well, I that went about as well as can be expected.”

The reindeer nodded their antlers in agreement.

KOK OK KOK

Wendall woke up in bed. The events of the morning immediately came flooding back to him. This was Largely because when he Looked up from his pillow he saw the grey December sky through a giant hole in his ceiling. He immediately sat upright and gasped for air. Actually, he'd have settled for any of the basics right then. Air. Shelter. Sanity.

Any of those three would have been nice. The giant hole in his roof left the room quite chilly, but at least there was plenty of fresh air to go around for his needy lungs. Soon thereafter, he saw the door to his bedroom open and in walked the young elf woman carrying a tray on which she'd Laid out brunch.

Preach on, good sirs. Preach on. Wendall left the radio on and shuffled across the kitchen in his slippers to put the kettle on. At least the old house was a relative haven from the realities of his life. He'd once been in a car crash in his early twenties. He remembered the sudden shock, the swerve off road followed by rolling across a ploughed field for several yards. Current circumstances felt almost Like reliving the experience in slow motion.

The shock of coming home early one chilly September afternoon to find his wife naked on his couch riding their next door neighbour. The swerve of moving out, starting to drink, and turning up for work in such a state that his best friend had no choice but to fire him.

Finally there'd just been the vague sensation that everything he knew was spinning out of control. He'd moved out there to the Little house in early November. Ever since then it felt like he'd been in a perpetual daze.

The divorce papers sat on the kitchen table, Looming there to represent the end of everything he knew. ALL his life. Everything he'd built. It all seemed Like a dream. He glanced over to those papers as he stirred his morning coffee, and then Looked away just as quickly. Signing them was the best course of action. Every part of his rational mind knew that. Amelia hadn't just been cheating on him that one time. She'd been at it for years. Quite a lot of things had come to light after he'd found out what she'd been up to. None of them painted her in a particularly positive light.

Except once he put that pen to the papers then it would be over for good. The distinctly irrational part of him didn't like that idea at all. He remembered her smile at him on the day they'd met at a work outing. They'd danced. They'd kissed. She'd taken him to her room and shown him quite a few things he'd enjoyed immensely. It had been good.

He thought it had always been good right up until he'd walked in on the heart-wrenching evidence that it wasn't.

That memory still hit him like a stab in the gut. He tried to force a distraction by stirring his coffee some more and looking out of the window. It was early December now. Frost covered the grass on the fields and hills outside his little isolated home. It was oddly comforting to Look out there and feel so wonderfully alone and safely distanced from his problems. With the exception of the occasional melodic reminder that he'd be spending Christmas by himself this year.

Just as the song changed and he started recognising the guitar riff of Run, run Rudolph, the radio signal scrambled. It was then interrupted by what he thought was definitely the strangest radio DJ he'd ever heard.