Letters From Santa (a seasonally appropriate flash fiction story) by Rachel Dull

At half past 11, I snuck downstairs to filch the enormous sugar cookie with green frosting that my baby sister, Isabelle, had left out for Santa Claus. I had already poured myself a glass of fresh milk before heading into the living room, which was lit by the cozy Christmas tree lights we had left on so Santa could navigate the floor plan when he arrived. I paused in front of the twinkling beacon, holding the magic of Christmas in its ornament-laden boughs. It felt so peaceful in the tree’s halo that I sighed with contentment as I reached for the plate on the side table by the chair. My fingers had just curled around the wreath cookie waiting for me these past 4 hours when a commotion caused me to dropped the stolen goods and jump back in fear as a man’s voice bellowed out “Ho! Ho! Ho!” and a mechanized Santa began to sway his hips and dance to “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.

I hardly knew a sound had escaped my lips, but my younger brother, sitting across the room with a video recorder trained on my every move, described it as the whinny of a horse crossed with the wheeze of our elderly grandfather when he gets out of bed. “Gotcha!” Davey called. I came out of my trembling crouch and recognized the horrible Santa mannequin that our mother had purchased once at a garage sale, and every year insisted on putting out on our front porch to greet holiday visitors who came to call. My brother, in his comedic wisdom, had relocated the devil for the express purpose of catching me in the act of stealing Santa’s cookie and giving me a fright. “Just wait until I show Isabelle!” he cackled, skipping past me, and swiping the cookie before heading back to his room.

As the robotic Santa finished his dance and clicked off, I stood there staring at an empty-but-for-crumbs plate illuminated in the glow of the tree that had lured me into a false sense of security with its angelic topper and glittery tinsel. After Isabelle saw that video, not even the large box I put under the tree with her name on it would win back her love. I drank my milk and pondered for a moment, then pulled a charred bit of wood from the fireplace and tucked it into Davey’s stocking with the following note: “Davey, I know you ate my cookie. I can’t take your presents back now, but consider this bit of coal a warning for next year. I’ll be watching. —Santa.” And then I tucked a special note into Isabelle’s stocking that said, “Dear Isabelle, your brothers mean well, they just make bad choices sometimes. Keep on loving them, just like I do, and they will come around. Don’t give up hope! Especially on Logan. He’s a good brother. Love, Santa.” That’ll teach Davey to mess with Santa, I thought, mechanized or otherwise.

Early Indicators of My Life to Come

I recently found a sheet of paper that I had begun to cover with lists, circa 1997 or 1998. It seems like maybe I was going to make a scrapbook or something because there are notes like “picture” or “draw” after some things. This was during an era when I used lined paper but didn't respect the margins or the lines. I remember thinking I was conserving paper? Let me be clear, though—the lines of writing are still parallel to the lines on the paper. Not diagonal or anything. There was method amidst my madness. Left brain and right brain each asserting themselves.

The following are a selection of the more amusing/notable lists, with my present day thoughts about them in [brackets]. It is amusing to see what is the same and what has changed since nearly half my life ago.

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Favorite Food:

• Cool Whip [heck yeah!]
• cheesecake [over it]
• steak [I am my father's daughter]
• pizza [always and forever]
• fruit
• OCPs [Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies]
• mushrooms [really?]
• fruit snacks [meh]
• turkey
• grease [ew. Did I mean, like, greasy foods? Like french fries?]
• ice cream
• baked beans [srsly?]
• cocktail shrimp

     [notably missing: Bacon, and my childhood favorite mashed potatoes]

Favorite Clothes:

• yellow sweater
• bleached jeans [??? perhaps I meant normal jeans that had gotten bleached accidentally?]
• long sleeve overshirts [by this I totally mean oversized men's button-down shirts, which remained a favorite long into the 00s, and which I'd probably still be wearing now if my husband hadn't intervened]
• socks [all of them]
• Nikes [sandals]
• Dr. Martens [brown boots; still have!]
• yellow scarf
• purple hat [fisherman's style, plaid; still my favorite hat to wear on vacation, as seen here]
• corduroy pants
• white t-shirts

Addictions:

• Mike [boyfriend]
• email [nerd! Also, emailing aforementioned boyfriend]
• Nintendo [N64: GoldenEye, Mario Kart, Mario 64]

     [These could have been so much worse, amiright?!]

Favorite Subjects:

• Math
• Stats
• French

     [It wasn't until Math 285 (Honors Calc 3) that I realized math is hard, and I should be a Creative Writing major.]

Favorite Movie:

• The Scarlet Pimpernel [1982 version, NOT the one from 2000! 1934 version isn't bad either.]

Favorite TV shows:

• Hogan's Heroes
• Cartoon Planet [Space Ghost]
• JAG [only because I watched it every week with my dad when I went to his house for dinner]

Favorite Colors:

• Yellow
• Blue

     [destined to be a Michigan Wolverine]

Favorite Stories/Books:

• The Lady or the Tiger?
• Howliday Inn
• Dictionary/Thesaurus [nerd!]
• A Treasury of the Familiar [classic poems]
• Scarlet Pimpernel

Favorite Songs:

     [Redacted, or rather omitted and saved for a future post. There is just too much to analyze there!]


Favorite People:

     [Redacted to protect the relationships I currently have with the people who didn't make the list!]


Favorite Verses:

• Joshua 1:9 - “This is my command—be strong and courageous! Do not be afraid or discouraged. For the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”
• Ephesians 4:26b-27 - “Don’t let the sun go down while you are still angry, for anger gives a foothold to the devil.”
• Philippians 1:3 - “I thank my God every time I remember you.”
• Psalm 23 [punctuation is important! “The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want” vs. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Silly King James Version. It might have been clearer if I had learned the New Living Translation]
• Romans 12

Future Plans:

• get married
• be happy

     [Check and check! But perhaps this lack of vision explains why my 20s were so directionless.]


Misc. Dislikes:

• pants with hammer-holders from my childhood [seriously, why did these exist? I owned zero hammers as a child.]
• yellow and green together [Attributed to my strong dislike of the Oakland Athletics baseball team as a kid.]
• puzzles of nature [??? Oh, Matt says I probably meant jigsaw puzzles of fields and flowers, which I still dislike! Not like the Fibonacci sequence.]
• soft chalk [dunno why this was a thing]
• flirty younger boys [SERIOUSLY! I never went out with anyone younger. Apparently I found them all impertinent.]

Misc. Likes:

• Dr. Pepper lip balm
• writing utensils [woo, PotMC!]
• jewelry
• quotations
• containers
• creative writing

Fears:

• loneliness [cliché, but understandable]
• tape/stickers [this has lots of caveats, but we all get one irrational fear, right?]
• carrying too much [I got over this one, because it is apparently in my nature to carry a lot of stuff at one time, but I still don't prefer it]
• criticism [ditto “loneliness”]
• working hard [I don't recall what I was getting at. Did I fear a life of laboring in the fields?]
• being tardy to class [not because I would be late and miss something, but because it was “wrong” and I was/am a rule follower]

Self Motivation

For your reading pleasure, I have unearthed some poems that I wrote back in high school when I fancied myself a poet. Or maybe my English teacher required a certain number of points be acquired through "Self Motivation", and she scored original written works higher than the worksheets she provided, so I was lazy and used silly poetry to accomplish my Self Motivation requirements quicker. Also, she pretty much ate up whatever I wrote. Thought she was crazy at the time (she barked at my sister once--like, literally looked at her and said "woof"), but since then I've reflected on her encouragement many times and been quite grateful for it. Honest admirers of your work, even when you think they're crazy or your work is unworthy, are a treasure not to be slighted.

Without further ado:


Gus (a limerick)

There was a boy named Gus
Who went out to wait for the bus.
He got sprayed by a skunk
and, oh, how he stunk!
And that's why we didn't want him near us!

(a perfectly sensible thing to write about!)


A Think

As I sit alone and try to think,
I think of you and what you think.
I wonder what it is you think
and why you think the things you think.

Sometimes when wondering of what you think,
"What is thought of me?" I think.
I hope the thoughts of me you think
are like the thoughts of you I think.

Very special are the thoughts you think.
When you tell me your thoughts, you make me think.
Then I go off and have myself "a think".
I can only think of you.

As I sit alone and try to think,
I think of you and what you think.

(see? I was always like this!)


Haiku

The wind was blowing the leaves.
They flew off the tree.
The leaves landed on the ground.

The sun is shining brightly.
The water sparkles.
Animals enjoying spring.

(lame sauce! but I got 8 points for it!)


Ode to the Stressed Out

Arise you stressed out worriers!
Forget your troubles for now!
The spring has come at least,
To wipe the pressures from your brow!

Behold the shining sun,
And the gentle breeze blowing.
See the flowers growing,
And the sweet blue river flowing.

So forget those things that leave you annoyed
Irritated, confused, and depressed
And head for the sunny fields
To look past the fact you're a mess.

(these last two were clearly written in spring, which indicates to me that the end of the year was fast approaching and I needed to get those Self Motivation points in!)

Love, Honor, Cherish, Always

Who can tell me the color of love?

Who can paint me its portrait?

Who will teach me how it bends and curves?

When it breaks, who will help me mend it?

Who will share the quotidian as well as the struggle and recovery?

And when we are weak and our love needs revival who will remember its ancestry?

For me, it is Matthew. He has painted me a portrait of love in a rich burgundy that flourishes all over the canvas in elegant scripts. He is my buddy, my baby, and the other half of my brain. I love him very much!

happy anniversary, baby!

The Tale's End

When I was digging through old folders looking for Snackademics the other day, I came across many more fiction pieces I'd written in pursuit of a college degree. Most of them are quite short, so I will share a few of my favorites.  This one is called "The Tale's End", and while it is not autobiographical, it does feature my apartment on S. Division across from Elbel Field, and a rain storm which really did happen.

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     Ting. Yelling and cheering. "Safe!" Ting. More yelling and cheering. Clara sat reading on the couch in her apartment living room. With the slider door wide open, she let in the cool, summer breeze and the sounds of the intramural softball game from the field across the street. Everything seemed right - everything was at peace. There was no homework to occupy her time, last week's blazing heat wave had subsided to tolerable 70s, and a good day at work had brought her back home again free to enjoy the setting sun and a good book.

     Clara liked to read by the fading daylight until she could no longer see the words on the page and she had to turn on a lamp. Sometimes after dark she would sit on the balcony in the night air and read under the porch light, or prop herself up in bed and read until she fell asleep and dropped her book. But always, always she would read. If she wasn't reading that summer, then she was working, showering, or asleep and dreaming about the stories she read.
     Clara read fiction. Short stories, long stories, kids' stories, old stories. She liked to be an observer in the lives of the characters. She liked the vicarious relationship she had with books. If she was reading, then she didn't have to be interesting in her own life. Clara was shy, though she was not unhappy. The thing was, Clara had liked a boy once, last fall, and she had found herself thinking about him all the time. But she had a lot of schoolwork during that time, and often discovered that she had trouble thinking about anything for very long because she only wanted to think about the boy. Now, this was bad, not only because Clara didn't have time enough to do her schoolwork and think about him, but she certainly didn't have time to read on top of all that. And Clara loved to read.
     Months passed, school passed, and the boy remained; he didn't leave her mind and he didn't enter her life. This distressed Clara. It was like a story with no end - and Clara couldn't stand to not finish reading a story, even a boring one. So she gave him up. Life's real stories never tied themselves up in neat little packages with happy endings, or endings at all, so she decided to go back to her books. And it was summer now and she could devote all of her free time to reading.
     As Clara turned the page, she noticed the sky had become very dark, though it was only 6:30. Clouds formed across the horizon and foretold of rain. One drop after another fell to the earth and the wind rushed faster through the trees. Clara could see the softball teams disbanding and heading for their cars as a long, loud, low rumble sounded from the impending storm.
     Clara put down her book and went out onto the balcony. The third floor balcony umbrella-ed her on the second floor as she stood gazing toward the heavens. She saw the flickers of lightning illuminate first one side of the sky and then the other as if they were two factions engaged in civil war. And what a violent struggle it was, as the wind slashed harder and harder through the leaves and caused the trees to bend and shiver. Even the third floor balcony could no longer protect Clara from the barrage of water now pouring down her face and drenching her clothes. The rain fell so fast and hard that the dirt patch that used to be the softball field flooded and became part of a small current following gravity down the street. Right battled left across the sky then receded past the horizon. The volleys of rain sputtered and ceased, and the wind blew away, herding the storm perpetually on.
     But who had won the conflict, was it north or south, east or west? The struggle had passed before the winner had been determined. Had peace been reached? But peace without a winner, without an end?
     The softball teams emerged again from their cars, and pointed at their field, still flooding down the street. One of them turned up a football, so they tossed their mitts aside and organized a muddy football match-up. Cheering and laughing ensued as mud-covered cavorting replaced tinging bats and base running.
     Clara remained drenched and wondering on her balcony overlooking the muddy field. Who had won the game before the sky's civil war? And what of this new game, had the sides even remained the same? She retreated back inside, but did not pick up her book again. Instead she took out some paper and wrote: "Life's stories have no end except for when it is really over, and there is no life left to know it. One tale pours into the next and we never will find out what happens - only one page at a time."
     Clara tacked the scrap of paper to the wall beside the door and went out to play football.

3/18/03

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I also found the penultimate draft of this piece in the folder when I was picking this out. I had ended it a sentence earlier, but my teacher had written "Clara needs to get out more" on the bottom, so I must have tacked the last sentence on to appease him. That's probably not what he meant, but I think it's funny.