DANCE OF THE SUGARPLUMS & CHRISTMAS PUNCH
From, NEITHERIUM 2022 – available at Amazon & via Ingram
’tis fascinating, how qualms, quirks and issues manifest as fashions, dialects, even units of measurement, is it not? Here is the story of one such event, that in the end, turned out to be as gruesome as it was innocently well-intended.
’twas but a simple mistake the Christmas Fairy did make, when she set out on her winter’s nap rounds ’round Santa’s Christmas Town, when, impulsively inspired, she upped the enchantment ante by bestowing upon every slumb’rous elf not one but a handful of their very own dancing sugarplums whilst they slept.
Problem is, the Fairy, enamored with that newly published ditty by a certain Mr. Moore, spaced it quite completely on the precise wording of the text, forgetting that part of it having been “visions.”
But what’s to expect with a mighty flighty sprite, who subsists on a liquid diet comprised solely of Christmas spirits? All that grog, glog, wassail and especially that nog might taste awful nice, but leave much when it comes to interpretive skills honing of the literary, literal kind….
Suffice it to say, on that very next day, on Christmas Eve morning, when the bells in the tower sounded the hour, calling their jolly minions back to the bench, not a single, solitary elf was roused from the biers that had served as their lil sleeping shelves.
Alas, a-snooze they were not. Instead, they lay dead on their hard, bookshelf beds, their pillows drenched in the goo of their pulverized brains, which had oozed from their pointed, elfin ears in minuscule rivers of troubling, bubbling crimson – a real nightmare come true.
For, ’twas not visions of sugarplums that had danced in their heads, but real sugarplums that had ricocheted like steel pinballs inside of their craniums – for hours! The sweets had come to macabre life, thanks to the Fairy’s wayward hex, and did not enchant, as in Mr. Moore’s text, but lob and bounce about within those small skulls until there was nothing, nothing left.
’twas about then, the grieving Clauses closed up shop, and took to ordering online instead.
THE END
CHRISTMAS PUNCH
“…We wish you a merry Christmas
And a Happy New Year!”
The suitable hours, as they called them, were long past by the time the carolers arrived at their destination, a stately brownstone whose shuttered windows and high gates promised the utmost in privacy and coziest of confinements.
“My dears, my dears, enough of this arctic merriment!” the jovial Hostess proclaimed as she swung wide the front door. “’tis time for our own merriment! We are accomplished of our good work and, so now, I say to you all, we celebrate!”
In a few short decades, this Christmas Eve celebration had become a most eagerly anticipated annual escapade, a tradition, if you will. And the Hostess was so pleased – the confectioner had filled her order to perfection. Every candy cane met precisely with the details as she had requested them – the rods of porous sugar were as sturdy as railroad spikes, and generously infused with the bitterest blends of peppermint oils, crimson swirl encased, lovely to behold. She couldn’t wait to hand them out.
†††
“Come along and follow me, my lovelies!” the Hostess called out as she led her flock down a long hallway, down a steep flight of stairs, and through a stretch of winding passageway, until the revelers and their mistress together came to a standstill at the doorway of a grand and marbled entry.
Anticipation and delight kindled and sparked in their eyes, their smiles, their clasped hands, so eager was this troupe to pass through into the next room.
This next room was, in fact, a vast and palatial underground ballroom. The air in the room was more an atmosphere, for the far and distant corners receded into foggy darkness, like that of a far-off and shadowed valley. But, immediately before them, welcoming them in, was a space awash in the brilliance of an army of sparkling chandeliers, so crystal and candle laden were they as to appear almost menacing in their massive iciness. Was it not, the Hostess gushed, so horribly opulent, so disgustingly regal?
A circular array of plush divans had been situated in the center of the ballroom. Upon these chaises lay draped in elegant repose a carefully culled crop of scrumptiously robust humans. These fine specimens reclined upon their lounges in various states of mesmerized restfulness, smiling sleepily, perhaps dreaming of sugar plums, their contented faces aglow with the very essence of Peace on Earth.
†††
“Now, my dear, you hold it like this,” the Hostess instructed, aiming the sharply honed, pointed end of her candy cane at the neck of the woman she had selected to share with her initiate.
The young man tucked his hair behind his ear and leaned in, listening, entranced.
“Watch as I do it, and then you simply come in from your side,” she went on, “and remember, hit sure and hard.”
He grinned, his garnet eyes glinting with desire. The Hostess smiled, recalling with sweet nostalgia her first time…
Then, with a practiced hand and preternatural force, she pierced the jugular vein of their somnambulant donor with her sweet staff, and quickly placing her mouth over the blunt end of the candy, the Hostess sucked hard, drawing up through the honeycombed sugar a warming mouthful of frothy human liquor. She drank long and deep. What a deliciously flavored blood!
Her young companion smiled lasciviously, and, following the Hostess’ lead, dove in for his first post-mortem Christmas punch.
THE END
“Christmas Punch” has historic factuality, for the way large, porous candy cane spears were indeed used to pierce such as oranges, to then serve as a sort of candy-spiced straw through which the fresh juice could be sucked up and out.
butterflybroth 