Stirfry Neon

The details poured through the door before it finished the futile bounce up, a flood of fine pointed print with sharp hats and pointed shoes. The wood splintered beneath their onslaught proving that doors are only a social contract and you should always check the fine print before agreeing to anything. My desk was the next casualty; they left my chair only so the collected weight of tiny, pointed feet could force me back into it…their breath didn’t smell like peppermint or ginger or pine, but their eyes were red as hard cinnamon candies, their hands as hard as a wax shell, their anger ripping my collar from my shirt…they spoke with 1000 flutey, tinkly voices, almost musical and if it hadn’t been so close to a dirge of irony, I might have chuckled. Then the leader, he of the tallest, stripiest hat, he (or she) of the hottest cinnamon breath and the cruelest candy cane striped eyes, spoke, “Where is it?

The laugh was forced out of me by the crazy contrast between sweet piping piccolo voices and burning crazy shiny red pin prick eyes , a window into a collective madness more dangerous than thrusting a broken leg into a hornet’s nest with your head in a beehive. The laugh saved me; a flood of elf detail poured off my armor of mirth, pooling malevolently on the floor. I grabbed my favorite weapon, the broom I kept propped behind my desk (people always assume it’s there because I clean and this is after they’ve seen my office; this tells you everything you need to know about the intellectual caliber of the people who wander into my office.) I held the broom out, poised for an aggressive elimination of the situation. One of the little buggers, no bigger or quieter than the regular rats you see around here seemed to be scrabbling around in its pockets for something; usually, this is not a situation I require my reading glasses for but this was a detail heavy situation, with the really fine, agate print of minature agitprop maniacs; I needed a magnifying glass and an Abrams tank What I had was a broom + enough experience to tell me I should have dived through the window when Danger (you remember her) went out the door.

The room went quiet, quickly…I would have looked to see if someone had stepped in behind me but no save the back of my head from a bat instinct had kicked in — or kicked me. They had clustered together, gathering like droplets; the one in front still with hands frantically reaching from pocket to pocket. I shoved the broom in his/her/its direction and the puff of air knocked a group of them back…But they moved so fast, like everything they walked on was slicked with ice and oil and facing downhill; my life was like that some days but never to any advantage. Suddenly, a little piccolo peppermint voice whispered into my ear, from my ear lobe, “Did she whistle?”

She hadn’t whistled but I certainly screamed…shimmied…shivered…and discoed; any kind of dance to get away from the wintery warm (and I mean icicle cold) breath of the details now tugging on my ear. I swatted too — quickly and with the blind accuracy of never honed animal instincts. My former earring landed on the desk, a few of his little pals clustered around, glaring up at me, eyes an even madder red now, trying to pull me down to their eye level, but I knew that was only an invitation to a painful poke and gouging, not my favorite waltz. ”The whistle, the whistle…did she have it; did she try it…did you see it?” A mad a cappella, ah cacophony of a choir that should have been echoing around a dollhouse gingerbread cathedral…instead there it was bouncing up to only a dog can hear levels and then back down to driving the drilling of a V-10 worth of piercing ill tuned pistons between my ears and my temples levels…”Whistle? Where?”

Headache…HEADACHE…head=ACHE

Raising a finger aside of my nose, still brandishing the broom in the other hand, I “shhhhh” ed as loudly as I could. Still the rabble roused, caroused and groused…Broom still brandished, finger (we won’t mention which) still aside, I WHISTLED. That stopped them (wait for it…yes, amusing myself costs nothing so it’s my favorite form of recreation — still waiting?); stopped them cold.

Come back when I’ve finished laughing ; )

Then one landed on my nose…the what’s in the pocket mystery finally solved when I got pelted in the eye by the brazen interloper running up the curve of my nose, all sharp points digging into my skin…this would be easy if I sneezed — one elvish (surely they were elves and not gnomes, gremlins or hallucinations — I hadn’t had any eggnog or peppermint schnapps, it was the day before the night before Christmas and I was busy, busy busy being rude)…where were we? One elvish schmear across the opposite wall if I sneezed. Spread on gingerbread man.  You were warned about the rude; I’m tired, there’s an elf tapdancing his way up my nose and I’m guessing a visit from the Mrs. doesn’t grant automatic placement on the nice list.

I let my attention wander, rookie mistake; I paid for it with one right between the eyes. Nose itching, eyes watering and elf waving a white handkerchief for parley like he’d rather carve out my eye with it. I sat, quickly. And reached for the hard cider. I guess we were going to talk. Maybe I could convince the Christmas Cacophony to wait outside while I talked to Mr. Nose Walker here…and we were going to talk. Somebody was going to answer all the questions I had. Whether he liked it or not.  Naughty, nice…never matters to me. I’m not Mr. Holly Jolly. What I want is informative, cowardly, very bad shot, drunk and leaving…If I shared the hard cider, maybe I could get the last two. I flicked him off my nose, he did the stunt man roll too dramatically and with an audible sneer. We were going to talk; but it wasn’t going to be warm cheery fun. I hated warm cheery fun. It sloshed.