This Fiction Friday prompt from Write Anything was particularly difficult and I’m not happy with the result but, in the spirit of whatever I’m sharing it anyway. The prompt, to write a scene where Santa meets with his PR people, was fun and I thought it would be interesting to write about issues not with him but the team that supports him. I wanted to show the cracks in the cheerful veneer, pull a Pinter on the Christmas family. It didn’t work. The one little idea in these 753 words that I find interesting is Mrs Santa’s job.

Fragment, Friday 23 December

“But listen to her, dear” Mr Santa said to Mrs Santa, “she knows what she’s talking about.”

Mrs Santa sighed and took a tighter grasp of her knitting needles.

“Sweetness,” she said, somewhat tartly, “I know that Ms Yarrow knows what she’s talking about. Yarrow and Yule have done a very good job with our PR for years. However…” she fixed Ms Yarrow with a steely gaze, “we’ve had this conversation before.”

“Times change, Mrs Santa, times change.”

“And we have to change with it!” Mr Santa stood up and walked over to the sofa where Mrs Santa was sitting. The atmosphere in the room was tense. Everyone there knew that this conversation would be difficult. Ms Yarrow felt for Mrs Santa. What they were asking her to do was not easy. She too walked over to the sofa. Pulling up a chair she sat down immediately opposite Mrs Santa and looked at her.

“Yes, we’ve had this conversation before. Last time, we decided against this particular course of action. This time, things are different: the mood of the age is different. We need a drastic image change to keep popularity.”

Mrs Santa was focused on her knitting. Her movements were stiff with anger. She dropped the needles into her lap and looked straight at Ms Yarrow.

“In the fifties we decided that Mr Santa needed a comfortable, nonthreatening  companion, not a sex-bomb, not a working woman. Over several years we changed the colour of my hair, I gained weight, started wearing frumpy clothing. I left work – work that I loved – and dedicated myself to keeping house. I learned to knit and sew, bake and make jam. I took up the traditional role you wanted me to fulfil. Now, you ask me to go the other way.”

Ms Yarrow nodded.

“Yes. The family image that you portray is not washing with our test subjects. We thought that, considering the economy and all the trouble in the world, they’d love the fact that Santa still runs a mom and pop shop. But they don’t. They think that you’re setting a bad example, lolling about at home, cooking fatty foods and spoiling the elves.”

“They do, do they?” Mrs Santa’s voice was ice. “They think I’m a bad example?” She picked up one of the balls of yarn on the sofa next to her and fiddled with it, pulling out a piece of yarn, twisting it, pulling, twisting.

“Yes. They also think that you should try a little harder, make more of yourself. The way you look. You know, lose some weight, maybe, wear more fashionable outfits.”

“More fashionable outfits?”

“Yes. The red and white prairie frock is so 1970s.”

“I thought 1970s was the look?”

“Only if it’s retro. Not when it’s unchanged since… Lipstick wouldn’t hurt either. And botox.”

“I see. Talking of the 70s…”

“Yes, dear?” Santa thought it was safe for him to enter the conversation again. He could tell that his wife was keeping her temper under control. She was as tightly coiled as the piece of yarn she was worrying. She had always had a fiery temper, had Mrs Santa.

“I remember asking, in the 70s, if it wasn’t time to update my image a little. If I should go back to work, outside the home, you know, to do what other women were doing back then. To show that we were all for women’s lib.”

“But darling, we weren’t. We really weren’t . Not back then.” Santa laughed.

“I was.” The piece of wool in Mrs Santa’s hand broke.

Ms Yarrow took hold of Mrs Santa’s hands, stopping their fidgeting.

“The world wasn’t. What the consumer in the 70s wanted to see as the embodiment of Christmas spirit was a stay at home grandma who cooked for Santa. Back then, men was still the main Christmas shopping demographic: they needed to know that their hard work was needed, was necessary and appreciated. Now, we’re selling to women and girls. They need to see you more active, more out there, more like them.”

“More out there? My skills are 50 years out of date. There isn’t a lab in the world that would employ me now.”

“We’ll get you on a back to work scheme. You could work with kids?”

“I don’t want to work with kids. I’m a scientist. I’m a geneticist, to be specific.”

Ms Yarrow sat back on her chair.

“Yes. We need to talk about that too. We really need to talk about that.”

To get practice reading out loud and help generating ideas I’m taking part in Write Anything’s Fiction Friday challenge this month. So far, the writing’s been more successful than the reading. Reading and recording takes as long, or even longer, than writing. I’ll try to get this one recorded on time.

I spent about an hour writing these 983 words. Not editing is very difficult. I want to do some major edits to this text, to make it flow better and to add more detail here and there.  I’m quite interested in finding out how John and Emma met: they seem to live intersting lives and I wish I knew more about them.

The not entirely coherent spoken version of this story can be found on AudioBoo.

Short, December 16

“Sorry I had to rig your GPS, but you wouldn’t have come otherwise. This is urgent. You know what you said, this morning? About my rashness, my habit to do stupid things? You were right, of course. I do do stupid things, stretch for things just beyond my reach. I don’t seem able to help myself.”

John smiled as he read the note Emma had left on the kitchen table. She wrote just like she spoke and he could hear her voice in his head. Her handwriting was strong and even. He recognized the scarlet ink she always filled her favourite fountain pen with.

“I have a favour to ask of you. Actually, I have two favours to ask of you. The first one is this: don’t leave now. Don’t walk out that door in a snit because I tricked you and you’re cross with me. There’s time for that later. “

He had no intention to leave. He had been angry with her, but that was this morning. Emma was eager to learn, eager to try her powers and to learn to control them. Her ambition was one of the reasons he loved her. She wanted to become the most powerful sorceress in the world. The problem he had with her learning-by-doing approach was her impatience. She threw fireballs and opened portals to parallel dimensions before she’d learned to hover feathers above her hand. She dove straight in, every time, entirely without fear. But magic was dangerous and he was afraid that she’d kill herself in her hurry to master a new technique.

“When you left, I went back to my work and continued to study the text that we quarreled about. It might seem like a really insensitive thing to do when you’ve just had a ding-dong row about it with your boyfriend/teacher, but it was a really interesting text and you were wrong: I could handle it. See, I even learned something new from it. This morning, I wouldn’t have been able to rig your GPS by magical means. But by lunchtime, I could. Isn’t that brilliant?”

It was brilliant. Emma was brilliant. He was so proud of her. John put her note down to make himself a cup of coffee and took both into the living room to read the rest.

“I got lots of great tips on different teleportation techniques – don’t worry, I still haven’t tried most of them, easy does it – as well as the distant manipulation that got you here this evening. The problems started this afternoon, when I looked at the other book. Yes, that one. The one you looked into the strongbox.”

The coffee suddenly tasted bitter in John’s mouth. He got up and walked to the bedroom where the strongbox was, reading as he went.

“I opened the strongbox and hovered the book down to the study all using remote techniques. I’m getting really good at that and at the moment, I don’t think there’s a metal container in the world that can keep me out. Or keep in anything I want out of it. Don’t be too annoyed. You knew I wouldn’t be able to stay away from it for long. Curious George, that’s me. Always monkeying around, sniffing things out.”

The strongbox looked as it always did. The lid was closed and locked. John’s hands shook as he made the signs that unlocked the box.  He got down on his knees and opened the lid. A faint smell of sulphur was the only indication that magic had been used. That, and the fact that the book was gone.

This book was one that he really hadn’t wanted Emma to get her hands on until her training was much more advanced. What she had spirited out of the strongbox was the book that held his magic, his tricks and his power: his grimoire. It is not something you share with a novice. Most sorcerers never show another person their grimoire but John had wanted to share it with Emma. Eventually. When he was entirely sure that he could trust her.

“My darling, John. I understand now why it was so important to you that I don’t look at this particular book. It breaks my heart that I didn’t respect your wishes, that I broke in to the strongbox and took it. Here, on the pages in front of me, are all your secrets. It is as if I know your thoughts now and I know how to use them against you. Suddenly, I understand the width of your power – you have so much more that I thought – and I know how to turn that against you too. I know too much to be able to stay. This is our end and it has to happen this instant.”

The sadness John felt was not as strong as the panic that rose in him. Emma had everything she needed to destroy him. To remove him from the fabric of the universe and take everything he’d ever known, achieved and loved and make it her own.

“Here’s the second favour I have to ask of you. Don’t come looking for me. I love you, John, but I love the power more. You understand, don’t you? I know that you do, or you would have shared this with me when I moved in with you. You shared everything else, from bathroom habits to embarrassing dreams, so why not this? It was because it meant more to you than I did. It is the same for me: magic is more important to me than anything. Maybe one day I can give it back to you. Until then, my love, stay safe.”

John crawled into a ball on the floor, crushing the note, smearing the pretty, treacherous letters with hands damp with panic sweat. He was alone. And he was powerless.

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