The Fat Man Read Free

that’s all.

CHAPTER 3
    Yes, Virginia

    B efore we get to how I got fired and all the mess that follows it, let me tell you how I got the job. Realize that there are some who wouldn’t want me to spill about some of what goes on in Kringle Town. They don’t want you to know that sometimes there’s a rat in the figgy pudding. They want to keep secret some of the stuff that goes on behind gingerbread doors, but for the love of Christmas, I’m going to sing. Sue me.
    The first fact you should know is that some elves have superpowers. From Santa to the lowliest stocking stuffer, there are special elves that have more moxie, more mojo, more brains and brawn and je ne sais quoi than any of those rubes in a cape ever hoped to have. Some of us can fly. We can shoulder a two-ton sack of toys without a grunt. Elves can turn invisible, throw our voices, breathe underwater, dance with fire and whistle through peanut butter. Elves cobble the toys, pepper the mint and deck the halls. We cast spells, raise hell and take names. You don’t see us unless we want you to and then you don’t recognize us. We can take your best shot and give it right back, but the point is moot. You’d never catch us or come close to landing a punch. Elves are smarter than you, quicker. Special. There is no kryptonite.
    If you make it to the Pole and are discovered to have a super elf power or two, you’re invited to a special training corps to learn how to use them, courtesy of Zwarte Piet, or Black Pete as he is sometimes called. Black Pete is one of Santa’s right hands, a surly little flunky who was with him at the beginning and is tasked with creating an elite squad of Santa Helpers. Black Pete’s academy is an elf gulag, a soul-sapping regimen of pain and ruin, with three meals a day of nothing but fruitcake and water. Black Pete’s methods are meant to break you, and many are happy to get broken. But when you’re broken is when you learn. You learn how to harness your magical elf powers, how to do push-ups with your gray matter. Delivering presents to the world in a single night would be quantum cyanide for most physicists, but Black Pete shows you the tune and teaches you how to play it so you really can help Santa. Graduating a Zwarte Pieten means you know your onions. You get plum assignments like the toy line or chimney reconnaissance. You race reindeer and go undercover to check The List. Twice. A Zwarte Pieten is an elf rock star. But if Black Pete spits a line of gingerbread juice in your general direction, it’s curtains. Peter out and your job is trying to match all the abandoned and lost socks of the world or raking out reindeer stalls. It ain’t pretty. Santa’s reindeer get a lot of fiber. A lot.
    The other poop you need to be wise to is that our world, Kringle Town, is in a different dimension than your human world, hovering at the edge of what you can see and hear. Kringle Town is always there, just out of sight. It’s how we see you when you’re sleeping, know when you’re awake. It’s how we know if you’ve been bad or good—well, you know the rest. Kringle Town is full of smaller cities and burgs, rivers, oceans, the works. We even have an “other side of the tracks” and I shouldn’t have to tell you it’s called Pottersville, and you don’t want to go there unless you want some bad business. Kringle Town’s population is all your favorite holiday characters. We don’t just come to life after Halloween. We all have lives to live and jobs to do here throughout the year, so our day-to-day resembles yours in a way. Your world doesn’t have as much snow, and the Muzak isn’t cranking out carols 24/7, 365 days a year, but we have a lot more in common than you think. The point I want to make is the holiday characters that you know and love can have bad days too, from low blood sugar (a real problem despite all the candy), to the stress of trying to stay chirpy for the cause. I mean, Frosty is real. I see him all