Santa's Bones

Santa’s Bones

A Short Story by: Julie Jansen

Genre: Holiday Sci-fi

Editor: Susan Davis

Line editor: Greta Gunselman

Cover Designer: Delilah K. Stephans

Words: 5725

Pages: 26

ISBN: 978-1-927361-51-1

Price: $2.50

Back Cover:

The crooked Leader of the Northern Territories plans to pose as a political Santa Claus to spiff up his tarnished image. On Christmas he’ll fire up his teleportation jet to deliver 206 presents across the world. And these aren’t just any presents. They’re reliquaries, beautiful jewelled containers each housing one of Santa’s bones.

The Leader assigns funeral director Merlin the task of creating the reliquaries.

For Merlin it’s a dream job.

For his assistant Joseph, it’s an abomination.

Will Joseph convince Merlin to abandon the job and preserve the memory of Santa Claus? Or will Christmas become a new form of twisted politics where deadly gifts are disguised as shiny new toys?

Santa’s Bones is a fun holiday science fiction: snow globes full of magic and Christmas spirit.

Excerpt:

A few days later, Merlin finished the first reliquary, his exquisite tip-of-Santa’s-pinky jar. A few more bones were ready to be placed in their reliquaries. It was a slow, careful process. The long work days turned my usual almost cheerful mood sour. I caught a few more beetles crawling around and convinced Merlin we’d need to call the exterminator once our project was complete.

“Joseph, be careful with the ulna. It’s brittle as a bone.” Uncle Merlin chuckled to himself.

I rolled my eyes, his attempt at a joke not amusing.

I painted the arm bone with whitening solution and watched the liquid seep into the gray and black cracks and tiny holes. As the liquid worked its way through the porous cavities, I thought of Santa in his heyday, squeezing his way down the chimney of every boy and girl in the world over the course of one single night. A twinkle, like a diamond, blinked at the tip of the bone when that thought crossed my mind.

There had been other sparks, too. I’d just attributed them to static electricity from a recent cold snap. The twinkle was different. It was like light reflecting off an icicle combined with the sparkle in a child’s eye. It made me smile.

“Uncle Merlin, were you fiddling around with Swarovskis at my workstation again?” My uncle was always ogling new gems he’d ordered, sometimes carelessly, and always at my desk.

“No, I haven’t touched the latest shipment yet.”

I pulled out my retractable magnifying lens and held it over the ulna. Other than another of the beetles that I flicked away, it was nothing but a plain old geriatric bone riddled with arthritic spurs that must have given Santa a lot of grief. And yet, he used those ancient arms to reach into his sack over and over and pull out toys for millions of children. Santa was an amazing man.

There it was again, the twinkle. I flinched and pulled away from the lens.

“You find something interesting? A healed crack from where the missus nailed him with a flying plate of cookies when she found out his post-holiday stopover in Thailand involved a little hanky-panky with the natives?” Uncle Merlin snorted.

He was getting really annoying.

Uncle Merlin leaned in and looked through the lens. “I see one. A beetle!”

“Another one?” I turned back to the bone, upped the magnification on the lens, even put on my bottle-thick reading glasses thinking that might help.

“Maybe those little beetles hitched a ride in Santa’s slay? Get it? Sleigh’s spelled different.” He snorted again.

“This really isn’t the time for your bizarre humor. Santa wasn’t slain anyway. He caught a tropical disease.”

Merlin was unusually quiet. He stared into space.

“What?” I asked.

“Oh. I was just thinking about my grandma’s stories of how she’d watch out the window Christmas Eve, hoping to see Santa and his reindeer in the night’s sky.”

This time Uncle Merlin flinched with a blinding flash of light, like a lightning bolt that jumped from metal tray to metal tray around the room.

“Did you see that?” Uncle Merlin asked.

“Of course I did! But the real question is: did you feel that?” My body tingled all over, not with the effects of lightning, but with something else, something warm and fuzzy that made me think of snuggling with my girlfriend in front of a fire with a mug of rum-spiked eggnog.

“I do. I do feel it. I smell it, too.” Uncle Merlin sniffed the air and it was true that on the air hung a faint whiff of peppermint.

I walked toward one of the trays. It steamed from the recent jolt. I leaned in close and sniffed.

I sprang back with a start when Uncle Merlin tapped me on the shoulder and knocked one of the trays into another. One bone, the mandible, fell into the tray of cervical vertebrae. A spark show erupted like a tinsel fountain. Clearly spelled out amongst the sparks were the words “make me whole.”

Uncle Merlin and I grinned from ear to ear and burst out laughing.

“Santa wants to be whole!” Uncle Merlin spouted with joy. The joy lasted only a moment. As he scanned the room his face changed. He muttered softly, “My reliquaries. They’ve all been a waste.”

I glared at my uncle. “Do you see now what’s wrong here? Santa’s pissed off we took him apart. He wants to be put back together again.”

My uncle nodded, and then bowed his head in shame.

The phone rang. On the teleprompter the face of the Leader waited impatiently for our answer.

“You ready for this?” I asked my uncle before pushing the ‘accept call’ button.

Uncle Merlin took a deep breath, and then blew it out. “Ready,” he said.

I pushed the button.

The Leader, dressed in a red and white suit just in time for Christmas, asked Uncle Merlin how things were going.

“Beautifully,” my uncle replied and held up the pinky reliquary.

The Leader just about jumped out of cyberspace to get at it he was so excited. “Show me the others,” the Leader demanded, his voice chock full of greed.

Uncle held back.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” the Leader snapped.

“You. I’m waiting for you to come see the rest in person.”

The Leader just about came unglued. “Do you realize how busy my schedule is?”

“I certainly do, Sir. But how can I be sure you like what I’m doing? What if you have a different idea for one of the bones? I’d hate to disappoint you.” My uncle could spread the charm when he needed to, like pink frosting on a sugar cookie. I wasn’t sure what he had up his sleeve, but it was something big.

“Very well,” the Leader said. “I’ll be there this evening.”

The call ended. My uncle sighed and his face turned serious. “We have a lot of work to do.”

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Customer Reviews:

Santa's Bones... what a delightfully twisted romp through Santa's Workshop!

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