A Winterland Tale - Part One

There was so much that Clare needed to do before everyone arrived for the party. There were still a few presents that needed to be wrapped and she had promised her mom that she would help her in the kitchen. She took in a deep breath and blew it out hard. Clare hated chopping. The knife always slipped and, after thirteen years of forced kitchen duty, there wasn’t much space left on her fingers for a new, shiny scar.

She stared at the white line running through her ruined fingernail as she tossed the smaller gifts into little decorative bags.

“Done,” she muttered. “Except for you,” she said to a proud, wooden nutcracker.

Her mom collected the creepy, bug-eyed chompers. After every Thanksgiving, their house turned into a veritable shrine to their bright, toothy grins. Her mom had lamented that her family had forbidden her from buying more nutcrackers the past few years, so Clare had given in and gotten her mother a ballet-themed doll.

Not that either of them cared for ballet. It was the cheapest nutcracker Clare could find. Her tiny paychecks from folding sweaters on the weekends could only afford so much Christmas.

“All right, Mr. Nutcracker, into the darkness you go.”

Setting it gently in the bottom of the large bag so that its little sword didn’t break off, Clare ignored the overwhelming feeling of being scrutinized by its painted eyes.

She smirked and grabbed some tissue paper.

“It puts the lotion on its skin,” she sang as it sat there grinning like a fool.

Clare wadded the green tissue paper between her palms. She should be covering its ruddy face and moving on with the rest of her to-do list, but she would be lying if she said that slicing her thumb would be more fun than having the nutcracker eat random things from her bedroom floor. She plucked him out from the bag, which also had nutcrackers on it, and set him on the windowsill.

Snow flurried outside her window, settling over the trees and neighboring rooftops. The sun was already making its way down and soon, her family would be there for her mom’s annual Christmas Eve get-together.

Clare shuddered at the idea that she would be on baby-sitting duty for her brother and cousins.

“Spoiled rotten spawns of hell,” she laughed.

Chewing on the edge of her thumbnail, she asked the nutcracker, “You crack nuts, huh?”

He didn’t respond. Clare nodded anyway, imagining that he had answered and their conversation had begun. If she was going to be sticking things in his mouth, it was only right that she get to know him, she thought.

“You’re a good man. Honestly, that sounds like a terrible job and I hope that you get paid better than me.”

It was a little strange to be playing with a doll again. After all, she was seventeen, but she ignored the awkwardness and searched for something small enough to break between his teeth.

“There’s got to be something here,” she assured him as she crawled around on the carpet.

“What are you doing?”

Clare didn’t look up from her task. “Go away, Freddy.”

Her younger brother ignored her request and jumped up onto her bed. “Did you lose something?”

She was getting frustrated. There wasn’t anything there that would fit in his mouth. “Hey, does mom have any nuts we can crack? I want to test the nutcracker I got her.”

He scoffed. “Another one of those stupid dolls? Is that it?”

Clare looked up in time to see Freddy reaching for the finely dressed little man and dove to stop him. She failed. Freddy pounced up, waving the nutcracker around and pulling on the mouth lever too hard.

“You’re going to break it, Freddy. Stop.”

He laughed at her and made the nutcracker nip at her fingers. “Stop worrying, I’m not going to break it. Besides, he thinks you look tasty and he wants a bite, Clare.”

As she chased him around her room, he kept trying to have the nutcracker bite her. For a smaller child, he was fast and annoying. Freddy would twirl the doll just out of reach and make him dance just shy of Clare’s hands. Freddy trapped himself in a corner and Clare lunged. As she reached for the doll, Freddy caught her finger in its mouth and squeezed as hard as he could. Clare yelled out, not in pain but in anger, as a snapping sound tore through the air. Freddy’s laughter ebbed and Clare’s ire grew. He had broken it. The nutcracker’s jaw hung slack because even he couldn’t believe that that little shit had broken their mother’s Christmas present.

“Umm,” hummed Freddy, as he tried to find a place to set the broken toy.

Clare bit out between her gnashed teeth, “Just put it down and leave.”

“Yep.” He threw it on the bed and ran for dear life.

“I didn’t mean throw it!” she yelled after him.

She looked at the sad thing sprawled over her comforter. It hadn’t even taken Freddy five minutes to break him.

Clare shook her head and picked up the broken man. “I’m going to rewrap his gift. Do you think it would be too mean if I put his gift card in a big block of ice? No? Good. Little bastard deserves it.”

She set the doll back on her windowsill and wondered if her dad had super glue in the garage. There wasn’t time to search now, she was just going to have to do it after the party.

Clare looked out her window, past the gaping smile of the nutcracker, into the dying light. A pair of eyes caught her attention as they glowed against the shadows of her neighbor’s chimney. Someone was on their roof and looking right into her room, but they were hard to see. They were pale, with white hair and a white suit that seemed to match the falling snow, and a wide, toothy grin split their face.

“What the fuck?” she muttered.

When she blinked, he disappeared. Clare pressed her hands against her window and looked down into the alley between their houses but there was no one there. She wondered if she had imagined it. Why else would a white man with white hair and a white suit be on someone’s roof?

Clare looked at the nutcracker, then outside again. “Weird. Let’s hope there aren’t any mental patient escapees running around tonight. Stay put, little man. I’ll find some glue, fix you up, and mom will love you.”

She left the nutcracker by the window but did close the blinds, just in case. Then the doorbell rang and she knew her time had run out.

To be continued…