An Elf’s Place in the World

Raya watches the next item approach on the conveyor belt: a heart-shaped box of chocolates, its exterior glossed and boasting 10 FLAVORS TO WARM THE HEARTS OF YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES THIS CHRISTMAS! in green and red font.

If she were back at the factory, she would have cut two pieces of her favorite wrapping paper (bright yellow with PSY's face printed every two inches) and sandwiched the box in between them. She would have folded the bottom edges around the point of the heart, and carefully pushed the top of the paper around the two curves and crinkled it just enough to fit the shape. No one wrapped presents as perfectly as Raya did.

But Santa no longer wants perfection. He wants a machine system of slave-elves and a quota to be filled every day. No more being gentle with the presents, fondly thinking about how each object passing through one's hands would bring joy to a child who has been waiting for a year for a magical holiday. Every child gets a present, good or bad, because Santa gets a 1% commission on every present he makes from the United Nations.

Raya, because she is not at the factory, scans the box and tosses it into one of the open plastic bags next to the counter, ignoring the customer glaring down at her. "Happy holidays." She's already eyeing the clock as she hands the customer her receipt.

Done. The clock hits 8 PM and Raya barely contains her desperation, waiting for the last customer to be ushered out. Her apron is tossed into her bag, her lane is wiped down, and the chocolates in the aisle are replenished just seconds after, and she drives herself home.

"Hi, darling," she says, giving her cardboard cutout of Jack Sparrow a kiss. "I missed you." She imagines that he winks back and makes a suggestive remark, as Jack Sparrow does.

"What's this?" She picks up the letter that she missed on the floor as she was entering her home. It's green with red borders, and smells like it was dipped in melted peppermint candy. It's kind of sticky like it was, too, and that's the telltale sign that now brings dread (and curiosity) to her gut.

Raya walks over to her desk to get her reading glasses and opens the envelope with trembling fingers. As she peruses the document, she loses feeling in her legs with every word until she collapses to the ground, stricken by the weight of unjustice.

"You may be evil, but you're no fool," Raya mutters. She urges her car to move faster and takes a swig of eggnog. Her fellow working elves may be too meek to stand up to Santa, but that letter was the end of his reign, at Raya's hands.

Hello, Elven Creature #1474!

This letter comes to you from Santa's Factories Incorporated. We noticed that you retired 103 years ago, so perhaps this new development has escaped your notice. All elves are to be taxed as per the Existential Taxation Decree, established 42 years ago, as a return payment for Santa's Factories Inc. creating you. This is a 90% tax on your yearly income, which you'll be happy to hear was negotiated down from a 100% tax (seeing as you do owe your entire existence to Santa).

You appear to be 42 years behind on your payments.This letter is to remind you to deposit $12,250,001.52 to your Santa's Special Elves :) account, which you can open today for a small fee of $80. You could also choose "Termination" as per Clause S1 and your offspring or any relatives would distribute the payment among themselves.

You have 2 weeks to make your payment before everything you own is seized.

Happy Holidays from Santa's Factories Inc.!

There is no way in hell that she's making that payment (and not just because she's very, very poor at the moment). So there's only one other option: a single-person, fury-driven, half-drunken coup. On Santa.

Raya's car sputters out of gas three-quarters up the cliff that the Clauses live on, so she grabs her axe and her bottle of eggnog, psychs herself up by imagining Santa with his face bashed in, and hikes up the remaining 2 miles through the snowstorm.

Mrs. Claus answers the doorbell with a disgusted look on her face. "What do you want, elf?"

"Your husband's head," Raya responds with a smile, then swings the flat of her blade at Mrs. Claus's spray-tanned face. She closes the door on her way in, taking care to step on Mrs. Claus's nose job.

"Was that the agent with our money, sweetheart?"

There it is. That despicable voice, dripping with greed. Raya doesn't realize that she's stomped up the stairs until she comes back to mind, face-to-face with a very surprised Santa Claus.

"You will never build upon our bones again," she hisses into his face.

Santa tries knock her away, but elves, as he wanted, were made for resilience. Strong arms to wrap presents all day. Dextrous fingers to fold tricky corners, scarred and strengthened by constant papercuts. And the most balanced, poised, and focused creatures on Earth, to deal with the mental war waged against a selfish master.

An hour later, Raya finds herself utterly drunk and nearly asleep on the floor. She turns to the side, smiles at the resting head of Santa five feet from the rest of its body, and then passes out completely, lost in dreams about a legacy of elves who work not for survival, but for genuine happiness.