It’s been a while since I’ve posted a piece of fiction, and with the Christmas season upon us I dug up this little story. It was inspired by my own visit to a local store and seeing a display of toys much like the one I describe here. Having previously done a stint in retail, I wondered how the staff coped being surrounded by so much forced Christmas cheer. Keep reading to see a slightly different take on the Christmas experience … or perhaps a bit of retail worker wish fulfillment?
She could feel it start thirty minutes into her shift. The little twinge of pain behind her right eye that signified a migraine was imminent. She wasn’t sure what triggered it. It could have been the colder weather. It could have been the fake pine scent sprayed liberally throughout the store. Or it could have been the Christmas CD that played the same 12 songs on a never-ending loop. Regardless of how it started, she knew it was going to be a long eight hours if she couldn’t figure out how to stop it.
“Yo, Kar, I need you to unpack these in housewares,” Brian, her manager, had said when she arrived, pointing to a pallet stacked high with boxes. Each contained assorted Christmas decorations that needed to be taken out, cleaned, stocked on the appropriate shelf, price checked, and scanned to be added into the inventory system. She knew it was going to be a tiring afternoon the moment she saw the boxes, and now the promise of a migraine made her want to turn around and go home before she had even started.
Housewares, normally a sedate place full of towels and linens, was being used for the overflow from seasonal and, being Christmas, there was a lot of overflow. Kara navigated her away around the fake Christmas trees (“So REALISTIC you won’t believe they’re artificial!”), the pyramids of lights neatly wrapped in boxes that, once opened, they would never fit back inside, and the table of what she and the other staff called the “please shoot me” toys, because listening to them made one suicidal.
There were about a dozen different types, each with a “PRESS ME” button. When pressed, the figure would play music, sing, or dance, or, in several cases, a combination of all three. There was the dancing Christmas tree that doubled as a hat. The singing snowman. A reindeer whose nose blinked on and off while he sang an ode to Rudolph. Kara had thought them vaguely cute when she first saw them, but after the 100th time someone made the snowman sing Frostie, she understood why Brian would mutter “Someone please shoot me or that blasted snowman” after he had been working in seasonal.
And this is what she was working alongside today. Just the sight of them made the twinge in her head begin to steadily throb as the migraine decided to kick it up a notch, from potential annoyance to guaranteed trouble. But the shop was surprisingly quiet for a Friday afternoon, and she began to unpack the first box in relative peace, scurrying up and down the ladder to arrange the decorations on the empty shelves. She was just about to open the second box when a woman holding a young child stopped in front of the table. Please just look at them, Kara thought desperately, Just look at them and move on. Don’t play them! The throbbing worsened and she could feel the telltale nausea in her stomach that meant that it was too late to halt the migraine.
“Which one do you want, honey?” The girl, no more than three, reached out towards the reindeer, then changed direction and hesitated over the tree, then dropped her arm. “I want them all!” Of course you do, Kara grimaced. She took several deep breaths in an effort to bring her head and stomach under control.
The mother laughed. “No, just pick one.” The child reached out again and, inexplicably, pointed to the ugliest of all the toys, a plush bathtub containing a singing Santa Claus.
Don’t press the button, for the love of all that’s holy do not press the button. Kara’s mental plea went unanswered. As soon as the child was confident with her decision, she pressed the button.
“Splish splash, I was taking a bath …” Santa sang. Whoever designed the atrocity thought it would be more festive if the singing were accompanied by the sound of sleigh bells. The pounding in Kara’s head grew even stronger with each ring of the bell.
The mother reached out to pick it up. Yes, Kara thought, please take it away. “Wait until it stops!” the child called out. The mother withdrew her hand and Santa continued to sing. “Wait until it stops!” Both the child and Santa seemed to be on a repetitive loop.
“… put my dancing shoes on …” Kara thought the toys only played music for thirty seconds, but it felt like Santa had been performing for hours.
“Wait until it stops!” There it was again. The same four words, said with the exact same inflection. Each one was a dagger in Kara’s ears. The mother reached for the figure again. “Wait until it stops!” The pounding in her head reached a crescendo. Kara walked over to where the mother and her child were standing, watching the Santa scrub his back over and over again. She reached out and pulled Santa’s head off with a satisfying pop. “There,” she said, “it’s stopped now.”
And, as a stunned silence filled housewares, she realised her migraine had stopped too.
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