บท 4: Home Sweet Home
All this time you thought Santa Claus lived in the North Pole? In the white snow, with moose and dwarves? I'm sorry to say this, but you're very wrong.
I insisted on going home to my apartment first before coming with Martin and the two Supervisors to our Boss. I don't want my skates crashing in the rain. Because there wasn't much time, it turned out that the Ashmedai was unconscious and could wake up at any moment, I only grabbed a bearing specifically used in wet conditions, and I put my inline skates and everything else in a backpack.
I had no choice but to wear sneakers. And it was very... srange. Almost like you're walking on something stiff. I used to roll and roll fast. This time I move one step at a time, time seems to pass slowly and in the same time it flies fast. I felt I had walked for a long time, but I didn't have as much distance as I did when I paddled on my inline skates.
We don't need Kayola to go to my Boss' place. There are points in every city in the world that connect the earth to where my Boss lives. In the city I lived in, the gate was under a bridge on the edge of town, which was on a swift-flowing river.
*
"Welcome home."
Whispered Martin, as we walked on the muddy ground, and it did not take long for my body to be drenched. The rain was not very heavy, but the pipes were firm. It's always like this, I don't understand how Santa Claus lives in the rain. Heavy rain, light rain, rainstorm, daytime rain, overcast rain. It's always rain.
I thought I wanted to moan every time I saw a movie made by human about Santa Claus, which said that Santa who liked to handing out gift lived among the snowdrifts. Santa Claus should appear in the rainy season, not on snowy Christmas.
"I never thought of this place as a home."
I whispered back to Martin, then followed the two Supervisors through the towering iron gate. We still have to walk about five hundred meters to get to a, I don't know what exactly it is... home? It's too complex to be called home. Ehm... a Castle? Perhaps more appropriately referred to a large house with elaborate forms and a spooky atmosphere. As you can imagine, a building that extends upward, with pointed roofs, standing alone in the midst of a super large grassland, with a gloomy clouds, moderate intensity rain, and sometimes lightning, as a background. To be honest, I feel guilty for ruining your belief in the home of Santa Claus, but yeah... that's exactly what it is.
One of the Supervisors, who had not carried Ashmedai, knocked at the wooden door painted black. Triple taps with regular pauses, and the door opened moments later. And voila... One of the Santa Claus waitresses is standing there. Guess what? You think they must be dwarves, or maybe fairies. Actually, this one's a good guess. The servants of Santa Claus are creatures that go by the name Grohl. Imagine a dwarf short creature, shaped like a troll, with fairy wings. Their ears has a pointy shape. And the words that come out of their mouths always, remember this, al-ways, sucks.
"Hey, Levent! Did you ask to be locked up at Black Christmas?" greet Grohl who opened the door. See, right? Even their opening lines are annoying.
"Hi, Black Eye." I greeted him, somewhat lazy. They don't deserve to be addressed, and they don't care whether we're friendly or not. The Grohl will always be a pain in the ass. Every Grohl has a unique distinction between one and the other. The one who opens this door has perfect black eyes. That's why they call him Black Eye.
The Supervisor who knocked at the door started to enter first. Now I remember the names of these two Supervisors. Sod and Mor. They were at my coronation as an Ardeon. The one who gives the things that the Ardeon uses, and paint tattoo pens on our skin.
Black Eye saw Ashmedai brought by the other Supervisor, named Mor, and then I saw the Black Eye's eye dilated in surprise. He looked frightened, and very shocked.
"Ashmedai? " Black Eye squeaking on Mor, answered only with a nod. Unbidden, Black Eye directly led the small contingent to the end of the staircase leading down the hall. There's two Grohl. It's so dark in here, the only light comes from Grohl's body that can glow in the dark, it looks like their bodies contain phosphorus.
The home of Santa Claus is more like a haunted castle than the home of a good-hearted man that loves to giggling 'ho-ho-ho'. I'm pretty sure Santa Claus is, in fact, a gothic lover.
"Green Thumb! " Black Eye yells at Grohl at the end of the hall, "Deliver Sod and Mor to our Boss! " then Black Eye let us down the stately white marble floors. I imagined the fun I'd gained by sliding back and forth over these stairs, with a pair of inline skates. Green Thumb waits for us at the other end of the stairs.
"Hey, Levent! You know what?! Black Christmas is empty! "
I nearly rolled my eyes. So today's theme is about Black Christmas, and their target today is me. Green Thumb walks to a small door made of wood. We follow him down into a super dark alley, lucky there's Green Thumb that guides us, he shines like a torch. I wanted to stop by to put on my inline skate, because I was starting to feel uncomfortable having to walk quietly like this. As I was about to stop, Green Thumb said, "Here it is. Come inside." He opened the door, and we ended up in a room---wait a minute, this was not the room I ever imagine.
I imagine we were driven to a dark office with a big table in the middle. Shining by a couple of candles light that gives a terrible silhouette of a great Santa Claus figure. To be honest, I've never scoured the castle of Santa Claus. The only room in this place I know is the hall where the Ardeon gathered, which also a dining room. Then the room I knew next was the kitchen, and the north wing, which was the Ardeon's bedroom. I never went to the Santa Claus room. He always comes to meet us in the hall.
Now I'm in a big round room made out like a garden. The floor here was neatly cut grass, the walls were covered with fresh-green and growing vines, overlapping with one another. Flowering bushes, some big trunks, fill a void of green overgrowth. In the middle of the park, there's a gazebo, carved from the trunk of a giant tree. I walked slowly, with a gawking face full of admiration at the place, until I didn't realize everyone had stopped, and I struck at Sod's back.
He turned, looked at me with his smug face, and then looked back at the figure inside the gazebo. I saw Sod's body flinch a bit, and so did Mor. I peeked in between the two of them, to find out what was going on so that the Supervisors who couldn't seem to be surprised by anything, gasped in shock.
If they're surprised because there's a lamp in the gazebo, which, frankly, surprises me because that is the only lamp I see in the castle, then my assumption that they're not easily startled is wrong. Then I saw Santa Claus, and someone sitting in front of him. And I took a jolt. Something like that is not supposed to be in here.
***
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