the snowman and the saint

“Christ, it’s hot,” Max said to himself as he squinted at the cloudless sky under the shield of his right hand. He was standing just outside the sliding doors of the Caltex Star Mart where he was about to start his shift. The doors behind him trundled open as someone inside walked past.
“D’jou say something?” Jeff was finishing his shift now, apparently doing one last task, walking into the back of the store lugging a large cardboard box.
“Just that it’s really hot,” he called over his shoulder.
“Not in here,” Jeff sang back sounding far away.
Max stood outside for a moment longer, savoring the heat baking off the dark concrete and the sun glinting off the roof over the petrol bowsers. Despite the fact that it was stinking hot, he loved this weather. It had the summer vibe that he enjoyed so much. Plus, when it was hot chicks tended to wear less clothes. Jeff had come back now and was standing just inside the store, his hair dancing around in the flow of the airconditioner situated right above the door.
“You still out there? What are you looking at?”
“ Nothing.” Max turned to face his co-worker and smiled sheepishly. Jeff was staring at him with a “you idiot” expression plastered across his boyish face. They stood like that for maybe five seconds until Jeff grinned and said,

“Anyways, I’m off to my girl’s house to drink some beers.”
“Dude, it’s ten a.m.” Max huffed.
“Yeah, but it’s Friday. Later.”
“Okay, see ya.”

Jeff walked past him and Max was about to step inside when,

“Oh, yeah, there’s some boxes that need to go in the freezer. They’re next to the drinks fridge.”
“Why aren’t they already in the freezer, did you piss off the delivery guy again?”

A broad smile spread slowly.

“Yep, have fun.”
“Ya bastard.”

Max could hear Jeff giggling as he walked across the carpark towards the bus stop about 60 metres away. He turned around and took a step towards the doors, waited a few seconds for them to open and then stepped inside. The air-con blasted icy air on his head and down the front of his shirt. It was an interesting contrast to have the thirty-nine degree Celsius heat roasting him from behind and this arctic gale blowing down the front but he had work to do so he reluctantly stepped further into the store to allow the doors to close.

Walking between one of the many shelved aisles, pausing every now and then to adjust or straighten something, Max spotted the 6 ft high stack of coffee colored boxes next to the fridge. He sighed as he heaved the top box off the stack and cradled it in his arms. The heavy box turned Max’s gait into an awkward plod, making him lean back as he walked so he look like zombie-Bernie in Weekend at Bernie’s 2, or was he the only one who had seen that movie? After ambling his way through the store to the freezer he fumbled with the over sized latch/handle nearly dropping his cargo in the process until he finally got it and the door swung open with a hiss. Ice flakes crunched underfoot with a sound that for some reason reminded Max of someone eating glass. ‘Someone’s got this thing cranked up too high’ he thought as he peered over the top of the box trying to see where Jeff had put the other boxes. ‘There they are’. He dropped the box on top of another one and arched his back. Then something made his frozen breath catch in his throat.

Standing in the middle of the freezer was a seven-foot tall snowman.

“Well, that’s weird.”

Max had never seen a snowman with his own eyes before. He’d never even seen snow. You don’t get much snow in Australia. He was fascinated. He walked up to it and ran a finger across his belly. It made a soft scraping sound that Max heard clearly despite the rather loud rumbling of the freezer compressor. Max looked up the face of the behemoth. From this close he couldn’t see much, just the corner of a smile and a single eye. A shiny eye gleaming down at him. Max took a step back and surveyed the snowman from this further vantage point. The black dots making up the smile, the eyes, the row buttons down his front were all shiny. What he had seen on american shows on tv suggested to Max that those parts were normally made of lumps of charcoal. Well, the fact that there was a snowman in his freezer was odd enough, he supposed.

His hand reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile phone and hit Jeff on the speed dial.

“Yeah?”
“Hey, Jeff, you on the bus yet?”
“Nah, mate. What do you want?”
“Umm…did you build a snowman in the freezer?”

A pause, Max could just imagine Jeff putting on his “you-idiot” expression again.

“A snowman…”
“Yeah.”
“There’s a snowman in the freezer…”
“Yeah.”

Another pause.

“You’re shitting me.”
“No, there is a snowman in the freezer.”

Max could hear Jeff get up and start walking.

“This isn’t just some ploy to get me in there so I can move those boxes, is it?”

Max was getting exasperated.

“No, there is a freaking snowman in the freaking freezer, what are you, deaf? Get over here and check this out.”
“Alright, alright, I’m coming, but there better really be a snowman in the freezer.”

Max hung up, his eyes still fixed on the snowman and remained there until he heard the crunch of footsteps behind him.

“Interestink.” Jeff said in his Colonel Klink impersonation.
“Yeah, that’s weird. Isn’t that weird?”
“Yep, that’s pretty weird.”

About half a minute passed while the two figures stood in frozen awe of this mysterious object.

“Well, I’m getting cold,” said Jeff, “what should we do with it?”
“What do you mean?” Max was still transfixed.
“I mean, what are we going to do with it. There’s some more deliveries to be made today and with it there we won’t have enough room. We gotta get rid of it.”
“That seems like a shame, have you ever seen a snowman before?”
“Nope, but to tell you the truth, this kinda freaks me out. Let’s stick it out front, it should cause some interesting reactions before it melts.”

The freezer compressor clicked off loudly and the boys jumped a little though neither would admit it. A bead of sweat rolled down the back of Jeff’s neck but it felt more like an ice cube and he shivered involuntarily, but he couldn’t decide if that was from the cold or something else. Misty clouds puffed from their mouths and rose to the ceiling and it was the only sign that they were still alive.

Finally, Max sighed and said “Alright then, go get the trolley and we’ll put it out front.” Jeff was relieved to get out of the freezer. He wasn’t built for arctic conditions. Frost again crunched underfoot as he left the room, Max heard this as he stood mute and staring.

“Hey, Max,” came Jeff’s voice from just outside the door, “customer.”

It took a great effort to tear his eyes from the snowman but Max managed to turn himself around start to walk reluctantly out the door.

When Max walked back into the shop there was a man walking through the sliding doors, removing his wallet from his back pocket as he did so. He was a chubby old fellow and he could certainly have done with some more clothes. Apparently, he didn’t handle the heat as well as others and was forced into the grotesque attire of a singlet and stubbies. He held out the bags of ice he wanted to buy and a fifty-dollar note while trying to initiate some idle chitchat. But Max hardly heard him. His mind was thirty feet away in the freezer. He handed the man his change, staring past him at Jeff wheeling the oversized moving trolley between aisles of porno magazines and breakfast cereals. With the customer still jabbering and laughing at his own jokes, Max felt it was only polite to stand and smile until he was finished but he was watching Jeff out of the corner of his eye as he walked backwards through the freezer door, lifting the wheels of the trolley over the lip of the door frame. If Jeff hadn’t been so distracted he might have noticed that the fat old guy at the counter was the same man who had come in a few hours earlier. The same annoying fat old guy that Jeff hadn’t really been very polite to. But Jeff didn’t notice and, besides, it would be pretty hard for Jeff to remember every customer wasn’t exactly very nice to. The customer had stopped quacking and after a bit of an awkward silence (for Max anyway, he got the impression that this guy was too oblivious to everything to ever feel awkward) Max realised that he was waiting for some sort of response from him. Not knowing what the question was Max had no idea what to say but he wanted to get rid of this annoyance so he just said

“Okay, bye.”

Not understanding that this was a rather rude dismissal the customer chuckled his goodbye and waddled out the store seemingly convinced he had just made a new friend.

“Max…”

Jeff was standing in the doorway of the freezer, his hands on the frame seemingly the only thing keeping him on his feet. His normally tanned face was as pale as watery milk.

“It’s gone…”

Max ran to the door, squeezed past Jeff and stared at the spot where the snowman had been.

It was still there.

“What’s the matter with you, it’s right there.”

Jeff was visibly sweating, little globs of moisture coursed across his face as he looked pleadingly at Max.

“He wasn’t a second ago. I swear that he wasn’t…this is freaking me out! THERE WAS A BIG EMPTY SPOT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROOM. I’m not making this up. Why would I be making this up?”
“I don’t know,” said Max calmly, “maybe you’ve had too much sun, Jeff. Or…have you been smoking the wacky tobaccy?”

Jeff huffed out what sort of sounded like a laugh but it was pained and desperate. He marched up to snowman.

“Are we moving it now, do you want the trolley,” asked Max. He was started to get a little unnerved by this whole experience. Jeff was usually so easy going, not easily rattled, but he had never encountered a magic disappearing and reappearing snowman before and whose to say that’s not gonna mess you up some. The fascination that Max originally had with the snowman was starting to melt into unease.

“I’m not moving it yet,” Jeff said more to the snowman than Max, and in the tone a frustrated parent would use with a petulant child. “First I’m gonna get rid of this stupid grin.”

He reached up to the moronic smile made up of the shiny black buttons and attempted to pull one off with his thumb and fore-finger. He yelped in pain and his finger went into his mouth in an involuntary action.

“What?!” Max shouted just as involuntarily, “What, happened?!”
“It bit me!”
“What?! He bit you?!”
“Not literally, you idiot. Those…things…whatever the hell they are, they’re really sharp! Shit.”

Jeff took a few steps backwards, eyeing the snowman warily. A single drop of blood ran down the snowman’s chin from the button in the corner of his mouth. Two more paces and Jeff was standing in line with Max. He pulled his finger out of his mouth and surveyed the damage. The tip glistened with the pinkish mixture of blood and saliva and running diagonally across the surface was a thin almost non-existent line. Jeff put a little pressure just below the cut and the line immediately turned red as blood flowed freely down his finger. He thrust the finger towards Max.

“Look,” he said like a kid wanting someone to feel sorry for his boo-boo.

But Max didn’t look. His eyes were fixed on the belly of the snowman, which had turned from opaque to translucent.

“I think that your cut finger,” he said slowly and swallowed hard before continuing,” is the least of our problems right now. Have a look at his gut.”

Jeff’s eyes followed Max’s own outstretched finger pointing to the midsection of the snowman. Out of the blue and glassy abdomen stared the dead gaze of a similarly blue and glassy face like the head of some long-deceased Neanderthal entombed in pure arctic ice. The eyes and mouth were open forming an expression of shock and awe between the stubbly, chubby jowls and the lank, dirty-dish-water hair plastered across the broad forehead.

“And there’s Oliver the delivery man,” said Jeff softly,” and I thought he just up and left because I insulted him…a lot. Come to think of it, I don’t think I remember him actually leaving.”

Max could imagine why. It was usual practice for Jeff to trade verbal punches with Olly until he went back to reading whatever porno he had grabbed from the shelf. He didn’t notice much else when he was ‘reading’.

“Well, at least some good has come from this snowman. He wasn’t a very nice guy ” said Jeff.

“Agreed, but all the same I think maybe we should call the cops, what do you say?”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Jeff enthusiastically, “I’ll call the cops and you stand here and make sure he doesn’t disappear again, okay?”

Jeff was out the door before Max could answer. He picked up the phone and dialed the local cop shop. He didn’t bother to mention the snowman, just that there was a head in his freezer. They told him that they’d send someone over. He hung up and went back into the freezer.

“Shit, not again.”

The snowman had disappeared again and along with it: Max. Jeff started to feel a little light-headed and then realised he had stopped breathing. He gulped in the freezing air but it caught in his throat when he saw the blood.

There was quite a lot of it, running in two long parallel smears from where the snowman had been standing to a deep freezer recessed into the wall. Jeff suddenly became very aware of the pounding of his heart in his chest and ears. With a trembling hand he reached for the handle and paused to steady himself before he flung the door open.

Max looked asleep. Ice crystals had started to form on his hair and eyebrows despite the fact he couldn’t have been in there for much longer than a few minutes but other than that he looked fine. Jeff was relieved having been expected some mangled carcass, a mess of broken bones and organs sprayed across the inside of the freezer. He forgot about the blood for a moment and tried to wake Max.

“Max?”

Nothing.

“Max? Wake up, dude.”

Still nothing. Jeff poked Max with his foot softly. Then a little harder. Just as the relief he had felt started to wash away Max slowly opened his eyes. He blinked a few times and looked around his little coffin and finally at Jeff. A grin spread uncontrollably on Jeff’s face.

“You okay? What are you doing in here?”

Max blinked a few more times and his frosticled eyebrows knitted together as if he was trying very hard to remember something.

“You know what?” he said at last, “I have no idea.”

Jeff laughed nervously.

“Hey, help me up will ya? I think my legs have gone to sleep.”

It was then that Jeff remembered the blood and the colour drained from his face again. His gaze dropped down to the floor, specifically, the frozen pool of blood around the stumps which were all that remained of Max’s legs. At first, Max didn’t realise what Jeff was looking at but when he too stared at the floor he was puzzled.

“Now, that IS weird. I could have sworn I had legs this morning.”

Max started to laugh and Jeff put it down to some strange shock related mania. He wasn’t feeling well now. He felt like throwing up but that urge disappeared when the shadow fell across the two of them and Jeff heard a sound that chilled him to the bone. A deep exhalant breath like the sound of a far away avalanche blew into his ear and the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and froze. An icy current flowed down his shirt just like one Max had experienced earlier in the day only this one carried with it the stench of decaying flesh and death. Max had stopped laughing now, his face blank and just as pale as Jeff’s. He could see what Jeff could not. The snowman’s gaping mouth was rimmed with blood now, the shiny buttons split in half into splintery shards shimmering with the flow of the viscous fluid down them. Jeff’s eyes were clenched shut as he waited for what ever was about to happen. The mouth leaned in closer and spoke.

“You’ve been naughty.”

Blood sprayed across Max’s face as the icy spear rammed through Jeff’s chest from between his shoulder blades. At least it was warm.

The snowman devoured them both as he had done to many others many times over the past few months. He enjoyed the taste of blood and flesh, as do most demons, but that was not why he fed. The Master who summoned him, a great wielder of the Red Majik and Slave Lord of the Elves, must be obeyed. The Master has powers. Strong ones. Powers that allow him to travel faster than anything the snowman had ever known. Powers that allowed him to watch while remaining unseen. The snowman could feel the Master’s eyes on him as he digested his kill, watching to see if his bidding was being done.

“I have done as thou hast bade, thine UberLord,” the snowman’s voice was but a hiss.

“I have seen, my Bergen. I hope your hunger is satisfied.”

“For now.”

But the snowman was hungry for more than flesh. He longed to be in his homeland. He missed the sweet caress of the crisp mountain air. This false air in this false cavern made him feel ill. He missed the sheer thrill of the hunt, chasing busty frauleins across the powdery slopes of the Bavarian Alps. These skinny sun-stained kids were no challenge. He missed his ancient free form, in which he could fly through the trees like the wind. He loathed this ridiculous shape the Master had confined him in. But the Master did as he pleased, dragging Bergen all over the world to consume naughty boys and girls. Rude, ungrateful and impolite boys and girls. Oh, how Bergen wished for the Master to rediscover his pure altruistic spirit that he had abandoned centuries ago so that he could be released. Unfortunately, now the Master was bitter and stubborn and a little senile, so there was little hope for that.

The snowman sighed as he felt his spirit being drawn back into his shiny, red orb of a prison that hung from a tree in the Master’s home. He watched his body dissolve into the air itself and then he was in his cell, staring longingly through the crimson wall at the window opposite the tree and the endless snowfields beyond.

When the police arrived at the Star Mart, there was no one there and they found no head or any other body parts in the freezer. They watched the surveillance tapes and saw nothing unusual except for a fat, nearly naked old man who had come into the shop twice to buy ice, which they dismissed as having any importance, and the fact that the two boys and the delivery man had gone into the freezer but neither had came out. Needless to say, they were quite perplexed.

Maybe if they had gotten there sooner they might have seen a cherry red Kingswood that had been parked outside the service station, just out of the view of the outdoor surveillance cameras, for the better part of the morning. They might have seen the fat, near-nude, old man sitting in it with the air conditioner on full and bags of ice propped up around him. And they might have seen him chuckling to himself as he crossed off three names from a list held in a clip-board before he and his car simply disappeared.


He's making a list and checking it twice,
Gonna find our who's naughty and nice,
Santa Claus is coming to town.

You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town.

He sees you when you're sleeping,
He knows when you're awake,
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake.

You better watch out, you better not cry
Better not pout, I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town.


word count: 3555