Young Writers Society

You open your eyes to an unfamiliar place.

At least, it initially looks unfamiliar.

Everything is dark. The few lights glowing from within houses and streetlights are quite dim; even the aurora above is. Snow is falling all around you in slow flurries, but you feel no cold. You scan the horizon even more. Buildings dot the landscape. They appear to have once been garbed in bright reds and greens and whites, but everything has become duller and broken. Broken toys litter abandoned alleys and lawns. As you look at the almost miniature houses and giant workshop in the distance, you realize you are standing in the North Pole.

And when you look down, you see that your clothes have been...changed. They have suddenly become "festive" in the loosest of terms. They are somehow related to Christmas, even if they are from obscure Christmas movies.

Your sole clue to what has happened is a note near your feet.



And, most importantly of all, you are not alone.

All she'd done was blink. Once. A single moment ago, she'd stood in the savannah, the breeze whipping at her loose, thin desert garb and the sun setting over the horizon, silhouetting their encampment.

Now she was in a very gaudy, blue-and-white sweater, strange, bluish pants, and fur, knee-high boots. Her bright orange curls that had, only a moment ago, been pulled back in a tight bun fell about her shoulders and face. A silvery scarf was wrapped around her neck and warm fur mittens covered her hands.

Tasha Hunter stepped back in surprise, eyes wide as she spun around to survey her surroundings...and instantly coming face-to-face with something between a satyr and a demon. It had goatlike legs, cloven hooves, and a long tail, but from the torso up it was quite human - blonde haired and blue eyed with a long scar across his face. Two curled horns grew out of his forehead and his teeth were unnaturally pointed. He seemed as shocked as she did and went stumbling back as he suddenly came face-to-face with her, tripping over his own hooves and landing in the snow. He was wearing a red and green shirt that read 'Frohe Weihnachten' and had cheesy deer silhouettes flying across the front.

"Ach!" he yelped in surprise, scrambling back to his feet and spinning around to get a better look at himself. Of all the things Kratzer could've become, why did it have to be Santa's evil twin?!

When he awoke, he instinctively reached for a cloak that simply wasn't there.

He sat up--dazed--and patted himself down to see if he had fallen asleep in it. But the fabric that ran through his skeletal fingers wasn't thin and ratty; it was soft to the touch, almost exactly like the pajamas he had been wearing before he fell asleep.

He glanced down, skeletal jaw dropping to convey a frown when he saw that he was wearing something oddly red, and oddly fitting his thin form. He unsteadily got to his feet and looked himself over.

And then his jaw dropped even further.

Was he wearing a Santa costume?

He raised a hand up to cover his gaping mouth, but froze when his hand touched something that felt suspiciously like a fake beard. He frantically tried to tug it off. Despite his many efforts, however, it remained exactly where it was.

"G-God?" he called out, turning his attention to the place he was in. "This isn't funny-"

He stared.

This place...

It looked just like the North Pole would have in a Christmas movie or book, but the color and life that should have populated it had all fallen away.

That was when he saw the note.

He leaned down and picked it up, carefully holding it as he read through each line. His face returned to a more neutral expression, though his shaking hand would have betrayed how worried he was.

He glanced back up at the deserted North Pole. There were two people there. One looked downright demonic, while the other just seemed to be dressed in casual holiday clothing. He frantically glanced around for some place to hide or something to wear that would hide his appearance, but nothing came to him.

He gulped.

(Metaphorically, of course.)

"Was zur Hölle geht-" Kratzer started, before he registered that the skeleton had spoken in English. "Ach, vhat's going on here?" he said, looking towards the letter. "I don't suppose zat tells us vhat's going on zis time?"

"This time? What happened last time, daemon?" Tasha grunted, glancing towards the paper and taking a subtle step away from the skeleton.

"I'm not a demon!"

"Then what are you, pray tell?"

"A really ficked up reindeer-thing," he grumbled, turning back to Grim. "Vhat's zat say, again?"

Grim froze when he realized the man was talking to him. He had met many strange people over the span of the last few months, but he still had trouble accepting that someone wouldn't fear him just because he was made of bones alone.

His grip on the note tightened.

Maybe...Maybe the Santa outfit wasn't so bad? At the very least, they couldn't tell who he was. He was just some strange talking skeleton. He'd eagerly take that over being feared for his true identity.

"I'll just read it," he said, his voice deceptively confident. He tried to quell the shaking of his hand. When that failed, he decided to ignore it instead.

He read the entirety of the note, then glanced up at the two.

"'Mistress Shadow'?" Tasha frowned. "I've heard that name before. From demons. You recognize it?" she asked them.

"Again, I'm not a demon, I'm just a strange reindeer person...thing...Nein, I don't. Guess we need to...save...Christmas then?"

"What's Christmas?" Tasha inquired.

This time, he didn’t even wake up. There was no sleep that preceded the brutal transition to the different reality that surrounded him. In a moment, he was there.

Though it had only been days since escaping his last reality-bending venture, he had not been expecting it so soon. He faltered, taking a step forward to steady himself as he looked around at the dismally decorated town and the few residents within it.

The first thing he noticed was that he was not alone. A small group of people stood a few yards down the road from him. But the second, most immediate realization was that he was wearing clothes that were not his own. With an angey frown, he looked himself up and down, taking in the bright green too and pants with white and red accents. He reached up and felt a hat on his head, but only after brushin against his ears - which had somehow grown pointy like that or a harpy, but not nearly as long as a goblin’s. He pawed at them for afew seconds before he saw the note on the ground.

Though he recognized two voices from ahead, he waited until he finished reading to go join them. Begrudgingly, he accepted their new fate with their current task to “save Christmas.”

Walking up beside Tasha, he stared at Kratzer, who seeme dto have been gifted the most unfortunate form of them all.

“Okay, so how the hell do we save Christmas?”

Realizing that the newcomer was busy talking with the two other people present, Grim took the opportunity. He slowly started to back away from the trio, eying the different buildings for a good hiding spot out of the corner of his eye. Finding one that he could easily cower behind, he started to make a dash for the little Christmas hut...

...and promptly tripped thanks to the unfamiliar pair of boots on his feet. He let out a startled cry as he landed face first into a nearby pile of snow.

Kratzer jumped and looked up as Grim tripped, wincing a little as he clattered to the ground. "You alright?" he asked, passing Tasha the note and trotting over, sliding a little as his hooves lost traction on the ice. He yelped as he fell again, cussing under his breath.

"What-" she started to ask James what in the world he was doing there, then stopped upon realizing what a terrible question that was. He'd probably spontaneously appeared, just like her. "I don't suppose you know what Christmas is?"

Grim frantically rubbed the snow out of the crevices in his skull that it had managed to get stuck in as he hurried back to his feet--his eye sockets, the gaps between his teeth, and in his nose. If he had a face to give facial expressions with, he knew he would have looked like a deer caught in headlights.

He hesitated.

"I'm fine," he managed to get out, hoping that the fake beard obscured just how nervous his pseudo-smile was. He looked down at the man sprawled across the ice and snow. "Do you need help?"

He held out a barely shaking skeletal hand.

The vampire shook his head. "Nein, danke, I just need to get a hang of...hooves, I guess." He scrambled back to his feet, slipping a little on the slick ground, but managing to keep his footing this time. He couldn't wait for this to be over.

He paused, looking up at Grim. "There's no need to be so nervous, you know."

James’s gaze idly followed over to the skeleton of a man. Apparently he was wrong. Whomever had been cursed with a skeletal frame was wors eoff than even Kratzer was. As for himself, he was grateful it was only his ears that seemed to be affected.

“It’s a holiday,” he said in answer to Tasha’s question. “From Kratzer’s world, I believe, and other alternate realities of it. That’s about all I remember.”

His hand slowly returned to his side.

"You're not afraid of me?" he slowly asked, looking at the man in disbelief--now that they were standing so close to each other, Grim started to realize that he looked oddly familiar. If he had the face, he would have frowned. All that he got instead was a slight lowering of his jaw.

Kratzer blinked. "I'm a vampire assassin gone Krampus. I don't think a skeleton is really any scarier than that. I mean, Hell, I've met a lot of worse people," he shrugged.

"Wonderful," Tasha said dryly. "Terribly descriptive. So you have no idea how to, uh, save it either, then?"

A vampire assassin? Why did that sound so familiar-

Oh.

Oh no.

No wonder the man had looked so familiar! They had met at that church; both of them had been turned into angels then. A name came to him as he stared at the man's face in growing horror: Kratzer. This man's name was Kratzer, and he had heard the truth about him. Kratzer had learned that he was a grim reaper--he had never disclosed that he was the Grim Reaper. The man would undoubtedly put the pieces together if he mentioned having met before, so Grim shut his mouth tight and tried to think of something else to say.

He turned to look in the direction of the other two present, then had to hold back a gasp of horror when he recognized the man to be none other than James. No, no, no! Why did this have to happen to him? His face was in plain view, and his hands were clearly skeletal. It didn't matter if they weirdly accepted skeletons. They would never accept him!