He folded the scrap of paper, put it in the right drawer and shoved it shut before he could change his mind.
Bo Balder lives and works near Amsterdam. She’s the first Dutch author to be published in the famous F&SF and Clarkesworld. Her short fiction has also appeared in Nature Futures, Futuristica Vol. I and other places. Her SD novel The Wan” by Pink Narcissus Press, was published in January 2016.
Visit her website: www.boukjebalder.nl
A Visit at St. Nick’s
Gregg Chamberlain
Art: Jessica Good
Is that so?” asked Santa Claus.
The little girl nodded. “Uh huh.”
“A time traveller!” Santa exclaimed. “That’s what you’re going to be when you grow up?”
Another nod.
Santa chuckled. “Well, isn’t that wonderful? Smile now.”
He gestured, and together they turned to face the camera. There was a flash. The little girl’s eyes blinked with the after-glare.
“Maybe we’ll cross paths again during one of your trips,” said Santa, still chuckling. “Time to go now.”
He helped the little girl slide off his lap and into the waiting arms of a pretty, tall, young elf standing beside Santa’s throne. She led the little girl by the hand over to where a harried-looking woman waited at the exit from Santa’s Christmas Workshop in the crowded mall.
“Ready to go, Lizzy?” the woman asked. Already she was looking around the huge mall foyer, searching for her next destination and also the one after that.
The little girl nodded and took her mother’s hand. The smiling elf held out a clipboard and a pen.
“Just mark whether you’d like prints or digitals,” she said. “Also fill in either the email or the postal address line.”
She watched as the woman’s face scrunched up in thought, forehead wrinkling with stress lines. A single strand of silver hair showed among the brown. Still smiling, the elf reached out, placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder, and gently squeezed.
“Hey,” she said, as the woman looked up. “It’s okay. You’re doing fine.” Her smile broadened. “You’re a very good mother.”
The woman blinked in confusion. Then smiled slowly in return. “Thanks,” she said, and finished filling out the form.
After getting back her clipboard along with the advance payment from a debit card swipe, the elf watched the mother and daughter quickly vanish into the mall crowd. She returned to Santa’s Christmas Workshop, taking up a position beside another girl, also dressed in elf costume. A third helper elf manned the camera while a fourth was stationed beside the throne waiting to escort yet another child away after his visit with Santa.
“How you doing, Kara?” she asked.
Her fellow elf groaned. “My feet hurt. My legs hurt. My back hurts. I think even my smile hurts. So looking forward to break time. Don’t you just hate this Christmas Eve shift, Liz? It’s like a freaking madhouse.”
“Always is when everyone’s in a rush to get things done,” Elizabeth replied. “All those last-minute items we all have to check off our lists.”
She looked back at the crowd, just in time to see little Lizzy’s mother give her daughter a surprise hug. Elizabeth the Elf felt a warm, new memory slip suddenly into place. A sad smile appeared on her face.
“Especially if there’s something important you need to do.”
Gregg Chamberlain, a community newspaper reporter four decades in the trade, lives in Ontario, Canada, with his missus, Anne, and a clowder of four cats. Besides writing genre fiction, he crafts zombie filk and indulges in the Canadian tradition of puns on the unsuspecting.
Spaceman
Florence Vincent
Art: P Emerson Williams
In a quiet bar towards the northern pole of a cold blue moon, the blind man sits and rubs his head, trying to remember where he left his eyes.
He should have known that it would come to this. That boarding the Exxtris for one last cruise was not a decision he should have made, not after what happened last time.
Like always he can remember, if not how and when he has come to be in the bar, at least why. The images loop in the front of his head with astonishing, painful clarity; he watches and despairs.
Here he is sucking the endocrinal fluid from the crested pajibet’s spines (so very moreish) and doing impressions with his lower mandibles.
Here he is inhaling two cartons of Drunksteam and running slow circles on the ceiling of the arboretum.
Here he is licking the venom pads of the beautiful Blashphelt girl with the soft wet mouth and telling her about his trick with the eyes. That, thinking back, was his worst mistake.
What is it? he wonders, sliding hands and feet around him and finding a cold, polished counter, a damp carpet. What is it that makes him do these things? The room smells of alcohol, and of waste material and slightly of burning, though the heat sensors at the back of his head indicate a low, stable temperature. It seems to be a bar, though it is exceedingly quiet. As his sub-mind runs a location marker, picking up cues from his surroundings to determine where exactly he is, the blind man makes a list of promises to himself.
No more booze cruises through the galaxy. No more getting intoxicated and demanding to be dropped at the nearest bar. No more taking his eyes out to impress the ladies.
