I Hate Shopping
Dec. 27th, 2010 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
danalwynI hate going shopping near Christmas. I hate it because it's crowded. I hate it because it's about as far as you can get from jolly without involving drugs. And I hate it because every year, something ends up burning down, or blowing up.
This year they did both.
“Why am I here?” Raven demanded, tucking her hands into her sleeves.
“What happened to your determination to never let me out of your sight?” I asked.
“It vanished when I realized that you were going to drag me out here,” she grumbled, glaring at me. She then transferred that glare to the third member of the party, who was busy trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue, “And why did you have to bring Alice along?”
“I had to bring somebody,” I said, which, according to regulations, was true. I had, of
course, flaunted that before, but I was in no mood to do so now, “Which means, with Amanda on vacation and Daren stuck on autopsy, that leaves her or Sam, and I am not taking Sam.”
“Why not? I like Sam.”
“Everybody likes Sam. Normally.”
“So? I get along with her better then I do with the vapid metalhead,” Raven jerked a thumb just as Alice, who was still staring upwards, ran full tile into a shopping cart.
“First, because we are at a shopping mall,” I waved my hand around at the shopping mall, which was barely visible in the distance, somewhere on the far side of the handicap slots, although its brilliant array of Christmas lights was visible several counties away, “And second, because whenever Sam hears Christmas carols she simply cannot help singing along.”
Raven shuddered, “We could staple her mouth shut.”
“Then she would just hum, and that would be even worse,” I said, feeling the tape measure in my hand snap back together.
“So why are we here anyway? You're violating my resolution to never go shopping anywhere near Christmas,” Raven said.
“We're catching snowflakes,” Alice volunteered, catching one on her tongue and in the process tumbling into a shopping cart, through the bottom of the shopping cart, and bouncing off the wreckage of what had been a shopping cart.
“Whatever,” Raven said, leaning against a brightly polished truck.
“Hey, get your hands off of that!” a man belabored with huge plastic bags staggered up, “you're gonna leave handprints all over it. I just got it clean!”
Raven gave him a look of disregard so intent it normally could only be exchanged with members of different species, “It's a four-by-four truck. It's meant to go outdoors and be muddy and stuff. And it's snowing! How did you plan to keep it clean?”
“Just get your hands off it,” he snapped, dropping his packages in a flurry of Holiday Rage and slapping her hand away.
One would naively think that, with a name like Raven, the thing she would most often hear would be questions about how she got her name. From personal observation though, the thing she most often hears is lame pickup lines She is not classically beautiful, but there's something about that eagle-like nose, that strong jaw, the way her cheekbones almost jut out that makes her look strong, like a sculpture made of steel, a precision machine built to cut through all resistance. There is an iron determination in her that shines through, a certainty that seems to make her endlessly alluring.
But beneath that cold, iron exterior, deep beneath the wall of ice, lies the beating, breathing heart of a closeted pyromaniac, which leads to the second-most often used statement around Raven: 'Why is _____ on fire?', where the blank has been filled with approximately ninety percent of the non-proper nouns in the English language, and a fair amount of the proper nouns as well. I filled in the blank when I asked it now.
“Why are that man's pants on fire?”
“Spontaneous combustion,” Raven said, innocently. There is something strange about Raven's innocence, it makes it impossible to believe that it is actually innocence.
“That seems to happen a lot around you.”
“That's just discrimination,” Raven accused me.
“Why?”
“You're accusing me just because I happen to be in the same place,” Raven said.
I gave her a very long look.
“What?” she glared back.
I can outglare her, I write her performance reviews.
“Oh fine,” Raven kicked at the ground, “I wish that I could leave a real smear on his truck.”
There was a click behind me.
“Alice, did you just take something out?”
“Um...yes.”
“Is it a rocket launcher, or other anti-vehicle weapon?”
“Uh...yes?”
“Is it going to be put away by the time I turn around, or am I going to have to get sarcastic here?”
There was another click, this time the holstering click instead of the drawing click, followed by the sound of someone petulantly talking to the ground, “But I want to blow something up.”
“I thought that you were catching snowflakes,” I groaned. Honestly, dealing with these two was like dealing with a hyperactive herd of cats locked in a trash can.
“I was. I want to blow something up and catch snowflakes,” Alice complained.
“Why are we here anyway?” Raven demanded.
“We're measuring parking spaces,” I said, tossing the tape measure in her direction and nearly beaning her in the process.
“Why are we doing that?”
“Because they're too thin,” I gave a rough measurement with my arms, “They should be nine feet wide. They were nine feet wide last week. Now they're about seven and a half.”
“What?”
“Maybe the parking lot shrunk,” Alice suggested.
“It's actually gotten wider. I think the street's shrunk,” I looked at the sidewalk, which seemed thinner then it had last time I had been here, and was strewn with detritus from a crash or two. Definitely the parking lot was bigger then it should have been. I hated it when this happened.
“That's sort of a sick and twisted genius,” Raven said, understanding.
“Hey, you there!” it was not the man with the truck now, but a security guard, “What are
you doing? We've got a complaint about you!”
“Measuring the parking spaces,” Alice smiled bouncily. As in her smile was bouncing. Because the rest of her was.
“Not another one,” the guard muttered, and then lifted his radio to his mouth, “It's another one of those parking guys. Okay, yeah. Usual place.”
He put the radio back down, “Look, I'm supposed to take you to the manager's office.”
“Fine with me,” I said. I wanted to talk to the man behind this all anyway.
The mall's central office was accessible off of a door in a non-descript storefront, the entryway of which had been turned into a foyer half full of plush furniture and fishing magazines, and half-full of a giant hulking man-shaped wall in a bad suit. If he were flying on an airplane he would have to take up an entire row. He might even take up an entire plane.
“More complainers, eh? Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't go around saying crazy things about parking spaces if you know what's good for you,” the thug said, crossing his arms, “but if you want to start something, go right ahead and get it started before we-”
The shot went wide and blasted a cheap ceramic lamp off the table because both Raven and I instinctively grabbed Alice before she could get the gun all the way out.
“But he said-” she protested.
“Not what he meant!” the two of us said in uniform, and shoved her back. This is why I wanted Raven along; Sam is too soft on Alice sometimes, and with two of us it gives us twice the chance that we can catch her before she does something stupid. Or sometimes before she does two things that are stupid. Usually someone stops her before the counting gets any higher.
“Uh, I-”
“Look, it's the holiday season. You should be having a good time. You should be relaxing. You should be going home to your family,” I said, stepping close to the gaping thug in the suit, “You should not be spending your Christmas lying on a slab because you got your head improperly ventilated by a girl who carries four shotguns in her pants.”
“It's not four. It's three and a sniper rifle,” Alice complained, tucking her Desert Eagle back into her jacket. The way Alice dresses it was hard to imagine she had enough space to hide a single bullet in her clothing, let alone enough firepower to take on a small army, but I was not about to give away all of her secrets.
The thug got control of himself and gestured toward the back, “Down the hall, third door on the left.”
“Right, thanks,” I said, heading up the hallway, pausing about ten feet in, “Alice, put it away.”
“Awww...”
The third door on the left crackled when I touched it. When I went to turn the door handle, the entire door shattered into about a thousand pieces. What was on the other side was clearly not in the back of even a rather spacious mall, even if they had built it out into the parking lot. For one thing, the room was made of very homey looking polished wood, almost mirror-like in its polish, extending up thirty feet into the sky. Beneath a ceiling made of logs long conveyer belts moved along a floor approximately the size of a large warehouse, filled with package after package of cheap plastic toys.
“We aren't where I think we are, are we?” Raven asked, glancing at a long line of man-sized wooden nutcrackers against a wall.
I sniffed. The air even smelled of pine and gingerbread, “We're definitely in one of the super-dimensional north pole factories.”
“Oh, I knew there was a reason I hate Christmas,” Raven muttered.
“Look! A bear!” Alice pointed. And it was. A teddy bear, of a sort. A large teddy bear, about twice my height, his stuffing shifting from side to side with every ponderous step. A large teddy bear with real, glinting claws.
“If you'll follow me,” he growled. Or tried to growl. Honestly for the body size he had he must have inhaled enough helium to float the Hindenburg in order to get his voice up that high. Then he shuffled off, across a catwalk, over another line of the giant wooden nutcrackers, and a continuing line of flocking and ribbons coming out of a great machine that had to have been put together by preschoolers under the influence.
The room he led us too was large, high ceilings, high windows showing an endless, snowy landscape, widely spaced walls, all to give an impression of dominance to the single desk in the middle of the floor. It was a lot of effort, but it can be hard to act dominant when you are only three feet tall.
“My name,” the hunchbacked figure in pastel green looked up with an expression that would have done Scrooge proud, “is Bobbo.”
“Bobbo?” I asked.
“Yeah, you wanna make something of it?” he asked.
“And you're one of Santa's elves, I take it.”
“Former. Former. We're independent workers now. Freelance holiday specialists. Our own bosses, our own masters,” Bobbo said, pushing back from the desk. For a moment all you could see of him was the tip of his pointed hat bobbing around the table before he appeared from the side, still hunched over, and glaring at everyone.
“From the fact that you don't seem surprised we exist, I take it you're from the Bureaus,” he said, glaring at us.
“Maybe,” I did not bother to correct the misconception.
“Well, let me tell you then, just go on home. You got no place here.”
“You can at least tell us what you're doing,” I said.
“Just spreadin' a little holiday cheer around. Doin' things for people. Givin' 'em a helping hand. You know how it is,” Bobbo said.
“You're shrinking parking spaces and enlarging lots. That causes a lot more fender-benders, and probably decreases the amount of holiday cheer,” I pointed out.
“Some people get happier. You can't please everybody,” Bobbo said.
“People with money?” I asked.
He shrugged, “Hey, maybe. Some people, all they want for Christmas is a few more customers. We can get 'em a few more customers. Maybe some money changes hands, we ain't the only ones who can give out gifts. So what? Important thing is, a little holiday magic happens. It ain't illegal.”
“Actually, I'm fairly sure it is,” Raven said.
“It ain't illegal because I am the law here. This place ain't in your little world. It's somewhere else, somewhere other, and you can't touch it. Nothing that happens here is your concern. You're only walking out of here because I'm in a good mood. Wanna see what happened to the last person who got on my nerves?”
A screen hidden on the wall suddenly switched on, revealing a man practically mummified in festive Christmas ribbons, writhing on the floor.
“Make it stop! Make it stop!”
The sound muted and the image died as Bobbo snapped his fingers, “And that's just what happened after a few days of 'I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas'. Think of what would happen to him if we used the Jingle Bells treatment on him.”
“Uh-huh,” I made another note on the issue.
“So, let me give you some advice. I'm in a good mood today. Must be all that holiday cheer – so why don't you just take advantage of this one-time deal and scram, before I start losing it, eh?”
“So, nothing that happens here can be brought up in a normal court, right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he looked up, “What's that to you?”
“Nothing at all, right?”
“Uh...yeah.”
“Alice, could you shoot this elf somewhere nonlethal, but also excruciatingly painful?”
BANG
“Oh God, she shot me!”
“Thank you,” I said, wiping my forehead. There was a loud whooping sound outside the doors, someone had triggered the alarm.
“Oooh, they're sending bears!” Alice said, looking out the door.
Raven grinned.
“And nutcrackers!” Alice squeed.
“Which are made of sawdust stuffing and varnished wood respectively,” I noted, “both substances which are, I should note, flammable.”
Raven was grinning so hard she was probably about to give herself a cramp.
“Is there any possible way that this can end without me having to fill out an Environmental Impact Report?” I asked, sighing.
Raven thought about that. She turned her head to the left. She turned her head to the right. She looked back, “No.”
I went to go sit behind Bobbo's desk, “Okay, I want that report on my desk by Monday morning.”
“What? You're supposed to fill it out!”
“Yes, I am. I'm doing it. It's called delegation, which is what I'm doing right now.”
“That's not fair,” she said.
“Well, you could always not set things on fire,” I suggested.
She glared at me, “I hate the way you manipulate me.”
“Remember. Monday morning,” I said, and sat down in the chair. Despite being elf-sized it was rather comfortable.
---
"So," Charity said, sitting herself on my desk, "Apparently you've once again scarred the minds of young children."
"Oh?" I asked.
"Something about flaming nutcrackers running through a mall parking lot and exploding," Charity said.
"Ah, you might want to ask Raven about that," I said.
"Someone already did. Apparently the children were complaining that the dancers in The Nutcracker didn't explode. Somehow that was corrected."
"-after I kill her," I finished.
Of course it was too late by then, but then again, it usually is. Next Christmas season I plan to stay at home and hide under my bed.
This year they did both.
“Why am I here?” Raven demanded, tucking her hands into her sleeves.
“What happened to your determination to never let me out of your sight?” I asked.
“It vanished when I realized that you were going to drag me out here,” she grumbled, glaring at me. She then transferred that glare to the third member of the party, who was busy trying to catch snowflakes on her tongue, “And why did you have to bring Alice along?”
“I had to bring somebody,” I said, which, according to regulations, was true. I had, of
course, flaunted that before, but I was in no mood to do so now, “Which means, with Amanda on vacation and Daren stuck on autopsy, that leaves her or Sam, and I am not taking Sam.”
“Why not? I like Sam.”
“Everybody likes Sam. Normally.”
“So? I get along with her better then I do with the vapid metalhead,” Raven jerked a thumb just as Alice, who was still staring upwards, ran full tile into a shopping cart.
“First, because we are at a shopping mall,” I waved my hand around at the shopping mall, which was barely visible in the distance, somewhere on the far side of the handicap slots, although its brilliant array of Christmas lights was visible several counties away, “And second, because whenever Sam hears Christmas carols she simply cannot help singing along.”
Raven shuddered, “We could staple her mouth shut.”
“Then she would just hum, and that would be even worse,” I said, feeling the tape measure in my hand snap back together.
“So why are we here anyway? You're violating my resolution to never go shopping anywhere near Christmas,” Raven said.
“We're catching snowflakes,” Alice volunteered, catching one on her tongue and in the process tumbling into a shopping cart, through the bottom of the shopping cart, and bouncing off the wreckage of what had been a shopping cart.
“Whatever,” Raven said, leaning against a brightly polished truck.
“Hey, get your hands off of that!” a man belabored with huge plastic bags staggered up, “you're gonna leave handprints all over it. I just got it clean!”
Raven gave him a look of disregard so intent it normally could only be exchanged with members of different species, “It's a four-by-four truck. It's meant to go outdoors and be muddy and stuff. And it's snowing! How did you plan to keep it clean?”
“Just get your hands off it,” he snapped, dropping his packages in a flurry of Holiday Rage and slapping her hand away.
One would naively think that, with a name like Raven, the thing she would most often hear would be questions about how she got her name. From personal observation though, the thing she most often hears is lame pickup lines She is not classically beautiful, but there's something about that eagle-like nose, that strong jaw, the way her cheekbones almost jut out that makes her look strong, like a sculpture made of steel, a precision machine built to cut through all resistance. There is an iron determination in her that shines through, a certainty that seems to make her endlessly alluring.
But beneath that cold, iron exterior, deep beneath the wall of ice, lies the beating, breathing heart of a closeted pyromaniac, which leads to the second-most often used statement around Raven: 'Why is _____ on fire?', where the blank has been filled with approximately ninety percent of the non-proper nouns in the English language, and a fair amount of the proper nouns as well. I filled in the blank when I asked it now.
“Why are that man's pants on fire?”
“Spontaneous combustion,” Raven said, innocently. There is something strange about Raven's innocence, it makes it impossible to believe that it is actually innocence.
“That seems to happen a lot around you.”
“That's just discrimination,” Raven accused me.
“Why?”
“You're accusing me just because I happen to be in the same place,” Raven said.
I gave her a very long look.
“What?” she glared back.
I can outglare her, I write her performance reviews.
“Oh fine,” Raven kicked at the ground, “I wish that I could leave a real smear on his truck.”
There was a click behind me.
“Alice, did you just take something out?”
“Um...yes.”
“Is it a rocket launcher, or other anti-vehicle weapon?”
“Uh...yes?”
“Is it going to be put away by the time I turn around, or am I going to have to get sarcastic here?”
There was another click, this time the holstering click instead of the drawing click, followed by the sound of someone petulantly talking to the ground, “But I want to blow something up.”
“I thought that you were catching snowflakes,” I groaned. Honestly, dealing with these two was like dealing with a hyperactive herd of cats locked in a trash can.
“I was. I want to blow something up and catch snowflakes,” Alice complained.
“Why are we here anyway?” Raven demanded.
“We're measuring parking spaces,” I said, tossing the tape measure in her direction and nearly beaning her in the process.
“Why are we doing that?”
“Because they're too thin,” I gave a rough measurement with my arms, “They should be nine feet wide. They were nine feet wide last week. Now they're about seven and a half.”
“What?”
“Maybe the parking lot shrunk,” Alice suggested.
“It's actually gotten wider. I think the street's shrunk,” I looked at the sidewalk, which seemed thinner then it had last time I had been here, and was strewn with detritus from a crash or two. Definitely the parking lot was bigger then it should have been. I hated it when this happened.
“That's sort of a sick and twisted genius,” Raven said, understanding.
“Hey, you there!” it was not the man with the truck now, but a security guard, “What are
you doing? We've got a complaint about you!”
“Measuring the parking spaces,” Alice smiled bouncily. As in her smile was bouncing. Because the rest of her was.
“Not another one,” the guard muttered, and then lifted his radio to his mouth, “It's another one of those parking guys. Okay, yeah. Usual place.”
He put the radio back down, “Look, I'm supposed to take you to the manager's office.”
“Fine with me,” I said. I wanted to talk to the man behind this all anyway.
The mall's central office was accessible off of a door in a non-descript storefront, the entryway of which had been turned into a foyer half full of plush furniture and fishing magazines, and half-full of a giant hulking man-shaped wall in a bad suit. If he were flying on an airplane he would have to take up an entire row. He might even take up an entire plane.
“More complainers, eh? Now, I don't know about you, but I wouldn't go around saying crazy things about parking spaces if you know what's good for you,” the thug said, crossing his arms, “but if you want to start something, go right ahead and get it started before we-”
The shot went wide and blasted a cheap ceramic lamp off the table because both Raven and I instinctively grabbed Alice before she could get the gun all the way out.
“But he said-” she protested.
“Not what he meant!” the two of us said in uniform, and shoved her back. This is why I wanted Raven along; Sam is too soft on Alice sometimes, and with two of us it gives us twice the chance that we can catch her before she does something stupid. Or sometimes before she does two things that are stupid. Usually someone stops her before the counting gets any higher.
“Uh, I-”
“Look, it's the holiday season. You should be having a good time. You should be relaxing. You should be going home to your family,” I said, stepping close to the gaping thug in the suit, “You should not be spending your Christmas lying on a slab because you got your head improperly ventilated by a girl who carries four shotguns in her pants.”
“It's not four. It's three and a sniper rifle,” Alice complained, tucking her Desert Eagle back into her jacket. The way Alice dresses it was hard to imagine she had enough space to hide a single bullet in her clothing, let alone enough firepower to take on a small army, but I was not about to give away all of her secrets.
The thug got control of himself and gestured toward the back, “Down the hall, third door on the left.”
“Right, thanks,” I said, heading up the hallway, pausing about ten feet in, “Alice, put it away.”
“Awww...”
The third door on the left crackled when I touched it. When I went to turn the door handle, the entire door shattered into about a thousand pieces. What was on the other side was clearly not in the back of even a rather spacious mall, even if they had built it out into the parking lot. For one thing, the room was made of very homey looking polished wood, almost mirror-like in its polish, extending up thirty feet into the sky. Beneath a ceiling made of logs long conveyer belts moved along a floor approximately the size of a large warehouse, filled with package after package of cheap plastic toys.
“We aren't where I think we are, are we?” Raven asked, glancing at a long line of man-sized wooden nutcrackers against a wall.
I sniffed. The air even smelled of pine and gingerbread, “We're definitely in one of the super-dimensional north pole factories.”
“Oh, I knew there was a reason I hate Christmas,” Raven muttered.
“Look! A bear!” Alice pointed. And it was. A teddy bear, of a sort. A large teddy bear, about twice my height, his stuffing shifting from side to side with every ponderous step. A large teddy bear with real, glinting claws.
“If you'll follow me,” he growled. Or tried to growl. Honestly for the body size he had he must have inhaled enough helium to float the Hindenburg in order to get his voice up that high. Then he shuffled off, across a catwalk, over another line of the giant wooden nutcrackers, and a continuing line of flocking and ribbons coming out of a great machine that had to have been put together by preschoolers under the influence.
The room he led us too was large, high ceilings, high windows showing an endless, snowy landscape, widely spaced walls, all to give an impression of dominance to the single desk in the middle of the floor. It was a lot of effort, but it can be hard to act dominant when you are only three feet tall.
“My name,” the hunchbacked figure in pastel green looked up with an expression that would have done Scrooge proud, “is Bobbo.”
“Bobbo?” I asked.
“Yeah, you wanna make something of it?” he asked.
“And you're one of Santa's elves, I take it.”
“Former. Former. We're independent workers now. Freelance holiday specialists. Our own bosses, our own masters,” Bobbo said, pushing back from the desk. For a moment all you could see of him was the tip of his pointed hat bobbing around the table before he appeared from the side, still hunched over, and glaring at everyone.
“From the fact that you don't seem surprised we exist, I take it you're from the Bureaus,” he said, glaring at us.
“Maybe,” I did not bother to correct the misconception.
“Well, let me tell you then, just go on home. You got no place here.”
“You can at least tell us what you're doing,” I said.
“Just spreadin' a little holiday cheer around. Doin' things for people. Givin' 'em a helping hand. You know how it is,” Bobbo said.
“You're shrinking parking spaces and enlarging lots. That causes a lot more fender-benders, and probably decreases the amount of holiday cheer,” I pointed out.
“Some people get happier. You can't please everybody,” Bobbo said.
“People with money?” I asked.
He shrugged, “Hey, maybe. Some people, all they want for Christmas is a few more customers. We can get 'em a few more customers. Maybe some money changes hands, we ain't the only ones who can give out gifts. So what? Important thing is, a little holiday magic happens. It ain't illegal.”
“Actually, I'm fairly sure it is,” Raven said.
“It ain't illegal because I am the law here. This place ain't in your little world. It's somewhere else, somewhere other, and you can't touch it. Nothing that happens here is your concern. You're only walking out of here because I'm in a good mood. Wanna see what happened to the last person who got on my nerves?”
A screen hidden on the wall suddenly switched on, revealing a man practically mummified in festive Christmas ribbons, writhing on the floor.
“Make it stop! Make it stop!”
The sound muted and the image died as Bobbo snapped his fingers, “And that's just what happened after a few days of 'I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas'. Think of what would happen to him if we used the Jingle Bells treatment on him.”
“Uh-huh,” I made another note on the issue.
“So, let me give you some advice. I'm in a good mood today. Must be all that holiday cheer – so why don't you just take advantage of this one-time deal and scram, before I start losing it, eh?”
“So, nothing that happens here can be brought up in a normal court, right?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he looked up, “What's that to you?”
“Nothing at all, right?”
“Uh...yeah.”
“Alice, could you shoot this elf somewhere nonlethal, but also excruciatingly painful?”
BANG
“Oh God, she shot me!”
“Thank you,” I said, wiping my forehead. There was a loud whooping sound outside the doors, someone had triggered the alarm.
“Oooh, they're sending bears!” Alice said, looking out the door.
Raven grinned.
“And nutcrackers!” Alice squeed.
“Which are made of sawdust stuffing and varnished wood respectively,” I noted, “both substances which are, I should note, flammable.”
Raven was grinning so hard she was probably about to give herself a cramp.
“Is there any possible way that this can end without me having to fill out an Environmental Impact Report?” I asked, sighing.
Raven thought about that. She turned her head to the left. She turned her head to the right. She looked back, “No.”
I went to go sit behind Bobbo's desk, “Okay, I want that report on my desk by Monday morning.”
“What? You're supposed to fill it out!”
“Yes, I am. I'm doing it. It's called delegation, which is what I'm doing right now.”
“That's not fair,” she said.
“Well, you could always not set things on fire,” I suggested.
She glared at me, “I hate the way you manipulate me.”
“Remember. Monday morning,” I said, and sat down in the chair. Despite being elf-sized it was rather comfortable.
---
"So," Charity said, sitting herself on my desk, "Apparently you've once again scarred the minds of young children."
"Oh?" I asked.
"Something about flaming nutcrackers running through a mall parking lot and exploding," Charity said.
"Ah, you might want to ask Raven about that," I said.
"Someone already did. Apparently the children were complaining that the dancers in The Nutcracker didn't explode. Somehow that was corrected."
"-after I kill her," I finished.
Of course it was too late by then, but then again, it usually is. Next Christmas season I plan to stay at home and hide under my bed.