• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Little old lady,” I said.

“Huh?”

“I said, ‘Knock knock,’ you said, ‘Who’s there?’ Little Old Lady. Now it’s your turn,” I explained.

Raymond took a step toward the direction of my voice, peering in the dark. “Little Old Lady Who?”

“I thought you said you hated yodeling,” I said as I popped visible in front of him.

At the sudden sight of me, Raymond gripped his chest as all breath leaped from his lungs. He stared at me with an open mouth and eyes filled with terror. I smacked him across the face, hard, and sent him to the floor. “Take a picture. It’ll last longer,” I said.

Raymond spit out a tooth and a little blood. He looked like he was going to cry.

“It’s not your night, Raymond Hall,” I said. I turned a flip in the air, landed behind him and gave him a tough kick in the rump. Raymond went to his belly with a splat and a groan. “You’ve needed a good belting since you were a kid, so tonight you’re going to take it and like it.”

I picked Raymond up, spun him on his back and put a curled boot on his throat. He stared at me with bulging eyes, like I was a freight train with teeth. “Who are you?” he managed to gasp.

“Believe it or not, Ray, I’m one of Santa’s elves,” I said. Raymond curled his lip slightly, like he could feel a wave of bravery coming, so I gave that lip a kick just so Raymond would know that I wasn’t trying to be cute. “You ready to listen?”

Raymond wasn’t, but he jerked his head yes.

“Like I was saying, kid, I’m an elf and we help Santa decide who’s naughty and who’s nice. All those lumps of coal you got over the years came from yours truly, but you never did learn, did you?” Raymond was speechless. “What did you do with the lumps of coal, Raymond?”

Raymond moved his lips to speak, but only managed a little croak, like a screen door. I had him on the ropes. For the first time in his life, he was scared.

“What did you do with the coal, Ray?”

“I don’t remember!” he said just like any other guilty kid.

I gave him a kick in the King Kong. As he curled up into a little pathetic ball, I leaned in real close and screamed into his ear. “Wrong, Raymond! You do remember. One year, you threw the coal through the neighbor’s living room window. The next year you picked off a bird’s nest full of eggs. Another year, you bounced a coal rock off a little girl’s head. She had to get stitches. Sixteen, if memory serves.”

“Please!” Raymond said. He was drowning in Guilty River.

“You never learned your lesson, Raymond!”

“I was a kid,” Raymond said. He was sobbing, the brat.

“That’s no excuse,” I said. “You’re a big cheese now, and you’re still breaking the rules, being bad. You still don’t get it.”

Scared and desperate, Raymond lost his head for a second, scrambled to his knees and took a wild swing at me. That was a mistake. I flew a telephone as solid as a bank safe right into Raymond’s nose. “It’s for you,” I said.

Raymond crumpled to the ground in a heap. He was half-naked, bloodied and bruised, shamed to the bottom of the barrel. For a split second, I thought I went too far, but reminded myself that the beaten man in front of me could be Santa if greedy kids got their way.

“Dad?” It was Little Ray. He went white when he saw his father kiss the rug again. The kid looked at me like I was the boogeyman.

Raymond Senior managed to get up and put himself between me and the boy. “Son, get out of here!” Raymond screamed. “Call the cops!”

“No, Little Ray,” I said. “I’m on my way out, but you need to hear this. Your dad’s gonna tell you how important it is for you to be a good boy. To mind your mother and your teachers and be good to your friends. He’s gonna teach you why it’s important to think of others before yourself and to have a smile for someone, even strangers. You’re gonna eat your peas and do your homework. Your dad will tell you why, right, Dad?”

“Yes, sure,” Raymond said with a split lip. “I’ll do whatever you ask, just don’t hurt my son. Please, just go.”

To make sure the lesson rang true, I cracked my knuckles and every telephone in the room, dozens of them,