Chapter 58 – Regarding Complete and Utter Destruction of Santa’s Workshop & Being Buried Alive

Santa’s workshop formed beneath him— smokestacks and mansard roofs! Like a brick hurled from heaven he crashed through the roof, caught a glimpse of Tchaikovky’s opera house bedroom as he plummeted through that as well, and like the meteor that kamehameha’d the dinosaurs, Peter obliterated the toy factory, his scrawny body cratering the floor with a thunderous explosion.The ceiling collapsed. Pillars twisted and buckled in a catastrophic avalanche of machinery. He threw his arms up in a pathetic attempt to protect himself from the thousands of tons of debris showering down on him. It was as if someone dumped the entire Titanic over his head, and then tossed the Brooklyn Bridge on top of that.

Then all was silent. A fine dust settled down over Peter’s face, and he spat. In the stillness that followed, heart still ripping, breath ragged, he realized that he was not dead. Not only was he not dead but miraculously unsplattered, unbroken, unpancaked— but, unfortunately, buried alive. His body twisted awkwardly and pressed against concrete. A sniggleploff engine teetered free from the wall and crashed— a final coda to the architectural destruction. Then Peter was in darkness— only the sparks from severed cables hinted at the surviving remnants of the room.

“Help!” Peter croaked.

He shifted but couldn’t crawl his way from under the debris. His legs were cuffed with rebar, and a chunk of ceiling and girders pressed down on his chest so tight he struggled to breathe. He couldn’t even touch his own face to wipe the dust from his eyes and mouth.

“Anybody!”

There was no answer.

But this is no problem, Peter! You’ve got arms! You’re strong! Just lift the debris away. He placed his hands on the wreckage pinning him down and pushed. Push! Push with all your might, Peter! Push until the muscles in your arms snap like rubber bands! After much constipated grunting— the twenty tons of metal and concrete did not budge. Again, Peter! Again! He pushed, strained— twice as hard! How heavy can a factory ceiling possibly be? But this too ended in failure. Systematically he worked at freeing his legs, his arms, he tested how much wiggle room he had. But then the horrifying truth sank in— a truth that took a word he never understood— claustrophobia— and mainlined it right into his heart. He understood it now. Complete helplessness. Trapped. He would be down here for hours, or days, or weeks, or however long it took the others to find him. Claustrophobia. At the bottom of a bottomless pit. Walls of darkness all around him, creeping nearer in his mind’s eye.

“Santa! Yuzuka! I need you!” He felt like he was going to cry.

A voice cried out, “Aahh! Aahhh!” Helpless, terrified screaming.

“Are you okay?!” Peter shouted.

“Peter! Is that you?”

“Yes! I hear you! Where are you?”

“I’m stuck!” the voice cried. “Peter, get me out of here!”

“I can’t!” His voice cracked. “I’m stuck too!”

“No! You can’t be! You have to save me!”

Peter barged against the debris, thrashing his body. He hoped to dislodge anything. He shook as many centimeters or millimeters as he could. But it was no use.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He heard the elf girl sobbing, and like a contagious yawn Peter felt himself cry too.

“What’s your name?” he shouted.

“Yumeka!”

“The maid! I remember you! Are you injured? Can you see if you’re bleeding? Any broken bones?”

“No! But I can’t move! And my head hurts!”

“That’s okay! You’re not bleeding so you can just relax and wait for someone to come dig you out!”

“I’m scared!”

“I’m right here with you! I can’t see you, but we’re together! Just hold on!”

Something cold and wet poured into Peter’s hair. He arched his back and bent his neck best he could, and saw a dark flammable liquid gushing across the floor. He was lying in it— soaking in its paint-thinner fumes. Yumeka may have been safe, wherever she was, but Peter was in a proverbial world of shit. What’s worse than being buried alive? How about being buried in a pit that’s flooding with toxic chemicals?

A little mouse girl came scrambling down the wreckage with incredible rodent-like agility. Perched at a precipice she looked at Peter full of worry, her mouse ears low and sad.

“Squee!” Peter whispered. “Squee! You gotta find someone and tell them where I am.”

Squee shook her head in disagreement.

“There’s no time, Squee! I promise you, the elves aren’t going to hurt you. You have to do it! Just find anyone!” Peter snorted the rising tide of chemicals out of his nose.

The mouse girl leapt down into the hazardous pool and wedged herself under the concrete. Like an adorable mousey Atlas holding the weight of the world on his shoulders, she squat down and tried to lift the debris off Peter. She squinted, heaved, again and again until her little face turned red.

“Squee, I appreciate the effort— I really do. But I can’t lift it and I’m twelve times your size. You have to find an elf. Hurry.”

Fire fwooshed to life somewhere— Peter felt its oven-like breath upon his face. A tangle of concrete ruins up above burst to life like a furnace. Embers drifted down the chasm of rubble, followed by flames.

“You gotta go now! Now, now, now!”

Squee took off on all fours, and then Peter was alone again, listening to Yumeka’s sobs as the strange chemical— whatever the hell it was— kept rising higher and higher up his face. Helpless, he lay and waited— with increasing desperation— as the dark shaft above him burst with fire. Burning pitch crept nearer and nearer. Fiery tongues slithered their way down the walls. He struggled again, in a fight to dislodge anything, thrashing for an extra inch, maybe it was all he needed to break free. Yumeka must have heard him struggling because she wailed even harder now.

Imagine, if you will, a guillotine— the soon-to-be executed immobilized— not face down but face up, and forced to gaze upon that horrible blade hanging overhead. But now imagine that blade is aflame, and instead of plummeting down it slowly, carefully, lazily lingers its way down upon its victim’s neck. And now imagine the French peasantry, in a truly sickening moment of brilliance, covered the Parisian aristocrat with gunpowder and buckled fireworks to his limbs. This was the morbid situation Peter was in— and unlike those French aristocrats with their privileges and stupid periwigs, this horrible fate was completely undeserving of Peter. What was he guilty of but falling in love with any girl who showed him the slightest bit of attention, and some peeping, and some penguin genocide, and crimes against gingerbread mankind, and blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, and making Santa cry, and technically he isn’t old enough to play rated M games like DeathBlood, and wow, Peter, you’ve really done a lot of horrible stuff in this book, haven’t you?

So Peter struggled helplessly in the fiery guillotine, surrounded by the anguished cries of elves calling out for him. His tears evaporated from the fire creeping ever closer to his bed of magical gasoline. Fear tore at his very soul. Fear took its skeleton fingers and pried his eyelids open to watch each agonizing moment. Fear whispered to him ‘Here it comes! Here it comes!’ The flames were so close now— so close that Peter could blow upon them— so he did— he blew like the flames were candles upon a horrible birthday cake. His wish— to not die— to see at least one more Christmas— to give his handmade present to Santa— to see her smile, and maybe even get a hug in return. He huffed and puffed and delayed the advance of that trickling flame, but like death itself, he could not halt its doomward progress.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit!”

Well, Peter, it was nice knowing you. If it’s any consolation, burning alive isn’t the worst way to die. Imagine the poor bastards who were thrown into wood chippers— at least you wont go out like that.

Hark! The tiny pitter-patter of -2 size boots! A frosty cloud of CO₂ burst forth and tore the flames to nothing! Through pillowy fire-retardant clouds— here she was to save the day— Squee triumphant! With a mouse sized fire extinguisher, her pink ears sticking out from a fire chief’s helmet, she beat those flames like they owed her money— smashed their fiery legs so they’d never walk again. Peter cheered her on and laughed— laughed because he would not become a charbroiled sophomore today. Christmas miracles do happen— and they come in little black dresses and hime cuts. Throw your caps into the air! Huzzah! Huzzah for Squee!

But then, what to Peter’s wondering eyes would appear but a flood of lovely mouse girls. A silky mass of black dresses and big round ears poured out from every crevasse, every nook, every break in the ruinous architecture. They slinked and spilled down to Peter like the largest K-pop group ever assembled— the might of the entire mouse kingdom— girls so waifish and fragile they struggled to roll an empty spool alone, but together they groaned and strained with falsetto voices in a tremendous deadlift and— by golly-gee-gosh— the slab of concrete lifted! Peter pushed too and wiggled free from his premature burial.

He climbed up, squeezed his way through the chunks of rooftop and machinery, and threw the main breaker switch. All the sparks and severed cables twisting like headless snakes ceased. The emergency lights filled the factory with a demonic red atmosphere. The familiar layout of the building with its kaiten-zushi gifts and perpetual motion toy printers was gone— all gone. Flattened, buried under heaps of concrete and steel, and reaching out from under it all were elven hands, dozens of them, stretching and waving and hoping someone saw them. All around him was a Christmas hellscape— the desolation of a million gifts that would never see Christmas morning— the lovely elves one and all buried under the devastation.

“Squee—” He knelt down before his tiny mouse girlfriend. “More people are trapped— I’m too big and heavy to reach them. I need you to find them. Tell them I’m coming and it’s going to be okay.”

Squee shook her head.

“Please. They need your help.”

“I came to save you. Not them.”

“Squee, please! Listen to them! They’re terrified.”

Squee looked at him with solemn, indifferent eyes, and then without argument nor protest, she turned and scurried off back to the mouse kingdom. Her thousands of friends followed after, and Peter begged for them to stay and help— if only for a while— just to point out where the missing elf girls were buried. Their mousey ears, large as they were, were deaf to his pleas. A dozen or so paused to listen before retreating.

“Yumeka!” Peter shouted into the dark. “I’m coming!”

Alone and with bitterness souring his heart, Peter climbed into a behemoth of a forklift and cranked its diesel engine to life. With chains and hammers and hydrolics, piece by piece, he peeled back the layers of fallen concrete. And then atop a jagged mound a single mouse girl leapt and waved her arms to his attention. She pointed at where to stick the blades, how far to pull forward, when to stop and lift. From the ashes he pulled Yumeka out into his arms. Her eyes full of tears, sniffling back her sorrow. The mouse girl dove back under to resume the search, when another mouse girl— her voice petite— called out “Here! Here!” And beside her was an elf hand reaching out from below. The majority of the mice had left, only a few dozen rummaged through the ruins, moved by pity.

It was a long day, a slow day, a day without rest. The more he searched, the more pretty elf hands reached out from the collapse, waving, waiting for someone to grasp onto. Santa arrived at ground zero and led the search and rescue, and a certified forklift driver elf kicked Peter out of the vehicle, but he spent all day clearing debris, digging with bare hands, unearthing more survivors from their industrial tombs. Each time a tearful girl reached up from her burial and clung to Peter, it felt as though his heart were made of broken glass. It was a sad, sad day for Christmas.