’Twas eleven months till Christmas, and all through Santa’s workshop, elves bounced on their heels or wrung their hands in dread. Even old Skirnir, the eldest elf in all of Alfheim, looked scared to death.
Everyone knew the fat man hadn’t been pleased last Christmas.
Ordella clutched her stomach so the butterflies wouldn’t escape. The news was going to be bad. Very bad indeed.
A hush descended on the room when Foreman Haslet mounted the podium. A deep frown drooped his face, and his right eye was swelling shut, which was never a good sign. “Last season was the worst of any year in all the years since the Saint arrived.”
Workers collectively flinched as if spat upon.
“Saint Nicholas was far from happy.” Haslet winced as his fingers grazed over his swollen eye. “Half-finished toys were being placed on the sleigh moments before takeoff. We cannot make the same mistakes. But there is good news.” Foreman Haslet paused to let his words sink in.
Elves held their breaths.
“Santa has decided on mercy this year.”
Ordella and her fellow elfin workers burst into cheer. The hollow sound stemmed more from relief than joy.
“He thinks a greater incentive is needed to boost productivity. By order of Father Christmas, the Employee of the Year will not only win all the sugar plum fairies they can eat …” Ordella licked her lips. She loved the way sugar plum fairies wiggled in her hand and the delightful squeaks they made before she bit into them. “They’ll also receive an all-expenses-paid, one-week vacation to sunny Key West on Earth!”
Gasps nearly sucked the air from the room. A year’s supply of sugar plum fairies was encouragement enough for most, but a vacation was an unthinkable luxury.
“May the most productive elf win. Now, let’s start the workday!”
Elves surrounded Haslet as he tried to leave the stage, bombarding him with questions about the new prize.
“Oh, sweet treats, a vacation.” Ordella already pictured herself sitting under a palm tree, sipping a piña colada.
“Can you imagine me in a bikini?” Livi said next to her.
“I’ll never have to. Slim chance of you ever winning.”
“Why not? I came in fifth place last year.”
“But I came in third.” Ordella smirked.
Emelin handed her two coworkers an apron as they walked to their stations. “If anyone has a real shot at winning, it’s Rowan. He’s the strongest and the fastest and has won Employee of the Year for five years straight.”
The light dimmed in the women’s eyes.
“If only there was a way …” Emelin’s voice drifted off as she studied her tools.
Livi slumped at her table and picked up a screwdriver. “We might as well give up.”
“You’re probably right,” Ordella agreed.
They don’t stand a chance, but I’m no quitter, she thought. I can actually win this thing.
Foreman Haslet pinned the March productivity standings on the billboard.
First place: Rowan.
Ordella’s heart sank as she read down the line. Livi made sixth. Her name was at sixteenth. Emelin ranked last.
Ordella’s fingers were stiff nubs, yet she had only placed sixteenth.
“I worked during lunch every day to only place down there,” she whined.
“Almost everyone skips lunch now,” Emelin pointed out.
The workshop buzzed like a beehive. Elves hustled and bustled, churning out dolls and green army men, rocking horses and skateboards. Santa’s workshop had never contained so much energy.
Livi rubbed her lower back. “Beating Rowan might cripple me—um, that is, if I were competing. Which I am not.”
“Oh, shut up.” Ordella limped to her workstation and picked up an unfinished iPad.
There has to be a way to beat him, she thought. “If only I had his muscles.”
Emelin leaned in and whispered, “I can make you stronger.”
“You can’t grow my muscles in a day.”
“I can build them.”
Ordella turned to her. “Oh?”
“That’s what I’ve been working on instead of this.” She indicated to the pile of springs and sprockets waiting to be assembled into a PlayStation. “With a sprinkling of magic and a touch of innovation, I can replace your fingers with metal ones.”
Ordella’s brows furrowed. She liked the idea, but bionic fingers scared her. “I don’t know. Why would you help me?”
“The last woman to win Employee of the Year was my grandmother. I’m already way behind, and I will never catch up, but you have a shot at being the first woman elf to win. I’d be honored to help.”
Ordella opened, then closed her mouth. Was this a good idea? Butterflies took flight in her tummy. A rum-laced piña colada would settle them, but metal fingers?
Ding, ding, ding, chimed the workshop’s bell. Foreman Haslet only rang it when someone completed one hundred units.
“Argh, Rowan again,” Livi moaned.
“Will the procedure hurt?” Ordella asked.
The May results were in.
First place: Rowan
Third place: Ordella
“Twenty-seventh place,” Livi all but sobbed. “I’m working harder than before, and it’s as if I were in reverse.”
Ordella and Emelin smiled at each other, then quickly glanced away.
“What was that look?”
“Huh?” Ordella picked up her toolbox.
“You’re up to something. What is it?”
“I made her bionic fingers,” Emelin blurted out.
Livi inhaled a sharp breath.
“Really, Emelin?” Ordella rolled her eyes.
“Show me.”
Ordella slid down her gloves to expose the fusion of flesh and metal that now was her hands.
Livi blanched.
“There are no rules against body modification from old Saint Nick,” Emelin said.
“Do mine,” Livi said with her hand on her hip.
Ordella pulled off her gloves and picked up a toy car. “No.”
“Why not? Emelin, please you have to help me, or I’ll tell everyone, and then you’ll have to modify every last elf in here.”
“Including Rowan?” Emelin bit her lip.
“Don’t listen to her,” Ordella said. “You promised to help me.”
“Not exclusively.”
“But—”
“We can’t let Rowan win again.”
“He’s still in first place, even with the mods.”
“Then, we need to do more,” Emelin said.
Ordella didn’t like the glee on her coworker’s face.
June’s results hung on the billboard, written in curly green font.
First place: Ordella
Second place: Livi
“Well done,” Foreman Haslet said as he passed their workstations.
Ordella smiled even though she seethed at Emelin’s betrayal. Livi had only produced ten fewer units than she had.
When Livi left for a bathroom break, she whispered to Emelin, “I need more mods.”
Emelin put down the teacup she had been painting. “You have bionic hands and arms.”
“It’s not enough.”
“Meet me tonight. I’ve been working on a bionic spine.”
July’s productivity rankings.
First place: Livi
Second place: Ordella
Ordella growled in Emelin’s ear, “How did this happen?”
Livi answered for her, “Bionic eyes. Works better than a loop for fine details. I’ll try to remember to bring you a seashell when I get back from Key West.”
September’s employee results.
First place: Ordella
Second place: Livi
“Again?” Livi yelled at the foreman. “Are you sure your numbers are correct?”
Foreman Haslet answered with a sneer and stalked off toward sector C.
“Oh, the numbers are one hundred percent right.” Ordella waved as she glided by.
“I outfitted her feet and ankles with wheels and hydraulics,” Emelin explained. “They help her to stand longer and move about the shop easier.”
“No fair!”
“See me later. I have something for you.”
Few elves bothered to check the rankings anymore. The Employee of the Year contest had been a two-woman race for months. Rowan no longer concerned Ordella or Livi. He was a distant third and not worth a backward glance.
They shoved Foreman Haslet out of the way as soon as he hammered the tack in place with October’s results.
“Yes!” Livi pumped her metal fist. “In your face.”
She twirled, using the rollers on her feet, then cranked her legs up six feet and then back down in a stiff mechanical dance.
Ordella slammed Emelin into the back wall of her bedroom turned laboratory. Gears rattled and tumbled from a shelf.
“You’re hurting me.” Emelin wiggled to get out of her steel grip.
“We’re tied!” Ordella let go but remained in Emelin’s personal space. “I snuck into Haslet’s office, and his notes say Livi made the same number of units in November as I did. You need to stop modifying her.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t.” Emelin gingerly stepped aside, holding up both palms. “We have a deal. Isn’t the most important thing that a woman wins?”
“Not if that woman isn’t me. I need a new advantage.”
“Such as? I’ve done your arms, legs, back. What’s left? Your brain?” She tied a fur shawl around her shoulders.
The sound of singing and laughing grew louder outside. “Let’s just enjoy the festival of Thanksgiving and not do any more mods.”
“I’m going back to the workshop. I need a head start on tomorrow.”
“Can’t you leave it for one day?”
Ordella left the room and stormed past her friends and coworkers playing in the snow. They built snowmen, sang around a bonfire, or decorated the outside of their cottages with red bows and pine wreaths. The rich scents of roasted sugar plum fairies wafted from the open windows.
Ordella lacked an appetite.
Light shining through the workshop windows stopped her. Who could be inside at this hour on one of the few holidays elves got? She peeked inside.
She expected to see Foreman Haslet or Santa Claus himself.
Who was actually in there was much worse.
“Livi.” Ordella glared at her nemesis.
Shiny silver arms moved in a fluid motion, turning at an inhuman speed. One arm cut up pictures for puzzles while the other welded handles on bikes.
A conveyor belt ran through her chest. Raw parts flowed into her front, and a fully formed toy came out through her back. It all happened in less than a minute.
Her left foot sorted piles of electronic planes, trains, and drones as her right wrapped them in boxes with labels.
Livi’s only recognizable part was her head that loomed over her body on an extendable metal neck.
Livi looked down and spied Ordella staring through the window.
Both women froze. Each wide-eyed with her mouth open.
Ordella’s heartbeat thumped in her ears. “What has she become?”
Livi blinked and stuck her tongue out, breaking the aura that held them in place. Her parts jerked back to life, making toys at a rapid clip.
Ordella staggered away from the window, unsure of her feelings, yet knowing in her heart what she had to do.
’Twas the night before Christmas Eve, and all through Santa’s workshop, not an elf was running around, not even old Skirnir, who never came near to finishing his work on time.
Foreman Haslet beamed down at his workforce. Pride held his chin high and put a rosy smile on his face. “We did it!”
The crowd erupted in cheers. Elves hugged each other with tears in their eyes.
Haslet waited for the noise to simmer down. “We all improved this year. Congratulations! But thanks to the tireless effort of one elf, we finished six days early.”
The crowd murmured their agreement.
“Father Christmas was so impressed that he added three more days to the Employee of the Year contest’s grand prize trip to Key West, Florida.”
The workers oohed and aahed.
Foreman Haslet unrolled the certificate with the winner’s name. “Drumroll, please.”
Rowan wound up wooden drummers and released them. The beat rat-a-tatted for a few seconds, then ended with the clash of cymbals.
“This year’s Employee of the Year is … Emelin! Give her a round of applause.” Foreman Haslet clapped and whistled. “Without her mechanical creations, we’d still be struggling to finish making billions of toys for the children of Earth. This is the type of ingenuity Santa Claus wants to see more of.”
“Hip hip hooray!” the elves cheered.
They saluted Emelin and the two machines whirring in the back of the workshop. Each one spat out toys, getting
a head start on the work for the following year.
Copyrighted 2024
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stacy benedict 