Part One
All Howard Langston wanted was to get a Turbo Man action
figure with movable arms and legs, a boomerang shooter, a rock’n ’roller
jetpack, and a realistic voice activator that said five different phrases, including
“It’s Turbo Time!”
It wasn’t for him, of course. It was for his son, Jamie.
Howard had already broken one too many promises with him.
This Turbo Man toy, his Christmas gift to him, was the only way to make up for
it. Unfortunately for Howard, every single store from Minnesota to Kingdom Come
was sold out of the Turbo Man action figure. All that was left was Turbo Man’s
sidekick Booster (but nobody cared about him).
Hope seemed to have been lost until Howard met a young
woman named Kimbyr who had been Christmas shopping with her 10-year-old
daughter, Shyla. She caught wind of Howard’s major dilemma and told him that
she knew exactly where to find the toy he was looking for. Howard was so
desperate that he didn’t even catch the name of the place where Kimbyr told him
to find it; he only accepted her invitation to take him there.
The next thing Howard knew, he was the passenger of a
bizarre alien spaceship of some kind that belonged to Kimbyr and her daughter.
He had seen it outside the outlet mall but didn’t give it much of a thought,
figuring it only to have been a piece of art deco.
Another child was already there when he boarded: a blond
boy who was the same age as Shyla and went by the name of Kevin McCallister.
According to Kimbyr, she found Kevin lost and alone in New York City one day
and offered to bring him back to his family in her odd alien spaceship, which
she called her “TARDIS” (whatever that meant). However, that was three months
ago. Kevin seemed to have enjoyed traveling with Kimbyr so much that he’s
postponed his return home.
Howard obviously didn’t intend on staying that long. All
he wanted was to get to the place where Kimbyr claimed the Turbo Man action
figure could be found. When he asked Kimbyr – as a reminder – where they were
headed, he nearly blew a gasket after she replied, “The North Pole.”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me!” Howard bellowed with his
distinctive Austrian accent. “How did I let myself get suckered into this
craziness?!”
“Desperation?” Kevin was quick to remind him.
“I know how it sounds, Mr. Langston,” Kimbyr told him.
“But I promise you that where we’re headed is very real. Santa will hook you up with that Turbo Man action figure
for your son.”
“He’ll use Christmas magic,” Shyla vouched for her
mother. “I met him myself.”
Kevin rolled his eyes at the girl’s naivety. “No, you
didn’t. You met some old guy in a mall.”
“Nuh-uh,” Shyla denied. “It was really him.”
“You boys are about to feel real silly,” Kimbyr
proclaimed right after she yanked on a lever from the hexagonal control console
at the center of the room. Her TARDIS made a humming, grinding noise that
stopped after yanking on the lever a second time.
Together, they stepped out and into an entirely different
climate.
No longer were they in front of an outlet mall in
Minnesota. They were in a village that seemed to have been just where Kimbyr
said it was – the North Pole. Surrounded by snow and mountains, the village was
occupied by elven denizens engaged in various activities, from feeding and
training reindeer to touching up Christmas decorations.
Neither Howard nor Kevin knew what to make of what they
had seen.
Kimbyr, arms crossed, smiled big and wide at them.
“Feelin’ silly yet?” she asked. Once she had her fun, she approached one of the
elves – a dignified-looking sort that wore rounded glasses and was a bit tubby.
“Excuse me, sir? Do you happen to know where Santa is right now?”
“Of course I know,” the elf barked, sounding offended. “I
wouldn’t be the Number 2 elf if I didn’t
know.” He pointed towards one mansion of a building that stood out from the
rest of the village. “He’s right there in his workshop-slash-house…and he’s
been expecting you.”
Kimbyr eagerly led the group to Santa’s workshop/house.
It certainly appeared much bigger on the inside (hyperbolically, of course)
with one lavish interior design. To Howard, it was like walking into another
mall during Christmastime with an overabundance of trimmings. Elves were among
a multitude of stations, constructing toys and even video game consoles that
were hot commodities in stores. Unfortunately, none of them was the Turbo Man
action figure Howard sought after.
That’s where he hoped Kimbyr’s dear friend, Santa Claus,
would be of assistance. They arrived at his office, which also served as his
personal quarters with a living room and bedchamber. Howard and Kevin were
amazed by how much larger the real
Santa was in person. “He’s the size of a planet,” Kevin said under his breath.
“I heard that!” Santa reprimanded McCallister.
When she first laid eyes on this Santa, Kimbyr sensed
something different about him. “You’re not quite the same one I met before,”
she told him.
“That’s ‘cause I’m a Santa who didn’t exactly start out
as Santa,” he said. “My real name is Scott Calvin. I was the executive of a toy
company. I got to be King of the North Pole only because the last guy fell off
my roof the night before Christmas.”
“Whoa!” Kevin exclaimed. “You offed Santa and took his
job?!”
“No, I didn’t ‘off’ Santa,” Scott fervidly negated.
“Regardless of how you got the job, can I still count on
you to give my new friend Howard here the Turbo Man toy he wants for his son?”
Kimbyr implored of Scott.
“Of course,” Scott happily assured, much to Kimbyr and
(especially) Howard’s relief. But that relief was short-lived when Scott then
added, “On one condition.” He momentarily turned around, his bulbous red back
towards them, and returned with two unique toys in his hands: a pull-string
cowboy doll and a spaceman action figure. “I need you to bring these toys to a
boy who doesn’t realize he has lost them.”
Shyla looked on the cowboy and spaceman curiously. “How
did he lose them?”
“Well, he didn’t actually lose them,” Scott reiterated.
“They’re from another dimension. They showed up here in my workshop by complete
accident.”
Howard felt like his brain was about to pop. “Let me get
this straight, Santa,” he uttered
Scott’s christened name with an air of condescendence. “You want all of us to
do your job and play Santa for one
kid?!”
The very idea overjoyed Kimbyr.
That was until Scott clarified, “More like Santa’s Little
Helpers.”
Thankfully, it didn’t deter her resolve. “We’ll do it,”
she graciously accepted the mission, much to the chagrin of Howard.
He didn’t let up on his complaints, even after they
departed the North Pole and reality itself in Kimbyr’s TARDIS. “This is
ridiculous! You drag me out to nowhere on Christmas Eve, tell me ‘Santa Claus’
can give me the Turbo Man doll at the North Pole, and now we’re stuck
delivering toys to one kid none of us know!”
“It doesn’t matter whether we know him or not, Howard,”
Kimbyr said. “Santa trusted us with this job and we’ve gotta do it.”
“No!” Howard exploded. “What I’ve gotta do is get back
home in time for Christmas with or without that toy for my son – preferably with!”
“And you’ll get back, I promise,” Kimbyr reassured.
Howard now knew how Jamie felt with those last two words.
“What do you know about keeping promises,” he snapped at her. “You promised me
Santa would get me what I wanted, and he gave us this!” He snatched up the
cowboy and spacemen toys that rested on the TARDIS control console. “A couple
of dumb novelties!”
“Who you callin’ a novelty, pal?!”
Howard didn’t quite understand at first who said that. It
was a man’s voice, yet he was the only adult male aboard the alien spaceship.
He then looked down and fleetingly suspected it might have been one of the toys
he held. But what were the odds that one of its catchphrases just happened to
have followed what he said about it?
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