Happy Holidays, You Bastard

Chapter 3

Jordi woke up in the middle of the night as he suddenly heard a loud bang from the reindeer stall. He looked around. Confused and half asleep. Gilfi and Trixie were still sleeping so he thought that he had just dreamed the loud sound. But he couldn't get loose of the bad feeling in his guts so he decided to make sure the reindeers were alright. He took his red beanie and put his jacket on while he was already running to the stall. From outside he saw a small light moving in the barn. Jordi sneaked to the door and opened it abruptly to catch the intruder off guard. He threw himself on the figure which was holding the light and they both fell to the ground. A green hat fell off the persons head and he immediately recognized it as Gugor's.

"Gugor?" Jordi was still on top of him.

"Get off of me!", Gugor pushed the other elf off of him which wasn't hard since he was way stronger than him.

Jordi stood up slowly while Gugor took his hat and placed it on his head.

"What by Santa's beard are you doing here?" he asked.

Gugor just looked at him with the mean glance in his eyes that was always there but it actually seemed like he didn't know what to respond.

"I'm visiting the reindeers", he finally answered.

Rudolph snorted in the background and Jordi raised an eyebrow at the elf in front of him. He had never heard such a stupid excuse before. It was more than obvious that this was simply another attempt to ruin Christmas.

"Visiting the reindeers? Since when do you care about them?" he asked.

"I already worked with them when you still used to shit in your pants", the brown-haired boy scoffed. He was right. Indeed, he had worked as an elf before Jordi even knew the North pole existed but that was way back when Gruzzlebeard had been Santa. Jordi didn't know much about that time. Every time he had attempted to find out more about Gruzzlebeard's background, Santa quickly changed the topic or just disappeared. They only thing he knew was that Santa and Gruzzlebeard were brothers and a bad fight happened between them.

Gugor and Jordi continued to argue but got interrupted by some sudden coughs, coming from the reindeers. Jordi immediately snapped his head into their direction and he couldn't believe his eyes. The reindeer's noses were all glowing, which meant that they were sick.

"You goddamn Bastard! You poisoned them!" Jordi took Gugor by his jacket.

"Don't worry, they won't die", he responded, not intimidated at all "They'll just need time to get better. Actually, a lot of time to get better", a huge grin appeared on his face.

Jordi's eyes filled with tears. By Santa, he hated that he got emotional over everything. Before Gugor could see the tears in his eyes, Jordi punched him in the middle of his face which caused his nose to bleed.

"Are you out of your mind?!" Gugor's anger was visibly building up as he saw the blood on his fingers after he wiped his nose. In the next moment he had pinned Jordi against the wall and was about to throw fists but the impact against the wall made the picture hanging on it drop down and the glass along with the frame broke into a thousand pieces. Jordi's eyes widened. The picture showed Santa together with his dear old friend Befana, the witch. She was something like Santa for the children in Italy. The picture along with the frame was a gift from her to Santa for his 10th anniversary in the Christmas business. The frame was special and rare. As Gugor saw the look on Jordi's face he let go off him and Jordi immediately bend down. He took the frame in his hands and tried to see if he could fix it, knowing damn well in the back of his mind that it would never have the same worth ever again. Right as he was about to stand up again, Santa entered the stall, still in his pyjamas and with a red nightcap on his head. His eyes scanned the scenery and as he saw the broken frame he seemed to be immediately wide awake.

"Jordi? Gugor?", his eyes shifted to the two elves who had their heads down. As Jordi looked up, he saw a disappointed look on Santa's face. He had never seen him like that before. Jordi always tried his best to live up to the expectations of everyone so the disappointed look made him feel like he used to feel as a young boy when his father always beat him up whenever he did anything wrong.

"Gugor poisoned the reindeers!" Jordi finally brought out.

"The two of you will take care of them and clean the stall every day until Christmas", Santa simply said, his voice was still calm but his eyes showed anger.

"But-" Jordi tried to protest while Gugor didn't say anything at all.

"No discussion", Santa interrupted him and before Jordi could say anything else, he had already left the stall.

"See you tomorrow", Gugor had his grin back on his face and left the stall too.

Jordi stood there. Speechless. What the fuck happened in the past few minutes?

He bended down again and gathered all the pieces together and threw them away. His vision got blurrier with each piece he picked up.