Read by Zach Harrison (3rd story in podcast, at XXmin, here)
Hi. My name is Rudy, and I'm an alcoholic. It's been 364 days since my last drink, but I still worry about falling off the wagon. Or should that be sleigh? I've done that a few times, actually.
It isn't easy being sober in my line of work. I spend most of the year doing nothing. The months of idleness are hard on someone with my weaknesses. You know how the saying goes, the devil makes work for idle hooves. These past few years, I’ve been through some dark times — and I don’t just mean the polar night — but I feel that, slowly but surely, I’m clambering back up to the daylight.
I can't tell you how much that hurts me.
Years ago, before I took the big job and everything spiralled out of control, I used to be just like every other reindeer. I would spend my days doing reindeer things—wandering the fjords, munching on shrubs, and locking horns with other males in a desperate attempt to gore them to death so I could mate with the most desirable females.
Simpler times. But it was never enough. Even as a young calf, I wanted more. So when the recruiter came to visit our herd, I hoofed at the chance. He promised a career in global logistics, lots of foreign travel and a limitless supply of carrots. And here's the kicker, I would have to work only a month or two a year. Who could say no? My friends tried to warn me, said I should be happy with my lot. But I was an ambitious young ungulate. If I’d known then what I know now, I would have stayed at home and chewed some more moss.
The recruiter was a little man with pointy ears and a felt hat. He lifted my tail, pulled my antlers and stuck his fingers in my mouth to feel my teeth and gums. ‘You’ll do,’ he said, in a high, child-like voice. He took a small bag from his belt, stuck his hand in, and pulled out some sparkling, rainbow-coloured dust. ‘Sniff this,’ he said. ‘It’ll make you fly.’ I did what he said, and my world changed forever.
We landed at a sprawling, fenced-off compound in the North Pole, and it was there I met the guys. They’re all famous now, of course, but what’s less well-known is how my nine comrades got their names. Blitzen was blitzen because that’s what he was when I met him and every day afterwards – blitzed, that is. Then there was Doner, so-called for his favourite post-session takeaway. He had his snout in a styrofoam box when I arrived and didn’t look up. Prancer was so-called for his tendency to dance on tables. Dancer was the same, but with a little more grace. Dasher earned his nickname because of how he always made a sudden rush to the conveniences. Cupid and Vixen always ended up snogging, and Comet, well that was a shortening of his full nickname, the other word of which rhymes with comet and was usually something he did eight or nine drinks in. And lastly there was Slash.
Yeah, no-one remembers him now, but I do. I’ll never forget you, buddy. That made ten of us, Santa’s ten reindeer. We were a team, a family.
The guys passed the time playing cards and munching hay. They sniffed more of that rainbow powder once in a while and drank from brown bottles smuggled in by one of the elves. I resisted their vices at first, but it was cold and there was nothing to do. My resistance didn't last.
‘Go easy on the powder, kid,' Slash told me not long after I arrived. ‘I’ve seen it do some awful things to a reindeer’s snout. Things you wouldn’t believe.’
I believe you now, buddy.
I don't know how long it was before he came. It’s always dark in winter there, at the Pole, and we were almost always wasted, so it was hard to tell. He stood in the doorway, a giant silhouetted by the light from the lantern on the post behind him. It was the morning after, or possibly the night before. There was no way of knowing.
‘Ho, ho, ho!’ he boomed, and in the stall opposite me Comet did what he was most famous for. I gave up an attempt to stand and settled for collapsing in an undignified heap.
‘Season’s greetings!’ He looked around, this genial old man with a white beard and a red suit, smiling widely at us all. He was exactly what you expected him to be like. And that was the problem. Doner was polishing off the last of a crate of scotch, hoof trembling as he raised it to his lips.
‘Little bit early for that isn’t it, Doner?’ the big guy said, and he turned and hefted a bag of something from just beyond the stable door. ‘I’ve got fresh moss,’ he said. ‘Your favourite!’ He offered it to Doner, who batted it away with his spare hoof and snarled. ‘Maybe later,’ the boss said. ‘Now, who’s ready for a practice run? December is just around the corner, and it’s time we showed our new recruit what we’re made of. Welcome, Rudolf! Welcome to the family!’ I tried to wave, but I just ended up following Comet’s lead.
The years after I joined the sled team are a blur. There are gaps the size of glaciers in my memory. For a month or so before the big day, we practised our manoeuvres. Santa had a whole model town on the complex, and we performed take-offs and landings of all different kinds. We flew up and down from flat roofs, gable roofs and dormer roofs; we flew up to high-rise flats and down to tiny cottages. We practised drills for dealing with emergency situations like presents overboard, aircraft flightpaths and incoming missile strikes. That last one was a bit of a ‘Hail Mary’, to be fair, but I guess it was meant to make us feel safer.
I never thought of myself as an addict, just someone who needed a bit of help to get through the day. And if I allowed myself the occasional blowout, then that was all right, I worked hard and I deserved to be able to let loose once in a while. But once in a while became all of the time, and before I knew it, I could hardly get up from my straw in the morning without a sniff of the old rainbow powder.
And that was how it was for all of us. We stumbled through the years, more or less intact. Sometimes something would happen that would make us clean ourselves up for a while, like lifting our heads above water during a long swim, but it never lasted. We always dipped beneath the waves soon enough. We stopped for a while when Blitzen disappeared and came back days later with half an antler missing and no idea how it happened. We paused for days after Comet puked over the children's presents and we had to double back to pick up replacements. We almost lasted a week when Cupid nearly gored Prancer to death over something he said about Vixen. And we stopped for a month when Slash relieved himself on that exposed electrical wire. But even then, we went back to it. Pretty sure Blitzen was wrecked at the funeral.
In the end, what finally did it for us was nothing more than a look, nothing more than two innocent eyes on the hideous messes we’d become. It was Christmas Eve last year, and we were shitfaced as usual. Santa was trying to ignore it, as always, pretending we were just giddy with excitement and that Comet just had an upset stomach. We were somewhere in England, and we’d landed on the roofs of a row of terraced houses, hitting those tiles like a ton of bricks. I’ll never know how we didn’t wake people up. Santa had just done his chimney-squeezing trick and would be gone for a while. Dasher asked Dancer to crack open a bottle, and Dancer just went white. He’d left it back at the North Pole, he said. We were all dumbstruck for a minute or two, the thought of sobering up before the night was over was too much. Then Blitzen shrugged off his harness and marched over to the chimney.
‘They’ll have brandy down there,’ he said. ‘They always do.’
One by one, we all followed. You might think it’s impossible for nine reindeer to fit down a chimney, but we’d seen Santa fit through thousands of openings of all sizes. Santa was like water; he could find his way through any crack in a house and squeeze himself in. You just had to have confidence, I guess. Or maybe it was just desperation that saw us dislocating our legs and snapping off our antlers to get down through that sooty, creosote-choked passage.
We found Santa sitting in an armchair halfway through a mince pie, a little glass of amber liquid by his side as expected.
‘What are you doing here?’ he said, dropping the pie and struggling to his feet. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
But it was too late. The owner of that house had a well-stocked drinks cabinet, and Blitzen had it open before Santa had finished talking. I don’t quite know the order of what happened next, but I remember Blitzen pulling out every bottle those people had – whisky, vodka, gin, port, even the bloody ouzo. Santa kept on telling us to stop, but he was just whispering and shaking his head. At some point he started to cry.
And then we all did what we were known for. Blitzen tipped a bottle down his throat and reached for another. Cupid and Vixen downed some tequila and started rutting on the sofa. Doner stumbled through to the kitchen in search of food. Prancer and Dancer clambered onto the table and the next minute it was in splinters. Dasher tried to find the conveniences but found the Christmas tree instead, and Comet emptied all four of his stomachs over a weeping Santa.
Then we heard a creak, and in the living room doorway there was a little girl, standing there and observing us all. She wasn’t crying, wasn’t screaming. She was just watching. And that was the worst reaction of all.
I saw it very clearly all of a sudden, my life. The emperor had no clothes, and he was covered head-to-toe in vomit.
Santa pushed us all into the hearth and bundled us up the chimney. He made it right somehow. He has a way of doing that. He can make a single night last for days, after all. But I knew we had to make it right too, all of us.
There have been slips since, but we're trotting in the right direction. And that's why I formed this group, so that our experience could help others. Maybe this glowing red conk of mine might be a lesson, might help lead others through the storm and safely back home.
We drink glacier water now and get our five portions of moss every day. We go for early morning canters and hit the hay at a sensible time. At least I think it's a sensible time. Still hard to tell. And yeah, some people might say we've lost our edge, but at least we're still here. Most of us, anyway.
Rest easy, Slash. We miss you, buddy.
(c) Rhys Timson, 2023
Rhys Timson has had short fiction published by 3:AM, Litro, Popshot, Structo & Lighthouse, & has had stories featured in several previous Liars' League events.
Zach Harrison trained at St Mary’s University & since graduating has been working on both stage and screen. Stage roles include Katurian (The Pillowman), Demetrius (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) & Erpingham (The Erpingham Camp). Film credits include Jack in I Kissed a Boy, Harry the Cunning Linguist in Shakespeare’s Diaries, & Alex in Z Positive.
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