A slice of Life

Baby Eyes' Christmas elf.

The elf, Isaac decided, had to go.

As he peered over the arm of the couch, his fingers pressed tightly together beneath his chin, it became increasingly clear that it was the only way.

The elf just had to go.

"Buh-bye, stoopid alf," Eyes breathed, his nose scrunching up in distaste. Daddy had promised that the pointy hatted goblin would be fun — a great festive friend.

Daddy was just so very, terribly wrong.

The nasty thing had eaten his sharkie cereal! It'd tied his laces together so it had taken an atrociously long time for Isaac to untangle them so he could play outside and try and pee on the neighbor's cat. He wrote a list of every bad word Eyes had said since the start of December and was taunting him beneath the threat of sending it to the fat jolly man so he didn't get presents!

But the final straw had been his stunt this morning.

He'd dressed Freddy up.

In. A. Pink. Tutu.

Eyes shuddered at the mere thought. It was so scary. His Freddy looked so disgusting. He'd had to wail and kick until his Daddy took the wretched thing off and threw it down the food disposal!

Maybe he could have dealt with the nasty thing doing drawings on his Daddy's face while he was sleeping — it might have even been funny if Isaac had the idea first, but messing with his Freddy?

The stoopid alf had crossed the line.

And now his time was up.

But he knew he had to be strategic about this. Asa had a nasty elf too, and every time Asa tried to make it dissy-pear, it came back, good as new.

He'd watched Toy Story. He'd seen what the elf did when nobody was around.

It was going to be a worthy opponent, but Isaac refused to be terrorized by something he could flush down the toilet and feed to Milo.

It meant war, and Isaac had no intention of losing.

"Mista Alf," Isaac whispered from where he was hiding, poking his head up that tiny bit further. The nasty thing was sitting on the mantle of the fire, pretending to innocently watch the every-changing lights that danced against the white branches of their chrissy tree.

Isaac wasn't buying it. He knew the little fudger was plotting.

"Mista Alf," he repeated when the ignorant toad ignored him. "Wanna pay a game?"

When the elf didn't respond, Isaac's eyes narrowed. Either he knew what he was planning, or he was just so good at being a Toy Story toy and didn't pretend to be real if people were watching.

That was okay. It just made it easier.

Dropping onto all fours, he crawled across the carpet, pausing, distracted, when he found a thin fiber of silver tinsel in the carpet. Despite his annoyance, he found himself smiling sillily.

Daddy had turned him into a Chrissy tree. They'd put it up together last week, and before they'd put the decorations on the branches, Daddy had decorated his Eyes in the itchy silver rope, twirling it around his head like a halo, and crisscross across his chest like a shotgun ammo thingie.

Daddy had hung the sparkly balls from his ears and told him he was the best tree in the world.

Isaac liked being a tree. It meant everybody would put their presents next to him and then he could steal them all and have all the crissy in the world!

"Daddy?" Isaac called out, checking the room. His Daddy wasn't in there to witness what he was about to do, but he had the most annoying habit of appearing every single time he was about to do something especially terrible.