We wake up in the workshop. My brother’s sleep longer than I do, I’m always the first one awake and at work. The earlier I finish my work for the day the earlier I can get back to figuring out how to get out of here. Once I told that to Issac, my oldest brother, and he told me to stuff a Furby up my ass because it was never gonna happen.

That’s my department, furbies. Or is it furbys? Whatever, I make them- from the pubic hair fur to the stroked out eye blinking, they’re all me.

The naughty list has a purpose and it’s more than deciding rations of coal- it also dictates who and what will be in the workshop that year.

That’s another thing everyone thinks, that the same elves have been at Nick’s since the beginning of time, but we rotate annually. Most of us. Nick does some of his Christmas spirit shit and the previous years elves don’t remember a thing, and he tries to send them back to where they came from. Most of them.

Issac, myself, and my other brothers? We’re the elves you have pictures of with little wooden hammers pounding away at miniature trains. We’ve been here forever because the workshop needs managers. Plus everything’s all enchanted and shit. Aging? Christmas magic. Food? Don’t need it- Christmas magic. Clothes? Always clean from, you guessed it.

But this furby right here is going to be my last because I don’t think Nick’s ever going to let us leave, furbys and drones are just too specialized a skill to let go year after year. But that’s just too bad because I just hijacked Vixen and I’m on the first reindeer outta here headed to New Mexico. A place Nick will never find me. Nick hates cacti.