Christmas Tale: Winter Dawn, Part 1

Out of all the bad jobs you could get during the Christmas season, Roxanna probably had the worst. She used to make fun of Salvation Army bigots asking for money at the entrance to every friggin' mall, or pretty much anywhere there were people with money, or of people stuck at late night shifts in toy store warehouses. But now it was her time to be a part of the worst one: Santa's little helper at the mall. It had been a rough year, losing her stable job after company wide layoffs, so she really needed the money and her savings were running low. So she swallowed her pride and pranced around with the fake ears, green and too tight outfit, boots...the whole ridiculous ensemble. And that was not an easy task for her.

You see, to ask Roxanna, Roxy to her friends, to swallow her pride is akin to asking her to swallow a beach ball. Not a bad person by any stretch (please, don't judge her by the events of this story, she can be nice, really!), but lets just say she doesn't have the best temperament in the bunch. She had been working at an accounting firm for a few years, so the stability did a lot to bring down the anger. However, that doesn't mean there weren't “incidents”, but they were far less numerous. Now having to do this embarrassing temporary job did not do well to her anger therapy. Because of work (and a dwindling savings account), she quit yoga and stopped going to her therapist. Now she was drifting in a sea of Christmas cheer, noisy children and overbearing moms, all the while feeling like hitting someone with a baseball bat. Or inflating them like balloons, you know, whatever came first.

Today it seemed like it was going to be one of those days. All the fake elves getting some time with the kids to excite them to get a picture with the fake Santa Claus, and moms trying to bribe them to get them further ahead in the line. Roxy was at the breaking point, but she didn't want to get fired, so the revolutions had to come down a notch. She tried putting the best fake smile she could, and pulled on ahead to do her job. She caught sight of her smile as it reflected off her phone after quickly checking for text messages.

“Wow, I haven't had a fake smile so convincing since Joe told me he loved me.”

The thought of Joe, her ex-boyfriend, was off putting. She tucked him back at the part of her brain that stored undesirable memories and walked right to the belly of the beast: the line of kids.

She didn't have to go far to find a she-devil complaining to a simple, temporary and part time mall worker. She had a stylish brown leather jacket and was sweetly holding the hand of her cute son...the bitch. She was slowly raising her voice, until Roxy could not ignore her anymore.

“Ma'am, what seems to be your problem and is there anything I can do to fix it?”, she asked from between her fake smiling teeth.

“We have been here for over an hour! When is that fu...Santa going to come out?”, asked the woman, holding her tongue so as to not call Santa a bad name with her son right beside her.

“Well, we are just about ready to begin but Santa...”

“Then begin already! Having us wait here is child abuse!'

“I understand ma'am but Santa...”

“I'm going to sue this mall and sue every single minimum wage elf here if this line does not start moving in five minutes!”

“Now calm down, I'm just trying to tell you that Santa...”

“Don't speak to me like that, you...”

“SANTA IS LATE AND IS COMING OUT SOON!”, yelled Roxy at the top of her lungs, which was not enough to call much attention to herself, because of the ruckus all around.

The mom stood frozen in place, with a look of indignation. Roxy fumed, turned her back and walked away. “Some people!” 

Santa finally arrived and the day went on without much incident, but the stares she got from dads was definitely making her uncomfortable. If she could only sit on that deadbeat Santa's lap and wish for a longer skirt, her mood would probably improve, if only just a little. However, that creep would probably enjoy it, so she decided to bare the lustful stares of dads and the envious looks of moms. But there was the look of one mom in particular that made her blood boil just as it was starting to cool down.

“That bitch is at it again”, she said, watching as the stylish mom was pouring it over a fellow she-elf. Roxy was not the kind of person to go out of her way to help someone in need, not that she wouldn't in extreme circumstances, but in cases such as this her decision to act was based on acting on the thoughts already mixing in her head...the kind her therapist warns her about all the time.

She strolled towards the woman's position in the line. Her kid was not even paying attention, probably used to her mom's dumb complaints over every little thing she can't control. Just like in the position Roxy was in some time earlier, her fellow was unsuccessfully trying to reason with the woman, barely getting a few words and grunts out before another barrage of complaint assaulted her ears.

She got to the spot and asked, fake smiling again: “What seems to be the problem?” This time, she thought to herself.

“I have been telling your friend here that me and my son have been close to twenty minutes in this exact same spot. Why on Earth is this line like a jammed expressway?”

Roxy's co-worker stood quiet, letting Roxy do all the talking.

“Ma'am, if I may give my two cents, you have not been at this spot for twenty minutes, and the line is definitely moving, since I'm coordinating with the photographer and...”

“Down with the attitude, Santa's little bimbo, I don't care what your excuse is. Your job is to have my...umm...our children up there with Santa. So you better get to it!”

“Look, in case you are either blind or STUPID, the line is long for a reason. There's a shit load of people here so you better wait your turn like everybody else!”

“Get me your manager right this instant!”

“Why don't you leave the line and look for her yourself?”

At that moment, the woman pulled out her wallet from her bag, and took out a hundred dollar bill.

“Here, take this and arrange for my son and me to move up ahead”

Roxy started laughing, but her co-worker's eyes beamed. She took the money and told the woman to wait a bit while she saw to it. Roxy stood there in shock, her laughter dying out miserably. The mom looked at her with a smirk, savoring her victory. And then she said:

“Money talks, sweety. Strange, I would have thought you would be easy to accept money for favors...”

Roxy's eyes almost turned red with rage. She imagined having pointy, devilish horns, impaling this piece of shit of a human being through her ass...but she calmed down, turned her back, and recited her mantra angrily: I need this job! That was the only thing that stayed her from grabbing a blind man's baton and poking an eye out from that bitch's face.

A mere 20 minutes passed, and the woman left Santa's lap with a smile on her face, and her kid happily holding on to a picture of him and Santa (classic picture, no email required!). Before leaving out of sight, she winked at Roxy. Oooooohhh!! Roxy was going to explode right at that moment...until her manager actually showed up.

“Roxanna! I was told you insulted a visitor! You better have a good explanation!”

Fuck my life!!!

It was ten to three o'clock and Roxy was, officially, unemployed again. Not only had that bitch of a mother gotten her way, but her co-worker had betrayed her in the most villainous and despicable way possible. She was about to calm down, having discarded the stupid ears, hat and belt, and thinking the green outfit actually looked kinda good by itself, when at the other side of the food court she spotted the mom with her kid walking down the farthest corridor, towards the clown making balloon animals. She decided right then and there that all the progress she had done in therapy, and all the money she had spent on it, was nothing compared to what she was about to do.

The woman walked up to the clown and his balloon stand, between the cellphone stand and the pretzels. She was ordering a balloon for her kid when Roxy worked her way next to her, coming out of from within the mass of people walking up and down the mall. She was swallowing a piece of cinnamon sugar pretzel samples. She cleared her throat loudly as the kid was pointing towards the balloon he wanted, and the mom turned around. She tensed up, but tried to not let her guard down. However, she found she had nothing to say to Roxy. Judging by Roxy's stance, the mom knew she was there to give her a piece of mind.

As she stood there silent, Roxy opened her mouth.

“You know, if you can't wait for your turn with Santa, why should you wait for a balloon? I mean, we do have a duty with customers.”

At that moment Roxy pushed the clown to the ground, and grabbed the red hose attached to the helium tank that was his means of subsistence. The mom was about to say something, finally, but Roxy thought she had heard enough from this woman. She stuck the red hose between the lips of the woman, and gave her a shove. She stumbled but didn't fall down, while Roxy twisted the helium valve as far as it would go. A loud hissing started competing with the ruckus, and only a handful of people noticed that something was going on.

The mom's face quickly bloated comically, as the huge pressure was unleashed upon her insides. Her kid was staring blankly, not understanding anything. The clown stood up and started to pace backwards, not believing his eyes. The mom's body was billowing outwards like bread dough, stretching her stylish clothes to their limits. In seconds her arms were fat with air, and were trapped in the sleeves of her leather jacket. Her arms felt pressured, as if she was having her blood pressure monitored. However, it dawned on her that in that analogy, she was the monitor, bloating all over.

Roxy was smiling a real smile now, feeling all her anxiety and anger drift away, much like she expected the mom to drift away with all the helium she was gonna pump her up with. Other people started noticing there was a woman shaped balloon being inflated beside the balloon stand. Some stopped to chat about it, a few people were screaming, and a group of children were pointing and laughing.

The mom felt embarrassed, but that feeling quickly gave in to the feeling of intense pressure that spread all over her body, making her stretch like a child's balloon. Her arms felt so pressurized, her eyes started watering from the pain. The rest of her body was following its course. Her breasts were destroying her dark blouse button by button, and each of those buttons clashed with the tank, making a funny clank sound that sent Roxy to a fit of laughter.  

The mom’s squeals of distress failed to rise above Roxy’s roaring laughter. For the ill tempered girl, this was catharsis. She felt a huge weight lift off her shoulders. The stress, pressure and resentment melted off her muscles, and she felt relaxed for the first time in a long time. Too bad the mom would not share in her satisfaction. She was too busy looking like a weather balloon.

The seams on her pants started popping, and pink flesh started billowing out from the cracks. With her arms so pressurized, the air squeezed into her hands, bloating them enormously. Each finger started to look like a golf ball, while her hands rounded out. The sleeves of her jacket were so stretched they looked like hoses under pressure. Her expanding back and sides were stretching the jacket, forcing it up her torso while her blouse came apart. 

Roxy stopped laughing and took a good look at her. With that devilish smile of hers, she said:

“Don’t worry, ‘sweety’, unlike you I got all day to watch you pump up like a tire. I’m in no hurry at all.”

“MMMM!!”, was the only thing the mom could say. Her cheeks and face were so bloated she became unrecognizable. Her once petite, young and lithe face became a pumpkin with huge cheeks and lips. Her moaning became more violent, and a frustrated stretching sound started taking center stage. The small crowd that gathered, since most people just kept on walking, thinking there simply was a strange balloon show, started pacing backwards, fearing a forceful explosion. However, what exploded was not the stuck up bitch, but her expensive, classy leather jacket. At that moment, her exposed arms ballooned in half a second, becoming so engorged with air that they started absorbing her bloated hands to the wrist. Her pants started likewise exploding, but not before she started to finally float off the ground.

Her moaning increased, and Roxy’s laughter came back, but this time in giggles. She started toying with the hose, causing the inflated woman to bob and turn in the air. If only she could find a job doing this for a living…

“What do you think my manager would think of this?”, said Roxy with glee. “Maybe Santa could ditch the reindeer and use a balloon bitch like you instead.”

The woman’s boots started exploding off of her rounded calves. Her feet were also destroying them, bloating up like footballs. Roxy felt that was not enough. This gal definitely needed more air so the lesson could be clear.

The mom kept moaning, possibly pleading with her attacker. Roxy would never really know, but usually people like her insulted her in their mind as they drifted off. Sadly, this was not an open air space. When Roxy started hearing deep groans coming from the balloon woman, she considerably lowered the tank’s air output, not closing it completely. She took a string from the dumbstruck clown, and tugged at the hose to lower her victim to a manageable altitude. Her body was so fat she had to play around with the hose to actually reach her lower part. She tied a string to what could be considered an ankle, and held her victim victoriously.

“How’s that for quick service, sweety?”, asked Roxy. She handed the string to the woman’s kid, who all the while was as dumbstruck as the clown. However, as soon as he was handed his bloated mother, a huge smile exploded off his face. 

“I hope you like your balloon! Whenever you want to go home, just pump her up full of more helium and drift off!”, said Roxy. 'You fucking brat', she thought to herself. She turned to leave, winking at the bloated mom, who pleadingly looked down at her inflator. Roxy seriously hoped the kid was reckless with his balloons so the mom would meet with an accident…

“Merry Christmas!”, she yelled as she left, leaving everybody confused as to what had just happened. She swayed her hips drawing some wanted attention from the male crowd.

Roxy never imagined she would feel so alive being jobless. She left the mall and went home, thinking all the while her life had just taken a turn for the better.

'I’m back, baby!'