A peculiar man sits by the fire in a cozy room. Festive decorations hang everywhere around him, and a small table next to his luxurious chair holds a small plate on which sits a strange click-clicking cookie, next to a glass of what smells like gasoline.
Before paying attention to the man, who seems to be busy drumming his fingers in mid-air as if typing something on an imaginary keyboard, let us further observe his surroundings.
Across the fireplace from the man can be seen an enormous tree, apparently made of pure gold in its entirety. Under the conifer are two small presents. The room has neither windows nor doors, and the ground is covered in artificial snow.
“Now that the stage is properly set,” says the man, “It’s about time to introduce myself!”
The man stops his mid-air fidgeting to hold out his arms, allowing the audience a good view of himself. He wears a well-fitted tuxedo around his moderately overweight frame, as well as white gloves for extra refinement. A long, red scarf hangs loosely around his neck and over the tuxedo, in a baffling display of poor fashion. Although the faux-pas would certainly make a certain unicorn cringe, it is the least noticeable detail of the man’s upper body as his head is nothing but a grinning human skull engulfed in bright flames. As a final touch, a classy top hat sits strangely safely atop his continuously combusting caput.
“Welcome all,” the burning man exclaims as he stands up. “I am the author of this silly little story, and I hope you’ll forgive me for pulling that kind of crap on you on this special day.”
The author bows respectfully to the readers.
“It’s just that,” the man continues as he proceeds to pace around the room, “as I know some of you may be getting rightfully frustrated by my lack of progress on this story, I decided to at least do this little thing here to maybe at least entertain you for a while.”
“Also,” the man rambles on, “I must honestly admit that I am disappointed as well about my work ethics. Yes, I should be able to post more words more often, and I can only hope to ever be able to put out thousands of words per day. But let’s face it, it probably ain’t gonna happen. In the meantime, I’ve heard somewhere that it helps creativity to just drop everything and go do something silly for a while. So that’s what I’m hoping to do here; drop the serious business I feel I need to do in favor of something silly and fun that I want to do.”
“But don’t worry,” the man says as he stops a few steps from the middle of the room, somehow grinning wide despite his total lack of lips. “I plan to at least try to make this entertaining for you guys as well! And for that purpose, let me introduce two very special guests: Silver Spring and Dave Smith!”
The man snaps his gloved fingers as he says those words, causing the fireplace to suddenly belch out a lightly smoking pony. The small brown horse lands face-first in the fake snow with enough momentum to slide all the way to the man’s feet, accumulating a small mound of white plastic flecks around and over his muzzle. Gentle wisps of smoke trail after him.
“Hi there, you two!”
The pony opens his eyes with a grunt, revealing them to be spinning wildly in the universal cartoon symbol of being dizzy.
“Whu… wha, what?” The pony asks as his vision stabilizes while he climbs to his hooves. He suddenly jumps to a standing position, craning his neck every which way as he takes in his surroundings in a growing panic. “What’s going on? Where am I?”
“Who-WHAT ARE YOU?” the pony screams as he finally notices me standing next to him. Also screw third person, it’s getting annoying. “Are humans usually on fire?” he adds, probably addressing the hairless monkey in his head.
“Hello, Silver, I’m Destrustor and I am your maker.” I helpfully and not-at-all-intimidatingly offer. “Also; hi Dave!”
The four-foot-tall pony scampers backwards away from me, only stopping once his rear hits the wall that I helpfully dragged closer while no one was looking. Can’t have him backpedalling too far away, right?
“Wha-wha-what do you mean? Who are you?” He asks, apparently trying to push himself straight through the wall.
As I said, …I mean “As I said, I’m your maker: I’m the author of this story. I’m the idiot who decided that putting this asshole,” I point at his own head, “into your head would make for an interesting story.”
“Whu-wha-“ he stammers.
“You are both fictional characters that I created,” I interrupt him with. “We are currently in the insane realm of my imagination, and a few hundred people are currently reading these words I speak right now. They’re also reading this sentence. Oh and they’ve also read everything that happened to both of you since Dave got in there. Because I wrote it. Because I’m the author here.”
He both just stares at me, mouth agape, for a few minutes. Like, really, more than sixty full seconds. Maybe I should offer some refreshments; having his mouth open like that for so long must be making it pretty dry.
“Why…” he finally whispers, somehow not even capable of intoning it like an actual question anymore.
“Drinks?” I suddenly ask, taking off my hat and pulling them out of it as I list the choices. “Water, milk, coffee, orange juice, magnetic wodka, some ferrofluid –Aw! They clumped together again.”
He just keeps staring at me as I try to wrestle the gooey ball of oil, magnetic alcohol and iron away from my fingers and free from the broken debris of the glasses they smashed when the two liquids violently merged. I eventually just will the whole mess out of existence and offer him cookies instead.
“Chocolate chip with caramel frosting, your favorite since just now when I decided that it was your favorite! Come on, take one. They’re free.”
He keeps staring at me. I keep the plate of cookies on my outstretched hand in front of his snout for a few more minutes, in complete silence, gently shaking it every once in a while with an inviting hum. The only other sounds in the room are the soft crackling of the fires, both the one in the fireplace and the one around my blackened skull.
He finally takes a cookie with a hesitant, trembling hoof and simply clutches it to his chest.
I return the plate into the place where things don’t exist and go back to my chair.
“Aren’t you going to eat it?”
He glances down to the cookie he’s holding, having obviously already forgotten about it in the short time I used to seat myself. His eyes dart back to me almost instantly, however.
“No, I’m not feeling very hungry right now,” he basically whispers. “W-what do you want with me?”
“Well, discounting the fact that this whole fourth-wall breaking bullshit is basically my Christmas self-gift, I wanted to thank you guys for being my most popular characters! Yes Dave, I know this room only has three walls, I got rid of the other one just before bringing you both here. Would you mind not talking too much right now? The point of view is currently outside Silver’s head, so the readers can’t read a word of what you think. It’s probably annoying them.”
I let them freak out for a few seconds over the fact that I can ‘read their minds’ as they put it, and then I keep speaking. Hm, where was I? Oh yeah.
“Anyway, I thought I’d pop you guys out of the continuity for a moment to give you gifts! Doesn’t that sound fun?”
I point my finger at the two small presents sitting under the solid-gold festive tree, causing one of them to shoot towards my guests as gently as the phrase ‘comically sudden’ would allow. Silver Spring manages to catch it, which would be surprising had I not decided to write that he would.
“This one’s for Dave!” I shout, clapping my hands. “You can open it for him, Silver.”
Silver Spring looks at me like I’m some kind of overbearing maniac. A weak whimper later and he starts unwrapping it with shaking hooves. The contents eventually turn out to be an absurd amount of bacon, geysering out of the box as soon as he opens it. Yes I decided to use geyser as a verb. It’s my story I do what I want! Anyway, the bacon flies everywhere, covering a good patch of the fake snow around my little pony. He yells out in surprise when the box shoots its contents in his face, pauses for a moment while Dave explains what just slapped him in the nose, and then yells again.
“Humans eat meat?!?”
“Oh yeah,” I ponder, rubbing my skeletal chin, “That conversation hasn’t come up in the story yet, did it? Gotta remember to have you both repeat the mental debate you’re having now.” I grab a piece of bacon and munch on it as I watch them discuss their horrifying differences in diet. Flaming crumbs fly everywhere. Maybe next time I should imagine an avatar of myself that at least has cheeks, this is way too messy.
Dave suddenly thinks something very rude about me and my gift skills.
“Hey, Dave! That is an awesome gift and you know it! ‘A fountain of bacon’ has always been a secret wish of yours, didn’t it?”
“Oh, fine,” I finally relent to his illogical arguments that even if this was what he wanted right now Silver would never eat any of that. “How about this instead, mister ungrateful?”
I pull out another gift from behind my chair. It looks suspiciously like a generic human male entirely gift-wrapped. Silver and Dave stop their freaking out to stare at the new gift for a moment, before Dave’s insistence makes Silver approach the immobile human.
After unwrapping a foot, which Dave immediately recognizes, Silver sets out to rip everything away from the human as fast as he can. When the final piece of colorful paper is finally pulled away, the human comes to life with a gasp. Silver jumps back at the sudden movement as Dave steadies his stance in his newly-returned body.
“So, Dave, what do you have to say to me now?” I ask.
“This is bullshit!” He points a finger at me, “You’re bullshit! I refuse to believe a single word you say, you fucking psycho! Let me out of here or I’ll do my best to kick your fat ass!”
My eye sockets narrow somehow. “A simple ‘thank you’ would have been the very minimum of gratitude for giving you your body back, you know. There’s still a bit to go in the story, and I could make it very uncomfortable for you if you keep up that kind of attitude with me. Have you ever heard of priapism? Chronic priapism? ETERNAL PRIAPISM?”
His face goes all white as he looks at Silver Spring, then back to me. “You wouldn’t…” he simply whispers.
“Oh you bet I would. Just stay there and enjoy your own body for a while instead of being an asshole. It’s time for Silver to open his gift!” Said gift hits said pony in the side of the head as said words are said by me.
“I don’t want to open gifts anymore,” he whines pitifully.
Well, too bad because the gift suddenly opens itself to reveal a full-sized Lemony Loft wearing nothing but a quartet of socks and winking suggestively at Silver Spring. His face reddens faster than the time it took me to give up trying to come up with a decent comparison of chromatic change velocity. He goes all red in the noggin’ super-fast, is what I’m saying.
“Whu-wha-w-what?” he stammers coherently as he sits down to hide his sudden b...elly, “How did she fit in that tiny box?”
Man, who cares. So what if I wrap my Christmas gifts in tiny tardises. Tardii?
“Do you like it?” I ask, completely ignoring his question inside the narrative. “ It’s your sexy workplace crush, and she’s aaaaallll yours.”
“That just makes me very uncomfortable,” he answers, because I somehow failed to make him a total perv. What am I even doing with my life.
“Oh, fine, you wimp,” I say, wiping the yellow pegasus from existence. “What do you want instead?”
“I don’t want anything. Just having him out of my head is fine, really. I do want to go home now, though. Please?”
“Nonsense! We’re having fun here, aren’t we? I brought you here to give you gifts, and you’re not leaving before I do!”
I snap my fingers in quick succession, offering him a wide variety of stuff.
Money? “Please let us go.”
Legions of adoring fans? “I want to go home.”
More cookies? He just whimpers under the pile of cookies.
Becoming an alicorn princess? “Aaaahh!” she screams in her new voice.
Alicorn prince, then? “AaaaiiI’m actually fine with this,” he says, inspecting his brand new wings. Good!
Before he can say anything else, I suddenly stand up, shouting “Eggnog for everyone!” just before approximately fifty thousand gallons of the stuff pour from the ceiling.
When they finally recover from the shock, Dave and Silver find themselves each with one of my arms around their shoulders, huddled together and facing you.
“So that’s the end of that, I guess,” I say, firmly squeezing their drenched shoulders. “I don’t really have any more ideas for ways to comically abuse the two of you, so I’m going to end this chapter soon. Say hi and merry Christmas to the readers!”
They awkwardly oblige, speaking their greetings to what they only see as a blank wall while torn between feeling uncomfortable about the traumatizing situation or feeling uncomfortable about the burning skull inches from their faces. They opt for both.
“Okay, see you next time, guys! I could promise you an imminent update, but I’m enough of a liar as it is, so I’ll just wish you a merry Christmas and hope for the best!”
Everyone pauses for a moment, waiting for the chapter to cut off. Just before it does, I suddenly begin trying to force my two protagonists’ faces closer to each other with my hands on the backs of their heads, shouting “NOW KISS!”
“AAAAHHH! NOOOO!” They scream, doing their best to keep themse
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