BRUCE’S GOOD TIME POST-HOLIDAY BAR AND GRILL

If it weren’t for the post-holiday season, Bruce’s Good Time Post-Holiday Bar and Grill wouldn’t stay open, given its location and clientele.

Actually, it isn’t open at any other time than after major holidays (attempts to request its services for Arbour Day or St. Swithin’s Day were ignored). It just opens up when it’s needed, and Christmas is the time that calls out to it the most.

The doors flew open in a gust of wind and good cheer, with a faint puff of malevolence and sour milk, and a scent of cookies from an anatomical area best left to the imagination.

“Ho ho howdy, Bruce!” a voice that has delighted and terrified children for centuries called out.

“Yeah, hi, Bruce,” a gravelly tone from just behind the first speaker rumbled. On a nearby ice floe, a baby polar bear squeaked and huddled closer to its mother.

“Hello, gentlemen. I’ve been expecting you,” the bewhiskered bartender in a plaid jacket called out with a tone that betrayed his other gig at a radio station in Alaska.

The red-coated patron slumped down on the barstool nearest to Bruce. The other fellow, as was his wont, sat in a darker corner, his eyes burning in the shadows like two lumps of red-hot coal.

“Eggnog, gentlemen?” the barkeep suggested.

“I’ll have a White Russian,” the jolly customer said in a weary but still warm range. “And I think my friend here will want something a little stronger. Maybe some absinthe, Mr. K?”

“Oh, you’re so very funny, Nick,” the lurker retorted. “I will actually have a white wine spritzer with grenadine syrup.”

“A Teddy Bear?” Nick chortled. “The embodiment of punishing bad boys and girls wants a Teddy Bear?”

“Haven’t you had enough milk, fat boy?” the devilish foil snapped. “The reindeer at least get to be upwind of you. And those freakin’ cookies you scarf down – I’m surprised you don’t have to pack insulin for your trip. Anyway – I’m trying to cut down the hard stuff. Hell is bad enough without a hangover.”

“Rough year, Nick? Krampus? Want to talk about it?” Bruce offered from the bartender psychology manual he had glanced through a time or two.

“Well,” Santa said, loosening his belt and allowing his stomach to expand from a pudding cup to a whole bowl full of jelly, “I blame that accursed open-source encyclopaedia the kids are reading. I sneak into their houses, which gets harder and harder as environmental rules make chimneys scarce, and POW! I meet a little moppet who wants to ask whether good behaviour adopted under threat of punishment can actually be considered ‘good’. I know Anthony Burgess got that stuff all the time, but spare me! That’s not even to mention the constant attempts to take selfies with me. Am I a Kardashian or something?”

The big guy took a gulp from his generously spiked moo juice. “And then there are the bigger guys who wait up for me. Seems there’s a following for large bearded dudes these days, called Bears, and letters from that fan club are bad enough. Actually MEETING them – they make ‘Santa Baby’ sound like nursery rhymes. A hug, sure. I can even put up with a kiss on the cheek. But Mrs. Claus would blow her top at some of the things they’ve whispered in my ear – and my knees are killing me from them sitting on my lap.”

Krampus snorted. “I would have imagined the pain in your knees would be from something else related to those requests, Nick.”

“Now don’t YOU start, you evil little pervert!” Santa roared, though his timbre still made it sound merry and enthusiastic.

“Sorry, Nick,” Krampus said indistinctly, as though saying it was burning his tongue – which in fact it was. “I can relate, believe me. I’ve had some older kids BEG me to hit them with my switch – fetishists, for badness sakes! And even a damned soul such as I feels a bit misty when I run across a homeless kid who WANTS me to drag them off to my cave in Hell, because at least they’d have somewhere to stay that was warm.”

A clippity clopping of hooves signalled that the reindeer outside must have finished their smokes and were now coming in too.

“Hi, Bruce!” the first one said. “And no, I’m not drunk just because I have a red nose. I know you were going to say it. I get it all the time. Anyway, since I agreed to guide you all home tonight for free, though I should be getting time and a half in sugarcubes and vegetables, I better just have some carrot juice. In fact, I’ll buy a round for the whole herd.”

An octet of voices muttered things along the lines of “make him guide and he thinks he can decide what we drink”, “I’d rather have a Moosehead”, “good old Rudy” (there’s always one insincere suck-up in every crowd), and “his nose may glow, but I hear he doesn’t have a septum anymore.”

Later in the evening, the elves arrived, and there was a flurry of requests for identification cards, some of which were clearly fake, and a little quarrel about size discrimination ensued when Bruce foolishly called for them to belly up to the bar.

There was also an ugly scene when the Easter Rabbit tried to come in and was told they didn’t serve his kind there. He replied that he didn’t eat bunny anyway, which got some courtesy laughs, not to mention a rim shot from an elf who had kept an extra drumkit from the sleigh. The Yeti bouncer gently picked the off-season intruder up by his ears and threw him all the way to Anchorage and the Bunny Bar there.

The celebration went on and on until late in the evening of December 26^th, at which point the bar literally closed up into a little box, though it came dangerously close to having a few elves left inside who were determined not to leave. Bruce packed the place onto the back of a sleigh pulled by Cerberus. Krampus had had enough Teddy Bears that he got generous and loaned Bruce the terrifying and cuddly creature, having summoned him with the dog whistle the demon kept around his neck. The mutt could find his own way home once he got Bruce to Anchorage, and anyone who happened to spot him – well, people are always overindulging at that time of year and seeing things...