The next morning, the Krampus gave me three hens wearing French berets, and the next four calling birds. Each addition was added to the growing aviary, the noise of which reached my bedroom window and woke me in the early morning.

  I came to curse my Animal Speak ability, their songs turning into a dreadful cacophony of wails about the size of their cage or demands for freedom. What use was an ability when anything I could talk to was just as trapped as I was?

  After each gift-giving ceremony, I was returned to my room until evening, when I would be allowed free reign of the office and the library it contained. I continued to help with the paperwork, partially to give myself a task – any task – to occupy my brain, as well as to try and hurry the Krampus along in his daily duties so I could draw him into conversation.

  “What happens to the gifts each year after they’ve been given?” I asked.

  “They are kept and treasured, I suppose,” the Krampus shrugged. “It is not my concern what people do with their gifts, only that there are enough made and that purchases each year meet the projections I am given.”

  “And if people don’t want a growing collection of nutcrackers? You’re making like… twenty thousand of them.”

  The Krampus shrugged. “Why is it of concern to you?”

  “I don’t know if you’ve noticed yet, but this world is pretty broken. I’ve been trying to fix it for months, and it’s an evolving situation. If you try think outside of your job role and recognize that there’s like… no recycling system, you might come to recognize that after a few years of this Christmas festival with the rate of production your guys keep up, the entire world will be drowned in junk unless its despawned or dealt with in some other way.”

  I saw his eyes glaze over as he tried to process what I was saying but failed, a common issue I encountered whenever I tried to explain things beyond the scope of their comprehension. I suppose an Earthly equivalent would be a religious nutjob trying to describe transcendentalism or the process of karmic reincarnation. Your brain had to bend a little to make room for philosophies outside your experience, and the people in this world often had to try a few times before they could manage true flexibility of thought.

  “I don’t know if I really like Christmas, in the end,” I sighed again.

  “Does anybody?” the Krampus asked, and I looked up at him in surprise, trying to decode his twisted features.

  “I mean, I guess its fine for really little kids, if they’re treated nicely and before the expectations and obligations get built up. But after that? It just feels like a lot of pressure. Honestly, I’ve always tried to avoid it.”

  Growing up in a broken home with difficult family politics, I’d always tried to work as much as possible each year until I managed to save enough to live independently. I bought something small for my younger half and step siblings out of obligation, though the act was never reciprocated even when they’d become adults. Once I’d grown up, I avoided it as much as possible except for the odd Hallmark movie. It felt like a strange sense of nostalgia for a life I’d never had, seeing sweet romances play out on screen and the unappreciated city girl finding a home and a family in a small Christmas themed town populated with hot lumberjacks.

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  “And that is why you are here,” the Krampus pointed out. “To pay for your disobedience.”

  He paused for a second, looking me up and down.

  “This is the first time I have seen you.”

  I cocked my head to the side. “What do you mean?”

  “You said you usually try to avoid Christmas, but this is the first time I have punished you. If you had avoided Christmas before, I would have apprehended you before. What can you mean by this?”

  I waited, seeing if any further connections would slide into place in his mind, but he simply waited for an answer. Perhaps it would be too much to expect, that he would suddenly realize he had been spawned into the world with a memory of events that had not necessarily happened.

  “This is my first Christmas here,” I said. If I explained it all, his eyes would glaze over again, I was sure of it. But if I proposed the problem for him to figure out on his own, perhaps he would develop the thought processes necessary to think outside of the box.

  Nightfall had explained it once as new brain connections being made. Old habits were hard to break, and old ways of thinking were even harder. Beliefs about the world or about oneself were difficult to override, but just like learning a language, exposure and experience made it easier over time.

  “It is time for bed,” he said suddenly, dismissing me once again.

  The next morning, I woke early and was summoned once again to the courtyard where the Krampus presented me with five golden rings. He placed them loosely on my fingers, and they shrunk to size, the costuming and accessory system Jenny had developed allowing the rings to alter to fit the size of the wearer.

  They glittered in the light on my fingers, and I looked at them consideringly although it wasn’t until I was escorted back to my room and the door locked behind me that I figured out where I had seen them before.

  I gazed down at the photo frame picturing the Krampus, Krampina and Santa and counted ten identical rings adorning the Krampus’ wife’s fingers.

  My heart pounded in my chest as I realized why the Krampus hated speaking about her so much. Why he had such a deep loathing towards Santa, who stood so confidently at his side in the image in my hands.

  It was like the original Kristina, the one Krampina was modelled from. The themes from James’ stories must have been woven into her personality.

  Krampina never would have made a loyal wife to the Krampus – she was a cheating bitch, and she’d left him for the wealth and riches that the greediest man in the land could bestow upon her.

  I was still holding the photo frame hours later, when the Krampus opened the door to my room and invited me into the office. He noted the picture in my hands and let out a muffled cry of genuine pain.

  I stared at him, thinking numbly of the deep scars Bruiser carried in his heart from Elise – his lost love who was only written into his past to give him a tragic backstory; or Jackal’s lost parents, who were there only due to the ‘accident-prone’ tag that had been attached to his character sheet; or Bastion and how he’d struggled with an alcoholism trait he didn’t understand until we had gone into the data that built him and managed to alter it.

  The Krampus was never going to have a happy marriage – he and his wife were designed for each other, but not to be compatible. They were designed specifically to play out a story of misery, heartbreak and loneliness – feelings that a teenage boy had once poured onto a page and an AI robot had formed her personality and view of the world around.

  I took a breath and levelled the Krampus with a serious look. “We need to talk.”