The Cinnamon Invasion: Week 3

Day 15

"Yay!!" I hear a disturbing scream coming from the next room too early in the morning and I'm startled out of bed. I find Cinnamon with a wide smile on his face. It seems we've made peace, or have at least reached some kind of compromise. Either way Cinnamon is in far too good of a mood to bother with any threats, idle or otherwise.

"Check it! This is perfect! They'll never find me!" he says with a confident swagger that doesn't match his stupid elf voice. "The perfect disguise!"

Day 16 

The Saturday end of a busy week. I'd planned to try and get some Christmas shopping done, but it didn't go well so I gave up and drove home. My neighbor Don was standing out in the yard between our houses, raising a hand in greeting as I park in the driveway. 

"I wasn't sure if you were home," he said, nodding toward the house. "I was sure I saw your car leave a few hours ago, but the music is so loud in there we could hear it from our living room." This is no small thing since it's winter and all of the windows on both our houses are closed up tight. I thank Don for his concern. As I walk in through the garage entrance, I'm greeted by an apocalyptic blaring. Cinnamon sits beside my old CD player.

"Dude, why didn't you tell me we had all this?" he said. "This is SO MUCH better than Burl Ives and Gene Autry and Andy Williams!!"

Apparently he calls me Dude now. And I can't help but wonder: What exactly does he mean by "we?" 

Day 17

"Hey! HEY!" I hear myself being summoned. "Get a picture of this and put it on the Internet," Cinnamon tells me, his voice temporarily reduced to a dry gag.

"To what purpose?" I ask.

"More effective than a disguise," he replies. "If there's anything about the world that I know for sure, it's that your enemies won't hunt you down if they think you're already dead."

Day 18

Cinnamon was waiting at the front door when I got home.

"Are you alone?" he asks. His voice has a nervous tremor I haven't heard before.

"Yeah, of course I am," I answer. I try the key. The door is barricaded from the inside.

"Are you really alone?!" he demands. "I'm not joking around here!"

"Yes, I'm alone! Open the door, you twerp! It's raining!"

I barely get inside before he slams the door and locks it again. He looks up at me with haunted eyes.

"They found me," he croaks. "We aren't safe anymore."

There he goes with that "we" business again....

Day 19

A burning smell as I enter the house, and my fight or flight response activates. Something left on a furnace grate? A forgotten candle? Is my house safe?!

"HELP!!!" A scream from the kitchen. Cinnamon's enemies must've found their way in. I quickly remove him, mostly to prevent any further damage to the grill. "Put me...on the tree...." he pants. "Time on...the Christmas tree...only way...to heal...for certain...."

Reluctantly I comply. 

Day 20

This morning I find Cinnamon impaled by an ornament and lying motionless on a plate as if he's been served up. This happened while I slept? I hadn't heard a thing. Oddly enough he seems to have something like maple syrup leaking from his body instead of blood, and somehow this doesn't surprise me. (At least it smelled like maple syrup; I wasn't about to taste it.) 

I don't like the thought of his enemies being able to enter my house at will, particularly in the middle of the night. There's no way this can end well.

"...tree, again..." he pleads, barely with the strength to speak. "...please... hurry...."

Day 21

There's no sign of Cinnamon anywhere this morning and I think, maybe he crawled off to die somewhere.

No such luck.

"Take me with you!" he pleads. "I'm not safe here alone!"

 

"Dude, they stabbed you when I was here, sleeping. I don't think I'm really much help."

He unconsciously pats at his side, mumbling something about how that was only a warning. "I just...I don't know what to do."

"Well," I tell him, "I've invested a lot of time into crafting a safe and welcoming classroom environment, and you represent a variable I am not comfortable introducing into that. Maybe you want to think of a better hiding place than sitting on the kitchen counter and staring out the window."

I pick him up and carry him back inside. He's still too weak from his injuries to struggle.

One week until Christmas. Part of me wants to see how all of this ends, while another part just wants it all to end....

The Cinnamon Invasion: Week 2

Day 8
Well, Cinnamon is back this morning. And it seems he's made a new friend. And I'm going to have to burn my favorite sweatshirt now.

Day 9
I've reached the point where now it's more about what curiosities I'll discover in the morning instead of if there will be any. Cinnamon greets me inside the front door, all cheery and smiling. "Happy St. Nicholas Day!" he yells, with his usual high-pitched dentist drill of a voice.

"St. Nicholas Day?" I ask, rubbing the sleep out of my face.

"Yeah, you know, treats in the shoes, that whole thing! December 6th! That's today!"

His description triggers a vague childhood memory. "So you're saying St. Nicholas came here last night?"

He laughs indulgently. "Of course not. He tried, but I kept the place locked down -- sanctuary and all, you know. It wouldn't be safe to let just anyone in here. I took care of business myself instead."

I see my shoes beside the front door. "Pizza?" I ask. "That's my treat?"

"You like pizza, right? Everyone does!"

I lean in for a closer look at the other shoe. "And...a vitamin?"

"Yeah!" he says, enthusiastically. "Because, health!"

I walk away, shaking my head and mentally adding shoe-shopping to my To Do List for the day.

Day 10
I managed to get the Christmas tree up today. Cinnamon's reaction was not at all what I expected. "It's happening too soon," I overheard him say, as if thinking aloud. "I'm not ready yet." I thought, "HA! Join the club, you little monster. Nobody's ready for Christmas yet. I haven't even started shopping."

By the time darkness settled in, he had checked the lock on each door at least twice, then began standing vigil at the patio door. "It's only a matter of time until they find me," he whispered, seemingly oblivious that I was even in the room.... 

Day 11
It seems Movie Night was going on while I was sleeping. I was much more comfortable with the idea of Cinnamon being potentially influenced by holiday cartoons from the 1960s.

For some reason this reminded me of my first fight with Tyler.... 

Day 12
I found Cinnamon staring at the wall. Before I could even ask, he said, "I just wanted to watch something burn."

Day 13
I found Cinnamon in the kitchen when I got home. "I wrote you a poem today," he said. "I hope you like it."

I'm sleeping with the bedroom door locked tonight.

Day 14
I came home to the sound of maniacal laughter echoing from the office. Cinnamon was sitting beside my desktop, looking a little too self-satisfied.

"What did you do?" I asked, my mind scrolling through too many bad possibilities.

He laughed some more, then suddenly went stoic. "I learned today that you've been posting pictures of me all over the Internet. Since I have made my needs for sanctuary abundantly clear, I was greatly displeased by this and decided you needed to be taught a lesson. Therefore, certain contacts found in your address book have experienced, shall we say, 'slight technical difficulties' today."

"Okay, whatever, enough with the vague sanctuary talk," I replied. "Just cut to the chase. Why do you need sanctuary? Who or what are you hiding from?"

He sighed. "If I tell you, you won't ever be able to go back to a time when you didn't know. And you might end up regretting that."

I left the room, refusing to take the bait. I can only hope this nonsense will resolve itself by Christmas.

Will the madness ever end??? Tune in next week! Same elf-time, same elf-blog....

The Cinnamon Invasion: Week 1

I’ve always enjoyed the holiday season, but this year it’s turning out to be something very different, and not necessarily in the merriest of ways.

Day 1
Thanksgiving had been a great day, full of family, laughter, football, dogs, and pie. I drove home that night through the unseasonably frigid temperatures and went to bed feeling full and content and loved. Then I woke the next morning and saw this creepy little thing perched by the television, staring me down. I recognized it as one of those disturbing “Elf on the Shelf” misfits, but the thing is -- I don't own one. I don’t mind saying I was a little freaked out. I mean, look at it. I know there are families that love to get all Pinterested up this time of year with stuff like this, but to have one of these awful things just show up in your house? Not cool. I went on with my day and did the best I could to ignore it, because there was no way I was going to touch the thing.

Day 2
I had almost forgotten about my interloping red bag of horrible when I went to bed Friday night and thought I was in the clear Saturday morning...until I walked into the kitchen and found it waiting for me. It sat on the kitchen table with the strangest handwritten note beside it: "I seek sanctuary. My Elven name is Clavicus Hrothgar, Overlord of the Darkness Guild. But perhaps it'd be best if you simply called me Cinnamon."

Cinnamon? I don’t know if that’s any less creepy than that other name. “Cinnamon” didn’t exactly specify what he needs sanctuary for, but I didn’t feel terribly compelled to grant it. Before I could tell him to get out of my house, he was gone. I didn’t see him again for the rest of the day.

Day 3
I found Cinnamon sitting vigilantly by the kitchen window this morning, quietly muttering to himself, "They're coming....they're coming....I know they're coming." This is not reassuring. I wish I had some idea who “they” are supposed to be.

Day 4
My first day back to work after the Thanksgiving break. I get home to find this scene.

 Oh, Cinnamon...I just...I don't even want to know....I can only hope all of this was enough to quiet whatever demons are plaguing your tormented elven spirit. Especially now that I have to finish off the leftover pie without any Reddi-Wip.


Day 5
For once there was no sign of Cinnamon when I woke up this morning, or when I got home from work in the evening. In fact, I had almost successfully banished the idea of him from my head altogether. Just when I was settling in for the evening, figuring I was finally in the clear, I heard the television turn on all by itself, which never happens because my house isn’t haunted. I walked to the living room to see what the deal was and turn it off when I heard a low, threatening growl coming from the edge of the coffee table behind me: "You will NOT. Touch that remote."

Day 6
After what I now think of as The Charlie Brown Incident, my sleep last night was frequently interrupted by unsettling nightmares. By the time I woke, I'd all but decided to send Cinnamon on his way, maybe even with the trash pick-up tomorrow. When I got out of bed to do some early work on revisions I found this, and noticed a recently recorded voice memo on my phone: "You didn't know I can see your dreams, did you? Do you ever want to work on your clever little story again? I think a few weeks of sanctuary would be a fair trade for your new password. Or, should I say, OUR new password."

What choice do I really have? And again, I'm wondering: Sanctuary from who? Or what? If whatever he’s hiding from would get him out of my life, I’d almost be ready to put up a neon sign outside the front door to guide the way.

Day 7
There was no sign of Cinnamon this morning. I’m learning to trust the mild anxiety that follows when that happens. Sure enough, I find another message on the iPad when I get home. Paraphrased, because it was kind of scattered and written in more fonts than I knew the iPad had available: "Haha I found the candy hidden in the bathroom and finished it off! It tasted awful but I feel great! I'm going on a pizza run, back later!!"

Is Cinnamon gone forever, or will tonight just be a temporary respite for me? Tune in next week to find out!!