The Case of the Holiday Clichés Read online



  The Adventures of Agent Diamond and Charming Guy: The Case of the Holiday Clichés

  A short story by Elizabeth Bent

  Copyright 2014 Elizabeth Bent

  Acknowledgements

  I wrote this story after a long period of writer’s block with encouragement from friends. It was inspired by a poem I wrote in my Christmas cards to my friends and family in 2006:

  Arabesques, endless loops, circles, angles, the warp and weft of a thousand strands of varying colours and size, vinelike ropes and tiny gossamer threads, all of them coiled and knotted to form images, a thousand images, that remain distinct despite the fact that they are crowded into the design. They overlap and merge and I cannot quite see the whole, but the carpet, this tapestry, is not yet finished. Perhaps there is no overall design, merely an abstraction of bright shapes and colours, yet here in the details I see many clear forms, from the sublime to the mundane to the ridiculous: a dark cowboy standing in the shadow of other cowboys, a phoenix burning in the night, proud lions and tigresses, constellations of endlessly circling planets and moons, a woman in a wicker cage, angels with smeared lipstick, a Cheshire cat, Chinese coins, crayons, a zucchini with wings a shoe with angel’s wings, a jester’s mask—so many images, so many bright things that are woven into this fabric, so many shapes and colours, that I can’t hold them all in my mind at once and they spill over into emotion where the taste of them, the texture of them, fills me with wonder. There are dark images too—but the ones I see now are shadows of bright days, of hands intertwined and shared smiles and laughter, of love and tears, and voices crossing vast distances at the speed of light. If you are reading this, it is because you have brought joy to my life—perhaps only for a few moments, perhaps for all the years I’ve been alive. You are part of the strange tapestry that is my life, the carpet unrolling behind me as I advance into the unknown, and whether you are a small or a large part of its design, I want you to know that you are cherished.

  Elizabeth Bent

  December 14, 2014

  The black van rolled through the snowy Ottawa streets, and stopped a few doors down from a brightly lit shop. Charming Guy, sitting in the front passenger seat, looked at the halo of blinking red lights on the map display on the dashboard monitor, surrounding the street.

  “This street, all right,” he said. “That’s the only shop open. It’s got to be that one.”

  Agent Diamond, who had been driving the van, nodded. She turned off the ignition, and turned to the thin, waiflike girl sitting on the seat between herself and Charming Guy.

  “Christina,” she said. “You remember the plan?”

  Christina nodded. “Sure, Auntie Liz. I go into the shop and pretend to be an orphan. I put on my headband and press the pink flower, which activates the microphone and camera, then I keep the shopkeeper talking.”

  “That’s it, kiddo. I don’t like to ask, but our research has shown that this particular holiday cliché only manifests fully in the presence of individual children.”

  Charming Guy frowned. “That can’t be completely right,” he said, “since the shop manifested itself about two hours ago—that’s the time tipsters called the cliché hotline.”

  “It’s your report—you sure this is the magical curiosity shop cliché?”

  “Only one way to find out,” Charming Guy said, frowning at the shop.

  Agent Diamond pursed her lips. “Might I remind you, Christina and I are supposed to be baking gingerbread and watching Grumpy Cat’s Worst Christmas Ever, not busting up holiday clichés.”

  Charming Guy grinned winsomely at the two of them.

  “I’ll take you out for Chinese food after,” he promised, blue eyes crinkling, and Christina, not having the immunity Diamond had acquired over years of working with Charming Guy, sighed.

  “Can we have Thai instead?” she asked, batting her lashes.

  Agent Diamond rolled her eyes.

  “Is this manifestation at all dangerous? This is my niece we are talking about sending in there.”

  Charming Guy shook his head. “Worst is boredom, cookies, and pats on the head,” he said. “This one’s totally benign—in fact, we might want to leave it alone. This particular one comes and goes.”

  Diamond’s eyes narrowed.

  “Too many holiday stories are destroyed by clichés,” she said, darkly. “They seem harmless, but they accumulate and grow stronger, and soon all original thought is choked out. No—they have to be stopped.”

  Charming Guy reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a pink headband covered in flowers.

  “This is for you to wear, Christina,” he said. “The pink one is on the right side, right by your ear- see?” He pointed at one of the flowers.

  Christina, clearly taken with him, simpered.

  Diamond looked over at her and sighed. “Here,” she said, and took the headband, then put it on her niece’s head.

  “If you see or hear anything creepy, I want you to run out of there immediately,” she said. “Guy and I will be monitoring everything from here—we just need to record enough clichés to charge the shopkeeper with grievous offences to Canadian literature. Once we have enough evidence, we will go in there and get you out, unless you get frightened and leave first.”

  “I won’t get frightened, Auntie Liz,” Christina scoffed. “It’s just a yarn shop.”

  “How do you know it’s a yarn shop?” Diamond asked, frowning.

  Christina pointed at a sandwich board that had appeared out on the sidewalk, featuring a large red cartoon ball of yarn with two giant knitting needles stuck into it. They all watched as the roof of the shop building shuddered and stretched, and suddenly transformed into a thick layer of icicle-strewn thatch, decorated with candy canes and blinking multicoloured Christmas lights.

  Diamond’s mouth tightened, and she nodded.

  “It’s spreading outward. OK, let’s get the exterior of the shop on video,” she said, activating the recording equipment on the headband. On the dashboard monitor, the street map was replaced with a slightly grainy black and white image of the interior of the van, taken from Christina’s viewpoint.

  Christina waved a hand in front of her face, watching the monitor, and grinned.

  “OK, then,” Charming Guy said, opening the door to the van. “You know what to do, right, Christina? And afterward, Thai food!”

  “And Grumpy Cat and cookies,” Christina replied. She pulled on a pair of mittens and slid over the seat to the outside. Agent Diamond watched her shake Charming Guy’s hand, and then watched the small form of her niece trudge through the snow toward the mysterious shop. A wooden sign, above the door, came into view on the dashboard: A Stitch In Time Saves Nine.

  “Oh, that’s definitely a violation,” she muttered, scribbling on a citation pad. Beside her, Charming Guy slid back into the van and adjusted the taser he held in a waist holster.

  Diamond glared at him. “Not dangerous? Why are you fiddling with that?”

  “Oh, don’t tell me you’ve never wanted to tase a jolly holiday shopkeeper,” Charming Guy replied, slightly defensively.

  Agent Diamond nodded, thinking about the blackjack she had tucked in her left boot.

  “Look, she’s entering the shop,” she said. “Shhh.”

  Christina opened the door of the shop, which was decorated with fat, happy-looking sheep in red Santa hats. A bell jingled.

  “Hello?”

  Christina looked around. The video screen showed a counter decorated with a large Thomas Kinkade painting, and behind the counter there was a plump, grandmotherly woman in glasses and an apron. She was holding a half-knitted Christmas sweater, whic
h apparently was to be decorated with a large reindeer.

  Diamond tsked.

  “The sweater might be ironic,” she said, marking her citation pad, “But an apron? Thomas Kinkade? No, no, no.”

  “My grandmother likes Thomas Kinkade—” Charming Guy began, but was cut short.

  “Hi,” Christina’s voice sounded slightly tinny through the monitor. “I’m an orphan.”

  Charming Guy’s mouth quirked.

  “My mother died of leukemia,” Christina continued. “Yesterday. And my dad was mauled by wolves when I was three.”

  Diamond winced.

  The shopkeeper did not appear to notice anything incongruous in Christina’s statements.

  “Well, hello, dear,” she said, knitting placidly. She adjusted her glasses. “What can I do for you today?”

  Christina hesitated.

  “I have Christmas money,” she said. The video footage cut away from the shopkeeper to Christina’s right parka pocket, where she pulled out a coin purse.

  “I’ve got twenty dollars. I made it selling, um, apples in the street. I’d