The banging from the building intensified over the next twenty minutes, much to Officer Fido's annoyance. He was having a hard enough time with Claireholm Dundas of the Miracle Street Symphony Orchestra, who ardently insisted that his lawful unlawful assembly continue, and whose symphony orchestra responded to the suggestion that they ought to cease and desist (put less politely, fly away) by launching into the Flight of the Bumblebee.
“Ladybug ladybug, fly away home,” he’d said, seeing if they’d respond better to poetry, “your house is on fire, your children shall burn!”
“Nee nee nee nee nee nee nee nee nee nee nee,” went the orchestra in reply.
The music was growing increasingly loud and aggressive, Officer Fido's attempts to silence it meeting with increased opposition. The crowd, for their part, were having the time of their life: they'd thought they'd only get free music, and here they were getting an additional theatre presentation to boot.
Officer Fido disputed, Claireholm responded (while doing cartwheels), the orchestra played, and the building exploded.
There was a rumble and a rush and a sudden sensation of thrashing and the earth heaved as if with the terrified screams of a thousand ennaughtified cultivators. And then the windows on the building’s bottom blew out, and the building went up in a storm of flowers.
Daffodils, daisies, and dandelions rained on the astonished mass. Pansies pounced on the police, orchids overflowed the orchestra, and calendula captivated the crowd. Like a crushing wave they descended from the building, inundating everything in their path, and following them came pure chaos.
Screams poured out of the building, corporate employees racing out the doors and even the windows with strange green men bounding and cavorting in hot pursuit. Officer Fido had no clue why so many inordinately short individuals had painted themselves green, nor why they had determined to torment (admittedly highly corrupt) corporate officials, and frankly he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. Scattered amidst this mob were what looked like furniture - only it couldn't be, for furniture couldn't move and certainly couldn't sing, nor was it predisposed to take showers. (And even if it was, where was the water coming from?)
Officer Fido cursed and made a judgement call.
“Bebother and beblast this symphony orchestra,” he swore, and gave orders to his pansy-pounded police. “Into the building, go!”
Claireholm vaulted back onto his feet, smiling.
“I'm afraid I can't allow that,” he said, expression serene.
“Can't allow that? Like heck I care what you'll allow,” Officer Fido swore, and tried to push past Claireholm.
He slammed into a solid wall of muscle and flesh, bounding back. The nearly fifty year old portly man stood firm, blocking his way.
He turned to a stuffed toy that was lying at the foot of the First Violinist.
“I do believe it is time for Plan B.”
Officer Fido ordered his men to advance, and arrest the symphony orchestra for obstruction of justice. The orchestra’s collective eyes narrowed, and they played on doggedly as the police clambered all over them.
Claireholm just grinned, a wicked look on his face, as if the entire affair was one great big joke.
“Brunehilde?”
The fat lady hurled the tuba away…and then she began to sing.
***
But let's back up a little. The goblins had poured into the higher floors of Das Gleiche, tormenting the employees with out of season holidays, poorly composed poems, and disco desks. Then they poured into the basement, limboed through the demonic legions, and summoned Krampus to punish the naughty.
In between all this they stormed all manner of other floors, wreaking havoc in corporate offices, decorating the boardroom in new and improved (which is to say, terrible) colour schemes, and eating the office computer servers. (Grubtoe was having a bad morning - the car key gnomes stole his glasses, and he managed to put on mismatched pant legs. He would later contend that he legitimately thought the servers were large, crunchy cakes.)
They also jigged through the front hall. The carpet came alive, snaking through the air to an Arabesque; the pillars began to darkly mutter cryptical prophecies of long ago; and the paperwork on Anna's desk converted to the tragically extinct religion of Mithraism.
Anna looked around, observed all this, and knowing who the cleaning would be delegated to went to get a broom. (The presence of the goblins did not trouble her unduly. She had longed for a good topsy-turvy revel, and figured she had a few years of Twelfth Night Shenanigans saved up.)
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Returning she found the situation had deteriorated even further. The staff who had escaped from up above came running through screaming, with the goblins also screaming beside them (they thought it was a contest). Daemoniac howls were coming from the basement, some sort of liquid crystalline fluid soaked the floor, and her desk had turned into a living mass of pure sauerkraut and relish.
The orchestra outside was playing In the Hall of the Mountain King, the perhaps too appropriate music echoing around her as she considered what it was she should do.
There comes a time in every woman’s life when she must make a choice: lose Christmas, or embrace it with all her heart and soul. It is possible, had the symphony not stirred something within her, that Anna would have made the wrong choice: and this tale would have had an altogether more tragic end.
But she was filled with music, and feeling merry and mischievous, her heart floating with a levity she couldn’t recall feeling since childhood. More importantly, she had no plans to work through Christmas again because management was too lazy to clean up their own messes. (She had no clue how, exactly, management was responsible for ninety-seven goblins doing an Irish jig in her office, but she was absolutely certain that, somehow, management was responsible.)
And so she made her choice. But she thought she would have a little fun first - after all, there was no time like Christmas for laughter and good humour.
“Oy, what’s all this,” she said, and waved the broom at a goblin. “You better not be leaving your mess for others to clean up.”
Her tone as she said this was entirely jocund, but the goblin blanched. There was no sword or spell that scared him - the one he would face head on, fly whisk drawn, the other he would stride through cheerily. But nothing unnerves a goblin like tools or cleaning implements: it shows their opponent knows how to play. Nervously, he wrung his wee cap in his hands.
“Oh, no worries miss, it’s only that it’s your birthday, so we thought we’d throw you a bit of a celebration.”
Anna’s birthday, for the record, was the third of March (the readers are welcome to send her gifts), but this entirely irrelevant birthday celebration didn’t bother her in the slightest. She was planning to quit, you see, and now that she had made this decision she had discovered the dark secret motivational speakers don’t want you to know - there is nothing like giving up to make you feel free.
“Oh, really,” she said, deciding to roll with the punches, and grinning as she remembered an old story she’d once read to her little cousin while babysitting him. “And since you’re here to celebrate my birthday I take it you know the Great and Profound Scripture of Birthdays - Sandra Boynton’s Birthday Monsters!?”
The goblin did indeed know Birthday Monsters!. He quailed. Some of the other goblins, who’d stopped to listen in, started quailing too. Their pet quail, however, appeared entirely unperturbed by this announcement. (Doubtless because he was firm of heart.)
“I see you know it. It was obvious - you had the first lines down; ‘you hear the door come crashing down — the birthday monsters are in town!’ And you mastered the middle,” she said, observing the unfolding chaos, “‘they took your gifts, they ate your cake. They made the mess that monsters make.’”
There was an explosion, then, a wave of flowers inundating the room and burying Anna up to her chest.
“And there we are - as I said, we have that part down, too,” she drawled, her voice monotone. She could no longer see the goblins under the floral floor, but she could tell by the nervousness in the air that they were not smelling the roses.
“Yet you have yet to finish the story: ‘One last surprise is here for you — the birthday monster cleaning crew!’ So, I take it you’ll start cleaning up?”
There was a floomph as the goblins appeared - the wave of flowers was passing out the door, leaving the cracked and ensorcelled floor free once more - and the goblin who first spoke cleared his throat.
“Begging your pardon, miss, but you see we’re goblins. Mischief is our inner nature,” he said, intoning with impish solemnity an ancient path of cultivation, “waggery our destined path to the Gates of Mystery.”
Anna smiled, the full weight of a decade’s demonic cultivation going into the wickedness of her grin. “And you know who else has mischief as his inner nature? My little cousin. But he always gets a present from Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, and you know why? Because he’s a hob in the truest sense of the word - he’s a good and mischievous child, and is on the Nice List. And you all look like you’re on the Nice List, so you must be good children too. And good children always clean up after themselves.”
The goblins felt dismay fill their hearts as Anna’s logic proceeded inexorably. They were good children - Santa’s agent had confirmed this to them personally - so logically speaking this meant they were clean. (Not must or would, but were - to be on the Nice List, the verb needed to be conjugated in the past tense. Also, as the astute reader will recall - see chapter seven - it must be a verb of character and not of action. To be, not to do.)
With a heavy heart, brooms and hammers magically appeared in their hands, and they sighed as they turned to restore what they had wrought. By sheer good fortune (some may say fate), it was at that very moment that the orchestra reached the apogee of Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
And then came a strong smell, as of broken earth and the first buds of spring, and the rhythmic bang, bang, bang of a cane tapping on the ground, and the cavalcade of goblins took hope, for he was here.