"Does this mean we have to wrap presents for snotty little kids?" Jess moaned.
"Yeah," an elf that was leading them answered. He was wearing a red hat with a white flashing snowball on the end. "Keep up, you need to chose your hates."
He led them into a room that was extremely large and had shelves with box compartments all over each wall, from ceiling to floor. In each small box there was a hat. And every single hat was different from the next. Some weere flashing, others were sparkling, some had detachable reindeer horns and others exclaimed: 'HO! HO! HO!' every 5 seconds.
Jess and Hannah stood rigid and surveyed all of the wacky Christmas hats.
"Hurry up!" the elf chanted. "Go and choose a hat!"
He pushed Jess and Hannah into the middle of the room as they looked around in wonder.
"Oh.. for God's sake..." Jess grabbed a red Santa hat and pulled it on, looking about as jolly as a snowman next to a radiator. Hannah took a headband with antlers attached and slid it into her hair.
"Right - get over there where that big pile of paper is," the elf pointed, "and sort it into two smaller piles - naughty children and nice children - so we know who to make presents for."
Jess and Hannah looked at the enormous disarray of papers.
"Right," Hannah cracked her knuckles. "Let's get going."
They crouched by the pile and started sorting through the papers.
"Good, bad, good, bad, good, bad..." Hannah said, taking a fair, pragmatic approach to their task.
"Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad--"
"JESS!"
"What?"
"You're being an ARSE! That's hardly Christmas spirit, is it?"
"Oh..." Jess looked reluctant. "All right." She turned back to the pile. "Bad, bad... good...bad, bad, bad..."
"That's right." A lead elf, with a flashing hat that said 'MERRY CHRISTMAS!' on (that made it very hard to take him seriously) said encouragingly. "Quicker!" He jabbed a candy stick.
"What is this place? Hell?" Hannah said, lifting up handfuls of paper, dumping it on the 'good' pile, the scooping up another handful, and dumping that on the 'bad' pile.
"Not enough fire..." Jess commented, performing the same dumping action as Hannah.
They worked quickly, hoping to have a rest afterwards. The music played on in the background helping them get into the Christmas cheer.
"Rocking around the Christmas tree... doo de doo doo doo doo-doo" Hannah sang along.
Jess rolled her eyes. She enjoyed wrapping presents, but this was just taking the piss.
"There!" Hannah laid the last sheet delicately on the good pile and smiled.
"Good." the lead elf smiled. "Mince pie?" he offered as their reward.
"No thanks." Hannah and Jess both declined.
"OK..." the elf, minorly offended, withdrew the offer. "So, tell me, what's the true meaning of Christmas?"
Jess thought for a second. "Dividing your wrapping paper carefully?"
"No!" the elf threw down his mince pies in disgust. "To the NEXT task!" He made them get up and marched them to an adjoining room.
What they found there was several huge machines, all with chocolate running through them. At the beginning, to the left of them, normal huge chocolate bars were going in and at the end, to their right, small novelty chocolates were popping out.
"Make 5000 Christmas tree shaped chocolates!" the elf ordered.
"I never liked those bloody things anyway!" Hannah moaned, pressing a button on the machine grumpily and trying to forget the Christmas she had eaten four and a half packets of Christmas Pudding-shaped After Eights.
"It won't take long, right?" Jess said, hopefully. "I mean, 5000 isn't that many…"
Suddenly the machine made a grinding noise and one single chocolate came out on a conveyer belt that was moving slower than a paraplegic tortoise.
"Oh, Christ." Hannah groaned.
"Maybe we should just make a run for it." Jess suggested.
"Past them?" Hannah said, pointing at a bunch of elves near the door holding their sharpened candy canes threateningly.
"Hmm." Jess cranked a lever on the machine and sulked.
"Hang on…" Hannah looked at the machine. "I think I may have an idea!"