Hellf on the Shelf

I was about eleven years old that Christmas. The one where I got the visit from “Ignatius.” Even now, every time I see an “Elf on the Shelf” doll being displayed anywhere, I just want to smash its fuckin’ head in with a meat cleaver. Sometimes, I’ll see a baby holding a little replica of one and I’ll get the urge to rip it from the baby’s tiny lil’ hands to teach them a preschool lesson in what homicide looks like. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here.

Let’s flash back to the year 2014, when little 11-year-old Maven’s sister got her very first “Elf on the Shelf.” Laina was only six years at the time, so it made sense that she would have some creepy, elf-looking doll thing sitting around the house, supposedly spying on her and reporting how “good” she’s been for Santa Claus. I hated it so much.

But then, one night, I was doing homework on our family computer, and this web article popped up: “20 funniest ‘Elf on the Shelf’ ideas,” which consisted of various “Elf on the Shelfs” going through all these bizarre and even cruel scenarios: torture, using a coffee mug like a toilet, etc. One picture in particular gave me an idea for a prank that I thought was bound for the books.

I moved Laina’s elf behind the couch, took the hat, then ate some leftover chicken wing bones from the fridge and put the bones on a plate that I sprinkled some additional ketchup on, before adding the hat. I put it on the mantle where the elf sat, and then called Laina over, saying with a snicker, “Oh no, Laina! Santa came early and became a cannibal! Look! He got your elf!”

Laina freaked out, nearly having a panic attack. Was she for real? I had to grab the doll back from the couch to show her it was okay. That’s when I realized she wasn’t upset because she took the joke seriously, but because the doll was moved from its spot.

She ran to our mom, crying, saying she won’t get any presents now because “Amelia” got removed from her post, so now she’s broken the arbitrating promise to not interfere with the elf’s spy work. My mom had calmed her down by promising that it was all a misunderstanding, and that since she didn’t move the doll herself, she didn’t break any promises.

My mom asked me politely to not touch the doll again, and that it’s all for Laina’s sake, and the purity of her childhood and blah, blah, blah. I laughed her off. She got a little more frustrated with me. “Maven Rose!” she said in her usual stern mom demeanor. “You know, considering you’re a kid too, I’d expect you’d be a little more into the whole Christmas spirit!”

My mom seemed a little incredulous. “Well, your sister isn’t. So go with the act. Or else maybe you’ll be the one Amelia will be giving a naughty report on.”

I laughed as if I got punched in the gut. “Yeah right, like ‘Santa’ cares what a plastic doll has to say...oh wait, the doll is inanimate, she can’t speak!”

All my mom could do was scoff. “Since when did you age five years?” she said. “I’m pretty sure Santa only visits good little girls in this house, not bratty teenage-wannabes,” she continued with a hint of sarcasm in her voice. A smirk even appeared on her face, which only annoyed me further.

“Oh please!” I scoffed back. “I’m too old for this Santa Claus stuff, Mom! I know it's just you and Dad buying presents—”

Mom cut me off there, very insistently motioning me to cut it out. “Don’t finish that sentence!” she angrily whispered through gritted teeth. Then she looked around to make sure Laina wasn’t anywhere in earshot before turning towards me, taking a breath before speaking.

“Look, I know you’re getting older–as much as it pains me to see you like this. It’s your choice what to believe, but like I said, your sister is still little, and you will not ruin her childhood while she’s still living it. Okay? And I want you to especially put that attitude aside when we go in for the concert tomorrow.”

Oh, yay. The concert. How could I forget? Laina’s stupid first grade holiday concert. Talk about boring! “Ugh, I still don’t want to go to that, Mom!” I moaned.

“Well, too bad,” Mom said. “It’s your sister’s shining moment, and you’ll be there with Dad and me to support her.”

I turned and stormed away in protest, looking at Mom over my shoulder. “I don’t care about her! You think I have nothing better to do than to hear a bunch of baby-kids singing sissy music?” I stomped towards the stairs.

As I turned to head up, I saw Laina standing there on the bottom step, her eyes filled with tears. Not the childish tears of a kid who thinks Santa won’t come, but a child who’s been hurt by her sibling. How much did she hear? Maybe not the part about Santa being an act, but she definitely heard me say I don’t care about her.

So what did I do? I shrugged her off and ran past her up the stairs. From the corner of my eye as I reared around the second floor hallway, I caught a glimpse of my mom hugging Laina.

Did I care at all? I’d like to think I did deep down, but this was the start of that age where my teenage hormones were starting to kick in. They blocked a lot of empathetic feelings for me back then, so if I had any regret, I didn’t think about it. I just went back up to my room to resume my normal, everyday life.

I had no idea this would actually be the last night I’d ever know what “normal” felt like.

The craziness began the following morning. I was packing up for school in the living room. It was the last day of school before the holiday break. As I moved onto the couch, putting all my books in my backpack, I noticed something else was on the mantle of the fireplace. An Elf on the Shelf. I would have thought it was Laina’s “Amelia” doll, except Amelia wears red clothes with white trim. This one was still wearing red, but had black trim.

I did a double take on this. Did the doll come with a second outfit that Mom put on her to make it look like the elf was changing outfits for the sake of Laina’s imagination? That’s when I noticed the elf’s hair was a different color. “Amelia” is a brunette, but this elf was blonde.

I curiously moved closer and upon further inspection, I noticed this elf was not a girl, but a boy. Then again, who was I to assume the gender of a plastic elf?

But the point remained: there was a new elf on our shelf. This one even came with a note next to it, one made out of red paper. It had my name written on it in clear letters. Naturally, I was curious enough to take the note and open it.

I was sent here to make sure you will be a good little girl this Christmas! Don’t move me around, or you get no reward this year!

Happy to be your new friend!

-Ignatius

Oh, I get it now, I thought. Mom is trying to get me in on this whole “Elf on the Shelf” tradition in order to get me to see things eye-to-eye with her and Laina. That’s the point of this whole “Ignatius” thing suddenly being here.

My dumb ass didn’t even seem to question the fact that the note said I wouldn’t get any ‘reward’ this year for Christmas instead of presents. What did that mean, ‘reward’? Looking back, if I had known any better, I would have questioned this right off the bat. But nope, instead I went to school, thinking nothing else of this situation.

When I got home that afternoon, that’s when things started to change. And by change, I mean, it got really weird...

I came home and didn’t go into the living room, so I didn’t see if the doll was still on the fireplace mantle. I honestly didn’t care. I was just relieved to finally be home and not have to worry about school again for a whole two weeks. I was ready to head up to my room and crash on my bed and take advantage of the fact that neither my parents nor Laina would be home for a couple more hours. Laina needed a new dress for her concert that night, so Mom was going to take her out shopping for one after school (last minute, of course), which could take god knows how many hours. Plenty of time to rake in some peace and quiet after the typical craziness of the last day of school before break.

As I got into my room and hopped onto my bed, ready to get some shut-eye, I let my head fall back onto my pillow, arms crossed under my head, eyes closed, I couldn’t shake this funny feeling. I don’t know how I could have felt it back then, but I had this strange sensation that I was being watched.

As I rolled over to face my nightstand, my eyes opened and immediately widened as I saw that dumb-looking Elf on the Shelf doll, “Ignatius,” sitting on my digital One Direction alarm clock.

No, not sitting. Laying back. His arms were crossed under his head like mine were just now. Same thing with his legs being crossed. It’s like he was posing after me! Not only that, but his little plastic head was also turned in my direction...

I thought I got it. Mom moved him up here to make me feel more “watched.” She’s probably come into my room a couple of times before and seen what my sleep positions looked like and made him mimic what she saw. I know it wasn’t the only time I’d been positioned like this in bed. That seemed to be the only logical explanation.

Well, I wasn’t having it. I picked up Mr. Stupid Smiley Face and literally hurled his plastic ass out of my room. “Nice try, Mom!” I yelled. It landed a few feet away from the door in the hall like a ragdoll.

I slammed it shut and then made my way back to my bed, muttering, “Pervert,” over my shoulder as if speaking to the elf. That was more playful, of course. I didn’t think the thing could actually hear me or even be alive to care.

I climbed back into bed, grabbed my CD player and put on my headphones, hoping to drown my mind in Taylor Swift’s masterpiece album, 1989. Instead, my ears were met with this horrid, screeching, loud guitar riff that sounded like an outtake from Van Halen’s banned album. I sat up with a jolt, trying to plug my ears before realizing I was only pressing my headphones in further and tore them off.

I immediately turned off the CD player. Did someone switch the disc with some metal CD? Nope. I checked. Still the seagull-printed 1989 that I’ve had in the CD player for basically all year.

Was it damaged? I took the disc out and examined it. Still looked clean and undamaged as always.

Maybe it was something wrong with the player? If it is, maybe then I’ll finally get that iPod for Christmas. Just to check, I switched out the CD with another of my favorites from back then, Red. I lowered the volume and listened carefully through the headphones in case that screeching riff came back.

I gradually turned the volume back up until I finally heard something. No, someone.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Maven,” a cold, male voice spoke through the headphones. I screeched and threw the headphones back down, just as the CD stopped playing as if it had ended.

The door creaked open. The Elf on the Shelf was right behind it, in the same position as it landed in when I threw it out, only much closer to the door.

I carefully stepped towards the door, and noticed something was up with its face. Though the doll looked like its regular self from up close, the face had an expression so different from that “derp” face it had all the time, with the eyes looking off in a side direction. This time the eyes were looking straight at me.

I must have been a braver soul back then, because despite noticing this a good distance away from the door, my first instinct was to go right up to it and pick it up. If that wasn’t dumb enough of me, I actually held it up close to my face to get a better look at its new design. It took a few seconds of staring at this close up for me to start getting nervous, so fixated on what I was seeing that I easily startled when the doll’s face came alive and said, “Boo!”

I screamed and dropped the doll again. This time, he landed on his feet, cackling maniacally.

The elf stood up on its two feet and looked at me, still bearing that red-eyed, sharp-toothed face of evil. I couldn’t even believe what I was seeing. My mind had to catch up to notice it still talking.

The voice wasn’t like a goofy cartoon voice or anything. It sounded like a normal man’s. Like, somewhere between the pitch of adolescence and maturity.

Of course, I didn’t have time to break it all down, really. The elf toy ran down the stairs faster than I could process what had happened.

It didn’t run like you’d expect a doll to. Not like, oh I don’t know, Woody from Toy Story with his head flailing back. It ran like an actual runner, and so fast that I didn’t even see it. Or hear it for that matter. It made no sound!

I was understandably freaked out when it had gone. I had to breathe for a second, simply processing the entire minute that just went by. It wasn’t until I heard the sudden sound of glass breaking downstairs that I finally snapped out of it and ran down to check it out. To this day, I still don’t understand how I didn’t run straight into the vase that flew right in front of me and smashed against the wall as I got off the stairs.

The elf was running along the top of the couch, grabbing random objects on the large windowsill behind it, and hurling them all at me. Pictures, knickknacks, all sorts of hard things that would easily smash my head open if he hit me.

Fortunately for me, my dad had a replica of an Arthurian shield propped against the wall of the foyer next to the door. I grabbed it, and it was just big enough to fully crouch behind.

Some of the next items he threw hit the shield dead on, others missed and hit the wall. Either way, they all left marks on either the wall or the shield, which was not meant to actually take hits like that. I peeked out as soon as I was sure the elf had thrown everything on the ledge. The front design of the shield was chipped and dented.

The elf was headed right for the large ceramic urn containing Grandpa Dusty’s cremated ashes, sitting on the fireplace mantle. Ironically, this “Elf on the Shelf” seemed to have a real struggle getting himself to climb up this shelf. That gave me just enough time to grab the sword replica that my dad had next to the shield, run right into the living room, and swing right at the elf, just as he hoisted himself up on the mantle. The sword hit him dead on and he went flying into the window, bouncing off and falling into the gap behind the windowsill and the couch.

The elf doll crawled out from under the gap. “Naughty girl, Maven,” it said with a condescending, playful hint in its voice. “You better learn to watch your mouth!”

Readying the sword in my hand like a batter at the plate, I found the courage to speak to this thing.

There was a moment of silent confusion from me, to which the thing spoke again. “I’ve come because I’ve heard you’ve been naughty! And I wanted to see for myself. Oh boy, Krampus will be pleased!”

“Krampus?” I asked. I’ve heard of that from kids at my school. It’s a sort of evil Santa Claus monster that punishes naughty kids. “You’re a Krampus Elf? Well, Elf on the Shelf?”

The elf’s smile widened, which I didn’t think was possible. It was wide enough. “Why, how’d ya know?” he said, giddy.

“Wait, this isn’t because of what I did to my sister’s elf doll, was it?” I asked.

“Your sister’s elf?” Ignatius repeated. “Oh, you mean Amelia? Oh yeah! Don’t worry! She’s fine! Very fine indeed...” he said with a chuckle (the implications of which I was too young to understand), and then continued, “Or I should say, was fine.”

I turned and saw that, on the floor, Laina’s “Amelia” elf was hacked into pieces. I gasped. Not just at the sight of Laina’s doll all torn up like that (and knowing my punishment after this was only going to get worse), but the fact that the decapitated head of the elf showed an expression of pure shock and horror. Was her doll alive too?

I turned back to find that Ignatius was now laying on the surface of the sword I was holding, positioned on his stomach, palms on his cheeks, legs up like he was watching TV on the floor.

I screamed and immediately threw the sword like a spear across the living room. Ignatius stayed firmly attached to the sword and gave a cry of “Weee!” as he went flying with it. The sword stuck right into the wall, and Ignatius hopped off and held onto the sides of the sword, dangling like a monkey, swinging playfully back and forth. “But it’s nothing like the pain that Laina will feel once she sees her precious ‘Amelia’ dead on the floor! How will she get her presents from Santa now?” he mocked.

I needed a new weapon now that I’ve launched the sword. So, I went to the side table next to the couch and pulled the lamp right out of its socket, holding it up threateningly.

“Au contraire,” Ignatius said, still swinging. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. Not yet. I just want the people around you to see the looks of hurt on everyone's face when they see what you’ve done...”

I was confused at first, but then I figured out what he was doing. He was threatening to get me in trouble for messing up our living room. He continued, “Mom’s vase? Dad’s shield? Laina’s elf doll? Grandpa’s ashes?” Then, he snapped his little elf fingers.

Suddenly, the urn with my grandpa’s ashes just exploded out of nowhere, and the room instantly filled with smoke, like the ashes themselves were starting to cloud the room.

I started coughing and blindly swinging the lamp around, like Ignatius could just lunge out from any direction.

His voice started to echo out in the room. “Don’t believe in this stuff, do you? Just plastic and inanimate, am I? So, Maven, you don’t believe in Christmas magic, huh?”

The ash cleared, and I saw that the living room looked entirely different. It was dark outside and so was the room, except for the illumination of the Christmas tree lights. There were presents around the tree, including one very large, tall one leaning against the wall. It looked almost like...

I looked around. None of the chaos of things thrown around and broken were evident anywhere in the room. No sword in the wall, nothing.

I wondered where Ignatius had gone, and thought I still couldn’t see him, I heard his voice, still with an echo. “Go ahead, Maven. Pick a present.”

Common sense would have told me specifically not to do as he said, but at eleven years old, I didn’t have much of that. I picked out the nearest box that said, “To Maven” and took the lid off.

In it...oh my God... it was my mother’s head, staring up at me with a look of shock. I dropped the box, and her head rolled out. The expression on her face changed, this time looking happy. I jumped when I saw her wink at me, then the gaze of her eyes shot up towards the large present against the wall.

I ran over, and in one fell tear at the wrapping paper, unwrapped the stiff, bloodied corpse of my father. Bullet holes punctured his body. His eye sockets were completely empty.

“I’ll tell you what happened,” the voice of Ignatius responded. This time, it sounded like he was actually in the room with me. Indeed, I turned to the fireplace, which now had a crackling fire going. Above, on the mantle sat Ignatius, just as he had been when I first saw him. Here though, his evil grin remained.

“Mom and Dad got angry with each other! Daddy capped Mommy with the sword, but not before she shot him over and over and even blew his eyes out. For a blind man, he sure had excellent swordsmanship!” He broke into a cackle at that.

How could this thing be so cruel? First, he attacks me, then he wrecks my living room, and finally shows me my dead parents and now, he’s laughing?

“Keep going...” Ignatius said snidely, but I did not. I knew exactly what I was going to find if I kept opening these presents. More pieces of my mom, or worse...was he gonna show me Laina—bloody, dead, and unrecognizable?

All the blood in my body started boiling as I screamed in fury, picking up the many gift-wrapped boxes and hurling them right at Ignatius, one after the other, just as he had with the knickknacks.

The Elf on the Shelf was flabbergasted, like he didn’t expect me to act out so fast. Whatever magical capabilities he had, he was caught so off guard from my attack that he didn’t have time to use them. He held up his arms, flailing around to block the boxes coming at him. Then, he lost his balance and fell off the mantle onto the hardwood.

Thank God I didn’t take my shoes off when I got home. I ran up to the toy and kicked him right into the flames in the fireplace. Ignatius screamed in agony, and I watched as he writhed around in the fire, eventually falling flat and disappearing in the flames.

The fireplace exploded with a plume of flame shooting out. Not far enough to get me, but the force of it sure knocked me back onto the floor. That’s when I started smelling the smoke and noticing the intense heat in the room. I looked up to find the entire living room burning. It was thickly ablaze, and I was caught right in the middle of it. Trapped.

Several voices rang out. I recognized some of them: my parents, Laina, kids from school, teachers, and others were just random voices. They all varied from screams of pain, cries for help, and some even scolding me, calling out insults and death threats.

And then above all, one echoed out louder than all of them: Ignatius, telling me his final word, “Merry Christmas, Maven, enjoy your gift!”

I was about to die horribly in flames, yelled at by loved ones as they pleaded for their lives. Was this karma for what I did to Laina’s elf doll? For denouncing her innocent holiday joy? For renouncing my own? Was this punishment for being eternally naughty?

And it all came down to this demented toy, this “Elf on the Shelf”...no...this elf came from no North Pole. It was an elf from hell. A Hellf. It was a Hellf on the Shelf!

I was so overwhelmed by all this that I just collapsed into myself on the floor, curling into a ball and breaking into fearful tears, crying out for my mom and for Laina. I especially needed her there, so I could tell her how sorry I was for being such an awful older sister.

I heard the muffled voice of my sister behind me. I looked up and realized that I was back on my bed in my room. It was not on fire, and there were no voices yelling in my ears...save for one: Taylor Swift singing “Bad Blood” from my headphones, which I noticed were on my head.

I took them off and looked back. Laina was right behind me. I noticed I was still curled in that defensive position I thought I was taking in the burning living room. I looked at Laina, tears still in my eyes, processing that I was seeing her.

I lunged out and hugged her tightly. “Yes!” I exclaimed. Then, I looked at her and asked, “Are you okay?”

She looked a little awkward, something I’d never seen of her. “Uh, yeah...?”

I threw my arms around her in another tight hug, frantically apologizing to her about everything I did the other day. She just looked at me like I was growing a second head. “It’s okay...” she finally said, after I stopped ranting, with a hint of confusion in her voice.

Mom came into the room. “Maven, what’s wrong?” she asked. “Laina said she heard you crying up here.”

It all made sense now. I actually did fall asleep when I got home. My encounter with this “Hellf,” Ignatius, was all just a really, really bad dream. Perhaps from a subconscious feeling of guilt about my attitude yesterday.

I looked up and smiled at my mom. “Nothing’s wrong,” I said, before running over and giving her a bear hug too. I think I made her stumble a bit.

“We’ve only been gone a couple of hours. What’s gotten into you?” she said with a laugh.

Both Mom and Laina look absolutely stunned. After days of protesting that I didn’t want to go to her Christmas concert, here I was in a full 180. “Alright, well, we’ll leave you to that then. We’ll head out when your dad gets home. Come on Laina, let’s leave your sister alone,” Mom said, but before she could shut the door, I ran out and down the stairs and into the living room.

Everything was intact. No fire, no broken objects, no sword lodged into the wall, and most importantly, no Ignatius. There was only one “Elf on the Shelf” in the room, and it was Amelia. Safe and sound on the mantle as she had been the other day. I couldn’t help but walk over to her, look her in the plastic face and tell her, “I’m glad to see you’re back together alright. Sorry about messing with you.”

When I heard a giggle from behind me, my heart raced in sudden panic. But then I turned to see Laina, amused. “You’re weird,” she laughed. I couldn’t help but smile.

As I made my way back up the stairs to my room, my little check-in on Laina’s elf made me realize something: all of that hell I had experienced today turned out to be a dream I had when I got home from school, yet I could have sworn I first saw Ignatius before I left. That wasn’t a dream. So how could...?

There was a red card sitting on my bed when I went back into my room that I knew hadn’t been there before. I went over and took a look at it.

It said, “Official Certificate of Indenturement.” My heart sank. “This is to certify that Ignatius has been indentured to Maven, until such time that the proprietor has achieved all existential meaning in their youth.” In the bottom corner of the card, the words “Approved by” followed by a signature: “Krampus”.

“Indenturement?” “Proprietor?” “Existential meaning in their youth?” The hell was all that supposed to mean?

Well one thing was for sure: it may have been a dream, but it wasn’t all unreal. This card seemed to be proof of that. If I had to take a guess what it meant, it’s that Ignatius was sent here to torment the “naughty” out of me and was only going to keep coming back until he—or someone above him—decided the job was done. He’d be back to test me, to make sure I didn’t act naughty during Christmas time, and if I did, or if I moved him, there would be hell to pay. Literal hell to pay. Leaving me be was the reward promised in his initial warning not to move him and be good.

To put it simply: I hadn’t seen the last of the Hellf on the Shelf. I know all this now because I’ve lived it.

I had to ask: why keep it going though? Didn’t he already get the point across the first time around?

Well, I can tell you this much: if I didn’t actually know how to be “nice” back then at eleven, I certainly do now at twenty-one.