Drosselmeier’s Nutcracker Changelings

Twisted Toys 25

Photo by Kai Damm-Jonas on Unsplash

It was a toy that was meant to be a gag gift. That’s what Henry told himself, anyway, when he was picking out a Christmas present for his boss.

Henry had just been promoted to junior partner in his consulting firm, and with higher pay and to show thanks wanted to do more than just the typical candy and nut basket for his boss that year.

He’d seen the gift advertised online over Cyber Monday, he couldn’t remember where, but it had stuck with him and later he’d searched for it.

“This isn’t something for the kids, but something to replace them!” read the home page for Drosselmeier’s Nutcracker Changelings. “Tired of them crying or complaining in the crib or before bed? Put one of these nutcrackers in the crib or bed with them, and that night Drosselmeier the toymaker will come in and replace them with a real, live nutcracker version of themselves. They’ll never cry or complain again!” The ridiculousness of it and the off-kilter Christmasy font made it clear this was a gag gift.

Henry’s boss Theodore had kids, a girl and a boy, and was constantly bragging about them. Not only that, but Theodore seemed to have a dark sense of humor. Now that he was junior partner, Henry felt getting closer to his boss was almost expected. A gag gift that is well-thought-out might do that, he reasoned. On the other hand, it might go over poorly.

Henry purchased two, had them shipped express, and then placed them on his boss’s desk the day before Christmas Eve.

When Theodore called Henry to his office late that afternoon, Henry was already steeling himself. Stupid, stupid, he mentally chided. You’re not close enough to the boss to joke with him like that, and maybe no one is. You’re going to get canned.

He took a seat in Theodore’s office while Theodore was finishing up a phone call. “Uh-huh. Well, tell ‘em if they want it shipped the old-fashioned way with the wheels coming off they can go ahead and give Blue & Silver a try. I know they’ve been dying to give them a try. Let ‘em give them a try and come crawling back.”

Theodore slammed the phone down.

Henry grimaced, shifting in his chair.

“Blue & Silver don’t know squat about engineering,” Theodore said. “They couldn’t consult their way out of a paper bag.”

“Should I come back later?” Henry started to rise.

“‘Course not. Stay. Now, Henry, you’ve got some explaining to do.” Theodore reached under his desk and put the two nutcracker changeling figures on top. They were in their boxes with see-through plastic covers. They were bigger than ordinary nutcrackers, more child-like, with big heads and small bodies. They were made of plastic, like modern toys, instead of the wood typical of nutcracker figures. The idea was that they were stand-ins, though, until Drosselmeier replaced them with actual living things, changelings that never cried or complained. That’s how the story on the back of the box went at any rate.

Theodore’s expression grew more livid than it had when he was on the phone, his bushy brows hanging most way over his eyes. Then he broke into a fit of laughter, leaning back in his chair with his paunch exposed like a tiger suddenly docile.

“Henry, my boy. This is a riot! Jess and Freddie are gonna love them even if they don’t realize it yet. And my wife will get a kick out of it.”

Henry leaned back in his own chair, allowing himself a smile. A hurdle had been crossed.

Then, the next day, his boss called him at home. “Got a big problem here,” he said.

“You want me to come in to work? I don’t mind working on Christmas Eve. Honestly.” Henry glanced around at his sparely furnished, barely lived in apartment. A small desktop Christmas tree hung over his coffee table, its star drooping.

Henry had expected the usual party invites that year, but after standing so many people up, he supposed, it was only a matter of time before those invites stopped. Add to that the fact that all of his family lived in another state, and he was in for a solitary holiday unless he did something about it. He had been just thinking about heading to a bar he’d heard was open that night.

“No, it’s at home,” Theodore said of the problem. “Can you come over to my house?”

Even better, Henry thought. I’ll be practically one of the family now, assuring a senior partnership down the road.

His boss also said, “I don’t know how to describe it over the phone,” but Henry was out the door by that point.

Awed by the two-and-a-half story Italianate belonging to his boss, a structure Theodore bragged about not quite as often as his children, Henry barely noticed how dim the inside of the house was, and hushed, as though in observance or caution of something.

While walking towards their destination, Theodore mentioned that his wife had stepped out to get some air, had taken a drive for it, in order to get away from what was in their children’s rooms.

“Here, look for yourself,” Theodore said, slowly opening Freddie’s bedroom door.

Dim light spilled into the black room. It fell upon a form in bed with a strange, bloated face and tiny arms and legs. Its body moved up and down, breathing.

“I don’t understand,” Henry said. “Were they supposed to move?”

“No.” The next words sounded as though they were choked out of Theodore. “They weren’t supposed to look like my children, either. They didn’t before. My kids are gone.”

But that was exactly what was supposed to happen, a voice inside Henry’s mind said. That’s what it said on the back of the box. Put the toys in the children’s bed while they sleep, and that night Drosselmeier the toymaker will come to replace them with nutcracker changelings. Those toys from the box are only meant to be stand-ins.

“But it was meant to be a joke,” Henry said while his boss barely noticed. Nothing on the website or the box, however, mentioned anything about a joke or gag. They were assumptions.

“We’ve got to do something about this,” Theodore said. “These aren’t my children.”

Theodore took Henry to Jess’s room, where the same had happened to his little girl. She had been replaced by a being that appeared to be a plastic caricature of both a nutcracker and his own child. And it lived as sure as the other did. And like the other, it slept. For now. And this was probably why everything was so quiet and the lights low, for fear of waking them up.

It was true that neither of them were crying or complaining, but who could tell which way things would go if they were awakened?

“Maybe call the manufacturer,” and, stupid, Henry thought immediately for having said that.

“Oh, I’ll do something alright. Going to sue them for all they’ve got while they rot in jail. But first I need to figure out what they did with my kids. Wait, you didn’t give them my address, did you?”

Henry thought for a moment, then shook his head.

“Some kind of tracking device on the toys? You don’t think whoever brought these other things is still here, do you?”

Theodore couldn’t wait for the police but had to search the house himself, with a saber he’d unsheathed from the wall that looked like it had taken part in the French Revolution. Henry followed behind his boss with a knife from the kitchen.

They found a man seated in the darkest corner of the master bedroom. As he rose and ambled towards them and the light of the hallway, they could see he wore an eyepatch and a white wig.

“If there is something wrong with the toys,” the figure rasped, “Drosselmeier can fix it.”

This Drosselmeier wasn’t an ordinary person, because being stabbed barely bothered him, and he must’ve mistaken Henry’s boss for a toy because afterwards, while Henry watched from where he was bound, Drosselmeier unscrewed Theodore’s limbs, checked them for deficiencies, and applied fresh paint before putting them back.

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