This next tale comes from Chuck Palahniuk. Blog saw Postcards from the Future a few weeks back and, in one segment, the author offered a holiday story that's sure to warm your heart. It's regurgitated below, compliments of Angela Bourdeau's Chuck Page. Apparently, he's told "The Pixie Story" countless times on his recent book tour.

Really, this could very well be the only story that's come out of his head that doesn't involve arcane trivia and gruesome factoids. Why, this could be shared with the whole family.

After Palahniuk's grandmother died, he travelled south from Portland to her home "in the desert." With his silbings, he helped clean out her house and divy-up her possesions. After sorting through 30 year-old Christmas decorations in dusty storage shed, he found a shoe box.


"I open the shoe box. And there were the pixies. For years, our parents, and our grandparents, to keep us in line, told us about the pixies. Wherever you go, whatever you do, 'The Pixies Will Be Watching You. They were made out of felt."

"So my parents and grandparents would hide these things places where they thought us kids might go. You'd move a chair, and one would be on the wall. 'The Pixies Are Watching You.' It was understood in our family. The pixies are linked to Santa Claus. Santa Claus is, of course, connected to God."

"For years, my parents and grandparents, whenever they could, would move the pixies around, so they'd never be in the same place twice. So you never knew when you were going to find a pixie. And suddenly, there they all were. And I knew I wanted to keep them."

"I was prepared to trade everything else that Grandma would have left me for them. I'm prepared to walk out there and tell my siblings that. 'You can have anything else in the house, but The Pixies Are Mine.'"

"Then I realize that this is never going to fly with my siblings. They are going to fight me for them. Then I decide that no matter what, I wanted to come home with the pixies. This is stupid--I'm this forty year old man in a workshed, covered in sweat and dust, in this heat, ready to cry like a baby over a shoebox full of felt pixies! I'm really ready to walk into the house, looking like this, crying: 'I...(sniff)...want...(sniff)...the...(sniff)...pixiiiiiiiiies...'

"So I decide that I can't do that either, otherwise I'll never get them. So I STOLE THE PIXIES. And then a few days letter my sister calls me--a message on my machine: "'Chuck? D-did you steal the pixies?' And that's when I decided to go on this tour."