Work Text:
The box is sitting on his desk when he comes in, well past a reasonable hour and strewn with improperly-placed garland. Let it never be said the Warner Brothers studio doesn’t know how to throw a party, with plenty of jolly, holly, and liberally-accented egg nog in the punch bowl.
At first glance, the box is innocuous at best: no larger and of no greater width than to suggest it houses a book, wrapped in green paper and tied with a large red ribbon. There’s a card on the front:
To our one and only P-sychiatrist.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!
Hugs and Kisses (especially kisses),
YAKKO
WAKKO
DOT
This is the point when Otto starts to approach the package with its due deference, and rather wishes he was in possession of protective gear. Absent as much, he elects for the manual approach.
Step 1: examine the package thoroughly for loose threads, trip wires, and ejector buttons.
Step 2: carefully balance the package in both hands and listen for anything audible, to include but not be limited to scratching, sniffing, growling, or ticking.
Step 3: with extreme caution, shake the package and keep an ear out for any distressing noises.
All three steps cleared. He can detect the slightest movement from inside, but nothing presenting as a threat or to suggest intelligent life residing within.
He pulls the ribbon loose and waits five minutes. Nothing. He peels back the wrapping paper and waits three minutes. Nothing. He hacks his way through an obscene amount of tape and a second layer of wrapping paper, this time striped red and white like a candy cane. Nothing.
He tears off a third layer of wrapping paper. This one is bright pink. And the kids must have used an entire roll of Scotch tape on this one.
Finally, he’s down to the box. Plain white box. Perfectly normal.
To be frank, that’s what worries him…
…until he opens it.
Nestled on plain white tissue paper sits a frame. Very much handmade – or, more specifically, hand-decorated – there will never be a question as to whose efforts produced this masterpiece. The picture, proudly set in the center, is a snapshot memory from a trip to the carnival earlier in the year. Just him, Dr. Otto Scratchansniff, the Warner brothers, and their sister: an hour’s car ride which involved choice words, general complaints, and threats to eject more than one of the siblings out the back window, accumulating in nine hours of carnival rides, cotton candy, and corn dogs. This picture is only one of numerous which were taken throughout the day, but it gives Otto a warm fuzzy feeling to see the kids were kind enough to not use the snapshot immortalizing his unfortunate conclusion to riding the rollercoaster ten times in a row. Instead, four grinning faces beam up from the glossy paper, waving excitedly to commemorate such a lovely day.
Otto neatly deposits the old wrapping paper and box into the trash bin, dusts a place on his desk, and sets the frame in place: right where it can be seen by all.
After all, such a lovely day deserves to be remembered all year long.