12 Days of Writing

Day 6 - horror

Prompt: Santa Claus is real, but he's nothing like you imagined.

~~~

Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse; but if you looked closely, you would soon see, there was a small boy, lying by the Christmas tree.

And there, down by the Christmas tree, is exactly where our story starts.

The boy was fast asleep, something he said would never happen. Over his shoulders, there was a thin blanket which his mother had put there, before she and her husband had gone to bed.

The child was waiting, waiting for his big hero: Santa Claus. All evening, he had stood by the window, looking for flying reindeer and listening for tinkling bells, but for the whole evening, they didn't come. The boy tried very hard to keep his eyes from closing, but in the end, exhaustion had gotten him.

It was a bit after his parents had gone to bed, that the sleepy child woke up from a sound from the kitchen. Immediately, the boy got excited and, with his blanket still clutched in his fist, he wandered to the kitchen.

"Santa? Is that you?"

Next to the counter stood a gigantic man, a burlap bag slung over his shoulder, holding a chocolate chip cookie in his hand. Only this man didn't have a clean, white beard like the Santa in pictures, but one filled with crumbs and dirt and living flies and something that looked an awful lot like blood. His suit was dirtier than a pig and he was fat, but not the kind of fat you become after eating too many candies.

"Well what do we have here? Is this a child I see? We can't have that, can we? A child staying up past bed time."

The child looked at him with awe in his eyes. The little guy didn't seem to notice the filthy beard, or Santa's awful grin. The only thing that mattered to him was that he was real, Santa Claus existed.

"A child past bedtime gets on the naughty list and do you know what happens to children on the naughty list?"

The boy looked up, a bit afraid of what this question meant.

"They- they don't get presents. They just get a lump of coal."

Santa's grin grew wider, as if he'd hoped that the boy would give this answer. He put a single finger under the child's chin and tilted his head up.

"You're way too old for fairytales, dear. Let me show you the reality."

Then, he grabbed him by the arm and with a swift motion, he stuffed the poor boy in the empty bag. The boy screamed, he kicked, and he screamed louder, but Santa ignored it all and started walking.

Fresh snow covered the porch, but as St. Nick walked through it, the white turned brown and dirty, like the shoes St. Nick was wearing.

And the boy, the poor boy cried, not knowing what he'd done wrong. He'd done all his homework, helped his mother with the dishes every day. Had he not baked the most delicious cookies?

The bag was dropped onto the sleigh and opened up a bit and the child, with all the courage he had, quietly tried to climb out. But Santa sees all and he grabbed him by his hair. He threw him back in the bag and made sure it stayed still. Then, he climbed the sleigh himself and with his iron whip he beat at the reindeer so that the snow underneath turned red and with a tremendous noise, the sleigh got of the ground. Santa was flying and the poor boy still crying.

They flew for the whole night, till Christmas came around and then they landed on the icy plain of the north pole. There were no Christmas lights or gigantic candy canes, neither was there a Mrs. Claus with freshly baked cookies. The sky was white with snow and the child's skin had turned blue from the frosty wind.

The boy was forced to walk barefoot through the snow, driven by the very same whip with which Santa had made the reindeer fly.

Inside, Santa cut the boys ears into points. He gave the boy food which made him sick and everyday, the boy turned green at merely the smell. Even though his pyjamas were just new, the red-green colours already began fading.

Then, on the twelfth day, the boy was taken from his small cell by Santa Claus himself and put to work. Everywhere he looked, the boy saw children like him, with cut ears and colourless pyjamas, tear stains on their cheeks. They were singing, softly, sad. The small boy joined them.

"You'll learn the song soon enough." Santa laughed, but it was nothing like in the stories. No, this was reality.

~~~

It was as if they never grew old there. The small ones grew in length, but not in mind. The tallest sometimes just disappeared. No one could remember their parents, no one remembered Christmas as they once did.

There were kids that tried to get away, our boy being one of them, but like the others, he didn't succeed. He stabbed Santa with a sharpened candy cane, but Santa simply pulled it out of his leg and pushed it through the boy's heart. Laughing his awful laugh as the boy sunk to the floor.

And so the story ends the way it started, with a boy lying down by the Christmas tree, wishing for a million things to happen tomorrow.

921 words