These pieces are a part of the Spec the Halls contest for speculative
winter holiday-themed fiction, artwork and poetry. You may find
descriptions of and links to other entries at http://wwwaswiebe.com/specthehalls.html
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The Santa
by Gregory Bernard Banks
The pounding on the roof alerted us that he’d arrived. The legends said he returned every Christmas Eve, the hulking red menace with his accursed sack of offerings. No matter what we did, whether we begged, pleaded, threatened, or attempted to deceive, he was never deterred from coming back each year to torment our lives.
Bells rang as he strutted across the roof, his gas-bag of a belly no doubt bouncing in glee. I glanced at my wife, her yellow eyes dancing with fear, and the two cubs, who hid beneath her skirts, and I felt powerless, even impotent, knowing that I could do nothing to stop this invasion into our dark abode.
There were sounds of scraping as he climbed into the chimney and began to descend. How he’d gotten by the blockage I’d created last year, or the roaring blaze I’d set in the fireplace the year before that, I didn’t know. But the year I had done that which my father had warned me to never do, lay claws on this spirit-in-flesh and try to rip him to shreds, I’d learned that he was no mortal man. And yet, he was neither angel or demon (whose countenances were forever bathed in light and shadow, respectively), nor zombie or vampire (upon whose walking carcasses clung the stench of death). He was too concrete to be a ghost, and yet too surreal to be a human. The Santa was something ancient yet new, something that predated all living and dead things, and yet was as native to this world as a grain of sand or a drop of rain.
The fire flared, and out popped the Santa in all his gory goodness. The happiness that oozed from every pore was the most sickening thing I’d ever tasted, even more so than the time I’d eaten the girl scout who came to the door selling cookies. The day was indelibly imprinted on my mind because of the horror I felt when my mate declared her love of Trefoils, and hoped another scout would blunder by with more. Especially given that, as I argued fruitlessly, everyone knew that Thin Mints were far superior.
The Santa quickly set to work infesting our lair with his talismans of love. Shiny packages containing untold ghastliness were spread under the tree he’d pulled from an inside coat pocket, and the star at its peak had flown in through the window when he beckoned it with a whistle. The old criminal seemed clueless to our presence, and sometimes I wondered if he had grown dimwitted in his old age and didn’t even know we were Were-folk. We were the only cave in this region he ever violated, after all.
I glanced away from the Santa to the portrait of my great, great grandsire hanging above the mantel. The first of our line, and the first to be haunted by the Santa, he was a rather squat creature, with a fat belly and gray-white fur hanging from his chin like a beard. As always happened, he himself remembered little about his pre-Were life, but he had always kept the gold chain around his neck with a deer-shaped emblem hanging from it close, as if a cherished thing from his forgotten days.
As the crimson-clad scourge gathered his bag and prepared to leave, having sufficiently ravaged our home, he paused to look upon my great, great grandsire’s portrait. When he turned away, I saw the glitter of a lone tear upon his disgustingly pink cheek. In his left hand, he fondled a chain he had drawn from beneath his wooly beard, upon which hung the engraved likeness of a deer.
Why does he have the very same necklace as my great, great, grandsire? I wondered. Then, being as quick-witted as I was, I had the answer.
The thief had stolen the chain from my grandsire’s grave! Such daring and insolence! What other explanation could there be?
Perhaps he wasn’t such an unlikeable guy after all, I mused.
The Santa caught my eye, and acknowledged it with a nod of his head. Caught off guard and not knowing what else to do, I replied in kind. He then laid a finger aside his nose, and shot up the chimney like a bat out Ol’ Scratch’s place down in the valley by the hot springs.
I crept over to the horrid tree, bent down, and carefully picked up one of the packages the bastard had left behind. Beneath the foil paper and cardboard box I caught the whiff of something human-made and sweet. A smile crept to my lips, in spite of myself.
Here was proof that even the Santa understood one undeniable truth...that Thin Mints were by far the best.
- The End -
