“Mother,” asked Seymour, “what are you doing out of bed?”

The old woman didn’t answer. She was carrying a lit wicket inside an archaic, silver, antique candle holder and the hot wax was dripping down onto her wrists. There was no need for this of course as the hallway was already ablaze with light courtesy of the best bulbs which G.E. had to offer. Plus the cold afternoon sun, which was brightened by the high piles of leftover snow outside, shone fearlessly through every available pane.

She was wearing a long, red, flannel granny gown with green trim and printed patterns of silver bells tied together with mistletoe. Her endless white hair, which was generally piled up in a bun, hung ragged and scraggly all the way down past the backs of her knees.

“C’mon. Let’s get you back into bed.”

After he’d pulled the blankets up to her chin, he noticed large beads of sweat dotted up on her gray and wrinkled forehead.

“Jesus, Mother you’re sweating… and it’s freezing in here.”

He turned on the electric space heater and scooted it a little closer to the bed.

“Seymour!” She barked suddenly, causing her grown son to jump. She rarely spoke at all anymore, as her dementia was far advanced, so the sound of her voice startled him.

“Jesus, Mother?!”

“Seymour! There was a man in the backyard.”

“No now there wasn’t, Mother. It’s ten degrees outside.”

“Yes there was!” She snapped. “A man came under the fence while I was tending to my garden; a wild man.”

“Mother, don’t tell me you went out to that garden. Why there’s a foot a snow coverin’ those plants over. No wonder you’ve gone and gotten yourself a fever. It isn’t fit for man nor beast out there.”

The old woman didn’t say anything else and for a moment he thought that the garrulous spell had passed, so he said: “Why don’t you get some sleep, Mother? I don’t think anyone’s going to bother you.”

But instead of regressing back into her usual catatonic state, the old woman exploded: “Don’t you patronize me boy! I was fightin’ in these factories when you were shittin’ figgie pudding!”

“Mother?”

“Now I SAID that there was a man out there, in the backyard. A man who slithered underneath the fence and all that red snow. A man with eyes like blue fire. And if you don’t believe me see for yourself: he bit me!”

She pushed the blankets off and clawed back the long sleeve of her granny gown revealing a rancid and inflamed bite mark.

“Hell’s bells Mother, how in the world did you get that?”

But the old woman was done talking. Her body straightened out on the bed as stiff as an ironing board and her mind refracted into the voiceless nostalgia of lost and darkened decades.

Seymour shook his head and went into the bathroom to open the medicine cabinet. By the time he’d fetched the bandages and Mercurachrome he could already hear the old woman snoring softly. He though that it must have stung like hell once he applied the disinfectant, but the old woman made no reaction.

“Jesus, Mother,’ he said to himself more than her. “we may have to take you to see Dr. Burke tomorrow.” After he’d finished bandaging her up he turned off the light and walked out of the bedroom scratching his head. How in the world had she received such a nasty looking bite? He checked all the doors and windows but they were either bolt locked or screwed down tight. There was no sign anywhere that anyone had broken in, and even if someone had: why in the world would they want to bite an eighty nine year old woman?

He plopped down on the couch and began watching a hockey game on the large color television. He didn’t know what the score was or who was even playing; content to just watch the players skate around. Could she have really been out in the backyard? Perhaps she’d been attacked by a dog?

Concerned, he got up and began walking towards his mother’s room. If she’d been out in the snow, maybe the bottom of her nightgown would still be damp?” He opened the door just a tiny crack and listened carefully. But he could no longer hear the old woman’s rasping breathes. He switched the light back on.

“Mother?”

No reply.

The old woman was as pale as vanilla and lying like a corpse in a casket. He tried to shake her awake but she didn’t move a wrinkle.

“Mother! Mother!”

He fumbled through the top drawer of the vanity until he came up with the old woman’s ancient, gold plated, compact mirror. He held it under her nose for several seconds but no foggy breath clouded its silvery surface.

“Oh no, OH NO!” He said as he grabbed the phone on the night stand and began dialing. “Alice it’s Mother. I don’t think she’s breathing.” An inaudible squawk lisped out from the other end of the line. “No Alice I don’t think she is. You’d better get over here. Yes I’m calling the ambulance now. Hold on let me check.” But as he took up the old woman’s wrist to feel for a pulse, as Alice had no doubt instructed, Seymour’s dead mother leapt to life and sank what was left of her halitosis inflicted teeth into his forearm. He screamed more with surprise than with terror and dropped the phone onto the rug. With the damage done, the old woman’s frail body dropped back onto the bed. Where she writhed into a couple of convulsions and then seemed to lose consciousness. Seymour jumped back and inspected the fresh bite. Blood was oozing up into the teeth marks like swamp water filling up muddy footprints.

“Dear Lord, Dear Lord,” he kept repeating.

“Seymour, Seymour,” the receiver called out from the carpet. After a few seconds of sucking on his wound like a mother cat he picked it back up.

“It’s okay Alice, I thought that she wasn’t breathing for a minute, but now she’s up. You’d better be gettin’ over here pretty soon anyway, I’ve got to be gettin’ down to the mall.” After he’d hung up, Seymour covered the old woman over with a blanket. She had quieted back down even though her eyes were open and blazing like the torches of a lynch mob. Once he was out in the kitchen, he let the tap water run over the wound and down into the sink. Once the blood had been rinsed from the teeth marks, the indentations were a blue color and the viscous cuts still smarted even under the flow of the faucet.

He thought that he heard a new noise coming from the bedroom. But when he crept back over to open the door slightly, all was silent. He looked at the clock and thought that Alice should be arriving pretty soon.

Once he was in front of the mirror he tugged on his white beard. It looked so authentic that there was no longer any need for the frost white fake one he had donned in previous years. There probably wasn’t any need for the foam belly anymore either but he pulled it from the closet and strapped it on anyway. A furry red jacket with white trim hung from a solitary plastic hanger. It was the same one he put his arms and shoulder blades into every year from Thanksgiving all the way up until Christmas Eve; the familiar and famous garb of Saint Nicholas.

#

“You look a little under the weather Seymour,” Stan said, “or at least equal with it.” He was referring to the blizzard which had quickly converged upon the mountain town and was now raging on outside.

“Ah, it’s just Mother again.”

Stan took a sip of scalding black coffee and said, “ya know Seymour, there ain’t no shame in putting a dying person in a…”

“…nursing home I know,” Seymour finished the sentence for him.”I can’t do it Stan. Not after the way she cared for dad all those years.”

“Well, it’s none of my business but…” Before Stan could finish, the eye of the walkie talkie which was attached to his belt winked yellow and then red before spitting out a line of garbled static. After a couple of seconds the white noise translated to words: “Stan 109, Stan 109.”

Stan held the speaker up to his mouth, “you got me.”

“Stan, you better get down here. I think we got a shoplifter at Spencer’s.”

He sighed before pressing the talk button, “be right there.” He got up from the lunch room table he’d been leaning his buttocks against. “Gotta go big boy.”

Seymour felt so weak and feverish that all he could do was nod.

“Look, don’t think about any of it tonight,” Stan offered as parting advice, “just have a good time makin’ the kids happy.”

But as Seymour walked past the store fronts out in the mall, his limbs felt stiff and their joints aflame. Breathing was difficult as if the oxygen were igniting a liquid fire inside his chest. He doubled over in discomfort and pawed the bite which was now hidden underneath his red and white sleeve. It throbbed with each beat of his heart and when he pulled the cloth back to inspect it he saw that it was practically glowing with a seeping green liquid.

“Look! It’s Santa.” Then the children were all around him. Usually, he enjoyed the walk through the mall. It gave him the opportunity to pass out his surplus of small, striped red and white hard candy canes to the excited kids.”HO HO HO,” he made himself say. But what he really wanted to do was floor the first snot nosed brat who tried to touch him. He shook his beard like a wet dog and sighed. What the hell was he thinking; he loved children, he’d always loved children. Maybe it was just that awful episode with Mother which had put his nerves on edge.

The sleigh was centered underneath a huge skylight in an expansive circular section in the center of the huge cross shaped mall. Above the glass roof, the ubiquitous cloudy beard of God shook out its mighty dandruff in the form of millions of snowflakes. There were eight living deer hooked to the front of the sled. They had been fastened up with reins and cordoned off in a small, chain link pen which doubled for a petting zoo. There were some cumbersome, clumsy, artificial antlers which had somehow been fashioned to their heads to make them look like the real deal. Many children were already mulling around the small enclosure and were busy feeding the creatures some smelly, small brown pellets which could be purchased from a nearby gumball machine for twenty five cents.

There was a very sexy teenaged girl, with legs much too long for both her years and for the elf costume she was wearing, standing over next to a display of empty but very colorful Christmas presents. Her long brown hair was so thick and shiny that it still looked stunning even underneath the absurd, pointed hat. She had worked carefully with the holiday shades of green and red to create an extremely alluring look with brushed on streaks of eye shadow.

There was also a thick, tired looking, rotund, middle aged woman who was stationed behind a big Polaroid camera which had been mounted near a check out desk. She wore a miserable expression and was shuffling her feet aimlessly. Seymour remembered a year when she was much more affable, but that was long before they had converted the entire mall into a non-smoking establishment.

“Jesus Seymour,” she said, “you’re fifteen minutes late.” She pointed to a long line of parents with their children; kids eager to tell Santa all about their Christmas wishes. “Look at these brats.”

“Okay, okay, Charlene,” he said, “let’s not make a federal case out of it, let’s just get some of the kids through the line.

Charlene sighed as if she knew he was right and unclipped the red velvet rope which separated the first customers from Santa. As he situated himself up inside the sleigh, a crud chewing (rein)deer watched him settle into his seat without much reaction. It was an actual mountain sled which had been donated by the local hunter and trappers museum. The door panels had been painted a dark maroon color and tacky, plastic, mistletoe which was sprayed gold was draped over the top half of the refurbished leather seat. The running boards were held in place by a network of wires which were hooked onto some temporary ground rods like a carnival ride.

“Hey Sarah.”

“Hey Seymour.” The ultra-attractive elf acknowledged his greeting.

The first kid of the day climbed up onto Seymour’s lap and proceeded to act like a repulsive brat. “I want an XBOX and a skateboard and a GI Joe and a…” Seymour was shaking his head yes when the boy paused: “hey? Why aren’t you writing any of this down?”

“I don’t have to write any of it down; my elves are recording it all.”

“The boy looked around as if checking for recording equipment and locked eyes with the vivacious Sarah instead. “She’s got pretty big tits for an elf.”

Before Seymour had to say anything else, the Polaroid’s flash popped and Charlene shouted, “Next!”

Next turned out to be a sweet little girl who was dressed like a miniature Mrs. Claus in strawberry red and snow white. All she asked for was some sort of urinating doll and was quickly taken down. A few more like her and Seymour thought that he might be able to get caught up a bit, but these hopes were dashed when he took one glance at the ever lengthening queue.

But as child after child rotated past a makeshift north pole, and request after request fell onto Seymour’s rapidly deafening ears, he felt worse and ever worse until his chest felt like there were two rats inside his breast plate fighting to devour his lungs. His arms and legs were heavy and cold like scrap metal from a dissected refrigerator and every time Charlene snapped a new instant photo, he felt as if his eyes were looking into a welder’s torch with no visor or at the detonation of an atomic bomb.

“Are you okay Seymour,” Sarah, the breathtaking elf inquired.

“Yes, I’m fine kiddo,”

“Maybe we should close early? You don’t look so good.”

“Oh no no sweetheart, I’m fine. These children deserve a Santa. Now call the next child up please.”

She did as she was told and for awhile the pace of the visits quickened. Child on, spiel spat, photo snapped, child down, cash garnered, next. This rush ensued until a roll of film got eaten up by the Polaroid. While Charlene busied herself with ripping it out and replacing it, a cigarette hanging from her withered lip despite the NO SMOKING sign which was only a few feet from her head, and while Sarah had her hands full trying to fend off the verbal advances of a fourteen year old boy who had wormed his way inside the red and green velvet ropes, Seymour slumped down in his seat. Charlene cursed as the new roll of film refused to cooperate. The lovely Sarah told the boy, who was much too old for Santa but much too young for her, to get lost. Perhaps, with all this aggravation on their plates they simply didn’t realize. Or maybe, when Seymour tilted his head back and closed his eyes, they just thought that he was taking a power nap until the camera was flash ready again. Whatever the case, they did not notice when Seymour passed away at 4:46 Mountain time.

Even when the amorous teenaged boy gave up and strutted away; even when the camera was repaired and ready to photograph, even when the children who had been so very, very good, were cleared to tell their tale to Santa; they still did not notice Seymour’s heavy and stiffening head.

Not until a darling little girl; with a look that could challenge the style and overwhelming cuteness of Shirley Temple herself, began slapping the face of the deceased Saint Nick did they take notice. The little girl snickered and hopped down. Only to be replaced by a huge boy who was obviously much too old and oversized to subscribe to such childish fables. While Charlene and Sarah glanced at each other in confusion the boy began running through his list. After a few seconds he paused and said: “Santa? Are you asleep?”

“Sarah,” Charlene shouted as she snapped what was sure to be a peculiar picture, “Is he alright up there? He doesn’t look so good.”

“I already asked him that once,” Sarah replied, “he says he wants to finish out the shift.”

“Well Jesus,” Charlene said as she tilted her grey head in an effort to look past the youngster on Seymour’s lap, “it looks like he’s passed out or something. Is he drunk for God’s sakes.”

Sarah walked up to the sled. “Seymour doesn’t drink. Wait a minute; I think he’s coming around.” Indeed, Seymour had began to stir and when his eyes re-opened they were as red as his jacket. Thinking that Santa had revived the boy continued with his delayed wish list.

“Seymour? Are you all right?” Sarah tried to whisper. Seymour, his face strangely glazed and distant, did not answer or even seem to hear her.

“… and a go-cart and a scooter and the Kim Kardashian DVD…” The big boy rambled on as a low guttural growl escaped from Seymour’s slightly parted lips and his face took on the countenance of a desperately sick and hungry animal.

“Seymour?”

Of all the items the boy had listed as potential gifts there was one thing that he certainly did not want for Christmas: and that was to have the first three fingers bitten off of his left hand. But that is what he got in the next instant as a Satanic new Santa, which was no longer any kin to the kind and respectful Seymour, chomped the digits off as if they were ketchup laced french fries. As the oversized child drew back his squirting and maimed hand, the first of what was sure to be many screams rose from the crowd. Sarah stepped away totally stunned; her gaping mouth as perfectly round as a moon while Satan Claus continued to chew the boy’s fingers; gore ruining his beard like the blood of a slaughtered animal running from a steel trap in the snow.

For a few awe stricken seconds, the parents and kids who had been waiting in line paused. As if there was a chance that this horrific spectacle could somehow still be a sick joke or even part of the show. They faltered like this for a few heartbeats like deflated flags in a weak breeze, before terror took hold and they dispersed in a wild zig zag of panic. People punched, kicked and pushed past each other as vicious as carnivorous zombies. The riot was on.

Seymour stood up; the nonplussed boy still locked in his grip. For a second he swayed drunkenly, his eyes maniacal. Then he bit a patch out of the child’s scalp as if it were a juicy cantaloupe. Sarah turned and bolted down a carpeted ramp; somehow finding her way out from the fog of shock. Charlene left her post behind the camera and bravely bustled up to the sanguinary soaked Santa.

“Good God, Seymour,” she said without much steam, “stop!”

She reached out and grabbed the gore splattered flap of the boy’s jacket. But even as she did this, the demonic Santa released the boy and switched his grip onto Charlene’s shoulders. When he bit into her cheek the blood squirted out as if from a torn ketchup packet. The sound of her scream was drowned out only by the boom of gunshots. Stan was pointing his pistol straight out from where he’d been seeking cover between two twirling display holders in front of the Sunglass Hut. The bullet struck Satan Claus in the chest; the impact knocking him back down into his seat; but it had no other effect.

“Stop Seymour! Don’t make me shoot you again!”

But the monster who used to be Seymour didn’t stop. He rose and continued to bite patches out of both the boy and Charlene, that pair now rendered unconscious inside the sled. This prompted Stan to empty his gun into the red and white clad target. The final projectile, however, grazed the gray antler of one of the (rein)deer and the balsa horns exploded into dull confetti. This panicked the animals and they were so spooked the no constraints could hold them. They quickly trampled the chain link petting zoo. The reins connecting them to the sleigh pulled it right out of its stanchions and away from the flimsy rods that no one had thought would be needed to help contain the docile deer.

Sparks shot from the tile floor as the sled gathered speed and mowed over what was left of the audience. A mother and several small children were tromped over and clomped on by the deranged (rein)deer. As the sleigh reached maximum velocity, a man was dragged for several yards along with Charlene’s dead body. After the man fell off and rolled violently into a Pepsi machine, Charlene’s felled carcass could still be seen hooked onto the door. One young mother, who had unfortunately fallen, had her legs scissored off by the skating blades. The detached limbs lay like reddened octopus meat, separated by several yards from her floundering body.

As the storefronts blazed past in a blur of neon commercialism, Seymour stood up and peered out over the crowd like an evil pharaoh; his eyes swirling with tiny cyclones of madness. At this juncture he let out a terrible and peevish laugh; perhaps owed to the fact that he was still an immature child of a creature inside his diseased mind. Or maybe the motion of the onrushing sleigh awakened some thrilling memory of fun, which his rotting pulp of a brain still manged to conjure. No one can say for sure. But whatever the case, the sound of that revoltingly jolly wail was disgusting and blood curdling; hearty and horrible it fell onto the sensitive ears of the shocked shop keepers.

The (rein)deer did not slow down as they reached the exit. They simply veered off from the doors, which were separated by stout aluminum frames, and aimed for the much wider berth of the department store’s display windows instead. They mercilessly trampled the seasonally garbed mannequins and crashed through the wide showroom-type pane with a sonic shatter. A large sliver of glass now protruded from Seymour’s chest. But even as the wound pumped fresh blood and the shard jutted out close to where his heart must be, he didn’t seem to notice.

Outside the blizzard flew with such a robust bluster that the plows and road graders could not keep up. A thickening layer of powder, which was near perfect for sledding, covered the parking lot. It was already dark outside and headlights reflected off of the menacing procession as the train continued on, careening off of cars and threatening to mow down aloof pedestrians. Then a sleigh, with eight tiny (rein)deer and one lifeless yet blood thirsty Santa at the helm, flew down the wide thoroughfare of the mountain town’s Main Street. The quickness of the sled had pushed Seymour back down into his seat where he foamed at the mouth at snapped his teeth at anyone who was even remotely close to the carriage. At the intersection, they bustled right through the red light causing a fancy Christmas lady who had been driving a Honda Civic to swerve in order to avoid them. She had to cross over into another lane where a huge YELLOW semi obliterated her small compact. The truck hit her so hard that the little import seemed to pop and burst like a balloon and the lady was thrown out into high drifts as dead as Seymour, while the big truck slanted and plowed into a ditch askew.

A few blocks from this accident a young family, perhaps thinking that this obscenity was some type of holiday parade float, pulled up next to the sleigh. A small girl peered out from the back seat and the evil Santa showed her his red and white teeth. Which looked as if he’d just chewed a ball of dentist’s dye to reveal cavities. Charlene’s corpse bobbed up and down along side the carriage, reddening the fresh flakes. The family, then realizing that they were dealing with something deplorable, quickly sped away.

Near the edge of town, they passed a speed trap and soon red and blue lights and sirens could be seen and heard trailing the sleigh. The following conversation was heard by many a curious townsfolk on the police radio band:

“What have you got car four?”

“Uh, this is four, we’re in pursuit over.”

“Request license plate number of suspect over.”

“Um, no plates, suspect is dressed in a Santa suit and appears to be dragging a dead body through the streets over.”

Pause.

“Clearance to shoot out the suspect’s tires over.”

“Um, vehicle doesn’t have tires. Appears to be a sled pulled by some type of dogs. Over and out.”

And they pushed on, until the traffic thinned out and the tall towers gave way to shorter three story buildings. Then they were outside the city limits, where they rode past the unmarked county roads, all boundaries and lane lines obscured by the relentless snows. The drifts were so high that they covered the snow fences and the barbed wire barricades, leaving no boundaries to obstruct the octet of deer and their cargo. Soon the hills slanted, chopped long ago by the ax of God they dipped into steeper slopes where the angry police vehicles could not follow. They climbed all the way to the top of Mount Paydirt. Its flattened peak gazing down at Gordon’s Gorge five hundred feet below; home of the Great Northern Paiute Grand Valley Indian Reservation.

Without pausing for a beat, the entire caravan ran off of the cliff and began the long plunge to the sharp, man-sized boulders below. For a few seconds, they looked amazingly graceful as their forward progress held onto the neat design of the jumping (rein)deer. Like a postcard with a silhouette of Santa Claus and the outline of his eight dependable beasts. Then it all fell apart as the heavier animals were grabbed by gravity and became entangled in the reins. The sled soon turned upside down in midair and Seymour was thrown from his lofty perch. He fell silent and solemn, too devoid of humanity even to react in defense of his own well being.

Far down below: in a house which did not have a Christmas tree or a wreath on the door, a young boy had seen the beauty and grace of the sleigh’s brief flight, before it turned into a tangle of falling creatures and twisted reins like the strings of a fractured puppet show. A child with chestnut brown eyes and shoulder length black hair. He was the only one who had glimpsed the entourage before they vanished below the precipice of the rock face. When the cervids finally found the thankless terrain at rock bottom, they exploded into chunky red ribbons of brown furry gore like slabs of dead meat. At the same time Seymour’s brain burst apart on the Sanskrit; his body shattered by an impact that not even someone who was already dead could survive.

“Mama, mama,” the small Native American boy said while pointing out his bedroom window. “I just saw Santa Claus.” The silhouette of his washboard hipped mother appeared in the doorway but she did not answer. After a few seconds of this silence, the child turned to her and said in a confused voice, “Didn’t you see him?” But she still didn’t answer, so he reached over and turned on his bed side lamp: the ceramic fixture was a depiction of a Paiute warrior riding atop a spotted black and white mustang. “Mama?” He said again as she shuffled within range of the bulb’s weak light. But that was the last words that he spoke, for by now he could see that there was something wrong with her eyes.

END.