Permafrost

The Prompt

Write a crime fiction story.

The music is "Permafrost" by Magazine and it contains some swear words, but it helped inspire this piece.

Permafrost

Permafrost (from perma- 'permanent', and frost) is soil or underwater sediment which continuously remains below 0 °C (32 °F) for two years or more: the oldest permafrost has been continuously frozen for around 700,000 years.

It was Christmas Eve and Santa had left the North Pole, sleigh laden with presents for the children of the world.

Flying over the tundra, the winds were blowing icy blasts, the clouds were filled with ice, thunder and lightning, it was ironic that two of the reindeer pulling the sleigh were Donner and Blitzen.

Lower and lower they were forced by blasts of ice, the reindeer and Santa glistened with frost. It had never been this cold, and the cloud was so thick it was like a carpet skewered with lightning blasts.

There was no way that Santa could stay in the air, and so they skidded to a halt on the permafrost of the tundra.

There was no shelter here, and the freezing plain stretched flatly for miles to some forbidding looking mountains that did not look as though there would be any shelter, but Santa set his reindeer off in the direction of shelter.

The ground was freezing and the sleigh runners kept sticking and the reindeer found it harder and harder to pull. Santa's elves, who had come along to help him distribute the presents were getting colder too. Covered in frost they glistened in the back of the sleigh, silent.

Santa was scared.

The sleigh came ti a halt and the reindeer fell to the tundra, freezing to death. They would not get up again. The frost permeated their flesh and bones, and one by one the heat left their bodies and they froze to death becoming one with the permafrost of the tundra.

Santa could do nothing.

He saw his reindeer freezing to death,

The elves were silent now, the life had left their bodies.

The children of the world would wake up and find no presents under their Chrismas trees, it would be a dark Christmas across the world.

Santa had a warm coat and a lot of fat, but that would only last a few more hours. The frost was covering the sligh and presents, the dead elves and reindeer and his red suit.

Why had this happened?

The cloud was black and low lit up by the odd lightning bolt.

There was no Plan "B", there never had been.

This was it.

Santa was freezing to death on the tundra, being devoured by teh permafrost.

No one would come to rescue him.

No one could save Christmas.

Christmas was dead.

Frozen.

And someone was watching.

Someone with an icy evil grin.

Someone who had planned this for a long time, and finally their plans had come to fruition.

They hated happiness.

They hated the joy of children opening presents and parents taking delight in their children's happiness.

They wanted blackness and misery for every child and parent in the world.

They made Scrooge look like a beacon of loving care.

They had succeeded.

Santa was frozen.

Dead on the tundra, with his presents, sleigh, elves, and reindeer.

Soon he would be part of the tundra consumed by the permafrost.

Who was this evil villain who had perpetrated this evil, heinous, despicable deed?

Someone who controlled the most destructive elements in the atmosphere, and used them to bring misery and darkness to the world.

That evil master criminal was none other than: