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Santa Claus is Coming to Town

Moonshine Mayhem

By Jamey O'DonnellPublished 3 years ago Updated 3 years ago 9 min read
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Santa Claus is Coming to Town

By

Jamey O’Donnell

It was all over the news that night. There was an axe murderer loose on the streets of Chicago, dressed up as Santa Clause, walking into people’s homes while they sat down for Christmas Eve dinner, wielding an axe, and chopping people up before they knew what was happening to them.

He had already struck 3 families on Pittsburgh Street, all within the hour.

I was going to be ready for him with my 12 gauge right behind the front door. My three girls and my wife were petrified, but I assured them he wouldn’t be coming to our house, not on our street.

Pittsburgh was only 2 streets away, so if he were to come to my door, he’d be met with a ho, ho, ho and a blast between his eyes.

It would be his proverbial partridge in a pear tree.

Watching Johnny Carson at 10:30 was me and the missus’s favorite thing to do at night after putting the girls to bed, sipping on a brandy, and laughing my ass off.

That night was extra special though because St. Nick was on the way, bringing toys and goodies, all set up around the Christmas tree, so our attention was split between the television and wrapping presents, and me assembling a bicycle for our oldest, Missy.

The more brandy I sipped, the more I halfheartedly wished he would come to my door. I’d been dying to fire off that shotgun since I got it last Christmas, and hadn’t yet had a chance to use it.

I didn’t go duck hunting with the boys this year because I’d been so swamped with overtime at the plant, I couldn’t make it on our annual jaunt. Hell, I couldn’t even get off to shoot trap. That’s how busy we were.

Besides, they had to have caught this guy already. There’s not too many Santa’s walking the streets carrying a bloody axe.

Seems like he would have stuck out like a sore thumb.

Whatever would possess a man to do something like this, especially on Christmas, must have been something so horrific in the guy’s life that it drove him over the edge, to the point of madness.

“Hey Baby, can I get you to give me another fill up on my brandy?” I asked Peg.

“Sure thing Sugar, as soon as I tie this bow” Peg answered.

I was drinking more than I usually did that evening. Hell, it was Christmas and I wasn’t going to work in the morning, so why not?

Right in the middle of attaching the back posts of the banana seat to the back wheel, I heard a large crash out back in the alley, most likely the sound from our trash cans being knocked around somehow.

Peg had just arrived from the kitchen with a fresh snifter of brandy for me and asked, “Did you hear that?”

I jumped up like Spiderman and grabbed the shotgun from behind the door, then opened the backdoor, telling Peg to lock it behind me and wait for me by the door, but as soon as I opened the back door and turned the lights on, I could see three alley cats by the trash cans fighting, and they had knocked over the trash cans, so I exhaled a sigh of relief, walked back there and picked them up out of the alley, then went back inside where Peg met me by the door.

“Damn cats!” I said. “There must be a cat in heat somewhere close by.”

After finally assembling the bike to my satisfaction, I began on the doll house, which wouldn’t be near as involved as the bike was.

I was on my fourth brandy by this time, and feeling especially buzzed, but I still had enough of my senses to do this and not screw it up.

Johnny Carson was over, and the station was about to sign off, so I turned off the TV and put on an old Sinatra album to listen to in the background.

Peg had since gone to bed, having wrapped all the presents there were to wrap, leaving me to my own devices with the doll house and my 2/3 empty bottle of brandy, which by that point, I was drinking straight out of the bottle.

While I was attaching the front corner of the doll house to the roof, I noticed a face in the window out of the corner of my eye, and it was my hillbilly neighbor next door, almost causing me to jump out of my skin and botch the doll house I was drunkenly trying to put together.

“Jesus H. Christ” I yelled out.

I got up from the floor and opened the front door, looking at Cletus half mad and half amused.

“You damn near caused me to mess up my kids present I’m putting together, Come on in,” Cletus then came into the house, wiping the snow off his shoes first, and shut the door behind him.

“Damn Sam. You shore are up late” said Cletus.

Cletus was the stereotypical Smoky Mountain, moonshine still in the backwoods operating, slack jawed yokel hillbilly you could find deep in the backwoods of Tennessee, though a lot of them seemed to have moved to Chicago in recent years.

He had two front teeth, better suited to pulling the pickle out of a Big Mac without moving the bun, instead of eating with, and he dressed like a hillbilly too, wearing overalls and work boots, all with a stocking cap, but tonight he was wearing a Santa Claus hat.

Tis the season.

He opened up his coat and pulled out a mason jar full of moonshine his kin had sent him a couple weeks ago, and offered me a sip, of which I of course accepted.

I took a generous glug and almost lost my cookies, coughing up a storm from the potency of it.

“Good Lord! How do you people drink this stuff?” I asked

“Born and raised on it Samuel. It’s like mother’s milk to me and my kinfolk.” Cletus answered.

If I thought I was buzzed before the drink of moonshine, there wasn’t a shadow of a doubt after I had imbibed.

Some people say if you drink enough of it, you will hallucinate, so I made damn sure I wasn’t going to have too much more.

“Did ya hear about the axe murderer on the loose?” asked Cletus.

“Yup, and I’m waiting on him. Gonna give him a taste of some buckshot if he comes around here.” I said, pointing to the shotgun behind the door.

He offered me another swig of his moonshine and I once again accepted, vowing that this would be my last. The second swig went down a lot better than the first one, but not good enough to want a third.

“Sure is cold out there. I been out there most of the night. Thought my damn hands would freeze off after a while. Definitely don’t get this cold in Tennessee.” offered Cletus after taking a glug from his mason jar.

“What do you mean, you been out there most of the night? Why?” I asked.

“Just walking around, looking at all the Christmas decorations. Saw lots of cop cars cruising through the neighborhoods too, harassing Santa Claus’s walking around, but they didn’t harass me, ‘cause I took my suit off and ditched it!” said Cletus, ‘causing me to have a bit of concern now. What the hell would Cletus be doing walking around these neighborhoods on Christmas Eve wearing a Santa Claus suit, with no one to go see?

“Why were you wearing a Santa Claus suit Cletus? You don’t know anybody around here, do you?” I asked him, now a little bit nervous with him in the house, me eyeballing my shotgun.

Cletus’s face then started to change, as if he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I turned away for just a moment to look at the doll house I was assembling, and suddenly I felt a sharp and severe pain on my wrist, and when I turned to see why, my hand had been chopped off from my wrist by Cletus, on his knees next to me, holding a hatchet that was covered in blood.

I screamed at the top of my lungs, watching the blood pumping out of my stump, and Cletus laughing up a storm.

“Why did you do that you fuck?” I screamed at him.

“Because it just seemed like the right thing to do Sammy. My wife told me tonight she was leaving me and was going to move in with some feller that reads the meters, taking the kids with her, so I axed ‘em all to death, then went on a killing spree, loving every minute of it. Truth is, I hate this damn place, and wish I never brought my family up here to live. This place tore my family from me. She told me that this meter reader looks a lot like you, so I figured I might as well come over here and kill you and your family as well…know what I mean?” said Cletus, with the look of the devil in his eyes.

Cletus was now standing over me, hatchet in hand, looking to finish what he had started.

“After I get done chopping you up, I’m going to go upstairs and chop up your wife and girls, then I’m probably going to come back down here and stick that shotgun of yours in my mouth and call it good.”

Cletus was just about ready to take a drink from his mason jar when I kicked his legs out from under him. He crashed to the floor next to me, drenching himself from his jar of moonshine, then I lit him on fire with a lighter from my pocket with my remaining hand, also setting myself a little bit on fire as well, as some of the moonshine had splashed on me, setting my legs ablaze.

He was full on a thundering blaze of human being, screaming from the pain, while I was busy trying to put my legs out. By the time I did that, he was pretty much fully on fire on the front stoop after charging out of the front door, not moving much, if at all, while the neighbors all came out to see this crazy spectacle from their front porches.

I decided I should put him out of his misery, so I grabbed the shotgun from behind the door and emptied a shell into his head, damn near blowing his head off of his body.

With my wife and girls standing at the foot of the stairs, I told them I was happy to have used the shotgun after all.

fiction
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About the Creator

Jamey O'Donnell

In the dead of night when the creatures are lurking about outside my window, you will find me brainstorming my ideas on the computer, trying to find the right opening, then seizing on it like Dr. Frankenstein, bringing paper and ink to life

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