Santa’s naughty list

Dreams of cookies and milk and a big white-bearded man filled Alex’s mind as the silent night carried itself as even the mice dare not make a fit on this oh so joyous of times of the year. Or so that’s how it should have been.

But for Alex, this was no longer the case when he was awoken by the shattering of ceramic. It was quite the turn going from his oh so holly dreams to his dim room lit only by the moonlight bouncing from the crisp white snow that had bound the earth in its blanket.

With this sound didn’t come to any sense of dread though, as after all this was Christmas night, which meant only one thing to a child. Old Saint Nick had come to visit, though Alex was happy inside his sleep had got interrupted as he felt as though he could barely get out of his bed with how tired he was. But still, his curiosity was more powerful than the little child he was, and so he stepped out from his room into the hallway with his fuzzy blue onesie shining its blue in the moonlight that lit the corridor.

Alex crept along with his tired body keeping itself up with the excitement of curiosity of what may be taking a bite of his cookies or sipping the milk he had kept out. Finally, he reached the top of the stairs and saw a figure huddled in front of the chimney’s glow, with a red stocking slinking down off the figure’s head. At this moment he felt a kind of joy that one may call true wonder that was trying to call for him to yell out “SANTA! “, But for some unknown reason, he wanted to just hug this man as though he was an adored family member who had always been kind to him. He crept down the stairs, not making a peep. The figure was almost motionless as it seemed to stare into the fireplace as though it was the only thing it could see, or at least it was until he had put his put foot down only to find his foot slipping and as the fall took place it slid him on his bottom all the way down the stairs making quite the ruckus. However, before he noticed anything else he first noticed a tinge of red on his little onesies foot, he had automatically recognized that red tinge as nothing other than blood, Fresh blood.

At first Alex’s mind was into a daze almost as to write it off as nothing, but his mind could not simply write it off when he noticed where this blood was coming from. The very first thing he had noticed, was the half-bitten cookie that was just out of reach from his mother, who was motionless on the floor just in front of him, her body lying in a pool of what he could only rationalize as her own blood.

He was only given a brief moment to process any of this before the figure stood up and spoke.

“Oh Alex, it’s always so disappointing to find such a handsome young lad such as yourself on the naughty list, but I suppose. Like mother like son huh little boy?” the voice was booming yet somehow distorted, the figure turned to reveal something, so long Alex could barely believe his eyes. It was certainly the visage of a man one may call Santa, but at the same time it could not have been any more wrong. His suit had rips all over, its buttons were metal and rusted to pieces along with his belt buckle. His hermit white beard was unkempt and covered in red spatters, and his eyes gleamed gold with madness and a kind of animosity, unknown to man. He wielded a jagged and almost broken looking knife colored like a candy cane that dripped ever so slowly with blood.

Alex with only his lizard brain being able to process anything bolted up the stairs the second his brain sent out signals to his whole body screaming danger in a manner almost no person could imagine, for this was not some standard danger, this was something a kind of seeing a real-life monster.

As he ran he heard “Ho Ho Ho, you know there’s no running from old saint nick, after all, ALL kids nice and naughty get their presents, TONIGHT ALEX! The moment he got upstairs, he ran into his room and locked the door, even bring over his little desk’s chair to block the way.

Even from his room, he could hear as the man was coming up the stairs as each step sounded as though it was rotting the wood beneath it as each step creaked with horror, one could only find in stories of old horror being drought to life.

Alex knew his door would mean nothing to this man.

He had to hide, Or this man Would kill him.

He looked all around his room for anything that may hide him. But there was nothing. His closet was much too small to fit him without this man seeing him, His bed was too short for him to crawl under in hopes of finding solace under his place of sleep, and all his furniture was much too heavy for him to move easily enough to make it a hiding place.

All that was left was the window. It was just close enough for him to reach and open, and he had no other choice than to try it. Exactly as the creaking stopped he reached up and slid open his window making little to no noise as he continued to clamber up onto the border looking down to see the white snow pilled up from the ground. Just as he clambered onto the side of the window out of sight from the inside, the door handle began to clatter with the forced attempt to open the door, and just then Alex slid closed the window and hid from sight only seeing what he could have in the room from the perfect reflection of a mirror on his little dresser.

The night air was frigid and absent of mercy as he had nowhere to go he would simply have to suffer through the night air, as this man searched through his room, eventually, though, he noticed the door handle no longer jiggled. Instead, there was something flat and red coming through the door’s sill, until finally it was all the way in, and it popped up like some kind of twisted toy.

It was a box, but not just any box, it was a candy red wrapped present with a snow-white bow atop its lid. After a moment completely devoid of motion, the present popped open with the lid flying off and going somewhere in the room Alex could not see. But that was not the end of this sadistic trick, as now hands reached out of the box and held themselves on the floor as the figure rose from the box like a monster one would only find in some sick ancient story to frighten the mind of men. The figure was unchanged, except for now he carried a smile upon his face. His teeth were like pins, sharp and straight, as though they had each been sharpened up and down into fine white needles that showed no sign of the blackened insides of a mouth.

Alex could only watch as the figure look around checking places Alex could never have been, even opening the vents with a single tug and looking in them like some macabre cartoon. Until finally the figure was walking back to his box, and Alex thought he had won. That he was safe, that he would no longer have to endure this fear, that he could run down and save his mother The second, this sadistic Santa had left. Until The figure stood dead in his tracks looking down at the ground and somehow his smile that already stretched ear to ear got wider and Alex realized A fatal mistake.

The blood he had stepped in was still dripping from his foot to the snow below, and he watched as the figure’s gaze rose from the floor to where his window was, and in a split second as Alex saw that jagged smile, he made a decision and jumped from his window side to the snow pilled below.

That is where his memory cuts out

Alex sprung awake not in his bed or room, but instead in a white-walled room with the sound of a heart monitor beeping away beside him. He looked around to find no one in the same room as himself, however, he did see one thing that caught his eye. A candy red card with A snow-white bow decorated on its back. Every bone in Alex’s body told him not to even look at the card, because if he did that the monster of a man would come springing out of it and gut him there and then in his white-walled room where not a soul stood to help him, but just as before his cursory still wanted to know what that letter said.

Maybe it would explain away everything, and say that he had simply been asleep for the whole night here because he was sick, that his mother had gone out to make him some of the cookies she had always made for him on Christmas, and that a nice old jolly man would be coming to visit him to give him a proper Christmas. He grabbed the card and turned it too, only to have his entire world shattered, as the card read something Alex would not forget for the rest of his life.

“ It was a pleasure spending Christmas with you Alex, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and don’t worry, I’ll be sure to give you your gift next year kiddo. Sincerely Santa Claus. ”