A COVID Christmas
By: Denizcan Onen
Tags: Short Story, 2020, Covid 19, Fiction, Horror

’Twas the night before Christmas and the sleigh tumbled through the sky, speeding nonsensically liked a crazed hummingbird. “Fuck” hissed Santa as he clipped the roof of the Waterson residential home a bit sharper than he’d intended to. He mumbled to himself, untangling his unkempt beard with one hand, while reaching for the flask of whiskey in his pocket with the other. After letting out a drinker’s groan, he fumbled around with the crumbled piece of paper, balled up on the floor of the sleigh.

“Now, who the fuck do we have here?” he grunted, sniffing the cold air. “Cin…Cindy. What a sweet name. Has she been naughty or nice? How can you be naughty with a name like Cindy? At least at this innocent age, before she turns twenty and ends up on a strip pole somewhere. Now that would be naughty and nice!”

He grabbed her mini waterproof camera that she’d asked for, as well as her little brother’s dinosaur set, featuring a cheaply painted plastic T-rex. He then looked straight up and howled with anger. The elves had forgotten to wrap the presents…all of them. He shoulda known better. Their eyes were always looking this way and that, sometimes both at the same time. Speed, or some variety of speed was his guess. How else could they work, day in and day out with those little chiweenie bodies. He always caught them with handfuls of sparkling powder. They’d told him that it was the “magic” needed to finish the giant annual order of useless shit that everyone always asked for. He never thought that they may have been inhaling the “magic” by the truckload.

Santa hawked up a loogie and spat it off the roof, as far as he could. Satisfied with the distance he was able to attain, he dangled his sack full of presents down the chimney, before climbing in himself. “God fuckin’ damnit!” he whispered, punching the brick wall of the chimney, covered in soot. The chimney had been latched shut from the inside and unfortunately, Santa had left his magic ring that Mrs. Claus had gifted him centuries ago, in the sleigh. Without the ring, he couldn’t open the chimney seal and gain access to the Christmas tree, under which he was supposed to silently slide these unwrapped presents.

“Well, plan B it is.” He took out the slightly rusted revolver from his belt and clicked open the chamber to make sure that there was at least one bullet in there. Some luck at last, full chamber! He stuck out his tongue and aimed carefully with one spinning eye. He pulled the trigger and was rewarded with a silent click. A dud. The bullets were so old that their percussion caps had decayed to shit. He pulled the trigger a second time. Nothing again. Santa growled like a feral panther caught out of his element and began pulling the trigger frantically. Like playing Russian roulette, but with a mostly full chamber of useless bullets, the last bullet fired, sending out a dramatic ball of flame and busting the revolver’s barrel in half. Santa grabbed his ear in defense of the never-ending ringing, and in his drunken stupor, forgot that he needed two hands to climb down a chimney.

The fat man fell down the long black pipe and landed on his sack, crushing the two presents. The loud crash had flung the chimney door across the room along with a couple of dragon’s breath worthy billows of black smoke. “Ahhh!” shrieked Santa, throwing the useless remnants of the revolver on the floor as he climbed out, completely covered in soot. The ring, which he’d forgotten in the sleigh, also usually protected him against stains and cuts and bruises that he might otherwise pick up during his many chimney climbs. He went down more pipes once a year than Mario did his entire life.

“No cookies?” he huffed and looked down at the pathetic, twisted little toys that Cindy and her brother Marvin were, oh so excited for! The camera had been dented and he was pretty sure that the lens was now cracked. The dinosaur set now featured a T-rex with severe scoliosis and a twisted head. Santa exhaled with relief as he felt his flask. It was still intact and the liquid inside sloshed around heavily. He kept taking swigs of whiskey until he ran out of breath and let out a long-drawn-out belch that smelled of putrid oak. He was about to carelessly throw the presents under the tree, but just as he was about to let go, he saw a freckled little girl peeping at him from between the balusters of the staircase.

“Cindy! No need to be afraid. Santa just had a little accident coming down the chimney. Why did you close and lock it?”

Cindy didn’t respond. Her father, however, came rushing down the stairs with a 12-gauge shotgun, which he pumped before aiming it right at Santa’s salt and pepper (more pepper now) beard. “Mr. Waterman…”

“It’s Waterson, asshole. Get down on your knees! The cops are on their way.” Mrs. Waterson briefly appeared on the stairs and placed her hand on Cindy’s shoulder and urged her to go back upstairs.

“Mr. Waterson, I think there has been some kind of misunderstanding here. I expect to be paid in cookies and milk, not anointed with shotgun pellets.”

“I said, down on your knees, NOW!”

Santa sighed and got down on his knees. He realized that he still had the flask in his hand and decided to kill whatever was left inside in two gargantuan gulps. “Oh, Rudolph! Code red! Nose red!” he screamed up the chimney, hoping that his loyal reindeer would come to his aid.

“Shut up! I want you to drop the flask and put your palms on the ground, slowly! And keep your arms and legs spread!”

Santa looked up at this scrawny man acting like a tough guy. The shotgun he had wedged into his shoulder was bigger than him. “Oh, you don’t wanna do this son. I am Santa Claus, dickhead! I brought presents to your daddy and his daddy before that. To all the daddies who celebrate Christmas! You really gonna put me down here in front of your family, and scar your children for life? All because I went out of my way to bring your kids the toys they’d asked for!” Santa pointed at the broken camera and the dinosaur set sprawled out sadly in front of the Christmas tree. Mr. Waterson contemplated what he’d said for a moment and his hands began to tremble.

“You’re so full of shit! There is no such thing as Santa! You’re breaking and entering on private property, shitfaced beyond comprehension!”

“You’d say that in front of Marvin? Put your hands over your ears kid.”

Right when Mr. Waterson turned around to look at his absent son, Santa leapt into the air and pounced him like a deranged housecat. He delivered one swift punch to Mr. Waterson’s kidney and took the shotgun from his hands as the protective father continued to writhe in pain.

“Now, show me where the cookies are! And you can skip the milk. Whiskey!”

“Cookies?

“Yes, Waterman! Cookies! And take off that ridiculous mask! This isn’t Halloween.”

Mr. Waterson took off his COVID face mask and pointed at the kitchen. “I can bake you some cookies. It’ll take time. Please don’t hurt my family.”

Santa itched his beard again and sat down on the living room couch. The threadbare carpet barely gripped his black boots and he almost ate shit twice. He pulled out a Cuban cigar from his coat pocket and lit it with a gold lighter that caught the Christmas lights from the tree just right, winking back at Mr. Waterson in blues and reds and greens. “I’m not here to hurt anyone Waterman. It’s you who created this standoff.”

“You fired a gun in my home! I heard it! Hell, the whole block probably heard it!”

“That was a necessity. These children need their presents! Are you baking those cookies yet?”

Mr. Waterson got up to preheat the oven. “Never mind. No time,” snapped Santa, pulling himself up to his feet with a deafening belch. “Too many rounds to make tonight. All the kids were quarantined inside this year. So, everyone by default is nice!”

“This is the police! We have the building surrounded!” said a voice over a megaphone. It took Santa a minute through his drunken numbness to realize that this was no figment of his imagination. He pulled the curtain to the side with the barrel of the shotgun to see an army of cop cars lined up like ants. He looked back at Mr. Waterson, who observed the whiskey’s anger protruding through those blue soulless slits.

“Please, don’t hurt us. We didn’t do anything to deserve this,” he pleaded, looking over to the staircase and thinking about his family, locked and bolted behind the master bedroom door upstairs.

“Shut up Waterman, I need to focus.”

Mr. Waterson started mumbling something under his breath.

“Waterman, I said SHUT UP! Rudolph! Where’s the cavalry!” From the lingering cloud of soot in front of the fireplace, there was a loud clanking followed by the clattering of a delicate metal object. A gold ring flew out of the fireplace and landed on the carpet next to Santa’s heavy boot. Santa laughed as he put the ring on his finger, though his laughter quickly turned into panic as a loud thump and sliding noise could be heard through the ceiling. It was coming from the roof. Rudolph and the rest of the reindeer were preparing themselves for takeoff without their master. “Rudolph, no! Come back you useless little shit! I’m gonna cook you and feed you to the elves if I ever make it back! Mark my words!” Santa spun around and Mr. Waterson turned even paler than he already was. His pupils had grown to the size of massive black holes, fueled by a growing supply of fear.

“What’re you looking at?”

Mr. Waterson tried to pull himself up out of the sunken couch. “Sit down Waterman. I said SIT DOWN!” The couch sunk in even more like birth in reverse. “We’re gonna make our final stand Waterman. No way I’m going to jail, you hear me! Hey! I need you to focus!” Santa walked over and slapped Mr. Waterson across the face, leaving behind a red throbbing welt. “Alright, I’ve never used it before for anything other than gravity defying chimney work, so in a way, this’ll be my new toy for Christmas.”

Santa twisted the ring on his finger. With each turn it changed color, exploring the entire spectrum from hot to cold. He stopped until he reached a blackish purple color that resonated with still desolation. Santa then slammed the butt of the shotgun into the glass coffee table in the living roof, shattering it into a couple of big pieces. “Grab a piece, make sure it’s sharp. C’mon, c’mon, we don’t got all night!”

Mr. Waterson’s hands trembled as he grabbed the biggest piece he could find. It looked like a lean slice of pizza. He looked at Santa, who was staring out of the window, and cleared his throat. His hands steadied in anticipation of what he knew he had to do. “Don’t you even think about it,” said Santa without turning around. “I’ll blow you in half with your own shotgun. Just take the sharp edge and cut a deep enough line across your palm to draw a healthy stream of blood. You’ll live. You won’t if you refuse me, Waterman. Think about your children and Mrs. Waterman. Don’t be a hero.”

Mr. Waterson stared at the piece of glass. “I just need your blood. The quantity is up to you,” said Santa, pointing the shotgun at him in a way that was reminiscent of the Terminator. Mr. Waterson closed his eyes and pressed the glass into his palm. It sounded like a quill tip was tearing a hole into thick parchment. The blood trickled onto the carpet. Santa grabbed and shook Mr. Waterson’s bleeding hand with the shotgun still pointed at his forehead. “Put the glass down before you get hurt, Waterman.” He obeyed like a scared little boy.

Santa flung a couple of drops of blood into the fireplace. A fire instantly came to life and danced like a resurrected belly dancer given a second shot at life. “Go upstairs now, Waterson. I don’t want the spirit to fulfill its cravings with your mortal body. They’re like sharks you see, and you’ve already dripped a substantial amount of blood into the sea layered between life and death. Fuck off and stay out of harm’s way.”

“You-you said my name right.”

“Of course, I did. I’m Santa Claus bitch! Now git!”

Mr. Waterson ran up the stairs like the final level of Mario ready to save his princess, as Santa rolled up his sleeves. “I invoke thee, spirits of the night, spirits that fill me full of fright, spirits that do not bark yet bite…I invoke the powers of my hooved counterpart of burning legions enslaved to the pentagram.” Santa looked around the room. Nothing had happened. The fire still danced adeptly, and the megaphone was still rambling on with threats of entering the building. The police were scared. They could feel the power resonating from the ring and the frozen might of the towering North Pole. “Krampus!”

Krampus never showed up. Instead, bones were reanimated underground and through some unholy strength, they were able to dig their way out from underneath the icy cement. They were the bones of short men and women. Some had the remnants of bone and obsidian knives mingled into their skeletal frames. Others had huge holes in their skulls from musket ball wounds over a century ago. The police captain clicked on the horn and just stared at the reanimations of the dead with wide eyes. His jaw was ajar just like the dead slowly approaching him with black cavities for eyes. “S-Stop! I said freeze!” he drawled as terror cracked his voice into a headless chicken pitch. The dancing flames in the fireplace were replaced by dying orange embers.

It sounded like microwave popcorn was reaching its two-minute crescendo outside. Santa peeped through the curtains and saw nothing but smoke from the gunpowder and particles of snow that lingered in the cold air like a thick mist. The screaming from the police had stopped and all was silent. A long forgotten native American reanimation charged the window with a few perfectly preserved feathers stuck on string between the remaining two ribs of its rattling ribcage. “Oh, fuck!” screamed Santa, pulling the trigger as a reflex. The glass shattered into a million pieces, turning the attacking skeleton into a cloud of ossified powder. “Waterson! I need your help! I can’t fight them off on my own!”

Mr. Waterson cautiously made his way down the stairs after a minute’s delay and a screaming argument with his wife. Maybe it was a hint of Stockholm Syndrome, or it was the convincing terror in Santa’s voice, but he answered the call. The mist from the shootout with the cops had settled back down, creating an extra thin layer on the blanketing snow. “What are they?” asked Mr. Waterson, looking at the dozen or so skeletons slowly dragging their feet towards them.

“They’re the buried natives of the land around us, resurrected and starving for the living.” There were also skeletal critters and birds who couldn’t fly due to the lack of feathers and skin, that popped up out of the ground. Whatever Santa had invoked, it was more than just human remains that’d been reanimated. Invisible sleigh bells could be heard above them. Then, another hard landing on the roof, which rattled the entire house. “Here you go. I shot one shell, I hope you have many more to spare,” said Santa, handing the shotgun back over to Mr. Waterson.

“Wait!”

Santa, with one arm already up the chimney in preparation for a hasty climb, turned around and looked at the desperate father. “Please, you did this. You gotta help us…” A reanimated dog charged through the remaining, cracked glass of the already broken window and jumped on top of Mr. Waterson. It tried to lock its fangs around his wrist but caught the stock of the shotgun instead. It munched down on it with the sole purpose of destruction, slipping its fangs deeper and deeper into the polished wood. It would’ve all been over for Mr. Waterson had Santa not intervened. He cracked the sodium hound over the head with Cindy’s camera.

Two more hounds and skeletal birds joined them inside the first house of the night. They were met with pellets and the flashing scent of gunpowder. “Quick, use your ring! Make them stop!” The reanimation process was stuck in a loop. Even insects that’d died many millennia ago were brought back confused in their hollow carapaces.

“I don’t know how to use it like that!” hissed Santa, looking around the room for anything else that could be used as a weapon.

“Just twist it ’til it shines a different color!”

Santa began turning the ring on his finger, going from dark purple to scarlet, to yellow, then to blood red. “Perfect, keep it at red,” said Mr. Waterson, popping another shell into the shotgun from the front pocket of his torn pajamas.

“Why red?”

“It matches your outfit. Red is the color of Christmas. I’m hoping for a Christmas miracle here.”

“I need more blood.” Santa walked over to Mr. Waterson and ran his gloved finger across the cut on his forehead.

“Ow!”

“Don’t be a such a baby.” The fire was reignited through the enraged embers, which now glowed a butcher’s red. At first, it looked as if nothing extraordinary was going to happen. However, right when hope was drained from the tattered men’s eyes, the fire burned so hot that it started to melt the iron grate. This in turn spilled the embers onto the carpet, which normally would’ve been cause for alarm. Instead, the two men stood there like two petrified logs at the bottom of a frozen lake.

“Oh shit! What is that!” yelled Mr. Waterson. A behemoth of a creature crawled out from between the licking flames. His body was chiseled and completely devoid of hair. His skin was as red as Santa’s ring and was glistening as if it were oiled up or very sweaty.

“The fuck do I know!” yelled Santa, twisting his ring this way and that. It went from yellow to blue to orange to turquoise. It didn’t have an effect on the crawling entity born of hellfire. The creature initially walked on all fours, but once it cleared the fireplace it stood up on its hooved hindlegs. He must’ve been at least seven feet tall! He had a long tail that dragged on the burning carpet behind him like a bullwhip. “H-Hello” stammered Santa. The entity peered at him through eyes stuck in a perpetual vortex of churning hatred. “And what would you want for Christmas?” asked Santa as the creature slowly approached them.

“What’re you doing?” whispered Mr. Waterson like a ventriloquist.

“I’m trying to buy us some time before the only option we have is to blast that thing with the shotgun. Try to get him on our side.”

“How?”

“Toys, gifts, your firstborn.”

“What!” said Mr. Waterson through clenched teeth.

“I dunno. Look at him! He might want some shit like that. Blood of the lamb or a bouquet of body parts. Fucking fuck this ring!” Santa’s eyes lit up with half a stupid plan. “More blood,” he said rubbing Mr. Waterson’s forehead gash again.

“Ow! Stop doing that!”

Santa smeared the blood over the toy T-rex on the floor and began twisting the ring again, while pointing the light directly at the toy.

“He’s here. He doesn’t look like he’s on our side,” whimpered Mr. Waterson with chattering teeth.

“Shoot him! Buy me as much time as you can.” Santa kept frantically turning his ring like he was trying to set the Guinness world record in a Rubrik’s cube competition. The shot rung in both their ears as it hit the demonic entity square in his defined 8-pack abs. Yellow molten lava oozed from the pellet wounds, melting away the embedded pellets themselves. Once they’d been pushed out, the wounds sizzled themselves closed.

“It’s not working!”

“Shoot him again!”

Mr. Waterson chambered another round but right when he was about to pull the trigger, the demon grabbed the barrel. The shotgun turned orange and the heated barrel started to droop towards the floor like a failing erection. He pulled the trigger anyway and was left standing there with only the shotgun’s grip still in his hand. Everything else had exploded to pieces, sending shells and unburnt gunpowder throughout the room. The demon growled at him with sharp fangs with something stringy and molten between them. From the windows, more skeletal natives climbed carelessly into the burning living room.

“I got it! I think I got it!” yelled Santa, pointing the emerald light onto the T-rex. The dinosaur doubled, then tripled in size before growing exponentially. The ceiling groaned under the tension and eventually cracked, sending down white particles that mimicked snowfall indoors. They were met with a deafening roar that was nothing like what Jurassic Park had taught us. It was deafening due to how low it was in pitch. Mr. Waterson and Santa both clutched their chests, scared that the low vibrations would dislodge their internal organs. The demon was equally confused. The only ones in the now smoldering living room who didn’t seem to mind were the slow approaching skeletons. They tried to sink their dusty teeth into the T-rex’s skin and were met with crushing stomps.

“Stop bringing shit to life! It’s not helping! We need the off button, or color, or whatever it is!”

Santa grabbed his empty sack from the floor and threw it over the demon’s head. The magical threading was strong enough to resist the hellfire which would have burned through an ordinary sack in seconds. The demon swiped at them with claws that whistled through the air. Santa positioned himself behind the demon and kicked him into the T-rex. “Let’s go! Grab your wife and children and let’s get the fuck out of here!”

“Wait, what about my neighbors? What about this town?” said Mr. Waterson with the kind of conscience that Santa had hoped he didn’t have in this particular moment.

“I’m sure they’ll be fine. They’ll send in a SWAT team or something. They’re probably on their way already. If that doesn’t work, the military will be able to put an end to this chaos.”

“No, Santa Claus. They won’t. Only you can, by destroying that ring.”

Santa turned around and faced Mr. Waterson. “Is that a Lord of the Rings reference?”

“I-I guess it can be.”

Santa smiled. “Let’s get one thing straight then. You’re Sam and I’m Frodo, got it? No, fuck that. I’m Aragorn! Just ’cause I’m chunkier than you does not make me your sidekick!”

Mr. Waterson grinned and held his hand out. The blood from his forehead and eyebrow had now travelled all the way down his clean-shaven chin. “Let’s do it together then, Aragorn.”

“Melt for me, baby,” whispered Santa to his ring which he pulled off of his stubby finger. “Hey!” he yelled at the demon, who’d successfully managed to pull the sack off his head. “Hey batter, batter, you demonic motherfucker. Go lather yourself back up in Hell, you chiseled dickhead!” Then, as if he were throwing a pitch, he scaled the ring on its side and with a bit of spin, was able to land it directly into the fireplace.

Mr. Waterson and Santa jumped with excitement, overextending their lower backs a bit more than they’d intended, and high-fived each other. “That’s right, go back to Hell! And you, hasta la vista baby!” yelled Mr. Waterson, giving the bird with both hands at the three-story tall T-rex that looked down at them through the gaping hole in the ceiling. Luckily, it was on the side of the house opposite the master bedroom, where the wife and kids were hiding.

“Wrong movie reference,” said Santa under his breath as concern collected on his forehead in the form of sweat. The demon controlled the fire and with a sharp inhale that sounded like fingernails scratching a chalkboard, he sucked the flames back in, leaving even the embers cold and desolate.

“Shit, we got too confident,” said Mr. Waterson, frantically looking around the room for a plan B. The T-rex and the demon looked at each other and then cackled at the two cornered men. “They’re working together…” Right as the T-rex’s jaws would’ve snapped shut around both of their torsos, bells jingled by the front door, which was somehow still intact with all the shit going on. The door opened with a stout hindleg kick and the silhouette of a creature with antlers could be seen in the entryway through the smoke. A red light beamed through the blanketing particles of debris.

“I think now, the hasta la vista baby reference would’ve been more appropriate,” said Santa with a smile. It was Rudolph, huffing and puffing through his red nostrils.

“He does not look nearly as cute as we were led to believe,” said Mr. Waterson, looking at Rudolph the red nosed reindeer with disgust.

“What did you think it was going to look like? It’s a swollen, red nose! He’s got a condition.” Rudolph pointed his antlers at the demon and charged him, sending him flying into the wall. Then, with his red nose, he started sneezing frantically. After a good ten seconds of sneezing, sparks began to fly out of his nostrils.

“What kind of condition did you say he has?” asked Mr. Waterson with a raised eyebrow.

“I didn’t. He has the North Pole virus, which makes your COVID virus look like a chihuahua in a lion’s den. Trust me, it’s some nasty shit.” Rudolph finally sneezed out a red flame which reignited the black logs hugging the deformed grate.

The fire burned and so did the ring. There was a blinding flash of every color imaginable. The skeletons crumbled and clattered to the ground. The T-rex shrunk back to its original size and turned back into an inanimate toy with the batteries not included. The demon suddenly fell through the floor that opened up for him, dragging him back to Hell. Even the fire which had spread throughout the living room had been put out. “Thank you, Rudolph,” said Mr. Waterson. Rudolph offered him a small bow before he galloped back outside through the front door.

“Well, Waterson we did it! Merry Christmas! Now where did we leave off? Oh yes…” Santa suddenly grabbed Mr. Waterson by the collar of his stained shirt and lifted him off the floor. “Back to square one. Where are those cookies, Waterman!” Santa then let him go and laughed so hard that tears came out of his eyes. “I’m just playin’ with you. Merry Christmas Waterson, and I’ll see you next year!”

Before Mr. Waterson could answer, Santa grabbed his empty sack and bolted outside and was already jingling the bells of his sleigh. He waved back at the entire Waterson family, who’d come out to wave him goodbye. “Hey, wait! What about our presents, not to mention the property damage!”

Santa rummaged through the exposed toys in the back of his sleigh and threw down two random gifts which landed gingerly on the snow. One was a bottle of wine, which had shattered on impact, staining the snow a burgundy red. The other, was an adult toy from Good Vibrations. Mr. Waterson looked up and Santa shrugged back.

“It’s 2020, what did you expect? Be happy you survived. Ho-ho-ho!”