Fiction Page:
The Santa Killer
By Carrillee Collins Burke
“I killed Santa Claus. Now nobody will talk to me.”
I’ve said I’m sorry a million times, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference. I walk down the street and I’m snubbed. And every child in the neighborhood accuses me of bringing doom and gloom on them for the upcoming Christmas season. They say I shouldn’t have done it. But you need to hear my side of the story to know what really happened.
It was at the costume birthday party for Nibs, my eight-year-old son’s friend, where everything went awry. I agreed to drive Jon and his friends to the party, but only if I didn’t have to wear a costume. It was October in Florida, and the temperature was nearing 90 degrees with 85 percent humidity. Much too hot for me to wear a costume. I drove Sleepy, Grumpy, and Dopey to Nibs' house.
Assembled there were numerous characters, including clowns and—you had to be kidding me!—a Santa Claus. I never physically met Santa, but I felt sorry for him. He was dressed in a fuzzy red suit with a wide black belt, black boots, and a full beard with tiny wire rimmed glasses on his nose and his furry hat pulled down over his ears. He sat in a chair on the lanai next to Jimmy, a huge Saint Bernard dog with plastic reindeer antlers taped to his head and a smudge of bright red lipstick painted on his big nose.
At a distance one could see from the way Santa was slumped in his chair and how he had Jimmy’s long bulky leash secured around his hand that he had probably drunk too much of the homemade wine I saw in a Mason jar on the kitchen sink.
About the time I noticed Santa’s condition, Jimmy decided to give chase to a stray cat lingering outside the screened lanai. Well, Jimmy broke through the screen, pulling Santa over brick-edged flower beds, a hot tar driveway, and through a couple of sprinklers before I decided to join the screeching, screaming, two dozen characters chasing him.
A couple of elves nudged me into a lamp post, causing me to stumble over my flip flops and fall down four cement steps. Enough was enough. I was no match for a horse-size dog and a bunch of kids. So I got my car and followed Jimmy at a distance as he broke down wood fences and hung rose bushes on his antlers, and, all the time, pulling Santa behind him.
The cat streaked down an alley, coming out at the end and climbing an escape ladder at the back of a store. I sped down the street and caught them, just as they exited the alley.
Jimmy charged into the middle of the street and stopped where he stood, whining. I just missed hitting Jimmy and ran over Santa; jerking him loose from the leash and tearing his hand off. Jimmy ran away; the cat smirked and the kids hunkered over Santa, screaming that I had killed him.
I jumped from my car and picked him from the pavement. His head wobbled, his glasses were broken, he’d lost his hat, and his left leg now long and thin stuck to a spot of warm blacktop in the street. Santa was skinned, cut, and busted. I opened my trunk and tossed him inside.
Jon and his friends called me a Santa killer. My wife frowned and the garbage truck men chastised me for throwing Santa in the garbage can. He was a tradition, I was told by everyone that had seen him sitting on Nibs' family front porch during the Christmas season for the last twenty years. And from the time Nibs was born, Santa had sat on the lanai at the birthday parties. Heck, the whole neighborhood knew the jolly old guy.
Okay, so he was a legend. Big deal. He was also a big red fuzzy balloon. And I killed him. So what does everyone want me to do? Finally, I figured it out for myself.
I purchased a life-sized Santa Claus and blew the big guy up with all the air I had left in my lungs. Then I sat the new Santa in the wicker chair on the front porch of Nibs' family house for all to see.
I wondered if anybody would ever talk to me again.
They haven’t yet. But time will tell.