Frost and Other Stories
Edited by Michelle Browne
Frost and Other Stories—Copyright 2013, Rights Reserved.
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End Town—L. K. Hatchett
The Room—Michelle Browne
Santa’s Secret Helper—James J. Murray
The Naughty List—Tina Traverse
Frost—Ian Rideout
Christmas, 2067—Michelle Browne
About the Contributors
End Town by L. K. Hatchett
All I can see is his red nose as he bears down on me. His front hooves are cutting into my shoulders, the back hooves digging holes in my legs. The snarl he makes sends lightning through my heart, his steamy breath surrounding my head in the cold.
"Rudolph!" I hear the fat man yell from some distant place.
Yes, the Rudolph.
They say he has a red nose because it lights the way. They are wrong. It's red because he can smell blood, and it lights up when he has found his next victim. Kind of like right now. As I lay on the ground in pain with said reindeer leaning over me, his red nose the only thing in my vision. It begins to glow, and I know he's about to rip my face off. I try to brace myself for what's to come, but how does one brace himself for getting his face ripped off?
"Rudolph!" the fat man yells again.
There is a blur of motion in my periphery. I don't dare turn my head to look. Being face to face with the murderous creature has me frozen solid in fear. Then, the red-nosed reindeer is gone.
It takes me two seconds to realize I still have a face, and two more to realize I'm no longer a target. The blur of motion I saw before becomes a screaming mass of frenzied movement. I turn my head to look, unable to just run.
Rudolph is busy tearing apart some hapless fellow who tried to make a break for it. It might be John, but I can't tell. He's a bloody mess, flesh hanging from bone as Rudolph's teeth make quick work of his victim. The glowing red orb is now shiny with blood. He makes a tearing motion and slings flesh to the side, blood flying through the air to land on my chest and arms. Little wisps of steam rise from the droplets.
That is enough to set me in motion, but I have to be careful about it. The same movement that attracted Rudolph to poor John will set him running right back to me.
I slowly crawl backwards in the snow, like a crab walk in a child's game. Only, this is no game. This is for my life.
The man Rudolph is ripping apart is now gurgling his last breaths, no longer able to scream as the deer wrenches his throat free of his neck. I hear bones snapping.
It's difficult to move this slowly. Every muscle in my body is thrumming with adrenaline. My heart is going to beat out of my chest, I just know it. Maybe I'll die of a heart attack before I have to know what it's like to have my flesh peeled from my bones.
Ever so slowly, I keep crawling. Right hand moving back, left hand...okay, now my right foot, my left foot. Slow crawl backwards, so slow...he won't notice.
"Rudolph!"
My God, if only the damn deer would answer that call. God must hear me, because Rudolph's head snaps up at the sound of his name this time. And then he's gone, leaping into the air and flying in the direction of the call.
It takes me three seconds to scan the area, making sure none of the other eight reindeer notice my position. Screaming fills the air as each deer is busy with his own victim. Some people are running. Others are doing as I'm doing, slowly trying to back out of the carnage zone.
There is blood everywhere and I notice a downhill river of red forming, still too warm and thick to freeze. Someone is playing dead. That's not going to work. They will find anyone doing that, having learned about that little trick years ago. If the body isn't mutilated, they know it may not be dead yet.
I locate the fat man. It isn't hard, his jolly laughter pervading the screams. He is one sick fuck.
Seeing my opportunity, I make a break for it, though I don't get up and run. That would attract everyone's attention. Flipping over on my stomach, I crawl away from City Hall as fast as I can.
There are a couple of kids hiding under a culvert just to my left, a boy and a girl. They see me and then frantically motion me over to them. No one is safe from this massacre, not even the children. But, all kids crave an adult presence when they're scared, and these kids look like they'll die from fright alone. They latch onto me as I wedge myself under the culvert with them. I latch onto them too, doubtful that they know it's because I'm as scared as they are. There's nothing wrong with a little mutual comfort, even if, in the end, it's all futile anyway.
All we can hope is that Santa will be done soon and fly away. That's the way it always ends, when it comes to this. This never should have happened, though. There was a deal in place, but someone made a very fatal mistake, fatal for all of us.
This is End Town, the end of the line, the last stop before the North Pole. You see, everyone else in the world gets presents and jolly laughter. What do we get? Santa is one sick fuck.
When our children sing about watching out, not pouting, and not crying, they're not talking about being good. They're talking about being left alive, for goodness sake. They're talking about flying under the radar of the fat man's killing spree.
In some ways I get it. If I had to climb down that many chimneys, try not to get caught by that many kids, all vying for a look at jolly red-suited me, lug around that heavy sack of toys all night long for the greedy little bastards, and eat that many cookies, I'd be pretty pissed off too.
What Santa feels is outright homicidal, though, and he comes to End Town to vent his frustrations. I don't think it's a curse at all, don't even believe in that shit. I just think it's because we happen to be the last stop before he finally gets home at the end of the night, the last stop and his only chance to take it all out on someone. Maybe if he tried laying off the cookies, he wouldn't be so wound up by the time he got here.
A shrill scream sounds from where I last had a visual of Santa. The bastard has decided to lend a hand in the slaughter himself. I was wondering when he would finally join in. The pattern is the same as it used to be before the deal. He unleashes his reindeer to sweep through the town first, his stomach jiggling like a bowl full of jelly at the terror they reap. He laughs so hard you'd think he'd jiggle himself apart.
Suddenly, a large red-clothed figure is standing before us. The little boy next to me gasps loudly and I clamp my gloved hand over his mouth. Santa's back is to us, and he doesn't turn around at the sound. So far, he has no idea we're here.
He has a skateboard in one hand and a baseball bat in the other, his large sack of toys strapped to his back. I want to yell a warning when I see Mack rush past, but he doesn't make it far as Santa clocks him straight in the teeth with the wheels of the skateboard. When it becomes embedded in the man's skull, Santa lets go of the board and hits the next running target in the back of the head with the baseball bat. He throws that aside and then reaches back into his bag for something else.
He pulls out a teddy bear. Snarling, he rips it in half and throws each half at the two victims. He reaches back again, and this time pulls out an ice skate and a wooden toy train.
Clearly satisfied, he goes after two more people. The ice skate makes quick work of one woman. Santa slowly bludgeons the other one to death with the wooden train.
Santa stomps away, out of our field of view.
I breathe again.
Knowing that this wouldn't be happening if we kept up our end of the deal, my mind wonders to earlier in the night at the town hall meeting...
"We didn't get three prostitutes this year," John, the town sheriff, said as soon as everyone was present.
As Mayor, I dropped everything else that was to be discussed. The town depends on John to find three women every year, and he had never let us down before. "What? Come on, you know what happens when he doesn't get three."
"There just aren't enough," John said, his eyes darting away from mine. Mack, a respected member of the community, nodded his head in affirmation.
"You know the deal." My blood felt cold. "How many were you able to get?"
"Two," Eddy, the deputy sheriff, said when John couldn't answer.
"You can't find one more?" Unable to keep the concern from my voice, I put my hands flat on my desk to keep them from trembling.
"If he wouldn't take them away every year, we'd have plenty. The girls are scared. But even if they weren't scared, we'd still only have two," Mack said.
Ah, yes, the harem at the North Pole. When they realized they'd never be able to return home, prostitutes all over town stopped volunteering and changed their professions altogether.
Looking from Mack to Eddy and then John, I asked, "Why are you only telling me this now?"
"I was keeping up hope that one more would come forward," John nearly whispered.
"You idiot. You know there's no such thing as hope during Christmas." I wanted to kill the man, but I knew his fate was decided. All of our fates were decided. Three, tall, long-legged beauties help him beat off his frustrations through his north pole. If he doesn't get that, he unleashes his frustrations in other ways.
As it were, I found myself standing nervously outside of City Hall as fear itself approached. My palms were sweaty as I rubbed my gloved hands together. My mouth was dry.
"Ho! Ho! Ho!" The red habilimented terror sounded as jolly as he usually did.
The red-suited man was soon standing before me, his beady watery eyes on the two prostitutes that volunteered this year.
"Hoe! Hoe! Hoe?" He glared at me and I could see murder forming in those watery depths. Then he looked at the first prostitute. "Hoe!"
Then the other. "Hoe!"
Then to the empty space where a third should have been standing. "Hoe?"
Knowing exactly what was coming, I took off. There is no such thing as being the hero for something like this. He was checking his hit list, checking it twice, and I was number one.
That's when Rudolph was unleashed upon me...
A scream to our left brings me back to the present. The children squirm closer to me as Dasher gnaws on the bloody stub of Steven's arm. Steven owns the gun shop down the street.
Why not just kill the bastard? That's been tried before. The homicidal fuck and his minions are immortal. Every time anyone has tried to shoot the Claus, the asshole would laugh as if he'd just been tickled rather than shot. Even the damn deer laugh. Nukes wouldn't stop their rampage.
The fat man's voice booms through the air. "Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, and Vixen!"
Dasher jumps into the air and disappears. I make eye contact with Steven. He's alive, but barely.
"Come Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen!"
Several reindeer rush past, all gathering at the sound of Santa's voice.
"Rudolph!"
Yes, Rudolph, answer that fucking call and get the fuck out of here.
And, just like that, they are gone. The kids next to me start crying.
"Go, find your parents," I say. We crawl out of the drain through a river of blood, some of it already starting to freeze at the edges.
I kneel next to Steven and do what I can to stop the bleeding. His arm is completely gone.
"I think," Steven's breath is ragged, "I think that I'm going to try to leave."
"You can't," I remind him. People try to leave all the time. Anyone who tries is met with tragedy. It's a wonder any of us are left, really. The Sawyers died in a plane crash. The Taylors died in a sinking ship. The Edwardos died in a car accident. When the Smiths started walking, they fell through the ice just as they got outside of town.
"Any death is better than this life," Steven says.
He has a point. I'm not sure why I bother myself. Putting my hand on his shoulder, I nod my head grimly.
"Oh, thank goodness. Mayor Weston, you're alive!" Eddy rushes up to me, out of breath and covered in blood, but otherwise unharmed.
I don't dispense with pleasantries. "Make sure we get three prostitutes next year. Do whatever it takes."
"You know they have to be willing."
"I'm not talking about that. I'm saying if you have to put out an ad on the internet or send word to the next town, do it. Surely we can find volunteers who want a turn with Santa from somewhere. The deal is to get him three hoes. The deal doesn't say they have to be residents of End Town."
"I'll do what I can, Mayor Weston."
"No. There's no room for uncertainty. Get it done or come to me as soon as you know you can't." I look down Main Street, at the hollowly staring survivors wondering around aimlessly. Bodies are laying in pools of their own blood, mauled beyond recognition. Several people are writhing in the snow, groaning in agony. I look back at Eddy. "The consequences are on End Town when we fail."