JASON MICHAEL’S STORY

FROM EPISODE #73

SECRET SANTA

by JORDAN MILLER

I.

They say nobody believes in Santa Claus anymore, not even the children, but I say that’s a load of shit. There might not be as much Christmas spirit around as there once was, but people still believe. For one thing, I believe, and I can’t be the only one. For another thing, my very being here proves the existence of Santa Claus, without a doubt. Don’t believe me? Just look at my drivers license and see. I was born Jason Michael Holdsworth but had my name legally changed to Santa Claus when I was twenty, back when I was just a kid. Even then I knew what I wanted to be. What was really was. 

I believe full heartedly in the Christmas Spirit, as I think many do. Shit, even people who don’t believe in God believe in the Christmas Spirit and when you look at the world can you really blame them? Look at how much charity brings in for the needy around the holidays and tell me the Spirit of Christmas isn’t real. 

I’ve actually always believed the Christmas Spirit is more than just a feeling you get around the holidays. This is where most people check out or write me off as just another crazy, I believe the Spirit of Christmas is an actual entity that returns or resurrects itself once a year and with it brings a feeling that to many is impossible to describe. It’s the feeling of Christmas they will say and shrug it off because it’s just what happens around that time of year. 

To them it was just a feeling that came and went, but I waited for it, welcomed it and worshiped it. Most people love Christmas so they never batted an eye at a kid who celebrated the season just a little harder than everyone else. Who loved Christmas more than children, after all. I celebrated the holiday for sure, but also practiced my own private Christmas rituals in which I tried my hardest to communicate and make myself known to the Spirit. 

If I ever really want to become Santa Claus this was the way to start. The spirit was the key. It was the keeper of the season and it only makes sense that it was the one to choose the person destined to wear the red suit. 

As I grew older the Christmas Spirit has never dwindled for me, not for a minute. For the rest of the world, however, it had more or less dried up. That’s how it seemed to me, anyway. As a child I figured Santa Claus must have died. Probably in some horrible way while traveling over some remote part of the world, but that didn’t mean Christmas was dead. The Spirit simply had to choose a new vessel. So even as a boy I knew that the Spirit must have chosen me and I started my personal quest to take on my true role as Father Christmas. Santa Claus. Pere Noel. Whatever you call him. 

I could have changed my name at age sixteen but my family hated the idea and I didn’t want to upset them earlier than I had to. I knew I wasn’t ready to become Santa yet so no point in changing my name then if all it would do is get my family mad at me and probably my ass beat at school a few times. 

My family always moved around, and at the bright young age of twenty had been living in a shit eating suburb outside Dallas. That was where I decided to go through with the name change. I moved closer to the city and found my first shitty apartment and started getting my paperwork in order. It was supposed to be a fairly easy legal process but it ended up taking me months and I had to move part way across the country to get it done, but it was worth it. 

When I brought my paperwork to the courts the first time, they damn near kicked me out into the street. The judge didn’t want to hear of any business about changing one’s name to Santa Claus. He would allow it. Wouldn’t stand for it. He told me he found it an insult to his courtroom and if I wanted to try and change my name to some hippie shit like Santa Claus I better move my ass up to somewhere in New England where they would let me change my name to the goddam Easter Bunny, grow dope and marry a donkey. So, I packed my things and took his advice. 

Turned out that douche bag Texan judge wasn’t altogether wrong, as it wasn’t too hard for me to find a judge to let me change my name once I officially changed my residence to the great state of Massachusetts. It’s only fitting that I should have to move North in order to finally become Santa Claus. People certainly have more spirit for the season up here. Maybe it’s because there’s actual snow, but even so I found a distressing lack of true holiday spirit. They participated, sure, but nobody really believed. That was when I experienced the first ever true miracle of my life.

II.

It was Christmas Eve and I was driving home from Vermont after one last mall Santa job, which was always my bread and butter this time of year. The people hiring for Santa usually got a kick when I showed them my driver’s license and thought it was great I had worked up such a convincing prop. That and the fact that my beard was real. Together those two things would work to quell even the most dubious doubting Thomas amongst the children. It was also a bonus that I had my own costume, which was far better than the loaner costume the mall gave to most mall Santas. My costume was movie quality, as some would say, and obviously home made. 

I was still wearing the Santa suit on the trip home, keeping it ten under the speed limit because the snow was coming down like a son of a bitch. It was coming down in waves of white flakes when I saw the dull red glow up ahead. I stopped and found an overturned truck lying on its side. The truck was white and would have damn near disappeared into the snowbank had it not been for the red tail lights still shining through a growing layer of white. I rushed to the driver’s side door and swung it open. 

The next part of the story nobody ever believes, but I’m going to tell it anyway because it’s the truth. I opened the door to that truck and found the driver slumped over, face caved in from the steering wheel, just as dead as dead can be. I didn’t kill the guy. Honest. People started saying I slit the guys throat but that’s all exaggeration for the sake of drama. If you don’t believe me, I’m sure his cause of death is logged somewhere in public record where someone motivated enough could find it. For all I know he was drunk and drove himself off the road on an icy turn. 

I saw his clipboard where it had been thrown to the floor and could tell from the first page what he had been hauling. I shut off the engine so the lights would stop glowing and rushed around to the back of the truck through rising layers of thick snow. Using the driver’s keys I undid the padlock and pulled open the metal truck door. I knew in that single glorious moment that I had been right all those years. I had been chosen by the Spirit of Christmas and my continued faith had been rewarded. There in the back of the truck was an entire load of gifts on their way to be donated to who knows how many shelters around the city. They were all already tied up in bright striped wrapping paper and professionally tied bows. When you’ve worked as much time as a mall Santa as I have, you know the professional jobs and this was it. I picked up the box closest to me and looked it over, reading two magical words written on the side. I picked up another box and sure enough it was written there too. If I hadn’t been sure before, I would have to be a complete idiot not see it now. On every single wrapped present in the truck was written From Santa. 

III. 

There was no way I could haul the truck out of the snow so I loaded as many of the presents as I could into my car. I was surprised how many of them actually fit. I thought I may try to come back for more later but that opportunity never came. I drove off into the storm with my car packed with presents and the feeling that for the first time in my life everything made perfect sense. I could hear the rhythm now and I was finally playing along with the band and it felt incredible. 

I forgot about the storm and drove like a madman into the city. There were so many houses to visit and so little time. You would probably call it a miracle I didn’t drive off the road just like that truck driver and kill myself, but I believe the Spirit was guiding me. The packages didn’t have addresses attached to them, probably because they were going to a single shelter for distribution or something, but I knew where they were needed the most.

I drove to the part of the city where I knew the children needed the most help this time of year and found a good dark spot to park my car. There was nobody on the streets because of the snow and the fact that it was Christmas Eve. I turned off my lights and shut off the engine and just sat there, waiting for the hour to grow late. Snow blanketed the car and eventually covered the windshield and all the windows while I waited inside and checked my watch. I rechecked the time every thirty minutes or so and in between tried to focus on the feeling of my skin as the temperature steadily dropped inside the car. I imagined the thousands of snowflakes atop my car silently compounding and encasing me in a growing layer of clean, cold whiteness. The cold felt good and sitting there felt like a form of meditation. 

As a child I had always imagined Santa taking a private moment much like this to collect his thoughts and self contemplate before setting out his annual night of intensive work and magic. That was when he had the whole world to get through and I just had one measly block, but you have to start somewhere and I fully intended to bring that block the best Christmas they had ever seen. 

When finally it had grown late enough I pushed my car door open through all the snow and climbed out. By then I was used to the cold and felt comfortable in it. I didn’t have Santa’s magical bag of toys, so I just grabbed the top couple presents and set out for the nearest house.

I didn’t have much of a plan but I knew I couldn’t make the mistake of trying any chimneys unless I wanted to break my neck. I also knew that going inside the houses was not a great idea. Santa clearly used some kind of glamour to get in and out unnoticed but all I had was a set of loud clunky snow boots and wasn’t about to press my luck on my first try. 

I found open windows where I could and quietly placed the presents inside. If I was close enough to the Christmas tree I would reach in and slide the gift as close to the other presents as possible. By the fifth house I was starting to get pretty good and most of the time I could make it right under the tree. It all felt so natural and I realized that I could do the whole block in a night no problem. I’d go all night if I could. I decided if there were presents left over I’d move on to the next block and then I’d go until I was out. Then I’d go back to the truck and load up again, assuming my car would make it back through the snow and that the truck was still undiscovered. There were a lot of variables in my so-called plan but nothing else made any sense, so I kept on finding windows and sliding presents across floors and making trips back to my car for more gifts. 

Finally I made it back to my car and found only one gift left. I grabbed it up and headed out to the last house on the block I hadn’t visited. The first two windows were locked but around the back I found one that was unlatched. Sliding it open I climbed up with my body halfway inside and set the present on the wood floor. Across the room was a fireplace with embers smoldering and next to it the saddest Christmas tree I had ever seen. It was barely covered with any ornaments and already starting to brown and die before Christmas had even come. 

I reached in a little further and slid the gift across the floor. As I did so I lost my balance and fell part way into the house, putting more force into the gift than I anticipated. The box, wrapped in red and white striped paper, slid across the floor and knocked into the front of the fireplace. It didn’t hit with enough force to damage what was inside, but it fell over landing in a tilted lean, its professionally wrapped and twirled ribbons hanging down dangerously close to the embers. 

I caught myself with my hands so I didn’t fall completely into the house, but stared in horror at the present across the room and what appeared to be a thin line of smoke forming hesitantly from those hanging ribbons. I had no choice, I couldn’t leave the gift there and burn the house down on Christmas. I pulled myself the rest of the way inside and landed as quietly as I could. Luckily my Santa suit helped cushion much of the sound. I looked back at the gift and saw that the line of smoke had grown thicker. I reached down and unlaced my boots and worked them off as fast as I could so I didn’t wake every person in the house. Once they were off I darted across the room and pulled the gift away from the fire. A small flame had formed at the end of the ribbon which I was able to blow out with ease.  

I turned around expecting to see some wide eyed little boy or girl staring at me from the stairs but there was nobody there. That would have been just a little too much like something ripped from the pages of a child’s Christmas book. In a book like that I might turn to the child, wink, put my finger to my nose and disappear up the chimney in a flash, but the reality would be far less romantic. There’s nothing that instills Holiday cheer like waking up to a strange man in a Santa suit fumbling to get his boots on as he escapes out your living room window. 

I tiptoed over to where I had left my boots and picked up the first one when I saw something flutter and my attention was brought over near the tree where on a small table a piece of yellow construction paper caught the cold breeze. I could see the unmistakable work of a child’s handwriting in crayon. I could also see it was held down by a small cookie. I knew I shouldn’t risk any more time in the house than I already did, but it was impossible to pass up my first ever Christmas cookie as Santa.

I left the boot where it was and tiptoed back across the room. I picked up the cookie and gave it a bite. It was a ginger snap and biting into it almost brought a tear to my eye. Picking up the yellow construction paper I saw it was in fact my first letter to Santa. It read only three lines. 

Merry Christmas Santa. 

     I’ve been as good as I can this year.

 Please don’t wake up daddy.

For my first Christmas letter it was certainly a weird one. I was just starting to really consider how strange that last line was when a white flash of pain exploded in the back of my head and I fell limply down to the hardwood floor. I flipped onto my back to see a man with a buzz cut in a white tank top and boxers standing above me with an old Kentucky Slugger. This must be daddy. Now the last line of that letter didn’t seem so strange. Now it seemed like damn good advice.

Daddy lifted the bat up, getting ready to bring it down and smash my head in like a melon, but I rolled and the bat only caught me in the shoulder. It hurt like a hot bastard but better than having my brains ejected from my skull. I kicked out and caught him in the knee which brought him halfway down with a furious grunt. Scrambling to my feet I ran back towards the window but made the mistake of forgetting I was doing so in only my socks. On the second stride my legs flew out from under me and sent me sprawling into the wall, smashing some framed photograph in the process. 

This little display of grace on my part had given Daddy time to regain his footing and come at me again with the bat. I started crawling towards the window but Daddy was already there, blocking my way. He was actually starting to smile now. I wondered how many times this guy had secretly dreamed some asshole would break into his house in the middle of the night just so he could exact his God given right to defend his home. 

I don’t know why I did what I did next, but I started crawling back towards the Christmas tree. I knew it offered me no escape but I suppose some part of my brain wanted to crawl under it for safety. Daddy brought the bat down onto my back. Shockwaves of pain echoed through my body. I kept trying to crawl when he hit me again in the same place. This time I could feel the sting of that impact all the way in my fingertips.

For the briefest moment I caught sight of a little boy standing at the base of the stairs in his pajamas, wide eyed just like the children from all those Christmas books. The only difference was this child was terrified. He had warned Santa not to wake Daddy in his letter but Santa hadn’t listened. 

I reached out and grabbed the gift with the singed ribbon which had been the cause of all this madness. I did the only thing I could think to defend myself and smashed that box right into Daddy’s psychotic face. I heard something glass break inside the box and now it was him who was on the ground. I started to try to get to my feet, which was no easy task considering the beating I had just taken, when the screaming started. I saw the Kentucky Slugger on the floor and beside it the man called Daddy writhing on the ground, screaming in incoherent agony. My first thought was that whatever had broken inside the box had cut his face, but then I heard the sizzling sound like bacon on a hot stove. Smoke started to rise from the man’s face, which he kept covered with his hands. 

I looked at the destroyed box on the ground, with pieces of shattered glass around it and a growing puddle of what looked like water. I knew immediately it wasn’t water because wherever it touched smoked and burned. The man called Daddy finally sat up and brought his hands away from his face, or what was left of it. The skin on his face looked like melted cheese, dripping off in large globs as blood seemed to flow from everywhere. Somehow he was still able to scream, the sound gargling from his throat, bubbling through the melted remains of his own flesh is a sound that will forever live in the deep dark places of my memory. 

Somehow the gift I had brought into the house must have contained some kind of corrosive acid and I was watching first hand what it did to a human being. Soon Daddy stopped screaming, but the wide eyed little boy had only just started. I had no fucking clue how any of this had happened but I knew I had to get out of there. If I had been caught delivering presents I could have explained my way out of it, there was no explanation on planet Earth that could excuse the bloody bubbling mess in this living room.

I threw myself out of the window and ran through the snow back to my car, all the while my mind trying to understand how something so awful had made it inside one of my gifts. I could see the entrance to the alley where I parked but when I spun the corner with keys in hand I saw two uniformed officers. They were standing around my car with the doors already open, searching through it with their flashlights. I stopped and one of their flashlights moved up onto my face. The officer yelled for me to stop but I was already running back the other way. 

They chased me and I had barely got to the next block before I could see red and blue flashing lights getting brighter. Either someone had heard the altercation or some of the people I had visited had called the police. I figured it must be the latter because they arrived too quickly. I couldn’t let them take me, not when I was this close. They couldn’t possibly realize I was trying to bring Merry Christmas and I wasn’t going to try to explain it to them. I ran as fast as I could, hearing the collective yelling and shoe falls gaining ground behind me. 

I heard a gunshot and it felt like something nasty bit me in the leg, then I was on the ground. The chase was over and the police were on me before I could even realize one of the bastards had shot me in the calf. I felt one of the officers put a knee down into my back which hurt immensely, especially after having taken two hard hits from a baseball bat in the exact spot not five minutes prior. I felt and heard handcuffs clank around my wrists and still I couldn’t understand what had happened.

IV.

Once they finally got me into questioning it didn’t take long for me to put the pieces together. By then it didn’t matter how much I swore ignorance because I had done a pretty bang up job of incriminating myself and the police had already made up their minds. The truck with the presents had not been a charity drive truck at all, but a veiled mob vehicle filled with boxes disguised as Christmas presents. The cop sitting across from me in questioning was fuming. You could just tell it took every inch of his willpower not to leap over the table and tear my head off. He kept asking me why. Why did I do it? What was the message I was trying to send? Any response I gave, no matter how true, only made him angrier. 

He told me some of the boys were already calling me the Secret Santa killer. When I tried to explain that it was a horrible misunderstanding he slapped a stack of photos onto the table in front of me. He asked me if they were misunderstandings too. I sifted through the photos in disgust and horror. Burnt corpses. Bodies under white sheets. Daddy’s melted face. Seeing so much horror I couldn’t speak, couldn’t try to explain. The cop spat in my face, took the photos back and left the room.

I still don’t know where the mob had been trying to send all those items, but I know who got them. I remember the names from the obituaries and I still say them to myself every day so I don’t forget. The gifts I left at Brittany Colton and Malik Destefeno’s houses both had explosives, the kind that triggered upon opening. Both families had been beside their trees when the bombs went off. 

Besides the gift that burned off the face of Lukas Pellegrine (which turned out to be Daddy’s real name), one other gift had contained a jar of corrosive acid, which I had slid under the tree of Robert Malone. They had opened it without knowing what it was and the fumes had blinded young Robbie and some of the acid spilled, burning his hands badly. From what I read his parents suffered some major burns as well. They did not die but I say their names still. 

The gift I left under the tree at little Stephanie Harper’s house had contained a large amount of heroin, which the girl had discovered when she woke up early to unwrap some presents on her own. Her parents found her and she was hospitalized immediately. Her condition stabilized but she will suffer brain damage the rest of her life. 

Many of the other packages contained hand guns, ammunition and various weapons, which surprisingly did not result in any accidents. The news alerted all parents to beware of any presents they did not recognize on Christmas day labeled “From Santa”. The orderly who brings me my meals calls me Nick, as in Saint Nick. He doesn’t mean it to make fun either, it’s just what he likes to call me. The press continued calling me the Secret Santa Killer and the name stuck. Ten years gone by and the name still sticks and I’m looked at as a monster even though all I wanted to do was spread happiness and I never killed anyone on purpose. Those things don’t sell papers though, and certainly don’t interest the average tragedy addicted citizen, sucking the vile teat of the nightly news. 

Sitting here all this time I’ve thought a lot about Christmas and how everything in my life seemed to steer me straight towards that overturned truck on that snowy Christmas eve. Every step I took my whole life was just slowly leading me to that one singular point. I can’t explain the will of the Christmas Spirit. I can’t explain why for every spoiled brat who gets a pony for Christmas, there’s another more deserving child who wakes up with a body full of Cancer. I can’t explain these things, but still I believe in Christmas, and still I believe in Santa Claus. He’s real, and if you don’t believe me just check the name on the outside of my cell. Every year still, parents around here check under their tree, fearful of any unfamiliar gifts from me. 

I’ve sat here for what must be hundreds of thousands of hours contemplating how impossible it is sometimes to tell the naughty from the nice. After so much time I suspect it’s even difficult for me to distinguish. I also think about how there’s a whole city of children out there who now believe Santa Claus is real. Know he is real, and fear him. Now I just sit here, waiting for another miracle, and for a Christmas to come where I can return to them.