“THE FAT MAN’S LAST RIDE”

Christmas eve. Tad and Jennifer were parked under a stand of sycamore trees, making out in the back seat of Tad’s car, radio tuned to an oldies station. Suddenly: “We interrupt this program for a special announcement. Residents of Glendale and the surrounding area are warned to be on the alert …”

“Gosh,” said Jennifer. “This is Glendale.”

“… A crazed psycho killer has escaped from the Glendale Prison for the Criminally Insane. Citizens are urged to stay inside and lock the doors.”

At that moment, there came a great thrashing among the limbs of the sycamores. Then something, a claw, began scratching the roof of the car, slowly ~ ssscritch … sscritch ~ scratching to get in. Something thick and wet began dripping onto the roof. A raspy, strangled voice spoke from outside the car, but the words were guttural and unclear.

“The … the killer!” gasped Tad, shivering with fear. The young lovers cowered in the back seat, paralyzed with dread, too gripped by foreboding to even move. All they could hear was the clawing and dripping and strangled, guttural voice in the night, the night itself closing in around them, drawing them tighter, compacting them into icy helplessness, trapping them like two tiny figures in a snow globe of dark, cold Hell. Throughout the interminable night, Tad and Jennifer clung to one another as though they were falling. Even long after the strangled noises outside the car had stopped, the two doomed lovers remained frozen within the paralysis of their terror …

Because that’s how they found them the following morning, Christmas day ~ in the back seat, still locked in their terrified embrace, silent screams stalled within their throats, wide eyes staring into the face of madness, still alive but in a catatonic state.

And there above the car, caught head-down in the branches of a tree, was the strung, lifeless body of Santa Claus. Evidently, the fat man had fallen from his sleigh and impaled himself on a sycamore branch. His injuries left him so weak he could barely move and could only speak in a strangled voice. His left arm dangled to within inches of the roof of  the car. What Tad and Jennifer heard was Santa desperately scratching with feeble, outstretched fingers, trying in vain to get their attention, begging for help as his life’s blood slowly dropped, fatly, wetly, onto the roof of the car.

“THE PHANTOM SALES ORDER”

A newly employed kitchenware salesman was working the North Pole territory … cold calling on Christmas eve. His blistery route finally brought him to the isolated manor of a “Mr. and Mrs. S. Claus.” Seeing a light on in the kitchen, the salesman walked up on the back porch and rang the bell.

Mrs. Claus herself opened the door and invited him in. The kitchen was warm and dimly lit and no one else was about. Although she was a pleasant host, Mrs. Claus seemed to have about her an air of wistful melancholy, tentative and preoccupied as she greeted the young man. They sat at a heavy cherrywood table and as the salesman spieled, Mrs. Claus gazed out the kitchen window with a faraway, sweet-sad expression on her face. The snow lay like a fluorescent blanket over the world. The arctic sky was so complete with stars that the Milky Way glimmered like a Christmas ribbon tied around the earth.

The kitchenware salesman was discouraged by the woman’s inattention, but he plodded gamely through his sales pitch anyway, eventually reaching its conclusion. Outside, an aurora borealis painted shimmering brush strokes of color across the sky. The salesman could hear his watch ticking.

Abruptly, Mrs. Claus came to herself, smiled and placed an order for all new kitchenware products. Surprised and delighted, the young man wrote the order up, re-packed his samples and continued on his route in order to be home for Christmas day.

A week later the salesman returned to the Claus residence with the delivery of kitchenware. He was met at the door by a female kitchen elf who knew nothing of any such order. The salesman insisted that it was Mrs. Claus herself who had placed the order.

Hesitantly, the kitchen elf asked, “Mrs. Claus?”

“Yes,” the young man replied. “A white-haired woman wearing a maroon dress and a white bib apron.”

“Yes!” gasped the kitchen elf. “You have described her!”

“Well, if you would be so kind as to call her I trust she can straighten this out.”

“Sir, that will be impossible.”

“And why is that?”

“Mrs. Claus died on Christmas eve … five years ago!“