When Christmas is over, we round up the Santas, herd them into trucks, and ship them back to the camps.
Radio tags help catch the strays.
We give each Santa a checkup, fix the damaged ones, and read through field reports that track which strains were effective where.
Beards by environment, bell-ringers versus department stores… we analyze everything.
This helps us plan our training and deployment strategy for the next holiday season.
And how to predict severe failures.
In the basement, the worst Santas are kept.
The molesters. The axe-murderers.
Oh no. The lock is broken?
Quick! Sound the alarm!
Tag: horror
Checking it twice
Santa’s making his list, checking it twice.
Too bad for John Bettencourt (now known as Paul Miller of Orlando, Florida) that he doesn’t check with the Witness Protection Program.
John wanted chocolate-covered truffles from his favorite online catalog store, but instead of using a new shopper ID, he used his old one.
Santa didn’t notice. But the crooked defense contractor that John blew the whistle on did.
A box arrived the next day.
“Mmmmmmmm… truffles!” John said.
He opened it, setting off the parcel bomb.
It wasn’t reindeer on the rootops, but bloody bits of John raining down on them.
What On Earth?
Everybody’s going to the new salon on Fifth Street.
For some reason, it’s all the rage, but the styles they come up with are dreadful.
“You look like you stuck your finger in a light socket,” I told my friend. Her hair was standing a foot tall from her head. “What on earth made you do such a thing?”
Then I caught a sparkle inside her hair. The updo was meant to conceal an antenna.
But there was a fully-exposed pod on the back of her neck. No coverage at all.
They might conquer earth, but they’ll never be in-style.
Hear The Horns
The world is out of sync.
Maybe God got the speed of sound and the speed of light got mixed up this morning, but now I hear things before I see them.
The alarm going off before the clock showed 6.
Birds singing on empty telephone wires.
I try to cross the street and I hear cars honking, the screeching of brakes.
But it’s a red light. The WALK sign is lit.
I am crushed to the curb.
Hit by a car?
People shouting. Sirens. Unseen hands lift me.
So much pain.
I still haven’t seen what hit me yet.
Elves Live
Happy The Elf woke up in the North Pole Infirmary.
His head hurt. Everything looked weird.
“What happened?” he asked.
“You had a rough Christmas,” says the lab technicians, putting equipment on a cart. “Everyone did. But you’re all fine now.”
Happy looked around and saw all the other elves in the Infirmary, in various states of stupor and lucidity.
Santa watched them through a one-way mirror.
“Poor bastards,” he said. “They have no memory of the Hell I put them through every year.”
“And neither do you, you old bastard” said a technician, sliding a needle into Santa’s neck.
Baby Brother
Lisa’s parents knew what would be on the Christmas List.
The same thing she’d asked for every year: a baby brother.
Her birth had been difficult. The doctors had performed a hysterectomy to stop the bleeding.
And her parents didn’t want to adopt or hire a surrogate.
“You’re plenty enough,” they said to Lisa.
So, she took matters into her own hands.
Sure, the paper said it was an electrical short from the tree.
Lisa said she saw smoke, rescued the neighbor’s baby first, couldn’t go back in because of the flames.
Just wait until she wants a baby sister.
Nanobots
Long ago, Sally would have had to clean her teeth with a brush, fluoridated goo, waxed string, and medicated rinse.
Now, it’s done with nanobots. Tiny robots programmed to scrub away food particles, eliminate bacteria, and rebuild any damaged surface material.
Everything is done with nanobots. Zapping cancer cells, replenishing muscle fibers, healing bone, and enhancing nerve signals.
They’re not supposed to go into the brain, but they do.
The tooth maintenance routine doesn’t quite work in the brain, neurons sheathed with shiny hard enamel.
Sally collapsed in the mall, staring blankly, with a perfect dead smile on her face.
Burned
I went out to the cemetery, found a place to sit, and read a book about zombies under the moonlight.
After a few minutes, zombies appeared through the trees, shambling across the grass and headstones.
I got out my lighter, and set the book ablaze.
The zombies burst into harmless puffs of flame and ash before vanishing.
Neat trick, right?
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
That’s when opened the magazine I found under dad’s side of the bed.
And… then… a zombie centerfold showed up, moaning “BRAAAAAAAAAINS!”
Sure, that’s in her LIKES list, but I think I’m going to run.
The Vault
I haven’t seen Mother in years, but one day I’ll remember the combination to the lock on the vault I put her in.
I thought about calling a locksmith, but that would just put him in danger of mother.
And me as well, I suppose, since it has been a while since I last drank.
She used to scream so loud, you could hear her through the thick iron door. But now, she’s far to weak and frail from the thirst to make a sound.
And if I let her out, I know I will be punished for this… naughtiness.
Timeshifted
When the time machine exploded, the research team told you I was dead, my atoms scattered throughout history.
I was badly hurt, sure, but there’s great medical care in the future. All kinds of advanced Star Trek stuff here.
You can hardly see the scars from where they regrew my arm, and this new eye is as good as the old one… even better, with the anti-aging treatments.
If only you’d have held on. They could have cured that cancer.
Instead, I wasn’t there to help you though it.
You killed yourself, and I’m laying a flower on your grave.