*This story was originally published at Citywide Lunch in July 2025. The updated version below includes a few minor changes.
Content Warning: Explicit violence and sexual assault.
Santa Claus???
No, I don’t think I’ve heard of him. I don’t think I have. Wait, do you mean the guy who puked up a grotesque mixture of bile and milk and assorted cookies into my stocking on the night of the Christmas Eve of my eighth year? The guy whose retching woke me up and I tiptoed down to find his fat face stuffed into my homemade felt stocking with Elmer’s-glued-on pipe cleaner antlers and googly eyes and red pom pom ball? The guy who wiped his face and said “Fuck off, kiddy kiddy boink boy” and then stumbled out the front door of my house? And I looked inside my homemade felt stocking and the trinkets—including an out-of-the-box, ready-to-go Tamagotchi—the trinkets my parents got me were completely rancid and drenched and unusable? The Tamagotchi that I would have named Harold P. Brum and cared for with an alert kindness and empathy? No, I don’t think I’ve heard of him. I don’t think I have.
Wait, do you mean the guy that followed me to and from school every day of seventh grade? The guy that followed five to six feet behind me and spit on my ankles? Continually spit on the back of my ankles until my socks were moist, and I would turn around and he’d start whistling to himself like he was a cartoon character? Is that the guy you’re talking about? That Santa Claus?
Wait, wait… surely, you don’t mean the guy who pissed on my mother’s face while she was sleeping at 2:32 pm on Sunday, July 24th, 2005, right? Who tied a rag drenched in chloroform to my mother’s face so she would stay unconscious and then pulled out his flaccid cock, placing it lightly on her left cheek so it was just resting there before beginning to piss, a steady stream of moderate piss that made his dick move around like a pale snake? Who knocked out my father when he was coming inside from doing yard work and laid him on the couch and tied another chloroform rag and started pissing on his face too? The guy who switched back and forth between my parents’ faces, flopping handlessly from one to the other, a simultaneous pissing of my parents’ faces? And when I tried to stop him, he punched me to the ground and said, “Fuck off, kiddy kiddy boink boy,” even though I was now sixteen years of age? And when he left and my parents woke up, my mother said to my father, “Oh, you know we’re not supposed to do this on the couch”? Causing me to realize a horrifying fact about my parents’ sexual proclivities? Causing me to realize that my parents, in fact, engage in at least non-trivial amounts of piss play? Irrecoverably changing our relationship forever?
Surely, that cannot be the Santa Claus you mean, right? No way that’s the guy you’re referring to, right?
Waaaaaaait, hold on, are you talking about the Santa Claus that showed up at my workplace three years into what had been a blossoming career? The guy who apparently passed an interview and sat in the cubicle next to me and heated up old halibut every day for lunch? And only finished half of it and dumped the rest into the uncovered trash bin alongside his desk so it smelled like old microwaved halibut and no matter which cubicle I moved to he followed me? The guy who slowly started turning my coworkers against me? Subtly and meticulously changing their perception of me over time? Like my coworkers used to think I was a serious guy and that was a nice positive attribute, and now they just thought I was humorless? Because he would do things like say a joke that everyone found funny besides me and then direct their attention to my unsmiling face and say something like, “It’s a joke, man. You’re supposed to laugh at those,” and then everyone would laugh at that? And one day he called me the “longest-faced mortician”—implying that not only do I have the sullen demeanor of a mortician, but that my demeanor is particularly morose even within their ranks—and it stuck? And then every day in the pantry, he would say “what’s up LF mortician?” and people would snicker? And in a meeting with our boss, in a twenty-person conference room meeting with our boss, he worked the phrase “longest-faced mortician” into a sentence and my coworkers hid chuckles and our boss was like “what’s so funny?” and everyone was like nothing, nothing, and I was completely embarrassed? Is that the fella you’re talking about?
Wait, wait, wait, okay, just a second… wait… are you referring to the guy who killed my first-born son? The guy who slid into my eldest son’s bedroom and asphyxiated him with an Optimus Prime pillow? Is that the Santa Claus you’re alluding to? Is that the Kriss Kringle you mention? That dude? That jolly ol’ chap?
Wait, hold on, wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait wait, hold on, wait… I think I got it… do you mean the guy who fucked my wife in the ass? The guy who—in an almost perfect mirroring of the day of Sunday, July 24th, 2005—tied a chloroform rag to my sleeping wife at 2:32 pm on Sunday, July 24th, 2022? My wife who was sleeping on the couch because she was grieving the loss of our first-born child? Are you talking about the guy who made his cock hard as a telephone pole and stuck it inside her ass? Stuck it in and out of her ass continually? And when I tried to stop him, he punched me to the ground and said, “Fuck off, kiddy kiddy boink boy,” even though I was now thirty-three years of age? And when he left and my wife woke up, I didn’t even have the heart to tell her what happened to her poor little hole? And then I realized maybe he hadn’t left because I heard ten loud bangs coming from my remaining three children’s rooms? And my wife and I rushed to my remaining three children’s rooms and the ten loud bangs had been the guy shooting my remaining three children dead? And he was nowhere to be found, the only things in my remaining three children’s rooms—which were Hello Kitty, Buzz Lightyear, and Moana themed, respectively—the only things in each of my remaining three children’s rooms were a carefully curated mix of store-bought, official brand items (for example, the Gear-Up Hello Kitty® Critter Backpack) and meticulously-crafted custom work I made myself (for example, a hand-carved wooden replica of Maui’s magical fish hook) and the blood-soaked corpse each child? And then also we noticed, laid atop my youngest daughter’s bed, laid right atop her Hello Kitty® Gingerbread Quilt, the guy’s empty and discarded IWI Galil Ace Gen II .30 Caliber Assault Rifle? And then we heard another, even louder, bang come from the room of my late first-born son? The room we now kept as a shrine to his memory? And we ran into his room and it was covered in vomitus and raw halibut? And also dead rats for some reason? And a small-to-medium-scale explosive had been set off in the corner, completely destroying our cherished possessions that commemorated and reminded us of our first-born son? Our cherished possessions such as the trophy he won at his first little league championship? Such as the certificate he received from his kindergarten teacher for having successfully counted to the number one-hundred? Such as a tuft of his hair taped to a photo of him as a baby before his first haircut? And then my wife fell to the ground and began frothing from the mouth because she had been (at some point before or during the aforementioned sexual assault of her asshole) injected with a delayed-acting but lethal poison? And so the last thing my wife saw before she died—moments after having been horrifically raped—was the destruction of everything she held dear in the world? The destruction of her whole heart and joy? And I was forced to watch her squirm in agony, each of my attempts at helping fruitless, until all the life had left her? And then I was standing there in the gory mess of my deceased wife and kids? And in this moment I was not even allowed the dignity of grieving, because this so-called “Santa Claus” pushed a small, animatronic, ambiguously-feathered bird with a party hat through the extensive hole in my first-born son’s bedroom and pressed its toe and then it waddled toward me and moved its wings and sang the “I don’t wanna be a chicken, I don’t wanna be a duck” song? And then from through the hole I saw the guy jogging away and up a sloping hilltop and then he turned and shouted, “Guess you’re really the mortician now!” and he licked his lips and continued to jog?
Is that the guy? That Santa Claus? That Father Christmas? That man who goes by “Saint”? No, no, no, I will absolutely not be wanting to come back to this mall next week and pay $5 to take a photo with that man. No, I will not be wanting to wait on a two-hour-plus line to sit on the lap of that man. Do you think that is appropriate to ask me? Do you think before you talk? Were you born as moronic as you are now or did you work at it slowly over time? “Come on by, December 16th, and take a photo,” you say, like a foolish little toad? Are you a toad? You oversized, pimple-faced elf? What more? My flexor tendons, my stomach lining, my throat, my tooth? My lateral incisor? Fine, here—here is my blood-splattered incisor, will you take it? Will you take it? Will you take it? I am a man too, can I not breathe if less than he?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Merry fucking Christmas, right back at ya. Go fuck yourself.
Tyler Plofker 