13 Days of Krampus: The Santa In the Window

Published

4 years ago

December 18, 2020

David Davis

The night the snowstorm hit was the fifth day that ten-year-old William Feldson had been tortured by a sinister yard decoration. Outside was the blow mold Santa again, currently facing out into the street. The Santa hadn’t moved yet, beyond finding its way in the view of the window, but it was only midnight and every previous night would find the Santa outside his bedroom window. It was only a matter of time.

William wondered who had put the Santa back out in his view. He thought that it was his brother Gary’s doing, but there was no evidence that was the case. Every night, no matter where the blow mold Santa was placed, the blobby, sun-damaged plastic shell would creep its way to William’s window when he wasn’t looking. Every night.

He shuddered and shut his eyes, hoping to get to sleep. Perhaps he could sleep through the inevitably sinister events. Within minutes he drifted.

He woke up again at 2 AM. The clock ticked its continuous tock and William turned his bleary eyes to the window. Sure enough, between flurries of snow, a glimpse of the blow mold Santa could be seen, and the unmistakable, distorted face was turned toward the window, gazing inside.

William had enough of the plastic monster.

He threw on his boots and pulled his thick snow jacket over his pajamaed shoulders. He marched out to the mudroom and grabbed the flashlight from the cabinet under the window seat. He unlocked the door and stepped out into the cold, his flashlight darting wildly in the night. He strode to the Santa and found it had changed its position again, this time toward the front door, where he had come out. Enraged, William was determined to be rid of it entirely, even if that meant throwing away his dead Grandma’s favorite decoration.

He paused and stared at the Santa when he was about a yard away from it. Nothing about it seemed odd beyond the strange, distorted face. Stepping closer, though, that’s when William understood the expression; under the massive, ballooned jowls was a smile, and the heavy-lidded eyes were set to a scowl. The Santa, so inscrutable for days, was grinning wickedly.

William threw a punch at the fat, ugly face, eager to topple the mold. He was shocked to find that his blow didn’t land, instead, his hand was sucked up into the mouth of the plastic Santa, which had begun pulling him in, eagerly.

William screamed, but a gust of howling wind masked his cries. The neighborhood slept soundly.

The police had yet to find William. It had been three days. Any signs of where he went that night had been obscured by the fresh snow the night of and the day after. Beth had been crying since. To lose her mother was one thing, but for their youngest child to go missing was quite another. Bill Sr. had been advised by the police to stay at the house, in case his son came home. Against his impulse, Bill had done so, but this was the last day of that nonsense. He’d be out tomorrow, all day and night if he had to. He’d already taken a few walks in the neighborhood, keeping an eye out for his son. For now, he would spend his afternoon doing something productive. He was putting away decorations.

Bill Sr. approached the Santa blow mold. He never really understood why Margaret had kept the ugly thing around, but it was something that had belonged to her and Beth decided to keep it. He bent down to pick it up, but it was far heavier than he had expected. He stooped down, closer, bending at the knees. He wrapped his arms around it, lifting it with a sudden jerk. He nearly toppled over at the weight of it as the plastic beard rested against his face.

That’s when he smelled the faint scent of rot coming from the Santa Claus.

Related Topics:13 days of krampus christmas Original Creation

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David Davis

David Davis is a writer, cartoonist, and educator in Southern California with an M.A. in literature and writing studies.

1 Comment

Jennifer Weigel

December 18, 2020 at 7:14 pm

I used to have a penguin like this…

Reply

Original Creations

Beyond Burning Bushes, a Short Story by Jennifer Weigel

Published

6 days ago

October 6, 2024

Jennifer Weigel

The gorse bush seemed taken aback. It bristled and exclaimed, “A bush!”

“I am so very sorry, my Lord, I can explain,” the goblin cleric bowed in reverence, eyes glued to the ground. Everything about his body language was submissive and nervous.

“Of all the useless… How is it that I got reincarnated as a bush?!” The shrubbery prickled, growing more and more agitated. “I should have come back as a great King, or an Angel, or a Demon, or a dragon, or something even grander… Hell, I’d have settled for returning as the undead Lich King Tyrant Boss-Man you all came to know and love and revere. But no, that wasn’t in the dice. And now here I am, A Bush!” The spiky leaves trembled and rustled as they spoke, both emphasizing and decrying their verdant stature.

“Well, we were in a rush to revive you, after that run in with the goody-two-shoes 20^th level adventurers and the awkward retreat,” the goblin knelt before the bramble-vine. “All of our best clerics, necromancers, and acolytes were tapped for spells or had perished in the great battle. Those of us who got out of the caves were lucky to escape with our lives and make it to this little clearing on the mountainside. And we desperately needed your guidance. We still do…”

“That doesn’t explain why I’m a bush now,” the gorse stretched to its full height, about two-and-a-half feet of thorny rage. “And a Gorse Bush at that! Before too long I’ll have a stand of satyrs piping along with a centaur drum circle, all strumming up some fertility ritual at my feet… er, roots…”

“Well, I’m multi-disciplinary you know.” The goblin spell-caster muttered and meekly shifted to his other foot, bracing for the inevitable, “Sometimes I get the cleric and druid magics confused a little.”

“Confused a little?” the bush growled, “Confused A Little?!” The bush’s rage turned to magic as it burst into flames. “I’m A BUSH!!! That’s not just some modest little cleric-druid spell translation issue!”

The goblin shrunk from the blaze, “But my Lord, you are a mighty bush. The greatest bush, really terrific… The gorsiest, bushiest bush in all of shrub-dom… Other bushes? Losers! We all agree, your Lordship.” The trembling goblin horde in the scrubland shadows at the edge of the small clearing nodded emphatically in response, fearing their bushy leader’s wrath. And rightfully so…

A tongue of flame erupted like a lightning bolt from the gorse and zapped the goblin cleric-druid where he stood, leaving nothing but a smattering of ashes drifting towards the ground. The flame erupted through the goblin horde in a huge explosion that engulfed everything in its wake, leaving a circle of scorched earth covered in a fine layer of sooty ash, smelling a bit like cordite.

The bush sighed and took note of its surroundings, sulking. It waited for some would-be adventurer to wander up the mountainside to find it there, where they could revel in its awkward awesomeness. Seasons came and went, and time seemed to stand still for nigh eternity as the gorse bush seethed beneath its crown of thorny brambles. Perhaps it should have convinced the goblin cleric to transplant it to a more trafficked location first.

Photograph from within Patrick Dougherty sculpture; base for Into the Faewild bush bewilderment digital artwork by Jennifer Weigel

If you enjoyed that bit of snarky fantasy, check out Ppppffffttt my previous Poised Potion Poison Potential story.

Portrait of myself with dark makeup and crow skull headdress, backlit by the sun.

And feel free to check out more of Jennifer Weigel’s work here on Haunted MTL or on her writing, fine art, and conceptual projects websites.

Original Series

Finger Spiders Keep Trying!

Published

2 weeks ago

September 29, 2024

Jennifer Weigel

You’ve almost made it to the end of the finger spiders here at Haunted MTL! Because I made A LOT of unfulfilled requests for a spider out of fingers, I will continue this snarky little AI art series with NightCafe and Canva through the month of September… In case you missed out, here are the other parts of this series:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: hand that is a spider; spider legs as fingers; fingers becoming spider; spider all fingers.

Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders Keep Trying! Yeah, I’m sure you don’t remember being bitten. Because of the ways they warp time and space, and the natural chemical reactions involved, the AI art generated finger spiders’ bite isn’t typically felt. They are still attached to you, feeding… You have to get them off… Keep trying!

Images: Overall design aesthetic of fashion / design advertising spread in muted tones with four AI art rendered images of spiders, built spiders, and spiders on hands, with any given number of legs on spiders and fingers on hands as you’d expect from AI interfacing at this time. Prompts used from top left to lower right include: spider leg fingers; spider made out of hand fingers; hand spider picking banjo; fingers as spider playing banjo.

Text reads: Creepy Crawlies Finger Spiders That’s All Folks! Well, I guess that’s that then. It’s been nice knowing you. Enjoy your new form. Nothing left for it but to play the banjo…

All of the AI art images used in this series were generated on Thursday, June 13, 2024. If you want to see more freaky spiderness in art here on Haunted MTL, check out Bitten and Soul Catcher. More AI art graphic narratives from Jennifer Weigel have explored Little Red Riding Hood and Into the Deep Woods. Oh, and the Tiny Brain Computers exploration. To see more such devolutions into AI generated art, check out the Will the Real Jennifer Weigel Please Stand Up? blog.

Original Series

Nightmarish Nature: Creepy Spider Facts

Published

3 weeks ago

September 22, 2024

Jennifer Weigel

We just can’t get enough of spiders here on Nightmarish Nature… so here are some more creepy spider facts for you to consider, outside of the giants, eating and mating habits, and wasp predation as previously mentioned in this series. Plus the finger spiders have taken over the whole of the month of September, so strap in because they’re here too – no goofy drawings this month just more terror unleashed in the form of AI art, courtesy of NightCafe.

AI art prompt: finger skin over legs of spider body

Spiders Are Baby Mama Machines!

Spiders can lay hundreds and thousands of eggs in their egg sacs at a time. And when they hatch, all those tiny baby spiders can balloon, flying to new homes on airborne strands of silk as if raining from the sky… So if you suffer from trypophobia and are weirded out by large quantities of clustered small and tiny objects (especially when they are alive and moving) you may want to steer clear of these little bug bombs.

Spiders Are Athletic Archdukes!

Jumping spiders can leap as far as 40 times their body length. And wolf spiders can run up to 2 feet per second. In movement, spiders have four feet on the ground and four in the air at all times. And they have six knees on each leg for a total of 48 knees – that’s a lot of potential kneecapping, I’d try to take them down a different way if I were you…

Other Interesting Factoids

Spiders are on every continent except Antarctica and there are over 40,000 identified species of them. All spiders produce silk for all that they don’t all make webs, since some prefer to live on the move or ambush from hidey holes. There is a known species of herbivorous spider, the Bagheera Kiplingi, but most are carnivorous or omnivorous. And the longest lived spiders can survive for 40+ years.