Christmas is Cancelled.
I always viewed the character of Santa as being highly questionable.
For my short story “Christmas is Cancelled”, I imagined him as this solitary, archaic figure who just does what he is always required come Christmas season. As he takes off in his sleigh, a brush with what might be a UFO panics the reindeer, and the sleigh crashes in the wilderness. Santa purposefully leaves hungry, so he can consume all the milk and cookies left for him, and struggling in the snowy wilds for hours, he becomes starving. So famished in fact, he ends up noshing on the remains of a reindeer that died in the crash.
These are not normal reindeer; they can fly and are almost immortal. The flesh erodes his faculties and turns him into a ravenous monster.
The illustration is for my tale of the same name and is in my collected work of short stories, Down Highways in the Dark…by Demons Driven.

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The illustration is for a tale of the same name and is in my collected work of short stories, Down Highways in the Dark…by Demons Driven.