‘I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus’ by Chad Collins [Tales

Carter’s Christmas turns deadly when he sneaks out of bed to catch a glimpse of Santa Clause.

Tales of Dread is an ongoing series dedicated to showcasing the best works of terrifying short fiction from underrepresented and emerging voices within the horror community.

‘I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Clause’ By Chad Collins

Carter’s Christmas turns deadly when he sneaks out of bed to catch a glimpse of Santa Clause.

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Carter had seen him three times before. The man crouched in the shadows behind the tree, just five feet from the fireplace. The chimney was sealed– that caught on like an infection after Mr. Turner down the block did it to his. But with a little dash of Christmas magic, all things were possible. That’s what the books and jingles said, anyway. The nebulous shape of a person, visible through gaps in polyvinyl chloride, was him. It had to be Santa Claus. 

His father told him not to look, told him to stay in bed lest he ruin the surprise. “It might be Santa,” he said, “but he doesn’t want you to look. He’ll think you’re a very bad boy if you look.” Carter wanted to be bad, though. He wanted to be cool, just like the kids at school who stole the teacher’s mug and slathered paste on Rachel Cooksem’s hair. 

Christmas Eve. That was it. The liminal night between the abstract holidays and Christmas day itself. Carter was going to look one more time. He was going to do the impossible, what kids for generations had strenuously tried to accomplish but never could. He was going to see Santa Claus. 

It was half past three when Carter worked up the nerve to slip out from under his covers and slide his feet into the patchwork slippers his grandmother had gifted him the year before. They muffled his footsteps on the floorboards, especially the third step leading downstairs. They were nasty little buggers that sought to rat him out. “He’s here,” their creaks and moans said. “He’s here and he’s going downstairs.” 

The dense canopy from the trees out back were angled perfectly to block most of the moonlight from breaching the windows. A sliver here and there, but never anything more. Just like the man downstairs, Carter could stick to the shadows. Sneaking from his bedroom down the hallway was the easiest part. He’d done so every night after a midnight Capri-Sun had him needing to desperately pee when the house was at its most silent.  

The stairs were trickier. Carter took them one at a time, especially mindful of that dastardly third step. He had half a mind to steal his dad’s hammer and gut the bastard until nothing remained. Not tonight, though. He catalogued that for next week. 

Carter was triumphant. His gangly little legs managed to reach from step four to step two without tripping or slipping and shattering his skull on the landing. He was downstairs. It was difficult to orient himself, but with a little time– twenty seconds of closing his eyes– he would adjust. And he did. The house still looked less like his home and more like a silhouette of what it should be; rough sketches and blueprints, fuzzy lines delineating doors and paintings, but it was enough for him to make his way through. His back against the wall, he shimmied his way into his dad’s office and through the kitchen, until he was right outside the living room.  

There was the man, Santa, just as he’d been every night before. His dad was there, too. But his hands were around Santa’s waist and their tongues were in each other’s mouths, rising and falling as the waves ebb in the sea. Carter had seen his dad do that with a few women, mostly bobs and botched dyes with long legs that left furiously right before it was time for school, but never with a man. Never with someone like Santa. 

As Carter’s eyes continued to adjust, he made out more of Santa. He had the appearance of what Santa Claus should look like, but just as the house felt altogether different late in the night, this Santa, this man, looked almost but not quite. His skin was dewy, little beads of sweat on both cheeks, his face like the skin of a fruit. Easily peelable to reveal layer after layer like a cake. The dermis with scraggly, infected hair follicles and porous, gooey sebaceous glands. Vessels and tissue, gruesome in an anatomical sense. A waferboard face.   

There was a plop. The skin did peel. On the nesting table by the tree, the smallest of three in different sizes, a flap of skin, flayed by his dad’s right hand as it brushed his cheek, fell right off into the glass of milk left out for him. The dozen cookies on a ceramic plate remained untouched. 

His dad’s hand moved down Santa’s face and toward his chest. It sounded like removing wet swim trunks in the summer. Squishy and squelchy. Little crimson trails pooled around Santa’s boots, and as they did, Carter caught the briefest glimpses of fleshy flakes floating down alongside them, puzzle pieces of the body removed too soon. His dad’s hand then moved to Santa’s crotch, and the plop that followed was enough to make Carter yelp. 

Both his dad and Santa turned to look at him. Even Santa looked at Carter with a sense of recognition he’d only seen from family and teachers at school. Santa grabbed the glass of milk, streaks of red swirling within, and drank it down in one single sip.

He placed it back down and walked forward, his steps little quakes. Carter had to grip the wall to stay upright. One step at a time. Closer and closer. Carter wanted to move, but he couldn’t. He moved his gaze between Santa and his dad. His dad never broke his line of sight. He looked at Carter the entire time. 

Santa was right in front of him now. He opened his mouth with a hiss like gasses escaping a mine. He spoke with a bellowing voice, distorted yet masculine. “Milk,” Santa said while gripping Carter’s shoulders strongly enough to hold him in place while he squirmed and writhed his body, trying to break free. “Milk… and cookies.”

Chad Collins is a staff writer for Dread Central. You can find him on Twitter via @ChadisCollins

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