VISUAL PROMPT
Art by Sans @ deviantart.com/Sanskarans

Title your story, poem, or scene 'Bad Santa'.
Bad Santa
**A Horror Story**
Snow fell like ash outside the cracked windows of the North Pole workshop. The elves hadnāt sung in years. The sleigh rusted in its stall. And deep beneath the workshop, in the frozen cellar, **Nicholas**āor what was left of himāsat staring into the candle's flicker.
They used to call him Santa Claus. Now they whispered other names.
"Papa?" The voice came from behind the door. Thin. Fearful. Female.
He turned slowly. His beard, once pure white, was matted with bile and sleet. Red-veined eyes bulged beneath a furrowed brow. The scent of pipe smoke and old whiskey poisoned the air.
āEve,ā he growled, voice like gravel. āLate again. Naughty girl.ā
The door creaked open, and **Eve Claus**, maybe seventeen, maybe olderāit was hard to tell under the grimeāstepped in. Her hands were bandaged. Her arms bore the ink-scars of old punishments: tally marks carved with sleigh-bells, crude reindeer silhouettes burned into skin.
āI fed the reindeer,ā she whispered.
āThey're dead,ā he snapped. āAnd so is Christmas.ā
She flinched.
He staggered toward her, boots thudding like a death march. Every December, it got worse. Ever since **Mother** had hanged herself from the sleigh harness, and the elves... vanished. Some say he fed them to the snow wolves. Others say they fled screaming into the blizzard.
Eve knew the truth. **He made them ornaments.** Glass-blown heads hung from a tree of bone in the basement. Their teeth sparkled like icicles in the candlelight.
āYou think Iām a monster, donāt you?ā he snarled.
She didnāt answer. She couldn't.
He reached into his coat. Pulled out a lump of black coal. Still warm. It hissed in his gloved hand.
āYou know what naughty children get?ā
She didn't wait to find out.
That night, Eve ran. Into the snow. Into the cold.
She stumbled through drifts until she found the sleigh ā skeletal, warped. Bloodstains lined the runners. She climbed in anyway, whispering names into the wind.
āDasher. Dancer. Prancerā¦ā
Nothing came. Nothing answered.
Except **him**.
The workshop door slammed open. A storm of red and white.
āYOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE BITCH,ā Santa screamed, a rusted candy cane shiv in one hand, the other dragging a sack that squirmed ā not with presents, but with **childrenās hands**. Severed. Twitching.
She screamed.
He laughed. "I give the world joy, and my own daughter dares run?"
She reached under the sleighās seat, hand finding the gift sheād hidden all year.
**A red-nosed revolver.**
Engraved on the barrel: _For the Father You Never Were._
One shot. Right between the eyes.
Santa fell, the candle of life blown out in a gust of justice.
Now Eve lives in the workshop. Alone. Tending to the tree of bones. Feeding reindeer carved from ice and screams.
Every Christmas, she delivers something to bad fathers.
**A bullet. Wrapped in cheer.**
And she always signs the tag:
_"From: Father Christmas's Daughter.āØTo: One More Like Him."_ š