Santa Claws

Winters on the Taimyr Peninsula are cold, at least for you and me. I live in California, so if God picked me up and sat me down where Kristofer Kringle sat, I’d shiver for a while, try to warm my hands, fail, and die within a couple of hours or so. I doubt you’d survive for that long either. Kristofer Kringle, or Santa Claus as he would later go by, was not like you or me, though, for he was born in this frigid cold on December 25, 1953. Left in the liquor cabinet of a local bar, he was found the next morning by a hunter who was too prone to morning drinking for his own health. But that isn’t the story for today.

This story starts with a hunt. 

The rocks and twigs that would have pierced the bottoms of an ordinary boy’s feet felt familiar to Kristofer’s soles. Of course, the pack would have food even if he failed, but he wanted to make Trivor proud. Trivor loved him like a son—there was no doubt about that—but Kristofer wasn’t blind to the way the others stared at him. Even now, crouched down, hiding behind massive fir trees that gouged themselves into the sky, Kristofer could feel the weight of all the gazes trained on him. 

In all fairness, Kristofer was different. He was a fourteen-year-old boy, just shy of 6 feet tall, with hazel eyes the same shade as the bark around him and fluffy brown hair that sat like a tumbleweed on his head. He wasn’t as scrawny as he looked, but he was still pretty scrawny.

The others were wolves, gray wolves with piercing green eyes and dark teal streaks of fur through their coats, the reason for which is also a story for another time.

Kristofer was not a wolf, and they made sure he knew it. Even now, on his own hunt, the austerity of their gazes bore into him more than the rocks beneath his feet did. 

He shook it from his mind; they would not ruin his first hunt. 

Now, physiologically, wolves are different from humans in a number of senses, many of them obvious, others not so much. Wolves possess a much more elaborate and sensitive Uncanny Valley. This helps them tell the difference between true prey and traps. Of course, humans like Kristofer had no biological reason to evolve this enhanced sense. This normally would not have been relevant, but it was for this particular hunt. You see, while Kristofer jumped with his makeshift spear as soon as he saw the deer emerge from the shrubbery, the other wolves stayed back, compelled to trepidation by their Uncanny Valley instinct. 

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Winters on the Taimyr Peninsula are cold, especially for someone who’d only moved there seven months and seven days ago for his job. Only a month or two, Colonel Alexei Tatchlovski, Major Dmitri Kaztchalov’s superior, had said. Only a month or two and you’ll be back home before your kids go back to school anyway, and you’ll be going back with a raise, too.

Acceding to this proposition had landed our deuteragonist in a not-so-charming cottage held together by twigs and twine, sitting on blindingly reflective white snow. Dmitri peered out the porthole-esque window he had fashioned two months ago, slurping loudly from the familiar coffee that sat in his mug, at ancient fir trees that stretched into the sky like Svyatogor, the giant warrior in children’s stories, wavering back and forth ever so slightly as the daggers of wind whipped at them mercilessly. The house shuddered, shivered, in a manner that a Californian like me would have to call “earthquake-like.” Oddly, there didn’t seem to be any clouds today, and the sun shone down even more on the snow, a phenomenon that a Californian would be childishly ecstatic to witness. Anastaysia Kaztchalov walked tenderly behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“Want me to take them today?” 

Her voice interrupted his train of thought of nothing in particular. “Take whom?”

“Take Vladmir and Eva? Our kids, genius,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “You know, to school? The place where they learn things?”

“Oh yes, right, of course,” Dmitri shook his head rapidly, attempting to aid the coffee in waking him up. “I would appreciate that, yes. My brigade and I are needed early in the morning today. It appears the escaped subjects may have been found.”

“Ooohh, well don’t get too dangerous out there, sweetheart.”

“Thank you, Anastaysia, I appreciate that.”

She nodded. “What time’ve you got to leave?”

Dmitrit glanced down at his watch. “Right now, in fact. I shall see you at dinner today.”

“Yes, you shall,” Anastaysia mocked playfully.

Dmitri chuckled slightly at this and kissed his wife on the forehead before whipping his coat around his shoulders. 

Entering the barracks of the garrison for The Workbench, a secret Russian laboratory which stood out in the forest pretty conspicuously for a “secret” Russian laboratory, one wouldn’t automatically suspect it to be a barrack. Boots and magazines, both of ammunition and of sports cars, were scattered all over the floor, while someone’s torn tank top hung from the ceiling fan as it slowly rotated like a hesitant dandelion seed. As to why there was a ceiling fan in the barracks of a military laboratory built in one of the coldest parts of Russia, I do not know, but there it was, the tank top, slowly spinning. Dmitri was always a serious man, but even he’d given up on instilling any sense of discipline into this particular brigade. As he gingerly stepped over a dead rodent of some sort, maybe a possum, its carcass roasting in the direct sunlight from the open window, he scrunched his nose in disgust and cleared his throat loudly. This seemed to wake the soldiers up as they scrambled to their feet. Many curses swept Dmitri’s eardrums, but he’d let it slide for today; he didn’t particularly want to be here either.

“Have yourselves dressed, then proceed to the armory,” he ordered before heading for it himself.

He heard many groans and a couple of more curses, which he would usually discipline them for, but instead he sighed. Yes, me as well. 

Dmitri pulled his Makarov pistol out from his holster and loaded it with his magazine before grabbing more from the bin. He strapped three grenades to his belt and also took with him a customizable holotrap. 

Dmitri squatted behind one of the Svyatogor trees and set his holotrap up. A deer was projected from it and it ran around in circles for a bit before jumping through the bushes. Dmitri placed the web between his thumb and index fingers on the handle of the gun, wrapping his other fingers around the cold, textured metal. The tip of his index finger lodged itself around the trigger and his thumb found the hammer. He cocked his gun and waited patiently for something to happen. 

The rustling brought them all to attention. Dmitri instinctively brought his gun up to eye level and aimed, his eyes darting from tree to bush to tree, scanning for the source of the noise. One of his soldiers, Private Yazlkovi, saw it first. A boy, not even the age of Vladmir, leapt through the hologram, a sharpened stick in his hand. 

“He’s just a boy!” Dmitri bellowed, but it was too late.

The bullet had already moved into the chamber, the back had been hit by the hammer, and the mini-explosion of gunpowder had sent the tip of the bullet spiraling out from the barrel. It sliced through the cold wind, whistling as if it was some cruel fiddler of death.

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The bullet ripped through Kristofer’s torso, just under his right lung. It burnt through the skin of his body and traveled through meat of his body, crashing through countless veins and arteries before bursting out through his back. 

Kristofer felt the moisture from his eyes evaporate and a strange hot panic took over his body. His diaphragm began contracting and expanding at random intervals, frantically trying to bring order back to his body, while his pores poured out puddles of sweat that fell off his skin and melted into the snow. 

The effect of scarlet on white is displayed quite well in Scarlet Picnic Dream Tree by Ashvin Harrison, a painting in which a large scarlet tree sits in the middle of a white background that stretches across the entire canvas. Kristofer’s blood splattered like the leaves of the dream tree, the blood forming branches in the once-flawless snow. 

The last image that Kristofer’s eyes were able to transfer to his brain before it lost consciousness was the image of Trivor leaping from the shrubbery and sinking his teeth into the neck of the man, the soldier, who held the gun with the smoking barrel in his outstretched hand. His neck, too, produced its own dream tree as his body sank to the ground. 

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Dmitri wasted not a second, raising the barrel of his gun to meet the wolf that had tackled Yazlkovi and letting one of the bullets in his magazine release. The bullet hit its mark and the wolf was thrown back, but not before the wolf had reduced the young private’s throat to drenched ribbons. 

Chaos ensued. The wolves materialized everywhere, dropping from trees and pouncing from bushes. Many of the soldiers of the 7th squadron of the Special Missions Brigade had never seen real battle before, only ever skirmishes with domestic rebel groups. Many had never seen a man die before their eyes. Today, they would see their brothers in arms fall.

The wolf got up, crimson leaking from his side, the same shade of the crimson that dripped from his fangs, and pounced on the communications specialist, Aleksandr Raveltoz, plunging his claws deep into his eyes, before swirling his paw around, swirling his face into a fountain of more crimson. 

The other wolves also followed in their leader's assault, tearing into calves, forearms, faces, and anything else their claws and fangs could find. However, as the element of surprise that had aided the wolves in their ambush subsided, the superior firepower of the soldiers began to turn the tides of the battle. Every second, there were tens of bullets being fired from the barrels of their guns, most of which were hitting their targets.

The blanket of white snow was now tainted by the dark puddles of both soldiers and wolves alike that had seeped through. One by one, the wolves fell, the bullets piercing through their skin. The soldiers shot at first out of fear, but not anymore. Now it was out of pure malice. They tore through the wolves like a warm knife through butter, or more accurately, a red-hot axe. 

The axe, however, was hungry for more. The axe searched the area until it found the tracks of the wolves and traced them back to where the pack lived. The axe used every weapon in its arsenal. The axe saw no difference in its victims. 

What happened in the forest was a battle. What happened at the pack was an execution. Teens and cubs stood no chance for the barrage of bullets and grenades that hailed down upon them. They were not simply killed, they were mowed down. 

In Dmitri’s mind, with every bullet that he fired, he recited the name of a fallen comrade. In his mind, he replayed a memory that he’d had with that comrade. Private Yazlkovi. I assisted in the planning of your proposal to your fiancee. Specialist Aleksandr Raveltoz. You had me drive your kids to school once as a favor when you were still in bed from a hangover. Staff Sergeant Igor Ivanov. Anastaysia and I allowed you to live in our house for the weeks following your divorce. 

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The stinging cold of the snow was the first thing that Kristofer’s brain registered when he woke up. His eyes adjusted to the dark quickly and he realized what was around him. There were scarlet dream trees everywhere. Murals of magenta vandalized the walls of the pack’s cavern. 

Then he saw them. As his eyes focused more, the gray spots in his vision solidified into bodies. The bodies of wolves lined the ground. Kristofer suddenly realized the smaller gray spots were cubs. Kristofer would later learn the word for what happened here, what happens all too often when one’s mercilessness overcomes one and unleashes horrors one would never even think of normally: a massacre. 

The distinct rust-like smell tainted the insides of Kristofer’s nostrils. Kristofer did not even realize he was crying until the first salty drop hit the corner of his mouth with a tang. He wished he could be as numb to all this as his face was from the sharp cold of the snow. 

We’ve all had our own “what have I done” moments in life. The amalgam of shock at what we’ve done, longing to take it back, shame for our shortsightedness, and the looming fear of the possible consequences. Your narrator, for example, has horrible decision-making skills and therefore has these “what have I done” moments at least seven times an hour. However, even your incredibly mistake-prone narrator has never had a “what have I done” moment like Kristofer was currently experiencing. His family lay around him, dead. The cave walls that served as his home for so long were violated with the blood of his brothers and sisters. The air that he had breathed for so long was stained by the sharp stench of blood. The snow beneath his feet in which he’d played with the cubs in, served as a burial ground for them. 

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Canis Aurora, a new species created from the experiments regarding radiation around Aurora Borealis, resemble large gray wolves with green streaks of aurorium through their coats. Their large fangs serve as both hunting tools and methods of communication as the properties of aurorium allow for what is theorized to be telepathic communication…

Dmitri Kaztchalov stood in the middle of a massacre. The shiny lines of teal aurorium that ran through the fur of Canis Aurora stood out from the backdrop of crunchy snow and crimson blood. Dmitri’s fingers explored his pocket until they came across his lighter and pack. His fingers, which were still novel to the climate, had to be warmed up by his breath before they were able to successfully light a cigarette. In one hand was his gun and in the other was his cigarette, both smoking for different reasons.

“Clean this all up and we shall write our reports once we return to base.”

Grumbles and groans regarding the reports filled the quiet air. Still, this did not distract Kaztchalov from his thoughts. Who was he? The boy, the one with the unkept hair, who had been shot. He would have to recount it all, including the strange boy, in his report. Hopefully, the unfortunate shooting of a young boy would be enough reason for the superiors to redeploy him back in Uglich. Oh, how he missed the feel of the river water maneuvering its way through his toes. And perhaps it was his reminiscing of the past that almost distracted him from Kristofer Kringle sneaking away from the scene as fast as he could through the shrubbery. Their eyes met for a moment and the boy froze. Dmitri knew the look in his eyes. It was the same one that he saw in the eyes of his comrades earlier that day as they were ambushed. Fear. And for the first time in his 25-year-long military service, Dmitri Kaztchalov disobeyed orders. He jerked his head to the right, indicating to Kristofer that he saw nothing.

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Every fourteen-year-old boy will tell you that in Kristofer’s scenario, they would have, without skipping a beat, exacted their revenge on all of the other soldiers on the spot. As a fourteen-year-old boy, I can assure you, that would be a lie. In reality, we would have the same reaction as Kristofer had: scared out of our minds. 

Kristofer knew these woods like home, but that didn’t help; a concoction of adrenaline and cortisol was flooding every reasonable thought from his mind. All he knew was to run. The wintery air stabbed at the insides of his throat whenever he took in large gulps of air. As the cold harsh winds hit his eyes and the reality of what just happened hit him, the tears in his eyes fell onto his face, forming a stream, then a river, then a waterfall. 

How Kristofer Kringle came to be Santa Claus is nothing short of a Christmas miracle and a half. However, one can only imagine what pain and suffering he holds underneath his jolly ho ho ho.