This story originally appeared in a zine given to backers of Malarkey’s 2025 Book Club fundraiser. Malarkey does wonderful work and deserves continued support. If you enjoy this story, please consider donating to Malarkey’s tip jar or purchasing one of their fantastic books (of which Boxcutters is one of many fine options.)
Hillwood’s Christmas parade passed by earlier than ever that year, on the first frigid Sunday morning of December as per tradition. It also came in at fifteen over the speed limit, Santa strapped to a half-painted wooden sleigh pulled by a rapidly accelerating white pickup truck with beet red sirens blaring on either side.
“Mom,” said Patty Hearst, age eight, shifting on her feet at the end of the driveway, “why’d they go so fast? They didn’t even throw us any candy.”
“Well, honey,” offered a similarly concerned Mrs. Hearst, “Santa’s just got a lot of places to be this year. There’s more and more kids out there each year.”
Mrs. Hearst and her husband thought about whether to let the police know, but Mr. Hearst said it was better to not exacerbate any more issues between Hillwood’s police and fire departments, and so they all went inside to have some hot chocolate.
Later, Patty asked the computer how many people there were in the world. It said seven billion. She’d never really thought about billions before. It just seemed like too big of a number to even count. She struggled to get past two hundred, even if she wrote all the numbers down on notebook paper.
The next weekend, Mrs. Hearst took Patty to the shopping mall to pick up some new winter boots. Outside the department store there was a meet and greet with Santa with a queue line that zigzagged over a big sun-faded carpet. A dozen families waited in line to get their picture taken with him and to share exactly what they’d like for Christmas that year. To orchestrate the affair, there was one younger person with dyed blonde hair dressed in elf attire telling people where to stand and when to smile.
“Do you want to go say hi to Santa?” Mrs. Hearst asked.
Patty remembered Santa’s bulging eyes and reddened cheeks as his sleigh hit the speed bump driving past their house and shook her head no. They decided instead to go get soft pretzels.
“Does Santa do this at every mall?” Patty asked, looking back at Santa, wearing a stranger’s sad and distant face on his ornate plastic golden throne.
Mrs. Hearst looked at her daughter with some curiosity, as if she was noticing something happening in her daughter she had been expecting for a long time. “Well, he certainly tries to, sweetie.”
That night, Patty asked the computer how many malls there were in America. It said there were one thousand and fifty six active malls, but that most of them were going to close in the next few years. Patty thought long and hard about that. That meant Santa would have to try and meet more and more children at each remaining mall. The lines would get even longer as more families traveled to see Santa before it was too late.
For Christmas that year, Patty decided she didn’t want any presents at all. She was just glad to be off from school and able to get a bit of time in drawing animals on the computer. She already had enough toys, clothes and books. It just felt like too much.
“Santa’s going to bring you something,” Mr. Hearst told her, ruffling her hair. “All the good kids get presents.”
That night, Patty looked up how many children there were. There were two billion children. Santa had to bring presents to all of them. It had begun to make her feel a little sick, this whole thing. She looked at the clock hanging in the den, just above the fireplace. Santa had about eight hours to deliver presents to two billion children.
She opened a calculator. Two billion divided by eight. Two hundred fifty million children an hour. She remembered that there were sixty minutes in an hour. She divided it.
4166666.66667 children a minute, every minute.
How? She lay awake in bed that night in her froggy pajamas trying to keep the bile down.
Everyone at school that week was excited for Christmas. They talked about video games and vacations and other things that Patty couldn’t care too much about. She spent most of her day staring intently at the classroom clock, watching the minute hand chug, feeling each little tick bouncing in her head.
That night, after a series of frantic searches, she first learned of quantum physics.
Her parents were beginning to worry. Patty was now fully avoiding going outside, as well as sitting anywhere near the fireplace or the decorated tree. They’d gone to a local farm this year and cut down a nice little pine together, four and a half feet tall and squatly needled around the base all to try and make it feel a little more cozy and special but it only seemed to alienate her further.
Christmas Eve came quickly that year. Mrs. Hearst tucked her daughter into bed around nine, not long after dinner, a light snow drifting down outside the bedroom window. Under the sheets, Patty was sweating and pale, squirming uneasily when her mother touched her cheek with her iron-deficient fingers. The Hearsts had tested their daughter for COVID and the flu, trying to pin down the source of her malaise, but the tests had all come back negative.
“We love you, honey. The only thing that matters is that we have a nice Christmas together. You sure you don’t want to bake cookies tonight to leave out for Santa?”
Patty nodded. “I’m good.”
“Okay. Well, get some sleep. When you wake up tomorrow, we can open some presents together and go visit your grandparents. I hear they’re really looking forward to seeing you this year.”
Mrs. Hearst gave her a kiss and left, turning off the overhead light. The air was cool and quiet, the snow eating the normal sounds of evening traffic passing down their road. Patty thought about the songs they played on the radio and in the old time movies about hearing footsteps on the roof at night.
She wondered, if Santa was visiting so many children, how could he even make time to sneak across rooftops? There wasn’t enough time for that. And what if he slipped and fell? He’d be so far behind his schedule he’d never catch up.
And what if he didn’t even need to sneak around? If he could be everywhere at once, why bother?
Minutes became hours, and a weary Patty drifted into an uneasy sleep. As she floated in and out of unconsciousness, a figure appeared before her like an absence of light and a candle all the same. Dream-heavy, she wondered what exactly it might be, reaching out to it. In response, it seemed to grow fuller, like a kind of deepening gravity.
Patty woke suddenly to the sound of distant screaming. There, in the corner of her room, was the dream figure made manifest. It looked like Santa, dressed like Santa, but something was wrong with it. It was inhuman. A net of matter. A stain. He was stuck in the wall, cleanly half of him in view, flickering like a television screen with the fast forward stuck on. He was trapped. Terrified. She could even feel his pain. It felt like something burning on her skin.
Presents materialized all over the room, some opened, others wrapped up tightly in a bow. Santa’s scream oscillated in volume and tenor as he bounced around the surface area of Patty’s bedroom furniture, his limbs changing places with each other all about his writhing torso. One of his black booted legs came jutting out of the wall behind Patty, kicking her in the back of the head. Gloved fingers sprouted like spider legs from her overhead lamp, sprinkling a heavy rain of cookie dust that rapidly collected in the room, becoming the sand in a giant hourglass.
From the central apparition of Santa, now hanging upside down from one leg in the upper right corner of the room, a heavy wind began to blow. The windows and doors flew open, his scream rippling through every nook and cranny. Everything became something else and nothing at all. The room was glowing, flickering. Closing in on itself. Patty could not hear herself scream but she could feel it, coming from the bottom of her lungs, but then it felt like she had forgotten what sound was. Everything felt incidental. Even herself. She blinked, and suddenly she was somewhere very dark and cold, with only a silver moon above her left half-open.
Mr. Hearst walked into the second bedroom, noticing the window was open. He shut it, looking out at the long country road accumulating with snow, and dreamed of a different life, one a little less lonely on holidays.
John Chrostek 