Hugh J. O'Donnell

“Who’s next on the list?” He ask his assistant. They told him.
“Really?” He asked. “She’s been good all year?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, let’s get to it then.” Santa wheeled his sleigh around and headed for the Antarctic lair of the ancient dragon Meagestrix the Inferno.
Santa slid quickly and quietly down a crack in the mountain, carrying a wrapped parcel on his back. He shot back up a moment later, running for the sleigh as fast as he could. The dragon was right behind him, belching smoke and flames, but her new set of humane adventurer traps was delivered.

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The old man sits at his workbench, painting a wooden soldier. It is fine work, flawlessly carved, like the legions before it. Just like the one he will make next. He enjoyes his work. It’s more of a retirement, honestly. But he still remembers the old days.
He remembers thrones, and drinking halls, and hide boots crunching on snow. He remembers the smell of fear and the taste of hot blood.
He paints a bright red smile on the soldier’s face and set it aside to dry. Santa is happy in his new role, but still, you’d better watch out…

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Every year at Christmas, she received a card with no signature and no return address. She would briefly puzzle over the card and wonder who it was from before being distracted again by the holiday rush.
Until one year the cards stopped coming.
She spent all winter trying to figure out where the cards came from, and why they had stopped. None of her friends or relations knew anything about it, and as the next holiday season approached, she had no answer.
But that year, she picked a random address out of the phone book and sent them a card.

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They returned to The Old House every Yule. It was the one stipulation in their mother’s will, and while nobody wanted to actually live in the old pile, they still relied on the inheritance.
So every year they trekked out to pile and greeted the caretaker and their mother’s lawyers and get locked in together for the next day.
Every year it was the same. They would eat a silent supper then retire to their rooms. Their mother could force them together, but not fix years of bad blood.
But they were still haunted by her ghost of Christmas presence.

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We were watching the Ball Drop in Times Square when it happened. As the countdown reached zero, the image started to get fuzzy and blocky.
“I think there’s something wrong with the cable, love.” I looked up at my husband, and to my horror, I realized, that it wasn’t the TV. The room seemed less sharp, and flatter somehow. “Or maybe I need to see the optometrist.”
“It’s not just you,” he said. Onscreen, the cheers were giving way to panic. The hosts were blinking furiously and rubbing their eyes. “I think everyone getting used to the New Year’s resolution.”

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The snow came early and thick that year. The almanac had promised a mild season, but the weather was particularly harsh, almost in defiance of prediction.
When the storm broke, he went out hunting with the dogs. They would need extra supplies and get them through what promised to be a long and bitter winter.
He wondered at the strangeness of the weather as he climbed the ridge and saw the Frost Giants. They were gathered in the clearing, working a ritual beyond his ken. He supposed some things had a rational explanation after all as he leveled his rifle.

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He heard the rumbling thunder of the giant machine’s footsteps in the snow long before he saw the Walker coming up the hill behind him. He kept a firm grip on his reindeer’s lead as the iron behemoth passed by.
It was a transport model, practically a boat crawling along on four titanic metal legs. A single scout stood on deck, but there were more soldiers inside. They’d occupied the region for years, from their hidden base in the mountains.
But if he could get this reindeer home, and decode the message it carried, that could all change by spring.

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