Page 3 of Don't Shoot Me Santa

Crouching with a quiet groan, as any good Santa might, comes the next line, worn in tone, casual in cadence, “Long shift for both of us, eh?”

The boy narrows his eyes. Not amused. Not charmed. But not retreating either.

So out comes the peppermint swirl, held between two gloved fingers. “For the good ones,” Santa says. “Even if the world doesn’t notice.”

A flicker in his expression. Not quite belief. But the hunger behind his wariness isn’t for food.

“Go on. Take it. You’ve earned something sweet.”

The boy accepts it. Which isn’t his first bad choice.

Only the most recent.

“You been good this year?”

He snorts, unwraps the sweet and pops it into his mouth.Good boy.“Depends who you ask.”

God, Santa adores them when they’re self-aware.

A quiet study follows. Not for beauty. Though the boy hasthat, in a wild, wrong-side-of-the-system sort of way. But forposture. Defiance. Chin tilted upward, shoulders drawn tight with a pride hunger hasn’t burned out of him yet.

What would the psychologists say? The ones who dissect posture in quiet rooms. Power displacement. Autonomy in trauma. Childhood origin theory. A dozen terms to explain why boys like this shine brightest before they’re extinguished.

Someone will notice the pattern, eventually.

They’ll line up the victims and search for similarities. The quiet boys who snapped in silence. The loud girls who refused to be small. The smart ones who masked it too well. Kids who didn’t ask for help because they knew it wouldn’t come. The ones who kept surviving, even when the world gave them every reason not to.

That’s the rule.

Santa doesn’t take the desperate.

No—he chooses the defiant.

The ones who were still fighting.

Because resilience is the final sin.

“I’d say you’ve been very good.” The white beard masks the smile, but it’s there. Gentle. Coaxing. Part of the performance. A benevolent father-figure wrapped in red, stitched together by societal myth. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

That catches him.

The boy glances away, towards the carousel wrapped in its plastic shroud, crinkled like old skin. One horse stands with its ear snapped off, mid-prance, frozen in time. Forgotten, like everything else in this town.

“Come back to the shelter with me. Hot drinks, gloves, those weird mince pies with no actual pie in them.” A ghost of a smile crosses under the beard. “I was dropping off supplies. Thought you might like first pick.”

The boy looks back. Cautious. Sceptical.Hopeful.

And that’s the thing about hope. It’s the last part of a person to give up.

“You don’t have to talk to anyone. Come get warm. Take something for yourself. For once.”

There’s a pause. A micro-calculation. Not trust. But need. Reprieve. Relief. The illusion that someone might see him and not recoil.

And what harm could Santa bring?

They don’t remember the old stories. Therealones. Before the red suit. Before Coca-Cola and charity drives. When Santa crept in, not togivebut tojudge. When he took what the world had already cast aside.

And they always follow the hope.