Santa's Last Visit

It all began that night 30 years ago. I was lying in bed, sound asleep, when I heard a slight sound on the roof.  After several minutes had elapsed, and I had just about fallen back asleep, I began to hear a slow rustling and clanking noise.  As I reached for my shotgun, I was thinking about the stories I had heard since I was a kid.  Stories the like you have never heard.  There was a legend, I was told, that once a year, somebody or something, would creep down the chimney, and would leave stuff random stuff into peoples stockings as they slept.

When I was first heard this close to thirty years ago, I was in shock.  How could somebody dare to sneak down a chimney, and fill peoples socks with objects.  That might make them rip, and then I'd be stuck without socks until next I went into town.  Destroying socks was the worst possible crime one could commit where I grew up.  As years when by, and I began to use my hard-earned money to purchase my own supply of socks for the year.

That was when I began to keep the shotgun beside the bed, in the hope that one day I would stop the one who made it a habit of breaking and entering peoples houses while they slept.  Thirty years later, my shotgun was about to pay off.  I was thankful, as I walked towards the fireplace, that I had loaded and cocked my shotgun before going to bed that night.

Moments after reaching the fireplace, I saw the first part of my target, a gigantic foot clad in red, appear.  As I watched, I saw the rest of his massive body slide out onto the hearth.   As I pulled the trigger, all I could think of was the millions of socks I was saving from destruction.  Never again would a stocking be ripped because of somebody with a giant white beard, and a floppy red hat.