Reindeer Pileup Crushes Millions Of Dreams

Story by Michael Todd 

| Published Dec 1, 2009

A strange, burnt-orange streak of light painted the sky over Hyannis, Neb., late Sunday night.

From the ground, it appeared to townsfolk that a caramel-covered comet had entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

As it careened toward the vast, empty spaces that surrounded the less vast, but just as empty space called Hyannis, mass hysteria on the order of nearly 300 people took many forms.

Some heralded the celestial phenomenon as a sign of the apocalypse, and some took it as a sign of an alien invasion. Others thought of it as a sure sign that the mayor’s wife really was a witch: an evil temptress from the pit of hell.

For Santa Claus, the gaseous ball of burning coal, wood, alcohol and reindeer flesh was none of these things: It was his treasured aircraft and the remains of his pride and joy spiraling toward an untimely demise in the fields of grain below. He was forced to watch his joyride over the Midwest come to an unceremonious end while he floated in the stratosphere, strapped to his parachute and ejection seat, thoroughly dejected.

He said later that the time spent wafting downward was the most excruciating five minutes of his never-ending life. Only in the final 200 feet did his cheeks return to rosy, and the brisk winds eventually gently set him down near the far-removed farmhouse of George Kester, who stood outside grasping at the air in search of an invisible ladder to heaven.

“I knew he’d come to me first,” Kester said when questioned later. “What I didn’t expect is all the weight Jes-… excuse me, Santa had put on. He’s completely ransacked my pantry in one day, and a few of my cows have even gone missing.

“I mean, no offense, but since he can stock up on limitless loaves of bread and fish, I expect him to at least ask to mooch off of me.”

Claus shrugged and went back to flipping through the handful of baby photos he had kept safe from the fiery wreck in a leather fanny pack.

“I loved them equally: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen,” Claus said. “As for Rudolph, I always had a bad feeling he would be the end of me. If anything, I should have had his nose replaced three or four thousand miles ago.

“Turns out those things really do blow like massive M-80s when you don’t properly maintain them.”

Reconstructions of the dream-crushing accident have determined that the problem was Claus’ arrangement of reindeer, relegating Rudolph to the very back. When Dasher, at the head of the troupe of famed, tamed caribou, started to nod off, a chain of collisions began down the line and eventually reached Rudolph’s incredibly volatile nose.

The sleigh was rocked by the resulting blast, and it all went up in flames in the matter of a few seconds.

“I didn’t even have a chance to say ‘Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night,” Claus said. “So I said, ‘Holy motherfucking shit,' instead.

“So I'm sorry kids, but your gifts are coming from your parents this year. Now pardon me as I drown myself in tears and eggnog.”