A child's correspondence with Santa is an unspoken contract, like attorney-client privilege, or a confession with a priest.
Jack Bristrow exposes what should never have come to light, a child's Christmas wishes.
Jack Bristrow exposes what should never have come to light, a child's Christmas wishes.
A Letter to Santa by Jack Bristow
 |
 |
Dear Santa,
This year, more than anything, I would really appreciate for my
paraplegic brother Billy to walk again. He has been wheelchair-bound for quite
a while now, Santa, ever since his unfortunate accident a few years ago. You
know who Barry is, don't you Mr. Clause? Of course you do! You know everything!
Anyway, just to refresh and re-jog your memory: Barry is the family's farmyard
bull. Anyway, Barry tore Billy in the spine one day with his horns when Billy
was hunched over with a smelt by his side, trying to milk Barry. I guess Barry
didn't understand my brother was a half-wit, and that Billy really believed he
could get milk out of a Barry's scrotum just like a cow's teat. I feel mighty
bad for misleading my older-but-denser brother like that but, you have to understand,
Santa—we have zero electricity on our farm: no television, no Internet, and
absolutely no YouTube. There is not a whole lot of entertainment value in our
neck of the woods, except for petty capers such as that one.
Which brings me to my second request, Santa. Would you mind helping us
on this front, too? You know—would it kill you to bring us a TV set, and
some electronics this year, for a change? Each time I keep thinking it's going
to be different but, every year, nothing changes. Poppy keeps telling us it's
because we are so far out in the country. He always explodes, whenever we
inquire him about your yearly absence. "Santa can't find us out
here!" he always shouts, waving a quart of Wild Turkey in his hands,
whenever the subject arises. "Can't you little bastards understand that?
Look at all them willow trees we have outside there, covering the top of our
trailer. You think he can find our little shit-box of a trailer when it's
covered up by all them branches, foliage and so forth?" Poppy then always
topples over to the ground, with a huge smirk on his face, and pee-pee draining
through his knapsack-colored pajamas. It happens exactly this way every year—just like in in the movies...
Santa, I'm also writing you to request that you send my halfwit
brother and me a non-cyborg mommy for a present this year. You see, every
night, Billy and I can hear mommy and poppy arguing in the next room. "You
are drunk all the time," mommy always protests. "And that makes you
impotent. Your dick looks like a tiny little firecracker, but it never shoots
off. I thought when we got married fifteen years ago, I was going to have a
real man by my side. But no, I am stuck with you. Shit, I should have listened
to my mother. She warned me about you. She had you pegged for what you really
are: a worthless, drunken sack of shit that doesn't want to sully his hands
with an honest day's work!"
"Well, fuck you then, woman! I injured my back when I worked
stocking shelves at Wal-Mart. You know that. It's your fault things are the way
they are now. I keep telling you to get that job at McDonalds!" Poppy
always screams at mommy, and then exits the room, slamming the door shut behind
him on his way out. And then, as Billy and I are trying desperately to get some
shut-eye, we will hear this strange-sounding buzz—sort of like a vibrating
noise—coming out of mommy's bedroom a few seconds later. And then afterwards
there's a moan and some sobbing. One day, Santa, I asked daddy to explain these
strange noises to me. He was sleeping on the living room floor, with his Levi
jacket balled up under his head like a pillow. Groggily, and with accompanying
breath that smelled like poo-poo, he explained it all to me: "See, son.
Your mammy ain't even human. She's a morbidly obese cyborg sent from the future
to torture me. That sound you're hearing in there—that's the sounds of her
recharging her batteries. "Really?" I asked Poppy.
"Really," Poppy confirmed my suspicions. "Not only does your
mammy need to shovel mass quantities of food into her trap to subsist, she also
needs to stick that big nozzle contraption up her butt, just keep her batteries
charged, so she can live another day to keep chewing on your old poor poppy's
ass.
"Wow," I replied in wonderment.
And Santa, while you are at it, would you mind giving us a new roof
this year as a present? Whenever it rains, or snows, water seeps through the
entire house. And it is very unpleasant, Santa. The stench of mold and mildew
is, at times, overbearing. I have allergies, and I've plumb near stopped
breathing a few times on account of this. One morning, I told mommy that poppy
should have the roof fixed, and she just shrugged my suggestion off with a
scornful laugh, as she was frying bacon for us. "Your daddy ain't nothing
but a lazy sack of shit." She cracked a few more eggs into the batter.
"He don't want to work. And all he wants to do is drink himself to death.
He has already got a bum liver. And with the way he's drinking, he will be dead
in six months. And then, how are we going to survive? His social security check
is the only thing keeping us financially afloat, month-to-month."
Oh yeah, Santa, which reminds me—there's one more thing I would
like to ask of you. I know I have
already asked for a lot. But, please, give this next request some serious
consideration. Could you please send my poppy a brand-new liver this Christmas?
Because if the cirrhosis finally does him in, like mommy says it will, we will
all starve to death.
Thanks for reading Santa, and, hopefully, you will be able to send me
all these presents this Christmas.
Sincerely, the bestest boy in the whole entire world,
Spencer Goodman
