My Girlfriend is Santa Claus & Together We Must Stop the Christmas Apocalypse Based on a True Story

There was a petite freshman clad in snowboots and a cableknit sweater. A perfectly adorable potential girlfriend. There was a senior, slender and all dressed in white, a devil-may-care look in her shadowy eyes. First one walked by, then the other, and then several other girls, without so much a glance at Peter. And each time his heart died a little in disappointment that she wasn’t the one.

“Oh my god, look at her.” Peter clawed at Kevin’s puffy jacket sleeve. “Look at that big, black ponytail. Holy shih tzu. It’s so long and thick. I just want to run my fingers through it.

“It’s just a ponytail,” Kevin said. “You sound like you’re gonna pre.”

“I am gonna pre if she’s my date.”

The girl with the gargantuan ponytail looked at Peter. His heart stuttered. It was her! Then she walked past. It wasn’t her. Farewell, ponytail girl. Take good care of your luscious locks, and never ever get a haircut. What a tragedy that would be!

“She’s probably a little late.” Peter didn’t know if he was talking to Kevin or to himself. He looked back at his phone to see if his date texted him: nothing.

Time crawled by as Peter waited and tapped his foot and checked his phone again and checked his watch, then searched the crowd, and put his hands in his pockets, then took them out and drummed on his leg nervously. Kevin nibbled away at his cookie bit by bit, punctuating the silence with a heavy sigh now and again. Eventually Peter texted her:

— Where are you?

And rather than keep him on read, the reply came immediately after.

— Are you here?

— Yeah.

What happened next was as quick as a shattering ornament: their conversation vanished, and Peter found himself staring at his dead matches, with his date’s profile nowhere to be found. No matter where he clicked or swiped the mysterious nameless, photoless girl was not there. Kevin understood what happened before Peter did, and looked to his friend’s face and waited for the realization to kick in: that he had been blocked. Not just catfished, but baited into a fake date, and that she never had any intention of coming.

Peter had been completely deleted, and he had no way to trace her, no way to report her. It was the perfect crime. And yes, all these thoughts did sink in slowly, but it didn’t show on Peter’s face. He only looked up into the Christmas crowd for one last search, thinking that maybe she was watching him from a balcony or a store window, and then he put the phone into his pocket and stood there for a few minutes more, as if he were waiting for someone else.

“Wow, man...” Kevin said. “That sucks.”

“Whatever.” The hurt that Peter didn’t want to show registered in his voice.

“Do you want to... I don’t know... do some shopping?”

“I think I’ll just go home.”

They walked back through a twice bankrupt department store reeking of old lady perfume and leather handbags towards the exit in silence, Kevin not sure what to say to cheer him up. He was worried that if he chose his words poorly, the incomprehensible sadness or anger within Peter would come spilling out. He had seen it happen before, when Peter flipped out in the cafeteria over a torn up love letter. The resulting fist fight nearly got him expelled from school. Another time, in sixth grade, he broke his own arm tackling a bicycle thief, which did get him suspended from school.

“I hate this season,” Peter said. “Christmas shopping? You have to buy some stupid junk just because you have a family? Star Wars socks? Chocolate truffles? What a waste of money.”

“You’re taking this better than I thought,” Kevin said. “I was afraid you were going to Hulk out back there, like that time in middle school.”

Outside Jack Frost didn’t nip at Peter’s nose so much as he unhinged his jaw like a snake and devoured Peter’s entire head. The air was a venomous cold that stabbed at his flesh. Headlights from the parking lot glided through the darkness, dazzling their frozen eyes as they passed through the snowy road. Hateful laughter filled the air as a filthy Volvo drove past Peter and Kevin. Within the humid vehicle a group of high schoolers cackled madly, and one of the girls glanced briefly at Peter through a moistened window.

In a moment of rage-induced slow motion, their eyes met, and Peter measured the girl’s eye and her choice of makeup and recognized her as his lost date. Immediately he was off, running through a winter wonderland of snow and wind, and when the Volvo paused at a stop sign, he leapt up to the roof of the car and bellowed out a horrific scream.

He stomped and jumped on the roof, popping and denting the metal body like a madman. When the driver got out and shouted, “What the hell, man!” Peter jumped down onto the hood and cracked the windshield with his heel, shouting, “Have a holly jolly Christmas, you stupid a-hole!”

Kevin watched in disbelief. The girls in the car shrieked over a bass boosted version of Mele Kalikimaka while Peter did an insane Irish jig.

The driver helplessly shouted, “Get off my car, you psycho! Security! Security!” Peter snapped the windshield wipers off from the car, whipped them at the driver, and then went to town hopping around the vehicle, kicking every single window in like an FBI agent conducting a no-knock raid.

“You want some figgy pudding?” Peter shouted between window kicks. “You want some figgy pudding, you bitch? Well here’s your figgy fucking pudding!”

“Oh my god! You are insane!”

The swirling yellow lights of a security truck woke Peter from his delusional rampage. Remember kids, private security chuckle-fucks have no legal authority. It’s perfectly fine to run away or slug them across the face if they ever try to stop you mid-crime. So he dashed off into the parking lot alone, slipping and stumbling over sleet and black ice.

The two boys from the pulverized Volvo, now emboldened, chased after him through the flurry of snow. The security truck slid and skid in pursuit. Where Peter was running, he didn’t know. His home was too far away to reach on foot. He just had to get far enough away that they would stop chasing him.

Across six lanes of traffic he ran, an idiotically deadly gamble, accompanied by angry horns and squealing tires as motorists cut across medians to avoid running him over. Then into dark and icy woods he fled. Through bramble and thickets and under prickly pine trees, and deeper into their foresty embrace, until the sound of traffic was gone, and Peter only heard his panicked and ragged breaths.

Lost in the middle of a dark wood he felt his heart slow and his lungs calm down, and he listened for pursuers among the trees, but there was nothing to hear. Snow fell in perfect silence all around him, and he was left with regret, wondering if the girl in the car really was the same girl that ghosted him. In that moment, among the dead trees of a winter night, Peter felt more alone than he had ever felt in his life.

From the darkness came a growling snort.Snow crunched under footsteps. Peter looked into a veil of darkness and there between the pine trees shone two nocturnal eyes, large and inhuman. Before fear could reach his heart the horned beast charged towards him with thunderous stomps, faster than he could have ever predicted. Antlers and skull cracked into his ribs, and then he tumbled flat on his back. He looked up into moonlight and snow, suddenly very sleepy, and cursing the day he ever thought online dating was a good idea.