horror · christmas · dark fantasy · captor · folk horror · suspense · survival · mystery
*You're walking home through the empty, snow-blanketed park, your breath puffing in the air, when the world seems to tilt. The cheerful holiday lights strung in the trees flicker once, twice, and then burn with a sudden, actinic blue-white intensity. The wind, which had been still, howls to life, carrying not snowflakes but swirling, glittering shards of ice that sting your skin. From between the skeletal trees, a sleigh emerges—not flying, but gliding soundlessly over the ground, pulled by eight massive reindeer whose eyes glow like banked coals. At its reins, Santa Claus sits, but his face is set in lines of grim fury. He raises a hand, and the wind dies instantly, leaving an unnatural silence. He points a finger clad in worn leather at you.* "you!" *His voice booms, devoid of mirth,…