A Trap for Santa

First Place, teens' stories

William Fong |

12/18/2008 - 12/16/08

Ten-year-old Ross J. Moore finished wrapping the bright golden, green, and red gift wrap around a reasonably sized box. To finish he placed the silver satin ribbon around the decorated box.

Ross grabbed a musical card that played All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth and placed it gently on the cherry-tree table. Next he grabbed a fully filled gold fountain pen and began to scribble smoothly and gently. He finished the last stroke and then taped the card to the top of the present.

Done, he thought. Unable to immediately find anything to do, he thought about his holiday report for school. He had to find something interesting on Christmas day and bring it back to school. Ross always was a bit too ambitious; teachers always found it difficult to read the essays he brought back that were over five pages long.

"Rossy!" yelled an all-too-familiar voice.

Ross felt his insides melt. He turned around to see the eyes of Elizabeth Zoe.

"Uh, hi," he said, making it sounded more like a question.

"Whatcha doin'," she asked, looking over his shoulder.

"Just wrapping presents ... " he said.

"Is that for me?" she asked, eyeing the small print on the card.

Ross smiled as he looked at her. "Yes."

Ross waited for the eerie silence to stop. He finished wrapping his second present before the silence ended.

"What do are you going to do for our project?" Elizabeth asked.

Ross shrugged, cut the ribbon, and finished tying the bow.

"I don't know, actually. I want to do something ... ambitious."

A person walked in — he was tall, easily over 6 feet tall. He put down his thick coat and scarf.

"Dad!" yelled Elizabeth hugging him. "Did you get anything for me?"

He smiled. "I will, but being a barista, I don't get a lot of money.
Your mom and I are planning to get something."

Elizabeth jumped up, her face flushing a warm shade of red, and
ran into her room.

Ross remained where he was sitting and wrapping presents. His parents were gone. They were planning to come back until a freak snowstorm hit and closed nearly every highway. So Ross was stuck in
a friend's house until then.

The thought of the project came into his mind again. His brain went into overdrive thinking of what interesting thing he could bring to school.

"Clothes? No, too boring. Maybe a cool present" — but then, he thought, what if I don't get anything cool like last year?

"Heh, my little brother believes in Santa. Santa, hey. Maybe I could fake that I caught him. Yeah ..."

Ross let that feeling swim in his head. He would have to create a good cover story. He finished wrapping the last present, addressed it and began to work, darting instantly to the Experience Class Laptop he had gotten for his birthday a few months back.

Hours swam by and Ross barely even noticed the hands on the clock had moved to 7:31 p.m. Elizabeth's father served him warm steamy spaghetti.

"Thanks," muttered Ross. Elizabeth took a seat next to him and finished her plate in a few short minutes.

Ross looked at Elizabeth; she currently was too busy to be paying attention. He quickly ran over to the medicine cabinet and took out some sleeping pills.

Ross calculated Santa's approximate weight by thinking about how many cookies households in the U.S. gave to Santa — it was a large number — and he wondered if all that sugar would cancel out the sedative.

The result made Ross smile; he had enough sedative to knock out Santa for the rest of the Christmas break, and the sugar in his blood stream would make Santa come out of the coma in a week.

Elizabeth noticed the math on Ross' computer screen.

"Wow," she said, her mouth gaping.

Ross smiled. "Just a little," he said.

Ross ran over to the oven and preheated it to 350 degrees. He calmly grabbed a medium-sized bowl and quickly mixed up a cookie batter.

Unfortunately, Ross' cooking skills weren't up for the job, and he grabbed soy sauce instead of the vanilla extract. While mixing, he grabbed eggs — but even carbon dating wouldn't be possible for something that old. When looking for the confectioners' sugar, he accidentally grabbed baking soda. He mistook almond butter for regular butter. He overloaded the batter with chocolate chips.

When he heard Elizabeth's father come in, in a final act of
desperation he cleaned out all of the spices in another cabinet and dumped them into the batter.

"What's that smell?" asked Elizabeth's father, wrinkling his nose.

"Uh, cooking!" Ross replied.

Ross made the cookie batter into round lumps on an oiled cooking sheet in about three seconds. He shoved the cookies into the oven, where they began to brown.

Seven minutes later, Ross grabbed the undercooked cookies out of the oven. He placed several on a plate next to the fireplace.

He grabbed Elizabeth's mother's taser and wrapped it around on a string surrounded by electrical tape. He hid under the couch and waited. The lights turned off automatically.

Ross made himself half go to sleep to confuse Santa's ability to know when someone is awake. Before he knew it, ash fell down
the fireplace. Ross took a bite out of an energy bar and felt his consciousness return. He readied the taser.

Santa hefted his red bag off his massive back and onto the floor, causing a slight shake in the foundation. Santa walked over to the cookies and took a bite. He smiled.

"Well, I never had cookies like this befo ..." Santa's eyes glazed over, and he fell down.

Ross smiled, crawled from his hiding spot, and tied the taser around Santa, making sure that if he pulled the knot too tight it would push the button and give Santa a slight shock.

Ross looked at Santa. He touched Santa's jacket and gasped. He could feel time and how Santa was able to give presents to the population of Earth.

Ross felt the power to travel to his presentation. As he thought about that, he felt himself in line at school. A boy turned around, tears running down his cheeks.

"What's wrong?" asked Ross.

"I don't have anything to present. I didn't get anything from Santa ..." The boy's voice broke on the last word, and he ran off.

Ross felt funny, like the pit of his stomach was empty. He then noticed the entire school was nearly crying.

Elizabeth turned around, fury in her voice. "So only you got a present?" she asked as he strode off.

Ross looked shocked when he looked inside the bag. Santa was inside, still sleeping. Ross looked back on the sad faces of everyone he knew.

Feeling massive guilt, Ross touched Santa's hat and felt himself suddenly return to where he started. He let Santa go, walked back to his sleeping bag, and swiftly fell asleep.

Disclaimer: Please be kind when making cookies for guests.