Walter saw his son and daughter safely tucked into their beds. His wife, Edna, was down in the basement wrapping all the gifts. They'd both been working overtime shifts to get them exactly what they wanted. For little Joey, they saved enough money to get him Wommie, the robot Wombat. It did everything real Wombats did, according to the commercial; it had a backward pouch that avoided getting full of soil, and it ate grasses and sedges like Roomba but for the lawn. It pooped out chocolate, somehow. It was very expensive.

Carla was a bit older. She wanted a lot of makeup and a new bananaPhone. The makeup was easy, but the bPhone was a tall order. Turns out, Walter's baby sitter's boyfriend worked at the Banana Store as a Plantain Genius, and he scored the last one of the season. Walter decided to pull a fast one and put it in the stocking, since they kids opened those last, just to see the baubles and trinkets. Get Calra's hopes up and down and up again. Good tactic.

But what was that noise? Something on the roof. Walter laughed because for half a second, he thought it would be Santa. That magic died very hard, even as an adult. He took the bPhone and placed it in Carla's stocking with care, and damned if he didn't see a bunch of soot around the floor of the fireplace. Then, some fell down. There actually WAS something on the roof. He ran to the kitchen to get his flashlight, and he hurried back to the chimney. He laid low, so he could see up the chimney flue, but it was too dark.

Suddenly, he face right next to the soot, he saw it had been disturbed. It looked like, but it couldn't be, a footprint. It was too small. It would have been, what, a size one? He laughed for a second at the notion but then shined the light on it. He saw an impression in the print. "Keds."

He was here. Walter's sins were finally catching up with him. Tampering with space time had consequences, and he had heard tales of black hounds that would run through time righting the wrongs committed by those would would meddle with the nature of such things. And oh, how Walter had meddled. But this. This was much worse.

There was a crunch, and he looked toward the end table. The plate with Santa's cookies was empty. Another crunch. He was eating the cookies.

"Ho, ho, ho," he heard the voice say near the door the basement. Then, "What you talkin bout Walter," and the door slammed shut and was locked from the inside. Edna. He came for Edna. There was a laugh, and a scream, and spotlight shining in the windows as the military helicopters circled the house. Coleman had come, and Walter had been naughty.

Oh, and we answer some questions about Christmas and stuff in this Christmas-themed bonus episode of The Sofa King Podcast.