The soot poured out in clouds, inky black billows that cast surreal shadows on the pristine white carpet before settling from the air to make those shadows a permanent feature. Heavy back boots settled down onto the fire, revealing unreasonably clean red pant legs above. I would have sworn no human body could fit into that chimney, and even if i were wrong about that, no rational explanation exists for the complete lack of soot on the man’s bright red suit, the failure of a large cheerful fire to burn of singe it.
He bent down to step out of the fireplace, bent far too low, stepped out of a space that wasn’t sufficient to hold him in the first place. Space became putty around him, size and shape suddenly fluid concepts, flexible restraints on the reality around him. He was a big man, but not slow, not awkward. His smooth animal grace was frightening, unreal. We cowered behind the couch, our eyes peeking over the back frozen in incredulous terror.
He, perhaps It, stepped lightly across the room to the tree. The strange star atop it illuminated the massive costumed figure but seemed to leave the rest of the room in darkness. The big man seemed to acknowledge the pulsing ethereal light briefly before placing two wrapped packages gently on the floor, and it seemed to me the acknowledgment was mutual.
It was the star we had found in the crowded and musty old second-hand store we had wandered into in the fall, and had never been able to locate on subsequent trips into town. I remembered thinking it beautiful but oddly discomfiting, Steven had insisted on bringing it home. In its blue-violet glow, was had sat before the tree and talk to each other of our wishes.
That was last night. Tonight, on the eve of Christmas, the last thing we had expected was for those wishes to be granted, and certainly not by Santa Claus himself. The specter before us was undeniable, though, the beautifuly wrapped boxes on the floor had the size and the dreamlike certainty about them that convinced me they contained precisely what Steven and I had said we wanted.
Then, as the impossible figure crossed the floor to the fireplace, he turned. The face that peered directly at our hidden face was the archetype of jolly, the very essence of cheer and robust good humor. He put a finger to the side of his large nose. His eyes were black voids, dark like the space between stars, threatening to suck us in.
He bent down and stepped into the fire, oblivious of the flames and the very impossibility of the act, and then he was gone. Soot black footprints marked his path back and forth across the room, stark black impossibilities on white carpet that glowed in the light of a gently pulsing star.