Rabid Red-Nosed Rudolph

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer was no longer the cheery underdog fawn of fairy tale lore. The one-time youngest of Santa’s nine-reindeer team was all grown up and his demeanor had considerably soured. He’d become, rather, a ruffian.

His nose, still red in his adult years, but was not currently illuminated, as made famous those fabled years ago. On that dark Christmas Eve in harsh winter weather he led Santa’s sleigh and the reindeer team on the annual gift route. But today Rudolph had an upsetting afternoon and had taken vengeance for some perceived wrong.

His nose was dripping with a thick red liquid, likely not the sweet juice of the local lingonberry. With the mangled carcasses of two elves at his feet, elf blood was presumed. Their tiny lifeless bodies face down in the snow, one had been gored through the small of the back. A third elf slowly crawled away into a copse of trees for cover, a wide, red trail coloring the snow behind him. The gift-manufacturing production numbers may be slightly off goal this season for Santa’s factory, pending how many others from the captive elven labor force have fallen in this latest rampage.

Rudolph’s headgear was magnificent compared to that of his more modestly endowed and estranged teammates. He had filled out well, a veritable alpha buck amongst fawns.

The reindeer games were in full action amidst a gently building snowfall. Like usual, all the other reindeer playing and someone had forgotten to ask Rudolph to join them. This recurring trend of jealousies would end today, one way or another, but certainly not amicably.

He emerged from the perimeter of the forest and slowly approached his stunned, and tame, colleagues. Blood could be seen dripping from his antlers onto the snow. A horrific scene with red droplets littering the snow around his every step. He was foaming at the mouth clumping up thickly like robustly agitated dish soap. The reindeer games were stunned to a halt. Nobody moved. The other reindeer couldn’t have been more afraid were it a wolf standing before them. There were too many for Rudolph to touch them all, so to speak, but his rabies-induced rage would not be tempered by reason. The carnage on this pre-Christmas afternoon had only begun.

In the distance voices could be heard in alarm.

“Mr. Claus, where are you going with that rifle,” yelled a bewildered Mrs. Claus seeing her husband dashing out of his workshop toward the meadow with a 30-caliber lever action Winchester rifle in hand. He kept it well oiled and loaded, ready to fulfill any request, especially since Rudolph’s behavior had been lately becoming more erratic. There were lower caliber arms in his arsenal, which he used to ‘motivate’ the workforce, he liked to joke, but today’s uprising was no joke.

“Mrs. Claus, get back in the house and stay there. It’s Rudolph again, he’s snapped and gone deadly this time,” he yelled back, running toward the snowy ascent where his reindeer liked to frolic. The distance was a half-mile, the going would be slow with snow up to his shins. Too slow to intervene, he figured, but he must try.

He could hear in the distance ahead toward the meadow, some kind of skirmish had commenced.

“Dear God, deliver me swiftly and give me one clean shot,” said the not so jolly old Saint Nick under his breath hustling as quickly as an old man could, his bright red great coat with the ostentatious white trim fanning out behind him.

[Inspired by Jakub Rozalski's illustration, Rudolph Uprising. (https://twitter.com/mr_werewolf_art/status/941343537886629888?s=20)]

-Klem