Don’t Shoot Me Santa (To Love a Psycho #4)

Prologue Don’t Shoot Me, Santa

Prologue

Don’t Shoot Me, Santa

Ten should have been the last.

Ten was sacred. Whole. The end of a cycle. All fingers accounted for. All sins tallied. Complete. But obsession doesn’t obey numerals. And need… need isn’t interested in completion. It carves its own commandments. Adds pages to closed books.

And twelve is sacred too.

Twelve disciples. Twelve strikes of the bell. Twelve chances to be reborn.

Twelve days of Christmas.

So what’s the harm in adding more?

Finishing what was started?

And there is something holy about the Isle of Wight in December.

Hush and hallowed in its emptiness, the tourists have fled the island, ferried back to brighter lights and mainland hum. Now only the salt-bitten shingle remains. The wind-shoved seafoam. The lights blinking across the Solent like distant prayers lost in fog.

Quiet.

Cut off.

The mainland hums with noise and notice.

CCTV on every corner, blue lights slicing through city smog, officers with shared databases connecting dots left scattered years ago.

Big forces for big cities, built to catch big names.

All of them tangled together, eyes wide open, searching.

With access to those who dissect minds as if they’re simply puzzles to be solved.

The island is better.

Quiet. Separated. Forgotten.

Here, no one looks too closely.

Most years, this would’ve happened elsewhere. A different city, a different square, a different face turning up blue under tinsel and frost. But this year is special. It calls for something more intimate. A return.

Where it all began.

And even here, in the hush of this forgotten place, there are those who need to be told if they are good or bad.

Who better to do that than the ultimate judge?

Santa Claus. The one who keeps a list.

And there’s a perfect specimen right now…

A boy. Seventeen, maybe eighteen. A silhouette at the edge of St Thomas’ Square, half-hidden beneath the twisted skeleton of a plain tree where gold and red lights sag between rooftops, strung like tired garlands across Newport’s high street, more weary than festive.

And beside it, an out-of-season carousel stands wrapped in crinkled plastic, creaking in the wind.

Its horses frozen mid-prance, as if startled by the cold.

He’s young, but not innocent. More forgotten.

Curled on the pavement beyond the covered market, hunched outside the charity shop with the broken security light, knees pulled tight to his chest beneath a fraying parka, hood stitched with patches and sleeves too short.

A tangle of copper hair spills out from under that hood, dulled by grime and weather.

His face is red with cold. Chapped mouth.

Eyelids heavy. There’s something smudged beneath one eye.

Maybe old eyeliner, maybe yesterday’s bruise.

His boots are water stained, laces mismatched.

And those holes in his jeans aren’t for style.

But it’s what’s at the boy’s feet that singles him out. A piece of torn cardboard, ink running in the damp. No family. Hungry. He doesn’t need the sign.

The coat explains enough.

Someone once cared enough to buy it for him. Not new. Not designer. But solid. Practical. Not stolen, either. He wears it as if it used to mean something. A gift once. A gesture. A memory sewn into the lining.

It’s worn thin now.

So is he.

But he’s not broken. Not yet.

And because of that, he has been chosen.

Santa’s boots crack over the frost-slick pavement, steps reduced only by the hush of distant tide.

The padded suit sways with the movement.

Cheap velvet, damp from salt-wind and sweat, clinging in places it shouldn’t.

The beard scratches over skin, coarse and artificial, but the discomfort is important. Sacred, even. A kind of penance.

Not for guilt.

For purpose.

Calling.

Let others dress in red and white for spectacle. This is for sacrament. Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas, Krampus. Every myth had its reckoning. A judge in winter’s cloak. A harbinger of cold mercy.

But this Santa doesn’t ho-ho-ho.

This Santa hushes.

Brings the stillness after the last carol fades. The hush beneath fresh snowfall. A saviour, whether they understand it or not.

The silent night.

And the island is quiet tonight.

That’s why Santa is here. Why, even after the holy ten on the mainland, the cycle won’t close.

Because they keep appearing. Coming out.

The ones too soft for this world. Too loud in who they are.

Too lost to know they need saving. The ones who think they can run from who they are. Well, they can’t. There’s no running.

There is only the sacrament of peace.

And on this floating relic of England’s forgotten parts, tourists only see the cream teas and castle ruins. But Santa sees the truth beneath the postcard gloss. What people become when no one’s watching.

And no one watches in winter.

The boy looks up, face pale beneath smudged makeup. Lips cracked, lashes crusted with old mascara. He’s a boy of the night. Used and abused. Obvious by the eyes. Sharp. Defensive. Intelligent. And he found his way into the wrong crowd. The wrong time. The wrong place.

Good.

It means he’ll understand.

“Cold night,” Santa muses, pitching the fake voice with the right note of comfort and cadence. Practiced. The voice one would expect jolly old Santa to have.

The boy reads the moment for what it is. He won’t be threatened. How could he be? Nothing here is threatening to him. And he’s had to become fluent in threat detection. Learned to read predatory men like tea leaves. And he’s learned the hard way not to drink anything too bitter.

The boy knows Santa, of course. Even the person beneath the facade.

Not this version. Beard and boots, benevolence stitched into polyester and seasonal cheer.

Not the smile made for cameras. But the truth beneath it.

He’s probably been offered safety with one hand before only for it to be taken away by the other.

People promising rescue wrapped in rules. Redemption by clipboard. By council.

But this boy can’t be helped.

He can only be redeemed.

There is no chaos here.

No madness.

No crime.

This is a service. A mercy carefully delivered.

Wrapped in ribbon.

Crouching with a quiet groan, as any good Santa might, comes the next line, worn in tone, casual in cadence, “Long shift for both of us, eh?”

The boy narrows his eyes. Not amused. Not charmed. But not retreating either.

So out comes the peppermint swirl, held between two gloved fingers. “For the good ones,” Santa says. “Even if the world doesn’t notice.”

A flicker in his expression. Not quite belief. But the hunger behind his wariness isn’t for food.

“Go on. Take it. You’ve earned something sweet.”

The boy accepts it. Which isn’t his first bad choice.

Only the most recent.

“You been good this year?”

He snorts, unwraps the sweet and pops it into his mouth. Good boy. “Depends who you ask.”

God, Santa adores them when they’re self-aware.

A quiet study follows. Not for beauty. Though the boy has that, in a wild, wrong-side-of-the-system sort of way. But for posture. Defiance. Chin tilted upward, shoulders drawn tight with a pride hunger hasn’t burned out of him yet.

What would the psychologists say? The ones who dissect posture in quiet rooms. Power displacement. Autonomy in trauma. Childhood origin theory. A dozen terms to explain why boys like this shine brightest before they’re extinguished.

Someone will notice the pattern, eventually.

They’ll line up the victims and search for similarities.

The quiet boys who snapped in silence. The loud girls who refused to be small.

The smart ones who masked it too well. Kids who didn’t ask for help because they knew it wouldn’t come.

The ones who kept surviving, even when the world gave them every reason not to.

That’s the rule.

Santa doesn’t take the desperate.

No—he chooses the defiant.

The ones who were still fighting.

Because resilience is the final sin.

“I’d say you’ve been very good.” The white beard masks the smile, but it’s there. Gentle. Coaxing. Part of the performance. A benevolent father-figure wrapped in red, stitched together by societal myth. “You’re still here, aren’t you?”

That catches him.

The boy glances away, towards the carousel wrapped in its plastic shroud, crinkled like old skin. One horse stands with its ear snapped off, mid-prance, frozen in time. Forgotten, like everything else in this town.

“Come back to the shelter with me. Hot drinks, gloves, those weird mince pies with no actual pie in them.” A ghost of a smile crosses under the beard. “I was dropping off supplies. Thought you might like first pick.”

The boy looks back. Cautious. Sceptical. Hopeful.

And that’s the thing about hope. It’s the last part of a person to give up.

“You don’t have to talk to anyone. Come get warm. Take something for yourself. For once.”

There’s a pause. A micro-calculation. Not trust. But need. Reprieve. Relief. The illusion that someone might see him and not recoil.

And what harm could Santa bring?

They don’t remember the old stories. The real ones. Before the red suit. Before Coca-Cola and charity drives. When Santa crept in, not to give but to judge. When he took what the world had already cast aside.

And they always follow the hope.

The boy stands, legs stiff with cold, boots grinding over salt grit. “If this is dodgy—”

“You can leave.” Santa crosses his chest. “Any time. Cross my heart.”

The boy nods.

He doesn’t smile, though.

And he follows silently. Down past the frozen riverwalk and the rusted boatyard fence. Past the Methodist chapel, with its cracked bricks and ivy strangling its spine. The cold slices through the boy’s coat. But he doesn’t complain. Nor does he even speak.

He’s learned silence the way some boys learn football. Or piano.

At the chapel gate, he hesitates. “Are you sure this is—”

Santa moves fast.

Throws the wire loop around the boy’s neck. Tightens it.

His gasp is wet and weak and ends far too soon. He claws at Santa’s gloves, but it’s instinct, not intention. Reflex, not fight.

Then his eyes lock onto Santa’s. And the realisation is beautiful.

Because Santa sees all the versions of him. The boy beneath the grime. The teenager not believed. The child who clung to some tiny ember of hope that someone might choose him one day.

Well, someone has.

And isn’t that what matters?

Being chosen. Being seen. Being made still.

No one wants to be invisible.

The garotte tightens until he folds. Then, holding him gently as if caught in prayer, Santa strokes his hair back and speaks into his ear. “Good boy.”

Because they deserve that.

All of them.

Deserve to be seen at least once.

So what if it’s in death?

The mainland profilers will circle this like vultures, muttering about compulsion, pathology, control. They’ll dress it up in diagnosis. Ritual. Obsessive pattern. Words to make the darkness feel distant. Contained. Academic.

But they’ll miss the point.

This isn’t about power. It never was.

It’s mercy.

Because the world eats boys like this alive. Strips their softness, starves their gentleness, sharpens them against their will, then punishes them for the edges. Forgets them until they’re useful. Until they become cautionary tales, or corpses to moralise over on the six o’clock news.

But Santa doesn’t forget.

Isn’t that the oldest story of all? The benevolent shadow figure in the dead of winter, cloaked in names and bells and bone-deep judgement. Slipping through cracks and whispers, unseen. Watching. Weighing. Choosing. Not giving. But deciding.

Saint Nicholas. Father Winter. Belsnickel. Knecht Ruprecht.

Santa was never about presents under the tree.

He is the judge.

The one who knows who has been good.

And who is simply pretending to be.

Brushing one last strand of hair from the boy’s cheek, light as snowfall on cold stone, a reflection forms.

Yes, the world might call it murder. Might even slap him with the label serial killer.

But the truth is…

Santa is mercy in red velvet.

Justice in jingle bells.

And only he decides who is a good boy.