🚀 go-pugleaf

	He had just been fired as the Burns' Department Store Santa.
The manager had almost yanked off his Santa beard when he protested that
the entire costume was his own.  He took out a bottle of cheap whiskey
and, sitting down on an icy concrete step in the alley behind the store,
treated himself to a mouthful.
	"Santa!" said a squeaky, almost childish voice.  He looked to
his right, where the voice had come from, and a small, androgynous-looking
elf in bright red and green, with ruddy cheeks and realistic-looking
pointed ears, came into view.  "We've been looking everywhere for you!
We need you!  How could you have gone off without telling us, just like
that?"
	"I'm sorry," he found himself saying.  "Sometimes the state of
the world gets to me: I need to spend some time away."
	"Not a moment to lose!" said the elf, helping him up.  "You've
got to get back to the North Pole and get things ready!  And Mrs. Claus
will be so relieved!  You know how worried she gets."
	They walked towards the end of the alley from which the elf had
come.  "Mrs. Claus should know me by now," he said, again not knowing
why he said it.  He tugged absently at his beard, and somehow it seemed
natural that it was rooted to his face.  The padding that made him properly
plump had become very comfortable, and he felt at his midriff and found it
naturally fat, not falsely padded at all.  It all seemed so right, somehow.
Then they emerged from the alley.
	A magnificent sleigh with eight reindeer, several jubilant elves on
or about it, waited just ahead and slightly to the right.  The elves looked
like familiar old friends -- he knew their names.  He _was_ Santa Claus,
he felt.
	Suddenly there was a crushing, horrible pain in his chest, a pain
that shot up one arm.  He collapsed, and was dead moments after he struck
the ground.
	The elves rushed over to him with sorrowful keening cries.  They
realized that they could do nothing for him.  "I told him that he should
get in shape," said a pretty and definitely female elf between her tears,
"but he never listened."

Mark., ho ho ho
gooley@netcom.com