Rudy: A Short Story

Rudy was a timid little reindeer- so timid that the villagers called him Red-Nose or mocked him with the title Santa’s Favorite. The elves and other reindeer are rude to Rudy. Christmas Eve, the other reindeer locked him out of the stable and refused to let him in unless he went inside the haunted house in the South Pole. The others told him that if he didn’t go they were going to chop him up and feed him to Santa in cookies. He began his journey, flying by himself, into the dark winter night. Rudy had a long, hard journey to the South Pole, he didn’t stop once along the way, he couldn’t let the others do that to himself or Santa.

When he finally arrived at the haunted house he was exhausted, physically from the journey and mentally from

Rudy continued down a long dark hallway with shivers down his little tail. As he walked down the hallway he heard painful cries which resembled the screams he had let out only moments earlier. His first instinct was to sprint out the front door but instead he went into the room where he heard the screams. No one was in there. Rudy then continues to explore the haunted house. He heard more noises coming from what he thought was upstairs so he crept up the stairs to investigate. After searching the large upstairs he found nothing, not a single sign of life, the house was entirely empty. The realization hit him that the noises that were haunting him were coming from inside his own head. The screams continued to develop the longer he stayed in the house. Words began to form and he was instructed to go to the attic of the house, he instinctively knew where the attic was and felt propelled by a force that was not himself to go there. Once he entered the door slammed shut behind him. Rudy

They decided to fly to the pole so they could have proof that he didn’t make the journey and so they could feed him to Santa like they promised. Hours later they arrived, flying over the ground, not daring to touch their hooves to the snow because they knew that if they did they would probably never make it back to the North. They were not expecting to see anything but the scene they arrived upon was gruesome. The front of the large frozen house was covered in blood as if someone had be raked along the ice. In the center of the yard laid Rudy covered in dried blood, his body concocted in unnatural directions it appeared that all of his legs were broken, his neck was obviously broken with his head turned completely around on his body and was facing a large broken upstairs window. It was a horrifying sight, the other reindeer could not come to a conclusion as to why a reindeer who could fly would fall from a third story window. The thing that fascinated them the most was that the snow surrounding Rudy’s body was melted so the dark rocks below were exposed, it was as if his body had melted it but it was freezing cold outside and there was no evidence of a fire