AN: Let's try this out, shall we?
Door No. Three
Santa Claus
Doris Teavee
Doris held a strand of Christmas lights in one hand and stared at the strange boy sitting on the couch - unconcerned by the festivity around him, concerned only with the image on the tv and beating his high scores. This year, when the family was decorating for the holidays, she asked for him to lend a helping hand. He said no, for the first time ever, and went back to his video game.
No. To Christmas.
She started to untangle the lights herself.
She could remember five Christmases ago. She had a different son then.
She had love their snow days, when she and Norman and Mikey were all off as a family. They'd sleep late, only to be awoken by a squirmy four year old who crawled between his parents. Then they all fell asleep again till Doris decided to tumble out of bed and make pancakes.
Mikey had laughed and frolicked in the snow as she watched him have fun, enjoying the Denver cold, kicking the powder up with his boots, his cheeks so adorable and pink with the cold that she just had to scoop him up and kiss him.
He had bounced on his heels when she made them both coffee since he couldn't drink hot chocolate - the coffee was decaf and pretty much drowned in milk and sweetener so it wasn't even coffee at all anymore - and he'd feel like he was a big boy drinking such an adult drink. They'd curl up on the couch and watched cartoons on TV with their mugs and laughed at Tom and Jerry's feuds.
Mikey had sprinted through a uprooted forest and look for the biggest and best tree. "This one!" He'd exclaim and jumped up and down like he had won the lottery. They'd pay the Boy Scouts and strapped the tree to the car and proudly paraded it through the town streets back to their house, where it was welcomed and adorned with ornaments of trains and Star Trek spaceships and Wizard of Oz figurines.
He had hidden himself in the box of tinsel and wait for Doris to scour the house to find him. He had shaken the boxes under the tree, trying to guess what they were. (He had even peeled the wrapping on a few.) He had dictated what he wanted her to write in his letter to Santa Claus.
And on Christmas morning, he had jumped from his bedroom and dashed down the hall, banging on her bedroom door to inform her that it was, in fact, Christmas morning and that Santa had come to visit.
Santa didn't visit here anymore. He was dead and gone.
And was it a sad thing that Doris was more upset than Mike was about it?