POISON COOKIES I don't belong here. It's a conspiracy and it isn't fair. I should never have been left for so long. It was just an attempted crime, really. They say I'm a patient in this hospital, but that's not true, I'm a prisoner. He's keeping me here. I know he is. All the doctors and the nurses are his little helpers. They're on his good list. And they're keeping me trapped because of what I tried to do to him when I was seven years old. They're keeping me here so that they get their presents and gifts on Christmas morning. He's still angry about that one year. Well, fat man, I can remember, too. I remember the Christmas I tried to kill you, Santa Claus. You give presents to everyone else in the world. But I will never forget what you took from me. *** He's a scary guy. You have to admit that. And it's got nothing to do with the fact that he can live in the coldest place on Earth or considers elves his contemporaries. He's a scary guy because he's always watching you. If you're bad or good, while you're awake or when you sleep, if you're shouting or pouting, he knows. And people here say I'm sick. Think about it. Not only is he watching us, he's judging us. Some are good enough for the nice list. Some aren't. And those that aren't are on the naughty list. They're not good enough for his gifts. But it's worse that that. It really is. Because it's not just about behavior, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. Don't try to interrupt me. I've had thirty-five years to think this through. Have you? When I was five years old, and living with my parents in our home in Chicago, I, like every other kid in the world, wanted everything. I wanted a teddy bear, a metal steam shovel, a boomerang, a Frisbee, a yo-yo, a jack-in-the-box, a train, an Erector set, some stuffed animals, boxing balloons and plastic dinosaurs. I got everything I wanted except the boomerang. Now I'm not greedy. I'm not. No. Don't think that. I had my list of what I wanted. Santa's got his lists too. No one says he's greedy. But with all those presents he was also giving me a message. And that was that he was not pleased with my performance. My parents tried to help me with my pain and disappointment. They told me that Santa probably didn't bring me the boomerang because he thought I was too young to have it. That maybe Santa would bring me one in a year or two. But I knew the truth. I hadn't done so well in English the year before, and Santa was watching. My grades didn't pass his tests. So I studied and studied and worked and worked and worked. I did everything I possibly could to be the best kid in the world. And I was. Even my parents talked about what a good kid I was. In fact, it was a bad year for them and they said I made it better. My Dad lost his job and we had to leave our house and move north to an apartment in Sheboygan, Wisconsin of all places. My parents told me not to hope for too much from Santa that Christmas, but I knew that they didn't understand. I was perfect. My grades were great. I was as good as good can be. I was good even for goodness sake. And you know what I got for Christmas that year? You know what I got? A book, some socks, and a few Lincoln Logs that actually look like they had been played with by the elves. Can you believe it? If my parents had actually bought my presents that year, as bad as it was, they could probably have afforded more. And Santa, who's got an entire toy factory, did that to me after I'd been perfect. Well, maybe not perfect, but as perfect as a kid could be. The truth was that Santa didn't care what you did or didn't do. He didn't care if you were bad or good. I had friends at school that got bad grades, pulled their sister's hair, beat on losers after class and were basically rotten kids. And they got loads of toys from Santa. And you know why? It's because their parents were rich. Santa's all about the money. I realized then what a cruel fat monster Santa was. Naughty and Nice was not as black and white as the fat man that dressed in red made us all think it was. And I saw it. I saw him for what he was. He had to die. He did. He had to pay for being so unfair. They say that if you don't believe in Santa, it's like automatically being put on the ÒNaughtyÓ list. He simply will not come to your house, and that means your parents get stuck buying you toys. So when I decided to kill him the next year, I pretended to believe in him like I always had in the past. Even when the other kids at the school were saying he wasn't real. Even when they laughed at me for saying he was. He was watching always. I had to be smart about this. I couldn't let him or anyone else for that matter see what I was planning. But how to kill him, that was the question. What was his weakness? The answer was obvious. Just look at the belly. His want for milk and cookies would be his undoing. Serves him right. He eats and drinks milk and cookies from every kid in the entire world. What a pig. He was an addict. I checked with my friends. The cookies were always eaten. Sometimes the milk wasn't drunk, though. So poison cookies were the answer. He'd eat them even if he didn't want to. He had no choice. He was a cookie junkie. And celebrating the twelve days of Christmas is not the same as being part of a twelve-step program. Santa was sick. I was going to make him sicker. We were now living back in Chicago, by the way. My father had changed jobs and my parents had promised that Santa would be bringing more that year because of my good behavior. But it had nothing to do with how good I was. My parents now had more money. It was as simple as that. So I asked my Mom if that year, that Christmas, I could make the cookie batter all by myself. She smiled and said ÒsureÓ. Of course, I had to agree to her pulling out the ingredients to the Double-Double Chocolate chip cookies, the favorite cookie of Santa and fathers alike. But when she wasn't looking, I added rat poison to the mix. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse indeed. And that's how I tried to kill Santa Claus. *** You know what I found the next morning? Every present I had asked for including a boomerang. You know what else I found? My parents were dead under the tree. He took them from me. He took my family. I made them promise not to eat the cookies the night before. They promised. They knew they were for Santa and Santa only. And Santa tricked them, and then he gave me everything I wanted, if only to spite me. I called the police immediately. I told them my story. I told them what Santa had done. I told them I was a witness to murder. My story hasn't changed in all these thirty-five years. It never will. The one thing I do know is true is that my parents didn't eat the cookies, no matter what anyone says. They couldn't have. They promised not to. And they would never lie to me.