Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Remember the first time you saw Nosferatu, and the vampire looked like a crossbreed between a human and a rat? Well Santa’s Elves looked like little Nosferatus, only they were three feet high and deranged. One of them was licking a child’s doll between her legs. You could hear the whole audience go Ew!

Rat teeth stuck out; fingernails curled in lumps like fungus. One of them snarled at Santa, and the old guy cuffed it pretty smartly about its pointed ears, then knocked it to the ground and gave it two smart kicks to the groin.

Then the reel ended.

Amy looked at me, her face seesawing between wonder and disgust. “That was a children’s film?”

The festival director bounced up to a lectern, trying to look spry. He joked about the movie. “It was called The Secret Life of Santa Claus and I think that must be the first X-rated Santa feature.”

We have another archived story for you this week:  “The Film-makers of Mars” by Geoff Ryman.

Remember that you can get all our podcasts if you subscribe to our master podcast feed.

Subscribe to the story-only podcast feed.

opens in a new window

Theme music is “Clockworks” by Beatnik Turtle, used with permission. Visit TheSongOfTheDay.com for more of their music. Podcast copyright 2010, Tor.com. Story copyright Geoff Ryman. Art copyright Gary Kelley. Produced by Mur Lafferty.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Mur Lafferty

Author

writer, podcaster
Learn More About Mur

See All Posts About

Subscribe
Notify of
guest
2 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments