Dead Santa: And Other Heartwarming Christmas Tales

by Shane Staley

For those who have been NAUGHTY this year... Sick of getting a lump of coal in your stocking every year? Well, this is your year. Tell Santa (or your husband, wife, mistress, etc.) to surprise you with Shane Ryan Staley's latest chapbook, Dead Santa & Other Heartwarming Christmas Tales, collecting 4 very twisted Christmas stories. Four Christmas classics are collected here for the first time: "This Wonderful Life" "The Little Hummer Boy" "Eggnog and Exlax" "Dead Santa" Cover Artwork by the amazing Chad Savage.

Genres: Horror

65 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Jakob J. 🎃 · Rating 3 out of 5]

“If you read this book and take any of this seriously enough to get offended, you’re an idiot.”
—Shane Ryan Staley’s introduction in its entirety

This is also as close as you were going to get to a trigger warning in the good old noughties.

Staley takes absurdity seriously, and nothing else. He seems to hold sacred the notion that nothing is sacred. He views taboos as challenges to violate, prostrate in problematic praise.

Each of these four stories of holiday hatred follow a similar foul formula of Christmas contempt.

This Wonderful Life begins with cannibalism, progresses with animal cruelty, sexual assault of a snowman, a dicksickle, and ends with Hell on earth. A whiny loser blames Jesus for ruining his life because they share a birthday. He logs his Christmas experiences over several years and finally appreciates his circumstances without needing a redemption arc like that pussy George Bailey.

Eggnog and Ex-lax is a predictably scatological endeavor as an annoying associate with chronic diarrhea is used to discover a new self-sustaining Christmas tree idea.

The Little Hummer Boy is a revenge story of a Jewish elf with a Hitler mustache being abused as a sex slave by Santa. It’s about as random edgelord-cramming as a story can get, culminating in a giant Pez dispenser castrating a sexually curios neglectful father. Based on the alarming title pun, it somehow could have been much worse.

The title story, Dead Santa has an inexplicably zombified Kringle duking it out with Satan Claus—an inverted version of himself after a stress-induced slaughter of his elvish workforce—for control over the holiday in an unfortunate family’s home on Christmas Day.

I can assume with confidence that illicit substances were the uncredited co-writers of this collection, but my morbid curiosity will lead me to see what else Staley and his addled, induced mind have belched into the world.

[Rich DeMars · Rating 4 out of 5]

You've got to own just for the cover. Also available in and eBook version for under 3 bucks. Shane has a great twisted sense of humor and like Sahne says in the beginning of the book,If you take any of these stories seriously enough to be offended by them, you're an idiot.

[Kurt Criscione · Rating 4 out of 5]

also Twisted, but some genuine homour mixed in.

[Mistress of the Bleeding Sorrow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sick and twisted, but hilarious. 😂

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Zombies, death, undeath and the sodomy of elves are some of the Christmas traditions that make up these stories. I like what the author said in his introduction: If you take any of these stories seriously enough to be offended by them, you're an idiot.

'Nuff said!