14th April, 9:30 PM,

"Hansen…" Prophet Marcello sobbed, "Dear son, I'm here to grant you your wish before you are purified. That wish and desire has now become a portion of purification and repenting process."

Hansen looked at the fireplace and took a long breath as warmth of fire hit on his face. He breathed like it was the final time he was going to do so. Hansen remembered himself spending his entire childhood and adult life in the same house where he was also going to die in. In his childhood Christmas was most beloved by him for one reason.

Presents.

For the whole night he would pretend to be asleep and frequently would sneak at the fireplace by wearing his red woolen socks. Neither his elder brother, who had passed away two years ago due to respiratory infection, nor anybody else would notice him doing it.

There was the chimney above fireplace as an outlet for smoke. "I'll hurt Santa Claus. I'll burn his freaking beard and I'll turn him skinny. Then I'll ride on the flying cart and take control over every single rain deer pulling it up in the air. I'll take all the gifts and they will not get any of them. I'll be the only one who has gifts and all my friends will be jealous of me." He had imagined and he even had stolen his father's hunting gun just to kill Santa whenever he was going to appear from the fireplace to eat the cookies under the Christmas tree.

On his sixth birthday, gifts came but without Santa.

After four more years of wait, when he was ten, he still had been holding the gun by pointing at the fireplace which was now burning. He had lit it some hours ago. For past five years he had been waiting for Santa but never had burnt the fireplace on Christmas night.

Dosing, he sat on his father's rocking chair with his body wrapped by blue stripped white blanket. He hadn’t realized the simple nap was turning out to be a sound sleep. It was unlike the previous Christmas nights which used to pass sleepless for him.

Something hit on the fire from the chimney.

It was a box which had fallen from up right on the flames. Before that night, gifts used to come from miniature fake tree in his house but not stra from the chimney.

"Anyone up there? Is this you, Santa?"

But the gift had caught fire in such a way it was disfigured when his eyes fell on it. The gift was burnt and Hansen had not even got to know what was inside it. Hansen knelt down and cried silently for a long time. Without any clue he had slept on the floor.

"I'm here to fulfill your wish too." Marcello said, "I've got a gift for you. It was your desire to get gift from Santa but it got destroyed. Since then you desired to kill someone who had let you down. Santa Claus. Your wish to kill him will be complete tonight…"

Next morning when TPD cops arrived then found Hansen to be missing from the house. The house smelled foul like a lot of tires were burnt inside. The fireplace had ashes on it and a coffee mug on the floor was untouched along with pork meat on the plate. And the door – unlocked.

Instead a person was found to be lying flat on his chest, dead. Nobody knew but he was Marcello. Prophet Marcello.

If the cops had checked the pile of smelling ashes inside the fireplace then they would have realized it was not wooden ashes. They would have found Hansen, instead, in there as the ashes.