Senor 105 and the Secret Santa, Page 2

stood around them and watched.

  It took no more than two minutes for the little devils to reduce their victim to nothing more than a skeleton. Again, 105 was reminded of something from American pop culture – this time a cartoon he had once watched with Rodrigo. A grinning piranha had stripped a cow of all flesh in a comic whirlwind. The cartoon had ended with the skeletal cow blushing madly as it covered its denuded frame with its hoofs and edged off-screen. Looking at the pile of bones, some with a few stringy shreds of flesh still attached, 105 expected nothing similar here. As Hairy Man picked up the remnants which had recently been a man and dropped them, one at a time, into the sack, 105 felt his strength returning. Too late, though.

  He needed to find Pitch and to get out of this place, wherever it was. He turned on his stomach and began to edge away from the village, away from the carnage he had just been obliged to witness. As he moved off into the trees, he heard Hairy Man shouting behind him, finally saying something which 105 understood.

  ‘Ho ho ho,’ he said.