Dear Santa,

How are things at the North Pole? Based on what General Patterson’s been teaching us, I’d imagine that there wouldn’t be many “strategic targets” up there (unless your workshop is one? I would think it’d be pretty important) so I hope you’re doing well. Things down here aren’t that great. A couple of people got dragged away by some crazy cult. We can hear ‘em shouting and singing their crazy mutant songs all night. It’s really scary.

Is it snowing up there? It’s snowing down here, too. Since I’ve lived in Florida all my life I’ve never seen snow but it snowed this year. Mom wouldn’t let me go play in it though. She said that the snow was actually something called fallout and I should stay inside. But I saw Billy and Bobby outside having a snowball fight and they were just fine! Mom can be so mean sometimes.

I don’t really want that much for Christmas. It’d be nice if everyone could be happy for once. I’ve heard Mom and Dad fighting and yelling about lots of stuff. A couple of people are saying that the water purifier’s close to breaking down and pretty soon we’ll all be drinking something called rads. I don’t know what rads is but it sounds pretty bad and all the grown-ups are kind of upset about it.

But I know that world peace and happiness and stuff like that isn’t really what you do, you’re more for the real presents. Well, I guess I’d like a BB Gun for Christmas. That way I could help all the grown-ups protect the shelter. A BB Gun’s not very powerful but I think it would help keep the giant rats away at least. They’re pretty scared of stuff, even though they’re really scary too.

Anyway Santa, I know there’s lots of other girls and boys writing letters to you so I’d better finish this up (also I’m running out of paper and I had to steal this sheet from the commissary. Can you believe they wouldn’t give me even one piece of paper? I hope that’s OK, I know stealing’s wrong, but otherwise there would have been no way! Please forgive me, Santa). Hope Mrs. Claus and the Elves are well. We don’t have any cookies but I’ll try and leave some canned pears out. They’re the closest thing we have.

Love,

Timmy Calhoun