Santa vs Evil Ways

*Written for the Prose Hoes competition, but it was a tad bit too long winded to post there. Go-figure.**
 
 
"He knows when you've been sleeping"...
 
Wilson "Old Wiley" Cantor glanced downward toward the small young girl in line ahead of him, his gaze quickly drifting off and away from her toward the old timer wearing the security uniform. He had begun to rethink the whole idea, right down to the theory that people would hardly freak out if they seen some guy in a bank in a Santa Claus outfit. Kids always, for good and ill, freaked out when they seen the fat rat-bastard. However, sending this kid, whom wasn't really doing anything wrong into some hundred dollar an hour nut-doctor for some fresh deeply set psychological trauma was not really something he had planned on. A quick scan of room showed him that hers were not the only small pair of eyes locked on him, which was about a hundred miles away from where his head should be at.  
 
"He knows when you've been bad or good, so you better be good"...
 
It wasn't as if he had done this kind of thing before, and robbing a bank was kind of impulsive decision. He had lost his job at the Bradley Industries last month, and becoming a mall santa was one of several meager jobs that he had taken on to supplement their rapidly depleting savings. Dell Woodriff, at BC, was damn well aware that Kenny was sick when he gave him the pink slip last month. He knew that this might be their last Christmas together.  
 
Wiley stopped and stared toward the counter. Even the President had said that it was the fucking banks fault this damn recession had happened, right? The First Bank was the one that was foreclosing everybody's homes earlier this year, putting them out on the streets with nothing. That this might be Kenny's last Christmas...
 
'Hold it together Wiley,' he scolded at himself. There were some things in life worth going to jail for.  
 
The pistol-grip twelve gauge was not riding right underneath the fat guy padding. It would likely end badly if he had to struggle to get the damn thing out. Even Hawk-eye the Geezer over there, whom likely could not see across the damn room would likely be able to bead up on a nice big red target. If was only about his own risk, well, that might be the come what may of a very short life of crime. They'd likely put him on one of those dumb ass criminals episodes... and he would be even more helpless than he felt now...
 
"You better watch out"...
 
"Are you alright Santa?" The little girl in line in front of him asked, and Wiley wiped away at his face.
 
..."You better not cry"...
 
"I am just thinking about those less fortunate children," Wiley's improvisation was off the cuff, and likely just as bad as the fact that he had stood there crying in a long line for the last nine minutes waiting for an available teller to rob.
 
... "You better not pout"...
 
"Will this help?" Wiley had expected her to not really give a shit about what he had said, but he could see that she was a little teared up herself as she lifted her hand with a fifty dollar bill. "My grandma sent it to me for Christmas"...
 
"Ellie honey..." her mother had only noticed the interaction between them since the young girl had stepped away from her side. Wiley could tell that her mother was searching for something to say, the right thing to say.  
 
"Because you've been a very good girl, right?" Wiley asked as he knelt down, and watched as she almost comically exaggerated her nod. "Santa don't take presents away from good little boys and girls, though I do want to say that it was a very big thing that you were trying to do. But if you really want to help Santa out, you just keep being good--okay? Because that's really the best thing in the world," he smiled, as she gave him a grin shy of a few of the front of her teeth.  
 
Kenny was around that age where he was losing his baby-teeth when the doctors told Wiley and his wife, Helen, that he wasn't going to get better. He was only going to get worse. Wiley had not told Helen about losing his job, as she still had hers. Taking care of Kenny had become quite a major chore, and you really couldn't quit, have a nervous breakdown because your only child was dying, you couldn't give up...
 
And you shouldn't have to worry about anything else.
 
"Santa's got to go, busy-busy-busy." Wiley stood back up and seen the mother's smile. The shotgun was murdering his hip, which might have served him right for even considering something as stupid as he was about to do. He doubted that the ol' obnoxiously bright green Kia would have made much of a get-away car, and that was presuming that he had managed to actually get the bank robbed and then get back to where he had parked it, two streets over. It had seemed reasonable, as Pine Avenue was the quickest way out of town...
 
"EVERYBODY DOWN! NOW!" Wiley barely had time to let the words settle in and begin to make some kind of sense when he seen the four masked gunmen walk briskly in through the front door. It was almost instinct that made him drop as soon as he seen the firearms. As it was, he had found the right place to do it, as he was standing near the desk where people filled out all of the forms that they needed before heading up to the window. It was the same desk where he had grabbed the withdrawal slip and hastily scribbled his note that he would have handed to the teller. She, invariably would attempt to set off some kind of silent alarm, as she tried to gauge the time that she could safely spend delaying him for the cops to show up.
 
"SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN!"  
 
Bruce Springsteen's voice sang out through the PA system as two the men strode right past him, as if he wasn't even there.
 
"SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN!"  
 
Wiley looked back to see Ellie had either crawled in underneath her mother, or her mother had pulled her in there. Wiley watched as the closest man to them jerked the woman's purse away, and then noticed the bill in Ellie's hand.
 
"Give it to me," he said as he pointed the handgun down toward her mother.  
 
Ellie was too frightened to know what was the right thing to do. Her whole sense of right and wrong was all jammed up.
 
"SANTA CLAUS IS COMINNNN'... TOOOO TOWWWWN!"  
 
"I SAID"... the gunman stopped talking once the rock-salt spun him around, and he began to howl as he cradled his arm. He had likely believed that he had been hit by some double-aught buck, and was rapidly moving closer to the ending of his days.  
 
Robbing a bank was one thing. Actually killing someone was another. It was not really about the extra time that would inevitably be added to his sentence. It was just about killing someone that had made the decision for him to use the old rock salt rounds. It stung like a bitch, but you mostly got up and everything would heal up just fine in the end.
 
Both Ellie and her mother were looking at him now as he still held the shotgun. For Ellie's mother, she had no clue what in the hell was going on. The look in Ellie's eyes was another matter entirely.
 
"You've been naughty!" Wiley stood up and sent a round blasting past the two men at the door. He was relieved to hear the sound of the alarm going off once the glass window at the front of the bank spatter crackled from the shot, quickly ducking back down and rolling to the aside as the two gunmen at the door returned fire.  
 
Wiley was not even sure why that had sounded like such a brilliant idea, but they sure as hell were not paying any attention to Ellie and her mother anymore. Rolling into the walkway, which led inside of the loan department; and with nothing really to separate him away from the bank robbers but a half-wall was not going to do much but maybe buy him some time to think. He heard at least one of the men running towards him.
 
It was at that very moment that some one of the bank employees chose to make a break for it out a side door. Wiley was not even sure if there was a side entrance to the bank, or if they were merely trying to get out of the line of fire. Why-ever that decision was made, it drew the gunman's attention, and he had nearly walked past Wiley entirely before he had thought to turn.
 
"Ho-ho-ho asshole," Wiley said and blasted him straight in the chest as he attempted to spin around and get the mini-assault rifle turned on him.  
 
Wiley kept moving, just trying to keep something between himself and a clear shot from one of the other two. The wonderful thing about the salt-rounds was that nobody died. The not so wonderful thing about it was that, after a few rolls, spins and a bunch of hollering; they would inevitably get back up again.
 
"SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN!"...
 
Wiley stood up as soon as he heard the front door open, and put a load in the britches of one of the two that had been standing by the door, as they attempted to make their get away. Wiley quickly wracked another load in as he seen motion from near about where the first man had fell.  
 
"Didn't learn your lesson eh?" Wiley said as he walked himself in closer behind the gun, and stopped up short when he heard the word "FREEZE!"
 
"You got this now?" Wiley asked as he lowered the shotgun, and then let it fall as he turned to see that the old security guard had finally caught up with the action. Trouble was that the old short nose thirty-eight was pointed at him.  
 
"Yeah Son, I got it now." The old man said as he pivoted quickly toward the first fallen gunmen. "I'm not even going to ask you why it was that you would bring a shotgun into a bank, but the police certainly will." He said as he moved forward and kicked the gunman over, who still was not feeling too spunky from the load of salt that Wiley had laid into his shoulder. "You best get yourself on now, and Merry Christmas." He said as he put a set of cuffs on the man.
 
"Yeah..." Wiley said as his gaze turned back to Ellie one last time. "Keep being good," Wiley said, and winked before he moved quickly outside of the door as he heard the sirens moving in quickly.
 
"BECAUSE SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN'... TO TOWWWWN!"
 
Epilogue:  
 
Wiley sat down on the edge of the bed as Kenny opened his eyes.  
 
"How you doing Baby-boy?" Wiley asked, and the boy forced a smile before his eyes moved past him.
 
"What's Santa doing?" He asked, and Wiley turned towards the television to see himself, obviously captured on the bank cameras. Wiley moved away from the bed to turn up the sound.
 
... "Police have no idea who the man, dressed as Santa Claus, was; but eye witnesses at the scene all said that the man foiled the bank-robbery attempt using rock-salt pellets loaded into a shotgun.  
 
When local police asked young Ellie Watson what had happened, this is what she had to say. The reporter said, with a gleam in her eye before the camera shot onto the face of the young girl that Wiley had met at the bank"...
 
"Santa?" Kenny said, with some disbelief, as Wiley turned back after a quick intro into precisely what it was that Ellie believed that she had seen.  
 
"Yeah Baby-boy, it looks as if he took care of some bank-robbers today, in-between his getting ready for his Christmas Eve ride," Wiley smiled at the boy's wonder in that, as it seemed as if he had not seen it in his son's eye a very long time.  
 
Uley