The Man Who Got Away: Not Your Typical Christmas Story

Nicholas Clauzen worked hard, worshiped often, laughed, cried, loved, and lost. He and his wife built the most beautiful home in the kingdom, where they began raising their five children on their farm. Life was good … until fate had other ideas. Lord Asster, offended by the beauty of Nicholas's humble home, sets in motion a plan to seize the Clauzens' farm for himself. As Nicholas is away to plead his case, Asster has the farmer's family brutally murdered. Soon after, the nobleman himself is killed. Accused of a crime he didn't commit, Nicholas becomes a hunted man. Raw with grief and anger, he flees into the mountains, where he uses his woodsman's skills to survive in the wilderness. To pass the years, he makes wooden toys with an imaginary companion named Sprite. Desperate, lonely, and yearning for human contact, he decides to go back into the village in disguise to sell his wares, even if the price may be death. Once there, he learns that no one can afford to buy his toys because the royal family has taxed everyone into poverty as retribution for Asster's murder. Determined to help somehow and to remind the villagers that there is still some good in the world, he gives the toys to the children before slipping back into the night, an anonymous, bearded benefactor from the cold North. In doing so, a lonely man on the fringes of sanity creates the legend of Santa Claus-proving that even in horror, there can always be hope.

Being alone meant time on his hands, time to think. He had to busy himself with something, anything. He would never build another house. He didn't own any land in the first place and in the second place, in his own eyes, he didn't deserve to live in anything other than a hole in the ground. Nick's tortured mind told him,"It is my fault that my family is dead. I should have been there to protect them. Why am I alive? Why doesn't God just kill me? It's His punishment for my not being there for my family when they needed me! How they suffered! Oh God! Sweet, beautiful Mary, little Nicholas and my beautiful daughters, I didn't even get to bury them. It is no wonder that even the bears can't stand the sight of me!"Nicholas retreated into his hole and under his covers to finish dying. His soul was already dead but his determined heart just kept beating! Beating and beating and beating! He pounded his chest as hard as he could but the damn thing wouldn't stop! The sword! He could kill himself with the sword!