So there are these animals in a hostile environment
they have wickedly hooked chitonous growths sprouting from their heads
and their feet are edged with a thin rim of razor sharp bone
these animals are called reindeer
and they have basically cornered the market for living in terrible places
I mean polar bears live in terrible places too
but what if a polar bear and a reindeer are living in the same place huh?
obviously the place you are living is significantly more terrible if there is a bear in it
and you are not the bear
REINDEERS WIN THIS DUBIOUS PRIZE

so anyway these animals are just chilling out in winterhell
digging craters into the tundra with their weaponized hooves
so they can slurp the lichen from between sheets of uncaring ice
(terrible places)
when they notice that something is amiss in the herd
because
you see
one of the reindeer
IS DIFFERENT

now what you have to understand
is that reindeer can see much further into the spectrum than humans
The world basically looks like a perpetual blacklight party to them
or maybe a crime scene
bodily fluids all conspicuously spattered over everything
especially places where you like to eat food
reindeer see ultraviolet light is what I’m trying to say
and it appears that one of these reindeer
has a SUSPICIOUS APPENDAGE
this dude’s nose is emitting ultraviolet radiation at a goddamn alarming rate
to the other reindeer this makes the nose appear very, very shiny
one might even say
it glows

This reindeer (let’s call him Rudolph, for convenience) is shunned by his comrades
this is because they do not want fucking skin cancer
and here’s this mutant reindeer with a tiny chernobyl going off inside his face
and he’s wondering about why he doesn’t have any friends
(oh yeah
in this story reindeers have the ability to wonder
there is no research to support this
but this is what is known as narrative convenience)

luckily for Rudolph
a local entrepreneur is looking to take his freight-delivery business global
he is not a very good entrepreneur
seeing as he has set up business at the north pole
and also he carries his packages jumbled together in a huge burlap sack
tenuously secured to an open-topped sled
basically he is hoping that the novelty of his operation will outweigh any disadvantages

anyway what this guy
(let’s call him Santa)
is looking for right now
is a cheap and renewable source of energy to propel his stupid sleds
and he has heard about this reindeer with the carcinogenic nose
so, on the assumption that anything that causes cancer must do something cool
Santa goes and hits rudolph up
he’s like hey man
i hear you are some kind of mutant
can you like
run really fast
or fly or something?
and Rudolph is like hey yeah
I can totally fly
that’s not really that special though
all reindeer can fly apparently
and Santa is like holy shit how did I not know about this
I’m going to be fucking rich

But santa feels like he’s sort of commited to rudolph
so he hires him anyway
and when the other reindeer find out that rudolph has a job and money and shit
they all start trying to be his friends
and he is so starved for affection that he ends up getting them all jobs towing the sled
and they use his freakishly glowing nose as a form of radar or something
and at some point santa starts giving out all his shit for free
which is pretty irresponsible because who knows where that shit came from in the first place
there are a lot of holes in this story to be honest
what’s important to remember
is that everyone died of skin cancer

the end