Part XIX

 

I opened my eyes.

Snow was dropping out of the sky as if a great God was sprinkling salt onto his plate of chips. I hadn’t completely emerged from my underground bed and the snow melted on my face leaving dark muddy tracks running down my chin. I breathed in deeply tasting the sweet air although in truth in tasted like stale bread left in the sun.

But I was alive.

The Croc was standing over me to the left, peering quizzically at me.

The girl?

Where was she? I looked around urgently spraying dirt in all directions.

“Have you seen a girl around here?” I asked the Croc.

“Plenty of girls around here, mate,” he said, “Problem is they’re all underground!”

He chuckled ignoring the nasty look I was giving him.

“I think her name is…Violet?”

“Like the end of a rainbow?”

“I don’t think that’s how that works.”

“Well maybe I’ll look around this place and see if there’s any Violets or Ambers or Scarlets. Fancy a shape if I see one?”

“You’re about as interesting as a straight line.”

He wandered off inspecting the names on the headstones while giving worrying nods every so often.

There had been a girl. Lying in my not so shallow grave, had I found a small window to the afterlife, or had it been oxygen deprived fever dreams.

Violet. Ultra Violet.

It had to have been real. All these years trying to rid the world of Santa and he had come damn near close to killing me. Lest we forget, Santa is an evil git. He’s getting away with it too. I am coming closer and closer to a loss from which there is no return. I dug myself out of the ground and sat down on a nearby headstone and tried dusting myself off.

Whatever that place had been - purgatory, somewhere between heaven and hell, the island from lost – I had been there. I had found her. I had come back. But she hadn’t. Or at least not here.

“Oi, Croc!” I shouted into the whitewashed moonlit abyss, my voice echoing through the graveyard like a ringing phone that has been forgotten at work over a long weekend.

“Oi!” A Croc-shaped head popped up from behind a gravestone, clearly guilty of... something.

“What are you up to over there?” I asked knowing immediately that I would regret it.

“Um, just digging this one up. Don’t think he was quite cooked yet. May be able to get over it.”

He slowly emerged and wandered over, adjusting his pants. I decided to close my eyes.

“How does one bring someone back from the dead?” I asked.

“Well, that’s not really… possible,” he said, eyes darting around.

“Oh.” A sudden pang of disappointment hit me hard.

“Of course, if they were in the liminal space…” Croc trailed off.

“What is the liminal place?” I asked, genuinely curious.

“Oh, y’know, the in-between place,” he said, shrugging dramatically and waggling his hands suggestively between his legs. “The… space where you’re neither here nor there.” He paused, looking like a man who’d said “in-between” enough times to get himself in trouble.

I thought about it for a second. It sounded suspiciously like it might be worth a shot. After all, I had a whole list of things to lose, and this wasn’t on it. Also, stranger things had happened to me.

“So… then… how do we do that?” I asked, squinting as if I might get some kind of magic recipe for bringing the dead back to life, or at least a script for a decent horror movie.

Croc gave me a look.

“Oh, I’m not sure you really want to go down that road…” His voice dropped low.

“I think I do,” I said, because really, what was the worst that could happen? More dead people?

“Well, we’re going to have to call… him…” Croc said, lowering his voice like he was saying the name of Voldemort.

“Who?” I asked, leaning in, practically vibrating with excitement.

“We can’t say his name. That’s the thing.” Croc’s eyes narrowed as if to imply I was about to make a terrible mistake. “If you say his name three times, he shows up. And trust me, you don’t want him showing up. That guy’s, uh... nuts, and I’m saying that as someone who’s hanging out with you in a graveyard after a spot of wanton violence and necrophilia.”

I stared at him, suddenly regretting every life choice that had brought me to this point.

“Great. So now we’re summoning lunatics, too?”

“Well,” Croc said, “it’s either that or take up knitting. Your call.”

I thought about it. I thought about the years of fighting Santa with no success. Of lost friends and a pigeon. Now, I had someone, well I didn’t have her, but it seemed like we were connected. Like two people in a Michael Bolton song.

“I’ve been doing this for 19 years.”

“You’ll be doing this when you’re 90!”

“Do it.”

Croc bent over stretching out his hamstrings followed by what can only be called unnecessarily graphic yoga poses. Then he looked me straight in the eyes and said…

“Cat-tlejuice!”

Cattlejuice. What in the world?

“Cat-tlejuice!”

“I think ‘milk’ would be an easier term to use.” I said unable to stop from interrupting him.

He paused.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

I paused. Then nodded.

“Cat-tlejuice!”

There was a moment of nothing when suddenly a blast of yellow flashing light erupted on the ground. Lightning split open the sky. A crack appeared and a shadowy figure started to rise up slowly, like a bad entrance for a singer at a pop music concert.

“The Juice…is…loose!”

The…man…looked like the illegitimate love child of Pennywise and the Joker. Wild green hair, dirty white face with racoon eyes and a ridiculously ugly smile. He wore an ill-fitting striped suit and started picking his teeth with long yellow fingernails.

“You’re…Cat-tlejuice?” I asked, thinking suddenly that Croc was right, and he was no longer the weirdest person in the room.

“That’s what they call me. But it’s just a nickname.”

“’Milk’ was already taken, hey?”

“My name is Michael Kat-on.”

“Okay that makes a little more…”

“And I like to have intimate time with cows.”

Oh, for crying out loud.

“So,” he asked, “What do you want?”

“I heard you can take me to the other side?”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“I think someone I know is there and I want to get her back.”

“Ah so you want to go after a bird in the nether regions.”

“Don’t you mean netherworld?”

“I said what I said! What’s in it for me?”

“The pleasure of helping someone find true love?”

“Let’s say that and…let me think…oh like an hour in that dug up grave over there…”

Croc, who had been decidedly quiet, audibly gasped.

“Deal.”

Croc started muttering to himself.

Cat-tlejuice pulled out a small gold mobile tablet and typed in some words muttering what I imagined was old Latin, and a golden door shaped portal appeared. I had expected something more like the ground turning into a whirlpool of fire, but I guess a portable door was going to be easier on the knees.

We walked out into a sandy post-apocalyptic world.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“You’re in the void,” said Cat-tlejuice, “Think of it as purgatory. Some call it a metaphysical junkyard. Where anything useless goes before it gets annihilated forever.

There is like an office we should have gone to first but that would have meant taking a number and sitting for aeons. Administration is such a goldfish in the bowl of time. And besides it gets icky because they play with the multiverse there and that just gets confusing. In one universe, I’m Batman.”

Croc had a giddy grin on his face.

“What’s up with you?” I asked thinking no one should be happy to be in a place like this. It certainly wasn’t the paradise I had experienced when I was last here.

He let out an excited giggle, “We’re parodying Deadpool and Wolverine! Oh, I get to be Deadpool. I have the vocabulary and wit for it. Are we going to get in trouble for IP infringement?”

I was happy to let him be Deadpool. Hopefully he’d put on a mask.

“I…am…SCMD Jesus!” he proclaimed.

“Dead…Crocpool…Croc, you can’t be that. We already have one of those and he’s the problem.”

Croc wasn’t even pretending to listen to me as he started doing a strange dance. He was probably making a TikTok of himself.

“Okay, so what do we do now?” I said turning back to Cat-tlejuice.

“This is as far as I go. Got me a hot date. You boys are on your own.”

With a splash, the ground beneath him turned liquid and he disappeared into it. See, whirlpools would have been cool.

I saw a trail of smoke on the horizon. We were not going to be alone for long. Several Mad Max type vehicles rolled up and circled us. As the dust settled down, I could make out the drivers and passengers. They were short.

Fuck.

Elves.

To cut a long story short, the fight was short lived, not that the Croc helped in the slightest as he was too busy thinking of sarcastic insults to throw instead of throwing his fists. I had lost consciousness after a particularly sneaky elf hit me from behind with a candy cane.

I awoke tied up. With the Croc. Face to face. I really wished that he had gotten a mask. We had been put onto one of the vehicles and was doing breakneck speed across the sandy dunes. I could make out a large structure that seemed to be designed…or had been…a giant.

“Oh look,” said Croc putting on Ryan Reynold’s voice, “Paul Rudd finally aged.”

“Shut…up!”

A figure walked out of the structure. As they walked into the sun, I knew it wasn’t an elf but I didn’t want to jump to conclusions in fear of being cancelled for being height biased. The figure was thin and wearing a loosely fitting red and white robe and was mostly hairless. A bald woman.

“Who are you?”

“Don’t you recognise me…Captain?!”

I squinted my eyes against the sun. Wait. No.

“Santa?”

“Here they call me Cassanta.”

“What the hell happened to your beard??? And your hair??? I thought you were a woman! I apologise for jumping to conclusions, you can be whatever you want to be, but what the fuck?”

“Oh, you know, I just wanted to focus on myself for once. I’ve been doing Pilates, getting my ten thousand steps in, eating more veggies. Someone told me shaving the beard would make me look younger.”

“And you think this is a good look??”

“There have been fewer ho-ho-hos, and I miss a good steak and a brandy.”

“Hey, you only live once,” I advised sagely.

“Or a few times in my case…anyway Captain I digress…shall we get back to our tête-à-tête?”  

“By all means.”

An elf with extremely long hair wearing a vest that said ‘Bali’ on it walked over and cut the ropes that were bonding the Croc and I together.

“What are you doing here?”

“I never left.”

“Didn’t you blow up?”

“T’was but a scratch.”

He was moving around like a hungry wolf looking in on a hen party.

“You also,” he continued, “Seem to have come out unscathed. But then why are you back here? And what is that…thing…doing?”

Croc had pulled out a small knife and was singing to it the words, ‘Baby knife’ to the tune of ‘Baby shark’.

“Just ignore him. What have you done? What have you done with Violet?”

“Ho, ho, ho,” Cassanta chuckled, “You’re here for a girl? I feel insulted. I thought you preferred chasing after me? ‘Life mission and what not’.”

Against my will, I was impressed with myself that I was being quoted. Perhaps Santa sat down on the day after Christmas and read SCMD as well.

“It’s not all about you,” I mumbled.

His eyes suddenly shone with fire, “But it is Captain! It’s always been about me!”

Fucking narcissist.

“Look,” I said, “Can we skip ahead to the battle, I mean, I’ve got things to do, people to find, and I still need to figure out how to get back after that.”

Cassanta walked up to me and slowly reached out a surprisingly tender and well moisturised hand. I fought the urge to ask what his skin care routine was now.

He placed his hand on my head and I felt his fingers clawing it’s way through my skin and massaging my brain.

“Ah, you are in love,” he said tenderly, “But at the same time your resentment for me is still a wildfire. We are not at the end of the road Captain.”

I cringed as his fingers searched through the areas of my mind while physically clawing in and out of my face.

“Well, you know what they say,” I mumbled through clenched teeth, “The last mile is the longest.”

He removed his hand, looked at Croc with an expression that suggested that he wouldn’t touch Croc even if he knew where the Lost City of Atlantis was. They were probably hiding from him in any case.

“Love is a battlefield,” Cassanta said wistfully, “I’ve loved and lost as you remember. It only opens the door for pain.”

“Maybe you weren’t doing it right…”

“SILENCE,” he paused in deep thought, “Perhaps it is time. Perhaps it is time to end it all.”

“You mean like retire to a nice island and herd sheep?”

“No,” he paused for dramatic effect, “To end this world, this universe, and all universes. Everything except the void. It is peaceful here.”

“So is a nice island with a population of sheep.”

“Enough!”

With that he pulled out a little gold accessory from his robes, drew a fiery circle in the air and walked through it, disappearing.

“That’s a good trick,” I thought as the elves swarmed. Then I shouted at Croc, “Oi through here before it closes.”

Croc and I ran in slow motion, kicking aside the odd eager elf and jumped through the portal as it closed.

We landed, arse over face as usual, on a hard quiet street. Croc was like a cat, he always landed tail up.

“Where the hell are we now?” I thought out aloud.

“I don’t know,” replied Croc, “Australia?”

“Can I help you up?”

That voice.

I rolled over. A figure silhouetted by the sun was reaching out a hand to me.

It was her.

“Violet?”

“Do I know you?”

“It’s like I’ve known you my whole life.”

She blushed.

“How did you get out?”

“Well, it was a process to get the visa, but then a couple flights and here I am. Traveling overseas isn’t that complicated. Did you hit your head?”

I quickly jumped up and gave her an awkward hug.

“Listen, wait for me. I just need to…you know…save all of existence.”

She looked at me quizzically but then gave a shy nod.

“Croc come on!”

“I don’t think you’ve parodied enough of the multiverse angle. I was looking forward to battling a hundred versions of me.”

“Croc, I think you and I both know, if there were multiple versions of you in one place, you would not have ‘battled’. Anyway, one of you is enough.”

He shrugged disappointedly, “Fair enough.”

We raced down the street and found a tunnel leading underground. It was an odd way to get to the underworld but there was a sign clearly stating ‘Administration’ and Cat-tlejuice had mentioned that.

“That’s just too convenient,” muttered Croc, clearly still upset.

“Look, it is what it is…”

The administration office was a large open plan office, with stairs and elevators off to the side. Tables littered with high towers of files and papers and an occasional succulent. The office, which right now was in chaos. I grabbed someone who was sprinting past me. He had a really small head in relation to his body and a nametag that read ‘Bob’. I grabbed a nearby fork and put it to his neck and demanded to know what was going on.

“Someone,” he said in a squeaky voice, “Has taken over the Time Ripper machine on the next floor, and it looks like she is going to rip all of time and space apart.”

“Hey, don’t jump to conclusions, that’s a ‘he’,” I said realising my priorities weren’t in order, “How do we stop him?”

“I’m no physicist, but there are these two tube things in the basement that seems to power the machine. I am guessing if we short circuit it, it will overload the system. You guys seems capable. Rip the cord out of one, rip the other and then have a bro moment and hold each other’s hands creating a circuit. That should make a mixture that will at least cause a small explosion.”

I guessed that Bob had done a few gummies before this conversation.

“You’ll both die of course, but the time and reality of all places will be saved.”

“Isn’t there like an off switch or something?”

“Oh yes, it’s over there.”

I slapped Bob out of necessity and shouted after him as he ran off, “You guys need better security down here.”

I walked over to the main fuse box and turned it off. The whirring circuits and lights shut down in the office shut down.

“Now let’s go get him!” I yelled at Croc who had found a red Santa Claus hat that he had pulled down over his face and was busy trying to tear two eyeholes into it. One had already been ripped open, but it was in the wrong place.

We raced over to the room with the now silent and unlit machine. The room was empty.

“Now where did he go…”

I felt a stab of the memory of a finger in my head.

“Curse you Captain, but this is not over. I will succeed.”

The power suddenly came back on and the machine, not having a surge protector, exploded.

I was blown across the room and my body hit hard against the wall. This time, I did in fact hit my head.

“Ho, ho, ho.”

I closed my eyes.

 

Part XVIII

 

I opened my eyes.

Darkness. A darkness that felt claustrophobic. The back of my head pounded along to a dull beat of a first-time drummer. It just wasn’t cricket hitting someone from behind.

I had fallen into the empty grave. Had he really buried me alive? Had that even been real?

When you sleep, the dream world is as real as your life.

I tried to move. Without beating around the bush, logic and recent events led me to believe that I was in a coffin. Although is a coffin a coffin while I was still alive? Then would it not just be a bed with a lid?

I pushed away the nonsensical thoughts. I thought about what Bear Grylls would do in this situation, but I wasn’t that thirsty. I squirmed around a little until I managed to pull my arms up to a plank position.

Plank position. That’s a wooden box joke. Ha, ha, ha. I must remember that one. Dammit. Stop it. Focus. Even though I’m alive, I still need to breathe. It would help if I had some cough syrup. Then the…coffin…would stop. Ha, ha, ha. I’m dead funny. FOCUS!

I lifted my shirt over my mouth and nose and started small Bruce Lee one-inch punches at the lid of the coffin. It was a terse battle between skin and bone and wood and nail. I ignored the pain as skin tore and I felt the splintering wood become wet with blood. But it began to give way and all too suddenly, the wood broke open. Downwards under the weight of the soil and dirt that rained down on top of me. I quickly pushed it down towards my feet while simultaneously pushing the broken lid aside and digging upwards. The sense of drowning was overwhelming. I sipped short sharp breaths as I could.

I kept going with eyes closed. I felt myself blacking out. With what I can imagine was the last of my strength, I felt my fingers break through the soil and felt the touch of clean air. With a burst of energy, I clawed my way above the ground and rolled over gasping for air.

Santa Claus really is an evil git. He must die.

I coughed up some dirt.

But he didn’t make sure that I was dead…that was a…grave…mistake. Ha, ha, ha.

My eyes closed.

 

*

I opened my eyes.

I sat up urgently drinking in the air violently. I grabbed at my throat trying to remove an imaginary scarf or tie, but nothing was there. Actually, the air tasted sweet. My eyes adjusted to light and as I calmed down, I felt like I was seeing and breathing for the first time.

I was on a plateau of some kind. Trees and long green grass ran through gentle hills and around trickling rivers and rocks. Flowers of every shade and colour carnivorously ate the landscape making a patchwork quilt of colours. The sky gleamed a contrasting orange against a slowly rising sun. It was breathtaking. I breathed in again, slower, purposefully. The air smelt of a spiced perfume and left a lingering saccharine taste at the back of my throat. My racing mind calmed to a stroll. I looked around again.

The world was beautiful. But there was something wrong with it. It was like I was looking at it through a pair of glasses that wasn’t quite right. That wasn’t quite the way to describe it. The edges of objects weren’t just blurred, it was a gradient blending of colours. The lines looked thick and varnished. As if it had been painted onto a three-dimensional canvas and was doing its best to fit in. It felt alive.

“Ciao.”

How had I let my guard down? Dammit.

I turned quickly trying to stand in what I believed was an ancient fighting stance and not just something I had seen in the Karate Kid. There was nothing to see. The old ring-the-doorbell-and-run routine, hey.

“Come sta?”

The voice was coming from a downward direction. I looked down.

It was a tortoise. Or a turtle. I never did figure out how to tell the difference. However, it was unlike the landscape. It was detailed and delicate, each of its oily green wrinkles showing off in high definition.

“Who and what are you?” I asked still doing my best Ralph Macchio impression.

“Ah you speaka da English,” the turtle spoke, “I am a Koopa Trooper. But my friends call me Scully.”

His accent was dipping in and out of the inkwell of pasta sauce, but it probably took a lot of effort to speak like a plumber.

“And you’re a turtle?” I asked.

“If you say so. I never could figure out the difference between a turtle and a tortoise.”

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Oh, you know what this place is,” Scully said its head slowly turning in its shell.

“Is it a dream? Am I dead?”

“When you sleep, your dream world is as real as your life, isn’t it?”

That sounded like an echo. Or a copy and paste from earlier. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. The world continued to pulse gently as white paintbrush clouds mixed with small swirls of dotted birds.

I was either dreaming or dead. It was probably the latter knowing my luck. Santa had finally gotten his way. I started pacing aimlessly and watched the grass suck in my feet while producing small transverse waves that then rippled into its surroundings.

It hadn’t sunk in. I was dead? A lot of really nice people are dead, I guess. A lot of pretty nasty people too. So, this was it. There was an afterlife. Who would have guessed? Looks like I had made it to the good place. That would make a rare tick on the bingo card of the Captain. Or perhaps the bad place had been really misrepresented. It also suddenly dawned on me that it seemed completely empty.

“Where is everyone Scully?” I asked as Scully was taking a meaty bite out of a nearby Jacaranda leaf.

“I’m right here.”

“I mean everyone else.”

 “I guess they must be around, somewhere,” Scully looked around slowly as if just realising he was in a game of hide and seek, “Anyone is particular?”

A hundred and ten billion dead people and I couldn’t think of a single person I wanted to talk to.

“Of course, she’s here you know,” Scully spat out little green shrapnel as he spoke while busy chewing.

She?

Scully looked at me with a duplicitous look, “You know who…”

Scully was as helpful as a wet fish in a housefire.

I looked around again. There hadn’t been an orientation. A pleasant chap at the gates giving directions or a list of things to do and places to see. A trip advisor post or a Google review would have been helpful. I stood arms akimbo and exhaled with frustration. What are we going to do today? I didn’t have a real destination and the landscape was ambiguous in its portrayal of any landmarks, so I picked a direction at random and started walking.

She?

A lifetime of fighting evil had finally come to an end, with a complete lack of achievement or fulfilment. There hadn’t even been a bell ringing or a fitting banging of a gong. Empires topple as house of cards in a tornado. Great men wither slowly and fade away. Santa though. Santa that evil git! He simply is ever lasting. Present. Always. It was a fruitless task to fight him. I could have lived a life. I could have been a contender. I could have been someone. Instead of a bum, which is what I am.

She?

There weren’t many ‘she’ type people that I knew. None human anyway. And the non-human ones had had a way of ending up dead. But maybe that made sense. Maybe C4 was floating around here somewhere doing dodgy things to the squirrels.

Or maybe?

Maybe the person I had seen in the visions. Maybe the one who was waiting? Definitely maybe. But if she was here, it meant that she was also…

The landscape changed suddenly. Bright greens turned a dull grey. The fiery sun turned the sky awash with an ugly dull orange, and yet the world grew darker. From each step sprang a literal cry.  Voices shouting madly of hope, of peace, of happiness. Resolution and restitution. Words posted into a world without action. Post it notes on the fridge of the universe. The road to hell is, indeed, paved with good intentions.

“Wotcher Captain.” Scully had appeared on the path and had now sported a working-class English accent. “Fancy place you wondered up here, then?”

The fields ahead rolled out in front of me into a burnt ashen carpet, the wind carried a high-pitched squeal. Until I looked again, and I listened again. The field was planted with the damned, some whose faces managed to flower towards the sky, screaming in pain only to drown each other out in a melancholic helplessness.

“I don’t think I have the ability to imagine such a place.”

“Well, it ain’t the pope’s wet dream.”

“Where is God in all of this?”

“Oh, he’s around here somewhere. Probably having a drink wondering why no one truly loves him and feeling sorry for himself.”

I looked at Scully. He seemed to be enjoying himself. He didn’t seem like the company I wanted to keep. I decided to leave him again in a slow and steady way. I played hopscotch with the faces and bodies that grew out of the ground, uttering an apology as I inevitably skipped on a nose or trod on a finger.

The ground evened out suddenly to barren rock. Silence fell like a hammer on a mattress. A dark foreboding house that an advert would call a ‘fixer-upper’ stood sad and alone in the middle of a shallow crater. I walked up to it. I didn’t recognise it, but it felt familiar.

“Knock-knock,” I said as I walked over the entrance door.

A single figure sat in the ruins of broken furniture, dusty paintings and forgotten memories. Her back faced me, she wore a pristine white dress that her hair fell in waves. Only her bare feet seemed to carry the collateral damage of the world that surrounded us.

“Hello?” I said timidly.

She turned.

“Well, well, well,” she said in a raspy whisper.

The figure was still mostly silhouetted but a flash of a halo glitched for a second. She was the figure from my visions. My past, my present…my future? She looked at me for a moment and simply shook her head. She looked at my confusion as I half turned to go. She began to giggle and faint traces of colour began to shimmer around her face.

“Who are you?” I asked, “Are you an elf?”

Her eyes looked deep into mine. A small spark of irritation ignited in her stare.

“I am not that short!” her voice began in the same whisper but gained volume and life with every word.

“Look I’m not one to judge but there’s nothing really put up on the high shelves…”

“What are you doing here?” she interrupted, “You shouldn’t be here. Not yet.”

Colour was seeping into her cheeks, like a flower turning its head to the morning sun.

“I love you,” she said to me.

“Why?”

“No idea.”

I looked at her again and felt the tugging of my heart and soul.

“I guess I can’t help falling in love with you.”

“Wise men say.”

“Who are you?” I pleaded.

“I am Violet.”

She suddenly took my hand, and a fire light the blood flowing in my veins. I felt alive. I felt the shape of happiness. She was a thousand suns burning in a midday sky. She was radiant.

“We need to get out of here,” she said urgently.

“Give me a breather, I just chose hell over heaven just to hang out with you.”

“Don’t be an idiot, this isn’t hell.”

I looked at her for a moment. A seriousness had washed over her.

“Nobody…said this was…hell…Captain.”

The voice was even and plain and I managed to pick out Scully as he walked out from behind a fallen table.

“Croc?” I said hopefully, but I knew it wasn’t. He hadn’t once asked me for weed. Or a beer.

Scully slowly waddled over to the remains of a fireplace.

For a moment the world blurred. Scully began to transform. In that cosmic moment, I saw unlimited faces and eyes, decorated with many celestial ornaments and wielding many kinds of divine weapons. He wore many garlands on His body and was anointed with many sweet-smelling heavenly fragrances. He revealed himself.

“Okay so you are actually just a teenage mutant ninja tortoise?” I asked with some mirth.

Scully had grown to be human sized but was still an amphibian. And now standing up straight was showing off a bit too much of himself to the world.

“Well, fuck,” he said, “Don’t think I read the directions properly. Give me a second.”

“We need to get out of here,” Violet was tugging on my shirt trying to pull me away, but I had to admit I was curious.

A light flashed and faded and this time the figure stood hunched over.

“Ho. Ho. Ho.”

Well to be honest that was rather anticlimactic. There were more twists in a doughnut.

We stared at each other, sizing up the other.

“Santa…”

“Captain…”

“Actually I have a bone to pick with you,” I accused him, “Last time we met, you hit me from behind. That was a really cheap shot. And honestly burying me alive just isn’t cricket. You’d think we had managed to bring some honour and respect to our battles. I mean it was just a few years ago when…”

“Do you ever shut up,” he interrupted, “You…you…you sanctimonious sloth?”

“Sancti…? Monious…? Sloth…? How dare you?”

“This is why people hit you from behind, you just never stop talking do you?”

Violet was shaking her head as she watched this battle of wits unfold.

“Will you two boys stop fighting for a second and just say you’re sorry.”

“Okay, okay I’m sorry,” I raised my hands in surrender, “Forgiven. Forgotten.”

“Not sorry,” muttered Santa.

“Do you want to shake hands?” Violet used the tone teachers use where they ask a question which is actually an instruction.

“Don’t push it, Violet.” I shook my head instead, “I don’t know where his hands have been.”

Santa had started impatiently and childishly kicking through the rubble.

“Oi, so Santa,” I said, “What is this place and where are we?”

His eyes lit up for a second.

“Oh Captain, my Captain. We are in your purgatory. Between your last life and your next. You were right. I should have just put two bullets in your head and called it a day. Here, we have to live in your hell of negative emotions – your fear, your anger, your darkness. Yes, yes, it has your so called heaven as well, but honestly a day in the bush doesn’t sound like heaven to me.”

“And he says I prattle on,” I whispered to Violet.

“So,” Santa continued, “I’m not actually sure what happens now. A heartbeat here could be a lifetime back there. Or vice versa. You could wake up here, there or the other there. Or somewhere else completely. But I feel you’re that mosquito that will wake up in the place that will annoy me most.”

“Well at least something to look forward to…”

He smiled at me. That was never good.

“One who remembers me at the moment of death, relinquishing the body ascends and achieves my nature. There is certainly no doubt about this.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means, Captain, you fool. Even if you go back now, you will be an incarnation of…me!”

He started glowing.

“That’s enough, let’s go.” Violet grabbed my arm and with a strength unbecoming of her height, she pulled me out of the door.

“You’re very strong for someone the size of a raccoon,” I said to make sure I drilled the point home.

“I guess I have superpowers when it comes to you.”

“Ah, ‘Ultra Violet’”

She gave me a nasty look.

Santa had continued to glow brighter and brighter.

We eventually stopped and looked back.

The light suddenly sucked in on itself. For a moment, nothing happened. Then everything happened. There was a large release of incendiary energy. A fireball the size of a bus shot up and burst into a mushroom cloud of flames. The sky caught fire. And the fire spread. From space, it must have looked like a tidal wave of blue and red flames blanketing the world.

“I have become Death,” I said profoundly, “The destroyer of stuff.”

“That doesn’t have a poetic ring to it,” said Violet at the blinding light caught up to us.

“Poetic? Like what?”

“Release the cabbages!”

I looked at her as the light began to burn. I watched the world implode in her eyes. She was beautiful.

“Oh well, it is what it is…”

*

I opened my eyes.

Darkness. I gasped for air. It tasted of dirt. And cabbages.

Dammit. After all that and I was still in the coffin.

Groundhog Day.

I lifted my shirt over my mouth and nose. Bruce Lee one-inch punches. Pain. Skin. Blood. The wood broke open. Soil and dirt rained down.

With a burst of energy, I clawed my way above the ground and rolled over gasping for air.

Good thing it wasn’t more complicated to get out. It would have been crypt-ic. Ha, ha, ha.

 “Oi Captain, what are you doing in the ground?” a voice said, “You wouldn’t happen to have any weed on you?”

A long deep breath.

“Or I’ll take a beer if you have one.”

My eyes closed.

 

 

Part XVII

 

I opened my eyes.

Several thousand light pixels glittered and sparkled in what I imagined the inside of a computer’s brain was like when it was starting up.

I was starting to get tired of opening my eyes and not actually being awake. This psychological, metaphysical journey was getting mighty irksome. And surely the whole, ‘and it was only a dream’, thing is getting old.

The pixels danced in reverse mitosis, enhancing colours and depth as it gained shape and form. Imagine being on a really fast train and the world was being built around you by really, really slow ants.

The Sandman, should I ever meet him; has a swift kick to his dream-stones coming to him.

With no warning or inertia, everything stopped.

*

I opened my eyes.

There I was. In a way it was disappointing; I was lying in a very comfortable bed, in a place that felt like home. Déjà vulnerability. Familial sunlight played tug-o-war against pale curtains, warmly creating waves of welcoming light that edged across the shores of the ceiling. I rolled over…and there was a person shaped topography beside me under the covers, gently breathing as a proof of life.

I made a silent prayer that it wasn’t the Croc, which almost guaranteed it would be. I wasn’t ready for that. Best let sleeping Crocs lie.

The walls had paintings adorned to it. Paintings of places and times and shapes and colours that bore no meaning. The ceilings had lights repelling from its base. Behind the earlier mentioned curtains, were windows with glass and no bars.

The sudden awareness of the absence of sound made it appear in a drumbeat. Birds, those idiotic, winged things with all the world at their feathertips, but absolutely nothing to say; sang loudly about the lateness of worms. A faint drilling was reminiscent of a plane joining those birds but not killing enough of them. An unnecessarily loud hum came from the corner of the room where on a small desk in front of a small chair was a laptop – who was thundering and coughing as all old laptops tend to do.

I slipped clandestinely out of bed, although my bed partner didn’t notice. I sat down on the small chair and tapped on the space bar.

The laptop exploded into colour. It landed on an open document. A blank canvas of a document. A white so vast and expansive that it was painful to look at.

It was named SCMD Part XVII.

What?

I minimised the window.

A folder.

SCMD.

Part I, Part II, Part III and all the way up as the roman numerals got fuzzy.

What was this?

This wasn’t real. I opened a few documents.

“Santa Claus is evil. And he will die by my hands. Life mission (and what not)”

It had postscripts, but it was not really a letter.

“If you're reading this Santa, I'm gonna get ya, I'm gonna get ya good!!!!”

Other characters narrated it, I guess because it got very maddening to keep repeating it.

“Well, over the last few years, you have found a truth in the universe that very few people can comprehend, let alone believe. That Santa Claus is real. More than that you have also figured out that Santa Claus is evil.”

It even had French accents.

“You have decided to take it upon yourself to rid the world of la evil. Of course you are neither able nor capable. Yet you continued to try. And like a madman, you continued in spite of le fact that you continued to fail.”

One of the chapters had the story written from Santa’s perspective. That was clever actually. I wouldn’t mind reading that. If anything, just for some insight.

I read and read. It was some funny stuff. Some blasphemous stuff. Some just plain weird stuff. But that’s easy to do when you write it down rather than live it. It was everything that had actually happened. It was real. It was real?

It had to be real.

“Santa Claus is an evil git. Santa Claus must die.”

I closed all the documents and reverted back to the blank canvas.

I slowly typed.

“I opened my eyes…”

*

I was in a musty dark room. I was lying deep inside a soft couch. It was very comfortable. The taste of a bitter apple lingered on my tongue.

I realised I wasn’t alone. A girl dressed in black stood next to a calendar. She wore a potent black, even though the room was dark and the edges were finely drawn against the background. It was likely that I may have been able to see her even with my eyes closed.

“Hello,” I said.

“Sit in the chair,”

“Why,” I replied, “I’m already sitting.”

“Not that chair!”, she cut me off, “In that chair.” She pointed to a chair which had all the makings of an electric chair.

“Why?”

“So, we can play a game.”

“What game?”

“It's called, "Is There a God?””

I wasn’t really about to start playing games with little girls with no supervision, even if it had been scrabble and not what was clearly about to end with, “Is he dead yet?”

“Listen, my name isn’t Jeff.”

I realised there was no need to actually make any small talk at all, as the door behind her was wide open, so I made a dash for it when she turned her back. This actually took three attempts to take off from the couch, for which I blame the couch, and not my aging knees.

“Don’t be a baby, I know what I’m doing,” I heard her voice raise four octaves, “Where the fuck did he go…this happens every fucking time. Moooooooom!”

The soundwaves kept up with me for a long while but soon faded into silence. Darkness crept in to keep it company. With irritation I grumbled, “Load shedding…”

“Captain…”

If it wasn’t for the silence I wouldn’t have heard it, but I still perked my ears up. Imagination is a poor bedfellow in such times.

“Captain…”

I turned a corner and the thick blackness had a sandwich shaped electric blue glow cut into it. While thinking a sandwich would really go down well, I realised it was the outline of a closed door.

While one doesn’t simply just go around knocking at eerily glowing doors, I figured that it wasn’t Santa’s colours and any port in a blackout.

I opened the door gently and it complied without any complaint.

The room was lit up from corner to corner; and if one squinted in just the right way, I believe one may have been able to see the future. Even the spiders were wearing sunglasses.

“Captain…”

The disembodied voice was coming from a high wing back chair facing a fireplace which bloomed a lively blue flame. I couldn’t see the owner.

I cautiously approached and turned the corner.

“Croc?”

“Wotcher Captain, do you have…”

“No, I don’t have any weed.”

I took a moment to check my pockets and realised I was wearing silky pyjamas.   

“Figures…”

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, if I wasn’t here, then I’d be there, and you’d have a slightly different stupid question and still no fucking weed.”

Fucking Croc.

He looked me up and down like a baby monkey seeing a banana for the first time.

“You look like hell,” he said, “What have you been up to?”

“I don’t actually know. I just woke up in a room with a weird child trying to kill me.”

“Ah, so just another Wednesday, my dude…”

“Is this real, Croc?”

“You can call me Croc Marley…”

“Croc Marley? Like Bob Marley? Oh, because you think that will get you weed sooner?”

“You know the day you ask an intelligent question; you’ll probably get hit by a bus.”

I then noticed that several heavy chains were tied to the Croc.

“Are you doing some BDSM?”

“Ah! You do not know the weight and length of strong chain you bear yourself! It was as full and as long as this seven Christmas eves ago and you have laboured on it since. Ah, it is a ponderous chain!”

I gave him a quizzical glare that would translate into a wtf emoji.

“Tonight,” he continued, “You will be haunted Captain, by three spirits…”

“Whiskey, vodka and tequila?” I said hopefully.

He gave me a glare that would have solidified mercury.

“Hear me! Captain! My time is nearly gone.”

“No need to be so dramatic. It’s not like you have anywhere to be.”

“Oh, but I do, I have an hour booked with Agatha, wonderful German woman who really knows how to pull on a chain. I can’t wait to see her face when my tail pops out.”

I grimaced as he quickly unfolded himself from the chair, stretched, burped twice, and exited stage left to the sound of clinking metal. The lights went off with the closing of the door.

“Fucking Eskom,” I thought as I felt around for the chair and was about to sink into it when I had second thoughts about sitting in a place that had just been vacated by the Croc.

I stumbled to the corner of the room where I had seen another chair, felt its outline and sunk into it.

*

I opened my eyes.

An alarm sounded in the distance. A low, repeated tone breaking down the walls of my sleep. It grew louder. It suddenly stopped. A flash of light struck the air as the curtains were drawn and impatient sunlight flooded the room.

A strange creature appeared before me. Well, it wasn’t strange. It was a very proud looking dog. He was a canvas of different shades of brown but a very discernible halo hovering over his ears. The alarm sound finally registered as barking.

“Hello Captain,” he said.

“What the hell?! You can talk?! Who’s a good boy?”

He bounced up to me and buried his face in my lap.

“No weed then?” he said.

I needed to get a sign printed.

“Who are you?” I asked

“I am the Ghost of Christmas Past,” he said in a gruff voice, “But you can call me Ottobiography”.

I looked at him and he looked back at me with deep puppy dog eyes.

“We are going on a journey,” he said, “Rise! and walk with me.”

I was about to argue but the scene faded into grey and refocussed.

“Where are we?”

As I asked the question, the picture became clear. We were in a small room whose geography was familiar. The low hills of the couches, the peaks of the shelves, the tree in the corner.

“This is where I grew up,” I said.

The tree was covered in cotton wool and toilet roll ornaments. Under it was a mishmash of wrapped shapes.

A little boy ran into the room. It was a strange figure – like a child: yet so not like a child. One could tell it was too early for him to be up, but excitement washed his face.

“That’s me!”

The boy walked over to the tree and stood still scanning the loot. Without touching the objects, you could tell that he was identifying labels where the black ink spelled out his name. Before he was the Captain, he was something simpler.

“EVERYONE WAKE UP, SANTA’S BEEN HERE”.

His voice was alien, a sound that no one had heard in decades.

“Be careful you idiot,” I shouted out, “It’s likely a trap, probably broken glass and a she-man toy.”

“He can’t hear you,” Otto-Biography said, “He can’t hear or see you; this is but a reflection of a memory.”

The boy had waited long enough with no response, so he carefully selected a present. It wasn’t the biggest. Eager hands carefully pulled back tape, preserving the gift wrap.

“Socks?!?!?”

Angry tears formed in his eyes, “I asked for an NES, how does Santa get that wrong??”

His face formed into a hard expression as he thought, “He knew what I wanted. I was good all year. All year! This is a trick. He’s playing with me. That evil…that evil…bastard!”

Before I could try to give him a high five, the scene faded and refocussed.

It was Christmas Eve. The boy had grown older. He stood over a table, a box of rat poison spilling its contents over the wooden surface.

“This will get you,” he muttered as he tipped a large portion into a glass of tap water. “And ha ha, I hate jellebi, let’s see what you do with that you evil bastard.”

A small chicken watched carefully from the corner of the room.

“Oh hell,” I cried out, “It’s Cat! Santa, that evil bastard, killed her.”

The young man laughed maniacally as he stirred the water one more time before turning off the lights and headed off to bed.

The moonlight drenched the room. A clock ticked menacingly on the wall.

Cat hopped over to the table, investigating the jellebi before moving on to…

“No!” I shouted.

Cat pecked at the rat poison that was still on the table.

“No.” I whispered, reaching out to the chicken but my hand ghosted through her.

Cat looked around quizzically.

And then she looked no more.

“No…”

The scene faded and refocussed.

An old man sat in a chair in a dirty room. An empty whiskey bottle watched him sleep. An unkept beard was drizzled a dirty white, the clothes clung snugly to a belly desperately looking for freedom. A television played a nondescript classic movie in the background.

“Santa!”

“Look again.”

“Wait, I thought you said this was the past, is that me? I don’t look like that…”

I looked down at myself.

“Oh…”

Snippets of paper scattered the table with almost illegible scrawls.

Back to the Future…

Thor…

Croc puns…

Santa blasphemy…

The figure stirred and started mumbling, “Santa, that evil bastard…need to…must…Santa Claus Must Die!”

He growled before picking up the empty bottle and gave it a studious look. He suddenly glanced right at me. Our eyes met. But he didn’t see me. But I saw him. The deep sadness and anger. For all the life that had died without having been lived. Time is a construct we don’t ever fully understand. Just passing of moments. Words that can be read a million times, but only written once.

“Can he see us?”

He growled again and looked away staring at the mess on the table, before laying his head down and fading back to sleep.

I had had all the energy sapped from me, “Spirit, remove me from this place”.

“These are shadows of the things that have been,” said Ottobiography, “That they are what they are. Do not blame me!”

“Remove me, I cannot bear it.”

I turned to the proud dog, and seeing that he looked upon me with a face, in which in some strange way there were fragments of all the faces he had shown me, jumped upon him.

“Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!”

It wasn’t really a struggle, but the spirit who offered no resistance, began to glow high and bright. The light could not be diffused, even when I tried to throw a blanket on it, and the light streamed from under it.

An irresistible exhaustion came over me, and the room faded. But it did not refocus.

*

I opened my eyes.

I was back in the chair, consciousness berating me for calling on it too soon.

“Enough is enough,” I thought, “When the next spirit comes, I’m going to politely tell him get a head start fucking off and I’d meet him at the end.”

With that, a sudden scratching noise. It evolved to a knocking at the door.

I convinced my form to unmerge itself from the chair and walked over to the door. The knock intensified.

“Who’s there?”

The knocking continued in triplets.

“No one’s home,” I said hopefully.

No effect.

Fuck it.

I opened the door.

“Come in,” a voice on the other side said.

This was a terribly backwards knock, knock joke. But I obeyed.

I walked into a beautiful room. It would have been featured on the covers of magazines, given a chance. Bright beautiful paint was well lit by a spiderweb of well-chosen light fittings, that perfectly complimented the fireplace of strong dark bricks. The furniture was posh and modern but looked welcoming and homely. A coffee table sat in the middle with a mug steaming delicious smelling cocoa.

“Come in, come in, and know me better man!”

It was Ottobiography. But he looked happier, more joyful. His eyes gleamed with happiness as he ran towards me and jumped up with his forepaws reaching my shoulders. His nose touched my nose and I felt a sense of unerring happiness.

“Ottobiography?!”

“No, no. I am Ottonomous,” his large tongue fell happily from his lips, “I am the Ghost of Christmas Present! Look upon me.”

Besides the demeanour, it was exactly Ottobiography, except then I noticed he was wearing a ridiculous little green bow on his head.

He saw me notice and said, “Get it? I’m a gift! Because present”

He chuckled and his whole body shook with laughter.

“Touch my bone…”

He had a large bone of indeterminate species hanging around his neck for easy nibbling access. I hesitantly reached out and touched it.

The room faded and refocussed.

“Say my name…”

A very manly voice broke through the gloom, and the room resonated with the crack of a whip hitting bare skin.

“Agatha!”

Agatha?

Croc?

What the fuck.

“Oops,” said Ottonomous with a twinkle in his eye, “Right time, wrong place.”

“Pull my tail!”

The room may have faded, or I may have gone temporarily blind.

When it refocussed, I opened one eye carefully.

A warm glow filled the room that you felt before you saw. A figure sat at a table, nimble fingers folding wrapping paper around a puzzle. She was beautiful. An angel in an oversized hoodie. No doubt to hide the wings.

“Who is that?” I asked, realising my mouth was open.

“Don’t you know?”

The woman, while being the personification of a sunrise, looked sad.

“Oh Captain, my Captain,” she whispered, “Where are you?”

“Who is she??” I asked again more urgently this time.

“She’s the foolish one who fell in love with you.”

“With me?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t I know her?”

“You’re off fighting your battles…real and imaginary…and she’s the one waiting for you to come home.”

“Why would anyone leave her alone??”

“You’ve chosen your path.”

“No!”

A side table sat in the corner, crowned with a vase of yellow roses. Picture frames held memories I was in, but didn’t remember. A bystander to my own happiness. Two figures in each others arms – smiling, laughing, a place I didn’t know where was possible. An NPC is my own story.

“Ottonomous, what is this?”

“This is the present.”

I was about to reply but realised I had nothing to say. I was off fighting demons. Santa. A fated life.

“We must go.”

“Can’t we stay longer?”

I saw Ottonomous look lovingly towards the ground. A great big bundle of fur lay at the woman’s feet.

“Unfortunately, we must go.”

The room faded.

*

I opened my eyes.

They were filled with tears that I could not control.

I wasn’t back in bed. I was in an open field. A storm was building, and the world felt like it was filled with the sooty remnants of a fire.

A robed ethereal figure appeared in the distance and slowly floated towards me. It was robed in an ashen, ragged cloak which guised its face.

“I am in the presence of the Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?” I guessed when the figure reached me, “Let me guess, Ottobe…”

He didn’t reply. The feeling of joy that Ottonomous exuded was replaced with a sense of unerring dread.

“Like Ought-to-be??”

The spirit didn’t answer, but from the folds in his garments, an appendage was raised pointing us in a direction.

“Is that your scythe or are you just glad to see me?”

In silence it started floating in the direction.

“Everyone’s a critic,” I muttered as I followed.

We walked across the field and the air grew heavier still. Bullets of raindrops fell, stinging the back of a neck.

We eventually reached a small hill.

“What now, Spirit?”

The robes lifted again pointing towards a small rock in the ground. But more than a rock. It was unnatural. A tombstone.

“No.” I said without any emotion.

I walked around to the front and a man size hole was dug out in front of me. I looked upon the stone at the head of the grave.

“Captain.”

It was in Comic Sans.

“No Spirit, how?”

I looked around. The Spirit had disappeared.

Was this how it ends? It was confusing though, for someone who was likely to be cremated or drowned at sea and never to be seen again.

“Wait Spirit. Hear me! I am not the man I was. I will not be the man I must have been but for this intercourse. Why show me this, if I am past all hope!”

I wept.

“Spirit, show yourself, I know the error of my ways. Santa Claus is not real! I do not need to kill him. It is a representation of my own fears, my own failures, my own shortcomings. I must face these demons, not an imaginary man in a red coat. This is the end of all that. Today I start my life anew. I will give of myself and to myself all that is deserved. I will love instead of hate. I will love completely and wholly. I will be the man I should have become.”

Silence.

“Spirit, show yourself!”

…

“Somebody has been a bad boy…”

What the fuck?!

The robed figure appeared behind me. I turned my head catching him slowly pull off the hood. A twinkly eye, a full white beard, a hint of brandy fragranced the air.

“Wait…what???”

Before I could move, Santa kicked me in the back and I fell head first into the grave. I heard the crack before I felt it as my head hit what could have only been a rock or a hard place.

“Ho. Ho. Ho.” I heard from above, “Or perhaps a spade would be more useful now…”

And my eyes closed.

 

 

*

Dedicated to Otto, a good boy