Part VI

(An email sent on 26 December 2011)

I woke up.

I was overcome by that terrifying vertigo that you experience when you wake up in a strange place that you don't recognise. My eyes adjusted to being open and the outlines on the wall began to take shape.

One of the shapes was moving.

“Good morning. I see you are finally...up.”

What the fuck?

Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit!

I curled up into a ball and tried to hide under the covers.

“Relax...it is only me...Guru Shaun the Monster.”

This, on the whole, was better than the Claus, but not a whole lot better. I decided to stay in my fight or flight mode.

“What am I doing here?”

“You have been asleep for a long time.”

Snippets of 2010 eroded their way out of the depths of my memories like the lazy flowers that don’t quite make spring day. These are the pansies that stay in the closet.

“What happened?”

Guru Shaun took a breath:

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. This is much like an untamed hoss (*horse) who always says neigh. Anyway, having found the truth did not bring you peace (as it seldom does), and instead it made you prepare for war. You took it upon yourself to rid the world of the bearded one. You have thus far been unsuccessful. However it is with great courage and stupidity that you continue your quest. True story.

Me:    Riiiiiiiiiiiight…How did I get here?


Guru: I see you also didn't read Santa Claus Must Die Part V. But it is wholly unimportant.  For all intents and purposes, you were asleep for the whole year.

Me:    Ah…Do you know if I had any wily and cunning plans? I mean it would save time if you told 
me instead of having to figure it out from first principles again.

Guru: Well you were mumbling something in your sleep about Crocodile Hasen.

Me:    What the fuck’s a Crocodile Hasen?

Guru Shaun, for a moment, looked uncomfortable. That was a first.

Guru: You are not ready for the Chronicles of Crocodile Hasen as yet. I can show you some pictures if you want. 

Me:    NO...No...That’s ok.

Guru Shaun had a vast collection of pictures that even the internet wasn't ready for and I had managed to unsubscribe years ago.

Me:              How do I find this Crocodile?

Guru:          The best place to start looking for Croc H is usually behind you. Don’t worry, he’ll 
probably find you. Are you sure I can’t show you a picture or two?

Me:             No...I am quite sure...so why would this Crocodile Hasen thing help me?

Guru:          Well, the universe is a fine balance of good and evil. Santa in this case is clearly the evil 
and you are clearly the good.

Me:             And the Croc is also good, thus helping to weigh more on my side?

Guru:          No. The Croc is the scale. This is not a pun due to crocodiles being scaly...but I’m 
definitely using that one.

Me:             But does that mean I can’t kill Santa because that would destroy the balance of nature?

It is difficult to not be philosophical with Guru Shaun (he gives you the other choice of being ‘filled-of-sophical’ which I’m sure he made up but I’m also certain that I never want to know what it means. Many of Guru Shaun's explanations are practical in nature.

Guru: I’m saying that in the balance of good and evil, it would be useful to have the scale on your side...

With that he stood up.

Guru:          It’s time to milk the hosses.

Me:    You mean cows right?

<Footsteps echoing away>


Me:             Right?!?!?!


<Distant sound of neighing>


Me:             I better get the fuck out of here.

Still very confused, I left Guru Shaun’s Heavy Petting Farm before I became a permanent feature. Guru said that CrocH would find me, but that was just monkspeak for 'I don’t know'. It’s that same bullshit when people believe that 'things will work themselves out in the end'. Yeah, the entire universe will change its natural course because you’re having a bad hair day. Don't be an idiot. You are not that important.

While I was having these extremely introspective thoughts, I wandered aimlessly. I had figured out that it was January. 2011.

I did a clever Forest Gump (which involves some walking, taking random buses and trains...the clever bit was that there was absolutely no running), and I ended up in a vast, deserted wilderness. I began to keep an eye over my shoulder, in the event that Guru was right, and some weird, scaly thing popped up behind me.

“Oi!”

The wilderness was beginning to talk to me?

“Oi...you.”

The echoes made it hard to pinpoint so it was one of a large shaking bush, a pile of rocks, or any one of a thousand trees talking to me.

“Um...yeah?”

“Got any weed?”

“Um...no...”

“Oh well...”

“Wait...who are you?”

“My friends call me Croc.”

Skipping all the introductory back and forth of this, because it is largely me talking to a pile of rocks and I don't want that sort of stories floating around. I still didn't really know what a Crocodile Hasen was, so I was trying to find a log that had eyes. And trying to listen for the sound of a ticking clock.

Somewhere between the talking (mostly things like 'are you sure you don’t have any weed?' and 'you sound like a guy who’d have some weed') the wilderness changed. The biggest change was that the wide open skies turned into a dark, gloomy ceiling. It was dark and cool with a hint of air conditioned moisture in the air.

Suddenly…light.

It took a moment to recognise. It was my cat cave. I'm not quite sure how all this Star Trek beaming about teleporting was happening, but my mind didn't care. Because with light, brought me face to face with the Crocodile.

He was humanoid.

That was probably the creepiest thing when you’re expecting a teenage mutant ninja turtle. 

Normal. 

Unassuming. 

Someone you would pass on the street and forget that you had actually been on the street.

Actually, he was agonisingly normal. And lacking in sharp teeth and claws and armour. He also didn't seem to have an arsenal of weapons or an army of rats at his command either. Short of him having an ICBM up his croc hole, I didn't see how he was going to be of any help.

He was standing with a bowl of cereal in front of my large big screens that showed my servers booting up.

“Got any beer?” he said.

“Beer? You can’t have beer with cereal???”

“I know…but you’re out of brandy...”

This argument lasted quite a while and he was adamant that drinking anything that came out of a cow was sick. Eventually the topic got around to what I wanted.

I sat down, asked him to close the questionable sites he had navigated to during the argument, and told him the epic saga of myself and the Claus. Listening to myself, I realised that this quest has become the Star Wars of epic adventures. I was the Indiana Jones in a world of disillusionment. My quest was the truffle shuffle of the 21^st century and my story was the yellow brick road to the future.

I also repeatedly slipped in that I had no idea how he could help me… He still looked pretty ordinary to me, and would be more likely to be a faceless Victim #29126328192 of Santa, than my right hand of glory (um).

A voiceover in my head interrupted.

In the beginning there was darkness. Then God said, let there be light. The first words in the history of history to ever be uttered were, “Oi...what the fuck...it’s not what it looks like...seriously god, can’t you fucking knock…um…can you pass a tissue.”
The rest is history.

Then in a director’s commentary sort of way:

Adam and Eve did exist by the way. They were the first humans. A slight typo in the Bible. They were part of the first batch of humans that evolved. Don’t blame the writers – the editors censored that work like it was 1940s Germany.

Me:             So you are as old as everything.

CrocH:         Whatever man, are you sure you don’t have any weed here? No? Dammit. Anyway,  it’s good that you know the story of Jesus. I haven’t really been following his antics after I heard he was going up and down people’s chutes. Pretty much TMI right there.

Me:             So you know that Jesus became Santa Claus and you know that he’s evil?

CrocH:         Yeah...so?

Me:             So I’m trying to kill him!

CrocH:         To what end?

Me:             What?

CrocH:         You kill him. So what? No one will know. No one will care. You said you've been
doing this for five years. No one's lifted a finger to help. Fuck clichés, but – you’re going to kill 
Santa – you and what army?

Me:             Well I’m certainly the underdog in the fight...

There was a long moment of silence, as Croc took some root like looking things from down the front of his pants, rolled it in some newspaper, and started to smoke it.

CrocH:         You know what? Your heart’s in the right place.

Me:             So you’ll help me?

CrocH:         Yes. I’ve got nothing better to do.

Me:             Whoo hoo...can I call you Cat?

CrocH:         What. The. Fuck.

Me:             Nevermind.

CrocH:         Right, step one – go buy me some beer.

I was so excited to finally have someone hear my story and be willing to help, that I forgot that CrocH looked like he couldn't help little old ladies cross the street.

It took a while to adjust to having a croc in my life. It required a lot of beer, brandy and a lot of avoiding crocodile puns. Imagine living with a smurf where every other word is smurf, except here every third word in every fifth sentence is croc and every other two words is fuck.

Once all this bonding was done, it was around March. I had been keeping up with world news, because no news is good news and bad news meant Herr Klaus.

Japan was experiencing some rather nasty earthquakes. It had Claus painted all over it. As I was trying to figure out how he was doing it and air it on YouTube I got was copied in an email from Guru.

Dear Japan…my bad...

Guru Shaun the Monster’s attempts to become one with the universe are at times a bit too literal and can lead to side effects (that can usually be cured with a round of strong antibiotics and penicillin).

I wandered into the main lair of my Cat Cave, where the Croc had set up his home base. He was in a video chat with Charlie Sheen.

CrocH:         Dude, what the hell are you up to?

Charlie:       Winning.

CrocH:         And how many women do you have in there?

Charlie:       Six. Also a midget, a monkey and a priest. I am trying to achieve croc blood.

CrocH:         You cannot achieve Croc blood. You wouldn’t survive that. Crocaine is like 10 million 
times more hectic than cocaine. At best you have...tiger blood.

Charlie:       Winning!

And he signed out. Croc turned to look at me and rolled his eyes, “That’s one crazy bastard.”

Me:             What’s tiger blood?

Croc:           Fucked if I know. Sometimes you just need to give the crazies something to do so they 
don’t hurt themselves. You should see what Arnie has been up to. Disgusting.

I told Croc that it was probably about time we started coming up with a cunning plan. He agreed and began packing. I didn't know where we were going, but the Cat Cave was getting a distinct musk, so it would be a good idea to let it air out.

CrocH happened to own a sea-rocket (there’s a sneaky pun in there – 10 points up for grabs) and we made our way across the Indian Ocean.

Me:             What are we doing in Pakistan?

CrocH:         You want to kill Santa. I know a guy who might know where he is.

Me:             Isn’t the North Pole a good starting point?

CrocH:         Don’t be naive. That’s just the location of his sex toy shop.

Me:             You mean toy shop.

CrocH:         Well that’s the front. Come on you worked there for a few months, didn’t you go into 
the dark, mouldy warehouse, that’s lit in a dim red hue.

Me:             Oh, yeah, sure. But that made normal toys – like the “Santa’s Little Helper” and 
the “Klitz Kringle” and the “Little Drum-Her Boy” and the “Handheld Longschlong  
VanHugenstein” and...oh I get it now.

CrocH:         Anyway, Santa Claus can go anywhere in the world. It’s one of perks of not really  
existing.

Me:             So who are we going to see?

The next couple days were a bit of a blur. A lot of red, white and blue in that blur. We arrived in Pakistan and there was utter turmoil.

And then the world rejoiced.

Croc explained it to me that a wanted man had been killed. But it was one of Santa’s close allies, so I shouldn't waste my tears.

Santa had caught wind that we were going to see the man in Pakistan, and had intervened and had sent his minions in advance to plug the potential leak. By the time we had got there, he was already dead.

But like I said, he was an ally of Santa, and the world rejoiced. This made me wonder how I would feel when the day came when I actually killed the Claus. Would I celebrate death the way the world did now?

We left Pakistan in a hurry, what with all the minions floating around. We needed to go underground very quickly. I pointed out to Croc that now that the world was united in killing off people in the name of good, any convenient murders (aka us) could be slipped under that blanket, and I didn't really want my dead body being tweeted by any idiot with a camera.

Does being labelled evil justify your judge and jury to treat you like an animal? Or do we as the 'good and just' world treat every evil with humbleness and goodness? Because if we do just behead the devil and piss on his body and broadcast it all to an awaiting world calling for blood, are we any better than Santa?

We took the Crocket (in case you missed it) to Ireland. Mostly because CrocH was demanding beer everywhere we went, and I figured the Irish wouldn't be in short supply. Dublin at that time was having a World Record Attempt of having the highest number of Wallies (of the Where’s Wally fame) in one place. This provided an excellent hiding in plain view sort of thing.

Once we broke the world record, we snuck into Scotland.

CrocH:         It takes a real man to wear a kilt. You’ve heard of William Wallace? Man, that guy was 
an asshole. And I’m pretty sure he was a little gay.

Me:             I watched the movie. He had that really inspiring speech.

CrocH:         Misquoted. He actually said, “Ye may take mah pride, but ye’ll neva take mah...oh 
look…Rob’s bending ohva...oh Rob, I kenna see ye baws...fabulous...oh right...ma                   
freedom…Oi Rob…aye got ye freedom right hee!”

Scotland proved another drunken mess with lots of hills and being attacked by a flock of seagulls. CrocH, now satiated of his desire for alcohol, turned to demanding weed. So we flew to Amsterdam. This quick maneuvering was definitely keeping us out of Santa’s reach, but wasn't really getting us anywhere in terms of attack.

CrocH:         Dude, you need to chill.

Me:             CrocH smoked three joints simultaneously. One in the mouth and one in each nostril. It 
was quite impressive. He then chuckled for about twenty minutes before falling asleep.

I took the opportunity to try and figure out how I could use CrocH to my advantage. He was definitely older than most people I knew, but his wisdom was dangling by the last few threads of his un-inebriated brain cells. He would probably be the greatest force the planet had ever seen, if only he stayed sober long enough or, I guess, if he gave a fuck.

Still, he actually knew quite a lot about Santa Claus. A lot of the information that he had was because he was actually there. And knowledge is power and power is electricity and electricity is global warming and therefore the end of the world. Knowledge will kill us all. Man, this is some good weed. How long have I been talking to myself?

CrocH:        Dude, shut the fuck up.

Me:             Heh, heh, heh, are you sure I can’t call you Cat?

CrocH:         Yes, I’m sure…also it’s four joints simultaneously…

When we eventually woke up, we heard about a music festival in Belgium, and figured that for three days, we could drop all the plans and just have some fun. I mean three days of music. And we were right there, anyway. The world would survive three more days. And if it didn't, it seemed like a good place to see it end.

On the second day, I was unexpectedly captured on Belgian TV. Unexpectedly because that sounds better than, 'and I gave away our position by giving an interview on TV'. I blame the weed.

It did prove that Santa works quickly.

While I was rocking out to Judas Priest later that night, I didn't notice a man pull CrocH aside and have a long argument. When I looked over, it was a white bearded, plump man in a vest, jeans and army boots. It didn't register until two days later when CrocH insisted we leave.

Me:             Was that Santa?


CrocH:         Well it wasn’t the tooth fairy.

I had never seen Santa Claus before. Other than his boots, of course. It made the last six years a little more real somehow.

Me:             Why didn’t he kill us?

CrocH:         When someone doesn't kill my friends, I don’t ask them why. Asking him to list reasons 
why he wasn't killing you, might have made him think of reasons to kill you.  He was also very 
drunk. I told him that there was a shy and young reindeer hiding out in the fields. That perked his 
interest.

Me:             You mean kill us…not just me right?

CrocH:         Death has long since given up trying to get me. He tried once and had a near-Croc-
experience. Almost killed him, and that sort of irony shouldn't be allowed to get out.

On the Crocket to Spain (a randomly picked country to get out of Belgium), Hasen explained to me that his time with me so far had shown how young and naive I was. I was attempting to kill a man that an entire religious sect tried and failed killing. And I was trying to follow conventional 'stick him with the pointy end' methods.

We hurried through Spain in a manner befitting the Amazing Race, before we found ourselves in England again.

It was rather unfortunate as Croc was about two bottles of brandy down when someone stopped us in the street and asked Croc 'what was up'. Croc revealed exactly what was up, and at least a dozen people were scarred for life. The immediate ripple effect was felt all through a large part of Tottenham and London. The riot police were sent for to try to appease the Croc, but they couldn't get past the throng of people running in the other direction.

Croc and I chose to strategically retreat back to the Cat Cave.

The year, up to that point had been rather wasteful. It had seen me running through a lot of Europe while trying to explain Crocodile Hasen to customs officials. And we hadn't even come up with a cunning plan. 

Crocodile Hasen seemed at ease that we didn't actually need to waste effort on coming up with a plan that didn't work every year, but instead maybe take two years to come up with a plan that did. But I was more of the Wayne Gretzky school of failure that said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” CrocH agreed with that and started pouring shots while singing, ‘I love Croc and Roll’ (this was an improvement on the previous night’s rendition of ‘Solid As a Croc’ and the entire previous week of ‘I Wanna Know What Croc Is’).

So while Crocodile Hasen spent most of his days analysing the parts of the internet that I didn't know existed, I set up a plan of attack station.

CrocH did have a point though. I needed to go outside the box of reasoning. I, perhaps, had to go religious on the bastard. But that wouldn't work. Religion had already tried to kill him and that only lasted three days. And all they did was make a martyr out of him that stemmed a whole new religion.

But I was keeping it Biblical. Maybe I needed to go beyond the Middle East and further East. Hinduism, after all, was filled with deadly, made up characters that did all sorts of dodgy things to each other, including murder.

Maybe I could get that guy who sat in the mountains playing with his cow to come down and have a word with Santa.

I sat, in what I thought was a meditative pose and hummed to myself for four hours. Nothing happened. Having run out of Metallica riffs that I knew, I swapped to AC/DC which led to four hours of humming Thunderstruck. Finally, I stirred what was left of the weed in a cup of tea and closed my eyes.

It was cold. And rocky. Made me wish I put on a jacket.

Before me a river began its young life.

Shiva:          Dude, I’m washing my hair.

Me:             Sorry...sorry, are you going to be long?

Shiva:          Well it’s been about 10,000 years so far...so probably not any time soon.

Me:             Look, I’m on a holy quest.


Shiva:          Really? Cool.

Me:             Um...yeah...I have come to bequest upon the shimmering light of thine eyes and form...

Shiva:          Dude, cut the bullshit and get to the point.

Me:             Oh right...look do you know Santa Claus?

Shiva:          I know...of...Santa Claus. Can’t say I've partied with him though. He’s a bit hectic.  And 
this coming from someone who snorted so much Crocaine that my throat turned blue.

Me:             Crocaine? From the Croc?

Shiva:          Yeah...

Me:             But if you snorted it...shouldn’t your nose have turned blue.

Shiva:          Yeah, well...um...it was a dare and I had to close my eyes and well...you know 
what...nevermind.

Me:             Yeah, I don't think I want to know. How do you know the Croc?

Shiva:          I don't believe in Crocodile Hasen but I fear him.

Me:             Riiiight…so anyway, I have made it my life's quest to kill Santa Claus.

Shiva:          Heavy.

Me:             I was hoping you could help.

Shiva:          Why me?

Me:             Well you’re called the Destroyer, and that seems like a pretty good god to start with.

Shiva:          Dude, that’s just my WOW avatar. I've got like 50. I’m also known as PixieDust786 and 
DeepBlueThroat. So I don't think you should judge me on that. I'm actually a very sensitive guy. 
You should read my blog.

Me:             This is not helpful.

Shiva:          Listen man, if we're going to keep talking, I've got these pretty decent shrooms.

Me:             No thanks. Listen, I really need this guy dead.

Shiva:          Ok, look if it makes you happy, I'll get a few thousand of us and see what we can do.

Me:             That would be awesome.

Shiva:          Epic.

Me:             Bitchin.

Shiva:          Gnarly.

Me:             Oh for fuck’s sakes.

Shiva:          Cowabunga! Hey dude, you want to see my third eye?

I snapped out of my trance and thought about making a DVD and selling them to the general population but I figured that I wasn't that evil to take advantage of the weak minded. It was them I was trying to save. This actually raised the question. Is this world worth saving? I re-lit the last remains of the joint until those deep questions went away.

Well, my job was done. On Xmas day, 10 billion Hindu deities would descend on the North Pole and disintegrate the Claus once and for all.

It would be a good day.

I didn't tell CrocH of my plan, as I still didn't want to know how Shiva became blue. But it did show that CrocH transcended religions and I was surprised that he wasn't a higher talking point during Hanukkah (unless he has also really pissed off the Jewish contingent (note to self – ask him about that – it’s probably a funny story)).

December came and went swiftly. CrocH kept me entertained with more songs and his version of the croc guitar (which is extremely disturbing, so I won’t describe it). Some of them include:

• Don't Let the Croc Go Down On Me
• House of the Rising Croc
• When a Man Loves a Croc
• All Along Croc's Tower
• You Croc'ed Me All Night Long
• A Rush of blood to the Croc
• Great Balls of Croc

It also involved a lot of alcohol. So I almost missed the fact that Xmas totally passed in the middle of ‘Smells Like Croc Spirit’. But I sobered up quickly. I mean, 132 million godly beings, armed to the teeth with thunder and plague coming down to earth may have some collateral damage.

But...nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Now as, per usual, the morning after held a semblance of quiet dread.

Maybe they had simply snapped their fingers and Santa just poofed and disappeared. I hoped not. That sounded too quick and painless.

My phone beeped. About 10,000 tweets.

To summarise some very disgusting pictures, and cleaning up some very biblical language, it seems that the gods from India did descend on the North Pole yesterday. And they but the bang in bhangra.

It was so excessive that time rifts were created. Steve Jobs tried to patent it and died. A little Korean guy with a girl's name tried to crash the party and died a week before the party started. 

It was lurid. Five thousand little kids in Africa died (although no one noticed) from the shockwave of Kali giving hand jobs to 12 elves simultaneously. There was also a universe altering threesome between Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu where the universe changed so much, that it stayed exactly the same.

At one point I’m pretty sure IfYouCanReadThisNameTagYou’reAlreadyDead and some monkey dude were breaking some serious laws. And I’m pretty sure I saw a trunk in that picture before I tried deleting the entire internet.

The last tweet was:

@CaptainakaUG – I dnt get it. U just gave me the #BestPartyEver. I should thank you. You get 2 presents nxt year. #NaughtyList #SantaClausMustDie lol.

FUCK. Double trouble.

I need to wake up CrocH, but it's always dodgy walking in on him in the morning. He doesn't wear much to bed and God knows where his tail will be.

Merry Xmas and prepare for the New Year (it may be the last one after all).

Ever the underdog,

Kamal

PS:              You know that saying – not enough alcohol in the world – now that I’ve met CrocH – sounds legit.

PPS:            I'll leave you with a new great question that has tainted my mind – WWCD?

PPPS :         Guru's heavy petting farm now open on Sundays. Don't take your kids.

PPPPS:        I wonder, what with the time rifts, if this is the incident that triggered the Mayan prediction of end of days. Have I caused the end of the world?