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.