by Adam Millard
The crowd applauded. So far, it was a good show. Much better than the time David Blaine came to entertain the masses. Three days encased in a block of ice was not so impressive in The Land of Christmas, where you didn’t have to walk to the end of your street to see a fellow elf in the exact same predicament.
“Can I request that flash photography be kept to a minimum?” the automaton loudhailer voice continued. “And that nobody attempts to stroke or feed the…special guest…as it moves through the village?”
The spectators all nodded in unison. No flash, no feed. Even they couldn’t fuck that up. As if to prove them wrong, there was a second of bright light before someone called out an apology.
“Elves of The Land of Christmas…I give you…”
“He’s milking this for all it’s worth, innee?” said a disgruntled voice from the crowd.
“…The Human Santapede!”
What happened in those next thirty seconds would go down in history, which wasn’t saying a lot since there might not be a lot of present left to convert to history. But the elves gathered in the centre of the village weren’t to know that.
A hooded figure appeared at the end of the street, a loudhailer in one hand and a leash in the other. It was what was on the end of the leash, though, that caused the audience to gasp in horror, and at least thirty of them to swoon. Ahora of the jigsaw puzzle section vomited into her own hands before sinking into the snow, squealing like a caged chinchilla. Mop MaChitup passed out so hard that the elves standing around her had no choice but to follow suit. Blinker and Brewster – the only conjoined twins in The Land of Christmas – tried to run away, but Blinker went one way, and Brewster the other, which meant they didn’t get as far as either of them had hoped.
“It’s ghastly!” one upchucking elf screeched.
“It’s a monster!” added another.
“Surely it should be called The Inhuman Santapede,” said a third.
“At least with brackets,” concurred a fourth.
It was chaos. Utter bedlam as elves attempted to put as much distance between themselves and the aberration as they could. A few of the more…opportunistic elves saw it as the perfect excuse to loot, and were therefore running along the street with stolen goods twice their size. One elf slipped on the snow and landed on his back with a thump. The fifty-two inch plasma screen he’d been carrying landed on his front with more or less the same sound effect.
“What has become of our beloved leader?” Ahora said, pulling her face from the vomity snow.
“He’s been made into a beast!” someone yelled, leaping over her and almost taking her hat clean off. “A beast, I tell you!”
“I don’t think my heart can take it!” one of Hattie Hermann’s liquorice workers said. A moment later, he clutched his chest. “Nope. I was right,” he said, before falling back into the snow.
And the grotesque Santapede kept coming, dragged through the streets by the hooded lunatic, who was laughing and cackling and, in a fashion, dancing. “Where are you all going?” the maniac said, his voice amplified by the loudhailer. “This is what you all came to see.” He gestured to the creature beside him and kicked Santa in what would have been the ribs had The Fat Bastard not had fifty inches of blubber in front of them.
“I’ll never shake the image!” One elf cried before leaping to his death from the roof of his house. A second later, his head appeared in the deep snow nestled up against his frontage. “Bollocks,” he said.
Eight reindeer were smoking and nattering amongst themselves when the Santapede ambled past the stables. Blitzen almost choked on his Marlboro, while Donner and Prancer set about resuscitating Dasher.
“I always knew he’d show his true colours,” Vixen said, nonchalantly flicking a hoof toward Rudolph. “You can always tell, can’t you? One minute they’re showing off with their great big red noses, the next…well, just look at it…”
The reindeer all turned just as the bloody, battered elf in front of Rudolph began to glow red.
“He’s still showing off now, look,” Blitzen said, shaking his head. “Yeah, you keep on glowing, you red-nosed prick! Honestly, that’s what happens when some asshole writes a song about you.”
The Human Santapede continued along the street, leaving a trail of faeces in its wake. The poor elf at the back had passed out, but that didn’t stop things from falling from his backside. There were fifty-one elves, a reindeer, and the Clauses in front of him, and all of them had done a little something in the past twenty-four hours. Trying to hold one poo in can be deadly, but fifty-one – plus his own – was just suicide.
“Please!” Santa sobbed. “Please can we stop now!?”
“Mthththtsth?” Mrs Claus said, which was more or less what her husband had just asked.
“Oh, no,” Krampus said, merrily jigging along the pavement. “We’re not going to stop. We may never stop. Let us keep going until the snow ceases to fall from the sky and the trees turn green, and Robbie Williams finally comes out as gay.”
“But those things will never happen!” Santa cried. “At least let us get off the street, to someplace my elves can’t see me. Ho-Ho-Hostel wasn’t even this graphic.”
“You should have thought about that before you came knocking my door and asked to borrow my snowblower.” Krampus grinned, and it was one of those wide ones; an ear-to-ear grin; a shark’s grin; a grin so wide that it stretched all the way around his face and met at the back of his head. Everything above his mouth should have – if we’re being pernickety – fallen off.
Krampus reached into his cloak pocket (yes, it had three pockets, one for spare change, one for his cell-phone, and one for his horn, which was all well and good, but where was he supposed to put his receipts?) and pulled out the horn. To his lips it went.
Heeeeerrrrrrnk!!! It was so loud that it required three exclamation marks. Heeeeerrrrrrrnk!!! Even he didn’t know why he’d blown it a second time. “Come on,” he said, yanking Santa forwards with an unceremonious tug of the leash. “To the village centre we must return. Hattie Hermann’s put the kettle on, and I’m gasping.”
“You’ll go to Hell…for this,” Santa said, his body racked with pain and sobs.
“Possibly,” Krampus said. “But not before I’ve had a cup of tea and a jammie dodger.”
25
The three Companions that weren’t raving madmen raced into the village proper, their riders more breathless than they were. The village was almost deserted; nobody had wanted to stick around for any longer than was necessary. Sure, a couple of intrigued perverts loitered about, but for the most part, the elves had dispersed, returning to their homes where there was a much better chance of surviving until morning.
To one of the dallying miscreants, Finklefoot said, “Hello there!”
The perv, whose name was Sid, suddenly looked very sheepish. “A’right,” he said.
“Have you seen a Human Santapede? About seventy foot long? Ugly as sin, with The Fat Bastard at the front?”
Sid nodded wildly. “Oh, yes. I’ve seen it alright. It’s the weirdest thing I ever did lay my eyes upon, and I once stood at the front of a Miley Cyrus concert.”
Finklefoot climbed down from his steed, though Belsnickel would have refuted such a name, and anyone silly enough to call him it to his face would have perished before they’d had chance to take another breath. “Which way did it go?” Finklefoot said, glancing both ways down the street.
“Last I saw it was headed toward the stables,” Sid said. “I’m ‘oping it comes back this way. I’d love to see it again, just one last time before we start dying to death.”
“Was he armed?” Belsnickel grunted. His breath was visible in the cold air. It was also so pungent that, if you had a butter knife, you could have sliced it clean in half.
“Was who armed?” Sid asked. It was a stupid question, but Sid had never professed at being anything but stupid.
Knecht Ruprecht took a few steps forwards. “Krampus,” he said. “The
lunatic. The guy that stitched everyone together. Was he armed?”
Sid frowned. He couldn’t remember seeing any weapons on the shrouded man. But that was the thing with concealed weapons; you didn’t know about them until they’d been unconcealed. “He had the beast on a leash,” he said. “But I don’t think you could call it a weapon. If Santa had been growling instead of crying like a baby, maybe—”
“Okay, so he’s unarmed,” Not-as-white-as-everyone-else Pete said, his voice saturated with relief. “Shouldn’t take us too long to bring him down.”
“He’s still the strongest one out of all of us,” Knecht Ruprecht said. “We need to be very careful about…”
Heeeeerrrrrrrrrnk!!!
Everyone panicked. Rat and Gizzo fell backwards off Knecht Ruprecht’s shoulders and landed, luckily for them, in the snow. Shart shuffled further up Not-as-white-as-everyone-else Pete’s back and buried himself in the Companion’s afro. Finklefoot pointed the Anti-Companion Water-Pistol™ into the gloomy nothingness, turning and turning, hoping to see just a hint of movement so that he could unleash hell.
Sid, the not-so-secret pervert, staggered forwards in the snow. His eyes had rolled up into his head, and he was reaching around for his back as if it was trying to get away from him.
Finklefoot moved to the side just in time as Sid continued forwards. Momentum can be a terrible thing, despite what the great Byzantine philosopher Philoponus said. More people had been killed by momentum than by choking on boiled sweets or autoerotic asphyxiation. The best way to avoid death by momentum was to avoid steep cliffs, railways stations, horseracing events, wild buffalo, and One Direction concerts.
Sid landed face-down in the snow, his legs crumpled up behind him as if they were suddenly independent to the rest of him. The miniature spear embedded in his back was still doinging from side to side, as was its wont…
“Christ on a broomstick!” Finklefoot said, glancing around, searching the semi-darkness for the perpetrator. He didn’t have to look far, for a moment later the shrouded figure stepped from the shadows looking particularly smug. The leash in his hand chinked and clinked as he dragged the Santapede from the gloom.
“Blimey, that was a good shot!” Krampus said, removing his hood. “I thought I was going to need a couple of go’s at it.”
“Shoot him!” Belsnickel roared.
It took an awful long time for Finklefoot to realise the Companion was talking to him, by which time it was far too late. Krampus had crouched down beside Santa and had the horn pressed to his temple, his mouth hovering just an inch away.
“Ah-ah,” Krampus said. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Not unless you want to see your beloved saint’s brains spattered across the snow.”
Finklefoot sighed. Why did nothing ever go as planned around here? “You kill The Fat Bastard,” he said. “You kill us all.”
“So people keep telling me,” Krampus said, straightening up and yet keeping the horn trained upon the sobbing head of his ghastly creation. The dart – like the one that had just dropped Sid like a sack of mouldy spuds – could be discerned at the end of the horn as its tip protruded ever-so-slightly.
Poison, Finklefoot thought. There was no way such a small dart could do so much damage unless it had been dipped in something mortally astringent.
“Have you lost your mind, Krampus?” Belsnickel said, his voice as deep and serious as ever. “This is no way to behave. This is The Land of Christmas, and we are a peaceful people.”
“What does that even mean?” Krampus said, shaking his head. “A peaceful people? Why not just say ‘peaceful people’?”
“You’re one to talk about misuse of language,” Knecht Ruprecht said. “This is the first time I’ve seen your monster, and it’s clearly inhuman. You’re lucky you haven’t been sued for false advertising.”
“It should at least be bracketed,” Not-as-white-as-everyone-else Pete said. “Like those Meat Loaf songs.”
Krampus waved a hand dismissively. “Whatever. The point is that I’ve grown tired of all this…this bullshit. We work all year round, and for what? One lousy day. And we don’t even get the fucking credit! No, the kids stopped believing in us years ago. And the parents don’t even bother to correct little Jimmy when he gets up on Christmas morning and thanks them for all his gifts. No, they pat him on his little ginger head and say, ‘Oh, you’re welcome, son. We’ve worked ever so hard to pay for all these wonderful things, but you deserve them, son, even though you’re ginger. You deserve them all’, and that, my Companion friends, is what has become of your beloved Christmas. That is why I’m doing this. Well, that and the fact that this fat bastard doesn’t know what the word ‘borrow’ means.” He kicked Santa once in the face. Blood dripped from his nostrils and soaked into his moustache, giving it a pinkish tinge.
“They still believe in us,” Belsnickel said, though he didn’t sound convinced. “Santa Claus will never die, and nor will we.”
Krampus sneered. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “We will all die tonight. Every last one of us.”
“He’s a bit of a buzzkill, innee?” Rat whispered to no-one in particular.
“You can’t kill Christmas,” Knecht Ruprecht said. Suddenly, he looked a lot taller than he had been a moment before. Beneath the snow – of which there was now several feet – and out of sight, Knecht Ruprecht had pushed himself onto his tippy-toes.
“If that’s true,” Krampus said, “then how come I’m about to blow a hole in The Fat Bastard’s head? I mean, if he is the One, then in the next few seconds there has to be some kind of miracle to stop me. How can he be the One if he's dead?”
“Isn’t that a line from The Matrix?” Shart said.
“Yeah, it’s the bit where the evil bald guy’s pulling the plug,” Krampus said. “But it works here, too.”
Just then, there was a metallic clank and Krampus’s head snapped forwards. A saucepan landed in the snow just in front of Finklefoot as Krampus tottered unsteadily on his feet.
“Hey, I recognise these porridge burns,” Finklefoot said, picking up the saucepan/missile.
“Frewzerth,” Krampus drooled, fingering the egg that had pushed up through his scalp, making it look like he had three horns. Now, ‘frewzerth’ wasn’t any word in the Oxford English Dictionary, but in The Collins Dictionary of Concussed Ramblings, it meant: (Verb) – Hurt like a sonofabitch…
“Isn’t that your missus?” Shart said, pointing to the darkness just beyond the still-staggering Krampus.
Finklefoot squinted. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
Trixie emerged from the shadows, her arms folded sternly across her chest, her eyebrows knitted together with utter fury. “When were you going to tell me you were working straight through until Christmas Eve?” she said. “I’m only your wife. Do I not have the right to know these things? Do we not discuss matters anymore? Hm?”
“Can we talk about this later,” Finklefoot said, shrinking into his own body.
“Everyone, run for it!” Santa bellowed, clawing his way through the snow at roughly one mile an hour. The rest of the Santapede followed, not that they had much choice in the matter.
Belsnickel lunged for the dazed Krampus, who, despite his current giddiness, dodged to the right. Belsnickel went down in the snow, and the snow went up in the air.
“I’ve got him!” Knecht Ruprecht said, diving after the escaping madman. Krampus turned and blew through his horn. Knecht Ruprecht flew back into the night as the miniature spear thumped into his shoulder. Lying on his back, staring up at the stars, he said, “Could somebody else get him? I’m gonna have a little nap.”
“Finklefoot!” Shart said as he leapt up onto Krampus’s trailing leg. “Shoot him with your thingamabob!”
Finklefoot spun, forgetting for the time being that his wife was terribly annoyed with him. Levelling the Anti-Companion Water-Pistol™ at Krampus, he said, “Yippee-ki-yay, motherlicker!” and pulled the trigger.
One minute, K
rampus was there, the next there was nothing but smoke and a purple haze.
“You got him!” Shart called from what sounded like a mile away. “Oh, no, hang on. He’s back up. He’s picking me up and…yep, he’s going to throw me.”
All eyes turned to the sky just in time to see Shart surge past. “Wheeeeeee!” he screamed. He was like a firework, but without the mess. He smashed through a window halfway down the street, and an alarm began wailing into the night.
“Where did he go?” Finklefoot said.
“Over there,” Santa said, ambling past with about as much pace as a blind chess tournament.
“Grthsthrh,” Jessica Claus mumbled as she clawed through the snow.
“We are escaping!” Santa said. “Do you want to come and try driving this thing? No? Didn’t think so.”
Finklefoot jumped onto Belsnickel’s back and kicked him in the side.
“Ow, you little fucker!” Belsnickel pushed back onto his haunches
“Sorry,” Finklefoot said. “Completely forgot. If you could chase after the raving lunatic, that would be great.” The gun in his hand was still seeping purple smoke; he hoped to god he hadn’t broken it.
Belsnickel roared and charged after Krampus, who was making good his escape via the back-alleys of the village. Imagine, if you can, the Reeves/Swayze chase of Point Break, but with two giant bearded immortals, one of which carried a squealing elf wearing a pointy hat and a pair of matching dungarees. With me? Okay…
“He’s a bit nippy for a big lad,” Finklefoot said as Belsnickel leapt over a small fence. It was all the elf could do to stay on the Companion’s back.
“I told you,” Belsnickel breathlessly said. “He’s the strongest out of all of us. That’s why everyone knows who he is, and why we’re just a mention on his Wikipedia page.”
Finklefoot shook his head. “You’ll get your own Wikipedia pages after this,” he said, clinging on for dear life.