santa claus eats babies

by Lise and Dex

The last night in London before the spring thaw, Dane was huddled behind a garbage can and eating chips for a dollar out of wet newspaper.

He didn't cast any spells, and the local ditch marijuana was nothing to scoff at; couldn't even warm you up, never mind get a high, and you wanted to kill the bastards that made your life this way, except you're on the street and you're wet and dirty and don't want much.

The pub played carols and smelled like dank air, fishy. People walked around in some plastic cosmopolitan smiling fishbowls, snowglobe pretty and carrying stupid parcels of stupid gifts. No one ran around with fox dogs, and no one had on stupid hats or stupid accents. He didn't see anyone that wasn't there; Santa Claus was walking down the street in black rubber boots, two pounds ha'penny at the market, but he was coming from the mall.

The Santa Claus sat down and started puffing a corn-cob pipe. "Why aren't you home, boy?"

"Am. Get 'way."

The smoke from the pipe was making Dane feel woozy. There was frost on the banisters on the stairs, and Santa got up and made his way down the street, whistling some song. Dane felt sick.

No one was going to catch him with a Christmas tree; all the light bulbs on the buildings made him feel dizzy, he caught himself falling, sucked up by the sidewalk. Someone's dirty shoes walked past; mud got on Dane's face.

Dane said "Who the fuck are you" to the face in front of him. The face in front of him bobbed and weaved out of sight; blond hair, yeah, and the smell of diesel from the trains, the Tube trains. Dane was looking up at stars. "Boy."

Strong acid tab from lunch. Merry fuckin' Christmas.

"The frost's going to be thick today, luv," someone said, and Dane could feel, suddenly, his fingers freezing and limbs splayed out on the cement in front of the Tube entrance. Someone was singing Christmas carols, and Dane sat up, painfully, aware of every muscle spasm.

He didn't see anyone. The carollers were gone.

Ground was slippery, as Dane stood up. Fucking shoppers. Fucking presents. Fucking Christmas trees. Wankers. No more acid. And it started to rain.

The stupid Santa was back on his same corner, jangling bells and singing "jack frost nipping at your nose" as he smoked his pipe. Dane looked up and there was no cheesy break of light in the dreary sky for the sun to shine through, but it would have been a perfect opportunity.

~

The last night in Santa Fe, after Boy died the second time, Jack insisted they listen to this particular Beatles' song before midnight, but the jukebox wasn't having it.

"That was the last fucking change we had!" Jack snarled.

Fanny flipped his head. "We'll dance to the next one, darling," and so they did, under the gaudy lights strung up in the cowboy bar. No more E, and the acid dried up somewhere between Houston and Phoenix.

They swung out, they boogied, they cha-cha'ed, and somewhere between the first beat and the last, the golden draft and the pale ale and the cowboy bar, the acid came back and the inversion to self/inner-self came back (Jack started telling some butch girl with a tattoo of a snake on her neck about the apple and the worm).

The jukebox still wasn't playing. They had a mission in the morning. "Fucking Lennon, came to me in a dream last night," Jack said.

"Thought he was the boss's deity."

The jukebox looked about a hundred years old. When you pressed twenty-three you got Elvis, and eighty-seven was Madonna, and no Beatles anywhere. Jack was convinced that it was enchanted or some shit, kicked the wall a hundred times while Fanny watched him unimpressed. He rolled his eyes and said, "Darling, why don't you sing it?" and Jack cracked a grin, because that was a little golden, wasn't it, and he could sing it fine. John didn't have much of a voice anyway.