Insanity Claus, or the Awkward “Consequences” of a Very Mary Christmas: A Farce, part 1

[Another silly story that I wrote for Christmas 2018 to amuse the family. I know it’s a little early in the year but thought it was too good not to share now. Also, for more information, see here.

Please note this is a work of fiction. All real-life entities or references to other works are included for the sake of satire or affectionate parody only; no misrepresentation is intended. The Today programme is property of the BBC.]

Somewhere in a cut in spacetime slightly lambda-wards of the skies above the Atlantic Ocean, battered by the cold air currents and the snow it blew through the rift, could be seen a most curious sight, albeit one which would no doubt be familiar to millions of children on the surface of the planet “below”. It appeared to be a sleigh pulled by reindeer, a large sack positioned in the rear and a portly, white-bearded fellow in a red coat in the driver’s seat. He let out a loud, cheery “Ho, ho, ho!” in a manner somewhat reminiscent of Brian Blessed, before calling out:

“On Dasher, on Dancer, on… Oh, dingo’s kidneys, why can’t I even remember the names of my reindeer? This is what you get for being over a thousand years old… On… Rudolph? Yes, that’s it… with your nose so bright…”

At this point the red-coated fellow was interrupted by the droning of a biplane closing in behind. A biplane on which was mounted a very menacing looking grenade launcher. A grenade launcher that fired off a rocket propelled grenade which exploded several feet from the back of the sleigh, sending fragments tearing through the large sack fastened to the back of the sleigh, creating a secondary rupture in spacetime and gradually sucking the multifarious contents of the bag into the unknown aether beyond.

“Oh, my sweet lord!” cursed the figure. “Oh, smegging foetid dingo’s kidneys! She’s ruptured the Bag of Holding! That dratted Mary! Does she ever give up? Now we’ll all be sucked in, and good little children the world over won’t get their presents! Oh, won’t she just think of the childreeee..nnnnaaaaaarrrgggh!” The figure, sleigh and all was sucked into the rift, the biplane soon following behind.

The rift opened up somewhere in the middle of the Scottish countryside not too far from a certain well known loch, early on a winter morning. As the red-coated figure held tightly to the reins of his reindeer, which had snapped off from what was left of the sleigh due to the force of the rift, the remains of the biplane could be seen careering into the side of a nearby mountain (where it made a fairly spectacular explosion) whilst the pilot, having bailed out, descended safely to earth by means of her emergency parachute. As she did, she could not help but noticing a large head emerging from the surface of the loch. When Santa (for it was, of course, he) finally emerged, crawling out of the freezing water after having let go of the reins and making an awkward “emergency landing”, he found Mary standing over him, brandishing a revolver.

“So, now I have you, Kringle! Any last words before I decide to send you on your way to meet the reason for the season since you failed to deliver that Bionic Woman action figure I so desperately wanted back in 1979?”

“Erm… brrrr… do you know… w-w-what y-y-you’ve j-just…d-d-done? Y-you’ve j-j-j-j-just ruined C-c-Christmas for millions of child-d-dren all over the smegging world! And w-w-w-worse s-still…”

The half-chilled-to-death Santa was interrupted further by the whooshing of a flying saucer bearing the words “SS Graceland” flying overhead, before it was hit by a rocket and tumbled headlong into the monstrous head emerging from the loch, which by this point had been joined by the rather long neck to which it was attached.
Santa, by this point just beginning to get over the shivers, scolded:

“Oh… oh d-d-dear! Just as if things couldn’t get any worse, now Elvis has been done in as well!”

“Elvis?” asked Mary quizically. “He’s dead isn’t he? I think it’s time to put you out of your misery for good, you mad old fool…”

“Before you do, you mad Yorkshire terrorizer, allow me to expl-l-lain… brrrr! Elvis isn’t dead, you know, he just decided to take a break for a while, and he went back to his home planet… you know, the media have been hinting at it for years!”

“Well I don’t watch much telly, do I?” pointed out Mary. “Usually since most of my tellies don’t last very long every time Marcia decides she really, really wants to watch Eastenders. Anyway, do go on…”

“Well he was about to come back especially for a one-off special New Year’s benefit concert before somebody shot him down…”

Mary looked out over to the loch to see the smoking remains of the flying saucer floating next to the severed neck of the monster.

“You have got to be kidding me… now let me see…” she said, replacing the gun in it’s holster, fumbling in one of the many pockets of her coat to pull out a small radio which she switched on and fiddled about until she found a passable Radio 4-bearing signal.

“…beep, BEEEEP!” went the radio. “This is the Today programme with Mishal Hussein and John Humphreys on Friday 28th December. It’s 8 o’clock. Now, a summary of the news with ..BZZT!” Another voice chimed in following the static:

“…News at 8 o’clock. Following the emergency debate of the Missing Christmas Disaster held in the House of Commons last night which resulted in a snap vote of no confidence in Theresa May’s government, amid ongoing tensions over the final BZZZT! which was due to be voted on in the New Year, a snap general election has been called due to take place in February ahead of the BZZZT! date in March. Early polls suggest an unprecedented landslide victory for the Monster Raving Loony Party…”

Mary turned off the radio, retracted the aerial and put it back into the pocket from which it came.

“I thought as much! You remember when Screaming Lord Sutch was leader of the party? Remember how the bookies had better odds for Elvis Presley crashing a UFO into the Loch Ness Monster than him successfully contesting an election?”

“Y-y-yes…?” asked Santa, puzzled.

“Well it looks like the odds have been somewhat tilted in the favour of both.”
“Y-y-you know what this means, don’t you? One, I’ve overshot Christmas by three days, two, your smegging actions have just broken the fabric of reality! We have to fix this, and there’s only two ways of doing that…”

“Oh really?”

“YES! One, trail all over the Highlands looking for every last missing present and get them hitched up to the sleigh to be delivered by last Tuesday, and I mean even though the time travel part is easy with a bit of magic – how else do you think I do it every year? – looking for that lot would be pretty much like looking for a habedashery’s worth of needles in a hay factory, so, two, we go off questing in search of the fabled Temporal Reset button before Twelfth Night, and the clock is ticking! Can’t cheat it, you know, timey-wimey you-know-what…”

“Oh brother,” said Mary. “I guess I have no choice do I?”

“Nope!”

“Well, three things before we do. One, since when did you of all people start turning into a walking parody of classic British sci-fi comedy? Two, I would place the blame for that squarely on my sister Wendy, the infamous monster slayer, not me. Three, we’re going to need help…”

‘Shhk!’ came a javelin, landing right between Mary and Santa, landing at their respective feet.

“Oi! Need a hand? Or rather, a longsword attached to a hand?” came a gruff but female voice in a strange, indeterminate accent.
They looked round to see a rough-looking barbarian woman, dressed in furs, her long brown hair roughly tied up in a braided bun behind her head for practicality, her face beset with scars from numerous battles.

“Marieka of the Renavam Amazons at your service,” she continued. “If there’s adventure, excitement and monster slaying to be had, count me in!”

“Well, I can’t guarantee any monster slaying, but…” said Santa before he was interrupted.

“Oh, bloody hell! Get yerself back to tabletop RPG land, you haridan, before I frag you to the middle of next century!”

“Try me,” the amazon replied, with the sort of come-and-have-a-go-if-you-think-you’re-hard-enough tone you might expect from someone like her in these sorts of situations. “I already dispatched one version of you back in the other story. Now will you let me join you or not?”

“Oh, go on then,” said Mary, resignedly. “But first we have to get you some more modern weaponry, and then we have to get you another monster slayer to face down…”

Will Santa, Mary and Marieka manage to reset the fabric of space and time before Twelfth Night rolls around? Will our intrepid antiheroes manage to deal with Wendy the Monster Slayer or will she ballista them in the backside first? Will things ever manage to get back to whatever passes for a vague semblance of normality in the Consequences-verse? And will Jenny Everywhere make an appearance? Find out in our next thrilling episode… if there ever is one!