Moments before the ship crashed on Tuesday November 24, 1992 at 7 pm, Tony Flores, 43, hot-glued the final Velcro strip to his latest invention, an Alzheimer’s smock for Uncle Fred which he planned to trademark as “Where’s My Stuff?’™. The strips meant Fred would never lose the TV clicker again. The half-dozen pockets were for cigarettes and doodads; there was even a small foldable tray to hold grilled cheese sammies and sodas.
Tony was crackling on four rails of meth, so the metallic shriek followed by a boom could just as easily have been him grinding his teeth. But Uncle Fred drew him over to the window, pointed across the freeway towards Southaven County Park, where a glow underlit the canopy of trees.
“Something crashed.”
“What? No way. What crashed?”
“Spaceship.”
On surrounding streets, police lights strobed as they raced to the scene. Smoke burbled up through the foliage. Tony fought encroaching memories of a napalm aftermath, clutching his head to squash images of smoldering ashes in the shapes of Vietnamese cows and villagers.
“Anthony.” Uncle Fred shook him by the shoulder. “Let’s try on the Where's the Stuff?”
“Where’s My Stuff.”
“I don’t know. Let’s go.”
Tony smiled, guiding Uncle Fred’s arms through the smock, then Velcroed the back closed.
“Stand still. We’ll do a demo.”
Uncle Fred held his hands out to his side. Tony tossed a lighter wrapped in Velcro strips at the smock and it stuck! The TV clicker followed, landing on Fred’s hip.
Uncle Fred clapped, so delighted to pull the clicker off his smock and turn on the TV.
Nothing on the news about the crash.
Tony knew he had to get some sleep before the Santa dry-run tomorrow and couldn’t be strung out. Helicopter sounds cut through the night air. An occasional spotlight swept past his window. If he smoked or poked his shit, the noises and lights would have sent him over the edge. Luckily, he preferred humpty-bumping up the schnozzle.
Occasional power surges blacked out the apartment, meaning that the clocks were fucked and his alarm wouldn’t go off at the right time. He had to wake up by nine to make a ten o’clock appointment. As with every Wednesday before Thanksgiving for the last decade, Long Island Santas would meet and socialize at the park before two vans dispatched them to various malls and department stores across the island for Santa service dress rehearsal.
But how would a meeting be possible with all this ruckus?
***
Being a Spencer Gifts Santa sucked balls. Three weeks into the gig and he already felt the hella vise of responsibility, clocking in, accountability. They’d squished Tony into the corner on a big chair wrapped like a Christmas gift, with green and red bunting draped between candy cane stanchions. A sign read: Spencer’s Gifts: North Pole
Tony, meth teeth the color of old papyrus behind the shock of white beard and mustache, had been Spencer’s Santa for going on six years. He was too skinny for JCPenney or Sears, and not a beloved community theater actor, so Macy’s was out of the question. Also, since he once crashed the North Pole Choo-Choo, he’d never get a gig in the central mall area or even the food court.
A man’s hand reached over Tony’s shoulder to grab a lava lamp from the display. Tony didn’t notice. His dark eyes twitched with thought as he pretend-listened to the little boy in his lap, but actually fretted that his friend Mike’s life might be in danger.
His focus shot back to the kid summarizing his top three Christmas gifts: A Haro Sport BMX, a Talking Barney and the Boys 2 Men album.
“You know what you should ask for?” Tony’s pinwheel eyes lasered in on the kid. “A math tutor. That way you can invent things. I’m an inventor.”
The kid’s mouth dropped open
“I made the world’s biggest disco ball. It’s in the basement of my building.” Tony shifted his legs, made a whistling noise and nodded at the Skinny Elf Chick who snapped her fingers at the child.
“Come down here, child. Santa has heard you. Did you hear Santa?”
The kid blinked and shrugged, but she was speaking to his mom, who smiled a yes. “Then show your love, momma.” She nodded to a tip jar with cotton balls stuck all over it.
When the Skinny Elf Chick put up the Back in 15 Minutes sign, Tony bounded off his throne, pushing past the candy canes and the stragglers still in line, and vamoosed out the back door into the hallway network that ran behind the stores.
Tony plopped his skinny ass on the top of the stairs, lickety-split pulling from his Santa pockets a Spin Doctor’s CD, balancing it on his knee, and a tiny triangle of folded magazine paper which he opened enough to dump a bump. He chopped it with Uncle Fred’s driver’s license, basking in the tingling waves of expectation. Soon, he’d know clarity of purpose and the delight of a well-planned, well-executed project. He couldn’t find a dollar so held the case up to his nose and zwooooop!
“Time to save Mike Cheebers!” His voice echoed down the hallway.
***
It’s all so fucked up, fucked up, he thought as he clomped down the concrete hallway, chewing gum, snapping the bubbles. Fucked up. But Tony was certain he knew how to save Mike. He hadn’t with Larry and Jesse, those poor bastards. But when he discovered the answer, he was able to save Ben.
“Gum, gum, gum is done,” Tony sing-songed as he veered right along with the corridor. “Gum. Gum. Elastic lump of resin, of wax, of elastomer. What’s it called what I’m chewing on? Gum. No. What’s the actual ingredient?” At a fork in the hallway, he took the left tine without hesitation. This was a familiar journey.
Few people got to see this employee transpo network. He’d made it to Sears in four minutes once, but on that journey he wasn’t wearing the suit. Since he had only 15 minutes, he didn’t bother with civvies. Meaning he had to keep a low profile because if the Smith Haven Mall boss Gerald saw two Santas together in the same place… Gerald had compared it to meeting a version of yourself from a parallel universe, eye-eee, it cannot happen and one of you must die.
“Polyisobutylene! Yes! Polyisobutylene and sugar.” He spit out his gum so forcefully it stuck to the wall. “Touchdown!”
Tony popped another piece into his nasty mouth. Would he make it to Sears’ Santa’s Village before Mike Cheebers exploded? Mike was a cool guy, part-time electrician, part-time dad, and, like Tony, a part-time Santa. He used to ride the speed rails to crazy town, too, but Mike went clean last Christmas-in-July. It was a rotten thing Tony was gonna demand Mike do. But if his theory was correct, it would benefit both Mike and possibly all of mankind.
He hooked a left into another long hallway that smelled of grease traps and bleach. Down at the end, a woman smoking a cigarette sat on steps leading up to the back door of Wicks and Sticks candle shop.
As he got closer, grease and bleach smells were replaced by candy apple perfume and menthol cigarettes. Helena. Helena, who only fucked Tony during Christmas in July and the official holiday season, and then only when Tony wore his Santa suit.
“Hey, Santa,” Helena said in a chain-smoking middle-aged woman’s baby voice. “I let my relatives buy candles with employee discounts, so I guess that puts me on the naughty list.” She unfurled crepey legs so he could see up her skirt. No underpants. Schwing!
Not now, he told himself.
“I need a favor. First I gotta use the–” a jerk of his head and a three-part whistle indicated the bathroom inside the store.
“Sorry, Santa. The mamaws shopping for Christmas candles are in no way prepared for your stank.”
“Fine, I’ll wait till Sears. What I really need is some of your Dexatrim.”
“Why do you need a diet pill? You seem to be doing okay.”
“I need extra. For Mike Cheebers. If he doesn’t—listen, woman, I don’t have time to explain, but I need about five, please.”
“Okay, you owe me.” She dug through her fanny pack, pulled out a silver sheet with three pills encased in plastic. “That’s what I got.”
“Thanks.” He made fish lips at her until she stuck the menthol in his mouth. After a long, sexy drag, he told her on the exhale: “Stay away from Sears today.”
“Yes, Santa.”
“Don’t be naughty. Seriously, Helena. Not on this one.”
“Jeez, whatever, fine.”
And laying his finger aside of his nose, he winked, then split.
***
Sears were dicks about keeping their doors locked, except behind the Notions department which was sort of like Spencer’s gifts, minus the whimsy.
Tony burst inside, acclimated himself. The low hum he always heard at Sears threatened as usual to make him buggy. “Gotta get to Mike,” he repeated to himself as he jogged over to the escalators.
Children clapped and cooed as he passed. Several parents frowned at the raggedy ass Santa mumbling to himself.
Tony perceived nothing except the path he had to take to get to Mike Cheebers. But his thoughts circled back to when he first saw Them, to what They could do, and how They might be defeated.
***
When the Santas gathered outside the park at 10 am on Wednesday, November 25, wind gusts and clouds swirled through air still choking on smoke. The official word was that a small plane had missed the nearby Brookhaven Calabro airport and crashed into the park, starting a fire. The unofficial word cited a research something-or-other being test-flown by the nearby Brookhaven National Laboratory. Or an alien crash landing.
Tony had no opinion, content to enjoy the reunion with his fellow Santas, most holding bottles of choice whiskey he could sample to dull the edges of his adrenaline. Nobody was around to tell the Santas that drinking in public was a no-no.
Queer movement in the bushes caught Tony’s attention, but he chalked it up to the floaters he’d sometimes get in his eyes—until it got too frenetic to ignore.
When Jesse hit the punchline on his yearly joke, “...and she says, ‘Hey Santa, you gonna come down my chimney?’ Tony slipped away from the group for a closer look.
Hovering before him was a group of critters, each maybe four-inches tall, resembling earwigs with pincers on their bellies. They unfolded membranous wings, rising in group formation to the apex of his velour Santa hat, then above the street lamp. A low hum intensified, giving Tony the shivers.
Then the creatures swooped down at the Santas, fanning out for one-on-one assaults—at which point Tony screamed.
A creature flew into his mouth. Its pincers scraped down his throat, and he felt it swimming into his stomach. No amount of gagging or coughing stopped its journey into the intestines. Once there, Tony felt it enlarge. Or was it just flapping its skin wings?
All the other Santas were bent over coughing and retching. But within a minute, every one of them straightened up, dazed. Nobody had an explanation or a theory. By this time, the two vans had arrived.
The ride to the mall was quiet, tense. Tony, stomach grumbling, and running a low temperature, thought the locusts or whatever the hell those things were had made him sick, so vowed to go clean. He made it all the way until December 4, when he gave in and scored some good stuff from a food court janitor. The stomach issues weren’t going away, so why not, he rationalized.
Armed with his new score, he skulked into the handicapped stall where he chopped and refined two rails on top of the toilet tank. The first bump should have been euphoric. Instead, he felt a massive rumbling in his intestines. A rip and a stab. A toot out the poot, followed by a mightier cheek flapper and light blood spray. As a finale, something nearly a foot long tore out of his rectum and plunked into the toilet. “Ow, ow, OWW!”
Tony jumped off the seat. That motherfucking earwig-looking exoskeleton with pincers had gotten bigger in the last week. But the most remarkable change was how its face had become less insectoid and more a gooey, nascent version of Tony’s.
“Holy fuck!” Tony pounded the flusher, but the swirling water only buoyed the creature! Pincers clambered up over the seat and wings flopped the body onto Tony’s second rail.
“What? No!” came the crestfallen wail of a tweaker losing his stash.
Smoke billowed out from its underside as the creature spasmed, before tumbling dead onto dirty tiles. A strip of exo-skeleton was still burning where it’d landed on the rail.
At the time, Tony didn’t make the connection. Then, about a week later, he heard through the Santa grapevine that Jesse's body tore apart when a creature mushroomed itself out of its human cocoon, through organs and flesh. The police had no idea what to call it, so the story became ‘spontaneous combustion’ and Jesse, a lonely alcoholic without kin, was cremated. Tony knew that Jesse never touched speed.
It was when he heard about clean-living Larry having a similar end and near-identical story from the authorities that his hypothesis developed: these alien bugs no bueno’d speed.
Tony tested his theory on Ben Jackson by suggesting a two-dude party that included a snort or eight. Somewhere around 2 am, Ben’s face got wonky and he sprinted into his bathroom.
Five minutes of moaning and crying passed before Tony put his ear to the door. “You okay, pal?”
Stomping sounds were the only reply before a pale, sweaty Ben peeked out. “Come look at this.”
Splattered on the bathroom rug with a boot mark on its belly was an ailing insect critter.
“I had one of those. Smaller, though,” Tony said.
The thing looked up at the guys. Its face was a miniature version of Ben’s, down to the same spate of black freckles! Its mouth opened, and that fucker spoke!
“We are coming. We grow inside you. We grow into you.”
Tony flicked some speed at its body, sizzling it like a slug covered in salt.
“I’m telling you, Ben, speed saves.”
***
“Psst, psst, elf, elf…” Tony crouched behind a Christmas tree near Santa’s Village where Mike had no less than 30 kids and their parents waiting in a line that snaked from Santa’s throne all the way over to Kitchen Essentials.
The elf, a jockey-sized man with a shock of red hair, shushed him.
“Dude, you gotta send Mike on break.”
“You can’t be seen here,” the Elf hissed.
“It’s life or death!”
A few parents rubbernecked. A kid pointed at him and cried, “Santa!”
Other small children noticed Tony and clamored.
Gerald, who, like every movie psycho, had a near-supernatural knack for appearing at the exact wrong moment, spotted him all the way from the vacuum displays and barked, “Flores!”
So caught, Tony went for it. “Mike! Mike! I need to talk to you!” He ran up the line, smacking away the groping hands of children on his way. “It’s a matter of life or—”
Store Security grabbed him by the back of his suit. But they couldn’t lock on to Tony’s body, which still propelled forward and burst through the front of the suit—which Tony had redesigned in Velcro so he could tear it off when Helena was on the Naughty List. In underpants and Santa boots, Tony squirmed through the security guard’s meaty hands and popped to his feet.
The crowd gave him a wide berth as he charged up the candy cane path, yelling, “Speed is the answer, dude! Speed is the answer.” He tried and failed to hurdle the snow-topped gates to the Santa area, smacking face first into a herd of plastic reindeer.
Mike Cheebers employed his decades of community theater experience and his most sonorous voice, to tell the families: “Please everyone, do not worry! For some elves are naughty elves and try to pretend to be Santa. But Santa will deal with this one, and it will all turn out okay. If everybody returns in half an hour, Santa promises to listen to all your wishes.”
Those were the final words Mike Cheebers ever spoke. In the next second, the poor bastard detonated, spraying everyone with red velour and chunks of flesh and innards.
A two-foot tall version of himself emerged from the entrails. Naked, shiny with viscera, it squawked at the crowd: “You are vessels!”
A din of outcries glutted Tony’s ears as he extricated himself from the reindeer. Too late for the Dexatrim, he thought, pulling out his magazine paper triangle and wondering how much he’d need to shake over the new Mike Cheebers, who darted through the crowd, squirting earwigs out his ass. The legions of babies spread their membranous wings and shot into the noses of parents, kids, elves, Gerald, and Tony himself.
It’s gonna take a lot of speed to save these poor fuckers, Tony decided as he pinched a bump straight up his nose. Meanwhile, the Mike Cheebers thing tried to ascend the Down Escalator, shrieking in frustration.
With all the mayhem blinking and screaming around him, Tony Flores might have been staggering through the burning village after a few of his compadres lost their minds and became vengeful gods of democracy.
Tony scrambled into the bathrooms behind the Missus section changing rooms. Here, he’d wait for his ass to burp out the monster while deciding which authorities should be informed of his discovery: that only methylamphetamine could stop the aliens from body-snatching the world.