I Killed Santa Read online



  Author Brian Lovestar is not the most interesting person in the history of the universe ever, but he has been to over 40 countries, once dropped a record player on his head and took Louis Walsh nightclubbing. Not in the same day, he hastens to add.

  When he’s not writing, he’s playing records and when he’s not playing records, he can usually be found writing. When he’s not doing either, he’s probably asleep.

  His debut novel was described by one critic as “a masterpiece, created by a genius” and who is he to beg to differ?

  I KILLED SANTA

  BRIAN LOVESTAR

  Legal Notes

  First published in Great Britain in 2016.

  Brian Lovestar has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  This is a book of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the copyright holder.

  Copyright © 2016 Brian Lovestar

  All rights reserved.

  To my enemy, my forgiveness. To my friends and family, my heart. To my children, a good example. To myself, respect.

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  i

  1

  I Killed Santa

  1

  2

  Don’t Forget The X in Xmas

  9

  3

  Death By Christmas

  16

  4

  A Pop Tart Is For Life. Not Just For Christmas

  21

  5

  Author Interview

  29

  6

  Dream Myself Alive Preview

  33

  7

  Pop Tarts Preview

  71

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘I Killed Santa’ is a series of short Christmas stories by author Brian Lovestar. With his unique twisted sense of humour, come and enjoy a Christmas like no other before... in Paris... space... hell… and Shotton Colliery, though some would argue the latter two are one and the same. The stories serve as an interquel and sequel of sorts to his existing novels 'Dream Myself Alive' and 'Pop Tarts', as well as a preview of upcoming work.

  .

  I KILLED SANTA

  Christmas 1978 through 1984. I wanted a Mr Frosty crushed ice drinks maker.

  I got a Biffy Beans doll, a Raleigh Chopper, Charlie’s Angels annual, an Etch-a-Sketch, a View Master, Scooby Doo annual, Guess Who, Buckaroo, Simon Says, Mr Microphone, Beezer annual, Bucks Fizz’s Hand Cut LP and a record player or three (I burned one out in just one day, one Christmas.)

  But no Mr Frosty crushed ice drinks maker.

  Each year my Mam would say “No, Zac. Sorry son, but it is a waste of money.” And she refused point blank.

  Even so, I never gave up hope. I got to touch it one year in Fine Fare, but that was as exciting as it got.

  This Christmas all I want is to spend the day with Kelly. The only problem is she died in April. Not that I’m going to let that stop me.

  I’ve been trying to master the art of lucid dreaming for a few months now. I’d like to say I’d got it down pat, but sometimes I feel like I’m seemingly at war with my own subconscious psyche. Part of me knows I probably shouldn’t be doing it and likes to throw the occasional spanner in the works.

  So I’m awake in the dream, but finding my way to Kelly is going to be a whole other obstacle.

  I find it a little bizarre in this day and age that parents expect their children to believe in Santa Claus. I say expect because I’m pretty sure from the age of about the age of 6, kids figure it out now anyway. That Santa is not real. They are too smart for their parents’ own good. Just like the new latest iPhone has better spec, a modern child’s brain ram is usually far superior to a parent made in 1972.

  And do you - despite your romanticised ideal of Christmases past - really want your child to believe it is okay for a fat man with a white beard to come down your chimney? (And there is purely no euphemism inferred there, those of you with a dirty mind.)

  Not even sure a 5 year old would believe now, seeing as we haven’t had open fireplaces for about 20 years. So what is it we tell them these days? A fat man with a white beard has a special magic key that allows him to enter your backdoor? Yikes! I’d be terrified if I was a kid these days.

  I’m sorry, and again I don’t meant to spoil your romance with Christmas and be a big bah humbug, but I guess it isn’t any less believable and probably slightly more so than most of your religions. We laugh at children for believing in the myth of Father Christmas, then go right back to believing in our own imaginary creator ourselves. Is Santa any less real than God is? Are they brothers? They both have a white beard. Both fat. They look like the same person. They come from the same place (a gullible imagination.) Perhaps they are one and the same?

  And another thing. I’m scared of both of them. God - because if he does exist - he’ll ring my neck for not believing in Him; turn me away from Heaven’s gates and send me to Satan’s Hellfire. (As long as it’s not Hartlepool, I’m good.) Santa, however, for a very different reason.

  My mother died when I was a nipper. I had to spend that first Christmas without her, with my Uncle Arthur. It was nice of him to dress up as Santa and play the part for me. Try to convince me that there was still a real Santa. By this point I was already sure there pretty much wasn’t a real God. Not after what happened to my mam.

  But in surprising me, he also surprised Aunt Lyndsey – his wife - who wasn’t expecting him back from the pub so soon. Milkman Joe hopped it out of her backdoor (he must’ve nicked Santa’s special magic key) fresh out of milk, while Aunt Lyndsey was left to explain that she had her knickers round her ankles just to ensure her ankles didn’t get cold.

  Uncle Arthur didn’t believe her of course. I don’t think he believed her shiny new pearl necklace came from Santa. So he beat on her. I heard the commotion and came downstairs to witness Santa attacking my favourite Aunt. I grabbed and hit him over the head with my etch-a-sketch.

  I KILLED SANTA.

  I fucking killed Santa!

  Of course I didn’t really. Aunt Lyndsey just kicked him out and took out a restraining order on him. But it took me years to get over that. Even to this day I still have nightmares.

  So now of course, whenever I try to find Kelly in a Christmas dreamscape, I encounter Dead Santa aka my Uncle Arthur, a zombified Father Christmas. So I wait until Christmas Eve, and all is quiet. Not a creature is stirring, not even a mouse.

  I’m current day me but I’m in the home I grew up in. I wait till Uncle Arthur goes to the pub and Aunt Lyndsey leads her latest gentleman caller to her boudoir. Shortly thereafter ‘Santa’ arrives and - as if on cue - hears bouncing bed springs and Lyndsey squealing like a pig with a feather duster stuck up its arse…

  He goes upstairs…

  I take this opportunity to sneak out of the house only to find Santa’s sleigh parked out front. Golly! Was that the real Santa and not my Uncle Arthur? Does Santa really exist after all? Anyway, I get in the sleigh and away we go. Down to Dover and over to Calais.

  Morning breaks and I land in Paris on the green just opposite the Eiffel Tower. Except it’s not green, it’s white - evidently adorned by a sumptuous blanket of fresh snow – and Kelly is waiting for me in the middle of it.

  We have a champagne breakfast with warm croissants and Tattinger. It starts to snow and the tower starts to sparkle. We are immune to the cold weather, lost in the beauty of our love for each other and the magical surroundings. Then we exchange gifts.

  I give Kelly my heart for the ten zillionth time.
She gives me a note with a clue that refers me to the attic in the house I grew up in, only this time she means the one before my mother died. When I get there I find a present wrapped up in 1984, covered in dust and cobwebs and a tag signed “Love, Mam”.

  I dust it off with the sleeve on my shirt and tear it open in pant-wetting haste. It is a Mr Frosty crushed ice drinks maker.

  DON’T FORGET THE X IN Xmas

  Life had not been kind to Susan Jones.

  She had married the first man who had shown a literal semi -interest in her.

  Had sex twice and popped out two kids.

  There was no love lost between her and Ronnie because there had never been any.

  They lived in a small County Durham village and not only was her business everyone else’s, it seems her man was too.

  In the 70s he was known as The Chopper of Shotton Colliery.

  All the not-so-ladies had ridden him… around the block and back again.

  Usually while she had his bun cooking in her oven.

  And things had not changed with time.

  Well other than her svelte physique.

  Now she was a size and age plus, alone and hungry for affection.

  Ronnie had left her years ago for some cheap tart or other.

  The kids had grown up, popped out a few of their own and moved onto the exciting big town delights of neighbouring Peterlee.

  All she had left was rock and roll night on a Thursday at the Shotton Comrades Club with her equally dowdy cousin Linda Lou.

  Oh how she lived for a Thursday.

  As did Linda.

  Linda’s circumstances were somewhat direr.

  She had never been kissed, never been loved, never been CENSORED.

  And this even after a night in Club Vibe (or claggy mat as it was called, back in her day) where girls had been known to get ‘with child’ just from the sticky carpet.

  The carpet has been replaced with linoleum and it’s harder not to slide and ride on a mystery penis there now, after a couple of cans of Hooch.

  And that’s just the boys.

  But Linda was determined to make amends for that.

  And it all started right here and right now.

  She was determined to get a White Christmas this year.

  Santa Claus was going to come down her chimney and empty his sack on her both.

  She just needed Cousin Susan to help execute her fiendish plan.

  Now Susan and Linda weren’t the prettiest of babes.

  They weren’t so much dropped as babies, but rather thrown.

  And usually in the Brickyard pond, twice a week.

  It’s how children were taught to swim here, way back when.

  They also got caught on barbed wire a couple of times, crawling under the gate of the local paper factory.

  That was how Shottonians got their weekly magazines.

  And Susan couldn’t live without her Look-In, nor Linda her Just Seventeen.

  She had saved all the weekly position of the fortnight clippings up and intended to try them all out this very Christmas.

  And with Santa himself no less.

  She’d been a good girl this year.

  Now it was time to get her just desserts.

  Susan too.

  So they wrote their letters to Daddy Xmas and hung their fishnet stockings on the mantelpiece.

  They couldn’t find a carrot so left a stick of Twix for Rudolph and can of extra strength lager for Santa.

  The Shotton norm.

  Oh and a couple of condoms.

  Susan’s was ribbed. Linda’s Salty Caramel flavoured.

  And off to bed they went.

  They believed in the true spirit of Christmas.

  So they had a couple of Brandy’s to help them sleep, otherwise the excitement would have been simply too overpower-bottoming.

  Linda was snoring within seconds.

  But Susan just couldn’t drift off (probably because of Linda’s snoring, which sounded like a pig and an elephant participating in electro anal auto asphyxiation.)

  She tossed and turned for what seemed like hours, then suddenly she thought she heard hoove-steps on the roof.

  “Rudolph!” she pronounced excitedly, getting out of bed.

  It was windy out and there were a couple of loose tiles.

  She tiptoed downstairs to find Santa in the living room, drinking the can of lager and nibbling on the stick of Twix.

  “That was for Rudolph!” she chastised, shaking her finger rather crossly at him.

  “He wasn’t hungry,” said Santa. “Ate too many carrots at no.23, 4 and 5.”

  Santa was sitting on the couch.

  And it looked like he had a boner in his big red suit.

  “Wanna sit on my knee?” he asked.

  It wasn’t really Santa of course, it was local druggie Ted Myers.

  He’d broken in to steal presents to flog for more E.

  But he’d been touched by Susan and Linda’s letters… it was likely the drugs, either that or the Carling Special Brew… so he’d gone back to no. 23 and ‘borrowed’ a Santa suit to make all their XXXmas wishes come true.

  Luckily he’d had enough drugs not to see that Susan wasn’t Cheryl Whatever-HerNameIs-ThisWeek. Or feel her weight when she kindly obliged.

  They made love by the open fireside.

  It was so ‘romantic’, Santa emptied his sack at least twice.

  Susan felt like she was in a Mills & Boon novel.

  She wasn’t expecting one pearl necklace, never mind two!

  The next morning when Linda woke up, she found Susan lying naked on the fireside rug.

  It was surely a sight for sore eyes, she thought, covering her eyes.

  Susan had fallen asleep after a cigarette and Santa had since mysteriously disappeared.

  Linda was sure Susan had just dreamt of her romantic liaison.

  Either that or she was just jealous.

  It looked like the only action she was going to get this year was with claggy mat, after a drunken tumble in Vibe on New Year’s Eve.

  And with that they exchanged Cousinly pleasantries, presents… well same value TK Maxx gift cards… they pulled crackers… and had a Turkey crown dinner with brussel sprouts and all the trimmings.

  And they wished a Happy XXXmas to one and all.

  DEATH BY CHRISTMAS

  It was not the way I wanted to go. Caught with my pants around my ankles, butt-fucking a snowman Do snowmen even have butts?

  But (no pun intended) you see, the thing I have learnt in death is something I only wish I had learnt in life: not to give a fuck about what anyone thought.

  And now it was too late.

  Oh I’m Snowman Buttfuck by the way.

  Or at least that’s how I’ll always be remembered.

  I have social media to thank for that.

  It was my Christmas work’s do. And I never usually go to these horrid, wretched things. I am not a people person by any wildest stretch of imagination, much a less a work’s colleague person; and because they surely are another breed unto themselves.

  And I don’t even do Christmas, so God knows what I was thinking! Actually he probably doesn’t. There are over 7.5 billion people on earth, so I sinseriously hope he was busy answering the prayer of a starving child in Africa, while I was selfishly begging to win the lottery.

  And that was never going to happen anyway.

  I never bought a ticket, for starters.

  There must be more chance of dying while butt fucking a snowman. Oh yes, it seems there was.

  And did I mention I’m not even gay?

  So anyway the work’s Christmas party was in full swing and horrendously awful; full of drunken people that I didn’t like sober, much less intoxicated. And I needed to be intoxicated beyond intoxication. So I drank and then some.

  And did I mention that I didn’t even like drinking anymore? Not that I ever really did, of course.

  Beer tastes like Santa’s coughed up flem.
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  Wine like Rudolph’s piss.

  And not that I liked Scrooge’s arse sweat either, but needs must and process of elimination and all that.

  So vodka it was then, and in tenfold.

  I had to numb the pain of being with creatures I absolutely despised and figured if I drank enough, I might actually start to like someone, but to be honest it was never really going to happen was it?

  Anyway, a gallon of Scrooge’s arse sweat later (and a pint of Santa’s coughed up flem, I was bought by the team brown tongue) I ended up in a game of truth or dare with said brown tongue.

  Is it too late to charge him with murder?

  The freaky fetish cretin asked me if I would piss on him if he was on fire, and me not wanting to hurt his feelings I’d chosen a dare instead.

  Him and his kinky, perverted little mind.

  I refused point blank of course.

  And that was that, I guess.

  At least it should have been.

  A few hours later I was walking home, alone.

  I couldn’t get a taxi and there was an Uber price surge way beyond the contents of both my wallet and bank account.

  Christmas really does suck.

  Bah humbug and all that!

  I came across a snowman on the corner of a council estate and in my absolute drunken stupor, I took a selfie while fulfilling said kinky pervert’s wishes. As you do.

  I was so drunk I passed out during which, of course.

  And I never woke up.

  I wasn’t the only unfortunate that Christmas.

  A girl sat next to me in Heaven’s check-in lobby was killed by an exploding Christmas cracker.

  She was laughing as she pulled it and choked on a set of snowballs that shot straight down her throat.

  I kid you not.

  And another guy had taken his little one to see Santa when he knelt down to tie his shoe laces and promptly had his heart pierced by the antlers of a loose reindeer that had just skidded on ice.

  I’m not making this shit up.

  They even turned me away at Heaven’s Gates.

  Sent me downstairs.

  Said there had been a picture of a starving child that I hadn’t liked or shared for three prayers on Facebook.