Last time out Santa wrote a fairy tale and it was godawful. This time out he’s trying to find an escape from the pressures of working life. Aren’t we all?

It’s Santa’s Birthday (🎂)

I don’t know when my birthday is. No idea! I just needed a breather from all the death and destruction at my factory and the pressure I’m under from my stupid employees and bastard stakeholders.

Result? It’s my birthday! For one day, I get a viable escape clause (as opposed to a Santa Claus, ho ho ho!) and some simpering attention from the jerks around me.

Rudolph, in a fit of heroin-induced euphoria, got the celebrations started.

He insisted on baking me a cake. Nurse Doreen (who doubles up as our cook) helped him out. They presented it to me one morning when I was prone on the floor hungover to all hell and covered in vomit.

I was slammed out outside the factory, my right leg frozen solid in the sub-zero temperatures. Frostbite kicking in.

They got all the factory there to watch. I’m slammed on the floor in my underpants, bloodshot eyes, my stupid wife prodding me awake, my leg looking like it’d been on a barbecue full roast for 24 hours charred to all bastard.

“Uh!?” I mumbled.

“HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!” They roared, all those elves with their stupid high-pitched voices and my goddamn hangover.

Rulpolph was braying and galloping around on the spot. He got overexcited and challenged Nurse Doreen to an antler duel. Nurse Doreen doesn’t have any antlers, so she declined. Rudolph tried it on anyway and one of his antlers pierced through her left thigh.

Her manic braying of agony was a real goddamn annoyance.

“SHUT THAT WOMAN UP!!” I bellowed.

Markus, my head elf, promptly chloroformed the stupid woman and she was dragged off to her infirmary. Once she woke up, she was able to administer to herself.

Meanwhile, the elves attached a vodka-based drip to me because I was too hungover to stand. Once that kicked in (30 mins) I could stand.

Rudolph, having calmed down, with his antler drenched in blood and some gristle hanging off one bit, got the cake out. It sat there in the snow with this goddamn putrid green arm sticking out of it.

I eyeballed him as violently as possible.

“What the Christ is that!?” I barked.

Now, Rudolph doesn’t speak English. He doesn’t speak at all, he communicates through heroin consumption, belligerence, argy-bargy, and braying.

Markus does have a better understanding of him than most. He explained to me, out there on the snow, as I soiled my underpants while listening.

“Sir, I watched him last night. He really wanted to impress you and his way of doing that was to dig up the corpse of the janitor from last year. Do you remember him?”

“John!?”

“Yes, sir, John the Janitor. Well remembered!”

“I hated that bastard!”

I was genuinely touched! Rudolph had dug up the rotten remains of that incompetent sack of shite from the year before. I yanked the arm out of the cake and took a great big munch.

“Sir, I wouldn’t advise…”

“YOU SHUT YOUR TRAP! I make the decisions round ‘ere!” I barked at Markus.

I chewed heartily and swallowed the flesh down, followed by a slug of gin from a bottle my wife had brought out for me. “That was delicious!” I announced, before belching vociferously.

It wasn’t delicious. It tasted like shit. But take it from me, it’s important to never admit you’re wrong around your inferiors. Never look weak!

But I could feel my bowels already violently disagreeing with what I’d eaten. Time was of the essence. I demanded I got lugged back into my quarters so I could thaw my leg out. The elves dragged me back, in a ceremonious kind of way with me bellowing, and propped me up onto my bed.

I was going to thank them, but any words were drowned out by the catastrophic and thunderous flatulence that promptly befell me.

It was so violently deafening it made all the elves abruptly stop and exchange glances. Even the wife looked repulsed.

“YOU GET BACK TO WORK!!” I bellowed, with me pelting the empty gin bottle at my nearest wall. And off they scuttled, to the sound of Santa’s baritone bowels booming bombastically.

Santa’s Guide to Dealing With Food Poisoning

The sound of thundering and rumbling woke me up. Continuous instances of foghorns sounding out. My stomach shifted again.

Oh my days. Oh my good Christ! I’ve never had a night like it. Nurse Doreen, with a bandaged leg, came to help me. I’d turned a weird light green and, through my drunkenness, was fairly abusive towards her.

I wasn’t having it, so got her to fix up a potent mix of vodka, cocaine, and cortisone. She gave me the shot without complaint, although did warn me it could be fatal prior to injecting me.

“BITCH!!” I bellowed. She gave me the shot.

I then downed three extra large cans of energy drinks, with more vodka, and that was enough to ensure I could stand up. I had the runs like a proper mofo, but I got one of my specially prepared man nappies for such an occasion and yanked that on.

The mess was soon spilling over the sides of the nappy, but at least let me get on with the day free from the nausea, light-headedness, and general malaise.

Staggering out of my bedroom to my office quarters, I bellowed for Markus (my head elf) to get into my office. I noted again that weird background noise of thundering and rumbling. It kept going. The very foundations of the factory were tremoring.

Markus turned up ashen-faced looking all horrified and pale.

“What’s your problem now, cretin?”

“Sir…”

Well, long story short, an out-of-it-on-heroin-Rudolph had done a Jesus Thing and distributed the rest of the putrid arm birthday cake to the elf workforce. He’d broken it into chunks so everyone could get a bit. And that meant 500 cases of food poisoning. Then he passed out (due to heroin).

I sat there stroking my big Santa beard in contemplation.

The silence was broken by a catastrophic movement from myself. I ignored the ongoing cacophony to continue stroking me beard, with Markus standing looking embarrassed.

“DID YOU HAVE ANY OF THE CAKE, MARKUS!?” I bellowed over the noise.

“NO, SIR!!!”

“GOOD! THANKS FOR CLAIRFYING!”

I stroked my Santa beard. The noise abruptly stopped with a disturbing squelch. I then stood up and went into the factory. The mess. The rumbling. The thundering. It was a war scene, all right, with elves staggering around clutching their stomachs and fouling themselves everywhere.

I took a quick tour of the factory then bellowed, “Bollocks to this!”

Nurse Doreen was commanded into my quarters. The order was given. Gas the factory! Mustard gas the lot of the bastards. However, Markus (also in my quarters) warned me that was a serious breach of various employment laws.

“What’s bleach got to do with this, dickhead?!” I bellowed at him.

Anyway, they put me off the whole mass murder idea. As I sat there continuously drinking I saw there was nothing else for it.

“Administer the magic potion…”

Thus, Nurse Doreen gave all 500+ elves vodka, cocaine, cortisone, and energy drinks. Elf nappies were also distributed.

Now, elves aren’t quite as robust of constitution as myself. They’re small beings and, as it turns out, the doses I ordered Nurse Doreen to administer were borderline lethal. In fact, only 300 elves survived the next 24 hours.

Unfortunately, this onslaught of death and faecal matter all coincided with a visit from my stakeholders I’d totally forgotten about.

They turned up, took one look at the place—drenched in shit with corpses littering the factory floors—and fled. A violently worded and threatening email was sent direct to my account later to visit their headquarters in New York to discuss the consequences of my actions.

I got that email when I was pretty drunk and drained of energy, having spent all day fouling myself repeatedly. I was so fatigued I hadn’t bothered changing my nappy.

Pissed off, I just sent them a simple drunken email back:

“fuck of u stupid wankers lol”

I came to the next day hungover to all bastard. My wife had printed off their emailed response to my rebuttal. I read the email. I belched in terror.

Then I went online and booked my plane tickets to New York.

Swigging from a bottle of vodka, I cursed the day I ever had a birthday. Then I began packing my bags for New York, piling the vodka bottles and Santa nappies into the suitcase ready for my epic journey of yore.