The Human Santapede Read online

  THE HUMAN SANTAPEDE

  Adam Millard was born in Shrewsbury, England, in 1980, and grew up in Wolverhampton. He is the author of the zombie novels, Dead Cells, Dead Frost, and Dead Line, the bizarre novellas, Zoonami, Hamsterdamned! and Vinyl Destination, and the supernatural novels, Deathdealers and The Susceptibles. He can be contacted through www.adammillard.co.uk.

  Also by Adam Millard

  Only in Whispers

  The Ballad of Dax and Yendyll

  Grimwald The Great

  Dead West

  Dead Cells

  Dead Frost

  Dead Line

  Deathdealers

  The Susceptibles

  Olly

  Skinners

  Divided

  Chasing Nightmares

  Peter Crombie, Teenage Zombie

  Peter Crombie Vs The Grampires

  The Secret Diary of Peter Crombie

  The Marionnettiste of Versailles: and Other Oddities

  Hamsterdamned

  Vinyl Destination

  Zoonami

  The

  Human

  Santapede

  Adam

  MILLARD

  Copyright © 2014 Adam Millard

  This Edition Published 2014 by Crowded

  Quarantine Publications

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  All characters in this publication are fictitious

  and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead,

  is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced,

  stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any

  form or by any means without the prior

  permission in writing of the publisher, nor be

  otherwise circulated in any form of binding or

  cover other than that in which it is published

  and without a similar condition including this

  condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-9928838-9-8

  Crowded Quarantine Publications

  34 Cheviot Road

  Wolverhampton

  West Midlands

  WV2 2HD

  “A good many things go around in the dark besides Santa Claus.” – Herbert Hoover

  “Everything is theoretically impossible, until it is done.” – Robert A. Heinlein

  “Elves shouldn’t be treated like shit. We’re not Mexicans!” – Finklefoot

  1

  They say, whoever they are, that a book should never begin with a description of the weather. It’s one of those important rules, like never kicking off with an epilogue or an afterword. However, it was snowing so heavily in The Land of Christmas that they, whoever they are, would most likely disregard such a ridiculous rule and instead try to figure out why so much fluffy white stuff was falling from the sky.

  It was not unknown for it to snow in The Land of Christmas. In fact, it snowed all year round, except for the odd day where it simply threatened to. It was, however, strange for it to piss it down so heavily that you could barely make out the village at the bottom of the hill or the brightly-coloured lights stretching from one house to the next. Somewhere beneath that perfect white blanket were a thousand elves, all of them wandering the same thing…

  How long can an elf last on a diet of snow-cones and elf-faeces?

  “What’s it doing out there?” Trixie asked, putting down her book and removing her spectacles. She was ranked in the upper echelon of Elvedom, which meant that she could afford books and spectacles to her heart’s content. Sometimes she bought books she didn’t even read, and glasses she never wore, but that’s what happens when elves become successful. The fact that her husband, Finklefoot, was one of Santa’s favourite foremen might have had a little something to do with it.

  “Oh, it’s bleedin’ lovely,” Finklefoot said, peeling his face from the frozen glass comprising their living-room window. “Nothing but nude beaches and piña-coladas. Hang on…” He held a small hand up, before adding, “I thought I just saw David Hasselhoff running down the street with an inflatable red float.”

  Trixie shook her head. “No need to be like that,” she said. “I was just making polite conversation.” She picked up her book – something about fifty grey sheds, though quite why she was reading about drab garden structures, Finklefoot didn’t know – and pretended to read it. Finklefoot knew she was pretending, for her glasses remained in her lap, and her eyes were about as useful as a chocolate radiator without them.

  Great, Finklefoot thought, suddenly feeling very guilty. “I’m sorry, love. I didn’t mean to be a dick. I’m just fed up. We’ve got less than a week to go before Christmas Eve, and we can’t even get up to the workshop. If it doesn’t knock off soon, we’ll be too far behind with the toys to catch up. It’ll be another one of those years.” He was, of course, referring to 1999. Two entire gangs of elves had gone on strike three days before the big one, leaving the workshop nineteen million toys short. Finklefoot and his team had had to improvise, knocking together toys from remaindered bits and thingamabobs. In the end, the Furby went on to be rather successful, but it had been touch and go back there for a moment. The last thing Finklefoot wanted was a repeat.

  “It’ll stop soon,” Trixie said. “Enjoy the break while it lasts. The Fat Bastard hardly pays us enough to lose sleep over a shortfall.” In fact, Santa Claus AKA The Fat Bastard, didn’t pay them at all. It was an elf’s job to make toys, and if you refused to make toys, you were sent to the human world to star in pantomimes and horror films. They had all heard such terrible stories about Wizzle (human translation: Warwick Davis), one of their own, and one of Santa’s former favourites. Human children were intentionally frightened at bedtime with tales of giants and witches; the children of The Land of Christmas were told stories of the former elf’s fall from grace. But that’s what happens when you don’t conform. You end up in sitcoms with Ricky Gervais.

  “You’re right,” Finklefoot said as he poured a large glass of eggnog. Personally, he hated the stuff, but it was either that or tap-water, and he knew better than anyone not to touch the stuff. If all the elves in The Land of Christmas were making toys, who the fuck worked at the water treatment plant? No one, that’s who, which meant it was probably about as safe to drink as an anthrax and acid cocktail. “I just don’t want to have to play catch-up. That’s how mistakes happen. One minute you’re working on a perfectly ordinary plastic doll, the next you’re trying to pull a piece of Lego from its ass. And you know how stressed my gang are at the best of times. Rat only has to see the word ‘overtime’ and his bowels give way, and the last time Gizzo was under pressure, he almost went around the slinky spindle.” The only good thing about that would have been pushing him down the stairs to see if he worked.

  “Then tell them to work safely, and at their usual pace.” Trixie knew that some of the elves only had two paces: slow and stop. “If we’re behind when the big day arrives, then so be it. What’s The Fat Bastard going to do? Sack us? I’d like to see him try. If you hadn’t noticed, us elves aren’t knocking out babies like we used to. He’ll have a helluva game trying to replace us.”

  “He’ll import elves in from Poland,” Finklefoot said. “They work at twice our speed, and you can fit fifty of them into a house this size without them even complaining.”

  “Yeah, but will they be as loyal as us?”

  “Twice as loyal,” Finklefoot said, “and less likely to steal The Fat Bastard’s paperclips.”

  “Who’s been stealing his paperclips?”

  “All
of us.” It was, Finklefoot thought, the only way to make the job worthwhile. “So it won’t make a blind bit of difference to The Fat Bastard if he has to replace us. He’ll save a fortune in office supplies, and we’ll be shipped off to the human world to play seven dwarves for the rest of our pitiful lives.”

  “Don’t be so grumpy,” Trixie said, pushing the specs onto her tiny face.

  “Or Sleepy, or Bashful?” Finklefoot said, pacing nervously from one side of the room to the other. “No, me and the boys are going to have to put in extra shifts to make this right. Santa’s going to work us round the clock. Once this blizzard stops, I don’t expect we’ll see much of one another.” That wasn’t such a terrible thing, as far as Finklefoot was concerned. He loved his wife dearly, but there were times when she simply got on his tits. When you’re married to a person for three centuries, such things are unavoidable.

  “I’ll have a word with Jessica. She’ll tell him to go easy on us.”

  Jessica – or Mrs Claus, according to the legend – was an ex-stripper, and had the body to prove it. Many of the elves had the hots for her, and a couple had actually managed to penetrate…her steely exterior. The thing about Mrs Claus was that she had a short person fetish, and when The Fat Bastard wasn’t around, she made no effort to hide it. As far as Finklefoot knew, she’d already slept with Shart, Rat, and Gizzo. The only thing keeping Jessica from having a slice of him was sitting across the room, her nose pressed into a book about grey sheds.

  “In the meantime,” Trixie said, “get some rest. You’ve been standing at that window for three days solid. I wouldn’t mind if there was anything to see, but we’re snowed in.”

  Finklefoot tapped at the window, watched as a few particles of snow trickled down the tightly-packed block pressed up against the glass. “You’re right,” he said, sighing. “I’m going to bed. Wake me up when it’s cleared up.” And with that, Finklefoot was gone. Trixie listened to his footfall as it disappeared into the bedroom. Once she was certain he was gone, she put the book down and picked up a large candy-cane (six inches, at least) and a piece of tissue.

  She picked the book up once again and smiled. “Just me and you now,” she said, reaching down into her knickers, where countless pleasures awaited. If only her husband’s sobs weren’t audible in the next room. It was awfully off-putting.

  2

  Santa Claus (AKA The Fat Bastard, AKA Kris Kringle, AKA Father Christmas, AKA He Who Shall Be Obeyed) watched as his wife erotically slid up and down the pole, throwing her long, slender legs in any direction they would go without snapping. She was a sight to behold, a beautiful red-headed minx wearing traditional slutty Mrs Claus garb (you could pick it up from any Land of Christmas sex shop, but this one was handmade, and not particularly well, Santa thought, as it was missing its crotch).

  Up she went, down she came, a delicious present that Santa would have normally looked forward to unwrapping, and yet…

  This snow was taking the piss.

  “What’s the matter?” Jessica said, sliding down the pole. “You look preoccupied.”

  Santa sighed. His thick, white beard did a little dance. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he said, pushing himself up from his armchair. “I guess I’m just not in the mood tonight.”

  “It’s the weather, isn’t it?” Jessica slipped a red and white robe around her shoulders and went to her husband’s side. God, he was fat. He’d always been a little portly, but the last few centuries, he’d really started to let himself go. “It’ll clear up soon. We can always start digging the elves out. Or maybe ship some Polish ones in to finish the job?”

  Santa grunted. “That would make sense,” he said. “I’ve heard they don’t steal paperclips.”

  “See,” Jessica said, rubbing his rotund tummy with a perfectly-manicured hand. “Things are starting to look up already.”

  Making his way across the room, Santa arrived at the bedroom window, slightly out of breath. “I think it’s stopping,” he said, staring toward the sky. Was he just being optimistic? Was it ever going to stop? Were his staff okay down there, smothered with snow? He didn’t know much about the weather – that wasn’t his job – but he knew a thing or two about oxygen, and what happened when it ran out. The last thing he needed was for the snow to clear, only to reveal a whole army of dead, blue elves. Even the Polish contingency would be tough to put to work in a place that had, only recently, generated a thousand deceased Smurfs.

  But the snow was stopping. For the last three days thick sheets had rained down, and now…now you could make out the stars in the sky.

  Jessica stretched a hand around and began to stroke her husband’s underbelly. The fact that he even had one suggested she ought to start casting her net a little further. I’ve always got my elves, she thought. Small in stature, but not in the trouser department, they satisfied her in ways her husband couldn’t. She was particularly fond of Finklefoot’s crew. They seemed to know which way their bread was buttered. If only she could convince that foreman of theirs to get in on the action.

  “I think everything’s going to be okay,” Santa said, a smile creeping onto his face (beneath the beard, of course) for the first time that week. “Oh joyous occasion! Oh, how wonderful! Oh, by morning my marvellous toymakers will be free! Free to return to work for no money and very little in the way of choice!”

  Jessica Claus didn’t think her husband quite grasped the concept of freedom.

  “Oh, this is good news,” Santa said, turning to his wife and pulling her into a tight hug. She could feel the erection through his jingling red trousers.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Jessica said, smiling, licking her lips sensually.

  Santa reached down and pulled free a rolled up scroll. It was his Good Child/Bad Child list. “I must get back to work,” he said, rushing across the room as fast as an overweight geriatric could. “Oh, how wonderful! How remarkable!” And then he was gone, leaving Mrs Claus standing there, half-naked and feeling generally unfulfilled.

  The sooner those elves are free, she thought as a stirring in her loins sent a shudder coursing through her entire body, the better.

  3

  If Santa Claus hadn’t been busy celebrating the cessation of the blizzard in his study with a large glass of brandy and a mince pie, and if Mrs Claus hadn’t been feeling sorry for herself and yearning for the considerate and amatory touch of an elf – any elf – they might have noticed the dark, cloaked figure moving through The Land of Christmas below. They might have noticed it, or they might not, for the shrouded individual moved quickly, seemingly impervious to the snow beneath its feet.

  The footprints the figure left were quickly, and rather cleverly, expunged by the contraption strapped to its back. Essentially a snow-shovel belted to a pair of whirling, battery-powered standing fans, it did the job for which it was built with aplomb. There was no way the snow could betray him; no way they would ever know who he was, at least not until he was ready for them to.

  He looked forward to that moment with an eagerness he hadn’t felt for many centuries. It would be like Christmas to him, but then again…wasn’t everything?

  Slipping between two chimney-tops, which just went to show how deep the snow was, the figure sniggered quietly. Reaching into the large sack draped across his shoulder, he pulled out a large shovel. It was the kind of shovel reserved for burying people, or hitting people devilishly hard across the back of the head, or decapitating mice. It wasn’t, therefore, a shovel that had seen much in the way of gardening.

  Taking a deep breath and a snort of candy-apple snuff, the cloaked figure began to dig.

  And dig.

  Dig, dig, dig…

  After fifteen minutes of laborious digging, the figure considered forgetting the whole thing and returning to his home, but a voice in his head reminded him why he was doing this, why he had to do it, and then he saw it again; the vile and beautiful and disgusting and wonderful and grotesque and gorgeous creation that had come to him just a few ni
ghts ago. An image so sickening and delightful that it would have given Satan himself nightmares.

  Switching the shovel to the other hand, the figure pressed on. Oh, it was going to be exquisite, and when it was complete, stretching around The Land of Christmas for all to see (at least, all those not partaking), he would climb up onto the workshop roof and watch in admiration. Watch as The Fat Bastard led the coiling worm through the streets, hollering out for help, begging for the perpetrator to unstitch him from such a foul and fetid fabrication.

  And he would laugh, and so on and so forth, for that was the kind of guy he was.

  Dig, dig, dig…

  Dig…

  Dig…

  Clunk!

  *

  “Jimbo,” Sissy whispered into the dark. “Jimbo, was that you?”

  Something shifted beside her. “Ugh,” Jimbo said.

  “Jimbo, did you just make a noise?” She was up on her elbows now, glancing around at the shadows.

  “What did it sound like?” Jimbo groggily asked.

  Sissy shuddered. “It sounded like clunk!. Did you just go clunk!?”

  Jimbo considered the question, and arrived at a conclusion. “In all my years of making noises in my sleep,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve ever gone clunk!. I don’t think it was me.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then the sound of snoring.

  “Jimbo!” Sissy said, nudging her husband hard in the ribs. “Are you going to go check?”

  “Check on what?” Jimbo said. “I can’t hear anything. Maybe you dreamt it. And could you please not elbow me in the ribs when I’m trying to sleep? It’s awfully painful and not at all what one might expect from his beloved.”

  “If you don’t get your ass up right now and check on what’s going clunk!, I’ll cut your little elf cock off and mail it to your mother.”