"Merry Christmas to All, and to All a Goodis Night"
By Peter Rozovsky
"Turn over, baby. You’re burning up," she cooed. "Let me do your front.”
The fat red man purred contentedly. Then he opened his mouth and screamed. He awoke from the dream jammed down the chimney, flames licking at his back. From above, a shaft of weak, sooty light and murmured voices.
“But, Rudy, what about—“
“Leave the fat guy. I’m out of here. Who’s with me?”
“I’m in,” a voice said.
“Dasher?”
“Yeah.”
"You on, Dancer? Prancer? Vixen? Comet? Good. Let’s go.”
Back down in hell, the fat red man shut his eyes and heard them exclaim as they drove out of sight …
© Peter Rozovsky 2014
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Labels: Christmas, David Goodis, miscellaneous
posted by Peter Rozovsky at 11:39 AM
15 Comments:
Okay, what kind of hallucinogen is at the root of the imagined scenario? Yikes! I'm suddenly very afraid of reindeer! (I wonder what Gene Autry would have said about this version of "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.")
You're right; I must have been hallucinating. My tale is more like Jim Thompson than it is like David Goodis.
Some writers -- shall we include you? -- do their best work under the influence. Consider S. T. Coleridge, Dylan Thomas, Hammett, and Hammett's tweety-pie Lillian Hellman. So, punning the 60s and 70s, write on, Peter, write on!
If only I could fall under the influence more often!
Peter
I really have to read more David Goodis. I've only ever read 1 or 2, but as a Jim THompson fan I think I wd like his oeuvre...
You might continue your Goodis reading with Street of No Return or Cassidy's Girl or the story "Black Pudding." I'm no Goodis completist, and I think some of his books are regarded as weaker than others. I haven't read any of the weak ones, though.
The invocation of hell toward the end of my little piece is a bit like The Getaway or maybe even Savage Night, which I realized only after I finished writing. We creative writers may be creatures of complete originality, but fortunately our muses are well-read.
But where are the reindeers going?
To a sleazy strip club called ... the North Pole.
I've been to that club. The reindeer Dancer was actually a pole-dancer at the Pole. Some of the patrons have complained about the horny reindeer. No one was safe. (Groan!)
Aye yay yay--what have I started?
In the sequel and his reindeer friends--call them the Donner party--get unruly then they discover that the North Pole is some joint uptown and that it's a lot closer to Warsaw than to the Arctic Circle. Or maybe the bouncer insists they're drunk, and Rudy's story about why his nose is red only makes things worse.
Seana, the position as my muse is open. It pays 10 percent of net sales.
I have always wanted to go with a group of friends to a restaurant and leave my name as Donner just to see if the person who calls us when our table is ready does the right thing.
Ho . . . Ho . . . Ho . . .
And that leads me to a question: Who is making the fat man so jolly at the beginning?
BTW, I no longer hang out at the Pole. It got too expensive. Too many bucks.
Maybe I'll call the story (or book?) Ho, Ho, Hell. Or I could borrow and alter one of Donald Westlake's titles and call it Sleighground.
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