Dirkmas Part 1

The last coherant memory of the Christmas party Dirk Angelos had was watching two faeries make out whilst slumped on the couch.



Not that he could remember how he got there in the first place, of course. It had been one of those parties that starts out like any other frat boy party one holds when your idiotically famous brother is away, your newest novel just got published and you've got nothing to do except watch the new addition to the shark tank derp his way into the walls. Seriously, goblin sharks are fucking stupid. Anyway, it had everything that a frat boy party needs - nachoes, alcohol, shitty music pounding from a cheap boombox scrounged from Wes Weasley a reputable eletronics store, honest. The guests mostly consisted of Pit's buddies from the Gravitas Grand Theatre, who had brought their friends along, who had brought their friends along until the house was full of various mythical creatures and aliens.

But that was alright, because why else was it three stories tall? And, up until half-eleven at night, it had been very much like the average frat boy party, too. There was talking very loud to be heard over the screamingly-loud music, bottles left in windows because the glass recycling bag was getting full up, and the obligatory drinking games. The highlight of those had to be one session of Dirty Pint, wherupon Bobby was unlucky enough to get to drink from the glass, and promptly ran to the sink to throw up out of all six of his mouths at once. Dirk could have done something to help out his suffering comerade, but he was a little too occupied with laughing his arse off at the scene, as was everyone else.

And then the roofies kicked in.

Sweet Lady Palutena, did the roofies kick in.

The rest of the night passed in a blur. Delia's flowers bloomed right in the middle of a half-naked table dance, causing whoops of delight from all present. A minotaur put his head through a wall. Yig, the Father of Serpents, climbed onto the roof, screamed that he could fly and fell three stories to a broken leg. A trio of Predators tried to hold a paintball tournament in the hall corridors, leaving an increasing number of laser burns in the walls. And Dirk observed it all through eyes blurred by the gauze of cider and Rophynol, his head feeling like a giant mosquito-man was pumping warm porridge into his head and he couldn't muster the energy to tell it that it was comitting a social faux-pas.

It was around the point where he was slumped on the couch, his chiton drenched in beer and sweat, watching the two faeries (where they cousins or did all faeries look alike?) trying to eat each other's mouths, where the world simply fell away from him.

-------

Nibiru...

Nibiru is coming...

Yes... Yeeesss...

Help! Somebody help us!

Burn... BURN... BUR-

-------

"GAH!"

Three things occured to Dirk as he bolted upright. One - he needed to lay off the cheese, because that was a seriously fucked-up nightmare. Two - Rophynol didn't leave any headaches at all! Hah! Being an angel rules sometimes!

Three - this wasn't Pit's couch in a messy living room. It was a bed, and a very comfortable one at that, in a homely-looking log cabin. The sort of log cabin one reads about in fairy tales, with woven carpeting and a creaky-looking rocking chair and a roaring fire that fills the whole room with it's glow. In short, it was the complete polar opposite of the half-ruined, bozze-drenched, puke-stained mess that was Pit's front room, or at least what bits Dirk could remember of it. And to top it all off, a quick sweep around the room revealed the holly wreaths and tinsel strewn across the walls, and the carefully-decorated tree standing proud and showing off it's beads and baubles/

Dirk's thought process went something like this:

What the hell is this place? Is... is this Hell?

...Nah, can't be Hell. There'd be a lot more screaming. And a lot more of Razor whipping people. Seriously, I think that's how he gets off now. Fucked up.

Throwing off the covers, Dirk was just about to get out of bed when a glance down revealed another shocking fact. His chiton, formerly covered in a fine sheen of alcohol, sweat and vomit, was now fresh and crisp, devoid of all dampness and creases. Furthermore, a tentative sniff was rewarded with the scent of pine needles, rather than the stench of alcohol and stomach juices.

Well, then, maybe it's Heaven? Nah, that's not it - Heaven doesn't have log cabins. Only samey rows of  terraced houses painted the same shitty white. Or a penthouse apartment, if you're really pious.

Clambering out of the bed, the dark angel carefully and slowly paced over to one of the windows set in the sides of the cabin, where bright sunlight streamed in like water from a broken dam. His eyes, formerly heavy with tiredness, drunkeness and drugs, squinted on reflex as he reached the glass, but it wasn't long before they adjusted to the light, allowing their owner to get a better look at his surroundings.

Snow. Everything he could see was covered in snow. From the frankly enormous pine trees lined up in neat military rows one one side, to the long stretch of field in front of him, to the rolling hills far away in the distance, everything was completely white. And it was still coming down - not in the usual headlong deluge that Dirk had, up until now, associated with snow, but in an almost idlyic dusting that fluttered it's way down as if it were admiring the scenery while it was at it. The angel would have been abble to accept all this, were it for the fact that the sky was a perfect summery blue, instead of a white mass of cloud that characterizes heavy snow.

"Okay," Dirk said out loud, rubbing a temple with one hand, "that proves it. I'm not on Earth anymore, because nowhere on Earth besides Disneyland could get away with looking like a fucking kid's book. Who really thinks this is-?"

"Hi-ho!"

"GAH!" That's the second heart attack our hero(?) had today, as he whipped around on the spot - so absorbed was he in his own talk (as usual) that he didn't even hear the door opening. Standing in the doorway, wearing the same sort of condescending smile one could imagine a primary school teacher having, was a very small person indeed - at least half of Sarah's height at a guess - dressed in the most obnoxious combination of bright red and forest green possible. Wide blue eyes beered out from a fringe of brown hair, staring at Dirk with a kind of mad innocence.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" cried the newcomer, raising his hands. "I didn't think you were awake!"

"Sure," grunted Dirk, "that's perfect grounds for giving me a goddamn heart attack." And then, just because somebody had to ask it, "Who are you, anyway?"

"Call me Merry!" The small figure seemed to completely ignore his new guest's foul mouth and incredulous stare as he made his way to a table set in what could a kitchen area of the cabin. "I was working out in the woods not far from here when I found you unconcious in a valley. So I took you back to my home and nursed you back to health."

"Well, that's nice of you, I guess." Dirk couldn't help but notice, and also balk at, the way his host's outfit made little jingling noises with every movement - the pansy literally had little bells sown onto his hat and arms. They were jingling right now, as Merry reached into something that looked vaguely like an old stove and took out a foil-covered dish or plate of some kind. Honestly, who in their right mind thought that was fashionable, apart from Santa's elves-

...Wait a second. Log cabin. Silly little elf with fucking annoying jingly bells. Old-timey Christmas decorations.

...This is-

"You're not from around here, are you?"

Merry's voice, like tiny bells of silver, cut into his thoughts.  The dark angel looked down, seeing the wide blue eyes looking up at him, and immediately got flashbacks to almost every time Sarah walked in and started acting cute over Eshe and Del. Sometimes it got on his nerves - being a dark angel made you diametrically opposed to cutesiness that could floor a charging rhino - but for some reason Dirk felt... well, in his words, more of a goddamned sap than usual. Like he could trust the little guy, no matter how childish he looked.

"Well," he said, slowly. "It's kind of a long story, and I'm not sure you'd understand all of it..."

"Maybe we could discuss it over dinner?" Merry lifted the cover, and Dirk's eyes widened in surprise at the sight of the biggest, roundest, most delicious-and-roasted-to-perfection-turkey he had ever seen IN HIS ENTIRE-

"Woah, slow down! There's enough for both of us!"

-------

Little did our hungry angel know that the cabin he had ended up in was part of something bigger.

It was the sort of picturesque, serene little village one expects to find on the back of a postcard. It consisted almost entirely of log cabins of varying sizes, each one bedecked with their own cap of snow and garnished with a variety of tinsel, baubles and other such decorations. A wreath hung over every door, and the glow of fires flickered from within the iced-over windows. The whole thing had such a thick air of jollity and cheer you probably would have to carry a spoon the size of a man to dig your way through it.

And on this bright and wonderful day, the inhabitants of this place were busying themselves with all sorts of important tasks in preperation for the days to come. Some of the elves scrambled over a massive tree dragged in from the woods, decorating it with utmost care. Some sawed and hammered wood for various purposes, whilst yet more stood behind lavish stalls, selling their wares to those who would stop buy. And wherever you looked, there was laughter and conversation and good cheer of a sort one has to dig through troughs of organized crime and speciesism to find nowadays.

"I think this year's gonna be the best Christmas ever, Tiara!"

"It's gonna be the biggest, that's for sure, Ricky!"

"Who wants to go sledging on the hill with Speedy and I?"

"Come on, Specs, you're standing under the mistletoe! Gimme a kiss already!"

"Uh, maybe later, Maisy."

Yes, Christmas on Planet Lapulas was going to be great.

And then someone (some say it was Tim the Blacksmith) looked up from his work and say the stranger approaching.

He was nothing like the elves had seen before. Considering that Merry had shown them all that unconcious angel from earlier, one would think they were immune to strange things by now. But the fact that this newcomer wore a ragged brown cloack over his form, hiding his shape from view as he paced slowly towards the village, immediately roused the curiosity of those who witness him enter. The only thing that might have suggested that something was off was the way the snow seemed to melt under his feet, forming puddles with every step. But the novelty of a new visitor to their humble village overcame whatever suspicions the elves had.

"Look," cried one of their number. "A visitor!"

And then there was a rush of green and a mass of jingling bells.

"Hi-ho, visitor!"

"Don't crowd him, everyone! Give him some air!"

"Will you kiss me under the mistletoe?"

"Darn it, Maisy, not now!"

The cloaked figure looked around at the massing elves, red eyes leering from underneath the hood. One of the elves, a young girl with freckled cheeks and curly blonde hair, pushed her way past her chattering co-workers and into the ring formed by their jolly green bodies. The newcomer was tall, obscenely so - the elf had to literally lean back so she could look him in the face, blue eyes wide with wonder.

"You're awfully tall, aren't you?" she piped up, in a voice much like the whistling of a tin flute. "Where are you from?"

The figure looked down at her, and at her question the eyes narrowed. The cloak parted, and a scaly hand emerged from within the tatty folds, glowing at the fingertips.

A cracked growl of a voice echoed across the valley.

"Burn."



And then the elves knew pain.

-------

"...but you gotta be really careful with those, because then you might wake up naked with some dude you barely know from high school and your bathroom curtains have been stolen."

Merry blinked at Dirk from across the table, ceasing to cut his turkey as amazement took hold. "Wow," he breathed. "That sounds like fun! And also a very dangerous thing that could very easily backfire!"

"Dangerous is how I roll." By comparison to the elf's dainty table manners, Dirk was ravenously ripping hunks from a single drumstick with his teeth, ignoring the possibility of bones getting stuck in the throat or anything like that. Again, the youngest of the Angel Bros. found it rather wierd that his host didn't try to berate him for the crunching and slurping noises that resulted from this, nore the occasional loud belch or the way he let the juices run down his chin. Wherever he'd ended up this time, they must be really accepting of people. Or, considering that the little elf willingly wore jingle bells (shudder shudder) in his clothing, really stupid.

"So," Dirk suggested as he swallowed his mouthful, "where am I exactly, again?"

"Planet Lapulas!" came the cheery reply. "And you're just in time for the Christmas celebrations."

"Wait, you guys celebrate Christmas too?" Dirk's eyes widened in disbelief.

"Yep!" Merry looked as though he was going to leap out of his seat from excitement, drawing yet another Sarah comparison. "And hopefully, you'll get to see-"

A shockwave. It's only a letter and two syllables, but it contains a lot of incident, such as the plates rattling on the table. Or some of the pins holding up the tinsel coming undone and letting their charge drape itself across the walls like a bored, furry snake. Or Dirk falling out of his chair with a cry as the vibration shook him off balance. Basically, what I'm trying to type is that a lot happened all at once.

"What the flying fuck was that?!" cried the dark angel as he picked himself up from the floor.

"Oh, no!" Merry's face was contorted in fear and panic as he jumped from his seat and rushed to the window. "That sounded like it came from my village!"

Dirk quickly ran up and pressed his face to the glass, trying to locate the so-called village that the elf was speaking of. For a moment, all he saw was a white haze, until the brilliant idea of wiping the window with one hand passed through his mind. Once that was out of the way, he strained his eyes to try and catch a glimpse of houses and/or people in the distance. Nothing odd so far - still the same trees, the same hills, the same snow, the same cloud of smoke rising up in the-

Wait a camel-buggering second.

"Is your village supposed to be on fire?" asked Dirk.

"Um, no," came the worried reply. "Not unless Sparky put too much wood on the Christmas Bonfire, and that's not going up until three days!"

Dirk could have dwelled on the question of why these elvish aliens had bonfires at Christmas, of all things, but then never let it be said he never had his priorities straight. I mean, if he had three wishes, he'd ask for immortality first, and then the bitches and penthouse apartment. I mean, a cosy pad and fine women is all very well, but unless you have all the time in the world to enjoy them, then it's a fleeting kind of decadence when you get old and find that all the gaudy gold statues and chamoagne hot-tubs don't really suit your tastes. Seriously, why would-

...what was I talking about?

Oh, yeah, the part where Dirk ran out of the house without so much as putting on a coat.

"Be careful!" cried Merry as he ran after him.

-------

The carnage was pretty much indescribable. The most appropriate metaphor that Dirk could think of as he dashed through the smoldering streets was that someone had let a bull made of fire and C4 rampage around the place, and even that didn't even come close to what he was seeing. Cabins were reduced to charred wrecks, bits of stall and sideshow scattered the floor and the air smelt overpoweringly of burnt oak, charred tinsel and crushed hopes. Which, for the benefit of the reader, smells like diesel oil mixed with burnt leather. And to top off all that, reaching the town square revealed an even more distressing sight - bodies. Elf bodies, burnt and blackened, lying in piles and scatterings all around the snow. And many more elves, still alive, hunched over their fallen comrades, weeping in horror at the fate that had befallen them.

Just looking at the destruction that had taken place here made the dark angel's stomach churn. So he just trashed his brother's pad whilst holding a massive, drug-fueled party - that didn't make him a bad person! And yes, he had killed things before, but that was usually due to them being massive dickbends. So whoever or whatever was responsible for killing these tiny aliens, who so far had demonstrated no superpowers or carried no kickass weapons on their tiny alien persons and lived just to be constantly cheerful... That was Disney Evil. Which, as we all know, is the very worst kind of evil.

"What the..." he growled, chenching his fists.

"No..." Merry's chiming voice was warbly with grief and horror as he observed the finely-cooked bodies of his fellows. "How could this have happened? Who or what could have possibly done something like this?"

"Why don't you ask that guy over there?" asked an elf with a voice like a faulty saxophone, pointing down the street.

All followed the finger of the aformentioned elf, just in time to see the cloaked figure from several paragraphs ago walk into view. His ragged attire billowed in the updraft created by the burning cabins, and his piercing yellow eyes scanned the crowd of elves almost accusingly. With every sweep they made, the terrified villagers fell back with horrified cries, no longer seeing a new friend or visitor to play games with or shower with gifts, but a horror from the darkest recess of the cupboard the Boogeyman himself refused to go in. The one that stank of mothballs.

And then they settled on Dirk. And stayed there.

Dirk was not only aware of the searing heat that seemed to come from within the billowing hood, but also that all the elves that had not been torched were looking at him, expecting him to say something heroic or courageous. Neither of which he was inclined to do at the moment. Seriously, anyone wearing a cloak and blowing up houses usually means business, and that was just the sort of person that not even the most pugilistic of dark angels wouldn't tangle with. But...

"Um... I don't know who you think you are," he tried, in as brave a voice as he could manage, "but you're a prick if you think you can go around blowing up people's houses like that!"

"Yeah!" piped up an elf from somewhere behind him. "It's Christmas, after all!"

The figure twitched.

"Christmas?"

The hand emerged, grasping hold of the hem of the cloack around the neck. The eyes flared dangerously, illuminating the onlookers with flaming light.

"Christmas?!"

With a sudden motion, the stranger ripped his cloak away, casting it behind him dramatically.

"I... Hate... CHRISTMAS!"

...

...

"...the fuck?!"

TO BE CONTINUED...