Robert Devereaux’s latest mash up of eros and
CHAPTER ZERO: PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN
When Saint Nicholas showed up unexpectedly at the foot of his throne, God the Father was, shall we say, somewhat put out.
Aw, hell, let’s he honest.
Almighty God was pissed, peeved, and perplexed.
He thundered and snapped at the usually-but-not-right-now jolly old elf. “What is it now? Fucking race of human fuckers is my bet. All right, spill the beans. Who did what to whom this time?”
Santa delivered the bad news, adding, “It was all done by a bunch of wankers who never managed to get off my naughty list.”
“They put that idiot up for election to the most powerful position in the world?”
“Yes.”
“And he won?”
“In a manner of speaking, though he’s really a minor-league president-elect who lost to another candidate by nearly three million popular votes.”
“Christ!”
The Son immediately appeared. “Yes, Father?”
“Oh, shut up. I wasn’t addressing you. You did enough damage on your little adventure down there. And stop flashing those fucking palm gashes before the heavenly host. They impress no one.”
The Son, giving a hangdog look, vanished.
Santa explained further what had happened in the last months of 2016.
“They don’t believe in science?” God the Father gaped in incredulity. “Or they pretend not to, lest spouting such beliefs might block their labial access to the buttocks of the rich? Fucking dolts!”
Santa put the best face he could on this Trump character.
If he dredged deep enough and downplayed the countless layers of crap slathered over the man’s personality, he could contrive to come up with some slight measure of generosity in depicting him.
But, let’s face it.
When you’re tarting up a pig, at some point, you simply run out of lipstick.
“Nice try, Nicholas,” said God. “No cigar. They don’t call you a saint for nothing.”
Santa went further into the political absurdities happening on planet Earth.
With each new insanity the jolly old elf reeled off, God the Father grew increasingly upset. At last, he let out such a sudden, high-
And God sighed. “I suppose divine intervention is called for. Who shall it be this time and what sort?”
The Son began to materialize, but the Father, with a sweeping gesture of dismissal, dismissed him and he at once backed off and winked out.
Santa said, “I’d be happy to—”
“Yes, yes. You and I, initially at least.”
He glanced sharply over. “Wait a minute. I thought you’d fixed those seven billion goddamned human psyches, you and your elves, the Easter Bunny, Hephaestus—and finally Aphrodite, giving you such a vast quantity of exquisite fucks to help you guarantee the integrity of them all.
“What the hell happened?”
Saint Nick’s face reddened. “I dropped in on Hephaestus. He took a closer look at the active clones in the psyche factory. Then he compared them to the actual psyches on earth.
“It seems they’ve developed a disconnect.”
“Seems?”
“Have developed. Up here, they look perfect. Down there? Royally screwed up.”
“And how long have you known about this?”
“
“Any evidence of mayhem from the Tooth Fairy, her imps, or any of her nasty recruits?”
“None. The psyches seem to have fallen back from a state of perfection all on their own.”
“And would I be correct in assuming that you’ve kept on fucking the Goddess of Love—to the tune of, what is it, a million and a half per week—in order to shore up the psyches of newborns? That you’ve done so, knowing that every last one of those psyches is disconnected from its original on earth?”
Santa averted his eyes. “Well, Aphrodite is an exceptionally beautiful goddess. And I’ve long ago reconciled myself to having once been Pan, King of the Satyrs.
“Insatiable him and therefore me.”
God scoffed, “Water under the bridge. Hephaestus is on board with your bedding his wife over and over and ad nauseam over again.
“Let’s put together a plan and head on down there now!”
CHAPTER 1: AN EMPTY SUIT SITS IN THE OVAL OFFICE
Hi, there.
Have a look-see at my version of Donald Trump as he sits here in my rendition of the Oval Office.
I’m your narrator for this little fantasy tale. I’ll pop in every so often for a direct comment.
Maybe I’ll even appear in person late in the book, once Donald has been transformed into his better self.
Oops, a spoiler!
One more thing: Be advised that this novel is not safe for children. None of this author’s Santa Claus novels are safe for children. But then neither is the current political climate.
Hell, that ain’t safe for anybody.
Welcome to the People’s House, otherwise known as the White House.
And welcome to the Oval Office, where momentous decisions—far too many of them horrendous and hostile to our interests, but a significant few beneficial not just to us but to the planet as a whole—are arrived at.
Here sits Donald Trump, a portly gentleman—well okay, stop laughing, a big fat pig.
“How can I best demean this fucking place?” he wonders. “Make it my own?”
But let’s shift over into his point of view, shall we?
* * *
Before God and Santa manifested in the Oval Office, Trump sat musing. He had commanded solitude absolute.
He surveyed the room’s oval shape. As he sat centered just so at the desk, his head occupied the clitoral position, a pencil eraser at the top of a far too wide vulva. Maybe narrow the room, ditch the chairs, no need for visitors, make all the decisions himself in this soon-to-be-tightened little pussy.
President Trump’s excitable inner sanctum.
Perhaps he could whip out his stubby little cock and jack off on this desk.
But no.
That would require Viagra and some coconut oil, and there was too little time for the blue pill to take effect.
His fucking aides had their dicks tied in knots, salivating over First Day Project and undoing as many of Obama’s executive orders as possible.
But to hell with that shit, he thought. We’ll get into destroying the country soon enough, as soon as my family drops in, I toss them out, and my pack of handpicked wolves comes snarling in here, slavering and sycophanting about my ass.
Time to savor that top-of-the-world feeling. Ain’t no higher position on the whole goddamned planet.
I could fuck any woman I want right here. Find that crazed cunt-bitch who shoved her wailing rug rat at me, toss that bawling bundle of meat to the lions, and force her to suck me off right here, right where that what-the-fuck-was-she-an-intern-or-something licked Bill’s shitty little asshole.
Trump stopped.
Some vague shapes were swimming into view.
What the fuck?
Things were going all wonky.
Had someone spiked his punch?
CHAPTER 2: TRUMP’S TYRANNICAL JIZZFEST INTERRUPTED
At Santa’s suggestion, God had toned down the effect of his presence, hoping not to destroy, by virtue of being such a powerful and overwhelming presence, the human being to whom they were about to read the riot act.
Now, the two of them were in magic time.
Magic time allows beings benevolent and malevolent to move unseen among humanity, distributing gifts to billions of children in one night, for example, or bartering coins for teeth.
God and Santa were in magic time, but Trump was not.
Not yet.
He was, you might say, frozen in time.
Now here comes a very embarrassing part of my narrative. But trust me, I’m only reporting the truth of what happened. No unreliable narrator, I.
You see, when God took in, in full, the vile nature of the man seated behind the big, important-looking desk, he . . . well—let’s just out with it, so to speak—he projectile-vomited. And God’s vomit came within a quarter of an inch of hitting Trump’s face.
Now perhaps you suppose that his puke stopped short of Trump’s face because I’m avoiding depicting an ugly act against a newly anointed leader.
Quite the contrary.
For God eats nothing but pure energy.
That being so, his vomit has no stink. Is perhaps healing in its touch. There’s no way to
In any case, the Fates decided that Trump, at this stage of his arrested development, was unworthy of the Heavenly Father’s shower of puke.
Later in the story? Perhaps.
God inhaled grandly to draw back his vomit, every sacred droplet, reversing the reverse peristalsis he’d experienced a moment before.
“What did I just do?” asked God in astonishment.
“You purged,” said Santa. “Out the front end. I see that all the time on my rounds, cute little kids so excited at the thought of my nocturnal visit that they upchuck their dinners and have to be cleaned up and put to bed, sobbing and comforted.”
God gave a look of disgust. “If the psyches had been fixed properly, this clown wouldn’t be sitting here. No one would have voted for his royal incompetence. And governance worldwide, let alone here, wouldn’t be befouled by all manner of Machiavellian bullshit. Nope. There’d be utopias everywhere, deliciously manifesting all of humankind’s highly touted but just about universally ignored virtues of peace, love, and understanding. Don’t get me started!”
“May I again offer an apology?” said Santa.
“Hephaestus has got to see this. Just a second.”
God gestured into the air, and Hephaestus appeared. The smith was burly and ugly, his beard wild and unkempt, his legs broken from Zeus having tossed him off Mount Olympus ages ago, but well balanced in elaborate gold servomechanisms, his eyes ferocious and fiery yet rich with compassion.
“Whoa, what the hell am I doing here? I have a shitload of work to do in the psyche factory. This better be good.”
“Stuff your work. We’ve got problems with this particular corner of humanity.”
“The goddamned human race?” said the smith. “Harrumph! Bunch of recalcitrant motherfuckers.”
“Take a look at this man.”
God took Hephaestus aside and gave him a crash course in earthly geopolitics, focusing especially on the nation-state in which they now stood.
“And this guy?”
“Look deep into his psyche.”
“Do I have to?”
“Look!”
The ruddy-faced Hephaestus turned increasingly whiter shades of pale as he braved the sight of this mutant psyche’s vast landscape of awfulness.
Hephaestus gaped.
He gasped.
He forgot to breathe,
Then he swore a blue streak, a red streak, and an ultraviolet streak. “I thought we fixed these, all of them, worldwide. Be right back.”
* * *
Okay, now. Time out.
Alert readers—that would be all of you—astutely recall from the prologue in heaven that Hephaestus already knew about this snafu.
So why is he surprised here?
Good call!
To confess, I have—or rather the author has—written this novella in all haste against a deadline, that being the shameful day of inauguration.
Such mix-ups occur in early drafts with amazing frequency, usually to be patched up in later drafts.
We’ve decided to leave both passages be.
Think of it as a hiccup of dream logic . . . or as the imperfect stitch in all Persian rugs.
We, the author and I, here offer our minima mea culpa.
Cool?
Okay, then.
Back up and off we go!
* * *
Then he swore a blue streak, a red streak, and an ultraviolet streak. “I thought we fixed these, all of them, worldwide. Be right back.”
The burly blacksmith winked out, then in, holding his clone of the Trump psyche, a sphere standing a foot and a half tall. “Take a gander. This is what his clone in the psyche factory looks like. Should be an exact match. Didn’t we fix the goddamned human race a few years back?”
God gestured into the air and said, “You tell me. Scan the world.”
Hephaestus scanned. “Holy shit!”
“No such thing. I neither take nor give a shit. And until I saw this dreadful,
God glared. “Now explain that,” he said, pointing into the heart of Trump.
Hephaestus popped out a clone, this time of the man’s current psyche, a sphere of the same size, but boy oh boy, was it a mess.
Hephaestus gave a low whistle. “Beats me. We had them, as always, perfectly in synch. This is a total cockup. I remember his psyche now. But what it has turned into is even worse than I recall. Let me give close scrutiny to them both.”
He bent to the task, examining first one, then the other. His sure hands pried open each psyche and peered inside.
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s almost as if the old psyche, bad as it was, fought back against the fixes we tried earlier. As if it dug in its heels, turned its back, and found the vilest swamp it could to wallow in and get all defiantly mucky.
“With your permission, I’m going to head back to the psyche factory with these two specimens and figure out just where the disconnect is, not only for this psyche but for all the world’s psyches.”
“Go ahead,” God said. “But be snappy about it.”
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