Santa’s nightmare before Christmas

Dec 25, 2009 News

A man with a hammer was chasing him—and somebody was trying to change the colour of his sleigh…

By Michael Jordan
A hand shaking him gently stopped Santa in mid-scream. His eyes fluttered open and the images of a cow bounding across a garbage-strewn road faded, and he was lying in his bed in the north-pole and staring at Mrs. Claus, who was gazing back at him anxiously.

“The nightmares again, Chris?” she asked.

“Yes,” he muttered. “I dreamed I was in Guyana.”

Santa wiped cold sweat from his brow. It had all seemed so real. The cows crossing the roadway like they owned it. The smoke from the mountain of garbage that they called ‘Hammy’s Hill’. The Leonora Police Station…the man with the hammer…

He trembled.

Mrs. Claus sighed and sat up in the double-bed.

“Chris,” I don’t understand. “Fine-man dead and gone and Roger Khan in jail, so you don’t have to walk with your bullet-proof vest this year. And you don’t have to be afraid of getting shot out of the sky over Buxton.”

Santa huffed and puffed as he shifted to a sitting position. He took a few seconds to catch his breath, then said.

“I know. And I was really looking forward to visiting Guyana this year. But I’ve been reading the Kaieteur News website these past few months, and what I read really got me depressed.”

“Maybe if you talk about it that would help,” she said.

In his dream, his troubles had started almost as soon as he had landed in Guyana.

Part of it was his fault, though.

He’d been following the internet and had seen that the CEO at the blackout company had said that power cuts would end by November 5, 2009.

So, like a fool, he’d decided that he wouldn’t need Rudolph to light his way this year, so he’d rested the red-nose reindeer and hitched a new reindeer to the front of the pack.

He was circling over Lodge when he was suddenly enveloped in a thick, stinking cloud, and just like that, he was lost. At first, he assumed that he was in a cloud of mist until he was hit with a bout of coughing. It was then that he realised that he was in the midst of the Le Repentir dumpsite. Santa’s eyes watered. He began to grow dizzy, and felt himself slipping into unconsciousness.

Just in time, he recalled that he still had the gas mask that he’d worn while flying over Iraq. He grabbed the mask and slipped it on.

Without Rudolph, it took him some time to find his way around Lodge in the stinking, man-made fog, and to deliver his smoky toys under Christmas trees. He wondered what the children would think about these smelly toys. Spitefully, he thought of leaving some at the Mayor’s home.

Santa made a mental note to pack some bottles of cough syrup next time for the poor Lodge residents.

Maybe it was because he was still dizzy from the smoke, but somehow, the next thing he knew, he was on the West Coast of Demerara, flying straight into a police roadblock near Leonora.

Santa cursed silently. He knew, from experience, that the policemen would be pissed off that they had to work on Christmas Eve, when there was little traffic and few chances of picking up any bribe money.

It was when he was right up to the policemen that he remembered that he was still wearing the gas mask. He thought of the several real-looking guns he had in his sack. He hoped that they didn’t take him for a bandit. Then they would shoot him and send out a press release that he was carrying an arms cache.

He pulled off the gas mask, expecting the cops would recognise him and send him on his way. Instead, they smelled the smoke on his clothes and said that they were arresting him in connection with the fire at the Health Ministry, and the attempted arson at the High Court.

“But banna, I been overseas when duh happen,” Santa pleaded in his best Guyanese accent.

“Ohhh,” you is one of de intellectual authors and overseas planners dat Rohee talking about,” one of the officers said.

He turned to his colleagues. “We got a big one hay.”

“Yes,” another one said, looking at Santa’s belly. “A really big one.”

Within minutes, they had impounded his reindeer and sleigh and taken him to the Leonora Police Station.

He was taken to the interrogation room, which smelled strongly of methylated spirits, and ordered to strip.

But he was prepared. When Santa dropped his pants, the policemen were shocked to see that he was wearing a pair of steel-plated underwear.

The rank sucked their teeth and let him go.

Santa breathed a sigh of relief at his narrow escape and headed back to Georgetown. But then he had sudden call of nature and realised that he had left the keys to his steel underwear back at the North Pole.

Luckily, he spotted an old ‘trunker’ that he knew and got the men to pick the locks on his steel ‘buckta’ just in time so he could relieve himself in some bushes.

While he was still in the bushes he heard the reindeer bellowing and a strange banging sound.

Santa rushed out of the bushes in time to see a bearded man dressed in a shirt-jac swinging a hammer at his sleigh.

The man stopped swinging the hammer when Santa came up and said: “So you is the vendor that encumbering the government reserve with this stall?”

Staying out of reach of the hammer Santa said: “This is not a stall. This is a vehicle, and I am Santa.”

“I don’t care who you is,” the man with the hammer said. You don’t know the new law? All hire cars must be painted yellow.” With that man dropped the hammer and began to daub yellow paint on the sleigh. He even daubed some paint on one of the reindeer but stopped when the animal fired a bite at him.

The man dropped his paint-brush and picked up the hammer and began to chase Santa up the street…

“And that is when I woke up,” Santa said. ‘You understand now why I’m so depressed? I’m afraid of passing the Leonora Police Station because I might be ‘interrogated’, I’m afraid of passing near the Soesdyke/Linden Highway because they might tow away my sleigh because they pass some new law about certain vehicles travelling at night. I’m even afraid of travelling in Diamond New Scheme because the stray cows might try to mate with my reindeer.”

Mrs. Claus nodded. “But you know that you can’t skip Guyana. Just make sure that you walk with Rudolph, your gas mask, something to bribe the police with—- and this.”

“What?” Santa asked.

Mrs. Claus handed him a pair of steel underwear.