Case 6: Peter A long time ago Christmas was my favorite holiday. Now I detest it. How could I love something that is centered around such a satanic creature? Now, like I said, I didn’t always feel that way. At one time in my life I was just like everyone else. I had wonderful Christmases as a child as least for awhile, one day when I was 14 I was sitting in the kitchen eating my delicious bran muffins and I heard a very small voice.
“Don’t eat me...”
What was that? I thought to myself.
“Please, Don’t eat me!”
I looked down and saw the top of my last bran muffin’s top moving and a voice coming from the muffin.
“Did you hear what I said?”
Surprising even myself, I replied, “Sure, I heard you. Why shouldn’t I eat you? You’re a bran muffin!”
“You shouldn’t eat me because I have to tell you something important. Have you ever heard of Santa?”
“Of course I’ve heard of him. Who hasn’t?”
“But have you heard the full story of Santa?”
“Maybe… at least I think so.”
“Listen Closely and I’ll tell you…”
I listened to the bran muffin for close to an hour as he described to me the evils of Santa. He told me, you see, that Santa was once just an ordinary guy until the bran muffin’s evil cousin blueberry muffin started to talk to him about 4 months prior and it made him evil. He had become a dark and unforgiving soul. He told me that blueberry has boasted about how he had gotten Santa to change his naughty/nice list so that only blueberry muffins were on the nice list and everyone else was on the naughty list.
I shook my head as he told me this, it couldn’t possibly be true. The bran muffin continued. Supposedly Santa would not be giving out any good gifts now that the blueberry muffin had taken over at the North Pole. I told him that he was crazy, and I must be too, because muffins can’t talk. “Besides,” I said, “I know that Santa doesn’t even exist. My parents buy me gifts for Christmas. Santa is just a children’s story.”
“Oh, you’d like to believe that wouldn’t you? Santa is real. He gives out one gift every year that you’ll love. He bewitches your parents to believe that the other parent must have bought it without them knowing and they accept it without arguing simply because they don’t want to cause problems at Christmas time. You just wait until Christmas, now that my cousin has taken over, just watch out. I bet you’ll get at least one present that you will be disappointed in… and it won’t be socks.”
“Wait just one minute! Why is the blueberry muffin doing this.”
“Well, just so you know. Muffins, including myself come from hell. I mean, how else can you describe something that looks like a cupcake, but it missing everything good that a cupcake has? Muffins don’t have frosting. That right there should be a big hint.”
“So if you are from hell, then why are you tell me all this?”
“It’s like this, have you ever seen a bad child born from good parents, or a good child from bad parents. I’m the exception. I had to tell you because you were the first human that has taken the time to listen.”
“Why exactly is the blueberry so bad?”
“Well, the blueberry muffin is Satan’s favorite kind, in fact, in the muffin circles of hell, we call the blueberry Satan itself, because the blueberry muffins have taken on so many of Satan’s qualities. You need to stop Santa and the Blueberry Muffin before it’s too late.”
I laughed at the muffing, wrinkled my brown, picked up the muffin and ate him. He was right about one thing, I thought, muffins don’t hold a candle to cupcakes. Cupcakes are awesome. That’s the last of that, I thought, and I hoped I’d never think about that muffin again. Besides, isn’t it crazy to listen to a muffin, especially a bran muffin?
A few months later Christmas came and I received a pink picture frame. I believed that muffin from that point on in my life and you know what? I made it my lives work to destroy the blueberry Satan muffin and Santa. He shouldn’t do this to children any more. Funny, I thought to myself, Satan and Santa… Anagrams of evil.
*****************
At the age of 35, I didn’t expect to be unmarried. I did expect to have a wonderful marriage, 2 children, and to have murdered Santa in his sleep. However, at the age of 35 I haven’t accomplished any of that. Instead, I am penniless man still trying to finish what he started 21 years ago.
I guess that penniless isn’t the right term to use. I made plenty of money, well, I would be if I wasn’t investing all of my money into destroying Santa. I may be a 35 year old unmarried fool, but I’m much farther than I was back when I found out about the evil and I’d have to say that I’m almost ready to finish off Santa and his satanic muffin.
When I graduated high school I decided that I had to go into something useful. I went into rocket engineering. I needed to gain the skills to accomplish the plan that I had sketched out. Phase 1 was to get my degree and gain the knowledge needed to carry out the rest of the plan. That part was completed when I graduated from college at the age of 22. The last 13 years has been trying to complete phase 2. Phase 2 was to build a battle ship that I could fly to the north pole in and defeat Santa once and for all.
Of course, student loans got in the way for the first 10 years, not to mention the job. People wondered why I was so penniless, they didn’t realize that every dollar that I made at my high paying job went to loans, rent, food, and books on how to block signals. I couldn’t let Santa know what I was up to. I mean, he is supposed to know if you’re bad or good, or if you’re awake or sleeping. He’s a tricky fellow, that Santa is. The rest of the money went toward financing phase 2. I didn’t realize when I planned this out how expensive it was. The parts are extremely expensive, especially since I insist on the best. If I’m going to fly to the north pole, I’m going to need to make sure that the ship can last in that cold, plus I’m going to need to make sure that it will be able to take on the reinforcements that the north pole are sure to have.
I’m pretty sure Santa hasn’t just sat around on his ass the past 21 years. He is a crafty fellow. Those poor elves are probably being worked to death now. He’s not about to give them a break now that he’s so evil. I also figured that he must have really bred the reindeer to be able to attack and even shoot lasers from their beady little eyes. I’d thought about this day and night since my plan was constructed. I was expecting at least some heat seeking missiles and armored sleds with roofs up there. I decided that I would have to plan for all of it.
First things first is that I planned to my ship to run cold. You shouldn’t be able to detect an ounce of heat from it. This will help to make me undetectable as well. It won’t make me undetectable, but since the heat seeking missiles won’t come for me, they won’t be able to locate me quite as well. I also decided to make my ship white with white coated windows for camouflage purposes. Like I said, I had really thought this through. I could only build my ship so fast, so I decided that I had to do some other planning. Santa has reindeer to fight so I was resolute to trying to talk some of the reindeer over to my side on the war.
On a day off from my job I went to the local zoo and went right to the reindeer pen. They had some feed that you could buy to feed the deer so I bought some and waited for one of them to come and see me. When one of them came over I decided to speak to it almost like a horse whisperer does to a horse. I told him how wonderful he was and how Santa was trying to bring him and his species down. I told him how Santa was running experiments and creating horrible beasts with one eye normal and the other cybernetic. I told him that he was most likely treating his rein deer badly and making them unhappy.
The reindeer walked away from me, most likely upset about what I had told him. I bought more feed and got him to come up to me again. I told him that he could help me lead the fight against Santa and his evil ways. However, I said that we would need more than just one reindeer and that if he was interested that he should talk to the other reindeer and try to get them on our side. He walked away again and I only hoped that I had truly gotten through to him.
I planned on visiting the reindeer that I had taken to calling Sparky later in the week so that I could see how he had taken all of what I had to say, and also to get the answer to my question. I had really hoped that he would take my advice to heart.
Next on my list of things to do was to get a simulation done. I brought my ship plans over to my college buddy Justin Mayan. Years ago I tried to talk to him about the evils of Santa, but he seemed to think that I was crazy. I didn’t want to deal with his comments to me, so I decided to tell him a little lie about why I wanted the simulation done. I decided to go to Justin for this because he majored in computer programming with math as a minor, and it was things like this that he was obsessed with. I knew he would help me as long as he didn’t know the real reason I was doing this.
I arrived at his house and knocked on the door. His girlfriend answered the door a few moments later.“Hey Trisha, is Justin here?”
“He is Peter, come on in and I’ll tell him you are here. I walked in and sat on the couch. I could hear the shower running. The bathroom door opened and closed and then a few moments later the water stopped. Trisha came back out and told me that Justin would be right out.
About five minutes later, Justin walked into the living room in sweats rubbing his hair with a towel. He sat down across from me in a big red comfy recliner.
“Hey Pete, what’s up? I haven’t seen you in awhile.”
“Yeah, It’s been too long man. What have you been up to?”
“Not much, mostly just work. You know. I’ve been looking for something to do in my spare time. I think Trish is getting sick of seeing me so much.”
“I don’t think so,” Trisha called from the other room, “You know how much I enjoy spending my time with you!”
I laughed. They make a great couple.
“Anyhow, I did stop by to visit with you, but I also have a favor to ask of you.”
I explained to Justin all about the simulation that I wanted him to create for me. I told him everything that I needed in it, including all of the different things that could go wrong with my trip and everything that I’d already planned for.
“Pete,” Justin began, “You’re not still obsessing over this Santa thing are you?”
“Justin… don’t worry. I’m completely over it,” I lied, “I’m actually preparing for November. Have you ever heard of NaNoWriMo?”
“No…”
“…NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. The goal is to write 50,000 words of a novel. I’ve decided to try it this year and I couldn’t think of a better plot than if I had actually gone through with my crazy scheme. So, what do you say?”
“As long as you’re not actually going to use this to stage a crazy stunt, then sure, I can do it. It actually sounds like a lot of fun.”
“When do you think you’ll be done?”
“Oh, probably about a week, this is going to be a relatively simple program, you don’t mind that do you? This is going to take a lot of coding, as it is. I don’t have too much time on my hands with my job for a complex program, especially if you need this before November. You know what I mean?”
“I do, and a simple program will be fine. I don’t need anything to special. Hey, I appreciate you doing this for me. I really want my novel to be awesome.
After my visit with Justin and Trisha I head back to my house to check my check list. I had a list that I’ve been adding to and checking to make sure that I don’t forget anything important. When I get home I look over my list and check off two items. One is to contact the reindeer for an initial meeting. The other is to speak with Justin in a week to see how the program is coming. I also decided that I should probably start to write out some stuff so that by the end of November I will have some semblance of a novel for NaNoWriMo.
I check over my list one more time and realize that I’m not too far from done. The ship is almost ready to go, all I need is two or three more parts which I’ll be buying next week and then all I have to really do is chart my flight and see about the reindeer and Justin and then after that possibly make some changes based on the simulation. I was almost ready. After 21 years, I was almost ready to take out the muffin Satan and Santa. I couldn’t wait.
I pulled out my maps of the world and excitedly got to work. I figured I should plan out at least two or three routes to make sure that I could get there from a variety of ways and to make sure that even if the weather got bad I would be able to find my way without too much trouble. Besides, I wasn’t a pilot by nature, I was a designer. I could fly, I had taken a lesson or two in college, but I wasn’t very comfortable in the sky yet, especially in bad weather.
*************
I looked at the console as I flew over the icebergs in the Arctic Ocean. My heart leapt as I saw the pole sticking out of the ocean. I hadn’t expected that the work shop was in the iceberg that the pole was sticking out of. Luckily, I had prepared for my ship to go underwater as well and as such, I drove the ship right into the icy cold water and kept on going. The sights underwater were amazing. I drove past fish that I had never in my life time or even imagined and I drove by ice floating at all around.
Finally, I arrived at a place underwater. The place was surrounded by a giant glass or plastic bubble. I couldn’t tell. As I got closer a section of the bubble started to move. It left a space for me to go and I flew right into it. When I got in, I realized that there were actually two bubbles. The outer bubble that I had just flown through began to close and then I heard a noise that surprised me. It took a couple of minutes, but the water was being pumped out of the space between the two bubbles. I took this time to examine what was below me. I saw hundreds of little shacks underground as well as a large factory. At the center of town was a small castle decorated in red and green. That must be the big guy’s house I thought to myself and planned on attacking there first. When that was completed the inside bubble started to open. I flew in slowly.
As I entered the second bubble I heard an alarm go off. The elves came running out of their shacks and over to missile silos. It was time to go into defensive mode. I flew around and waited. I only hoped that they had fires going, my running cold ship wouldn’t attract any missiles at all. I’m glad that I went into research for the government about anti-heat seeking missile ships.I laugh as I watch the missiles careen back to the ground killing dozens of elves that I’m sure had turned evil by this point. I decide to go back to the offensive and sent wave after wave of machine gun fire at the castle. Santa comes running out of his castle with his belly that shakes like a bowl full of jelly wiggling all over the place and holding a single blueberry muffin. I watch in horror, mesmerized by the massive stomach moving. Luckily, I’m able to shake myself out of it and continue firing. I keep missing him as I realize that shooting my guns at a small area is a lot more difficult that I first thought it would be. I realize that the only way to get to Santa is to kill him with the water.
I turn my ship around and start to fire at the bubble. I see a crack in the inside bubble forming as I look over my shoulder to see what Santa’s next move is. He is still running, and it looks like he’s headed for the factory. I turn my head back to my job and continue shooting. Finally, as I’m starting to get worried the glass shatters as pieces start to fall all around me. A couple shards of bubble fall on my ship and I realize that my original assessment that the bubbles were made of glass was correct. I felt lucky though that they didn’t seem to damage my ship any.
Checking back in with Santa I could see his sleigh coming out of the factory doors with his hood up… That must be how he manages to get though the water to this hell forsaken place. I continued to fire at the outer glass bubble and managed to make a small crack. The pressure from the outside made the glass shatter and as I made my way to the surface I could see Santa following me. He wasn’t firing, but I was pretty sure that was because the guns on the hell sleigh were inside the covering and firing now would be certain death for him. We made our way past the weird fish and ice blocks toward the surface going at tremendous speeds. He was gaining speed on me, but I was still ahead of him.
I came out of the water about 15 seconds before Santa, and saw both his reindeer already engaged in battle with the reindeer from the zoo that had come to help me. They were butting heads and ramming into each other while flying over the ice dotted water. I was glad that I had the reindeer. They sure did come in handy.
When we emerged over the ocean his roof began to open up and he started to fire his guns at me. I started to fire back at him and we proceeded to dogfight for a good hour or so. We dodged around icebergs and I would occasionally go back under the water for a moment to lose him. I finally got him with a missile after coming out of the water behind him, taking him by surprise, and his sleigh went crashing down into the water. I shot some fire into the water after it and parts of the sleigh started to float back up to surface.
I flew around the crash site for a bit. I wanted to see his body; I had to know for sure that I had succeeded. I knew the old saying, if you don’t find a body, then he probably isn’t dead. I waited for a good long time and when he finally surface I saw crumbled muffin crumbs that had started to look like muffins all around him. I fired another round of machine gun fire into the body just to make sure. Once I felt sure that I had defeated the evil monster I flew back home.
Christmas was good that coming year. I’ll tell you one thing I sure didn’t receive any pink picture frames. I also didn’t hear of anyone else complaining of any really bad gifts. The only ones that I heard complaining were the poor children who’s parents didn’t buy them any gifts at all.************
I awoke in the morning sweaty from my dream. I reached over to my bed stand and grabbed my glasses and a notebook and pen. I needed to write down as much of that dream as I could. I needed to be prepared for everything that I had encountered in it.
As soon as I had written down all the information about my dream I gave Justin a call. I would need him to have some of the info for my simulation.
“Hey Justin, have you started that simulation that I asked you about yet?”
“Not yet, I was actually thinking of starting it tonight…”
“Cool, listen, I had some dreams about my NaNo plot last night and I was hoping you hadn’t started yet so that you could possibly try to add them in.”
“Sure, what are the details?”
I proceeded to tell him most of the details from my dreams about the reinforcements that Santa had prepared and how agile and quick thinking he was. I also asked him, for shits and giggles to make sure he added him something to suggest that Santa had a fat stomach. I think that I was still a little mesmerized by the moving fat in my dream.
Justin laughed after I told him everything that I wanted him to add. “Man, this is going to be one crazy story. I get to read it after right? If I don’t, I might just have to charge you for the simulation.”
“Tell you what, if I succeed in getting my story all done I will definitely let you read it.”
“Cool, talk to you later.”
“Sure thing.”
After I spoke with Justin I realized that I had work to do. I needed to make sure that my ship was prepared to go underwater. I needed to add propellers to the ship and make sure that it could handle pressure from being under the water. This was going to se me back a little ways as far as time. Luckily, I had been able to save up some money recently since I had been almost done buying parts, so I wouldn’t have to wait to get the parts, in fact, I could even go today since I knew that the last parts I would need were already in.
I ran to the store after planning out everything I would need and went to my favorite parts store. They knew me by name by now and they kept asking me to take pictures of my project since I had probably been most of there business the past few years with all the junk that I had been buying. Today I finally promised them that they would get some pictures when it was all done. They seem pleased and sold me all the parts that I was going to need to make my ship ready, just in case it needed to because a submarine of sorts, including two high power propellers. I left quite pleased.
On the way home I decided to stop by the zoo to see the reindeer. Again, I bought some feed and held it out for the reindeer that I thought was the head. I asked him if the reindeer would be joining me as an army and he said that they would be. I told him about my dream and told him that I was pretty sure that the reindeer didn’t have laser eyes, but that they were still evil and giving reindeer a bad name everywhere. I asked him if they would be flying up to the North Pole and he just stared at me. I was being an idiot, of course they would fly. How else would they get there?
After my conversation with the reindeer I headed back home quite pleased. Everything was going to plan. When I arrived back at my house I immediately went into my garage to continue to work on my ship. I added the propellers and some reinforcements to the body to make sure that it would be able to handle underwater pressure.
It took me three days to finish my adjustments and after a couple of days after that I decided that it was time to stop by and visit Justin. I brought over some home brewed beer that my friend had cooked up and some pretzel rods. When I got there Trisha opened the door and brought me into the computer room where I found Justin working on the computer.
“Hey Justin, how goes?”
“Oh Peter, you know, it goes… it goes…”
“What are you working on?”
“I’m actually just putting on the finishing touches to that simulation you asked me about, it’s been fun, but I think I’m going to have to charge you…”
“How about you charge me a 6-pack of Steve’s home brew and some rods?”
“That sounds like it will do. I was going to charge you 2 good beers and a bag of chips, but I think that your offer is much better.”
Justin and I played around with the simulation for a few hours and I realized that there were in fact some things that I needed to change, but nothing to major. I needed to come up with some way to make my ship more bullet resistant and I needed to add some better engine boosters for quicker getaways. When I left Justin gave me a copy of the simulation and one of the beers.
“What are you giving this back to me for?”
“I told you Pete, I only needed 2 beers, besides this was a lot of fun. Let me know if I can help you with next years project.”
“Sure will.”
I went home with my simulation and played with it for a little while longer. I needed to make sure everything went perfect. After I felt satisfied with the results I spent the next couple of days finishing up my ship and reporting back to the reindeer telling them when I would need them. This plan was going to go perfectly, I could just tell.
I spent that night tossing and turning because I was so excited. Santa was finally going to get what was coming to him. In the morning I awoke all ready to go. When it was time to go I climbed into my ship and after checking all of the dials I gave the ship power. I pressed on the handles to go forward and crashed right through my garage door because I had forgotten to open it. I went barreling down the street in the ship and when it was time to gain altitude I ended up crashing into the elementary school. At the point of impact I looked at my dials and checked the fuel gage. It was on E.
I hit myself a couple of times in anger. I couldn’t believe that I had forgotten to fill up the fuel tank before I had left. I was an idiot. Just then my airbag opened up and knocked me out. Or at least that’s what Justin told me when I woke up in the hospital.
“I thought you said that the simulation was just for this NaNoWriMo business. You need help, man.”
“What?” I smiled sheepishly, “I was going to write the novel too.”
“Listen, I told you before that you’re nuts, Santa isn’t evil. I do know what you need though, and that’s group therapy. I signed you up for it while you were out. I’m going to make sure that you go too.”
“I’m not going. I’m not crazy. I don’t know anyone who goes to group therapy!”
“Trisha’s roommate goes.”
“Kate? Kate goes? I’m in. She’s pretty hot.”
Justin just shook his head in disbelief.
Group Therapy | Case 1 | Case 2 | Case 3 | Case 4 | Case 5
Case 6 | Case 7 | Case 8 | Case 9 | Case 10 | Therapy Session
