(your soundtrack for this entry)
‘Twas the night before Christmas
And all through the ‘verse
It was cold, it was grim,
It was black as a hearse
[And if the rhyme scheme’s just made you
Puke into your purse
That’s just how I roll,
It’s a gift (and a curse)
So hang onto your naughty bits
And call for your nurse
‘Cos I’m just getting started
And it only gets worse]
Yes, Christmas was coming
Like a runaway tanker
Carl delivered our quest
We neglected to thank her
In fact Creepy’s first impulse
Was to verbally spank her
Then we learned of the Elves
Titled Nobbo and Wanker
They’d fled from the Workshop
And set things in motion
Seems our world is a bubble
Adrift in the ocean
And when it pops, take a bow,
For all reality ends
That means you, me, your mother
And our wacky new friends
And we couldn’t have that, could we,
Creepy and I?
No, for we’re super-sidekicks
Though I’m not certain why
“Not on our watch,” we said
Thrusting chests proudly
So we came up with a plan
While Ian ate loudly
It was clear to us both, now
That something was hinky
And when you add the Apocalypse
The whole thing turned stinky
So we took on the identities
Of the renegade Elves
And set out with a purpose:
To save the world [and ourselves]
St. Nick, in the meantime
Had woes of his own
Death commandeered Rudolph
And away they had flown:
“Now Famine, now Conquest, now War and Yours Truly,
It’s the end of the world, boys, let’s get unruly!”
After standing around
In the Diner’s carpark
Father Christmas’s mood
Began to grow dark
[He was standing behind Death’s
Sick Pale Horse
When it lifted its tail
And ejected by force
All over his special new
Christmas Eve boots
He damn near pulled out
His beard by the roots]
But that’s nothing to how
The Four Horsemen were feeling
When they felt End Times receding
And causality healing
For Creepy and I
Had stepped into the fray
Leaving Nobbo and Wanker
At loose Christmas Day
The Apocalypse cancelled
And catastrophe missed
We were already heroes
And the Horsemen were pissed
They flew back to the Diner
Accused Santa of stealing
Then stormed off in a huff
And left the big fellow reeling
By the time he had finished
His rounds double-time
Faux-Nobbo and Wanker
Had paid for their crime
[It hadn’t been bad
Or if it was, I forget
All our limbs were intact
And our trousers weren’t wet]
So then came the showdown
We strode in through the doors
Of that bleak Arctic sweatshop
And confronted The Claus
And so Creepy told him
That the scam was all done
That we were onto his tricks
And were stopping the fun
We knew that the presents
And the sleigh were a con
So Noël and his
Slave underclass could go on
And indeed the sole way
To avoid Armageddon
Was to eradicate Christmas
[At this, St. Nick reddened]
“Now hear me well
My mouthy young friend
For I laugh at your threats
And there shall be no end
“To this cycle of labour
And chastisement infernal
For I’m Father Christmas
And I am eternal.
“Do you think that the Elves
And reindeer will agree
To consignment to nothingness
Just to be free?
“You’re a fool, you’re quite mad
On your head you were dropped
When your mother gave birth-”
And that’s where his rant stopped
For Ian the reindeer
Had appeared, fury blinding
With fifty-odd rangifer solis
invicti behind him
“If you think we won’t
Welcome the void like a friend
Rather than watch this world
Come to an end
“Then you are the madman
And you are the fool
You’re naught but a parasite
Unfit to rule
“You witnessed the Horsemen
You know we’re not bluffing
If the alternative’s this
Then we’d rather be nothing.”
It happened quite quickly
Consensus achieved
If the world was in danger
Then they’d all have to leave
Santa was severed
Like removing a cyst
And kicking and screaming
Thrown into the mists
And with him went all
His dark organisation
[And with it, incidentally,
The threat of negation]
And lastly went Nobbo,
And Wanker, and Ian*
Who I fancy had finally
Found peace in his being
And as they faded from sight
I heard Ian sigh
“Happy Christmas to all,
And to this world…
…Goodbye.”
* Also Yool was there,
But despite being buff
Simply being a Christmas tree
Wasn’t enough
To consign him to nullity
Abs all strangely sublime
So he came home with us
Like he’d been the whole time.
Hatboy's Hatstand 
Hatboy and Creepy saved Christmas (and the universe) by destroying Christmas. There’s Christmas spirit for you! This may very well be the first story I’ve ever read (or otherwise experienced) where Father Christmas is actually killed. I find that cool.
Now, I get that in order to have a proper dramatic payoff you need sacrifice, but did Ian really have to go? Why not just get rid of Santa and call it a day? And are they really dead, or just floating formless and projectionless somewhere in slo-time? And, again, Ian? Come on!
Btw., what exactly were the conditions for the Apocalypse?
PS. I liked the poem form. Definitely not what I expected, but there you go. I’m no expert on rhyming schemes or metrical patterns, but you had a nice flow throughout and the semi-consistent rhyming was funny, so I thought it worked. (Plus, modern poetry doesn’t have to rhyme anyways.)
As a conclusion to a pretty long and epic short story, though, the poem felt a bit abrupt or rushed, but it was certainly unexpected and made a nice contrast to Creepy’s wall-of-text rant from the previous episode, so I’d say it fits the semi-postmodernist reader-fingering meta-something feel of the Creepy & Hatboy ‘verse quite nicely. Also, you struck a nice balance between funny and somber. (Re: Ian!)
Additionally, in pure logistical behind-the-scenes terms, I set out to write this whole thing in real-time and without additional drafting or edits, and I decided to finish it on Christmas Day (came out on Christmas morning and wrote the poem in a single sitting), and it turns out I had a bunch of other stuff to do Christmas Day and leading up to it, so there it goes. I did get a few of those long pieces written ahead of time, because I couldn’t do a long writing session on the 23rd, let alone the 24th.
But yeah, it was an abrupt end and that was planned, not forced. Just so you know. Like you say, the lengthy exposition leading up and then the extended deconstruction in Part 19 set the foundation for a swift and Christmassy ending, which even more importantly meant that I could do it colourfully but without a lot of technobabble. Leave it in the readers’ heads.
This is almost like DVD extras! (Something else that you can do in blog format but not really in print.)
Well, to put it simply, Santa wasn’t the problem. Nobbo and Wanker were the problem – by closing the metaphorical circuit and returning to the Workshop, they would cause the End of the World. So the entire circuit had to be cut out.
That means the entire concept of Christmas, as parasite-meme (I mean “meme” in the actual meaning of the term, not as in “a picture of a cat with text under it, shared on the Internet”) affixed to our universe, had to go, leaving behind only Christmas as it actually already exists.
And, sadly, Ian was a part of that. There was no continuity-supported way to remove Santa’s Elves without taking the entire rangifer solis invicti species with them. It was, however, a worthy end.
Well, therein lies the rub. By every standard of this universe, they’re gone completely. To speculate along those lines is to invite questions of the afterlife, which is what Doc Brown would call “some serious shit”.
And that’d be telling.
Also, would involve me making them up, which would ultimately be a letdown in comparison to anything you might imagine under your own steam.
Somehow that makes perfect sense. (Although I’m assuming that your Christmas parasite is some kind of pan-dimensional meta-existential supermeme rather than an Earth meme, since our real-world Christmas is itself a meme or a collection of memes.)
Way to break your reader’s illusions, man!
Well, exactly. I imagine it something like a consciousness (purely in our terms) that affixed itself to our universe and then grew by feeding off ideas that were already around (the solstice, early Christianity, not sure).
Plus, of course, this is entirely Earth-centric and based on the past couple of thousand years, whereas this parasite could have been around for billions – since time has no meaning – and could exist pretty much anywhere in all the layers of reality. Other planets wouldn’t have a comparable festival or traditions, but they might.
Was this played out simultaneously everywhere? Was Creepy and Hatboy’s (our?) world just the place where Nobbo and Wanker happened to perform their “escape”, and thus the solution applied all over?
That’s when it all just gets too big.
Forget about speculations about the afterlife, that is what I would call “some serious shit”. And, indeed, the perfect place for an author to stop and just let the ramifications reverberate inside a reader’s head.