Forever After (a dark and funny fantasy novel)

by Jester, David

  Michael turned to him, a strained look of bemusement on his face. He lowered his voice, “I think something’s wrong with Chip,” he said with an assured nod.

  4

  The Records Department was the red tape of the afterlife. In an organised and structured world, where everyone and everything had a place, they were the ones who maintained order and made sure that everyone and everything was where it should be.

  The headquarters of the department rested on a plane between this world and the next, accessed by any of its tens of thousands of worldwide employees through personal portals around the globe. A world on its own, a busy, functioning heart through which the lifeblood of the afterlife pumped. Without the department there would be no death and there would certainly be no afterlife; the dead would be stuck in a constant state of limbo.

  It was rumoured that the heads of the department were the top angels and demons themselves, but nobody really knew. The leaders, if any -- as the department breathed and beat to the pulse of its many lower level workers and didn’t need a head to function -- were a secretive, unseen group.

  Naff had worked at the department for longer than he cared to remember. He could no longer recall his birth, his death or any of his life outside of the one he had grown so accustomed to. None of it mattered anyway -- whether he had a worthwhile mortal existence, whether he was a scoundrel or whether he had never lived at all -- the only thing that mattered was his current existence, a life devoted to the department and an endless track of data.

  He was paid well for his services. His salary earned him more money than Michael and Chip combined, and allowed him to buy a comfortably sized detached house in a quietish suburb on the edge of town. It was still Brittleside so it was still rife with squalor and, a mere stone’s throw from Naff’s front door, over the neatly trimmed hedges of his pedantic neighbour and beyond the potholed road boarded by rows of overgrown weeds and broken glass, was one of the worst estates in the town. But Naff liked Brittleside, he had been there a long time and, although he couldn’t recall it being anything other than a dumping ground for the worst portraits of human existence, something about the town endeared him.

  Michael always felt like he was dirtying Naff’s house whenever he entered. He always took his shoes off at the front door despite being told not to, yet he still trod on the fluffy cream carpets with great care, worried that the cheapness of his unwashed socks would somehow transfer a film of dirt onto the floor.

  He always refused to sit on the soft, upholstered three-piece sofa lest he transfer the dirt from his clothes. He chose instead to sit, precariously, on the edge of a wooden chair brought in from the kitchen.

  Chip, on the other hand, bounded into the house like he owned it. He never took his shoes off, barely acknowledged the trail of mud he so often left behind, and threw himself onto the sofa like an athlete attacking the high jump.

  Naff did tell Chip to remove his shoes, but he rarely listened. This time, as Michael carefully placed his coat over the edge of the hardback chair and sat -- with a careful and awkward consideration -- Naff didn’t mind the trail of mud left behind by the impish tooth fairy soiling his expensive sofa. The homeowner stood in the middle of the living room, next to a marble-style fireplace.

  “We need to lure him here,” he suggested with a thoughtful finger on the tip of his chin. “We write a letter, give him my address, ask for something we know he’ll feel obliged to deliver,” he tapped his chin as he spoke, his eyes wondering ponderously away from the faces in front of him, “we wait for him and then--” he lifted his hands and widened his eyes. “Bam! Gotcha.”

  “We jump him and kick the shit out of him,” Chip said with an agreeable nod. “What? No,” Naff said, disapprovingly. “We talk to him, see if we can--”

  “Talk to him and then kick the shit out of him?”

  Naff shook his head solemnly. He turned to Michael who returned his bemused expression with a simple shrug.

  “No fighting,” Naff insisted. “We let him come to us and we keep things civil.”

  Chip looked disheartened, but he quickly perked up.

  “So we hide in the dark, wait for him too approach and then jump out?” Chip exclaimed excitedly.

  “I guess…”

  Chip buzzed with childish glee, his little body practically trembling under the veil of his own pent-up excitement. His mind seemed elsewhere as he spoke: “And then we say something cool, something like, ‘the only presents you’re getting are--’, no wait. Oh, oh, I got it, ‘They’ll be no chimneys where you’re going’.”

  “What? No, I don’t think--”

  Chip held up an apologetic hand. “You’re right,” he said softly. “It’s terrible. Don’t worry, I’ll think of something better.”

  Naff stared with open mouthed disbelief at his friend, lost for words and detoured from his own train of thought. Chip turned his own thoughtful eyes to the carpet, his mouth speaking silent thoughts as he tried to come up with a better punch line.

  “What do we do when we have him?” Michael wondered as he shifted uncomfortably on the seat. “We can’t just ask him to nicely follow us back to hell can we?”

  Naff tapped his forefinger against his lip thoughtfully. “I can take his powers away first, that would help.”

  “No shit.”

  “But I can only do that if he willingly gives them to me.”

  “Ah,” Michael said with a sarcastic nod. “No problem there then.”

  “Without his powers he’s harmless, we can overpower him.”

  Michael nodded again, “Good luck with that.”

  “But first,” Naff drifted into the kitchen. His friends listened as he opened and shut drawers that rolled on hinges and thudded against frames. He rummaged around inside a few, spilling and shifting cutlery and papers. Eventually he returned to the living room with a pen and a notepad which he offered to Chip.

  The tooth fairy looked at the pad with caution, as if seeing one for the first time.

  “You need to write the letter,” Naff explained after a few seconds of awkward staring. “It’ll be better coming from you.”

  Chip raised a thick eyebrow suspiciously. “And why do you say that?” he quizzed.

  Naff hesitated, Michael explained for him, “Because you write like a retarded child.”

  “Ah,” Chip acknowledged with a nod of his head. “Gotcha,” he took the pad and pen and awaited their instructions.

  ****

  A spitting spool of undelivered letters -- a myriad of bills and season’s greetings awaiting undesignated recipients -- raced along a succession of conveyor belts that overlapped one another like a high-speed spaghetti junction and dropped with a fling and a flutter into large bins.

  Amongst the clattering calamity of ferocious machinations a handful of dole faced workers worked like automatons, picking out armfuls of the dropped letters and transferring them, with skilful rapidity, to their chosen slots which beckoned like a wall of bird-less pigeon holes behind them.

  A heavyset worker moved quicker than the others, his hands barely visible as he tore through the mountain of letters before they had a chance to accumulate. His large white beard flicked and waved under his chin, gracefully shifting with the movements of his overfed body.

  He blocked out the chaos; blocked out the mayhem. He was in his own world, a highly efficient machine.

  The bearded fat man with the blank expression and the motorised hands halted his speedy work. The flicker of a smile twitched at the wrinkled corner of his eye, pulled his skin momentarily taut, and then departed just as quickly as it had appeared.

  The address on the letter in his right hand had been scribbled by the hand of a very special, very young, child. The handwriting was a mess, scribbled erratically by an incapable hand. The words weren’t uniform, some were heavily pressed in; some barely visible. They bounced around the page as if they had a mind of their own. The spelling was atrocious; every word had been spelled incorrectly.

/>   The smile threatened to return, he quickly banished it.

  He looked around at his fellow workers, an army of boys in blue who worked like systematic machines, flipping and sorting the letters without a flicker of emotion. He looked back at the letter, happy in the knowledge that he wasn’t being watched.

  These letters were his favourite. He felt like he was doing an honourable job by responding to them, these were the children who needed him the most. He was excited about the prospect of opening it, of finding the required present and then taking it to the child in need, but that had to wait.

  He eagerly ripped open the letter and stuffed the torn envelope into his pocket. He read it with an unrestrained smile on his face, a face that had now come to life and shone with an empathetic and wise glow.

  He was almost giddy at reading the callous writing. This child was clearly troubled, clearly in desperate need of his services. They wanted a toy, a popular military action figure currently doing the rounds on the playgrounds and in numerous advertisements targeted at children.

  Every misspelled word was clearly a pained struggle for the child. He was either very young or had severe learning difficulties, yet he had gone to effort to write the letter himself, instead of turning to an adult or a computer for help. He read the name at the bottom with a warmth in his large heart, like a parent seeing their child’s first scribble.

  “Naff,” he read softly to himself. Odd name for an odd kid, but he would do his best to give him exactly what he wanted. He placed the letter back in his pocket and continued with his robotic job. The smile, and the warm expression, banished from his face.

  5

  The chunky man in the cushioned red suit whistled as he walked from one house to the next. Trade was picking up, Christmas was nearing. On the first few nights of the season he had visited a few children in houses pockmarked all over town, but now there were dozens to see, a tonne of presents to deliver.

  Strangely enough, for him at least, there had also been a handful of adults. Christmas was for children, yet over the last few days he had delivered three bottles of whiskey, a crate of beer and what he hoped was a lifelike, simulated friend, but suspected was a sex doll. He didn’t mind of course, adults needed cheering up just as much as children, and who was he to judge who received presents and who didn’t?

  Well, okay. But he preferred not to.

  He visited two neighbouring houses, squashed together in the centre of a terraced street. The sleeping boys seemed to be of the same age and had probably sent their letters out together. One got a brand new games console; the other got a selection of games to play on it. He enjoyed that, the togetherness that the boys clearly shared. There was a good chance that they would come to blows in the future over their split-share presents, but he thought it honourable and in the spirit of the season that they would split their presents, instead of greedily asking for a bundle each.

  He was in good spirits when he left their houses and quickly made his way to the next. His sack was still brimming, the night had just begun.

  He was at the next house before the children in the previous ones had passed a second of slumber, shifting the several hundred yards with an effortless thought of his magical mind. He only wished that his powers extended to stopping or slowing time, thus giving him the ability to traverse the country in one season and bring goodwill and joy to children all over the world and not just the town of Brittleside, but it didn’t matter. He knew that there were thousands of others just like him. He hadn’t seen them, they, like him, were a secretive bunch, but he was confident in their abilities nevertheless.

  The next house was bigger than the last, the occupants a little more well-off than he had imagined. He sidled to the back garden via a darkened path that carved between the detached house and the one next to it. He slowly opened a tall iron gate that blocked his path. He could walk through what he wanted; one of the perks of the job, but the presents wouldn’t follow him. He also enjoyed the thrill of doing it the old fashioned way, next to the joy he knew he was giving to the children, and the free booze and cakes -- another perk of the job, everyone remembered to leave out cakes and sherry for Santa, and if not they often left it in the fridge or cupboards for him to find at leisure -- the creeping and sneaking was the best part of the job.

  One of the windows at the back of the house was wide open, inviting him inside. A little odd, he thought to himself, but convenient. It would save him the trouble of trying the doors and windows or reverting to his powers.

  He clambered through into a room of pitch black. He hadn’t been in the best of shape or practise this season, but over the last few days his guile and agility had returned and he was able to make it through without tripping over and falling on his arse. He did knock over something that sounded fragile, the realisation of which came when he heard it shatter into a dozen pieces on the floor, but you couldn't make an omelette without breaking a few expensive vases.

  He pulled in the bag from outside and walked slowly forward, cringing as his feet crunched the broken pottery pieces.

  The lights snapped on, the room suddenly lit with a bright glare that the man in the red suit tried to shield with a hand thrown to his eyes. He dropped his sack; stumbled backwards.

  In front of him, standing in a line of three and looking like an abstract Evolution of Man, was Chip, Michael and Naff.

  The man in the red suit stared at them. He put on his best wizened smile, took a step towards them and retrieved his sack, dragging it by his side.

  Chip was the first to speak. He folded his arms, put on a menacing expression and delivered his best action movie line. “You got something in that sack for me big man?”

  Santa Claus paused mid-reply, swallowed his words and flashed Chip a perplexed stare. Naff and Michael also turned to their little friend, bafflement and disappointment on their faces.

  Chip weighed up his comment in his head, met each of the disappointed stares and then turned a slight shade of red. He hung his head, “That came out wrong,” he admitted. “Just forget I said anything.”

  The jolly man in red looked at each of them in turn, spending significantly more time on Chip. An expression of perplexity, without the slightest hint of trepidation, creased his features. “What is this?” he asked.

  Chip was the first to reply. “This is where the road ends for you, where your road ends,” he chewed the sentence like a small stick of toffee. “This is where, ah for fuck’s sake,” he spat, exasperated at his efforts.

  Michael turned to his friend, “Give it a rest Chip.”

  “Fuck you,” Chip spat back, sinking his head into his chest.

  “This has to stop,” Michael told Santa Claus, stepping forward. “You can’t keep breaking into people’s houses, it’s not right,” his voice was warm and innocuous.

  The big man looked bemused. “But I bring joy to children all over town. There’s something in this sack of mine to please everyone.”

  Michael and Naff turned instinctively towards their midget friend, he didn’t meet their gazes; he didn’t speak.

  “What’s not right about that?” Santa finished.

  “Jacky, look,” Naff offered, moving closer. “You need to stop this.”

  “Who’s Jacky?”

  “You are. Don’t you remember? Your name is Jacky Sampson, you’re on probation.”

  Santa Claus retained a blank expression.

  “I’m your intermediary: Naff. No? Nothing? Look,” Naff said, waving a hand. “The point is: you’re not Santa Claus. You’re a mentally ill demon escaped from hell.”

  He glared back momentarily, then he turned to Michael, aiming a swift and indicative nod in Naff’s direction. “Is your friend a little…” he twirled his finger around his temple.

  “Asks the fat guy in the Santa costume,” Chip noted, returning to the conversation.

  “This is not a costume. I am Santa.”

  “Of course you are mate, and I’m Gandhi.”

  “You l
ook familiar,” the man in red noted. “Didn’t I bring you a present?”

  Chip was overcome with a childish sense of bashfulness. “Maybe.”

  “That’s right,” the fat man waddled forward, pointing a knowing finger. “You’re Chip,” he dug a hand into his pocket and brought out a list, a myriad of heavy handed names and information formed a visible impression on the back of the sheet. “Some multimedia device it seems,” he recalled with the know-how of a Grandfather seeing his first Xbox, “some state of the art, computer --”

  “My wank box,” Chip cut in knowingly. “Yes, that was me, and for that, I thank you.”

  The jolly man looked a little less jolly. “Your what?”

  “But the point remains,” Chip continued. “This is wrong and downright freaky, you have to stop. I mean I know you gave me a present an’ all, but I have to stick by my friends on this one.” He coughed nonchalantly. “Unless you have something else in that sack for me?”

  “Well, no,” Santa replied, even more bemused. “You only get one,”

  “OK,” Chip said resolutely. “Then this is wrong, you should stop.”

  His eyes lingered on the little man for a moment and then shifted to Michael. A desperation had crept onto his jolly face. “I don’t understand,” he swapped his stare between Michael and Naff, ignoring Chip.

  Naff calmly said, “You’re not well.”

  “But I feel fine.”

  “But you think you’re Santa Claus.”

  “I’m not the Santa Claus,” the man in red scoffed with a satirical grin creeping onto his face.

  Michael and Naff looked at each other, suddenly wondering if they had made a mistake, if the demon wasn’t really delusional after all. Maybe he really did just want to bring joy to the children and sex perverts of Brittleside.

  “You don’t think you’re Santa Claus?” Naff asked suspiciously, not failing to note the red suit and the large toy-filled sack.

  He laughed derisively at the outlandish question. “Of course not,” he smirked.