Story by Astyages

Gotta get this down while I can still remember it all… before THEY wipe my memory! But I don’t want to jump the gun! I must start at the very beginning…

So there I was, just a few days ago, sitting there at home minding my own business… Having fallen asleep watching old episodes of ‘Porridge’, I found myself rudely awakened by a sudden loud cursing in some strange, probably Scandinavian language, apparently coming from above and behind me. I turned my neck so quick I think I damn near dislocated it! But what I saw gave me such a shock I immediately forgot that pain… for there, dangling from the trapdoor which leads to the mysterious and hitherto unexplored regions of my loft, was the bottom half of a rather rotund gentleman clad in an ermine-lined, red velvet jacket and a pair of black moleskins over a pair of shiny leather boots, the tops of which were similarly fur-lined. At this stage his top half was invisible as the gent appeared to be stuck there… (and Gord alone knows how he got there, ’cause my roof hasn’t got a chimney!)

I instantly divined his problem: his jacket had got all rucked-up and was adding far more than was necessary to the stranger’s already impressive girth. I limped the few steps from my chair to the place underneath the trapdoor and, reaching up with the ‘reaching stick’ the insurance company had provided me with when I first had my accident, I started tugging at the jacket… As soon as I had pulled enough of it down to easy the jam the stranger fell down through the hole, skittling me in the process. The weighty gent picked himself up with remarkable agility and then bent down to offer me a hand. I took it and allowed myself to be pulled to my feet by a figure I never in my wildest dreams ever imagined I would ever meet, for standing there, right in front of my was a red-capped, bespectacled, white-bearded, red-cheeked fellow who could be none other than Santa Claus…

“Crikey!” I exclaimed aloud, “Those bloody painkillers must be stronger’n I thought… I’m hallucinating!”

“Ho-ho-ho!” The figure in red said, adjusting his jacket underneath his belt, “You not hallucinating minheer! You seein’ da real Santa Claus! Who yust picked you up from da floor? When you ever actually feel a hallucination? A hallucination strong enough to lift you up, ja?”

He had a point there… but I was cagey: “How do I know you’re the real Santa Claus and not just an imposter? I mean, there’s lot of ’em about at this time of year!”

“No problem!” he said… “Who else would bring you chrissie prezzie…?” I was astounded; I’d lived alone for so long I’d virtually forgotten about prezzies. Curious, I couldn’t resist asking, “Ah… What prezzie?” It was only then I noticed the large sack which had come through the trapdoor with him, as he put his hand inside it and pulled out a Les Paul guitar! Now, I’m a pretty cynical dude and not easily convinced when it comes to believing in fairytales, but Les Pauls don’t lie… this dude had to be Santa!

“Wow!” I said… and then, as I reached forward to take the guitar from him, I intoned, “I do believe in fairies! I do believe in fairies…!” just in case it should turn out to be a dream. But the ‘dream’ didn’t fade as I took the guitar in hand and plugged it into my amplifier; and the first few notes, amplified by those superb double-coiled, humbucking pickups, left me in no doubt; the guitar was real! So Santa must be real too!

“But hang on a sec, Santa! How come I get a prezzie this year? And why such an expensive prezzie too? I mean, all my life all I’ve had are socks’n’jox and maybe an occasional fishing rod, but I’ve never ever had such an expensive prezzie; and it’s just EXACTLY what I wanted… There’s something suspicious going on here…”

“Aha, mein freund!” the fat man said, “You are so sharp! You never miss a trick! Zat’s why you were chosen… And I have to admit zat ze reason you haven’t had so many prezzies in ze past is ‘coz you bin a naughty fella for so long… But ziss year is different; ziss year we need your help… ze guitar is a teensy-weensy bribe…”

But before he could explain further, there was a lot of scuffling noises from the ceiling above us and then several, dwarf-like creatures with grey-green skin, huge bulbous heads and large black, almond-shaped eyes, descended from the trapdoor. Each of them held something in their right hands; and as Santa suddenly fell silent and raised his hands. Santa’s reaction could only mean one thing: ‘they can only be ray-guns!’ I thought…

I also thought it wise to immediately put down the Les Paul and follow suit…

After exchanging several series of what can only be described as clicking noises with his two assistants the tallest of the dwarf-like creatures, who was evidently their boss, said, “I’m taking you both to our leader!”

“Shouldn’t that be the other way round?” I said, without thinking.

“Ah, but you, my dear Astyages, recognize no leaders; in your former incarnation you were a king of kinds; in this one you are an individual who, though poor, recognizes no master; it is for these reasons that you have been chosen… And as for Santa… The Master has his own reasons for wanting to see him!”

I hated the thought of being ‘chosen’ for anything… it smacked of responsibility and worse, seemed to imply the probability of work!

“Then you’ll just have to choose someone else, won’t you?” The grey dwarf, who I now realized was an actual, bona fide alien, just silently raised his ray-gun level with my forehead and allowed the corners of his slit-like mouth to raise into something which was not quite a smile. “Oh, alright then… If I must, I suppose I must…”

I could spend whole chapters describing the journey we next underwent; how we traveled in a flying saucer to the South Pole, fighting off American fighter planes from the US fleet all the way across the Southern Ocean, ’til we finally flew down into an immense cavern which took us deep into a world which I now realized was REALLY hollow!

In a fantastic underground city we were taken to a building which would have dwarfed the twin towers and given the Empire State Building a good run for its money, where we ascended to the penthouse suite which the Master was currently using as a pied-a-terre. As we ascended in the lift, I wondered why I’d been chosen and for what… I’d attempted to get further information from the greys during the flight but they remained silent and refused to make any comment.

Finally the greys escorted us through a luxurious apartment and out onto a rooftop garden which would have put the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to shame, and there, sitting on a chaise-longue drinking gin and tonic, was the Master, who I couldn’t help but think looked a lot like Jimi Hendrix…

Using telekinesis, the greys forced Santa and I to our knees, with our foreheads to the floor, as if salaaming… “Let them up you idiots!” the Master said, “I need their willing cooperation!”

The Master didn’t realise it, but he had just made his first mistake; whatever it was he needed my cooperation for, I most certainly was NOT going to oblige him!

“Forgive those stupid Greys,” the Master said, “they are one of the most uncivilized species in this galaxy! No manners at all!”

“What do you want with us?” Santa demanded. “Why have you brought us here?”

“I’ve brought you here because you two are the last ‘hold-outs’… the last two people on the whole of planet earth who have not somehow been subverted, brainwashed, bought or otherwise incorporated within structures which are ultimately owned by the Illuminati. Surely you’ve suspected…?” We both nodded silently, “I’ve known for some time…” Santa said, then, turning to me he added “I was trying to warn you when we were so rudely interrupted… and brought here…”

“You will be used as ‘Judas goats’; we will first brainwash you then program you to be the most zealous advocates of our cause; from the human perspective you will be leading the exodus from the doomed planet earth to travel to another earth-like planet in the constellation of Arcturus… You’ll act as travel-agents as well as poster-boys for our human migration plan to our home-world…”

The Master must feel confident of himself, I thought, if he could afford to give away such staggering details, even in such a tiny slip… but the words ‘human’, and ‘homeworld’ in the same sentence told me I was dealing with aliens here… Space aliens, or inter-dimensional ones? I wondered, but had little chance to find out, as the Master explained that the purpose of migrating the whole human population to Arcturus was so they can be farmed as fodder and used as slave labour… but we two would live like kings… with every one of our senses most abundantly gratified in all kinds of imaginative ways…

I’d heard enough; the time had come to act! If I waited any longer they’d isolate me and then start to work on me psychologically; if I acted now at least I might have some element of surprise as they wouldn’t be expecting either of us to resist the three armed guards who had escorted us and who were still aiming their weapons at us… Moving suddenly, and hoping Santa would realize what I was doing and at least just move himself out of the line of fire, I put myself at the center of a cross with three Greys to my left, right and in front of me, desperately hoping my sudden movement would trigger the precise reaction it did: the Greys all instantly pointed their weapons at me, but just as they fired, I dived into a combat roll aimed at the feet of the one in front of me…

The Greys to the right and left of me were instantly vaporized by their own ray-guns, while the third Grey hit the Master with a glancing shot that left him seriously concussed and winded, as I came out of my combat roll onto to my knee, finishing the roll with a punch to the groin which thankfully turned out to be as painful for the Grey as it is for humans. He dropped his weapon as he doubled up, whimpering in a foetus-position on the floor as I carefully took aim and vaporized him.

I went across to the Master and saw he was wearing some kind of mask which had been damaged to reveal reptilian scales underneath the human-like face… I knew it could never have been Jimi! There was not even a single guitar in sight! This was just another psychological ploy to gain my sympathy and trust… Mercilessly, I zapped the Lizard-man into oblivion.

Finally turning my attention to Santa, I realized he was not entirely surprised by my actions… I gave him a quizzical look, with my head tilted to one side… “You were expecting this, weren’t you?”

“Errr… Ummm… ahhh… let’s just say, ‘hoping’ shall we? But yes, I was rather relying on your skills as a martial artist… Now, quickly, we must get out of here before any more of them come! We can hijack a saucer; I was watching how they operated them on the way here…”

“Yeah, me too!” I said… “Now let’s go!”

The ray-guns made it easy for us to get out of the building and into the private car-park where our guard had previously parked their flying saucer (I must use this term now, as they are not ‘UFO’s any more!)

Speed, surprise and a couple of zaps from the ray-guns took care of the guards; and, if we’d both been watching them to learn how to fly the saucer, I’d also been keenly observing how they operated their weapons systems… As we flew out over the underground city I saw my target and yelled at Santa to head towards it as we fought off a small fleet of half-a-dozen more flying discs… After finally shooting down the last of these I had just enough time to aim and hit the ‘fire’ button to loose a photon torpedo at what had looked to me very much like the city’s nuclear power-station. We saw the explosion and the beginnings of an unmistakeable ‘mushroom’ cloud behind us as the shock-wave finally hit us… Tilting the saucer at an angle, I found I could ‘surf’ the shock-wave ’til we finally shot out of the cavern’s opening like a bullet from a gun… In the rear-view screens we could clearly see that our explosion had started a chain-reaction as the major buildings of the whole city were blasted into their component atoms.

Of course, we took the long way ’round on the way home, to avoid having to fight the US fleet in the Southern Ocean, ’cause those guys shoot first and ask questions later! But as soon as we got home I’ve prepared this report for YouTube; the world MUST be warned; though I shall post it under a pseudonym. The Lizardmen’s dastardly plan, which had been scheduled to start on 21/12/12 has, I think, suffered a serious setback, but sooner or later, they will be back from Planet X with another attempt to turn us all into lizard-fodder! In the meantime, NOW is the time to turn against your Illuminati masters, who will be weakened at least temporarily by the absence of the Master…

Anyway, now you all know why the world didn’t actually end on 21/12/12 as it was supposed to; Santa and I have managed to buy it a temporary reprieve, but how long that will last is unknown; in the meantime, Santa assures me that he will not let this little escapade interfere with his usual Christmas duties and I’ve let him keep the flying saucer to help him with this… so, without undue modesty, I can truthfully say that I have not only saved the world, but Christmas too! With Santa’s help, of course!

Happy Christmas piglets!

Asytages