Santa Monster by Josh Stallings

Q: Share memories of being read to. Or stories you read to those close to you. Have you written stories for friends or family, not for publication?

A: I was lucky enough to grow up in a family that loved stories. My mother read us Peter Pan and our father read us Winnie the Pooh. He also read us Catch 22, which might have landed better with my older brother and sister than us younger kids, but that story is for another therapy session. Dylan Thomas’ A Child’s Christmas in Wales was a holiday standard at our home. After the divorce Pops would entertain his wild brood by dropping a poster board on the floor, give us colored pens and have us work together mapping out a fantastical world. The older kids had read Tolkien, I hadn’t, I just thought making up worlds was cool. Who knew I’d be doing that the rest of my life?

When I became a dad I was lucky to parent with Erika, a life long reader she already had a collection of children's books and we made sure our boys had the bottom shelf of a bookcase just for them. I read to the boys most nights. Introduced them to some of my favorites. When they discovered I could make up stories they started asking for two picture books (one for each of them), one of my talking stories and a song. The bedtime routine stretched to 20 minutes or more, but they slept peacefully after that so it was worth it. 

My ability to make stuff up served me well as a dad. When three year old Jared asked me, “If Santa gives good kids presents, what about bad ones?” 

“Bad kids get visited by Santa Monster.” I said, keeping my eye on the car ahead of us I failed to see his face. In a non-Christian home navigating Christmas’ complex and contradictory rituals is tough, (Easter? Forget about it.) Jared didn’t ask any follow up questions so I figured I’d handled the good vs bad kids question pretty well.

Nope. 

Two days later a babysitter took Jared to the mall to see Santa. She brought back a picture of our son screaming in terror from his perch on jolly old St. Nick’s lap. Erika was rightfully angry, she explained to the babysitter that we didn’t force our children to sit on people’s laps. I thought I was off the hook until the sitter went home and the boys were happily watching Ninja Turtles, that’s when Erika gave me “the look.” I told her about Santa Monster. “Jared isn’t developmentally able to get your humor, or understand sarcasm.” She explained. “He takes what you tell him literally and believes it.” 

“That’s his mistake,” I almost said, but she was the only one of us with any early childhood education, so I just mumbled, “I’ll fix it…” 

This was one day before Christmas Eve. Santas would be triggering and unavoidable. What do I do? I didn’t want to say, “Sorry kid, you shouldn’t trust me.” I wanted Jared to grow up in a world where he could trust his father. I wanted this to be a funny story we joked about with his psychiatrist thirty-five years down the road.

My fall back plan: I stayed up all night writing and drawing a children's book staring baby Dracula and Franky, a baby Frankenstein, (yes I know Frankenstein was the doctor not the monster, but that seemed a bit complicated for a children's tale written at midnight the night before the book was due). In my story two sweet monster children tried to find out what they could expect for Christmas. Being monsters and thus bad by definition, would they get lumps of coal? If so what did one do with coal? What was coal? These monsters lived in LA and had never seen coal. Drac and Franky tried to stay up all Christmas Eve night, as they were drifting off to sleep they dreamed they saw a zombie looking monster in a red suit. The next morning under their tree they found a bicycle and a skateboard left for them by Santa Monster with a note wishing them a Merry Monster Christmas. (This is roughly the story, I wrote it forever ago so I may have gotten some details wrong.)

The book did its job. It helped Jared to not be afraid of Santa Monster, and to understand that all children deserve presents.

What I didn’t say was; Santa as seen by the predominant culture in the USA is one judgy bastard. What kinda guy spends his time spying on kids to see who he thinks is good or bad? Kinda Creepy, dude. And if we follow that logic, was the kid in school who’s folks could afford a radio controlled car to put under his tree better than me because I got a bike my dad built from found spare parts? If that’s true, if wealthy kids according to Santa are better than poor kids, then I say he’s the monster, not Zombie Santa.

SAFETY NOTE: If any precocious children stumble across this post, have your folks contact me and I’ll start working on “Santa Monster 2 Rudolph’s Revenge.”  

  

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In other news...

Episode 2 of Dumpsterfireside Chats the podcast where Chantelle Aimée Osman and me try to makes sense of life, publishing, writing, and the crazy state of earth 2022 can be found here- 

https://www.wordsofpreypodcast.com/1751031/10516034

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* Photo Credit Mark Lowrie

Of Course, It’s Funny; It’s Always About Us.

Can you name a writer or a work that made you Laugh Out Loud? (no inner chuckles)

Paul here, I’m out washing my hair, out of town, on the lam, in hiding, so D.J. Adamson is filling in for me this week. D.J. has a terrific blog and newsletter and a new mystery, Suppose, the second in her Lillian Dove Mystery series. She’s also the author of the Deviation science fiction-suspense trilogy. She also teaches writing and literature at Los Angeles colleges. And to keep busy when she is not writing or teaching, she is the Membership Director of the Los Angeles Sisters in Crime, Vice President of Central Coast Sisters in Crime and an active member of the Southern California Mystery Writers. Her books can be found and purchased in bookstores and on Amazon. To find her, her blog L’Artiste, or her newsletter that interviews and reviews authors go to http://www.djadamson.com. Make friends with her on Facebook or Goodreads.

So take it away D.J.!

Of Course, It’s Funny; It’s Always About Us.

by D.J. Adamson

“It’s the best book ever,” I told the conductor when, traveling on the train to Santa Barbara for a business appointment, he stopped at my seat and asked quietly, “Are you all right?”

I was blubbering like a baby.

Two weeks later, he stopped again. “Best book?”  This time, I was laughing and hooting.

It’s what truly makes a book memorable, isn’t it? The ability of the author to hook into human emotions and not let go. I remember which novel that made me literally sob for its last 150 pages: Dorothy Allison’s Bastard out of Carolina. The novel that embarrassingly caused other passengers to think I’d lost my mind: Heller’s Catch-22.

"They're trying to kill me," Yossarian told him calmly.
"No one's trying to kill you," Clevinger cried.
"Then why are they shooting at me?" Yossarian asked.
"They're shooting at everyone," Clevinger answered. "They're trying to kill everyone."
"And what difference does that make?"

Heller’s use of satire and black comedy to create a statement on the war was hilariously memorable and poignant.

Authors like Stephen King use humor to ease suspense and tension. Some of King’s comedy is horrifically funny…”Here’s Johnny.”  Others use black comedy to take a tragic situation and make a comment about the human response to it:  Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions or Slaughterhouse-Five; Adam’s Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces.

In my own work, I use sarcasm as a humorous means to get my character’s point across, (also to amplify her pent up resentments). I use comedic behavior as a method to demonstrate our continual attempt to “get it.”

I am thinking of my latest Lillian Dove novel Suppose.  Lillian returns to Davenport, Iowa, a city from her dark past, and she spots a dumpster diver she remembers. Now after her sobriety and creating a new reality for herself, she sees herself as having a higher, unique awareness.

My first thought was that it was crazy Ben or a man I’d named Crazy Ben. He was walking the same route with his shopping cart full of ripped, black trash bags and dirty, smaller white grocery bags, holding found treasures. You’d think I’d feel sorry for him. Especially since my life had changed so vastly. I was sober. Getting ahead in life. 

I’d once admired how he always seemed to know where he was going. Sure footed, he’d walked the same route day after day, safe in his routine. Sure of his path. But since my path had taken me elsewhere, I could now understand how a person can get on the gerbil wheel of going nowhere fast. Running to beat hell, around and around and around, only to end up in the same place.

I slowed. Hold it. Where was his cart? The rusty-wired cart with the squeaky wheels? It was never more than ten feet away in case someone came by, saw the value of his valuables, and decided to make them his own. Had he been robbed? The thought melted away my arrogance. It’s hard to come up with an answer, why me and not him? A toss of life’s dice? If I wouldn’t have quit drinking, it could easily be me pushing around the cart, hoping for enough recycle to buy a drink to warm my blood, or finding leftover food so I wouldn’t have to spend any money on nutritional sustenance. 

I pulled over. I should give him a little money. 

When I parked, I checked to see where Ben was and found him straightening up from the trash, his hands full of empty cans. He turned toward me as if he could sense he was being spied upon.

 I was wrong. It wasn’t Ben. What happened to Ben?

Did that make a difference? It wasn’t my Crazy Ben, but it was a Ben nevertheless.  I pulled a twenty out of my billfold and walked over.

As I came closer, he hurried and dumped his cans into a black, trash sack I now saw setting on the other side of the trash can. 

“Here.” I held out the bill.
“Go away,” he yelled.
“No, you don’t understand. This is a gift.”
“Get away from me. I’m not doing no harm.”
“Of course you aren’t.” Poor soul. “Take this. Get a warm meal.”
“I don’t need your money. Get away from me.” 

He snorted a lungful of air through his nose, leaned back, and aimed at huge, blob of spit. If I wouldn’t have moved faster, I’d have been wearing it.

He inhaled another mouthful. 
I raced back to the car. 
What was I doing back here? Why had I come? People don’t change.

She realizes by coming back, she, too, is running in that gerbil wheel. Around, around, around, still trying to “get it” even after five years sober.

Okay, so I am not a Heller, King, or Vonnegut. But I am working to use comedy as a tool for offering a comedic response to the perceptions we make. Especially when we think that somehow we have risen “above” the masses who just haven’t “got it.”

"Catch-22...says you've always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to."
"But Twenty-seventh Air Force says I can go home with forty missions."
"But they don't say you have to go home. And regulations do say you have to obey every order. That's the catch. Even if the colonel were disobeying a Twenty-seventh Air Force order by making you fly more missions, you'd still have to fly them, or you'd be guilty of disobeying an order of his. And then the Twenty-seventh Air Force Headquarters would really jump on you."

--Catch-22

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Thanks, Diann!

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Paul here again. If you’re in L.A. I hope you can come to SoCal MWA’s event: Demystifying Writing Software: James Scott Bell, Sharon Goldstein and Tom Sawyer discuss Scrivener, Storybase, Final Draft and Word Tips and Tricks, Saturday October 22, 2016. 2pm. Studio City Library, 12511 Moorpark Street, Studio City, CA  91604. I'll be introducing, so if you have any questions, drop me a line.

Check out Akashic's St. Louis Noir anthology with my short story Deserted Cities of the Heart.

www.PaulDMarks.com

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