Yellow Hat Man Saves Christmas
“No-tecuh-tzin... Quetzalcoatl...
tlacua-quiuh... mo... yollotl...”
A bright orangey-yellow light began
to radiate from within my chest, giving me flashbacks to Indiana Jones and
the Temple of Doom. I screamed, and
in my weary, primal attempt to flee, I stumble over my own feet. The mummy, realizing my escape attempt,
staggered over to block the door, trapping me in the one corner of my room.
Fortunately,
this is the corner where I lean the weapons too large to fit in my karate
bag. My room is too small for me to swing
the bo staff properly, but the katana is another story.
This sword is a definite collector’s item... after all, if
something is made in
Grabbing
the sword from the corner, I pull the sheath off in a sky-to-ground fashion
before tossing it to the ground. (This is an act which symbolizes my acceptance
of death in battle for all of those of you unfamiliar with these little Eastern
traditions.) I stood in a guard position
as the mummy stammered over. When the
Aztec mummy reached for my heart once more, I countered with an upward strike,
making a shallow incision from navel to neck.
Heh, that SOB felt that one. The
mummy doubled over, unsure as how to piece himself together with most of his
wrappings cut too short. Taking
advantage of his moment of weakness, I drove down with a would-be decapitating
blow. Didn’t work out that way, after
all it’s not like it’s a real Japanese sword. But the second decapitating blow, now that
was the stuff.
That did it
alright. He was down for the count this
time. Ichor, the viscous green sludge that oozes through the veins of the
undead clings to my blade, and it also oozes onto the floor and into the carpet,
meaning that I’m going to have to rent one of those carpet-cleaner machines
from the grocery story to get the ichor smell out of the rugs. I fucking hate those things, my mom always
puts too much soap in and I get chemical burns on my feet. Seeing the inevitability of this, I flick the
ichor from my blade with a snapping motion of my arm, wipe what remained on the
bed sheet, and re-sheathed the sword.
“Ryan!” my mom screams. I swing the door open to find her standing
there with the cordless phone in hand.
“Telephone,” she says before
shuffling back to the dining room. I
take the call:
“Hello?”
“Coons!” shouts my friend Joe. “What’s happenin’?”
I don’t know where the hell Joe
was, but it was obviously nowhere near me.
Joe was dressed in white shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, relaxing in a
chaise lounge on a white sandy beach somewhere.
Scantly clad women hover over him as they cool him with
ostrich-feathered fans on long poles, feeding him grapes as he nurses a virgin
strawberry daiquiri. I could barley
resolve Buffet’s “Margaritavile” through his cellular phone connection.
“I was
almost killed today.” I flat-out tell
him.
“Really?” asks Joe, who was both interested and amused.
“How?”
“An Aztec mummy! Yeah, that’s right... an Aztec fuckin’ mummy!”
“But Coons, there is no
archeological evidence that the Aztecs mummified their dead. Furthermore, if they did, why would they drag
these mummies from their Central American Empire to
“No Joe... these are definitely
Aztec mummies,” I assure him.
“Right...”
“Come on, they’re obviously
Aztec mummies. One tried to rip my heart
out to sacrifice to his feathered-serpent god Quetzalcoatl.”
“Yeah, so what? Sarah used to try to rip my heart out all the
time, remember? During lunch... ‘Dark
Mother, come to me...’”
“You know Joe, you’re quite cavalier when it
comes to seeing people sacrificed as blood offering to pagan deities.”
“Yeah... well. Remember Hunter’s,
that trucking supply place where my dad used to work off of Old Exit 8?”
“Yeah...”
“Well they called my dad’s shop
because they’ve been having some difficulties...”
“Having difficulties... when you say
‘difficulties,’ you don’t mean, oh, say Aztec mummies poppin’ out of the ground
and killin’ everybody?”
“I didn’t get into details... but I
need for you to do me a favor.”
“Hmm... what?”
“Well I need for you to go there
and lead a convoy of trucks to Edinboro.”
“Joe, it’s Christmas Eve, what
could possibly be so important that I have to waste my day on this.”
“Christmas presents for all the
starving orphans,” he states.
“God Joe, can’t this wait?”
“Hey now... it’s Christmas Eve, and
I’m not the one that has to tell the starving orphans that they weren’t good
enough this year for Santa to stop at the orphanage...”
“Dammit Joe!
Why can’t you do this?”
“Me? I can’t.
I’m busy...” he pauses to have one of the scantly-clad women feed him
grapes. “Busy with stuff. Yep, let know how it turns out.” I hang up the phone in disgust. Here I have to bail out Joe... again. Do what ever crazy errand Joe forgot about...
again. Fight legions of undead
for the greater good... again.
I walk down the hall to see my mom
sitting at the dinning room table, eating a bowl of Rice Krispies and reading
the paper. She faces the Aztec mummies
pressing themselves against the picture window.
Occasionally the mummies pound on the window as though they were the
monkeys at the zoo. My mom eats and
reads on as usual.
“Who was that?” my mom asks as I enter the room
“Joe,” I tell her.
“Hmmph, what’d he want?” she asks.
“He needs for me to go to
“Will you be home for dinner?” she asks.
“Probably not.”
“Okay. Have fun.”
I walk into the family room and
look at the TV, which had been left on.
There was an Aztec mummy warning for
I wandered into the garage, because
I didn’t see my dad yet and I figured that he might be there. Indeed he was, bringing a load of firewood
from the woodpile outside into the garage.
As he stoops down to stack the wood, an Aztec mummy wanders in through
the garage door. Hobbling towards my
father, the mummy sticks out a hand and begins to rasp:
“No-tecuh-tzin... Quetzalcoatl... tlacua-quiuh...
mo... yollotl...”
My dad
nonchalantly picks up the sledgehammer conveniently laying next to him, and
then swings it around, cracking the mummy in the right temple, crushing his
head in. The mummy flies across my
garage from the impact. The ichor oozes
from the mummy’s head, his eyes rolled back his limbs twitching, as is the case
with traumatic head injury.
At about
this time, another mummy smashed through the cement floor of my garage, and
grabbed my dad’s legs. My dad tried to
shake the mummy off, but only succeeded in dragging the mummy out of his hole a
little further. Seeing the urgency of
this, my dad triumphantly raised the hammer over his head, and then drove down
upon the mummy’s back with maximum force, shattering his spinal column. As I enter the garage, my dad looks up at me
with amazement.
“Well you’re up early!” he shouts.
“Yeah, I got strangled by a
mummy... and Joe called.”
“Oh, what’d he want?”
“He needs for me to go to
“Will you be home for dinner?” he asks.
“Probably not.”
“Sure? I was thinking about grilling a steak.”
“Hopefully I’ll be back, if not
save me a piece.”
“You’re not going out there
unarmed, are you?” he asks concernedly.
“Oh... hell no, I came to see if I
could get some weapons.”
“Huh... suppose you want the hammer
then?” my dad asks.
“I don’t much care for the hammer,”
I tell my dad as he smacks his cigarettes pack against his wrist twice to draw
one up.
“Oh?” I explain as he pulls the cigarette from the
pack with his mouth.
“Hammer does a good job, got a lot
of heft to it, but it’s almost too heavy.
You can’t miss with that first swing, it’s real hard to get multiple
strike’s off with that.”
“Yeah, your right...” admits my dad
before pausing to light his cigarette.
“...but you do got to admit, it works a whole lot better than the
splitting maul. So what do you want
then?”
“I was wondering if I could take
the .357 with me?”
“Nah, go ahead. I never use it. The hammer’ll take care-a everything.”
“Sure? Mom said you’ve used that a lot in the past.” My dad puffs his cigarette, then holds it
between his index and middle fingers, and waves it a bit, as he tends to talk
with his hands.
“Me? Nah. I
don’t know where she got that from. I
used the splittin’ maul on the first couple-a times-a Demon Mobsters came
around. After that I got the hammer, and
pshoo... that took care-a them. You need
a key? Oh wait, you have a key! Yeah, go
ahead and take it, I don’t care.”
“Thanks.”
Digging through my parent’s closet,
I unearth the gun case and load the .357, placing it into the shoulder holster
that I bought at the Army-Navy Surplus Store.
I also had my sawed-off shotgun and bandoleer of shells that I picked up
from the Post-Apocalyptic Vagabond Surplus Store. I figured that I needed some melee weapons,
and since I am a poor swordsman, I opted for my tonfa, a pair of batons similar
to police nightsticks. I also decided I
should bring the hunting knife that Grandpa Coons carried all throughout World
War II. It’s more a lucky or sentimental
thing—that knife carved more jewelry than Jerry. After saying my goodbyes, I
hop in my trusty Geo, and head to
Hunter’s was easy enough to find,
right at the foot of I-90 Exit 29 (Old Exit 8).
Two semis were waiting in the parking lot, and a large, poorly-groomed
man was standing outside, next to the Coke machine. I walk up to the man next to the Coke
machine, and introduce myself.
“Hey, I’m Coons,” I tell him as I
shake his hand.
“Louie,” the trucker replies. That made all kinds of sense, seeing as how
he was played by the legendary professional wrestler Captain Lou Albano.
“Something to drink?” he asks me.
“Nah, I’m good,” I tell him.
“Well, I do,” says Louie as he
draws his wallet from his shirt pocket to get a dollar bill.
“Huh, never seen that before,” I
tell him.
“What?” Louie asks.
“Never seen a guy carry his wallet
in his shirt pocket before,” I tell him.
Louie opens his wallet again and shows me a well-worn and somewhat faded
picture of himself, his slightly overweight wife, and his rosy, apple-cheeks
daughter.
“I love my wife and my little girl,
but I’ve been on the road so long that I never get a chance to see ‘em. I was being offered triple pay for tomorrow,
but I told my boss that I’d be damned if I miss Christmas with my family. But when I heard local area churches took up
a special collection to help out those starving orphans, I couldn’t help but to
give. Good Lord has given so much
already. And when I heard that all was
to be for not just because the truck drivers had their hearts forcibly
extracted by Aztec mummies...w ell, I... I just knew what I had to do.” Louie looks at the picture again, then grins
as he tucks his wallet back into his shirt pocket. “That’s why I keep my wallet in my breast
pocket, this way they’re always close to my heart.”
“Dude, no...” I tell him.
“Hey man, you’ll be the same way
when you have a family. Just you see...”
“No man, I’m telling you to shut up
to keep you safe. See, authors will
often crate extraneous minor characters, and go through the effort of providing
them with a back story to make the readers emotionally attached to this new
character. Soon after, the new character
then meets their tragic and often violent demise, in a process often used by
authors to play on, and with, the reader’s emotions to enhance a piece.”
“Nah...
you’ve got a real pessimistic view... you’re a ‘glass is empty’ kind-of-a-guy. You got to relax, nothing bad’s gonna
happen... it’s Christmas!” Louie takes a
sip of his Coke and continues. “You know
how to drive a big rig Mr. Coons?” Louie asks.
I look at the truck for a second, and ponder its operation.
“I suppose it’s none to different
than flying the Soviet Mig-29 Fighter, except without the flaps, wings or jet
engines... but since I don’t know how to work any of those, I guess we’re in
good shape.” I tell Louie.
“That statement was the most
logically terrible thing since voodoo economics.”
“Indeed. Let’s go.”
Sure enough, the big rig was easy
enough to drive, because it was an automatic.
Even if I had problems, they could be easily handled by Louie, who I was
talking to over the CB. Of course, I had
no idea what the hell he was saying. It
was times like this that I wished that I saved that CB-to-English dictionary
from moldering away in the trash heap in my car. We decided to take the interstate the whole
way, west on I-90 to the interchange, where we’d take I-79 South to Edinboro,
and then straight to the orphanage.
There was no traffic. Everyone in
“Man, it’d suck to be stranded on
Christmas Eve,” I thought “Maybe I can give them a lift one I get up there.”
The crowd looks down at the
oncoming trucks, and leaps off the bridge onto the cabs of the semi. They weren’t stranded motorists; they were a
group of Aztec mummies, ready to pounce.
“Mummies!” I scream into the CB. I drop the CB, and draw my pistol, blasting
mummies off of my hood with one hand, driving around the cloverleaf-style on
ramp with other. When I got them all, I
looked back in my rear-view mirror, to see they had smashed through Louie’s
windshield. One mummy tried to tear his
heart out, but Louie was able to defend himself with his trusty tire
buddy. The semi swerved, because Louie
was not paying attention to the road, in addition to the mummy on the hood who
grabbed hold of the wheel and steered the semi off the bridge.
The truck exploded in a magnificent
fireball which mushroomed into the sky, for the majority of the toys it held
was the last shipment of Spongebob Squarepants Homebrew Napalm Kits. This was considered one of the more ill-conceived
marketing promotions by anyone’s account.
A lone baby doll crawls away from
the flaming wreckage, the only one able to escape the nylon tie restraints that
doomed her comrades by forcing them to stay within their cardboard
confinements. With singed-off hair and a
broken eye that stays closed even when she sits upright, the baby doll shakily
limbers forth with no one to answer her monotone cries of “Ma-ma... ma-ma...”
“Don’t look back,” I told myself.
Louie was quickly incinerated if he
was lucky, boiled in his own juices if he was unlucky. But there was no time to think about
that. I had a job to do. Louie’s
tragic-and-often-violent-demise-insurance only covered
tragic-and-often-violent-demises induced by industrial accidents, military
action, vampires, zombies, conventional Egyptian mummies, and Cthulhu. For
eighty cents a day—the price of a cup of coffee—he could have extended his
family policy to cover mummies from other cultures, as well as accidental
mummies created by bodies buried in glaciers, peat bogs, and the dehydrating
desert sand. Yup, ol’ Louie saved a lot
of money by cutting corners like that... but did he?
I drove on for about a mile, before
my semi simply quit out on me. I climbed
out to see that one of the mummies tore the fuel line. I could tell because he was still there. The mummy must’ve passed out from the vapors,
or else he poisoned himself when he drank the fuel, thinking it to be candy.
Mummies are stupid.
It was easy enough to MacGyver the
fuel line back together. I just used some of the mummy’s wrappings, alone with
the resin used to glue the wrappings on to the body, and to waterproof and seal
everything. The only problem was getting
more diesel fuel.
The nearest gas station with
diesel, the big Country Fair off of Exit 24, was only a few miles off; truly a
convenient store. I took all of my
weapons with me, for I had no reason not too, and followed the interstate back
to
It took me longer than I thought to
reach the recently abandoned Country Fair.
It was a mess inside, the place having been looted by the panicked
multitudes evading the mummies and/or last minute shoppers. However, I managed to find gas cans for sale,
which I quickly appropriated to my own cause.
From what I remember, semi’s have
fuel efficiencies of five or six miles to the gallon. Don’t know where I remember that from, maybe
when discussing the Otto cycle in thermal physics.
“Assuming that I lose half of the
diesel though my impromptu patch job, I’ll need fifty to sixty miles worth of
gas, instead of twenty-five to thirty, so that’ll correspond to ten gallons of
gas.” I tell myself.
Of course, assuming diesel to have
a density close to water, that means I’d have to lug back eighty pounds of
fuel. It seemed like it weighed more
than that, though. Indeed it did,
because my water-like density assumption was off some. I wanted to have my hands free to fight my
way back to the semi, so I utilized a plastic toboggan, which was conveniently
nearby. Making a few bowlines in an extension cord, I was able to MacGyver a
harness that allowed me pull the gas sled behind me. Sure it was only a hundred
pounds, but if you ever dragged a deer out of the woods, you’d know what fun it
is to drag stuff. Drag stuff a few miles... and once you get in the zone, you
have to stop to engage in deadly combat with Aztec mummies.
Like I said
earlier, it took me longer that I thought it would to get to the Country Fair,
and as I arrived, the sun began to set.
They come out at night mostly... mostly.
To make matters worse, I used up all of my ammunition getting to Country
Fair, because I’ve always been somewhat lacking in future planning skills. But I managed to take a two-liter of Pepsi in
case I got thirsty. I piled as much beef
jerky as I could fit on the sled, because it was free. Since I had everything I needed, I pulled out
my tonfa, and hoped for the best.
But I didn’t get the best, oh
no. Not by a longshot. It takes a lot of effort to kill one of those
SOB’s manually. I did my best just to
incapacitate, typically by cracking them in the temple. I estimate that it took me somewhere between
three and four hours to get back to the semi.
I guess I have to be thankful that it was a mild winter. Still the cold was beginning to take its
toll, even on a hairy, robust individual such as myself.
I couldn’t feel my face. Granted, I don’t go around feeling things
with my face, but I would still like to keep that option open. Feeling your face is something you kinda take
for granted, you don’t miss it until it’s gone.
I couldn’t feel my fingers either, which was making it harder to wield
the tonfa. When I saw the semi, I felt relieved, until I broke one of my tonfa
on a mummy’s skull. Tonfa have a
critical weak point, the peg that holds the handle to the shaft. Tossing the tonfa aside, I grab my Grandpa’s
knife and wave it around, waiting for something to leap up at me.
Nothing does. I’ve walked so far, and fought so much. More
than I’d planned to. More than I could
handle. I fell to my knees. It was a mild winter, there wasn’t any snow
on the roads. They were dry. While at
college, I never turned the heat on.
Hell, I still slept with the window open, so this was business as usual
for me. In fact it was nicer. So often am I around streetlights, that I
never really get to appreciate the night sky.
It’s quite pretty.
I woke up around
Two children, dressed in
hand-me-down footed unitard pajamas (which date back to a time when footed
unitard pajamas were easily obtainable) wake up before the rest, and make their
way to see what goodies lie under the chinsy artificial tree they decorated
with paper chains. When they entered the
orphanage’s common living room, they see their pathetic tree sitting in its
darkened corner, and beneath it was a bare as before. Shocked and bewildered, the two children turn
to the wicked elderly orphanage overseer.
“I guess you weren’t good enough
this year,” she snaps.
Before the children have a chance to cry, the
hottie co-ed orphanage volunteer (who was about to cry herself) snatches the
children into her arms. She tried to
reassure them that everything was going to be alright. After all, she knew there was nothing else
that she could do.
I placed my Trans-Siberian
Orchestra cassette into the semi’s factory tape deck, and proceeded to crank
that mother. I skip ahead to their
stunning rendition of “The Carol of the Bells.”
Its somber beginning would serve as good non-digetic background music for
the sad children within. I see them
through the living room widow, there numbers begin to grow. With the first jarring guitar chords, I lay
on the air horn.
“Look!” shouts one of the starving orphans as he
points out the window.
I replace my trademark yellow
fishing hat with the yellow Santa hat my friend Joyce made for me on one of her
mad sewing binges. Rather then stepping
out of the cab, I collapse from exhaustion into a snowbank. It took a lot to stand myself up, but it was
a whole lot easier when I knew there was no danger. The kids form a mob and
follow me around back, as I reach for the trailer’s latch. I stop and sneer at the kids, because I like
to be rough around the edges, before opening the doors to my semi laden with
every kind of fun and amusement imaginable.
All of the starving orphans are
outside, staring on in wide-eyed wonder, before the simultaneously rub their
tired eyes, then collectively gaze on in astonishment once more. I climb into the trailer, look down upon the
crowd of children and begin to speak.
“I, Yellow Hat Man, as part of my
eternal Crusade of Justice -- bring you highly amusing, and quasi-educational
gender-neutral playthings, such as board games!” I shout to the crowd of kids, who smile
onward.
“...and toy guns for all the
boys!” I shout, only to be received with
puzzled looks. I must elaborate, so I
pick up a plastic blue H&K MP5, hold it over my head, and continue to
shout.
“There was once a time, long before
you were born, when people thought rationally, and chose not to live in
fear! They realized that there were
things in this world such as guns, and we knew that trying to forget about them
would not make them go away! There was a time when play-fighting amongst children
was not a sign of violent tendencies, but an essential part of play! Modern
child-raising gobblety-gook suppresses the natural exploration of violence,
leading children to have unclear and dangerous notions of the concept! This will not happen to you! You will be
saved!”
The children had no idea how to
react to this. Having been brainwashed
by the liberal media all their lives, they’d no idea that there was another
approach to life. I hand the gun to a
little boy in the crowd.
“Ho Ho Ho... now you have a
machinegun,” I tell the little boy, who doesn’t get the way cool and highly
appropriate movie quote that I had dished out on him.
“I also have...” I look back into
the truck at all the dolls and such.
“...whatever the hell girls play with for the girls! Sorry, I don’t have a cool sociopolitical
rant for you girls... but that’s ok!”
The girls all look at each other
and shrug there shoulders. I turn around to unload the truck, when I hear a
resonating, elongated “What’s up!”
coming from behind me. I turn around
to see my old buddy, J.C. standing there, drinking Maddog straight the
brown-paper bag clad bottle. He was
kinda wiry, with long shaggy hair and an unkempt beard. As always, he wore his trademark nondescript
white tunic and thorny crown ensemble.
“J.C.!” I shout as I slap him some skin. “Happy birthday, man!”
“Thanks, you remembered!”
“How can I not? It’s marked on the calendar!”
“Man, anymore the only JC people
care about is J.C.-fuckin’-Penny’s when they have a sale,” says a
bitter-sounding J.C., as he takes a swig of Maddog. “Not you man,” he tells me with a friendly
slap on the back. “You’re keepin’ it
real.”
It was at about this time the
wretched old bat running the orphanage slaps J.C.’s face before scolding him:
“How dare you use that language in
front of the children!”
“Hey lady, I died for your sins,
alright? Cut me some friggin’ slack,”
says J.C. as he goes to take another swig of Maddog. The wretched old bat sneers at him.
“Are you drinking in front of the
children?” she snaps.
JC turns to me and winks. I know what’s going to happen, and I fight to
keep from cracking up. JC pulls a bottle
of Naya brand bottled water from his crumply brown-paper bag.
“No.” he tells the old bat, whilst snickering.
“Mr. Coons, I suggest your friend
leaves. I think he’s a poor influence on
these children.” snaps the wicked
elderly orphanage overseer.
“Let he who is without sin cast the
first stone,” the hottie co-ed orphanage volunteer mutters under her breath.
“Sounds like a plan!” shouts J.C. as he bends down and picks up a
rock.
“Simmer down man!” I tell J.C., while holding him back. “Just
save it for Judgment Day.” I look at all
the happy children playing, and somber piano music fills the air, and I let
J.C. go, and see the fruits of my labors.
“Thank you for all you’ve done,”
says the overjoyed hottie co-ed orphanage volunteer, as she nonchalantly slips
me her phone number.
“Aww, it was nothing,” I tell her,
because it makes me look cool.
“Check you later, man!” shouts J.C., waving from the window of his
wood-paneled station wagon.
“See you Sunday!” I tell him.
“We’ll never forget you!” shout the kids.
“Hey, I’ll keep in touch guys,” I
tell them, knowing well that I would not.
I turn and wave a final time, as I
adjust my karate bag to keep it from sliding off my shoulder. Once more, I find myself walking along the
side of the road, to the tune of the non-digetic piano music, sticking out my
thumb at passing cars because I left mine in