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I Sold My Soul To Santa

Nate Leved

[I got this text from this URL: http://www.churchofsatan.org/santa.html]

Damn! It's cold up here at the North Pole! Yep, It's a fine kettle of fish that I've gotten myself into now. You see, I'm an elf. Oh, I wasn't always an elf. In fact, it wasn't all that long ago that I was a human being just like you. However, some years ago, I got myself into this mess, and now I can't get myself out. Such a deal!

It all began because I was kinda slow. You see, I'd been raised a Christian and had to go to Sunday School when I was just a little tike. Later, Ma got a bug in her bun and sent me to one of those Churchy, Christian schools where a kid can't even see how high he can pee on a wall without someone getting all out of joint about it. I was always in trouble, but they were determined to make a devout believer and a good Christian out of me whatever it took.

Well, in a hog's ear, as I always say. I don't believe in nothing! Well, I don't believe in that churchy stuff anyway, but I do believe in Santa all right, though. Boy, do I ever! But I'm getting ahead of myself... Back to school! Yeah, things went from bad to worse, and I was in and out of more of those religious schools than you could shake a rubber duck at. Oh, I had my troubles all right, and kept getting things all screwed up. I couldn't read worth a darn and writing was beyond me. All of those little characters would just swim around on the pages as if they were alive, flipping first one way and then the other, and then they would swap places. Talk about confusing! I just couldn't figure it out. There is a name for my problem, but back then, they weren't aware that such a condition even existed. I think the name for my condition is dyslexia or something like that, anyway.

They kept on trying to teach me, and I kept on trying to learn, but I just couldn't do it. They were embarrassed to admit that they couldn't teach me the three R's, so after a while, they began to just cover my condition up and play like it wasn't there. Anyway, they kept on passing me up the grades whether I could read or not. Then at last, I graduated High School, and there were no more church schools to which they could send me-- except for some church colleges. However, I couldn't pass their entrance exams, so I had no choice but to get a job.

Of course, the only job I could get was that of a janitor. Odd, how things work out; I couldn't get into college as a student, but my first job was working for one as a custodian. Though, it wasn't all bad. You see, I was the same age as most of the students, and a lot of them let me party with them. That's where I met Linda, the lab tech. She worked for a Doctor Waters, who did neurological experimentation on those little white mice with the pink noses. He used to run them through mazes to test their intelligence. That way, he could discover which mice were smart and which ones were stupid. Then once he was sure which ones were which, he could experiment with them. I found out that he wanted to make the stupid mice smart and the smart mice stupid. He did that by injecting a bunch of chemicals into them. Boy, oh boy, there were a couple of times where those mice just about went crazy when he dosed them with his smart and stupid medicines.

At first, Doctor Waters lost quite a few mice, as a lot of them just went nuts, chasing their tails so fast that they finally just flipped over and died. Sometimes, it was pretty scary when they would fight one another to the death. It was pretty violent too-- all teeth and claws. They literally chewed each other to death. Those mice have really long, sharp teeth. Vicious too, you know. Doc Waters says that their teeth keep on growing so fast that they have to keep chewing on things to wear them down. I just thought of something funny; If the mice didn't wear down their teeth, they would become saber-toothed mice. Ha, Ha, Ha, Can you imagine? Once one of those mice even attracted a cat after getting loose and making its way into a room where the Doctor kept the larger lab animals.

Finally, after a lot of failures, old Doc Waters finally seemed to get his formulas right, and the mice he injected with his new serum seemed to really thrive. They could run the maze better and faster than any of the untreated mice and really acted smart, far surpassing their peers in every aspect of the intelligence tests. One mouse that Doc nicknamed "Marty Mouse" became a super mouse after a series of injections of an even more refined version of the "Magic Mouse Elixir". Not only could Marty out distance the other mice in the maze race, but he started to show more intelligence in that he started trying to communicate with us.

Doc rigged up a kind of a keyboard similar to those used to teach monkeys how to get a banana, except that Doc put mouse stuff on the keys. It was no problem for Marty to master that keyboard, and soon Doc noticed that Marty was intently watching him type on his computer keyboard. Doc started letting Marty have the run of the lab, and one day when Doc came back from lunch, he found that Marty had written him a letter on the computer. There it was on the screen in perfect English. Marty had asked the Doc to teach him math. Well why not, thought Doc and punched up a beginning math program for Marty to play with. It was only a few days before Marty picked up basic math and wanted to start on algebra lessons. Doc said, "What the Heck," and ran the algebra program for his prize mouse. Well after that, there was no stopping Marty, and the passing days found him conquering geometry, trigonometry and calculus as easy as eating cheese. That's when Marty got interested in physics. He had this funny way of understanding abstract logic, and pretty soon, Marty Mouse started developing his theorem on a new hyper dimensional physics that stood the academic community on its ear. I guess that was because it worked and answered a lot of questions that had bothered the best physicists for years. Of course, Marty was now using base 16, hexadecimal math as the old, base 10 decimal system was too limited for his needs.

It wasn't long before Marty had developed time travel, dimensional shift and interstellar transport by folding space. Soon, men were leaping across time and space, popping in and out of worm holes and sidestepping the here-to-for long distances between solar systems. Marty even developed a fairly simple device to plot a seven dimensional course that would take travelers from anywhere to anywhere else in the blink of an eye, past, present or future. At last the dream of colonizing the universe was accessible to mankind. In just a few months, because of Marty's inventions and new math, man had escaped the surly bonds of Earth and escaped the prison of his native planet that had held him down for so many years. In months, man had accomplished what he had dreamed about for aeons without even looking back. Because of a mouse, mankind was free-- and so were mice! Yes, mice went to the stars with men, as every new space vessel had to have a "Super Mouse" along to navigate as only such a mouse could comprehend the new logic and correctly navigate the celestial fields of a seven dimensional universe.

Well, like I said, Doc used to let me help out around the lab, and after a while, I started noticing him looking at me with a longing expression. Well, I wasn't too smart, but even I could see that Doc wanted to try his new serum on me to see what would happen. Mice and men are pretty similar, you know. I know that he wanted to do it, but he didn't dare ask me. That is when I got to thinking about things in general and realized that I wasn't too happy with my life as it was. Like I said, I was kind of dumb and had this anomaly called dyslexia that always held me back. The truth be known, I was jealous of Marty Mouse and couldn't understand why that little ball of white fur could do all those wonderful things while I could only sweep and mop the floor.

That's when I decided to change things. I wanted to become. I wanted to become like Marty. No, that's not true. I wanted to become much more than Marty. I wanted to become as a God and control the very universe, creating and destroying by the word of my mouth. That's why one afternoon when Doc had to leave the lab for a meeting, I snuck into the medicine cabinet and took some of Doc's serum and a syringe. I made sure that I had the very latest batch and filled the hypodermic syringe with what I figured was a human-sized dose of smart juice. I wiped some alcohol on my arm like I had seen Doc do, shut my eyes and stuck in the needle. When my heart quit pounding, I opened my eyes and slowly pushed that clear, yellowish fluid into the big artery that moved blood up my arm to my heart. It felt cold. When the tube was empty, I pulled out the needle and placed a ball of alcohol soaked cotton over the little prick and closed my arm tight to put pressure on the hole and stop the bleeding. I felt weird. Things got all fuzzy and woozy, but I figured that it was just the serum going to work on me. I passed out.

Later, the Doc found me lying on the floor with the broken glass syringe on the floor next to me. Then picking me up, he carried me over to the little cot in the corner and laid me on it while he tested my vital signs. He knew what I had done and was afraid to call anyone for fear that he would be blamed. Instead, he made me comfortable and kept me warm until I woke up several hours later. What an experience! The veil of stupid had lifted, and for the first time in my life, my mind was clear and sharp. I could think! I mean, I could really think, and the whole world opened up for me. Somehow, I tapped into that wellspring of genetic knowledge where I knew what all men knew and had known for thousands of years. I had the knowing! I knew how it all worked and I was as a God. I could create anything or make anything happen. If I desired anything, I could have it. Oh, the inventions that I patented! First, I discovered how to broadcast power, and then I learned how to tap into the power of the Universe. No more was it necessary for men to carry voluminous quantities of fuel with them when they traveled the starry skies. Now, they could just tap in and withdraw all the power that they needed from space itself.

Everything went so well until Marty started getting dumb again. Yes, he started slowing down and lost the ability to reason. He was degrading a little each day, and after a while, it really became noticeable. One day, He couldn't even talk to us anymore, and if anything, he even got more stupid than he was when he started. This really scared me, as if it was happening to Marty, it would probably happen to me too. That's why I hurried and created as many new inventions as I could before I too, started degrading. There were a lot of mice, and one could replace the other, but there was only one of me.

Well, in time, I started losing my edge and I could feel my smarts slipping away like sand draining out of a broken hour glass. I was getting desperate! Doc tried to help me, but the serum had no effect. Apparently it had accelerated my mental processes and burned up all of my smarts potential in that brief time that I was a genius. No, No, No, I didn't want to be stupid and dumb again, so that's when I decided to make a deal with the Devil. Yes, I'd sell my soul to keep my smarts and be a genius again. The damn dyslexia was getting worst too. I didn't dare wait any longer for fear of becoming so dense that I couldn't save myself. At last, after reading some diabolical books, I cut my thumb and wrote out my agreement with the Devil and signed it in my own blood.

Too bad about that dyslexia. I got Satan mixed up with Santa. Yes, I sold my soul to Santa, and that's why I'm here at the North Pole, knee deep in reindeer poop, polishing harness for the Christmas Eve transglobal flight. Oh well, you know what they say about "The best laid plans of mice and men!"