Previous Post The Baroness, Part 73. A Vignette for Killer Shrike [I’ve been taken ill by something more annoying than dangerous but haven’t been able to reply or comment. As I probably won’t be able to write any more for some time, here’s a partial scene I finished that may appeal to KS in particular. Cheers to everyone for the New Year, and special thanks to Ian for persevering with his cosmically ramified plots. ] [Take a look at the attached image while you read this post.] Otto Zemo tottered down the aisle lined with racks of men’s jackets, wool slacks, and shirts toward the display windows at the front of his store. At age 112, only the sheer discipline from a lifetime of military obligation kept his spine straight and his gait martial; the Saxon cadet of 1917 had learned his lessons well. That life, though, was a cloudy fog of memories as the Normalverse progressed. Otto could no longer remember how he had prolonged his existence in that Romanian castle with the Soviets closing in on him in late 1944. The subsequent years of infamies, wandering, and black magic were not even phantoms in his mind. His wife of a few days, Fanny Sweetwater Dewdrop, was a misty glow, and his daughter and granddaughter altogether forgotten. Unknown to the old man idly rearranging sweaters on the front table and glaring at the Dominican girl at the cash register, his existence in the Normalverse was a fluke of his mystic machinations. The undead, save those that had fled the dimensional plane, had gone to mere dead, while Otto, the unalive, had defaulted to alive – and quite decrepit but for that iron discipline he’d absorbed in the Kaiser’s military academies. He stared out the window for some moments in surprise. Yes, the Christmas holiday was approaching, and men in those absurd, indulgent, red Santa suits were all about, but why were a half-dozen milling around his shop door? And, as he tottered toward it to interrogate them (why interrogate? Don’t old men just fuss?) , he saw tens more wandering up and down the Shelton streets looking in at every bar and pub. “Verdammte Faulkoerbe! No discipline, no respect, carrying beers up and down den Strasse What an example!” One of the Santas, a young man of about 25, staggered into the shop with a beer breath, even though it was only 1 pm. “Hey, man,” he burbled. “Fantastic SantaCon, innit? Gotta towel?” His stomach heaved and his face turned light green as he struggled to keep his mouth closed. “Rosa! Rosa, get here with that wiping rag. Schnell!” His employee calmly turned and ostentatiously looked for the rags, and began pulling out items from under the counter in a deliberate, unconcerned way. Meanwhile, the Santa informed the store owner that, ”Man, in a couple of seconds you’re gonna have … technicolor sweaters” while he clutched at the table’s edge to steady himself. “Not on the goods!” commanded Otto, and with surprising force shoved the inebriated St. Nick from the table. The Santa staggered, spinning into the opposite table, bringing it, the display of wallets and himself into a red and white crumple on the floor. An acrid odor of beer and stomach contents floated up to Otto’s nostrils. At this moment Rosa arrived with a small rag. Too little, too late. In his shock at the sight of his uncultured visitor, all Otto could do was shake his head. Rosa smirked a little. This would preoccupy her boss for the rest of the afternoon and leave her free of his rants about immigrants, inferiors and immorality. “Another SantaCon trekker, I guess, boss.” “What?” “SantaCon. [1] All these guys and women get dressed as Santas, elves, reindeer, and so on. You saw them outside. Then they hit every bar in this part of town and get totally wasted. This guy got started early.” “No class,” Otto mourned. “In my day, you had to be at least a Ritter to get drunk at one in the afternoon. And dress a lot better.” Rosa shrugged. A lot of the time it seemed the boss was from a different universe, like now. Playing the part of Otto Zemo (very reluctantly): J. Jonah Jerkson VOICE OF THE PEOPLE Footnotes: [1] From Wikipedia: ‘SantaCon is an annual pub crawl [1][2][3] in which people dressed in Santa Claus costumes or as other Christmas characters parade in several cities around the world. ‘A December 2014 cover story in the Village Voice recounted how SantaCon had evolved from "joyful performance art" that originated in San Francisco to a "reviled bar crawl" of drunken brawling, vandalism, and disorder in New York City and elsewhere, resulting in fierce community resistance and disavowals from the originators of the event.” [2] The Zemo Clothing store in the picture actually exists and is a well-regarded menswear merchant. It has no connection with mad scientists, Nazi plotters, the Marvelverse or the Parodyverse (except for JJJ’s occasional patronage). The SantaCon revelers outside are from December 2016.

All the best for a speedy recovery JJ.