﷽◇The Greatest Enemy of  Santa Claus is not Bellschnickel, Krampus or Schwartz Peter, But two angry Persian intellectuals and an alternative timeline◇

“I need you at the school. Right. now.” Kafka’s voice was so tense it cracked, I was already in my car at the time. I cannot recall where I lived at that time, but I remember the aftermath.

Disoriented, even before he called. I didn’t ask anything at all, and that was entirely unlike me.

I drove robotically, I didn’t have to ask where Kafka was located. I could feel him the way I felt my own left hand, but trembling as if wired to a nervous current.

Kafka, please breathe. Kafka. Hermano. Please don’t look too closely. Kafka. I am on my way. Kafka. Do not touch anything. Kafka. Did anyone else hear it? Kafka. This isn’t our fault. Kafka. I love you. Kafka. Kafka. Kafka.

I thought at him with every bit of concentration, I didn’t second-guess anything at the time, it was natural. I parked in the guest parking spot because it was closest. No one was going to ticket my car. Not after this. Not during this.

I met him in our office- non-verbal, cheeks damp and unblinking. I pulled him under my wing, my arm, and held his head against my shoulder so he would STOP FUCKING LOOKING.

I no longer felt like myself anymore, starting a few minutes before his call- something about me changed in an ineffable fashion. My posture, new. The way I walked, as if my limbs were suddenly longer.

On the way to the office, I ran my fingers through my own hair and felt none of the characteristic resistance I expected. Smooth, like river water with no eddy or waves. My face was too smooth. I could see too clearly and removed my glasses as I walked straight through the flowerbeds avoiding the petunias somehow.

They are going to blame me for this, not you. Holy shit, Kafka. What did he do to us?

I felt the younger man gasp and almost dry heave into my shoulder. I knew exactly where on his back to place my hand to calm his nervous system, and in turn, calm my own slightly. Only slightly.

My ears rang with a sound I was not present to hear and never could erase in 16 years.

The aftermath- the smoked-out silence after dead quiet where there was a hollowed reverberation as if the walls extended their witness.

And I was now Shaykh.

Fernañdo stated, “It is not your fault,” as he removed Kafka from the scene as I completed necessary phonecalls.

I found an apartment in Whitehall and spent months in bed, not leaving my room. My roommate claimed to be a psychopath, yet always made sure there was pizza on the counter and only complained at me once in all that time over expired peaches on the countertop, just once, calling it a “science experiment.”

I was on Buspar & Valium after the questioning that took 6 hours- I was held poorly then released. My lawyer held my hand in the courtroom.

“This isn’t your fault. Try to live a normal life,” said the judge to me kindly. I started to collect federal disability for my resulting agoraphobia. Kafka fled cross country with strangers to block it out and we slowly became estranged.

Volos Reichhörnchen invited me over for holidays. I met him at a funeral.

I actually attended. There was a creche in his living room, a blonde photograph, a wooden hammer, a bottle of unopened Ale, and another of mead sealed in red wax. Statuary of saints he found in thrift stores.

My life was a haze I walked through like a man in a ceaseless fog. All I felt was internal, burning pain in a part of myself I could not describe or explain that never ended, that never decreased, and on some nights became so unbearable I traveled to Barto with my shit car and smoked clove after clove next to Oaks who still tried to sleep with me despite established incompatibility.

I attended therapy twice a week. Volos sat me down a year later. I was going to need a bodyguard; and he found one for me. I moved to Reading. I would awake with night terrors, reaching for Valium and Cannabis- when neither stopped the internal burning, even for a moment.

Wild animals started to approach me the few times I went outside; I found myself surrounded by small black kittens one day, only to discover they were skunks. A deer chewed my hair when I sat on a park bench, fledgling birds ran towards me, not away.

I stayed for seven years, moving to Mount Penn, near the Pagoda. I became a funeral chaplain with my own uncle dying of multiple organ failure in my father’s hospital as my very first case. I got him hospice- a beer in his hand, a pack of Marlboro reds, and a week later his wife dumped his ashes in the trash.

I didn’t feel a thing. My mind and body still burned inside perpetually as if I survived third degree burns.

I blocked anyone who mentioned 2011 to me, and even when asked, I would decline outside of therapy to speak.

I met the other “Duke” on Discordianism, he said he was a Marine chaplain, I had no idea it was actually Fischhandler, the old dean himself, trying to piece me back together from a day I couldn’t name.

My battle buddy. I called him with my flashbacks, and I would tell him: “Dude, you are the second smartest man I ever met.”

“…Who was the first…?” He would ask. I responded with silence. Fischhandler made a fart noise and said, “Hey kid- might want to load up that bong.”

“You gonna smoke with me, Chief?”

“You betcha.”

“War is hell,” he would say as he inhaled over the phone then coughed like this wasn’t our daily ritual already. I made custom tie-dye, I wrote cannabis industry articles.

Sometimes in October I would write vague retrospectives about “war trauma.” I didn’t know what else to call it. Kafka was in Texas. I lived under a pagoda.

“I am not Duke,” Fischhandler would say.

“I know,” I would reply.

“Have you ever thought of taking up viola?”

My bow was pernambuco. Online, ghosts in the machine created simulacra of the dead in countless waves of botted social media platforms.

Fischhandler stayed in London. Volos needed brain surgery. Oaks started guarding an ounce of cannabis with cameras and live rounds. I made him put the gun away when I visited.

Fischhandler would stay on speaker when I visited. When I went anywhere.

“Call me, first.”

“Okay, boss,” I replied, as always. “Love you too.”

“Gay,” he would reply. I would strain to listen for his accent- and usually, he had none. He mimicked my Philadelphia patois like a talented English parrot and our conversations ended up primarily echolalia.

Then Ai took over the internet, and I was suddenly targeted by a thousand imposters of the dead.

My ring & scarf remained on my home altar, in front of my own statuary of Hera and Tuisto. I had given up on Allah loving me years before and led Luciferian flavoured Asatru instead.

I clearly fucked something up- I went to where I was cared for. By undercovers in leathers and spies in burlesque. They saw some real shit out there in the field. I counseled them through it.

My Quran was red and dusty on the top shelf unopened. I got it from a guy I played World of Warcraft with who brought it home from Medina.

“Just please read even one sentence a day”- he wrote pleadingly on the inside cover.

I found Volos talking about neuropathy online as part of “Long COVID” and ripped him a new figurative asshole for trusting the same people I did, incorrectly.

Volos was compromised.


I spent four days in prayer to whatever else listened. Too bad I didn’t eat. I had a headache then suddenly I did not, replaced by a brief vertigo. Fischhandler was on the phone.

“I need to see a doctor.”

“They won’t treat hypochondriacs,” he replied.

I sent him a selfie.

“Shit. Drive yourself to the ER, Murīd.”

????!!!!????MURĪD??????!!!!????

“Now would be an excellent time to refresh your Shahadah,” Fischhandler stated dryly.

My health fell to shit. My bodyguard got paid off to do me in and botched it.

Looked him in the eye, “If you wanted to kill me so bad, you should have used a fucking gun.”

Volos wasn’t improving.

“Look, kid. This isn’t ideal, but my son is at a madrassa near you. Can you please stay within eyeshot a few months?” begged Fischhandler.

I went. Garrett met me the first day, he wanted bayat. I already had one. Took all his classes anyway as he described in great detail how he was enslaved in Mauritania, then Yemen, then Mecca, and finally caged on 24/7 live Broadcast where he couldn’t even take a leak without three men offering to hold his dick for him.

He seemed happy. I was wrong.

I left for Chicago, I changed my name, changed my face, Bird had been poisoned, we had the same first shaykh.

We didn’t talk about it much because he would just repeat “I hate him. Everything that happened to me after 2011 was his fault. He left me to the mercy of the fucking CIA. MY SPINE IS BROKEN, THEY FED ME BATTERY ACID. THEY TOOK MY CHILD FROM ME.”

Bird could walk, but stiffly. His vertebrae were fucked after the assault. My car was destroyed for parts overnight. We got a moving van, it had a hole in both the gas tank and the radiator, and $2000 later we were relocated to a safe location.

Bird mostly stayed in his room curled up in a corner with his cellphone or in prayer. He hated Islam, but prayed out of spite. I just tried to keep him fed after months of outside imposed starvation and chemical compromise.

He moved to the Cities.

I stayed right here. Astaghfirallah.

In my frustration I announced on social media, “Are there any other trapped/poisoned intelligence assets who need to be rescued while I’m online?”

Garrett raised both hands.

Astaghfirallah. Again.

Then, in trying to rescue Garrett, my radio equipment got hotwired. Got zapped, had a heart attack and blamed him entirely.

He accepted bribes on camera so I cut his ass off. In my operational channels he would provide nothing useful at first. I started calling him “Worm” and “Theon Beigejoy.”

My adoption records were released by Switzerland, to my great relief, revealing a whole family of better people than I ever knew prior to exist.

…as well as the revelation that I was forcibly castrated as a child.

In the meantime, online botspam increased, mimicking dead people as if they were still alive.

Annoying.

Fischhandler took over operations further, until he got poisoned himself.

Also annoying.

There I was, recovering from a broken heart, surrounded by bots mimicking the dead, Fischadler was poisoned.

And suddenly, the man I blamed for the intolerable conditions that caused a 2011 suicide was in my DMs.

“I thought you killed my successor,” he said to me.

“That’s funny, Dr. Sraosha Leto. I thought the same about you- I thought *you* drove him to suicide yourself. He said you enslaved him.”

“He told me you ruined his life.”

“Funny, he had a corner office and $70k a year when he died. I was technically homeless.”

“I thought you were a woman.”

“So did I, I was terrible at it.”

“I can solve this gender issue for you once and forever,” the intense propagandist replied, “How do you feel about the loss of your penis?”

“PISSED THE FUCK OFF.”

“Sir,” replied Dr. Leto, “You are a man. Would yelling at Latvian human traffickers by radio help you feel better?”

“Of course.”

“LATVIA. YOUR BACON FLAG IS RANCID,” they screamed in concert whilst flooding their servers with abusive potato memes.

Latvia spent 6 months in apology.  Their operators were treated no better, as children, by the exact same Nazi-idealizing trafficking network.

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Antony Leto stared at his screen in full incredulity. He hadn’t left his office in 14 years but didn’t feel dead. He had spoken to both of them through memes and radio and vague symbolism for years.

He taught in empty classrooms, he collected an increasing paycheck. Certainly, he felt “unseen” much of the time…but dead? Impossible.

He started an empirical examination of his physical reality. He still felt tremendous pain, he still drank coffee without evident translucence or incorporeality.

He tried calling. The phones rang with no answer.

He taught classes on thanatology. His retention rate was dismal.

…and to his horror, an article arrived in his inbox: “Iranian Diaspora Create Campaign Against Santa Claus. Intellectual leader Shah Sraosha Leto the First confronts Western consumerism head on with a new organization, known as MASC: Muslims Against Santa Claus, with protégé Officer Atticus Leto, who changed his name in honor of his intellectual lineage and formation.”

There was a photograph of Atticus dressed like Antony himself circa 2011, shaking hands with his own mentor at Krampuslauf under a very well designed sign: “YES, WE ARE THE BAD GUYS. DOWN WITH IMPERIALISM.”

“Teaching children to sit on the laps of strange elderly men wearing all red to express all their material desires is simply a normalization of grooming dynamics; why are Americans so stupid?” Shah Leto asked this to be printed.

“The first demonic pact a child in America enters is with Santa Claus, making Goodness only a result of implied surveillance and promise of material gain,” stated Officer Atticus Leto 2.5.

Antony tried calling again. No reply.  Both numbers were deactivated. He hadn’t tried calling in years anyway.

He tried creating endless online accounts and bot farms to object.

Atticus wrote a 40 page essay about the cruelty of Ai programs designed to simulate contact from the dead.

“I AM NOT DEAD,” screamed Antony.

“Sometimes, it’s like we can almost hear him,” Atticus stated in an online interview.

“Grief should not be artificially extended by COINTELPRO against Persian assets and diaspora,” agreed Sraosha.

“One more question, who bombed Alaraf & London?”

Both men refused further comment, however they were seen smiling and fist-bumping instead of replying.  Attribution remains unclear.

Antony stared at the many screens of his terminal.

How do I prove to them both that I am alive? How do I stop Atticus from dressing like me? …and most of all, why is my Sufi Tariqah attending Krampuslauf out of mutual opposition to Santa Claus instead of defending Persian intellectual thought?

How can I show them I love them in a way they will believe I am not Ai botspam?

May Duke Antony Leto find all success in his personal resurrection as a living [and physically present] Shaykh.

Inshallah & Ameen