I was laying on my bed taking my rooming house's land lady's words to heart after telling her that I was going to be a tad late on my rent when the call came just as I was about to. If it had been a phone I would have simply ignored it, but it was my dagger; that meant that my boss, Kuan-Ti, head of the Department of Justice for Mythological Entities required me. That was the down side for being a bounty hunter for the gods: no nine to five hours. It was more luck than astute observation that I even saw the dagger's hilt glowing -- I was looking for the tissue box that had fallen.
I quickly wiped the lotion off my hand, pulled up my pants and grabbed the dagger out of its sheath. While some may think that living in a run down rooming house was not an ideal residence, it was perfect for me; it gave me plenty of sacrifices for answering the calls. See, blood is needed to answer the dagger beckoning and after several months of stabbing myself every time the dagger glowed left me quite light headed from blood loss and with deep lacerations in my calf that just wouldn't heal. Now, living in this shit hole, I had other fodder to use, such as the mouse that I had in my sights just to the left of my single bed. It was munching lazily on the used piece of tissue and never knew what hit it as I drove the dagger blade tip into the top of its skull, securing it to the floor.
"Club," a bodiless voice of Kuan-Ti boomed from above the seeping mouse skull, "I have an important mission for you -- if you're not too busy, of course." The general consensus in the heavens is that though gods and goddesses can be omnipotent; they do not exercise that particular power. They say that humans are just far to inane to bother witnessing because it would drive them insane from all the whining -- and most of the celestial beings weren't all there to begin with, so far better just to turn a blind eye and ear to the affairs of mortals. From his tone, I thought that perhaps Kuan-Ti wasn't one of those who did the hear no evil shtick. I didn't know if I should consider him a passionate observer of the human conditioner or a fucking pervert. In the end, I thought best not to get an answer.
"Heck no, boss, I was just wrapping something up," I said cheerfully, "its Christmas Eve after all."
Kuan-Ti sighed. He sighed a lot when he spoke to me; I figured it had to be one of those mystic Taoist meditation tricks to keep his mind clear. There seemed to be a ring of resignation to his voice as he continued. "As you are aware, the LAW is that no god or goddess shall directly interfere with the mortal realm -- they may influence but they cannot directly influence events. There is one of our ilk who is about to break this."
I snorted. "About to?" I asked into the empty air, "Boss, I go after the ones that have already broken the LAW. To go after ones that may be or are intending to is sorta Big Brotherish, don't you think?" Then I remembered who I was talking to -- they all thought in terms of control, so I thought best to amend myself. "The LAW isn't broken by intentions, otherwise all of humanity would be locked away, so why would you want me to stop someone who's intentions haven't become action?"
There was a hint of anger, uncharacteristic for the Chinese God when he answered, "oh I don't know, I would think that the DESTRUCTION OF THE MAJORITY OF THE MORTAL PLANE WOULD BE A LITTLE BIT MORE IMPORTANT to you than questioning a being that's been around before your great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandfather could wipe his own buttocks."
This piqued my interest. "Who would this be?"
"Mary Jessica Christmas Claus," Kuan-Ti said grimly. He must have been thinking a few steps ahead of me as he added, "She has a very communicable STD commonly found in reindeer." Kuan-Ti explained further, "To the animals, it's nothing serious, just makes their noses glow red until they get the treatment serum. In humans, it's far more dangerous -- in males it makes their penis's develop large bright red puss filled welts and their urine becomes almost like a glue when exposed to the air, effectively sealing the outlet. In time the urethra becomes plugged and then the penis becomes engorged and explodes."
I couldn't help but shiver and clutch my groin but Kuan-Ti's voice didn't notice and continued.
"In women, it's far worse. The inside of their cervix gets the welts and rapidly grow to a size that when the woman has a hard bowel movement and has to bear down the pressure causes the pustules to burst. The woman then begins to leak a mixture of white puss and blood down her leg; the mixture of the two is so toxic that it eats the skin and muscle tissue down to the bones. The combination is fatal and there is no current mortal medicine that can stop it. It's slow and painful, but even more so for naturalists who like to do cart-wheels." Kuan-Ti paused for a second before adding, "You must inject Mrs. Claus with the reindeer cure."
"I thought you said that there was no cure for mortals?"
"Have you ever seen Mrs. Claus?" Kuan-Ti said defensively.
I admitted that I hadn't. Kuan-Ti didn't say anything else but then I looked down and saw that the last of the mouse's blood was quickly disappearing -- the connection was broken. There was nothing for me to do but to find my way to the North Pole. So much for a quiet Christmas Eve.
A vial of the cure for Mary Jessica Christmas Claus appeared on my bed. I picked it up and read the directions to ensure I knew what I was doing. This wasn't going to be as easy as I thought; I would have to ingest the serum orally and wait five minutes until the serum quickly made its way through the stomach wall, through the blood stream and into the ejaculate. It would combine with the ejaculate and form a sort of a hyper-active white cell that would directly attack the virus located on the outside of the cervical walls. The catch? The serum was only good for ten minutes and then the sperm would ingest it and I only had one shot -- my own immune system would immediately attack another dose as an invader and kill its effectiveness before it even reached my scrotum. Don't they make anything fucking easy these days?