“A popcorn bomb plot. A lady in a gorilla mask punching a politician in the face. A ballerina blasting Coca-Cola firehoses at fat children in Kansas. Bill Gates talking like a pirate and terrorizing call centers in the Philippines. A Karen in a death van. A Chinese warship in the Taiwan Straits… A bat cave in Cambodia…. You know Joe Rogan killed the animal’s mother. But we were all pouring gasoline on the delusion, living in a spitfire derecho. We all saw the sad results and no desultory plan. There’s a tracking chip in every electronic device. That’s the true magnet link.”

The Caddy picked up speed, roared past the fresh corpse of an elf. The elf in a snow angel of blood. The elf splattered cold in front of a Waffle House, the eighth ring of Hell. The dead elf’s right arm bent to a sharp curve, twisted like a serpent. The elf’s torso distorted from the impact.

Coroners in space suits were ringing around, in a conga line, dancing in pendulum-like movements, stopping every ten steps to stomp and kick at the elf’s corpse. One of the coroners dropped to his haunches, punched his gloved hand up the elf’s little ass, checked for coronavirus via an anal swab test.

“It’s the Ring of Fire, right? Tinfoil hats, bulletproof business suits, and threats of catastrophe. Senators in drag. Damn right the Senators fooled us all, tricked everyone on Twitter, ejected tongues of flame. But, mister, some might say there are more elves, and the elves are up high, living in the clouds, humming 2 Chainz, ‘Beez in the Trap.’

“The elves with a list of grievances long as a man’s forearm. The elves sharpening knives in struggling structures. The elves with awareness in their eyes, confidence in their bearing. The elves fixing to fake the Mars landing, play grab-ass with Elon Musk.”

The churning mass of black clouds in the flat sky thickened, and there was only a faint glimmer of light toward the north. Santa sure knew a peccadillo when he saw a peccadillo.

“One laboratory, it’s all it took. Yessir, Huang Yanling, the 21st century’s Gavrilo Princip.

“One lab. One wrong move. One fumble… One spill… Brought the world to its knees. Crippled economies… Took time, trillions of smiles… One lab, gaming functions, slipping Mother Nature the Bill Cosby pills…

“And Dr. Daszak and Shi Zhengli, oh, they’re singing karaoke. They’re off sipping champagne and stuffing toilet paper into Al Capone’s vault.

“Yessir, it was gongs and clouds of smoke and pained voices shouting in chorus when Dr. Daszak tore off all his clothes, set fire to his tennis shoes. The doctor’s head swinging from side to side, like the casing of a bell, as he tore off running, his hairy legs pumping. The doctor with the shocking speed of an Olympic sprinter.

“The doctor’s feet aflame, two bright balls of fire, twin meteors in the night, as he tore through the streets of Wuhan.

“Dr. Daszak, with a certainty, a concentrated savagery in his sprint… The doctor stopping only to dance in graveyards, with his arms outstretched. The doctor barking at a mid-autumn moon, foaming at the mouth, rabid and hairy as a werewolf…”

The inky, dark scuds of cloud coalesced to form a dense steel-gray mass. The glimmer swallowed whole. The sky gray as a wolf.

Santa rolled the windows down a skosh, let the Caddy breathe. A line of cold air whirred in with a sucking sound, like surf slicking over a slope of sand. The air with a strange smell, something between mildew and medicine.

“Yessir, Dr. Daszak bled the bats, red-handed, with the ceremonious air of a pedophile priest. His was a practice, his was a language of receding gumlines. His was a mouth like a gloryhole…

“Yessir, Dr. Daszak was the Snakes’ fixer. He bought Brother Snake God all the necessary time and excuses, let the broken elevator fall free.

“The Snakeheads… yup, they yanked the seat out before the blind could sit. Then they lost a lung from laughing so hard. The Snakeheads, and their kidney thieves, the world knows they have reeducation camps. But the world didn’t know that the Snakes had their prisoners standing and clapping, cheering the British and American death tolls.

“Yessir, but that Dr. Daszak, he kept an eye out, like Fetty Wap. The doctor elected himself the mayor of a ghost city and was accompanied by thundering drums and exploding fireworks, everywhere he washed up. Just look at the cut of his jaw as he speaks…

“It’s true that we learned more from losing than winning, I tell you what. But our smiles died on our lips.”