Another metallic clank and a whomp whomp. Muffled cries echoed from the back of the vehicle. Santa then crinkled his nose in revulsion and stabbed a finger at the dashboard, clicked on Clay Travis and Buck Sexton’s radio show.

“They like to think God Himself went and offed us, like He was stomping on a cockroach. But, no sir, He wasn’t hanging upside down from Kobe’s helicopter.”

Santa swallowed the end of the blunt, belched, and set the Caddy on cruise control. His bloated face blanched. Then he reached in the open glove compartment, plucked out another from the pile of pre-rolled blunts.

“God Himself, like Mike Tyson, stomping on your children’s testicles,” Santa muttered, and effortlessly Santa clipped the blunt in between his thin red lips, bit into the blunt like a hot dog, and then touched his finger, ala ET, and flicked the blunt’s tip ablaze, and a string of grayish smoke curled to the sunroof.

“There never was an answer. There were more questions. Joe Rogan killed Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Ate the red-nosed fucker alive, raw, like a zombie, as the animal was twitching and coughing blood bubbles… Fucking socialists, Rand Paul’s neighbor, they had no problem carjacking me for my flying wheelchair, no sir…

“Yessir, a constellation of factors took place, blew in like a burst of wind against a flagpole. Late 2019, early 2020. The Year of the Rat… The Year of RaTG13…”

“One factor involved Doctor Li, the Wuhan doctor. That man was a patriot. A martyr. A saint. He tried to jump on the dragon, choke out the dragon, put out the fire, before it spread. Before it reclined its seat directly at the world’s knees…

“But it was all tithing, totalitarianism, bureaucracy, glass hearts, apathy and antipathy, empathy distress. There were tongues licking blood off the blade. The lab’s disinfection took place in October 2019. But the dragon had flown the cave. Later, Brother Snake God found his clothes, slipped on his singlet, and proclaimed another ban, bellowed out: ‘No more towel-snapping hijinks!’ But it was too late.

“Brother Snake God, in a wrestler’s singlet, forced the doctor into a full nelson, forced the doctor to drink the dirtiest dragon dick blood.

“Yessir, it’s one of the fundamental principles of a Leninist system. Whenever the Communist Party is skating on thin ice, it can afford to switch to repression. The greater the difficulty, the greater the potential growth. Any crack could be a big one… Meaning that one could expect episodic jumps in volatility… Meaning that one could expect the Snakes to be highly sensitive and nervous and, ultimately, inactive…

“Yessir, in the before times, in the good ole’ days, pre-plague, the Snakeheads just made payday loans and fed America poisoned pet food. Then fentanyl. The latter was revenge for the Opium War. Yessir...

“Then Brother Snake God got ants in his high pants, and he upped the stakes, fed the American children spiritual candy contaminated with razor blades. Then Huang Yanling’s epic fumble-rooski… The lady worse than Ryan Leaf, I tell you what…

“Brother Snake God, we know he once lived in a cave and that he ate bat soup. But he was no Ozzy Osbourne.

“Brother Snake God eventually sent the bootlickers and window-lickers to take over the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But it was too late.

“Brother Snake God, oh, he agonized, dug himself a new cave, and hid his puffy, steam-bun of a face for weeks. But then he came to, photoshopped alertness into his eyes. Then he strapped on his high pants, went to work. Brother Snake God’s high pants perfectly creased, perfect as folded paper, his pants dark as motor oil. Brother Snake God’s high pants just as his eyes and his hair: a most pure, funereal black.”