The Tale of Dander Claus

1. Dander Claus: Slight Return

I knew it was going to be a bad day when that fat bastard Dander Claus burst through my rotten screen door, marched to the center of the living room, pulled a mouse-sized ball of hair out of his unbearable hip pocket and ground it into the floor. "Heaux heaux heaux!" Dander Claus hawked and spat, "Merry Goddamn Day!"

"You there, Dander Claus!" I shouted from my illegal couch. The bottle of Old Bushmill's I clutched to my chest rocked and chuckled. "I didn't ask for this, you know."

Dander Claus didn't answer. He just stood there, staring at me — the vermin in his tobacco-juice-stained beard stared too — and scratched his four-dimensional ass. It went on forever. I began to fear that another hairball was in the offing, but as luck would have it the Mr. Softee truck made an appearance on my street and Dander Claus went running through the ruins of my screen door to beg for his soft-serve.

Among other things for which he had no respect, Dander Claus had no respect for my extensive collection of minerals. He'd been known to burst in, grab a delicate specimen, place it between his knees or — what was worse — his legendarily astringent and piebald butt-cheeks, strain madly, and with a dastardly, long-deferred "nnnN-Da!!" crush the sample to colored powder and glittery chunks, which then would rain down in a heat-slowed manner too awful to detail here, but about which many a clever clerihew had been composed by righteously indignant, mineral-loving locals.

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