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A sequel where the first 40 minutes is highlights of the first film taken from the memory of a character who was either a baby or not present when those events happened. Followed by GARBAGE DAY. And, at the end, a surprisingly resilient nun.

Obviously, my version adds in a bit of Querelle and Stroszek for no reason except it felt right at the time, and now it’s added, works quite well [I think].

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Naughty.

To some degree.

For entering the room.

Dredging up the first film, removing the black guy.

Is this really me?

Finger frozen in the finality of a universal hissy fit, Ricky comes to understand that he is pointing at the dead psychologist. Is he dead? He wants him to be dead. Not interrogative or sleeping but dead. He is dead. Looks dead. White equals dead. Tape from the recording device wrapped around his neck means dead. Had a wife and now he’s dead. No kids so they won’t care that he’s dead. Broke my accordion so dead. Wisconsin?

‘Eat Shit, doc. I’m saying nothing. Here’s my story.

When I was a kid there was a road and on that road was Santa Face. This Santa Face was friendly for four to five seconds then flipped. Shot my dad, absorbed my mum. Stood there and did nothing as me and Billy were sent to that kind of orphanage. Catholic love Whip. Mother Suspiria. Where is Billy now? Not around here. I know cos I’m around here, and Billy was too until he got shot by a cop who appeared out of one of those portal machines. You got kids, doc? No, but you are married. To a Shelley Duvall type no doubt. Hmm. I love women. Hate it when they nag. Billy did too. Not that you’d know it from his kill ratio. Four in the store, one on the sled, two in the cabin, cop on the stairs. Seventy-two per cent men. Feel like I’m missing someone. Another cop. Stray nun. I do miss Jennifer. That pudgy neck. The way she said oops. You think you know me, doc? A colour like RED, a value like brightness, a power like-…yeah, what of it? I’m allergic to RED. RED on the sidewalk. RED in my head. RED suffused into that petty thunderstorm effect. Used to play the accordion till RED came along. Nah, I don’t drink anymore. Forget Billy, he’s done. Doing it elsewhere. RED Car? More like black sun. The umbrella opened itself. Not to electrocute that guy would’ve been an invisible disease. Jennifer wasn’t Jennifer, she was air-space, far too caustic for that kind of scenario. Ah, we’re coming to the end, aren’t we? To be honest the cop shot was a lottery. Yes I cared at that specific point but the not caring was prodding fierce. Who holds up a garbage can that way? My grandma used to like wood. Wood everything. Can’t remember what she looks like now. Think she may have been adopted. What’s that, doc? You also want to know what’s outside this place. Well, the glare of the black guy for starters. If he’s out there, I’ll kill him, but if he’s not, I’ll leave a note. I do not want to kill you. Serious. Glare wasn’t that bad. Naughty off-screen only. Or I assume he was, but based on all the other sluts lurking about, I don’t really know. Or I’m not really sure. That’s the same thing, right? Ah, no more cigarettes. This mind dump is claustrophobic. In Berlin, there was space-space. For the pimps to come in and dump bells on your back, rip to pieces your favourite accordion. That happened to a cousin, not me. And that cousin lives in Wisconsin now, some made-up town. I forget the name but if I do go there I’m sure I’ll end up in its-…’

A knock at the door, black guy ADR.

‘That’s not him. For sure. I have the memory of a dolphin. Okay, it’s him. Let me tell you my story, doc. The RED version. When I was a kid, there was a road, and on that road was a demolished accordion. And Billy. If you looked at him from a certain angle, he-…I don’t know. I miss him completely. From all possible zones. You think there’s an actual, live corridor out there, doc? Can’t recall coming in. Maybe it’s just another room with CORRIDOR written on it. Hmm. There’s nothing to smoke in here apart from your corpse. I think I’ll be going now. Hope your wife finds a new psychologist store. Don’t try and follow me. Serioso. I have no interest in nuns. On some level, it was pleasure. She fingered herself while whipping me. That’s what my version of Billy told me anyway. And I believe him. Cos he had photographs. RED Car? You really do get me, doc. Pity you had to give the impression you were gonna ask questions about the-…questions that I knew would lead to me strangling you. Is this the door? Looks real enough. Is it though?’

Stepping out beyond the camera, Ricky sees exactly what he thought he would see.

The black orderly speaking muffled into a cold mic, ‘he’s escaping, he got out.’ A man in a full-sized garbage can costume. Either a cheap stripper or ambivalent nun stubbing out a cigarette on the body of the psychologist, who looks a little bit REDDER now that he’s been ditched in the corridor. What else? On the tiles, all alone, a toy horse hoping to be picked up and cradled, rubbed against Ricky’s dick. And that’s what he does, understanding that it’s a part of his psychology that he hasn’t quite got to yet, an act severed from-

The rubbing feels good.

Better than Jennifer.

Simply cos they never had sex.

But still

It is better.

Because of the horse aspect.

Horses are better than people.

Or perhaps the toy.

Toys are fun.

Am I a toy? Ricky wonders, wondered, was wondering, had wondered, will wonder, will have been wondering, the Spanish tenses too, as he blows open the papier mâché gate.

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‘Don’t wanna do this. It’s beautiful. I love it. This isn’t Christmas. Arrgghgjhvhvgvh. Billy?’

Out in a world of puerile snow, virulent snow, Ricky realises at the pump of the first abandoned gas station that he needs cash.

But the bank next to the gas station is closed and the costume store next to the bank is wide open so he goes in and thirty-two dollars is all they got, it’ll do, and beyond that, the Christmas rack, yet the effort of slipping into seven separate Santa suits becomes borderline Sisyphean until, on suit five, he decides that symbolism can have its limits and strips off the first three, leaving his body a bit on the warm side but, never mind, he’ll be okay.

Where to next?

Berlin?

Or my cousin’s mobile home in that pretty town of I forgot, Wisconsin. If I’m lucky, there’ll be a busker playing that I can murder off-screen and perhaps, if the death grip isn’t too tight, borrow an accordion from.

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‘I love the accordion. Billy did too before he saw the axe. And the portal cop got to him. You know about my musical past, doc? Ah, don’t be coy, I’m only staying a while. You can continue with whatever it is you were in the middle of afterwards. Fucking by the looks of it. Yeah, fucking. Don’t know if you noticed, but your girl’s got stretch marks. And she’s fingering herself. Martyrdom of Joan, my ass.’

The white-haired man thrusts into the back of the brunette, eyes nailed to the TV.

‘What are you watching anyway? Seems like a horror movie, everything’s dark as shit. Wah, isn’t that Santa?’

Ricky runs a finger down his own [outer layer] Santa suit, confused at the other Santa on the TV screen, the lack of Christmas decorations around the living room of the mobile home that he’s just broken into.

‘This is sacro-lodge. You can’t treat Santa that way. My brother did all the hard work, even studied that book on animal magnetism. Hmm, maybe I should try it too. Beats all the Catholic shit. There’s a library near here, right?’

The man thrusts again, startling the woman who was starting to doze off.

‘God, you guys are taking forever. Makes me wanna see something RED and/or terrifying, puppet myself back to the asylum. Sorry, hospital. I don’t really care but they do. Says asylum demeans me. But I like being mad. Better than working in Chicken Queen. And I only kill when I’m marginally irritated. When I don’t have cigarettes. Or job opportunities. Or something RED and/or terrifying turns up. Or there’s a nun trapped in a fence, about to be raped, and I’m the only one who can watch it happen before decapitating her. God, I hate them. But only cos a grandma whipped me. The younger ones were quite nice. Good at chess, nice clarinet. Argh, that TV. Why isn’t that Santa killer killing something? I feel so lost. This place looks like a construct, smells like it too. Wrapping this jacket over my head isn’t going to change things. I can see the creases on you. Can’t breathe. Can’t function. Is that a Liverpool shirt? Doesn’t matter. RED is here. Naughty. Punish. Nun. Fuck. You got a hatchet in that kitchen back there, right? Oh, you’re dead already. Fine. Don’t think I did it but you deserve what you got, fucking that slow. Now, the hatchet, where’s it at? The kitchen-looking thing back there? Under the tree?’

Closing his eyes, Ricky imagines himself walking to the freezer and pulling out a frozen turkey and when he opens up he sees a frozen turkey staring back at him, waiting for a song.

‘Santa’s back,’ is all he’s capable of and that’s what the turkey gets, tucked under Ricky’s armpit as he ambles past the auction outside, the man in beige cowboy hat speaking in tongues, the locals gathered around desperate to buy something, pretending to understand the Midwest brand of sludge demonology, and Ricky ignores all that to pursue the signs out of the trailer park and into the fields and over the leafless forest, whispering NONO to himself cos that’s what he can read on each sign, and soon the signs change to scribbled notes and a while after that the notes become small bursts of shock audio, telling him that the abandoned school-stroke-prison up ahead is the hiding place of a man he might mistakenly recognise as his dead brother, Billy, but who is in fact a completely different character, a builder from the local church called Gilly.

But then that story falls apart as Gilly insists that he is only pretending to be a builder called Gilly and is in fact Ricky’s dead brother Billy, who has been in hiding since being shot in the gut by portal cop, and this school-stroke-prison seemed as good a place as any, though the diet of carpenter ants isn’t the greatest and something about the aesthetic reminds him of one of those old Fassbinder films, the Q thing with the ludicrous knife fight, the sleazy cop, the guy hiding out in a prison who ends up fucking the main guy even though he looks eerily like his brother.

Ricky demurs, attempts to remember what demur means, gives up and instead rubs the tip of the shotgun he picked up earlier down the hollow of his chest, muttering one word – NAUGHTY – a little beyond a mutter.

Gilly/Billy says it back, louder, forcing Ricky to say it again and then it’s the type of war that ends only when the bolder one spits on his palm and slides inside his Batesian opposite.

In this scenario, it’s Ricky, cos he’s the youngest, and Gilly/Billy is a bit worn out.

After that, it’s back and forth.

Mongolian dungeon sex

Smooth-sclerotic

One brother almost coming [sic] then the other spinning round and almost coming [sic] then losing his grip and flipping on his side and getting awkwardly fucked from that angle until both siblings pull out their knives and tug each other off as the sun reasserts, lighting up all the dogshit and pizza roll wrappers on the school/prison floor, and now there’s cum streaks too, a murky greyish colour.

‘I want to punish,’ Gilly/Billy says, running a finger down the length of Ricky’s dick and then flicking the tip with his sharpest nail, ‘only this time I wanna do it with a bit of panache.’

‘Accordion face?’

‘See, I lived in a mobile home for a while, and worked as a part time mechanic, and then there was an auction, or what they said was an auction, I don’t know cos the man talked so fast, but they said it was an auction and the trailer was sold, and the money I got from that was enough to buy an animal magnetism book. Not that I’m an expert, but I think I’ve got it to a level where I can toy with my victims first, evoke permanent Christmas, make them do something genuinely naughty before swinging in with the-…’

‘Magnetism? Yeah, I heard of that too. There was a book in the mobile home, next to the grey couple fucking, it looked a bit like-…’

‘Shut it, Ricky. Hear me out. Focus on my Santa suit. Your Santa suit. My eyeballs too. Right. This is the deal. You listening? This is the deal. I’m not gonna discuss the rights and-…wait, wrong tone, start over. This is the deal. I do not propose…that’s it…I do not propose to discuss with you the rights and wrongs of practising the magic art. I will confine myself to saying that I am a practitioner of some experience. That dead psychologist has no doubt led you to believe that I’m thoroughly evil and that’s-…such is not the case. In magic, there is neither good nor evil, it is only…merely…a science, the science of causing change to occur by means of one’s will…my will. The sinister reputation attaching to it is entirely groundless and is based on superstition instead of-…rather than objective observation. The power of the will is something people do not understand, attributing to it mysterious qualities which it does not possess, being made of the power of mind over matter, or in the greater number of cases, the power of mind over mind, as your mind now is succumbing…’

‘Is that the cops?’

‘…to mine. What?’

‘I think it is.’

By tradition, bursting into a room is something done way past the witchy hour, when cops know for sure fucking is afoot, but this time it’s gay fucking afoot and they don’t wanna see that unless it’s back home with the wife out and whiny Japanese, and it’s a shame about Gilly/Billy but he’s the one in the Santa suit and Ricky’s the one halfway out the window with the frozen turkey and shotgun and, somehow, the toy horse from the mental asylum and

this is the end, he thinks

but then he wanders the wilds of western Wisconsin and North Carolina and the next one along until he comes across something that at first appears to be a reservation but, on closer inspection, is in fact Santa’s Final Village, a barren patch of land with snow-covered huts and sponge reindeers and sad mechanics and a machine with dancing elves that doesn’t work when he puts all the stolen money in.

‘Naughty,’ he tells the machine, then the frozen turkey, then the horse that has lived far too long to still be considered a toy.

‘Don’t panic, kids, I’ll take care of you. On this little train here. With the ghost of my broken accordion. Ghost as in we’ll just pretend it’s there next to us. And Gilly too. Good old blank-faced Gilly. God, I miss him a lot, doc. But it’s okay, he’s back in the original now, in any part you wanna watch, at any specific time. Or maybe he returned to Berlin? That would be nice. If he did do that. I hope he did.’

The train is waiting so Ricky climbs in and shoots spit at imaginary staff, admires the stationary elves, hums lullabies to himself, enjoys one full lap before deciding that, yes, that wasn’t an auction, it was just an alien in human skin speaking insanely fast, and, no, Hegel was right, I’m past all that nun shit now.

[Gunshot]

Meanwhile, in the backdrop of Santa’s Final Village, the dancing elves continue to dream of being and nothingness and pancakes and militarism and ripping their own faces off in the fourth sequel, the one with the little guy who said originally that all this was sacro-religious and the idea of a Santa with-