Prologue

 

 

Thwakkk!!

“Hit ‘im again.”

Whapp!

“Harder”

Grumpfhh!

I felt that one. That’s not saying I hadn’t felt the others, but I’d been hit harder. I mean, I’m the guy who’s been punched out by the daughter of Hel herself. Yeah, it hurt… a lot, and I think that last punch had broken a rib. But, what really bothered me was I had no idea why this was happening. All I’d done was save an old man from being run down. That’s all.

Whunkk!! The lights went out. As I fell into the black, I thought I heard laughter, familiar laughter. What I heard when I woke up wasn’t familiar, or encouraging.

“Pick him up lads, let’s try this again.”

Hands grabbed me and lifted. Some of those doing the lifting giggled. Yeah, everyone was having a grand time abusing the PI. The whole scene would have been surreal if it wasn’t for one thing, the pain.

“You’ve been a bad boy, Tony.”

I tried to focus, but both eyes were pretty well swollen shut. I managed to crack one lid open a bit, but mostly all I saw was a red blur.

A gloved hand reached out and lifted my chin, “Bad. Very, very bad. What do we do with bad children, children?”

I got to listen to more giggling. The really confusing part of the whole thing was, why was Santa telling his elves to beat me to a bloody pulp?

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