Yule be sorry Author: sinbadthesailor Email: sinbadthesailor@my-dejanews.com Date: 1998/11/16 Forums: alt.tasteless Starting to see the first shite of Christmas appearing in the shops reminded me of an incident several years ago. I joined the merchant navy direct from school. My first Christmas away from the bosom of my family gave me some trepidation, but as the beer and wine flowed on that Christmas morning I started to feel at 'home'. Mealtimes aboard ship were sombre affairs, full uniform, served by stewards, tables strictly segregated according to rank. I was the lowliest rank an Officer Cadet and sat at the far end of the saloon with my cadet colleagues. Christmas day lunch, however, was special. All the tables were pulled into a line, civilian clothes worn. A few beers in the bar preceded moving to the saloon for the lunch. Wine was flowing and the atmosphere convivial. Rounds of applause accompanied each course brought from the galley; the galley staff had worked long and hard over the previous week to provide a true feast. A cadet I shared a cabin with sat to my left, a pain in the arse sort of 'life and soul of the party' type. He had decided that he would wear a rubberised Santa Claus mask, the balaclava type, complete with white hair and flowing beard. This obviously presented him with some problems whilst eating and drinking, but had only had the soup and fish courses at this stage. Wineglasses proved more problematic, and he found the solution in drinking from the bottle, each enormous gulp accompanied by him standing up. Many beers, and a bottle and a half of wine later I began to fear the worst, and a few seconds later those fears were confirmed. He stood bolt upright, drank long from the bottle and then froze. A hiccup was it? No, a burp - oh no - gag reflex, things were looking bad. Then the table hushed conversations stopped and all eyes moved round to this lumbering fool in an overly tight Santa mask with a bottle of wine rammed in his mouth. He fell forward, but only from the waist and was now bent double across the table, the wine bottle supporting his head. What felt like an eternity passed with him statue-like. Another gag, I shuffled uneasily in my chair. Suddenly a torrent of vomit spew forth, but all contained within the almost- empty wine bottle. The level went from empty to full within the blink of an eye. Vile looking objects swam in putrid juices, the candles on the table making it glow like the lava lamp from hell. We began to laugh, but laugh too soon. There is an old adage about quarts into pint pots, never was this so true. The pause had not been our friend regaining composure, but simply all available spaces filling with vomit. Our hero then began to realise these spaces included his nostrils and windpipe and again he stood upright pulling the bottle from his mouth, his throat still retching pints of vomit into the mask. Perhaps only two seconds had elapsed, but now the true horror began to unfold. The vomit made good its escape, jetting from the mouth with unbelievable power and then, an image which will stay with me until I die, projectile vomiting from the eye sockets. A happy-go-lucky jolly-faced Santa Claus, loved by children the world over now stood before me an old, wrinkle faced man with dishevelled, matted grey hair spewing great torrents of acrid fluid from every orifice in his head. Twenty Christmas lunches began to be spattered with the acid rain, happy smiling faces of a few seconds before now appeared pockmarked by the bile of our hero's stomach. I can never look at any Yuletide scene now, without the image of a projectile- vomiting Father Christmas, that's what Christmas means to me. Sinbad the Sailor (No longer a lurker).