Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups

by Robert Devereaux

  *****

  In the frenzied feeding of Anya's revenge, two lovers became three, three became four, and four grew in kind. She dimly recalled Heinrich huddled about her, two of him taking turns at her mouth, two moving against her nipples, one each shoved into bunghole and cunt. But that memory lost its precision in the swirl of so many like it.

  Long afterward, when she tried to focus on her bouts of passion, the recollection that shone most clearly was of every last elf packing the tiny hut to the rafters, though by any rational measure that could not have been. Yet there they were in memory—a host of Cupids grown old and bearded, leers of lust or bewilderment in their eyes; and loveshafts everywhere, thick and thin, lengthy and stubby, circumcised and un-. And somehow their slit pricktips all reached her as she lay there on the bed. Every pore was an orifice open to them, and their seed spilled forth rich and viscous, turning the mad swell of her vengeful flesh everywhere deeper, redder, wetter, until—while the Santa Claus that looked on and suffered in her mind's eye grew hardly distinguishable from the flayed carcass of some butchered porker—Anya grabbed all about her for love, bucking and ramping toward absolute forgetfulness.

  *****

  Thousands of miles distant from one another, Santa and Anya came. Their climaxes were not joyous by any means, not the sort one is wont to replay to heighten the solitary delights of masturbation. Powerful as these orgasms were, they brought with them a terrible ambivalence and the first tentative turnings toward reconciliation.

  Santa, pumping and gasping beneath his paramour, looked up and saw pure harpy, pure siren, pure succubus. If this creature, into whose womb tunnel the long arc of his arousal now curved, had anything more to her than insatiable desire, he failed to see it, now nor in the twenty years of their adultery. In the instant his flesh lunged into what it craved, the scales fell from his eyes and he knew that, unlike so many times before, he had the strength to keep them from growing back. For as much pleasure as he shared with this faery daemon, so much pain he now realized would his dear wife endure.

  And that was intolerable.

  As for Anya, there came a time when the lust she surrounded herself with transmogrified into some bizarre and meaningless flesh-machine and her ire against Santa turned to dust and blew away. Beneath mounds of humping elves, Anya found a certain stillness, in the midst of which stood her husband, whole and pristine and loving as always. There were roses in his cheeks and a twinkle in his eye. Smoke curled in white wisps from the bowl of his pipe, wreathing about his face like the fingers of a loving wife.

  *****

  When she had come to herself, Anya rose from the bed and hurried two score bare-assed elves out the door like mice before a broom. The last of them—Helmut the clockmaker, whose mind, before this intriguing night, had been preoccupied with springs and flywheels—she collared.

  "Send Fritz," she said, and Helmut nodded.

  Fritz found her sitting on the side of the bed, staring into the flames. Uncertain of her mood, he wondered if he should tuck his engorged elfhood back inside his trousers.

  "Mrs. Claus?" he ventured.

  "Fritz," she said, glancing peripherally at him, "please help me into my dress."

  "Yes, ma'am." He turned away, working with both hands to maneuver his stiff member beneath the fold of green cloth that fell from belt buckle to crotch. Given his tumescence, he abandoned the buttoning itself as a lost cause. It was all he could do to retrieve the torn peasant dress Mrs. Claus had tossed over the sleeping doll so long ago, carry it like a dead woman draped across his arms, and hold it out to her.

  When she was dressed, he ushered her to the door and watched her take her silent way through a gaping sea of faces. In bewildered silence, the other elves followed Fritz out of the woods, past the skating pond, and across the commons to the porch. Those, like Fritz, who busied their giddy minds with renewed hopes of carnal easement, lingered there in the snow, watching the object of their obsession move from room to room, closing curtains. They heard her turn the shower on. Still they stood there in the snow, the lustful pure, in silent devotion. And when at last the distant hiss of the shower cut abruptly off, they took the occasion—all except Fritz—to disperse like whipped dogs to their kennel of calm, where elfdom damped down the satyr in them and all was right again with the world.

  Sexlessness reclaimed them.

  But it did not reclaim Fritz.

  He stood there in the etched light of magic time, his clasped hands pressed against his erection, waiting for Anya to uncurtain her windows, to re-emerge on the porch, to give him some sign that his priapic adoration of her was not misplaced, that it had its parallel in the urgings of her own lovely sex.

  *****

  On the long walk home, Anya felt nothing.

  In the shower, nothing.

  Beneath the comforter staring up at the ceiling, still nothing. The close of her eyelids and her swift drop into sleep came as casually and as unlooked for as a shift in the wind.

  In dream, her naked body sprawled across the snowy commons. Her right thigh rested upon the roof of the cottage, her left upon the workshop. Both buildings were weather-beaten, broken-windowed, abandoned and badly in need of repair. So too the elves' quarters along whose ragged front eaves she ran an idle finger.

  The winter cloudcover broke. The Lord God's hands parted the firmament. His face showered beatitudes upon her. Then, touching His foot to the earth, He crouched between her legs like the lowliest of His creation. His vestments were of rough bronze and leather. His beard, always feather-white before, had turned a mischievous brown shot with bolts of silver. His eyes rioted with typhoons. With the easy contrariety of dreams, Anya knew that this was how God the Father had come to them at the beginning of Santa's realm, even as He manifested Himself in robe and crown, fingers bejeweled and beard beribboned, with hosts of angels singing His praises.

  Along the folds of her flesh, His tongue traced a path of healing. He flicked and swirled blessing upon blessing there until her soul felt so full of passion she wondered the wood didn't blaze up about them nor the snow sizzle into steam.

  At first when He moved to cover her, she protested, craving more mouth. But where His divine flesh touched hers, He was all tongue. His private hair was a writhe of tongues, teasing, urgent, intelligent. And His unending organ of generation eased past the swollen petals of her womanhood and gloried inside. Ever deeper His divinity probed, absorbing heartache and radiating epiphany.

  And when He kissed Anya's eyelids, she knew for one blinding instant what she had once been. The heady scent of mountain groves in moonlight came to her. Her chaotic queenship over the fir nymphs. Pitys, her name. After elusive chase she had turned to fir, felt Pan peel off a low branch and wear it as a chaplet, watched him kneel in supplication at the base of her trunk, suffered blinding white splashes of devotion against her bark, and at long last metamorphosed back and let him prick her to his heart's content. Thus to Pan and his satyr offspring did Pitys's fir nymphs thenceforth behave, eternally open to poking, giving back better than they got and falling upon each other when the males were spent.

  God's love made Anya young again, locked that youth into place. The barbs and burrs of old age softened and fell away. And when His climax came, it was oblivion as sweet as it gets, all-embracing, with a pleasure bearable only because her flesh had become divine.

  When Anya's eyes opened, she lay in bed, the hushed light of magic time gilding the lace curtains. A gentle rapping sounded at the front door. A calm lay upon her, and a sadness. Her dream had evaporated—something about God and fir trees and copulation, something about how life had been for them in earlier times.

  No matter.

  Dreams were that way: elusive, tantalizing. Anya rose, a spring in her step, and wrapped her bright green robe about her.

  She opened the door. "Yes, Fritz?"

  He stood on the porch, bent slightly at the waist, hands behind his back, one toe sweeping an arc of shyness across the porch snow.
"Um . . . I was wondering . . . that is I was hoping . . . ." Looking up from beneath a mop of red hair, he blushed.

  "Come in," she said, opening the door for him, then closing it firmly behind, feeling a whoosh of cold air at her ankles.

  Fritz crushed his cap to his breast. "The others, they all drifted away, they don't remember what happened in the woods, they can't understand why everything's in magic time. They look at me standing there in the snow with this bulge in my pants and call me crazy."

  Anya shook her head and smiled. "My faithful Fritz," she said, "always so eager to please. It makes me wonder what you were in the other life."

  "Other life?"

  "No matter. Something I dreamed."

  "Oh. Anyway I was wondering if you'd like to go back to the hut and—"

  "It's over, Fritz."

  "—and you and me, we could . . . what did you say?"

  "Things are returning to normal. I'm Santa's wife again and only Santa's."

  "Oh, no, don't say that. Please."

  "You were there at the beginning, with the others. You saw God resanctify our marriage."

  "But doesn't this count for anything?" Fritz took out his penis and held it as though it were a priceless treasure he'd found in his pockets.

  Anya contemplated the ruddy column of flesh, its squinty eye, its wrinkled wrap of veins. Men were such children when it came to sex. All of their passion rushed to this hidden finger, the creature they kept in their pants whose primary function seemed to be to turn love into plumbing.

  Now here was Fritz in her vestibule, surrounded by wreaths, spare overshoes, a pipe rack, and a dozen other reminders of his beloved master, and all he could think about was his elfin erection. She went to her knees and cupped him in her hands. Moaning, he caressed her face.

  "This counts for much," she said tenderly. "These past many days, I've handled lots of these, Fritz, but none so beautiful as yours."

  "Yes, yes, ooooooh that's nice."

  "But this is what you gave up to be one of Santa's helpers. Surely the sacrifice was worth it."

  "Never. Oh, Anya, please?"

  Anya looked at the stiff rod she kneaded. Its tip glistened to Fritz's plea, like a lowly petitioner, naked and disarming. "You'll tell no one?"

  "Not a soul." His head blurred with shaking.

  "I'll drain you so dry, not a memory of any of this will be left in you."

  "Fine, fine, just do it. Please." The way he said it, she knew he didn't believe her. The poor dear thought his newfound bliss would go on forever, that he would unseat Santa in her heart.

  Anya bent then to the task of obliterating Fritz's memory, giving free license to her mouth to bob and weave as it would. But her thoughts were elsewhere. She scarcely gave ear to the increased volume and urgency of his groans, barely tasted the mucoid surge of his seed. She gave but passing notice to the confused look on Fritz's face as she buttoned him up, showed him the door, and waved the entire North Pole back into normal time.

  Steadying herself at the porch railing, she watched Fritz stroll across the commons while elves here and there began to wink in and out. She wondered what her husband was doing at this very moment—and what would happen between them when he returned.

  *****

  "Well."

  "Well?"

  "Well, it's over."

  "Oh, fuck you, Santa. And fuck your precious Anya too. You're telling me you're never going to want to kiss these nipples, never feel the tickle of my breath on your balls, never again sail your longboat into the saline port of my sex?"

  Santa gulped hard. Moonlight accentuated her lithe, lean, perfectly proportioned body. Spent as he was, the demon of desire raced about Santa's heart whenever his senses drank her in. He began once more to doubt his resolve.

  "No reflection on you. It's just that I've got to get my life in order, and lust pure and simple is one emotion I've resolved never to act on again."

  She seized him. "You see this meat? It's mine. I own it. In twenty years my tongue has given more life to this thing than Anya's whole body in the centuries you've known her. Admit it. See? It's stiffening up again. It knows what's best for it better than you do."

  Santa removed her hand. "No more. We're finished." There, it was out, and it felt good. "You have to leave now. There's work to do."

  At that, she swirled into a rage, hovering above the bed. "You dare deny me, fat boy? You'll pay for that. Next time you want me—and fuck the Christ child in the manger if it won't be before the year is out—I'm going to make you squirm and beg on your chubby little knees. I'm going to roll back the lips of my cunt like a baboon's mouth and turn my womb inside out right in your jolly old face, and all you'll be allowed to do with my glistening pink flesh is watch it, itching with all your heart and soul to touch it and stroke it and lick it and fuck it. You hear me, fat boy?"

  Santa, softly: "If you want your panties back, look in my left pants pocket."

  The Tooth Fairy's renewed display of fury took Santa's breath away. She spun in the air like a cat chasing its tail, giving a banshee wail. The enraged fairy whipped up storms of immortal anger, earsplitting peals of thunder, and clouds dark beyond ominous, from which forked lightning split apart Santa's skin and fried his innards. Then she was gone. Abrupt calm fell and Santa healed at once, though his body still tingled and thrilled at her outpouring of rage.

  He pictured Anya, knitting and rocking by the sewing room window, and prayed to God it wasn't too late to save his marriage.

  Santa looked down at Wendy, tiny fists poking out of the nightgown to either side of her body. "God keep you and all children from such furies," he said, bending to kiss her cheek. The sleeping child made him think of Rachel lying in this same bed twenty years before. And now Rachel had a darling girl of her own. Now she played at being mommy, asleep upstairs in her parents' bedroom.

  On a whim, Santa gathered his clothes, tucked them under his arm, and headed upstairs. Rachel would provide closure. His affair would end with one loving glimpse at the girl who had been there beside them at the beginning.

  From the door the sight of her, alone in the double bed, made her seem smaller than she was.

  Santa entered her bedroom, taking in the nightstands of dark laminate, a matching dresser, a blond wood desk used as a catch-all for bills and stationery. Then he gazed again at Rachel asleep in the bed.

  She was stunning in her loveliness.

  Santa sat beside her, staring down in awe at the simple summation of humanity in her face.

  "Dear, dear Rachel," said Santa. "How lovely you've grown since your first Christmas in this house."

  And, God help him, Rachel's large hazel eyes opened just wide enough for Santa to fall into them.

  9. Rachel All Grown Up

  Santa was so astonished at seeing a mortal—let alone this mortal—open her eyes, that he quite forgot to snatch back the stray bit of magic time that had seeped out to claim her. Whether that straying occurred because Santa grew careless or because the events of Christmas twenty years before had opened Rachel to magic time, as the seconds ticked by and Santa ignored God's injunction to maintain the barrier that hid him from mortal eyes, any justification for vanishing from her sight grew less and less compelling.

  It was the look she gave him.

  A look that silenced his intruder, laid him in a box, and buried him deeper than profundity itself. New love, God help him, flowered among the blossoms of his love for Anya—a flora that complemented that love, not the choking riot of weeds his lust for the Tooth Fairy had given rise to.

  The air in Rachel's bedroom seemed as heady as pure oxygen. He breathed it, and so did she. She looked radiant against the pastel columbines of her pillow. In the midst of panic at these new freshets of feeling, Santa's heart basked in a glow of peace.

  *****

  "Santa Claus?" said Rachel. Part of her wanted to scream in terror, but the rest of her was remembering the details of Christmas Eve twenty years before as she took in th
e roly-poly phantasm sitting there naked, beaming down at her.

  He gave a perfect nod and opened his perfect mouth. "Yes, Rachel," came his words, and their purity speared through her like sunlight.

  "Jesus!" she gasped. "Turn down the gain!" She tried to sit up but it was difficult. Her skin tingled beneath her nightgown as though she had become one great heatlamp filament. Her womanflesh swelled and fretted, and a series of soothing orgasms giggled inside her like champagne bubbles.

  "What's wrong?" said Santa. His caring voice set off a new round of climaxes, continuous as wavelets lapping at a shore.

  "Not a thing," Rachel laughed, holding out her hands to deflect him. "It's just that you're a bit . . . overwhelming."

  Santa touched his chest. He looked down at himself. "Oh dear, I'd better put something on."

  "Don't," she said, touching his thigh with one hand, then snatching it back as though stung. His words she had begun to adjust to. But touching him had slipped her at once into a cauldron of climaxes. Had it not been so shudderingly delicious, the rush of them would have been painful. "You look fine the way you are."

  "Are you sure you're all right?"

  "Oh yes," she said, the sweat of delirium at every pore. She laughed. "Now I know how Leda felt."

  Santa Claus looked away and repeated the name, trying to place it.

  "Yes, Zeus came to earth as a swan and . . . and he slept with Leda, who gave birth to Helen of Troy."

  "Oh, please don't think—"

  "Of course not, I—"

  "You're a beautiful woman, but—"

  "It's just that you make me feel . . ."

  "I make you feel how?"

  "Well, very physical. You take some getting used to. Everything you do feels like a caress." God, was she out of line? She lowered her eyes, though not looking at him was a torture. "An intimate caress."

  "Really?" Santa seemed at a loss. "It's not too unpleasant, I hope?"

  "Oh, no. Not at all."