by Sean Shake
She stopped at the entrance to the woods, allowing me to catch up with her.
“What the fuck?” I asked, panting. “Where are we?”
“I still don’t think I should tell you that.”
“We’re not in Miami anymore.”
“Of course not. That’s what portals do. They take you different places.”
“Wait, so you really are… Santa Claus’s daughter?”
“I’m the Santa Claus’s daughter, yes.”
“And we’re looking for Rudolph.”
“Call her Rue.”
“Right, of course. Sorry, Rue. And then you’re going to imbue the spirit of Christmas into me, with the North Pole.”
She shrugged one shoulder, shook her head slightly. “No, but that’s close enough.”
Holy shit, I thought. “Just tell me one thing then.”
“If I can.”
“Are we still on Earth?”
6
I followed Alexa—who’d only smiled at my question—into the woods, not sure if I felt more or less crazy now that we’d gone through a portal.
“What’s in here, anyway?” I asked. “Rue?”
She nodded. “A place no one else knows about.” She said this in not-quite-a-whisper, but still a voice that gave the impression she was trying to not draw attention.
From what, I didn’t know.
“How do you know she’s here?”
“I don’t. But I can’t get her on comms, and the only places Rue would be that comms don’t work are the void or here.”
“The void?”
She nodded. “Or here. Or if she’s dead.”
“That’s… reassuring. What do you mean comms?”
She glanced at me. “You’ll find out in a bit. Now pick up the pace. We have one more portal to go through.”
We reached this second portal a few minutes later. This one was visible, unlike the one I’d driven my truck through.
“Are all portals on Earth invisible?”
She looked at me surprised. “Wow. I didn’t expect you to figure that out.”
“Do I look that stupid?”
Her eyebrows went up. “No, it’s not that. I just didn’t expect it. Come on. I want to hurry and get there.”
“It’s cold,” I said, shivering and rubbing my arms. “Aren’t you cold in that?”
She was still only wearing my T-shirt and boxers, and I realized now that she wasn’t even wearing her heels. I wasn’t sure if she had been wearing them in my truck, or if she’d left them back in my apartment. In any case she wasn’t wearing them now.
It wasn’t like the ground was covered in snow or anything, but it was still pretty cold.
“Why would I be cold?” she asked.
“I guess you wouldn’t, Santa Claus’s daughter.”
“You can call me Alexa. I prefer it.”
She said this so sweetly that I wanted to… well, do things with her.
I glanced around as we walked deeper into the woods, not liking the fact that I’d left my truck behind. Had I turned the engine off? I thought so, but I didn’t have my keys, so maybe not. Had I left the door open? The dome light would turn off automatically, wouldn’t it? What about the headlights?
“Is my truck gonna be okay back there?” I was guessing it wouldn’t be visible from Miami anymore. That it was now in some other world. This other world.
That I was in, too.
Unless I had totally lost my mind.
“Oh don’t worry about your vehicle. Once we get the sleigh going, you won’t need that anymore.”
I felt stupid for asking the question, for even taking any of this seriously, but I couldn’t deny the fact that I had been transported… somewhere.
Even if it was still on Earth, the fact that I’d been transported at all by simply driving through a group of stones suggested something otherworldly was afoot. “The sleigh. You mean Santa’s sleigh?”
“Yep,” she answered quietly.
Her short replies were starting to get to me. Already had been getting to me.
I also wasn’t comfortable with the fact that she was walking through this forest as though she were looking out for an enemy that was ready to strike at any moment. Then again, she didn’t hush me, and seemed content to answer my questions.
So I asked another. “What are you looking around for? Is it dangerous here?”
“I hope not. But I don’t know. I know Krampus claimed responsibility in his note, but the more I think about it, I can’t see my dad losing to him. My dad is so strong. And Krampus tried to ruin Christmas for ages. Literally. He never succeeded. Not once. So he gave up. He hasn’t tried for as long as I’ve been alive. I don’t know what would have changed to make him try again. To let him succeed.” She glanced behind us, and for some reason the hair on the back of my neck stood up.
I quickly looked behind, but there was nothing there. When I turned back again she was moving forward once more.
“So,” she went on, “I think there’s maybe something else going on. I just don’t know what. But if they were able to take my dad and my mom, then maybe they could come here. I don’t think they know about this place, whoever they are. Because no one knows about this place. Not even Dad.”
“And yet you expect to find Rudolph here.”
“Right. Well Rudolph knows about it—” She shook her head. “Rue knows about it. None of the other reindeer did though. Or the elves. Or my mom, who I pretty much tell everything. Sometimes she doesn’t want to know the things that I tell her. Not sure why.”
“I can’t imagine,” I said sarcastically, though she didn’t seem to catch my sarcasm.
After a minute I asked, “How am I supposed to save Christmas?”
“You’ll become the Santa Claus.”
I halted.
This statement wasn’t entirely unexpected—she had said as much before. But that was before the portal, and now the idea of becoming Santa seemed… not possible, exactly. But plausible.
She must’ve sensed that I’d stopped, because she too stopped and looked at me. “What?” she asked. “Do you hear something?”
I shook my head. “I’m really supposed to become Santa? The Santa Claus?”
“Yeah. That’s what I’ve been saying. That’s why I came to your home. You don’t think I’d go home with any strange man, do you?”
I chose not to answer that question. “So Rue, the reindeer, has the North Pole, which you are going to use to put the spirit of Santa into me.”
She put her hand out and tilted it back and forth. “Something like that.” She bit her lip. “You…”
“Me what?” I asked after several moments.
“You have to marry me,” she blurted.
“Marry you?” I asked.
“You don’t need to sound so disappointed about it.”
“I’m just… not looking to get married.”
“You’ll have to put aside your feelings. I am. Think of the children.”
“Please don’t ever say think of the children again.”
“Why not? Children are wonderful. Without them we wouldn’t exist.”
I supposed that was true, technically, but really didn’t excuse anything.
Instead of answering, I said, “So to become the Santa Claus, I have to marry you, Santa Claus’s daughter. What are you, like a princess?”
“What’s a princess?”
I balked at her. “Are you—”
Then she started laughing. “You’re silly. I like you. I don’t know if it’s enough to marry you. Well I mean it is enough to marry you. I have to marry you. To save Christmas and all. But I think I’ll enjoy our consummation.” And with that she started through the forest again.
I put up my finger and chased after her. “Wait, our consummation?”
“Shh,” she hushed. “We don’t want to draw attention.”
“I thought you said there wasn’t anyone here?”
“You know, you really don’t listen very we
ll. What I said was, I’m not sure if there’s anyone here, but there could be. So we need to be careful.”
I sighed, and followed her deeper into the woods, half-wishing I was a woman, because then I wouldn’t have been drawn into this mess.
After another several minutes, in which she hushed me every time I tried to ask her a question, we finally arrived.
At a tree.
A tall, big, thick tree. It looked maybe like an oak tree. I wasn’t exactly sure what oak trees looked like, but that was the first thing that came to mind when I saw it.
The second thing was a pecan tree. But I was pretty sure I’d never seen one of those.
She pressed her hand against the bark and a dull light emanated from beneath her palm.
Then a section of the tree slid circularly away into the trunk, revealing what looked like a very modern elevator.
“In here,” she urged, waving me on as she stepped inside.
I followed her hesitantly in. At least it was a bit warmer in here. Though not by enough. It was a shock to go so quickly from Florida weather—even in the winter—to this.
As the doors shut, she flapped her shirt to get some air under it. “I think Rue must be here. She likes it warm. I’m gonna have to take this shirt off.”
My mouth started to water with that thick saliva that pretty girls had a way of making form.
I wanted to ask if the elevator was safe, but that seemed rather pointless since I was already on it. Instead, I said, “That’s good, right?”
She stopped fanning her shirt and looked at me. “Maybe for you. I know guys like those things.”
“What things?”
She grabbed both her breasts in her hands, demonstrating quite nicely that she wasn’t wearing a bra. “These things.”
“Uhh, I was asking about Rue being here.”
“Oh.” She let her hands fall from her breasts. “Yeah that’s good. Unless someone has her as hostage here. Then that would be bad.”
“Very reassuring.” I looked around the high-tech elevator. “So this elevator is in a tree, huh?”
She put her palm on a panel in front of us and a holographic number appeared in the air. She swiped at it and it rolled like a slot-machine wheel. It rolled all the way down to negative 102.
I wondered if that meant the negative hundred and second floor.
How deep did these roots go?
“Yeah,” she replied.
“It’s just surprising. I wouldn’t think you’d have technology.”
“Where do you think your technology comes from? Have you ever heard of the Pentagon?”
“Uh, yes.”
“Well, I guess they’re kind of a big thing in your world? I don’t know. Anyway, we sell them a lot of stuff. Dad says they’re a big deal on Earth.”
“They are… something like that.”
“Anyway, you might want to hold onto something.”
“Hold onto—” But before I could even get a chance to ask my question, we suddenly plunged down and I was thrown into the ceiling.
I looked down—by virtue of my body being stuck to the ceiling—at Alexa below me, who was somehow not pinned to the ceiling, even though she didn’t appear to be holding onto anything.
My clothing on the other hand was trying to come off of her and she had to pin her arms to the side to keep it down.
“Argh,” she said exasperated. “I forgot how much your world sucks.”
“We’re in your world!” I managed to get out.
She looked up at me. “Would you come down from there? You’re making me uncomfortable.”
“I’m making you uncomfortable? I’m stuck up here.”
“Oh. Oh yeah, that’s right. I told you to hold onto something. See, this is why you need to listen better.”
“You didn’t give me much of a chance.”
She sighed, and then started floating up toward me.
I wasn’t sure if she had just let go of whatever she’d been holding onto magically, or if she was actually levitating.
She wrapped her fingers around my wrist, fingers which were burning hot, and then I stopped being pinned to the ceiling, and started floating like her.
Her shirt rose up and caught on her breasts, revealing the underside of them to me. The skin was smooth and pale, and for a second it was all I could look at.
She used her free hand to tuck the shirt into the waistband of the boxers she was wearing, then we slowly went back to the ground.
Not a few seconds after my feet touched the ground, the elevator stopped, but I felt no jolt with Alexa’s fingers still on my wrist.
That contact seemed to be enough to prevent the effects of gravity or whatever the equivalent was in this world from slamming me into the floor as we suddenly stopped. “Effective security system. At least for anyone from my world.”
The doors opened, and revealed a secret layer.
There were no other words for it.
It was huge, and had screens and fancy technical-looking things everywhere.
“Where are we?” I asked.
She grunted in disgust. “We really need to work on your listening skills. I already said I’m not ready to tell you that.”
“No. I mean this place, what is it?”
“It’s our secret hideout.”
Funny, that was exactly what I thought it was.
“I don’t see Rue anywhere.”
“That’s because you’re not looking to your left,” a voice from my left said.
I turned, and found a girl holding a very large gun trained on me.
7
I put my hands up. “Rue?” She was no reindeer. She was a beautiful, slender brunette with wavy shoulder-length hair and strange metallic-blue eyes. She did have a faintly glowing red nose. And her cheeks seemed to glow slightly as well. She also had small antlers coming up through her wavy locks.
The girl looked past me, to Alexa.
“He’s with me,” Alexa said from behind me. “He’s gonna save Christmas.”
“Is that right?” Rue asked, eyeing me suspiciously.
I noted she still had the gun trained on me, a science-fiction-looking blast rifle. It was a big bastard, and looked like it would simply vaporize me if she fired a single shot.
Which I hoped she wouldn’t.
“Yes. And can you not point that thing at me please?”
She slowly lowered the gun, but didn’t lower it all the way.
If she fired, it now likely would hit my foot. Perhaps my thigh. Perhaps my crotch.
I wasn’t sure I would prefer that—even if a single shot anywhere on my body would destroy me completely, I’d rather that point of origin be in the chest, rather than my crotch.
“You want him?” Rue asked.
“It’s not a matter of what I want, Rue. It’s a matter of what needs to be done.”
Rue huffed. “Got your message by the way. Thanks for running off without telling me right after everything goes to crap. An e-letter? Really? You couldn’t have called?”
“Sorry. I was already at the portal and…” She shook her head.
“So what happened? I thought you were going to their world to drown your sorrows.”
“I was. Then I found him.”
“Shocking. Beautiful woman gets drunk, goes to their world, comes home with a man. How unexpected.”
“I don’t think it’s that unexpected,” Alexa replied, completely missing Rue’s apparent sarcasm.
Rue rolled her eyes. “Kids. Well, we have to do something. We can’t let Christmas be ruined.” She glanced at me, then back to Alexa. “You’re sure? You want him? I mean, you think he can do it?”
Still standing between the two women, I now turned my head back to Alexa, like watching a tennis match. Something I’d never done.
She nodded firmly, which raised my spirits a bit.
I was glad she had so much faith in me, even though she barely knew me.
“I do. And I also do.”
“Save your I do’s for in a bit. First we need to get everything together. Were you followed?”
“Followed by what?”
“If I knew, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation, we’d be rescuing your dad from them. But seeing as how we only have twelve days, we can’t take that risk. We still need to gather all the elves, find eight more reindeer, get the workshops working again, build a sleigh…” She shook her head sadly. “Ugh. We’ve got so much work to do. And so little time.”
Alexa walked over to Rue and put an arm around her shoulder, so that they were now both facing me. “Don’t worry Rue, I’m confident Nicholas will help us do all that, with plenty of time to spare. He won’t let Christmas be ruined.” She looked at me. “Will you?”
The way she gazed at me, so earnestly, I didn’t want to let her down.
Also I had to admit, I was quite excited about marrying her, and finding out what the consummation would be. “No,” I said as confidently as I could. Which actually sounded pretty goddamn confident.
Maybe too confident. “I won’t. We’ll do this. We’ll save Christmas.”
“Great,” Rue said, unenthusiastically. “Well, take off your clothes then.”
8
I stood in my boxers as Rue sized me up.
She was measuring me for the outfit I would be wearing to get married to Alexa in.
This is why I avoided one-night stands. Though they didn’t usually end up in marriage, they did usually end up as a relationship.
Alexa was not here, as apparently she wasn’t supposed to see me before the wedding.
Which was going to be in a few minutes anyway. “If the wedding is so soon how are you going to make a suit for me in the time we have?”
“Eh, Earthers. You think so small. You have such limited scopes.”
“Such limited scopes?”
She didn’t answer me. Not unlike Alexa in that way.
Instead she circled me, hand on her chin, elbow resting in the crook of her arm that was crossed over her body, studying my body.
“Hmm.”
She continued walking around me for three more rotations.
It was starting to make me dizzy.
“Right,” she said finally. “Okay, wait here, I’ll go make your suit.”
“You know I already have a Santa costume. If I’d known I was getting married to Santa Claus’s daughter, I could’ve brought it. Seems fitting.” Unable to help myself, I added, “And it already fits.”