Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (24 page)

Because God had given Santa and Anya memories of past mortality, their dreams frequently took up these themes. In a typical scenario, God reached down in displeasure to peel away the veneer of immortal life from this or that inhabitant of the North Pole. There followed many tearful visits to the victim's deathbed, an elaborate burial scene in the woods, and after a heartrending period of gloom and mourning, at last a reversal: God forgave all, the grave belched forth its victim amidst a rain of flowers, and joy returned tenfold to every heart.

This night, however, Santa's dreams took an atypical turn. He floated blimplike above the world, an earth made not of rock and soil but of mattress, white with feathery blankets and pillows of snowdrift. Lying legs akimbo in every direction were vast expanses of women, naked and swollen-lipped. Down he drifted into the embrace of each of them, dipping into her ready flesh and leaving liquid gifts inside her. Glancing back, Santa watched them belly up and birth out girl babies, who blossomed swiftly into womanhood, their limpid gaze inviting his return.

But when he closed his eyes to savor his bliss, a blast of chill air suddenly assaulted him. Peeling his lids back against the wind, Santa found himself falling precipitously toward an island engulfed in flame. One twisted cypress burned, as did the ash trees racing up a mountain slope. Beaches of sand and rock roared with the ferocity of a furnace. Into this inferno he fell, skin scorched, lungs scandalized. And this isle—which was somehow the Tooth Fairy herself—rose to seize him. She held out inflaming arms, hugged him to her fiery bosom, sucked his prick into her pit of love, and pressed it to white coals until it sizzled and blistered like a hotdog on a grill.

"Santa." Her demonhood gripped him. "Look into my face. Behold what once you were, what realms of bliss you lorded over in days past." Through the wash of flame, her skin cleared like a pool and he witnessed scenes of forest abandon, heard reed-pipes endlessly rippling. His head fell forward into hers and the goatishness surged within him, wild and gamy, clever in chase, rough in capture, rude in ravage. Raising a hairy arm, he splashed wine down his throat and the spirit of pressed grape filled him. "Nymphs," came his command, "pleasure me!" At once, out from the trees—ash and oak and lofty pine—they flew to him. Lips moistened, grandly flush between the thighs, they grabbed at him, smothering him in tongue and cunt, nippling his lips with full milk-yielding breasts.

She thrust him up from her flaming face, tearing the vision away. Pain seized his limbs and worse pain gripped his sex. "But you gave that up long ago, fearing to die. Hoodwinked by God into a life of selfless giving, you are no longer worthy to wield such a lovely weapon as this." The blazing pit of her vulva, sprouting teeth and tongue, parted its jaws and inched around the tight pouch of his testicles. Then her teeth dug deep and incisive, severing his genitals with one savage chomp. As he screamed, her vaginal jaws munched away at their prize. Then she tossed him upon the hissing sea, straddled his head, and irised open her anus. Out fluttered flurries of currency, all colors, shapes, and sizes. Engraved presidents and kings and queens slapped across his face. Monetary excrement blinded him. So thick and furious came the defecation of banknotes that no air was left for breathing. With his last gasp, he found enough breath to scream, scream for his life . . .

. . . but suddenly he was awake. And it wasn't his scream he heard but Rachel's. There by the bedroom door in the moonlight stood the Tooth Fairy, her strong right arm thrown savagely across the shoulders of Wendy's torn nightgown. Wendy's head whipped from side to side in protest. Ringed in a ghastly red, her torn and toothless mouth sobbed open.

*****

When Rachel saw the look on the intruder's face, she knew at once why this hellspawn stood at Santa's bedroom door, hurting her daughter. In the same instant, she saw Wendy's terror, her face a fist of pain, and Rachel's love for her took over.

"Let her go!" Flinging back the bedsheets, she leaped at the vengeful demon before her.

"With pleasure," said the intruder, hurling Wendy with a loud smack against the wall and turning to embrace the charging mortal.

"Mommy, a big bunny rabbit took Thnowball," she heard her daughter cry out, but then Rachel's ribcage snapped like a rack of twigs in the Tooth Fairy's brutal hug and the creature's jaws suddenly gaped far wider than seemed possible. Rachel inhaled sharply, astonished at how much pain went with the puncture and crush of internal organs. Then the Tooth Fairy's head sprang forward and her teeth lit into Rachel's face, and Rachel knew no more.

*****

Blond bitch tastes halfway decent, came the thought. But there was no time for thinking, no time to savor the woman's flesh; time only to bolt it down. First the head, face and teeth and tongue, shove the skull in, crush it, gulp down bones, brain, and all. Then the torso, ripping into it like a hungry shredder pulping a treetrunk, taking in shoulderflesh and clavicle, arms and elbows, wrists and fingers, breasts and breadbasket. Finally she heaved the rest of the woman up into the air (a swirl of motherblood slapping across the whimpering girl's nightgown), ate away at innards and cunt and buttocks, stuffed down thighs and legs and feet, gulped flesh and bone and blood in quick triumph.

She was in high spirits, the Tooth Fairy. She'd been in the room ten seconds tops, her feast had taken no more than three, and Santa and his wife lay wrapped in shock. Already she could feel her insides working over her meal. Her belly bulged and she rose into the moonlight, hugging her knees to her breasts, ready to mint the mortal bitch.

She screamed at the pain.

Her anus gaped wide, straining at all sides. The milled edges of the coin came first, accordioned over three or four widths' worth. It fanned out as it emerged, gleaming golden. Faster and faster the impacted metal issued from her, hurting her even as it fed her pride. Like a flat balloon it filled out huge and round and golden. On the upturned side, she made out the mortal woman's breasts and hands and anguished face. When its last serration had been shat, the huge disc stiffened in the air like swiftly tempering steel and clattered to the hardwood floor, digging deep dents in it.

The sound roused Santa to action, but the Tooth Fairy rocketed over to Wendy and swooped her up, screaming and kicking, by the waist.

"In the name of God, put her down!" Santa shouted as he leaped from the bed.

She threw him one last look, then folded herself and her victim into magic time and was gone.

*****

Still cocooned in shock, Anya watched Santa race to grapple with the Tooth Fairy.

Too late.

The moment his moon-white arms began to close on her, she winked out, Wendy with her. Santa slammed full force into the wall. A long, wounded howl issued from him. He struck it with his fist and crumbled against it, weeping.

Anya went to Santa. Turning at her touch, he hugged her. "Good God," he sobbed, "what have I done?"

"There, there, Nicholas." He blubbered in her arms. Anya fought away her tears, shutting out the terrible images of her loved ones bloody and dying, so as to tend to her husband.

"I could have stopped it. I could have held Rachel back. Don't you see, Anya, I could have gone into magic time and saved her."

"That's enough," she replied, looking him straight in the eye. "It happened much too fast for either of us to stop it. Now pull yourself together. You've got a child to save."

"Yes, I must think of Wendy." The catch in his voice tore at Anya's heart. "But how will I ever find them in time? They could be anywhere. Wendy might already—"

"Wendy is not dead," said Anya with more conviction than she felt. "But she's out there somewhere, hurting, and you've got to find her and rescue her." An image of Lucifer sprang to Anya's mind, his antlers glowing bright as neon.

"Claus, do you still have those red panties?"

*****

Back in his burrow, the Easter Bunny's brain was buzzing. The Tooth Fairy had tossed him a sop for his conscience, this vigorous young she-cat, this Snowball. An insult to his dignity, a blatant bribe. And a prize worth having. It didn't by any means erase the sight of that little girl's mouth being savaged. He had almost leaped in to stop it, screeching at the Tooth Fairy to quit hurting her. But she had looked death at him and shouted, "If you value your balls, you'll stay the fuck where you are and shut up!" And he, God help his wormy soul, had prized his accursed genitals above the well-being of a child in trouble. Where had his virtue—what little there had been—gone in the last year? He grimaced. He knew the answer. Right into the Tooth Fairy's quim, that's where. She had sucked it clean out of him. Yes, he thought bitterly, casting a baleful eye along the walls of the exercise area; and he hadn't lifted a claw to stop her.

He hung his head and felt chills of regret course along his spine for the degenerative spiral he had hopped down since last Christmas.

Snowball meowed up at him.

"What's that, my pet?" he said. "You'd like to see the rest of the burrow?" He stroked her smooth white fur, at which she lifted against his paw and piano'd upon his chest in approval.

At his groin, a stirring.

"All right, my precious little Snowball. First I'll show you where the candy is made and where the baskets are assembled. Then we'll go watch the hens lay Easter eggs, won't that be fun?"

She purred.

"And then I'll show you my bedroom."

*****

Lucifer was dreaming about Bambi's girlfriend Faline again: her gangly legs, her white wiggly paintbrush tail, and below—what Disney dared not draw—her puckered anus and the sweet wet furrow along which Lucifer eased the tip of his buckhood.

But then the stable door's sharp creak and the harsh gleam of Gregor's lantern robbed him of his cartoon lover. He looked up in annoyance to see Santa all suited up; Mrs. Claus in bathrobe and slippers; Prancer and Blitzen poking their heads over the sides of their stalls, blinking in curiosity; Fritz standing alone, looking stunned; yonder, Gregor lifting a saddle out of an old trunk and wiping the dust off it. All of them were bathed in the soft glow of magic time.

What in blazes was going on?

"Lucifer, old friend," came Santa's voice, with an edge of desperation that frightened him. "I need your help."

At once, new vigor came into the lead reindeer's limbs. He rose from his straw bed and cocked his head.

In the glow of Lucifer's antlers, Santa's face shone like a violent blush. "The Tooth Fairy has taken Wendy. We've got to find them and get her back, and it must be done quickly." Fumbling in his pocket, Santa brought out a bunched handful of red silk and lifted it to Lucifer's nose. "Can you track her from this?"

The reindeer shut his eyes and inhaled.

He had once thought it strange when Wendy carried her kittens into the stable one morning, teasing them with a catnip mouse Mrs. Claus had stitched together from scraps of calico. It had amused him, how they dizzied about their prize, sniffing it and batting it and pouncing upon it. Now he understood. Now, with the aroma of the immortal seductress rising in his flared nostrils, by God he understood.

"Easy, Lucifer!"

Great Christ, his antlers flared at once into aflame, straight out to the tips. Down below (Jesus in a manger, how embarrassing) his sex suddenly stiffened, her fairy hand stroking him there. His hoofs beat out a tattoo on the stable floor and seed shot from him in gleeful jets and spurts.

"Gregor, for God's sake, help me hold him! Anya, stay where you are!"

Strong elfin arms steadied him. His brain felt energized, as if there were networks of bright white Christmas lights everywhere agleam along its folds and runnels. He shook his great antlers and snorted. Then, looking at Santa, he nodded sharply.

Santa smiled. "Good boy! All right, Gregor, saddle him up. Make haste. Watch where you step." While Gregor placed a blanket across his back and cinched him into the jingling saddle, Lucifer watched Santa exchange a parting word and an embrace with Mrs. Claus by the door.

Then they led him outside into the sleeping snowscape, where he caught her scent, faint but unmistakable, in the air by the cottage.

With Santa riding him, he bounded away, speeding southward, tracking his prey on her zigzag path through the night, down across the frozen reaches of the Yukon, swooping low over sleeping cities sprawled the length of British Columbia and Washington and Oregon, straight on toward the gleaming heart of the Sacramento Valley.

*****

Wendy had no more tears and very little fight left in her. Her gums throbbed and it hurt something fierce when her jaws accidentally jarred shut. But the images in her mind hurt much more—the sudden appearance of the hard-faced fairy in whose grip she now flew, jolting her out of sleep and digging her fingers again and again into Wendy's mouth; Nightwind's mewls of protest; Fritz frozen in normal time; the gigantic white rabbit who just stood there and Snowball's sharp yowl when she was snatched up and tossed to him; and worst of all, her mother vanishing in a sweep of blood down the Tooth Fairy's throat.

She bleared down at the frosted lights of yet another city. So many cities she had passed over, so many homes strung with color, full of warm beds and dozing children.

But this city, wet with rain, they began to descend toward. Twin pinpoints of light inched along ribbons of highway, enlarging into small circles that threw before them glittering scoops of yellow.

They banked sharply and her nemesis pointed down. "That's where we're headed, right there. Recognize it?"

Wendy saw a wrought-iron gate in a tall dark fence that ran for several blocks. A dimly lit road branched out from the gate, meandering along wide patches of earth. Here and there, trees gloomed up like glistening broccoli. The only sign of life was a lone lit windowpane in a tiny building near the gate. The place nagged at her, as if she had seen it in a dream. But she shook her head.

"You will soon enough," came the harsh voice. "Keep your eyes open."

Wendy looked. Below them, black teeth thrust up through the earth in serried rows. A certain stand of oak trees moved into place about a rise in the landscape, and it dawned on her. She moaned anew as they circled in on her buried father.