Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (31 page)

His elves became as sons and brothers to him. He gave them more free time and often joined them when they pulled Wendy on her sled. He even laced up iceskates (something he hadn't done for centuries) and joined in the post-Christmas ice-a-thon on the skating pond. It soon became a tradition, at that event's climax, to link arms, speedskate round and round faster and faster, and whip Santa off—his loud booming whoops of jollity filling the snow-flecked air—into the commons, where he would roll and tumble and come up halfway to the cottage, staggering like a drunken snowman.

But Santa's favorite moments were those he shared with Anya and Rachel in the intimate heartspace of the marriage bed. He loved his wives, especially when the three of them came together like a swirl of wind and fire under the down comforter.

Even now, as you read these words, the jolly old elf lies delirious beneath them, enjoying the give and take of their favorite triadic practice, 969. The bedclothes have been flung to the floor and moonlight spills boldly across their sheets. Anya and Rachel murmur words of love to Santa and to one another. From the waist down, his body lies in normal time, his thighs spread wide to welcome the kisses of his wives, his sex tight and hard and veined in silver beneath their fingers. Above, he moves through magic time, the better to serve and observe them.

Part of the time, Santa's head rests pillowed between two sets of feet. Rachel's right leg warms the heartside of his torso, Anya's left the other. He contemplates with holy rapture the curves and folds of their loins. His fingers work their flesh like a friar telling his beads. When his head flutters in and out of magic time, their bodies seem to strobe in the steady light of the moon. He feels as if he's flying through the night. Their flanks rock to the rhythm of his hands like the soft white haunches of Donner and Blitzen twitching under the gentle slap of leather across their backs. Their long beautiful bodies move like his team in harness, supple, articulate. Down below, where Lucifer's gleam might light up the night sky, the glistening blood-purple tip of his penis emerges from the mouth of this wife or that. Rachel favors tight lips and the suck and swirl of salivation. Anya, going wider and deeper, brings her tongue into it. Together, they give him heaven.

And when his head is not pillowed and marveling, he does his best to return the favor. Bifurcating at the waist, he arcs beneath them, giving each wife in turn his full attention. He hums as he licks, something they've told him excites them immensely.

Moving in and out of magic time, Santa's brain plays strange games. He sees Superman standing behind a seated Clark Kent in his Daily Planet office, fooling Lois Lane by changing clothes so fast she can't detect the flicker. Santa watches him repeat the trick with his new now-savvy bride at the Fortress of Solitude, splitting into two, then four, then as many ardent supermen as he can sustain without distracting himself, crowding around his wide-eyed Lois and loving her with the multiplicity of his manhood.

Had Santa a hand free, he would slap his forehead for not having the idea sooner. Time enough for that, he tells himself; and time enough for Anya and Rachel, if they like, to please him in the same way. He imagines them riding him everywhere in blurred overlap, opening to him like blooms in time-lapse photography the infinite variety of their love. Just picturing it makes Santa's pillowed head burst apart at the beard and split the night with a rousing
ho-ho-ho
. His delight spills into the hum of his cunnilingus. That familiar feeling starts to rise in him like the unspeakable wonder of life itself, and he readies himself to give his beloved women the whitest Christmas they have ever enjoyed.

God bless us, comes his last coherent thought before sweet oblivion claims him. God bless us every one!

Epilogue: Tooth and Claw

Fear not the flesh nor love it. If you fear it, it will gain mastery over you. If you love it, it will swallow and paralyze you.

—the Gospel of Philip

Subduction leads inevitably to orogeny. And the earth moves.

—anonymous

Epilogue: Tooth and Claw

Underground. Valentine's Day. For weeks, anxiety unrelenting had shattered the Easter Bunny's nerves. He had hopped about his room, sniffing aimlessly at the dirt, staring for hours at a bent piece of straw. Once he had peeked in at Petunia, only to pull back in disgust. He hadn't dared venture into the rest of his domain.

Upon waking that morning, however, anxiety had given way to calm. It was a calm as deep as sadness. He left his room at last but kept to the confines of the burrow. Everything, down to his hens and the blush-colored eggs they laid, seemed glazed with a patina of resignation and regret. He knew what was coming and welcomed it.

When God's footsteps first shook the earth, he went to his room, found its precise centerpoint, and hunkered down with as much humility as he could muster. Trees toppled. God's approaching tread matched the steady dead-march of his heart.

The Easter Bunny glanced up at the domed roof. A dark crack opened along the arc of the outer wall. Then the roof lifted from the burrow like an earthen shield. He blinked away a thin trickle of dirt that fell as the roof rose and daylight flooded in. Shafts of sun streaked through settling dust. But what captured his eye was the towering figure of God the Father, Who propped the giant disc of earth against an oak tree and, turning His gaze on him, sadly shook His head. "What, Mister Ophion, am I to do with you?"

"I beg your—?"

"This I believe is yours." God gestured north and the Easter Bunny could see dried egg remains lift from a distant mirror, defy space and time, and come together at God's fingertips like a jellybean. God stooped and laid it at the Easter Bunny's feet. "To voyeurism, which I shut My eyes to, you have added rape, an act intolerable in mortal men, let alone in an immortal entrusted with spreading happiness on the anniversary of My Son's resurrection."

"But I can expl—"

"Further, you have seen fit to lend aid and comfort to the Tooth Fairy. Sinning by omission, you have helped her mutilate and torment a child, devour that child's mother before her eyes, and dishonor her father's corpse."

"It was her fault. The Tooth Fairy. She forced me into it."

The tip of God's index finger stopped his lips. It stung like iodine on a cut. "No more lies, Mister Ophion, Mister Boreas, Mister North Wind. Pause a moment. Pause and think about your misdeeds. Then you may confess your sins and beg, if you will, for mercy."

His lips were free again.

God sat upon the lip of earth, His feet resting inside the burrow near where Santa Claus had burst in. The Easter Bunny began to ask Him why He had called him such peculiar names, but the stern look in the Father's eyes stopped him.

He paused. He pondered. One by one, he named his sins and humbly begged God's pardon for them. Then he raised his head. "But it's just not fair. Really it isn't."

"What's not fair, My beloved?"

The sweetness in God's voice broke his heart, but he went on. "When You created me, Lord, You chose to make me a rabbit. If You'd only kept to scale—please forgive my presumption—I might have mated with mortal rabbits and been content. Instead, You made me an order of magnitude larger than normal. Even that wouldn't be a problem if I had a mate, a real Petunia just my size to love and honor and fill with seed. Instead I roam the world alone. And, dear Lord, as You well know, my sex drive, like everything else about me, is ten times that of a normal rabbit's. Lately, I fear, it has overwhelmed my better judgment."

"Go on."

"And also, well," he looked away, embarrassed, "this may sound funny, but I've had the feeling lately that You may have made me forget things about myself, that there's more to my past than You've let on, that maybe I—dear God forgive me, it seems so absurd now that You're here—that maybe
I
was the true creator of the world way back when and somehow You snatched that position from me."

"Interesting. Very interesting."

"Of course it's all nonsense. I see that now. You needn't say a word about it. But this mate thing, oh dear Father, it's that that drives me buggy."

God reached down and lifted the Easter Bunny into His lap. The folds of His robe felt like a soft patch of pure heaven against his underbelly. The hand that stroked him made tears of joy start in his eyes. "I understand," said God. "And I see how to make things right."

Yes! thought the Easter Bunny. God's going to bring my Petunia to life, just like Pinocchio. Or He'll scrap her and fashion from His infinite love a fresh new mate, white and soft and fluffy, always eager for me to top her. Or maybe He'll fill the burrow with dozens of does. Hell, I can handle scores of the twitchy-tailed beauties. Nay, hundred, thousands. Bring them on. Let legions of lovers smother me in kissyfur.

But God's hand covered his eyes and at once he saw straight back to the dawn of creation. "All begins in Chaos," said God. "But soon the goddess Eurynome rises out of it like naked love, full-thighed, full-breasted, her hair tumbling in wanton ringlets about her shoulders. She tries to rest her feet but finds nothing save herself and Chaos. Look there, her long lithe hands part sky and sea. She dances lonely upon the waves."

The Easter Bunny thumped against God's palm, snared by the image's fleshy perfection. "And there you are, the north wind she stirs up as she moves. She wheels about and snatches you up in her hands, rubbing you thick and tight until, behold, you become the serpent Ophion. See, she holds you close, dancing, ever dancing. Coiling about her limbs, you copulate with her."

He saw it all and remembered, even as God spoke it. He saw Eurynome, goddess of all things, turn herself into a dove, brood upon the waves, lay the universal egg. He saw himself coil sevenfold about the egg and hatch it and stare in amazement as all of creation, all the stars and planets, everything upon the earth and under the sea and in the firmament, leapt forth and took its place, pushing Chaos all atumble into oblivion. He saw too how it had gone bad: his boast that he alone had created all things, the heel she planted upon his head, the loss of his fangs, and his banishment to the dark places beneath the earth.

Now God brought the vision forward to the point of his rebirth as the Easter Bunny. The distant brooding of innumerable hens. The sound of his Creator's voice instructing him, his leaps into the air—all of it as he had always remembered it. But then there befell a memory splice: God paused in the past, as He had never done before, and looked about the burrow, His eyes full of prescience. He stretched out His hand, set a finger between the Easter Bunny's back legs, and—like a cartoonist erasing a smudge—massaged away the genitals, leaving only one small hole to pee with. Then the splice was over, and it wasn't a splice at all but the Easter Bunny's sole memory of his creation.

God lifted His hand from His creature's eyes and set him down in the burrow. "Does that clear up our little problem?"

"Yes," he said, confused. He couldn't begin to guess what problem the Father was talking about.

"Good," said God. "By the way, you've been doing a wonderful job with your Easter deliveries and a wonderful job managing things here. Keep up the good work."

Exhilaration filled his heart. "I do it all," he said, "to please You and to make the children happy."

"Bless you, My beloved," said God, and blest he felt. "Now be at peace. It's time I paid a visit to another of My servants, one not so contrite and cooperative, I fear, as you have been."

The Easter Bunny knew He was talking about the Tooth Fairy, though he had no idea how he knew. But he beamed up at the Lord and watched the roof close out the sunshine and the crack reseal itself, wondering what on earth the thing made of pellets over wire mesh was doing in the room next to his. When he had hauled it outside, crushed it with heavy stones, and skritched dirt over it, he headed back to the laying house to see how things were going with the hens.

Easter was little more than a month away and he was determined it would be the best Easter ever.

*****

Rain pelted the Tooth Fairy's face.

The storm, at its height, billowed out of control. Lucifer lay exhausted on the beach. His antlers blushed pale pink from the abuse he had suffered since Christmas. Gripping his penis, she waited for signs of renewal.

As the wind whipped up her hair, the teeth of her necklace rattled upon her breasts. She forced her eyelids not to blink. Sheets of rain beat against the whites of her eyes and washed across her irises, flowing like sorrow down her cheeks. Squatting beside the blasted cedar, she awaited with relish the final showdown.

Where wails of typhoon fury had filled her ears, there now abruptly sounded the
Sanctus Dominus!
of angel choirs. The roiling sky turned blue and filled with billows. Angel faces beamed upon them, psalms of heavenly praise blasting in triumph from their throats.

Then God parted the clouds, sitting in state upon His golden throne, and glowered down at her. Lucifer's feeble head rose from the sand to stare in wonder. Letting go of his limp lovehandle, she stood defiant before the Lord.

"Call off your minions!" she shouted. "You're not about to overwhelm
me
with your heavenly bullshit!"

A flick of God's hand and the angels vanished. Pointing at Lucifer, He gestured north. Instantly, the reindeer sprang into the air and flew off, his antlers as bright, his gait as sure, as ever.

"Santa and I had a bargain—!" she protested.

"Do you want to continue to be the Tooth Fairy?" He asked quietly, resting His hands upon His throne and fixing her with His worst glower.

"Listen, just cut the—"

"Do you want to continue to be the Tooth Fairy?" If anything, the question came at her lower and more simply inflected than before. It chilled her to the marrow.

"Fuck you, all right? All right? You and the other shitheads of this world want to call me the Tooth Fairy, that's your lookout. My real name, as you well know, is Adrasteia. If I harvest molars and bicuspids and canines, it's because I damn well choose to."