Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups

by Robert Devereaux

  Wilhelm and Fritz helped bring Wendy's bed away from the far wall of her bedroom and prop it up by her picture window. Then they joined the others outside. The crowd watched Santa lay Wendy down and bend a slow kiss to her forehead. Mrs. Claus knelt beside her, cradling the dead girl's face in one hand and smoothing her hair against the pillow with the other. She folded Wendy's hands across her waist, fussing with her clothing until Santa stepped in and raised his wife.

  Then began a parade of elves past Wendy's corpse, a parade that stretched across three days and nights. The line hugged the perimeter of the commons, running the length of the workshop and veering at the stable, then going past Santa's cottage and making a wide bulge out, which twisted back to the elves' quarters, curved round the skating pond, and hugged the hills almost to the gingerbread house again.

  Those who, cap in hand, had said one farewell to Wendy wanted to say another. They rejoined the line. Soon the far bulge flattened out, the end of the line met its beginning, and the visitation became continuous.

  Midafternoon of the first day, Englebert and Josef retrieved the black armbands from the recycling bins in the workshop and passed them out. Over their protests, they were thrust forward to the front of the line.

  At sunrise on the second day, Knecht Rupert disappeared into the woods and returned with an armload of snow crocus. Until Anya called a halt to it, there was a brief incursion into the hills and hordes of elves returned with the purple and yellow flowers clutched to their chests. Soon a blanket of soft petals covered Wendy from chin to ankles, filling her bedroom with fragrance.

  And on the following night, Heinrich, heartsick at the happy sound his half-dozen bells made dangling from his half-dozen caps, not to mention the bells jangling at the tips of his dozen slippers—Heinrich closed his fists around the cold silver X-cut spheres, wrenched them with a muffled clk-clk-clk off his clothing, and placed them, shiny with candlelight, above Wendy's folded hands on the crocus blossoms. Those that followed saw. And seeing, did likewise. Anya's sewing scissors were passed round the circle of mourners until, to an elf, they held their bells clutched tight in their hands and moved solemnly through the silent night, contributing, when it was their turn, to the shimmering coat of moonlight that silvered and grew about Wendy's corpse.

  Such were the rituals that developed in the course of their three-day vigil. But none so simple nor so moving as the ritual approach to the body, the kneeling, the gaze upon Wendy's face, the kiss upon her brow, the reluctant rise, the slow nod to Santa and his wife, and the stoop-shouldered departure.

  Mrs. Claus held together well.

  But Santa looked worse at each pass.

  The first day, he avoided their eyes. He stood there without a word, looking down at Wendy and letting her death assault him full in the face.

  The second day, he stared at them as though they were unearthly beings that angered and appalled him. Late afternoon, he seemed like a fat old man with no home, no food, no one to love.

  By the third day, the strangeness he had shown of late began to dominate. Above his forehead, twin bulges rose at the hairline as if inch-thick brass rings pressed his flesh outward in torment. And his grief grew, all that day and into the night and on into the dawn that followed.

  The odd thing about their visits to Wendy's side was that no one expected them to last more than a few hours, a day at most. They thought their shared grief would peak, that the flow of elves across the threshold would cease and Santa would lead them back to the Chapel to bury Wendy beside her mother. But even as the cloud cover grew darker and more oppressive during those three days, just so did Santa's sorrow feed the communal woe, wrapping them in ever more unbearable layers of woe. Death coaxed them hour by hour—none more so than Santa—toward some awful orgastic brink. But, like a cruel lover, he withheld release, letting the torment build and build in them.

  When Santa could stand it no more, he broke from the house with a roar of agony, sending Friedrich and Helmut tumbling into the snow. Anya followed, her mouth red and wet, her tears streaming free. Clouds churned above him like blankets of pitch. Trembling before the weeping elves, Santa ran his fingers through his beard in a gesture of supplication. Then the buttons from chin to belt popped like cherries into the snow and his red suit peeled open under his hands.

  "Help me Lord!" he supplicated, in a voice that tried their hearts. Then abruptly, full of gall and grapeshot: "Show yourself, you god of scum and shit!" Santa shouted this aloft, rending his garments, tearing off his boots, and hurling his belt away from him like a shiny black snake twisting through the air. Patches of red and puffballs of white filled the air about him and fell in fury to the snow. He stood there naked, his body wavering between two extremes: one was the round soft Santa they had always known; the other had horns and hoofs and hair, eyes that burned, and a shout that hurt their eardrums.

  "Heal me, oh my God! Bully pantheon tyrant, I spit in your face! Let me vomit my soul into oblivion, let me fling away all trace of Santa, for Santa is a sack full of sin and ashes, a fraud, a fiend, and I must be rid of him or my heart will burst! I defy you! I hurl figs at you out of my arse! May you choke on them, you slayer of the innocent!"

  And his wife wept and tore her dress and let her hair tumble down, as she knelt naked in the snow beside her husband and opened her hands to the heavens. When he was penitent, she was the sweet-faced old woman they knew; but when Santa raged and shook his fist, she swayed toward him and her body appeared to tuck and smooth and firm and tighten, fir-green tresses flowing down her back, her eyes reflecting—as the moon the sun—her mate's outrage.

  Santa's alternating rage and self-loathing washed against the rapt circle of elves. And though they were mightily confused, they too stripped and knelt, joining hands, holding them high. They keened into the clouds, weeping and swaying with the buffet of Santa's words, but giving vent to a delicious defiance when Santa veered that way.

  "Dear God," implored Saint Nicholas, "hollow me out, scoop me clean of presumption and lust." But Pan surged forth and bellowed, "Forget what the wimp says! Physician heal thyself!"

  The split raged in him, first one side of him holding high ground, then the other. "Mercy I pray. Give me, if such be Thy will, the gift of nullity. Go ahead, blast me! You scared to? Do it! Annihilate the fuck out of me! The immortal blood pounds in my skull. Naught passes before my eyes but cascades of boys and girls falling, endlessly, into the grave. They die. We live. Dear Lord, the burden crushes. Get the fuck down here! Get the fuck down here right now! We got things to duke out, you and me, and I'm raring to take you on!"

  Then it happened.

  Those in front of Santa saw the shaft of light fall upon him and strip away the rage and pain, salving his visage with soothing. They saw the body come back full and Clausean, the droll little mouth, the twinkling eyes, the rosy cheeks, the bowlful of jelly—all there in the wink of an eye. Gone the horned bellicosity. Gone the defiant fist, the goat-god's savage eyes.

  The elves gazed along the bright chute of light, up into the firmament, and their deepest pain fell from them like a mere mood, as the hand of God swept aside a thick batting of cloud: Pure love beamed down upon them from the beatitude that was the Creator's face.

  15. A Time to Rejoice

  And God carried on many conversations in that hour, as many as there were creatures to hear and be heard. Every deer and elf He took aside, off from the others, addressing his inmost hopes and fears and refreshing his parched soul with the waters of divinity.

  And each of them felt singled out and loved for his unique qualities.

  And so it was.

  But Santa and his wife, kneeling naked in foot-deep snow, He held in thrall. For He wanted all to witness the wonders in store for them.

  And when the elves had been newly dressed, inside and out, God unbound the beloved pair and spake thus to them: "Santa, Anya, do you not know how precious to Me is the least mote of your being? Can you not feel within you the pulse of My c
ontinuous creation? Does your faith falter so, is your charity turned so inward, are your hopes so blighted by misfortune, that you have grown insensible to truth?"

  Santa took Anya's hand in his. "Forgive us, Lord, our unfaith," said he. "Though immortal by Your grace, we share with all humanity feelings of love and loss, the—"

  With a flick of His fingernail, God silenced him. Then, though it was barely dawn, He suffered the sun to top the sky, moving like a mole behind the clouds. When it reached its zenith, a precise circle of cumulus irised open. Golden light coned down around Santa and his wife, so that the snow cover melted away in a wide radius about them. Beneath their knees thick grass sprouted. Around them the earth turned verdant. Soft breezes warmed their bodies. Beyond that radius, all remained ice and snow and rapt elves, and a fresh descent of snowflakes, large and clumped and fragile as puffs of dandelion.

  Now there rose up four saplings, reaching toward the heavens and thickening as they reached, resolving at last into palm trees stretched thin as Chinese handcuffs and arching out, broad-leafed, thirty feet overhead. Beneath the unclothed couple the earth rumbled and warped. Like bread rising in a rectangular tin, it plumped up and out. And the grass upon this uplifted bed, with its bedposts of palm, split and twisted into moss, luxuriant and spongy to the touch.

  Then God stretched forth His hand and beckoned past the gingerbread house into the woods. A faint snap was heard by all. Then they saw the coin, thick and clean and solid gold, rolling through the trees. Out of the hills it came, leaving a deep milled track of snow in its wake. Heinrich split apart to let it pass, and it rolled through him as feathers of snow fell and melted upon it. Onto the bed of moss it rolled, coming to rest against the palm tree at Santa's left. Rachel's face agonized out of sun-gleamed gold.

  And God said, "Though you hate the means by which it was made, love the coin. Only love the coin and all will be well."

  And He began to withdraw behind the cloud cover.

  "But Lord," Santa said, "what will become of the Tooth Fairy?"

  Anya chimed in, "And the Easter Bunny?"

  Their hearts thrilled to see God smile. And He said unto them, "Leave those two to Me."

  "But our dear Wendy—" Santa said.

  And God's smile turned enigmatic and He repeated, as He faded, His injunction: "Only love the coin." But they could scarcely hear His last word, and then He was gone.

  *****

  Fritz was struck heart-sore at God's disappearance. To judge from the groans that rose from his brethren, he was not alone. But the Father, as He had done at their first creation, inlaid His healing hand and toyed with their emotions, turning wretchedness to regret and, by degrees, to blessedness.

  God's departure drew all eyes to Santa's bower, where divine love infused the brilliant cone of light, the bed of moss it fell upon, the gleaming coin upon that bed, and the immortal pair who now laid hands upon that coin.

  *****

  Santa rolled the golden disc between them and set his hands at ten and two o'clock. Below him were Rachel's nether parts, down to the sculpted soles of her feet. "Only love the coin," he said.

  Anya placed her hands between his. "Oh, Claus, she seems in such agony." Rachel's face howled, twisted rivulets of hair streaming past her ears, her neck bent sharply back, her nipples thrust forward. The arms, mere suggestion, resolved into hands taut with vain rebuff.

  "Close your eyes, Anya," Santa suggested, doing likewise. "Close your eyes and explore her features with your fingers." His right hand moved to Rachel's rump, tracing the familiar curves of her buttocks. Touching this mockery brought back at once the self-loathing he had felt making love to the doll he had created. But those feelings he now put by, bringing to the fore all his love for the mortal woman. As he caressed her hindquarters—the golden buttocks and the gaping labia of gold between them—their year together flashed before him and he almost fancied that the cold metal warmed beneath his touch.

  "It's astonishing," Anya said, "how something made in such an awful way could capture so precisely the softness of Rachel's cheek."

  Santa felt Anya's right hand beside his left, still clutching the striated edge of the coin. "Use both hands, Anya. I've got it." Anya's fingers slipped away.

  "The breasts are simply breathtaking."

  "Are your eyes closed?" he asked.

  "Yes."

  "Touch your face to hers," Santa said. "Make her suffering your own." He ran his index and middle fingers past the gold nub of her clitoris to the inverted V of private hair, fine and curly, etched in gold. Then, defying the coin's abrupt angle there, Santa strove to push further.

  "Yes, I can feel it. Oh, Claus, she's so cold. And her mouth is stretched so wide."

  "Press your mouth to hers, Anya. Lick about her lips. Breathe into her. I think I'm starting to sense some give back here."

  "Yes. Her nipples seem to be softening. I can feel the tension leaving her hands."

  "Her mouth, Anya. Look to her mouth." The coin edge beneath his left hand no longer curved hard about. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the edges all round were pulling inward little by little. His fingers inched along Rachel's right buttock as though he were a sculptor working tough clay. He felt resistance at his fingernails but pushed on until he rounded her hip. "It's yielding, Anya!"

  "Mmmmm."

  Now Santa brought his other hand down and pushed his way through gold until he had her other hip, bone-hard at its turn but covered now with something less than metal and more than skin. His belly pressed against her buttocks as he reached around her and, fighting the stubborn metal, felt his fingers meet at her navel. He ran his hands down the flat of her tummy and found a stiff yield of hair and the start of her thighs.

  Her toes flexed against his legs.

  And something of Santa's flexed too.

  He was turned on by joy. His blood pulsed and he laughed as his growing member throbbed with love for the reviving Rachel. Into the golden gape of her vulva he eased, feeling her flesh yield and grow warm at his entry. Closing his eyes again, he leaned forcefully into the upper reaches of the coin, willing his powerful chest down along her back, willing with all his heart that his lips would not crush against flat hard metal but come to rest upon Rachel's soft neck, his beard pressed playfully into endless billows of blond hair.

  *****

  Anya's eyes were shut. Over her head, palm leaves rustled. Tropic breezes caressed her skin. Astonished murmurs came to her from some far-off dream world.

  What was reality? Hands pilloried in gold, now flexing, now responding to her hands. Rigid ropes of hair that had begun as faint suggestion, passed into a cabled mass, and now frayed and separated under Anya's touch into fibrous strands. Stiff jaw relaxing shut. A tongue losing its metallic taste, softening at the lick of Anya's tongue. The flutter of golden eyelashes against her cheek.

  Anya cried for joy. Into the moving taffy of the coin she sank her eager hands, finding there the dead woman's arms, straight down to the elbows. Her fingers explored the length of the softening torso, the ribs and midriff. Kissing her crimped lips, she sobbed along one gilt cheek.

  When Anya opened her eyes, Rachel was kneeling upon the moss, but a Rachel gilded and trembling, twisting her neck like a wild mare. Santa had her by the flanks and was moving within her. "Claus, she's not breathing!"

  "Keep loving her," he gasped, eyes on fire. "She's almost free."

  Anya lay on her back and brought her lips to Rachel's left nipple. The right one she tormented with thumb and forefinger. Bringing her free hand to Rachel's sex, she found there the glistening gold nub of flesh and danced her fingertips over it.

  Rachel arched up and stiffened.

  "Anya, we've lost her!"

  *****

  Rage.

  Bound across bedroom.

  A sharp intake of breath.

  Then pain everywhere, swift and slashing, a pain like the swift chill of a winter's dive.

  She had dropped out at once, preferring
the peace of the void. Now something coaxed her back. Hands of love pulled her toward pain.

  Suddenly she had returned. The hands, though they adored her, coaxed her into cruelty and raw hurt. Yet she craved their touch. She knew them. Through the agony, she struggled to put faces to them, caught them, lost them, saw a little girl, her little girl. Wendy!

  There came suddenly a remembrance of stretch and pressure below: Wendy emerging, coated with vernix, milking her, sleeping, raising her head, turning over, crawling, toddling, struggling with words, waving forlornly from a pre-school window, learning to read and being read to, writing notes to Mommy and Daddy and Santa Claus, playing with elves in snow, standing with her mouth ravaged and the Tooth Fairy's arms grappled about her.

  Rachel's body throbbed. Though her eyelids raised and lowered, she saw nothing. She needed to exhale, but her lungs burned at the impossible task.

  Then the pain zoomed upward and peaked. Riding her scream, it paid out bit by bit until a divine point of inflection twisted it up into pure pleasure. And death tumbled away empty-fisted. A gush of immortality shot through her and held at her center.

  Through her howls, she heard sobs upon her throat. Anya's sobs. Rachel's vision cleared and there was Anya's radiant face, and upon her shoulders Santa's kisses, and in her quim Santa's cock. And Anya was sobbing "You've come back to us, you've come back" over and over again. Rachel hugged the dear soul and kissed her, the memories flooding into her now.

  Then Santa, disengaging, fell to the moss and clipped and cuddled her like a man starved for love.

  A surge of green, shrieking with delight, descended upon them and a sweep of tiny hands lifted them into the air.