by Sean Shake
“Hey yourself,” I said, sitting down with them. “Did you leave?” I gestured at the food.
“No. People bring you food here!” Alexa said excitedly. “Isn’t that amazing?”
“Yeah, actually it kind of is. Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You needed your beauty rest,” Rue said. “Though you’ll never be a beauty.”
“You don’t sleep much, then?”
She scowled at me.
I looked at Erica. “Aren’t you worried about a sunburn? You’re pretty pale.”
She stretched out her arms and yawned. “I’m not worried about anything.”
“That makes one of us.” I snatched Rue’s chopsticks from her hand and pulled her plate in front of me.
“Hey! I was eating that.”
“Yes you were.” I shoveled some noodles into my mouth. I was surprisingly hungry. “So,” I asked, “what’s on the agenda for today? The elves are still sleeping, so we can’t take them across yet.”
“You should be revitalized enough to make some more of them,” Alexa said. “We still only have eight, or nine if Erica here is an elf. Which I think she is.”
Erica nodded. “I like making things.”
“So I’m basically one-tenth of the way there,” I said dejectedly.
“Don’t sound so down,” Rue said. “You did it in one night.”
“Yeah, but we only have eleven days until Christmas. And you said we needed the elves before then. And I only get ten points an hour. At ten points per conversion, that’s like eight days unless I can sleep a lot longer than I usually do each day.”
“Oh. You know, you’re right. You should feel down. You need to step it up. You need at least twenty more girls today.”
“That’s impossible. I don’t have enough points.”
“Sleep more.”
“That’s harder than it sounds.”
“Well, twenty more wouldn't be full capacity, but would be enough to get started in earnest.”
“How long is it going to take you to make reindeer?”
“No time at all. The hard part will be finding them.”
“Don’t you think you should start doing that?”
“Why? We won’t need them until we have the sleigh rebuilt and ready to go. So we won’t need them until Christmas Eve. I’ll probably get them the day before just to be safe.”
“So basically we’re waiting on my dick to recover?”
“Basically,” Alexa said sheepishly. “We need the elves to rebuild the workshops, and then get started on all the things they need to make.”
“Yeah, I have a question about that. So if elves make all these gifts, then… I don’t understand. Because it’s not like parents don’t buy their kids gifts. And I’m pretty sure people would have noticed by now if the kids were getting gifts they hadn’t bought themselves. So, how does that work?”
Alexa and Rue looked at each other, seeming to communicate silently.
They did that a lot. I guess that was because they’d known each other for so long. Apparently since Alexa was a child.
I wasn’t sure if that meant she’d known Rue as child as well, or if reindeer just lived a lot longer. Hadn’t Rue said something about being like a hundred years old?
Hell for that matter, I realized I didn’t even know how old Alexa actually was.
When I’d first ran into her, I’d guessed she was maybe twenty-one or twenty-two, but that’d had a lot to do with her outfit and the fact that she was drunk and walking around carelessly in public. It seemed like a teenager would be more careful.
But studying her face now in the light of day, she might only be in her late teens.
Before I could ask, Rue said, “That’s kind of complicated. So, we generally don’t make gifts for adults. So any gifts adults buy for each other, that’s fine. But kids…“ She looked at Alexa again.
“We make gifts for kids. That’s what you see when someone writes a gift is from Santa. It’s because it really is. Adults don’t remember that they didn’t buy their kids those gifts, and so it works out."
“But don’t they notice that their kids got gifts they didn’t spend money on?"
“Well… You see, they did spend money on them."
"I’m confused," I said.
"Yeah, it’s confusing.”
"Do you want to elucidate?"
"Not really," Rue said, shaking her head. "Not now anyway. You’ll understand better once you live through a Christmas. Otherwise it’s really hard to understand.”
“Okay…” I didn’t see what could be so hard to explain about it. They somehow had to make it so that adults didn’t realize they were not buying gifts for their kids. And other people’s kids, and grandkids.
I shoveled a last mouthful of noodles in, then pushed the plate back in front of Rue.
“Aren’t you kind,” she said, picking up the chopsticks.
I stood. "I’m going to go find some more girls to turn into elves. I can only fit so many in my truck at once though, so I’ll have to find somewhere to—”
“You can use my boat,” Erica said, pointing to the boat that I’d seen last night on her private dock. “You could go to the Sandbar. Lots of women there.”
“Oh yeah, that’s nearby,” I said.
“Just a short boat ride,” she agreed.
“And it’s yours?”
“Yeah. It can fit, easily, thirty people.”
“Wow, that’s great. I don’t have much experience with boats though.”
Erica stared at me. “You live in Miami. How do you not have experience with boats?”
“Not all of us have inheritances. About the only boat I could afford would be an inflatable dinghy. Even a Hobie Cat would be out of my price range. Actually come to think of it, even a dinghy would be out of my price range. Maybe a kayak.”
“Well it’s easy, I’ll show you how it works.”
“So you’re finally gonna get dressed?"
"No,” she said, disgusted. “Why would I do that?"
47
So I got dressed—Erica didn’t—and she ran me through how to use the boat, waving at people when they passed as they stared in awe at her, not trying to hide herself from them.
The boat was actually quite simple to drive. It was a power catamaran, the kind of boat with two hulls and a flat platform up top.
It was pretty roomy, though thirty seemed like it would be a tight fit.
Erica left the boat to join Alexa and Rue, and they watched from the table as I pulled away from the dock.
Without hitting anything.
A good start.
I piloted carefully, and so it took me almost twenty minutes to reach the outer edges of the sandbar.
I stopped here because going in any farther would mean navigating between other boats, and I didn’t want to risk that.
Plus there were plenty of people around already.
I dropped the anchor like Erica had showed me how to, then jumped off the boat.
As soon as I landed in the shallow water, I realized I was wearing my Santa suit.
Crap. Too late to do anything about it now. I wasn’t about to go all the way back empty-handed.
Maybe people would mistake it for a weird scuba suit.
Also, I was caring less and less what other people thought.
Walking around with a demon and a reindeer would do that to a guy.
As would being able to get any girl you wanted just by walking up to her and grabbing her like you were shopping for fruit.
Nearly all the ones here were even more scantily clad than the ones at the nightclub—seeing how this was a beach and they were in tiny bathing suits.
I spotted one girl who drew my attention, though I couldn’t tell if it was because I was actually attracted to her, or if it was her pink hair that drew me.
Most likely though, it was because of how tiny the bathing suit she was wearing was.
The bottoms had no waistband, just something tha
t somehow stayed on between her legs without one. It looked like those bands girls wore in their hair to keep it off their foreheads, just turned to the side to cover her crotch.
She wore no top, but instead stickers over her nipples, reminding me of Vampirella from the nightclub last night.
I decided this pink-haired vixen would make a great elf, and went up to her.
But when I took her hand, she looked at me through her large sunglasses like I were crazy.
I tried to pull her, but she resisted.
“Hi?” she said.
“Come on,” I urged.
“Where?”
“To my boat.” This was weird. I’d never had to say anything before.
Course, I’d only done it twice before. Or nine times, if I counted each girl individually.
I realized I hadn’t checked my points, just assumed they’d recharged. Was that it? I couldn’t attract girls without enough points?
It didn’t seem to cost points to attract them though. Not that I had noticed.
I quickly brought up my HUD.
STATS
Points
Available: 94
Generation rate: 10 per Earth hour while sleeping
Max capacity: 125
Energy
Fire: 100%
Ice: 100%
Progress
Unique Gifts: 0 created, 0 planned
Total Gifts: 0 created
Households Remaining: 2.1 billion
Percent Complete: 0%
Resources
Sleigh: N/A
Reindeer: 1
Elves: 0
Workshops: 0
Headquarters: 1, hidden
Spirits
Spirit of Christmas: 5
Spirit of Ice: 27
Spirit of Fire: 8
Spirit of Air: 0
Spirit of Joy: 0
Spirit of Time: 0
I had enough points to convert her, but I didn’t know how I was getting—
“Does this work for you?” she asked, breaking me out of my thoughts. “Going around in a high-end wetsuit and just grabbing girls?”
“Yes, actually. It usually does.”
“You’re hot, but not that hot.” She pulled her hand from mine and started walking away.
“Hey,” I called after her. I wasn’t sure why I was so interested in her. There were hundreds of other girls around. She wasn’t even a perfect ten or anything. She was pretty, and her ass was nice, but not spectacular.
I didn’t think it could just be her outfit.
I caught up to her, and she looked up at me, raising an eyebrow underneath her large sunglasses.
I pulled her sunglasses off, thinking maybe that was it.
She squinted against the bright sun and shielded her eyes. “What’s wrong with you? What are you doing?”
“Come with me to my boat.”
“I don’t know if you’ve looked around, but pretty much everyone here has a boat, so that’s not a very good line in this situation.”
“It’s not a line. I want you to come to my boat.”
“Why?”
“So we can have sex.”
“Wow. That’s… pretty forward.”
“So are you going to come?”
“Wow, you set me right up for that one. I’m gonna say no.”
She grabbed her sunglasses from me, put them back on, then walked away, leaving me standing there, staring after her.
Then she was gone, disappeared into the crowd, her pink hair nowhere in sight.
I walked around after that halfheartedly looking for other girls, but not able to get her out of my mind.
Eventually I found one that sparked my interest, but was gun-shy about going up to her, worried I’d somehow lost the touch.
But I hadn’t, and she went along with me eagerly, laughing as I picked her up and slung her over my shoulder.
So did the next nine girls, though I only threw one more over my shoulder—I only had two after all.
I spun around to look at the entourage following me—as I had two hot asses blocking my view and couldn’t simply turn my head. Ten girls was a lot, but not enough, at least according to Rue.
So I put the girls I was carrying down—it was drawing a lot of attention—and wandered around some more, gathering up more babes.
But the more I gathered, the more dejected I grew.
Which didn’t make sense given the awesomeness of my task. Literally, I was walking around finding hot girls to bang, and I was feeling sorry for myself.
What an asshole.
But I really wanted that pink-haired girl. And I didn’t even like pink-haired girls! The more I thought about her and the more I thought about how she rejected me, the more I wanted her.
But I pushed on, looking for other ones.
After gathering eighteen girls, it started looking suspicious—even without any of them over my shoulders—a huge party of people walking around, all hot girls except for me.
People started taking pictures and asking me what club I worked for, thinking I was some kind of promoter.
So I decided to bring them all back to the boat, and then gather another ten or so, before heading back to Erica’s.
I’d have to sleep again before I could get to them, but might as well stock up while I was out.
I told them all to wait on the boat and then left to gather some more girls.
I was barely even paying attention at this point, just going to ones that vaguely drew my interest.
I couldn’t believe I was going to have to sleep with all of them. Just the thought of it was tiring.
I mean, look, don’t get me wrong, I was eager to. I just knew that after the first five of them, I was going to be much less eager, and much more tired.
Perhaps due to my mood, it took me another half hour or so to gather another nine girls.
I led them all back to my boat, almost getting lost, though my sense of direction seemed to have improved since becoming the Santa Claus.
As I was walking back, nine beautiful girls around me, I frowned, squinting at a girl doing a handstand in the water fifty feet away.
I wasn’t sure exactly what drew my attention to her, other than the fact that she was doing a handstand.
Then she came out of the handstand by doing a rather impossible-looking flip, and I saw that it was her.
The pink-haired girl who had rejected me earlier.
Only now, she was wearing a different bathing suit, a one-piece, and her sunglasses were different as well.
I didn’t know what made me go over there, perhaps the fact that she had rejected me and I wanted to try again.
She saw me coming, and started to turn away, but then something made her stop.
“Hi,” I said, stopping in front of her.
“These all yours?” she asked, gesturing at all the girls surrounding me.
I glanced at them, then back at my ‘challenge’. “Yeah.”
“What do you see in him?” she asked one of the girls, apparently at random.
The girl blinked rapidly, then looked at me, then back to her. “I… I don’t know. I was just, I was just following him.” Then she looked at me one more time, back to the pink-haired girl, then started wandering off.
“Hey,” I called out, feeling a sense of déjà vu, “where are you going?”
But the girl didn’t turn around, didn’t respond.
I glared at the pink-haired girl. “What the hell was that about?”
“I should be asking you the same thing.”
“Who are you?”
“Who are you?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“Same.”
I glared at her harder.
She glared back. She put her hands on her hips, a move I couldn’t match, and one which had the effect of drawing my eyes down to her crotch, and the very small area that her one-piece bikini covered there. It didn’t even span the entire gap, but instead wa
s just thin enough to cover her folds.
I shook my head.
What was she doing to me?
When I looked back up to her sunglass-covered eyes, she was grinning.
“Come with me,” I said, trying my luck again.
“No,” she said simply.
“Aren’t you at all interested? Why I have all these girls?”
“I don’t need to be. I know what you are.”
“What is that?”
“Something unnatural.”
“That’s not very specific.”
“It doesn’t need to be. Besides, you didn’t deny it.”
“Maybe that’s just because I’m not in the habit of telling crazy people they’re crazy when they’re very hot girls that I’d like to bring home and give mind-blowing orgasms to.”
She pointed at me. “See, if you had started with that, you might’ve got my attention.”
“I have your attention now. So come with me.”
“We could stand here going around in circles all day, but we’re not going to get anywhere.”
“What’d you do to that other girl?” I asked, changing the subject because I realized she was right.
“I just let her see the truth.”
“What truth is that?”
“That you’re not as hot as she thought you were. Not nearly as magnetic. Whatever you are, you need practice. That was too easy.”
“And what exactly are you?”
She shook her head “Uh-uh. You don’t get to ask me that.”
“What if I tell you what I am.”
She looked at me thoughtfully, moving her hands from her hips and crossing her arms, drawing my attention to her breasts, which pushed up as she did.
Goddammit.
When I looked at her face again she was wearing that wicked grin once more.
“You really are inexperienced. I have to admit, I am a bit curious. There’s only a few things I can think of, and it seems strange that any of them would be here in Miami. Not exactly a hotspot for anything but serial killers. And serial-killer killers.”
“So that’s a yes then?”
“No. But it’s not a no.”
“Well I’m about to leave, so you better decide in the next five seconds.”
She said nothing, just stared at me.
I shrugged. “Have it your way. Have a nice life, mystery lady.” I turned and started to walk away, the girls—only eight now—following me.
