Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups (9 page)

Santa chuckled. He glanced at Anya, then made as if to rise. "Let me put some clothes on and we'll be on our—"

She restrained him, firm hand on shoulder. "No need to go anywhere. I want you here. Right now."

"But Anya—"

"She can't see or hear us. She won't know what's going on."

Santa shook his head. "I will not make love to you lying beside Anya and that's final."

She tried coaxing. "Come on, Santa, it turns me on so, the thought of sucking you off while your frumpy old wife just lies there." She nuzzled his neck. "Don't you want to see what it's like, just once, to rock your dull Anya in the rhythms of our lovemaking?"

Again he refused.

The Tooth Fairy exploded with rage. She tore back Santa's sheets and blankets, exposing him and Anya in their nightclothes. She stood over Santa, straddling him. "Foolish elf, look at my body. Take it all in. Think about the taste of my breasts, how you love to cradle your head here and finger the sweetness between my legs."

Santa was, for the moment, stunned.

"Now look at your wife." Her hands swirled over the sleeping woman, as smart and sharp as fans snapping open. Anya's nightgown went transparent. "Look at this wretched excuse for a woman. Her face a map of wrinkles; two tired old dugs as ugly as they are flaccid; nipples that would shame a sow; a flabby belly that looks more like cottage cheese than flesh; a few spare wisps of crotch hair, dull as flax; an old crone's cunt, as tired and sexless as the lady herself; legs veined and thick; feet grown old and idiosyncratic from years of pointless ambling. Good God, what do you see in her?"

Santa's face burned red during this outrage. Now he grabbed her wrists, pulled her atop him, and drilled into her face with his eyes. "Cover my wife."

"Just tell me—"

He shook her hard. "Do as I say."

Her necklace rattled above him, her breasts swaying with the force of his ire. She glared at him, then shot a scornful glance at Anya, whose nightgown regained its bulk, pattern, and opacity. She snapped back into Santa's anger, writhing upon him. "I've been naughty, haven't I? Maybe you'd like to punish me. Slap me around some. Give me a good spanking."

When Santa opened his mouth to speak, the Tooth Fairy spat into it. His lips flecked white with spittle. She darted forward and pressed her mouth to his, tonguing deep as though to retrieve her saliva. Through the nightshirt, her labia found his rod and rocked upon it like a hen upon an egg. By Zeus, she'd fuck the bastard into loving her if she had to!

He clamped his huge hands tight around her head and pushed her lips away. "Not next to my wife!" he shouted. "Not here!" Her skull strained toward buckling under his grip.

Still she rocked upon his hard-on, crying out at the bone-bending pressure of his hands, laughing her defiance. Her hands yanked at his nightshirt, pulling it above his waist. She straddled him then and her flesh closed about him.

Throwing aside all consequence, he gave off hurting his mistress and hugged her as tight as he could, raining kisses on her face and arching up to meet her as she rode him. And ride him she did, skillfully, as a moth flits and flirts for hours near a flame, swooping near, tempting the heat, singeing a wing, until at last it dips and plunges to a perfect death.

*****

After six hours of bug-eyed voyeurism, the Easter Bunny lost track of how many penile anointings he had graced Santa's cottage with. Enough anyway to turn the snow at his feet to slush.

No matter.

Satiety had come at last. He had wearied of watching these two inexhaustible fornicators and the lovely woman caught in mid-snore beside them. Tired too he became of fending off recurring notions of some long-forgotten role in the world's creation. Whatever he might have been in the past, he was the Easter Bunny now. Time to get in there, do his job, and move on.

He hopped away from the cottage in a zigzag through the snow. Then he sprang up, twisted about so that he once again faced the window, and bounded toward it with the full thrust of his back legs.

Silent as moonlight, the Easter Bunny tumbled through the glass onto the bare wood floor at the foot of Santa's bed. Warm air wrapped him round. The sounds of sucking, no longer muffled by glass, filled his ears. Soundlessly, he padded toward the naked lovers, nearly indifferent in the face of their umpteenth variation on mutual orality. Yet he felt compelled to move in for closer inspection.

It was the glow about them that drew him now. That and the rich aroma of lust fulfilled. He was stunned by the tightly packed beauty of the Tooth Fairy, her hands leaning upon the fat inner thighs of her lover, her lips moving up and down in slow undulation. This close to her, he felt an abrupt rush of danger, a violence in his groin that made him shy off, avert his eyes from her, and fix them on her lover.

God damn your jolly old soul, Santa Claus, he thought, surprised at the depth of his anger. Not only do kids love you more, but your penis is lots bigger, easily twice the size of mine. You enjoy such wonderful repute, yet now I find you're nothing but an adulterer, betraying your adorable mate by allowing this fairy slut to . . . to . . . .

A chill coursed up his spine. Would anyone, he wonder, ever do that amazing thing to him? Or was he forever confined to merely imagining its delights, a furtive witness to the fellating of others?

At the pillow, Santa
mmmm
'd into the Tooth Fairy's vulva. The Easter Bunny's troubled eyes sought the elf's face above his matted beard. Fancy house, fine wife, a voracious lover, the untainted adoration of human beings of every stripe and color, a huge longlasting loveshaft. To top it off, a sickening excess of generosity oozed from every pore. It made him burn with envy, this Clausean outpouring of good will and gratitude, gift after gift after gift.

His eyes narrowed. He reached a paw into the void and pulled out the most pitiful Easter basket he could find. A wretched affair it was, with a handle on the verge of breaking, one tired clump of grass, a chocolate bunny staved in on one side and tan-crumbled with age, and nothing but red jelly beans.

Santa, he knew, despised red jelly beans.

Setting it down by the rutting elf's slippers, he hopped soundlessly around the bed and raised his head to study Santa's wife.

Anya was her name. Until this night, he had never really paused to appreciate her. She was a vision, this Anya. For all the tug and tussle of Santa and the Tooth Fairy, Anya in the pristine calm of slumber struck him as far more erotic than they. The shape of her head was so like a rabbit's, her hair so like soft white fur.

For the longest time, the Easter Bunny found himself staring at the top button of her nightgown. How breathtaking it would be, he thought, if she were to open those innocent eyes and, fixing him with a fathomless look of purity, undo that one blue button.

At last he looked away, a frenzy inside. The basket he pulled out of the void this time was usually reserved for spoiled starlets and the children of the filthy rich. Obscenely large and bound in gold cellophane, this Easter basket, whose crafted handweaving was itself a work of art, boasted all manner of fruit and nuts, in and out of chocolate coatings both light and dark; an extended family of bunnies, solid milk chocolate through and through save for hearts of marzipan; rich caches of jelly beans waiting to be discovered among the hand-painted Easter eggs and spun-gold chicks of marshmallow; and all of it bedded in the finest, most delicate strands of emerald green grass his machines could manufacture. This he set on the floor where Anya would be certain to see it on waking.

Then, rising to his full height and drinking in one last time the lovely Anya, radiant against the loathsome backdrop of jolly old Saint Nick locked in his fairy lover's embrace, the Easter Bunny turned to the window and leaped out into the night.

*****

When finally she rose to leave, Santa grabbed her to him, kissed her long and hard, and said, one finger raised to admonish: "Next time, our love-nest in the woods."

She took his finger between her lips, tasted herself there, then cradled her face in his palm. "All right, my big fat fucker. But one request."

He raised a bushy eyebrow.

"Think about dumping her."

Santa scowled. "Incorrigible, aren't you?" He gave her a smart slap on the rump. "Now for the love of God, let me get some sleep."

She threw him a look of pure chaos and, with a toss of her head, vanished into the night air.

For the longest time, Santa propped himself up in bed and pondered the duplicitous life he'd been leading. He ached for the simplicity and goodness of his life before Christmas '69. But he couldn't imagine abandoning his trysts with the Tooth Fairy. Finally, he cast a troubled glance at Anya, turned his back on her, and surrendered himself to sleep.

5. Mounting Frustrations

Your typical rabbit—if asked and capable of giving intelligible reply—would choose a temperate habitat, an ideal mix of grassland and woodland, affording plenty of good grazing in tandem with dry, quickly accessible cover. But the Easter Bunny was not your typical rabbit, neither in size, nor in longevity, nor in his taste in living arrangements.

Save for Easter Eve and his nocturnal prowlings at bedroom windows, the Easter Bunny kept almost exclusively to his burrow, as dark and dank a hole in the ground as his Easter leavings were light and airy. He was there now, some six months after watching Santa betray his wife with the Tooth Fairy. Through the dimness of the low archway that separated Petunia's sleeping quarters from his, the metallic gleam of her eyes peered back at him.

"I know, I know, dearest," he said in answer to her weary look. "It's the end of October and I've been going on and on about this since April. So maybe you're right, maybe I am just a teensy bit obsessed. But God bless the jolly old bastard, Petunia, it isn't fair. The simpering Coke-drinker's got two mates, one for his lust, one for his love. I'm not even going to mention the countless copulatrixes he no doubt encounters on his rounds, wanton flibbertigibbets with too much eggnog in their noggins, waiting undraped by their fireplaces and dangling sprigs of mistletoe from their bellybuttons; I'm not even going to mention them. Let's confine ourselves, for the sake of my sanity, to the ones I
know
about. My point is, Santa's got two luscious ladies and I've got nobody."

Mistake. He glanced in at her and immediately wished he hadn't been so blunt. "Sorry, dearest. But we've been over this before. I love you, indeed I do. You're a good listener, you're compliant, you don't eat much, and you're no small consolation in a pinch. But let's face it, love, you just don't have what it takes when it comes to getting down and dirty. Both of us know that, though we like to pretend otherwise. I'm not blaming you, sweetheart. That's just the way things are."

No sense in being subtle. He squinted at her through the dimness. Clever little creature. If he didn't know better, he'd swear she was weeping. Fine, that was just hunky-dory with him. But if she was going to sulk about it, she could damn well sulk in private. Let her cry all the crocodile tears she wanted. "I'm off to survey my domain, Petunia," he said, trying to keep the anger out of his voice, "to look in perchance on the poultry." Now there were some females who knew how to move it. Petunia could do worse than take lessons.

If the archway had boasted a door, the Easter Bunny would have slammed it. Instead he turned tail, skritched some loose dirt in her direction with his back claws, and dashed from his quarters into the exercise area. There, with all the embittered zeal of one who works at having fun, he ran to and fro in the wide expanse of darkness, stopping on occasion to gnaw on scraps of bark or throw himself down and roll in the dirt, then leaping up again to resume his mad career about the perimeter. When he'd had enough, he sat in the dead middle and thrust his huge ears up to catch and amplify the burrow's activity.

Dull. Boring. Downright soporific.

His eyes pinched with envy. He pictured the North Pole as a place rich in sound: the prancing and snorting of reindeer; the shouts and laughter of elves at work and play; the chill night wind whistling in the chimney; the feathering of snow upon snow; the honeyed voice of Anya calling her husband home to supper; and then . . . the sounds of the bedroom. No! He pressed his paws to his temples and clamped his eyelids shut, refusing to upset himself again with that.

But here in his burrow, what sort of soundscape greeted him? From the sleeping quarters on the right, the sound of worms eating earth, of straw settling, of Petunia in silent pout. Ahead of him, where motes of dust drifted in the dim tunnel leading upward, the faint buzz of forest life, too far removed to distinguish its strands. At his back, the rhythmic weave and tumble of baskets being assembled, the gush and cut of colored grass, the counting-house clatter of jelly beans spilling into bins and hoppers, the dull hum of row upon row of candy-making machines: all of it set in motion by the Creator on the day He had made him the Easter Bunny, running unattended since.

And to his left, the sounds of the laying house.

*****

The distant brooding of innumerable hens. That was the first sound that fired his ears when God created him. Crouched upon this very spot, his eyes not yet opened, he heard God resume a thought, speaking above a comforting wash of hen-sound.

"This burrow shall be your home, a place of rest and solace. And men shall call you the Easter Bunny . . ."

His lids opened to effulgent light. His eyes were bathed in blessedness. He knew that, moments before, he had been something other than what he was, a scaly thing, a thing of wind and bruises, a brutish sinuosity inlaid with pride, a reveler in . . . in what? The otherness slipped away faster than he could grasp it. Pure Easter Bunny filled the gaps.

"After the New Zealand White, a feisty breed and fair, have I modeled you. Yet, though your natural bent be rabbitlike, I have given you the stature and speech of men . . ."

He leaped joyously into the air, feeling the surge of immortality in his veins. About his new-created home he flew, pausing to groom his coat or lie on his side in the straw with his hind legs stretched to their limit.