Hi all! Annabelle Hawthorne here with the next chapter of "Let's fuck Christmas...Literally!"
(Now if we could just get Starbucks to put some book art on their cups this year...)
New Reader? This is a story that started as a dude with a nymph in his tub and is now about a dude fighting the Krampus. There were a few chapters between then and now, so you may want to pop back and get caught up the long way.
Returning Reader? Welcome back!
As always, thanks for your continued support. I've been inundated with (mostly) nice emails from you, and would like to gently remind some of you that each book is comprised of chapters that contribute to a whole novel. There will simply be times where the erotic elements are a bit light, but I always try to balance it out later on.
(Or maybe the erotic element is secretly edging, and I'm just light years ahead of my time, whatever makes you happiest)
Anyways, this chapter will feature a scene that has been oft requested, so I hope I do it justice. There's some holiday spice coming in the pages ahead, so kick back, relax and let's all get
Caught in the Present
When Lily first caught sight of the Pacific Islands, two thoughts occurred to her. The first of these was that it was far warmer than the US had been, which caused her to start sweating under her hat. It had been easy enough to remove the sweat glands from her forehead, but that fudging hat was a different story. Over the last few hours, she had tried everything to remove the offensive article of clothing, but it refused to budge. She had even debated letting Tick Tock bite off the top of her head, but worried about getting bounced out of the time lock by doing so.
The second thing that occurred to her was that there should be daylight here in the islands. There wasn't. In fact, it was just as dark as it had been when they left the east coast of the U.S., and there was no rational reason for it. Curious what Santa Grim would offer as an explanation, she asked him about it.
"It's Christmas magic," he explained as they descended toward the first island. "It does what it needs to do."
"Fudging figures," she muttered as they approached their first home. Cerberus hovered in the air about ten feet over a shack on the beach. Death pulled out Santa's list and reviewed it.
"Okay then, we need presents for Mabel, Rose, and Timmy." He looked at Lily expectantly.
"Those are some very white names for Polynesia," Lily replied, not sure what he wanted from her. "You sure we've got the right stop?"
"It says here they are on vacation from Maine," he informed her. "And if you could grab their presents from the bag, that would greatly speed things up. Poor Timmy is worried Santa won't find them this year. It's a good thing we're on the case."
"Somebody kill me," she groaned, then smiled upon realizing that had gotten past the filter. "So I have to look through the bag for their gifts?"
"Just stick your arm in and think of those names," he said.
"Lots of people are named Rose," she argued, but shoved her hand in Santa's bag. A package was shoved into her hand, so she removed it.
"The process is very well automated," Death told her, holding out his arms. She handed over two gifts for Mabel, one for Rose, and then three for Timmy. Death's arms were very full as he moved towards the edge of the sleigh.
"How are you getting inside?" she asked.
"Christmas magic." He winked and stepped backward off the sleigh. The tails of his cloak fluttered out from beneath Santa's coat like the wings of a crow before he struck the roof hard and slid across its surface. Death dropped all of the presents when he spilled off the roof, landing face down in the sand. His bare bony legs kicked out as he struggled to extricate himself.
If Lily had been inclined to help, it still would have been impossible. She was laughing so hard that she had crouched down in the sleigh, clutching her stomach as tears rolled down her cheeks. It was a good minute before she could pull herself together and look back over the side.
Death had managed to free himself, his skull twisted into a scowl as he picked up the presents he had dropped. He shook sand out of his sleeves, then brushed the presents off. Somehow they had all survived, though the wrapping paper on one of Timmy's gifts was torn.
"You're supposed to be Santa Claus, not Sandy--" Lily ducked out of the way as Death hurled a stone at her. Cerberus let out a series of snorts that could have been laughter.
"This is why you got coal for Christmas," Death declared as he tried to turn the latch on the front door. It clicked open and he wandered inside.
A few minutes later, Death returned, pausing to shake some more sand out of his hat. Cerberus lowered the sleigh to allow the Reaper to get in.
"So what went wrong with the dismount?" Lily asked, hiding her grin behind the pom pom of her hat.
"I'm not sure." Death pulled out the manual again. "The house didn't have a chimney, so I just assumed...ah, okay. There's some stuff in the chapter on entering homes that I missed. Entrance is possible through any natural entry, or one that allows the flow of air, like a chimney or a window. For difficult to reach entryways, there's a safety rope."
"I didn't see a safety rope." Lily looked around her feet and was surprised to find a coiled length of rope that was white with red ribbons woven through it. "That definitely wasn't here a minute ago."
Death waved his fingers at her. "Christmas magic, my dear demon. Come, Cerberus, to the next home."
The next home was only a block away, and Death had the hellhound park the sleigh on the ground this time. The name he read was Chinese, and Lily pulled two gifts from the bag with hanzi characters written on the tags. Death delivered the presents again and came out with a cookie in each hand.
"Little Bao remembered to leave Santa cookies," he explained, then handed one to Lily.
"How kind of you." She took a bite and winced. "This is very stale."
"Indeed. The four I ate were not very good." Death held the remaining cookie up. "And don't worry, I didn't forget about you." He tossed the cookie to Tick Tock, who snatched it out of the air with a ribbon tongue.
"Should you be feeding that thing after midnight?" Lily asked.
"I am unaware of any time constraints on mimics or cookies." Death snapped the reins and they were off again.
They established a good rhythm as they delivered hundreds of presents. Lily had Death read the list between houses so she could prepare gifts in advance. Death delivered most of them by walking through the front door. Apparently the world was still frozen inside the homes as he dropped off the packages, so there was no fear of discovery.
Without any proper way to keep time, Lily had no idea how long it took. Between Death falling off of a couple more roofs and that time Cerberus crashed into an apartment complex, the deliveries flowed together in her mind like a collapsing dream.
In a way, it made sense. It was a similar trick to what she could accomplish in the Dreamscape. An hour in the real world could become years inside a dream, but the human brain would find a way to compress that information upon waking. An ordinary mind was likely to forget enough details that it may as well have been an hour.
When staying with Eulalie and Velvet last fall, she had done something similar for their father, allowing him several months with his deceased wife in the Dreamscape. While awake, he didn't even question the time distortion. Instead, his dreams were just a montage of pleasant memories, the time dilation forgotten.
At the sudden thought of Velvet, Lily scowled. Her passing had left a scar on Mike's soul. Over the summer, she and Dana had gone down to Florida to take revenge for the death of their friend, but got caught up in something much bigger.
She pushed the whole event out of her mind. It was only going to make her angry all over again.
Australia was similar to the islands, but the population clusters were thick enough that Death would often return to the sleigh just long enough for presents to the next house. Lily had noticed back in the islands that they didn't stop at every home, even if there were signs of children. Death thought that the children had been naughty, or even no longer believed, but it didn't matter. That was always a few minutes saved, and it was going to add up quickly as the eternal night progressed.
They were somewhere above Sydney when they stopped the sleigh over an opulent home covered in Christmas lights. Lily knew something was up by the way the windows on the house sparkled as if tagged with fairy lights.
Death frowned at the list, his gaze moving to the house and back again.
"What's wrong?" she asked. Not that she cared, but she didn't feel like wasting time just sitting there. As long as they were busy making deliveries, she didn't notice how long it took.
"Er, nothing." Death looked at Lily, then back at the list, then the house.
"C'mon, what's the problem? I don't want to sit here all...night." She gestured at the moon up above, which had followed them the entire trip. "If there's an issue, let's just skip this place. Kid looks like they're probably getting a ton of presents anyway, look." She pointed at a window in the front of the house. Through it, a massive tree decorated in glass ornaments had been packed to the brim with presents.
Death cleared his throat, which made an eerie sound that reminded Lily of a creaking house. "Well, technically, there isn't a problem."
"Then let's get to it. What's the name?"
"William."
Lily reached into the bag and was surprised when nothing was pressed into her hand. She reached even deeper and tried to grab the first thing she felt, but the presents slid away from her touch. "What the fudge?"
"This child requires something else from Santa," Death explained. "You see, not everyone needs a material gift."
"Okay, then what is it?"
Death turned the list to show her. William's full name was scrawled in beautiful golden calligraphy. Just off to the side were the words Personal Visit.
Lily laughed. "Oh, that is rich! He's going to be so fudging scared when he gets Jack Skellington instead of the big man himself!"
"And that, my dear friend, is the problem." Death tugged his beard away from his face, revealing a bony jaw. "He might not believe that I am only helping Santa, you see."
"No poop." Lily scowled. Maybe her vocabulary could be more extensive, but she hated that the filter chose words for her.
"If only I had the ability to alter my form, it would be no problem." Death looked at Lily.
