Christmas Cracker 1

Author's Note: Thanks very much to Krissta and NaokoSmith for their tremendous help in editing this story for me.

* * * * *

"Oh fuck yes! You sexy slut! Take it! Take it right to the balls!" said Santa.

The jolly old elf was stood in his bedroom merrily pounding into an elven assistant. She was bent over the desk in front of him, propping herself up on her elbows, and trying very hard not to yawn. They were supposed to be checking his list by going over the names of the naughty people and the nice ones for filing purposes. It wasn't like Santa was in the present delivering business any more. In fact, he didn't do much at all these days apart from drink, eat, and fuck. She'd shown up hoping to get the work done and as usual had found herself on the receiving end of some chubby Santa sex.

"Oh. Wow. Santa. You're so good at that." She propped her cheek on her hand and rolled her eyes.

Not seeming to notice her lack of enthusiasm, Santa continued to chug away. His red pants were down around his ankles and his long coat was open to reveal a bare chest and enormous gut. What had perhaps once been a fluffy, white beard was matted with brown whiskey stains. Even then, he couldn't keep a bottle out of his hand. He waved it about above him, splashing the stuff everywhere whilst holding onto the bare hips of the elf with his other hand.

"Right to the balls!" he shouted before giving her bare ass a spank.

She had her own leggings around her ankles and her green smock was pushed up over her hips to leave her ass bare and her pussy open to the enthusiastic fucking. Although, despite that enthusiasm, going the length of Santa's cock wasn't exactly a long journey. Being the dutiful helper, she'd often tried to sound pleased the first hundred times or so this had happened. These days she found that the man hardly even noticed the boredom in her voice.

Serving Santa always made her happy, but in this particular case it was in more of an abstract happiness.

"Oh fuck! So fucking good!" He hissed the words through his teeth. "One eight is eight! Two eights are sixteen! Three eights are twenty four!"

Great. The old "lets recite multiplication tables aloud to keep from cumming early" dirty talk. He sure knew how to light a girl's pussy on fire. She sighed with resignation and started thinking about how she might decorate her Christmas tree that year.

Behind her, Santa continued panting and gasping between yelling out multiples of eight. His cheeks and nose had turned awfully red and sweat was pouring from his brow. Inside his chest, his heart thundered along against the will of all those mince pies and a copious amount of hard liquor.

"Nine eights are... Hgnk!"

"Yeah, seventy two is what you're looking for there, big guy," she passively filled in. He wasn't exactly the brightest bulb in the drawer, and often needed help with the larger numbers.

Unfortunately this time his struggle wasn't with mathematics but rather with his heart which had just decided that enough was enough. Behind her, she felt him fall away. A very large thud shook the floorboards. She glanced over her shoulder and her eyes widened with genuine emotion for the first time that day. There was Santa, lying on his back with his eyes wide open and his pants still around his ankles. Despite the enthusiastic salute of his three and a half inch long boner, he didn't appear to be breathing.

"Santa? Santa! Oh shit!"

* * * * *

Wendall Klaus awoke to the sound of his telephone ringing, and immediately wished he'd had the good sense to destroy the thing. It was a very old land-line wired up to his bedside table, and as such it was impossible to send to voicemail. Gritting his teeth, he reached out and grabbed the receiver before pulling it over to the side of his face. He did not take his head from the pillow.

"Wendall?" an uncertain voice called from the other end of the line.

"Hello, Vernon." Wendall tried to keep the cold anger out of his voice. His aversion to consciousness wasn't the fault of one of his oldest friends.

"Are you alright? You sound strained."

"Well I would be, wouldn't I?"

"I suppose so. Look, I know it's been a month now but I just wanted to call to apologize about everything."

Wendall closed his eyes and let out a long, slow breath. The anger gave way to resignation, just as it always did.

"It's alright. I know it wasn't your fault. I showed up to work drunk out of my mind. When you called me into your office I hardly thought I was going to be winning employee of the month. Is everything alright over there? God, there weren't any visitors were there?"

"No! Nothing like that."

Wendall and Vernon had been department heads of a privately funded charitable organisation. Visitors usually meant donors, and he doubted seeing him stumbling through the halls would have been taken as a sign of confidence.

"Good. That's a mercy then," said Wendall. "Look, Vernon, I'm sorry I didn't call you. I felt like such an idiot after it happened and what with everything else..."

"Don't be silly! I wouldn't have fired you if I was the one in charge, it's just that our main investors were concerned and-"

"You wouldn't have fired me?

I

would have definitely fired me," Wendall grumbled.

"Hah," the noise sounded slightly strangled in Vernon's throat. "Well, I might have insisted on a few months paid leave whilst you got yourself together." Another poignant pause. "Have you gotten yourself together, mate?"

"I'm not drinking any more if that's what you mean. Stopped the day after and haven't touched a drop since. I moved out to my old country house. The place is dry. It's just that after

it

happened I needed something to, I don't know, help me sleep?"

"We're talking now about the trollop then?"

"Don't call her that."

"What the hell am I supposed to call her!?" Vernon could really make his voice boom when he wanted to. "You walked in on her with another bloke! Believe me, I've called her a lot fucking worse since you stayed over at my house that night. Frannie made a voodoo doll in her image and she's been poking at it every day these last few weeks."

Frannie was Vernon's secretary and was about half his age. The pair of them often enjoyed some very naughty time together after work. Frannie was also a very nice woman, who seemed to think that Vernon was the one for her and had dutifully made friends with Wendall because of it. You didn't go all-in with someone without at least trying to get their best friend's approval after all.

"Tell her I'm oddly grateful." Despite the lead weight that often felt embedded in his chest, Wendall smiled.

"Anyway, I wanted you to know a few things. First off, the

No Room at the Inn

report came back and it's workable, largely thanks to yourself. We've got permission to set up the shelters across London through 'till the spring. Should stop a lot of desperate people from having to freeze in the cold. Nicely done. We also put a team on working the idea of that new kid."

"Adrian?"

"Yeah! Going around the hospitals and trying to make sure every kid gets a present. The investors loved it. Lots of photo ops with smiling kids."

"Ok, just don't let them turn it into a bloody campaign rally or marketing op."

"Think your boy will see to that. Guy's got the presence of a Rottweiler when he needs it."

Wendall smiled at that. Adrian was a big guy who had just graduated university and wanted to help change the world. He'd voiced the idea in a meeting and Wendall had given him the go-ahead to run with it. He'd also happened to work as a bouncer before that, and was very experienced at fending off unwanted assholes. That was good training for dealing with the board of investors.

"Right. Thanks for calling, Vernon."

"Hey, no problem. I'll come see you soon, ok? Might be the week before Christmas before I get a chance. Just stay off the sauce and get your shit together, mate. You'll be fine."

"Yeah." His agreement didn't exactly sound wholeheartedly agreeable. "I think I'll hang up now, before I get the speech about there being plenty more fish in the sea."

Vernon laughed a little more genuinely then.

"Alright. I'm busy over here right now or I'd be with you, but if you need me for anything then you call. Ok?"

"I will. Thanks again." Wendall hung up.

It wasn't that his friend's heart wasn't in the right place. It was just that if he had to relive what had happened one more time then he might seriously consider taking a bath with the toaster.

Taking a deep breath, he rallied his willpower to face another day. After silently counting down from three, he flung off his bed quilt and sat up to put on his slippers and then his dressing gown before shuffling over to the door in search of coffee.

When he stepped down into the kitchen he glanced at the kettle before noticing the radio. Some music might cheer the place up a bit. The old country house was out in the middle of nowhere and could get deathly quiet. He walked over to the radio and powered it up.

It'll be lonely this Christmas, lonely and cold.

Oh yeah now there's a song that would cheer him up no-end. Thanks for nothing, Elvis. He clicked the search button to find another station.

Oh what a Christmas to have the blues, my baby's gone I have no friends to-

Click. Bon Jovi was hitting a little too close to home there too.

...and there won't be snow in Africa this Christmas time-

Click. Ok, that one didn't have anything to do with his divorce. He just thought that song was bloody awful.

They sold me a dream of Christmas, they sold me a silent night, and they told me a fairy story 'till I believed in the Israelite.

Preach on, good sirs. Preach on. Wendall left the radio on and shuffled across the kitchen in his slippers to put the kettle on. At least the old house was a relative haven from the realities of his life. He'd once been in a car crash in his early twenties. He remembered the sudden shock, the swerve off road followed by rolling across a ploughed field for several yards. Current circumstances felt almost like reliving the experience in slow motion.

The shock of coming home early one chilly September afternoon to find his wife naked on his couch riding their next door neighbour. The swerve of moving out, starting to drink, and turning up for work in such a state that his best friend had no choice but to fire him. Finally there'd just been the vague sensation that everything he knew was spinning out of control. He'd moved out there to the little house in early November. Ever since then it felt like he'd been in a perpetual daze.

The divorce papers sat on the kitchen table, looming there to represent the end of everything he knew. All his life. Everything he'd built. It all seemed like a dream. He glanced over to those papers as he stirred his morning coffee, and then looked away just as quickly. Signing them was the best course of action. Every part of his rational mind knew that. Amelia hadn't just been cheating on him that one time. She'd been at it for years. Quite a lot of things had come to light after he'd found out what she'd been up to. None of them painted her in a particularly positive light.

Except once he put that pen to the papers then it would be over for good. The distinctly

irrational

part of him didn't like that idea at all. He remembered her smile at him on the day they'd met at a work outing. They'd danced. They'd kissed. She'd taken him to her room and shown him quite a few things he'd enjoyed immensely. It had been good. He thought it had always been good right up until he'd walked in on the heart-wrenching evidence that it wasn't.

That memory still hit him like a stab in the gut. He tried to force a distraction by stirring his coffee some more and looking out of the window. It was early December now. Frost covered the grass on the fields and hills outside his little isolated home. It was oddly comforting to look out there and feel so wonderfully alone and safely distanced from his problems. With the exception of the occasional melodic reminder that he'd be spending Christmas by himself this year.

Just as the song changed and he started recognising the guitar riff of

Run, run Rudolph

, the radio signal scrambled. It was then interrupted by what he thought was definitely the strangest radio DJ he'd ever heard.

Run, run Rudolph, Santa's got to make it to-

"Dammit! Will you guys stop swerving so much!? I'm getting sleigh-sick back here!"

"...tell him he can take the freeway down! Run, run Rudolph 'cause I'm reelin' like a merry-go-round."

He turned to the radio and blinked a few times in surprise. It had sounded like a girl with a notably high-pitched and distressed voice. He'd heard bells jingling in the background. Must have been some ad for... sleigh-sickness? Was that even a thing? Who the hell had a sleigh these days, anyway?

Wendall's moustache wiggled slightly with amusement. At least it wasn't just his world that seemed to be going mad.

All I want for Christmas is a Rock 'n Roll-

"I just told you that's the house we're looking for! I didn't want you to dive-bomb it! Oh no! We're coming in way too low! Shiiiii-"

And then away went Rudolph, wizzing like a shooting star!

Wendall narrowed his eyes at the radio this time. "What the hell?"

BANG!

He nearly threw his coffee all over himself. The little house had been shaken to its foundations, as if a giant had stomped on the roof.

A second crash rang out quickly afterward from the rear garden. This time he looked out of the window to see something that made him completely forget about his spilt coffee. On the field just outside the kitchen door there was a very large, very red sleigh that was lined with a number of golden bells the size of his fist. It had been turned completely on its side to show a wide-set seat with leather reins laid out across the frosty grass. Still tied up to the sleigh were nine very large reindeer standing in two lines and looking like lost sheep. At the head of the two lines was another smaller reindeer with a very shiny red nose.

And if you ever saw it, you would even say it glows.

"You have got to be shitting me." Wendall ran to the door and pulled it open to see that his eyes weren't deceiving him at all.

It was only then that he looked at the low stone wall beside the overturned sleigh. He saw a single pair of shapely legs wiggling about up in the air with obvious distress. They were garbed in white and red, stripy leggings.

"Hey!" Wendall yelled out as he made a run for the legs. "What the hell is this? That's my house you nearly just destroyed! I... fucking hell!"

When he mentioned his house he'd just happened to glance back and see that a very large chunk had been removed from the middle of his roof, leaving him with an impromptu skylight. Pausing for only a moment to look over the damage before remembering the rest of the crazy in his back field, he turned to hurry over to the flailing legs.

Whoever they belonged to had landed in a thick stack of straw he kept bundled behind the fence. It seemed like his unknown visitor had landed in there head-first. His approach allowed him to take a closer look at the sight of those stripy red and white leggings, and see the toned and slender shape of the legs within. The legs were each topped with a pointed green shoe decorated with a little, round bell attached to the upturned points. These allowed the legs to jingle merrily whilst they flailed.

"Alright, alright, steady on." He said as he reached out and wrapped his arms around the legs to pull. At first he got a knee in the nose for his troubles when the legs became even more alarmed at this manhandling. "Oh for crying out loud!" Wendall yelled. Summoning his strength after tasting blood on his lip, he hauled the intruder up out of the straw in one go.

They both fell back onto the frosty grass with Wendall still in his pyjamas, slippers and dressing gown. It seemed like the frost didn't really consider those to be proper obstacles and he quickly felt a fresh chill go through his body. Turning his head, he looked up to see the intruder scrambling to her feet.

From the back he wasn't immediately sure it was a her. She was about 5ft tall with a slender build and her hair was kept mostly inside a floppy, pointed, green hat. When she turned around to look down at him, he saw she was unmistakably female. Her face had delicate, pointed features that ran the mark somewhere between cute and surreally beautiful. Large, green eyes glittered with a little of what seemed to be their own light. They were framed by smooth, fair skin. A few tufts of bright red hair could be seen trying to escape from under her hat. Though what made his heart almost miss a beat was her ears, which were long and naturally pointed at the tips.

The sight made him sit up urgently and pull himself to his feet despite some creaky bones offering resistance.

"It's you!" the girl's face broke out into a big grin and just as he got his feet underneath him she threw herself forward to wrap her arms around his chest.

For a pint-sized girl she could sure as hell give a hug. Randall felt his lungs struggle for air as she squeezed him whilst burying her face into the lapels of his dressing gown. He was almost certain that she could have easily lifted him right off his feet if she had a mind to.

"Oh, sorry!" she suddenly realised that he'd started turning blue and released him to catch his breath.

"Who? Wha? Huh!?" Randall tried to breathe whilst gesturing to the festive insanity surrounding them.

She looked back at the reindeer and glowered at the red-nosed one before marching right up to it and poking her finger right at that nose.

"Are you nuts!? You knew you weren't hauling fatass around today! Look at me! I'm 90 pounds soaking wet! You almost flung me out nine times! I almost wound up landing in a sheep farm outside Inverness! Argh! Do you even

know

what they do to sheep up there? All alone on those fields with no one else around. There's a reason those guys wind up on the naughty list. Imagine what they might have done if they'd found my skinny, elven butt!"

He stood and watch her give the reindeer what-for, with each of her little pokes making its nose glow a shade brighter. The animal lowered its head in obvious shame, and she left him to think about what he'd done wrong. Walking back towards Randall, her demeanour instantly changed from outright ferocity to pleasantly cheerful.

"You're an elf," Randall surmised, his eyes growing very wide all of a sudden.

"Wow, you sure catch on fast." The sarcasm was laid on thick, but the friendly smile remained. "I'm an elf. That's Rudolph. There's an overturned sleigh over there. Now get ready for the big one, buddy. You are the next Santa Claus! Woohoo! Right?"

She threw her hands up into the air and gave a little celebratory hop.

Randall demonstrated just how "woohoo" he thought it was by losing consciousness and landing face-first in the frost.

The elf looked down at him, clucked her tongue, then placed her hands on her hips before glancing back to Rudolph and the other reindeer.

"Well, I

that

went about as well as can be expected."

The reindeer nodded their antlers in agreement.

* * * * *

Wendall woke up in bed. The events of the morning immediately came flooding back to him. This was largely because when he looked up from his pillow he saw the grey December sky through a giant hole in his ceiling. He immediately sat upright and gasped for air. Actually, he'd have settled for any of the basics right then. Air. Shelter. Sanity. Any of those three would have been nice. The giant hole in his roof left the room quite chilly, but at least there was plenty of fresh air to go around for his needy lungs. Soon thereafter, he saw the door to his bedroom open and in walked the young elf woman carrying a tray on which she'd laid out brunch.