Miriam was drunk.
She sat in the dimly lit and sparsely populated bar early in the afternoon, having been forced to leave work early due to the half day. She had watched bitterly as everyone left, knowing all her co-workers were thrilled to finally be off for Christmas and were headed home to the warm embraces of families, spouses, and lovers, while she was not. She actually would have just as soon worked well into the evening doing paperwork, then gone home and gone straight to bed.
But since that was not an option, she decided to stop off for a few drinks instead. Miriam sat at the bar, alternately staring into her mixed drink, listening to the nauseatingly repetitive Christmas music, and looking around at the assorted collection of drunks, losers, and pot-bellied balding salesmen. The bar was decorated in a thoroughly unrestrained and gaudy manner, which only added to Miriam's misery. She would glance over once in a while to an annoyingly jolly animated Santa, staring at it dumbly, wanting desperately to kill the repulsive thing.
As she surveyed her hellish surroundings, her mind kept returning to the thought that hammered in her head with as much obnoxious regularity as the Christmas carols: Here it was, the day before Christmas, and she was -- once again -- alone.
Miriam had come to the big city from her small town nearly a decade ago to go to college and law school and begin her career. She had accomplished both of those things with great dispatch and success, but once happily entrenched in her job she quickly found that finding quality people with whom to spend time, even in a city of hundreds of thousands, was actually very difficult. She had discovered that Christmas was always the most difficult holiday for her to be so alone, and with every passing year she became more and more convinced that she was simply doomed to be alone and never again feel the touch of a man who loved her, feel his hot breath on the nape of her neck as they made love, or to feel the pressure of a cock as it was slowly slid inside her.
So that is why, on this Christmas Eve day at not yet 1:30 in the afternoon, Miriam was drunk.
Miriam sat there for another two hours, until finally the bartender said to her, "Bar's closing, lady. Time to go."
"Wha—what?" she asked, not grasping the concept through her Jagermeister-clouded brain. "So early? I just got started!"
"The bar's closed for Christmas, and we all want to get home. C'mon, lady," he said now, gently but firmly escorting her off her stool and to the door, "it's time to go."
He opened the door for her, gently thrusting her out into the cold, a gentle flurry of snow just starting to settle on the pavement. "Have a Merry Christmas, lady," he said with a smile, closing the door even before he was done wishing her well.
"Yeah, well...fuck you, too," she muttered to herself as she began to stumble along the sidewalk, walking the several blocks to her apartment.
As she did, Miriam kept returning to the tormenting thoughts of being alone for yet another Christmas. This particular holiday in her house as a little girl was always the most special, the most magical of all holidays. Her parents lavished attention on her, their only child, so every Christmas wish became a Christmas reality. But beyond that, her home was always warm, bright, happy, and joyful during this time of year with beautiful, hand-made decorations her father himself would craft, with delicious baked goods and treats her mother could create like none other, and the constant bustle of various relations.
But her parents died the same year she started college, and the various relations all either grew old and died or grew up and drifted away. So here she was, suffering through yet another lonely Christmas with an ache in her heart like nothing she knew...nothing, that is, but the equally maddening ache in her pussy.
While Miriam was in college, she certainly enjoyed the life of a sexy young co-ed living in the big city, having different guys nearly every weekend. But then she graduated and went to law school, and made the willful choice to focus on her legal career, forsaking such things as dating and relationships. In time she realized she missed far more than mere companionship, but desperately needed to have the sexual beast that was growing inside her fed. She had met some guys discreetly for sex, but couldn't help but notice they seemed to lose interest in her needs as soon as they reached orgasm. She had had a few boyfriends, but none of them seemed to satisfy her sexually, and so the relationships soon ended, usually with thinly veiled and angry recriminations that her inability to be satisfied sexually was entirely her fault and no reflection on their manhood. She had even had a fling with a married man for a while, who was at least able to keep up with her and satisfy her magnificently, but who was forced to abandon their relationship when his wife found out and gave him an ultimatum.
Since then, Miriam had been without sex for nearly five years, finding release only in her fingers and assorted sex toys. She was now 34-years-old but felt as desperate for sex as a teenager.
As she clumsily stumbled her way home, mumbling sadly to herself and tormented by thoughts of loneliness and the fire in her pussy which only seemed to get worse the more she drank, Miriam saw a man dressed in a cheap Santa outfit, seated by one of those ubiquitous charity collections seen so often this time of year. He must have been sitting out there collecting nickels and dimes since the day after Halloween, because the once hearty wave and jolly laugh had dwindled down to a cranky monologue.
