Santa's Naughty Aunts

Getting a panicky phone call at 9:30 in the morning is never a good thing, especially on a cold December morning when you just want to stay between the flannel sheets dreaming of bikinied superbabes. It's doubly bad when the frantic caller is your Aunt, when you're having an affair with your Aunt, and she's calling to tell you about the extortion letter she just found in her mailbox.

"I...I...I..." Aunt Jess sputtered.

"Slow down, are you OK?" I asked.

"No, I'm not OK!" she screamed. "I went out and got the mail this morning and found a letter addressed to me, and I opened it and the person who wrote it says they saw us fucking in the church hall last night!"

"Oh, ah, uhhhgh," I mumbled, reaching for the table to steady myself. "But...how could anyone have seen us?"

"I don't know!" she said, exasperated. "But the letter describes what we did, how I sucked your cock, how I stood on the chair while you ate my pussy...it describes everything we did!"

"What do you mean, 'sort of'?"

"This is the really fucked up part. The letter's written in crayon."

"Wait, crayon?"

"Red and purple crayon! It's fucking crazy, whoever sent it wrote it like it was a letter to Santa."

I rubbed my temples. "You should come over and let me look at it, maybe we should talk about what to do."

"You think?" she said sarcastically. "I'll be there in half an hour."

When she arrived she was not in the Christmas spirit. "Turn those fucking lights off!" she said as a greeting when she saw my tree all lit up. "Jesus Christ, this isn't the time for a fucking holiday cheer!"

"Calm down," I said, even though my stomach felt like it was full of eels. "Let me see the letter." She handed it to me, tucked inside the envelope it came in. I looked it over. My Aunt's name and address were printed on the envelope, but, "There's no stamp or postmark," I said. "Well, we know it wasn't mailed."

"I know THAT, Sherlock!" Aunt Jess yelled. "It wouldn't have gotten to me today if it had gone through the mail. Is that the limit of your deductive powers?"

She lit a nervous cigarette as I took out the letter and started to read. It gave me the major heebie-jeebies. It actually WAS written in crayon, and it was written in a deliberately childish scrawl, with letters "E" and "N" occasionally reversed and odd choices of capitalization. It went on for three pages. Here's what it said:

"Dear Santa!

I liked seeing you SO MUCH last night that I came back to give you a big hug and say thank you for bringing me toys every year! But the door was LOCKED! I started to cry because I thought you had gone back to the North Pole, but then I heard you inside yelling and I thought that maybe you were mad at one of your elves! So I looked through the KEYHOLE and I saw this very FAT and OLD elf kneeling down in front of you! I thought that was strange, you're supposed to SIT in Santa's lap, not just put your head there! And then I saw that this OLD and FAT elf was doing something, she was doing something to Santa's PRIVATES that looked very bad! It was so bad that Santa really started to yell and I thought he must be very mad at this ugly elf!

But then I saw Santa put HIS head in a strange place, and the UGLY elf started yelling too, and I got scared, because I thought she was angry at Santa, and nobody should be angry with Santa! And then I saw the elf sit in Santa's lap, and I watched Santa's PEE-PEE go between the FAT elf's legs, like it was magic. And then both Santa and the elf were YELLING and SCREAMING I almost had to cover my ears.

That's when I remembered what my mommy told me when I asked her where babies come from, and she said that the daddy puts his PEE-PEE inside the mommy's CAVE and makes a baby! But then I got REALLY confused, because when all the yelling stopped I saw that the elf wasn't an elf AT ALL. It was a lady from the church group! And then I remembered that this wasn't Santa at all, but a handsome boy who just PLAYS Santa! And then I got REALLY, REALLY confused, because the lady and the boy are aunt and nephew, and aunts and nephews aren't SUPPOSED to play like that! It's very, very NAUGHTY. And I knew that if the boy's mommy found out, it would be VERY BAD for them! They would get in TROUBLE!

So, I guess I know a SECRET! A bad, naughty secret! And I wonder how important it is to both of you to make sure it STAYS a secret! So, I want Santa to send me an e-mail, telling me he saw this note, and I'll tell you what I want to make sure I don't tell his MOMMY on him!"

It was signed, "A good little girl."

I looked up at Aunt Jess, puffing at her cigarette. "The fucker calls me fat, old, and ugly. When I find out who it is I'm going to rip her face off."

"OK...OK..." I said, not feeling OK. "Who would know where you live?" I asked.

"Everyone who goes to church there! My name and address was on the latest newsletter that went out. Anyone there last night might have known."

"Anyone...dislike you?"

She drew on her cigarette and exhaled. "I don't know, it's a church group, not a Mafia family. I'm not friends with everyone there, but I don't think anyone has cause to blackmail me."

"Well, it actually looks like they're blackmailing me," I said. "The writer tells ME to e-mail her, threatens to tell my mother."

"So who would want to screw you?" Aunt Jess asked. "Maybe the mother of some little brat who didn't get what he wanted for Christmas last year?"

"I kinda doubt that."

She stubbed out her cigarette. "There's the e-mail address on the back of the letter. It's one of those free e-mail accounts, I have no idea what the username means, if anything.

I flipped the letter over and read the e-mail address, "sweetnessD@mail.com". I considered it. sweetnessD? "I don't know either. Sweetness, I don't know. She's a good little girl, she's sweet. Maybe the "D" is her initial?"

Aunt Jess pulled out another cigarette. "I don't know. But..." she looked like she might burst into tears, "this can't get out! I'll end up divorced, I'll lose everything, Don will take me to the cleaners, I mean, fucking my own nephew, I..."

"Don't you worry, I'll take care of it. Whoever it is, I'll reason with them. And think about it, it would only be our word against the word of this lying bitch. If we stay united on this, we might be OK."

"Maybe." She looked at the unlit cigarette between her fingers and put it back in her pack. "Send a note to that e-mail address, and then let me know what you hear."

I promised her I would, and I gave her a big hug. "Everything will be fine, I promise." I walked her to her car, waved goodbye, went inside, and threw up in my toilet.

"HOLY FUCKING SHIT!" I screeched. "I...I mean...what the fuck! What the fucking fuck! What am I going to do! I'll be disowned! I'll be cast out of the family, I'll be exiled! I'll have my eyes gouged out and my entrails fed to the pigs! All I wanted was a little sexy auntie nookie! Should I be DESTROYED just for that!"

When I got it all out of my system I sat down, cried a bit, and went to the computer. I launched my e-mail program and typed in the blackmailer's address. I wrote, "Dear Good Little Girl, I got your note, and Santa is very angry with you. You might get coal in your stocking this year unless you stop telling lies. Write back and tell me that you are very sorry for making Santa upset."

I sent it and wondered how long it would take before I got a reply. Turns out it was four minutes. My computer went "ding!" and I saw the new message in my box. I opened it and read. "Dear Santa, Thank you so much for writing back! But I'm disappointed that you say I'm lying, when you know I'm not. I saw everything you and that bad lady did. I saw the dark birthmark she has on her big backside, and I saw how big your pee-pee is! It looked so pretty that I'm sure I could describe it IN DETAIL to your mommy if she didn't believe what I told her! Write back if you still don't want me to tattle on you!"

Gulp and double gulp. I wrote, "Don't you know that it's not very nice to tattle? Especially on Santa Claus?"

The reply: "It's OK to tattle if the tattletale gets something out of it. And there's something I want from Santa in exchange."

With trembling fingers, I wrote, "Then what exactly do you want Santa to give you?"

The answer came almost instantly. "I want Santa to give me a nice, hard FUCK. Just like I saw you give your fat, old, ugly aunt."

Oh boy. Ohboyohboyohboy. I wrote, "If you promise not to tell, maybe Santa will give you what you want. But I need to know who you are, so we can meet and talk."

Ding! "Santa, you must think I'm a very silly girl! I'm not going to give you my name, and I don't want to talk to you! I want to fuck you! Tonight, at seven sharp, go to the Comfort Inn on Route 8 and go to Room 307. Just walk in, the door will be open. I'll be waiting for you. You'd better be alone, Santa baby, or else the deal is off, and your mommy will know how dirty you've been.

"Oh, another thing. Wear your suit."

I wrote back asking for more information, for directions, for mercy, but the conversation was over. My in-box remained empty. I got off the Internet and picked up the phone to call Aunt Jess. And then I put the phone down. If I called her and told her what the plans were, I knew she would crash the hotel room, she wouldn't be able to just sit at home while her stupid nephew tried to save her bacon. She'd fuck things up. So I had to keep her in the dark, for a little bit.

I dialed her number. "Yes?" she said, breathless.

"I sent the e-mail, and she wants to meet me at the Holiday Inn on Route 8 on Monday. She told me to wear my suit. I think she wants, um, she wants to do what we did."

"Oh, God," Aunt Jess said. "This is a nightmare."

"Did any of the women there ever talk about me, how handsome I am, how incredibly sexy I looked in my suit?"

"No, of course not," Aunt Jess said, a bit uncharitably I thought, but she was under strain. "I can't think of who it could be."

"Me either. I guess we'll just have to wait."

She took a deep breath. "I guess so. If you hear anything, let me know."

I promised I would. I hung up, flopped on the couch, and started to think. Would I actually go through with this? Of course I would, I had no choice. Would I have sex with a blackmailer? Yes. Even if she was hideously ugly? Yes. I ran through a mental catalog of the women who had been at the church hall the night before and didn't remember any really scary-looking specimens, but I couldn't be sure. Then a really scary thought hit me-what if the blackmailer WAS a little girl? Not six years old, maybe, but what if some 11-year-old who knew enough about sex to know THAT was what Aunt Jess and I were doing behind locked doors was behind all this? I discounted that. How could she reserve a hotel room, let alone GET there? Nah.

Who could it be, who could it be. I thought about the e-mail address. SweetnessD. Sweetness, with a "D". Why the word sweetness? Why not sweety, or sweet, or any other derivative of the word? I racked my brain. Sweetness. Sweetness. I repeated the word over and over until it lost all meaning, until it sounded like gibberish inside my head.

And then it hit me. It was an image, not a thought. An image of a man running, running with a ball under his arm. The man was wearing a football helmet with the letter "C" on the side. He was a Chicago Bear. Walter Payton. I jerked up off the sofa. Walter Payton, Hall-of-Fame running back.

Whose nickname, it just so happened, was "Sweetness".

Could that be it? Could the blackmailer really be so stupid as to give me a clue like that? I tried to remember if any of the women in my mother's circle had the last name Payton, or even Walter. I couldn't think of any, but I knew someone who did.

"Oh, hi, honey," Mom said, "How are..."

"Quick question," I interrupted. "Do you know if anyone there last night has the last name Payton?"

"Payton? Um, no, I don't know anyone by that name in the whole parish, but I could be wrong."

"No one there last night was named Payton?"

"No. Why..."

"How about Walter? The last name, Walter?"

"No, I don't think so, at least I don't know anyone by that name. Why do you ask?"

"One of the parents asked me if I played Santa for kids' Christmas parties, and I said not really but I'd consider it, and he said he'd come back after we were done, but I didn't see him and it was so noisy I wasn't sure of his name."

"You couldn't tell if he said Payton or Walter?"

"It was noisy."

It took me another minute to get Mom off the phone. I was back to square one, my brilliant detective work for naught. "Walter Payton," I sneered. "Fucking idiot." I was referring to myself, not the late, great running back. I always liked Walter Payton, in my opinion he was the greatest running back in history. He played most of his career on lousy teams, but year after year you'd see number 34 slashing through the line, bowling over linebackers, sprinting toward the end zone.

Number 34. I perked up again. Number 34. Could that have any significance? I didn't see any. The kids coming to sit on my lap didn't take a number. It didn't seem to make sense that 34 would correspond to the blackmailer's address or phone number or whatever. Another dead end.

Until...until I remembered that "Sweetness" wasn't the whole address. There was a D at the end. I thought about it...thought about it...thought about it...

The number 34. The letter D. 34D.

I remembered the night before, Aunt Jess and Aunt Billie taking turns insulting each other as I got into my Santa suit, "A year ago you were flat as a board, and now, boing! Amazing what miracles technology can achieve these days!" I remembered my mortification as Aunt Billie caught me staring at her new-and-much-improved breasts. I remembered the sniping of my family members as they gossiped about Aunt Billie's augmentation surgery, how she went from a 32B to a 34D.

"Aw, come on," I said aloud. "That's fucking bullshit. OK, fine, she's proud of her new breasts. She should be, they're incredible. But, come fucking on! This is ludicrous!"

Then I thought about Aunt Billie a bit more. What was her favorite sport? Football, she was a fanatic. And where was Aunt Billie born and raised? Chicago, she was transferred the year before she met Uncle Carl. And wasn't she the kind of goofball showoff who would do something as crazy as hide her new cup size in her e-mail address?

And, I wondered, was she the kind of sexpot who would get a thrill out of fucking her nephew?

I had to table my answer to that final question. I was hardly an impartial judge. It seemed beyond belief that two sexy, gorgeous women, women who happened to be related to me by marriage, would want to have sex with ME. I'm good-looking, really, but I'm not SO good-looking that I should be seducing my kinswomen. OK, Aunt Jess wanted to screw me because of her Santa fetish. So why would Aunt Billie want to screw me?

Because Aunt Jess had. And, as they both had shown so many times, my two Aunts were very, VERY competitive. So competitive that Aunt Billie would want to fuck me just because Aunt Jess had? Well, maybe not. But enough that she would want to rake Aunt Jess over the coals with fears of blackmail, exposure, divorce, and ruin?

I could see it.

I paused to think. One minute in I shouted at my penis, "Will you knock it off!" I was HUGELY erect. The thought of having sex with my OTHER hot, sexy aunt was almost too much to believe. Well, there was one way to test the hypothesis.

I got my address book and dialed a number. Three rings later a breathy voice said, "Hello?"

"Hi, Aunt Billie? It's Tim."

"Hi, honey, how are you?" Perfectly normal, a bit surprised to hear from me, but just a bit.

"I'm fine. Just wanted to make sure you got home OK last night."

"Oh, no trouble. I made it home before the snow really started coming down. Did you make it OK?"

"A few slips, nothing major. Hey, I wanted to apologize for not taking you up on dinner last night, it's not THAT tiring playing Santa."

"Don't worry about it, honey. I had a headache just from being in the same room as all those kids."

"Thanks. I was wondering if you'd want to go somewhere tonight? Seems like all my buddies have their office Christmas parties tonight, and I know Uncle Carl has his poker night on Saturday, so I thought you might be free."

She didn't miss a beat. "Oh, honey, I'd love to, but I have tickets for the hockey game tonight. I'm going with some girls from the neighborhood."

"Oh, that's OK," I said. She'd caught me off guard. Trying not to sound suspicious, I asked, "Who are they playing tonight?"

"The Rangers. We have good seats, B section."

"Oh." I'd meant to call Aunt Billie and shock her, but now I was the one unsure of my footing. "Well, no biggie. Maybe next week."

"I hope so, honey. I'm still not sure what to get you..."

"Last night you said you had a good idea."

"Oh, I do, and it's something I'm sure you'd like. But...I'm just not sure if I should get it for you."

Now I was intrigued. "What is it?"

She laughed. "It wouldn't be much of a surprise if I told you, now would it? You'll have to wait and see. Have a good day, honey."

"You too." I hung up more confused and more aroused than ever. It was just past noon. Seven hours until my date with...whomever.

*****

In literature, when brave, innocent are walking to the gallows, mere seconds from martyrdom, they always hold their head up high, their gaze is steady, their whole demeanor personifying the noblest ideals of mankind-courage, conviction, calm in the face of adversity.

Well, either those writers made it all up, or maybe it's impossible to keep your dignity when heading to your doom dressed up as Santa Claus. Because I was a crying, twitching, whimpering wreck.

I pulled into the parking lot of the Comfort Inn already suited up. All I had to do was put on my beard and cap, and that at least hid my quivering lower lip. I had absolutely no idea what I was heading into. I had twelve Tums in my belly and still my guts burned like hellfire. I didn't know whether I was hoping to find Aunt Billie in room 307, or if I FEARED finding Aunt Billie there. Time to end the suspense.

I walked through the lobby, which, damn it all, was jam packed. "It's Santa!" a dozen voices young and old called out, and I fucking had to go into my spiel. "HO HO HO! Merry Christmas everyone!" I shouted with as much merriment as I could muster. One adorable little girl tried to follow me down the hall to the elevator, and had her mother not flagged her down I would have tossed the tyke in the trash can. I was not in the mood.

The elevator elevated me to the proper altitude and I got out and walked the frighteningly short distance to room 307. The blackmailer told me not to knock, to just come on in, but that sounded silly. I tapped three times, loud enough for someone to hear. "Um, hello?" I called out, and for some reason I used my Santa voice. It seemed appropriate.

I walked into the room and had a look around. It was your typical hotel room-bed, nightstand, dresser with the TV on top. But there were dozens of candles on the dresser, big white candles that threw bright flickering light over the walls and bed. I could see that the bathroom door was on, and I saw light coming from beneath. I was about to call out again when I noticed the glass and plate sitting on the nightstand. A tall glass filled with milk, and three chocolate chip cookies.

There was a note next to the plate, written in red crayon. "Have a little snack, Santa."

I sat down on the bed shaking my head. I sighed and dipped one of the cookies in the milk and took a bite. When you're in cuckoo-land, you do what the cuckoos say. I had to admit, the cookies were excellent, chewy and moist, and the milk did more to settle my roiling stomach that all those antacids. I was just polishing off the last cookie when I heard the bathroom door open. Sitting where I was I couldn't see the bathroom, so I had to wait for my tormenter to make her appearance. I waited, waited, waited...