She was beautiful and she knew it. A drop-dead gorgeous blonde with gams that could stop holiday traffic and eyes that could melt Frosty the Snowman right down to his icy toes. A wild-eyed winter heart-stopper in a plush little red dress with white fox trim short enough below her lovely ass to hint that she was in the browsing market for just the right sort of holiday stocking stuffer to keep her private parts nicely warmed until spring. Her eyes reminded me of Mrs. Claus but it was certainly not that grand dame, but something in the same spirit ... but younger, cheaper and much more tawdry. A festive package for the eyes held together with a red velvet ribbon bow just waiting for some lucky boy to find under his tree as a gift from Santa. She was playing the act like a professional too, alternating between being tarty and demure.

It was a shame though that nearly every word out of her cute sensuous mouth was pretty much a fib, if not an outright lie. No surprise. It goes with the territory. It was the lovely but crazy, crazy eyes ... divine, but deliciously bughouse. Just looking into them made my toe-hairs curl!

When you’re Christmas Town’s only private investigator, you don’t tend to get the more honest and upright citizens for clients. Like the town’s snowplows and weekly garbage collection, I deal with all of steaming reindeer crap that everyone else tries to pretend doesn’t exist here in our winter wonderland utopia.

Think about it ... it’s Christmas here the other 364 days of the year too, complete with all of the stress and dysfunction of that day of the year times two or two-hundred. There isn’t enough magic Christmas snow in the entire North Pole to keep everyone’s holiday spirits bright every single fucking day of your entire unnaturally long life. At some point even the jolliest toyshop elf is going to snap and climb up to the top of the gingerbread clock tower with a high powered rifle. It’s only just ‘normal’ crazy most of the year around here but during December it can be like living in a pressure cooker dialed up to eleven for the entire town, not to mention all of the high-brow muckity-mucks inside Santa’s Castle.

When folks finally snap the results and the collateral damage can get ugly; getting boiled into a plum pudding and getting a stake of holly through your heart aren’t just idle threats!

Today was the eve of Christmas Eve, December twenty-third, and everyone I’d seen on the streets this morning already appeared to be already nervous and jittery enough to resemble old fashioned coffee percolators. The coke and meth dealers were all doing record trade this week. Next week it would be back to being mostly heroin. The next poor innocent out on some street corner misguided enough to sing out ‘Merry Christmas’ today (and mean it) was entirely likely to suffer an unfortunate accident involving the vigorous application of a dozen or two iron pipes smacking upon their skull!

Since the blonde strumpet was practically begging for my help and brazenly showcasing her goods available for trade, I could tell that somewhere some particularly really nasty sewage pipe was about to blow its seasonal discharge. Naturally, cute and perky was also lying her luscious little ass off, no two ways about it, but her case was gaining my interest.

She was claiming to be Caroline Christmas’s sister, whom everyone better knew as ‘Christmas Carole’, and supposedly she’d gone missing. Disappeared without a trace, her alleged sister said, and she wanted her found. If true, this was a big time case; Christmas Carole was one of the really important players and her famously gorgeous tush had a nice cushioned seat at the adults’ table of the Kringle Gang, right by the quivering belly and fat lecherous hands of the old fat fool himself.

More importantly, since I’d declined any barter arrangement, she was now offering to pay cash, in good cold shiny silver too, for me to do the job! It’s all about silver and gold here. Even the Kringles only really care about the jingle! Nothing else could possibly explain why the Fat Man did all of those cigarette commercials in the 1950’s and 60’s, complete with a tattoo on his arm that said ‘Less Tar’.

It had been a good year for business at Scrooge & Marley, LLC and the money box under the potbellied stove in my office was stuffed nearly as full as the hostess at a reindeer orgy, but there was always room in the till for a bit more of the old ready. I gave my client another quick look-over, especially at the mile of openly displayed pristinely white cleavage where her coat was slowly surrendering to the hopeless pressure of restraining within the irresistible abundance of her magnificent huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

Oddly, I was able to keep my cool and even keep my eyes (mostly) focused upon hers. She might have been impossibly gorgeous, but that just made my thumbs itch even more, reminding me that anything that seemed obviously too good to be true, was ... and that meant trouble that I probably didn’t need. The crazy women are the best in bed, though.

Yeah, this lusciously ripe tart was just the type to be a regular at one of Comet and Vixen’s weekly gangbangs, or she would sink even to the utter depravity of an elf orgy, probably imparting to one and all some gift that keeps on giving that neither penicillin nor ground up mistletoe berries could cure.

This was trouble that I didn’t need and my brain had been telling me to send her flawless tits and ass right straight back out the door ... right up to the moment that her shiny silver started to jingle upon my desk. Bah!

I decided take the case and the cash ... but her robe was going to stay right where it was!

Humbug! Crazy women are the most fun in bed, I reminded myself again ... but I didn’t trust this one even with her clothes on, let alone naked and in the dark. Worse, she had that palpable scent of the castle about her. She just quietly reeked of Au du Arrogance or something like that. The aroma of money, power and entitlement ... everyone from the castle has that stench, and I try to keep it as far away from me as possible. My old partner Marley used to enjoy diddling those sorts of clients but I haven’t the tolerance for bullshit that he’d had, even before he became deader than a doornail.

“It’s nippy enough already in here, what with the coal strike, so lady you can keep your coat on and don’t bother showing off any of your other finer and more pronounced features that just might otherwise freeze and break off in the cold! I’ll take the case and I prefer payment in gold, fifty sovereigns a day plus expenses, plus a bonus for a happy ending, and make it a big gusher! Two day minimum deposit in advance, no promises or refunds.”

She shrugged and tightened up the belt ribbon of her coat, closing up from view something of a majority of her otherwise unrestrained immaculately snow white breasts. In my opinion they could have used just a hint of sun and already I was going to need a good stiff drink in a few minutes, not but what other parts of me weren’t already nicely stiff. With coal being rationed rather severely at the moment, the office was pretty bloody close to freezing and my perverted, but otherwise useless clerk Bob Crotchitch was absolutely shivering at his desk near the snow covered window outside. Perhaps I should buy him a heated butt-plug for Christmas?

Sleeping with clients is always bad business, especially when they’re dishing themselves up to you complete with the proverbial silver platter. The odds were good that there was more than just humbuggery up for offer here ... and the goods that were on offer here were undoubtedly more than a bit odd! She was definitely high class quim from the castle ... and even thinking about tapping it would undoubtedly bring me far more trouble than I could handle.

My old dead partner Marley would have screwed her right then and here on the spot in every orifice she had, but truthfully he never did have the common sense of even a doorknob, bless his dead soul, there is no doubt whatever about that. ‘Mankind was his business’, he was often wont to say, namely that there wasn’t a man, woman or child that the old letch wouldn’t dip his wick into!

My blonde Christmas angel sighed and slowly offered up the goods (no, not her utterly flawless breasts) and with obvious reluctance started to count out the jingle jangle jingle. One hundred bright and shiny gold sovereign coins, newly minted too. That alone was suspicious enough to be worth the careful examination of a dozen or so coins at random to check for enchantments or charms. I then checked another full two dozen more just to be sure. She scrunched up her face and pinched her thin ruby lips tight in annoyance at me but I was just following accepted good business practices. The old ‘fairy gold’ trick had never entirely died in a town chock full of mischievous (and insanely stressed-out) elves and smart folks always kept a lead stylus on hand to check any dodgy coins before accepting payment. Hers were good, pure minted gold, each and every one. Cold hard cash!

Silver and gold, silver and gold
Ev’ryone wishes for silver and gold
How do you measure its worth?
Just by the pleasure it gives here on earth!

I grunted with approval and swept the coins up into my strongbox and placed it back down into my bottom desk drawer. This box was enchanted with numerous protection spells and completely lead-lined for good measure. My desk has several other assorted protective spells as well. The other old sneaky magical trick in the game is ‘pay and poof’, where right after payment is made the coins are made to disappear and return right back to their owner. My stylus should have been able to detect that sort of charm, but with elf magic you never know. To be safe, I’d leave those coins in the box unopened for three full days. Long enough to dispel any minor lingering magic’s, just in case.

My client had really done a nice job of disguising herself, especially the ears (not to mention her breasts), but it’s the pert, cute little nose that always gives them away. Elves and much of their kin are first class actors; they’re all con-artists born and bred, always after the lutz’s – going for the big joke, especially if it’s a cruel one at someone else’s expense ... they gotta have the very last laugh. No one trusts an elf as far as you can throw one (they drop kick even further, if you’ve got the balls to do the deed) and they’re everywhere around here, the very backbone and muscle of the Kringle clan. Find a crime and if you dig deep and long enough you’ll find an elf somewhere lurking in the dark corners, probably also with its hose pulled down to its ankles and doing the nasty to someone’s pet dog.

Her other big lie was that as far as I knew, the famous Caroline Christmas didn’t have any sisters, or other family - elf or otherwise, so I had no idea what this disguised elf really wanted with her. True, I didn’t know Carole (in the biblical sense or otherwise) and at best I’d only ever seen her at a distance, but I’d always had the notion that Christmas Carole was a rather unique sort of polar white swan, powerful, beautiful and disdainfully aloof from the affairs of mere mortals ... and more toxic than a room full of black cats, broken mirrors and ladders should you cross her path.

Everyone had heard rumors of her; some said that Carole was the ‘conscience of Christmas’ but other folks were equally certain that she was really the implacable Italian patent leather steel-toed pointed boot of holiday karma that you didn’t want within twelve postal codes of your ass.

This situation just oozed Kringle clan politics from within Christmas Castle, undoubtedly something far too sordid and messy for any of the Jolly Red’s usual top tier handlers to deal with. Something probably too sleazy even for the Polar Bears to handle or needed far more finesse than just calling in the nuclear option, the Krampus. On the other hand, everyone’s got some angle they want to play, and mine usually includes getting a fat payday that would make my holiday season very, very merry. I didn’t have friends or contacts inside the castle ... probably the very reason that I was presented this job in the first place.

Besides, I had a rep for being really old fashioned about my cases, just doing the job and not caring a fig if the results made the client happy. That has made me quite a rep over the years, but not very many friends in useful places or the tinsel-covered corridors of power.

Lies and likely trouble or not, this case was just too big to turn down ... so reluctantly told the lovely holiday parcel that I’d find Carole and accordingly I quietly swore the weakest sort of oath that I thought she’d accept.

There’s an obligation, an honor debt once you’ve taken someone’s money, so I couldn’t just kick my feet up on my desk for a week or two and then report that I’d found zilch. Oath-breaking is nasty stuff around here and there’s more than enough ambient background magic floating around to make Karma bust your balls half-way up to your throat if you’ve done someone the dirty in that way.

You can stick the knife in from behind and give it all of the nice hard twists you want but once you’ve given your word, it’s a bond. Even the real black-hearted villains ... and most of the Faerie like elves, can be more-or-less trusted at their word under oath or obligation, assuming the formalities are strictly observed and no nasty but clever loophole can be discovered. In my case, while I had just formally sworn to try and find the missing girl ... I never said anything about handing her back over!

If one of the major players, like Caroline Christmas, had vanished, it was probably for a damned good reason and one or more of the ‘powers-that-be’ would want it kept that way. That ... and/or the entire mess was far too repugnantly sordid and pervy even for the fat red-coated pedophile and his jaded ass-felching minions to deal with.

My client departed, nominally satisfied and with an exaggerated swinging of her impossibly perfect white-furred heart-shaped rump she left, leaving our front door wide open to the winter wind and blowing snow. The frigid temperature inside didn’t change for the worse much, if at all, and the weak glow from our feeble fire in the stove couldn’t hope to influence even the existing chill in any meaningful manner. Damn coal strike!

To make things now worse, with the door wide open anything could now slither in from the street, and now unfortunately did so. They were a pair of portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in my office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to me.

“Scrooge, I believe, ‘‘ said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge? Your late partner, Mr. Marley, was well known to us by his liberality.’’

“By ‘liberality’, I frowned, “you of course mean his complete and utter lack of moral standards. A husband to every wife and like a wife to every husband ... until of course he let the Bumble Beast bugger him to his demise, a full seven years ago to this very day!”

“An inspiration to us all, and at this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge, ‘‘ said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “and it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries, like vibrators, dildos and butt-plugs; hundreds of thousands more are in want of common comforts, sir, like lad’s magazines with glossy full color centerfolds.’’

“Are there no titty bars? Are there no pole dancers giving happy endings in the champagne rooms?’’ I enquired.

“Plenty!’’ said the gentleman.

“And the split-tailed doves and dollymops of the sporting houses?’’ I demanded. “Are the brothels still in operation?’’

“They are. Still.’’ returned the gentleman.’’

“The corner penny girls are out plying their happy trade in full vigor, then?’’ I said.

“All very busy, sir.’’

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course, ‘‘ I sighed, “and I’m very glad to hear it.’’

“But for the multitudes it is not enough!” They gasped, “A few of us are endeavoring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some stroke magazines, and some helpful means for proper ejaculation. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?’’

“Nothing! Notta! Zip and zilch!’’ I replied.

“You wish to be anonymous?’’

“I wish to be left alone, ‘‘ I growled. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I keep busy enough diddle myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people’s fingers merry, fiddling their own ferrets. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned; they certainly cost enough, and those who are badly off must settle for the five-knuckle-shuffle or a holiday date with Rosey Palm and her five sisters.’’

“Many can’t go to those places; and many would rather die than be caught basting the turkey in public or spit-shining someone’s candy cane in a public restroom.’’

“It’s not my business, ‘‘ I said, “it’s enough for a man to understand his own business, keeping my own corn buttered and not to interfere with other people’s pipe cleaning. Dancing with my own eye-eyed sailor occupies me constantly enough as it is ... but I can freely offer you poor gentlemen the services of my clerk Bob, if you have a rusty trombone that needs greasing. He usually goes out to lunch about this time for a zipper dinner with a pearly shower, otherwise, good afternoon, gentlemen!’’

With a loud sigh, Bob Crotchitch groaned and arose from his desk and made some exaggerated stretching motions, swishing his dress, feigning that the extreme chill within our office had frozen up his joints to the very bone, and dropped to his well-calloused knobby knees at the altar. Then, like a good obedient clerk, he proceeded to gobble the perv-merchants knobs, bagpiping the pair of penises rather over loudly. He was useless as a clerk but Bob knew how to give Big Jim and the Twins a good bath.

After receiving his holiday communion, taking down their pair of chunky crotch yogurt loads, Bob rose to his feet and we bid the enterprising pornographers a good day.

“With your permission, sir, I need to run over to the baths at lunch ... to check on things there, if I might?”

Ah, the White Swallow Bathhouse, Bob’s home away from home, as it were. True, we did have a small monthly retainer to handle any minor irregular problems for the ownership and its twinkle-toed clientele, but Bob was quite zealous about coddling this minor customer account and often visited the establishment on his way home at night ... or at lunch, and sometimes before work as well. I had to admit it was usually a good place for Bob to pick up on all of the latest rumors, innuendo and hearsay while getting a brisk prostate massage or his tonsils spit-shined.

Apparently Bob had really enjoyed the nice view of the business end of my new client and after long minutes of ogling her scantily clad furred rump his yule log was about to get all eggnoggy inside his breeches. Sucking off the pair of beef whistle custard launchers had only whetted his appetite for a big cock-chowder lunch.

“Sure, go!” I told him, “First though, do you know anything about what Caroline Christmas has been up to lately? Oh, and if you see them, ask either Santa Bear or the Sugar Plum Fairies about her while you’re there ... and also, what’s in that big envelope those perv’s gave you? Other new business Bob, or just sample lad’s magazines?”

“Nothing work related, boss. Just some suspects that I’ll need to keep my eye on! I’ll peruse this later for ah, research, yea ... research purposes. Just times when I’ve got a clogged drain and need to call in someone, as it were,” he simpered, reluctantly leaving the thick packet on his desk. “And, no, I haven’t seen Carole around town in weeks, but the Mrs. might have. Young Martha’s might know also. She’s got herself a good position with Lady Vixen now and doesn’t have to stand out nights in the cold on street corners, neither! She’s a six pence girl now for a nice rub and tug, no longer a common guttersnipe bunter gobbling nobs for just a pence a-pop! Martha gets to hear all of the gossip from the clients, including some from inside the castle, and the other girls and she brings it home for my wife’s ears on her off days. She’ll be home today, I imagine, so you can check and see. We’re hoping that Lady Anne will take in young Belinda next year, too, once she turns thirteen ... it’s important to get a young girl set in her career as early and securely as possible!”

Lady Vixen ran undoubtedly the fanciest and most upscale knocking shop just off of the High Street near the town square just downhill from the castle. Her girls specialized in strict deportment and obedience to their well-heeled clients wishes, albeit in a relatively safe and secure environment. From what I’d heard, some of the gals liked their amusement extremely secure, with stout leather restraints and other instruments of chastisement. For that matter, quite a few of their gentleman callers seemed to rather enjoy a good bit of submission to a haughty mistress equipped with a riding crop, and eager to apply it! Word was that Big Red’s #1 enforcer, the Krampus himself, called the place home. Word was, the scary brute was a switch, with the switches, and enjoyed both giving and receiving festive presents and was extremely partial to golden showers.

As an investigator on his own, Bob was pretty much useless and invariably not even worth a copper of his salary, but he and his wife did have an ear for gossip and between the two of them they generally knew any and every rumor worth knowing. I’d originally hired him as an act of charity as a favor to my old late partner Jacob Marley, who had the habit of regularly buttering his buns. I still often regretted it, but in truth he did made for an adequate bookkeeper and secretary, especially when I made him wear a dress, wig and high heels here in the office every day. Now if he would only shave regularly and take it a bit easier when applying the white pancake makeup.

I let Bob scuttle off to the baths, where if nothing else the waters (and the steamy action) were much hotter than here in these cold chambers. Casually scanning inside the folder on his desk I found his collection of candid prints of gentlemen bodybuilders in an aroused state of rigidly muscular un-attire. Ah, just his usual bathroom reading materials. In addition there was a colorful illustrated periodical entitled ‘The Right to Bear’s Arms’, which quite shockingly depicted groups of extremely muscular and hairy men wearing black leather forcefully inserting their paws into each other’s fundaments, and to quite an alarming depth! No doubt, this was possibly a reason why Bob often had difficulty sitting or even walking after his regular visits to the bath house.

As for the well-worn collection of ‘The Illustrated Adventures of Twink the Elf’, the less said the better. My own collection of ‘bathroom research materials’ weren’t much better, except that I’d like to think that the superior artwork of ‘Elf Girls Tied in Tinsel’ is destined to become a holiday classic of the genre.

As for the Crotchitch daughters, finding a situation for them at Lady Vixen’s was good fortune indeed! I’d always been fond of Martha and now young Belinda was starting to ripen nicely as well. Both girls were (like their father) models of submissive obedience and always eager to please their uncle Scrooge during my regular visits to the family. Bob was rather incapable of handling many of his family responsibilities (and not much better with his business once here either) and in the spirit of holiday helpfulness I’ve tried to provide service to Mrs. Crotchitch with her more personal needs for over a decade now. Their youngest son Tim is quite the scamp and rascal, and is already at his young age the best second-story burglar in the city. In good light, he bears more than a passing resemblance to me, as a boy of the same age, but Emily has never confessed if I am his father, or if she had other admirers during that time.

Heck, I’d bet heavily against any of the children being Bob’s. She’s plumper now but still a squealer, and it had been awhile since I’d given her holiday goose a good internal basting and seasoning, so a visit to the Crotchitch house seemed as good a place as any to start my investigation as any.

It was a slight disappointment that both Martha and Belinda were out doing the shopping, so I had no one to rim my tight rosebud while I porked their mother’s roundmouth, plowing her back field as she giggled, bent over her kitchen table. Her plump ass fit my cock like a glove, as I drove her hard all the way up to brown town, fishing for chocolate trout.

Since I was in something of a hurry, I held myself to just one booty-blast into her fart-box before we got down to exchanging gossip over a brisk pot of tea. Martha and Belinda then returned with the shopping and while the young minks were showing off their maturing oral skills at the whore-pipe, trying some mouth-to-junk resuscitation, the ladies (between mouthfuls) shared their tittle-tattle with me and I started to get a better idea about the nature and character of the woman I was hunting for.

Unfortunately, no one had seen Carole Christmas in at least a week. There was just a vague rumor; Martha had heard at Lady Vixen’s, that she hung out sometimes at Goldilock’s, a gay bear nightclub. Usually in the back room where the on-going poker game was held. This was a good place to find Santa Bear or his seven very gay elves, his vocal backup singing group, the Sugar Plum Fairies.

Not my usual sort of place, but the bear did know everyone and everything happening in Christmas Town. I did the ladies of the Crotchitch household a very fond farewell and wrapped my scarf up around my neck tightly to ward off the cold once more and forced myself back out into the snow.

Passing by the mid-town arena, I noticed that the Tranny Siberian Orchestra was playing tonight, but sold out as usual. I didn’t much care, I’d seen them before a couple of dozen times. Even the holiday classics, like ‘Who are you doing New Year’s Eve’, ‘Blue Balls Christmas’ and ‘I Saw Mommy Blowing Santa Claus’ can get stale over the decades.

The show I really wanted to see, the Slutcracker, was completely sold out, and had been for weeks. This classic performance of Tchaikovsky’s timeless Christmas ballet would be performed by a dozen of the finest pole-dancers, featuring the signature pas de deux the ‘Dance of the Sugar Tits Fairy’. Now that was a holiday classic!

Just past the central town square up ahead, on a side-street, I’d find Goldilock’s and hopefully some knowledgeable bears. Up at the next corner I stopped to give a pair of cute penny-girls a small coin each and a pat on the head. Their lips looked too cold and blue to get down to the cream filling of anyone’s holiday éclair and I bid them to take a respite and get themselves creamed-up proper with a hot cocoa first. The young promising sluts of today are our future strumpets and trollops of tomorrow!

As always, there was no nativity scene in Christmas Town’s square. This wasn’t for any religious reasons ... as usual no one could find three wise men or a virgin. There was a big Christmas tree in the center but, as always, there was a big fuss over who’d get the contract to decorate the tree and town square. I think this year, like last, it was a $10 billion ornament contract and of course it went to Halliburton.

The lawsuits from the usual sore losers will go on for years! Everyone accused Santa of using illegal immigrant labor. Rush Limbaugh said the gifts were part of some kind of socialist giveaway program. The AFL-CIO claimed that Santa underpays his elves and brings in foreign ones via H1B. Even the town mayoress said that she will not be exchanging gifts this Christmas with the councilmen, like they used to. She got tired of all the so-called ‘big men’ promising large things and then not delivering.

I tipped another small copper to the bare chested carolers in the square and admired how the frozen ice was dangling from their nipple rings, as they sang:

Pretty titties
Naked titties
Dressed in holiday style
In the air there’s a feeling
Of titsmas.

Oh, yes indeed!

Inside Goldilock’s, there were the usual assorted bit of eye-ball queens, gal-boys and basket-shoppers all looking for an afternoon of rough-trade, but I didn’t make eye contact with anyone or anything until I was safely backstage and saw Santa Bear himself holding court.

The hairy old bear was looking very himself, today. A broad muscular daddy-bear of the old school and a three time winner of the Best Ernest Hemingway Look-alike contest, he was dressed in his usual performance costume of black leather pants and nothing but a forest of chest hair covering his gold nipple rings and chest. He was bored and quite in the mood to talk, but had nothing to say worth repeating. He hadn’t seen Carole in over a week ... maybe two, but perhaps the Sugar Plum Fairies had seen her since then. I had been dreading that ... none of the Seven Gay Elves were wrapped up too tightly in the head, or remotely tight in the sphincter anymore either. Still, they were now my last hope.