Katie Merchant needed some holiday cheer. She could tell, because no one was supposed to be this grumpy on Christmas Eve.

She'd snapped at a perfectly innocent question Susie had asked her after she picked the kids up from the babysitter, and had to apologize for being such a big meanie. It had to do with having to work on the 24th of December, when darn near everyone else was having fun with their family, and she attempted to explain that to the kids without sounding too self-pitying. She also tried not to hate Kensington Tate for causing her to work nearly the whole holiday on that stupid set of slides ... but she didn't try all that hard.

Kensington had gone to Hal and asked if she could write the presentation, keeping Katie out of the loop altogether, with nary even the customary email. Hal, Kensington had reasoned, outranked Katie, and why go to the subordinate when you can talk to the boss directly? While Hal and his peers found this profoundly amusing, Katie objected to being treated like this on principle, and coworkers who ticked her off this way automatically got their Power Point slides downgraded. Kensington would get several strategically embarrassing typos to teach the little wench some humility.

She needed something to cheer her up and, as always, her kids did the trick; by the time she pulled into the driveway she felt much better, but there was still something missing. Colin would take care of that later tonight, she hoped. God knew she needed a man around for that, if nothing else...

The children were nestled all snug in their beds, with visions of Xbox games and Dora the Explorer toys dancing in their heads. Katie got halfway down the steps, then thought better of the idea, returning to lock the door to the kids' hallway. She didn't want any interruptions. Not tonight.

She made her way into the guest bathroom downstairs, where she kept an extra set of toiletries for nights when it just seemed too much of a pain in the butt to climb the steps and get into bed.

And for nights when you didn't want the kids to hear you sobbing yourself to sleep a more honest voice inside her said. Damn you, Kevin, damn you and your stupid toy planes... She stopped herself from going farther, either into melancholy or bitterness; the last thing she needed was to head down either path tonight. Tonight was for her and Colin. Tonight was for starting anew.

She'd been dating Colin a couple of months already. Although the kids knew he was "mommy's friend", they didn't know that it went a bit farther than that. And they didn't need to-- not yet, anyway. Right now what they had was playful romps in the hay, but lately Katie had started to feel something else stirring within her, something that terrified her with its implications, and something she'd struggled to stifle. Colin was a good guy, if a bit on the casual side, but Katie was starting to convince herself that maybe, just maybe, he might be a good dad for her kids, someday, if he could just get serious about her. There was sometimes trouble between them about that sort of thing...

Well, she thought as she sat down in front of the makeup mirror in the downstairs bathroom, tonight I'll make sure to show him just how serious I am about him. She opened a drawer under the sink and retrieved a bundle of flimsy but expensive material, and held it out in front of her with a dirty little smirk before beginning to put it on.

First the white satin bra and garter belt were upon her, then she drew the nude, silken stockings up her thighs. She smoothed the wrinkles, then attached the hose to the garter tabs, one by one. Colin was a leg man, she knew, and the stockings would ensure that he was at his most ... powerful ... tonight. The thong was the final touch, and it felt so amusingly wrong to have it on over the garter belt instead of under. That had been a request of his months ago (The better to eat you with, my dear! he'd leered), and she'd mock-frowned at his vulgarity and put up a token resistance. A little. But she was pretty sure by now she knew what pushed his buttons, and how hard, and she fully intended to use that knowledge tonight.

She stood up and looked at herself in the full-length near the bed. Her hips were too wide, her butt too large, and her breasts too small (in short: she was phenomenal-looking, but had seen far too many airbrushed Cosmo's to believe this), but she was as sexy as she could make herself, and even she had to admit the effect of the lingerie on her figure was pleasing. She sat down once more to touch-up her makeup, and then slipped on the high-heeled slippers and the diaphanous silk parody of a robe before heading back out to the living room.

She went to the kitchen, trying unsuccessfully to mute the clop-clop-clop of her heels on the tile floor, grabbed some ice out of the freezer, and placed it in the wine bucket she hadn't used in ... she didn't even want to think about how long. The chardonnay was in the fridge, and she gathered it along with the rest and clopped her way back to the couch in front of the fireplace.

Arraying herself in what she hoped was a seductive manner, she laid back and relaxed, checking the clock on the wall. It was about to strike ten-- she'd finished just in time. Come on, Colin! Ready, waiting, and oh-so-willing!

It wasn't until 10:20 that she got worried, and by 10:30 she'd transitioned to annoyed. By 10:40 she was back to worried again, as Colin being late reminded her of the night Kevin had been late, and she was about to start thinking hard about that when her cell phone rang.

Darn it, she thought, tripping twice on the heels in her rush to get the phone out of her purse in the dining room, this had better be good, Colin...

"Hello?"

"Hey, kitten." His voice was vaguely apologetic. "I'm sorry, I fell asleep in front of the TV. They had this reality show on about what's her name, the one with the enormous boobs... ? Oh, anyway, can we take a rain check on tonight? I'm exhausted from work, and all the traffic on the way home, and it's already going on eleven at this point..."

"But, Colin ... It's Christmas Eve. Surely you don't want to be alone tonight?"

"No, I sure don't. Why don't you come over here, then? I'll make it worth your while..." He trailed off, his meaning clear.

"Colin, you know I can't. The kids."

"You can't leave 'em alone, just to sleep? It's only a mile and a half away."

"They're three and six! Of course I can't leave them alone!"

"Yeah, I guess not. Well, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have fallen asleep, I know, and I wanted to see you this evening, too."

"Yeah, I know." She toyed with telling him what she was wearing, how she was feeling, putting the pressure on ... then imagined him zonked in front of a Paris Hilton marathon while she dolled herself up for him, and right then and there decided he wasn't worthy. "Good night, Colin."

"Hey, we'll get together tomorrow or something, okay?"

"Or something. 'Night." Jerk.

"Night, kiddo."

She threw the cell phone across the room and bit back tears. No, she insisted. No more crying. Not over the likes of him. I've had enough crying.

She cried.

Then she yanked the cork from the bottle and started drinking until the room began to glow around the edges.

"Sonofabitch," she commented, to no one in particular. "And here I am, all dressed up and no one to blow. Well, it's you who are missing out, Mr. Colin Germa-- Germanes-- oh, fuck it. Your name's not worth the effort either. I am, I'll have you know, a damn sexy woman. I am hot. A hottie." Then why doesn't he want me? a small voice inside her asked, but she shut that snivelly little girl up real quick. "I don't need Colin. I have enough sexy for two people, right here in these panties." She indicated this by putting her hand inside and patting herself there, and it was then that she realized how much she had been looking forward to tonight, and how much she was still in need of ... comfort.

With a sigh, she put down the wine glass and started in on what was all too often her most pleasurable sexual outlet in these past years. With her left hand she lightly massaged her outer lips, teasing herself in preparation for more activity later; she bit her lip unconsciously as her right hand moved the cups of her bra aside and replaced them with her palm. Pressing the nipples between her middle and ring finger, she felt the heat in her nether regions spike and was pleased to access it fully with her well-manicured hand. Alternating tingles from her breasts and the pressure she was applying with her palm on her clitoris made her thong dampen considerably, and the rhythmic thrusting she performed with the two fingers she stuffed inside herself brought her exciting inner pleasure. She held onto it as long as she could, postponing the final act, but when she could stand it no longer she directly tweaked her pearl with a back-and-forth motion which made her world shift and spin in violent oblivion.

Kevin, I miss you... she thought distantly as she relaxed into dreams.

The guy in red and white accessed his database feed to figure out who was next.

James Paul Goxxi ... ah, yes. James had prayed to God for a new bike, keeping Nicholas out of the loop altogether, with nary even the customary note. God, James had reasoned, outranked Santa, and why go to the subordinate when you can talk to the Boss directly? While the Father and the Son both found this profoundly amusing, Nick objected to being treated like this on principle, and kids who pissed him off this way automatically got their presents downgraded. James would get a scooter to teach the little sprat some humility.

He tweaked a device on his belt, thereby ensuring little James's parents would think they had bought the gift themselves, and even implanting them with fuzzy memories of annoying shopping trips in order to obtain it. Nicholas silently bemoaned this necessity in an age which no longer, it seemed, believed in miracles, but shook himself loose of these thoughts and moved on. He still had a big night ahead of him, but the temporal distortion device ensured he would be able to hit every required house in the allotted time. Christians get all the cool toys, he reflected, knocking the clock back ten minutes or so to give him time to get next door, but the saints get the cream of the crop. The laity wouldn't get their hands on tech like this until the Church of Christ, Engineer was established in the latter half of the century, and that wouldn't happen until the prayer in the schools amendment was approved in '46...

Next in line was Billy and Susie Merchant. He hit the chimney, and started dropping. Hmmm ... the database query indicated their father had died in a small place crash a couple of years ago. The kids were less impacted by this than the average because, despite their family tragedy, their mother was remarkably good at juggling the modern-day responsibilities of a working mother and still finding the time to spend nurturing them in countless minor but critical ways. Nice. Mom was doing so well that the "post-trauma" coefficient had been dropped to 1.002 on their gift allocation-- barely above "untraumatized" on the scale. Nicholas admired that kind of self-sufficiency, and made sure to make a note in his Yearly that the woman should be given extra consideration by his colleagues in their annual review of--

He stopped short in his crawl from the fireplace in order to give Katie Merchant "extra consideration".

Sprawled across the couch in slumber, Billy and Susie's mom made quite a sight. Her silk robe had parted around her generous bosom, and her breasts had fallen (been removed?) from the cups of her brassiere, her pink nipples exposed to the firelight. A wayward expanse of thigh, coated in a mist of thin nylon, made its way out the slit in her robe, and the high-heeled slipper at the end of the limb implied she had been going for the Victoria's Secret Catalog look instead of the comfy-toes-during-a-run-downstairs-for-coffee style. Not that Nick had to think too hard about her intentions, though; the translucent silk she wore revealed that she'd not bothered to remove her hand from her panties as she'd fallen asleep.

It was hardly uncommon for Nick to encounter adults at this time of night-- even conscious ones; it was the twenty-first century, after all, not the thirteenth. He'd seen more bizarre stuff in his years than he could recall, and he wished he'd had one of these modern camcorders back during the Victorian era just to prove to the elves that old Santa hadn't been drinking too much 'nog when he told these stories at parties. So this scene wasn't exactly shocking. Somehow, however, the sight of this beauty enticed him as few did. Maybe it was the loneliness of the self-pleasuring act itself. Perhaps it was the empty wine bottle in a bucket's half-melted slurry on the floor, or even the end table nearby which told the rest of the story: two glasses, one used. It was at once charming and sad, but even aside from the emotional reaction, Nicholas had to admit, it was pretty damned arousing.

Tossing his bag aside, Saint Nick removed his mittens, eager to warm his hands on this woman's flesh. What were the naughty boys calling them these days? Moms I'd Like to Fuck?

The belt device was useful for more than memory alteration; in the event that someone was still awake during Nick's romps around the tree, he could use it to knock them out temporarily. In this case, since she was already asleep, he just dialed it in on a minimal setting to keep her that way. Closing in, he placed his chilled palms on her tits and watched the nipples awaken.

Aside from the obvious ethical issues with taking Katie's pussy while she was drunk and asleep, Nicholas didn't experience much guilt to ruin the moment; Mrs. Claus ignored his once-a-year dalliances with random trollops across the globe, and in turn Nick pretended not to notice her weird elf-fetish during the rest of the year. It all worked out, and since there was absolutely no way his saintly spunk could impregnate this fine lady ... well, who exactly was being harmed in all of this? He parted her thighs with a majesty befitting their perfect shape, and slid the thong aside to view the glory within, her hand still caught in the panties' band. Ah ... now this was beauty. He brushed his lips, lively and quickly over her outer lips, and slurped his tongue inside for a taste of her. Yes, she'd been a bad, bad girl earlier this evening.

He dropped his red fur trousers and got busy with fucking her. While not overly-endowed as far as saints went (the Biblical stories of how Simon had gotten the nickname "Peter" were somewhat edited) he did all right, and Mrs. Claus had never complained. Of course, thinking of seeing her going down on Winkie that one time lent a little less ardor to his performance tonight, so he put that sort of thought out of his mind for the moment and concentrated on the look of Katie, the smell of her somnolescent arousal, and the heaviness of her breathing as she accepted him, all of him, into her warm, wet space, and in a wonderful dream thrust her hips up to meet his...

And woke up.

He was in the midst of his climax, so it was tens of seconds before he could dampen her sleepy bewilderment into unconsciousness by grabbing his pants and fumbling with his belt to dial the device's sleep feature to "maximum".

Damn. Damn damn damn.

That had been a close one; what if she had cried out and woken up the children, or the neighbors? The memory device didn't actually edit the brain, it just sort of left blurry impressions that something had or had not happened. And having the kids humming a hip new tune, I Saw Mommy Fucking Santa Claus, would not play well at the All-Saints Consortium in June ... While it might not undo all of Katie's excellent mothering, therapy would doubtless have been required. Eesh.

He drew open his trousers, and threw them up his ass. Snapped his belt closed and pondered how to play with her head to minimize the damage, or at least...

Nicholas grinned. He got an awful idea. The saint got a wonderful, awful idea ... He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work.

Katie awoke with a funny head and an urge to pee. She kicked off her ridiculous slippers and tromped into the bathroom. While she did her business, she laughed out loud at the dream she'd been having. Well, at least he's a man who knows the meaning of hard work, responsibility, and most of all punctuality. And the beard was kind of tickly, in a nice way.

She chuckled again as she flushed the toilet, then removed her unmentionables and slid into something more matronly. She almost forgot to unlock the upstairs door before she crashed on the guest room bed.

She giggled to herself once more as she remembered his cheery laughter, and then dropped back down into the wine and exhaustion, knowing she would have to be awake again in a matter of hours. Her dreams started with a perverse take on an old favorite...

Santa Claus is coming

in me.

It only got weirder from there.

The car ride to her brother-in-law's house for the traditional Christmas day feast with the relatives was as loud as could be expected; Susie's newest dolly was chatting with one of the old dolls (instructing it on its ABCs, which evidently contained a brand new letter, "Blue"), while Billy's Killer Space Charger clicked and beeped and shouted "Kill! Kill! Kill!". Her only refuge was the classical music station, but she couldn't hear it over the ruckus, so she shushed the kids and turned the radio to something with lyrics. The local soft-rock station had an "all holiday music" motif going on this time of year, so she tried that. Billy obliged by putting aside the murderous robot and singing along, louder than the broadcast itself, with unpleasant results:

Katie was horrified and almost slammed into the Honda in front of her. She muted the radio.

"What did you just say, Billy?"

"Pa rum pa pum pum?"

"Before that."

"A newborn king to see?" The height of innocence. Susie's dolls were still arguing.

Katie narrowed her eyes at him, but she decided to let it go for now. After a minute or so, she moved the volume up again. Billy obliged by adding his voice again, this time more cautiously.

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas

just like the ones I used to know.

Where the cunt-lips glisten--

Amidst her shrieks, Katie pulled the car to the side of the road. The radio was off, now, and would stay off. Susie's dolls stopped arguing.

"Where in the world did you learn such language, young man?"

Billy looked mystified. "Uh..."

My god, she thought, I figured it wouldn't be this bad until age nine, at least. Unless ... He couldn't have!

"Did Colin teach you that? When you went out for your 'boys' day' last week?" My baby boy!

Billy was becoming terrified at his mother's emerging hysteria, and was on the verge of tears. "No, mom, it was in music class at school. Everyone was singing it."

Uh huh. She didn't believe that for an instant. This was Colin's doing-- this was just like him. Him and his rap music and his Camaro and his Pam Anderson. Bastard! Well, she had him on speed dial...

"Hello?"

"Colin?"

"Katie! Sweetheart, I'm so sorry about last--"

"Skip it, you jerk. Billy just told me about the little songs you've been teaching him. You disgusting pig! He's six years old!"

"Six and a half, mom!"

"Stay out of this, Billy!"

"Kate, what the fuck are you talking about!"

"That's exactly the sort of language I don't want you teaching Billy, you son of a ... you ... freak! Don't you ever, ever call me again!" She pushed several buttons at once on her cell phone, one of which probably hung up on him. Her head was in her hands for several moments before Susie asked her if she was okay.

"Yes, dear, I'm fine. We're just not going to see my friend Colin anymore because he was teaching Billy naughty things. Billy," she added, turning to face him directly, "it's not your fault, but please, please, don't sing any other songs or use any other words Colin taught you, okay? He's not a very nice man."

"Okay, mom."

"Thank you, sweetie. Thank you." She took another breath, then blew both of the kids kisses and started edging the car back into traffic again. She felt oddly relieved by the whole ordeal, and confident of the future. And with her newfound confidence she felt, as she sometimes did, even a little bit aroused. The foul lyrics of the songs, troubling as they were coming out of Billy's lips, had left her with a bit of an edge she'd have to work off tonight when the kids were sleeping.

Billy had no clue what had come over his mother, but he was glad he wouldn't have to spend time with that stupid Colin anymore, so he didn't want to argue with her. He smiled and pushed the button on the Space Charger again.

"Kill! Kill! Kill!"

It wasn't until the following October that Katie gave the incident another thought.

Halloween had not even passed yet and already Costco had mechanical reindeer for sale, sprinkled with miniature lights and stooping to eat nonexistent grass. It never failed to amaze Katie how the Christmas season migrated forward in the year. Soon they would be selling Nativity displays during Back to School sales, she felt certain.

At any rate, even here in Michigan snowfall was a month away except in the humongous snow globe sitting on the top shelf, wedged between the leftover six-person tents and the reasonably priced backyard jungle-gym. The kids were in the next aisle, digging through the children's DVDs and snagging a few to try and surreptitiously sneak into the cart, but Katie stood and looked at the snow globe. Inside, a Frosty-wannabe smiled down on her while a cute little house in the background was invaded by a red-coated marauder with a getaway sleigh parked up top. She stared at the scene for several moments, imagining the snowflakes alighting on her breasts, nipples stiffening with their chill ... and suddenly, even the snowman's carrot nose was starting to look pretty good to her.