The Naughty List (Santa's Little Helper)

You stood with your Power Rangers boots on the slushy mall floor. Before you was a column of young kids, faces all aglow, and behind you was the same. Sitting up at what appeared to be the throne of the mall itself was the man of the hour. Santa Claus. On his lap was a smiling little girl.

“Ho ho ho,” you heard. It reverberated, even through the dampening walls that were the parkas of kids and parents alike. Your mom, in her red parka, pushed you up slightly from behind. “We’re getting closer, sweety.”

You looked up at her to see her smiling down at you, then you turned around to take a step forward, her smile like a poker, prodding at the fire within your hearth. A fire that only rose, roasting chestnuts as it did, with each step closer toward those rosy cheeks and big white bushy beard.

Even with the full weight of your attention being pulled toward the red and green jovial orb that was the big man before you, something caught your eye. It was your mom. She kept looking over at something off to the side. You followed the direction of her eyes and you saw someone standing there, away from all the action, looking directly back at her. It was a man. He wasn’t looking anywhere else, not even at Santa, a fact you had a hard time believing. All of his attention, interrupted only periodically by the slightest of blinks, was aimed toward your mom. Not any other mom there, of which likely numbered in the low hundreds. Just your mom specifically. All while every other set of eyes looked perpendicularly at the big red ball of joy up on that podium.

The line separated from you and your mom and moved ahead. You went to take a step but your mom was holding onto your shoulders tightly, keeping you from moving. You turned around to look up at her to see her attention entirely on the man. Her face was red, and she looked worried to you. You became fearful that someone would come and cut your place by filling in the gap between you and the kid before you. You grabbed your mom’s parka sleeve and tugged.

She was startled. She looked down at you, then ahead, and then said “oh, they’re moving,” in a way that only underlined her flustered state. “Let’s go, sweety. Just…. Um… 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 more and we’re there.”

With each smiling kid walking away from the podium with their simpatico parents making faces in reciprocal joy, you felt your heart soar further. Santa, being only a cartoon to you before this joyous day, was now starting to become a fleshy reality before your eyes. With each step he became more real.

As each parka-clad toy soldier marched up to the man with a mission, and marched away victorious, you pulled your mom along with you, through the slush and dirt on the ground. Twice you had to get her attention first. You looked over both times to see that man still standing there. Still staring nowhere else but at her.

Your mom had a look about her that you had never seen before. You couldn’t put your finger on it, but it was almost as if you could sense that she wished your father was there with you. Something about this man was so different from your dad. So different from Santa. He was hard to look at. Something in him made you want to look away. You had seen people who looked like that before. But you had never interacted with any of them, even in the half-realized way that kids usually interacted with adults. He had stepped out of the bubble that people like him lived within, and was now intruding upon your bubble, pulling his entire person through and inside it, a bubble which looked more spacious from the outside than it did from the inside. After all, it was already filled with mom and dad and uncle Nick and grandpa and Santa.

Something in you flashed back to the thought of when you passed your parent’s room one morning and as your dad stood with his arm extended, leaning on their bathroom doorway, your mom was bent over on the bed, looking for something that fell on the floor. Your dad was in his boxers, and your mom in her panties and a t-shirt. One of her bare feet sat over the other as she balanced herself on the edge of the bed with her palm and her bum perked up into the air, up and above even her head if measured from sea level.

It somehow occurred to you then how private this little moment was. Though nothing nefarious was occurring, you knew that moments like the one you were witnessing now, were moments that belonged to the family.

The reverberating echoes of hundreds of voices and the slush and grime below your boot-clad feet stood in stark contrast to the fluffy beams of light that played delicately on your mom’s bottom at home. Another moment of insight touched your little mind when you thought about all the moms around you. They had their own bedrooms, beds and underwear too. All of this belonged to them and them alone. And though you all stood there under that very same roof, so far above you now, in proximity to that very jolly, big man, the streams of these private moments would never clash or intermingle, each would remain purely in its own pocket. And it would remain that way for every mom there.

The girl before you stepped up and apprehensively approached the big man. You stood there, next in line, so excited you could barely move or speak.

“We’re next sweety,” your mom said.

You tried to respond with “yeah,” but your mouth was dried out, and all that came was a squeak.

You could just barely make out the conversation being had at the podium. Something about a Barbie playset and an Ipad. Santa nodded and then pushed the girl delicately on towards her mother waiting by the exit. Her mother smiled at her with excitement. Your teeth started to rattle. You looked up at the podium and saw him there waiting for you, smiling. The miracle maker himself. He was looking at you. You and no one else.

And just as suddenly, violently becoming real with no indication or lead-up, his face contorted in pain and confusion. His eyes went so wide, their whites were almost as visible as the white on the lining of his coat. He placed his hands on his chest and began to groan as he collapsed to his knees, leaving his regal seat empty and alone behind him.

“Uh oh,” said one of the attractive blonde elves standing near. A well-dressed man standing off to the side said “I told them this would happen!”

The elves tried to help Santa up as the man got on his phone and dialed three numbers. The entire mall had all at once gone silent. And then the murmurs started. And when Santa crashed to the floor, it was then that you heard screams from behind you. Your mom clutched your shoulders. The well-dressed man continued “I knew we should have gone with somebody younger this time! But ‘nooo,’ he said. ‘the kids will realize he’s different this time.’ Oh yeah, Jon. What are the kids going to think now!”

“Enough!” someone barked at him, getting him to finally bite his tongue.

A few mall staff members grabbed the curtains and pulled them tightly around the podium until all before you was just red velvet, only inches from your face. It was light and fluffy, but to your mind, was indistinguishable from cast iron.

You turned around and looked up at your mom. She looked down at you, with a look so sorry, it alone almost brought tears to your eyes. You looked over to the side. Nobody was standing there.

You both sat at the food court. Your mom used her napkins to dry the tears from your eyes. Santa’s elves sat at the table next to yours, both talking on their phones and explaining what happened to Santa Claus himself in a fury of frantic “like”s and misplaced “literally’s.

Your mom drowned out their gossipy chatter. “He already got your letter, you know,” she assured you. “We just came here to meet him and say hello. He knows what you want for Christmas. He’s Santa. He knows everything.”

“Is Santa going to be okay?” you asked, pleading with your eyes.

The sweetness of it bowled your mom over and she said “of course he is, sweety. Santa gets sick like all of us, but it’s never serious. Mrs. Clause will nurse him back to health. And Rudolph can warm him up with his nose.”

“Really?” you asked, sniffling.

“Really,” she said, and smiled.

The fire within you, which you had thought had been snuffed completely, was actually still smouldering hot, just waiting for the wood that it could set alight on first contact.

You could feel it. Like an urgency rising up in you. It must have been what your mom called “Christmas Sprit.” You were sure of it.

Either that or you had to pee.

Your mom noticed. “Do you need to go to the washroom, baby?” she asked.

You nodded your head.

“Well,” she said with a wry grin, “do you know where it is?”

You looked over at it in the corner of the food court.

“You’re getting big now,” she said. “I don’t think you need me to take you anymore.” She smiled at you, excited to bestow this responsibility upon the shoulders she had been clutching as recently as fifteen minutes ago. “I think you’re ready to go yourself.”

You looked at her, unsure what to do.

“Go on,” she said, grinning. “Just make sure you go to the boy’s bathroom. You can’t go to the woman’s one without me. You know the difference, right?”

You nodded your head.

“Then go, sweety.”

You didn’t know what to make of the urinals, so you used the stall instead. The walls in here were very different from the walls you were used to seeing in the stalls of the girl’s bathroom. There was marker all over the place. Mostly saying things you couldn’t understand even if you wanted to.

What did “fuck” mean? How about “COcK?” And what was with the picture of a rocketship with two balls at their bottom about? And why was it shooting water up into the air? And the pictures of the naked girl bending over, and looking back at you over her big cartoon bum? And what was it about this picture in particular which transfixed you so much? You thought of you mom in her room looking back at you over her own bum, then turning around again to grab what she dropped.

When you finished relieving yourself, you flushed the toilet and turned around to open the stall. And as you did, you opened them to a pair of thighs standing before you. You followed them upward until you saw a face looking back down at you. It was the man from before. The one who stood off to the side. Here he was, directly in front of you. His strange face looking down at yours.

“Hello,” he said, and smiled.

You just stood there, wafting in the overpowering scent of his aftershave.

“You didn’t get to meet Santa, did you?” he asked. His mouth was slightly ajar and his eyes wide with concern and curiosity.

You couldn’t say anything. Nothing would come out if you tried. You couldn’t even nod your head. His jawline looked like it was carved from stone when you saw it from below.

“That’s too bad. You know, I told him he should have taken his medicine, but he always thinks I’m full of it. I don’t get that guy.” He stood there and shook his head in exasperation. “Do you have a brother?”

You somehow found the strength to shake your head.

“Oh, okay. If you ever do, please never treat him like Santa treats me. He doesn’t understand that I’m only trying to help him because I’m his brother and I care for him. I don’t understand why he can trust me with running the toy factory but he doesn’t trust me when it comes to his medicine. It doesn’t make any sense, does it? Running a whole entire toy factory is much harder than finding out what medicine to use to cure a Grinch infection.”

You were silent. Your mouth inert and weak, but your ears as sturdy and focused as ever.

“It drives me insane, really.” He fishes in his back pocket, his tongue in the corner of his mouth, and then he pulls out a little pill. A little red pill with a smiling face on it. “This stuff works miracles. Christmas miracles. If only I could prove it to Santa. Then he’d never be sick. I have to test it out on someone. That’s the only way Santa will trust it. But it has to be a grownup. The main ingredient in this stuff is already in kids, that’s why they have such big imaginations. So I’ll need a grownup. Santa’s health depends on it. Do you know any grownups we can test it out on?”

At first you shook your head, but then you caught yourself. Your mom! You nodded your head instead.

His eyes went wide. “Really!? Who?”

“My mom,” you mumbled.

“Your mom! Hm, would that wou- I don’t think so. Maybe. Hmm, you know what?”

You listened with anticipation. Your right fist clenched.

“I think that might actually work. Your mom. Yes, let’s try her. The only problem is that your mom doesn’t know any magic does she?”

You shook your head. She knew none that you could think of. Unless kissing your ouchies away was magic. You felt like asking, but before you could, he started again.

“Oh no. Umm,” his eyes lit up. “It still might work. People who can’t use magic only can’t use magic because they don’t believe. They work very hard to convince themselves that they don’t believe. Just like how kids convince themselves that Santa isn’t real. So this medicine won’t work on your mom.”

Your head dropped and you looked down at your red boots.

“But…” he continued, causing your head to perk up to his grinning face. “if she doesn’t know she’s taking it, she won’t be fighting against its magic effects, and then we’ll know for sure if it works, and then we can save Santa.”

You smiled up at him. It hadn’t occurred to you just how big the rock of responsibility you were carrying here was until now. You were wiry with the remote possibility of saving Santa, no matter how farfetched it all seemed. You, who only moments earlier were waiting in line just like every other kid just to meet him, could possibly be the one to save him. What a story. What an experience. What a deed.

“And I bet,” he continued “Santa would love to meet the kid who helped save him. He might even let you stay up at the North Pole for a week. As long as you don’t mind hanging out with elves and reindeer. And only if you’re okay with riding in his sleigh of course. There are no commercial flights that go that way.”

You took a deep breath and exhaled. Your teeth jittered.

“Okay, so that settles it then? You ready? Wait until she has to use the bathroom and then put this medicine in her drink. It’ll disappear when it gets in there.” He stopped to think for a second. “Because it’s magic.”

Suddenly, you could hear a voice just outside of the bathroom door. The man just put his finger to his mouth and then he whispered in your eye “don’t tell her you saw me or anyone else here, okay? Otherwise it won’t work.”

Two men came into the washroom and Santa’s brother spun around and started combing his hair with his fingers in the mirror. It was as if he had never met you before. As if his fate and yours, and Santa’s in turn, weren’t star-crossed and inter-tangled hopelessly and thrillingly. The moment between you and him was private and special. You looked up at him, then you turned away. You walked toward the bathroom door with the pill in your right hand and you pulled on the handle and stepped outside.

You looked at the back of your mom’s blond head as you came back to the table. As you rounded toward your seat, she smiled at you. “How did it go?” she asked.

“Good,” you said.

“Not so hard now is it?”

“No,” you said.

She smile and continued eating.

“You know,” she said, after a few moments, “Santa Claus is probably going to give you two presents this year. I bet you he feels really bad about what happened. Especially since you’re so high up on his nice list. Something tells me he’s going to treat you well this Christmas. He just has to.”

You wanted to explode on her like a burst dam with the knowledge that she was underselling it. You were like an evergreen branch encumbered by the weight of its pure white snow, eager to buckle and drop its load to the earth it normally sheltered below. Santa was going to be more than happy with you this year. You might be the one to save Christm- you couldn’t even finish the thought. You were about to open your mouth and spill over with all of this to her, but you caught yourself right on the edge of making that horrible mistake. “She can’t know,” you thought. “Not until later.”

“Okay,” she said. “Now that you can go to the bathroom alone, do you think you can sit here alone as mommy goes to the bathroom herself?”

You nodded your head, not realizing all at once that this was your chance.

She got up and said “Just guard my food.” She looked over to her right subtly, and then leaned in to whisper to you: “I hear that elves love snatching at French fries.”

You watched her get further and further away. And just as she was about to step into the girl’s room, he stepped out of the boy’s room. He looked at her, and when he realized who he was looking at, he smiled. She looked down immediately and rushed into the girl’s room.

He smiled and looked down and then walked off to the side. Then he turned and looked at you from across the court. He was at a similar distance to you now as he was when you and your mom were in line for Santa. He held his index finger and thumb together and downward up at you. And then he pulled them apart as if he was dropping something that sat between those two fingers. You looked down at the pill in your hand. You looked at your mom’s diet coke. You looked back up at him. He was smiling.

You got up on your chair with your knees and you dumped the pill in her drink. It melted like snow. You looked up at Santa’s brother, wanting to see his reaction. There was nobody standing there.

Your mom came back to the table suddenly as you scanned the court for Santa’s brother, hoping he didn’t forget about you. You were startled by her big, warm body suddenly coming into view, as if she had dropped from the ceiling and into her chair. “See, everything is alright,” your mom said.

She began picking at her fries. And not long after, she took a sip of her drink. “You know,” she said. “We should go to Dairy Queen for some ice cream after this. As long as they’re not also closing early.”

You said “yes!” You loved ice cream. You loved it more than almost anything.

She took another sip of her drink. “Me and your dad have been very proud of you this year. You know, I think even without Santa you’d be the best boy you could be. It’s just who you are.” Her face contorted into a look of bitter taste, in stark contrast to the smile she was just giving you. “This coke has a weird aftertaste.”

Luckily, this didn’t stop her from drinking it.

You looked over her shoulder and saw him standing there, smiling at you. You wanted to smile back, but like before, something in his being was so foreign to anything you had known. You had a hard time believing this was Santa’s brother, at least on a gut level, even though you knew logically that he was.

Your mom’s straw started to make a hollow noise as she slurped at it, and when she set her paper cup down, it made a hollow thud on the table. It was empty. Your mom sighed. “Only four more day ‘til Christmas.” She smiled at you. “And thank goodness. I’m so tired of shopping for gifts and trying to figure out what people want. It’s only 5 in the evening, and I feel like sleeping right here.”

You thought about buying presents yourself. It had occurred to you in that moment, and never before it, just how different Christmas must be for adults. You had never even seen your mom get a present from Santa. Not even once. Even though she was a really good person. At least as far as you could tell. And it couldn’t be that she was in fact really bad, because you never saw her get a lump of coal either.

Your mom, apparently neither naughty nor nice according to Santa’s estimation, started to yawn. A minute later, she rested her head on the table. She never got back up.

You looked over her shoulder. Nobody was standing there. “Did it work?” you mumbled to yourself. You felt scared. Where was Santa’s brother? What if she doesn’t wake up before the mall closes?

All of a sudden, a shadow engulfed you and your mother. You turned around to see him looking down at her. He looked over at you and extended his open hand. “Hold it,” he said. “I’ll take you to Santa.”

“Is it working?” you asked and grabbed his hand.

“It’s working,” he said. And he lifted your mom by her waist until she was upright, then he rested her head on his shoulder. The three of you walked out of the food court.

As you did, somebody, a man whose demeanor felt much more familiar to you, stopped and asked, “Sir, is your wife doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Santa’s brother said. “She’s just exhausted from all the hullabaloo from earlier. She’ll be okay.” And you just continued on. You, him, and your mom. His arm was wrapped around your waist in a way that you had only seen your dad do with her previously.

As you continued on through the mall, which was thinning down to non-holiday numbers, you heard him groaning next to you: “Oh yeah,” he whispered.

You looked behind his back to see his entire open palm squeezing your mom’s butt. His walk, his smell, his face, the feel of his hand, and his voice. It was all so estranged from anything you knew. And that hand, the way it squeezed that familiar butt. You flashbacked to your mom in her room, rays of sun decorating her back and the soles of her feet as your dad stood off to the side. She turns around to look at you over that big butt, covered by nothing but those white panties.

You imagine that strange hand coming over the edge of the bed and squeezing that big butt.

He took the two of you within the shadowy embrace of a doorway. You had been to this mall countless times, half-a-dozen with your mom during the last month alone, but you had never been here before. It was cold and grungy looking, without shelves or bright lights and price tags. Just carts and boxes.

He took you within a little cramped bathroom and laid your mom on the floor. He locked the door behind the three of you. “You ever want to stay in a mall after dark?” he asked. “After everyone’s gone? With all the toy stores to yourself?”

You nodded your head, not believing your luck today.

“Well, that’s what we’re going to do. You just have to be very quiet. Okay, in order to see that the medicine worked,” he started, his voice quivering, “I have to get some of her heavy clothes off.”

He pulled her butt into the air as her face lay on the ground. “Let’s see this badboy,” he said, and he pulled her pants down, groaning with each inch of her that was made bare. Her bare butt stood in the air, higher than any other point of her body, including her head. It was in grand contrast with her bright red parka, which she still had on. He pulled down his pants and his wiener was throbbing, big and red. “Okay,” he whispered, huskily, “I got my tester out. Here, pass me her purse.”

You picked up your mom’s bag and handed it to him.

“Let’s see,” he said as he dug through it. “I need something with some emotional value. Ah! A keychain. ‘#1 mom?’ This is perfect.”

He pulled her butt cheeks apart, exposing her two holes between them and he shoved the keychain into the higher hole. “Yeah,” he said, voice still quivering, “it seems to be working.” And then he started playing with his hard wiener. The key was entirely gone inside her as the ‘#1’ mom chain hung suspended from it, rotating slightly back and forth. Her spanked her right cheek, causing the pendant to bounce.

Even as young as you were, something told you this was only the beginning of what was about to be a long night.

The halls were now empty. The Christmas music had stopped and each and every store had a pull down steel cage in front of its glass. One security guard patrolled the silent mall, while in the staff corridor, a bathroom door unlocked and then opened. Your mom came out naked all over, including a new pale spot on her ring finger. Her ass hung down below two arms, and her butt crack was being tickled by an erect cock that peaked up from below. Her feet buckled over each other at the ankles.

You followed behind in your parka and boots, watching Santa’s brother’s pink butt, wondering what Santa’s wiener looked like, or if Santa was going to get naked with your mom too.

As the three of you traveled through the empty halls, Santa’s brother suddenly stopped before you. “This is it,” he said. “Perfect.”

You stepped out from behind him to see it there. Santa’s throne. It had been hastily placed there with all his other things.

“Now,” he said, his voice louder, but still with the desperate quiver that slightly undermined his authority. “Watch what I do next to test the medicine. I want you to watch all of it. Watch it and remember it. Because you’re going to be the one to explain it to Santa later. It’s a very important job but I know that I can trust you…” he stopped for a second as if thinking. “Can I trust you?”

You nodded your head affirmatively.

“Okay then,” he said and smiled as he wrapped your mom up in Santa’s coat and leg warmers slowly.

When he was finished making your mom into a warm and breathing Christmas decoration, he positioned her on her knees just inches away from his wiener, which twitched and throbbed. It was the hardest part on either of their bodies. He brushed her blonde hair and smiled. Then he said “now watch this.”

His wiener, the most outstanding and strange part of his already strange body, which looked irritated and aggressive to you, even when it was under the flourescent light of that bathroom, was now disappering in, an reappearing from, your very own mom’s mouth. Santa’s brother was inside of the very same mouth that kissed you every morning before school. You couldn’t believe how deep it went inside her. You imagined the taste and feel of it inside her mouth. You wondered if she could taste it now. The only thing you had ever seen go inside her mouth was food. And never that much at once.

He saw you admiring his work. “Now look what I do to mommy’s face.”

You had no idea what he was doing or if it was working, but your mom was going “Glghh glghh glhgh glghhh,” a sound which you had never heard before. Her face down there with all those strange and outstanding pieces of him filled you with an emotion, or a vibration, that was impossible to describe. His face looked somehow both pleased and angry. It occurred to you, in some way that you couldn’t quite understand, that your mom would normally never allow something like this to happen to her. And you could tell that he was enjoying what was happening because of this, not inspite of it.

You remember hearing a story about one of the kids from an older grade spitting in his teacher’s face. What was currently happening to your mom, though very different, gave you the same feeling. Even still, you stood there, curious about what would come next, a sensation that you weren’t so sure you’d have if it was anybody but Santa’s brother here doing these things. You could be sure that regardless of what was happening, that it was at least headed in the right direction. And because of this, you felt no guilt at enjoying what it was you were seeing. You felt the thrill of sneaking candy before dinner while at the same time feeling secure in your actions because it was the tooth fairy that had snuck it into your hands behind your mom and dad’s back to begin with.

Your outlook was reinforced. “Mmmh yeaahh!” he said. “You’re on Santa’s nice list this year. Watch mommy suck this cock.”

There was that word again: “COcK.”

His wiener was wet with your mom’s spit. The hairs above, much darker than your dad’s, touched her nose, which she occasionally pressed into him. Everything looked so nice and scary down there at the same time. And the entirety of your mom’s face was in contact with it. Her head occasionally went lower and licked the hanging skin beneath while his “COcK” throbbed above, alone but for the saliva your mom left on it.

“Yeah,” he said, basically breathing it out, “you’re on the nice list. Definitely. But your mom? She’s on Santa’s naughty list. She has to be punished.”

A piece fell into a previously obscure place. The naughty list? Your intuition had been correct. Your mom’s warm exhalations into his nether region was both a gift for him and punishment for her. And what a way to punish someone. The privacy of the moment, it’s vulgarness, though you had no conception of any such concept before now, was spelled out to you plainly in each gag, and goggle, and moan, and slurp of the tongue. Your mom’s nudity, and even more so, his, really was a spit in her face. It was intended to be. And given that Santa was the final arbiter of who really was naughty or nice, this – all of this – was not only warranted, but correct.

And you had played the most premier part of it all.

You felt on fire. It was Santa who gave you the good gifts each year anyway. Not mom and dad. You knew you were in the correct corner from that alone. It didn’t hurt that on top of it all, what you were watching looked good visually.

So when you saw Santa’s brother pick up the pace again, you felt great. Santa will be extra proud of you when he sees this, if he wasn’t watching already. He had to be though. He knew when you were sleeping. He knew when you were awake. He knew when you’ve been bad or good. And you were in the middle of being good for him right now. He was seeing all of this. He was looking at you now the way he had been before that red velvet curtain closed on you, separating you and him forever.

Santa’s brother suddenly stopped and pulled his “COcK” out of your mom’s mouth. “Her mouth is great,” he said, as if explaining the science of it all to you. “But there’s a part of her I need to punish now that’s so much better.”

He pushed her over on her side and pulled her long, white legs apart. Then he got in between them and slowly pressed his wiener inside a hole in her body. “Ohhhhhhh” he said as he got deeper. “Yeah, Santa’s going to love you.”

Your ears perked up. Was Santa going to do this to your mom too? His brother seemed to be enjoying it more than you’ve ever seen anyone enjoy anything before. It was like he was on a waterslide, but quieter. And the fuzzy feeling, instead of being in his face and chest, was in his hips and wiener and the round things hanging from it.

If he was enjoying your mom this much. Imagine how Santa would feel doing it. You’d be on his nice list forever. What was it about your mom that contributed to this reaction? You thought you were excited to see her everyday after school. You never thought you’d see someone even more happy to be around her, but here you were.

Maybe it had something to do with her nakedness. It was like a secret weapon. Is that why moms wore clothes? Is this what happened when they didn’t? Did this happen with all moms, or just yours? And why did their punishment seem to necessarily rely on someone else’s pleasure? You had so many questions. But you knew the answers would only come with age, like so many other things your dad could never explain to you.

Your mom started moaning pathetically on the floor. “Uhhhhhh.” He put his hand in her mouth as she did.

“Luh luh luh luh” is what echoed through the halls instead. You began laughing.

“You like that?” he asked.

“Yeah!” you exclaimed and giggled.

Your mom was making him feel good in the wiener, but you in the funny bone. Her body was a multi-purpose playground. A truth only hinted at in that sunny bedroom. The glory of it being realized here, in a world so removed, without your dad in his boxers to interrupt it, was a cherry on top of all of it.

“Ohh god. What an ass!” he exclaimed.

Her butt, you thought. He likes her butt.

“I knew I needed to have you the second I laid eyes on this ass. Who knew your little faggot would be the one to bring this thing to me. God, that’s good!”

Your eyes lit up. You didn’t know what “faggot” meant. But you knew that it could only be something important. After all, what other kid have you ever heard doing this much for Santa? This was a lot more than a plate of cookies or a glass of milk. And this didn’t satiate the stomach, it was much more filling in a way that’s more central to whatever it was anyone could ask for. You knew this all somehow.

You looked, fascinated by the fine hairs between your mom’s legs. They were similar to his but different. That entire space, now open to you when it was once hidden, was a treasure trove of novelty and fascination. She had this all locked away from sight the entire time. And while you had seen your dad’s wiener, you had never seen it as big and hard and red as Santa’s brother’s was right now.

This is something your mom’s body just does, you realized. Did your dad know this? Was he the one who usually did this with her? If so, you had just brought the Claus family in on something that used to belong solely to your parents. And it was possible that in a short enough time, Santa himself would also be partaking whatever it was that this was, and doing it all on your very own mom.

Santa’s brother noticed you gawking and said “come closer.”

You just stood there staring.

“Come on, it’s not going to bite.”

You walked up to motions and parts that transfixed you so.

“Now get down and watch as closely as possible. I’m going to need you to remember all of this to tell your daddy. He’s going to need to know what happened to mommy.”

You nodded your head dutifully. You marveled as it disappeared and reappeared again, your mom the most vital step in this sideshow attraction. The smells wafting from what was happening down there were both familiar and foreign all at once. You knew you were smelling him and her together. A mixture that never would have existed without your help. Your mom’s smell had only intermingled with your father’s before now.

He grabbed her throat aggressively. “We’re going to start this new year off right,” he said. “We have our honorary elf here to thank for that.”

You fell backward when heard that. And honorary elf? Then your eyes went wide at the possible revelation: Was this how elfs were made?

“I was going to follow you home and come back for you on Christmas Eve. But this is so much better. Sooo much better. Ffucck.”

Your mom’s head shook with his passion, her hair becoming a blur. If his wiener felt as good as your funny bone did now, he must have been having a good time. And to think, it was all deserved. She, being your mother, was somehow so naughty, it warranted this, all while you were at the top of Santa’s nice list. This was the very first moment in your life when it occurred to you that your parents don’t know everything. They weren’t even better people than you were. Yet they were the ones raising you. What a way to find out. What a glorious way.

For a second you thought you were wrong about this new revelation, as Santa’s brother lifted your mom up and placed her on Santa’s throne. But within seconds it became obvious that this was only done for better access to her bottom half.

Her bottom half looked like that picture on the bathroom stall wall. It occurred to you then that the world loved naked moms. But men did specifically. That’s why those drawing were only in the boy’s washroom. After years of using the woman’s washroom with your mom, you had never seen a naked man or woman on those pristine walls. It was moms, and their naked butts, that guys wanted. And Santa’s brother was no different. That’s why he was so grateful to you. Your mom’s naughty butt was nice to him.

Could it be that she was on Santa’s naughty list, but her butt was on Santa’s nice list?

Did a butt that belonged to someone naughty become nice? Or were butts nice regardless of who it was that was attached to them? You could tell that it was girls who had the really nice butts. Just a comparison between Santa’s brother’s and your mom’s was enough to spell that out for you. But would he still enjoy what he was doing with it now if she were not naughty, but nice instead?

What was more likely, that your naughty mom raised a nice kid? Or that you, your mom, and her butt were all nice, and that calling her naughty was just an excuse to use her nice butt? Or was it even possible that what your mom had done to genuinely end up on that naughty list was withholding her nice butt? After all, if being nice is about bringing joy to the world, what would you call someone who withholds that joy even though they had more than enough to give?

If your mom had done nothing except for that, wouldn’t that be naughty enough for several lifetimes? And if, god forbid, Santa’s brother was really the naughty one here, who was it who was responsible for drawing this naughty behavior out of him? If your mom, by her very being, stoked the flames of naughtiness within him, wasn’t she, by definition, naughty, and therefore always worthy of this?

So even if someone wasn’t Santa’s brother, wouldn’t they be right to do what he was doing now? Hasn’t your mom had enough Christmases without her portion of coal? Hasn’t your dad had enough Christmases without this happening to his wife? After all, he was the one who hogged her this entire time.

You thought about your dad standing there, in his boxers, with his hand on the bathroom door frame, as streams of light flittered in and played along your mom’s figure. There was a reason why that panty-clad butt drew your eye the way it did. There was a reason why she made that face as she saw you. She had a beauty she was hiding. A beauty that cowered behind the shield of suburban walls and customs. A world of atomized units of humanity locked in boxes from one another.

In contradiction with the beauty that was and could always be possible but that she chose to deny.

But today that could no longer be. Because now it was finally time to share. To be honest, I’m finally proud of your mom. Because now, she was finally partaking in something she only playacted at before. What was that specifically?

Well, it was the spirit of Christmas.