Read Online Santa Steps Out: A Fairy Tale for Grown-Ups by Robert Devereaux - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Robert Devereaux
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stormclouds above, like a gray-green gash knifed into the wet flesh of the sea. Where the waves washed against it, jutting rock alternated with stretches of strand. The sand was finest, the tough dune vegetation least choked together, at the gash's two jagged extremities. From the sparse beaches and ocean-dashed rocks, the island rose abruptly into steep wooded slopes, as though God had placed His hands to either side of a flatland forest and bunched the earth together between them. Save for the blasted cedar at the north tip of the island, the trees were exclusively ash.
When she was in residence, the mistress of the island preferred either to squat upon the shore near the cedar, brooding into the ceaseless storm, or to take refuge up among the ash trees in a grim cavern punched into the mountainside and decked out with bone-furniture. She sat now at the cave entrance on a bleached-white armchair, munching on a bowl of molars and staring past the wind-tossed treetops. Incessant rain beat at her breasts and belly. But her mind was fixed on the fat fellow with the generous cock and the sensitive hands.
These days he called himself Santa Claus. But she knew who he really was, who he had been before the Christers had wrested control from their pagan predecessors.
A rough wind set the tops of the trees to rioting. Vacant now, every one of them, despite their animation. She could still hear, as if it were yesterday, the shriek and moan of her sister nymphs as they perished. She could feel the jaws of death close over her. She recalled how the rescuing hand of Almighty Zeus—in the midst of his own self-transformation—sealed a pact with her and infused her with life.
Bitter pact. Grim life. Sundered from the ecstatic community of nymphs and satyrs—constant byplay, constant sensual delight, life lived to the full. Set down alone on this island, given a craving for bone which could never match, marvelous though it was, her old cravings for wine and fruit and the frenzies of the flesh.
Their god, the One-and-Only-God, he who sometimes glared at her in patriarchal admonishment through swirls of stormclouds, had obliterated Santa's memories of those days, slipping more convenient myths into his head. But whenever she tried to speak of these things, her words would not come.
"You really don't remember," she'd say.
"Remember what?" he would ask.
"The time before you were . . . the time he who calls himself God was . . . back before you were . . ." The hut walls shook with her frustration.
"There, there, don't trouble yourself over it."
But she did trouble herself, and greatly. She wanted Santa to know. Together, they would conspire against the big blowhard in the sky; they'd topple the turncoat whose betrayal had led, in spite of his rescue of her, to the slaughter of her sisters and their goatish lovers.
At times, it was hard to see the old satyr in Santa. From time to time she caught hints, a special stance, a casual scratch behind an ear. But he looked so different. The hornless forehead, the kind eye, the impossibly white curls. They thrilled and disgusted her.
Desolation blew through the dripping forest before her now. A curious feeling harried her heart these days when she thought of Santa. In the beginning her lust had been pure, her desires wholly selfish. She had wanted the jolly fat man because he, of all beings, could best cater to her insatiate whims, could give give give until there was no giving left—and then give some more.
But of late, his selfless giving had seeded her gut, had sent out runners from her viscera to her every soul and limb. More often than not, to her astonishment, she found herself mouthing her lover for the sheer pleasure of hearing him moan, without a thought to the payback to come when he turned her about, as he invariably did, to feast on her fairyhood.
She wondered—perverse thought—if it could be love she felt. "Love. Love for the fat man. Love for Santa," she said. She liked
When she was in residence, the mistress of the island preferred either to squat upon the shore near the cedar, brooding into the ceaseless storm, or to take refuge up among the ash trees in a grim cavern punched into the mountainside and decked out with bone-furniture. She sat now at the cave entrance on a bleached-white armchair, munching on a bowl of molars and staring past the wind-tossed treetops. Incessant rain beat at her breasts and belly. But her mind was fixed on the fat fellow with the generous cock and the sensitive hands.
These days he called himself Santa Claus. But she knew who he really was, who he had been before the Christers had wrested control from their pagan predecessors.
A rough wind set the tops of the trees to rioting. Vacant now, every one of them, despite their animation. She could still hear, as if it were yesterday, the shriek and moan of her sister nymphs as they perished. She could feel the jaws of death close over her. She recalled how the rescuing hand of Almighty Zeus—in the midst of his own self-transformation—sealed a pact with her and infused her with life.
Bitter pact. Grim life. Sundered from the ecstatic community of nymphs and satyrs—constant byplay, constant sensual delight, life lived to the full. Set down alone on this island, given a craving for bone which could never match, marvelous though it was, her old cravings for wine and fruit and the frenzies of the flesh.
Their god, the One-and-Only-God, he who sometimes glared at her in patriarchal admonishment through swirls of stormclouds, had obliterated Santa's memories of those days, slipping more convenient myths into his head. But whenever she tried to speak of these things, her words would not come.
"You really don't remember," she'd say.
"Remember what?" he would ask.
"The time before you were . . . the time he who calls himself God was . . . back before you were . . ." The hut walls shook with her frustration.
"There, there, don't trouble yourself over it."
But she did trouble herself, and greatly. She wanted Santa to know. Together, they would conspire against the big blowhard in the sky; they'd topple the turncoat whose betrayal had led, in spite of his rescue of her, to the slaughter of her sisters and their goatish lovers.
At times, it was hard to see the old satyr in Santa. From time to time she caught hints, a special stance, a casual scratch behind an ear. But he looked so different. The hornless forehead, the kind eye, the impossibly white curls. They thrilled and disgusted her.
Desolation blew through the dripping forest before her now. A curious feeling harried her heart these days when she thought of Santa. In the beginning her lust had been pure, her desires wholly selfish. She had wanted the jolly fat man because he, of all beings, could best cater to her insatiate whims, could give give give until there was no giving left—and then give some more.
But of late, his selfless giving had seeded her gut, had sent out runners from her viscera to her every soul and limb. More often than not, to her astonishment, she found herself mouthing her lover for the sheer pleasure of hearing him moan, without a thought to the payback to come when he turned her about, as he invariably did, to feast on her fairyhood.
She wondered—perverse thought—if it could be love she felt. "Love. Love for the fat man. Love for Santa," she said. She liked
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