Chapter 4: Jingle Bells and Jiggling Asses
The cold between the houses was a shock that felt like purity. Kris stood in the shadow of a leafless hedge, the damp smell of Candace’s body clinging to his beard. He rubbed his face, the coarse hairs slick. A distant memory tried to surface—the clean, sterile scent of the Pole, the whisper of elves’ feet on workshop floors, the dry, sexless kiss Mrs. Claus planted on his cheek each solstice. He smothered it with the lingering stench of release and sweat.
He needed noise. Light. Something to burn the quiet aftermath out of him.
The address for “Santa’s Naughty North Pole” had been texted to him by a bleary-eyed mall security guard weeks ago, a furtive nod passing between them as children lined up for photos. The guard had seen something in his eyes, a vacancy that had nothing to do with holiday cheer.
A short sleigh-ride away, through a warp in the cold, and he stood before it. A low, windowless building throbbed with bass from behind a black-painted door. A neon sign flickered: a seductive elf winking, her leg kicking over the words. He pushed inside.
The heat was a physical wall, thick with the cloying scent of artificial peppermint oil overlying something darker—stale beer, body spray, and the tang of anxious sweat. Garland draped everything, tinsel catching the low red and green stage lights. Fake snow, dingy and trampled, clung to the edges of a runway stage. On it, a woman with tired eyes gyrated around a pole wrapped to look like a candy cane.
A few men sat at tables, their postures slumped in the gloom. The place was a funeral for Christmas spirit.
He shrugged off his heavy coat, revealing the full, stained red suit beneath. He kept the hat on. He was a spectacle, and he knew it. Heavy boots thudded on the sticky floor as he walked to a table right by the stage. He sat. The chair groaned.
A waitress in a corset fashioned like a wrapped present approached, her smile plastic. “What can I get for you, Santa, baby?”
“Milk,” he said, his voice a low rumble that cut through the synth-carols piping from the speakers. “Whole. In a dirty glass.”
Her smile faltered. She nodded and retreated.
His presence began to ripple outward. The dancer on stage spotted him. Her routine changed. The sluggish rolls became sharper, more deliberate. She crawled to the edge of the stage near him, dropping onto all fours. A cheap sprig of mistletoe was clipped to her G-string.
“Want a present, Santa?” she purred, her breath smelling of cinnamon gum.
He looked at her, his gaze flat. He reached into the deep pocket of his coat, which was draped over his chair, and pulled out a crumpled hundred-dollar bill. He didn’t fan it out. He held it, rolled into a tight cylinder, between his thick fingers. He leaned forward, past the stage lights, and tucked it not into her garter, but into the waistband of her flimsy bottoms, his knuckles brushing her skin. It was an impersonal, transactional gesture.
“The real show,” he said, his voice barely audible over the music. “Where is it?”
She blinked, the seduction evaporating from her eyes, replaced by a wary understanding. She glanced towards a heavyset man with a clipboard standing in the shadows by a red velvet curtain. She gave a slight nod.
Kris leaned back, accepting his glass of milk. It was lukewarm and left a greasy film on the inside of the glass. He drank it in one long gulp.
The music shifted. The syrupy carol bled into a grinding, aggressive industrial beat. The stage lights went dark for a moment, then strobed. The previous dancer scurried off.
The man with the clipboard stepped onto the stage, a wireless microphone in his hand. “Alright, you filthy elves,” his voice boomed, echoed by feedback. “You think you’ve been naughty? You think you’ve been nice? We got a special guest tonight. Direct from the North Pole, with a sack full of… discipline. Let’s give it up for the one, the only… KRIS KRINGLE!”
The spotlight hit him. Kris didn’t smile. He stood, a mountainous shape in garish red, and walked to the three steps leading to the stage. He took them slowly, each movement heavy with intent.
The stage was a glittering prison of fake snow and plastic holly. He took the microphone from the manager. His breathing was loud in the sudden quiet of the dead music.
“I’ve seen your lists,” he began, his voice not booming, but spreading through the room like a stain. “I know what you want. You want the lie. The shiny paper. The perfect bow.” He paused, scanning the handful of upturned faces. His eyes landed on two women sitting together at a front table. Office Christmas party, clearly. Matching ugly sweaters, makeup smudged from the day, a shared bottle of cheap vodka between them. One looked defiant, the other, whose name tag read ‘Stacy’, looked hollowed out, her eyes glassy.
“But I’m tired of the lie,” Kris said, dropping the mic to his side. It thumped against his leg. He began to unbuckle his wide leather belt. The sound was stark, leather on leather. “Tonight, you get the coal. Straight from the sack.”
He let his trousers fall. The vulgarity of it, in the tinsel-strewn light, was breathtaking. This wasn’t a dancer’s tease. It was an unveiling of something blunt and real—thick white legs, a hanging gut, the worn red long johns stained at the crotch. He hooked his thumbs in the waistband.
The woman with the defiant eyes, ‘Chloe’ on her tag, snorted into her drink. “Oh my god,” she giggled, too loud.
Kris’s eyes locked onto hers. He pushed the long johns down. He was already hard, a crude, ruddy reality against the pale, artificial setting.
“You think it’s funny?” he said into the mic, his voice suddenly a gravelly whisper. “You. Up here.”
Chloe’s smile died. She shook her head, shrinking back.
“Both of you,” he commanded. “Now.”
A hush fell. The manager made a ‘go on’ gesture. A collective, held breath tightened the room.
Stacy stood first, moving like a sleepwalker. Chloe, after a nudge from her friend, followed, her face pale. They climbed onto the stage, their sneakers crunching in the fake snow.
Kris pointed to the floor in front of him. “On your knees. See what you wished for.”
They knelt. The scent of him, carried from Candy’s bedroom and amplified by the club’s heat—sour milk, old sweat, a deep, musky pungency—washed over them. Stacy stared, transfixed. Chloe gagged, turning her head.
Kris grabbed a handful of Chloe’s hair, not gentle. He pulled her face forward. “Open.”
She whimpered, her lips parting. He guided himself past her teeth. “Taste your Christmas bonus.”
He used her mouth with a brutal, mechanical rhythm, his other hand fumbling at the button of Stacy’s jeans. He yanked them down along with her underwear, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hips. He pushed two thick fingers inside her without preamble. She cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the grinding music that had started again.
He worked them both like machines, his breathing becoming a steady, rhythmic grunt broadcast through the sound system. He was a foreman on a factory floor of depravity. He pulled from Chloe’s mouth with a wet pop and turned to Stacy, shoving her onto her back in the grit of the fake snow. He mounted her, not bothering to remove her ugly Christmas sweater. The reindeer on it stared blankly at the ceiling as he drove into her.
“You wanted magic?” he snarled, his face a grotesque mask above hers. “This is the magic. This is the fucking workshop. You’re just a toy. A hole to be stuffed.”
Chloe, on her knees beside them, was crying silently, her hand moving between her own legs, a mimicry of arousal that was pure trauma reflex. Kris reached over, grabbed her wrist, and forced her hand onto Stacy’s clit. “Make her sing,” he growled. “Give the people a show.”
The chants started somewhere in the back. A low, rhythmic pulse at first. “Kris! Kris! Kris!”
It built, fueled by vodka and vicarious shame. Soon the whole room was throbbing with it. The strobe lights fractured the scene into hellish snapshots: the gleam of sweat on his back, the terrified glaze in Stacy’s eyes, the garland tangled in Chloe’s hair.
Kris felt the pressure coiling, a different kind of magic, sick and dark, pulling from the base of his spine. He fucked harder, deeper, his body slapping against Stacy’s. He wasn’t pursuing pleasure anymore. He was chasing obliteration.
“You wanna come?” he roared at Stacy, his voice raw. “You wanna squirt all over this fucking fake snow? Do it. Give Santa his milk.”
As if his words were a command, her body seized. A violent tremor racked her, and a clear gush spilled out from under him, darkening the white plastic flakes beneath her. The crowd roared.
He pivoted, pulling out, and dragged Chloe on top of Stacy. He entered her from behind, his fingers finding Stacy’s soaked flesh again. “You too,” he grunted into Chloe’s ear. “Be a good girl. Piss yourself for Santa.”
Chloe’s body, wound tight with shock and a perverse, unwanted stimulation, convulsed. Another hot stream joined the first, mingling on the stage. The two women lay in the wet mess, shaking, as Kris finally emptied himself onto their backs, his release hitting their skin in thick, heavy stripes.
The chanting reached a fever pitch. He stood, looming over them, pulling his long johns up over his dripping flesh. He left them there, exposed and trembling in the puddle of their own making.
He picked up the microphone from where it had fallen. The room fell silent, panting.
“That,” he breathed into the mic, the word echoing, “is how you fill a stocking.”
He turned and walked off the stage, through the red curtain, leaving the glitter, the stink, and the broken women behind. In the dark, sticky hallway, he leaned against a wall smelling of disinfectant and mildew. The manager appeared, clapping him on the shoulder, offering cash.
Kris pushed the money away. He didn’t want it.
He wanted the hollow echo inside him to stay quiet. He wanted the memory of the clean, silent snow of the North Pole to stay buried. For a moment, in the violence and the filth and the roar, it had been.
But as the adrenaline bled away, the cold crept back in. And with it, a single, clear thought: it wasn’t enough. The hunger was wider, deeper, and more ancient than a strip club stage could hold.
He needed a bigger chimney.