Festive Cocktail (sans cock)
I opened my eyes with a start. I hadn’t really had that much to drink at the party, but Frankie’s melon-and-eggnog concoction had so much sugar and who knows what else, so as soon as I started to sober up I was feeling just ill enough not to sleep.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been awake at midnight as the calendar rolled over to Christmas day, but it was the first time I’d been both awake, at home and relatively sober. James’s kids were fast asleep in the next room, while James (of course) was out on an all-night bender. I cursed him under my breath, then after a moment’s pause started to wonder what had jolted me back to full wakefulness. There had been a sound, hadn’t there? But all I could hear was… silence. Total silence. Not even the continuous tick-tock I was used to in the background. I looked up, and saw that the clock had stopped on the stroke of midnight.
I slipped out of bed and pulled on my robe. I wasn’t quite sure where I was going, but there was something odd, and I needed to find out what it was. I was glad to find that standing didn’t cause any further nausea, but I couldn’t see where my slippers had got to. Still, that didn’t matter too much. I padded quietly out into the hall, looking for a sliver of light under the kids’ door to tell me they were awake too. No, all was dark. Then I heard it again, the sound of movement from downstairs. That must be what had woken me, and I quickly headed over to the stairs.
I was right outside the lounge door before I stopped to think what I’d do if I found an intruder in the house. I didn’t have a weapon, and the sight of a 5′2″ young woman in a fluffy pink bathrobe wouldn’t be that intimidating to most determined burglars. I couldn’t think what else to do, though, and didn’t want to wake the kids. The most likely solution was that it was just my imagination. I pushed open the door, and heard a whispered “Bollocks!” from a figure standing in the hearth.
I froze. I couldn’t see who it was, just a silhouette in the darkened room. Only the flickering red and green lights on the tree cast any kind of illumination. I could see clearly, though, that the grandfather clock here in the hallway had stopped, both hands pointing straight up and the pendulum hanging in the air to one side. I didn’t care if I was still drunk, if someone had spiked my drink or something, but that was plain impossible. The weirdness of a stranger in the fireplace, that felt like some kind of joke that would seem so funny until the perpetrator sobered up. But stopping the clocks? That would be a major effort, surely, and I had no idea where I’d even start trying to pull off something like that.
“Who’s there?” I tried to inject menace into my voice, but I was fully aware that I’d never threatened anybody in my life. I think it came out kind of needy, but I hoped that someone being there would be enough intimidation to whoever this was. If it was a joke, it would get old fast as soon as I threatened to invite the police to the party.
“I’m the Easter bunny!” she called back, exuberant and slurring her speech so badly I could hardly make out the words. I stepped into the lounge and flicked on the lights. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard, and I couldn’t believe what my eyes were showing me. She was indeed a bunny. Light hazel fur covered all visible parts of her body, and that was quite a lot. Her face was somewhere in between human and rabbit in form, with brown eyes that seemed unusually large. Her ears hung almost down to her shoulders, and trembled as she moved. If this was some kind of costume, they must have spent a fortune on animatronics. Oddly enough, all this didn’t really surprise me. It’s as if the part of my brain responsible for processing weirdness had imploded under the strain. One thing that did strike me, though, was her costume. She was wearing a red costume trimmed with white fur, and a Santa hat. A straw basket filled with gaudily wrapped presents completed the ensemble.
I looked my midnight visitor up and down again, trying to find something coherent to say that wouldn’t seem too clichéd. Quite aside from being a bunny, and having the wrong outfit for the identity she claimed, she was awfully cute. Her legs were long but muscular, and her tank top was tailored to highlight the contours of two pairs of breasts. I was surprised to realise I’d never wondered how many tits a bunny girl should have; the ones in my teenage mind’s eye had been human babes with a sexy costume, and even once I discovered the massive library of images available on the Internet’s furry communities, I was mostly seeing images that were humanoid with fur.
This was so much hotter, and I found my mind drifting from all the immediate questions to wondering how you went about seducing the easter bunny. Did they have the same dating rituals as humans, or rabbits? Or something entirely unique? Was there even such a thing as a bisexual rabbit? I knew that these thoughts revealed just how much of a freak I was, at least on certain subjects, but I’d never claimed otherwise. I don’t usually mention it, but I guess most people have their own little bit of weirdness buried deep inside their psyche.
“Look, I’m sorry, I screwed up,” she finally spoke, and strode out leaving sooty pawprints across my beautiful Ptolemy rug. Before I could stop her, she reached the mince pies the kid had left out for Santa, and downed the glass of sherry in one gulp. From the swaying and her voice, she’d had more than a few already. She didn’t touch the pies, but grabbed the carrot that Jocasta had insisted on leaving “for the reindeers”.
I didn’t bother pointing out that her whole presence here was impossible, or that a fake wood fire with an electric element shouldn’t generate soot, or even that boyshorts and a tank top probably wasn’t the most sensible attire if she was going to be out in the middle of winter. Taking my booze, though, was something I couldn’t forgive so easily.
“Hey, that’s mine!”
“Says ‘for satta’ here,” she jabbed one paw—four fingers, I noticed—at a note on the little end table. “An’ that’s me. For tonight, anyways.”
“You said you’re the easter bunny. Now you’re Santa. What the fuck?”
She backed away and shrank down in the corner, suddenly reminding me more of some pet than an almost-human exoctic babe. “Sorry, I’m just filling in, old Nick’s sick and he can’t do the full round, okay?”
I stared at her in disbelief. She looked back at me with those big, beautiful eyes, and I felt my heart start to melt. She proffered a piece of paper, which turned out to be Kaleb’s christmas list. He’d written a letter to Santa so many weeks ago, though she could tell he was really too old to believe in Father Christmas. It was right here, items annotated with little lines of text in a handwriting so neat it could almost be mistaken for printing. “Leave to humans,” she read, “Not nice enough,” “Impossible,” “Hold until next year.”
There were two things he’d asked for that just had a careful tick beside them. Popular toys that me and James hadn’t been able to afford, and now I looked I realised that the gift-wrapped boxes in her little egg basket were just the right size.
“Thankyou,” I muttered, “Sorry I doubted you, its just, you know this must seem crazy to me. Adults don’t believe in this stuff.” I thought back to the last letter I’d written to Santa as a child. I already hadn’t believed, but my parents had insisted that I write a letter to set a good example for my sister. I’d asked the imaginary man for all kinds of crazy things, like the talent of a rock star and a cure for cancer. It was sobering to think that maybe he’d been real, shaking his old, tired head in resignation as he saw the signs of one more child he’d never have to visit again.
“I know. I’m not supposed to let adults see me, but I kind of messed that up, and the instructions don’t say what to do if someone does see me.”
“Instructions?”
She didn’t reply, but handed me some kind of electronic device with a set of rules on the screen. “Deliver presents, don’t eat presents, sooty footprints (use bag of soot if necessary), drink sherry/brandy/eggnog, try to avoid adults,” the list went on and on.
“He’s connected it to this chip in my head,” she explained, suddenly more coherent despite the slurring, “I have to do what it says on there. I’d be too dumb otherwise. Don’t need so many rules to run around in spring and lose eggs, so I just do what comes naturally.”
I admit, I was a little drunk. I’d only had a couple of glasses at a party several hours earlier, but I must have been under the influence. Otherwise, there’d be no way I’d have thought to try adding my own rules to the list. I protested while I typed, saying that putting a microchip in someone’s head was inhumane. She pointed out that people did that to animals all the time; even she knew that. And she didn’t mind; it just made it easier for her to be useful. When she wasn’t drunk (“What’s that mean?”—she’d never even come across alcohol before), she loved being able to please people. Though I still wasn’t too sure if Santa should be on his own naughty list next year, her satisfaction let me feel more confident that my experiment wouldn’t hurt her at all.
“But don’t get drunk,” I typed in next to rule 6. Nothing happened. Well, I guessed that was a little too optimistic to think that would have any effect. The tablet was just a record of the instructions that had been programmed into her brain in some way, not directly linked to the implant. I was about to hand it back, when I noticed the little button in the corner of the screen with a picture of a brain and the word “sync”. Incredulous, I tapped it.
“Did you just do something?” the bunny snapped sharply. For the first time she wasn’t mumbling, and she wasn’t wobbling as she stacked the kids’ presents next to the ones we’d already bought, in piles under the plastic tree.
“I’m sorry, I just thought…” I had wanted to help her, but I couldn’t deny that a good deal of my motivation had been raw curiosity. A device that could make someone do whatever you typed in would be a dream come true.
“I feel better, anyway,” she said, and turned to me with what I had to assume was a smile, “So thanks. You don’t need to say sorry, you know, we were created to serve the needs of humans, so it’s not my place to complain about anything you want to do.”
I smiled. She was so selfless, so willing to help others. I don’t know if that’s a normal characteristic of rabbits, or of whatever you call magical beings whose purpose in life is to deliver presents, but I know that hearing those words got me hotter than I could ever have imagined.
I glanced down at the keyboard again. I wouldn’t even think about this if I was sober, I told myself. That was it, I could just blame it on the booze if everything went wrong. I added another rule at the bottom of the list, “If an adult sees you, you can make this riight by doing everything they say, and you will enjoy pleasing them.” She was craning to see, and I hit the ‘sync’ button almost in reflex.
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” she said, apparently not realising how much a command like that violated her human rights. Or whatever rights giant mythical animals have.
“Shall we test it out?” I asked, and she nodded eagerly, “Then strip for me. I want to see you naked.” She didn’t even hesitate. She peeled off the tank top, revealing 4 breasts that I’m sure were larger than anything a rabbit normally had, or even larger than most rabbits. Then she dropped the shorts to the ground, and I saw the stubby little tail that I hadn’t even noticed before. She bent over to pull the pants off past her oversized feet, and even wiggled her ass enticingly in my direction. Before she stood up again to remove the hat, I stepped closer and put my hand on her ass. Her breathing was faster now, and I guess mine was too as I ran my hand over her soft, fuzzy fur. It seemed to be the same over her whole body, and it was wonderful to stroke. I couldn’t wait to find out all the things I could do with her once we got back to my room.
“Would it be too much if I told you to fuck me?” I asked, though I knew she wouldn’t have a choice if gave the order.
“Ohh, please!” she squeaked, and literally jumped up and down in excitement, “I always want it, I can’t stop thinking about it, but I don’t know any other bunnies the right size for me. But…” and now she paused, as uncertain as I’d been when she first appeared in my room, “…Sorry, I thought you were a doe.” I didn’t explain, feeling that actions could speak louder than words. The only thing I had to say now was warning her to be quiet as we passed the kids’ room.
A good deal later, I went down the stairs once again, with slippers on my feet this time, as well as clean underwear and a huge smile on my face. The bunny was lying in my bed, even more exhausted than me. It would have been so nice to drift off to sleep with that wonderful fur warm against my skin, but I had a question to ask first.
When I reached the front door, the clock still said midnight. I was sure several hours had passed, but that was probably just another side to the magic. But while it was Christmas, and the witching hour, I figured that something a little crazy must be worth a try. Outside on the veranda, I called out to Santa Claus, to Father Christmas, and to Saint Nicholas. The air was so cold I could practically feel frost creeping across my skin as I waited, but it wasn’t uncomfortable at all, and I wasn’t cold.
Just as I was about to give up and return to my fuzzy lover, I felt that irrational sense of someone looking at me, and he was there beside me. No flashy entrance, no words, no reindeer. Well, maybe there was a sleigh on a roof nearby, it was hard to tell in the darkness.
“You believe in me again,” it was a statement, not a question, “And you’ve been a good girl this year, nice enough to earn a gift or two.”
“How… how can you do this?” I asked, “I mean, I wrote you so many letters as a kid, and I was nearly always nice, and yet all the presents I got were from people I know. except…” I trailed off, finally realising that nobody would even realise if there was one unlabelled present under the tree. A greedy kid would just think it was from their parents, and never stop to ask. My parents would both have assumed the other bought me a little extra something. “You gave me presents,” I said, “All through my childhood, and I never realised until tonight. But why, if you want people to believe in you? I mean, all it would take is one gift, one unexpected thing once they’re old enough to keep track of who sent what, and everyone would know you’re out there!”
“It’s not faith if you know,” he said, quite calmly. His face wasn’t as lined as I’d expected, but his words had an intangible undertone that indicated just maybe he was older and wiser than I could possibly imagine. “And I do still give gifts, when someone deserves it.” I could see the list in his hand now, and recognised the notepaper my parents had insisted on all those years ago. It had been folded and unfolded many times, and was quite worn around the edges, but had always been handled with care.
“I’ve always been nice, I hope,” I said, hoping that it didn’t sound as much a plea as it did in my head.
“Ohhh, yes,” he replied, with just the first hint of the belly laugh he was so famous for, “But everyone has their bad days, and some presents need a little more time to earn them.” As his finger ran down the list, I could see the careful pencil marks; I imagined they nearly all said impossible. To get all the credit for world peace, the fountain of youth, every Sega game ever made, and…
I’d almost forgotten after so many years. But as I saw the words right at the bottom of my list, through notepaper faded almost to transparency, I could see enough detail to remember what I’d asked for. My parents had exploded at that one, and I’d been forbidden from writing letters to Santa in future years. That had been my intention, of course, though it seemed a little crazy looking back on it now. They’d even burned the letter, that was how mad they’d been, and yet here it was.
“And lastly,” the fat man read, his voice an inscrutable mix of amusement and disapproval, “If you want to prove me you really exist…” he didn’t need to read any more. I gratefully took the list back, and went inside my house to decide how I was going to be better behaved next year. By the time I was half way up the stairs, the clocks started ticking again and it was Christmas morning. I looked at the bunny in my bed, and she stared back with unbridled lust. I’d be right on her, savouring those wonderful, furry thighs, as soon as I’d put my last ever letter to Santa safely in a drawer.
As I did, I glanced down again at the line I’d managed to forget for so long. “If you want to prove me you really exist, send me a bunny girl to be my sex slave for life. Good luck getting that down the chimney!”
I guess he’d had the last laugh after all, echoing over the rooftops all across town. Ho ho ho.