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Santa’s Workshop, or: A Good Girl’s Lament
To regularly spend one’s evenings at Santa’s Workshop was a pretty good indication that one had hit rock bottom. Just off the highway, along an under-lit stretch of road and surrounded by adult toy stores and twenty-four-hour greasy spoons, the seedy exterior gave only a small hint to the debauchery within. To be spotted with one’s car in the parking lot was an advertisement of one’s not-so-secret depravity, a sign to all that your predilections and proclivities were not something that could be discussed in polite company. Yes, being a regular patron of the Workshop indicated rock bottom.
To work there, on the other hand: a sign one had started to dig.
There were more undersized cars belonging to elves in the tight employee lot than what one might find at Santa’sactualworkshop, Krampus thought sardonically, trudging through the slush. It seemed a sad testimony to the state of things, particularly with the holiday only just having passed. One would surely think there would be a need to review results and forecast next year’s workshop needs, but one would likely be disappointed with the truth. Once, the immediate post-season period would have meant machine maintenance and upgrades, advanced training courses, skilled carpenters refurbishing work areas, and staffing needs reassessed before the start of the second fiscal quarter, when the whole cycle of gluttonous consumerism would start all over again. But now . . . now things were different.
Late-stage capitalism had reached Christmastown at last. Once thriving toy factories were now fulfillment centers where hundreds of tractor-trailers were emptied every week, cheap electronics and soft goods shipped overseas and stored in the warehouses, sorted by unskilled, poorly compensated elves armed with scanners and untenable hourly pick goals. The master craftsmen had all but disappeared from the landscape of Christmastown, the older unionized generation retiring to Boca, and in their place — handheld urinals to assist the new generation make their fulfillment center goals and a desperate need for truck drivers to get the merchandise from one warehouse to the next. He’d watched a yeti getting a blowjob beside the cab of his eighteen-wheeler only a week earlier, recognizing the scrunched, fur-colored face as being a former line cook at the diner across the parking lot from the Workshop.At least some people are moving up in the world.
It was an unsurprising turn of events. Now that more than half of the product bearing the highly covetedFrom Santagift tag was outsourced electronics, a vacuum of under-employed elves and other Santa helpers were left behind, quite literally in the cold.Tough shit.There was a rumor going around that the front office wasn’t happy about the uptick in workshop employees seeking employment at theWorkshop, but the big man needed to offer a better benefits package if he didn’t want his employees to spend their off time gyrating their hips in foiled red and green g-strings, jockeying for space on the strip club’s shallow runway. A job was a job, especially in this economy.Tough shit, he thought again. It had been a hard year, and times were tough, tough for everyone.
He’d begun picking up shifts at the Workshop around mid-summer, with the expectation that by December, he’d be back on his hooves with a full schedule of homes to visit and wrong-doers to punish, an entire month of back-to-back expense reports to file and the promise of a full belly for months to come . . . but things hadn’t quite worked out to plan. The holiday was different this year. People’s hearts were heavy and their celebrations small. Families were separated, and as a result, the Christmas wishes made were not rooted in vengeance and retribution, leading to his own unfortunate reversal of fortune and no promise things would improve next year. All he knew, Krampus thought tiredly, was his back ached from the weight of his basket, carried in vain at this point, and even though his cock regularly wound up chafed after a shift on the raised, black throne in one of the dungeon rooms as patron after patron bounced and shrieked across his caprine lap, the throne’s cushioned seat would be welcome that evening.
Santa’s Workshop’s ground floor was your run-of-the-mill titty joint, populated with elves and other seasonal cast-offs from the Santa machine. The week between Christmas and the New Year holiday would be busy as people sought respite from their families, now that the false piousness of the holiday was behind them. Unsurprisingly, there were more cars in the patron lot that night than there had been in the previous two weeks. The din of high-pitched, inebriated laughter told him it was ladies’ night, and sure enough, a swift glance into the club’s main room showed him one of the reindeer handlers pinwheeling his fat little cock in the faces of a cluster of shrieking suburbanites, his pulled aside g-string stuffed with bills. Shaking their assets for dollar bills was an honest way to make a living and far more lucrative than the fulfillment center, regardless of the big man’s feelings on the matter.
The crowds that gathered on the main floor on weekend nights were a pedestrian sort, there for the cheap thrill of nudity and being performed for, the occasional housewife wanting to be photographed as she held a workshop elf’s half-erect cock between her lips, letting it fall as soon as the desired photo was obtained. He’d watched one or two enterprising elves move from mouth to mouth on a busy Saturday, collecting cash and growing harder as they went, attempting to cajole one of the gigging guests to finish them off, or else parting with a fistful of their take backstage to be sucked off by one of their orally talented peers. It was only the occasional patron of the strip club who was audacious enough to ask for more than just a lap dance; a tragic waste, for he’d never met a workshop elf who couldn’t suck the chrome off a car bumper with ease, but they rarely got the chance to demonstrate their skills upstairs unless it was on each other.
It wasdownstairs where the deviants gathered.
The Workshop’s dungeon boasted fetish rooms of every flavor; peepholes and glory holes, tiled stalls with drains, and accessories of every kind. The patrons who sought the dungeon’s forbidden pleasures were a different sort than the giggling bachelorette parties and horny business people who gathered upstairs. Illicit sex, punishment and degradation, desires that could not be slaked in their everyday lives —thatwas why the downstairs customers came. Came for and came so regularly that they were soon shirking their families and responsibilities to visit the Workshop over and over; to be paddled and punished by the nightmares of Christmas and he — he was there to oblige.
It had been a hard year, after all.
Belsnickel was seated upon the throne when he entered the red-painted room at last. Cackling madly, his hands digging into the fleshy thighs of the screaming young man he thrust into, the lesser Christmas boogeyman took no notice of the dark shape now hovering over him.
There were other stations he could take, Krampus considered with a sigh: a St. Andrews Cross, a padded bench, fastenings on the walls for bound whippings . . . but it was the cushioned throne he wanted, the chance to rest his feet and expend little energy, and he wasn’t willing to let the issue slide.Hewas the one the people feared, who punished the wicked and greedy, regardless of age. If he needed to give a reminder of the pecking order every once in a while, well, he was happy to do so.
The young man’s eye bulged comically when clawed hands seized him by the neck and dragged him off the weeping cock that had speared him. For the briefest of moments, Belsnickel looked as if he had a mind to complain, but one glance up to the malevolent figure who loomed over him was enough to change his mind, and he quickly vacated the tufted cushion, chasing after the young man with another cackle.
Krampus took his time. The bedraggled Belsnickel always left his station in a state, no matter where he was in the dungeon, and the cushion needed plumping and brushing off, the floor around the throne tidied, and he needed to settle in first. A groan slipped past his lips as he dropped back against the throne’s equally cushioned back, taking his weight off his cloven hooves at last. If he could just spend the next week here, right here with his feet up and his eyes closed, things might not be so bad . . . a cleared throat, impatient and insisting, the elf standing at the velvet rope separating the throne from the rest of the floor, gesturing meaningfully to the line of dungeon-goers already queued up.Another day, another sweaty, filthy dollar.
The first supplicant was a shadow-eyed girl with limp, straw-colored hair, familiar to him. Krampus let out a world-weary sigh, which was precisely what he was, knowing there was no way to put off the inevitable.Time to work.She approached the throne like a creeping shadow, hesitating a few feet away.
“P-please,” she stammered through dry, cracked lips. “Please, I need to be punished. I’ve been abadgirl.” There was nothing coquettish in the girl’s voice, no simpering smirk or boastful challenge. She was one of the regulars, wholly addicted to the lack of accountability in the submissiveness of her role here and the mindlessness of physical sensation. He chuckled when the girl dropped to her knees, crawling forward until she was able to place her hands on the coarse, black fur covering his splayed-open legs, raising slowly to press her lips reverently to the seam of his sac. The heavy testicles rose slightly at the girl’s touch, and he grunted. There were certainperksto this job he didn’t much mind, it was true. The workshop elves weren’t the only ones who knew how to orally service, after all. Many of the regulars knew the drill, and those who didn’t . . . well, they caught on soon enough. When the girl’s lips began to travel upwards along his fur-covered sheath, a sharp pull of her hair directed her back downwards.
“Are you in a hurry, sweetling?”
His voice was a throaty black rasp, and the kneeling girl’s eyes widened, her head shaking quickly before sticking her tongue out to lave at the pendulous sac once more. He kept a hand in her hair to better direct her as the girl sucked and licked his bollocks, giving her attention to one, then the other. His cock made its entrance under her ministrations — sliding from its sheath bright red and glistening, jealous at the attention lavished upon its southernmost neighbors, and he rested his head back against the throne’s padded back once more with a sigh. Being a Workshop employee was as exhausting as any other job, but the perks were an absolute plus . . . at least, they were for him. Another sharp tug of her hair to correct the situation, her hooded eyes blown wide once more. His cock had withdrawn to only half its length, but it would already be a mouthful for the girl.This is what she paid for, after all.
“Suck.”
No further direction proved necessary, as the girl leaned forehead, her desperate mouth swallowing his cockhead. They always thought it was that easy, he thought, tipping his horned head back against the throne as her straw-colored hair bobbed. It was how the Workshop stayed in business, he supposed. They came meekly or desperately or boastfully, always thinking they could control the situation by pleasing the dungeon’s staff adequately. The girl brought a hand up to massage his balls as she sucked, whichdidplease him, and he grunted again. She’d learn soon, but it was an appreciated touch.
Sure enough, she was taking him as deeply as she was able, but all too soon, it was simply not enough. He did so enjoy being anactiveparticipant, after all. His clawed hands spanned her head, and he felt the moment when her panic rose, a frantic gasp of air which only fed his pleasure. The girl’s arms pinwheeled, finally understanding that she was not at all in control, that thiswas, indeed, a punishment. Thrusting upwards, he groaned, finally finding the proper amount of stimulation as her stuffed-full throat sucked and quivered around his cock. He could quite happily fuck her this way for hours—off his feet, expending the bare minimum of effort, enjoying her gagging convulsions until he spilled himself into her throat, filling her with fire again and again. Perhaps he would do precisely that, he thought. Only then would he pull her back, lifting her to drop her cunt-first onto his drool-covered cock before starting the whole process over again, chasing his pleasure and teaching her the lesson to be careful what you wished for.
“That won’t do any good,” he chuckled as the girl began to struggle, unable to draw a proper breath. Her lungs were likely burning at this point, her throat too overstuffed with his fiery red rod, lungs deprived of much-needed oxygen, and the burn would only intensify once he came. “I thought you wanted to be punished?” He laughed as her arms flailed, attempting to push off his legs, an action that only increased the speed of his thrusts, chasing his approaching climax. The first spill of the day was always the most pleasurable, the longest and hottest, his biggest load and the quickest to reach, and his heavy balls were already beginning to contract, eager to empty themselves. “Don’t you worry, sweetling, there’s plenty more in store after this.”
He groaned in pleasure at the first pump of his release, his cock convulsing rhythmically in the girl’s throat, filling her with ropes of his fire as she attempted to scream. Her hands scrabbled at his fur-covered hips, attempting to push herself away in vain. Her throat fluttered with her choked scream, stimulating his cock further as it erupted, and Krampus sighed happily, hoping the other supplicants in line were watching, were prepared to kneel before him and worship his cock in the same fashion, preventing him from needing to get up. They would, he already knew. Some things never changed.They never, ever learn . . .
* * *
The neon sign blinked crudely against the backdrop of the overpass, red and white with several light bulbs missing, illuminating the parking lot and the twenty-four-hour diner across the stretch of pavement. Dara took a shuddering breath, attempting to slow her hammering pulse.
She had left the house that night with her nerves jangling, feeling like an exposed wire: tingling and electric, a buzz beneath her skin that demanded she get in the car and drive. She couldn’t explain why she drove in circles for what felt like hours, taking unfamiliar turnpikes and back roads, nor why she directed her car down the seedy stretch of road beside the highway on the edge of town, pulling at length into a lot bearing the lurid, candy cane-striped sign, advertising the adult club.Santa’s Workshop.It seemed exceptionally obscene, she thought, invoking Santa’s name for a place like this, but obscene, she conceded, was why she had come. She had heard of this place. She knew what it was, what happened here. She knew why she’d come, and there was no way around it. Despite that self-awareness, as she stared up at the sign through the car’s windshield, Dara was unable to make herself get out.
Why can’t you just be normal? Why are you like this? Why can’t you just be happy with things as they are?Her boyfriend’s words buzzed through her mind like static on the radio; his face creased with frustration and disgust.Ex-boyfriend, she reminded herself. He’d ended things the week before the holiday, vacating their townhouse for good the day before Christmas Eve, leaving her with a heap of extra gifts beneath their small tree. She wasn’t sure what the etiquette was in the situation, in the end deciding to give her parents the presents she’d bought for his and stiffening up her drink every time her mother began lamenting the relationship’s demise.
