Aaron took a half-step backward away from his nineteen-year-old cousin. The poor sap must be tripping. He’d warned him not to take so many drugs. Harry stood, eye rims reds, pupils glazed, a pitiful sight. Aaron tried to humour him. “Okay, so Santa came into the room just as you were unwrapping one of the presents under the tree.”
“I just wanted to see what was in it. I would’ve put it back. I told him that.”
“So he said you’d been a naughty boy and he made you take down your trousers.”
“And pants,” Harry confirmed.
“Trousers and pants. And then … What …?” Aaron’s face creased with laughter. “He put you across his knee and spanked your bare bottom.”
“You want I should take down my trousers and show you my blistered arse,” Harry’s nostrils flared; he was ready for a fight.
“No, that’s all right,” Aaron moved closer to the door, the better to escape this lunatic. “So, tell me,” he scarcely controlled his mounting concern, “You let him. You just went and put yourself over his knee?”
“That’s the weird part of it,” Harry gazed at his own feet, as if he hadn’t realised before what they were. “It was like a spell. Mind control. He could make me do anything he wanted.” He gestured at a chair across the room. “I watched him sit in that chair. He’s a big man; he could hardly fit his fat arse on it. Then he clicked his fingers and this heavy wooden brush just magically appeared in his fist. He said, ‘you know what happens to naughty boys,’ and I said, ‘no Santa,’ and he says, ‘they get their bottoms spanked. Their bare bottoms. Now come here’.”
Harry paused and drew the tip of his tongue across dried lips before continuing, “It was like I had no control. Some power made me do it. I didn’t want to. Believe me, why would I want to do it. I was standing by him. You couldn’t see any of his face. His snow white beard was so bushy it covered everything. Hs hair was so long it fell into his eyes. Those eyes …” Harry’s own eyes widened as in his imagination he re-lived the ordeal he described. “Horrible eyes. Piercing blue. The eyes of a devil.”
Aaron frowned, intrigued at how lucid his cousin was in his story-telling.
Harry went on, “Santa said, ‘Don’t make a fuss. Take down your trousers.’ I can’t explain it. Of course, I should have just run a mile. Got away. Can you see the fat old man trying to chase me ….?” He stopped, as if trying to conjure up the scene. Harry’s face reddened. “But I didn’t. My fingers were out of my control. I had these trakkies on, so I only had to slip them down.” He mimed guiding his trousers to his shins. “Then Santa says, ‘underpants too. It’s not a proper spanking unless it’s on the bare’.”
Harry paused as if the enormity of what he was about to say had just dawned on him. “So I did,” he croaked.
He fell silent, his eyes now no longer at his feet. Instead he looked intensely at the chair as if the scene he was about to describe was playing out before him.
After a long moment he took a deep breath and in halting speech continued, “I was standing there bare-arsed and Santa says, ‘Bend over my knee, naughty boy. Santa hasn’t got all night.’ I just kinda stared. I’d never been spanked (Have you? No, of course, not) I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. Santa taps the brush against his thigh and says again ‘Bend over my knee.’ He was pretty fat and he’d spread his legs a bit and there was plenty of him for me to get across. But still I couldn’t work it out. Santa must have thought I wasn’t going to obey because suddenly he grips my wrist and tugs me forward and hurls me across his knee. I was face down. Nose close to the carpet. Arse pointing upward …”
Aaron imagined it. Harry was no fit athlete. He was only nineteen but was already running to fat. He could visualize the boy’s chubby buttocks presented across Santa’s lap. Full and round. Not mounds of fat exactly, but full, plump cheeks.
“I can remember how soft Santa’s suit was. So smooth … What material is it made of …?” Harry asked wistfully. It took a moment before Aaron knew he expected an answer. “Wool, I suppose,” he murmured uncertainly.
“Do you think so,” Harry wondered, “No, it was something else, some material from out of this world ….”
It took a few moments before Harry continued trancelike. “I’m staring down at the carpet and I feel Santa wrap his arm across my back. I’m pinned down. I can’t move. There’s a cool breeze coming from somewhere. It blows across the back of my legs. Santa doesn’t say anything but I hear him clear his throat and there’s heavy breathing. I think Santa smokes a lot.”
Harry closed his eyes as if this helped him to picture the scene more clearly. Aaron also tried to see his cousin draped across Santa’s lap; his head low, bottom high, held down submissively while cheery old Santa beat his bottom black and blue with a heavy wooden brush.
“Wham!” Harry’s shriek echoed around the sitting room. “Whack” Bang! Crack! He let fly with that faking brush. Jesus! I have never felt such pain. I couldn’t do anything about it. I wanted to. I wanted to fight my way off his knee and go running to my bedroom. I couldn’t move. Not only did he have me pinned down but I think he had done some magic spell that sort of paralysed me, so I couldn’t struggle. I can’t explain it, but all I could do was lay there face down and let him wallop my bare bum as much as he wanted to.”
Harry’s hands rubbed his buttocks as if the spanking had just that moment ended. “I felt a right fool. An idiot. Me, a grown man, trousers and pants down, bent across the knees of Santa Claus getting myself spanked like some little kid in a nursery rhyme. Spank! Spank! Spank! And the pain …. My God, the pain!
“I have no idea what a spanking is supposed to feel like. It’s meant to hurt I suppose, otherwise what’s the point of it. But bloody hell,” he traced the contours of his cheeks with his thumbs as he spoke, “I have never felt anything like it. He just kept on and on. I don’t suppose it hurt too much at first but each time that brush whacked across my backside the heat rose a little more. He put all his strength into it. It was relentless. He had every part of my bum blistered in seconds. My arse was on fire!”
Harry’s eyes moistened as he continued, “I cannot tell you how painful it was. Agony. So sore. It felt like my cheeks had swollen to twice their normal size. Whack! Whack! Whack! and still he kept on battering me. I was hollering by now. How was it you didn’t hear me…?”
Again, Aaron didn’t realise this was a genuine question. “Because it never happened. It was all a drugs-fuelled nightmare,” he said at last.
Tears trickled down Harry’s cheeks. “You don’t believe me, you think I’ve made this up!” he raged.
Unnerved, Aaron became aggressive, “Durr! Listen to yourself. You say Santa Claus caught you going through the presents under the tree before Christmas Day and he spanked you for being a naughty boy. Listen to yourself. Santa … Santa …!” he began to run out of words to express his contempt. “You ought to lay off the drugs.”
“He did, he did …” Harry sounded like a small child would when trying to convince a disbelieving adult of a fanciful story.
“Yeah, in your head,” Aaron had lost all patience. He had a date with his girlfriend and if he didn’t get a shift on, he’d be late. “Total bollocks!” he snapped and turned towards the door. But before he got there it opened. A tall, fat figure blocked the entrance.
Aaron gaped. “No …” his voice trembled. “I don’t believe it. It can’t be true.”
There could be no doubt. The red suit and the white beard confirmed it. Santa Claus. And in his right hand he clutched a big, heavy wooden brush. His steely blue eyes rooted the 19-year-old to the spot. Santa’s shoulders heaved. Beneath the whiskers his face beamed.
He hustled into the room and brandished the brush at Aaron. “Well young Aaron,” he taunted. “You don’t believe in Santa Claus, eh.” he stepped back in confusion. Who? What? The room started to spin. What was happening? He hadn’t taken drugs. He never took drugs. Had Harry slipped something into his coffee?
Santa stepped closer, “Well Aaron, you know what happens to boys who don’t believe in Santa Claus,” he gripped Aaron’s left ear and began to pull him across the room towards the sofa that stood conveniently against the far wall.
