She bit the end of her pen. Should she cross the previous part out?
And make the letter an even bigger mess?
Nope. She’d leave it as is and mail it before she changed her mind.
Asking Santa for help. The nerve. Especially since last Christmas she’d forgotten to put out cookies what with being in the emergency room all night.
No excuse. She was probably on the naughty list forever now.
She sealed her note in an envelope and then carefully labelled it Satan. She skipped his last name since she couldn’t remember if it was spelled with a K or a C. But she knew the rest. 666 Igloo Street, North Pole. OHOHOH.
Funny the things a person remembered. Especially since she had no idea why she knew Santa’s address.
“It must be fate.” She hummed happily aloud before she popped it into her purse to mail. Then she turned a bright smile on Miguel. “Let’s make some cookies.”
Her son didn’t say a word. His face remained solemn, and yet he rose from the floor where he’d been paging through a picture book on trucks. They entered the tiny kitchen, and he opened the cupboard and pulled out a shaker of candy sprinkles.
“You want to make sugar cookies so we can decorate them?” she asked.
His reply was to head for his chair at the kitchen table. Her heart melted.
“We are going to make the bestest cookies ever! With icing, too!”
She didn’t get a smile but did enjoy watching him lick the mixing bowl. It was a good day.
They didn’t run into trouble until she pulled out the box of Christmas stuff later that night.
4
Satan, the red-dicked devil,
Had a very shiny trick,
And when he used it on Gaia,
Flooding hit the town of Wrick.
“I swear I won’t be responsible for the maiming if you continue that bawdy poem in front of our children.” Gaia glared.
“Only you can hear it, wench.” And later Lucifer would remind her of its truth.
After they ditched the kids.
Currently, Junior rode on Lucifer’s shoulders while Jujube travelled on her mother’s hip. Family stroll to see the dogs.
“Perhaps instead of indulging in tavern songs, you could explain why you’re not passing on that woman’s letter. I thought you learned your lesson the last time you stole Nick’s mail and decided to actually answer it,” Gaia harangued.
“It wasn’t that bad.” Getting imps to make gifts for children had its advantage. Free labor being the main one. The problem being the toys tended to be cursed or possessed or both. Lucifer might be many things, but he didn’t torture children. The innocent shall not suffer.
But the wicked…the wicked were his to play with forever.
“You made three of those kids you answered that Christmas into orphans.”