Jen's Christmas Nightmare

This story was written as part of the Literotica Winter Holidays Contest but also written as my 2020 NaNoWriMo. This is an edited version completed on 29 November, adding about 3000 words of correcting mistakes, adding clarity and improving word flow. I am now happy with it. Please vote if you like it but, more importantly, comment as feedback is the only real reward a writer needs.

INTRODUCTION

Hi, I'm Jennifer Nixon (please call me "Jen", all my family now do) and if you are reading this little book you are either a loving member of my parents' family, a member of my husband's family or a Christmas Elf.

My parents' family are ordinary folk, the Websters, but my husband's family, now mine by marriage of course, are all descended from Saint Nicholas or St Nick, the original Santa Claus or you may know him as Father Christmas.

No, my husband isn't THE Santa, not yet anyway, he's Nicholas Claus Junior (although his legal name in our everyday world is Nicholas "Nick" Nixon, although at work we all call him "Ace" because he's so good as his job in logistics as our leading truck driver and I have always called him Junior). He is the only son of the current Santa, who probably won't step down from his traditional role for many more years to come, leaving Junior and me plenty of time to live a relatively normal life and start to raise our own little family before we together take over the traditional duties of being Father and Mother Christmas.

Why am I writing this little book, starting just 10 months into my marriage which I trust will last a lifetime? Well, the Elf Chief Librarian, Wylenmast, who edits the weekly local paper, the "North Pole News", mostly read by the elves (well, to cram everything in it does come in very small print), approached me this weekend, saying he thought it would make interesting reading not just now but for posterity. He must be the keenest librarian ever, because although elves are notoriously hardworking, such a diary or journal from a new bride of Santa had never ever been recorded before.

He told me to be candid and tell my story as exactly as I can and that he would edit it throughly so that no-one would be offended by any slights or slurs that I might be a little too candid with.

That's why I know I can say anything I like about my mother-in-law, knowing with confidence that this line as well as every other word I say about the hellish bitch who makes my life a misery every step I make in the North Pole, will be blue pencilled out of the final edit.

Heehee, I'm glad I can get away with saying that, because Hilde Claus is my one Christmas Nightmare; when Junior and I had only just become properly acquainted, she did everything she could to get Junior to marry her choice of bride, an admittedly charming, absolutely gorgeous and, now that I know her better, a very sweet and innocent much younger woman called Beata, who my uncle by marriage, a once confirmed bachelor Uncle Henry, appears to be quite attracted to and I am hoping he will take her "off the market" in the very near future.

However, even though Junior and I are newly-weds, Hilde is still interfering in our marriage as only the worst kind of mother-in-laws will do. She should realise by now that she's backing a lost cause, because Junior's mine, not only is he devoted to me, I love him dearly and I'm never ever going to give him up.

So, going on from my last edited paragraph about telling my story about what will be my first Christmas since my marriage to Junior, my plans for the next two months are to spend the whole of December at the North Pole in support of Junior learning how to take a bigger role in the organisation of Christmas from his father, who is the grumpiest Father Christmas ever (Wylenmast please use your blue pencil here, nobody, not even a daughter-in-law who his son dotes on, should get on the wrong side of Santa!)

Meanwhile, I will be spending the whole of December with Hilde (oh woe is me!) learning how to be Mother Christmas from a woman who hates me and still yearns to replace me with the walking wet dream that is the beautiful Beata. I mean to say with all modesty that I'm not chopped liver by any means, who couldn't lose a few pounds, have longer, much lighter hair and be graceful as a swan, but I have to admit, there is hardly anyone in the history of the North Pole who could outshine Beata.

It's a good thing that Junior is a one-woman guy and that one woman is resolute about never giving him up.

I just know that Hilde will try her worst to make me look as bad as possible in Junior's eyes as a future Mother Christmas during my training. Just the thought of her treachery makes me want to push my fingers down my own throat, or preferably grip them around Mother Christmas' own throat. (Sorry, Wylenmast, you might want to order a gross of blue pencils and a sharp penknife!)

Calm down, Jennifer. You can do this with candour and good grace. Back to positive thoughts.

And I am positive, really positive, because life for Junior and me is perfect. My time with Junior away from the North Pole has been gloriously wonderful, we are in love and I really have found my soulmate at last, even though it took me until my 30th year. He is so attentive, strong yet gentle, enthusiastic yet sweet and kind. I'll tell you how we met later on in Chapter 1.

Junior has been particularly sweet this weekend because he has been fully behind me to organise a separate "pre-Christmas" for my family, knowing that we will both be in the North Pole over the festive season, which will actually be my very first Christmas that I've not spent with my family.

Junior told me about a little group of abandoned log cabins on the edge of the main North Pole settlement, that a previous extended Santa family once spent a lot of time in. It is just far enough away from the intensity of the Christmas preparation area in Elf Town but within touch should anything go wrong.

Although long-empty, the elf general maintenance team had kept these little cottages clean and in a sound state of preservation. This is where we have been this last weekend of October and, with the help of Gronwynk, Santa's chief house elf and her marvellous cleaning team, Junior and I have made the group of log cottages spick and span and decorated ready for an early Christmas weekend planned for 27 and 28 November, when I will invite all my family and my best friend's family, plus selected North Pole guests to celebrate an early Christmas with us.

It is during this cleaning weekend that Elf Chief Librarian Wylenmast tracked me down and requested this personal little account from me, and I was so full of Christmas cheer that I promised to write this little festive missive for him without a second thought of how I would manage such a feat. This is my first attempt as writing anything other than a shopping list, so if it's total rubbish, my dear elves and family readers, you know who to blame ... yes, the Editor!

Which reminds me. My best friend Sati doesn't know I am married to a future Santa Claus. She's British Indian, even both her parents were born here in England, but we do have one thing in common, our marriages were arranged, in her case by her family, in my case the Claus tradition of St Nick selecting Santa's soulmate.

Yes, of course, if you are reading this, you're either family or a Christmas Elf so you know all about this "Santa's Soulmate" stuff, but just in case you are new to all this, I'll explain as best I can in this introduction. After all, I was asked to write this for posterity's sake and you, dear reader, could very well be my future child or future grandchild, if so, please enjoy this book and don't think too badly of me; if you think "that doesn't sound like Grandmother Hilde or Great-Grandma Hilde", please bear in mind that the Elf Chief Librarian is editing this for general consumption ... if you really want the truth children, just ask me over a cup of hot chocolate with lots of marshmallows and a cherry muffin, and I'll reveal all!

Now, everyone knows that courtship between two people attracted to one another is a game of chance and risk, with neither side revealing their faults and foibles to the other and also "bigging up" their best bits to display to the possible future partner. It is very much a game of guess and disguise, truth and lies, give and take negotiations, with probing and inevitable pressing for commitment. It is a game full of uncertainty and doubt, risking two broken hearts or reaping the rewards of companionship, security and ever-lasting love.

Santa, even a future Santa, cannot play these games. For a start he knows how naughty or nice she is, he can call up to mind evidence of her every transgression, every positive and negative action on her part. Knowledge of that background has a bearing on their future relationship; he simply cannot play the courting game.

So St Nick come up with the solution, he has taken away Santa's right of first choice. Santa's soulmate is selected for him, not by random, but in conjunction with "Upstairs" and Santa, in this case my Junior, cannot contemplate any other woman, he is only attracted to the girl chosen for him from birth. In fact, Junior stalked me from my first Christmas while I slept in my crib. He didn't know why he was fascinated by this baby, little old me, or why he felt more for me than for any other child, and Santas just love every child without exception, that's a given.

Junior spoke about this strange obsession with this baby to his father, Young Nick, who didn't explain the situation to him, merely allowed him minimal contact with the child that I was and on the other side allowed me to remember our encounters even though they felt like dreams to me.

By the time Young Nick explained to Junior that I was his soulmate chosen by St Nick, I was in my early 20s and in a relationship with my then boyfriend Scott. Unlike Junior's father, who had given up on Bernadette, his chosen soulmate, and married Hilde instead, Junior refused to give me up and continued to appear to me every Christmas for eight more years, seeing me grow more and more disillusioned with my relationship but feeling unable to interfere.

Young Nick's parents, who were Junior's lovely grandparents Old Nick and Georgianna had a wonderful partnership as soulmates and fully supported Junior in waiting long enough for me to become free of any entanglements again, to then court and marry me as a relatively old spinster on the cusp of 30. Lucky me, compared to the old boyfriend Scott who I dumped for serial infidelity, Junior is the perfect husband for me.

Enough introduction, I think, on with Chapter 1.

Signed

Jen Nixon, Mrs

CHAPTER 1 PRE-CHRISTMAS PREP

"Hi, Sati, it's me, Jen." I said to my best friend over the phone. Yes, mobile phones do work at the North Pole, in fact they are crystal clear. Don't ask me how they work from a different dimension where Santa and his helpers live, trust me, they just do. Junior probably knows, the sweetheart knows everything, I'm just not that technically minded, but at least he still finds me cute (thank you, St Nick!)

"I know it's you," replied my best friend Sati at the other end of the line, "you come up as 'Jen' on my phone screen, having recently changed it from 'Jenna'".

This is embarrassing. All the while I lived in London I thought my given name was lame and boring so I got everyone new I met to call me "Jenna". My full name is Jennifer, and it was always Jenny at school or contracted down to plain Jen at home and I hated my name. I felt it was so common and boring. OK. That's what I thought in my late teens when, full of adventure and self-confidence, I left home to make my fortune in London and told everyone that my name was Jenna. As a name it was different, a little more uncommon and more important it was my choice what people called me, no-one else's.

I was going to make my fortune in London, but then I met my abusive boyfriend Scott, who systematically destroyed any self-confidence I started out with. I sank through a quicksand series of boring dead-end jobs and ended up in telesales, single, lonely, boyfriendless, lacking in confidence and barely able to afford my high rent studio flat while doing a job that I hated.

I even lied to Mum about my loneliness, not admitting that I had dumped serial womaniser Scott because I had found irrefutable proof of his infidelity. I was ashamed that I couldn't hold onto my boyfriend after an 8-year relationship with never a hint of marriage, so I lied to my mother and invented a fictitious boyfriend. My life was such a mess.

All through my London experience, Sati was my lifesaver, she was the only light in my existence in Scott's overbearing shadow. She's older than me, early forties I should think, married to a general practitioner doctor, Sanjay, who's a really lovely bloke, full of sweet innocent self-deprecating charm. As for their kids, ranging from 15 to19, they just make me dizzy with their driven energy and focus, the way they take on life as a challenge that they can meet as equals at least: the eldest is starting college, medical school, because he wants to follow his dad as a doctor, the middle girl is determined to be a vet and really into biodiversity, while the youngest is a mathematical genius and will probably be an Oxbridge professor in his twenties and a Nobel winner eventually.

Sati (my mangled shortening of her Indian name, which she cheerfully answers to) has a business degree and could easily get a decent paying career job, but she is all about family and telesales was something she could do standing on her head, while flexibly managing her working hours, to maximise her family time, which she valued way above money and personal prestige.

She's bright, funny, wise beyond her years and was more than a second Mum to me, she's my very best friend. I tell her everything, even how I lied to my Mum, and she told me for years to leave Scott, he was bad for me, but I simply can't tell her anything important about Junior.

I've tried to, almost as soon as I fell in love with Junior, but the Magic of Christmas must be observed and the words just wouldn't come out. I tried writing a letter, voice mail, email, Facebook Messenger and nothing worked, and will never work. Nobody will know the Secrets of Christmas, otherwise the Magic of Christmas will die and the Saturnalians will get their selfish indulgent festival back. That is not happening on Junior and my watch! You are only reading this book because it was completely written by me in our log cabin at the North Pole and will never leave the North Pole Library (without a proper North Pole Library Card anyway).

"I want to invite my family to an early Christmas celebration," I told Sati, "a month before Christmas for two or three days of a weekend, because Junior and I will be away for a whole month over the Christmas period with Junior's parents, learning how to run their business."

"Is that a sort of insurance, in case something like an emergency happens to your in-laws?" Sati replied.

"Something like that. I mean, eventually, and we hope that won't be for many more years, as their only son Junior will be taking over his parents' business one day. It is something I have to expect to take on. However, I've never missed a family Christmas before, so I want to invite you, your family, and all of my family to this long weekend. My folk have all been to my in-laws before but you never have. So, in preparation for this celebratory weekend, to ensure that you don't feel out of it, if you do agree to join us for the Christmas celebration, I would like just you and your family to come stay with us for a more relaxed weekend two weeks beforehand. Please say you'll come?" I pleaded to Sati, "Please?"

"Your whole family coming? You sure your in-laws will have room for the five of us as well?"

"Well, it's not at their residence as such, but we've just spent the weekend cleaning up a group of cottages on Junior's parents' place."

"Does this mean that we'll finally meet your fabulously wealthy and highly secretive in-laws at last, Jen?"

"They are not fabulously wealthy, Sati."

"They own planes and fabulous executive jets and now they happen to have a few spare cottages dotted about their country estate, already in a vacant state for passing guests of the daughter-in-law that you told me they don't particularly like. So will we be able to meet them on this trip?"

"Well, probably, yes I'm sure that they will be around, although not staying with us as we will be on the very edge of their property," I said, "The rest of the family have met them before, of course, last Christmas, but if you come we'll introduce you to them, or they may even grant you an audience of sorts, they are very formal. Anyway, they are not really fabulously wealthy, it's just that need all that expensive stuff for their logistics business. We use trucks for our customers' deliveries, they fly literally everywhere in executive jets for theirs. They have a much bigger operation and many more workers than we could possibly find work for. That's all I can say on the subject."

"Why do you want to celebrate Christmas a month early anyway?"

"Last year Junior had a bit of a falling out with his family and he left the company and worked with my dad at Webster's for most of last year, including during his father's busiest period. Now we're trying to mend fences with his family and we've had to promise to spend the whole of December with them. Maybe next year we can cut it down to a fortnight, but we're committed to a month this year. It will also give me a chance to get to grips with their admin side. I might learn a lot from them to take back to Webster's in the New Year."

"I suppose the business will be all Junior's one day?"

"Well, maybe he'll be running it, but he won't be able to carve it up and do a runner, it's owned by his family in trust and they are a big family."

"All right, I'm quite tempted to come. I'll talk to Sanj about whether he can get time off and check about the children's activities for either weekend."

"Well, I hope you can make it. It should be a fun weekend, besides it would be nice to make up to you for getting married without inviting you, my best friend as my david of honour."

"Yeah, Miss Webster cum Mrs Junior Nixon, what kind of friend does that? Goes off for three days as a single girl with only a completely made-up man in her life and comes back after the Christmas holidays with two fabulous rings on her finger and promptly hands in her notice. And I didn't think any couple in their early thirties still ran off to elope and get themselves married in Gretna Green any more. That only happens to sixteen-year-olds in cliché Mills and Boon romance books!"

I admit that Sati had a point, the Gretna Green marriage lines was a complete surprise to me too. We were married a long high road away from Bonnie Scotland, at Santa's home in the North Pole, in a very traditional ceremony conducted by the original St Nick himself, a legal marriage by stint of him being a bishop and various religious and political edicts down the years. Of course the Magic of 'Keeping Christmas a Secret' made it impossible to have a legal document of marriage from the North Pole, so Gretna Green was the logical choice and Junior pulled the official Marriage Certificate from his sack shortly before I had to leave Mum's house where were were staying and go back to the city to work my notice.

Sati continued, "And I've met Junior three times since the marriage and I know he's handsome, well-spoken, funny and interesting, a wonderful catch for any girl and you do look so good and happy together. So much more so than you ever could with Scott. But I also know for a fact that Junior wouldn't press you against your will to marry him without your friends present after you knowing him for only two days. No, Junior would bend over backwards to do anything you want him to do. "