Yes, Virginia, there is a…

He and his assistants take their places and begin the normal ritual of calling the employees and children forward to present them with their annual bonus or a gift.

She makes small talk with several of her co-workers for a few minutes, trying to focus on what they're saying instead of re-living what just happened in her head. She fumbles through conversation for a few minutes then excuses herself.

She rushes back to her office, logs into her computer and then logs into the video security system.

She clicks through the menu to find the cameras that cover the area by the snack machines.

As they pull up, she sees only darkness and she's disappointed. Then she remembers the cameras have the ability to record in ultraviolet and she selects that feature on the screen.

She selects a time near when she remembered heading to that area and presses "Play".

She sees nothing for a while and is about to hit "Fast-forward" when she sees herself enter the area.

She sees herself talking, but can't see who she's talking to. She enlarges that one screen to see if she can make out anyone, but can't. She switches quickly between the other three cameras in the area and blows each one up in turn but still can't make out anyone other than her.

She continues to watch and sees...

There she is, talking to someone who isn't there.

There she is, pulling her wrists behind her back and crossing them.

There she is, swaying her hips back and forth.

There she is, closing her eyes with a sly smile on her face.

There's her head tilting back quickly.

There she spins around and bends over to put her hands on the edge of the table.

There her feet start to slide apart and her dress starts to slide up her thighs.

There is where she reached back to pull her dress up slowly up her right thigh, and then her left until her ass is exposed except for the thin back of her thong.

She watches as her body occasionally jerks though there's nothing there.

She watches herself push back from the table, jump in the air and spin around to land with her ass on the table behind her.

She watches herself lean back on her elbows.

She watches as she lifts her legs to pull her thong over her ass cheeks then up her thighs, over the boots and past her face.

She watches her legs start to spread.

She realizes her left hand has found its own way to her crotch. Her knees are spread as she sits in her chair and the tips of her middle two fingers are rubbing a slow circle around her clit.

She sees herself reach down to spread her puffy lips and rubbing on either side of her clit.

She rubs her clit in time with the image on the screen and has to hit the "Pause" button as she bucks her hips against her fingers as another orgasm overtakes her.

She un-pauses the video to watch herself jump lightly off the table, then sink slowly to her knees.

She watches as she reaches her hands up and loops them through her scarf before interlacing her fingers behind her neck.

She watches herself lean forward on her knees and stick her tongue out of her open mouth.

She watches her hands unwrap from the scarf and turn into claws, clutching at nothing.

She watches as her cheeks swell and her throat moves in a swallowing motion.

She watches as she stands and wraps her arms around something that doesn't exist.

She watches as she turns around to grab her thong then turn around and rush to the curtain and step through.

Wow! I know I didn't have anything to drink tonight. The only thing I've eaten since I've been here this afternoon were some of the stuffed mushroom appetizers. Shit!! I hope they aren't contaminated! I need to go check on those and make sure everything's okay. And if no one else is sick, then I must be missing my husband more than I thought that I would have such a strange hallucination. I mean, I've had dreams that were pretty realistic, but I've never either sleep-walked or whatever.

Virginia locks her computer and steps out into the hall.

As she does, one of her closer co-workers calls down the hallway, "There you are. The Jolly Holiday Elf has been calling for you and no one knew where you'd gone. I said 'She's probably in her office working or something', now come on back to the party. Oh, hey, where did you get those boots? I LOVE them! They go so good with that dress and scarf."

Virginia looks down at her feet and sees boots that she doesn't recognize. Instead of the black boots she was wearing earlier, she's now wearing red boots. With white fur cuffs at the top. And several straps with gold buckles across the arch and up the shaft. She lifts one and realizes they have about an inch and a half of platform under the balls of her feet and silver tips on the five inch stiletto heels.

She walks down the hallway, back to the party with her co-worker.

As she enters the room, the fat man on the big chair waves her over. She walks over to him and he stands up to put his hand on her shoulder.

"Folks, I know you all know that this party would not have happened without Virginia. She's done so much for so many of you, both here at work and in her time off. What some of you know and some don't is that she also volunteers at a homeless shelter. But even those of you that know she goes with your group don't know she goes back other nights even though she doesn't have to."

He turns to Virginia and continues, "For all that you do, please accept this as a token of appreciation from all of us who know the good you do."

Virginia takes the envelope, murmurs a quick, "Thank you all," and steps off to the side. She hates being singled out like for doing things that she can't help but do.

She steps around the corner and opens the envelope. Inside is a check for her annual bonus.

She pulls it partly out of the envelope, glances at it and starts to put it back when she thinks to count the zeros. There must be some mistake, she thinks. There's at least one too many zeros there. She starts to push it back into the envelope but it won't go back in. Something seems to be preventing it from sliding in.

She tucks the check under her arms and taps the open end of the envelope on her palm.

A small card, no bigger than a business card, slides out into her hand.

She picks it up to see nothing on one side. She flips it over to find a note, handwritten in tiny script that is legible despite its size and slightly different shapes of letters.

Virginia Marie, Thank you for our time together and for all that you do for so many others. Our time together ended all too early tonight. Your reward has not yet come to an end. I will be seeing you again this holiday season.

Whaaaaat the fuuuuccckkkk?

She jams the card and the check back into the envelope and runs back to her office.

She unlocks her computer and taps her fingers on the top of her desk impatiently as she waits for it to come up.

When it does she goes back to the start of the video and watches it again. She zooms in to watch it more closely.

She sees a disturbance in her hair just before she throws it back.

She sees her swollen lips begin to move beneath her fingers, but not in a way that her fingers should be causing.

She watches as they part and begin to move in and out while still being spread wide.

She watches as her throat seems to expand like nothing she's ever seen, but not just to expand, but to expand as if something is pushing it out from the inside.

Virginia quickly pops open her purse and pulls out her special, personal data-stick.

She pops it into the slot in the side of her computer and then opens a window from the security camera program.

She goes back to the time just before she walked through the curtain and clicks a button to set an edit point for the videos, selects all the cameras that cover that area and drags the slider to after she's put her thong back on and walked back out from behind the curtain.

She clicks the radio button to cut the selected videos from the security history then clicks another to save it to her data-stick.

A box pops up that asks her to verify that she wants to delete the selected record from history and to save it.

She clicks the "YES" button.

Another dialog box pops up that asks if she wants to also delete and save the UV files as well.

She clicks the "YES" button again and another dialog pops up that asks if she wants to save the infrared files as well.

Infrared? Didn't know we had that. But sure. I don't want any of the techies deciding to scan the drives out of boredom and find anything.

Once the files are done downloading she closes the security program and opens the new folder on her data-stick.

She opens the infrared folder and starts scanning through the video from the best camera angle and sees much of the same thing, but she's surprised that she can see her face flush.

She can see the heat flowing up her legs.

She's even more surprised to see heat bloom on her ass cheeks in the shape of a hand. First on one cheek, then the other.

She watches as heat blooms between her legs and through her torso.

She watches as heat moves down her swollen throat.

Then she realizes she can see a slight blue haze between her and the camera.

She watches as she wraps her arms around the blue glow.

One of her hands reaches up to the top of the glow and she sees a shadow fall to the ground.

It's then she realizes she's sitting on a lump in her chair.

She rocks to the side to lift a cheek, reaches under herself and pulls out a gray elf hat with black fur at the base and... no cheesy fake elf ears.