ST3.12 | "Santa Daddy"

PROMPT: The office holiday party is the setting for this month’s Stone’s Throw prompt. What happens when you’re forced into a social setting with a bunch of people you would never willingly socialize with except for a paycheck? How does dipping into a less formal space embolden your protagonist to tell Jan from Accounting what they really think of her? What hare-brained schemes can your protagonist come up with after knocking back a few cold ones and eyeing up the unguarded bank safe? And what fresh hell and awkward hangovers await the story’s characters the morning after?

SANTA DADDY

by James D.F. Hannah

The afternoon of Christmas Eve, and Slater’s at a dive bar on Crenshaw, drinking well bourbon and eating un-sauced wings—both keto—and hoping Chloe, the deeply-tattooed bartender, will take him home with her when her shift’s over, because he’s been living in his car since his girlfriend found those photos of him with her sister on his phone, and sleeping in his Prius is fucking his back.

That’s when Ashlynn shows up. Or rather, Ashlynn’s chest announces her entrance, and the rest of her appears over time, a royal procession of tits and hips and ass. She’s a spank bank wish list: four-figure blonde hair, five-figure rack, Brazilian butt lift, cheekbones that are a cutting hazard. A smoke show that should require a warning from the Forestry Service.

She clicks four-inch heels across the concrete floor in time to Darlene Love on the jukebox.

Chloe gives her the look. “Get you something, honey? Beer? Wine? Antibiotics?”

Ashlynn ignores her, slides into a booth. Slater chews the last bit of meat off a drumette and carries his drink over.

“I’ve got a job,” she tells him. “Thought you could use the money.”

Slater tries to play it cool, but Ashlynn is . . . not wrong. He’s struggled since he left the industry, looking for mainstream work. He can’t score more than a day player gig on a third-tier Netflix series, and he tells himself it’s because there’s prejudice still against porn, and not because there are more images of his junk on the Internet than there are cat videos.

He’s made ends meet during the holidays playing Santa Claus. Buff Santa, though. Saint Nick with his swole on. For late-year bachelorette parties, or girl-boss holiday get-togethers where Slater can strip and grind to “Last Christmas.”

As good as the money is, though, the biggest benefit is the shocking number of women who want to fuck Santa Claus. And why wouldn’t they? Slater’s six-two, gym-ripped the way he was shooting scenes in Griffith Park. His sleeveless red velvet costume and the mischievous twinkle in his eye scream to these ladies he’s waiting to come down their chimneys.

But this year’s he’s been SOL—Santa outta luck. Demand’s down for a Father Christmas who’s more of a “Daddy.” Work-from-home has blown up office festivities, and bachelorette parties, they’d rather drunk pedal than paw at a chiseled Kris Kringle and wine-drunk whisper if the stockings are the only things that are hung.

“I’m not filming anymore,” Slater says.

“It’s not a scene. I’ve got a corporate party tonight, and my Santa got busted shooting with girls with fake IDs.”

“My dad did always say fifteen’ll get you twenty. What’s the job?”

“Tech bros at Silicon Beach. They’re taking a break from doing ketamine and kissing oligarch ass to celebrate the birth of Christ.”

“And you’re planning to rob them?”

Ashlynn rolls a violet contact-lensed eye.

“Duh. Interested?”

Slater tells himself he should go home with Chloe. She’s the only reason he’s got well bourbon to drink and chicken wings to eat. She’s sweet and funny, owns her own house that’s probably decorated for the holidays. Plus, he doesn’t want to wake up on Christmas morning in the parking lot of a Planet Fitness.

Still, he’s not surprised when he tells Ashlynn, “Sure, I’m in.”

***

That evening, Slater drives to a mansion in the Palisades, where the interior design is best described as “asshole luxe.” Everything’s cavernous and blindingly white and Slater half-expects Tom Cruise to cable down from the ceiling. There’s a DJ doing a drum-and-bass mix of “Baby It’s Cold Outside” and naked women being used as sushi tables. Dudes outnumber ladies ten to one, the women gorgeous and bored, obviously hired to keep the party from being a complete sausage fest, while the guys roam about like coked-out hyenas.

Ashlynn’s costume is a fur-lined red negligee and G-string with garters and hose and heels. She’s talking to a guy with powder around his nostrils and roided muscles straining the seams of a shirt sized for a ten-year-old. She introduces him as the party host, Reggie.

“Call me Biff,” he says.

“No,” Slater says. “So what do you do, Reggie? Marry and murder rich widows?”

Biff flashes very white, very expensive teeth.

“I made an app for guys to track down women who ghost them. After that company went public, I rolled the money into shorting subprime loans. Now I invest in AI.”

“I liked you better thinking you killed old ladies,” Slater says.

Biff’s not listening. His eyes are locked on a redheaded bombshell strolling by in an LBD.

“End of the night, you two hand out the holiday bonuses,” he says, gesturing to a stack of small white boxes, each tied with an elaborate red ribbon. “Help yourself to the food and the booze. Coke’s by the caviar. Ketamine’s next to the gingerbread cookies.” He walks toward the bombshell. “Don’t get them confused.”

Ashlynn says to Slater, “Biff found me on OnlyFans. He acts all alpha, but twice a week he puts on a puppy mask and lets me whip his bare ass.”

“Then you know what’s in the boxes?” Slater says.

“Crypto wallets. Each one loaded with six figures, every penny untraceable. Biff was barking, he was so excited to tell me. I went home and made a dozen identical boxes. They’re stashed under the gift table. When it’s time, I’ll hand you a box, and you give it to the next asshole in line. Every few boxes, I’ll switch one of mine for a real one. Everyone’ll be wasted by then, so they won’t notice, and we’ll haul ass out of here.”

Slater nods and checks across the room. Biff’s trapped the bombshell in a corner, talking, not noticing her eyes have gone dead.

Not completely dead, however. because she’s eye-fucking Slater. Her smile is feral.

Santa freak.

It’s on.

Slater turns on his Santa voice. Says to Biff, “What do we have here? Getting ready for Santa?”

Biff snarls, “Fuck off, Saint Nick.”

“Now, now, you don’t want on the naughty list, do you?”

Biff squares up. Slater recognizes fight training from a gym. Doubts Biff’s ever had a brawl where a check didn’t secure the outcome.

Slater slaps his hand on Biff’s shoulder, lets his thumb find the right nerve, digs in. Biff’s knees wobble and sweat pours from the line of hair plugs trenched across the top of his brow.

“Jingle your jolly ass elsewhere, Reggie,” Slater says. No holiday tone now. He releases his grip and Biff collapses against the wall.

“Skank,” Biff says to the bombshell, and storms off toward the caviar.

The bombshell bites on the skinny red straw from her drink.

“Thanks, Santa.” She takes the straw and traces the unchewed end along the edge of Slater’s tricep. Bites her bottom lip. Gets close enough, her perfume hits the “reset” button in Slater’s brain, flushing all of his blood south.

“You know,” she says, soft and breathy, “I think I’m awfully naughty.”

She goes to a catering table, grabs a bottle of wine and a corkscrew. A wink and a shake of ass and vanishes down a hallway.

Slater sees Ashlynn talking with two guys, giving a tour de force performance of someone who gives a fuck what they have to say. Decides he’s got time, pops a blue pill from his pocket, goes to find the bombshell.

He finally finds her in the library, where the books have uncracked spines and everything’s crusted in oak and gold leaf like dried cold sores. Southern California and there’s a fireplace, for fuck’s sake.

The bombshell’s draped across a desk the size of a basketball court, a come-hither expression on her face which has Slater hithering in her direction, the rip of Velcro closures, his costume dropping to the floor. He feels a surge of heat through his body, both the thrill of fucking in a place like this, and probably the blue pill.

The bombshell tells him to keep the beard on.

They twist and shape one another’s bodies across the desk surface, their noises drowned out by the DJ trying his damndest to make Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” into not just a Christmas song, but one you can dance to.

Finally, the bombshell explodes, a piercing scream that echoes between the walls, muting Slater’s smaller, more guttural sounds. They collapse onto the desk, and Slater offers to open the bottle of wine.

He’s got the corkscrew, reaching for the bottle, when the library door opens and Biff says, “I’m paying you to do a job, not—”

A beat. Then.

“That was my grandfather’s desk!”

Biff runs to the fireplace and grabs a poker. Slater can see the rage in his eyes, the fury of a desire he’s been denied, as well as the fresh Colombian snowfall dusting his nose.

As soon as Biff’s close enough, before he’s got a chance to swing the poker, Slater throws a punch.

This is the very moment Slater remembers he’s holding the corkscrew.

Biff drops the poker, and his shirt turns red as blood pours from around the corkscrew lodged in his neck.

(Slater later learns from the ME’s report that he hit Biff’s carotid artery. “A one-in-a-million punch,” it claims. Lucky him. It’s also where he learns the word “exsanguination.”)

The bombshell’s screams draw a crowd, and if nothing else it gets the DJ to stop playing. Everyone has a cell phone out, either recording for social media or calling 911—but mostly for social media. Biff’s very dead on the floor, lying in the middle of a—fuck you not—zebra skin rug. Real zebra.

The cops arrive, pissed to leave the Korean barbecue joint feeding them, having to deal with this shit on Christmas Eve. Slater tries to find Ashlynn in the chaos, but can’t. She’s gone, and, he realizes, so is every single one of those goddamn Christmas bonus boxes.

As he’s getting handcuffed, Slater thinks, I should have gone home with Chloe.

JAMES D.F. HANNAH (on Instagram / Threads @jamesdfhannah; on Bluesky @jamesdfhannah.bsky.social) is the author of the Shamus Award-winning Henry Malone series, including the novels Behind the Wall of Sleep and Because the Night. His work has been nominated for the Anthony Award and the Pushcart Prize and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery and Suspense; Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine; Eight Very Bad Nights, edited by Tod Goldberg; Playing Games, edited by Lawrence Block; Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, edited by S.A. Cosby; Vautrin; Rock and a Hard Place; Dark Yonder; and The Anthology of Appalachian Writers. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where the bourbon is.