“There is a beast in man that must be exercised, not exorcised.”-The Satanic Bible***It was Christmas Eve, and Jolly Old Saint Nicholas had one last job to do. A job he dreaded.He stood at an iron door in the side of a mountain at the top of the world, hesitating as he lifted a rusted key from around his neck. Did he really have to go through with it? Maybe this year, just for once, he could skip this last chore. Maybe everything would be better off if he just left well enough alone…But no.; he shook his head, spilling snow from his crown of ivy. It was his duty to be charitable to everyone in need, and what soul needed charity more than this one? He slipped the old key into the heavy lock. It groaned as it turned, like an old ghost.The door’s ancient hinges were still strong after nearly 1,700 years, and it took all of his power to move them. Once the cell door was open the moonlight spilled in and revealed a barren cell, its one small window obstructed by both bars and frost. A single prisoner sat on the cold stone floor; his chains scraped each other as he looked up.The prisoner was not a man, although it had a face something like a man. It was not an animal either, although it had horns and hooves and hair in all places. It was a kind of blasphemous man-goat, bestial and ugly, and even the ever-compassionate Saint Nicholas flinched at the sight of it. The heaviest chains forged in all four corners of the world bound it from head to hoof.They looked at each other in silence for a moment as snow drifted into the cell, blown this way and that by the north wind. Eventually, Saint Nick cleared his throat. “Well, Christmas has come again, you wicked old sinner” he, trying to maintain his customary cheer. “You know what that means.”The great gray goat held out his wrists. Saint Nicholas fiddled with the big key, trying to make it fit the locks on the manacles.“Try to do some good this year?” he said as he worked at them. He turned one eyebrow up, an expression that half a plea, half a chastisement. “Maybe help someone while you’re out there, if you can manage it?”The chained figure only shrugged. He wasn‘t the type to make promises, even on a special occasion like this. Saint Nicholas, of course, knew this, but every year he lived in hope. Maybe this time will be different. Maybe…With a sigh the saint unfastened the last of the locks and, free at last, the Beast of the Yuletide let out a hearty growl, stretched his legs, winked at Saint Nicholas, and, laying his finger aside of his nose, leapt out into the dark, snowy night, flying through the sky due south, with an unsuspecting world spread out before him like a morning buffet.Saint Nick grumbled as the horned figure vanished. “I’m just a bleeding heart, that’s my problem,” he said, holding the empty manacles and shaking his head. “One of these days it’s going to get me into trouble.”***Free at last, the beast of the winter festival leaped through the night, letting the winter winds blow him wherever he was needed.He had no name. Which is to say, he had many: On the coast of Scandinavia they called him Nuuttipukki, the Yule Goat. In the Bavarian mountains he was Klaubauf. In Germany he was Ruprecht, and in older times and more temperate climates he was called Azazel, Capricorn, Pan, Banebdjedet, and Baphomet.His favorite names these days were Old Scratch, or sometimes Old Nick—his way of making fun of Saint Nicholas. But most often at this time of year, people called him Krampus.Once, he had been the king of the Yuletide, with its dark midwinter feasts and great fires and ritual offerings. Then a new god came and took away his feasts and his nights off the calendar, replacing him with old men and angels and saints, and now they called this time of year “Christmas” instead.But they couldn‘t do away with him entirely. He was too old, and his hold on people’s hearts too strong. And since Saint Nicholas was obligated to do a kindness to every creature in the world on Christmas, for one day each year the Krampus was free again.It was the earliest hour of the morning when his hooves first touched the virgin snow in the village square. This was a sleepy town, isolated by wilderness and winter storms. A perfect place to start.The first thing he did was sneak into a tailor’s shop and steal the most fashionable suit of clothes that fit him, pausing for a moment to groom himself at the tall mirror nearest to the big front window, so that the moonlight reflecting off the snow could illuminate him.Admiring his reflection for a moment, he considered getting a hat to cover up his horns too, but decided against it. He liked his horns. Most people did.Once he‘d fixed himself up, it was time to get to work. The Krampus slipped upstairs to where the tailor and his family slept. It was a humble little home, belonging to a most ordinary pedigree. The Krampus peeked at the family members one by one as they dozed, slipping from the shadow of one doorway to the next. Here were two daughters, still in small clothes, and a son near to manhood, all fast asleep in beds of their own.The Krampus’ hooves touched the floorboards so daintily that they scarcely made noise at all as he crept in to peep at the head of the family, fast asleep too. As he looked he thought:Here lies a tailor, all snug in his bed, while visions of prayer Ankara bayan escort books dance in his head. But why (the beast wondered) does this man sleep alone? His wife’s pillow’s empty, as bare as a bone…Curious, the Krampus crept to the spare bedroom, which had until only recently had been a workroom. Here the tailor’s wife slept on a cot, far away from her husband’s side. What was the meaning of this? The woman seemed to be fretting in her sleep. He pushed her hair out of her face.How lovely (thought the Krampus), her skin, her teeth! And her hair, it encircles her head like a wreath.Although his touch was gentle, it still stirred the tailor’s wife to waking. When she saw him standing over her she seemed neither frightened nor surprised. Indeed, she regarded him the way you might an old friend, although they’d never met before.Pulling the blankets up over her bosom, she looked the Krampus up and down and said: “You’re not Father Christmas.”The Krampus licked his lips. If he’d had a hat, he’d have doffed it now. Instead he just said:“I’m Father Krampus, and I‘m here to assist; no need to check for your name on my list. I’m an excellent judge, and I’m sure you’ve been good; the bestest and goodest, if misunderstood.”He laid a hand on one of the woman’s bare leg. She arched an eyebrow but didn’t object, and even tugged the blankets down a bit, revealing another tantalizing inch of bare skin.“It’s Christmas morning,” she said. “Do you have a present for me?”“I do, and I‘ll put it in your stocking with care.” He gestured to the front of his trousers. “It’s the gift that keeps giving, a most generous affair.”His hand crept further up her leg, but she swatted it away. “That sounds more like a present for you,” the tailor‘s wife said.The Krampus was not discouraged. He spread his arms wide. “What do you want, dear? Calling birds? Maids a milking? Whisper a wish; no fooling, no bilking.”The tailor’s wife leaned in, and her hot breath tickled his earlobe when she spoke. The Krampus grinned. “I should have known,” said the Krampus. “In fact, I did know. Human wishes are simple as quid and pro quo.”“Can you get it?” said the tailor’s wife.“Of course, my dear, and I’ll give you it now. I‘ve no use for such things myself anyhow. It wouldn’t be Christmas if I reneged on your wish. Here it is, turtledove, the very same dish.”He reached into the pocket of his suit (which of course should have been empty) and drew out something like a bottle of perfume.“The finest love potion from the land of the Nile. My gift to you, with a kiss and a smile. Your husband, of late, is idle in love, but this substance will give his libido a shove. Petition him now and you’ll find he’ll relent; I swear it, I promise, 100 percent.”The tailor’s wife took the bottle with something like reverence. The Krampus winked, and then away he flew (like the down of a thistle), leaving the tailor’s wife alone. She swung her feet down to the cold floorboards and crept to her husband’s room, then shimmied out of her nightclothes and, mindful of the cold, slipped under the blankets next to him. The man woke with a start, but she stopped his exclamation with a kiss.“Merry Christmas, darling,” said the tailor’s wife.He shifted next to her. “Away,” he said. “It’s not morning yet.”“It doesn’t need to be morning for this.” The tailor’s wife guided his hand to the warm, soft flesh of her naked breast. He froze, as if struck.“Away,” he said again. “It’s a sin.”“How can it be a sin when we’re man and wife?”She rubbed his hand over her naked body some more and then rolled over on top of him, nibbling his lips with her pearly teeth and letting her long hair hang around him.“We’ll have no more children between us,” said the tailor. “It’s not godly to do it except to make a child…”“It‘s natural,” his wife said. “You’re a man; I’m a woman. What else were we meant for? Don’t tell me you haven‘t thought about it while you slept here alone?”She kissed him some more while her hands ran down the length of his body, undoing the buttons of his nightshirt and laying her naked self against him. The tailor felt his blood boil but immediately stamped it down. “Forget Christmas for a moment,” his wife whispered. “The children will sleep for hours. You’ve no work to do today. Let me remind you how good things used to be.”The soft coaxing of his wife’s lips and the feeling of her warm flesh close to his did indeed remind the tailor of other times, when he’d been young and hotheaded and eager to chase anything with skirts on. His body, it seemed, remembered such things too, rising to the occasion just as readily as it had in his youth.”I…I can’t…” the tailor whispered. His wife shook her head.”But what if you could? Maybe this will help.” She took out the bottle with the love potion. “One touch of this and you’ll forget all guilt and all shame for as long as you want. My Christmas present to you.””What is this? Witchcraft?” the tailor said, taking the bottle with two fingers.”No,” said his wife. “Just an answer to your prayers.”He looked at the bottle, then at his wife’s eyes. Both had a gleam he thought he recognized. So before he could have second thoughts, the tailor broke the seal on the little bottle and, as his wife instructed dabbed a few drops on his open palm and inhaled. Escort bayan Ankara The fumes sent his brain reeling immediately, but it wasn’t an unpleasant sensation. It made him feel young again. Eager, he took another breath.The small bedroom grew muggy with the heat of two bodies together. The tailor’s wife kissed her way down her husband’s bare chest, her generous lips sending sparks through him and kindling a fire that he thought he’d long since put out.The truth was, the tailor HAD thought about such things on nights when he lay in bed without sleeping. That’s why he’d sent his wife to keep in the spare room, and spared himself that temptation. Whenever sinful thoughts crossed his mind he’d prayed furiously and, now and then, mortified his rebellious flesh.This time he didn’t send her off, and she evidently had plans for his flesh that involved much more tender ministrations than he was used to. When her warm mouth opened around his embarrassingly erect cock he almost cried out at the scandal of it. But the firm, assuring feeling of her lips wrapping around him stifled it into something like a throaty groan. A sound of gratification, he realized, but it was too late to stop it now.The walls in the little house were thin, so they kept as quiet as they could while the tailor’s wife tended to him with her sumptuous mouth and the little licking sensation of her mischievous tongue. When she tasted that he was ready she removed it and, favoring him with a wink, sat up in bed on all fours, her backside in the air in an invitation he couldn’t mistake.Blood pounded in the tailor’s brain as he sat up. The sleek curves of his wife’s fine body coaxed a lecherous and lustful chorus of pants out of him that suggested anticipation he would never admit to in words.But the smoothness of her thighs, the roundness of her behind, the taut line of her back all the way up to the point between her creamy rounded shoulders with her long curls spilling over them couldn‘t be ignored.Her warm skin was exposed to the cold winter air, and he traced the gooseflesh on her thighs with a fingertip. When he finally moved to put himself inside of her, she surprised him by saying, “No.”But she didn’t actually stop him; only positioned him a bit higher, to a place where, he was certain, no baby could ever be conceived, and where the town vicar would drive him right out of town and directly into purgatory for even thinking about. “There,” she said. “Right there. Slowly…slowly…ah!”Her little cry hung like snowflake, batted this way and that by the night air. Inside, she hugged tight against his cock, her sensitive muscles rippling and squeezing him every time he moved. He leaned as far over her as he could, mounting her from behind like an animal and pushing out more snowflake exclamations from her with each thrust of his hips: “Ah…ah…ah!”Eventually she laid down on her side, and he with her, never pulling out but remaining as far in as he could, the hard pressure of his hips against her backside creating a rhythm. The sheets twisted around them, first growing hot with the sweat of their bodies, then cooling fast in the winter air.If you’d have asked him before, the tailor would have said that there was nothing more repugnant than sinning on Christmas morning. It was the kind of thing that was liable to keep Christmas from coming at all.But he soon realized that he hadn’t stopped Christmas from coming. No, he realized (as he felt a sense of release, long and hot, rush through him and out of him and into his wife‘s body even as she licked her lips in satisfaction), it came. Somehow or another, it came just the same.Meanwhile, the Krampus bounded over the snowy rooftop, and children and animals stirred in their sleep as he passed. When he came to what seemed like a good spot for people watchinng he hung his hooves over the edge of one roof and waited. There were no people out this early in the morning, but he felt certain that if he just waited he’d soon find what he was looking for.Sure enough, he spied his mark in seconds: A strapping young man with a face full of tears trudged alone through the snowy nigh. He looked lost and drunk, tromping through the slush in the gutters.The Krampus leaped down and landed right next to the lad. He was a sweet faced man of 20, and he smelled like an empty bottle of holiday cheer. With neither hesitation nor introduction, the Krampus threw his arm around the boy‘s shoulders and said:“Now why should you cry, instead of make merry? What makes such distressing displays necessary? Are you hurt? Are you dying? Has help come too late? What blow has been dealt you by cruel Mistress Fate?”The boy blinked in wonder, but the Krampus kept talking:“I‘m your new friend, and you‘ll find that I‘m true; I‘ve arrived right on time, to answer your cue. Unfurl to me now this tale of your woes, and I’ll do my best to your problems depose.”In the end, the boy felt so wretched that the appearance of this goblin provoked no reaction more violent than a shrug. “I’ll never be merry again,” he answered. “The whole world is one dark winter, and I’ll never again see spring.”He leaned against the icy stones of the town’s well, and he sounded so devastated that the Krampus worried for a second that he might even jump in. Instead Bayan escort Ankara the boy just kicked a snowdrift, scattering it into meaningless particles. “I asked a woman to marry me tonight,” he said. “And she told me no.”And then he moaned as if he’d been shot. Oh my (thought the Krampus), this one’s in a state. But I bet if I prod him, he’ll rise to the bait…He picked the boy up and brushed snow off his collar. “Now lad,” said the Krampus, “heartbreak‘s sore, that is true. But now you’re still young; give it a week, maybe two. You‘ll discover your heart more resilient than most, and then with some new lass you’ll be most engrossed.”“No,” said the boy, looking at the snow on the nearby churchyard as if it was the abyss of death. “She broke more than my heart tonight. She hurt me to my soul.”“A soul is a trifle; barely a trinket. You’ll bounce back right away, if only you think it. With my help, dear boy, you’ll have love’s own purview. You’ll have girls enough for ten sweet lads…plus two!”“But ho would ever love me? I’m nothing. She said so.”“I would suggest that her tastes are astray. Let’s find a new girl, who’ll suit for today. And tomorrow and the next you can always meet more. Life’s a great game, and it’s time you keep score. A wife you’ll soon know, when the time for one comes. Spend the years in between on the sweetest of plums.”The Krampus began steering the lad away from the town square and down certain alleys, leading him to the edge of town and the river and some of the less respectable corridors. Here were lanes and avenues that the upstanding people of the village never frequented but still couldn’t help thinking about in their midnight hours, and even glancing toward now and then when they passed by after dark…“As it so happens, I’ve a great girl in mind. She’s a personal friend, and her charms most refined. You can trust in my tastes, because I am your friend. (I have been since we met, as I’m sure you’ll contend.) Let me be matchmaker, and you’ll soon be impressed. Come now, follow me, to the north, the northwest!”They were at a house with a candle still burning in the uppermost window. The boy peered at it curiously. “Does anyone really live here?”“She lives, she loves, she thinks, she breathes. She’s waiting for you now, up there in the eaves.”“She won’t take strange visitors at this hour. On a holiday?”“A girl this profound makes no fuss of the time. To sample her charmings, we need only to chime.”The Krampus rang the little bell by the door, and the girl did indeed come to her window. She squinted through the night and the snow, and when she saw the Krampus’ smiling face she broke into a grin of her own.“Darling!” the girl said, for the Krampus had friends in every town in the world, and made more every year.He cried out in return: “Sweet dove! What a treat it is seeing your dear face above. But come now to your door, and your welcome extend. It’s Christmas, my chestnut, and I’ve brought a new friend.”The girl, a fresh thing of 19, dutifully slipped downstairs in her nightclothes and invited them both inside. She greeted the Krampus with a hug and a kiss, then turned her attention on the boy.At first he wasn’t sure why she was looking at him so intently (except maybe because he was dripping snow all over her floor, of course…), but then she pointed over his head. “Mistletoe,” she said.The boy swallowed, but the girl stood on her tiptoes (her feet were bare despite the cold), and he had no choice. Her lips were soft, and tasted like her own bated breath.The Krampus went to the hearth and started a great, rousing fire that soon had the entire house as snug as a dove. The girl played hostess and poured them mulled wine, slipping her fingers briefly into the boy’s hand when she gave him the mug. He blushed, and hoped that it was too dark to tell.All three of them sat by the fire, chatting and laughing like old friend. The boy stared at the girl, his looks becoming more and more bold as he dran. She returned his gaze often, but never for more than a few seconds before turning back to the Krampus, who entertained them both with songs, bawdy jokes, and stories of Yuletides past.Eventually the girl finished her wine and, very deliberately, licked the last of it from her lips. Through his alcoholic haze, the boy felt his blood simmer. Now she turned her full attention on him, sitting back in her chair and crossing her legs.“You’re a shy one,” she said. “Is it your first time?”The boy choked.“Now, now,” said the Krampus. “The question is fair. She wants you to answer, not squirm in your chair.”“I don’t mind,” the girl added. “It’s all the same to me as long as you pay.”“Quite right,” said the Krampus, “how rude to forget. A present for my darling, to settle the debt.” From the pocket of his suit the Krampus produced a fat purse, overflowing with silver coins. When the girl judged that it was enough she took off her clothes, standing as naked as Venus in front of them both.The boy swallowed again. The Krampus nudged him in the ribs. “She’s all woman, my lad, as you see with your eyes. She’ll fill all your needs, as each ones arise. A wink of her eye and a turn of her head will let you know now that you’ve nothing to dread.“I’ve been here myself, and I know all her tricks, all her ways and her means, all her quicks and her picks. Satisfaction’s guaranteed, that’s a promise, dear boy. As your friend, I share only what I know you‘ll enjoy.”“I think there’s been a mistake,” the boy said. “I’m not interested in…um, that is to say, I don’t want to pay for it.”The girl stood up straight and gave him a contempt-filled look that made him blush.