A long sigh escaped my lips as I finally made it to my apartment door after far too long a day. I stood for a quiet moment, watching the fog from my breath vanish into the chilly night air. The world around me was silent, save for the low hum of the fluorescent lights illuminating the apartment complex. In the surrounding street, warm amber lights from house windows with too many cars in their driveways shone like lanterns glinting off the snow, holding a vigil against the cold night.

At least some people were enjoying their Christmas Eve. 

Christmas hadn’t meant much to me this year. It was a shame too, because I loved Christmas. It'd always been my favorite holiday, and I was normally the first person to start blasting “All I Want For Christmas is You” while chugging peppermint hot chocolate the moment November first rolled around. But this year was different. My job had me stuck working ‘til late, and although I had Christmas day itself off tomorrow, they were expecting me right back on the twenty-sixth. That meant I wouldn’t be able to make the drive down to see my whole family this year. And just to rub salt in the wound, my folks had just gotten a new puppy a few months back and I wouldn’t even get to see him. With almost all of my friends up here out of town for the holiday, it meant that the only person I’d be spending Christmas with tomorrow was my roommate. 

Nothing against my roommate of course—he was a great guy and pretty much everything I could reasonably ask for in a roommate. I was closer to him than I ever had been with a roommate before. But still, it wasn’t quite the same. I always counted myself as inordinately lucky in having a family I loved and who loved each other. Not getting to see them this year stung. The work thing sucked of course, but that was really just exacerbating something deeper beneath the surface I’d been feeling the entire year. Or feeling a lack thereof, anyway. Seasonal depression was novel, but the fancy pumpkin spice depression was just adding flavor to the classic vanilla depression that made it hard to look forward to anything, much less find the Christmas spirit deep within my heart.

Ruminating on it, as I was wont to do, I’d never really been able to envision what my future would look like. I could imagine plenty of scenarios, hypotheticals ranging from overly dismal to astonishingly unlikely, but never me in them. Some deep… disconnect? discomfort? with myself made it impossible to look in the mirror and see anything but a mannequin—a lifeless impostor in a costume. All throughout my life, at least ever since puberty, I’d kept pushing off that anxiety into the future. I suppose I figured the clouds would suddenly open up one day and the path ahead of me would be clear. After high school. After college. After I got a job. 

But they never did. And now here I was, in the Real World with a Real Job, having to contend with the existentially terrifying possibility that this might be all there was. That I might have to be this for the rest of my life.

Christmas had always served as one of those bulwarks of comforting certainty in my life. That, if just for a week or two in December, I’d be surrounded by people I care about and things would be okay. Without that, I’d gradually fallen into a numb malaise, and I had little hope that things would change for the better in the coming new year.

Under ordinary circumstances, I’d get home, make dinner, and spend time cuddling next to my roommate—the dude was built like a truck, gave off warmth like a space heater, and our apartment got really cold, so don’t judge me—but the hour was far too late and I was much too tired. Upon returning to the captivating warmth of my apartment, I barely even had the energy to offer a curt “Merry Christmas” to him before shambling to my room, shutting the door, and pulling the blinds down. I hit the light switch and immediately flopped over onto the bed, managing to take off the most constricting parts of my work clothes until I was down to a button-up shirt and boxers. Changing into actual pajamas was well beyond my capacity at that moment.

Sleep found me quickly, but in those few vulnerable minutes between wakefulness and slumber, I found myself wishing that if Christmas might bring me one thing this year, it would be some kind of answer.

It must have been around three in the morning when I awoke based on the height of the moon in the sky visible through the open window—and also how my alarm clock read ‘3:07 AM’.

I groaned in protest, still half asleep with bleary eyes that wanted nothing more than to remain shut for the next twelve hours. I had no objection to their request, but the frigid air, the odd jingling noise, and the sound of someone humming a familiar melody made that difficult.

Perhaps another full minute passed before my sleep-deprived brain put several things together. One, my window had definitely been closed before I fell asleep. Two, the awfully feminine humming was awfully nearby. Three, my roommate—much to my chagrin—wouldn’t be caught dead in the same room as the nineteen ninety-four Mariah Carey Christmas classic currently being caroled close by.

I bolted upright, wondering just who the fuck was in my room and why they had the audacity to break in at 3:07 AM on Christmas morning. Unfortunately, the righteous anger keeping the panic and fear at bay was quickly replaced by the aforementioned panic and fear when I actually caught a glimpse of the intruder. 

She—definitely ‘she’ if her silhouette was anything to go by—had horns. And bat wings. And a tail. The kind with a little heart at the end. Crimson skin. Claws as black as night. Slitted ruby eyes. The kind which glowed in the darkness of my room.

I’d never seen a demon before. I hadn’t been raised in a religious household, nor had I ever been given any reason to believe in the supernatural. But if it looked like a demon, flapped its wings like a demon, and was staring into my fucking soul like a demon...

Oh god there was a demon at the foot of my bed.

Her inhuman eyes remained locked with mine as she slowly stood up from her crouched position in front of my bed and flashed a wide smile that showed off four very large fangs and numerous other sharp teeth. 

“Oh, you’re awake! Hiya!”

I screamed. 

At least, I tried to scream. I got at least a good two and a half uninterrupted seconds in before her smile became a frown, and with some strange hand gesture, suddenly all noise vanished from my throat—despite my best efforts. She quickly skipped over to the door, tracing strange motions onto it with her fingers that left behind faintly glowing patterns.

“Okaaaay… I’m just gonna soundproof the room real quick and we’ll try this again.” She turned back to me, her tail flicking out behind her to hit the light switch. In the brief moment I was blinded by the overhead light, she’d already returned to my bedside, leering down at me from not nearly far enough away. A part of me was a little bit thankful I was still on silent mode because the noise I made would not have been particularly dignified. She didn’t give me any further opportunity to react before speaking again with that unnerving smile back on her face. “Alright, take two. Hi! I’m Alzette!”

I just sat there like a prey animal with an evolutionarily-questionable fear response, hiding behind my covers in the vain hope they might protect me. The sudden return of my rapid breathing and incoherent stammering notified me that I’d been unmuted, but I didn’t dare speak. The pause soon turned into a very awkward silence as the seconds ticked by while she watched me with a curious expression. If she was here to kill me or drag me to Hell, at least she could have been quick about it. My total bewilderment at the situation was not at all helped by the increasingly complete image of her I took in as we continued staring at each other indecisively.

She was dressed in this utterly absurd outfit. A deep red leotard, a bit darker than her skin, with a fluffy white trim that perfectly hugged every inch of her ample curves and revealed a generous amount of her already generous cleavage. Something that skimpy had to be physics-defying if it wasn’t causing a wardrobe malfunction with the slightest movement. Candy cane-striped thigh-highs and arm-length gloves completed the picture, along with a Santa hat tilted back so as to keep her horns uncovered. Oh. She had tied sleigh bells to her horns. I guess that’s what the jingling was about.

I couldn’t possibly fathom why this literal demoness was dressed as an unabashedly horny parody of Santa, but she was, to put it mildly, extremely attractive and the spike of arousal was having a mixer with the fear, learning they had a lot in common, and creating some weird chemistry in my brain.

“Hey, so can you like… speak?” she asked, seeming to find this exchange as awkward as I did. I’d expected something a little more ‘sultry temptress’-y from a demoness, but her voice was actually kind of bubbly. “I know a bit of ASL, but I think it’s a few decades outdated, so maybe just writing would work better?“

“Wh-What do you want from me?” I blurted out all at once as my words finally found me.

“I mean, your name would be a good start. We haven’t even gotten through introductions yet.”

“You can’t take my name!” I said with surprising force. I’d read enough to know not to just give my name away to some magical creature of dubious repute. But then, she’d also given out her name? Wasn’t that also kind of a magical faux pas? “And you can’t have my soul either!” I figured I might as well be clear on what was on the table here. Which to clarify, was nothing.

She slapped her palm to her face, sliding it down with an exasperated sigh. “Look, buddy. First of all, I’m a demon, not a fae. That’s not what we do. I’m just trying to be polite here. You know, get to know the person I’m trying to help a little first. Secondly, the soul thing is a false and harmful misconception. Even if I could take your soul—which I can’t—that’d kind of go against the whole spirit of the season.”

“Oh. Um, sorry?” Wait, why was I apologizing to the demon?

Her mood immediately seemed to perk back up. “I’ll let it slide this time since you’re a human who’s clearly not used to this stuff, but people seriously need to be more critical of all the anti-demon propaganda out there.” She then leaned in closer and spoke in a low purr that sent blood rushing to my face and also a certain other part. “So anyway, who is it I have the pleasure of working my magic on tonight?”

Maybe it was the sheer absurdity of the situation or her complete lack of gravitas, or maybe just my brain needing to be put in horny jail, but when she looked at me with that expectant grin I found myself responding. “I’m, um… My name is... Uhh…” Oh come on, why was something this simple giving me so much trouble?

“Oh! Fuck! I’m so sorry, I should have realized!” She suddenly looked mortified for some reason, but I was honestly grateful for the sudden interruption of my regularly scheduled ‘making a nervous fool of myself’. “Of course you wouldn’t want to use your current name, that was so stupid of me. Let’s take a raincheck on the name thing for now,” she emphasized with a little wave before her smile returned, “I’m sure you’ll be able to come up with a way better one anyway!”

“Hang the fuck on!” Frustration had started to overtake confusion, fear, and my better judgment. “What the hell are you talking about? What do you mean ‘spirit of the season’?! You’re a demon! What do you want from me and why couldn’t it have waited until after Christmas?!”

“It’s kind of important that I’m here on Christmas. Look, I’m totally a ‘Christmas elf’! See the pointy ears?” She brushed a raven lock behind her ear to reveal that it was, in fact, pointy.

“Why are you doing this to me.” I was starting to think that this might be one of those psychological torture kind of deals.

“Okay, hear me out. This is going to need a bit of explaining. So you know Santa, right?”

“Uhuhhh,” I nodded slowly, very skeptical of wherever this train of conversation was headed.

“Well the thing is… it’s actually ‘Satan’.”

I elected to stare blankly at her rather than dignify that with a response.

“No, seriously! Us demons have been pretty much running the show for the last couple centuries.”

“I don’t—That isn’t—” I gawked for a moment before managing to put my disbelief into a coherent statement. “You can’t possibly expect me to believe that. It’s called goddamn Christ-mas.”

“Well yeah! That’s the whole problem! Think about it: How many different winter holidays used to exist around this time? And how many of them are still around today? Yule, Sol invictus, Saturnalia, Koleda—all gone! Every one of them swallowed whole and corrupted by that greedy beast known as Christmas. Christmas didn’t even used to happen in December!”

“Yeah, sure, but last I checked none of those old holidays were based around demons.”

“Ughhh,” she groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose, “Why does no one ever recognize our vital contributions to these things?—No, don’t answer that. Our optics are seriously the worst, and every time we try to improve our PR, it just gets ignored or twisted somehow. What about the Yule Goat, spirit of the harvest? And the whole ‘Krampus’ thing? Seriously, an evil demon anti-Santa? Like, come on! It’s not Luci’s fault that people take one look at the horns and hooves and just totally flip out. Luci’s the biggest sweetheart I know! Besides, where do you think we sourced all our coal from?” 

“Is that last thing really something to be proud of, though?” To give her some credit, it would have made a degree of sense if Hell was in charge of the naughty list.

She pouted at me and flapped her wings indignantly, her tail poking ramrod straight out from behind her just for good measure. “You’re proving my point! It’s not some kind of punishment, everyone got coal or firewood back then! Winters could be pretty harsh before central heating, you know. Most households appreciated being given a big reserve for their hearths and furnaces right at the start of winter to keep them warm for the next few months.”

“I still don’t understand. If you have such a big problem with Christmas, then why are you actively working for it?”

“Well that’s the thing. It’s too late at this point for all those old holidays I mentioned to make a comeback, right? But if Christmas stole and corrupted them, then we can steal and re-corrupt Christmas right back! You know, celebrating the coming winter, togetherness, sharing joy and goodwill with those dear to us, showing altruism and kindness even towards total strangers—just so we’re clear, the whole commercialism thing was all on you humans—Bring it back to its traditional roots and all.”

“So you’re…”

“We’re taking the ‘Christ’ back out of Christmas!” she said with enough pride for an entire pack of lions. I kept searching her face for a hint of irony, but found none. 

“I don’t. I’m not sure…” My mind was still reeling from learning the ‘war on Christmas’ was apparently an actual thing. “But aren’t its ‘roots’ still Christian? I mean, what about Saint Nicholas?”

“Yeah,” she smirked, “you mean the patron saint of prostitutes? Besides, it goes so much further than that. Does an old bearded man leading a flying procession in the sky on a chariot remind you of anything?” She looked at my confused expression for several seconds before recognizing that I didn’t actually have an answer for her. “Odin! The leader of the Wild Hunt? Come on, that’s literally what Yule is all about! We’d never be able to hit every house in one night if we didn’t have him helping out on the transportation end of things.” 

“Wait wait wait, you’re saying the Norse god Odin is a demon?” I could feel my understanding of theology being repeatedly bashed in with a sledgehammer. 

“Of course not, don’t be silly.” The psychological torture thing was clearly working because at this point I kind of wanted her to just drag me to Hell already. “We’ve got a whole sort of pagan coalition going on—we kind of need one to make any real impact these days. Solidarity, you know? And I can promise you that we’d never get anything done if Hell wasn’t there to keep things running smoothly. Boss tells me it’s like herding a bunch of divine cats.”

“Okay, okay. Let’s say I believe everything you just said—and for the record, I don’t—I still can’t fathom what literally any of that has to do with you dressing up in a slutty Santa outfit and breaking into my room at three in the morning!”

“Oh! Well honestly that one’s easy. It’s because of the contract you made with Satan! You know, the one you made when you were five!”