Nicole Claus might have made a poor life choice when she decided to deliver a load of the presents for Dad this year. The thought certainly crossed her mind as she looked up from the seat of the red pickup. (Dad didn't trust her with the main sleigh, but getting to drive this baby was half the reason she agreed to take the job. I mean, who wouldn't want to drive a perfectly-restored old truck that could fly?) Looking down at Nicole was a red-skinned woman with demon horns. Part of her body was covered in snake scales and she looked like she was nothing but snake from the waist down.
"Can I help you?"
"Well, um, Miss Snake, I have to deliver all these presents to all the children on my list before morning. But I don't see the town they live in anywhere."
"Oh." The snake lady smiled. "That's because they're in my belly. AHHH!" She opened her mouth wide.
"Heh heh heh," Nicole fake laughed unconvincingly. Nicole became uncomfortably how easily she could fit in that mouth. "Really, where are they?"
She patted her stomach. "I told you, I put them in my belly. They had a candy candy about the size of several of you tinies that looked really tasty. But it would be wrong to just steal their candy cane after they probably worked really hard on it, so I put the whole town in my belly with it. Then it turned out the candy cane was just plastic..." She scrunched up her face for a second. "But since I already put my new friends in my tummy where they're nice and safe, they can just stay there. It's too cold to be outside tonight." She licked her lips. "You shouldn't be out in the cold either or you'll get the sniffles. I can help. AHHH!"
Nicole gulped. She didn't like where this was going. The present compass was magically set to always point to the next kid on Dad's list, so there was no way it could be wrong... and it was pointing right at the snake lady. Just to check Nicole flew the truck a circle around her, and the whole time the needle kept rotating to point to her.
"So if they're inside you..."
"You have to go inside too or you won't be able to deliver them. AHHH!"
Can't I just leave them on your tongue? is what she wanted to ask, but she knew that wasn't really delivering them. Dad would be disappointed. She screwed up her courage as best she could and steered the pick straight for the giant maw. She sailed right over most of the long, red tongue, finally setting down with all four tires near the back. "For the kids, Nicole." She shifted into first gear. The rolled toward the abyss, then when the front wheels left the ground everything fell.
The nose of the truck pointed 90 degrees downward. Nicole found herself stuck between the seat and the dashboard. Thankfully, the pink muscle pressing up against the truck on all sides and pulling it downward was actually slower than a gravity-powered free fall. It felt like much longer to Nicole, but it was less than a minute later that world opened up into a giant, pink-tinted expanse, and the magic of the truck held it suspended in midair.
Nicole rolled down the window and stuck her head out to get a good look. The bottom of the giant pink cavern she was in was filled with a slowly bubbling red liquid. Sticking out of the various places were pieces of what looked like demolition debris. There were pieces of bridges and scaffolding, several abandoned cars partially submerged in the liquid, and the giant plastic candy cane that the snake woman had mentioned. So... she really did eat a whole town. But where were all the people? Were they digested in that liquid down there? She seemed to be telling the truth so far, but if they were still inside her, where were they? The present compass was spinning, which the signal that she was supposed to land.
Trusting the compass, Nicole sat the truck down in the liquid. The magic of the truck meant that it wouldn't sink like a ton of metal not shaped like a boat would usually do. However, that was when the whole contents of the stomach began to shift. There was a gurgling noise somewhere deep below, then whole red lake shifted and began to flow. The truck drifted with the liquid. At first it was difficult to tell what was happening because it was moving somewhat slowly. However, the speed continually increased, and it became apparent that everything was spiraling toward the center, where it vanished into an enormous whirlpool.
Nicole held her breath as the truck plunged backward into swirling center. For a second everything was submerged in the liquid. It rushed into the pickup's cab - Nicole had never rolled up that window, after all. But then it quickly receded, and even though the goop still covered the inside of the cab she could breathe again. In the red rush Nicole had accidentally gotten a mouthful of the liquid, and she swallowed. It... actually didn't taste bad. It was sweet, but not quite syrup-sweet. Now, if you could just a little ginger, maybe some cinnamon... Am I actually coming up with a recipe to make punch out of snake stomach juice? She checked the presents in the bed over her shoulder, but of course the magic had held them in place. You could have barrel rolled the truck and they wouldn't have fallen out.
Being pushed through the warm, fleshy tube for a while, the truck was finally pushed out in midair. The truck's magic took over and began levitating, but all the other junk she had seen in the red lake - cars, bridges, buildings, that candy cane - feel past her in a free fall. Nicole followed them downward, and watched as they slowed and touched down on the ground. The ground in question here was a broad expanse of meadow grass, though there were bare patches of squishy-looking red flesh in places.
There were other buildings here, too. It looked like a disorganized messes of houses, stores, churches, and other buildings. There were people milling about too, most of them clad in pajamas. So the people were alright, well, as alright as you can after being gulped down by a snake-woman on Christmas Eve. Nicole happened to glance down at present compass. It was definitely pointing to a certain house now. Well, she came here to do a job and she was going to do it. Being eaten was no reason these kids should have to miss out on presents.
Landing the truck on the roof of a house, grabbing from the bed the one present for the boy inside. (Carrying a whole sack full of presents down a chimney was just so extra when just getting herself down was hard enough.) She emerged from the chimney to see a boy, about four, sitting up with his parents.
"Santa!" His face fell. "Oh, you're not the real Santa. You're a girl."
Nicole groaned. She expected this if any kids caught her, but it was still annoying. "The real Santa's my dad. I'm just delivering some of the presents for him this Christmas."
She handed him a package with silver wrapping paper. Forgetting all about whether his present got delivered by a jolly fat man or an irritated thin(-ish) woman, he ran off to open it. The boy's father picked up a paper tray with cookies and a red plastic cup full of milk and handed them to her. "Sorry about that, Miss Claus. We'd normally have him in bed by now, but, well, we got all ate by a snake today. Our bedtime schedule's a little off."
"It happens." Nicole touched the side of her nose, and the magic whisked her back up the chimney. She looked at the milk and cookies. Dad could down milk and cookies all Christmas Eve long, and a giant snake woman could fit a whole city inside her, but Nicole was neither of those people and her stomach space was decidedly limited. "I don't suppose anyone wants some milk and cookies?" she asked no one, rhetorically.
But someone answered. A small, winged woman popped up from behind the other side of the truck. "I do!" she volunteered, raising her hand.
"I'm going to have to eat so much milk and cookies tonight. I'd be glad to share with you, but I'm not exactly how..."
"Got it!" The fairy flew straight at her. She blinked, and in that split second she felt something in her mouth. Nicole swallowed reflexively.
"Ugh, what was... Wait, where did you go?"
"Here!" said the same high-pitched fairy's voice, but it was slightly muffled this time. And it sounded like it came... from her stomach? She poked her stomach. "Yep! Just send the milk and cookies on down! I'm hungry enough to take care of them all right now!"
Nicole felt almost full from the entire fairy that just stuffed herself down her throat. Perhaps she should be worried about the fairy's safety, but since she was in a stomach full of people not getting digested she figured the fairy knew what she was doing. Nicole decided to humor the tiny girl's request. She broke each cookie in two and swallowed each piece in one big gulp. Then she turned up the milk and drank the whole cup in one shot.
"Thanks!" came the tiny voice from inside her. "Hope there's more where that came from!" Strangely, Nicole didn't feel any more full after eating all of that.
Nicole headed for the next name on the list, gave her a present, and then headed for the next. As she went down the list, she felt better and better about her decision to through with this. Not surprisingly, a lot of houses didn't make it through the process being eaten undamaged, so families were staying with friends or relatives or even just in any building they could find. Some families got separated in the process of being swallowed and then sucked down into a second stomach, and there was a small army of humans and other creatures like the fairy she had met (and eaten) - harpies and minotaurs and centaurs and devils and goblins and who knows what else - all working with the local police to reunite them. In the middle of all this chaos, kids seeing something familiar like a present from Santa (even if Santa's a girl now) was something comforting.
It wasn't long before Nicole founded herself handing out the last present to the last name on the list. She swallowed her last plate of milk and cookies for the night (and still didn't feel any fuller; she increasingly suspected that little fairy's mouth was actually a black hole) as she watched a little girl in Santa pajamas and with red hair in pigtails unwrap her present, a video game system.
"Hurray!" The girl paused to think for a moment. "Wait, do snake bellies have electricity?"
"Is there electricity in there?" Nicole wondered out loud.
"Of course," the fairy in her stomach responded. "But sometimes it takes the Nina Utilities Board several days to to run lines out to a new area to connect it to the grid." Having an exposition fairy inside her certainly was convenient.
"Yes," Nicole answered her own question, "but it might take a few day. You're going to have to be a good girl and be patient, okay?" With that, she waved the little girl goodbye, tapped her nose, and made her way back up the last chimney.
Nicole stretched as she stood on the roof , her job complete. "Well, time to head on home." She moved the truck off the roof and left it sitting on the grass. It was a shame to leave the truck behind, but her magic was only for getting herself up out of chimneys. And esophaguses are kind of like chimneys, right? She touched the side of her nose and felt herself propelled into the sky. The force shoved her through the giant pink ring of muscle she came in here through, and she flew upward, splashing through the red goop as she went, until finally she surfaced in the red lake of the first stomach. This place was a lot more unsettling that the second, but the second was so big that it allowed you to forget you were in something's belly. In this one, you couldn't. She wondered what it felt like for the fairy in her own belly for a moment.
Nicole tapped the side of her nose again, and once again she tore off upward into the sky. She felt herself being shoved back up into the esophagus and moving upward against the muscles. Then, after a few seconds, she heard a girl gulping noise and felt herself getting pulled back down. She free fell back down into the stomach and splashed down into the red liquid. Looking around for something to hold onto, she found a stray Christmas tree floating nearby and grabbed onto it. Well, that didn't work at all.
"Hey!" protested the fairy inside her. "Were you trying to get out of Nina's belly? That's not being very nice."
"I was trying to get home."
"Nina's belly is your new home. Getting eaten is a one-way trip." Nicole felt something pushing in her stomach, then something in her throat, then the fairy emerging from her mouth, no worse for the wear for having spent a few hours in a stomach. "Well, getting swallowed by Nina is a one-way trip. You can get out of other ones if you know what you're doing."
Nicole looked the fairy up and down. She was just as lithe as before. "What happened to all the milk and cookies?"
"Digested. I kept having to cast spells to keep your belly from digesting me, and magic burns a lot of calories, so... Yeah." The fairy sat down on the tree beside her.
"I wasn't intending on spending the rest of my life in here. I just wanted to deliver those children their presents this Christmas. The presents every year are part of the holiday."
"The kids aren't getting out of Nina either. If you got out, who would bring them presents from now on?" Nicole hadn't thought of that.
"I guess it's time for the Claus family to branch out. The good little boys and girls in Nina's belly deserve to get presents, too."
"And you would have to leave the truck in here."
"I know. Even if I had gotten out, I'd never hear the end of it from Dad. Better to stay in the snake."
----
The mother closed the book. "And that's the story of Nicky Claus and why she brings all the good boys and girls inside Nina presents every year."
Her son, tucked into bed, looked up at her. "Was that little girl with red hair you?"
The mother brushed some auburn hair out of her face and smiled. "Maybe."
"But where did she find the polar bear who rides shotgun in the truck? Why is her workshop inside a flying orca? Why do bad children get candy corn in their stockings?"
The mother kissed him on the forehead and turned out the light. "Those are other stories for other nights. Now it's time to sleep."
by Bright » Thu Dec 20, 2018 11:28 pm 
