Santa's Amazing Mind Control Machine

When I was a kid, I was gonna be a writer. Yeah, right. You know the old saying, be careful what you wish for? Maybe if I'd made up my mind to be a lawyer or an engineer or a doctor, like my mom wanted, I wouldn't be here now, trying to find a new twist on diaper porn to keep my editor happy and my bills paid.

The internet was supposed to bring a new Renaissance. Information travelling from person to person around the world at the speed of light. Everyday a new adventure awaits, all you have to do is open your web browser. Like getting a bunch of presents under the tree 365 days a year instead of just one. And better than Christmas, because at Christmas you get what other people think you want--like socks and underwear and dictionaries--but with the internet you get exactly what you want--

Sadly, a surprisingly--make that a horrifyingly--large number of English speakers around the world wanted diaper porn.

There's a No Bothering Mommy When She's At Work policy in our family, but I was relieved rather than peeved when my son, Dylan burst through the door. His nose was snotty and his eyes were red. Tears streamed down his cheeks.

"Mommy!" he howled. "Kit says there's no Santa Claus!"

At seven, Dylan was a little old to believe in Santa. However, he was an only child, and because we lived in the country in an old farmhouse, his only playmates were his school friends, and he was not around older kids much. This Christmas, my husband and I had decided to travel halfway across the country to visit his mother and siblings and all their children. Turned out that Dylan had fifteen cousins, half of them older than him. And today, his ten year old cousin, Kit, had decided that it was time for him to leave childish things behind.

Dylan usually climbed onto my lap when he was distraught, but today I was the Enemy, the one who had lied to him every winter for as long as he could remember. He glared up at me through his tears. "I saw the presents in the attic."

"What presents in the attic?" I lied, stalling for time.

He listed off the video games, action figures and other toys that were in his letter to Santa that year. "Santa Claus doesn't bring them," he muttered. "You do."

I had never liked Kit. She was a bully who once pushed Dylan into the deep end of the pool and laughed as he yelled for help. And now, she had broken my little angel's heart.

"That's not exactly true," I said slowly. What good was being a writer if I could not come up with something to save the joy of Christmas for my son? I searched the room and found inspiration in the small heap of action figures on the trundle bed. One of them was Professor Xavier from the X-Men, bald and in a wheelchair. Dylan had every episode of the cartoon television show memorized. He knew all their powers backwards and forwards.

I lowered my voice, as if confiding a secret. "The thing about Santa is he doesn't actually bring the toys himself."

Dylan edged a little closer. There was snot running from his nose. Automatically, I wiped it with the back of my sleeve and continued

"No one person could deliver toys to every child on earth in a single night."

My son nodded.

"That's why Santa has a mind control machine."

Dylan's blue eyes widened. He crawled up onto my lap. "Mind control?" he echoed. "You mean like the Jedi?"

"Just like the Jedi. Except this is a machine. A giant computer that can send thoughts to people all over the world, millions of people, all at the same time."

Dylan was visibly impressed.

The hard part was over. If he was willing to buy a mind control machine, the rest should be easy. "Every year at Christmas, Santa's mind control machine tells parents to buy toys for their children. When a kid writes a letter to Santa or tells a department store Santa that he wants a certain toy, the real Santa and his helpers put the wish into their computer. The computer uses mind control to tell the kids' parents what to buy. The parents don't realize that they're being controlled. They think they thought of it themselves. They go to the store and buy the toys, and then they hide them somewhere in the house where no one will find them. And then they forget. The mind control machine makes them forget. On Christmas Eve, Santa's machine takes control of their minds again while they're asleep. You know what sleep walking is?"

Dylan nodded.

"The parents sleep walk. They get the toys out of hiding and put them under the tree. Then they go back to bed. In the morning, when they get up, there are a bunch of presents under the tree that they don't remember buying or putting there. That's why everyone believes in Santa. But it's really his mind control machine that does the work, and all the parents are his helpers, they just don't know it."

Would it work? Dylan was a precocious seven year-old. On the other hand, people much older than him believed in telepathy and extraterrestrials and magic.

"Does Kit know?" he asked.

In a conspiratorial whisper "No, and you mustn't tell her. If people find out about Santa's Mind Control Machine, someone might try to steal it and use it to take over the world. Promise you won't say a word."

Solemnly, "I promise."

December 2004

Dylan broke that promise six years later. His seventh grade English teacher gave her class a creative writing assignment. The topic was Christmas. My son wrote a short story titled Santa's Amazing Mind Control Machine. Over the years, he had embellished upon my original idea. Santa lived in a bunker on Antarctica--at thirteen, Dylan knew that there was no land on the North Pole, just ice. His assistants were midgets who wore penguin costumes so that no one would notice them if they were spotted from the air. His fortress was made out of glass that looked like ice covered with snow. The colossal squid living in the deep ocean surrounding the southern continent had telepathic powers, and they prevented scientists from detecting the signals that came from the supposedly uninhabited wasteland. Friendly whales and dolphins supplied Santa and his workers with food.

In Dylan's story, global warming was a plot dreamed up by a group of mad scientists who wanted to melt the Antarctic ice so that they could locate Santa's fortress. With the help of a boy named Danny--who looked a lot like Dylan--the villains were defeated, the Antarctic ice was left intact and everyone lived happily ever after.

It was a surprisingly effective story. I say that as a writer not as a mother. Dylan's teacher submitted it to an online contest, and he got first place. My son declared that when he grew up, he was going to be a writer "Just like Mom." At thirteen, he still did not know that his mother made a meager living writing porn under a half dozen different pseudonyms.

Late one Tuesday night, when my husband and son were both asleep, I was staring at the screen of my laptop, wracking my brain for some variation of elf porn that had not already been done a thousand times before by anonymous online amateurs. Fantasy based pornography was tricky, because the audience wanted novelty--that's why they were interested in imaginary creatures, as opposed to cheerleaders--but at the same time, they wanted the comfortable predictability of sweaty bodies writhing together towards the inevitable climax. So, I had to squeeze pages of plot and character development into a few lines, enough to wet the reader's appetite for make-believe without making him lose his boner.

I was interrupted by scratching at the window. Raccoons lived under the porch. Every night, they came for a handout. Oreos were their favorite. I pulled three cookies from the bag and approached the sliding glass door. It was cool to the touch. The temperature was dropping fast. By morning, the world would be frost covered.

My eyes were fixed on the ground, where the raccoons were supposed to be, so the first thing I saw was boots, shiny and black. Red velvet pants fringed with white fur. A big belly that strained against the shiny gold buttons of a red velvet coat. A snowy white beard--

What the hell was Santa doing on my back porch in the middle of the night? No, cancel that. What was a man dressed in a Santa Claus costume doing on my back porch in the middle of the night?

I was a little slow to slam the sliding door closed, and he was able to get the toe of his shiny, black boot in the way.

"Go away! My husband's upstairs! I'll call the police--!"

All at once, my panic disappeared. Not because of anything the Santa impersonator said or did. He was still a great big bearded stranger trying to force his way into my house in the middle of the night. But, suddenly, I did not care. It was as if someone had injected Valium into my veins. "I'm busy," I mumbled, stepping out of his way. "What do you want?"

Santa made himself at home in my husband's chair. He poured himself a shot of Booker's and drank from my husband's glass. The soles of his black boots were shiny, without a speck of dirt, though the house was two hundred yards from the nearest road and the recent rains had turned the pastures to mud.

When he spoke, his voice was big and deep. "I'm disappointed in you, Cindy."

Santa disappointed in me? I glanced around the room. My eyes came to rest on my laptop. "Porn is the only thing that sells--" I began to explain.

He waved a gloved hand. "You promised you wouldn't tell."

Wouldn't tell? "Wouldn't tell what?"

"About my mind control machine." He sighed and folded his hands across his big belly. "But what's done is done."

Ah, I thought. This was a dream. I fell asleep at my desk while writing about the sexual exploits of a nymphomaniac elf named Fanny of Buttercup Hill. Just go with it, I thought. You'll wake up soon. Maybe the dream will give you something to write about. It's been years since you wrote any Santa porn…

"You aren't dreaming," said the dream Santa. Which proved it. Only a dream character would know what I was thinking. He poured another shot of whiskey. "Do you have any idea how many hits you would have gotten if you'd Googled 'Santa's mind control machine' a month ago?"

"Ummm… zero?"

"Exactly right." He drained his glass and poured another. Booker's was not cheap. My husband was going to wonder what had become of his liquor. "Guess how many hits you get now. Go on. Guess."

I took a wild stab. "A thousand?"

Santa snorted. He climbed out of my husband's chair and lumbered across the room. He smelled like bourbon and snow as he leaned over me. Despite his big, furry gloves, his finger's deftly typed out a search on my laptop. "Santa's Amazing Mind Control Machine", in quotes. The search netted one million, three hundred twenty-six thousand, and four results.

Damn, I thought. My son's famous. I could not help feeling a little twinge of jealousy.

Santa sighed. "And it's Christmas season. All those children asking for presents. All those parents who have to be persuaded not to buy the educational toy instead of the new Mario game. And now, my elves and I have to work overtime erasing the memories of everyone who's read that story or the dozens of imitation stories."

His words slowly sunk in. "You mean you really do have a mind control machine?"

Santa settled back into my husband's chair and poured a fourth glass of whiskey. "Certainly. A single man can't deliver toys to all the children of the world in a single night."

I have to get this down, I thought. Before I wake up. I began typing.

"Don't bother," said Santa. "In the morning, you will have forgotten all about Santa's Mind Control Machine. So will Dylan. So will the millions of people who read about it. The internet will be scrubbed."

I shook my head slowly, trying to clear the sleep or the valium or the mind control or whatever it was from my thoughts. My gaze fixed on the Booker's bottle. It was half empty. Was that it? Had I decided to get drunk, in hopes of finding inspiration in alcohol? In vino veritas, they say.

"Why?" I demanded. My speech was slurred. "Why come here tonight if you're only going to erase my memories tomorrow?"

He leaned forward. His eyes were bright blue above his snowy white beard. "I wanted to see how you turned out, Cindy."

"How I turned out?" I echoed dully.

One velvet gloved finger touched the tip of my nose. Santa smiled behind his beard. "You've turned out fine."

December, 1965

Cindy was playing dress up in her mothers' clothes when her father burst into the living room of their small apartment late one night, waving a handgun.

"I know he's here!" he bellowed. His face was flushed. "Where's that no good mother--" His eyes focused on the small form of his daughter, engulfed in one of his wife's dresses. "What are you doing out of bed?"

Cindy cringed behind her mother. Her bedtime was nine, but tonight she had a fever and her ear hurt and she could not sleep, and so her mom had let her stay up.

"She's got another ear infection," her mother said. There was something about her voice that disturbed the girl more than her father's drunken rage. She sounded scared. Cindy had never heard her mother sound so afraid before. Usually, when her father got angry, her mother got angry back. They yelled and cussed and called each other names until her dad finally stormed out of the apartment. But tonight, her mother's lips were fixed in a big, false smile, and she kept her voice soft and low, as if she was talking to a stray dog, trying to coax it to be friendly.

Cindy's father snarled and grabbed his daughter by the arm. He began hitting her. Hard. Cindy waited for her mother to intervene, the way she always did. When her mother did not move, Cindy defended herself. She fought like a wild animal. Her father laid down the handgun so he could get a better grip on her.

The gun, Cindy thought. Mom's afraid of the gun. She was only six. She had been taught never to touch her father's guns, so she was surprised at how heavy the small handgun was when she snatched it up. She darted under the sofa, the gun clutched in both hands. Her father got down on his knees beside the couch and tried to pry it from her fingers. Out of sight, her mother was screaming. Cindy squeezed her hands tighter--

And then the world went silent and still, and she was floating near the ceiling in the far corner of the room, looking down at her mother and her father and the red that slowly seeped through the beige carpet.

"Forget," said a voice from somewhere inside her head. The red on the carpet became a man with a white beard and a red velvet suit. His eyes were as blue as her father's eyes, but her father had never smiled at her that way. Tentatively, Cindy smiled back. She climbed down off the ceiling and back into her little girl self.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"You know who I am," said the big, bearded man dressed in red.

Her parents were motionless, like statues.

"Is it Christmas?"

"Not yet. In a few days. By the time Christmas gets here, you'll be far away. Your father won't be there anymore."

Cindy knew she shouldn't feel glad, but she did.

"Your mother made a wish," Santa explained. "And a mother's wish for her child is something I can't ignore. She wants you to forget about tonight. So, I'm going to make you forget with my mind machine, but it's important that you remember, too. Otherwise, there will always be a dark, scary place in your mind that will haunt you. No matter where you go or what you do, you'll be afraid. And it's the things we don't understand that are scariest. So you have to forget what happened tonight, but you also have to remember that what happened tonight was not your fault and it will never, ever happen again. Do you think you can do that?"

Cindy was not sure exactly what Santa was saying, but she liked the thought of a mind machine. It sounded like a time machine, except instead of making you go backwards or forward in time, a mind machine would let you change the people around you. With a mind machine, she would never have to worry that her father would come home drunk. She could make him forget where he lived, and she and her mother and her little sister could live happily ever after…

December, 2012

My latest assignment had me stumped. Tentacle porn, long a staple in Japan, was now in high demand in the states. I had watched a dozen hentai animes, read scanlated mangas, but still I could not understand the fascination some people had with tentacles. Was it a fishing thing? Supposedly, giant squid could climb out of the water and onto boats to steal fish. Did Japanese sailors who were away from home--and women--for long periods of time look at the tentacles and find their minds filled with dirty thoughts? Would Midwesterners who had never stepped foot on a beach much less a deep sea fishing boat find anything arousing about an animal that they knew best as a fried appetizer

"Cindy!"

I looked up from my keyboard. No one called me Cindy anymore. That was my childhood name. Now, I was Cynthia or Cyn or Mom.

"Cindy," said the voice again. "This is Santa."

And just like that, the memories, long forgotten, came back. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that no one else was in the room. The sky outside was still dark. My son and husband would not wake up until dawn. "What do you want?"

"I'm short-handed this holiday season. I need someone to help with the wishes."

I snorted. "And after Christmas is over, you'll brainwash me again? No thanks."

"This isn't a temporary job. If you say 'yes', it'll be a permanent assignment."

"You mean, I'll remember? Everything?"

"Everything," he promised.

I stared down at the screen of my laptop. "Santa's helper or tentacle porn? Hmmm. That's a tough one. You'll have to give me a little time--just kidding. Sign me up."

For good measure, I pressed the delete button, and two hour's work disappeared. I felt as if a weight had been taken off my shoulders. And that little dark place at the back of my consciousness, the one that always scared me though I could not remember why--that place vanished as if it had never existed. Instead of worrying What if people don't like this?, I found myself thinking how much fun it was going to be to make so many children--and their parents--so very happy.

THE END

Bio: McCamy Taylor is, of course, Aphelion's reigning Serials / Novellas (fiction longer than 7,500 words) Editor. She is also the author of many stories and articles that have appeared in Aphelion and various other publications too numerous to list here.

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