Getting a panicky phone call at 9:30 in the morning is never a good thing, especially on a cold December morning when you just want to stay between the flannel sheets dreaming of bikinied superbabes. It's doubly bad when the frantic caller is your Aunt, when you're having an affair with your Aunt, and she's calling to tell you about the extortion letter she just found in her mailbox.
"I...I...I..." Aunt Jess sputtered.
"Slow down, are you OK?" I asked.
"No, I'm not OK!" she screamed. "I went out and got the mail this morning and found a letter addressed to me, and I opened it and the person who wrote it says they saw us fucking in the church hall last night!"
"Oh, ah, uhhhgh," I mumbled, reaching for the table to steady myself. "But...how could anyone have seen us?"
"I don't know!" she said, exasperated. "But the letter describes what we did, how I sucked your cock, how I stood on the chair while you ate my pussy...it describes everything we did!"
"What do you mean, 'sort of'?"
"This is the really fucked up part. The letter's written in crayon."
"Wait, crayon?"
"Red and purple crayon! It's fucking crazy, whoever sent it wrote it like it was a letter to Santa."
I rubbed my temples. "You should come over and let me look at it, maybe we should talk about what to do."
"You think?" she said sarcastically. "I'll be there in half an hour."
When she arrived she was not in the Christmas spirit. "Turn those fucking lights off!" she said as a greeting when she saw my tree all lit up. "Jesus Christ, this isn't the time for a fucking holiday cheer!"
"Calm down," I said, even though my stomach felt like it was full of eels. "Let me see the letter." She handed it to me, tucked inside the envelope it came in. I looked it over. My Aunt's name and address were printed on the envelope, but, "There's no stamp or postmark," I said. "Well, we know it wasn't mailed."
"I know THAT, Sherlock!" Aunt Jess yelled. "It wouldn't have gotten to me today if it had gone through the mail. Is that the limit of your deductive powers?"
She lit a nervous cigarette as I took out the letter and started to read. It gave me the major heebie-jeebies. It actually WAS written in crayon, and it was written in a deliberately childish scrawl, with letters "E" and "N" occasionally reversed and odd choices of capitalization. It went on for three pages. Here's what it said:
"Dear Santa!
I liked seeing you SO MUCH last night that I came back to give you a big hug and say thank you for bringing me toys every year! But the door was LOCKED! I started to cry because I thought you had gone back to the North Pole, but then I heard you inside yelling and I thought that maybe you were mad at one of your elves! So I looked through the KEYHOLE and I saw this very FAT and OLD elf kneeling down in front of you! I thought that was strange, you're supposed to SIT in Santa's lap, not just put your head there! And then I saw that this OLD and FAT elf was doing something, she was doing something to Santa's PRIVATES that looked very bad! It was so bad that Santa really started to yell and I thought he must be very mad at this ugly elf!
But then I saw Santa put HIS head in a strange place, and the UGLY elf started yelling too, and I got scared, because I thought she was angry at Santa, and nobody should be angry with Santa! And then I saw the elf sit in Santa's lap, and I watched Santa's PEE-PEE go between the FAT elf's legs, like it was magic. And then both Santa and the elf were YELLING and SCREAMING I almost had to cover my ears.
That's when I remembered what my mommy told me when I asked her where babies come from, and she said that the daddy puts his PEE-PEE inside the mommy's CAVE and makes a baby! But then I got REALLY confused, because when all the yelling stopped I saw that the elf wasn't an elf AT ALL. It was a lady from the church group! And then I remembered that this wasn't Santa at all, but a handsome boy who just PLAYS Santa! And then I got REALLY, REALLY confused, because the lady and the boy are aunt and nephew, and aunts and nephews aren't SUPPOSED to play like that! It's very, very NAUGHTY. And I knew that if the boy's mommy found out, it would be VERY BAD for them! They would get in TROUBLE!
So, I guess I know a SECRET! A bad, naughty secret! And I wonder how important it is to both of you to make sure it STAYS a secret! So, I want Santa to send me an e-mail, telling me he saw this note, and I'll tell you what I want to make sure I don't tell his MOMMY on him!"
It was signed, "A good little girl."
I looked up at Aunt Jess, puffing at her cigarette. "The fucker calls me fat, old, and ugly. When I find out who it is I'm going to rip her face off."
"OK...OK..." I said, not feeling OK. "Who would know where you live?" I asked.
"Everyone who goes to church there! My name and address was on the latest newsletter that went out. Anyone there last night might have known."
"Anyone...dislike you?"
She drew on her cigarette and exhaled. "I don't know, it's a church group, not a Mafia family. I'm not friends with everyone there, but I don't think anyone has cause to blackmail me."
"Well, it actually looks like they're blackmailing me," I said. "The writer tells ME to e-mail her, threatens to tell my mother."
"So who would want to screw you?" Aunt Jess asked. "Maybe the mother of some little brat who didn't get what he wanted for Christmas last year?"
"I kinda doubt that."
She stubbed out her cigarette. "There's the e-mail address on the back of the letter. It's one of those free e-mail accounts, I have no idea what the username means, if anything.
I flipped the letter over and read the e-mail address, "sweetnessD@mail.com". I considered it. sweetnessD? "I don't know either. Sweetness, I don't know. She's a good little girl, she's sweet. Maybe the "D" is her initial?"
Aunt Jess pulled out another cigarette. "I don't know. But..." she looked like she might burst into tears, "this can't get out! I'll end up divorced, I'll lose everything, Don will take me to the cleaners, I mean, fucking my own nephew, I..."
"Don't you worry, I'll take care of it. Whoever it is, I'll reason with them. And think about it, it would only be our word against the word of this lying bitch. If we stay united on this, we might be OK."
"Maybe." She looked at the unlit cigarette between her fingers and put it back in her pack. "Send a note to that e-mail address, and then let me know what you hear."
I promised her I would, and I gave her a big hug. "Everything will be fine, I promise." I walked her to her car, waved goodbye, went inside, and threw up in my toilet.