“Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, jingle all the way, oh what fun it is to ride on a one horse open sleigh…ay! Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, jingle all the way, oh what fun…”

“What is that terrible noise…my ears are hurting!!”

“Noise, what noise?”

“That awful jingly belly noise…ugh it was terrible.”

Indignant, Amber hops, flapping her demonic little wings, landing upon Topaz’ chest, hanging on to her body by alternating between Topaz’ protruding horn-like appendages on her shoulders and the horns on her forehead then starts to slap her silly. “Terrible, I’ll show you terrible.” She mumbles while slapping all available…uh…skin.

Topaz just stands there with an amused look on her face and hands on her hips. Some moments later, “Are you quite done tickling me, shorty?”

“Shorty…tickling…shorty!!” The three-foot Amber continues to…um…pommel the six-foot Topaz, determination on her face.

Topaz finally gets tired of carrying the short-shit upon her chest, grabs Amber by her own protruding shoulder horns and places her on the floor a few feet away. However, Amber hasn’t had her satisfaction and runs towards Topaz to once again land on her chest but before that happens, the bigger demon places a hand upon the shorter ones forehead, halting her on the spot. All one can see are small feet determinedly moving yet going nowhere, arms swinging at the air and wings flapping non-stop.

“That’s enough, Amber.”

“No, you called my singing terrible!”

“Oh, is that what that was.”

“And you called me shorty!”

“Hmm…well…” Topaz’ gaze gives the shorter body the once over.

“And…I wasn’t tickling you, I was beating you up!!”

“Ah, I see.” She clears her throat.

The small demon is still trying to get some more licks in, unfortunately, without any success.

“Amber, that’s enough!”

The small demon falls over spread eagle onto her back. “Phew…didn’t you brush your teeth this morning?”

Topaz just raises an eyebrow at the comment. “So what’s with that jingly belly thing?”

“It’s Jingle Bells. Topaz…it’s almost Christmas!”

“So what, we don’t celebrate that holiday down here and you know that very well. It is forbidden to even mention the name since the first part has His name in it.”

“Yes, true but you and I do…privately. Remember last year, that was fun.”

“Mmm…how could I forget, you on all…”

Amber silences Topaz with a kiss. “We don’t have to tell the kiddies that, do we? And if you’re nice…we might do it again this year.” Said with seductive <cough> well, as seductive as a demon can, and with eyebrows wiggling.

“Ok, so…what were you doing in here other than, uh, singing?”

“Not much, just decorating, you know, some mistletoe here, tinsel there, more mistletoe over there.” Wiggling eyebrows.

“Mistletoe, huh. Ok, let’s lay over here on the rug and you can tell me why you’re celebrating a holiday you know we’re not supposed to be celebrating. You know that if the boss hears of this we can get into a lot of trouble.”

“Nope, I will get in trouble and don’t argue with me. I will not let you take blame for any of this.” Topaz opens her mouth to speak. “Hush!” Opens again. “We will not play like last year.” Silence.

“That’s better.” Smirk. “The reason I like celebrating around this time of the year is because it brings back memories of when I was still among the living. I had fun, especially during high school and a few years later.”

“Really, how’s that?”

“We used to love to party and get ourselves into trouble. Let me tell you about this one time, you’ll get a kick out of it.”

“Ok, go ahead.”

“It was during the winter season and we decided to go to the mountains. So seven of us, out of our group of a dozen, leave and drive the two-and-a-half hours. It’s still early in the morning when we arrive at the small town we rented a two-room cabin and at the first place we stop at is a convenience store with a liquor store next to it. We buy some food, cold cuts, chips and bread, you know, survival food, some liquor next door then we head on up to the cabin. We arrive at the cabin and look around. The room we enter from the front door is large with a double bed, sofa bed, TV, dining table with four chairs, a kitchenette on one side then there’s a second room that is the main bedroom and there’s also a bathroom. We settle in then we leave, driving up further into the mountain where the ski lifts are but since none of us know how to ski, we just watch for a while then we start playing in the snow. Throwing snowballs and pushing each other down some inclines on the big rubber tires we rented for that purpose. You should have seen me during one of those slides! One of my friends and I were going down and we lost control, I ended up flipping over and landed on my back, she landed with her face stuck in the snow.”

Both demons are getting a good laugh out of that scenario.

“Anyway, so after a few hours of frolicking we go back to the cabin. We fix ourselves some lunch and sit around just chit chatting then someone suggests we play poker. All right, yeah, we’re up for it. We sit around the table gathering all the chairs available, there’s a couple of folding chairs too, and we start to play. Mind you, we don’t play for money. The game is five-card draw and the loser has to take a shot of tokillya…”

“I beg your pardon? Tokillya?”

“Oh, sorry, that’s what I call it, ‘cause in the end it sure will kill ya. I’m referring to tequila. The loser had to take a shot of tequila. We played way into the night and needless to say, I wasn’t one of the winners. By the time we called it a day, I was feeling no pain at all, let me tell you. However, before I headed for bed, I had to go use the bathroom. Luckily for me, one of my other friends had to go too. So we help each other off our chairs, go into the bedroom and start our walk towards our final destination. We’re giggling and sorta pushing each other, you know, acting stupid. So we’re walking when all of a sudden she nudges me again, I lose my balance and land sprawled out on my back in the closet, whose sliding door had been left open. Hearing the commotion, our other friends in the front room come barrelling in to see what happened. Once they made sure I was fine, they did exactly what you’re doing at the moment. They laughed. They were laughing so hard that the couple of attempts to try to help me up failed. I kept falling back down and they just laughed harder. Yep, just like you are.” Amber finishes and waits for Topaz, who is doubled over stamping her feet on the ground, to get the laughter out of her system.

“It wasn’t that funny!” Topaz continues to laugh.

“Topaz!” Stomps a foot.

“Sososorry…I…I…I…can’t help it…the image…in my…mind…kersplat!” The laughter continues.

“We won’t celebrate this year!” Amber threatens.

Silence. They stare into each other’s eyes. “Splat!” Topaz once again begins to laugh. A quiet, “sigh” from Amber but inside happy her partner enjoyed her story.

The scene fades with Topaz rolling in laughter on the rug, now slamming both arms and legs upon it, the guffaws echoing of the cavern walls while Amber resumed her celebrating.

“Jingle Bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way…”