Marla Entwistle had died a few years ago and her partner Muriel Groosce had almost forgotten her. They had been good friends during the course of their business life but sentiment and business make very unsatisfactory bed-fellows. Muriel lived for the present.
The Spartan finishing school they had both founded and run was prospering as never before. The female pupils came from a wide variety of backgrounds. The one thing they all had in common was their parents’ determination that the evils of the modern world with its consumerism and materialism should not pollute their offspring.
This was Christmas Eve and the girls had all been sent early to bed. Muriel walked up to the dormitory and commanded the young but physically mature pupils to stand by their beds so that she might inspect them. The room was cold and the beds hard, covered only by a threadbare blanket. No linen sheets touched the soft skin of these poor young people! They might be from rich families but they led lives of poverty and pain. They stood in line naked as the day they had been born.
"Henrietta! Your bed is untidy! Bend over!"
"Gloria! Take this whippy cane from my hand and use it on the rear of that wicked child!"
Gloria did as she had been told. She swished the cane for a few minutes, experimenting with its potential for causing pain and brought it down upon the soft and shapely rear of her dearest friend.
"Ouch!" said Henrietta.
"No speaking," said the stern Muriel Groosce. "Hit her again and hit her six times! I will brook no disobedience."
She walked up and down the room a few more times and found more faults with the shivering terrified girls. Many a shapely and delicate posterior, in the luscious bloom of youth, had its ripe and rounded firmness covered with red lines before the evil Muriel’s work was done that Christmas Eve! Finally she strode off to her own room to sleep the sleep of the just and righteous.
As she was about to undress, the telephone rang.
"The Groosce Finishing Academy for Young Ladies! How may I help?"
"Merry Christmas, Auntie!" There was drunken laughter from the young man at the other end of the line and Muriel heard the sounds of ribald and highly inebriated merriment in the background. Disgusting! Her nephew Arthur again! Drat the stupid man! Married to a stupid flighty miss with painted toenails who had never been better than she should be and the father of two undisciplined brats. If only she had those juvenile fiends under her care! She’d make the little bitches jump!
"Get lost, Arthur. Don’t you know phone calls cost you money and me valuable time?"
"Coming round tomorrow Auntie? There’s always a spare place for good old Dad’s sister! God rest his soul!"
"He was another damned fool. Just like his idiot son! Goodbye and don’t phone me again or I’ll inform the police!"
She put down the phone and the doorbell rang. Fucking Hell’s Bells! She cursed under her breath as she went to answer the door.
"God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen. Let nothing you dismay!"
Muriel had never been a devotee of choral music, especially when produced by a bevy of tonally challenged people with some terrible kind of throat disorder! Maybe they had suffered from cancer of the vocal chords and had these appendages removed!
"Fuck off!" shouted the furious Muriel. "I don’t pay my rates and taxes to be subjected to this mental torture every bloody year at this time!"
"It’s for a good cause, Madam! Helping to pay for the children of single mothers to have a free holiday in Benidorm!"
"Get off my doorstep or I’ll have the law on you! Arseholes!"
Muriel stomped upstairs to bed. Was she ever in a wicked mood by this time! She prepared to go to bed and there was Marla Entwistle standing by the unlit fire and looking sadly at her former partner. (I use the word ‘partner’ in its archaic sense as meaning one with whom one is in business - not screwing on a regular basis!)
"What the f*ck are you doing here? Aren’t you supposed to be dead? Piss off, I’m tired. Never could stand you, to be honest!"
"Muriel Groosce! You are a wicked and lost woman! You torment nubile and naked young beauties night after night. You deny joy to those around you. You have the chance to repent. I repented but too late! I am doomed, Muriel, but you may yet be saved. You will be visited by three Spirits and if you listen to what they have to say, you won‘t get much of a night‘s sleep!"
"You sound like one of those American television evangelists! I don’t know who you’ve been hanging around with since you died and left me in the lurch, but I suggest you find more intelligent company."
"Repent Muriel! Repent!" and Marla backed away and out of the window, where the astounded Muriel saw a host of doomed spirits wailing in the night sky. She shut the window and went to bed. Something to do with global warming, she thought.
Muriel got into bed and the clock struck one o’clock. Odd, really. She didn’t have a chiming clock. Noisy horrible things!
Muriel was not sleeping well lately. And tonight was worse than ever. She tossed and turned and finally sat bolt upright in bed. Somehow, the room looked different. And someone was standing on her carpet, looking merrily at her. Pissed out of his mind, obviously!
"I am the Spirit of Christmas Past," announced this tipsy apparition. "Come with me and see how you were in the old days, you dirty old devil."
Suddenly Muriel found herself on the edge of a stretch of water. A buxom lady wearing not a stitch of clothing ran out of a makeshift hut and scampered to the water’s edge, plunging in with a squeal of mock agony. Behind her was a young lithesome female whom Muriel recognized as her younger self.
The older naked woman was Hortense, her governess. This lake was in the grounds of her father’s estate -- an estate he was soon to have to sell to pay off his debts.
"Don’t leave me behind, Hortense!" cried Muriel’s younger self. She rushed to the water and jumped in, screaming as the cold touched her body.
Muriel and Hortense played around in the water for a while and then came out, lying side by side as the sun dried off their bodies. Muriel could see how two tongues were passionately rubbing against each other and two bodies writhing as Hortense seduced her employer’s innocent eighteen-year-old daughter.
Finally the two got up and wandered arm in arm to the house, where Muriel was to be instructed once again in the mysteries of Sapphic love.
"Will Daddy be back soon, darling Hortense?" asked the lovelorn Muriel.
"He’s in Paris with his mistress. He is every Christmas," replied Hortense.
"Lucky old Daddy," replied Muriel. "Mummy’s such a fucking bitch!"
"Was this sweet child really me?" asked Muriel. "How could I have become such a nasty old kill-joy?"
She found herself back in her familiar room and started to nod off.
Then the clock chimed again.
"Damn! I don’t have a chiming clock! What’s going down?"
Muriel looked up again. She was getting pretty used to spooks turning up in her room by this time!
"Who are you, Spirit? Why don’t you take a seat?" she said with a politeness that she had not used for years. Was she going soft already? Dear me!
"I am the Spirit of Christmas Present," yawned the bored Spirit. She had several more misery guts to reform before the night was out. And the pay for this work was terrible. Last year, strike action had been mooted!
Muriel could see that this Spirit was rather inadequately dressed for the time of year. In fact she was not dressed at all. She was a red-headed Spirit with a pubic bush that covered about seventy per cent of her stomach beneath the navel. Muriel noted with some distaste that the Spirit had not shaved her armpits recently -- if ever! She smelt a bit strong, too!
"I am taking you to see how your intimidated pupils celebrate Christmas!"
Muriel found herself in the dormitory. Rudimentary decorations had been put up since the dreaded head Mistress has departed and the little devils had procured alcoholic beverages from somewhere. The very idea! Horrible!! There was already an air of debauched merriment as Geraldine Smithers and Annette Brown went into a loving clinch, sinking to the ground in their ecstasy, cheered on by the others, who were already pairing off in amorous embraces and getting ready for a wild night in the dorm!
"I remember how I loved to feel Hortense lick me out with that sweet tongue of hers! I wonder what happened to her?" mused Muriel as she watched the naked young ladies going wild.
"Done for child abuse," replied the Spirit. "She comes out in a week."
"Dear old Hortense. Is there no hope for her?"
"Doubt it! Bloody pervert!"
Muriel found herself drifting off again and again that non-existent clock chimed. Horrible chime, too! Cheap and nasty rubbish, that clock!"
"Hello, Spirit! Who the fuck are you?"
"I am the Spirit of Christmas Yet to Come. Don’t you know anything, you ignorant bitch?"
"I never could get on with Dickens! Sorry about that, but I found him such a boring old sod!"
"Never mind. I prefer Iris Murdoch, myself. And I’m not supposed to speak -- just point in a sinister way!"
Muriel found herself watching an auction. With a shock she realized that her most precious possessions were being sold off.
"What am I bid for this vibrator?" asked the auctioneer.
It went for a song and Muriel was most annoyed. When her favorite dildo went for even less she was spitting with rage! Don’t people appreciate true craftsmanship any more? Wicked!
The Spirit, too, seemed bored with this tawdry auction and motioned Muriel to come along. He looked at his watch and pursed his thin, cruel lips. Running behind the clock!
Muriel found herself looking at a cemetery and a grave. People were dancing on the grave and laughing.
"Good riddance, Muriel, you old cow. Ha Ha Ha Ha !!!"
And Muriel, after this distress, was then in bed in her own familiar room. She looked out of the window and saw that it was snowing. She loved snow today and today was Christmas. She rushed, gloriously naked, up to the dormitory and screamed at the girls to get out of bed and come with her.
The lusty young pupils needed no encouragements! Mistress and girls flocked out onto the snow-covered lawn and cavorted naked in the icy cold morn.
"Is the old girl mad?" said Geraldine to Annette. "Mind you -- she’s not bad looking is she? I quite fancy her in a way. Lovely tits!"
"I’m nicer, though!" laughed Annette, putting her arms around Geraldine and pushing her dripping wet tongue into that delicious mouth for the hundredth time since last night.
"Yes, but it is Christmas! Let’s give Miss a time to remember!"
And so all the pupils, pink skinned and shivering in the winter cold, crowded around the newly benevolent Muriel and ravished her with their firm and agile young bodies.
Muriel was never a misery after that, but she did get done for child molestation and shared a cell with Hortense, with whom she was very, very happy.
The End