Chapter 55 — Concerning Santa’s Very Confusing Instructions to Give Princess Peppermint a Good Time
“I understand your plight, and how badly you want to become Queen,” Santa said. “If you were to loan us your Spearmints to help defend us in the apocalypse, I’m sure Peter can help give you an heir.”
“You want my Spearmints?” she growled.
“I just want to borrow them for Christmas Eve. You said yourself you don’t believe in the apocalypse, so what do you have to lose by lending them to me for a day? Isn’t that worth becoming a Queen?”
Princess Peppermint pretended to ponder Santa’s proposition. There were lots of “hmmm...”s and “huh...”s and her eyes looked off into several distances as if lost in thought, but it was clear that she had already made up her mind and was poorly trying to hide her glee.
“Very well,” she said. “Peter will give me an heir, and in return you will have my Spearmints for Christmas Eve. The Spearmints are to be returned immediately after, apocalypse or not.”
Santa beamed a big smile, and Peter felt his heart melt. She had always seemed so stoic, so calm and cool, that in this moment, seeing her happy filled him with joy. The princess and the king of Christmas resumed their dinner, eating happily in silence. Then Peter leaned over towards Santa and said, “Wait. You want me to go and…?”
Santa was chewing, so she covered her mouth with her hand and said, “I see her when she’s sleeping. I know when she’s awake.”
“Okay… what does that mean?”
“We agreed to give Princess Peppermint an heir, so you will go and give her an heir. But Peter… if you actually sleep with her, I will never forgive you.”
Santa resumed her dinner. Peter was still confused.
Shoulder to shoulder, Peter and Princess Peppermint rode the royal carriage off into the night. Her skirt was so incredibly frilly that sitting down next to her, Peter couldn’t even see his own feet. It filled up the entire carriage with its red and white striped fabric. He looked at her, as she held out a mirror and adjusted her pink bangs, and then she looked at him and said, “Ugh.” Out the window he saw a Spearmint knight and beyond that the darkness of the North Pole. He wondered if Santa had really just pimped him out to this tsundere princess, and what the hell she meant by that cryptic message. How was he supposed to give her an heir without laying her down by the fire, tenderly caressing her, kissing her softly, and taking her to the bone zone?
After a long and silent ride through the night, Princess Peppermint’s castle appeared like a swirling gumdrop monument. It was a puzzling architectural mishmash of spires and towers, each topped with Hershey-kiss-shaped domes. Like her dress, the domes were also candy striped, gilded, and glittered in sweet pastels. It looked less like a castle constructed from the bottom up with brick and mortar, and more like its walls and towers were squeezed out from a giant piping bag. Whereas Santa’s workshop was industrial and Victorian in style, this was a work of sugar rushed fantasy.
“Yes,” Princess Peppermint said proudly. “That is indeed my home: Candy Stripe Castle, the heart of mint horticulture on Earth. Built by my forefathers millennia ago. My sugary kingdom.”
Together Peter and Princess Peppermint walked through the grand halls of her swirly, twirly domain. Along the way to wherever she was taking him, he spotted a greenhouse annex, part forest, part hydroponic, where the fearsome Spearmints wore goofy straw hats and overalls. They watered and harvested every kind of mint imaginable: banana mint, slender mint, forest mint, horse mint, and frost mint, to name a few. The mint flowers were in every shade of purple and pink, sometimes shaped like tiny Christmas trees, sometimes shaped like thistles.
“There are over two hundred species of mint.” The princess’ voice echoed off the vaulted ceiling. “Although your pallet probably isn’t refined enough to appreciate all the varieties.”
Peter thought she had taken him to the throne room, but in fact it was a small room with only a single table, and on it was a bell jar, and within the bell jar was a small phial, half full, of emerald green liquid.
“This is malachite mint extract,” she said. “The rarest mint in the world. It only grows on mountain tops with fresh snow melt. It takes over a century to cultivate a single drop. I only tasted it once when I was a young girl.My father gathered enough to make nine candy canes. He gifted one to me and another to Santa. I look forward to the day we can use it again.”
There was a silence. Peter was too busy thinking if he was going to fuck her or not, and whether or not Santa was eavesdropping on them right this very moment.
“Feel free to say aloud how impressed you are.”
“Yes, it’s a very pretty shade of green,” Peter said.
“Don’t you want to smell it? This is the holy grail of mint extracts and you don’t even want a little whiff. It’s maddening.”
Peter sighed. “May I please smell the—”
“Absolutely not!” Then she turned heel and briskly walked out of the room.
Princess Peppermint’s bedchamber was a dizzyingly enormous vault of white marble and gold architecture— larger even than Tchaikovky’s bedroom, which was an entire opera house. It looked less like it was decorated by a girl, and more like it was curated by a museum. Far up and above the cavernous Hershey-kiss shaped dome sprinkled down rays of moonlight upon her baldachin bed. The canopy of her bed was also lofty and baroque and adorned with motifs of flowers and mint leaves. The princess plopped herself onto the bed and her big fluffy dress stood erect from all the layers of fabric. Candlelight ran its intangible fingers over her body and tresses.
“My bed will be a suitable location to make an heir,” she announced.
Peter looked at her slender and stockinged legs, and the way her pink hair spilled against the golden bedsheets and he thought to himself, ‘Fuck it. I’m gonna have sex with her.’ In the back of his mind, the Christmas Apocalypse still lingered, waving at him with its grim, bony fingers— an intangible memento mori. And not only did it remind him of his imminent death but it also reminded him that he was a virgin. And to a teenage boy there is no fate in this world worse than dying without knowing the touch of a girl— or the kisses of a girl— or the licks of a girl— or the violent, quivering, seizure like spasms of a girl. Maybe she would be more bearable if she were laid bare and naked. So Peter crawled onto the bed, reached up under Princess Peppermint’s skirt, and removed her royal panties. She suddenly slammed her hands down on her skirt and shouted, “Pervert! Fiend! How dare you?!”
“I was—”
“There will be no more clothing removed from hereon!” she shouted.
Peter looked down at her skinny and fully clothed body and wondered how he was supposed to proceed without stripping her. He looked at her chest, and the corset he was unfortunately forbidden from removing, and decided to kiss her collar bone. She gasped, and then he slowly worked his way down toward her cleavage— or where her cleavage would have been if she were more endowed. His lips reached fabric and he tried to go underneath to her royal nipple when suddenly she shrieked, “Pervert! Ugh! You’re slobbering all over me! Utterly disgusting!”
Peter hovered over her. She could not see the frustration on his face because she kept her head turned away and refused to make eye contact. She wiped his drool off her chest.
“Hurry up and finish already, will you?” she said.
“What? I haven’t even started.”
“Fool! We started the moment I got on the bed!”
“What exactly do you think—”
Princess Peppermint gruffed angrily. “I suppose I will have to take the lead then! Do try to keep up with me, whatever your name is.”
Princess Peppermint clinched her eyes shut and began rolling on the bed, fully clothed, by herself. Peter watched her in puzzlement as she tossed and turned left and right atop the bedsheets. She began making sexy noises, gasping and crying out. She panted heavily, and Peter watched her chest rise and fall against her corset. Then she started shouting things like, “Oh! Ah! Uh! Yes! Harder! Don’t stop! Whatever-your-name-is, don’t stop! Ah! Oh! Uh! Yes! Yes!” But this only made Peter more confused, because not only was he not touching her, but she wasn’t even touching herself. Her hands were tangled in the sheets and she was just rolling around like a mental patient. At no point was anything remotely sexual going on between them. And that was when Peter realized that the princess had no idea what sex was.
This would complicate things. Or perhaps it would make things easier. Or perhaps neither. It was quite a conundrum. A conundrum that will be solved in the very next chapter.