“Ooh, this one next, I think!” Samantha grinned, reaching for the longest of the packages and tearing it open. Inside was a stack of thin wall-calendars, a picture of Samantha dressed in the Sidney outfit, looking over her shoulder as she showed off her meaty rump on the front. Instead of a proper background this time she was shown against a pink starburst wallpaper very similar to the ones used in the official Sidney’s marketing. Superimposed over her boots at the bottom of the picture were the words “A Year With Samantha” in the same gold lettering as had been used on everything else. “Here you go, Daddy!” she passed the calendar to Josh. “It’s a great showcase of Mummy’s editing work!” Josh took a look through and was forced to agree, also chuckling in the realisation that his wife and daughter must have spent quite a while rummaging through various boxes from the loft and garage in search of seasonal props – it was no wonder they had rushed him out of the house that morning and it was amazing quite how many different looks Samantha was able to achieve despite being effectively naked in every shot! Having taken a quick flick through in his hands, he then set the calendar down on the table, folded the cover back and took a good look at each picture one by one.

January was a depiction of Samantha in the snow, facing the camera and grinning wearing the cold weather ensemble one of her incarnations had sported on the back of the memory book. Behind her was a grinning snowman and in her hand she held a snowball, raised as if ready to be thrown towards the camera.

“That was actually an orange from the fruit bowl!” Samantha giggled, pointing to the snowball in her hand. “Mummy did a good job, huh?” Josh agreed and turned the page. February showed Samantha kneeling in an arm-chair which he knew to be pale green in real life but now appeared red, the room behind her replaced with a montage of hearts. Her hair was in bunches as with the elf photos and she was wearing a pair of heart-shaped boppers on her head, hugging a heart-shaped pillow. March found Samantha in a meadow, her body facing the camera but her head turned to look at a tree covered in very pretty pink blossom, some of which floated on the breeze behind her. April saw her dressed as the Easter Bunny, crouching slightly with her back to the camera of course to show off the fluffy tail stuck just above the cleft of her rump, bunny ears on her head and a basket of colourful eggs held out in front in one hand while with the other she put a finger to her lips, urging her audience to stay quiet. The background for this was a lush, green field with rolling hillocks, dotted all over with Easter eggs with blue sky filled with fluffy white cloud beyond the horizon.

On the page dedicate to May, Samantha stood in the foreground, a bouquet of flowers in her hands that matched the garland around her head. Similar to the March shot, her body was square on to the camera, her intimate parts on clear display, but once again she was looking away, this time back over her shoulder where girls in white dresses were dancing around a May Pole on a village green.

“I wanted to put a Wicker Man in the background of that one,” Laura grinned, “but I figured your parents would find the nudie pics scandalous enough as it was and I didn’t want to push them over the edge!”

“Probably for the best!” Josh chuckled, turning to June where he found Samantha sitting on a rock, wearing a long green wig which she was brushing, looking coyly down at her reflection in the sea, her shapely legs gradually morphing into a mermaid tail.

“That one probably took the longest out of all of them.” Laura admitted. “We couldn’t think of anything that screamed June to us so we thought a mermaid would probably do. Who doesn’t love mermaids after all?”

“If in doubt, add a mermaid!” Josh chuckled again and tuned to July. Here Samantha was standing on a tropical beach wearing nothing but a wide, straw sun-hat and over-sized, neon orange sunglasses, blowing a kiss towards the camera with one hand and brandishing a bright green bucket and spade in the other. The August picture was something of a companion piece to the front cover, utilising the same background but this time with Samantha facing and looking directly into the camera, one hand on her hip and the other touching the brim of her hat in what was commonly known as “The Sidney Salute”.

“Great picture,” Josh looked at the Samantha and Laura, both of whom were watching him with delight, enjoying his genuine, first-time reactions to the photographs they had collaborated on and put so much effort into producing, “but I don’t get the connection?”

“August fifteenth?” Samantha reminded him as if she expected him to kick himself for missing something so obvious. When he still looked oblivious, she sighed heavily and rolled her eyes. “Sidney Roebuck’s birthday and also the day she was harvested?”

“Ooh right!” Josh nodded, wondering if this was a fact he had forgotten or one he had simply never taken in before. “I get it now.”

“Honestly, Daddy!” Samantha shook her head in mock disappointment. “Whatever would Emily say?”

“Emily?” It was Laura’s turn to look puzzled. “Who’s Emily? Should I be worried?” Josh opened his mouth to explain but Samantha quickly jumped in to save him.

“Emily’s the Sidney-obsessed piggy whose meat we’re going to use for my trimmings!” she explained. “I wish you’d seen her, Mummy! She really did look delicious!”

“Well I guess you’d better brush up on your Sidney lore if you plan on seeing her again!” Laura teased her husband with a chuckle but this seemed to give Samantha the spark of an idea.

“Do you think we could, Daddy?” she leaned forward eagerly. “She said she was being harvested on the twenty third. Perhaps we could go and watch? That would be so cool and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind?”

“There’s no harm in asking, I suppose.” Josh agreed, thinking that it would be quite an exciting experiencing to watch the lovely young girl reduced to a pile of fresh, pink meat. Plus it would be a great distraction for his daughter who was likely to become more and more restless as her big day approached. “I’ll find out if that’s allowed and get them to check if she’s okay with an audience. It’s quite an intimate, personal moment after all!” This seemed to satisfy Samantha and she leaned back to watch as he turned to September. Here he found Samantha kneeling in a pile of autumn leaves apparently in a forest where many of the trees were still covered in orange and light brown foliage. She was looking upwards gleefully with her arms held up and out in a salutation to welcome the Autumn, having just thrown handfuls of leaves up in the air. “Let me guess?” Josh ventured. “Paper cutouts? Or did we have some silk ones?”

“A hundred percent ‘added in post’ this time, I’m afraid.” Laura admitted, making air-quotes again as she used the cliché American film-making phrase. “Sometimes that’s just easier.”

“Well it looks great either way!” Josh assured her turning to October Samantha was kneeling in front of a large, steaming cauldron in a spooky graveyard, her knees spread, wearing a black witch’s hat and holding what Josh recognised as the ornamental ceramic jack-o-lantern that they put in the window every Halloween. To one side, a cute but entirely fake black cat could be seen emerging behind her. “Almost surprised you didn’t put a spider crawling out of her pussy!” he joked.

“Or a snake crawling in there!” giggled Samantha. “Would you have been jealous, Daddy?” Before he could answer, Laura reminded them that the calendar was intended to be at least notionally family friendly and urged him to turn to the next page. November’s image showed Samantha sat atop an unlit bonfire, one knee bent upwards and the other leg stretched out decorously in front of her as she watched a spectacular firework display in the sky above.

“See you couldn’t quite let go of the Wicker Man idea?” Josh grinned.

“I compromised by leaving it unlit.” Laura chuckled. “It could be that she’s just sitting up there to get a better view and will climb down before anyone thinks of setting it ablaze.”

“Yeah or maybe I’m going to be a burned offering!” Samantha grinned. “Like Jeptha’s daughter who we learned about in RE class, or maybe burned as a witch?” Shaking his head in amusement, Josh turned to the final page and saw that it was another snow-scene but this time with Samantha in her elf costume leaning jauntily against a candy-striped post with a golden ball on the top. “The North Pole, obviously!” she grinned. “In case you couldn’t tell!” The back cover had the roasted turkey picture at the top and smaller copies of all the monthly pictures arranged in four rows of three beneath.

“Amazing work!” Josh complimented them with genuine admiration. “People are going to love those!” He found himself becoming more and more curious about the larger packages but could see that Samantha intended to get through all the contents of the box before unpacking them.

There were two packets next to each other of almost identical dimensions, similar in shape to the invitations but many times thicker. Samantha opened the first and showed her dad the Christmas cards that she wanted to be sent to all their family and friends that year. Like the invitations, these came with their own envelopes except these one were red and on the front of the card was a the more modest picture that Josh had insisted on taking at first, with Samantha’s hands covering her nipples and a sprig of holly shielding her private parts although, now he looked at this picture in contrast to the many, many nudes of his young daughter he had just seen, he found the coyness somehow seemed to make them more suggestive! Unlike the picture where she seemed already to be roasted, this version of Samantha lay on a bed of pine and holly. The front of the card simply bore the message of “Merry Christmas” while the message inside read “May your holiday be filled with warmth, love and delicious treats!”

“You really want us to send these out to everyone we know?” Josh asked as he made a quick mental calculation of the size of the pile and surmised there were about a hundred cards.

“Of course!” Samantha grinned then, playing innocent and pretending not to know what his concern was, added, “Don’t worry, Daddy! I’ll help you write them!” She moved the greetings cards to one side and opened the other similar-sized parcel. Inside this were a number of other puzzles, each about the thickness of a book. Josh watched with interest as Samantha carefully opened the end of the top-most one and drew out a glossy postcard like the invitations but this one and slightly different edit of the picture of her in her Sidney costume making the famous salute in front of the pink background. In the bottom right-hand corner, her name was written in the swirly gold font like a variation of the Sidney’s logo.

“There’s eight different designs.” she explained. “I won’t get them all out now, if you don’t mind? They’re all pictures that are in the calendar anyway,” Josh nodded, “but these are art cards. We’ll have to sort them into piles later so that everyone gets one of each. The final three packets all contained fridge magnets. One pack with Samantha as Sidney, seen from the back this time, one of her kneeling as on the invitations but without the Santa hat this time, leading Josh to realise for the first time that it must have been something else his wife edited into the picture rather than a real costume piece, a neutral black background behind her, and finally one with the masterpiece of editing that was the roast turkey picture.

“These are awesome!” Josh praised his creative and talented family. “Do we actually have bags yet?”

“Not yet,” Samantha admitted. “We should probably sort those out but I kinda wanted to see all the stuff for real first and work out what kind of size we would need.”

“That’s fine.” Josh smiled. “We can pick some up tomorrow when we go shopping for the other bits to go in them, then we can work on getting them assembled.”

“We need to send out the invitations too!” Laura reminded them both. “Have you decided who you’re inviting yet?”

“Yeah.” Samantha nodded. “Amelia, of course,” she winked at Josh who could not help blushing a little, “then I thought it would be nice to invite Rob and Amanda. They live in a group care-home and the staff there do their best but a nice family Christmas would be a treat and mean a lot to them!”

“That sounds like a lovely idea!” Laura smiled. “We can get them written up tonight.”

“So do I get to find out what’s in these?” Josh asked, trying not to sound too desperate and he patted the stack of huge, upright cardboard envelopes on the chair next to him.

“Ooh yeah! I almost forgot!” Samantha exclaimed, getting up from the table. “Just wait until you see these, Daddy!”


To be continued...