Geoffery stood naked, staring in the full length mirror that hung in his hotel room. Well, the lower half of it. It was December Twenty-seventh. Christmas was over. All the presents delivered to the good little boys and girls all over the world. To those that still believed anyway. And the sleigh was parked, the workshop clean and quiet, all of Missus Claus's huge Christmas dinner eaten well after everyone else had finished theirs.
And Geoffery was no longer an elf...a managing elf in fact. He was what he had been all his life. What he had been before Santa found him drunk by the road after a nasty hazing at the fraternity he had rushed in college. He was nothing more today than a dwarf. A little person. A midget. Did it matter what horrible name you called yourself when life was one joke, one cruel comment after another?
Oh sure, as always, there were a few...famous actors, reality television stars that raised the profiles of their medical condition. But the hard cold truth as he saw it was that they were no different really than the Medieval court jesters or side show freaks. They simply made themselves fodder for the curiosity and comic relief of others. It was something Geoffery had never wanted.
He held the Christmas cookie that Missus Claus had baked. She baked them every year. Hers and Santa's special present for all their elves. The cookie was magical. The same magic that could turn the medical condition of achondroplasia into one of Santa's little elves. But this magic was different. It could grant your wish. Just one mind you, so you better make it a good one. But it was a special treat that all the elves looked forward to during this time of year when they had a break, a holiday, a vacation. When they went home to visit family or simply just got drunk and disappeared into themselves.
This year Geoffery had begged off his family's huge Christmas celebrations that always made him feel like he was the odd man out, which he was in his family of athletes and beauty queens. Each year it was harder as he watched his brothers and sisters find what he never would...love. To make it worse, each year more and more of his nephews and nieces grew taller than 'Little' Uncle Geoff.
No, this year, he knew what he wanted. That one magical wish whose promise would last only a few hours, but whose special gift would be held close to his heart all the year through...perhaps until his dying breath. He had thought this one through. He was going to wish to be...normal. Just for one night. One brief moment in his life, he was going to know...what might have been.
He closed his eyes. He bit the cookie. It always tasted the sweetest imaginable...sugar, spice, chocolate, orange and everything nice. He tasted the magical way that the workshop smelled all the year long.
Then it hit him. Pain. Blinding, gut wrench pain much worse than the time that his parents had risked the corrective surgery that would break his legs in hopes of lengthening the bones. It burned. It felt as if someone had him on a Medieval rack...or that was what he imagined anyway. It felt as if he were being torn limb from limb. It was more than he could take. And he fainted.
Geoffery came back around slowly. The cheap carpet in his hotel room was scratchy and itchy against his cheek. His mind was fuzzy. Where was he? What was he doing here? Then slowly the memories came back. A hotel room in Anchorage. And he had eaten the magic cookie. He stretched tentatively then. His body still ached a bit when he tried to move, but it was not as bad. He supposed this was what his brothers complained about after a work out, maybe? It was not that bad. Not after the other anyway.
He sighed heavily and sat up. He looked in the mirror and his mouth dropped open. The man staring back at him was...beautiful. No misshapen features. No shortened limbs. No thickness in the body. He was a man's man. Like one of those male models from the old Seventies cigarette commercials. He slowly came to his knees, wincing a bit at the burn in his muscles. Then using the dresser to steady him, he stood up. He was at least six foot two. And every bit as athletic as any of his half a dozen brothers.
Geoffery reached for his cell phone on the dresser. He took half a dozen pictures. He flipped through them all several times. Quickly at first, then taking the time to carefully examine each one of the funny poses he had made like a body builder at a competition. He wished with all his heart that he could show those pictures to someone, anyone. But that would break the magic spell. It could even jeopardize his job with Santa. And he would never do that...it gave meaning to his life. Santa had given him the most precious gift of all...purpose. And not even vanity could tempt him to risk that.
He shook his head as he grabbed the clothes that he had purchased for this occasion. He had not known what exactly to expect so he had gone with a loose fitting sweat suit, but even that stretched taut across muscles that bulged in all the right places. He enjoyed a moment of vanity, snapping a few more pics. He hoped that the magic was not stronger than technology. Even if he could never show them to another soul, he hoped the pictures would not disappear from his phone the way that he knew this body would...shortly. Too quickly in fact.
He reached for water-tight moccasins that he knew would stretch enough to fit his feet. He did not have time to tarry. This transformation was only the first step in his plan. The most important one for certain. There would be no magic to help with the other. That would be all up to him. But he had a plan for that too. He had watched enough chick flicks late at night to learn how to romance a woman. Because tonight he wanted it all...he wanted to taste love. Love that he had never known before. Love that he never would again.
He pulled a thick parka around him and rushed out of his hotel room like it was Christmas Eve and they were running behind schedule. He looked around for the first bar that he could see. It was just a short walk from the hotel room. Nothing special. In fact, he wanted to laugh when he walked in to the sound of a famous country singer bragging that he loved this bar. It was as cheesy as any of those late night movies on the women's cable television channel.
