Christmas Presents by Aleathia Drehmer and Pat King

Cynthia Brewster’s mother always said that she had the devil in her. Cynthia started to believe there might be something to that when one of Santa’s elves began gnawing on her ankle while she was Christmas shopping at the Ithaca Mall. She had three shopping bags in her hands and dropped all of them. She shook her leg but the elf wouldn’t give way. Finally, she bent down and slugged him on the jaw. The elf fell onto his back and looked up at the ceiling with a blank expression on his face. Cynthia’s ankle hurt like hell, but she felt an overpowering sense of sympathy for the the little guy. She bent down and touched his cheek.

“Hey, you all right?”

“Well, I would have been you bitch if you wouldn’t have punched me in the jaw.” The elf snarled at her.

Cynthia suddenly felt all the sympathy drain from her meager existence. She felt her face getting as red as Santa’s chaffed ass on Christmas Eve. Who was this little shit to give her flack? He was chewing on her ankles in the middle of the mall.

Cynthia gathered her bags and stood up. She turned and walked away.

“Wait, don’t go,” the elf said.

Cynthia looked over her shoulder and saw the small man standing in the center court with the bustle of the holidays all around him. She had a mixture of feelings at that moment. This season of joy and giving and blessings was really a disguise for perverts that liked to dress up in odd clothing, and for the leaching of the American pocket, not to mention their souls. The lights and the music were making her dizzy and she felt like she might pass out with her head turned like this.

“I just want a hug,” the elf said

Cynthia bent down, eye to eye with him. His breath reeked of whiskey.

“No sir,” Cynthia said. “I will not hug you. You’re lucky I don’t find a police officer and report your assault.”

He looked at Cynthia stunned. He thought for sure he was going to get a hug from this woman and inadvertently be able to cop a feel of her ample breasts and blame it on the whiskey. He gave her his best dopey eyed look, his best helpless little elf face to see if he could change her mind.

“Aw, come on lady. It is Christmas after all. I am just as lonely as the rest of mankind.” He said to her quietly.

“That might be so, but I will be damned to hell if I am going to let you hug me after you tried to draw first blood in front of this whole town. You might as well resign yourself to the cold chill baby, cause that is all you are getting from me.” And as Cynthia said this, she felt a piece of her heart harden up, some small spot turned to stone as if she had looked into the eyes of Medusa, and she wondered why.

“Listen lady, I just got laid off.”

“Who lays off an elf during Christmas?” Cynthia said.

“This mall and apparently they frown on drunken elves. Look, I’m sorry I bit you, lady, but I’m at my wits end. What am I going to do now?”

The elf started fiddling with his eyeball. Cynthia found it strange at first and was horrified when he pulled it out, but she calmed down when she realized that it was just a glass eye. The elf held it out toward her.

“This is for you,” the elf said.

For some odd reason, Cynthia found herself holding out her bare hand to receive this man’s weepy glass eye. She was horrified by the thought of it sitting in the palm of her hand, yet she was also intrigued by the gaping hole on the elves face.

“Um, thank you?” She said. “Listen, I am sorry I punched you in the jaw and stuff, but I am not used to getting attacked on the way to buy a Nintendo DS, ya know?”

“Yeah, I guess I could have gotten your attention in a better way.” He offered.

“What am I supposed to do with this fucking eyeball anyway? I mean it is sweet of you and all, but as you can see, I have no need for an extra eye.”

“Don’t know. It’s all I have to offer. Listen, I’m going to sleep out in the cold tonight. I live behind the mall. I’m a little drunk and very lonely.”

“Jesus,” Cynthia said. “What am I going to do with you?”

Cynthia couldn’t believe what was happening. Was she actually attracted to this one eyed dwarf? Was she that desperate? It had been over a year since she had been on a date and she had to admit that she was quite lonely herself.

“Well,” Cynthia said, “I can’t take you home, but I can buy you a meal.”

“And a drink?” the elf said.

“Well, yes, I suppose a drink or two never hurt anyone. I might want one myself.”

It was only five in the afternoon. The Texas Longhorn steakhouse in the mall was still open. Cynthia asked the elf if he wanted to grab a bite there.

She pushed open the door to the Longhorn and the smell of grease hit her in the face, along with the stale smell of cheap beer and even cheaper perfume. Cynthia looked down around her knees to make sure she didn’t clip the elf in the door when she let it go. He had trouble enough without her slamming his head against a metal pole.

The hostess looked at Cynthia and asked her, “Table for one tonight ma’am?”

“Uh, no. Table for two please.”

The girl looked over the podium and was puzzled. She couldn’t see anyone and thought this lady might be bat-shit crazy, so she nodded and grabbed two menus. It would be easier to play along with her delusions rather than argue. It had been a long day and she wasn’t in the mood for a scene.

They sat down at a booth. Cynthia ordered Bloody Marys and a French fry appetizer. The elf hopped onto his seat and took off his plastic hand and laid it on the table

“Jesus,” Cynthia said. “What else is missing?”

“You don’t want to know,” the elf said.

“I guess not.”

“You know, I haven’t been able to think straight since I got out of Vietnam.”

Cynthia was puzzled. Did they allow dwarves in the army? Besides, he looked like he was in his late thirties or early forties, much too young to have been in the war.

“You couldn’t have been in Vietnam,” Cynthia said, laughing. She didn’t know what to make of this guy, but she felt strangely comfortable around him.

“Not in this life, babe. I didn’t make it out. I was killed, but I took plenty of Gooks out before the hammer came down.”

“What do you mean, not in this life? Are you some kind of nutter or what?” She sneered at him thinking this meal was a bad idea.

“Naw baby, for my karmic residue in the mass slayings, I got reborn as a fucking elf with missing parts. Pass me that fucking girlie drink before I lose my shit.”

Cynthia didn’t know what to make of him now, not that she did a half hour ago either, but now she was even more mystified. She stuck the greasy fries in her mouth and chewed loudly, washing it down with the most potent Bloody Mary she ever had.

“I think this drink is a little strong,” she said.

“Yeah,” the elf said. “Even I can taste the vodka. I think Pat King must be the bartender tonight.”

“He’s not very good.”

“No, he’s not, but he can sing like nobody’s business.”

“Sing?”

“Yeah, he knows all the show tunes. Give him a quarter and he’ll sing a song from the Phantom of the Opera.”

“Really?”

“Yup, stay with me babe and you might learn a little something.”

“I think I might have learned enough.”

“I bet your tits would make a nice pillow. I ain’t ever seen tits as big as those. What are you, an F cup?”

Cynthia had always been self conscious about her weight. She resented the elf’s comment, but a part of her was just glad that he noticed.

“No,” she said blushing, “they are only D’s.”

“Hell, I could give a fucking shit how big they are just as long as you let me rest my head on them at the end of the night.”

She didn’t know what to say to that, but the vodka was loosening her up a bit, and some part of her was actually entertaining the idea of letting this elf nuzzle her tits. Cynthia gazed in his direction, at this broken man with a missing eye and a plastic hand, and realized that she didn’t even know his name.

“What the fuck is your name anyway, since we are over here getting personal?”

“My name is Leopold Gibbons. And yours?”

“I’m not sure I want you to know my name,” Cynthia said.

“Ah, come on! What’s it gonna hurt?”

Cynthia thought for a second. “OK, fine. My name is Scarlett.”

“Scarlett? Like that chick from that movie?”

Cynthia smiled. She didn’t think he would get her Gone with the Wind reference.

“Well, yes. My mother was a big fan.”

Actually, her mother was a cross dresser who eventually got an operation to become a man, but these were all just details anyway.

“My father used to be my mother,” the elf said. “Then my mother got pissed and became my father. They’re still married, though. Make a cute couple. Never could tell they used to be the opposite sex.”

Cynthia was stunned. Maybe she should have been more honest with Leopold. They seemed to have a lot in common.

But she decided to stay as Scarlett, because she was having fun being someone else for a change. She was more than tired of boring old Cynthia who never met anyone interesting. Maybe that was because she never left the house, but that too, was just a minor detail.

“Wow. That sounds like a really interesting life to be reincarnated into…I mean not everyone has double transgender parents who produce a dwarf that dresses up like an elf for Christmas.”

Cynthia was a little more drunk than she thought she would be from this strong Bloody Mary that Pat had made. She felt in the mood to really top the night off, so she excused herself from the table and walked over to the bar.

She flipped a quarter onto the bar and said “Start singing mister….shorty over there says you can bust a move on Phantom of the Opera and I want to be entertained.”

Pat looked at her, well….not really at her, but at her cleavage that was spilling over the top of her bra, and swiped the quarter from the bar and stuffed it in his pocket.

“You’re a hot piece of ass aren’t you? Yeah, I’ll sing for you. Stand back and give me my space lady.”

Pat, decked out in a smart tux, smiled and then stood on top of the bar and started singing “Masquerade.”

“Ooops,” Leopold said. “I seem to have popped a massive woody.”

Cynthia was embarrassed. She felt her cheeks flush. Still, she was a little flattered. “Look,” she said, “nothing is going to happen between us tonight.”

“What?” Leopold said. “No, not you. Pat. See, we, uh, had a little thing going on for a while.”

Cynthia’s jaw hung there like a Venus fly trap that hadn’t had any action in awhile. She couldn’t believe this elf was sporting wood over the bartender belting out show tunes. But it all seemed to make sense though, I mean, a bartender that sings Phantom of the Opera?”

Leopold sat there with the moon in his eyes as Pat crooned from the top of the bar, making eyes at the elf. Cynthia shook her head and opened her purse leaving a twenty on the table.

“Merry Fucking Christmas asshole.”

The elf didn’t hear her and she turned twelve shades of red before she turned and walked out of the Longhorn.