I'll Be Horned For Christmas

By DerbyGhost

One Night, Three Spirits – You won’t even think about saying ‘Bah Humbug’ to this flight of drinks. The shot of Christmas Past takes your taste buds on a visit to all of your cherished childhood Christmas Memories. The shot of Christmas Present is hearty and strong, something to put a little meat on your bones. The Shot of Christmas Yet to Come is bracing and cold, something to shake you out of your malaise. You’ll feel as light as a feather, as giddy as a schoolboy!

“This is typically the part where I try to be all shocked and surprised, but mostly I am just kind of confused. The elevator runs on magic? Why would that even matter to me? I mean electricity might as well be magic for how much I understand how it works.” I scratched my head. I might be drunk, but I wasn’t drunk enough for whatever the heck Ashley was talking about. 

“Well, that’s the thing.” Ashley walked over to the lift, placing her hand on the door. “It shouldn’t matter. Not really.”

“Then let’s go,” I said, stepping towards the machine and pressing the button. I felt a slight spark as a surge of energy coursed through my frame and took a step back. “Ah jeez! This thing has got some weird static going on. Or maybe it's magic.” I made sure to give the word magic way more syllables than normal and wave my hands a little bit in order to play into her goof, but Ashley wasn’t laughing.

“Ah, country gravy biscuits. You triggered some latent magic.” Ashley flapped her hands as she looked back and forth between me and the elevator. “There are people out there with a baseline bit of magic to them. Perhaps from them goin rooty-tooty-fresh-n-fruity with some kind of monster in the past.”

“Uh-huh.” My tone obviously showed how much I was buying this, since she shot me a hell of an icy glare. The elevator, mostly a quiet bystander in the conversation, chose this exact moment to Ding, opening its doors to us. Much like the rest of the hallway, the elevator looked safe enough and I took a step forward to show Ashley approximately how much I bought into her weird magic tangent.

“Oh, you’re just walking in there, huh? Just going to surround yourself with magic, Rudolf?”  Ashley joined me in the elevator, sighing. “Alright but it would probably have been easier to explain some of this before you change. I would have at least been able to tell you about Eleanor.”

Before I could respond, the doors shut and something odd happened with the closed elevator doors. As if by an unseen sculptor, letters began carving themselves out of the door. They were fast and precise, but most uncanny was the presence. As soon as the words began appearing, all the cavities in my teeth began to ache from the sheer pressure. 

Hello Ashley. (OwO) It’s good to see you again. And you’ve brought a friend. \(IuI)/

“Hey El! I would chat a little bit, but my friend is an idiot and didn’t believe me about magic so I feel like he’s going to start changing any-oh, yep, there he goes. UL Main Lobby please, as close to the Three Horned Goat as possible.” Ashley said, having a perfectly normal conversation with a door. I wanted to say something like ‘hey this is buckwild’ but the pressure had spread to all of my teeth and if I just didn’t acknowledge that I was feeling fucky wucky then nothing weird would be going on. Nothing at all. 

Ashley, you goof. (u_u) You sure know how to keep things interesting. It’ll take a minute or two, you might want to tell your friend to sit down, this ride shall be a doozy.

Have you ever heard your body crack? And I’m not necessarily talking about the small crack when you flex your fingers together to get the kinks out. No, I’m talking a deep visceral crunch. It’s not pretty. In an instant I was on the floor, not out of pain but out of the expectation of pain. A rush went through my whole being, just by being in this elevator was like sticking a fork in a cosmic socket. It was enough to drop me to my knees. My breath came in gasps and starts as I tried to ride out whatever it was that I was feeling. The cool metal floor of the elevator was a balm to my head as the warmth of my soul boiled over. It was like my body wasn’t enough to contain the feelings that I was experiencing. 

And then, it was over. I still felt connected to energy, but the elevator no longer was moving. After a few moments of catching my breath, I finally remembered that I wasn’t alone. Ashley was here and had witnessed the entire thing. That more than anything was mortifying. Shakily, I lifted my head from the ground and gave her a wary glance. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had bolted out of the elevator as soon as it came to a stop. 

Instead, I was met with a gentle shaky smile. “Hey, it’s okay. Take my hand. You’ve just gone through a bit of a change, so it makes sense if you’re a little shaky getting to your feet.” Ashley was kneeling in the elevator, hand outstretched. The light from the open door framed her hair in a way that made her look almost angelic. 

“Magic is real?” I said, and then froze. That wasn’t my voice? That absolutely was not my voice. I would know. I hate my voice. I cringe every time I say something. It was too scratchy, too coarse. The sounds that came out of my throat normally were like big chunky rock salt, all edges and angles. Yet these words were smoother, creamy even. They flowed from my lips and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. “Magic is real, and you use it to power an elevator?” This was an NPR voice, an easy listening late night drive voice. Light and a little feminine, which was odd but not something that I hated as much as I thought I would. 

“I don’t know if this is exactly the time to focus on that. Are you feeling okay?” Concern dripped through Ashley’s voice, making me worry that something was drastically wrong with me. 

“Yeah I feel hella good actually. I felt weird when we stepped in the elevator, but now? I feel free! I feel light. Like I’ve been turbocharged with energy.” It was true, whatever had caused me to crash to my knees had passed and I felt… good. Like really, really good. Like mainlined three energy drinks and no longer cared about my physical body good. Like 3 am leaving a friend’s house and walking home in the middle of the night soaking in the feeling of being tipsy and in love kind of good. A kind of good that I shouldn’t feel. This was wrong, this wasn’t me. I was a weirdo sad sack who just got sacked. I was hanging out in a talking elevator with a relative stranger who I definitely was starting to develop a bit of a crush on. But should I even care about the weirdness? 

Probably! Every impulse in my body says I should over analyze this situation to hell and back, but the delightful melody coursing through my bones said just lean in.

I hopped up to my feet, a goofy grin plastering my face. Stumbling for a moment I almost knocked into Ashley, my limbs weren’t necessarily exactly responding how I was used to. Catching a glimpse of myself in the reflective sheen of the elevator, I did notice that I looked a little different. Gone was the persistent five o’clock shadow that had haunted my face my entire life. Without the stubble my cheeks looked a little fuller, pink and blushing from the overexertion. 

“I don’t know why you were so worried. Even if there was a magical reaction, I’m pretty much still me.” I smiled at her, shifting my weight between my legs in an attempt to burn off some of the excess heat I felt in my core. 

“That’s because you’ve barely transformed, dingus.” Ashley sighed and shook her head. “All you did was absorb a metric shit ton of ambient magic into your system.”

And just like that, all my confidence and cheer stuttered to a stop. “What, but the pain? And the huge changes. My eyes are kind of bigger! Look at them, they’re all adorable.” 

“Yeah and red. A sign of something a little more monstrous to come.” Ashley slung her arm around my shoulder, calming the roaring fire of magic inside me. “You don’t have that strong a reaction to ambient magic unless your body is preparing for a big change. Like, a fundamental shift of appearance and species kind of change. I’m guessing that there is an honest to God monster somewhere in your family tree, and the magic has awakened that connection.” 

“Wh-what?” I stammered.

“Judging by the cute little stubby horns on your head as well, I’m assuming it’s demonic. Makes sense why you’re just so deliciously warm.” She gave me a reassuring side hug which I eagerly returned. Holy shit, mom wasn’t joking. We really did have a demon in our family, and we were about to gain one more. “C’mon. Let’s try to get you somewhere private where the change can happen and you can process it. Before we head out, just a warning. There are going to be some nonhumans out there, so can I trust you to be cool?”

I nodded, trying to put on a brave face. “‘Bout as cool as someone can be when they find out they’re transforming into a demon.”

If she picked up the sarcasm at all, it didn’t show. “You’re taking this real well, Rude. Some people get all up and upset when they become a monster.”

“This happen to you often?” I joked. 

“Often enough. But we can talk about it later, now c’mon trust me. When you’re growin’ new body parts you’re going to want to be somewhere without any peepin’ eyes.” New body parts? I felt the twin surge of excitement and dread at the idea. With stumbling feet and consumed by the burn of the magic, we finally made our way out of the elevator into the UnderPort.