Commissioned by Anonymous
As soon as he heard the car pull out of the garage, the door lowering behind Howard as he drove off, Drew hurried upstairs. He’d been planning this for about a week now, but hadn’t had the perfect opportunity, but now Howard was out all afternoon, giving Drew plenty of time to work. He’d just graduated from college and was living at home with his parents, his job prospects grim. Drew had been hard pressed to find a job even for just the summer, when Howard, a neighbor, had offered him some cash if he helped him out around the house. Drew hadn’t been very happy about it—Howard had always kind of creeped him out, this old, fat, pipe smoking man who seemed to never take his eyes off him, but he paid him fourteen bucks an hour under the table, and so Drew had taken the job—and then he’d learned about the safe.
Howard, it seemed, was a bit paranoid when it came to his money. He didn’t trust it to a bank—instead, he had a massive safe in his study, which Drew saw every Friday when the older man pulled out a massive wad of twenties and gave him his wages. Inside, he saw piles and piles of bills—more money than Howard would probably ever be able to spend, and if Drew could slip away with just a bit of it, he’d be out of debt and living comfortably states away before Howard even knew it was missing. But there was a problem—the safe could only be opened with Howard’s voice and thumbprint, and Drew had no idea how to get around that little problem.
He might have never noticed it, if Howard hadn’t spilled the coffee on his shirt that day—the older man had been so embarrassed, he’d urged Drew to give him his shirt so he could wash it quickly before the stain set in the fabric, and gave him a different one to wear for the time being, before asking Drew to carry some junk up to the attic for him. He’d noticed the elaborately framed mirror leaning against the wall, but as soon as he walked past, something strange happened—the new shirt, which had been rather loose on him, suddenly felt tighter, and in the mirror, Drew gasped. He’d gotten fat, somehow. He’d grown a gut and two small moobs, big enough to fill out the shirt he was wearing, and worse, when he pulled the shirt off, his body didn’t change back.
Sure, he’d panicked at first, but he reasoned that it must have something to do with who had previously owned the shirt, since he’d grown to fit it so perfectly, and he’d snuck downstairs, gotten his own shirt from the washer, and back in front of the mirror in the attic, his own shirt thankfully restored his old body, good as new. Still, that little surreal experience had set the wheels in his head turning, and now he knew just what to do to get his hands on Howard’s piles of cash.
Mirror, Mirror
Published
Stuck as Santa 