Santa’s Little Helper. by Angharad Copyright© 2014 Angharad

“Why can’t Santa have boy elves?”

“Shut up and hold still.”

“Watch it, that’s my eye.”

“Well keep bloody still then,” Amanda kept applying the mascara. “You’ve got eyelashes to die for, d’you know that?”

“Whoopee doo,” he replied, feeling so embarrassed he thought he’d die.

She invited him to look at himself in the mirror. He barely recognised himself. Gone was the awkward young man, instead a moderately pretty young woman smiled coyly back at him.

“See, I told you you’d be all right.” Amanda insisted and for a moment he agreed. For that moment he’d forgotten how she’d talked him into wearing the tiny dress and high heeled boots.

Julian was sixteen, though looked about twelve. He went to boarding school because his parents were in the Diplomatic Corps, serving HM Government in the Far East. He had three weeks holiday from school, not really long enough to travel to be with his parents, so he had to stay with his auntie, Maud Matthews, whom he referred to as Lordie Maudie, to his pals at school.

He didn’t have many friends, he was painfully shy, and being small for his age meant he was treated with a degree of contempt. Everyone had a nickname, awarded by the other boys—his was, ‘Shrimp.’ He loathed it but he wasn’t big or strong enough to prevent them calling him by it.

His aunt Maud was childless and although she tried her best, she didn’t really like children, even one as willing to please and compliant as Julian. Before he came this time, he’d been there at Easter, too, she’d grumbled to herself that her sister Catriona, could at least have had the decency to have a girl, if she absolutely had to have children.

Maud knew the general manager at Peach’s Department Store and was able to pull the favour of getting Julian a temporary job over the Christmas break. Given how bored he was at Easter, Julian, agreed happily to earn some money to put towards a new tablet, as his old one had been damaged by one of the bullies who occasionally made his life difficult at school.

Julian had been given the briefest of interviews and accepted to start the next day. He’d work for ten days before Christmas, finish at mid afternoon on Christmas Eve, have Christmas Day off but return on Boxing Day for another week. At six pounds fifty an hour, he didn’t care what he did.

They put him in the stock room, but he was too small to do much in the way of humping boxes or pushing heavy trolleys, which was how Amanda got her paws on him. She ran ‘Specials’, the store’s name for events—which included Santa’s Grotto. As the only store in town which still had a grotto for children to visit Santa, it drew in all the parents for miles around who queued and paid to see Santa and his reindeer. They even had two lethargic reindeer, who seemed quite happy to stand around in the store eating hay and cow cake in their custom built stall while being patted or stroked by hundreds of little hands.

When one of Amanda’s elves handed in her notice because Marks and Spencer’s had a vacancy which meant she no longer needed to wear the stupid outfit, as she called it, Julian, who was simply gofering, became an obvious replacement and she cajoled and manoeuvred him into agreeing to be a stand-in elf.

Like lots of youngsters, he was stick thin, so she had to borrow one or two things to pad him out in various places. She acquired some pants which padded out his bum while holding his dangly bits tightly in the front—some adhesive breast forms took care of his flat chest, after she got him to use a depilatory cream—all over. His hair was collar length and her friend, Cheryl, had him up at the salon for a quick and aptly named, pixie cut. After she shaped his eyebrows, he began to look decidedly girlish.

The elf outfit consisted of a red and green mini-dress, a green cardigan and tights and high heeled ankle boots. Julian was like a lamb to the slaughter and Amanda considered that as he took the same shoe size as his predecessor, it was meant to be and when she suggested it was an elf or no job, Julian accepted his fate, unaware all the other elves were girls.

He was told to use the cream then shower it all off. After towelling dry she gave him a moisturiser to use which was when he realised the little body hair he had was no more. She handed him a pair of tight panties and told him to tuck his genitals back between his legs. He was astonished at the flat frontage he now presented. She gave him the padded panty and he suddenly seemed to have hips and a girlish derriere. He protested when she applied the breast forms but she pooh-poohed him and continued his disguise.

Red bra and green tights followed then the dress. Finally the boots, he protested again but amazingly he managed to walk reasonably well in the three inch heels. Before he could recover, she marched him up via the service lift to the salon where Cheryl changed his hair cut and dramatically changed his appearance. With red painted nail extensions and pierced ears, Julian became Julie-Ann, as her badge proclaimed. After the makeup, he was simply shocked—before him stood a relatively pretty young woman.

A senior elf called Lottie, took the new girl, under her wing and by tea time, Julie-Ann, was acting like a veteran elf, escorting excited children to meet Santa and then returning them plus Christmas present to their parents. The most demanding thing was constantly smiling when the occasional obnoxious child deserved a scowl before being clipped around the ear. Unfortunately, that wasn’t allowed.

“Have you done this before, Julie?” asked Lottie during their afternoon break.

“Uh, no, I’m still in school.”

“Oh, which one?”

As she’d just used the ladies rest room and refreshed her lipstick as Amanda had shown her, Julie-Ann, suddenly thought telling the truth could be inviting exposure, so she gave the name of one a schoolfriend’s sister attended, “Um, Hatherley Girls’ School.”

“Where’s that?”

“Yorkshire, near York.”

“That’s a long way to go.”

“I’m a boarder, my parents work for the Foreign Office. I’m staying with my aunt for Christmas.”

“Ah, well you’re amongst friends here, we’ll look after you, oh and the boss gives a bonus to the best elf—usually the one he fancies the most—and you girl are in with a definite chance.”

Julie-Ann blushed and looked at the floor, “But I...”

“Don’t worry, girl, all you have to do is flirt with him, his wife would kill him if he went any further. So just smile a lot at him and be your normal self—he’ll love you, it’s our turn to win this year, last year Anita’s team got it, so I’m looking to you to win it for us this year. C’mon, back to the coal face, and Santa bleedin’ Claus.”

At seven o’clock, Julie-Ann went to leave Santa’s Grotto, having run the vacuum cleaner around after the man who sorted the reindeer, led them both out to their night quarters and cleaned out the stall in the shop. She was busy hoovering up the stray bits of straw when someone walked up behind her.

“So it’s true, then?” said a familiar voice.

“Um—Auntie Maud—um.”

“I think I shall enjoy having my niece for Christmas, I thought you might enjoy a lift home.”

“I—er—have to change.”

“Yes, Amanda arranged some clean clothes for you, here.” She handed a bag of clothing to Julie-Ann, who trotted off despite her heels to the changing room. She was astonished to see the clothes were girl’s ones, but seeing as her other stuff was missing, she slipped into the toilet cubicle and put them on; emerging ten minutes later in a black top and skirt, tights and knee boots, with a similar heel to the elf ones.

Waiting outside was Auntie Maud who held up a coat for her to wear and a small handbag on a shoulder strap. “I’ve got your other stuff in the car.”

“Thanks.”

During the drive back to Lordie Maudie’s house, Julie-Ann confessed she’d enjoyed the day as a huge joke, but that the others had been really good about it, even pretending she could win a prize as best elf-girl. She was surprised to still be wearing a skirt now.

“You’re on elf duty until you finish for Christmas, and when you go back on Boxing Day, you’ll be on the shop floor helping the sales staff.”

“Yeah, as a boy.”

“Uh—I doubt it, that’s your new uniform you’re wearing now. When Amanda called me and said you were filling in for one of her girls, I was bit surprised but she said you were doing fine but could probably use a few things to wear besides a silly elf outfit, so I let her pick a few things as she knew your size better than I did. I think she’s done quite a good job, don’t you?”

“But I...”

“You can thank her tomorrow, now what lovely things can I buy my niece for Christmas...”

Goose and cooked ran through Julian’s mind, he hoped the glue on the breast things would dissolve by the time he went back to school, and he’d need a new haircut—oh boy.