Stocking Stuffers

by Sara James

  Her smile lit her whole face up. “Thank you! Merry Christmas.” Her face froze as soon as she said the words. She’d probably been instructed by her manager to avoid saying it. Not all of the company’s customers would be Christian.

  “Merry Christmas to you too,” he said, enunciating the words with care, adding a wide smile for emphasis. He wanted her to know he was fine with the holiday greeting.

  She breathed a sigh of relief and turned to leave. He closed the door as abruptly as he could without slamming it. He didn’t dare to think about watching her walk away, let alone do it.

  He walked the pizza into the kitchen with a low moan of mixed hunger and pain. He wanted to eat, but first, he had to get out of the ace bandages and the corset. They felt like a giant fist was crushing his ribs and internal organs.

  Retreating to the bedroom, he took off the suit’s jacket, throwing it on the bed. His reflection in the full-length mirror near the foot of his bed stole his attention. Without the shapeless jacket to hide his figure, it was obvious that his body was no longer the same. His hips were as wide as his narrow shoulders now. Perhaps even a bit wider. In between, his torso was a fraction of what it had been. The dress shirt hung off of him. Freed of the suit jacket, the sleeves were almost down to his fingertips. It took him a moment to account for that. It wasn’t that his arms were shorter. The shoulders of the shirt were meant for a man’s broad shoulders, not the narrower ones he now had. The extra length in the sleeve was because the shoulder seams of the shirt were running down his arms.

  One more thing for him to be annoyed about. He unbuttoned the dress shirt and took it off. He threw it on the bed with the suit jacket. Another unpleasant surprise was waiting for him. “Shit,” he spat, angered by his reflection. That morning, his t-shirt had been snug. Now it seemed several sizes too large for him. If he could ignore his thick neck, face and muscular arms, he looked too effeminate now to make a believable man. “Shit,” he repeated with more emphasis. He picked at the thin fabric, trying to convince himself it wasn’t as loose at it seemed and failing.

  About the last thing he wanted to do was see how bad the situation was, but he had to. The corset felt like it was going to cut him in half. He only stalled long enough to take off his socks and pants. His legs were still as female, hairless and sexy as he remembered, so that at least was no shock. The downside of that was that the lower edge of the t-shirt didn’t quite hide the smooth, flat contours where his underwear covered his female genitalia.

  That was all the motive he needed to stop procrastinating. He pulled the t-shirt off over his head before checking out his reflection.

  “Awww, fuck.” The profanity was reflexive. His already wide hips seemed even more pronounced beneath the narrow column of his torso. The red satin of the corset was trimmed top and bottom with white faux-fur. The cups were empty but were large enough to make him worry about how they would make him look once they were filled.

  He had to get it off! The closure at the front of the corset was obvious, but the laces were so tight that he couldn’t unfasten it. It was similar to a bra’s hook and eye. Metal tabs fitted over matching posts. All he had to do was loosen it a little and he should be able to take the damn thing off with ease. Reaching behind his back, he could feel the laces, but not the ties for them. He turned his back to the mirror and looked back over one shoulder. He groaned and closed his eyes, wishing he could erase the memory of what he’d seen. It was a familiar sight. He’d seen it many, many times in magazines and on the internet. All he’d seen was a woman’s round, broad, attractive ass. Such a simple thing, made complex by that fact that it was his ass.

  The air in his lungs seemed to burn with the heat of his shame and embarrassment. He was glad he was the only one that could see what his body looked like now. Taking several deep, slow breaths, he buttressed his emotional resolve and tried again.

  He opened his eyes and turned his head to confront his reflection. It only took a few moments of focus to see that the laces were tied in a bow near the narrowest part of his waist. The ends were tucked inside the laces to help keep them flat. Knowing where they were made untying the knots much simpler. He only had to use the mirror once or twice more to help check his progress before he was able to undo them. With a minute or two more of pulling the laces loose, the corset had enough slack to unfasten the metal hooks at the front, letting the whole thing fall free and drop to the floor.

  “Thank God,” he said, taking a deep breath for what felt like the first time in days. He kept waiting for his waist to expand like a dry sponge soaking up water, but it didn’t. While he felt much more comfortable, the shape of his waist did not change at all. It was still far narrower than it had been that morning, curving inward before ballooning out to meet his hips. All traces of flab were gone, replaced by fat-free, smooth, firm abs. Even the hair on his belly was gone.

  Still confined by the ace bandages binding his chest, he ripped the Velcro end free, unwinding the wide, elastic band of fabric. Even before he began, the breasts they were meant to confine seemed bigger. It occurred to him that they might still be the same size, only seeming bigger in proportion to his much smaller torso. That thought didn’t comfort him. Either way, the effect was the same. Were before they were simply large, those firm, prominent mounds now dominated his chest. By the time the bandages fell free, there was no doubt that he now had an hourglass figure. The newly hairless skin of his torso was nothing but a momentary afterthought compared to his new, dramatic curves.

  He stood there, looking at his reflection. It was mesmerizing to see his muscular arms, thick neck and familiar face attached to such a ripe, female body. It was a little like one of those joke photo stands in an amusement park. You put your head in the hole to make it look like your head was on the body of a muscle man, or a mermaid, or a princess, or a prince, or a woman in a bikini, or a cartoon character. Only this was no joke. It was all too real. His body was both female and well proportioned, dressed only in a pair of men’s underwear.

  He was torn between panic and fatigue. After almost ten minutes of staring, his stomach rumbled. He was still as hungry as he’d been before he began to undress. He was tired of feeling freaked out. He hadn’t slept well for two night in a row. Having breasts had made the foreign nature of his own body even more distracting, compensating for the added exhaustion. He’d been on edge all day. The fear of being discovered had been constant. It was bleeding him dry feeling so wound up for so long. Maybe it was adrenaline fatigue.

  With a deep breath, he did his best to let it go.

  He put the t-shirt back on, ignoring the way his large, firm breasts made it tent out, punctuated by the twin bumps of his firm nipples. Picking up his flannel pants, he stepped into them on his way to the kitchen. He got out a plate and filled it with two slices of pizza. He opened up his laptop and let it start up while he got out a soda to drink. By the time he had himself situated at the kitchen table, his browser was open and he was ready to have some fun and relax. All he wanted to do right then was forget about his situation.

  He had a number of favorite sites he normally visited after work. Comics, news, forums, entertainment gossip, an auction site and some free access sites he liked to browse for their adult content. He liked to visit them in a fixed order, from G rated to XXX. Opening the folder where he kept his list of sites he visited daily, he moved the cursor to hover over the first link.

  He hesitated.

  With a sigh of self-loathing, he opened his search engine of choice instead. He typed “32F” into the search field and hit “Enter.” The first result was an ad for a website that sold lingerie, including bras in a wide variety of non-standard sizes. The second was for a famous actress that was very attractive and well known for her sexy, near ideal body. The linked article revealed that her bra size was 32F. He was surprised. While her breasts were impressive, he would have guessed she was a DD at most. The third result was a link to a question and answer public forum. The question was askin
g for opinions on how people felt about 32F as a bra size. Was it too big? Should her “friend” be ashamed of being so large? The consensus seemed to be that her bra size was nothing to be embarrassed about, with reassurances that her size wasn’t extreme, but that most women in the USA were wearing the wrong size bra. That led him to do a search for information on finding the right bra size, which led to sites that talked about the inverse relationship of band size to cup size when buying a bra. For example, a woman wearing a 36B bra with a band that was too loose should switch to a 34C, or a 32D for a better fit.

  The pizza was half gone before he realized he’d been surfing the internet, learning all he could about the proper way to size and fit a bra for more than an hour. His soda was almost empty too. Stretching first, he drank the last of his soda and shut down his computer. Putting the rest of the pizza in the fridge, he got out another bottle of soda, threw away his plate and moved to the living room to watch TV.

  He stopped dead in the middle of the living room. The plastic soda bottle slipped out of his grip and rolled to the side. He started to pant, near panic, the weight of his large, heavy breasts as they rose and fell feeding his building hysteria. The tips of them even began to burn and tingle as the feeling built within him.

  There were two more presents under the tree.

  “Why?” he challenged the empty room. “Is this about the pizza delivery girl? I barely looked at her!” His only answer was silence. “I didn’t leer at her. I swear! There was nothing sexual about it at all. At all! Or … is this about what I was doing on the internet? That wasn’t sexual either! I was just trying to understand what’s happening to my body. It made me feel better to think that you didn’t saddle me with humongous boobs just because of what the tag in the bra said. Can’t you understand that? Isn’t it a good thing that I know more about bra sizes? That I can better understand the challenges women go through to find a bra that fits right?”

  He looked at the phone, hoping it would ring so he could beg Holly to reconsider. It didn’t. He looked at the door, hoping that she would knock. And then the doorway leading to the kitchen, in case she had found a way to let herself in already.

  His bladder felt loose, so he went to the bathroom. He’d avoided going most of the day, dreading to use the stall in the men’s room and risk discovery. Even so, he had to go during his lunch break. In the time since, his bladder had refilled to near bursting. He did his business, embarrassed to have to sit, cleaned himself up and went back to the living room.

  The presents were still there waiting for him. His eyes began to leak tears. He pressed his lips together, refusing to sob like a child. “Fine,” he sulked, kneeling down on the floor in front of the tree. He kept his knees together as he sat down with his legs to one side, not wanting to spread his legs to sit cross-legged. “Let’s get this over with.”

  He retrieved the first present and tore it open. It was a pair of white opera gloves. They were long enough to cover his arms from finger tips to armpit. The card that came with it showed a busty woman in a Santa bikini, red with white fur lining the cleavage. A man was holding her from behind. His muscular, bare arms cradled her slender, non-muscular crossed arms. Even as tiny as her biceps were, they were more than enough to press her large breasts together and create a deep valley of cleavage. Inside the card was another message:

  If you want to fill

  A strong man with alarm

  Just show him a girl

  With more muscular arms.

  More delicate arms

  Are far more attractive.

  They lend women charm

  And hold men’s hearts captive.

  - Holly Day, Elf

  He waited for the gloves to burst into glimmers of light and reform on his arms. When that didn’t happen, he grunted and switched to the second package. Inside the second package was a wig with long, straight hair that matched his natural color and a small bottle that contained a flesh colored liquid. The label on the bottle said it was concealer. The card showed the back of a woman’s head, with long hair that fell to the small of her back. She was wearing a Santa hat. The inside read:

  I sure hate to burst

  Your holiday bubble

  But it’s time to lose

  All that rough, prickly stubble.

  And while we are on

  The subject of hair

  It’s time for your locks

  To grow down to there.

  - Holly Day, Elf

  He looked at the packages and their contents. He could guess the outcome: skinny arms, long hair and a baby smooth, hair-free face. Once they had their way with him, the only thing he would have left would be his facial features. How could he go to work looking like that? There was no way he could conceal his figure and get away with it. No suit was that baggy.

  The presents, remorseless, turned into flecks of light and covered his face and head like a hood, as well as his arms. It blinded him for several seconds.

  When it was over, he was – as predicted – wearing the opera gloves and the wig. He stripped off the white opera gloves first. He used his fingers to explore the skin of his face. His always-present stubble was gone from his neck, jaw and upper lip. His fingertips came back stained by flesh-colored makeup. He knew it didn’t matter. Once he washed his face, it would still be smooth, hairless and blemish free. Reaching up, he pulled off the wig. It freed his thick mane of transformed hair, replacing the illusion of long hair with the reality of long hair. He ran his fingers through his new, longer tresses, finger combing it. It wasn’t as long as on the card that had come with the wig, but it would still fall well below his shoulder blades.

  He put the wig and still full bottle of concealer back in their box along with the white opera gloves. He sighed, holding his arms up again to examine them. What else could he do? There was no way to change them back. They were now slender and feminine with almost no bulk and little tone. His transformed biceps looked too thin to pick up anything heavier than a martini glass without straining. Like his face and body, they were hairless too. His longish fingernails were painted with a candy cane stripe that matched the delivery girl’s manicure. That removed any remaining doubt about the reason for these additional transformations.

  He still had to go to work the next day, which was Christmas Eve. Even worse, he was supposed to drive home after work to be with his family for Christmas. How could he do that when the only part of him that still looked even a little bit like him was his face?

  If he thought he’d been miserable getting ready for work on Monday morning, Tuesday was far, far worse.

  He’d decided on a two step method for concealing his transformation. The first step was to undo the loss of mass in his torso with padding. Using a combination of towels and duct tape to add bulk to his midriff and ace bandages to flatten his chest, his torso looked almost normal once he put on a shirt and sweater. Any oddness to his shape could be blamed on the thick sweater. He even put a rolled up sock in his underwear to emulate his normal bulge.

  His hips and rear end were a different matter. There was no way to make them smaller overnight. Not daring to use the suit jacket to hide their shape again, he had to pick his longest sweater, trusting that no one could notice his butt if he stayed sitting at his desk all day. While he didn’t normally eat lunch out of the office, Christmas Eve would provide a good excuse to put his overcoat on and leave the office for a meal. No one at the office could look at him if he ordered at a drive-thru and ate in his car to keep his rear end hidden.

  His hair and nails posed a similar problem. He couldn’t cut his hair. When he tried, it simply regrew in an instant. It had taken five tries and a very large mess to clean up before he’d given up on that tactic. As for his nails, he was able to remove the polish using some remover he’d bought to clean up a superglue accident earlier in the year. He’d bought three bottles and still had most of two left over. That made taking the nail polish off easy. He had less success cutting his nails short. Like
his hair, if he cut them off, they immediately regrew. After some thought, he decided to put his hair up and wear a Santa hat to work. As long as no one made him take it off, he could hide his hair. With his nails, they were longer than he normally wore them, but not super long. At least they weren’t as obvious as his other changes.

  So, disguise complete, the plan was for towels held on by duct tape to pad his waist, ace bandages to flatten his chest, a long, baggy sweater coupled with social avoidance to conceal his expanded backside and hide his shape, socks to fill out his groin, loose pants, a Santa hat to hide his long hair and pure hope that no one noticed his longer nails.

  At least, that had been the plan. Putting the plan into action made his nerves feel like they’d been shredded by a cheese grater. Every glance from a coworker made him sweat with panic that everyone could see right through his camouflage. The Santa hat got several comments on the short walk from his car to his desk. He hadn’t planned on it drawing as much attention as it did.

  Screw coffee, he thought to himself. I’m not going anywhere near the break room today. He settled in at his desk, glad Jenna wasn’t there to notice the awkward moment between him taking off his coat and sitting down. His coworkers were milling around, chatting and laughing about their plans for the holiday. Several of them stopped by his desk to compliment his hat. The walls of his cubicle were too low to hide it. He did his best to be cheerful and banter with everyone that stopped by without encouraging anyone to linger.

  Eight o’clock came without any of the phones ringing. That wasn’t too unusual during the slow season, but it gave people a chance to stand up, talking over cubicle walls and continuing to socialize with their neighbors. Everyone seemed to be chatty except for Max. He tried to look busy, like he was reading something online when all he was doing was searching the internet with terms like, “magic sex change,” “real Christmas elves” and “breaking spells.”