"Merry Christmas!"
The last time she checked in on Tim, Mindy had been relieved to hear that his next big idea for the upcoming weekend was a lot less ambitious - and didn't require her to drive around with him on the roof, either. She had to wonder if maybe, just maybe, he was starting to calm down a little bit. When she picked him up from the airport, he'd seemed more subdued than he had been before. But in the brief time she'd gotten to know Tim, she never could tell what he was thinking. The only thing she could predict was that he was unpredictable. Still, when she heard that he wanted to go door-to-door Christmas caroling - and especially when she realized they wouldn't even have to leave the apartment building to do it - she was more than happy to humor him on this one.
That being said, she couldn't hold herself back from questioning the idea just a little before they started canvassing the hallway. "How many people do you think will actually open up?", she had asked while he was staring into the floor-length mirror, getting the last of his ornaments in order. "I mean, in this part of town, you don't see a whole lot of big Christmas parties. Most people are probably leaving this weekend to fly back to their parents' places..."
Tim stopped what he was doing - Mindy thought he maybe even flinched - and turned to look at her. For a moment, the look on his cartoony face was serious, but then he snapped right back into the cheerful demeanor he'd adopted for the past month. (Mindy could never tell how much of that was real or if it was all forced.) "Well...", he said, playfully drawing out the L as he reached for the next word. "I'm still here, and you're still here. And I'm pretty sure Callie's not going anywhere this week. So that makes at least three of us. And I have a feeling there are probably more who are in the same boat, who could use a pick-me-up right about now. That's going to be the fun of it! We'll get to meet some of our neighbors for the first time, and share the holiday with the ones who don't have anyone else to share it with!"
Okay, now he was definitely rolling into that entertainer mode. When he fully embraced that Christmassy cheer or whatever it was, Mindy always found it freaky to watch, like the host of some old TV show for kids had taken over his tree-body and started hamming it up for the non-existent cameras. She wasn't going to burst his bubble by acknowledging what happened the last time she went door-to-door, meeting some of her neighbors for the first time, and trying to get them to partake in a holiday spirit that they were otherwise going to ignore. But then again, she suspected, Tim probably now believed that getting invited to that Halloween party was the best thing that had ever happened to him. Maybe he was trying to get something similar out of this experience. But Mindy wasn't too worried about the idea of intentionally tempting fate. After all, you only find out magic is real, by having it inflicted on you and totally upending your entire life, once.
Tim turned out to be wrong about one thing, though, just as they were preparing to get started. The first door they went up to was Callie's, to offer her a polite invitation to take part in the caroling (which she would probably turn down), and more importantly to check in on her. She was leaving her apartment less and less these days, whether to help out with Tim's arrangements or anything else, so it seemed like a safe bet that they would find her here in the middle of a lazy Saturday evening. But Tim knocked on her door - with a surprising force, given that it was just pine needles he was beating against the wood - and there was no answer. The two of them waited for a minute. Mindy also tried knocking, as though it was the person doing it that was the problem. Nothing.
Mindy shrugged and decided to take it as a good sign. Maybe Callie had finally managed to convince herself it was safe to go visit her parents after all. Or maybe she was just out running errands. Either way, she wasn't penned up in her room like it was a cage. They waited a little longer, just in case, and then moved on to the next door.
Most of the apartments, as Mindy could have guessed, were empty tonight - or, at least, no one came to the door when they heard a knock. It was hard to tell for sure. The building certainly wasn't totally empty - when she stopped and listened carefully, she could hear faint noises coming through the walls. And as those sounds seemed to get closer and louder when the two of them went down the hallway, it was a sure sign that they were getting closer and closer to finding one of the few people who had stayed behind this Christmas.
And on that front, Tim was exactly right. They did, in fact, discover neighbors they'd never met before, who were stuck in exactly the same boat as they were. The first door that actually opened when they knocked turned out to belong to a sheep-woman who was surprised but delighted to have visitors. She quickly invited them in for a fresh hot chocolate (although only Mindy could actually drink it), and without any prompting started to tell them all about how she was getting by with her changes - clearly just happy to have someone to talk to.
"I always loved knitting beforehand," she said, in a sugary-sweet voice which made it clear that, despite now being covered from head to toe in a fleece as white as snow, she had been Black before. "So when this happened, the very first thing I thought was, I could make good use of this stuff. So I started making my own sweaters, from scratch, and selling them online. People write back to me and say, 'wow, this is really soft and comfortable. Where do you get such high-quality wool?' I figure it's probably best not to tell them. But it's hard work, you know? I even have to watch my diet to make sure it grows out right..."
As she went on and on, Mindy and Tim both realized at about the same time that the woman wasn't wearing anything on top of that wool. They shared a look and silently agreed to excuse themselves as quickly and politely as possible. To be fair, her wool covered up every one of her curves far better than it would if it was made into a tacky Christmas sweater. And it had to be awfully warm, too. It wasn't hard to imagine why she would've wanted to take her clothes off on Halloween night. Still, it was weird to think that she was casually walking around naked. Even Tim had to insist on covering himself up with those ornaments before he went out.
"Well, it was great talking to you, Mrs. Perec," Mindy said as she ushered herself and Tim back toward the door, trying not to seem too hasty in the process. "Hopefully it won't be too much longer before you can get reverted."
"Oh, don't worry about me. It's not so ba-a-a-ad." She moved to clear her throat. "And please, call me Georgia." She said her goodbyes, and when she finally closed the door, Tim and Mindy could make eye contact with a lot less subtlety, there in the relative seclusion of the hallway.
"I guess we can call that a success, right?", Tim said sheepishly - no pun intended. He wasn't sure what to make of the look that Mindy was fixing him with as they slowly shuffled toward the next door in the hall. Without him even having to think about it, a few of the branches on his backside started to shake, as if they were trying to rub the back of his nonexistent neck.
Mindy couldn't deny that, if nothing else, it was interesting to see how other people had ended up. She suspected that the only people who were left in the building a few days before Christmas were the ones who had been changed like them, so knocking on doors to see who would answer was like going through an Advent calendar - except there were people going through the most difficult periods of their lives instead of pieces of chocolate. And who knows, maybe one of those people would be a piece of chocolate! She figured that the sort of uncomfortable awkwardness they'd just escaped from was the best possible outcome from trying to strike up conversations with these people, and guessed that it could probably go pretty far downhill from there. But she didn't want to say any of this out loud to Tim. She forced a smile, then forced herself to try and look like she wasn't forcing it, and said, "Yeah, that's a success. One down, however many more you want to do left to go."
She knew he wanted to do as many as it was physically possible to do. When they'd knocked on every door in the building, she would probably have to convince him not to walk over to the apartments across the street and keep going. But she would deal with that when she had to. A part of her wanted to believe that Tim was right when he said this was just what the world needed. Maybe that was the only reason she'd agreed to go caroling with him in the first place - to find out if she could see things the way he could. Well, it wasn't working on her yet, but maybe it would start to rub off on her... eventually.
A few more doors down, and they had their next "success", so to speak. Immediately after knocking, they could hear a deep rumbling noise, and feel it reverberating through the floor. It was the sound of heavy furniture being abruptly rearranged. Mindy had to wonder what on earth was going on in there before the door popped open and answered her question. The face that greeted them was that of an ordinary human man, except that it nearly filled the entire doorframe. The man Tim was now saying "merry Christmas" to, he had to be at least twenty feet tall - or at least he would have been, if he had any hope of trying to stand up straight. Instead, he was lying flat on his stomach, and the top of his gigantic head still came close to grazing the ceiling.
Mindy glanced behind the giant face in the doorway and saw the rest of his body, contorted into a form that made even his relatively spacious apartment look like a cramped crawlspace. And of course, understandably enough, he was also completely naked. Are Callie and I the only ones left in this damn building who can still put some actual clothes on?, she thought, blushing a slightly darker shade of green. She was relieved, at the very least, to notice that a couch way back in the living room was perfectly placed to block any view of the space between his legs. Although the shape and placement of that couch left some uncomfortable ideas to the imagination, namely that whatever lay behind it was probably not that much smaller than the couch itself...
The man's magnified facial expression was one of total confusion when he first laid eyes on Tim, but it softened into a smile when he looked over at Mindy. And she, in turn, had her attention snap back to where it belonged when she saw that huge grin forming in her peripheral vision. "I'm so glad you're here," he said with a palpable sense of relief. "I thought it was gonna be another week still before you could come out here, but I guess you got my messages while I could still send them. Let's just say I could really use a witch right now..."
Realizing that she had a misunderstanding on her hands, Mindy stammered out a reply. "Oh, uh, no, I'm not actually... trained to, uh... I just..." But before she could attempt to finish her sentence, Tim stepped in. "We're just here to spread some holiday cheer before the end of the year." He giggled. "Hey, that rhymed!" Mindy looked over at him in disbelief. He really was starting to treat this like it was a TV show. Not that she had known him well - or at all - before he was changed, but he'd seemed so... quiet and reserved on Halloween. Was this sudden burst of personality always there within him, waiting for some unlikely chance to be let out, or was it the magic that had gotten into him? She didn't dare to ask, and she figured he wouldn't have an answer if she did.
The optimism fell from the giant man's face. "Oh." He looked like he was considering closing the door right back up again, but Mindy interrupted him before he could reach for it. She knew it was a sensitive question, as it would be for anybody that was changed, but she couldn't resist asking. "What happened to you? Or, I mean, uh, how did you end up...?"
The man sighed deeply, letting a jet of hot breath escape into the hallway and assault Mindy's nostrils. He must have had tuna for lunch. "Okay, so, let me explain. On Halloween, I was dressed up as this character from my favorite anime. I won't bore you with the details, but the important part is, this guy needs to bathe in the waters of a sacred spring every day, or else he'll grow three inches taller. And there's a lot of hijinks that ensue when he can't get to it in time - you get the idea. Anyway, when I got home from that costume party, I looked in the mirror and my face still looked totally normal, so I thought I was safe. Then, when I woke up the next morning, the seams were popping off of my clothes. I guess I still ended up with the same curse even if I didn't become the character himself."
He was on a roll now. "Of course, the first thing I thought was, this is fine, I just need to fly to Japan real quick and find that mountain with the spring. But it doesn't really exist. Good thing I looked that up before I dropped all that money on the non-refundable plane tickets, right? So then, when I started gaining another three inches every day, I wasn't sure what to do. I thought, this is just like what happens in Episode 46, where he can't go to the spring for a while and things start to get crazy. But even that only lasted for like two weeks. I didn't realize it was gonna take this long to get an appointment with the restoration people..."
As he spoke, his broad chest rose and fell and pressed tightly against the wall, and the floor underneath them all gave a sickening creak when he shifted slightly in position. Mindy cringed at the sound. "Why did you stay in here?", she asked.
"Well, I could see that this was gonna be a big problem if I stayed here, but I didn't have anywhere else to go. I guess it would have been safer for me to just stay outside, and I'm sure the cops would have had a hell of a time trying to pick me up for vagrancy. Oh, and indecent exposure. But to go out like this in the dead of winter when I have nothing I could possibly wear? Forget it. Still, though, ever since I got too big to squeeze my way out the door, I keep wondering if I made the right decision. Maybe there was somewhere else I could've gone, but it's a little late for that now..."
Mindy was pretty sure the costume party he was talking about was not hers, but she still felt a compulsion to do something - the same compulsion that had motivated her to keep helping Tim out. She needed to do a better job keeping that feeling in check, she thought. It was going to get her in some real trouble someday. "How are you holding up?", she asked, in a tone that came out as almost motherly.
"I think I'm doing all right under the circumstances," he replied. "Bored as hell, though, ever since I broke my TV by leaning on it a little too hard. And the food delivery bills I've been racking up lately are something else. I don't think that stimulus check we all got is gonna cover it, and I still feel my stomach growling all the time. But hey, I only have a week left to go before this is all over with." He paused for a second, thinking. "Today's the 23rd, right?"
"It's the 21st," Tim offered, the tone in his voice still somehow upbeat.
"Oh." The man looked crestfallen. "I guess it's actually, uh... nine more days, then. Well, I think I can make a few more feet of room in here if I just..." He had a strained expression, and there was the sound of something clattering to the floor as he rumbled into a new position. "There. See, I'm holding up okay. I just hope the building can do the same."
When Mindy and Tim eventually said their goodbyes and walked on further down the hallway, something still didn't sit right with her. "This whole idea of yours is about helping people, right?"
Tim's confused expression made Mindy wonder if his idea of "helping people" started and ended at giving them a friendly face to talk to. "Do you think there's anything we can do?"
"Well, I don't know if there's anything you can do," Mindy huffed, "but I know what I'm going to do. I'm gonna go to the local restoration office first thing tomorrow and try to convince them they've got an urgent case to deal with. Wait, I guess they're probably not open tomorrow. I'll go there first thing Monday. I've heard they really don't like to make house calls, they want to get people together into small groups so they can get as many changes done as quickly as possible. Maybe that's the holdup. But somebody's got to do something to help him soon, or we're all going to be shivering in the cold while we climb out of the rubble that used to be our building..."
The next door that they knocked on, there was no response. That was what they'd grown to expect from most of these apartments, and Mindy was counting off the seconds as they waited. But just when they were about to give up and move on to the next, there was the sound of something skittering coming from behind the door. Then a small, high-pitched voice: "Wait, wait, wait! Gimme a second, I just need to... ugh... there we go! And..."
The door swung open on its hinges, revealing an empty apartment behind - and a tiny squirrel, dangling by its front paws from the doorknob as it rode the momentum outward. "Sorry for the wait!", the squirrel cried out as it scrambled with its claws against the wood grain, trying to get a better foothold. "I usually leave it unlocked in case I can't hear the buzzer. Now what did you- whoa..." In the squirrel's black, beady eyes, Mindy could see shiny ornaments reflected as it stared directly at Tim's body. The person inside the squirrel seemed to lose all control at the sight, and leapt from the doorknob straight onto a branch. Mindy watched in shock and horror as it ran straight up through the interior of Tim's body. But he just giggled at the sensation. "That tickles!"
If this had been a TV show, Mindy thought, this would be the part where she stared directly at the camera with heavy-lidded eyes.