After a few weeks of living in the North Pole, dining on Christmas cuisine day after day, absorbing the quirks of elvish culture with each conversation, and even altering his wardrobe to their military-like Santa Claus fashion, Peter began to change internally. Every day he felt himself developing new and exciting fetishes— like legs! He had never been attracted to legs before. What even were they but a human drumstick wrapped in denim? After all, Peter himself had legs— long, girly legs— and how ridiculous would it be if every time he took a shower he got a stiffy while washing his own scrawny legs? But the elves had awakened a new appreciation for these slender and muscular appendages.
When every girl about him strut about, sat down, and reclined crossed-legged in a skirt, he developed a lustful affinity for their knobby knees, their curvy calves, and their thin thighs. Oh the male gaze was strong with Peter! And there’s nothing wrong with that! All the best artists practiced the male gaze! Gustave Doré, Alphonse Mucha, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Botticelli, John William Waterhouse— all horrible male gazers! So many erotic paintings of pale girls taking baths are now prized and displayed at the Louvre behind bullet proof glass! Picasso painted so many boobs he would be selling prints off OnlyFans if he were alive today— and Van Gogh had a weird, erotic affinity for cypress tress! The lewdest and most feminine of trees. There are far worse things in the world than the male gaze that are more deserving of your ire, like that feminist who painted nothing but vaginas her entire career, or whoever invented The Smurfs.
Every night since his first encounter with the little mouse girl Peter left some food for her at the hole in his bedroom wall. He would sit on his bed and wait for her arrival late into the night. When he changed clothes he would also peek back to see if the mousey voyeur would come to watch him strip. Sometimes he would nod off with the candles still lit and the fireplace crackling. Sometimes he would snuff out the lights in hope that she would come out into the darkness. But there was no luck. When he awoke in the dark of the morning, usually by the aide of the French maid elf, the food he placed there would be gone, but there would be no trace of the mouse girl.
Tucked in his bed, wrapped under the blanket from the cold, Peter hugged a pillow imagining it was Santa Claus, her slender body in his clutches, and snoozed the night away. Not a creature at that hour stirred— except for the mice. From the hole in the wall a gang of darkly dressed mouse girls crept into Peter’s bedroom with the stealth and feathery footsteps of a band of ballerinas. But these mouse-eared, ninja-like ballerinas were not here for dancing, they were here for mischief! When girls get together late at night, with nary a boy in sight, it can only lead to no good.
The nameless mouse girl— perhaps you remember her from way back in chapter eight— of course! Who could forget? The one whom Peter spoke to and gifted the leg of ham was there, directing the others. They scurried up the bedsheets and climbed up the pillow to Peter’s face. And while Peter may be sort of, kind of, possibly handsome when viewed from the right angle, and if the lights were dim enough, there was nothing handsome about a human from a mouse’s point of view. Every nostril hair, every eye booger, every pore, and tiny blemish is magnified in horrific 8K detail.
At the stroke of midnight, these bed chamber invaders glitter bombed Peter’s face with a sparkling, twinkling purple dust. The magical jingle of chimes filled the air, and once settled on his face Peter began to shrink, and shrink, and shrink, until he too was the size of a mouse. The bed became an ocean of fabric, the pillow a mountain of softness, and the window, only a few steps away, receded further and further into the distance.
The mouse girls seized Peter by his ankles and dragged him to the edge of the bed. They dangled him head first over the precipice and pulled taut the bed sheet into a slide of fabric. How Peter remained asleep during all this pulling, carrying, dragging, and hanging, is as much a mystery to myself as it is to you. But once he landed on the hard wooden floor below he woke to the sight of the mice girls capturing him. So surprised was he to see the mouse girl again that he did not immediately notice that they had grown in size, or that he himself had shrunk. It was only after Peter looked up at the leviathan sized bed that he realized some sort of witchcraft had transpired in his sleep.
“Hello Peter,” the mouse girl said. Her voice was no longer falsetto or diminutive, but still rather mouse-like compared to most human girls, who usually have the voice of a goose or duck.
“Hello… Mouse Girl… who won’t tell me her name.”
The other mice girls scowled at Peter as if they wanted to rip him limb from limb. Their tails were tense with boiling hatred. Black ears low against their black hair. He was unsure why they seemed so upset at him, considering he was just now meeting them. It was also shocking, since so many girls in the North Pole seemed to be instantly smitten with him. What was wrong with these girls?
“You’re coming with us. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
“Tell me your name and I’ll come with you,” Peter said.
“Okay, we’re doing it the hard way.”
The mouse girls lunged at him, clutching his every limb, stretching out his pajamas, and despite being mice they were surprisingly strong. During the literal man-handling Peter wore a huge dumb grin on his face. Oh to be taken prisoner by a group of adorable girls in cocktail dresses. And they were adorable. Not sexy or gorgeous, but the very embodiment of cuteness— cute little mouse ears, princess-like hair styles, elf-like noses, flat chests all around. It also removed any sense of fear from the situation. Oh no! I sure hope these little mouse girls don’t enslave me to be their boyfriend! Peter never knew that he desired this sort of wanton feminine aggression until now. He playfully yanked his arm away, and the girls only grasped harder with their little fingers.
“Seriously, what do you have against telling me your name? It’s not a secret is it?”
“Shut up.”
They traveled into the space between the walls, the dusty and dark, tiny corridors perfectly sized for mice, but narrower than a Pringles can for humans. Now shrunken, the ceiling vaulted up, impossibly high, as if going on forever. Dust balls appeared to Peter like grey, fluffy tumbleweeds, and iron nails that held the architecture together were like water pipes tapering in sharp points. There were all sorts of oddities to be found back here: towering lost coins, bits of yarn like colossal pythons, a tattered playing card the size of a shed.
One of Peter’s guards had only a single pale leg descending from her dark skirt. She hobbled about with a crutch tucked under one arm, and Peter felt his soul enkindled with sorrow for this Tiny Timéa.
“How did you lose your leg?” he asked.
“Mouse Vietnam.”
“Seriously?”
“No, you idiot. I lost it in a fucking mouse trap.” She turned to her friend and asked, “Where did you find this dumbass?”
They descended mouse-sized stairs through vast pits of darkness, where a misstep would send Peter tumbling endlessly into the deepest subterranean pits of the workshop. He was completely lost in this mousey shadow-realm. At times he thought he heard sounds of dishes being scrubbed in the kitchen, and he wondered if they were above or beside it. Other times he heard the voices of elves coming through the walls.
On a straightaway course, the air grew humid, and Peter could definitely hear the sound of giggling elves. He and his mouse guards passed by a crack in the wall and Peter peeped through— when what to his wondering eyes should appear but a steamy bathhouse full of bathing Christmas elves. On little stools, with backs arched and breasts lifted they shampooed their gorgeous golden hair. Bubbly clouds of soap clung to their slender and pale legs. With their hair pinned up, they rested peacefully in a massive communal bath, beads of sweat running down their flushed faces.
The sweet smells of a hundred different soaps and shampoos and the distinctive aroma of estrogen filled the air. Peter’s eyes swelled with delight at the smörgåsbord of skinny bodies with nothing, no veil between his male gaze and their perfectly flat abs. It was better than any hot tub livestream, more alluring than water nymphs beckoning Hylas to come hither, sexier than a thousand flashtoks.
He began searching among the crowd for familiar faces to which he could place a name, and then he wondered if perhaps Santa was there somewhere, in the flesh— the pale, smooth flesh— raking her fingers through her wet black hair. But Peter’s Christmas miracle was cut short, as the mouse girls took hold of his arms and yanked him away from the peephole.
“Wait!” He cried pathetically. “I have to… look… more! The… no! E-elves!”
Peter thought that perhaps he could return back to this location on his own in the future, but then he remembered he was now mouse sized, and it would be impossible to him to see the heavenly glory of the bathhouse if he were his normal size again. Nonetheless he began mapping the route in his mind, trying to remember each twist and turn and descent from his bedroom. That was until the mouse girl, the one Peter first met and fed, turned to him and scowled. Suddenly he felt embarrassed to be gawking at girls when there was such a cute one right in front of him.
Further and further they marched and shoved their way into the dominion of the mice girls, and gradually Peter spied more of them. They sat up in rafters munching on almonds the size of watermelons and sipping booze from enormous thimbles. Then he found a larger group of them gathered round a spool table, playing Texas Hold ’em with potato chips.
“I call your two sour cream and onions, and raise you a salt and vinegar.”
“Don’t eat the chips! I’m gonna win those back!”
Despite their cuteness, they reminded Peter of soldiers passing the time in the remnants of a shelled building. They hid their cards and turned to silently watch Peter march by. Other bored mouse girls, crocheting scarves and lounging about massive headphone speakers, roused from their idle activities and followed Peter and his captors.
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It became an endless M. C. Escher madhouse of mice girls. Hundreds of them came literally out of the woodwork, sliding down poles, scurrying up ladders, popping out of trap doors, hopping out of little mouse windows. From above and below and all around, they descended upon Peter and formed a gawking mouse girl parade. He thought the elves looked similar with their military uniforms and blonde hair, but the mouse girls were even more so nearly identical in their black dresses and with their black hair, black ears, and fluffy black tails.
They arrived at the monarch’s throne, a dark and dilapidated hall made opulent with bits of broken glass mosaic’d together into artificial windows that twinkled in candlelight. Icicle ornaments stolen from Christmas trees hung like chandeliers. Up above, a string of fairylights were stuffed, and a pair of mouse girls were struggling to cram a fresh pair of giant AA batteries into place. Shattered baubles were scavenged and cobbled into a throne of mirrors, and there at the apex of the seat, sat the Mouse Queen.
But if you wish to know about the Mouse Queen— and believe me, you do, then you must wait until next time.