Free Casper Gets His Wish by R. Cooper Page A

the only office that had bothered to close them was the one he was headed toward.
     
    Those in the break room between the offices didn’t bother to hide their peals of laughter at Casper’s approach, and the room itself smelled like burnt cinnamon sticks and nog despite it being the middle of the day .
     
    At that extremely irksome realization, with his cheeks hot at once again being a joke, Casper shoved open the office door without bothering to knock and marched inside.
     
    He interrupted a no doubt brilliant discussion about some arcane and obscure creative elf topic that could never be of any interest to someone like Casper, but he didn’t care. The chairs in the room were occupied by dolls and trains and sparkly plastic hoops. There wasn’t a window with a view of the grounds in this office, something that calmed him, just a little, and let him feel the faintest bit smug. But it didn’t last. It never did.
     
    In the middle of the room sat a large, heavy desk of oak, shining with polish and care. It was the only thing in the entire office that Casper could approve of. But it was littered with broken toys, drawings, and candy, of course it was, because no one in this taste-forsaken department had the sense to treat things as they deserved to be treated. Seeing it only inflamed him more.
     
    He stopped in front of the desk, in front of its owner, and began without preamble, asking the question that had been burning in his mind for so long that he felt like he was on fire.
     
    “Why is it that with all of your department’s productivity, you are the only section that never turns in their paperwork on time?” His voice was as icy as the sparkling snow outside the thick, spicy-scented walls, but he had to swallow to hide his slight shortness of breath.
     
    He was aware, though dimly, that there were others in the room. A game tester who slipped out with a squeak, as well as Miss Pinebough, Hollyberry’s executive assistant, but Casper kept his eyes on the ever-slouching figure of Dmitri Hollyberry, the head of this department and the thorn in Casper’s side for the last ten years.
     
    Hollyberry was standing—leaning—against the side of his desk, his head still angled toward his assistant although his gaze had locked onto Casper the moment he had walked in. The man had likely learned his terrible posture from humans, when he’d lived among them, earning fame and success before choosing to bring the skills he’d acquired over the centuries to the Pole. 
     
    Unlike Casper and most of the other elves that chose to work at the Pole, Dmitri Hollyberry hadn’t been raised here, though his parents had worked in Gift Development in their youth before moving south. He’d been born somewhere without snow and had lived among the humans and the other elves far too long, judging from his manners and clear lack of dress sense. Perhaps those were the reasons he simply didn’t understand the way things were, or why he didn’t care. But rules and protocol were there for a reason and everyone had their roles.
     
    Casper was an accountant, and damn good one, and the very least the man could have done was acknowledge that by handing in his expense reports and budgets on time. But no, Hollyberry had strolled into work every day for ten years wearing the stupid human clothes that he favored, in that punk style, his shirts always obscene and ripped and too thin, his eyes smeared with dark liner, his hair a series of green spikes, and had never once bothered to hand in his monthly reports in a timely manner. 
     
    Casper tore his attention from the leather dog collar tight at the other elf’s throat and narrowed his eyes. He didn’t consider the baggy jeans, the loose chains dangling from his belt, or, worse, that skateboard propped against the wall. He didn’t dare. He might explode. But the purpose of a belt was to hold pants up, not to let them hang at his hips and offer hints of skin covered in tantalizing swirls