Trixie the Pixie

Ever wonder why sometimes things go perfectly right or on the contrary, perfectly awful? You wake up late for work and so you buy a coffee on your way in, only it’s cold. A bird aerial bombs you with guano. You accidentally put salt instead of sugar in your cereal. Would you say you got up on the wrong side of the bed? 

You order yourself dinner and the restaurant offers you a dessert, on the house. You consider yourself a good enough person so when you win that raffle you feel it was well deserved. If you call it karma, I’d be inclined to disagree with you unless in your mind, “karma” is synonymous with Pixie. 

My name is Trixie. I have hair that looks like fire which is perfect because I love fire. My skin is the colour of sunset, my eyes the colour of water. Fire and water, the perfect cocktail if you ask me. I have lots of friends and we have so much fun together. The other day we all went to the beach. I used a magnifying glass to burn people’s toes. They are so confident about sun protection but always forget their feet. We spent the day hiding their sunglasses and hats. I had a serious tummy ache from laughing so hard at all the red bodies leaving the beach. They blame themselves or whomever they’re with but never me and do you know why? They can’t see me. It’s the perfect prankster's dream.

Humans are so easily fooled. But I don’t always prank them, no. I’m a pixie not a devil. I have little iridescent wings; no horns, no tail. My favourite human is this one named Felicity. It’s a shame I’ll never be able to formally meet her. The other day she didn’t even need to yell to present authority. She made a man cry and she remained so serene. She is a lawyer and has her own (very successful) firm. That legal mumbo-jumbo is of no interest to me but her way of commanding a room is inspiring. I try to give her presents to let her know I appreciate her. It started with little treats on her desk but she would always throw them in the trash. At first I thought maybe she just didn’t like chocolate, or caramels…or paper mȃché characters. But then I realized, she was a woman of power. She didn’t want these little trinkets. She needed something more substantial. So, I slipped some sleeping pills into her nighttime tea so she would sleep well because I noticed she was restless at night, staying up late working. No more of that. A woman like her shouldn’t have to work so much. That boy who struggles to grow facial hair in her office is there for a reason. Actually, this will be good for him too because I think Felicity thought my gifts were him trying to apple-polish. Not a good look for me, or for whats-his-name. But now, look at me. I am helping Felicity and that boy. Felicity has more time to herself and he has some more responsibility. 

Next I will deliver some germs. This is a kindness, believe me, because if Felicity gets sick, she will need to take time off of work. Nothing serious of course. I will find some child with a cold and feed her one of their boogers. I am willing to do that disgusting delivery service for her because I care about her that much. 

So, I’m on my way to the playground. Children are always sick so it should be easy enough to find something they snotted on. As I’m looking around I couldn’t help but notice a woman discussing these tickets she had just purchased for her and her husband. A trip to Hawaii. Felicity would love that. She will only need one ticket though but perhaps she will want to bring someone. That may be more sanitary than the previous plan. So I'll just dive into her purse and see what I can find. 

BINGO. Two first class tickets to Hawaii. The fun part is, this lady will just think she misplaced them or blame her travel agent. As always, it will never be blamed on me. I’m the biggest secret the world doesn't know about. But sometimes, I wish I could be seen, heard. I know Felicity would like me and we’d be fast friends. She would’ve made a great pixie in another life. I’d make a good human. 

I snatched both tickets from the woman's purse wishing I could use the second. A pixie didn’t need a plane ticket though, I could go anywhere I wanted. Skip the lines at the airport, skip the obvious violations made by security, hop on whichever flight I chose with no fuss. I wouldn’t even need to tell anyone I left. No one would be looking for me, no one would notice I left. The only thing I can do to have people notice me, to feel something, is my pranks. And that’s something I am very good at.  

So I decided to go to Felcity’s house to deliver her ticket. I would use the second whether I needed it or not. I figured it would be safer to deliver it to her home because if it were at her office, it would give the credit to whats-his-name, and that would make her instantly reject the idea. Maybe I should try my crack at writing a letter. I don’t know how to read nor write but I must know enough from my years watching people. It was never something that interested me before but perhaps this is a way I could communicate to Felicity. Forget it. I can’t have my delusional scrawls be her first impression of me. I’ll leave just the ticket on her countertop. Next to the coffee pot because if there’s one thing I know about Felicity, it’s her love for coffee. She drinks a whole pot a day, black. It absorbs faster when it’s black, I heard her say once. I don’t know if it’s really the taste of the coffee that gets her, she uses it as a tool. Something to provide her with energy in the most efficient manner, gosh, she's intelligent. 

I pressed my lips to the ticket as if there would be some logical explanation behind the fact that I’d hope it would bring luck and work at making her happy. After I kissed it, I thought maybe a good slap would do well to give some pizzazz. I smacked it good and hard three times to make sure it stuck. I decided to try to start some coffee while I waited for her to arrive home because if the ticket didn’t work, which it would, I knew the coffee was a guarantee. So I’m sitting on the coffee maker, inhaling the disgusting odorous steams that are emitting from the machine. I can’t stand the smell of coffee but I’d do anything for her. I’ve thought about tasting it just to try to understand her better but I just could never get past the smell. The air conditioning kicked in and wafted it straight into my lungs and I couldn’t hold back the gag that pushed itself out of my throat. I jerked back to get upwind from the smell but lost my footing and fell…straight. into. the. coffee.

Burning hot pain–and pixies have thick skin but the heat blasted through each layer of it and to top it off, I couldn’t swim. Why would I ever need to when I had these powerful wings strapped to my back. Wings that were of absolutely no use to me in a boiling vat of black death. This is how I die, struggling in like-sewage when all the sudden it becomes turbulent. I can’t see clearly and I’m choking on coffee that's swishing me around in the pot. 

Suddenly I see light. I feel air reenter my lungs. It’s sharp and aggressive but it's oxygen. I tumble out of the pot onto a cold hard surface, coughing up the hot liquid, it burns twice as much coming out as it did going in. 

“Oh my god,” a gravelly voice sounded. A voice that wasn’t my own. I rubbed my eyes and looked up. Felicity was looking down, right at me. The coffee pot she was still holding, tumbled out of her hand, bouncing off of the counter I was perched on and shattered on the floor. I watched the pot disintegrate and looked back up to Felicity who was still staring, right at me. I waited for her to notice the broken pot but nothing could peel her eyes away from me. Should I try saying something?

“I do not like coffee,” I said. 

She blinked. She can see me. She can hear me. 

I wrung out my hair as best I could given its short length and stood. I held out my hand for a shake as I’d seen her and several other humans do upon first meeting. Her eyes tracked my hand. I let it fall back down by my side. I’m not sure how we’d shake hands anyhow given that I was the size of her pinky finger. 

“Thank you for saving my life,” I said.

“Your life. Wh-what a-are you?”

“A pixie and you’re a human, named Felicity. I’m Trixie.” 

“Trixie…the pixie… Now I know I’m either losing my mind or someone has drugged me. Maybe someone I locked up got out and is having their vengeance by secretly feeding me hallucinogenics in an attempt to have me disbarred. Or maybe I’ve finally cracked,” 

She turned away from me, throwing her hands through her hair like she was trying to wring out a wet rag. 

“You’re not hallucinating. Though, I might be,” 

“How do you know my name? How did you get in here? Why are you here?” she asked

I thought about her questions for a moment. I pondered how to answer without sounding like a creepy stalker. I kind of was her stalker I supposed. I wasn’t a creep though! Just an admirer, really. 

“I saw your name on some of your mail,” I lied, hoping she had mail out somewhere and as I scanned the apartment I noticed some sitting on the front table, next to her keys. My shoulders sank in relief. 

“I stumbled in, following the delicious scent of coffee,” I choked out, “thought I’d give it a taste.”

I sucked on my cheeks in an attempt to get the putrid taste out of my mouth. If I had known all I had to do was taste the liquid fecal matter that was coffee to be seen by human beings, I would’ve done it long ago. Maybe just a dip of a finger instead of my whole body. 

“What is that?” she asked, looking at the plane ticket. I tried to fly over to snatch it before she could get to it but my wings were still too wet. I sank my head in defeat as she grabbed it. 

“A trip to Hawaii? What’s a pixie doing with this?” 

“Uhhh…it’s for you,” I muttered

“You got me a ticket to Hawaii?” 

“Yes,” I admitted. 

“I thought you just came here for coffee,” she cocked a brow at me

“Well, that's still true. Only if true means false…I’ve been an admirer of yours for some time and couldn’t help but notice your work ethic, and I thought you could use a bit of a break. So I went to the park to steal you a cold but got those instead,” 

“Steal me a cold?” 

“Not important, as soon as my wings dry, I’ll be on my way,” I said, secretly hoping she would ask me to stay. If she didn't, maybe I could just keep rewetting them so neither of us had a say in the matter. Suddenly I became worried. Was this the right person to trust with this information? What if she sold me for science experimentation so that she could quit her job altogether. Then no pixies would be safe. 20 years would go by and we’d be extinct. 

“You know you can’t tell anyone about me, right?” I asked her cautiously. 

“HA! I have spent the last 8 years cultivating a respectable reputation for myself as one of the top lawyers in New York. I wouldn’t dream of ruining all of that by going around rambling nonsense about the existence of pixies,” Felicity said, running out of breath.  

I let out a sigh of relief, “Soooo do you want to take a trip to Hawaii?" 

She looked at me, dumbfounded, “Where did you get this ticket?” 

“Oh… I found em’” I said

“There’s more?” she asked

“Oh yeah, I grabbed one for me just for hell of it. So, do you wanna go?”

“Actually,” she giggles, “I kind of do and my case's final judgement hearing is next week, just before the plane leaves.”

“Well then, great,” I say.

“HA ha HA,” she laughed maniacally.

The fit of laughter she fell into was more than uncharacteristic, it was downright insane. I almost didn’t recognize her. My eyes widened at the woman before me. The woman I thought I had known without meeting. 

And I sat there, full of brown stains, stinking like coffee, wondering what else I thought to be true from my years of spectating and how very wrong I must be; how little I truly know; how much I would come to know from now on by actually experiencing and interacting with the world around me.