A Letter of Apology to the Leprechaun

Short fiction of an undetermined amount of luck, both good and bad.

Dear Leprechaun:

First off, none of this was planned.

Although some of my friends are leprechaun hunters, and I’ll admit that I’ve joined them on some of their excursions—to no avail, I might add—I was not seeking members of your kind when I ran into you the other day.

I was merely walking through your forest to clear my head.

Now, you live in that forest, so you probably do everything there. As for myself, I’m not an outdoorsy kind of guy. As a kid I did Easter egg hunts in my basement, you know what I’m saying?

But I got in a fight with my girlfriend and my boss—actually, my girlfriend is my boss, which is another story—and I was really stressed out.

My therapist offered some methods to employ when I am feeling stressed, like playing Minesweeper and taking deep breaths while sticking my head inside a slightly preheated oven, but neither of those worked this time.

So I tried the forest.

I chose your forest because it’s closest to the Taco Bell I go to when I stress eat, so I grabbed my usual drive thru order of four taco supremes—two hard, two soft—and headed over.

I’d never been to your forest before, and I figured it was just called “The Enchanted Forest” as some kind of marketing thing. And after just five minutes, when I spotted Bigfoot riding a unicorn, I figured maybe it was just a coincidence. Plus, I had other pressing issues on my mind.

Soon my legs got tired and I wasn’t gonna sit on the dirt in my khakis, so I found a large tree to lean on, and lean on it I did as I opened my bag of taco supremes and wondered how the hell my life turned out like this. Breaking up with my girlfriend or quitting my job or both were all reasonable options for the good of my mental health, but I’d never been with a woman like that and also I wasn’t qualified to be employed in anything that paid as much as my current job.

And that’s when I heard, just off the main forest path, that sound — that tap-tap-tap. I slowly approached its source and there you were with that little hammer. You were repairing a shoe or maybe adding a heel lift so you’d look taller, I don’t know. I was trying to get a closer look at what you were doing but I tripped on a branch and fell on you, and apparently that qualified as “catching” you, I don’t know, I don’t make the rules.

You got out from under me and sighed like Let’s get this over with and you summoned a rainbow from which you dragged out that pot of gold which was literally a small pot like a saucepan not something larger like a cauldron that I would have expected so there were like what maybe 40 pieces of gold but don’t get me wrong that’s worth a lot of money I mean have you seen the price of gold lately but that didn’t matter because I was in such a headspace that no amount of precious metal would have helped—which is why I impulsively pulled out your teeth.

I should mention at this point that my boss, who is also my girlfriend, is the Tooth Fairy.

She’d been riding me very hard because I’d been missing quota, and she didn’t care that the territory she assigned me did not have a lot of children of tooth-falling-out age. She added that she didn’t want to be accused of playing favorites, especially because she really wasn’t supposed to be dating someone who directly reported to her. That, of course, impacted our personal lives, especially in the bedroom, which — even though you’re a leprechaun—I don’t need to explain.

So all of that was going through my mind as I stared into your beady eyes that reflected those shiny coins and as you grimaced at what I assume would be the loss of some of your personal net worth I saw those tiny choppers of yours and recalled that the teeth of a celebrity or holiday icon are worth a hundred times the value of some average 6-year-old’s bicuspid.

Before I ran out of the forest as you clutched your bloody jaw, I did leave one of my tacos as an feeble attempt at compensation. I only realized later that leaving the hard-shell taco instead of the soft-shell taco was adding insult to oral injury, but my mind was already elsewhere.

As you probably read in one of your leprechaun newspapers, I then went on a bit of a rampage to grab other teeth, with varied levels of success. Jack Frost wasn’t a problem. I planned to trick Santa when he showed up at the mall, but as I sat on his lap I saw he wore a bridge and veneers—neither of which count toward my quota. For the Easter Bunny, I merely asked him for the teeth, and he obliged because his teeth grow back in like a day. The Loch Ness Monster has no teeth—I learned that the hard way. And the Chupacabra? Just a beak. Useless!

I’ll spare you the rest of the details, but the point is, I still have my job and my relationship is on the mend. But I want to apologize. I can’t return your specific teeth, but please find enclosed Santa’s bridge. It’s probably too big for your mouth but I’m sure your cobbler craftsmanship can shape it to fit.

Merry Christmas!

P.S.: If you run into Dracula, please don’t mention this letter. He’s…not happy with me right now.