About Just a Touch of Frost
by Kiernan Kelly
33 pages / 14500 words
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc, epub and Sony Reader pdf
Jack is tired of his life. It's cold and wintry and just plain boring. He has a plan to get his father's attention, hopefully to put him out of his misery. Until he meets Matt, that is.
Matt can see him, Matt can touch him without freezing to death. He decides to keep Matt forever, going to ask his family for help. Things go awry quickly, with Matt disappearing, and Jack has to appeal to his
jolly brother Nick for help. Can he rescue Matt before it's too late?
With a cast of characters that range from Jack Frost to Saint Nick and everything in between, this Christmas story is one you won't want to miss!
Sample
Jack had a bad reputation; one well deserving of every curse, oath, and expletive that usually accompanied his name. It was as it should be. He’d worked hard to get it that way.
As a child, he’d been the polar opposite of his fraternal twin, Kris, whose rounded pink cheeks, twinkling blue eyes, and jolly disposition had made him seem about as threatening as a tuft of cotton candy. The taller of the two, Jack’s pale skin and hair and angular body instantly gave one the impression of ice – hard, sharp-edged, and dangerous. Even his eyes, so pale a blue that they were nearly translucent, appeared incapable of warmth. His temperament, naturally leaning toward the cool side, did little to change that perception. It seemed preordained from their birth that he would be the bad boy in the family.
He hadn’t set out to fulfill everyone’s expectations of him. Not always. Not in the beginning. A large part of it wasn’t even his fault. As a child Jack had had little control over his gifts, freezing everything and, unfortunately, everyone in his path. By the time he’d learned to rein in his power, the damage had been done. Eventually he’d wearied of trying to prove himself otherwise. It had been easier to simply mold to their preconceived notions of him.
The only one who had ever really understood him was his brother. But even Kris had had his doubts, and as time had marched on a rift had grown between them that seemed too wide for either of them to bridge. Kris grew to be beloved by everyone who knew him, and Jack…well, let’s just say that Jack’s chances for canonization were slim to none. After The Incident, Jack had been banished from Olympus altogether and, angry and hurt, had severed ties with everyone, including Kris.
Today, Jack found himself waxing nostalgic as he walked the streets of a small, mid-western town, clad head-to-toe in white leather. An anomaly among the Stetsons, dusty Levis, and scuffed boots of the people who lived there, he nonetheless confidently strode past hardware and feed stores as if he owned the place, unconcerned with what others might have thought of him.
Actually, it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d thumbed his nose at them or shot them the one-fingered salute. They couldn’t see him unless he wanted them to, and at the moment invisibility suited his purpose.
He liked this town. It was small and relaxed, with no one in any particular hurry to get from one end of Main Street to the other. It reminded him of simpler times, when people had believed in magic and had respected those that could wield it. Now, unless a man had his photo plastered across the pages of People magazine, or had an affair that made the headlines of the latest supermarket tabloid, people didn’t know he existed. They viewed everything in their small, narrow world in purely scientific terms, and if there were no readily available theorem to explain what they saw, they discounted it altogether as a bunch of hokum. It was sad.
It was times like these when Jack’s depression and loneliness wrapped around him like a shroud that he yearned for the old days before humans had ever learned that the earth was round. The days when Men were Men and Gods were Gods and people with any lick of sense knew the difference.
Skirting a white latticework bandstand, he entered a small park in the heart of the town. As he passed by, ice crystals crackled and grew in his wake, covering the whitewashed wood of the band shell, each tree limb, and every blade of grass with a thin, cold, glittering glove. Icicles dripped from every surface, growing long and sharp. By the time he’d exited through the opposite side of the park, it had been transformed into a sparkling, awe-inspiring wonderland of wintry beauty.