Snowman's Chance in Hell

*****

More
Fantasy E-books
by Robert T. Jeschonek

6 Fantasy Stories

6 More Fantasy Stories

Blazing Bodices

Earthshaker
– a
n urban fantasy
novel

Girl Meets Mind Reader

Groupie Everlasting

Heaven Bent
– a novel

Rose Head

The Bear in the Cable-Knit Sweater

The Genie's Secret

The Return of Alice

The Sword That Spoke

*****

The man of meat sat at a campfire inside an ice cave and watched the snowman build him a partner. The fire was just close enough to remind the snowman of the meat man’s new invention and its power to destroy him.

If the snowman, whose name was Wink, had known that the meat man would invent such a rotten thing, he never would have built the man in the first place.

“Make him
strong
,” said the meat man, who called himself Hurt. “Strong and
smart
.”

Wink continued to knead and shape the flesh on the ice shelf. He had already given it the same rough form as Hurt, which wasn’t much like a snowman’s body at all.

Instead of an elegant arrangement of stacked spheres, able to function in concert or independent of each other, Hurt’s body consisted of a head and appendages permanently affixed to a central trunk. Hurt’s thick, stiff arms and stubby fingers were awkward compared to those of a snowman, which were graceful and branchlike. Hurt’s beady, watery eyes and knobby nose were nowhere near as handsome and functional as the stony, black eyes and long, pointed nose of a snowman.

Still, as crude as Hurt’s body was, one fact remained: he was the only meat man who had ever come to life.

In those days, when the world was always winter and snowmen ruled it, building men from meat was a diversion. During the annual fleshstorms, when meat fell from the sky and covered the ground, roly poly snowchildren near and far assembled meat men in parks and yards. In some towns, making meat men became a competition, with prizes awarded by judges.

This year, Wink was the winner in his hometown of Drift...at least until his creation killed everyone in town with fire.

“Why did you make me?” said Hurt.

Wink’s spindly fingers were red with blood as he molded the flesh of Hurt’s partner. “Not to kill and destroy, that’s for sure.”

“You did a lousy job, then.” Hurt laughed.

“I just wanted to show people what I could do. I wanted someone to like me.”

“And now they’re all dead,” said Hurt. “Because of me. Funny how that worked out.”

Wink pulled the skin together over Hurt’s partner’s torso and sewed it up with reindeer hide thread.

“Yeah, funny,” said Hurt. “It’s like you hated them, and I came along and did what you never had the balls to do yourself.”

Wink ignored him and kept sewing up the skin. “You realize I don’t know how you came to life, right? I don’t know how to make it happen again with your friend here.”

Hurt got to his feet and scooped a flaming branch from the fire. “I think you just need the right motivation.” Waving the fiery branch back and forth, he walked through the snow toward Wink.

“No,” said Wink, staring into the approaching flame. “Please don’t.”

“I’ll kill you like I killed your whole town.” Hurt leered. “Like I’m going to kill every last one of you.”

Wink remembered the glittering, icy towers and domes of Drift...the sunlight streaming in rainbow colors through window prisms...farmer snowmen tending fields of icicles...snow angels singing and circling overhead.

He remembered the town’s snowpeople gathered around his creation, praising it in their wind chime language, filling Wink with pride and triumph.

And, later, he remembered that same creation stalking through Drift with a blazing torch in each hand. He remembered the screams of the townspeople, now more like the howling of winds than the tinkling of chimes.

Hate surged in him like the spume of a whale.

Suddenly, Hurt’s new-made partner on the ice shelf stirred and drew in a sharp breath.

“Ha!” said Hurt. “I knew we could do it.” He moved closer for a better look, and Wink shrank back from the flame. “Wait. Why does he look funny?”

Wink rolled back further. “You wouldn’t want the two of you to look exactly the same, would you?”

Hurt stepped closer. “But those big bumps on his chest. What are
they
for?”

“Upper body strength,” said Wink. “You said you wanted him strong.”

“How come he doesn’t have a tail?” Hurt pointed at the tubular organ between his own legs.

“It’s useless,” said Wink. “You can’t swing from a tree or hold a club with it, can you?”

Hurt frowned, then walked right up to the body on the ice shelf. “Hello,” he said.

The meat-person on the shelf opened her eyes. “Hargh,” she said.

“I’ll be right back.” Hurt smiled. “I just have to take care of something.”

Then, waving his torch, he stomped toward Wink.

“Goodbye, Maker,” said Hurt.

Wink rolled back fast on his big base sphere. “No!” he said, waving his twiggy hands at Hurt. “I did what you said! Why kill me now?”

“Me and the new meat man don’t know how to make more flesh people,” said Hurt. “With you gone, there won’t ever be more than two of us in the world.”

“You think I’d
want
any more of you?” said Wink.

“What’s hell like for snowmen?” Grinning, Hurt thrust the torch forward. “A desert?”

Wink skidded up against the wall of the ice cave and had nowhere left to go. “All right, all right.” He felt the heat from Hurt’s torch liquefying his crystalline outer crust. “But what will you do when Squall gets here?”

“Squall?” said Hurt. “What’s that?”

“Our god.” Water from Wink’s melting head trickled over his obsidian eye-stones. “Taller than a glacier. Mightier than a thousand snowmen. He’ll strike you down for what you’ve done to us.”

Hurt looked around. “Liar.”

“There is only one way to save yourself.”

“What?” Hurt plunged his torch toward Wink. “Tell me!”

Wink felt his body condensing and slumping from the heat. “You must fool him,” he said. “It’s called a snow job.”

Hurt listened. When Wink had finished, he melted him down to a puddle with two black eye-stones floating in it. Then, he followed the steps that Wink had prescribed to protect himself and his partner from Squall.

Even though Squall did not exist.

What Hurt did was this: he built a snowman just outside the mouth of the ice cave. He even gave it Wink’s leftover eyes, because they were handy. According to Wink, when Squall saw the snowman, he would be tricked into thinking the cave was occupied by people of snow, not meat.

The real reason for the snowman was something that Hurt would never know.

In years to come, the meat people and their descendants never forgot the story of Squall. After they had wiped out the snowpeople ruling the world, they feared Squall’s wrath all the more. They tended roaring fires in case of attack and told bedtime stories to keep their children alert.

And when there was snow, they built snowmen near their caves and camps in the hope that Squall would pass them by.

What they didn’t know was that snow always dreams. Even a snowman made by a meat man dreams and thinks and waits.

And snow always comes back.

Someday, when it’s always winter again, and the meat people build enough snowmen and the moment is right, the snowmen will rise up and take back the world with swords of ice powerful enough to overcome the hottest fire. They will rebuild the towers and domes of ice and replant the fields of icicles and put up glittering frozen statues in every town square in honor of Wink, who ensured their return.

That is the story the snowmen tell each other when no one else is around to hear, their voices tinkling like wind chimes when there are no wind chimes to be found.

*****

Special Preview:
Heaven Bent, A Novel

By Robert T. Jeschonek

Now
On Sale

Chapter 1

If I'd known then what I know now, I never would have gone toward the light. Seriously. This Heaven, I could've done without.

My actual life before death was much better. I was a
movie star
, for cryin' out loud. I had it all.

As recently as twelve hours ago, I had it all.

"So tell me, Stag, how does it feel to be nominated for your third Academy Award?" That's what the perky blonde morning show host asked during the live interview.

"Unbelievable." I said it with my patented humble-yet-confident grin, letting the bright lights cast a glare on my teeth. Down-to-Earth, salt-of-the-Earth, salt-and-pepper hair parted on the right. "It never gets old."

"What a track record." She, Susan F., was in a New York City studio. For reasons that weren't clear to me, I was in a separate studio across town, watching her on a monitor. Doin' the ol' split-screen tango. "And with two Best Actor wins under your belt, how do you feel about chances for a third?"

"Crossing my fingers, Sue." I flashed my bright whites and showed my crossed fingers to the camera. "It would be an indescribable honor."

"We wish you the best," said Susan with her most endearing smile, as if I were family.

"Thank you, Sue." Nod and a wink. "I hope to see you at the after-party."

Aaaand cut!

"On a cold day in Hell," I added after the red light on the camera went dark.

"Screw you, too, Stag." That's what Susan F.'s voice said in my earpiece. Looks like my mic was still hot.

Not that I cared. "Love and kisses, S.F.," I told her as I unclipped the mic. Reaching under my gray sweater, I pulled the mic down and out by the cord.

As I popped out my earpiece (to the sound of her angry cursing), I saw someone open the studio door and stroll in. It was a guy--six-three, six-four--with broad shoulders, dark business suit, and red tie. High roller maybe?

"Hello?" I was irritated, because the only one walking in on me at that point should have been my manager, Shisha M. "You know I have to be at a film shoot in fifteen minutes, right?"

The guy cleared his throat. He was standing with his hands folded over his lower abdomen. "Hello." I couldn't make out his face in the shadows beyond the studio lights. "Hello, S.L."

I hopped off the stool, squinting for a look at him. "Very funny." More than a little pissed off because he was riffing on my call-people-by-their-initials routine. "What do you want?"

At that instant, somebody switched off the lights, and I saw the guy's face. For a moment, the pissed-off-ness poured right out of me.

My breath caught in my you-know-what. A cold chill rushed up my you-know-where.

That guy...

"About the film shoot." He shook his head. The hair wasn't salt-and-pepper, it was solid silver. But otherwise...identical.

To me. He could've been my twin.

"What about it?" I said, but my head was tingling. I had a feeling like very strong vertigo, like being stoned.

"Don't go back," said my twin. "Not today. Not ever."

As the initial shock wore off, I started thinking this through. I had no twin, so... "Who sent you, pal?" I straightened my back, squared my shoulders, copped a sneer. "Was it Brad? Was it Morgan? I've gotta say, you're the best Stag Lincoln impersonator I've ever seen."

My twin walked toward me, looking intense. As he got closer, I swear I could smell the ocean. "I'm begging you. Don't go back to the shoot, Willy."

My sneer turned into a frown. How could he possibly know that ancient nickname? The one I paid
millions
(conservatively speaking) to bury forever? "Whatever was remotely funny about this just stopped being funny." I yanked the phone out of my pocket and started punching 9-1-1.

At which point, my twin charged up and smacked the phone from my hand. "Listen to me!" Next, he hauled off and slapped me across the face. "If you go to that shoot, it's all over! Can you get that through your thick
head
, you arrogant
ass
?" He slapped me again, harder.

Where the hell was Shisha while this was happening? Where the hell was
anyone
? "Get your hands
off
me!" I pushed away from him, planning to plow my fist into the middle of his copycat kisser.

But that was when he started glowing with bright golden light. I thought I could hear a bell chiming somewhere far away.

"Last warning!" His voice was beyond urgent, beyond serious. "I'm telling you...
you're
telling
yourself
...stay away from the shoot!" He glowed brighter with each passing second. "And whatever you do, Jerry..."

He flared so bright, it was blinding, and then he was gone.

I stood there, blinking at the spots in my eyes. Wondering what the hell he'd been trying to tell me before he disappeared.

Just as I thought that, he popped back into existence in front of me, still roiling with golden glow. His voice crackled, and the bells I'd heard earlier were louder than before. "Whatever you do...don't...toward..."

I thought I heard screams between the chiming of the bells. The screams of not a few, but a multitude of people.

"Jerry!" Suddenly, his voice grew clear and strong. "Don't go toward the light!"

This time, when his glow flared and his body vanished, he didn't come back. I was left there with the echo of his words, the lingering smell of the ocean, and the tingling in my head, asking the one question that kept circling in my mind again and again.

"Was it Cameron?" I stared into space, my mouth wide open with amazement. "That was some serious 3-D, man. That
had
to be Cameron."

*****

An hour later, I got out of my limo at--you guessed it--South Street Seaport, the shoot location.

For a moment, I stood and took it all in. A four-masted tall ship, the
Peking
, bobbed gently in the water. A vast brick building spanned the pier, filled with shops and restaurants. Bright sunlight flared off the bold orange and red awnings and umbrellas fanned out around it like plumage. The air smelled like the East River, like gasoline (from the water taxi docked at the pier?)--and like the ocean, too.

I wondered briefly if that was important.

Shisha, that redheaded fiftysomething fireplug of a manager, never stopped texting as she slid out of the limo behind me.

Did I feel a little apprehensive after the warning from my twin? Not enough to breach my contract.

Looking back, well
duh
, how dumb could I
get
? But I'd mostly convinced myself the visitation had been nothing more than an elaborate special effect arranged by a prankster. I
was
in a TV studio, after all. Ever hear of motion capture? No way
no how
was I going to call off work and give whoever was pranking me the satisfaction.

If I had a hundred bucks for every time some self-proclaimed future me showed up to complicate my life, well...I'd be rollin' in it, these days, actually. But back then, there was just that once, so the odds seemed better that it was B.S.

"Seemed" being the operative word, in retrospect.

"This Distefano character, what a peach pit!" Shisha's upper lip curled as she texted. Unattractive? I didn't hire her for her looks; I needed a bulldog, and she brought plenty of bark
and
bite to the dogfight. "He won't budge on the backend points."

"Sounds like a deal-breaker, Mom." She's not my mom, but I call her that anyway. I even take her out for Mother's Day because it's good to keep a bulldog happy at all times.

"Only if I minded tearing him a new one." Shisha pulled on her giant sunglasses with the leopard-print frames. "Unzip the body-bag, Larry." (That's what she calls me, though it isn't my name.) "I'm goin' in with the spear gun." She dialed the phone like she was squashing bugs on it.

I almost said something to her about my twin, but it sounded too crazy in my head to sail it out there. Anyway, why bother?

How important could it be?

"Hey, anal probe!" That's what she said to the studio boss on the phone as she waddled away from me. "You better be wearing an adult diaper right now at this moment!"

Her voice quickly faded in the ruckus of the shoot. Members of the film crew shouted from every direction as they scurried around, prepping the camera, lights, talent, and set. Extras milled around one corner of the pier, blabbing to each other and on phones while they waited. A mob of onlookers crowded the street, yelling for attention, yelling at...me. (As usual.) And let's not forget the director, D.X. (That's his full name, FYI, I didn't abbreviate.)

"Yo, Stag!" He waved me over to where he was standing, in an open section of the pier near the tall ship. "There's been a change."

"What kind of change?" I frowned. "Another rewrite?"

D.X. pushed up his black ballcap with the movie's title on the front in white letters--
Lie-Jacker
--and scratched his forehead. I couldn't see his eyes behind his mirrored sunglasses, just the reflection of my own face. "More like an opportunity."

That exact moment was when I first heard the sound of the helicopter coming in from the direction of the Brooklyn Bridge.