Icicle Man [Scene II]

[The second scene for Icicle Man or The Icicle Man, depending on where you first read it (BB or elsewhere)]

HANNAH: That girl is useless. Should have been back by now to see to the animals. Walk’s not that far. One would think I’d raised her better than to go wandering off without so much as remembering she needs to come back. (Throwing slop from a bucket into the pig trough, fully concentrating and not noticing Jack sitting on the pig pen fence.)

JACK: The piper’s children are slow to return.

HANNAH: (Glances at him) Piper’s children? Mari ain’t no piper’s child and watch out for them pigs, they bite sometime.

JACK: That’s life, darling. Most things bite.

HANNAH: (Puts down her bucket) What do you want, Jack?

JACK: (Brightening) You remember me.

HANNAH: Everyone knows of you. You live in these woods, you have to.

JACK: Your daughter didn’t.

HANNAH: (Pauses) How do you know my Mari?

JACK: Everyone knows of you, you live in these woods you have to.

HANNAH: She never made it to my mother’s, did she?

JACK: Not quite, darling. Not quite. She ran into the Father’s herald and he, well, convinced her it would be rude to not accept his invitation to see his latest works of ice.

HANNAH: So you’ve got her.

JACK: (Calmly) In a manner of speaking, yes.

HANNAH: Give her back!

JACK: (Slides off the fence) Now, Hannah, wouldn’t want you to forget what happens when something’s demanded of me. And so rudely, too.

HANNAH: You know I’ve never been anything but kind to you, Jack. I have been since I first met you.

JACK: Rather unfortunate that was, you getting turned out and all that. And in the coldest part of winter, too. Dear, if you hadn’t been found by a certain someone, well, things might have turned out differently.

HANNAH: I know that.

JACK: Good, then you’ll remember to keep a handle on your tongue.

HANNAH: (Tiredly) What do you want with her, Jack?

JACK: I don’t quite know yet. Give me some time, there’s a dear.

HANNAH: What do you want with her, Jack?

JACK: (Peevish) I don’t know yet, Hannah. I don’t. Maybe I want her company, maybe her opinion on where to hang my newest sculpture? In the dining room or the front hall, next to that statue that looks remarkably like/

HANNAH: Don’t!

JACK: (Walking to her, leaning in close) Don’t what?

HANNAH: Don’t bring her into this.

JACK: She has a name, dear.

HANNAH: Don’t – Don’t bring Megan into this.

JACK: (Caressing her cheek) Was that so hard? It was, wasn’t it? But I don’t understand why. You never liked your step-sister, did you, Hannah? And when your step-mother send you out into the cold, alone and defenseless, she never expected you to return, much less endowed like a queen. So she sent her own daughter out, hoping to reap the rewards, and then what happened, hm? Rude, selfish, she was a nasty girl, wasn’t she, Hannah? And when she met me, well, I wouldn’t put up with it. I made her body match the cold heart she already had, didn’t I? And your step-mother, oh how she wept and wept when her daughter didn’t return, and the temperature dropped and it grew dark. No one came looking for her, so I kept her. And you – You were secretly happy weren’t you? Megan was gone and you moved away, met a man, and had only one child. And moved here. Where is your dowry, Hannah? Where is your legacy?

HANNAH: It’s set aside for Mari. When she marries.

JACK: If she marries, you mean.

HANNAH: Shut up.

JACK: Manners, darling.

HANNAH: Jack, if there was anyone who could get away with telling you to stuff it, it would be me and mine.

JACK: Eh. You’re grasping, Hannah.

HANNAH: And you’ve attempted to fall for a human, unless I’m mistaken.

JACK: (Peeved) Shut up.

HANNAH: (Placidly) Manners, Jack. And admit it; that’s why you took Mari. Because you liked her.

JACK: She reminds me of the piper’s children.

HANNAH: Jack, every child reminds you of the piper’s children.

JACK: She stays with me until I’m done with her.

HANNAH: If you harm one hair on that girl’s head, I’ll/

JACK: You’ll what, Hannah? You will what? You forget too easily who and what I am. What I can do and what I can take. You daughter will do for now, but you might want to start sleeping with the pigs, as you never know when a cold snap might crop up. Wouldn’t want them to freeze, would we? (Leans in close again) Do not forget, Hannah. You are human. I am something entirely different. (Kisses her cheek and strides off, mixing with the snowflakes as he does so)

HANNAH: If ever a child should have been stole, there was one. (Looks to the sky) Watch my daughter, Father. Jack Frost can’t be trusted with a warm heart, even one that’s begun to melt his own.

One and Twenty

Then: Cat, Music, and Care Bear required.

There's just something about saying one and twenty instead of twenty-one that makes me smile in that little way. Don't ask because I really can't explain it.

I know that last year I did this whole big post where I talked about my year in review, and then kind of looked ahead to what it was going to be like to be twenty. I wrote that in my corner single in Jackson, back in New York, shortly after getting a tattoo and accepted in the study abroad program for Wales. One whole year later, I'm sitting in my single with an en suite bathroom in Carmarthen, Wales, and I'm staring my birthday in the face. And I thought about doing another year in review type of thing where I made it a little easier to keep track of events by going month by month, maybe adding some pictures, and I was sitting there planning and creating and I more or less decided that I didn't want to do that.

It would be a lie to say it hadn't been an interesting year. I was a little out of my depth at times (Two Cities, anyone? The chemist trying to be an economist and sociologist?) and I nearly spazzed out completely on an occasion or two, but I bucked it up, got some assistance, and finished out the year strong. My adviser was a wonderful help - the one line he said to me, when I was freaking out about organic II, This is not beyond you, I wrote into my novel - and my family, as always, was with me, too.

They're still with me, even though they're three thousand miles across an ocean and I call them twice a week.

Twenty-one is that magic number in the States, the one that says you can legally consume alcohol. Europe in general? Well, people have been drinking for about two years already, by that time, so it's not that big of a deal, and it's not that big of a deal to me, either. I'm a big fan of hand-pulled cask ales, but, I'm not really interested in getting so inebriated that you can't remember what you did the night before, let alone who you did it with.

On another note, my drivers license expires tomorrow. Mostly so NYS DMV can give me a new one that doesn't say Under 21 in red down the side of my picture. That picture? I was sixteen when they took that.

Which seems like a long time ago now, truthfully.

If you ask me what I want for my birthday, I'm going to tell you that I don't want much, if anything at all. I'm currently living in a foreign country for another month; my mother has come visit me in said foreign country; I've had another year of good health and good fortune (I do count when I fell down the stairs at work and didn't break anything incredibly good fortune); I've made great friends while I've been over here, and I've made memories to last me the rest of my life.

I've been handed an amazing opportunity so far, one that I'm pretty sure I've done a good job of making the most of. And maybe that's all I can do, at this point, is take each year that I'm given and continue to make the most of it. We only get one ride on life, and it's what you do to make your ticket count that matters. You don't have to live loud to live big, but the important part is that you remember to live.

So, I propose a toast. Not just to me for tomorrow when I turn another year older (and possibly wiser, too) but to all of us, who take it one day at a time and leave no open space unwandered. Here's to another year of good health, good fortune, and plenty of opportunities to come your way. Cheers.

Also, it's perfectly acceptable to substitute Oreo Truffles and/or Sticky Toffee Pudding for birthday cake when applicable. They're both very delicious.

Oh, and one more thing before I forget completely (as this happens some years), to all of you who celebrate Thanksgiving tomorrow, have a very happy Thanksgiving in whatever way you celebrate.



Now: Backpack and Adventure Required

Things I Learned in High School

[In no particular order.]

- Taking independent study band sucks.

- Especially when you take it so you can take ACE US History, and normally this wouldn't be a big deal, only the ACE history book is so damned dry you'd expect it to light itself spontaneously on fire.

- Even though you have friends that you could tell anything to, there are some things that you simply can't tell them.

- When your math teacher and your sophomore English teacher are married to each other, it's a little difficult to get away with writing in a composition book in class because she knows it's the novel.

- It's okay to have the same teachers for multiple classes multiple years.

- Unless you sit there in AP English wondering why she couldn't have retired before you got there.

- Trumpet plungers were not meant to be thrown at the wall for entertainment, unless of course they were, and yours truly still has the record for the longest distance from the wall and Andrew has the record for how many times in a row he could get it to stick.

- Of course I have a band lesson this period, and not just because I want to miss class.

- It's okay to "kill" people if you're going to process them in Forensics class soon after.

- Though it's not very helpful when the dead body keeps squirming because he doesn't like bugs.

- How to hawk baked goods in the crowds on vintage weekend outside the bars because they were the easiest people to get to part with their pocket change.

- FYEX (First Year Experience) had to be the more worthless "class" ever.

- One of the trumpets falling off the risers every year during the first week of school.

- "A wooden clarinet is the orgasm of clarinets."

- Being Raggedy Ann for Halloween my senior year and lifeguarding IAC's still wearing my red, hand-made yarn wig.

- Powderpuff Football. Only we forgot most of the time to go for the flags as it was simpler to flat-out tackle people.

- Scuba diving in the pool.

- The massive bruise on the inside of my thigh from the giant's ladder in Lifetime Sports

- Jesse's face when he found out I'd sprained my ankle playing indoor soccer in the middle of basketball season.

- Though, the above didn't really matter because it's not like I played in the games, anyway.

- Having whooping cough as a sophomore and continuing on with life like I wasn't trying to hack up a lung simply by walking from class to class.

- My love of films can probably stem from film analysis sophomore year.

- I can write flash fiction; it might not come out very good or make much sense, but I can do it.

- I vowed never to take any more business classes ever after sophomore year.

- Though we made the family "dream" of having an ice cream boat kind of come true that year, with the magnets to prove it.

- My classmates weren't as unobservant as I once thought.

- Humming the Vonage theme song in public yields a lot of interesting looks from boys in leather jackets.

- Music Club trips to NYC were, in some ways, the highlight of the year.

- Riding three hours to Buffalo on a school bus was an interesting experience, especially for my rear end.

- I got really good at getting on the bus in the morning, leaning against the window, and falling back asleep for the twenty minutes it took to get to town.

- I cemented how easy it was to live out of a Jansport backpack on a daily basis, in an academic sense.

- It's a bad idea to let your friend fake-bleed you at the Freshman Humanities Renaissance Fair in the courtyard because it somehow leads to higher-ups thinking that you and two other girls have been cutting yourselves.

- In order to get out of there as soon as possible, showing said higher ups the slightly oozing patch of psoriasis you've digged open on your ankle will do the trick nicely.

- You might think you have things under control, but until you break out completely and totally in itchy bits that may or may not leave scars because of something that you have no genetic control over, you find out just how much you really have to keep your head high to live with things.

- I found out that, sometimes, when you really love someone, you let them go to make sure you don't hurt them.

- The above, however, does not ensure that they will be there when you return at a time convenient for you.

- Eating school food made me the fan of tacos that I am today.

- I think I wasn't too far into my sophomore year when I realized that I didn't want to be one of the popular girls; I just wanted to be me, whoever that was going to develop into.

- How not to sugarcoat things.

- Sunday in the Park with George is a truly awful musical when you're eighteen and there's such shows like Avenue Q and Monty Python's Spamalot to be seen instead.

- I don't like rye bread, and while it might look similar to wheat, it sure as shit isn't.

- Never had the urge to drink illegally while in high school.

- High school is a different ball game that takes a bit to get used to, and it doesn't help when you're about as down as you could get when you get in there.

- I learned how to temporarily shut up and go with the flow because that's what it took to do a good job on a job that needed to get done.

- You can be a bit busted if you know how to sit there and superglue yourself back together while paying attention in math.

- How not to give a damn about certain things.

- How to make my mom understand that being in the nineties in calculus might not be something that I achieve, and how to settle for high eighties when I'm still trying my best.

- How to play alto saxophone because who ever heard of a clarinet in jazz band?

- The opening to Colt 45 while tooling around the nation's capital for senior trip.

- That it's kind of cool to think about double calculus as double potions, but it's nowhere near as cool.

- I can't stand Ernest Hemingway.

- How cool having a sister is, and how much we do, despite our age difference, have in common.

- Going to Open House still in a uniform and cleats is perfectly acceptable.

- Trying to get to first base in softball to listen to your dad give you advice and tell you bad jokes to make you giggle.

- There are things in life more important than soccer.

- The new basketball uniform shorts were the most comfortable things in the world.

- Riding on the bus with the baseball team wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

- Riding the bus, period, wasn't all that it was cracked up to be.

- How to feel like you're stretched in fifty different directions, but still together enough to get everything finished that you need to, and well enough that nobody thinks twice about it.

- There's only so many times that you can say, "Eh, tomorrow" because your tomorrows start to run out.

- What it feels like to finish something significant.

- Writing a senior thesis in five weeks absolutely sucks.

- Being yourself, no matter how crazy and unconventional that might be, is so much easier and so much more worth it than trying to be anyone else.

- I'm about as bad at economics as I am at math.

- I like dressing up and looking decidedly female every now and then.

- Coffee is not only lovely, but also a necessity.

- Going to Europe and then returning and having the opening night and subsequent three performances of the school play when you have no voice makes life very, very interesting.

- Graduation is one of those things that always seems like it'll never get there, and then when it's looming, you wonder where the time's gone.

- A locker only holds so much stuff before it decides it won't shut, open, or even move.

- The instructions, "Put in your combination and then continue to turn like a doorknob" would have been really helpful that first time standing by 477 and wondering how to get into it.

- I don't think I was ever late to English my first year because my locker was right across the hall from the English room.

- I took one art class, and that was more than enough for my four years in that building.

- Sadly, cafeteria food doesn't get much better when you hit high school.

- Cafeteria's came with vending machines.

- Get there early enough so that you have a parking space.

- Doesn't matter what kind of car you drive, just as long as you have one to drive.

- How I ever passed my Earth Science regents is beyond me because there were eight seniors in a class of sophomores, and most of us, since it was the end of the day, slept through most of it.

- AP Calculus, AP Economics, and AP English was going to be the death of me my senior year.

- New York State Regents are, for a lack of a better phrase, the shitty things on the face of the Earth.

- The SAT's are just as bad as everyone says they are.

- Giving blood is fun. What's not so fun is passing out and scaring the living bejeezus out of your two best guy friends when you fall out of your chair.

- Playing softball after giving blood is always advisable - when half the team has done it, what else can you do?

- Things weren't always easy. Do the best you could, and hope for the rest to sort itself out.

- NYSSMA is a great excuse to miss school, though they'll flay you alive when you have whooping cough and are trying not to hack up a lung while you play classical music.

- When in NYC, one must visit in a Starbucks. That is nonnegotiable.

- I was the band geek, the writer, the athlete, and the chick with enough brains to graduate tenth out of ninety-seven. It hasn't always been easy, but if you stick to what you know and follow your instincts, the end result is pretty good.

Things to Know: International Edition VI

- I'm down to four more weeks - a little over maybe - of living in Wales.

- Thursday is Thanksgiving.

- Thursday is also the day when Louise turns one and twenty.

- One and twenty is olden talk for twenty-one (thank you, Horatio Hornblower).

- Have I mentioned lately how much I love Jamie Bamber?

- So, we made handprint turkeys in my primary school class today - after a Powerpoint about Thanksgiving - and I took my bracelets off so I wouldn't get paint on them. Then forgot to put them back on. Therefore, I feel kind of naked and you can totally see my tan line. Or tan chunk, rather.

- My next-door-neighbor has gone home/to visit his girlfriend for the week.

- Due to the previous, Louise can actually shave her legs now.

- I haven't shaved in approximately three weeks.

- Give or take.

- On the housing front, I just send the Res Ed people an email saying that I wanted to be placed in Beta Sigma, which is the Hope House, the theme house in support of the American Cancer Society.

- The room is actually the smallest single on campus, but it would be an assured single, and I could figure out what to do about a meal plan - doing a possible partial one, which might save my mama some money this upcoming semester.

- The piece that I want to do titled Things I Learned in High School is definitely going to happen, but there's no release date yet.

- Who does release dates for blog posts, anyway? Books yes, blog post? Eh. Possibly.

- Anyway, I know that's probably going to make you giggle, which is another reason to write it, too.

- My wrist looks really, really naked without my bands.

- It's kind of freaking me out.

- My handprint turkey I left in the classroom, but when I get my bands, I'll nab my turkey, too.

- Yes, I have plans to hang him on the fridge using my Mind the Gap magnet.

- Whether he will come to New York with me or be left to live with the flat mates for the rest of the year has yet to be decided.

- I've made a home here. And I have to leave it in a month.

Dumbstruck

With the exception of some pieces of fiction, you really haven't heard much from me lately. I can't decide if you guys are missing the snark yet or rolling in the silence. Either way, that temporary peace might have just been shattered.

There's this great organization called Host UK. What happens is if you're a student from another country, you can fill out an application, tell them where you're studying, what you're interested in, and how much you'd be willing to spend on travel, and they put you up with one of their hosts for the weekend. Your host feeds you, gives you a place to stay, and usually sort of shows you around the UK town they live in.

I spent this past weekend in Bath, England. My host was over sixty, and had lost her husband little over a year ago. But that was okay, because she seemed really enthusiastic about hosting and she' had done this plenty of times before. And I didn't think it was a big deal that she was about fifteen minutes late to pick me up, because, and I was looking right at it, traffic was chaotic. I can understand that. That's fine. And our first little trip out to a place called Wells to see the abbey and bishop's palace, that was cool, too. The church was absolutely awesome (if you're still stalking around my Photobucket, I'm working on it, though that seems to be Louise's Famous Last Words, but you know me) and that was a really nice way to start the weekend off. I'd been on a train for three hours, then sat in a car for another half an hour, got out and wandered around an abbey, and then back into the car and we drove to her house, where I would be staying. I had my own bathroom - down the hall toward the kitchen - and I had my own room. And it was nearly the size of my one at home in New York, so it was pretty big. It was really nice. She has a lot to offer these kids that come stay with her - which, from my understanding, are a lot of Chinese students because they come over to England for university a lot of the time.

Cottage pie for dinner followed by a sort of apple cake thing that had been warmed in the oven, and we watched a little TV and talked about what was going to happen the next day. The woman is over sixty. Walking is not her strong point, and you know damn well I'm prepared to hike all over the place if it means I can see all that I can see and do all I can do. So she was just going to drop me off in the middle of Bath, by the abbey and the Roman Baths, and I would catch the two hour tour that was leaving from there. I'd see all sorts of things.

Honestly, it reminded me of when we went to Toronto for class in the spring. Most of Toronto's speakers involved wandering around and looking at social housing, mixed housing, and that sort of thing. In Bath? You looked at Georgian architecture and talked about the heavy Roman influence and how the place had been a spa for the rich and maybe not-so-famous. The Circus was a great piece of architecture (a circle with three roads coming in all equally spaced apart, really a thing of beauty) and the Royal Crescent was nice, too. It's a crescent-shaped building. And, of course, the Roman Baths because that's what made the place famous to begin with. And really, once you've seen all of that, you've really seen Bath.

I wandered through the Roman Baths. They still function - they've actually opened a new spa right behind the Roman Baths that uses the natural hot spring water that bubbles up - but you can't swim in them because, well, the water's green from algae. There's no roof on the thing, so the sunlight hits the water, and the algae grows.

Another interesting point is that the sheets of lead that surround the pool? They're still there, and still watertight. I heard that and I immediately thought of something along the lines of lead poisoning, anyone? But apparently not. And no, it's not much warmer by the water than outside the building.

Right next to the Roman Baths is Bath Abbey. It's a fraction of the size of the Norman church that used to stand there, but it's still impressive. Along the sides of the front door is a Jacob's Ladder, in which there are angels ascending to heaven. I felt really bad for the bottom angels, because they were missing their heads - most likely due to erosion - but everything else was pretty much intact on the outside.

In Bath Abbey, you can go on what's called the Tower Tour. You get to go up into the tower and see the back of the clock face and see the bells. You learn about how they ring them - because, yes, they still have bell ringers, and it's not as easy as it sounds if you want the real deal - and we were actually in the bell room when the clock struck two. The only reason that we weren't deafened was because the mechanical parts hit the bell with a hammer, it doesn't swing like a bell ringer is doing it. If we had been in the room when they - especially the tenner bell - were swinging, you'd kiss your hearing goodbye.

As my host was coming to pick me up at half four (four-thirty), that didn't really leave me a lot of time to find lunch and then get to where she was picking me up, after seeing everything that I had wanted to.

I thought it very appropriate to work on Murphy and Me while in a Irish pub sipping on a pint of Caffrey's and waiting for my BBQ chicken melt. The chips were excellent, the melt not so much, and the beer was, as usual, good.

Once again with my map and on foot, I hoofed it to the William Herschel Museum - and was not very impressed with it, I'll tell you that, and I don't really care that the guy did live in that house - and then was craving something sweet for some reason. Which meant that I found a pub (because I didn't have time to walk all the way back to the Ben and Jerry's by the abbey) and saw that they had Sticky Toffee Pudding.

Heaven in a bowl.

I don't normally eat butterscotch (my dad likes butterscotch pudding, but I won't touch the stuff) but I am a huge fan of Sticky Toffee Pudding, specifically with custard. You have to be careful with that first couple of mouthfuls because you'll burn yourself pretty spectacularly, but after that it's bliss.

I had curry for the first time on Saturday night. It was good (I'm still not a big fan of curry, despite what I told her because, on occasion, a Sagittarius can be tactful) and after watching more DVR'd Rugby than you should probably watch in one sitting (though when Scotland plays, they have bagpipes and music by The Proclaimers) and then she wanted to watch something about America in the fifties and sixties. Something about the American Dream.

And that's kind of where the night went to hell in a handbag.

I'm sitting here struggling how to word this. How to start this.

Yes, I'm a scientist. A chemist, more specifically. I know that the creation of the atomic bomb was a great development in complete science terms. Forget everything but the science. If you look at just that, it was a great advancement. And I like advancements in science; maybe one day science will find a cure for cancer, and that would be awesome.

Now go back and factor everything else about the end of World War II into the equation with that science, and the fallout - literal and figurative - from dropping Fat Man and Little Boy. The understatement of the century would be to say it wasn't good. Thousands of people died, and even more are, in some cases, still suffering the after-affects of that this day. Their parents or grandparents had radiation sickness. Buildings were leveled, people died. Without getting too much into the politics, it was a very bad thing. Understatement? You betcha.

I'm sitting in this armchair and I'm hopin' that we can get off this topic and move on because it's not the greatest, and it's not one of America's finer moments, when my host goes, "That's the best thing that America could have ever done, drop those bombs on Japan."

I was speechless. Absolutely speechless.

It was also a struggle not to say anything because what exactly was I supposed to say to the woman who had taken me into her house for the weekend, fed me, gave me someplace to sleep, and had drove me into town? So, and this was by no means easy, I kept my mouth shut and hoped she wouldn't say anything else along those lines. Mostly because I was so infuriated that she had such a disregard for human life and the lasting effects of something of that magnitude, but also because, wouldn't you think something like that might offend someone?

I was still pretty mad by the time we hit the sixties in the program. And they got talking about homosexuality, how there was a beach in California that was known as the Queer Beach, and this guy was talking about a sort of pseudo-affair thing that he'd had, and the next thing I know she's pressed he fast forward button (she'd recorded the program) with a, "Too much talk about homosexuality."

Still sittin' in my armchair, grindin' my back teeth together.

Then she starts to speak about the dissolution of marriages and how homosexuality undermines what's a natural marriage. How it leads to depression in both the parents and the children. Basically, how pushing homosexuality has destroyed natural families.

I was downright livid by the time she pushed play, but also trying to figure out what exactly I should do. Again, I was in this conundrum of, do I say something? If I do, what do I say? How do I say it? Or is this another occasion to just keep my mouth shut?

Actually, what I really wanted was out of there. I honestly didn't want to be in the house anymore. If she had been closer to the city of Bath, closer to other places to stay, I would have packed my belongings in the night and left because I did not want to be there anymore. And I debated getting up and leaving the room. Then I thought if I did that, she'd want to know why I'd done it, and I didn't really want to talk about it.

Mostly because I didn't want to offend the person that had opened their home to me for the weekend.

It was a struggle for me to enjoy the rest of my time there. There wasn't much left, truthfully, and even though I went with her to her church - St. Mary's - and I was respectful of the service (because I do have manners and I know how to behave) I just really wanted out. I wanted to be as far away from this woman as I could possibly be. I just wanted to get on the train and go back to Wales and, honestly, never see her or hear her again.

At one point I was counting minutes.

Bath is a nice city. There's not really much to do other than shopping, but there's some pretty neat pubs and shops and architecture to look at. And now, honestly, I'm struggling to not let the last half of my interactions with this woman color the entire trip for me. It's difficult.

Gimme a week and ask me what I think of Bath. By that point I might not be so pissed off.

The Icicle Man

I wrote this for my dramatic texts class - We were supposed to take a myth/legend/fairytale and work our creepy, creepy creative magic with it. Jack Frost and I got real cozy. The end result was The Icicle Man. Enjoy.

The Icicle Man

Mari, a young woman of twenty is walking through the woods on a snow-covered path, bundled in layers and clunky snow boots. She is very cold. Everything is covered in ice and snow around her, dead silent.

Mari: I’m gonna get frostbite. This was so stupid. (She puts on a high voice) It’s not that far if you go through the woods. Not far at all. (Grumbling) Not far my ass. It’s more than a half mile, and that was when I could feel my feet. Now they’re freakin’ icicles.

(Jack is hidden from Mari behind a tree, watching her progress.)

Jack: (Eerily) Icicles are quite different, dear. Each a different size, shape, and texture. They have personality. Uniqueness.

Mari: Yes, well – (Halts abruptly) Hello? (Looks around)

Jack: (Still hidden) Your feet in no way resemble anything I could possibly come up with. For one, they lack good taste.

Mari: They have function. Function, not fashion. That’s what counts.

Jack: (Creeping slowly from behind the tree and approaching her to her left) Nothing I create could possibly be that ugly.

Mari: Better be talkin’ about the boots, buddy.

Jack: (Stepping closer, considering) My, my. What do I have in my wood?

Mari: (Looks at him fully – white brittle hair, pointed ears) Your wood.

Jack: Not mine, per say, but it’s winter. My favorite season. When snow and ice cover everything I get….a little giddy. (Smiles revealing pointed teeth)

Mari: I’m not much of a winter girl…

Jack: (Starts to fondle her hair that sticks below her hat) Really? But you look it. Same pale face as she, same nose as he…you could be one of their lost children. The ones that were…led astray, as it were, by the young minstrel. They haven’t found them all, you know. You could be one.

Mari: I’m not. Who are you?

Jack: No one you don’t know. (Leans close to her ear) You see me in the morning, painting paisley on your windows and doors. I make flowers shine in pretty silver, right before they die. The world is my plaything and humans, well…are absolutely delightful. In more ways than one.

Mari: (Staggering away from him) That doesn’t help. And don’t touch me.

Jack: No? You see around you? The ice and snow? I herald this months before it comes. While I might not be Hermes, I enjoy my work, bearing the tidings.

Mari: Father Winter brings/

Jack: Wrong! Wrong, my dear. He creates, he doesn’t bring. That is, how do you say, my job. Like yours is to milk the cows and feed the pigs.

Mari: (Dumbfounded) You watch me? You watch me while I do my chores?

Jack: (Cackling) Not like that, you silly thing. But I see you when I visit the cottage. Remember the piglet you buried without telling your mother?

Mari: (Horrified) That was/

Jack: (Looking at his rather long nails with an air of boredom) Yes, dear. That was me.

Mari: Why?

Jack: Because it happens. The universe is give and take. Surely you know this. You’re not a child. (Looks at her appraisingly) No, definitely not a child.

Mari: Hey now/

Jack: Don’t get uppity with me. I’m not the one who’s been brought up to hide herself.

Mari: (Looks at him – He is like Peter Pan, only wintry) It’s cold. That’s why normal people put on layers. And pants.

Jack: Darling, I am anything but normal.

Mari: Ya think? I don’t even know who you are.

Jack: Yes you do. I’ve been around since you’ve been born. Before that, really. You’ve practically grown up with me.

Mari: You can’t be much older than me.

Jack: (Smiling coyly) Dear, you could have me arrested for a pedophile, even at your age.

Mari: Oh, my/

Jack: Don’t mention that. He’s got nothing to do with this. He’s not the one that I answer to.

Mari: (Head tipped to one side) I think…I think I know who you are. Mother used to tell stories about a forgotten prince, one who’s favorite season was winter. He would make the icicles for Father Winter, sometimes called the Icicle Man. You’re Jack Frost.

Jack: Well done, darling. Would you like a cookie?

Mari: No, thank you. I need to be going, actually. Like, yesterday.

Jack: But you haven’t even introduced yourself. It’s rude to make a new friend and not tell them your name.

Mari: (Peevishly) You didn’t tell me yours.

Jack: You never asked politely, dear. Never asked, (Mimicking her voice) Who are you, dear sweet man? Who are you with the icicles in his hair and snow on his cheeks? (Flatly) No. You demanded. And demanding is bad manners.

Mari: Humans have bad manners. Get used to it.

Jack: (Leans in close to her face, breathing across her cheek – she shivers) Do you know what happened to the last human that was rude to me? Do you? (She shakes her head dumbly) I froze her solid and she sits in my ice palace forever, probably wishing that she hadn’t snapped when I had asked her – repeatedly – if she was alright as she sat in the snow, cuddled in on herself, freezing slowly to death. I was merciful to her, putting her out of her misery, freezing her sluggish heart when I could have started at her toes and worked my way up. And she was pretty, too. Almost like you. (He leans back, studying her) Are you sure you’re not one of the lost children?

Mari: I – I might…No. I don’t know. Am I?

Jack: It’s not a question of knowing if you are or if you aren’t, dear. It’s whether you’re game enough to try. (He bows in a gentlemanly way, holding out his hand) Would you care to see my home? The icicles that I’ve made that are too perfect to share with the undeserving humans?

Mari: I shouldn’t….I need to get going…

Jack: Humans. Always in such a rush. Rather rude, you know. (Tilts his head to the side) Well? And you still haven’t told me your name.

Mari: Mari. My name is Mari.

Jack: Such a sweet name. I really do think you were one of the forgotten children that damned piper stole. Shall I take you home? It’s not nice to refuse an invitation.

Mari: Damned if you do/

Jack: (Chuckling softly) And twiced damned if you don’t, dear. Trust me.

Murphy and Me XXX

[Great. Now the Roman numerals look like the short-form of bad porn. Fantastic.]

It was a small party, if it could be called that, and was just me, Jo, Sasha, and Cara. For the moment, as the boys hadn't come back yet. We were finishing up Dead Poets Society and sniffling like fools. Well, I was, at any rate.

"You okay, Ollie?" Sasha asked from her position of leaning against Cara on my bed.

"Fine," I sniffled, watching Todd stumble away from the rest of them toward the pond in the snow.

Nolan was telling Keating to collect his things when a knock came at the door.

"Open." My attention was glued to the screen, Edgar crushed to my chest.

Colby pushed open the door and the boys traipsed in. Murphy handed me a take-out container that I traded for a slightly greasy plastic bag.

"Oh - two?" he smiled, biting into one as the boys on the screen stood one by one on their desks with Todd's, "Oh captain, my captain."

I opened the take-out container; a mound of sweet potato fries with little containers of honey. Oh, yay. I wanted to squee but figured that might be a tad too creepy.

Liam and Dev were looking through my DVD's, muttering to each other. They pulled a few done; I put aside sweet potato fries to deal with the movie we'd just watched. Dev and I made the most awesome movie hand off ever and then I nearly dropped what he'd handed me.

Practical Magic.

Not what I was expecting when my movie shelf also includes stuff like The Patriot and all three Lord of the Rings, but okay. I can roll with that.

I set it up to go and the eight of us played musical chairs with only one real chair. Jo and Colby sandwiched Cara and Sasha on the bed; Devn had rousted me out of the moon chair; Liam was leaning against the wall of the nook, and I was sitting comfortably against Murph who had his back against my desk. We were both mowing down our respective guilty pleasures.

"Dinner alright, boys?" Sasha asked.

Oh, shit. Not sure everybody knew everybody. Jo did, and maybe Sasha. Cara was probably clueless.

"Was fine," Dev said. "A little crowded but otherwise fine."

"Cara, have you met the boys?" Some hostess I was.

She glanced around and shook her head. "Nope. I'm assuming that you're leaning against Murphy, and that the guy who looks like his twin is somehow related."

"My twin, actually. Liam." Murph set the other egg roll aside for later. "Colby is on your left and Dev is in the chair."

She smiled at each of them and laced her fingers with Sasha's. My room was and always would be a prejudice-free, judgmental-free, LGBTQ-friendly zone. If I was going to be PDA-ing it up with Murph, Sasha and Cara were going to feel safe and secure enough to do the same.

And anyone who had any notions to the contrary was going to have my size nine-and-a-half where the sun didn't shine on their way out the door.

No one so much as batted an eye. That's when I really knew I was in extremely good company. There had been other factors as well, so this was almost like extra icing at Cinnabon. Free extra icing.

Occasionally I like free things.

"Practical Magic?" Jo said as the opening music started. She looked over at Dev. "You like chick flicks?"

Dev turned a rather pretty pink and refused to answer.

"My brother's got a girlfriend who likes to quote movies," Liam said blithely.

"My boyfriend's twin likes a certain movie with Irish twins who are badass, so I'm actually impressed we're not watching Connor tossing a toilet at the moment." Not to be outdone, of course.

Jo looked down at Colby. "How do you live with them?"

"It's an art form," he said casually. Murph threw a balled up piece of paper at him.

This was honestly nice. Watching a movie with everyone - laughing when Sally couldn't poke needles in James Angelov's eyeballs without the incredibly coincidental crack of thunder - was really nice.

"Liam," Murph said as Sally and Gilly stomped mud over where they'd buried him after killing him the second time, "I just want to let you know that if your girlfriend ever tried to kill you - after branding you with her class ring - I'd help you bury her in the yard." He said it so straight-faced that it took Liam a few seconds to realize he was joking.

"Might have more of a chance doing it for you, especially after Manda."

Every muscle that Murph possessed - between six hundred and fifty and eight hundred, to be exact - went rigid. Liam had crossed a line, one that was obviously very clear and very sharp, though there was nothing apologetic in his eyes. This was a shove from one brother to the other to talk about something quite sensitive.

Incredibly so, as Murph felt more coiled than a freakin' slinky.

I rubbed his thigh just above his knee with my fingertips, accidentally digging in when I realized something more or less monumental.

The ex now had a name.

She had a name and a presence now. Not a welcome one, if Murph's fingers on my hip were any indication. Which was fine by me, truthfully.

Colby looked between the twins. "Don't worry, Liam, we do the same for problem roommates, too."

Liam frowned. "I don't have a roommate."

He looked innocently at the screen. "Oops...I thought you were Murph....should've said twin."

Murph relaxed slightly - namely, he wasn't going to accidentally leave bruises. Though I might turn colors there tomorrow if he didn't really chill soon.

Jo chuckled and very slowly - molasses in January slowly - the tension leaked from the room.

He crept the hand not easily seen by the rest of the room up the back of my t-shirt to rub circles in the area I so lovingly (not) called my back fat. As it seemed to relax him - and felt good - I didn't care. Course, if he crossed a line I'd let him know, most likely with a well-placed elbow, and settled more against him.

Even though Practical Magic was pretty old (1998) the special effects when Angelov comes out of Gilly? Flippin' awesome. And Sally? Totally feel you with wanting something you shouldn't and then wondering when it's going to fall apart. Story of my life, pretty much.

Until now. But that was only going to last four months, max.

Stop it.

I almost missed our favorite lines.

"Midnight margaritas!" Jo, Cara, Sasha, and I squealed with Gilly and Sally.

"We are so doing that when we live in the town houses and can drink," Cara said, jamming her shoulders in time with the music.

"You'd wind up in Odell's Pond," Sasha snorted, "though we could sit on our porch and pass a bottle of tequila."

"I don't do tequila," Jo and I said together. I was more of a beer or wine drinker than hard liquor, though SoCo and lime shots were lovely.

"So we'll give you a bottle of white zinfandel and let you have at it," Sasha continued. "The adults'll drink liquor and you can sip on that." We shared a knowing, if somewhat pained, smile.

Sasha had hit bottom and then the bottle when Cara had broken up with her last semester. How she'd gotten a hold of Jose was still a mystery, but when Mel had called me to say Sasha was sitting on the quad at eleven-thirty and pretty much sobbing into copious amounts of alcohol, I really hadn't thought twice about running barefoot in soccer shorts and a sweatshirt from my room on J2 to the large grassy space outside the colleges administrative building. It had taken a lot of convincing to get her to come with me, and she threw up by the college store on the way back to Jackson.

Don't ask how they'd fixed things, since between puking twice more and the absolute bitch of a hangover the next morning, Sasha wasn't in the mood to say anything to anyone. Even me. In a rate moment of brilliance, I hadn't pushed. Looking back now, I'm glad I'd let her do her thing.

Dev gave a full body shudder that almost dumped him out of the chair when Kylie and Antonia pushed Gilly - tied to an armchair - across the floor with a swath of toads in her wake.

I'd like to say we all didn't turn and openly stare like landed trout. Despite evidence to the contrary, I try very hard not ot feed myself utter fantastical bullshit, even if it tastes better than reality.

"Are you afraid of frogs?" Colby asked, clearly skeptical.

Dev colored. "Like Murph's afraid of heights."

Any trace of a smile vanished from Colby's face. "Oh. Sorry, Dev."

He shrugged. "Not your fault. I blame living next to a swamp and three sisters."

I had one sister that pushed my sanity. How he dealt with three was beyond me.

Murph's fingers slipped around more toward my belly and he flinched when, at the end, the Owens women jumped off the roof and flew. Probably wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't been so close to him.

I tried to play the good hostess and probably railed miserably because, after making brunch plans with everyone, they cleared out.

For the first time since I'd met Murph, it was awkward between us. Pink elephant named Manda awkward. He sat on my bed, wedged into the corner where two walls met, idly turning Edgar over in his hands. I stayed leaning against the door, content to watch. And not say anything.

"Amanda Morrison is my ex-girlfriend," he said, rubbing his forehead before giving me that look that said he'd really like to have me physically near. The elephant and I eyed each other as I crossed the room, climbing onto the foot of the bed to put my back against the dresser. He looked at me, open and vulnerable to the point where it was beginning to scare me. "And I'm not ready to talk about it."

Understandable. Very understandable.

Because if he wasn't ready to talk about Manda, then I was nowhere near prepared to talk about Bobby. That was a whole lotta mess to handle in one try and...no. Not right now.

"I - "

"You don't have to tell me," he said softly. "When you're ready, you're ready. When I'm ready - "

"I'll know." I would, too. And wouldn't that be an interesting conversation.

Edgar was put gently to the side, Murph's head lolling back against the wall. "I do trust you."

Oh, Murph. If I gave him an arrhythmia, he was going to give me a stroke. "I know." Before I could stop and analyze it, I slid forward between his knees and planted my shoulder against his chest, curling in on myself and toward him, solid and warm. He slipped an ankle between mine where they were pressed together and rested his other thigh on mine. Now utterly caged and content, the pink elephant didn't seem quite so large. Might even have been shrinking. Temporarily, of course.

"Chroi," he murmured into my hair. "What you are to me. And what you do."

"I trust you, too, Murph," I whispered, breathing against his chest. Even if it's only because I think I love you.