This month I’m participating in the 100-word #adventghosts2024 flash fiction event run by writer Loren Eaton. You'll find links to all the stories participating in this event at his blog, I Saw Lightning Fall. Every single one of them is exactly 100 words. Here’s my piece. Loren will be adding links to more stories as we get closer to Christmas, and as writers submit them. So be sure to check back. Here’s my story:
Image by @kiwihug via Unsplash.
A NIGHT IN BAVARIA, 1261
I am naked, nearly flesh, when I penetrate the baron’s bedchamber. My ogre state: half flesh, half ice.
“You know me, pig? I have fought in your wars.”
He brandishes his sword.
“Not my wars,” he sneers. “Peasants never understand that.”
I seize the pitcher near his wardrobe. Spring water splashes. Droplets knit themselves like quicksilver in my palm.
“Ice?” he scoffs. “What good is ice?”
The first icicle takes him in the cheek. His blade clatters to his pretty carpet.
“It melts,” I say, plunging the second and grinding his right eye to jelly, “and leaves no trace.”
Copyright 2024 Joseph D’Agnese
My previous contributions to the Advent Ghosts events are here: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2019, 2023.
Over the years, I’ve written three times about Jack Frost for these Advent Ghosts events. And since 2013, I have spent a stupid amount of years envisioning his adventures among mortals.
I wrote a half million words trying to get the story right, before dropping him as the main character, and focusing the story instead on Kris Kringle, who is his adopted daughter (at least in my retelling). She is goodness and light, while he is darkness.
But you can’t really blame him, can you? What if your existence consisted of making ice, ushering in Winter, and snuffing out the natural world (and the occasional despot) for all eternity?
