Rise of the Snowmen

by Emmi Lawrence

  Loved him and wanted him.

  Wanted to take him to dinner. Wanted to know his birthday, not for medical, societal reasons, but to celebrate. To focus on Taylor and only Taylor, just as Greg was doing now, his hand sliding down and around, finding Taylor’s stiff shaft where it bounced against the sheets, in order to tug him into warmth and friction.

  By all the devilish elves that flew the grayscale skies, Taylor wanted to stay. He wanted to kiss Greg good morning every morning. Wanted to share coffee and showers and dinners, whether here or somewhere else. Wanted to have a fridge always stocked, a home meant for living and not just sleeping.

  He wanted to shoot rubber-bands at Greg’s back and be forced to hide the last dredges of the caramel coffee so no one else could drink it.

  He wanted to be pressed into this pillow so often that it became mundane, that sex became comfort, so much so they’d be forced to push all the boundaries to make every kiss better than the last. Find the new in the familiar.

  “Taylor, babe?”

  Taylor sucked in a hard breath.

  Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. And nothing had happened but for a family outing—sticky peppermint and overpriced coffee and photo-ops—and a promise of a future from a man he thought he might love. Christmas Eve and the world felt…right.

  “Babe.” This time Greg’s voice breathed directly in Taylor’s ear. Soft and deep and hopeful.

  His balls jumped, squeezing in sudden anticipation. Greg’s thrusts had slowed, gone purposeful. The drag of Greg’s cock became a forceful press. The graze of his lips over Taylor’s ear, a whispered prayer to a god Taylor didn’t even believe in.

  “You’ve gone somewhere again, like you were all evening,” murmured Greg.

  “I’m right here.”

  Greg chuckled, the sound sending tendrils of pleasant heat tracking through Taylor’s body. “You better be. You’re going to stay. Right here. With me.” Greg punctuated every sentence with a slow thrust, with a hard press of their bodies together. “Whatever worry you have? It’s over. Christmas is here. We’re all okay. Everything is okay.”

  Taylor let his head fall, forehead buried in the pillow. Closed his eyes. Focused on the way Greg smelled—sandalwood and orange—on the way he felt—hard muscle, soft lips, firm grip—on the way he spoke—sexy, claiming words that Taylor both wanted and feared. He tipped himself backward, meeting Greg with every heartbeat-pounding jerk, with every cock-thickening shove.

  “Everything’s okay,” Taylor whispered to himself, the words mere noise, bursting from his lungs as Greg pressed down, squeezing them tight.

  Fingers woven together, their bodies strained, Greg scraping over Taylor’s prostate in sharp, quick motions. Constant friction accelerated the pleasure swelling in Taylor. He fisted the sheets. Buried a moan into his pillow. Blinked back traitorous tears and swallowed against the clawing in his throat.

  And just when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, that he couldn’t stand for this heat to increase, to reach burning heights he could not survive, Greg arched, swept a hard grip through Taylor’s hair and then cursed resoundingly. Pinned, with cock scrubbing against the sheet, Taylor felt something release inside of him. He came, sobbing against the pillow, jerking out of sync with Greg now that the two of them were swept into a mess of orgasm.

  Christmas Eve.

  Taylor shuddered one last time, pumped his spent erection and then sank under Greg’s weight as the other man collapsed.

  “Merry Christmas, baby.” And Greg hummed a few breathless bars of some Christmas carol, then he sang under his breath, “Baby, please stay home,” but Taylor wasn’t familiar enough to know the tune or tell whether the words were right.

  He probably should get up, clean himself off. Yet, the sweet caress of satisfaction pulled at him, assuaging whispers echoing in his mind that Christmas had come, that Christmas would be gone in mere hours, the world was safe. Greg and Mandy were safe. All was well. All was good. Time to sleep, even if it wouldn’t be in heavenly peace, it would certainly be in some sort of earthly one.

  “Got to go play Santa.” Greg pressed a kiss against Taylor’s ear. There Greg paused. “The fake one, that is. Be right back.”

  The bed rocked under Greg’s shifting weight. Then the closet door creaked open, leading to a rustle of bags, the crinkling of wrapping paper, the flutter of ribbons. Greg’s footsteps padding down the hallway.

  Taylor kept his eyes closed. This satiation, this contentedness, it was new and unexplored. Beautiful, even. Far more beautiful than Christmas lights or snowflakes or any of the million other holiday spirit representations.

  This, right here, this really was peace.

  And to all a good night.

  A chill seeped into Taylor’s dreams. A frigid nightmare breathing ice, filling his subconscious with twisted memories of an arctic nature.

  The snowmen’s forest outside Santa’s village growing larger, the trees coated with pristine, contradictory white. Angels flitted about the canopy, their wings thickening the gray light, sending eddies of snow flurries into Taylor’s vision.

  The cold sank into the village, spread to Santa’s palace where the warmth of the gingerbread ovens began to falter. Cinnamon and clove hung in the air.

  The sizzle of Christmas light whips buzzed against children backs. Snowflake ninja stars sliced cold fronts through the halls, one blade sinking into Taylor’s fingers, pain lancing across his knuckles, frost numbing his fingertips. He ran, screaming long-ago friends’ names, their echoes slipping across the ice-coated halls, like glass, reflecting his own terror back at him.

  Outside the windows, the reindeer began their yearly climb into the sky, legs kicking, their power propelling them up and forward through the snow flurries, while the angels fluttered down, down to settle into the drifts of the spearmint forest.

  Deepening the cold. Spreading the frost. Covering runaways with their frigid, welcoming wings until they’d cease to—

  Taylor woke.

  The warmth from Greg’s body lay across Taylor’s back, yet every inch of untouched skin felt awash with icy needles. Each one, a sharpened point of dread embedded in his body. He pulled himself free from Greg’s grip, letting the soft blankets slide away. A cold front settled across his shoulders, causing a shudder to jerk him into full alertness.

  An eerie silence enveloped him. No hum of the heater. No tapping of the pipes. Nothing but the gentle rhythm of Greg’s breathing.

  The vague glow of a neighbor’s Christmas lights blurred through the curtains. Yet inside Greg’s house there was no shine from the clock. The television’s standby light gone as dark as the rest of the night.

  The electricity must have gone out.

  But just here. Just Greg’s house. A zeroed-in focus. Taylor felt the grip of childhood terror for a moment before he could staunch it down where he could control it. He shook Greg’s shoulder lightly.

  “Greg, wake up.”

  Then he threw back the blankets and leapt from the bed. Ignoring the light switch entirely, he fumbled for the emergency bag he kept underneath where Greg never looked. The zipper screamed loud in the silence. Taylor felt around, pushing aside his gun, his knife, a small clip filled with cash, a second phone, the metals all ice to the touch.

  “There’s something wrong! Greg!”

  His hand finally closed around the hard metal of his flashlight. He pulled it out and flicked it on, sending a beam coursing throughout the bedroom. Frost cracked around the window frames. The light refracted, casting a thousand tiny reflections across the walls. A thousand tiny reflections that should not have existed, not even had the electricity been off since he and Greg had fallen asleep.

  This was something more, something sinister, something Christmas.

  Merry Christmas to all.

  He should have known better. Peace wasn’t something that belonged to Taylor.

  Never had. Never would.

  Greg groaned softly and made noise that may have b
een questioning words. As he tugged on his underwear, Taylor turned the beam directly on Greg’s face. “Greg! Wake the fuck up! I’m going to check on Mandy.”

  “Mandy?” came Greg’s groggy voice. “God, it’s freezing.”

  Taylor rushed to the door in just his boxers. “They’re here. They’re coming. Pull some clothes on.”

  “What?”

  But Taylor didn’t bother clarifying. He jerked open the door and stepped into the hall, right into a cold wetness that chilled his sole. He cast the flashlight back and forth, up and down the hall, the glow reflecting off the framed photos of Mandy's preschool graduation. A thin dusting of snow had settled across the hardwood.

  Snow, inside Greg’s house.

  He spun, the floor growing slicker underfoot as his body heat melted where he stepped. The dusting grew heavier outside Mandy’s cracked-open door, a drift beginning a few steps from her room.

  “Mandy! Mands?”

  A chill wind filtered down the hall, kicking up the snow, flurrying it as if he stood outside Santa’s village again, watching as the snowmen grew in size, as angels shivered up from the drifts. He shoved open Mandy’s door forcibly, a foot of snow resisting him. A white expanse had fallen on every available surface. Bits of stuffed animal ears poked up from the creased blanket of freshly fallen snow on Mandy’s bed.

  “Oh fuck! Mandy!”

  No, no. He’d been lax. He’d let his guard down.

  He dove through the room, mindless of the freezing cold clutching at his toes, his feet, his calves, as he waded through the snow. It had the quality of a fresh fall, light and airy, fluttering as he kicked through to Mandy’s bedside. He shoved his hand into the drift and shoveled off the snow, searching for Mandy’s nightgown, her braided hair, her small hands, thumb and forefinger barely strong enough to pull the rubber-bands back far enough to fling.

  “Greg! Get in here!” His voice broke on his scream.

  Greg must have staggered against a wall because Taylor heard a thump, but he couldn’t turn to see, couldn’t spare the moment. Who knew how long Mandy had been buried, how long the snow had pressed against her little chest. How long he’d slept through it.

  He threw stuffed animals and bunched and frosted blankets onto the floor, Bobby Pie Turtle turning sad, little eyes upward. The light bounced and shuddered across the wall as he sought desperately to find the bed itself. He grabbed what he thought to be another blanket and yanked, but met with resistance.

  Behind him, Greg made an anguished, deep-throated sound and suddenly Taylor had help, giant swaths of snow flung away and Mandy appearing from beneath it all, her lips parted, her eyes wide as she let out a high-pitched wail.

  “You’re okay, sweetheart, you’re okay.” Greg bundled her up to his chest, Mandy’s wail morphing into broken sobs, more gasps than crying.

  Taylor cast the flashlight’s beam toward the doorway. “We need to get out—”

  From the mound of snow encasing Mandy’s bed rose a winged figure. Faceless, armless, merciless, the snow angel spread its wings with a sigh. Taylor shouted and shoved Greg out of the way and barely had time to lift the flashlight into the angel’s face before it folded over him, throwing him into the snow.

  He arched as the cold radiated through his skin. Shouted and swung the flashlight into the angel’s faceless head. A chasm appeared across the angel where the flashlight tore a path through the snow holding the creature together. Then the snowflakes paused in their flight before sweeping back into place, settling that smooth faceless head into a blemish-free surface once more.

  “Taylor? What the fuck is that?”

  “Take Mandy and get out of here! Get in your car and don’t stop! You hear me?”

  Wings of pure arctic chill curled about him. A sudden soundless dome closed against his ears, blocking off Greg’s response and Mandy’s hiccupped, shuddering sobs. Taylor swung the flashlight again and again, denting and smearing and taking giant chunks from the angel’s head and torso. Yet the dispersed snowflakes merely tumbled back into place after a moment’s sigh, his efforts not fast enough, not expansive enough to break through.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” he gasped, smashing against its wings, though they seemed more ice than snow, packed down tight, letting his chipping do little but flicker the light. “You can’t survive this far south. How—”

  But the answer came unbidden to his mind: snow shapers. The elves were here, had likely been here, biding their time, hidden away as he searched for them. Cackling at his inability to find them. Not just a few of their workers, not just a few grunts. The blasted snow shapers themselves were here. And since powerful elves were here, then too would their creations. Snow angels and—

  “Greg! They’ll be snowmen outside! Many of them!”

  His words echoed back to him within the cage of the snow angel’s wings, likely going nowhere, too muffled to be heard.

  He whaled at the angel even as it closed in, closer, closer, cutting off the room, the world, his life. Space to swing the flashlight narrowed, shrunk, until he couldn’t get enough of a windup, until he was doing no more than chipping at the snow. He elbowed, he kneed, he thrust his cooling body against the creature. His boxers were soaked through, his body picking up a shudder he couldn’t control.

  Flashes of memory, of friends outside the village, their small bodies—some as small as Mandy’s—disappearing in snow angel embraces, flooded his sense. Their screams cutting off, muting as thickened wings wrapped them in chilly embraces. This had been their last moments.

  This would be his.

  The North Pole’s cold crept through Taylor’s limbs, winding him down. His light glowed against the angel’s faceless head. Emotionless, it stroked its smoothed surface against Taylor’s face, exactly how a lover might. As Greg had done this evening, cheek against cheek. That face then stuttered, opened to swallow him.

  To end him in the same way he would have been ended years and years ago had he fallen from his reindeer that night.

  And to all a good night. To all a good night.

  He took a breath, snow falling into his mouth. Then the snow shuddered, paused. The angel’s head pulled away.

  A crack appeared in the angel, the snow splitting apart a portion of its torso. The wings loosened as the angel twisted, its faceless expression splintering.

  Thump. The angel shuddered again, the chasm growing before it had a chance to suck its snow back to sooth itself out. Thump. Craaack.

  Taylor would have laughed had he not been so chilled, his body too stiff to do more than suck in a deep breath of icy air that felt as if it pierced his lungs. He redoubled his efforts as the angel’s hold loosened. The beam from the flashlight hopped and skipped and shook as he bashed at the angel’s head, at its curved wings.

  “Taylor!” Thump. “Can you hear me?”

  “I hear you,” Taylor gasped to himself. “I hear you.”

  With a singing crrraaccck, the angel’s body exploded into a snowy, powdery mess. A hand reached in, gripped Taylor by the arm and yanked him upward. He staggered against Greg’s firm body, the light casting shadows across his forehead that gave him an ungodly look, a fury set in his brow.

  “You’re practically naked. You’re going to get sick.”

  Taylor’s teeth chattered too fiercely to respond, but he gave a wan smile and stumbled after Greg and his snow-encrusted orange baseball bat. Mandy sat right by the door of her room, swallowed up in the comforter off Greg’s bed, her hair loose from her braid. Her eyes opened wide. Her dimples exchanged for an expression that mimicked her father’s.

  “Taylor,” she whispered in a voice that reminded him of children long ago. “The elves are back. But don’t worry. I have my jump rope.”

  And she poked one tiny hand from the blanket to show the orange and red striped handles and the malleable rope in between.

  Chapter Eight

  Greg scooped up Mandy one-handedly and ushered Taylor into their bedroom. “Clothes first
,” he said sharply, setting Mandy on the sheets and dropping the snow-smeared baseball bat beside her. Then he fetched a couple of towels from the bathroom by the light from the window and the constantly shivering beam from Taylor’s flashlight.

  “We need to go,” said Taylor in a tight, cold-compressed voice. He sank to the bed near Mandy and doubled up, though his gaze never left the door. “We need to go before they encase us.”

  “What does encase mean?” asked Mandy.

  She’d dried her tears and staunched her sobs as Greg had been beating the crap out of whatever the hell snow monster had been wrapped about Taylor. Now she leaned toward Taylor, something in her gaze Greg hadn’t seen before. Something fiery. Awe-filled, yet stricken.

  “You’ll freeze, babe.” Greg dropped one open towel over Taylor’s shoulders and tossed the other across his lap, but didn’t stay to scrub his body the way he’d done for Mandy a few minutes earlier. “Dry up. I’ll get your clothes.”

  “It means the house will be completely covered. Like a fucking ice castle, with us its frozen statues.”

  “Don’t cuss in front of Mandy,” said Greg automatically as he yanked free the first shirt and set of jeans from the shadows of Taylor’s drawer.

  “An ice castle,” whispered Mandy. “Like a snow queen.”

  “Like snow shapers. They’re elves, Mands. A kind of elf that’ll continue to summon angels and snowmen until they think they’ve killed us.” Taylor clutched at the towels and did a haphazard job of attempting to dry himself, his movements jerky and tight, his hair flopping in damp locks. “We need to go. My weapons, most of them are in my car.” Then he bent down, fumbling in a black bag half-pulled from under the bed. Took out a gun and a knife.

  Greg would have to have a word with him about unsafe weaponry in the house when they got out of here. If they got out of here.

  “Yes, we’ll go. But it won’t do any of us any good if we all catch hypothermia in the process.” Greg straightened Taylor, did a wipe of his hair with the towel and then forcibly shoved the shirt over his head. Then he tugged Taylor up and nudged him toward the bathroom. “Get those boxers off and put these on.”