Contents
About The Book
Act I: Well-Met By Moonlight
Act II: Attitude Adjustment
Act III: Fine Lines
Act IV: Structural Failure
Act V: Awake
Coming Soon
Also By Athena
WINTERJACKED: RUDE AWAKENING
Book One of the WinterJacked Cycle
To the young, impossible dreams are magic. At forty, they’re a mid-life crisis.
Jack Winters lost his perfect, upwardly-mobile life (along with the perfect, upwardly-mobile wife) when it intersected with a pack of fantastical creatures. He’s spent three years determined to ignore the Things that want to call him Master, and kept his failures frozen under a thick layer of isolation from even his closest friends. But when a holiday reunion presents him with the woman who Might Have Been, suddenly the impossible doesn’t seem so improbable anymore…
Lin Sanada thought she was long over her college crush and the missed connections that kept her and Jack Winters “just friends” for nearly twenty years. She’s moved on, and left wishful thinking behind. But when a winter night, a full moon, and a little magic lead her into a very real relationship with the man of her dreams, she finds a reality far more fantastical than her wildest imaginings…
Sometimes you reinvent yourself…Sometimes you redefine reality.
If Jack wants to earn a new chance at a future, he’ll have to confront all the raw wounds failure left on his expectations. And he’ll have to choose: keep clinging to the shreds of his old life…or make a whole new reality.
~*~
Athena Grayson writes stories about characters that are a little more than expected, in situations that never turn out quite as planned. She lives in Ohio with her family and an assortment of furry creatures that seem to believe her primary occupation is to feed them. She’s always got a craft project going on (usually unfinished, and taking up space on the dining room table), and enjoys using the kitchen as a test lab for new and exciting dishes that don’t always go over well with the other humans in the household.
~*~
I love to hear from readers, and I care about quality. If you find any errors in this book, I want to know.
Find Athena: athenagrayson.com | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads
Other Works
The WinterJacked Cycle
WinterJacked: Rude Awakening (Book 1)
Kaidan: Snow Bride (a WinterJacked Frost Bite) in Spirits of the Season Holiday Anthology
Huntress of the Star Empire
The Chase (Episodes 1-3)
The Snare (Episodes 4-6)
The Catch (Episodes 7-9)
The Release (Episodes 10-12)
Forever Material
The Spelling Error
Copyright Notice
© 2015 Jen Sokoloski. All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Published by Uncharted Worlds Media. unchartedworldsmedia.com
Cover Artwork: © Jennette Marie Powell Heikes. All images licensed and used with permission
Act I: Well-Met By Moonlight
Jack Winters woke up naked, screaming, and forty. Since it was his birthday, the forty part was new.
He thrashed free of the bedclothes, his arm knocking against the squat little being that crouched on his pillow in the middle of a ponytail of hair that used to be on his head. The pitch of the scream turned more frantic than the usual “what the hell happened to my life” panic that gripped him every time he returned to consciousness. “Get off!” He flailed his limbs, his six feet-plus lankiness trashing the comforter and sending the creature flying across the floor of the screened-off sleeping area of his downtown loft.
First things first. He flung the sheet away and checked down south. Everything safe. Everything...if not normal, then at least present and accounted for. Because honestly, with the way his life had gone for the past five years, the definition of “normal” was relative, and always worth confirming.
He set his bare feet on the concrete floor, glaring at the foot-tall creature currently making a wet spot in the middle of the speckled throw rug in front of his dresser.
“It regrets! It regrets! It is only trying to serve!” The tinkling, crystalline voice shouldn’t come from something that homely.
Jack squinted. “Use your pronouns, please.” He pushed himself up off the bed. “And get the hell out of here.”
Naked, he passed the mirror mounted over the dresser and glanced towards it.
Ah, there it comes, he thought. The scream—second one today, might have a record on my hands—carried his breath towards the glass, which fogged and frosted over, softening his appearance with a merciful blur.
He turned towards the thing on the floor. “What. The. Hell. Did. You. DO. To. My. Hair?”
“It serves! It serves!” The creature pleaded. It--could be a him, could be a her, Jack couldn’t tell--peered up at him with enormous, frost-rimmed, colorless eyes dominating a walnut-skinned face. Gangly limbs too long for its body folded in supplication in front of the narrow, pot-bellied torso. The thing squatted, its legs so long that its knees were taller than its knobby little head, and stuck out at even angles. “Majesty’s day of birth is here! Majesty must be resplendent!”
Jack didn’t know what the hell it was talking about, but “resplendent” wouldn’t exactly be the word he chose to describe himself...even naked with morning wood. “You cut my hair.” He squinted through the frost on the mirror. “You cut all the color off and left all the gray.”
The Oddling had taken his ponytail and whacked it off, taking the last of the warm cinnamon brown with it. The stark colorlessness of what was left looked even whiter with the tips cut in a razored shag.
The Oddling nodded, thin-lipped mouth twisting up into a grimace that might have been a smile. It shifted its elbows, unconsciously angling them out to match the angle of the knees. “Majesty must bear Winter’s pride.”
Jack shifted a protective hand over his “pride” and hunted for boxer-briefs. He peered into the frosty mirror again. It actually didn’t look that bad. With a little blow-dry--the scream bubbled back up, trapped in his windpipe by the realization that sometime in the past six months, he’d come to accept the presence of these creatures in his life.
He wiped the frost off the mirror with his hand. It left more frost, ferning out in absorbing fractals that his eyes wanted to follow down to microscopic detail. He tore his gaze away. The last time that happened, he’d stared, motionless, at a window and come back into himself twelve hours later with no memory of the time that had passed. The dog had gone hysterical.
That wasn’t a problem now, as his ex-wife had taken the dog, along with half of everything else—the good half—when she left. He really missed that dog, but there wouldn’t be any more Rockys in his place. Not with creatures like the one squatting on his floor. “That better not be piss,” he growled.
The Oddling shook its head. “No, Majesty! This one serves even in places of hot misery.”
“Hot misery?” Jack’s voice pitched to disbelief. “It’s all I can do to keep the place at sixty-five!” At least he and Nan didn’t have to fight about the thermostat anymore. “And I’m not your majesty. You’re not my servant. Get out of here if it’s too warm for you.”
The Oddling vanished, leaving a cloud of frosted vapor that left a thin layer of ice on top of the puddle.
The creatures insisted he was their king and nothing Jack did or said to them made any difference. King, my ass. The ki
ng of little potato-headed hallucinations. His Royal Majesty padded into his kitchen and pulled out the broom and mop. Out of the corners of his eyes, he spotted other dark, half-sized bodies scurrying up in the shadowed rafters of the loft, leaving frosty footprints that faded in moments few enough to make it easy to dismiss them as tricks of light and shadow.
He swept the remaining locks of his beleaguered ponytail into the dustpan, but gave up on salvaging the bedding and just stripped the sheets and pillowcases, taking small comfort in the fact that having that much hair meant he wasn’t losing it. On the other hand...”If I’m supposed to be your damn king, how come you don’t clean up after yourselves?” He muttered out loud to the squirming shadows lurking at the edges of his vision.
He made up the bed with fresh linens, noting out loud that the housekeeping was taking away from work time. Never mind that it was four days from Christmas, he had corporate clients that needed to be billed, and jobs that needed to be finished before the calendar year ended.
“Quit complaining,” he said to his mirror image as he searched for pants. “At least you won’t be dead of a heart attack in five years.” Freelancing was decent enough in the good times, and his only option if he wanted to keep his personal life from imploding his professional one. Freelance Architects were supposed to be artsy and quirky. Architectural firm partners were not.
The haircut, he was forced to admit, wasn’t a complete disaster. He’d always worn his hair a little long, but the past year’s abrupt changes--like every bit of his hair going to snowy gray at the roots--had led him to hold onto what was left of the color, perhaps longer than was wise. Maybe it was time for a change. He wondered with a stab of guilt if people would recognize him tonight.
He wondered if he would be able to keep it together long enough for them to whisper behind their hands at how far he’d fallen, how much he’d aged. The people who used to be your best friends weren’t supposed to think things like that about you, but in his case, how could they not, when he’d been hiding from them for three years.
While he pulled on leggings made of shiny blue performance fabric that molded to his limbs, another Oddling scuttled out from behind the mirror.
Better they think I got old than went crazy. The Oddling dropped to its knees, planting its face on the dresser top. “This one seeks only to serve, Majesty.”
The little goblin’s abject submission repulsed him. “Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Jack’s teeth clenched. “What kind of critter are you, anyway?” He’d been thinking of them as Oddlings because of their misshapen proportions and the fact that “monsters” sounded a lot more threatening...and a lot less sane. He hunted in the bottom drawer and found a pair of loose shorts that went over the leggings.
The potato head perked up. “Majesty wishes to be Informed?” It showed bared teeth and the gleam of a sharp-tipped grill behind the comically unassuming face sent a shiver down his spine.
Jack stopped, shorts in hand, eyes narrowed. He heard the capital letter in that question. “Tell me the name of your species,” he finally said, and hoped it was specific enough. Asking too many questions had already made a mess of his life.
“This one is of the tribe of Chillsprites, Majesty.” It bowed again, this time with a flourish.
Chillsprite. The word was...somewhat apt. It certainly gave him the chills to look at the little—Chillsprites—for too long. The chillsprite opened its mouth to speak again, but he cut it off. “That’ll do.”
He should know better than to ask questions of the Oddlings. His first question—an “Are you for real?” spoken a few months ago to the flickers dancing at the edges of his vision--had produced a vehement “yes” in response. After that, there was no way to un-know it, or anything else they told him. He’d questioned their reality and it now slapped him in the face every time he turned around.
“Majesty may call the Chillsprites to serve at any time. The Chillsprites have always served Winter—”
“I said shut up!” He flapped his shorts at the creature. “Why can’t you just leave me be for one day!”
The critter skittered away. “It is sorry! It begs forgiveness from Majesty!”
The beep of the coffeemaker in the kitchen sounded over the creature’s blubbering. Jack dropped the shorts and let out a deflated sigh. “You made me coffee again, didn’t you?”
From the corner, the critter nodded. “It serves Majesty, yes?”
Jack sighed and rubbed his temple. “There’s milk in the dish in the kitchen.” Since the Oddlings had begun lurking in the corners of his eyes, hanging around his windows, tailing him from home to anywhere outside, he’d discovered that milk was one of the few things that could distract them from their pestering.
The Oddling squeaked. “Majesty is generous!”
Jack grunted nonverbal acknowledgement of just a hint of guilt at the critter’s worship of his undeserving ass. “No, I’m not. I’m just willing to pay you to leave me alone.” He pulled on the shorts he’d been harassing the Oddling with, then rooted through the drawers of the bureau until he found a performance turtleneck. He slid the silky fabric over his head through a halo of static electrical snaps that plagued him until he laced up his running shoes. Lastly, he pulled on a pair of half-gloves from the tray on top of the dresser that held change, keys, and fountain pen nibs.
Suitably armored and insulated against the cold that radiated from his body in unpredictable spikes, he gave a last swipe to the mirror with a hand towel, mopping up the moisture condensing on the glass from his presence, then chucked it into the corner with the larger one he’d used to sop up the puddle left on the rug by his self-appointed Oddling—Chillsprite, because dammit, now I know its name—stylist.
The Oddlings’ messy slurps echoed from the loft’s galley kitchen. Punctuated by clatters of the bowl as it scooted across the kitchen floor, muffling when it hit the rug in front of the sink. It’s like having a dog again, except it’s shaped like a potato and talks. And it has friends.
Jack stepped over the wrinkled-tuber bodies to pour himself an insulated mug of their hard work. The noises at his feet went from slurps to crunches as the milk froze over from the Chillsprites’ natural frigidity. A surreal sort of equilibrium settled over him as he stirred in cream. This is my life now. No dog, no wife. But strange, sharp-toothed gremlins that seemed to see him as some sort of minor deity. A handful of strange and useless traits that summed up to a natural coldness that might explain itself through poor circulation if it hadn’t taken the coffee from steaming hot to lukewarm in mere minutes, and the ability to see creatures that should not be there. And a necessarily empty hole where friends and lovers should be.
A life in which each step could slip him sideways from the world he knew into another one, just half an inch off, but completely separate from everything he knew.
~*~
“Well, that’s it, I guess.” Lin Sanada peered down into fifteen years’ worth of life-defining detritus. Coffee mugs, awards, certifications, swag from a hundred different technology-oriented trade shows and sales conferences piled around framed photos of friends and coworkers past and present—well, mostly past, since they’d all been laid off before her.
And dust. Lots and lots of dust.
She sneezed and was glad of the excuse it provided for her red eyes and runny nose. She tucked a strand of straight black hair back into the loose knot at her nape and tugged on her earring to compose herself.
The young twentysomething guy leaning in the doorway shifted nervously. “We’ll miss you, Ms. Sanada. Sorry about this.”
Bullshit, she thought. You won’t miss me and you’re not sorry, either. “It’s fine, Will.” She’d trained him when he started here two years ago and now he was lurking in her doorway, as per company policy—while she cleaned out her desk, waiting to escort her out of the building for the last time.
She made one last check through her desk drawers, found an old Tori Amos CD, and tucked that on top. It would make for good
trip-home music. She sank into her chair one last time as she sifted through paperclips for pennies—gonna be needing those. Even with the generous severance package and the healthy buyout of her shares as one of EvoWorld’s founding members, things like health insurance would eat into that faster than a lost weekend in Vegas. With hookers.
She tossed the handful of change she found, but left the paperclips. Will stood in the doorway, making sure she didn’t make off with any “company property” or harm the company in any way out of retaliation for being laid off. As if she were a common thief. As if the stock would tank for want of paperclips.
Thanks to her, EvoWorld was doing better than ever, the buyout to the major gaming-industry producer complete, and the intellectual property properly licensed and leveraged into a solid money-maker that guaranteed excellent return on corporate investment. What more could she have done to the plucky Internet startup dreamed into being by a handful of her best college friends in a rented storefront fifteen years ago?
Maybe not sold it out so completely to a soulless corporate Godzilla. She started working on her keyring next. She slotted her thumbnail into the split ring and slid keys out, one by one. Front door, back door, server room, roof, archive, mail room, office, desk, cubby. The last one—employee files—proved too much for her thumbnail, and the nail tore away from her thumb, ripping skin and sending a sharp stab of pain through her. “Dammit!”
She jerked the offending thumb away from the keyring, sucking on it while the telltale prickle of tears built behind her eyes. She sucked in a deep breath through her nose. I will not cry. My humiliation is already so far down in the abyss—hot shame curdled her stomach. So much for Asian stoicism.
Will shifted again and the sound sent a shot of anger through her. Fuck that little turd. He can wait two more minutes to get his damn office. Speaking of which—She pushed away from the desk and dropped the last key onto the pile, then strode over to the door and leaned out. She slid her nameplate out of the holder and slapped it against her thigh.
WinterJacked: Book One: Rude Awakening Page 1
