91Èȱ¬

The camouflage truck chugged its way along the familiar roads. Past dimly lit windows and sparkling lights, all the way to his stop. He faintly saw the silhouette of a young women standing in the doorway. As he neared closer and closer, he could see her. Her smiling green eyes and pale heart face. Her cheeks, became soaked in a flood of joyous tears as the veteran sprinted to his adoring wife, scooping her up in his arms. He kisses her forehead before setting her down, as she excitedly led the way.

The house hadn’t changed. He felt the same carpet sink underneath his shoes, all the same pictures lining the walls. Nothing had changed, bar the decorations. The hallowed tree was central of their squat living room, its branches shining rosily as the flames in the fire licked the air. The lights flashed vibrantly and for a moment his head spun, bringing taunting memories of his time in the battlefield, hunched over a lantern as a black velvet sky surrounded him.

He looked at the burning flames of the fire now dying, leaving ashes. Hand on head visions flooding back of the bombs, bringing destruction, leaving cities in ashes, as the fire was doing now. The fear churned in his stomach, his eyes glazing over. The smell of cinnamon warmed the air as his wife strolled into the room to tell him time for dinner. Her eyes met his, wild and scared for a split second before he bolted like a frightened doe. She found him later that night, as the fog’s long white fingers grabbed at him and milky stars etched the sky. Waves crashed, as he sat with his knees drawn up, rocking back and forth, the sand dunes reminding him all too well of the trenches.

Thief. Scoundrel. Nuisance.

People were always shaking their fist at Jack Frost, and he had learned to shake his right back. Skulking down the street, hair threatening to impale stray leaves and hands thrust into motheaten pockets, he seethed as he recalled past winters. “My darling dahlias!” He wailed in an ear-splittingly high falsetto. “My pilfered petunias! My verdant violets, victims of such a vagabond! Curse you, Jack Frost!”. His arched eyebrows, encrusted with icicles, plummeted downwards. “Same old, same old.”

You see, unlike his big fish counterparts, Jack had never really been accepted by many. The constellations of condensation he left on windscreens were bemoaned by harried commuters, and often suffered a torturous death involving kettles of scalding water. His glistening roads, cleansed of all human litter or filth, were soon defaced with zig-zags of coarse salt and grit. Flowers bedecked in grandiose ice finery were executed in gardeners’ relentless pursuit for perfection. After a while, it simply began to wear a guy down.

Rounding the corner, he sniffed resignedly and kicked at the mounds of leaves. It just wasn’t fair. He made the world an art canvas, in return for what? Nothing. Instead, a nonagenarian in a tired red coat stole all the limelight. Maybe he would set aside his tools and call it a day; a swanky retirement hotel in the depths of the Arctic was calling his name.

And then it happened.

Lights crowded his vision.

Camera flashes ambushed the pavement.

Shouts of “Jack! Jack! This way!”.

As his gaze focused, so did the blur of headlines.

JACK FROST UNMASKED: A HERO OF OUR MODERN ART, blared one. FROST HAS GOT HIS BITE BACK, screeched another. WE HAVE FROST FEVER!, rejoiced a third.

Things were finally looking up for Jack, this Christmas!

‘Ding-a-ling-a-ling!’ Sounded the defining bell on the heavy oak door of the corner shop. ‘Not for me’, thought the scruffy old bear that sat on the dusty window ledge of the shop, staring out onto the busy street in front of him with a solemn look on his face.

He wore a green checked waistcoat with a tiny pair of gold spectacles that sat on the bridge of his nose, just covering the glint of sadness in his eyes. The scruffy old bear sits there all year round and watches as the people rush by through the wind, rain, sun or shine.

But this time of the year when the ice begins to freeze, and Christmas trees can be seen, the people change, they skip by laughing and chatting all full of joy. It’s this time of year he feels his body fill up with that sense of longingness to be one of those bears again, the ones that the children hold in tight when wind cuts through the cold winter’s night. He remembers what it was like when he was one of those bears when His Girl loved him with all her heart and he loved her, until the day he was forgotten and ended up here.

As the bear woke on Christmas day the street was filled with fresh gleaming powder and an overwhelming silence that was soon broken by a far off laughter. He recognised that laugh, that laugh he used to always hear and loved. ’Surely not’, he thought, but there she was, hands and face squished up against the icy window screen looking in at him. And the defining bell on the heavy oak door of the corner shop echoed through the street, ‘’This time it’s for me’’, said the bear.