Fangboy

blue rather than a dark blue, almost turquoise, and he guessed that he’d return to his pinkish state before too much longer.

“What is going on here?” said a voice that was neither Nathan nor Candice, at a volume that was significantly louder than what they’d been using to carry on their conversation.

Monika stood in the doorway to the bathroom, looking positively furious. Nathan, of course, did not know that she was Monika or that she owned the mansion, but he picked up on the general idea of their relationship very quickly.

“Nothing, ma’am,” said Candice.

“Nothing? I catch you in the act of bathing the secret illegitimate child you’ve clearly been hiding in my home all these years, and you say nothing? How much of my food has he eaten? How often have you used the wind in my backyard to dry clothing on his behalf?”

“It’s not like that at all,” said Candice, doing some quick mental calculations on whether she’d get in more trouble for accidentally melting the Astounding Frozen Boy or for hiding away a love child. She decided that the melting was worse. “All right, I apologize for—”

“She freed me from my prison of ice,” said Nathan. “She is blameless in this matter.”

Candice smacked him on the back of the head. “Don’t call your mother ‘blameless,’ you disobedient brat.”

Monika narrowed her eyes. “It is the ice boy. Did you leave the freezer door open?”

“Oh, no, ma’am, the ice cracked all around him, as if his dormant superhuman strength suddenly rose to the surface, and he broke his way out with a power few could have imagined!”

“She flatters me,” said Nathan, “but the truth is that I lay helpless on the floor in a pool of melted ice—water, I suppose you could call it—and were it not for her generosity, I might have died. She should be praised and rewarded.”

Candice pointed at Nathan’s face. “He is a mutant with fearsome teeth! Run, ma’am! We must run before he kills us all!”

“Stop being so prone to mindless panic. He’s only a young oh my goodness gracious his teeth are hideous protect me protect me protect me!”

Candice rushed over to the doorway. “Come with me, ma’am! I shall barricade the doors and protect you from this vicious beast!”

They fled. Nathan wanted to soak in the tub some more, but he felt that wasn’t such a good idea, and so he got out of the water, grabbed a towel, and dried himself off.

If you looked in the dictionary under “wretched,” you would not see a photograph of the clothes Nathan was frozen in, since the makers of dictionaries are rarely so lazy as to simply include a photograph rather than a proper definition, but wretched and mildewed they were. Even when enclosed in ice, clothes are not intended to be worn for eleven years, and Nathan had no desire to put them back on, despite his decision to wear only cheap clothing. So he tied the towel around his waist and hurried out of the bathroom.

“I’ll stand in front of you, ma’am!” Candice shouted from the end of the hall. “If he charges like a bull, I’ll throw myself in front of his horns!”

Nathan went the other way.

The mansion was a maze of winding hallways, staircases, and doors that led nowhere, but fortunately he’d been bathing in a room that was right next to a side exit and he made his way out of the house with minimal effort.

He walked away, joints still creaking a bit, skin still light blue, still feeling an inner chill, but at least he hadn’t been eaten by that bear.

“Nathan…” whispered a voice in his ear.

He looked around. There was nobody there.

“Nathan…” whispered the same voice in his other ear.

“Who is that?” he asked.

A figure, barely visible, materialized next to him. It looked more like fumes than a person.

“Nathan, this is your father.”

TWENTY-ONE

“My…father?”

“Yes.”

“Are you a ghost? Or am I going mad?”

“It’s actually both. But don’t worry, Nathan, the madness will fade before long. Do not be ashamed of it. A man who spends eleven years in a block of ice and emerges sane was mad when he started.”

“What?”

“There are things you must know about this new world. It takes more coins to buy things than it once did. If you attempt to purchase a loaf of bread and hand them only a half-coin, as you would have in the past, the grocer will stare at you impatiently and await additional funds.”

“Are you in heaven?”

The apparition chuckled. “I’d tell you, but then I’d be killed.” What little of its face that Nathan could recognize turned serious. “No, really, I would. A strange thing to say since I’m already dead, I know, but you can also die in the afterlife, which is at least three times worse than dying in the regular life. They’re very big on keeping secrets here. I’ve already said too much.”

“Is Mom with you?”

“She’s right here. We’ve been watching over you. Not such an interesting process during your decade in the ice, but we’ve never left you. Not ever.”

“Am I…am I making you proud?”

“Very much so. Your mother and I have never stopped being proud of you. We’re up here with a lot of deceased parents who are watching over their children, and while I won’t get into the details, there have been many viewing experiences that were extremely uncomfortable, activities that were really never meant to be witnessed unless one was an active participant, and there will be plenty of awkward conversations when these children join their parents in the afterlife. But you, Nathan, have behaved heroically. You’ve been compassionate. I’m not going to lie and say that it was a good idea to bite that kid on the arm—obviously, your mother and I were up here shouting ‘Don’t do it! Don’t do it!’ and we both sort of looked at each other and cringed when you did it, but when you consider a lot of the other things you could have done at your age, the level of shame is comparatively low. Now, we do have to acknowledge that the teenage years are where most of the truly distasteful sights occur, and you either missed those years or just haven’t gone through them yet—I’m not entirely sure how that works with the whole frozen-in-ice thing, but to answer your question, yes, you are making us very, very proud.”

“Thank you, Dad. But what should I do now?”

“Go home. People there still care about you. They still miss you.”

“Are they still alive?”

“Well, most of them. It’s not as if you’ve woken into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Go to them.”

“I will!” said Nathan, feeling more excitement than he had in the past eleven years. “I’ll find somebody with a car and beg for a ride immediately!”

“No,” said the ghost. “You must walk.”

“Walk?”

“Yes. This is a journey you must take on foot. It will be a time for personal growth and spiritual reflection.”

“I don’t think I need any of that.”

The ghost frowned. “All right, the truth is, with your skin that blue color, people are going to be somewhat squeamish about giving you a ride, and with your track record there’s very little doubt that you’ll end up strapped to a table in the laboratory of a mad scientist whose experiments will give new meaning to the word ‘invasive.’”

Nathan had to admit that the scenario sounded plausible.