Flash Fiction Friday: That Old Silk Hat

Sipping her tea, she peered out the window at some children constructing a snowman on a nearby lawn.  It had been a long time since she’d done this, and she was overdue.  She unlocked the trunk and withdrew the black top hat, then grabbed her coat from the rack and ventured outside.

“That’s a very handsome snowman,” she told the kids, “but you’d better see he doesn’t catch a cold.”  She proffered the hat, and one of them placed it on the frosty round head.  Without warning, the rotund snowman transformed before their eyes into a tall, handsome, very human stranger in a perfectly-tailored tuxedo.  Gone were the two eyes made out of coal, replaced with a pair of lively blues.

“Happy birthday!” he exclaimed.  The children screamed and ran in all directions.  The block was deserted but for the woman in the coat, and a tuxedo-clad gentlemen who mere seconds before consisted of three large lumps of ice.

Their eyes met.  “Would you care to come in for tea?”  She took his hand in his and led him to her door.  On the way to her boudoir, they stopped to christen the sitting room, the kitchen, and the hallway.  He proved himself a skilled and generous lover, giving her greater pleasure than she had ever imagined.  His climax was momentous, voluminous.  As they lay in each other’s arms, she felt a twinge of guilt over what she knew was about to happen.

By the time he noticed, it had already occurred.  His body crystallized and quickly turned to water.  He didn’t even have time to say good-bye before soaking through the bedclothes and into the mattress.  Without a moment’s regret, she rose from the bed, removed the saturated sheets, and tossed them in the dryer.

Until next winter… (299/299)

Behind the Scenes

In my opinion, there wasn't much substance to this week's prompt photo.  It's a sexy image, certainly; however there was no story implied.  A typical Tumblr-worthy shot of two people fucking?  The story possibilities are limitless.  It wasn't until I thought about the required word - "...frosty..." - that I decided to tie my story into the holiday standard Frosty the Snowman, first performed by Gene Autry in 1950.  In fact, the title of this story is a direct reference to the lyric, "There must have been some magic in that old silk hat they found."

Once I sat down to write, the story flowed easily.  The hook - a snowman that turns into a human being rather than simply coming to life and dancing around - was a no-brainer.  Among the details carried over from the source material is the snowman's "Happy Birthday" greeting, first utilized in the 1969 television special produced by Rankin Bass.

Though I'd already decided on the "snowman that comes to life" story, I was a bit conflicted with regard to how to incorporate the required word.  I considered making explicit reference to Frosty the Snowman, something along the lines of, "The snowman came to life, but not like Frosty did."  Ultimately I decided on a random usage of the word to describe the snowman's head; initially the word used here was "icy".

Initially I planned to have the story end with the sex scene.  Having the snowman melt away, much like Frosty himself, was a relatively last minute addition.  I enjoyed juxtaposing the tragedy of the snowman's "death" with the woman's relative nonchalance.

Deleted Scenes

In my original vision for this story, the woman was the divorced or widowed mother of the children who were building the snowman.  Ultimately I decided that wouldn't work because her kids would certainly have been familiar with her hat trick, having surely been exposed to it on multiple occasions.

Soundtrack

Obviously it's got to be Frosty the Snowman, though thanks to its use in Goodfellas, I am partial to the version recorded by The Ronettes.