"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
We were parked in the parking lot of the old Quickie-Mart drinking the sodas we’d gotten from the store and laughing about our High School days where we would have ridden down here on our bikes and maybe sat under the big tree that used to be at one edge of the lot.
“Hey, look over there,” I said pointing at the tall wooden fence that separated the lot from the first of the houses that ran down the street. “Somebody kicked a hole in the bottom of the fence.”
“Looks like it could’ve rotted away,” Steve said. “That fence was here when we were in school and probably when those houses were built.”
“Yeah,” I said remembering the days of Saturday Morning cartoons and homework.
“Some things haven’t changed,” Steve said. “Somebody tossed their trash on the grass.”
He hopped out of the convertible and walked over to pick up the bottle and tossed it expertly into the nearby trash can.
“Hey, Alec,” he said. “Come here and look at this.”
I walked over, careful not to trip on the lumpy asphalt.
“What?” I asked.
“Look at that from here,” Steve said pointing at the hole in the fence.
I saw the grey wood, the hole and through that the green grass with a hint of flowers.
“Pretty, huh?” Steve said. “Like a painting.”
I grinned and nodded. Sometimes it was nice having friends who appreciated art and nature.
“I remember when I was really little my babysitter told me there were doors in garden walls and that what she called ‘the Fairy Folk’ would use them to come into our world.” Steve said.
“Yeah?” I said.
“But in all the years since I never once saw a garden wall.” Steve said. “Hey, let’s head back.
We climbed back in the car and Steve was just about to start it up when I saw something out of the corner of my eye.
“Hey,” I said. We both looked.
There was a blur as if two or three figures moving impossibly fast rushed across the grass and through the hole in the fence.
Steve and I looked at each other.
“Cats,” he said.
“Yeah, cats.” I replied.
We drove back home not saying a word, imagining vast gardens beyond the fence that stretched on forever.
We were sitting in a booth at Los Tacos which was nearly deserted at this time of the afternoon.
Drew adjusted the yellow crown he had perched on his head. It was made of thick wires painted gold and looked more like something a beauty pageant contestant would wear, not a College junior.
“What for?” Drew said with a grin.
God his grin could make me melt.
“It belongs to the Theater Department,” I said. “They’ll miss it. They’ll…”
“What?” Drew said. “Clap me in irons and throw me in the bloody tower?”
“No, but they could expel you or call the cops.” I said.
“Why?” Drew said. “We’re supposed to promote the show and what better way than to show off the costumes?”
“Yeah,” I said glumly. “It’s not like we need any more publicity.”
The Colleges spring production had made the local news because we were doing Shakespeare’s Henry VIII, a play that probably was mostly written by somebody else and so our director had turned around and re-written the whole thing. Drew was working on the tech crew. So was I and I was covering a couple of bit parts.
Someone suggested calling it “Henry IX.”
“You should have worn those purple pantaloons and that hat with the feather in it, Kip!” Drew said.
“That would attract attention all right,” I said. “Look, you’re not supposed to take school property off-campus without…”
“Who’s off-campus?” Drew said with a shrug. “Last time I looked Los Tacos is still in a corner of a campus parking lot.”
I sat there and blinked like a character in an old Warner Brothers cartoon.
“Oh, yeah.” I said. “Right.”
“Anyway,” Drew said munching on his taco salad. “Do you want to, you know, go out this weekend? On like, a date?”
I smiled. Usually Drew was pretty forceful and fearless. But when it came to asking a guy out…
“Hey, we’re busy working on the play this semester.” I said. “That’s kind of like a perpetual date, isn’t it?”
Drew grinned and nodded.
“You know, even with Valentine’s Day right around the corner you’re still a sweet, funny, infuriating year-round Valentine’s Day card.” I said, leaning in to kiss Drew over the table.
We held the kiss for a moment.
“Uh, Kip…” Drew said.
“Yeah?” I said, looking dreamily into Drew’s eyes.
“You’ve got your elbow in my salad…”
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the February Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were A Romance, set in a Mexican Restaurant including a Crown from a Theater Prop Room.
First, here’s the prompts for the February 2026 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Romance
Involving A Crown From A Theater Prop Room
Set in A Mexican Restaurant
Now, on to the details.
Hi! I’m Mike Mayak, I also write as Jeff Baker and I’m the current moderator for the monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, which was started by ‘Nathan Burgoine a few years ago and carried on by Cait Gordon and Jeffrey Ricker. It’s a monthly writing challenge mainly for stress-free fun that anyone can play.
Here’s how it works: the first Monday of every month I draw three cards; a heart, a diamond and a club. These correspond to a list naming a genre, a setting and an object that must appear in the story. Participants write up a flash fiction story, 1,000 words or less, post it to their website and link it here in the comments. I’ll post the results (including, hopefully, one of my own!)
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage. So, the results were the Four of Hearts (a Romance), the Three of Diamonds (A Mexican Restaurant) and the Two of Clubs (A Crown From A Theater Prop Room.)
So we will write a Romance, set in a Mexican Restaurant involving a Crown From A Theater Prop Room.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday February 16th, 2026.
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week! And I’m putting the 2026 Flash Draw sheet at the end of this message, again! (* indicates those have been used.)
Thanks for playing, and I’ll see you in about week!
“Honey,” Todd said looking out the window of the couple’s breakfast nook. “Come look at what the new neighbors have on their fence.”
“Another practice dummy for his broadsword fights?” Andy said as he scooped more scrambled eggs onto his plate from the pan on the stove.
“No, if it was a fight it wasn’t with a dummy,” Todd said pointing. “Look.”
Andy glanced out the window at the house next door. Perched on top of one of the ornate, smooth-tipped spears that made up the gate to the neighbor’s backyard was a large human skull. The skull was tilted upward as if it was grinning at the clouds.
“Looks like he’s waiting for rain,” Andy said. “Think it’s anybody we know?”
“Hope not,” Todd said.
The two young men kissed and Andy sat down and started in on the eggs.
“Gotta admit,” Andy said between bites. “They are nice neighbors. I mean, if a barbarian warlord and his…what? Partner?”
“His ‘woman,’ he calls her.” Todd said with a grin.
“Yeah, well it could be a lot worse.” Andy said. “Dimensional portal opens up and dumps them on Earth and they wind up living on the suburbs.” He looked up with a pained expression on his face. “Oh, Geez. That sounds like the setup to a bad Sixties sitcom.”
“Call it ‘The Barbarian Of Country Acres Avenue.’” Todd said with a laugh.
There was a knock at their front door.
“Now who could that be this early on a Saturday morning,” Andy said getting up from the table. “As if I couldn’t guess.”
Their new neighbors kept stranger hours than he did and he was a freelance artist.
Andy opened the door and found Vargon standing there, wearing a pleasant Hawaiian shirt, shorts and the golden belt with the hilt for his sword. Andy tried not to glance at the six-foot-something man’s huge thighs and muscular arms and chest.
“Forgive me for bothering you early, it is I, Vargon of Keltpagore. Defender of Arimoch. Protector of the Eagle, Marinth. Warrior of his father, King Zargon.”
“Good morning,” Andy said, still expecting Vargon to name check Castle Greyskull. “Do you want to come in? We have breakfast. Pancakes, eggs. The whole shebang.”
“No, I have other affairs to tend to but I thank you with gratitude.” Vargon said. “I was practicing with my War Bola and I believe it ended up in your back yard. May I retrieve it?”
“Of course.” Andy said. “Just go through here out the back way.”
“My gratitudes to you again good Sir.” Vargon said.
“Hey, Vargon! Care for some pancakes?” Todd said from his place at the table.
“Not this day, I have eaten hours before.” Vargon said as he walked out the sliding glass door.
Todd and Andy were still surprised Vargon didn’t simply smash his way through a glass door but they kept that to themselves. A few minutes later, Vargon stepped back into the house, holding his War Bola by the leather strap, wiping of a gloppy red substance from one of the dangerous-looking black iron balls.
“My apologies for the mess,” Vargon said. “The bola made short work of one of your tomato plants. Something I did not intend.”
“Uh, that’s okay,” Todd said, glad it wasn’t somebody’s remains Vargon was wiping off with a rag.
“Hey, Vargon, where did you get that, uh, nice skull?” Andy asked.
Vargon looked up puzzled.
“The one on the fence.” Todd said.
“Oh, that one!” Vargon said with a laugh. “It is plastic. What you call a Hollowing Decoration. My Woman and I found it at your flea Market. Shopkeeper glad we could pay in gold.”
Vargon had gotten a job modeling for advertisements but they had brought some gold with them during the dimensional shift that had brought them here.
“The skull will serve as a warning to those who would attack.” Vargon said. “Although an attack is not that likely. And Vargon, the Swordsman of many battles is bored. When do hoards of trolls with their hammers or Dal Lords inflamed with sorcery come to Country Acres?”
“Probably not for a while,” Todd said. He suddenly glanced at Andy, he had an idea.
“Vargon, have you ever been to a place called Minnesota?” Todd asked.
The Barbarian shook his head.
Andy’s face lit up.
“Have you ever heard of ICE?” Andy asked
“Ice? I have been to the Frosty Lands.” Vargon said.
“Vargon,” Andy said. “Have we got a battle for you…”
Johnson “Dobby” Dobbins III half-walked, half-staggered into the second floor apartment he shared with his partners, tossed his overnight bag on the sofa and considered calling out “Honey, I’m home,” except that it was eleven-thirty. He looked around the apartment and grinned broadly. Two and a half weeks and it hadn’t changed. Pillows still stacked on one chair, magazines on the coffee table and the fridge in the kitchen plastered with mementos and pictures of the extended lives and families of the three guys who had decided to become a family themselves.
Even the empty bag of cereal held by a refrigerator magnet to the door because Rich or Todd thought it worked better than writing a note that they’d forget to take to the store, so in the end one of them would zap a picture of it with his phone and that would be the shopping list.
“Hey, I thought it was you.” That was Rich, short with stringy brown hair, wandering into the living room wearing just a pair of basketball shorts with a team logo.
“Yeah, me.” Dobby said. “The Ancient Mariner returns.”
“You don’t look like the Ancient Mariner,” Rich said after they kissed. “No beard.”
“Shaved this morning,” Dobby said. “I would’ve been back a day earlier but I had to slow down for ice.”
“ICE?” Rich asked.
“The frozen water kind.” Dobby said.
“Oh.” Rich said. “Todd’s already in bed crashed-out.”
“I don’t blame him.” Dobby said. “I had myself a few adventures out there this time. Not the least of which was I got turned around on the road because one of the signs had been knocked down and I missed a turnoff.”
“Uh-Oh,” Rich said.
“Yeah. I didn’t realize until about an hour later when the clouds lifted and I saw the sun rising on the right, meaning I was headed the wrong way.”
“Not good.”
“I turned back but I had to wait around at my last stop and by then I had to take a break. Then I headed here. At last.” Dobby said.
“Want something to eat?” Rich asked.
“Naaah.” Dobby said. “Grabbed a snack on the way. Besides we’re out of cereal.”
Rich laughed. Dobby put his arm around Rich’s shoulder and they headed towards the bedroom. Dobby began to recite:
“The Bridegroom’s doors are opened wide
And I am next of kin
But after that long drive I’ve had
I’m just sleeping in.”
In the dark apartment the three men somehow had the same dream: They were on an old sailing ship, clear skies, pleasant sailing and even the Albatross pointed their way towards a green and flowered shore.
Every Week at Rainbow Snippets https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets participants post six lines of a work of theirs, a work-in-progress or a work by someone else that has LGBT characters. My snippets this week come from “Selected Shorts,” Cait Gordon’s fine anthology of disability-friendly LGBT-flavored sci-fi and fantasy. Here’s a bit from maybe my favorite of the stories “Ranger Of the Sea.”
When a Mermaid suddenly finds a blind sailor all but dropped in her lap, what’s a girl to do?
The human jumped and turned his head to the right and left. “Who’s there? Are you the one I seek?”
Abigail paused, then swam closer to set herself on the shore.
“I am here,” she signed.
There was no response at first.
“Who is there?” he repeated, tilting his head toward the sound of her tail flapping against the wet sand.
NOTE: Didn’t expect to do another sequel but I guess this is Part Three. Check the earlier stories taking place in The Under: “A Bicycle Built Fortuitously” and “Blue Shoes” also on this blog—-jeff
“‘Scuse me,” a squat man wearing a floppy red hat said as he brushed past Franco and Anthony. “Got my drinks.”
He handed a cup to somebody in a green hat in the back row.
Anthony decided to make small talk.
“Some game, huh?” Anthony asked.
“If you like that sort of thing,” the man in the red hat said.
“We, uh, aren’t from around here,” Franco said for what felt like the tenth time in the last hour. “We don’t even know what the game is.”
“We call it “Shoemerang,” the man in the red hat explained. “I keep waiting for the shoes to turn around and come back.”
“Uh, you know real boomerangs don’t come back?” Anthony said.
“Neither do these,” the man in the green hat snickered. Red hat joined in.
“You know what the winner gets?” someone else said.
“What?” Franco asked.
“One of my special cream pies. We call it Shoemeringue too.”
Franco looked around, half expecting to see a White Rabbit hop up and pull out a pocket watch.
Suddenly there was a commotion from the crowd. People were looking up and pointing. Most of them were angry.
“Well, that’s no fair.” The man in the red hat said.
“What?” Anthony asked.
“Look up,” the man in the green hat said.
They did. The sky had been clear, also it had been near dusk. Now it was daylight and the sky was filled with roiling grey clouds.
“Playing with time and the weather. No fair!” yelled the man in the green hat.
“Dirty pool!!” The man in the red hat yelled.
Anthony was wondering how they knew what pool was when Franco tapped him on the shoulder.
“I think it’s time to go,” Franco said pointing at the bicycle which was swaying from side to side on the ground.
“Yeah. Probably,” Anthony said as Franco hopped on the seat and Anthony sat down behind him, glad the seat was long and that they had been a couple for a while as he grabbed Franco’s waist.
Franco started to pedal carefully behind the rows of people when the bike slowly ascended and floated over the crowd as it got higher and higher.
Somebody noticed.
“Hey! They’re cheating!” That was a voice from the crowd, joined by other loud, angry voices and followed by people on the ground throwing drinks and food at the two young men on the flying bicycle.
“We’re not even playing!” Anthony yelled down as a strange looking fruit soared past his foot.
“Hang on, I’m gonna try to go faster,” Franco said as he pushed on the bike handles. The bike responded by angling upward and zipping into the clouds. Clouds which smelled funny and familiar.
“I think the bike wanted us out of there because it was about to rain.” Franco said.
“So?” Anthony asked.
“We don’t know what comes out of these clouds.” Franco said.
“Oh.” Anthony said.
“But I think it smelled like…” Franco began to say. Then something zipped past them, hurtling downward.
Then there was another one. And another.
“Hang on!” Franco yelled as the bike soared upward and broke the upper layer of clouds.
“Shoes!” Anthony gasped. “Those were shoes!”
“Yeah,” Franco said. “Work boots, I think. I thought the cloud smelled familiar.”
“Sure hope they have some kind of warning system down there…” Anthony said. “And that those boots aren’t steel toed.”
“Owch.” Franco said. He glanced down, hoping to see some of the city if they had cleared where the cloud was. The cloud was only dimly visible through the blue-green misty light that looked like the bottom of the swimming pool. Above them was a silvery mirror-like oval splotched with dark green. The Bicycle was headed right for it.
“Oh-Oh” Anthony said.
“Look out!” Franco yelled.
They hit the oval with a splash.
The two young men gasped for air, which fortunately there was a lot of. Also blue sky, and green grass and trees on a lake bank a few feet away. The bicycle had popped out from under them and was floating on its side next to them. They had burst through a covering of greenish lily pads.
A large green frog was laying on one of the pads that was still floating, looking like he had been overturned by the pair’s sudden emergence.
As I said last time, my New Year’s Resolution is to write every day. Inspired by Frederik Pohl who wrote four pages a day for decades. I won’t hit that number but I plan to try and kick it into high gear as much as possible. I decided to start it up a couple of weeks early.
To my utter shock I sat down and wrote a little over four pages a few days before Christmas! If I at least TRY for that, I could finish the two stories I wanted done by the end of the year, NEED to have done by the fifteenth of January. Four pages is not a bad goal to strive for. Four pages it is, then!! (For the record, I’m writing this bit on December 21st)
And now on January 20th, 2026 I can report that the four pages thing is working, as a prod if nothing else. I managed for about four weeks to do the four pages thing about five days a week, sometimes just making it to the beginning of the fourth page. This has helped with the progress in writing longer stories and I am working on finishing up stories I wanted to finish for years or even decades. Besides writing three flash fiction stories I wrote four full-length stories and sent three of those off to markets.
Yes, this is seriously working and I may be able to send off more stories this year as well.
Beta read another of J. Scott Coatsworth’s fine stories. Doubtless it will be published soon.
Read Jeffrey Marks’ story “The Fall Of the House Of Fresher” in the LGBT-themed mystery anthology “Crime Ink: Iconic.” An homage to Dupin and Ellery Queen. Nice touches about the late Seventies from the closeted college-kid narrator. My first read of the year…
Read “The Lost Blend,” by O. Henry. Read about it in an article about “Pete’s Tavern” in NYC. Was called “Healey’s,” and Henry calls it “Kenealy’s” in the story. Reportedly O. Henry sat and wrote stories in the tavern. Local legend claims he wrote “Gift Of the Magi” there.
Read Nelson Bond’s 1995 story “Pipeline to Paradise” in Roger Zelazny’s posthumous anthology “Wheel Of Fortune.” The story starts out like one of the whimsical yarns Bond wrote in the 30s and 40s about characters like Horse-Sense-Hank. Then comes the twist.
And another.
And another!
And a kicker last line…
Read “The Wand’s Boy” by Rick Bowes in the anthology “So Fey” from Lethe Press. Sent Bowes a birthday thing on F.B.; didn’t know he had died in ‘23. Anthony Cardno posted that he had met Bowes a few times so I decided I’d better read him. “Wand’s Boy” is very otherworldly.
Read the usual offerings by E.H. Timms and Kaje Harper.
And I read a bunch of the stories in Cait Gordon’s new collection “Speculative Shorts,” which is reviewed in full on this blog so I won’t repeat myself.
I didn’t read as much as I have been, mainly because I kicked the writing into high gear. I’m going to have to strike a balance.
authorjeffbaker 