"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, a work-in-progress or from someone else’s work we recommend that has LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets here https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets
Here’s the first snippet, a bit more than six lines from “Caliburnus and Chocolate.”
“Who are you?” came a voice. I jumped. The siding had moved and an old man was peering out of the closed gate.
“Uh, hi,” I said. “I’m Geoff Monmouth…”
“They call him Mouthy,” Terry said with a grin. I glared.
“We’re looking for a couple of replacement parts for my, uh, for a 1974 Chevy Nova,” I said. “A rear bumper and a left rear taillight.”
Here’s another snippet:
The man stared at us another moment, then unlocked the gate.
“Enter, then,” he said. “I am Foremann Aurelian, keeper of this place.” The man was old, he was so weather beaten I couldn’t tell whether he was Native American, Latino or any ethnicity. His hair was scraggly and pure white with a fringe of beard around his chin. And he was big. At least six-foot-two. I was six feet even, but this guy looked like he might be solid muscle under his jacket. Of course, it could have been the layered flannel shirts.
Here’s one more snippet:
“Gruffudd yn Aur was such as you,” Aurelian said. “A paladin of honor and duty, loyal to the crown and to the man he had chosen. Later generations had his name stricken from the Chronicles, but I recall him battling, and also raising high the tankard, and, wait, put that down.”
I had picked up an old bulb horn from a stack of hubcaps.
“That is a destiny for others,” Aurelian said, “Though it may not be the Horn of Bran Galed, the search for mighty Caliburnus is your destiny.”
Okay, that’s it for now! Did you recognize Foremann Aurelian? Our two young lads didn’t! And I promise someday I’ll uncover what the chronicles say about Gruffudd yn Aur and his adventures. Oh, and check my response in the comments of the original post where I identify the easter eggs in the story! Next week, more snippets I’m sure you’ll enjoy! Until then, goodnight! ——jeff
This all happened to me my Junior Year in High School. I had a job working at Movie Palace (that was the name of the place!) in a cheap shopping center. Back when shopping centers were a big deal.
Movie Palace had just one theater, metal seats with cushions, no big decorations like the older theaters but we kept the theater clean, and sold tickets at the right price. Nowadays there’s a laundromat where the theater was and I wouldn’t go near their snack machine but back in the 1970s it was kind of a cool place to work.
Two little restaurants, the dress shop my Mom went to all the time, a little bookstore and the theater at the far end of the building. And we were about the only kids Mr. Lotan hired that stuck with the job for a year.
Louis went to a different High School than I did but he always said “Augie, we gotta be crazy to keep this job.” Maybe we were but we were awfully young.
That was the year “Jaws” was making a big splash (I know, sorry!) and so my Boss, Mr. Lotan, was quick to capitalize by booking a quickly-made knockoff; “Teeth of Terror” was an hour-and-thirty five minutes long but it felt longer. It would have been shown on one of those cable shows where they show bad movies if they had been around then and besides the film just wasn’t that good.
Anyway, my boss loved gimmicks, his patron saint was probably William Castle so he paid a couple of local carpenters to build an open shark’s mouth, big enough to walk through and put it at the entrance to the theater, right beside the ticket window. Of course, the skittish customers could walk around the mouth and some of them did.
It worked like a charm, getting attention and publicity even a picture in the local paper.
Luis cracked that the caption of the picture was better-written than the script for the movie.
Amazingly, the movie actually played for longer than we expected it to.
The first odd thing came a couple of weeks after it opened. Somebody came in looking for their grown daughter. She’d said she was going to see the movie and her car was parked in the parking lot but it had been there for several days. He showed us a picture and I remembered her; she’d come in to see the movie wearing a bikini top. I remember thinking she’d be wishing she’d brought a sweater.
A couple of weeks later, a cop actually chased a guy into the theater, right through the open jaws. He’d robbed a store and probably thought he’d be able to hide in the theater. No dice.
But they never came out.
At first, I thought they’d gone out the emergency exit but then I remembered Mr. Lotan had put alarms on the doors in case somebody left them open to let someone in.
Then there was the afternoon some old guy, smelling of gin bought his ticket and was the only one in the theater for that showing. He walked through the jaws and didn’t come out of the theater when the show was over. Louis and I checked the theater, even looking under the seats.
Most of the people who walked through the shark’s teeth came back out, but not everybody. Several people had disappeared and Louis and I had stopped kidding about it. It wasn’t part of any gimmick.
So, I went up to Mr. Lotan’s office and was about to knock on his door when I heard his voice, talking on the phone?
No, singing on the phone.
No, chanting. Chanting something about “Leviathan.”
That was when I quit.
Louis walked out right after I did.
I had them mail me my paycheck, and I stayed away from that shopping center and saw all my movies at the Westlink Multiplex across town.
—end—
———-for Joel
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Again, special thanks to Joel Sanderson for the picture. (That’s him in the wetsuit.) Theater showing “Jaws” in 1976.
Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, a work-in-progress or from someone else’s work we recommend that has LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets here https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets
“Seriously, boss. I’m not from this world, and even I know it’s a bad idea to steal from the sea master.”
Though only he could hear Spin’s voice, Raven wished the little silver ay-eye would just shut up.
The hencha cloth-wrapped package in the carriage above was calling to him. He’d wanted it since he’d first seen it through the open door. No, needed it. Like he needed air, even though he had no idea what was inside. He scratched the back of his hand hard to distract himself from its disturbing pull.
Hope that tantalizes you! (I also hope you don’t go around swallowing dragons and stealing stuff!) I can highly recommend this and anything Scott writes https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/
See you for more snippets next week when two young men find wonder in a junkyard! —-jeff
Josh and I had been hired to find some missing jewelry, gems that hadn’t even been reported stolen yet, the owner felt he was to embarrassed to do what he should have done and called the police.
Early Breakfast usually had more customers in the morning but that was the morning of the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade downtown. I had said something about the big rooster on top of the building being the Saint Patrick’s Day Chicken and Josh grumbled something about sticking to business.
In this case, “business” meant sipping coffee at a back corner table and keeping track of everyone in the restaurant. Including the owner.
We hadn’t been able to really track down the thieves but we’d found one strange bit of evidence at one of the jewelry stores that had been hit; an old photograph of the building with the chicken on it that was used as an advertising flier.
And there was a date written on this one: March 17th. A. M.
“So far, those guys are the only customers in here, Adam,” Josh said.
“Everybody else is downtown drinking green beer,” I said to my husband and partner.
Some crooks are clever, but not totally clever. These guys had apparently been meeting here after every robbery and disposing of the jewels under the owner’s nose. These guys had actually been stopped and questioned but they had alibis and no evidence on them. They were wrapping the jewels up in small paper bags and tossing them in with the trash along with the leftovers as they left the place. Their accomplices pick up the little bag of jewels from the dumpster after hours and nobody suspected a thing.
We texted the police. They nabbed the bad guys.
After the police arrived and we explained everything to the owners, we had lunch.
On the house.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: My happily-ensconced P. I.’s, Josh and Adam have appeared in this space before. Check the link under “categories” to the side to read their earlier adventures.
My friend J. Scott Coatsworth https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/ has a new book available right now! “The Dragon Eater,” but I’ll let him tell you about it —–jeff
Book Blurb:
Raven’s a thief who just swallowed a dragon. A small one, sure, but now his arms are growing scales, the local wildlife is acting up, and his snarky AI familiar is no help whatsoever.
Raven’s best friend Aik is a guardsman carrying a torch for the thief. A pickpocket and a guard? Never going to happen. And Aik’s ex-fiancé Silya, an initiate priestess in the midst of a magical crisis, hates Raven with the heat of a thousand suns.
This unlikely team must work together to face strange beasts, alien artifacts, and a world-altering threat. If they don’t figure out what to do soon, it might just be the end of everything.
Things are about to get messy.
Series Blurb:
The Tharassas Cycle is a four book sci-fantasy series set on the recently colonized world of Tharassas. When humans first arrived on planet, they thought they were alone until the hencha mind made itself known. But now a new threat has arisen to challenge both humankind and their new allies on this alien world.
Giveaway With Purchase:
I’m giving away the prequel, Tales From Tharassas, with all preorders – it contains The Last Run, The Emp Test, and a brand new short story the Fallen Angel. Just order the book and email me a proof of purchase at scott@jscottcoatsworth.com, and I’ll send you the book on release day (March 16th).
Non-Exclusive Excerpt:
Spin’s voice echoed in his ear. “This is a bad idea, boss.”
“Shush,” Raven whispered to his familiar.
He needed to concentrate. Cheek and jowl against the smooth cobblestones, he held his breath and prayed to the gods that no one had seen him duck under the sea master’s ornate carriage. The setting sun cast long shadows from a pair of boots so close to his face that the dust and leather made him want to sneeze. Their owner was deep in conversation with the sea master, the hem of her fine mur silk trousers barely visible. The two women’s voices were hushed, and he could only make out the occasional word.
Raven rubbed the old burn scar on his cheek absently, wishing they would go away.
“Seriously, boss. I’m not from this world, and even I know it’s a bad idea to steal from the sea master.”
Though only he could hear Spin’s voice, Raven wished the little silver ay-eye would just shut up.
The hencha cloth-wrapped package in the carriage above was calling to him. He’d wanted it since he’d first seen it through the open door. No, needed it. Like he needed air, even though he had no idea what was inside. He scratched the back of his hand hard to distract himself from its disturbing pull.
An inthym popped its head out of the sewer grate in front of him, sniffing the air. Raven glared at the little white rodent, willing it to go away. Instead, the cursed thing nibbled at his nose.
Raven sneezed, then covered his mouth. He held his breath, staring at the boots. Don’t let them hear me.
A shiny silver feeler poked out of his shirt pocket, emitting a golden glow that illuminated the cobblestones underneath him. “Boss, you all right?” Spin’s whisper had that sarcastic edge he often used when he was annoyed. “Your heart rate is elevated.”
“Be. Quiet.” Raven gritted his teeth. Spin had the worst sense of timing.
The woman — one of the guard, maybe? — and the sea master stepped away, their voices fading into the distance.
Raven said a quick prayer of thanks to Jor’Oss, the goddess of wild luck, and flicked the inthym back into the sewer. “Shoo!”
He popped his head out from under the carriage to take a quick look around. There was no one between him and the squat gray Sea Guild headquarters. It was time. Grab it and go.
He reached into the luxurious carriage — a host of mur beetles must have spent years spinning all the red silk that lined the interior — and snagged the package. He hoped it was the treasury payment for the week. If so, it should hold enough coin to feed an orphanage for a month, and he knew just the one. “Got it.”
“Good. Now get us out of here.”
A strange tingling surged through his hand. Raven frowned.
Must have pinched a nerve or something.
Ignoring it, he stuck the package under his arm, slipped around the carriage, and set off down Gullton’s main thoroughfare. He walked as casually as he could, hoping no one would notice the missing package until he was long gone.
“We clear?”
Spin’s feeler blinked red. “No. Run! They’ve seen you.”
Raven ran.
Author Bio:
Scott lives with his husband Mark in a yellow bungalow in Sacramento. He was indoctrinated into fantasy and sci fi by his mother at the tender age of nine. He devoured her library, but as he grew up, he wondered where all the people like him were.
He decided that if there weren’t queer characters in his favorite genres, he would remake them to his own ends.
A Rainbow Award winning author, he runs Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, and Other Worlds Ink with Mark, sites that celebrate fiction reflecting queer reality, and is the committee chair for the Indie Authors Committee at the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
(I highly recommend E. H.’s story, it is excellent! But her stories usually are!)
I’ll see you April 3rd, 2023 for the next draw! And it’s not too late for you to write a story for this month’s or any earlier months Flash Fiction Draw Challenge! Happy writing!
Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, a work-in-progress or from someone else’s work we recommend that has LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets here https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
The creature trying to bite at my boot was a raccoon once, I think. I kick it away. Clumps of fur fall to the ground as it snarls impotently and it loses a tooth while gouging a scar in my leather instep.
Dammit, I like these boots. I dig in my belt pouch for salt and sprinkle it on the wide, moth-eaten forehead. “Earth to earth.” A flash of my Earth power to go with the salt, and the poor creature collapses at last in its well-deserved rest.
We meet Roland’s friend Colyn who is mourning his husband Mark and has decided to use his own magic to do something about it…something forbidden and grim…
The box is fine work, the kind of unit that might grace the home of the wealthiest citizen, large enough for a whole pig, and a haunch of venison, with a jug of milk to spare.
Large enough for a man, clothes still wet after a year, bloody hair matted to his deathly white face from where he struck something in the river, limbs tucked in and head bowed, when the door is opened.
The spell shimmers across the front, keeping everything inside from changing, as it’s designed to do. In a normal home, opening and closing the spell daily means the work would thin and need renewal every month. I hoped to the Goddess no sorcerer had been complicit in renewing that…living death.
“I saved the maker’s wife and baby.” Colyn runs a hand in front the control rune, but not close enough to activate it. “He gave the unit to us as a thank-you, just the day before…When Mark died, the stasis seemed providential. A gift of the Goddess.”
Well! Those snippets went a bit over six lines, but how far will Colyn go?
And on that macabre note, I leave you until next time when we will we meet a man who has encountered a dragon. —–jeff
(The house pic DID inspire this week’s story but I forgot to mention it in the story! Oh well, it’s where our narrator lives! —–j)
Fools That Will Laugh on Earth
by Jeff Baker
The alien invasion failed but it still got me in a lot of trouble at school.
My name is Christopher Normand, but they call me Kip. I was a Junior in High School that year, trying to keep my head above water and keep a low profile. And I’m gonna blame my cousin Andre Prezetti for the whole thing. Well, most of it anyway.
Andre was my Mom’s sister’s (that’s my Aunt’s) youngest son and so we were the same age. We didn’t really hang out, he was awfully full of himself and always getting in trouble. And a lot of the time he could talk or charm his way out of it. Well, some of it anyway. And on Mom’s side of the family, we were Firsters.
“Even after all this time, a lot of people didn’t even believe in the Firsters, despite all the evidence.” That’s from a ‘cast I saw about the 150th anniversary of the initial contact when the aliens landed in the middle of the 21st Century
The aliens said they were the First so they got called the Firsters. They showed up around 2062 and gave us the usual sci-fi movie shtick about “coming in peace,” “boon to mankind” and all that. But their real motive was to breed with humans and create a superior version of their race.
The invasion was a terrific fail. The Earth’s magnetic field proved fatal to the aliens consciousness and only a few advanced traits showed up in the descendants without any sign of alien personality. The Earth governments figured any other alien invaders would be warned away.
As for the descendants, these “firsters” were human except for some flashes of advanced perceptions, super intelligence (we were able to upgrade communications satellites and colonize the Moon) and a few genuine super powers like Andre’s.
I just had this funny perception gift sometimes. I could look at something and analyze its physical mass. It only came in handy in chemistry and geometry which I was aceing anyway, and once I was going home from school and glanced at an old building and I knew that its one wall wasn’t firm enough and it did collapse a few months later.
Andre could change shape. Make himself look like anything he wanted. The catch was that he would still have the same general mass as he always had. He could turn himself into an elephant but it would be a 5’7” 155 pound elephant. And he couldn’t do anything about the clothes he was wearing.
Andre and I were both Juniors at Lyle Monroe High School that year. Even without the shape changing, Andre was one of those guys who could charm the socks off of anybody and managed to not do a lot of classwork. I really didn’t hang out with him.
Anyway, Andre and I only had one class together that semester and we weren’t even in the same lunch period. But it was at lunch I realized something was going on. I walked up to the serving counter and was told I didn’t get two lunches per school day. I didn’t think anything of it at first, I grabbed a MunchieHealthBar from one of the machines but while I was eating the bar I remembered a couple of the guys in one of my classes snickering at me and I’d heard something about my messing around with one of the girls behind the old gym during second period when I was supposed to be in class.
Andre.
He could do it. We were about the same size. He knew I wouldn’t have the nerve to ask any girl out, or any guy either.
But I checked first. I knew what class he had second period so I went to the teacher and gave her a story about my Aunt wanting to know if he had any homework and she said he just needed to read chapter four and she hoped he was feeling better and would be back in school soon.
So Andre had been cutting his classes and going around school as me. I asked a couple of kids we both knew if they’d seen Andre around and I guess word must have gotten to him that I was onto him and then I saw myself turning a corner down a hallway and I ran after him but he was gone and then I passed the office and saw one of our neighbors, this tall, older guy In poorly fitting clothes asking somebody for directions in the office and I was wondering what he was doing at school and so I looked at him with my perceptions and I saw that his distribution of mass was all wrong. And besides, he was wearing Andre’s clothes.
I wasn’t a very physical guy, no good at gym but I ran and tackled the guy and I was right because suddenly I was on top of Andre on the floor and we were both hollering.
Well, Andre and I got sent to Mr. Bradford’s office and he was pretty old-fashioned about discipline and he also didn’t believe a word about the Firsters, he said all that alien invasion stuff had been faked. Of course, Andre just played dumb and let all the blame fall on me but he couldn’t explain what he was doing in school when he’d missed all his classes supposedly being out sick. So Mr. Bradford put some things down on our input sheet and we both had to do the after-school class for the next few days but when he was going all disciplinarian on us something clicked in my head…
…and I saw through him to who he really was, or part of him anyway. Not his physical mass like I usually could but his, well, his inner self I guessed. And I saw that he was scared. Maybe scared of us. Maybe he did believe Firsters were real and we were Firsters. I couldn’t tell that. In the instant I remembered something I’d heard about our gifts possibly expanding as we grew up and I glanced over at Andre and for an instant saw something hungry for power, love, money, all of it. Then, I was just looking at Andre again.
And that was the first time I got extra sight. It didn’t happen again for months but I spent the next few days glaring at my teachers, my parents, everyone. Hoping for another glimpse into who these people really were. By the end of the week, I was bleary-eyed. Control of the gift and its responsibilities would come later. And I still had to make it through the rest of High School.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: This is the second story I’ve written about The Firsters, the other was called “Four Star Review” and was accepted by an online magazine which vanished without a trace before the story could get published. I’d always wanted to write another story about The Firsters and this idea had been roiling around in my head. Although it’s set in the future it is a version of the more innocent school days some of us remember. Oh, and the title is from Christopher Marlowe. —-jeff
The lights at the football stadium were off and they could barely see the grass in the reflected light from the city.
“Gimmie that thermos,” Hammie Dane said from where the two twenty-somethings stood in the shadow of the stands.
“Careful unscrewing the cup,” Horacio said handing him the thermos. “I about lost it once.”
“Okay, I…hey! This is hot!” Hammie said.
“Careful!” Horacio said.
“I am,” Hammie said sipping the tea. “Wish we’d put whiskey in it.”
Hammie and Horacio had come here to kill Hammie’s Uncle Claude. They knew he liked to go for walks on the old college football field where he had played as a young man. The voice of Hammie’s late father had spoken to them, claiming murder and demanding vengeance. Claude was now married to Hammie’s mother.
“You want some tea?” Hammie asked.
“Maybe later,” Horacio said rubbing Hammie’s arm fondly.
In the dim light they briefly looked into each other’s eyes. Then Horacio gazed across the field.
“Look!” Horacio whispered pointing. “There he is! Or there somebody is.”
They saw a dark figure in the shadows under the goalpost on the other end of the field.
“It’s him,” Horacio said.
“He can’t see us,” Hammie said. “Keep quiet. Follow me.” He felt the knife he had brought. They needed to get close.
The two men edged along the shadows of the stands. Then Hammie pressed his hand against Horacio’s chest and they stopped and stood deathly still.
Uncle Claude had fallen to his knees in the end zone. Was he celebrating? Was he ill?
“He’s praying,” Hammie whispered.
“Yeah.” Horacio said.
They stood and stared. They could almost hear Claude’s whispered prayers.
Hammie quickly turned and walked back the way they came, Horacio following.
“I can’t do it,” Hammie said, looking exhausted, bending over to grab his knees, breathing hard.
“You okay?” Horacio asked.
“I can’t kill a man,” Hammie said. “Even him. I don’t care who tells me to.”
Horacio patted his friend on his shoulders.
“I’m here for you, buddy,” he said.
“Yeah, thanks.” Hammie said. “I wanna get back to my apartment. Hey, would you stay with me tonight? I mean, we don’t have to, you know…”
“I’ll stay.” Horacio said. “You need your sleep.”
“Yeah.” Hammie said. “Hey, you’ve always stuck by me.”
“Yeah,” Horacio said as they walked to the car. “Hey, I got a CD from Flights of Angels. Should help you get to sleep.”
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the March 2023 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were A Shakespearean story, including a cup of tea, set on a football field. My story is sequel to “2B or Not 2B” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2022/08/19/someones-not-at-the-door-for-friday-flash-fics-2b-or-not-2b-by-jeff-baker-august-19-2022/ a story that I wrote in the heat of summer set in an air-conditioned apartment as an homage to one of my favorite fantasy writers. This was a chance to do a sequel, following the much better original. And the title is a line from that original. ——jeff
First, here’s the prompts for the March 2023 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Then my usual long-winded explanation:
An Shakespearian Story
Involving a Cup of Tea
Set on a Football Field
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 (and hopefully have one of my own written!) the week of March 13th, 2023.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage and the results were the Eight of Clubs (a cup of tea), the Ace of Diamonds (a football stadium) and the Jack of Hearts (a Shakespearian story.)
So we will write a Shakespearian story, set at a football stadium involving a cup of tea!. And, again, I’ve got to be crazy listing another writer’s style (like last month’s Aesop’s Fable!)
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week!
authorjeffbaker 