Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work-in-progress or published, or a recommendation of someone else’s work with at least one LGBT character. Posted at Rainbow Snippets here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974

I got a nice response a few weeks ago for snippets from one of my stories about closeted Gay teenage runaway Bryce Going, out on his own after his Mom bails on him around 1975. In this one; “The Milk Grotto” Bryce thinks the police may be after him so he’s hiding in the basement of a nearby abandoned football stadium. He finds the basement inhabited by some men who are not what they seem…

I felt my way carefully down the stairs and stayed still, listening for any sounds from upstairs. Instead, I heard a rustling in the room with me. I stayed in the middle of the stairway, unwilling to walk into a basement of scurrying rats.

“Company,” a voice said.

“Don’t turn the lights on yet,” said another.

I heard a scuttling on the stairs behind me and I groped for the lights.

Here’s another snippet:

When my eyes adjusted to the light I realized this wasn’t the huge stadium basement I’d imagined in the dark; just a medium-sized storeroom lit by a bare bulb. I took that in in an instant as my major concern was the three men I saw standing at the bottom of the stairs, all wearing gray sweatpants and sweatshirts.

“We saw you running from next door,” one of the men said.

“We figured you were trapped,” said the other.

“Cornered,” said the third man

“Shhhhh,” he said. “People. Upstairs. Lights.”

That one stretched a few words beyond the usual length, but what the hey! Here’s a link to the original story from a few years ago: https://authorjeffbaker.com/2019/04/26/the-milk-grotto-walk-into-the-dark-in-friday-flash-fics-by-jeff-baker/

Also, the first few stories about Bryce have titles taken from the Biblical story of The Flight Into Egypt, which was the title of the first story and is part of the title of a full-length Bryce Going story I’m working on.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed it!—-jeff