December 31, 2022

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’ve posted about my series guy Billy Gonzalez here before, and I may be cheating as this story dates back to before I’d outed him as bisexual, but in this story, “At The Stroke of Midnight” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2016/12/31/spooky-new-years-eve-everybody/ he has other things on his mind.

I have always considered New Year’s Eve to be spookier than Halloween. What if there’s more to the change of dates than just getting a new calendar? Here we find Billy babysitting his two young nephews on December thirty-first as they talk about a legend involving the passing of the old year:

“We wanna see Old Man New Year,” his older nephew Alex said.

“Who?” Tyler asked.

“The old man isn’t the new year, at least not anymore,” Billy said with a laugh. “The little baby is the New Year.”

“What little baby?” Tyler asked.

“Not mine,” Billy said with a grin.

Here’s a little more after twenty-something Billy sends his nephews off to bed and dozes in the living room only to be awakened by a sound and an intruder wielding a scythe…

Billy realized what he was seeing; someone dressed up as Old Man New Year. He could just make out a banner wrapped around the figure with the year written on it, the last number trailing into a smudge. Billy could barely make out a large, dark hourglass hanging from the figure’s belt.

But how had he gotten in here? Then the figure stepped into the light. Its arms were almost skeletal and its face was frozen in an open-mouthed expression, skin withered making the head look like one of those dolls with the head carved out of an apple.

And on that eerie note, with the tower clock in the distance chiming midnight we close out this post in Rainbow Snippets. Happy New Year to you and may your 2023 be free of any scares and may your happiness last for more than a snippet! —-jeff