Author’s Note:

Ten Years! Wow!!

Well, it doesn’t seem like yesterday but it was ten years ago this month I saw a post on Facebook for a weekly flash fiction page and decided to try a story myself. That first one was okay and I decided to try another one the next week, which was not that good. So I did the third one the next week and I was off and running.

It’s been a real challenge sometimes, and I won’t pretend it’s made me a better person but I am a better writer. I am certainly a much more disciplined writer. And I will recommend writing on a regular deadline to teach you a lot of discipline. I’m not sure of the exact count but between the weekly stories and the monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge stories and a few extras I’m up to about six-hundred tales written for and posted on this blog, under my own name and my pen-name “Mike Mayak.”

I need to thank a lot of people here; First all the moderators of the Monday and Friday Flash Fiction pages as well as everyone who wrote a story, commented on or read a story I wrote (Bless you, especially for reading!!) My friends and family, my late parents and late husband Darryl and the friends I have amazingly made writing these weekly stories. I will do a special shout-out to ‘Nathan Burgoine, Brigham Vaughn, Kelly Jensen, Elizabeth Lister, Cait Gordon, Jeffrey Ricker, E. H. Timms, Kaje Harper, Brent and Lori Silveria, Rick and Amy Tharp, Jan Grape, Danny Boling, the late Helena Stone, the late John Bogner and all the teachers who tried to teach me how to write and others too many to mention. And I will tip my cosmo topper to my late College buddies Terry Jones and Mark Lebsack who would have seen themselves referenced, if obliquely, in one or two of these stories.

Sometimes writing under a deadline gets a little, well, deadline-y and I actually did consider ending the run of weekly stories at the ten-year mark a while back. But I can’t do that—it’s usually too much fun seeing what comes next!

Like this anniversary story. I’ve written a lot of series characters here; the weird adventures of Billy Gonzalez, the supernatural wanderings of teenage Gay runaway Bryce Going, the science-fictional denizens of Demeter’s Bar as well as a host of detectives and romantics some of which have longer adventures published in anthologies and other online venues.

Wonky the Dog has a lot of fans on this page. Canine TV cartoon co-host and part-time detective whose name was suggested by my late husband Darryl. Wonky hasn’t wagged his tail (or tale) on this page in a few years, so here he is just in time to celebrate ten years of stories with a brand-new story of his own: “Wonky And the All-Seeing Eye.”

Wonky And The All-Seeing Eye

by Jeff Baker

Benjy Baxter, tall, redheaded and not looking like he was almost thirty leaned back in the soft swivel chair in the TV studio and grinned, listening to the interviewer. They were sitting under a banner that read “WUBG TV 1956-1996 Celebrating Forty Years!!”

It was like old times, being in the WUBG studios. Beside him, Wonky the little mixed-breed dog listened attentively from his own chair. Benjy’s grin grew broader as he remembered that the studio had loaned him the suit he was wearing but the dressing room was registered to Wonky.

“Benjy, you weren’t actually supposed to be Wonky’s co-host, were you?”

Like the question, Benjy’s story was on cue cards but he’d told the story so often he just launched into it without thinking.

“I was on-set as Wonky’s trainer back when we were doing the show live and the new host they’d hired was at a bar celebrating. Anyhow when he couldn’t do the show the director all but begged me to go on with Wonky. They threw me in a different shirt and poofed some makeup on my face. I must’ve looked like I’d gotten into a fight with a bag of flour.”

The interviewer laughed.

“The camera came on and there we were! I was awful! But Wonky was a pro, just like his Dad had been.” Benjy reached over and scratched Wonky behind the ears. “And the revival of the show took off!”

“And a few years later you two got to take the show to cable TV all across the country.” the interviewer said.

“Yeah,” Benjy said.

“And that got Wonky those dog food commercials,” the interviewer said.

Very lucrative commercials, Benjy thought.

Wonky looked over and smiled as Benjy launched into the story of being there during the commercials filming.

Benjy sat there and glanced around the darkened studio as the Interviewer showed a couple of pictures of the original Wonky from the Sixties and Seventies and told the story of how Wonky Number One had been the current Wonky’s Grandfather and had been a shelter dog that Benjy’s Uncle, a dog trainer, had rescued and trained. Two Wonkys had co-hosted the show until it was discontinued in the early Eighties.

The cameraman moved the camera in closer as Benjy was telling about his actually being in the studio twenty years earlier when Wonky bristled and started to growl.

Wonky jumped off the chair and ran up to the cameraman, grabbing his pants leg in his teeth.

“Wonky! No! Stop!” Benjy yelled, jumping up and rushing over to try and grab the dog.

Wonky usually didn’t act like this, Benjy thought, unless…

The cameraman ran off and Benjy glanced down and realized what had been bothering him; the camera wasn’t connected to any cable or cord. Benjy started to open the big camera, as Wonky rushed up and started to bark.

“Oh, golly!” Benjy said. “Somebody call security! And maybe the bomb squad!”

“Fireworks, not dynamite,” said the man from the Bomb Squad when they let people back into the building an hour later. “Could still do a lot of damage. This empty camera was full of them.”

“We have a couple of old cameras like this in the storeroom,” the Station Manager said.

“The cops grabbed the guy,” Billy Gander the security guard said. “Remember Bill Sykes?”

“Don’t think so,” Benjy said as Wonky growled at the name.

“You’re the guy who took his job a few years ago when he didn’t show up,” Gander said.

“Oh, wow!” Benjy said. “I never even met him. I’ll bet when I was telling that story he started seething and Wonky noticed.”

“Sykes said he was here for revenge on the station,” the Station Manager said. “Glad Wonky was here!”

“Yeah, he’s a good fella, aren’t you?” Benjy said as Wonky wagged his tail and accepted Benjy’s backrubs and petting. “And y’know, I’ll bet Wonky knows a lot more than he ever lets on!”

Wonky let out with a happy “Ruufff!”

—end—

Author’s Note:

I am going to be away from the laptop for a week or so but I promise I’ll be back, even if I may slow down a bit in the future. But there will be more stories. As Ernest Hemingway said: “I know some good ones.”

And as always; thank you for reading.

—-jeff baker, May 2026