"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
It was just past noon when Jorge switched off the radio and said “They’re coming.”
“Should we hide?” Ty said, fingering the wedding band that matched Jorge’s.
“No. Not hide. Not today,” Jorge said. “We hide, they think they’ve won.”
Jorge went over to the closet and pulled out a large rainbow flag on a pole.
“We make ourselves obvious,” Jorge said. “Even if we’re the last.”
It took a few minutes but Jorge and Ty had tightened the screws in the bracket on the column of the front porch of their bungalow by the river in the heart of town. The pole with its rainbow banner was soon sticking out defiantly from the house, the flag swaying gently in the breeze.
Jorge and Ty stood in the yard, Tyler’s arm around Jorge’s shoulders, watching the flag.
“I forgot to show you,” Ty said. “I found a pic online that I think is of this house from way back when, about the 2020s with a Pride Flag hanging from the upper window and a bunch of guys standing on the porch glaring into the camera.”
“Probably waiting for neo-nuts to come marching down the street.” Jorge said. “That pic might have been from the first Defiance Day, like they announce over the radio every year.”
“Nobody marching down this dead-end street today,” Ty said. “Let’s get a…hey!”
Ty laughed and pointed. Two kids, looking barely into their teens, rounded the curve with it’s shock of trees and biked up to the driveway.
“What’s with the flags?” one of the kids said. “See em all over the street.”
“You mean you don’t know?” Jorge asked.
The kids shook their heads. Ty and Jorge grinned at each other.
“Well it’s like this,” Ty said. “About fifty years ago…”
“Did you see him leave?” Gina said, glancing from the big glass front door to the rows of washers.
“No,” Jack said, looking panicky. “I glanced over there at the two way mirror in the other wall and when I looked back at his chair, Tommy was gone!”
“I was up by the front door. I didn’t see him leave,” Gina said over the sound of the washers and dryers there in the laundromat. And he can’t hide. Look up.”
The ceiling was covered with those half-dome silvery mirrors that hid security cameras. They could clearly see the rows of washers and dryers and that they were the only ones in the room. The room was longer than it was wide with five rows of four washing machines each running from near the back to the front with large dryers in the left hand wall with a locked office with a two-way mirror by the back corner, and metal chairs and benches along the right side wall, across the back and on either side of the big glass door at the front.
“Wait,” Gina said. “You were looking in the mirror. Could you see Tommy in the mirror?”
“No,” Jack said, brushing his stringy red hair out of his face. “I was standing up and my reflection blocked where he was sitting. But I didn’t see him run past me…”
“Maybe when you were turning,” Gina said.
“But he would have had to run down that aisle by the wall and you were there at the end of it. You would have noticed him!”
“Yeah,” Gina said. “And I was looking back there when I heard you yell.”
Jack shook his head. “And he couldn’t have run past me…wait! It’s crazy…”
“So was Tommy.” Gina said.
“Maybe he hid in one of the washers. They are big!” Jack said.
“Tommy was a six-footer. He might just have been able to squeeze in…hang on, stay there!”
Gina quickly went through the rows of washers, opening the doors of the machines that weren’t running. No Tommy. She walked past the big dryers built into the one wall. Big, clear doors, nothing inside but drying clothes. Lastly she tried the door to the employee office. Locked with the same padlock on the outside that was there when they came here fifteen minutes earlier.
Jack saw her expression.
“And he didn’t come up here, either,” he said. The two of them walked to the back of the laundromat where Tommy had been sitting in one of the chairs fixed to the floor.
They stared at the chair.
“His cellphone!” Gina said.
The cellphone was still there on the metal armrest of the chair Tommy had been sitting in, charger plugged into the wall. Jack picked it up and swiped a finger across the screen.
The image came up. Tommy had been making a call. The air time minutes were displayed.
More planning than actual writing progress this period.
I kept up with the weekly flash fiction and wrote a Queer Sci Fi column, but much of the rest was planning out longer stuff, including a full-blown sword and sorcery story for an online magazine I discovered.
I hadn’t even read much of the genre but I had some characters ready from one of the Friday Flash Fiction stories so I have notes and the like in a separate notebook. That’s kind of progress.
And I have been reading some of the good sword-and-sorcery stories. Research.
A Henry Kuttner-heavy Reading Report for March/April 2025
Read “Food For Thought” by Felice Picano who had died a week earlier. It’s in is collection “Tales From A Distant Planet.” The story plays like an episode of the original “Star Trek,” albeit with group sex as well as a good story.
Finished the Kuttner/Moore story “We Kill People.” A perfect bleak, clever story with some Kuttneresque, sci-fi, near-future touches. First published in “Astounding” in 1946, reprinted in the 1955 British anthology “Looking Forward,” edited by Milton Lesser. The story (as by “Lewis Padgett” has rarely been reprinted. It includes the line: “The first true humans were mutants, and were given intelligence so they could dominate.”
Started reading the collection “Somewhere In the Night” by Jeffrey N. McMahon. Fine horror stories I will write more about later.
Read N. K. Jemisin’s story “Reckless Eyeballing” in the anthology “Out There Screaming.” (Special thanks to Brent Silveria for pointing out Jemisin to me!)
For the April 3rd birthday of Washington Irving I read his story “Legend Of the Arabian Astrologer.” I will here gush about Oldstyle Press’ fine collection of his tales: “The Best Ghost Stories and Folk Horror of Washington Irving.” https://www.oldstyletales.com/irving
I’m bumming my way through “Mark Twain’s Mississippi River,” by Peter Schilling, Jr.
For Henry Kuttner’s April 7th birthday I listened to a You Tube reading of “Where The World Is Quiet.” A Kutneresque horror story from the 50s that plays like one of his earlier stories but very well-written.
I finally started reading “The Wrong Box” by Lloyd Osbourne and his stepdad Rbt. Louis Stevenson. Black humor and not as laugh-out loud funny as I expected but I’m only in the early chapters.
Listened to a fine reading of “John Mortonson’s Funeral,” by Ambrose Bierce.
Also read Bierce’s “A Cargo Of Cat.” A tall tale and a grotesque one at that.
Read Robert W. Chambers’ “The Repairer Of Reputations.” Hadn’t expected it to be a dystopian story that rang so contemporary; set in the near-future (1920) with references to tariffs, immigration “…and new laws concerning naturalization and the centralizing of power in the executive…”
Oh, and a war with Germany, in the Nineteen-Teens. Remember, this story was published in 1895.
First time I’d read one of Chambers’ “King In Yellow” stories. (I can’t find my full collection.)
NOTE: Book Tubers are doing “Horror MAYhem: Decades of Horror” in May, reading one story for a decade. I decided to do it here and start a month early. My decades also start about a century earlier. “Repairer…” will be my story for the 1890s.
For the 1930s I read Henry Kuttner’s Prince Raynor story “Citadel Of Darkness.” Fun sword-and-sorcery adventure with enough horror to qualify for the BookTubers theme.
Been keeping up with the fine weekly stories by Kaje Harper and J. Scott Coatsworth’s entertaining serial “Down The River,” as well as E. H. Timm’s excellent monthly stories on the Flash Fiction Draw Challenge.
I also re-read a lot of J. Scott Coatsworth’s “Miz Fortune’s Lonely Hearts Salon,” which is now available in an anthology.
And I actually paid about five bucks for a comic book I bought for twelve cents back in 1970; a one-shot called “Zody the Mod Rob” which blends hippies, the zodiac, a little magic and robots! Actually fun! Worth a smile or two. Would’ve made a fun Saturday Morning cartoon show!
More next month, including a few more decades of “Horror MAYhem.”
“Have I ever told you chaps,” McGuffin said from his usual chair in the Billiards Room at the Club, “how I took on a dragon?”
My sprained ankle was propped up on a stool, Aubrey-Smith and Delmar were in the middle of a game and Old Man Plunkett was half dozing in his chair. None of us were getting away.
I waved at a waiter for a refill and McGuffin went on.
It was not long ago (McGuffin said) and I was in America on business when I stopped in San Francisco and, as I always do, stopped in Chinatown. As usual, the sights, the sounds, the smells were exquisite! I bought myself a souvenir and was soon standing in a crowd on the street watching a small parade. Traditionally-garbed dancers, brightly-colored streamers and of course, a dragon. In reality, a group of young men and women beneath a dragon costume consisting of a long, decorated cloth and a strong young man under the large dragon’s head.
There was plenty of cheering from the crowd as this dragon danced and snaked its way along the street. But suddenly a pair of beer bottles sailed through the air and landed perilously close to the crowd. A few feet away stood a small group of protesters, yes protesters jeering and holding signs with anti-Asian slogans.
One of the young men making up the dragon’s body bent down and peered out from under the long cloth. It would have looked quite comical except for those rabble-rousers who were becoming even more hostile and had started throwing rocks. Obscenities were being hurled as well and the scene had the potential to become even more ugly.
And at that precise moment the ground began to shake!
With my vast experience, I knew this was no ordinary earthquake. Within seconds a section of the street burst open and a large scaly green Dragon suddenly ripped up onto the street! The onlookers and the protesters were suddenly on the verge of panic! The people in the dragon costume stood petrified! I knew I had to act quickly.
I stepped up to the green Dragon and spoke to it in a firm, clear voice. The Dragon glared at me then glanced between the protesters and the parade dragon. It glared and snarled at the protesters and puffed a burst of fire at them. The cowards ran away down the street.
Then, in a blur of green, the Dragon spread a pair of wings and shot upwards and was a tiny speck in the sky a moment later.
McGuffin leaned back in his chair and gestured for a refill.
“Wait a minute,” Aubrey-Smith said. “How did you get a dragon to actually listen to you?” (In spite of themselves, Aubrey-Smith and Delmar had wandered over to McGuffin’s chair to listen.)
“It was simple, gentlemen,” McGuffin said. “Dragons are intelligent creatures and will listen to reason. With my knowledge, I identified the Dragon as not one of the Chinese variety or the skittish American breed, but one of the Ancient British Dragons. Doubtless, a stowaway in the hold of one of the abandoned ships which some of the city was built upon. Sleeping underground for over a century. I merely addressed the Dragon in Old English and explained the situation.”
McGuffin nodded thanks to the waiter who had arrived with his refill and took a sip, and then said, thoughtfully:
“I suppose I’ll never know why that Dragon chose that particular moment to awaken.”
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
My friend J. Scott Coatsworth has a story in the new Own Voices anthology “Romance Is a Drag.” https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/book/romance-is-a-drag-anthology/ Scott’s story is set in the same locale as his “River City” series; slice of life with some Magical Realism. And with Miz Fortune, the magic is definitely real! Chester Carlson leads a dual life; as an unsatisfied office drone, and in drag as the fortuneteller Miz Fortune, who narrates Scott’s story “Miz Fortune’s Lonely Hearts Salon.”
I’d seen six clients that night, including another man torn between two women—the solution there was a poly relationship. Surprise! Also a woman in her late eighties searching for her first love—alas, deceased. And a lesbian couple who had been fighting for months, desperately seeking a path back to one another.
That had been the hardest. They both featured other people—one a man, one a woman—in their sendings. One had been relieved at the news, but the other… I couldn’t get the haunted look on her face out of my mind.
“Romance Is A Drag” is described on the cover as “A Queer Anthology/Volume One.” Given the caliber of the eight authors involved that is a most good fortune indeed! —-jeff
Happy Birthday to my onetime teacher Sister Tarcisia Roths, who celebrated her 95th on April 11, 2025 with a party at Newman University! She has been a hugely important part of the school for much of her life!
The Great Dinosaur of 2155 or Please Don’t Eat the Paleontologist
by Mike Mayak
It was early in the Winter evening at the Carmine-Gardner Museum and the tall, silver-haired museum guide was glad this was the last group of schoolchildren for the day.
“Over here, children,” he said. “Step this way! Don’t touch that! All here? Good.”
The grade-schoolers crowded around the display. The guide indicated a small glass case where a discolored bone sat on a purple pillow.
“This bone,” he said with the dignity and drama of the Shakespearean actor he had been in his youth, “is a relic of the Plesiosaurs. Large aquatic reptiles that swam the Earth’s oceans back when there was even more ocean than there is today and who disappeared over sixty-five million years ago.”
He smiled to himself. Some of the children at least seemed interested. He went on.
“One man who could have told you much more was Professor Thomas Parker. His specialty was that bygone age of reptiles as well as the more recent ecological calamities which have altered the climate since the late Twentieth Century.”
A boy in the back row raised his hand. The guide sighed. “It means a world-wide problem that affected the weather for the worse.”
“Oh,” the boy said, lowering his hand.
“Several decades ago,” the guide said. “Professor Parker was camped-out on one of the small regions of rapidly disappearing Antarctic ice.” He paused, seeing puzzled looks. “That’s the Southern one.” He cleared his throat. “Anyway, the professor, as was his want, was eating his lunch and watching what is left of the gigantic ice walls break apart and crumble when a huge chunk of ice bobbed up from below the surface, sloshing water everywhere.”
The children giggled. The guide smiled.
“In that ice, perfectly preserved, was a Plesiosaur. As the professor groped in his pockets for his trusty camera app, the ice broke open and the creature plopped into the water, shaking its head to clear it.” He paused for dramatic effect. “Yes, the Plesiosaur was alive!”
The children gasped. The guide went on.
“The Plesiosaur looked around, and sniffed the air and the Professor was typing out a note to himself that such reptiles had, or rather, have a sense of smell when the creature lunged at him!”
More gasps from the kids.
“The Plesiosaur’s long neck had stretched out but in another instant it slipped back into the water, turning to spit out something and then it swam away.”
The guide was satisfied. The story had produced the desired effect: looks of awe.
“And Parker’s papers and this relic were donated to our museum.”
One of the kids raised her hand.
“But Mr. Wells, if the Plesiosaur escaped and so did Professor Parker, whose bone is that?”
Museum guide Wells smiled. “This, if you didn’t know, was part of Professor Parker’s lunch on that fateful day. Look closely.” Mr. Wells pointed at the bone. “And you can see the tooth marks from a living relic of sixty-five million years ago.”
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
“None of it,” Riley said. “They didn’t even try to get into the safe. What they did take…” Riley shook his head. “You know those little cardboard boxes we give the customers for the hot dogs?”
“Yeah?” Patrick said.
“Every last one of ‘em. Gone!” Riley said.
“I finished talking to the cops,” Joel said, walking into the office. “At least they made out a report.”
Mystery afoot! Call Sherlock Holmes! Or maybe Donald Strachey!
See you soon with more snippets! —–jeff baker, April 11, 2025
authorjeffbaker 