A Swap Meet for Friday Flash Fics, by Jeff Baker (January 5, 2018.)

Posted on January 5, 2018 by jeffbaker307

26055805_322421618255416_3708938565997131904_n                                                                  Will You Still Respect Me In The Morning?                                                                                        

                            By Jeff Baker

            Luke stood in the doorway running a hand through the short hair. He looked down and flexed the right bicep, staring at the tattoos.

            “I don’t remember this one, the one of the face,” Luke said.

            “You should,” Johnny said, from in front of the mirror. “You used to like to rub it with one hand when I was on top of you when we’d…you know.”

            “I think I usually had my eyes closed by that time,” Luke said. He flexed the biceps again. “Seriously, you really took care of yourself. This body looks good.”

            “Thanks,” Johnny said with a grin. “Yours does too.” He grinned into the mirror. The face that grinned back was tanned and dark haired. The body was lean, not as muscular as the figure standing in the doorway but with some good definition. “How much do you weigh, anyhow?”

            “Mmmm…about 185 pounds last time I checked,” Luke said. “Be careful with that body; I get it back tomorrow afternoon”

            “Yeah, you take care of mine too,” Johnny said. “Hey, where did you get those shorts? The ones with the marijuana leaf on them?”

             “Office party gag gift,” Luke said grinning with Johnny’s teeth. Johnny’s body (which Luke was occupying) was muscular, tattooed with reddish brown hair. “This is crazy, you know.”

            “Yeah,” Johnny said. “But it should be worth it.” Luke grinned again; he was getting used to seeing his own face and hearing his own voice coming from over there.

            Johnny had inherited money, and he’d told Luke this was something he’d wanted to try. It was, he said, “a little faddish and kinky,” but it could be fun. They’d spent enough to have themselves transferred into each other’s bodies for 48 hours. Since they got back to Johnny’s apartment they’d spent about an hour gawking at each other. Since body transfer as a way to keep prisoners in line had been declared illegal in 2237 the transfer companies had gone private. It wasn’t legal to do permanently, say to extend life, but after filling out a lot of paperwork it could be done temporarily.

            “Hey, turn around,” Johnny said. “I want to see my backside.”

            “So, when are we going to, you know, do this?” Luke asked, facing the wall.

            “Um, well. Anytime.” Johnny said. “Whenever you’re ready.”

            Luke grinned. Johnny was getting cold feet. Maybe he was too. This was different. Essentially making love to themselves. Luke faced where Johnny was sitting and stared. Unabashedly checking out his own physique. Not a jock but still nice, in a way. Not super-hot like he thought the body he was in now was. But still…

            Luke looked down at his shorts. “Pup tent,” he said.

            “You’re actually blushing!” Johnny said walking over to Luke. “I didn’t think you ever did that!”

            “So, how are we going to do this?” Luke said with a grin.

            “The usual way.” Johnny said. “Let me help you out of those shorts.”

            “Be my guest,” Luke said, kissing him (Weird feeling—kissing your own lips!)

            “I could get to like this!” Johnny said.

            “Yeah, but I like you either way!” Luke said.

 

                                    —end—

Posted in Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, LGBT, Science Fiction, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

A Christmas Ghost Story by Jeff Baker. For Friday Flash Fics., December 29, 2017

Posted on December 28, 2017 by jeffbaker307

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Dusk at Marsden Towers

                                    (A Christmas Ghost Story)

                          Written December 24, 2017 by Jeff Baker

 

            I was sixteen in 1978, and my little brother Todd was thirteen the year we spent Christmas in Los Angeles where my father was from and where my grandmother lived. We were supposed to stay in a suite in the old Marsden Hotel, which was just a few blocks from the big downtown area and dated back to the 1930’s. It was in what they called the Art Deco style, and isn’t there anymore, but it was there in 1978. When we got there, we found the big suite with the adjoining rooms had been given to somebody else and the hotel manager apologized all over to us and offered us the only rooms left. They were four separate rooms but they were right across the hall from one another on the fourteenth floor. The hotel had seventeen floors (I know because in the years since I have read every word ever written about the Marsden Towers, formerly the Marsden Hotel.)

            Mom and Dad took a room across the hall (my Aunt and Uncle were driving down from Hayward the next morning and would have the room next to theirs) and Todd and I each had a room to ourselves across the hall. I had to admit, for the two of us it was an adventure, almost like camping out. We had been up early driving in from Kansas, so we ate and went to bed around dusk. Todd and I spent some time running back and forth from each other rooms, then we settled in for the night.

            Our rooms were the same, table, chair, small bathroom and a single bed right by the window. The windows had been refurbished so they wouldn’t open. My Dad joked that we could see a glimpse of the ocean or check out the California girls through the window. They didn’t know that I wasn’t interested in girls. I would guess we were in bed by about five-thirty. I dozed eyeing the L.A. skyline.

            I was awakened a few hours later by somebody crawling in bed with me. I recognized him immediately as Todd. I knew him and I knew his voice. We’d each had a key to the other’s rooms. He was whimpering and telling me to shut the drapes. He kept talking about a face.

            I got him to calm down and tell me what had happened.

            He had been dozing when he woke up from an awful dream, a dream of an awful face with wide eyes and a mouth open in a big 0 just inches away from his. He had woken up, stared out the window, seen nothing but the city, gotten up, gone to the bathroom, drank some water and went back to bed. He lay down, stared out the window for a few minutes, he guessed, and started dozing again, when he opened his eyes and saw the face again, for an instant. He blinked and it was gone. It had been the same face and Todd realized it had been upside down. He thought he was having a nightmare. He sat up in bed. He was breathing hard. He had a thought; maybe he’d seen somebody jumping off the roof, past the window. He pressed his face against the glass and stared down at the street. No crowd, no police, no sign of anything unusual. He looked up. He could barely make out some stars in the light from L.A’s streetlamps. He sat back in bed. In a minute, he laid back down, still staring out the window. He was absolutely sure he was awake. He glanced up at the ceiling for an instant. When he glanced back at the window he was staring into the face.

            Todd lay there frozen. The face was on the other side of the window. Upside down, lit by the light from the streetlamps, its mouth and eyes open wide. The face wasn’t moving, but the hair, which was a dark reddish color, was streaming out from behind the forehead. There was no body visible, just a hint of shadow above the chin where the body should be. It was frozen in an instant, Todd realized. And Todd took it all in in another instant and then the face, the hair and the shadow were gone.

            The rest is quickly told; Todd talked me into going into his room and watching out the window, but he didn’t want to go back in there or be left in my room alone, so he ducked into Mom and Dad’s room. I stood in the hallway with my hand on the doorknob of Todd’s room but I didn’t go in. I went back to my room; made sure the door was locked behind me and went to bed after closing the drapes tightly. We spent Christmas Day at Grandma’s apartment and headed back home that evening, staying at a motel.

            And only later did I find out about Zachary Marsden, who had built the hotel and lost all his money gambling and had thrown himself from the roof in 1936, from the side of the building facing west. Yes, he’d had red hair.

            And yes, he’d done it on Christmas Eve.

 

                                    —end—

 NOTE: My attempt to write a Jamesian ghost story for Christmas; my unconscious inspiration (besides the picture) may have been the image of the mask at the window in M.R. James’ essay “Stories I have Tried To Write.”

                                                                            ——Jeff Baker, Dec. 24, 2017 

 

Posted in Christmas, Fantasy, Friday Flash Fics, Ghost Story, Horror, LGBT, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

A Tale for Christmas, in Monday Flash Fics. by Jeff Baker, December 25, 2017

Posted on December 24, 2017 by jeffbaker307

25399133_10155886363339787_3625427976267169604_n                                                                                                                                                                          Note: I couldn’t think of a story this week. Fortunately, my club bore McGuffin has a story for any occasion! Merry Christmas!

McGuffin and the Joyous Season                                                                                                                         By Jeff Baker                    

            What got McGuffin talking this time was the workmen trying to bring a Christmas tree in through the door into the clubroom with the billiard table where we all were, as usual.

“Ah, the tinsel, the carols, all the trappings of this time of year!” McGuffin said as he helped himself to eggnog there in the clubroom. “My own contributions to the festivities have been humble,” he went on. “Except for when the Royal Family called upon me to select their Christmas tree.”

            Aubrey-Smith nudged me as he began looking for an exit. Unfortunately, the Christmas tree blocked any escape and McGuffin went on.

            It was a week before Christmas (McGuffin said) and I had received a message from the King, as it was then. Plans for an official tree had fallen through, and knowing my reputation, they felt I was the man for the job.

            I had to act quickly and in secret; Under cover of night I travelled to an area I knew where I believed I could find the perfect tree. The moon was high and bright and there was snow on the ground when I found it—an immense fir, one of the proud descendants of the firs brought to England a century earlier. I pulled my axe out of my backpack and began to chop down the tree.  It took a while but I worked swiftly and soon the tree fell to the ground with a crash. But while I deftly stepped to the side, I was careless enough to allow the strap of my backpack to become caught in one of the branches as it fell. Not only was I pulled onto the falling tree but the tree began to slide down the snow-covered hill towards the ocean! I was stunned, and could do little but hold on for dear life as the tree fell into the ocean with a splash and I began to move quickly out to sea! By the time I untangled myself from the branches and my backpack I was far out to sea in the middle of the night. I tried to steer the big tree but to no avail. My only recourse was to hang on for dear life and make do with the nuts that were stuck in the tree branches from the adjoining trees. Between those, the rations I happened to have in my backpack and the precious water in my canteen I was able to survive during the days I was out to sea without any sight of land. One morning, by a miracle, I saw I was headed for land; an island with a cove. The swift current that I was caught in quickly deposited myself and my tree on the shore. I found that the natives were friendly and largely spoke English. And, to my amazement, I was near the coast of Java—I had traveled two-thirds of the way around the world!

            It did not take long to send word back to Britain to tell them where I was and to arrange for return passage on one of the Crown’s cargo ships. But I learned of the most remarkable surprise of my journey; it was December 25, and I had somehow made landfall on Christmas Island.   

            McGuffin leaned back in his chair and reached for another eggnog.

            “Really, McGuffin,” Aubrey-Smith said. “Halfway around the world…”

            “Two-thirds,” McGuffin corrected.

            “Yes,” Aubrey-Smith said. “Two-thirds around the world on a Christmas tree? And what about the Royal Family? What happened when they didn’t get their tree?”

            McGuffin sipped his eggnog and gestured behind him at a spot on the trophy wall. We walked over and stared at a framed picture we had never noticed before. The picture was small, just a black-and-white snapshot. McGuffin standing on a beach next to a large fir tree he and some natives were propping up like a prize fish. Next to the snapshot in the frame was a note on royal stationary.

            A most appreciative note.

            “As you can see,” McGuffin said, “their Majesties were most understanding.”

 

                                                —end—

 

Posted in Christmas, Fiction, McGuffin, Monday Flash Fiction, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Something for the End of December in Friday Flash Fics, by Jeff Baker

Posted on December 21, 2017 by jeffbaker307

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WRUD New Year’s Eve?

By Jeff Baker

I hadn’t planned on working New Year’s Eve when I got the text message. Enough cash to pay off my post-Christmas credit card balance, so I packed a toothbrush and my private eye license and checked into one of the ritziest hotels downtown for the night. Another working holiday for Andrew Navarro. I was between boyfriends, so no big deal. The party was on the top two floors, a New Year’s bash with booze and snacks and a posh room to safely crash in after ringing in the New Year. All part of an expensive package. I got with hotel manager, my latest employer, about Noon in the hotel lobby on December 31st.

His request was simple; stay sober, keep an eye out and troubleshoot if necessary. The hotel had security but with two floors full of hard-drinking partiers they wanted to take no chances. The hotel rooms all opened out onto windowed hallways with a view of the city, and there was a big conference room at one end of the top floor which had been converted to a makeshift ballroom with streamers, signs saying “Happy New Year” and a cash bar. There was a table to one side where the D.J. was going to set up later, but the partying had already started. I saw about four guys sitting around, drinking beer and laughing. Another couple, both with greying hair were kissing in the hallway outside their room, one of the two men reaching behind him and fumbling for the doorknob.

Have fun guys, I thought as I walked past the closing door.

The rest of the partiers trickled in as the afternoon went on, and most of the guys were pretty well-behaved at first, but some of them had evidently started partying early. About five-thirty with the lights coming on in the darkening city I saw a buff young guy in the hallway wearing nothing but a red speedo, a Santa Claus hat and “Naughty or Nice” printed in black marker across his chest and abs.

“Happy New Year, dude!” he said, giving me a thumbs-up. I gave him a nod and grinned.

All that’s missing from him is a surfboard, I thought walking down the hall.

I checked in at the ballroom from time to time but mainly I patrolled the hallways, keeping my eyes and ears open for any trouble. It was after nine thirty and the music was blaring from the ballroom when I found trouble. The kid from earlier in the hallway with the Santa hat was lying face down on the floor of an unused back room. It didn’t take me more than a minute to realize he wouldn’t be ringing in this or any other New Years.

The regular hotel security wasn’t too far away and I was just glad I had their number on my cellphone. We were lucky nobody came into this room. Security called the police and when they arrived we turned the dead man over.

“Yup. It’s who I thought it was,” the head of security said. “Pete Zongker. He’s come to a couple of things here before and I talked to him earlier. No sign of any wounds. He may have O.D.’d.”

I stared and shook my head. “This may be Pete Zongker, and it sure looks like the guy who was roaming the halls earlier, but that guy wasn’t this guy.” The other men stared. I went on. “This message on his chest isn’t going to wash off for a few days, but it’s different than the one I saw earlier. That one was written by the man on his own chest; you can tell by the shape of the letters. It’s like when a right-handed person trains himself to write with his left hand, the letters are shaped differently. Writing on yourself is like trying to write backwards. But the printing on the dead man was clearly written by someone else. Possibly his murderer or whoever was there when he O.D.’d or was poisoned, probably before we saw the other one walking the halls. Making everyone believe that the other was still alive. Whichever of them is Pete Zongker it’s the other one we’re looking for. Someone who looks like him,” I said staring at the dead man.

I found out later that the dead man was Pete Zongker and the police had caught the man we’d seen alive; Zongker’s cousin and business partner. Some New Year’s Eve.

Amazingly, most of the other partiers knew nothing about this; they were in the ballroom as the body was removed. I walked in just as they were counting down to midnight, and another buff, young guy, (this one very much alive) ran across the room wearing shorts and a banner proclaiming “Happy 2018.”

—end—

Posted in Andrew Navarro, Christmas, Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Mystery, New Year, Uncategorized | Tagged | 4 Comments

Pre-Christmas Poem by Jeff Baker

Posted on December 21, 2017 by jeffbaker307

(Because sometimes milk and cookies aren’t enough.)

                                       Beer For Christmas

                                                By Jeff Baker

 

            We left Santa beer for Christmas

            Next morning he was in our den

            Just as jolly as could be

            Right in front of our T.V.

            Watching ESPN

            Now Santa and our Dad have bonded

            They’re best buds the whole year long

            We get presents every day

            We fly to school in Santa’s sleigh

            What could possibly go wrong?

            Mrs. Claus sent a text

            Common sense set in

            Those presents won’t deliver themselves

            Kids’ll be disappointed

            The reindeer won’t be happy

            And what about the elves?

            So Santa took off in September

            Waved goodbye and thanked us for the brew

            Christmas morn we got a shock

            When we looked into our socks

            We got gold cards, labeled “Merry Christmas to You.”

 

                                    —end—

Posted in Christmas, Poems, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Something sorcerous by Jeff Baker for Monday Flash Fics, December 18, 2017

Posted on December 17, 2017 by jeffbaker307

25299388_10155869230184787_3985942074536705252_n                                                          The Sorcerer

                                                             By Jeff Baker

           The sorcerer’s life is not an easy one. Hard work. Decades of study. Long nights. (Some things can only be learned and studied under the stars of a black sky.) A solitary life. A life dedicated to the quest for knowledge and the mastery of power.

            It is a learned art, and once the doors of power are unlocked they cannot be shut again. A vocation and a calling rather than an occupation. A priest has been described as Celebrating. A sorcerer has no time for celebration. Perfection in their art is a necessity; there is always another sorcerer who craves their position and power. Power, however, must be restrained. The wrong word or thought can invoke chaos. The trained mind is safer.

            Sleep is a refuge for the sorcerer but even then, the wandering mind of dreams may invoke limited disturbance in the real world. Various levitations in the room surrounding the slumbering mage. Books. Glasses. Coffee out of cups, orbiting the bed like planets surrounding a sun.

            This is why so few sorcerers marry.

 

                                                —end—

Posted in Fantasy, Fiction, Monday Flash Fiction, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

“Dogs Don’t Ask.” Friday Flash Fics for December 15, 2017 by Jeff Baker

Posted on December 15, 2017 by jeffbaker307

24796821_313352622495649_7653346714334419769_n                                                                              Dogs Don’t Ask 

                                   By Jeff Baker

                                   

            The dog was old and weathered and Amzed had been assigned to her. She didn’t protest as he picked her up and carried her, first outside where he set her down and she stood shakily for a few minutes, then Amzed carried her back inside and gently set her down by her food and water bowls. Amzed sat down beside her and rubbed her back as she ate, chewing slowly.

            “That’s okay girl, take your time,” Amzed said, running his finger along the edge of the dog’s collar. “We both know what it’s like to have a master.”

            Dogs took things as they came, Amzed reflected. Dogs didn’t ask about your status or about the ancient verse tattooed on your left arm or whether the name carved on your right shoulder was the name you’d been born with. (“Amzed,” and it wasn’t.) Dogs don’t ask about the welts and scars on your back.

            Amzed rubbed the dog’s back again. No scars.

            “Your masters have treated you better than mine have,” he said. “I guess we’re lucky with the owners we have right now.”

            The dog finished eating and looked up at Amzed with eyes that seemed tired but smiling. Then she made a few halting steps toward the door.

            “You want out again girl?” Amzed asked. “All right, we’ll go out.”

            He gently carried the dog outside and set her down to sniff the grass. He sat down again and stared up at two of the three moons, dim in the daytime sky. For a few minutes, Amzed and the dog both felt very young and free                                          

                                                       —end—

Author’s Note: I had written the first draft of this story when I realized it fit into a series of stories I have set on an alien world with an Arabic-like culture, maybe made up of refugees from Earth who arrived millennia ago and then regressed from the space age to something more medieval. With the assistance, of course, of mystical forces that inhabited this planet first. No name for the series, I just think of it as “The World of Three Moons.” The only other one published was “Wild Horses,” on this blog February 19, 2017, connected with the Monday Flash Fics page.

Posted in Fantasy, Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Science Fiction, Uncategorized, World of Three Moons | 1 Comment

“Of Another Age,” Monday Flash Fics, for December 11, 2017, by Jeff Baker

Posted on December 10, 2017 by jeffbaker307

019                                                               Of Another Age              

                                                                   By Jeff Baker

 

            “Power’s on, see?” Alberto said pointing at the brightly lit columns shining there in the dark.

            “How long will they be activated?” Jerry asked.

            “Not sure this time,” Alberto said. “We’ll have to work fast. How far are we headed?”

            “Not too far back this time. Nineteen-sixties. Maybe Eighteen-sixties,” Jerry said.

            They looked around. Trees and bushes surrounded them; the lit columns were several yards away across a concrete strip.

            The two of them looked at each other. “You ready?” Alberto said. “Okay.”

            “Jerry! Alberto! Come here right now!” The voice behind them was familiar.

            “Oh, great,” Jerry grumbled. “Right here, Mom!”

            “Come here right now!”

            “Mom! Alberto and I were just…”

            “Don’t even think about crossing that street!” Jerry’s Mom said. “Honestly, why they ever put those columns up and called them ‘art’ I’ll never know. Come on you two!”

            “We weren’t playing in the street, Mrs. Hunkle, and its Friday there’s no school tomorrow and…”        

            Over to one side crouched in the bushes the two older men watched the two protesting kids and Jerry’s Mom head back down the street.

            “So, what happens anyway?” Rupert asked.

            “From what I remember we both get a severe lecture,” the other man said. “Hey, we were about nine years old! We spent our Friday nights together after school.” Alberto smiled, staring after his younger self.

            “And it was stuff like this that got you interested in formulating the time/space equation?” Rupert asked.

            “Pretty much,” Alberto said. “That plus the usual stuff; comic books, sci-fi movies and T.V. If I’d been born about ten years later, I would have wasted all my time on social media.
“This is, how far back again?” Rupert asked staring across the street.

            “Ninteen, I mean, Two-thousand and three,” Alberto said.

            “And what exactly is that thing?” Rupert said, pointing at the columns of light that surrounded the intersection.

            Alberto laughed. “It was part of an outdoor arts project. I heard there were all kinds of complaints about this one. But I guess it’s still up.” He looked around for a moment. “I haven’t been back in town in years.”

            “You still haven’t, remember?” Rupert said. “In 2002 you hadn’t left yet.”

            “Okay, okay, get technical,” Alberto said. “So what’s our destination, anyway?”

            “About thirty-five years from now, according to this,” Rupert said, pulling from his pocket something that had a display but didn’t seem to have any stable form. “Easier to get our spatial bearings by going back a few decades first.”

            “Yeah, technical stuff,” Alberto said, grinning again. “How soon before we take off?”

            “It should be…” Rupert said. But then the two men weren’t standing there anymore.

 

                                                            —end—

 

Posted in Fiction, Monday Flash Fiction, Science Fiction, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Big Cat for Friday Flash Fics, December 8, 2017 by Jeff Baker

Posted on December 7, 2017 by jeffbaker307

24131088_310299182800993_6517696875416122740_n                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     Nice Kitty                                                                                                                                                By Jeff Baker

 

“Hold still, dammit!” I said. “I’ve never scrubbed a mountain lion before.”

“I’ve never been a mountain lion before,” Marshall grumbled through furry lips. “Is this really necessary?”

“Yes!” I said emphatically. “You were starting to stink. How long are you going to stay this way?”

“Probably another eight hours or so,” Marshall said. “Unless we find a formula in one of those books.”

“Not likely,” I said. “We were lucky the one time we did. At least these transformations are only temporary.”

“At least when I turned myself into a crow I could fly,” Marshall said.

“At least when you were a crow we were out at the cabin, not here in the middle of the city,” I said, thankful for the thousandth time this apartment didn’t have a No Pets sign on the front door.

“You know,” I said, lathering up the big cat that I was now married to. “At least when you were a crow you could have used a birdbath.”

“Ick!” Marshall said. “Stinky, with dirty water and algae and you-don’t-wanna-know what kind of gunk on the bottom.”

He was right, I didn’t want to know.

“Got to admit,” I said, “you make a handsome mountain lion. Or cougar.”

Marshall grinned. “Thanks. I’ve never been called a cougar before. I thought we were about the same age!”

Bad joke but I laughed.

“Hey,” Marshall said, “wasn’t there an old episode of Bewitched where the guy got turned into something and his wife scrubbed him down in the bathtub?”

“Maybe,” I said, scrubbing Marshall’ back. “I never really watched it all that much.”

“Oh, and I’d better sack out on the floor tonight,” Marshall said. “Claws and teeth could rip the sheets or the mattress. Oh yeah! Right there! Scrub right there! Aaaaaaaahhhhh!”

In another instant, I was no longer scrubbing a mountain lion, but a tanned, dark-haired man who had nice arms but probably needed to cut down on drinking sodas,

“Hey! How’d that happen?” I asked.

“I dunno,” Marshall said. “I was kind of envisioning how it felt to be with you when I’m me and you were scrubbing me and I got really relaxed and wham! Back to normal!”

Yeah, life was crazy, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I’ll get your bathrobe,” I said.

“Hold up on that!” Marshall said. “How about you keep scrubbing?”

I grinned and started soaping up the washrag.

 

—end—

 

Posted in Fantasy, Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Uncategorized | 4 Comments

Something Reflective for Monday Flash Fics, December 4, 2017.

Posted on December 3, 2017 by jeffbaker307

23843175_10155832001044787_3540132578421384651_n                                                  Nausithous and Dorkas

By Jeff Baker

 

Long ago, when Ancient Greece was new, there lived a young man so good-looking that everyone fell in love with him. Including him. He was so in love with himself that the people in his village used to say that he was some kind of narcissist. And, they were close to the truth. For the young man was, in fact, the son of Narcissus and Echo, the result of their one-night tryst which wound up with his father turned into a flower by a reflecting pond and his mother a disembodied voice. And, unfortunately for young Nausithous, he was also the recipient of the curse that had befallen his parents, for he couldn’t get enough of himself in the mirror.

One afternoon, when young Nausithous was finishing lunch after a pleasant morning admiring himself in the mirror there was a knock at the door. Making apologies to the mirror he went to the door and found standing there, a gorgeous young woman holding a scroll.

“Hello,” she said. “My name is Dorkas and I’m working my way through school selling subscriptions to The Daily Acts and I was wondering…”

“These daily acts,” Nausithous asked, “are any of them about me?”

“Um, I don’t think so.” Dorkas said. “But then, I haven’t read the latest edition.”

“Sorry, not interested,” Nausithous said as he closed the door and went back to his mirror.

But outside, what Dorkas heard was; “Interested. Interested. Interested.” So naturally, being a good salesperson, she opened the door (they had no locks on doors in those days, just a well-trained slave boy who slept in front of it at night) and went in. Meanwhile, Nausithous was back to admiring himself in the mirror.

“Oh, if you weren’t a mirror I could tell you how much I love you,” he said to his reflection.

In the other room, the voice (this time sounding just like Nausithous) repeated; “I love you. Love you. Love you.”

For the voice, of course, was Echo. Besides being a disembodied voice, she was after all, Nausithous’ mother. And mothers know what their sons want, even if the sons don’t.

“Mister Nausithous,” Dorkas said. “Did I tell you about the Sunday supplements and our coupon offers?”

But what Nausithous heard, courtesy of Echo, was: “Sunday supplements tell you about Nausithous. Nausithous. Nausithous.”

“Lemmie see one of those Sunday supplements,” he said. And then he looked into her eyes and realized he could see himself reflected in them perfectly.

“I love you,” he said to his reflection in her eyes.

“I love you,” she said back.

“I love you. Love you. Love you,” repeated the voice.

So, they soon were married and it was perfect for them. Dorkas was always out selling subscriptions and Nausithous was too preoccupied with himself to get into any trouble. Of course, tongues in the village wagged, as they often do. But soon, all the talk was about the scandal with Oedipus and his family, so the locals realized that there were more awkward relationships and that this one wasn’t the end.

“The End. The End. The End…”

Posted in Fantasy, Fiction, Monday Flash Fiction, Uncategorized | 2 Comments