"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Dieter Leib walked over and plopped his director’s chair, decorated with the words “Leib’s Seat,” down at the far corner of the room and gestured at the two men in cowboy hats.
“Okay,” Leib said, “This could be the start of a new series. We’re just lucky we got the loan of an authentic Mexican palace to film this. But we only have it for a day. So you guys fake your big fight scene and try to do it in one take.”
Matty Barstow glared at Leib. “Fake?”
“As best you can.” Leib said. “Okay, quiet on the set.”
“Hey, is this the final scene?” Ross Scarman asked.
“Not by a long shot.” Leib said.
“Then which one of us wins the fight?”
“Which one of you is in the black hat?” Leib said.
“I coulda been in that new movie MASH,” Ross grumbled.
“And make sure you take the fight over past that big green window.” Leib said. “But don’t break it; it’s over a hundred years old. Okay, ready? Action!”
Leib nodded at the cameraman and the two actors in their cowboy outfits began fighting, obviously throwing punches, only half-trying to make it look real.
Leib sighed. “At least I’m not making porn anymore,” he thought.
The dusty light shone through the big green window as the two men stared at each other from across the table. One of them an American with piercing eyes, the other a younger Mexican man in an Army uniform.
“Senor, even if you are a reporter, even if you are a famous one, I cannot allow you to speak with Pancho Villa.”
“I came all the way from San Francisco to interview him,” the American said. “I’ll tell his story to everyone back in the U. S.”
“That is politics, Senor,” the man said.
“Politics: a strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles,” the American said. “I wrote that. I have plenty of experience and people know my name when it appears in print.”
The other man laughed. “Who are you, Mark Twain?”
“Hardly,” the American said.
“Tell you what,” the man said. “Villa is not here but I will tell you where to find him, if you are that crazy.”
The American nodded.
“Cut!” Leib said, jumping up from his chair. “What kind of a fight is this anyway? Ross, you’re supposed to be underhanded, shifty. You move like a drugged porcupine. And Matty, if you’re going to hit the guy you need to get a little closer. You’re fighting a wild west desperado, one who probably killed the woman you love during a bank holdup. Show some more emotion. Some vitriol!”
“This plot went out with Tom Mix,” Ross said.
“Old-fashioned stuff is coming back,” Leib said. “I can feel it.”
While Leib was griping at his actors, Ernesto, the cameraman glanced around the big room, wondering what sort of things had happened there over the years. Certainly nothing comparing to shooting a not-big Hollywood movie.
“Senor, are you sure you want to do this?” the man asked the American who was sitting in the back of the wagon load of supplies.
“Where Villa goes, I go,” he said. “I’m over seventy. If I get stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, well it beats disease or falling down the cellar stairs.”
The man in the uniform shrugged and waved at the driver who clicked at the horse and the wagon moved onward toward the distant battle that was aborning.
The American smiled. His own horse would be fine back at the palace. They would take good care of it. Besides, he himself probably couldn’t have found Villa, although it wouldn’t be the first battle he’d seen. “To be a gringo in Mexico, that is euthanasia,” he mused.
Leib sat down again and called for action.
Somewhere in the palace, the house echoed with the past.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the May Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: A Western, set in a Palace involving a Director’s Chair. I threw in the author of the Devil’s Dictionary and his mysterious disappearance for good measure.
“I didn’t know you could climb up here,” Rupert said.
“Yeah.” C. W. said. “Glad my Dad doesn’t keep track of the key.”
“Would you look at the view!” Rupert said, looking through the little window.
“Yeah, you can see the whole town,” C. W. said. “Nothing like a grain elevator to get you up in the world.”
“And you’re still working for your Dad here in town.” Rupert said.
“And you’re off in the big city,” C. W. said. “Wow.”
“Yeah.” Rupert said. “It’s not that big of a deal.”
“Not that big You’re making money hand over fist.” C. W. said.
“Just a matter of getting yourself in the right place and going for it.” Rupert said. “Seeing an opportunity and taking it.”
The opportunity, C. W. thought, that should have been his.
“Yeah.” C. W. said. “Some people get to do that. Hey, look over at the other wall. You can see all the way to Sumner City.”
He pointed and Rupert turned around, hanging on to the railing on the little catwalk that was all that separated them from the big space of the grain elevator.
A long way down.
“Yeah, I think I can almost see their water tower from here,” Rupert said squinting at the window on the opposite wall. “Hey remember when your brother got caught trying to climb up the water tower here? That’s when they put up all that barbed wire…”
C. W. remembered. And while Rupert was talking he was leaning. Maybe a bit too far.
It wouldn’t take much, just a shove…
C. W. just stood and stared. He couldn’t bring himself to risk going somewhere else for a job, couldn’t go for the opportunities, and he couldn’t do this.
What had his guidance counselor said? “Unmotivated.”
“Hey,” Rupert said, turning to C. W. and grinning. “I bet old man Meyerbeer still has that ice cream stand open. It’s not too late. My treat.”
C. W. faked a smile and nodded. “You can afford it.”
As they clamored down the stairs, C. W. imagined screwing up his courage and asking his Dad for a raise.
Here’s the draws for the May 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Followed by my usual long-winded explanation:
A Western
Involving A Director’s Chair
Set at A Palace
Now, on to the details.
Hi! I’m Mike Mayak, I also write as Jeff Baker and I’m the current moderator for the monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, which was started by ‘Nathan Burgoine a few years ago and carried on by Cait Gordon and Jeffrey Ricker. It’s a monthly writing challenge mainly for stress-free fun that anyone can play.
Here’s how it works: the first Monday of every month I draw three cards; a heart, a diamond and a club. These correspond to a list naming a genre, a setting and an object that must appear in the story. Participants write up a flash fiction story, 1,000 words or less, post it to their website and link it here in the comments. I’ll post the results (including, hopefully, one of my own!) on the blog.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage. So, the results were the Ten of Hearts (a Western), the Five of Diamonds (a Palace) and the Nine of Clubs (A Director’s Chair.)
So we will write a western, set in a palace, involving a director’s chair.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday May 12th, 2025.
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week! And I’m putting the 2025 Flash Draw sheet at the end of this message, again! (* indicates those have been used.)
Thanks for playing, and I’ll see you in about week!
And have fun!
——mike
Here’s the list:
Flash Draw Sheet for 2025 (“*” indicates prompt has been used.)
Kitty Ebbet enjoyed the book but he thinks a Rainbow Snippet sounds like something fun to chase across the floor…
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 actually intended to post this one a week or so ago, but I got busy (read “lazy”) so I’m doing it now. It’s snippets from another fine story from the Own Voices anthology “Romance Is A Drag,” which we sampled before. https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/book/romance-is-a-drag-anthology/ The story, “Miss Vina Volaria,” by M. D. Neu, finds drag performer Pailo en route to his next gig. But his ports of call include the Moon and Mars.
Oh, and there’s one other thing…
Here’s our first snippet…
He needed to arrange his trip correctly to ensure the Mars crossing went smoothly. He didn’t want to have the voyage near his transition time.
Those days can be a bitch when you’re traveling. And not nearly as fun.
Fortunately for him, his Lycan Circadian Cycle was every five weeks. He knew other lycan that weren’t so lucky—having their cycles sometimes three and a half, or even three, weeks apart.
Here’s one more snippet, and yes the italics in the story are his not mine.
That would suck, especially if you had to make the Mars crossing often.
He scanned his VIS Sheet again, calculating the math in his head, ensuring his trip would be after his mandatory time at the Lunar Lycan Reserve. He didn’t need to double check the schedule, since his Tappy managed to track such things for him, but still he didn’t want to rely on technology for such an important and personal bodily function.
And that’s our snippets for this week, I’ll see you next time!
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.”
authorjeffbaker 