"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
We were in line outside the old movie theater which was showing the original version of one of those old epic movies, y’know, the one they re-titled and re-numbered a bunch of times when he started rambling.
“I was walking down Main Street a couple of years ago, y’know,” he said, “not on the street, but the sidewalk because the street wouldn’t be safe and the sidewalks were a lot safer so I walked on the sidewalk and this was the old sidewalk, the one with a bunch of cracks in it and I turned to where it goes past the City Park, y’know, the small one downtown not the big one over by the University…”
I knew. I nodded.
“When all of a sudden I notice the park is full of bears! They looked like they were trying to hide but they weren’t hidden very well. One was standing up behind a tree but he was so much bigger than the tree y’know?”
I knew.
“And there were a few peeking over bushes and one was actually sitting on a park bench pretending to read a newspaper somebody had left there but I knew they were all looking at me. Maybe waiting for me to step on a crack or something.”
“Yeah?” I said.
“So, I kept walking along, pretty casually, trying not to step on any cracks or anything, yeah I know that’s silly but it seemed the bears were really watching where I stepped and I remember when I was a kid I read a poem about bears who eat kids if they step on cracks or something.”
“Milne,” I said.
“So, anyway, I made it past the park and I glance back to see if the bears are following me and they aren’t but still I’m being careful where I step and I make it to where I parked my car and I drive away and I actually take a roundabout route because I don’t want, y’know, the bears running after me or worse piling into a car and chasing after me.”
“That would be bad,” I said.
“Right,” he said. “And so I make it back to my apartment and my landlady is all upset because she says somebody broke in and it was a bunch of bears and they ate all my poetry books.”
“That was good,” I say laughing.
“Yeah,” he said. “Hey, you done with that soda?”
I hold up the bottle I had just opened a while back. “Haven’t started it. Help yourself. Was going to drink it in the theater.”
“Thanks,” he said swigging it. Then he got a strange look on his face and fell over.
The poison did its work but the medics got to him in time. He’s in a hospital and I’m in a different hospital. I still haven’t figured who I really meant the poison I dumped into the soda for, but it would have been a funny way to end that story he was telling if he’d fallen down on a crack and the bears had gotten him.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the January 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were a Shaggy Dog Story involving a bottle of poison in a line outside a theater. I was stuck for an idea and a title and then I remembered A. A. Milne’s poem “Lines and Squares” and it all came pretty easily after that! Watch out for bears! ——mike
Ethan sighed as he walked from the bus stop towards the little building made of round stones. He patted the small paper bag in his jacket pocket. The big stores couldn’t replace the burned-out bulb from the old floor lamp that had been his Mom’s Grandmothers. One of the clerks had recommended a place called “In the Room Of Light,” on the west side of town so Ethan took the bus and found himself walking up to the little shop. The windows were probably glazed because it looked dark inside.
Inside was another story.
Floor lamps, table lamps, chandeliers hanging almost down to the floor from the ceiling, most of them lit. The room looked bright somehow. Like Christmas, Ethan thought. One side of the room had a wall of bare bulbs in sockets and even a mirrored dressing table ringed with lights like he’s seen on TV.
He pulled the bag out of his pocket and looked around for a clerk in the maze of lights. He saw a thin, balding man behind a small counter against a wall, sitting in front of a cash register, going through receipts. The man was facing the back wall and didn’t look up as Ethan approached.
“Um,” Ethan said. “I’m trying to find a replacement for this bulb…they sent me here.”
The clerk muttered “Let me see,” and reached out a hand without even turning. He glanced at the bulb and said “Yes. They don’t make many of these anymore. But we carry them.”
He reached under the counter and rummaged around and then handed Ethan a duplicate bulb that looked new. He still didn’t look up at Ethan.
“Uh, thanks,” Ethan said. “How much do I owe you?”
“Twenty,” the clerk said, busy with his receipts.
Ethan’s Mom had given him fifty dollars to cover the replacement bulb “just in case.” She knew the bulbs were an off-size. And Ethan had bus fare, his own money from his part-time job at the burger place. He set a twenty on the counter and put the new bulb in the little paper sack.
The clerk turned and picked up the twenty.
Ethan stared. It was like the man was only half there. He was divided right down the middle and his right hand side wasn’t there but there was a dim light coming out of the length of his body. It reminded Ethan of a light bulb he’d seen set in a coffee cup as a decoration one time.
Ethan ran, clutching the bag. Somehow he made it through the maze of lights and out the shop door. He didn’t really remember the bus ride home except that he spent it sweating and shaking.
He watched his Mom put the bulb in the lamp telling him he shouldn’t run with a light bulb in his pocket.
First, here’s the prompts for the January 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, the first one of the New Year of 2025! Then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Shaggy Dog Story
Involving A Bottle Of Poison
Set in A Line Outside A Theater
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!)
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage. So, the results were the Nine of Hearts (a Shaggy Dog Story), the Ten of Diamonds (A Line Outside A Theater) and the Eight of Clubs (A Bottle of Poison.)
Yes, Eight, Nine, Ten!
So we will write a Shaggy Dog Story, set in a Line Outside A Theater involving a Bottle Of Poison.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday January 13th, 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.)
When I finished the annual draws for the Flash Fiction Draw Challenge this year, there were three draws left over on the list; A Paranomal Story, a Greenhouse, and a Cellphone. Usually, I just slip them into next year’s draw list but the idea for a story banged into my head when I saw them.
So here’s a New Year’s Eve story; a Paranormal story set in a Greenhouse, involving a Cellphone.
Happy reading! —–jeff, a.k.a. mike
We always have our Christmas at Grandma and Grandpa Pelzer’s, right on the edge of town. They had an old farmhouse with a big garden and a big greenhouse out back that was about as big as a double-wide trailer a friend of mine lived in.
Afternoon of December thirty-first, New Year’s Eve and Grandpa had called me over to his place to “help out.” It was fairly warm for December in Kansas and so I was in my sweats from Gym Class as I bicycled over, gloomy about how school was going to be starting up again in a few days.
Grandpa Pelzer met me at the greenhouse and ushered me inside. It was big but felt cramped inside. There were long wooden tables extending the length of the greenhouse along the walls and one right down the middle. The tables were full of planters, some in use and there were bigger planters and a lot of gardening equipment underneath the tables. It all smelled weirdly green with the scent of garlic and some other plants I couldn’t identify. And it felt almost like summer in there.
This is where I grow the Christmas trees,” Grandpa said as we walked down to one corner of the building. “I usually put the one in the living room and give one to old Mrs. Plunkett and one to the Retirement Center downtown. But I have this one here and it needs to be pulled out of its planter. I shouldn’t have waited this long.”
On top of one of the tables was a plastic flowerpot with a small fir tree growing out of it, about half as big as I was and I was sixteen. Its branches were dotted with little multicolored bulbs that looked like little glass ornaments.
I pulled out my phone and was about to take a picture when Grandpa waved it away.
“When I was your age we didn’t stop to take pictures every two minutes,” he said.
“No, because you would’ve had to run inside and grab your camera!” I laughed.
“Ah, the early Seventies,” Grandpa said. “Terrible time. Here, help me with this.”
He tossed me a pair of dirty gardening gloves and I fumbled with putting on the gloves and stuffing my cellphone in my pocket at the same time while Grandpa tipped the pot over on its side.
“Those ornaments look like they’re growing right out of the tree,” I said.
“They are,” Grandpa said. “Help me pull it out of the pot.”
“Sure,” I said, grabbing the top of the tree. Grandpa braced himself and started pulling the pot as I pulled at the tree.
“Tradition…UMMPFH! Says you toss out a live tree…OOOMPH! On New Year’s Eve….UNNNGH! But these trees can’t be…UNNNNNGH! Still planted in dirt on New Year’s Eve…OOPPP!”
The little tree popped out of the pot in a shower of dirt and Grandpa and I both landed on our butts. The little tree landed on top of me. I pushed it off and stared; the roots were little striped candy canes.
“My gosh,” I said. “These things ARE growing out of it,” I said.
“Yeah,” Grandpa said. “But it’ll shrivel up now that it’s New Year’s Eve. That’s why I cut the bases off the trees I give away.”
“Where did you get these, anyway?” I asked, standing up.
“Special seeds,” Grandpa said, waving off any attempt to help him up as he braced himself on a table and stood. “A guy I know supplies me with them. Basically peppermint pine cones. He’d sell them to a candy store except they have seeds in them. He says he bred them for years to have them…”
There was a sudden rattling noise, like someone dropping marbles on a tin shed.
“I missed one!” Grandpa said. “Quick, help me find it! I shouldn’t have moved everything when I…”
In the opposite corner behind a flat planter on the ground with tall brown grass growing out of it I could make out one of the little Christmas trees, this one shaking violently.
“This one’s starting early this year,” Grandpa said, “but I guess it’s New Year’s somewhere.”
As I watched, the multicolored little bulbs began to pop of the tree and started bouncing around on the floor; obviously not glass, bouncing higher with each bounce.
Grandpa rushed over and closed the greenhouse door.
“Quick!” Grandpa said. “Grab them! If those things get out, it’ll be a disaster!”
We started chasing the bouncing bulbs around the greenhouse and I managed to grab a few of them, one of them when it almost bounced up my nose.
“What do I do with these?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Grandpa said. “You grab them, they lose their momentum. The crumble up pretty quick. If they get out and drive themselves into the ground they’ll grow huge. And their seeds will be huge, and their seeds will be even bigger and the trees will be even bigger…”
“And on and on…” I said amazed I believed it all. But Grandpa and I were running around a greenhouse on New Year’s Eve lunging after bouncing, living Christmas ornaments.
It took a little bit but finally we were done. I had mine stuffed in my pockets, Grandpa had taken off one of his gloves and filled it with the bulbs.
“We got ‘em all,” Grandpa said. “Now we…”
There was a CLINK from overhead. We glanced up in time to see the last of the bulbs zipping overhead through a broken pane in the glass, landing on the ground outside.
“I got it!” I said, running for the door.
I was outside when I saw Grandma and Grandpa’s big, furry dog sniffing the bulb on the ground.
“Ralphie! No!” I hollered.
Too late. Ralphie happily chomped down the bulb, then bounded away.
Grandpa walked up behind me.
“He…he ATE it!” I said.
“No harm done,” Grandpa said. “They’re edible.”
For the next few months, Ralphie’s farts smelled like peppermint.
—end—
NOTE: Actually had to really revise and trim this to make it shorter and add reference to cellphone (I’d forgotten in handwritten draft!) as well as re-set it in the present day, not the 1970s as I originally planned. —-mike
I started out 2024 by telling myself I was going to finish a bunch of half-finished stories I had in my catalog and I amazingly did, especially through the first half of the year.
I also promised myself I would finish this one longer story I had been working on. I sloughed-off on it and it took most of the year but I got it done!
I didn’t really work on a lot of longer stories in 2024, so I’m planning to do more on those in 2025. I have a couple started as well as one idea I want to see finished; another story that’s a sequel to one that got published that is partly started in a notebook somewhere and a longer story set in Wichita which will be a novella if I do it right, or maybe even a short novel.
I have to finish the corrections/suggestions a friend of mine sent me on a mystery I showed him—I got distracted. (Boy! Did I get distracted!) The ms for that one is in one of the boxes I moved to the spare room when I brought the kitties home.
Also, I am planning two books; a long-overdue collection and a collaboration with someone that I can’t talk about now.
So, things look good for the new year. I hope so, anyway!
That’s about it for now, but of course more on the way!
Not a lot on the progress front, other than the usual flash fictions and my end-of-the-year stuff. Did some synopsizing and playing around with ideas. Wrote one column and started a couple of others. Didn’t really do any work on any full-length fiction this period. Nonetheless, I’m proud of that as well as the work on writing I’ve done this month and this year.
I’m probably going to do an end-of-the-year progress post where I also talk about my hopes for next year’s work.
Read John Floyd’s “The Home Front” in “Punk Noir Press.”
Read more of “Sara Was Judith” by Julian Hawthorne.
Read Kaje Harper and E. H. Timm’s online offerings.
Started reading a bunch of Rudyard Kipling: Read “In the Rukh,” a story a lot of people don’t like. I did.
Read “The Return of Imray” (Creepy!) as well as “By Word of Mouth.” Both ghost stories, the latter a variation of the old ghost story about Ticonderoga. Also read another ghost story “The Lost Legion.” A very effective tale of soldiers and ghosts in India. Kipling swore that a lot of this story was true.
Read two of Kipling’s elephant stories: “Moti Guj—Mutineer!” and “Toomai Of the Elephants.” Read his “Red Dog” and The Miracle of Purun Bhagat.”
The above Kipling stories were collected in “Picking Up Gold and Silver,” a fine collection edited by M. M. Kaye.
Got the anthology “A Constellation of Cats,” edited by Denise Little. I love theme anthologies and this one from 2000 combines cats and “celestial influences.” Read “The Stargazer’s Familiar” by Mary Jo Putney, a charming little tale. Started reading “Three-Inch Trouble” by Andre Norton.
During the last several months I’ve been reading through the Barnes and Noble “100” anthologies of things like Vampires, “Hair-Raisers,” “Wicked Little Witch Stories” and the like. A treasure trove of very short genre stories. In “100 Sneaky Little Sleuth Stories,” they reprint five detective stories by pulp writer Leroy Yerxa about beat cop Paddy O’Sheen who comes off at first like the stereotypical Irish cop but has the detective skill of a Sherlock Holmes. Not a lot of character development except for his devoted relationship with his wife Marta. The stories actually surprised me with fairly placed clues for the reader to follow (if they’re clever enough!) including one that ties into something people would have known on the WWII homefront. Yerxa here is almost a precursor to Edward D. Hoch. I had never read Yerxa before and fortunately his stories are available in various places on the Web. He’d be better known if he hadn’t died in his 30s, after selling at least 70 stories in three years.
The O’Sheen stories collected here were:
“O’Sheen Minds the Baby,”
“O’Sheen Is Best Man,”
“O’Sheen’s Photo Finish,”
“O Sheen Sees Red,”
and “O’Sheen’s Sweet Tooth.”
There is one last O’Sheen story uncollected here; “O’Sheen Goes To the Dogs,” which is reprinted online. I found it and read it. Wonderful!
Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, a work-in-progress or from someone else’s work that we recommend that has LGBT characters on Rainbow Snippets, here; [LINK]https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
So, we hear the story of Solsta, the Solstice Cow and why it’s important to select your Solstice gift early…
Even when you weren’t a kid anymore it was tradition, some said superstition, to ask for some small token gift from Solsta. Better safe than sorry. T’amec remembered what the Sorcerer had said about his Mom.
“You’d better make up your mind,” T’amec said. “Solstice is tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I know,” Skid said getting annoyed. “Everybody keeps telling me that.”
“It’s tradition,” T’amec said.
“More like superstition.” Skid said grumpily.
Okay, a little more…
After a few minutes T’amec sighed again.
“Look, I didn’t mean to get on your…”
“That’s okay.” Skid said. “Just everybody keeps asking me. That’s one reason I’m glad I stayed at your place the last few nights. My folks don’t bug me there!”
“Yeah,” T’amec said. But Skid had been sleeping over a lot the last few months. Even though they’d said they were taking it slow.
For the record, the picture of the festively-draped cow sculpture is at our local dairy. Awwww! Santa Cow! Isn’t that sweet? I thought it looked creepy and demonic. And the story came from that.
Again, I wish you all the best for the season, and remember the best gift you can give is YOU. Take time to be with those you care about or those who think that no one cares. —jeff
There was a festive air in the mall that season. Green and blue garlands were draped on the walls, storefront windows were festooned with blue lights, even the window in Mrs. Du Pass’ Scrying shop, The Orbuculum, displayed a fake crystal ball with glittering lights around a miniature cow.
Cows, of course, were everywhere.
Little replicas for sale, cow balloons the kids were carrying, more expensive cow sculptures of course and the virtual shrine with the big cow standing in a pile of gifts to one side of the Food Garden Court.
An old man with a grey beard shook his head as he paid for his veggie roll.
“Disgusting! All this commercialization of WinterRite. Makes you want to scream.”
“Yeah, it does,” T’amec said, playing agree-with-the-customer to the hilt. Behind the grey bearded man the young Sorcerer who worked in the Augury shop there in the mall was grinning and pointing to the cow emblazoned on his tunic. T’amec tried not to smile or laugh until the grey bearded man had walked off and T’amec served the Sorcerer his usual morning cup of broth.
“Some people just don’t understand the season,” the Sorcerer said, glancing down at the cow on the front of his tunic, emblazoned with the words HAVE YOU ASKED YET?
“Yeah,” T’amec said. “I sent out my note as soon as the season started.”
“Same here,” the Sorcerer said. “My Mom didn’t get around to it one year, back when I was in school. We had no end of trouble for the next few months. Car broke down, furnace got clogged, household spells misfired.”
“Yeah, I try never to even cut it close,” T’amec said, handing the Sorcerer his broth. “Skid on the other hand always waits ‘till the last minute.”
“Yeah, we got a guy like that down at the shop,” the Sorcerer said. “He puts everything off. Hey, what did you ask for?”
“A couple of new discs for my old player,” T’amec said. “How ‘bout you?”
“Another cow tunic, what else?” He grinned at T’amec. “Comes in handy; did a formula wrong last week and it zapped my other tunic down a size too small.”
T’amec grinned as the Sorcerer paid for his broth and walked back to the Augur’s shop. He glanced around at the decorations in the Mall and smiled, remembering one of his earliest memories, going shopping at the old shopping center where they lived around WinterRite time and his pointing at all the decorations and mooing like a cow. His Mom had explained to him about Solsta the Cow and how she had no children of her own so she was granted the gift of giving gifts to other children on the Winter Solstice which heralded the beginning of WinterRite Season. His Mom also said he had to select what he wanted in time or Solsta would be unhappy.
T’amec sighed. That was a story for little kids he had thought but as he got older he realized the necessity of selecting a Solsta gift each year even if you never got anything. In school, they’d learned the old rhyme about Solsta coming around “When the Solstice Bell tolls.” T’amec had never heard a Solstice bell as far as he knew. Little kid stuff.
“Hey, T’amec!” The voice was Skid, coming through the kitchen doors into where the counter was. “A little help here?” Skid was balancing two big pans of sliced meat on a tray. T’amec grabbed the edge of the tray and helped Skid put the pans in their slots on the counter. He noticed wryly that one was sliced beef. Cow meat.
“So,” T’amec said. “You picked out your gift yet?”
“No,” Skid said. “I don’t think I’m going to. I don’t really have to, you know.”
Even when you weren’t a kid anymore it was tradition, some said superstition, to ask for some small token gift from Solsta. Better safe than sorry. T’amec remembered what the Sorcerer had said about his Mom.
“You’d better make up your mind,” T’amec said. “Solstice is tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I know,” Skid said getting annoyed. “Everybody keeps telling me that.”
“It’s tradition,” T’amec said.
“More like superstition.” Skid said grumpily.
After a few minutes T’amec sighed again.
“Look, I didn’t mean to get on your…”
“That’s okay.” Skid said. “Just everybody keeps asking me. That’s one reason I’m glad I stayed at your place the last few nights. My folks don’t bug me there!”
“Yeah,” T’amec said. But Skid had been sleeping over a lot the last few months. Even though they’d said they were taking it slow.
“And I think you’re going to like what I got you for WinterRite,” Skid said.
T’amec almost blushed. “You didn’t have to,” he said. Last WinterRite they had barely known each other.
“I know,” Skid said grinning. “Just don’t nag me about Solsta or if I’m asking for anything, okay?”
“Okay,” T’amec said.
Skid looked up, startled. “Did you hear that?”
“What?”
“A sound…like rushing wind and a cow mooing.” Skid said.
“Must’ve been from one of those decorations,” T’amec said with a grin. “And it may not have been wind. But I didn’t hear anything.”
They went back to work as the day stretched on to late afternoon. T’amec noticed that Skid looked lost in thought.
They’d had a rush, serving a line of customers who were doing last-minute shopping when Skid stopped what he was doing and banged on a pot with a broth ladle.
“Okay,” Skid said. “Can I have everyone’s attention please?”
Customers stopped what they were doing and stared at Skid behind the counter.
“I’m probably way too late to send a note so I’m doing it this way. I didn’t think I wanted anything this year, but you have to ask, right? I mean, this past year, well, I realized what I want more than anything in the world.”
He looked right at T’amec, standing by the broth pot.
“I want you,” Skid said. “I mean, I know we said to take it slow, not risk screwing-up what we’ve got but I’ve been realizing all year that this is what I want. I want to spend my life with you. I want to sit around the apartment and listen to the radio. I want to snuggle together in bed. I want you with me always, even if you’re not there. If we have different jobs I want you to be the guy I come home to. I think about you all the time. Even if we never do an official binding or anything, I don’t want to ever lose you. You’re what I want for WinterRite. And every day. I want you.”
The two of them kissed right there and several people applauded. In that moment, Skid thought he heard a deep bell chiming and the low baying of a cow.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I worked in a mall in the late 1980s-early 90s and have fond memories of Christmastime there, back when malls were a big deal. I had been wondering what kind of “Christmas” they celebrate in the magical world of Food Garden Court when I saw the picture of the Christmas-dressed cow sculpture at a local dairy. It was probably meant to look sweet. To me it looked fairly demonic and menacing. And the story came out of that!
We’re taking a break posting the pictures for next week, and I’ll post a pic on January 3rd, 2025.
Whatever my readers celebrate, I wish you all the best for this Christmas Season and for the New Year. To me, your readership is a priceless gift all year ‘round.
authorjeffbaker 