"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Every Week at Rainbow Snippets https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974 participants post six lines of a work of theirs, a work-in-progress or a work by someone else that has LGBT characters.
To begin the Holidays, here’s my annual Christmastime Treat: A few snippets from Oscar Wilde. No openly LGBT characters here but the writer IS Oscar Wilde. Here, from “The Picture Of Dorian Grey,” Dorian realizes that his idle wish that his portrait should age instead of him may just have been granted. But it not only displays age but what kind of man he is…
It’s not a pretty picture…
As he was passing through the library towards the door of his bedroom, his eye fell upon the portrait Basil Hallward had painted of him. He started back in surprise, and then went over to it and examined it. In the dim arrested light that struggled through the cream-colored silk blinds, the face seemed to him to be a little changed. The expression looked different. One would have said that there was a touch of cruelty in the mouth. It was certainly curious.
Here’s another lengthy snippet
He threw himself into a chair, and began to think. Suddenly there flashed across his mind what he had said in Basil Hallward’s studio the day the picture had been finished. Yes, he remembered it perfectly. He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his prayer had not been answered? Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth.
I was nine years old that Thanksgiving in the early Seventies. I had been relegated to my Grandparents house so I would be out of the way of my Mom Dad’s preparations for having the family over in late afternoon. So, I was getting in the way of my Grandma. (Grandpa was wisely over at our cousin’s house, having made himself scarce.)
If I’d had any sense, I would have asked Grandma to show me what she was making and how to do it which I have realized in the decades since are handy things for a guy to know, but I didn’t. And I must have been getting in the way because Grandma suggested I might want to watch TV in the living room.
I was watching the parade on television with their tantalizing ads for the Saturday Morning cartoons they were going to show tomorrow, Friday! Joy of joys! Two days in a week to watch cartoons!! And two extra days off of school.
That was when my Grandma called me from the kitchen.
“Drew,” she said. “The milk I have is no good. I need you to go to the market and get me another carton.” She pulled out a five dollar bill from her apron pocket. I never knew whether she always carried it there of whether she’d planned this.
I got up off the floor in front of the TV and walked over and she handed me the money.
“Take your bike, I need it fast,” she said. “The market is open until two.”
I should mention that since I usually spent the night at my Grandparents on Fridays, Mom and Dad let me keep my bicycle there. Maybe they thought the streets near my Grandparents were a little safer because we lived right by the highway.
Keep in mind, none of us even thought about bicycle helmets back then.
I thanked Grandma, grabbed my sweater off the chair, said “I will” when she told me to be careful and ran out to the garage where my bicycle was leaning against the wall away from Grandma and Grandpa’s car.
I wheeled my bike out the side door, and hopped on pedaling out of the driveway and down the street to the market, really Spaulding’s Grocery which was in a little shopping center that included a laundry and a place that sold baseball cards, which Grandpa always took me to for my Birthday Present in the Summer.
But this was Thanksgiving and I was on a mission. I surveyed the large parking lot and noticed the only cars were in front of Spaulding’s. I looked around. There wasn’t any bike rack and I didn’t have a lock for my bike anyway, so I walked the bike through the doors which always swung open and always made me think of something on “Bewitched.”
There weren’t that many people in the store. A couple of people stared but I went down to where the cooler with the milk was, glancing in passing at the big, turning stand with all the comic books on it. But, I was on a mission.
I stood in front of the cooler with the milk, looking for the tall thin box that Grandma always used. Should I get something bigger? Five dollars could pay for it. But could I carry it on my bike?
I grabbed the container and wheeling the bike with one hand, and holding the milk with the other I got in the short line.
Mister Spaulding, (probably one of the younger Spauldings I realize now but at age nine he looked as old as a teacher) gave my bike the once-over but I put my milk on the conveyor belt and handed him the money which I’d kept stuffed in my pocket. He counted out the change and I counted it again and thanked him as he put my milk and the receipt in a paper bag and handed it to me.
I walked out of the store with my bike and the milk, wondering how I was going to do this.
I buttoned my sweater up all the way, tucked it into my pants and put the milk in the sweater so I could hang onto it by keeping my one arm up next to my chest letting me still hold the bike handles with both hands as I carefully pedaled back to Grandma.
That was the first time anybody had trusted me with an errand like that on that Thanksgiving so many years ago.
The decades went by and the Spauldings sold their grocery stores to a big chain and that whole shopping center has been closed for years. I see it every now and then when I’m on that side of the city and decide to drive through the neighborhoods and see Grandma and Grandpa’s old house. Inevitably I drive by the old shopping center and smile when I remember that for years every time I’d go in there Mr. Spaulding would look at me and say “Drew! Where’s the bike?”
And I’d smell that Thanksgiving meal cooking so long ago.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Happy Thanksgiving, everybody! We’ll be taking a break for Thanksgiving Week next week but will be back with a new story on Friday December 5th, 2025. Until then, take care! —–jeff
Read “Crossing the Border” by Barry N. Malzberg in his collection “Collecting Myself.” Story written for the Resnick anthology “Men Writing Science Fiction as Women.” More from both books as this report progresses.
Also from the Malzberg book read “Gotterdamerung” which appeared in “After The King.” That was a Tolkien tribute anthology that couldn’t use any of his characters or settings. Malzberg’s story goes to an earlier, similar source also involving a ring. A clever set up and a clever ending.
Malzberg’s “It Comes From Nothing” first appeared in “Weird Tales From Shakespeare,” which I read thirty years ago but I didn’t remember this one. A grim and tragic riff on “King Lear.”
Fourth in a row from “Collecting Myself.” Malzberg’s “These the Inheritors” from the Resnick anthology “Space Cadets.” Sci-fi, the Talmud and alien invaders in a grim horror story.
Read “In the Heart Of Kalikuata” by Tobias S. Bucknell in the Resnick anthology “Men Writing Science Fiction as Women.” Very Kipling-esque.
From the same anthology John Teehan’s “A Small Goddess” was well worth the time. It made me smile! (I looked up Teehan: he’s still around and does some scholarly writing and the occasional short story.)
And read “A Woman’s Touch” by Ralph Roberts” from same anthology. An interesting take on ending war with a deliberate reference to “Star Trek.”
Read Leigh Brackett’s “The Last Days Of Shandakor.” Brilliant.
Am bumming through some of C.L. Moore’s stories hoping to emulate her for a story I’m working on. Read some of the Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry stories. Started reading “Black God’s Kiss.”
Read a PDF of a fun urban fantasy/horror novel someone I know wrote. She’s busy editing and has a sequel done.
Celebrated Halloween early November First by reading “The Ballad Of the Flexible Bullet,” a Stephen King story I hadn’t read. It’s from 1984 and I saw some of King’s own admitted drug and alcohol abuse in the character. (He would sober up not long after the story was published. Glad he’s okay.) Scene with the typewriter, the piece of wallpaper and the typing was genuinely frightening.
The story has a gripping pace that increases toward the uncertainty of the last line…
Finally read J. Scott Coatsworth’s novella “Between the Lines.” Funny and sweet.
Also read the regular online offerings by Kaje Harper and E. H. Timms. Wouldn’t miss them!
I got Julian Hawthorne’s collection “David Poindexter’s Disappearance” and read the title story; a twisty tale set in the Eighteenth Century involving an inheritance. Read “My Friend Paton,” another crime story with maybe a ghost. Melodramatic but fun. The stories remind me of the books Mr. Foster in High School used to tell us about and make fun of. But Hawthorne’s are without the ridiculous improbabilities.
Stumbled across B. M. (Bithia Mary) Croker in an Oxford World Classics anthology “Late Victorian Gothic Tales.” I don’t think I’d heard of her before, but I realized I have several of her stories in a FlameTreePress 451 anthology “Indian Ghost Stories.” Her story in the Oxford book was “The Dak Bungalow at Dakor.” Variant on the travelers-stay-at-the-haunted-inn story but done very well. Irish-born Croker spent time in India accompanying her husband who was in the Scots Guard, and her writing was compared with Kipling. Unlike Kipling, her narrators here are outsiders not soldiers or natives.
Also from the Oxford anthology I read two stories by the French writer Jean Lorrain: “Magic Lantern,” and “The Spectral Hand.” Translated by Brian Stableford, Lorrain was something of a gossip columnist and his stories do a lot of name-dropping of real people and events. The first, just a catalog of impressions of people at a theater. The second about a man who has a ghostly premonition that comes true. Both stories had the ring of truth to them.
From the same anthology, I read “Pallinghurst Barrow” by Grant Allen. A tale of ancient prehistoric mounds in Britain and ghosts. I’d never read Allen before. He was better known for his scientific writings and is even referenced in H. G. Wells’ novel “The Time Machine.
For Robert Arthur’s November 10th birthday, I was going to re-read one of his stories but ended up just skimming through an issue of “Mysterious Traveler Magazine” and reading snippets of his story “Mystery Of the Three Blind Mice.”
Finally got around to reading in John Maddox Roberts’ historical mystery novel “The Temple Of the Muses,” which I actually started reading about twenty years ago and resumed reading this year. Wonderful descriptions of Alexandria and the surrounding area in the time of Julius Caesar.
And I skimmed through Oscar Wilde’s “Picture Of Dorian Grey,” looking for one scene.
I just noticed; I’ve been posting these Reading Reports on a monthly basis since Thanksgiving 2023! Not bad! It HAS improved my sitting around and reading, something I enjoy and something I had been slacking off on.
Wishing my readers all the best for the holidays with many wonderful things to read!
Georgianna Mount Sutro shook the blonde wig she was holding at arms length as if she was afraid something would fall on her gold sequined dress. She considered tossing it in the street as the trolley rolled up the hill in the early-morning fog.
“It’s moldy, Honey, that’s the problem,” said Miss Windy Weather. Miss Windy was sitting beside her in an outfit festooned with veils which were in danger of blowing away.
“Ugh!” Georgianna said. “Perfect for Halloween if that wasn’t months away.”
“Girl, for us every night is Halloween.” Miss Windy said.
“Too bad we don’t get treats,” Georgianna said and they both laughed.
Okay, a few more than six lines, but it’s a dystopia! Oh and look up “Emperor Norton,” he was a real person! I’ll be back with something special soon! —–jeff
The young-looking raccoon scrambled and pulled himself onto the top of the castle’s low wall and sat there breathing heavily.
“This would have been a lot easier to do as a hawk,” he muttered in a human voice. “Demnitos take you, Rehavanc, why couldn’t your magic have worked the way it was supposed to?”
Cygar, known in some quarters as Cygar-The-Thief, had been offered a deal by the Magistrates of Glosber, where he had been caught helping himself to things that weren’t his; charges against him would be dropped if he performed “a small service” for the kingdom.
Mainly allowing himself to be transformed into a hawk and fly to the castle of Prince Tulosbah and find out why Tulosbah and the sorcerer Urzipan were not allowing the promised marriage to Tulosbah’s niece Princess Verona. To find out if the Princess was actually at the Prince’s castle and see what means might be taken to liberate her, for they were sure she was being held prisoner.
But Rehavanc’s magic wasn’t dependable and so Cygar-The-Raccoon had been forced to hitch a ride in the back of a cart traveling between the two kingdoms.
Fortunately, a raccoon was about as inconspicuous in the dark as a hawk would be.
Cygar smiled to himself. And as a raccoon he had a built-in mask, which fit the whole idea of…
“Hey, look! A raccoon!”
Great, Cygar thought. Palace guards. With spears. Just what I don’t need.
Cygar gave the two guards the once-over. Didn’t look too bright or agile. Still they could probably use the spear. Cygar ran the other way and kept to the top of the wall, not glancing back at the guards on the battlements. He turned another corner (How big was this Demnitos-cursed castle anyway?) and stopped where the wall had come to a rise. Almost out of breath, he climbed the angled wall and found himself staring at a lit window in the castle wall. Inside, dressed in greenish robes was a young woman who Cygar recognized from the portrait he had been shown as Princess Verona.
Cygar-the-raccoon watched as she made certain the door to her room was secured, she was after all prisoner of an evil sorcerer. He wasn’t quite close enough to hear but she laughed and suddenly began to shimmer with a soft light. In another moment, Urzipan the Sorcerer stood in her place.
“Oh, they are not gonna like this back in Glosber…” Cygar muttered. “But it does explain why Urzipan wanted the wedding canceled…”
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was going for more of a Jack Vance feel with the title, but the style of L. Sprague deCamp took over, I guess. —–mike
Joey Strunk had rushed into the church just after morning Mass. He was furious and loud.
“Father! I have to talk to you!”
Father Gareth Armbrewster raised an eyebrow. He’d known Joey for years. He was loud enough now that this probably wasn’t going to be a confession. Gareth was just glad that most of the parishioners had left.
“Do you want to go to the confessional?” Gareth asked. Just in case.
“No, Father.” Joey said. He glanced around. There was nobody nearby.
“You know the old liquor store on Fourth Street? In the Grocery Store parking lot?”
Gareth nodded. He’d passed by it a lot and been in it a few times.
“I always thought ‘The Fatal Glass Of Beer’ was an odd choice for a name for a liquor store,” Gareth said.
“After the W. C. Fields movie, yeah…” Joey said. “But it was a gas station before that and I worked there for a while.” He sighed. “I was working there when I got into trouble.”
Joey Strunk had been sent to prison for a series of burglaries some twenty-three years earlier. He’d been out for a decade or more and was a semi-regular parishioner. He looked like he hadn’t slept and was shaken. He took a deep breath.
“Before I got…sent down…I wrote out a confession. I named names, Father. People who were involved in the thing I did.”
“And I take it they didn’t get caught?” Father Gareth asked.
“No” Joey said. “This was for the stuff I actually did, we did. That I wasn’t caught for. We didn’t hurt anybody, Father. But I had to help them…take some stuff. To get them off my back.” Joey sighed. “And it worked. And about two months later I got busted for the burglary and the thing is, I hadn’t done those. But I had no way out of it so I did about five years.”
“You don’t need a priest you need the police…” Father Gareth said.
Joey shook his head.
“The last thing I need is for the police to read what’s on that paper. My name and the names of…the other guys. I’ve got to get that thing before they do.”
“This isn’t that Father Dowling show,” Gareth said. “And I’m sure not going to break and enter…”
“The demolition already started,” Joey said. “They’ll finish up tomorrow.”
“Look, I can’t possibly be a part of something like that.”
Joey looked at him with pleading eyes.
Father Gareth stood looking at the pile of bricks that had been The Fatal Glass Of Beer. He couldn’t believe he was here at One in the morning. But the lights were off at the supermarket and the parking lot was empty.
The store had been a one-story brick building about the size of a trailer. Some of it was still standing; a brick corner and a thick side wall made of the same brick. The pile of brick and stone, part of wall and roof, in front of it all was almost as tall as he was, Gareth thought.
And the thin, yellow tape propped up around the old building wouldn’t have stopped a kitten, he thought.
“C’mon. We can get in this way” Joey said ducking under the tape and crouching behind the pile of bricks.
“I’m out of my mind,” Father Gareth thought as he followed Joey through what had been a full doorway but was now just a space between the standing wall and the pile of bricks.
Father Gareth had been in the store a couple of times. The tacky green carpet was still there, still attached to the counter which was still in the middle of the room. Pure Nineteen-Seventies, he thought.
“I know just where it would be,” Joey said stepping over fallen bricks and pieces of glass that glinted in the dim light. “Just glad they didn’t tear this wall down yet.”
“I hope he doesn’t expect me to tear down a wall, I draw the line there,” Father Gareth thought. He’d hoped he would be able to talk Joey out of this, it was trespassing after all. But Joey kept insisting it was actually his property he’d left here years ago.
“I dropped it in this when they were putting in that old A. C. unit,” Joey said. “And there used to be a…aha!”
Joey bent down and pulled at a small grating at the base of the wall. When it wouldn’t budge he kicked at it with his boot. With a crack, it broke loose and Joey quickly felt around in the hole.
Father Gareth imagined rats.
With a big grin on his face, Joey triumphantly held up what looked like a rusty metal tin they sold throat lozenges in years ago. He quickly pried it open and pulled out a folded piece of paper. He held it up to what light there was and breathed out a half-laugh.
“It got wet, Father. The ink is all messed-up. Nobody can read it now,” Joey said quietly.
Father Gareth sighed with relief. Joey stuffed the paper in his jacket pocket.
“Now let’s get out of…” Father Gareth broke it off, he’d heard a sound from outside. He waved at Joey to get down. Joey needed no encouragement, he ducked behind the counter a moment before a security guard walked in and shone his flashlight of Father Gareth.
“What’re you doing here?” the guard asked.
“Oh, I’m looking for one of my parishioners,” Father Gareth said, making sure he pulled his jacket open enough to display his clerical collar.
“Parishioners?” the guard asked.
“Yes, he had way too much to drink and was staggering this way and I thought he might have come in here to see if they’d left anything behind.”
“Well, there’s nobody else here, Father, so you’d better get out of this building. It’s not safe.”
“Thank you very much,” Father Gareth said. “Now if you could just give me a hand…”
Sixty wasn’t as old as that but Father Gareth was grateful for his grey hair as the guard took his arm and guided him out of the mostly-demolished store. Gareth was sure the guard sniffed his breath at least once.
“My car isn’t too far away, if you could help me over this bunch of bricks here,” Gareth said.
The guard walked with him across the parking lot and past the dark supermarket.
“Technically I’m just security for the grocery store but I like to keep an eye on Fatal Glass too,” he said.
“Thank you so much,” Father Gareth said. “Old leg isn’t in as good a shape as it used to be. All that kneeling.”
“I know, I’m on my feet all the time,” the guard said. “You know, you were probably trespassing but I didn’t actually work for the liquor store so I probably was too.”
“Yes,” mused Father Gareth. “The vagaries of middle age.”
Gareth smiled to himself. It was amazing the things a priest could get away with. And hopefully Joey had time to get away from the store. Father Gareth didn’t look back.
“My car’s right down here in the hardware store parking lot,” e said. “Could you follow me with that flashlight? It’s so dark and late…”
Father Gareth noticed Joey in the congregation a few weeks later. He didn’t seem to be bothered by anything, in fact he looked relieved.
Father Gareth sighed. At the very least, there had been no damage done and Strunk hadn’t done anything that would get him back in trouble. He looked heavenward and mused: “Lord, for that we can be grateful.”
To Emperor Norton, Thanks For Everything! Love, Georgianna.
by Mike Mayak
“This wig just smells!”
Georgianna Mount Sutro shook the blonde wig she was holding at arms length as if she was afraid something would fall on her gold sequined dress. She considered tossing it in the street as the trolley rolled up the hill in the early-morning fog.
“It’s moldy, Honey, that’s the problem,” said Miss Windy Weather. Miss Windy was sitting beside her in an outfit festooned with veils which were in danger of blowing away.
“Ugh!” Georgianna said. “Perfect for Halloween if that wasn’t months away.”
“Girl, for us every night is Halloween.” Miss Windy said.
“Too bad we don’t get treats,” Georgianna said and they both laughed.
“You can keep that thing ‘till Halloween.” Miss Windy said. “By which time it should all be one big lump of green mold.”
“Not on my head, girl!” Georgianna said. “After last night maybe I can afford to have it cleaned.”
Georgianna and Miss Windy were Licensed Professional Dragsters of the City Of San Francisco, Bay District, Nation of Nortonia.
“License signed by Emperor Norton the Ninth, thank-you-very-much!” Miss Windy would say.
“When’s the last time we got big checks for one of those all-night gigs?” Georgianna asked.
“Listen, Girl, these days we better be glad we got any job.” Miss Windy said. “Look over there.”
She pointed at the Pyramid Building. It was deserted. It wasn’t the only one.
“Remember that young comic the other night?” Georgianna said. “Remember his line? ‘I got a bumper sticker that reads: The Underground Economy Is Thriving, That’s Where I made This Sticker. It was on my car I had to sell.’”
The girls laughed again.
“Oooooooh! Wait a minute!” Miss Windy said. “I gotta check my messages!”
She pulled off her wig and rubbed the spot above her ear where the implant was. She always said it helped with reception.
“Gimmie a minute…Ooooooh! We got a gig!” Miss Windy said.
“Does it include a long nap beforehand?” Georgianna asked, faking a yawn.
“Tomorrow night at the Emperor Norton Ballroom at the Harding-Palace Hotel!”
“Good. I can rest up.” Georgianna said.
“Rest up to count the money!” Miss Windy said. “Somebody on the Emperor’s staff saw us at the club and he wants both of us to perform for five hundred dollars!”
“Apiece?” Georgianna asked, wide awake now.
“Who cares!” Miss Windy said. “We have friends in high places! Bless you Emperor Norton!”
“Bless you!”
They blew a kiss to the city as the trolley started back down the hill.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the November 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: A Cyberpunk story, set on a trolley involving a moldy wig. (I had to look up “cyberpunk,” and I’m the guy who made up the list!) I’m aware that in San Francisco they don’t call them “trolleys,” but hey! It’s a dystopia.
And Emperor Norton was a real person way back when, but never a real Emperor. Look him up! Fascinating story! And there is an “Emperor Norton Room” at the Sheraton-Palace Hotel in San Francisco. ——-mike
Here’s the draws for the November 2025 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Followed by my usual long-winded explanation:
A Cyberpunk Story
Involving A Moldy Wig
Set on A Trolley
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 Queen of Hearts (a Cyberpunk Story), the Six of Diamonds (a Trolley) and the Four of Clubs (a Moldy Wig.)
So we will write a Cyberpunk Story involving a Moldy Wig set on a Trolley.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday November 10th, 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!
authorjeffbaker 