"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Progress Report for July/August 2024 from Jeff Baker
Okay, not much progress to report this month either.
I didn’t work on “Love’s Not Time’s Fool,” writing-wise anyway but I proofread it and did a couple of notes for the story. As well as a few notes for other stories and stories yet unwritten.
Wrote the usual weekly Friday Flash stories and the monthly flash stories.
And I wrote two of the Queer Sci-Fi columns.
And then I got stressed-out over some stuff (which I took care of) and really didn’t do any full-length story writing. So I will start on that again.
Roger Hulot and his husband Paolo were the only customers in Demeter’s Bar that summer afternoon. The fifty-somethings sat at the table Roger sipping a glass of Merlot, Paolo tapping a glass of whiskey on the side with a straw.
“Can I get you guys anything else?”
That was from Zack, the bartender with the long stringy red hair whose soccer player build got more than one approving glance from the customers.
“No, we’re fine,” Roger said. “We’re enjoying the cool in here.
“Yes,” Paolo said, toasting Zack with his glass.
“Yeah, Zack said. “This heat is something else. The song ought to have said something about feeling as popcorny as Kansas in August.”
The redhead and the two graying older men laughed.
“Yeah, that’s just our bad timing,” Paolo said. “Coming back into the heat after two weeks in the cool of the mountains.”
“Mountains, wow!” Zack said. “Too bad you couldn’t bring some of that cool back with you.”
“We’re lucky we didn’t bring something else back with us,” Roger said. Paolo nodded and took another sip of his whiskey and Zack thought, shuddered.
“Pull up a chair and we’ll tell you all about it.”
It was about three weeks ago (Roger said) and Paolo and I had some time off work. My family has a cabin in the mountains they’ve owned since forever. We weren’t in any hurry so we stopped and stayed the night before we hit the Colorado border. The drive was nice, the weather was pleasant and the scenery was spectacular.
We made it to the cabin in late afternoon after a winding drive through part of a national forest and some low hills.
The cabin has been kept up and refurbished over the years; about a thousand square feet, two stories with electricity, running water…
“And a convenience store just down the road,” Paolo said. The three men laughed again. Then Roger went on.
The area was high enough for spectacular views of the trees and the mountains in the distance, especially from the second story bedroom.
It was after the second day that I noticed what I thought was a bear in the distance as I looked out from the bedroom window at dusk. It was large and lumbering and it disappeared through the trees, brown fur tinged orange in the setting sunlight.
We saw the bear again a couple of days later right at dawn, and this time there was more than one. I would have sworn one of them looked back at us as it was lumbering away. That afternoon Paolo and I walked up the hill to examine where we’d seen the bears. The little clearing we had seen them in was near a tall, gnarled tree so the spot was not hard to find. We were cautious though and we were sure to make plenty of noise so as not to surprise any bears.
In the clearing we noticed scuff marks in the dirt but no real footprints as there was a cover of leaves and the like. We could see a pattern of some of them flattened from something walking on them and this almost made a trail going into the denser part of the trees. Neither Paolo or I was interested enough to follow.
The doors to the cabin were pretty secure so we did something we weren’t supposed to do; we took some food, some grapes, an apple and the like and put it at the edge of the trees in sight of the cabin. Then we staked out the site from the bedroom. We fell asleep after dusk but the food was gone the next morning.
We put out some more food that afternoon, this time in front of the cabin to the side of the driveway, far enough away we hoped. Then we sat and waited by the upstairs hallway window.
After a couple of hours, Paolo realized he hadn’t seen any birds or squirrels or other small critters come and investigate the food. We realized that we hadn’t seen any squirrels, raccoons, foxes even birds.
They came when it got dark.
It was a family of four. We guessed a set of parents and two offspring not quite their size. They towered over our car as they walked past it. Big, hairy, with hands and human faces.
Sasquatch. Bigfoot. A family of Bigfoots. Or Bigfeet. Either way they were there.
Paolo pulled out his cellphone and tried for a picture in the dim light as the furry family helped itself to the food we’d left.
One of the apples rolled down into the driveway, under the car.
Mama Bigfoot calmly walked over, lifted the front end of the car with one hand and grabbed the apple. You’ve seen that old Superman comic cover where he lifts up a car? It was like that.
The Sasquatch finished the food and lumbered off. As they left, one of them looked up at our window and flashed a big smile.
It knew we were there.
Paolo and I talked and figured that the reason we had seen no more critters in the area was they didn’t want to come onto Bigfoot territory. Maybe the Bigfoots were encroaching on more territory, maybe eventually man’s territory. If there are enough of them.
Roger finished his drink and sighed.
“Paolo and I decided to cut our vacation short. We drove down to a motel in town and then headed back, trying not to think too much about an army of Sasquatch driving people away.”
“Yeah,” Paolo said. “Maybe they are some kind of elder race that’s been hidden. I used to read stuff like that in old paperbacks.”
“Hey, what happened to those pictures?” Zack asked.
“Oh, not much,” Paolo said pulling out his smartphone. “You really can’t make out anything in the dark through the window. That blurry thing there is the glint of light when the Bigfoot lifted the car. It’s blurry because I was so shocked I dropped my phone.”
Remember, it’s never too late to write a story of your own, post it in the comments and join in the fun! We’ll be back with more draws on Monday, September 9th, 2024.
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
This week’s snippets are from an unpublished erotica story of mine. James is reminiscing about an encounter with his friend Horacio at his apartment. This is from “Afternoon In Numitor.”
Horacio pulled the sweatpants down slowly, teasingly shaking them as they passed over his muscular legs. Under the sweats he was wearing a tight pair of bright red bikini underwear. They blended nicely with the tight black t-shirt Horacio was wearing. He was hot and he knew it. He stepped out of the sweatpants then twirled them over his head and let them fly. They landed in a corner of the living room.
Can’t leave you in suspense. Here’s more…
Horacio kept an eye on me as he put his hands behind his back, flexed his biceps and began posing like a male model. He bent his knees, bringing himself down then up several times, He spun around facing me and spread his hands rubbing his palms on his chest, bringing them down to cradle the bulge in his shorts. He grinned and nodded as he saw me rubbing the bulge in my pants.
“Yeah,” he breathed. You like that.”
“Mmmmm-hmmm,” I said. Horacio had once told me he’d worked as a male stripper. I believed it right there in the dimly-lit apartment in the A. C. that hot Summer day.
Hope that’s steamy enough for Summer! (It was 103 here the other week! Naturally when I’m posting the steamy story it’s on a nice rainy weekend with temps in the 60s!) Next time I’ll try for something cooler. Till then——jeff
“Not that crazy,” Woody replied. “Nobody’s going to come here! The sign’s a perfect deterrent.”
The sign on the old power pole by the side road read “Dead End.” The dirt and gravel turnoff from the old highway led to a wall of greenery blocking any entrance.
“But it’s not a dead end, is it?” Ernie asked.
“Nope,” Woody said. “Just got to be discreet.”
The car turned onto the dirt road and Woody double-checked that there were no cars coming. Traffic was unlikely since it was mid-afternoon and there was a big four-lane highway a mile or so east of there.
Woody quickly grabbed a hidden pole in the leaves and branches and in another minute the green swung inward like a door. Driving the car through Woody then shut the gate behind them.
They were in a one-lane corridor with the trees on either side forming a canopy of branches and leaves overhead. They drove slowly for a few yards.
“There we are,” Woody said.
There was a cluster of small houses under the canopy, most of them with a car parked to the side.
“We have some rules,” Woody said. “No lights on outside the houses, especially at night. No cooking with fire. The lights and the smoke would give us away. And obviously no driving around here at night. Headlights.”
“Do you have electricity?” Ernie asked.
“Yes. One of our guys jury rigged a patch to an underground city electrical cable. We don’t use much so it goes unnoticed.”
“Plumbing?” Ernie asked.
“We have a communal bathroom in that building over there.” He pointed to one side. “It’s sanitary and clean and warm. Unfortunately it’s the only building with running water. It’s attached to a city water and sewer line. Again, the usage is so small that so far the city hasn’t noticed.”
Woody smiled. “If you remember your Grandmother’s old washbasin on the farm, we use those for real now. Every home keeps a couple of jugs of water and a couple of basins.”
“What about winter?” Ernie asked. “How do you keep warm?”
“We have a system involving pipes and steam.” Woody said. “We have to monitor it but it seems to work and it’s discreet. And when it snows, the snow and ice come in handy.” He grinned. “We actually have an ice house. Perfect for storing meats and the like.”
“Sounds good to me,” Ernie said. “After forty-plus years in the rat race with no family left I’m ready to just chuck civilization and kick back.”
“Luckily some of us have money,” Woody said. “A necessary evil. And we make occasional trips to the store.”
“And nobody has found out about you?” Ernie asked.
“So far, no.” Woody said. “We aren’t that far from the city but we are off the beaten path. And nobody is going to come looking in a wooded area just off a highway hardly anybody uses anymore.”
“No taxes, no bills…” Ernie mused.
“Nope.” Woody said with a smile. “It’s kind of back to nature except we use a grocery store. Discreetly.”
“Does this place have a name?”
Woody laughed. “Somebody started calling it Dead-End Junction, but we don’t have a train.”
“Okay,” Ernie said with a smile. “Show me around and I may sign up.”
NOTE: The draws for the August 2024 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were A Thriller, involving a Box of Rubber Bands set in a Field Of Lettuce. Here’s what I came up with. —-jeff, a.k.a. mike
“How dangerous are these things?” Stone asked they pulled up in the van beside the old barn.
“Very dangerous,” said Anson. “These hornets were mutated in a lab. Their sting is debilitating. And if you are allergic to any of the stinging insects, you’re dead.”
“Why did Lowell develop these things anyway?” Stone asked, stepping out of the car and adjusting the hazmat suit he was wearing. “Is he some kind of mad scientist?”
“Maybe,” Stone said checking the seals on his hazmat suit. “Lowell said he wanted to push us all into the future and supposedly he even tried stuff on himself.”
“Hey, what is this?” Stone asked, looking at the lumpy ground they were walking on which had clumps of green leaves sticking out of the ground in uneven spaces.
“Lettuce,” Anson said with a smile. “Lowell is a working farmer as well as a biologist.” He smiled. “I can tell you’re a city kid. Just watch your step and…”
Something small and fast zipped past his head. Another struck Anson’s face mask.
“Hornets!” Stone said. “We’re under attack!”
There was a quick TAP! TAP! And the two men ran back inside their van.
“See any?” Anson asked looking out the window.
“No,” Stone said. “And I…wait a minute…”
Stone plucked a small, reddish strip out of a fold in his suit.
“A rubber band,” Anson said examining it.
“We’re being attacked by swarms of grade-school kids.”
The two men rushed from the van as rubber bands continued to hit them zipping through the air. It was a simple matter to find their origin point. They grabbed Lowell who was crouching behind an overturned old tractor with what looked like a miniature crossbow and a big box labeled ACME RUBBER BANDS.
“Are you going to arrest me?” Lowell asked.
“No,” Stone said. “The Organization is prepared to buy out your hornet studies and formula so neither you or the government will be able to use them against anybody.”
“Won’t do you any good,” Lowell said. “The augmented hornets did okay in the lab under test conditions but they couldn’t survive outdoors with various germs and pollen and pollutants.”
“War Of the Worlds,” Stone murmured.
“But I’ll come up with a new and better formula!” Lowell said excitedly.
He knocked the men aside and rushed behind the corner of the old barn. Stone and Anson followed him just in time to see Lowell take off on what looked like a motor scooter.
“He had to have designed that,” Anson said.
“Or souped it up,” Stone said as they watched him roar through the lettuce field to the road at unbelievable speed.
“Hope he’s got a helmet.” Anson said.
Lowell was caught, of course. He was so predictable.
He should never have taken that left turn at Albuquerque.
First, here’s the prompts for the August 2024 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Thriller
Involving A Box Of Rubber Bands
Set at A Field of Lettuce
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 Five of Hearts (a Thriller), the Six of Diamonds (A Field of Lettuce) and the Nine of Clubs (A Box of Rubber Bands.) So we will write a Thriller, set in a Field of Lettuce, involving A Box of Rubber Bands.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday August 12, 2024.
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week! And I’m putting the 2024 Flash Draw sheet at the end of this message, again! (* indicates those have been used.)
Thanks for playing, and I’ll see you in a couple of weeks!
And have fun!
——mike
Flash Draw Sheet for 2024 (“*” indicates prompt has been used.)
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
“But we have made progress,” Cliff said looking around the house. “All that furniture we had crammed into the living room and kitchen yesterday.”
“And all your folks’ and my folks’ stuff was, well, still where it was.” Terry said with a laugh.
“Yeah.” Cliff said. “I wish you could have met my Mom. She would have liked you.”
“Thanks.” Terry said, holding Cliff’s hand and reaching over to kiss his husband.
“Look at that stuff,” Terry said. “It’s kind of like Christmas in reverse!”
“And we gotta put it all back. “Ho-ho-ho.” Cliff said.
I based this a little on helping some family move furniture last week. Next week, since it’s hot, something hot. In fact, NSFW! Till then, I am ever yours—-jeff
“Okay…OOOMPF! Watch the carpet!” Cliff Rogers grunted as he and Terry Slater edged the sofa back to its usual position under the living room window.
“Yeah…got it!” Terry said, carefully edging the end of the sofa against the corner. “Just gotta watch my feet!”
“You’re the one going barefoot!” Cliff said with a grin.
“No shoes on the carpet, remember?” Terry said grinning back. “There! Got it perfect.”
The two forty-somethings who still thought of themselves as young men surveyed the sofa pushed against the corner of the wall.
“Not perfect,” Cliff said. “The little cabinet goes in the corner there, remember? Next to the plug for our chargers and you Mom’s old lamp?”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Terry said, glancing over at the stacks of furniture in the dining room which covered and blocked the table they’d pushed against the back wall. “And I think the cabinet is under all that stuff.”
“Swell.” Cliff said. “We can get that all done. But I’m taking a break!”
Cliff plopped down on the sofa and Terry sat down right next to him.
“But we have made progress,” Cliff said looking around the house. “All that furniture we had crammed into the living room and kitchen yesterday.”
“And all your folks’ and my folks’ stuff was, well, still where it was.” Terry said with a laugh.
“Yeah.” Cliff said. “I wish you could have met my Mom. She would have liked you.”
“Thanks.” Terry said, holding Cliff’s hand and reaching over to kiss his husband.
“Look at that stuff,” Terry said after a minute. “It’s kind of like Christmas in reverse! And we have to put all the presents back where we found them!”
In another moment an orange streak bounded up to the couch and jumped onto Cliff and Terry, stretching onto their laps and kneading with her paws in their chests.
“Hey, Scooter!” Terry said. “No, we didn’t lose the cat food! Or your bowl.”
“Where was he?” Cliff asked. “I thought he was outside?”
“Hid under the bed as soon as we put it back in the bedroom.” Terry said.
“Bed sounds good.” Cliff said.
“Yeah. After we get that stuff…”
“I know! I know!” Cliff said with another grin.
“Hey,” Terry said to the cat. “We’re getting up. You want to help?”
Scooter looked from one of them to the other, then hopped off their laps and down the hallway to the bedroom as they started getting up.
“Oh well, once more unto the breach?” Cliff said.
“Yeah.” Terry said. “Order pizza later?”
“Sounds good.” Cliff said.
“Okay,” Terry said. “Grab that end of the couch and I got this end. Move it back just…about…yeah.”
Here’s a couple of stories from my long (4,000+ miles!) drive from Wichita through Arizona, New Mexico and California and back again.
“We left for Frisco in your Rambler…” —Diesel, Sausilito Summernight
I left the kitties with my Brother’s family in Western Kansas in early June 2024 and barreled out to drive to San Francisco, California (actually Livermore!) to scatter Darryl’s ashes in the Bay. I packed water, food bars and notebooks along with necessities like clothes. But I had a multiple purpose in driving out there.
The route I was taking was through New Mexico and Arizona. Decades ago I had family in the Southwest and I wanted to see a few places again. (I planned a stop in Albuquerque where my Great-Grandmother and Great-Aunt had lived for the trip back. I almost didn’t realize I was in Albuquerque because of the high wall on the highway!) I drove through New Mexico, gawked at the beauty of the desert and continued on into Arizona.
My plan was to do the trip in two stages; I had originally planned to drive to Needles, CA and stay the night, but I changed it to a stop in Flagstaff, Arizona. That would make it a ten-hour drive both days. Well, actually a twelve-hour drive as I stopped to use the loo and do just a bit of sightseeing.
I took note of the signs for turnoffs to the Grand Canyon (been there about 50 years ago!) and Phoenix. We had gone through Phoenix on our way to the Grand Canyon about 1973 or so. Not this time.
So twelve hours it was and I was getting pooped when I hit Flagstaff (a really beautiful area!) found a Super 8 Motel just off the highway and pulled in to the parking lot. The clock on my dashboard said about 6:00pm.
But that wasn’t quite right—I had crossed into the Arizona Time Zone and it was about Four in the afternoon. I realized that through a quirk of geography I had two extra hours and that I had arrived for my first overnight stay in late afternoon, just like my Grandparents and I did when we would drive to Albuquerque from Wichita decades ago. I checked in, unpacked, set my alarm and crashed. Woke up a few hours later, heated up the food I brought (thank you Super 8 Motel for microwaves and cups in the rooms!) and sat around watching videos on my smartphone.
At no point during either of my motel stays on the trip did I even think of turning on the television.
Alarm set I snoozed and got up before the alarm, somewhere around five thirty to throw my stuff into my bag, toss the stuff into my car, check out and continue the drive to California.
I’ll go into more of my adventures getting to Livermore another time. Right now I want to talk about the return trip, heading back to my Brother’s house from Flagstaff and another Super 8 Motel and losing two hours.
I slept in more than I should, had breakfast at the motel (Yum! No, really!) and hit the road about seven-ish or so. I’ll go into my first visit to Albuquerque in 45 years in a later post. But here’s what happened after I left there.
Pretty simple heading back to Tucumcari, New Mexico on I-40 but I got turned around looking for Highway 54 in the dusk there—it was not clearly marked. I had to ask directions. Stupid! I came in on the road heading to the mountain two weeks earlier, and even took a picture! I should just go away from the mountain on the only paved road heading to/away from it. Finally did that and headed through Arizona, a bit of Texas and the Oklahoma Panhandle, Highway 54 a two lane highway, feeling very much like a backroads trip or like I was on the highway in the 1960s. I fueled up and used the facilities at a convenience store in maybe Dalhart as the wind was whipping up and it did sprinkle on me just a bit during the trip. My companion through those late-night hours was the SIRIUS XM radio station “Radio Classics” which was playing episodes of the fun show “Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar.” Somehow the 40s/50s ambiance fit with the ancient-seeming back road drive in the dark.
I hit Kansas after midnight and pulled into my Brother’s driveway about One in the morning. Sat there for a few minutes relieved to be back. Texted the family to tell them I was finally there and wondered what my kitties would think of me bailing and leaving them. I needn’t have worried. I unlocked the door and went in through the back porch, snuck downstairs in the quiet house and left my bags (and laptop) in the guest room. Then I hopped upstairs to grab something from the fridge.
At least one of my kitties greeted me, sort of indifferently like they hadn’t noticed I was gone. But they were sweet. It was good to be at the home-away-from-home.
I ate, hopped back downstairs, checked mail and then crashed, realizing that if I ever got back to California I wouldn’t be doing the driving but I was glad I did it this way this time!
Woke up next afternoon and wandered through the house. Nobody there but me and the kitties.
—end—
——jeff baker, July 31, 2024.
NOTE: Borrowed the title from a piece by Arnold Schoenberg. —-j
authorjeffbaker 