"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
NOTE: I wrote the original version of this poem about twenty years ago. This version has been posted here almost every year for the last eight years or so. Happy Thanksgiving! —-jeff
Oh Stately Bird
By Jeff Baker
Oh stately bird
Who is there that does not love you
Our family gathered together, you the centerpiece of the table altar
Old Ben Franklin, I am told
Wanted you as the symbol of our fledgling nation
Not the Eagle.
If things had gone the other way, I cannot imagine us sitting down
An extra for our off-week for Thanksgiving. Happy reading! —-jeff
Along Came A Parade Balloon
by Jeff Baker
Thanksgiving in New York City was pleasant and actually warm. The young photographer grinned to himself as he aimed his camera and took a picture of the band marching past the Newspaper Building across the street. He grinned again at the sight beside the Newspaper Building.
“My jolly boss is getting his shoes shined by that shoe shine dog,” he said watching the dog in the red vest and striped ballcap work at the shoes with the rag. He waved at them as his editor looked up, cigar clamped in his teeth. “Figures he’d pick somebody cheap,” he said to nobody in particular. If he got a really good picture of the parade he might frame it and give it to his Aunt for Christmas.
He heard a cheer from a block away.
“Aha! Just on time! Here come the balloons!” They had been the young photographer’s favorite when he was growing up. As they drew closer he could make out a cartoon cat, a mouse, a big candy cane…
Suddenly there was a scream.
One of the large balloons had torn loose from its handlers and was bouncing against one building than another. Then a second and a third balloon joined, following almost as if they had minds of there own.
“Uh, oh” the young photographer said to himself. “Time to duck out of sight and swing into action. But first the camera…”
Across the street, the cigar smoking editor gawked at the rampaging balloons.
“There should be pictures of this!” he said, his voice rising to a yell. He looked across the street. “PAR…” he began. But the photographer wasn’t there.
Behind the editor, the anthropomorphic dog dashed from the shoe shine box and ducked into an alley behind some trash cans. In another instant there was a burst of energy and a blurred, caped figure soared skyward.
“The parade’s in trouble, I must act fast. And so it’s up and awayyyy at last!”
Now attired in his own familiar disguise the erstwhile photographer swung up the building on a slender web just in time to meet up with the flying dog. Beneath them a large orange cat balloon followed by a dog flying on a doghouse and a mouse in gloves were swirling over people’s heads seemingly of their own volition.
“I’ve seen a lot of crazy things as a New Yorker but a costumed dog superhero and crazy balloons…If I had eaten dinner I’d put it down to spoiled cranberry sauce!”
“The man with webs in front of me,” the dog said hovering “I’ve seen you fight crime on T. V.”
“You too, canine crusader,” the webbed wonder said. “But I think we’d better take care of the parade before someone gets hurt!”
“I agree! Follow me!”
The two of them zipped down to parade level and zoomed and swung around the balloons which started to soar after them. There was a glint of something metal around the edges of the balloons.
The dog pointed. “The balloons are being flown by jets! Spray them quickly with your nets!”
“Uh, actually, they’re webs but, right!” he said aiming his shooters.
The chemical webbing did its job as the three cartoon balloons were stopped and attached quickly to the ground. Moving at superhuman speed the caped canine disabled the jets attached to the balloons and zipped along the route to check for more with the web swinger swinging behind.
“That must be all of them,” the webbed superhero said at the end of the parade route. “I’ll take one of those jets and see if I can find out what spoilsport is behind this.”
“There’s no return label on these jets, analysis would make some safer bets,” the dog said hovering a few feet over the ground. “Harm did not seem the intent, just a prank by a mind quite bent.”
“At least we stopped this before any damage could be done,” the webbed wonder said. But, uhhh, I have to be somewhere.” He was thinking of his automatic camera he’d set up hoping it might get a picture the paper would buy.
“It’s the same for me, I think…” the flying dog said. “I must be gone quick as a wink.”
And with that he zipped up into the air and was gone.
The cobwebbed crusader sighed as he jumped up a wall.
“I’ll track down the baddies who did this stuff. Then I’ll make them say ‘Enough.’ Oh my gosh, he’s got me doing it now!”
And to all my readers I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and a…hey, what’s this? A copyright notice?!? ——-jeff
The ancient pickup truck puttered through the convenience store parking lot as Braden Walter, just turned forty-five and still my boyfriend, headed it into the parking space. Not that many people around that late so nobody noticed us and the truck appear out of thin air.
“Handicapped Parking” I said pointing at the sign. “That puts the time at least after the seventies, I think.”
“When I was over in England I saw a sign at a gas station that said “No Naked Lights,” Braden said. “That meant No Lit Cigarettes.”
“Yeah, they call them ‘fags’ over there,” I said grinning as I leaned over to kiss Braden.
“Hold up,” he said. “Until we find out exactly when we are.”
Braden’s late father, John Walter, had some odd ideas about the relationships of time to matter, in particular that older objects had earlier times stuck to them and it might be possible to travel through time with those objects. We got the old pickup truck and with what we knew about the Braden Formula we were trying those ideas out. So far we’d been to the 1960s and the 1940s all here in Western Kansas where we’d grown up.
“Too bad we’re a ways out of town,” I said. “We might see something to tell us the year.”
There were just a couple of big worn cigarette ads in the store window, no prices.
“Let’s get a paper,” Braden said. “That’ll give us the date. “Or yesterday’s date.”
“Or last week’s date, depending on the size of whatever town we’re near,” I said hopping out of the car. “Besides, I have to use the men’s room.”
“Finney Monroe, I like the way you think!” Braden said, shutting the car door behind him.
I wandered around the store as Braden used the facilities. Not a lot to tell us the date but even the overpriced bread looked a lot like it did near the year we had started out from.
We had both used the restroom and grabbed a soda. At the counter I found the paper with the date: June 5th, 1998.
I smiled as I pulled out my wallet and paid for the paper and soda.
“Hey, what is this?” the clerk said eyeing the money. “You passin’ counterfeit dough?”
“No,” Braden said. “That’s a perfectly good ten dollar bill.”
When we started this we made sure we had denominations from several decades. But the clerk held the bill under our noses.
“Yeah? Then who’s this guy Hamilton on the front? Your printer?”
Braden and I stared at teach other. I glanced behind the clerk. On a small file cabinet was a small flag of a country I’d never seen before.
We left the stuff and ran back to the truck.
“Well, that’s never happened before!” I said.
“Yeah,” Braden said. “Let’s think of home real hard!”
Everything shimmered around us as the truck started up but I wish I’d kept that paper.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: No official pic for next week as it is Thanksgiving but I may have something special! Happy Thanksgiving!!!!!—-jeff
Wrote a very angry Queer Sci Fi column on Election Night.
Wrote a story based on the last word prompt by the late Paula Wyant and posted it on the blog earlier this month; “Look Down Fair Moon” where I channeled Ray Bradbury and used a Walt Whitman line as the title. I’m glad it turned out so well. It was posted on this site about a month ago.
Wrote the usual flash fictions and made a list of markets that want to see more stuff from me.
Did some notes and synopsizing. Worked on a longer story with an “Arabian Nights” feel, one of my “World Of Three Moons” stories. I have another longer one synopsized that I need to write up.
Some of the Flash Fics stories over the next month and a half will be holiday stories. We need them right now.
Am still on my Julian Hawthorne jag. Ordered “The Strange Recollections Of Martha Klemm” which collects his two Klemm stories. “Absolute Evil” and “A Goth From Boston.” The intro explains that the first story was reprinted in 1919 as “Island Of Ghosts” with a minister recast as a Professor. This is the version I read in “Strange Island Stories.” So, I finished reading the original. A fast-paced horror-adventure with Klemm as the protagonist.
Read Hawthorne’s other Martha Klemm story “A Goth From Boston.” Nothing supernatural here, just a romantic adventure with a lot of the emphasis on the adventure. There are hints of the plotline from “Absolute Evil” in similarities to a situation mentioned by a character who had visited an island with a woman and a little girl but it isn’t played like a sequel.
Worth mentioning that there are several literary references in the story and all of them are to works still familiar (and in print!!!) just over a century after this story first saw print in “All-Story Magazine” in 1919. Including a line from Walt Whitman who Hawthorne had actually known…
From Hawthorne’s “Six Cent Sam’s” I read “Greave’s Disappearance,” a mystery featuring an impossible vanishment. Even though I could figure out how it was done I didn’t see the ending twist coming! Also read “Raxworthy’s Treasure,” a lighter story with clever touches but nonetheless a crime story. It involves a miser, an inheritance a mysterious house and a ghost!
And I also read Hawthorne’s “A Goth From Boston,” one of the stories he published a hundred years ago in “All-Story.” Cirsova Press has been republishing them. A fun adventure/romance. Too bad people aren’t writing stories like this today!
Finally read Frank Stockton’s “The Bee-Man Of Orn,” which I had confused with Dahl’s “Royal Jelly.”
Read an A.R.C. of ‘Nathan Burgoine’s excellent “Upon the Midnight Queer.” His second collection, featuring Gay retellings of Christmas stories. I’d read some of them before on his blog. Burgoine is an absolute master of his craft.
Read the excellent weekly stories posted by Kaje Harper and the equally excellent monthly story E. H. Timms writes for the Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. (Links for those are on this site to the right of this column.)
For the Halloween season I listened to a reading (on You Tube) of Arthur Gray’s “The Everlasting Club.” Possibly one of my favorite ghost stories. If there’s ever an anthology of college-set ghost stories, this one belongs in there.
Re-read (online!) a revised version of Jerome Steuart’s “The Autumn Woods.” He’s finally bringing it out in a book, and there’s even an exhibit featuring the artwork he did for the stories in Dayton (I think!) He’s expanded the stories and I’ll link to his blog. He’s that good! https://jeromestueart.com/category/autumn-woods/
Stumbled across an anthology in the library: “Witches: Wicked, Wild and Wonderful,” ed. By Paula Guran. From it, I read “The Witch’s Headstone,” by Neil Gaiman, which became part of “The Graveyard Book.” Also read Nancy Holder’s “The Only Way to Fly,” which was also in the anthology “100 Wicked Little Witch Stories” where I read the next few selections on this list. “The Only Way to Fly” takes “Bewitched” to its logical extremes.
Read Cynthia Ward’s “The Robbery.” A nifty story with a nasty ending. (also in the Guran anthology.)
Read Adam-Troy Castro’s “Vend-A-Witch.” It’s a one-joke story but the joke is very funny!
Read Steve Rasnic Tem’s “A Hundred Wicked Little Witches,” a grim story that ties in with the idea of witch hysteria.
Read Basil Wells’ “Wall Of Darkness,” a story from the ‘40s in “100 Wicked…” That’s the great thing about those old Barnes and Noble anthologies; I’d never heard of Basil Wells.
Started reading Julian Hawthorne’s novel “Sara Was Judith.” It’s a page turner!
Read two stories in the Library Of America’s complete stories of David Barthelme: “The Piano Player,” and “The Joker’s Greatest Triumph.”
Read Mack Reynolds’ story “Mind Over Mayhem” for his birthday. Fun 1950s crime story from before he started writing sci-fi. Reminded me a little of Pronzini.
Got Graham Greene’s “Our Man In Havana,” if only for the oft-parodied title. First book I bought at the new West Side Barnes and Noble in Wichita. Read a couple of pages.
Started reading Julian Hawthorne’s fairy tale “Callodon.” And speaking of Hawthorne I have been delighting in “Twenty Days With Julian & Little Bunny By Papa.” The book is the segment from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Journals about taking care of young Julian and a pet rabbit while his wife and daughter went to visit her mother. Nothing really eventful happens in this but the account is charming! This is not the dour and gloomy Hawthorne of “Young Goodman Brown,” it is a sweet father realizing how much time goes into caring for his child. It made me hungry for the vegetables they ate!
“Oh wow,” Max Clyborn said looking around at the big room in the brick building in Old Town. I think I was in here when it was still a warehouse, but this…”
“Great, isn’t it?” Denny Smith said. The rainbow colored light from the displays on the wall reflecting off his broad grin. He was 24, built like a soccer player, wearing sweats and a grey tank top with the Bisexual Pride flag on the front. Max was his Grandfather and was about three times older than Denny.
“So, you hang out here?” Max asked.
“Yeah,” Denny said. Well, not hang out really. Just come in here sometimes. Place is busier on the weekend or at night when the College is in session. You want a booth or sit at the bar?”
“Bar’s fine,” Max said.
“Beer and chips?” Denny asked.
“Soda for me,” Max said.
“Hey, I gotta go use the men’s…uh, the restroom. Be right back.” Denny said walking toward the doors beside the little stage.
Max waved and started walking around the room. He looked up at the reddish-haired kid (“They’re all kids these days” he thought) in the D. J. booth.
The kid looked familiar and not a lot older than Denny.
“Uh, excuse me,” Max said, glad they hadn’t started playing loud music. “Your last name isn’t Wyatt, is it?”
The kid looked down from the booth.
“Uh, no but that was my Mom’s maiden name,” he said. “I got a lot of Wyatt family.”
“Any chance one of them was a Tom Wyatt who went to Millington College back in the 1970s?”
The kid brightened. “Yeah, that was my Mom’s Uncle. He used to wear a Millington t-shirt sometimes. Me, I’m going to Wichita State.”
“He and I were friends back then.” Max said. “You look just like him. We lost touch and I saw he had…passed in the Alumni newsletter about five years ago.”
“Yeah,” the kid said. “He didn’t like saying ‘passed away.’ He said it made it sound like you’d just farted.”
They both laughed.
“Oh, I’m T. J.” he said. “T. J. Axton.”
“Max Clayborn.” Max said. “Hey, do you know Denny? He’s my Grandson.”
“Yeah,” T. J. said with a smile. “We know each other.”
“Small world,” Max said. “Well, nice meeting you. I got some chips we have to order.”
Max waved goodbye and walked over to the booth.
If things had been a lot different, he and Tom would have stayed together after college, Max mused. But then he wouldn’t have met Melanie, fallen in love and Denny wouldn’t exist right now.
Max sighed. “The playlist of my younger days,” he said to the open air.
A minute or so later, Denny came walking around the D. J. booth giving a thumbs-up to T. J. He stopped at the bar and spoke to the bartender who started getting their order.
Denny brought the drinks over to their table.
“Chips will be here in a minute,” he said.
“Good,” Max said sipping his soda.
Things were certainly different than in 1971, he said.
“So, Max said with a smile. “How long have you and T. J. the Deejay been dating?”
“About…hey, how’d you know?” Denny said with a laugh. “Did he tell you?”
“No,” Max said with a soft smile. “But he looks like the nice kind of guy someone would date.”
This Must Be What Legs Diamond Said To Dutch Schultz
by Mike Mayak
“Yeah. I’m downtown right now. Yeah, I got a burner phone, you think I’m stupid? Yeah, I got the time. And the place. Millar’s Drugstore over on Fifth and Main. Yeah. Two-Fifteen tomorrow afternoon. It’s when the guy takes the deposit to the bank. Yeah, yeah. Same guy, the older guy. Yeah, he walks there. He’ll be in the alley for about a minute. Yeah, we grab it when he’s in there. Yeah, I got my ski mask, like you said. No, no I won’t be wearing anything with any logo on it. And I’m not stupid enough to wear my work shirt with MYRON HERKINS on the front. That’d be like some baseball player wearing his jersey to steal a deposit from someone.
What? No, I’m not in a motel room. And I didn’t find a phone booth. I’m on the first floor of the Library. The big one downtown. You know, with the big couch by the window, that’s where I am now. Whaddya mean I should keep my voice down? This damn cheap phone you can’t hear me unless I really speak up. Hang on a minute, will ya? Security guy wants to ask me something…”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Actually written not too far from where I took the prompt pic in the Library a few months ago.—-mike
We’d walked on the artificial wooden boards (and I knew what “wood” was because Team G, which I’m on, had done a report on it for school) and had seen the Solooen where they drank and shot people and the barns where they kept the horses. Then Dad/Mom said he/she had a “surprise” for me.
We walked between two of the old buildings and turned toward the edge of the little street, opposite where we’d paid our admission and came in. The buildings were perfect for the period (1870’s, I’d been studying it!) and Dad/Mom said “So are you ready to do your school report on the Murcan Frontier West?”
“Yes, Sir/Ma’am,” I said.
“Well, you’ll need something to show the class and to prove you were here,” He/She said.
We walked into a little wooden building that had fake faded lettering on its fake glass window.
Team J had done a report on “glass,” but their visual display had dropped and broken. I’d tried not to laugh.
Inside was a shop, a real shop. Not like the places you go on screen to order something. There were actual items on display on shelves and counters and (what I assumed to be) a real person watching both of us.
“You have one of your birthdays coming up,” Dad/Mom said. “How about getting one of these?”
He pointed to a row of clear glass balls, some of them small, a couple as big as my head. All of them with small figures inside. They each had a little base attached so they wouldn’t roll away.
“These are called snow globes,” Dad/Mom said. “They used to make a lot more of them. Watch this.”
He picked one of the medium sized ones up and shook it and held it out to me. The ball was full of liquid and little white flakes I hadn’t noticed. They swirled around like a snowstorm.
“I’ve seen snow!” I said. “When we took the hoverflyer up North, remember?”
“Take a good look inside,” Dad/Mom said.
I stared. The little model inside was a miniature replica of the little street we’d been walking along and exploring. What had been called a “Ghost Town.”
“You want it?” Dad/Mom asked with a warm smile. I nodded, smiling.
“Did you notice? It’s got the name of the place that used to be here on it?” Dad/Mom asked.
I hadn’t noticed. I carefully took the globe and tilted it until the flakes fell away from the words on the base of the little town: “Losvegis.”
“Happy Birthday!” Dad/Mom said.
I held the globe tight as we took off in the hoverflyer.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the November 2024 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were A Science Fiction Story, involving a Snow Globe set in a Ghost Town. This story uses the characters and setting of “Continental Divide,” a story I posted back in July. —-jeff
First, here’s the prompts for the November 2024 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Science Fiction Story
Involving A Snow Globe
Set in A Western Ghost Town
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!)
I’m a day late with this because I’ve been stressed-out.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage. So, the results were the Ace of Hearts (a Science Fiction Story), the Eight of Diamonds (A Western Ghost Town) and the Four of Clubs (A Snow Globe.) So we will write a Science Fiction Story, set in a Western Ghost Town, involving A Snow Globe.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday November 11th, 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 about week!
And have fun!
——mike
Flash Draw Sheet for 2024 (“*” indicates prompt has been used.)
