"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the December Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: A Fantasy, set in a Parking Lot, involving a Stack of Pizza Pans. So we look back a couple of decades to find Billy Gonzalez, much younger at one of his first jobs. —-jeff
It was back when I was in High School. I was sixteen years old and the Pizza Playce was my first job. Part-time during school and full-time on the weekends. Not a bad job and the people were nice and the owner, Mr. Montovanni, stayed out of our way and was in the office a lot.
I’d heard a crazy story that he’d paid to buy the building there on the edge of town in gold coins which he said he’d “got from somewhere else.” I didn’t ask him where he got them, but I should have.
We had a couple of fights in the parking lot that summer but nothing like what happened towards the end of June. There was a Full Moon that night and looking back that was probably what did it. I wasn’t as savvy back then but I’d already had a couple of weird things happen to me.
Mr. Montovanni had left earlier in the day telling me and Mark and the girls to close up. He did that a lot on the slow middle-of-the-week nights so that wasn’t unusual. But I overheard him on the phone saying he’d “pissed off” what he called “his backers.”
I was working there with Mark and a couple of girls. I was just starting to realize I liked girls and guys but I was still stuffed in the closet. This was the late 1990s. It was just after sunset that I noticed the first of the fairies. I thought it was just a big moth. It flew past the front window as I was bussing the table at one of the back booths. I happened to be looking up.
It passed by a couple of times and I thought about the Hummingbird Moths my folks saw in their garden sometimes. Then I noticed this one had arms, legs and a very angry expression. Then I noticed a whole swarm of the things hovering and swirling over the parking lot; luckily the only cars were the employees’ in the back. No customers then.
“Billy!” Mark hollered from the kitchen. I ran over. He looked sick.
“There’s, there’s THINGS flying around outside.”
We could see them through the windows, naked human-like winged men and women. A man-sized fairy landed in front of the glass front door, wings bristling. It was pale pink with green hair. The wings were like a giant dragonfly. I stared; he had nice abs. I stepped over to the door.
“We have come to collect,” the fairy said in an echoing voice. “Where is Montovanni?”
I glanced out at the parking lot again; the fairies were everywhere, except in the back where the cars were.
“Cars…” I murmured.
I’d done some reading about weird stuff. I hoped I was right. Something I remembered…
I quickly pulled down the big old pizza pans from the wall by the door, labeled with the sizes of pizzas, praying I was right. They felt different, heavier than the ones we made pizzas on. I stacked them and hollered for Mark to help me. He looked scared, but bless him he did what I asked.
Together we carried the stack of old pans out to the parking lot as the fairies swarmed around us. I held up one of the smaller pans; Mark grabbed a larger one and held it like a shield.
“In the name of all that’s holy, I command you to be gone!” I yelled. I was imitating Chris Wiggins on a TV show I’d seen. Mark waved his pan and yelled too.
The big fairy started looking as terrified as Mark did. It rose into the air with a scream. Mark and I walked around the lot with the metal pans shooing the other fairies away. And even though it worked, I was at least as scared as Mark was.
As I thought there had been no sign of the fairies in the back parking lot near the dumpster and the employees cars and I knew why.
“I used to come in here with my folks when I was little,” I explained in side. “The guy who ran the place had worked at the old foundry. He was proud of having made these himself.” I rapped my knuckles on the biggest pizza pan. “Pure iron. Lots of iron in the cars and probably the dumpster too. And I read somewhere that fairies are repelled by iron, just like garlic does to vampires.”
I smiled to myself. We had plenty of garlic. We had vampire swarm covered too.
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; https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets
I’ve gotten a nice response the last couple of years posting a snippet of Oscar Wilde around Christmas. No overtly LGBT characters here but the writer IS Oscar Wilde. And there are some closeted Gay sensibilities in his legendary novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray” from where I have taken this week’s snippets. The man who is our title character is young and pretty. He would like to stay that way forever. He would, in fact, give anything…
Do not be fooled by Dorian’s good looks and charm; Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to introduce you to a monster…
“How sad it is!” murmured Dorian Gray, with his eyes still fixed on his own portrait….”I shall grow old, and horrid, and dreadful. But this picture will remain always young. It will never be older than this particular day in June…If it was only the other way! If it was I who were to be always young and this picture that were to grow old!
Be careful what you wish for! In our next snippet; Dorian shows the artist, Hallward, the portrait he did after several years have passed…
An exclamation of horror broke form Hallward’s lips as he saw in the dim light the hideous face on the canvas grinning at him. There was something in it’s expression that filled him with disgust and loathing. Good heavens! It was Dorian Gray’s own face that he was looking at!
If you think Hallward is not long for this world, you are very perceptive! (Oh and I borrowed the two snippets from Wilde’s two different versions of the story!)
I wish you all the best for the happiest and most meaningful holiday season. May your joys come in more than snippets! ——jeff baker
AUTHOR’S NOTE: My apologies to followers of Facebook’s Friday Flash Fics page. I either forgot to post this picture there or it got deleted! ——jeff
Snow Day
by Jeff Baker
This all happened about seventeen years ago when I was in High School in D’Artagnan, Kansas. But this isn’t a story about High School, it’s about my getting home from my older sister’s house in a blizzard.
We lived about a block or so from downtown, not that there was much of a downtown; flower shop in an old gas station, couple of convenience stores, two Mexican restaurants, theater that showed kid’s movies on the weekend, intersection with a couple of 110 year-old buildings on either side, High School visible at the end of the street. And my sister lived about seven blocks away. Her house was walking or bike riding distance from our house, but so was everything else in town. At least that was when it wasn’t snowing. I’d spent the night there playing board games that weekend and the snow was just letting up when I was getting up that morning.
Around mid-afternoon Mom called me and told me that there was more snow on the way and if I was going to be snowed-in when they closed school I was going to be snowed-in at home.
I told her I could be snowed-in at Ruthie’s just as well playing Monopoly and Yahtzee.
“Jason Sylvester Jones! You are coming home right now!” Mom said in that Mom Tone. “Your Dad is busy so I called your Uncle Gil and he’s coming right over to pick you up.”
And that was that.
My Uncle Gil was actually my Grandmother’s youngest cousin (55 seemed old to me then!) and his full name was Gilbert Keith Chesterton Menken. (He hated it!) and he was “self-employed.” Dad said he could list his occupation as “whacky inventor” on his taxes. He lived in an old farmhouse just outside of town where he did all his inventing. He didn’t look like a mad scientist. He was about 5’10” with brownish hair, lean and clean shaven. He channeled accountant more than physicist.
Anyway, about fifteen minutes later there was a weird honking outside the house and my Uncle pulls up in a glistening white car. It looked like something out of the 40’s; long, rounded curves, like a Packard or Chevy. The windows were plastic (he told me later) and there were lights and turning lights mounted on the front and back.
As I got closer to the car I realized that it was made out of snow! Wheels, the top, everything! Uncle Gil sat behind the wheel wearing coat and gloves. A couple of switches on a box that I guess operated the lights and a funny looking silvery box were all embedded in the snowy dashboard.
“Jason! Good to see you!” Uncle Gil said as I opened the door, glad I was wearing gloves and a coat and got in. He indicated a beach towel draped over the back of the seat down to the seat and indicated I should sit there so I wouldn’t freeze my butt.
“Put on your seat belt,” Uncle Gil said. “Your Mom will have my butt in a sling if I didn’t have you do that. Welcome to my Snow Mobile.” At least the seat belt was real. It looked like it was hooked to the seat by clamps made out of ice.
Uncle Gil ran a gloved finger over a metal disc in the middle of the steering wheel and the car moved forward with a crunching sound like when you rolled around in snow.
“You made a car out of snow?” I asked, even though it was obvious.
“I can form and animate anything out of snow!” Uncle Gil said. “This little gadget does it. Don’t touch it!” He pointed to the silvery thing on the dashboard.
“Wow!” I breathed, realizing I could see my breath.
“I programmed it to look like my Grandfather’s car,” Uncle Gil said. “The wheels move and they even turn when I turn the steering wheel…” We turned down a side street just to show how it worked, “and there’s a braking controller right by my foot.”
I glanced down and there was another silvery disc embedded in the driver’s side floor. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Uncle Gil had pointed out a Flux Capacitor. I took off one glove and tapped on the seat. It felt as solid as stone.
“Gadget doesn’t have a name yet,” Uncle Gil said.
“Well, if this is your Snow Mobile why not call it the Snow Mobilizer?” I said.
He nodded, grinned and we both laughed.
“How fast does this thing go?” I asked imagining a midnight drag race between two snowy dragsters.
“Not much more than ten miles an hour,” he said. “But it’s perfect for navigating snowy streets.” He tapped the disc in the steering wheel. “I control everything else with this. And I rigged up turn lights and headlights and stuck the license plate from my pickup on the back!” Uncle Gil laughed.
“Cool!” I said. What else could I say?”
We turned onto my street and I could see the house at the end of the block. That was when the Snow Mobilizer started to sputter. The car slowed to a stop and shuddered and suddenly collapsed into an inert pile of soft snow there in the street.
“Oh well,” Uncle Gil said as we climbed out of the snow. “Back to the drawing board.”
I fished my glove out of the snow pile and we walked toward the house and hopefully some hot cocoa.
First, here’s the prompts for the December 2023 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge. Then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Fantasy
Involving a Stack of Pizza Pans
Set in a Parking Lot.
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 (and hopefully have one of my own written!) the week of December 11th, 2023.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage and the results were the Five of Hearts (a Fantasy), the Jack of Diamonds (A Parking Lot) and the Two of Clubs (a Stack of Pizza Pans.). So we will write a fantasy set in a parking lot involving a stack of pizza pans.
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week!
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; https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
Here’s a snippet from a story that isn’t mine, from the fine new Queer Sci Fi anthology “Rise.” https://www.otherworldsink.com/book/rise/?cn-reloaded=1 In the story “Recovery” from the excellent Kaje Harper, we find a loving couple busy in the kitchen…
“Hold that thought.” I put more details on the gingerbread men, girls and enbies I’ve created. They hold hands or hug, pairs and trios, every combo I can think of. Ground-almond crewcuts with candied-lemon skirts, long hair, a bra, and a chocolate-sprinkle beard; two twinks in matching rainbow-icing shorts. It’s not art, but I’m baking love and acceptance in every bite.
The stories in the anthology are 300 words or less, so I’ll stop there. Suffice to say, things are about to get wonderfully wonky in the hands of this master craftsman of words!
Next week, we continue a couple of Christmastime traditions. One; my posting a bit from an LGBT literary master. And two, the Yuletide telling of tales of dread! —-jeff
Mention Edgar Allan Poe and several stories immediately come to mind: “Fall of the House of Usher.” “Pit and the Pendulum.” “The Purloined Letter.” “The Black Cat.”
Everybody knows those. But how many people have read “Some Words With a Mummy,” “Morella,” “The Island of the Fay” or “The Conversation of Eros and Charmion?”
As part of my personal reading project I’m going to read my way through some of the lesser-known, or less-talked about and reprinted Poe stories. At least I haven’t read most of them! And I’ll try to post my results hear or on the Reading Reports I said I’d do.
So, here’s a starter list. I realize that some of these may be more familiar to a lot of other people than me but I’m posting it anyway. They are all available online and a Complete Poe is always in print somewhere!
The older of the two workmen finished bolting the last of the metal legs of the wooden bench into the concrete to one side of the sidewalk that ran between the Fine Arts Building and Campus Administration.
“That oughta do it,” he said. “Two expensive benches paid for by rich alumni.”
“These are just like the other benches,” the younger workman said. “What makes them so pricey?”
“These little things,” the older workman said, tapping a metal plate screwed onto the back of each one. “They bought these in memorial to two of their classmates from years ago.” He started putting his tools in the box. “You know, my cousin went to school here back then.” He tapped one of the plaques. “She said this guy, Eddie Tooks and the other one, Drew Singer were best friends on and off the basketball court. Tooks died about thirty years ago and Singer died this past year. I guess their friends decided this was a good way to remember them.”
“Yeah,” the younger workman said. “It’s kind of nice to think about. I mean, two best buddies getting memorialized together.”
The two workmen walked off not seeing the two twenty-something looking young men in varsity jackets sitting opposite each other on the opposite benches.
“Awwww, swell!” the taller one said. “As if sitting on this damn bench wasn’t bad enough, now I got Mister Varsity Showoff in my face!”
“Hey, this was not my idea!” the shorter man in the varsity jacket said. “They told me I had to sit on this bench with my name on it and hang around for a while.”
“Sure as Hell wasn’t my idea!” the tall one said.
“E. J., will you stop saying ‘damn’ and ‘hell.’ We got enough troubles!”
“That’s the only good news, Drew,” E. J. said. “We aren’t anywhere but St. Nigel’s college again.”
“Yeah, I was here for alumni things a few times.” Drew said. “But I keeled over at sixty. Now look at me! I’m twenty again!”
“And nobody can see us!” E. J. sneered. “And I didn’t like looking at you when you were alive and we went here.”
The two men sat on the benches trying not to look at each other.
“So,” Drew finally said. “What’s the weather like when you’re dead?”
“Same as usual, it’s still Kansas,” E.J. said. “Except it goes right through you.”
They sat in silence for a while longer. Then Drew spoke up again.
“How long do we have to be here, anyway?”
“I think,” E. J. said, “until these original benches crumble or get torn down.”
“Then we go off to paradise or somewhere else, you think?” Drew said.
“Or some where else,” E. J. said. “Or we get reincarnated. Maybe we wind up back here as kids decades from now.”
“Maybe we get to be rivals again,” Drew said.
“Great!” E. J. snorted.
After a while spent in silence, Drew spoke up again. “You know, I’d kind of like that. You always brought out the best in me. Basketball, baseball, the track team…”
“And the worst in each other.” E. J. said.
“Yeah. Maybe.” Drew said. “But I’ve missed some of it.”
“Yeah.” E. J. said.
“Hey! Look up there!” Drew said. “I’ve never seen so many stars!”
“Yeah, that stuff that light pollution doesn’t bother us,” E. J. said. “Something else that’s fun?”
“What?” Drew said.
“Every now and then there’ll be some kid doing weed and he’ll sit down here and he can like hear me and I’ll go ‘Boo’ or something!”
They both laughed. Then, more silence.
“Hey, when do we sleep?” Drew asked.
“We don’t,” E. J. said.
“Oh…” Drew said. “Hey, you remember the time when…”
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; https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
I pulled my jacket tight around me as I walked down the small main street. There was a trash barrel right there. Sign on it telling people not to litter, I hated what I was thinking.
I glanced in the barrel and reached in, felt around through the newspaper, the empty pop and beer cans and felt a lump. I pulled out a wrapped-up half-eaten something with the logo of a burger place on the wrapper.
I unwrapped it, yeah, a burger that someone had taken a bite out of and then discarded it but it was still a burger.
In our next snippet, Bryce goes dumpster diving at the back of a closed Russian restaurant.
I pushed the lid open. It smelled like trash and food. It was about a third full of garbage and leavings from other people’s meals, people who hadn’t had to worry about where their next meals were coming from. I felt around and grabbed what felt like a chunk of ham or turkey.
Something grabbed my wrist.
We’ll leave him right there for now. I hope your Thanksgiving was stress and demon-free! Next week, more from that perfect Christmas present; a new anthology!—-jeff
This, the first of these monthly reading reports, is being written in my Brother’s guest room, early in the morning of Thanksgiving Day, November 23, 2023. I can’t think of a better day to start off on this as reading is something we should be thankful for, especially in this era when books are under assault.
I’ve been chronicling my writing progress in monthly reports and so I decided to do this, influenced by the You Tube vlogger Michael K. Vaughn whose entertaining recountings of his reading adventures (including a near-weekly “Reading Report”) are regular and highly entertaining features of his vlog. (And I’ll post a link to the videos at the end of this long-winded prologue to my own report.)
Another reason to do this is simply to motivate myself to read more. I’ve been doing a lot more writing (I have a lot more time to do it in!) and I need to read more. I became a writer because I’m a reader. I consider my pouring over anthologies of short stories during the late ‘80s and through the ‘90s as essential training for my writing career. I’m mainly talking about reading fiction and doing it for pleasure, but since when do I follow rules?
As I haven’t been taking notes and am away from my books I’ll just list the ones I can recall. If there’s a short-story or such I read other than these I don’t remember. I haven’t done a lot of reading in the last, hell, I’ll say month-and-a-half.
So here’s what I read, fiction-wise.
“Travels With Charley”/”The Portable John Steinbeck.” I’ve just been dipping into these the last few months, mainly because I’m working on a story for an anthology call in the style of Steinbeck. I hadn’t read a lot of him and my copy of “Charley” was given to me by my Dad in Grade School. I may have read some of it then, but I don’t recall. Steinbeck has a sort of mater-of-fact prose style. Like Twain he probably blends fact and fiction in his travelogue.
“The Gay Detective” by Lou Rand. Read it to review for Queer Sci-Fi but still counts as reading for pleasure.
And now two stories by Robert A. Heinlein.
First “The Man Who Traveled in Elephants,” a story recommended by a World Fantasy Convention panel on Heinlein’s Fantasy stories, one of the panelists called it “a favorite.” It’s a sweet and sentimental story, with prose reminiscent of Ray Bradbury. There’s even a carnival! I may have seen the ending coming but it was fun getting there!
It’s in a re-titled paperback called “6 X H,” (originally “The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag”) and has a couple of his stories I hadn’t read yet including one that first appeared in Weird Tales!
Second, a novel not a story. I’d started reading Heinlein’s “The Rolling Stones” several months ago and got sidetracked (Read: Drank a lot instead of reading.) The book is one of Heinlein’s “Juveniles,” what we would call a Y.A. book today. That WFC panel called those books some of Heinlein’s best work and I agree! I’m a third of the way through and it’s a blast! Oh, and I imagine the Grandmother as being played the way Ellen Corby played Grandma Walton.
I also started (and got sidetracked again!) reading “A Canadian Ghost in London,” the final story in James K. Moran’s fine collection “Fear Itself,” the story I hadn’t read yet. (The book is fun! Get it!)
Of course, I’ve been reading “Rise,” the new QSF anthology which includes a story of mine and a lot of other wonderful stories, all of them 300 words or less!
I also read one of the legendary Edward M. Cohen’s stories in Steve Berman’s anthology “Brute.” The book described as “Stories of dark desire, masculinity and rough trade.” Other authors in this NSFW tome include Tom Cardamone, Berman himself and Tennessee Williams (!)
Of course, I never miss the weekly story by Kaje Harper which is posted on her website or Facebook page, usually around Sunday.
I also read a couple of the stories in “Orchard of the Dead,” a new collection of translated stories by the Polish writer Stefan Grabinski (1887-1934.) He is compared to Poe or Lovecraft but he is so much more than that.
On my “to-be-read” pile is “The Abyss,” another translated collection, this by the Russian writer Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919.) I’d read his story “Lazarus” in a horror anthology about thirty years ago and I found this book online one night. He’s a writer who was actually influenced by Poe.
When I started typing this I didn’t think I had read much but I read more than I thought!
I also didn’t remember I’d brought a bunch of books with me,, so I was able to reference them!
So, that’s about it for now and I’ll keep you posted!
Happy reading!
Oh, I should mention the translators of the last two books: Anthony Siscone for the Grabinski and Hugh Aplin for the Andreyev.
authorjeffbaker 