“The Year Is Gone Beyond Recall.” A Story For New Year’s By Jeff Baker. December 26, 2023.

Posted on December 26, 2023 by jeffbaker307

The Year Is Gone Beyond Recall

by Jeff Baker

AUTHOR’S NOTE: No Friday Flash Fiction story this week, but I have a story for New Year’s that I’m posting this week. The picture that inspired it I took right before Halloween and I wrote the story a week or so later. Enjoy! ——–jeff

Peregrine House was the name attached to the stylish old brick house, one of a neighborhood of stylish houses that had stood in that area near the river since just after World War One.

The house had originally been owned by a man named Peregrine and there had been a stone falcon set into the concrete of the low wall at one end of the spacious, welcoming front porch until it had been worn away by generations of young children and toppled by a falling tree branch during a storm. It had been part of the Rawley family since the late 1950s when it had been bought by the patriarch and then inherited by the younger son, Gus Rawley, along with a lot of money and Gus lived there, wrote articles for magazines there and was happily ensconced with “Bertie,” really Bertram, the man he had met at a party and they were the rare couple in that generation of the family who actually stayed together over the years. They were, in fact, together in the house for just over forty years before they both passed away.

“I don’t like ‘Passed Away,’” Gus had said at a family Christmas at the house. “It makes it sound like someone just farted.”

The house was vacant for a few months before a Rawley nephew took possession and moved in. But he didn’t stay. Little things moved when he wasn’t there. Strange noises in the night. Laughter. Voices. The nephew believed the house was haunted. And that was how Peregrine House’s reputation stayed until several years after when the nephew’s cousin and her husband took possession.

They heard no creaking, no noises, found the house warm and inviting and dismissed the stories and the stories were forgotten. They raised children who they didn’t tell about the house’s reputation and nobody saw anything unusual.

Almost nobody.

One bright, brisk New Year’s Day morning one of the neighbors, John by name, was walking home from spending the night on another neighbor’s couch after a New Year’s Eve party a few doors down from Peregrine House. As he passed buy, he glanced up at the porch.

There, sitting on the metal chairs that stayed out there in all kinds of weather were two full-sized human skeletons.

“Bout time to take those Halloween decorations down, isn’t it?” John said to nobody in particular, his head throbbing.

One of the skeletons sat up off the chair and waved.

“We’ll do that,” the skeleton said.

“Hi, John!” the other skeleton said, waving.

John stared for a second and ran, barely registering the laughing from the cozy porch as a ghostly couple celebrated the arrival of yet another year.

—end—

Posted in Fantasy, Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Friday Flash Fictions, Ghost Story, LGBT, Peregrine House, Short-Stories | Leave a comment

Visit The Misfit Toys of “Handmade Holidays” by ‘Nathan Burgoine. Rainbow Snippets, Jeff Baker December 22, 2023.

Posted on December 22, 2023 by jeffbaker307

December 22, 2023.

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/?multi_permalinks=24307088435601223&notif_id=1703302181358719&notif_t=group_activity&ref=notif

No better place on Christmas Week to visit than a Christmas Party. And no better book for our purposes than ‘Nathan Burgoine’s excellent Christmas story “Handmade Holidays.” https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55992618-handmade-holidays?ref=nav_sb_ss_5_17  The book follows Nick, on his own after his homophobic parents toss him out at age nineteen, on a series of Christmases over the years. Nick and his friends call themselves “The Misfit Toys.” Let’s join them. The party is in full swing…

“When your number comes up, you get to pick an ornament off the pile,” Nick explained to Erik, while Haruto shredded the wrapping paper. “Or if you like something someone else already has, you can take it from them, and they get to do the same thing—open a new present or take something someone else has. But the ornaments can’t change hands more than once a round. Once they’re all open, you trade instead, or you can keep the one you’ve got. You’re in the deck three times.”

‘Nathan Burgoine says that the collecting of Christmas ornaments to symbolize a year came from his own experience. Which he put into the highly recommended book.

Next Week; A New Year’s Eve party that does not turn out as well.

And I wish you all the very best for the Holiday Season! —–jeff

Posted in 'Nathan Burgoine, Handmade Holidays, LGBT, Rainbow Snippets | 4 Comments

“Gas Lights.” A Friday Flash Fics Christmas Story from Jeff Baker. December 22, 2023.

Posted on December 22, 2023 by jeffbaker307

Gas Lights

by Jeff Baker

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Here’s my Friday Flash Fics Christmas story! We’ll be taking a break for the holidays, and be back with another prompt picture January 5th, 2024. Until then, thank you for participating and thank you for reading. More great stories to come! Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! —-jeff

We were lucky the snow held off a few days when we decided to drive out to D’Artagnan, Kansas for Christmas. I grew up there but I hadn’t been back for Christmas in about four years. My husband Miles and I drove out for a visit every summer but Mom & Dad had come to our place in Wichita for Christmas the last few years.

My big brother Lance Biggs had actually flown into town on business the week before Christmas, stayed with us and the three of us drove out two days before the holiday as soon as Miles got off work.

It was kind of fun, really. The weather was nice and we felt a little like kids on a car trip with the folks.

“Except nobody’s fighting over the radio,” Miles said grinning.

We stopped a couple of places to gas up, use the restrooms and grab snacks. Miles standing in the parking lot gawking at the Kansas prairie.

“A lot different than where I grew up in Wisconsin.”

He and I had met in College over in Wichita about ten years ago. We’d both been nineteen. Now we were all in our early thirties.

Lance was driving for the last leg of the trip, down a back road that we always used as a shortcut. “The horse knows the way to carry the sleigh,” he’d started to sing.

My Brother could never sing!

It had gotten dark. We could see a couple of farmhouses and a grain elevator with a sprinkle of Christmas lights and the lights of the town in the distance topped by the modern water tower next to the High School as we turned back onto the highway into town.

“Gotta love that water tower,” Miles said from the back seat.

“Yeah,” I said wistfully.

“Hey, Lonnie,” Lance said to me. “Remember Grandpa Biggs’ old gas station?”

“Oh, yeah!” I said with a smile.

“Remember how we went there after school sometimes and tried to help him out?” Lance said.

I laughed again. “Yeah, and he’d send us up to the drugstore to buy candy to get us out of the way! But you were the one who actually got a part-time job there.”

“Yeah,” Lance laughed. “Until my grades slipped and I had to quit! That was just before Granddad retired and sold the store.”

I looked back at Miles. “It was a knicknack shop last time I looked.”

“Mmmm.” Miles murmured.

“Can’t believe he’s been gone ten years now,” I mused.

Lance turned the car down onto Main Street.

“Look at all those decorations,” Miles said.

There were a few houses and then shops and the main intersection, some of the buildings with strings of lights and decorated trees.

“Hey, remember when he’d have the station all decorated for Christmas?” Lance said.

“Oh yeah,” I said, remembering.

Before we got to the intersection, Miles turned right.

“Hey, Mom & Dad’s house is back that way,” I said thumbing behind us.

“I know,” he said as he turned left down the street. “Take a look.”

Ahead a few blocks was the old gas station. Lance pulled the car into the lot. The old pumps weren’t there but the poles holding the towel dispenser and air hose were still there. There was a string of lights between them. There was a little Christmas tree lit up in the front window, and a plastic snowman standing cheerily to one side. A big Santa’s sleigh was parked in front of the old garage doors and a big cement block I remembered was wrapped like a Christmas package. And there were twinkling lights around the windows and on top of the little building.

“Oh, my gosh!” I breathed. “That almost looks like…my God! Those are Grandpa’s decorations! The ones he used to put up! How…?”

“Thank your Husband,” Lance said. “Last year when I was up for Christmas and I told him about decorating the store and that Mom still had those same decorations, he suggested somebody do this.”

“They talked to the lady who runs the place now and she agreed to put up the old decorations,” Miles said. “Your Brother helped. The lady thought it was nice.”

“We thought a lot of people in town would like it,” Lance said. “We thought you would like it.”

“Aw, man!” I said. “Thanks!”

We sat there for a few minutes, the lights twinkling onto the car.

“Let’s get home,” I said.

We drove back to our folks’ house, the house Lance and I grew up in, the three of us singing “Jingle Bells” with the windows rolled down, laughing all the way.

—end–

Posted in Christmas, Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Friday Flash Fictions, LGBT, Short-Stories | Leave a comment

Reading Report, December 2023 from Jeff Baker. (December 22, 2023)

Posted on December 22, 2023 by jeffbaker307

First off, an addenda to last month’s report; I read a Sherlock Holmes story I hadn’t read before. “The Adventure of The Three Students.” I’m crazy about anything Arthur Conan Doyle wrote and this story is fun, even though the resolution is a sad one. I didn’t remember reading it until I was putting up my books and found the story bookmarked in “The Complete Sherlock Holmes.”

For Mark Twain’s birthday (November 30th) I read a few of his shorter pieces, including “Curing a Cold,” “A Visit to Niagara” and “A Fine Old Man.” Also bummed through just a little of “The Prince and the Pauper.” Also I got a signed paperback copy of David Morrell’s collection “Black Evening.” Read through the story introductions. Had no idea he was inspired by Stirling Siliphant’s TV scripts or that they had known each other! Read Morrell’s fun story “Partnership.” Very much an “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” kind of story and first appeared in AHMM. Also bummed through his story “Dead Image,” which I’d read years ago and loved.

Read a couple of stories in Kaje Harper’s “The Distant Hills” that I may have read before online but may not have read in the book. “Perceptions” and “Looking Forward.” Excellent as always.

And I read a few stories from J. Scott Coatsworth’s fine collections “Spells and Stardust” and “Tangents and Tachyons.” The stories; “A New Year,” “The Frog Prince” and “The System.” Wonderful!

Read “The Terror of Blue John Gap” by Arthur Conan Doyle.

And I read the first of my Edgar Allan Poe stories for my Poe Project: “King Pest.”

Got Nelson Bond’s fix-up novel containing the stories about “Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman.” Looked up which stories were turned into which chapters and read “FOB Venus.” It’s a typical Bond comedic romp where there’s a comedic twist at the end that saves the day. Science-fantasy, not hard sci-fi. Great fun! And as I read it I mentally compared it to Heinlein’s “The Rolling Stones.” Rbt. & Ginny Heinlein did meticulous research for their book. I’m guessing Bond just made it up. Both are intentionally funny; with the humor in the Heinlein flowing naturally from the characters.

Oh, and the Bond story has a Scottish engineer on a spaceship. This some twenty-plus years before “Star Trek.”

Also read some of Carol Burnett’s memoir “This Time Together.”

Commemorated James Thurber’s December 8th birthday with a Thurber read; “More Alarms at Night” from “My Life and Hard Times.” I decided to read through the stories I hadn’t read in the book and then thought “what the hey.” and decided to read the whole thing. So far I’ve read “University Days,” “A Sequence of Servants” and “Draft Board Nights.” The latter of which ends with Thurber being awakened by bells ringing the Armistice all over town. “The Car We Had to Push” made me laugh out loud.

I’d read “The Night the Ghost Got In” before but listened to a fine podcast reading of this funny (and apparently true) story. (This is what inspired me to read the whole book again.)

Not a part of “My Life and Hard Times,” nonetheless I, uh, Thurbed-out with “A Box to Hide In,” and “Mr. Preble Gets Rid of His Wife.” And yes, I DO consider an audiobook to be “reading.” The feeling is the same.

More from J. Scott Coatsworth, who was kind enough to send (okay, sell) me signed copies of his collections “Androids and Aliens,” and “Love and Limitations.” From the latter I read “The Boy in the Band,” “Ten” and “I Only Want to Be With You.” From the former I read “Rise” and “Ping.” (I had read some of those stories before but I re-read them. He’s that darn good.)

And one more by Arthur Conan Doyle; someone on a book video was gushing about how good “The Boscome Valley Mystery” is and I agree. It’s a Holmes story I didn’t remember reading. From “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.”

And that will do it for this month, but I have more books/stories to read. I’m surrounded by books as I type this, including “The Rolling Stones” which I’ve got to finish and what looks like a fun Christmas sci-fi/fantasy anthology with a story by Joe Haldeman I hadn’t read.

As it is a few days before Christmas, I’d better start in!

———jeff baker

December 22, 2023

Hugoton, Kansas

Posted in Arthur Conan Doyle, Books, David Morrell, Edgar Allan Poe, J. Scott Coatsworth, James Thurber, Kaje Harper, Mark Twain, Nelson Bond, Reading, Reading Report, Robert A. Heinlein | Leave a comment

End-Of-The-Year Progress Report for 2023 from Jeff Baker

Posted on December 22, 2023 by jeffbaker307

Progress Report for End of 2023

by Jeff Baker

(December 13, 2023)

I started doing these Progress Reports a few years ago and started doing them on a monthly basis this year. I did a year-end wrap-up last year, so I’m doing another one now.

2023 was a year that had the potential to be all-around awful. But I managed to do a lot of writing and submitting anyway and had a few successes.

The big story for me, writing-wise, is that the RoMMantic Reads ‘zine continues to be a welcome market for flash fiction and articles. The bulk of my publications (that weren’t posted by me) were there.

In 2023, I submitted a grand total of 23 stories and four articles. (Actually about 26 fiction submissions, counting re-submissions.)

A couple of them went to markets that acknowledged it would be a while before they got back to us.

I have about three stories from earlier years that are still hopeful, I think. One editor told me as much but then his computer (with the files) was damaged. Another editor was waylaid for a while by COVID.

To break it all down;

As Mike Mayak, I submitted four stories (one significantly revised.)

Two were rejected, one I haven’t heard back from and the other was accepted(!!!)

As Skip Hanford, I submitted two stories (one of them twice!) One rejected, one posted in RoMMantic Reads.

In addition, I got a rejection for a story I had sent out in 2021 (!!!)

As by Jeff Baker I submitted eleven different stories, one three times, another one twice.

Got eight rejections.

Five of those stories are still out there, submitted or re-submitted.

Got two accepted! One published in the QSF anthology “Rise,” and an Honorary Mention to boot!

On RoMMantic Reads I published six stories (one noted as “Skip” above) in addition to two parts of a serial.

This was also my major non-fiction market (except for the blogs!) I published four articles, mainly about earlier LGBT Gay themes in TV series.

RoMM was also my major poetry market, publishing four poems I submitted.

Angel Martinez did me the kindness of reading three of my stories aloud on her blog.

I submitted one item to “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me,” which didn’t use it.

I also did the monthly Queer Sci Fi columns (Thanks, Scott!) and I’ll admit I have several already written in the pipe for next year (I like doing that!)

As for my own column, I stuck to Progress Reports, the occasional blogger stuff and the weekly (or more!) stories. Doing them for various themes and holidays can be fun! In addition, to push myself into reading more I started doing a monthly Reading Report last month and have been reading James Thurber and some of Edgar Allan Poe’s lesser-known stories.

I posted about fifty-two weeks of weekly stories, mostly from the weekly prompt pics on Friday Flash Fics (which I still moderate!). I also wrote twelve stories for the monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge which I am also moderating (I gotta be out of my mind!) Those are challenging, but loads of fun! And I marked seven years of weekly stories last May!

An important detail in the writing for me was that I really started writing longer fiction again, not just the flash stuff. I have more time now that I am no longer a caregiver. It keeps me busy and I am grateful for that. Of the stories submitted this year, five of the full-length stories were written this year. In addition, I have a handful of full-length stories in progress right now, and yes I keep a list!

A decade or more ago when I really started pushing doing the writing I decided to concentrate on only one story at a time. In the last few years I have achieved the discipline that allows me to do several. I don’t write every day but I come close. And I actually feel good about the writing. It has helped me a lot in what could have been a dismal year, given me something to do besides curl up in the dark by myself. And it has been part of my realizing how lucky I have been.

I had wonderful relationships with my parents and Husband. That does not change even though they are gone. I have friends all over the world who check in on me and that helps keep me going.

So this year-end wrap-up is as much theirs as it is mine.

Thanks!

That’s about it for now!

——-jeff baker, December, 2023.

Posted in Progress Reports, Writing | 2 Comments

Progress Report for December 2023 from Jeff Baker. December 22, 2023.

Posted on December 22, 2023 by jeffbaker307

Not a huge amount of progress to report this month and that’s a good thing. After being under a few big deadlines through the summer, I told myself I would take it easy for a while. Then around September I saw two submission calls that were too good to be true and gave me a few months to do them in. “I can do this,” I thought. I finished the second of these and sent it off a week ago. WHEW!

So, I’m taking it easy and concentrating on reading (see “Reading Report” elsewhere on this blog) and a few little things. Did the weekly stories and the monthly Draw Challenge story. Got the last official Friday Flash Fics story written and will take a break from those until the first Friday in January. (I do have a New Year’s story to write but I wrote that a month ago!)

Only thing I’m going to work on is the Queer Sci Fi column for January.

This has been a rough year and the writing helped me push through it.

There’s an end-of-year wrap-up on this blog too.

But that IS about it for now!

“A Merry Christmas to Everyone. A Happy New Year to all the World!” —–from Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.”

Posted in Progress Reports, Writing | Leave a comment

Rainbow Snippets: “Spirits Of The Earth And Air.” Pizza, Strange Flying Things and Billy Gonzalez. Jeff Baker, December 16th, 2023.

Posted on December 16, 2023 by jeffbaker307
Photo by Christian u00c1lvarez on Pexels.com

Every week we post six lines of a story of ours, or of someone else’s or a book recommendation

of a work with LGBT characters posted at Rainbow Snippets here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets

This recent story of mine goes back to my Bisexual stumbler across weird things Billy Gonzalez and his closeted teenage years. In one of his first jobs at a pizza place we find him discovering how his boss made his money in “Spirits Of the Earth and Air.”  https://authorjeffbaker.com/2023/12/11/flash-fiction-draw-challenge-story-from-jeff-baker-for-december-2023-dec-11-2023-spirits-of-the-earth-and-air/ (Did I mention there’s a full Moon on this mid-summer evening?)

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.

Here’s snippet #2

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.”

Well, that should be snippet enough for anybody! Next week, something for the holidays! Until then, watch out for very big flying things! —–jeff

Posted in Billy Gonzalez, Farie, Fiction, LGBT, Rainbow Snippets | 2 Comments

Room For Rent with Friday Flash Fics by Jeff Baker. December 15, 2023.

Posted on December 15, 2023 by jeffbaker307

Room For Rent

by Jeff Baker

Norby, Kansas wasn’t too far away from where we all lived but I hadn’t been through there in a while. But with our son going off to College I figured we ought to. It was one of Max’s weekends to work so it was just Scott and me. He was wearing his t-shirt that said “My Other Dad Is Gay Too” and we were both talking about his starting College in another month.

“Okay,” I said. “Right after college I lived here for about a year-and-a-half.”

“Yeah, I know, Dad.” Scott said, not that interested. “We’ve been through here before and you mentioned it.”

“But I don’t think I actually showed you,” I said turning down the main street. “Back in the Eighties I lucked-into this job working out of the warehouse down the street here. But it wasn’t in the same town I was living in, I was about ten miles away…”

“At Diggs College,” Scott said. “Yeah, you told me. You know, we play Diggs in basketball every…”

“Anyway,” I said. “One of the guys told me about what he said was ‘a great apartment’ not too far from the warehouse.” I pulled over to the curb and pointed across the street.

There was a line of two-story buildings, most with shops in the basement and upstairs windows looking out on the street.

“You lived next to that old firehouse?” Scott said staring.

“Nope,” I said grinning. “I lived IN that old firehouse!”

“You’re kidding!” Scott gasped.

I shook my head. “True!” I said. “They’d opened up the new firehouse at the edge of town a few years earlier and this one stood vacant until they turned the upstairs floors into apartments. I got the one right next to the fire tower.” I pointed at the little tower with windows all around that stuck out over the building. “It was cheap.”

“Did you ever, you know, slide down the fire pole?” Scott asked, sounding like an excited five-year-old.

“They’d taken that out,” I said with a laugh. “But they had stairs leading to the back entrance. There was another apartment on the ground floor which had a kitchen from the firehouse days.”

“So, you couldn’t park your car in there?”

“Believe it or not, we parked our cars in the old garage right next to it.” I said. “Only cost ten bucks extra a month.” I smiled at the memory. “I could walk to work, even when it was snowing and if I needed groceries the store was actually just a block down the street. And if I didn’t feel like trying to cook there was a…uh, restaurant across the street right next to where the used bookstore was.”

I thumbed at the building just a door down from where we were parked. I saw the neon sign.

“Yeah, what was your beer tab?” Scott said.

I smiled. “Not much. But there were weekends and days off where I’d go into the bookstore and get something by Asimov and sit and have a sandwich or a bowl of chips.” I was smiling with a memory now.

“Was that where you met Max?” Scott asked.

“Oh no,” I said. “That was in Wichita and he was working at the place I went in.”

“Wow,” Scott said.

“Main reason I brought you down here,” I said. “First, to show you where I lived almost thirty years ago. Second, to make sure you don’t ever move into a crummy, poorly heated dump like that!”

We both laughed.

And I remembered stringing an extension cord up to the tower where Robbie Silverman next door had put up a Christmas tree and going outside to watch it as the snow fell. Somewhere I had a couple of pictures.

“But I wouldn’t have missed it for anything,” I said. I grinned at our son. “C’mon, let’s go home.”

—end—

Posted in Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Friday Flash Fictions, Kansas, LGBT, Short-Stories | Leave a comment

December 2023 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge—The Results! Dec. 11, 2023

Posted on December 11, 2023 by jeffbaker307
Photo by Christian u00c1lvarez on Pexels.com

Flash Fiction Draw Challenge December 2023; The Results! December 11th, 2023.

Hi, again! Mike here, also known as “Jeff Baker.”

The draws for the December 2023 FFDC were:

A Fantasy

Set in a Parking Lot

Involving a Stack of Pizza Pans

E. H. Timms wrote “One Of Those Days.” (I really love this one!) https://thinkingthinking123.blogspot.com/2023/12/flash-fic-challenge-one-of-those-days.html

And I wrote “Spirits Of the Earth And Air” https://authorjeffbaker.com/2023/12/11/flash-fiction-draw-challenge-story-from-jeff-baker-for-december-2023-dec-11-2023-spirits-of-the-earth-and-air/

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 and stories on January 8th, 2024 (!!!!) ——mike

Posted in Billy Gonzalez, E. H. Timms, Faerie, Fantasy, Fiction, LGBT, Monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, Short-Stories | Leave a comment

Flash Fiction Draw Challenge Story from Jeff Baker for December 2023. (Dec. 11, 2023) “Spirits Of the Earth And Air.”

Posted on December 11, 2023 by jeffbaker307

Spirits of the Earth and Air

by Jeff Baker

(A Billy Gonzalez Story)

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.

Just in case.

—end—

Posted in Billy Gonzalez, Faerie, Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Fiction, LGBT, Monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, Short-Stories | 2 Comments