"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
The cloud moved from in front of the sun, spreading light and warmth on the suburban driveway. At the end of the drive stood the two tall sunflowers. The slightly taller of the two sent a thought to the slightly smaller one.
“I’ve been thinking.”
“Nothing else to do,” the smaller sunflower said.
“Here we are, Herodias, two powerful witches, long after death, rooted to the ground…” the taller sunflower said.
“Louhi, you know as well as I do there are far worse places to be.”
“As a Daughter of Hell, we both know that.” Louhi said.
“But how long will this last?” Herodias said. “A flower, even one such as this does not last past the Summertime. Then where will we be?”
“After all these centuries, all these reincarnations we have been fortunate to still be living things. Living things with even meager power.” Louhi said.
“If our next cycle makes us rocks we may be that way for eternity.” Herodias said.
“A cycle which may come soon if the fool in the metal carriage comes closer to us again. He nearly ran over us the other day.” Louhi said.
“Because he knows not our power.” Herodias said.
“The trick is knowing which sunflower is actually the witch.” Louhi said.
There was a rattling rumble from down the street.
“The carriage!” Louhi exclaimed in her inaudible voice.
“Quick!” Herodias said. “Concentrate. With me! Concentrate.”
In another moment, the approaching car gave a loud noise and stopped in the middle of the road, smoke pouring from under its hood.
The two sunflowers cackled with nobody to hear them.
“Listen, Herodias,” Louhi said. “The driver of the carriage is invoking the Damnable Names!”
“Maybe he will wind up growing beside us someday!” Herodias said.
First, let’s get to the prompts (a day late!) for August 2022. Then the usual explanation.
A Paranormal Story
Set in an Abandoned Grade School
Involving a Stuffed Octopus
Hi! I’m Jeff Baker. I also write as Mike Mayak.
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 August 15th, 2022.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage and the results were the Seven of Hearts (a Paranormal story), the Two of Diamonds (an Abandoned Grade School) and the Queen of Clubs (a Stuffed Octopus.)
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week!
“What? Are you crazy?” Burt said. “Your Mom and Dad are…”
“Sitting down in the beer garden,” Ross said. “In another minute, the Ferris wheel will turn enough that we’ll be hidden behind the building and nobody can see us.”
Here’s a little more.
“Do you love me?” Ross asked. His eyes were wide and his lower lip was shaking a little.
“Yeah, yeah I do.” Burt said. They’d never said that aloud before.
Ross’ Mom and Dad had driven the two teenagers over to the county fair. Neither of them had a car yet. Ross stretched his legs and Burt stared at his bluejeans-covered thigh.
(I put this week’s story under my pen-name “Mike Mayak” who hasn’t been getting enough attention lately.)
The High Top
by Mike Mayak
The customers stared as the two walked into the barbershop.
“Hey, guys,” Anthony said. “This is my friend Evidivis. He’s the exchange student my folks have living with us this semester.”
“Hello, friends,” Evidivis said, raising a hand and waving.
“Hi,” Mort the barber said.
“Evidivis came all the way from Banouthnian. That’s over past Arcturus.”
“Oh, yeah,” Marcellus, the assistant barber said from behind his barber chair. “My Dad had a run up there back when he was shipping.”
“Yeah, shipping along the spaceways.” That came from the man under the hot towel in Marcellus’ chair.
Evidivis was looking around the barber shop, his eyes full of excitement. He stood four-foot-eleven and was a pale green. His body and head were each round, giving him the look of a greenish snowman with thin, spindly legs, matching his long skinny arms. He was wearing shorts and a Monroe High t-shirt. His facial features looked human, except with large yellow eyes with cat-like pupils. There was a small fringe of black hair running from his forehead to the back of his neck.
Anthony Manuel stood five foot eight, had his hair done in a fade. He was a sophomore and was wearing the same Monroe High shirt as his friend. He had been coming into Mort’s since he was little.
“So, how do you like Earth?” Mort asked.
“Earth fine,” Evidivis said. “I make more friends here. Not have as many friends on home world.”
“How come?” Marcellus asked.”
“Aw, this sucks!” Anthony said. “You won’t believe this! Some people there say he’s the wrong shade of green.”
Evidivis shook his head. “That the way it is on home world. I not dark green like many others.”
“What’s that about?” Mort asked.
“On home world, dark green is considered the norm. They rule us for many years.” Evidivis said.
“Like the way they did it with us down here,” Marcellus said. “Long time before I was born.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was telling him,” Anthony said.
“You know my Grandfather’s Grandfather marched in what we call the rights wars over a hundred years ago,” Mort said. “Anything like that going on where you come from?”
“Not yet,” Evidivis said. “But there is talk. There is hope.”
“Good,” Marcellus said. “So, you want a trim while you’re waiting for equality?”
“Yes. I want that.” Evidivis said, rubbing the frizz of hair on his head. He grinned as he sat down in Mort’s chair.
“Just take a little off the top,” Evidivis said.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: Again, not the story I envisioned when I started writing. I guess the times influenced this one. And maybe Zenna Henderson’s classic story “The Closest School.”
“Could it get any hotter?” somebody at the bar asked.
“Only if we all press together,” Paco said, sipping his beer.
About five of us were sitting at the bar at Demeter’s, mainly to be under one of the air conditioning vents and to get a look at Zack the bartender who was wearing a tank top and shorts. He’d tied his long red hair in a bun. It was the middle of summer and the sixth day in a row where afternoon temperatures hit over a hundred-and-three.
“Welcome to the drought,” Zack said.
“Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.”
We sipped in silence for a few moments. Then, somebody broke the silence. It was an older man in a grey suit and a loosened tie.
“You know, a long time ago I knew a way of extracting water from the ground,” the man said. “I mean, really.” He took a sip of his drink and started in on his story.
My name is Gil Chester (the man said) and back in the early 70s I was working with a company out in the Arizona desert. We were doing a lot of scientific experimentation and one of our problems was water. The head of the project, and my boss, was a guy named Buddy Closter. He was about sixty and he was not afraid to think outside the box, a phrase I hadn’t heard back then.
Buddy called in a guy my Granddad back in Missouri would have described as a “Water Witcher.” He wasn’t some guy they’d found living in a shack with his burro, he was in his late forties, (I guessed) and actually nice-looking. Five-foot-eleven, lean, buff, tanned with silvery-black hair and a big toothy grin. Jake Ohmley had at least three degrees, including in Meteorology and something called “Applied Magnetics.” And he didn’t have a burro, he drove a shiny red Jeep.
I was in my twenties, just out of college and I couldn’t have been more nerdy. If I’d met Ohmley here at Demeter’s, I would have bought him a drink. But it was fifty years ago and I was stuffed in the closet and the only drink we were interested in there was water.
Ohmley demonstrated to all of us how the divining rod he’s brought with him would be “pulled down” by the presence of water and he assured us that it was a sound scientific principle and not magic. He also maintained that with a rod made of the right material and the proper use of electromagnetic fields it would be possible to “reverse the dowsing effect” and actually pull water up from the ground.
“Even in the desert?” one of the guys asked.
“There’s water everywhere, Ohmley said.
Buddy’s calling of Ohmley was not just an impulse. Over the next two days, a truck brought Ohmley’s equipment out to our camp along with a small crew to install it. When it was finished, it was as strange a sight as the desert had ever seen.
The set up was a long, thick pole made of some metal I didn’t recognize, propped up at an angle and hanging several yards over the desert floor like a huge fishing rod.
“This is a combination of alloys, most of which aren’t supposed to be blended together,” Ohmley said with a smile. “But they are.”
I stared as he pulled out a small, black case, about the size of a transistor radio, which he identified as a battery pack.
“It just takes a small bit of electrical current running through this rod to activate its potency, which will be demonstrated in a matter of moments,” Ohmley said.
He connected the battery pack to the end of the rod which was attached to the ground on a huge steel winch which was seemingly bolted to the desert floor. There was a crunching noise from the ground and the rod dipped downward as the hard desert floor cracked and a jet of water spurted upward, splattering against the metal rod.
We began rushing towards Ohmley, congratulating him, but he was staring upwards. A small clump of filmy clouds were suddenly roiling and swelling in the sky, the cloud growing progressively darker.
Ohmley had stepped back from the metal pole as he was staring upward, presumably to get a better view, but his and our distance from the rod and winch was actually very fortunate as in the next instant the cloud let out with a roar and emitted a swirl of rain which seemed directed at the rod. In another second there was a blue white streak of lightning and a brittle clap of thunder as the bolt hit the rod and we were thrown back away from it by a burst of force. And then the ground rumbled and a tower of water erupted from underneath the rod, leaving the small area underneath a small pond the size of a swimming pool.
Gil Chester finished his drink and set it down on the bar.
“The device was totally fried, we were all just lucky we weren’t fried along with it,” he said. “Buddy and the project were affiliated with a large corporation which saw they were losing money and pulled their funding and we went our separate ways. But I still think of Ohmley when I see it rain. Or when I see a tanned, greyish-haired man with a killer smile.”
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I hadn’t visited Demeter’s Bar, my gay watering hole where strange science fictional tales are told in a while, but the hot summer seemed to call for a tall cool one, a dark bar and a story about water——jsb.
Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work-in-progress or a work of someone else’s that has at least one LGBT character, posted on the Rainbow Snippets page, here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974 We join two Native American twenty-somethings at a diner with an angry toddler. But things are not what they seem; The young men are “Two-Spirit” people, but the supposed toddler is a spirit herself.
Jeremy “Mac” McCabe and Samuel Oldtree had met at the annual Native Coalition on Understanding Myth and Legend three years ago. That was before Mac found out that some legends weren’t just legends. Corn Maiden, for example; she supposedly became a young woman and aged into an old one over the year before repeating the process. Corn Maiden was Sam’s great-great-something Aunt. This year the annual transformation had gone a little extreme and she’d become a toddler.
“I have to be careful of eclipses,” she’d explained, “it threw me off.”
Here’s another snippet
“We’re ordering corn,” she said to the server who was taking their order. “And fry bread. With butter.”
“She’s been studying our culture,” Sam explained.
“I AM your culture God dammit!” Corn Maiden said. “I’m the one who showed your people how to make…”
Okay, just one more bit, to see if Corn Maiden calms down…Oops. I didn’t think so…
Mac wondered why a Native goddess swore exactly like a white Protestant guy whose lawn mower wouldn’t start.
“I should forbid the corn crop from growing this year,” Corn Maiden grumbled when the server left.
“You do,” Mac said, “and I have two words for you; Day Care!”
“You wouldn’t!” Corn Maiden said shocked. Mac glared. She sat back in her chair.
“Hey, Mister Acosta,” the kid in the backwards ball cap and low-slung jeans said as he walked into the shop. “You know you got a dragon on your roof?”
“Yeah, yeah, thanks.” Julian Acosta said from behind the counter. He knew about the dragon. He was losing business because of the dragon.
“Bet you’re glad its one of the purple ones,” the kid said. “The other ones breathe fire.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Acosta said. He knew that too.
“And that this old building’s made out of stone and has that big old stone support in front from like when it was a gas station,” the kid said as he walked out the door, looking up cautiously.
“Yeah and I’m glad at least some of the kids who wander in here buy stuff,” Acosta thought.
The bell over the front door jingled and a tall man in a dark suit carrying a briefcase entered.
“Afternoon,” the tall man said. “I’m Lucinius Drake. Board of Dragons.” He had a slight British accent.
“Hello,” Acosta said. He wasn’t going to buy anything either.
“I hear you have a dragon problem.” Drake said.
“Yup. The one on the roof.”
“Oh. Right.” Drake said. He stepped out the door and looked up. He leaned back in the shop. “It’s a dragon all right. A young one from the looks of it. Luckily it’s a purple one. The others breathe fire.”
“I’ve been told.” Acosta said.
“Well now. I guess I’d better pop on up and see exactly what kind of situation we’re dealing with. Better hope it’s not nesting.”
“Nesting?” Acosta said. “You mean, building a nest?”
“Really using your roof as a nest,” Drake said. “It’s, or she would just use the roof with its bowl shape as a nest. For eggs.”
“Eggs?”
“You won’t be able to just shoo a nesting dragon away,” Drake said. “They’re ornery. Besides there are rules.”
“Rules?” Acosta said.
“Relocating nesting dragons and all that. Endangered species you know.”
“Of course.”
“But then the problem is, when she starts laying the eggs,” Drake said.
“We can’t just haul them off, I suppose?” Acosta asked.
“Dragon eggs are heavy.” Drake said. “Then there’s the problem that they hatch into baby dragons. Each one about the size of a Volkswagen. The roof would be a total loss.”
“Um, so what do I do?” Acosta said, envisioning hauling everything out of the shop under cover of night.
“Just hand me a ladder and I’ll pop up to the roof and see what’s going on.”
Drake hauled the ladder and all his equipment out the door. A few moments later there was a loud crunch.
Drake stepped back into the shop, brushing dust off his jacket.
“Good news,” Drake said. “The dragon’s a male so it won’t be nesting. It should be off your roof in another few days. They’re restless that way. All you have to do is fill out a form or two.” Drake sighed and looked around. “Which I don’t have at the moment.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: the draws for the July Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were an Adventure, set in the Asteroid Belt, involving a Pie Tin. Here’s what I came up with, and I’ll post the rest of the stories on the 20th.
The Pop Suit’s circulation filter was somehow cutting back on the dizziness so Manny could stand and gawk at the stars as the asteroid they were standing on slowly rotated. He could hear the hiss of air and the low beeping of his wrist adjuster, as well as Luke’s breathing over the digital link. He stared at the distant bulk of nearby asteroids in the Asteroid Belt seeming to set behind the near horizon.
“Hey, Manny! Get back to work!” Luke’s voice crackled in Manny’s helmet. He sighed again. Time to sift through more rocks on this potentially rich asteroid.
Manny Ruiz had been twenty-four when he’d been convicted of a mass-burglary scheme. He’d spent three-and-a-half years in a work-facility on one of Jupiter’s moons and was now on a “limited-release-work-detail.” This meant he could work for pay but not much pay. He’d signed on with Luke’s Asteroid Mineral Retrieval Service. In other words, they were mining the Asteroid Belt.
“Because the damn thing’s there, okay?” That was Luke’s usual response to why he was doing this. Manny had his suspicions about other motives.
Manny pushed the chunks of rock aside with the scoop that looked like a pie tin. Nothing was registering on the scan. At least there was enough gravity on this big lump of rock. He checked the scan device. It just wasn’t working. He realized he wasn’t even hearing the small regular beep from his wrist adjuster which sent off a signal telling where Manny was, a condition of his current status. He remembered reading that some minerals in the Asteroid Belt negated some electronic signaling devices.
Manny looked upward. He could see the Earth, a small blue dot, and the Sun further in the distance; it’s brightness filtered through his helmet’s visor. He glanced around. Luke was over on the other side of the small hill.
But he could still see the ship.
He moved over to where the small four seater craft with the big storage bay was parked and went in through the airlock. Once inside, he pulled off his glove and carefully twisted the band of his wrist adjuster off his wrist. He grit his teeth; it was supposed to be in contact with his skin at all times. But maybe whatever was jamming the signals was jamming the adjuster too. He pulled it all the way off his wrist and let out a sigh of relief; no shock, no alarm. The display read: “Unavailable.”
He quickly pulled on his glove and went out through the airlock, dropping the wrist adjuster on the ground.
“Free.” Manny breathed.
When he was back inside and had pressurized the cabin he took off. Luke would be okay, there was a space freighter that checked on them every couple of days to make sure they weren’t smuggling anything. They would be there even if Luke’s signaler wasn’t working. Anyway, Manny would be hiding with friends on Earth by then.
Manny was humming as he set the automatic navigation controls for Earth. The ship headed in the opposite direction. Manny tried to switch the controls to manual. Nothing happened. The ship went on darting through the maze of asteroids heading out of the Solar System.
The ship must have been pre-programmed and Manny had set it off. He glanced at an indicator at the far end of the console: there was something stored in the cargo bay. Luke must have programmed it to take off and return after dropping off whatever was in the cargo bay while Luke and Manny were busy on the asteroid.
Manny leaned back in the pilot seat and relaxed. Nothing to do but wait and see exactly who it was that Luke was dealing with. Well, Manny could make deals too. And whoever he was dealing with, they could always use a good second story man with mining experience.
authorjeffbaker 