"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Here’s my story, based on the prompts of a Crime Drama, set in a Law Office involving a Railroad Tie. I set my lawyer-detectives Musselman and Pearce to work on the case! —–jeff
All the Live Long Day
by Jeff Baker
The Law Firm of Musselman and Pearce usually didn’t handle murder cases, but this one was different. For openers, all the people involved were dead. For another, the case had taken place 76 years ago in 1945. Musselman and Pearce were lawyers, not detectives but they would be be researching a case and would be paid well. Really well. They had the world’s smallest law office but still had to pay rent.
Abraham Bendix had been accused of killing his foreman in the old railroad yard in January of 1945. Someone had swung a heavy railroad tie and hit Smith on the side of the head. The trial had taken place months later. He was acquitted, but now his grandniece wanted to find out who really killed his foreman, Smith. Bendix had gone to his grave with people whispering behind his back.
It took a while but Musselman and Pearce found some letters and documents testifying to definite animosity between Smith and Bendix. None of it was reason to convict anybody. One of the notes, however, was about the railroad tie.
In their cramped law office, Pearce explained his findings.
“One of the women who worked in the office had mentioned that a discarded tie was sticking up out of the ground like a fence post and might be dangerous. Why she wasn’t called to testify I do not know. We were unable to find anybody living who had been at the trial, let alone who had known the suspect or the victim.”
Belford, Kansas had been a small town during the war, not even a post office, but the railroad yard was just outside of town. It served Millington more than Belford, but it was in Belford’s jurisdiction.
The facts were these: On the night of January 11th, 1945, Abraham Bendix had had dinner at his usual diner and supposedly gone home. The next morning, Smith was found dead. It was cold and there were no footprints in the hard ground around the body but somebody remembered Smith saying he had to inspect something in the yard. He was found laying by a large, wooden railroad tie which was laying there half buried in the ground, but was laying on its side like a railroad tie is supposed to.
Musselman and Pearce had checked the weather for that week. Bitter cold. But it hadn’t sleeted, rained or snowed.
Smith could have fallen, but had he?
The secretary’s note had been found in an old, abandoned desk in one of the yard’s old buildings, along with a receipt from January 17th of that year for ice.
Here’s how they pieced it together; Bendix had lured Smith out there in the dark, scattered ice from a freezer bag and had arranged for him to slip and bang his head on the tie that was standing there in the dark. It looked for all the world like someone had slammed him with the tie instead of the other way around. A tie that he could never have picked up. Bendix had simply kicked the tie over so it looked like it way laying there.
“So, why hadn’t the cops figured it out, Pearce?” Musselman asked me.
“The war was still on, remember?” I said. “Police officers were considered as serving their country, but most of the able-bodied young men in the area had joined up to fight. Remember, Belford was still very much a small town and the local police had been on the force for about thirty years and had probably never come up against anything like this before.”
I sighed. “Now comes the hard part…telling Abraham Bendix’s grandniece that he really DID commit murder. But in a very clever way.”
“But what happened to Carstairs, the secretary?” Musselman asked.
I smiled. “Don’t you know? She ran off with Bendix.”
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 This week’s snippets are from one of my weekly flash fiction stories. We eavesdrop on Jayse and Cassie, two best friends sharing a latte (or some such.)
Here’s snippet one:
“I don’t like funerals. I don’t like ‘em in the rain and I certainly don’t like ‘em at night,” Jayce said, sipping his coffee.
“Would you, could you with a bagel? Would you, could you reading Nagel?” Cassie said grinning and holding up her blueberry slathered bagel. The two of them laughed sitting there in the mid-afternoon sun of the coffee shop. Jayce sipped his coffee and went on.
Here’s a second snippet:
“I mean, honestly, I barely knew Uncle Karl. Remember, I told you when I was going through my David Bowie phase when I was fifteen? My hair was all, you know and I was in one of those suits that make you look skinnier? And that tie that looked like blue tinfoil?”
“Mmmmm-Hmmmmm,” Cassie said sipping her coffee.
“It helped with the look that I was pretty pale,” Jayce said.
Okay, one last snippet where Jayse recounts his one meeting with his Great Uncle:
“Anyway, Uncle Karl said he had to wear dark glasses too because his eyes were pretty sensitive to daylight, but he wasn’t wearing them then. Honestly, Girl, he looked pretty healthy and way too young to be a great uncle.” He took a big slurp of his coffee and Cassie grimaced. “Anyway, I asked Uncle Karl if the punch was spiked and he said ‘I never drink…punch.’ And then laughed like he’d made this big joke.”
All Arnie Jorgenson told me was that he’d found a place with some good grass. Me, I wasn’t into that, but he told me to meet him behind the old Power Company Building that afternoon and he’d explain.
Arnie and I had known each other since grade school over in Maize and now we both lived in Wichita. I got over to the place just West of downtown and parked in the old Power Company lot which is where Arnie ran up to me. He was six-foot two, blonde and muscular. Yeah, I noticed. But that was all.
“It’s cool, Billy. It’s great. I’ll get it at a bargain price. ‘Cause the city doesn’t own it!”
He was babbling. Maybe he was on grass.
We went around the back of the big brick building with the old glass windows and Arnie pointed to a small rise covered in thick green grass.
“We’re going to set up the lab right there,” Arnie said. “This spot hasn’t been touched in centuries. We have the pictures and the deeds. And the four families that own it are going in on it with me.”
Arnie had been working with some ecology, environment group. I didn’t expect him to do it downtown or close to it.
“My family is one of the ones that owns this, or part of it,” Arnie said. “We just found out about it recently.”
I’d known Arnie’s family had some money. But I wondered why he’d gotten me out here unless it was to offer me a job. Or something else.
“Look over here, Billy,” he said pointing at a grate at the back of the building. “And watch your step.”
I stepped over the part of the grate and looked down. A chalky, lumpy face with squinty eyes looked up at me. There was one thin arm reaching up towards the grate. I jumped back and fell on the grass.
Arnie laughed, helping me to my feet. “Hey, ‘Bro! He’s harmless! Take a look.”
I stared again. It was a statue under the grate. Of a troll.
“Yeah, I read about this,” I said. “Like the story about the three billy goats. They would use that name.”
“You’re nothing like a goat, Billy,” Arnie said. “Now come over here and be careful. I’ve got a little problem.”
Oboy, I thought. My friends didn’t call me because they had an ordinary problem.
“My Great-Great-Grandparents bought this land around 1890 with some other people. They were going to build houses, but…”
“Who dares intrude?” The voice growled from nowhere, deep, guttural, menacing.
“What the hell was that?” I asked.
“Well, we think…”
The voice growled again.
“You have the scent of the ancestral lands and waters. But you do not belong here. Begone!”
There was a rush of wind and clumps of dirt and rock began hurling at us. From out of nowhere.
We ran to the other side of the building.
“What the hell was that?!” I asked again.
“I think it was a troll,” Arnie said with a sigh. “A real one.”
“A what?” I said. I shouldn’t have been surprised. William H. Gonzalez (as my driver’s license called me) had a knack for this sort of thing. I also shouldn’t have walked over to where the voice had come from. All that experience with weird stuff had made me a little careless.
“Look,” I said. “Maybe there’s some kind of un-weird explanation for this…”
There wasn’t. The next instant the ground erupted again. I was glad that my other experience included the High School and College track teams. In other words, a lot of running.
When Arnie and I were catching our breath across the street, I pulled out my cellphone and scrolled and searched for information about trolls.
“Only thing it says here is that trolls stick to the shadows. Sunlight is about the only thing that can fight them.”
“Swell.” Arnie said. “We start digging the ground to get the Troll some sunlight, how long before that thing throws us into the building?”
“We probably wouldn’t get to the building,” I said. It could toss whole slabs of ground at us and still stay in the shade.”
I held up a hand: “What kind of equipment do you folks have?” I asked. “Like for green houses and such?”
Arnie shrugged. “Lights. Thermometers. Some heavy-duty stuff.”
“Can I see it?” I asked.
I was glad Arnie’s headquarters was not too far away. While we were going through the equipment, Arnie told me how his family had emigrated from Norway over a hundred years ago and he thought his ancestors may have accidentally brought the Troll with them and it had settled into their land. I joked that if this was an online troll Arnie could just unfriend him.
Yeah, that went over well. Fortunately, right about then we found what I was looking for. Then it was just a matter of waiting until dark.
Going after an angry nocturnal troll after the sun sets. I must be living well, I thought.
We pulled up as quietly as we could by the old Power Company building and carefully made our way in the dim light from the streetlights to the back and the mound of earth and grass. We were carrying a pair of big portable lamps that reminded me of a lantern we’d had when my folks and I went camping. I could hear the thing in the ground grumbling. It sensed us coming, or maybe it just sensed Arnie I wondered. It had mentioned his family earlier. The ground rumbled and the Troll emerged.
I was expecting a little man with thick arms and a beard wearing a red cap. Instead it was tall, bulky and looked like it was made of deep shadow. It had limbs and a vaguely human shape. It hurt my eyes to look at it closely.
The thing towered over us.
“Okay…NOW!” Arnie said shouted when the thing was out of the ground.
We turned the lights on and aimed them at the thing. The reddish beams hit the thing which let out a roar and dissolved.
I shone the light in my face and grinned. “Nothing like a little ultraviolet and infrared light to fake a little sunlight!”
We high fived each other but then there was a growl and the ground shook again. Then we heard a metallic clanking behind us. I had an awful feeling and went over and looked at the sculpted troll under the grate.
It was moving. Banging its fists against the grate and snarling. But the grating held; I guess the sculpture wasn’t made of anything sturdier than the grate.
It looked up and glared when Arnie looked in.
“You,” it growled. “You no stop me from finding way home. I can inhabit all things of the deep Earth.”
“Hey, wait,” I said. “You mean, you want to leave?”
“Need to be there. The mountains, the fjords, the rivers. My land,” the Troll said. “This not my land.”
Arnie and I looked at each other. If the Troll could really inhabit things like metal and rock…
It took some doing, and the toughest part was translating the note into Norwegian. But we shipped a carefully-wrapped stone in a large package with a letter explaining that this was a Norwegian mineral that we felt belonged in its own country. We figured the stone would be there long enough for the Troll to emerge and go where he wanted to be.
So we shipped the rock to a major Norwegian university. Arnie being part owner of a research and ecology company did help but it still cost us a bundle to ship.
And I guess Arnie did okay researching a chunk of Kansas grass in the middle of the city. I was just as glad I wasn’t working with him. I didn’t want to find out that there was some other unearthly thing there under the earth that didn’t belong.
First, let’s get to the prompts for October 2022. Then the usual explanation.
A Crime Drama
Set in a Law Office
Involving aRailroad Tie
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 October 10th, 2022.
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage and the results were the King of Hearts (a Crime Drama), the Ten of Diamonds (a Law Office) and the Jack of Clubs (a Railroad Tie.)
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week!
and features Jessie Skedderis and Shawn Rodriguez who are more than boyfriends they are vampire hunters who have been invited to Castle Dracula. They bring with them the tools of their trade but will that be enough? Oh, in this first snippet they see a familiar image as they are being given a tour…
“Which is why he called us here, I guess,” I said from further down the stairs.
“You have gained some fame in some circles, and being who he is, the current Count Dracula of Castle Dracula felt he should meet you.” Wilhelm said.
When we came upon the upper floor, I stopped and stared at one of the framed portraits. A familiar figure, slick black hair, deep-set eyes, garbed in black and holding a wolf’s-head cane.
“Reproduction,” Wilhelm said. “I told you the Master had an interest. Ah, here is your room.”
Here’s snippet two.
He balanced Jessie’s overnight bag on his shoulder and opened the door. Of course, the door creaked.
I had expected a shabby room with bare wooden floors, a fireplace and a four poster bed with worn curtains. Instead, it looked like a modern hotel room.
“Bathroom is down the hall. Dinner is at six.” Wilhelm grinned and closed the door.
Jessie plopped down on the bed. It had been a long trip.
That’s it for this week. Watch out for stray vampires. Our vampire hunters are armed with a blessed anti-vampire talisman. You should bring along the regulation garlic. Until next week…
The afternoon sky was deep blue as the car raced down the highway.
“So that’s it,” Davey said sitting there in the passenger seat. “It isn’t all going to end some day, it isn’t real.”
“What isn’t real,” Chuck said keeping his eyes on the road.
Davey tapped the dashboard. “This. Everything. Us. Hindus believe everything is destroyed and reborn in a cycle and they aren’t even real.”
Davey had always been a little “out there,” even a year before when he and Chuck had actually dated, but he hadn’t been this far out.
“I mean, it’s all an illusion,” Davey said. “Look, you know that speed zone sign up here past the curve?”
Chuck knew it. His Dad had called it a speed trap sign.
“Always been there, right?” Davey said. “Well, not if I don’t want it to be.”
Davey stared off into space for a moment then said “Right here.”
“Yeah, I see the curve,” Chuck said slowing down. But he didn’t see the sign. It wasn’t there.
Chuck laughed. “Yeah, they took the sign down and you’re playing it like it’s The Twilight Zone or something.”
“No,” Davey said. “It’s the nature of reality! You can control it sometimes if you’re in tune. I can do it, because I’m in tune.”
Davey stared out the window again.
“Look up there,” he said pointing at the sky.
Chuck stole a quick dance. Blue sky, some patches of grey clouds. Then he stared.
Parts of the blue sky were fading into patches of grey, not grey clouds but the grey you see when you take a piece out of a completed jigsaw puzzle.
They passed a billboard which looked like it had grey chunks bitten out of it.
The grass and trees were turning into big grey blank spaces. The car suddenly froze like it was just a big color photograph, no a black-and-white photograph.
Then the world, the stars, everything blanked out into grey. Grey and Chuck’s last echoed cry:
Snippets this week from one of my favorite stories (not mine!) Imagine this scene: A young man named Jessie has gone to a bar for a furtive, risky hookup as his own sexual orientation is forbidden. But there are a few twists…
For openers, in this future Earth, it is heterosexuality that is the aberration and is forbidden (except for procreation) and “homosexuality” is the norm. Jessie is living a very dangerous existence in this future world.
Also: this story “The Crooked Man” was first published in the hardly Gay-friendly year 1955. If it sounds reminiscent of a “Twilight Zone” episode, it was written by the excellent writer Charles Beaumont who penned some of TZ’s most memorable episodes, but died far too young. He had a fine hand when it came to writing about dystopian worlds.
He didn’t look like a hetero. They said you could tell one just by watching him walk—Jessie walked correctly. He fooled them. He was lucky. And he was a criminal. He, Jess Four Martin, no different from the rest, tube-born and machine-nursed, raised in the character schools like everyone else—was terribly different from the rest.
Here’s another snippet.
It had happened—his awful suspicions had crystallized—on his first formal date. The man had been a Rocketeer, the best high quality, even out of the Hunter class. Mother had arranged it carefully. There was the dance. And then the ride in the spacesled. The big man had put an arm about Jessie and—Jess knew. He knew for certain and it had made him very angry and very sad.
“Uncle Chris! Uncle Chris!” the three little girls shrilled running up as Chris stepped out of the cab of the truck.
“Yeah! Heyyyy! Who are you?” Chris said with a grin.
“Keeley!”
“Ruby!”
“Tina!”
“Oh, yeah! I remember now!” Christopher Four Sandhall said, picking all three of them up in his arms as they squealed and laughed. He could see his sister and brother-in-law sitting on the shaded porch of the house that dated back almost a hundred forty years, back to the 1960s. It had survived because Hugoton, Kansas was way out of the way.
“Hey, you guys want these?” Chris called out.
“Nope. You keep ‘em!” Chris’ sister said with a laugh. Her husband nodded his head and tended to the grill.
“Okay,” he said turning around and heading back to the truck to the delighted squeals of the girls. He plopped down in the yard and the four of them wrestled. Three pre-schoolers against a 24 year old. Chris was outclassed. After a few minutes they lay back on the grass and Chris caught his breath. He stared up at the sky. So blue. He loved it here.
“You get married Uncle Chris?” Ruby asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “They don’t assign marriages to inter-star truckers,” he said. Too long an explanation for a five-year-old? He smiled to himself. He could wait. He might petition to find a girl or guy himself. He was lucky enough to be versatile. He couldn’t possibly be as lucky as his sister, falling in love at first sight to the guy she’d been tentatively paired with during the assignment. But that could wait.
Tina jumped on his stomach.
“OOOF! Careful!” Chris said.
“Fly, Uncle Chris! Ruby said.
“Yes! Fly! Fly! Fly!” the girls chorused.
“What do you mean, fly?” Chris said, his face a half-shaved mask of innocence.
“The ancient fields of gravity,” Tina said.
Chris stared. His Electromagnetic Physics Professor had used that term; he’d quoted it when he was here before the youngest of the three girls was born. Tina was the oldest, but he couldn’t imagine her actually remembering.
“You know, you’re scary smart,” Chris said, flicking his finger on Tina’s nose. “Okay. We fly.”
The girls squealed. Chris walked over to the back of the truck and opened the back. He glanced in to the big box where the gravity field held his load, only now it was empty. Adjust the settings and the girls could play around safely in the field.
“Up you go,” he said helping them inside as they yelled with excitement. In another moment the girls were soaring excitedly around the inside, safe in the gravity field.
Chris glanced up at the sky. For now, this part of the Universe was calm. Hopefully it would stay that way and he’d only be hauling produce and supplies to colonies, not munitions. Not bodies.
Chris waved at his sister as the three kids swirled around in the field, happy in a world of their own. Soaring beyond time to see Peter Pan.
I have a serious liking for the happily-married husband-and-wife (or husband-and-husband) sleuths of fiction, such as Mr. and Mrs North and Nick and Nora Charles. I’ve written one or two series like that, but so far this is the only case for Josh and Adam (who probably aren’t married yet.) Here, they find danger at a client’s wedding. Oh, and here’s a link to the original story: https://authorjeffbaker.com/2017/11/06/monday-flash-fics-with-hors-d-oeuvres-by-jeff-baker/
The reception had been going on for about twenty minutes when Adam leaned over and nuzzled Josh’s ear.
“Don’t react and don’t look,” Adam said. “He just walked in.”
“Is he armed?” Josh asked.
“I can’t tell,” Adam said.
Josh and Adam had been hired by one of the grooms just in case the one’s ex showed up at the wedding to cause trouble. The ceremony had gone on without incident but now they were all seated at big picnic tables in the park next to the wedding venue.
Here’s another snippet:
The gist of it was that Chris’ ex-boyfriend Chaz had said he was going to break up the wedding. He hadn’t threatened violence but Walter had remembered Josh from school and that he and Josh had opened their own detective agency.
“Chaz can be mean,” Chris had said.
The grooms were paying Adam and Josh plus renting their tuxes. It was a formal wedding, plus, there were free hors d’ oeuvres. Then Chaz showed up.
Here’s one more snippet:
Chaz was six-foot-something and probably would have looked at home in any football uniform instead of the suit and tie he was wearing. For a moment he stared at the table loaded with food. With a yell, he tipped the table over. In the corner, the band stopped playing.
“Oh, yeah, he’s a lot sloshed,” Adam said as he and Josh jumped up from their table.
“Chaz no like buffet table, Chaz smash,” Josh said.
And that’s the snippets for this week. I’ll be back next week, and I promise Josh and Adam will be back with another case someday soon! ———jeff
