"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Computer’s going into the shop, so I’m posting this a day early. And I’m still celebrating my 5th anniversary posting these weekly stories: the prompt pic was off the old Monday Flash Fiction site just before I started playing along. But this story is new!
Pirouette
By Jeff Baker
“When did you get the call?”
“About a half-hour ago. Some lady in the building across the street.”
“What did she say?”
“Something about a naked man in a ballet tutu dancing on the edge of the building.”
“And there he is. Dances real pretty, too. He could fall off. Got the net set up under him.”
“Might not do any good. Take a good look.”
“Hey, waitaminute! The way the sunlight glistens off of him! That’s the bronze statue from the park downtown!”
“Looks like the call we got earlier was right.”
“What call?”
“Somebody saying a drunken nut claiming to be a sorcerer was running loose in the park with a magic wand.”
Computer was in the shop for a few days and I got lazy. Nonetheless in the last couple of weeks I did a little research for a long story/novel I may or may not write, finished and sent off a mystery to an anthology, started working on another mystery for an anthology with a deadline in October and wrote on a couple of the column/blogs I’m doing now. And I posted the fifth anniversary flash fiction story which I’d written a week or so earlier.
At least the rain had stopped, I thought. And we were in a city, I wasn’t sure which one. I hoped it wasn’t Philly or New York; I still had family there who might turn me in as a big-for-my-age sixteen-year-old runaway. I’d slept a lot since I’d gotten on the bus in that small town I’d been working in. Luckily I’d made some cash, enough for a sandwich and a ticket. I blew on the window and it steamed just a bit. I looked around trying to figure out where I was. Dark. Tall buildings, some of them with a few windows lit. I looked behind me and couldn’t make out much through the back window. The bus was dark and the few passengers were asleep. I looked at the watch I’d paid ten bucks for; it was just after one A.M.
I stared out the window beside me, thinking of some old TV show where a man was running from the police trying to find the man who’d done the crime he’d been accused of. He traveled on busses a lot I remembered. But I’d usually fallen asleep before the show was over. I must have been five or six. Now I was sixteen, and while I wasn’t a murderer I was a runaway. If the cops picked me up they might not believe my story that I was Bryce Going and I was travelling across the country looking for a job and would probably do a check and find I’d bailed after my Mom ran out on me. I doubted they knew I was gay but the places they would put runaways weren’t good for a kid gay or not no matter how big for my age I was. Especially not in 1976.
I had dozed. The squeaking of brakes and hiss of air woke me up. We were in an old bus terminal and it looked like we were the only bus there.
“We’re going to be here about thirty minutes, if anybody wants to use a real restroom or grab something from the candy machine.” That was the driver. He eyed me a moment and then walked off towards the big glass doors, presumably to the restroom. Nobody else on the bus got out. I didn’t know how long we’d been on the road. I settled back in the seat and looked at my watch again. I figured I’d go in and use the men’s room and snack machine but not when anyone was in there. I’d heard stories about restrooms in bus stops in the middle of the night.
After a few minutes I decided to get out and stretch my legs and have a look around. The terminal was white stone with curved edges instead of corners and looked like the buildings I’d seen in old movies from the 1930s. We were under a stone canopy where there was room for about three busses if they parked side-by-side. I wandered out front. There was an old red sign with “BUS” written in red neon. I looked out and saw the neon reflected on the wet pavement. I looked down the street. I could see some tall buildings, taller than I’d ever seen. A couple of them tapered off into spires. I’d been in New York, this wasn’t New York. About a block away was a tall, grey building with no lit windows but in the reflected light I could see what looked like graffiti carved on the building’s wall, in a language I’d never seen before. Was it a church? I turned completely around; some of the buildings were cornered at odd angles. I looked down at the ground.
I didn’t have a shadow. There was a streetlight right beside me and I didn’t have a shadow.
“Hey, Kid!”
I turned. The bus driver was standing just under the awning. “We’d better get going,” he said.
I started walking over, but it was a longer distance than it had been before. I was sure I’d only walked a few feet from the bus.
“C’mon,” the driver said once I was under the awning. “I made a mistake and took the wrong turn off. I’ve been here before. If you want a snack, we’ll stop someplace ahead on the road.”
I shook my head and hopped on the bus. I took my seat while the driver counted passengers. We pulled out of the bus stop and I glanced down the street. It may have been the residue of rain on the window, may have been the motion of the bus, and may have been that I wasn’t as awake as I thought I was but I thought I saw something fluttering at the top of the buildings. Not birds or smoke. It looked like the night was fluttering.
We drove back the way we came. I noticed there were no signs on the street or on the on-ramp to the highway. We drove maybe a mile and I saw a familiar looking mileage sign at the side of the road. I looked at the driver; his shoulders seemed to relax like he was breathing a sigh of relief. I walked up and leaned close to the driver and asked in a soft voice; “Hey, where exactly are we going, anyway?”
The bus driver looked at me and smiled. “Cleveland. Ohio.”
I went back to my seat and closed my eyes. The bus stop and the tall city seemed like a dream.
When I woke up, I glanced at my watch. It was the golden orange light of morning. We were on a highway, the sky was clear, the landscape was bright green and I saw a road sign. We were headed north.
I leaned back, closed my eyes and smiled.
—end—
In Memory of T.B.J.
AUTHOR’S NOTE from Jeff Baker:
“Five Years.”
I started writing these weekly flash fiction stories after stumbling across the old Monday Flash Fics Facebook picture prompt page in May of 2016 and posted my first story “Entr’acte” on May 25th, 2016 a little bit ahead of the usual posting date. Since then I’ve written at least one story a week (with pauses around Thanksgiving and Christmas) for the Monday and later Friday Flash Fiction pages. In addition I’ve written other non-flash stories and several other flashes including for the monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge that ‘Nathan Burgoine started up a few years ago. All in all it adds up to at least 52 stories a year for five years which is not bad. But the fifth anniversary is special, and so I wrote a special story. Of my series characters, the wandering Bryce Going may be my favorite. He was created for one of these flash fiction posts and I named him after a late college friend of mine, I hope he would have liked them. This week’s story is dedicated to his memory.
Three years ago I wrote in an anniversary post, words about writing that are just as meaningful today:
The best result being that I have exercised my writing muscles and maybe become a better writer as well as developing better and more regular work habits when it comes to writing. (Skills that would have served me well had I developed them and started regularly writing in College about 40 years ago!) I’ve written the weekly story when I was eager and motivated and when the words flowed as well as when I didn’t feel like writing. I’ve written standard stories as well as taken the advantage of the form to experiment with themes, styles (drabbles?) and new or series characters. Plus, I have written about a hundred stories, most for Monday and Friday Flash Fics, a handful for ‘Nathan Burgoine’s monthly flash fiction challenges and a few for submissions calls. A few of them are out in submissions right now, some originals, some reprints of stories posted on this blog. I owe a lot of thanks to Helena Stone, ‘Nathan Smith, Brigham Vaughn, Kelly Jensen, Elizabeth Lister and others too numerous to mention for their encouragement in maintaining these prompt sites. Again, many thanks!
Ray Bradbury and Anthony Boucher were both believers in writing at least one story a week, although I usually don’t have time to pull off a full-length one each week, I hope they’d approve of my efforts and persistence.
And I will now, in May 2021, paraphrase Ernest Hemingway who once said he wanted some more time to write some more short-stories; “I know some good ones.”
“I know,” Big Dave said. “That’s why they call it the Cigarette Nebula. The wonder of this part of the Galaxy.”
Big Dave, owner of Big Dave’s Stellar Rentals, is nothing if not persuasive. The Nebula looks like a thin curl of grey smoke frozen in place, hanging against the stars.
Jonny Kilbassie is not interested in the tourist spiel, he is more practical.
“How much for a cruiser?” Jonny asks.
“The big one or the small one?” Big Dave asks.
“The small one,” Jonny says, on account of how he is trying to save on resources and the smaller cruisers are a lot cheaper. But Jonny Kilbassie is still in need of immediate transportation.
“You want it with or without the map?” Big Dave asks.
“The map comes extra?” Jonny says, somewhat perturbed. This is something he has not considered. Every added expense is an added drag. Also, he has a valise of ill-gotten gains from his most recent exploit as well as the knowledge that the authorities as well as the survivors of said exploit will doubtless be looking for him and it is best if Jonny Kilbassie is nowhere around when they find out where he has been.
“Done.” Jonny says. And with that, Big Dave supplies him with his small cruiser, his star map and a modicum of fuel. With that, Jonny sets off to hide on an out-of-the-way planet on the other side of the Nebula. But what happens to Jonny Kilbassie we only find out from his log book and from the testimony of Big Dave.
Jonny’s star map is the cheapest one available. It, therefore, does not automatically update without Jonny paying an additional subscriber fee which Jonny is not aware of. The group of planets he is planning to hole-up on do not exist anymore. It is a long trip across the Nebula and there are no available fueling stations.
This is the story we put together when Jonny and the star cruiser are found floating on the other side of the Cigarette Nebula, both of them cold lumps. He should have opted for a larger cruiser with a bigger fuel tank and an upgraded map, but Big Dave, whose family had been on the losing end of one of Jonny Kilbassie’s earlier ventures. opted not to press him on that.
Surprised myself and started a longer short-story when the market dropped into my lap. Deadline’s the end of this month and all I have to do is the middle. Wrote a little on the baseball story I’m aiming at the Saturday Evening Post, and finished the Friday Flash story for last week. Wrote the Friday Flash story for this week, tightened it up and it looks good. I have been actively studying Damon Runyon’s stories about Broadway and his influence made its way into “Blowing Smoke,” which will be posed on Friday. Not influence in the use or “Runyoneese,” but in the plot and themes. I also wrote a line on a poem that popped into my head. The week of May 25th is my fifth anniversary of writing the weekly flashes and (as I am current moderator I have a couple of pics chosen in advance) so I have cheated and wrote out the anniversary story in advance. More on that later.
“So, how long has your brother been missing?” she asked.
He grinned for a moment, it almost sounded like an old radio show.
“About six months now,” he said.
“Any word from the police?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “You ask me, he just bailed on everything. His job, his girlfriend. And I almost don’t blame him.”
They’d been walking around after getting out of class. Usually they stopped and grabbed a burger or something, but this afternoon they just walked.
“My Grandmother used to say that everything happens for a reason,” she said. “And that there’s a natural order to things.”
“To everything there is a season,” he said. “That’s in the Bible. I heard it out of a jukebox once.” He stopped and faced her.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“I need to tell you something,” he said. “About a month ago I got a letter from my Brother. He’s alive. He’s okay.”
“A letter? Are you sure he’s okay?” she asked. “That he wasn’t kidnapped or something?”
“The letter was in this, this code we developed when we were a kid. Pretending to be the Hardy Boys or something.” He grinned. “That way we could pass notes in school and nobody knew what we were saying. So nobody else could read what he was saying if he was being coerced or something. Well, he’s okay. He ran off with this girl he’s known for years. She’s living in this little town and he’s working for her. He just wanted to get away.”
He smiled and took her hand. He was glad he told her. And in that moment, he couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.
Got about three flash fictions done as well as two columns. I’m working on yet another column and another Friday Flash Fics story, the one that’s due Friday. I was lamenting that I hadn’t worked on a lot of fiction lately, but I seem to still have the knack. I need to work on a few full-length stories soon.
Author’s Note: The draws for the May Flash Fiction Draw Challenge (thank you Jeff Ricker!) were a Science Fiction story set in an auditorium involving a tablet computer.
Third-period class was dull, especially in the auditorium.
Kennir shifted in her seat, the big old theater kind, one of a whole row of seats “joined together practically at the hip,” her girlfriend Zilthias had said. But it was the only available building in the decades old school, and the trick was not to fall asleep when the teacher was droning on.
“Okay,” Mrs. Dache said. “I see some of you are ready to fall asleep.”
Laughter from the class of about fourteen tenth-graders.
“Look around at this theater, how many of you know how old it is?”
Several students raised their hands, someone called out “Fifty.”
Someone else called out “Seventy-Five.”
“Seventy-Five years ago, right,” Mrs. Dache said. “Anybody know why? Why colonists on a strange planet would put up a theater?”
“’Cause they were building a school,” a kid in the front row said.
“That’s a good guess, but no. They didn’t build the school until later. The theater came first,” said Mrs. Dache.
She pulled a flat screen out of her bag which she’d set on the stage.
“Who knows what this is?”
A couple of the kids laughed. Somebody shouted out something obscene.
“No, it’s a revulator!” another kid called out.
“Nope! Screen’s too big. Anybody else?” Mrs. Dache asked.
Kennir raised her hand.
“That’s a third-generation tablet,” she said. “My grandmother has an old one she brought from Earth.” That was a little surprising, considering that the colonists only brought a few things, mostly practical ones. Not a telecomputer that was almost a hundred years old and probably could barely pick up the phone signals that had only been set up a decade earlier.
“Yes, it looks like one, but this is new,” Mrs. Dache said. “Watch.”
She tapped a couple of things and the screen came to life. The picture was blurry and green-tinted but she held up the tablet and the class could just see the video: construction crews working on scaffolding.
“This is video footage of the construction of this auditorium,” she said.
“Where’d they download it from?” Alix asked. He was always looking at available videos, to the extent that teachers went to him with questions sometimes. He knew all the historical footage on the planet. Not bad for a sixteen-year old.
“That’s the big news,” Mrs. Dache said smiling. “This was transmitted to us through a satellite link from an archive in a system about five light years away from us, in the opposite direction of the Earth. It’s started. The colonization of this part of the galaxy. After a century, we are no longer isolated. What this means is your futures will not be limited to this world, they will be infinite. You want to go to college or get extra technical training after high school, now you can.”
There was commotion for a few minutes as the future and all their dreams rose before them.
There was nothing unusual about a lighthouse on the Carolina coast, but this one hadn’t been operational for a long time. And it wasn’t built quite like any of the others.
The hurricane had uncovered this stretch of cove. The green sea-plants somehow looked like grass that had been growing on an untouched beach, but there were hints that things were extraordinary. The two men stood there and stared at the structure.
“You’re absolutely sure about this?” Murray asked.
“Yes,” said Professor Martinez. “I’ve checked and double checked. This lighthouse is of Mediterranean construction, the style and age of the stone date it to be almost three thousand years old.”
“An ancient Greek lighthouse in North Carolina,” Murray shook his head. “But why?”
“We may never know,” Professor Martinez said. “But I would guess this was the beginning of a colonization effort.”
“From Greece?” Murray asked.
“Why not?” Professor Martinez said with a smile. “We know the Ancient Chinese made it to the West Coast. The Greeks were one of the great intellectual and seafaring civilizations of the ancient world. They might have tried to spread their empire across an ocean.”
“So, where are the ruins of the temples?” Murray asked.
“My guess is they never had the time to build them. Maybe they built the lighthouse and left. Maybe something happened.” The Professor sighed.
“We may never know,” Murray said.
The Professor was eyeing the lighthouse intently. It was the size of a four story building. They had measured it, outside and in…
“Come with me,” the Professor said suddenly. Murray followed him to the lighthouse, through the sealed door, into the interior which they had drained of water.
“I should have noticed it before,” the Professor said. “The inside of this lighthouse is not as tall as the outside. The base is bigger than it ought to be. There is something under here. He stamped his foot. There was a hollow sound.
“A chamber!” Murray breathed. “Hidden for millennia!”
“Maybe before the left they wrote an account of their visit and left it for future colonists before they returned…where? Sparta? Athens? Alexandria?”
The sunlight glistened on the lighthouse as it must have on the Lighthouse that had guarded the harbor of Alexandria for scant decades all those centuries ago.
Not a lot to report: Worked on a blog post (I’m doing three blogs counting this one!!!) And wrote a few lines on a mystery/crime story I’ve been improvising now and then since I was between jobs in the summer of 2018. Hadn’t looked at it in a while; for a bit I was at least adding a line every night. Yes, it’s set in Ancient Rome.
authorjeffbaker 