"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
“Pwhew! How hot is it, anyway?” Charlie asked, looking up at the inside of the tent.
“Somewhere in the nineties,” Anthony said, wiping his forehead with the apron his Grandmother had him wear.
“Perfect weather to be out on an asphalt parking lot in a tent full of explosives.” Charlie said.
“Tell me about it.” Anthony said.
Anthony Aquila and Charlie Ford were going to be Juniors in High School that fall.
“Month and a half ‘till school starts up,” Charlie said.
“Presumably it’ll be cooler in September.” Anthony said.
“Yeah, but school starts in August. And you never know about the weather in Kansas.” Charlie said.
Anthony’s family had been selling fireworks in summer for decades. As soon as he was old enough Anthony was put to work in the tent they had in the big parking lot of the grocery store.
“So, what do you have for sale?” Charlie asked. “I mean, that I can afford.”
“Uhhhh…snakes? Smoke bombs? Sparklers?” Anthony ticked off the items on his fingers.
“Hey, remember a few years back when we set off snakes on the sidewalk?” Charlie said.
“Yeah, there’s still black burn spots on the pavement in front of the house.” Anthony said laughing.
“Snakes, then. Definitely.” Charlie said.
“Coming right up,” Anthony said as Charlie selected a little plastic bag with the black pellets and a label with a black snake complete with fangs and yellow eyes.
Anthony punched up the numbers on the register as Charlie handed over his cash.
“And here’s to the Summer of Nineteen-Eighty-Six and the Class Of Eighty-Seven.” Charlie said.
“Yeah,” Anthony said. It was July first. Time was moving by.
“Okay…yeah…I got it…” Julian said into the phone. “Just come in sometime this week and we’ll see what we can do…yeah…yeah…goodbye.”
Julian hung up and glanced over at Ryder.
“Well, that’s another one. Got a tattoo here last month.”
“From Elvis?” Ryder asked, but it went without saying.
“Yeah.” Julian said. “Right down her arm. A lightning bolt. Said she nearly ran over somebody the other day.” He sighed. “Felt somehow the tattoo was responsible.”
“Well, it was wasn’t it?” Ryder said.
“This is no way to run a business,” Julian said shaking his head.
Julian Syms and Ryder Boyd had been together for five years and had gotten tired of working for other people when they decided to open their own tattoo parlor. They’d been in business for a year when Elvis Ambroise had shown up. At least he called himself that. He had impeccable credentials and solid skills as a tattoo artist. But then they found he had been mixing his own ink from a very unorthodox formula. For that and other reasons they had fired him months ago. Then they started hearing from customers Elvis had inked. Strange things were happening to them. A man had tried to strangle a passerby on the street. A kid had set fire to his own house. They all said somehow their tattoos had compelled them to do it.
After Elvis had left, Julian and Ryder had found his backpack in the back of a cabinet in the back room. It had a bottle of that homemade ink and a couple of cabalistic books in it.
“That,” Ryder had said, “is a bad sign.”
They’d gone to a priest Ryder had grown up knowing and he had blessed their tools and ink. Using them on the tatts Elvis had done seemed to negate the effects.
“I happily signed up for anything to marry you, but I didn’t expect a redo of that old TV show about the creepy antique store,” Ryder said kissing Julian on the cheek.
“Yeah,” Julian said grinning and kissing him back.
The door burst open.
A huge man stood in the doorway, his shirt and pants ripped. On his chest was a green tattoo of the Hulk snarling.
“What the Hell did you people do to me?” the man yelled.
—end—
Author’s Note: Okay, I hadn’t expected to do a riff on “Friday the 13th The Series,” but it fit the picture. —-jeff June 27, 2025
I’ve been posting stuff from J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding’s fun novel “Office Of the Lost” for Pride Month. Today we meet the adorable Minkis.
Friday, June 27, 2025
Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work in progress or part of someone else’s work with LGBT characters at Rainbow Snippets, here https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
For Pride Month I’m posting snippets from “Office Of the Lost,” a fun new novel written by my friends J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding. https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/book/office-of-the-lost/ Our heroes, Leopold Lane and Desk Fae Crispin get a breather this week from bopping around dangerous worlds as they are back at the tree apartment Crispin calls home. Oh, and we get to meet Minkis! (But all Hell is about to break loose!)
A delighted chittering greeted him.
“Minkis!”
The gray squirrel approached cautiously, sniffing at him as if he wasn’t sure whether Crispin was real.
Small wonder. I’ve been gone for days. He reached into his pocket and held out an acorn.
Minkis stood on his hind legs, took it greedily, and dashed back toward the giant oak tree they both called home.
Awwwwwww! So sweet! (Of course, all Hell is abut to break loose, like I said!)
They filmed that scene right here,” Anthony Lee said, staring up at the fire escape a floor or so up. Grey metal draped with blue jeans, shirts and baby clothes. “Twenty-nine years ago. Seen it in reruns at least two dozen times.”
“Wow!” Marcus Guyle said, staring up.
Anthony had grown up there in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Marcus was from Minnesota.
“The car roared down Mason Street…” Anthony said, pointing.
“The yellow G.T.!” Marcus said delightedly.
“…and turned at the corner and stopped right under this fire escape.”
“Wow!” Marcus said again.
“And that’s when Berto Blasco, played by a stuntman, wearing that jacket…”
“With the green stripes on it!” Marcus said.
“Yeah. Ran onto the fire escape and jumped down to the alley and got into the car.”
“The door barely closed when the car roared off!” Marcus said laughing.
“Berto complaining about Maxx’s driving all the way!” Anthony said. Laughing too.
“You know, the scene of him running through the apartment?” Anthony said. “That was filmed on a sound stage. That was my Grandma’s apartment up there and she wouldn’t have allowed any running. Even from a high-paid actor!”
“Hey,” Marcus said. “Were you there when they filmed this? Did you meet Stagg Arthur?”
“Naaah! I was about one year old. But supposedly I was up there, asleep in a crib in the bedroom.” Anthony stared up again. “At least, that’s what Grandma told me.”
“Y’know, Stagg Arthur went to High School down the road where I grew up.” Marcus said.
“Yeah, you told me.” Anthony said. “Of course back then he was just called Artie Gist. Saw his yearbook once, he did a bunch of plays.”
They both stood and stared up at the clothes swaying in the slight breeze on the metal railing.
“Look at that!” Anthony said pointing up. “Blue, red, orange, yellow…”
“Yellow? Where?” Marcus said, looking up and squinting.
“The stain right there,” Anthony said. “On the white shirt.”
“Oh.”
“Looks like a Rainbow Flag to me!” Anthony said.
Marcus grinned and the two men kissed standing under the fire escape. They kissed again and held it for a moment as a car drove by on the street and honked.
Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work in progress or part of someone else’s work with LGBT characters at Rainbow Snippets, here https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
For Pride Month I’m posting snippets from “Office Of the Lost,” a fun new novel written by my friends J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding. https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/book/office-of-the-lost/ We find Desk Fae Crispin and Leopold Lane in another world having, uh, leaped away from a Lovecraftian thing that materialized in Leopold’s apartment. Leopold isn’t used to things like that or to being called “Leo.”
“What was that thing?” The cloud thing, with the teeth?” Leo was staring at Crispin as if he would somehow know, his earlier hostility apparently forgotten.
“You were mad at me just two minutes ago–”
“Sorry about that. My blood sugar’s a bit low. I get a little…” and he wobbled his hand in a way that reminded Crispin of a three-footed sploot.
“Um…splooty?”
Here’s a bit more…
“Crispin scratched his head. “I have no idea. It looks a bit like the things that chased us out of your…” He’d been about to say “garbage pit,” but that didn’t sound politic. “Um…your flat. But what they are, where they came from, what they want” —could an ethereal being truly want anything? “I haven’t a clue.”
More snippets for Pride Month next week. See you then! —–jeff
Continuing Horror MAYhem a bit longer, I read “The Summer People” by Shirley Jackson (1950) The beginning reminded me of Nesbit’s “Man-Sized In Marble,” but Jackson’s story takes the very normal and turns it progressively darker.
Blending Horror MAYhem with Arthur Conan Doyle’s May 22nd Birthday (also my Dad’s Birthday!) I kept to my tradition of honoring both men with a read of Doyle’s work. I finally got around to reading Doyle’s “The Parasite,” which I have in several collections including “Dracula’s Brood.” The story is one of, if not quite parasitic vampirisn, obsession and mesmerism. The ending was a bit of deus ex machina and I expected that denouement in the middle of the story with the narrator’s predicament going on, but still a fun and spooky story. (It’s one of those tales told through entries in a diary/journal, by the way.)
Also read Doyle’s “The Fiend Of the Cooperage.” A horror story that eschews the supernatural for a real-world terror. Set in Gabon off the coast of Africa. I could see where Doyle was going with it, but it was nonetheless horrifying! Reminicent of Doyle’s hero E. A. Poe as well as another of Doyle’s stories.
When someone reads Arthur Conan Doyle, the characters are alive. Not every writer can say that.
And I’ll consider this a last blast of Horror MAYhem; in early June I read Algernon Blackwood’s story “Ancient Sorceries.” I’d never read one of his John Silence stories before. Maybe overly long and wordy but not a word wasted! Utterly gripping with plenty of cat imagery in a tale of a little French town where the dark ways of the past are not gone.
I’ve been dipping into “This Is A Thriller,” by Alan Warren, a non-fiction book about the 1960s horror anthology hosted by Boris Karloff. Absolutely marvelous!
Read Frank Belknap Long’s sweet and fun story “The Mississippi Saucer.” That was anthologized in the Asimov/Greenberg/Waugh anthology “Flying Saucers.” A book I should do a whole post on sometime! And Long is a neglected writer, mainly associated with Lovecraft but he was so much more.
Re-read Jack Finney’s “The Other Wife,” in the Fifth Annul “Year’s Best Sci-Fi” from Judith Merrill, which I picked up in Emporia.
Read a fun picture book that’s going to be a Christmas Present so I won’t mention it here!
Read Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Tom Toothacre’s Ghost Story” for Stowe’s June 13th Birthday. Spooky and fun with a different way to get rid of ghosts! From about 1871.
Finally finished J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding’s fun novel “Office Of the Lost.” Sweet, well-done and funny!
Read the regular online offerings by E. H. Timms and Kaje Harper, as well as J. Scott Coatsworth’s weekly serial “Down The River.”
Read “The Christmas Shadrack” by Frank R. Stockton. I LOLed at this sweet and funny comedy of romance, manners and magic in Victorian-era America. Published in 1891.
Read Ray Bradbury’s “Memento Mori.” One of those macabre Bradbury stories that nonetheless makes you smile.
Read Gahan Wilson’s “The Big Green Grin.” This and the Bradbury are in the anthology “Gathering The Bones,” edited by Campbell, Dann and Etchison.
Had lunch with my friend Bryan Dietrich, estimable sci-fi writer and poet and he signed a copy of “Drawn To Marvel,” a collection of Superhero poetry he edited with Marta Ferguson. It has some of his poems in it too!
AND I ordered (and I don’t believe I did!) a collection of comic book stories: “The Detective Chimp Casebook.” I’d never read a Detective Chimp story before and these little crime stories are charming as all get-out! Mostly written by John Broome and illustrated by Carmine Infantino the stories were first published in the 1950s.
Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work in progress or part of someone else’s work with LGBT characters at Rainbow Snippets, here https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
For Pride Month I’m posting snippets from “Office Of the Lost,” a fun new novel written by my friends J. Scott Coatsworth and Kim Fielding. https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/book/office-of-the-lost/ They alternated writing chapters, and last week we met Crispin, a Desk Fae at the aforementioned Office. This week, we meet Leo, uh I mean, Leopold Lane. A guy with enough bad luck to plot a soap opera for a decade.
His apartment was only a few blocks away, on the upper floor of a house that had been pretty nice a hundred or so years ago but had long since sagged into disrepair. His place—a cramped bedroom, a living room with a closet-sized kitchen, and a Lilliputian bathroom—was in a converted attic reachable by two flights of rickety outdoor stairs. The climb had been miserably hot in summer and was now cold and damp, making the ascent both dangerous and uncomfortable. Today he walked up the stairs more slowly than usual because his ankle was sore from the puddle incident, and he somehow managed not to fall to an untimely death on the cracked and weed-infested pavement of the parking lot below.
Okay, here’s just a little more of our introduction to Leopold Lane:
But still, Leopold liked it. He found it charming that none of the walls were plumb and none of the corners formed perfect right angles. His landlord had seemingly used the dregs of several paint cans, resulting in walls that had large patches of varied whites and beiges. Leopold liked that too. He loved it when the floors and rafters creaked and when the pipes made noises like dying ancient sea monsters.
Also, it was cheap.
I like Leopold!
Oh, and for the record, Scott and Kim alternated writing the chapters of “Office Of the Lost.” Kim wrote the ones from Leopold’s point-of-view and Scott wrote the ones from Crispin’s point-of-view. We’ll see them together in next week’s snippets.
Night in the metropolis of Goat’s Town and the blazing headlights of the Ecolo-Car cut through the enshrouding darkness as Captain Ecology and Compost Boy are patrolling, looking for local miscreants.
“We’re fortunate that the Ecolo-Car is powered by an ecologically-viable mix of greens and vegetable juices that react with the car’s special engine,” Captain Ecology said from behind the wheel.
“And that it smells like a herd of cows threw up,” Compost Boy grumbled to himself, wrinkling his nose.
“There! Look!” Captain Ecology said, slowing down the car and pointing to a darkened storefront. “Look at the window!”
“Golly, Captain Ecology,” Compost Boy said. “Somebody did a job on another window!”
“Yes. Doubtless high-grade soap, like at the other stores around Main Street.” Captain Ecology said.
What had actually been a main street through town during Goat’s Town’s beginnings was now, over 200 years later, several blocks to the south of the main drag and the Business District.
“The last few nights. A different window every night.” Compost Boy said. “It doesn’t sound like the work of the Chicken Queen. Or the Lariat. Or the Squashmaster. Last time we talked none of them were even in town.”
“Have you dated every super villain?” Captain Ecology asked, almost suppressing a smile.
“Not the Silver Shrieker,” Compost Boy said. “She was hot but she was interested in you, remember?”
“Don’t remind me.” Captain Ecology said. “It would help if there was a letter sent to the papers or the police signed The Soaper or something.
The two of them sat and stared at the soaped window, tinted a light blue in the foam.
“Well, at least it’s clean.” Compost Boy said.
“Cleanliness is no excuse for vandalism,” Captain Ecology said. “But it fits a pattern.”
“What pattern?” Compost Boy said. “Some super villain who’s still mad his Mom made him take baths?”
“The soapings have all taken place the last couple of weeks on this street. And this is the street the Goat’s Town Pride Parade is taking place on this weekend!”
“Golly, that’s right! I forgot!” Compost Boy said.
“Commemorating the first Pride parades in New York about six years ago,” Captain Ecology said. “And that gives us our biggest clue! The soap!”
“It’s some kind of protest?” Compost Boy said.
“In a way, yes,” said Captain Ecology. “Each of the store windows lathered with a different color of soap. Matching the colors of that Rainbow Pride flag.”
“Golly, you’re right again!” Compost Boy said.
“You’re a twenty-five year old Bisexual, you should have figured this out before I did.” Captain Ecology said. “What do you know about all these soapings?”
“I’ll bet it isn’t just one guy. I bet it’s a whole gang,” Compost Boy said. “And probably we’ll never catch them!”
“Probably not.” Captain Ecology said. “Anyway, I heard that marriage-minded arachnid-themed arch-criminal is back in town and has her sights on marrying and robbing another sucker at Goat’s Town’s exclusive Club Sixty-Eight.” He started the car up again.
“Golly, Captain Ecology! You mean, Spider Ma’am!”
As the car drove off, Captain Ecology’s voice could be heard over the engine’s roar.
“It’s not just a matter of a bunch of people marching for one thing. What we are doing is standing up for the right, for the good, for the just. One person can affect lots of other people. Once we all understand that, maybe we won’t need a parade like this anymore.”
authorjeffbaker 