"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Haven’t been writing much lately; took a week or two off. Got lazy. But, I roused myself this week and finished the Queer Sci-Fi column for January, and wrote the week’s Friday Flash Fics story. Both while I was waiting on an oil change. And today (Tuesday Jan. 5th) I checked the video for the new Monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge prompts (I’d forgotten about that!) and wrote the new story in a few hours. Feels good to be back in harness. I have a longer story to revise and one to proofread again.
To end this hideous year we did a whole lot of nothing. Took a nap from about five P.M. to nine P.M. Fireworks had popped occasionally all day. Got up and watched “Quantum Leap” reruns ’till midnight. Fireworks really started up then, and went off for a while. Went outside but saw no fireworks. It’s 1:17 now and we still hear one occasionally. Snow is on the way.
One of the good things that happened in 2020 is I stumbled across the videos of artist Pete Beard. I’m gathering he’s British and an illustrator himself, and he posts videos about the history of such subjects as Windsor McCay and a history of French illustration. Maybe his grandest achievement is a series of biographical videos “Unsung Heroes of Illustration.” In these, he devotes each video to the histories of three sometimes more neglected of forgotten illustrators. Coupled with illustration and perfectly chosen background music, the videos are of PBS quality. I recommend them highly! There are fifty so far and more on the way! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKKWGERRrnE&t=629s
I wasn’t going home for Christmas that year, and I was working so I didn’t mind. I had decorated my room with a few Christmas cards and a cheap plastic Nutcracker ornament I’d bought at a convenience store. I also had a bathroom and a fridge and stove so I wasn’t complaining too loudly. I had two days off the 24th or 25th so I was stuck in the apartment with the radio and TV. Nothing but stale TV shows and so I kept the radio on low to the station that played Christmas music and heated a TV dinner Christmas Eve to go with the six-pack of beer I’d bought. I hit the sack early, for once not disturbed by the neighbors being loud. A lot of them had gone somewhere else.
I woke up after midnight. It was dark, but there was a glistening light coming through the window. I looked out, still pretty groggy, to find that it had snowed. Not a lot, just an inch of cover or so, and so I opened up the window and looked out. It was quiet. Totally still. Totally clear. I looked up at the stars. Some of them even seemed to twinkle and I could see their colors; some yellowish, some blue. When I was younger, I knew a lot about the constellations, so I tried to pick a few of them out. I could see the Great Square of Pegasus, but I stopped and blinked. Was I looking in the right direction? I remembered Pegasus being over there, not there.
As I listened, I heard a wind blowing but no trees were stirring, and I didn’t feel as much as hint of breeze.
Then I heard the distant clattering of hooves and faint voices.
“Faster, faster!”
“He’s ahead of us, Equuleus!” That was another voice.
“Of course he’s ahead, Monoceros; he’s Pegasus,” said the first voice.
“I’m not buying into all his talk!,” came the second voice. “He doesn’t really have wings! I’ll come in first this year!”
And then, from far off, came a third faint voice as I saw two smaller groupings of stars move in behind the great square.
“Noooooooot thiiiiiiiis yeeeeeeear!”
“So you won,” said the first voice. “Now, back into our places before somebody notices.”
I heard distant laughter and blinked again, and the constellations were back where they belonged. Either that or I had woken up. I shut the window and headed back to bed.
In my dreams, I saw glittering horses racing across a starry sky.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: A Christmas story for all the stargazers out there. And Happy Holidays to all my wonderful readers!
Not a lot of actual progress to report for the last week or so. I wrote down the opening to a story whose idea I dreamed up almost forty years ago when I got my first car (Has it been that long ago?) I could show you the parking lot where I was when the silly notion first hit me.
Friday Flash Fics is officially shut down for the year, but I wanted to do a Christmas story (I do one every year!) to post, even though the one posted last week (Dec. 18th) should have been enough. I wrote a Christmas story a month ago, but I’m going to revise that one and try to sell it! So, I’ll have the story I finished about twenty minutes ago up in a day or so!
Jupiter and Saturn will appear to make their closest pass in centuries today, even though they are about half a billion miles apart! Talk about social distancing!
“Not much. This way, just watch your step,” Eric said.
I was watching. There were rocks all over these foothills and it was getting dark fast. I had my flashlight but I could hear Eric’s voice ahead of me, I followed it.
“There was a Native encampment here, way back about ten thousand years ago. But they left around, well ten thousand years ago.”
“Ten thousand of their years or ours?” I asked.
“Theirs,” Eric said.
I could hear Eric’s smile in his voice. Also, the term Native had nothing to do with North American natives back on Earth. I glanced up; I knew I couldn’t see it from here but I knew I was looking in the direction of Earth’s sun. This world had lakes and hills and this rocky desert. And people, thanks to we immigrants.
“Okay, watch your step,” Eric said. “Here, give me your hand and whisper if you talk at all.”
Holding hands with him made me smile. Eric was an expert on the ancient cultures of several worlds. He’d documented what looked like a huge pictograph that actually was a landing strip, unused in millennia. My eyes were getting so used to the dark that I almost didn’t notice the soft, yellow glow ahead.
“The Natives left behind some of their technology,” Eric said, his voice a near-whisper. “Most of it is stuff we’ve had for hundreds of years. Some of it we can’t begin to understand. Like this.”
We stepped over a small rise, which led to a long, flat plain. And for a seemingly infinite area in front of us were what looked like small, square lanterns, glowing with that same yellowish glow. The edges of the squares shimmered and wavered. These were not solids but pure light.
“Beautiful!” I breathed. “What are they?”
“We don’t know,” Eric said. “They may be some kind of projection, but we don’t know the source. The fact that they appear at regular intervals seems to work against their being landing lights. Maybe it’s some signal that never stopped sending.”
“Luminarias.” I said.
“That’s what they reminded me of too,” Eric said. “That’s why I wanted to show these to you this evening.” He grinned again and squeezed my hand. “You know what night it is back on Earth, don’t you?”
We moved in closer to the glow of a thousand otherworldly luminarias.
—end—
Wishing all the readers Happy Holidays and a Wonderful New Year, from all of us at Friday Flash Fics!
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for December’s Flash Fiction Draw Challenge (by Cait Gordon, thank you very much!) were a dystopian story (yeah, like that could happen!) set on the Eiffel Tower involving a cane. I’ve been reading a lot of stuff about Ancient Rome, so this is what came out!) ——jsb
When In Rome
By Jeff Baker
Devius Flatulus Maximus XVII raised a hand ordering the liter to stop. He stared up past the banners proclaiming Saturnalia there in Roma-Gaul Past the huge pictures of Devius Flatulus Maximus adorning the walls. The tower was made of grey metal and narrowed as it reached the top. It hadn’t been there a few minutes before. It wasn’t part of the Factorum Complex; there were no workers streaming in for their shift.
“Move over to the other side,” Maximus ordered the liter bearers. The young slave at the front nodded and the four of them proceeded to carry the leader closer for a better view. He didn’t notice someone had pasted a small banner on the back of the liter: HONK IF YOU VOTED FOR MAXIMUS; NEITHER DID ANYBODY!
The two slaves carrying the liter in the back were keeping their mouths shut.
Maximus stared again; he hadn’t heard of any new construction projects. He would have demanded the new erection be named after him. He touched the metal; there was a tingly shock.
He touched it again. Static lightning, like he’d felt on his carpet. Maximus pointed at one of the slaves at the back.
“You,” Maximus said. Then he gestured.
On the Eiffel Tower’s observation deck, M. Alden Engrenage was staring through what looked like a cross between a potbellied stove and a telescope. A moment earlier, he had been staring down at a muscular young man eating at a sidewalk café. Now, it was a set for a bizarre sitcom. Behind him, a weathered old man stamped a steel cane on the platform.
“What in the blazing Hell is this?” M. Charles Pelouse was the richest man in the E.U. “You don’t have to spend money on some kind of show; I just want a new viewing scope that works!” M. Pelouse slammed his cane against the metal railing. “I bought this tower, and by God I can buy you if your gadget doesn’t pan out!”
M. Engrenage had been paid to create a device that could see through time. He’d flipped the switch, hoping for a view of Paris in 1890. Then the scene had changed beneath them. His fingers tapped the steel bolts that held the device to the Eiffel, or rather, the Pelouse Tower. It was like the device was part of the tower now. That would explain some of this The whole tower had moved and them with it. The horizon was full of smokestacks topping dour-looking buildings.
“Well?” M. Pelouse grumbled.
“We seem to have moved,” the inventor said. “But I believe I can…”
“Um, excuse me,” came a voice in oddly-accented Greek.
“What?” M. Pelouse said.
“I am Etienne,” the muscular, red-haired young man said. “Loyal slave to Master Maximus who demands that you explain how this edifice was built without his approval.” He paused. “Unless you are working for the Gods.”
M. Engrenage spoke Greek, along with six other languages (being a polymath had some perks.) and was even more unsettled by what the young man had said, as by his ragged tunic and the chain tattooed on his right forearm. This was no joke. He introduced himself and then asked to see the paper he observed sticking on the young slave’s belt. He made sure to ask for it with a tone of authority.
“Yes, Sir,” Etienne said, responding automatically to someone who was of a higher station and handing over the rolled-up newsprint. “But my Master, the Great Maximus, demands that you immediately appear before him.”
M. Engrenage quickly scanned The Daily Acts, with a headline proclaiming “Saturnalia MMDCCLXXIII.” An alternate world! One he didn’t want to stay in.
“I don’t know how to explain this to you,” the inventor began in his best Greek, “but we have travelled from another, another…” how the hell does that police box doctor whatever explain things like this? M. Engrenage thought.
“I don’t know what the Hell you think you’re up to,” M. Pelouse said, limping towards the device, cane raised. “But you wasted too much of my money and time!” He quickly slammed the cane down on the telescope-thingie.
There was a crackle and the scene around the tower flickered in and out like a TV picture when the dog chewed the remote. In another instant 2021 flickered into view.
“See?” M. Pelouse shouted. “A trick! You’re fired.” He stalked towards the elevator.
M. Engrenage stared. Etienne was still standing there, staring over the railing.
“I’m not where we were, am I?” he asked.
“No, and I doubt we can take you back,” said the inventor.
“Good,” said the former slave. He grinned broadly. “This is a better place?”
“It depends,” M. Engrenage said, “on who you ask.”
“Woah!” Skip said. “Look at all those books! Hey, what’s that statue?” he pointed to a small, naked woman reclining on the top of a bookcase.
“A library should be nurturing, so that’s Amalthea, who suckled Zeus,” Arthur said.
“It should also be in a big house you inherit from a cousin,” Skip murmured. He stared at the rows of books, many of them old, all of them hardback. “You don’t have the Necronomicon here, do you?”
Arthur laughed. “In the vault, in the dungeon, guarded by a dragon. Naaah! But I did find this. It was my cousin’s.”
Arthur reached behind the books on one of the shelves and pulled out a frayed book tied with string.
“Open it up,” Arthur said. “But be careful.”
I set it on the round table in the middle of the room, undid the string and opened the book. It was a notebook, one of the old ones you could buy in the 1800s, filled with a handwritten scrawl. I’d seen one like it before at a friend of mine’s house when I was a kid. A family heirloom.
“Read the first page,” Arthur said.
I turned back to the first page. It started with a date:
July 16, 1865
This fool plan seems to be working. Maam is not happy I hear but there is no other way. I am out here where there are few people and nobody will no (sic) me in this disguise. At least I am a backwoodsman again for a while. Now, I am going to do more of this work for I have a messenger from Andy Jones tomorrow.
It was signed; Al.
“I’ve seen this handwriting before,” Skip said. “Somewhere. I don’t know who Al is though. If he just signed his last name.”
“He did,” Arthur said. “Sort of. A lot of that’s in code, but ‘Maam’ is just bad handwriting. That’s his wife, Mary. The writer was in hiding. It was a tense time for the country. And Andy Jones was his new boss. Being code for Johnson.”
Skip stared, his mouth open.
“A. L.” Skip said. “Not ‘Al…’”
“1865. It couldn’t be anyone else.” Arthur said. “I’m betting it was Pinkerton’s idea. There are hints of that in the notebook later on.”
“The funeral was faked,” Skip said.
“With a dummy in the casket they took back to Illinois,” Arthur said.
“And the assassination?” Skip asked. “In front of all those people?”
“Who couldn’t see into the theater box. Booth wasn’t the only actor up there. But someone really did go after Booth, that wasn’t planned.”
“What are you going to do with this?” Skip asked.
“Sell it and get rich,” he said.
“It all sounds like something out of a novel.” Skip said.
Arthur grinned. “I thought of that too! I’m writing it! I intend to have my books on those shelves right there!”
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I just ad-libbed this and it didn’t go in the way I wanted! I had fun, though! (Yes, I was going to bring on the Necronomicon!) —–jsb
Sat down about 10:00p.m. and wrote the monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge story. Sometime around 1245a.m. I wrote two more; one of them the weekly Friday Flash story. Phew! I have a column and a flash story I’m going to write for Christmas that I want to finish this week.
authorjeffbaker 