Wrote the weekly flash story on Thursday, wrote about a page and-a-half on the story I’m sending off in Fall (when this market opens up.) Also went through (all) my notebooks, looking for the notes to the story, finally realized it’s from 2018! Found it, including an ending I wrote when I was considering writing this story!
That’s it for now!
The Comet
By Jeff Baker
We’d been playing tennis on the old court on the edge of town (the one without lights) until it got dark. We were far away from town so we could see the stars without interference from the streetlights. I could make out the Milky Way stretching across the heavens.
“Hey, look!” he said, pointing up with his racket. “There’s that comet everybody’s been talking about.”
“Yeah,” I said. It was dim and fuzzy but definitely had a tail and definitely wasn’t a star.
“What do they call it anyway?”
“Some anagram.” I said.
“Yeah, Comet NORAD or NORAD…”
“Or COVID,” I snickered.
“Smartass!” he said.
We stood and watched the comet.
“You know, my Granddad discovered a comet once, or at least, he took a picture of one.”
“Really?” I said.
“Yeah,” I said. “In 1956. LOOK Magazine. Picture of the tops of a bunch of houses with the comet in the sky overhead. Granddad had to climb on top of the house to get the picture. His Dad about paddled his butt. But they framed the picture from the magazine.”
“Wow,” he breathed. “Hey, this isn’t the same comet, is it?”
“Naah. That one won’t be back for a thousand years. Something like that. This one won’t be back for longer. Probably.”
“You know, I think by then they’ll have the lights on the tennis court fixed.”
We stood there and watched the comet move among the stars.
—end—
Wrote the Friday Flash story Friday (early, like around 2:00am!!!) Came off okay for a flash mystery, actually using a couple of characters I whipped up back in 2016 for an earlier flash story.
Also proofread, tightened up and read aloud (to Darryl) the mystery I’ve been working on for months and meant to work on for the past few weeks. Maybe it’s better that I waited. I may have seen a few things I hadn’t before.
Now, I have a few stories and the longer one I’m sending off to a magazine this fall when the market opens up.
That’s it for now!
Surfin’ Bird
By Jeff Baker
There was no other way.
Donna Reidel stared at the ocean, at the man pulling the girl on water skis. It looked fast and wet. She shuddered. Staking out somebody in a car she was used to, waterskiing she wasn’t.
Donna and Sean Reidel had been hired by the hotel to investigate a series of jewel thefts. Items stolen from the rooms because rich vacationers would keep the jewels they were going to wear, and didn’t trust the hotel safe.
“Too many people can get into that,” one of the guests had said.
The Malaki Hotel had fake-Hawaiian décor and high prices for its exclusive stretch of California beach and rich clientele. Clientele who liked to be seen rich when they weren’t in swimwear; the hotel banquet hall hosted lavish parties in its expansive ballroom seemingly nightly.
“Expensive ballroom is more like it,” Shawn had said. “But the guests live in their own little world.”
It hadn’t taken long to find the guilty party; a gang of thieves had infiltrated the staff, even security. But recovering the jewels was another matter. The Reidels had staked out the delivery area, even the dumpsters. Somebody was delivering the stolen goods to someone outside the carefully-screened hotel property.
Donna hung on as Shawn pulled her at a seeming thousand miles an hour over the water; she had learned to waterski when she’d been undercover at a waterpark a year ago. She kept her eyes open. The song “Surfin’ Bird” was going through her head.
She saw it.
She waved at Shawn to circle back. She snagged the small plastic bag floating on the water’s surface. In it was a diamond necklace.
The clear plastic and glittery diamonds blended in with the waves. They would be picked up by one of the gang on a jet ski. Donna and Shawn called the police and the Coast Guard who managed to round up the rest of the gang and recover the jewels.
The hotel, of course, was grateful. They paid the Reidels their usual fee (daily, plus expenses) and even let them stay on another week free in the rooms they’d been put up in. They stayed away from the water skis, though. Blanket on the beach with an ice chest of bottled tea and each other under an umbrella was excitement enough.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Reidels first appear in my story “The Cutesey Bear Caper,” back on August 14, 2016. https://authorjeffbaker.com/2016/08/14/monday-flash-fic-cutesy-bears-and-intrigue/ After four years, it’s nice to have them back! —–jsb 8/21/20.
My story “The Alchemical Arrangement,” (as by Skip Hanford) is one of the flash fiction stories in Queer SciFi’s latest anthology: “Innovation!” I’m in pretty good company, including David Gerrold! Enjoy!
——–Skip J. Hanford, August 18, 2020
IN-NO-VA-TION (Noun)
1) A new idea, method, or device.
2) The introduction of something new.
3) The application of better solutions to meet unarticulated needs.
Three definitions to inspire writers around the world and an unlimited number of possible stories to tell. Here are 120 of our favorites.
Innovation features 300-word speculative flash fiction stories from across the rainbow spectrum, from the minds of the writers of Queer Sci Fi.
Series Blurb:
Every year Queer Sci Fi holds a flash fiction contest that solicits stories from writers around the world, and publishes the best stories as an annual anthology.
Non-Exclusive Excerpt:
“The fields are overgrown, have been for years with all the Bios underground. The wind kisses the grass in serpentine patterns long forgotten, patterns the Bios couldn’t imagine anymore. My mechanical hand stores the seed envelope in the mechanical pocket in my androgynous torso. In these suits, there is no gender. Gender is, always has been, in the mind. And I am finally, unequivocally, female.” —Seed, by Val Muller
“No one in the village knew what the Change would bring. They never saw it happen. They only knew what they had been promised: the Change would bestow three gifts.” —A New Way, by Rory Ni Coileain
“The girl kissed her, hard. Then backed away, grinning, teasing, drawing her to the end of the hallway and a flight of stairs leading downward. She took two steps and gazed back up at Lilian, one hand outstretched. Her brilliant red lipstick wasn’t even smudged. Her skin glowed in the harsh white torchlight.” —The Thing With the Bats, by Mary Francis
“Interspecies sex is outlawed on the Freespec Interplanetary Space Station. Politicians call it a safety measure. But I’ve been in the Medical Corps for half my lifecycle, and I call it criminally negligent prudery. Leaders would rather let innocents die needlessly—punctured by sperm darts and dissolved in sacks of voltaic pleasure mucus—than give them the knowledge to express their feelings safely.” — Are My Underwater Sperm Darts Normal?, Brenna Harvey
“The bell’s brassy gong echoes through the flat; the walls blush crimson. See, see! He’s at my door. The live feed shows him sniff his armpit; cup his breath. He wants to impress, but I’m impressed already. His lips softly part; he brushes them with stubby fingers, as he waits. Ugly fingers. Ugly hands. Scrawny neck. Milky eyes. But those lips, see, they’re perfect, just perfect. Plump n’ pale, a slither of my future.” —Just perfect, by Redfern Jon Barrett
“Lekke looked down over the valley, First People’s home for as long as any tales or dreams could tell. Now only Spirit Dreamer Manoot, neither he nor she but both, and Lekke, elder healer, were left. Lifetimes of Long-legs’ raids had driven First People to their deaths—or, some few, to the Way. If there truly was a Way.” —Going Back,” by Sacchi Green
“Savinna limped into her lover’s workshop, her hip still sore from tangling with the marabbecca which had knocked her into its well before she managed to kill it. Such was the life of a monster hunter. Not at all surprised to see Larissa hunched over her bench, hard at work tinkering with something, Savinna ghosted her hand over Larissa’s back.” —Those Who Hunt Monsters, by Jana Denardo
“The baby cried as Freya lowered the bartering bucket into the wishing well. Many had come to the tree-shrouded clearing to make exchanges—a bushel of azure apples for a sword, a woven blanket for a day of rain. The well had been the final creation of a thousand-year-old inventor. But dead wizards often don’t anticipate how their gifts birth consequences.” —The Bartering Bucket, by Diane Callahan
Giveaway:
Queer Sci Fi is giving away your choice of a $20 Amazon gift card OR a print copy of four of the other five flash fiction books in the series – Flight, Renewal, Impact, and Migration (US only unless you are willing to pay the shipping outside the US) with this tour. Enter via Rafflecopter:
<a class=”rcptr” href=”http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47138/” rel=”nofollow” data-raflid=”b60e8d47138″ data-theme=”classic” data-template=”” id=”rcwidget_t1jpke15″>a Rafflecopter giveaway</a>https://widget-prime.rafflecopter.com/launch.js
Direct Link: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/b60e8d47138/?
Buy Links:
Publisher: https://www.otherworldsink.com/book/innovation/
Amazon eBook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08D2M9NXX/
Amazon Paperback: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08DSR7H1M/
iBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/id1523783080
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/innovation-24
Author Bio:
120 authors contributed stories for this volume:
Photo by InstaWalli on Pexels.com
Seeing the Summer Triangle
by Jeff Baker
Some things are constant regardless of what is going on here on Earth. The Summer skies put on their ancient show no matter what. This evening, around eight p.m. as the sky’s blue was deepening after sunset, I stood in a parking lot near my house and watched bright Jupiter and dimmer Saturn climb the Eastern sky, looking like a set of barbells; or like the ultimate social distancers. (Mars will follow in a few hours!)
Surmounting it all, higher in the sky, becoming visible in the evening’s dimming light; the bright stars of the Summer Triangle. Not an official constellation, the pattern has been called by this name since the 1800s (popularized by H. A. Rey among others!) and has been a noticeable star pattern since the days when Ancient Chinese astronomers took note and wove a story of to separated lovers around it.
The Summer Triangle is made up of three bright stars; Altair, Deneb and Vega. Each part of other constellations in their own right, and a part of this obvious asterism (and Vega fated to be the North Star again in a few Millennia when the Earth’s Axis shifts a little more!) which has become a familiar friend to stargazers from navigators to backyard astronomers across the Northern Hemisphere.
As much a part of Summer nights as the sound of crickets and locusts.
—end—
Wrote both the Friday Flash Fics story (which I had doped out in my head) and a poem which I sent off to The New Yorker!!
And then, totally by accident, I found that I had one of my Queer SciFi columns reprinted on the Amazing Stories website! A helluva credit! In fact, I’ve had several columns posted there! Wow!!!
Thats it for now!
The Pagoda of Shadows
By Jeff Baker
“The gods have condemned this place. The Spirits have fled. And you should too.”
The old man cast a backward glance at the tall structure. Familiar, slanted roofs, dark windows, somehow more dark than they should be.
“How long have you been here?” I asked.
“Fifty years,” the Old Man said. “Since my youth. As my Father and his Father and his Father and their fathers before me.”
“And you have no one to take over for you?” I asked.
“This place has driven away all that is good,” the Old Man said. “The only reason to be here is to destroy this place and send the evil back where it came from.”
“Destroy it?” I said.
“The only way to be rid of this invading abomination is to destroy the building. The earthly anchor that keeps it on this plane.” The old man shuddered. “To do so would risk your soul. Your very being.”
“I am called here,” I said. “I must enter. It is my duty to confront.”
The old man took a deep breath.
“You must lay down all weapons outside the threshold,” he said. “For only your own power can defeat what is inside this place. Only the light that is within you.”
I had only the sword, sacred to generations of my family. I set it down in front of the door. Then the Old Man and I bowed to each other. I removed my shoes and walked inside the pagoda.
There was no furniture in the large room inside. Just carpeting and cool air. And darkness. There were squares of light on the floor but the windows looked outside to pitch blackness, even there in midday.
I stood in the middle of the room and raised my arms to the ceiling. The squares of light began to swirl around the room; the shadows blended with them into tendrils, surrounding me, groping me. I rose into the air.
I laughed.
“Father,” I said. “I am home. We are one.”
The darkness began to expand outside the pagoda.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The prompts drawn (thanks, Cait Gordon!) for the August Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were a horror story, set in a bakery involving a spoon. I’ve been in food service, so I’m familiar with the setting. I’ve written seven stories so far about Billy Gonzalez and his knack for stumbling into the weird. Here’s the latest.
Night of the Risen Dough
by Jeff Baker
It was about nine thirty in the evening and my new boss and I were standing in the dim kitchen at the back of the bakery.
“Okay, Mr. Gomez,” he said.
“Uh, Gonzalez,” I said. “Billy.”
“Right. Somebody will be here to open up at around six-thirty, and the truck will be here to pick up the bread right after that. We’ll expect all of these,” he gestured at the tall, wheeled racks in the large, back room, “to be filled. You know how to do it, right?”
“Yessir!” I said.
“So far you’ve done pretty well, but this’ll be your first time on your own. Take a break at about one-thirty for a half-hour, the orders will be taken off-site. Got that?”
“Yessir.” I said. This was my first job in four months; I would have done about anything.
“Okay, Gonzalo, I’m taking off. Just don’t turn on the old oven back in the back.”
I nodded and didn’t correct him.
“I’ll see you tomorrow evening. Be careful! And lock the door behind me.”
“I will! Thanks!” I said.
I’d been working the day shift at Kolobok’s Bakery for three weeks. The night guy had quit, so I’d been handed the position: longer hours, working nights but more money. I just had to get used to going to bed during the Today Show.
I had the radio down low and I started rolling the dough, filling the tray, putting it in the oven setting the alarm. There was a rhythm to it, once I got started. Working in the bakery in the old, stone building on North Broadway didn’t go with my degree, but neither did unemployment. I was just glad I didn’t have to mix the flour with the huge old spoon they had hanging over the door.
The night went on, and when I was near the front windows, I could see an occasional set of red taillights on the highway in the dark. I managed to fill up the first cart with trays of baked bread, the smell driving me wild, me sweating from the heat. Before I knew it, it was past midnight and I was getting hungry. At around one-thirty, I took a break, pulled my bottle of soda out of the cooler and started in on the sandwich I’d stashed with it, really tempted to stick the meat and mayo on some of the fresh bread I was making.
I checked my cellphone; it was about one-fifty and I was going to have to start up again, when I heard a grating grunt from the darkened back of the bakery. It had been built in the 1920s and was full of sounds. Besides, the ovens were still on and the metal pans made all kinds of noises when they heated up.
I started in rolling the dough again. I was filling up another of the racks when I heard the grating noise from the back again; this time louder. I remembered what my Boss had said about there being an old oven in the back and decided to check it, just in case something was falling apart or someone was breaking in. Just in case, I grabbed the big spoon; I’d thought it was wood but it was metal and it was heavy. I felt like I was in my first apartment just off Arkansas Street where I’d kept a baseball bat by the bed and had jumped at every sound. Still, I’d had my share of strange encounters.
The back of the bakery was a jumble with racks and storage and my Boss’ office and a large room behind it that I’d only been in once. That was the original bakery with an old stone oven built right into the stone walls. Dated back almost a century. I switched on the lights and glanced around the storage area. Nothing out of place. I looked around the old stone oven. Couple of broken chairs and a tray on the floor. And the grating noise again. Louder. Like metal pushing against something.
The door of the oven pushed open and the rack stretched out, piled with greyish, expanding dough, like in an episode of “I Love Lucy” I’d seen. The dough spread out around the oven and suddenly I realized the huge wad of dough wasn’t expanding, it was sitting up!
It slid off the rack and moved slowly towards me, indentations in the front corresponding to a mouth. I yelled at it to keep back and that I wasn’t playing around. I swung the big spoon and connected with the thing’s arm which fell off with a splat. Another fingerless appendage started to grow out of what corresponded to the dough thing’s shoulder as it stepped on the detached arm which suddenly blended back into the creature. I turned to run and tripped over the broken chair.
The thing bent down and covered my face with a paw, hand, whatever. I breathed in dust and flour. I flailed with the big spoon and as I connected, the thing recoiled. I scrambled to my feet and ran for the front door. I could hear the thing behind me, feet slapping the cement floor. I grabbed the key in the lock just as the thing grabbed me; I screamed, I heard the thing make a hollow, horrible sound and I pushed the door open, falling onto the pavement outside.
The air was cool, the street noises ordinary and the thing stood there for an instant and let out a long groaning noise as it shriveled and fell apart.
I sat there, breathing hard, trying to get the lines from “The Gingerbread Man” out of my head.
—end—
Photo by Jill Wellington on Pexels.com
Finished writing the Monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge story and did some more work on the Queer Sci-Fi column for August; both due this week.
That’s all for now!
authorjeffbaker 