"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Every Week at Rainbow Snippets https://www.facebook.com/groups/RainbowSnippets participants post six lines of a work of theirs, a work-in-progress or a work by someone else that has LGBT characters. My snippets this week come from “Selected Shorts,” Cait Gordon’s fine anthology of disability-friendly LGBT-flavored sci-fi and fantasy. Here’s a bit from maybe my favorite of the stories “Ranger Of the Sea.”
When a Mermaid suddenly finds a blind sailor all but dropped in her lap, what’s a girl to do?
The human jumped and turned his head to the right and left. “Who’s there? Are you the one I seek?”
Abigail paused, then swam closer to set herself on the shore.
“I am here,” she signed.
There was no response at first.
“Who is there?” he repeated, tilting his head toward the sound of her tail flapping against the wet sand.
NOTE: Didn’t expect to do another sequel but I guess this is Part Three. Check the earlier stories taking place in The Under: “A Bicycle Built Fortuitously” and “Blue Shoes” also on this blog—-jeff
“‘Scuse me,” a squat man wearing a floppy red hat said as he brushed past Franco and Anthony. “Got my drinks.”
He handed a cup to somebody in a green hat in the back row.
Anthony decided to make small talk.
“Some game, huh?” Anthony asked.
“If you like that sort of thing,” the man in the red hat said.
“We, uh, aren’t from around here,” Franco said for what felt like the tenth time in the last hour. “We don’t even know what the game is.”
“We call it “Shoemerang,” the man in the red hat explained. “I keep waiting for the shoes to turn around and come back.”
“Uh, you know real boomerangs don’t come back?” Anthony said.
“Neither do these,” the man in the green hat snickered. Red hat joined in.
“You know what the winner gets?” someone else said.
“What?” Franco asked.
“One of my special cream pies. We call it Shoemeringue too.”
Franco looked around, half expecting to see a White Rabbit hop up and pull out a pocket watch.
Suddenly there was a commotion from the crowd. People were looking up and pointing. Most of them were angry.
“Well, that’s no fair.” The man in the red hat said.
“What?” Anthony asked.
“Look up,” the man in the green hat said.
They did. The sky had been clear, also it had been near dusk. Now it was daylight and the sky was filled with roiling grey clouds.
“Playing with time and the weather. No fair!” yelled the man in the green hat.
“Dirty pool!!” The man in the red hat yelled.
Anthony was wondering how they knew what pool was when Franco tapped him on the shoulder.
“I think it’s time to go,” Franco said pointing at the bicycle which was swaying from side to side on the ground.
“Yeah. Probably,” Anthony said as Franco hopped on the seat and Anthony sat down behind him, glad the seat was long and that they had been a couple for a while as he grabbed Franco’s waist.
Franco started to pedal carefully behind the rows of people when the bike slowly ascended and floated over the crowd as it got higher and higher.
Somebody noticed.
“Hey! They’re cheating!” That was a voice from the crowd, joined by other loud, angry voices and followed by people on the ground throwing drinks and food at the two young men on the flying bicycle.
“We’re not even playing!” Anthony yelled down as a strange looking fruit soared past his foot.
“Hang on, I’m gonna try to go faster,” Franco said as he pushed on the bike handles. The bike responded by angling upward and zipping into the clouds. Clouds which smelled funny and familiar.
“I think the bike wanted us out of there because it was about to rain.” Franco said.
“So?” Anthony asked.
“We don’t know what comes out of these clouds.” Franco said.
“Oh.” Anthony said.
“But I think it smelled like…” Franco began to say. Then something zipped past them, hurtling downward.
Then there was another one. And another.
“Hang on!” Franco yelled as the bike soared upward and broke the upper layer of clouds.
“Shoes!” Anthony gasped. “Those were shoes!”
“Yeah,” Franco said. “Work boots, I think. I thought the cloud smelled familiar.”
“Sure hope they have some kind of warning system down there…” Anthony said. “And that those boots aren’t steel toed.”
“Owch.” Franco said. He glanced down, hoping to see some of the city if they had cleared where the cloud was. The cloud was only dimly visible through the blue-green misty light that looked like the bottom of the swimming pool. Above them was a silvery mirror-like oval splotched with dark green. The Bicycle was headed right for it.
“Oh-Oh” Anthony said.
“Look out!” Franco yelled.
They hit the oval with a splash.
The two young men gasped for air, which fortunately there was a lot of. Also blue sky, and green grass and trees on a lake bank a few feet away. The bicycle had popped out from under them and was floating on its side next to them. They had burst through a covering of greenish lily pads.
A large green frog was laying on one of the pads that was still floating, looking like he had been overturned by the pair’s sudden emergence.
As I said last time, my New Year’s Resolution is to write every day. Inspired by Frederik Pohl who wrote four pages a day for decades. I won’t hit that number but I plan to try and kick it into high gear as much as possible. I decided to start it up a couple of weeks early.
To my utter shock I sat down and wrote a little over four pages a few days before Christmas! If I at least TRY for that, I could finish the two stories I wanted done by the end of the year, NEED to have done by the fifteenth of January. Four pages is not a bad goal to strive for. Four pages it is, then!! (For the record, I’m writing this bit on December 21st)
And now on January 20th, 2026 I can report that the four pages thing is working, as a prod if nothing else. I managed for about four weeks to do the four pages thing about five days a week, sometimes just making it to the beginning of the fourth page. This has helped with the progress in writing longer stories and I am working on finishing up stories I wanted to finish for years or even decades. Besides writing three flash fiction stories I wrote four full-length stories and sent three of those off to markets.
Yes, this is seriously working and I may be able to send off more stories this year as well.
Beta read another of J. Scott Coatsworth’s fine stories. Doubtless it will be published soon.
Read Jeffrey Marks’ story “The Fall Of the House Of Fresher” in the LGBT-themed mystery anthology “Crime Ink: Iconic.” An homage to Dupin and Ellery Queen. Nice touches about the late Seventies from the closeted college-kid narrator. My first read of the year…
Read “The Lost Blend,” by O. Henry. Read about it in an article about “Pete’s Tavern” in NYC. Was called “Healey’s,” and Henry calls it “Kenealy’s” in the story. Reportedly O. Henry sat and wrote stories in the tavern. Local legend claims he wrote “Gift Of the Magi” there.
Read Nelson Bond’s 1995 story “Pipeline to Paradise” in Roger Zelazny’s posthumous anthology “Wheel Of Fortune.” The story starts out like one of the whimsical yarns Bond wrote in the 30s and 40s about characters like Horse-Sense-Hank. Then comes the twist.
And another.
And another!
And a kicker last line…
Read “The Wand’s Boy” by Rick Bowes in the anthology “So Fey” from Lethe Press. Sent Bowes a birthday thing on F.B.; didn’t know he had died in ‘23. Anthony Cardno posted that he had met Bowes a few times so I decided I’d better read him. “Wand’s Boy” is very otherworldly.
Read the usual offerings by E.H. Timms and Kaje Harper.
And I read a bunch of the stories in Cait Gordon’s new collection “Speculative Shorts,” which is reviewed in full on this blog so I won’t repeat myself.
I didn’t read as much as I have been, mainly because I kicked the writing into high gear. I’m going to have to strike a balance.
Franco and Anthony had followed the Yellow Man’s directions and pushed the bicycle to The Midnight Cafe which was positioned under a yellow, neon sign of a crescent Moon. The furnishings, wrought-iron chairs and tables and wallpaper were yellow but thankfully the food wasn’t, although Anthony did order some Golden pancakes.
They were amazed that when they asked about money and were told that since they didn’t have any of the Yellow Issue bills, the meal was free.
“But only the first time,” their waiter said.
That seemed to be the way things were done in The Under, the land their Bicycle had flown them to.
After they finished eating they asked the waiter what there was to do in town.
“Oh, nothing right now.” the Waiter said. “The real excitement is over in the Blue Area. The Games should be starting up soon.”
“What Games?” Anthony asked. “We’re not from around here.”
“Everybody in The Under makes such a big deal about it,” the Waiter said. “But it’s just flat boring as far as I’m concerned.”
Franco shrugged. “Okay.”
They glanced over at the bike propped against the table.
“Think it wants to get us out from, uh, under here?” Franco said.
“Hopefully not until we’re done exploring.” Anthony said.
They loved exploring. Most couples did it in a car or a plane. The Bicycle had flown them all around the world and into this world a few hours ago. It was what came of being magical.
They politely turned down dessert; a large yellow lemon pie and headed back on the street pushing the bike until they came to a large map on the wall. It indicated which area was which and where they were.
“Must be like the map the Yellow Man mentioned,” Franco said.
“Uh huh,” Anthony said, hanging on him and looking over his shoulder. “And the Blue Area isn’t too far from here.”
“If the map’s accurate none of The Under is very big,” Franco said.
“Well, we are under a swimming pool,” Anthony said with a grin. He kissed Franco and the two of them walked on in the direction of the Blue Area.
“Hey, think we should just ride the bike?” Franco asked. “It still works as a bike you know. Ground-based transportation and all.”
“Yeah, but we don’t know what other vehicles may be on the roads.” Anthony said. “For all we know there could be a steamroller driven by a hungry shark.”
“Underwater stuff, yeah. Of course.” Franco said.
There was no big sign, and everything didn’t all go blue when they walked into the Blue Area but they noticed a few differences. For one thing, every building had a blue plaque on it. And there was a small building labeled “Blue Area Cafe” on its big front window.
They did notice one thing though; it was getting dark.
“Hey, I thought it was sunrise when we got here?” Anthony said.
“I know.” Franco said. “We haven’t been here that long. But we don’t know how long the day is.”
There was a tall man in a blue robe on a ladder adjusting one of the tall lamps. Franco called over to him.
“Uh, excuse me. Blue Man?”
The man turned, looking a little like the Yellow Man they had met in the previous story.
“Yeah?” The Blue Man said.
“We’re new around here.” Franco said. “We just walked over from the Yellow Area. Are you guys in a different time zone or something here?”
“Oh no,” the Blue Man said. “We’re just turning up the lamps and turning down the daylight. Dusk is a lot better for The Games.” He twisted something in the lamp which was glowing softly.
“What Games exactly?” Franco asked. “Olympics or Football?”
“Don’t know what those are,” the Blue Man said climbing down the ladder. “But you can see ‘em for yourself, if you just follow the…”
There was a loud cheer from a crowd.
“…noise.”
“Thanks,” Franco said with a wave of his hand as the two of them walked the bike around a cluster of buildings, following the sound.
They came to what looked like a town square and that was where they started to see crowds.
“Here for the Game?” a man in a red suit and peaked hat said. “It’s over there. Good luck getting a good spot!”
Anthony and Franco waved a “thanks” and walked the bike around the back of the crowd. Through some luck they came across a barrier where they could look down and see what was going on.
At the edge of the square, at what looked like the edge of town were a long row of very normal telephone or electrical poles. The wires ran from the top of one to the top of another like they did in the world Anthony and Franco knew. But underneath and to one side was a man wearing a gaudy T-shirt with what was probably a team logo on it. He was bent over, looking upward and holding a pair of shoes the way a man would hold a bowling ball. The shoes looked like Nike’s but they were bright blue.
There were calls of encouragement from the crowd.
“C’mon, Mylo!” “Go, Mylo!!”
The crowd hushed as Mylo took a step forward and tossed the shoes upward. The laces were tied together and they swirled around each other like a bola Anthony had seen once.
There was a cheer from the crowd that turned into a loud groan as the shoes soared over the wires and the pole and landed on the ground.
“They’re not…” Anthony said.
Franco just stood there with a broadening smile.
Meanwhile, another man wearing the same logo on his T-shirt stepped forward holding a pare of laced together work boots. Blue, of course.
“Awriiight, Keldrick!!” someone in the crowd yelled. Anthony and Franco noticed Mylo standing with the crowd pumping his fist in the air. The next player, Keldrick, was taller and had a blue lanyard over his shirt.
Keldrick stood in the assigned spot, took the bowler’s stance, gauged the distance and with practiced ease tossed the boots upward. They spun and soared and the crowd let out a long “aaaaaahhhhhhhh” that followed the arcing trajectory of the boots until they hit the line at the top of the pole, spun around the wire and hung there. Then the crowd let out with a triumphant yell, and Franco and Anthony found themselves cheering as well.
There was a pause as four people, three men and a woman, all wearing robes and peaked hats, each outfit a different color, blue, red, yellow and green, stepped up and measured the distance from where the men had stood to under where the shoes had snagged the wire. After consulting together, the three men looked at Keldrick and Mylo and nodded.
The crowd burst into a loud cheer.
“I keep expecting somebody to sing about the Yellow Brick Road,” Franco quipped.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE:
I’m quitting this here, it’s way too long to be a “Flash Fiction” story, but a lot of mine balloon up! I hadn’t expected to do a sequel but when the idea for the shoe tossing competition hit me, I realized it would be perfect for the earlier characters. And the “Wizard Of Oz” references and similarities just kind of happened. I grew up reading Baum’s “Oz” books and have read some of his others—wonderful! I don’t know if I’ll ever continue any of this, but it’s been fun. Oh, the earlier story “A Bicycle Built Fortuitously” appeared on this blog at the end of December.
Characters who sign. Accessibility. Ableism. This book deals with issues of…
No. Wait…
Two Opera divas in an otherworldly rivalry, complete with tentacles.
Love stories across every gender spectrum.
A non-binary Alice meets a different kind of Cheshire Cat.
People with varying disabilities banding together after a cataclysm and being perfect for the job.
A nifty twist on ageism in a very special retirement home.
These and other delights are featured in Canadian author Cait Gordon’s new collection “Speculative Shorts.” (Out now from Dinsdale Press. )
Subtitled “Stories That Fell Out Of My Brain,” the fifteen Queer-flavored tales feature everything from a tale reminiscent of Ray Bradbury’s “Homecoming” to a rebellious reclaiming of the term “crip”
There are lines like: “I think I spouted more ovaries.”
And “Have y’ever conversed with an irate eel? Would make a sailor blush, the curses out of their mouth.”
And “Is it still considered cheating to fake your own death in poker?”
Enlivening the book are Gordon’s story notes after every tale, headed: “Neat Facts About This Story.”
Gordon comments: “My favorite genre to write in is character driven science fiction.”
The two of us got on the elevator at the same time. The twenty-something with the brown hair in the suit and tie punched the button for Floor 34.
The doors closed and the two of us started up.
“Did you ever hear about Alfred Hitchcock’s elevator story?” I asked.
“No,” the guy said, probably not really interested.
“Oh, it’s really cool,” I said. “Hitchcock, the director you know, would get on an elevator like this, and he’d start in telling this story about finding somebody ‘with blood everywhere.’ And the other people on the elevator would look up, kind of startled, y’know.”
The guy looked over at me, interested.
“And Hitchcock would go on, you know, describing the scene,” I said. “And he’d say he asked the guy what happened. And he’d time it so that this would be about when he got to his floor and the doors would open and he’d walk out of the elevator leaving everyone hanging.”
The guy was this close to asking me something. But I went on.
“Anyway, one day when Hitchcock did that, one of his friends was with him and when they walked out of the elevator the friend asked Hitchcock what happened and Hitchcock said ‘Oh, that’s just my elevator story.’”
The guy and I both laughed and faced front again, still going up.
Behind him, I pulled the weapon out of my bag, swung with practiced ease, glad I worked out as much as I did and hit him on the perfect spot on the back of his head. He fell over and I struck him again and he started to bleed but not to move.
I put the weapon back in the plastic bag and pushed a floor button. This time none of the blood got on me, luckily. I put the bag back in my jacket pocket.
I waited until the elevator stopped and the doors opened.
I walked out of the elevator into the empty hallway, whistling that old Beatles song, wondering how Hitchcock’s elevator story would have ended.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The story about Hitchcock’s elevator story is real. My story is made up. I was midway through writing it when I remembered about “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.” —jeff
The Draws for the January 2026Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were: A Fantasy, set at a Skating Rink involving a Plastic Toy Horse. This is what I came up with. And yes, for a flash fiction story it got a little long… —-mike
The horse had been mentioned in my Mom’s Will. It took me a few weeks to find it among her things at her old house. She had moved into a care facility and thankfully it was over in a few months and she hadn’t been herself but she hadn’t suffered.
I guess I had somehow expected her to get better and move back in. I kept the house closed-up, mowed the lawn, paid the utilities, even kept the cable going. She’d never gotten on the internet but I had gotten her to use a cellphone. And then one day in early spring I was an orphan at thirty-five years old. Dad was gone and I was their only son. No real family to speak of, just some distant cousins and a very casual boyfriend.
The horse was a little plastic toy, a fine brown animal about the size of a kitten. Standing there on all fours, looking boldly forward. I think I’d glanced at it a few times when I was a kid but hadn’t given a thought to it. But when it was mentioned in the Will, I started looking and couldn’t find it. It wasn’t until I was home leafing through a bunch of old pictures that I found a picture of Mom as a little girl holding the toy horse. I remembered where I might have seen it.
I went back to the house the next day, not a big house but big enough for one person. I started looking on one of the shelves in the room just off the kitchen. One full of knickknacks and old Christmas cards. There was the horse, leaning against the wall behind a big card showing a snowy church lit for Christmas. I picked it up. It was lightweight, firm plastic. I pulled out a tissue and dusted it off.
“Well, now little horse,” I said. “It looks like we’re going on a little trip.”
As Mom’s only heir, I inherited everything. Her house, belongings, car (which I’d been driving for a few years anyway) and the bank account which was not a lot. Mom had been sensible and lucky but not rich.
There was no money involving the horse, just a request. Mom wanted me to take the horse to where the old Cumberland Stables were just outside of the city. I remembered her telling me that she had gone there to ride when she was a girl. That was mentioned in the letter I got in the Will. A request to take “Dilly,” which was what she called the little plastic horse, to the old stables “and let him have one more run.”
I sighed. I’d passed the stables when I had been in grade school and my folks and I had driven somewhere. I really hadn’t thought of that in decades. I never got into horses and hadn’t any curiosity about seeing the stables again. I remembered that it had been just outside the city limits in a little wooded area with a big, welcoming archway. The trees and grass around it caused Mom to say “It always looked like Summer there.”
The next day I took the horse, wrapped in tissue paper in the passenger seat, and drove out to the stables. I was glad Mom had left the address in her letter to me.
In the intervening half-century since Mom had rode there the city had expanded and swelled around the stables. There were thrift stores and convenience stores and liquor stores as well as at least a couple of restaurants advertising BREAKFAST ALL DAY and LOTTERY SOLD HERE.
And the stables, of course, were gone. Instead, there was an ice skating rink with a big domed roof and a few brightly colored pennants over the entrance. Somehow it looked friendly and inviting and I saw a lady escorting two excited looking children into the building.
I sighed. Well, I could still do this. I was glad I always kept my coat in the back seat. You never knew about Kansas weather. I parked, picked up Dilly and went in. I thought I glimpsed a big tree at the back of the parking lot behind the building, maybe the last remnant of the stables.
As I paid my admission I asked the clerk if he knew about the old stables that used to be here.
“Oh, yeah,” the kid said. “My Boss bought the property when Mister DeLuno died ages ago.”
I thanked him and walked into the rink.
It was cold, of course, making me glad I had the jacket. I sat down on one of the benches near the stairs leading to the rink with the signs NO SKATES ON CARPET. I was sitting behind a padded barrier that was chest-high and I could see the glittering white oval with several skaters. One couple (cisgender, of course) skating around happily, other people of various ages skating by themselves and two teenage boys the one clinging to the wall and the other skating beside him who passed where I was sitting and I heard the skater tell his friend “you’re doing fine!” as they crept by.
I took Dilly out of my jacket pocket.
“Well, Mom. This is the best I can do. Hope it’s what you wanted.” I said.
I set the little plastic horse down beside my feet on the floor.
I glanced out at the skaters on the rink, their blurred reflections on the black, polished wall on the other side. For a moment I thought I saw a taller, larger blurred image on the wall, passing the other images, then there was an indistinct figure racing gracefully around the rink. A brown horse with a rider.
I shook my head and blinked a couple of times.
In that instant, it was suddenly outside, suddenly Summer, bright and sunny and I was on a brown horse, riding through a wooded area at a gallop, hanging on to a young woman from the back of the horse. I looked up and the woman turned around, young, brunette and smiling. It was my Mom, looking about the age she had been when she had me.
“Isn’t this fun?” Mom called out.
I held on and nodded. It was an hallucination I was sure but it was kind of fun.
“I got you here to tell you something,” Mom said. “Some advice. Take the Way of the Horse.”
“Way of the horse?” I said, realizing that in this dream-thing I was a lot younger and my voice hadn’t changed yet.
“Always go forward,” she said. “But always watch and be careful. You don’t always get second chances.”
“Yeah,” I said, still hanging on.
“Don’t let him get away,” Mom said.
“The horse?” I asked.
Mom pointed ahead on the little trail. There was a log blocking the way. Not a big one but still in the way.
“Watch out!” Mom said as the horse raced faster. I held on tighter.
The horse jumped up. Up. Past the tall branches of the tree, into the bluest sky I had seen, into the bright warm rays of the Sun.
“Wheeeeeee!!” Mom called out again as I held on for dear life.
There was a thud and I realized I was back sitting at the ice rink. Gripping the seat tightly. I picked up Dilly and shook my head.
I took the horse with me to my apartment and sat and thought about what she’d said. “Don’t let him get away.”
In the years afterwards, my onetime boyfriend and I refurbished Mom’s old house and kept the horse in a place of honor where we could see it in the morning when we ate breakfast together.
NOTE—January-ish pic taken by Ashton Tharp in NYC.
First, here’s the prompts for the January 2026 Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, the first one of the New Year of 2026! Then my usual long-winded explanation:
A Fantasy
Involving A Plastic Toy Horse
Set in A Skating Rink
Now, on to the details.
Hi! I’m Mike Mayak, I also write as Jeff Baker and 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 (including, hopefully, one of my own!)
As I’m no good making videos I did the drawing offstage. So, the results were the Five of Hearts (a Fantasy), the Eight of Diamonds (A Skating Rink) and the Nine of Clubs (A Plastic Toy Horse.)
So we will write a Fantasy, set in a Skating Rink involving a Plastic Toy Horse.
We’ll have the results here in this same space around Monday January 12th, 2026.
So, get to writing and I’ll post the results next week! And I’m putting the 2026 Flash Draw sheet at the end of this message, again! (* indicates those have been used.)
Thanks for playing, and I’ll see you in about week!
authorjeffbaker 
