Chaser

"Chaser"

a short story

Gary Baker, September 2014

(a practice piece in cross-chronological plotting)

A friend once told me there was nothing to lose, providing proper effort was given where it was due. This person also claimed nothing could get in the way of our dreams were they only strong enough to withstand the close of ages.

What she didn't tell me, however, was that consequences were completely indefatigable.

My breath came in ragged gasps, my back slapped wetly against a shadowed redwood or other deep in the northern woods. I didn't even know where I was anymore. With my head lain back against the bark I released another exhale high above myself into the misty night. The subsequent inhale brought in the crisp reality alongside tangy pine, rustic petrichor and the oddly salt-free taste of woodland fog.

Sweat dribbled across my brow and down my cheek. Moonlight flickered across my loosely closed eyelids with the pace of a breeze pushing branches up high.

I remember how she had summoned me over one day, calling me from the foyer. Poised behind her desk, brows drawn in consternation, she set to lay waste to my dreams. It was a practical battlefield that day in her office, all torn reality and woeful hopes burned at the stake as one regretful sibling to a rising lord seeking kingship. She said my words meant nothing, that no matter what I wrote it could never please her. That I could never please her.

After what felt like ages of resisting, I broke. I had worked my ass off for nothing. I had bore my heart and soul into my most recent article, working prose through fields of ghost-written sciences, never to see the light of day 'neath my own name. I remember the glitter of my tears as they fell.

I also remember how her scowl then morphed so wondrously into a gleam of coy awe. She then told me that any dreams I still had, anything at all that survived such abuse, were the only ones worth fighting for. She told me that any dream that could be broken by unknowing anger, instead of being strengthened, could never place the bread upon the table.

An echo of rushed movement clattered across my lap and I tore away from the tree with my heart in my hands. Feet raw from running, I knew I would be caught sooner than later. I was barely keeping ahead as is, did I really expect to survive this?

In seconds time I reached the pebble-strewn shore of an annual riverbed. The waterline had dropped mere feet, yet it left an island three times as wide as the river currently was. Moonlight on my shoulders, I raced. I aimed myself for the far shore where I could only wish for a place to climb out and into saving grace of darkness once more.

The water came like yet another smack to the face. Ice seemed to form around my very lungs themselves and I gasped for the solace of staying alive, were it only so easy.

She had come around. Leaning on her desk with an arm held out to hand me tissues, her eyes told me everything I needed to hear. She was my mentor. She was my friend. More than that, she was the one who paid me for my articles. She would connect me with scientists needing their experiments recorded and understood by their lesser-minded peers, the ones with the money, the ones who could either shut them down or add another dose of much-needed funding.

She told me the writer within me would benefit from what she had just done, that I should be grateful. I didn't believe her then, but later I discovered she had saved me while sending me off to my executioner all in one.

I thrust my arm above the water to take hold of roots extended into the riverside and came back empty. I fought to reach the surface and came up just enough to find that in a fraction of a moment's time I had drifted deep downstream. Already I had gone further than I originally planned and missed my chance at finding safety on the far shore.

Thinking back, even as the frigid sloshing tussled me in every which way, I chose to make the most of the moment. At least I couldn't be followed by the dogs from this point. Perhaps I could survive this after all.

So I turned into the current and used cupped palms to pull myself further. I swam like a frog, like a dog, I even kicked like a dolphin for a while, doing everything I could to keep warmth flowing through my limbs. When the current tore me around a bend I hit the first of several rocks and debris. Shortly thereafter I was losing consciousness and knew I was losing blood in much the same way.

When I had taken that last job I knew things were different. She had changed me. My will to write was stronger than ever and somehow it had broken barriers of writers block with all the excess energy that coursed within. The original job was to oversee a chemical experiment based on reactions deduced by the particle accelerator in Munich. I was to observe and record while science types tried and failed to reproduce chemicals known to have been used in abroad. For some reason the men and women at the lab I was sent to believed the chemical to have been falsified and, for all that I could tell, they were right on the money.

When things got boring for me, though, I chose to indulge myself. I escaped via a supposed bathroom run and instead began my exploration of the facilities.

I hit another rock as rapids began to form. I dropped several feet into a pool, peace lasting only hints of time until I was once again dragged along into white foam and jagged yanks to and fro. Those bastards, I figured then, might have missed their chance to kill me, but nature was sure as hell trying to do their work for them.

I remember jotting down a rough assimilation of a map, writing my story as I went in my head of how the chemical wasn't properly reproducible and thus disproved any subsequent experiments done with it. I remember altering words from experimental Latin-fused English to much more layman terminology when I found an open door. The door led to some shadowed, as yet unfinished portion of the facility, and from there to a massive basement.

It was like a horror movie turned real and still I pushed on. Suddenly nothing could sate my curiosity, not now that my desire to write, my desire to know, was so strong. What I walked into was the last thing I expected so deep within a chemical laboratory: there in front of me were the stooped forms of human experiments gone wrong.

Beakers upon beakers as large as tables, all stacked with sealed contents of everything from embryos and fetuses to full-grown men with bubbles and blisters formed along every imaginable inch of surface area each in varying degrees. My reporter instinct kicked in and my cell was out and set to record both video and audio in separate files. I cautiously walked the aisles looking over tabs of information and degrees of chemical composure.

Bonnie Jones, here, dosed with what I read as heroin and cyanide in a convoluted molecular solution, then injected into the bone marrow. In big red letters were stamped: Exp-Failed. Cringing, I moved on to the next, finding an illegible name with etches of acid formulas described as having been slowly increased in dosage since birth, grown in a test tube until the body of cells simply went haywire and somehow morphed into a human-sized mass of muscle and tissue. This one was marked as: Exp-InProgress.

It was still alive.

The experiments went on for whole sections of the gymnasium-sized room, when finally I freaked and bolted for the entrance. Immediately I ran headlong into someone on their way in. We fell to the floor with boxes of supplies dropped in the collision, and as I scrambled to rise I found there were others with this scientist. Guards loomed over us, guns in hand; massive guns. They shot their own man first, for what I can only pretend to know, and then began at me. From there I barely made it out alive. Shortly after I had dogs on my tail and leaves slapping my face.

I don't even remember getting out of the water, only that I was suddenly racing with sodden icy clothes into oncoming traffic when a cop hit me. Gun drawn he came at me as I lay roiling in pain on the ground before his beaming headlights. I remember looking him in the eye, how he then grimaced and shrunk back, and how he was then shot more times than I can commit to. His once white shirt was riddled with color, his eyes glossed over quickly and soon there were figures in black surrounding me.

This time I couldn't get away. My leg broken, there was no way I could run, walk, hell I couldn't even crawl my way out of this.

One of the figures then moved over me and placed a thick, heavy black boot on my wrongly-twisted knee. The pain was deafening. When he stepped down it was blinding. I came to again and my throat was hoarse, the cop still bleeding beside me, eyes completely glazed over, and my leg seemed nonexistent.

"I won't tell," I plead, hands raised as I tried to back away by pushing with my good leg. "Let me live and I'll forget this ever happened."

I felt cold metal place itself against the back of my head. From there I couldn't honestly say for sure what happened. It's like time just skipped over the following few years.

Sniper

"Sniper"

an excerpt

Gary Baker, September 2014

(part of my Corporal Roi project)

First there was a reaction of particulates followed by a burst of photon energy sent forth from heavenly heat and sent careening out into the deep unending abyss. Then, after moments of hasty nothingness, came the reflection which subsequently hit receptors and a message was transcribed. From there energy was sent out once more coursing along minute pathways of similar individuals until it came to a stop within a tangled mess of a much greater number of somehow different individuals, was changed into another message entirely, and was once again sent out in another direction altogether. Again the message of energy coursed along until it struck a mass which then contracted as one, pulling the metal trigger and setting another series of events into play.

The sliver of smooth metal drew down a jagged rod that held back a sharp slab which then, with the haste of a tightly-wound coil snapping back to its proper shape, brought the spike tip careening into a metal wall. The wall then broke just so slightly enough to cause a burst of energy, igniting packed molecules of sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate into an explosive burst of an even greater form of energy. This new form then slammed heavily into a particularly-shaped piece of metal with such force as to send it flying.

The projectile form hit molecules of air hard, forcing itself through and through without regard whilst reaching a velocity of seven-hundred and seventy meters per second, followed by a concussive burst of resounding waves, soaring passed legs stomping through in this way or the other, leaving a wake of empty air through crimson mist and splashed mud, cauterizing newly-made holes in still-living leaves until finally it reached the end of its journey. The first layer burned on contact, baring plates of leather inlaid with thick mail-like wire which are subsequently split by the force of contact alone to allow the projectile deeper access. Then came the thick layer of metal sheets formed in a lab for better displacement and, while the momentum is lessened immensely, they too are breached until after a few more layers of fabric, the projectile hits skin and puckers as it passes into the soft cushion of fat and muscle.

With a hideous cry of alarm, Corporal Roi Anxo went down, barely able to reach safe cover behind a mass of shattered cement braced with steel and iron. In an instant he rolled onto his uninjured hip to peer over and survey the damage. His gloved hand came away matted with fresh blood, as though the throbbing fire in his ass wasn't enough to be sure. Adrenaline coursed through him as he tried to guesstimate how deep the bullet had gone, and was almost certain it had came millimeters from hitting bone. There was no way to tell how bad it was, yet he knew instantly that there was no way he could just get up and get to safety.

So he grabbed a morphine needle from his vest and quickly jabbed it under his armor into his side and released the chemicals. Right now he needed to focus on not dying, for that was the obvious detail. Despite that, he had a mission to complete and so he rolled back against the ledge while the numbness made its way through.

Roi hefted the rifle he'd thrown down just before falling and loaded an armor-piercing round into the bay. Nodding twice to himself for a count, he thrust himself up and over the ledge to drop the scope right in line with the invasion commander, a mass of bulbous purple flesh and teeth all over. The beast had already proven its resilience to bullets, and as far as Roi could tell had armor-like bones. The first round he'd sent earlier, just before being shot, had merely left a fractured crack along the creatures head, now lamenting a beautiful blue fountain of blood that only made the beast that much more intimidating.

This time Roi knew for sure that he could do it. One more bullet and the beast would go down, allowing temporary confusion among the invading forces.

He aligned the crossbars of his scope with the commanders head and clicked to zoom in. With some trepidation, the bars then aligned with the beasts missing eye and the crack in it's skull beneath all that blood. The corporal exhaled slowly as the world ebbed into slow motion. He pulled the trigger just before his inhale began and barely kept himself upright when the force of his shot struck.

For a heartbeat there was nothing after the crack of thunder, only emptiness. Then the bullet hit and the commander went from striding callously through the wreckage of bodies to kneeling with both hands upon its face. Even then the beast didn't fall. Suddenly it looked right at Roi with half it's head hanging by threads of muscle, navy blue blood fountaining everywhere as it rose one arm at the corporal and let loose an ugly bellow.

But it didn't falter. The killing shot gave the beast a slower stride, stumbling now and then, but the way that it picked up a fallen assault rifle and emptied the magazine at Roi with what could only be anger sent shivers down the mans spine. Two bullets to the head, one leaving half the skull hanging out to dry, and still the beast walked on deeper into the fray.

Dragon Rider

“Dragon Rider”

a short excerpt

Gary Baker, December 2013

(possibly the prologue to Kingdom's Rise)

“Ride high! We've almost got him!”

Vaughn kicked his stallion into gear and charged faster to clear the dust of the prince's gilded mount. The warm saddle shifted as he swung his hunting pike, a long double-hilted shaft of the finest hardened oak that ended in a lightning-like double spike, and pulled closer to his king's heir.

Ahead the drake sped like a hare being chased by a hawk, though with none of the ragged misdirection. It was young, that much was obvious. It's opalescent gray armor shone in the light of high noon, almost reflecting the vast green of the broken plains around them. Vaughn found it inspiring to watch the beast sprint like never before, as it's muscles grew taut as it leapt forward and how they bunched into massive hunks of glistening smoke-gray mounds as the beast landed.

The beast began to veer off to the left, trailing toward a series of jagged cliffs that arose from the grassy hills as though broken by the hammer of god. This was where they would do it, he knew. This was where the beast would die.

“Lithomir!” He shouted over the ever-present thunder of the group's stallions pounding the earth beneath their feet. The prince looked over, excitement showing in his deep green eyes, his golden hair held back in a long tail over his chrome-armored back, and grinned. It was his tell-tale sign that he was up to something again. Vaughn, captain of the boy's personal guard, knew this look all too well. The blasted heir knew.

He must have planned this from the start.

Vaughn dug his heels into his mount's hips and pushed closer to the silvery white horse armored with plated gold and steel over intricately woven crimson wool, noting the series of weaponry that the heir seemed so attached to. Though everyone knew he wasn't one, the heir carried them like a Centurion: always ready for anything, prepared to fight until the last breath with whatever he had on him. In Lithomir's case, however, the boy seemed to think this meant he should carry more should he drop anything, instead of the usual mantra that followed along “a man's blade is his life, lose it and death will be there waiting.”

The guard captain looked back over his shoulder to gauge the depth of the playing field as they closed in on a corner in the cliffs. The others had fanned out to give the heir more room, and took unspoken orders from the boy to block off the passage should the beast turn and flee. Their own mount's shuddered with the growing energy: Huira's murky dappled mare cantered as he slowed near the far wall, his pike drawn and ready, Kilnar's jet-black mount pushed ever harder against the reins as he flanked off to the right, crossing with Jilai as they rode onto the rises that overlooked the coming arena. Vaughn had to admit that the arena was well-planned, too. At the far end it rose with a sheer wall of granite over three stories high, and tapered out on either side with not much room to spare other than the not-quite-circular clearing where they were headed. The flooring was well-packed with plenty of grass to soften falls without losing too much traction, and the bottleneck would give the drake just enough of a view into the arena to expect an outcropping where it might leap with it's ungodly strong hind legs and escape.

There wasn't any such ledge, in truth, but the young beast didn't see that until the group was following it into the corner.

Instantly Vaughn spotted the continuing crevice where the two sides had collided into each other, and would have been traversable for a while longer for a man on foot. The drake made for this only to crash against solid stone against either shoulder before it spun to get out and found itself flanked on all sides. Kilnar and Jilai then dropped bolts of weighted arrows here and there to keep the drake in the furthest point in the corner until the prince and heir could become the gatekeeper of the bottleneck and prevent it from escape.

Vaughn and Grishe then slowed to a trot and watched from the opening as the would-be king swung his pike side to side to loosen his arms. “You think he's ready for this?” Grishe grumbled under the ear-piercing cry of the trapped drake, timed so the heir wouldn't hear. His brown stallion heaved it's head side to side as it fought to run again, but stayed put as the rider quickly yanked the reins twice consecutively.

The captain held his breath for a moment and felt his pulse quicken as he watched the arrogant young man move from wall to wall while flashing the blade in an attempt to intimidate the beast that must have been scared half to death by now. “It's possible,” he admitted uneasily, “he is the King's boy, after all.”

Grishe nodded at that, snapping a fist to his heart in salute to the great leader's mention, and turned back to watch the display. There were a couple of wayward attacks from either side as the game moved into showoff mode and the heir grew visibly cocky, throwing obvious swings to merely antagonize the beast into another pointless charge. “I hear he's been training with Master Ghera's centurion's,” he glanced across to Vaughn from under his scarred right eyebrow, his dirtied helmet barely hiding his deep black curls that fell along the sides of his face, “what might yon Captain Vaughn Heirsguard think of that, eh?”

Vaughn pressed his lips tight as he fought to intervene in the boy's display of bravery and show. “The men of the empire will never follow a man who is weaker than they, Grishe, you know that.” He gripped his pike tighter and brought the shaft into his lap atop the saddle, distractedly fingering the dark, carved oak while expecting the beast to land a fatal strike at any moment. It made him twitchy, watching this. Each time the wingless, gecko-shaped dragon launched forward, it's horned spines gnashing the air, Vaughn kept thinking his future king was about to be gored before ever reaching the age of two-hundred and twenty new moons. “The boy has to fight harder than any of us, Grishe, and I'd be hard pressed to say his training hasn't done him some good in the last fifty or so, other than this increased bravado.”

Just then the drake leapt off the ground, using those toad-like hind legs to send it full force into Prince Lithomir's face. They all witnessed as the boy brought up a hand just in time to deviate the beast's maw before the two tumbled in the grass. The heir's stallion then did what all Celestial mounts were trained to do in such a situation and shot quickly out of reach where it could not be harmed in the ensuing fray, taking with it the boy's only means of escape.

Vaughn inhaled suddenly, his lungs becoming solid as his grip tightened on the lower hilt of the pike, as his eyes searched through the cloud of dust to find his charge.

Finally the air cleared just enough that they could see the prince now standing in the corner with the drake between himself and his guards. Vaughn moved to kick his horse into action when the prince held a hand and stopped him mid-way. “Stay!” The boy shouted, “he's mine!”

Jilai barked a laugh that echoed down from the plains above and mocked the horseless heir. “Would you look at that! The wittle bwayby pwince feww off his howse!”

Kilnar joined in, then, with a “you know the rules!”

“No remount!” Grishe joined in with a static grin towards his captain.

“Take him on foot!”

“Show him who's the true heir to the empire!”

“Fight like a man!”

Vaughn scowled as the scene deepened into greater feats of callous manliness and show. Personally, he felt that a man should prove his strength in battle against his fellow men, not in a self-made arena against a young, just-off-the-teat drake. Yet the odds seemed even more against the young heir now, as the beast was easily as tall in the shoulders while on all fours as the heir was standing as tall as he could.

The problem now was that the drake was in it's natural element whilst the heir was weighed down by several blades, his armor, and the heavy cavalry pike in his hands.

Yet Lithomir grinned at his cliff-top comrades and dropped the majority of the weapons into the soil before he began to spin his pike in circuitous motions until it became but a blur of silver and two gold-framed hilts churning the dust once again. He moved to the side, the beast watching him and doing the same, and lashed out twice before the drake reared back and slapped the pike high into the arena walls. Suddenly the boy was on his own with nothing but an ornate dagger at his hips and a short-sword on his back.

“How could you not block that?!” Kilnar mocked.

“Lithomir!” Vaughn scoffed, “pay attention!”

“Hey, Kingsheir!” Jilai sang. “You dropped your pi-ike!”

Grishe brought himself a few paces closer. “Now what would your father say, if he heard about this, eh?”

Kilnar bellowed with laughter from his perch, “he'd be shamed, he would!”

Vaughn found his eyebrows cinching toward each other, burrowing as he watched the fangs appear and the spines flare out from the beast's body to make itself even more fearsome. “Lithomir do not let this break you!” He pushed his mount as far in as Grishe's and brought the pike back out and to the side, ready to swing should the need arise. “Focus, man!”

It was obvious to the captain as the boy began blindly boasting and laughing off about the drake's inferior speed and mobility, that the heir, too, was scared out of his wits. “Look at him!” The heir shouted, “if he were human he'd be crying!”

“What a bwayby!” Jilai taunted.

Kilnar added in, then “does the wittle thing want his mommy?”

Seeing the heir's lowering sense of bravery and thus his narrowing ability to survive this event, Vaughn, too, played along to keep morale high. “Hell if I was it's mother I'd tell it to lay down and die already! So weak!”

“Well let's just be glad you're not!” Jilai retorted. “This is the most fun I've had in weeks!”

Lithomir lashed out, then, using standard Centurion slash and dodge techniques. He swung the sword low to clang against the solid armor of the drake's outer elbow, and side-stepped the beast's whip-like tail as it spun to slam it into the grass. Vaughn felt the earth shudder as the tail hit home, knowing that had it hit the boy there would have been no going back. Every bone would have been crushed by that blow.

He was lucky this time.

This went on for a handful of further attacks by both the heir and his target when finally the boy made contact with penetrable points in the underside of the drake's shoulder, as well as another gash into it's chin. Neither were of any significance, but the beast had started bleeding and that was the point. Now the grass was becoming redder and redder as the minutes wore on, with the traction loosing quality as blood was churned into the soil to become a brutal, gory mud. Vaughn raised his chin at the sight, seeing all too many memories of battles waged against the various surrounding territories as the centurions had vanquished all opposition in the age of expansion. Nowadays the broken plains that surrounded the empire's capital was as bloody in history as the arena in which the heir was finding his manhood, though the plains had long ago overgrown the thick rivers of gore while this corner was just getting a taste for it.

When the drake had been gashed enough to cause it to lose balance a few times and stumble on it's own feet, it charged full-force, much to the captain's dismay. Unexpectedly, and just like a battle-seasoned centurion, the heir shifted on his feet and grabbed one of the four arm-length head-adornments to swing himself up and over the beasts neck and onto its back. Instantly the boy was riding the wild drake as though he'd gotten atop of a wild stallion, fighting to stay on as it bucked and rolled to get him off.

“Haha!” Howled Jilai. “Look at him! Our prince – a bonafide dragon rider!”

Grishe rubbed his chin with his free hand, watching the show with overly excited bouts of laughter and howling. “Why, I'll be that one day they'll call him 'Lithomir, Lord of the Drakes'!”

The captain rolled his eyes angrily. Each second that this went on for was another second in which the beast could impale the boy on a stray horn, or worse: on his own weapons that still lay end-first in the grass at the far end of the arena. “Lithomir, get it over with!” He hollered through cupped hands, “I'm hungry for good meat and you're doing nothing but serving to make it bitter!”

The heir made eye-contact with his guard captain, then, and grinned as wide as Vaughn had ever seen the boy grin. Cockily, he reached down with his dagger as the drake charged toward Grishe and Vaughn to break their lines at last, sending the whole group charging after him, and slid the blade up along the young dragon's throat. It stopped in mid-stride as he did so, seeming to know what was about to happen, and reared back onto it's hind legs one last time. It was an ungodly sight for Vaughn to watch as the heir rode the drake's flaring form even as he brought the blade through the beasts spraying neck and against the armor scales along it's spine. The whole sight then ended with the beast falling, headless, atop the king's heir in a heap of gore just beyond the entrance to the broken cliffs.

Vaughn leapt from his horse just as the mount brought him close and sprinted to the headless dragon's side where he'd last seen the king's son. Neither the head nor the boy were anywhere to be seen for the longest time, until finally the boy stumbled out from behind the mound with a gory dagger in one hand and the drake's head dragging along the ground in the other. He was painted in blood as though he'd just been swimming in wine, though he limped on one side where Vaughn instantly spotted the bone spike jutting from the heir's left side.

No one spoke for the longest time.

Grishe seemed cowed for once, and the two jokers in their gleaming chrome armor stared with slack jaws from atop their horses. The heir looked from one man to the next with his opalescent teeth the only contrast to the steaming gore. Even his now-crimson hair was so drenched that it had fallen from the ties. The heir appeared more like a child soaked in the innards of a sweet cherry pie than he did a man with a drake's horn rammed through his kidney.

At such a sight Vaughn felt a beaming smile of his own creep over his cheeks as he cupped the boy's chin in a dark-gloved hand. “You're an arrogant bastard, you know that?” he guffawed, “just like your father!” Together they all fell into a fit of raucous laughter.

Banners, Men and Manners

"Banners, Men and Manners"

a short story

Gary Baker, December 2013

“Gah!” Rudolpho Mizrahi shoved his chin deep into his high-collar scarf and exhaled a bit of his body heat to warm himself up from the outside. Even with the layers of soft wool beneath the outer layers of his thick shark leather coat, mist formed where his breath escaped. “Is it just me or does it get colder the older we get?”

His companion set his jaw around a long shaft of whittled ivory, a thin gray plume barely visible at the end amidst his own exhaled fog. “Well, 's a certain thing that,” the man grumbled through grit teeth, “plus that you can't very well get colder without gettin' older now can ye?”

Mizrahi scowled. “Well by that logic you may as well say that you can't very well smoulder without getting older, too, eh?”

The gruff man snapped his mittened hands from the safety of his thick pockets and laboriously scrubbed them together beneath his unruly white beard. “Well I suppose ye might also say ye can't carry a shoulder without gettin' older, too.” Suddenly the pipe pitched to the side as the man brought his lips to one side, “no, wait, tha's not right, now, is it?”

The Reinvention of Bond

"The Reinvention of Bond"

an excerpt

Gary Baker, September 2013

Corporal Roi Anxo, lead mechanical engineer for the United States Army drill base, located deep in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, stared, wide-eyed, as the silhouette came closer and closer, step by step consuming the space between itself and the high-grade military-issue rifles that had just riddled it with holes.

...and still it walked like an agent, calm, collected, and confident.

“Give me that thing!” The general forcefully grabbed the PK-Assault Rifle from the soldier closest to his left side and, with precision and speed only gained by years of use in the field, struck in a new magazine, brought it to his shoulder, using the shieldman for cover, and began a sharp, repetitive rat-tat-tat over the man’s shoulder. The man-shaped shadow stopped, hesitating in mid stride, then seemed to shake it’s head and turn around.

“You don’t want me out there, that’s fine.” It -- he -- spoke, using the regal coolness of tone that only one without fears might use. He knew he was more than safe in this situation, though Roi couldn’t comprehend how. “But at least take my invitation and enter my abode, if you would be so kind.”

Manzana

"Manzana"

a Stories by Baker exclusive

Gary Baker, September 23, 2013

Carnival lights flashed, kids shooting clowns with water toys squealed, petting zoo goats bleated into the air; and all as the smooth, suave, lady-man spy, Carlos Manzana, flickered passed in his Armani black suit.

He vaulted over a bench with a couple slapping tongue, turning even as he landed down to shoot her a wink, then back to running; bad guys were on his heels. Balloons burst as fragments of pistol-whipped bullets broke through them, glass jars with the little orange fish that die two days after you win them shattered in a quick barrage as Agent Manzana swept around the booth corner. Ladies screamed, hands flying to their hair in utter panic, their shrill cries echoing through Manzana who wanted nothing less than to hold them close and let them swoon their fears away.

Most would anyway, Manzana knew, but lets get this straight: most men would too, for this beast of beauty's rock hard bod.

The Death of a God

"The Death of a God"

a short excerpt

Gary Baker, April 2011

(final piece to a larger project)

Jolarie pressed her eyes shut fearful for her life, as the blade-arm of 'Artemis the Wise' lifted her chin ever so slightly to force her gaze upon her one-time god. The tip pierced the flesh of her lower chin, dangerously close to her jugular vein, dripping a solitary trail of deep maroon blood down her neck where it began to pool in the indents of her collar bone.

Meters away lay her newest invention, the single-handed armaments weapon, beyond any reach that she could possibly achieve. And Artemis smiled deeply.

In the distance Raspora's body should have lain, but with Artemis's power instead was gone. Evaporated into dust, most likely. She should have been able to save her; Raspora had always looked up to her, and when the youth had needed her idol most Jolarie had failed. She was weak, and Artemis had proved as much. Why hadn't she seen that everything would end this way? That the one who she once proclaimed as great, subsequently denouncing, would really be all-powerful and take his revenge upon her for her stupidity.

Mathias

"Mathias"

 a mystery

Gary Baker, January 2013

(the beginning of a longer project)

"Welcome, Dr. Mathias," the gray-suited man turned to face Dr. Henry Mathias from behind a well-made oak desk, "if you would so choose, we shall begin." The man shifted a slim lock of silvery hair behind one ear and leaned back into the plush black leather. "First off, Dr. Mathias is dead, Dr."

Henry scowled. As intriguing as it had been, being brought from the central train station in Madrid all the way to this unknown skyscraper not far off, subsequently followed by the long elevator ride into the depths of who-knew where, the man's tone set him on edge. Finally he managed to shift in his seat, an uncomfortable guest chair with sparse cushioning and an awkward pattern, and mumble aloud. "But I'm not."

The Comet

"The Comet"

a short story

Gary Baker, January 2013

It was one of those moments when you had to look twice, with the afterglow of an explosive burst making rivulets in the wake of the event. The stars dimmed under tinted glass as Krio looked north along the blue lines of the programmed airway.

Ships moved along the X-axis parallel to the planetary orbit, the cargo freight along the Y-axis lifting people, foodstuffs, and debris up and out of the shrinking rock in space. It shone like a pearlescent green ball, held aloft in the oblivion of endless surreality as though tinged with an inner lighting mechanism generated by the far-distant sun.