The Last Day

“The Last Day”

a short story

Gary Baker, October 2013

Recognition dawning, secrets climbing, fruit upon the vines declaring the day well-spent.

Breakfast harbors lingering wishes, strips of bacon cringing while they roil about in bed, hissing for another five minutes.

The T.V. doesn't work, so no news explains the current of humanity, but then again nothing else does either lately, not this close.

She looks over, anticipation in her eyes, tears of wonder glittering like raindrops, possibly the last he’ll ever see.

“You ready?” she chimes, her voice a harmonious melody of unexplored beauty.

“Yeah,” the jaw answers without the mentality to force it down, a hard lump caught in the place just above the thyroid, “ready as I’ll ever be, I guess.”

Don't Forget the White

“Don't Forget the White”

a short story

Gary Baker, October 2013

“Why do you eat the white part?” She asked, her chin held in curious fingers.

I looked across from my park-side stone bench, the kind that appears as though carved from marble despite being everyday cement, and into the crystalline eyes of an elderly woman in an automatic cart. “Why do I eat the white of the melon?” I responded back, unsure of how to answer.

The real question she should have been asking was: why wouldn't I? or better yet: why didn't everyone else?

But I had always eaten it that way. It had always been the sweet, tangy crimson red first, dribbling down my moistened chin like an ecstatic cannibal with vegetal gore slipping down the corners of my lips, along the crevices made by years of childish smiles, and out over the overhang of my own mandible. It always made my jaw muscles ache with awe each time I bit into it, made my tongue sear with relishing delight as those black and white seeds floated over and beyond the grasp of my ability to bite down on before they, too, slid down my gullet and into a core of happiness.

Reciprocal

“Reciprocal”

another excerpt

Gary Baker, October 2013

Sunlight searing, almost a sky-spanning white, with volumous realities criss-crossing in viewing rampart waves. Pines blurred, grasses as tall as homes turned to walls of color, stone fortifications melted in subsystomic bursts and a new world was borne from the last.

Eyes twinkling, always twinkling, she looked to the new skies, searching, wondering, hoping. Mascara drizzled over prim and proper painted cheeks, red hues tracing over her bones with a blushing intent, freckles opened into the night air, exposed like pebbles covered in mud in the rain.

Not here. It never was.

Maybe the next one. It always would be.

And blurs began again, smells coruscated into burning air, tastes of everything from sap to soil to saline droplets from the eye became metallic and raw, then nothing. Colors swept out, creeping like spiders in the mist, webs spearing the darkness with reflected tangibility, then connected and filled in to make the next in line what it was.

Tremors of the Heart

“Tremors of the Heart”

a short story

Gary Baker, October 7 2013
(a special story to commemorate one full year of short stories, here on Stories by Baker)

It lasted for ages, the city swaying and juddering through hazy earthen convulsions. Standing at an open park bench, his book bag jostling in the grass at his feet, Ariel watched buildings begin to fall…

...and the screaming begin to rise.

The mall across the park from Ariel swayed, seven stories loosening in their gravestone foundations until, finally, one side buckled and brought the rest down in a cascade of stone and dust. The hideous screams rose to a crescendo, flooding Ariel’s ears like water breaking at the floodgates of a wounded dam.

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.”