(Searching for) Prophet

“(Searching for) Prophet”

a short story

Gary Baker, June 2013

(intended for use as comic idea)

Frankie dropped his hands to his knees and heaved, rustling leaves of the park shrubs scratching at his face in the midday heat. It was as though his entire day had become nothing but sheer terror laced with an eerie ecstatic sense of woe.

Nothing made sense anymore. His whole life had been turned upside down in a matter of hours starting with that fateful wave revealing a woman floating face down more than a land-based mile out to sea.

“You really should learn to cope with such things,” the woman, no longer dead and cold as a gutted fish but actively telling him what to do like an undead mother with a staff wielded like Excalibur, dusted his back absently. Her hands were rough and forceful, he noticed, with the heir of a Templar knight lost in the twenty-first century.

But coping was something he definitely could not do.

Not moments ago he’d been just an average joe living his well-to-do lifestyle like any other decently-endowed professional surfer. The other day, even, he’d won his second gold medal this

Libra

“Libra”

Gary Baker, March 2012

(character working for a larger project)

Libra danced to the side, avoiding the rushing torrent of arrows in their hailstorm drop that decimated his unsuspecting squad. A large up-held mass of moss-choked branches and mulch crested from low-hanging branches just above his scaled snout, with the musty smell of decay making him want to cringe. The continued chicks, clicks, and clacks tattered the makeshift roof as the stone-nosed arrows hit home in the surrounding forest floor, seeming to go on longer than should have been right.

Libra stepped forward in the dark, moist grotto, with as little noise as he could manage in the mud and moss, slowly creeping toward an opening over-looking the battle ahead. He reached a silhouetted arm forward to draw back the thick-foliage of a hanging fern, letting the filtered white light reveal to him the deep navy scales of his thin-yet-muscular clawed right hand. Beyond the shadows, the battle came to an end amidst the towering jungle landscape with tribal beasts, their scales of pasty yellows and faint moss-greens, hefting spears and bows like torches to usher on their comrades.