The End of an Age

"The End of an Age"

an excerpt

Gary Baker, July 2013

The dance went on for ages, a time that lapsed into the subconscious mind where it was quickly forgotten and barely noticed. Tips of steel and violent edges of hardened wood traced hornet trails in the air, leaving dark crimson mist in their wake.

Yet still Lithomir moved like a god at the heart of making the sun and moon and planets work, orbiting and lifting and launching here and there under cosmic certainty that nothing too horrible could happen to him so long as he kept his pace with the rhythm dwelling deep down. All he had to do was simply keep moving, to continue swinging and arcing and shifting the extensions of his hands, two lengths of folded iron with a taste and hunger for human flesh.

One good thing for the ever-unsatisfied blades was that soldiers swarmed the scene around the Dragon King like a nest of wasps turned over in midsummer when the insects were more apt to be driven to fury. Half of the sightless human forms in the midst of battling chaos seemed to intend almost utter silence as they fought, a choice completely and unintentionally unwise, as the other half “hum-bumbumbum”ed and thus avoided the sharp agony of an encounter with Lithomir’s blades.

Tablets, part 1

“Tablets”

a short story

Gary Baker, July 2013

(part 1 of 2)

Alright,” said the shaggy thin man through lips pursed around a thin cigarette. “Alrightalrightalright. Here.” He pushed a hand toward a well dressed businessman sitting against the brick wall in the midnight alley beside him and dropped a gray tablet into his hand as he reached for it. Seeing the speculative look on the businessman’s face, the shaggy man nodded, “the ‘calmer’. We call it ‘le neutral’, don’ever take s’m’others withou wonna these in between.”

The businessman, audibly referring to himself as ‘Cookie’ for the purposes of this meeting, looked to the two quiet men on the cement next to Shaggy. One watched him like a hawk from mascara-lined eyes and piercing-riddled features, while the other seemed entranced in his near-empty bottle of low-grade vodka, would-be grout-cleaner trickling down his chin to seep into the pores of his ragged coat.

Admission

"Admission"

a short story

Gary Baker, July 2013

(based closely on a lucid dream)

Five consecutive years of blogging; ten works published by various degree here or there in some, admittedly triflous, public forums; two years work in freelance for tribunals ranging from Who’s That? to The Series, Quarterly; and a wonderful, dare I say it, wonderful expanse of more than seventy-two short stories all self-published and edited by oneself.” The man in the business suit across from me lifted his eyes from the off-white pages held aloft in his hand, to watch me with a glimmer of a smirk. “Not to mention, my boy, three versions of this very moment, all unique and each subliminal as Tabasco sauce in angel food cake, I might say.”

I squirmed in my seat, an overly-tall leather swivel chair meant to make a man or woman of any age feel like a child in the principal's office again. My hands gripped tighter together and I felt beads of sweat dribble down my spine to soak into the tail of my shirt tucked into my pressed slacks.

Heist at Dawn, part one

“Heist at Dawn”

a short story

Gary R. Baker, July 2013

(part one)

“Remind me never to go to prison,” McKenna arched an eyebrow as her roommate, Bale, walked in with nothing but a towel tied around his waist and hair matted to his head as though from a torrential downpour.

She gaped, unnoticing as soggy cheerios dumped from her lilting spoon back into the bowl of off-white milk inches below. Befuddlement and wonder crossed behind her eyes at the words of the lean, muscular, man while he reached into the balsa wood cabinets to retrieve a bowl of cereal of his own. “I don’t get it,” she let dribble out, transfixed in the curves of his abdominals gliding across one another in the process of lifting his arms.

He shot her a quick grin, green eyes bespeckled with amusing embarrassment. “Literally: I dropped the soap fifteen times in there.”

The Summoning

"The Summoning"

a short story

Gary Baker, July 2013

I know this is mute, and I hate that I have said as much before.

Delicious ecstatic throes of awe drown out all but the remainder of what exists inside, a drilling, pounding surreal glob of what cannot be understood. It sits there, wondering what might be out and about if it could cease and be deceased, always out of reach of those in the vicinity.

See I was running when it came to me, when this bitch of an idea hit me square in the chest like rocket fire from a blaring trumpet of vinyl hell. I staggered like a drunk, suddenly void of air within my lungs, hands reaching for throats that eclipsed my grasping, groping fingers; my nails burned for blood, my eyes yearning for endless red, and my teeth longing for an ever-more violent form of red.