Einfach Leben

“Einfach Leben”

a short story

Gary Baker, June 2014

Eleven o’clock and I pop the cap on my first bottle as Charlie plays on the flat screen, cigar still smoldering in the livingroom ashtray. He’s up to no good again, always off on some caper or other doing god knows what or why. I watch as the ginger rebel dons a dress and masquerades as a vegas dancer for the Prime Minister.

I wonder why they call him that; was there some other series of ministers before him? Suddenly it dawns on me that Optimus must have been the same way, otherwise he would just be Optimus, which doesn’t nearly sound as all-powerful. I mean, who in their right mind would allow some mega robot intelligence seven stories tall to roam the earth with the name of “Optimus One” or “Optimus Prototype”? No one, that’s who. The prime must mean by any indication that he is the best, by default. So the Prime Minister must be some sort of dictator for the Europeans. A man who came after a bunch of phonies who couldn’t handle cold, hard leadership.

I smile and start to refer to him as “Optimus Minister” while Charlie pretends to give him a lap dance. But it isn’t a real lap dance; no, Charlie is too good for that. He actually pockets the phone of Mr Optimus and passes it off to a rebel crony of his acting as a bouncer, then scampers off to rejoin the stage. I actually enjoy his little routine, grinning as the hairy dancer fools everyone else. Stupid sexy rebel man.

A knock at the door, frantic and bothersome. My head pounds just as hard, indicative of the hangover in full force. I free up another soot-black sea of greatness and drop it back. Another knock and I grumble without moving. The couch and I have become best friends, there’s no way I’m going to give that up, not now that the cushions have started to form around me. I feel like a rope tied to a tree for decades, the trunk slowly overtaking me until I am simply a piece of the whole.

“Trumer?” A female voice, somewhat sexy, but incredibly irritating once it dawns on me who it is. Rachel knocks again. “Trumer I know you’re in there. Open up.” In hasty annoyance to end her spiel I connect my headphones to the wireless VidBase on my coffee table, ending the audibility of the show. “Are you serious?” She berates. “I just heard you…” she sighs with an angry overtone and I knock another back trying to pry into my own mind for details.

Again with the knocking! Insatiable grumbling as I flip open the laptop and hit the power key. It comes out of sleep and straight to ComeOnMe, my latest tab. I forgo the memory-prying of the night before, now entirely sure that it was a bust after all. So much for the glory of delayed adventures remembered in glimpses over the next few days….

“Dammit, Trumer, that’s it!” I hear a jingling of keys and panic. I almost smash the computer screen when I close it so hard, just in time too as the front door opens with wicked speed and slams against the wall just inside. My first thought is that the neighbors must be vying to kill me right now, or at least those who aren’t at work. My second thought is how the hell she got a key to my apartment. Who did she play to get a key to my place without me knowing?!

Rachel glares at me with wet cheeks, eyes red and makeup dribbling down across her chin. Her hands are on her hips and her painted fingernails dig into her jeans like rounded cactus spines. Then it seems to finally hit her and her eyes go wide in shock. “Seriously?!” She rebukes -- or maybe she refutes, the throbbing pain is too much for me to think clearly and the light of day that enters in behind her from the courtyard attacks me like a million illuminated wasps, seeking the sweet spots of my retinas. She gives me a thrice-over, “where the hell are your clothes?!”

I look down over my furry flab that hoists a plate of dried-out lunchmeat like a butler, and discover that I am half-laying with nothing but boxers on. “In the wash,” I lie. “I’m waiting for them to finish so I can shower and put them on.” I purposely ignore the fact that they are still lying haphazardly across the white carpet throughout the room, and similarly I avoid all eye-contact with them as though doing so makes them not even exist.

Her cheeks soften and she perks her lips to one side, relaxing with sympathy. “Look, Trumer, I came by…” she shoots a glance at the window and tosses me a blanket from the cubby system beneath it, then sits down on an ottoman. “I came by to apologize. For last night.” Eyes wide I move the plate to the table and lean forward, covering my sorry self with a thin layer of dyed wool. “Let me guess,” she winces, noting the bottles with an overall eye wander, “you don’t remember?”

“Sorry,” I mumble.

“Ha!” Rachel throws herself back against the cushioned chair next to her, “you’re sorry! Dammit, Trumer, I’m the one who’s sorry!” Her eyes bead up and she feigns a smile. “I shouldn’t have rejected you like that. I was scared. I was pissed. I was-....” She brings her keys into her hands and watches them with what looks like reverence. “When you gave me a key to your place I thought you were asking me to marry you, and there’s no way I was ready for that!” She sighs loudly and wipes away tears with the back of her hand. “And -- wait, is that a stripper with a Hitler mustache?!”

It catches me completely three-sixty and for several moments I just stare in bewilderment. “What?” Then I see where she’s looking and realize she’s referring to Charlie. “Oh. No it’s a Charlie Chaplin mustache.”

She scowls disbelievingly. “On a stripper?”

“No,” I correct, “on an Irish rebel spy acting like a vegas feather-dancer to take down the Optimus Minister.”

“What kind of show is this?”

With a finger held high in lecture, I set down my latest bottle. “It’s the perfect mix of Charlie Chaplin, James Bond and the I - R - A. Though if you think about it, there’s quite a bit of the Stooges laced in as well.”

She shakes her head. “Whatever. Anyways I’ve been thinking about your offer and wanted to tell you that I accept...” her eyes once again take in the whole room, “although only on the condition that this never happens again.”

I sit straighter suddenly. “Are you serious?” Is she serious? What if this turns out to be a joke? A prank set up by my neighbors, or colleagues? I mean, it’s not as if I didn’t want her to say this, but I don’t even remember asking her in the first place.

Rachel’s smile is soft, caring, and totally obviously intentionally ignoring the mess nested around me. “Yes, Trumer, I am one-hundred percent serious.” She shrugs, “truth is I kinda, sorta wanted it all along anyways. I just wasn’t prepared to be asked like that, in front of all of our friends, at the exact same sitting as when Karl proposed to Jenna.” Another nervous shrug. “It sorta felt like you were only doing it because you felt the need to, that you were only asking because we’d been dating for so long.”

Maybe it’s the booze, but I scowl, “we’ve only been dating for six months….”

“Exactly!” Rachel runs her hands through her hair wildly. “And to think I almost told Jenna I hated you for asking me like that!” Then I notice the green and blue smears across her elbows. She’s been painting again. Standing, she pockets her keys and makes her way to the fridge where she concocts some sort of mixture with the rice milk, coconut water, and... was that a lime? Then she turns to me with her solution in hand, a milk mustache set upon her upper lip. “You told me something last night, while pleading your case. You said I needed to…” she glances off to the side, trying to remember, “I needed to ‘einfach leben’. I think I said that right.” She connects with my gaze again with a look of hope as I muse on how she pronounced it wrong. “Was that German?”

“It means to live simply, more or less,” I sit back and rest my hands on my lap. “That or to simply live, whichever, though to be honest I’m not entirely sure I have the grammar correct.”

“Well either way, I choose to ‘leben’ in the moment.” She comes to the couch and sweeps aside the empty bottles and detritus, then hoists her insane white, sweet-smelling mixture. “Starting with a cure for the hangover you gave yourself due to me rejecting you.” As I reach for it she lifts it to her own lips and chugs the damned glass. Grinning, she sets the empty thing down and laughs devilishly while unplugging the headphones from the jack and hits play. Instantly the sound of the rebel ginger slams into my ears as he sneakily chicken-walks off stage to the not-so-mellow jazz music.

I suddenly hate the show, but Rachel sits back and turns up the volume grinning like the Cheshire the whole damned time. Maybe it was a bad idea to give her a key after all.

Impasse

“Impasse”

a short story

Gary Baker, March 2014

Two years back I was ready to jump ship. I was standing on the corner of Haight and Ashbury, looking at my feet, ready to take the plunge, and then I found God. I’d never bothered to call myself an atheist until that precise moment and, ever since then, I’ve never seen any reason to change that.

I remember the wind, the incessant tugging of air at my jacket like an unseen monstrous entity trying to throw me around. It was enough to boil the blood in my veins before I even looked down to see the bustling streets so very, incredibly far below. I inhaled deeply through my nose and held it for a second, awaiting the calming effect that it often gave, then slowly, so very slowly released it through pursed lips.

My breath quivered as it went, anxiety meshing with raw fear and a wish that it didn’t have to be this way. I opened my eyes, unaware that I had ever closed them in the first place, and looked once more upon the setting sun falling between skyscrapers. The world was coming to an end. Everything was crumbling and there was nothing I nor anyone else could do about it.

They say the ring of fire was on the verge of breaking itself, that the icecaps were gone completely and that the most recent hurricane in the Caribbean wasted it’s way all the way through to Moscow before finally petering itself out. Claims had been made that the moon was shifting in it’s orbit and that one more nudge in either direction and there would be two possible outcomes: A- it would fall toward us and be the last thing anyone ever saw, or B- it would drift away into space and would kill the cycle of weather and tides and so on. From there it was only a matter of time before the whole of human existence simply shut out like a dimming LED.

I wasn’t ready to face those consequences. My life had been perfect up until then. I had a wife, three loving children, and a career as a high market supervisor for a publishing firm at the dawn of an age when books -- real books -- had come back into style. These days everyone carried some literary document made of pulped wood and ink with them at all times. Some chose the age-old classics from the early twenty-one hundreds, with topics that bordered on the heretical dislike of technology, while others chose more modern titles spanning anything from the sciences to the dead religions that technology had slowly pushed out of society.

Yet it would all be gone in a mere echo of the dials upon a clock. Entropy had reached it’s end, and I wasn’t one to face things like that head on. What if the world burst into flames? How could my pale complexion face such a feat without hordes of pain lasting all-too long? Besides that, I hated pain. I still do.

So there I was, facing the sun for the last time with my buttoned jacket beating a quick rhythm against my throat as though drums beating out my lonesome dirge. A tear dripped down my cheek and fell from my chin. I watched it fall, eyeing the glint of refracted light as it pre-enacted what I was just about to do.

And, in the uncaring crowds below, I made eye-contact with God.

My heart skipped a beat. Maybe more than that. I just know it felt like forever that I was transfixed in those eyes. They seemed to hold everything, like miniature doorways to the whole universe with infinite stars and everything just a few cellular molecules apart. I couldn’t tell the gender from that height, but there was no mistaking who it was: all the dead religions boiled down to that one moment when what appeared to be a pitiful homeless vagrant caught the sight of a man about to end it with a half step into empty air.

Suddenly I slammed against the stone wall, my heels arching as I tried to get back to something stable. I was inside my office before I knew it and was racing lopsided to the elevator terminal even as I suddenly realized I’d lost a shoe. It didn’t matter, though, as I just had to get there. I had to meet him -- her -- it -- or whatever God claimed to be.

“Got a hot date?” Jennison Valdery mocked me as she calmly sipped her protein-infused mocha beside me. Her suit had been pressed and refitted just that morning, smoothing the edges of her elegant hips with swatches of silk-like carbon micromesh and an underlying leather-tan fabric. She eyed me with an arched painted eyebrow and eyelashes that extended all the way to her forehead as the latest fashions dictated.

“No,” I mumbled, loosening my tie awkwardly as we descended floor by floor.

She laughed that fake laugh of hers, a chuckle that was supposed to catch men off-guard. It didn’t work on me, not these days, not now that I had a purpose. We’d had an affair once or twice before, I will admit, having hit the red panel on the way down to indicate a corporate need to stop the elevator as would be done in a private meeting. It happened more than either of us wanted to admit, but I never had the heart to tell my wife.

“So then what’s the hurry?” She crossed her arms curiously and leaned against the polished steel panelling. “It’s not like the world is going to end any time soon is it?” She smirked with a wide grin of pearly teeth and deep green lips that also followed the latest styles. “Oh, wait -- I forgot: it is!” The doors opened and I began toward them. “Well, whatever,” she cooed as I passed, “the way I see it? Doesn’t mean a thing. It’ll all be dust in a few days anyways, eh?” She kept talking, but the doors had already started closing and I was well on my way through the foyer to the corner door that led outside to the unfabricated breezes and scents.

It took a second of looking anew from this alternate angle, but I found him again with another stroke of lightning in my chest. He was still there on the sidewalk, smoking the last cigarette from a now-empty pack, watching the skies and occasionally shaking his mug with a few macro M-chips inside.

Again I had a hard time telling if God was a man or woman, or even one of those who’d been born into the middle sex given by a feat of nature and technology. For a split second I wondered what he would prefer I call him. Should I address this person as ‘Sir’? ‘Ma’am’? Perhaps even ‘thei’ as had been the overall middle term for the last century?

Instead, I lost my chance -- God looked my way, dirty pudgy face and all, broken teeth jutting to the side here and there, and grime colonies seeming to decay the very flesh upon which growth was enabled. This was a person on the verge of death as well and I wondered for a split second if that was ironic. “Well don’t just stand there,” thei called, “come closer, share a smoke with me, eh?”

I wanted to move, but found myself frozen in place. What did one say to the living patron saint of the longest-lived, though still dead, religion of Earth?

We stared through billows of smoke for ages before God shook the cup again and received a few chips from a passing soul while, in the distance, someone succeeded where I had faltered. I heard the horrendous smack and winced, though no one else seemed to even notice. These days it was far too common a sight in the cities.

“Sad, that one,” God mumbled, taking another draw of the tobacco. Those eyes still held me, keeping me staring, no matter how hard I tried to get away. “Single theilen, obviously no offspring, with a fanatic tendency to paint like no other.” God pursed it’s lips to the side, “I always wondered when those chemicals would start to affect thei and convince thei to end it.”

God lifted a grubby finger with more oily dirt on it than I had ever seen this deep in the city. “Almost like you, I might add.” A welcoming, warm smile appeared and I found myself sitting cross-legged on the ionic-edge street side with someone so low comparatively that most must have thought I’d lost it. “See? No harm done, my little lamb. None at all.”

Dumbfounded I just leaned on my knees and shrugged. “Where’ve you been?” I finally breathed.

“Here,” she handed me the tobacco and I took it gingerly, since I didn’t really think I had the choice of saying ‘no’ to a smoke from God. “Now what’s this about my whereabouts?”

I drew the first breath of smoke that I’d ever done in my life and coughed instantly, much to God’s cackling humor. When I finally caught myself again, I shot him a look of annoyed wonder. “Where have you been all my life?”

God raised thei’s bushy, unshaven eyebrows as though over the wires of a pair of spectacles. “You mean to say you, or anyone living in your religiousless times for that matter, need the likes of me?”

“Well, yeah.”

“As in I, the famed-” she scowled, “well, at one time I was -- creator of all things in this universe?”

I glanced to people casually passing by as the world counted down it’s last moments. They all seemed so calm, so eerily unaware. I wanted to grab one of them by the shoulders and shake them, asking frantically “don’t you care? Are you not afraid? Am I the only one who sees this?!” Instead I returned my gaze to God’s eyes, those magnificent eyes that held eons of everything imaginable. It was ironic that suddenly I had the inspiration to write books upon books on anything that came to mind, and all when I had perhaps a day or so to live. “Well I sort of had a bad week last week.”

“Meaning?”

“I stubbed my toe when getting out of my sleeping capsule, then forgot to put on my autodetection ring and was locked out of the vehicle pod for hours while I searched through messes of everything in my home for it, and things just kept getting worse for me.”

“And you just assumed I had nothing better to do.”

I shrugged, “if there was ever a time where I wished a god existed to control my fate then that was it!”

She nodded with lips pursed around the cigarette, “hmm, you wanted someone to blame it all on.” Her face became a flurry of wrinkles as she drew again and frowned at me, then handed the tobacco back for me to do the same. “Alright, lamb,” God mumbled while streaming thick smoke from her nostrils, “look at me. What do you see?”

I finally inhaled smoke without choking and let it sit in my lungs for a bit, as I’d seen God do, before releasing it into the wild air again. But I did look him over as commanded, noting the scraps of sullied trash bags used as a makeshift belt, the stains of God-knew-what, and gave myself a moment to chuckle at that thought, coating his every last garment. He wore sneakers three sizes too small, his toes peeking out of mouth-like holes in the forefronts, and laces so frayed it looked like God had assembled them from body hair over the years. He was overweight, yet anorexically thin in the same glance, where the rags neglected to cover his pasty diseased skin, and each breath both expanded his visible ribcage as well as tightened the cellulite beneath that.

“Are you looking?” Thei asked. “I mean really, truly looking at me?”

“Yeah, and?”

“Krishna, lamb!” She cursed. “Why do you think I look like this? Why would an all-powerful being choose to be poorer than dirt, or eat scraps of food leftover after the rats are done, eh?”

I was silent, trying to figure out a good response.

“Or how about this one,” he shot again, “if I were so benevolent and all-powerful, why would I allow the universe to be about to collapse for your kind?”

I frowned at my one remaining glossy neosuede shoe, letting the tobacco ease my anxiety. “Because… you’re just an asshole?” As soon as I’d said it, I hated myself.

God smirked joyously and I watched as thei made the cigarette grow back to full length and reignite itself, then took a dramatically long pull. As thei released the smoke with a sigh, God rolled thei’s eyes toward me awkwardly. “Exactly.”

Suddenly I felt wronged. The world was about to end and all because the last living god had simply decided he was annoyed with humanity? What gave him -- her -- thei the right? “Are you serious?” I jabbed and snatched the tobacco away from the bastard.

“Completely,” she sniffed angrily. She crossed her arms and fell backwards onto her pile of things that looked more like trash blown in on the wind. “Think of it this way, lamb: I am the last god out there. All the others faded away as science inevitably snipped us out of the human mind. We once reigned over everything, you know, our power limited only by the vast numbers of those who worshipped us, and now only I exist due to scholars unwillingly acknowledging me because of a book I, more or less, wrote eons before their time.” She rolled onto her side to face me as she took the tobacco back for another pull. “Obviously I was pissed. Science had, in fact, won out on us all and there wasn’t even a god at it’s center for us to complain to. So I made an ultimatum: starting on this coming Tuesday I will only allow your universe to exist for one day for each soul that believes in me. Just one, each.”

I gaped and smoke dribbled from my lips. “No shit,” I breathed exasperatedly.

“Trust me, there’s shit,” he huffed angrily, “and it’s all your lousy asses that walk this earth, too. Nothin’ shittier than a bunch of worshipers ignoring you and your miracles for the plain-old screen of the latest phone.”

Then it struck me: there was a loophole. “So, wait, you mean to say that if, say, three people were to start worshipping you right now you would let the earth live for another three days beyond Tuesday?”

Thei grinned. “That’s exactly what I mean, little lamb.”

“So,” I hesitated; how to word this in a way that God would tell me completely? “How do I get atheists to start believing in a disproven god?” Then I startled with a shock of realization. “Wait -- how do I prove you to me? I can’t go out there spreading the word of your sorry ass if I don’t even believe in you.”

Crossing his nasty-smelling arms under his head as a pillow, God laughed lightly. “Well you can always wait until December twenty-fifth to find out for yourself if I’m legitimate or not.”

“But that’s this Tuesday!”

“As I said: I’m giving you humans until my son’s birthday to start worshipping me, and from then on I will only give you shits one day per believer to continue existing.” The grin on her lips was frighteningly dark.

The Day I Played with Fire

"The Day I Played with Fire"

a short story

Gary Baker, February 2014

The rain was soft, much softer than I expected it to be as I lay there, blood dribbling down across my gaping eyelids, wondering if this was success that I was finally feeling.

It started days ago. Too many, if you ask me, but for relevancy I'll keep it to a minimum. I want to say it began all suddenly and out of the blue, but in all reality it didn't. I had seen this coming for weeks, months -- hell, I'd seen this coming years ago, not that I had ever admitted it right out. I did cry out for help, though, don't get me wrong. I didn't let fate take me lightly. My shoulders had been increasingly white over the last few weeks, and neither the hype nor the meds did anything to alleviate as much.

Three days back I was at work, sitting in on a meeting with my boss as I geared up for a promotion of sorts.

"Craig," she said, with that all-too-familiar scowl of approval set upon her cheeks, "don't forget that you represent us, this store, when you go there." She sat back in her black leather office chair, waving her gilded pen like a baton between her dexterous right-hand fingers, and crossed her leg like a stereotypical cubicle boss. She was the kind of boss people would search for years to work under, not sexy and thus not someone people rumored about as having slept around to get to where she was. She was competent, and that showed through her every demeanor, whether it was her loose-fitting pin-stripe slacks, or her semi-mustache that appeared every time she'd been up late trying to reconfigure something that would increase sales.

She was talking about my transfer. It was purported to be something to help me ease into the higher-ups, almost like a stepping stone that no one else was willing to bat an eye at me with. I was lucky to have her as my superior, much more so to have her be willing to take this big of a risk on my development. If I failed, she would forever be marred by her mistake in vouching for me, and she made that clear from the get-go. Almost a 'no pressure, but if you don't succeed you won't be ruining just your own life' kind of moment.

But really: no pressure.

Things changed from there. As I worked the next day at the store I was transferring to, I met the new bosses that I would be under for the next segment of my career, and found out I wasn't as perfect as I had been talked about.

"Look, kid," the new superior pointedly stood when there where seats to be sat in, "we don't just need someone to fill the shoes of someone for a while, we need a good. Hard. Worker." He turned to the door, then and led the way to my new abode, a place where the hardware and the good old nuts and bolts of the store could be found. With a wave of his hands, he indicated the spread of my new domain, "this isn't just some department of yours," he wavered on obedience training as though I were some mutt out of the pound. "This isn't even your new home. It's our backbone, and if it doesn't move right, neither does the rest of our little contraption. You got me?" Suddenly he smiled, all eager-to-please and beaming with delight, "but I trust you'll do the right thing, don't you worry."

It took me an hour to learn the new way of things, even though I was doing anything but the job I was transferred to do, and by the time my lunch hit I was ready to call it a day. I eagerly pushed into the oddly-circular room where I had placed my bag and tore into my lunch: a mere toasted bagel with Skippy and strawberry Weston jam, as I ate the words of my latest book as well. It was then that my phone buzzed. At first I ignored it, thinking it anything but important, and dove back into the other world just pages beneath my nose.

The hero was valiantly staggering through a dark, murky hallway, where the bestial juggernaut golemn had laid it's final trap. My heart was racing as I followed him, seeking answers in the authors tone, knowing something bad was about to happen and yet not able to tell Lord Graedel what I thought it might be. The hallway was obliviously dark, the sewer water fogging the scene as he tread deeper and deeper. He gripped the hilt of his sword when he heard a noise -- and my phone buzzed again, shattering the illusion.

It buzzed a second time, and then a third, and finally a fourth, before settling into peaceful calmness again as I reached for my second bite of an awkward bagel PB&J. Something was up, and it set me on edge, though I hadn't the slightest as to why. So I flipped open my phone, saw the six missed messages, and felt that electric jolt of anxiety that normally accompanied the fear that someone had died, or was dying and needed to talk to me of all people to say their last words via text or some shit like that.

What I got, instead, was something way out of left field: "Craig, the bank called", "wtf is wrong with you? can't you pay one godam bill?!", "this is ruining our credit you dumbfk!!!!"

I didn't even have the capacity to read the rest, nor to acknowledge the bad spelling like the English major that I was deep inside. It felt like I was having a heart attack. My veins had turned to ice, my heart into a rave-like beat sped up via Garage Band or Music Pro or some software like that, and my breathing reflected that of a dead mouse. Finally I un-clenched my throat and inhaled as if I'd been under water for ten minutes, and clatteringly dropped my escape to the table. My world was over. I was going to die.

It took deep breaths, controlled as if I'd had an asthma attack like when I was a kid, and took serious forces to bring myself back to reality. I told myself that everything was going to be okay, that my life wasn't over, and that I was surely the butt of some douche-bag joke played by... no, wait, they wouldn't joke with me, they never had and probably never would.

The panic then returned and took another series of moments to bring back under control. No amount of alcohol could solve this for me, and besides that I was midway through the toughest day I had had at work in ages. I wasn't just there to work, I was there to make an impression. But fuck whomever expected me to be calm in a time like this: my life was ending and I had to get away.

I tried the book again, but couldn't concentrate. I tried force-feeding the remainder of my breakfast, lunch and dinner, all one meal of a bagel with peanut butter and etc, but found my appetite gone and my diseased stomach a turbulent organ of chaos at that point. So I threw the rest away and clocked back in.

The next few hours went by as though slowed down by the hand of some sick deity trying to mess with my head more than had already been messed with. Minutes felt like hours and hours like days, until, finally, I found the seat of my hatchback and sighed so loud I may as well have moaned with ecstasy. In seconds I had thumbed the radio onto full and had the engine turning over, when I overheard the news of impending rain.

Normally this would have been a bad thing for me, not being one to enjoy it full-on like the rest of those I worked with, but this time I relished the idea for some sick reason that I had yet to decipher. So I drove home with the odd music of a lonesome oldies station playing as my backdrop to a dreary, dark night, which only further brought my mood into the shitstorm of what was to come. I felt the sorrow of a blues singer who'd lost his lover to a doctor in Manhattan, I felt the regret of a country singer who'd left home to see the world only to find out he left his best girl behind, and actually felt the pain of a man playing the harmonica to the beat of jazz flutes and percussion as he sang melodious tunes of a girl who'd died on her way to meet up with him where he'd planned on proposing.

By the time I got home to my apartment I was practically bawling but, choosing to 'be a man', instead held it in and grit my teeth against what should have been otherwise expressed right then and there.

I made my way to the door, just then, and entered into a dark living room where I quickly found a note from my best friend, roommate and lover of over ten years, claiming: "hun, please stop avoiding my parents, they are just trying to help you. They didn't mean to type it the way that they did, and are sorry for that. Please talk to me tomorrow when you get home." She had then penned in with another color of ink at what seemed last minute due to her handwriting "PS: please be quiet coming in, I work at four a.m. and I know how you stumble around at night when you aren't thinking. Love ya!"

Yeah, right. So I bedded down on the couch, heart racing once again, and eased into sleep as fluidly as green branches might catch on fire.

The next day came like the last in that I learned more about where it was I would be staying for the next segment and also more ridicule by those with whom I would be working. Lunch came without the everlasting throes of fear induced by malicious texts, which were so sarcastically missed, and I found refuge in knowing that my hero somehow survived his plight by expecting the beast to be in the shadows instead of the murky, glowy sewage, and had thrown himself into harms way to avoid the worst of it all. He was wounded to hell and back, though, and walked away dripping neon waste with more than just a few scrapes as he limped back into the light of day again, valiant and heroic as ever before, knowing he had vanquished the worst of his problems while down in the deep.

The rain then started at just about the same time that a customer was telling me how bad I was at my job, all because I refused to take a clearly fraudulent return. She didn't rest there, either: no, she claimed I was a 'hell-hole of a human being' and that I have been should be ashamed of even existing.

So I smiled and told her with a straight face that I was; and I meant it. She was right. I had no reason to argue with her about returning a brand our company had never carried, nor about how our company would not allow returns into cash without the receipt nor tag being present. I was a pitiful human being. I failed on bills, I avoided stressing situations, I was heavily taxed when thinking about any sort of finance, and fuck it all I was a man, treating a woman with anything other than complete reverie.

"You're right: I should be hanged," I told her in my own mind, and walked off without saying a single real word edgewise, much to my dismay. The day then passed by as quickly as ever, until the closing supervisor came in and relieved me of duty so I could thankfully head home in pouring down rain.

I bit my lip as I phased into my car, not even aware of the water that had already drenched me in the fifty feet I had walked to get there, and felt the metallic blood well up onto my tongue. Then my phone buzzed again.

I didn't even have to read it, as the next two came in one after the other from the same "You Know Who" name. Apparently I had changed both her parents names to the same nuance as each other, though I knew not when. What then threw me was when the phone began to ring that incessant "carry on my way-yward so-ooon, there'll be peace whe-n you are go-oone" and I was not in the mood for Styx at all just then.

"Yeah?" I answered.

"Craig," came the voice of her father, the husband of my co-signer, "just the man I was wanting to talk to." I wanted to say 'no shit, that's why you called me' and thus felt like a complete ass for even thinking that. The rain on my rooftop drowned out the sounds of birds that would have lightened my mood just then, and so I felt myself dropping even further as the man went on. "Look," he said, suddenly all serious, "we need to figure out what's going on with that loan of yours." Of course it was my loan when it came down to me needing to start paying it off, despite my financial inability right then, whereas it was always our loan when they told others about how they had helped me go abroad all those years ago.

"Yeah, I know, I've been trying to contact the bank," I lied, "but unfortunately I keep working hours where I start before the bank opens and I get out after they close." I gave a pause to let that sink in. Realistically I had worked those hours, but only for the last couple of days. In all reality I had no excuse for leaving it unpaid, despite the heart-race that it gave me whenever I so much as thought of it. "I can call their regional hotline, if you'd like?"

He sighed audibly, making it obvious that I was the male organ out of the two of us. It wasn't as if I didn't already feel that way, but hearing the aura of someone who absolutely despises you kind of puts an extrasensory damper on things that becomes hellishly hard to describe. "No -- just," he sighed again, angry with me as had become the usual, "go in when you have a chance. You remember how long it took to sort this all out when you had to call them after the college lost your records. We don't want that again." He grumbled to someone in the background, and came back with the sound of his fingers coming off the microphone. "I trust you'll get this sorted out, Craig. Talk to you later," and abruptly hung up.

I wanted to die right then, and it felt like I was -- with how heavy my heartbeat had become, still sitting in the parking lot of my new workplace, with more water heaving onto my car than a typical car wash could have done for twice the usual pay. I hated everything. I was avoiding bills that affected more than just myself, I was too wet-behind-the-ears for the job I hadn't even fully transferred into, I had been called out on being the worst of human beings in all of existence, was avoiding the dentist where I could get my two root canals taken care of all because I had a fear of the sounds their tools make, and had found myself locked in a steel box on wheels...

...while rain slicked the roads.

In an instant, I knew what had to be done.

It was a good fifteen mile ride before I chose the place I would do it at, all with the ruse of making it appear like a normal accident. So I hit eighty, my usual 'I'm in a hurry' speed, as I came upon my exit, and gripped the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands, my breath coming in nonexistent inhales and my heart making one long hum in my chest.

Then the guardrail hit the front bumper.

Temporary Hiatus

Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, I am in no way pleased to announce that Stories by Baker is going on a temporary hiatus due to a lack of internet access at my place of living.

This does not mean that I will stop writing, at all, but that I will be posting when and if I can for the time being and will continue on my regular schedule from the point at which I am able to receive consistent wifi again. I am very much displeased with this end to such a display of chaos, but I assure you all that I will come back with a vengeance. This is not the end of Stories, nor will it ever be.

I merely ask that you be patient and accept the untimely posting for the time being.

Wishing you the best of regards,
Gary Baker
Founder, Stories by Baker

The Attack

“The Attack”

a short story

Gary Baker, January 2014

(my first-written story of the new year)

“So,” lead inspector, Chiff Mason mumbled through lips pursed around a basic ballpoint pen, “judging by the spray,” he traced the gore with imaginary lines that led either way along the mountain trail, “we can safely say this was no ordinary attack…

The growl came from behind him with the snap of a twig and Barson spun around to find himself face to face with a massive wild cat. It’s eyes gleamed in the moonlight, it’s hide wet with the recent rainfall that had collected upon the shrubs, and it’s bared fangs shone like silver daggers in the night.

“There was no escaping this,” Mason declared, “he knew that much from the start.”

Suddenly the beast shot forward with intense speed, leaving Barson just enough time to stumble to the side and escape instant death with a long tear across his left shoulder, his backpack torn open in the same blow. He rolled through the trailside grass and came to his feet even as the beast came at him again, this time with a vengeance.

Again Barson moved out of the way, but was again hindered by his pack.

“So he dropped the remaining strap from his right shoulder,” the inspector continued, following the boot prints and the now-dry, blood-soaked mud. The suited man stopped beside the shredded external frame laying on it’s side in the trail as though left by a careless child at play. “But it was here,” he nodded at a sudden change in the direction of the bootprints, “that Mr. Barson chose to fight back.”

The pack crackled as the porcelain of his camping bowl shattered within and yet Barson couldn’t think anything of it. He had no time. Nevertheless the hunting knife was in his hand in the blink of an eye, the sheath discarded into the dark, and the golden glow of the mountain lion’s eyes was reflecting off the blade like firelight.

When the cat leapt again, Barson was ready. Claws met his biceps as the young man clenched his fist and swung hard. Up and across in an arc that bisected the leap. Warmth seeped into his cheeks from fresh blood and he watched as the beast landed with a howl.

The man stumbled when the pain hit him, finding his walking stick as he toppled forward, and quickly struggled to use it to stand. He stood there with the darkness enveloping him like a blanket for the longest time, the wounds of his arms dripping down his outheld elbows and into the mud while he searched frantically for the assailing cat. In his left hand, Barson held himself up with the staff of worn, de-barked oak, and in his right, he held the blade like a lifeline, like a compass trying to find the lion out of impossible magnetism.

Inspector Mason scowled as he knelt beside the fallen knife, feline blood congealed across much of the glossy-yet-muddied chrome blade. “It was here, I am led to believe,” he looked to the police reporter taking notes in a handheld notebook, “that the cat came upon him again.”

Barson was slammed into the mud as the lion landed on his back from behind and pushed him deep into the rocky post-rain slush; but the beast’s momentum carried it further still and gave the young man that blessed second to regain himself.

Instantly he pushed himself from the ground as though having gained super strength when least expected and thus overshot it and landed on his feet with too much backwards inertia. He tripped over his own heels and almost fell again, had he not still been holding the staff. When he realized the knife had been lost he went white with fear.

This was it. This was how he would die.

Again the lion came at him, charging like a mad rhinoceros from out of the dark. He only noticed at the last second due to the splashing sound of mud, and absently swung the staff around and forward. The jaws gleamed and his reflexes kicked in. His body became a vehicle for the many years of limitless knightly dreams, of wishing he were some heroic armor-bearing knight for the king, and the walking stick became a weapon to be reckoned with. In a flash of hallucination enabled by blood loss and fear, the oak turned to Excalibur and the mountain lion a bloodthirsty dragon.

“Right here,” he indicated with a pointed gesture toward a place where pawprints had meshed with pools of gore, “is where the cat received a major blow, ultimately turning the tide.”

He set his jaw and felt the thin end of the staff pierce the forward crest of the lion’s chest, and subsequently slip upon the cat’s upper ribs. He fell as the beast sailed passed, regained his determination, and swung with all his might as a warrior to carry the extension of the legendary blade into the dragon’s side. He felt something within crumple, and the blade shattered back into a heft of arm-length oak with a wicked crackle.

The cat bellowed out in pain and it’s eyes lost color for a split second…

“...but then the lion reciprocated despite the shrapnel protruding from it’s side…”

...and then it turned back toward the backpacker with sudden animistic, feral fire burning deep within the confines of it’s will.

Barson watched in growing fear as the cat came again, slower now but still much too ferocious to be avoided. He barely brought the heft of oak up in time to land it square into the lion’s underarm as a stray paw swiped at his neck.

The cat landed hard, the staff piece still lodged deep in the soft spot where it’s front right paw connected with it’s chest, turned viciously sideways by the landing, and stumbled a few paces before it turned back toward Barson again. Their eyes held for a brief moment as the man felt his shirt grow warmer and his arms grow numb, when the beast huffed one last breath into the cold night and fell to the trailside grass.

Inspector Chiff Mason bit the end of his pen again and frowned at the corpse of the mountain lion laying halfway out of the trail. The beast was massive. Bigger than most other cats around these parts in the national park lands. The forest ranger, who had first arrived at the scene after he’d received the distressed call of a local hiker going for a morning run, had said the cat was affected by some tumor lodged in the lobes of it’s brain that controlled hunger.

He’d said that was the only plausible possibility for the attack.

“What I don’t understand,” Mason mumbled, “is why the boy did what came next…”

Barson leaned on his knees and panted hard air and fought to stay standing. He’d been sliced too deeply just above the collar, that much was obvious by now, and there was no way he was going to make it back alive. Even worse: there was no cell service to call for help… or to hear the voice of his fiance one last time.

He huffed through a blood-filled mouth and lost his dinner onto his feet. God it hurt so much. The whiteness of the numbing sensation was fleeting through his body like a phantom mist, thicker in some areas and thinner in others, but these places never stayed constant. He would lose full feeling of his left shoulder one second and the next he could feel every nerve crying out in a searing explosion of throbbing hellfire.

Before he knew it, the ground met his face with a thunderous echo…

…and there in front of him, inches from his nose and looking into his own, were the bloodshot eyes of the dying mountain lion as it fought to breathe it’s very last breath.

Barson felt the tears begin to flow, the sadness of it all summing up in that one glance as the beast and he recognized each other as equals, and that neither would survive to remember the sacrifice of the other as nature took it’s toll. He lifted a heavy, brick-laden right hand and placed it upon the cheek of the lion, meshing his fingers with the fur and a soft grin appeared across his cheeks.

“We’ve had a good run,” Barson whispered reassuringly as though to himself, “I’m just glad to have made it this far. Thank you.”

“Thank you?!” Mason interjected, catching the reporter off-guard. “Private Fennison, really? You think he thanked the beast?”

“Well, yeah,” the small man winced under the inspector’s glare, “the guy was a romanticist. It’s clear in the way he wrote all those books of poems that he thought himself a reincarnation of an age-old hero.”

“And you just assume that means he was thankful for such an attack?”

Fennison found himself looking at the way the young man had lain in death, with one arm held over the lion that had killed him, resting his palm on the soft spot of it’s cheek where one might cup the face of a pet or a lover. He gazed upon the way the two had bled out together from their numerous wounds, and how content the man was despite the circumstances. “Judging by the way Barson commonly ends his books of poetry, how the bad commonly becomes subjugated by the wonderful, I cannot help but think he died with a sense of loss at the creature’s life that was just as strong as that for his own.”

Mason pushed his lips forward in denial, “well don’t think that’s going into the report, Private: there is nothing to say why he chose to lay like that.” He stood taller and beamed, “in fact, I might rather believe the man was saying something more akin to ‘take that, asshole’ than some cheesy thank you.”