Jeffrey Ricker's Blog, page 6

May Flash Fiction Draw: House Lights Up

Wow, this one is late.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m on deadline for a project I can’t talk about yet, but that I’m very excited about. (Also? I will never contract for something that isn’t finished ever again. Never. Mark my words. And remind me of this when I think writing to a deadline is a good idea for me. Because, honestly, it’s not. People think I’m disciplined but I must have them fooled, because I don’t feel that way, at all.)

ANYWAY. A while back I wrote a flash piece, “Exile,” which was a denouement to a story that I actually hadn’t finished writing at the time—and still haven’t, if we’re being completely honest here. (And why not be honest? I have so many unfinished projects, I could never come up with a new idea for the rest of my life and I’d still have plenty of projects to finish. I guess that’s a good position to be in.) This month’s Flash Fiction Draw prompt—science fiction, in an auditorium, with a computer tablet—made me think of an alternate ending to this story that I still haven’t finished, and so, without further ado:

House Lights Up

Doyle knew the auditorium was empty before he walked in. His tap into the station’s surveillance system gave him access to all the audio/video monitors in the room, as well as the biometric scanners. He scattered his own bio signature so that his presence registered as nothing more than an elevation in ambient temperature. No one would ever know he’d been there.

Except, of course, for the person who asked him to meet there.

Matt’s heartbeat registered in the biometrics before Doyle saw him, emerging from the shadows at the front of the auditorium. He entered from stage left. The room was still mostly dark, and it was obvious, as he scanned the rows of empty seats, that he didn’t see Doyle.

Well, Doyle could help with that. He sent a command to the lighting system and brought up the house lights. Matt looked startled to find himself standing in the middle of a spotlight’s soft yellow glow. Squinting against the sudden glare, he shaded his eyes and stepped to the edge of the stage.

“Doyle?”

The room may have registered him as nothing more than background heat, but Doyle’s heart was beating faster now. And his heart, unlike other parts of him, was still flesh. He walked toward the stage.

“Nice entrance, Matt.” He said his name to keep from calling him Range. He hadn’t done that to his face yet, had he?

“So, you want to tell me who you really are?”

“Honestly? No.”

“I’ll buy that. It’s probably the first truthful thing you’ve said to me since I met you.”

Doyle shook his head. “I meant what I said about the sushi bar’s salmon rolls. Those’ll kill you.”

“Okay, that makes two truthful things. Anything else you told me that wasn’t a lie?”

“I wasn’t lying when I told you about Range.”

Matt nodded. “The man with the same face as me. The one you can’t go back to.”

Doyle shook his head. “More than just him. I can’t go back to anything from that universe. When I sent the Morellan agent back through the vortex, it collapsed the link between our realities. From now on, this is my home.”

Matt was quiet for a long moment. In that time, Doyle listened to the clicking of the ventilation exchange, the background hum of the gravity emitters below their feet, and read a terabyte of system communication traffic, looking for any signs that he might have missed a loose thread that needed tying—or cutting.

But there was nothing. This reality was refreshingly mundane.

“We don’t have Morellans in this universe,” Matt said.

Doyle’s artificial eye detected the tremor along Matt’s shoulders. For someone who lived in a reality where there were no other life forms than humans, he could imagine how unsettling they’d be. Doyle found Morellans mostly annoying. And kind of smelly.

“What’s to say they won’t come back again?” Matt asked.

Doyle stood at the edge of the stage now. “For a species with that many tentacles, their thinking is surprisingly binary, this or that. The Morellans tried to get the Dormany crystals here, but they failed. They may try something else, somewhere else, but they won’t try the same thing twice.”

“You sound very confident of that.”

“I’m not confident of many things, but that’s once I would bet money on.” He paused. “You have money in this universe, right?”

Matt laughed, humorlessly. “If we didn’t, there wouldn’t be much point in me trying to steal ten kilos of crystals for an interdimensional invasion force, would there?”

“They weren’t going to invade your universe. Not permanently, anyway. If they could have gotten their tentacles on all those crystals, they might have crossed the barrier en masse, but only long enough to get what they want. No, they would have left eventually.”

“So why did you come here, then?”

“You mean to this universe, or to the auditorium tonight?”

Matt paused, as if maybe he didn’t know which one he meant. Maybe, to him, there wasn’t a difference between the two. Doyle moved closer. He was at the edge of the stage now.

“Why did you want me to come here, Matt?”

The question seemed to stump him. He looked at Doyle, mouth half open, before staring down at the floor with an exasperated smile, hands on hips. His voice strained, he said, “I had to keep my promise.”

“Which was?”

Matt opened up his palm, and a tablet sprang up in front of him. He tapped a set of controls on the holographic surface. “This.”

The lights dimmed, and for a moment, they stood in blackness. Then, in an instant, the ceiling above them pulsed with a soft glow, before becoming transparent. A spray of stars painted dim light overhead before the outpost’s rotation brought the planet in view.

“I still don’t—“

Matt shushed him. “Wait for it.”

The meteorites appeared one at a time at first, some of them as small as grains of sand, their velocity the only thing that made them flare brightly against the planet’s atmosphere as they incinerated. Others, larger, burned a tail of fire across the darkness as they plunged toward the surface.

Doyle sat on the edge of the stage and stared up at the meteor shower. It wasn’t real, of course—the planet had passed the debris cluster two days ago, it was out of range by now—but Matt must have talked someone at the station into letting him replay the holo recording. It hadn’t really been a date when Doyle had suggested it earlier, more of a pretense, but it was a meeting he would have liked to keep, anyway.

Matt sat next to him and stared up. They both stayed there for a long time, not saying anything, just looking up at the light show and hoping it wouldn’t end any time soon.

May Flash Fiction Draw: The Results!

So… I’m running a little behind.

I’m on deadline, you see, for a super awesome thing that I can’t tell you about yet. That deadline is getting SUPER close now, and I’m… not done. So I spent a good part of the weekend working on that (when I wasn’t procrastinating, which it turns out is the thing I’m absolutely the best at) instead of working on my Flash Fiction Draw story.

That story’s in process, I promise, but it won’t be finished until later today.

However! That doesn’t mean you need to wait to see all the stories that other folks have written. So, to refresh your memory, this month’s prompt was for a science fiction story, set in an auditorium, including a tablet computer. Here’s who we have so far!

An Unconventional Skiltaire Party by Iara WarriorefeatherSunset Warning by E H TimmsWon’t You Be My Neighbor? by Jeff Baker

And eventually mine. Really! I promise.

Flash Fiction Draw for May 2021

It’s May! That means the year is one-third over, and time’s a-wasting. So let’s get right to this month’s Flash Fiction Draw.

(If you want to skip the song and dance, click here to go right to the prompt.)

If you’re unfamiliar with this, here’s the deal: I draw three cards from a deck of playing cards, each from a different suit, and use those to select a genre, setting, and random item for a writing prompt. From there, you have a week from today (Monday, May 10, in other words) to write a 1,000-word or less flash fiction piece based on the prompt. Simple, right? Right.

To recap, here’s where we stand so far. The grayed-out items have been used already:

Card drawnGenreSettingObject1RomanceSpaceshipRay gun2Science FictionRestaurant kitchenKey3Fairy TaleStudio apartment in a big cityHairbrush4HorrorAuditoriumLength of rope5MysterySewerPendant and necklace6ThrillerHighway tollboothPotted plant7ComedyFarm fieldTablet computer8FantasyPawn shopFountain pen9Ghost StoryMarshDecorative pillow10SuspenseTulip fieldVacuum cleanerJCrime CaperTrunk of a carBouquet of rosesQAction/AdventureToolshed / Utility closetA stray sockKHistorical FictionShopping mallSuitcase

And here’s the prompt:

As always, if you want to get right to the good stuff, here’s the prompt:

Science fiction (“double feature“)…in an auditorium…with a tablet computer.

Remember, there’s no pressure here, so if you take longer than a week, or if your story turns out to be longer than a thousand words, or you only incorporate two of the three elements, or if you end up writing a breakaway pop hit instead of a story, it’s all valid! But be sure to email me, or tweet at me, or leave a comment below to let me know what you’ve written.

April Flash Fiction Draw: The Results!

For April’s Flash Fiction Draw, we have the following stories based on this prompt (action/adventure, set in a restaurant kitchen, including a stray sock). I’m always impressed how a single prompt can inspire such a diverse batch of stories in response.

Taste Explosion, by E H Timms

Raptors in the Kitchen, by Iara Warriorfeather

The Everything but the Kitchen Sink Incident, by Jeff Baker

Dropped Stitches, by ’Nathan Burgoine

and A Place to Land, by this guy

Thanks to everyone who wrote something! If I missed yours, drop a comment down below or send me an email.

April Flash Fiction Draw: A Place to Land

Well, it’s nine-thirty on a Monday night, and I’m just now getting around to posting this, which I guess tells you everything you need to know about how my day’s gone.

Actually, it hasn’t been that bad, as Mondays go, but I feel perpetually in a state of trying to catch up and am still at least two tasks behind schedule. Well, what can you do, other than stop complaining and get on with the next thing.

And that takes us to today’s story! To recap, the prompt I came up with last week was an action/adventure, set in a restaurant kitchen, including… a stray sock. Hey, I just draw the cards. OK, so I also made up the list of prompts, but I didn’t foresee this particular combination. Maybe I should have. The combos have started getting a little weird the past couple draws.

Anyway, the first thing I pictured was Miss Vida Greenleaf, the early twentieth century St. Louis drag queen, chasing a thief through a restaurant kitchen with her faithful gentleman companion Herbert close at her heels. Then I just had to picture why they were chasing the thief and just what exactly he’d stolen. But I imagined that maybe Miss Vida was growing a little weary of all their time-hopping adventures—even if she wasn’t anywhere near ready to go back home.

What happened after that? Only one way to find out….

A Place to Land

Looking back, Miss Vida figured it was probably in that restaurant kitchen when she started having doubts about traveling through time with Herbert.

She didn’t have doubts about their relationship—heavens, no. Herbert was the most faithful suitor she’d ever known in all her life. If anything, she adored him more than he venerated her, and that was saying something.

And they had seen so much together, glimpsed futures they couldn’t have even dreamed of. Met people beyond her imagination. Seen advances that staggered the mind.

They had also seen some of the worst of humanity. Borne witness to two global wars, assassinations of world leaders, disasters that would have been inconceivable in their time.

But she’d also seen the way society had evolved since their time, and it made St. Louis at the cusp of the twentieth century seem… hopelessly backward.

“Darling,” she said to Herbert as they raced down the alley in pursuit of the man who’d picked Herbert’s pocket and taken the key to their time cabinet, “I don’t know how much longer I can go on.”

“I can maintain the pursuit, light of my life,” he said, his breath heaving. “You wait here.”

But she kept pace with him. “That was not my meaning, heart.”

The pickpocket skidded around a corner and disappeared for a moment. When they rounded the corner themselves, Miss Vida saw a large white man in a stained apron sprawled on the ground, a metal door behind him clanging shut.

“In there,” she cried, slowing momentarily to look down at the man and say, “I’m so sorry about all this.”

The door opened onto a long, narrow corridor. They had to run single file down its length until they reached another door that was just closing. Herbert grabbed the edge of it and flung it wide. On the other side was a kitchen, brightly lit, full of wire shelving and men and women, all dressed in white, hovering over flaming burners, steaming sinks and knives clattering against cutting boards.

The thief threaded his way around them, nearly knocking one woman against a steaming stockpot before Herbert seized the back of her white chef’s coat and steadied her. The thief elbowed another cook out of his way, and the poor man dropped his burden, a heavy pot filled with something white and gloopy looking—mashed potatoes, it turned out. And Herbert, in his haste, stepped right in it. The heavy mixture sucked the shoe clear off his foot, leaving him hobbling after the thief, his wet sock slapping loudly against the tiles.

Miss Vida vaulted past Herbert and followed their prey into a dimly lit, high-ceilinged dining room, filled with tables draped in white tablecloths, surrounded by people more fashionable than she could have imagined.

He was tantalizingly close, but still out of reach. So she grabbed the closest thing to hand from a nearby dining table—a salt cellar, round and white with a clasped brass lid, and extremely heavy for its size—and she winged it at him with all her might.

Contact. The projectile struck him in the back of the head and he collapsed across a table. The couple seated there leapt out of the way before their meals and the table itself came crashing down in their laps. Miss Vida pounced on the man, pinning one of his arms under her knee while wrenching the other behind his back as she rifled through his jacket pockets until she found, not just Herbert’s keychain, but his pocketwatch and money clip. Laughing victoriously, she held them aloft like a prize.

“Thought you’d gotten away, didn’t you, you sticky-fingered scoundrel!”

He called her a foul name and said, “Get the hell off me.” She clouted him in the back of the skull one more time.

“Language.”

For a moment, when the hostess reached the scene of their collision, Miss Vida thought she and Herbert were going to be the ones thrown out of the establishment. Luckily, she was able to smooth things over with both the hostess, the diners, and the police who were called in due course and carted the pickpocket away. Fortunate too that, in the general confusion, Miss Vida was able to pocket the keychain, although the police did insist on retaining the pocketwatch for evidence, as well as the money clip. Miss Vida, however, carefully removed most of the cash from the clip before handing it over.

So in the end, once the debris was cleared and Herbert’s shoe retrieved from the mashed potatoes—the sock was a lost cause—they were able to enjoy a lovely dinner with the couple whose meal the thief and Miss Vida interrupted so spectacularly.

“Dearest,” Herbert said later, as they walked away from the restaurant, “what’s wrong? You’ve been uncharacteristically taciturn since we sat down to dinner. You’re not still bothered about the pocket watch, are you?”

“No, darling, it’s not that.”

“Because I can always get another watch,” and here he jingled the key ring, “but we can’t get another time cabinet. Without that, we’d have no way home.”

Miss Vida stopped. They were at a corner not far from Jackson Square, and the other pedestrians flowed around them as she turned to face Herbert.

“Herbert, I think I’m ready to settle down.”

He frowned. “You want to go home?”

She shook her head. “That’s just it. I feel as if I need a moment to stop and catch my breath, but….”

Miss Vida looked behind them, as if the past were something she could glimpse in their wake, something pursuing them. She shivered, though it wasn’t cold at all, and looped her arm through Herbert’s.

“But I don’t want to go back to nineteen hundred four. I’ve seen too much of the world to go back.”

Herbert didn’t say anything for what seemed like an eternity. She couldn’t look at him, instead casting her gaze downward toward the cobblestones, the feet of the people walking by. If she did, there’d be disappointment in his eyes, surely.

When he seized her hand and brought it to his lips, she was surprised. When he sank down onto one knee, she was terrified. When he took both her hands and gazed up at her with that same unfailing adoration, she was lost, and also found.

“Vida, marry me.”

Flash Fiction Draw for April 2021

Well, this one’s a doozy.

(If you want to skip the song and dance, click here to go right to the prompt.)

I feel like I might have said that last month, too. But that’s the nature of these Flash Fiction Draw writing prompts: they’re as random as the categories I picked for them in the first place.

Here’s the story (or stories) so far. The items that have already been used for previous prompts are grayed out:

Card drawnGenreSettingObject1RomanceSpaceshipRay gun2Science FictionRestaurant kitchenKey3Fairy TaleStudio apartment in a big cityHairbrush4HorrorAuditoriumLength of rope5MysterySewerPendant and necklace6ThrillerHighway tollboothPotted plant7ComedyFarm fieldTablet computer8FantasyPawn shopFountain pen9Ghost StoryMarshDecorative pillow10SuspenseTulip fieldVacuum cleanerJCrime CaperTrunk of a carBouquet of rosesQAction/AdventureToolshed / Utility closetA stray sockKHistorical FictionShopping mallSuitcase

And the prompt:

For the TL;DR crowd, that’s:

an action/adventure…in a restaurant kitchen…with a stray sock.

(Yes, really.)

So, your mission, if you choose to accept it: write a 1,000-word (max) flash fiction piece and post it online by Monday, April 12, and let me know! Drop a link in the comments below, send me an email, tweet it at me—you can try telepathy, but lots of people will tell you I’m not very sensitive. (You see what I did there, of course, because you probably are sensitive.)

Happy sort-of belated birthday to The Unwanted

I don’t know where this month went. I think I said something similar about last month, which, granted, was a short month, so it was bound to go by quickly. March always feels a little bit extra considering it has 31 days, and yet here I am at the very last day and just now realizing that seven years ago my last book, The Unwanted, came out.

I suppose I should call it my latest book, since “last book” makes it sound as if that’s all there is to my so-called writing career. It’s a long gap between books, though. And strictly speaking, it’s not the last book I wrote. I’ve written three more books since then. Publishing them, of course, is a different matter. Finishing them would help. (One is finished. Another is finished but needs to be redone. The third is a rough draft, for sure.)

That book never really found an audience, but I’m still happy with the way it turned out. Every so often (and some people are probably sick of hearing me bring it up), I think about doing a sequel to it. In fact, one of the three books I’ve finished since The Unwanted came out is a sequel… that didn’t really work. I’ve also got the concept for a third book in the back of my head—and somewhere on my hard drive—but if the first book didn’t really land with readers, I’m not sure it makes sense to put the time into two more. And at this point, I have a few other projects that I’m really excited about working on.

That’s the thing I’ve tried to remind myself I need to do more often: focus on the projects that I’m really excited about.

And one other good thing did come of writing that young adult fantasy novel: it’s a big reason I landed a gig teaching an intro to writing science fiction and fantasy class at one of my alma maters. And you know what? That’s pretty cool.

March Flash Fiction Draw: The Results!

Thanks to everyone who wrote a story based on this month’s prompt. And if I somehow missed your response, please let me know! I’ll add it posthaste.

Lakeside Counsel by Colin Colgrave

Tulips by E H Timms

The Calm, Quiet Whisper of Graves by Jeff Baker

The Keys to His Heart by Iara Warriorfeather

Tulips, in the Key of Philip by ’Nathan Burgoine

and The Haunting of Shaw’s Garden, by yours truly

March Flash Fiction Draw: The Haunting of Shaw’s Garden

The entrance to the mausoleum grounds at Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis.

A long time ago, I worked at the Missouri Botanical Garden. you may not know it, but it’s one of the top three botanical research institutions in the world and has the third-largest herbarium on the planet. It’s been around since 1859, when it was opened by a retired English businessman named Henry Shaw. In addition to being a global leader in the preservation of plant biodiversity, it’s a beautiful place, with 79 acres of display gardens, including a magnificent Japanese Garden, Seiwa-en, “garden of pure, clear harmony and peace,” the largest of its kind in North America.

It’s also haunted, according to many people. Why? Because in addition to being a botanical garden, it’s the final resting place of its founder, whose mausoleum is located on the grounds. It’s actually a beautiful part of the Garden that I enjoyed walking through, especially in the middle of summer, since it was always shady and a little cooler than the rest of the grounds.

All of this made the Garden the perfect setting for this month’s Flash Fiction Draw, which needed to be a ghost story, set in a field of tulips, including a key.

As always, I took liberties. I also brought back a couple of characters from previous Flash Fiction Draw submissions, because they fit both the place and the time.

The Haunting of Shaw’s Garden

Miss Vida stepped out of Herbert’s time cabinet into a field of tulips.

At least, she thought it was a field at first. In reality, it turned out to be a garden, orderly beds of tulips in a profusion of pinks, purples, yellows with flame-tipped petals. She grasped Herbert’s wrist as he was about to turn the key in the cabinet door behind them.

“Darling, are we home? Is this Mister Shaw’s Garden?”

Herbert pocketed the key. “It is indeed, but I fear we are not quite home yet.”

He pointed over her shoulder. She turned to take in the view—and gasped. At the other end of a plaza dominated by a trio of reflecting pools rose a giant dome of metal and glass, looking for all the world like a cross between a bombe and a spider’s web.

Miss Vida clutched Herbert’s arm as if she might be overtaken by vertigo. “What is it?”

Herbert laughed and put an arm around her reassuringly. “Now now, it’s nothing to get in a fright over. But I must say it’s a remarkable example of a geodesic polyhedron. They must be using it as a sort of hothouse for growing tropical plants, if I had to guess.”

She tilted her head and considered the structure. “Do you think we could go inside?”

“I don’t see why not, but it’s not really why we’re here.”

Miss Vida leaned away and turned a haughty look on him. “I thought we were going home. Were you planning this little detour?”

“My dear, of course we were heading home,” he stammered. He adjusted his tie as if it had become a snake constricting his throat. “But I had hoped we might take this small… temporal excursion to investigate a most fascinating phenomenon that you would surely find engaging.” He leaned closer, dropping his voice. “They say that Mister Shaw haunts his Garden!”

Frowning in an almost patronizing way, she tilted her head at him. “Darling, really? Phantasms and ghosts? Do you really think that—“

“Excuse me, can I help you?”

Miss Vida and Herbert turned in unison to find themselves facing a beautiful blonde woman with a contraption in her hands that looked like it might have been a weapon. Also—and scandalously, in Miss Vida’s opinion—she wore a skirt that was much too short, practically above her knees!

Before Herbert could utter a word, Vida stepped forward, angling herself between him and the newcomer. She put on her best smile. “My dear, you could do me a great favor by telling my companion that this Garden is not haunted by Mister Shaw.”

The woman looked momentarily taken aback. “Oh, you know about that?”

Miss Vida’s smile faltered. “I’m sorry?”

The woman waved toward their left. “It’s becoming a more common story, that people have seen things in the Victorian District that convince them Shaw is haunting the Garden.”

“Um, excuse me,” Herbert said. “Victorian District?”

“That’s the area where the mausoleum and Tower Grove House are located. And the Museum Building, but that’s closed to the public.”

“Perhaps we should head in that direction, dearest,” Herbert said, taking Miss Vida’s arm. Vida, however, held her ground, and with her height advantage, Herbert couldn’t shift her.

“Just a moment more, light of my life,” she said, which was a diminutive she brought out only when she was not in a position to say cross me at your peril, Herbert. To the other woman, she said, “Is such a thing really possible? Surely, spirits and phantasms are simply fancies cultivated by the impressionable mind, are they not?”

The woman smiled. “Well, there are more than a few Garden staff members who would say otherwise. I’ve never encountered the ghost of Henry Shaw myself, but maybe he’s just not chosen to reveal himself to me.”

Miss Vida gave her an appraising glance. “I suspect any spirit of the other world would find you a formidable adversary.”

The woman laughed. “I don’t know about that, but you’re welcome to explore the Victorian District and see if you encounter him yourselves. Tower Grove House isn’t open yet, but you’ll be able to walk around it and through the mausoleum grounds.” Pausing, she glanced down at her wristwatch. “Actually, the Garden doesn’t open for another hour. Shaw’s birthday isn’t for another month or so. We usually don’t have the cosplayers on site until then. Did someone let you in early?”

Miss Vida wasn’t sure what “cosplayers” meant, but she grasped the situation quickly enough. They were interlopers but of the kind who would be expected sometime in the future. She took Herbert’s arm gently.

“We’re… new. We just wanted to get into the spirit of things as much in advance as possible.”

The woman smiled. “In that case, with few people around it should seem suitably ghostly.” She held up the contraption. “Do you mind if I take your picture first?”

A camera, of course. Much smaller than the ones Miss Vida was accustomed to, but if she knew anything, she knew how to pose.

Flash Fiction Draw for March 2021

(If you want to skip the song and dance, click here to go right to the prompt.)

It’s the first of the month, which means it’s time for another Flash Fiction Draw. If you’re new around here (welcome!), I build a prompt based on three cards drawn at random from three different suits: clubs for genre, hearts for setting, and diamonds for an object that must appear in the story. That’s where you take over and write a story, 1,000 words max (but no one’s really counting), based on the prompt. You can check out last month’s prompt here, and the stories people came up with here.

So, here’s where we stand so far. The items that have already been used for previous prompts are grayed out:

Card drawnGenreSettingObject1RomanceSpaceshipRay gun2Science FictionRestaurant kitchenKey3Fairy TaleStudio apartment in a big cityHairbrush4HorrorAuditoriumLength of rope5MysterySewerPendant and necklace6ThrillerHighway tollboothPotted plant7ComedyFarm fieldTablet computer8FantasyPawn shopFountain pen9Ghost StoryMarshDecorative pillow10SuspenseTulip fieldVacuum cleanerJCrime CaperTrunk of a carBouquet of rosesQAction/AdventureToolshed / Utility closetA stray sockKHistorical FictionShopping mallSuitcase

And without further ado, the prompt.

For the TL;DR crowd, that’s:

a ghost story…in a tulip field…with a key.

You probably know the drill from here: write a story by March 8, post it somewhere online, and drop a link in the comments (or tweet it at me, or email me—you could try semaphore or homing pigeon, but I don’t fancy your chances with either of those).

Remember, have fun with this, and if you don’t have time this month, there will always be next month, and the month after that. Unless time stops or something, in which case all bets are off. You can do this.