Daniel D Baumer 6/3/26 Daniel D Baumer 6/3/26

Grit

Patel travels across the Martian landscape to find a deserter. When he finds him, will he do his job—or follow his instincts?

Patel travels across the Martian landscape to find a deserter. When he finds him, will he do his job—or follow his instincts?

Patel ripped the new work order from the printer and saw the ghost-pale corporate logo and heading. The name told him everything he needed to know about what kind of job it was.

He drove the crawler alone across the B17 basin; four hours of ochre hardpan, violet ridge lines, and rock formations that had been standing since before anything on Earth had even thought of forming into something worthwhile. After six years on Mars, it still wasn’t home. Maybe a safe harbor for a while, but not home.

The job was a retrieval order—Earnest Bauer, listed as a deserter. Last known coordinates were somewhere sensible people avoided, near the outer boundary. There, addresses stopped being addresses and became descriptions. East of the third relay. The silver dome with the dents. Patel had worked three jobs in the B-Ring fringe and knew that few people lived there by choice.

He had been a staff sergeant in the federal forces, doing dirty deeds with dirty soldiers for dirty reasons. Now he found people. Different, but somehow the same; finding dirty people in dirty places for dirty money.

Bauer opened the door as Patel approached.

He stood with an unhurried look, one hand on the doorframe, the other holding a coffee mug. He had had plenty of time to decide how he felt about the approaching guest and apparently had processed those thoughts well. Leaner than the service photo; more weathered. The current look came from years of hard work in an environment that didn’t seem to care about the weakness of the human body. The sun and cold had rearranged his face into a series of lines and fields and patterns looking as much like a topographical map as a man.

He looked at Patel the way you look at an approaching dust storm.

“Coffee,” he said, more a statement of what was about to happen than an offer.

The entirety of the module was a single room partitioned by purpose rather than by walls. A cot. A workbench buried in parts from any number of projects happening there. A heating unit working harder than it should have had to. The coffee pot looked to be a well-used feature.

The dog in the corner watched him with professional disinterest and went back to sleep.

Bauer handed him a cup and sat without clearing the metal table in front of them. The clutter didn’t embarrass him. He lived in his space the way the rock formations outside lived in theirs.

The coffee was awful. Really bad. Patel drank it anyway, though he noticed the grit floating and swirling on top. Just like back in the day.

“Took ‘em long enough,” Bauer said.

“Six years.”

“First year, second year; I kept thinking about it, about running deeper into the dust.” He picked up an old-fashioned book from the table and turned it in his hands. “By the fourth, I stopped. Whole thing seemed kinda silly at that point.”

“You didn’t run.”

“Nowhere worth running to.” He set it down. “Besides. I like it here.” He waved his hand around toward the land outside and then again to his meager possessions in his domed unit. “I like what I have.”

Patel looked at the room. Exposed insulation on the ceiling. A water ration gauge hovering near the lower third. One window with its view of hardpan, ridge, and a sky that looked no cleaner than any other part of the landscape.

“It’s rough,” Patel said.

“Yes.”

“Most people—”

“Most people are in the main station paying sixty percent of their wages for the privilege and comfort of the big dome.” No spite or malice in his voice. He was just stating a fact. “I own twelve hundred square meters of a lot of dirt and a lot of nothing. But it’s mine.” He paused, raised his mug to take a sip, and paused again. “The nothing is mine.”

Patel set his cup on the workbench beside a regulator whose mouthpiece mount had been stripped and re-threaded by hand. Careful work. Important work; a task that only confident and steady hands could do. Done wrong, it would mean death in a sandstorm.

He hadn’t yet said why he was there, but it seemed Bauer had figured it out already. The calm face and determined eyes told him that he didn’t need to. The mark had figured it out the moment he stepped out of the crawler. Bauer was tolerating something that he knew might end him, as if he were offering tea to the snake poised to bite him.

The shame arrived with texture and pressure. A low persistent friction beneath everything. The thing you noticed when the other things went quiet.

He thought about the corporate header. Ghost-pale and visible only if you looked for it. He thought about a lot in a short amount of time. The bulk of his thoughts were on how his old dog, Bess, would have gotten up and greeted any visitor, no matter how worn out she was at the end.

It also crossed his mind that where he now lived, a twenty-square-meter metal cave in the worst part of the junction wouldn’t be a fit home for a dog. Maybe it was better that Bess was gone.

“I should tell you,” Patel said, returning to the moment, “that I’m very good at my job.”

Bauer sat and watched his hunter spin his wheels.

“I should also tell you I haven’t decided yet what my job is.”

Bauer stayed silent for a moment. Outside, the wind wanted to push against something and chose the module. It pushed hard for a minute. The heating unit cycled. The dog let out a sigh like its time in the red dust had rendered life too difficult.

“There’s more coffee,” Bauer said finally. “If you need time to figure it out.”

Patel looked at his empty cup, traces of red in the bottom.

“Yeah. I’ll have some more.”

Daniel D Baumer 6/3/26 Daniel D Baumer 6/3/26

Witness to the Flames

When a young girl sees something she shouldn’t, can she do what’s right, or will the consequences of speaking be too much for her? - A YA-inspired tale

When a young girl sees something she shouldn’t, can she do what’s right or
will the consequences of speaking be too much for her?

We didn’t have assigned seats, but everyone naturally avoided the desk where Olivia usually sat. It was in the front row, second from the window. She’d sit in class and sometimes take notes or doodle with her colored pens. Purple must have been her favorite color. She used it the most.

Mr. Garrett had her notebook on his desk, maybe waiting for her return. But she wasn’t coming back, and he might not know what to do with a book for a student who no longer attends; a notebook now belonging to an empty space in the room that no one but me notices. I watch the space every day in fourth period, but like everyone else, I say nothing about it.

I often find myself drifting through the house at all hours, making tea that I’ll never drink or scrolling on my phone, hoping to be entertained until the fatigue finally grows strong enough. On the night of the fire, I sat at my desk by the window, writing in my journal, when I saw the truck. I’d seen it before in the church parking lot a hundred times: dark blue, lifted high, cracked rear window. No lights on, engine running, waiting. Across the street and two houses down from the Andersons’ place. Someone dressed in dark clothing moved along the back side of their house, someone whose walk and movement were familiar to me. Their face was covered by a dark hoodie over their head, but everything seemed to fit with who it might be. Minutes later, a fire started outside along the back side of the house, not inside, where they later said it did. I woke my parents and had them call the fire department.

Back in my room, on a fresh page of my journal, I wrote everything down that I saw: the truck, the man, who I thought it was, and where he went. It seemed important to do that, even though I never told my parents about what else I saw.

Faulty wiring, they said.

Father is on the city council and coaches Little League baseball. He knows which hands to shake and what questions to ask. At the council meeting discussing the fire, my father just nodded along and frowned like he had already made peace with the decision. Now and then, I recall that he, like me, was awake the night of the fire, and seemed almost mad at me for witnessing anything.

On a Tuesday, I came home early and heard him in the kitchen. He didn’t see me. He said something about the insurance company flagging the claim, and it could be months before it gets settled.

A pause.

“Well, that’s not really our problem, is it?”

He laughed in that way that older men do when something isn’t funny. My stomach churned violently. It churned because the ground underneath me moved, shifting my understanding of what my world had been built on.

Upstairs, I sat on my bed and looked at the journal on my nightstand.

Our problem. As though the Andersons losing their home were a random act rather than something done to them.

I start doing the math in my head about gains and losses. How much weight is there in a journal entry of a teenage girl? Does that entry have enough weight to unblock the flow of some kind of belated justice? There are Father’s years on the city council and as a deacon. There’s the college recommendation letter sitting in the principal’s computer, waiting to be sent contingent on my being a good girl. How much could I lose?

Then I think of the empty chair in class and the sight of the rising flames.

I found Olivia’s profile through Sajni, who shared a class with us and is still friends with her online. In a DM, I ask if she’s okay. I know she can’t be, so it’s a stupid question.

“We’re in my aunt’s apartment. Four of us in two rooms. Mom doesn’t sleep.”

I stare at that and think of my own wandering at night.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been thinking about you,” I type.

“We’d finally found a place,” she writes back. “My dad checked out every town around to find the right house. He said it seemed like people would accept us.”

It wasn’t an accusation, but it landed like one. Her neighborhood struck them down, and I was part of that neighborhood. Deep down, I knew what I was going to do and why. I had to do something because I wasn’t the one suffering here. I’d been balancing action and inaction as if I were the one paying the bill, but I really wasn’t. The Andersons had already paid it. Their loss had been the raw material for my turmoil over the past days. Whenever I came close to feeling a type of calm, all I needed to do was think of their messed-up situation, and I would hurtle towards another round of confusion.

It was time to pay up.

With the journal open to the page with the entry from the night of the fire, I took a couple of pictures with my phone to make sure I captured everything I wrote.

What will come next? What will Olivia do with the information? Will it be enough? Will Father look at me differently when he comes home or across the dinner table?

I think about the empty desk in fourth period, the one that nobody wants to sit at yet.

I press send, and a read receipt appears almost immediately. She’s been waiting, like she knew I knew something. Now it’s my turn to wait, to see what comes of this simple action.

Outside, it’s dark. My father’s car pulls up in the driveway. Somewhere across town in her new and uncomfortable home, Olivia Anderson is looking at her phone.

Daniel D Baumer 6/3/26 Daniel D Baumer 6/3/26

Last Call at Connie’s

It’s the last chance for Cal to reach out to the woman of his dreams. Will he do it? Can he do it?

It’s the last chance for Cal to reach out to the woman of his dreams. Will he do it? Can he do it?

Connie’s had been dying for years before anyone bothered to say so out loud. Connie herself had passed years earlier, and the bar began to lose its life when she did. For years, Cal had watched it happen, the way a family member watches their parents age and pass, by degrees, then all at once. The swinging bathroom doors bore wear marks from countless hands that had pushed them open over the years. The neon beer sign in the front window had developed a flicker in its second letter around 2019, and nobody had fixed it. Tonight it buzzed P_BST into the rain-slicked street, and tomorrow it would buzz nothing at all, because tomorrow Connie’s would be officially dead.

He moved through the closing routine without thinking. It was all muscle memory. Glasses face down on the rubber mat. Speed rail wiped, no need to restock tonight.

The last regulars left around eleven. Dave Randall and his construction crew, after talking about everything except the closing of the bar the way men do when they’ve been drinking and don’t want to examine the feelings swirling in their heads and hearts, shook his hand on the way out. Misty-eyed, Dave said he’d catch Cal “on the flipside.”

Cal was alone with the hum of the cooler when the door opened, and Clara walked in.

He had not allowed himself to hope for her arrival. Still, a part of him, a part he kept subdued, wanted her to show. Three years of hiding his feelings, and here she was, wet from the rain and slightly out of breath, unwinding a scarf the color of autumn.

“Still open?” she said.

“For another hour.”

She took her usual stool, third from the left, and he was already reaching for her favorite bourbon, Blanton’s, before she’d removed her coat.

She watched him pour. “You didn’t ask.”

“No. Care for something different to start?”

Clara didn’t smile, but her eyes lit up like they had a new flicker behind them. She wrapped both hands around the glass and cradled it. “I almost didn’t come. I walked past twice.”

He didn’t ask why she came back. He had hidden hopes for that part of it and didn’t want the illusion crushed if he was wrong—but he knew he wasn’t.

They talked about the bar, about the owner, and Connie’s eldest son, who’d sold out and moved away without a farewell party. About the regulars and where they’d end up drinking, probably the sports bar around the corner or just home. Clara talked about ordinary things in a way that made them feel like they all mattered to her. Cal had picked that up three years ago, on a Tuesday in November, when she’d come in after what was clearly a bad day and talked for forty minutes about a Sir David Attenborough documentary on migratory birds. Later, at home, he’d tracked down the documentary and watched it, thinking back to their chat about the snow geese and plovers.

While she talked, he worked on crafting something that had been in his head for most of a year. Mezcal, a half-ounce of elderflower liqueur, two dashes of bitters, and a curl of orange peel to highlight the taste and color. She would be the first to try it. He set it in front of her without comment.

She looked at it, then at him. “I didn’t order this.”

“No.”

“What’s it called?”

“November,” he said, looking at the drink instead of into her eyes.

She tasted it. She tried to find the words for it, but couldn’t quite manage. “Yes,” she said finally.

“Yes to what?” Cal asked.

“Just yes.”

He turned to wipe down the rail and process what might also be a yes.

She was quiet for a moment. Then: “I got the offer. In Seattle.”

His towel moved in slow circles. “When do they need an answer?”

“End of the month.”

“Good job?”

“Good enough.” She used her delicate fingers to turn the glass slowly on the bar. “I keep waiting to feel certain about it.”

He almost said something. He gave the words the same attention he’d given the drink: measuring, composing, imagining how it would be received. The moment passed. That happened a lot.

Last call was a formality with only one person left to hear it. He said it anyway, because some rituals deserved completion.

“One more,” she said.

He reached under the bar for the bottle he kept there — a twenty-four-year Macallan, his own stash, not for the customers. He poured two short glasses and set one in front of her.

She looked at the second glass. “Is this what you drink?”

“At the end. Yeah.” The end. He almost laughed to himself.

She picked it up and held it with both hands, as if it were something worth keeping safe and warm. They sat with it for a moment in the quiet of a place that had stopped being a bar and had become something else. The neon sign gave a long, electronic sigh and went dark.

“I used to think about what you were like,” she said, “when the bar was empty.”

He looked at her.

“I could never figure it out,” she said, almost an apology.

She finished her drink, sidled off the stool, and put on her coat, her eyes cast down at the bartop and the empty glass. At the door, she paused, one hand on the frame, looking over her shoulder, and said: “Take care.” Two simple words that carried more than a simple well-wish. Then she was gone.

Cal stood in the quiet for a while. Then he turned off the lights, moved through the room one last time, the way his hands knew without being asked, leaving her glass on the bar until last.

He looked at it once before grabbing it.

Then he washed it, turned off the final light, and stepped out into the rain.

Daniel D Baumer 11/1/25 Daniel D Baumer 11/1/25

Live Feed

What happens when the past catches up with you?

What happens when the past catches up with you?

The microphone was inches from Barry Gill’s face. He adjusted his backwards baseball cap more out of agitation than for comfort and leaned into the mic with all the serious intensity he could muster. Only five minutes into his show, he was already on a roll.

“Look around D.C. now, and you know what you won’t see? You won’t see any gangbangers roaming the streets looking for some poor soul to prey on. They’re all locked up, running scared, or holed up, waiting for the troops to leave. In D.C., you also won’t see immigrant killers looking for their next victims, waiting to see who they’ll rob next. What do you guys think? You all saw what just happened in California a few days ago, where that young woman was murdered by that thug? If we had troops in Oakland, I guarantee that wouldn’t have happened then.”

He mostly kept his eyes locked on the camera lens to maintain a connection with his viewers for dramatic effect, but occasionally glanced over to the screen that showed the feed of his YouTube Live viewers' comments.

Somebody gotta say it!

100% 100% 100% 100%

Just get rid of them!

Most of the names of the viewers were fake handles to hide behind when the users spewed their filth, but a few used their real names proudly to express their hate: FatNinja, BigBad John 69, Shittin Kitten, or Eric Kaufman. They chimed in faster than Gill could respond.

“The Death Troll says that liberal policies got us here, and I agree. Cary from Texas says that Biden let in twenty million illegals. You got that right, my friend. That swarm is responsible for much of the mess we’re in. I say that if we’re gonna get out of the hole that last guy got us into, we’re gonna have to wade through a lot of shit for a while. That’s what our new president is doing now to clean up our streets.”

Amen brother!!!!!

FK those guys

Gill had been hosting these “Lives” for over a year now, and he’d found his niche. What started as a channel to discuss film from a man’s perspective had morphed into something more pointed. He’d begun just wanting to talk about how men are represented negatively in current film and television culture, but he noticed that his most-watched episodes were the ones that contained elements of racial bias or what he viewed as forced diversity. The heat and wild comments he generated on those videos and discussions brought him more subscribers, viewers, and eventually, revenue, than those simply about media. Bolstered by seeing the numbers and direction of the channel, Gill added more social and political content to his repertoire, and his viewership began to climb exponentially. He had found his niche in angry white men.

The live broadcast ended after another thirty-five minutes of hate and bile directed at brown people, black people, poor people, and anyone else who happened to come up as easy targets for the night’s overall topic. The episode was titled Minority on White Crime Epidemic EXPOSED After Oakland Murder | Trump Calls for 'DEATH PENALTY' so there was plenty of filth to go around for everyone. Gill sat, chin in hand, for a few minutes in his expensive desk chair, elbows on the desktop, and clicked away to review the night’s analytics, checking to see not just the overall numbers but also interested in a state-by-state breakdown. He wanted to get his numbers up in the blue states, Canada, and Europe. The red states were easy pickings, he thought, but he wanted to make inroads with his viewership in those tougher markets. He knew there were more of his target audience there. That's how he was going to grow. In a moment of self-doubt, he wondered how he would be able to maintain the high volume of content to keep these people satisfied and to keep the money rolling in. He just had to think back to the amount of hate in his comment section to remind himself that the world was full of people waiting, yearning to let their grievances be aired.

Satisfied with the modest but growing numbers and happy with the $578 in the tip jar for the night and the three shirts he sold from his merch store, he used an app on his phone to adjust the lights in his Spokane “studio” and stayed in his expensive chair, bathed in the one purple light that he left on. Then, with his phone, he scrolled. And scrolled. And scrolled. He sat soaking up more dopamine and hate by scrolling and clicking through Reddit, 4chan, and other popular sites to find angry, disaffected young men and what they were mad about. He was beyond being gullible like the young men he was looking for, at least he thought he was. At 35, he felt he was beyond being manipulated or coerced, and he hoped to find younger, more receptive minds to mold or preach to. So far, his marketing plan seemed to be working: finding these hotspots on the internet where young men gather and complain, using a fake name to drop a couple of links to his videos, and waiting for new viewers to arrive. It’s just one of the things Gill had been doing to get new viewers, but it was effective.

The next night’s live show was on a new topic, but it was really more of the same. The episode was titled How Fatherlessness Created a Generation of Criminals | Spitting Hard Facts.

“I know a lot about this topic,” Gill said softly into the microphone and camera, striking a gentler tone than usual. “I grew up without a father around, and I may have gotten a little crazy. My mother must have had shit fits over me in my teen years. I ran with a few tough kids, and I had a mouth on me, but I never came close to doing what we see some of these animals in the streets are doing.” He paused for dramatic effect but continued in his softer tone. “But then, by the grace of God, I pulled myself out of that tailspin and pulled my head out of my backside. I joined the Marines right after high school and never looked back.” His tone started to rise with intensity. “Now, though, look at these other dregs that haven’t been graced by God or have the sense to pull themselves out. They’re gunning down store clerks and selling drugs whenever and wherever they want. They don’t have fathers at home to teach them right, and their welfare mothers are probably too strung out to do anything about it either.” His voice was sharp, and he looked straight at the camera, daring anyone to disagree with him. “The democrats have done everything possible to defund the police, so we can’t even fight back anymore, and the courts give the thugs so many rights that they can just waltz out of juvey or jail as soon as they walk in. What do you guys think about that? What have you guys seen?”

The comment feed, already active with a few comments from his regulars, lit up even more with viewers adding what they thought the problems or solutions might be.

NO FAULT DIVORCES KILLED THE FAMILY UNIT!!!!

they tells everyone that their victims

Tips were dribbling in at a dollar or five at a time, the usual pace. Then, from an account he’d never seen before came a tip for the amount he’d never received before on a live show: $500. He’d had several Lives where the total adds up to that much. That was rare but not unheard of. No one had ever dropped that much at one time before. If the amount wasn’t enough of a surprise, the username made him freeze: RickyRocket07.

No, he thought to himself, that must just be a coincidence. Despite his self-soothing, he did one of the worst things a live YouTuber could do: he froze for a spell and created dead air. After a long ten seconds of silence and with a shake of his head, he collected himself and began again in a voice less confident than before, but not before the image of a certain young, blonde teen was planted in his mind.

“Friends and patriots, I wanna thank RickyRocket07 for the generous donation to the show. You all know I use those funds to support the channel and causes that are in line with our shared beliefs, so this will go a long way in helping. Thank you, Ricky.”

RickyRocket07 had something to say about this in the chat.

My pleasure. I, too, had a rough time in my late teen years

Again, Gill froze, thinking about the similarities and odds of a coincidence, but gathered himself and spoke directly to Ricky. “I’m sorry to hear that, but it looks like you’ve recovered well and are doing OK for yourself.”

Yes. Much better now, but it was rough. Maybe I’ll tell your viewers about it sometime.

It was only through practice and repetition that Gill could hold his gaze into the camera. What he really wanted to do was to shut it all down, dim his lights, have a stiff drink, and sit in silence for a while to figure out what was going on. That had to wait; he still had more of the show to do. Now, though, he was without the steam and bile he had built up before the donation and the disturbing input from his guest. He shifted in his seat, took an extra moment to gather his thoughts back to the topic of kids without fathers at home, and started in again with a tangent about how social programs coddle society and that more young men should be compelled to join the military.

After another twenty-five minutes of screed, he ended his show with his usual reminders to his viewers to go check out his Patreon account, where patrons can get special behind-the-scenes access to him and can see content not found elsewhere. Within seconds of logging off, instead of his usual check of analytics and tip jar totals, he sat upright in his chair, turned his cap around, looked at the profile page of RickyRocket07, and found it to be mostly blank. Mostly. There were no profile or banner photos, and no information other than the user's hometown. It was listed as Rathdrum, Idaho. Gill knew the town well. He grew up in nearby Coeur d’Alene, and Rathdrum was where .... he didn’t want to finish the thought, but he couldn’t help himself. Images of Ricky Rocket came to mind.

Gill got up from his chair and grabbed a beer from his refrigerator, opened it, and drank half of it in one go. He had a twinge of regret for always drinking Michelob Ultra, always trying to keep calories down to stay fit and lean. Can’t be a fat slob like most of those liberals, he often told himself. Now, though, he wanted something heavier to drink, something stronger. He wanted to get a buzz on like–like he had that night, he recalled in a shock to himself. He had a bottle of bourbon in the cabinet that he kept for special occasions. Was this a special occasion? Would drinking make him forget or make him think about Ricky more?

He finished the rest of his beer in one more swig, grabbed another one, and then went back to his computer chair. Opening a search browser on his computer, he typed in a few keywords to aid his search: rathdrum, 2007, missing, richard lund, murder. Several articles popped up from the two local papers in North Idaho, as well as some older reports from CNN. They had a news crew up there for a short time until they finally found the dead body, and the furor calmed down a little. What all the articles had in common was a photo of Ricky, one that his mother gave to all the news sources. It showed a sweet young man with locks of bouncy blonde hair, smiling at the camera like it was his best friend who had just arrived at a party. His eyes were bright and wide, just like his smile, and his face radiated joy, reflecting his youth and enthusiasm. His face wasn't as joyful when he was finally discovered in the woods a few weeks after his disappearance.

Gill shook his head once and drained the second beer. It had to be a coincidence, he thought. No one knows. No one else was there. Ricky Rocket is dead and buried. He has been for a long fucking time.

Ricky Rocket was a dumb nickname, and Gill knew it even back in high school. Everyone did, but they used it anyway. The short, wiry kid earned it by being a sprinter on the track team and “moving fast” with the girls on the team. Someone said it out loud one day at a track meet in Post Falls when Ricky was just a freshman, and it just stuck. “Go, Ricky Rocket,” they yelled. The second meaning was earned later that season when Ricky was seen trying to make moves on some of the junior and senior girls on the team. By his senior year, his legend in the school established, The Rocket would be dead.

The thought made Gill stir from his torpor and got him moving again. He finally clicked through his analytics, scrolled through the comments on the video, checked his monetization settings to ensure everything was as it should be, and then checked the email account associated with his channel. Littered among the comments from viewers, requests for collaboration, and sponsorship offers was an email from a Gmail account: RickyRocket07. A tingling sensation began in the center of Gill’s chest and radiated outward like a star in all directions. When the tingling numbness reached his fingertips, he clicked the email to open it.

The email contained a photograph and three words. Nothing more. The photo was grainy and poorly lit, and if you didn’t know what you were looking at, it might have been hard to tell exactly what or who was in the photo. Gill knew. Gill knew exactly what and exactly who was in the photo. It showed a truck, a dark truck, sitting somewhere at night. His truck. The only illumination came from either streetlights or lights in a parking lot. The angle of the picture was from the left rear side, showing that the truck was a Ford F150, and there were two occupants. Most of the license plate was visible, and it showed to be an Idaho plate. You couldn’t see the face of the driver, only his outline, but you could clearly see the passenger's side profile. Just as importantly, you could see his bouncy, blonde locks of hair.

The three words were, “You were seen!”

The feeling in his chest intensified and pulsed and generated a heat he’d never felt before as his mind leapt to the many possibilities of how his life just might have turned to shit.

* * *

Half a state away, safely ensconced in a studio apartment above the garage at her parents’ house in Boise, Sara Lund refreshed her browser and saw that she no longer had access to Gill’s YouTube channel. Good, she thought. That meant that he had seen the email and had blocked her account. Donating that $500 hurt financially, but she felt it was a good way to get his attention. Sara wasn’t positive that Gill killed her brother until he blocked her accounts. Until then, she had only suspected it, felt it in her bones. She had gotten to him, and he thought he was safe. The real fun was to begin now.

Despite her years of self-denial and lying to her therapists, regardless of the built-up walls of self-defense she had constructed to keep herself safe from the memories of Ricky’s murder and her negligence, all it took was a mention in the news that a new Shake Meister was going to be opening near her home to release all those years of darkness. It was a breakthrough, a long time in the making, and the clarity for her responsibility in her brother’s end washed over her, wiping away her fears of consequences for her actions, leaving only the long-simmering hatred for the one she now knew in her heart was responsible. Lying dormant under all the years of pain from her brother's death, the failure of her parents to accept that she was still alive, her own long-standing addictions, and her feelings of unworthiness was a little kernel that had been the cause of much of her consternation. Her remembrance of a repressed fact brought about gut-wrenching sobs and a river of tears and snot of a volume she had never before produced. But that released memory, that hidden memory that had been tucked away so long under layers of shame and alcohol and drugs, meant so much to her. She remembered. She was the last person to see her brother before he was killed.

As soon as the clarity hit her, she went right to the basement in her parents’ home, where she’d moved back into after yet another relationship breakup and emotional breakdown. She opened one of her boxes of old things from her youth and found what she was looking for: an old blue Razr phone and charger. After charging it up for a few minutes, it came to life, and she checked the photos. And there it was. The picture she knew would be there. The photo she took on a whim as her brother drove off, leaving her at the Shake Meister in Post Falls to wait for her friends to give her a ride home.

“I'm gonna tell him,” Ricky said to her earlier that night.

“Whatever. I think you’re crazy. Barry’s not like that. He’s not gonna understand. What if mom and dad find out? They’ll freak out,” Sara said back to her older brother.

“Yes, he will. I know he will. Mom and Dad are gonna have to find out soon enough.”

Other than talking about the logistics of her getting home, that was the last conversation they ever had. Sara saw him as he drove off in Gill’s truck, and for no reason that she could ever verbalize, she snapped a quick picture with her phone. She never saw her brother again. His recovered body was so deteriorated that they had a closed-casket funeral. Her brother’s murder and disappearance were still unsolved even after all these years. With this new piece of information, this photo, this memory that she had willingly kept back then, suppressed for so many years, now refreshed, maybe she could get the case reopened.

A wave of guilt and shame washed over her as complicity in never sharing the image with the police at the time or telling them about Ricky’s last ride. She wanted to at the time, but was so worried about letting Ricky’s secret out that she never did. Having her parents know Ricky’s deepest identity, his deepest secret, would have shamed them to no end. They moved away from liberal California to avoid such “evil” impulses. She sat at her desk, head in hand, and replayed the time the deputy asked her if she knew anything at all that might help, and she just said, “No.” The self-loathing washed over her for a full minute before she shook it off. Enough of that, she thought. The blocking of the accounts, Sara felt, was something that only a guilty person would do — and she had a plan for that.

* * *

Gill went live a few minutes later than usual, 9:04 pm Spokane time. He’d gone back and forth about cancelling the whole show, but his need for ego gratification won out, and he started with his regular, confident self.

“What’s up, guys! Sorry for the delay. Had some tech difficulties, but I’m here now. Today, we’re gonna talk about the modern military, how it’s gotten too “woke” and what is being done by the new regime to instill a more killer mentality instead of all this soft shit we see now.”

The live feed comment section, already abuzz with activity, came alive even more.

GO WOKE GO BROKE!!!!

Its not like it was when i was in

“That’s right, DragonDawg. Times have changed. Even since I got out only a few years ago, things have gotten so soft. As you all know, I was a Marine for a bunch of years, and we knew how to kick some ass. Now, the rules of engagement they have to use make sure that they’re always fired upon first. A Marine has to die before we can fire back. That’s what the last administration gave us. That’s what the new guys are trying to fix.”

The comment section, still lively, started to come alive with unusual activity. RickyRocket07_2 posted a hyperlink time and time again. Nothing more. No message or text, just the link. It must have been posted forty or fifty times before Gill noticed it, interspersed between the comments of his viewers.

What the fk is this?

FKN SPAM!

Whos posting this

Gill saw the username and had a good idea what the link went to without even opening it. He right-clicked on the name and blocked them, hoping he had done so before anyone opened the link. Blocking a user removed all of their comments, and Gill noticed that all the links had disappeared. He hoped he was safe.

You guys see that pic? WTF was that about?

Hey, Barry! Who in that truck?

Hoping to cover his own concerns and distract his viewers from the distractions, Gill went back into his diatribe about the “woke” military. “When I was in Iraq, we knew what we had to do and we did it, but just a few years later, when that old man had us tuck tail and run out of Afghanistan, good Marines died because we had gotten too soft under his administration.” However, there was a segment of viewers who weren’t following his lead.

Wasn’t Ricky Rocket the guy that donated $500 yesterday?

Whered they go?

Y’all see what else that site said?

That chilled Gill. He had blocked the user, so he no longer had the link. While half-heartedly keeping up his banter, he wondered what else was on the end of that link. There was the picture he had been sent, he was sure, but what else? He hoped that if it stopped now, everything would just blow over and return to normal. One of his viewers had other ideas.

You gotta check this out!!!!! Gonna be a good show tomorrow. Lolz!!!!

A user named TigerBomb posted the link along with the comment for all viewers to see on the live feed. Gill, entirely forgetting about protocol and the fact that he was live on air, indulged his curiosity and clicked on the link. It went to a YouTube video that, when played, showed a still image that had been sent to him the night before, but in this one, the license plate on the truck was blurred out. The title of the video was WHO KILLED ME, and superimposed over the photo near the top was floating text that gave a date and time for a live broadcast!

"Fuck!” he said aloud for all his viewers to see. “Look, folks, I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like my show being hijacked. I’m gonna cut this one short tonight. I’ll see you next time.” He ended his show without his usual outro and end music. After cutting the video feed, he sat still in his chair, thinking of all the possibilities of how this could be hell on him, but he still suffered from the illusion that he could escape the weight of what was happening.

* * *

With the end of Gill’s live broadcast, Sara was just getting started. At her desk, she raised her hand to move aside a lock of curly blonde hair that had fallen in her face. When that only partially succeeded, she blew at it from the corner of her mouth, finishing the job. She had a message prepared and went through every video on Gill’s channel to paste it. It said, “Come find out who Barry Gill killed back in 2007!” and gave a link to a YouTube Live scheduled for 9 pm PST the next night. Not coincidentally, Sara scheduled it for the same time as Gill’s show. After ensuring that all his videos and Shorts conveyed the same message, she visited the SubReddit devoted to Barry Gill’s channel, r/BarryGillLive. She left the same message on several of the posts. Lastly, she did the same to about fifty of the posts on his show’s Facebook page, just to make sure the older crowd saw the message.

“Yeah. Fuck you,” she said out loud to no one when she was all done. Back straight, leaning forward, her elbows resting on the edge of the small folding table she used as her desk, Sara rested her chin in her hands and felt a swell of energy and self-empowerment she hadn’t experienced for years. Going to the police would have been too easy, she thought. She would do that also, but she wanted to make that fucker squirm for a while first. Now, there was nothing to do except wait.

She stood up quickly from her desk, knocking over her empty teacup, and headed over to her red velvet couch. The couch didn’t fit the decor of her current light green room at all. It was from a previous life, from a brief time a few years ago, when she had a modicum of happiness in her life, when she thought she had love. What she had, she realized too late, was the right combination of denial and alcoholism to make her feel like she had enough balance in her life to maintain the appearance of happiness in a co-dependent relationship. The relationship ended, but she salvaged the funky retro couch and an expensive mattress out of it all. That, and material for even more therapy.

Lying down on the soft, plush couch, her goal was to not move a muscle other than to breathe, to let her mind adjust to stillness, and then to work through the details of her presentation the next night. It was a fine goal, but like so many others of hers, it failed. She stayed still, but her mind whirred with thoughts of her many failures concerning her brother’s memory; her failings from that night. She knew there was no way she could have saved her brother, but maybe she could have said something earlier about him going away with Gill in his truck. Maybe that would have done something. Maybe this and maybe that. Her brother was dead, and now she was certain that Gill had something to do with it. She was taking action, and she felt better than she had in many, many years. Despite her desire to fulfill her nightly habit of getting white wine drunk, she didn’t have the urge to blot out the feelings. She wanted to feel things tonight.

* * *

As long as it took Sara to paste all the comments on his various posts and videos, it took Gill three times as long to find and delete them, but that was only after followers had seen them and either liked the comment or made a comment underneath it. There was no way to know how many of his followers had clicked on the link, but looking at the page where the Live was scheduled, he could see that the user, the original RickyRocket07, had grown a following of a few hundred subscribers. Checking back at the video/picture that was posted the previous night, he saw that it had over 5,000 views and more than 100 comments. Scrolling through them, most of them expressed confusion or bewilderment over the meaning of the image, but a few shocked him.

He’s exactly the kind of guy who would do something like this.

These fkn guys!!!! Always with these guys

Had anyone asked him, Gill would have said that it had been years since he’d thought of Ricky Lund, but the truth was that he thought of him in some way every single day. Sometimes it was just a passing thought about his feelings from that night, and other times he recalled each and every second of what had happened with crystal clarity. Tonight, waiting for 9 pm, was one of those times. He remembered their talk. He remembered what Ricky told him. He remembered his disgust and anger, and he remembered pushing Ricky away. He remembered the sound of Ricky’s head hitting the rock, and he remembered all that blood. He remembered all of it. An IMAX movie with full Dolby sound played in his head of his shameful actions afterwards. How he knew no one knew they were parked at an old, abandoned logging road near Rathdrum Mountain. How he buried the body under all those rocks, and how he went back to town like nothing happened.

As the 9 o’clock showtime approached, Gill wanted nothing more than to dive deeply into a bottle of something stronger than Michelob Ultra.

* * *

In the past week, since she discovered that Gill was a YouTuber and her plan became clear, Sara had learned a lot about technology. She taught herself all about the ins and outs of YouTube videos and livestreaming, but more importantly, she looked up all she could about creating deepfake videos using commercially available AI. Those two tech pieces combined to make what Sara hoped would be a powerful tool for her to impart some pain on Barry Gill, perhaps not as much as he deserved, but a little would suffice before the deputies did their duty. She had her prerecorded video ready for the Live session and waited.

At nine, exactly, she went live and hit the play button on her dashboard. Her screen, and those of the 2,377 viewers who were waiting for her, showed a young blonde man standing in a scrubby pine forest, looking serious and waiting to speak. His slightly curly hair was messy, but in an endearing way that highlighted his good looks. After a five-second pause, he began the speech that Sara had generated for him.

“Hi. I’m Ricky Lund, and I’ve been dead since 2007. I died somewhere in the woods outside of Rathdrum, Idaho, and only one person knows exactly how and where it happened. One night, in late 2007, this person and I drove in his truck away from the Shake Meister in Post Falls, and I was never seen alive by anyone else ever again.”

Ricky’s almost realistic self disappeared from the video and was replaced by the still image of the truck. This one didn’t have the license plate blurred out.

“That’s me in the passenger’s seat of that truck, and you’ve probably guessed by now whose truck that is and who that is in the driver’s seat. I’m not alive to tell you what happened after we drove away that night,” Ricky’s avatar held for a few seconds, where Sara wrote in for it to make a dramatic pause, “but that person is. They can tell you all about what happened afterwards. They can tell you what we talked about that night, the secret that I revealed, and all about why they never said anything to the police about our trip that night.”

* * *

Barry Gill watched the video while seated at his desk, keeping an eye on the comments as they rolled in.

Who tf is Ricky Lund?

I’ve found a link to a news article about this. I’ll post it.

Is Gill spposed to have done this? Is that what this is all about

Other viewers started posting old news links to the stories about Ricky’s disappearance and the eventual discovery of his body. Gill squirmed in his seat and felt a trickle of sweat roll down his back. That starburst in his chest was back again.

* * *

Sara watched as AI Ricky finished the speech she had programmed for him, an almost smile on her face.

“An hour ago, an email was sent to the sheriff’s department with a copy of the photo you’ve seen and a statement from the person who took it. In that statement, the person shares more about what I was going to tell the other person that night. That might be the reason this person killed me, but we won’t know until the deputies speak with him.

This is a person many of you know, who many of you follow on this platform. It’s someone who talks an empty talk of bravery and manhood, but was a coward when it counted. I suppose we’ll know more soon enough.”

The video ended and was again replaced by images, this time a series of them depicting the real Ricky Lund at various times in his too-brief life: Ricky as a baby, Ricky dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween, and another of Ricky just after a track race, smiling and waving to someone off-camera. Sara felt the tears welling up, but she fought them back. She didn’t feel that she deserved to cry; she’d done enough of that. She wanted a drink, but she thought she’d done enough of that, too. Instead, she stood up, walked away from her desk, and threw herself face down on the bed she had salvaged from the wreck of her last relationship. It was three days until her next therapy session, and she’d have a lot to talk about.

* * *

His followers, or at least the viewers of the Ricky Rocket video, kept the comment section of the video abuzz, and Gill read them with a sense of dread.

Gill’s a killer?

Oh, damn! Ya know the police are moving right now

Dude better have some answers

The starbursts in his chest didn’t stop now. They came so fast and so powerful that they all ran together in a solid series of pulses, keeping him both stunned and energized. He couldn’t stay motionless anymore. He jolted up from his chair and pushed it back, knocking over the lightstand behind him. This caused a quarter of the room to get darker, but it was the corner he wanted to get away from. He paced the faux-wood flooring and used his foot to shove the coffee table out of his way when he decided that he needed more room to move. A wider path seemed safer, he thought.

“Fuck it!” he said aloud and went into his modest white kitchen to fetch the bottle of bourbon he’d been avoiding the past few nights. The bottle was tucked away in the same cabinet as the Bloody Mary mix, vodka, and tequila. He felt better knowing he had all that to fall back on if the bourbon wasn’t enough. He had another fallback, too. Something more final.

His 9mm sat on the shelf in his closet in a secure case. He had other handguns, but this one, a Beretta, was special. It was the model that he carried back in the Corps. They hadn’t gone to the range together in more than a year, but every once in a while, Gill took it out of its case, stripped it down, used a lint-free cloth to rub it clean, and gave it a tiny bit of oil before putting it back together and working the action a few times. It was a calming, almost hypnotic act that took him back to happier times, to when he felt a purpose in his life, to when he wasn’t just floating around in space, making it all up as he went along. The Marines, even in the dangerous times, maybe especially during those times, gave him direction and a sense of purpose after all the lost feelings for what he did to Ricky. Now, all that was going to come out into the open. Now, questions would be asked. Now, he’d be ruined.

Gill pulled the case down from the shelf, opened it, and pulled out the handgun. He dropped the magazine and cleared it to ensure it wasn't loaded, then reloaded the magazine but didn’t rack a round into the chamber. Instead, he went back out to where his drink was waiting for him on the kitchen counter, grabbed it, then went to his overstuffed chair, his thinking spot, and held his pistol close to him in one hand, drink in the other.

He knew they’d be coming, and soon. The police, or maybe the sheriff’s department. Someone would come. They'd ask questions about that night. His secret would come out.

He heard a car pull up in front of his building and knew who it was. He listened to the car doors opening and then shutting again. Gill had a choice to make.

Daniel D Baumer 10/30/25 Daniel D Baumer 10/30/25

The Toilet Fairy

When the thing you feared and loathed becomes a dear treasure.

When the thing you feared and loathed becomes a dear treasure.

It was among the most ridiculous things any of us had ever seen in our lives, yet the damn thing felt like part of the family somehow. She sat upon the upper lid of Gramma Andy’s toilet tank for all the years and all the visits we made to her house in Santa Rosa, staring at us boys as we stood to do our business. Her porcelain face and torso appeared smooth and mostly pristine, the look of an angel, but Lord knows how many men and boys’ private parts she’d seen in her day. She wore a grand variety of colorful, billowing dresses that covered the extra roll of toilet paper underneath, the selection chosen to match whatever color hand towels my grandmother displayed.

From an early time, we were familiar with the doll’s story. Mother had told it to us enough times. It came from Germany with our grandmother in the 1950s when she emigrated here as a young woman. The post-war years proved to be too much for her, and she jumped at the chance to come to a land with so much opportunity. She came with only her dreams, a suitcase, and the Toilet Fairy. Only, it wasn’t the Toilet Fairy back then. Then, it was only half a doll on a stick — a childhood puppet that kept my grandmother company during the dark days of the war and the sometimes darker years that followed. How and when it became the Toilet Fairy was a mystery to us grandchildren, but we knew that the ugly thing had had a colorful life.

After Gramma Andy’s passing, our mother adopted the creature and kept it as a part-joke, part-heirloom in the display cabinet in her well-appointed San Francisco living room. The thing stuck out among her collectibles and other oddities, always catching the attention of visitors. We kids just rolled our eyes whenever someone mentioned it, or we made jokes about how many times it had seen us pee. We hated the thing, but it had always been a part of our lives.

Then, our mother died.

I had already moved to Germany to teach, but also to reconnect with the country and my German heritage. It had always been a void inside me. When my grandmother moved to the U.S., she married an American, adopted a bland last name, gave her children American-sounding first names, and stopped speaking German. Instead of Wolfgang, Claudia, and Lothar speaking German around the house, Robert, Linda, and Thomas spoke American English. In her desire to move forward and assimilate, she left her country and culture behind. My mother continued that pattern of leaning into American-ness, but there was always a whisper of something inside of me that knew there was something more to be learned. Maybe it was the memory of how my grandmother pronounced “w” and “v.” Maybe it was in how she always had a layout of cold cuts, cheese, and bread when guests came over. Or maybe it was that damn Toilet Fairy who carried history and memory like a torch across a foggy field to keep something alive inside of me.

“When it happens, you don’t have to come back over,” my mother said on the phone a few weeks before she passed, “You were just here this summer.”

“Won’t there be a funeral or something?” I said it as if I weren’t speaking to my mother about her own death.

“Like I’ll care. I know you’ll miss me. I don’t give a shit what other people think if you’re not there.” In her illness, my mother had lost some of the refinement from her upbringing. Within the month, she slipped away to join her mother.

My sister Marie had the unpleasant task of dealing with our mother’s possessions. She was both the eldest and the geographically closest. I, the baby, far away chasing yet another dream, was once again shielded from responsibility. Our dead brother was also free of his duties here.

“I want the Toilet Fairy,” I said when asked which of Mom’s things I wanted. “I know just where to put her.” It was an impulsive ask, and I hadn’t thought of it until the instant my sister brought the subject up. Just the mental image of the cursed thing brought to mind the dusty rose color of the tiles in Gramma’s bathroom, the cloying scent of the decorative hand soap, the rough feel of the fairy’s wool dresses, and the little scar on her left ear from where my grandfather had to glue it back after I knocked her off her pedestal trying to peek under her dress when I was five.

“Don’t put it on your toilet lid. You’ll creep out all the men.”

I rented the cottage outside of Darmstadt that I did because, based on an old photo, it looks like the one my grandmother grew up in. It was a white stucco rectangle with a tiled roof and a garden with a half-wall. In another photo from that era, my grandmother, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, sits in a wooden chair near the fireplace, holding the Toilet Fairy as she was before we knew her: a half-doll on a stick. I don’t have a fireplace in my cottage, but I have a wood stove with a shelf above it. That will be the new home for the fairy when she arrives.

Checking the tracking number, the package my sister sent has been at the DHL center for almost two weeks. I can see the Toilet Fairy, with all of her colored dresses, sitting alone in a box, scared and lost somewhere in a warehouse. It’s not the homecoming that I would have chosen for her.

Daniel D Baumer 2/28/25 Daniel D Baumer 2/28/25

Managing

A reminiscence of the summer that I killed my father.

Managing

One summer, I killed my father. OK, I didn’t actually kill him, but he died, nonetheless. He wasn’t my real father, either, but he felt that way a little bit. I probably could have stopped it from happening, but in my youth and fear, I failed to do the right thing.

The Darmstadter Hof was and still is a local icon. Some would call the granite building a relic, but a family member of ours had owned it and managed it for nearly ninety years. The ‘Hof’ sits snugly in the middle of the town marketplace, and over the years, though the area's fortunes rose and fell with the economy, our place stayed open to welcome travelers. Its Art Deco design went in and out of style, but the patrons always came; some left a lasting impression on me.

I am now the General Manager, but I didn’t start that way. Throughout my school years, I’d work in one menial position or another, finally making my way up the ranks to the gold jacket of the desk crew, a prestigious position in our fine hotel. I started as a busboy in the restaurant for two summers. Then I was a shuttle van driver for two more summers. That was fun because I interacted with people more and got out of the building. Even though most of my driving was just to the airport or seaport and back, getting out to see the city was always an adventure.

Most times, my passengers would engage with others in their party, discussing their trips or business dealings. It was the lone travelers who brought the best conversations to me. I met a few cool people, a lot of chatty types excited about their adventures, and more than one older woman who would have liked to show a younger man an interesting time. At least, that’s what my young man fantasies hoped for.

The first summer I drove, one man in particular caught my interest. He barely spoke to me the first time I transported him from the airport, but he had an almost recognizable air about him. I didn’t notice right away, but as I was loading his luggage, I was soon struck by how he stood, his stance, and the cut of his shoulders. There was something familiar in them. We drove along, and I’d peek at him in the rearview mirror to see his salt and pepper hair as he stared intently out at nothing. Even his button-down shirt and lack of a tie were reminiscent of someone missing from my life. And it finally hit me: my father.

Now, at this point, my father had been gone for eight years. Not dead, just disappeared. He left my mother and me in the mid-‘80s to live his life and hadn’t been in touch since. The man in the van certainly wasn’t my actual father, but his presence, his similarity to my father, stunned me into an uncomfortable silence. I don’t think he minded because he just stared off into the distance and sat quietly the whole ride. At the hotel, I wordlessly unloaded his belongings and was rewarded with a $20 bill, a firm handshake, and a genuine “thank you.” I don’t know why, but I remember feeling like crying.

I saw him again the following summer, but this time, the early morning drive was to the airport. He recognized me from the previous year, said a fond hello, and sat in the van's front seat. He sat quietly for the first ten minutes of the ride, but then he looked at me and told me a story.

“My wife and I used to both come on these trips to the ‘Hof’ for weekends back when we lived in the area. Back when …,” His words trailed off.

“Yeah?” I said. I wasn’t sure where to go with this at the time. I didn’t want to say or ask anything upsetting. “Is she...still with us?” I thought this was a smart and diplomatic question.

“Yes,” was all he said. After a deep breath and a sigh, he continued. “It was for our anniversary weekend, and we thought it was a good way to rekindle some fun or romance or...,” he waved in the air to indicate he couldn’t find the words, “or whatever.” He paused for almost a full minute. I could see he wanted to say something, but he hadn’t found the words or the energy yet. Now that he had been in the van longer, I could smell what must have been last night’s alcohol coming through his pores. I’d driven enough hungover guests to recognize the odor.

“She stopped coming with me a couple years ago.” He let out another sigh. “I wish she would start trying again.”

Arriving at the airport saved me from the awkward situation. Another $20 bill, another firm handshake, and another genuine “thank you” later, he was gone again.

The next time I saw him was the following summer, my first in the gold jacket and on the 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. shift.

He had just left the hotel lounge when he saw me across the lobby. “Hey, kid,” he said a little too loudly for the late hour. “You’re moving up in the world. Gold jacket looks good on you. Who’d you sleep with to get that?” He approached slowly, in slow, smooth, controlled steps, and I could smell the whiskey that had loosened his tongue.

"I worked very hard to get here,” I said a little indignantly. Then, with a little smile, I let the truth slip out. “Well, my mother is the General Manager, too.”

“Oh, shit!” he said, leaning back from the countertop. “I didn’t mean anything by that.” He shooed away invisible flies as if to wave away his faux pas. “Anyways, good for you. You’re probably livin’ the dream, aren’t ya?” He leaned back onto my counter with both hands as if the answer to this question was really important to him.

I didn’t like the question or what it implied. I didn’t like it because I wasn’t livin’ the dream. I was livin’ my mother’s dream: graduate with a BA in Hospitality Management, follow up with a master’s in business administration, work all the positions at the family hotel, and eventually take over for her as the general manager. If I just follow that path, I’ll make her happy. But it wasn’t my dream. I wasn’t sure what my dream was back then.

I lied. “Yes, sir. I’m working towards my professional goals.”

“That’s great, kid. I’m so glad to hear that. I’m proud of ya. I remember you when you were a busser in the restaurant. Now look at you.”

“You saw me back then?” I said, only half believing him. But how else would he know if he hadn’t seen me?

“Sure. I been coming here for years, you know that, and I see what’s what. Now look at you. Well done, young man.” He leaned back from the counter and shot me three times with the finger guns he drew from his side holsters. “Pew! Pew! Pew! Congratulations, bud.” He toddled off to the elevator down the hallway and disappeared.

I’d been seen. This man, who wasn’t my father, saw me. This man, who reminded me of my father, was proud of me. I was profoundly shocked to the edge of tears. My mother, granduncle, and co-workers had expressed pride and pleasure for my promotion, but it wasn’t the same as if my father had done so. This man, this stranger, was the closest thing to it that I could imagine.

It would be another year until I saw him again, the late summer of ‘95. Again, he was coming from the bar, and it was again whiskey that loosened his tongue. He leaned on my counter as if he owned it. “I don’t see a ring. You married? Engaged?”

“No, sir. That’s not in the plans for me just yet.” The truth is I had no romantic options at the time that would make marriage even a remote possibility.

“Good. Don’t rush into that. Once you do, everything changes. Same with having kids.”

I never knew if he had kids. It never came up. He wanted to say more but seemed to be having trouble finding the right words. His mouth would open like he was about to speak, but then it would close. He held his hands in front of him like he was holding an accordion. Still, the words didn’t come, so I helped.

“Has today been a rough day for you?”

He dropped a bombshell on me. “You can say that. I finally left my wife. Or, maybe she kicked me out. I’m not sure.” He gave a little laugh. “She said not to come back from my little pity vacation this year.”

How does one respond to that? Instead of trying to say something wise or comforting, I went with the first thing I could think of. “Yeah?” Wise words, indeed. If the end of his relationship wasn’t enough, he shared some more disturbing information.

“Yeah. Our son disappeared eleven years ago. Fourteen-years-old and he just up and vanished from the neighborhood. We’ve never heard from him since. We’ve been trying to keep our shit together since then, but I just can’t anymore. I can’t be there for her. I can’t stand being without him, and…,” he looked down, avoiding my eyes, “I can’t stand being with me. I can’t stand being me. I guess we’ve both had enough of it all.”

The lobby was silent save for the whirr of the ceiling fans. From the bar, I could hear the staff closing for the night: the clinking of glassware, the shuffle of tables, and the laughter of the employees enjoying the end of their shift. There was nothing to break the silence of the moment except more from the man.

“I want him back so badly. There’s so much I want to say to him. I want to hold him, ya’ know? I want to tell him I love him and that I’m sorry I wasn’t there for him. I just want him back.” He wasn’t crying, but it seemed he was close to it. The alcohol and his demons were doing their work. His left arm leaned on my desk, his eyes were still downcast as if in recollection, and he stayed still in place, as if any movement would scare away all the memories of his son.

This was outside the bounds of any other discussion I’d had before, and at that point in my life, I didn’t know my social obligation in that situation. Part of me wanted to hustle him out of the lobby so no one would come in and get upset by such a conversation, but another part, the part that had been left behind by a father, wanted to hug the man and let him tell me all the things that he wanted to tell his missing son. I love you. I’m proud of you. I’ll always be there for you. Instead, I sat stone quiet as he let his mood pass.

He looked back up at me. “I’m sorry to drop that all on you, kid. I don’t know where it came from. It’s just been a helluva day, ya’ know?”

“I’m sure it has,” I said in a voice softened more from timidity than true compassion. I had no idea how to handle so much weight. Rather than being bold enough to offer the man any words of comfort, I was stunned into silence by what I wanted to hear. I love you. I’m proud of you. I’ll always be there for you—instead, nothing.

After a moment, he collected himself, took a cleansing breath, and straightened out his shirt and coat as if it would wash the sadness from him. He apologized for sharing so much and mumbled a quiet good night to me. I watched him walk down the hallway to the elevators and disappear. A few hours later, he would be dead.

The next evening, I came in to work to hear that the man had passed during the night from an apparent overdose of prescription medication. The loss hit me harder than one would expect, harder than the passing of any other guest. We’ve had guests die before and plenty since then, but it always seemed more of an administrative problem than an emotional one. This was different.

The shift passed with as little human interaction as possible. My behavior was curt yet professional with those who came to the desk, but I wasn’t in the mood to talk in-depth with anyone. There’d been enough of that for a while. I wanted that man to come in again. I wanted to let him talk some more. I wanted to ask him about his son. I wanted to ask him question after question to keep him talking about what weighed him down. I just wanted to see him again, to know that he was ok. But he wouldn’t come in.

All these years later, and many times since then, I’ve thought of that man and my lack of courage, of my selfishness. The man died because I wanted him, my ghost father, to tell me he was proud of me and that he loved me. Instead, in that instance, I was the only person in the world who had the power of life or death over him, and I could have said the words that could have let him live, maybe just for another day, but he would have lived. I should have talked to him and told him that his son knows that his father loves him. It might have made no difference at all, but I’ll never know because I failed.

Daniel D Baumer 2/27/25 Daniel D Baumer 2/27/25

Deadlined - Prologue

An excerpt from the prologue of my newest release, Deadlined.

Deadlined - Prologue

Jonathan Robert Scotts was going to die tonight. He settled into his comfortable camping spot beneath the eaves of the South Hayward BART station tracks for the last time, his impending death by gunshot coming within minutes. This wasn’t something Jonathan, JR to his friends, had anticipated, but he wasn’t one to live a calendared life. Having lived on the streets for the better part of two years, his social activities didn’t call for much planning.

Luckier than most of his peers, he got a modest disability pension from the VA. It wasn’t much, just enough each month to get drunk a few times before the money ran out. Apart from that, Scotts depended on donations from the churches on Tennyson Road. Sometimes, he dumpster dived behind the markets, but there was often too much competition from his fellow street dwellers for whatever treasures they might contain.

He wanted to be around his family, but he’d burned those bridges. They still lived down the road in Fremont, but they’d grown tired of his bullshit. They’d grown tired of his lies, and they’d grown weary of him stealing from them when he needed some kind of fix. There were only so many times they wanted to retrieve JR from the county lockup.

The day arrived when they no longer came, and he could only manage a ride to Hayward. Then Hayward became home. JR tried downtown around the bus and BART station but found it crowded with too many hardcore drug users. The industrial areas lacked food or booze sources, and the prime foraging spots along Mission Boulevard were already occupied. After a few weeks of exploring and experimenting, he found his way to the Tennyson corridor and made it his home—for what that was worth. Sure, he had to break camp every night, but that didn’t take long, and it was easy to pack with him on the bike he had stolen. He’d never been robbed, the BART police never rousted him, and only the strongest of winds would bother him in the faux cave beneath the tracks.

Tucked away under his blue tarp, sipping the last of his malt liquor, he weighed whether to take a piss now or hold it in through the night. He wanted a better life, and he had a plan for it. He wanted his disabilities reevaluated to see if he was eligible for a better pension. He’d qualify for VA medical care if he had a high enough rating. If he could do that, he would get to rehab. With rehab, JR almost teared up at the thought that he might get his family back.

He’d fucked up so much, so many times. He knew his family would never forgive him, but he’d wanted to try. He had no idea how to get sober and had every excuse and opportunity to keep drinking as things were now.

Sleep approached as he thought of his ex-wife, Debra. She hadn’t remarried, so maybe he had a chance. He recalled their first dates, how they met, how they kissed and made love. It made him sad. He turned in his blanket to face the concrete wall, took a heavy breath, and eventually slipped into slumber.

JR wasn’t aware how much time had passed, but he woke with a jolt when his tarp and blanket were jerked away. Was he being robbed? For a moment, he felt relieved, knowing he had nothing to steal.

That comfort ended with two quick spits of light from the gun barrel pointed at him. For the briefest of instances, images of Debra passed through his mind before the final shot entered his brain, and he slipped to the other side.

* * *

Start at the beginning with *The Stone Harvest.*

Oscar Braga looked forward to the killing on this night. It was an idea a long time coming, and that time was now.

While traversing this busy corridor commuting to and from work sites, he had seen the patterns of people in this area and kept mental notes on their activities. He’d seen where the homeless gathered, where they hid and nested. A few weeks back, he’d parked his truck and scouted this area to get a more intimate feel for which dark corners held his targets. He had found the alleys and corners that gave shelter to those he despised.

Tonight, he would clean the streets and make a better world for those remaining, he thought solemnly.

Tennyson Road ran east-west and crossed Hayward just south of downtown. Lower-middle-class neighborhoods saddled its length up and down with a few strip malls, churches, and schools thrown in. Once gentrification took hold, the area’s glory days were behind it and, if lucky, ahead of it. For now, though, it had more than its share of homeless souls seeking refuge from the world’s economic woes where and when and how they could.

The South Hayward Bay Area Rapid Transit station was the site of his first planned contact. Braga didn’t know if it was a male or female, only that this silhouetted figure would be in its usual spot, as it had been every time he’d checked in the past few weeks.

Braga had been keeping himself calm during the roundabout walk from his truck to this starting point, but knowing he was about to commence his wave of cleansing, he was both scared and excited beyond words. His breathing was quick, and his heart rate elevated like he was about to begin a trip on a rollercoaster. But he was ready.

He walked westward along the north side of Tennyson, dipping low to avoid the BART tracks in a half-underpass. Braga shone his flashlight into the eaves of the underpass to check for anyone unaccounted for. Had there been occupants in that dry area, he’d have to skip this first kill, but he already knew from his weeks of prep work that no one had taken up shelter there. Braga wanted a clean start with no potential witnesses. At other spots, he’d easily be able to kill any witnesses, but not at the beginning. Too open, too busy with traffic, too well-lit.

Head on a swivel, he reminded himself while keeping one of the massive concrete support pillars between him and his target. One flickering light cast his shadow intermittently upon the stone. It was a short path and worth the risk. Traffic was clear.

Once on the other side, he steeled himself, pulling a suppressed 9mm pistol out from the front pouch of his black hoodie. It was an old military surplus Beretta 9mm and probably had a few thousand rounds sent through its barrel—maybe even a few in anger. It would work for tonight’s mission.

With one final glance over his shoulder to the street behind, Braga turned and hustled up the concrete incline toward the eave, where it met the underside of the BART track overpass. There it was, in the same spot it had been every time. Tonight was its last night of being a drain on society. Reaching his target, Braga seized the edge of the tarp and blanket the person had used for protection from the world and whipped them away, rousing him with a start. It was a man, after all. Before the man made a sound and while staring into his rheumy eyes, Braga overcame the rapid rise of the man’s stench and placed three quick rounds into him: two in the chest and one in his face. No time to enjoy the victory. He had more to do.

Three blocks west, someone had made a home of tarps against the tall noise-abatement wall, partially protecting the adjacent neighborhood from the sounds of passing trains. The wall kept him safe from the elements but not from predators.

Braga grabbed the tarp that served as the man’s home and ripped it away. Held in place by ropes and bungee cords, it didn’t get torn down altogether, but it did expose the alarmed occupant to the cool Hayward night.

The man’s panic didn’t last long. Two quick shots to his chest, with another well-aimed shot to his forehead, ended any possible emotion or commotion.

Braga crossed over Tennyson again to a small camp in the shadow of overgrown oleanders near the corner of the recently refurbished strip mall two blocks west. There were the usual businesses, all closed: a laundromat, bar, liquor store, taqueria, check cashing store, and a doughnut shop—minimal illumination at this hour.

As soon as the lights from a passing van faded, Braga used the noise to cover his movements as he headed toward the far side of the lot and oleanders. Walking a slow arc to avoid making a straight line to the bushes, he noticed movement to his far right while focusing on his target area. A man shuffled toward him. No, not toward him, but in the direction of the shade and shadow and safety of the overgrown plants. The approaching man carried a bundle, probably sleeping gear he’d stolen.

Braga took a chance to see if anyone inside was sleeping. He looked around in the gloom while adjusting his eyes to the darkness. Two, no, three people were sleeping in their blanket cocoons. The suppressed 9mm had nine rounds remaining, ready to go in Braga’s grip.

The homeless man with his belongings stepped between two overgrown oleanders. As the shadows of the heavy branches embraced him, blocking the light, Braga welcomed him with two quick shots to the chest. Only one of the three vagrants inside the impromptu camping spot stirred from the muffled gunshots. Though they were in the shadows, Braga saw his dark Central American features and greeted the man’s shocked appearance by placing two rounds into his forehead. Neither other camper stirred.

Five rounds left. He put one into each man’s heart and followed it with another into where their heads would be. He gave the second man an extra round in his skull just for fun.

Motionless and silent, he absorbed all the sights, scents, or sensations from the scene: spent propellant from the multiple rounds, the metallic tinge of blood, human filth of the routinely homeless, the wash of noise from the rare passing car, and a distant train. Nothing close that would present a threat.

He reloaded his pistol and surveyed his latest kills for signs of life, satisfied they were all ex-homeless and would no longer be a burden on society. As at the other scene he left his spent shell casings behind. He had stolen all the ammo, making it untraceable to him, and wiped down each round before loading it into the magazine—no chance of leaving a print behind.

The next kill site was two blocks west on the other side of the street. An auto repair shop sat on the opposite corner from a brightly lit 7-Eleven, its lights a blanket of hope and a sense of security for those ensconced inside for the time it took to buy a late-night pack of cigarettes or a Slurpee.

Braga walked to the kill site, the shadowed side lot of the shop, and played this stop differently, knowing he had a full magazine. He quickly placed two rounds in the chest of each of the three sleeping victims he knew frequented the place, short Latino men who appeared to be in their forties. Then, taking a few more seconds, he put a final round in each skull.

He had no more attacks planned out. His truck waited a few blocks away, and if the night’s killing ended here, he’d be okay with the body count. Nine. About as he expected. Naturally, he wanted more, but prudence demanded he take precautions. If he really wanted, more targets could be found in the dark alleyways behind nearby businesses or tucked under bushes at parks. He’d learned in his many trips up and down Tennyson that no matter the hour, there were always stragglers lurking about in the landscaped to add to the count. The fat one without shoes who often stopped traffic by walking right into the middle of the street, regardless of how busy it was. There was also the gal who slept in front of the Mexican market and changed her clothes on the sidewalk. He also knew of an old man who pushed his two shopping carts up and down Tennyson and made his home wherever he felt like it.

There was always more.

Between here and his truck, the most likely spots to find prey were behind the Life Church community center, outside the 24-hour Jack in the Box, or near the park library, but they all looked too busy. Braga knew already, but he triple-checked his ammo count. Loaded with a new magazine and two more ready, he had one other quiet spot to check.

Ruus River was the local name for the cement creek that ran perpendicular to Tennyson. It was part of the city’s rainfall-runoff abatement that gathered all the rainwater from the Tennyson Basin. It brought the water to the shoreline during the rare storms that dumped so much rain and runoff that the regular drains and gutters couldn’t handle it. During the drier seasons, like now, the river served as a pathway for those trying to stay out of the streetlights. The county fenced off the area where Tennyson and the river met, but the chain link fencing wasn’t enough to stop the natural flow of humans on this primate game trail. Braga found a place where someone had cut through to make a path. There’d been no rain, so the concrete river was dry except for a bare trickle down the center of the channel. The tunnels under the road proved too dark to see anything, but the stench of human filth was thick. He gave his eyes a moment to adapt, then noticed a motionless human silhouette at the far side of the street leaning against a pillar.

Braga made an arc around and behind the man, walking past the target with about ten feet between them, making side glances in his peripheral vision. He couldn’t tell if the homeless man was asleep or unconscious. Odd. He was more than sleeping.

He’d seen this man several times shuffling up and down the street, wrapped in his old blanket, looking as bad as he smelled. Probably smelled worse than that fucking donkey, Braga thought. Whatever alcohol or drugs he had gotten hold of had incapacitated him enough that no matter what noise Braga made, he wouldn’t have roused. This wouldn’t be a killing. It would be euthanization. This pathetic piece of shit needs to be put out of its misery, out of our misery.

He changed his mind about how he wanted this kill to play out and slipped his Beretta away. He pulled out the five-inch lock blade from the rear pocket of his pants and used his thumb to bring the blade into position. Smooth is fast, and fast is smooth.

Taking a quick step toward the target, he dropped to one knee, clasped a gloved hand over the homeless man’s mouth, and slid the blade with ease directly into his eye, dead center of the socket. The man’s body convulsed violently, his upper torso lurching toward Braga before flopping into stillness. He kept the pressure on the knife until the man’s body relaxed completely and then pulled it free, not bothering to check for a pulse, but he didn’t get up immediately.

Braga wiped the bulk of the gore from the blade onto the homeless man’s blanket and stood. He was concerned there may be blood on his face or hoodie, but there was nothing much more for that than a quick, cursory wipe with his sleeve. He retraced his steps back to the cut in the fence to see if anything was different, any new people, or maybe someone not there who was before. No. All looked smooth and clear.

Passing back through the fence, he noticed a slight uptick in traffic, which meant more eyeballs on him, but mostly it meant more noise and movement in which to remain concealed. Several parking spaces were empty on the side street where he parked. A few locals headed out to work, he assumed.

On his walk, he pulled out his cell phone and turned on the camera to check for any splatters on his face. There were none, but there was some blood near the right cuff of his hoodie. He’d have to get rid of it, but that’s why he bought cheap ones.

Approaching his truck, he unlocked the passenger side with the fob he had secreted inside the wheel well and got to work. He removed his hoodie, placing it along with his pistol, gloves, shoes, and knife inside a plastic bag. He put his regular sneakers back on. Next, he pulled a package of baby wipes from the glove box, then cleaned his face and hands. Those dirty wipes went into the plastic bag, too. He brought out a small bottle of hand sanitizer, the kind with a substantial alcohol percentage. If he missed any blood, the sanitizer would destroy any DNA value it held. Lastly, he switched out of his “work” shoes, stuffing them in the bag, too.

Braga gave himself a final visual inspection before climbing into the driver’s seat, feeling good about his appearance. He pulled from his spot, headed northward along smaller streets, and reviewed his after-action checklist. Moreso, he thought about the drain on society caused by his ten victims and the incalculable gain to the community because of their deaths. No one gave out medals for this sort of thing—but he felt they ought to.

Grit

Witness to the Flames

When a young girl sees something she shouldn’t, can she do what’s right or will the consequences of speaking be too much for her?

Last Call at Connie’s

It’s the last chance for Cal to reach out to the woman of his dreams. Will he do it? Can he do it?

Live Feed

What happens when the past catches up with you?

The Toilet Fairy

When the thing you feared and loathed becomes a dear treasure.

Managing

Managing

Deadlined - Prologue

Deadlined - Prologue

When a young girl sees something she shouldn’t, can she do what’s right or
will the consequences of speaking be too much for her?