novelettes

A Long Wait for Meatballs

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

Clarence Under helps police the high altitude areas between the shafts of commercial space elevators.  The one warning they always give is to never attempt light speed within the atmosphere.  If you do, time will distort, and Clarence is left cracking open your vehicle to see just what of you is left…

(reading time: 1 hour, 17 minutes)

A Long Wait for Meatballs

I’ve got a couple short stories to tell you… well not exactly short.  They were short for me, just a few minutes or hours; they were painfully long for everyone else, sometimes days and sometimes years.

You can have the legal details first.  Legally, my name is Clarence Under.  I was born black to white parents, which my father was pretty upset about.  He left for a while but eventually came back.  Legally, I’m married to a fantastic woman named Alberta.  She co-owns a garden supply shop with one of her chatty friends.  (I think all the plants there do well because she’s always talking at them… I heard that makes plants grow) Alberta’s second job is worrying because, legally, I’m a police officer. Continue reading →

Bookworm

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 5 Comments

Grandma’s basement is full of jarred and preserved magical creatures!  That’s how her cooking was always so scrumptious.  When she passed away she probably should have put a warning label on one jar in particular, the one with the smart-looking little caterpillar that loves to eat words…

(reading time: 1 hour, 10 minutes)

Bookworm

There came a time when knowledge turned invisible and raced across the globe.  It ran to those who searched for it and was displayed almost offensively.  It was called the internet.

Deep under a house, blankets of dust, like permanent foggy twilight, obscured a glass jar.  The shadow inside wanted out so badly that it tackled the side and cracked the glass.  It wanted out because it sensed, no, smelled, the knowledge flying in the air.  The internet called to it like a cartoon pie’s scent trail that tickled everyone’s noses.  That one crack… was its last bit of energy.  It was too dry now.  It shrank, it shriveled, it cracked, and, finally, it fell into a death-like sleep.  Not death though, for the jar had no expiration date. Continue reading →

Head Chef at Cave Gouch

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

The ship’s crash left the cook stranded on an alien planet as the sole survivor.  A large creature decides to take him in rather than eat him, the industrious varclid known as Gouch.  He would like to use the man’s expertise, and there’s plenty of meat left around from the crash…

(reading time: 1 hour, 7 minutes)

Head Chef at Cave Gouch

Gouch’s territory was quite large for a male his age.  Usually, a varclid’s range shriveled and curled inwards with their body, but Gouch’s body was still as strong as a steam engine, which allowed him to maintain a domain with ten miles of pristine rocky coastline, a wetland of forty square miles, and a patch of dense forest around three square miles.  With all that land to himself, it wasn’t inconceivable that a human might occasionally stumble in. Continue reading →

The Hollowcry

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

The twins came to town to deliver some plants, but they didn’t speak much.  Here speaking is an act of creation, giving birth to a quote, which wanders around repeating itself as it tries to resonate with people.  They’ll have a hard time keeping their mouths shut if that rumor about the monstrous Hollowcry is true, flying on the lift from human screams…

(reading time: 1 hour)

The Hollowcry

“A sleeping traveler is merely cargo.”

The quote roused Tawny from her nap.  She rubbed her eyes, forgetting her hands were coated in soil.  After a solid twenty seconds she’d removed all the sleep and dirt and been able to survey her surroundings.  She was glad to see they were exactly as she had left them.  More than two hundred shakespore plants crowded her with their huge hanging flowers.  The petals were bright orange and yellow and they hung so low because they hadn’t heard anything stimulating since the beginning of the journey almost two weeks ago. Continue reading →

Pron

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

Mankind has gone digital and set the worst corners of the internet adrift to fend for themselves.  A lone woman descends on one of these cesspools, eyes censored by a black bar, armed with a deadly cursor.  There are other women trapped there, and they need her help…

(reading time: 1 hour, 6 minutes)

Pron

A thousand links rested silently in the gray air.  This world was past dust, so the only sign of the field’s age was its stillness.  A thousand benches in a thousand styles: Victorian, art deco, 1990’s mail order catalogue, ferris wheel car, smooth bubbles meant to evoke the physical future that never happened…  Each one draped in heavy cables with frayed ends, like serpents with heads blasted to smithereens by lightning.  Without the cables the links could go nowhere.  Without the links the nearby town, the nearby pit as the civilized net would call it, was completely isolated.  The town became a pitiful little world that curled in on itself; culture became masturbation and love became a dream with no minds big enough to dream it. Continue reading →

Timeless

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

Dogwood the magician is less of an expert and more of a dumpster diver, but when someone new in town offers a big payday to find a magic relic that can sever emotional bonds, he takes the job.  How hard could it be to help him divorce his enchanting wife…

(reading time: 1 hour, 20 minutes)

Timeless

The saddle topped the newest gross of garbage funneled out of Fernico’s mansion like a flake of chocolate grated onto red velvet cake.  Dogwood reached down and pulled the red chunks of a destroyed carpet off it.  When held up in the day’s dying light, the saddle’s rare markings betrayed its true purpose.  The ordinary brown leather gave way to a pewter rim imprinted with inward facing blue triangles, designed to trap a certain type of magic like bear trap teeth.  A ghost saddle, he thought.  Should fetch at least four gold and six silver. Continue reading →

Panic in the Mumgrass

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 5 Comments

Modified animals with human minds roam the jungles and savannas, each kind generally keeping to their own, but the trailcutter of the mighty water buffalo-like brohoov must explore other options when he learns there’s a traitor in their midst, causing fatal stampedes at every turn…

(reading time: 1 hour, 12 minutes)

Panic in the Mumgrass

“Stampede!” a voice shouted.  Hundreds of others joined in calling out the word and took off running.  The herd’s countless hooves pounded the mumgrass they were grazing on moments before into a thick choppy pulp.  Calves called to their mothers in the confusion, unsure where to run.  One of the older beasts tripped and rolled onto its side; a second later it was trampled to death by its distracted kin.

The calls to flee took a moment to reach the back of the herd, since this group of Brohoov was over six hundred strong.  When it did, the herd’s leader, Dodarka, growled to himself, Not again!  He was forced to join in as the horns of those behind him pushed and shoved forward.  It didn’t matter how much authority he carried as TrailCutter, it would take an act of god to stop a stampede before it ran its course.  That meant an hour of running until everyone’s legs burned and their breath came in great gasps of mist that shot from their wide nostrils like jets of volcanic gas.  It meant everyone would need a little more food to recover their strength.  It meant innocent dead, crushed in the storm surge of stupid fear. Continue reading →

Born-again Birth Defect

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

A botched baptism left her with facial scarring, but god always took care of the faithful.  She believed that, even as her brother ran off and became a heretical terrorist.  When she accidentally commits blasphemy by modifying one of god’s helper machines she finds herself on the run in search of a place where she can simply be left to her own devices…

(reading time: 1 hour, 8 minutes)

Born-again Birth Defect

Humans walked a dark Earth for thousands of years.  They were ravaged by disease, the teeth of great shadow beasts, and the cogs of their own societal machinery.  When their suffering was sufficient it moved Honweh, almighty god, to reveal himself.  He descended to the plane of man and brought with him astonishing gifts to prove his divinity: magnetism to pull the metals of the Earth, coalfire and steam to drive winter’s bite away, trapped lightning to immolate the dark predators and the nightmares, mirrors so man could see his own soul, and plastic to coat the works of man and starve out the diseases that dwelled on Earth’s moist surfaces.

Honweh also brought with him his great justice that organized the races and creeds of humanity.  All were united in worship of him.  Honweh guided this adoration like an artist guiding a paintbrush and built incredible cities of bronze, brass, and lead.  As his concern for the humans grew, Honweh made the decision to move his Ancyclopedrae, his book of immutable records, to Earth along with his other belongings, making Earth his home.

And so he remains, ruling the kingdom of man with kindness, wisdom, and discipline.

-First Summation, Honweh’s Glory Continue reading →

The Neofates

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

In the vast space before life, spirits try to build their own world from dredged up memories of past lives.  They’ve made progress, even able to recall animal forms, but any contact with the wandering ‘blooms’ dooms them to another life on Earth.  Things get even worse when a mad neofate arrives, promising all the carnal joys and sinful satisfaction of the human world…

(reading time: 1 hour, 22 minutes)

The Neofates

The room offered no comfort.  The air blasted cold and constant, spreading out across the blue rubber of the examination bench and sinking to the ground.  Diagrams of the female reproductive system were framed like public service announcements with key phrases underlined.  Every corner that wasn’t sharp was probably waiting to be stuck into someone.  Even the light felt sterilized.

Separated from her clothes, which were folded neatly on the counter, the young woman dried her tears with the edge of the patient gown.  She sat, feet dangling from the edge of the bench and growing numb, opposite her doctor who dreaded what she had to say.

“There’s a twenty-four hour waiting period before we can perform the procedure.”  She saw the girl’s eyes fog up.  Her bare toes, painted with cracking purple polish, rubbed against each other anxiously as if trying to start a fire. Continue reading →