short stories

Adult Frog (horror short story)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

(estimated reading time: 20 minutes)

Adult Frog

by

Blaine Arcade

A pool in the back is a suburban home’s most vestigial body part. If any sort of major stressor comes along, like the cancer double whammy that got Mom and Dad, one of the ways the house can fortify itself is by shutting down all resources going to the pool. Chlorine? Non-vital expense. Heating? Forget about it. Let the water pick its own temperature; it hardly needs a supervisor to follow the physics rulebook.

Lexi, the Ukrainian pool boy who stopped in once a month to scrub it and do the surrounding grass? Losing him hurt a little, he was hot, but it was just a sting, no actual damage to the property and thus the property owner, me, though I can’t speak to the current status of the paperwork.

Mom and Dad left it to me, the house, the pool, their car, and they even tried to have the medical debt ‘shove off’ from the rest of the estate on a sort of rhetorical raft of scavenged legalese. Anyway, their lawyer told me it didn’t work and they couldn’t leave me any of those savings, just the house, the car, and the pool. Continue reading →

I Still Love the Truck

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

Chucky Brook can’t stop staring at the newly announced cybertr- I mean Gigaterra ultra-modern Atlas smart truck.  He has to have it.  It has to have him.  They must be together.  What follows is a horror comedy short story of one CEO’s dream and everyone else’s struggle to deal with it.

(estimated reading time: 15 minutes)

I Still Love the Truck

by

Blaine Arcade

“It doesn’t look like anything else. It’s not thin-skinned- all stainless steel. You’re welcome. The windows too, let’s show the glass demo. Now take that ball, don’t hold back, really wind up and nail it… Oh my f$$$ing god. That was too hard; nobody told you to throw it that hard. We threw the world at this thing and it didn’t break. For some reason it broke now. We’ll fix it in post.”

-Clive Murger, CEO of Gigaterra

-excerpt of Gigaterra ultra-modern smart truck ‘Atlas’ unveiling event

Chucky Brook’s memory echoed when he accidentally repeated a phrase he’d used hundreds of times throughout middle school: I’m not gay. This time no one was challenging his masculinity via the avenue of the gaping hole where a girlfriend could’ve stood. No, this time he was offering it up unprompted as an addendum to his comment on his first look at the Atlas truck he was currently sweating up the courage to buy.

“Oh man, look at those arms. They look super strong.” Addendum: something something not gay something.

“As if anybody could blame you,” laughed the dealer, pairing it with a smack on Brook’s back. “Those are the patented Atlas arms, an unstoppable vice that can secure any payload in the bed. Cords are a thing of the past. Even at their widest they only block a couple thirds of the side-views.” Continue reading →

Last Meal Ticket

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

In a dystopian near future, a chef who prepares only the final meals of the condemned takes it one order at a time…

(estimated reading time: 22 minutes)

Last Meal Ticket

by

Blaine Arcade

For once, the Republicans decided to pay for something. Stranger still, they were paying for public luxury, welfare class. Rather than a renovation it was more fitting to call it a metamorphosis when the workhorse building that had served a dozen governmental purposes got new paint, burgundy and charcoal, big curtains everywhere like a theater, crowned with three additional floors, and soundproofing that made the interior absorb anxiety.

Big rooms full of people still granted a sense of solitude in the weak lighting, turning others into shadows and props. Elegant, always fading and sinking like dusk in a sand tunnel, the Hall of Corrective Reduction had become an admired fixture of the city almost immediately after its transformative surgery.

Where did Republicans find the money for a public service? After the moral revolution of January 6th, 2025 and the elimination of the Demon-rats all public funds were successfully moved from the deep state and into less leaky deep pockets, safe and secure. Those pockets didn’t open very often; congress under the supreme president insisted it was earmarked for investment, and once those investments paid out the American people would see ten thousand times what they put in. Continue reading →

The Pick-Knows

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

(estimated reading time: 13 minutes)

The Pick-Knows

by

Blaine Arcade

I had a bad morning guys, even though I everytasked as goodly as the other mornings in my collection. First thing out of the matchbox and quilt I cut the iron filings with coffee grounds to really wake up the magnets, angled the solar coins to bounce crystal clear sparkles to the costume glass and gold-painted links, beat the stickers to free the hairs, checked the electric frog battery for tangy white creep, and oiled the swatter so it misses the flies so I don’t miss the joke of the huge-mans missing the flies.

But the morning was still bad. Had to be somebody else’s fault. They made 6 AM sharp, 7:11 sticky, 8 a bad breakfast, 9 lives long, and 10:04 no good buddy. All my stuff looked goldy-oldy at a glance. Then I amble up the right-by and it catches my surprise (that I didn’t even leave out to stale) by doing some pose of the possible that benefits me leastways. Continue reading →

Spilled Milk and Curbside Cookies

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(estimated reading time: 7 minutes)

Spilled Milk and Curbside Cookies

by

Blaine Arcade

Something died in the Klaxton house. The response to it was rather slow, partly because the symptoms of its demise did not present for over two weeks. January thirteenth, around there, was the likeliest date for when the first needle changed color. The evergreen dropped the ever, and then the green, and then some of the needles themselves. Continue reading →

Jesus has the Wheels

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 25 minutes)

Jesus has the Wheels

by

Blaine Arcade

It was rare to see such a nice car in Watershed, and even rarer to see one driving with purpose, never stopping once for the driver to swear at their GPS until it got them out of that mosquito-infested and mosquito-invested bog that called itself a town.

Tom knew cars, on account of a few years working as a mechanic, and he couldn’t recall if he’d ever even worked on such a fine piece of machinery. He expected it to drive on by, as nobody sitting in that sort of thing could have any business with him, but it stopped, for the first time in days, at the foot of his gravel driveway. Continue reading →

Ad Space

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

(reading time: 7 minutes)

Ad Space

by

Blaine Arcade

(Legal Disclosure: This work of fiction has been filtered and modified by the United States Ad Plus Council Algorithm, copyright 2036. In compliance with the Corporate Ignorance Prevention Act, all unbranded products and services have been claimed within the text by competitive interests in your area for your convenience.)

A subsidiary of OntheNose Advertising Solutions® was not ready for bad news that day, big or small, but he got it in DigwellTM spades. It started with his Goldenbrowner® toaster, which was supposed to spit out a crispy image of his favorite actress on every HeatzaPizza® slice, but just kept giving him a burned specter, like a lit Ashlesswonder® cigarette positioned just under her face on an old Popcorn Comet Studios® film strip. Continue reading →

Rather Spartan

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

In this thriller/horror short story the Snake War Museum is just one of many, an opportunity for Claire to confront history.  It’s just her, the collection, and the audio guide… at least until she hears her own name in the headphones…

(reading time: 34 minutes)

Rather Spartan

by

Blaine Arcade

If a museum does its job well, its physical location in the world is inconsequential. The best place for the George Washington museum might be his birthplace, Westmoreland County, Virginia, but the best museum would be the one that had his actual shoes, his actual buttons, his actual tools, his actual quills and inks, wherever they were, even if the collection was accidentally shipped to, say, Ulverstone, Tasmania. Continue reading →

Cracker Warmer

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

Cracker Warmer

by

Blaine Arcade

(estimated reading time: 12 minutes)

At sixty-three it was the oldest thing out there, living or inanimate. The house behind was only forty-two. Everything older was off in the dark woods, grumbling, bundling up for the whipping wind of another late November night. The device was ready for anything, having weathered plenty of Cayuga winters already.

It was little more than a circular ceramic tin with a frayed cord tail, plugged into two more cords to make sure it could stretch from the counter outlet in the kitchen, under the closed front door, and out onto the lawn next to the three folding chairs with their legs buried in the snow. It gave off no light, and the faint smell wafting from it, like biscuits sun-mummified and siloed, was dragged away by the wind. Still, the three men were drawn to it. Continue reading →

School Supplies

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

(estimated reading time: 24 minutes)

School Supplies

By

Blaine Arcade

Breeeeeeek, breek, breek. Sort of like a cicada, but according to the box it was supposed to be a tree frog. I hadn’t liked tree frogs in about six years, but when Mom said she was going to keep my room just as it was after I left she sure meant it. So I was being woken up by a plastic golden alarm clock shaped like a frog. It breeeked in my face and flashed the lights behind its purple eyes.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and winced when my feet hit the floor. Pain. Docs said my leg should be one hundred percent by now. Liars. They wanted me to get hurt again; it’s just more money in their pocket. Miss the family doctor. Think he was a real family doctor… like a cousin removed a handful of times or something. You need your blood mixed with theirs to get them to really care. Continue reading →