short story

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 →

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 ~ 1 Comment

Author’s Note: This story is closely based on a nightmare I had, written up the following night and only modified enough to make some amount of sense.

(reading time: 12 minutes)

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

School Supplies

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 24 minutes)

School Supplies

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 →

Singin’ in the Upper Paleolithic

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

(reading time: 24 minutes)

Of the sixteen time machines in operation, only one played a video of someone tap-dancing.  The machine itself wasn’t much to marvel at; in fact, it looked like a space heater from the 1970’s, just with a fancier coat of paint and 6,380 small wires snaking out of its base and entering all kinds of unusual places around the laboratory.  Some went into sockets, some hugged the wall and left the room, and others rose into the air dangerously enough to get tagged with black and orange warning stickers. Continue reading →

Moana’s Mosaic

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

(reading time: 22 minutes)

Over two hundred students were ushered into the atrium of the Pascal Higher Institute of Mathematics, which was composed of a huge, blue, glass dome held in place by a latticework of metal bars. Sunlight shone in through a hole at the top, bypassing a spinning frame in order to cast the shadow of a shifting tesseract on the floor below. Continue reading →