fiction

Snakewaist: Species Invader (part two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(back to part one)

Logistics

With the mathematical minds of the gigagoyles on their side, they were spared the most difficult calculations of roster and rendezvous. That isn’t to say things went smoothly and without argument, there was in fact no greater concentration of interpersonal discord in the history of life on Earth than occurred between those tens of gigagoyles in the days immediately preceding departure, it just happened in channels of infinitely high bandwidth and thus took only microseconds for each barb to be thrown and countered.

In the strictest terms, acquiring their army should have been child’s play. Gigagoyles had unfettered access to most ferrier software, as they were always intended to be compatible. Plenty of couchgrousers were without pilots who might disconnect their machines from networks when not in use. Any of Onthinice’s recruits could zap to a machine they detected, insert themselves as a pilot program, and be just as effective as a flesh and glitter-blood pilot. Continue reading →

Snakewaist: Species Invader (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

Chaxium and her formerly human partner Ladyspiller are modern fairies, fighting the good fight against human encroachment, and this time fighting the fairy who goes too far, Chaxium’s ex Clove!  In fey warfare there is only one reliable tool, the living magical machines they can pilot, called ferriers.  Clove’s latest scheme seeks to harness a new breed of them, turn their noble nature to instinctive violence aimed squarely at mankind in this, the fifth Snakewaist novella.  You can find the beginning of the series here.

Snakewaist

Species Invader

by

Blaine Arcade

Underground Networking

Teaching the rules of a board game to a new player is always a taxing process, rewriting their entire world view on a smaller scale, and it becomes infinitely more difficult when new people keep wandering in, staring curiously until they ask to participate, and the unfinished teach must start all over again… and again… and again!?

“So everybody gets two pieces on the board and an understudy in their wings. What, you too? No, sure. We can modify it to accommodate- one, two, three, seven… seventeen players. So, you get two pieces on the board-” Blizzardime the diminutive, the genderless, struggled to explain.

“Is that a-“

“Incredibly fun board game?” they finished. “Yes it is.” Continue reading →

Mysterious Americana Catalog: ‘Barmuda Triangle’

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

M-A-C (26):’Barmuda Triangle’

Category: whatsit

Collection Date: April 13th, 1985

Collection Location: (REDACTED), Georgia

Collection Report: The MAC is not to be confused with the establishment where it was found, also called ‘Barmuda Triangle’: a tropically themed purveyor of alcohol with a stable of billiards tables. For each there is a triangular ball rack with a decal lining the exterior that depicts palm tree silhouettes against an exaggerated orange-to-violet sunset.

Only one is MAC-26, indistinguishable from the rest initially. The catalog’s attention was drawn when several patrons of the bar, all with the same profession of pilot, went missing. There was never any clue in the disappearances, not so much as an empty car where it shouldn’t have been or an article of clothing. Shortly after their visit, six men were simply gone.

Beyond their jobs they all had one thing in common, having played a game on the furthest table from the entrance, next to the jukebox wearing the hula skirt and the coconut bra. Presumably they all handled MAC-26, which was singled out as the culprit from one witness report by (REDACTED): a fellow pilot shooting the breeze and pool with his coworker but who did not go missing, having touched everything at the table but the rack.

The catalog was able to purchase the item from the owner with no fuss as a ‘souvenir’. It is not to be touched by anyone who has ever flown an airplane or helicopter.

Current Collector: Joanna V. Satellito, provisional senior rank

Notes from Collector: “I’m banking on one of those boys reappearing. Need myself a fourth husband.”

Current Status: active

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Pineberry Lights

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

Rumraisin Knacklevern and his best friend Mollywald, a talking flower in a wheeled RC pot, are finally being taken to the farmer’s market where magic and produce are sold in tandem.  There they just might find what they’ve been looking for, Molly’s hypothetical boyfriend, seeing as she’s never encountered one of her own kind before.

Along the way they might cross paths with the strange denizens of the market, like amorous pet rocks, an undead hunger artist, and gourds that are better at eating people than people are gourds in this, a cozy, alternate-1990s, autumnal fantasy novella.

(estimated reading time: 2 hours, 35 minutes)


Pineberry Lights

by

Blaine Arcade

The Kind-of Long Drive

“I spy with my magical eye… something that starts with the letter P.”

“Petals!”

“No.”

“Dang. I thought you were trying to get me because I can’t see mine.”

“The only thing I’m trying to get you is a boyfriend.”

“Parking spots,” interjected the witch from the driver’s seat, having already learned the lesson of not looking over her shoulder when the last time caused both her concentration and one of the windshield wipers to slip. Maybe they’d spot it standing up on the way back, waiting for them like a hitchhiker. At least it was the passenger side one. Continue reading →

‘Planet in Theory’ Cover and Re-edit

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Hey folks, my probability-based card-combat space opera trilogy ‘Planet in Theory’ has just received a light re-edit and to mark the occasion I’ve made one of my signature lousy covers to slap on it.  It takes place in probable space, on planets that were only ever theorized in our world, and begins here with the manifestation of Pluto after its demotion.  Please check it out if you’re interested.

Grab (finale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 55 minutes)

In the fog, in the fervor, in the distress, and in the uncertainty, it became impossible for them to tell how much time was passing. A grabbler can known an hour by the number of breaths, but not these grabblers. A grabbler can know autumn by the lethargy in a beetle’s wings, but not these grabblers. These grabblers were sinking in Rooth Tugt.

Falling, Jeremiad realized dumbly as she took a false step and tumbled. The fog tried to trip her with arcing roots and smooth flat rocks underneath, but she managed to put a foot down. It struck a larger rocks, which slid, so her other foot did the same, creating two little sleds that she could use to reach the bottom of the incline as long as she jumped over a few more roots and caught the slipping stone shoes on the other side. Continue reading →

Grab (part seven)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 17 minutes)

As they lapsed back into silence, thoughts of the Half-Biters and Beerbetters were left behind. The eye of Xeams did not leave their sky, but soon its powers would be neutralized under the humid greenery. If half the stories of the place were to be believed, only grabblers had a good chance of surviving a journey to the jungle’s center, facing just as much risk on the way out. Even if Roddery Graychild were to pursue them into the dense tangle it was unlikely he could get many others to do so, especially after being half-drowned or whole-drowned by the enigmatic hand of Hexaclete.

Instead the grabblers’ sights were set on the jutting ruin ahead, offering the furthest and least-impeded ingress into Rooth Tugt that, according to Beocroak, also aligned with their heading. To investigate it they would first have to scale the intimidating rock ridge upon which it grew like broken teeth, difficult, but not so much as the crumbling wall of the basin. Or so they thought during that last stretch of Welkmadat, all the way to the start of the climb. Continue reading →

Grab (part six)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 14 minutes)

Survival was more of a current question for Graychild, who judged the eye’s fall by the encroaching shadow out the nearest tiny window. He was back on the ground, with Breakwater freed from the table and positioned across the throat of a woman collapsed against the captain’s chest, like a bow across a cello. In his other hand was the eye of Hexaclete, godly power making his wrist quake. It was eager. Impatient, and thus corrupting.

He knew he was stronger, but there was the matter of it dropping from the heavens. That would overpower him. The only reason the cowering crowd around him hadn’t done so was their fearful watching of the same shadow. Fools. Minds of rabbits, not men. So much more time they’d spent in the company of the old fencer, cozying up to him, and yet they hadn’t surmised the mechanics of transferring his power to themselves. Continue reading →

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 →

Grab (part five)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 56 minutes)

HAND

They couldn’t keep him, not on their long trek cutting the coasts of Welkmadat. On a farm he could become a member of the family, a reliable hand, a forager with a nose for food better than any hound’s or pig’s, but on a quest he was a burden, a worrisome pet.

This the nameless man knew, never voicing complaint as long as they tolerated him. She got better treatment despite being a similar sort of animal, the reason being plain. Her curse was not literal. It was not grown into the bones of her face and erupting out of her skin like new volcanic lands. When she opened her mouth, which she did not often do, just like her forebears and her guardian, actual words could come out, whereas the nameless man could only produce squawks, titters, whistles, shrieks, honks, quacks, and peeps. The sound was entirely dependent on which of its many forms the curse took at that moment. No matter what his utterances sounded like complaint, so he tried to not make them in the dignified and silent company he would get to keep all too briefly. Continue reading →