fiction

Challenging Ass (Part Two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 27 minutes)

Flaunt the Ass

Tropical Lilliputian air pervaded the convention center, for its massive walls weren’t built all the way up. There was a ceiling of hollow glass oblongs to keep out the rain, but it was supported only at corners, leaving a gap for local atmosphere to pour in like waterfalls. The flaw was called intentional, excused as a way of promoting a breeze and dispelling the sweat-fog of war, when in truth the actual cause was a disparity between the construction company’s claims and the Lilliputian labor force’s ability.

An auction had been held for the convention’s location, and Lilliput’s winning bid was achieved by cutting corners in the venue budget. A Lilliputian could be paid in peanut dust, a Blefuscan even less, so hiring thousands upon thousands of them still took far fewer resources than hiring big people. Continue reading →

Challenging Ass (Part One)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 5 Comments

In the barn-city of Minimil, small creatures from all across the literary canon live as one people, from Lilliputians and Shakespearean fairies to myrmidons, homunculi, and Wonderlanders.  Their lives are tenuous, valuable as they are as pieces in the proxy game of Little Wars, where conscripting countries can use them to spill thimbles of blood rather than buckets.

A decade into the Little Wars era, the largest convention ever is about to occur on Lilliput.  Among the arriving ships is the candle boat Wicky Sticket out of Minimil, carrying a secret cargo of agents sent to interfere with the Hidden Body, an ethereal nation of traitors making big moves in the littlest and most deadly game.  And behind it all the ancient slumberers toss and turn.

This is the middle of The Challenge Obscene, the second novella trilogy of the Challenging universe.  It’s best to start with the first, which can be found here: The Challenging Handful, The Left Challenging Handful, and Challenging Applause.  The first part of this trilogy is Challenging Cock.

(estimated reading time: 30 minutes)

The Challenge Obscene

Challenging Ass

by

Blaine Arcade

Bear the Ass

Your fate is determined not by deck underfoot, but waters beneath it.

When a stranger is met at the chessboard, analyze their first move: how they greet you.

Beware the world’s largest candle boat, which is Charon’s ferry for half its passengers.

-Noozy Cornerlore

Frustrated at her own inflexibility, the Lilliputian woman who had just signed her name ripped it out of her custom-made elongated typewriter and crumpled it into a ball, tossing it over her shoulder into a similar pile, a pile casually chewed and ruminated upon by a group of milling donkeys she was supposed to watch over more attentively. The animals were interested because the long strips of paper still smelled like the mild cookies they were stored near: the only stock she had access to at that point. Her new employer, the newspaper called Minimil Minutes, would grant her supplies more in line with her position as a journalist, but only after she’d completed and turned in her first big story to an approving editor. 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 →

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Finale)

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(estimated reading time: 53 minutes)

Where!?

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Wagonher encompassed a pointy all-in belt, wagnered Knowrth the way to tavendor’s keyp, iffin it haddocked otherplatz on staggburred drunk ledggs. Theire might be founded and won ormbinous avoid: hole filled with punch that used to were the bodd of Hamsandcans Glammount. Asquerying locales how two reconvict themtwain was her gaol, a seedcret to be retilled in Pursuit of grown pease. Continue reading →

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Part Four)

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(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 13 minutes)

Eviction Declaration

The coerced accord was signed, and in it a plan of attack. What none of them were prepared for was the degree to which mobilization of their military machine would make it clear that the experiment of Pilgrim’s Anchor was coming to an end. Should they succeed, in erasing the Bickyplots’ claims on Pursuitia and its inhabitants, the remaining Founders would then be free to attempt their Second Declaration, intended to return them not only to the American colonies, but to the exact moment they had left so they could resume their plans for a true revolution in a world they at least thought they understood.

If that happened, nothing needed left behind. So it could all come down, apart, and then alight on the wheels of war if it would be of any help in this singular assault. Everyone began to strip the stores, the walls, the cabinets and cupboards. They entered a kind of mania where they couldn’t stand to see anything with hinges closed. Anchor needed to spit up its contents, disgorge its secrets, and splinter inside out to make sure no rusty nail bent away from Bickering Hall. Continue reading →

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Part Three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 36 minutes)

Squatters’ Bill of Claim

Just as Hart’s message to her had begun to unfold into fresh shoots thanks to the magic of its green ink, so too did the political situation in Pilgrim’s Anchor find itself ripped open by growing pains. In a single encounter much of what had been settled fact for decades was upended. Now waterlogged powers desperately patched leaks. Curious stowaway rats searched for new unintentional passages.

To the Founders Pursuitia never looked smaller. Their first instinct was to retract into the tortoise shell of Independence Hall. Papering over the exterior to a mad degree, the building now looked as if wagons had literally circled it with their canvas. No doubt they were furiously at work, perched over writing desks, forcing themselves to vomit up new corkscrew legal clauses that would extricate them from this perplexing bottleneck bind. Continue reading →

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Part Two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

(estimated reading time: 44 minutes)

Leaflets

Almost every young hand was in the Jefferson Drafting Library, toiling away with writing instruments. Franklin pens were the best choice, if you could ignore the occasional zap, but there were not enough to go around, leaving only old fashioned quills, sometimes from anatimals and sometimes the diaphanous backbone-like stents found in Pursuitian worm mantles.

Even Kidd was there, behind a student’s desk of her own. She would be by far the slowest at producing leaflets, but the Founders apparently thought every five would count, though they might taker her half as many hours. Continue reading →

Declaration: Gibberish Mire (Part One)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

The signing of the United States Declaration of Independence… has gone awry!  As it so happens the declaration was too powerfully worded, and effectively declared independence from the realm of Earth.  The signing founders, and those legally considered their property, and a Native American tribe roped in as well thanks to an old treaty, have been transported to a strange new land where trees write upon their own leaves and owl-eyed worms march about in the shapes of men.

Twenty years on the Founders are desperate to return to the war they never started, and have enlisted their mixed-heritage children as an army to help them fight the Bickyplots: thirteen shambling horrors with colonial inspirations of their own.  Here the written word is magic, and a new declaration might undo everything, but what of the children who have fought and journaled so hard to build their own lives?  Find out in this, the second of the Declaration duology.  (Here’s the first!)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 30 minutes)

(estimated reading time for entire novel: 6 hours)

Declaration

Gibberish Mire

by

Blaine Arcade

From the Bickering Hall Retroactive Deed

In finding this land most hospitable we, the Bickyplots of Bickering Hall, must conclude that such a plainly-stated welcome indicates an intrinsic desire for proper mastery and dominion. So it is that we declare, on the standard of the furthest distance that can be spied by the tallest amongst us, Impestle Hissmidge, allowed the luxury of tippied-toe, all of this land surrounding our port of entry is called Evidentia and is our sole property. Continue reading →