fiction
Twitch Stream Stories Redux #8: Who has the Green Expectations?
These stories were written live on stream based on prompts provided by the viewers. They have been edited, with this second more in-depth edit occurring much later, but not meaningfully rewritten or expanded so as to preserve the spirit of the exercise. Sadly, the prompts themselves were not recorded until many stories in. Sometimes the prompts were silly challenges, or quirky thoughts, or dark ideas, or utter nonsense. I did my best each time.
If you enjoy this, please check out the other activities from the stream. If you would like something longer and much more thoroughly planned, simply investigate my more traditional work at the top of the page.
Who has the Green Expectations?
Prompt provided by dark_lord3
The man seemed to misplace his name. All of a sudden he couldn’t remember it, although he remembered his situation just fine. He was currently traveling through time, strolling through it really, and observing the effect. The time tunnel was a pleasant light show, his mind having difficulty following it, what with the quantum confusion and all.
He recalled what he was doing before the time tunnel, just ten minutes ago, if minutes still existed. He was very devoted to his idea, having spent years getting everything arranged, those years now looking like nothing more than plastic bags over his shoulder. Time travel had eluded everyone else, but his idea was fresh. Continue reading
Twitch Stream Story: Thieving Tom Puts it Back
Author’s Note: This flash fiction story was written based on a prompt provided by Justintoonz during a livestream. I hereby transfer all story rights to them, with the caveat that it remain posted on this blog. If you would like your own story, stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade during one of my streams and I’ll write it for you live!
Prompt: “A thief finds a mask containing a snarky evil spirit inside.”
Thieving Tom Puts it Back
The book he’d stolen didn’t just contain many magic spells; it also helpfully told him about various artifacts worth stealing. He wasn’t even a thief until he’d found the book and been turned down as a customer. Really, why even shelve the thing if you weren’t going to sell it, Mr. decrepit old hermit in your very brown store that was more dust and earwigs than merchandise?
Ah, he realized in sinking despair, stolen mask in his lap, blood clot of consequences now freewheeling through his morale, because the book wanted to be stolen. It took itself out of storage. Same as this mask that won’t shut up. They all want to be active again. That’s what magic is: eager chaos. Continue reading
Challenging Cock (finale)
(estimated reading time: 55 minutes)
Tame the Cock
The Wicky Sticket heard many bad ideas over the course of those two days, concentrated in the empty ballast tank where the challengers made camp, guarded at most hours by some of the collaborating eggties.
Suggestions swirled about the tiny table quickly cobbled together from scrap wood. The representatives of the Death-or-Glory gang suggested they kill Zamshy by dropping directly onto him knives in hand, hoping that one went deep enough into the neck. There wasn’t much confidence in the idea, as they recalled dragon slaying being a rather rare skill, and Zamshy was at least half dragon. His serpentine flailing could buck them all off before they’d found a good spot to stab. Too many variables, the Wayfarer and Vesperos agreed. Continue reading
Challenging Cock (part three)
(estimated reading time: 52 minutes)
Study the Cock
“They call it the Dreamtime, far more south than I’ve ever coasted,” the Wayfarer said, guiding Vesperos through the quietest alleys of a worker’s district. It was just the pair of them, and a little distance from the boisterous toads was something of a relief. Not that the bee didn’t like them, or feared their insectivorous nature, it was just that his cell back in the hive had been such a perfect sort of peace, not silent, alive with the hum of all the other bees and wasps, but free of conflict. It had been the sound of harmony, of vibrating on the same wavelength as the planet. A symptom perhaps, to enjoy such a thing this far into his divine degradation, but no matter. It was closer to Psyche.
“Dreamtime,” he repeated, only to keep the Wayfarer talking. The sanded grain of the rat’s affable voice was almost as good as the hum, and he hardly seemed aware he was a font of incredibly varied knowledge. ‘Coasting’ as he described it had taken him from Constantinople to near the summit of the world, but never far inland. Continue reading
Challenging Cock (part two)
(estimated reading time: 1 hour)
Flash the Cock
Vesperos only missed the flash because he had eyelids, which was curious because the man was a bumblebee. Svelte for a bumblebee, upright for a bumblebee, rather four-legged for a bumblebee, far too intelligent to be a true bumblebee, and also far too eyelidded. Aside from these many anatomical anomalies he could also be identified by the pinkish shimmer in his thick collar-mane of thatched bee fur, also found in his otherwise black eyes and the transparent panels of his delicate wings.
His stinger bore pink fletching that shaped it like a heart, but he tried to draw attention away from it with his dress, including long wide coattails perpetually crimped at the end. Something about him tended to draw people in, and the people of Minimil were no exception, so he kept himself sequestered in the hive neighborhood of Dauber’s Comb, accreted and situated on the barn’s ceiling in the crook of a beam: the only living complex higher than Loftplace and its sprawling sand castles that drowned half the old buildings. Continue reading
Challenging Cock (part one)
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.
Worse still, someone has petrified their goddess, Hestia, and it falls to her nephew Vesperos, the god of love reduced to a mere bumblebee, to find out how and why. He’s joined by a ragtag group of woodland critters who have heard the wind in the willows, and wish to help him rescue the reputation of their good friend Mrs. Toad, who is somehow caught up in the hatching of a cock’s grand scheme.
This is the beginning 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.
(estimated reading time: 24 minutes)
(estimated reading time for entire novella: 3 hours, 11 minutes)
The Challenge Obscene
Challenging Cock
by
Blaine Arcade
Tease the Cock
Only one creature found themselves caught out in the rain, but it should have been zero, scheduled and announced thoroughly as the precipitation was, the notice posted all over the city and found in the weather & events section of the Minimil Minutes: the only newspaper circulating in the entire barn.
Just under an advertisement for the concert of Fadfid Paganinny, the world’s smallest violinist, itself just under, and in fact cutting off, a complaint letter to the editor, the announcement was printed thusly:
On Monday the 18th of October 1926, on the hour of seven until one in the morning, there will be rejuvenating rainfall over the neighborhoods of Banker’s Dozen, Hopalong, and Tin Junction, graciously provided by the cloud, water, and wind nymphs of Bonsai Park. The cost of enjoying the rain and its spiritual benefits is nothing, afforded to us once again by our lady and master Hestia of the hearth-throne. Continue reading
Giftysit & Rulover
Giftysit & Rulover
Designation: the GIF TZU & WRAPPING PAPER cillimorphs
Group: MAMMALISH
Native Biomes: PLANET URBANIAC
Size: SMALL
Interesting Facts: An ornamental breed that loves the suburbs, Giftysit sometimes appears in piles of presents during the holidays, and there’s no way of knowing if people actually got you one, because they always take the credit anyway. Rulover enjoys rolling around in shredded paper, and sometimes its coat will change to match. Always brush a Rulover; you never know how long a shred of the holidays has been stuck under their topcoat.
Mysterious Americana Catalog: Issue #1
Mysterious Americana Catalog
Issue #1
compiled by
Eunice Gate Latch
They’re out there, scaring good folk. We keep them out of government hands so they don’t get any scarier. Good luck collector; I’m praying for you.
Mysterious American Catalog: ‘Literally Figurative Lightning Rod’
M-A-C (25): ‘Literally Figurative Lightning Rod’
Category: whatsit
Collection Date: October 29th, 1995
Collection Location: (REDACTED), Massachusetts
Collection Report: Reported and logged by its current collector, this MAC is an antique lightning rod with a thick patina. Its midsection bears an oddly shaped bulge that, when viewed from certain angles, resembles a fist deploying the middle finger. It was installed where it currently stands, on the roof of the collector’s compound, where it serves both its intended function and its anomalous one. Continue reading
Blaine Arcade 