flash fiction

Twitch Stream Story: None are Garbage

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A janitor of dreams works his shift across the dreamscape each morning after sleepers have awakened.

There had been a party there, just four hours ago. The sun was up, back in the world, and it was time for Vecker’s shift. He shuffled out onto the deck of the boat and analyzed the scene. Really, it wasn’t too terrible for a party of that size. Out in the world there was a recession. That had dampened everyone’s excitement some, and it bled into Vecker’s work space like it bled into everything else. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: A Decent First Throw

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A sentient mobile tree creature tries to comprehend things outside the forest.

The object fell at an incredible speed, faster than any bound, flight, or slither the Dryent had ever seen. It fell so fast that it caught fire, but then it slowed itself down enough to quell the flames. Still, the impact was powerful enough to strike the Dryent in the side of its head and rip off one of its main five branches. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Borrowed Horns

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: An advance in technology limits the evolutionary potential of the human species.

Each of the eight was the first of their generation to see anything other than their domes. The domes weren’t bad homes, just limiting. For the humans, only 1400 could live inside comfortably. Luckily, the women had somehow gotten into the habit of only having twins and only having them when they were needed. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Art’s getting Away!

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A slice of life in a Minecraft-like world.

She had a scrape on each knee. Why were boys so cruel? She poked at the scratches and hissed through the pain. She could see little red crystals in them, not the result of her drying blood. She had been pushed into the hole she’d spent all morning digging. It was a perfect square, wide as a hot tub, and just deep enough to scrape you if you fell in.

She lived in in a small town, just off the outer angles of the city Blida. The town was called Rangshed and it was known for its pliable agreeable ground. It certainly didn’t feel that way to Lilly while she dug into it on the raised hill of her backyard. She’d been told that there was a time when the ground used to be made of much smaller pieces. Her parents told her, with a straight face no less, that the ground used to be like powder, and one scoop of a shovel could move thousands of pieces of it. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Classified Beasts

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A dragon steals the latest fighter craft from the human battleship.

Artillery shells exploded all around her as she tried to keep on her path through the otherwise clear skies. Pieces of shrapnel, aluminum hairs, landed in the gooey corners of her eyes and stung them. She roared, flashing her knife-like teeth, and tried to dig them out with the side of her hand. The weapons didn’t stop. They weren’t like the weapons of old; there was always somebody manning those, somebody who might grow a soul and stop attacking. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Kebab Appointment

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A child adopted by a drug dealer, and the drug dealer actually uses a kebab shop as a front company for selling drugs.

Some complained that the shop smelled terrible. Others said it was wonderful to wake up to. Both groups stopped vocalizing their opinions about one week after the kebab shop moved in. That was the way of its smells, its private recipes. They quickly became part of the air, a warmth in it rather than a scent, and nobody who lived there even remembered it had ever been a point of argument. Their neighborhood smelled of it, and only visitors cared. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Sun Extraction

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A dragon is sent to another plane of existence because he’s destined for greatness.

Fleeing the den without permission could earn banishment. It could earn death if you were from a line expected to be the most dignified. The night sky was full of stars when he fled, on clawed foot rather than wing. The shrubs were thicker than he’d anticipated, and the thorns dug into his wrists and ankles. He shed hot blood, but his fear and sadness kept it from igniting any of the driest plants. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Rosetinted.exe

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: your eye has been twitching all morning, suddenly the vision goes black and a message displays “error, maintenance required.”

She, we’ll call her Rose because it’s the simplest name to use, awoke in a tangle of blankets sucking her thumb. The habit had reared its head, adorable or ugly depending on who you ask, about eight months ago. She slept alone, so she didn’t see the harm. On that morning her thumb tasted like pancakes and dark amber syrup with smashed blackberries. Continue reading →

Chat-your-own-Adventure #7: The Concord Portal

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This story was written live on stream with the audience bidding tokens (earned while watching) to determine the path of the story.  The underlined phrases in the choice of three were the winning pathways.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d ever like to participate in our interactive fiction.

Scientifically Enhanced Fruit         Poetic Device Fruit           Enchanted Fruit

The Concord grape before them was certainly the largest to ever exist. Its skin was thick enough to require a fillet knife. Its seeds were large enough to serve as baseballs. Five bottles of wine could be produced from the juice of a solitary example from the vine. The vine itself was full, more than thirty grapes growing over a titanium trellis, because the other materials they’d used had ended up buckling under the weight. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Jintybix gets Take-out

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A sheep is tired of grazing around with his fellow sheep, and wants to become a rocket scientist and go to space.

The new grass was the old grass, and it was far worse than Rummy the sheep remembered. Back aboard the Poker station he’d been able to eat a hundred different things. The astronauts let him munch on grass from every one of their experiments and every one of the cultivars they had. Some of it was crummy, but much of it was transcendent. Continue reading →