novelettes
Heirs of Cain: Venus in League
Severin Molochi is in love with a goddess. She’s not the kind found in a church, or that you can take with you to church for that matter. She’s of the old, muddy, animal line of Cain: those who gained power in the world’s first murder. Just as Severin and his goddess Wanda are settling in their new home, setting up her future dominion, her jealous siblings come calling, but they’re not after her. They want every gods’ most valuable asset, the mortal chosen as the conduit between them and the people, who in this case happens to share her bed.
Heirs of Cain, a gothic horror fantasy erotic thriller novelette series, continues here.
(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 16 minutes)
Heirs of Cain
Venus in League
Including her name serves no purpose, for she was never going to be a citizen of our village. Such was her stated intent, with so much simulated earnestness that I could not smell the trick, nor could my goddess, lover, and wife Wanda Blasphemer Pelts, until she encountered the applicant up close that is.
Her waiting period was nearly over, which all potential residents of Quarantown had to endure to even step foot over our borders and barriers, both obvious and arcane. The plague called Throng’s Delirium, the impetus for the founding of Quarantown in the first place, before it was commandeered, still in secret, by my Wanda, and before I was wooed as her chief disciple and chiefest confidante, still ravaged the continent. Continue reading
Heirs of Cain: Venus in Labor
Severin Molochi is in love with a goddess. She’s not the kind found in a church, or that you can take with you to church for that matter. She’s of the old, muddy, animal line of Cain: those who gained power in the world’s first murder. Just as Severin and his goddess Wanda are settling in their new home, setting up her future dominion, her jealous siblings come calling, but they’re not after her. They want every gods’ most valuable asset, the mortal chosen as the conduit between them and the people, who in this case happens to share her bed.
Heirs of Cain, a gothic horror fantasy erotic thriller novelette series, continues here.
(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 30 minutes)
Heirs of Cain
Venus in Labor
Accepting their compliments proved difficult, and I had no way of explaining myself either. You see, I, Severin Pelts, still had not informed anyone in Quarantown that my wife, Wanda Blasphemer Pelts, was secretly a bloodthirsty goddess from a smudged and misinterpreted age long before any notions of a Christ child or contemplative Buddha.
One day they would all know, the shock bending them into kneeling prayer, where they would no doubt stay for the remainder of their lives. They’d be fools not to. Already they knew the magnetic draw of her company, knowing it just then at the dinner party I’d arranged, the guest list made up of several early pilgrims to Quarantown who seemed like good candidates for lesser disciples than myself when the time came: Miss Giselle Ulterrine the duck farmer, Giggles Terroir our town sommelier, Doppler Burstyn the mining magnate, and the freshest of them, Godwin Hammerstein, a playwright looking to be heard of. Continue reading
Cardiac Zack’s Healthy Human Shack (an animatronic horror tale)
Holden Geats makes his scratch snapping pictures of abandoned places, and he’s heard of a new one: a kid-centric educational play place about the human body. A quick bribe and he’s in, only the singing and dancing animatronics populating the place didn’t exactly get the ‘abandoned’ memo…
(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 27 minutes)
Cardiac Zack’s Healthy Human Shack
by
Blaine Arcade
Sometimes it was difficult to get all the animals out of the way. Bugs were the worst of course, too small to shoo and too fast in flight to keep their trails out of the shafts of light coming through any fissures in the ceiling. They weren’t the only ones though: birds, rats, cats, and occasionally frogs tried to ruin it too.
An indoor miniature golf course where the artificial turf now had mountain ranges of artfully-fallen ceiling plaster. A former public park where vines with sunhat leaves had eaten a listing seesaw. The outdoor section of a dilapidated lawn goods store, a flock of plastic herons standing vigilant even though their feathers and eyes had peeled white.
Every shot was devoid of live animals, but there was a big one just behind the lens, and his name was Holden Geats. Snapping pictures was his livelihood, and what renown he had came from his very narrow purview, as he only sold pictures of a world abandoned, of a speculative future Earth where mankind had vanished months or years prior achieved by finding the quiet little places that found themselves for a time unprofitable, suitable for investment only to Mother Nature herself. Continue reading
Blaine’s Novelette Blurbs
If you don’t know me, I’m Blaine Arcade, a speculative fiction writing hobbyist, and I write lots of out-there science fiction, fantasy, science fantasy, and some horror. All of my stories are available here and free to read, so please check them out if you’re interested. Happy reading!
Austentatious Punk: Attorney-at-Genre
Welcome to Helens, where books (looking an awful lot like people) show up to have their genres assigned by the publishing courthouse. The gorgeous and vivacious Valentine Lots appears, claiming to be a contemporary romance, but the sour soggy publishers say she has to be labeled as erotica.
Enter her representative Austentatious Punk: passionate, funky, and wearing as thin as her home. Valentine’s public defender will stop at nothing to see her get the genre label she deserves, but there might be time for a few breaks to get to know each other, bake a decent dessert, and talk love lives in this metafictional courtroom procedural slice-of-life novelette!
Cardiac Zack’s Healthy Human Shack
Holden Geats makes his scratch snapping pictures of abandoned places, and he’s heard of a new one: a kid-centric educational play place about the human body. A quick bribe and he’s in, only the singing and dancing animatronics populating the place didn’t exactly get the ‘abandoned’ memo…
Many know the tale of Frankenstein, but few remember its alternate title ‘The Modern Prometheus’. Long before its penning someone else was called the ‘Prometheus of modern times’, and it was none other than the American founding father Benjamin Franklin. This tale supposes that he was the one to engage in the doctor’s dread experiments, and success came through his most famous effort with the key and the kite… Continue reading
Brawny Blue Blerkafeld
The beast Blerkafeld is one of the mightiest dragons, and even more conceited. After pilfering magics of time and space he has built his own little pocket world, pulling people from all over the Middle Ages to be his loyal worshipers. The only problem is, one of these groups is secretly a Renaissance fair…
(reading time: 1 hour, 36 minutes)
Brawny Blue Blerkafeld
by
Blaine Arcade
The beast of Kidnapt Valley
Four waterfalls marked the center of the cavern’s many tunnels and chambers. The place was most curious, as the passageways looked naturally formed, the walls porous and uneven, but its layout was certainly the work of intelligence. Each fall was a curtain separating four identical tunnels from each other.
By unknown force, one fall’s flow ceased just as a cluster of four people reached it, letting them view the rising column of the central shaft. They dared not step over the wet line in the dirt; their invitation had warned them not to do so.
Led they were by Peter Iconius, lord of the red heath, equally red of hair and beard. He was a bear of a man, he insisted upon it in fact, wearing a bear tooth necklace whenever his bear tooth crown seemed too formal for the occasion. He’d brought with him the greatest warriors of the village he ruled, masters of sword, bow, and hammer. Continue reading
The Field Guide to Fantasy Birding (for enthusiasts only)
In the world of bird watching competition can be intense, sometimes even deadly, sometimes even magical. There are birds you can’t see unless you devote your life to seeing them, and a few are in this short story with an aesthetic best described as ‘birdwatchingpunk’.
(reading time: 43 minutes)
The Field Guide to Fantasy Birding
(for enthusiasts only)
by
Blaine Arcade
NAME: boreal chickadee (Poecile hudsonicus) 
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION: a four to six inch bird which may weigh as much as an ounce. Gray wings and a brown streak across the head are the most common features, but the easiest way to identify it is by its white face with gray patches at the sides. It also has short wings and a short dark bill.
DIET: feeds mostly on seeds and insects by probing in bark and across the forest floor. It favors wood beetle larvae most highly.
RANGE: Maine, Vermont, Alaska, Canada, and New York. Migration happens quickly, with hundreds of miles traveled in just a few days.
BEHAVIOR: not picky when it comes to choosing a mate, though they will often mate for life. Boreal chickadees rarely build their own nests, instead choosing to occupy the abandoned efforts of other birds like the woodpecker. Only one egg is laid, its size surprising given the diminutive creatures that produced it.
…
To nearly every person who looked at the amateurishly-produced paper it was just a page out of a field guide, a work in progress at best, something to keep an old lonely man busy. Even his family members would not have recognized it for what it was, because they, even the widower’s children, didn’t recognize him for what he was. Continue reading
Eyelids of an Aristocrat
Everett finds himself trapped underground, prisoner of a most peculiar family, missing their sanity as well as a few other pieces…
(reading time: 54 minutes)
Eyelids of an Aristocrat
by
Blaine Arcade
Overboard
This account exists, in various lengths, a hundred times over, and the world over at that too. I suspect this will be the longest version of it, and the most difficult to stuff in a bottle or box, but I’m going to bury it the deepest as well. It brings me joy to imagine the sense of reward of reading it to be directly proportional to the effort put in to acquire it. Continue reading
Mary Annette’s Big and Beautiful Dog and Pony Show
(reading time: 51 minutes)
Somewhere in the enchanting space between dinner theater and the wild west, performer Madrigal Mora finally gets his shot to use that ol’ dirt-kicking magic, but the owner has seen fit to cast him as the villain…
Mary Annette’s
BIG
and
BEAUTIFUL
Dog and Pony Show
by
Blaine Arcade
Voice 1: Alright Miss, I think we’re ready for a trial run. Can I take you through it one more time?
Voice 2: Sure thing Sugar. Continue reading
Feisty Faustus Ferret in “Machine Works”
Inky animated stars make the world smile with their films and theme parks, and none are better known than Feisty Faustus Ferret. Everything is perfect for our plucky little weasel with the train whistle voice, until someone insists he needs a costar, and the ground under his hallowed studios and parks starts to rumble…
(reading time: 1 hour, 39 minutes)
It is notoriously difficult to hear, the voice of creation. The mind naturally listens for it at all the wrong times. It expects to hear god singing when a flower blooms, or when a child is born, or when lovers embrace. The mind looks out when it must look in. The voice of creation comes from within man. It is when her or his creations are born that it can be heard. Continue reading
Blaine Arcade 