romance

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 →

Austentatious Punk: Attorney-at-Genre

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

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!

(estimated reading time: 1 hour, 37 minutes)

Austentatious Punk

Attorney-at-Genre

by

Blaine Arcade

The Valentine Case: Public Reading 1

Double doors burst and the works flooded in. None of them had any idea where they were going, hence the guides with their red sashes and gold calligraphy titles. ‘Right this way please’ they say, polite as a first time flight attendant, white gloves beckoning in slow motion: the flight of serene and knowing doves.

Using cues only they have memorized, the guides split the new works based on one glance, into different tributaries of shuffling feet headed for their very own doors. The space was tall but tight; you had room to breath but not to run. Wooden doors were stapled into buzz cut carpets. New works never brought any odors along from the imaginary places that spawned them, so despite the crowds the publishing courthouse always smelled like office printers breathing their last and spine glue.

A pair of dovely gloves fluttered in her face, momentarily nonplussed, then grabbed her and pulled her into another line. Nobody else was so much as touched. She couldn’t catch the plaque on the door before she was pushed through into a dimmer room, quieter too, so much quieter that it left her stunned. Continue reading →

Heirs of Cain: Venus in Peril

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

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, 31 minutes)

Heirs of Cain

Venus in Peril

What had until recently been a long and tall storage shed for mining equipment and explosives was now shrouded in mystery and wonder, cloaked inside and out with black curtains, doors thrown open to entice the townsfolk into its dim stalls, themselves converted to show off peculiar creatures and abominations of an intellectual nature.

“Welcome one and all, to Severin’s Hall of Incredible Beasts! Yes, this way, do keep walking, I want everyone inside and hearing me. There will be plenty of time to meet them all and learn for yourself what they have known for as long as they can remember.

Up first we have the genius rabbit, generously lent to us by her owner. She is called Sugarbowl because she is so very sweet. Please Sugarbowl, demonstrate for us. What is… five plus eleven?” Continue reading →

Heirs of Cain: Venus in League

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

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

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

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 →

Heirs of Cain: Venus in Quarantine

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

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, 27 minutes)

Heirs of Cain

Venus in Quarantine

After the thirtieth entry or so I realized what was so familiar about the process; it was as if these unsuspecting people were being added to a menu, complete with their prices, and the intention was to serve them all to a solitary but reliable customer who would appear out of the dark and damp at the same time each day without the ring of a doorbell, like a fox fed once and then forever entitled.

And her name was Wanda Blasphemer Pelts. My Wanda. My whole world, to have her tell it and me experience it. She did not permit me what used to be the most basic knowledge of position spatial and chronological, which still prevented a precise understanding of both my location and the year, but I knew that she and I had recorded three months of paradigm-gnawing history together, written in an ink of sweat and a sensual but possession-gnarled hand, our bodies intertwined like two pages stuck together, the words of experience on her, still wet, transferred messily to my blank by rapturous spineless contact. Continue reading →

Heirs of Cain: Venus in Transit

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 11 Comments

Severin Molochi is aboard a train… but to where?  And come to think of it, what year is it?  He has lost his place and time in the world.  Could it be the work of the bewitching predatory woman who enters his private car, wrapped in furs, with designs and desire in her eyes?  Heirs of Cain, a gothic horror fantasy erotic thriller novelette series, begins here.

(estimated reading time: 1 hour and 33 minutes)

(estimated reading time for entire series: 8 hours, 38 minutes)

Heirs of Cain

Venus in Transit

by

Blaine Arcade

The number one… followed some time later and after strenuous mental investigation by the number eight. What was the one? One of the seven? One of the six? One of the two? All of these number were suddenly in my head, throbbing as if of great importance, but they were a distraction.

What had I been searching for? It was difficult to recall as I had my forehead pressed against the cold glass of a locomotive window, eyes chilled as if dangling just outside by threads. What I saw was snow-cloaked firs by the thousands, with a stormy winter tailor still in the process of garbing them. Continue reading →

Snakewaist: The Demon of Gougecoin (Part Two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 1 hour, 32 minutes)

The Knight and the Thief

After leaving Twarly behind their journey took several days. Snakewaist could not travel along interstates because of the danger of being seen, so they opted instead for the most forested route and a few old fairy tunnels that were magical enough to move out of the way of any cables and pipes bumblers tried to install.

There were several family trees on the way, but neither of them particularly felt like making diplomatic stops yet. If they succeeded in stopping the electric demon they would have something to show for their travels, and would be much less embarrassed to ask for lodging. Continue reading →

Snakewaist: The Demon of Gougecoin (Part One)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 3 Comments

Join the modern fairies Chaxium and Ladyspiller as they use their transforming magic mecha-snake to intervene in the madness of the human world, this time doing battle with digital dragons and a thief stealing electricity to power his crypto-hoard.

This is the second in a series of novellas, so if you’re interested I’d recommend starting with the first.

(reading time: 1 hour, 9 minutes) (reading time for entire novella: 2 hours, 41 minutes)

Snakewaist:

The Demon of Gougecoin

by

Blaine Arcade

Onthinice

Kunk kunk. Nobody answered the door, so to the back of the line with Pollywig. The next fairy up guessed that she just hadn’t been forceful enough. KUNK KUNK! He succeeded in bruising his knuckles, but not in opening it, so Taxido had to cede his place. If the other nine failed again he could have another turn at it. Next was Bellirub, and she had bragged after every attempt that she had a way with stubborn magical things. Her knock was practically melodious: katunk kunk katunkituktuk.

“I think I heard something move behind it,” she insisted, but that was met with good-natured booing and hissing. It was time for the owners to give it another shot; they stepped up together.

“Do it as a couple!” somebody shouted from the back. “It’ll be twice as powerful.” The rest of the party agreed and cheered them on until their hands locked together and the blades of their transparent wings overlapped. They looked at each other encouragingly, both a little surprised and elated to see the happiness sparkling in the other’s eyes. They’d come a long way in a few short months. Continue reading →

Timeless

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

Dogwood the magician is less of an expert and more of a dumpster diver, but when someone new in town offers a big payday to find a magic relic that can sever emotional bonds, he takes the job.  How hard could it be to help him divorce his enchanting wife…

(reading time: 1 hour, 20 minutes)

Timeless

The saddle topped the newest gross of garbage funneled out of Fernico’s mansion like a flake of chocolate grated onto red velvet cake.  Dogwood reached down and pulled the red chunks of a destroyed carpet off it.  When held up in the day’s dying light, the saddle’s rare markings betrayed its true purpose.  The ordinary brown leather gave way to a pewter rim imprinted with inward facing blue triangles, designed to trap a certain type of magic like bear trap teeth.  A ghost saddle, he thought.  Should fetch at least four gold and six silver. Continue reading →