short stories

Twitch Stream Story: Colorful Apes

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

There was no consensus whether or not that morning’s rainbow was an omen. They were scientists; they didn’t generally believe in such things, but their hand was being forced by the times. The year was 1972 and research was still years behind the drug culture of the sixties.

That’s why the facility existed. It was supposed to help them catch up in various fields, most of them involving the strange psychosis-inducing substances that had leaked into the counterculture of the past decade. While their regulations were strict, their moods had to be loose and flexible, for beyond those bland brick walls, strange things happened nearly every day. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Rustgut the Talented

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Deanna’s soup arrived. Everything looked normal. It was hot. Bits of meat bobbed up and down in the yellow broth. There was a full layer of sunken barley on the bottom, like pale river stones. She couldn’t stop herself from breathing deeply and craving the food. She threw her hands over her mouth and leaned backward, nearly falling off the bar stool.

The other patrons turned and scowled in her direction. They were enjoying their soup very much. Giles’ Bubbling Pot had quickly become the number one eatery in town. Even in the middle of this blazing yet rainy bayou summer, folks came from everywhere for a bowl of the turtle soup. It was one of those recipes good enough to pass through generations, and they were lucky enough to taste its first form before reincarnation. Deanna could show a little respect. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Manual Descent

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

It looked exactly as it did on the page. Tyler’s eyes jumped between the book and the creature before him: lithe, faceless, and with countless ribs visible through its tight pale skin. Should he be surprised that it looked so similar? The creature was a mimic after all. That’s what the bestiary entry said.

Mimic

Class three monster

Arcane nature

Rare status

Possible drops: skin cloak, perfect mask +2, and shattering claws Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Lovely Creatures of Salmontown High

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Sammy walked out with the bell blaring overhead. He was out. He was free. School was done for the summer, and this was high school, so he would be able to ratchet up the sort of trouble he had planned. Adults would no longer get mad at him; they’d threaten charges. Did you need at least one charge to be a man? You certainly needed at least one date.

Why am I hearing Mr. Sorkinson’s voice? He’s narrating my life! God, has my imagination always been this out of control? Sorkinson’s a drama teacher, of course he made everything sound like there was something at stake. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Walk out of a Bar!

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

So, a duck, a fish, and a snail walk into a bar…

They had had a particularly long and difficult week. The duck’s feathers were drab and disorganized. The snail’s slime trail was more phlegm-like than usual thanks to a recent cold. That’s what happens when you get passed around so much between mouths and ears. The fish was extraordinarily thirsty, and the fare at the bar was destined to be unsatisfactory. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: How Long do ya Think he’ll Last?

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

“We ate yesterday!” Monica the mouthy scullery maid argued.

“No we didn’t, and we’re dying. You can’t hear that tummy grumbling?” Arthur said, angling his head to look into the kitchen. Between them sat Ophelia, who, at the moment, listened with tight lips. “Poor O’s nothing but skin and bones.”

“I don’t think she even gets hungry anymore,” a salty Caribbean sailor, sans shirt, said as he walked out of the bathroom and moved into the game room. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Warmest Egg

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

The oviraptor was an egg thief, one of the best of the Mesozoic, but one of their number failed so spectacularly that history did more than record it. It became a story told across super-continents, across ages, and even between the planets of the Milky Way. The oviraptor, were she intelligent enough to speak, would not call her heist a failure.

The egg was special; she knew that the moment she snatched it. It had a shell of two components: half metal and half glass. The glass was full of a reddish-amber liquid, like the blood of ancient trees happily spilled. Within the liquid grew an embryo, unlike one that came out of Mesozoic eggs. The first thing they learned was that it couldn’t be eaten, at all. The strongest beaks and claws had no effect on its material. They dropped rocks on it. Not a scratch. Defeated and hungry, the oviraptors didn’t know what else to do with it. They threw it in with their own eggs and waited, occasionally mesmerized by its pulsing warmth. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Bark Wars

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

The prison had busted open more than one hundred years ago. Now vines crawled in through its windows and weaved between the bars of its small plastic cells. The cells for fish were long shattered, the glittering rainbow pebbles they had swam over were now spread across every aisle. The warden, the manager as the olds would have called her, was long gone. Her species and all its breeds were long gone.

The building was full of bad memories for most of the animals, at least the ones whose ancestors had been held there, in the gulag of the Pet me! Pet me! Pet store, but memories had no effect on the runty pug as it scurried through the colorful pebbles and kept its stubby snout glued to the floor. The dog ran into the darkness of the back, ducking under mops filled with cobwebs and mouse fur. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: We Wield this Hammer, and We Ban!

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

“We cannot do this thing! The gods beyond will strike us down for it! I, Administrator Rotahn, of the Messager peoples, of the arid message boards, vote no. It cannot be forged!” The men and women flanking the administrator roared their agreement. The Messagers were an excitable people, born as they were from the exclamations of startled and confused gods.

Less than a generation ago, a generation by god standards anyway, they had landed in the darkness between computers like meteors and sprung forth with venom and sword drawn. It was a miracle they’d been convinced to send a representative to the gathering that day. All races of the early digital space needed to be there for the forging to work. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Girl in the Bottle

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

His collection for the day included a purple cowrie the size of his pinky nail, the green tip of a crab’s leg (hopefully, wherever it was, it still lived), a forked shark tooth, and a yellow seaweed float that looked exactly like a lemon. Pembo was disappointed. What good was living in the village next to the world’s most bountiful beach if it couldn’t provide him with amazing specimens every single day of the summer?

It was the beach of Illustraya, the beach of the goddess with the fanciest clothes and the loudest giggles. Its color were spectacular, the stuff of legends. Sometimes even the sand wouldn’t settle for being white; huge streaks would dye themselves green, or red, or silver. Weeds from the other side of the world would wash up, murals painted on their Pembo-sized leaves by the striped merfolk. Continue reading →