short stories

Twitch Stream Stories Redux #4: The Willow and the Cross

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

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.

The Willow and the Cross

prompt provided by Silentwillow and Chaytoncross

There are only so many places in the modern world where a spirit can live. Add to that the constant arguments between the five high spirits, and you often get hostile neighbors, whose arguments are interpreted by humans as chills in the wind or the raucous cawing of ravens.

One such argument occurred in the backyard of the Fander family in the summer of 1981. The children were off enjoying the pool of the wealthier neighbors and the parents were busy repairing their aged car and shouting at each other when the nuts and bolts didn’t fit quite right. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Stories Redux #3: Bitter is Lighter than Sweet

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

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.

Bitter is Lighter than Sweet

prompt provided by TheBludes

It was such a wonderful thing that it wasn’t raining that evening. The sun was gone, off to bed, but the streetlights did its work tirelessly, and then some. Things had been crazy in Baros City since the new A.I. had taken over. He was excitable, and always turned the lights up too bright; they flared aggressively against the blue spires of the skyline. He was good at managing the denizens’ hangups though, much better than his predecessor.

Since he’d saddled up suicides were down, homicides were down, rape and theft were down. Everything was down. People moved about the streets mutely, staring at the grain of the sidewalk and forgetting the hats on their heads. They didn’t shout. They didn’t push. They didn’t complain. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Stories Redux #2: Cheater Wings

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

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.

Cheater Wings

prompt provided by Simlover48

The altar to the Earth god Gohees was buried deep in the ashen forest, surrounded by trees that had looked an inch from death for six thousand years. Fineesh’s path to it would normally have been fraught with danger, but she was there in her capacity as the Earth-friend.

And not just the Earth-friend, but the peacekeeper for all the other gods as well. She was water-friend, fire-friend, air-friend, and Earth-friend. She could show no favoritism, only respect. Gone was the age where the arguments of the gods sundered continents. Now they used one human from every generation as their friend. Fineesh, a girl of fourteen, was but the latest.

Continue reading →

Cardiac Zack’s Healthy Human Shack (an animatronic horror tale)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 5 Comments

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 Thumbnail

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 →

Jesus has the Wheels

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(reading time: 25 minutes)

Jesus has the Wheels

by

Blaine Arcade

It was rare to see such a nice car in Watershed, and even rarer to see one driving with purpose, never stopping once for the driver to swear at their GPS until it got them out of that mosquito-infested and mosquito-invested bog that called itself a town.

Tom knew cars, on account of a few years working as a mechanic, and he couldn’t recall if he’d ever even worked on such a fine piece of machinery. He expected it to drive on by, as nobody sitting in that sort of thing could have any business with him, but it stopped, for the first time in days, at the foot of his gravel driveway. Continue reading →

Big-Saw-in-Law

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 4 Comments

Glassy eyes, gaping mouths, matted fur…  Sports mascots are supposed to be fun, but if you see them in the wrong light you can feel a jolt of fear.  What if they weren’t just a joke?  What if they were as alive as anything else, with their own instincts and hungers?

(reading time: 1 hour, 7 minutes)

Big-Saw-In-Law

by

Blaine Arcade

The Kleinbury High Spinners were up three games that season so far, so morale had improved in the neighborhood. Perhaps enough that he could return uneventfully, which was what Kevin Woods tried that Saturday afternoon. He was never the biggest football fan, more of a baseball guy as he always told people, but his son Matt was on the team. Continue reading →

Ad Space

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

(reading time: 7 minutes)

Ad Space

by

Blaine Arcade

(Legal Disclosure: This work of fiction has been filtered and modified by the United States Ad Plus Council Algorithm, copyright 2036. In compliance with the Corporate Ignorance Prevention Act, all unbranded products and services have been claimed within the text by competitive interests in your area for your convenience.)

A subsidiary of OntheNose Advertising Solutions® was not ready for bad news that day, big or small, but he got it in DigwellTM spades. It started with his Goldenbrowner® toaster, which was supposed to spit out a crispy image of his favorite actress on every HeatzaPizza® slice, but just kept giving him a burned specter, like a lit Ashlesswonder® cigarette positioned just under her face on an old Popcorn Comet Studios® film strip. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #23: KLS and KWS: Drop Outs

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring

Klskws

(The adolescents and children held in the RVR facility have been there so long that their methods of communication have drifted away from the language practices of the world they were stolen from. At times it can be difficult to catch their meaning, given the preponderance of acronyms in their speech. This record provides helpful notes to clear up the issue.) Continue reading →

Regular Romp #22: Killed and Chronicled by Bloodwriter Lee

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Regular Romp is an interactive fiction activity over on our Twitch stream where I ask a regular a series of questions before turning their answers and a corruption of their username into a short story.  Stop by twitch.tv/blainearcade if you’d like to participate.

starring

Writerlee

After another simple night’s work, Bloodwriter Lee slid across her roof and landed on the balcony, red-covered book in hand. The life and Times of Augustus Jules was its title. The crisp night air burned in her lungs, and she felt so alive that she couldn’t quite go inside yet. She flicked the volume open to the back and read the final paragraph: Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: A Wren Landed on the Doorstep

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: A female assassin turns out to be a queen, hired by the royal family that stole the throne from hers.

“We got another letter from her,” Arch-Adviser Grackle said nervously, nearly wiping the sweat from his forehead with the envelope. He spoke in hushed tones, because anything louder might get his name written down inside one of those black letters with the gold writing. Continue reading →