short stories

Chat-your-own-Adventure #28: Mixing Soda and Stock

~ 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.

Death Combat                              Slime Culture                              Expiration Date

The palace wibbled and wobbled as the thousand guests rolled and slithered into the exhibition hall. It used to be the ballroom until the slimedom collectively realized they could not dance, at least not by the standards of the solid beings in the neighboring lands. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #12: Leor the Tenth, Possibly Last

~ 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

LiorX

Sixty-eight people milled about on the beach pretending to enjoy various activities. There was a game of volleyball going; the ball hadn’t touched the ground in more than forty minutes. Neither team had scored yet. They didn’t need to. The game was simply decoration, like the surfers lounging against their posted boards and the children building sand castles so tall and symmetrical that no actual child could resist toppling them. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Balancing Actor

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: a comical tale of a superhero dad who struggles to balance real life with his wife and daughter and his heroics.

Pretty soon I would be going to my daughter’s games. I don’t care what kind of games they are: soccer, baseball, mountain biking, chess… as long as she gives me something to go to. My wife insists she’ll be a gymnast because she’s now quite good at tumbling without bruising her forehead. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #11: Sir Moanle at the Luncheon

~ 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

Sermonal

Most people chose to capture moments like that with paint or, if they could afford it, the newfangled tin plate photography. Sir Moanle was a simpler man who painted with nothing but the sparsely-haired brush of his memory. If the image had any bare patches they were filled in over time, as he observed that sunrise over the river every day for three months. Continue reading →

Minesweeper Fiction: Session 16

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Author’s Note: This was written live on stream, with the tone being determined by the numbers under minesweeper tiles.  The audience could bid tokens earned in stream to reveal random tiles.  A mine hit results in the death of all characters, unless they are temporarily saved by a lump sum of tokens.  If characters make it to the end of the stream, they survive to be seen another day.  Join us at twitch.tv/blainearcade if you wish to participate.

1-peace    2-alert    3-escalation    4-action    5-tragedy    6-world-changing

The minefield has been moved. It now connects the Trap to a new world, a new game. There is no destruction this time, nothing forcing them to flee. Only the brave, curious, and strange will take the journey. Who will step through the fog and face the myriad dangers of the field?

Three enter: Glitterhook the pirate who thinks he’s a unicorn, Cricketty the empty bent mimic chest, and Sailor Midnight the Gothic sailor booted from her ship. Continue reading →

Regular Romp #10: The Controlled Burn of Frykeesh

~ 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

Dwaiquiche

“Turn it up,” the young chef ordered. She stirred the vegetables around in the wok, waiting for the right shade of char marks to appear. She leaned in to scrutinize the zucchini, but there was a sudden flash of heat, forcing her to pull back and wipe the sweat off her face with a hand towel. “Not that much!” Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: No Screen Time

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: he was just a kid.

It honestly was a humanitarian effort. It was supposed to help, at the very least, two humans in particular. Him. And me. I was what passes for a fresh adult these days, just starting my thirties and inheriting my parents’ old house while they finished work on their retirement home. I was single, but I had a good job, plenty of space, and I never was much of a dog person. (Something about them not having much color to their iris always creeped me out. If the eyes are the window to the soul then a dog’s are all fogged up.) Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: The Dusk Runner

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: the story of a clipper-class airship called the Dusk Runner.

The great cities of mankind’s first and only steam empire had risen into the sky with brass spears and aluminum windmills. The airships used to see these towers, like a mineral garden sculpted from a dwarf treasure hoard, but they were no longer visible. The city produced its own clouds in vast numbers; they became a second sea obscuring the upper reaches of the entire empire. Continue reading →

Twitch Stream Story: Fire Fixed the Sky

~ Blaine Arcade ~ Leave a comment

Prompt: a story with dragons and a ‘broken sky’.

All the warriors among all the birds had made their attempts already, and all had failed. Evidence of their failure was everywhere. Taravien lumbered forward, her legs splayed out to the side rather than directly under her, pushing aside the feathers like Autumn leaves. As a dragon she had two ways of walking and two ways of flying. Continue reading →