The Wind in the Willows

Challenging Cock (part three)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 52 minutes)

Study the Cock

“They call it the Dreamtime, far more south than I’ve ever coasted,” the Wayfarer said, guiding Vesperos through the quietest alleys of a worker’s district. It was just the pair of them, and a little distance from the boisterous toads was something of a relief. Not that the bee didn’t like them, or feared their insectivorous nature, it was just that his cell back in the hive had been such a perfect sort of peace, not silent, alive with the hum of all the other bees and wasps, but free of conflict. It had been the sound of harmony, of vibrating on the same wavelength as the planet. A symptom perhaps, to enjoy such a thing this far into his divine degradation, but no matter. It was closer to Psyche.

“Dreamtime,” he repeated, only to keep the Wayfarer talking. The sanded grain of the rat’s affable voice was almost as good as the hum, and he hardly seemed aware he was a font of incredibly varied knowledge. ‘Coasting’ as he described it had taken him from Constantinople to near the summit of the world, but never far inland. Continue reading →

Challenging Cock (part two)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 1 Comment

(back to part one)

(estimated reading time: 1 hour)

Flash the Cock

Vesperos only missed the flash because he had eyelids, which was curious because the man was a bumblebee. Svelte for a bumblebee, upright for a bumblebee, rather four-legged for a bumblebee, far too intelligent to be a true bumblebee, and also far too eyelidded. Aside from these many anatomical anomalies he could also be identified by the pinkish shimmer in his thick collar-mane of thatched bee fur, also found in his otherwise black eyes and the transparent panels of his delicate wings.

His stinger bore pink fletching that shaped it like a heart, but he tried to draw attention away from it with his dress, including long wide coattails perpetually crimped at the end. Something about him tended to draw people in, and the people of Minimil were no exception, so he kept himself sequestered in the hive neighborhood of Dauber’s Comb, accreted and situated on the barn’s ceiling in the crook of a beam: the only living complex higher than Loftplace and its sprawling sand castles that drowned half the old buildings. Continue reading →

Challenging Cock (part one)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 6 Comments

In the barn-city of Minimil, small creatures from all across the literary canon live as one people, from Lilliputians and Shakespearean fairies to myrmidons, homunculi, and Wonderlanders.  Their lives are tenuous, valuable as they are as pieces in the proxy game of Little Wars, where conscripting countries can use them to spill thimbles of blood rather than buckets.

Worse still, someone has petrified their goddess, Hestia, and it falls to her nephew Vesperos, the god of love reduced to a mere bumblebee, to find out how and why.  He’s joined by a ragtag group of woodland critters who have heard the wind in the willows, and wish to help him rescue the reputation of their good friend Mrs. Toad, who is somehow caught up in the hatching of a cock’s grand scheme.

This is the beginning of The Challenge Obscene, the second novella trilogy of the Challenging universe.  It’s best to start with the first, which can be found here: The Challenging Handful, The Left Challenging Handful, and Challenging Applause.

(estimated reading time: 24 minutes)

(estimated reading time for entire novella: 3 hours, 11 minutes)

The Challenge Obscene

Challenging Cock

by

Blaine Arcade

Tease the Cock

Only one creature found themselves caught out in the rain, but it should have been zero, scheduled and announced thoroughly as the precipitation was, the notice posted all over the city and found in the weather & events section of the Minimil Minutes: the only newspaper circulating in the entire barn.

Just under an advertisement for the concert of Fadfid Paganinny, the world’s smallest violinist, itself just under, and in fact cutting off, a complaint letter to the editor, the announcement was printed thusly:

On Monday the 18th of October 1926, on the hour of seven until one in the morning, there will be rejuvenating rainfall over the neighborhoods of Banker’s Dozen, Hopalong, and Tin Junction, graciously provided by the cloud, water, and wind nymphs of Bonsai Park. The cost of enjoying the rain and its spiritual benefits is nothing, afforded to us once again by our lady and master Hestia of the hearth-throne. Continue reading →

Lizard-Haunted Walls (an erasure poem)

~ Blaine Arcade ~ 2 Comments

What follows is an erasure poem of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, which, if you’re not familiar, means I have erased most of the text but left the remaining words in order to form a new work.  I attempted to have a narrative, structure, and some rhyme, so the resulting story is quite abstract, but I promise there’s one there!

Lizard-Haunted Walls

(an erasure poem of Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows)

by

Blaine Arcade

His Little Home First

Brooms and chairs had eyes of white
penetrating lowly house.
Spirit divine struck cellarage private,
busy working dust sounds. Continue reading →