J. Arthur Collins
Bio
Aspiring author and envisioning a life lived as a games designer and a lead writer.
New to Vocal and new to writing publicly. I am ever excited to begin both and I hope you enjoy my journeys.
Stories (14/0)
Five Winters
The toddler in tattered clothing, soaked and scared, is running through the thicket with only the adolescent thought of protection. He holds his small bunny away to get her as far as possible from the comparatively monstrous boars charging behind. Only the dexterity and weight difference keep the toddler ahead as they’re forced to propel their thick hides and gnarled tusks over fallen trunks.
By J. Arthur Collins2 years ago in Fiction
Nonzero's Wish Station
“Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say, but I don’t know, there’s something about this beastie’s head that makes me think he could break apart that saying in a belch, let alone a scream,” Hugh says, chuckling to himself. His laugh caused the hard, plastic hazmat suit face screen to fog up dramatically. He lets go of his disgusting mop that was pushing the now detached head, to fall perfectly behind his fellow janitor, scientist and partner, Isabel. He expertly uses the amount of time it takes for the mop to fall over to heave the green scaled and decomposing head up and aloft, just in time for Isabel to be spooked and turn around in a huff to come face to face with it.
By J. Arthur Collins2 years ago in Fiction
Stomach Stories
Hellfire and crimson-covered cobblestones upon which many demons walk and crawl. They move and peruse in utter, relentless anguish. They traverse, directionless, shackled in their metaphysical bonds. Dragging their deformed, hooked and bloodied claws along the stones. These beings are malformed and eerily red; with clipped black wings and deteriorating appendages. Their existence is confusing and their purpose is futile, they simply meander upon cobblestone roads soaked with decomposition. The roads stretched like vicious veins between blackened buildings. The air is thick and sticky and rich with acid. It smells of curdled milk and millennia of failed experiments. The atmosphere in this sad city, on this, the wretched eighth layer of Hell, is slowly and endlessly decomposing its inhabitants. No building, cobblestone, streetlamp, blackened wing or demon is safe from the acrid air. Any movement, every shift of the environment sends another wet building into a crumbling, crumpled stew of biomass. Squishing and sloshing as it congeals and traps nearby travelling demons. Burning and melting what remains of their flesh. The pain often not significant enough for them to open their accursed maws, for the taste of this air is yet hotter than the building sludge and tenfold as rancid. Yet, the weaker and more destitute among them find no choice but to let their forked tongues fly. Most not for long, as their bodies are quickly burned from the inside out once exposed. Their very last moments are spent in incomprehensibly dire pain and torture. The second their terrifying jaws open, they are simultaneously boiled and screaming in disgusting agony. They look to the sky and with what few moments of consciousness remain, they cannot help but ask and wonder if they will ever get to see what lies beyond the hazy, crimson sky. What, if anything, could possibly be worse or, painfully, better than this confusing existence? Their questions and aspirations may never reach beyond the thick, red sky. But their yells do. They ascend, forming much gentler and quieter versions of a yell incarnate. In the ironic shape, consistency and physical characteristics of an altogether unassuming and innocent bubble. A bubble in multitudes of thousands, quickly surfacing to a land entirely and permanently unseen by the demons below.
By J. Arthur Collins2 years ago in Fiction
Do My Ideas Flutter or Fly?
Do my ideas flutter or do they fly? Do they follow me into the washroom or do they wait for me at the door? Are some slower than others at floating through the wind and try helping their friends along the way? Are they friends? Do they ever fancy one another or grow romantic? I have questions for and about my ideas, but to whom do I ask them? Surely if I stand and attempt to formulate a question for them in the shower, there'll just be more outside waiting for me than I walked in with? There's no ticket or queue to query for my ideas to stop me from making more. Surely my ideas follow me around. They must. But I desire to be confident in knowing whether they fly or flutter. Or do only some fly while others do indeed flutter? They all must be omniscient, too, they just choose not to tell me so. I do believe that. But how would I know for sure? We don't communicate, my ideas and I. I only cut and sever and sculpt and mould. Alter and adapt. Is that fair? Is that fair for my ideas? I wish for them to have autonomy, I do so, truly. I wish for them to choose to follow me where they wish. I desire for my ideas to decide whether they fly or flutter upon wings of sky or glitter. Think of what the world would be, what magnanimous, manicured, magnificence the world would materialize of if only I could communicate with my ideas. If, and only if I could just surmise whether they fly or flutter. If they choose to wait for me outside doors or do indeed follow me through. If my sweet ideas are fluffy or flat. Tell me, my children, are you flat? I grow tired of asking these questions as blatant rhetoric; I ask you directly now, are you flat? I refuse the prospect that you, my fleeting mental mannerisms, are flat. I refute it rigorously, I rebuke it righteously that you, my darlings, would give me an accurate reflection upon your surface. I wish I could ask you that if ever I were granted the chance to witness you all as you flutter or fly that you distort my face in your minimal reflection. Grant me zero retention, please. But oh, I wonder, does this impose on your autonomy? I simply wish for you to have depth, is all, as I believe you all do. I believe that, wholeheartedly, that you would incur a wondrous world of make-believe and nigh-endless possibilities upon someone if they were to do so little as to dip a pinky into your substance. But how, I beg, would I or someone else reach you? Tell me, please, relent your secrets but do not release your autonomy to grant me my answers. I harbour so many questions for you and your kind. Are you colourful and sprightly, or dim and spiteful or do you get to choose depending on your current substance? When I think thoughts and ideas of plentiful journeys and experiences to take my creations on, do you take on their respective colours and act in their appropriate ways? But if I were to think back upon the turbulent and destructive ideas I had years past, were you spiteful and dim? Did you wield mystical, incorporeal weapons and would wage war upon the sweeter of my ideas? I hope not, but sometimes it would feel like that. Oh, is that how we speak to one another, I wonder? I cannot picture powdered wigs and high, wooden chairs that designate status and import. Not nearly as vivid as I can picture my ideas fighting one another for the spot of prevalence in my metaphysical periphery. I do feel the effects of that war. Each impact affecting my psyche; temporarily snuffing the luminosity of the effortlessly deep and entrenched ideas to make way for the dim and spiteful. Now that I think about it, I believe I know how those ideas wander their world. I believe those neither flutter nor fly. Those ideas bounce along the tops of the colourful and sprightly, clipping their wings of glitter or sky, bringing them ever closer to an aura of utter forgetfulness. But how do they enter through the washroom door? I have certainly felt the effects of their war, no matter which room is beyond which door. Do they bounce atop your precious wings and use the clippings to squeeze through the gaps? I suppose I must also ask the question, that do I contribute to their dimness and spitefulness by not addressing them directly? So far I have only thought of them as they, and have been addressing you, my children of colour and of a sprightly disposition. Maybe I am an aspect in their quality and indirect quantity. Would that then make them-- I'm sorry, you, consider me an inadvertent asset in the process of snuffing the sprightly and colourful? If this is how we loosely communicate, my ideas, my children, that may or may not be fluttering and flying upon wings of glitter and sky. If we communicate by how I address your friends or maybe romantic partners and which ideas I add or detract, then I apologize, my sweets. You are all truly a part of me, and perhaps I have gone far too long ignoring, you, my dim and spiteful when all you were attempting to do was vie for my affection and attention when all I was attempting to do was the same, while ignoring you in the process. I have been trying to ignore you, rebuke you, and in fact, repent for some and remove others. When from the start I should have also wished to communicate and ask you the same questions I ask the sprightly and colourful. I believe you are just as important as the ones you hop on. So I ask you, now: my children, do you also follow me into the washroom or do you wait for me outside and watch as I create and designate more of you? Are you also slower or quicker than others as you float along with the gentle winds? Do you also help your friends when they fall behind? Are you friends? Do you ever grow romantic with one another? Are you flat, please do not tell me you have been flat all these years? I believe in my heart that even in my ignorance and denial you would also incur such wondrous worlds of make-believe and nigh-endless possibilities if someone were to ever simply dip a pinky into one of you. I must also then ask you, my dear ideas, what colours do you choose to exhume and exist as? Do you now bumble along quite as sprightly and colourfully as the rest of your companions, or do you now, perhaps, my ideas: do you flutter or fly?
By J. Arthur Collins2 years ago in Confessions
The Uloralie Plains
"There weren’t always dragons in the valley," Eothyn says gently, closing his eyes in thought. "My father – our father, told me so often and so fondly about his travels along what used to be called the Uloralie Plains." He points out through the trees and brush, giving way to a sheer drop off the mountainside the four friends are perched upon. They overlook onto pale green rolling hills and in the far, misty distance, remains a blackened site of ill repute. A line, in essence, a border, stretching easily from one side of the plains to the other and much further beyond.
By J. Arthur Collins2 years ago in Fiction
My Cat Is The Best Listener
My cat is the best listener. An incredible little guy, in fact, the sweetest boy. That's what I call him the most. Wilco was a pretty great choice from my sister, but nothing quite stuck in my heart like the sweetest boy. Sometimes I elongate that final syllable and make it sound like "boi," only because he is just that cute. But a gentlemen, mind you. If he only had the strength and the opposable thumbs, you bet he would have pulled out the chair for you and offered to don your coat.
By J. Arthur Collins2 years ago in Petlife
A Tale Of Different Wings
The unmistakable scent of freshly cut lumber fills the space. A space about twice the size of his home's height and quadruple the length. The smell of cut wood only pushed back for prominence by the tangy odour of the excessive gas lamps hanging over workbenches and shelving units lining the walls. A great deal of warmth from the lamps swells the interior bare wood panelling, already bursting from the humidity of residing so close to the Atlantic Ocean.
By J. Arthur Collins2 years ago in Fiction
Tileryan
"You want to know where I'm from?" Asks Tortilla, the dull-green and ever-cracking with age, Tortle to his new friend Eothyn Wylderrym. "I hail from a town as you would refer, which we consider a village, called Tileryan, much like I imagine your elf-kin is accustomed to. Deep in a forest, mayhaps a little closer to a marsh than you would prefer? A swamp... I think? A grotto... perchance? I'm not quite sure, I know much of many locations, yet I have tasted the waters of none."
By J. Arthur Collins2 years ago in Fiction
Standing In The Forest Is A Soul
Standing in the forest is a soul. A soul of no extraordinary import, simply a soul existing. Breathing, moving, and rustling in his clothes as he's done decades-long. He is searching, spreading his gaze for any and everything on this path. Be it birds, other passersby, squirrels, and rodents. All are welcome to cross between or over this soul's narrow feet. He takes strides in synchronicity with the gusts, carrying him forward and throwing his hair in every direction. He is not a soul known for rushing, taking shallow strides in both life and his birdwatching. His breathing. His routines. He has lived too many years now to fall folly to the spontaneous and the wild. His heart cannot entirely take it anymore. He was once a very successful businessman, accounting for his town's taxes. He would wake every day and don a sharp suit, much like he continues to wear even now. Except now retired, he chooses a perhaps more bold color palette, striped black and white, only at the beginning of the first few sun-ups. The rest of which is a relaxed beige - far more familiar upon his face, it appears. This particular morning his journey is a little longer, reaching a distance unfamiliar. His distance is half of this on most morns, as he has a few rescued kittens to provide shelter. However, his kittens have meowed louder and louder with their new growing lungs and summarily been adopted by a few willing adults. With no pressing matters to attend, he begins to carve a few new paths through older and dying trunks, giving way to a marshier land but still ever burdened with trees, speaking to the ground with groans and creaks of aged wood, conveying discontent with this quicker wind. This soul is so lost in the changing landscape, the different flavors of the air, and how those spindly feet feel so misplaced in the spongy, moistened soil. The skies have darkened, the sun dipped so below the canopy, casting rays upwards illuminating angry clouds. A gust picks up, wetting his now grey-looking hair first until it drips down onto his skin, letting a second gust air-dry it off. A third, a mighty one, nearly pushes him off balance, releasing long-lodged underbrush up and into the air giving it another different flavor. Despite the airborne flak, his eyes open as ever, continuing to search and spread his gaze. A fourth, buffeting and violent, toppling a distant tree, landing with a thud that can be described only with sadness and pain. As if the forest lost a limb in a battle against a thousand unseeable cuts. His strides continue but backward. He begins looking for others to help, to aid in escaping a pained soul. A fifth gust now, drifting the angry clouds directly overhead, adding more excessive groundwater to this already hydrated land.
By J. Arthur Collins3 years ago in Fiction
