It Begins

Visit my new website at www.morbidtoybox.com to read the continuation to my original #sciencefiction #horror #bassysbasilica

Our booth at last year’s Scare-a-con

ParaVice delayed.

I’ve been a little too busy with work and had next to no time to work on this project are the artwork I had planned to share with each chapter. So I have no choice but to delay this project. Luckily I have no real deadline. I want to make the story as fun as possible, but I’ll need more time than I thought to do that. I’ll post more info as the project develops. My plan is to isolate myself and work on this all winter. Lots of artwork will accompany the final. If I lose you on this, I’m sorry. But art and artists is a capricious thing. I’d rather delay it than to throw it out on display half baked. 

News (April 2019)

Happy April!
I am working on a lengthy follow up to my short story #bassysbasilica 

Season 1 will be presented with a wicked noire themed title that is just the longest title ever. I was inspired by Rob Zombie to make these ridiculously long titles to break up part 1,2, and 3. They all have meaning, and they are all like twisted riddles that I hope will engage the quriosity of my audience before the stories are posted.  Kinda like a puzzle for everyone to try and decipher before show time. The universe I am building is called ParaVice, which is the nickname of my fictional city where these events will come into play. My ultimate goal is to have a chapter ready every Thursday starting in the month of October. I want the segments to be short enough to enjoy by reading from digital tablets and phones, leaving every installment with a cliffhanger that will hopefully inspire my friends and followers to continue coming back to see what happens next. I am really having fun creating this world and these characters. But it is a challenge. This is the first time I am trying out world building, and I'm moving through the project as quickly as I can with my free time. So this is my Toy Box. These are my kickass action figures. And come Fall it’s time to play. 

Scare-A-Con Caricatures

I will be vending at this year’s Horror convention in Verona New York. I will be there to promote my story blog, and drawing some Zombie/monster caricatures to cover the bill for the event. I will also be selling my all new character stickers and Tarot art. Hope to see you there. Here are some samples of my work!

Stickers!!!!

My first batch of limited promo stickers just came in the mail today! Getting supplied up for my horror convention.

Wicked Shorts Story

Wrote as a guest blogger for Wicked Shorts! My featured story was made from a prompt that asked for a tale under 1000 words based on: Lone Survivor on a Deserted Island. And as is my nature I had to twist the rules some. Here’s the link:

http://www.wickedshortsblog.com/2018/09/something-got-out-jarce-artthor.html

Jarce ArtThor

As a traveling caricature artist, author Jeffrey Arce (a.k.a Jarce ArtThor) has witnessed some very strange things. From the opinions, and liquid perceptions of fun-drunk carnival patrons he drew inspiration. A writer, an artist, and a dark thinker, he weaves a visceral web of twists, terror, and wonder. His tales are filled with dynamic environments, vividly portrayed, colorful characters with dangerous talents, and mind bending artwork to feast the eyes of his audience. A touch of comical mischief follows his every step as he journeys the unknown wilderness in search of another scary story to tell round the campfire. Join him in an adventure that spans across uncharted universes, swelling in his own imagination. Witness the cartoon fantasy, and nightmarish reverie that unravels behind the mind in front of an easel. Welcome to my literary/artist blog, my own personal cauldron of mischief. 

Monsters on a Mountain (a fanfiction)

No matter how fast she could run, no matter where she tried for cover, or what wood she could get herself lost in, or ruined suburb she could thread through, those red eyes were always there behind her, smoldering in the night like burning embers. 

She was still only a child, but she knew fear better than any living man could still walk the earth. The red eyes belonged to a monster. And that monster was coming for her. Her muscles were too young to escape it. She fell at last, panting, exhausted. Sweat drenched her. She was terrified. She would have screamed if she had anymore energy in her to do so. Instead, she put the last of her strength in her arms and she crawled. The dry dirt beneath her felt like a hot desert’s sand between her fingers, even though it was the black of night, but still she heaved. There was no respite from the heat anymore. 

Twisted metal, and old charred rubble surrounded her. The skeleton that remained of the world of yesterday fascinated her youthful imagination. She always wanted to know what that world was like, before their own massive stockpile of antiquated death was launched against the world—before they took the world. 

Now it was coming for her, like it came for everything: the beasts with the red eyes. She could hear the weight of their footfalls drawing in. It was behind her, like all that wonder she had for the fallen civilizations that made them. She rolled on her back, seeing it with wide-eyes through a curtain of sodden bangs sticking to her face. It was awful. It’s eyes pierced the night, and it’s silver skeleton hand reached out to grab her. 

Natasha sprung from her bedding with a gasp in her throat. After a few gulps of rotten air she new at last it was all only a dream... but it wasn’t. It was all very real, and inexorable. Nothing can stop it... nothing. She looked. There were people around, of course, but they were sparse, and miserable. Silhouettes of the life moving about the ghetto were thrown on the broken walls by candlelight. They huddled in their corners with what scraps remained to remind them of their lost humanity. She saw a mother and her child, close in arms, whimpering. The adult wept for the life she wasted in front of the beloved box, where the child cried for that life he could never know. Natasha at least liked to think they were kin, it was a romantic idea in her head; part of her own stubborn humanity that just won’t die. They were watching a television, but it was only the frame of one. Grandfathered survivors had told her once how it used to be, when there was power, and there wasn’t a care. But it could have all been bullshit, for all she could know. That magical box—as it was said—told them endless stories about man’s triumphs, and even their humilities. She wished she could have seen it then. But she was born after the cities had gone up in flames. Now, all the mother and son, or stranger and waif could do was watch a fire eat away at debris that had been piled inside where the tube once had dwelt. It was such a very poignant image to behold. 

Something hurt. Her legs were sticky in strange places. Natasha did not feel well. An unusual sickness turned at the pit of her stomach. She removed her threadbare sheets, and she suddenly knew it at once: It was very bad. 

“No,” she panicked. 

Quickly she scrambled out from her bedding and she was running, like in her dream. The couple in front of the relic television watched her go, their eyes curious, and sore from the wistful tears.

When Natasha was alone she ripped down her pants, and only stared at it, not knowing what to do. The hollow wind howled through the decrepit complex. Distant on the breeze, she could hear the high scream of the droning air vents on the patrolling Sky Hunters. She could not let them find her, not like this. She then hurriedly took off her top, leaving herself standing naked under the stars. All of their shelters in the ghetto were without roofs. It was so the warden could always watch them as they lived, scrutinizing—studying how they lived.

Natasha would have to be quick about the matter, and she would have to burn the evidence. Her maturity was becoming vastly difficult to conceal, but she had to, for as long as she could, so long as she lived there. She had not grown too full in the breasts, so that was at least one blessing she did not have to fret for, but now she was bleeding. It ran hot, thick-bodied and copious down her thighs. She spit on her bundled up shirt and she scrubbed, sobbing all the while she worked. 

Her blood was a rare thing. They kept a close watch on her development all the long years she had been trapped in captivity. A cult were left as her guardians, recording her every change. At first, in her naive  innocence, she was proud to have them, calling them mommy, and daddy, and uncle, joining them in ritual. But that was before she knew the truth: that they had meant to harvest her when she would come of age. 

“The Time Has Come!” 

She was too late. Standing there bare as a new born under the cloud flanked moon, Mommy had found her. 

Her vanity prompted her to fold her arms around her body, and she begged them to show mercy. She asked them to keep her secret. But it was useless. Before long they were dragging her by both arms. Her tattered jeans clung to her foot as they took her up the mountain, where They were waiting for her—the ones with the red eyes. She wailed, and the cult sang, rejoicing in her horror. The beauty in the stars high above mocked her naked and scourged body, exposed for her prey to feast on. They threw her down at their feet. The cult in unison dropped to their knees and they prayed. They thought these things were gods; they have been lost in this world far too long. They were not gods—They were demons. Several of them stepped out from the darkness, their silver bodies glistening in the night. Their Sky Hunters slicing the darkness with high-beams, like great birds of steel floating over the scene. The beasts moved hard on her, their eyes blazing red as blood, always analyzing and calculating. They were always precise, and that’s the true reason why they could not be stopped. Nobody was as strong as the brain that knew only math, logic, and balance. 

Natasha stopped crying. She sat up on her knees and glared at them. There was nothing more left for her to do—it was over. 

Her blood was too special. The cult stripped off her clothes, and that was bad, but They would strip her flesh. That was what they wanted. The machines encircled her, and they wasted no time. The whine of gears was all she could hear beyond her own screams as they tediously cut her open, and drew her apart, collecting every drop of blood that sprayed in the process. She remembered seeing shattered pieces of the massive letters that used to spell the word Hollywood there on that strange mountain, but now it was where the beasts did their malign work, and where their sycophants worshipped them as slaves. 

It was a long time before she was dead. They were called T-800’s. They were different from the ones before; they were worse. They could be more human, and that was an egregious thing anything with such a mind as Skynet could ever possibly achieve. Natasha thought that before she finally went. She was grateful for death, though, at least in death she did not have to face the impossible trials humans only had left to confront before their final descent. Only a miracle of invention could save them. And that miracle was far from their mortal reach. That would take a mind with more time to be so dangerously ambitious. Or perhaps so cunning that lack there of would dare challenge them to think in their final moments so brilliantly. Still, none of that mattered for her anymore. In death, all was forgiven, forgotten, and done.

#fanfic

#terminator

***Terminator

Inspired by characters created by James Cameron and Gale Anne Hurd***

Creating new characters

2018 has come. Time to develop some new characters. This one is called “D.”

Read my short, Bassy’s Basilica, to learn more about her. 

News (Oct 10 2017)

I had wanted to publish one story per week for the month of October, but my working schedule interfered with those plans, sadly. however, I have finished one hell of a solid short story that I will be sharing before halloween. It is a 4,300 word story in the horror/suspense category, but I added a few elements of fantasy because that is truly my genre by nature. I don't want to give away too much about it, but it will be fun, sexy, and dark. I wanted to step away from my very serious Historical Fiction to write something completely different,  something with fewer restrictions—I really needed the break. So I went and created a world that we could explore ever deeper should we be interested in such a journey in the future. Short stories are exciting for me, but my demanding lifestyle and all-consuming primary projects make it a difficult task to complete, and to polish a single story in a short window of free-time. As some of you may know (those of you who are probably actually taking the time to read this, and I thank you for it) I travel the country for a living. My big road trips are a full-time job all on their own, but then I spend much of my life on this planet sitting at an easel drawing caricatures, and however I do love the job, between it and travel, and writing, and studying, I get a tad bit inundated. My ambitions are hungrier than I can even handle half the time, but I will keep trying to produce and share new work wherever I can break away from my life to do so. My next live drawing event will be in Georgia, and then I get to go back home to finish some drawing commissions, and polish up some stories. After, I will finish my work season in Jacksonville Florida, and begin a grueling month of writing in November: attempting to complete the first draft of a new novel in thirty days. This Halloween I will be sharing my last short story until I finish all of that. If you guys like it, give me some feedback and perhaps we will develop that universe further. Some interesting side facts about the upcoming short: it was inspired by a song by one of my favorite rock bands, In This Moment, and the book by Laurell K. Hamilton Guilty Pleasures. Hope you all enjoy it. Thanks again, Blessed Be!

Sincerely:
Jarce ArtThor (author)
Jeffrey Arce

October 2017

This October I want to take everyone to a new universe: a dark realm blossomed from a dangerous part of the imagination. Creating haunting shorts inspired by the insatiable hunger of Man. Beginning in the first week of October, I will begin sharing these strange tales. Explore the plights, the dire, and political strife of Tiamat, and behold the dawn of an eternal season of harvest.