Drabblecast Covers Collage 2018 01

Category: Drabblecast Page 12 of 27

Drabblecast 309 – All the Young Kirks and Their Good Intentions

Cover for Drabblecast 309, All the Young Kirks and Their Good Intentions, by Jonathan Wilson2249 A.D.

All the young Kirks in Riverside Public High School are assigned to the same Homeroom class. They sit together in the back corner on the far side from the door. They speak only to each other.

The young Kirk on the Moon goes to school with no one. Each of the colonists has a job and he or she is responsible only to the duties of that job. The others call him Fisher instead of James since he spends his days knee deep in the trout pond, allowing the fish to glide between his legs. When the fish become completely inured to his presence, he thrusts his hands into the water and grasps one around the belly. It fights and Fisher holds on. He is supposed to take it out of the water, to throw it into the white bucket by the shore, but Fisher never does. He lets the fish go and when he comes home, with nothing to show for it, his mother expresses her irrevocable disappointment and sends him to bed.

Drabblecast 308 – Happy Old Year

cover for Drabblecast 308, Happy Old YearThis week the Drabblecast Presents “Happy Old Year” by Tim Pratt.

Tim is a regular Drabblecast contributor, bringing us such classics as Postapocalypsemas, Rangifer Volans, and fan-favorite Morris and the Machine. He also runs a Patreon page where you can read and download a new, unpublished story from Tim every month for a little as a dollar. Why not check it out?

This year, instead of our usual Tim Pratt Christmas special, we decided to run with a New Years Eve them—something new… and something old. Lots of old. Maybe too much. Because in this story, nostalgia can be a cancer that lasts forever.

Story Excerpt:

The night I met Elsie I was up on the roof of my apartment building with a bottle of Kentucky Gentleman, because it’s sort of like bourbon, but cheaper, and better at blotting out reality. Technically it wasn’t “my” building anymore since I’d been evicted and had to be gone by morning if I didn’t want sheriff’s deputies to dump all my possessions out on the sidewalk. Joke was on them — what possessions? Everything I could sell, I already had, in a vain attempt to keep up with rent. What remained was so crappy I couldn’t even give it away on Craigslist.

Drabblecast 307 – Unbelief

Cover for Drabblecast 307, Unbelief, by Oskar KunikIT HAPPENED IN BRYANT PARK, a little after six o’clock in the evening. He was sitting by himself in lamp shadow amongst the trees, at one of the rickety green metal tables along the north side, close to where the Barnes & Noble library area is during the day. He was warmly dressed in nondescript, casual clothing and sipping from a Starbucks in a seasonally red cup, acquired from the outlet on the corner of Sixth, right opposite one of the entrances to the park. He queued, just like any normal person: watching through the window you’d have no idea of who he was, or the power he wielded over this and other neighborhoods.

Drabblecast 306 – Trifecta XXVI

Cover for Drabblecast 306, Trifecta XXVI, by Gino MorettoWhile sipping my tea in the morning, I find a small, only two inches long, naked female corpse on the bottom of the cup. Her white skin fades int the white porcelain, tiny gobs of tea leafs cover her round breasts. I immediately slap the cup down, and snick across to the phone to call the police. I forget all about checking if she’s really dead. Of course, how could I give her a mouth to mouth resuscitation, if not? Her body is about the size of a match-stick.

Drabblecast 305 – Testimony Before an Emergency Session of The Naval Cephalopod Command

Cover for Drabblecast 305, Testimony Before an Emergency Session of The Naval Cephalopod Command, by Bo KaierThe squid is a solipsistic psychopathic God with a lust for submarine hull and a mandate from Ronald Reagan branded on its hunting tentacles. It sweeps east from Iceland in the cold under the
thermocline, alone in the dark, solitary lord of a solitary place.

 
 
 
 

Drabblecast 304 – Hero, The Movie pt. 2

Cover for Drabblecast episode 304, Hero the Movie pt. 2, by Joe BotschRick takes the money the Mayor of Corkscrew has wired him and flies to Florida, feeling his oats, full of hope.  He’s met at the airport by one of Mayor Delameter’s staff and driven to his hotel, the old but clean and dry Swamp Hotel in downtown Corkscrew.  The next morning he’s out at the edge of town where Main Street runs along the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary and he’s surveying the marching battalions of Gecarcoidea natalis—little, red, forest-dwelling crabs about the size of your palm that are migrating, as they do each year—though not usually in such numbers—through the town, back to the swamp to breed . . . and taking their sweet time doing it. .

Drabblecast 303 – Hero, The Movie pt. 1

Cover for Drabblecast episode 303, Hero the Movie pt. 1, by Joe BotschThis romantic comedy begins where all low-budget ’50s creature-features ended: The mutant insects born of atom-bomb radiation (or invaders from space, or monsters from the sea, or fifty-foot women) have at last been defeated and our small-town hero, with girlfriend Janie or June or Betty at his side, must now face the rest of his life. Didn’t we wonder what his life would be like after the final credits rolled? After you save the world, what’s left? You can marry the Professor’s daughter, sure. You can sell the rights to your story. Be on national talk shows. Hold onto fame a little longer. But then what?

 

Drabblecast 302 – The Next Logical Step

Cover for Drabblecast episode 302, The Next Logical Step, by Philip Pomphrey“I don’t really see where this problem has anything to do with me,” the CIA man said. “And, frankly, there are a lot of more important things I could be doing.”

Ford, the physicist, glanced at General LeRoy. The general had that quizzical expression on his face, the look that meant he was about to do something decisive.

“Would you like to see the problem first-hand?” the general asked, innocently.

The CIA man took a quick look at his wristwatch. “O.K., if it doesn’t take too long. It’s late enough already.”

“It won’t take very long, will it, Ford?” the general said, getting out of his chair.

“Not very long,” Ford agreed. “Only a lifetime.”

 

Drabblecast 301 – Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

Cover for Drabblecast episode 301, Everything Ravaged Everything Burned, by Brent HolmesJust as we were all getting back into the mainland domestic groove, somebody started in with dragons and crop blights from across the North Sea. We all knew who it was. A turncoat Norwegian monk named Naddod had been big medicine on the dragon-and-blight circuit for the last decade or so, and was known to bring heavy ordnance for whoever could lay out some silver. Scuttlebutt had it that Naddod was operating out of a monastery on Lindisfarne, whose people we’d troubled on a pillage-and-consternation tour through Northumbria after Corn Harvesting Month last fall. Now bitter winds were screaming in from the west, searing the land and ripping the grass from the soil. Salmon were turning up spattered with sores, and grasshoppers clung to the wheat in rapacious buzzing bunches.

 

Drabblecast 300 – Bloodchild

Cover for Drabblecast episode 300, Bloodchild, by Soren JamesMy last night of childhood began with a visit home. T’Gatoi’s sister had given us two sterile eggs. T’Gatoi gave one to my mother, brother, and sisters. She insisted that I eat the other one alone. It didn’t matter. There was still enough to leave everyone feeling good. Almost everyone. My mother wouldn’t take any. She sat, watching everyone drifting and dreaming without her. Most of the time she watched me.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 299, The Revelation of Morgan Stern, by Jerel Dye

Drabblecast 299 – The Revelation of Morgan Stern

Cover for Drabblecast episode 299, The Revelation of Morgan Stern, by Jerel DyeIt is July 31, your birthday, and I can’t reach you. I’ve been trying all day, but the cell networks are down, the internet is down. I even tried a pay phone–there are two left in town that I know of, and I collected all of my change and walked to the 76 in the village. It was on fire. I watched it for a while from a distance as it painted a brown, toxic streak across the sky. It was a long walk back to the house, or what’s left of it. My feet hurt, and it was too quiet.

 

 

Drabblecast 298 – Flying On My Hatred of My Neighbor’s Dog

Cover for Drabblecast episode 298, Flying On My Hatred of My Neighbor's DogThe week we present to you Flying On My Hatred of My Neighbor’s Dog by Shaenon Garrity.

Have you ever been so exasperated that you could feel the energy rippling off of you? Just how far could the power of that hate carry you? Could it fuel your car? How about a rocket ship?

 

I know my neighbor’s dog as a bark: a deep, dark, venomous yawp that begins and ends on a snarl. It’s loud, louder than it should be. Earplugs do nothing. It penetrates. Once it starts, it continues, relentlessly, for a period ranging from one to four hours. It can start at any time, day or night, dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket sings.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 297, The Apothecary's Apprentice, by Sean Azzopardi

Drabblecast 297 – The Apothecary’s Apprentice

Cover for Drabblecast episode 297, The Apothecary's Apprentice, by Sean AzzopardiIn the back of the shop I scrubbed three large cauldrons clean, stripping the seasoning from them because Master Aloz insisted on it once the trade caravans stopped coming at the end of summer. Tallow, he called me, on account of my paleness. I used a brush made of iron bristles instead of horse hair, scraping away the brown muck inside, various plant and animal parts rendered into sludge like droppings from a sick bull. My book lay on the floor beside the cauldrons. Sir Tannis and the Hydra. It seemed I wouldn’t get to read much of it today…

 

Drabblecast episode 296, Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain, by Caroline Parkinson

Drabblecast 296 – Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain

Drabblecast episode 296, Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain, by Caroline ParkinsonOver the years, Tikka’s job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain’s Bureau of Tourism had shaped her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five distributed by the Bureau: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain’s Clay Fields; Five Restaurants Serving Native Cuisine at Its Most Natural.

 

 

Cover for Drabblecast episode 295, Twenty Ways the Desert Could Kill You, by Jacob Wayne Bryner

Drabblecast 295 – Twenty Ways the Desert Could Kill You

Cover for Drabblecast episode 295, Twenty Ways the Desert Could Kill You, by Jacob Wayne Bryner1. A poisonous snake could bite you, and you could die.
2. You could prick your finger on a previously undiscovered poisonous cactus.
3. The cactus isn’t poisonous, and neither is the snake, but the snake’s venom is a powerful anti-coagulant. You could bleed to death from the place you were bitten and/or pricked.

 

 

Drabblecast 294 – Partial Inventory

Cover for Drabblecast episode 294, Partial Inventory, by John DebergeThe air conditioning only worked when the speedometer crept past 70 MPH which the lumbering GMC van (on loan from a friend of a friend who took pity on the family and their situation) rarely did. November in the South is hardly hot, but thirteen hours in any vehicle with nearly a half dozen relatives and mismatched belongings, each one trying to both curl and crowd themselves into their claimed seats had left the air warm and slick and smelling faintly of musk.

 

Drabblecast 293 – The Call of the Pancake Factory

Cover for Drabblecast episode 293, The Call of the Pancake Factory, by Bill HalliarThe bar is plenty kitschy: goofy statues made from coconuts everywhere and strings of shell beads hanging from the ceiling. I smile when I see a coconut sporting a pair of mouse ears made from scallop shells.

Tourists from all over the world are sitting around, ordering drinks non-stop because the sun is so hot at this time in Indonesia that you’ll wilt if you go outside and also because the drinks are so watered down. But that’s all right with me. I’m here to blend in, not to get drunk.

Drabblecast 292 – Hollow as the World

Cover for Drabblecast episode 292, Hollow as the World, by Oskar KunikOne of the reasons Joshua loved Lydia as much as he did was all the secret rituals they’d devised. Their shared jokes were treasured secrets, never to be shared with the other kids at high school; some days, the way Lydia could send Joshua into high titters with a raise of her pierced eyebrow was the only thing that kept Joshua from slitting his wrists…

 

 

Drabblecast 291 – The Lurking Fear

Cover for Drabblecast 291, The Lurking Fear, by Gabo VitolloThere was thunder in the air on the night I went to the deserted mansion atop Tempest Mountain to find the lurking fear. I was not alone, for foolhardiness was not then mixed with that love of the grotesque and the terrible which has made my career a series of quests for strange horrors in literature and in life. With me were two faithful and muscular men for whom I had sent when the time came; men long associated with me in my ghastly explorations because of their peculiar fitness.

We had started quietly from the village because of the reporters who still lingered about after the eldritch panic of a month before – the nightmare creeping death. Later, I thought, they might aid me; but I did not want them then. Would to God I had let them share the search, that I might not have had to bear the secret alone so long; to bear it alone for fear the world would call me mad or go mad itself at the demon implications of the thing. Now that I am telling it anyway, lest the brooding make me a maniac, I wish I had never concealed it. For I, and I only, know what manner of fear lurked on that spectral and desolate mountain…

Cover for Drabblecast 290, The Screaming Door, by Forrest Warner

Drabblecast 290 – The Screaming Door

Cover for Drabblecast 290, The Screaming Door, by Forrest WarnerIt has been two hundred days since the door to my study began screaming. I was nodding over a volume of Edwin Corang’s collected prose when I first felt it; a curious ripple that moved through the
room, standing my hair on edge, followed by the sensation of coffee spilling into my lap as the screaming began…

 

 

 

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