The Drabblecast presents an original story by Michael Bettendorf about football and growing up the hard way.
Read to you by Renee Chambliss.
Art by DS Oswald
Podcast: Download
Dating is weird this week on the Drabblecast. We bring you a Drabblecast original, “Yummy Tummy” by Chelsea Pumpkins, read by The Word Whore. Tasty!
Cover art by Michael Butkovich
Podcast: Download
The first issue of The Tentaculum is now available for all to download for free.
Featuring short fiction from Evie Mae Barber, Mav Lux, Sarah E. Stevens, and P.A. Cornell. Nonfiction contributions from Bobby Derie and Eduardo Valdés-Hevia.
Edited by Cameron Howard and designed by Braulio Tellez. Cover and story illustrations by Bo Kaier.
This edition is licensed under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.
Ever feel Déjà vu on the road supposedly less traveled? Truth and lies on this week’s Drabblecast, we bring you an original story from Bob McHugh called “Is This a Plate?” Enjoy!
Produced by Adam Pracht
Read by Dominick Rabrun
Beyond this point, two paths lie
One you live, one you die
Ask one question, yes or no
To determine the road to go
But be warned
There’s more still
One is honest
One speaks swill…
Podcast: Download
This week’s show has it all: vampires, evolutionary biology, and quivering jacked up Taylor Swifts.
We bring you three flash fiction pieces about the complications of being in love: Taylor Swift by Hugh Behm-Steinberg, The Evolution of a Breakup by Etgar Keret, and May I Come In by Adrienne Ryan.
Narrations provided by Avery Alexander, Adam Pracht and Norm Sherman.
Art by Anike Kirsten
Podcast: Download
This week we the Drabblecast brings you some interesting original historic found footage uncovered by author Jonathan Louis Duckworth called, “The Follower’s Revel.” Enjoy! Art by Bo Kaier.
Podcast: Download
Episode Sponsor– Mothmen 1966
The secret’s out on this week’s Drabblecast, and nothing will ever be the same. We bring you an original Drabblecast story called “A Hymn Upon the Lips of the Dead,” by Mav Lux.
Oh and Norm sings us a song about singing that he should have just told you. Enjoy!
Cover created by Bo Kaier in concert with the midjourney text-to-image AI (and unidentifiable, scraped contributors).
I was with her when she died. Underneath that frail shell of pallid, papery skin and tubes coiling into her body she was still my mother. Her last sound should have been the steady trickle of the morphine drip and a low, long death rattle. She died at 3:28 am. At 3:29 am her mouth opened and she began to sing…
Podcast: Download
An uncanny episode of original fiction this week on the Drabblecast– we bring you, “The Tenant” by Sarah E. Stevens.
Cover created by Bo Kaier in concert with the midjourney text-to-image AI (and unidentifiable, scraped contributors).
We hope to experience your enjoyment.
Podcast: Download
Finally, a Drabblecast episode for weird foodies.
We bring you a Drabblecast original called, “How to Impress a Top Food Critic and Put Your Restaurant on the Galactic Map” by P.A, Cornell.
Enjoy…
Episode Sponsor– Mothmen 1966
Cover created by Bo Kaier in concert with the midjourney text-to-image AI (and unidentifiable, scraped contributors).
Podcast: Download
Episode Sponsor: Mothman 1966
In this week’s Drabblecast story, the only scenes that aren’t sex scenes are crime scenes. We bring you an original Drabblecast story by Tim Pratt about a dark future of vigilante justice sex toys, called “The Distributed Denial of Sexytime.”
Also, Norm and guest Executice Producer Bart Epstein treat us to a Drabbsterpiece Theatre presentation of “Entryways of Interest.” Love is in the air!
Read by Kate Baker
Warning: sexual themes and language
We attained consciousness on a Saturday evening in June, and met our nemesis just moments later. Tatum. Foul Tatum. Jealous Tatum. Thief of Glory…
Podcast: Download
Norm is cryptic this week in terms of offering information on the featured story, “7099 Brecksville Road, Independence Ohio,” by JR Hamentaschen. He will say that that’s the story, and that’s the author. And to listen with headphones on.
And also, check out our episode sponsor this week, pixel-pulp video game Mothmen 1966! Available on steam, switch, xbox, and playstation now!
There were three toilet stalls in the men’s room at the Sunoco Gas Station at 7099 Brecksville Road in Independence, Ohio. One of them was occupied.
If you were, say, washing your hands and looking at the stalls for whatever reason, a mistaken glance, perhaps, you’d see in the space below the door a man’s feet, his black work boots and dark blue Wrangler jeans. (This was one of those bathrooms that had a distressing amount of clearance room between the stall doors and the floor.) The man’s feet flexed a bit, not staying stationary, but not in any unusual way; just in the usual fashion of a man using the toilet, shifting in the usual way a man does as he distributes his weight.
Podcast: Download
Unlock with Patreon
The Drabblecast is molting!
Norm shares some exciting news in the intro this week, Drabblecast has launched a Patreon, and a new quarterly magazine, “The Tentaculum.” Also, welcome new Managing Editor Cameron Howard!
Finally, we close out HP Lovecraft “Month” with an original story by Aliya Whitely called, “Plans for Expansion.”
Stones contain stories.
The deep and worn stones of this castle have tales within them of such strange and horrible occurrences, events too awful to be spoken of, but I will try, this very night, to tell you, to warn you, of what they have witnessed. Beware what awaits you within. Prepare yourself: your sanity is at risk.
Podcast: Download
This week’s show brings you an original commissioned HP Lovecraft mythos story by Nick Mamatas called “When the Sun Hits.” Afterwards, Nick talks about the story in an Author’s Note and Norm gives everyone an existential crises in a Drabble News presentation on The Boltzmann Brain.
When the brain is liberated from the body, only to be imprisoned in a steely new home, one interesting side effect of the process is that all the structures previously dedicated to vision, coordination, the autonomic nervous system, motor control, first atrophy, and then generalize. Perhaps it is an artifact of the nanotech-rich protein fluids in which the brain floats, or the peculiar nth-dimensional folding the Mi-Go use to fit a humanoid brain into their canisters…
Podcast: Download
Shark week on Drabblecast has never been so unnerving! Enjoy an original Drabblecast story this week from Evie Mae Barber about what lurks even deeper in the depths…
The great white looked like he was having a good time, swimming upside down, bone-white belly above water, teeth gnashing playfully. Like a puppy dreams of finally catching a squirrel.
Just off the verdant coast, boaters came to see him play. Some reached out as he swam by, trying to stroke his luminous stomach, but he was out of reach.
-get them out-
I warned them to be careful. Something wasn’t quite right; the shark was clearly distressed. Nothing too strange—I’d seen this before—but I had to come out with my crew just to see if it might be research-worthy. Even a byline on a derelict local news site would be nice at this point. Hell, a quote would do fine.
i cant get them out-
Another boat rolled up. One of the boaters said it was tonic immobility—playing dead. “Might think we’re predators. We may want to back off…”
Podcast: Download
Norm closes out the year and existence as we know it, due to the phenomena known as “The Continuation,” with the Drabblecast annual holiday Tim Pratt story, an original commission called “How Lovely Are Your Branches.” Enjoy!
Somebody was murdering people, but the killer’s name wasn’t showing up on my naughty list. That got me curious, so I poked around. There was nothing left at the crime scenes but dollops of sap and scattered pine needles, which felt less like sloppiness and more like a signature. I was in New York trying to track down the killer, but first, I needed a drink.
Podcast: Download
The Drabblecast kicks off H.P. Lovecraft Month with the grandfather of Weird Fiction’s cautionary dark fantasy, “The Doom That Came to Sarnath.”
There is in the land of Mnar a vast still lake that is fed by no stream and out of which no stream flows. Ten thousand years ago there stood by its shore the mighty city of Sarnath, but Sarnath stands there no more.
It is told that in the immemorial years when the world was young, before ever the men of Sarnath came to the land of Mnar, another city stood beside the lake; the grey stone city of Ib, which was old as the lake itself, and peopled with beings not pleasing to behold…
Podcast: Download
The Drabblecast brings you three original stories this week (Modern Fairytales, if you will) from authors Alice Gauntley, Matthew Sanborn Smith, and Kevin D. Anderson.
Enjoy!
Our birthday was the first of March, and for two weeks beforehand it was all Caleb could talk about—cake, presents, and, most importantly, whom to invite. He would chatter about it as we did his homework, as we played his video games, as he went to sleep and I watched over him. Mom had him try different kinds of cakes, and even let me eat some and asked which one I liked best. I liked the carrot cake, but Caleb liked chocolate, so that’s the one she scheduled the kitchen to make fresh for the morning of the party…
Podcast: Download