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Year: 2012 Page 1 of 3

Drabblecast B-Sides 19 – How the Moon Got Its Cousin

Cover for Drabblecast B-Sides episode 19, How the Moon Got Its Cousin, by Brian WalkerOnce upon a time, O my Best Beloved, when the world was one world with one moon and the stars did scintillate and sparkle in the sky, astronomers discovered a Beast of a Meteor flying through the vast black toward the Sun.

The scientists of the world realized that the Beast, in a veraciously voracious manner, would devour the hot yellow sun, and they did talk and squawk and look through long telescopes to watchwhat that Beast was doing. They crunched their magic numbers and they scribbled their special notes, and they filled their study rooms with piles of scritch-scratch paper…

Cover for Drabblecast episode 267, Postapocalypsemas, by Mary Mattice

Drabblecast 267 – Postapocalypsemas

Cover for Drabblecast episode 267, Postapocalypsemas, by Mary MatticeSandeer smelled her.

It was just a whiff, a few molecules of something familiar and therefore sweet, wafting on a late afternoon breeze that otherwise carried only the usual: formaldehyde, benzene, dioxin, chromium, and miscellaneous particulate matter both organic and non-. (Once, there had been the smell of roasting chestnuts and crackling logs and simmering spiced cider, but in recent cycles only less pleasant things burned.) There, represented by an air sample just barely statistically significant, was the scent of Sophie.

Drabblecast B-Sides 18 – On the Vinegar Valves of Venus

Cover for Drabblecast B-Sides 18, On the Vinegar Valves of Venus, by Bo KaierMonsignor’s Log, stardate the Millennium Feast of Saints Blot & Cugat…

It was a very special day, so I wore the least tatty of my vestments. The chasuble is only slightly frayed, the stains on the cincture have faded, the alb, granted, is little better than a rag.  I cannot get the grease out of the amice, and the stole is in tatters. The less said about the maniple the better. But by adjusting the lighting so it played through the cobwebs I think only the sharpest-eyed of congregants will have noticed. I did my best to disguise the stink by spraying the chapel with an aerosol can of Essence of Blood of the Lamb. It was decocted, of course, not from the real blood of a real lamb, but from chemical compounds manufactured in the lab by boffins. I have seen pictures of so-called “real” lambs in a codex. They look like tinier versions of sheep, if, that is, they were drawn to scale. Who knows?

Cover for Drabblecast episode 266, Little Grace of the House of Death, by Caroline Parkinson

Drabblecast 266 – Little Grace of the House of Death

Cover for Drabblecast episode 266, Little Grace of the House of Death, by Caroline ParkinsonThe niece of King Death had not yet chosen a name.  She was the only daughter and youngest child of Death’s sister, Merciful Grace, and everyone still called her by her baby name, Little Grace…

Cover for Drabblecast episode 265, Pop Quiz, by David Flett

Drabblecast 265 – Pop Quiz

Cover for Drabblecast episode 265, Pop Quiz, by David Flett

“By the Earth-Stypei Treaty of The Twenty-third Local Year of Our Interaction, as amended, suspected Stypean sympathizers may be detained by duly empowered authorities only so long as the unbreachable sovereignty of the Stypean body-host is not violated, and only for the purpose of deportation upon confirmation of Stypean inhabitance. Tests to determine inhabitance are only permissible if they do not breach body-host sovereignty in any fashion. The breaching of a body-host as well as the deportation of a non-Stypean body host to Stypean space shall constitute an act of war and a resumption of hostilities between the two worlds”

Cover for Drabblecast Episode 264, The Belonging Kind, by Kathleen Beckett

Drabblecast 264 – The Belonging Kind

Cover for Drabblecast Episode 264, The Belonging Kind, by Kathleen BeckettIt might have been in Club Justine, or Jimbo’s, or Sad Jack’s, or the Rafters; Coretti could never be sure where he’d first seen her. At any time, she might have been in any one of those bars. She swam through the submarine half-life of bottles and glassware and the slow swirl of cigarette smoke… she moved through her natural element, one bar after another.

Now, Coretti remembered their first meeting as if he saw it through the wrong end of a powerful telescope, small and clear and very far away.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 263, Betty Flesh and the Meat Man, by Bo Kaier

Drabblecast 263 – Betty Flesh and the Meat Man

Cover for Drabblecast episode 263, Betty Flesh and the Meat Man, by Bo Kaier“Your suitor’s here!” Ma Flesh hurried into the back room of the butcher’s shop. “Are you presentable?”

Betty waited there amongst the swinging, marbled yellow cow carcasses. The wooden butcher’s table was smooth under her fingertips, and solid as the earth. Knives glinted from the walls, each reflecting a tiny, seated Betty and the thin figure of Ma Flesh standing over her.

“Sit up straight,” Ma snapped. “And don’t scratch. It could lead to tragedy. I mean it.”

“I won’t.” Betty didn’t dare ask why Ma was so against scratching. Her head itched but she didn’t lift her hand. Ma had cut off Betty’s hair to stop her from being so floaty. She hoped the suitor liked short hair. If he was blind, he’d like it, she thought. She could lay her head in his lap and he could tell her mood by the bumps on her skull. He could stroke behind her ears, let his fingers drift up to her crown, slide down her neck–

“It isn’t Saturday.” Ma rapped on Betty’s head with the back of her shining metal hook. “No going floaty today, girl.”

Cover for Drabblecast episode 262, My True Lovecraft Gave to Me, by Rodolfo Arredondo

Drabblecast 262 – My True Lovecraft Gave to Me

Cover for Drabblecast episode 262, My True Lovecraft Gave to Me, by Rodolfo ArredondoDear Mr. Kugelmacher,

This letter is to inform you of my resignation. As you know, I have spent the last fifteen years of my life working in your department store, from the age of twelve when I was hired as a stock boy, to my years spent in the jewellery department, to my time in management. I have loved working here, and I am very sorry to leave, but I fear that if I remain any longer, my health and my sanity will be forfeit. Perhaps if I explain the events of weeks, it will become clearer why I have to quit.

Cover for Drabblecast 261, The People of Sand and Slag, by John Deberge

Drabblecast 261 – The People of Sand and Slag

Cover for Drabblecast 261, The People of Sand and Slag, by John Deberge“Hostile movement! Well inside the perimeter! Well inside!” I stripped off my Immersive Response goggles as adrenaline surged through me. The virtual cityscape I’d been about to raze disappeared, replaced by our monitoring room’s many views of SesCo’s mining operations. On one screen, the red phosphorescent tracery of an intruder skated across a terrain map, a hot blip like blood spattering its way toward Pit 8.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 260, Trifecta XXIII, by Bo Kaier

Drabblecast 260 – Trifecta XXIII

Cover for Drabblecast episode 260, Trifecta XXIII, by Bo KaierYou don’t remember anything, do you? Selective memory loss; what an achievement for a mind as young as yours. Locked in a cupboard of your consciousness, the guilt will eat at you from the inside…

Cover for Drabblecast episode 259, The Last of the O-Forms, by Jacob Wayne Bryner

Drabblecast 259 – The Last of the O-Forms

Cover for Drabblecast episode 259, The Last of the O-Forms, by Jacob Wayne BrynerAt the sack’s bottom, beneath an empty donut box, he found the beef jerky. It tasted mostly of pepper, but underneath it had a tingly, metallic flavor he tried not to think about. Who knew what it might have been made from? He doubted there were any original-form cows, the o-cows, left to slaughter…

Cover for Drabblecast episode 258, Brown Dust, by Amber Carky

Drabblecast 258 – Brown Dust

Cover for Drabblecast episode 258, Brown Dust, by Amber Carky“Adao, no.”  Teo, the older boy’s second-in-command, lays a staying hand on his master’s arm.  “The stories I told you about this one… they’re true.”
“True?”  Adao casts a skeptic’s eye over Santos.  Can those flimsy ribs cage anything as fugitive as truth?

Cover for Drabblecast episode 257, Judgement Passed, by Jerel Dye

Drabblecast 257 – Judgement Passed

Cover for Drabblecast episode 257, Judgement Passed, by Jerel DyeWe stared up at the sunlit peaks, each thinking our own thoughts.  I thought about Dessica.  We’d waited two months after landing to name it, but the decision was unanimous.  Hot, dry, with dust storms that could blow for weeks at a time– if ever there was a Hell, that place had to be it.  But eight of us had stayed there for two years, exploring and collecting data; the first interstellar expedition at work.  And then we had packed up and come back– at an empty Earth.  Not a soul left anywhere….

Cover for Drabblecast episode 256, Roanoke, Nevada, by Spencer Bingham

Drabblecast 256 – Roanoke, Nevada

Cover for Drabblecast episode 256, Roanoke, Nevada, by Spencer Bingham“It’s the extra-terrestrials,” the General said, watching for my reaction. “Our extra-terrestrials are falling ill.”

“Really?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice. My eyes wandered back to the picture on the general’s wall.

He noticed. “That’s an untouched photo,” he said. “The aliens are real, and they’re here…”

Drabblecast 255 – The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward pt. 2

Looking away from the light that showed the Charles Dexter Ward was no longer entirely dead was as hard as opening a rusted zipper. But Cynthia did it, and didn’t let herself look back She pulled Hester a little further down the corridor and said, “Now we really need to know how she killed him. And whether it’ll work a second time…”

Drabblecast 254 – The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward pt. 1

Cover for Drabblecast 254, The Wreck of the Charles Dexter Ward, by Bo KaierSix weeks into her involuntary tenure on Faraday Station, Cynthia Feuerwerker needed a job. She could no longer afford to be choosy about it, either; her oxygen tax was due, and you didn’t have to be a medical doctor to understand the difficulties inherent in trying to breathe vacuum.

You didn’t have to be, but Cynthia was one. Or had been, until the allegations of malpractice and unlicensed experimentation began to catch up with her. As they had done, here at Faraday, six weeks ago…

Mega Beast Death Match 2012 Finals Cover by Bo Kaier

Mega Beast Death Match 2012 – The Finals

Mega Beast Death Match 2012 Finals Cover by Bo Kaier“There’s Gonna Be a Hard 8 Tonight”

The worst Swedish fish…
How to get spell off a white couch…

And who would win in a fight to the death:  A flying invisible panda-ray with missile launchers and a pair of gun turrets, a 30 foot tall, 6-ton hydrogen filled naughtilus with heat vision, giant flamingo legs and bayonet tentacles, an anthropomorphized salamander-horse necromancer that can run the speed of light, cast barrier spells and subjugate the recent dead, or a winged, acid-spitting octo-platypus with probability altering abilities and a cricket bat…

You decide who becomes the champion of the Season V Super Animal Megabeast Competition!

Warning:  Super Explicit and just awful, as always.

Drabblecast 253 – Maybe the Stars

Cover for Drabblecast 253, Maybe the Sea, by Steve SantiagoPresently it rose, and with a shuffling walk it supported itself along the bars until it reached the bucket.  With a sigh it plunged its hands inside.

Little Useless inched closer and watched while the creature cupped the salt water and brought it to its face: not to drink, but to moisten its skin…

This episode of the Drabblecast continues H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month with an eye towards Lovecraft’s fascination with and misgivings about the sea. It starts with a quote from Dagon, which kicked off the very first H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month. In the drabble, there is more to a fisherman’s remarkable sea wife than meets the eye. In the feature, a nod to Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a young girl living among humans who act savagely encounters a sympathetic, otherworldly Deep One. She faces hard questions: where does she truly belong, and where should her loyalties lie?

Drabblecast 252 – The Elder Thing and the Puddle People

Cover for Drabblecast episode 252, The Elder Thing and the Puddle People, by Matt WasielaUpon the coming of the rain and the and the reawakening of the Krr’at race, the Elder Thing returned to us and squealed Its sky-splitting squeal and waded in among us. It came with the green feet that had eyes and mouths, and with the yellow, rubbery outerskin, and with the lace and the glitter — oh, the horrible, horrible glitter…

This episode of the Drabblecast continues H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month, specifically focusing on the frequent appearance of cults in Lovecraft’s work. In the drabble, cult meetings aren’t always all about sacrifices and secret rites. In the feature, what starts out as an innocent encounter between a little girl and her imaginary friends takes an ominous turn when the “puddle people” turn out to be real creatures who worship her as their capricious god. When a rebel revolts against the the cult to save her daughter from being sacrificed, how will their deity react?

Drabblecast 251 – The Music of Erich Zann

Cover for Drabblecast episode 251, The Music of Erich Zann, by Bill HalliarMy room was on the fifth story; the only inhabited room there, since the house was almost empty. On the night I arrived I heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told me it was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb man who signed his name as Erich Zann, and who played evenings in a cheap theater orchestra; adding that Zann’s desire to play in the night after his return from the theater was the reason he had chosen this lofty and isolated garret room, whose single gable window was the only point on the street from which one could look over the terminating wall at the declivity and panorama beyond…

This episode of the Drabblecast kicks of H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month. It begins with a reading from Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth. In the feature, an impoverished student is forced to take an apartment in an almost empty building on the mysterious Rue d’Auseil. One of the other tenants, a viol player named Erich Zann, lives alone on the top floor and plays strange, otherworldly music at night. The student, drawn to his music, eventually gains Zann’s trust and learns catastrophic secrets.

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