Part two of a Drabblecast production of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
The reality of what I had been through was highly uncertain in my mind, but I felt that something hideous lay in the background. I must get away from evil-shadowed Innsmouth—and accordingly I began to test my cramped, wearied powers of locomotion. Despite weakness, hunger, horror, and bewilderment I found myself after a long time able to walk; so started slowly along the muddy road to Rowley…
The Drabblecast Annual Halloween Special kicks off this year simultaneously with HP Lovecraft month on the show, a full month of original Drabblecast-commissioned stories playing around with elements of Lovecraft’s style and mythos.
We kick things off this year with a fullcast adaptation of one of Lovecraft’s most popular stories– The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Do enjoy!
During the winter of 1927–28 officials of the Federal government made a strange and secret investigation of certain conditions in the ancient Massachusetts seaport of Innsmouth. The public first learned of it in February, when a vast series of raids and arrests occurred, followed by the deliberate burning and dynamiting—under suitable precautions—of an enormous number of crumbling, worm-eaten, and supposedly empty houses along the abandoned waterfront. Uninquiring souls let this occurrence pass as one of the major clashes in a spasmodic war on liquor.
A sadistic tale from a sadistic future on the Drabblecast this week; we bring you a Drabblecast original from People’s Choice Award winning author Robert Reed. Brought to you by the ever-sexy and captivating voice of the internet’s one and only Word Whore.
For Drabblecast Bsides subscribers only!
A work colleague suffers a stroke and gets whisked to Intensive Care, where an experimental neurostimulant is pumped into the blood. The drug can be therapeutic, and he recovers. Sort of…
Weirdness is in the air at Drabblecast as we bring you an original story about spousal life and home ownership by author Ao-Hui Lin.
“Hey babe, where did the closet go?”
The Hubby, Victor, gives me a blank look, like the word “closet” is Swahili for “bratwurst”. He neither understands the question nor the purpose of the question.
“The closet. It used to be here, through this door, under the stairs. Now there’s just a pit and bite marks on the door jamb.”
More silent incomprehension.
I let the subject drop. After all, who uses the under-the-stairs closet anyway? I don’t even remember if I ever put anything in there, and if I did, it would have been stuff I’d never planned on seeing again. High school journals, SAT study guides and shoeboxes full of bad poetry to that guy I had a crush on during junior year – Tony? Toby? Tory? I’ll find someplace else to put the vacuum cleaner.
Drabblecast fan Jen Fischer hosts another Drabbleclassics episode this week, bringing you a touching H.P. Lovecraft mythos story called “Maybe the Stars,” by Samantha Henderson.
This week on the Drabblecast: dirty jobs. We bring you a quirky original tale by Bryan Miller about mad scientists and henchmen gone awry. Enjoy!
The bulletin board posting specifically stated that the internship required “special skills,” “unorthodox hours,” and an “old-fashioned go-getter,” so I can’t really complain as I’m digging up coffins in search of heads.
Even though the graveyard muck is hell on my Cole Haan shoes, I roll up the sleeves of my Oxford shirt and keep working that spade. Dress for the job you want. One day some intrepid young man—or woman!—may be fetching moldering crania for me. Assuming all goes well.
Another gripping and macabre tale from Drabblecast fan favorite Tim Pratt.
Finding that first body wasn’t so bad, though it rattled me at the time. The dead man was curled up on a piece of cardboard in the alleyway I cut through sometimes on my way to the good coffee shop, and I would have assumed he was just sleeping rough, if he hadn’t been on his back, eyes open to the gray morning sky, lips flecked with bits of whatever he’d thrown up and choked on. The flecks were still wet…
“My headlights were streaked pink with frog blood…”
Norm and author comedian/writer Bryan Miller about comedy and horror, editing and frog country, Lovecraft and fish horror. Also, Bryan’s H.P. Lovecraft-inspired story, “Necessary Cuts.”
The manuscripts I read are haunted. Commas vanish forever into the void. Subjects and verbs struggle in bloody disagreement. Infinitives are cleaved with a dull axe. Sentence fragments ablated at one ragged end lay strewn between the margins.
I take an exorcist’s solemn pride in banishing these warped creatures from the village, sending slapdash monstrosities back to the murky dark from whence they came. The pages come in and the pages go out; my reward is the warm tingle of equilibrium, having restored order to some tiny corner of the world…
For Drabblecast Bsides Premium Subscribers this week, we bring you the classic 1972 Full Cast radio production of The Peoria Plague. Don’t worry, it’s just a fictional audio drama!
On this week’s show Norm makes a case for adult diapers in preparation for the apocalypse before giving us a taste of “The Peoria Plague,” a 1972 radio drama that doesn’t feel so “1972” at all.
The feature story this week, “The Full Moon Group” by Dianne M. Williams is a Drabblecast original and reminds us that creatures of all walks of life need a little support now and then…
Time was running out, and Matt couldn’t stand the thought of driving home for the change. He turned off the car in the parking lot across the street from the stone church and checked the address. The internet ad said: “Shifter Support — we welcome all shifters. We take security seriously…”
This year’s Drabblecast Christmas Special brings you another original commissioned holiday story from the master of Christmas weirdness himself: Tim Pratt.
Happy Holidays Weirdo’s!
I was in a grubby little bar down in Florida, sitting on a stool beside a plastic palm tree decorated with Christmas lights, when I heard a cough, and smelled cold ashes. I folded up my list and tucked it into my pocket. Without looking around, I said, “Ruprecht. Long time.” A very long time, actually, but I’ve always been good with names…
Closing out this year’s H.P. Lovecraft month, we bring you another Drabblecast original, this time from author by Bryan Milller, about editing a manuscript as if the whole world depended on it…
The manuscripts I read are haunted. Commas vanish forever into the void. Subjects and verbs struggle in bloody disagreement. Infinitives are cleaved with a dull axe. Sentence fragments ablated at one ragged end lay strewn between the margins.
I take an exorcist’s solemn pride in banishing these warped creatures from the village, sending slapdash monstrosities back to the murky dark from whence they came. The pages come in and the pages go out; my reward is the warm tingle of equilibrium, having restored order to some tiny corner of the world…
Sweet Valley High and the Babysitters Club meet cult life and H.P. Lovecraft mythos, as we continue our special Lovecraft anthology month this week, bringing you an original story by Shaenon K. Garrity.
The Wakefields were the worst family in Oakes Isle. Even the grown-ups knew it. Whenever a chicken was stolen or the air was let out of a bike tire or a starving hex was chalked on a barn wall to sicken the sheep, there was a Wakefield behind it…
I don’t know how I lost you. I remember there was that long time of searching for you, frantic and sick-making … I was almost ecstatic with anxiety. And then I found you, so that was alright. Only I lost you again. And I can’t make out how it happened.
I’m sitting out here on the flat roof you must remember, looking out over this dangerous city. There is, you remember, a dull view from my roof. There are no parks to break up the urban monotony, no towers worth a damn. Just an endless, featureless cross-hatching of brick and concrete, a drab chaos of interlacing backstreets stretching out interminably behind my house. I was disappointed when I first moved here, I didn’t see what I had in that view. Not until Bonfire Night.
Lovecraft Month continues as the Drabblecast brings you an original, commissioned piece of H.P. Lovecraft mythos fiction, “Dance, Siege, Swoop” by award-winning author Robert Reed.
Be sure to keep a night light on, this one will chill you to the core!
Story Excerpt:
“My foot did not discover the prize, nor was I the first of the object’s erstwhile owners.
According to every account, it was a young girl who innocently tripped over the mostly buried artifact while skipping across a whisper field. Since this was near the edge of the habitable world, onlookers assumed that the object was an artifact lost by one of the Great Cranes, and perceiving rarity, it was the girl’s uncle who excavated the prize…”
Kicking off this year’s H.P. Lovecraft month with a classic from the man himself. It’s not your mind playing tricks it’s The Rats in the Walls!
On July 16, 1923, I moved into Exham Priory after the last workman had finished his labours.
The restoration had been a stupendous task, for little had remained of the deserted pile but a shell-like ruin; yet because it had been the home of several of my ancestors, I let no expense deter me.
The place had not been inhabited for a century since a tragedy of intensely hideous, (though largely unexplained) nature had struck down the master, five of his children, and several servants; finally driving forth under a cloud of suspicion and terror their illegitimate third son— my lineal progenitor, who had been taken in as their own. The final survivor of the cursed line…
Aimless. A short, simple word. It means “without aim”, where “aim” derives from the notion of calculation with a view to action. Lacking purpose or direction, therefore, without a considered goal.
People mainly use the word in a blunt, softened fashion. They walk “aimlessly” down the street, unsure whether to have a coffee or check out the new magazines in the bookstore or maybe sit on that bench and watch the world go by…
On this week’s Drabblecast, Norm and NPR’s Chioke I’Anson bring you stories about the voices in your head, including “Go Between” by acclaimed writer China Mieville.
“Go Between” tells the tale of a man who, for several years, has been receiving strange instructions to deliver seemingly random items from location to location. Agonizing over effect his deliveries, he considers stopping, unsure whether the deliveries support a malignant cause or aid a good one.
Story Excerpt:
“Something was in the bread. Morley was cutting, and on the fourth strike of the knife, the metal broke.
Behind him, his friends talked over their food. Morley pried the dough apart and touched something smooth. He had marked it with a scratch. Morley could see the thing’s colour, a drab charcoal. He frowned. It had been a long time since this had happened…”
China Tom Miéville is a British urban fantasy fiction author, essayist, comic book writer, socialist political activist and literary critic. He often describes his work as weird fiction and is allied to the loosely associated movement of writers called New Weird.
For this bit of Drabblecast Member Premium Content, we bring you “The Five Hundred Days of Ms. Between” by Joshua Alan Doetsch.
Joshua Alan Doetsch is a “sentient word virus spreading across the collective unconscious through the vector of human language.” His writings include novels, short fiction, and video games (including Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey).
Click here to become a Drabblecast B-Sides Premium Content Member with access to extra stories like this each month!
Warning: story contains violence and references to suicide.
Story Excerpt:
Can’t feel my legs. So I slither along the ground, toward the audient window, humming that song. I hear the wet-velcro rip of the thousand hands rending flesh. I see her through the window. That mocking grin.
The first thing Ms. Between said to me was, “I’m a mad woman with a lab.” The second thing she said was that I could leave at any time with no obligation. The third thing was that there could be no questions—questions would cause her and her offer to evaporate. I believed absolutely in that, so she handed me the murder weapon.
Part two of a Drabblecast production of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic The Shadow Over Innsmouth.
