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.
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Category: Horror Page 3 of 12
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.
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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…
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“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…
Episode Trailer can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC-qJxNuA6s
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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…”
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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…
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Special Guest Host Cryptkeeper Norm hosts this year’s Drabblecast Halloween special.
The Drabblecast brings you a special 3 original stories from Editors past and present, all centered around the history of a lonesome Texas Graveyard.
We present to you,The Lich Gate Trifecta:
They Went Into the Graveyard, One by One by Matthew Bey
The Armadillo Man by Norm Sherman
Macadam by Samantha Henderson
Enjoy!
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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…
Episode Trailer can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WC-qJxNuA6s
Podcast: Download
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…
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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.
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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…”
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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.
Featuring original
Episode art by Bo Kaier
Twabble: The scraping sound drags me from my sleep. I cannot move. I cannot scream. I COULD, but I’d wake up the cat. Death can wait. by Big Dumb Yak
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…
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Drabblecast Exclusive Premium Content.
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…
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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.
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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.
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“Just Lookin’ for Chocolate.”
Norm and author Kevin Anderson discuss the horror genre, the origins of Cryptkeeper Norm, and of course, the hit story “The Box-Born Wraith” featured as Drabblecast episode 87 back in 2008 and published as our second official Halloween Special.
“We all die in the dark, Benny…”
Another Drabblecast Director’s Cut bringing more detail and author insights to a fan favorite episode.
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Today The Drabblecast brings you an original story commissioned by Karen Heuler: “Beauty Tips for the Apocalypse.”
Karen Heuler wrote her first novel when she was eleven, and she’s been worshiping books at the altar ever since.
Story Excerpt:
In times such as these, with the world shaken to its core, it is all too easy to give up on routine cosmetic care. Yet a fresh look in a war zone can do so much to uplift those suffering and dying right in front of your eyes. Consider it a humanitarian obligation that you owe to those around you, no matter the particular effects of the zone of destruction you find yourself in…
Enjoy the show (the full story is printed below the player)!
Drabblecast 406 – Beauty Tips for the Apocalypse
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This Drabblecast B-Sides episode features Judith Merril’s story “That Only A Mother”
This story is available to our $10/month B-Sides subscribers! Not a member yet? Here’s how you can support the show!
Story Excerpt:
Margaret reached over to the other side of the bed where Hank should have been. Her hand patted the empty pillow, and then she came altogether awake, wondering that the old habit should remain after so many months. She tried to curl up, cat-style, to hoard her own warmth, found she couldn’t do it any more, and climbed out of bed with a pleased awareness of her increasingly clumsy bulkiness.
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Women and Aliens Month continues with Part 2 of “We Who Stole The Dream” by James Tiptree Jr., aka Alice Bradley Sheldon.
If you have not heard part one, you can find that here.
Sadism, slavery, power and oppression… are we ever truly innocent? Or is there the potential of cruelty in all of us?
You be the judge.
Story Excerpt:
An alarm shrieked and cut off, all colors vanished, the very structure of space throbbed wildly—as, by a million-to-one chance, the three most massive nearby moons occulted one another in line with the tiny extra energies of the cruiser and its detonating missile, in such a way that for one micromicrominim the Dream stood at a seminull point with the planetary mass. In that fleeting instant she flung out her tau-field, folded the normal dimensions around her, and shot like a squeezed pip into the discontinuity of being which was tau.
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