Horror – Page 5 – The Drabblecast

Drabblecast 368 – Restless in R’lyeh

On August 30, 2015

In Comedy, Drabblecast, Horror, Lovecraft Month

Dear Doctor Saperstein,

I’m a 44-year-old librarian from Kansas and a loyal reader of askdoctorsaperstein.com. Last night, after a relaxing day spent gardening, binge-watching “America’s Got Talent,” and organizing my snowglobe collection, I had a nightmare. A hideous octopus-headed monster performed a ukulele solo on “America’s Got Talent,” then killed and ate Howard Stern. Afterwards, Heidi Klum chanted tunelessly in a harsh alien language (possibly German). When I woke up, I was filled with unspeakable dread and all the snow in my snowglobes was whirling around as if someone had shaken each one. What could it mean?

–Worried in Wichita

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Drabbleclassics 24 – Cinderlands (176)

By Charity Helton

On August 29, 2015

In Drabbleclassics, Horror, Lovecraft Month, Mystery

Dexter crouched beneath the toxic fruit trees in his grassless back yard, turning over black earth with the spade he’d taken from the old man, and every shovelful revealed worse things:
clumps of cinders and the dust of ashes; rusting nails, practically dripping tetanus; wickedly-curved shards of brown glass; bullets of various sizes, crusted with dirt; and a foot or so down, fragments of black-stone statuary…

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Drabbleclassics 23 – Synesthesia (92)

By Charity Helton

On August 23, 2015

In Action, Drabbleclassics, Drama, Horror

They called it “Synesthesia.” It’s when the senses got mixed up and you started to hear colors or taste sounds…

Norm begins this with a warning concerning graphic violence and gore. We return to one of the Drabblecast’s favorite topics, the Zombie Apocalypse. The theme receives a fresh airing, which is just as well, as it was starting to smell. Sal Lemerond, veteran of the horror webzine “Necrotic Tissue,” posits the connection between drug addicts and zombies, in a 100-word drabble. Norm chimes in with a tasty public service announcement about the nutritional value of your brain on drugs. In the feature story, J. Alan Pierce whose work has appeared in Kaleidotrope, as well as twice on the Drabblecast (#18 “The One that Got Away” and #31 “Beekeepers”) – takes us through a zombie plague via the eyes of an early victim. The condition first manifests as Synthesesia, the scientific name for the ability to taste colors, smell sounds, and other bizarre sensory hallucinations. The story culminates in a family dispute and a choice betrayal.

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Drabblecast 367 – The Whisperer in Darkness pt. 2

By Drabblecast

On August 20, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Lovecraft Month

Then, apparently crossing my incoherent note and reaching me Saturday afternoon, September 8th, came that curiously different and calming letter neatly typed on a new machine; that strange letter of reassurance and invitation which must have marked so prodigious a transition in the whole nightmare drama of the lonely hills. Again I will quote from memory – seeking for special reasons to preserve as much of the flavour of the style as I can.

To say that the letter relieved me would be only fair, yet beneath my relief lay a substratum of uneasiness. If Akeley had been sane in his terror, was he now sane in his deliverance?

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Drabblecast 366 – The Whisperer in Darkness pt. 1

By Drabblecast

On August 9, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Lovecraft Month

Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end. To say that a mental shock was the cause of what I inferred – that last straw which sent me racing out of the lonely Akeley farmhouse and through the wild domed hills of Vermont in a commandeered motor at night – is to ignore the plainest facts of my final experience. Notwithstanding the deep things I saw and heard, and the admitted vividness the impression produced on me by these things, I cannot prove even now whether I was right or wrong in my hideous inference. For after all Akeley’s disappearance establishes nothing. People found nothing amiss in his house despite the bullet-marks on the outside and inside. It was just as though he had walked out casually for a ramble in the hills and failed to return.

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Drabblecast 363 – The Totals

By Drabblecast

On July 4, 2015

In Drabblecast, Fantasy, Horror

Clutch has killed somebody recently.

This goes without saying.

For as long as Clutch can remember, he has always killed somebody “recently.” If not within the last few hours, then certainly within the last few days. He may have gone as long as a couple of weeks without, from time to time, when circumstances conspired against him. But never as long as a month, no, not for living memory.

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Drabblecast 359 – Trifecta: Unnatural Growth

By Drabblecast

On May 9, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Strange

My twin brother had been a dry-eyed baby, and he grew into a dry-eyed boy.

“Yaakov, why don’t you ever cry?” I asked him the day we buried my uncle’s family.

He shrugged. “Maybe you carry all the tears for both of us, Anna.”

I thought he might be right. In the past month I had cried again and again. I had wept through the night of hiding in the root cellar among the onions and potatoes and jars of pickled vegetables, my face buried in our mother’s skirt. We emerged in the morning to discover the Cossacks had burned down the barn with all of our animals trapped inside. I cried again for the goats. We didn’t even know yet that our cousins down the road had suffered the same fate. Our two older siblings took their turns calming me, but I took the most comfort from Yaakov’s stoic face.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 60 – The Great VüDü Linux Teen Zombie Massacree

By Drabblecast

On April 7, 2015

In Comedy, Drabblecast B-Sides, Horror

Bob and I attracted a pack of zombies when we stopped to fuel up at the Texaco in Buffalo Springs. I hoped we’d lost them, but hope was all I had. Bob said they were the fresh remains of a high school football team who’d been drowned and de-souled by water daemons at a lakeside party.

Young, strong corpses have the speed and stamina to run down a deer. Until the sun and wind finally turned their flesh to stinky jerky, they’d be dangerous enough to make a vampire shit bats. And fresh zombies are persistent as porn site pop-up ads. If they take a shine to the smell of your blood, they might track you for days, stopping only if live meat falls right in their laps.

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Drabbleclassics 19 – So You’re Going to Die (149)

By Charity Helton

On March 31, 2015

In Drabbleclassics, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi

The energy and personality of a person can get stuck before it evaporates from our world. Wood is a fair dumping ground. Something about its pore size and how cellulose vibrates. A person can get himself pasted inside the wall or the floorboards. The body and brain quit, but the rest of the bastard lingers, and that’s the weird quantum trickery that for thousands of years people have called a ghost…

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Drabblecast 350 – Trifecta XXX: Something Fishy

By Drabblecast

On February 18, 2015

In Drabblecast, Fantasy, Horror

Izam’s fingers moved on their own. They found his sunken chest. And counted his ribs.

His father would have slapped his hand away. A stupid habit of a stupid boy. A stupid starving boy who counted his ribs when he was hungry even though it only made him hungrier. Izam knew it was stupid
but he could not help it. He was so hungry.

The ocean was silent. The boat was still, the fishing line as motionless as ever. The last rays of sun sparkled on the waves. There would be no fish today. No food. Izam’s fingers brushed his chest and began counting his ribs again. No food for another day.

The line tugged. The rod tore from his hand.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 57 – The Pain Peddlers

By Drabblecast

On January 24, 2015

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Horror, Sci-Fi

The phone bleeped. Northrop nudged the cut-in switch and heard Maurillo say, “we got a gangrene, chief. They’re amputating tonight.”

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Drabbleclassics 15 – Creature (206)

By Charity Helton

On January 19, 2015

In Drabbleclassics, Fantasy, Horror

And so came Creature out of the wasteland and into the city, bouncing from hilltop to hilltop like a bulbous ballerina skipping across the knuckles of a great hand. He was big as the moon and black as the night, and he came crashing into the city like a silent meteor. The cityfolk watched his approach with wide eyes and open mouths, and then scattered like leaves…

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Drabblecast 347 – Why I Hate Zombie Unicorns

By Drabblecast

On January 10, 2015

In Comedy, Drabblecast, Fantasy, Horror, Strange

The good news is, zombie unicorns almost never bite. The bad news is, even a tiny scratch from a zombie unicorn horn will turn you into a zombie. Mom discovered that by accident.

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Drabbleclassics 13 – Rangifer Volans (192)

By Charity Helton

On December 20, 2014

In Comedy, Drabbleclassics, Horror, Strange

In early December, Brad Miro walked into the office of his partner, Dr. John Estes, and said, “I’ve got our next target. It’s perfect. The public is going to love it.”

John closed his eyes. “I haven’t even finished writing the paper about the Mongolian death worm yet”

This Christmas Special episode of Drabblecast starts with Norm’s Lovecraft inspired take on “The Night Before Christmas”. The theme this week is a creepy yet festive take on Christmas. The feature lets us see the career of a successful crypto-zoologist. As we see Dr John Estes just recovering from discovering the Mongolian death worm when his partner wants to catch a flying reindeer. Norm discusses how it’s better not to believe, like in Santa… or the Mayans.

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Drabblecast 345 – Cat With Blue Fur Trifecta

By Drabblecast

On December 19, 2014

In Comedy, Drabblecast, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi

A collection of stories from the Cat With Blue Fur Writing Contest.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 55 – The Lonely Child

By Drabblecast

On November 23, 2014

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Horror

Something pricked Marla’s hand. Groggily, very much so, she turned over in bed and spoke to her husband.

“John,” Marla whispered, trying to keep the irritation out of her voice, “turn on the light. There’s a pin in the bed.”

“What?” Her husband rolled over in the dark, and she felt his elbow bump into her leg.

“John, there’s a needle. In the bed. With your baby. Turn on the light.” Her words were firm. John got up and turned on the light, looking at her unsteadily.

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Drabblecast 342 – I’m Bill Kurtis

By Drabblecast

On November 10, 2014

In Drabblecast, Horror, Mystery

Nate had expected the first serial killer. In fact the first thing he’d said to Kelly once their Ford rolled to a stop on the shoulder was, “This is serial killer country. We’re finished.” She made scaredy-cat eyes and drew a finger across her throat. “Finished,” he enunciated. She’d heard his bake before, something to the effect that certain places settled and then maybe recultivated to feel remote–the Wisconsin Northwoods, for example, or parts of Appalachia or, in this case, Tornado Alley–were stuffed silly with the dumped spent corpses that were the nuggets of serial killers’ labor. The type needed space to operate. So each tree in the Northwoods doubled as a headstone, each stalk of corn out here a memorial, and to hike cross-country through such territory was to traipse condemned through the densest kind of cemetery.

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Drabblecast 341- The Litany of Earth

By Drabblecast

On November 4, 2014

In Drabblecast, Drama, Horror

After a year in San Francisco, my legs grew strong again. A hill and a half lay between the bookstore where I found work and the apartment I shared with the Kotos. Every morning and evening I walked, breathing mist and rain into my desert-scarred lungs, and every morning the walk was a little easier. Even at the beginning, when my feet ached all day from the unaccustomed strain, it was a hill and a half that I hadn’t been permitted for seventeen years.

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Drabbleclassics 11 – The Box Born Wraith (87)

By Charity Helton

On October 31, 2014

In Drabbleclassics, Horror

“I don’t want to die in the dark!”
“We all die in the dark, Benny…”

Norm spends this episode doing his very best cheesy Vincent Price styled horror show host (Note: not a Vincent Price imitation, but an imitation of a really bad Vincent Price imitator), complete with an interminable string of puns about “ghouls” and “ghosts.” As this year’s Halloween treat, Norm selects a truly terrifying story from frequently heard contributor Kevin David Anderson, also seen in Dark Animus, and numerous other publications which include the word “Dark” in their titles. In “The Box Born Wraith,” an unexpected encounter between a condemned mobster and a tribe of hungry ghouls changes both the captive and the captors. Finally, still in character, Norm urges listeners to face the horrors of the voting booth in November’s election.

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Drabbleclassics 10 – The Wiggly People (68)

By Charity Helton

On October 13, 2014

In Drabbleclassics, Drama, Horror

Uncle Karl shouts when he’s mad, and sometimes he smacks Mama. That always makes the sharp things hurt me and the wiggly people come out…

On this episode of the Drabblecast, a dark tale from favorite author Eugie Foster. A troubled youth, a view in to his chaotic mind, and deeply effected life. Shake hands with the wiggly people!

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Category: Horror Page 5 of 12