The Drabblecast – Page 11 – Strange Stories, By Strange Authors, for Strange Listeners

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Drabblecast 374 – Jump I’ll Catch You

On December 18, 2015

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi

Anton drew his legs up underneath him. The car seat was huge and puffy, and the leather made a breathy creak when he moved. It sounded like it was sighing.

‘How much longer?’ he said.

For a while, nobody answered. He thought maybe they hadn’t heard him, but then his mother said, ‘We’ll be there soon.’

There meant the place where our new friends lived. When people talked about them, you could hear something extra in the words. Like they were names: Our New Friends. Anton was trying to look forward to it, because it was good to make new friends, but he sometimes got nervous when there were a lot of new things, different things, to take in. But his mother said they all had to get used to things being different now, so he was trying. He was trying hard.

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Drabblecast 373 – Trifecta: Things We Made

On November 30, 2015

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi

Sato lay on the cement floor of the workshop in a pool of his own blood and tried desperately to get Kuro-4’s legs working again. The robot, in turn, tried to deal with the gaping wounds in Sato’s smashed leg and pelvis.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 64 – The Top 10 Post Apocalypse Short Films

On November 27, 2015

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Video

Norm shares the top 10 best (and free online!) post apocalypse short films in an exlusive video podcast.

Access Drabblecast Bsides Premium Content by signing up for an automatic $10/month subscription to the Drabblecast. Your support is greatly appreciated!

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Drabblecast 372 – Delicate Parts

On November 27, 2015

In Comedy, Drabblecast, Strange

Earnest was in kindergarten when Jackie the Janitor got fired for “choking the chicken” in the girls’ bathroom. That phrase, along with his best friend Bradley Watson’s accompanying hand gestures, stuck in Earnest’s head so hard that whenever he looked at the thing between his legs, all he could see was a bald, pointed bird head, like the ones attached to the roast ducks hanging in the window of a Chinese restaurant.

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Drabblecast 371 – Old Dead Futures

On November 16, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Sci-Fi

There are two things I love, and one is the tiny grey owl outside my window. He is not afraid of me. He hoots and hops to my windowsill so I can stroke his downy head and feed him worms I’ve saved in my pocket.

It is hard to get the worms from my pocket, the way my left arm jerks up behind me and my right hand shakes. Often fat mister owl gets a half a worm, but he doesn’t mind. Mother minds picking the half-worms from my pockets, but I see how she looks at me when I calm my tremoring hand long enough to pat mister owl; I see how she loves me then.

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Drabbleclassics 25 – Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely (113)

By Charity Helton

On November 9, 2015

In Comedy, Drabbleclassics, Strange

A change came over Charlie then, like a cloud passing in front of the sun. He placed his hands flat in his lap, straightened his neck, and took a deep breath. “Us,” he said at last. “They read us.”

A delightful Drabble evokes a sage summation of the style from Norm: the mark of a good drabble is the rolling of the eyes and sounds of chuckling. The feature is a unique tale set inside a televised cartoon world. Our main character, Charlie the purple giraffe, has a disturbing and profound view of his world, one not shared by his best friend Jerry the orange squirrel. Floating question marks, colored word balloons, it may not be as light, airy, and humorous as appears at first blush.

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Drabblecast 370 – The Little Mermaid of Innsmouth

On September 13, 2015

In Drabblecast, Fantasy, Horror, Lovecraft Month

The Drabblecast presents: “The Little Mermaid of Innsmouth” by Caroline M. Yoachim.

This is a new take on the classic Hans Christian Andersen fish tale, replete with all the Lovecraftian lore you should expect from The Drabblecast!

Story Excerpt:

Tomiko knelt at the table, across from her father, carefully holding her back rigid and straight as they ate their breakfast. She hoped the formal posture would make him take her arguments seriously, but he barely looked at her as he ate mix of rice and nattō, fermented soybeans that gave off a pungent smell and overpowered even the constant fishy odor of her father’s skin.

Enjoy (full story is printed below the player):

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Drabblecast 369 – In The Walls

On September 6, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Lovecraft Month

The deadliest things in war are not bullets and guns, but hunger and desperation.
I’m hungry.

Penny gets the bed tonight, I’m on watch, Erik is out looting for food and supplies. If he were white, he tells us seriously, the press would say he was scavenging. But for him, it’s looting.

Not that there’s a press anymore. The newspaper we stuffed inside our makeshift mattress were all from three weeks ago. Then the newspaper company was bombed. That was a week after the Internet service provider was bombed. And while we missed the Internet, no one missed Comcast.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 63 – Doorstepping

On August 31, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Lovecraft Month

There was a buzz at the door. Mike Jansen sighed. Just when you got yourself settled after a long day working on the cheese counter; just when you were looking forward to some quality TV; the door had to go. He’d been standing up all day. His feet were killing him. He nestled down into the settee, deciding to ignore the buzz. He turned up the TV a little.

Buzz. Buzz. Bleedin’ buzz.

The caller was a persistent fellow and no mistake.

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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

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

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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Drabbleclassics 22 – Go Beep (173)

By Charity Helton

On July 21, 2015

In Drabbleclassics, Drama, Fantasy

I’m a fan of Nirvana.

I mean I’m a fan of the band rather than a fan of the concept. Although, hey, what’s not to like about the idea of being no longer subject to torture over the fires of greed, hatred and delusion? Free from all suffering – yes, that sounds pretty good. But if I really wanted to free of everything that makes us human then I probably wouldn’t dig bands like Nirvana any more, and that would be bad. Then I wouldn’t be me any more.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 62 – War of the Clowns

On July 15, 2015

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Strange

One time two clowns set themselves to arguing. The people would stop, amused, to watch them.

—What’s that? they asked.

—Why, it’s only two clowns arguing.

Who could take them seriously? Ridiculous, the two comedians reparteed.

The arguments were common nonsense, the theme was a ninnery.

And an entire day passed.

The following morning, the two remained, obnoxious and outdoing each other. It seemed as though, between them, even yucca soured. In the street, meanwhile, those present were exhilarated with the masquerade. The buffoons began worsening their insults with fine-edged and fine tuned barbs. Believing it to be a show, the passersby left coins along the roadside.

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Drabblecast 365 – This Secular Technology

On July 12, 2015

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi, Strange

Leah woke up, said the blessing upon waking, then turned on her overlay with a mental command. She hissed with displeasure — it was a _gevurah_ day, again. She was supposed to contemplate restriction, discipline, withdrawal. She was beginning to wonder if her teachers were doing this on purpose; the assignments were said to be random, but she no longer believed in randomness. Her soul root was in _chesed_, the diametric opposite of _gevurah_, and she found _gevurah_ days draining at best, excruciatingly painful at worst.

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Drabblecast 364 – All of Our Past Places

On July 5, 2015

In Drabblecast, Fantasy

Aoife always told me that you could go anywhere, as long as you had the right map. So when it happened, my first thought, when I let myself into her apartment after not hearing from her for three days, was this weird feeling of pride.

She’d done it.

She was gone.

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Drabblecast 363 – The Totals

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 362 – Starter House

On June 14, 2015

In Drabblecast, Strange

Dale looked up through the ribbed Lucite dome of Asteroid Cintas II,
his eyes lit from within by thoughts of a bright future. “I never thought,” he said, “I’d own a purebred house.”

Pam locked her eyes on his. “I knew you would. I knew we would. This makes it all worth it.”

They kissed.

A forklift driver smiled at them as he passed, trundling a giant spool of wire through corridors of stacked feedbags. He disappeared into the high dark bay of the feedlot.

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