Drabblecast Covers Collage 2018 01

Tag: children Page 2 of 3

Cover for Drabblecast episode 237, Test Drive, by Mary Mattice

Drabblecast 237 – Test Drive

Cover for Drabblecast episode 237, Test Drive, by Mary MatticeIt was my turn to wear the mask, but my egg-sister Linney wouldn’t give it up. She’d been wearing the mask all morning, set on Smile, and it was a test day, too. Everyone thought she was so pleased and relaxed and Earthy…

This episode of the Drabblecast opens with the announcement of the 2011 People’s Choice Awards winners: Best Episode Art (Jerel Dye, Hokkaido Green, episode 208), Best Drabble (Lab Rats by Nicholas J Carter, episode 229), and Best Story (The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk by Eugie Foster, episode 214). In the feature, alien egg-sisters Linney and Mirana are competing for an assignment on Earth. On test day, they are evaluated on their abilities to blend into human society. Despite a disappointing start, Mirana pulls ahead of Linney during a trip to the mall where they meet, and she charms, a human teenage boy.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 235, Unreliable Witness, by Kathleen Beckett

Drabblecast 235 – Unreliable Witness

Cover for Drabblecast episode 235, Unreliable Witness, by Kathleen BeckettI don’t know if this is the same tape as last time, because They keep moving things around and stealing them. I don’t know who does it. It may be the staff here, or my own family when they come to visit, or the aliens, but somebody’s always doing it — taking my glasses, my tapes, my TV remote, anything I put down for a second. I don’t think it’s the other residents. I used to think that, but I don’t think they’re that organized. Some of them are a bit senile, to tell you the truth…

In this episode of the Drabblecast, Catherine is an 89-year-old nursing home resident plagued by someone who keeps taking her things and a son and daughter-in-law who treat her like a child. When she gets a visit from an alien named Tom, they strike a bargain: He will tell her who the thief is if she tells him the secret to longevity. His race does not live to old age, they die after reaching breeding age and having children (the human equivalent of about 40 years old); he is trying to learn how to extend their lifespan. Despite her insistence that there is no secret he doesn’t believe her, but does tell her no one is taking her stuff – she just can’t keep track of it. Catherine thinks he is lying because he didn’t like that she didn’t have an answer for him and becomes convinced that the people who are taking her stuff are actually looking for alien, looking for clues about their existence among her possessions. She makes a tape recording of her experience, hoping that when they inevitably take the tape and listen to it they will realize they have no reason to continue stealing from her since she will freely tell them everything she knows. In the drabble, a young girl wakes up with a new set of stitches and doesn’t stop searching until she finds the quarter the kidney fairy has left her.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 234, Jagannath, by Bill Halliar

Drabblecast 234 – Jagannath

Cover for Drabblecast episode 234, Jagannath, by Bill HalliarAnother child was born in the great Mother, excreted from the tube protruding from the Nursery ceiling. It landed with a wet thud on the organic bedding underneath. Papa shuffled over to the birthing tube and picked the baby up in his wizened hands. He stuck two fingers in the baby’s mouth to clear the cavity of oil and mucus, and then slapped its bottom. The baby gave a faint cry.

“Ah,” said Papa. “She lives…”

This episode of the Drabblecast is about awakenings and transformations. In the drabble, not all its memories of a man’s life make sense to an undersea creature. In the feature, generations ago the survivors of a ruined world struck a deal with their Mother, an enormous creature merging flesh and technology. They live symbiotically within her, helping her do everything from navigating to digesting food while in return she provides them safety and sustenance. When Mother is injured beyond repair, starved for both food and fresh genetic material, she passes on a dying gift.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 225, Trifecta XIX, by Steve Santiago

Drabblecast 225 – Trifecta XIX

Cover for Drabblecast episode 225, Trifecta XIX, by Steve SantiagoOnce, at the beginning, you asked why you were brought here. This is what I told you: your parents made a deal. I would rid them of their plague of rats, and they would pay me. I cleared the town of pests, easily done, and returned for my payment. They laughed at me and tried to send me away with less than they promised. Money is not important. Deals are.

The theme of this episode of the Drabblecast is fairy tale child abduction. In David is Six, David cannot wait to be seven. In his desperation, he strikes a bargain with a fairy that appears to him as a talking toad and is taken to the fairy queen. The Best Boy, The Brightest Boy picks up where the Pied Piper of Hamlin left off, following the children and the Piper into his kingdom under the mountain where after a series of cruel games and tests, only one boy remains alive. He becomes the Piper’s apprentice. In Broken, a father stumbles upon a fairy in the act of exchanging his disabled child for her own enchanted brood. A heart-breaking decision follows.

Drabblecast 220 – Trifecta XVIII

Cover for Drabblecast episode 220, Trifecta XVIII, by Liz PenniesAnother of the Drabblecast’s vaunted Trifecta series. Three short stories, each with a unique twist. The episode begins with an interview of author J.R. Hamantaschen, Norm runs fingers through his troubled mind, learning of the seeds from which his horrors spring. The theme of this Trifecta: getting the boot – stories of rejection and alienation. First up, Richard Weems’s Bad Habit, in which a nun and a naked pervert do battle (no, really). Next, author Andrew Gudgel (featured on fellow podcasts such as Escapepod) appears with Tags, as read by Kimi Alexander, a story of teenage dares in a technologically submerged world. Lastly, A Happy Family, by author, novelist Nathaniel Tower, read by Abner Senires, in which a family receives a very unexpected bundle of joy (and puzzlement).

Episode Sponsor: You Shall Never Know Security by J.R. Hamantaschen.

Drabblecast 214 – The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk

Cover for Drabblecast episode 214, The Wish of the Demon Achtromagk, by David FlettAchtromagk shuddered, lost in nightmare images: crimson lightning dotting a wasteland, twilight despair and feeble railings, isolation in a mewling throng. It thrashed and twisted but could not escape, could not stop the unwanted vistas in its mind.

It was silent. And soft. And dark…

Next up in Lovecraft month, a heart-warming tale of an extra-dimensional Lovecraftian horror (an ‘oh so huggable’ one) by Drabblecast favorite Eugie Foster.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 211, At the End of the Hall, by Michael Hoskins

Drabblecast 211 – At the End of the Hall

Cover for Drabblecast episode 211, At the End of the Hall, by Michael HoskinsMy earliest fear, the one I remember anyways, was of great pulp magazine robots with hot water heater bodies and vacuum tube eyes. My brother forbade me to touch his precious magazines, so I wouldn’t. I’d stare and stare at the covers through; hourglassed damsels in diaphanous gowns draped over thick slab altars, and the robots, always the robots with their cylindrical torsos and pincer claws for hands….

In Search of the Brain-Eating Nandi Bear Part III

Cover for Drabblecast episode 209, Babyhead, by Johan Lindroos

Drabblecast 209 – Babyhead

Cover for Drabblecast episode 209, Babyhead, by Johan LindroosCynthia couldn’t explain what she’d just seen in the vegetable patch.

She didn’t want to look again. She considered going back into the house, crawling back into bed with Mikey, and putting it down as a beer-inspired dream.

But that pinkish dome with the fuzzy down had felt soft under her fingers, and there had been the smell of manufactured newness, like a dusting of talcum powder wafting up to her nostrils, as she had pulled the coarse outer leaves of the cabbage apart…

Tales of parental love gone awry in this week’s unsettling Drabblecast.

Drabblecast 205 – Trifecta XVI

Cover for Drabblecast episode 205, Trifecta 216, by Georgia Warley CummingsA Trifecta is comprised of three similarly themed stories selected by The Drabblecast’s editors. Now for some raucous scary fun!

Love means never letting go. And biting..

Cover for Drabblecast episode 181, Funeral Song For a Ventriloquist, by Caroline Parkinson

Drabblecast 181 – Funeral Song for a Ventriloquist

Cover for Drabblecast episode 181, Funeral Song For a Ventriloquist, by Caroline ParkinsonA puppet’s words infect. They taint. They do this without ever sounding like a thing, without the listener realizing they have been spoken. A true ventriloquist, as those who are educated and informed may or may not choose to tell you, is an adept in the art of keeping those mouths shut…

On this episode of Drabblecast, Norm focuses on the bliss of ignorance versus the pain of knowledge. In Drabble news he muses about the fact that (oh no!) scientists have decided that the Triceratops never existed. The feature, narrated by podcast regular Mike Boris, is a new, sinister spin on puppetry. Ventriloquists, it turns out, are the guardians of terrible secretes tasked with preventing their loose-lipped dummies from bringing darkness in to the world.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 179, The Red Bride, by Skeet Scienski

Drabblecast 179 – The Red Bride

Cover for Drabblecast episode 179, The Red Bride, by Skeet ScienskiYou are to imagine, Twigling, the Red Bride to be a human, such as yourself, although she is in truth a creature of the Var...

Cover for Drabblecast episode 165, Doubleheader 6, by Rodolfo Arredondo

Drabblecast 165 – Doubleheader VI

Cover for Drabblecast episode 165, Doubleheader 6, by Rodolfo ArredondoThe baby list is not very long. Babies only come in about six colors — we’re getting one that matches Mother and me. Humans are a lot less interesting than Legos or iBots…

Cover for Drabblecast episode 163, Once a Month on a Sunday, by Caroline Parkinson

Drabblecast 163 – Once a Month on a Sunday

Cover for Drabblecast episode 163, Once a Month on a Sunday, by Caroline ParkinsonOnce a month, on a Sunday, Mum and me and my little brother Zubby would dress up in our best clothes, Mum would put ribbons in my hair, and we’d all walk into town to go to church…

Drabblecast 134 – Bone Sigh

Cover for Drabblecast episode 134, Bone Sigh, by Bo KaierThis week The Drabblecast brings you “Bone Sigh,” by legendary author Tim Pratt!

But first we bring you the continuing adventures of cryptozoologist Connor Choadsworth: In Search of the Mongolian Death Worm: Part Three.

Tim Pratt has written multiple stories for the Drabblecast and this one is quite horrific.

Story Excerpt:

I put the tenderizer down on the white formica table and look at my bonsai scar. It is like a flower, a jellyfish, a pinwheel of raised flesh, yellow bruises, subcutaneous hemorrhaging…

Cover for Drabblecast episode 133, Over the Walls of Eden, by Bo Kaier

Drabblecast 133 – Over the Walls of Eden

Cover for Drabblecast episode 133, Over the Walls of Eden, by Bo Kaier“Why do you remember the books?” he finally asks.
She smiles again. “O Sun, to tell thee how I hate thy beams, That bring to my remembrance from what state I fell, how glorious once above thy sphere, Till pride and worse ambition threw me down…”

Cover for Drabblecast Episode 130, Trifecta 9, by Bo Kaier

Drabblecast 130 – Trifecta IX

Cover for Drabblecast Episode 130, Trifecta 9, by Bo KaierTrifecta 9, dinosaurs, love, monsters, everything you need. Featuring works by Bruce Holland Rogers, Steve Calvert and Bruce Boston.

Cover for Drabblecast episode 129, Annabelle's Alphabet, by Bess Gutenstein

Drabblecast 129 – Annabelle’s Alphabet

Cover for Drabblecast episode 129, Annabelle's Alphabet, by Bess GutensteinAnnabelle’s mother closed her eyes. “Get it sharp,” she said. “Very sharp, so it doesn’t hurt much. I’ll boil some water.”

Somewhere in the house, far from the green places she’d known, baby Annabelle lay on her stomach and cried…

Drabblecast 115 – Clown Eggs

Cover for Drabblecast episode 115, Clown Eggs, by Bo KaierThis week the Drabblecast presents “Clown Eggs” by Jay Lake.

It is a story that introduces us to old “bull” clown Uncle Swarmy. It’s not just another day at the beach. You’ll learn more about the clown life cycle than you’re probably comfortable with!

Story Excerpt:

The spring tide rolled across Momus Beach, tossing the flaccid corpses of clowns like so many torn balloons. Weathered to a dispirited pallor, they twisted in the foamy surf with the eternally surprised expressions of the dead..

Cover for Drabblecast episode 112, The Guardian, by Josh Hugo

Drabblecast 112 – The Guardian

Cover for Drabblecast episode 112, The Guardian, by Josh HugoShe sprinted along the sidewalk, the bag bouncing against her back. The sun melded into the horizon, disappeared, engulfing the city in grave dark. Blood-thirsty screams could be heard in the distance, human howls. The gangs and muties were waking, to reclaim the city in their nightly routine…

This episode of the Drabblecast begins with a Drabble News report on a missing core of armed dolphins, trained to shoot people that look like terrorists or suicide bombers. The Navy denies the report: Norm has his own theories. In the feature, a young girl sneaks through the ruins of a post-apocalyptic city at dusk, in search of medicine for her dying brother. A harrowing journey with life and death consequences ensues.

Cover for Drabblecast 108, The Wicked Witch Looks at 40 (Decades), by Mary Mattice

Drabblecast 108 – The Wicked Witch Looks at 40 (Decades)

Cover for Drabblecast 108, The Wicked Witch Looks at 40 (Decades), by Mary MatticeThe wicked witch business wasn’t what it used to be.  It had been such a simple thing, to lure children with candy; back in the old days when candy had been hard to come by…

In this episode’s Drabble, a moth eloquently expresses her attraction to a bright light and her own subsequent destruction. The feature story, The Wicked Witch Looks at 40 (Decades), follows Winnie the witch through her (long overdue) midlife crisis. After a particularly discouraging Halloween, where not a single child is captured, she takes the advice of an article in Martha Stewart Living magazine, changing her house and her lifestyle.

Page 2 of 3

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén