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.
A special throwback episode. With One week left in the Drabblecast Reborn Kickstarter, Norm presents one of his favorite surreal stories from deep in the archive by Hootingyard writer and Resonance FM radio personality Frank Key, and gives us a teaser about Frank’s commissioned story for Drabblecast Kickstarter Supporters
The bullet-riddled corpses of our dead crew-mates, all sixteen of them, are coffined up, and the coffins stacked as a makeshift ping pong table…
As the Drabblecast Reborn Kickstarter campaign continues, we bring you another Fan Pick: The Belonging Kind. Drabblecast fan Kyle Sellers introduces this eerie story about how hard fitting in can be sometimes…
It might have been in Club Justine, or Jimbo’s, or Sad Jack’s, or the Rafters; Coretti could never be sure where he’d first seen her. At any time, she might have been in any one of those bars. She swam through the submarine half-life of bottles and glassware and the slow swirl of cigarette smoke… she moved through her natural element, one bar after another.
Now, Coretti remembered their first meeting as if he saw it through the wrong end of a powerful telescope, small and clear and very far away.
“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.
Achtromagk 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.
It might have been in Club Justine, or Jimbo’s, or Sad Jack’s, or the Rafters; Coretti could never be sure where he’d first seen her. At any time, she might have been in any one of those bars. She swam through the submarine half-life of bottles and glassware and the slow swirl of cigarette smoke… she moved through her natural element, one bar after another.
Now, Coretti remembered their first meeting as if he saw it through the wrong end of a powerful telescope, small and clear and very far away.
At the sack’s bottom, beneath an empty donut box, he found the beef jerky. It tasted mostly of pepper, but underneath it had a tingly, metallic flavor he tried not to think about. Who knew what it might have been made from? He doubted there were any original-form cows, the o-cows, left to slaughter…
“What I don’t like about it,” said Cliffe, “is that is it’s just a metaphor instead of something real.”
“What if it was real?” I (Sam) asked. “What if it was me and I actually turned into a cockroach someday?”
This episode of the Drabblecast is all about crazy relationships. In the drabble, it’s apparent that finding Mr. Right is difficult no matter who (or what) you are. In the feature, Sam wakes up one day to discover he has been transformed into a giant cockroach. He spends the rest of his day on a surreal quest, not only to return to his normal self, but also to save his girlfriend from threats both mundane and extraordinary, with the hope a new start together.
It had rolled and tumbled, whatever it was, gelatinous and tentacled, from lake to canal to stream.
People watched from the shore, following it with opera glasses and sea telescopes. Some thought it was a squid, others an octopus, others still just a glob of fatty flesh from some aquatic animal long torn apart and rotten. It was milky and translucent with tiny red hooks lining the each of its sixteen flacid arms. Deep blue bruises speckled the skin, wrinkling in like spots on a tomato. It had no visible eyes…
This double header features two “postcard stories” by Will Ludwigsen. In Nora’s Thing, sickly Nora’s sister and friends bring her to a mysterious creature they hope has healing powers. In Endless Encore, a sinister puppet show occurs nightly for its audience of one.
In some parts of the world — Austria, Croatia, Hungary — they still remember. They understand. You can’t have something bright without having something dark to balance it. If you’ve got St. Nicholas, you also need the Krampus…
This episode of the Drabblecast opens with Norm’s reflections on the holidays, Santa Claus, and the origins of flying reindeer. In the drabble, the mayhem of a large family’s holiday dinner leads to a darkly humorous tragedy. In the feature, an unsavory petty criminal has a chance encounter with a dying old man who confides that years ago Santa bestowed upon him a miracle, a wish, to teach the true meaning of Christmas. Unfortunately, as they both learn, it comes with a catch..
Achtromagk 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.
“Are these fiddlebacks ferns mommy?” Cindy asked. Fiddlehead honey. Margery said absently. “Fiddlebacks are nasty spiders.” It was only later that she would realize Cindy, for once in her vacuous, Barbie obsessed life, was right.”
The first episode of Women and Alien’s month 2011 featuring three stories, each exploring nasty, insectile alien menaces. Fiddleback Ferns, a space infestation sends a mother to her breaking point. Killipedes, a dark, humorous tale where a doctor breaks down a patient’s nasty parasitical infection. In The Difficulties of Evolution, a mournful parent contemplates her child’s anthropomorphic metamorphosis.
The book opens in New York where hedge-fund manager Tony Wolfe- completely convinced that his success proves him a superman straight out of an Ayn Rand novel- wakes up groggy and realizes his new hair transplant appears to have fallen out. If only.
I woke to this new darkness, swirling about me. A phrase sticking in my mind — “Lazarus Syndrome.” What happened to people when they had died, but, for some reason, some lack of death’s completion — some unfinished business — had rejoined the living.
In this episode of the Drabblecast, with a theme ‘Control,’ Norm speculates on zombies as dependents. In the drabble, we visit the zombie apocolypse. In the feature story, the consciousness of a slain man forms a being out of his remains, and the sea life around the. What is the nature of this entity, what is its place, and ultimately, what is its sinister purpose?
His home is in the dense jungle along the banks of the Liverpool River. Should anyone venture into that jungle Garkain, who can fly as well as walk, will wrap himself around the intruder, and smother him with the loose folds of skin which are attached to his arms and legs.
—Charles P. Mountford, The First Sunrise, 1971
In this episode of the Drabblecast podcast, the theme is mythical beasts and creatures, imagined, extinct or otherwise. Norm discuss fantastic animals from down Under (Australia). In the feature we are presented evidence of the existence of the frightful Garkain. The monster’s aspects are recalled in several accounts from eye witnesses and scholars.
Oh, it’s been comin’. You can hear it at night when the refugee traffic quiets down. Distant crashes, muffled thuds. Those spindly trees fall over in the front lines and advance the jungle another 15 meters. Or sometimes, it just sounds like soap bubbles fizzing down to scum…
On this episode of the Drabblecast podcast, a pair of stories from decorated author Bruce Holland Rogers. Each deals with perception and the invisible rules that run our lives.
Also on this episode, crytozoologist Connor Choadsworth returns with: In Search of the Mongolian Death Worm: Part Two.
We have two feature stories for you today: “A Baker’s Dozen,” and “The Wrong Cart.”
Story Excerpt:
People don’t like to admit mistakes. You know how it is. Sometimes it’s just easier to act like you didn’t make a mistake at all, like you’re doing exactly what you meant to do all along…