PodCastle 136: The Christmas Mummy
Show Notes
Rated G
Happy holidays to all of you from all of us at PodCastle!
The Christmas Mummy
by Heather Shaw & Tim Pratt
Trish led Nate from the room, into the hall — their parents’ door was closed — and onto the stairs. She could hear someone moving down there. Trish crept down the carpeted steps. The only light in the living room came from the bright Christmas tree. Even the yule log in the fireplace had burned down.
Two men, dressed in black pajamas with their faces covered, were tying a big red ribbon around a crate that was bigger than the couch.
“Ninjas?” Trish whispered to her brother.
“Christmas ninjas,” Nate said.
One of the ninjas pulled up his mask a little and ate one of the cookies they’d left for Santa. He drank the milk, too, leaving a white mustache on his ninja mask when he pulled it back down over his mouth.
About the Authors
Heather Shaw
Heather Shaw is a writer, editor, sewist, bookkeeper, and lindy hopper living in Berkeley, CA with her husband and 17-year-old son, River. She’s had short fiction published in Strange Horizons, The Year’s Best Fantasy, Escape Pod, PodCastle, and other nice places. She has been the fiction editor at the erotica zine Fishnet, the speculative fiction zine Flytrap, and the pro-SF zine, Persistent Visions. As a family project during lockdown, Heather, Tim, and their son River designed, created, and successfully Kickstarted a tabletop card game called Cyberwreck. She mostly posts on Bluesky (https://bsky.app/profile/sundew.bsky.social) and Facebook (https://facebook.com/hlshaw).
Tim Pratt
Tim Pratt is the author of more than 30 novels, most recently multiverse/space opera adventure The Knife and the Serpent. He’s a Hugo Award winner for short fiction, and has been a finalist for
Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, Mythopoeic, Stoker, and other awards. He’s also a senior editor and occasional book reviewer for Locus magazine. He posts a lot at Bluesky
(https://bsky.app/profile/timpratt.org) and publishes a new story every month for patrons at www.patreon.com/timpratt
About the Narrator
Rish Outfield
