by Vylar Kaftan.
Read by Cunning Minx.
Originally appeared in Sybil’s Garage.

“It has a horn,” I say, pushing my plate aside. “That makes it a unicorn.” I go to the window and stare at the sky. It smells like a storm. Clouds stack on top of each other in thick blankets. Lightning flashes in the west. It fires an electrical impulse into my body, and I push the window open. I’m on the fourth floor. “Hello!” I call out the window, leaning forward into the hundred-degree heat. The blast of hot air buoys me up like boiling water, burning me but supporting me, and I’m sure I can fly away if I just let go.

Maddoc hauls me back in the window. “Are you crazy? Get back in here. You’ll fall and kill yourself.” It’s like Maddoc, to make sure everyone and everything is safe.

Rated R for unusual unicorns and deflowered virgins.

Stay tuned for the announcement at the end. More details on our forums here: http://forum.escapeartists.net/index.php?topic=3429

by Samantha Henderson.
Read by Tina Connolly.
Originally appeared in Helix.

The mermaid barely slowed her breakneck pace as she approached and ran herself halfway up a yellow beach, belly-down and arching her back so her torso was almost upright. At the same time, she flung Cassandra casually upon the sand, half-knocking the breath out of her. Cassandra gulped for air, then scrambled as best she could up the beach, out of reach of the mermaid’s grasp — or so she profoundly hoped.

The sand clung in a fine film to her dress and bare legs, and itched. Miss Murchinson would have been scandalized.

Rated R for carnivorous mermaids, sexual shenanigans in the presence of a minor, and near death experiences. This one’s not for the kiddies.

This episode was brought to you by The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, out now from Orbit. You can read the first three chapters of the book at www.Nkjemisin.com.

by Leah Bobet.
Read by Mur Lafferty.
Originally published in Strange Horizons.

The sun slanted ever further in, pooling warm and uncomfortable at my feet as I noted the exits and matched walls to arms of the compass, itemized my situation neatly in my head.

When the light-dapples on the floor were long and tinged with sickly orange, a servant came in with bread and cheese and water. Peasant food: perhaps it was meant to be a slight. Mercenary food, Company food: perhaps it was meant to remind. I moved to take it, and remembered that my hands were bound fast.

Rated R for kickass heroines and human suffering.

by Kiini Ibura Salaam

Read by Ann Leckie

Originally published in Ideomancer

It is legend how my mother kept my grandmother’s eye sockets clean with the pure white feather of a cockatoo. She often sent me to the forests to pick marigolds to stack high around Grandmother’s skull. Grandmother loved the smell of the marigolds. She told me so every time I entered the house with an armful of fragrant weeds.

After my grandmother’s head had been sitting in the altar room for a month, my mother realized my grandmother was dying, not because of her missing body, but because she was bored. Mother brought Grandmother into the living room and positioned her right in front of the window. There Grandmother sat happily for a week until Dad caught her promising her skull to an epileptic candy vendor.

Rated R: For Skulls, Sweet and Otherwise, and Days of the Dead

By Ben Francisco

Read by Brian Lieberman

Originally Published in Realms of Fantasy

Before I can even ring, Uncle Gilberto opens the door and gives me a
big hug and a kiss that smells of gin and menthol cigarettes.  His
dog, Ganymede, barks and snuggles his head between my legs.  The cat
eyes me suspiciously from the next room.  From behind me, someone
helps me slip off my jacket.  I look over my shoulder, but nobody’s
there.  “Who’s that?” I ask my uncle.

“That’s Daniel,” he says.

“Hey, Daniel,” I say.  “Been a while.”

Gilberto shakes a finger at the air behind me.  “No, you cannot also
take his shirt!  I told you to behave.”  Uncle Gil throws both hands
into the air.  “Dios mío, what have I done?  Bringing my innocent
nephew into a house with twenty-seven horny ghosts.  Qué barbaridad.
You tell me right away if any of them try anything, me entiendes,
James?”

Rated R: Contains Love, Ghosts, and San Francisco

By N.K. Jemisin.
Read by Rajan Khanna.
Originally published in Helix.

“Death is not a Gatherer’s business,” Cet said. Did the woman realize
how greatly she had insulted him and all his brethren? For the first time
in a very long while, he felt anger stir in his heart. “_Peace_ is our
business. Sharers do that by healing the flesh. Gatherers deal with the
soul, judging those which are too corrupt or damaged to be salvaged and
granting them the Goddess’ blessing — “

“If you had learned your catechisms better you would understand that,”
the Superior interjected smoothly. He threw Cet a mild look, doubtless to
remind Cet that they could not expect better of ignorant country folk. “And
you would have known there was no need for payment. In a situation like
this, when the peace of many is under threat, it is the Temple’s duty to
offer aid.”

The men looked abashed; Mehepi’s jaw tightened at the scolding. With a
sigh, the Superior glanced down at some notes he’d taken on a reedleaf
sheet. “So, Cet; these brigands she mentioned are the problem. For the
past three turns of the greater moon, their village and others along the
Empty Thousand have suffered a curious series of attacks. Everyone in the
village falls asleep — even the men on guard duty. When they wake, their
valuables are gone. Food stores, livestock, the few stones of worth they
gather from their mine; their children have been taken too, no doubt sold to
those desert tribes who traffic in slaves. Some of the women and youths
have been abused, as you heard. And a few, such as the village headman and
the guards, were slain outright, perhaps to soften the village’s defenses
for later. No one wakes during these assaults.”

Cet inhaled, all his anger forgotten. “A sleep spell? But only the
Temple uses narcomancy.”

Rated R for nightmares, broken oaths and mended persons.

This episode of PodCastle is illustrated! The illustration has been provided by Shaun Lindow.

By Tim Pratt
Read by Steve Anderson
Originally published in Realms of Fantasy.

“It is an axe, Mr. Selfry,” the man said. He produced a prybar — from where, Richard wasn’t sure — and, with a great squealing and popping of nails, pried the lid off the crate. Richard left the safety of the doorway and went out onto the porch just as the man set the lid aside. Peering into the crate, Richard saw only darkness, as if the box were full of ink, but then something glinted silver, and — as if his eyes were adjusting to a moonlit night, instead of midafternoon sun — he saw the great silver crescent of an axehead, nestled among styrofoam packing peanuts that were, inexplicably, black instead of white. It was a double-bladed axe, with a long three-sided pyramidal spike emerging from the top.

“I don’t understand,” Richard said. “This thing is a family heirloom? From Great Grandma Melody? It doesn’t even look old.”

Rated R: contains a weapon smarter than average, and more purposeful.

By Katherine Sparrow
Read by Marguerite Croft
Originally published in Best Lesbian Romance.

Besides, Tucson was too hot in summer.

It was so hot, way up into the hundred and tens, that the only refuge was in Betty’s pool. We stayed out there the whole hot afternoon, and when the sun went down it didn’t even get all that much cooler. Neither of us had a stitch of clothes on as we lay submerged, lying on twin yellow plastic floatables. It was good to be naked with Betty, I could look over at her and see all the things a body could survive. She had that old desert skin that bore a million wrinkles and just hung off her. It made me feel like maybe I could survive in this world too. Betty kept our cups of Jim Beam and Mountain Dew full all afternoon and into the night, cause as she said it, it was too hot not to drink. On about midnight, the hot air was just starting to feel bareable again, but neither of us were keen on getting out.

Rated R: for desert weather, both heat and storms.

by Ann Leckie

Read by Phoebe Harris

Originally Published by Strange Horizons.

Irris was a changed man. When he went out fishing, he didn’t spend the day drunk or asleep in the boat and then come home with nothing, the way everyone expected. Instead he made a full day’s catch early, and then picked up an axe and went to cut wood. He sat down to dinner sober, played with the baby, spoke pleasantly to his wife and sister. In the evening, instead of drinking, he sat in front of the fire and knotted nets, or carved fishhooks. It’s because he almost died, the neighbors whispered. Everyone had seen the scar. Everyone wondered how long the change could last.

There were other things, little strangenesses that never made their way out of the house for the villagers to be aware of them. For instance, one afternoon Ytine brought him a dish of vetch, and he said, “My dear, it amuses me to call this gravel. So the next time I ask you for a bowl of gravel, you’ll know what I want.” Water was poison, working was sleeping. The list of changed names seemed to grow every day. Voud wasn’t sure why Ytine went along with it, except that the new Irris was kind and hard-working, and doted on the baby. And maybe, thought Voud, that was reason enough. The crane had said not to waste her grief on Irris, and she hadn’t cried when she’d heard the whispery-voiced god say he was dead.

But one evening Irris came home in an especially good mood. “Good fishing means good trading,” he said. He had needles, and fiber — dyed and spun — for Ytine, and a tiny, wheeled cart for the baby. “And Voud,” he said, “I hear you’re a hunter.” He handed her a bronze knife. It was small and its plain haft was dented, but it was a real metal knife and it was hers.

That was when she knew for certain that her brother was dead. Irris would never have thought to buy her something she wanted so much. Not without her telling him, and likely not even then. She sat there with the knife in her hand and cried.

Rated R: For Gods, Mortals, Frogs, and Other Potential Sacrifices

By Samantha Henderson

Read by Ben Phillips

Originally published in Abyss & Apex.

I rock in the bentwood chair on the porch and wait. I know about the
bodies in the arroyo, in the mesquite ash between the charred trunks
of the live oaks. The grass beneath the mesquite had grown long in
winter rains and was shriveled dry by the summer heat. Fire had
crisped it quickly, and the oaks were dense hard wood, old fuels,
burning long and hot and all-consuming.

Eventually they all come to me like homing pigeons, those unlucky ones
who die in the unforgiving desert, short water or caught out at night
with no fire and not enough of them to huddle together to keep warm,
not thinking how cold the badlands get in the middle of the night with
nothing to keep in the day’s heat. They come to me at dusk,
hollow-eyed and bewildered to my front yard, all of them. They stand,
wavering in the moonlight, waiting for me to let them go.

Rated R: Ghosts are Unhappy for a Reason