Read by Norm Sherman (of The Drabblecast)

Special Closing Music: “Just Mizunderstood” by Norm Sherman

Originally published in Magic for Beginners. Read the text here. (Reprinted from The Living Dead)

This is a story about being lost in the woods.

This guy Soap is at a party out in the suburbs. The thing you need to know about Soap is that he keeps a small framed oil painting in the trunk of his car. The painting is about the size of a paperback novel. Wherever Soap goes, this oil painting goes with him. But he leaves the painting in the trunk of his car, because you don’t walk around a party carrying a painting. People will think you’re weird.

Rated R: Contains Language, Thematic Elements

EDITORS’ NOTE: For some reason yet to be determined, we experienced some kind of issue with iTunes and other programs, resulting in an incomplete download (only Norm’s song). The entire download should be 62 minutes in length. We apologize and are trying to remedy it. Thanks for your patience!

UPDATE: Thanks to Ben, things seem to be back to normal now. Thanks again for your patience, and enjoy the story!

Read by Tina Connolly

Originally Published in Strange Horizons. Read the Text here!

Martin Spatz, the actor, had gone Vagabonding in 8,000 BC and killed a wild dog that was about to attack him. (It was a blatant violation of the rules–you had to be prepared to die in the past, that was the first thing you signed on the contract. He went to jail over it. They trimmed two years off because he used a stick, and not the pistol he’d brought with him.)

No one could find a direct connection between the dog and the mice, but people speculated. People were still speculating, even though the mice were long dead.

Everything went, sooner or later; the small animals tended to last longer than the large ones, but eventually all that was left were some particularly hardy plants, and the butterflies.  By the next year the butterflies were swarming enough to block out the summer sun, and Disease Control began to intervene.

Rated PG: Contains Butterflies and Hurricanes. Happy Birthday, Ray!

Read by Simon Meddings (of the Waffle-On podcast)

A PodCastle Original!

Bits and pieces of passengers and crew lay in untidy heaps along the deck. Picking my way through the remains of the unfortunate purser, I stepped to the railing. The setting sun threw the airship’s shadow across the water. Amid the rolling waves, the mermaids kept pace with us, gliding effortlessly in a perfect Q-formation.

“Regard,” I said to the gore-spattered robot, hoping to distract him from his murderous frenzy. “The zombie mermaids of the Undead Sea. The dirigible’s shape triggers the decayed synapses of their putrefied brains, awakening memories of the briny dill pickles they craved in life.”

Rated R: Contains Zombie Mermaids, Killer Robots, Dirigibles, and Cigars

Read by Rachel Swirsky

Originally Published in Fantasy Magazine

They line up before Laurana, forty baked-clay heads atop forty bodies built of metal cylinders.  Every year she casts and fires new heads to replace those lost to weather, the wild, or simple erosion.  She rarely replaces the metal bodies.  They are scuffed and battered, over a century old.

Every morning, the island sun beating down on her pale scalp, she stands on the maison’s porch with the golems before her.  Motionless.  Expressionless.

She chants.  The music and the words fly into the clay heads and keep them thinking.  The golems are faster just after they have been charged.  They move more lightly, with more precision.  With more joy.  Without the daily chant they could go perhaps three days at most, depending on the heaviness of their labors.

This month is cane-planting season.  She delegates the squads of laborers and sets some to carrying buckets from the spring to water the new cane shoots while others dig furrows.  The roof needs reshingling, but it can wait until planting season is past.  As the golems shuffle off, she pauses to water the flowering bushes along the front of the house.  Placing her fingertips together, she conjures a tiny rain cloud, wringing moisture from the air.  Warm drops collect on the leaves, rolling down to darken pink and gray bark to red and black.

Rated PG: Contains a Rush of Sugary Sweetness (No Corn Syrup or Artificial Flavoring!)

Read by Claudia Smith

Originally published in Strange Horizons (Read Along Here)

Old Mrs. Farley waves the Daily Mail in Edith’s face and shouts, Did
you see this, dear? She always shouts. She’s half deaf, bless her.

That I did, Edith shouts back. She doesn’t add, When I put them up
this morning, stiff as I was from the cold, and again every time
another customer asks. Wouldn’t be Christian. Wouldn’t be good
business, either. But how the old biddy thinks the papers got on the
rack without Edith putting them there, the Lord only knows.

Mrs. Farley slaps the paper onto the counter, rotogravure picture up,
next to her packets of willow bark and powdered mummy. Edith tries not
to look at it. Fails. That smirking girl staring back with her
cigarette, that ugly short hair, the shapeless dress with its silly
fringes and its shameless show of calf, frivolous before the great
dark mass of Flamel Hall. Girls these days, says Edith. What they
wear. Her voice stays steady, but her eyes go to the headline.
SPELLCASTING SUFFRAGETTES! And below that some inane babble about the
wizards lost in the war, the London College opening its doors, that
child dancing right in as though she belongs. . . .

Rated PG: Contains Magical Higher Learning, Discrimination, and Charity

Read by Rashida Smith

Originally Published in Postscripts

Read by Matthew Wayne Selznick

Originally published in Realms of Fantasy

Sandlin stopped at the landing, gesturing grandly as he called down. “It is my belief that books are living things.”

That sent a shiver up Justin’s spine as he thought of Linda.

“And as living things, they need to be protected.” Sandlin walked the rest of the way up the stairs.

Justin rubbed his arms and bit back what he wanted to say. It was readers that needed to be protected, he thought. Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victimsof books.

Rated PG: Contains Books, and one of the Coolest Personal Libraries Ever

Read by Elizabeth Green Musselman

Originally Published in Subterranean: Tales of Dark Fantasy

I am ugliness in body and bone, breath and heartbeat. I am muddy rocks and jagged scars snaking across salt-sown fields. I am insect larvae wriggling inside the great dead beasts into which they were born. Too, I am the hanks of dead flesh rotting. I am the ungrateful child’s sneer, the plague sore bursting, the swing of shadow beneath the gallows rope. Ugliness is my hands, my feet, my fingernails. Ugliness is my gaze, boring into you like a worm into rotting fruit.

Listen to me, my prince. Tomorrow, when dawn breaks and you stand in the chapel accepting your late father’s crown, your fate will be set. Do nothing and you will be dead by sundown. Your kingdom will be laid waste, its remnants preserved only in the bellies of carrion birds.

There is another option. Marry me.

Rated R: Contains Violence and Gore

Read by Dave Thompson

Originally Printed in Starlight 3. Read the text at Ideomancer!

“Hey,” said my brother. “Down there.” Without waiting, he dove toward the sand where a dead Rotweiller rolled in the white foam. It had been a long flight and we were both ravenous. I angled in to follow, and soon we were absorbed in our feast.

A big gray gull challenged our salvage rights, screaming and beating us with his wings, but we tore him to shreds, ate him, then returned to the dog.

Later, my brother would be able to report every minute detail of the incident. He’d describe the precise markings on the gull’s bill, the way he favored his left foot over his right, the iron and salt taste of his blood.

But he wouldn’t be able to say why we’d killed him. He’s expert at the whats and whens and wheres, but he leaves the whys to me.

His name is Munin, Memory. I’m Hugin, Thought.

Rated R: Contains Violence and some gore.

]]> http://podcastle.org/2010/07/20/podcastle-114-wolves-till-the-world-goes-down/feed/ 34:29 By Greg van Eekhout Read by Dave Thompson Originally Printed in Starlight 3. Read the text at Ideomancer! "Hey," said my brother. "Down there." Without waiting, he dove ... By Greg van Eekhout Read by Dave Thompson Originally Printed in Starlight 3. Read the text at Ideomancer! "Hey," said my brother. "Down there." Without waiting, he dove toward the sand where a dead Rotweiller rolled in the white foam. It had been a long flight and we were both ravenous. I angled in to follow, and soon we were absorbed in our feast. A big gray gull challenged our salvage rights, screaming and beating us with his wings, but we tore him to shreds, ate him, then returned to the dog. Later, my brother would be able to report every minute detail of the incident. He'd describe the precise markings on the gull's bill, the way he favored his left foot over his right, the iron and salt taste of his blood. But he wouldn't be able to say why we'd killed him. He's expert at the whats and whens and wheres, but he leaves the whys to me. His name is Munin, Memory. I'm Hugin, Thought. Rated R: Contains Violence and some gore. Metacasts,,Podcasts,,Rated,G,,Rated,R,,Reviews Greg van Eekhout no No http://podcastle.org/2010/07/18/podcastle-miniature-52-the-sphinx-in-thebes-massachusetts/ http://podcastle.org/2010/07/18/podcastle-miniature-52-the-sphinx-in-thebes-massachusetts/#comments Mon, 19 Jul 2010 03:05:14 +0000 Dave http://podcastle.org/?p=198 by Lord Dunsany

Read by Steve Anderson

There was a woman in a steel-built city who had all that money could buy, she had gold and dividends and trains and houses, and she had pets to play with, but she had no sphinx.

Read by Marie Brennan

Originally published in Abyss & Apex

Whenever a foreigner came to the district, all of the neighbors would
tell him how lucky he was to be in the home of the legendary
Joukahainen, charmer for the ages.  But the foreigners would squint
and say, “Joukahainen?  Never heard of him.  Is he as good as
Väinämöinen?”  And Joukahainen would seethe.

Then he would do all of his best charms.  The birds would sing an
invocation to the spirits of the forest in such piercing beauty that
any man would weep to hear it, and the fire would glow white and blue
and paint pictures of splendor, and the flowers would all
spontaneously bloom, even if it was in the middle of the long night
and snow covered them all.

And then the foreigners would clap Joukahainen on the shoulder and
say, “Keep at it, lad, and someday you’ll be as great as Väinämöinen!”
Or, “When Väinämöinen’s not around, by the gods, you’ll do!”  They
meant to be kindly, but every time he heard the name Väinämöinen,
Joukahainen’s blood boiled.

Rated PG: Contains Charmers, and Charming Singing Fish (Naturally)

Read the text here

EDITORS’ NOTE: When this episode was originally posted, there was an audio issue within the file. The audio file is now corrected, and available for you to download. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience. Hope you enjoy the story!

Read by Elizabeth Green Musselmen

Originally published in Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy

The somnambulist brakes at the intersection of two suburban streets–Ivy Something Lane, Something Creek Road.  Her headlights illuminate the 2 A.M. silence.  She leans over to open the passenger side door and her husband, in the body of a grey squirrel, jumps in.  He’s been gone twelve days, in a double-door trap, in a coma, trekking across astral space and chemically treated lawns.  Earlier today his human body died.  The somnambulist cried herself to sleep; salt tracks have dried upon her face.

She pulls the door shut and sits up.  The squirrel-husband hops over to her, his tail arcing after him like an echo.  He climbs the arm of her teddy bear pajamas and perches upon her shoulder.

The somnambulist–her name is Judy when she’s awake–has been married for ten years.  Her husband calls himself a trader, and this is perhaps the best description of what he does, but he has been called other things; magician, sorcerer, devil.  Within the profession these terms have little meaning.  He traffics in power, which is more or less what Judy has always believed.

“The hospital,” says the squirrel-husband.  At least, she hears a voice, and the squirrel is the source.  The somnambulist turns towards the highway.

Rated R: Violence, Language, Adult Themes

Read by N.K. Jemisin

Originally Published in Strange Horizons.

There was once a Sun-woman, glorious as any of them, named Lam. She was nimble, lithe; she was all of eighteen, quite in her prime, while her bright-eyed acolyte had only just learned the sacred alphabet off by heart. She was a sensible teacher, and differed from her sisters in only one respect.

It was her custom, once the dawn-dance was done, to look out to the very farthest reaches of the horizon and imagine how far the fingers of the Rising Sun could reach, what they touched where her gaze failed. And when the evening was shaken out like a sheet between the arms of her sisters, then, too, rather than look to the closing of her palms, she would chase the last ray of the Sun as it vanished over the desert and the mountains, and wonder where She went, where She slept, and in whose bed.

These were unnecessary thoughts for a Sun-woman to have, to be sure, but perhaps none had loved the Sun quite so completely as she.

It happened one afternoon that Lam looked out, as was her wont, towards the west, and wondered. But while she thought her puzzle-thoughts, she became aware of eyes on her, and looked down to the great square before the temple of the Sun.

Rated PG: Contains Stories for Travelers Who May or May not be Passing Through

Read the text here.

Read by Anna Schwind

Originally Published in Shimmer

The bearded Spaniard says little to her. He prefers to kiss her and mount her and have her pour his drink for him.

But the priests speak often, furiously. They show her drawings, they explain. The priests have images of martyrs drenched in blood, holding their own heads on a platter, their bodies pierced by arrows.

The priests make her kneel before their blessed Virgin and pray. She has prayed to others before and it is not so difficult to pray to new gods. It is more difficult to have lost her name. Even more difficult to have lost the jaguar shape.

But she does not remember much about those times either. It must have been years ago. She’s been the Spaniard’s mistress for an eternity. It has been like this forever, eating at his table, sleeping in his bed. Although it must not have been forever; she remembers there was a time when she could barely understand him and now his words are clearer although his meaning is the same.

Rated R for Violence, Including Gore

Read by Dave Thompson

Originally published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies

I have always done as I have been told, and most of my actions have not been kind ones. I know because the Alchemist did not always tell me to forget and so, trapped inside my jar, I was cursed to remember.

I dreamt the dreams of dolls, and those were the times I could see the past most clearly. I remembered the time I crept inside a true man’s workplace to hide false evidence. And when I delivered a botched love potion into a poor serving girl’s tea and hid behind a jug of milk to watch as she retched black blood and green bile across the floor.

Tonight as I dreamt, I became aware that these were horrible things. They did not bother me at the time, and they do not bother me now, but I am aware of them in a way that I have never been before. And in the morning I realize one of my fingers is gone.

Rated R for Violence

read by Amy Elk, Voice Actress for Hire

Originally published in Fantasy Magazine

Dear Father:

If you are reading this, Dariael murdered me.

Though I am not your favorite daughter, you also know I’m not the type of sixteen-year-old to feign suicide for sympathy. For the moment, I ask only that you believe in my abilities as a threadkeeper. If my sorcery works, you can save me in your universe. If you’re too busy to follow my instructions, you’ll never see me again.

In my timeline, I wrote this letter with your (presumably) grieving hands after you channeled me through a favorite memory. Naturally, Dariael was in the memory too. We had surprised you with that golden fleece jacket for your thirty-fifth birthday. You hugged Dariael, and I hugged you both.

Rated PG for Father’s Day Issues - we hope yours turns out better than this!

read by Melissa Bugaj of the Night Light Stories podcast

Originally published in Shiny

Once in the most boring lunchroom of the most boring junior high
school in the world, there sat a girl who refused to be bored for one
more minute.  Renee Ryder cut P.E. and found some interesting girls
who liked to hang behind the shop building and get artistic with spray
paint.  She decided to be their leader.  With Renee in charge, the
girls got very good with spray paint.  In the amount of time it took a
red light to change, they could paint an entire ocean on a car, with
goldfish and seahorses and two dolphins doing it.  But then they got
busted for tagging the vice-principal’s minivan, and then Renee was
snarky and got expelled, which was fine with her because she’d
mastered both the graffiti and the girls by now and it was all so
boring.

Renee’s parents shrieked, which was also boring, but then Renee’s aunt
Simone stepped in and said Renee could come live with her and go to
the very best junior high in the City.  Renee’s mother, who often
called her sister something rhyming with witch, cackled.  ”Whatever
happens to you, you’ll deserve it,” she said.

“Six bedrooms, a hot tub, my own flatscreen the size of a bed?  You
bet I deserve it,” said Renee.  She packed her ripped jeans and her
cans of spray paint, her old teddy bear and her lighters, and went to
live on 1313 Strega Place with her aunt.

Rated PG for School Spirit, Goats, and Life in the J.H.

read by MarBelle of the Directors Notes podcast.

Originally published in Lone Star Stories

Flashjack had hauled himself up beside her on the rim of the wine-glass he was skinnydipping in, shaken Rioja off his wings, and looked around at the crystal forest of the table-top he’d, just a few short hours ago, been born above in a moment of sheer whimsy, plinking into existence at the clink of a flippant toast to find himself a-flutter in a wild world of molten multicolour— mandalas wheeling on the walls and ceiling, edges of every straight line in the room streaming like snakes.  He’d skittered between trailers of wildly gesticulating hands, gyred on updrafts of laughter, danced in flames of lighters held up to joints, and landed on the nose of a snow-leopard that was lounging in the shadows of a corner of vision.  He’d found it a comfy place to watch one of the guests perform an amazing card trick with a Jack of Hearts, so he’d still been hunkered there, gawping like a loon at the whirl of the party, and making little flames shoot out of his fingertips (because he could), when Pebbleskip came fluttering down to dance in the air in front of him.

“Nice to get out once in a while, eh?” she’d said.  “Hi, I’m Pebbleskip.”

“I’m… Flashjack,” he’d decided.  “What’s in a while?  Is it like upon a time?  And out of what?”

Her face had scrunched, her head tilted in curiosity.

“Ah,” she’d said.  “You must be new.”

Since then she’d been explaining.

Rated R for Foul-Mouthed Fairies and Ever-Shifting Landscapes

(Check out the shiny new Directors Notes iPhone App)

Reviewed by Peter Wood

The City & The City, Miéville’s latest novel, is stylistically quite different than some of his previous work and, I think, considerably more accessible. In short, The City & The City is a crime novel that follows Inspector Tyador Borlú as he investigates a murder. The tricky part, for Borlú is that while the body was found in his city, Besźel, the murder appears to have been committed in the neighboring city of Ul Qoman. Additionally, there seems to be political slant to the case, putting Borlu in conflict with some very powerful people in both cities. He travels to Ul Qoman and teams up with his counterpart in that city, Qussim Dhatt and together they attempt to bring the murderer to justice. And of course, there are red herrings strewn about and further fatalities as the investigation proceeds (as any proper detective story should have).

Minor plot-oriented spoilers. DO NOT BREACH.

read by Dave Thompson

Originally published in Strange Horizons

“I wish I could be a little goddess of cinnamon,” my wife Emily says,
closing her eyes and leaning in close to the spices. I’m used to Emily
saying things like that, so I don’t take any notice, just nod and pick
up a bottle of peach nectar off the shelf, slosh it around, wrinkle my
nose. I know all the gunk in there is supposed to be fresh natural
goodness, but to me it just looks like gunk. Emily says that I deny
the truth of natural origins. Emily likes peach nectar, so I put the
bottle in the basket.

“A little goddess of cinnamon,” Emily repeats. “Or brown sugar.” She
crosses her arms, her silver-and-brass bracelets tinkling together.

“As opposed to a big goddess of cinnamon?” I move on down the aisle
with my basket over my arm.

“Little things get little gods,” Emily says. “It’s only natural.” She
trails after me, running her finger along the shelves, pausing to
sniff at the black teas, to open the lid on a jar of sugar-free
gumdrops. Emily is always prodding, smelling, caressing — she says
that she is experiencing the world.

“So big gods are for big things, then? Like, say, whales?”

Emily sighs behind me. “Big things like . . . I don’t know . . . love.”

Rated PG for the Little Gods of Hanging On

Read by Eugie Foster

Originally published in The Coyote Road: Trickster Tales.

I have met very few evil people in my life, but my grandmother is one of them.  When my mother died, Omama told my father that she would support him and my brother and me, but only if he gave up all his and my mother’s friends, her family and his work in their studio, to return to Omama’s family compound.

There was no reason for this.  She already had other sons and cousins working for her.  There had been one more, but my Uncle Great Light had taken his own life right before the Harvest Festival.  Maybe she needed father back to make up a propitious number.  That’s not what he says.  When I asked why we could not visit my weaver grandmother and all the cousins anymore, he sighed, “Omama has never learned to share.”

“She’s so rich she never had to.”

“Wealth is not a disease, Bright Phoenix,” my father said sternly.  “You may be rich yourself some day, so I want you to remember that.”

That may be so, but I think being rich can make you selfish. It’s like a cold: you have to fight it off by wrapping up warm and keeping your head covered.  I don’t care so much about being rich, but I might like to be famous.  I think I have a pretty good shot at it, because since I was five I have played the kchin, and even my brother Great Joy, who is good at games and doesn’t like to lose, knows that I play better than he does.  I like to practice.  When I kneel before my instrument, and my fingers bend and dance on the strings, I feel as if I know things no one has every known before.  It isn’t just pretty sounds, it’s like entering another world.  Some of the great kchin players played for years in solitude before letting anyone else hear them, but I don’t mind playing for others. I like their admiration well enough, but even better I like to think that somehow my music has changed them, as it changes me.

Rated PG for Evil Grandmothers and Music from the Heart

Read by Erik Luke (of the Extruding America podcast)

Originally published in The Poison Eaters & Other Stories

Each year, wolves are caught in traps or, very occasionally, a litter is discovered and they are brought to the city to die spectacularly. Arn wolves are striking, black and slim as demons, with the unsettling habit of watching the audience as they tear out the throats of their opponents. City dwellers are made to feel both uneasy and inviolable by the dog fights; the caged wolf might be terrible, but it is caged. And the dog fights are majestic tented affairs, with the best bred dogs from all parts of the world as challengers. Expensive and exotic foods perfume the air, lulling one into the sense that danger is just another alluring spice.

Not to be outdone by his subjects, the king of Dunbardain obtained his own wolf pup and has trained it to be his constant companion. He calls it Elienad. It is quite a coup to have one, not unlike making the son of a great foreign lord one’s slave. The wolf has very nice manners, too. He rests beneath the king’s table, eats scraps of food daintily from the king’s hand, and lets the ladies of the court ruffle his thick, black fur.

Rated R For Wolves in the Fold, No Matter Their Manners

They say that when I was born, blossoms spread on the rose bushes outside my mother’s birthing chamber. They say that where I step, blood-red petals spring from the earth. The first, my father tells me, is a legend. The second has been known to happen on occasion, though only by my design.

For centuries I believed that this was the life for which I was intended.

Rated PG for roses which may smell sweet but still have their thorns.

Read by Rish Outfield of The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine

Originally published in Barrellhouse

The plumber always dies with the same surprised look on his face, his mouth hanging open as he flies upward through the air before being born again at the beginning of the world. He’s tiny and frightened without his mushrooms and his fireballs, desperately banging his head against blocks, looking for more. Sometimes, between reincarnations, the plumber thinks he senses God trying to decide whether to give him another chance or to just bag the whole thing. He’s scared then, but who wouldn’t be? He prays for continuation and then God says Continue and the music plays that means the plumber will live again. Back in the world, he realizes that the God he senses between deaths is there when he’s alive too, guiding his motions. His triumphs are God’s triumphs but so are his failures. It bothers him that God can fail but he doesn’t show it. He is a stoic little plumber, looking for mushrooms and jumping on turtles. He is not a philosopher, or at least not until after the Princess is safe and he has the time to think things through. Still, sometimes when he’s alive and running or, heaven forbid, swimming, he realizes that the God Who Continues is possibly not the only god there is. Surely, that god isn’t the one who put all the collapsing platforms and strange, angry wildlife everywhere. At first he thinks it’s the Turtle King, the one who captured the Princess and started him on this whole adventure, but then he thinks, Who made the Turtle King? Not God, or at least not his God. Does this prove the existence of the Devil? He doesn’t know.

Rated PG for plumbers, philosophy, and good ol’ fashioned shrooms

(Hey! Look at us! Fifty miniatures!)

Read by Rajan Khanna

Originally published in Clockwork Phoenix 2

I should not be so hard on Beit Zujaaj and its bumpkins. But when I look at the gray rock-heap houses, the withered gray vegetable-yards, and the stuporous gray lives that fill this village, I want to weep for the lost color of Baghdad.

Instead I sit and listen to the Shaykh.

“Abdel Jameela is not of Assad blood, O learned Professor. My grandfather took mercy, as God tells us we must, on the old man’s mother. Seventy-and-some years ago she showed up in Beit Zujaaj, half-dead from traveling and big with child, telling tales – God alone knows if they were true – of her Assad-clan husband, supposedly slain by highwaymen. Abdel Jameela was birthed and raised here, but he has never been of this village.” Shaykh Hajjar scowls. “For decades now – since I was a boy – he has lived up on the hilltop rather than among us. More of a hermit than a villager. And not of Assad blood,” he says again.

I stand up. I can take no more of the man’s unctuous voice and, praise God, I don’t have to.

“Of course, O Shaykh, of course. I understand. Now, if you will excuse me?”

Shaykh Hajjar blinks. He wishes to say more but doesn’t dare. For I have come from the Caliph’s court.

Rated PG: A miracle a day keeps the physicker away…

Read by Norm Sherman

Originally published in Realms of Fantasy

“I came for my things,” he said.

“If you’d called, I could have been out.” She stood aside to let him in. Reluctantly.

“That’s not necessary,” said Paul. “You don’t have to do that. You look great.”

“Yes, it is,” she replied. “Yes, I do. No, I really don’t. Your stuff’s in the spare.” She walked into the kitchen and he heard the strange squeal again. Perhaps the sound of a sponge against the inside of the oven?

Rated PG For Goats That Will Eat Pretty Much Anything You Can Think Up.

Read by Wilson Fowlie

Originally Published in Interfictions 2

Every day for three decades, the abandoned house strains against its
galling anchors, hoping to pull free. It has waited thirty years for
its pipes and pilings to finally decay so it can leave for Florida to
find whatever is left of the Macek family.

Nobody in its Milford neighborhood will likely miss the house or even
notice its absence; it has hidden for decades behind overgrown bushes,
weeds, and legends. When they talk about the house at all, the
neighbors whisper about the child killer who lived there long ago with
his family: a wife and five children who never knew their father kept
his rotting playmate in the crawlspace until the police came.

The house, however, knows the truth and wants to confess it, even if
it has to crawl eight hundred miles.

Rated PG because you can never go home again, but sometimes home can come to you.

Happy 100! Thanks for to all our listeners for being part of the journey!

Read by Sarah Tolbert

The dream jerks me awake and I stare at the rough plaster ceiling.  My body is filmed with sweat, and the pattern of cracks above me looks just like Nevada.

The dream leaves me hollow.  An empty place like the inside of a drum stretched tight, a hollow place echoing with short sharp cries of dread or despair.

The dream forces tears from me eyes, crawling slowly, thick like worms, drying into sticky crusts of salt.

I blink once, twice, and emerge from the shadow of the dream.  The pit of of my stomach aches, as if punched, once, twice.

I blink three times and I’m out of it.  Out.

Rated PG for Waking Dreams (Not the Idealistic Kind)

1986. Salty’s. Newport, Oregon.

Until the pirate.

Rated R for the fashion woes inflicted by Adam Ant and complicated relationships.

I shot the sparrow because I was starving. Though truthfully, I was aiming at a pheasant; the silver snow and the silver birches played tricks with the light, and as if by magic, pheasant turned into sparrow.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, anything.”

Rated R for cross-species connubial arrangements.

At the time, it was pretty exciting stuff. The flaming torches on the tunnel walls as me and half a dozen of my fellow inductees rushed to the ceremony. The older guys who’d known my Da all standing around and beaming down at me as I pricked the drop of blood from my fingertip and pledged eternal loyalty to my fellow workers. Then the singing of the Anthem of the Red Flag and my first taste of whiskey.
Raise the scarlet standard high,
Beneath its folds we’ll live and die…
I knew Guilds weren’t exactly legal, but everyone still seemed to be in one. I’d heard some talk of Guilds sabotaging machinery when conditions got really bad, even walking off the job. In the excitement of the induction ceremony, I didn’t realize just yet that Guilds didn’t do that sort of thing any more.
In our grandfathers’ era, they might have gone on strike. Now that the companies have smartened up and started using drinkers instead of regular humans for plant security, we pretty much drink whiskey and hold induction ceremonies and sing. Good jaunty song, though, real nice beat to it.
Let cowards flinch and traitors sneer,
We’ll keep the red flag flying here…

Rated R because those unionbusters don’t play around, and they might just be genuine bloodsuckers.

Some of the asides in your article made me realize (Gods, can I be dense sometimes) that when you spoke of concerns about “arcane rites” in response to the invite to my Halloween party the next evening, that you possibly weren’t kidding and perhaps had some genuine anxieties. I really should stress that my wife and I had planned for the Halloween party to be occult-free — no spirits other than the liquid sort!

Rated PG for warlocks in your inbox.

You cannot really keep a princess in a tower. Not if she has no brothers and must learn statecraft and dancing and riding and poisons and potions and the passage of arms, so that she may eventually rule.

She needed no tower, for she was like unto a tower in her person, a fastness as sure as the mountains she bloomed beside, her cool reserve and mocking half-lidded glances the battlements of a glacial virginity.

Rated R for fierce princesses, bloody warlords, and living rocks who will grind you down.

This episode was brought to you by audible, your destination for the widest selection of digital audiobooks available for download.

“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

Since she was literate, she had been put to work in the fortress’s library. It was undemanding work, and she did not hate it; it gave her something to do to fill the weary hours of daylight. When she had been brought to the fortress, she had expected to be ill-treated‚ a prisoner, a slave‚ but in truth she was mostly ignored. The fortress’s masters had younger, prettier girls to take to bed; the women, cool and distant and beautiful as she had once been herself, were not interested in a ragged woman with haunted half-crazed eyes. The librarian, a middle-aged man already gone blind over his codices and scrolls, valued her for her voice. But he was the only person she had to talk to, and she blurted as she came into the library, “I saw a child.”

“Oh,” said the librarian. “I thought we’d killed them all.”

Rated PG for feral children and the winners who write history.

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.

Reviewed by Bill Peters

PodCastle’s very first review!

It is remarkably hard to review Unseen Academicals, what Terry Pratchett says will likely be his penultimate work. Most people who’ve read Pratchett and liked it have gotten attached to him in a way they don’t to other authors. Part of this is certainly due to the regular and breakneck pace at which he writes, averaging at least one book a year since the first Discworld novel was published in 1983, twenty five years ago. The other part is that many of us would like to live in his world, and we know it will soon be robbed from us.

Minor Spoilers Ensue! (Don’t worry - we don’t tell you how it ends or anything!)

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.

“Do you ever wonder about the nature of the world, Mister Fitz?” asked the foremost of the two riders, raising the three-barred visor of his helmet so that his words might more clearly cross the several feet of space that separated him from his companion, who rode not quite at his side.

The political identification of these fallow pastures and the occasional once-coppiced wood they passed was not clear to either Sir Hereward or Mister Fitz, despite several attempts to ascertain said identification from the few travelers they had encountered since leaving the city of Rhool several days before. To all intents and purposes, the land appeared to be both uninhabited and untroubled by soldiery or tax collectors and was thus a void in the sociopolitical map that Hereward held uneasily, and Fitz exactly, in their respective heads.

Rated PG for wooden puppets with no desire to be human.

Ann Leckie month comes to a conclusion with this rousing tale. We hope you enjoyed her choices as much as we did. Thanks, Ann!

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.

Read by John Meagher

Extracted from “Tales From the City of Seams,” Originally Published in Polyphony 4

One day as I sat in the restaurant savoring my lunch, a man in an ivory suit came into the place. His head was as white and hairless as an eggshell, and when he spoke, every syllable came out twisted into an odd shape. I think he was Belgian. “Daughter of Lu Ch’eng-Huan, far removed,” he said,  ”I have grown impatient with your truculence. I have dealt with you in good faith. I have offered you riches — gems and antiques, property and estates, significant shares in profitable concerns — but you have mistaken my generosity for desperation. If you will not part with the soup in a fair exchange, I shall have to take it by force.”

Michelle Sze was over at a corner table, taking care of some accounting matters. “Get lost,” she said.

Rated PG for some very old soup

Happy Chinese New Year!