Translated by Bernardo Fernandez

Read by Roberto Suarez (of Trailerclash)

Originally published (in English) in Three Messages and a Warning, edited by Eduardo Jimenez Mayo and Chris N. Brown

The wolves came at twilight, melted into the shadows. At first we thought they were mist coming down from the mountains—it was impossible to think that there were millions of white bodies, thousands of creatures sliding down the snow. Their voices convinced us it was them, their long, sad howls, the occasional growling and fights among them. We’ve never seen such a herd. It’s impossible to gather one on these lands. The wolves we know around here are solitary ferocious animals, always stealthy. We’ve never seen them trot into a village. They don’t run away from men out of fear, their temperament demands that they always hide—all carnivores are furtive. Once in a while they steal a sheep, a deer, some child left in the woods that surrounds us.

Rated R: Contains some Violence and Adult Themes

Read by Dave Thompson

Originally published in Realms of Fantasy

Let me tell you a little fable, a story I crafted while sitting inside this dangling cage, where the rooks shit on me and steal my bread all day, and the smoke from your town fires stings my eyes all night.

Did you know the owls feed me? They bring me rats, mice, squirrels, and I eat them. That’s why I haven’t died yet. I’ll never die, not here, wait all you like.

My fable? Yes. Oh, yes. It will, most assuredly, have a moral. Hunker down and listen for it, boys.

Rated R: Contains Violence, some of it gristly.

Read by Mur Lafferty (the Mighty, Mighty)

Originally Published in Firebirds, edited by Sharyn November.

One dusty, slow morning in the summer of 1922, a passenger was left crying on the platform when the milk train pulled out of Denilburg after its five minute stop. No one noticed at first, what with the whistle from the train and the billowing steam and smoke and the labouring of the steel wheels upon the rails. The milk carter was busy with the cans, the station master with the mail. No one else was about, not when the full dawn was still half a cup of coffee away.

When the train had rounded the corner, taking its noise with it, the crying could be clearly heard. Milk carter and station master both looked up from their work and saw the source of the noise.

A baby, tightly swaddled in a pink blanket, was precariously balanced on a large steamer trunk on the very edge of the platform. With every cry and wriggle, the baby was moving closer to the side of the trunk. If she fell, she’d fall not only from the trunk, but from the platform, down to the rails four feet below.

Rated R: Contains violence.

On the other side of the valley, across the creek, the real ridge line—the geology, her father would have said disdainfully—stabbed upstream. By her rough estimation it had rolled perhaps two degrees off the angle of its writ mapping. Lucas would determine the exact discrepancy later, when he extracted his instruments from their feather and wax paper wrappings.

Lucas gave his half-grin—not quite a smirk—acknowledging her reduction. Cartographers were famous for their willful ignorance of social expressions like politics and history.

Rated PG.

I well know the whole disgraceful affair was my fault. I was the one that befriended that great beast of an Outlander, spawn of his border-clan House, and led him with such fatal consequences to my family’s heart.

But Lukah Brehill seemed such harmless oaf, charming in a way rare among my fellows, and I thought it was a kindness to introduce him to proper society. He’d been sent by his House to pay his respects to Sireni and its Duke, and was housed among the rest of the young bucks of the Houses too far and unfortunate to live in the heart of the city spectacular.

Rated PG.

Read by Marguerite Kenner

Originally published in Sybil’s Garage

Dear Mom,

Instead of washing a load of clothes, I keep going to the store and buying more underwear.

_I don’t even know where to start!_

Rated PG. Contains Some Dirty Laundry.

Ashley watches Renata take a last deep drag and then stub out her comfrey cigarette on her dressing table. It’s already covered in spilled glitter, matches, paint, and the burned craters from other cigarettes. Ashley can hardly remember the fine wooden vanity Renata found on the street and dragged back to the Magic Lantern. It’s suffered a lot since then.
“Open the box already,” Renata says, pulling a lip liner from one of the drawers.
On the wall, a cracked mosaic of mirror fragments reveals Ashley’s face, filled with trepidation.
The Magic Lantern was one of the first places Ashley came to when she arrived in Bordertown. She’d sit in the back and watch whatever was playing or doze because she was sure she’d be safe. Once Alain Bach Glaimhin took over from O’Malley and started casting for simultaneous live shows, Ashley knew that she wanted to be on that stage more than any- thing.
Ashley loves working at the Magic Lantern. Her hands hesitate over the ribbon on the large package, the one woven with sprigs of rosemary and ragwort. She knows the more gifts Alain gives her, the closer she is to being asked to leave.

Rated R for violence.

The half-dressed girls passed silently between the lying figures, their bare feet making no sound as they stepped on the sand. Low-lying metal braziers cast a shifting glow and made the girls’ shadows move as of their own accord. Gorel of Goliris lay on his back on the thick rich carpet under the stars and what he saw no one could tell.
One of the girls stopped and knelt beside him. ‘Are you comfortable?’ she asked. She took his hand and put two long, graceful fingers against his wrist. ‘It is time for another one?’
She waited; presently, Gorel closed and opened his eyes. The girl, used to such minute communication, took it for assent.
The long thin needle was almost translucent but the nature of the material passing through it had stained it in fantastical whorls of yellows and reds . It was the quill of a small desert dweller; Gorel had captured and eaten several of its kind. The girl held his arm and her practiced fingers searched his naked flesh. Gorel’s lips moved, though little sound escaped. The girl stroked his hair. ‘Soon now,’ she murmured. ‘Soon. Hush now.’
Finding a suitable place, she pressed the needle into his arm with one practiced motion. The needle was attached by a long thin tube to a contraption of metal and glass standing upright beside Gorel and the girl. The bottom component was a glass jar filled with water. A pipe ran up and into a metal bowl. The girl moved her hand over the bowl and murmured words, too quiet to be heard. The bowl began to smoke. The smoke had a sweet, pungent smell. Everyone at the place knew it intimately. The water in the jar began to bubble. The girl took hold of a bulb attached to the side of the device and began to pump it. The water bubbled harder, and the smoke grew more intense. A sluggish substance began to drizzle down the long tube and into the needle. Gorel sighed, a weak exhalation of air, and closed his eyes. The girl continued to pump, and with her other hand stroked Gorel’s hair. ‘Better now,’ she said. ‘Everything is fine now.’

Rated R for violence, drug use.

Once upon a time there was a plucky young woman called Princess Bite. She loved to roller-skate, and Roller Derby was her community.

Princess Bite loved everything about Roller Derby. She even loved cleaning up after a game, sweeping the floor with a broom twice her size, coiling cables and emptying endless garbage cans. Princess Bite loved the spectacle, the makeup, the glitter and ferocity. She loved crashing into people and trying to keep her feet when they crashed into her. She loved watching the teams train and playing with the other kids of roller mums.

Rated R for language.

This is what William Wachter wrote in his spiral notebook during study hall, the first day.

Read by…well, A LOT of cool people! How about a full cast list?

Norm Sherman as the Narrator
Peter Wood as Lazlo
Dave Thompson as Casimir
Wilson Fowlie as Master Molnar
M.K. Hobson as Astriza
Graeme Dunlop as Lev Bronzeclaw
Anna Schwind as Yvette
Ann Leckie, Alasdair Stuart, Talia, Occicat, and Marshal Latham as the Librarians, Indexers, and Vocubavores
and Rachel Swirsky as the Head Vocabuvore

Originally Published in Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery,

On the clock outside the gate to the Manticore Wing of the library, the little blue flame was just floating past the symbol for high noon when Laszlo and Casimir skidded to a halt before a single tall figure.

“I see you two aspirants have chosen to favor us with a dramatic last-minute arrival,” said the man. “I was not aware this was to be a drama exam.”

“Yes, Master Molnar. Apologies, Master Molnar,” said Laszlo and Casimir in unison.

Hargus Molnar, Master Librarian, had a face that would have been at home in a gallery of military statues, among dead conquerors casting their permanent scowls down across the centuries. Lean and sinewy, with close-cropped gray hair and a dozen visible scars, he wore a use-seasoned suit of black leather and silvery mail. Etched on his cuirass was a stylized scroll, symbol of the Living Library, surmounted by the phrase Auvidestes, Gerani, Molokare. The words were Alaurin, the formal language of scholars, and they formed the motto of the Librarians:

RETRIEVE. RETURN. SURVIVE.

Rated R: Contains violence, some language, and the coolest, most dangerous library ever!

Thank you, listeners, for an amazing two hundred episodes!

Read by Paul Tevis

Originally published in Swords and Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

Sir Hereward sighed as he turned another page. His enthusiasm for reading had diminished in the turning of several hundred pages, with its concomitant several hundred finger lickings, for he had found only two entries worth reading: one on how to cheat at a board game that had changed its name but was still widely played in the known world; and another on the multiplicity of uses of the root spice cabizend, some surprising number of which fell into Hereward’s professional area of expertise as an artillerist and maker of incendiaries.

In fact, Hereward was about to give up and bellow to the housekeeper who kept the tower to bring him some ale, when the title of the next commonplace caught his eye. It was called “On the Propitiation of Sorcerous Puppets.”

As Sir Hereward’s constant companion, comrade-in-arms, and one-time nanny was a sorcerous puppet known as Mister Fitz, this was very much of interest to the injured knight. He eagerly read on, and though the piece was short and referred solely to the more usual kind of sorcerous puppet—one made to sing, dance, and entertain—he did learn something new.

Rated PG: Contains some violence.

Read by Diane Severseon (of StarShipSofa)

Originally published in Clarkesworld Magazine. Read the story here.

In the morning, she called me always by my name, Kseniya, and her eyes would be worry-wrinkled—and her hair would be wet, too. While she scraped a pale, translucent sliver of precious butter over rough, hard-crusted bread, I would draw a bath, filling the high-sided tub to its bright brim. We ate our breakfast slick-haired in the nearly warm water, curled into each other’s bodies, snail into shell, while the bath sloshed over onto the kitchen floor, which was also the living room floor and the bathroom floor and my mother’s bedroom floor—she gave me the little closet which served as a second room.

In the evening, if we had meat, she would fry it slowly and we would savor the smell together, to make the meal last. If we did not, she would tell me a story about a princess who had a bowl which was never empty of sweet, roasted chickens while I slurped a thin soup of cabbage and pulpy pumpkin and saved bathwater. Sometimes, when my mother spoke low and gentle over the green soup, it tasted like birds with browned, sizzling skin. All day, she sponged my head, the trickle ticklish as sweat. The back of my dress clung slimy to my skin.

Before bed, she would pass my head under the faucet, the cold water splashing on my scalp like a slap. And then the waking, always the waking, and hour or two past midnight.

Rated R: Contains some disturbing imagery.

Read by Daniel Foley

Originally published in Strange Horizons. Read the story here.

During my brother Mel’s final test to become a guard, he performed a flourish with his halberd and cut off his left foot. You wouldn’t think it was possible to slice your own foot clean off while you’re standing on it, but he managed. He says that he didn’t really feel any pain at first, but he did feel the tendon in his leg rolling up like a window shade.

My parents were mortified. My dad just set his jaw like he does when he can’t yell at us right exactly then, and my mom covered her eyes. Me, I watched the whole thing. There was a lot of blood, and of course Mel was screaming—they say you’re not supposed to, that it makes a bad impression on the test officers, but I’m pretty sure I would have, too. Then the healer came over and made an incision in the back of my brother’s leg. He reached in and found the tendon where it had gone into hiding and pulled it down to where it belonged, chanting the entire time. Mel was screaming a lot louder by then. Five minutes later the foot was reattached. It’s pretty much as good as it ever was, but Mel still has nightmares about the pain.

Not that I’m the least bit sympathetic. If you ask me, he did it on purpose.

Rated R: Contains violence and prophecies

At last Destiny brought us to an island, fair and verdant, in trees abundant, with yellow-ripe fruits luxuriant, and flowers fragrant and birds warbling soft descant, and streams crystalline and radiant. But no sign of man showed to the descrier- no, not a blower of the fire. The captain made fast with us to this island, and the merchants and sailors landed and walked about, enjoying the shade of the trees and the song of the birds, that chanted the praises of the One, the Victorious, and marveling at the works of the Omnipotent King.

Rated PG.

Once upon a time, in a land radiant with stars and redolent of
sandalwood, where peacocks breakfasted on dreams salty with the
residue of slumber, a rani mourned. On the surface, the rani had
everything: a kingdom to care for, fine jewels to wear in her long
black hair, silken saris threaded through with silver and gold, and a
garden of roses and jasmine to rival that of Lord Indra in his
celestial realm. When she rode atop her warrior elephant, her subjects
bowed before her in awe and love. But one thing remained out of
reach–an heir. She longed for a small, smiling face to call her own.

Gulabi Rani consulted midwives, healers schooled in the art of
Ayurveda, and magicians. Knowing better than to refuse a monarch, they
plied her with charms and salves, medications and horoscopes. She ate
the roots and leaves of the shatavari plant as they recommended, and
drank creamy buttermilk while fastidiously avoiding the color black.
Yet her belly stayed flat. At last the healers admitted that, without
a husband, there was no hope.

But the rani did not want a husband. Nor did she suffer from a lack of
hope. After dismissing the healers and her servants both, she readied
a place in the garden. If no one else could help her, she would find
the answer herself. Surrounded by her beloved roses, garnet and pink
and ivory, Gulabi meditated for weeks on end.

Rated PG.

Judy had been painfully aware of him since her arrival two weeks ago, when she had seen him across the mess hall. They talked a little, but Judy hadn’t been prepared for his appearance or his popularity. She hadn’t expected him to change quite so much.

Judy hoped she would get used to it.

Rated R for profanity, young adult themes.

Short Story:

To Follow the Waves, by Amal El-Mohtar, read by Marguerite Croft, originally published in Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories

The Bear in the Cable-Knit Sweater, by Robert T. Jeschonek, read by Cheyenne Wright, A PodCastle Original

After October, by Ben Burgis, read by Eric Luke, originally published in Giganotosaurus

The Landholders No Longer Carry Swords, by Patricia Russo, read by Ann Leckie, originally published in Giganotosaurus

The Paper Menagerie, by Ken Liu, read by Rajan Khanna, originally published in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

We Were Wonder Scouts, by Will Ludwigsen, read by Chris Reynaga, originally published in Asimov’s.

Still Small Voice, by Ben Burgis, read by David Rees-Thomas, A PodCastle Original

起狮，行礼 (Rising Lion—The Lion Bows), by Zen Cho, read by Tracey Yuen. Originally published in Strange Horizons.

Black Swan, White Swan, by Eugie Foster, read by Abra Staffin-Wiebe, originally published in End of an Aeon anthology.

This Strange Way of Dying,  by Silvia Moreno Garcia, read by Marguerite Croft. Originally published in Giganotosaurus

Ties of Silver, by James L. Sutter, read by V.O. Bloodfrost, originally published in the Beast Within 2: Predators and Prey anthology.

The Ghost of Christmas Possible, by Tim Pratt & Heather Shaw, read by Ian Stuart. A PodCastle Original!

A Window, Clear as a Mirror, by Ferrett Steinmetz, read by Rish Outfield. Originally published in Shimmer

Fruit Jar Drinkin’, Cheatin’ Heart Blues, by Patty Templeton, originally published in Steam Powered II

Their Changing Bodies, by Alaya Dawn Johnson, originally published in Subterranean Online (Next week’s episode!)

As a Novellete:

Balfour and Meriwether in The Vampire of Kabul, by Daniel Abraham, read by Paul S. Jenkins. Originally published in Subterranean Online

But this time, Cazy’d done enough wrong for Balma to prop the grudge on a pulpit and preach.

Rated R for profanity, violence.

Read by Steve Anderson

I had said: “I will see Andelsprutz arrogant with her beauty,” and I had said: “I will see her weeping over her conquest.”

I had said: “She will sing songs to me,” and “she will be reticent,” “she will be all robed,” and “she will be bare but splendid.”

But the windows of Andelsprutz in her houses looked vacantly over the plains like the eyes of a dead madman. At the hour her chimes sounded unlovely and discordant, some of them were out of tune, and the bells of some were cracked, her roofs were bald and without moss. At evening no pleasant rumour arose in her streets. When the lamps were lit in the houses no mystical flood of light stole out into the dusk, you merely saw that there were lighted lamps; Andelsprutz had no way with her and no air about her. When the night fell and the blinds were all drawn down, then I perceived what I had not thought in the daylight. I knew then that Andelsprutz was dead.

Rated PG.

Mister Bumblethorn slept through the morning, as he usually did,
rising from his dry-as-dust bathtub just after noon. He stood in the
weak light of the shaded window, his massive blue coat rumpled but
still imposing. He did not even remember getting into the bathtub the
night before, much less falling asleep in it. He yawned and shook out
his arms. An antelope or a gazelle, tiny as a beetle, tumbled out of
his coat sleeve and splatted on the floor below. Mister Bumblethorn
studiously ignored this.

Mister Bumblethorn sighed heavily. Into the blank space of his empty
stomach, memories began to flow like saliva. Once, adoring folk had
thrust gifts of cheese and honeycakes at him wherever he walked:
through the streets of grand Abadore, through the humble thoroughfares
of nameless hamlets. Fingers shaking, Mister Bumblethorn rolled
himself a fat spliff of redleaf. No matter how little the peasants
had, they shared their suppers with him and refused any offer of
payment. Damn it, light already. After all, he was–Ah, there it
was, that sweet smoke filling his mouth, translating the stream of
memories into a language as meaningless to him as the clicking prayers
of the insectile priests in their hive temple on Wingcleft Avenue, his
old life grown as insubstantial as their flowery incense, drifting
away in the wind.

Rated R for graphic violence, drug use.

It was the third of December in 188-, and snow swirled down grey and damp upon the cobblestones of London. Meriwether paced before the wide window of the King Street flat impatiently. Balfour sat before the roaring fire, correcting a draft monograph he had written on the subject of Asiatic hand combat as adapted to the English frame.

“I cannot understand how you can be so devilishly placid,” Meriwether said at last.

“Every winter it’s the same,” Meriwether said, gesturing at the falling snow. “The darkness comes earlier, the cold drives men from the roads, and I have this…stirring. This unutterable restlessness. The winter traps me, my friend. It holds me captive.”

Rated R for violence.

Malcolm Gebrowski returned from his job at the stamp factory to discover his
wife had left him for a magic portal. He stared numbly at the linoleum
floor of his apartment’s walk-in kitchen, all scuffed up with hoofprints,
the smell of lilacs gradually being overpowered by the mildewy stink of the
paper plant next door. All that was left of eight years of marriage was a
scribbled note on the back of the telephone bill.

Guess what? A magic portal opened.

Rated R for profanity, sex.

When did Len first see how far the path would take her son? No Far Walker had been born in Home Village for many years. But everyone knew Shreve Far Walker, from Third Village Down, who often passed through as she carried loads between High and Low. When nightfall caught her near Home Village, she would stay over, taking dinner and giving back news. She wasn’t by nature a talkative person, but she understood the duties of a guest. Len would crowd with the others to hear Shreve’s account of the Far Villages.

There would be a jaunt proposed, a clamor of assent, and a rush like a group of startled goats when Cam and his friends hurried off. No packing or planning was needed as they carried no real loads and it was understood that they would stay in whatever village they were closest to when night fell. Families who housed a youth from another village tonight knew that their own children would find food and a pallet where they needed it tomorrow, and the balance would be kept.

Rated PG.

I was asleep: to begin with.

He was a frightened old man, and I was acquainted with such; I had met the terrified, the dread-filled, and the desperate over and over during my researches into the occult.

Rated PG.

Harris always found me when I was at my worst. Not that it was particularly difficult — the way I figured it, I’d been at my worst for going on three years, and if there was reason to expect a change, nobody had clued me in.

In this case, I was sleeping off an evening of hard drinking and harder words, the latter contributing to the egg-sized knot on the back of my head. Turned out folks in the skin bars didn’t take kindly to a fur running his mouth, blueskin or otherwise. There was no way to tell how much of my headache had come from the bruise, and how much had been the brew.

Still, I was at my desk when Harris arrived. I may have been half-drunk, worked over, and counting each heartbeat as it lanced through the back of my skull, but I was no deadbeat.

“Jesus, Terry,” he said. “You look like hell.”

“At least I have an excuse,” I replied. “What’s yours? And don’t call me that.”

“It’s still a free city. I can get thrown out of any bar I want.”

Rated R for some strong language and violence.

“Remind me why the pirates won’t sink us with cannon fire at long range,” said Sir Hereward as he lazed back against the bow of the skiff, his scarlet-sleeved arms trailing far enough over the side to get his twice folded-back cuffs and hands completely drenched, with occasional splashes going down his neck and back as well. He enjoyed the sensation, for the water in these eastern seas was warm, the swell gentle, and the boat was making a good four or five knots, reaching on a twelve knot breeze.
“For the first part, this skiff formerly belonged to Annim Tel, the pirate’s agent in Kerebad,” said Mister Fitz. Despite being only three feet six and a half inches tall and currently lacking even the extra height afforded by his favourite hat, the puppet was easily handling both tiller and main sheet of their small craft. “For the second part, we are both clad in red, the colour favoured by the pirates of this archipelagic trail, so they will account us as brethren until proven otherwise. For the third part, any decent perspective glass will bring close to their view the chest that lies lashed on the thwart there, and they will want to examine it, rather than blow it to smithereens.”
“Unless they’re drunk, which is highly probable,” said Hereward cheerfully.

Rated R for violence, sex.

Georgina met Death when she was ten. The first time she saw him she was reading by her grandmother’s bedside. As Georgina tried to pronounce a difficult word, she heard her grandmother groan and looked up. There was a bearded man in a top hat standing by the bed. He wore an orange flower in his buttonhole, the kind Georgina put on the altars on the Day of the Dead.

The man smiled at Georgina with eyes made of coal.

Her grandmother had warned Georgina about Death and asked her to stand guard and chase it away with a pair of scissors. But Georgina had lost the scissors the day before when she made paper animals with her brother Nuncio.

Georgina looked at Death and Death looked back at her, unblinking.

Rated PG.

Concentric circles lap beneath the dock’s wooden planks. A swan floats out, its shining plumage driving the water’s void back.

“There’s a man across the way.” The swan fixes Delia with polished onyx eyes. “Sometimes he’s a lighthouse and sometimes he’s a train, but silence doesn’t scare him.”

Black arms fold her to a black breast; the cold locks her lungs shut as water weights her limbs. Delia fights the embrace, even as she acknowledges her relief.

Rated R for language, sex.

Read by Jen Rhodes (of the Anomaly Podcast)*

Originally Published in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Read it here!

Halla got halfway out the window, stolen brooch in hand, and then the dizzies hit.

She swore as the world rocked around her. She kicked off the sandstone wall by instinct and thumped to the ground. The gold plate stuffed down her shift knocked her ribs and all her breath whooshed out. She gasped like a fish in the humid air.

Voices.

Halla stumbled over the cut stone and clover of the landowner’s garden. Her breath rushed back with loud wheezes and she flung herself into the ubiquitous bamboo groves dividing one house from the next. A bamboo leaf sucked into her mouth and she spat.

The landowner was a heavy woman, whose flesh swung through the gaps in her chiton as she thudded around the side of the house. Two maids trailed her. “I heard someone!” she panted. “Search the house!”

Rated PG. Contains violence and God-Deaths.

*Jen Rhodes is one of the hosts of Anomaly, an award winning sci-fi and fantasy podcast. Jen and her co-host Angela, have two goals for every episode they produce; to have fun and to offer a feminine perspective on all things geek. Recently, Anomaly has evolved into a community comprising two shows (Anomaly and Anomaly Supplemental), a successful blog, and a growing forum. You can find them online at anomalypodcast.com.

Coco had been with the troupe for six years. She had never been their official president because she preferred not to deal with technicalities; it gave her more time to actually lead the troupe.

“Are Mr. and Mrs. Yu around?” she said.

It was Mr. Yu who had emailed them to ask if they would perform at a Christmas party that was being held at his hotel. It was a new hotel and this was the first big event they were hosting, so he was willing to pay them a generous fee. They had agreed that the troupe would perform before and after dinner. There were also going to be fireworks, and a disco.

Mr. Yu hesitated.

Rated PG.

Jack slipped on his invisibility shawl as he entered the café. Henry sat at a table by himself, reading a handsomely leather-bound book.

“Not a bit. I can feel it. If you stare at the damn thing for long enough, you can make out a sort of outline, but I find it’s best to remember where you left it.”

Rated R for profanity, sex.

My parents, Father especially, had little interest in the imagination. “Why would you read things that someone else made up?” he always wanted to know. We had no books of fiction in the house or a radio, and I didn’t have many toys.

A strange sensation of stretched time would overtake me when I visited Thuria, started by a sort of whispering trance, and I could perform whole epochs of its development in just a few stolen moments before dinner. Have you ever felt that way? It’s a feeling of total absorption, the kind that seems to hum and fizz against the edges of your brain.

Rated PG.

Read by Jen Rhodes (of  the Anomaly Podcast)

Originally published in Andromeda Spaceways #49.

The flowers of the forest outside the witch’s cottage bloomed black, with little shiny purple leaves.  The villagers tried to say the blossoms themselves were deep purple, not a true black, but Garren was the second daughter of a witch, schooled from birth that she must never, never call things what she knew they were not.

Telven, Garren’s older sister, had the other half of the witch’s training, and that was to always, always call things what she knew they were not.  Telven called an carven oak a man and made of him a husband, who was solid and dependable though not, perhaps, as swift as some.  She called a cave a home, and made it cozy and neat, though she could not keep cheese in it more than two days for the mold.  She called their mother wise and listened to her council.

The way of the second daughter was harder.

Rated PG.

“Two days later, I drove to the house, late in the afternoon. I found it a very old place, standing quite alone in its own grounds. Anderson had left a letter with the butler, I found, pleading excuses for his absence, and leaving the whole house at my disposal for my investigations. The butler evidently knew the object of my visit, and I questioned him pretty thoroughly during dinner, which I had in rather lonely state. He is an old and privileged servant, and had the history of the Grey Room exact in detail. From him I learned more particulars regarding two things that Anderson had mentioned in but a casual manner. The first was that the door of the Grey Room would be heard in the dead of night to open, and slam heavily, and this even though the butler knew it was locked, and the key on the bunch in his pantry. The second was that the bedclothes would always be found torn off the bed, and hurled in a heap into a corner.

“‘There isn’t many ghosts like ours, sir,’ he assured me, with mournful pride. And, by Jove! he was right, as you will see. “

Rated R.

Read by Kara Grace

Originally published in Clockwork Phoenix 3.

That first year, when Nin was eight, she wanted her mother so desperately. But Noir was dead, she was dead, and would always be dead, thanks to Reshka.

Reshka liked to say, “I’m not above keeping ghosts in the house for handmaids and men-of-all-work. There must be ghosts for sweeping, for scrubbing, ghosts for plunging the toilets or repairing the roof, ghosts to fix the swamp cooler and to wash and dry the dishes. But,” said Reshka, “but I will be damned—I will be damned and in hell and dancing for the Devil—before I summon any daughter of mine from the grave.”

So Reshka had Noir cremated three days after her death. Afterward, she prepared the funeral feast in Noir and Nin’s small apartment kitchen.

Rated R: Contains Some Disturbing Imagery and Sex.

Read by Eric Luke (of the Extruding America podcast)

DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country ; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable ; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me - upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain - upon the bleak walls - upon the vacant eye-like windows - upon a few rank sedges - and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees - with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium - the bitter lapse into everyday life - the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart - an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it - I paused to think - what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher ? It was a mystery all insoluble ; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. It was possible, I reflected, that a mere different arrangement of the particulars of the scene, of the details of the picture, would be sufficient to modify, or perhaps to annihilate its capacity for sorrowful impression ; and, acting upon this idea, I reined my horse to the precipitous brink of a black and lurid tarn that lay in unruffled lustre by the dwelling, and gazed down - but with a shudder even more thrilling than before - upon the remodelled and inverted images of the gray sedge, and the ghastly tree-stems, and the vacant and eye-like windows.

Rated PG.

Read by Norm Sherman (of the Drabblecast)

Originally published in Strange Horizons. Read it here!

He’s driven this way five times already, watching the same banks and donut shops and car washes fly past in a never-ending reel. Got the front windows open, taking in the night air. And then he sees her—sitting on the curb, cradling her head in her arms, going boo hoo. Hodgepodge of girl and woman: miniskirt; halter top, no bra; friendship bracelet on wrist; hair pulled back with cherry scrunchy; Hello Kitty stick-on tattoo on her left shoulder, mushy from the heat.

“Hello.” He cruises to a stop. “I’m lost and I need to get to the Interstate.”

She snorts: “Are you for real?” She’d be stupid to get in, she surely would.

Rated R: Thematic Material