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PodCastle 411: Hands of Burnished Bronze

PodCastle 411: Hands of Burnished Bronze is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13.

Hands of Burnished Bronze

by Rebecca Schwarz

Night after night, I lie awake staring into the darkness, listening for the sound of scrabbling fingers on the flagstones outside my door. Sleep, like a young lover who sees how old and frightened I have become, has left me—I fear for good. I hear only the boy’s regular breaths. A new slave brought back from a recent campaign, he sleeps curled at the foot of my bed. Watery pre-dawn light outlines my narrow window, too weak to enter my chamber; soon dawn will drain the black hours pooled in this room.

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PodCastle 410: The Saint of the Sidewalks

First appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine. Read it here!

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Show Notes

Rated R.

The Saint of the Sidewalks

by Kat Howard

Joan wrote her prayer with a half-used tube of Chanel Vamp that she had found discarded at the 34th St. subway stop. It glided across the cardboard – the flip side of a Stoli box, torn and bent – and left her words in a glossy slick the color of dried blood: “I need a miracle.”

You were supposed to be specific when asking the Saint of the Sidewalks for an intervention, but everything in her life was such a fucking disaster, Joan didn’t know where to start. So, she asked for a miracle, non-specific variety.

She set her cardboard on the sidewalk, prayer-side up. Then lit the required cigarette – stolen out of the pack of some guy who had been hitting on her at a bar – with the almost empty lighter she had fished out of the trash. You couldn’t use anything new, anything you had previously owned, in your prayer. That was the way the devotion worked: found objects. Discards. Detritus made holy by the power of the saint.

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PodCastle Miniature 87: All Things to All People

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Show Notes

First appeared in Apex Magazine. Read it here!

All Things to All People

by D. K. Thompson

I wake up in someone else’s house every morning, and lay my head somewhere else every night. The tattoos are my only constant company, covering almost all my skin. I’d stretch the free space of my flesh out if I could, but I don’t make or choose the pictures – and I can’t control the size. I’m running out of skin, and I know what that means. When it’s all inked I’ll be out of time.

The angel here, on the inside of my wrist, that was the first one. A cartoon character – the tips of his wings sharp as knives. That’s as far back as I can remember: waking up on the side of the road with the taste of dirt in my mouth and the smell of gasoline on my hands. The asphalt and the sun had burned my face from opposing sides, like I’d been twice-grilled. Gravel bounced around me as semi-trucks roared by. I flexed my hands – my knuckles were bloody and cracked. I’d been in a fight, but despite the pain I grinned because I was pretty sure I’d won.

Then I saw the dead man in the ditch.

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PodCastle 409: The Husband Stitch

First appeared in Granta. A Nebula and Shirley Jackson Award nominee. 

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Show Notes

Rated R.

The Husband Stitch

by Carmen Maria Machado

(If you read this story out loud, please use the following voices:

Me: as a child, high-pitched, forgettable; as a woman, the same.

The boy who will grow into a man, and be my spouse: robust with his own good fortune.

My father: Like your father, or the man you wish was your father.

My son: as a small child, gentle, rounded with the faintest of lisps; as a man, like my husband.

All other women: interchangeable with my own.)

In the beginning, I know I want him before he does. This isn’t how things are done, but this is how I am going to do them. I am at a neighbor’s party with my parents, and I am seventeen. Though my father didn’t notice, I drank half a glass of white wine in the kitchen a few minutes ago, with the neighbor’s teenage daughter. Everything is soft, like a fresh oil painting.

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PodCastle 408: Tumbleweeds and Little Girls

PodCastle 408: Tumbleweeds and Little Girls is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Rated PG.

Tumbleweeds and Little Girls

by Jeff Bowles

 

They had the tumbleweed ambassador on the news a month before the big battle. The news guy and news girl said he was intelligent, and then a local representative of the Plains and Wildlife Service translated for him because tumbleweeds can’t talk and must sign everything by rolling and hopping and what not.

“We mean your people no harm,” said the Plains and Wildlife Service guy. He spoke kind of slow and choppy. I guessed he wasn’t actually, what do you call it? Fluent in tumbleweed?

He said, “The war has started, whether you realize it or not. The Prairie Queen has an army of deer and antelope and coyotes. She’s got the power of fire. She murdered our Wizard Father and made her castle from our dead tumbleweed brothers and sisters. The crazy bitch!”

I winced at this last word. I’m only twelve years old, after all. My dad used to talk real rough like that. He used to cuss and laugh and say to me, “Don’t repeat that to your mother, Amie Masterson. I don’t want to fight no little girl.” Then we’d roughhouse a bit. My dad died last year, though. Some kind of cancer. Mom never told me which.

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General Submissions Update

Greetings from the floating castle in the sky!

2016 has proved to be a particularly strong year for submissions. In order to give proper attention to all the stories we’ve received, we’ll be temporarily closed to new submissions beginning May 1. We expect to reopen our submissions portal in June 2016.

Thank you for your patience! We look forward to reading your stories.

Best,

Rachael K. Jones and Graeme Dunlop, PodCastle Co-Editors

and Editorial Staff

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PodCastle 406: The Little Dog Ohori

Originally published in the Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk.

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Show Notes

Rated PG

The Little Dog Ohori

by Anatoly Belilovsky

 

The young soldier jumps to his feet, snaps to attention.

“At ease, Corporal,” the officer says. “And please, sit down.” A white coat hangs off the officer’s shoulders; it hides her shoulder tabs, leaving visible only the caduceus in her lapel.

The soldier hesitates. The officer leans against the wall; her coat falls off one shoulder, revealing three small stars. The soldier’s eyes widen.

“Begging Comrade Colonel’s pardon,” he says, and sits down. The movement is slow and uncertain, as if his body fights the very thought of sitting while an officer stands.

“Sit,” the officer says, more firmly now. “This is an order.”

“Thank you, Comrade Colonel,” the soldier says, sees a small frown crease the officer’s face, and adds: “I mean, Doctor.”

The officer smiles and nods. A strand of graying hair escapes her knot and falls to her face; she sweeps it back with an impatient gesture.

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PodCastle 405, ARTEMIS RISING: Beat Softly, My Wings of Steel

PodCastle 405, ARTEMIS RISING: Beat Softly, My Wings of Steel is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Welcome back to Artemis Rising 2!

Beat Softly, My Wings of Steel

by Beth Cato

By the light of the full moon, I crept onto a battlefield mounded with decaying soldiers and horses. Mud squished beneath my boots as I searched for a horse’s soul. This close to the Jen picket lines, they had likely already scavenged for souls of both flesh horses and those that had already been reborn as pegasi, but I was desperate.

Not far away, the campfires of the Jen army flickered, their encampment a living wall across the peninsula. At my back, my own city Sharva repulsed me like the rotten flesh on this battlefield. Holes dotted the magicked dome over the spires like a moth-gnawed veil unable to hide an ugly bride. I would rejoice over Sharva’s imminent fall but not for what that meant for me and Grandmother.

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PodCastle 404, ARTEMIS RISING: Territory

PodCastle 404, ARTEMIS RISING: Territory is a PodCastle original.

disturbing imagery

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Show Notes

Rated R

Welcome back to Artemis Rising!

Territory

by Jae Steinbacher

 

I.

If we do the magic wrong, Lucy, we won’t know until our bodies fail and there’s nothing we can do to go back.

We lie down together in the grass, the damp blades tickling our legs below the hems of our pleated skirts, our hands clasped, and close our eyes, and let our hearts slow until they beat no more. The rain comes first, plastering your dark curls against your forehead, washing away the spell words inked on the palms of our hands. Our skin turns pale and cold, harder and yet more yielding. We stop smelling like ourselves, like cherry lipgloss and hard white soap and the heather crushed on the bottoms of our shoes. We smell like nothing for a time, and then like the bottom of the bins, like the dog on the side of the road, putrescine and cadaverine.

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PodCastle 403, ARTEMIS RISING: Send in the Ninjas

PodCastle 403, ARTEMIS RISING: Send in the Ninjas is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes

Rated PG-13

Welcome back to Artemis Rising II!

Send in the Ninjas

by Michelle Ann King

The streets are more full of snow than people tonight, lending everything an enjoyably deserted, apocalyptic air. Isabel smiles as she walks home, humming happily to herself. Getting stood up never fails to put her in a good mood.

She always goes on the dates her mother sets up, but she much prefers it when the other person doesn’t show. That way, Isabel still gets credit for trying, while also getting to skip straight to the part where she doesn’t have to go on a second date.

Sexual relationships are a minefield Isabel would rather not have to navigate. She works as a copy-editor for a publisher that specialises in erotic science fiction, and real life never stands up to the sex in the books. She also worries about her left breast being a slightly different shape from the right—her last boyfriend was an artist, and his preoccupation with proportion gave her a bit of a complex. All things considered, it simply doesn’t seem worth it.

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