Archive for Rated R

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PodCastle 888: TALES FROM THE VAULTS – This Sullied Earth, Our Home

Show Notes

Rated R


This Sullied Earth, Our Home

by Mimi Mondal

A few hours after the Majestic Oriental Circus rolls into Deoband, Johuree steps into our tent and whispers, “This is the place where I took you in. It was here.”Outside, it looks just like one of the many small towns we wind our way through, halting for a week or two to put up a show. It has been raining for days. The university dome in the distance glistens with dark moss against the ponderous sky. The fairground is all mud, sludge and clumps of grass, sucking in our tent posts like a fumbling, ungainly monster. A group of local men, hired to dry up enough ground to put up the main circus tent, have been working since the morning. So why does this miserable earth feel like a familiar taste, again?We wonder if Johuree would like a cup of tea. He agrees. There is no milk, but he sips the dark brown brew in silence.We watch.“There is a cottage at the far end of the town. Little more than ruins now, I presume. Would you like to visit?”Johuree never goes anywhere. We don”t recall him ever stepping out into the daylight. We don”t recall much anything. Though we travel far and wide with the circus, we have never left the camp site and gone “sightseeing”, as some others in the troupe are in the habit of doing.

Nor has he. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 883: Redo

Show Notes

Rated R


Redo

by Brigitte Winter

 

3.

In our third timeline, I met you on New Year’s Eve.

I had slept off a migraine half that day, so I wanted nothing more than to spend the evening by the fireplace cuddling with Jamie and our ancient basset hound. But New Year’s Day would be my fifth wedding anniversary with Jamie — our “wood” anniversary — and he had gotten tickets to a burlesque show because he thought he was hilarious. Predictably, he insisted that it would be wasteful to skip the show because the tickets were fifty dollars each. Plus, booze was included. Plus, he could watch women dance out of their clothes, which was significantly more interesting than watching me sit around all night in the oversized sweater and leggings I’d been wearing since Christmas.

“Plus, Mary,” he said, “maybe you’ll surprise yourself and have fun for once.” (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 878: The Carving of War

Show Notes

Rated R


The Carving Of War

By Somto Ihezue

 

Odili was a child when Nkeala, her grandmother, died. All she remembered of her were her braids, a tangle of clouds that reached for the floor. She remembered her eyes, how they swallowed her face. To look into them was to be lost in a vastness. It was to find eyes — owl eyes, bold eyes, brown eyes — staring back at you. Most of all, she remembered her kindness, an unending sea.

Nkeala had been dìbìā — keeper, to Idemili; the roaring python, they who drowned oceans, mother of mothers. At the birth of time, Idemili, like beads dancing on a fragile waist, had wound herself around the clans of Obosi. Out of her mouth, the Eke River poured, its brooks and streamlets giving sustenance to the corn in the farmlands, the antelopes of the wild and the Irokos that split the sky. Odili’s family was bound in perpetuity to Idemili. With her grandmother’s passing, the fanged staff fell to her mother, Adaugo. In the past, a few keepers had met their fate with defiance. Odili’s great-great grandfather, Agbadike, had refused the staff when it passed to him. Setting the shrine of Idemili ablaze, he invoked the ritual of blood in a bid to sever the bond that tethered his life to the deity. Three days after, a breadfruit fell from a tree and split his skull in half. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 874: The Husband

Show Notes

Rated R


The Husband

By P.C. Verrone

 

He has never taken a man for a wife before. This becomes clear as he introduces me to his other wives. The youngest wife bristles and the wife with the long, dark hair avoids meeting my eye. The tallest wife just looks from him to me and nods. Her face betrays no hint of hospitality. They are aware that he and I have exchanged vows, exchanged fluids. However they may feel, nothing can be done about it now. He has chosen me.

He wants a feast to celebrate. We order delivery. When the driver arrives, the youngest wife invites him into the house. She is beautiful and coy, and the driver is stupid. As soon as he steps inside, our husband sinks his teeth into the man’s neck.

At the sight of blood, my eyes fill with red. I leap at the body in our husband’s arms, but a sharp jab in my rib sends me tumbling to the floor. The youngest wife tucks her elbow back against her side as she devours our victim’s clavicle. I reach for a wrist, a thigh, but the wife with long, dark hair kicks me away. The tallest wife glowers at me, lapping at the driver’s neck, inches from our husband’s lips. I can only suck the capillaries from the man’s toes. If our husband notices, he does nothing. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 857: Ecdysis

Show Notes

Rated R


Ecdysis

by Samir Sirk Morató

 

My husband never got over being a lindworm.

Understandably. For over two decades, he was a serpent wider than an oak barrel and longer than a warship; for under two years, he’s been human. Had someone changed me from a shark-swallowing, black-and-blood-banded titan to a naked, knobbly beast with limbs, I would’ve killed them and myself, even if we were wed.

Yet wed we were. Our betrothal was as crushing as my husband’s past coils: because he was a princess-eating monster, he needed to be murdered; because he was a princely man, he needed to be married.

“My eldest needs a bride or a coffin,” the queen told my father. “He’s forbidding his younger brother from marrying before he does, and no more princesses will come. We’re out of options. Surrender your daughter.” (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 847: The Golem Lover

Show Notes

Rated R


The Golem Lover

by J.H. Siegal

 

 

I have learned of a lace that runs through my little village. Geilevska, nestled within the bosom of nearby hills, rests upon these strands, sewn around the fertile patchwork of letters learned in the men’s yeshiva, through the words traded by merchants, beneath the whispers of the crops waving in the fields. I speak, of course, of the hidden discourse of the women of Geilevska.

Every village in the pale has such a lace, to be sure. We are not the only people for whom a matron’s eyebrow may hold the fate of many, whether it raises or lowers, and the strength of the twinkle yet in the eye of an aged woman holds much solace for a young widow such as myself. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 844: On Snowflake-Veined Wings

Show Notes

Rated R


On Snowflake-veined Wings

by Chip Houser

 

Amalia runs her finger around the inside of her Tupperware, wiping up the last of her leftover poutine. Her fall allergies kicked in a few days ago, so she doesn’t really taste the gravy. But she’d rather finger-clean her Tupperware at her table than go wash it because Jerry and three of his sales team flunkies are clustered by the sink watching a video on his gigantic phone. From their crude commentary and the video’s crashing waves, then the gagging, she can guess what they’re watching. Why they’re silent for once, too. It’s a clip of a woman in the Côte d’Azur, slim and tan in her pink maillot, running in slow motion into the waves. The man who’s filming keeps calling out Sirène! Amalia watched the video earlier that morning; it was all over her feeds. The video is like a Viagra commercial, until the woman vomits an impossibly long stream of brightly colored fish into the surf.

When the woman throws up, Jerry’s flunkies unleash a range of expletives. They’re all staring at Jerry, who looks quite pleased with himself. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 842: TALES FROM THE VAULTS – The Aunties Return the Ocean

Show Notes

Rated R


The Aunties Return the Ocean

By Chris Kuriata

Auntie Roberta landed badly on the roof of her escarpment house, scraping her knees across the flagstone shingles and splitting her pantyhose. Her arms were too full of black water to keep her balance so she nearly slid off the edge.

She carried so much ocean she barely knew where to hide it all. Inside her stony home, she filled the kitchen drawers and cupboards with cold dark brine. Every pot and tankard as well.

She quickly ran out of places, yet her weary arms were still loaded with the stuff. Where would it all fit? Auntie Roberta got on her knees and stuffed the final bits of ocean into the mouse holes. She heard the panicked mice squeak before drowning. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 810: And in Rain, Blank Pages

Show Notes

Rated R


And in Rain, Blank Pages

by Lora Gray

 

It’s 1981, I’m nineteen and now I know the truth.

It rains in New York just like it rains in Indiana.

I’m wretched as a wet kitten and drunk, trudging through Brooklyn in a cardigan and combat boots. My lip is split. My left eye is beginning to swell.

I’m not even sure I know how to write poetry anymore.

Funny that I grabbed the notebook Tony gave me before running from his apartment, as if the potential of those blank pages was somehow more vital than an umbrella. A jacket. Fucking socks.

By the time I find an open diner, my feet are soaked and I’m shivering so hard it takes three tries to open the door. It looks empty and nobody greets me, but the stink of old grease presses over me like a damp palm. I sniffle, card my fingers through my hair, tacky with Aqua Net, and squelch my way to a booth. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 808: ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL: The Settlement

Show Notes

Rated R


The Settlement

by WC Dunlap

They file out into the predawn chill before the rest of the settlement is awake. Cloaked by a thick fog and the still darkness of a waning night, they carry shovels and picks. Despite the high collars and low hats that conceal their faces, their attempts at anonymity are wasted. I recognize them instantly through the frost of the kitchen window, their layers of clothing stitched by my own hand or those of my brethren.

I see you Reverend John Able, Matthias Smith, Thomas Gore, William Roe and Matthew Surgeon. And God sees you too.

They are silent in their duties, barely even looking at one another. Their breath visible in heavy puffs that quickly condense into white frost, as they pound the hard, frozen earth. They dig deeper, until the ground cracks, and still farther until they hit bone. It is hard work and it takes an hour before the first body is pulled up.

(Continue Reading…)