Archive for Rated R

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PodCastle 467: How I Became Coruscating Queen of All the Realms, Pierced the Obsidian Night, Destroyed a Legendary Sword, and Saved My Heart’s True Love

Show Notes

Rated R for adult content


How I Became Coruscating Queen of All the Realms, Pierced the Obsidian Night, Destroyed a Legendary Sword, and Saved My Heart’s True Love

By Baker & Dovey

No shit, there I was, knee-deep in necromantic weasels in the lair of the mad wizard-king, when Korgar and Elutriel both decided it was time to win my affections once and for all.

Elutriel had summoned an aura of resistance, an iridescent bubble free of weasels. He struggled forwards, heaving against the weight of their wasted furry bodies.

“Push them into the flames!” I shouted, pointing with Hrrnngnngrrrndr, the Sword of a Hundred Thousand Agonies, at the fire-trap Korgar had triggered as we entered the room.

But Elutriel ignored me and waded toward Korgar instead. He used the aura to shove a wave of writhing, stinking flesh before him until it piled up and over the granite-slab shoulders of the Vhunken warrior.

Korgar burst out with a mountainous effort and grabbed a gnashing undead weasel with a hand like a boulder. His huge arms straining, he forced it through the aura and toward Elutriel. The weasel’s rotted body twisted and deformed under the pressure, but its teeth still gnashed as Korgar bent it toward the healer’s neck.

Typical.

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PodCastle Miniature 97: When I Had Eyes, I Didn’t See

Show Notes

Rated R for disturbing themes and imagery


When I Had Eyes, I Didn’t See

By Anna Yeatts

I had eyes once.

Before the Lift-man came.

Now I have knobs, smooth and black and round as pegs. I touch them with my fingertips and try to remember what it felt like, having eyes.

If I push one knob in, the other one pops out like the elevator buttons used to do.

There used to be a brass plate mounted on the wall next to the elevator’s cage with two smooth black pegs. I pushed in the top peg to go up. The bottom peg popped out. Gears ground, cables groaned, and the elevator clanked down to the lobby.

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PC 464: Needle Mouth


Needle Mouth

by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

 

When Hana Samsa woke from a fevered nap one afternoon, she found that she had been transformed into an enormous mosquito. At the foot of her bed, her tiny legs thumped against an empty bottle of Becherovka; she’d pushed it there that morning after licking the last particles of bittersweet liquor from the cap. Her head pounded in the faint light of the gas lantern by the bedside, but when she raised her new insect arms to massage her temples, they wouldn’t bend. She felt quite sure that, when she had escaped Anastázie’s embrace that morning in order to retrieve the Becherovka from beneath the bed, she had been human, had used her human tongue to lap the inside of the cap, had nudged her human head back under Anastázie’s arm and rested it on her chest, had breathed with human nostrils the sunshine smell of Anastázie’s skin. Now Anastázie was gone, likely off to work at the school, and Hana had gained four extra legs and a mouth like a needle.

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PodCastle 460, ARTEMIS RISING: The Settlement


The Settlement

by Wendi 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.

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PodCastle Miniature 95: The Stories She Tells Herself

Show Notes

Rated R.


The Stories She Tells Herself

by Kelly Sandoval

He stole her skin. Yes, that’s the one. He stole her skin, so he had her heart. Or her soul. The part of her that would have fought him otherwise.

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PodCastle 452: Hibakusha

Show Notes

For more links and information on butoh see here:

Sankai Juku – Clips from Umusuna.

Interview with Ushio Amagatsu (Artistic Director of Sankai Juku) and Theater Critic Tamotsu Watanabe

Tatsumi Hijikata – Hosotan (part 1)

Kazuo Ohno – The Written Face

Hisako Horikawa & Min Tanaka, 1988 Performance


Hibakusha

by L.P. Lee

The closer I get to the island, the more of a dream Tokyo becomes. The obelisks of high glass, the polished people, their nails and shoes so clean. The neon canopies, the subtle dishes, the cab drivers with white gloves on their hands.  I leave it behind on the train ride down. Down to the fishing town with its  immaculate streets and kindly grandmother, who  hosted me in her ryokan and made me a breakfast of rice and fish. Now the fish scatter before my boat, clean waves break against the hull, and the green island looms ahead, rising from the horizon like an old god.

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PodCastle 445: In Mixcoatl’s Net


In Mixcoatl’s Net

by Charlie Allison

Sunny abandoned her house the day after she buried Anna and struck out for the western metropolis of Palotl. She gathered up all her practical effects in no time at all: a sharp knife, matches, a map, and a pair of good blankets—one from her childhood, one from Anna’s.

Anna’s blanket was a mess of Evenki winter scenes: the Old Witch’s Comb, a strutting rooster and the gaping grey jaws of wolves.

Sunny sniffed. It still smelled like her.

Her own blanket was decorated with Quetzal mosaics in bright reds and greens: the Flower Goddess bringing life to the desert, Mixcoatl the Hunter casting his net through the stars, headless Night Axe terrorizing travelers.

Sunny rolled up the blankets along with a bedroll and stuffed them into her backpack.

She packed a sensible amount of food (turkey and dog sausages, tortillas, a few ears of corn and as much water as she could fit), strapped on her boots, and stomped to her front door for the last time.

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PodCastle 441: A Shot of Salt Water (Aurealis Month)

Show Notes

Rated R.

Part of our Aurealis Month, celebrating the Australian Aurealis Awards.


A Shot of Salt Water

by Lisa L. Hannett

Accordions unpleated welcoming songs the day the mermaids returned.

The first notes droned joyful at dawn, played by young men with wool collars unrolled against the wind. Mattress-clouds bulged above land and water, miles of damp cotton dulling the fishermen’s music. As the sky blanched, fiddlers sawed harmonies, horsehairs screeching on weather-warped bows. Bodhráns were rescued from blanket boxes and cupboards, clatter-spoons from the backs of junk drawers. Soon drummers thumb-pounded down autumn-gold slopes from the village. Beats jigged and reeled past the wharves, along the coast, then splashed through froth seething to shore.

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PodCastle 438: Defy The Grey Kings


Defy The Grey Kings

by Jason Fischer

There are many ways to kill an elephant. When that mountain bears down on you, shaking the earth and screaming for your blood, show no fear.

Only without fear will you see the truth. They are quick, even draped in chain and iron, but you are quicker by a whisker. They fight like devils, but it only takes three people who know what they are doing to bring an elephant down.

They are afraid of you.

All elephants can die.

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PodCastle 435: Bilingual, or Mouth to Mouth

Show Notes

Rated R.


Bilingual, or Mouth to Mouth

by Lisa M. Bradley

“Sweet Sue,” Maz hissed, and I barely resisted an urge to jump into the bonfire. ‘Cause I knew that hiss from his habit of scrolling through smut in my presence, never mind my pleas, and I knew exactly what (or who) had prompted this particular sexhalation.

She was a thimbleful of darkness lurking under a mesquite tree at the party. All’a five-feet tall and maybe 90 pounds if you threw her in a pool—which would’ve, incidentally, accounted for the lemon-suck look on her face. A minute earlier, I’d glanced up from the bonfire, its flames weirded by the plastic bottles that Marcos, our host, had tossed in to melt, and I’d seen the green-tinsel in her black hair, those Hello Kitty combat boots, and I’d known, absolutely known, Maz would zero in on the girl. She was a stranger, and she had a style most of the girls on Five Mile Line didn’t bother with: sort of “pop-punk princess caught in heroin-related downward spiral,” if I had to put a name to it.

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