Archive for Rated R

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PodCastle 120: Some Zombie Contingency Plans

Show Notes

Rated R: Contains Language, Thematic Elements

Special Closing Music: “Just Mizunderstood” by Norm Sherman

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!


Some Zombie Contingency Plans

by Kelly Link

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.

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PodCastle Miniature 54: A Spot of Bother, High Above the Undead Sea

Show Notes

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


A Spot of Bother, High Above the Undead Sea

by Kris Dikeman

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.”

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PodCastle 117: The Wages of Salt


The Wages of Salt

by Deborah Kalin

Squatting to examine a buried shadow, I nodded. There was no academic or scientific value in salt — it would not advance my thesis, nor bring any glimmer of knowledge about the theriomorphs — but it would sell. White gold, the economic cornerstone of New Persia.

I brushed at the crust. Dirty grains clung to the sweat of my palms. The shadow underneath, too clean-edged to be a phantasm, didn’t change. “Here,” I said. “Help me.”

“It’ll just be another ammonite.” But he knelt and set to scraping beside me.

My fingers touched cloth.

I jerked back, staring at the dark linen we’d uncovered. Suspicion lifted the hairs on my nape and I dug faster, harder, in danger of damaging the specimen with haste.

An arm emerged from the salt. Beside me, Hareem had uncovered a knee. Working feverishly now, we followed the contours, salt flying from our fingers, until the entire body lay bare to the sky.

Hareem let out a low whistle. “Now this,” he said, “will fetch a fiefdom.”

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PodCastle 115: Monstrous Embrace

Show Notes

Rated R: Contains Violence and Gore


Monstrous Embrace

by Rachel Swirsky

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.

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PodCastle 114: Wolves Till the World Goes Down


Wolves Till the World Goes Down

by Greg van Eekhout

“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.

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PodCastle 112: The Somnambulist

Show Notes

Rated R: Violence, Language, Adult Themes


The Somnambulist

by David J. Schwartz

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.

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PodCastle Miniature 51: Jaguar Woman


Jaguar Woman

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

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.

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PodCastle 110: The Alchemist’s Feather


The Alchemist’s Feather

by Erin Cashier

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.

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PodCastle 107: The Behold of the Eye (Giant Episode)

Show Notes

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

(Check out the shiny new Directors Notes iPhone App)


The Behold of the Eye

by Hal Duncan

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.

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PodCastle 104: The Dog King

Show Notes

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


The Dog King

by Holly Black

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.