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PodCastle 666: Reading Dead Lips — Part 2

Show Notes

Rated R.


[Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part novelette. Visit our previous post to read Part 1.]

Reading Dead Lips — Part 2

By Dustin Steinacker

They must have razed the entire village, Alex said carefully, rather than admit that ordinary people had killed the officers living here. Better for the city to appear a battle casualty.

“Why does it matter?” she managed. “Whether it was military or rebels?”

“Czir military all captured or killed. Nobody there left, but still guerrillas fighting. No need to inspire them.”

“But you know it was rebels.”

“Everybody knows. Propaganda.”

“Then why?” she pled. For understanding, for any way to put order to this. Questions of politics seemed so distant and sanitary to this charnel town before her. “Why the coverup?”

“We pretend not to. Same thing. Propaganda still works.”

These streets of death brought names back to her memory. Her friend, little Tibor, he of the harelip scar. The Valentins, who both shouted and struck their children and made Noe glad for her gentle mother. Petr Mátyás, an oddly well-to-do peddler who’d had the misfortune of settling in Óste just before the end. A nice man with a hard-to-place accent who loved a foolish pun.

All dead or enslaved or worse. This was a graveyard, as much as any she’d visited coming here.

Snap. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle Flash Fiction Contest VI


The Escape Artists Flash Fiction Contest is back again, and it’s PodCastle’s turn! The contest will be taking submissions beginning March 1, 2021, and ending on March 31, 2021, at 11:59 p.m. EST. PodCastle Associate editor Craig Jackson, or Ocicat on the forums, will be our Guest Editor for the contest!

Each author may submit one original fantasy story of 500 words or less. Stories will then be sorted into categories, anonymized, and posted to our forums for all to read and vote on in a tournament-style contest (you can check out past contests over there as well)! The three winning stories will be purchased at our usual payment rate, USD $0.08 per word, and the stories will be run together as an episode of PodCastle. Note that stories will be published on a members-only section of the forums, so first publication rights will not be expended by participating in the contest. And it’s easy to become a member! In fact, you can head on over to the forums and do that right now. All the pertinent details and rules will be posted under “The Arcade” section of the forums; voting will commence in April!

Check back here on March 1 or follow us on social media for links to our Moksha portal where you can upload your contest entries. Best of luck to everyone participating!


[NOTE: A previous version of this post indicated that we would be purchasing stories for USD $30 each. That has been corrected to $0.08 per word to reflect our increased payment rates.]

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PodCastle 665: Reading Dead Lips — Part 1

Show Notes

Rated R.


Reading Dead Lips

By Dustin Steinacker

Nouelle had always thought that she’d feel a sense of homecoming when she returned to the country that had birthed her. But after eight years, it was already a foreign land. Her first day back she risked a hostel, near the border, and the shower water was wrong; it stung her flesh with its force but never seemed to rinse off the lather. The loudest voices in the common room all spoke the occupiers’ dialects and she stayed silent rather than mark herself as a Czir. The cooking smells too were unfamiliar.

After that she slept out of doors.

She was wiser than she’d been when last she breathed Czir air (this she told herself, and sometimes she believed it too). She now knew occult sciences, after all, and had acquainted herself with the many stages of corpse-stink. So yes, she was standing on ground that she’d had to sell herself to escape, occupied ground. But she was also prepared. She’d lost everything she ever had in this country and now, dammit, she had the chance to take just one thing back.

Somewhere within these borders was her sister. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 664: Wytchen Wood


Wytchen Wood

by Lori J. Torone

A decade of shavings covered the floor of Lewys’s carpentry shop. He didn’t bother sweeping any more, although he probably should — wood without magic produces a drab dust that desiccates the throat, shrivels the lungs. He coughed and gulped from his flask, stepping back from his work. Carving the finishing scrollwork on yet another hope chest for the latest bride-to-be in town did nothing to fill his own hollowness.

“Wait for me,” she had whispered in the wytchen grove so many years ago, her berry-scented breath caressing his cheek, “I will come back to you.” She’d taken magic with her, in the wytchen dust glinting in her sunlit hair as she waved goodbye from the newly-carved wagon. She took his heart as well, but left hope in its place. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 663: Our Mortal Undressing

Show Notes

Rated R.


Our Mortal Undressing

by Hamilton Perez

I. Discovery

I suppose I’m chasing the wildflowers.

I first found them while digging for worms. It’s not very often an earthworm dies of old age, but this one called to me, bloated and weary, with its body caked in pollen and a belly full of decay. The soil was soft and moist to my mouth, rich with nutrients I had no need for, yet there was something familiar about it also. Like I’d loved and tasted this earth. Like it was a part of me, and I was a part of it. Slinking through the soil, something called to me, and not just the worm.

Over mineral and plant debris, rib bones and stones, I chewed my path downward. The others wriggled desperately away from me, until I found my heart’s desire curled up in the soft, fleshy remains of a lifeform already passed.

That’s when I remembered: No . . . she’d said upon meeting me, and nothing more ever again. As far as recognition goes, it’s not the worst I’ve encountered. She was a stubborn one though, suffering constantly yet refusing to leave. A deep gash sank through her belly, coated with red. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 662: La Camaraderie du Cirque

Show Notes

Rated R.


La Camaraderie du Cirque

By dave ring

Gather round, and let me tell you the story of Veronica’s Oiseau de Feu.

They were dark times, for me.  Every bloody day, Chuckles, Magda and Felix tried to trip me when I walked by, ugly faces snickering underneath their greasepaint.  My everything, Michel, ignored them, even when they pull that shit right in front of him.  It infuriated me.  He said it was to preserve “the camaraderie du cirque.”  I loved Michel.  But when Michel stood by doing nothing while those painted-mouth idiots tormented me, my love was lost in a rage that could turn a forest into cinders.

On those days, I screamed into my pillow: “Fuck the camaraderie du cirque!”  Though my pillow did just as little as Michel to salve my wounds.

Before my banishment from the tent, I used to lurk behind the cheap velvet curtains and watch Michel and Lars from backstage after all the tickets had been sold and the punters put in their seats.  Dear Michel and sweet, foolish Lars.  Our main act.  Under the lights, they gleamed.  They wore tiny silver posing pouches and white cords criss-crossed around their muscled limbs, like they’d been the pawns of bondage-minded sailors.  As if you could pull at a loose string and the two of them would fall apart into a sloppy pile of oiled pectorals, triceps and thighs. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 661: The Engineer of the Undersea Railways

Show Notes

Rated PG-13.


The Engineer of the Undersea Railway

By Varsha Dinesh

The undersea engineer Persis Makhanwala cut a solitary figure to all those who knew her. The gossip rags reeled in the wake of her spangled saris and perpetually bruised eyes, scrambling to dredge up old dark-eyed paramours and sad, sparkling scandals. They called her such epithets as Queen of the Undersea and Siren of the Rails, crowding to get a glimpse as she emerged from a pincered little car at Bombay’s Marine Drive. Cameras clicked; lights flashed. Chai vendors, journalists and spectators jostled.

As Persis glowered, a train’s whistle sounded. The underwater tunnel lit up. The arc of it glimmered like a diamond necklace, stretching as far as the eye could see, into the mists of the Arabian Sea. A roar went through the crowd. Persis stepped off the promenade and into the waves, disappearing into a carefully concealed elevator.

It was a historic moment. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 660: TALES FROM THE VAULTS — The Husband Stitch

Show Notes

Rated R. 

This episode is a part of our Tales from the Vaults series, in which a member of PodCastle’s staff chooses a backlist episode to highlight and discuss. This week’s episode was chosen by associate editor Kaitlyn Zivanovich. “The Husband Stitch” originally aired as PodCastle 409.


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.) (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 659: My Country is a Ghost

Show Notes

Rated PG-13.


My Country is a Ghost

By Eugenia Triantafyllou

When Niovi tried to smuggle her mother’s ghost into the new country, she found herself being passed from one security officer to another, detailing her mother’s place and date of death over and over again.

“Are you carrying a ghost with you, ma’am?” asked the woman in the security vest. Her nametag read Stella. Her lips were pressed in a tight line as she pointed at the ghost during the screening, tucked inside a necklace. She took away Niovi’s necklace and left only her phone.

“If she didn’t die here, I am afraid she cannot follow you,” the woman said. Her voice was even, a sign she had done this many times before. Niovi resented the woman at that moment. She still had a ghost waiting for her to come home, comforting her when she felt sad, giving advice when needed. But she was still taking Niovi’s ghost away.

Stella paused. She gave Niovi a moment to think, to decide. She could turn around and go back to her home taking the necklace with her. Back to her unemployment benefits and a future she could no longer bring herself to imagine, or she could move down the long stretch of aisles, past the dimming lights and into the night, alone, her mother’s ghost left behind—where do ghosts return to in times like this? Niovi would be a new person in a new country, wiped clean of her past.

Foreign ghosts were considered unnecessary. The only things they had to offer were stories and memories.

Niovi had prepared herself for this, and yet she had hoped she wouldn’t have to leave her mother behind. (Continue Reading…)

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PodCastle 658: The Cursed Noel

Show Notes

Rated PG-13.


The Cursed Noel

By Tim Pratt & Heather Shaw

It was supposed to be a Very Zoom Christmas, but the internet went out on Christmas Eve, and out here, it usually took a couple of days to get going again. Travis didn’t expect things to happen any faster during the holiday. He could get a bar on his cell phone if he stood in the right spot in the cabin, but that wasn’t enough for a video call. He could always drive into town tomorrow where the service was better, but sitting in some parking lot in the cold, looking at the thumbprint-sized faces of his mother and sisters and cousins on his phone, all broadcasting from their own places of pandemic isolation, didn’t exactly sound festive.

Travis went to the window in the kitchen and looked out at the whitened evergreens. Loneliness settled onto him, like the weight of all that snow on those branches. The smell of his morning coffee was already dissipating in the chill air. The original plan, back when everyone thought the pandemic would surely be under control by the end of the year, was to fly to Chicago for the traditional giant gathering, but the Midwest was even more ravaged by the virus than everywhere else. So he was staying here instead, wintering for the first time in the cabin in the North Carolina mountains he’d inherited from his grandfather, and only used as a summer place before. The isolation hadn’t bothered him much so far, but like the snow in the song, the pandemic didn’t show signs of stopping, and it had all become a bit wearying. (Continue Reading…)