Drabblecast

Drabblecast B-Sides 33 – Free Range

On November 15, 2013

In Comedy, Drabblecast B-Sides, Fantasy, Strange

After she lost interest in the green eggs—yes, green chicken eggs (taste the same, look dyed, so what’s the point?)—my neighbor Johanna started raising black chickens. Yes, black ones. They’re popular in China for reasons ranging from nutrition to superstition, and she’d gotten three hens and a rooster from a guy in Chinatown—in exchange for the last two green-egg chickens she had.

“Green is good now in China,” he said. “Helps make a man’s pole longer.”

“Right,” she told him. “Don’t need to kill rhinoceros and go to jail for long pole anymore.”

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Drabblecast 302 – The Next Logical Step

By Drabblecast

On November 13, 2013

In Drabblecast, Drama

“I don’t really see where this problem has anything to do with me,” the CIA man said. “And, frankly, there are a lot of more important things I could be doing.”

Ford, the physicist, glanced at General LeRoy. The general had that quizzical expression on his face, the look that meant he was about to do something decisive.

“Would you like to see the problem first-hand?” the general asked, innocently.

The CIA man took a quick look at his wristwatch. “O.K., if it doesn’t take too long. It’s late enough already.”

“It won’t take very long, will it, Ford?” the general said, getting out of his chair.

“Not very long,” Ford agreed. “Only a lifetime.”

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Drabblecast 301 – Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned

By Drabblecast

On November 9, 2013

In Action, Drabblecast, Fantasy

Just as we were all getting back into the mainland domestic groove, somebody started in with dragons and crop blights from across the North Sea. We all knew who it was. A turncoat Norwegian monk named Naddod had been big medicine on the dragon-and-blight circuit for the last decade or so, and was known to bring heavy ordnance for whoever could lay out some silver. Scuttlebutt had it that Naddod was operating out of a monastery on Lindisfarne, whose people we’d troubled on a pillage-and-consternation tour through Northumbria after Corn Harvesting Month last fall. Now bitter winds were screaming in from the west, searing the land and ripping the grass from the soil. Salmon were turning up spattered with sores, and grasshoppers clung to the wheat in rapacious buzzing bunches.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 32 – Headlife

By Drabblecast

On October 31, 2013

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Horror

“Everything on the list,” says Quentin.
“Expensive,” says Dr. Derwent. “You’re sure?”
“Dave, I own this fucking place,” says Quentin. He’s taken to swearing more as the decades have worn on. An inhibition thing disappears out of the brain with age, he’s read that somewhere. Angry old men capering around in their institutional PJs, dribbling pee and yelling at the nurses. That won’t be me.
“So, everything?” says Dr. Derwent, smiling his unctuous ass-kissing smile. He seems nervous. Hope he’s not on drugs, wouldn’t want those pricey fingers to slip.

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Drabblecast 300 – Bloodchild

By Drabblecast

On October 31, 2013

In Drabblecast, Drama, Horror, Sci-Fi

My last night of childhood began with a visit home. T’Gatoi’s sister had given us two sterile eggs. T’Gatoi gave one to my mother, brother, and sisters. She insisted that I eat the other one alone. It didn’t matter. There was still enough to leave everyone feeling good. Almost everyone. My mother wouldn’t take any. She sat, watching everyone drifting and dreaming without her. Most of the time she watched me.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 31 – The Black and White Animals Trilogy

By Drabblecast

On October 23, 2013

In Comedy, Drabblecast B-Sides, Fantasy, Horror, Sci-Fi

The complete Black and White Animals Trilogy, uncut. Written by Kendall Marchman, Luke Coddington and Norm Sherman, produced by Norm Sherman. Originally appeared as episodes 11, 22, and 24… Part 1: Secret Weapons, Part 2: Vengeful Hearts and Part 3: Chromatic Conclusions.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 30 – The Tribe

By Drabblecast

On October 15, 2013

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Strange

The grass is cool against my skin. A nice contrast from the burning hot sun hanging in a sky the color of pale skin, sickly and suffocating. I’m naked but I think I’ve always been this way. There’s a moment of comfort, like everything is going to be OK, before I remember that nothing is going to be OK, and everything is fucked.

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 299, The Revelation of Morgan Stern, by Jerel Dye

Drabblecast 299 – The Revelation of Morgan Stern

By Drabblecast

On October 11, 2013

In Drabblecast, Drama, Horror, Romance

It is July 31, your birthday, and I can’t reach you. I’ve been trying all day, but the cell networks are down, the internet is down. I even tried a pay phone–there are two left in town that I know of, and I collected all of my change and walked to the 76 in the village. It was on fire. I watched it for a while from a distance as it painted a brown, toxic streak across the sky. It was a long walk back to the house, or what’s left of it. My feet hurt, and it was too quiet.

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Drabblecast 298 – Flying On My Hatred of My Neighbor’s Dog

By Drabblecast

On October 3, 2013

In Comedy, Drabblecast, Sci-Fi

The week we present to you Flying On My Hatred of My Neighbor’s Dog by Shaenon Garrity.

Have you ever been so exasperated that you could feel the energy rippling off of you? Just how far could the power of that hate carry you? Could it fuel your car? How about a rocket ship?

I know my neighbor’s dog as a bark: a deep, dark, venomous yawp that begins and ends on a snarl. It’s loud, louder than it should be. Earplugs do nothing. It penetrates. Once it starts, it continues, relentlessly, for a period ranging from one to four hours. It can start at any time, day or night, dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket sings.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 29 – The Lemon-Green Spaghetti-Loud Dynamite-Dribble Day

By Drabblecast

On September 25, 2013

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Strange

Testimony of Witness No. 5671 before the Special Presidential Investigative Commission. Leonard Drucker, thirty-one years old, unmarried, of 238 West 10th Street, New York City, Borough of Manhattan, employed as a salesman by the Har-Bern Office Partition Company of 205 East 42nd Street, New York City, Borough of Manhattan. Witness, being placed under oath, does swear and depose:
Well, I don’t know, the telephone woke me up about eight A.M. on that Wednesday morning. I grabbed at it, half falling out of bed, and finally managed to juggle it up to my ear. A girl’s voice was saying, “Hello, Lennie? Is that you, Lennie? Hello?”

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Drabblecast B-Sides 28 – TGIF

By Drabblecast

On September 25, 2013

In Comedy, Drabblecast B-Sides

TGIF, a covers medley by The Drabblecast’s Norm Sherman

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 297, The Apothecary's Apprentice, by Sean Azzopardi

Drabblecast 297 – The Apothecary’s Apprentice

By Drabblecast

On September 24, 2013

In Drabblecast, Fantasy

In the back of the shop I scrubbed three large cauldrons clean, stripping the seasoning from them because Master Aloz insisted on it once the trade caravans stopped coming at the end of summer. Tallow, he called me, on account of my paleness. I used a brush made of iron bristles instead of horse hair, scraping away the brown muck inside, various plant and animal parts rendered into sludge like droppings from a sick bull. My book lay on the floor beside the cauldrons. Sir Tannis and the Hydra. It seemed I wouldn’t get to read much of it today…

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Drabblecast episode 296, Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain, by Caroline Parkinson

Drabblecast 296 – Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain

By Drabblecast

On September 16, 2013

In Drabblecast, Romance, Sci-Fi

Over the years, Tikka’s job as a Minor Propagandist for the planet Porcelain’s Bureau of Tourism had shaped her way of thinking. She dealt primarily in quintets of attractions, lists of five distributed by the Bureau: Five Major China Factories Where the Population of Porcelain Can Be Seen Being Created; Five Views of Porcelain’s Clay Fields; Five Restaurants Serving Native Cuisine at Its Most Natural.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 27 – I Don’t Know Timmy, Being God is a Big Responsibility

By Drabblecast

On September 10, 2013

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Sci-Fi

Tim already had his bag and overcoat on and his keys in his hand and was about to leave when Diane stopped him at the door.
“I just got this thing working. You have to come and see it.”
“I have a bus to catch.”
“You can get the next one.”
“They’re every half an hour,” he objected. “This had better be good…”

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Cover for Drabblecast episode 295, Twenty Ways the Desert Could Kill You, by Jacob Wayne Bryner

Drabblecast 295 – Twenty Ways the Desert Could Kill You

By Drabblecast

On September 9, 2013

In Drabblecast, Fantasy

1. A poisonous snake could bite you, and you could die.
2. You could prick your finger on a previously undiscovered poisonous cactus.
3. The cactus isn’t poisonous, and neither is the snake, but the snake’s venom is a powerful anti-coagulant. You could bleed to death from the place you were bitten and/or pricked.

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Drabblecast 294 – Partial Inventory

By Drabblecast

On September 3, 2013

In Drabblecast, Drama, Horror

The air conditioning only worked when the speedometer crept past 70 MPH which the lumbering GMC van (on loan from a friend of a friend who took pity on the family and their situation) rarely did. November in the South is hardly hot, but thirteen hours in any vehicle with nearly a half dozen relatives and mismatched belongings, each one trying to both curl and crowd themselves into their claimed seats had left the air warm and slick and smelling faintly of musk.

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Drabblecast 293 – The Call of the Pancake Factory

By Drabblecast

On August 22, 2013

In Comedy, Drabblecast, Horror

The bar is plenty kitschy: goofy statues made from coconuts everywhere and strings of shell beads hanging from the ceiling. I smile when I see a coconut sporting a pair of mouse ears made from scallop shells.

Tourists from all over the world are sitting around, ordering drinks non-stop because the sun is so hot at this time in Indonesia that you’ll wilt if you go outside and also because the drinks are so watered down. But that’s all right with me. I’m here to blend in, not to get drunk.

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Drabblecast B-Sides 26 – The Beast in the Cave

By Drabblecast

On August 22, 2013

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Horror

The horrible conclusion which had been gradually obtruding itself upon my confused and reluctant mind was now an awful certainty. I was lost, completely, hopelessly lost in the vast and labyrinthine recesses of the Mammoth Cave. Turn as I might, in no direction could my straining vision seize on any object capable of serving as a guidepost to set me on the outward path. That nevermore should I behold the blessed light of day, or scan the pleasant hills and dales of the beautiful world outside, my reason could no longer entertain the slightest unbelief…

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Drabblecast 292 – Hollow as the World

By Drabblecast

On August 14, 2013

In Drabblecast, Horror, Sci-Fi

One of the reasons Joshua loved Lydia as much as he did was all the secret rituals they’d devised. Their shared jokes were treasured secrets, never to be shared with the other kids at high school; some days, the way Lydia could send Joshua into high titters with a raise of her pierced eyebrow was the only thing that kept Joshua from slitting his wrists…

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Drabblecast B-Sides 25 – Fungi from Yuggoth

By Drabblecast

On August 13, 2013

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Horror

I. The Book

The place was dark and dusty and half-lost
In tangles of old alleys near the quays,
Reeking of strange things brought in from the seas,
And with queer curls of fog that west winds tossed.
Small lozenge panes, obscured by smoke and frost,
Just shewed the books, in piles like twisted trees,
Rotting from floor to roof—congeries
Of crumbling elder lore at little cost.

I entered, charmed, and from a cobwebbed heap
Took up the nearest tome and thumbed it through,
Trembling at curious words that seemed to keep
Some secret, monstrous if one only knew.
Then, looking for some seller old in craft,
I could find nothing but a voice that laughed.

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Author: Drabblecast Page 12 of 17