<img src="https://www.drabblecast.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/drabblecast_base_logo_circle_bw.png"> The Drabblecast

On August 31, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Lovecraft Month

There was a buzz at the door. Mike Jansen sighed. Just when you got yourself settled after a long day working on the cheese counter; just when you were looking forward to some quality TV; the door had to go. He’d been standing up all day. His feet were killing him. He nestled down into the settee, deciding to ignore the buzz. He turned up the TV a little.

Buzz. Buzz. Bleedin’ buzz.

The caller was a persistent fellow and no mistake.

Drabblecast B-Sides: <a href="http://www.drabblecast.org/donate/">Donate</a>

Drabblecast 368 – Restless in R’lyeh

On August 30, 2015

In Comedy, Drabblecast, Horror, Lovecraft Month

Dear Doctor Saperstein,

I’m a 44-year-old librarian from Kansas and a loyal reader of askdoctorsaperstein.com. Last night, after a relaxing day spent gardening, binge-watching “America’s Got Talent,” and organizing my snowglobe collection, I had a nightmare. A hideous octopus-headed monster performed a ukulele solo on “America’s Got Talent,” then killed and ate Howard Stern. Afterwards, Heidi Klum chanted tunelessly in a harsh alien language (possibly German). When I woke up, I was filled with unspeakable dread and all the snow in my snowglobes was whirling around as if someone had shaken each one. What could it mean?

–Worried in Wichita

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabbleclassics 24 – Cinderlands (176)

On August 29, 2015

In Drabbleclassics, Horror, Lovecraft Month, Mystery

Dexter crouched beneath the toxic fruit trees in his grassless back yard, turning over black earth with the spade he’d taken from the old man, and every shovelful revealed worse things:
clumps of cinders and the dust of ashes; rusting nails, practically dripping tetanus; wickedly-curved shards of brown glass; bullets of various sizes, crusted with dirt; and a foot or so down, fragments of black-stone statuary…

Podcast (classics): Download

Subscribe: RSS

Drabbleclassics 23 – Synesthesia (92)

On August 23, 2015

In Action, Drabbleclassics, Drama, Horror

They called it “Synesthesia.” It’s when the senses got mixed up and you started to hear colors or taste sounds…

Norm begins this with a warning concerning graphic violence and gore. We return to one of the Drabblecast’s favorite topics, the Zombie Apocalypse. The theme receives a fresh airing, which is just as well, as it was starting to smell. Sal Lemerond, veteran of the horror webzine “Necrotic Tissue,” posits the connection between drug addicts and zombies, in a 100-word drabble. Norm chimes in with a tasty public service announcement about the nutritional value of your brain on drugs. In the feature story, J. Alan Pierce whose work has appeared in Kaleidotrope, as well as twice on the Drabblecast (#18 “The One that Got Away” and #31 “Beekeepers”) – takes us through a zombie plague via the eyes of an early victim. The condition first manifests as Synthesesia, the scientific name for the ability to taste colors, smell sounds, and other bizarre sensory hallucinations. The story culminates in a family dispute and a choice betrayal.

Podcast (classics): Download

Subscribe: RSS

Drabblecast 367 – The Whisperer in Darkness pt. 2

On August 20, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Lovecraft Month

Then, apparently crossing my incoherent note and reaching me Saturday afternoon, September 8th, came that curiously different and calming letter neatly typed on a new machine; that strange letter of reassurance and invitation which must have marked so prodigious a transition in the whole nightmare drama of the lonely hills. Again I will quote from memory – seeking for special reasons to preserve as much of the flavour of the style as I can.

To say that the letter relieved me would be only fair, yet beneath my relief lay a substratum of uneasiness. If Akeley had been sane in his terror, was he now sane in his deliverance?

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabblecast 366 – The Whisperer in Darkness pt. 1

On August 9, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Lovecraft Month

Bear in mind closely that I did not see any actual visual horror at the end. To say that a mental shock was the cause of what I inferred – that last straw which sent me racing out of the lonely Akeley farmhouse and through the wild domed hills of Vermont in a commandeered motor at night – is to ignore the plainest facts of my final experience. Notwithstanding the deep things I saw and heard, and the admitted vividness the impression produced on me by these things, I cannot prove even now whether I was right or wrong in my hideous inference. For after all Akeley’s disappearance establishes nothing. People found nothing amiss in his house despite the bullet-marks on the outside and inside. It was just as though he had walked out casually for a ramble in the hills and failed to return.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabbleclassics 22 – Go Beep (173)

On July 21, 2015

In Drabbleclassics, Drama, Fantasy

I’m a fan of Nirvana.

I mean I’m a fan of the band rather than a fan of the concept. Although, hey, what’s not to like about the idea of being no longer subject to torture over the fires of greed, hatred and delusion? Free from all suffering – yes, that sounds pretty good. But if I really wanted to free of everything that makes us human then I probably wouldn’t dig bands like Nirvana any more, and that would be bad. Then I wouldn’t be me any more.

Podcast (classics): Download

Subscribe: RSS

Drabblecast B-Sides 62 – War of the Clowns

On July 15, 2015

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Strange

One time two clowns set themselves to arguing. The people would stop, amused, to watch them.

—What’s that? they asked.

—Why, it’s only two clowns arguing.

Who could take them seriously? Ridiculous, the two comedians reparteed.

The arguments were common nonsense, the theme was a ninnery.

And an entire day passed.

The following morning, the two remained, obnoxious and outdoing each other. It seemed as though, between them, even yucca soured. In the street, meanwhile, those present were exhilarated with the masquerade. The buffoons began worsening their insults with fine-edged and fine tuned barbs. Believing it to be a show, the passersby left coins along the roadside.

Drabblecast B-Sides: <a href="http://www.drabblecast.org/donate/">Donate</a>

Drabblecast 365 – This Secular Technology

On July 12, 2015

In Drabblecast, Sci-Fi, Strange

Leah woke up, said the blessing upon waking, then turned on her overlay with a mental command. She hissed with displeasure — it was a _gevurah_ day, again. She was supposed to contemplate restriction, discipline, withdrawal. She was beginning to wonder if her teachers were doing this on purpose; the assignments were said to be random, but she no longer believed in randomness. Her soul root was in _chesed_, the diametric opposite of _gevurah_, and she found _gevurah_ days draining at best, excruciatingly painful at worst.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabblecast 364 – All of Our Past Places

On July 5, 2015

Aoife always told me that you could go anywhere, as long as you had the right map. So when it happened, my first thought, when I let myself into her apartment after not hearing from her for three days, was this weird feeling of pride.

She’d done it.

She was gone.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabblecast 363 – The Totals

On July 4, 2015

In Drabblecast, Fantasy, Horror

Clutch has killed somebody recently.

This goes without saying.

For as long as Clutch can remember, he has always killed somebody “recently.” If not within the last few hours, then certainly within the last few days. He may have gone as long as a couple of weeks without, from time to time, when circumstances conspired against him. But never as long as a month, no, not for living memory.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabblecast 362 – Starter House

On June 14, 2015

In Drabblecast, Strange

Dale looked up through the ribbed Lucite dome of Asteroid Cintas II,
his eyes lit from within by thoughts of a bright future. “I never thought,” he said, “I’d own a purebred house.”

Pam locked her eyes on his. “I knew you would. I knew we would. This makes it all worth it.”

They kissed.

A forklift driver smiled at them as he passed, trundling a giant spool of wire through corridors of stacked feedbags. He disappeared into the high dark bay of the feedlot.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabblecast 361 – Time to Say Goodnight

On June 10, 2015

“Then Duck left Mr. Tomkin’s farm and went to swim in Glacier Lake, just like he’d always wanted.” Mommy looked up from the last page, but Clara wasn’t sleeping.

“And then what did Duck do?” Clara asked.

“That’s all there is.”

“Duck died?” Mommy had explained about dying on the way home from visiting Grandpa. Clara didn’t really understand, but it made
her sad.

“No sweetie, Duck didn’t die, this is just the end of the story.”

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabblecast 360 – Trifecta: Locked Boxes

On May 31, 2015

I didn’t kill God; we should clear that up right away. I just captured him and put him in a little box.

It sounds harder than it actually was. Hannah helped me make it. Her dark, sad eyes so serious and focused behind the wire-rimmed glasses she always wore, her slender fingers tracing the passages from the Bible. A long time ago, God gave instructions on how to build a tabernacle for him to inhabit. That story made us wonder: if the infinite can be confined to a building or a tent or a room, then why not a box?

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabblecast B-Sides 61 – The Horses of Lir

On May 24, 2015

In Drabblecast B-Sides, Fantasy

I sent this one to The Saturday Evening Post. Three times. They kept losing the ms. I stopped.

The moonlight was muted and scattered by the mist above the loch. A chill breeze stirred the white tendrils to a sliding, skating motion upon the water’s surface. Staring into the dark depths, Randy smoothed his jacket several times, then stepped forward. He pursed his lips to begin and discovered that his throat was dry.

Sighing, almost with relief, he turned and walked back several paces. The night was especially soundless about him. He seated himself upon a rock, drew his pipe from his pocket and began to fill it.

Drabblecast B-Sides: <a href="http://www.drabblecast.org/donate/">Donate</a>

Drabbleclassics 21 – Mongoose : Part II (171)

On May 10, 2015

In Action, Drabbleclassics, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

You couldn’t describe a rath. You couldn’t even look at one for more than a few seconds before you started getting a migraine aura. Rovers were just blots of shadow. The breeder was massive, armored, and had no recognizable features, save for its hideous, drooling, ragged edged maw. Irizarry didn’t know if it had eyes, or even needed them…

Podcast (classics): Download

Subscribe: RSS

Drabbleclassics 20 – Mongoose : Part I (170)

On May 10, 2015

In Action, Drabbleclassics, Fantasy, Sci-Fi

Izrael Irizarry stepped through a bright-scarred airlock onto Kadath Station, lurching a little as he adjusted to station gravity. On his shoulder, Mongoose extended her neck, her barbels flaring, flicked her tongue out to taste the air, and colored a question. Another few steps, and he smelled what Mongoose smelled, the sharp stink of toves, ammoniac and bitter…

Podcast (classics): Download

Subscribe: RSS

Drabblecast 359 – Trifecta: Unnatural Growth

On May 9, 2015

In Drabblecast, Horror, Strange

My twin brother had been a dry-eyed baby, and he grew into a dry-eyed boy.

“Yaakov, why don’t you ever cry?” I asked him the day we buried my uncle’s family.

He shrugged. “Maybe you carry all the tears for both of us, Anna.”

I thought he might be right. In the past month I had cried again and again. I had wept through the night of hiding in the root cellar among the onions and potatoes and jars of pickled vegetables, my face buried in our mother’s skirt. We emerged in the morning to discover the Cossacks had burned down the barn with all of our animals trapped inside. I cried again for the goats. We didn’t even know yet that our cousins down the road had suffered the same fate. Our two older siblings took their turns calming me, but I took the most comfort from Yaakov’s stoic face.

Podcast: Download

Subscribe: TuneIn | RSS

Drabblecast 358 – DoubleHeader: Rachael K. Jones

On May 3, 2015