Looking away from the light that showed the Charles Dexter Ward was no longer entirely dead was as hard as opening a rusted zipper. But Cynthia did it, and didn’t let herself look back She pulled Hester a little further down the corridor and said, “Now we really need to know how she killed him. And whether it’ll work a second time…”
Podcast: Download
Six weeks into her involuntary tenure on Faraday Station, Cynthia Feuerwerker needed a job. She could no longer afford to be choosy about it, either; her oxygen tax was due, and you didn’t have to be a medical doctor to understand the difficulties inherent in trying to breathe vacuum.
You didn’t have to be, but Cynthia was one. Or had been, until the allegations of malpractice and unlicensed experimentation began to catch up with her. As they had done, here at Faraday, six weeks ago…
Podcast: Download
Presently it rose, and with a shuffling walk it supported itself along the bars until it reached the bucket. With a sigh it plunged its hands inside.
Little Useless inched closer and watched while the creature cupped the salt water and brought it to its face: not to drink, but to moisten its skin…
This episode of the Drabblecast continues H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month with an eye towards Lovecraft’s fascination with and misgivings about the sea. It starts with a quote from Dagon, which kicked off the very first H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month. In the drabble, there is more to a fisherman’s remarkable sea wife than meets the eye. In the feature, a nod to Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth, a young girl living among humans who act savagely encounters a sympathetic, otherworldly Deep One. She faces hard questions: where does she truly belong, and where should her loyalties lie?
Podcast: Download
Upon the coming of the rain and the and the reawakening of the Krr’at race, the Elder Thing returned to us and squealed Its sky-splitting squeal and waded in among us. It came with the green feet that had eyes and mouths, and with the yellow, rubbery outerskin, and with the lace and the glitter — oh, the horrible, horrible glitter…
This episode of the Drabblecast continues H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month, specifically focusing on the frequent appearance of cults in Lovecraft’s work. In the drabble, cult meetings aren’t always all about sacrifices and secret rites. In the feature, what starts out as an innocent encounter between a little girl and her imaginary friends takes an ominous turn when the “puddle people” turn out to be real creatures who worship her as their capricious god. When a rebel revolts against the the cult to save her daughter from being sacrificed, how will their deity react?
Podcast: Download
My room was on the fifth story; the only inhabited room there, since the house was almost empty. On the night I arrived I heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told me it was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb man who signed his name as Erich Zann, and who played evenings in a cheap theater orchestra; adding that Zann’s desire to play in the night after his return from the theater was the reason he had chosen this lofty and isolated garret room, whose single gable window was the only point on the street from which one could look over the terminating wall at the declivity and panorama beyond…
This episode of the Drabblecast kicks of H.P. Lovecraft Tribute Month. It begins with a reading from Lovecraft’s Fungi from Yuggoth. In the feature, an impoverished student is forced to take an apartment in an almost empty building on the mysterious Rue d’Auseil. One of the other tenants, a viol player named Erich Zann, lives alone on the top floor and plays strange, otherworldly music at night. The student, drawn to his music, eventually gains Zann’s trust and learns catastrophic secrets.
Podcast: Download
Cover for Drabblecast episode 216, The Book of Eternity, by Jan Dennison
Is eternal life real worth it? A demonic tale from Mike Resnick explores the question in the final week of Lovecraft months Story features In Search of the Brain-Eating Nandi Bear Part V.
Podcast: Download
Okay, no one expects eldritch horror in LA. Not that I know what eldritch horror really is. My old boyfriend (about fifteen boyfriends back) called anything that inspired dread “eldritch horror.” I guess that would describe my entire job, really…
Another story from Lovecraft month – elder horror in LA. Dread Unlocks is on the job!
Podcast: Download
Achtromagk shuddered, lost in nightmare images: crimson lightning dotting a wasteland, twilight despair and feeble railings, isolation in a mewling throng. It thrashed and twisted but could not escape, could not stop the unwanted vistas in its mind.
It was silent. And soft. And dark…
Next up in Lovecraft month, a heart-warming tale of an extra-dimensional Lovecraftian horror (an ‘oh so huggable’ one) by Drabblecast favorite Eugie Foster.
Podcast: Download
That’s when I saw it. A thing — no, not even a thing, just an impression of a thing; a momentary imperfection in that seamless blue — that teased at the edge of my vision. My eye flicked toward it, but it either whipped away faster than the eye could follow or it hadn’t really been there to begin with…
Podcast: Download
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: Download
Unhappy is he to whom the memories of childhood bring only fear and sadness. Wretched is he who looks back upon lone hours in vast and dismal chambers with brown hangings and maddening rows of antique books. Such a lot the gods gave to me – to me, the dazed, the disappointed; the barren, the broken…
Podcast: Download
As I crawled into the stranded boat I realized that only one theory could explain my position. Through some unprecedented volcanic upheaval, a portion of the ocean floor must have been thrown to the surface, exposing regions which for innumerable millions of years had lain hidden under unfathomable watery depths…
Podcast: Download
Its extraordinary mouth, its thick and scaly hide, and its single, deep-set eye were wonders scarcely less remarkable than its colossal dimensions; and when the naturalists pronounced it an infant organism, which could not have been hatched more than a few days, public interest mounted to extraordinary heights…
Drabblecast B-Sides: <a href="http://www.drabblecast.org/donate/">Donate</a>
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
