This week’s show has it all: vampires, evolutionary biology, and quivering jacked up Taylor Swifts.
We bring you three flash fiction pieces about the complications of being in love: Taylor Swift by Hugh Behm-Steinberg, The Evolution of a Breakup by Etgar Keret, and May I Come In by Adrienne Ryan.
Narrations provided by Avery Alexander, Adam Pracht and Norm Sherman.
Art by Anike Kirsten
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The Drabblecast brings you three original stories this week (Modern Fairytales, if you will) from authors Alice Gauntley, Matthew Sanborn Smith, and Kevin D. Anderson.
Enjoy!
Our birthday was the first of March, and for two weeks beforehand it was all Caleb could talk about—cake, presents, and, most importantly, whom to invite. He would chatter about it as we did his homework, as we played his video games, as he went to sleep and I watched over him. Mom had him try different kinds of cakes, and even let me eat some and asked which one I liked best. I liked the carrot cake, but Caleb liked chocolate, so that’s the one she scheduled the kitchen to make fresh for the morning of the party…
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This week on the Drabblecast– three stories about Strange Futures. We bring you Drabblecast originals, “Department of Invention” by R.L. Thull, “The One’s Who Won’t Be” by Martin Munks, and “Cannabilism in the Inhuman Age” by Jaye Viner.
Closing Music by 19 Action News
Saul broke down in an unusual way for a robot. Saul ‘died,’ is the more apt term, but I hate to put a human descriptor to a machine. They already get enough of those…
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This week, another Drabblecast Trifecta, this time with the theme: Friends Close, Enemies Closer. We bring you three stories, with three different narrators, by three different authors! Time Cookie Wars, by Benjamin C Kinney, Sandy, by Bruce McAllister, and Oh What a Privilege to Dwell in the Grand Palace of the Tungerils! by Kelly Moore.
Good evening. Below you are 2,478 feet of air. Yes, study the carpet, little Wesley. Whatever you do, don’t stomp! Just kidding—what you should be doing is taking off your clothes to ready yourself for this journey. All of you—Ms. Linden, and your glasses, too. Don’t worry. Over 2 feet of concrete and rebar lay between that long drop and us anyway…
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“My Kids Think I’m Nuts”
Norm and Drabblecast Audio Producer Adam Pracht talk about the Maker’s Movement, everything wrong with Gloucester, the finer points of audio production and of course the three stories in this classic Trifecta Special themed around “Things We Made.”
Drabblecast Director’s Cut Specials are regular monthly features where we bring back a story, or in this case, stories, from the archives and play them uncut as Part 1. Then in Part 2 we replay the episode with bonus commentary on top from the author… or in this case, the story’s producer– Adam Pracht.
We talk about all the inside baseball that goes into producing a Drabblecast story from start to finish.
Hope you enjoy!
Sato lay on the cement floor of the workshop in a pool of his own blood and tried desperately to get Kuro-4’s legs working again. The robot, in turn, tried to deal with the gaping wounds in Sato’s smashed leg and pelvis.
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This week the Drabblecast presents a Trifecta Special: “We Don’t Talk Any More.”
Cath Schaff-Stump writes fiction for children and adults, from humor to horror. She is the author of the Klaereon Scroll series, the most recent of which is The Pawn of Isis, coming in March, 2019. She lives and works in Iowa, teaching English to non-native speakers.
She placed the pan on the burner. “Lycanthropy?”He wasn’t joking. “You know there are genetic indicators.”“First of all, just because Peter Stumpf is the most famous werewolf in the werewolf books, and you’re related, I don’t think that means you’re going to become a werewolf. He had an enchanted belt, right? That’s not a genetic indicator.”
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This week the Drabblecast brings you three stories about shipwrecks, murder, and Nazis. It’s a Losses and Sacrifices Trifecta!
by Rose Lemberg
This is a brooding look back on things taken, things lost, and things always remembered.
Rose Lemberg is a queer, bigender immigrant from Eastern Europe and Israel. Their fiction and poetry have appeared in Lightspeed‘s Queer Destroy Science Fiction, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny, and many other venues. Rose’s work has been a finalist for the Nebula Crawford, and other awards. Their novella The Four Profound Weaves is forthcoming from Tachyon Press. You can find more of their work on their Patreon: patreon.com/roselemberg
My life is described by the music of mute violins. When myparents married, my great-grandfather, may the earth be as afeather, ascended the special-guests podium, cradling the oldfiddle to his chest. “And now the zeide will play the weddingmelody,” they said. “A special blessing,” they said, a sgule, aroyal blessing. But the bow fell from his fingers.
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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?
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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.
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It looks like a quantity of strawberry jam squeezed into a cheap polythene shower cap. Even down to the darkened pips and the intimation someone’s attempted to pick it up and squished it in the middle. Clint adjusts the telescopic sight and tilts his head, upping the magnification, but knocking the thermal readout to the off position. He can feel the heat from here, so it’s safe to say that the temperature is outside the usual parameters.
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The ghost in my attic is Margaret, but she lets me call her Margie. She was seventy-six years old when she died, and now that she’s a ghost she sits in her rocking chair day and night, holding a tiny baby in her arms. The baby rarely moves and almost never cries. His name is Gavin, and he is thin and wrinkly and covered in fine brown hair. Funny looking, as preemies often are, but sweet nonetheless. Margie keeps him wrapped in a blanket of cobwebs, which I think is disgusting. I’ve always hated spiders.
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The Drabblecast April Fool’s Day episode!
Recorded live: A Drabblecast story slam that took place March 27th 2014 in Baltimore Maryland at the EMP Art Collective.
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While sipping my tea in the morning, I find a small, only two inches long, naked female corpse on the bottom of the cup. Her white skin fades int the white porcelain, tiny gobs of tea leafs cover her round breasts. I immediately slap the cup down, and snick across to the phone to call the police. I forget all about checking if she’s really dead. Of course, how could I give her a mouth to mouth resuscitation, if not? Her body is about the size of a match-stick.
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You’ve been one-legged since the lasso trap. Your personal ad says “Kids: undecided” even though you desperately want two.
When the maître d’ shows you to your blind date’s table, you are pleased with her prominent forehead and symmetric face. She has potential.
Before you can sit, her eyes drift to where your missing leg would be and snap back to your face. She forces a smile.
You talk menu.
She likes the braised shank.
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We listen to the spidersong. The spiders are far away, just at the edge of our senses, whispering a haunting and beautiful melody into our minds. The grown-ups are oblivious, as always. They are having several conversations at once around the campfire, laughing and gossiping. It’s a nuisance because we can’t enjoy the spidersong nearly as well, not with all the distraction. We use a reliable trick — we have Sheila ask for a story…
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My name is… John.
I am…
I have a wife and a daughter. They are visiting me today. Their names– Alice. And Anna.
I can see, sort of. Everything is blurry. I am submerged in a coffin, a clear coffin with green water. There’s a tube in my mouth so that I can breathe, machine-like.
My legs are transparent. I see veins and arteries, thin muscles that look like spiderwebs bundled together. The doctors say my memory will be fuzzy. It’s supposed to come back quickly.
I am…
The theme of this Drabblecast Trifecta is “if you want something done right, you’ve got to do it yourself.” In Faithful Servant, a long-suffering butler’s poorly timed fit of temper is nearly the end of him. In Selfless, a man with an incurable illness goes to great lengths to ensure his wife and daughter enjoy a normal, happy life. In Prophecy Negotiations, a fateful farm boy learns that if you want to rise to a new station, it pays not to accept the first offer.
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We bought our first yarn baby at a garage sale. The ends of its arms were frayed and its eye buttons dangled loose on bare threads.
This theme of this episode of the Drabblecast is family unties: Nontraditional homes and family situations. In the drabble, the enterprising resident of a haunted house fools its ghosts into performing everyday domestic tasks. In Divorce in the House of Flies, a young boy has to deal with his parents’ divorce at the same time he has to deal with their transformation into human-shaped masses of tiny insects. In Wendigo Bake Sale, residents of a small town overcome their initial terror of a pair of wendigo participating in the school bake sale, only to be frightened anew when the wendigo reveal they are supporting the school because their child attends. In Knit, after losing their first yarn baby during her rebellious teen years in a tragic unraveling accident, a couple tries vainly to reconstruct her from the scraps of yarn, stuffing, and buttons left behind.
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