Archive for Little Wonders

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Cast of Wonders 413: Little Wonders 25: Hearts in Boxes

“The Half-Life of a Broken Heart” by N. R. Lambert previously appeared in Factor Four Magazine, Issue 2 (June 2018)

“A Heart, An Egg, A Lock Of Hair” by Kelly Sandoval previously appeared in Daily Science Fiction, May 16th, 2017

Death of a child; Grief

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The Half-Life of a Broken Heart
by N. R. Lambert

We hear the nursery long before we see it. Feel it too, despite the heavily insulated walls. Deep metronomic concussions roll down the corridor and crash through us. When we reach the entry, marked simply, “Hearts,” the door slides open and a technician ushers us through. The nursery is aggressively antiseptic–shrill LED lighting, a gleaming steel tile floor, and between them, bed after bed of hearts. A chamber of chambers, bumping and pulsing in sync.

“They do that on their own.” The tech says, smiling, glasses glaring back at us.

“We’ve even tried to offset them intentionally, quite drastically, but still…they always sync up somehow. It’s rather uncanny, don’t you think?”

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 407: Little Wonders 24: Dogs and Monsters

Cast of Wonders 407: Little Wonders 24: Dogs and Monsters is a Cast of Wonders original.

Harm to animals.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:27 — 14.6MB)

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Show Notes

Good Girl was first performed as part of Escape Artists Live at PodUK 2020, and released on the EA patreon feed.

Good Girl

by Maria Haskins

Wawa waits in the woods, tongue lolling, ears drooping. She waits in the fern-covered gully beside the dried-up creek. Every now and then she tries to lie down, but then there’ll be a rustle in the trees, the sound of snapping twigs, of scuttling claws, and she’s up again.

But no one comes.

Wawa waits. She would howl, would bark, but Wawa is a good girl. A good dog.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 380: Little Wonders 23: Comfort is Universal

Cast of Wonders 380: Little Wonders 23: Comfort is Universal is a Cast of Wonders original.

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Taking the Nine to the Last Shop

by Craig Robert Saunders

I.

The last shop before the fog is my favourite shop of all. It has candy, which is best. It sells shrimp which never, ever goes off, krill, newspapers, mops and buckets, and air packets you can open that tickle your tentacles just like the popping candy, which Grandma lets me have even though she hates the sound of the air packs and the poppers. She likes the hardboiled sweets. They have what seems like endless rows of jars of those behind the counter. You can buy things for the house there, and things for dull days when the seas are hard and rough and you can’t go out, or when the fog’s so heavy it squashes you up so you can’t see above your parapet, and all you can do is draw yourself inside and listen to your mother muttering and feel the sway of Grandma moving underneath you both. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 372: Little Wonders 22: #FantasyWorldProblems

Cast of Wonders 372: Little Wonders 22: #FantasyWorldProblems is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:45 — 45.5MB)

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Show Notes

“Whatever the Price” and “The Supervisor of Accountants and the Great Grey Wolf” are original to Cast of Wonders (2019)

“An Evil Opportunity Employer” was originally published in Unidentified Funny Objects 6, edited by Alex Shvartsman (2017)

Whatever the Price

by Matthew Bailey

The road to defeating an evil Corpse Lord is long, the oracle had told me, but it always starts with proper financing.

With a deep breath, I stepped into the Rootbridge Savings and Loan praying I wouldn’t have to sully my honor. Knowing I would, if it came to it. One way or another, I was getting what I came for–whatever the price.

At least the place wasn’t as imposing as the larger, marble-hewn banks I’d already tried back in the capital. Banks that would laugh at anyone without their own personal standard and at least one hornblower. Banks that existed solely to help those who already had money make more of it. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 357: Little Wonders 21: 2018 Flash Fiction Contest Runners-Up

Cast of Wonders 357: Little Wonders 21: 2018 Flash Fiction Contest Runners-Up is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:37 — 19.4MB)

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Grounded

by J. T. Nilson

“I can’t,” Sophie sulked. “I stayed out past curfew last week and I’m not allowed to go out.”

“But the gnome army marches onward!” cried Aithne, flitting in circles within Sophie’s window frame, her glowing wings a hummingbird-like blur. “The pixie tribes need our human champion to bring forth the magic. We must triumph!”

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 356: Little Wonders 20: 2018 Flash Fiction Contest Winners

Cast of Wonders 356: Little Wonders 20: 2018 Flash Fiction Contest Winners is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:23 — 21.9MB)

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Show Notes

Dream Foundry is a new organization helping all professionals, especially beginners, working in the speculative arts. Back their Kickstarter to make sure they last and grow, and to get yourself some nifty rewards.

 

Website: www.dreamfoundry.org
Twitter: @dream_foundry
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dreamfoundryorg/
Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dreamfoundry/dream-foundry-2019-hatching

An Economy of Words

by Wendy Nikel

Growing up so far from the wordfields, I’ve learned to appreciate the few words I have, so as the fitting for Baron Kensington’s festival garments drag on, I cringe at each wasted remark.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 336: Little Wonders 19 – Bittersweet Christmas

The Night Before Never: First published in 10Flash Quarterly, January 2011

A Little Something for Christmas: First published on thefictionphial.wordpress.com

Content Warning: Grief

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:57 — 20.5MB)

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The Night Before Never

by Gerri Leen

Kris Kringle moved silently through the workshop, making sure nothing had been forgotten by the elves. Normally, they’d be starting their post-toy-making-frenzy party, but this year the group was more subdued, the carols on low, with no one making merry or wearing lampshades.

Kris sighed and lifted his hand in a wave as he passed the break room, but he didn’t go in.

Inventory.  Yes, inventory would take his mind in the direction it needed to go.

Toys?  Check.

Lumps of coal?  Check.

He peeked out the window.  Elves hooking up the reindeer?  Check.

Reindeer fat—but not too fat, they did have to fly—and happy?  Check.

Rudolph’s nose at full power?  Check.

As Kris moved from the workshop to the adjoining kitchen, he sniffed.  Apple pie baking, ready to eat when he got home?

No. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 310: Little Wonders 18: Transformation

Cast of Wonders 310: Little Wonders 18: Transformation is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:35 — 29.9MB)

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A Cradle of Vines

by Jennifer Mace

There’s a plant in the hedgerow whose berries glimmer like starlight. Gyn passes it every morning on her way to school. Its leaves are waxy beneath her hands, small as the new baby’s fingernails and greener than grass stains on knees. They leave her skin smelling of peppermint.

The berries are blacker than midnight, blacker than her new father’s hair, and Gyn first notices them as her mother stops noticing her. They like to hide under hawthorn leaves or in the joints of holly bushes, but their silver shine in the winter sun gives them away. She’s smarter than the blackbirds and the robins. She understands hidden things.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 292: Little Wonders 17: True Selves

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:28 — 35.9MB)

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Show Notes

February is Women in Horror Month, an international initiative which encourages supporters to learn about and showcase the underrepresented work of women in the horror industries. Whether they are on the screen, behind the scenes, or contributing in their other various artistic ways, it is clear that women love, appreciate, and contribute to the horror genre. Check out the hashtag WiHM9 for plenty of suggestions. Or if you have the stomach for stronger fair, our sister show PseudoPod.

You can find all our own Women in Horror episodes here!

Silver Things

by Dagny Paul

The first time Leah turned into a fish, she had been small, maybe four, and she’d been sitting with her daddy on the rock that overlooked the lake. He had turned to her with his stubbled smile and his bright blue eyes and asked her if she’d wanted to dive. She didn’t know how to swim, she’d said, and he had said that’s okay, sweetheart, because we’ll be fish.

He’d stripped off his shirt and pulled her to her little feet, and before she’d even had time to think about it they had jumped. She’d never hesitated, never worried. He had never let her down.

Until now. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 281: Little Wonders 16: Siblings in Space

“Houston, Houston, Do You Read James Tiptree” was originally published in Nature (September 2016)
“Outburst” is a Cast of Wonders original!

Content Warning: grief; drug use

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:24 — 28.0MB)

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Show Notes

The Little Wonders theme “Neversus” is by Alexye Nov, available from Promo DJ or his Facebook page.

Houston, Houston, Do You Read James Tiptree?

by Rachael K. Jones

After two hours of work, Daria got the space station’s recycler back online without Hugh there to help her. If he had just waited ten minutes while she tried resetting power. If he had let her double-check his gear before his spacewalk, like he was supposed to by all protocols.

If. If. If.

Now her only brother drifted away from Station Mars One, a fragile floating bubble on the void. He brought to mind the time Daria packed her goldfish in the front seat for the drive to college. Glass bowl swathed in bubble wrap swathed in a blanket, set in a flimsy taped-up cardboard box. The thinnest sliver of shelter against a sudden end.

She pressed both palms into her eyeballs until stars blossomed, and with great effort, focused on her last obligation: to keep him company until he died.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 277: Little Wonders 15: Monster Mayhem!

Brothers in Stitches is a Cast of Wonders original!
Got Cookies? was originally published in the Alternate Hilarities 2: Vampires Suck! anthology (Strange Musings Press, 2014)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:19 — 27.5MB)

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Show Notes

The Little Wonders theme “Neversus” is by Alexye Nov, available from Promo DJ or his Facebook page.

Brothers in Stitches

by Dantzel Cherry

I’m sorry to say Master lay charred and inert on the laboratory floor for a good quarter hour before I noticed he was dead. I regret pulling the wrong lever, resulting in an overflow of electricity from the storm, the brunt of which Master received, resulting in his death and a ruined experiment. I’m even sorrier to admit I then ate all his internal organs before I remembered to offer any to Harry the moaning subject chained to the metal chair in the middle of the room or to the rest of my brothers-in-stitches in the downstairs dungeon.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 264: Little Wonders 14: Lyrical Beauty

Cast of Wonders 264: Little Wonders 14: Lyrical Beauty is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:50 — 33.8MB)

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Show Notes

The Little Wonders theme “Neversus” is by Alexye Nov, available from Promo DJ or his Facebook page.

The Best Busker in the World

by R.K. Duncan

“The best busker in the world never plays in the same place twice.  He is too busy searching.  But maybe, just maybe, you will hear him once.  If you hear him, you will have to see him, even if the first notes of his music drift to you from streets away, completely opposite from wherever you intended to go.  Once you hear a single note, it will draw you along like an invisible string, tugging at the knot in the center of your chest where you keep your secret fears and disappointments.  Wherever you find him— a dusty back street in a sleepy town, a bustling avenue in the rush-hour of a big city, a lonely campground haunted by only a few brave souls and stubborn wanderers— the sight will burn itself into your memory almost as deeply as the music.”

The old man sighed, and leaned back in his chair.  The corners of his mouth turned up, but the young woman couldn’t call it a smile.  His eyes were too sad for smiling.  They had been the first thing she noticed about him, catching her eye as they passed on the train platform.  She paid attention after that, more and more once she started digging, and those eyes had never changed.  They drew her irresistibly toward him, and his rich, careful voice held her there and pushed all other thoughts to the far corners of her mind.

(Continue Reading…)