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Cast of Wonders 390: The Tale of Descruptikn and the Product Launch Requirements Documentation

Cast of Wonders 390: The Tale of Descruptikn and the Product Launch Requirements Documentation is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:39 — 30.4MB)

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The Tale of Descruptikn and the Product Launch Requirements Documentation

by Effie Seiberg

Once upon a time there was an associate project manager named Jaime. She knew she was lucky to have this job – so many others in her graduating class were still juggling nanny gigs and catering gigs and tutoring gigs and so many side hustles they could’ve been a dodecahedron.

It was at a small company that ostensibly helped foreign students find scholarships for American colleges, but actually if you looked closely you could see that the company didn’t do much and was just a vanity project so the founder could say he was innovating and disrupting and other such nonsense buzzwords. Considering how little the company actually accomplished, Jamie was astonished that she was the one hundredth person to join the team. (Continue Reading…)

episode art - desert snow, for Luchadora

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Cast of Wonders 389: Luchadora

Cast of Wonders 389: Luchadora is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:20 — 31.1MB)

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Luchadora

by Melissa Mead

When Alejandra was nine, her mother died of dehydration. When she was ten, Alejandra made her father bring her to the Luchadores’ barracks. The three ancient wizards who would choose the boy who would become the next Luchador weren’t pleased. They almost sent Alejandra’s father to the hellstone mines, where men died with their limbs charred black. Then Alejandra marched up to the eldest of the Magos, the one in flame-red silk, and demanded that he make the bull-man stop waking her up at night. The other two Magos, in silk as gold as the sun and as blue as the sky, gasped. The first wizard scowled.

“What do you mean, child?”

“The bull with the man-face. He came when Mama died. He comes in the dark, and whispers to me.”

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 388: The First, the Second, the Third

Cast of Wonders 388: The First, the Second, the Third is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:41 — 33.2MB)

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The First, the Second, the Third

by Katherine Kendig

In the winter, the mornings are colder inside than out. Lily sings at the window, her voice wending its way toward the barn, the willow grove, the creek, as pure as the snow it floats over. Her breath frosts as she sings, her gaze fixed on the horizon where the church is the only part of town we can see. Margot huddles in bed, her hair tousled over her face, shivering. Margot has never been able to stand the cold.

“Celia,” she says to me, lifting the blanket a little so I can crawl in beside her. We lie side by side and listen to Lily sing until our stomachs rumble and we go downstairs to make breakfast. Lily refuses to sing while she is working, but she hums under her breath as she makes porridge, and in my mind I am humming too. Margot insists on having jam with breakfast every day, even though she knows the jam will run out long before spring. Lily insists on reserving a jar of rhubarb for herself, so that she can savor it on special occasions, long after Margot has devoured the rest of it.

I don’t care much about the jam. I begrudge my tongue its sweetness.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 387: The Rose Sisterhood

Cast of Wonders 387: The Rose Sisterhood is a Cast of Wonders original.

Abusive relationships. Murder.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:24 — 20.1MB)

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The Rose Sisterhood

by Susan Taitel

My Sisters and I await the next girl. She will be beautiful. We always are. We hope she’ll be the one to break the curse, that she will have the wherewithal to see our master as he truly is. To succeed where we all failed.

We do not know when she will arrive. We hope it will be soon. It is not good for our master to go too long without a companion. We Sisters are not company.

As we wait, I try to console our newest Sister. It was only a flinch. I assure her she still has a role to play. There are clothes to mend, meals to prepare, and roses to prune. She won’t be comforted yet — her bones are too fresh. I know she will adjust to her new station in time. We all do.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 386: Cosmetic Procedures (Encore!)

“Cosmetic Procedures” first appeared in the anthology It Came From Her Purse from Sam’s Dot Publishing, edited by Georgia Middleton and Karen L. Newman, published August 17, 2011.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:56 — 24.2MB)

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Cosmetic Procedures

by Desmond Warzel

When I became a private investigator, it wasn’t for excitement, or for money. The work is humdrum, and whatever noir romanticism the profession ever actually had is long gone (though I’ve got a raincoat, a fedora, and a dusty bottle of scotch in the closet, just in case they’re called for). As for money, there isn’t much–and I don’t need it anyway. I’m a dilettante, and utterly unashamed of it.

It was an ego boost, pure and simple. I suppose I just enjoyed the idea that, when some poor desperate soul was in dire straits, stretched to the breaking point, with nowhere to turn, I would be the one he’d call.

Well, now I’m sitting at my desk, unable to take my mind off the lower right-hand drawer, and the unique item therein, and I have no idea who I should call.

I am, however, extremely open to suggestions.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 382: No Matter Where; Of Comfort No One Speak

Cast of Wonders 382: No Matter Where; Of Comfort No One Speak is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warnings: abuse and suicide

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:51 — 26.9MB)

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No Matter Where; Of Comfort No One Speak

by Kate Baker

Tucked behind the cracks in the plaster and the peeling, wallpaper print, we watch you draw a blade. You stand in the kitchen, holding the steel in your right hand. A finger slides down the sharp edge, testing its strength as you do calculations in your head. The slow creep of a smile indicates you are happy with your choice. Drawn away in visions to the future, everything is interrupted by a quick slip and slice as you drop the knife. We notice the dribble of blood, a bead welling at the tip, inviting a hungry mouth. You bring the cut to your lips and suck on it a moment and then examine the depth.

No stitches required.

Despite its already proven efficacy, you reach for the knife again, and then for the sharpening block, and run the blade against stone. The familiar grating sound that would normally set your nerves afire. We cover our ears in this dark place despite the muffled transfer through your space to ours. We know what these determined machinations mean.

(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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:24 — 31.9MB)

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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 378: Common Grounds and Various Teas (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 378: Common Grounds and Various Teas (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:52 — 19.6MB)

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Common Grounds & Various Teas

by Sherin Nicole

Mama’s fingernails are mesmerizing. They’re black and shiny as volcanic glass but not polished. Her skin is a deeper shade than North Carolina red clay, and her hair is pulled up high in two top knots. Long dreadlocks cascade down over both her ears. If she’s older than thirty  no one can tell. Right now, I’m giving her serious side eye. She won’t stop blabbering and babbling and telling her grifter tales.

“I told that man, you cannot sell me this bucket on wheels. It’s beneath me,” she says in an accent as brown as her skin. “He didn’t like that. Now, rather than me convincing him, he’s convincing me to lower the price. ‘Til I have mercy, I take this car from him for $45 and I let him buy the beers.”

I huff and turn away from her. “Can you stop now?” I mumble.

“I could,” Mama says, like she’s sharing secrets, “but I could also be swallowed and spit back out as something flavorless.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 377: This Is Not A Ghost Story (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 377: This Is Not A Ghost Story (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content Warning: profanity

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:49 — 21.4MB)

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This Is Not a Ghost Story

by V. Medina

In the darkness of her bedroom, after her mother has gone to bed and she’s supposed to have done the same, she tells stories to the ghosts. She would do more for them but they never ask for anything else and she doesn’t know what more to do. They listen, gentle whispers all around her, urging her to continue, begging her for a few more words, just a little more of her time. They crave the stories she has to offer them and even when she is young, she feels the pull of narrative against her bones.

The ghosts are kind in their need, not pushing or screaming but quietly pleading, and she was not raised to deny anyone. She is the quiet kid, the good girl, the sweetheart. She knows her role, and it doesn’t matter what she wants because everyone already knows who she is before she ever gets the chance to show them.

People look at her, see the way she moves, the white cane in her hand, the way she holds books so close to her face. They all think they know her story, even before she says a word. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 376: The Ways of Walls and Words (Banned Books Week)

Originally published at Tor.com (April 15, 2015)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:01:57 — 57.2MB)

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The Ways of Walls and Words

by Sabrina Vourvoulias

Solitreo

“If it were not for Thee, what would become of me?”

She’s not speaking to me when she says this. Her poetry nests behind a prison’s walls. I am an unknown noise on the other side of her door—the only spot where sound enters or exits her world—a sweep of bristle against wood, some transitory trace of life that has nothing to do with her.

She and her people are in cells lined along a corridor in the deepest reaches of the convent. On occasion the mentally disturbed have been kept here, tended to and made safe by walls so thick they are more than an arm’s length. These people, however, are all one family: a mother; an adult son; four older daughters; and this one, who has spent nearly half her life in here.

That was all the information the Dominican Brothers shared with me the day I started. Except that I must not attempt to speak to the girl or her family through their doors. The Brothers made me swear this before I swept even one stone.

In the language I share with jailer and jailed, my name is Bienvenida, though my Nahuatl name is different. By the Brothers’ reckoning, it has been 1,562 years since the death of God. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 375: Reclaiming Our Narratives (Banned Books Week)

Cast of Wonders 375: Reclaiming Our Narratives (Banned Books Week) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:51 — 35.3MB)

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Our Skin Will Now Bear the Testimonies

by Innocent Chizaram Ilo

“Nduka, you better hurry or you’ll be late for school! Your breakfast is getting cold and you know you don’t like when curds form in your pap!” Aniele calls from the kitchen.

“Yes Mama,” Nduka answers from his bedroom.

The boy tiptoes to the door and gently bolts it before unbuttoning his school shirt. He stands in front of the mirror and looks at the string of words that snails along his belly. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 374: Take Heart (Part 2 of 2)

Cast of Wonders 374: Take Heart (Part 2 of 2) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:56 — 24.3MB)

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Take Heart (continued)

by Claire Eliza Bartlett

The break had been clean and would heal up nicely. That was the good news.

The bad news was, well, everything else. Julia entered the factory hospital an hour after Magdalena had been patched up, wearing a storm cloud face. She flopped into one of the cheap metal folding chairs, making it scrape across the floor.

Neither of them spoke for long moments. Magdalena wanted to muster the courage to apologize, but shame choked her whenever she tried to speak. She’d tried to be cleverer than Julia. Now she was more useless than ever.

(Continue Reading…)