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Cast of Wonders 187: The Haunted Jalopy Races (Staff Pick 2015)

Originally published in Shimmer (January 2013)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:12 — 21.3MB)

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Show Notes

Every year in January, Cast of Wonders takes the month off to recharge our batteries, plan the year ahead, and highlight some of our favourite episodes. As part of joining the Escape Artists family, this year we’re pulling out all the stops. We’re running 10 staff pick episodes over the month, each one hosted by a different member of the Cast of Wonders crew.

We hope you enjoy alumnus host and editor Graeme Dunlop’s favorite story from 2015, The Haunted jalopy Races by M. Bennardo, and narrated by Alasdair Stuart. The story originally aired March 22, 2015 as Cast of Wonders 160.

The Haunted Jalopy Races

by M. Bennardo

It all started when gallant Joe Jones and shiftless Sylvester Sneep agreed to race each other for the hand of pretty Sadie Merriweather. Except that’s not really how it started at all, not the first year anyway, not back in 1938.

Back then, that first year, Joe Jones wasn’t thought especially gallant and Sylvester Sneep wasn’t thought especially shiftless. Sadie Merriweather was indeed thought especially pretty–at least by most of the boys in Rock Falls–but Joe and Sylvester weren’t racing for her hand.

Not even in Rock Falls, not even in 1938, did anybody think that the outcome of a jalopy race could decide the affections of a teenaged girl. Instead, it was purely a matter of honor. Sylvester had felt his pride pricked when Sadie chose Joe over him, and so the challenge for the race had been given. The challenge was well-known among the upper classes at Rock Falls High School, but the rest of the town only got their first inkling of what was happening when the boys revved up their modified flatties at the top of the square pointing out to Falls Bridge down on Five Falls Road, and by then it was too late.

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Cast of Wonders 184: Wine for Witches, Milk for Saints

Originally published in Intergalactic Medicine Show (November 2014)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:12 — 30.6MB)

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Wine for Witches, Milk for Saints

by Rachael K. Jones

My grandmother would have disapproved of a Tinker in a Father Christmas suit, my customary dress in the children’s hospital each December. She believed no good could come of frivolity in our profession, when a routine procedure could end in tragedy. I saw her point when I found myself delivering bad news in costume to a 7-year-old and her sick friend on Christmas Eve.

Maria wasn’t supposed to be in Lia’s hospital room to begin with. She should have been in the Puppet Ward with her little brother Enzo, who was infected with puppetism. Instead, the two young girls curled up cross-legged on the hospital bed, divvying up sweets I knew Lia shouldn’t eat in her condition. Congenital heart failure didn’t require abstention from sugar, but with her transfer imminent, the Coromancers advised against heavy food, as it could interfere with medical magic.

I didn’t know how she’d smuggled in the contraband, but that was Maria. It wasn’t easy for siblings of sick children, stuck in a hospital for days on end. Maria coped by slipping into all sorts of places she shouldn’t go. But on Christmas Eve, we all tended to look the other way.

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Cast of Wonders 183: Hat Trick

Originally published in Oomph: A Little Super Goes A Long Way by Crossed Genres Publications

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:50 — 28.4MB)

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Hat Trick

by Beth Cato

“The pond is open today!”

No one else was in the kitchen, but I had to make the cheery announcement, even if it was just to myself. It was tradition.

Mom’s St. John Ambulance books sat on the table, one still flipped open. She’d just gotten a job as receptionist at the old folks’ home and they had her taking a first aid course. At the far side of the table, two mugs touched handles like old friends. Two packets of cocoa – the best kind, with the little marshmallows – lay flat behind the mugs. I grinned. The cocoa would wait until we got back from hockey.

She used to always set out four mugs. Maybe I could still pull down at least one more.

“Chuck?” My brother’s door was open a smidge. The lights were off and he was sitting in front of the computer. The faint light from the monitor cast a spooky glow on his face. “The pond’s open, remember? You want to come?”

In the funny light, it took me a second to realize his eyes were shut. His hands were folded on his lap, graceful like when we had to sit all proper in church. It’s not like he needed to touch the keyboard.
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Cast of Wonders 182: A Troll’s Trade

Cast of Wonders 182: A Troll’s Trade is a Cast of Wonders original.

This story involves trolls and their… unique approach to diet and hygiene. Those with weaker stomachs may find it a challenge, but I encourage you to give it a try.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:21 — 28.0MB)

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Show Notes

Dedicated to Graham Joyce, Clarion West 2010 Instructor

A Troll’s Trade

by Sandra M. Odell

Maybe I should have listened to me mudder, been a mason or a carpenter, but I was young, hornstrong, determined to make me own way.

“A what?” she said, and stirred the stew so hard the pot tumbled right off the fire and spilled into the river.

I picked me nose and spread it on a cracker with a bit of brie. “A florist.”

Me mudder scooped what she could of the stew back into the pot and set it back on the fire. “What would your da say? He built our bridge with -”

“With the sweat off his nose before he got tricked by the Maiden of Merriwether and turned to cheese, yah, yah, I know. Chisels and mortar and nails aren’t me thing, is all.”

“You’re a troll! Where are you going to live if’n you can’t find a bridge?”

I tossed a bit more gravel into the stewpot for a proper crunch. “I’ll find something, easy peas porridge.”

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Cast of Wonders 181: Fairy Bones

Cast of Wonders 181: Fairy Bones is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:20 — 44.5MB)

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Fairy Bones

by Guy Stewart

Owl hadn’t been real to her since she stopped reading WINNIE-THE-POOH on her thirteenth birthday. That day, she realized she had become Eeyore, losing her metaphorical tail in real life.

Later, her husband hadn’t been real to her since the divorce.

Even later, the rest of Clementine Dresden’s family had faded from her life one by one.

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Cast of Wonders 179: The Mothgate

Originally published in Shimmer, Issue 25

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:27 — 34.5MB)

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Show Notes

Hello everyone. Here in England the seasons have completed yet another quarter turn. The leaves are falling, the wind is gusting, and the pumpkin spice lattes have been packed away faster than you can say Christmas sales.

To accompany the longer nights and contemplation of the cycles of life, this week we’re proud to present The Mothgate, by J. R. Troughton, originally published in Shimmer.

The Mothgate

by J.R. Troughton

19th September

“This is your most important lesson.”

It was a rifle she handed me. Long and cold, ornately decorated. It was heavier than I’d expected, heavier than the one I had practiced with. She laid the barrel on the low wall before us and that helped.

“Watch and wait. No mistakes, Elsa. I know what is coming,” she had said, staring off into the trees. “Look for the butterflies. See them, and you’d best be ready to shoot what’s coming behind.”

We knelt behind the crumbling wall, rifles balanced over its brow, peeking over the moss-stained stone and into the dense trees that lay beyond. I tried as best I could to stop my teeth from chattering, but the winter night was bitterly cold. Mama Rattakin didn’t seem to notice. She was staring toward the tree line, pointing with her black and withered hand.
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Cast of Wonders 176: Makeisha in Time

Originally published in Crossed Genres (August 2014)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:07 — 25.9MB)

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Show Notes

You can find the Uncanny Magazine Kickstarter here.

Makeisha In Time

by Rachael K. Jones

Makeisha has always been able to bend the fourth dimension, though no one believes her. She has been a soldier, a sheriff, a pilot, a prophet, a poet, a ninja, a nun, a conductor (of trains and symphonies), a cordwainer, a comedian, a carpetbagger, a troubadour, a queen, and a receptionist. She has shot arrows, guns, and cannons. She speaks an extinct Ethiopian dialect with a perfect accent. She knows a recipe for mead that is measured in aurochs horns, and with a katana, she is deadly.

Her jumps happen intermittently. She will be yanked from the present without warning, and live a whole lifetime in the past. When she dies, she returns right back to where she left, restored to a younger age. It usually happens when she is deep in conversation with her boss, or arguing with her mother-in-law, or during a book club meeting just when it is her turn to speak. One moment, Makeisha is firmly grounded in the timeline of her birth, and the next, she is elsewhere. Elsewhen.

Makeisha has seen the sun rise over prehistoric shores, where the ocean writhed with soft, slimy things that bore the promise of dung beetles, Archeopteryx, and Edgar Allan Poe. She has seen the sun set upon long-forgotten empires. When Makeisha skims a map of the continents, she sees a fractured Pangaea. She never knows where she will jump next, or how long she will stay, but she is never afraid. Makeisha has been doing this all her life.
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Cast of Wonders 170: Princesses Do Not Breathe Fire

Originally published in Flagship Magazine (February 2012).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:00 — 42.6MB)

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Princesses Do Not Breathe Fire

by Sarina Dorie

When Princess Draciona was born, it was obvious something wasn’t quite right. She had emerald eyes and viridian hair. Most unusual of all was her scaly, moss-tinted skin.

“This baby looks a little like a . . . ahem . . . dragon,” said Prince Rupunzelson (named after his great-grandmother).

“No, no,” insisted his wife, Princess Penelope. “That’s just green eczema. She’ll outgrow it.”

Prince Rupunzelson nodded and decided to let his wife worry about it. He would rather think about battle.

But Princess Draciona did not outgrow her eczema. To make matters worse, when she started to teethe, she grew sharp, dagger-like fangs. When she didn’t get her way, she sometimes breathed fire.

“Princesses do not breathe fire just because they don’t get their way,” said Rupunzelson, who was king by now.

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Cast of Wonders 169: Lost Socks

Cast of Wonders 169: Lost Socks is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:25 — 23.3MB)

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Show Notes

Want to see those OTKs I mentioned? They’re at Sock Dreams – and tell them I said hello!

Lost Socks

by Lisa Montoya

Perdy saw Grandpa Zeke sitting in the swing on the front porch as she carried the empty laundry basket.  She pushed open the old wooden screen door and went to sit next to him. She leaned her head against his shoulder as the two of them just looked out into the yard.  Perdy sighed.

He asked, “How you be, Perdy Perdy?”

She squeezed his arm and cuddled closer to him.

Grandpa Zeke slipped his arm around her. “Did you find those missing socks?”

Perdy shook her head. “No.  They aren’t in my room. Do you think a squirrel got into the house again and took them?  Or maybe we have a sock eating washing machine.”

He laughed.

She sat up and looked at him.  “Really, I looked everywhere.”

Grandpa Zeke smiled at her.  “I am sure you did. Most likely was the sock gremlins.”

Perdy stared at him, waiting for him to continue.

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Cast of Wonders 167: Setting My Spider Free

Originally published in Electric Velocipede Issue 17/18 (Spring 2009).

Content Warning: This week’s story features spiders front and center. Arachnophobes may want to skip this episode and join us again next week.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:50 — 19.1MB)

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Setting My Spider Free

by Caroline M. Yoachim

Cool air swirled in through the window and carried with it the faint tapping of claws scratching against stone.  A spiderling was climbing my tower.

Lilymiya stirred.  She’d spent the daylight hours in her corner with all her legs fanned out across the floor, trying to ward off the summer heat.  My poor spider. Her fur, so thick and comforting in the winter, was patchy and ragged. Clumps of it gathered along the base of the walls, and thick strands clung to the grimy sweat on my skin.

The spiderling appeared on my windowsill.  It was medium-sized — bigger than a loaf of bread, but a hundredth the size of Lilymiya.  I didn’t want it to disturb the webs that decorated my walls, so I reached up and grabbed it with both hands.  The spiderling twirled its legs in the empty air as it tried to cool itself.

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Cast of Wonders 165: Into The Forever Place

Originally published in the The Devilfish Review (December 2012).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:14 — 39.6MB)

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Show Notes

Our story this week is a special re-broadcast of Into the Forever Place by Luke Thomas. This story originally ran in July of last year, but the recording suffered from a technical failure that meant we took it down almost as soon as it went up, so we’ve decided to re-release it for your listening pleasure.

Into the Forever Place

by Luke Thomas

I fasten the last braid about Jad’s shoulder and step back. My belly flutters as I look him over, which isn’t normal. Jad’s my best friend. I’m never more comfortable with anyone than with him. Today, though, he is to be venerated, and he looks the part. I knew the dyes used for this sash were precious, but only now do I understand what that means.

We both examine his reflection in the slab of mirrored glass leaning against the wall. The mirror’s old tain yellows everything—the wood and mortar walls, my pale skin and Jad’s dark—it’s all yellowed except the braids of the sash. They wind around Jad’s lanky torso in blues and greens more vivid than life. I know a veneration ceremony is about the clan, not about Jad, but we can both see he looks splendid. His chest swells. I can’t help but laugh. “Jad… you’re preening.”

He blinks, realizes how puffed up he is, and laughs. This doesn’t last long though; Jad recovers himself more quickly than I can manage. He’s a trained storykeeper, after all, and can isolate the rhythm of his breathing and trim the laughter right out of it. I’ve no such control.

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Cast of Wonders 163: Speaking to Skull Kings

Originally published in Betwixt issue 4, Summer 2014

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:13 — 33.2MB)

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Speaking to Skull Kings

by Emily B. Cataneo

When Bird with his crown of black roses disappears from the clearing, Genevieve knows she and Joseph won’t be safe anymore. At night, while Joseph sleeps, she sorts the walnuts and lingonberries that Bird gathered for them to eat, counting fewer each time. Her stomach aches and she flinches at the rustle of the skull kings in the ghost forest beyond the clearing.

Sometimes, she clambers up trees, her boots slipping on bark, straining to hear the rustle of Bird’s wings, the growl of his caw.

Night after night, Bird doesn’t return.

Night after night, the skull kings crunch through the undergrowth, closer and closer.

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