black cows in a grassy field against the skyline.

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Cast of Wonder 652: Habitat

Cast of Wonder 652: Habitat is a Cast of Wonders original.

spider-like creatures

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:08 — 48.2MB)

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Habitat

by Juliette Beauchamp

The orb appeared on a Friday. Just popped up in the northeast corner of the horse pasture, out where the grass grew thin and the ground was spotted with gopher holes. It was black and not a bit shiny despite the heat shimmers dancing around it. From a distance, as Cole and I rode along the dry creek bed, it looked more like the absence of something. A blank spot in the air.

It wasn’t until we got closer that we realized there was something there after all: a giant, dull marble suspended about three feet off the ground. The horses didn’t like it, rolling their eyes and snorting, but they were ranch-bred and broke and used to doing things they didn’t like.

Cole slid out of his saddle and passed his reins to me. I held his mare as she pawed and swished her tail while Cole walked over to the thing.

“It feels funny,” he said as he got closer. I wasn’t surprised to hear it since the hair on his head had begun to float upwards. (Continue Reading…)

a close up of a burning purple candle

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Cast of Wonders 647: What Good Daughters Do

First published in Apex Magazine issue 146, October 2024

Image by Pashi from Pixabay

Violence, Cannibalism. Death of a parent. Death of a bystander. Terminal Illness/Dementia Allegory

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:03 — 56.4MB)

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What Good Daughters Do

by Tia Tashiro

I’m not expecting it when my mother eats the bus driver.

My surprise comes mostly because I thought I’d gotten her under control. The bus ride—two AM on a Tuesday, servicing the night shift paycheck-to-paycheck workers at the meat factory a few miles out of town, predictably empty between the Turnpike Mall and Cedar Park stops (its last of the route)—is about as isolated as you can get. I wasn’t taking any chances with tottering old grannies in the accessible seats or teens who think they’re too cool to grab a handhold. (Continue Reading…)

sea cave, dark, with an obscured swimmer

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 635: What the God Mouth Wants

Cast of Wonders 635: What the God Mouth Wants is a Cast of Wonders original.

Homophobia, body horror, risk of drowning

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:10 — 38.7MB)

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What the God-Mouth Wants

by Ryan Cole

They call it a homecoming: when your own severed tongue finds its way back into your mouth; when it slides all slippery and wet onto the stump that your parents cut out when you were six years old; when it gives you the power, the freedom to say what your lips never could. All in exchange for a decade of silence.

Dallas doesn’t care. Tongueless for years, he’s ready to be whole again no matter the cost. Better to say what the God-Mouth wants than not be able to say anything at all. (Continue Reading…)

spotlights and fog, lit up blue, forming a ray of illumination from bottom right to top left against a dark background

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Cast of Wonders 632: Tongue is a Void

First published in the anthology Death in the Mouth: Original Horror by People of Color, in October 2022

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

intrusive thoughts

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:57 — 20.5MB)

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Tongue is a Void

by P H Low

enter

Late at night, driving: highway lane lines spooled like cream beneath your high beams, fields of corn and hay undulating soft beneath pinprick stars. The last gas station has faded behind you; ahead, only mile markers, a firefly flicker in the velvet dark.

The echo of your father’s voice, thick with disappointment: I thought you loved musical theater.

And you do, you want to cry out—you dropped out of conservatory for this, love it with every atom of the wreckage that is your body—but when you light yourself on fire every night before a thousand pairs of watching eyes, there is only so long you can last before the wick burns low.

An indrawn breath from the backseat, a brush of shadow like feathers, but when you turn around, you only see the dark. (Continue Reading…)

a small gingerbread man in a bowl of gingerbread

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Cast of Wonders 619: A Properly Spiced Gingerbread

This story was originally published in DreamForge Magazine in March 2022 and later won the 2022 Critters Readers Choice Award for “Best Magical Realism Short Story.”

Image by Slava Sidorov from Pixabay

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:07 — 18.0MB)

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A Properly Spiced Gingerbread

by David Hankins

Run, run, as fast as you can. You can’t escape the Gingerbread Man. Granny had warned that magic could kill, but Lucy hadn’t expected to die at the hands of a cookie. (Continue Reading…)

creepy vintage doll

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Cast of Wonders 617: Emily

Cast of Wonders 617: Emily is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:51 — 27.3MB)

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Emily

by Alexander Hewitt

The bell jingled as we left the creepy little doll shop. The store owner smiled from behind the counter, one of those off-putting, ‘I know more than you do,’ kind of smiles. Her old, crackly voice didn’t help.

“Take care of her now, won’t you?”

She was a witch.

She was absolutely a witch. (Continue Reading…)

axe and chopped wood

Genres: , ,

Cast of Wonders 616: Worse than a Wolf

Cast of Wonders 616: Worse than a Wolf is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content warning for implied past sexual assault

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:29 — 36.4MB)

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Worse than a Wolf

by Wen Wen Yang

The sound of the metal grinding against the whetstone reverberated up my arms. My father was sharpening his ax, preparing for the day’s work. “I invited Mu to dinner tonight,” he said.

I shuddered.

Mu was a woodsman whose family came from a neighboring village in China and had settled in the same rural town in Oregon a decade before my family. How happy my family was to hear our dialect! It almost made this foreign country feel safe. (Continue Reading…)

three happy pumpkins on a woodland path

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Cast of Wonders 613: The Gingerbread House

Cast of Wonders 613: The Gingerbread House is a Cast of Wonders original.

Off-screen death

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:56 — 21.9MB)

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Show Notes

Additional audio production by Wilson Fowlie of CatsCast

Trick-or-treaters: Rebecca Ahn, Amy Brennan, Katherine Inskip, Samuel Poots, Ryn Richmond

1248 words

The Gingerbread House

by Jenny Hart

The air has only just begun to smell of autumn as I head for Gingerbread Cottage, where I am to house sit two cats for the winter. I have packed warm clothes and antihistamines, and the emailed instructions are both simple and strange. Feed the cats and clean up after them and yourself. But don’t let them out, no matter how much they ask.

It’s easy work and easy money. It’s also a chance to hide from my sins, and those who would hold me accountable for them. (Continue Reading…)

three happy pumpkins on a woodland path

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 611: The Gobstomper

Cast of Wonders 611: The Gobstomper is a Cast of Wonders original.

Dentists, teeth, trauma

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:27 — 33.6MB)

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Show Notes

Additional audio production by Chelsea Davis of Pseudopod.
Trick-or-treaters: Rebecca Ahn, Amy Brennan, Katherine Inskip, Samuel Poots, Ryn Richmond

2130 words

The Gobstomper

by Alex Dal Piaz

A lot changes as you get older, thought Wilkie Saunders.

For example, he’d been sure older boys like Tom Dunn—who was either in 10th or 11th grade depending on if you counted the year he was repeating—hated his guts. Tom had tormented Wilkie and his friends everywhichway for years. And yet here they all were in the dark, Tom and Wilkie and half a dozen other older boys, gathered up behind the home of the local dentist. This was small-town Indiana, and not the best parts of it. The house of the dentist was plenty run down, perhaps not as much as the other homes along the street, but its peeling dish-sponge-blue paint was enough to make Wilkie feel antsy. Outside was a shingle-style sign, dismally busy with fancy script, advertising the services within. “What’s so special about a dentist?” Wilkie asked. (Continue Reading…)

three happy pumpkins on a woodland path

Genres: , , ,

Cast of Wonders 610: What Cannot Be Cured, Must Be Endured

Cast of Wonders 610: What Cannot Be Cured, Must Be Endured is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:47 — 35.4MB)

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Show Notes

2992 words

What Cannot Be Cured Must Be Endured

by Elisabeth Ring

They say if you take the old scarecrow out back, jam some old leaves in there to make up for some of the straw that’s fallen out, and put a jack-o-lantern on the shoulders where the head used to be, you can make it almost as good as new. And then, if you get the old pill bottle filled with your baby teeth out of your mom’s dresser drawer and shove the tiny white contents into the jack-o-lantern’s wide grin, you can make it come alive. (Continue Reading…)

abstract art of a pale woman hiding her mouth behind an oversized knitted sweater

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 602: All-Consuming

Cast of Wonders 602: All-Consuming is a Cast of Wonders original.

Portrayal of an eating disorder; surrealistic cannibalism; body horror

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:57 — 17.8MB)

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Show Notes

A broad list of international eating disorder support resources: https://www.worldeatingdisordersday.org/home/find-help/

 

All-Consuming

by Taryn Rose Frazier

My sister walks in on me as I contort myself in bed, trying to take a bite of my inner thigh—the fleshy part that’s rubbed against the other thigh ever since I got curves. I sit up so fast my head hits the underside of the upper bunk.

Avery’s eyes are wide. “Rowan, what are you doing?” she hisses. Avery gets angry when she’s scared, because she hates being scared.

“Nothing,” I say. I tug my jeans up over the offending thighs and fumble with the zipper. Avery’s only two years younger, but I’ve always felt motherly toward her. Mom always lies to me when she doesn’t want me to worry—Dad and I are just having a loud discussion, or of course Grandpa is going to get better, or you’ll be fine—so I do the same for Avery.

Avery crosses her arms and waits. After fourteen years of sharing a room, she knows me well enough to tell when I’m lying. She also knows me well enough to tell when I’m not going to talk, so when an awkward minute passes and I’m still picking lint off my comforter, she throws up her hands and leaves.

That’s where it starts. (Continue Reading…)

raw meat

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 590: Umami

Originally published in October 2019 by Sourcebooks on their FIREreads blog

Episode image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay

cannibalism, zombies

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:17 — 26.5MB)

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Umami

by Amelinda Bérubé

Their progress through the woods had slowed to a stagger, but they kept going. They had to.

Jane shoved one booted foot through the layers of fallen leaves, then the other. Imagination kept her fear burning, prodding her forward with what if on an endless loop. What if that thing that had been her father had lurched impossibly to its feet, bent-necked and grinning, and come after them? But the sun was going down, the sky fading to pink and lavender behind the trees, and they wouldn’t be able to push forward much longer.

Emmett, ahead of her, cried out. “Look!”

Jane squinted in the direction he pointed, but the pale, twilit trees refused to stop moving after she turned her head, sliding past like tall, mocking ghosts. (Continue Reading…)