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

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Cast of Wonders 612: The Illusionist’s Tent

Cast of Wonders 612: The Illusionist’s Tent is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:24 — 29.4MB)

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Show Notes

Additional audio production by Eric Valdes of Podcastle

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

1360 words

The Illusionist’s Tent

by H. K. Payne

I was told we had the night off, but I guess no one told you kids that. Tell me, whose idea was it to come trick-or-treating through our camp? I suppose it was yours, since you’re the only one here. You do realize we’re a bunch of broke circus performers, don’t you? Well, since you’re here, we might as well get this over with. Which do you want: the trick or the treat?

Treat? All right, let’s see. What have I got… Here you go. A handbill folded into the shape of a bird.

What do you mean, it doesn’t look like a bird? It’s a swan, obviously.

You have some nerve, showing up outside a man’s tent on his night off, demanding a treat and then insulting his paper-folding abilities. Yes, I know it’s not a very good paper swan, but what do you expect? This isn’t my area of expertise. You’re the one who came to an illusionist asking for a treat.

(Continue Reading…)

three happy pumpkins on a woodland path

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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…)

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Cast of Wonders 603: Three Wishes to Save the World

Cast of Wonders 603: Three Wishes to Save the World is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:49 — 43.7MB)

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Show Notes

World CleanUp Day

Three Wishes to Save the World

by Rebecca Zahabi

It started, like most of these things do, with a magic lamp.

Eden placed the lamp on the little Ikea table of their student housing and brushed their hand in one swipe from snout to handle. The burnished copper lamp turned to gold under their fingertips, glowing as if newly made, then began to rattle and puff silver-grey smoke.

The genie emerged with a hastily plastered-on smile. Contrary to popular belief, he was grey, not blue. He was wearing pointed shoes and a bright red tunic, through which his skin billowed out.

“Greetings, young…” The genie paused, hovering between ‘sir’ and ‘lady’. He had never had trouble identifying someone’s gender before. In the end, he settled for: “… young master.”

As a matter of fact, the genie was also what people would have called nonbinary, but lacking traditional female attributes, he had been considered male for so long that he now assumed he had to be a man of some sort.

Eden wasn’t awed by the genie’s sudden appearance. After years of witnessing a wilder, weirder, and worse reality on TV, and having also inherited their parents’ stiff upper lip, they greeted the genie with a thumbs-up. “You can call me Eden.” (Continue Reading…)

image of a dark haired boy's head in profile, overlaid with flecks of mud

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Cast of Wonders 601: Bokrug and the Boy

Previously published by The Dragon’s Roost Press, December 2022.

Episode image by intographics from Pixabay

Bullying; implied neglect

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:49 — 30.0MB)

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Bokrug and the Boy

by Liam Hogan

“You know we don’t care?”

“Yes. You’ve said.”

It wasn’t much of a beach. Estuary mud, littered with debris from both river and sea. A hulking, concrete sewage outlet, that only discharged at the minimum recommended distance from land when measured at high tide. Betwixt and between, neither ocean nor shore, even the seabirds avoided the area, as Samuel Pelsey trudged through the boot-sucking sludge, half-heartedly poking a stick.

No more than a giant step behind, the Great Old One lurked. Against the grey sky, reflected by the grey sea (or was it the other way around?), foregrounded by grey mud. The eldritch horror’s powerful limbs and webbed feet were better suited to the conditions than an eight-year-old’s short legs and hand-me-down, but still-oversized wellingtons, one of which had long ago sprung a leak, the cracked and weathered seals not up to the pull of the thick mud, rank water oozing in with every second step and soaking his doubled up socks. His jeans were turning the same dismal grey, caked layers that would only flake off when next he went to put them on, there being little point in being washed until the “holiday” was over. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 600: Double Yellow Lines

Cast of Wonders 600: Double Yellow Lines is a Cast of Wonders original.

death, road traffic accidents

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:27 — 30.8MB)

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Double Yellow Lines

by J. M. Bueno

Wednesday

We sit on opposite ends of the table, Charles’s beautiful breakfast spread laid out between us. He wears his distinctive ear-to-ear smile, and his eyes, beady, like those of a dead fish, never once stray from mine. I keep my own gaze downturned towards the silver cutlery and the perfect omelet on my plate, slowly cutting it open to reveal the runny inside.

“Why so stiff today, Raleigh?” Charles chirps. “Is the food not to your liking?”

I snort. “Charles, the one thing you’re always good at is cooking.”

“You wound me. I’m certain I have other good qualities.”

Proudly displayed in the table’s centerpiece, all rich mahogany and sharp steel, is a large carving knife. I remember the way it gleamed in Charles’s hand last night. From the head of the table, Charles smiles. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 592: Flawless

First published in 2013 in the short story collection Twisted Winter, edited by Catherine Butler

Image by Leonhard Niederwimmer from Pixabay

 neglect and dysfunctional relationships

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:11 — 47.0MB)

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Flawless

by Frances Hardinge

When people stay in hotel rooms, they suddenly turn into toddlers. Weird, creative, screwed-up toddlers.

Let’s smear jam on the wall! Let’s leave apple cores in the drawers! Let’s hide used nappies behind the radiator, so that they fill the whole room with the smell of cooked poo! Hello, whoever cleans this room! I’ve left you a surprise!

Maybe they think there’s some hidden handle we pull to flush the room clean. But there isn’t. The only ‘handles’ are Mum, ‘occasional Kev’ from the village, and me. Kev’s just Occasional and Mum has everything else to do, so cleaning is mostly my job, particularly during the school holidays. (Continue Reading…)

A group of people wearing grotesque festival masks

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Cast of Wonders 561: All Good Children Come Out To Play

Originally published in khōréō magazine, September 2022

Episode image by Rodolfo Pimentel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Death of a child

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:23 — 49.7MB)

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All Good Children Come Out To Play

by Karlo Yeager Rodríguez

For longer than I could remember, we had been Lázaro and Marta. We should have been celebrating our ninth birthday together.

Instead, my twin brother was laid out on our table. He looked so small and still and pale: the silent point around which our family and neighbors swirled, dancing and singing and laughing. Abuela Trini held me in her lap and cradled my head in the crook of her arm. Her reedy hum meandered through the cuatro music until my tears dried and my sobs shrank to hiccups.

I never meant for any of this to happen when I slipped away to bathe in our secret pool the day before. The one only Lázaro and I knew about, the one nestled in a clearing up the mountain and surrounded by yagrumo trees, the one we had splashed around in, the one with chilly spring-fed waters, the one where the freshwater shrimp tickled our legs and nipped at our feet.

All I had wanted was to be alone. (Continue Reading…)

glowing butterflies in a jar in the darkness

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Cast of Wonders 548: Little Wonders 41 – Mortality

Cast of Wonders 548: Little Wonders 41 – Mortality is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 15:14 — 22.3MB)

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Glass Flies

by Gwen C. Katz

At dawn they poured from the ground, from crevices in the rock, from underneath tree bark. Glass flies. June 25. You could set your clock by it.

Newly hatched, they were clumsy. They collided with windows, smeared themselves across car grates, got entangled in hair. Jonas found one trembling on his porch, one transparent green and yellow wing shattered. He scooped it up. Its thread-thin legs clung to his finger.

“A glass fly is not a pet,” said his mother. Jonas didn’t listen. He placed the glass fly in a shoebox and offered it some Oreo crumbs. (Continue Reading…)

comforting image of a cup of tea and a paperback book

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Cast of Wonders 547: From Here

Cast of Wonders 547: From Here is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 12:53 — 20.1MB)

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From Here

by Wen Wen Yang

The smoldering joss sticks behind the psychic burned my throat as I sipped on chrysanthemum tea from a juice box.

“Where are your lodestones buried?” The psychic had a round face like my nainai, though she wore her hair in a pixie cut instead of the ubiquitous perm.

“The Bronx,” I croaked out.

The psychic snorted. “What were you doing there?” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 541: Ashes and Buttercream

Cast of Wonders 541: Ashes and Buttercream is a Cast of Wonders original.

Warfare, refugee trauma

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:20 — 26.0MB)

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Ashes and Buttercream

by Malina Douglas

The domovoi is protecting them. Sofiya knows this, even as her mother’s dismissive remarks prod the fireplace like skewers.

When the flames burn to embers and the ashes in the fireplace thicken, she sees him. A miniature creature with short limbs and stubby toes, a round face and snub-nose, a burnt texture to his skin. He smells like crème brûlée just after the surface has been singed.

She feeds him crumbs from her dinner while he answers with titbits of stories that don’t quite make sense.

Where Sofiya sees blinking eyes and the flash of a grin, her mother sees flames and flakes of ash. She tells Sofiya off for staring into the fire too long. Then she sighs into a kitchen chair, takes out her phone and stares at the screen.

In her mother’s work there are great glowing hearths but no domovois. Sofiya has checked. Her mother stirs steaming pots and fills moulds with dark delights in a chocolaterie. They live in Lviv, where carved faces gaze from curved Art Nouveau archways and baroque façades brush against classical columns. City of stone lions, violins and chocolate. (Continue Reading…)

Image by Freepik

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Cast of Wonders 539: Little Wonders 39 – Home Ties

Cast of Wonders 539: Little Wonders 39 – Home Ties is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:54 — 33.2MB)

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Show Notes

Minor Magics of Chinatown was originally published in Factor Four Magazine, April 2022

Park’s All-Night Ramyun and Snack Emporium

by Seoung Kim

After the stoplights go to flashing red and the bars make their last calls, Park’s All-Night Ramyun and Snack Emporium lights up, its warm yellow lanterns beckoning customers from the street.

The tiny dining area just outside the truck is already full: a rusalka who always leaves the counter wet; her girlfriend Ms. Llorona, who uses too many napkins crying but refuses to order less spicy noodles; the old yokai lady Mrs. Rokuro with her mile-long neck; and a jiangshi who isn’t eating but stares at every drunk club-goer who stumbles down the street.

Yujin Park crosses their arms and leans back on the freezer, checking their phone for the fiftieth time that shift. It seems like everyone is out enjoying the last summer before senior year — except for them. Their feed is full of rooftop parties and group selfies.

Even if they could escape from the drudgery of scrubbing moldy drains, the thought of showing up covered in a thick layer of grease is too mortifying to bear. (Continue Reading…)