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Cast of Wonders 637: Calling on Behalf of the Dark Lord

First published in Translunar Travelers Lounge in February 2020

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:05 — 19.3MB)

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Calling on Behalf of the Dark Lord

by Catherine George

It’s only part-time — you can always quit if you don’t like it. That’s what you told yourself when you were hired, and that’s what you tell your friends, too, when you meet down at the pub to buy them all drinks, for once, because apparently the Dark Lord pays on time and by direct deposit. Which, honestly, is more than you can say for your last couple jobs.

“It’s not that bad, really,” you say, grabbing another lukewarm potato skin. “It’s inside” — that matters to you, ever since the winter you almost got frostbite in your fingers selling hot chocolate to ice skaters on the canal — “the chairs are comfy, and it pays more than minimum. Plus, there’s a bonus each month for the person who signs up the most followers.” (Continue Reading…)

pink gerbera daisy and dust on a black background

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Cast of Wonders 636: Whatever Remains of the Dead

Cast of Wonders 636: Whatever Remains of the Dead is a Cast of Wonders original.

Gun violence, aftermath of a school shooting, grief.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:35 — 48.9MB)

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Whatever Remains of the Dead

by Lyndsey Silveira

I fish a black dress from the back of my closet, all bunched up and wrinkled after its long exile. I get out the ironing board and try to iron it without burning it. Mom comes in as I’m cursing under my breath at a wrinkle that won’t go away. This small struggle is a nice reprieve from…everything. I don’t even want to go to the funeral, to any of them, but I don’t have an excuse. I wasn’t injured.

She watches me for a moment and says, in that quiet, gentle tone that’s beginning to grate on me, that everyone seems to use around me, “You don’t have to go, you know.”

“I do,” I reply. “His family isn’t going to any of the funerals. Not going makes me look guilty.”

“No one thinks you’re—”

I cut her off. “I necromanced their children’s corpses.”

She winces. It probably wasn’t the best choice of words on my part.

“And you saved your classmates.” She says it with conviction, like she’s proud of me, and it makes me wish I could find it in me to cry.

“Not all of them.” A beat. I stare down at the black fabric, smoothing it down. “I’m going.”

She nods. “All right. While you’re at it, you can iron my slacks.”

“That’s a bad idea.”

She smiles, probably thinking that if I can still banter, I must be doing okay.
(Continue Reading…)

Announcing our call for submissions for Banned Books Week 2025!

Every year in September, Cast of Wonders celebrates Banned Books Week, an annual international event celebrating the freedom to read and raising awareness of the immense social value of free and open access to information.

Free a book butterflies freedom illustration

Joy that Sustains

 

It’s all too easy to doom-scroll these days. The world is facing a climate emergency amidst a global rise in fascism and prejudice.

For Banned Books Week 2025, we want to see stories of irrepressible joy. Show us the sparks that cannot be extinguished, the many facets of humanity in all its splendour. We are looking for stories that showcase the hopefulness and power of diverse voices, stories of music in dark times, stories that are unapologetic and inspiring.

At Cast of Wonders, we welcome stories that portray the full spectrum of human experience. We don’t challenge stories; we want stories to challenge us! Cast of Wonders looks for stories that evoke a sense of wonder, have deep emotional resonance, and have something unreal about them. We aim for a 12-17 age range: that means sophisticated, non-condescending stories with wide appeal, and without gratuitous or explicit sex, violence, or pervasive obscene language.

Preference for this submission window is under 5,000 words with an absolute limit of 6,000 words. Flash submissions under 1.5k are also very welcome!

Submissions must adhere to Cast of Wonders guidelines, and our standard rates apply (8c/word for original fiction, $20/$100 for reprints depending on length).  Submissions will be accepted from May 15-31 through our Moksha Portal – we can’t wait to read what you send in!

https://escapeartists.moksha.io/publication/cast-of-wonders/banned-books-week-2025/submit

Image by Alexa from Pixabay

sea cave, dark, with an obscured swimmer

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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…)

Schedule Re-Jig

Hello,

We know Banned Books week Submission window should be open right now but our editorial team have been hit (all of us ><) by a run of different illnesses.  We are officially postponing the banned books submission window at LEAST a couple of weeks and our Editor is looking into adjusting our submissions schedule.  We should have more details on that by Friday.

Apologies this communication didn’t go out sooner!

(At least it gives folk time to do a bit more writing, a bit more polishing :D)

– Amy Brennan Editorial Assistant.

a girl diving underwater, reaching out for an object

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Cast of Wonders 634: Pearl Diving

Cast of Wonders 634: Pearl Diving is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 18:53 — 25.9MB)

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Pearl Diving

by J L Akagi

Makoto Matoba is enduring her third ever “scaly day” when her mother drives her down to the shore. She hasn’t yet adjusted to the itchy-scratchy rash covering her legs. Nor the tight agitation crawling over her entire body. Even worse, the Los Angeles pollution is thick today which irritates her developing gills.

Mako doesn’t get periods—she’s not that kind of girl—but she imagines this is what cis girls feel like when they do. Cramping and urged to retreat into themselves like hermit crabs.

When Mako and her mother arrive at Toes Beach, the sunset shines through the thin haze stretched over the California sky. Mako lowers her feet from the dashboard to sit up a bit at the sight of the pink sky meeting the flat, gray line of the ocean.

They clamber out of the car, and Mako eyes the water, scowling. “Mom, don’t make me pearl dive today. I can’t, I just can’t.” (Continue Reading…)

abstract phoenix in flame tones

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Cast of Wonders 633: Born in Flame and Song

Cast of Wonders 633: Born in Flame and Song is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:39 — 60.0MB)

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Born in Flame and Song

by Jameyanne Fuller

They will tell me, later, I was born singing. I wasn’t. I was born like all children are born, in one bloody, wailing, messy push. But I was born on fire. (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…)

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Cast of Wonders 631: Sometimes It Happens That Way

Cast of Wonders 631: Sometimes It Happens That Way is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:23 — 48.6MB)

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Sometimes it happens that way

by Jamie Lackey

I stood on the platform bundled up in one of my pa’s old work coats, its stained, fraying cuffs hanging well past my fingertips. The acrid stink of magic was thick in the air, rolling off the engine in hot waves. My ma took me by the shoulders and shook me, her fingers cold and hard even through the heavy coat.

“Your uncle lined up a good job for you out west,” she said, leaning close to shout over the steady rumble of the engine and the din of strangers’ voices. She smelled like the expensive formula my baby sister needed, powdery and sweet. “You work hard, and we can bring you back home in a few years.” She tucked my train ticket into my pocket.

I nodded. The thought of leaving home made my stomach curdle like old milk on a hot day, but I was almost twelve years old. I wanted to contribute. I was small for my age, and not strong, not like my older brothers and father. But my uncle had found me a job where small was what the bosses wanted. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 630: Poets of Painswick

First published in Augur Magazine issue 6.2 in December 2023.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:34 — 39.2MB)

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Poets of Painswick

by Kate Francia

Monday, 1st of June

Dear Mama,

I am sorry to tell you that Fanny is out hunting Poets again. It’s such a bore. She’ll be tiresome when she gets back, obv. sans Poets. No good telling her we don’t have the right sort of climate, or that she’d be sorry indeed if she caught one. She’ll persist in calling that bit of meadow above the duck pond “the moor,” lying in the grass pretending she’s just been thrown from her horse. Papa won’t let her take the plow horse, so she pretends hers has run off.

Later: A bit of excitement. Fanny has contrived to twist her ankle out on “the moor.” It’s swollen to a frightful size. She’s mum on how she managed to walk home on it. (You mustn’t worry; she is perfectly well. Carrying on dreadfully, but you know how she is.)

Spoke to Papa after she retired, in re: something must be done. But as usual, No One Listens To Me. (Continue Reading…)

a dark haired girl underwater, surrounded by bubbles

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Cast of Wonders 629: The Otter Woman’s Daughter

Cast of Wonders 629: The Otter Woman’s Daughter is a Cast of Wonders original.

Off-screen historical domestic violence

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:43 — 53.2MB)

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The Otter Woman’s Daughter

by Eleanor Glewwe

In the stories, when the selkie finds her skin, she always leaves her children behind. When I was little, I was terrified that would happen to me. After it didn’t, I began to wish it had. Not all the time, but in brief, shame-stricken bursts, in the darkness underwater. (Continue Reading…)

books viewed from vertically above, in black and white

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Cast of Wonders 628: The Bookstore at the End of America (Staff Picks 2024)

First published in the anthology A People’s Future of the United States edited by Victor LaValle and John Joseph Adams, and in Cast of Wonders 593 in July 2024

Image by Mirko Stödter from Pixabay

War, political intolerance

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 55:06 — 75.7MB)

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The Bookstore at the End of America

by Charlie Jane Anders

A bookshop on a hill. Two front doors, two walkways lined with blank slates and grass, two identical signs welcoming customers to the First and Last Page, and a great blue building in the middle, shaped like an old-fashioned barn with a slanted tiled roof and generous rain gutters. Nobody knew how many books were inside that building, not even Molly, the owner. But if you couldn’t find it there, they probably hadn’t written it down yet.

The two walkways led to two identical front doors, with straw welcome mats, blue plank floors, and the scent of lilacs and old bindings—but then you’d see a completely different store, depending which side you entered. With two cash registers, for two separate kinds of money.

If you entered from the California side, you’d see a wall hanging: women of all ages, shapes, and origins holding hands and dancing. You’d notice the display of the latest books from a variety of small presses that clung to life in Colorado Springs and Santa Fe, from literature and poetry to cultural studies. The shelves closest to the door on the California side included a decent amount of women’s and queer studies, but also a strong selection of classic literature, going back to Virginia Woolf and Zora Neale Hurston. Plus some brand-new paperbacks.

If you came in through the American front door, the basic layout would be pretty similar, except for the big painting of the nearby Rocky Mountains, though you might notice more books on religion, and some history books with a somewhat more conservative approach. The literary books skewed a bit more toward Faulkner, Thoreau, and Hemingway, not to mention  Ayn Rand, and you might find more books of essays about self-reliance and strong families, along with another selection of low-cost paperbacks: thrillers and war novels, including brand-new releases from the big printing plant in Gatlinburg. Romance novels, too. (Continue Reading…)