Posts Tagged ‘Alexis Goble’

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Cast of Wonders 458: Little Wonders 31 – Acceptance

Cast of Wonders 458: Little Wonders 31 – Acceptance is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:37 — 22.1MB)

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Rosie’s Ghosts

by Srikripa Krishna Prasad

They sway in front of the bay window, sunlight tinting their translucent bodies gold. Rosie watches from under her eyelashes, her book lying uselessly on her lap despite her attempt to focus. Don’t look, she thinks, shame burning her throat, but they are magnetic as they dance together, the short woman’s head fitting perfectly into the crook of her partner’s neck. Their laughter rings in the air; Rosie knows it intimately. She hears it often when they reminisce about their time in this house, when they touch each other, when they waltz impromptu around the room. The creature in her chest cries out for this joy, this bright love that has transcended even death, despite how much she tries to suppress it.

The short woman leans up, and the tall woman leans down, and their lips meet, their arms bracketing each other tenderly, like they hold something precious. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 457: Just Like the Speeding Heart

Cast of Wonders 457: Just Like the Speeding Heart is a Cast of Wonders original.

Neglect

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 14:10 — 13.5MB)

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Just Like The Speeding Heart

by Osahon Ize-Iyamu

It’s seven A.M. and you’re making akara and tea, just for yourself and not for the two of us. You ask if it’s time, and it is, but I won’t tell you that. Let you be silent and make your tea and not speak. Let you be as you are—unhearing as ever, keeping this energy as I keep this information from you. Mama—Let you be blissful in ignorance, and let’s keep the silence of the morning as a beautiful thing, a hallowed memory.

Let this be true.
(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 456: Armed With Such Stories, I Roamed Into The Woods

Cast of Wonders 456: Armed With Such Stories, I Roamed Into The Woods is a Cast of Wonders original.

Multiple profanities

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:09 — 40.9MB)

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Armed With Such Stories, I Roamed Into The Woods

by Evan Marcroft

Never trust a wolf’s promise, Atticus, my mother once told me. Remember the tale of Smiling John and Baron Icepelt. They lie between fangs, and their promises will only ever lead you into their belly. She was full of such morsels of wisdom. There was a fable for every lesson I should know. Not all pertained to talking wolves, but this was most relevant to my task. Remember how Smiling John escaped. If you should find a wolf at your heels, throw meat behind you. Wolves are clever but lazy creatures. They will stop for the easier meal.

Armed with such stories, I roamed into the woods to save her life. (Continue Reading…)

alien and human

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Cast of Wonders 455: Little Wonders 30 – Not So Alien After All

Cast of Wonders 455: Little Wonders 30 – Not So Alien After All is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:48 — 25.4MB)

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Toward the Sploff Zone

by Brenna Harvey

“Kids, you’re switching bodies today!” said Coach Sningarax.

Our whole gym class groaned.

“Why?” I asked.

“To build character! Now, what’s the number one rule of neuroswapping?”

“Respect,” we droned in unison. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 454: The Fairy Queen

Cast of Wonders 454: The Fairy Queen is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:02 — 23.4MB)

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The Fairy Queen

by Lynn Buchanan

She made the first fairy by accident, with a twig she found under a hawthorn tree. It was a stick possessing the general shape of a human, with offshoots that resembled arms and legs, and a knot she called a head. Sitting in the shade of the tree, she wrapped a bit of twine around the twig’s torso, tearing off a piece of thread from the cuff of her sleeve and decorating the “arms” in tight white lines. With a ribbon pulled from her hair she clothed the stick, folding the silk into a tunic tied at the back with a bow. For hair she picked up a strand of leaves from the grass beside her, fastening the stem down the slope of the wooden face with three pieces of her own hair, pulled with a jerk and grimace from her skull and braided into a cord the color of sunsets. Last of all she attached to the twig’s back a set of butterfly wings, collected earlier that day from a trip to the garden. (Continue Reading…)

Barn owl at night

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Cast of Wonders 453: Langsuir

Cast of Wonders 453: Langsuir is a Cast of Wonders original.

This story features stillbirth, death, murder, abuse, rape, slavery and misogyny.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:50 — 21.3MB)

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Langsuir

by Nadia Mikail

The langsuir is a woman who has died giving birth. Malay folktales have a multitude of women featured as wrathful, devious spirits: the hantu kum-kum thrives on the blood of virgin girls, desperate to maintain her youth even in death; the hantu kopek lures men to cheat on their wives, jealous that their afterlife contains no husband of their own; the pontianak goes after the people who have wronged her, tearing out their organs.

People usually shake their heads, they think: oh, well, that is the envious, terrible nature of Eve. Personally I think it is more how humans are treated in life that influences how they behave in death, and in this culture the women are angrier than most. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 451: Unnamed

Cast of Wonders 451: Unnamed is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:28 — 32.9MB)

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Unnamed

by Monte Lin

Huìhuì Gāo’s homeroom teacher squinted at his roll call. He wore a slight smile that conveyed no joy. After a few seconds, he said, “Ms…?”

Her hand hovered over her desk, hesitant, ready to catch her name. Her teacher squinted and furrowed his brow and looked about the classroom, finally settling his gaze on her. “Here,” she said, her voice cracking a little. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 450: Little Wonders 28 – Metaphors & Allegories

Cast of Wonders 450: Little Wonders 28 – Metaphors & Allegories is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:39 — 24.8MB)

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Show Notes

“This is not my adventure”, by Karlo Yeager Rodríguez, was originally published in Uncanny Magazine #30, Disabled People Destroy Fantasy, 2019

Three monsters that are not metaphors

by Dani Atkinson

1. The kelpie is not a metaphor for depression.

“You’re kind of like a metaphor for depression, though,” I tell her, and she snorts angrily. Her hide twitches, dark and sticky as tar pits.

Just because she’s deceptively appealing, and wants to trap me and drag me down into cold grey waters, means nothing. Just because I am already drowning does not make it a metaphor. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 449: This is How You Remember (Staff Picks 2020)

Originally published in Cast of Wonders episode 438.

profanity, war, PTSD

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 52:19 — 48.4MB)

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This is How You Remember

by Phong Quan

I see the crowds before I see you, before I see even the flickering white of your flame. Your culture’s everywhere now—your music, your art, your words—but not your people, and not you, not in this tiny airport in this little place between San Diego and LA. So I hear the whispers—A Torch! A Speaker’s on the flight. Why here? There’s nothing here—and prepare myself to see you for the first time since the War. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 448: The Oak Knowers (Staff Picks 2020)

Previously published as Cast of Wonders episodes 403 & 404.

Content warning for language/profanity. This story contains in-character usage of the N-word and the F-word.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 54:30 — 50.4MB)

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The Oak Knowers

by Wesley Jenkins

When the moon sits high, and our parents have passed out for sure, we gather in the grove to do our business.

We never call it magic. Magic is something magicians do, pulling rabbits out of hats. I guess witches turn princes into toads and sorcerers cruise from kingdom to kingdom, toppling regimes and screwing everything in sight, but we have never been so outrageous. For one thing, we believe in rules.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 447: Candy Wrappers (Staff Picks 2020)

First published in Cast of Wonders episode 437 in November 2020

colonialism, death

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:41 — 32.2MB)

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Candy Wrappers

by Kaitlyn Zivanovich

The island is a circle. A magmic glow radiates from the lips of the volcano crater at one end—hot, and alive. On the other end the Visitor compound is white and cold, lit by the new false light. But it is darkness the island child seeks as she sprints through the garden of the dead, cradling her brother’s soul in her hands.

Mikmik dashes from night-shadow to night-shadow. She skirts around overgrown patches of soulseeds, left uncollected by their living. There is no singing in the garden. Jyn chatters and laughs in Mikmik’s palm, completely unchanged for all that he no longer has a body. “Faster!” he cries. The wind rushes over his soulseed. “Run, Mikmik, run!” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 445: The Pop-up Artisan of Drink Me Café (Staff Picks 2020)

Previously published as Cast of Wonders episode 434

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:14 — 25.4MB)

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The Pop-up Artisan of Drink Me Café

by Marie Croke

I came to her coffee shop, but never bought anything–things like that the owner’s bound to notice. Figured my days were numbered as soon as she took note, but my mom ran me off and the cold drove me in and there’s only so many stores one can pretend to be shopping at before people start looking at you all suspicious-like.

Took a coffee cup out of the trash and did the mime thing actors did, pretending to sip while I turned pages in my library book. Whenever the owner came near–wiping down a table, picking up dirty napkins, delivering a latte–I got all stiff, shoulders tense, waiting for her tap on them.

“Excuse me.”

Like I said…

“What are you reading?”

“A book,” I muttered, hugging the book awkwardly with my arm. (Continue Reading…)