Posts Tagged ‘Amy Brennan’

a greyscale image of a ruined stone head

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Cast of Wonders 646: As Brittle as Granite

Cast of Wonders 646: As Brittle as Granite is a Cast of Wonders original.

Death of a parent

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Show Notes

Image by darrenquigley32 from Pixabay

As Brittle as Granite

by Matt Tighe

Lisa’s father has a crack in his face. It isn’t even a small one, something that she could maybe dismiss as a shadow cutting through the warm afternoon light of the sunroom. It runs from his forehead straight down through his left eye, splits his cheek in half, and just touches the very corner of his top lip. The inside of the crack is grey stone with pale flecks of mineralisation.

“You have cracked, father,” she says. The words come out as they should, steady and measured.

When his eyes move to her, the part of the crack that runs through his eye also moves, sliding sideways with his gaze. He is calm.

“Tell your mother,” he says. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 623: The Cat That Worked From Home (Staff Picks 2024)

First published as Cast of Wonders 583, April 2024

Image by Aleksandar Cvetanović from Pixabay

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The Cat That Worked From Home

by Dan Peacock and Rachel Peacock

Macaroni’s workstation is set up just the way he likes it. He has a little laptop with little buttons for his little golden paws, adjusted to a comfortable height. His scratch post is within easy reach; all he has to do is lean over his mousepad and mouse and

Mouse!

Macaroni tackles the computer mouse and rolls around with it until he is sure it has been sufficiently killed. Satisfied, he returns to his work. It’s a good day to be working from home; the sun is coming through the window just right, and a warm rectangle of light is spreading across the carpet, ready for his lunch break.

Macaroni stops. There’s a noise from outside. He jumps up onto the windowsill and sees Gingerbread, his next-door nemesis, clambering over the garden fence.

Macaroni runs downstairs and out of the cat flap. The orange fur on Gingerbread’s back rises, but he quickly relaxes.

“Clear off,” Macaroni says. “This isn’t your garden. I’m trying to work from home here.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 598: The Middle Rages (Encore!)

Originally published as Cast of Wonders 144, 2 November 2014

Image by Peter Schmidt from Pixabay

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The Middle Rages

by Joseph L. Kellogg

Cale twirled his drumstick morosely as the last of the reverb from the guitars died out.

“We vent,” he finally declared, tossing the sticks down onto the snare with a clatter. He leaned against the back of the couch and crossed his arms over his ample stomach.

“No, come on,” Bendrick replied, turning toward the drums as he brushed the hair from his eyes. “That was good, we’re definitely getting better. We’ve just gotta-” He stumbled as he stepped on the cord and pulled the plug sharply from his guitar. “We’ve gotta keep practicing.”

“What for, Benny?” asked Jillan, plopping down on an amp and resting her head in her hands. “It’s not like we can ever sign a big record contract, or go on a world tour. There aren’t any opportunities on the ship, no matter how good we are.”

“Don’t you see?” Bendrick said, pulling the guitar strap over his head and setting it down. He pointed at the crude letters formed from strips of electrical tape on the base drum. “We’re The Middle Rages! It’s not about the money or the fame, it’s about the rage, the emotion. It’s about the art.”
(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 571: The Raven Princess (Staff Picks 2023)

Originally published in Cast of Wonders as episode 543 on 5 August 2023

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The Raven Princess

by Dani Atkinson

“Oh no,” Clarinda muttered, fluttering to the body of the fallen prince. His limp form lay sprawled at the base of a willow tree, the fine embroidery on his clothes gleaming in the shifting patches of sunlight cast between the branches. A basket lay near his feet, and an empty wine goblet lay toppled near his hand. Clarinda pecked his fingers. “No no no…”

Notchbeak flapped down to join her. “Who’s this? Are you going to eat him?” He started pecking the other hand. “Dibs on his eyes.”

“No!” Clarinda cried, hopping to the man’s chest.

Notchbeak ruffled his feathers in a shrug. “Well, fine, we can split the eyes. He has two, after all.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 523: A Full Set of Specials (Staff Picks 2022)

Originally broadcast as Cast of Wonders 512, 23rd October 2022

Natural Disasters

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A Full Set of Specials

by Marguerite Sheffer

I’m not used to holding strangers’ hands, the way Miss Tina is. I don’t like how they go all soft and strange in mine, all vulnerable. Like anyone can walk in the door, their hands in any state, and they just let you touch them. The sharp tang of the remover is everywhere, not covered by the fake floral-smelling lotions at all, just blown around by the hum of the little drying fans. (Continue Reading…)

moon, clouds, nebula

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Cast of Wonders 494: The Day I Didn’t Get a Pet Nebula

Previously published in the Drabblecast, April 2021

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The Day I Didn’t Get a Pet Nebula

by Effie Seiberg

On the day I turned nine, I didn’t get a pet nebula.

I’d really really wanted one, just like the one Shelly had. And I’d been talking about it FOR-EVER, so Dad could have the time to save up for the one in the pawn shop, and I’m not usually patient enough to talk about anything that long. I told him how responsible I was and how I could take it for walks and trim its dust wisps and everything. I made him breakfast when he got home from his shift a bunch of times, and even did the dishes after to prove how responsible I was.

“C’mon kiddo, you know that’s not possible,” he’d said, ten rotation cycles before my birthday. We were at the wobbly kitchen table and he was helping me with my physics homework after dinner, so everything still smelled like tacos with neutron star shavings and spray cheese. The chapter was all about distortions of spacetime, cosmic strings and black holes and whatnot. He leaned his head on one tentacle, like he was too tired to hold it up on its own. Even his work shirt looked tired, like the frayed thin patches were struggling to hold his tentacles in. “A pet nebula isn’t happening.” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 485: Simons, Far and Near

Cast of Wonders 485: Simons, Far and Near is a Cast of Wonders original.

Character death; Radiation sickness

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:52 — 43.4MB)

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Simons, Far and Near

by Ana Gardner

Days after a solar hurricane fried Western Europe, nations across the world gathered their brightest grade-schoolers, and they launched us into space with promises of glory and cake.

Solar storms were worsening ahead of schedule, said government men in wrinkled suits, as they pulled us from our underground shelters and stuffed us into armored tanks. The exodus ships, forced to launch early, weren’t ready to sustain endless space travel. They’d need places to land, shelters for their thousands of passengers, far from our ever-deadlier sun.

And someone had to travel on ahead and build those shelters.

Fortunately, we learned as we marched up the launch ramp, Earth had a few shuttles ready for immediate departure. Sure, they had poor radiation shields and leaky engines, but wouldn’t you know it? Shuttle travel damaged the body worst after puberty. Kids had great odds of surviving a trip across the solar system.

‘Great odds’—those were the words they used, and they loaded us into hastily-cobbled ships and chucked us from burning Earth like spores from a coughing fungus. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 475: Miss Tansybaum’s Circus of the Moderately Peculiar

Originally published at the author’s website

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Miss Tansybaum’s Circus of the Moderately Peculiar

by T Kingfisher

By all accounts, Miss Tansybaum’s Circus of the Moderately Peculiar should not have continued to operate. They were a very small operation as circuses went, they had no rides and their menagerie consisted of a single geriatric lion and a handful of obscure species, such as the Sudanese Crooning Lizards, who were obscure for a reason. Sure, Brendan the Mono-juggler could keep a single ball in the air for hours, but you got tired of watching after the first few minutes.

Lord Maggothaunch’s Carnival of the Un-Ordinary should have crushed them out of existence in the first year–indeed, that was among the lord’s stated goals–and its failure to do so was a source of intense frustration for him. Did he not have scantily clad women and a genuine, if sullen tiger? Did he not have a genuine freakshow, with real live freaks, including a pair of dubious Siamese twins and a two-headed calf in a jar?

Miss Tansybaum did not have a freakshow (at least not in the conventional sense, although the less charitable would argue that the entire operation qualified.) Instead she had Sister Rosemary’s Curious Convent. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 442: Mothers, Watch Over Me (Staff Picks 2020)

This story was previously published in Mythic Delirium, April 2018, and in Cast of Wonders Episode 401 in February 2020

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Mothers, Watch Over Me

by Maria Haskins

Even in the dream, Maya knows her pup is dying.

She dreams of a lone mother-dog in the time before the packs, before the dens, before the sky cleared, before the flames on the horizon went out. Mother-dog walks through dust of the Forbidding, beneath the same skyfire that glows ever-brighter in Maya’s waking world, walking towards the towers, carrying a pup in her jaws.

In Maya’s dream, mother-dog is starlight and shadow, and the dirt glimmers where her paws touch the ground. Mother-dog does not speak, but Maya’s own voice ripples through the stillness of the Forbidding, stirring dust and silence:

Watch over me, mother. Watch over them.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 397: Wordslinger, Wordwreaker (Staff Picks 2019)

Originally appeared in Cast of Wonders Episode 354 (Artemis Rising 5), March 28, 2019.

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Wordslinger, Wordwreaker

by Amanda Helms

The wordslinger first came into Lasthope on the back of a scarab the size of a large pony, during the worst flaying-wind storm in a generation.

Mind, we didn’t know then that she was a wordslinger, or even that she was a she. I didn’t witness it direct, but later one of our regulars told me of her, all bundled up in hat and gloves and too-big cloak, on account of them winds, you see. She climbed off her scarab with the stiffness of someone too long in the saddle. But like any rider worth her salt, she saw to her mount afore she came into the saloon, which is where I first saw her myself.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 396: Bunny (Staff Picks 2019)

Previously appeared in Cast of Wonders 356: Little Wonders 20: 2018 Flash Fiction Contest Winners (April 8, 2019).

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Bunny

by Amy Brennan

You are crying.

Salty tears dripping into my fur and steaming off in the dry heat.

You hug me tightly, I feel your ragged breathing, your shivers as you hold in the sobs that want to be free.

I want to offer more comfort, but what am I? – Just bits of fabric with plush stuffing, a pink button nose and a pair of beaded eyes. I can do no more than be hugged, do no more than silently offer sympathy, wish to the legendary stuffed toys of the past – and to Veleveteen most of all – that I can do more.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 392: The Angel (Staff Picks 2019)

Originally appeared in Cast of Wonders, Artemis Rising 5, March 4, 2019

Terminal illness; Cancer

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The Angel

by Kate Cobey

I: Sterile

“Just don’t treat her like anything less than a person,” Mama fretted from the front row of the cab. Never mind that this was the fourth time we’d come to see her, and we’d heard the same plea every single time. Cautiously, Mama asked the white hospital archway next to her, “May we enter?”

“Card?” responded the building.

“You don’t need to be so formal. It’s just a robot,” Nina complained from the back. “It’s aaaall robots, here.”

(Continue Reading…)