Posts Tagged ‘friendship’

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Cast of Wonders 659: The Archive of Unnamed Joy

Cast of Wonders 659: The Archive of Unnamed Joy is a Cast of Wonders original.

CW: dystopia, authoritarianism, brainwashing

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:44 — 55.9MB)

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The Archive of Unnamed Joy

by Bella Chacha

On the day my best friend forgot how to laugh, the sky over Lagos turned a dusty gold, like the gods were sifting garri over the sun.

Kambili had always been the one to pull joy out of thin air: snapping her fingers into a rhythm that made our feet twitch, making jokes out of government warnings, drawing flying cats with glowing eyes on the back of her school reports. But that morning, she just sat there at assembly, eyes vacant, lips sealed tight, her laughter gone like it had been folded up and hidden inside someone else’s pocket.

“Mood correction successful,” the hall monitor announced in that soulless mechanical tone, tapping her brass baton twice on the concrete. Around us, the students kept silent, unmoving. Stillness was virtue. Stillness was law. Stillness meant safety. (Continue Reading…)

old playing cards

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Cast of Wonders 651: The Liar

Image by Emilia from Pixabay

First published in The Book of Witches (edited by Jonathan Strahan, August 1 2023, Harper Voyager)

swearing, assault, murder

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:43 — 73.8MB)

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The Liar

by Darcie Little Badger

The Mysterious Woman

Jodie sat in a bench-filled lounge outside the Dominion Casino poker room. It was 6:18 p.m., and she’d been waiting for a table since 5:30. A 32-inch flat-screen TV on the wall displayed the standby list and indicated she was up next, along with four others identified as Pete M., Joe T., Olav A., and Bartholomew S.

Lowering her phone, she wondered if the sweaty, pink-faced man sitting next to her was Joe, Olav, or Bart. There were a dozen people in the room, but he was the most visibly nervous, his right leg bouncing.

“Howdy,” he said, noticing Jodie’s attention.

“Afternoon. What’s your name?”

“Pete.” He jabbed a thumb at the waitlist screen. “That Pete.”

“Call me Jodie.” (Continue Reading…)

illustration of a motel and parking lot

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Cast of Wonders 645: Chloe Chew and the Museum of Undead Art

Cast of Wonders 645: Chloe Chew and the Museum of Undead Art is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:07 — 45.5MB)

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Show Notes

Image by Camila Denleschi from Pixabay

Chloe Chew and the Museum of Undead Art

by Olivia B. Chan

In Chloe Chew’s suffocating hometown, there’s only one place fit for necromancy: the parking lot outside Em’s motel, where summer heat wavers above cracked pavement, blurring the darkness on the horizon. Forest fires have driven away all the tourists, so Chloe’s safe to prepare her resurrection materials between the yellow lines.

She presses her hands to the torn-up canvas as it flaps in the wind off the highway, Asperthbell’s skyline rippling in its peeling acrylic. Her victim is a painting she found in the back of Miss Plent’s classroom, wedged between old answer keys, entirely forgotten. Perfect for a resurrection. She recognizes Asperthbell’s gas station in its streaks of red, but besides that the painting’s portrayal of her hometown is unrecognizable—no ash. No smoke.

The painting’s ghost trembles in her hands. (Continue Reading…)

Australian Billabong

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Cast of Wonders 642: Feeding Spirits

Cast of Wonders 642: Feeding Spirits is a Cast of Wonders original.

Friendly haunting, bereavement

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:39 — 35.2MB)

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Show Notes

Image by Daniel Burkett from Pixabay

Feeding Spirits

by Emmi Khor

What does one feed a hungry ancestor? Fish and chips, chicken parmi, or steak pie didn’t seem like something my recently deceased Popo would enjoy.

I’d just returned from my backyard swamp with a full trash bag, when the phone rang. The call bounced with around-the-world echoes and I’d barely said hello, when Ma started in on her visit to the medium.

“I asked your Popo if she was comfortable. Ai yah, Li-Li,” cried Ma, “she scolded me! She said: Twenty years my granddaughter doesn’t come home. I go all the way to Australia to visit and she doesn’t even offer me a meal.” The click of Ma’s tongue was like a slap. “You should respect your ancestors!” (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…)

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…)

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Cast of Wonders 626: Bokrug and the Boy (Staff Picks 2024)

Previously published by The Dragon’s Roost Press, December 2022, and as Cast of Wonders 601, August 2024

Episode image by intographics from Pixabay

 

Bullying; implied neglect

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:09 — 30.4MB)

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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…)

stately home garden distorted by a kaleidoscope

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Cast of Wonders 618: Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa

Cast of Wonders 618: Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 46:12 — 63.5MB)

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Beneath the Unreal Gardens of the Virtual Villa

By M.K. Hutchins

Self-defense class in the virtual reality sim is supposed to be safe. My green dummy-partner lumbers toward me like a particularly unthreatening zombie and grabs my throat. I clasp my hands together, crash down on those green elbow joints, then strike up at its nose with everything I have, just like Mrs. Rodriguez showed us.

Green blood sprays all over me.

I cough, splutter, stagger back. Who’d program a dummy that way? Several girls gape in horror. Two guys start laughing. No one else made their dummy gush blood.

Mrs. Rodriguez smells wounded social prey like a great white shark—Carcharodon carcharias. She hurries over with a plastic-fake, angelic smile. “As you can all see, Anne has gotten into the spirit of things! Excellent work, Anne!” (Continue Reading…)

bamboo forest in winter

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Cast of Wonders 608: The light that became a star

Cast of Wonders 608: The light that became a star is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:56 — 39.7MB)

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The Light That Became A Star

by A.N. Pinckard

The old monk of the temple warned us not to go to the meadow, but Haru and I, we could not help ourselves. The strawberries were so ripe, like jewels, and we were so hungry. Other children had vanished there, but we were willing to take the risk.

It was the fifth year of the clan war and the seventh year of the drought. The dry, cracked rice paddies, the dusty taste of millet, and the ever-present gnawing in our bellies defined our existence.

That spring, Haru and I rose early each morning to fetch water from the Yubari river before the heat became unbearable. We’d haul it back to the rows of millet, dump it on the ground, and watch it disappear into the cracks. Year after year, the customary summer and fall rains had not come, and the earth’s thirst was insatiable.

The cloud dragon was sickened by the war, the old monk said. The thunder god was insulted by the poor offerings. The mountain gods were angry and withheld the rain. Every few days he had a different explanation. What were we to believe? We knew only our hunger. (Continue Reading…)

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

Genres: , ,

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…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 584: Robot Girl

Cast of Wonders 584: Robot Girl is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:06 — 42.7MB)

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Robot Girl

by Grace Griego

At age nineteen, Robot Girl had dropped out of the most prestigious university in the country, had no objectives in life, and was now stuck pet sitting for the lovely lesbian couple at her old church. Everything she was programmed not to be and do, Robot Girl had now become.

1 Extra Large Pepperoni Pizza

Robot girl tightened her faded, pink Hello Kitty Hair band then typed her order through a delivery service, rather than actually talk to anyone on the phone. Something deep in her wiring went off at this idea, but she didn’t know why. Robot Girl much preferred not to bother anyone if she could help it. And really, she couldn’t help it, it was in her programming. “Remember, Robot Girl! Be nice and polite!” her mother had always told her before she went to school. “Got it! Polite and nice!” Robot Girl never failed to reply, the words coming out stiff and wrong.

Nice. Robot Girl had grown to hate that word. It was the kind of word a fellow classmate would use to describe you because they didn’t know what else to say. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 575: Crystal Hexagons on Windowsills (Staff Picks 2023)

Originally published as Cast of Wonders 560, 27th October 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:44 — 55.3MB)

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Crystal Hexagons on Windowsills

by Prashanth Srivatsa

I was the only one among my friends who did not get the letter. Which is a real shame, because I was the only one who could snap a finger to conjure a flame. (Continue Reading…)