Posts Tagged ‘Jeremy Carter’

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Cast of Wonders 572: The Time Traveler’s Cookbook (Staff Picks 2023)

Originally published in Cast of Wonders as episode 533, 13 April 2023

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:46 — 39.3MB)

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The Time Traveler’s Cookbook

by Angela Liu

  • Day: 4202
  • Place: Northern Laurasia (later known as Mongolia)
  • Time: 66,000,000 BC (late-Cretaceous Period)
  • Meal: Magnolia and Grilled Oviraptor

Mom’s cookbook recommends tenderizing the meat so I fashion a club from a young cycad, but I might as well be beating a rock with a feather.

Don’t eat dinosaur. Just don’t. Mom marked it as a must-have, saying it looks and tastes “like an exotic giant chicken,” but just getting to the meat has been a nightmare. The skin’s teeth breakingly-tough and the sucker hooked me in the thigh with one of its nasty claws during the hunt. I’ve staunched the bleeding with Happy Time Traveler’s super medical glue, but holy hell it still hurts. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 570: Both Hope and Breath (Staff Picks 2023)

Originally published as Cast of Wonders 527, 1 February 2023

Transphobia, misgendering, rejection

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 38:08 — 53.4MB)

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Both Hope and Breath

by Riley Tao

It’s perfectly normal for breath to fog up mirrors. Everyone knows that. For most of my childhood, I never thought twice about the way mirrors went cloudy when I drew near. The only time it really mattered was when Dad flew me to school; even well into my upper school years, I never could sit in the front seat without frosting over the rearview mirrors, much less pilot an aerostat myself.

In my senior year at Ettwood Upper, I was the only person still flown to school by a parent–and Dad never let me forget it.

“You know,” Dad said, smoke and mist drifting out from between his lips, “I did the math. If your Aspiration didn’t block you from piloting, I would’ve saved two hundred hours this year.”

I sighed, letting out a cloud of Aspiration. As always, the faint white mist hung in the air for a second before gravitating towards the nearest mirror–in this case, the left-hand passenger window. “Well, I’m sorry that the physical manifestation of my hopes and dreams isn’t good enough for you.” (Continue Reading…)

A girl crouched beside a tree, inside of which is a cosy living room

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Cast of Wonders 569: The Woods in the House (part 2)

Cast of Wonders 569: The Woods in the House (part 2) is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:10 — 41.8MB)

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The Woods in the House

by Amanda Cecelia Lang

(part 1)

Finally, I had a decent guess about the cog-works of the witch’s magic. The theory swamped my head until it became my only thought. But how to test it?

Sneaking down 13th without eyes on me became impossible. The beat cops, my kryptonite, manifested whenever I stepped outside. Dad stopped working double-shifts to warden me to-and-from school. On weekends, he locked the apartment and grumbled about sacrificing the overtime. Restless days passed, countless awkward hours cooped up together—watching the boob-tube, fixing meals from cans, pacing grimy ditches into the carpet, back and forth, back and forth, silently missing Tina. Missing our girls. It felt weird not feeling so afraid inside his shadow. But I had other villains to worry about.

How bonkers was it that I felt thankful for that? (Continue Reading…)

A girl crouched beside a tree, inside of which is a cosy living room

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Cast of Wonders 568: The Woods in the House (part 1)

Cast of Wonders 568: The Woods in the House (part 1) is a Cast of Wonders original.

death of a parent, corporal punishment and neglect

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:13 — 44.6MB)

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The Woods in the House

by Amanda Cecelia Lang

Those magic-duped beat cops warned me not to return to Old Lady Sybil’s brownstone. They ordered me to leave the odd-bird alone, let her totter about her dying years in peace. Said the myths us punks on 13th Avenue spread about her were just that. She didn’t skin alley cats for bubbling potions or hex the afternoons with yellow smog. She didn’t whisper haunted prayers and open portals into other realms. Her house was just a house.

And she didn’t kidnap Tina.

The whole neighborhood agreed—from the bodega owner to the apartment rats to the sidewalk gossips. Something wretched had happened to my little sister. Just another big city statistic. Kids like her go missing every day, run off, tumble through cracks, take ill with sinister luck—same as alley cats and treasured parents. One thing the cops promised me: telling wild lies about lonely spinsters was never gonna bring Tina back.

But I know what I saw on Halloween. (Continue Reading…)

angel outline against a blue sky

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Cast of Wonders 567: Disposable Gabriel

Cast of Wonders 567: Disposable Gabriel is a Cast of Wonders original.

Commercialisation of religion, abuse of non-human sentients, terminal illness.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:28 — 44.6MB)

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Disposable Gabriel

by Brian D. Hinson

The lights illuminated a young Mary sitting alone, in a humble abode of wood on the stage of a church that more resembled a sports arena. The stadium screen behind her displayed the dusty streets of Nazareth: clusters of connected adobe brick structures beneath an orange sun blazing its last glory on the horizon.

The angel Gabriel swooped in from an aerial catwalk, huge feathered wings angled for a glide, and a collective gasp filled the auditorium. He alighted in front of Mary, folding wings that glowed in the spotlight. Mary leapt up and screamed, back pressed against the far wall.

Gabriel’s voice thundered. No mic pickup was necessary. “Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus.”

The crowd cheered.

Pastor Anabel stood offstage, arms crossed. By her side, the play’s director, Pastor Jude, beamed as he scratched his beard, an old anxious habit. It was Christmas Eve, the final performance, and things were going perfectly. (Continue Reading…)

Christmas Baubles against a backdrop of a dark sky

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Cast of Wonders 566: Will She Remember the Lights?

Originally published in Underneath the Tree: Twelve Christmas stories from Writers in Northern Ireland in November 2020

Dystopia, Organised Religion as a tool of the State.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:22 — 45.8MB)

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Will She Remember the Lights?

by Samuel Poots

The reader spits out my finance card, its screen flashing a book and cross in luminous green. The young man behind the counter gives me a wary look as he hands the card back and says, in a carefully neutral tone, “Sorry Brother, your account has been locked.”

His words ripple through the queue of people behind me; their stares prickling across my skin like crawling ants. All I can do is murmur an apology, hoping that I sound more confused than guilty, before hurrying out of the store and making my way to the Financial Office across the town square.

Winter winds have stripped the place bare of people. Even the Security Deacons have found excuses to linger indoors, which is one small mercy. The only other face I see as I cross the open span of concrete is that of the Reverend Father shining from his pole-mounted projectors. The image flashes from fatherly love to stern disapproval, so I’m never quite sure which I’ll see when I look up. Normally I take some comfort from the sight. Light blazes from that face, pushing back the growing shadows of this darkest time of the year. It might be a far-cry from the colourful bunting of my childhood, but I take pride in knowing that it’s often my wiring that keeps the Reverend Father always before us. (Continue Reading…)

hourglass filled with blue sand

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Cast of Wonders 565: Foster-Child of Silence and Slow Time

Originally published in the anthology MY BATTERY IS LOW AND IT IS GETTING DARK, 2020, from Zombies Need Brains.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:56 — 59.0MB)

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Foster-Child of Silence and Slow Time

by Brian Hugenbruch

“How do I save the world?”

I accept the question as input on a Wednesday. It comes from Samantha Mills, a little girl in Cincinnati, Ohio. She is the daughter of one of my programmers—and since I came online three years ago, she has talked to me daily. She believes I’m her mother. Since her mother wrote my language processing routine, she is not entirely wrong.

Unfortunately, the question is a bit vague. “I’m sorry, honey,” I tell her. “I’m not sure I understand.”

I cannot access the cameras inside their apartment; I cannot tell if she has been crying. And I must always wait for a question: it’s a core part of my programming. The nanoseconds between strings of text feel like eons. (Continue Reading…)

weird sunset

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Cast of Wonders 563: Stolen Sky

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:40 — 45.9MB)

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Stolen Sky

by Storm Humbert

My first night on Earth-Vega was also my first sunset show. The viewing was held on the Sunset Mezzanine, which jutted out from the third floor of the hotel. My human guide, Ruya, gently escorted me through the press of humans to the front railing so that I could see, since we Yelvani are no larger than human adolescents.

From the balcony, the hills seemed to tumble over each other down the gentle grade from the hotel to the edge of the forest, which then climbed gradually up toward the horizon until it terminated at the feet of the distant mountains. The breeze was bracing but not so cool that I had to turn up the temperature of my garment. The view was perfect. Everything the humans made was perfect. (Continue Reading…)

Image of a derelict overgrown blue car

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Cast of Wonders 562: One Last Broken Thing

Originally published in The Dark, February 2021

Swearing (two f-words) & homophobic slurs

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:09 — 48.2MB)

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One Last Broken Thing

by Aimee Ogden

In elementary school, the other kids called Liv’s home that haunted house out on Barnhill Road. Liv herself has never seen a ghost there, but not for want of trying. They called her father lots of things: Freddy Krueger, Charles Manson, David S. Pumpkins. Now that she’s in high school, the other kids call her the spooky girl: to her face, on ugly pieces of paper smashed up small and pushed through the vents of her locker. Stay away from me, spooky girl. Don’t talk to me again in English, spooky girl. I saw you looking at me in the locker room, you spooky fuck. (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…)

decorative image of a pink abstract hexagon

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Cast of Wonders 560: Crystal Hexagons on Windowsills

Cast of Wonders 560: Crystal Hexagons on Windowsills is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:34 — 55.0MB)

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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…)

Girl with balloons walking on a landscape made out of an open book

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Cast of Wonders 559: Libricide

Cast of Wonders 559: Libricide is a Cast of Wonders original.

Arson, burns

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:20 — 27.9MB)

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Libricide

by Rachel Linton

When he woke, the air tasted of ash.

For a moment, he contemplated not getting up. There was a physical weight to smoke-filled air that went beyond the actual density of the particles. It crushed him; his throat closed up beneath it. It was never a good day when a neighborhood of ideas was consumed by fire. (Continue Reading…)