Posts Tagged ‘Laura Hobbs’

A girl's feet in pink trainers next to the shrouded feet of a grim reaper

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 666: The Mall Reapers

Cast of Wonders 666: The Mall Reapers is a Cast of Wonders original.

Content notes: attempted suicide, eye trauma

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:26 — 33.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

Show Notes

Image by Darelle from Pixabay

The Mall Reapers

by Daniel Roop

The second time I died, when I was fifteen, I didn’t. Mama and I had been arguing about the usual things, including my black eye shadow and mascara and how it “made me look awful pretty for a corpse.” I’d stormed off to my room in the back of our trailer in a huff, and she just stayed in the living room and drank coffee and smoked at the rickety brown table next to the stove so the vent would siphon off the smell. I threw myself on my bed and pulled the covers over my head, trying not to smudge the eye shadow. In fairness to her, I did cake it on back then. I laid there and listened to Concrete Blonde and The Cure and mumbled the lyrics into my black comforter. I was pretty dramatic in those days, and that along with the Crow’d up outfits didn’t help me fit in much in our little town in Scruggs County, Tennessee. I only knew three things for sure: I hated my life, I hated this place, and I was never, ever going to get out of here. This smoky trailer, this rutted gravel road, this hemmed-in Appalachian horizon was the only one I would ever see. So, I butchered a few more songs, earnestly at least, and then Mom called, “Elsie!”—it’s hard to be goth when you’re named Elsie—“Elsie, come look at this!” (Continue Reading…)

Genres: , ,

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

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

Natural Disasters

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:48 — 36.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

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…)

Genres: , ,

Cast of Wonders 512: A Full Set of Specials

Cast of Wonders 512: A Full Set of Specials is a Cast of Wonders original.

Natural disasters

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:57 — 37.8MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

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…)

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 421: We Sang You As Ours

Originally published in Issue 49 of The Dark Magazine, June 2019

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:51 — 36.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

We Sang You As Ours

by Nibedita Sen

The new egg was going to be a boy.

Cadence had overheard Mother Reed and Mother Piper saying so in the kitchen, last night, after they were done singing to it. She didn’t know how they could tell–it looked just like her little sisters’ eggs had. Maybe a bit bigger than theirs had been at three days old, but otherwise the same: fat as a pumpkin and ribbed like one, flushed with the faintest hint of venous blue. It looked like the dead jellyfish that would sometimes wash up on the beach, plump and gelatinous, clear near the surface and fibrous white at its heart, making you want to dig your fingers in, or maybe take a bite. (Continue Reading…)

Genres:

Cast of Wonders 299: All Them Pretty Babies

Originally published in Onspec Magazine Vol. 24 No. 3

Content warning: grief.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:39 — 31.9MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | RSS

All Them Pretty Babies

by Alexandra Renwick

Esmè step careful in the pretty grass. Grass on the hillside is green just how she like it; not all yellow, not all brownish purple like grass past the base of the mountain.

Them grasses, them yellow and purple grasses, make Esmè think on her old mama, who yell and slap and bite and kick at her. Only good thing Old Mama ever done for Esmè, she done let Esmè know just how ugly Esmè is. Ugly enough to stop her wind-up watch, say Old Mama. Ugly enough to stop a train, like train what done stopped on other side of the mountain when them bio-bombs fell so close, sent that train bucking like nasty old three-headed milk cow so it buck right off its track and into the gully.

Of course, that train done crashed long before Esmè was born. That train done crashed without Esmè ever having seen a train a-go full of people, with all them people’s pretty jewelries and pretty clothes, and them pretty little babies bouncing on they’s laps. No, Esmè never seen a train a-go, but she sometimes climb down into the gully, ignore bruised grass and glowing sludge, and she play in that wrecked train what now filled so full with all them clean, clean bones, and she think how pretty all them ladies and gentlemens must’ve been; so pretty that if ugly Esmè lived back then they would’ve chased her off with sticks like Old Mama done when she got so sick-and-tired of looking at Esmè all day long. That’s what Old Mama done told her: I’m so sick-and-tired of your ugly face. Now get gone, girl. Go try the other side of the mountain.
(Continue Reading…)