When the alien fleet was first sighted just beyond the asteroid belt, end-of-the-world riots broke out in cities around the globe. But when astronomers calculated that the huge, silent ships would take nearly three weeks to reach Earth, all but the most committed rioters felt their enthusiasm wilt. By the end of the day they’d […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The water fountains are low. The lockers are empty. The summer air is warm but there are people in the classrooms. People are talking, are moving. A female emerges from the nearest classroom. She is fully grown. She has dyed hair and competing odors and all of her teeth. Showing her teeth, she asks, “Are […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Whatever you do, don’t call me Ishmael. Don’t call me anything at all. Give me my pint of piss-poor ale and leave me be in this yellowed corner where men relieve themselves when they are too lazy to make three extra stumbling steps to the streets of Nantucket. I am done. Finished. Come to this […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Sandeer smelled her. It was just a whiff, a few molecules of something familiar and therefore sweet, wafting on a late afternoon breeze that otherwise carried only the usual: formaldehyde, benzene, dioxin, chromium, and miscellaneous particulate matter both organic and non-. (Once, there had been the smell of roasting chestnuts and crackling logs and simmering […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The niece of King Death had not yet chosen a name. She was the only daughter and youngest child of Death’s sister, Merciful Grace, and everyone still called her by her baby name, Little Grace… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“By the Earth-Stypei Treaty of The Twenty-third Local Year of Our Interaction, as amended, suspected Stypean sympathizers may be detained by duly empowered authorities only so long as the unbreachable sovereignty of the Stypean body-host is not violated, and only for the purpose of deportation upon confirmation of Stypean inhabitance. Tests to determine inhabitance are […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It might have been in Club Justine, or Jimbo’s, or Sad Jack’s, or the Rafters; Coretti could never be sure where he’d first seen her. At any time, she might have been in any one of those bars. She swam through the submarine half-life of bottles and glassware and the slow swirl of cigarette smoke… […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Your suitor’s here!” Ma Flesh hurried into the back room of the butcher’s shop. “Are you presentable?” Betty waited there amongst the swinging, marbled yellow cow carcasses. The wooden butcher’s table was smooth under her fingertips, and solid as the earth. Knives glinted from the walls, each reflecting a tiny, seated Betty and the thin […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Dear Mr. Kugelmacher, This letter is to inform you of my resignation. As you know, I have spent the last fifteen years of my life working in your department store, from the age of twelve when I was hired as a stock boy, to my years spent in the jewellery department, to my time in […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Hostile movement! Well inside the perimeter! Well inside!” I stripped off my Immersive Response goggles as adrenaline surged through me. The virtual cityscape I’d been about to raze disappeared, replaced by our monitoring room’s many views of SesCo’s mining operations. On one screen, the red phosphorescent tracery of an intruder skated across a terrain map, […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
You don’t remember anything, do you? Selective memory loss; what an achievement for a mind as young as yours. Locked in a cupboard of your consciousness, the guilt will eat at you from the inside… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
At the sack’s bottom, beneath an empty donut box, he found the beef jerky. It tasted mostly of pepper, but underneath it had a tingly, metallic flavor he tried not to think about. Who knew what it might have been made from? He doubted there were any original-form cows, the o-cows, left to slaughter… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Adao, no.” Teo, the older boy’s second-in-command, lays a staying hand on his master’s arm. “The stories I told you about this one… they’re true.” “True?” Adao casts a skeptic’s eye over Santos. Can those flimsy ribs cage anything as fugitive as truth? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
We stared up at the sunlit peaks, each thinking our own thoughts. I thought about Dessica. We’d waited two months after landing to name it, but the decision was unanimous. Hot, dry, with dust storms that could blow for weeks at a time– if ever there was a Hell, that place had to be it. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“It’s the extra-terrestrials,” the General said, watching for my reaction. “Our extra-terrestrials are falling ill.” “Really?” I couldn’t keep the disbelief out of my voice. My eyes wandered back to the picture on the general’s wall. He noticed. “That’s an untouched photo,” he said. “The aliens are real, and they’re here…” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Looking away from the light that showed the Charles Dexter Ward was no longer entirely dead was as hard as opening a rusted zipper. But Cynthia did it, and didn’t let herself look back She pulled Hester a little further down the corridor and said, “Now we really need to know how she killed him. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Six weeks into her involuntary tenure on Faraday Station, Cynthia Feuerwerker needed a job. She could no longer afford to be choosy about it, either; her oxygen tax was due, and you didn’t have to be a medical doctor to understand the difficulties inherent in trying to breathe vacuum. You didn’t have to be, but […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Presently it rose, and with a shuffling walk it supported itself along the bars until it reached the bucket. With a sigh it plunged its hands inside. Little Useless inched closer and watched while the creature cupped the salt water and brought it to its face: not to drink, but to moisten its skin… This […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Upon the coming of the rain and the and the reawakening of the Krr’at race, the Elder Thing returned to us and squealed Its sky-splitting squeal and waded in among us. It came with the green feet that had eyes and mouths, and with the yellow, rubbery outerskin, and with the lace and the glitter […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My room was on the fifth story; the only inhabited room there, since the house was almost empty. On the night I arrived I heard strange music from the peaked garret overhead, and the next day asked old Blandot about it. He told me it was an old German viol-player, a strange dumb man who […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My name is… John. I am… I have a wife and a daughter. They are visiting me today. Their names– Alice. And Anna. I can see, sort of. Everything is blurry. I am submerged in a coffin, a clear coffin with green water. There’s a tube in my mouth so that I can breathe, machine-like. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This episode of the Drabblecast presents Jimmy’s Roadside Cafe by Ramsey Shehadeh. It’s a tale about running a shanty café off I-95, in a post-apocalyptic, plague-ridden America. Jimmy cobbles together the shanty between the guardrails of the highway, where he assists passersby. Scavenged goods, hard truths, or a place to rest, Jimmy’s kindness becomes an […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“What I don’t like about it,” said Cliffe, “is that is it’s just a metaphor instead of something real.” “What if it was real?” I (Sam) asked. “What if it was me and I actually turned into a cockroach someday?” This episode of the Drabblecast is all about crazy relationships. In the drabble, it’s apparent […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“You are accused of stealing the intellectual property of Einstein, Dirac and Heisenberg.” The middle-aged speaker waved his finger at Professor Hillabin, more in the manner of a prosecutor than a judge. This episode of the Drabblecast illustrates the folly of bureaucracy. In the drabble, one by one an entire classroom of students are promoted […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The shop bell rang at the front of the St. George Tim Hortons. I didn’t see who came in, but when Shel looked up, his eyes widened. “Crap.” He whispered. “It’s my kidney.” “Your kidney?” I asked. I turned in my seat, but Shel jerked me back by the shoulder. He held up his free […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
“Mrs. Levine, it is hard enough for someone to find the right person to love in the world, even with all the people in it. For Yeshua, it is almost impossible. Would you have him fall in love with a human girl and pine for her until his heart broke and we would have to […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
It had rolled and tumbled, whatever it was, gelatinous and tentacled, from lake to canal to stream. People watched from the shore, following it with opera glasses and sea telescopes. Some thought it was a squid, others an octopus, others still just a glob of fatty flesh from some aquatic animal long torn apart and […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
I step out of a porter booth in the overheated Los Angeles station and reach up to peel off my winter coat. That’s when I realize something’s wrong with my hand — it feels numb and prickly, and the fingers aren’t quite responding the way they’re supposed to. Weird. I don’t recall circulatory problems being […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
My new occupant is larger than Carson was. I was made for her, within a certain tolerance for the inevitable changes in human specifications that come with age, changes in health, and abundance or scarcity… This episode of the Drabblecast is all about Mechs, aside from the beat poetry that it begins and ends with. […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Three boy zombies in matching red jackets bussed our table, bringing water, lighting candles, brushing away the crumbs between courses. Their eyes were dark, attentive, lifeless… This episode of The Drabblecast is all about zombies. In the drabble, a post-outbreak actor is almost too talented for his own good. In the feature, a job interview […] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
