Fantasy – The Drabblecast

The chair first appeared on a Thursday afternoon on the sidewalk in front of the Dollar Bank and Trust on Lancaster Street in Pulaski, Kansas. Nobody saw how it got there. At least, no reliable eyewitnesses have ever come forward, so we are unable to pinpoint the exact moment of its arrival. Customers began to […]

Captain Confederation was annoyed when he got off the elevator and it showed. It would have been so simple and logical for him to land on the roof of the Superhero Administration Centre, or in the ample grounds surrounding it, but these alternatives were no longer open to him. Last month Transport Canada had proposed […]

The ghost in my attic is Margaret, but she lets me call her Margie. She was seventy-six years old when she died, and now that she’s a ghost she sits in her rocking chair day and night, holding a tiny baby in her arms. The baby rarely moves and almost never cries. His name is […]

For the Drabblecast’s 28th trifecta anthology, we explore ‘changes of heart.’                   EARTH MUSIC By Miriah Hetherington A potted arrangement of anemones recoiled from Polbo’s wake of odorous irritation as he jetted through the passageway. His meeting with the Grand Curator of the Inter-species Museum of Music […]

An oral history, recorded in the annals of sentientkind, spoken by Sven Al’bedo di’Cantara, on the eve of the ninth flying. 1. The Tree And so it came to pass, in the years past reckoning, when I served as a scribe in the court of the king, that there stood the last and only tree. […]

Hunger has made you reckless. You track the sound of human voices through the woods until you find a man and a woman. They are shouting at each other. The woman slaps the man’s face. He presses his hand to his cheek for a moment, and then lunges at the woman, knocking her to the […]

The moon came up and the sun went down. The moonbeams went shattering down to the ground and the jackalope wives took off their skins and danced. They danced like young deer pawing the ground, they danced like devils let out of hell for the evening. They swung their hips and pranced and drank their […]

The magician’s table was covered by a sheet of plywood, four feet square, completely wrapped up in aluminum foil. Sugar magic was messy magic, and the foil made for easier cleanup. Scattered across the aluminum were misshapen chunks of candy, the seeds from which the carnival would grow. And grow it did.       […]

The Drabblecast April Fool’s Day episode! Recorded live: A Drabblecast story slam that took place March 27th 2014 in Baltimore Maryland at the EMP Art Collective.

“Get out of sight, Joe.” He hustled into the shop and locked himself in the bathroom. The first cruiser that pulled up had Frank Boone riding shotgun. Less than a minute later, the sidewalk was swarming with cops.           The Blue Celeb by Desmond Warzel   When me and Joe got […]

When me and Joe got home from Vietnam, we went into business together, cutting hair. Bought a little shop in the old neighborhood and been there ever since. Back then, wisecracking Harlem barbers weren’t a cliche yet — at least not south of 110th Street.           The Blue Celeb  by Desmond […]

Thomas takes his lunch outside the shelter, on one of the park benches that look out over the interstate and down all the way to the containment pond. He has wondered whether a passerby seeing him from the highway would know whether he worked at the shelter or was one of its clients. He has […]

This week the Drabblecast Presents “Happy Old Year” by Tim Pratt. Tim is a regular Drabblecast contributor, bringing us such classics as Postapocalypsemas, Rangifer Volans, and fan-favorite Morris and the Machine. He also runs a Patreon page where you can read and download a new, unpublished story from Tim every month for a little as […]

While sipping my tea in the morning, I find a small, only two inches long, naked female corpse on the bottom of the cup. Her white skin fades int the white porcelain, tiny gobs of tea leafs cover her round breasts. I immediately slap the cup down, and snick across to the phone to call […]

In the back of the shop I scrubbed three large cauldrons clean, stripping the seasoning from them because Master Aloz insisted on it once the trade caravans stopped coming at the end of summer. Tallow, he called me, on account of my paleness. I used a brush made of iron bristles instead of horse hair, […]

1. A poisonous snake could bite you, and you could die. 2. You could prick your finger on a previously undiscovered poisonous cactus. 3. The cactus isn’t poisonous, and neither is the snake, but the snake’s venom is a powerful anti-coagulant. You could bleed to death from the place you were bitten and/or pricked.   […]

Cat’s tail flicked impatiently back and forth across Elle’s face. She resisted the urge to brush it away. Mud tugged at her feet, and putrid water soaked through her shoes. She ducked beneath a low hanging branch dripping with old man’s beard. It trailed over her shoulders, and evidently Cat, who dug his claws into […]

Samuel sat on the balcony, enjoying the fading light of day. When the ventilator pushed air into his lungs, he savored the salt brine from the sea.  He pretended that he had control over breath, but it was much a fantasy as adjusting his wheelchair….         Locked In by Mary Robinette Kowal […]

Old Tom was a very tall man. He was so tall he didn’t even have a nickname for it. Ned Black, who was at least a head shorter, had been ‘Tower Block’ since the sixth grade, and Jack, the owner of the Hog’s Head Bar, had a sign up over the door saying ‘Mind Your […]

Through the dim forest came Liane the Wayfarer, passing along the shadowed glades with a prancing light-footed gait. He whistled, he caroled, he was plainly in high spirits. Around his finger he twirled a bit of wrought bronze—a circlet graved with angular crabbed characters, now stained black. By excellent chance he had found it, banded […]

Between 1347 and 1450 AD, bubonic plague overran Europe, killing some 75 million people. The plague, dubbed the Black Death because of the black pustules that erupted on the skin of the afflicted, was caused by a bacterium now known as Yersinia pestis. The Europeans of the day, lacking access to microscopes or knowledge of […]

We listen to the spidersong. The spiders are far away, just at the edge of our senses, whispering a haunting and beautiful melody into our minds. The grown-ups are oblivious, as always. They are having several conversations at once around the campfire, laughing and gossiping. It’s a nuisance because we can’t enjoy the spidersong nearly […]

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…

“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 […]

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…

“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?

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 […]

“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 […]

“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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

We bought our first yarn baby at a garage sale. The ends of its arms were frayed and its eye buttons dangled loose on bare threads. This theme of this episode of the Drabblecast is family unties: Nontraditional homes and family situations. In the drabble, the enterprising resident of a haunted house fools its ghosts […]

The first ‘Go to Hell!’ The Angels did say To certain poor bastards On Valentine’s Day; ‘Go to Hell! We do our job well! It ain’t who you are It’s what you can sell…’ On Valentine’s Day, The World demands Love With a milk-chocolate fist In a red tin-foil glove. Romance is featured in this […]

This episode of the Drabblecast presents “Bears Discover Fire,” by Terry Bisson. We examine and interpret humanity through anthropomorphism. When bears discover fire, stop hibernating, and begin populating highway medians in the southern US, people notice. Their changing behavior highlights how other families react to changes in their own lives with varying degrees of acceptance […]

In some parts of the world — Austria, Croatia, Hungary — they still remember. They understand. You can’t have something bright without having something dark to balance it. If you’ve got St. Nicholas, you also need the Krampus… This episode of the Drabblecast opens with Norm’s reflections on the holidays, Santa Claus, and the origins […]

I can’t fly faster than a speeding bullet. I can’t lift a car. I can’t climb slick surfaces with my bare hands or breath underwater or stop time. All I can do is change blue things to yellow. I didn’t bother to buy a cape or a spandex suit like the others. I just bought […]

Once, at the beginning, you asked why you were brought here. This is what I told you: your parents made a deal. I would rid them of their plague of rats, and they would pay me. I cleared the town of pests, easily done, and returned for my payment. They laughed at me and tried […]

James Kennedy had stared at his sock drawer for a good ten minutes that first morning, dumbfounded. He’d never seen it so neat, and he didn’t remember doing it. But there they were: threadbare, but tidy and folded… Another Drabblecast doubleheader special, featuring two stories from from author John P. Murphy. Help support Norm’s New […]

This, of course, is what comes of being overly friendly with strange mangoes. One day you’re a wide-eyed virgin, with nary a care in the world; the next, you find yourself most unexpectedly and all but inexplicably burdened in a manner that afflicts virgins only once every two thousand years or so, to the best […]

Achtromagk shuddered, lost in nightmare images: crimson lightning dotting a wasteland, twilight despair and feeble railings, isolation in a mewling throng. It thrashed and twisted but could not escape, could not stop the unwanted vistas in its mind. It was silent. And soft. And dark… Next up in Lovecraft month, a heart-warming tale of an […]

Another in the Drabblecast trifecta series. This time, we dip in to the Alphabet Quartet collection.

The sound of running water came from ahead. The trail emerged from the woods and he looked up at the side of a rocky hill. A narrow waterfall trickled down the side of the rock, splashing into a pool of water. His father claimed the water here was the most amazing color he’d ever seen […]

And so came Creature out of the wasteland and into the city, bouncing from hilltop to hilltop like a bulbous ballerina skipping across the knuckles of a great hand. He was big as the moon and black as the night, and he came crashing into the city like a silent meteor. The cityfolk watched his […]

One day when a surge of dying summer heat roiled through the waterways, spoiling my fishing, I punted home to find Mama running down the grassy swell towards my docking-place. Hope died in her face when she saw my punt empty and I knew then what had happened…

“I’ll tell you what’s going to happen tomorrow, Davie. In the orning the priest will come here to see your box. It’ll be still there because nobody dares to touch it…” This episode of Drabblecast deals with fear and rationality. The feature takes us to a world where fear of knowledge and how it can […]

They needed a virgin to make a bargain with the sea monster who hunted the waters off their coast, and they were not willing to sacrifice their daughters… With the theme this week being about freedom, this episode of Drabblecast sees Norm musing about the irony of song about freedom written by a man name […]

Tompkins sighed. “What happens is this: You pay me my fee. I give you an injection which knocks you out. Then, with the aid of certain gadgets which I have in the back of the store, I liberate your mind…” This episode of Drabblecast starts with Norm recommending and playing an excerpt from Frank Key’s […]

“They will come on bicycles and by balloon, they will arrive in mailboxes and packages of cake batter. They will come like fleas on the dogs and like giants over the moon. The dull shall be turned into nothing by the coming of the angels…” Norm presents this week’s Drabblecast in the form of a […]

A puppet’s words infect. They taint. They do this without ever sounding like a thing, without the listener realizing they have been spoken. A true ventriloquist, as those who are educated and informed may or may not choose to tell you, is an adept in the art of keeping those mouths shut… On this episode […]

You are to imagine, Twigling, the Red Bride to be a human, such as yourself, although she is in truth a creature of the Var...