PodCastle Escape Artists Foundation

* Author : Chip Houser

* Narrator : Leigh Wallace

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Previously published by Bourbon Penn

 





Content warning for bodily fluids

 





Rated R

On Snowflake-veined Wings

by Chip Houser

 

Amalia runs her finger around the inside of her Tupperware, wiping up the last of her leftover poutine. Her fall allergies kicked in a few days ago, so she doesn’t really taste the gravy. But she’d rather finger-clean her Tupperware at her table than go wash it because Jerry and three of his sales team flunkies are clustered by the sink watching a video on his gigantic phone. From their crude commentary and the video’s crashing waves, then the gagging, she can guess what they’re watching. Why they’re silent for once, too. It’s a clip of a woman in the Côte d’Azur, slim and tan in her pink maillot, running in slow motion into the waves. The man who’s filming keeps calling out Sirène! Amalia watched the video earlier that morning; it was all over her feeds. The video is like a Viagra commercial, until the woman vomits an impossibly long stream of brightly colored fish into the surf.

When the woman throws up, Jerry’s flunkies unleash a range of expletives. They’re all staring at Jerry, who looks quite pleased with himself.

Amalia laughs, but they don’t notice. No surprise, they’ve never noticed her.

“Dude, you knew,” one of the flunkies says. “Why would you do that to us?”

Jerry chuckles and restarts the video from the beginning. He’s not interested in the ninety seconds that follow the woman’s vomiting, the miracle of the fish churning through the crests, leaping in rainbow arcs, or the woman following them out into the surf. The video ends with the man filming calling out to the woman long after she’s disappeared. Amalia watched that part a dozen times.

“Boys, that right there is perfection,” Jerry says. “I’d fly to France for you, Sirène.”

His flunkies giggle like horned-up adolescents.

He’s calling her a mermaid you a*****e, Amalia thinks. She’s confused, alone, in pain — and all you can think about is fucking her?

The break room is quiet. Jerry and his team are looking at her, mouths open.

“Did I say that out loud?” she says, and then she sneezes unexpectedly. It’s a big one, and she doesn’t have time to cover her mouth or turn away. A surprising amount of mucus dislodges, spraying out across the table. Her head immediately feels clearer, which she hardly notices because her snot is chunky and full of maggots. Tiny, squirming maggots no bigger than grains of rice.

The sales team recoils as one, dumbstruck or horrified. Except for Jerry, who steps toward her, phone raised.

Bending close, Amalia sees they’re not maggots, they’re . . . fairies? Little jellybean-colored people with wings wrapped around their tiny bodies. Beautiful, delicate things struggling in the slush-like snot.

“She’s got some kind of enhanced allergies,” Jerry says. He’s taking a video, moving closer.

“Get away!” Amalia yells, shielding the fairies with her arm as best she can. She hooks her Tupperware under the edge of the table and sweeps them in, leaving glistening arcs across the tabletop. The fairies smell faintly of mint.

Jerry is almost on top of her. “Would you look at that! Like tiny Tinkerbells!”

Amalia pushes his phone away —  “Fuck off,

* Author : Nick Douglas

* Narrator : Wilson Fowlie

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Devin Martin

*

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PodCastle 843: The Mountain and the Vulture is a PodCastle original.





Rated PG-13

The Mountain and the Vulture

by Nick Douglas

 

“High in the North in a land called Svithjod there is a mountain. It is a hundred miles long and a hundred miles high and once every thousand years a little bird comes to this mountain to sharpen its beak. When the mountain has thus been worn away a single day of eternity will have passed.”

 

― Hendrik Willem Van Loon, The Story of Mankind

 

 

At the edge of the world stands a mountain, a mile high and a mile wide, black against the white sky, like one was carved out of the other. Wind whistles against the knife point of the stone. There is nothing for the wind to blow. Nothing grows here. There is no snow or rain. The mountain is alone.

And then in the distance, in the white sky, is a dot. The dot grows into a line. The line grows into a shape. It’s the shape of a vulture in flight. Wings out ramrod, feathers like rays of the sun. Below the wings, the body, in the same dappled gold. Below the body, the head, red and fuzzy and bobbing. The vulture is sailing toward the mountain, and now it is close, and now it is circling.

“May I land?” asks the vulture.

“Wow,” says the mountain.

“I’m sorry,” says the vulture. “Shall l go?”

“No! Wait!” says the mountain. “I’m sorry! Yes. Land.”

So the vulture tightens its circles, slows, and with an undignified flapping it lands on the mountain peak. Its claws grasp the rock, prickly but tolerable.

“Thank you,” it says. “I was very tired.”

“You were higher than me,” says the mountain.

“Yes. My apologies.”

“No, it’s fine, I’m sorry, I don’t say these things to . . . I’ve never seen something higher than me.”

“Oh I see,” says the vulture. “I hope that is all right.”

“It is,” says the mountain. “It is. It’s nice.”

“Well then, you’re welcome.” The vulture chuckles to let the mountain know it’s joking. The mountain chuckles to let the vulture know it knows.

“Where did you come from?” asks the mountain.

“A flat place,” says the vulture. “A green place, a wet place. Usually a hot place. I’m sick of it. This is nice, here.”

“Your place sounds interesting,” says the mountain, “but I know things sound more interesting when they’re new to you. I don’t mean to contradict you, is what I mean.”

“Of course,” says the vulture. “No, you’re correct. It is interesting. But at my age, sometimes you want things to stop being so interesting.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” says the mountain. “For me too.”

The vulture rests.

“And you look young to me,” adds the mountain.

“Thank you,” says the vulture. “I have not felt young. The molting is not so graceful. Eyes are dim. Beak’s dull.”

“You could sharpen it on me!” blurts the mountain. “Oh my god, I’m sorry, is that . . .”

“That is actually a very kind offer. And an honor, truly.”

So the vulture bends. And if a landing vulture is undignified, a bending vulture is embarrassing, and the mountain would look away if it could, from the jutting joints and the knobby bones and the twisting of the neck. The vulture scrapes its beak against the strong rock of the mountain. Tiny bits of keratin sand off the beak. Much tinier bits of rock,

* Author : Chris Kuriata

* Narrator : Summer Fletcher

* Host : Eric Valdes

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Previously published by Diabolical Plots





Rated R

The Aunties Return the Ocean

By Chris Kuriata

Auntie Roberta landed badly on the roof of her escarpment house, scraping her knees across the flagstone shingles and splitting her pantyhose. Her arms were too full of black water to keep her balance so she nearly slid off the edge.

She carried so much ocean she barely knew where to hide it all. Inside her stony home, she filled the kitchen drawers and cupboards with cold dark brine. Every pot and tankard as well.

She quickly ran out of places, yet her weary arms were still loaded with the stuff. Where would it all fit? Auntie Roberta got on her knees and stuffed the final bits of ocean into the mouse holes. She heard the panicked mice squeak before drowning.

What an exhausting evening she’d endured. At the appointed hour, all the Aunties of the world had banded together like a swarm of locusts, and set upon the heart of the ocean. Their grubby hands tore the water apart, breaking up the reflection of the moon as they scrambled to load every last drop into their arms.  All along the empty ocean floor, fish flopped and ships jammed into rock beds. The neighbours had called the Aunties’ bluff, refusing to give in to their demands. So, just as the Aunties threatened, they stole the ocean.

During the theft, Auntie Roberta kept close watch on the other Aunties, noticing none of her sisters carried away as much ocean as she did. Auntie Roberta always did more than her fair share and never received thanks. The other Aunties thought they were smarter than her, but really they were just lazier.

“Hey!” Auntie Robert shouted. “Get away from there!”

A burr covered cat with collapsed ears sat on the kitchen table, lapping away at a mug filled with ocean. Auntie Roberta flung a wooden spoon and sent the cat retreating through a gnawed hole in the parlour wall.

“Sneaky thief,” she huffed.



“It smells damp in here,” the neighbour woman Marilyn said. She didn’t outright accuse Auntie Roberta of helping to steal the ocean, but she certainly sounded suspicious.

Normally, Auntie Roberta threw rocks at nosey neighbours, but the neighbour woman Marilyn came bearing a freshly baked pie and, well, Auntie Roberta didn’t know any spells strong enough to compete with flawlessly executed baking.

“Roof leaks when it rains,” Auntie Roberta said, stuffing pie into her mouth with both hands. “Makes the house damp. Can’t do nothing about it.”

The neighbour woman Marilyn pointed to the ceramic mugs, each filled to the brim with a curious liquid the colour of midnight. “What’s in all these?”

“Coffee what’s gone off.”

The neighbour woman Marilyn put her nose to the rim and breathed in the scent of salt and seaweed, triggering memories of her uncle’s tugboat and the baskets of crabs she helped haul from the deep.

Auntie Roberta licked the last of the crumbs from the bottom of the pie pan and the neighbour woman took her cue to leave. A neighbour had nothing to fear in the house of an Auntie so long as she was eating, but once an Auntie’s belly was full, staying under their roof was like leaving your head in a lion’s mouth—sooner or later the jaw would get tired and CHOMP.

Auntie Roberta washed her sticky lips in a mug of the ocean,

* Author : E. F. Benson

* Narrator : Devin Martin

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Originally published by Hutchinson’s Magazine, October 1928

 





Content warning for references to grief





Rated PG

Pirates

by E.F. Benson

 

 

For many years this project of sometime buying back the house had simmered in Peter Graham’s mind, but whenever he actually went into the idea with practical intention, stubborn reasons had presented themselves to deter him. In the first place it was very far off from his work, down in the heart of Cornwall, and it would be impossible to think of going there just for weekends, and if he established himself there for longer periods what on Earth would he do with himself in that soft remote Lotus-land? He was a busy man who, when at work, liked the diversion of his club and of the theatres in the evening, but he allowed himself few holidays away from the City, and those were spent on salmon river or golf links with some small party of solid and like-minded friends. Looked at in these lights, the project bristled with objections.

Yet through all these years, forty of them now, which had ticked away so imperceptibly, the desire to be at home again at Lescop had always persisted, and from time to time it gave him shrewd little unexpected tugs, when his conscious mind was in no way concerned with it. This desire, he was well aware, was of a sentimental quality, and often he wondered at himself that he, who was so well-armoured in the general jostle of the world against that type of emotion, should have just this one joint in his harness. Not since he was sixteen had he set eyes on the place, but the memory of it was more vivid than that of any other scene of subsequent experience. He had married since then, he had lost his wife, and though for many months after that he had felt horribly lonely, the ache of that loneliness had ceased, and now, if he had ever asked himself the direct question, he would have confessed that bachelor existence was more suited to him than married life had ever been. It had not been a conspicuous success, and he never felt the least temptation to repeat the experiment.

But there was another loneliness which neither married life nor his keen interest in his business had ever extinguished, and this was directly connected with his desire for that house on the green slope of the hills above Truro. For only seven years had he lived there, the youngest but one of a family of five children, and now out of all that gay company he alone was left. One by one they had dropped off the stem of life, but as each in turn went into this silence, Peter had not missed them very much: his own life was too occupied to give him time really to miss anybody, and he was too vitally constituted to do otherwise than look forwards.

None of that brood of children except himself, and he childless, had married, and now when he was left without intimate tie of blood to any living being, a loneliness had gathered thickly round him. It was not in any sense a tragic or desperate loneliness: he had no wish to follow them on the unverified and unlikely chance of finding them all again. Also, he had no use for any disembodied existence: life meant to him flesh and blood and material interests and activities, and he could form no conception of life apart from such. But sometimes he ached with this dull gnawing ache of...

* Author : Rachael K. Jones

* Narrator : Heather Thomas

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Devin Martin

*

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Previously published by Nightmare Magazine

 





Content warnings for gun violence, school shootings, child endangerment, references to child murder





Rated PG-13

The Sound of Children Screaming

by Rachael K. Jones

 

 

THE GUN

 

You know the one about the Gun. The Gun goes where it wants to. On Thursday morning just after recess, the Gun will walk through the front doors of Thurman Elementary, and it won’t sign in at the front office or wear a visitor’s badge.

The Gun does most of its damage in the first five minutes. The Gun doesn’t care about lockdown drills, and it will not wait for the SWAT team to arrive. The Gun can chew through a door, a desk, a cinderblock wall, and kids don’t wear those bulletproof backpacks during reading time.

Everyone has a right to a gun. Nothing can take that away from you. What you lack is a right to the lives of your children.

The Gun likes a game of hide-and-seek. The Gun will rove the grounds until someone stops it. The Gun has been here many times before.

The Gun is not working alone.



THE SHOOTER

 

He is never anyone special. Just a man exercising his right to a gun.



THE TEACHER

 

Michelle Dalton has taught fourth grade for nine years, long enough to know how the job yawns wider each year, collecting all the loose threads that society needs done but no one wants to pay for. Michelle has six figures in student loans and makes less than $50,000 a year. She shares a rental house with two roommates and has a weekend job at Trek & Field selling athletic shoes to make ends meet. She does not get paid overtime, and the school district does not buy the art supplies. She is not entitled to bathroom breaks or a nonworking lunch, and she doesn’t get paid for summers.

Michelle wears the armor of an elementary school teacher: an A-line dress in an ocean print, a blue cardigan to match. She bears no weapon but a sharp-edged teacher’s tongue that cuts through noise like scissors.

Every teacher in Thurman Elementary will sense the Gun moments before it opens fire as a tense, drawn-out pause, an upset child drawing the breath to scream. They will not visibly panic, not with twenty-one pairs of eyes locked upon them for guidance. Michelle’s body will act before her mind comprehends the threat.

It is Michelle’s job to keep her students safe, just as it is her job to take the blame for whatever harm the Gun inflicts in the process.



THE PORTAL

 

You know about the Portal too, although not by that name. The Portal seeks the places where children hide. It stalked the air raid shelters in London during the Blitz. It lurked in underground cellars during the Cold War, crouched between the canned corn and rancid Crisco. It has fed itself in Italian orphanages and Australian residential schools, and it has only gotten hungrier.

The Portal has been exhibiting itself at gun shows recently, a gleaming bullet-proof vault in which to store kids when the shooter comes. The Portal has been installed in every classroom, funded by bake sales and cereal box tops, bought at the expense of pencils and math books and a music teacher.

The Portal is not wheelchair-accessible.

* Authors : C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez

* Narrators : C.S.E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Previously published by Clockwork Phoenix and as PodCastle episode 669





Content warnings for illness and death





Rated PG-13

The Book of May

By C. S. E. Cooney and Carlos Hernandez

From: Morgan W. Jamwant

To: Harry Najinsky

Date: January 22, 2015 12:58:59 p.m. est

Subject: Death Is the Tree

Eliazar,

Dude. I wanna be a tree when I die. Make them put me into one of those urn-y things. The biodegradable ones with the seed inside. Go look it up. I swear to God. Gawd. Gerd. Gods. All of em.

I wanted to be oak, ’cause of what you wrote a hundred billion years ago in our high school yearbook. “To Morgan, an Oak amidst the Spruce.” But I didn’t see oak on the website. Maybe I should go sugar maple instead. I’d be so fabulous in October.

Can you take this seriously? I mean, not too seriously but a little seriously? I’m kind of on a time crunch here, they tell me.

M. W. J.



From: Harry Najinsky

To: Morgan W. Jamwant

Date: January 22, 2015 6:07:21 p.m. est

Subject: Re: Death Is the Tree

Hey May,

You know you’re the only one who still calls me Eliazar? And it’s not like I don’t hang out with all our old D&D buddies. It’s just that all we play these days are Eurogames, and you don’t give yourself cool, vaguely medieval names in Eurogames. Mostly you do math. I guess all that resource management makes them feel adult or productive or something. To me it feels like a job. I miss D&D.

So I googled it. Eco-urn? It doesn’t sound like you. It sounds like earthy-crunchy ooey-gooey overpriced bourgeois b******t. I mean, it’s not like we have a choice. We’re all recycled eventually. Do you think Nature gives a shit about how we’re packaged when we die? She’ll eat us any way we come prepared.

But okay, you said take you seriously. So you want to be an oak? I can see that. I see your hair, and I can imagine it defying gravity and tendrilling up toward the sky. I’m imagining each lock crusting over, becoming strike-a-match rough, radiating like a bark-brown crown around your head. Then come the leaves, not slowly like boring normal trees, but in one verdant, fireworks-ical explosion. You’d spontaneously generate a heavy load of acorns, and the squirrels would be so pleased that they’d learn to speak, just so they could sing choir songs of gratitude.

How’s that? I was never as good at that shit as you. You were always the roleplayer. I was the rules lawyer. It’s why we made such a good team. Well, and you knew the Raise Dead spell, and could bring me back to life every time I miscalculated.

I wish I hadn’t said Raise Dead. It’s just too painful to contemplate a world where a spell like that could exist. That’s the real reason we don’t play D&D anymore. Fantasy is hopeful. Fantasy hurts.

You’re not a sugar maple. I forbid you from being a maple! Maple trees are all sweet and Canadian and self-sacrificing. “Yes,