PodCastle Escape Artists Foundation

* Author : Peter M. Floyd

* Narrator : Graeme Dunlop

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Devin Martin

*

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PodCastle 849: The Third Wish is a PodCastle original.





Rated PG-13

The Third Wish

by Peter M. Floyd

 

I was in the middle of a pleasant little nap in the Seventh Sky of Severus when the summoning came.

Enfolded in a cloud bank, I was snuggling under the billows in a comfy-cozy fashion, all of the troubles of the sixteen quasi-pyramidal dimensions slipping away like forgotten dreams. This was my first real rest after four or five eternities spent putting out fires in the Red Chasm of Varsh, and I was looking forward to spending a nice long perpetuity indulging in some me time.

But no such luck. I had been there for only two or three eons when the all-too-familiar tingling sensation began in my phalanges and outer membranes and then spread in jagged waves along my dorsal limbs and then up through my carapace. There was no denying it; some fool on the mortal plane had successfully cast a spell to call me to them.

“Oh, by Crom’s back teeth,” I said to no one in particular. “Not now!”

But my words were in vain, and all too soon I felt the glorious softness of the cloud melt around me. For fifteen horrible seconds I slipped through the oily blackness between dimensions, fighting back the urge to vomit. (Dimensional travel always gives me motion sickness.) Then, with an audible pop, I landed in the mortal plane.

My surroundings there were not prepossessing, but when are they ever? There are, I am told, many wonderful vistas in the human world, but mostly what I see are the ugly underground dens of malignant, small-minded necromancers (and, to be honest, there isn’t any other kind of necromancer).

This time proved to be no exception. I found myself in a room with a smallish floorspace but a high ceiling, giving the impression of being in a mine shaft. Before me was a firepit filled with burning logs that gave off far more smoke than fire — if I’d had lungs I would surely have started coughing them up. Wooden shelves were laid out on the walls, bearing books that, if judged by their covers, did not contain addictive beach reading. There was also an abundance of human skulls about, many with burning candles stuck on the tops of their craniums. They seemed to be serving no other function than as necromanical paperweights. Call me a stickler, but to my mind you have no business littering your workplace with skulls unless you’re either an orthopedic surgeon or a phrenologist.

The sole non-skeletal inhabitant of this dreary chamber was a little man wearing a dark blue robe covered in symbols which, if I’d had the interest to study them, would no doubt have signified allegiance to various unpleasant demons and deities. He sported a black pointed hat and a black pointed beard, neither of which became him in the least.

“Praise Apollyon!” he cried out. “Thou hast sent thy servant to answer my prayers. All praise to thy Satanic majesty!”

Hoo boy, I thought, This is going to be just awful.

I should point out that I had not manifested as my true self, firstly because it would have melted this poor fellow’s brain, and secondly because it wasn’t really possible to do so in a mere three-dimensional sphere of existence in any case. Instead, I had dressed myself in the usual sort of manifestation that such clients expect, with batlike wings, a pointed tail, scaly legs,

* Author : Ken Liu

* Narrators : Curtis C. Chen, Dagny Paul, Eleanor R. Wood, Stefani Cox, Wilson Fowlie, Matt Dovey, Jen R. Albert, Peter Adrian Behravesh, Summer Fletcher and Craig Jackson

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Previously published by Fireside, and as PodCastle 537

 





Content warnings for violence, murder, and religious and regime persecution





Rated-PG-13

To the Moon

by Ken Liu

Long ago, when you were just a baby, we went to the Moon.

Summer nights in Beijing were brutal: hot, muggy, the air thick as the puddles left on the road after a shower, covered in iridescent patches of gasoline. We felt like dumplings being steamed, slowly, inside the room we were renting.

There was nowhere to go. Outside, the sidewalk was filled with the droning of air conditioners from neighbors who had them and the cackling of TVs at full volume from neighbors who hadn’t. Add your crying to the mix, and it was enough to drive anyone crazy. I would carry you out on my shoulders, back in, and then out again, begging you to sleep.

One night, I returned home after another day of fruitless petitioning at the Palace of Mandarins, having gotten no closer to avenging your mother. You sensed my anger and despair and cried heartily in sympathy. The world seemed so oppressive and dark that I wanted to join you, join the sound and the fury that filled the mad world.

Then the Moon passed low overhead, ripe, golden, round, like a shaobing fresh out of the oven. And I tied you to my back with one of the scarves your mother left behind and began to climb the pagoda tree by the side of the road that somehow survived all the construction and reconstruction, all the road-widening and demolition, all the pollution and apathy.

The climb was long and arduous. The Moon seemed close from the ground but it kept on receding as we progressed up the tree. We had to climb through clouds, through flocks of wild starlings and sparrows, through wind and rain that threatened to tear us from the tree, until finally, we were at the very tip of the tallest swaying branch, and then, just as the Moon passed right overhead, I reached up and hoisted us onto it.

It was wonderful on the Moon: cool air, clean skies, as quiet as a library. You stopped crying as soon as we landed, looking around with your eyes wide open like when we first got to Beijing and you saw all those cars for the first time.

The Moon people were beautiful and polite. The women wore dresses that flowed and shimmered like water, and the men walked in shoes that gleamed and shone like the paint on new cars. Everyone spoke like they were poets from the Tang Dynasty. In teahouses made of green jade and white nephrite, they drank tea brewed from dew and whispered and laughed at each other’s wit. They ate cakes flavored with sweet osmanthus, prepared by the goddess Chang’e herself.

* Author : J.H. Siegal

* Narrator : Rebecca Fraimow

* Host : Eleanor R. Wood

* Audio Producer : Devin Martin

*

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PodCastle 847: The Golem Lover is a PodCastle original.





Content warnings for the death of a spouse and for sexually explicit themes and content throughout





Rated R

The Golem Lover

by J.H. Siegal

 

 

I have learned of a lace that runs through my little village. Geilevska, nestled within the bosom of nearby hills, rests upon these strands, sewn around the fertile patchwork of letters learned in the men’s yeshiva, through the words traded by merchants, beneath the whispers of the crops waving in the fields. I speak, of course, of the hidden discourse of the women of Geilevska.

Every village in the pale has such a lace, to be sure. We are not the only people for whom a matron’s eyebrow may hold the fate of many, whether it raises or lowers, and the strength of the twinkle yet in the eye of an aged woman holds much solace for a young widow such as myself.

Before I came to know of such secrets, it was the eyes of Avram, my dear late husband, that lingered with me. How they would speak to me across the field, or at the well, or outside the shul, dark and sweet, resting above a half-smile that creased his beard. Always lingering with my own gaze, turning away just perfectly a moment too late. I had known he was asking about me — who didn’t know? — and I began to ask about him as well. The night of our wedding, as we say, no bread was braided: all the work was banging around the bed. He was a sweet man, a smart man, smooth and strong between our bedsheets, gentle during the day. We loved with that pastoral romance the poets describe, until the Cossacks came and slew him in the fields.

Then the Golem, the divine monster of our town, was roused to thrash the invaders and drive them away.



The trouble for me started not with this Golem, exactly, but with Zalman Scholem, a learned man from a good family, not unhandsome, a bit quiet and awkward of speech, and waiting — so obviously waiting — until respectable months of mourning had passed, to begin to seek my hand. Zalman had a reputation as a nice man, a gentleman, but as a bit of a schlemiel in social matters. With him, there came no lingering gaze, no smooth words, just a shuffling and fumbling about of his tongue in his mouth when he had occasion to speak to me, and two eyes that found anywhere to look but my face.

When one is young and unbidden yet by a certain longing, the smallest bed can be a refuge, and no matter how many siblings curl up, your little space is a sanctuary. But, when one has grown and come to know a different kind of warmth in one’s bed, its lack spreads beyond where you might lay your hand and feel only a cold sheet.

So, welcoming some attention, I did nothing to dissuade Zalman Scholem.

Carrying water one day, I spied Zalman (there was no way he would have spied me first) lingering outside the yeshiva, his classmates yet to arrive.

“Good morning, Mr. Scholem,” I said.

“Zalman, please, you could call me Zalman.”

“Good morning, Zalman Scholem.”

I put down my water bucket and stretched my back, a playful motion, if I’m doing it right, that Avram used to consider irresistible.

Zalman was looking at the ground.

“A pleasant morning, Hannah,” he said.

“It’s not,” I said, but without reproach.

* Authors : Anna Mikhalevskaya and Elvira Rizaeva

* Narrator : Yaroslav Barsukov

* Host : Matt Dovey

* Audio Producer : Devin Martin

*

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PodCastle 846: Against All Odds is a PodCastle original.





Content warnings for war, death, injury, and child endangerment





Rated PG-13

Against All Odds

By Anna Mikhalevskaya

Translated by Elvira Rizaeva

 

Time is slipping away drop by drop, along with sweat on deceptively calm faces. He runs through the shafts of stairs, through abandoned tunnels. Seeps through the ceilings into echoing hangars, stumbles upon crooked figures, shakes oilcloth curtains, rolls empty mugs, beats metal on metal, guts backpacks stuffed to the top with yesterday — a small find! — and rushes on. A rat’s tail flickers around the corner; Time snaps his teeth in vain, losing his prey.

His paw catches a stuffed animal, a knitted bunny with one button eye. Time greedily opens the funnel of his mouth where ages have perished more than once, and immediately snaps it shut. He cannot swallow the toy. The bunny has an owner.

A lantern’s firefly dances in the darkness. Time, estranged of light, squints. Now darkness is everywhere even during the day, even in the cities still intact. It’s even darker here under the factory shop floors and tunnels, under ground trembling from explosions. Charcoal blast furnaces and chimneys are ironed out by bombs. Bombs crush gauge tracks and trolleys, smash the memory of the past. They even out the light that contains everything with the darkness that contains nothing. That’s why Time is here. This is his domain.

“Here you are, Vanya.” The flickering light gets closer. The girl with a disheveled dark braid picks up the toy.

She’s about seven years old, decides Time, checking her out with a trained eye and retreating. He has a troubled relationship with children. They keep getting in his way, interfering with his work. Time wistfully recalls Mount Olympus; back then he could simply swallow children. Not without consequences, true, but still. Now in the age of tolerance you have to wait until they grow and wise up. Or rather get dumb. Sometimes he gets his share from his Sister. War indulges herself and gets way more than him.

The girl peers into the darkness as if she sees him. It is impossible, though.

How did she end up here, Time wonders. Women and children hide upstairs.

“Let’s go, Vanya,” she says, as if to the stuffed bunny, but she certainly looks Time right in the eyes.

How long can you sit here stranded, reasons Time, sneaking behind the child. The girl confidently takes a turn at the fork; she knows her way. The dim reflection of the lantern rushes along the walls.

“Don’t you run away,” she whispers in the knitted bunny’s ear and pulls the door.

It smells like prey. Time rubs his paws.



The entire gigantic space of the production facility built for machines is permeated with human despair.

There are soldiers behind polyethylene screens; some cradle the stumps of their arms, some smoke, leaning on a crutch, some lie on the rags, turning their backs to the wall. There are others whose bodies remain intact but their eyes cannot focus on anything. They look through the oilcloth, through their comrades and the darkness of the bunker, through its walls and through the ruins of the city,

* Author : Rati Mehrotra

* Narrator : Shweta Adhyam

* Host : Kaitlyn Zivanovich

* Audio Producer : Eric Valdes

*

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Previously published by The Deadlands

 





Content warnings for death and injury





Rated PG-13

Amma’s Kitchen

by Rati Mehrotra

 

I can always tell what dish my customers will order. Knowing what the dead crave is my gift. Or my curse. It’s hard to know which.

This girl, for instance. Brown, like me, but pale, as if the color’s been leeched out of her skin. Dark, staring eyes, weeds tangled in her drowned hair, and an ugly purple frog squatting on her shoulder. She doesn’t remember her name or the man who killed her, but she remembers the taste of her mother’s fish pakoras.

She drifts in, dripping water over my nice linoleum floor. I suppress a sigh. Cleaning’s the worst part of my job. At least it’s not blood and guts today.

“Sorry,” she says, glancing down.

“Don’t worry about it.” I wave her to a barstool. I have tables and chairs for groups, even a couple of red vinyl booths, but my customers are usually a solitary lot. Sometimes a family will come in, all four or five of whom have died in the same accident. I’ll usher them to a booth, doing my best to ignore their ghastly wounds, and give them what they need.

In a manner of speaking. What they need is for whatever tragedy struck to not have happened at all, but that’s not in my hands. All that’s in my hands is my frying pan, my pressure cooker, my stockpot, and my notebook. I do what I can with these implements. I like to think I fulfill a useful role in people’s afterlives, helping them move along.

A few become regulars, refusing to move along. This is not my fault. I can’t help it if I’m such a good cook.

The drowned girl perches on my stool and regards my diner with tepid interest.

“What’ll it be?” I ask, even though I know. This is a ritual; every step is important.

She points to the menu I’ve stuck to the wall. Anything you want, it says. Within reason, it adds. “Can you really make anything?”

“If you truly want it, I can make it,” I answer.

She sighs, spreading her hands on the counter as if to anchor herself. Her nails are bitten-down white, her fingers wrinkled prunes. “I want fish pakoras, the way my mother used to make them.”

“Be right with you,” I say, turning around.

What about me, croaks the frog on her shoulder.

I throw it a dirty look. Pets sometimes sneak in with their owners, but I’ve never had a frog before. You don’t belong here.

She needs me. Its voice drips with fake sincerity. I’m her emotional support whatchamacallit. Amphibian.

I roll my eyes. Fine. What do you want?

Caviar, it says smugly.

I retreat to the kitchen. Rule number one, said the Shadow Man. You must serve whoever enters the diner. He didn’t say anything about species, but honestly, when I accepted this job, I assumed I would be dealing only with humans.

Don’t get me wrong. I welcome the occasional dog, cat, parrot, or budgie. I have even served decommissioned robots without batting an eye. Robots are persons too, after all — metal persons who like to knock back a tankard of oil while reminiscing about the good old factory days.

But I draw the line at frogs.

I wish I could draw the line at frogs. I open the fridge and glare at the jar of expensive caviar that has just appeared on one of the s...

* 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 f*****g 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,