Fantasy – The Drabblecast

Izam’s fingers moved on their own. They found his sunken chest. And counted his ribs. His father would have slapped his hand away. A stupid habit of a stupid boy. A stupid starving boy who counted his ribs when he was hungry even though it only made him hungrier. Izam knew it was stupid but […]

Today I am going to the island. I climb the slick wood stairs down to Whitmuth beach. The wind blows fierce through the town like usual and swirls back out to sea, smoky with our coal fires and smacking with hot oil from the fry shops up and down the boardwalk.         […]

The fish were restless. They spun the water mossy dark until the pond was the color of crushed bottles. Pey held onto her sister’s hand. They peered down at the water. This morning, their mother opened her eyes and said she was too cold to get out of bed, so their father said they would […]

The good news is, zombie unicorns almost never bite. The bad news is, even a tiny scratch from a zombie unicorn horn will turn you into a zombie. Mom discovered that by accident.             Why I Hate Zombie Unicorns by Laura Pearlman The good news is, zombie unicorns almost never […]

Susan found her boss’s feelings drawer by accident. She drank too much and took a wrong turn in Sundrun’s apartment at the office holiday party, while looking for the bathroom. It had been all the rage five years ago, getting your feelings surgically removed. After a sensectomies, some people had the feelings stuffed or encased […]

A collection of stories from the Cat With Blue Fur Writing Contest.                       Meow Meow Bang Bang by Oliver Buckram She was the kind of dame you never forget. Lips as moist and pink as smoked salmon. Legs as long and well maintained as the […]

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 […]

Just as we were all getting back into the mainland domestic groove, somebody started in with dragons and crop blights from across the North Sea. We all knew who it was. A turncoat Norwegian monk named Naddod had been big medicine on the dragon-and-blight circuit for the last decade or so, and was known to […]

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 […]