PodCastle

* Author : Vylar Kaftan * Narrator : Elie Hirschman * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Shimmer and as PodCastle 128 Rated PG Something Wicked This Way Plumbs by Vylar Kaftan Oh, the watercooler jug? Yeah, I get some questions about that. Not a lot of visitors here in my office, but most people notice it right away. It reminds me how important plumbing skills are. Never know when they’ll save Halloween. Or your life. It happened last year. I’d come into the office early, because I was on deadline—and a month behind on bills. To make things worse, my girlfriend had the flu, and I’d promised to be there by 5 to take her boys trick-or-treating. So here I was in the men’s restroom, at 7:30 on Halloween morning. I shook out a few drops, zipped my pants, and went to the sink. It’s one of those two-faucet deals with handles on each side and a wide central spigot. I turned the cold water tap. Candy streamed out of the faucet like the entrails of a slaughtered piñata. The sink filled with Skittles, candy corn, and jellybeans. They rattled against each other as they spilled over the basin’s edge. Startled, I turned the faucet off. I hoped someone was playing a Halloween prank, because the alternative was disturbing. Or maybe I wasn’t awake yet. I glanced at the mirror. In dreams you’ve always got weird things about your face, like snakes crawling from your eyeballs. But I looked normal. A bit scruffy, and my sleepy eyes were bloodshot. Neither of these were a problem for a freelance writer—in some circles, they might count as street cred. I looked at the sink. Still candy. I went to my office for a paper bag. My office is a closet in a small San Francisco office complex. I rent it as a workplace away from my noisy roommate. I share the complex with a dental office, a massage therapist named Dana, and an unnaturally large ficus tree. Dana says it’s a spirit tree and it brings harmony to her work. She re-pots it every year, which encourages its monstrous tendencies. I found a bag and emptied the recycled newspapers. I checked Dana’s door, but she wasn’t in yet. I took my bag to the restroom. As I scooped up candy, I noticed it was slimy and smelled like algae. I turned a jellybean over in my hands, looking at the green streaks. I supposed whoever set up this prank hadn’t cleaned the pipes first—how had they done this, anyway? I certainly wasn’t planning to eat any of it. Basic Halloween safety: don’t eat razorblades or unwrapped candy. Especially from a faucet. The thought reminded me: there were two handles. I turned the hot water tap. Nothing. I lugged the candy back to my office, uncertain what to do with it. Maybe I could take it to the preschool next door—but after I made my deadline. To my surprise, Dana was fiddling with her office key. She was having trouble keeping it level—the dozen-odd keychains dragged it down. “Morning, Dana,” I said. “Hey, you’ve got to come see this.” “Gary! Hiya!” she called out, finally unlocking her door and dropping her keys in the process. “You’re here awful early. Happy sowwin.” “What?” “Sowwin. Spelled Sam-hain,” she said, as if the syllables were actually the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth letters of the alphabet. “Day of the Dead. Wiccan New Year.” “Oh! Well, happy New Year, ” I said. “I didn’t know you got here this early.”

* Author : Oliver Onions * Narrator : Matt Dovey * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums Originally published in The London Magazine, August 1928. Content warnings for the off-screen deaths of a spouse and sons Rated PG John Gladwin Says . . . by Oliver Onions   If we are to believe John Gladwin, the oncoming car made no attempt to avoid him, but held straight on. It held on at top speed, he says, for the first he saw of it was the sudden blinding gold of the afternoon sun on its screen, almost on top of him. He was not woolgathering or thinking of anything else at the time, and he had been for years a teetotaller. As for there not being any other car there at all, he naturally scouts the idea, for if there had been no other car why should he have made that violent and instinctive swerve? He did swerve; something hurtled past him; into the hedge and through it he and his car plunged; and where a moment before the white secondary road had run straight as a ruler for miles, he found himself on soft green, still at the wheel, his screen unbroken, his engine still running. He says that his first thought was this — people ought not to drive like that. All was quiet on the road behind him, but the fellow could hardly be out of sight yet. John Gladwin came to life. He climbed as quickly as he was able out of the car and pushed through the hole he had made in the hedge. Properly speaking he had not come through the hedge at all. He had broken through a thin part of it, a gap, thinly tangled over, and his car had come to rest on an old grass-grown track beyond. He looked first down the long white road. There was no sign of any other car, and no other roads ran into it. Then he looked at his own wheel marks in the dust, and they rather scared him. Heavens! What a mercy he had been crawling along! It would be just as well to report a lunatic who drove like that. But what was there to report, except that golden flash, gone in a moment, the empty road, and his own tracks in the dust? He scrambled back through the broken hedge and climbed into the car again. At any rate he was alive. Something had happened to the car none the less. The lever would not go into reverse. Again and again he tried; it went with ease into the other speeds, but not into the one that would take him out backwards again into the road he had left. He got out and set his shoulder to the car, but that was a younger man’s job, and the car remained immovable. Then he looked ahead, and thought he saw the best thing to do. Old Harkness Bottom he knew the region to be called, and from the pocket of the car he fetched out the map. It was an old map, mounted on linen, in tatters with much use, but it told him what he wanted to know. Harkness itself — New Harkness the older people still called it — lay away over the hill and out of sight, and New Harkness was almost a bustling sort of place. A tarred main road ran through it, with traffic at all hours, and it had red and yellow petrol pumps, and a church already old as new churches go, with its shrine and flowers at the lych-gate and its tablet with the names of seven Harkness lads inside. But nobody ever went near Old Harkness. Something had happened about the price of corn, and its very stones had been carted away to make the new village. But there was probably a way through and out again beyond, and John Gladwin,

* Author : Joshua Lim * Narrator : Marcus Chen * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums PodCastle 858: Roti Time Travel is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for grief, addiction, and the deaths of a spouse and child Rated PG-13 Roti Time Travel by Joshua Lim   You put a strip of roti in your mouth and chew — — and now your living room is wreathed in shadows by the angry grey skies outside the windows. Your son crawls across the floor, chasing after the ball which rolls under the sofa where you sit. He looks up at you with large pearly eyes, saliva dripping from his lips. “Appa.” From the kitchen you hear the clatter of utensils. Your wife is spooning baby food into a container. You attempt to move, but your body is rooted to the sofa. All you can do is stare at your son’s pure, innocent face, wishing you could remain like this forever. And you feel your hands reaching for your car keys. No, you want to scream, stay. . . but you pick up the baby and call to your wife. “Ready to go? We’re late!” You stop chewing — — your living room floods with light — — you work your jaws on the roti, crushing the strip of oily flatbread between your teeth. Forcing the world to dim again. Burying yourself in the past. You were first introduced to that mamak stall in Petaling Jaya when you were nineteen. The waiter came over as soon as you and your friends sat down. “Roti Time Travel, tapao dua,” said Arman to the waiter. You turned to him. “Roti Time Travel? What’s that?” “You never heard of it before?” said Sandesh. “No,” you replied. “Is it just roti canai with some crazy ingredient added on top?” Arman said, “Do you want to try?” “Okay.” “Sorry, boss, Roti Time Travel lagi satu makan sini,” said Arman. The waiter nodded and moved away. You were familiar with the odd names of food sold in mamak stalls. Milo Dinosaur was a Milo drink piled high with enough undissolved Milo powder to give you diabetes. Roti I Love You was just a heart-shaped roti telur with the words “I Love You” written on it with strawberry jam and mayonnaise. Nasi Kandar Basikal had apparently nothing to do with actual bicycles. “Wait for it to come, you will see,” said Sandesh, grinning. It arrived, and it looked just like a regular roti canai. You stared at it, trying to identify the specialty. Even the dhal and the curry seemed normal. “This is just roti canai!” “You haven’t tasted it yet,” said Sandesh. He and Arman were waiting. “Go on.” You tore off a fragment with your fingers. “Should I dip it?” “Doesn’t matter.” You dipped it in dhal, then put it in your mouth. You bit down — — and you are in a classroom, writing furiously. You glance up. The clock shows ten minutes left. The whiteboard bears the words SEJARAH KERTAS 2. For the first time you notice that you are wearing your high school uniform. The stress you felt during the exam comes flooding back into your mind, and the words begin to swim before your eyes. You feel the nausea rising and you retch, spit out something — — and you were back in the mamak stall, your friends staring at you across the table. “Bro, you okay?” said Arman. He pushed your Teh O Ais Limau towards you. “Did you choke? Have a drink.” “Nah, he just got a shock,” said Sandesh, still grinning. You gawped at them.

* Author : Samir Sirk Morató * Narrator : Amanda Ching * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums PodCastle 857: Ecdysis is a PodCastle original. Content warning for ableism (including ableist language) and scenes of a sexual nature Rated R Ecdysis by Samir Sirk Morató   My husband never got over being a lindworm. Understandably. For over two decades, he was a serpent wider than an oak barrel and longer than a warship; for under two years, he’s been human. Had someone changed me from a shark-swallowing, black-and-blood-banded titan to a naked, knobbly beast with limbs, I would’ve killed them and myself, even if we were wed. Yet wed we were. Our betrothal was as crushing as my husband’s past coils: because he was a princess-eating monster, he needed to be murdered; because he was a princely man, he needed to be married. “My eldest needs a bride or a coffin,” the queen told my father. “He’s forbidding his younger brother from marrying before he does, and no more princesses will come. We’re out of options. Surrender your daughter.” Sedition meant death for us both. So I arrived at the castle a condemned shepherd and left for my honeymoon a terrible bride-knight, blessed both with a wedding gown and a blade. Even then, I knew my blade was useless. Steel was nothing to a serpent’s scales. The younger prince’s broken sword had proved that. I entered my marital sea cave armed with nothing but vision. Don’t ask me how I knew to wear ten shifts, or how to make my husband skin himself. Don’t ask about the way I whipped his muscle raw with lye-dipped whips, or bathed his agonized, slimy mass in milk, or how I fell asleep wrapped in his wet, warm coils, half conscious as they contorted and tore into a human form. Although that night ruined me, I live with the knowledge I enjoyed it. So does my husband. Despite the lack of choices, my once-worm chose peace. He no longer flounders while walking, or counts his vertebrae in bewilderment, or beds me in the tub. The lye I scalded him with now cleans our clothes, my ten shifts included; the whip lives in our bedroom. We’ve entered another era. Still, after dinner, I catch him hunched in the kitchen, wolfing raw herring scraps. He starts. I glimpse an old instinct in his delayed blink. My husband lacks the translucent eyelids he used to have. “That will make you sick,” I tell him. I wipe a scale from his cheek. He cradles my salt-stung hands in his. Flies walk across nearby potato peels and unwashed dishes from last night’s gathering. Outside, snow crusts the mountains’ gutters in sea snake stripes. “I know,” he says. “I can’t help it.” His tongue flicks out. Our fingers twine. My appetite quickens. Sweat creeps beneath my clothes. Every day, I better understand how my husband swallowed girls whole. How the queen ate two enchanted tulips to fill her womb without heeding the warning to take just one. Emptiness breeds hunger. I could devour three princesses yet starve for satisfaction; I’d eat a cursed bouquet without blinking. I kiss a shred of meat from my husband’s mouth. It’s slick and cold. I don’t care for it. I just want to understand those flashes of wildness stripped from him yet never permitted to me. “That will make you sick.” My husband’s nose scrunches. “Why eat it? You don’t crave raw fish.” “I could. Maybe I’m pregnant. You don’t know.

* Author : Matt Dovey * Narrator : Matthew James Hamblin * Host : Eleanor R. Wood * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums PodCastle 856: TALES FROM THE VAULTS – Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky is a PodCastle original. Rated PG-13 Clouds in a Clear Blue Sky By Matt Dovey It were a clear blue day, what with the factory shut for the funeral and wake. Colin was slumped in the pub garden’s swing, his straw hair sticking out every which way despite his mam’s best efforts with the Brylcreem. Me and Trev were stood by quiet, our hands lost in the oversized pockets of our borrowed suits. Trev’s cheeks had gone red and purple in the heat, his top button still done up and straining against his neck. Mark came back out the pub with a plate of sausage rolls that he offered round. “What’s it like in there?” I asked. “Grim,” said Mark. “Your Uncle Gareth’s lost his jacket, and then he says it doesn’t matter compared to losing Colin’s dad, and then he starts crying again. Seen it happen three times while I were at the buffet.” “Yeah, well,” I said. “Best mates, weren’t they?” Colin grunted, swung himself a bit harder, but said nowt. “Here, Colin,” said Mark, holding the plate out. “Fancy a sausage roll?” Colin shrugged, carried on almost as if he hadn’t heard. Then he got up and stomped to the picnic bench and drank his Coke back in one go, then slammed the glass down so hard we all flinched thinking it’d smash. “This is shit,” Colin said. “Really shit. Shit shit shit.” Well there weren’t much to say to that, really, cos he was right, so we stood and picked at the sausage rolls awkwardly. Colin stared us all in the face. “You know they wouldn’t even let me see inside the casket? My own dad! I should have a right!” “Colin, mate,” said Trev, patting him on the shoulder as reassuring as he could. “If they din’t let you it’s for a reason. We all know what it’s like in that factory. All sorts of dangerous stuff.” “I don’t know though, do I? Not my thirteenth birthday till next month, so I ain’t been shown round yet.” Colin suddenly sniffed and wiped away an angry tear. “He’d already got me my workboots. Found ’em in the bottom of his wardrobe this morning when I was looking for the shoe polish.” “Oh mate,” I said. “I . . .” what? How to say anything that wouldn’t sound like summat we’d copied off our mams? ‘He’d’ve been proud for everyone in the factory to see you with him, and proud to show you round and have you see where he did his work, and everyone always said he was the best at cloudmaking, a real artist, you could always tell when your dad was on shift cos the sunsets looked like bloody magic’? Colin knew all that, and he’d know we meant it, but saying it out loud would sound stupid. There weren’t no good way to say Colin, mate, this is shit, you don’t deserve it, but we bloody love you and we’ll get through it, alright? Cos no matter how you said it his head was too full of angry buzzing to hear it. His head and his mouth both, and it kept spilling out, even though he din’t mean it to. “You what?” he shouted. “What, Jamie? What can you do? What can anyone bloody do?” And I dunno, that’s a question without an answer at times like this I reckon, but before I knew it my mouth had opened and I’d answered anyway. “We could show you round, Colin. Us three. Show you where he worked, and how to work the clouds.”

* Author : Seoung Kim * Narrator : Yoon Ha Lee * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums PodCastle 855: Shim Hyeon and the Ocean God is a PodCastle original. Rated PG Shim Hyeon and the Ocean God by Seoung Min Kim   “They usually send maidens.” The Ocean God’s voice is a deep and resonant drawl. The whole palace smells of brine and sealife, like the fish market back in Inju. There are lights, but not from candles or lanterns — it’s a faint luminescence radiating from the walls. Shim Hyeon has his forehead pressed to the cool stone of the palace floor, but even if it was raised, he could not see the throne clearly from this distance. “What is your name?” “I am known in the village as Shim Bongsa.” Shim the Blind — and only for the past ten years since his eyes clouded, but the village must not remember him as he was before. He doesn’t let his true name leave his tongue. “I’m sorry,” he says, speaking to the stone tiles. Each one is carved with patterns and inlaid with pearl — he can tell by moving his fingers over them. “The merchants at Indangsu meant for my daughter to be your bride, but I stole her place in the coffin and they threw me into the sea instead.” “I have a whole city of unwanted daughters down here. If I married all of them I wouldn’t remember their names.” The Ocean God sounds bored. “So what am I supposed to do with you?” Shim Hyeon lifts his head. “I’ve lived a long life  ” he begins, and the Ocean God snorts “ — and I will be satisfied as long as my daughter can live on in peace.” “Then we’ll put you in the kitchens. See what they make of you.” He raps his knuckles on the throne. “Seven, show this man to the servants’ quarters.” A hand takes his arm. “Thank you, young man,” says Shim Hyeon. The grip slackens in surprise at being addressed. Shim Hyeon does his best to examine his guide. Short and slender, but the boy holds himself with the poise of an adult — perhaps around his daughter’s age. The fabric of his jeogori is of fine silk. “Watch your step, ahjussi.” Shim Hyeon had to leave his cane behind when he climbed into the coffin meant for his daughter, but he can feel the ground beneath his worn sandals go from stone to packed sand as they pass through a courtyard. The sea swirls above the palace in a distant roar, kept back by the Ocean God’s magic. “And why are you here, young man?” “Call me Seven.” “That’s not your name, is it?” “Yours isn’t Shim Bongsa, is it?” Seven practically spits. Shim Hyeon has no answer for that. “I came to retrieve medicine for my parents,” says Seven. “Well, well. A good son,” says Shim Hyeon. Seven makes a scornful noise and tugs a little harder at his sleeve. “Wanted or unwanted, faithful or unfaithful, all of us ended up down here eventually,” says Seven. He leaves Shim Hyeon in the room and shuts the door. The sleeping mat Shim Hyeon is given is more comfortable than the thin straw he slept on in the village. The combined body heat of the servants keeps the room warm, and it brings him back to his youth, when he slept with his whole family in one room. But he is alone here. He misses the nightly ritual of his daughter combing his hair out, of combing hers in return. He falls asleep and dreams of floating in a coffin on top of the waves. Morning in the palace begins early for the servants.

* Authors : Diana Dima and Sara Omer * Narrators : Tanja Milojevic  and Kitty Sarkozy * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums PodCastle 854: DOUBLE FEATURE: City Grown From Seed and Harvest House is a PodCastle original. City Grown from Seed-Content warnings for off-screen death of a parent and mild references to domestic violence City Grown from Seed-Rated PG-13 Harvest Home-Rated G City Grown From Seed by Diana Dima   Long before you came along, I was myself just a seed in Raffa’s pocket, something she fumbled with as she stepped onto the plane, her other hand clutching her mother’s. Small as I was, I sensed her fear. I tried to hum reassuringly. Above the ocean, I helped her fall asleep. She planted me soon after landing, behind the park by a graffitied wall hidden from view by maple trees. She seemed half ashamed, yet she came every day to water me and sit beside me. We can’t grow without stories, and she made sure I never went hungry. At first, they were stories from home, full of her aunt’s golden yeast pastries and hand-knitted dolls. Later they were made-up tales of dragons that came to whisk her away from the cramped walk-up apartment, or fairies that did her mother’s work while she slept, or spells that made you speak every language in the world. I loved all the stories, even those that made Raffa sad. Little by little, I bloomed: a single clock tower (there is a tower at the heart of every living city), no bigger than a blade of grass, with little dirt roads radiating from it; then tiny red-roofed houses and a neoclassical theatre and kiosks on every corner and markets and packs of stray dogs. At first, Raffa had to bring a magnifying glass to look at me; then I grew large enough that she could count my windows with the naked eye. She worried about rain and raccoons. She brought a big glass bowl from home and set it over me like a dome. “I’m going to be in so much trouble,” she said, and I found it funny how she switched to English mid-sentence, as though she couldn’t remember the words. When school started, she stopped coming so often. She only dropped by on Sunday mornings and crouched beside me, checking for new buildings. I didn’t fit under the bowl anymore; the clock tower came up to her chest. Her stories changed. She told me about the boys she didn’t like and about Mae, who she maybe liked too much and who lived in a big house in the suburbs with a garden and a barbecue and a garage. One day I saw Raffa from a distance, walking hand in hand with a girl. She’d grown tall, but I was taller. She looked at me sideways and turned away, pulling the girl with her. It stung a little. I didn’t mean to grow the abandoned five-storey garage by the river; it sprung up like a pimple after they left. I had no room to sprawl, so I grew inwards, roads knotting and twisting, buildings folding in unexpected places. I waited for Raffa to walk through my gates. I hung baskets of flowers on the lamp-posts and put up banners and a festival stage; I filled the streets with smells of honey-soaked pastry, of summer days and river picnics. Every house brimmed with Raffa’s memories. It took a long time for her to come back, and she wasn’t alone. She stopped at a distance, whispering in the girl’s ear.

* Author : Renan Bernardo * Narrator : Diogo Ramos * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Samovar Magazine   Content warning for off-screen parental death Rated PG – 4 – “There’s been a fire over at the Bosque Verde.” Leandro entered the house, removed his coat, and hung it on a hook on the wall. “Dry leaves, it seems.” Eduardo shuddered, his nails rasping against his cane. He was sitting on an armchair he’d put where the old pendulum clock had struck its last sigh five years before. “Will it reach us?” Bosque Verde was a grove at the other side of the Amorims’ property. It couldn’t be seen from there, but the scent of ashes stuck to the air like the remains of a fireplace. Eduardo had woken up that morning with the smell and yelled for Leandro, asking him to find out its source as soon as possible. Leandro obeyed. He was always there for his grandpa, though sometimes the old man seemed not to notice. In the core of old Eduardo’s soul, he probably missed Joana a lot more than she deserved. “Vô, not even if a hurricane blows the fire toward us.” Leandro patted Eduardo’s thinning hair. “Authorities are already there and it won’t even spread too much. Just relax.” Eduardo nodded, but his eyes remained open and attentive at the windows. He stayed like that during the remainder of the day, sometimes glancing at the windows, sometimes dozing off, other times mumbling about fires. Leandro left for college. It was only when he came back later and told Eduardo the fires had been dealt with that the old man was able to rest his head on the armchair with relief. Leandro was no more the teenager tied to a set of earphones that I knew when I came to live in the Amorims’ residence. Now a twenty-five-year-old young chap, his wavy hair fell over his shoulders and his obsession with Metallica had transformed into a frayed Lady Justice on his left bicep, ironically matching his ongoing Law studies. “Do you still talk with your sister?” Eduardo asked when Leandro served some spaghetti for Eduardo that night, the ashen odor still adhering to the air. It was a recurrent question. “She never reached back.” Leandro always lied. If Eduardo knew how to read eyes as I did, he would see Leandro’s evasiveness. But Eduardo just moaned in agreement. Leandro circled the table and sat on me. He was always the one to pick me, and sometimes, even after ten years, he still blurted out compliments about my comfortable upholstered seat or my perfectly built arms and backrest. He never paid too much attention to my aquatic themes though, which were now kind of battered and unimpressive anyway. Eduardo had taught Leandro how to properly take care of me, but Leandro’s hands were never so good as Eduardo’s, never so precise. And the old man wasn’t able to kneel and scrape dirt from an equally shriveling chair. And now there were days darkness stretched and not a single spot of sunlight fell over me. It reminded me of the lonely days at Wood & Depot, just waiting to be bought. In hindsight, I remembered those times with a slight sense of nostalgia, even if deep down I knew my life was a lot more meaningful now. In the end, all I wanted was to stave off the thought that Eduardo Amorim wouldn’t be as longevous as oak. One day he would be a long pack pushed into a white truck.

* Author : Renan Bernardo * Narrator : Diogo Ramos * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Samovar Magazine   Content warning for off-screen parental death Rated PG A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair by Renan Bernardo     – 1 – I was conceived by a carpenter with quivering hands in the back of a lumberyard. She was called Anatólia. Some days she had to fix flaws, sawing one or two parts of me again. On other days she hurled chunks of me against the wall, screaming at the bashful furniture she’d built, lined against the far wall. If she knew she’d bestowed consciousness on me with her art, perhaps she’d have other thoughts. I didn’t care. She was sturdy and careful and didn’t mind her son babbling about her being too old for this kind of work. Oak trees lasted for millennia. She had but a dozen wrinkles around her cheeks. Her particular way of wheezing meant nothing. She would last. Ignoring all the humility chipped into my wood by her hands, I was a true work of oak art. Seahorses adorned the palmettes atop my backrest, which was ornately twirled with bubbles and the contours of fishes. I had cockleshells on my apron and water lilies on my four feet, so exquisitely wrought that I feared the day someone would push me against fellow furniture. My upholstered cushion was velvety and crimson, not unlike the eyes of Anatólia’s son the day he entered the lumberyard and brought me to my first sunlight bath. The day I found out things I didn’t want to. It happened two weeks after Anatólia sighed and told me some mysterious, uplifting words. She sat on one of my partners, an unconscious, wobbly stool, breathing out in her particular, noisy way. “She’s going to love you,” she said. The barbs of my wood bristled. Who was “she?” I’d ask if I had a mouth. She left after a few minutes dozing off with her hands on her knees as if mesmerized by deep thought. It was the last time I saw her. When Anatólia’s son brought me outside for the first time, he was weeping, and so were half a dozen other people, all gathered and hugging on the porch of a house with peeling green paint. A white truck with red lights was parked on the gravel drive. The long pack that was taken inside smelled like sawdust and coffee. Every bit inside of me warped and swelled sluggishly when sunlight touched me. Or it could’ve been just the realization that my carpenter was gone. Turned out she wasn’t made of oak like me, but of a weaker, less resistant structure called bone. “Keep it,” Anatólia’s son told Aunt Suzana as if I wasn’t listening. He was pointing to me and a set of other furniture. “I have to move soon.” Was Aunt Suzana the one who was going to love me? – 2 – Aunt Suzana tucked me into the back of her SUV and kept me just enough to sell me to a Wood & Depot branch near a diner on the BR-116 road. Back then, I deemed twenty reais fair enough to keep my dignity and to value all the sweat Anatólia had poured on me. Lucky ignorance. It probably paid for Aunt Suzana’s dinner later that day. Deservedly, she leaves the story now. Life at Wood & Depot wasn’t like I dreamed. The dark years had begun. Literally. João Gutierrez, the manager, decided to put me in a corner that never captured sunlight. With the memories of the day Anatólia died at ba...

* Author : Peter S. Beagle * Narrator : Barry Deutsch * Host : Matt Dovey * Artist : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums Previously published by The Raven, and as PodCastle 037 Rated G Gordon, the Self-Made Cat by Peter Beagle   Once upon a time, to a family of house mice there was born a son named Gordon. He looked very much like his father and mother and all his brothers and sisters, who were gray and had bright, twitchy, black eyes, but what went on inside Gordon was very different from what went on inside the rest of his family. He was forever asking why everything had to be the way it was, and never satisfied with the answer. Why did mice eat cheese? Why did they live in the dark and only go out when it was dark? Where did mice come from, anyway? What were people? Why did people smell so funny? Suppose mice were big and people were tiny? Suppose mice could fly? Most mice don’t ask many questions, but Gordon never stopped. One evening, when Gordon was only a few weeks old, his next-to-eldest sister was sent out to see if anything interesting had been left open in the pantry. She never returned. Gordon’s father shrugged sadly and spread his front paws, and said, “The cat.” “What’s a cat?” Gordon asked. His mother and father looked at one another and sighed. “They have to know sometime,” his father said. “Better he learns it at home than on the streets.” His mother sniffled a little and said, “But he’s so young,” and his father answered, “Cats don’t care.” So they told Gordon about cats right then, expecting him to start crying and saying that there weren’t any such things. It’s a hard idea to get used to. But Gordon only asked, “Why do cats eat mice?” “I guess we taste very good,” his father said. Gordon said, “But cats don’t have to eat mice. They get plenty of other food that probably tastes as good. Why should anybody eat anybody if he doesn’t have to?” “Gordon,” said his father. “Listen to me. There are two kinds of creatures in the world. There are animals that hunt, and animals that are hunted. We mice just happen to be the kind of animal that gets hunted, and it doesn’t really matter if the cat is hungry or not. It’s the way life is. It’s really a great honor to be the hunted, if you just look at it the right way.” “Phooey on that,” said Gordon. “Where do I go to learn to be a cat?” They thought he was joking, but as soon as Gordon was old enough to go places by himself, he packed a clean shirt and some peanut butter, and started off for cat school. “I love you very much,” he said to his parents before he left, “but this business of being hunted for the rest of my life just because I happened to be born a mouse is not for me.” And off he went, all by himself. All cats go to school, you know, whether you ever see them going or not. Dogs don’t, but cats always have and always will. There are a great many cat schools, so Gordon found one easily enough, and he walked bravely up the front steps and knocked at the door. He said that he wanted to speak to the Principal. He almost expected to be eaten right there, but the cats—students and teachers alike—were so astonished that they let him pass through, and one of the teachers took him to the Principal’s office. Gordon could feel the cats looking at him, and hear the sounds their noses made as they smelled how good he was, but he held on tight to the suitcase with his shirt and the peanut butter,