* Author : Charlie Sorrenson * Narrator : Rebecca Wei Hsieh * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Tor.com   Content warnings for violence, assault, misogyny, and PTSD. Rated PG-13 Flight by Charlie Sorrenson   Now They are coming out of the woods when Mateo grabs one of Maggie’s wings and tugs, hard. This has long been his way of getting her attention and she has always let him do it, wanting to be a good mother, reminding herself that this is a phase, that he is only five years old, that little boys who do bad things are not destined to become bad men. But now she wheels on him, the force of her movement yanking her wing from his grasp. “No!” she says, and he blinks and reels back. Two women are walking ahead of them with their children. At the sound of her voice, their heads flick back to watch. “You’re a big boy now,” Maggie says, her voice rising. “You can’t touch them anymore.” Out of the corner of her eye, she sees the women murmur to each other. Turning their smooth, wingless backs to her, they seize their children’s hands and hurry away. Maggie doesn’t care. Tears pool in Mateo’s eyes but she ignores them, stalking up the big, sweeping lawn toward the place where everyone parked. Further up the slope, the man who is not Trace walks quickly, gripping his daughter’s hand. On her arm is a bruise the size and shape of Mateo’s fist. As Maggie watches, the girl tugs her hand out of her father’s and takes off, her empty Easter basket bobbing in her grip. Her father calls out but she keeps running and Maggie urges her on, her heart pounding on the girl’s behalf, as her head says: faster, and her heart says: it will never be fast enough, and all the places where the Brothers took her apart pulse with remembered pain. Ten minutes ago The man who is not Trace kneels in front of his sobbing daughter and hushes her. Neither he nor Maggie was there to see what happened, but the girl has just told them that Mateo hit her when she wouldn’t give him an Easter egg she had found. Now her father says, “I’m sure he didn’t mean to hurt you.” He winks at Maggie; an invitation to a game she does not want to play. “You know boys.” Maggie looks from her son to the bruised girl to the man who is not Trace but who is so much like him, and something flares within her that has been dead a long time. “She has a right to her pain,” she says. “She has a right to it.” “We’re going,” the man says, to no one in particular, and pulls his daughter away, his fingers wrapping around her hand and enveloping it completely. Seventeen minutes ago The Easter-egg hunt takes place at the home of some friends of her husband’s, wealthy investor types who live in Marin County and own several acres of old-growth forest. Maggie hasn’t set foot in a forest like this in years, but her husband is out of town and the things that happened to her were such a long time ago and so she agrees to take Mateo. The moment she gets under the trees, she knows she has made a mistake. She sees the bobbing lights, hears the Brothers’ laughter, remembers running until she couldn’t. She grasps the trunk of a nearby redwood and inches her hands along its fibrous bark, noting its texture as her therapist has taught her. Gradually, her heart slows.

* Author : Lavie Tidhar * Narrator : Ian Stuart * Host : Eleanor R. Wood * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Apex Magazine and as PodCastle episode 304 Content warning for violence Rated PG-13 Titanic! by Lavie Tidhar 10 April 1912 When I come on board the ship I pay little heed to her splendour; nor to the gaily–strewn lines of coloured electric lights, nor to the polished brass of the crew’s jacket uniforms, nor to the crowds at the dock in Southampton, waving handkerchiefs and pushing and shoving for a better look; nor to my fellow passengers. I keep my eyes open only for signs of pursuit; specifically, for signs of the Law. The ship is named the Titanic. I purchased a second–class ticket in London the day before and travelled down to Southampton by train. I had packed hurriedly. I do not know how far behind me the officers are. I know only that they will come. He made sure of that, in his last excursion. The corpses he left were a mockery, body parts ripped, exposed ribcages and lungs stretched like Indian rubber, he had turned murder into a sculpture, a form of grotesque art. The Japanese would call such a thing as he a yōkai, a monster, otherworldly and weird. Or perhaps a kaiju. I admire the Japanese for their mastery of the science of monstrosity, of what in our Latin would be called the lusus naturae. I have corresponded with a Dr Yamane, of Tokyo, for some time, but had of course destroyed all correspondence when I escaped from London. And yet I cannot leave him behind. I had packed hurriedly. A simple change of clothes. I had not dressed like a gentleman. But I carry, along with my portmanteau, also my doctor’s black medical bag; it defines me more than I could ever define myself otherwise; it is as much a part of me as my toes, or my navel, or my eyes; and inside the bag I carry him, all that is left of him: one bottle, that is all, and the rest were all smashed up to shards back in London, back in the house where the bodies are.   Unfortunately we don’t have the full text to this one, but you can read the rest of the story here!

* Author : Marisca Pichette * Narrator : Julia Rios * Host : Kiran Kaur Saini * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums PodCastle 834: All the Better to Taste You is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for end of life and misgendering. Rated PG-13 All the Better to Taste You by Marisca Pichette   This morning I swallowed the Wolf. I started with oatmeal — sweetened bitter by fresh maple syrup, sticky all the way down. On top I poured mead inherited from drunken bees bumbling through the windows I always leave open — wide, gaping, hungry. I finished with the Wolf. He’s quite small now; time and peace have removed his claws, decades of sweetness have rotted out his teeth. An infestation of fleas conjured by my stepsister forced him to shave completely. His final years were pale, bald, shivering as I carried him from room to room. At the end, all that remained to feed his once-formidable muscles were nightmares. First mine, then his — rousing him gasping at midnight. I brought him cocoa, warm milk with a dash of honey. At the end, I slept soundly, snuggled in a bed that learned to fit me. I stopped having nightmares years before I swallowed the Wolf whole. He stirs in my belly now. Treacle-slow, contemplative, tame. He knew today would come before I ever thought to make his end. “You’ll eat me up,” he said the day we met. I wore my white cotton dress, cornflowers embroidered along the hem. He lay in bed under a blanket stitched of lace and grandmother skin. Then he was large, gray as ashes, eyes algae-green. I’m sorry to say I was scared of him, thin as I was, still within reach of my teenage years. I couldn’t imagine a day when I would be stronger than the Wolf. “With treats and dreams and moon-blood,” he told me the day I moved into the guest room. One suitcase, a twin bed dressed in faded linens. My hands — naked, cold. Standing there, one hallway away from him, I wondered if I’d made the right choice. I wondered if I’d had any choice to make. We’d run out of space in my mother’s house. After college, my stepsister had married and brought the Woodsman home. It had never been a mansion, equipped with only enough rooms for a mother and her daughters. The addition of the Woodsman meant the subtraction of someone else. My mother asked if I would mind moving out, living with our only other relative: the Wolf. “Don’t let her bite you,” she told me as I packed pads and protein bars into my suitcase. “It’s he,” I replied, resentful and a little petulant. I knew a little about wolves. My stepsister had known a few in college, though only tangentially. They came more to some families than others, and never before the age of sixty. He was our first, as far as I knew. “No, it’s she,” my mother huffed. “She was your grandmother, before.” “That doesn’t matter. Now he’s a wolf.” She gave me a hand-me-down cardigan and left the room. When I moved in, he cooked for me. Quiche in the morning, martinis at lunch, Bolognese for supper. His table manners gave me my first nightmares, mixed up with cold toes and shifting shadows. I rose each morning exhausted, longing for home. The cottage was too quiet. The Wolf didn’t speak much. He seemed as uninterested in my presence as he was unbothered by it. He spent more time in the garden, while I perused the living room,

* Author : Eleanna Castroianni * Narrator : Kat Kourbeti * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums PodCastle 833: This Wooden Heart is a PodCastle original. Content warnings for death and references to war and genocide. Rated PG-13 This Wooden Heart by Eleanna Castroianni     It starts with a seed in your grandfather’s beard. Before you were born, when you and your brother were still seeds tucked deep inside your parents’ bodies, your grandfather dreamed for a while: of grainy bark, of sun-kissed leaves, of sweet purple fruit and of milky poison sap. Your grandpa: you knew him for a while. He had the eyes of someone claimed by something bigger; the eyes of someone who has known secrets that take root deep below. He had the eyes of your brother. Your brother: you knew him for a while. His fire burned too bright. And everyone who shines brightly is sent to exile. To this day, your mother thinks her son — your only brother — is imprisoned on a faraway island. She doesn’t know that your brother dreams of grainy bark and sun-kissed leaves. She doesn’t know that what started with a seed in her father’s beard has grown wiry roots and curly tendrils around this family’s hearts. She can feel the thorns. She can hear the faint beating. She will clutch at her chest with every long breath. But she doesn’t know. It starts like this.     The story of your grandmother goes like this — or so they told you. Rumour had it that the fig grove surrounding the church of Saint Yerasimos in Tholaria could hide one from human eyes. When the Ottomans and the Moors raided, people took to the grove. They knocked on the trees and the spirits of the trees answered. They welcomed them, one trunk now holding two souls. In the thick shade of the fig trees, with no birds singing, no cicadas trilling, no bees buzzing, the priest eyed your grandmother with a smirk on his goatish features. The irreverent call priests he-goats, but he truly was one: shiny horns and black jewel eyes, part of the beastfolk of Yerakari. He was the spitting image of Dark Father, one of the Cruel Saints that are honored only in Messara Valley. No doubt this chilling resemblance made him, ironically, popular with the pious. Goats have herbivore eyes; his eyes were a predator’s. “It will cost you,” he said. “The church has needs, you know that, child.” He stroked the heavy cross hanging from his neck. The little jewels tucked in the insets must have cost a fortune. Among them, rubies shone bright red. Rubies were a sign of someone who had traded with the Ottomans. Someone who herded the serfs for the sake of the master. She clenched her jaw. Of course. The beastfolk of Yerakari cared about one thing only: money. Sometimes it took the form of business, sometimes of sheer thievery. When it came to the church, the beastfolk were a natural partner to the biggest thieves in the country. “Name the price,” she said. The he-goat went silent for a moment to briefly weigh the odds. “Forty aiyes. With interest.” That was a year’s income for a spinner, in good times. Your grandmother was resourceful; she could find a way to pay the instalments. “Expensive, but you have a deal. I have an upfront of ten.” “Splendid. Dark Father thanks you.” His goaty eyes shone with greed, and his long-fingered human hands,

* Author : Rebecca Buchanan * Narrator : Nicola Chapman * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives 1 (Belanger Press) Rated PG ~ Five ~ Dinner was not silent. While we sat in the kitchen, sipping soup and munching on bread and mutton, Miss Couper maintained an animated lecture on the tumuli and barrows of the British Isles and the Continent. “Wayland’s Smithy being a prime Neolithic example. And then there’s Maeshowe up on Orkney. Chambered cairn. Unique to the Orkneys. Don’t see that anywhere else. Well, that we know of. Could change at any moment. Always making new discoveries. Even the Americans are doing good work, digging up Indian mounds —” “Miss Couper, could you pass the salt, please?” I held out my hand, smile stiff. “Eh? Oh, aye.” Miss Baxter hid a smirk behind a bite of mutton. Ailis and the other two students, whom I now knew to be Judith Fleming and Beatrice Gordon, sat across the table from me. They remained alarmingly quiet, their gazes fixed on their plates. Like Ailis, Judith and Beatrice also wore older dresses: all charity students, then, without the funds to travel home for the holiday. Mrs. Fearghasdan sat at the head of the table, frowning with concern. Holmes hovered around the edges of the room, watchful. I cleared my throat, shaking some salt into my soup. “How will all of you be celebrating the holiday, then? Cider and carols after church? Will you be bringing a tree in?” Miss Couper raised her spoon. “Interesting history to that —” “No tree, I’m afraid,” Mrs. Fearghasdan interrupted. “But we plan for a Yule log in the main hearth in the great dining hall. Dawn services at St. Giles, of course.” “And you, Miss Morstan?” Miss Baxter smiled at me, her eyes gleaming. “Will you be burning a Yule log?” I set aside the salt, folding my hands in my lap. From across the table, Ailis watched me through her hair. “I do recall that you and . . . oh, what was her name? Weaver? Walker?” “Mrs. Webster.” Miss Baxter clapped her hands. “Yes, that’s right! Webster! The two of you would slip away at the oddest times of the year.” She turned to Miss Couper and continued in a loud whisper, “Did you know that Miss Morstan here was the only student at the Academy who had her own nanny? The rest of us, of course, had long outgrown our nannies, leaving them behind in the nursery. But, well, I suppose when one is born in a distant heathen land, one needs some sort of comfort when one rejoins civilization.” Miss Couper shifted uncomfortably, her expression uncertain. “You are quite right, Evelyn.” I smiled thinly, holding my back and shoulders so stiff that they began to ache. Breathe. In, out. “It was a shock to leave the beauty and warmth of India for Scotland. It took me some time to come to appreciate the lochs and moors and heaths — beautiful, but a spare and striking beauty in comparison to India. And, of course, I had just lost my mother. My father, loyal down to his marrow, would not abandon his duty to the Queen. And so Mrs. Webster kindly agreed to accompany me back to my homeland, to love and care for me as if I were her own daughter. And I came to care for her as a second mother — but more, as a role model, an example of compassion and honor and courage. The sort of woman I could only hope to become myself,

* Author : Rebecca Buchanan * Narrator : Nicola Chapman * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums Previously published by Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives 1 (Belanger Press) Rated PG The Adventure of the Faerie Coffin: Being the First Morstan and Holmes Occult Detection by Rebecca Buchanan   Dramatis Personae Miss Mary Morstan — a governess with a secret, fiancée of Dr. John Watson Mr. Sherlock Holmes — a consulting detective of ruthless logic Mrs. Edith Fearghasdan — a concerned headmistress Miss Evelyn Baxter — not a friend of Miss Morstan Miss Susanna Couper — an opinionated teacher Ailis, Judith, and Beatrice — students with a shared secret Miss Maighread MacPherson — a teacher skilled at uncovering secrets Mrs. MacPherson — her mother Mrs. Webster — Miss Morstan’s former governess and mentor Mrs. Forrester — Miss Morstan’s current employer, a supposedly respectable society matron Dr. John Watson — Mr. Holmes’s flatmate and partner in criminal investigations, Miss Morstan’s fiancé ~ One ~ “Miss Morstan. May I join you?” I closed my eyes, shutting out the chaos of the rail station. The sounds of whistles, shouts, and carolers were only slightly dulled by the window. Of course he was here. I inhaled slowly, feeling the breath fill my chest, spread through my arms and down my legs; an old habit, learned long ago at the feet of one far more skilled than me. Calmer now, I turned and offered him a smile. “Of course, Mr. Holmes. Please, have a seat.” He was not dressed in his usual attire. His clothes were not neat; rather, they were stained and wrinkled and slightly too large for his frame. His shoes were scuffed. The glasses that perched on his nose — pink from the cold — subtly changed its length and shape. The threadbare hat did much the same for his head, hiding his thinning hair. Of course he had altered his appearance. No doubt he had been following me from the moment I left my rooms at Mrs. Forrester’s home. I should never have declined his dinner invitation the previous evening. There had been something in my note — a curious curve to an s, an odd slant to a t, a wrinkle, a stain — that had piqued his curiosity. And so here he was, right where and when I least wanted him. How John tolerated it, I failed to understand. He settled easily into the seat opposite, legs crossed, hands folded in his lap. Silent. Still. Waiting. We stared at one another as the whistle blew loud and piercing, and continued to stare as the train lurched forward, down the track, north, away from London. Only when we reached the outskirts of that great city did he finally speak. “You are not breaking your engagement with Watson.” A statement, not a question. “No.” “You have only ever served as a governess in London, therefore you are not paying a sentimental visit to previous charges.” “Correct.” “This train is bound for Edinburgh. Your mother’s family hails from that country originally, Deòireach being her surname. You were born and lived with your family in India until you were eight. After your mother’s death, your father sent you to the same boarding school that she had attended. The Frazier Academy. You remained there until you were seventeen, at which point you traveled south to seek respectable employment.

* Author : Farah Naz Rishi * Narrator : Nadia Niaz * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums Previously published as PodCastle 526 Rated PG-13 When Shadow Confronts Sun By Farah Naz Rishi [Allah] will say, “Enter among nations which had passed on before you of jinn and mankind into the Fire.” Every time a nation enters, it will curse its sister until, when they have all overtaken one another therein, the last of them will say about the first of them, “Our Lord, these had misled us, so give them a double punishment of the Fire.” He will say, “For each is double, but you do not know.” (7:38) The paan seller’s cart has a very particular smell: burnt roses, sugar syrup, cumin. Spicy and sweet, like Nani’s sticks of sage, the ones she burns every Sunday after fajr to ward off jealous eyes and jealous spirits. But I am hungry and I breathe it in, letting the newfound familiarity of the fragrance settle into my bones. Perhaps if I smell like paan, this world would accept me as one of its own — because that’s what Pakistan is in Ramadan. Its own world. The paan seller greets us. The smell of his wares is its own lighthouse in the bustle of the market, still crowded in the long days of Ramadan. Beside me, Sayf’s chappals slap against the bottom of his bare feet with his every step. Nani is ahead, as she always is, her chin high and her dupatta low, revealing silvery strands of hair. She is very much at home here. I don’t really like paan; it tastes too much like grass and birdseed. But the paan seller with his pink and yellow teeth always gives Nani free paan and affectionately calls her Nani-ji. She loves paan, so I want to like it, too. The paan seller smiles at Sayf, my twin brother. And then he sees me. His smile falters, as it has every time he has seen me these past few weeks. “There is the paani bachi,” he says. Water child. I feel my own eyes brew with quiet annoyance. Mine are blue. Nani says blue eyes are a bad omen. It means I carry a watery, unstable personality. What she really means is rebellious. Secretly, though, I think she means this with affection. Sayf has brown eyes, round and gently inquisitive. He is petting a donkey’s velvet nose a few feet from the cart. His lashes are almost as long as the animal’s. “Maybe she’ll look like Aishwarya Rai when she grows up,” the paan seller suggests in Urdu. Whether he is trying to comfort me or Nani, I’m not sure. But I know he’s spewing nonsense. I am too short for my twelve years, my hair and eyebrows too thick and unruly, and my skin is just a shade too dark, even here. And now I am angry. Her blood pressure has prevented Nani from being able to fast in years; she takes the free paan he has offered. “Maybe,” is all she says. I can’t see her face. Warm fingers suddenly fold themselves between mine. Sayf smiles at me; besides Nani, he’s the only one that ever does. He reminds me that despite the paan seller’s coarseness, I still like it here. Flaws and all. I press my fingertip into one of his dimples, which makes his smile only wider. The azaan begins to echo through the market, a sound that gleams through the smog-tinted air. Nani sneaks the paan in her mouth and chews as she strides ahead. The market’s walls of stands and carts narrow, though many of them are closed during the day for the monthly fast. Above us, colorful signs plastered in Urdu — which I’d never learned to rea...

* Authors : Derrick Boden and Kevin Sandefur * Narrators : J.S. Arquin and Dani Daly * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums When the Giants Came Through the Valley – Previously published by Lightspeed Floaters – Previously published by Pulp Literature Magazine When the Giants Came Through the Valley – Content warning for references to suicide and parental death Floaters – Content warning for hospitalisation Rated PG-13 When the Giants Came Through the Valley by Derrick Boden   When the giants came through the valley, they made footprints as long as the Santa Monica Promenade, as wide as Dodgers’ Stadium. They crushed dance studios, keto cafes, a waterpark. They left trails of steep-sided ravines with walls of stratified clay and crumbling asphalt, and this is where we now live. Sunset comes earlier down here, but it could be worse. Our footprint is deep and arid and full of retooled strip malls. We dwell in the remains of Foot Lockers and tiki bars, tag our names out front in bold blue letters. Lazy Stan, Carmencita, Hot Hot Henri. We didn’t all live here, before the giants came through. We’re a product of collective chance. Grinding out another two-hour commute, heading for happy hour at The Village after working another double, the third this week. Some of us still have homes topside, in buildings the giants happened to miss. But that’s neither here nor there. The footprint is our home, now. No two footprints are the same. Ours doesn’t have much going for it, aside from a surprisingly fertile heel wall. Good for growing grapes, which has come in handy considering how the airdrops never include any wine. A few footprints down, they struck oil. Bleeding through the cracks in that old giant’s sole stamp. Most people topside say the footprints are a blemish, an embarrassment. Not that one. Excavators moved in overnight, kicked everyone out. The grapes are our little secret. When the giants came through the valley, they shed all manner of alien creatures. Land-crawling octopuses shaken from the hairs of their feet, huge spiders jettisoned from their vast dreadlocks. Razor-toothed frogs that are ninety-percent mouth. They scuttled about in a daze, like us, before aggressively laying claim to whatever residence they could find. The dusty asphalt crags of a basketball court, the ethernet-cable jungle of a ruined server farm. Most of them are herbivores, lucky us. Tomas took it upon himself to sort out which ones weren’t. He had a good run; we’re thankful for his contributions. Topsiders have a rule. Anything that breaches the surface that isn’t human, kill it. Down here, though, it’s live and let live. Sure, the critters aren’t always pleasant, but who can blame them? They’re just like us, clinging to some dispassionate monolith our whole lives because we’re all too scared to let go, even as it stomps and stomps and stomps on everything we’ve ever known. Until finally, through exhaustion or the sheer loss of will, we just can’t hold on anymore. So we let go. When the giants came through the valley, they caught everyone unaware. Where did they come from? The Moon? Mars? Bakersfield? Did they rise from an age-old slumber deep within the crust of the earth?

* Author : Ryan Cole * Narrator : Hugo Jackson * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Eric Valdes * Discuss on Forums Previously published in Museum Piece, from Metaphorosis Publishing Rated PG-13 The Museum of Living Color by Ryan Cole   Red lust, as usual, comes in the morning. Red in the way that you whisper my name, in the tender caress of your fingers on my neck, where my dry skin soaks up your technicolor world. Where you are my brush, and I am your canvas: pliant, eager, ready to be drawn. I smile as your scorched-earth skin comes to life. I swallow the vermilion heat on your tongue. And I take. I steal as much of you as I can. But it’s never enough. Not for me, or your family, or the portrait of us that they want you to create. The one that will hang in their gallery forever. And you and I both know that your red never lasts. Revised placard text for: The Portrait of Maurice and Henrietta Mildrin (1925; Great Falls, VA; property of the Mildrin Family Gallery). Maurice and Henrietta are pictured along with their six children on the azalea garden lawn of the Mildrin family estate. As is shown by the way that they gaze into each other’s eyes, red played a prominent role in the artists’ lives. Note the crimson undertones, the unabashed desire. Red lust is used to hide all of their flaws. Note also, however, the smear on Henrietta’s chin — the dark-golden anger, the same gold that glimmers in Maurice’s right pupil. The artists claimed that these were due to the aging of the portrait, and that they never would have used such an impure color — especially gold — to paint themselves. Mrs. Henrietta Mildrin, the original curator of this Gallery, took pride in showing which colors made an appropriate marriage. And until her recent death, that marriage — and its portrait — was what every Mildrin relative strove to achieve.  Gold creeps in like the sun between the clouds. Your lust becomes a shadow of the fire that it was when you sculpted my skin with red-smeared hands. When you hadn’t yet dipped into your palette of emotions, the reminders of who you are and who you have to be — who we have to be — to have a place in your family. “I don’t think we should go,” you say through your tie. You wrangle the ends into a paisley knot around your throat. “You’re still not ready.” “I’m not ready?” I say, unsurprised, because I am no stranger to your swiftly changing colors — the inconvenient shades that you aren’t allowed to show. “It’s been seven years. I’ve learned what I need to know.” “Maybe it’s not enough.” I pull on my loafers, absorbing the words. Your gold never comes without a fine, serrated edge, forged in the heat of your growing frustration. At me. Your parents. Your bottled-up emotions. “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I say with years of practice. You sigh and rest the back of your hand on my cheek, staining me with all of your dark, dirty gold. One of the scant few colors you can share. “Alfie,” you whisper. “Don’t make me do this.” I try to pull away, but the color won’t let me. It continues to flow. “You can’t just cancel,” I say, my cheek burning. “We’ve had this scheduled for months.” As if there weren’t anything strange about scheduling an appointment to see your great-aunt, whom you’ve known since you were a child, who has probably already seen what you’re trying to hide. Don’t blame me for showing you who you really are.

* Author : Sherwood Smith * Narrator : Kaitlyn Zivanovich * Host : Matt Dovey * Audio Producer : Devin Martin * Discuss on Forums Originally published by Realms of Fantasy Rated PG-13 Mom and Dad At the Home Front by Sherwood Smith   Before Rick spoke, I saw from his expression what was coming. I said the words first. “The kids are gone again.” Rick dropped onto the other side of the couch, propping his brow on his hand.  I couldn’t see his eyes, nor could he see me. It was just past midnight. All evening, after we’d made sure our three kids were safely tucked into bed, we’d stayed in separate parts of the house, busily working away at various projects, all excuses not to go to bed ourselves — even though it was a work night. Rick looked up, quick and hopeful. “Mary. Did one of the kids say something to you?” “No.” I had a feeling; that was all. They were so sneaky after dinner. “Didn’t you see Lauren —” I was about to say raiding the flashlight and the Swiss Army Knife from the earthquake kit but I changed, with almost no pause, to “— sneaking around like . . . like Inspector Gadget?” He tried to smile. We’d made a deal, last time, to take it easy, to try to keep our senses of humor, since we knew where the kids were. Sort of knew where the kids were. How many other parents were going through this nightmare? There had to be others. We couldn’t be the only ones. I’d tried hunting for some kind of support group on the Internet —Seeking other parents whose kids disappear to other worlds — and not surprisingly the email I got back ranged from offers from psychologists for a free mental exam to “opportunities” to MAKE $$$ IN FIVE DAYS. So I’d gone digging again, this time at the library, rereading all those childhood favorites: C. S. Lewis; Edward Eager; Eleanor Cameron; Edith Nesbit; and then more recent favorites, like Diana Wynne Jones. All the stories about kids who somehow slipped from this world into another, adventuring widely and wildly, before coming safely home via that magic ring, or gate, or toy rocket ship, or pair of shoes. Were there hints that adults missed? Clues that separated the real worlds from the made up ones? “Evidence,” I’d said, trying to be logical and practical and adult. “They’ve vanished like this three times that we know about. Doors and windows locked. Morning back in their beds. Sunburned. After the last time, just outside R.J.’s room you saw two feathers and a pebble like nothing on Earth. You came to get me, the kids woke up, the things were gone when we got there. When asked, the response was, and I quote, ‘What feathers?’” But Rick knew he had seen those feathers, and so we’d made our private deal: wait, and take it easy. Rick rubbed his hands up his face, then looked at me. And broke the deal. “What if this time they don’t come back?” We sat in silence. Then, because there was no answer, we forced ourselves to get up, to do chores, to follow a normal routine in hopes that if we were really, really good, and really, really normal, morning would come the same as ever, with the children in their beds. I finished the laundry. Rick vacuumed the living room and took the trash cans out. I made three lunches and put them in the fridge. I put fresh bath towels in the kids’ bathroom. At one o’clock we went to bed, and turned out the light, but neither of us slept; I lay for hours listening to the cl...