By Tim Pratt
Read by Tina Connolly
A high fence of weathered wood ran along the right side, partitioning the beach for the people in the hotel. The fence ran for a distance even into the water before giving up hope of division. Harriet heard happy shouts and laughter from the other side. It was a gleaming white hotel with balconies on the back; she could see the top floors rising over the fence, much better than the ramshackle crammed-in house with rusty showerheads and sand in the mattresses. Same water, she thought, squelching her envy, they get the same beach we do.
But this was a sad little beach. Grady surged like a live wire, pulling away and eager to be in the grey-green water, but she held on and stepped with distaste around broken beer-bottles and chunks of styrofoam. The horizon was infinite and curved but the air stank of fish.
Standard Podcast [20:54m]:
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By Paul Haines
Read by Graeme Dunlop
I wanted her to say she’d had a few long-term boyfriends, a couple of one-night-stands. The fewer lovers the better. I wanted her to make me feel superior in my sexual conquest of the world.
I wanted her to say that, but I knew she wouldn’t.
She recorded our lovemaking sessions to watch later. I knew what that meant in terms of experience. I wanted to be cool about it. I wanted to be able to handle it. Whatever went before didn’t matter.
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Ladies’ night at the meat market. A threesome of delectable flash fiction morsels.
My Body Your Banquet
By C.S.E. Cooney
Read by Jacquie Duckworth
The man next door was interested in eating human flesh. He said as much, last time I took the trash out to the alley.
Sight Unseen
By R. Scott Shanks, Jr.
Read by Rachel Swirsky
“Wherever you touch yourself, you will feel my hands touching you.” Sylvie reached for her aching head and felt a man’s rough hand twined in her hair, gently but firmly pushing her face into her graying sheets.
The Lot
By C.M. Harris
Read by Eve
It’s The Call of The Hydrae. It’s started.
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By K. A. Dean
Read by Alasdair Stuart
Sit down with the usual gut warp strength black coffee - only thing that’s going to keep my eyes open all night really- and settle down to watch. I can’t help smiling at it all, all those individual juddering images spread out in front of me, like an artificial compact eye watching the city. A hundred small screens surrounding the single, higher resolution monitor, all for me. So much information fed right back to me in my warm, dark skull of a control room.
I can’t help but enjoy it. Too much to pour over. So many minute human dramas played out over the night shift as though just for me, all of them oblivious. All so used now to the all seeing eye, that ever present observer above that hums and tracks them, benevolent and protective. Never look up, never acknowledge, but I don’t mind. It’s more interesting when they forget they’re being watched.
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By Simon Wood, whose latest thriller, Terminated is hot off the presses this month.
Read by Ben Phillips
Turning into the long driveway, I noticed three tall figures standing shoulder to shoulder on the porch. That, I wasn’t expecting. This was meant to be a one-on-one affair with no spectators. Alarm bells rang in my head, but there was no way I could turn tail for the hills. I had to see things through, no matter how bad they got — especially after the phone call.
“Cam, you have to meet me. You have to help me stop you. If you don’t, people will die.”
I’d recognized the voice immediately and knew I had no choice. There’d been too much killing over the years and if I could prevent any further bloodshed, then I would do my best. It was the least I could do, considering the amount of blood on my hands.
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In which we present, for your pleasurable unease, two classic tales of suspense and woe by two of the masters.
Oil of Dog
By Ambrose Bierce
Read by Ben Phillips
One evening while passing my father’s oil factory with the body of a foundling from my mother’s studio I saw a constable who seemed to be closely watching my movements. Young as I was, I had learned that a constable’s acts, of whatever apparent character, are prompted by the most reprehensible motives, and I avoided him by dodging into the oilery by a side door which happened to stand ajar. I locked it at once and was alone with my dead.
The Horror of the Heights
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The thirty-thousand-foot level has been reached time after time with no discomfort beyond cold and asthma. What does this prove? A visitor might descend upon this planet a thousand times and never see a tiger. Yet tigers exist, and if he chanced to come down into a jungle he might be devoured. There are jungles of the upper air, and there are worse things than tigers which inhabit them.
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By Daniel I. Russell
Read by Graeme Dunlop
John walked into the small kitchen. About to pitch the hot tea across the room, he took a slow breath, tipped the drink down the sink and delicately placed the mug at the side. Hands covering his eyes, he leaned back against the table.
“Why?” he asked. “Why us? What did we do?”
Fists squeezed, he rubbed his eyelids, cursing God, cursing the events looped on the news, cursing Emma for burying her head in the sand and pretending everything was fine. Nothing was fine. Not a fucking thing.
He stank. He ignored it.
It had all begun three days ago. Dressing, washing, eating. None of it seemed important anymore. The first thing he’d prepared in that time was the mug of tea, and that was a peace offering.
“Get off the damn balcony!” he screamed and pounded his fists on the table top. The wine glasses at the centre jumped and clinked. A decision was needed. If Emma took the easy way out…
He’d be the one left to make it.
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By Tim W. Burke
Read by Paul S. Jenkins, author of The Plitone Revisionist
We were in our places, Olivia at the door and I in the wicker basket. The windows were concealed with heavy curtains to keep out the afternoon sun, but oil lamps pushed back the gloom.
The lady who entered our study first was the old friend of Olivia’s family, who embraced Olivia, then introduced her guests. The other matron wore black; she was the hopeful patron. The men were both young, one balding and mustached and the other dark and intense. They were surprised by her frank smile, by her firm handclasp, and they smirked.
The basket that hid me was a cubit square. Within it, I sat naked on a thin cotton mat, waiting for my cue.
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By Lavie Tidhar
Read by Elan Ressel, voice actor for hire
Closing music: “Mourning of the Storm” by The Secret Life
On my brother’s computer, a video file shows an American fighter plane pinpointing a group of men in Iraq.
‘Do it?’ the pilot says.
‘Confirmed.’
‘Ten seconds to impact.’
Where the men have been there is a huge explosion, and black smoke covers the grainy grey streets. ‘Dude,’ the pilot says.
I have no faces and no names to put to the men. The black smoke must have contained the atoms of their flesh, their bones (though bones are hardy), vaporized sweat, burnt eyebrows and pubic hair and nose hair (unless they used a trimmer, as I do), in short, the atoms of their being. Later, I think, one could find, lying in the street, a tooth or two, the end of a finger that had somehow survived, fragments of bone, a legless shoe. These men are nothing to me. They are pixels on a screen, a peer-shared digital file uploaded from sources unknown, provenance suspect, whose only note of authenticity is that young pilot’s voice when the smoke rises and he says, quietly – ‘Dude.’
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By Frank Oreto
Read by Jesse Livingston
“Find yourself a nurse,” he remembered his mother saying as they prepared for her act. “They always have jobs and they like to take care of men.” It was good advice but even Sharon’s patience had an end. Danny thought he had almost reached it. He borrowed the three hundred from her. Told her he was done gambling.
“Does that include poker?” she’d asked.
It was a good question. Danny didn’t think of poker as gambling. He learned to cold read rubes in his mother’s mentalist act. His card-sharp father taught him to make the cards dance – when the man was sober enough to hold a deck.
Poker wasn’t gambling. When you gambled you might lose. Danny knew all about losing. He was down twelve grand to Rod Renshaw due to a string of sporting misjudgments that climaxed when the Steelers had the bad grace to win the Super Bowl but lose the point spread. That was gambling.
Standard Podcast [34:46m]:
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