It’s harder than you thought, walking from the battle at the end of time and down a street that reeks of entropy and fire and spilled lives. Your eyes aren’t dry. Neither is the alien sky. Your shoulders ache and your stomach hurts. Blue woman, blue woman, the chant runs through [...]

Andy kidnaps me at 11:12 PM. I see the time on my microwave. He clamps a hand over my mouth while I’m making a pot of coffee, and I scatter the grounds all over the floor. It’s late, and I have work to do, but that doesn’t matter now. "I have a [...]

Her name is Ilona. The other children at school call her Smellona. She is not me, but I have been her. Here are the things I remember most clearly:

She lives in a townhouse in Washington D.C. with her mother and younger brother, whose bangs are always cut crooked. It [...]

It wasn’t a sound that woke her this time, nor the soft slow lights that came dancing through the curtains. She thought in that first wakening haze that it might be a scent, like the "bad air" her mother had talked about, creeping in to announce their presence. Then full wakefulness [...]

This month’s audio fiction is When the Gentlemen Go By written by Margaret Ronald and read by Cat Rambo.

 

 When the Gentlemen Go By by Margaret Ronald [21:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (696)

They went upstairs, to the second floor that was actually much higher than the first. An unknown contractor had sandwiched it in between the dimly lit twenty-second and the exceptionally roomy fifty-fifth, either for fun or as a publicity stunt. As they walked up they saw through the big windows an [...]

The clockwork chickadee was not as pretty as the nightingale. But she did not mind. She pecked the floor when she was wound, looking for invisible bugs. And when she was not wound, she cocked her head and glared at the sparrow, whom she loathed with every tooth on every gear [...]

Jack cut up pictures of girls with thin razors and then glued the most pleasing body parts together onto a single white sheet of paper.
A leg, snip; an arm, snip. Eyes, snip. Perfect hair, snip.
And then the assemblage. Glue spread across the floor and the sound of glossy pages being stuck [...]

This month’s audio fiction is Clockwork Chickadee read and written by Mary Robinette Kowal.

 

 Clarkesworld - June Audio - Clockwork Chickadee by Mary Robinette Kowal [17:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (475)

Lot 657D
Topographical Map of the Ross Ice Shelf (The Seal Map)
Acuña, Nahuel, 1908
Minor tear, upper left corner. Moderate [...]