Friday Freebies - Part One

A  few very good freebies from yesterday, more to come later today!






Fiction
• Now Posted: Beneath Ceaseless Skies #116.

"A Family for Drakes" by Margaret Ronald. Fantasy.
     “The boy who owned them had another pair,” she lied. Maybe he had; she hadn’t checked under his mother’s body. Probably she should have; she’d made the long trek out and back after spotting the two huddled bodies... but pulling the little boots off cold feet had taken longer than she’d thought it would, and she’d been shivering too hard to search for more. “Bron, where’s our blanket?”
"Bakemono, or The Thing That Changes" by A.B. Treadwell. Fantasy.      "The Emperor of Japan punched through the soft belly of Russia on the day of my birth. My father’s men were the iron girding the fist. He showed me how it was on a rotting melon. The flesh caved in, and seeds spilled out."

• At Daily Science Fiction: "Hope, Shattered" by Brian R. McDowell.
      "Her knees were bent, and her feet rested at the edge of the mattress. Perspiration dripped from her brow and soaked the synthetic brunette hair matted on her cheek. The liquid fell in a steady stream from the android's temples instead of beading in a glow, but it was a common flaw in manufactured pores."

Flash Fiction

• At Every Day Fiction: "The Nymph of Limantour" by J. J. Roth. Fantasy.
• At Nature: "Canopy of Skulls" by Beth Cato.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Ghost In The Machine" by Clint Wilson. Science Fiction.
• At 365 Tomorrows: "Self Defense" by Patricia Stewart. Science Fiction.

Audio Fiction
• At Beneath Ceaseless Skies: "Bakemono, or The Thing That Changes" by A.B. Treadwell. Fantasy.
      Described above

• At Escape Pod: "Finished" by Robert Reed. Science Fiction.
      "What did I plan? Very little, in truth. An evening walk accompanied by the scent of flowers and dampened earth, the lingering heat of the day taken as a reassurance, ancient and holy. I was genuinely happy, as usual. Like a hundred other contented walkers, I wandered through the linear woods, past lovers’ groves and pocket-sized sanctuaries and ornamental ponds jammed full of golden orfes and platinum lungfish."

• At Fantastic Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs: Episode 03 - The Beasts of Tarzan. Adventure.
     "Tarzan has fallen prey to the wiles of Nicholas Rokoff. Trapped in a steamer at sea, Tarzan knows only that his son also is in the clutches of the arch-fiend. He does not yet know that Jane has also been captured."

• At PodCastle: "Logic and Magic in the Time of the Boat Lift"by Cat Rambo and Ben Burgis. Fantasy.
     "They said the Marielitas were escoria – scum. The abuelitas muttered it to each other, and the young girls coming home from school clustered together like butterflies, looking thrilled and worried whenever the wind whistled at them. The newspapers said Miami was under siege, that Castro had loosed the worst from the Cuban prisons and madhouses."

Other Genres

• Audio at The New Yorker: “Girl” and “Wingless” by Jamaica Kincaid.
• Flash Fiction at Every Day Fiction: "Scott Is" by Steve Calvert.