Wetting the Bed (Excerpt)

By Heather Shaw

When the floods came, all us kids climbed into bed and pulled the covers up over our heads while our parents rushed about trying to do something to stop it. As the water level rose we could feel the beds lift off the floor, floating through our houses, bumping down our hallways and out our front doors.

We sat up in bed waved to one another as our beds merged onto the canal that now flowed between our houses. We shrieked and giggled as our beds spun and bumped along with the swirling water. Waves lapped at our boxsprings, but our covers were still warm and dry.

Host Commentary

By S.B. Divya

And that’s our story.

I love stories about resilience in the face of adversity, and this one certainly checks that box, but it does so with a unique style. At first, the apocalyptic flood is almost like a slumber party. It’s only near the end that the children discover that survival means more than cutting off the heavy adults – it means starting to act like them. It’s rare that a situation so serious gets treated with such a light touch, but I’m always appreciative of that, especially when it comes to situations about children.

Chump Change (Excerpt)

By Pete Butler

It’s going to be the Three of Clubs.

I know this, as certainly as I know my own name. I’m less sure about some things than my fans would think. But sometimes, the swirling laws governing what _may_ happen coalesce into what _will_ happen with astonishing clarity. The sun will rise tomorrow, the Pirates will beat the Mets tonight, and as soon as I announce my “guess,” the Three of Clubs will appear on the monitor in front of me.

“Jack of Spades,” I proclaim, full of conviction.

The monitor flickers, and is suddenly filled by a pixilated version of the Three of Clubs.

Host Commentary

By Mur Lafferty

I always enjoy finding a classic trope that’s approached from a fresh point of view. Modern writers have to work hard to make a time travel story feel fresh, and it’s the same with an omniscient (or rather, a clairvoyant) character. I love seeing someone take a superpower to the fullest extent. For example, if I could teleport, I’d never walk again. Why do we see teleporters walking, ever? (This was a nice detail in the show “The Good Place” when Janet was never seen walking until she’s forced to, and it only takes a few steps before she yells, “walking is dumb!”

Bona Fide

By Ben Hallert

The block’s turning into a rough neighborhood, the kind of place murder victims go to hang out.  It’s nasty and dirty but it’s home.  What’s got me pissed isn’t a little trash, it’s these stupid glasses everyone’s wearing.  Government wastes money on them instead of doing their goddamn jobs, drives me nuts.  The worst part: that dumb smile.  You know the one.  Bunch of fakers, walking around smiling at all the filth like it’s high art.

“Hey man, forget your specs?”  Crap, a cornerboy snuck up on me because I wasn’t paying attention.  He holds out a set.  “Free pair.”

“I pay my taxes, boy, it’s not free.  Bug off.”  I keep walking, the pest follows.

“Ok, then you’ve already paid.”  He waves ’em again.

“I don’t want ’em.  My taxes should go to REAL cleanup and maintenance, not…  those.”  I stop, point.  “They’re insulting, I’m not interested in fantasy.”  I walk again, faster.  The boy keeps pace, switching to that infuriating ‘reasonable tone’ parents use when they’re trying to con kids out of being monsters.  I don’t NEED to be handled, I just want him gone.

“Look guy…. if you don’t take these, someone’ll try again later, then again after that.  Might as well get it over with.”  He brightens.  “Hey, you can just turn off the overlay if you want, you know.”

I slow.  “I can turn ’em off?  And you’ll all leave me alone?”

“Sure, you can turn off any enhancement.  Click your tongue twi-”

“Yeah, I’m not a caveman.”  I grab the set.  “Ok, you win.  Go bug someone else.”  I scowl at the glasses as he leaves to find his next mark, then put ’em on.  Everything around me changes.

I ignore the pretty lies and start configuring.  I know if I don’t, the slums’ll look like new construction, the garbage in the street’ll be gone, and everyone’ll have the bodies of freakin’ supermodels.  After a minute, I’ve got honest, dingy reality back.  I’ll take true filth over fake clean anyday, but… everyone still has that dumb smile. I want to scream “It’s not real!  It’s a lie, they’re faking you out and you’re buying it!”  I want to, but they say I sound like a crazy person when I drop hard truths so sometimes I don’t.

They don’t care.  They get their shiny buildings and pretty people and nobody has to DO anything for it.

Well, at least the cornerboys’ll stop hassling me.  I squint, it’s bright out.  Re-open the editor, make ’em sunglasses.  Not bad.  For funsies, I flip one of those idiot mouths upside down.  Oh, this is rich, the simp looks so messed up.  I flip a setting so everyone’s like that.  That’s better, now I don’t have to look at the grins anymore.

Fine.  They can have their illusions, I’ll stay in the real world.  I know the score, I’ve got my integrity.

I keep walking, the last honest man in a world of lies, and I smile.

Host Commentary

By Benjamin C. Kinney

Oh, I love this story. On the surface, it’s a fun little story about hypocrisy. But on a second look, it’s a deep and revealing story about hypocrisy. When the narrator calls himself the last honest man in a world of lies, he’s only wrong on half of it. All of us – every human being, every one – gets by on lies. I mean, I wouldn’t call them lies, but there’s the rub, isn’t it? It’s not even self-deception. It’s self-creation.

We see what we expect to see. For those of you who don’t know, in my day job I’m a neuroscientist. One of the most fascinating things about the human brain is how little of the world it really senses. You have a rich experience of sight and sound and color – but only a tiny fraction of that is coming in through your eyes and ears. You get a few pinpricks and hints, and your brain fills in the rest based on what it knows and what it expects. This is true for everything from a tree in the corner of your eye – you have very little color vision in your peripheral vision, but your brain knows leaves are green and you have a tree there; to a conversation, where two people might remember the same gist but would recount entirely different words.

In this way, our personality shapes how we see the world. All those expectations depend, in part, on who we are. We’ve all got our glasses, turning filth into high art, or turning smiles upside down.

I just wish we had easier access to the settings.

Oasis (Excerpt)

By Greg van Eekhout

You turn a lever that pops open the cover of the control pad. There’s a big red button labeled OPEN AIRLOCK. You jab it. Then you jab the CONFIRM button. Then you push the handle thing, and it’s all over.

Host Commentary

By Alasdair Stuart

Welcome friends to the show of shows. Escape Pod is a Hugo nominated podcast which has for the last 15 years or so brought you the best short science fiction on the planet. This year its editors, Mur and Divya, are ALSO Hugo nominated and I’m incredibly happy, both as a fan and as an employee and, well, as the co-owner to see them get the recognition they deserve.

It got me thinking, too, about the earliest stories we’ve run and in particular, this one. Oasis, by Greg Van Eekhout, is the first flash piece EP ever ran and now we do rafts of them across all four shows. Oasis isn’t quite where it began, but it’s where it began to coalesce, and revisiting it in 2021 was a fascinating and disquieting experience as you’ll hear. Host, narrator and audio producer are all Serah Eley on the original, and while Serah’s narration remains, I’m tagging in on host duties and Adam Pracht has the audio conn. So without further ado, it’s story time.

This story really does have a different resonance in 2021. Which by the way is how you say ‘hits different’ if you’re 44. The crushing tedium, the sense of constantly being underfoot, the constant aggregate terror that after a while just collapses into a flat grey line of eternal angst? This isn’t a story about lockdown but it’s absolutely a demonstration of how art is different every time we encounter it.

But it’s also a demonstration of something else, something more fundamental and vital and, I’d argue, necessary than anything else in this story: perseverance, and the perseverance that comes through community. Let’s be real, this is a story that places suicidal ideation front and centre and at no point looks away from that. But it also stares it down every single time. The fear never stops slathering, the terror never stops screeching. We just look at it until it loses its grip.

It always, always loses its grip. Sometimes it takes ten seconds, sometimes it takes sixty days. Sometimes it takes sixteen months. But we hang on and we pay the price we have to because we know what we’re going through will end.

Sound familiar?

I’m going to the cinema for the first time in sixteen months as you listen to this. My partner’s getting a haircut. We’re getting cleaners in next week. We’re double vaccinated, effective from tomorrow, and we’re still wearing masks everywhere we go because we aren’t idiots and we don’t want to put other people at risk. Things are different, things are mostly better. We persevere. We recognize those differences and victories and on we go. Or to put it another way, a way Greg puts it: None of us suck. Not today, and not tomorrow either.

What a story. What a way to start our relationship with flash fiction. Thanks Greg and thanks Serah.