#weirdfiction

[enchantedbook]

Cover of the magazine 'Der Orchideengarten' by Karl Ritter, 1920.

[hollys-tape-recorder]

**This contains spoilers, so if you are currently listening to the show and wish to remain in the dark, maybe avert your gaze and attention entirely.** I’m currently casting a voice actor for an upcoming episode of my indie horror audio drama, Jack, It’s Me.

The episode is titled “Tape Found In Room 6” — a standalone found tape installment connected to the larger story of Cedar Bend.

ROLE: Frederick Frederick is the morning chef at Junco Diner. Dry, practical, sarcastic, tired, and deeply unimpressed by the town's nonsense… until Room 6 starts making that difficult.

Looking for an adult masculine voice, ideally 30s–50s sounding. Any North American accent welcome.

This is a featured episode lead role. Clean home recording required.

[quietcut]

The Road Below

A Subterraneans Story

Cassidy Watcher arrived in Burbank on a day when the heat felt tired, as if even the sun couldn’t be bothered anymore. He stood on the pavement staring at the tiny bungalow he’d just inherited — a chipped, sun-faded thing from the 1940s, now dwarfed on every side by towering new mansions. Glass walls, infinity pools, hedges trimmed into silent green fortresses.

None of these houses had been here when the bungalow was built. They looked like they belonged to another century entirely.

Cassidy, disgraced ex-detective, now pretending to be a real estate researcher, pushed open the gate and felt a strange vibration in the ground. Not movement — more like recognition.

Inside, the bungalow smelled of old dust and abandoned citrus. On the kitchen table lay the keys, the paperwork, and a brass key unlike the others. Heavy. Tarnished. Etched with a single word:

SUBSTATION.

He found the door behind the house — a metal hatch half-wrapped in ivy, nearly invisible unless you knew where to look. The brass key fit perfectly.

The hinges groaned as though woken.

Cold air drifted upward, smelling of concrete, stone, and something older.

The stairs led down to a tunnel lined in poured cement, cracked and marked with faint symbols he didn’t recognize. The walls were damp. The silence felt padded, deliberate. The further he walked, the clearer it became that the tunnels extended under the new mansions surrounding his bungalow.

And then he saw the footprint.

Bare. Fresh. Wide.

Someone had been down here very recently.

“You really shouldn’t be exploring,” a voice said behind him, smooth as poured whiskey.

Cassidy spun. A man stood in the tunnel wearing a tailored suit that looked wrong in the dim light — too clean, too sharp, as if the dust refused to touch him.

“I’m Cosmo Gent,” he said. “I imagine you’ve heard of me.”

Everyone had. Cosmo Gent — the mystery tycoon who had somehow acquired half the prime property from Beverly Hills to Malibu in only a few years. He’d become a legend, a ghost with a portfolio.

“Didn’t expect to find you underground,” Cassidy said.

Cosmo smiled. “This is where the foundations are.”

Two figures stepped out of the darkness behind Cosmo — neighbours Cassidy had passed earlier, though something about them now seemed different. Noah Deitrich from the hilltop glass house. Reiko Columbia from the place with no visible driveway. Their eyes reflected the tunnel light in a way that didn’t look entirely human.

“These tunnels… they’re not on any map,” Cassidy said quietly.

“No,” Cosmo agreed. “They belong to the original planners. Visionaries. They understood that a city must be built on more than land. It must be built on intention.”

“Why are they under my house?”

Cosmo stepped closer, and for a moment Cassidy thought he saw the tunnel walls pulse behind him. “Because you’ve inherited a doorway,” he said. “One the city forgot. One the founders never intended to leave unattended.”

Cosmo’s smile softened, almost pitying.

“You’ve already stepped across the threshold, Cassidy. That’s all that matters.”

Cassidy backed away, heart hammering. He turned and ran, following the echo of his own breath until he burst back into daylight, gasping. The hatch slammed shut behind him.

That night, as he tried to sleep in the bungalow, he heard tapping beneath the floorboards. Slow. Methodical.

Four taps. A pause. Two taps. Then a long, dragging scrape, as though fingers were moving across the underside of the house.

Cassidy knelt and pressed his ear to the floor.

The tapping stopped.

Then a whisper rose from the soil — soft, patient, impossibly close:

“You’re home now.”

[juhnkit]

a mind-bending tale where reality glitches at a midnight convenience store. An abandoned notebook transforms a night shift worker into part of an artist's creation, blurring lines between creator and created. The ultimate meta-horror: discovering you're just a character in someone else's masterpiece.

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[patterspod]

It made me sad in the middle of work when I found out David Lynch died. I said out loud in my cubicle “no..no” and even teared up. Nobody noticed or showed any signs that this mattered as I quivered with emotion with a headset on and my white button down long sleeve shirt tucked in.

It made me sad because a force had left us, whose bread and butter it was to investigate - and keep alive like a crackling electrical connection, the human moments that bind us, while on the surface, deranged characters would plot or seethe and innocent, tragic or even “off-beat” types would fall in love, commit murder and generally play out elements of wholesome Americana.

There was no “us vs them” in the world of Lynch, there was just “Lynchian,” an umbrella term that unified universal beings under an unknowable but potent…something. Some kind of presence that was either manmade or primordial or a mixture of both and in most ways that answer didn’t matter because a teenager was dead and the community was hurting.

He felt like a bright shining beacon in a storm of normal norms. His presence alone was a comfort, like the idea that him just being alive meant that others gravitating toward the weird, thoughtful life could use him as a strong example of why this is a fulfilling path to take, and find similar travelers along the way.

When I was in middle school I listened to a punk rock album recorded live where the singer references having a bad haircut like “Eraserhead” which I had never heard of or seen. But I did see the cover in the video store and knew that if a punk rock singer was referencing it live on a recorded album that it must be cool or interesting at least. The Simpsons would send me on this type of journey multiple times throughout life.

I liked David Lynch’s relationship with creativity, how he seemed to tap into a pulsing, pre-existing force like placing his hand in a clear stream to catch a passing fish. He seemed to do this from the perspective of an everyman without ever believing once that to be an everyman was the goal. It was an archetype to step out of I think.

I equated his relationship with Americana to be a lot like Pee Wee Herman’s and John Waters, two of my other favorites. That normalcy was deranged on its own. No tweaking necessary. The grinning neighbor’s white smile where teeth might crack or shoot out was the strangest thing.

Oddball kitsch could be a comfort.

I was in awe of what Lynch did. As a thinker I was naturally curious about understanding “it” - like an exercise, but similar to the otherworldly presence of the Beyond in Twin Peaks, I never ever wanted it fully named. That wasn’t the point. The reaching was the point or the traveling or the phantoms.

The point was the Being, the relationships or the living. Or the dying - a process all its own that brought out humanity like instinctual figures called to an ancient ritual. Makes me think of the Log Lady’s last scene where she has a final conversation with Deputy Hawk and he knows her well and cares about her as Margaret Lanterman and she speaks urgently to him and it all feels lonely and intimate.

I suppose I identified with David Lynch. I was a Boy Scout. I was raised Mormon, had Mormon ancestry that I could trace all the way back to Brigham Young himself (though admittedly it was through his very first “pre-Mormon” wife Miriam Works. Who in a strange turn of fate right this very moment, I just learned for the first time she and I shared the very same birthday. I’m not sure if this is “Lynchian,” but it is strange.

I identified with David Lynch, because he always seemed to be putting Americana into focus from an earnest standpoint, and in looking at it so earnestly, he revealed the strangeness and a strangeness inherent in life itself, probably.

He championed a weirdness in me that was an unnameable force fighting against the rubric of my attempted but doomed traditional upbringing that my family always fell short of not through vice but doubt or apathy.

When it was time to go on my cinephile journey the Lynch filmography was there with a whole big groaning factory space all to his namesake. And discovering his movies were bread crumbs to a bigger community of fellow weirdos who were not weird but actually more normal than the normies. What did these words even mean actually?

There were traditional tales of masculinity and melodramatic love triangles mixed with ancient nameless evils. I mostly liked how comedic he could be while being thrilling and grotesque like when Bobby Peru blows his own head off, or how Lynch let things just be odd without scapegoating a character. After all, “This whole world is wild at heart and weird on top.”

He was an instrument that harnessed the ethereal like music and allowed me to be a type of device capable of receiving it.

I favored his atmospheric droning. I will internally refer to it as “industrial Lynch drone.” It is a version of room tone that feels proactive. It feels like a presence. It is soothing to me. I guess it’s Lynchian. I will miss knowing that his heart is beating out there. He is an idea now, but he was an idea then too.

Now he is a presence like sunlight or the fog through the trees on a mountain by a waterfall.

[notesfromtheunknown]

Incident Report: Wild Fae Ejection

Root & Ember staff report ejecting a wild fae (again) for attempted glitter theft. The fae claims innocence. The floor sparkles anyway.

Lys: “This is the third time this week.”

[madlabgames]

The Pilot Episode: A Quick Guide to Bizarre Boroughs

Bizarre Boroughs: A Quick Guide 📖

Welcome to Bizarre Boroughs: The Endless Grind, a tabletop roleplaying game where the extraordinary hides in plain sight. It’s a game about truly living in a city where the mundane is always on the verge of becoming the bizarre. You'll play as a Player Citizen (PC), navigating your daily life, while the Mayor acts as your game master, storyteller, and the arbiter of the city's strange rules. This isn't about saving the world; it's about finding triumphs, forging unbreakable bonds, and discovering the epic narrative woven into the fabric of everyday urban life.

The core of the game is collaborative storytelling. You and your fellow players will work with the Mayor to bring the metropolis to life, defining your character's place in it and reacting to the bizarre situations that arise. It’s a game for those who appreciate the thrilling highs and lows of the everyday and the surprising drama found in the struggles and triumphs of modern existence.

Core Concepts 🏙️

The Setting: Your game is set in a sprawling, American metropolis—New York City, but with a unique, bizarre twist. Gleaming corporate towers cast long shadows over dilapidated tenements where ancient curses might fester, and the subway system is a labyrinth of forgotten tunnels that might lead to another dimension. Here, the everyday and the hyper-mundane collide. You might find a shambling zombie working the night shift at a fast-food joint, a demon running a suspiciously successful business, or an intelligent plant offering surprisingly good financial advice from a pot on a fire escape. This city is a living, breathing character in your story, filled with forgotten gods, mischievous spirits, and a constant hum of ambition and desperation.

Hyper-Mundane Adventures: The challenges you face are not epic quests to slay dragons, but rather mundane problems with a bizarre twist. That broken appliance isn't just a repair job; it could be a boss battle with a rogue automaton that demands a philosophical debate before it gives up its microchip. Your neighbor's nightly rituals might be demonic, causing your houseplants to wilt, or your overdue bills could be coming from an infernal collection agency that sends minor imps to your door. The real adventure lies in the relentless grind of bills, bad landlords, and bureaucratic red tape, all of which are infused with a fantastical element that makes every small victory feel monumental.

Player-Driven Story: This game emphasizes character-driven stories. Your PC's personal goals, struggles, and relationships are the heart of the narrative. Your choices and actions, not a pre-written plot, will shape the story you tell together. It's a collaborative experience where your character's life feels real, messy, and wonderfully weird. Maybe your PC's goal is to open the city's best coffee shop, only to find the perfect location is already claimed by a territorial coffee elemental. Or perhaps you're trying to get a zoning permit from the Department of Interdimensional Affairs. The game is about finding the hero within the hyper-mundane and writing your own unique saga.

How to Play: The D6 Success System 🎲

Most actions in the game are resolved using a simple yet flexible D6 Success System. When an action has an uncertain outcome—whether it's trying to talk your way out of a parking ticket or outrun a possessed taxicab—the Mayor will call for a "check."

Dice Pool: Your dice pool is determined by one of your five core attributes, each rated from 1 to 5. A higher rating means your PC is naturally more adept in that area.

Brawn: Raw physical power, useful for wrestling a sentient garbage disposal, lifting a magically sealed manhole cover, or enduring a prolonged chase.

Finesse: Agility and coordination, perfect for dodging a flying gargoyle, picking a magically sealed lock, or performing an acrobatic escape from a collapsing building.

Wits: Reasoning and perception, for investigating strange occult markings, deciphering a cryptic message from a talking pigeon, or noticing the subtle details of a supernatural scene.

Presence: Persuasion and social grace, for convincing a goblin shopkeeper to lower their prices, haggling with a spirit for a forgotten memory, or standing your ground against a intimidating entity.

Resolve: Willpower and fortitude, for resisting a demon's influence, enduring the psychological strain of a surreal hallucination, or staying calm under pressure.

Successes: On a D6 roll, a result of 4 or 5 is one success (∙), and a 6 is two successes (∙∙). The total number of successes is your Player Result. The special value of a 6 represents a moment of true brilliance or a stroke of luck that propels you far ahead.

Challenge Rating (CR): The Mayor sets a Challenge Rating, which is the number of successes you need to achieve. If your Player Result meets or exceeds the CR, you succeed!

Critical Glitch: Beware of rolling 1s! A spectacular failure can result in a Critical Glitch if the number of 1s rolled is equal to or greater than your relevant Attribute rating. This can lead to a disastrous, often bizarre, outcome, like your pants suddenly falling down during a tense standoff or your arms temporarily turning into rubbery tentacles after a magical backlash. The Mayor's interpretation of a critical glitch is where some of the most memorable and bizarre moments of the game come from.

Key Mechanics 🔧

Harm Tracks: Your PC has two crucial tracks, Physical and Mental, each with six segments that represent your resilience to the city's pressures. As you take harm, you fill segments, which imposes penalties on your dice rolls. Physical Harm comes from bodily trauma or getting slimed by a sewer monster, while Mental Harm is from stress and psychological strain, like the relentless pressure of overdue bills. These tracks visually represent the toll the city takes on you, reminding you that survival in this metropolis is a constant grind.

Relationships: Your connections with Non-Player Citizens (NPCs) are vital. These are tracked with a -6 to +6 rating, and a strong relationship can provide aid or create new, bizarre problems. A trusted contact can get you a discount on arcane artifacts, but they might also get you involved in a bitter supernatural rivalry. A negative relationship can be just as interesting, as a PC might have to find a way to deal with a resentful ghost or a grumpy gargoyle who holds a grudge.

Life Lessons: You'll earn Life Lessons for completing significant story milestones. These can be used to improve your character, such as gaining a new Profession Skill Bonus or a Unique Talent/Quirk. These are how your Citizen grows and adapts to their bizarre surroundings, becoming a legend of their borough. This mechanic is a direct reflection of your character's journey, showing how they learn from their bizarre experiences and become more resilient and capable.

Finance Rating: Your Finance Rating (-1 to 6) represents your PC's financial situation, from being broke to wealthy. It's not just for buying things; it can affect your daily life in a number of ways, from what kind of apartment you can afford to the type of food you eat. It's used for checks related to your financial well-being, like paying a demonic landlord, affording a ticket to the interdimensional opera, or trying to bribe a bureaucratic imp for a vital permit.

Bizarre Boroughs is a celebration of the small victories and the beautiful weirdness of urban life. It’s an invitation to find the hero within the hyper-mundane and write your own unique saga.

Ready to start your adventure? Grab the rulebook and get started at madlabgames.itch.io!

[daniel-profeta]

The Head

There was a place between sleep and wakefulness where anything could be possible. A haze of forgotten dreams and lost promises. Her hands hung out of the window and the gleeful grin on her face was infectious. She floated between states of being completely alive and nearly dead, but right then she was whole. He smiled back and sped up as the car careened across the mountainside. The world was awash in pink as the sun set. The trees opened on one side to give way to the entire countryside with the dead city just beyond it. It was all so real; they could almost reach out and touch it.

In a past world they were barely friends, but shared experience can bring people together in a way nothing else can. He was well acquainted with this concept already as his parents had bonded over their mutual hatred of their absent father figures. He had always hoped he could break the cycle, but some patterns are more universal than anyone could have imagined.

For example, the cycle of life had finally taken a turn and allowed something new to become apex. Finally, something had surpassed the limits of human ability and taken the worms out. All that remained were ruins and some survivors. Small communities of huddled forms abounded in the wilderness, and they both knew some humans had been kept alive in the cities. All that was left was to hide and wait for death. Or so thought most survivors.

Not them, not these humans, they had taken advantage of the situation and had risen. With gallons of stockpiled gasoline, stolen weapons, food reserves, and ingenuity, they were rulers of the wasteland. They found each other and found a hope that lasted beyond anything they had yet experienced. They were one of the few who managed to carve out a life beyond simple survival, they had become explorers of a new world filled with wonders and powerful entities just beyond the layers of hopeless chaos. They were heading to the dead city to try and loot it and see what they could learn. It seemed every place they found had a story to tell regarding the end of times. He put his foot down further and they sped up.

They had become each other's shadows. In everything they did they fed off each other’s energy and had almost become one person. At first working together was difficult, but with practice they had gotten so good it seemed impossible to stop them. He would rather go a week without food or water than go a week without her company, and thanks to current circumstances that exact scenario had occurred on multiple occasions. He couldn’t believe she had stuck with him for so long, and in everything they shared everything. Except for one twisted secret.

He was dying.

Something had taken hold of him inside and he had no idea what it was. He believed he had contracted it in the bunker they had stormed a few months prior, but where he got sick was immaterial. Last week the coughs had gotten worse, and he had started coughing up blood. Earlier today he found himself coughing up what looked like black sludge. His body, once strong and lean, was weakening. He could feel his brain burning and shriveling as his eyes stung every time he tried to close them. He couldn’t sleep.

She knew something was wrong and had asked him about it, but he had lied repeatedly to try and protect her from the knowledge she would soon be alone. He somehow knew in his heart this disease would finish him; it was something inevitable. He just had to try to hold on as long as possible.

They made their way down the mountainside, and through the tall grasses that paved the way to the city as well as any road. They had gotten incredibly lucky with the car they had found; it was built to last decades. Most recent car models were victims of planned obsolescence and were vastly overpriced, but the rich had vehicles most could never dream of. No longer. Now it belonged to the strongest and the smartest.

Darkness snuck up on the world slowly and like a wave descended and crashed onto the city, illuminating through polarity the small fires still sending smoke signals up into the dry night air. As they entered the core of the city, they felt alive. Her hand crept over to his and squeezed. Driving through the empty city at night was almost romantic in a strange way. Despite everything, they still existed. Despite all the world had been through, they had found and sustained each other through love and devotion.

Parking the car and looking up at the towering skyscrapers, they were struck by how small they were in comparison to these edifices of human achievement that were slowly eroding and falling into the ground. The earth would swallow them up and time would roll on by, totally unbothered by their presence. It was freeing and exhilarating, because with this knowledge comes the idea that one can live life for the joy of living beyond the idea of constraint and boundaries. There is nothing but the never ending potential of endless wonders, and the only sadness could be regret that you don’t have time to see even the smallest fraction of them. All that was inconsequential all along is revealed. Everything comes to an end, and it was foolish to ever try to convince themselves otherwise.

There was a faint sound carried by the wind from a far distant part of the city. It sounded like a distorted voice being carried aloft by a long-broken loudspeaker, probably a forgotten loop of the old advertisements that would constantly play to remind people to consume till they could actively consume no more. Then they would be shunted aside.

Their lips met and lingered, the doors opened, and they exited in tandem, armed and ready for anything that might come their way. There were not many humans who could say they had killed one of the creatures. They had killed many of them in that bunker where he had gotten sick…

They started to search the rubble and inside smaller buildings for anything useful. Small radios kept them in contact as they split up and moved slowly through the ruins like cats on the prowl. Focus was razor sharp. They could see their breath in the cold of the night. Days had been slowly growing colder and colder since the sun had begun to shrink.

He suddenly was wracked with self-doubt and faltered as the sickness almost overcame him. He knew he did not deserve this situation. Why was it he who managed to survive and not someone who needed to? Before the end came, he hadn’t had any direction in life, and he actively felt life had no purpose or reason to it. He couldn’t stand to look at himself in a mirror, he felt as though this body was not his own. He was not really that great of a person, but he had been forced by either hidden courage or simple instinct to adapt and stay alive.

Now he had a girl who would die to protect him, and he would do the same for her. But he couldn’t help but feel as though there was no reason it was he who made it this far. As he stopped to catch his breath, he realized that - in a way - he was happy he had gotten sick. He felt it was justified if he died.

Her voice, distorted yet obviously excited, came blowing out of the radio to inform him she had found something. He smiled at the thought of her. It had not been easy for her, yet she had retained her enthusiasm for life and living despite the circumstances. Mostly.

Occasionally, there would be mood swings where she would feel like she was completely worthless and attempt to take her own life. Thankfully, they balanced each other out and kept each other's doubt and self-hatred in check. It was a system that might work better if he was as honest with her as she was with him. But that is something he felt he couldn’t do.

As he moved quickly to her position, he tried to imagine life without her. Life without her smile. Without her daily kindness and thoughtfulness. Without her unconditional love. Without her soul staying beside his.

He coughed again.

She rushed to him and they embraced beneath an awning of sheer metal hanging out over what looked to have formerly been a restaurant of some kind. Her hug was warm and bracing and his worries left him, at least at that time.

She was holding a Journal that was wrapped in some strange animal skin. He ran his hands over it and asked her what it was. She told him it was either crocodile or alligator, but it might have been fake. Not that it mattered, the book itself was real. She had discovered it in a single-story home that had remained mostly intact. She opened it and showed him what she had been reading.

The name signed inside the front cover was nearly illegible, but after staring at it for a few seconds he thought it read “Rick.” He took the book and started flipping through it. It felt strange to hold, as if it were cursed. Evil. It was only a teenager’s diary, and it felt like an invasion of privacy to even be reading it. But there was no helping it, any discovery of what had caused the end of the world was worth it. What had happened leading up to it? Why had the sun gotten smaller? How did civilization collapse so quickly?

As she realized the book felt odd, she started looking around them and felt increasingly that something was invading them. They were not cats, they were mice. Insidious and slimy, it crept within and caught hold. Despair was setting in, and something weird was happening in the sky above them. The stars had gone black.

Looking up, they felt a sickly turning in their stomachs as long tendrils or ropes began to descend from the sky. These eerie tentacles were like nothing else these naïve humans had viewed before and following them up with their eyes found no place where the dead hanging ropes could originate from. It just seemed like they went up into the sky forever. Slowly lowering down to choke any fool caught in the grasp of self-doubt.

A split second of hesitation almost destroyed them both at once, but the universe had other plans for them. They stared in awe and fear at the slender limbs as more and more slowly appeared in the inky black sky. Then he grabbed her hand and bolted for the rubble of the home she had found the book in. In the air behind them small floating lights started opening and illuminating the large gaping pores on the falling limbs with a cold and calculating pale light. Daring to look back revealed the lights were darting alien eyeballs suspended at random points in the air, slowly floating and all staring at these idiot humans who got far too overconfident.

She slammed the rusty door shut as the sound of the loudspeakers in the distance faded, replaced by a single repeating sound that continually rang out at seemingly timed intervals. The sound was that of the chiming of a bell; small, sharp, and eager to annoy with its piercing yell. They had heard this sound before, and both knew they were going to die. It was not a matter of if, but a matter of when and how gruesomely. His sickness was starting to overtake him.

They locked their eyes together and realized they were going to be stuck in the dilapidated house for a while. Long enough to at least learn from the diary of Mr. Rick. Maybe it would reveal something secret information they could use to escape this god-forsaken place? At the very least it would pass the time before their fates were sealed. They moved furniture into position to block the door, but soon heard a strange hissing sound coming from outside. It was the sound of acid devouring or water being eviscerated by fire. The things outside were trying to get in. But what the humans did not know was they already had gotten in..

listen to the song I wrote to accompany this story.