Audio Engineering by Bruce McDonald

Music by Robert Farmer

Ending Song  ”Re: Your Brains” by Johnathan Coulton

Parental Guidance Strongly Suggested

No tricks today, only a treat – a new Union Dues story!  Also included is a Halloween Song which we love and hope you will too.

Most of our listeners are familiar with Jeffrey DeRego’s Union Dues series both on escapepod and now his new series of the Team Shikaragaki on our podcast.  If you haven’t yet been infected with the Union Dues bug, you will have the joy of getting to go back into our archives and escapepod’s Union Dues archives to catch up with the stories

I’m on my second Martini when I feel Miss Jennifer enter the Jumpin’ Catfish Lounge: Home of the Buck-Fifty Draft. The bar is attached to a seedy little candlepin bowling alley wedged between an abandoned church, Baptist I think, and a dirt parking lot stuffed with pickup trucks. The walls are papered with posters for low-rent country cover bands, amateur wrestling, and The World Famous Solomon Brothers Traveling Circus. A wagon wheel chandelier throws enough light that I can’t even blend into the shadows so she’s sure to see me.

I’ve got an ear-worm and the gin is dulling it some but not chasing it away. This isn’t a regular ear-worm, you know, like the first two bars of a TV theme song that perpetually cycle through your head like some supernatural torture. No, this is a stray thought.

We are fortunate to have another Union Dues story upcoming.  We will release as soon as we can do it justice and again ask our listeners to help out an author who has given so much enjoyment.

Audio Engineering by Chris Moody

Parental Guidance Suggested

Most of our listeners are familiar with Heffery DeRego’s Union Dues series both on escapepod and now his new series of the Team Shikaragaki on our podcast.  If you haven’t yet been infected with the Union Dues bug, you will have the joy of getting to go back into our archives and escapepod’s Union Dues archives to catch up with the stories.

The smell of greasy hamburgers and the sound of calliope music sneaks into the small dark dressing room off the main stage of the Missouri State Fair.

Kitty and TK are already in costume, Johnny Toruko is in the back getting dressed, and Miss Jennifer is alternating between looking at her watch and glaring at us for not being quicker.

“Five minutes,” she says.

“Almost ready Miss Jennifer,” we answer in sing-song voice.

I’ve barely got my last white glove on before the Team Shikaragaki Go! theme music starts.

Kitty is out first. She handsprings across the center stage then leaps up and crouches on the light rig.

TK walks out next, waving and smiling. Her yellow tights catch the early Saturday afternoon sunlight and almost glow.

Some kids are waving drawings of us on homemade signs.

Johnny goes out next. He stops and makes a “bang-bang” motion with his hands until bolts of flickering blue/white lightning snake up his arms. He flashes each hand down and blasts the lightning into a grounded steel plate in the stage floor.

The fans, especially the young girls, scream so loud it vibrates the dressing room.

I was supposed to wait until our theme music hits the second bridge before taking the stage but all I can hear is the carousel, all I can smell is the food, and I come out early.

The story today is not for young children. It is PG13 for language, mature topics and violence

Read by Abby Kim

Music by Robert Farmer

Audio Engineering by Chris Moody

Jeffrey DeRego’s fiction has appeared at Escape Pod and Tales of the Zombie War. He also contributes funny commentaries about writing to The Writing Show (www.writingshow.com) and has appeared on both SciFi Dig, and The Eclectic Word.
 

So, we’re like in this mall in Wisconsin or Michigan or some other place I can’t find on a map, roped off and on a little stage. And, all I can concentrate on is how good an Orange Frosty from the food court would taste right now. Do I notice that a couple of hundred kids, mostly girls around between five and fifteen are screaming questions and snapping pictures? Sure, but that isn’t anyway near as interesting as how they mix orange juice, coconut milk, and soda water with a chopped banana.