Hello and welcome to the travel cast episode 495 the

travel cast is an audio fiction podcast magazine that brings strange stories

by strange authors to strange listeners such as yourself. I'm your host Norm Sherman.

Got a deep weird and layered story for your folks this week. You're gonna love it.

We bring you Jared Chapples The First Car Ballet by Kay Vandel.

Kay is a coastal ecologist and weird fiction writer.

Her works first appeared and sees the press, dark matter, and anthologies including

the world belongs to us and death's other kingdom, horror tales of World War I.

This story is a treble cast original.

So grab your pen and paper and get ready to take notes.

Without further ado, we bring you Jared Chapples, The First Car Ballet by Kay Vandel. The setting, I tell the choreographer, is the great swamp near where my squadron crash landed shortly after

armistice. We didn't know about armistice yet, though. No one told us. How could they, so high above us in their airships?

So we kept collecting stinking mushrooms and huncering and sawgrass that would cut our faces raw

until all the victory songs were written and the bodies were buried and

have a grave we out until Maron with my name on it actually if you want to go see it, you know,

for inspiration. The choreographer nods and writes this down. She's very accommodating.

I describe to her the taste of the mushrooms, chewy, gamey, like strips of salted meat that weren't quite jerky, and the giant turkeys were their serrated beaks

and how they'd hunt us, and how the frogs would sing their loudest when the engines of the airships

bellowed overhead.

Durbin and I would squint up at the sun and try to make out their banners.

If they were allies, we'd scream until our throats were raw and wave our arms.

And they were always allies, because it was after armistice. The choreographer goes over her notes. I just want to clarify one thing, sir, she says. Certainly, I say. When she calls me, sir, she says. Certainly, I say.

...