by B.T. Joy.

“The Angel In The Marble” is original to Pseudopod.

‘The Angel In The Marble’ is an example of a kind of story that has haunted and fascinated me since early childhood and which, until writing this, I had never quite expressed in words. It’s one of those ‘stormy night’ stories we find in the darker corners of books of fairytales in which someone is lost in a deep wood and so follows the single light shining from a nearby cabin; wandering, unknowingly, even further from the road. It’s a story about two strangers, not desiring company and having their own personal reasons for solitude, who nevertheless meet on common ground and must reveal and complete one another’s stories. I see this as a trope very near to the heart of horror and dark literature and I’ve witnessed it play out time and again in such places as Pinter’s The Caretaker and No Man’s Land, Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night and, more recently, the 2008 Marek Losey film The Hide, which is probably the best contemporary example I can name.

B.T. JOY has been writing horror for some years now and has had around two dozen works of fiction included in magazines, journals, anthologies and podcasts worldwide. His intention is to produce tales set in a realistic environment in which the psychological preoccupations of the protagonist drive the narrative and any supernatural elements are left for the reader to infer; rather than being openly stated by the writer. Also a practicing poet, B.T. Joy’s verse has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize on three occasions and can be found in the pages and internet presences of over fifty markets. He is the holder of a BA from London Metropolitan University and a PGDE from Strathclyde. This year he was awarded an MLitt in Poetry from the University of St. Andrews and he relocated to Heilongjiang, in Northern China, where he writes and reads voraciously and teaches English at high school level. This year his first solo collection of poetry Teaching Neruda will be released through Popcorn Press. White Knuckle Press are also releasing a selection of his prose poetry in a chapbook due out in March. For information on all his writing and publications listeners should refer to his website: B.T. Joy: Online Poetry and his blog: Turning To Visuals

Your narrator – Simon Meddings is a freelance script writer, podcast etc and audio actor. The waffle on podcast can be found at waffleon.podbean.com You can follow simon @hawkeyemeds

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It’s always been the consensus that symmetry is synonymous with beauty.

But Adrian Speer disagreed.

What was more symmetrical than that block of rough, square-edged marble; fresh from the quarry? If symmetry was all we were looking for we’d be exhibiting a slab of raw, unchiseled stone on that glass-surrounded plinth in the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence.

They do say the great artist went personally to Carrara; to choose just the right marble for his masterworks. And so the raw resources were important. No one’s saying different. But, in the angles of the white stone, Michelangelo saw angels; and he chiseled until he released them into the air. Breaking symmetry for beauty’s sake.

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