PseudoPod

• Author : Ramsey Campbell
• Narrator : Ant Bacon
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Marty Perrett
• Discuss on Forums

“Again” was first published in Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine, November 1981 and has been reprinted numerous times.

by Ramsey Campbell

 

Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.

All at once he was no longer sure that the groaning had been the sound of flies. Even so, if the old lady had been watching him he might never have been able to step forward. But she couldn’t see him, and he had to know. Though he couldn’t help tiptoeing, he forced himself to go to the head of the bed.

He wasn’t sure if he could lift the blanket, until he looked in the can of meat. At least it seemed to explain the smell, for the can must have been opened months ago. Rather than think about that—indeed, to give himself no time to think—he snatched the blanket away from the head of the figure at once.

The post PseudoPod 550: Again appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Authors : Ruth EJ Booth, Richard Farren Barber and Samuel Marzioli
• Narrators : Andrew Reid, Moaner T. Lawrence and Spencer Disparti
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
• Discuss on Forums

‘Good Boy’ was first published in Far Horizons e-magazine, in their January 2015 issue.

‘Reaching Out’ is a PseudoPod Original.

‘A Thing In All My Things’ was originally published in Urban Fantasy Magazine on August 25, 2015.

“When you let go, you are truly free.”

Good Boy By Ruth E.J. Booth

I’d wanted a dog ever since I was little. So when I finally moved out, I was bound to end up with my own. This scratty wee scrag of soot. I say he’s mine, I think we sort of found each other. Well, they say the dog picks the owner. I say he found me when nobody else wanted me.

He doesn’t do tricks or owt. He’s more a companion, really. Likes being talked to, taken for walks, that sort of thing. He prefers the quiet parts of town – the old industrial estate, or that scrap of trees down by the railway tracks – though he’s well-behaved in crowds, a stilling presence in all that madness.

I take him out more these days. He’s putting on weight, y’see. Funny, I used to be able to fit him in my hand, now it’s hard to heft his paws off of us. I’m not sure about him being at work so much – my boss doesn’t like him, for starters – but it’s nice, knowing he’s there, just over my shoulder. My constant shadow. Frankly, it’s become difficult to get through the day without him.

So he deserves a treat. I’ve meant to take him up to the bridge for a while, but it’s been a question of timing. Even then, I almost baulk it and climb back over the guard rail. That drop makes me fair dizzy – but, bless ‘im, suddenly he’s there, and the sickness just vanishes. God knows how he fits on the ledge.

He sits right up close to me, this big wet fuzzy thing. I bury my face in his damp black coat, until I’m not scared anymore. Just sort of warm, and numb. I lift my head, and all I can see is that same furred darkness. I pull myself up, stand on the edge and give his head one last scratch.

Good boy, I say. Good boy.

Reaching Out by Richard Farren Barber

I tried to ignore the woman because that’s what you do in a cemetery; you don’t intrude on someone else’s grief. But she was only a few rows behind me and I couldn’t concentrate on what I was saying to Gemma so I turned around.

I couldn’t see her at first. I looked over rows of pale gravestones and her voice rose between them as if the words came from the ground itself. There was movement and then I saw her. I hesitated – if there’s one thing you learn early on as a visitor to this place it is to keep your distance.

But I was concerned for her. It was impossible to remain human and not be a little worried. She wailed like an infant. I’ve heard people dying on a battlefield who were in less agony than she was.

I finished my conversation with Gemma – rushing through my update on the kids and her parents, the usual stuff – and stood up.

My feet crunched on the gravel path and I thought that the woman would hear my approach, but she was too wrapped up in her own pain. I got to within a few feet of her before she noticed me.

I hadn’t seen her in the cemetery before and I visit Gemma often enough to know most of the regulars. The woman was kneeling on the ground. Smudges of mud on her arms suggested that she had been lying on top of the grave. There was mud on her cheeks; mixed with tears that continued to stream down her face.

I hesitated. “Are you okay?” I still didn’t want to intrude. I thought she hadn’t heard me, or she’d heard me and decided to ignore me. And that would be okay, that would be fine – grief is a terrible thing, it can change you in ways you never expect and can’t understand. When Gemma went…

When Gemma went I hit a bad patch.

The woman turned to me.

“I can hear him.”

I looked at the headstone at the end of the grave. James Bowen.

“Your husband?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Lover.” She drew her hand through the grass on top of the grave in a way that made me shudder. It was as if she was caressing the body in the casket buried six foot below her.

“He’s gone,” I said.

She shook her head. Violently, so that the curled bangs of her hair swung back and forth. “No. He wouldn’t leave me.”

I sat down on the ground beside her. I made sure I was on the path, rather than James Bowen’s grave. Standing on plots gives me the creeps. When I see the cemetery’s gardeners taking short cuts across the grass I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from shouting at them.

“Can’t you hear him?” she asked. Her eyes were wide. Deep enough for a fool to fall into. I didn’t know her. I didn’t know James, and yet I understood what she was saying; how could he leave her? How could he ever leave? I’d asked Gemma the same question.

She kneeled forward on the grave once more. I put my hand on the grass beside her head and I thought I felt…movement.

“He’s waiting for me,” she said and started to pull away chunks of grass with her hands, gouging out black grooves in the earth. She stopped and put her cheek against the ground.

This time I heard it. A voice. Muffled. Almost hoarse from screaming.

“He’s still there,” she said.

I put my head to the ground and felt the thrum of noise rising to the surface. The scream of his pain.

And I ran back to Gemma, and started to dig.

A Thing in All My Things By Samuel Marzioli

There’s a thing in my closet, crouched in the dark, black lines accentuating every crease and fold of its shriveled face. A cherry-red eye peeks at me. The slash of a frown hints at untold regrets even as its croaking voice spills into the silence.

You should have died in your sleep and saved me all the trouble, it says.

After taking a moment to compose myself, I slip out of bed and hurry past that raw, corrupted space with my eyes averted. In the gloom of the living room, I open the blinds and let the day pour through the slats in glowing strips of light. Breakfast consists of three bowls of cereal and a handful of pills meant–among other things–to squash the thing for good. I unfold the newspaper and try to cloud my brain with random bits of trivia. Stuff the gaps with distractions so that, for one slivered moment, I might forget what’s waiting in the other room.

Not that it does a lick of good. For three years it’s haunted my life and there’s no rhyme or reason for when or where it will manifest next. A week ago, it appeared hunkered beside me on the porcelain ledge of the bathtub, its eyes staring curses–but only visible through the chrome reflection of the overflow plate. A month ago, it hid beneath my pillow, its fingers worming out from the edges like heavy tongues lapping at the air. Before then, it was behind a hallway air vent, scratching and sobbing inside the living room walls, and on and on, through more days and places than I care to remember.

I head to the bathroom and dawdle through my morning routine: brush my teeth, wash my face, scrub my skin in the shower so it shines the pink of old, healed bruises. But after toweling off, there’s no more time to waste. My feet drag across the carpet like dead weights, room to room, until the bedroom closet looms before me.

A chill digs through my skin as I reach into the infected recess of the closet. The thing flattens against the wall, like it’s pretending to be a shadow or a patch of mold. As if it thinks I can’t hear the sound of its spectral lungs pulling in the thought of air. Though I know it will not scratch or bite, it takes some time for me to steady my nerves, assemble my clothes and prepare for work.

There’s a thing in the espresso maker of my barista station. It fiddles with the inner workings, making the shots burn too hot or steep too thin. Its scalded fingers wiggle from the spouts, deep red filling the gossamer cracks in its broken, bloated skin.

We’re slammed at exactly 6 AM. The line of vehicles stretches across the parking lot, like the boxcars of two stalled freight trains. My co-workers scurry around–with a manic intensity that makes the Café Stop’s interior feel small as a crypt–and all of them barking orders.

On my best days, I can knock out eighty drinks an hour. But my best days never come when the thing’s around. Its blood sprinkles into the milk pitchers, and I have to dump them out in the sink to start again. Its spit dribbles down the espresso spouts, forcing me to remove the portafilters and wash them. It even reaches out from the water reservoir and whacks at finished drinks, upsetting their lids and spilling the contents across the counter.

My boss yells at me for the mess. “Damn it, Tom! If you can’t get your shit together, maybe you should find another place to hang your apron, mister!” Like a parent scolding an unruly child. As if I wasn’t twice his size and hadn’t trained him the day he stepped through those doors.

I almost say as much, until the thing knocks against the espresso machine’s plastic interior. Its whispered taunts, hidden behind the screech of steaming milk, lift stark as any shouted voice: Can’t you do anything right? You’re useless. A waste of air.

It drains the fight from me. I nod, apologize and promise, “It won’t happen again.”

There’s a thing in my cigarette lighter. It wets the wire so it can’t spark and clogs the jet valve so the butane won’t release. Sometimes it sticks its head into the torch stream, infusing my cigarettes with the scent and taste of rotting flesh and burning hair.

My co-worker, Cara, slips out the Café Stop entrance and heads for the dumpster cage where we’re forced to spend our smoke breaks. She stands aloof, snatches the cigarette from behind her ear and lights it up. She avoids making eye contact with me, same as everyone on any given day. Because I’m intense, they say, and they sometimes catch me talking to the thing even though only I can see and hear it.

“Hi,” I say, to lighten the mood. Because Cara’s one of the good ones–beautiful inside and out–no matter how shy or scared of me she is.

“Hey, Tom.” She pauses to take a drag. “Mike’s a real asshole for yelling at you like that.”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Don’t let it get to you. He knows you’re a good worker and it’s not like he doesn’t have his off days too.”

“Maybe.”

“Any plans for after work?” she says, examining her shoes like mushrooms just sprouted from the leather.

Now is the perfect time. I take a breath to calm the vicious beating of my heart, assembling the words I’ve rehearsed since the day she and I first met. “Actually, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to–”

But the world around me comes alive, spewing the thing’s vocalized disdain. Lardo, from the gray smoke leaking from Cara’s mouth.

“No.”

“No what, Tom?”

Fatty plumpkin, from the burrows insects punched into the dumpster’s rotting food.

“Stop it.”

“Tom, I’m not doing anything.”

Chubby little bastard, from my own shadow wedged beneath my feet.

“Just go away, goddamn it!” I shout, swatting at the voices hording in, crawling all around me.

She runs for the café’s entrance before I can explain, and I’m left alone. Same as always.

It proves too much. Though I’ve managed to push the rage aside till now, the pressure builds, causing my inner parts to tear from all the strain. The thing can’t hurt me, I tell myself. But I know I’m wrong because it always does and nothing–not therapists, doctors, or even pills–can fix it or make it any better.

No more. Today’s the day it ends. After three years, the time has come to put the thing to rest. I flick my cigarette away and head inside, to finish my shift and make my plans for later.

When work is through, I fill a cup of espresso dregs and take it with me. Down on Main Street, I stop by the florist and buy a red rose and then drive along the route called Old Sutter Road. Before stepping out of my car onto the sun-baked cemetery parking lot, I ask myself what the point is. But I know the answer all too well: because there’s a thing haunting my life and it will never, ever go away until I finally confront it.

The quarter mile walk to the plot is a winding, deserted path of silent grass and still trees, all hedged in by a gaudy chain-link fence. Heat bears down like a crack to hell has opened up above me. I find the proper row, skip a few graves over and I’m there.

There’s a thing in my mother’s coffin. It scratches at the inside of the lid, shouting curses reduced to babble by the six feet of dirt above it. Nevertheless, the emotions it expresses are clear, stuff I’ve heard so many times I know it all by rote. Utter disappointment. Hate. But mostly regret for the life and freedom ruined by my unexpected birth.

She killed herself three years ago. She should be dead and gone and yet she returns as the thing in all my things, a malignant voice manifesting the poison words she fed me all my life. But now I’ll say my own words, kept locked away because of fear, because of deep-seated self-contempt. Because it hurts too much to voice aloud, no matter how true they are.

“For thirty years, you were a terrible mother. A monster, a hateful, selfish thing. I never said it before because I loved you, but I can’t let you hurt me anymore. You’re dead and buried and that’s all you’re allowed to be.”

I lay the flower on her plot, a symbol of my enduring love. As for the rest of me, the greater part? I dump the cup of espresso dregs, as bitter and cold as was her constant disposition. It drips down her tombstone, trickling across the words, “Loving Mother, Died Too Soon,” etched into its face. Then I spit on the grass above the remains of what has always been her small, decaying heart.

There’s a thing in my head, inhabiting the darkest grooves and wrinkles of my brain. It tells me terrible, degrading lies–lies that poke and prod and tear and hurt–and sometimes I still believe them. But now, for the first time since my mother’s death, my memories are the only place it haunts.

The post PseudoPod 549: Flash On The Borderlands XXXVIII: Letting Go appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Joe L. Hensley
• Narrator : Ben Phillips
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
• Discuss on Forums

“Lord Randy, My Son” was first printed in DANGEROUS VISIONS (1967) and appears here with the kind permission of the Hensley estate and the Virginia Kidd Agency. This is the second of Ellison’s Dangerous Visions to appear here on PseudoPod. Make sure to check out Go, Go, Go, Said the Bird by Sonya Dorman.

Lord Randy, My Son

He rebelled on the night the call came to leave the warm and liquid place; but in that way he was weak and nature was strong. Outside, the rains came; a storm so formidable that forecasters referred to it for all of the time that was left. He fought to remain with the mother thing, but the mother thing expelled him and in fear and rage he hurt the mother thing subtly. Black clouds hid the stars and the trees bent only to the wind.

The post PseudoPod 548: Lord Randy, My Son appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Jon Padgett
• Narrator : Dagny Paul
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
• Discuss on Forums

“Escape to Thin Mountain” originally appeared in Padgett’s 2016 short story collection The Secret of Ventriloquism.

Escape to Thin Mountain

The post PseudoPod 547: Escape to Thin Mountain appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Ian McHugh
• Narrator : Ron Jon
• Host : Alex Hofelich
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
• Discuss on Forums

PseudoPod 546: Monsters Exist is a PseudoPod original.

Monsters Exist by Ian McHugh

I.

Monsters exist. Their numbers and nature vary from time to time and place to place, but they are always near.

More often than not, they are nearer than we like to think.

Monsters do not appear in the world fully formed. They are not angels, fallen from the sky. Monsters grow, here. They germinate, as if from a seed, and we water and nurture the seed ourselves.

II.

For him, it starts with hair.

The smell of his mother’s hair is all that he remembers of her. That is what he tells himself, anyway.

Monsters are supposed to have mummy issues. Heroes tend to have daddy issues. That is the truth, as told in stories.

Most monsters are socialised and reified by the monsters around them. He does not have that luxury. A fabricated memory of his dead mother is something to cling to, at least.

III.

How he got from sniffing hair to boiling down corpses and making wind chimes from their bones may be of interest to some.

It seems, at first blush, a large leap to make.

Large leaps can be comprised of many small steps. The steps are often accidental.

You take enough steps, not planning or even really thinking about where they might be taking you, and one day you look up and find that what started out as a fetish for sniffing hair has morphed into dismembering bodies with an axe and rendering them down in the boiler out back of your house.

It started with sniffing hair, and hair is still the crux of it.

He has a routine.

IV.

It begins when the baggage carts are parked out of view of the passengers in the terminal, while he is loading the cases from the carts to the conveyer belts. Those going from the belts to the carts are sometimes tantalising, but of no real use to him.

He touches zippers and handles, sniffing and listening with his fingers. That is how he thinks of it. What his fingers seem to tell him is something other than touch, more like a fading scent and the faintest of echoes. A bouquet and a song, travelling up his arms from his fingertips.

His grandmother, who taught him, would have said that he is sensing the resonances of the souls of the people who own the cases. Scents and voices are the closest analogues he has.

What he is searching for is his mother’s semblance – the fragrance of her hair, the melody of her unremembered voice.

Discarding each case in turn, he lifts them from the baggage cart across to the conveyor belt and moves on to the next. His skims the baggage tags with his eyes, reading the details without really being conscious of doing so.

Ah.

He lifts a case off the cart and kneels beside it on the tarmac. He pauses, holding the zipper between finger and thumb. His other hand rests lightly on the handle, savouring the moment of anticipation.

He unzips the selected case and flips it open. Inside are a woman’s clothes. This one is fastidiously packed, the clothes neatly folded, the limited volume optimally used. Sometimes the contents are messy, clean and dirty jumbled together, packed with more haste than thought.

It is unerringly a woman’s case that he chooses. Reverently, he places his hands flat on top, his skin pimpling as the thrill runs up his arms. He likes to lift up a petticoat or other piece of underwear and hold it to his face, covering his mouth and nose while he breathes. He feels the song and scent of the soul go inside him, filling his lungs.

He searches deeper, finds the toiletries bag and opens it. Inside is what he is looking for. He plucks hairs from the brush, running them under his nostrils before dropping them into the snap-lock bag he retrieves from his pocket.

He repacks the case as he found it, zips it shut and lifts it onto the conveyor belt. He watches it disappear up the tunnel to the baggage carousel.

He wonders what she looks like, the owner of the soul that is so like his mother’s. He has found it is better not to see. Reality inevitably disappoints. Instead, he stands still and enjoys resisting the temptation.

Then he goes back to work.

V.

In hindsight, it seems blindingly obvious that his grandmother should not have taught him voodoo.

‘Voodoo’ is his word for it, not hers.

It was women’s secrets she taught him, not meant for men. But her daughter was dead and her nieces and grandnieces were far away and beyond her reach. He was all she had.

If she was not a lonely old immigrant, if there had been one other woman – any other woman – within reach who knew the tradition, she would not have done it. But she was, and there was not, and she did. And then she died.

He does not properly understand the nature of what she taught him, or see truly what it is that he does.

That does not excuse him.

VI.

You could find the monster seed inside of anyone, easily enough, if you cut them open and if calling it a seed was not just a metaphor.

If the metaphoric seed is fertilised by culture or circumstance, it will flourish.

And the monster will grow, in anyone.

VII.

At the end of his working week, he locks up his tiny bedsit under the flight path and drives home. The journey takes him out past the suburbs, up through the hills and down the other side. Past farmhouses and towns. It is well past sunset when he pulls off the highway and hears the crunch of gravel beneath the tyres. The headlights sweep across the whitewashed walls of the old, deconsecrated church, the garden bursting with flowers and fruit.

He kicks off his shoes in the old vestry, uses one to prop open the door. The voices are muted in the still air, a murmur at the fringes of his thoughts. He leaves the lights off, finding his way by memory and touch. They hang in the high space above him, ready to sing. He unbolts the portico door at the far end and pushes it wide.

Gently, the breeze finds its way inside. Softly, the voices begin to sing. Such sadness they hold, such forlorn and touching bewilderment. He lets the tears run down his cheeks as the chorus washes over him and through.

He turns on the lights and walks around, stroking the pale extremities of bone that hang low enough to reach, stilling the chimes for a minute while he caresses the varnished smoothness, marvelling at his own artistry, how he has carved them, assembled them, hung them just so.

Content, he makes himself sandwiches in the kitchen shoehorned into what had been the church’s south transept. He sits on the battered old couch to eat, in the serene space in the middle of the floor, surrounded by his workshop clutter.

After he has cleaned his plate and cutlery, he sits down at his modelling bench, unwraps the end of the clay block and cuts off a slice. He rolls it into a ball that sits comfortably in his fist, then presses the hair he has harvested that day into the middle of the ball. Then he selects a pin from the jar at the back of the bench, touching each one in turn until he finds the right one for now. He pricks his thumb and squeezes out a drop of blood, then presses it into the hole in the clay that he made for the hair, just the way his grandmother taught him.

Carefully, he shapes the clay into a figurine. He feels a stiffening and tightening inside his pants as he squeezes its breasts into shape, narrows its waist and gives a pleasing curve to its buttocks and thighs. Satisfied at last, he sits back to admire his work, pressing the heel of his hand down onto his crotch.

He takes the new figurine and the pin over to the altar table and lies them side-by-side on the cloth. He trails his fingertips over the doll’s breasts, belly and crotch, imagines that he can sense the tremor in response, even over such a distance, as its owner feels an echo of his touch. Then he goes outside.

He leans his back against the old iron boiler and watches the stars turn across the sky, the night air filled with the heady perfumes of his garden.

In the still hours before dawn, he goes back inside. Again, he caresses the new doll, sensing the sleepy response. He picks up the pin and gently pushes its point through the doll’s chest.

He rests a few hours, then drives the few kilometres into town for groceries. There is a woman who works at the general store who he likes, big-hipped and blousy. The scent and song of her are wrong, but she is friendly and maternal in a way that he likes to imagine reminds him of his mother.

VIII.

Sometimes, his co-workers at the airport observe while he performs his routine at the baggage carts. They mock him, but they never intervene. The men are unthreatened by his eccentric behaviour and the few women are too threatened by the men, should they speak out. Besides, sniffing underwear and stealing a few hairs is not a patch on what some of them do with the luggage.

If most monsters are men, it is because most cultures and circumstances nurture the monstrousness of men.

If most cultures and circumstances nurture the monstrousness of men, it is because most monsters are men.

It is a vicious circle.

IX.

The next time he comes home from work, he goes straight to the altar. His palms are sweating, fingers trembling. The past few days have been almost unbearable, as those in-between days always are. Has he captured the soul?

Carefully, so as not to crack the dried clay, he eases the pin from the doll’s chest. The voice is still there, ever so faint. His pulse thuds. He lifts the doll to his face, brushes the clay with his lips, inhales deeply. He finds what he is seeking, a tantalising facsimile, an almost memory of the scent of his mother’s hair.

He stays awake until dawn, although he is tired, then rests through the day. After sunset, he loads his tools into his van and drives back to the city. He rests the doll between his thighs, feels its voice grow subtly stronger, its pleasing hardness against his erection. Its scent fills his nostrils. It draws him along, through the suburbs, past the bright, empty towers of the city centre, past the airport, veering away, out the other side of the metropolis.

The country road dances and twists in the dark, trying to escape his headlights. His hands are sweaty on the steering wheel. At last he arrives at the cemetery gate. He keeps driving, slowly, following a side road that parallels the iron fence, past a service gate. He pulled over, gets his tool bag out of the back and walks back to the gate. He cuts the chain with his bolt cutters and slips inside.

With the doll in his hand, he hurries past the ugly concrete block of the crematorium, that hateful, wasteful place. He lets the song and scent guide him to the right spot. His excitement spikes when he sees the fresh-piled dirt. He tucks the doll into a pocket, slides his tool bag off his shoulder and extracts his shovel.

He digs at the head of the new grave, making a hole big enough to stand in and work. When he strikes the coffin, he throws the shovel out of the hole and clears the dirt from the lid with his hands. The voice of the soul trapped inside is soft but clear in his mind, mournful and sleepily confused. He uses the sharpened blade of his pick to score across the lid, then takes his mallet and chisel from the bag.

The blows ring painfully loud. He knows that the earth walls deaden any sound that escape from the hole, but he pauses, nonetheless, between each blow and listens a few seconds.

Once the lid is split, he hooks a surgeon’s mask over his ears. The stink of the corpse overwhelms the fragile aura of the soul.

He puts on heavy rubber gloves and levers the coffin open with his crowbar. The stench is like an assault. Holding his breath, he loops his rope around the body’s ribs, under the armpits, then climbs out of the hole. He tries to breathe shallowly until he has hauls the body up and seals it inside the bag. Then he slips back down into the hole, sets the broken piece of lid back in place and climbs back out to refill the grave, evening out the surface as best he can to disguise his intrusion.

He heaves the body in its bag up onto his shoulders, bending awkwardly double to gather up his tools. Crabwise, stooping, huffing with effort, he scuttles back to the gate and out to his van. Not until he is back on the road, leaving undisturbed quiet behind him, does he begin to relax.

X.

This all began with a fetish for sniffing hair, remember.

XI.

He rests when he gets home, toppling onto his bed for a couple of dreamless hours. His alarm wakes him in daylight. He allows himself only a glass of water before he goes back out for the next part of the task.

First, he gets the furnace going underneath the old boiler. Then, donning gloves and mask and averting his gaze as much as he can, he unzips the body from the bag and strips it. The clothes he throws into the furnace.

He stands, opens the top of the boiler and picks up his axe. He closes his eyes for a few breaths, then he starts to chop, tossing each piece into the boiler as soon as it is separated. He aims for the joints – wrists, elbows, shoulders, ankles, knees, neck – trying as much as possible to avoid damaging the long parts of the bones. Separating the thighs from the pelvis and ribs from spine are the hardest. A cut on either side of each thigh and a practiced twist of the axe takes care of the former, placing the axe blade precisely so and judicious application of a mallet does for the latter.

He wishes he could shut his nose to the stink, shut his ears to the jumbled mess it makes of the song. He will make it whole again, he reminds himself, better and purer than it was before, cleansed of its decaying husk of meat.

The doll he tosses through the furnace hatch after the clothes.

Afterwards, he opens both doors and winds out all the high windows of the church to let the chorus swell as loud as possible and the fragrances of the captured souls swirl into every nook. He sits on his couch in the serene space and lets the reconstructed memory of his lost mother wash over him, cleanse him, remind him that it will be worth it, in the end, once this new soul is purified and shaped and perfected and hung in its proper place among the multitude.

He is going to be late for work, but it is more important that he is calm before he sets out than that he be punctual.

The thought of breakfast turns his stomach.

He dresses in his uniform and combs his hair. Before leaving, he looks up at the bare, elegant, ivory shapes, layers and layers of them that fill the vaulted ceiling space, the dozens of souls he has already carved into such sublime harmony.

He pulls the door shut and checks that it is locked. He decides to stop and buy a coffee and sandwiches from the woman at the general store, who he likes to think reminds him of his mother, before he sets out on the long drive back to work. He is tired but content.

XII.

Monsters exist, and they can be dangerous. It all depends where the next leap takes them.

 

The post PseudoPod 546: Monsters Exist appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Hillary Dodge
• Narrator : Christiana Ellis
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Chelsea Davis
• Discuss on Forums

PseudoPod 545: Indiscretions is a PseudoPod original.

Indiscretions By Hillary Dodge

During the full pound and punch of her morning run, in the steadily lifting gloom, Mary sees a figure, indistinct and blurry, at the end of the broken street where no one ought to be. She skids to a stop and blinks. The figure is gone.

Most of her neighborhood is undeveloped and has been for some time. There are wide open tracts of weeds, cracked flats of dirt, and animal holes in abundance. There are also three foundations, gaping holes, really, and another with a rotting timber frame above. It is as if the contractors went out for lunch and never returned. Even the For-Sale signs have disappeared, perhaps toppled by wind or kids and eventually buried.

There is nowhere for a person to have gone. She approaches one crumbling basement hole after another. In one she sees the shape of a snake slither into the deep shadows. In another she is impressed by scattered anthills, which make the basement floor resemble the cratered surface of the moon in the early morning half-light. She sees a spider dangling beneath its intricate silvery web. But there is no person. Nor any sign of one.

Something about the foundation with the rotting timbers doesn’t feel right. Its framework is tilted and warped and she is overcome by an inexplicable feeling of grief. She avoids looking at it.

As she retraces her steps through the un-neighborhood, she only counts three rabbits scattering as the sun slips above the horizon. Perhaps they are being scared off or eaten by the dogs she hears howling and fighting at night.

Mary jogs past her house and up the front steps of her next door neighbor’s. Behind the kitsch patchwork flower pot, she retrieves a set of keys tucked inside a false stone. Inside Bev’s house, it is much the same. Cozy countrified décor with As Seen on TV gadgets.

The remote control in its place of honor on the easy chair arm brings to mind better days. Mary closes her eyes for the briefest moment before George, the cat, finds her, slowly inhaling. The cinnamon apple scent of Bev’s decorative candle compulsion, however, is not present. She looks towards the false mantel and sees the three fat red candles sitting mutely in their crystal dishes.

George races up to her and paws at her, stretching himself full up her leg, as if about to jump to her shoulder. Mary leans down to pet the orange long-hair, cooing to him gently. He yowls back, visibly agitated. It is very uncharacteristic of him. Bev, like too many others, is in the hospital. She’s been there for almost a full week. Mary is beginning to get worried about her and wonders for the third time that week if she should go against the old woman’s wishes and just call her son already. But perhaps he is sick as well?

George weaves about her feet anxiously, making nervous guttural noises as she moves towards the kitchen. When she pries open the lid to the dry food canister, Mary is puzzled. Hadn’t it been full the day before? Today, it is almost empty, down to the last cup or three of George’s food. Mary dumps an overflowing scoop into his bowl and decides to add his food to her list for the grocery tomorrow.

She tries to sit with George for a while, stroking his bristling fur to calm him down. But he won’t stay put and keeps moving all over the couch. Besides that, Mary herself feels unsettled. Her thoughts return again and again to the figure she saw in the gloom. There’s no way she imagined it. She isn’t that sort of person. Mary pushes the uncomfortable feeling out of her mind.

There is no newspaper waiting on the driveway when she returns home. Perhaps her husband has already taken it in, although he isn’t typically an early riser. But on going to his room and knocking, she finds it empty, the bed not slept in. Her stomach feels hot and leaden. So, it’s come to this, has it? He’s not even coming home anymore.

Mary grits her teeth and passes by the hall mirror. Out of the corner of her eye she sees her hair. Pausing and stepping backwards, she looks in the mirror. How did it get to be so gray? And her eyes, where the hell did those wrinkles come from? Suddenly she is beyond furious at her husband and what he’s done to her—all the stress he’s put her through. Isn’t it enough with what’s been going on around them? Why does he have to add to it?

Mary stomps into the kitchen, teeth clenched and knuckles white at her sides. She fills the coffee maker and opens the fridge to grab the milk. Only the milk is gone. The sugar, she also discovers, is running low.

With a growl, Mary grabs the notepad and pen off the countertop to begin a grocery list. Milk. Sugar. Cat food. She notices that her hand has begun to shake. What else has her rat of a husband forgotten to tell her about? Mary knows these are small indiscretions in the greater scheme of things. But she is unwilling to forgive him. She pockets the list and takes a deep breath.

Her chest is too tight and Mary tells herself that she has lost any appetite she may have had after her run. She goes to retrieve the step ladder from the pantry but it isn’t there. She finds it in the garage with its step broken. When the hell did that happen?

Using a chair, she retrieves the pills from the cabinet above the fridge. She quickly swallows two of the small round pills with a gulp of coffee. It is hotter than she expects and she drops the bottle, spilling the pills onto the floor. Cursing, she squats to pick them up. There is a brownish stain on the gray tile. Mary rubs at it with a finger but it does not come up. She pops another pill into her mouth and chews it to hold back the tears.

She would like to go somewhere but she had promised her parents and son that she would take a few days off and stay out of the city.

Mary decides to keep busy with chores. She goes into her son’s room to retrieve his laundry and is surprised—almost concerned—to see that he has already washed and folded his own laundry. His boxers and shirts sit in neat stacks on his freshly made bed. His clothes look faded and somehow permanent. She experiences an empty feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Mary is immediately suspicious of something. Does Dylan know about the trouble between her and Michael? Is he perhaps trying to smooth something, anything over to lessen the tension of the house? Mary shakes her head. That’s not like him. Dylan is a typical moody teenager. He would deal by stuffing his head into his headphones and listening to that screaming racket he calls music.

The thought of her son retreating into his music makes her smile and miss him terribly. He’s only an hour or so away at her parents’ house, but today the distance feels too heavy. She reminds herself that it was the right thing to do—sending him away until the danger was past. She also reminds herself that she can simply call him later in the day to hear his voice. She smiles as she pictures him swiping a lock of brown hair out of his eyes—that silly resistance to cutting his hair—and hears his voice cracking innocently in contrast to the bad boy look he sought.

Thinking of the phone call has reminded her of something else and she returns to the kitchen and picks up the phone. She dials her salon and leaves a message requesting an appointment ASAP. It is too early for anyone to be in but Mary finds herself imagining the blinking light of the answering machine and the digital display beside it. In her mind’s eye, she sees the numbers flashing and increasing one by one each day until the machine is full and will no longer accept new messages.

Mary shakes herself out of the morbid daydream. What is wrong with her?

She decides to wash the dishes—much less than she’s used to seeing in the sink—and actually takes the time to soap and rinse them by hand. She sees the bubbles pop, expire and thinks for a moment that she will turn on the TV to see the latest reports. But she almost instantly decides against that. She doesn’t want to know what is happening, how the world is dying.

A sudden thought occurs to her. She can’t have imagined the person. They probably hid in the least stable-looking house precisely because they hoped she wouldn’t look in there. But why would they be hiding? Because they are someone trying to get away from the city and all that chaos. They are someone taking cover from the world and the sickness that is bringing it to its knees.

This means that things are getting worse. Worse than she suspected it would get. And so soon. It is barely three weeks since the first confirmed cases. Isn’t it? Her timeline is fuzzy.

If the person is hiding, then they are scared. It isn’t likely that they are dangerous, Mary concludes. She makes up her mind to bring them some canned food. She grabs a can of Italian Wedding soup—the kind with a pop-lid for easy opening. She’s never cared for the stuff but her husband loves it. Well, he can just go buy more if he wants it that bad. She also takes a bottle of water and a half-eaten box of crackers. She stuffs these things inside a plastic grocery bag.

Outside the sun burns the world pale. The asphalt looks bleached like a dead thing stretched out on a beach. Weeds split through the dirt-filled cracks and even they look to be more a shade of gray than green.

A distant rumbling draws her attention as Mary walks towards the unfinished neighborhood. She stops and turns towards the noise. It is a truck, shifting and accelerating somewhere out on the highway. Mary is startled to realize that she hasn’t heard a single vehicle all day. The sound of its diesel engine reverberates through the empty air as the truck draws near, passes close, and then coasts away. Mary imagines the world beyond her quiet neighborhood as if it were a vast ocean, only passable now and then in great churning, thundering vessels.

When the sound of the truck is lost to her ears, Mary continues down the street.

The contractors got as far as the sidewalks and the required utility connections. She stands at the curb in front of the half-made house and watches its openings closely. There is no movement of any kind.

The house doesn’t quite have a front or sides for that matter. It is a skeleton of a house with timber ribs protruding from the sagging plywood subfloor. There isn’t even a roof. Mary can see into the house and right through it. There is no one inside. But there is a basement that is mostly covered over and protected from the elements.

Mary mounts the ramp that stretches from the ground in front to the gaping doorway. She shifts her weight carefully and enters the house.

“Hello?” she calls, lilting her voice as if it is a question.

No one replies.

Mary moves towards the mostly enclosed cave that is the opening to the basement. Simple wooden treads lead down into the gloom. A smell wafts up and Mary immediately places it from her childhood on the farm. Sweet and dry, unmistakably putrid and yet also, aged somehow, lessened over time. It is the smell of the decaying cow she stumbled upon one summer, far out in the west field. What was left was mostly a desiccated rind, the maggots having moved on long ago.

Mary descends.

The basement isn’t really that dark. She can see well enough thanks to the window wells and an unfinished or collapsed part of the floor above. She skirts the hole and the pile of debris beneath.

Behind the stairs, she finds the person. He is huddled in the corner farthest from the light, bent double, curled up as a child might do when they are frightened of the monster under their bed. The man is wearing a navy sports coat and dark jeans. There is a dried stain on the concrete beneath and around him. He is as still as the dead.

Mary sets the bag of food onto the floor and lets out a shaking breath. She cannot see any part of the person, only his clothes. But the clothes sag as if the figure beneath has shrunken. The jacket is spotted and discolored.

How long has this guy been here? And how long was he dying alone in the dark?

Beside the person rests a rusting hand trowel. An arm partially extends from the huddled body towards the trowel as if it was important to them somehow. The hand is out of sight within the sleeve, a trivial mercy for which Mary is grateful. She leaves the bag of food and ascends back into the daylight.

Mary strips her clothes off in the garage and tilts open the trash can to dispose of them. There are already several sets of t-shirts and pants wadded inside. She pauses, her arm holding her clothes in midair above the open can. She knows those clothes because they are hers. But what are they doing in the trash? Did her husband do it? Did he come home while she was out? Did he walk his usual route from the train station, whistling and snapping, while planning to pop inside her closet and throw out all her clothes?

Mary drops her clothes inside and slams the lid. She bounds up the three steps into the house, fury giving her speed. She doesn’t care that she’s naked.

“Michael!”

There is no reply. She waits a breath or two before plodding into the house. He isn’t there.

Mary returns to the kitchen where her bottle of pills still sits on the counter. She twists open the lid and pops another pill into her mouth. She is shaking again and her breathing feels strained. She imagines spores lifting off the dead person’s jacket to dance with the dust in the light from the window wells. She remembers her sigh and deep inhalation when she discovered that the man was dead—long dead.

Mary decides she will ask Michael about the clothes when he shows up. But at this moment, she wants nothing more than a scalding hot shower.

Under the spray of the showerhead, Mary discovers a wound on her head. It is roughly half an inch above her right ear, buried in her hair. She found it while sliding her fingers through her hair when applying shampoo. Frowning, she traces her slippery fingers over the ridge, feeling its shape and testing for tenderness.

Sliding open the shower door, Mary steps onto the bath mat and turns her head to look at the wound in the mirror. She can only see a part of it but from what she can see, it looks like an old wound, already pinked into scar tissue.

Mary returns to the shower puzzled. She can’t remember any injury that might have caused that. She is filled with uncertainties and squeezes her eyes shut, thrusting her face beneath the spray. She backs into the tile and leans there, inhaling the lavender scent of her body wash, a washcloth draped over her face, blocking the steam and light. She practices deep breathing and the mental mantras she’s been taught to use.

She is feeling more frazzled and uncertain as the day peaks and dips towards afternoon. She has begun to manifest her old habits of lip chewing and fingertip counting. Her lips hurt and she tastes blood. Her fingers begin to feel fatigued from touching edges and corners.

Mary brews a cup of Sleepytime tea, the mint and lemongrass to help calm her nerves. She settles onto the worn denim couch to read. She picks a book off the coffee table, a classic she’s always wanted to read but never got around to starting. She fights hard to stay focused, to keep her mind from wandering and wondering. The characters chase each other across various probabilities and imagined insults. Although she’s never read it, the story seems too familiar and after an hour or so, Mary gives up.

She is just drifting off into the blank void of sleep when the screen door slams. Instantly, she is on her feet, heat beating, her brain bleary.

“Michael? Are you finally home?” she calls out.

Silence. She is getting tired of this routine she’s developed. Her calling out, questioning the air, never to be answered.

Mary steps into the hall and looks towards the front door just in time to see a figure pass in front of the screen. She immediately recognizes the blue sports jacket with the mottled stains. The inconsistencies and mysteries of the day come crashing back on her in an instant and for a moment, Mary is paralyzed, struck with a horror so primal she can hardly breathe.

But then she is angry and she stomps down the hall and shoves open the screen.

Her yard is empty but there is a sudden crash from the garage. The door is wide open but she’s sure she left it closed. Mary lets the screen door slam shut behind her as she takes the front steps two at a time. She turns into the garage.

It is also empty. But there is movement. A cabinet swings lazily open as if someone just pushed the door closed, not allowing the latch to catch before rushing out. Mary approaches the work bench and the cabinet above. Michael, being the tinker and fiddler that he was, always kept his tables and cabinets in perfect order. For each tool there was a place and for each place, there was a tool.

Except that on the backside of the cabinet door, Mary sees a tool is missing. The shape is familiar, cylindrical at the top and scoop-shaped at the bottom. A place where a trowel might live.

Mary doesn’t pause to think this through. She is out the door and running across the street towards the half-house in the unfinished neighborhood, swirling and remote memories of days just like this one opening up inside her mind.

In the basement again, she watches the corpse for any sign of movement. She is sure that this is the same figure from this morning. She is so confused, she doesn’t even know the right questions to ask the air.

Fearing contagion, she pulls her sleeve over her hand as she squats down beside it. With a quick, fearful movement, she prods the body. It is long, long dead. Of that, she is certain. Part of it is stuck to the floor and when she exerts a little more force to get it to roll over, a piece of it tears away and remains tacked firmly to the concrete. Mary feels the acid burn of bile rising in the back of her throat. The face is unrecognizable. It is collapsed in on itself, skin folded over and shrunken.

She doesn’t look at it for long because something else has caught her attention. In the dead thing’s hand is a crumpled paper and beneath the body is a small hole where a pump might have been placed eventually. It appears that the person was digging something out of the hole when they died.

Mary reaches across the space between herself and the corpse and tugs a mud-caked Ziploc bag out of the hole. Inside is a gun and a stack of twenty-dollar bills—probably a thousand dollars. Holding her breath, she takes the crumpled paper from the withered hand.

As she carefully unfolds it, a terrible premonition washes over her; with a sinking feeling she recognizes her husband’s handwriting. A glance at the hand confirms that the corpse is who she thinks it is; the gold band she gave to him sixteen years ago glints from the second finger from the left.

In silence, she reads his words. She reads them over and over, her breath held tight and hard in her chest. He must have been sick and came here to retrieve what he’d hidden for the worst-case scenario—if one of them was left alone.

She can’t know what has happened to her son and her parents. But she does know that this man—this man she both loved and hated—is no longer with her or anyone else. Despite his infidelity and their rapidly deteriorating relationship, he had still been trying to reach her. His letter of apology and love, clutched tight in his dying fist, declared more than he himself was able to show or say for the last year of their relationship.

She does not know how long ago that was. In a flash, she recalls the broken step stool and the brown stain on the kitchen floor. She feels the raised scar on her head through the coarseness of her gray hair. How many times has she been down in this basement with the corpse of her husband? How many days has she gone out running every morning thinking it was Sunday all over again?

Mary presses her husband’s letter to her forehead and weeps. The tears roll down her cheeks and her air is compressed inside her lungs, wanting to burst out, but held there by her misery. Her fingers are shaking and she is silently crying as she tucks the letter back inside his hand and drops the Ziploc back into the hole. She rolls him gently over and stands.

When she returns to the house, all she wants to do is go to sleep. But first, she must visit her son’s room.

It is just the way she left it on that last day. How long ago could that have been? She tries to remember through the fog of the past days, weeks…months. She’s sure she must have gone into his room and picked up the laundry scattered on the floor, like she always did after her morning run. She knows also, that she probably washed them, folded them, and sat them on his bed, waiting for him to return.

And there they are. Mary notes how faded the clothes have become. Weeks, then. There is dust on his pillow and Mary furiously plucks it from the bed and holds it up under her nose. His smell is already gone. Months.

She squeezes the pillow as she fights back the tears. He never came home.

She curls her hand into a fist and pounds her temple, where the scar is still pink. If she hadn’t been injured, could she have… she cannot finish the thought. It is too horrible.

In her room, her bed waits. There is nothing she can do but kick off her shoes and crawl beneath the cold sheets. She is so tired. Too tired to do anything that might make tomorrow a different day. Her sobs are silent and her grief curls her body in on itself.

In the morning, Mary rises and stretches. She wonders briefly how she could have possibly fallen asleep in her clothes. Lacing up her running shoes, she remembers with both anticipation and dread that next week her son will return from her parent’s house. Although she misses her son beyond her understanding, she hates knowing she will have to return to the charade of living with a husband, a father who no longer cares.

 

 

The post PseudoPod 545: Indiscretions appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : John Wiswell
• Narrator : Marguerite Kenner
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Marty Perrett
• Artist : Shawn Garrett
• Discuss on Forums

PseudoPod 544: Under the Rubble is a PseudoPod original.

“This story is dedicated to Takeo Murata, Ishiro Honda, and Rod Serling.”

The horror of an earthquake is something you’d never wish on anyone. In 2015, in the span of three weeks, two severe earthquakes struck the nation of Nepal. The damage was so great that much still hasn’t been rebuilt. If you’re moved by this story, please consider a donation to relief efforts. More can be found at https://www.globalgiving.org/projects/nepal-earthquake-relief-fund/

Go check out A River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey and Greedy Pigs by Matt fn Wallace.

SOUNDBED SOURCES

Ambulance Siren 13GVomackovaK_ambulance.wav FIRE ENGINE long approach and drive away firetruck.wav Fire_engine_siren.wav Metal Sounds » Door_Metal_Groans_Ext.wav Towson EMF 366»creakingmetalchair.wav Heatpress squeaking and creaking.wav Drones » Metal Creaks_Groans.wav remix of 108732__klankbeeld__creaking_metal_spokes_of_the_bicycle_wheel_06.flac furnace creaks.wav Creaking attic door. » Attic door creaking 2 Ambiance and Background » Creaking Metal Soundscape 2 Cracking Earthquake (cracking soil, cracking stone) Disaster » Earthquake_Interior_MetalRattling_2.wav Large Earthquake Earthquake » Quake1.wav Rumble Bass 2.wav Rumble Bass.wav TEC Machine/Complex Sounds » Low Rumble.wav Cinematic Deep Bass Rumble SUBSONIC RUMBLE.wav Staircase metal rumble.wav Monster Pack » Monster Low Rumble 1.wav Rumbling Rumble » Rumble · fade in 10s

Under the Rubble By John Wiswell

The world trembled until Samantha opened her eyes. She groaned, then coughed and spat dust. Every hitch of her chest made breathing harder, and there was something on top of her, crushing her left breast. She looked at it, but the air was too dark to see anything, so she tried pushing it away and found her arms could barely move. It felt like a metal bar pinning across her chest and biceps, digging into her skin, so she braced her elbows against the floor and heaved. The bar budged just an inch, but the inch was all it took for her to take the deepest breath of her life.

Dust poured out of the blindness, filling her nostrils with a stinging sensation, clinging to her perspiration, and giving the darkness a cloying texture. The illogic of drowsiness sagged away as she forced herself to breathe normally, and she realized for the first time that this wasn’t her apartment. Her eyes scanned for a window and failed to find one. This wasn’t the middle of the night. Where the hell was she?

Oh Saints, the store. She’d only ducked in for some milk and maybe one of those chocolate bars with the air bubbles in it. She’d been reaching for her wallet when the earthquake hit and everything crashed. Was she still in the store?

She called, “Hello? Anyone?” Her words bounced back at her. She couldn’t see her confines, but they were cramped. She kicked her legs and found hard debris in every direction, walling her into this nowhere. She groped around herself for anyone. Where had the clerk gone?

“Oh, thank goodness,” said a miraculous voice. It sounded young and so calm. It had calm to spare, calm it spent on sounding tickled that Samantha was alive. “Someone else is up. I thought I heard coughing. Are you okay?”

“I’m pinned under something.” Samantha tried to sit up, but the bar refused to budge. She was forced to remain lying on the floor, her neck aching, head tilting up against something tall and stiff behind her. It was probably the checkout counter. She asked, “Can you come get me?”

“Afraid I’m stuck as well. The ceiling came down and formed a little cave over the greeting card aisle. It hit the older lady right in the head. I don’t know if she’ll be okay. I can’t see, but I felt her bleeding.”

Samantha knew what sounded wrong about this kid now. His voice carried the pain of someone who thought the TV news sounded bad, not the pain of someone whose corpse might soon be the subject of it. He sounded like a junior correspondent, live from under the rubble.

She asked again, “Can you get to me?”

“One moment,” he said. Rustling rose from the direction of her left foot. It could have been three or thirty feet away. Her eyes kept reaching for perspective, but couldn’t find it. The other survivor groaned with effort before calling, “Cement and beams are blocking both ends of the aisle. I’m lucky it didn’t fall in here. I wonder if architects build these aisles so they’ll be safe like this.”

Samantha squirmed. Every time she wanted to stop it felt like it would take one more twist to escape, forming a series of one-more-pushes that never worked. At most she could force herself a few inches back. Her neck bent painfully against the checkout counter and she slid up, but that brought the bar to the bottom of her ribs, allowing no breath at all. Her eyes bulged with the effort and saw nothing.

“Ma’am?”

She gasped and relented, easing the bar down and bracing it with her wrists, elbows against the floor. Her arms ached from it, but at least she could breathe.

“I’m afraid I can’t get to you. These beams are too heavy.”

“Are you sure?”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” The answer came so quickly that she was shocked by its untruth. Yeah, she’d almost asphyxiated in the rubble of a quake and Saints knew if anyone else was alive, but she was doing just swell. She said, “There’s a bar on me. On my chest. It’s… It’s hard to breathe.”

“It’s on your ribs? So you’re on your back?”

“Yes.”

“Is there anyone near you, ma’am? Someone who can assist?”

“No,” she said without checking. She hadn’t thought to check. The counter blocked pretty much everything and there was no room to shimmy on either side. She listened for breathing around her, and heard a subterranean grinding that she didn’t want to think about. The only plausible human being nearby would be the clerk, and he had probably been crushed on the other side of the cash register, and if she thought about him anymore, she would definitely die under here.

“No,” she said. “Definitely no one around.”

“Okay. I have a lady in the aisle here. She was the one who saw the monster and screamed. The roof hit her pretty bad.”

Samantha paused over ‘the monster.’ It had been a monster of an earthquake, though.

She asked, “How bad did she get hit?”

He said, “Her hair is sticky and part of her skull feels loose. I wrapped her up in my shirt and don’t want to touch it more. I check on her every once in a while to keep her air passages clear.”

“Are you an E.M.T.?” That kind of luck made Samantha lick her lips, not even minding her tongue coating in dust.

“No, ma’am. I just read the internet a lot. Can you hold out?”

Her mind swam with the idea of rescue. Of firemen and cranes. Volunteers swarmed in these kinds of disasters and worked all hours.

The kid called again, “Ma’am?”

“I…” It took one word to realize the air was escaping her. Just thinking about rescue workers made her breathe faster, and suddenly she forgot how to breathe slowly. How did you forget something like that?

She said, “This bar is crushing me.”

“You’re lying on your back with a thing on your chest? You can’t move it?”

“Too little. I need help. It’s too heavy.” There was a new rustling sound, like the other survivor was exploring his aisle, or rolling around in it. She asked him, “Can you find a way to me?”

“If you can scoot back, maybe you can get your knees under it and breathing will be easier.”

She let the anger into her voice. “I’ve been trying.”

“I’m testing something,” he said. His voice sounded like it was coming from a different direction now. A different angle. “You’re on your back with it on your chest, and not much room to move. That’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. My chest feels like it’s going to burst down here.”

“I got into a position like yours. We can figure it out. If you scrunch your shoulders down and your neck up, then pull your knees as far as they go, how far can you scoot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you try it?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

No, Samantha wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything except the pain in her chest and arms. She said, “Hold on.”

“I’m just trying to help, ma’am.”

“Don’t call me ‘ma’am’.”

“I’ll make you a deal. I won’t call you ‘ma’am’ if you try this. Okay?”

She wanted to laugh. To laugh far harder than she should with this bar crushing her wrists and ribs. Her arms trembled under the weight.

“Alright,” she consented. She took as deep a breath as she could, as good a final breath as possible, and leaned up, raising her shoulders and curling upward until her neck popped. Her knees trembled upward, but not far enough, and she moaned when they touched the bar. There was no way they could get under it.

The voice said, “Ma’am. You’re fine.”

Samantha was abruptly sure she was going to die sitting under a cash register, and ten feet from a front door she couldn’t see.

The calmness voice grew colder. “Ma’am. You’re fine.”

“I’m not.”

“Are your knees up?”

“They aren’t.”

But they were. It took a few moments to realize it. Her shoulders rubbed against the checkout counter, her head probably resting against a cigarette ad. The pain in her neck abated and the bar was digging at the tops of her shins. Her legs wobbled slightly, holding a miraculous angle where it didn’t even hurt. If she ever saw light again she’d probably find them covered in welts. She could deal with that.

She stammered out, “I… I… it worked.”

Her buddy said, “That’s super, ma’am. Congratulations!”

“Thanks,” she said, rubbing her eyes, mixing tears with stinging dust, wetness welling from a mixture of pain and the crap in the air. Eventually she asked, “Who are you?”

“I’m Hansel. I live over on Robin Row.”

“Never been.” She caught herself making a face, even though he was a wall of rubble and a hundred miles of darkness away. Saints, was she actually feeling embarrassed? Was that possible today?

Hansel said, “It’s right off of Fifth. Near Godot’s Cakes.”

“Oh. Okay,” she said in the universal tone of not really knowing what she was agreeing with but wanting the topic to change.

“I was the blue boy in the greeting card aisle. Blue Hawaiian shirt? I was picking something out for my aunt before baseball practice. She loves cards with cats on them. Her birthday’s coming up.”

“Blue Hawaiian shirt,” she repeated. She might’ve seen one of those before everything turned upside down. Neon blue with stark yellow palm trees and ugly as sin. She couldn’t conjure his face; had she gotten a look at it? No, she’d only seen him from behind on the way to the milk. But at least she had a Hawaiian shirt to put with his name.

“Well, hi Hansel. I’m Samantha Pears.” She re-thought her introduction, and added, “Black hair, buying milk at the counter.”

“Black hair and the tweed skirt, or black hair and the pantsuit?”

So this Hansel was observant. She groped her legs, feeling all the tears in her trousers.

“The pantsuit, which needs to go to the drycleaners.”

When Hansel chuckled, she chuckled with him. It was the kind of light laughter that weighed heavier than side-splitters, the kind that melted thoughts of never sitting up again, or choking under rebar, or never getting out from under tons of convenience store debris when you could barely lift this much, and how much air was there left? Her thoughts spiraled away from her.

Hansel said, “Pleased to meet you, Ms. Pears.”

“Call me ‘Samantha’.”

“Pleased to meet you, Samantha. So did you see it? You were right by the exit.”

“The cave-in? I’ll never forget it.”

Although she didn’t remember much. There hadn’t been much before there was nothing. All these parts of the ceiling denting and lunging down in unison, glass crackling, light fleeing as the world rushed into her face.

Her friend in the greeting card aisle asked, “What did you see?”

She chewed her cheek; the pain was pleasant, interrupting panic before it could really grab her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Sorry, ma’am.”

“Samantha.”

“Samantha. I was just curious if you saw the monster.”

“The quake? Yes, everything shook and broke.”

“It wasn’t a quake.”

“Excuse me?”

“I saw it.”

“What did you see?”

Maybe a tank? A bomb? Had terrorists hit their city? That was crazy. There was no way.

“I was looking at the birthday cards, which face the windows. They used to, anyway. I was looking for one with cats on it, because my aunt loves cats. I saw it over the racks.”

“Saw what?”

“A foot.”

“What?”

“It took up the entire window. It was scaly, with claws the size of lamp posts.”

“You saw a foot in the window? I was right next to it, Hansel.”

“It took up the whole window, and the whole street. It had three toes and was scaly, and there was a car stuck between two of the toes. A van. A red van. The foot was green or grey. I can’t remember. How silly is that, ma’am? Forgetting the color.”

Samantha gaped at the darkness. “You didn’t see that.”

“I saw it over the racks of greeting cards. The lady in the aisle with me saw it, too. She screamed before she was hit.”

“Everybody screamed.”

“She screamed at the foot. We were looking at it together.”

“For the two seconds before the roof caved in? You’re sure it wasn’t wreckage? Asphalt and dust kicked up from a main exploding?”

“It didn’t look like those things to me, ma’am.”

“For the split-second you saw it?”

“Yes.”

Samantha rubbed at her knees, which were beginning to ache. They felt like splintering wood. “What did this foot belong to? A dinosaur?”

“I don’t think dinosaurs were ever that big, but I guess it could be a new one. It could have been a monster or a dragon. Some kind of god.”

“A god with a van stuck between his toes?”

“So you saw it?”

“No! I was standing right next to the window and I didn’t see anything.” Yelling made her suck in too much soot from the air and she gagged. At least he stayed quiet until she finished throwing up.

Then Hansel asked, “Did you look out the window, ma’am?”

“No. I don’t know. Look. I was looking at the clerk who was selling me milk, okay? And don’t call me ‘ma’am’. I’m Samantha Pears.”

“So you didn’t look out the window to see if it was there or not?”

“I didn’t need to look out the window to know our building wasn’t knocked over by a dinosaur.”

“Are you sure you didn’t look outside?”

“No. I didn’t.”

“Because you sound very agitated. Perhaps you want it to have not been a giant foot. That kind of denial is sometimes indicative of traumatic stress disorders.”

She hissed dust out of her face. “I’m in denial?”

“A third of my RSS feed is psychology stuff. The human mind is fascinating.”

She wanted to kick him. Wanted the dying woman trapped in the greeting card aisle with him to kick him. And perhaps Hansel sensed that, for he said nothing more. Samantha thought it was out of politeness.

She said, “We shouldn’t talk anymore. We need to conserve air.”

“That’s a good point. We’re in a conundrum: research suggests if we don’t talk we may become fixated and hyperventilate to death, while reason suggests speaking very little will conserve air. Which do we do?”

How dare he respond with so many words when they could suffocate down here? Samantha shifted. Her shins felt like they were bleeding now. She hoped they wouldn’t break.

“Probably,” he continued, “the best thing to do is moderate. Talk some, then rest some, so nobody gets too worked up.”

“Sure. Let’s rest some.”

Like magic words, it made them quiet for a while. Samantha felt bad, being quiet at the teen who had coached her through a panic attack under this bar. She tried to merge that helpful teen with the dinosaur theory nut.

It didn’t work out and she tried shifting her knees for any relief under that bar, and eventually spoke just to get her mind off the immovable. She said, “There were reports of small earthquakes lately. The city put out an aftershock warning or something, I think.”

“They did a special about it on TV that my aunt recorded. She’s great.”

“So you see, Hansel? It was a quake.”

“Seismologists all over the net were confounded. The severity and patterns of the quakes had never hit our region before, and there are no fault lines around.”

“They can only ever be so accurate.”

“They said that on television. One doctor also said the new models for predictive seismology were getting much more accurate, up until two months ago when our quakes started. He called it a total anomaly that bucked the model. What if—”

As though the convenience store wanted him to shut up too, it lurched. The floor jumped, and Samantha threw up her arms to defend herself against debris. Stray pebbles fell and the tremor ended immediately, though its tune played on with the blood banging in her ears.

That calm voice pried in. “Are you alright, ma’am?”

“Yeah. Are you?”

“These have been happening for a while. Have you been awake for many?”

“None,” she thought out loud. She was kind of glad for that.

“They seem random. Not normal for any aftershocks I’ve heard of.”

Samantha covered her face even though there was nothing to hide. How many aftershocks had he heard of? Couldn’t he be a little considerate and sane with what they were going through?

Hansel said, “I’ve counted at least a dozen. Like the unpredictable quakes in the last two months, it seems to me that all these really short aftershocks could be the result of something gigantic moving around.”

“Come on.” She wanted to taunt him about his dinosaur god, but couldn’t bring herself to say it out loud. That would legitimize it somehow.

He said, “So you think they are, too?”

“No. That wasn’t a footstep. That’s crazy.”

“Then what do you think it was, ma’am?”

“Aftershocks.”

“Have you ever heard of Omori’s Law?”

“I don’t want to hear about it. Earthquakes are real. They’re something you see.”

“I saw the foot.”

“Listen: I didn’t see it. Nobody saw it. A quake is real because it’s something you can see.”

“A quake is an invisible wave in the ground. Even if it wasn’t invisible, it would still be underground where you couldn’t see it. All we see is the top layer moving.”

“Okay, fine,” she snapped. “So what did we do to make this magic dinosaur god attack us?”

“I don’t know. Maybe one of those countries that tests nuclear weapons underground woke something up. Maybe it came from the sea. Maybe nature is angry at us. I don’t know what would motivate a monster because I’ve never met one before. All I did was see a giant foot kick over the building.”

She slammed the brakes on this conversation. Either he’d put a lot of thought into this or deserved a career in improv. His tone was so collected, like a news pundit reporting from the scene. He could host a stupid seismology special.

She asked, “You don’t see anything crazy in what you’re saying?”

“I don’t mean to offend, ma’am, but denying what someone saw in favor of a thing you can’t prove sounds like where craziness starts to me. One moment. I need to check this lady’s breathing passages.”

“Are you always this…?”

Samantha trailed off, realizing what she was saying. She bit her upper lip and listened to Hansel huffing air into a stranger’s mouth. Of course the kid wasn’t always like this. He’d been through the same thing she had, and now was stuck in a greeting card aisle next a dying old lady.

Maybe a dead old lady.

Maybe, though Samantha couldn’t prove it and wouldn’t ask, he was checking the airways of his aunt.

The poor kid was in shock. Arguing with him about his monsters was downright cruel.

So she asked him something else. She asked, “How is the lady in your aisle?”

“She’s barely breathing. I’d like to get her to a hospital, if any are left.”

“How many times have you checked her airways?”

“Every few minutes. You have to make sure nothing gets in the mouth or throat. I read that even tiny particles can be dangerous.”

“You’re a good guy, Hansel.”

“Thank you.” Probably the smartest thing this boy did in his life was not end that sentence with a ‘ma’am.’ She congratulated him silently.

“You’re not normally like this, are you?”

“Me?” He paused. He rustled, and she strained to imagine him on a bed of upturned greeting cards. “I think I am. My aunt says I’m so pragmatic that I should see a psychiatrist.”

That didn’t change Samantha’s theory. She had a conclusion and he wasn’t going to change it. It hurt to realize it, and how much of any day was lived like that. So she changed the topic, asking, “So when do you think rescue is coming?”

“I was avoiding that. I don’t want to upset you.”

She couldn’t be upset right now. It just wouldn’t come. Three minutes ago she was sure she’d die and now she couldn’t think it. She was as calm as he sounded. Plus, even if he had something insane to say, he was just a shell-shocked teen.

She said, “I’m okay. It’s a good topic. Don’t you want to get out of here?”

“They may not come.”

“They will.”

“As I see it, if the monster is still in the city, the authorities are very busy.”

“An earthquake would keep them busy.”

“Many other buildings will be damaged. Thousands will need help. Rescue workers will start wherever they are. We have no idea how long it will take them to get here.”

There was grime on her eyelids. Rubbing increased the burning, so she tried pinching particles of dust from her eyelashes.

Hansel’s voice beckoned, “Can I admit something to you?”

“Please.” Him admitting the right thing would really help right now.

“I’m hoping the monster comes back and rescues us out of recompense for its actions. I’m hoping all these quakes were an accident.”

Samantha grazed her left eye with a fingernail, jerked and saw blots of color for an instant in the eternal darkness of the rubble. She spoke at the blots, “That would be nice.”

“If we’re down here too long I’ll try harder to get to you. Don’t panic over that, ma’am. Maybe I can roll some of the wreckage away and dig a tunnel. You were near the exit already, right? I can get to you and we’ll slip right out.”

Foolishly she tried to sit up. Something popped in her knees and she sucked air. It burned briefly, and she was thankful when it subsided and she only had the ache of the bar on her shins.

Sitting up was the first reflex of exploration. Making sure she remained slumped this time, she groped around. Her hand struck something metal on her left, which she followed until her reach ended, fingers finding a metal column running at an angle that meant it was likely holding her bar up on one side. The door would be somewhere beyond this column. If the register was behind her, the door was to her left. If she was right, it was only five feet to freedom. She squirmed a little, but couldn’t make it six inches in any direction.

Were they having quiet time now? She wasn’t sure.

Then Hansel said, “I am curious about something.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you feel air moving around you at all? A draft might indicate a way out.”

She hadn’t thought of that. If there were any sort of draft it would at least mean they wouldn’t suffocate. It might also mean rescue workers could hear them yell.

She licked her lips unconsciously, then consciously froze and tried to feel air moving across them.

Nothing.

She licked an index finger and held it up. Was that air wafting across it? It was impossible to keep her hand still. The trembling made it feel like there was wind in all directions.

Hansel asked, “Anything, ma’am?”

“Hold on,” she said. She squeezed her eyes shut against blindness and concentrated. Holding your hand still wasn’t hard. It was like putting the key in the lock of her apartment. Like flipping a light switch. A thoughtlessly little thing.

Booming resonated through the rubble around here and the world shifted. Her shoulders spasmed, fine dust slashing across her face and down the neck of her blouse. Hard bits of debris clattered all around her, and she refused to give a damn, sticking her fingers up into the hail, willing breeze to her fingers. She just wanted to go home, turn the key in the lock and turn on a light.

The aftershock ended. It could have been a bomb going off, or a missile striking a magic dinosaur god. Samantha didn’t change positions, keeping her finger up for drafts. The hairs on it stiffened, and she thought she felt a little something coming from her right.

“Ma’am? Are you okay?”

“Sure am,” she said. She adjusted on her right hip, preparing to give Hansel the good news, and realized that the bar over her legs had shifted off of her. Her shins hurt worse than ever, definitely bleeding, but it was the pain of relief. She slid back, only a few inches, but a glorious few that let her worm through the hail.

She felt the floor and her left palm sliced open on what was surely broken glass. That was okay, because broken glass would be next to a window.

Another quake hit, this one louder, the tiles beneath her crumbling. Something immense crashed down through the counter behind her, spraying splinters at her neck, several embedding in her skin.

Then it was over. Samantha shook and held up a hand. There was less than the width of her fingers between the top of her head and a hard strip of metal. Another steel bar.

She said, “I’m going to die.”

“No you’re not, ma’am.”

Samantha didn’t have a response.

Hansel said, “Take your time. It’s reasonable to take your time.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because I think I’m right near the door. The door or the windows.”

She reached down for a piece of the glass, as though holding it up would show Hansel. It pricked her thumb and she groaned at herself. How would she show it to him, anyway?

Her hands kept fumbling, finding nuggets of tile and cement. Beyond those was a hard vertical plane. A wall? It had to be, and her imagination conjured one when her eyes failed to see it. It was so straight and went up forever.

She groped around its sides, then slid her bleeding fingertips to the floor, then from the floor at the edge of the counter on over. This bit was tile, and more tile, and then a crack, and then… jackpot. Soft dirt and gravel, or whatever it was, something that gave between her fingers. She scooped at it like she wanted sand for a castle.

“I’m getting us out of here, Hansel! Dig that tunnel!”

“I’m on it, ma’am.”

There was cement two inches down. The entry was narrow and she could barely fit her hand under, but it did fit through. Maybe she could see light if she dug further. If there was light then there was an outdoors. If there was an outdoors, she could be heard yelling for help. Someone could hear. Someone would know to come. They had to.

She scratched at the cement. Her nails chipped against it, and again she was too busy to care when a quake hit. It made the floor jump. Blind, it felt like her hand was squashed flat as paper inside the crack.

She said, “Oh Saints, please don’t let it be broken.”

“Ma’am?”

Her wrist ached. It was not flat or stuck, swelling, sure, but who cared about that? She could still move it, still work it, so it wasn’t broken. There was room to dig. She jammed as much of her good hand as she could through until she felt something cool. Cool air. It had to be fresh air. She withdrew her wrist and forced her face against the hole.

Was there light in there? She couldn’t tell. How couldn’t she tell? You didn’t forget what light was like. Your eyes didn’t forget how to see.

She screamed. Somewhere behind her, behind a dozen feet of concrete, Hansel said something, drowned out by her own noise. She tried to speak, tried to sculpt her sound into words, and panic ruined it all. She was a balloon of worry, punctured and emptying, unable to inhale any more, screams pouring out, begging to be heard.

Her arms trembled and she wanted to vomit in that hole of fresh air. But she wasn’t the only thing trembling. Was the world joining in? Did it see her?

She was quaking, the world was shaking, and the ceiling rattled, the wreckage of the store overflowing with light too bright for Samantha to see. Was it daylight? It blinded her all over again, and she peered on instinct, to see through blindness. Amidst all the starbursts and sparkles in her eyes she thought she saw a clawed foot hooking around the sun, anchoring a titanic belly of scales. She raised her swelling hand to defend herself, or to reach for help, and the thing stretched out a second limb as though in greeting. It filled her world.

“Ma’am?”

The post PseudoPod 544: Under the Rubble appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : J. T. Glover
• Narrator : Dagny Paul
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Marty Perrett
• Discuss on Forums

“Be Still, My Dear, And Listen” was published in Issue 7 of “Makeout Creek”, a literary magazine based in Richmond, Virginia.

by J. T. Glover

 

Of course we called her “Audrey.” We were sixteen, mad about Sherilyn Fenn, tuned in together every Thursday, and we went to school with a pimply, stinking cow named Audra Horning? What happened was inevitable.

The post PseudoPod 543: Be Still, My Dear, And Listen appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Judith Merril
• Narrator : Dagny Paul
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Marty Perrett
• Discuss on Forums

“That Only a Mother” was originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, June 1948. It appears here with appreciation through the assistance of the Virginia Kidd Agency.

That Only a Mother by Judith Merril

A well-known geneticist, in the medical news, said that it was possible to tell with absolute certainty, at five months, whether the child would be normal, or at least whether the mutation was likely to produce anything freakish. The worst cases, at any rate, could be prevented. Minor mutations, of course, displacements in facial features, or changes in brain structure could not be detected. And there had been some cases recently, of normal embryos with atrophied limbs that did not develop beyond the seventh or eighth month. But, the doctor concluded cheerfully, the worst cases could now be predicted and prevented.

The post PseudoPod 542: That Only a Mother appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Rob Kotecki
• Narrator : Makenzi Newman
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Marty Perrett
• Discuss on Forums

PseudoPod 541: Tessa Told Me is a PseudoPod original.

CONTENT WARNING:

Spoiler Inside SelectShow Sexual Assault, Rape

“I always like to say that there’s nothing more terrifying than the human heart.”

Tessa Told Me by Rob Kotecki

Julie only half listened to Mr. Garland as he ran through the emergency numbers on the fridge, distracted by why Liam hadn’t texted her back. It had been forty-five minutes. They’d agreed to break up when she moved, but spent more time talking now than they ever did living ten minutes away from each other.

“I mean it,” Mr. Garland said, bringing her back to her babysitting gig. “Don’t forget to have fun… just wait until Noah goes to bed,” and he pinched his fingers and brought them to his lips.

As if. She had no idea where to buy yet. The stay at home Dads were always the worst, as they were either OCD about their kid’s every move, or desperate to prove they stayed home because they were so chill. Really.

“If all goes well, I’ll be home around one. If it goes great, I won’t be home at all.” Julie mustered a smile that fell just shy of condescending. He seemed to want something from her. “Don’t worry. Noah and I are going to be fine.”

That did the trick, and he grabbed his guitar case. He was off to play in some sad cover band at the sports bar that seemed like an off-brand TGI Friday’s from the outside. But as soon as he left, there was nothing to distract her from checking her phone and refusing to send a second text, until Liam responded to her last one.

Noah was lost in some stupid video game that seemed set in World War II. He was cute now, even a little shy, but she saw the inner frat boy Noah would grow up to be. She tried to do her calculus, but her attention never drifted far from her phone. Fine. “Busy?” she texted Liam, feeling so cavalier about it right until it was sent, at which point she realized how sad and desperate she was.

She decided to shut her phone off before she did even more damage to her self-respect and offered to play with the kid. Noah wagged his head.

“Tessa says no.”

“Who’s Tessa?”

“She’s nice. She likes you, but she thinks you should go home.”

“Well, too bad for Tessa.” But he merely shrugged and went back to the game.

“She says too bad for you.”

Imaginary friend. Fine. At least the kid’s quiet.

She shrugged and went through the house, gathering clues about the Garlands. Spotless… no doubt from a maid. Framed degrees from colleges she’d never get into even if she could afford them, and photos with politicians she recognized from her parents’ cable news habit, but no real celebrities. Mrs. Garland looked just like Julie imagined her — prim, beautiful, probably a bitch. At least to Mr. Garland. Probably with good reason.

When it was time for his bath, Noah went without even being asked. But after a half hour or so, the bathroom door remained closed. “Everything okay in there?”

She heard a splashing, a gasp. The door was locked.

“Open up, Noah. Noah?” What’s the worst thing that could happen?

“Suit yourself. But I’ll just tell your Dad.” But there was no response. And she knew exactly what the worst thing was.

“I mean it. Open up. Just tell me you’re okay and you can stay in there forever.” Another splash. Another gasp.

She didn’t know how long she’d been banging on the door when it finally gave way, revealing Noah.

Nude. Soaking wet. A puddle at his feet. “Tessa bet me I couldn’t hold my breath longer than her, and she was right.”

Julie swaddled him in a towel, worried and a little pissed that Mr. Garland didn’t warn her how weird Noah was.

“Why wouldn’t you open the door when I told you?”

“Tessa told me not to.”

“Well, Tessa isn’t in charge. I am. Understand?” Noah was smart enough to know not to argue. “How come I can’t hear her?”

He shrugged. “She says there’s still time for you to go.”

“Do you see her right now?”

“She stays in the basement but she can see everything.” Noah said it without the relish of make-believe, like he was showing her where the peanut butter was.

“Well, you don’t have to do everything Tessa says, understand?”

“Dad said I did.”

And that’s when Julie decided she’d never babysit here again. She got him fresh pajamas and let him dress himself.

“It’s time for bed.”

“But you said I could stay up till 9…” She was almost grateful to see him whining like an ordinary twerp.

“That was only if you behaved.”

“Tessa says you’ll be sorry.”

“No locking the door, understand? Sleep tight.”  She closed Noah’s door and slipped down the stairs, grateful to have him down for the night. Now if only Liam would get back to her. No such luck. The door to the basement was open, just a crack, but she shut and locked it. Feeling foolish, but relieved.

She flipped through channels, settling for a marathon of the Big Bang Theory even though she’d seen most of them. Outside, a storm gathered, starting with a rain that tap danced on the windows and the porch, swelling to a rickety sleet that seemed to leave the house whimpering beneath its blows.

There was a sense she should check on Noah, but deeper than that, she wanted to assure herself that she wasn’t truly alone. She knows dark, stormy nights with strange children never end well for the babysitter.

Cut. That. Out. She felt like Gretchen, and immediately snapped back to good ole sensible Julie. But a cold pebble dropped in her stomach when she discovered Noah wasn’t in bed.

Or the bathroom. Or any other room. Or closet.

The rain had intensified into hail and it was too loud now to hear the house, or anything else, settle. That stone in her stomach went soft and oozed into a full panic, one that blew past any hesitation she had about checking the attic.

The attic was nothing more than boxes of decorations, toys Noah grew out of, paraphernalia from hobbies long since abandoned. Later, she wondered what drew her to the octagon window. But when she peered out, there was Noah.

Atop the roof, at its very edge, his pajamas soaked dark and calm as can be, his hands outstretched as if he had summoned the storm himself. He was only foot away, but the window couldn’t open. How’d he get up there?

She banged the window, but soon gathered that was useless.

Julie plunged down the steps. Out the front door, off the porch, she didn’t know when she started to scream at him. To get down. To stay there. She didn’t know what to tell him. Up there, any move seemed doomed.

“Tessa told me I could fly! She told me! See?”

And with that, he leapt.

Julie screamed as if her words could somehow catch him, but in the leaping, fell towards her, enough that she didn’t so much catch him, as break his fall. His elbow or his knee, she couldn’t tell, clipped her face.

He tumbled off her and on to the rain-drenched lawn. Noah seemed to have twisted an ankle or bruised something. When he moaned and rolled over, she had never been so fond of a kid before. Unsure if she should move him, she watched as he simply stood up and limped to the front door, still wide open from her dash to save him. How she wanted to grab hold of that tiny weirdo and never let go.

She called Mr. Garland immediately, who was slow to respond, no doubt wailing on some song that was never that good. But when he got one or all of her frantic messages, he raced home, pissed that she had not called an ambulance and livid she’d allowed Noah to fall asleep with a possible concussion.

“Don’t you fucking know that much?”

After the hospital, in the car ride home, Mr. Garland had ceased to sulk or glare or sigh in her direction. Something had shifted now that Noah was in the clear. Back at the house, with Noah tucked in bed, he even cracked a joke and noted her bruised lip.

Mr. Garland walked out of Noah’s room, and after he left and headed downstairs, she heard Noah say something in his sleep. But it made no sense. He said it three or four times:

“Run.”

“We don’t need to tell Mrs. Garland about this,” he said cracking open a pair of beers in the kitchen.

“I’m so glad he’s okay. I mean, nothing like this…”

“I can keep a secret,” he winked, and leaned in to kiss her.

She flinched, took a step back.

“Better get home.”

“No need to rush,” and he cradled her head in hands and before she could pull away his tongue was already inside her mouth, less awkward than when Ethan Hollins tried that in middle school but the effect was the same: an overwhelming urge to spit it out.

“This isn’t wrong.” And his hands began to undo her buttons.

“Mr. Garland- NO…”

And she yanked free of him. He didn’t seem remotely upset. Instead, a smile split open on his face. “I understand, I do. But Julie, part of growing up is learning what you like, and you’d be surprised just what you want. Maybe you’re scared. Maybe it makes you feel dirty, but it’s beautiful. You’re beautiful.”

“I want to go home.”

“Absolutely. Let’s at least get you cleaned up.”

“I really-“

“What’s your Mom going to say when you show up looking like that?”

She couldn’t think of an answer though she knew one was around, like when she misplaced her phone. The house was still. The rain had stopped. And it was now quiet enough to hear Mr. Garland lock the door in the distance.

Back door. That’s what she needed, but could she make it in time? She’d have to run. Run now. Undo those two-

Mr. Garland came back with the first aid kid, but she was no longer in the kitchen.  “Julie? Julie. Let’s not be a tease.”

She could hear him from the bottom of the stairs of the basement where she hid. Crouched low, jutting her hand out to the sky so her cell could catch a signal, but nothing came back down. On her hands and knees she retreated further into the darkness, tucking herself in the crawlspace beneath the stairs, packed with garbage bags. She dry heaved from the stench of a perfume that reminded her of rotten fruit doused with gasoline.

Her thoughts scrambled- how could she be so stupid? What if all he wanted was a kiss? Blow it off. Or don’t. Let him do what he’ll do and handle it later. But don’t get trapped like the babysitter on a rainy night with a strange fucking kid and his even stranger Dad.

Windows. Basements have windows. There. A slit of glass, cobwebbed and caked with dust, came into view, but as soon as she lurched in that direction- the basement door squealed open, the basement light flicked on, and Mr. Garland made his way down, but patiently. Why so patient, Mr. Garland?

She pressed even harder into the pile of garbage bags, deeper into that foul fruity smell and held her breath as Mr. Garland reached the bottom of the stairs. She finally pressed deep enough that she hit something inside a garbage bag that wouldn’t budge. She peered just below her armpit, and noticed something poking out of the black plastic.

Skin. Human skin. Couldn’t be. Was that a knee?

She blanked it out, trying to bury herself deeper behind the bags without so much as a rustle, or much of one. She kept her eyes closed, praying to wake up back in her bedroom. Then she heard Mr. Garland return up the stairs, step by step by step.

And she began plotting how to crawl through that window and all the way…

An electronic whoosh blared from her phone. To announce she’d gotten a text. Loud. How loud? It was in her back pocket, but it bleated AGAIN before she could reach it.

It was from Liam: “Hardly. Missing you tho. Still up?”

How she wanted to scream at it, for help, for the love of God, why-

Mr. Garland ripped it from her hands.

“I called my parents!”

But he already scanned the screen to know she was lying.

“Come on out, Julie. I’m not mad. We’ll laugh about this tomorrow.” What struck her was how much she wanted him to be angry. She crawled out from beneath the stairs and there, while standing up before him, she considered that she’d been foolish. Perhaps he was going to simply clean her up and take her home, and would apologize for creeping her out.

And a moment later she discovered just how foolish.

“So you met Tessa.” He gestured to the pile of garbage bags, packed with bundles of potpourri. One of which clearly had a mane of dark hair erupting from its top. “Now she was a gem. Noah just loved her. And you know what? A part of me did too.” He stepped towards her, grabbing hold of her arms.

“But she couldn’t keep a secret. Can you?”

And later, her mouth stuffed with her own underwear, her nose clamped shut in his hands, her body would go still and as soon as it did, she heard a voice, a girl’s voice.

“I told you to run.”

The post PseudoPod 541: Tessa Told Me appeared first on PseudoPod.