PseudoPod

• Author : Leslie J. Anderson
• Narrator : Emily Smith
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

Pseudopod 442: The Only Child is a PseudoPod original.

“While writing this story I was wondering why death sometimes makes people feel special – touching it, escaping it, even causing it. Yet it’s not special. It’s something that happens to all of us eventually and it’s usually terrible.”

“Annabell Crowley lay on the dirt floor and looked up at Death. She remembered that a man had cut her throat. It was so hard to hold onto ideas. Her parents were already dead. Death had taken their spirits hours ago. She thought she should be afraid of him, but wasn’t. The human mind has amazing capabilities of adjusting to a new reality. The world was very peaceful. She looked up at Death, who looked back down at her. How funny that everything felt normal now. A man had cut her throat and she was not dead, even though that was impossible. Her arms lay at her sides. She didn’t have the power to raise them.

Death tilted his head. His skin was pulled close over his skull and his eyes were closed and sunken. Maybe he had no eyes at all. After looking at her for a long time he flicked the cigarette away and walked out the door. He was dressed in flannel and jean, with a brown hat. He had taken the hat from a hanged man because he’d liked it and it fit well. He stepped over Anna’s father.”

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• Author : Karen Munro
• Narrator : Spencer Disparti
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

“Deep Deep” originally appeared in Electric Spec, May 2012.

“I once worked as a summer camp counselor, and I love swimming in lakes. (You might not think so, but it’s true!)”

“If a kid got lost in the lake, all the counselors had to dive. They were supposed to line up an arm’s length from each other, dive to the bottom, swim a few feet, then come straight up for air. If you dove close to shore it wasn’t bad. You only had to go down a few feet. But out at the end of the dock, beneath the diving board, it was twelve or fifteen or twenty feet to the bottom. That’s what we called deep-deep.

I wasn’t a counselor. I wasn’t counselor material, especially not at Wanderwell Reformatory Boys’ Camp. I wasn’t there to reform anyone, I just wanted to get out of my mom’s basement for the summer. Bagging cream of wheat and counting bowstrings in the quartermaster’s A-frame was better than listening to my mom and Shouty Phil rampage through the house. I didn’t want to be a counselor. I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone . . . but they still made me dive.”

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• Author : Nathan Ehret
• Narrators : Halloween Bloodfrost and Jen Rhodes
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

Pseudopod 440: Octavius Bound is a PseudoPod original.

“Although the events in this story are fictional, the Octavius itself is somewhat less so. Legends of this ship’s disappearance have existed for centuries, and nothing conclusive about its existence has been documented either way.”

“Sept 17, 1762

Five Months now we have been at Sea, tho’ it seems but half a Week since the _Octavius_ embarked from Peking and the Orient. I have decided to eschew the Horn & attempt a Course through the New World for our return Journey. If, by God’s Grace, the Weather is clear & we maintain our current Heading, we should find Passage eastward through the Arctic within the next Fortnight.

June 1, 2014

Saw my first iceberg today. Not sure when we can expect pack ice, but everyone just tells me, ‘relax, we’re on an icebreaker’. Kinda takes the excitement out of sailing into the Great White North to chase down a ghost ship, but hey–at least we’ll be safer than the _Octavius_.

It’s funny–we really don’t know much more about the _HMS Octavius_ than what anyone’s grandma could find on Google. It was last seen in 1775, some thirteen years after its disappearance, by the _Herald_, an English whaling ship. When the whalers went on board, they discovered the entire crew of the _Octavius_ frozen dead at their stations. The captain, William Perington, was still at his desk, pen in hand, along with a woman and small child. I guess the whole ‘freezing-to-death-at-your-post’ business kinda freaked the hell out of the whalers, and they legged it pretty quick. But not before purloining the captain’s log book from right under his stiff, dead hand…

Course it was all basically hearsay until good ol’ Robert came across the log book in an auction for maritime memorabilia. It was vetted by a dozen historians, and it seems to be legit. Turns out the coordinates for the _Octavius’_ last known location were in the book. Also turns out that Yours Truly is Robert’s favourite student of maritime archaeology, hence my place aboard the _Liberator_! Sweet deal.

(OK, cards on the table–Robert knows about what happened with Dylan, and maybe he figures this trip will help me get over things? Yeah, right. But it’ll be a good voyage nevertheless. Right? Of course it will.)

_And why, O Wise and Lovely Amelia Finley, are you writing in a diary?_ My distinguished advisor, Prof Robert Winston, thinks it will actually help organize my thoughts when it comes to writing my thesis. Huzzah.”

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• Author : Marie Brennan
• Narrator : A.J. Fitzwater
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

“Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes” was published in RUNNING WITH THE PACK (ed. Ekaterina Sedia), in 2010, and reprinted in MAD SCIENCE CAFE (ed. Deborah J. Ross) in 2013.

“The story was directly inspired by a set of online essays written by Michael Briggs, husband of the urban fantasy author Patricia Briggs, in which he attempted to make silver bullets and discovered that it’s insanely hard to do.”

“_Abstract_

This study seeks to establish a hierarchy of efficacy for various antipathetic materials and delivery mechanisms thereof as used in the extermination of lycanthropes. Pre-existing data on this issue consists solely of folkloric narratives and unsubstantiated anecdotes on Internet communities, neither of which are based upon suitable experimental trials. It is hoped that this study will be only the beginning of a proper body of scientific literature, which might be expanded to include hyena men, were-jaguars, and other therianthropes.”

The post Pseudopod 439: Comparison of Efficacy Rates for Seven Antipathetics as Employed Against Lycanthropes appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Sarah Benkin
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

“Baby Weight” was first published on Bogleech.

“Baby Weight started out as a story about eating and about the way disorders can hide themselves under other names. It turned into something all its own, but the thoughts that gave birth to it are still in there”

“7:00am – Glass of room temperature lemon water with cayenne pepper

8:00am – Steamed, purred carrot, half. Eaten at desk

10:00am – 1/2 cup coconut milk. No added sugar. Four bites porridge.

I watch the women from the phone bank while they eat. One is nibbling on a small, grey puck of a breakfast sandwich. The kind that you buy, store, microwave and eat out of a white paper wrapper. I can’t look away. I watch while she’s pushing bite after bite of the thing through her greasy, lipsticked mouth.”

The post Pseudopod 438: Baby Weight appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Kristin Luna
• Narrator : Joe Sammarco
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

Pseudopod 437: Fog is a PseudoPod original.

“This story didn’t just come out of thin air. It really did come out of the fog. While waiting for fog to clear at the Colorado Springs airport so my plane could take off, I went to the bathroom. There, just walking around, was a woman with no pants. It was one of the oddest, out-of-context sights I had ever seen, and knew I had to create a story around it. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you enjoy ‘Fog.'”

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“Outside, there was only gray, diffused light. Hints of airplanes sat lifelessly at their gates. The fog drifted and stroked the windows.

Just as the businessman turned to make conversation with the old man to his left, his gaze caught on a woman walking out of the bathroom. “Will you look at that?”

The security cameras in the terminal jerked into position to watch the woman, except for the one camera trained on the crowd of onlookers. The crowd turned their heads to look.”

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• Authors : Sandra M. Odell, Cat Rambo and Shane Halbach
• Narrators : Julie Hoverson, Pete Milan and Matt Arnold
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

“Worm Within” was originally printed in “Clarkesworld” 2008.

“Lullabies For A Clockwork Child” is a PseudoPod Original.

“Used” is a PseudoPod Original and was reprinted in For Mortal Things Unsung.

“The strategic problem is, of course, that simulacra are reassuring only when viewed from outside. They do not provide an existential model for how to be in the world. One can appreciate the brilliance of the embalmer’s work, but one would not want to be its object.”

“Decadent Naturalism” by Charles Bernheimer; introduction to A HAVEN by J.K. Huysmans in THE DECADENT READER.

Sounds in this episodes:

“Ticks” for “Worm Within” can be found here. “Static” for “Worm Within” can be found here “Interstitial Clockwork” for “Lullabies For A Clockwork Child” can be found here

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“Worm Within” by Cat Rambo

“The LED bug kicks feebly, trying to push itself away from the wall. Its wings are rounds of mica, and the hole in its carapace where someone has tacked it to the graying boards reveals cogs and gears, almost microscopic in their dimension. The light from its underside is the cobalt of distress.”

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“Lullabies For A Clockwork Child” by Shane Halbach.

“You are not Jack, but I will tell you of Jack, so you can know.

Jack was beautiful and strong. Jack had curly hair and shining brown eyes, and when we walked, he held my thumb and swung our arms just to feel them move.

You will not look like Jack. Every child is different. You are both my sons, but you are different.”

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“Used” by Sandra Odell.

“I recognize her sitting five seats down at the bar. She notices my attention and invites me over with a sip of her drink and a nod to the empty stool to her right. We are diseased, and long for understanding company.

She says her name is Cindy. Small, Clairol blonde, buxom Cindy with a blue, winged heart tattoo under her left collarbone. I introduce myself as Steve, buy her another what-she’s-having. She traces circles around the knuckles of my right hand with the sweat from her glass. There is a band of pale skin at the base of her ring finger.”

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The post Pseudopod 436: Flash On The Borderlands XXV: Simulacra appeared first on PseudoPod.

• Author : Christa Pagliei
• Narrator : Brian Rollins
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

“Raw Appetite” first appeared in the August 2014 “Kitchen Sink” issue of Fictionvale

“I suppose that I want people to think about the intersection of honing a craft, and obsession as well as mentorship.”

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“As a commis I worked under the rest of the Chefs de Partie. The first two months were a slog of relentless hazing and trouble. I never flinched, just kept moving forward. I knew I was the lowest man on the totem pole and I’d simply have to wait out the abuse.

In my sixth month when Chef first asked me to keep his knives sharp I was taken aback. I didn’t even know that he knew my name. He’d certainly never spoken directly to me before. Chef Catalan never let anyone even touch his knives, but to trust some aspect of their care to a mere commise… It was unusual to say the least.

The hazing stopped, but now I was only spoken to in a professional capacity. I became an automaton to them, a tool, no more worth socializing with than a ladle or a whisk. I never let any emotion show as a rule, but I certainly never showed them how much their silence pleased me. The more I could streamline my existence. The more I could eliminate every superfluous thing, person, and interaction, the more I could dedicate myself to my craft. It only took two weeks to get the knives as he wanted, or at least get past the point of a daily critique of my sharpening technique. When dealing with Chef Catalan, two weeks to anything resembling pleasure is a triumph.”

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• Author : Michael Payne
• Narrator : Joe Calarco
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

Pseudopod Bonus Flash: The Discussion Of Mimes is a PseudoPod original.

“Why are so many people afraid of clowns and amused by mimes?”

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“Following careful overanalysis, I decided to treat myself for a change. I’d spent the last three years working during the day and attending school at night. You can understand why I thought I was entitled to some frivolity.

I settled on mime classes. I’d never even thought about miming, which is part of what drew me to it. I’d been living a drab, bookish life, so I wanted to go as far in the other direction as possible.

An Internet search found fewer mime classes than I anticipated. I figured in NYC there was enough interest in every artistic pursuit to support a small army of participants. Miming appeared to be the exception. If they rebranded it “mime yoga” perhaps it’d be different.”

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• Author : Thomas Ligotti
• Narrator : Rish Outfield
• Host : Alasdair Stuart
• Audio Producer : Graeme Dunlop
• Discuss on Forums

“Drink to Me Only with Labyrinthine Eyes” first appeared in Nyctalops #17, 1982.

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” ‘Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen,’ I say when the lights come back on and the meager applause dies entirely. ‘I hope my beautiful assistant and I haven’t bored you too much this evening. You do look a little sleepy, as if you’ve been lulled into a trance yourselves. Which is not such a bad feeling, is it? Sinking deep into a downy darkness, resting your souls on pillows stuffed with soft shadows. But our host informs me that things will liven up very soon. Certainly you will awake when a little chime commands you to do so. Remember, it’s wake-up time when you hear the chime.’

I repeat. ‘And now I believe we can prosecute this evening’s festivities.’ ”

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