Archive for June, 2013

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 340: Neighbourhood Watch

“Neighbourhood Watch” originally appeared in an Australian magazine, Aphelion, in 1986, and was reprinted in Karl Edward Wagner’s THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES XVI in 1988. The story is available to read at here

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Neighbourhood Watch

by Greg Egan

Only at night, says the contract. After eleven, to be precise. Decent people are not out after eleven, and decent people should not have to witness what I do.

Andrews is seventeen, and bored. Andrew, I understand. This suburb is a hole, you have my deepest sympathies. What do they expect you to do around here? On a warm night like this a young man can grow restless. I know; your dreams, too, shaped me slightly (my principal creators did not expect that). You need adventure. So keep your eyes open, Andrew, there are opportunities everywhere.

The sign on the chemist’s window says no money, no drugs, but you are no fool. The back window’s frame is rotting, the nails are loose, it falls apart in your hands. Like cake. Must be your lucky night, tonight.

The cash drawer’s empty (oh shit!) and you can forget about that safe, but a big, glass candy jar of valium beats a handful of Swiss health bars, doesn’t it? There are kids dumb enough to pay for those, down at the primary school.

Only those who break the law, says the contract. A list of statutes is provided, to be precise. Parking offences, breaking the speed limit and cheating on income tax are not included; decent people are only human, after all. Breaking and entering is there, though, and stealing, well, that dates right back to the old stone tablets.

No loophole, Andrew. No argument.

Andrew has a flick knife, and a death’s head tattoo. He’s great in a fight, our Andrew. Knows some karate, once did a little boxing, he has no reason to be afraid. He walks around like he owns the night. Especially when there’s nobody around.

So what’s that on the wind? Sounds like someone breathing, someone close by. Very even, slow, steady, powerful. Where is the bastard? You can see in all directions, but there’s no one in sight. What, then? Do you think it’s in your head? That doesn’t seem likely.

Andrew stands still for a moment. He wants to figure this out for himself, but I can’t help giving him hints, so the lace of his left sand-shoe comes undone. He puts down the jar and crouches to retie it.

The ground, it seems, is breathing.

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 339: The End-Of-The-World Pool

“The End-Of-The-World Pool” was first published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show #12, May 2009. Ray Bradbury’s SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES was a direct influence on this story.

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The End-Of-The-World Pool

by Scott M. Roberts

The pool was as warm as sweat. Evan kicked away from the surface, algae shifting and bumping against his bare legs. Even with his mouth squeezed tight, he could taste the foulness of the water, like it had seeped through his ears to touch the back of his throat.

Down!

There’d been no squares edging the poolside, advertising the depth. It could be ten feet, twelve feet, a thousand feet deep. Evan couldn’t sense the bottom or the surface. All around him, floaties and foulness and warm water, like piss. He was swimming through a toilet, that’s what, and maybe he’d gotten in the bend without realizing it, and what if someone flushed?

Evan opened his eyes. Light blurred above him, at the end of the angle of his skinny body. And below him, more water, darker and deeper. He stretched his arms, kicked his legs, and pushed on. Pushed in, he thought, through slick, sweaty water.

The water grew cooler the deeper he swam. He kept his eyes open, despite how they burned. The light above dwindled, and then was gone, and the water didn’t end. That wasn’t right — where the pool was dark and deep, that was where the bottom had to be. Covered by a layer of muck, maybe; maybe inches of decaying leaves blown into the pool during the winter. But water and quiet surrounded him instead.

Quiet. He couldn’t hear Dad and Uncle Hector banging on the deck. He couldn’t even hear the bubbles when he let some air out of his lungs. Evan swiped at the water, edging deeper. His fingers touched sand. Sand. At the bottom of a pool.

Something touched him back.

PseudoPod 338: Beware The Jabberwock, My Son

“Beware The Jabberwock, My Son” was first published *way back* in 1991 in a tiny little photocopied horror zine out of Seattle called FEAR BOOK. The print run was 150. It was the author’s first attempt at trying to write horror for a living, and the results paid so little ($15) that he stayed away from genre fiction for the next twenty years. But now we have podcasts and the world looks much brighter! If anyone remembers actually reading this story in print from back then, the author would like you to contact him. This is what Facebook is for.

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Beware The Jabberwock, My Son

by Dixon Chance

Richard stayed frozen. This is nonsense, he thought. Am I afraid of a funny noise? Of nonsense? He formed a determined smile and decided to recite Humpty-Dumpty’s poem to himself. Maybe that would help him relax, fighting nonsense with nonsense. “_I sent a message to the fish/ I told them, ‘This is what I wish—’_” he said softly.

He had nerved himself up enough to go two steps when he heard the next sound. It was like a lady’s fan—one made of cellophane—being opened. Or a breeze being…folded?

The sound (_whiffle_) came again, and this time it definitely came from the mirror. Definitely. He could imagine its long, snaky neck pouring out of the mirror frame, those two pale unblinking eyes peering around his bedroom as it flew

(_whiffle_)

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Pseudopod 337: At The End Of The Passage

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:53 — 40.5MB)

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by Rudyard Kipling

“At The End Of The Passage” (1902) was originally published in the August 1890 issue of Lippincott’s Magazine. The description of the country suggests the desert of Upper Rajputana, north of Jodhpur which Kipling visited as a correspondent. It is available online to read here

(JOSEPH) RUDYARD KIPLING (1865–1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was born in Bombay, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including THE JUNGLE BOOK (which includes “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”), JUST SO STORIES (1902), KIM (1901) and many short stories, including “The Man Who Would Be King” and his poems, including “Mandalay”, “Gunga Din”, and “If—”. He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story, his children’s books are enduring classics of children’s literature and his best works are said to exhibit “a versatile and luminous narrative gift”. Kipling’s ghostly tales evince a powerful interest in the psychological, and their subtlety and indirection can be very impressive.

Your reader this week – Alasdair Stuart – needs no introduction – so click the link in his name and go read his blog instead!

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“The sky is lead and our faces are red / And the gates of Hell are opened and riven / And the winds of Hell are loosened and driven, And the dust flies up in the face of Heaven / And the clouds come down in a fiery sheet / Heavy to raise and hard to be borne / And the soul of man is turned from his meat / Turned from the trifles for which he has striven / Sick in his body, and heavy-hearted / And his soul flies up like the dust in the sheet / Breaks from his flesh and is gone and departed / As the blasts they blow on the cholera-horn”

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