Archive for July, 2016

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PseudoPod 501: Flash on The Borderlands XXXII: Punishments

PseudoPod 501: Flash on The Borderlands XXXII: Punishments is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:14 — 23.6MB)

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Show Notes

“Rat King” and “Dead Alive Imagine” are PseudoPod originals.

“The Cages”  originally appeared in PERSONAL DEMONS in 1998.

Devils speak of the ways in which she’ll manifest

Angels bleed from the tainted touch of my caress

Rat King

by Lia Swope Mitchell

narrated by Rish Outfield

Listen. This is just a free consultation. We’re just two men in a bar, you and I. Respectably dressed with respectable drinks, talking business, like everyone else. But I can see it on your face, written underneath your eyes. I can smell it. Underneath the bourbon, underneath the cigarettes and lies. Something’s in there, crawling around inside. You’ve got a secret. And you want to do business, I can tell.

Dead Alive Imagine

by David Murphy

narrated by Siobhan Gallichan

Incisions are made within the clinical white surrounds of the operating lab; incisions in space and time in the operating theatre itself – and incisions into the flesh of the patient. These cuts and alterations take place in a lab so pristine that ceiling, walls and floor blend in a haze that fuses dimensions of distance, height and depth; a shining cleanliness so all-pervasive that light and surface intermingle, making it difficult to distinguish what is vertical from what is horizontal. Concentration and precision are of vital importance in this facility. All tables are smooth, all medical equipment sharp. Follow the instruction manual carefully. Do not – repeat: do not – attempt any ancillary procedures beyond those outlined in this manual.

The Cages

by Christopher Fowler

narrated by Jon Grilz

‘Look,’ said Albert, ‘they’re beating up Mrs Tremayne.’

‘She’s not done anything wrong, has she?’ asked Dr Figgis. ‘No. Perhaps that’s why they’re beating her up.’

‘Doesn’t follow, does it? God, she’s making a lot of noise.’ He shouted through the bars. ‘Hey, keep it down!’

‘This thing’s hard on my arse.’ Albert fidgeted on the rungs. After a few hours they cut into your buttocks and forced you to change position. At least, that was the effect they had on Albert. He noticed that many of the others never seemed to move at all.

NASA aurora image from April 10, 2015, Delta Junction, Alaska

PseudoPod 500: A Bit Of The Dark World

“A Bit Of The Dark World” originally appeared in Fantastic Stories of Imagination, February 1962. It is presented here as the 7th part of our 10 episode “A CENTURY OF HORROR” celebration – with 9 other episodes made available only to subscribers!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:36:25 — 66.3MB)

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A Bit Of The Dark World

by Fritz Leiber

… and then one of the last rays of the sun must have struck a mirror-surface in the summit-crag, perhaps an outcropping of quartz, for it struck back at me like a golden rapier, making me blink, and then for an instant the beam was glitteringly black and I thought I saw (though nothing as clearly as I’d seen the black all-knowing spider-centipede on the pinnacle) a black shape — black with the queer churning blackness you see only at night with your eyes dosed. The shape coiled rapidly down the crag, into the cavern gullies and around the rocks and finally and utterly into the undergrowth above the fold and disappeared.

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PseudoPod 499: The Tooth Fairy

PseudoPod 499: The Tooth Fairy is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:14 — 31.2MB)

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Show Notes

“I hope the story works on its own without needing to know too much. But I’ve always been fascinated by the fascination that people have with serial killers, and how our perception is affected by both the fiction and the mythologizing of fact. To say much more would of course be to give away some of the story. It’s also an unusual piece for me in that its one of very few stories I’ve written set in the US. I’ve always wanted to write more US based fiction as that is mostly what I read, although I’m known for writing about Scotland and, more generally, the city of Dundee. It was refreshing to be able to write about a subject matter and location that was new to me, and the enthusiasm of Pseudopod for the story has been a great reward for taking that risk.”

The Tooth Fairy

by Russel McLean

The package, when it arrives, is innocuous. Plain envelope. Bubble wrap. A little box inside. Black cardboard. Red ribbon.

Could be anything.

Anything at all.

It comes standard delivery. Anything else would provoke suspicion. Signing for packages, someone, somewhere has to say what’s inside.

How would you explain the contents of that black box?

I sit it, for a while, on the black onyx stone of the kitchen worktop. I look at it. I anticipate opening the box. Think of Schrodinger’s Cat.

Dead?

Alive?

Present?

Gone?

I won’t know. Until I open the box.

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PseudoPod 498: The Only Ending We Have

“The Only Ending We Have” was first printed in Psycho-Mania! in October 2013, edited by Stephen Jones, then in a Year’s Best edited by Ellen Datlow. Have a biscuit (US: cookie) every time you clock a reference to an Alfred Hitchcock title.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:09:33 — 47.8MB)

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The Only Ending We Have

by Kim Newman

The windshield wipers squeaked … like shrilling fiddles, scraped nerves, the ring of an unanswered phone. Another reason to trade in her ‘57 Ford Custom. For 1960, she’d like something with fins. Not that she could afford next year’s showroom model.

Unless Hitch coughed up the ransom.

For the thing it was all about. The mcguffin.

The thing the audience doesn’t care about, but the characters do.

‘Good eeeev-ning,’ Hitch said, every goddamn morning … like in his TV show with that nursery/graveyard tune burbling in the background. ‘Funeral March of the Marionettes’. Dump-da- dumpity-dump- da-dump…

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PseudoPod 497: Killer

PseudoPod 497: Killer is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:20 — 16.8MB)

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Show Notes

“Killer” is the second sequence of “The Murderer Cycle,” a loosely connected set of stories written to deconstruct the near-mythic portrayal of killers in modern horror. This is Sean Ganus’s first professional sale.

Killer

by Sean Ganus

There’s a killer in my kitchen. I don’t know how long he’s been here, sitting in the dark. I didn’t notice him until I was already six steps inside, obliviously hitting the light and grabbing a pear from the basket by the stove. He’s sitting at the little wooden table I keep by the window. He looks like he’s waiting for dinner. His elbows hang over the edge and his hands rest on top of each other. One hand clenches the handle of a machete. The tool sports a fresh, gleaming edge. It was sharpened with obvious care. It’s wet and glistening in the fluorescent light.

He’s massive, so unbelievably *big*. He’s a heavy chunk of muscle and bone, tied off in a mechanic’s jumpsuit. Clumps of drying mud peel from his boots.

I know him. I mean…I know who he is. Velstrom. Robert Velstrom. Robby’s been dead and buried for thirteen years, but he’s sitting here now.