Do you feel an implicit threat in the query “How May I Help You?”

“Last Waltz in Texas” by Bryce Albertson

This story originally appeared in Necrotic Tissue #10 and was reprinted in THE BEST OF NECROTIC TISSUE.

BRYCE ALBERSON is a writer from Fort Smith, Arkansas whose work has appeared in The Brooklyner, THE BEST OF NECROTIC TISSUE, MALPRACTICE: AN ANTHOLOGY OF BEDSIDE TERROR, On The Premises, and other places. His screenplay, PAPER EMPIRES, won first Place in the 2012 Las Vegas Film Festival’s screenplay contest. He was a guest judge for issue #17 of On the Premises and his story, “Like the Title Goes Here and Stuff”, will be featured in that issue, which should come out sometime near the end of July.

Read by Jacquie Duckworth, who grew up sneaking out of her room in the wee hours of the night to watch Twilight Zone and Night Gallery (my kind of girl - ed.). She is an actress in the San Francisco Bay Area performing everything from Shakespeare to sketch comedy and is proud to have been featured as the “Bondi Neighbor Woman” in a television episode of Discovery ID Channel’s I ALMOST GOT AWAY WITH IT!

“Hey there, cowboy. Have a seat.”

“Sterile” by Christopher Tepedino

“Sterile” has not been published previously. Pseudopod is the first publication to pick it up.

CHRISTOPHER TEPEDINO is a speculative fiction writer currently living in Champaign, IL, just south of Chicago. His other works have been published in Fusion Fragment, SNM Horror Magazine, 69 Flavors of Paranoia, and Arable. He is hard at work on a western zombie apocalypse novel that involves the pursuit of a mythical gun that may save mankind.

Read by John “Man Of Many Voices” Bell - why haven’t you gone and listened to BELL’S IN THE BATFRY, yet? Are you MAD?!?

“‘A shiny quarter. It’s on the pale green floor outside room 133, bright and sparkly, and Reynolds Parker stoops to pick it up. He’s a short, hunchbacked man, with missing teeth and a left eye that rolls in its socket without purpose. He has a mop in one hand; the tendrils hang toward the floor, splotched in dark red. He clutches the mop, sure to not let it fall — it’s his, after all — and hesitantly folds the shiny quarter in his palm. His hand shakes as he turns the quarter over, examining the eagle on the back, wings spread, perched on a branch of olives above the block letters E PLURIBUS UNUM, and then the decapitated George Washington head, a letter halo LIBERTY poised above his balding skull. It’s silver all around, not a speck of red blemishing its smooth surface, and Reynolds tucks it into the front pocket of his pants. Such items did not go in his apron; those pockets are for messiness. This quarter is clean.”

“Meat” by David Steffen

“Meat” has not been previously published.

DAVID STEFFEN writes video processing algorithms for traffic control systems by day. He lives with his wife and three dogs in Minnesota. His fiction has been published in Daily Science Fiction, Bull Spec, AE, and twice previously on Pseudopod, among others. He has been a dedicated listener to all the Escape Artists podcasts for years, and you can find him on the forum as “Unblinking”. David co-edits the non-fiction zine Diabolical Plots, focusing on interviews, reviews, and other topics of interest to speculative fiction fans. Also check the site for a full bibliography.

Your reader, Josh Roseman, has been published in Asimov’s and on Escape Pod, among other places, and his reviews appear regularly at Escapepod.org (he’s on the forums as Listener). His most recent fiction sale was “Secret Santa”, which appeared on THE DUNESTEEF last December, and he is currently seeking a publisher for his new superhero novel. He’s in the midst of a Buffy re-watch on his blog, Listener. His main website is Josh Roseman; his twitter is @listener42; and you can follow him on Google Plus or like him on Facebook.

“Try as I might, I fail Master. Keep the house clean and keep red meat in the fridge, he said. These are menial tasks, yet I fail.”

PLEASE HELP PSEUDOPOD AND ANSWER A VERY SHORT DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEY AT THIS LINK. IT WILL HELP US IMMEASURABLY! and thank you!

SURVEY

 

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For Pearl Harbor Day, three flash pieces about fighting back …

No Further by Matthew Acheson

This piece was previously published in “Underground Voices” magazine and is one of two stories available to date from Mr. Acheson’s WHISPERS FROM THE NORTH saga, a series of linked short stories that sets the backdrop for his currently in progress fantasy novel.

Matthew Acheson lives in Orono, Maine. He earned his Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Ancient History from the University of Southern Maine, and has worked as an engineer in the telecommunications industry for over a decade. His fiction has appeared in Raygun Revival, Spinetingler, Digital Dragon, Morpheus Tales, and others. On some cold winter nights you’ll find him by the fireplace, entertaining his fourteen nieces and nephews with strange tales of supernatural horror and the fantastic. His website, Cryptic House, is linked under his byline above.

Read by Ian Stuart, who has something special in store for you in a few weeks!

“Their arrival was a terrible sight. The light from the full moon cast a strange, eerie glow upon the host of pale corpse things and their shrieking masters which stretched across the vale for miles in every direction. They swept the valley like a flood that left only ash, carrion and pestilence in its wake.”

The Conchie by J. Chant

Pseudopod is the story’s first publication.

Jayne Chant resides in a tiny town in Cambridgeshire with her husband, daughter and malevolent cat. Her first experience of the unmatchable thrill of a good ghost story was as a small child listening to her mother read Victorian ghost stories by candlelight..

Read by Kim Lakin-Smith, whose dark fantasy and science fiction short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies including Black Static, Interzone, Celebration, Myth-Understandings, Further Conflicts, PANDEMONIUM: STORIES OF THE APOCALYPSE, THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF GHOST STORIES BY WOMEN (”‘Field of the Dead”), and others, with “Johnny and Emmie-Lou Get Married” shortlisted for the BSFA short story award 2009. She is the author of the gothic fantasy Tourniquet; Tales from the Renegade City, the YA novella QUEEN RAT, and CYBER CIRCUS which was shortlisted for both the 2012 BSFA Best Novel award and the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Published on the 1st of December by Snow Books will be RESURRECTION ENGINES, an anthology of steampunk short stories inspired by classic novels from the Victorian period, containing her short story, “The Island of Peter Pandora” (a mashup of Peter Pan and The Island of Doctor Moreau), which has also been picked up for Best Fantasy 2013 from Proxima Books. She is currently working on an urban fantasy YA novel and a dark fantasy novel for adults.

“‘But last night I could not sleep. That unending thunder – I shut my eyes and all I could see were flames. It hurt to breath. It was Thomas I worried for. Then very late, after the clock struck three, Peter appeared and my heart leapt. He sat on the Ottoman at the foot of the bed, his back to me, his arm stretched along the bedstead.

‘It was a nightmare, nothing more,’ said Elizabeth, pulling her hand away.”

Bitter Tea & Braided Hair by Henry Lu

This story was first published on Fiction365 on May 4th, 2012.

Henry Lu learned English in a pre-podcast era, by listening to Voice of America when he was a teenager in Communist China. He also paints. You can look at his paintings on RedBubble under the name of “ArtPal”

Read by Tracey Yuen, who is involved in education and considers listening to podcasts a big factor in getting himself to “read” fiction and dabbles in photography, videography editing, page layout and narration.

“Incense smoke rises from the monastery into the low-hanging clouds of the same ominous shade, portending a quick-fire summer storm.

He pays close attention to the braided hairs of Tibetan maidens, determined to follow his Chinese father’s footstep in marrying one of them someday.”

 

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A Murder Of Crows by Tres Crow

Tres Crow lives in Atlanta with the two people he loves most in the world. He’s been published in decomP, Emprise Review, Full of Crow, The Foundling Review, as well as the website Metalsucks.net. Check out his blog, Dog Eat Crow World, at the link under his name above.

Read by Malcolm Charles

I grab him by his shirt and yank him to his feet. He is so thin, a bird, just like his mother, and the reek of liquor from his pores and breath stings in my nostrils. I shake him.

“John…” starts my wife, dropping the shovels, but I wave her away.

“Stop your whining. It’s your fault we’re out here. If you weren’t such a goddamn idiot,” I yell at him and I shake him and I stamp my feet.

Magnitude Seven by David Glen Larson

This story was originally published in Niteblade, December 2011.

After leaving the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, David worked as a screenwriter and television writer for several years before writing his first short story, which recently appeared in Daily Science Fiction. He has also published speculative poems in magazines like Niteblade, Ideomancer, and the British Fantasy Society Journal (formerly Dark Horizons).

Read by Patrick Bazille. Patrick “The Voice” Bazille is a new and fresh sound in the voice over industry. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Patrick has voiced everything from PSA’s to major product brand commercials and movie trailers to documentaries. With a deep, commanding voice often referred to as “The Voice of God” Patrick demands attention.

Levoy found a road at the bottom of the stairs, and followed it to a city of blue and white tents. There were strange people all around him: dog people, pig people, tin-can people, people with legs made of tires and arms of twisted steel, and rat people too. All of them had no eyes.

There were also children making masks from scraps of wood and other broken things for tourists that would never come here. The children had no eyes.

One of them called out his name. It was Marta, a friend from the school Magnitude Seven destroyed. Marta had no eyes.

Always Grinning by Nathaniel Lee

Nathaniel is a writer living in North Carolina with his wife, child, and obligatory cats. He puts words in order, and sometimes people give him money for them.  His work, including a full bibliography, can be found at his daily writing blog, Mirrorshards (see the link under his name above) where he publishes a 100-word story most days.  HIs short story “Gastrohpidia” is currently available at Ideomancer.  The Mirrorshards book, “Splinters of Silver and Glass” has 100 of his drabbles, one flash fiction story (”The Lady of Tilmarine”) and one full-length short story (”Old Growth.”)

Read by Rikki LaCoste. Rikki is the creator and co-host of the metaphysical and esoterically flavoured podcast, Kakophonos Internet Radio available for free from iTunes.  His odd, informative, and provocative show often collapses into the silly and the absurd whenever it begins to get a little too serious.  Rikki is a writer of strange articles on occult subjects, a musician (involved in the projects Panthea and Wychwood Children), the creator of a cartoon strip about Aleister Crowley, a Hermetic Philosopher, a Ceremonial Magician, a summoner of daemons, and teaches piano to happy little children.  He currently lives in Toronto, alone, and in a basement that is dubiously avoided because of the strange sounds and eldrich odours that regularly waft from it.

With an audible thump, a man threw himself at the glass, arms splayed. Jay jumped before his conscious mind caught up with his reactions. Some asshole office-clown playing a prank.  But there was something wrong with the man’s head.  Jay peered up at the window as he resumed walking, then stopped dead barely ten feet away from the building. The man wasn’t moving, hadn’t thrown himself at all.  He was dead.  He had to be, couldn’t still be alive.  Could he?  Jay saw bones jutting from one limp leg, saw the bruises and black smears of blood across the man’s pudgy, gray-haired face.

 

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(creaking door) Welcome, boils & ghouls, to our gory little abattoir of the airwaves, a festering waveband of wretchedness we’ve dubbed Pseudopod! Woven into this website of witchery are some truly tormented tidbits, so pull up a casket fear-fans, adjust your drool cups and settle in for some sickening sound, as we serve up…

A Short History of Pseudopod: Episodes 201 to 300

(see you soon at a Senate Subcommittee hearing on Internet delinquency and the corruption of the web’s morals!)

 

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(clasps hands behind back and walks into shot) Welcome to our audio archive of eerie, atavistic atrocities (lights cigarette), a carefully curated cacophony of chilling curiosities, sure to curdle the blood and tingle the spine. With the greatest of pride, we bring you tonight’s offering and welcome you to

… A Short History of Pseudopod: Episodes 101 to 200

(Do not operate heavy machinery while under the influence of this audio file. Do not operate light machinery, either. Do not operate, period.)

 

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Submitted for your approval, or perhaps just to induce madness, a small reminder of what PSEUDOPOD has brought you these last few years, as we rapidly close in on Episode #300. Dare you attempt to listen to this fast-forward through our first 100 episodes?

(medical note -Bleeding nose, not too bad. Bleeding ears, bad. Bleeding eyes, very bad indeed!)

….ENJOY?

 

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Three flash fictions about the creative impulse that drives and maddens…

DANCING by Donna Glee Williams.

This will be the world debut of this story, which was written at Odyssey 2011, inspired by Ben Bova’s “Leviathan” and owes a lot to the feedback it got from Evil Overlord Jeanne Cavelos and her Minions.

Donna Glee Williams is a writer, seminar leader, and creative coach. A sort of Swiss Army knife of the page, Donna Glee has seen her work published in anthologies, newsstand glossies, literary magazines, academic journals, reference books, big-city dailies, online venues, and spoken-word podcasts, as well as on stage and CD recordings. These days, her focus is on speculative fiction, aka fantasy and science fiction. Check out her blog at the link under her name above.

Read by Heather Welliver continues singing and doing various voicework. Check out her website (link under her name, natch) and download some of her recent work.

““I do not pay you to tell me what cannot be done.” They used to call her Freedom on the Wing. And now… This fool said it could not be fixed.

The dancer hated being soothed. “I’m hardening,” she snapped. “I’m losing my range of motion. I’m stronger than I’ve ever been, but suddenly my turn-out is shrinking. My forefoot extension is down. Do something. Why do I keep you if you can’t do something?”

LOST FOR WORDS by Kenneth Yu.

“Lost For Words” was won first place in FANTASY MAGAZINES 2009 Halloween Flash Fiction contest, which was overseen by writer Rae Bryant and under the ezine’s publisher, Sean Wallace. It can be read here.

Kenneth Yu is a writer from the Philippines. His work has seen print in his country’s various publications, including the Philippine ezines Usok and Best Of Philippine Speculative Fiction 2009. One of his stories also placed 3rd in the Neil Gaiman-sponsored 3rd Philippine Graphic Fiction Awards in early 2010. Elsewhere, his stories have been accepted by Innsmouth Free Press, The Town Drunk and AlienSkin.

Read by Marguerite Croft. Marguerite is a professional writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s a recovering anthropologist and a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop; her most recent publication was in the Boys of Summer anthology. She has also read fiction for Podcastle and Escape Pod, and can be found on Twitter as @albionidaho.

“When she was young, the words flowed freely, fearlessly, seemingly forming on their own into sentences and paragraphs, pages upon pages, blending together until they became stories.

She drew scenes with almost no effort, conjuring them with a vividness that took control of her readers’ imaginations. She could make her readers cry or laugh, fill them with anger or melancholy, leave them sighing in bittersweet pleasure, or stir them with high inspiration, all as she so directed with the words she chose.”

MUSIC ON THE MICHIGAN AVENUE BRIDGE by Mort Castle.

This story was originally published in Mort Castle’s 2002 anthology NATIONS OF THE LIVING, NATIONS OF THE DEAD. Originally was a story in the comic book NIGHT CITY (with art by Mark Nelson).

Mort Castle has three times been Guest of Honor at the World Horror Convention, has had multiple nominations for the Bram Stoker Award and the Pushcart Prize, and was cited as one of “21 Leaders in the Arts for the 21st Century in Chicago” by the Star/Sun-Times Newspaper Group. He won the Readers’ Choice Black Quill Award for Best Non-Fiction Work for editing ON WRITING HORROR (2007) and the collection, Ksi??yc na Wodzie (MOON ON THE WATER) was considered one of the “Best Books Published in Poland” in 2008. The hardbound edition of J. N. Williamson’s MASQUES, Mort Castle Editorial Director, presenting horror stories in comics format, is available from Checker Book Publishing Group.

Read by Patrick “The Voice” Bazile. Patrick was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois and, many years ago, wrote, produced, and performed Hip Hop music. Patrick works as a professional voice artist (HIRE HIM…..HE HAS SEVEN CHILDREN!!!!!) and you can check out his “amateur looking voice talent page” at Patrick “The Voice”.

“It’s dark, the special dark of the city as it is punctuated by street lights. We see the shoes of the saxophone player on the sidewalk as he is moving right along.

We have Two A.M. and the city is angles and rhythms. The city is moves and slides and whisperings. You can hear the city breathe.”

 

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Three flash fictions about those darker spirits we know so well…

DOG

By Stephen Hodgkinson.

Stephen lives & works in Manchester, United Kingdom. He is working on a collection of short stories that he hopes to publish by Summer 2012.

Read by Eve Upton, who previously starred as the mushroom in “Tippler’s Bane”.

“The girl stared out of her bedroom window. Her neighbour, the little boy was playing alone in his garden. She hated him, she hated his constant happiness, and she hated the confident way he dealt with his own company.

She hated him and she was very lonely.

“You could kill him” said a tiny voice lurking somewhere in the room.”

ANNOTATIONS

by Brady Golden.

Brady lives in Oakland, California with his wife and daughter. Click the link under his name to visit his website and find him on Twitter at @bradiation.

Text read by David Michel.

Numbers read by Melissa Bugaj. Click her name to hear her host original children’s stories at the Night Light Stories podcast.

“There are any number of books containing illustrations of the runes to be inscribed at the ritual’s onset. Some exist only in the private collections of reclusive eccentrics, while others are as close as your local library, misfiled at the ends of dimly lit aisles that smell like public toilets.”

“Annotations” uses this chime sound from Freesound.

“crystal_glass” by reinsamba

THE DROWNER

By Peadar O Guillin

Click his name to sample some FROZEN STORIES. Random House published his first novel, THE INFERIOR, in 2007 (2008 in North America). The translation rights have since been sold to ten different markets. A sequel called THE DESERTER will be appearing in the U.S. and Canada in March 2012. He is also the author of numerous short stories, the most recent of which is “Heartless” over at BENEATH CEASELESS SKIES (December 2011), “Fairy Gold”, due out in LORE in March 2012 or “The Dowry” in the next issue (#16) of BLACK GATE.

Read by Cian MacMahon. Click the link under his name to visit his blog.

“As they sank together, Sean continued to stare into the strange white face of the Drowner. It hadn’t decayed too badly. The hair must have kept growing after he’d been lost. Bits of twig lay tangled there and tiny fry swam in and out of it as the walls of the island’s roots kept rising away from them. The eyes were whole too and Sean fancied he saw a flicker of recognition in them as well as a slight, shy smile on the rotted lips.”

“The Drowner” uses these water and seascape sounds from Freesound.

“bajo_agua_LOOP” by plagasul

“Water1″ by pushtobreak

“Water2″ by pushtobreak

“Water4″ by pushtobreak

“Water” by Halion

“ELEMENTS_WATER_01_Underwater” by suonho

“Water” by Batuhan

“Herring & Great Black backed Gulls 2 edited” by genghis attenborough

“bubblesrealslow (2)” by Rhedcerulean

“SplashEdit” by duckboy80

“Lapping Waves and Sea Gulls 2″ by digifishmusic

“Scuba 1″ by digifishmusic

“Underwater (small river)” by melarancida

“Pirate Ship at Bay” by CGEffex

“01650 underwater bubbles” by Robinhood76

“Credo” by cormi

“03_Lanes_Island_Water_2_LowBoat_48_24″ by tomtenney

 

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By Maria Alexander

The text of this story is available at Gothic.net. You can also seek out her poetry collection, AT LOUCHE ENDS: Poetry for the Decadent, the Damned & the Abinsthe-Minded published by Burning Effigy Press in Toronto and her anthology of stories by award-winning authors: LEFT HANGING: 9 Tales of Suspense and Thrills. Get it on Kindle and Nook today!

“My mouth is sour with whiskey and the loaded shotgun lays heavily across my lap in my sofa chair. This is my Christmas Eve ritual.”

AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT….

 

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Three VETERAN’S DAY flash fictions about war - ancient, recent and omnipresent

KING

By C. Deskin Rink.

Mr. Rink has previously appeared on Pseudopod with episode #186 - “Ankor Sabat”. A sequel to it, “The High Priest”, appeared as episode #35 of the (Cast Macabre podcast). He has an upcoming story, “Kingdom of Sorrow,” in the Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations anthology.

Read by V.O. Bloodfrost, who previously read the Podcastle Miniature #65 “Blood Willows”. He can be contacted at his Twitter @VBloodfrost.

“The first time I beheld my King was amidst the arcades and columns of Babylon beneath an aching, cerulean firmament. From the uppermost heights of the hanging gardens he descended, taking each megalithic tier in a single stride until his final step cracked wide the world itself. His bloodshot eyes stared out at me from beneath his golden crown: wide and perfectly round – bereft of lids, lashes or flesh. “Hail!” I cried out, “Hail! Our King is descended from on high to rule the Earth!”"

NUMBER 21 RUE LE SUEUR

By Edward McDermott

While the story is fiction, the events it describes are all real: Dresden, 84 avenue foch, 93 Rue Lauriston, and Number 21 Rue le Sueur .

Read by Ben Phillips.

“”We had received several reports about a doctor in Paris who was part of the resistance. Dr. Eugene of the resistance cell code named Fly-Tox. He was one of many, and we were told to concentrate on the Red Orchestra, that was the Communist spy system and resistance system in France. Your British and American agents were simply not that important.

“The problem was that Fourrier knew nothing, and Petiot wouldn’t talk. There was no proof of any escape line. We tracked several people who supposedly used this line to disappear, and disappear they did, but they never turned up anywhere else.”

WAR

By Aaron Ashley Garrison

Click his name for his website. Aaron also blogs at Synchroshock.

Read by Dominic Rabrun. Click the link under his name to visit his blog, Sketch Banquet.

“‘These little rabbit’s feet, on my neck? They mean I’ve killed a man. Men. And I don’t regret nothin. It was war.”

 

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