---

I will be who I will be

---

Made of You

by Nick Petrou

---

I was a blister clinging to the throat of your shower drain. I didn’t know I was alive, let alone that, as I built myself from your beautiful waste, I would grow to love you.

The first thing I remember was a taste: a sweetness tainted by bitter soap. My membrane shifted, allowing the sweet, the you, to pass, while the soapy water spat down the pipe into darkness. I disassembled a flake of your skin, reading you as you might read a book.

When I’d swollen to the size of a fingernail, I fashioned a primitive mouth and chewed the hairs that swung from the drain grate, much to my delight. Your textures excited my growth, and soon I, a curdled grey sludge, coated the entire inside surface of the pipe, down to the water seal.

After I learnt how to pass through the water seal, I spread to other pipes. And how I gorged myself on the blood and solids you flushed down your toilet.

For a time, I busied myself exploring your plumbing system, though I found no source more satiating than the shower, toilet, or sink. Limited in this way, my growth plateaued. I wouldn’t die, but I knew I’d tasted merely a portion of you. There were other flavours to enjoy, and other senses beyond taste. With eyes, I could see you. With ears, I could hear you. And with a heart, love you.

I used much of my energy fashioning these organs, and when I finally beheld you with my hundred lidless eyes, I wept. At first, it was due to the sheer sight of you, your magnificence. Beyond that, confusion and misery goaded my tears.

One evening, I extended an eye-covered tendril out through the sink and watched you tear dresses from your wardrobe until it was empty. Every garment flattered you, but you couldn’t see that. You pinched your skin so hard you bled. You screamed at your bedroom mirror until my naked eardrums could bear it no more and I shrivelled back into the dark.

I couldn’t ignore your pain, though I found some relief in venturing from my labyrinth whenever you left the house. I sucked the oil from your pillowcase. I ate out your bathroom bin. I grew once again, and some nights I sculpted myself into your shape and stood in front of your mirror, trying to hate my reflection. But I could not.

When you returned this morning, vomiting in the shower and repeating that you would never find anyone, that you would die alone, I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I waited until you were asleep, then I bubbled out of every one of your drains until I stood in the shape of you, my boggy flesh as firm as it had ever been.

Now, I stand over your bed, fighting the urge to reach down and wake you.

I’m made of you. I am you. I love you.

Open your eyes and love yourself.

---

Dancing With Etta

by Ai Jiang

---

You would think that something attached to threads moves in a jerky manner, resembling Pinocchio’s clumsy walk, but her movements are smooth and graceful, making her presence far more terrifying. She has no childlike naivety or innocence, and she has no desire to become human. At least to my knowledge, she does not.

I am unsure of when she appeared, but when I noticed, it’s as though she has been there all along like a familiar stranger, though she is far from a welcomed friend. I see her daily, but I refuse to give her a name. They say names create attachments. I don’t believe I will become attached, so I name her Etta.

Wherever I go, Etta follows. She does not walk or trail behind me. Instead, she appears in each room I enter. We are inseparable, though not of my own choice, of course. The only place Etta does not follow me to is work. Yet, I often find my mind drifting to Etta’s skeletal figure when I overhear the supervisor yelling at a coworker for being incompetent. Etta’s fingers click against my laptop keys when I take a break. I watch the tight, smooth, grey skin pull over each finger. The threads move each finger rhythmically across the squares. Only her fingers appear—the rest of her body is missing.

I come home one night after drinking with coworkers. Etta sits by the stairs with her knees drawn together. She has one of her elbows propped on top of her knee. Her slim fingers cup the concave hollow of her cheek; her shriveled purple lips are drawn together tighter than usual. I often wonder whether she is breathing, but I dare not check, for I fear the proximity. I imagine her breath is like the rotting flesh of molding meat I often throw at the end of the week.

Does she have a tongue? Can she speak? Perhaps not. She has been quiet since the first day I saw her hunched in the corner of my room with threads attached to each body joint and disappear a meter or two into space above her head. Her head is left free, or so it seems. She resembles a small child in a grown body. I often feel the need to protect her, but I somehow knew that I could not. I wonder who pulls her threads. Why does she follow me when I am not the one controlling her?

At first, I was afraid. What if I woke up to Etta’s ghastly face looming over mine as I slept? What if I felt her breathing down my neck as I moved around the house? What if her raspy gasps mixed with the sound of the stove fan as I cooked? She does none of these things. Soon, I lost fear in this once terrifying figure. She became something familiar. She is always in the same place in every room—a designated spot. I never worry about her disappearing because she never does.

Sometimes Etta resembles a spider caught in between her web; she pulls and pulls, but she never loosens herself from the threads. It is when I am eating this happens most. I lift my fork. Pull. Sink it into an excessive amount of pasta. Pull. Draw it to my lips. Pull. The mouthful disappears in a second, although I do not chew it well enough. I am now used to Etta, but I always try to finish my meal quickly so I would not have to see her from the corner of my eye any longer.

Etta becomes less graceful the longer she stays with me. She once looked like a dead bride as she glided down the halls. I always watch her through a small opening at the side of the front door before I enter the house. When I finally muster up the courage the open the door, she is suddenly sitting on the lowest step at the bottom of the staircase, waiting. Now, her actions are jerky, and she no longer waits for me, sitting in an upright position, but slouches over her knees instead.

Some days, I see her walking down the hall with each strand of hair attached to a new thread above her. Some days, her hair is down. Some days, she has no hair at all. Those are the days I dread the most. Her scalp either red or irritated in the way my scalp looks when it is peak season at work. There are needle-sized pricks indented in where the hair is supposed to be. I think the threads pull them out. But of course, aren’t we all lucky that hair grows back quickly; though this is especially true for Etta—her air grows back the following day. I can’t decide if that is a blessing or a curse.

One day, I notice Etta appearing in different spaces around the house. I can no longer find her in her designated spot. Rather than the corner of my room, I find her sitting in a contorted position in my closet. I look at the snug sweater tangled in her threads. Etta is clutching the neckline of the sweater tightly between her skeletal fingers.

I look away and see my usual opaque, white dress shirt and formal grey slacks untouched by her. I shut the closet door, but not before my eyes meet her sockets. What little grey flesh Etta has on her is melting away—only patches of both white and grey, bone and flesh remain.

On Friday nights, I venture to release the snug sweater from Etta’s grasp. I try not to touch her as I untangle the sweater from her threads. With a swift tug, I remove it from her fingers.

Even as I arrive for a blind date at the bar, Etta now follows and stands right behind my date’s head, staring at my sweater. I suddenly feel exposed and cross my arms over my chest for the rest of the night. My date returns none of my calls.

Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night. I see Etta’s threads pull upwards towards the ceiling whenever my phone lights up with another email from work. Her legs would dangle in the air. My throat closes because I think she is dead if she wasn’t already, but then the threads loosen, and Etta’s feet are once again on the ground after I send a reply to the email.

The next day, rather than my coworker, I am the one my supervisor yells at. Etta is behind my supervisor. Threads now pull, pull, pull at her head; her hair dip up and down with the skull. With each dip, a few strands of hair fall out, and the skin of her face pulls upwards, causing her feature to become sharp and angular but above all, grotesque. It seems as if she agrees with my supervisor and all the insults that he yells at me. I know she does not.

They fired me that day.

At night, Etta does something that she has never done before—she dances. She draws me in and forces me to dance with her. Grey ashy hands in warm flesh, clutched tightly like how she clutched the neck of my sweater and clutched tightly like the resignation letter held in my hands as I stood in front of my supervisor while he yelled a string of incoherent profanities. We twirl down the hallway, and as we dance, it appears to breathe life back into Etta. The bald spots spout new strands of hair, and the missing parts of her flesh replaced with peach coloured skin. Though her cheeks are still concave and her eyes are still hollow, her now full lips draw a close-mouthed smile.

When we stop, I do something that I never dared to do before: I take out the scissors hidden in my pocket, surprising Etta. I smile as I reach up and run the blade through all her threads. By now, she must have accumulated millions.

I expect her body to fall to the ground as the threads fall around her, but she stays standing amongst the pool of limp threads. My heart stops as I look above her head. The threads slowly rise to their original position. Etta shakes her head. She takes my hands in hers, the one with the scissors, and guides it above my head.

I look up and notice the threads above me, tangled and threatening.

My eyes widen as she mimics my previous actions and guides the blade across the threads.

---

A Well-Polished Puppet

By Alyson Tait

---

Heather found me under a pile of boxes and envelopes. My long strings were tangled around a crumpled, unreadable shipping label, forcing her to cut them short.

They had always been too long for me anyways., Too muchyardage of feet to control a tiny puppet.

I sat on an unused desk for a while, an old puppet with no name, mostly ignored – although every now and then I’d have to listen to Heather’s supervisor Kevin discuss throwing me out.

He also discussed how short someone’s skirt was, and talked a lot about melons.

Although I never met whoever that someone was. Almost no one else visited us.

Heather eventually shoved me into her large purse. “I’m going to take her home,” she said. “For my daughter.”

After that, I sat on her kitchen table for months, watching her make coffee and sourdough bread. I saw herbs and candles, and when the moon was full I watched her open all the curtains. But I never saw a daughter. Eventually, she brought me back to the mailroom. With her sour disposition, I worried she was going to get rid of me after all, but she didn’t.

She got rid of everything but me.

“My daughter said the puppet looks a little bit like her. Asked if it could watch over me,” Heather said, when she asked Kevin to put me on top of the supply shelves. “Just when we’re apart.”

“Don’t know what that puppet gives you that I can’t,” Kevin said coyly. But he gave me an excellent view of the room, his hand rubbing against my plastic dress and long painted-on hair as he pretended to smooth a stray.

Heather watched him handle me, eyes soaking in every movement. Those same eyes glanced up at me whenever Kevin told a crass joke or placed his hand on her lower back.

Before he left he took me down.

“For my daughter,” Heather said every time. “For her whims.”

A sickly-smelling towel being rubbed all over my faded-white plastic skin marked our new daily routine before long. The smell was acidic yet herby, and it clung to me all day long.

Every time we arrived at work, Kevin put his orangey-tan hands all over me as he set me up on my shelf, and Heather watched every movement, only occasionally asking for some minor adjustment.

Kevin would change the position of my head, or scoot me a little to the left. I wasn’t sure what hold she had over him that caused him to listen every time, but she had a one hundred percent success rate.

He magically listened to everything she said.

And whenever his hands pulled away, I noticed that same acidic, herby, sickly smell on his skin. He made no sign that he was aware, however. Perhaps his oppressive cologne clogged his senses.

Heather certainly seemed to be bothered by his stench, if the way she screwed up her nose every time he came near her was anything to go by. Perhaps she knew how to hide other smells from her target.

He didn’t complain when the rash spread from his fingers to his elbow. And he didn’t mention when the orangey-tan palms of his hands peeled, turning red and scaly. At first, he seemed oblivious to the damage we were doing to his body.

But eventually he was absent from work for the first time since I arrived. On that day, Heather simply set me on her desk and told me Kevin had a doctor’s appointment as she took her gloves off. She smiled all that day.

It was the first time I’d seen her smile.

I haven’t seen much of the world, but that smile looked good on her. Almost as if the quiet solitude suited her. Maybe it did – or maybe Kevin’s presence simply didn’t.

It was hard to tell, since even though Kevin talked a lot, he was the only other person that came in the room with any regularity. I didn’t have enough data to know if another person would clash against her needs or not.

Her smile was addictive.

In the silence of the empty mailroom, she began talking to me. Whispering about her to-do list, her upcoming meetings, and the strange dreams she had. She spilled the secrets of her rituals.

Her whispers were as addictive as her smile and in those moments I wished I could whisper back. Tell her my own thoughts and desires. I would have told her about the heat in my belly anytime Kevin touched my plastic.

I couldn’t remember feeling anything quite like hatred before I’d met him.

When Kevin returned, he handed Heather an iced coffee.

She threw it away as he rambled on about allergies, prescriptions, and copays. When he sat me on the shelf, he rubbed my face to remove a smudge of some sort and then took a step back. “I missed the little gal, too.” He winked at me and then put a hand on Heather’s shoulder.

I could see her jaw clench.

I couldn’t clench my jaw of course, but I shared the sentiment. I missed our time alone.

I, too, wanted Kevin gone.

The routine, slow but effective, continued: the sun rose, the awful-smelling towel appeared, the car took us to the mailroom, Kevin put me on a shelf, and Heather sorted envelopes and dark brown boxes.

Then we went home.

Unless Kevin wasn’t there, which started to happen more often. Sometimes it was doctor’s appointments. Sometimes, Heather would whisper, he simply couldn’t drag himself out of bed.

Those days became increasingly frequent.

When he was in, he wrinkled his nose when he touched me. I think he finally noticed something might be off.

I’d begun dreading Kevin’s arrival, my feelings matching the face that Heather made before he could see her. I felt relieved when his absences became so frequent that he was barely making it in one day a week.

Heather murmured one day that the whole process would be easier if they’d just fire him. Then she mumbled for a while, mostly incoherently except for the word nepotism.

I had no idea what that meant, but I knew enough to know it was why we’d done all this. Why she’d gone through so much effort to get rid of her supervisor and get us some alone time in the mailroom. I didn’t doubt her for a second.

I wished I could tell her I appreciated it, but my mouth doesn’t move and I have no voice box. My plastic throat is hollow – and I can’t move my own snipped strings.

Instead, I simply sit on her desk and watch her work.

I felt joyful when she told me the big news. She talked about a funeral – I had never been to a funeral before, that seemed like a distinctly human thing to do. I didn’t give it a second thought – but I was happy that I might get a break from that smell.

And from Kevin.

She smiled at me, absolutely beamed. The herbs changed from soapy smelling to floral, and sweet. Heather even decorated her a desk a little bit more. “I’m so glad I found you,” she said one day. “The perfect partner in crime.”

I couldn’t agree more. I’d spent a lifetime used and forgotten, strung up and stared at. Now I had no audience, and my strings had been cut short, but I was finally happy.

---

My Summer of George

by Sam Rebelein

---

There’s a fly in my apartment again.

It floats, silent, across the window-blinds. Orange daylight from outside frames it perfect for a moment, as the fly floats along.

The blinds are drawn tight. It’s 2 pm and I’m still in my pajamas.

I’m sitting on the floor watching the eighth season of Seinfeld. They are talking about the millennium, which is still three years away. Newman has a party planned already. I don’t feel like I exist, watching this show in 2023.

Now that we live in the future, everyone I know has begun to suspect, on a very small level at least, that some of us are robots. Or aliens. Or the undead. We must be. TV said it would happen. We’re beginning to grow wary of each other, in ways we don’t quite talk about.

As I watch Seinfeld, I play with my dog, a corgi, except she doesn’t want to play today. She lies on the floor on her side by my feet. She’s waiting for me to feed her. I haven’t fed her in a long time. My will to feed either of us has sunk into the floor, has watered the ground of this apartment. This apartment will probably feel sad for a long time after I am gone.

It’s funny to think of your life as a ghost in the making.

My laptop is black-screened next to me on the floor. I was applying to jobs, but I ran out of steam. I have applied to so many jobs that the mere sight of Indeed.com fills me with dread. A fly lands on the screen of my laptop. It walks around on that dark rectangle, like the dead filmy eye of a long-gone beast.

I’ve seen flies in here a few times now. I’ve lived in this apartment for two years, with my girlfriend. It’s on the ground floor, and very dim during the day, because we keep the blinds drawn, because anyone on the street could look inside, and watch us in our living room. During the day, my girlfriend is at her job. I was let go from my job last year. My girlfriend has let me stay with her until I find something better. She has threatened to leave me if I do not. Sometimes, during the day, I apply for jobs. But mostly I sit on the floor with my dog, smoking my girlfriend’s weed, watching Seinfeld on her TV. I don’t want anyone on the street peering inside and seeing me hunched against this armchair on the floor, in pajamas, in the middle of the day.

When it’s nighttime, I dream. My girlfriend is home from work. I try to tell her about the flies. She hasn’t seen any. But that makes sense. She left before the flies arrived. We only hang out in my dreams now, me and her. And my dreams are only memories. I only remember my girlfriend being home at night.

I have been here on the floor for fifty-six weeks. I have applied to ninety-seven jobs. I have not had so much as an interview. My Sociology degree is not helping me at all. There are more flies around the window. I am too tired to get up and shoo them away. I am too tired of myself. I have seen Seinfeld more times than I can count. I’m surprised they haven’t cut the power yet. Netflix no longer asks if I’m still watching. It has accepted me. I think I felt more alive in 1997, when Newman was planning his big party, and I was five years old.

There’s a knock at the door. It’s right over there, but I’m too lame to get up and answer it. I can’t even move my fingers. I have the bong in my hand. I think I breathed myself out with the smoke a while ago. Fell asleep, never bothered waking up. Said goodbye to a time I never truly felt alive in to begin with.

There’s another knock.

Finally, the landlord shoves the door in. There are more flies than I could’ve imagined. They burst into the air in thick black swarms. They darken the shaft of daylight coming through the door significantly. The landlord has two other men with him. Uniformed. When the smell and the flies hit them, they all jump back, gag, and shout, “Christ!”

I watch them retch outside.

When they have regained their composure, the three men peer inside the open door.

“How long’s he been in there?” one of the officers asks.

“The girlfriend transferred the lease to him about a year ago,” says the landlord. “Haven’t seen her around since.” He lives right next door, so he would know. “The smell got noticeable…bout a week back?” He coughs.

“Alright,” says one of the officers. He nods at the other. “Let’s see if we can get someone up here, determine an exact cause of death.”

They start to move inside.

I want to laugh. Cause of death? What are they saying? I’m not dead. I just sat down and tuned out for a bit. So what if I have begun to rot? I am still alive. I am still applying to jobs. Look at my dog. Isn’t she alive? Never mind the blanket of flies squirming over her fur. Never mind all the flies in the air. Some of them have lain eggs in me, it’s true. I am squirming with wriggling yellow things, all inside my holes. Some of the holes are new. But that’s true for everyone, isn’t it?

And then I do laugh. The men look very surprised. I stand up to tell them that, despite all of the flies, I am still alive. This is a mistake.

They draw their guns.

They don’t believe me.

They are filled with worms, too, they just don’t know it yet. In the future, we’re all dead.

---

Host Commentary

PseudoPod, Episode 888 for October 20th, 2023. 

Flash on the Borderlands LXVIII (68): Actualization, featuring: 

Made of You by Nick Petrou [pet-ROO]

Dancing With Etta by Ai Jiang [eye djang]

A Well Polished Puppet by Alyson Tait

Summer of George by Sam Rebelein [rebel-EIN]

Hosted by Kat Day, with audio production by Chelsea Davis

***

Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing okay. I’m Kat, Assistant Editor at PseudoPod, your host for this week, and this week we have episode 888, Flash on the Borderlands LXVIII (68): Actualization. The episode number feels particularly appropriate because traditionally the number 8 represents balance between the material and spiritual world, as well as strength and fortitude. And here we have three of them, so that’s GOT to be good, right?

 

INTRO 1

Our first story today is a PseudoPod original: Made of You by Nick Petrou [pet-ROO]. Nick Petrou works as a freelance writer out of Perth, Western Australia, where he likes to read unsettling fiction and complain about the sun. His short fiction has been published by The Arcanist, Ghost Orchid Press, Quill & Crow, and others. You can find out lots more about him at nspetrou.com and reach out to him on Twitter @nspetrou.

Our narrator for this episode is Jordan Shiveley [SHIVE-ley] , the author of the Dread Singles (@hottestsingles) Twitter account. Their work has also been seen in a variety of short fiction venues such as The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 15, Nightmare Magazine, Voidjunk, Baffling (Neon Hemlock), and tabletop roleplaying games. Their first novel, HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA, is slated to be released from Unbound in August of 2024 and is available for preorder. They live and work in Minneapolis, Minnesota. More at jordanshiveley.com

Now, make sure your shower curtain is pulled back, because we promise you, this happened…

ENDCAP 1

Welcome back from Made of You, by Nick Petrou [pet-ROO] 

On a fundamental level, how could we not love a story about sentient slime mould? But there are deeper layers here. Sometimes, despite our best intentions, we end up throwing the best parts of ourselves away. Because we’re caught up in the NOW, making decisions NOW, and we don’t, can’t, see the bigger picture. And what if… those parts… woke up? What if they decided they wanted to show us a different way of seeing ourselves? That’s the question this story asks and, ooh, it’s a good one, isn’t it?

---

INTRO 2

Our next story is Dancing With Etta by Ai Jiang. This story was first published in Maudlin House in October, 2020. Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, an immigrant from Fujian [FOO-kyen], and an active member of HWA. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in F&SF, The Dark, Dark Matter, Prairie Fire, Jellyfish Review, Hobart Pulp, among others.

Our narrator is Eliza Chan, a writer and occasional narrator of speculative fiction. She has narrated for PseudoPod, PodCastle and Cast of Wonders. It amuses her endlessly that people find her Scottish accent soothing. Eliza has had her own work featured in The Dark, PodCastle, Fantasy Magazine and The Best of British Fantasy 2019. When not working on her current novel or reading, Eliza can be found boardgaming, watching anime, baby wrangling and dabbling in crafts.

Now, what is that in the corner? We promise you, it’s real…

ENDCAP 2

That was Dancing With Etta, by Ai Jiang.

At first glance, you might see this as simply a story about a creepy puppet. Well, puppets are inherently creepy. It’s that uncanny valley thing, isn’t it? They look human, but not quite human ENOUGH. And then you realise… that’s the point. Who IS the puppet here? Is there any difference between Etta and our supposed protagonist? Look up the meaning of the name Etta and you’ll find it means ‘ruler of the home’. The main character in this story is… not who, or what, we thought it was. Have you looked up recently? How many threads are tangled above your head?

---

INTRO 3

Our next story is another PseudoPod original: A Well Polished Puppet by Alyson Tait. Alyson lives in Maryland, where she got married, had her daughter, and began her writing journey. She has appeared in (mac)ro(mic), Wrongdoing Magazine, Pyre Magazine, and HAD, among others. You can find her on Amazon, and Twitter @rudexvirus1

Your narrator is Dani Daly, who is a jack of many trades, master of none. But seeing as she loves the rogue life, that’s ok with her. You can hear stories she’s narrated on the original four Escape Artists podcasts – she has yet to make it to CatsCast but it surely can’t be long before that oversight is rectified – StarShipSofa, Glittership, and Asimov’s Science Fiction or you can buy the audiobooks she’s narrated at Audible.com under the name Danielle Daly. You can also contact her on Twitter @danooli_dani or at danielledalyreads.com if you’d like her to read for you.

Now, if you’re someone’s boss, have you been kind to them this week? Because we promise you, all our witnesses are entirely reliable…

ENDCAP 3

Well done, you’ve survived A Well Polished Puppet, by Alyson Tait

Women have, through history, often found themselves with limited control over their own lives. A woman with the fiercest of natures can still find herself at the whim of a man from whom she cannot get away. He’s the father of her children. He’s an elected official. Or a member of a police force – with the emphasis on force. He’s her landlord. He’s her boss. Men hold power everywhere, and somehow THIS one’s got control of her strings and she realises that if she cuts them to get away, she’s going to end up powerless anyway so… she chooses to… put up with certain things. Next verse, same as the first. Every generation right from now back to the beginning of goddam time. And historically, witchcraft was a way for women to take power back – which is why, of course, men have never liked it terribly much. Here, the witch gets rid of the man who’s tormenting her. She has to use our protagonist to do it. But that’s okay. She’s only a doll. She doesn’t matter. Right? 

Right?

---

INTRO 4

And we end this delightful sequence of small horrors with one more PseudoPod original: Summer of George, written, and narrated, by Sam Rebelein  [rebel-EIN]. Sam holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College, with a focus on Horror and Memoir. His work has appeared in Bourbon Penn, Coffin Bell Journal, The Dread Machine, Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year, and elsewhere. HarperCollins’ horror and crime imprint William Morrow is publishing Sam’s debut horror novel EDENVILLE in Fall 2023. His Twitter (for whatever that’s worth) is @HillaryScruff, and his Instagram is @rebelsam94.

Now, are you ready? Because we have one last story for you…

… and we PROMISE you. It’s true.

 

OUTRO 4

That was our final piece this week, Summer of George, written, and narrated, by Sam Rebelein [rebel-EIN].

We the editors often say, at PseudoPod, that we look for a sense of creeping dread. That some of our favourite stories are the ones where everything is normal, normal… what was tha— it’s probably fine, normal, nor— oh, hell. Oh gods. No. No. No!

It’s not easy to achieve that in a 1000-word flash piece. Sam Rebelein [rebel-EIN] absolutely bloody nails it. “In the future, we’re all dead.” I have nothing more to say.

---

What did you think of our stories this week? If you’re a Patreon subscriber, we encourage you to pop over to our Discord channel and tell us. PseudoPod is funded by you, our listeners. We pay everyone, and we’re very proud of that, but it relies on your generosity. As always, if you can, please go to pseudopod.org and donate by clicking on “feed the pod”. If you can’t afford to do that then please consider leaving reviews of our episodes, or talking about them on social media. Speaking of which, we now have a Bluesky account: find us at @pseudopod.org. And if you like merch, Escape Artists has a Voidmerch store with a huge range of hoodies, t-shirts and other goodies. The link is in various places, including our pinned tweet.   

PseudoPod is part of the Escape Artists Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, and this episode is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license. Download and listen to the episode on any device you like, but don’t change it or sell it. Theme music is by permission of Anders Manga.

Next week we have one of my absolute FAVOURITE stories that crossed my path last year: Darke’s Last Show by Jonathan Louis [Loo-ee] Duckworth, narrated by Jon Padgett, and hosted by the always marvellous Alasdair Stuart. Audio production is by Chelsea Davis.  

And finally, PseudoPod, and Terry Pratchett, know…

“Eight was also the Number of Bel-Shamharoth, which was why a sensible wizard would never mention the number if he could avoid it. Or you’ll be…

…eight alive.”

See you soon, folks, take care, stay safe.