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Every Last Gossamer Strand

By C.J. Dotson

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The high windows of the Bluebird Lake Lodge ballroom let in warm afternoon sunlight. Gilded embellishments glowed upon white columns and high door frames, ornate chandeliers glittered, and bloated black flies swarming outside the glass made the light seem to flicker. The insects, tiny intruders from a different kind of place than this, had noticed me so quickly—I’d arrived at the Lodge and its surrounding campground only half an hour ago.

Mother must be lonely. Or whatever her version of loneliness is.

Unsatisfied? Hollow?

Maybe she’d be happy to see me.

“This place needs an exterminator,” my photographer, Abby, muttered. “I’ve never seen so many flies.”

I held my pose and didn’t acknowledge the flies. They’d buzz away soon.

Abby’s camera clicked three times, then she lowered it, revealing her round smiling face and the bubblegum-pink hair curling out from beneath her beanie. I wished I could still pull off bold looks like that, but at seven months pregnant the kind of attention that style would earn me tasted as sour as old milk. This maternity photoshoot, however, was perfectly satisfying.

Shame I’d have to spoil it.

“You look great,” Abby said, and another thread—as thin and tenuous as the ones already drawn trembling between us—spun itself out from somewhere inside her. She didn’t see it, they never do, but insubstantial as spider-silk it stretched from her to me.

Under other circumstances I’d have been pleased that Abby and I clicked so well. It’s different—guilt-free—when the people I tangle up want to give themselves to me. It’s not like what Mother does. I’m not like Mother. Temptation tugged me to call off the rest of the afternoon off; I could’ve gotten so much from Abby.

Inside me, the baby kicked and then shifted. I blinked and rubbed a hand over my belly, tenderness woven with only a faint regret wrapping me up in warm certainty. Abby would have been a fine catch if I’d had the leisure, but time to tell Mother about the pregnancy in person—time for a chance to get something from her, anything, I love you or I’m proud of you or even just congratulations, darling—before the baby arrived was already running thin.

What a pity.

So, I kept my smile in place and said, “Thank you,” and wished Abby had been rude or talentless or at least dismissive and inattentive.

“These photos are going to be perfect. The red dress against the white and gold themes in here, it’s so lush.”

Lush was the right word for it. When I was a girl we’d had a family vacation here, back before my father had disappeared and Mother had retreated from his whole world to hide away in her miserable cabin. The ratty little room we’d stayed in had been nowhere near as nice as this marble-and-gold reception hall—the Lodge had two faces, and I preferred this one.

Through the glass the sound of buzzing faded, slowly at first but then silence grew in a rush as the flies moved like a cloud toward the forest. Soon Mother would know I was nearby. Worse, if the swarm had the wit to recognize human pregnancy, she’d know why.

“Let’s head outside now,” I said. I’d hoped by starting the photo session indoors, I’d delay Mother’s notice a little, but now that the flies had come and gone it hardly mattered what the crickets sang or the trees whispered.

“For sure,” Abby said, and she pulled on a light jacket while I slung mine over my shoulder, plucked my purse and the present for Mother within it from a chair, and led the way out of the reception hall.

My heels echoed in the lodge’s mostly-empty lobby. Despite the lack of bustle, a few gazes followed me—elegantly dressed, hair swept up, and carrying late pregnancy with a grace I’d practiced in mirrors and while walking up and down hallways in my house. Nothing I could sate myself with but still, the attention was sweet, with just the barest spice of envy. Even in moments like this, when I caught more of a scent than a taste, I savored this kind of regard. Mother, on the other hand, just ate up any reaction that came her way—sympathy or judgment, pity or recrimination, didn’t matter to her. She thrives on bleak bitterness just as much as she does on admiration.

Sure, maybe that negativity is easier to draw out, maybe it’s more filling, but personally I think it’s unhealthy. Still, I can’t change her.

I swept through the double doors just ahead of Abby and paused on the patio. A cool autumn breeze pushed back the few curling strands of my chestnut hair I’d left out of the updo, and as I glanced over my shoulder to ask Abby which part of the beach we should go to the camera clicked again.

“Couldn’t resist a candid shot,” Abby said with a grin. “You look so stunning.”

I smiled. “You’re so sweet, I wish I could just keep you around forever.”

She laughed, cheeks a little pink, and the tiny thread that reached for me from within her came thicker this time, identifiable now as the amiable rapport that precedes friendship. This one I did catch, winding it up with a glance and drawing it to me, faster than it would have come on its own.

The flies’ departure meant the time for subtlety was running thin.

Abby moved past me, onto the stairs leading down from the Lodge’s entrance, then paused. For three or four seconds she stood still, her eyes fixed on the trees opposite the lodge, across the parking lot. The photographer frowned and I followed her gaze.

Not to the trees themselves, actually. A little above them.

A thin trail of smoke reached above the canopy, off to the west and not too far into the woods. As I stared, smile slipping, the smoke thickened, and a yellow hue crept into it. I stifled a frustrated sigh.

“That’s not where the campsites are,” Abby said, her voice soft, her attention eaten up by that yellowish smoke twisting sluggishly skyward.

The flies told Mother I was here, and now she was rushing me. Well, of course—showing up early, getting started before anyone else is prepared, hurrying everybody all the time. Everything always had to be about her.

Something thicker than a thread spun out of Abby, reaching not for me but for that smoke—something more like a cord, frayed and clouded with trepidation. “Is there a fire in there?” Nerves made her voice thin. “I don’t think people are supposed to be burning anything in the woods…”

“Abby,” I said, and she turned to look at me.

Our eyes met and I sharpened my focus, caught her gaze and held it. She was kind, inclined to like people, to find things about them to admire. I searched her eyes and teased out a more substantial thread of that admiration. I no longer had to work too hard at this part, no longer had to reach inside someone with my hands, or even touch them, to draw out the attention I needed. I didn’t unravel her, didn’t pull that thread all the way into myself. Just like the other filaments drawing whisps of herself into me, I left the line connecting us and then I turned my gaze just over her shoulder for a moment. Just long enough to let her blink and get her bearings.

“I’m not worried about that smoke,” I continued. “But we’ll go quick, if it makes you feel better.”

“Thanks. You’re so nice,” Abby said, her gaze a little dreamy, her smile a little more shy than before. Every thread I pulled between us would deepen her esteem for me, but even so she had a refreshing sincerity about her. If I ever had to do something like this again, I’d be sure to hire someone obnoxious. Someone I wouldn’t regret missing out on.

“After you.” I gestured toward the mouth of the hiking trail across the smooth blacktop of the parking lot, and followed as she set off.

I eyed the smoke as we neared the trees. That column had thickened, the yellow in it had deepened. Autumn’s golden sunshine faded as we stepped from pavement onto the packed dirt of the hiking trail. I eyed the change in the light, the depth of the shadows and the cooling of the colors, and pulled my jacket on. There’d be no more time for pictures today; the dimming came on too quickly, Mother’s impatience hurrying me along as always.

I let Abby draw a little ahead of me, but as she walked she asked over her shoulder, “D’you know whether you’re having a boy or a girl?”

“A girl,” I said, and smiled. I pictured her there in me, almost a real baby already, curled and warm and safe and not needing or wanting anything yet, not yet learning how to sate herself or how to protect herself. My daughter. My daughter. Soft warmth wrapped me up, but with a cool tickle of unease at its center, just like every time I dwelled on her.

“Do you have names picked out?” Abby asked.

“No.” I peered beyond her.

People never notice the threads I spin away from them; they don’t have the eyes to see them. But they can see color and they can see light and they can see their absence. So why, the few times I’ve brought someone along on a visit to Mother, don’t they notice the moment when the path ahead shifts?

The moment when it leads somewhere other than the world they’re from.

Ahead the trail rounded a corner and plunged out of sight into the woods. Shadows gathered thicker there, stirring even when the wind fell still.

I glanced away from that curve, back over my shoulder toward the mouth of the hiking trail. Through the opening in the trees the light fell with ordinary brightness on the parking lot with its neatly painted yellow lines and its cars parked all in rows.

Another ten paces. Then Abby would step out of sight of that world and I would follow behind her a moment later.

Seven. Four. One.

Abby rounded the curve and the shadows beneath the trees swallowed her without a sound. I plunged through them myself a breath later.

My shoes no longer tapped softly on the dirt trail, but swished and crackled through drifts of dead leaves. The trees here stretched limbs toward a sickly sky, naked but for gauzy swathes of cobweb draped here and there. That yellow smoke did not climb above the canopy here but crawled like mist between the trunks, its bitterness underlying the scent of rotting leaves. Abby stood still, her back to me, her body tense.

Now she noticed.

I reached out and put a hand on her shoulder, and without turning back to me she raised her own hand to grip mine. When she spoke, her voice came out hoarse and wobbly. “I think we should go back now.”

I squeezed her shoulder without answering—let her think it a reassurance—and took one moment to close my eyes and breathe the scents of childhood, the decaying leaves and the smoke bitter with the herbs Mother sprinkles in her fireplace. The stiffness of my spine relaxed, the posture I practice in the world of my father easing here. New tension replaced it, raising my shoulders a bare fraction and drawing them into just the slightest forward curve. A knot in my belly loosened, but it did not unwind completely, and a new tightness gripped my chest.

I’d come home to Mother.

Abby released my hand, taking a step backward, keeping her eyes on the uncanny woods even as she tried to retreat from it. “Something’s wrong here,” she said, and reached behind herself, arm stiff, not grabbing me but shielding me. “Stay back, okay?”

I sighed and turned her to face me. Mostly I think I resemble my father—sharp jaw and long nose and thick hair and so normal—mostly a person could look me over and not find anything alarming. But I’ve got Mother’s eyes, and we stood in Mother’s place, and Abby saw me at last when I pinned her gaze with my own. Her mouth fell open but before she could speak or cry out I peered beyond her eyes and the hurt filling them—I’d leave that for Mother, she would love that—and found the cords at the center of her.

No more tiny threads. No more spider-lines of attention and affection and kindness.

I made my gaze a spindle. I twisted every wholesome strand around and around and around, tighter, tighter, until Abby trembled, taut and ready to snap, beneath my palm on her shoulder.

But she made no move to break away from me. Not that she could have, not when I held her very self within my gaze, but it’s nice sometimes not to have a struggle.

Every time I pulled more of her toward myself, Abby let out a whimper that, in spite of her softness, filled the silence of Mother’s forest. Her focus shifted inward, on the parts of herself I drew out, and when she closed her eyes I let out an annoyed huff.

“Abby. Look at me, Abby.” She opened her eyes again and I wound the cords tighter still. Keeping her focus out of herself—keeping it where it belonged—I spoke to her as I pulled and pulled. “Did you know most people have just a hint of my Mother in them? Not pure enough, generally, to spark the hunger. Some have almost none, but others… You long to be seen. To be experienced.”

The hurt didn’t leave Abby’s eyes, but she stopped whimpering. She relaxed, just a little, just for one second.

I yanked.

I tore her goodness out at the root, every filament of sweetness and generosity and concern and all of it, all of it, spun together and drawn into myself.

She sagged to the leaf-strewn forest floor like a puppet with her strings cut. Huddled in the dirt, her shoulders shook. If she wept I could not hear it—Abby had been vocal in her cheer, but when left with only sorrow she fell silent.

The seeking fingers of discolored smoke reaching through the trees thickened as they drew nearer. It even smelled yellow, that bitter stink. Letting my purse dangle from my elbow, I leaned down and took Abby’s hands, pulling her to stand, head hanging and body hunched with a limp heaviness.

“Why couldn’t you have been cruel,” I sighed, turning her to face the path ahead of us again. She moved in halting stumbles, but turned; I’d left her with little reason to resist. Still, I rested one hand on the back of her neck, fingers firm but gentle against her skin. “I don’t like doing this to people I like. But I can’t face Mother, not like this—” I glanced from the encroaching, obscuring smoke, down at my belly “—not unless she’s sated first. And she wouldn’t have appreciated you. You’d have gone to waste. She…” I raised my gaze again. The smoke nearly reached us, spreading as if to surround the path where we stood. The nearest trees loomed out of those dense yellow fumes, but beyond that handful of bare branches and rough trunks, the smoke hid everything. I pressed my lips together and drew a little closer to Abby, lowering my voice. Mother was near enough to hear, now, if I wasn’t careful. “Well,” I whispered in the photographer’s ear, “you’ll see. It was better my way.”

From inside that creeping yellow smoke the low drone of insect wings sounded. Without glass between us, the unmuffled humming buzz made my skin crawl. Louder it grew, and louder, impossibly loud. Abby moaned. The smoke billowed from within, first a bulge and then a rolling sweep of thick, harsh yellow. As it spread toward us it thinned, but not enough. When the wave of smoke washed over Abby and me it still hid the trees. Abby gasped and then coughed, gagging on the pungent cloud. I tightened my grip on her neck. My eyes burned. I’d long given up trying to see the moment Mother’s home became, so I let myself blink reflexive tears away and when I looked again the air had cleared.

Mother’s hut crouched in a small, miserable clearing where no clearing had been a mere moment ago. Rotting thatch crowned mud walls. The crumbling chimney still oozed its yellow smoke, but now it climbed sullenly skyward rather than creeping through the trees like dread creeps up the spine. A dilapidated wooden fence stumbled around the meager yard, posts leaning drunkenly, pickets broken and jagged or lying in the rank, overgrown grass. To the left of the hut, an outhouse sagged in on itself. To the right hunched an old-fashioned well with no neat little roof to protect the water within from debris, squat stones not just green with moss but slimed. Hovering and swirling over the sagging roof, lining the frame above the ill-fitting door and the single rotted windowsill, blanketing the bare branches and rickety fence, crawling among the brown grass and the green stones, the flies watched us.

Well. They watched Abby.

Typical. Who could remember the last time I’d visited Mother, but did she care that I was here now? No. She only wanted what I’d brought her.

“Go on now,” I said to the swarm, waving one hand. Abby flinched, her breath raspy and fast, but she didn’t move. “She knows we’re here.”

They didn’t go.

I pushed Abby through the gaping opening in the fence where a gate might once have been, following close behind her. For now. “I did you a favor,” I whispered to the photographer. “You’ve got nothing good to lose now—”

The weathered door swung open with choked wheeze. Like it was trying to cough Mother out. Her face emerged into view, held low near the ground, the bulk of her concealed by the thick gloom within.

Abby tried to recoil—I’d left her with plenty of fear.

Mother’s eight lidless, round eyes gleamed out of sunken, shadowed sockets. Sharp cheekbones made dark hollows of her cheeks. Her thin lips stretched wide over a pair of chelicerae covered in hair so dark a red it was nearly black and tipped in bone-white fangs. The spider-mouth kept her from closing her lips and foamy spittle collected at their scabbed corners.

“Hello, Mother.” I took care to keep my voice calm, to keep my body behind Abby’s.

Mother’s jaws parted and she licked the corners of her mouth and the photographer reached up behind herself to scratch at my hand on her neck, pushing her body back against mine. A thin whine escaped her and I resisted the urge to try to soothe her. Mother, after all, doesn’t want composure.

Mother’s lips mumbled over the chelicerae, her tongue stumbled over her fangs, mangling whatever she tried to say.

Diffuse sunlight filtered through the low clouds and bare branches of Mother’s place, dimmer than the autumn glow at the Lodge had been but not dark. Not dark enough to spare Abby and me the sight as Mother scuttled from her hut. Her body nearly dragged along the ground, naked and pale but for spikes of that same red-black hair bristling down her back. She’d been alone too long—her skin hung loose on her bones. Her skeletal shoulders hunched up around her long, thin neck, and her arms thrust out before her, hands flat on the ground and brittle fingers digging into the dirt. Below the shoulders her torso bulged into two bulbous sections. Eight long, thin legs, fleshy beneath but ridged on top with that same dark hair, speared up from the center of her mass and bent back down. Claw-tipped and multi-jointed, they moved Mother with heart-stopping speed.

Abby sucked in a breath.

Before she could scream Mother’s hands closed around the photographer’s ankles.

Mother scuttled backward, just as fast. She yanked Abby’s feet from under her. Abby crashed flat onto her back. The air exploded back out of her in a whuff. The nearest flies lifted in a startled cloud. I shifted my purse in front of my belly. Even as Abby fell, Mother dragged her.

In the blink of an eye Mother had Abby in the doorway to the hut. The flies swirled and settled. Mother didn’t bother taking her prey all the way inside.

She loved an audience.

Mother released Abby’s ankles and skittered overtop her, caging the photographer beneath her body and her spider’s legs. Abby finally screamed. Her eyes bulged, locked on Mother’s face. Mother gave a long sigh, shivering all over. Relief loosened my shoulders; Abby pleased Mother. Her chelicerae opened, stretching the lips around them wider, splitting the corners again so that the foamy spit there seeped a dark red with her own blood.

Abby kicked her legs, scrambling her heels in the dirt, trying to escape. Mother clamped her hands down on Abby’s shoulders. Abby cried out again, raised her hands to scratch at Mother’s fingers.

Mother tipped her head down, fangs clicking gently against each other. Bloodied frothy saliva bubbled down her chin and chelicerae, dripped onto Abby’s chin and throat.

Abby’s scream ran out and she sucked another trembling gasp. She didn’t cry out again. She squeezed her eyes closed and saved her breath for struggling. The little photographer writhed against Mother in the dirt. She bared her teeth and squirmed and kicked.

And she kept her eyes closed.

Mother never indulged such behavior.

She shifted her spindly legs, stabbing the clawed tips down with precise timing. Pinned Abby’s hands and elbows with four legs, gripped her legs with the other four. This freed Mother’s hands.

Her long fingers forced Abby’s eyes open again.

Tilting her head once more, Mother met Abby’s gaze.

Abby fell still.

The corners of Mother’s lips twitched in a stretched approximation of a smile.

She didn’t tease the threads out of Abby a little at a time as I’d done at first. She didn’t establish a connection she could feed from for years. She made no neat ropes or skeins. Mother’s eyes tore at Abby’s self in one thick, tangled mass. Abby’s back arched beneath Mother. Her jaw gaped open soundlessly. The photographer’s eyes rolled back in her head, her arms and legs twitched, and Mother yanked and yanked until every last gossamer strand of what I’d left Abby with had been scoured out of her.

Watching Mother feed always unsettled me. I would find myself checking for weeks to make sure I don’t act like that when I indulge myself. To spare myself, I watched Abby instead of Mother, as Mother gulped that enormous snarled knot of Abby’s self all at once. She never knew how to savor anything.

Abby’s flailing stopped, her back arched further. Her head pushed into the dirt, only the whites of her eyes visible. Her muscles stiffened. Her body quivered for an instant.

And then she fell limp.

In a moment her breathing slowed. Her eyes rolled down again, but stared, vacant. Lips slack, her mouth hung open.

“Ahhh…”

I raised my eyes from what was left of Abby to regard Mother. She still held herself low over the body, her head still dipped over her victim’s eyes. Eight spidery limbs no longer erupted from her now-human torso. Her two legs, though emaciated, were normal, knees pressed into the dirt on either side of the body’s legs. Her hands, all skin and bone, still framed that slack face. The spiky red-black hair no longer ran over her back, replaced by a threadbare dress of the same color that did not entirely hide the way her spine and her ribs pressed at her skin. Mother’s hair hung in a tangled curtain around her head.

Lifting her gaunt face, she regarded me with only two eyes, human but for their darkness. Just like mine. With thin, cracked lips that no longer stretched over a spider’s fangs she smiled at me, and something in my chest loosened just a little—she was pleased.

Then, with her human mouth, Mother ate the flesh that had been Abby when we entered this woods together.

I half-expected the body to scream again when Mother began. But there was nothing left in it to scream, though it continued breathing for a time as Mother fed.

When she finally stood, wiping blood from her lips and chin with the back of her wrist, the hollows in Mother’s cheeks had filled, her skin no longer hung wrinkled on a bony frame, the flesh smooth and firm, full of vitality. A droning filled the air as all the flies buzzed up, descending on the red-stringy bones Mother had left at her feet.

“Hello, darling.”

She held her arms out to me, but I did not hurry to her embrace. Not yet.

One more gift first, to keep the baby safe. To keep me safe. One brand new flavor of attention for Mother. I reached into my purse and pulled out a shirt, shaking it open to show her the words printed across the front. World’s Best Grandma.

I stayed near the path, kept my weight on my back foot. Ready. And I made sure to keep the focus on Mother, where it’s safest. I didn’t say I’m pregnant, I didn’t say I’m having a baby.

“Hello, Mother. You’re going to be a grandma.”

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Host Commentary

PseudoPod, Episode 976. Every Last Gossamer Strand by C.J. Dotson.
Narrated by Jess Lewis; hosted by Kat Day; audio by: Chelsea Davis 

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Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing okay. I’m Kat, Deputy Editor at PseudoPod, your host for this week, and I’m excited to tell you that for this week we have Every Last Gossamer Strand by C.J. Dotson. This story is a PseudoPod original.

Author bio:
C.J. Dotson possesses the statistically average number of body parts for a human being to have. She and her husband, stepson, and children (all of whom also appear human) share a cabin in the woods with more bugs and spiders than she would ever like to see. In her limited spare time she enjoys reading, video games, painting, baking and decorating cakes (with… questionable success), and petting her puppy and five cats. Her debut horror novel, THE CUT, is now available wherever books are sold – we’ve put a link in the show notes.

Find her on Bluesky @cj-dotson.bsky.social

Narrator bio:
Jess Lewis is a trans non-binary and pansexual writer, designer, and voice actor who hails from the hollers of Western North Carolina. They currently live in the deep South, where they explore futures of liberation and how to get there.

When they’re not imagining weird queer cli-fi utopias, designing future tech, or facilitating capacity-building workshops, they’re organizing programming with their local queer community and The Outer Dark Symposium on the Greater Weird. Their work has appeared in a range of publications, including Solarpunk Magazine, HyphenPunk, and Kaleidotrope.

You can visit their website at https://www.quarefutures.com and follow them on Instagram @merrynoontide

 

Before we go further, this story contains spiders. Arachnophobes, be warned. It also alludes to emotional abuse.

Now we have a story for you, and we promise you: it’s true…

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ENDCAP

Well done, you’ve survived another story. What did you think of Every Last Gossamer Strand, by C.J. Dotson? If you’re a Patreon subscriber, we encourage you to pop over to our Discord channel and tell us. 

 

There are so many things I love about this piece. Key is the idea, skilfully threaded right the way through it, of two faces – both in terms of the buildings and the people. One façade beautiful, or at least socially acceptable, and one darker, uglier. Hidden. 

 On some level, every good story exists to hold up a cracked mirror to our world. In real life, there are people like the creatures in this story. They’re not literal spiders, of course. They’re just humans. Humans who suck all the goodness and joy out of others with manipulation rather than fangs. 

Real-life people who do this are hollow inside. Voids of shame and self-disgust hiding under a thin veneer of, often very seductive, charm. They seek out good people because they need them to fill the gaping hole inside themselves. And they’re often lovely at first, using their sweet charm to fatten their victims up – like the witch in Hansel and Gretel – so that, in time, they can consume all their warmth, love and kindness and so be turned from a monster into something resembling a human. It never lasts, of course, because as psychologist Brené Brown says, “no amount of external validation can heal the wound that comes from not being seen for who you truly are.” But it makes them feel better, for a bit. 

Instinctively, we recognise this behaviour as bad. Evil, even. Such real-life people can be evil, sometimes. But also, they rarely got there alone. No, someone, or something, ate their insides first. It’s not simple. Things never are. The good storyteller’s job is to show us that. 

It’s no easy thing to step into the monster’s shoes, to understand them – all their little excuses, their justifications, their, “I’m not like Mother”s – and tell a story from their point of view. But godsdammit, it’s good when it’s done well, isn’t it? Wonderful work from C.J. Dotson, and her upcoming novel sounds marvellous, too.

But I’m not quite done. Back to the themes here. One of the first things any good therapist will tell you is that you can’t control other people, you can only control your reactions to them. This is one of those things it’s easy to say, even easier to hear, but much, much harder to internalise. “If I just explained…” “if they understood how much damage they’re doing…” 

It’s so tempting to try. But… no. Nope. Don’t waste your energy. 

They might change, one day, but if they do, that’s their journey to take, and nothing you do can force that process. 

Your only defence is to stop feeding them. 

This is much harder, of course, if you work for them. Scratch the history of any narcissist and you’ll inevitably find inappropriate relationships with employees: the personal assistant, the housekeeper, the nanny… 

And here, of course, the photographer. Abby can’t leave because she’s on a job. And our main character goes through her little routines of mental gymnastics. 

 

I savored this kind of regard.  Mother, on the other hand, just ate up any reaction that came her way …

It’s different—guilt-free—when the people I tangle up want to give themselves to me. It’s not like what Mother does. I’m not like Mother. …

I would find myself checking for weeks to make sure I don’t act like that when I indulge myself. … 

 

But perhaps there is a glimmer of hope here. A flicker of awareness. She does want to break this cycle, it’s just that she can’t step away from her mother. One more gift to keep the baby safe. To keep her safe. Will this be the last gift? Probably not. But perhaps one day there will be a last time. For her mother, and for herself.

And in the meantime, for the Abbys out there? Well, As G.K. Chesterton – and absolutely no one else – said, “Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed.” And you deal with these particular monsters by not engaging with them. You cannot fight these people while you continue to feed them. Your silence says more than your words ever, ever will. 

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Now, onto the subject of subscribing and support: PseudoPod is funded by you, our listeners, and we’re formally a non-profit. One-time donations are gratefully received and much appreciated, but what really makes a difference is subscribing. A $5 monthly Patreon donation gives us stability and allows us to keep coming back, week after week.

If you can, please go to pseudopod.org and sign up by clicking on “feed the pod”. If you have any questions about how to support EA and ways to give, please reach out to us at donations@escapeartists.net. 

Those of you that already support us: thank you! We literally couldn’t do it without you! And good news, it looks like the whole Apple-taking-a-cut-from-Patreon thing has been overturned, but still, for the moment, if you’re going to sign up it might be best to do it through a browser – including one on actually ON your phone – than going through the Apple Store app.

And, if you can’t afford to support us financially, then please consider leaving reviews of our episodes, or generally talking about them on whichever form of social media you find yourself… skittering through… this week. We have a Bluesky account: find us at @pseudopod.org. If you like merch, you can also support us by buying goodies from the Escape Artists Voidmerch store. The link is in various places, including our latest social media posts. 

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.

 

And finally, PseudoPod, and Fleetwood Mac, know…  

“I can still hear you sayin’ you would never break the chain.” 

See you soon, folks, take care, and… break those chains. And their webs.