Archive for Podcasts

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 559: Granite Requires

PseudoPod 559: Granite Requires is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:32 — 36.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | TuneIn | RSS

Show Notes

Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds!

Granite Requires

By T.J. Berry

Granite requires my baby’s eyes. Only one of them really, but that’s still one more eye than she’s gonna give. That granite already took one of mine.

I may have only one eye, but I’m a worker, not a taker. I have three jobs. First and most importantly, I’m a mama to my baby girl. She will always be priority numero uno. Secondly, I do remote transcription for a vet in Albuquerque when their regular people get behind. And third, I have a side agreement with a few of the guys in this town that keeps me in tax-free cash. God bless America.

I’m never going to be like Mama Tracey, who sits out front of Dell’s General Store holding out her mug for cash. People give it to her too, paper money like fives and tens, cause she gave both of her eyes to the granite.

They took the first in fifty-two after she was born. The other she volunteered in eighty-eight when pickings were slim in town and the rocks started to collect their due.

I could give my second eye in place of my baby and collect fives and tens too, but I bet there’s not room in front of Dell’s for both me and Mama Tracey. She’s wide in the hips and also people will think I’m a copycat and give me less. Anyways, I have my Nightlee now and lord knows you need at least one eye to take care of a baby. (Continue Reading…)

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 558: Toward the Banner of the King

PseudoPod 558: Toward the Banner of the King is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 35:02 — 32.1MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | TuneIn | RSS

Show Notes

 

Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds!

Toward the Banner of the King

by T.R. North

In times past I often dreamt I was driving a carriage through the deserted streets of an alien city.  In spite of the strangeness of the city, it seemed utterly familiar to me; in spite of the utter waste it presented, whenever I paused, passengers would appear and alight.

They were all masked, as was I.  Communication between us was unnecessary, as there was only one fit destination in the whole of the city.  They were dressed in fine clothing, but it had the air of costume, and I could find nothing of their true condition in it.

No matter how many passengers I took on, the carriage never filled.

No matter how long I drove, we never drew so close as to see the crest on the yellow banners adorning the distant towers. (Continue Reading…)

PseudoPod logo

PseudoPod 557: ‘Till the Road Runs Out

PseudoPod 557: ‘Till the Road Runs Out is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:24 — 24.0MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | TuneIn | RSS

Show Notes

Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds!

‘Till the Road Runs Out

by Luciano Marano

The ratty doublewide burned faster than they expected, and when the whiskey-fueled flames reached the meth lab in the trailer’s back bedroom, the explosion was likewise extraordinary.

Hicks gulped the last of the Jack Daniel’s, wiped his mouth with his hand. The flames were warm against his shirtless torso, his muscles hard and lean from his most recent turn inside. He leaned back on the Mustang’s hood, feeling toasty inside and out as he was tickled by the heat of the fire and the fuzzy embrace of booze. He ran a hand over his fresh buzz cut, crossed one booted ankle over the other and casually lobbed the empty bottle into the fire. (Continue Reading…)

PseudoPod logo

PseudoPod 556: Evitative

“Evitative” is the titular and ultimate story of The Aversive Clause, the collection of stories that also included, ‘Sweetness,’ which ran as Pseudopod episode 445.

Says Edwards: “I’ve been listening to audial fiction for longer than I’ve been listening to music. I ‘read’ Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, Treasure Island, the works of Issac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, and countless others in this form starting around four and continuing onto today. My work is always written with the intention of being read aloud. So it’s really something to have a pair of stories in your archive. Thanks for keeping both horror and the spoken word going strong at the same time.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 50:36 — 33.2MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | TuneIn | RSS

Show Notes

Shawn Garrett composed the soundbed for this episode, which he dedicates to master avant-garde musicians/field recorders Annea Lockwood & Chris Watson. A list of links to sounds used from Freesound.org are below.

SOUNDBED SOURCES
48558__crk365__birds-23dec07-spesh
278213__fundamental-harmonics__ban-doi-insects-night-time-02
320173__arnaud-coutancier__night-insects
65288__acclivity__cicadasplus

Thanks to our sponsor, ARCHIVOS – a Story Mapping and Development Tool for writers, gamers, and storytellers of all kinds!

by B.C. Edwards

Once the oceans came up and covered the streets over it was like they weren’t ever there. No streets or dead Camaros or boys that abandon you when things get flooded and break down. There were just the tall trees with the high branches and water everywhere and the smudge of mountains I can see off on the horizon if I climb all the way to the top of the tree we use for looking at things. The water filled in all the gaps and erased our telemarketing jobs and our high-heels and the clubs we wore them to. But we’re safe up here, on the little platform Jo-Jo built in the trees. He found me wandering in the muck, cold and alone and his was the first face that I’d seen in forever that didn’t look scared or desperate or tired. The first one since the water and the bombs and all who didn’t try to take one more thing from me, didn’t try to steal me away or trick me into anything. Jo-Jo just smiled and his eyes smiled too and even though he’d lost his words already I knew he meant well. And he showed me how to climb the trees and get up to his platform where there’s nothing to do but climb around, eat the berries and the appleish things that dangle off the branches like Christmas ornaments and screw all afternoon long and laze about watching the world disappear. Jo-Jo catches the birds that build their nests and try to eat our fruit, and then we eat the birds too. That’s about all we do.

That’s about all the kid in my belly will do, too. But the kid won’t know any different. It won’t think there was ever something other than the trees and the muck and the water and the men who come by every now and again in their canoes and their ugly paddles and their terrible broken whispers.

You can’t go down there; those men will eat you.

PseudoPod logo

PseudoPod 555: Four Hours of a Revolution

PseudoPod 555: Four Hours of a Revolution is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:56 — 24.3MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | TuneIn | RSS

Four Hours of a Revolution

by Premee Mohamed

Rebels, like vampires, prowl by night, sleep by day; they are short on everything in the besieged city – bullets, socks, soap, bread – but mainly they are short of sleep, for they fight under starlight, hide under sun in secret places. And yet their enemies are most vulnerable at night when, like all good civil servants, they retire to their houses and lock their doors. Until they swap schedules neither side will eliminate the other.

So the revolution is easy enough to find as I whisper up the wall of the apartment complex, slide under the half-inch of space left by the open window. They will not open it further, even though the little boarded-up living room is intolerably hot. As it is, they sweat profusely in their sleep, even the lucky few shaded by the walls.

One has, deliberately I assume, curled up in an armchair under a poster reading ‘PUNK ISN’T DEAD BUT IT WOZ UP AWFUL LATE LAST NITE.’ On the poster, two men sleep in a train seat, cartoonishly rendered in hot primaries on a black ground. The rebel in the armchair echoes their pose, but instead of a tired friend she cradles a stolen police rifle, its distinctive silver finish oversprayed with matte black paint, the camera blocked with a glued-in coin. The police carry them proudly, counting on the reflected glare to carry their message far ahead of them; the rebels carry them only at night, counting on stealth.

It is this girl, Whittaker, in the armchair, in this war, that I am here to claim. In due time, as is her right and my duty. For I am Death.

(Continue Reading…)

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 554: A Doll Full of Nails

PseudoPod 554: A Doll Full of Nails is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:21 — 16.7MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | TuneIn | RSS

A Doll Full of Nails

By Ville Meriläinen

1.

 

“Once upon a time,” the doll began, “there lived a god who feared the dark.

“He cast a shadow over his creations and heard them whisper his doom when he turned away. He feared them so much he stole fire from the other gods and gave it to the tiny creatures, hoping it would take away the dark in their hearts. Instead, they set the god on fire, and that is how the sun was born.”

“Fascinating,” grumbled the doll maker, setting a glass eye into the socket of his latest masterpiece. This one, he hoped, would be as mute as most, unlike the one sitting on his shelf. “And patently untrue. Be quiet, now, or you’re getting another nail.” (Continue Reading…)

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 553: Fade to Gold

“Fade to Gold” was first published in End of the Road, edited by Jonathan Oliver (Solaris Books, 2013).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:26 — 33.4MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | TuneIn | RSS

by Benjanun Sriduangkaew

They say the afterlife is a wheel and that is true, but I am between and so for me the way is a line. It unspools interminably into a horizon that shows the soft gold of dawn, always just a little out of reach.

Before the war this was only packed earth and grass and dirt to me; before the war I trod this path from home to capital thinking of the sweetness of rare fruits. Now that my back is to Ayutthaya the ground is sometimes baked salt where nothing grows and sometimes wet mud bubbling with the voices of the dead. Inside my arteries there is blood which throbs and pumps, and my belly growls at emptiness as might a bad-tempered dog. But it is difficult to be sure, after so much soldiering, that one is still alive. It is difficult to be certain this is not all a fever dream. 

PseudoPod logo

PseudoPod 552: The All or Nothing Days

PseudoPod 552: The All or Nothing Days is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:40 — 23.5MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Pandora | iHeartRadio | Podchaser | TuneIn | RSS

The All or Nothing Days

By Gus Moreno

Sometimes Ya-Ya would lie on the ground and look up at the sky, and in between sips from her mason jar she would point to clouds and call them out. That one looked like a shark, that one looked like a gun, that one looked like Donkey Kong. And I would always ruin it with my questions. What’s a shark? What’s a gun? What’s a Donkey Kong?

She would roll over and that meant she was over it. She grew impatient with me and with herself, with slipping and mentioning something that was before my time, and having to explain it to me, something that was so simple and obvious to her that she was reduced to stuttering because she couldn’t figure out how to explain what a computer was without me asking what plastic was, what an internet was. She’d rather talk about other stuff, like pyramids. She didn’t mind explaining to me their shape and precision, how no one knew how they were made. I imagined a mountain with flat sides, with the point of a knife at the top, when both of us laid in the red dirt after the sun fell and the stars covered the sky. She said pyramids generated their own energy. You could run a whole city off their magnetic power. They were beacons to lifeforms on other planets. They were built by a kind of human that was different than us. But the planet froze over and killed off this special strain, and the humans we descended from were the cowardly, spindly ones that knew how to hide and steal and survive.

(Continue Reading…)