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PseudoPod 453: The Toyol

“The Toyol” originally appeared in Black Static magazine in March, 2014. It has also been reprinted in Joel’s collection of horror, BEDTIME STORIES FOR THE APOCALYPSE III, which can be found in most ebook stores.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:26 — 29.9MB)

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Show Notes

Human trafficking is a modern-day form of slavery involving the illegal trade of people for exploitation or commercial gain. Every year, millions of men, women, and children are trafficked in countries around the world, including the United States. It is estimated that human trafficking generates many billions of dollars of profit per year, second only to drug trafficking as the most profitable form of transnational crime. However, trafficking is also something occurring much closer to home. Estimates indicate between 100,000 and 300,000 children are trafficked for sex in the US each year, with the average victim being just 14 years of age. Also, 27% of trafficked victims are held for purposes of domestic servitude and 10% for work in agriculture. There is no single profile for trafficking victims; trafficking occurs to adults and minors in rural, suburban, or urban communities across the country. Victims of human trafficking have diverse socio-economic backgrounds, varied levels of education, and may be documented or undocumented. Traffickers target victims using tailored methods of recruitment and control they find to be effective in compelling that individual into forced labor or commercial sex.

Here are some common indicators to help recognize human trafficking:

  • Does the person appear disconnected from family, friends, community organizations, or houses of worship?
  • Has a child stopped attending school?
  • Has the person had a sudden or dramatic change in behavior?
  • Is a juvenile engaged in commercial sex acts?
  • Is the person disoriented or confused, or showing signs of mental or physical abuse?
  • Does the person have bruises in various stages of healing?
  • Is the person fearful, timid, or submissive?
  • Does the person show signs of having been denied food, water, sleep, or medical care?
  • Is the person often in the company of someone to whom he or she defers? Or someone who seems to be in control of the situation, e.g., where they go or who they talk to?
  • Does the person appear to be coached on what to say?
  • Is the person living in unsuitable conditions?
  • Does the person lack personal possessions and appear not to have a stable living situation?
  • Does the person have freedom of movement? Can the person freely leave where they live? Are there unreasonable security measures?

Warning Signs for Child Sex Trafficking

  • Chronic runaway/homeless youth.
  • Excess amount of cash in their possession (may be reluctant to explain its source).
  • Hotel keys and key cards.
  • Lying about age/false ID.
  • Inconsistencies when describing and recounting events.
  • Unable or unwilling to give local address or information about parent(s)/guardian.
  • Presence or fear of another person (often an older male or boyfriend who seems controlling).
  • High number of reported sexual partners at a young age.
  • Sexually explicit profiles on social networking sites.
  • Injuries/signs of physical abuse (that they may be reluctant to explain).
  • Inability or fear of social interaction.
  • Demeanor exhibiting fear, anxiety, depression, submissiveness, tenseness, nervousness.
  • Is not enrolled in school or repeated absence from school.
  • Does not consider self a victim.
  • Loyalty to positive feelings toward pimp/trafficker.
  • May try to protect pimp/trafficker from authorities.
  • Prepaid cell phone.

How can you help?

Organizations combating human trafficking in your area: NGO’s in your area

20 ways you can help fight human trafficking: Help

Avoid products that facilitate human trafficking:
According to research by the Polaris Project, human trafficking often operates alongside legitimate businesses. From chocolate companies to electronics producers, a number of corporations use human trafficking and forced labor as a means to making the most profit on their product. You can find out which companies still use slave labor in the Department of Labor’s List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor. Do your research to make sure your investments are socially responsible and benefit companies that don’t take advantage of modern day slaves.

Sources/Resources:
What is human trafficking?
Victims of HT
7 Ways To Join The Fight

The Toyol

by Joel Arnold

“The man from the limousine stops, takes off his sunglasses and squints. He removes the handkerchief from his face and smiles. “How old are you?” he asks Zeya.

“Sixteen,” says Zeya.

“Are you hungry?”

“Yes. And my grandfather.” She nods toward U-Po. “We’re all hungry here.” (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 457: Escape From Kroo Bay

PseudoPod 457: Escape From Kroo Bay is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:04 — 23.5MB)

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Escape From Kroo Bay

by Byron Barton

Kossi glanced at the dead body sprawled across the bus stop floor. One ragged leg was draped over a weathered wooden bench while the torso was splayed in a half-twist over pitted concrete. Old newspapers and candy wrappers partially covered the corpse like a loose patchwork quilt. If not for the slack in the man’s jaws and dark goo pooling in his worn denim shirt, the corpse might simply be a passed out drunk.

Dead bodies on the street weren’t common in Freetown, but they weren’t particularly unusual, either. Kossi shuttered, thinking back to the civil war, when the RUF had temporarily taken the city and left behind enough stiffs and severed limbs to fill a dozen mass graves. Ebola hadn’t left nearly as many bodies behind, but the panic was the same. At least they could see the rebels. At least they could hide or beg or buy their way out of trouble. Ebola was invisible, and as indiscriminate as a child soldier jacked up on brown-brown.

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Pseudopod 456: Flash On The Borderlands XXVI: Official Reports

  • “Thumbwood” was originally published in September of 2007 in THE FIRST HUMDRUMMING BOOK OF HORROR STORIES, a UK print anthology of horror fiction edited by Ian Alexander Martin. The tale was reprinted in August of 2010 in ESTEBAN’S HOUSE OF BIZARRO, an online journal of bizarro fiction that folded some weeks later.
  • “Final Corrections, Pittsburgh Times-Dispatch” was first published by Daily Science Fiction on January 3, 2013. (about story)
  • “N0072-JK1: Study of Synaptic Response of the Organism to Spontaneous Stimulation of Vulnerability Zones. Photographic Analysis” was first published in the anthology Borderlands 5 from Borderlands Press. It was reprinted in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection. Borderlands 5 was republished by Warner Books under the title From the Borderlands.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:26 — 28.6MB)

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Show Notes

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. ”

George Orwell

Thumbwood: “While the tale itself is fictional, the structure and language of the document are lifted directly from a genuine British Ministry of Defence report I was able to get my hands on.”

Final Corrections, Pittsburgh Times-Dispatch: “I’m quite fond of Pittsburgh, and selected it as the scene of this story only for its interesting geography.”

Thumbwood

by Davin Ireland

c) The kitchen is surprisingly modern given the setting, and contains many of the domestic appliances one might expect from an equivalent family home. Dishwasher, microwave, fridge-freezer and designer espresso machine are all in evidence. In an alcove by the back door, Sisyphus struggles valiantly to push a large granite sphere up a craggy mountainside. Oblivious to our operative’s presence, the former Corinthian king puffs and strains in order to achieve his goal, jaw clenched, diminutive biceps popping beneath the fabric of his flimsy cotton tunic. The task is a thankless one. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 455: Turbulence

“Turbulence” was first published by Innsmouth Free Press in Innsmouth Magazine #14, November 2013

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:43 — 19.1MB)

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Turbulence

by Scott R. Jones

They’re sealing the silo today and the cavern below it. One hundred fifty thousand tonnes of concrete poured down the wet, black throat of the thing. I hope it’s enough.

The facility is down to a skeleton staff now. Topside security and just enough eyes on the monitors to hit the red button if things change down there. I’m not really needed; my MSc is in Avionics Engineering, after all. I don’t even work here anymore, but I felt like paying my respects. I’m not alone in this. Declan made friends easily and there are a lot of project folks here that don’t need to be.

His official funeral was just so goddamned unsatisfying, for one thing. That eulogy! “Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth….” They ran that Magee poem into the ground, which was about as tasteless as you could get, considering the circumstances. Considering his resting place.

That’s just it though, isn’t it? Declan isn’t at rest. Declan will never be at rest. I know what they told everyone. That he died testing the DreadMoth. That’s only technically true. I know he’s not dead. Ask anyone who ever sat with him down there, in the cavern. They’ll tell you.

They talked about Icarus at the funeral, too, which is all mytho-poetic and sells the American hero line, sure, but it’s a flawed comparison. Icarus fell. That kid kissed the dirt.

Declan may be half a mile underground, but he hasn’t touched down, yet.

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PseudoPod 454: Eastern Promise

“Eastern Promise” originally appeared in Crowded Magazine issue 2, 2013.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:53 — 25.4MB)

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Eastern Promise

by Stewart Horn

‘In more western parts of Europe, incorrupt corpses were apt to induce almost the opposite response. A lack of decay was taken to be evidence that the individual had died in a state of perfect grace, immaculate and sinless. There are reputed to be whole, perfect bodies secreted among the other saintly relics in churches all over France, Spain, Italy and Prussia, and all those that remain intact have since been canonized. Many such corpses were said to emanate an ‘odour of sanctity’ for some time after death, described as akin to the smell of fresh flowers; it may be principally this olfactory phenomenon, coupled with geographical and religious incidence, that determined which corpses were worshipped as saints, and which destroyed as demons or vampires.’

M. Rhodes, Demonology and Vampirism in Europe, 1897

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PseudoPod 452: Abandon All Flesh

“Abandon All Flesh” first appeared in Tales of Jack the Ripper, a 2013 anthology.

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Show Notes

Silvia remembers the wax museum in Mexico City burning down in 1992, which helped to inspire this story.

Abandon All Flesh

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

The chamber of horrors. The cobwebs and the torture instruments and the lights. And Jack. She loves Jack most of all. He stands in a corner, past the mummies and the witches, in his cape and stylish top hat. Black satin. Gloves. Right hand raised, knife gleaming. He sports a wicked smile.

If you stand in front of Jack all you can see is the smile. The angle of the hat wraps the rest of his face in rich shadows. However, if you move to the side and step a bit forward, against the velvet ropes, you can look at him up close.

The quality of the wax sculptures varies. The older ones are good and the newer ones are less detailed. But Jack. Jack is not good, he is great. The one who crafted him did so with exquisite detail, labouring over the eyes and the skin, striving to approximate life as much as one can within the confines of a wax mold. The result is a face that seems alert, capable of speech, of drawing a breath. The fingers curl around the knife with true strength, the body tenses, ready to leap down from its dais.

Even the background of this exhibit is flawless. Behind Jack there is a bed, unmade, the sheets splattered with blood. The subdued lighting reveals a brick wall and a shuttered window.

Julia stands in front of Jack and touches the sleeve of his jacket. She is fourteen. During class she draws skulls and dragons in the margins of her notebooks. In the afternoons, she does her homework with more haste than effort. Twice a week she walks the wax museum, pausing before Jack and admiring him.

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PseudoPod 451: The New Arrival

“The New Arrival” was first published in Electric Spec, Volume 5, Issue 4 November 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:24 — 17.5MB)

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The New Arrival

by Miranda Suri

I stood in line at the grocery store with my mother, ignoring Simon as he pawed through the carnival-bright offerings on the candy rack. Suzette, the check-stand girl who sometimes babysat for us on Friday nights, ran the items across the scanner.

“What great news, Mrs. Waverly,” Suzette said. “You must be so excited!”

Simon finally settled on a chocolate bar and held it up to our mom, his eyes eager. Watching my older brother, his ten-year-old body twice my size but his mind still years behind, I felt something between pity and disgust.

My mother took the candy bar and slid it onto the belt. Her other hand held mine.

“I know,” she responded. “We’re thrilled! We didn’t want to say anything until we were out of the first trimester.”

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PseudoPod 450: The Horse Lord

“The Horse Lord” was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in June 1977 and included in A NEST OF NIGHTMARES. This collection was first published in 1986 by Sphere Books and is now available as an e-book from Jo Fletcher Books; it is also included in STRANGER IN THE HOUSE, a collection of her early supernatural fiction published as a limited edition hardcover by Ash-Tree Press in 2010.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:28 — 33.4MB)

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The Horse Lord

by Lisa Tuttle

The double barn doors were secured by a length of stout, rust-encrusted chain, fastened with an old padlock.

Marilyn hefted the lock with one hand and tugged at the chain, which did not give. She looked up at the splintering grey wood of the doors and wondered how the children had got in.

Dusting red powder from her hands, Marilyn strolled around the side of the old barn. Dead leaves and dying grasses crunched beneath her sneakered feet, and she hunched her shoulders against the chill in the wind.

‘There’s plenty of room for horses,’ Kelly had said the night before at dinner. ‘There’s a perfect barn. You can’t say it would be impractical to keep a horse here.’ Kelly was Derek’s daughter, eleven years old and mad about horses.

This barn had been used as a stable, Marilyn thought, and could be again. Why not get Kelly a horse? And why not one for herself as well? As a girl, Marilyn had ridden in Central Park. She stared down the length of the barn: for some reason, the door to each stall had been tightly boarded shut.