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PseudoPod 579: All My Nightmares Are Named Heather

PseudoPod 579: All My Nightmares Are Named Heather is a PseudoPod original.

Content Warnings:

Spoiler

Self harm, body dysmorphia, eating disorders, toxic relationships

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:40 — 40.0MB)

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Show Notes

One night I woke up talking to myself, whispering the title of this story. That was the embryo, and now you’re reading the full creature. This is for those who know insomnia and what it is to never have a dreamless night.

Dedicated to Marcos. Sleep well, my friend.

All My Nightmares Are Named Heather

by Mário Coelho

She’s always this close when I wake up, less than a palm’s distance bridging our noses. Big eyes, darker than this penumbra. Pupils lightly flickering, like the TV static behind us. In these roadside motel rooms, everything rustles and murmurs. The carpet is pregnant with aborted cigarette butts and dead smells—sweat and barely washed bedding.

“You were dreaming,” she says.

“I was.” My voice, hoarse. Blind fingers reach out for the bedside table, grab the glass. A bit of water left overnight. Tastes like dust.

I was. Running along a creek. Bare feet cut. Biting my cheeks. Breath heaving. Dry tongue lapping out her name. Heather.

“Who’s Heather?” she asks.

“I told you.” These post-nightmare conversations of ours, dirty laundry beating against the washing machine. Cycling. Hushed, like the drowned out buzzing of the late-night driving outside. “She’s no one. Nothing. A bad dream I don’t know.”

“We only dream of things we know.” (Continue Reading…)

Alarm Will Sound

PseudoPod 578: Alarm Will Sound

PseudoPod 578: Alarm Will Sound is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 27:05 — 24.8MB)

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Show Notes

As mentioned by Alasdair:

Art Bell-The Frantic Caller

The Peoria Plague

https://archive.org/details/ThePeoriaPlague

Uncanny County-The Boy Who Cried Martian

http://uncannycounty.com/episodes/page14/

The Hugo Awards have these things they call nominations tallys but they are commonly referred to as The Long Lists. These include the top fifteen nominees, and show who just missed making the finals. For example, Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Mothership Zeta all made the long list last year for Semiprozine.

One of the great values of these long lists is that it allows readers even more excellent works to add to their “to read” pile. David Steffen has worked to make mining those lists significantly more convenient for you. For the third year in a row, David has published a volume of The Long List Anthology. In this most recent version are included works from names familiar to fans of Escape Artists. Lavie Tidhar, Ursula Vernon, Caroline M. Yoachim, and Ken Liu, among a host of amazing others.

Want to know what sort of story makes it to this anthology? Go listen to episode 607 of Escape Pod and catch Red in Tooth and Cog by Cat Rambo. Been procrastinating picking up Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw or Run Time by Escape Pod’s S.B. Divya? This anthology will assuage your guilt. You can find The Long List Anthology Volume 3 at all the usual purveyors of books. If you’re already the proud owner of this book, become a subscribing supporter of Diabolical Plots which is also edited by David Steffen. Subscribing there puts you in line early for not only the ebooks of the original stories published in Diabolical Plots, but also gets you in line early for The Long List Anthology Volume 4. Go support this fantastically creative human being.

Alarm Will Sound

by Christopher Shultz

And we’re back. This is hour two of Talk it Out. I’m your host, Gabrielle Esposito. If you’re just tuning in, in our first hour on the air we talked at length with Mary from Poughkeepsie, New York, who has been having suicidal thoughts. She was able to talk through a lot of what’s been bothering her, and I think overall we left things in a good place.

Now of course, if this is your first time listening to the show, I want to reiterate that I am not a licensed therapist, nor do I behave like one. What we provide on this show is an avenue for people just to talk. I listen, and the rest of you, the audience, listen too, and we share messages of positivity and encouragement from you listeners, which you can send via email or post to our Facebook page. I always recommend that anyone experiencing things like suicidal thoughts, like Mary, or any other psychological issue, to seek out counseling. Now, Mary definitely wanted help, and we gave her several numbers of therapists in her area to call. My producer Michelle just told me that Mary was okay with a callback live on the air next week, so for those of you concerned for her well-being, be sure to listen in. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 577: From the Fertile Dark

‘From the Fertile Dark’ was originally printed in Nightscript II, in October of 2016.

Content warning:

Spoiler

Loss of a child

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:01 — 27.5MB)

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Show Notes

“I started writing five years ago by participating in a weekly flash fiction challenge, and this story began as a 250 word sketch based on a photo of an empty swing.”

The Hugo Awards have these things they call nominations tallys but they are commonly referred to as The Long Lists. These include the top fifteen nominees, and show who just missed making the finals. For example, Escape Pod, PodCastle, and Mothership Zeta all made the long list last year for Semiprozine.

One of the great values of these long lists is that it allows readers even more excellent works to add to their “to read” pile. David Steffen has worked to make mining those lists significantly more convenient for you. For the third year in a row, David has published a volume of The Long List Anthology. In this most recent version are included works from names familiar to fans of Escape Artists. Lavie Tidhar, Ursula Vernon, Caroline M. Yoachim, and Ken Liu, among a host of amazing others.

Want to know what sort of story makes it to this anthology? Go listen to episode 607 of Escape Pod and catch Red in Tooth and Cog by Cat Rambo. Been procrastinating picking up Hammers on Bone by Cassandra Khaw or Run Time by Escape Pod’s S.B. Divya? This anthology will assuage your guilt. You can find The Long List Anthology Volume 3 at all the usual purveyors of books. If you’re already the proud owner of this book, become a subscribing supporter of Diabolical Plots which is also edited by David Steffen. Subscribing there puts you in line early for not only the ebooks of the original stories published in Diabolical Plots, but also gets you in line early for The Long List Anthology Volume 4. Go support this fantastically creative human being.

From the Fertile Dark

by Rebecca J. Allred

As tendrils of spilled ink mingle with the pool of blood expanding around her knees, Charlotte paints the shadow child on a wall the shade of wilted daffodils. Upstairs, her husband packs his things, slipping quietly from her life even as the last of their children slips from her womb. There will be no call for the midwife who, with the blessings of the town elders, declared her pregnancy an abomination from the start. Neither will she seek the aid of the doctors from away. There is nothing either the ancient woman or the practitioners responsible for its inception can do to stay the flow of despair and failure seeping from Charlotte’s sex, and she is already intimately familiar with the details of post-miscarriage self-care.

Hands trembling, she outlines the shape of a girl, four years old, with soft curls that fall to her shoulders—an imitation of invented memory. With each stroke, Charlotte replaces the foul taste of Black Haw extract and Chaste Tree berry with the flavors of vanilla ice cream and birthday cake; the acrid scent of antiseptic and bleached linens with the fragrance of baby powder and warm milk; and the repeated pricks of needles that promised a miracle at the price of her friends and family with the soft ticklish flutter of butterfly kisses. In her mind, the short, hurried footsteps traversing the hallway are not the clatter of a runaway spouse, but an echo of a toddler fleeing bath time. Charlotte chases the phantom memory into darkness.

(Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 576: Flash On The Borderlands XLI: Flash Fiction Contest 5 Winners

PseudoPod 576: Flash On The Borderlands XLI: Flash Fiction Contest 5 Winners is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:49 — 19.1MB)

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Show Notes

Third Place: The Taking Tree by Evan Dicken narrated by Karen Bovenmyer

Second Place: Legal Tender by Stephanie Malia Morris narrated by Alexis Goble

First Place: Two Step by Drew Czernik narrated by Austin Malone

The Taking Tree

by Evan Dicken

Governor Porter,

I deserve to die for what I’ve done, just please don’t bury me.

I’m reaching out because I got no one else. Even my lawyer keeps asking where the bodies are buried. I wish I knew. Then I could chop the damn thing down, but the tree don’t work like that.

I see it sometimes–out in the yard, beyond the prison fence–waiting for me. At night, I dread the moment when the heater clicks off and all that’s left is the rustle of leaves in the vents.

Sorry, I’m getting ahead of myself. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 575: Christmas Present

“Christmas Present” originally appeared in the NAMELESS PLACES anthology edited by Gerald W. Page in 1975, followed by THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES: SERIES IV anthology, also edited by Page, in 1976. A slightly different version of the story was broadcast on BBC radio Mersey-side on December 24th, 1969, there read by Gavin Richards, produced by Tony Wolfe and with a special electronic score by Donald Henshilwood – and the story is thus dedicated to these three gentlemen. This presentation features audio production by your editor, Shawn Garrett using some sounds from Freesound,org and dedicated to Zoviet France, the sisters of St. Francis Academy and the 1971 film THE NIGHT CALLER.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:05 — 18.0MB)

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PseudoPod 574: While the Black Stars Burn

“While the Black Stars Burn” originally appeared in the Cassilda’s Song anthology. It was reprinted in Turn To Ash, and is the title story in Lucy’s Stoker Award-winning collection While the Black Stars Burn.

Content warning:

Spoiler

Child abuse

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Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:17 — 25.7MB)

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Show Notes

I wrote “While the Black Stars Burn” while I was attending a winter MFA residency at Goddard College in Vermont. I knew I wanted to write a story evocative of both the Robert Chambers story “In the Court of the Dragon” and Lovecraft’s story “The Music of Erich Zann” but which was not a copycat pastiche of either one. The heat wasn’t working well in my dorm room, and my being profoundly cold and under-slept definitely influenced my writing!

While the Black Stars Burn

by Lucy A. Snyder

Caroline tucked an unruly strand of coarse brown hair up under her pink knit cap, shrugged the strap of her black violin case back into place over her shoulder, and hurried up the music building stairs. Her skin felt both uncomfortably greasy and itched dryly under her heavy winter clothes; it had been seven days since the water heater broke in her tiny efficiency and the landlord wasn’t answering his phone. Quick, chilly rag-baths were all she could stand, and she felt so self-conscious about the state of her hair that she kept it hidden under a hat whenever possible. She hoped that her violin professor Dr. Harroe wouldn’t make her take her cap off.

Her foot slipped on a spot of dried salt on the stairs and she grabbed the chilly brass banister with her left hand to keep from pitching forward. The sharp, cold jolt made the puckered scar in her palm sharply ache, and the old memory returned fast and unbidden:

“Why aren’t you practicing as I told you to?”

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PseudoPod 573: Bitter Perfume

This story was originally published in She Walks in Shadows anthology, eds. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles, October 2015 from Innsmouth Free Press. Prime Books issued the American edition, which is called Cthulhu’s Daughters. This will be its first reprint.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:00 — 22.8MB)

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Show Notes

Some listeners will recognize characters and story elements from H.P. Lovecraft’s “Cool Air.” That’s because this story was written for She Walks in Shadows, an anthology of stories containing female characters from Lovecraft’s stories. All contributors to the anthology were women. She Walks in Shadows won the 2016 World Fantasy Award in the anthology category, and “Bitter Perfume” received an Honorable Mention from Best Horror of the Year, Vol. 8 editor Ellen Datlow.

PseudoPod 572: Deconstructing Hillsdale

PseudoPod 572: Deconstructing Hillsdale is a PseudoPod original.

Click to view content warnings:

Spoiler

The events described occur in America and are told from an American perspective. Being a multicultural society, it is not unusual for Americans from all walks of life to partake in diverse celebrations like St. Patrick’s Day, Oktoberfest, or Cinco de Mayo regardless of their individual heritage. Nor is it unusual for people of all backgrounds to enjoy themed activities ranging from Civil War reenactments, to Mardi Gras, to amusement parks styled after the Old West, etc. Therefore, events like the Gypsy Carnival are mentioned with the American understanding that these are themed affairs and not connected with a particular people.

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Deconstructing Hillsdale

By D. Morgan Ballmer

What do you recall about the horrific events that unfolded in Hillsdale Heights on December 2nd, 2014? I remember thinking that the town seemed populated by ghosts, mostly. All over Jefferson County living room windows framed our friends and neighbors as they bathed in the cold glow of their televisions, transfixed by the ongoing standoff. The reports didn’t make any sense. Even when it ended, nothing made any sense.

The media attempted to paint a portrait of the gunman, Randy Hollstrom. They sprinkled buzzwords throughout their coverage as if ‘veteran’, ‘loner’, or ‘PTSD’ somehow explained what we were seeing. Our eyes screamed that the words we were hearing did not match up with the footage. Perhaps after so many hours our hunger for peace of mind outweighed our appetite for the truth.

There was no real way for the news to tell the story anyway. Think of those 3-D sculptures which appear as an elephant when seen head on, but take four steps to the right and suddenly it looks like a giraffe. Same with the Hillsdale event – you look directly at the facts and you will never see the evidence that matters. You have to approach it sideways. (Continue Reading…)