Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 300: The Step

“The Step” was originally published in 1925 and later collected in MORE SPOOK STORIES (1930)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 44:15 — 30.5MB)

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

The Step

by E.F. Benson

John Cresswell was returning home one night from the Britannia Club at Alexandria, where, as was his custom three or four times in the week, he had dined very solidly and fluidly, and played bridge afterwards as long as a table could be formed. It had been rather an expensive evening, for all his skill at cards had been unable to cope with such a continuous series of ill-favoured hands as had been his. But he had consoled himself with reasonable doses of whisky, and now he stepped homewards in very cheerful spirits, for his business affairs were going most prosperously and a loss of twenty-five or thirty pounds to-night would be amply compensated for in the morning. Besides, his bridge-account for the year showed a credit which proved that cards were a very profitable pleasure. (Continue Reading…)

Pseudopod Default

A Short History of Pseudopod: Episodes 201 to 300

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 51:11 — 35.2MB)

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

(creaking door) Welcome, boils & ghouls, to our gory little abattoir of the airwaves, a festering waveband of wretchedness we’ve dubbed Pseudopod! Woven into this website of witchery are some truly tormented tidbits, so pull up a casket fear-fans, adjust your drool cups and settle in for some sickening sound, as we serve up…

A Short History of Pseudopod: Episodes 201 to 300

(see you soon at a Senate Subcommittee hearing on Internet delinquency and the corruption of the web’s morals!)

Pseudopod Default

Pseudopod 299: White As A Bedroom Door

Pseudopod 299: White As A Bedroom Door is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:23 — 17.5MB)

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

White As A Bedroom Door

by Nathaniel Lee

The story she tells most often is not about any one person. In the story, Amber is a little girl, maybe five years old. She is sitting on her bed, in a darkened bedroom. The covers are thin, sometimes damp where she wet them. She smells sour sweat and urine, old cigarette smoke, spilled alcohol. The smells of home, as she thinks of them. They are almost comforting.

What isn’t comforting is the door.

Pseudopod Default

A Short History of Pseudopod: Episodes 101 to 200

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:09 — 19.4MB)

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

(clasps hands behind back and walks into shot) Welcome to our audio archive of eerie, atavistic atrocities (lights cigarette), a carefully curated cacophony of chilling curiosities, sure to curdle the blood and tingle the spine. With the greatest of pride, we bring you tonight’s offering and welcome you to

… A Short History of Pseudopod: Episodes 101 to 200

(Do not operate heavy machinery while under the influence of this audio file. Do not operate light machinery, either. Do not operate, period.)

Pseudopod Default

Pseudopod 298: The Long Road To The Sea

“The Long Road To The Sea” first appeared in CATASTROPHIA, edited by Allen Ashley, published by PS Publishing in September 2010.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:24 — 29.2MB)

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

The Long Road To The Sea

by James L. Sutter

 

After enough time had passed for everyone to get unloaded and settled, Mischa gave the order, and the real work began. Throwing open the back doors of the largest truck, he quickly prepped the surgery, then let Colville’s mayor know he was ready.

The first corpse was a young man, maybe twenty or twenty-one, who’d fallen beneath a thresher and bled out before the other field hands could even send for help. One arm was a mangled mess from the crushed collarbone down, but the convoy had been expected and the family had the sense to keep him cold in the cellar.

Mischa accepted the corpse with respect and ceremony, then firmly ushered the hard-faced locals back outside and shut the truck doors, limiting the people in his workshop to himself, his protégé Andrew, and Jimmy to help with the lifting.

Beneath the harsh battery-powered lights, they began. Able to tell at a glance that nothing in the tangle of bone and fiber was worth saving, Mischa and Andrew broke out scalpels and began the process of removing the tattered arm, tying off what veins they could and cauterizing the rest with a hot iron. Taking one handle each, they used a set of bolt cutters to shear through the protruding bone with a sound like a tree being limbed.

Pseudopod Default

Pseudopod 297: Of Ants And Mountains

Pseudopod 297: Of Ants And Mountains is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:14 — 25.7MB)

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

Show Notes

“I visited the nearby city of Joplin, Missouri last year just after an EF5 tornado destroyed much of it. And before long, this story began to slither its way into my head.”

Of Ants and Mountains

by Charlie Bookout

 

‘I thought it would be worse,’ I said as we ascended College Lane. ‘But it’s…’ My words caught in my throat. I stomped the brake pedal. Directly in front of us was a red minivan that had come to rest on its top. It was crumpled like tissue paper and was bleeding fluids onto the street. And beyond it was what old Mrs. Cropley must have already seen. The devastation was complete: bricks and cars and furniture… all jumbled together as if some great machine had bit into the earth and churned away for miles. No landmark was recognizable. Here and there the trunk of a tree remained, denuded of its bark. There were fires burning in half a dozen places. And there were people, everywhere in the streets, all in a hurry and accomplishing nothing. From a distance, they looked like ants searching for a pheromone after someone smashed their hill.

Pseudopod Default

A Short History of Pseudopod: Episodes 1 to 100

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:54 — 20.6MB)

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

Submitted for your approval, or perhaps just to induce madness, a small reminder of what PSEUDOPOD has brought you these last few years, as we rapidly close in on Episode #300. Dare you attempt to listen to this fast-forward through our first 100 episodes?

(*medical note* -Bleeding nose, not too bad. Bleeding ears, bad. Bleeding eyes, very bad indeed!)

….ENJOY?

Pseudopod Default

Pseudopod 296: The Squat

“The Squat” was first published in the 2007 charity anthology THE VAULT OF PUNK HORROR and Sean says “at the time I was thinking about what ‘punk’ means beyond the music and the esthetics. I remembered stories I’d heard about runaway kids living on the streets in San Francisco and the ways they used to take care of each other–the older kids looking out for the younger ones, sometimes prostituting themselves to provide for them. Somehow these acts of kindness and generosity from people who were in desperate situations themselves said ‘punk’ to me more than any loud music or mohawk ever could.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 41:56 — 28.9MB)

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

The Squat

by Sean Logan

The floor underneath him was sticky, as if it was covered in warm honey, and it made the skin on his hands and the side of face sting slightly where he’d touched it. All around him he heard the wet sounds of sliding, a thousand separate sounds, a thousand entities sliding toward him in the darkness. And all of these sounds seemed to echo down through a vast space, along with a deep, distant rumbling.

The sliding noises were closer now, and there was a wet, fleshy slapping against his feet, and creeping up his legs, under the pantlegs, thick coiling muscles, like long slugs or smooth tentacles, up and around his torso and arms, his neck and covering his face.

The old man felt himself being stretched and pulled and smothered, but the panic that had been rising in his mind was melting away. He didn’t remember how he’d gotten himself here, but for the first time in a long, long while he knew exactly where he was going. And he found comfort in that as his body and its extremities were pulled asunder.