Pseudopod Default

The Pseudopod Autopsy: Stephen King’s 1408

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A man alone in a hotel room. The past, present and future colliding beneath banal wallpaper, store bought faux art and carefully neutral furniture. A courtesy phone, a mini bar and every surface covered in the blood of the previous victims. 1408 is a meticulously constructed assault on reality itself, a film where the normal is abnormal and where it’s a very, very bad idea to try and steal the complimentary towels. So glove up, and join us as we pull the most evil room in the world apart apart and find out what makes it tick.

Pseudopod Default

Flash Fiction: The Little Match Girl

The Little Match Girl first appeared in Shimmer #3, Spring 2006

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The Little Match Girl

by Angela Slatter

The walls are a hard patchwork of rough stones. In some places, there’s the dark green of moss, birthed by moisture and the breath of fear. In others there’s nothing but black. Soot from torches has gathered so thickly that I could scratch my name into it, if I knew how to write. The floor wears scattered straw for a coat, stinking and old. No natural light comes into this place, there’s not even a window, the aperture bricked up long ago so no one could flee. And it stinks; the waste bucket sits festering in the corner.

I haven’t seen a mirror in weeks, so I conjure my face in my mind: pale skin, green eyes, black hair. Almost against my will, I superimpose the marks of my stay: dirty smudges on the skin, the eyes red-rimmed, the hair a storm cloud of filth. I try to smooth the ghostly suffering away, try to see my eighteen year old face as it was, but it’s no use. I’m forever marked. I close my eyes, tightly.
In my hand, a weight. A matchbox, silver and hard. Inside are four matches with the power to show me the moments when my life turned, when doors opened and closed, and my path changed forever. I open the matchbox and strike the first match.

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 80: Votary

“Votary” was first published in Black Static Horror Magazine, September-October 2007

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Votary

by MK Hobson

One day Mom came home from work early. Votary found her sitting on the porch talking with Mr. Dubeck, the postman. He had his bag next to him, full of mail. He was bald and skinny, with neck muscles that stuck out and jumped around when he laughed. He had strong muscular legs, rippling and hard, and they had fine golden hairs on them that shone in the sun. He was sitting on the stairs below my mother, in the late afternoon sunshine.

She was sitting in the cool shadow, speaking quietly, her hands clasped together. The thumb of one hand was stroking the palm of the other. She was sitting back under the overhang of the roof; her face was darkened by the heavy shadow. Mr. Dubeck had his head inclined sympathetically toward her.

They weren’t talking about mail.

Pseudopod Default

Flash Fiction: The Closet

The Closet first appeared online in Chiaroscuro, March 2003.

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The Closet

by Barton Paul Levenson

London, 1847. A tall, thin young man came into a shop and nervously removed his top hat. Snow fell silently in the streets as the sun went down. The cobbled street held no carriages or other pedestrians.

The proprietor stood behind the counter. He was taller and fatter than the young man. He had jowls, and hair that was black on top and white in the sideburns. “And what may I do for you today, sir?”

The young man gulped and fidgeted with his hat for a moment. Then he seemed to grow calm. “I am here to see about a closet,” he said firmly.

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 79: Ice

Ice first appeared in High Seas Cthulhu

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Ice

by Heather Hatch

Johnson looked out at the glistening white expanse, glad for the barrier between him and the snow covered ice. He noted the research ship’s position and speed in the log book – along with the calm emptiness of the Antarctic wasteland – and turned to Ivers, the man at the radar.

“Still no sign of Dr. Fenton?” Johnson asked.

“Nope. Nothing from Saunders – how much longer are we waiting out here?”

Johnson shrugged. “Captain says another day.”

Pseudopod Default

Review: Stephen King’s “1408”

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Hotel rooms are, in essence, purgatory charged at a nightly rate. They exist in that same curious hinterland as the departure lounge at airports, not quite in one country and yet not quite at the destination. They are, in essence, neutral spaces, transient environments which are defined, which exist, only for as long as it takes you to check out.

They’re also prime horror real estate, this very transience allowing for the things on the other side of the door, the wet things, the singing things with impossible claws and the voices of children to break through. From the hotel in The Shining to the Bates Motel in Psycho and the snuff palace in the recent Vacancy, hotels have provided fertile ground for horror writers for years and one in particular. Stephen King has survived stays in Hotel Horror before with two versions of The Shining and last year returned to the field again, when Lasse Hafstrom adapted his short story, 1408.

So join us as we pay a visit to the Dolphin Hotel, home to the most evil hotel room in the world and the crucible which will either destroy Mike Enslin, or rebuild him. Welcome to 1408, room service is suspended. Forever.

Pseudopod Default

Flash Fiction: Secret Boxes

Flash Fiction: Secret Boxes is a PseudoPod original.

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Show Notes

Music by love is nothing. (featuring Bill Abdale and Lee Bartow)

Secret Boxes

by Jerome Dent

Samuel found the secret of the death of the universe in a box. The box was small and plain, with a corked opening, like a jack in the box without a handle. Samuel forgot how he’d gotten the box before he even got home, the facts smothered and dismantled in a haze. All he thinks he knows is that there was a tree involved, sun-bleached to a moth-white with gnarled branches, fruit with eggshell skin that burst and bled crimson at the touch, a man who had misplaced his heart, and something very painfully white or made of light. But he could have picked it up at Jericho’s. Much more likely, some knickknack impulse buy that’ll prompt his roommate to ask for Samuel’s half of the rent, again.

Pseudopod Default

PseudoPod 78: In a Right and Proper Place

PseudoPod 78: In a Right and Proper Place is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 20:34 — 14.2MB)

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In a Right and Proper Place

by Holly Day

Across the street lives a woman with snakes in her hair. She watches me from between the rotting drapes that keep the sun from melting her living room furniture. Her eyes glow in the dark, and she thinks I can’t see her, but I am not as stupid as she thinks.

I sit at the breakfast table and wonder if she has to feed each snake head individually, or if they’re just like hair, and just need a shampooing, now and then. I imagine her dipping her entire head into a cage full of frightened rats, the snakes in her hair darting this way and that, tangling around each other in their haste to catch the fat ones, the ones with the least demented testicles. Tiny bones crunch in my head as I close my own teeth on a spoonful of raw bran, orange juice instead of milk because milk always makes me sleepy.