PseudoPod 759: The Withered Heart

“The Withered Heart” was originally published in the November 1939 issue of Weird Tales

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Show Notes

As this was originally published as a novelette and a bit long for an episode of PseudoPod, staff turned this into an abridgement project to see if we could trim out some of the fat and keep the core of the story. What is presented is the abridged text we’ve edited.  

Ben Meredith’s podcasts

The Withered Heart (abridged)

by G.G. Pendarves

Dear John,
If a fifteen years’ friendship means anything to you, come at once.

My whole future is at stake and you’ve got to come and help. It’s a very very queer thing, and Jonquil and I don’t agree at all about it. I wish to heaven we’d found the box earlier and had more time to argue it all out.

Come and see us through it.

Rafe.
May 27th, 1938.

(Continue Reading…)

PseudoPod 758: Little Worm

“Little Worm” was originally published in the anthology Black Cranes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:02 — 40.3MB)

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Little Worm

by Geneve Flynn

Ping-ping-ping-ping.

The incessant chiming underscored the cabbie’s music and the occasional blare of a horn. Theresa wondered what the hell it was as she braced herself. There were no seatbelts in the back of the taxi. Hopefully, wedging herself tight between her luggage would work just as well.

The taxi casually swerved within inches of a looming truck. Theresa’s foot jammed down on an invisible brake pedal. “Christ! Careful!”

The Malay cabbie twisted in his seat. “Ah?” A grin split his face, showing teeth stained yellow with tobacco.

Brake lights flashed in front. (Continue Reading…)

PseudoPod 757: Flash on the Borderlands LVI: The Heart’s Filthy Lesson

“The Woman the Spiders Loved” first appeared in Penultimate Peanut and was reprinted in her 2020 collection I’ll Tell You a Love Story.

“Edge of the Cliff” was first published in Weird Tales in March 1941

“The Memory of Love” originally published in Demonic Visions I in 2013 and reprinted in his 2020 collection PseudoPsalms: Resurrection.

“Three Years Ago this May” first appeared in Shock Totem (Issue #10, March 2016).

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Show Notes

“Three Years Ago this May” was my attempt to write a short story with a strong finish. Both Jack Ketchum’s “The Box” and Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Richard Cory” inspired the tale. The question at the center of it all is how do we go on without the one(s) we love.

The Wikipedia on the history of “The Hearts Filthy Lesson”

With her hundred miles to hell

The Woman the Spiders Loved

by Couri Johnson

There was a woman who the spiders fell in love with. You knew her in high school, but you weren’t friends. She was plainish. She still is.

But that didn’t matter to the spiders. They thought she was beautiful. It was something about her hair. It’s long. She’s never cut it, and it’s very blonde. A spider saw her waiting for the bus one day, and it fell in love just as it was laying its eggs. When its young hatched and ate their mother’s corpse, they also ate that love. (Continue Reading…)

PseudoPod 756: To Witness

PseudoPod 756: To Witness is a PseudoPod original.

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Show Notes

Though the author is a professional photojournalist and has covered many car crashes, all characters, events, and organizations depicted in this story are fictional.

Bad Samaritan (YouTube link)
Don’t Breathe (YouTube link)
Nightcrawler (YouTube link)
Savageland (YouTube link)

To Witness

by Luciano Marano

Wesley had beaten the cops. It happened sometimes, but not often. So he quickly pulled onto the shoulder, leaving his car running and the door open, grabbed his camera off the passenger seat and leapt out, determined to make the most of his good fortune.

The drivers looked to actually still be inside their vehicles this time.

He needed this. The supposedly epic car fire his editor had ordered him all the way out to Port Orchard to shoot had been a bust, nothing but a torrent of smelly smoke pouring from under the hood of an old VW van in a diner parking lot and some geriatric hippie telling annoyed firefighters, “It’s never done anything like that before!”

(Continue Reading…)