That’s what the parade is for. (Continue Reading…)
Special thanks to Margaret Dunlap. In collaboration with:
Unwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mystery
Featuring sounds from Free Sound under Creative Commons licenses. PseudoPod’s theme music “Bloodletting on a Kiss” is by Anders Manga and used with permission.
(WITCH, brightly) PseudoPod, The Sound of Horror!
The familiar strains of PseudoPod’s opening music, “Bloodletting on a Kiss” begins. A moment of distortion interrupts, followed by a saxophone-driven 90’s talk show cover of the same song. Canned studio audience applause as the song concludes.
WITCH
(saccharine, without irony, like a morning talk-show host)
Hello and welcome back to PseudoPod, I’m your host, Alasdair Stuart. We are so excited to bring you a very special episode, a rooftop extravaganza to celebrate the Witching Hour! (Continue Reading…)
“What are you afraid of?” Jeanne asks, kicking her feet on the top bunk. I’m lying underneath looking up at the springs where they sag down under her weight. My mind is racing like a game of Memory, flipping over cards to see what comes crawling when exposed to the light.
What am I afraid of? How about everything? Dogs and spiders and those firecrackers called jumping jacks and cancer and splinters and that story about the girl who has a spider lay eggs in her face and, while we’re on the subject, earwigs and that other story about the girl with an ax-wielding maniac in her back seat and the guy in the pickup behind her keeps turning on his brights but really he’s just trying to warn her and infections and going to the swimming pool this summer because everyone expects me to wear a bikini but I’m too fat so I’ve still got a one-piece and Mrs. Conroy at school and getting a C in algebra and and and…
Eighteen years later, I want to go back to that day and give her a different answer than whatever I say, as I put my feet on the springs and push up, feeling her weight push me back down. I want to tell her that what I’m afraid of is her not being there. But at that age, even though I worry about everything, I don’t yet know to worry about that.
A fresh burst of white noise roars through my head and jittery tracking lines wiggle and squirm through my vision again, even worse this time. The world stretches and distorts like in a mirror in a funhouse that’s no fun at all.
The girl behind the bar pushes my pizza and a sixer of sweaty beers forward, a look of disgust on her small-town pretty face. If this were a movie she’d be played by Lori Petty, circa a few very hard years after Free Willy. She was nicer to me yesterday, even nicer when I first came in four days ago. I know how I look, enacting this, our daily routine, in the same wrinkled clothes again. I know what she’s thinking.
I desperately shove my fingers into my eyes until pain stars flare up and drive away the other stuff, blink hard. Things are normal again, and I realize I know this girl. I’ve seen her before, and not just in the bar.
She’s on the tapes. (Continue Reading…)
Sites that help with and advocate for the safety for women:
We arrive at the compound outside Huanca just after midnight. We are tired and hungry and altitude sick and irritated by the spotty signal. We keep refreshing our phones, which had guaranteed service, even in the mountains.
We pile out things on our beds, claiming the top bunk, claiming the bottom bunk, claiming the place by the window. One of us shuts the door. One of us puts her bag on the bed and asks, have we heard?
We have not heard. We have heard and had hoped it was not true. We have been hearing for years but those sorts of rumors go around about every professor and anyway, our boyfriend likes him. We have heard but we need the credits. We have heard, we know the girl (one of the girls), but we are going to be so careful. (Continue Reading…)
Highway 28 vanished and reappeared as the windshield wipers fought a losing battle against Hurricane Francis. This storm was Harriet’s big chance. She only hoped she’d live through it. The news van hydroplaned for a heart sickening moment, then the tires caught asphalt again. “Maybe this wasn’t my best idea.”
Pete, Harriet’s cameraman, sat hunkered low behind the van’s steering wheel, eyes slitted, chin jutting forward in concentration. He shook his head. “You wanted to be in front of the camera. Now you will be. Though I still don’t know why. Behind the camera is where the action is, and you’re good at it.”
“Everybody needs a dream, Pete.” Harriet had started working for WRBC a year ago, her communications degree still warm. She rose rapidly from intern to assistant producer. Her coverage of the Hansen High Lunch Lady Strike was even up for a Murrow Award. But they never put her in front of the camera. And despite her achievements behind the scenes, in front of that camera was where she wanted to be.
When other girls were dancing around their rooms singing Katie Perry songs, Harriet had read news articles into a hairbrush-microphone in her best anchorwoman’s voice. Strong and confident, speaking truth to a world hungry for answers. She’d never lost that little girl’s dream, but desire and good elocution weren’t enough, at least not for the management of WRBC. You had to look the part. At almost six feet tall, with thick features and hair that frizzed at the barest hint of humidity, Harriet did not.
Then came hurricane Francis. Standing in gale-force wind and rain was the one on-air opportunity no one wanted. No one but Harriet Connors. (Continue Reading…)
“Devil on your back, I can never die”
“Perhaps David really loves her,” Mother said indecisively. “We wouldn’t want our boy made unhappy, you know.”
Kate threw back her head and laughed. The lamplight glinted brightly on her long, strong teeth. “Of course he does,” she cried in her raucous voice. “Of course he does. Desperately, enormously. Otherwise, why would he want to marry her?” From the ceiling of the dim, raftered room came the obedient echo, “marry her … marry her …”
“Kate’s always been in love with her brother,” Lance said from the other side of the room. Lance was thin; David had never known anyone as thin as Lancelot. “She really must learn to watch out for it. Our family name’s Vlchek, not Volsung, Katharine.”
Everyone laughed. A bright glance of understanding, of shared, familiar mirth rippled from face to face. Only Kate, rumbling in her throat, refused to see the joke.
“No offense meant, Katharine,” Lance said with a touch of haste. “None at all. But it was agreed long ago that David was the only one of us who could pass for more than a day in the outside world. He has certain qualities which make him remarkably, outstandingly, attractive to the opposite sex. There’s no occasion for heartburning. Whatever it is he does, he does for us.”
“But if he really loves her—” Mother repeated, staring down at the worn greenish webs on her hands. “If he really does …” (Continue Reading…)
The patch of fog on the window, expanding and fading with each breath, was the only proof that I was still breathing as the school bus turned the corner. The driver slowed, and the brakes made a squeaking, squealing sound. It reminded me of the mice my brother used to feed to his snake. Of that sound they made before the fangs released a blessed silence. Most of the kids, including me, were sitting two to a seat. We were still a block away and had just passed the Dead End sign when I heard the wind chime. Dainty at first. It always sounded dainty at first. Then clanging as the breeze picked up. I knew what hung from that oak tree. We all did. And we knew what was making that sound.
Every time we drew near that house, I thought of this old album my mom put on the turntable at Halloween. Sound effects like creaking floors, screeching cats, and a thunderstorm played as a woman with an overly dramatic, yet convincing voice described a “dilapidated” house. It was only mid-September now, but I heard that woman’s voice in my head. I looked at the Monstrum place, with its drooping gutters, missing shingles, and peeling paint. I mouthed the word dilapidated, and the patch of fog on my window grew again.
The bus rolled to stop. The Monstrum kids stood motionless, waiting, behind a broken porch banister. They all had a certain look about them. Lanky, with long straight hair that had never seen a barber’s shop or a beautician’s blade. Some said they all wore black eye shadow on their upper lids, but I was among those convinced the lids themselves were a smoky black. The older ones wore gloves all the time, and spoke through practically closed lips. I watched the horde of them descend those warped front porch steps. In one motion, like a flock of birds, they moved across their overgrown front lawn. Dandelion seeds scattered on the wind, and a few of the Monstrum girls blew kisses after them. A shiver ran through me at the thought of those wishes being granted. Gunther, the oldest boy in the group, led the V formation. (Continue Reading…)