This is what she knows:
Do not immediately repeat a word.
Do not immediately repeat a word spoken by someone else, and do not allow someone to repeat a word you’ve just said.
Do not allow yourself to hear your own echo.
These rules will keep you alive.
Words cannot be trusted. Give them a chance and they will kill you. (Continue Reading…)
He’d wondered, when he started the job, why he needed a belt with so many holes. Now he knew–it fitted around him twice and felt like it needed tightening again. It took months to visit every home in one night and he’d lived every minute, surviving on what was left for him. In some houses it was mince pies and a glass of sherry. In others milk and cookies, and a carrot for the reindeer.
In most, it was nothing at all. (Continue Reading…)
Do you find most perfumes reek of banality and bad French puns? Do you want perfumes that resonate with your dark heart and blackened soul? Do you want perfume that speaks to you, the discerning PseudoPod listener?
Allow me to introduce you to the fine perfumers of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab. Black Phoenix’s fragrances take inspiration from grand myths and tall tales, the height of camp to the depths of decadence, the lightest of fantasy to the blackest of horror. You can experience scents based0 n titans of literature like William Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, and H. P. Lovecraft to modern storytellers like Clive Barker, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and Neil Gaiman.
Their perfume oils are lovingly hand-blended using only the finest ingredients. Based in the City of Angels, they will send their creations far and wide to satisfy your needs. Peruse their vast catalog for enticing aromas or maybe some nail polish, atmosphere sprays, candles, and other sundries. You can also travel to live events and sample their wares and meet the staff in the flesh.
All this and more can be found at blackphoenixalchemylab.com. So go ahead, indulge yourself.
It seemed to Margaret Abbott that her children, as they grew older, clung more and more jealously to the family Christmas traditions. Her casual suggestion that, just this once, they try something new in the way of a Christmas tree met with such teen-age scorn and genuine alarm that Margaret hastily abandoned the idea. She found it wryly amusing that the body of ritual she herself had built painstakingly through the years should now have achieved sacrosanctity. Once again, then, she would have to endure the secret malaise of shopping for the tree at Cravolini’s Christmas Tree Headquarters. She tried to comfort herself with the thought that one wretchedly disquieting hour every year was not too much to pay for her children’s happiness. After all, the episode always came far enough in advance of Christmas so that it never quite spoiled the great day for her. (Continue Reading…)
Out this week is The Dead Girls Club by Damien Angelica Walters. This coming-of-age horror novel focuses on a group who have named themselves the Dead Girls Club in celebration of the generally nameless victims of serial killers. They played a game when they were kids, leaving one of them dead. The girl’s mother took the blame and went off to jail for years. The narrative alternates between the past leading up to the events of the death, and the present, where we learn the mother has been released from jail. The pacing is excellent, cutting away from each timeline leaving us wanting to jump ahead, but we dare not.
Don’t just take my word for this. This week’s author, Gwendolyn Kiste said “Damien Angelica Walters once again proves why she’s a major voice in the horror and thriller genres…Put this on your reading list now, as it’s sure to be among the top books of 2019.”
Want a sample or a reminder of her work? Make sure to check out the stories of hers we’ve run before, including “Take a Walk in the Night, My Love” and “Falling Under, Through the Dark” and “Scarred.” Or you can check out the original story “In the Deepest Darkest Holes” that she contributed to our 10th anniversary anthology “For Mortal Things Unsung.”
Here’s what you know for sure: you won’t survive the film. There’s no chance a woman like you will live to see the end credits. Heck, you might not make it through the opening credits.
But even if you’re dead before the very first frame, that doesn’t mean you’re gone. There are other ways of being in the picture. You could, for instance, linger like a ghost, there and not there. A whisper in the heroine’s ear, a dull ache in the brooding hero’s heart.
But it’s important that you remember: this isn’t your story. None of this—not the man or the glory or the happy ending—belongs to you.
Please don’t forget. Or the film will have to remind you. (Continue Reading…)