Mother Horror challenges you to Take A Walk In The Night, My Love

First, I must use this opportunity to encourage horror fans that if they are only digesting their horror fiction through the traditional method of the written word, I strongly recommend integrating some audio into your diet.

This is only my third PseudoPod episode but already I can feel my appetite for more grow stronger every day.

“Take A Walk In The Night, My Love” by Damien Angelica Walters is a whole meal. Immediately after savoring the thought and care that Walters put into preparing this feast for your horror soul, your mind will continue to lap at the lingering morsels.

It’s proving to be somewhat of a challenge to share my full experience because this is one of those stories where all of the discoveries need to be preserved and not spoiled. So I’ll start with what I can freely exchange: The moment the narrator, Justine Eyre, began speaking — I felt my shoulders fall. I exhaled. There’s something so dreamily intimate and almost hypnotic about her voice. She has a nuanced way of ending her sentences that captured my attention and later, my affection. I’ll be looking for more stories that she has narrated.

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PseudoPod 744: This Wet Red

PseudoPod 744: This Wet Red is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 21:14 — 23.3MB)

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This Wet Red

by Marisca Pichette

I lie listening to a mouse in the wall. Its tiny feet scrabbling across worn boards; its tiny heart beating and beating and beating.

Its not so tiny pursuer winds through the dark, a soft caress of scales over pine. I track the path of the monster unseen from one end of the room to another, steady in pursuit. It knows the mouse cannot escape. It knows there are only so many empty spaces in the house.

Scratch scratch scratch. Squeak. The mouse erupts from the corner and runs down to the floor. I sit up in bed, tracking its progress between my bare feet. From above, I hear the relentless monster drinking the scent of its prey, following it into the open.

Open-ish. It is almost totally dark in the room. In the house. There is no power anymore. (Continue Reading…)

PseudoPod 743: Flash on the Borderlands LIV: Stage Three: The Bargain

“The Kid Learns” was first published in the New Orleans Times Picayune on May 31, 1925 

“The Sputtering Wick of the Stars” was originally published in Halloween Forevermore in 2015

“If It Bit You” is a PseudoPod original

Content warning:

Spoiler Inside SelectShow

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:29 — 28.1MB)

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The Kid Learns

by William Faulkner

Competition is everywhere, competition makes the world go round. Not love, as some say. Who would want a woman nobody else wanted? Not me. And not you. And not Johnny. Same way about money. If nobody wanted the stuff, it wouldn’t be worth fighting for. But more than this is being good in your own line, whether it is selling aluminium or ladies’ underwear or running whiskey, or what. Be good, or die.

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PseudoPod 742: The Sea Thing

This story was first published in Weird Tales, December 1925.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:54 — 23.1MB)

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The Sea Thing

by Frank Belknap Long

JULY 16—We are caught in one of the great calms. There is water in the well, and our food is nearly gone. Everything is hid from view by the fog. I confess that I am a hopeless coward. The situation appalls me. What an expressive word is despair. I shall write it large—DESPAIR. Luckily a flying fish came scudding over the rails this morning.

 July 17—The fog has lifted, but there is no relief in sight, and the water in the well has risen several inches. The seven of us worked on the pumps all night. Thompson seemed surly and inclined to rebel. He is a man to be envied. He still retains his egoism and he fancies himself a very shrewd and important person. I hadn’t the heart to be angry with him. Poor devil! He doesn’t know how near we are to the rocks. I speak figuratively, of course. We are at present in the open sea, a thousand miles from land, and our rudder has gone by the board. We drift aimlessly. A fine situation, truly, for the skipper of the Octopus! Three months ago I had a full crew, and full sails, and now… Cholera isn’t pleasant! Damn it all, cholera is not pleasant. (Continue Reading…)