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…)
Nobody wanted to play with the boy who killed his mother. Nick Metcalf understood why in the same way he understood why the sun rose and set. Comprehension was simple for six year olds; things just were. So even though he accepted the other kids in his class avoided walking too close to him (in case they caught whatever made him a “bad” boy), or whispered when he walked past, (that’s him, he killed his own mother) that didn’t mean he liked it. He didn’t. Not one little bit.
One time Nick arrived at school to find “killer” written on a sheet of paper and left on his desk, as if whoever left it thought he needed reminding of the day his world collapsed around him. Maybe he did. If by some miracle he forgot his crime he might start to think he was just like everyone else. For endless seconds he stared at that word scrawled with red crayon, knowing (the way the sun rose and set) this was his label for the rest of his life. If he was meant to have a different label before he killed his mother (doctor, lawyer, president) it shattered the way his mother’s skull shattered when the bullet entered her forehead at close range. (Continue Reading…)
Werewolf Ambulance Podcast:
http://werewolfambulance.libsyn.com/
Pure Cinema Podcast:
http://www.nowplayingnetwork.net/purecinema
Do you find most perfumes reek of banality and bad French puns? 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. You can experience scents based on 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. All this and more can be found at blackphoenixalchemylab.com. So go ahead, indulge yourself.
“What’s the earliest memory you have of your father?” my therapist is asking. Such a tired line, something that a therapist would ask in a movie. I don’t tell him the truth, of course. I cast around for an easy lie, the same one that I would give to Kenzie if she asked, though she never does. Tell him something about my dad wrapping Christmas presents in old shoe boxes, packing them in socks, a twenty-dollar bill stuck between two bricks, wrapped in faded paper. Something that could be cute but always felt mean-spirited.
My laptop case is lying on the floor of the office. In it is a letter on stationery from the Seldon Civics Committee or somesuch, a clipping from the Seldon Herald, complete with a grainy newsprint photo of the old Gorka Theatre, with its marquee like an art deco wave. I’m driving there from here, in a rented black Accord, but I thought it would be a good idea to get one last therapy session in before I go.
No, let me stop. That’s a lie, and I know it. Kenzie thought it would be a good idea, and she’s right, but I knew it would be a waste of time, and it is. I talk about Seldon, about my childhood, about my dad, but I skim over the surface, like I’ve taught myself to do. A rock skipping across a deep, black pond, never touching the water long enough to attract the attention of the beasts that circle below. (Continue Reading…)
This story is based upon Chinua Achebe’s “Things Fall Apart,” though it’s set in modern-day Nigeria rather than colonial times. Beyond the locale, it has a few deliberate parallels. I loved how Achebe qualified the characters’ actions with wise sayings, which is something we’ve all seen before, but I have a soft spot for the device. The characters use the voice of tradition to give their actions weight, and so that’s an idea here too. Even the title speaks to it. With all the Shakespearean suffering in the original, I was convinced Achebe would focus on a father’s loss of a son. I’m still surprised that that was just a background detail, and so “Things My Father Taught Me” is the separation I wanted to see. It’s that same loss with a new family.
My father taught me old knowledge, not all of it useful. It was mostly platitudes that sounded profound until you realized that they were just the logic of one’s own wits. But I hold to this: If a man wants to go quickly, he travels alone. If he wants to go far, he travels with friends. Simple, direct, useful. I wanted to go far.
I was with Bwambale when he found the grenade amongst the scrapyard’s refuse. His uncle owned the business, an acre of steel skeletons rising from rust scale sheddings, and we often rooted about the new collections. His uncle was not a generous man, but if he didn’t know what it was that we had found, like the grenade, then we might pick it up cheap. Which is what happened.
And so afterwards, the three of us–Bwambale, myself, and our friend Godfrey–crouched in the dust behind the Soroti central market, looking as if we were throwing dice in its scant shade. The grenade sat between us like a squat little god. (Continue Reading…)
Audio used in this episode:
https://archive.org/details/joel_pulham_0307/03_joel_260307_knitting_skylarks.mp3
https://freesound.org/people/viznoman/sounds/267306/
https://freesound.org/people/ross_sinc/sounds/444793/
1
The children were always called Blue-Eyes and the Turkey. The elder one was like her dear father who was far away at sea; for the father had the bluest of blue eyes, and so gradually his little girl came to be called after them. The younger one had once, while she was still almost a baby, cried bitterly because a turkey that lived near the cottage suddenly vanished in the middle of the winter; and to console her she had been called by its name.
Now the mother and Blue-Eyes and the Turkey and the baby all lived in a lonely cottage on the edge of the forest. It was a long way to the village, nearly a mile and a half, and the mother had to work hard and had not time to go often herself to see if there was a letter at the post-office from the dear father, and so very often in the afternoon she used to send the two children. They were very proud of being able to go alone. When they came back tired with the long walk, there would be the mother waiting and watching for them, and the tea would be ready, and the baby crowing with delight; and if by any chance there was a letter from the sea, then they were happy indeed. The cottage room was so cosy: the walls were as white as snow inside as well as out. The baby’s high chair stood in one corner, and in another there was a cupboard, in which the mother kept all manner of surprises. (Continue Reading…)