It has come to our attention, through multiple channels, that the current incarnation of Artemis Rising 5 has caused harm to members of our community.
Thanks to Bogi Takács’s eloquent explanation of how to bring more voices to the table, we are examining the best way to repair the trust we’ve broken. We appreciate the conversations happening on various platforms and thank you for allowing us to participate in them. (Continue Reading…)
We go to Grandmère’s house to ride the unicorns.
We only go once or twice a year, and it’s never enough. Riding the unicorns is the most fun a person could have, and I don’t know why we can’t do it every day. Mom never gives us a good reason. It’s not like ice cream, where it’ll give you a stomachache if you have too much. You could ride the unicorns for hours and hours. They never get tired. They prance and they fly a little, just a foot or two, and they’re blue and pink and green and purple, and their horns shine in the sun like candy canes, like candy canes after you’ve licked off all the red and made them white and sharp with your tongue.
Grandmère watches us from the veranda as we ride. She never touches the unicorns herself. They’re here for us. They’re here because she loves us, and she wants us to have fun. She watches, and sometimes she waves with her hand cupped like she’s a queen, the big diamonds on her necklace sparkling across the lawn, and Robin and I go around and around until we’re dizzy and Mom yells at tell us it’s time to go home. (Continue Reading…)
to the memory of Conrad Aiken
I
It could make her invisible. Untouchable.
The thought came back years later like the distant melody of church bells, familiar and comforting. The moment she found the thing, she knew it was indescribable. Remote from parents, lovers and friends alike. It was her own, held close from other eyes, from other fingers.
Invisible. Untouchable. (Continue Reading…)
Welcome to the catacombs of via Altamontivecchi, the grandest and one of the most ancient in the world. I will be your guide for this special pilgrim’s tour in the English language. If you have booked in advance, you will find the number 34 stamped on your ticket. If you have not booked in advance, you have no business being here. Please return tomorrow in the morning when there will be more tours for you in several languages.
For those of you who have booked in advance, please step inside. (Continue Reading…)
During the month of September, PseudoPod seeks submissions to celebrate ARTEMIS RISING, a special month-long event across the Escape Artists podcasts featuring stories by any author who identifies as a woman, to any degree.
Stepping in as guest editors for our fifth annual ARTEMIS RISING event is PseudoPod Associate Editor Cecilia Dockins and Nightlight Editor Tonia Thompson.
Cecilia Dockins resides near Nashville, Tennessee. Over the years, she has slung cocktails in bars, instruments in surgical suites, ink on paper, and possibly a curse word or two. She’s an Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate and former University of Maine: Stonecoast student, a failed academic, loner, dreamer, damn-good angler, and professional book hoarder.
Tonia Thompson is the editor of Nightlight: The Black Horror Podcast. Follow the stories on Twitter @NightlightPod
From Tonia’s website:
I write horror, science fiction and dark fantasy. I’ve been scaring people since the second grade, when I wrote my first story based on Michael Myers. I’m pretty sure my teacher was concerned, but I turned out fine(ish).
I also write essays on racial inequality and inclusion in literature. If you don’t like my essays, you probably won’t like my fiction either. It’s cool. Just don’t send me a nasty note because I’m not your cup of tea. Don’t start none, won’t be none. (Continue Reading…)
He is a good man. Remember that. He is a good man.
“This story is partially autobiographical. My older cousins did, in fact, teach me how to induce a fainting spell, and I did, in fact, have some kind of seizure. Do not try this at home, in the woods, or anywhere else.”
I held my arm out the window of the car and pretended it was a long sword slicing through the landscape. This was a game I always played on long car rides, holding my hand flat and my fingers rigid. The wind pushed the sword up, and I chopped through the tops of trees and telephone poles. Lower and I scythed through farmhouse attics and distant silos. I tried to control the sword by changing the angle of my hand, so I could hop over other cars without slicing their passengers in half. But sometimes, the wind forced my hand lower, and I’d apologize under my breath to the motorcyclist or hitchhiker I’d beheaded. (Continue Reading…)
One gray morning not long before the onset of winter, some troubling news swiftly travelled among us: the town manager was not in his office and seemed nowhere to be found. We allowed this situation, or apparent situation, to remain tentative for as long as we could. This
was simply how we had handled such developments in the past.
It was Carnes, the man who operated the trolley which ran up and down Main Street, who initially recognized the possibility that the town manager was no longer with us. He was the first one who noticed, as he was walking from his house at one end of town to the trolley station at the other end, that the dim lamp which had always remained switched on inside the town manager’s office was now off.