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PseudoPod 344: The Pit

“The Pit” originally appeared in THE BLACK LIZARD ANTHOLOGY OF CRIME FICTION (1987) (“and this was the original Black Lizard line, before it was owned by Random House”). Joe describes the story as “Alice In Wonderland meets Southern Gothic.”

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The Pit

by Joe. R. Lansdale

Six months earlier they had captured him. Tonight Harry went into the pit. He and Big George, right after the bull terriers got through tearing the guts out of one another. When that was over, he and George would go down and do their business. The loser would stay there and be fed to the dogs, each of which had been starved for the occasion.

When the dogs finished eating, the loser’s head would go up on a pole. Already a dozen poles circled the pit. On each rested a head, or skull, depending on how long it had been exposed to the elements, ambitious pole-climbing ants and hungry birds. And of course how much flesh the terriers ripped off before it was erected.

Twelve poles. Twelve heads.

Tonight a new pole and a new head went up.

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PseudoPod 343: Magdala Amygdala

“Magdala Amygdala” originally appeared in DARK FAITH: INVOCATIONS (Apex Book Company, October 2012) and has been selected for inclusion in Ellen Datlow’s BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR anthology and won the Bram Stoker Award.

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Show Notes

“I wrote this when I was working the graveyard shift in a large computer data center. Third shift can do terrible things to your brain after a while, because often you just don’t get the right kind of sleep (if you can sleep at all during the day; I never got the hang of it), and it kills your social life dead. I felt disconnected and zombified, and my short-term memory was starting to slip. My story came out of that experience, specifically my wondering what if I’d been put on that shift precisely because I couldn’t be allowed around normal people.”

Magdala Amygdala

by Lucy Snyder

I have excellent health insurance. There’s no bliss for me. What I and every other upstanding, gainfully-employed, fully-covered Type Three citizen gets is an allotment of refrigerated capsules containing an unappetizing grey paste. Mostly it’s cow brains and antioxidant vitamins with just the barest hint of pureed cadaver white matter. It’s enough to keep your skin and brains from ulcerating. It’s enough to keep your nose from rotting off. It’s enough to help you think clearly enough to function at your average white-collar job.

It is not enough to keep you from constantly wishing you could taste the real thing.

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PseudoPod 342: Riding Atlas

“Riding Atlas” was first published at Three-Lobed Burning Eye and can be read here.

Some people think the medical facts in this must be wrong. I ran it past two doctor pals of mine and a paramedic. It seems incredible, and Ryan IS playing very fast and loose with safety, but you could actually do this. Kind of. Please don’t. And if you do, don’t mention me.

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Riding Atlas

by Ferrett Steinmetz

They were naked, now, on a dirty mattress.

‘Neither of you have eaten or drunk anything for twenty-four hours?” Ryan asked, hauling equipment into the room: sloshing plastic buckets, packs of hypodermic needles, coils of tubing, straps. “And no drugs in your system? This is a pure trip. Just two bloods commingling. Any impurities will stop Atlas from getting inside you.’

Stewart didn’t answer. He was too distracted by all the naked couples. The attic floor was covered with bodies, lying belly to swollen belly on bedbug-blackened box springs. Their arms were thrust out above their heads, ears resting on their biceps; they clasped hands like lovers, each couple’s circulatory systems knitted into a single bloodstream.

Stewart felt his arms itch where the needles would be inserted, anticipation and fear churning into a sour mix in his gut. But Tina was ready, as she always was for things like this. She’d dragged him here, telling him they had to do this now, before they outlawed consanguination just like they’d outlawed LSD.

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PseudoPod 341: Immortal L.A.

PseudoPod 341: Immortal L.A. is a PseudoPod original.

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Show Notes

“Immortal L.A.” was written for Pseudopod. “Because I’m a big fan. A really big fan. I was recently in a taxi driving through the Romanian country side. I asked the cab driver if he believed in vampires and he said in thickly accented broken English ‘of course, dictators, criminals, liars… these are the vampires. We see the news and we see the vampires. Vampires are not legends, vampires and legends don’t make vampires, if you look around you’ll see them. If you watch the news you’ll see them.'”

Immortal L.A.

by Eric Czuleger

I ran a hand along my softening stomach. Tomorrow I start my diet. I thought. I removed my mouth from my hand. Two neat holes. No blood.

I went to the bathroom. Before I opened the door I tried to convince myself to chew a piece of gum instead. Saliva roused in my mouth and convinced me otherwise. I placed my head on the door with a gentle thunk, and thought, Am I hungry? Then, no I’m just depressed. I opened the door to the bathroom. The girl was lying in the bathtub where I left her.

A stream of blood ran down her neck and out of her thin wrists, it formed a shallow pool at the bottom of the tub. Her legs were like pale sticks. Her platform shoes with nine inch spikes were thrown in the corner, I have to throw out that pile, it’s just getting bigger. Her eyes lazily rotated in their orbits toward me. Even below her thick red lipstick, her lips seemed blue. Her hair was cut into a short blonde bob and while I had my mouth around her neck I could pretend for a bit. Pretend she was someone else that I wanted to drain the life of.

I stood in the doorway feeling self-conscious. I didn’t think she would be awake still, and I was already coming back for a fourth helping. It was like that moment when I still ate food, where you wanted to take the last slice of pizza but no one does through mutual shame. In spite of the fact that, if left to your own devices, you would have devoured the pizza entirely. It was like that. This time the pizza was watching me. And judging me.

‘Are you going to kill me?’ She croaked, as if she were asking the time. She’d lost so much blood she was punch drunk.

‘Yes,’ I said guiltily. Conscious of my gut.

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PseudoPod 340: Neighbourhood Watch

“Neighbourhood Watch” originally appeared in an Australian magazine, Aphelion, in 1986, and was reprinted in Karl Edward Wagner’s THE YEAR’S BEST HORROR STORIES XVI in 1988. The story is available to read at here

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Neighbourhood Watch

by Greg Egan

Only at night, says the contract. After eleven, to be precise. Decent people are not out after eleven, and decent people should not have to witness what I do.

Andrews is seventeen, and bored. Andrew, I understand. This suburb is a hole, you have my deepest sympathies. What do they expect you to do around here? On a warm night like this a young man can grow restless. I know; your dreams, too, shaped me slightly (my principal creators did not expect that). You need adventure. So keep your eyes open, Andrew, there are opportunities everywhere.

The sign on the chemist’s window says no money, no drugs, but you are no fool. The back window’s frame is rotting, the nails are loose, it falls apart in your hands. Like cake. Must be your lucky night, tonight.

The cash drawer’s empty (oh shit!) and you can forget about that safe, but a big, glass candy jar of valium beats a handful of Swiss health bars, doesn’t it? There are kids dumb enough to pay for those, down at the primary school.

Only those who break the law, says the contract. A list of statutes is provided, to be precise. Parking offences, breaking the speed limit and cheating on income tax are not included; decent people are only human, after all. Breaking and entering is there, though, and stealing, well, that dates right back to the old stone tablets.

No loophole, Andrew. No argument.

Andrew has a flick knife, and a death’s head tattoo. He’s great in a fight, our Andrew. Knows some karate, once did a little boxing, he has no reason to be afraid. He walks around like he owns the night. Especially when there’s nobody around.

So what’s that on the wind? Sounds like someone breathing, someone close by. Very even, slow, steady, powerful. Where is the bastard? You can see in all directions, but there’s no one in sight. What, then? Do you think it’s in your head? That doesn’t seem likely.

Andrew stands still for a moment. He wants to figure this out for himself, but I can’t help giving him hints, so the lace of his left sand-shoe comes undone. He puts down the jar and crouches to retie it.

The ground, it seems, is breathing.

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PseudoPod 339: The End-Of-The-World Pool

“The End-Of-The-World Pool” was first published in Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show #12, May 2009. Ray Bradbury’s SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES was a direct influence on this story.

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The End-Of-The-World Pool

by Scott M. Roberts

The pool was as warm as sweat. Evan kicked away from the surface, algae shifting and bumping against his bare legs. Even with his mouth squeezed tight, he could taste the foulness of the water, like it had seeped through his ears to touch the back of his throat.

Down!

There’d been no squares edging the poolside, advertising the depth. It could be ten feet, twelve feet, a thousand feet deep. Evan couldn’t sense the bottom or the surface. All around him, floaties and foulness and warm water, like piss. He was swimming through a toilet, that’s what, and maybe he’d gotten in the bend without realizing it, and what if someone flushed?

Evan opened his eyes. Light blurred above him, at the end of the angle of his skinny body. And below him, more water, darker and deeper. He stretched his arms, kicked his legs, and pushed on. Pushed in, he thought, through slick, sweaty water.

The water grew cooler the deeper he swam. He kept his eyes open, despite how they burned. The light above dwindled, and then was gone, and the water didn’t end. That wasn’t right — where the pool was dark and deep, that was where the bottom had to be. Covered by a layer of muck, maybe; maybe inches of decaying leaves blown into the pool during the winter. But water and quiet surrounded him instead.

Quiet. He couldn’t hear Dad and Uncle Hector banging on the deck. He couldn’t even hear the bubbles when he let some air out of his lungs. Evan swiped at the water, edging deeper. His fingers touched sand. Sand. At the bottom of a pool.

Something touched him back.

PseudoPod 338: Beware The Jabberwock, My Son

“Beware The Jabberwock, My Son” was first published *way back* in 1991 in a tiny little photocopied horror zine out of Seattle called FEAR BOOK. The print run was 150. It was the author’s first attempt at trying to write horror for a living, and the results paid so little ($15) that he stayed away from genre fiction for the next twenty years. But now we have podcasts and the world looks much brighter! If anyone remembers actually reading this story in print from back then, the author would like you to contact him. This is what Facebook is for.

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Beware The Jabberwock, My Son

by Dixon Chance

Richard stayed frozen. This is nonsense, he thought. Am I afraid of a funny noise? Of nonsense? He formed a determined smile and decided to recite Humpty-Dumpty’s poem to himself. Maybe that would help him relax, fighting nonsense with nonsense. “_I sent a message to the fish/ I told them, ‘This is what I wish—’_” he said softly.

He had nerved himself up enough to go two steps when he heard the next sound. It was like a lady’s fan—one made of cellophane—being opened. Or a breeze being…folded?

The sound (_whiffle_) came again, and this time it definitely came from the mirror. Definitely. He could imagine its long, snaky neck pouring out of the mirror frame, those two pale unblinking eyes peering around his bedroom as it flew

(_whiffle_)

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Pseudopod 337: At The End Of The Passage

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 58:53 — 40.5MB)

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by Rudyard Kipling

“At The End Of The Passage” (1902) was originally published in the August 1890 issue of Lippincott’s Magazine. The description of the country suggests the desert of Upper Rajputana, north of Jodhpur which Kipling visited as a correspondent. It is available online to read here

(JOSEPH) RUDYARD KIPLING (1865–1936) was an English short-story writer, poet, and novelist chiefly remembered for his tales and poems of British soldiers in India, and his tales for children. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907. He was born in Bombay, and was taken by his family to England when he was five years old. Kipling is best known for his works of fiction, including THE JUNGLE BOOK (which includes “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi”), JUST SO STORIES (1902), KIM (1901) and many short stories, including “The Man Who Would Be King” and his poems, including “Mandalay”, “Gunga Din”, and “If—”. He is regarded as a major innovator in the art of the short story, his children’s books are enduring classics of children’s literature and his best works are said to exhibit “a versatile and luminous narrative gift”. Kipling’s ghostly tales evince a powerful interest in the psychological, and their subtlety and indirection can be very impressive.

Your reader this week – Alasdair Stuart – needs no introduction – so click the link in his name and go read his blog instead!

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“The sky is lead and our faces are red / And the gates of Hell are opened and riven / And the winds of Hell are loosened and driven, And the dust flies up in the face of Heaven / And the clouds come down in a fiery sheet / Heavy to raise and hard to be borne / And the soul of man is turned from his meat / Turned from the trifles for which he has striven / Sick in his body, and heavy-hearted / And his soul flies up like the dust in the sheet / Breaks from his flesh and is gone and departed / As the blasts they blow on the cholera-horn”

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