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PseudoPod 348: The Easily Forgotten


The Easily Forgotten

by Philip M. Roberts


“He has to have an angle,” Doug said.

“I’d be careful,” Greg said, stopped in his planting, just as Monica stopped to listen, her head tilting towards the conversation. “Owen doesn’t tolerate people trying to take advantage of him. He’s great if you play nice, but he’ll kick you out of here the second he feels
you’re trying to screw him. And when I say kick, I mean literally.”

“You’re kidding me, right? What if people go into town to the cops? What right does he have to beat up on people?”

“You know how much money he’s invested in this whole state? Besides, I’ve seen him boot two people, one for stealing, and one for hitting someone else. Both went on their way with a black eye, probably a few other bruises. More embarrassing than painful I’d imagine.”

Monica stood up and brushed the dirt off on her jeans. She didn’t want to hear any more of the conversation.

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PseudoPod 347: Flash On The Borderlands XVI: Trial & Discipline

Show Notes

“Passing Grade” is a PseudoPod original.

“The Killing Machine” has never been formally published before, but an edited version was presented at the 2nd Open Reading for Beijing Writers, which is a small quarterly event open to anyone in the Beijing area who writes creatively, in any form. “When we are guilty of evil, do we deserve empathy? When we are victims of evil, are we capable of feeling empathy for those who have harmed us? Just how much punishment is too much? Where exactly do we draw the line between justice and cruelty?”

“Awaiting Redemption” was bought by the Horror World web site. “People can claim a religious faith but use it strictly as a cover for their own cruelty (that has nothing to do with their religion).”


“Passing Grade”

by Paul DesCombaz


This wasn’t cutesy time. You don’t get personal with the bad things coming for you. You don’t make sweet talk to nightmares. Just make it through to the other end. That’s your only job. Or something along those lines. (Continue Reading…)

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PseudoPod 346: Prisoner Of Peace


Prisoner Of Peace

by David Tallerman


Today is a day of darkness.

For all that, I can see every brick in the wall, and every crack in every brick. I think somehow that if I only looked hard enough I could even see into those cracks, and scrutinize their furthest depths.

I know today what’s behind me, lying on my sleeping mat. I wish I didn’t, but I do.

I tried to scream at first, but no sound came out.

Now, I sit and wait. Forgetfulness will come.

It has to.

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PseudoPod 345: Boxed


Boxed

by Donald McCarthy


A few beads of sweat slithered down Trevor’s forehead and he blinked rapidly, a panic attack oncoming. His pulse was quick, as if he’d just come in from a run, and the contents of his stomach threatened to come lunging out of his mouth if he didn’t calm down. He grabbed a pillow off the sofa and placed it over his mouth, screaming. Once his throat became hoarse he flung the pillow back on the sofa and threw himself on top of it. “I don’t cope well,” he said.

He looked across the room, to a small, gray box on top of his fireplace. The box asked, “Why are you telling me this?”

“I had a bad night,” Trevor replied, speaking quickly. “I was with Kim. She had her friends join us. She didn’t tell me they’d be coming. How am I supposed to prepare for something like that if she doesn’t tell me they’re coming? I thought it’d just be me and her at her apartment but a minute after I arrived she said there’d be others. She rattled off their names but I couldn’t remember them. I can’t be expected to just remember names that are randomly thrown out there.” Trevor began playing with his hands, one gripping the other tightly. “I got sick right away and had to excuse myself to the bathroom. I have something going with Kim, something good, and this could’ve easily messed it up.”

Trevor stood up, his legs so weak with anxiety that he came close to falling. He slowly walked across the room towards the fireplace, looking only at the box, as if he would lose his balance should he even glance at any other area of the room. “I couldn’t relate to any of them. I stumbled through conversation. I said idiotic things. My opinions made no sense. I made a fool out of myself. It was terrible.” Trevor reached the mantle, placed both hands on it, and loomed above the box. “I wish that the whole thing could be done over.”

“I can’t make that happen,” said the box.

“Neither can anything else,” said Trevor. “But you can do the next best thing. Get this night out of my head.”

“All of it?” asked the box.

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PseudoPod 344: The Pit


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

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

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.

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.