Posts Tagged ‘witch’

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PseudoPod 561: Better to Curse the Darkness than Light a Candle

PseudoPod 561: Better to Curse the Darkness than Light a Candle is a PseudoPod original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:06 — 39.5MB)

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Show Notes

Check out PAPERBACKS FROM HELL by Grady Hendrix. Listen to the interview on the Know Fear Podcast with Grady and Will Erikson about the book and the paperback boom of the 70’s and 80’s.

 

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Better to Curse the Darkness than Light a Candle

by Joseph Cusumano

They mockingly call me “Diogenes,” believing my lantern is carried merely to illuminate my path each night through the dark streets of Philadelphia. Yet it is not an honest man for whom I search, but a scoundrel, a liar, an adulterer, a thief, a murderer – ideally someone who has been all of these – for I must find a soul darker than my own.

This quest resulted from an earlier and more innocent one, first undertaken while I was a young man blissfully wed to Patience, who brimmed with optimism over what heaven had apparently planned for us. Not content with the considerable success that I enjoyed as the proprietor of Silsbury Shipping Company, I sought more wealth, the respect of Philadelphia’s business and merchant class, and especially the adoration that Patience showered upon me with each step my growing business took. On the occasion of my boasting to her that I now employed upwards of fifty men who labored on my behalf, moving goods from our warehouses to multiple sites hundreds of miles west, she swelled with pride in my accomplishment and even her passions were aroused.

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PseudoPod 475: The Toad Witch

The Toad Witch originally appeared in Tales of Witchcraft in 1991.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:22 — 17.5MB)

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The Toad Witch

by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

I began life in 1950. Until then, everything was darkness. Afterward was suffering and beauty. How could 1 not become a masochist? By the age of four I had learned to mistrust everyone, a good philosophy. If one expects something terrible to develop out of even pleasant events, one may also expect consolations at moments of travail; and even I must delude myself from time to time, succumbing to the disease of sentiment.

People who are essentially cheerful annoy me. When they are finally bent and deaf, they are suddenly surprised. They find out their lives were pointless falsehoods; that it’s all nearly over, and for what? When in the end they are completely disillusioned they seek forgiveness from everyone, for they had always been oblivious to the obvious things, to the suffering around them. They are sorry for having insisted nothing was ever all that bad. Destined as they are to so much disappointment, they merit our sadness more than our disdain.

As for those of us daily anguished, we need not be pitied. The world constantly reinforces our perspective. We may nod our heads like true sages. We are impervious to disillusion, knowing as we do that worse is yet to come.

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PseudoPod 380: Abigail

“Abigail” has been performed at various readings in northern New Jersey and New York but is published now here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:50 — 21.3MB)

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Abigail

by Hunter Gray

The sun was dipping now, and I feared for myself. My hands grew cold, like ice. And then, I felt the popcorn pop in my belly. The jelly-baby was kicking. My jelly-baby was awake and real and moving. And then I feared for her too.

The pin-prickle of fear brushed itself against the small of my back even more when I saw what lay in the street ahead of me. A perfect mountain of frosting…a cake delicately decorated in pink icing. Maraschino cherries floated around the edges and crystal sugar sprinkles peppered the top. It was beautiful, but terrifying. Why was this in the middle of the road? Who left such a thing? Instinctually, I looked around me. And behind me. For the first time, in a long time, I felt like the prey, not the predator.

But there was no one, nothing. No cars or birds or tiny children or good Samaritans trying to feed some hungry knocked-up college kid.

And then, I saw it. The most beautiful house I had ever seen.

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PseudoPod 328: The Suicide Witch

“The Suicide Witch” originally appeared in Daily Science Fiction, July 2012 and can be read here. She says “I wrote this story for the Codex Halloween contest. Codex is an online group of professional writers, and every year we trade “seeds” to spark new stories. My seed for this story was to write about a mortician who glues hair for special events. Clearly I have some funny ideas about how morticians live.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:51 — 22.0MB)

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Show Notes

AS PER AL’S OUTRO NOTES – COME EXPERIENCE THE ZOMBLOGALYPSE!

ZOMBLOGALYPSE

ZOMBLOGALYPSE: THE MOVIE!

The Suicide Witch

by Vylar Kaftan

The suicide witch crushes glass in her leather gloves. Shards crumble like crackers over soup, filling her metal bucket. The witch’s fingers squeak together in the damp cellar air. Glitter escapes over the worktable’s edge, like white stars vanishing in the low torchlight. A peasant girl lies dead on a funeral board, her dress nailed to the wood in thirteen places.

The witch’s name is Yim, but none call her that. She lives under the noble house of Jiang in the province of Kung-lao, in a cellar with puddles like rice paddies. In the summer, fat flies buzz around her face until she swats them down. In the winter, her knees ache, and she coughs in the dampness as if she were an old hag. But Yim’s ragged hair is black without silver, and her face shows no lines. She can still see in the dark.

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PseudoPod 304: The Last Reel

“The Last Reel” originally appeared in Supernatural Tales #10, in 2006 and was reprinted in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST NEW HORROR #18 (2007).

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:12 — 23.6MB)

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The Last Reel

by Lynda E. Rucker

Working in a kitchen had left her inured to minor cuts and burns. ‘Let’s see what’s in the box.’

Let’s not, he wanted to say, but what came out when he followed her back to the bed was, ‘Three movies featuring a head-in-a-box. Name them.’

‘God,’ she said, ‘do you have to be so morbid? _Seven_.’ She lifted the lid.

‘That’s one,’ he said, so he wouldn’t shout something stupid and hysterical like _Don’t look inside_!

‘It’s filled with photographs,’ she said. ‘_Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia_.’

‘That’s head-in-a-bag, not head-in-a-box,’ he said desperately.

‘Oh, for God’s sake. Picky, aren’t we?’ Her voice changed. ‘That’s weird.’

‘What?’

‘I don’t know how she got hold of these. It’s all pictures of me.’