Runalong the Short Shelves - The Dark and Pseudopod
Publishers - https://www.thedarkmagazine.com and https://pseudopod.org
Price - The Dark $2.99 and Pseudopod is a free podcast but donations welcome
This week as there is an autumnal feel to the air it feels a good time to have a look at the horror side of short fiction.
Starting with The Dark and issue 112
Wiremother by Laura Mauro - Horror tends to be thought of as bleak but it’s also quite important as a genre that encourages the fighting of monsters. In this tale we meet a teenager named Helena who has a robot for a mother. This is a controlling robot that shouts all the time, has blades for fingers and constantly carries the feeling of violence. Helena is though starting to feel she needs more in life and may have her first girlfriend and romance developing. The horror of Helena’s situation and the constant feel that violence will erupt makes the tale incredibly tense but you also have much needed rays of hope and the question for the reader is which will win out. I loved it!
Sundown in Duffield by Steve Rasnic Tem - another tale of constant threat where John and his adult grandson visit the abandoned childhood home. John though has a form of dementia and his memories of this ruinous home are fractured. It’s a compelling tale where the reader senses somewhere in these lost memories is the reason the home was quickly abandoned and John just can’t see it as he tried to find why this house worried him. The threat is never explained just draws closer and the final scenes are very much the trap shutting the reader out of any reveal which makes it even more unsettling.
The Ribbon Rule by Mae Jimenez - this is a wonderful dystopian tale imagining a world where at 13 everyone has their lips seen with a ribbon. Our narrator chooses though lace instead of silk as a form of protest. This tale explores the painful side of rebelling against society - that you may be alone, detested and isolated even when you know it to be right. Outside of horror this rebellion could change the world but here we see a harsher fate awaits and not everyone will have secret armies ready to fight the cause. Vivid with moments of body horror this was a stand out tale.
Big Boned by Kristi DeMeester - many horror stories explore how the desire to be perfect ends badly. Here a group of teenagers who wish to be prom queens go even further than normal. The desire for bodily perception makes the group turn inwards, cruel to one another and unwittingly get themselves involved wit the supernatural. As the beauty pageant unfolds we see what their future holds and the tale moved into a dark and terrible modern myth. Really enjoyed the way this changes shape quite organically from satire into something quite unsettling.
Pseudopod is an acclaimed weekly horror podcast. And over the last two weeks I’ve had great enjoyment from the stories
Episode 937 - The Yearning of the All-Devouring Earth by Marianne Kirby narrated by Sevatividam with host Alasdair Stuart
A gorgeous unsettling tale mixing the joy of being alive with the unsettling pull of horror. Our narrator tells us how a strange man who constantly warned her to beware the underground sets off a lot of odd occurrences in her life. I love the flawed humanity of the main character - who Sevatividam breathes life and a sense of a life lived from boring shortfall to living a life on the dance floor to family grief and getting older. But the wider sense is something inhuman awaits and that’s most terrifying and strangely compelling. A story that is gripping and for me what horror is always about. The outro talking about what Stuart sees in the story is an equally beautiful piece of writing
Episode 938 - The Sea Curse by Robert E Howard Narrated by Tad Callin and hosted by Alasdair Stuart
I’ve not read much Howard and the bit I’ve read hasn’t quite won me over but the joys of audio is sometimes words spoken come alive and this really made me rethink my opinion. Pseudopod always work hard to match narrator to the story and Callin makes you feel like you’re witnessing this historical horror tale of a small fishing village dominated by two scoundrels who finally go too far and get cursed. Howard’s words are darkly poetical and economical bringing the tale to gruesome life and a very fine finale to wrap it all up - short and memorable. Again Stuart’s outro explores that use of language and finds parallels about how communities always indulge bad faith actors for far too long. Another great listen!
