Author Topic: PseudoPod 557: ‘Till the Road Runs Out  (Read 2540 times)

Bdoomed

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on: August 27, 2017, 02:39:34 PM
PseudoPod 557: ‘Till the Road Runs Out

by Luciano Marano.

“‘Till the Road Runs Out” is a PseudoPod original.

LUCIANO MARANO is a newspaper reporter, photographer and author. His award-winning reporting, both written and photographic, has appeared in numerous regional and national publications, and he made his debut as a fiction author in the recent extreme horror anthology “DOA III” (Blood Bound Books, May 2017), appearing alongside such genre icons as Jack Ketchum, Bentley Little and Edward Lee, among others. He lives near Seattle, Washington.
Learn more about him and his work at www.luciano-marano.com. He also blogs, sporadically, at citmyway101.wordpress.com.

This week’s reader – Dave Robison is an avid Literary and Sonic Alchemist who pursues a wide range of creative explorations. A Brainstormer, Keeper of the Buttery Man-Voice (patent pending), Pattern Seeker, Dream Weaver, and Eternal Optimist, Dave’s efforts to boost the awesomeness of the world can be found at The Roundtable Podcast, the Vex Mosaic e-zine, and through his creative studio, Wonderthing Studios. Recently serving as vice-president for The Ed Greenwood Group (TEGG), he is currently Executive Producer at Onder Media Group, a speculative media enterprise launching in January 2017.




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Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.



A solitary figure was stumbling down the dirt road, and Hicks could smell his happy ending begin to rot.

There shouldn’t be anybody out here, he thought. That’s the point of the spot. The Duke didn’t hold court in Nowhere, Alabama for the scenery. It was a lonely place a million miles from anywhere a sane person would want to be. He flicked on the high beams, recognized the wounded man and realized that as bad as he thought it might be, it was actually much worse. He threw the car into park.

“Stay here,” Hicks said to Dakota as he grabbed the pistol and got out. Before him the man fell to his knees into a widening pool of blood, squinting dazedly into the car’s lights.





Listen to this week's PseudoPod.

I'd like to hear my options, so I could weigh them, what do you say?
Five pounds?  Six pounds? Seven pounds?


shawnproctor

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Reply #1 on: August 28, 2017, 05:39:12 PM
Whoa. This was a truly intense story, full of, to put it bluntly, ugliness. Ugly people. Ugly deeds. An ugly world. It's a difficult challenge to write from a point-of-view that most people would consider unsympathetic--I mean, he literally kicks a cat at the beginning--and it's a triumph that the author made me care about the characters by the end.

I think this story would not work but for the romantic love at its heart. That glimmer of hope, albeit very small, and the arc of redemption keeps the story from sliding into nihilism. And, by the end, that seems to be as much good as this world can allow.



South of No North

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Reply #2 on: August 29, 2017, 05:16:45 PM
Really, very good. So many great lines, the mustang ate road, silence held sway over the night, (I don't have time to seek out the exact wording). Even " The cherry on the syanara sundae." had potential to be silly but the story pulled it off, setting up the Modern Noir that I think this represents.
I found myself hoping, that somehow, they would get to that new life as dirty and violent as the road to it might be.

The violence was handled excellently. I could keep track of where and what was happening while not taking anything away from the frenetic pacing. The graphic quality of the gore let me understand why this author would fit nicely in a compilation along side Jack Ketchum.

Thinking about it...The Death Cult would be a fun center for peripheral stories of people running across them. Never from the cult POV, only blind run ins or rumor and legends before unfortunate contact.

Fun story, good to get some violence and blood in horror once in a while.

"Yes, of course I can blame you. Without them, where would all of us outlaws be? What would we have? Only a lawless paradise...and paradise is a bore. Violence without violation is only noise heard by no one, the most horrendous sound in the universe." --The Chymist by Thomas Ligotti


Ichneumon

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Reply #3 on: December 06, 2017, 05:57:56 PM
I don't think I liked this story, but I couldn't stop listening either... So, good job team?