PseudoPod 587: ARTEMIS RISING 4: When the Slipling Comes to Call

[Bdoomed]

PseudoPod 587: ARTEMIS RISING 4: When the Slipling Comes to Call

by N.R. Lambert
Narrated by M.K. Hobson  and Tina Connolly
Hosted by David Ian McKendry and Rebekah McKendry

PseudoPod 587: ARTEMIS RISING 4: When the Slipling Comes to Call is a PseudoPod original.


She rises. The ache of eons and a cold night brittle her bones. She cracks them one at a time, and sometimes all at once, like tree branches snapping in an ice storm. The stone floor of the hovel is chilled with October’s first frost, but it doesn’t bother her, her feet never need touch the floor. She hovers over it, knotted fingers dragging tangles of dark hair from her face and eyes.

Her slick black tongue flicks the melting frost from her flaky gray lips as she goes about gathering the scraps of bone, hair, and skin she needs to make her Littles. One by one, she stuffs them with dead leaves and other rot. She ties off the dollies’ necks with gut string, then tops each Little with a smooth clay head–the vessel–blank faces reflecting nothing of their fates or those of the ones to whom they’re tied.

The Slipling fills her basket.



Listen to this week's PseudoPod.

[Katzentatzen]

I like that the monster was fallible and could be defeated, in a quite satisfying way.

[Ichneumon]

I don't have children, but one of the most pervasive themes in fiction and non-fiction is that parents will do anything to save their children. I am surprised it took so long for the slipling to be challenged, especially when the old woman was supposedly close to success in her own time. Maybe I just didn't completely understand the system. As a monster, the slipling was very creepy.

[Fenrix]

I don't have children, but one of the most pervasive themes in fiction and non-fiction is that parents will do anything to save their children. I am surprised it took so long for the slipling to be challenged, especially when the old woman was supposedly close to success in her own time. Maybe I just didn't completely understand the system. As a monster, the slipling was very creepy.

Protecting your children was pitted against protecting the community. Going against the community also has terrible consequences for the family in that home.

"Lottery in June, corn be heavy soon"