Pseudopod 059: Fever

[Bdoomed]

Pseudopod 059: Fever

By David Malki !

Read by Dani Cutler

The sisters sat in the back seat, bundled up against winter, as the car idled in the driveway. Julie hunched low, staring at the seat in front of her; Emma slumped against the opposite window, staring at the snow that blanketed the world, staring at her friends, lying silently asleep.

“You’re such a freak,” Julie snarled. “You’re always causing such problems. Why can’t you just be normal.”

“I’m hot,” Emma croaked.

“Well, it’s like thirty degrees out there, have at it,” Julie said, and unclicked Emma’s seat belt.

Emma bounded from the car and ran to join her friends, feeling the refreshing rush of snow on her face. They cheered as she rubbed the ice into her skin, feeling weight lift from her lungs. She breathed in the cold deeply, and became more alive: she noticed the tang of pine in the air; smelled the dirty heat of the car’s exhaust.

She felt a deep hatred for her sister rise. Her friends felt it too. They didn’t need to be told what to do.


Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

[bolddeceiver]

Wow.  What a story.  Malki ! is truly a man for all seasons.

[Bdoomed]

id think that the girl, no matter how detached, would still feel guilt/sadness/something after the deaths of her parents.
and all this happening over one winter? wouldn't there be much more grief, especially on the part of the mother?  or was the girl too detached to notice?

[bolddeceiver]

I think it's a case of a highly unreliable narrator, and a highly disturbed one (even if the voices are real).  I'm reminded a lot of Little Boy Leg Bone, but not in the "this has all been done before" sort of way, but the "how great to have two stories exploring this really interesting theme" way.

[lowky]

I kind of felt like there was missing story somewhere, like I came in in the middle of it, and that there should have been more after it ended.  How did the girl wind up craving cold so much?  Why didn't she care that her sister and both parents were killed by her "friends".  Where was Santa Claus to take them to the north pole so frosty didn't melt?

[Chodon]

Even though the story didn't really strike a chord with me (for some of the above-mentioned reasons) the imagery in this story was awesome.  I loved the descriptions of the "friends" and the feeling of cold.  They really had me feeling the heat and cold along with the little girl.

I just don't get why she killed her family one by one and didn't care...

Also, she seemed to be a couple (maybe three?) years old, meaning she would have seen winter come and go before.  Why was it such a shock when it left this time?

[Listener]

The snow angel cometh...

I liked the story enough, but I wonder what's going to happen to her, and how she became the snow angel.

The reading was good, with the right inflections, though the reader sounded like she may have had the last vestiges of a head cold.

[DDog]

This was a great story, even though it leaves me curious about lots of things. Really wonderful idea and imagery.

Also, she seemed to be a couple (maybe three?) years old, meaning she would have seen winter come and go before.  Why was it such a shock when it left this time?

She's obviously nuts or in a sideways reality of her own and there's some evidence of a distorted sense of time already; perhaps she simply can't remember that far back or only remembers in fits or wasn't friends with the snow until that year.

[DKT]

Also, she seemed to be a couple (maybe three?) years old, meaning she would have seen winter come and go before.  Why was it such a shock when it left this time?

Did it ever say how young she was?  I was trying to figure it out and was wondering if she was super young or a little older.

If she's that young, she probably wouldn't remember the previous winter that well.  My 2 year-old kind of remembers Christmas from last year, but I think it's more vague images like Christmas trees and presents and things.  Emma (the narrator) probably wouldn't understand the idea that winter would come again and would most likely have a similiar tantrum with her sister and parents, even if her "friends" didn't kill them.  Which is basically what happened here, the kid thinks her mom is killing winter, so she throws a tantrum and kills her mom (and sister and dad).

[BSWeichsel]

I loved the story but one thing I was trying to figure out was how in reality (I assume she imagined much of it) where the people killed.

[eytanz]

I don't think she imagined anything. I think this girl is the inverse of the girl in "firestarter" - she has the ability to control snow, and she used it (without really understanding what she was doing) to have the snow attack her family members, freezing her sister and father and carrying her mother off somewhere else.

[DDog]

Also, she seemed to be a couple (maybe three?) years old, meaning she would have seen winter come and go before.  Why was it such a shock when it left this time?

Did it ever say how young she was?  I was trying to figure it out and was wondering if she was super young or a little older.

I don't think it says her age. Her sister is a teenager, and her "voice" sounds really young, but people can have a young "voice" regardless of physical age, and I don't think we ever hear her actually speak. She's at least old enough (or capable enough) to use the bathroom by herself, but she doesn't seem to go to school.

[Russell Nash]

Also, she seemed to be a couple (maybe three?) years old, meaning she would have seen winter come and go before.  Why was it such a shock when it left this time?

Did it ever say how young she was?  I was trying to figure it out and was wondering if she was super young or a little older.

I don't think it says her age. Her sister is a teenager, and her "voice" sounds really young, but people can have a young "voice" regardless of physical age, and I don't think we ever hear her actually speak. She's at least old enough (or capable enough) to use the bathroom by herself, but she doesn't seem to go to school.

As I was listening, I assumed she was around 6 or 7.

[eytanz]

I assumed she was a toddler - she seemed to have a very limited experience of interaction with other people, and obviously, she did not understand that winters come and go, which a 6 year old would certainly know. Also, her family, especially her parents, don't really seem to try communicating with her much; and there is no mention of her knowing anyone else. This could be because the story is told from her viewpoint and she is ignoring what people say to her, but it looks like while her parents and sister tell her things, they don't seem to expect responses or to ask her any questions. So she's either very young, or possibly she's autistic or otherwise has some communication/social disability.

[Russell Nash]

I thought she was older because of her ability to describe her "friends" and such.  A todler doesn't have that capability.  I think the reason why her responses seem younger is because she's a loon or everyone thinks she's a loon.

[Loz]

I wondered if she was autistic, she didn't like human contact and didn't display emotion at all when her family died, though admittedly I'm basing that opinion on a few documentaries on television rather than any actual knowledge.

A neat and effective little story. More like this please!

[goatkeeper]

I actually assumed she was autistic to some degree- wasn't this apparent?

[DKT]

I actually assumed she was autistic to some degree- wasn't this apparent?

If she was autistic, does that mean she didn't actually control her friends?

I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now.  In a horror story (or at least a horror short story, like the stuff here), I think the default setting for us in a tale like this is that it was "just all in her head" unless it's proven otherwise.  In a movie, it's the opposite, we believe what we're seeing until we see something that makes us doubt.  In movies, it's got to be something pretty serious, because we've been conditioned to not doubt the boogey man. 

I don't know if this is an accurate representation or not, it's just a theory I was trying to pin down.  Anyone else notice anything like that?

[DDog]

I found myself looking for textual clues that would tell me whether she really had snow demon buddies or she had done everything she gives her friends credit for herself, and I didn't find any. You can read the story either way. It took me awhile to realize that her friends are in fact some relation to snowflakes. I thought they might be woodland animals at first (envisioning cute and cuddly wolves tearing her small body to pieces, etc).

[Planish]

I kinda' thought of Emma's friends as smaller, more agile, less substantial versions of Calvin's deranged mutant killer monster snow goons.

I don't think she imagined anything. I think this girl is the inverse of the girl in "firestarter" - she has the ability to control snow, and she used it (without really understanding what she was doing) to have the snow attack her family members, freezing her sister and father and carrying her mother off somewhere else.

That seems about right. She didn't seem to imagine the reactions of her parents to what must have been the real death of her sister, and I got the impression that her sister was cold and blue when she died, not simply cyanotic from strangulation.

[Planish]

Waiddaminnit ... I just had a thought (and a lonely one it is):
 
Is this another golem story? (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

[Unblinking]

This was an interesting tale about a girl and her possibly imaginary friends.  This kid is seriously scary, no remorse whatsoever.

I would've liked a description of her friends, it's a block to visualization if there's no description.  And she seemed seriously surprised that winter was coming to an end.  I pictured her as 6 or 7 so that was a major stumbling block for me! 

But other than those couple things, I generally enjoyed it.

[Fenrix]

I like this story even more upon a second listen. I read the comments here between the first and second listens, so I was thinking about that the second time around. I got the impression that maybe Emma was a doppleganger who was inserted into the family after the faeries of the winter court stole the real Emma away. That's all I needed to be fully satisfied with any of the behavior. There's enough implied in the story that backs up the possibility. The temperature sensitivity, the supernatural metabolism, the relation to the snow over her family members, the parental suspicion of her behavior, and the poor understanding of the world. Emma didn't really belong in the warm world.

My enjoyment of this story is similar to my enjoyment of Little Boy Leg Bone and Drawing the Moon. The concept of the children's imaginary friends being both real and not particularly friendly is a compelling chunk of the horror genre.

[Millenium_King]

This one gets a negative reaction from me.  I actually switched it off only a few minutes in.  Someday, someone needs to write an effective essay explaining the difference between "immersive" and "pointlessly vague."  The beginning diatribe about the girl in the grips of fever was useless, dull and unimaginative.  It served no point in the story and the story could have just as easily started with the door of the fridge being opened.  It took me a long time for me to figure out that the lead character was a girl who was in perpetual fever, that this was not unusual and that she craved cold.  That stuff is readily apparent, there is no need to draw it out: it should have been stated plainly.  There's no reason this story couldn't have opened with "Ever since she was born, Emma had never had a body temperature lower than 107." or something like that.  Bam! It's in your face, the information is out there and the story can move forward.

Instead, we got a loooonnng description of vague events coupled with some timeskipping.  There are times to show, but sometimes just telling can be so much more effective.

When the story moved on to Emma's "friends" - I thought they were other children.  I was confused about how they could "feel" her hatred... then it turned out they were some sort of spirits or something?  Why not just make that plain?!?!  That bugged me so much that I just pressed "next."  At that point, I no longer possessed any desire to continue wrestling with the story to get readily apparent information out of it.