Pseudopod 061: The Keeper

[Jim]

Pseudopod 061: The Keeper
By Ken Goldman

Read by Alasdair Stuart

An intermittent brightness from above allowed Shelby a study of her captor’s lumpish face that seemed more pockmarked with each new illumination. Standing near, the man stank like raw sewage. He polished off what remained of a sandwich, licking brown grease from stubby fingers that somehow remained filthy.

Shelby struggled against the knots at her wrists and those inside her stomach. Attempting some semblance of composure she breathed deeply, filling her lungs. It didn’t help much. A rotted smell imprinted itself inside her nostrils. Near her, shelves housed a grotesque assortment of stinking pumpkin heads, maybe a dozen of them reduced to disintegrated lumps surrounding the room, one-time jack-o’lanterns whose carved smiles had long since decomposed.

Fighting the urge to gag Shelby focused outside where the black ink of the Atlantic heaved in the darkness. Distant lights of the Jersey shore towns glimmered like painted stars, but nearby no lights shone. Rotating from a pedestal above, a huge beacon scoured the circular room. Its single ray flittered upon the ocean’s whitecaps and exposed a beach that turned to marshland, impossible to traverse. A small boat had been dragged away from the surf, its tracks upbeach indented in the sand near a small shed. The bastard had removed the outboard, probably locked it inside that shack. He had tendered her to this middle-of-nowhere light house, as isolated as it was remote, dragged her to its lantern room to fuck her and then kill her.

Or maybe he would kill her first, and then . . .

Shit . . . oh shit . . . breathe . . .

[Jim]

I thought the story was well-written and wonderfully read, but I wonder if the author ever stopped to consider how utterly cliche the ending is. Anyone who's ever seen a slasher flick is going to see it coming a mile away.

The lesson is, as always, once you've clobbered the guy, don't turn your back on him. Make sure he's definitely absolutely dead, or at least incapable of grabbing, seeing, or walking. Break all of his fingers, gouge out his eyes, and give him at least two dozen solid kicks in the testicles.

Remember, gals, men can be big, tough, strong, but eyes and balls are always soft and squishy.

[bolddeceiver]

I don't know, the predictability almost seemed beyond cliche and more in the realm of a convention.  It provided horror through dramatic irony -- the girl didn't know she was in a slasher story, and thus didn't know with our utter certainty that he would get up, that things would not go well for her.  You know at the start of a Greek tragedy that everyone's going to be dead or ruined at the end, but we don't call that a cliche ending (though I can't speak for the critics of the time; perhaps the first audience of Oedipus Tyranus yawned that they could see the eye-gouging from a mile away).

[Unblinking]

While this story kept me listening to the end with all of its well-played tension, in the end it didn't offer me anything I haven't seen in scores of other slashers.

[Scattercat]

While this story kept me listening to the end with all of its well-played tension, in the end it didn't offer me anything I haven't seen in scores of other slashers.

Not true!  It also had the question of how the hell he managed to get her skull to fit around the rotating light.  Did he just cut off the front of it and glue it to the glass?  I just can't picture the physics of it at all.

(This story was dull enough that I found myself paying more attention to my little Mii climbing up and down on his Wii Fit platform on the stage than I was to the action in the story.  A C-grade horror film translated to written form.  Huzzah!)

[Unblinking]

Not true!  It also had the question of how the hell he managed to get her skull to fit around the rotating light.  Did he just cut off the front of it and glue it to the glass?  I just can't picture the physics of it at all.

Is that what was supposed to have happened?  As far as I was concerned, the story had ended with her death, and that was just a detail tacked on the end to make it more spooky (which failed for me).

[Ben Phillips]

Not true!  It also had the question of how the hell he managed to get her skull to fit around the rotating light.  Did he just cut off the front of it and glue it to the glass?  I just can't picture the physics of it at all.

An excellent question!  You'd probably have to put it between the lamp and the Fresnel lens:



Tips:

• Be sure to properly dry and cure the face first.  This may lead to some shrinkage.  This is normal, and will help match the footprint (pardon the expression) of the face to the ray of light from the lamp.
• Notice the inversion indicated by this diagram.  I don't think this happens in an actual Fresnel lens, so you probably won't need to place the face upside down.

[Unblinking]

An excellent question!  You'd probably have to put it between the lamp and the Fresnel lens:

That makes sense.  A little TOO much sense.  Have you done this before?

[DKT]

Not true!  It also had the question of how the hell he managed to get her skull to fit around the rotating light.  Did he just cut off the front of it and glue it to the glass?  I just can't picture the physics of it at all.

An excellent question!  You'd probably have to put it between the lamp and the Fresnel lens:



Tips:

• Be sure to properly dry and cure the face first.  This may lead to some shrinkage.  This is normal, and will help match the footprint (pardon the expression) of the face to the ray of light from the lamp.
• Notice the inversion indicated by this diagram.  I don't think this happens in an actual Fresnel lens, so you probably won't need to place the face upside down.

File this response under Reasons Why We Love Ben Phillips (Even If We're Terrified of Him) 

[Scattercat]

That diagram is substantially more awesome than the original story.  Like Talaggio compared to Cheez Whiz.  If it had come with such ancillary materials, I'd have rated it A+ from the start.

[kibitzer]

Eck. Too much evil.

[Millenium_King]

Big fat thumbs down from me.  Very typical male-psychopath-tortures-pretty girl story.  I just don't get the appeal of stories like this.  Once, Roger Ebert reviewed the movie "Funny Games" (the remake, as if it needed one) and basically said there was nothing redeeming about it.  The director attempted a rebuttal by positing that "Funny Games" was actually trying to illuminate aspects of the human struggle and the glorification of violence (all while maintaining a distinct, anti-American chip on his shoulder, I might add).  Ebert rebutted by pointing out that at least other "torture porn" fare like "The Last House on the Left" had something to say about the moral dilemma of revenge and an eye for an eye - he continued to say that "Funny Games" did not participate in the struggle, it simply "gave up."  That's exactly how I feel about stories like this.  They're cruel, pointless, dull, and always, always, always, always mysogynistic.  Some people might get their rocks off by watching pretty girls get raped and murdered while they sob helplessly, but not I.

My favorite part was the intro in which it's mentioned that this is another addition to a "familiar genre."  I think that just rams my point home all the harder:  everyone knows what to expect from a story like this.  Ergo, there's no tension or dread: we know the ending already.  Why not just admit it's just a snuff fetish masquerading as horror?