Author Topic: PseudoPod 653: Spurs  (Read 1655 times)

Bdoomed

  • Pseudopod Tiger
  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 5891
  • Mmm. Tiger.
on: June 26, 2019, 04:00:24 AM
PseudoPod 653: Spurs

Author: Tod Robbins
Narrator: J.S. Arquin
Host: Alasdair Stuart

“Spurs” was first published in Munsey’s Magazine in February 1923.



Content Warning:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)



Jacques Courbé was a romanticist. He measured only twenty-eight inches from the soles of his diminutive feet to the crown of his head; but there were times, as he rode into the arena on his gallant charger, St. Eustache, when he felt himself a doughty knight of old about to do battle for his lady.

What matter that St. Eustache was not a gallant charger except in his master’s imagination— not even a pony, indeed, but a large dog of a nondescript breed, with the long snout and upstanding ears of a wolf? What matter that M. Courbé’s entrance was invariably greeted with shouts of derisive laughter and bombardments of banana skins and orange peel? What matter that he had no lady, and that his daring deeds were severely curtailed to a mimicry of the bareback riders who preceded him? What mattered all these things to the tiny man who lived in dreams, and who resolutely closed his shoe-button eyes to the drab realities of life?




Listen to this week's Pseudopod.
Follow us on YouTube and Spotify!

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


Scuba Man

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 353
  • Drabblecast, Pseudopod, Escapepod, Podcastle
    • Black Cat Bed And Breakfast (proposed start up 2024)
Reply #1 on: June 26, 2019, 08:41:31 PM
What a nasty, nasty piece of work. No heroes. All villains. They preyed off each other.  Good stuff.  :)

I'm a stand-up philosopher until 2024. Then, I move onto my next gig. I'm a gentleman forester and farmer. I also enjoy jumping into Lake Huron and panicking the fish.


Lisa3737

  • Palmer
  • **
  • Posts: 38
Reply #2 on: June 30, 2019, 01:36:17 PM
Entertaining story!  Great narrator. 



Scattercat

  • Caution:
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 4904
  • Amateur wordsmith
    • Mirrorshards
Reply #3 on: August 26, 2019, 04:39:29 AM
Yeah, this one was a little hard to get all the way through.  At least "Freaks" conveyed a sense of camaraderie and companionship among the titular freak show performers and managed to tone down the little person to where he was brittle and proud enough for that to be a fatal flaw without making him a full-on monster who'd torture someone for years because of an offhand joke.