PC616: DOUBLE FEATURE! Telomerase; Mycelium

[Ocicat]

PodCastle 616: DOUBLE FEATURE! Telomerase; Mycelium

Authors: Ian Muneshwar and Eleanor Wood
Narrators: Sienna Tristen and Jen R. Albert
Host: Setsu Uzume
Audio Producer: Peter Behravesh

PodCastle 616: DOUBLE FEATURE! Telomerase; Mycelium is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes
Rated PG-13.


You lost your first word when I began to lose my hair.

You brought a wicker basket to the hospital and opened it in the waiting room, taking out a blue-checkered blanket that you spread out over our laps. Inside the basket there was a book of Greek myths and two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches cut into crustless triangles, just how you used to make them when the kids were young.

I told you that this was silly, that cancer was no picnic, but you just grinned like you had set me up for that very joke.

When the needle was under my skin, the nausea starting in the pit of my stomach, you opened the book. You read Hades with a seething hiss that made the child across the room giggle; Zeus was a grand baritone that reminded me of what you were like when we first met, all blustering, billowing confidence.

After the first few tales you got up, saying you had to get something. Your lips tried to form the last word, to tell me what it was, but you couldn’t make the sound. I asked you to spell it out, to write it down, but the word was gone completely, even its roots burned out of your memory.

You came back with tea in one of the hospital’s Styrofoam cups. You pointed at it and tried to summon the word again; your thin lips parting, the tip of your tongue pressed to the roof of your mouth.

Tea, I said. Hot tea.

Shaking your head, you picked up the book and started where we had left off.


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[FleggTheAxe]

Telomerase really hit home. My wife has been disabled half of our 44 years together. I am starting to deteriorate now. It's a slow fade.