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Author Topic: Pseudopod 116: Sick Day  (Read 10617 times)

Bdoomed

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on: November 15, 2008, 08:04:34 PM
Pseudopod 116: Sick Day

By Michael Chant

Read by Elie Hirschman

As she leaves for work, my wife kisses me goodbye. It is love in the machine, passion stripped away on the assembly-line known as the workweek. Her car pulls out of the driveway, leaving me with more than an hour to kill before I have to go to work.

I empty a little plastic bag of capsules and gelcaps into my palm. These are all the vitamins a man my age should be taking. I wash them down with a glass of calcium-enriched orange juice, and then it’s time to shower. While lathering up, masturbation gets considered and rejected, the pleasure I would receive is found to be too fleeting to affect my mood. After rinsing and drying off, I pause to look at my face in the bathroom mirror. Seeing is believing — I look older than I am.


This week’s episode sponsored by Audible.com, who offers you a free audiobook download of your choice from their selection of over 40,000 titles.


Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

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

Zathras

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Reply #1 on: November 15, 2008, 08:06:49 PM
This is one of my favorite PPs ever!  Well read and written. 

Of course, I pull stunts like this myself...

One bit of advice, though:  Add a teaspoon of dish washing liquid to the blood to prevent staining!


Raving_Lunatic

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Reply #2 on: November 15, 2008, 08:48:48 PM
Truly, deeply weird. Yay!


Dwango

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Reply #3 on: November 17, 2008, 08:17:33 PM
I was kind of waiting for the ending where the police think he really did kill someone and shoot him.  This really wasn't too horrific, just an over the top prank.  I guess this is for the whole of last months Halloween stories across all the escape artists podcasts.  Got too dark I guess and needed some levity.  It was rather humorous.  I am still trying to get that lady at the stop lights expression and smiling. 


Zathras

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Reply #4 on: November 17, 2008, 08:23:38 PM
Quote from: Dwango on November 17, 2008, 08:17:33 PM
I was kind of waiting for the ending where the police think he really did kill someone and shoot him.  This really wasn't too horrific, just an over the top prank.  I guess this is for the whole of last months Halloween stories across all the escape artists podcasts.  Got too dark I guess and needed some levity.  It was rather humorous.  I am still trying to get that lady at the stop lights expression and smiling. 

I have cat's eye contacts and almost made someone swerve into the median of the highway one day.   

My wife listened to this one and immediately thought of me.


MacArthurBug

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Reply #5 on: November 17, 2008, 11:05:21 PM
Scary? No, not so much.. but where would this odd bit of fiction fit? I adored this, well written, well read, and well executed. I wish I was clever enough to pull off this sort of grand scheme. It was a little disturbing, the main characters definite lack of "care" for the consequences of his actions, but then who doesn't want to just show up for work one day covered in blood?
« Last Edit: November 17, 2008, 11:09:11 PM by MacArthurBug »

Oh, great and mighty Alasdair, Orator Maleficent, He of the Silvered Tongue, guide this humble fangirl past jumping up and down and squeeing upon hearing the greatness of Thy voice.
Oh mighty Mur the Magnificent. I am not worthy.

DKT

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Reply #6 on: November 17, 2008, 11:34:14 PM
That was fun.


zZzacha

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Reply #7 on: November 18, 2008, 01:14:52 PM
Great PP story! I enjoyed the weirdness of it very much.

And I absolutely agree with MacArthurBug: who doesn't want to just show up for work one day covered in blood?

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

gelee

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Reply #8 on: November 18, 2008, 08:34:28 PM
Well written and well read, just not my cup of tea, I suppose.  Short, that's for sure.  This really struck me as the sort of thing that I would expect to hear on The Drabblecast (www.drabblecast.org).  Still, not many nits to pick.  I'll concede that it was nice to hear something light from PP.  It's been kind of heavy for a while.
« Last Edit: November 19, 2008, 08:13:51 PM by gelee »


Ellspacer

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Reply #9 on: November 20, 2008, 11:34:04 PM
I absolutely adored this story!
It was enhanced by the fact that I was in a motorway-carpark simulation commute workwards, while listening. It saved me the bother of doing it myself, and I had the smug, in-my-car, capsule satisfaction of not having to share this little nugget with another soul. I was in a traffic-jam, and loving it! All the angry faces around me made the sheer fun of this story seem like my own indulgence! A guilty pleasure, almost. Made my entire day.
There was a darkness in a seemingly selected autism, but my envy of his actions meant I transferred my own glee to his emptiness.
An absolute humdinger of a story, the quality of the fun transcending genres.
I'm gonna listen again tomorrow morning.
Premium cut, Mr Stuart, and thanks for the smiles, just think "up on the hill" and share my smirk!


goatkeeper

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Reply #10 on: November 21, 2008, 06:26:02 PM
One of my favorite PP's of all time.  Not horror at all, but that doesn't change my enjoyment.


gelee

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Reply #11 on: November 21, 2008, 07:21:54 PM
Quote from: goatkeeper on November 21, 2008, 06:26:02 PM
One of my favorite PP's of all time.  Not horror at all, but that doesn't change my enjoyment.
Yeah, I thought you might like this one.


Bdoomed

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Reply #12 on: November 21, 2008, 10:39:39 PM
ha i loved this one.  I agree, it's not really horror... tho i guess it is horror to the other people in the story...
but it was definitely fun!

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

Coyote

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Reply #13 on: November 22, 2008, 08:52:40 PM
Well, that does it. This story has inspired me to get out the bottle of fake blood and find some old clothes of mine...

The following sentence is false. The previous sentence is true.

FamilyGuy

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Reply #14 on: December 09, 2008, 03:13:35 AM
Quote from: MacArthurBug on November 17, 2008, 11:05:21 PM
who doesn't want to just show up for work one day covered in blood?

Slightly less than the number that want to leave work covered in blood.   ;D

When will all the rhetorical questions end?

MacArthurBug

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Reply #15 on: December 11, 2008, 11:49:25 PM
Familyguy- that's so true it hurts a little

Oh, great and mighty Alasdair, Orator Maleficent, He of the Silvered Tongue, guide this humble fangirl past jumping up and down and squeeing upon hearing the greatness of Thy voice.
Oh mighty Mur the Magnificent. I am not worthy.

umamei

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Reply #16 on: December 23, 2008, 02:06:04 PM
I listened to this a few days ago while catching up on stories, and can't believe it took me this long after the fact to come post about it.

I LOVED it.  I think it's a brilliant idea, only because so few people would come up with such a stunt, it's hard to believe when looking at a bloody person that it could be anything other than actual blood.  Well, unless you live near Hollywood, like me.  Then you always assume it's fake and hope you're not wrong. ;)

Not horror, but I give it an enthusiastic grin.  I loved it. 


Unblinking

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Reply #17 on: October 29, 2009, 08:33:51 PM
Not horror, and not what I would really call a story arc, but I enjoyed it.  I kept expecting cops to accuse him of participating in an actual murder.  Or perhaps that he HAD committed a murder, blocked it from his mind, and then did this sort of gallows humor and gave himself away.  Or perhaps the girlfriend commits suicide and he gets blamed.  If any of those would've happened it could've been horror.

In any case, I'm not a huge stickler for genre boundaries.  I'm more just looking for a story that entertains, and I enjoyed this one.

My favorite line was where he looks down on his girlfriend for flipping out over a little bit of sight humor.  He doesn't even consider that he flipped out because of a necktie.  :)


Fenrix

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Reply #18 on: February 25, 2010, 10:17:12 PM
This makes me reevaluate the genre for Falling Down. I do believe that I will make this a beer argument in the near future. Is Falling Down horror? I think it may very well be. This story is as much horror as It's Easy to Make a Sandwich. Different in scale and intensity, but similar in scope. It's as much horror as Everything Is Better with Zombies. No monster and no murder, but a very solid read on the human condition.

I haven't wandered over to the Escape Pod or Pod Castle boards. Is there as much gyre and gimble about genre appropriateness there as in the Pseudopod threads?

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”

gelee

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Reply #19 on: February 26, 2010, 04:13:25 PM
Oh yeah.  :)  Quite a lot more, actually.


Millenium_King

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Reply #20 on: June 28, 2010, 10:08:34 PM
I cannot deny that I found this story entertaining... but I definately felt like "Ummm... So what was the point?"  It was really too silly to be horror and to plotless to really make the top 10 in my book.  Not bad, but not super-exciting.

Visit my blog atop the black ziggurat of Ankor Sabat, including my list of Top 10 Pseudopod episodes.

Fenrix

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Reply #21 on: July 14, 2010, 09:23:31 PM
Quote from: Millenium_King on June 28, 2010, 10:08:34 PM
I cannot deny that I found this story entertaining... but I definately felt like "Ummm... So what was the point?"

I think you answered your own question.  :)

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”

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