Pseudopod 479: ARTEMIS RISING Women In Horror Showcase: Like Dolls

[Bdoomed]

Pseudopod 479: ARTEMIS RISING Women In Horror Showcase: Like Dolls

by J Lily Corbie.

Like Dolls started as a meditation on the other side of the ‘wailing on your grave’ subgenre of folk music, such as I Am Stretched on Your Grave and The Unquiet Grave. Not only is Like Dolls a Pseudopod original, but also the author’s first professional publication sale. PseudoPod couldn’t be prouder to introduce you to this author.

J Lily Corbie lives in Oklahoma with two dogs and two cats, where she’s a government lackey by day and a writer by night. She can be found on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter, and she blogs erratically at girlserrant.wordpress.com including updates and news regarding her short stories looking for homes and a novel in the revision process.

Your narrator – Kim Lakin-Smith is a Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy author whose short stories feature in Interzone, Black Static, Behind the Sofa: Celebrity Memories of Doctor Who, Best British Fantasy 2013, Sharkpunk, The Mammoth Book of Dieselpunk, and more. She is the author of gothic science fantasy, Tourniquet, and YA novels, Queen Rat and Autodrome. Her novel, Cyber Circus, was shortlisted for both the BSFA Best Novel and the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel 2012.

With a background in dance and performance, she has narrated stories for Dark Fiction Magazine, Word Punk, Tales to Terrify, PseudoPod, and PodCastle. You can follow her on Twitter at @thegifairy

Your guest audio producer – Chelsea Davis is a scholar of Gothic fiction. She’s currently at work on a dissertation about supernatural war literature. In her spare time, she produces radio, & gets a huge kick out of reading killer Pseudopod submissions as an Associate Editor.

Your guest host – Marguerite Kenner is a native Californian who has forsaken sunny paradise to be with her true love and live in Merrye Olde England. She frequently wears so many hats that she needs two heads. When she’s not grappling with legal conundrums as a trainee solicitor or editing Cast of Wonders, she can be found narrating audio fiction, studying popular culture (i.e. going to movies and playing video games) with her partner Alasdair Stuart, or curling up with a really good book. You can follow her at her personal blog, Project Valkyrie, or on Twitter via @LegalValkyrie.


I am awake. Through the trappings of a funeral and the clods of earth raining upon me, I am aware. When my father kneels at my headstone and calls me his willful girl, I hear him. When Meredith weeps and lays poppies on my grave, I know. When they are gone, I am at rest.

The dark is absolute. I know my eyes are open–curious fingers encounter the wet resistance of eye, feel the brush of eyelashes with each blink. I suffer neither thirst nor hunger, and though my chest still fills and empties, I want for nothing. I am somnolent, content with my eternity.

Only Bastian’s voice interrupts my peace.

At the service, he threw himself across my coffin and wailed. He wasn’t mourning–he was claiming my funeral with his grief. Now he lays himself along my grave. He weeps and he laments, and I feel his weight through earth and wood. I am reminded, time and again, that not even my death belongs to me.



Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

[danooli]

That was exquisite. The story, the narration, Marguerite's comments...all of it.

I am ordinarily NOT a fan of first person POV stories. I tend to always find myself wondering just how trustworthy the narrative is as I've been burned by one too many "it was all a dream" twists. This, however, was done incredibly well.

Bastian was the quintessential "nice guy" and I am just in awe at how well J Lily Corbie was able to so wonderfully capture the creepiness a girl can feel. The line "I am reminded, time and again, that not even my death belongs to me" was so simple, but so strong.

This was my kind of horror! Thank you!!!!

[archaevist]

agreed danooli. as a (former? ) nice guy, I've felt that obsessive possessiveness which is so clearly captured in this story. I felt the unease which I've seen in other's faces really clearly. I liked the unsubtle and nonspecific sexuality of the narrator. I liked the ending and the title. I liked that the villain didn't have good fashion sense. I liked the rural isolationism without ragging on faith. I thought the title was brilliant. I almost wanted more of how the heck the villain discovered the cure to death but it really really didn't matter. I liked the villain forgetting which story went with which grave. Great, great story.

[Kaa]

Now THAT was wonderful.

Huzzah, J Lily Corbie! Huzzah, Kim Lakin-Smith!

Good stuff.

[Unblinking]

Ooh, this one was super good.  

I liked how, even though she was dead and even though she was aware she was dead, she was a very content dead person until she gets dug up.  Just like "Hm, things are kind of slow around here, but life wasn't so incredible as everyone seems to think it is and it's just kind of nice to have a nice lie down and relax for a little while, you know?  For that little while she is just her own, she is not the thing her parents worry about making a scandal, or the husband she's supposed to pretend to not hate.  And then that bastard has to come and wreck her wonderful rest.

I thought the story did a very good job conveying the horrible helplessness of the doting and obsessive attention of someone you never liked in the first place but which everyone around you is telling you you have to be with.  Especially from one who clearly does not think of women as actual people, but as props who are meant to fill the woman-shaped hole he has carved in his life.

And, well, I though it was a clever inversion of the "my heart belongs to you" phrase for her to take action in her new mobility and immediately take him literally on it.

I felt very sad that her love had apparently been murdered as part of her own resurrection.  I wonder if her love will rise up again, I wonder if her love will embrace their opportunity to be together even as ghouls, I hope that they can find some happy ending in the tragedy that their lives have become.

[adrianh]

I can only echo the general "That was damn good" sentiment.