Author Topic: Pseudopod 480: Servant Of The Aswang  (Read 2756 times)

Bdoomed

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on: March 05, 2016, 06:50:05 AM
Pseudopod 480: Servant Of The Aswang

by Samuel Marzioli.

Servant of the Aswang” was first published in Penumbra eMag Vol. 3, #6, March 2014

Samuel Marzioli is an Italian-Filipino writer, currently living in Oregon with his family. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in various publications, including Apex Magazine, Intergalactic Medicine Show, Shock Totem, and Penumbra eMag. His blog, marzioli.blogspot.com, featuring updates on his current projects, releases and sales, and a complete list of publications.

Your narrator – Mae Heaney is originally from Manila, Philippines and currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her Irish husband and 2 young children. She is an IT professional who once briefly dabbled in theater, loves to cook, bake and exercise! Her blog celticpinaymom.blogspot.com badly needs updating, she said she will try in between nappy changes while on maternity leave. And yes she still believes in the aswang!



The Manila Times predicted March 30th would be a scorcher, the hottest so far this year. The aswang called it a perfect day to hunt and went to pack the cargo van.

As a rule, she never took us to the same site twice and always drove along the back roads and forgotten streets to every destination. It kept us unseen, she said, and put a bold stroke outline on any car that might follow. She was always fastidious about these things. That’s why she had lasted so long when all the rest of her kind had faded into folklore and rural superstition.

This time we traveled to Alabang Town Center, about fifty kilometers south and a two-hour drive by the route we took. We staked out a bench and waited for shoppers to pour in, acting like mother and daughter kicking up our feet. By noon, teenagers crammed inside, walking in noisy groups, still celebrating their newfound summer freedom.

Had they known the kind of eyes that watched them, they would have fled the mall and gone straight home, to huddle in their closets and wait for us to move on. But they never knew, never left, and I was forced to relive the same nightmare over and over.

“Pumili,” the aswang said.

“I can’t. I can’t choose,” I said, practiced words she’d heard a dozen times before.

“Do not act like you have forgotten our deal,” she said, a rare moment when she didn’t speak Tagalog. “Choose someone, or I will choose you.”

I did. Like the coward I am, of course I did.





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?


Agamidae

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Reply #1 on: March 05, 2016, 03:53:57 PM
Hm, I have mixed feelings about this one.
I don't know much about the aswangs, but was such narration justified? Wikipedia says, "they can talk to you like any normal human being". Was this really "the same flippant tone one might use to tease a child"?
And I felt the story was a bit over the top. Almost like, hey, what is the best way to horrify readers? Let's torture innocent children! Yes, Stephen King did something similar in Doctor Sleep, but there was more to his story.
Honestly, I think The Toad Witch from the last month impressed me more, even though (or because) there was nothing so shocking in it.
I hope someone liked it, though. It's an interesting monster and an interesting dilemma.



adrianh

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Reply #2 on: March 05, 2016, 09:07:09 PM
This one left me strangely unmoved. I'm not really sure why. It has a bunch of the things I like; A non-default monster, a great protagonist, an impossible dilemma, etc.

But for some reason it didn't really engage me. For me the voice given the aswang occasionally crossed over into the incomprehensible and necessitated a rewind (I'm a little bit deaf which doesn't help ;-)

 



SMarz

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Reply #3 on: March 08, 2016, 10:26:25 PM
According to lore, the aswang is well known for its propensity toward killing children. Some versions of them even attack pregnant women, sucking out the unborn fetus with a lengthy proboscis. I'm not aware of the reason for this fixation, but part of it may be that the aswang took the role of the Boogie Man in Filipino culture. In other words, it's a scare tactic to get children to obey their parents' orders. "Don't stay out too late or the aswang will get you." It's a brutal concept for sure, one which is almost anathema in American horror, but it very much plays a part in the original lower mythology of the Philippines. Cheers!



dagny

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Reply #4 on: March 17, 2016, 10:59:35 AM
I loved this one. Made my kid sit in the car with me so I could listen to the end.

"Wolfman's got nards!"


Unblinking

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Reply #5 on: March 17, 2016, 04:50:39 PM
I've never heard of the Aswang before, so that was all new to me.  With that in mind I thought I'd get more into it.

Part of it was that I did have a lot of trouble understanding the Aswang voice at times, so raspy it was easy to lose in background noise like car noise.  I generally don't sweat the voices too much as long as I can understand them, a subtler change would've been easier to hear I think.