Author Topic: Pseudopod 482: The Box Wife  (Read 4410 times)

Bdoomed

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on: March 20, 2016, 04:27:21 AM
Pseudopod 482: The Box Wife

by Emma Osborne.

The Box Wife” was first published in Shock Totem: Curious Tales of the Macabre and Twisted issue 9, edited by K. Allen Wood.

Emma Osborne is a fiction writer and poet from Melbourne, Australia. Her short stories can be found in Aurealis, Bastion Science Fiction and Shock Totem. Her poetry has been featured in Star*Line and has appeared in Apex Magazine. Emma comes from a long line of dance floor starters and was once engaged in a bear hug so epic that both parties fell over. She can be found on Twitter as @redscribe and her website is A Practical Crown

Your narrator – Eve Upton – is huddled in the darkness of the cupboard…she appears to be scratching words into the floor… what does that say? “nolite the bastardes carborundorum”.



If you run your hands over me you’ll be pulling splinters from your palms for days.

I am in a room bare and dark.





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?


dagny

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Reply #1 on: March 21, 2016, 12:05:59 PM
Best narration ever. This was soooo good.

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Unblinking

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Reply #2 on: March 21, 2016, 02:49:36 PM
Hmmm... This story was horrible, but I guess it felt kind of one-note to me for much of the story.  Horrible man is horrible.  Horrible man continues to be horrible.  The horribleness continues unabated.  Oops, the horrible man makes a mistake, the mostly-inanimate protagonist seizes opportunity and now the horrible man is dead, escape!

All of this was fine, but I think it would've done better at a shorter length since the protagonist is incapable of really doing anything it felt too long for me. 



ChrisK

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Reply #3 on: March 23, 2016, 04:42:07 AM
I enjoyed how uncomfortable this story made me feel, trying to figure out exactly what this fuck-box he's built works and how he goes about...using it. I'm not above enjoying gross-out stuff, and despite the triumph at the end, this story was completely gross.

I see how opinions on this one could be split.




Draconis

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Reply #4 on: March 23, 2016, 05:35:18 AM
It's worth noting that the captor is not explicitly gendered (neither is the "one below" who keeps the circulatory system going...)



adrianh

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Reply #5 on: March 23, 2016, 12:40:20 PM
I'm not sure I can say I enjoyed this (because, topic), but it was wonderfully constructed & narrated.

It makes me wonder why I've not read more steampunk-ish horror. Seems like such a rich vein to mine. Perhaps I'm just not looking in the right places.



Fenrix

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Reply #6 on: March 23, 2016, 01:24:26 PM

It makes me wonder why I've not read more steampunk-ish horror. Seems like such a rich vein to mine. Perhaps I'm just not looking in the right places.


One of my favorite combinations is The Murmurous Paleoscope. But yeah, we need more like both of these.

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


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Reply #7 on: March 23, 2016, 03:03:59 PM

It makes me wonder why I've not read more steampunk-ish horror. Seems like such a rich vein to mine. Perhaps I'm just not looking in the right places.


One of my favorite combinations is The Murmurous Paleoscope. But yeah, we need more like both of these.

I love that one.



Unblinking

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Reply #8 on: March 23, 2016, 03:05:32 PM
It's worth noting that the captor is not explicitly gendered (neither is the "one below" who keeps the circulatory system going...)

Maybe not quite explicitly, but the title and the constant use of female-gendered names to refer to the protagonist seem at least to be very strong suggestions.  (The one below is more strictly ambiguous)



Tango Alpha Delta

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Reply #9 on: March 25, 2016, 12:56:40 AM
Describing the femoral artery as a "tube" put a great deal of the narrator's self-description into perspective.

But mostly, I uttered my three-word review to myself in the car already, and I can't really top that. (That review was 66% holy...)

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Lieberkuhn

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Reply #10 on: March 26, 2016, 03:38:40 PM
This was one of the most disturbing, fucked up stories ever. I was walking my dog at night while listening, and now I can't pass some buildings on that route without getting creeped out all over again. And the narration was perfect.

I'm onboard with Fenrix about The Murmurous Periscope as well. Before that story I had pretty much dismissed Steampunk as a genre I would ever have much interest it.



TrishEM

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Reply #11 on: April 02, 2016, 09:11:12 AM
I was a bit surprised to hear this so soon after 479, Like Dolls, by J. Lily Corbie. The two stories seemed very similar in their themes of being trapped and stored for sexual obsession, although the tone of this one was more explicit. Also, both stories ended badly for the captors, but in this case there's much more room for optimism about how the protagonist's character is evolving, as she moves to help the One Below.

I shivered when the protagonist was talking about how it would have felt to be a child wandering and playing in a stream,  and then said, but of course that never happened, I have always been here in this room. I felt very strongly then that the box wife DID have some core of original humanity, but was denying her own memories to make her present reality less unbearable.



FeloniusMonk

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Reply #12 on: April 19, 2016, 11:31:50 PM
Fantastically written and read but I felt a bit lost all the way (as well as extremely creeped out).
Like TrishEM I got the impression there was something human in the box wife at some level, but the descriptions of construction and pumping were so consistent that I can't figure out how it goes together.
Now that I write that, though, I realise that that uncertainty has kept the story in my mind longer than most and kept me horrified by the what ifs.... hmmm