Author Topic: Pseudopod 506: The Shopping Cart Apocalypse  (Read 6600 times)

Bdoomed

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on: September 04, 2016, 03:15:04 AM
Pseudopod 506: The Shopping Cart Apocalypse

by Garrett Croker.

“The Shopping Cart Apocalypse” is a Pseudopod Original, inspired by actual parking lots and actual injuries. Some details have been embellished.

GARRETT CROKER lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area. When he’s not a writer, he has at different times been a college English teacher, a copywriter, and a marketer. He received his MFA in creative writing from Mills College. His fiction has appeared previously in Mad Scientist Journal‘s anthology SELFIES FROM THE END OF THE WORLD. He can be found online at THE BALLPOINT APOCALYPSE, or follow him on twitter @garrettcroker.

Your reader – Alasdair Stuart – was just recently in the United States and is currently moving house (although not to the US, afaik). And I could not ask for a better boss.



The beautiful Horror in Clay 01 – The Murders in the Rue Morgue mug Kickstarter can be accessed at the link! Check it out, for the love of God, Montressor!



I wanted to bring your attention to a project from Orrin Grey and Strix Publishing. You already know and love Orrin Grey.

PSEUDOPOD 155: THE WORM THAT GNAWS

PSEUDOPOD 262: BLACK HILL

PSEUDOPOD 415: NIGHT’S FOUL BIRD

Strix Publishing has launched a Kickstarter to bring us a new and expanded hardcover edition of Orrin’s collection NEVER BET THE DEVIL AND OTHER WARNINGS. This new edition includes all ten stories from the original, as well as the heretofore hard-to-find “A Night for Mothing” and an all new story, “Goblins.” As of the time of this recording, it’s just passed the halfway mark with almost three weeks to go, so it’s time for the add-ons and additional goals to creep out of the corners.

So, please check it out: NEVER BET THE DEVIL AND OTHER WARNINGS Kickstarter. You’ll be glad you did!



The CAST OF WONDERS Flash Fiction Contest info can be accessed at the link.



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“Eli had never seen so many scattered across the lot so early, their sleek plastic frames a startling red against the radiating blacktop. Some congregated in small packs, propped haphazardly onto planters two by two, or grouped into neat lines just outside the cart returns, or facing outward from each other in small, defensive circles that only had the appearance of random chance. Others hunted alone, hiding behind cars, or rolling slowly down the lot’s near imperceptible incline, or simply waiting patiently in plain sight, loose wheels spinning slowly in the breeze. There was no order to unify the disparate groups, as he might have hoped. This was a disaster.”




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Maxilu

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Reply #1 on: September 05, 2016, 08:01:42 AM
So, I was shopping at a big box store with large, red, plastic shopping carts when this popped up in my podcatcher queue.

This is not a good story to listen to while shopping at a big box store with large, red, plastic shopping carts.

No questionable stains on my cart, though. I checked.

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adrianh

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Reply #2 on: September 06, 2016, 08:50:46 PM
Lovely. Especially the unquestioning quality of the narrator on his work life. It makes me wonder what some of the other jobs in this universe are like.

It also reminded me of a drunken conversation many years back where a friend & I developed an alien-esque lifecycle for shopping carts that started out with wire coat hangers :-)



Lacuna

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Reply #3 on: September 07, 2016, 08:53:17 PM
Loved it. Story and narration really worked well. We often have rogue carts lurking in odd places round here so it lentba kind of unnerving quality to an evening walk whilst listening.

Shopping cart lifecycle reminded me of the mall organism from Reaper Man. Made me wonder if the carts are hatched out somewhere special in this universe



Garrett Croker

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Reply #4 on: September 08, 2016, 04:44:59 AM
Thank you all so much. I've been overwhelmed by the positive response for this story, and I'm thrilled people are enjoying it.

Lacuna: It's not written anywhere yet so there's no **official** method of reproduction for the carts. I do imagine that they are still manufactured... though definitely not in the conventional sense, and definitely not by people. Their production line would necessarily involve quite a bit more viscera than the usual, for one.

Worldbuilding-wise, there is a line that got lost in revision somewhere, because it never quite worked as well as it needed to, that the carts learned to call for mom by mimicking the cries of children that had been separated from their parents in the store.

adrianh: I'll just say that there is A LOT of turnover among baristas.



Unblinking

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Reply #5 on: September 09, 2016, 07:54:33 PM
Ha!  This was fun and weird.  I like a story that takes something absurd and plays it completely straight.

At the same time, I kept wondering throughout it--did the author really see shopping cart injuries?  Are they really that common of a thing?  I ask in part because I spent about a year in college working as a cart attendant at Target, which is the store I kept picturing this as because of the big red plastic carts they've now gone to (at the time they were metal).  In the time that I worked there as a cart attendant, I don't recall ever hearing of anyone injured by a shopping cart.  Our store did have the cart returning machine, but I don't think we had the remote control one and I found it too awkward to steer it without losing carts and I was afraid I'd damage somebody's car.  I was still a young buck that wasn't exactly in shape but was young enough that I could still hold my own anyway, and so I used the less technological method.  They had a very long canvas strap.  I could pull about 10 carts at a time with that strap.  Stack the carts up, hook the strap onto the handle of the backmost cart, stand at the front cart to steer, and pull the whole column by leaning hard against the strap.  It was a decent workout, and I could keep up pretty well that way apart from the holiday season as long as I wasn't called away to clean up any puke or any of the other unpleasant tasks that I tended to get tasked with. 

Anyway, I enjoyed the story, but I did find that I kept wondering if there were stores where cart injuries were actually super common as the note before the story made it sound like.



Bdoomed

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Reply #6 on: September 09, 2016, 10:30:55 PM
Quote
shopping cart injuries?  Are they really that common of a thing?

I've pinched myself on shopping carts before.  Trust me: they can bite.

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


Garrett Croker

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Reply #7 on: September 09, 2016, 11:47:16 PM
Ha!  This was fun and weird.  I like a story that takes something absurd and plays it completely straight.

At the same time, I kept wondering throughout it--did the author really see shopping cart injuries?

David -- I did! Though, never at Target (which this story's carts are definitely based on). When I was a kid and the local Safeway was still, believe it or not, a Fry's grocery store (or a Fry's Food Store? It probably doesn't matter), it was something of a matter of course that when kids got too big to ride in the toddler slot up front we got to ride on that little platform beneath the cart bed instead (which had a bit more vertical space to work with back then, or maybe I was just a lot smaller). It was FUN for some reason I can no longer fathom as an adult. The store even added seats down there at one point because it was such a common practice. This naturally led to a LOT of us getting pinched by wheels after dragging our hands. The store ended up having to ban the practice after one of my friends ended up in the hospital because her hand got caught between the wheel and the thing that holds the wheel on. It was pretty gruesome - and is the specific injury that inspired how much of the trauma in this story was hand related. She did get better, though.



ElectricPaladin

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Reply #8 on: September 10, 2016, 06:27:47 PM
I liked this one as economic/social commentary. The way that management was okay with the death/maiming of labor felt very realistic, and the impact that this disregard had on their psyches and self-image was as well. That's where a lot of the horror of this story lived, for me.

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Brenticus302

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Reply #9 on: September 13, 2016, 02:00:41 PM
I feel like I haven't absorbed all of this one, really.  I wasn't sure what to make of some parts.  What I loved though, was the matter-of-fact way it was told- unquestioningly.  Clearly, this was just the world the character lived in.  I wanted to know more about that world, and that says a lot.  I enjoyed this story.



dagny

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Reply #10 on: September 13, 2016, 02:06:14 PM
I feel like I haven't absorbed all of this one, really.  I wasn't sure what to make of some parts.  What I loved though, was the matter-of-fact way it was told- unquestioningly.  Clearly, this was just the world the character lived in.  I wanted to know more about that world, and that says a lot.  I enjoyed this story.

Listen to it again! Trust me, it's worth a second listen. :)

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bounceswoosh

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Reply #11 on: September 14, 2016, 01:33:09 AM
I'm probably taking the story too literally, because it tasted more absurdist to me than anything. Thus the serious bits were hard to take, er, seriously. I wanted it to go in a sillier direction. No fault of the author, of course.



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Reply #12 on: September 14, 2016, 02:19:15 AM

I'm probably taking the story too literally, because it tasted more absurdist to me than anything. Thus the serious bits were hard to take, er, seriously. I wanted it to go in a sillier direction. No fault of the author, of course.


They can't say we never do Bizarro or Bizarro-adjacent. We just like our Bizarro to have verisimilitude and layers.

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Unblinking

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Reply #13 on: September 14, 2016, 01:48:00 PM
Ha!  This was fun and weird.  I like a story that takes something absurd and plays it completely straight.

At the same time, I kept wondering throughout it--did the author really see shopping cart injuries?

David -- I did! Though, never at Target (which this story's carts are definitely based on). When I was a kid and the local Safeway was still, believe it or not, a Fry's grocery store (or a Fry's Food Store? It probably doesn't matter), it was something of a matter of course that when kids got too big to ride in the toddler slot up front we got to ride on that little platform beneath the cart bed instead (which had a bit more vertical space to work with back then, or maybe I was just a lot smaller). It was FUN for some reason I can no longer fathom as an adult. The store even added seats down there at one point because it was such a common practice. This naturally led to a LOT of us getting pinched by wheels after dragging our hands. The store ended up having to ban the practice after one of my friends ended up in the hospital because her hand got caught between the wheel and the thing that holds the wheel on. It was pretty gruesome - and is the specific injury that inspired how much of the trauma in this story was hand related. She did get better, though.

Interesting, thanks for elaborating!  I had no idea!





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Reply #14 on: September 14, 2016, 01:51:11 PM
I'm probably taking the story too literally, because it tasted more absurdist to me than anything. Thus the serious bits were hard to take, er, seriously. I wanted it to go in a sillier direction. No fault of the author, of course.

I love it when a story is both absurd and with extremely serious consequences for those actually experiencing it. 

But, speaking from personal experience, those stories are SO HARD TO SELL.  I have a story in which a man is trapped in his house by the deadly threat of... a penguin lawn ornament that he never actually sees moving.  I've gotten some positive responses on it, and it has gotten good responses at fiction readings, but...  I even the good responses tend to be along the lines of "I'm not sure if this is supposed to be funny or serious.  And I want to shout "WHY NOT BOTH?"




Metalsludge

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Reply #15 on: September 14, 2016, 06:54:10 PM
I'm probably taking the story too literally, because it tasted more absurdist to me than anything. Thus the serious bits were hard to take, er, seriously. I wanted it to go in a sillier direction. No fault of the author, of course.

I love it when a story is both absurd and with extremely serious consequences for those actually experiencing it. 

But, speaking from personal experience, those stories are SO HARD TO SELL.  I have a story in which a man is trapped in his house by the deadly threat of... a penguin lawn ornament that he never actually sees moving.  I've gotten some positive responses on it, and it has gotten good responses at fiction readings, but...  I even the good responses tend to be along the lines of "I'm not sure if this is supposed to be funny or serious.  And I want to shout "WHY NOT BOTH?"

I love a touch of humor in macabre fiction, so the feeling out there that one has to choose one or the other in terms of horror versus humor is indeed a little frustrating. I think we should be able to trust the audience to either get it, or come away with whatever aspects were interesting to them.

That said, I do want some consistency to the world that we are presented with, and for it to have its own logic that I can understand. It can still be its own logic, but I think it should follow some kind of consistency and have a base explanation under it, even if not everything is explained.



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Reply #16 on: September 15, 2016, 02:01:40 PM
That said, I do want some consistency to the world that we are presented with, and for it to have its own logic that I can understand. It can still be its own logic, but I think it should follow some kind of consistency and have a base explanation under it, even if not everything is explained.

Yes!  Certainly.  I like internal consistency, even if it's externally quite absurd.  :)




Frank Evans

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Reply #17 on: September 16, 2016, 10:50:23 PM
I enjoyed this. I think Dagny had it right in the outro where she compared the story to real life situations that people just can't get out of, even if to an outsider leaving that situation is the obvious answer. The entire time I was listening all I could think was "if the carts are eating people, why are people still using them?" But Dagny's right, inertia's a powerful thing. Still, maybe just bring a reusable bag?

On another note, I'd love to know how the shopping cart apocalypse got started. I keep picturing a Dawn of the Dead (Snyder version) style opening montage except with shopping carts.



ElectricMandolin

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Reply #18 on: October 16, 2016, 05:52:02 AM
This story had a strange sort of dissonance for me. When I worked as a cart retriever at my job I always imagined that carts were something like cows: big, slow, and not very threatening. Hearing them described as predators threw me off at first. That being said the story is wonderfully unnerving and I look forward to sharing it with my coworkers.