Pseudopod 507: The Candy Store

[Bdoomed]

Pseudopod 507: The Candy Store

by Christopher DiLeo.

“The Candy Store” is a Pseudopod Original. Puberty, we recall, is a time of change, and it can be quite dangerous.

Christopher DiLeo inherited his love of horror stories from his father, who left him a coffin filled with Stephen King novels. Chris teaches high school English in New York, infecting many students with a love for the macabre. Chris is currently searching for an agent for his novel DARK HEART, a psychological thriller that explores treacherous deceit, violence, and love, where the strongest heart is often as dark as it is virtuous. This story is dedicated to Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s. His poem “The Pennycandystore Beyond the El” was very much in mind while Chris wrote this.

Your reader – Brian Rollins was born in California and grew up in and around the Western US. He currently resides in Highlands Ranch, CO where he works as a voice artist, primarily focused on audiobooks. He is probably best known for being the voice of the Glen and Tyler series of audiobooks, written by JB Sanders.


The Eighth Day Brotherhood is a new novel by Alice M. Phillips that should be of interest to PseudoPod listeners. If you want a novel with the milieu of The Stress of Her Regard but tighter pacing, look no further. Couple this with the sensibility of Fincher’s Se7en and you have a tense and relentless thriller. Alice’s love for the tenebrous portions of the Decadent period glows through Paris while the Eiffel Tower rises on the bank of the Seine and as the city prepares of the Exposition Universelle. It manifests with an abiding love for the period supported by an incredible depth of research. Do yourself a favor and pick up this book from Black Rose Writing.

The Eighth Day Brotherhood by Alice M. Phillips — Black Rose Writing

One August morning, in Paris, 1888, the sunrise reveals the embellished corpse of a young man suspended between the columns of the Panthéon, resembling a grotesque Icarus and marking the first in a macabre series of murders linked to Paris monuments. In the Latin Quarter, occult scholar Rémy Sauvage is informed of his lover’s gruesome death and embarks upon his own investigation to avenge him by apprehending the cult known as the Eighth Day Brotherhood. At a nearby sanitarium, aspiring artist Claude Fournel becomes enamored with a mesmerist’s beautiful patient, Irish immigrant Margaret Finnegan. Resolved to steal her away from the asylum and obtain her for his muse, Claude only finds them both entwined in the Brotherhood’s apocalyptic plot combining magic, mythology, and murder.


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 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!


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


Info on Anders Manga’s album (they do our theme music!) can be found here.


Pennies jangled in his pockets.

Larry ran along Jamaica Avenue beneath the elevated railway, the bridge stretching on for miles. Cars’s headlights flickered down the corridor, winking like giant eyes.

Dark clouds clotted the afternoon sky, and humidity thickened the September air so that it clung to Larry’s skin, heavy and wet. Mom wanted him back before the storm broke.

No problem.

The Candy Palace was six blocks from home.



Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

[hwaffle]

Something about this story rubbed me the wrong way. I can't put my finger on it, but as I was listening I felt rather irritated. *Shrugs*

[ElectricPaladin]

I have to admit that this one was a miss with me as well. Let me try to explain why. It was a little too... obvious. So, he did the bad thing and got into THE SEX and now THE SEX is going to come and get him... with a giant vertical vagina-tummy-mouth no less. I was kind of hoping for something more along the lines of adolescence makes you a monster - ie. he was going to join the "huh huhing" teen boys in their worship of their siren goddess. What happened was just a little too... conventional.

[Brenticus302]

Didn't do it for me either.  As Paladin said, it seemed too obvious to me.  I just think something about "really hot girl turns out to be a monster that's going to eat you" seems very...high school to me.  I was expecting some kind of angle on the boy's age- something to do with how he's changing or how overwhelming and confusing puberty can be.  But it just didn't really happen, aside from just mentioning how these things "felt new."  But ultimately, it didn't really cause anything different to happen than what would have happened with pretty much any teenage boy- or most adult men, if the girl's age was adjusted.  I super hot girl started seducing a guy, and the guy went for it and was destroyed.  It's ultimately the same either way.

That said, it wasn't poorly written or anything but it just felt like a not-so-great story that was well-told. But I still had fun listening.

[Unblinking]

Hmmm...

I was very interested to see where this one was going.  It had enough weird, striking moments that I felt like it was building up to some memorable conclusion.  The tension of being in a between age, where you feel the pulls of childhood and adolescence both, just wanting to go to the candy store but distracted by hormones.

But I was disappointed when the recipient of his desire turned into a monster and consumed him.  It felt too much like a... what's the word... flat cautionary tale at that point, I guess?  THOU SHALT NOT THINK ABOUT SEX OR YOU WILL BE EATEN.  THOU SHALT NOT CONSORT WITH DRUG USERS, OR YOU WILL BE EATEN.  (At least, I assumed the barking boys were supposed to be potheads--maybe I wouldn't have thought that from the text, but in the audio their barking/laughing sounded to me like a stereotypical marijuana cough)

I don't know exactly what I was expecting.  Maybe that rather than be killed, he would start to feel himself become one of them, at least to a small degree?  Their strangeness in the beginning is presented as the strangeness of adolescence, and he is on the cusp of adolescence but not quite over the edge, so I think I was expecting it to end with him barking involuntarily or something?

[Garrett Croker]

I think I read this one a bit differently. I didn't read it as cautionary, and I don't think sex is a bad thing that he's being punished for wanting. I don't even, actually, think that he's dead... or, well, not exactly. The part of the main character we're seeing is the part that's situated firmly in childhood, the part that saves up pennies to buy candies and thinks a girl can get pregnant if you kiss her.

And, yeah, that part of him dies. It dies good.

But I think the maturing part of him survives, for better or worse. There's even some textual evidence - see: the friend who loses an eye in a similar experience (a pretty clever nod to the old wive's tail that you'll go blind if you masturbate), but who is himself definitely not dead. Just changed.

[davidthygod]

Also, in the miss camp.  I think some of the scenes were just over done and over the top.  I appreciate the effort and it did not lose my interest.

[Sgarre1]

I think I read this one a bit differently. I didn't read it as cautionary, and I don't think sex is a bad thing that he's being punished for wanting. I don't even, actually, think that he's dead... or, well, not exactly. The part of the main character we're seeing is the part that's situated firmly in childhood, the part that saves up pennies to buy candies and thinks a girl can get pregnant if you kiss her.

And, yeah, that part of him dies. It dies good.

But I think the maturing part of him survives, for better or worse. There's even some textual evidence - see: the friend who loses an eye in a similar experience (a pretty clever nod to the old wive's tail that you'll go blind if you masturbate), but who is himself definitely not dead. Just changed.

thank you

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-pennycandystore-beyond-the-el/

[dagny]

I think I read this one a bit differently. I didn't read it as cautionary, and I don't think sex is a bad thing that he's being punished for wanting. I don't even, actually, think that he's dead... or, well, not exactly. The part of the main character we're seeing is the part that's situated firmly in childhood, the part that saves up pennies to buy candies and thinks a girl can get pregnant if you kiss her.

And, yeah, that part of him dies. It dies good.

But I think the maturing part of him survives, for better or worse. There's even some textual evidence - see: the friend who loses an eye in a similar experience (a pretty clever nod to the old wive's tail that you'll go blind if you masturbate), but who is himself definitely not dead. Just changed.

Agreed.