Escape Artists

PodCastle => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Ocicat on December 24, 2020, 07:41:25 PM

Title: PC658: The Cursed Noel
Post by: Ocicat on December 24, 2020, 07:41:25 PM
PodCastle 658: The Cursed Noel (https://podcastle.org/2020/12/22/podcastle-658-the-cursed-noel/)

Authors: Tim Pratt (https://podcastle.org/people/tim-pratt/) and Heather Shaw (https://podcastle.org/people/heather-shaw/)
Narrators: Jen R. Albert (https://podcastle.org/people/jen-r-albert/) and Dominik Parisien (https://podcastle.org/people/dominik-parisien/)
Host: Setsu Uzume (https://podcastle.org/people/setsu-uzume/)
Audio Producer: Peter Behravesh (https://podcastle.org/people/peter-behravesh/)

PodCastle 658: The Cursed Noel is a PodCastle original.

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Show Notes
Rated PG-13.



It was supposed to be a Very Zoom Christmas, but the internet went out on Christmas Eve, and out here, it usually took a couple of days to get going again. Travis didn’t expect things to happen any faster during the holiday. He could get a bar on his cell phone if he stood in the right spot in the cabin, but that wasn’t enough for a video call. He could always drive into town tomorrow where the service was better, but sitting in some parking lot in the cold, looking at the thumbprint-sized faces of his mother and sisters and cousins on his phone, all broadcasting from their own places of pandemic isolation, didn’t exactly sound festive.

Travis went to the window in the kitchen and looked out at the whitened evergreens. Loneliness settled onto him, like the weight of all that snow on those branches. The smell of his morning coffee was already dissipating in the chill air. The original plan, back when everyone thought the pandemic would surely be under control by the end of the year, was to fly to Chicago for the traditional giant gathering, but the Midwest was even more ravaged by the virus than everywhere else. So he was staying here instead, wintering for the first time in the cabin in the North Carolina mountains he’d inherited from his grandfather, and only used as a summer place before. The isolation hadn’t bothered him much so far, but like the snow in the song, the pandemic didn’t show signs of stopping, and it had all become a bit wearying.




Listen to this week's PodCastle. (https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/podcastle/PC658_TheCursedNoel.mp3)
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