Escape Artists
PseudoPod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: Bdoomed on August 05, 2011, 08:57:19 AM
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Pseudopod 241: In Bloom (http://pseudopod.org/2011/08/05/pseudopod-241-in-bloom/)
By Caspian Gray
This story originally appeared in the July, 2009 issue of Chizine (http://www.chizine.com/) magazine (although it doesn’t appear to be in their archive any longer).
Read by Julie Hoverson of the wonderful 19 Nocturne Boulevard (http://www.19nocturneboulevard.net/).
“Willy was waiting for me with his hat in his hands, pinching the brim and rolling it back and forth. I tried to smile to show him how it would go, but in the dark I don’t know if he saw anything but teeth.
Papa keeps the gate greased, so it opened real silent, and Willy only took a moment to follow me in.
“Are those them?” he asked, pointing at the flowers that keep the dead down.
“They are. You’re lucky they’re just buds now, though. Once they bloom they’ll smell something awful.”
The window in my bedroom faced the garden, so all August I had to smell them flowers. They was big showy things, with a stink like jasmines and gardenias and lilies of the valley all tied up with twine and then tossed in the river to rot. They said it was the smell that warped my family into thinking it was okay to handle the dead, but the truth is it wasn’t so bad, and you never had to be warped at all just to dig a hole and put something in it.”
(http://pseudopod.org/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/audio_mp3_button.png)
Listen to this week's Pseudopod. (http://media.libsyn.com/media/pseudopod/Pseudo241_InBloom.mp3)
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They call me the King Under The Mountain.
I don't know how i felt about the story. I thought the reading was excellent but felt the author over-emphasized the "coming of age" teenage romance portions at the expense of horror. I found the mother to be much more interesting and would have liked a little more detail as far as what the 'dead' were and the world this is taking place in. Otherwise it was a good listen.
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best plea for money ever.
not a bad episode either.
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This is another one of those instances where the reading adds depth to a good story to make a great performance. Julie Hoverson did a magnificent job.
The story took a turn at the end I wasn't expecting, which is the mark of a good short story.
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Great reading, and I enjoyed the bulk of the story, Teen romance was front and center and I liked how the walking dead stuff mostly creeped in around the edges. I liked it quite well until the ending, and I'm just not sure what happened there. The boy didn't show up so she decides to kiss the walking dead instead? I guess I don't know the details of the walking dead in this universe, but that seems like a quick way to get your face eaten off. I don't get it.
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Yeah my attention wandered near the end so I didn't feel qualified to comment. I didn't really grasp the ending and it seemed to take a long time to get to the horror bit. Could've hammed it up a bit with some good old fashioned southern US zombies.
Pseudopod probably has enough zombie stories now to make a limited edition zombie sampler.
Great narration and I like how the story and broadcast time matched up. August in the northern hemisphere is definitely zombie weather.
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Doubleplus good. I just wanted to speak up and say I endorse this story wholeheartedly. An excellent bit of world-building with a neat metaphorical flourish.
One oddity: was the author British, or was this story intended to be set in the U.S.? I ask because "c*nt" struck me as weirdly out of place in the rest of the language. I know that it's not quite as shocking a word in the UK, hence my question, but I was jolted a bit when "the C word" came out of nowhere in a story that didn't feature an awful lot of other profanity or even particular crudity.
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Great narration and I like how the story and broadcast time matched up. August in the northern hemisphere is definitely zombie weather.
Thanks for noticing - timing stories to seasons is something I strive for. This was in house and complete back in May but I deliberately pulled it and rescheduled for the dead of Summer for exactly that reason. That aspect won;t work for everyone (people just randomly catching up on things, for instance) but I consider it a bonus for the faithful listeners.
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The reading for this was absolutely superb, and I'll add that the recording Julie sent us is the cleanest, easiest one I've so far dealt with.
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I really enjoyed this one, but mostly wanted to heap some praise on Julie Hoverson's fantastic reading. It really added quite a bit. And that's not meant to take anything away from Caspian Gray's story. It was just a really outstanding reading.
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What a horrid story. Nicely done!
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I am one of those women that has "had" a man, just to have him boast to his friends that it was the other way around. From a young age I found I had more experience than most everyone around me, yet never got why I never dated. So I really related to this character, but that is exactly why it prickles me so much. Ultimately the undertones ruined it for me and the ending cinched the deal. I wanted to chuck this story across the room, luckily it was on my phone that is my life line. The taboos made her act the way she did, not just her being "evil" or any other derogatory girls name.
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I'm a couple years too late on my reply, but this broke my goddamn heart. This story is intended to stand with you: the narrator is in no way bad or evil, she's just been raised in such a fucked up environment that she believes some wrong things about herself.
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There is no such thing as "too late"! Glad you liked it!
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There is no such thing as "too late"! Glad you liked it!
Not too shocking that he liked it, as he seems to be the author. ;D
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We're not assured that every author will like their production, just as we are not assured every listener will...