Pseudopod 109: In the Coils of the Serpent

[Bdoomed]

Pseudopod 109: In the Coils of the Serpent

By William Meikle

Read by K.J. Johnson

“So after he killed her he cut out the clitoris.”

“Well, that settles it - it can’t have been a man. If it had been, he’d never have found it.”

I looked up at her over the top of my drink, but there was no humour in her eyes - then again, there rarely was these days.

“I don’t know why I’m telling you all this anyway”, I said, taking a long swig of beer and brushing the foam from my upper lip. “If the boss ever finds out, I’ll be knocked back to traffic patrol - this is all supposed to be hush-hush - even the tabloids haven’t got hold of it yet.”

“I should hope not,” Jane Woolsey replied, “If they get so much as a whiff that I’m involved, you won’t see me for dust.”

I didn’t blame her. I remembered the last time - the finding of the body, the lurid headlines, the media circus permanently encamped on her doorstep. I would do everything in my power to make sure that didn’t happen again.

She was playing with her hair, twirling the blond tresses around her little finger. She had that faraway look in her eyes again, as if she was staring fixedly at something in the far distance that only she could see. I leaned over and took her hand.

“I’ll try to keep the press out of it, Jane - I really will.”


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Listen to this week's Pseudopod.

[Void Munashii]

 I enjoyed this one, nothing particularly unusual about it, but I wasn't able to predict the whole store from the first five minutes, so that was nice.

  It was also nice to see a happy ending. I don't think every story needs a happy ending, but one is nice every so often.

[Zathras]

Now this one qualifies as horror!

I don't think it was a happy ending.  I think it was a happy point. 

There was definitely a not-quite-over feeling to the ending.  I like that.

[Void Munashii]

Now this one qualifies as horror!

I don't think it was a happy ending.  I think it was a happy point. 

There was definitely a not-quite-over feeling to the ending.  I like that.

  It was happy for a story of this type. The author could just as easily had the serpent kill Jane, and the speaker be imprisoned for murdering a suspect. compared to that, the ending was suunshine and lollipops.

  Of course the story of the characters isn't over, any work of fiction is only a snapshot of a portion of  the characters' reality, but it's the end of the bit we get to see.

[JoeFitz]

Loved the reading; didn't mind the story; hated the denouement.

[Thaurismunths]

Good story, and a lot of fun. Great opening line.
Was a little disappointed that the Loch Ness monster is an evil daemon.

[deflective]

take heart! there's no way this could have been the loch ness monster; it wasn't looking for 3fiddy.

[Russell Nash]

I missed that this was taking place in the UK.  The first few times they said loch I heard lock.  I kept thinking about deep sea mud from the bottom of the Panama canal or something like that. 

I like the hard-boiled cop stories on PP.  I don't think one of them has been a bust yet.

[DKT]

I missed that this was taking place in the UK.  The first few times they said loch I heard lock. 

I didn't realize that either until the guy referred to his weight in stones.  Even though I understood it had to do with the Loch, I thought maybe he was just an evil tourist or something.  (I'm pretty sure it's because the narrator was American.)

Pretty good story, all in all. 

[Listener]

I didn't care for the story, but I thought it was good, and the reading was good also.

When you have a story that takes place in the UK, though, a UK-based narrator (or someone who can do the accent) would help.

[owildebeest]

 

Am I the only person who found this story pretty rubbish?

I though this story was rather weak on several points:
1. Obviously place was not established well, as like most people i only suspected it might be set here in the UK about 1/4 of the way in. Even then there was no obvious city suggested. It was outside Scotland, but where? Where in the UK was it so quiet and peaceful in the streets during the 70s but also has enough local press to worry about being ambushed by reporters?
2. There were too many police cliches -- am I the only one who cringes at the phrase "I'm getting too old for this shit"?
3. Some of the references -- pubic hair? buttocks? scissors -- scissors from my office. It just seemed silly.
4. The neat wrap-up ending -- somehow they explained away the aftermath and retired and lived happily ever after? Please!

Overall this reminded of me this "horror gem", but read inexplicably by and American.

Sorry to be the negative nancy, but I just don't think this was up to Pseudopod's usual standards.

[eytanz]

I enjoyed this story, but it's already slipping out of my mind. The plot didn't really make sense - Jane contacted the narrator because she had psychic information about the bad guy, but she didn't realize he was a mythological evil serpent until later? What was the information she had in the first place? What was the motivation of the boyfriend? Was he in some sort of cult? Was he aware he was possessed? Was he in control of his actions? Why did he go white at the mention of the Loch? Too many unexplained threads, and it feels to me that answers to some of these questions will contradict the answers to others.

I'm not saying that it's not possible to come up with an explanation for all of this; I'm sure people on this forum are up to it, and if I would have just claimed it was impossible someone would prove me wrong. What I'm trying to say is - I heard the story ten minutes ago, and now if I try to think of it I get a muddle of unanswered loose ends in my mind as the primary impression of it. And I don't feel that this story was aiming for ambiguity.

[MacArthurBug]

This story was okay. Soft in spots, gross in spots, and over all weird. I liked it, didn't love it, didn't hate it. So- good?

[goatkeeper]

Like a bad xfiles episode.  You know when a story has a police capt named "Briggs" that it's gonna be an eye roller.
Speaking of Briggs- I thought he died?  Yet he retires from the force in the end?  Getting stabbed in the chest and then slumping to the floor in a pile of blood seems pretty direct.

[Russell Nash]

Jane contacted the narrator because she had psychic information about the bad guy, but she didn't realize he was a mythological evil serpent until later?

I think she just said something like he's going to kill her and she was scared.  I don't think she had it all figured out.

edit: tupo

[eytanz]

Jane contacted the narrator because she had psychic information about the bad guy, but she didn't realize he was a mythological evil serpent until later?

I think she just said something like he's going to kill her and she was scared.  I don't think she had it all figured out.

edit: tupo

That was later, after she touched the evidence. The narrator explicitly says that the reason they were in the bar to begin with was that she had contacted him saying that she had information and that he should bring something for her to touch.

I guess she could just have had some sort of vague premonition that told her that she could help the investigation even if she didn't know any details yet, but I'm pretty sure the story included the direct quote "I have information".

[Russell Nash]

The part with the bar was from the first case IIRC.  That was how they first met.  This case is several years later-

[eytanz]

The part with the bar was from the first case IIRC.  That was how they first met.  This case is several years later-

Nope.

The story starts in the bar, where she jokes about the cut clitoris (making it clear it's this case, as the first case was a missing infant) and she cries out in shock and gives him the warning. Then there is a flashback about the first case, how it went wrong because of the media, and then he says he hasn't heard from her again until she called him - the call I was referencing above - telling him he had information and asking to arrange the bar meeting.

[Russell Nash]

The part with the bar was from the first case IIRC.  That was how they first met.  This case is several years later-

Nope.

The story starts in the bar, where she jokes about the cut clitoris (making it clear it's this case, as the first case was a missing infant) and she cries out in shock and gives him the warning. Then there is a flashback about the first case, how it went wrong because of the media, and then he says he hasn't heard from her again until she called him - the call I was referencing above - telling him he had information and asking to arrange the bar meeting.

we now see that this story stuck with me even less than it did you.  Kind of funny.  I liked it enough, but it has pretty much slipped away.

[Loz]

Speaking of Briggs- I thought he died?  Yet he retires from the force in the end?  Getting stabbed in the chest and then slumping to the floor in a pile of blood seems pretty direct.

Maybe it's like Russell Crowe's character in LA Confidential, you think he's been killed but he survives to take a cab ride with Kim Basinger.

I thought it was a bit of fun pulpy nonsense but yes, it reminded me of when we had a lady reading a first-person piece with a male protagonist, surely this piece could have been held on to until one of Pseudopod's British readers was free?

[Russell Nash]

Speaking of Briggs- I thought he died?  Yet he retires from the force in the end?  Getting stabbed in the chest and then slumping to the floor in a pile of blood seems pretty direct.

Maybe it's like Russell Crowe's character in LA Confidential, you think he's been killed but he survives to take a cab ride with Kim Basinger.

I thought it was a bit of fun pulpy nonsense but yes, it reminded me of when we had a lady reading a first-person piece with a male protagonist, surely this piece could have been held on to until one of Pseudopod's British readers was free?

There's this guy named Alisdair Stuart.  Wasn't he available?

[Loz]

I've often wondered what the process is for handing stories, sometimes it seems that specific people are asked to do specific stories (like Frank Key the other week) and some times it's random. I suppose it's mostly done on the basis of who's available and able to give up some of their time.

Hmmm, the words 'Escape Artists Staff Christmas Panto' are forcing their way into my head for some reason... 

[Sgarre1]

I'm with Owildebeest.

Didn’t like it. Hard boiled pulp-isms (yawn) may sound better coming from an American but no American says things like “use my guts for garters” (and I have trouble seriously believing any Brit born later than 1890 does either), but there you go.

Cliched. Sorry, not a winner for me.

Thanks for listening

“The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic.”
G.K. Chesterton “The Blue Cross” (1911)

[Unblinking]

It was alright, but didn't really end up rising beyond the hard-boiled cop cliches it started with.  A regional narrator would've been nice too.

[Millenium_King]

I disliked this one.  It felt like the cliche urban horror/hardboiled detective/paranormal crime nonsense that's cropping up everywhere these days (think Anita Blake - but without all the sex).  I was really surprised the protagonist was a cop, rather than a P.I.

Nothing really surprising here: from the killer who drowns his victims supernaturally to the psychic who could see crime by touching an object, it read like a pastiche of all the X-Files/Millenium episodes I've ever seen.  I know for a fact there's an X-Files episode about a psychic who has visions by touching objects and the "they drowned out of water" feels so very, very, very familiar that I am SURE I've seen it before somewhere.

The ending of this story also begs the question: why didn't our protagonist just SHOOT the killer instead of kicking him to death?  I know that some police officers in the UK do not carry guns (as ridiculous as that seems) - but surely someone as high up as this would have a weapon in a shoulder or ankle holster?

All in all, pretty trite and pretty dull.

[Millenium_King]

WARNING: THE BELOW IS JUST MY OPINION

Sorry to double-post, but I wanted to editorialize for a minute: one of the biggest things that bugged me about this story, and turned me off to it immediately, was the opening dialog "hook."  I hate dialog that just floats out there in the beginning of a story.  Steel Beach starts with a similarly ridiculous line ("The penis is obsolete!") - it's just designed to rope the reader in.

Now, there is nothing wrong with a strong "hook" for an opening line (read "Dagon" by HPL for example) - but I hate it when it's done in dialog.  That sort of technique works fine in film; The Godfather, for example, opens with the line "I believe in America" delivered via voice-over on a black screen.  It works in The Godfather because, despite the absence of visual information, we can tell the speaker is male, old and Italian - and probably not a native english speaker.  So much information conveyed by one little sentence.  But in written form, it falls flat on its face: the 1st line of this story is just for shock value and is delivered without any prior establishment of who is saying it, and where he or she is.  Films are successful because of their ability to convey large amounts of information swiftly - written stories cannot succeed on the same merits as films.  A stronger opening would have been something subjective, from the point of view of the character perhaps reflecting on the case from a future perspective (Lovecraft is master of this - read "The Whisperer in Darkness" for a strong example).

[Unblinking]

I know for a fact there's an X-Files episode about a psychic who has visions by touching objects and the "they drowned out of water" feels so very, very, very familiar that I am SURE I've seen it before somewhere.

Psychics having visions by touching objects was not made up by the X-Files either.  Stephen King's The Dead Zone comes to mind, which also spawned a TV series.  And I've seen it in a variety of other places that aren't coming specifically into mind.  I think it might be rooted in some traditions of magic that go way back, but I don't know that specifically.  I'm not saying you should like this story, I'm just saying that pretty much all of the ideas on the X-Files were in turn taken from somewhere else.  There are original ideas out there, but not as many as one might think.  It's okay to use an idea seen somewhere else, it's all in how you use it.

[Unblinking]

Ah, "psychometry" is the word I was looking for.  It's not as old a concept as I suspected, but it's still quite old, according to Wikipedia having been coined 160 years ago.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychometry_(paranormal)

I think I first came across the concept in a D&D-style choose your own adventure book when I was in grade school.  When you set up your character at the beginning you could choose any one of a set of magical disciplines--the magical equivalent of psychometry was one of them.  It was quite handy, though I had more fun with the summoning of elementals. 

[Millenium_King]

That's true - but the criticism that this episode came across as an X-Files ripoff still stands.  In my opinion, both the concepts and the execution were unoriginal.

[Fenrix]

That's true - but the criticism that this episode came across as an X-Files ripoff still stands.  In my opinion, both the concepts and the execution were unoriginal.

X-Files is a ripoff of the Twilight Zone with the bolted-on lame excuse of trying to weave in some meta-plot. Nothing can be original to a jaded consumer.

[Millenium_King]

This may be a little off-topic, but...

While I agree, the X-Files wasn't a total ripoff of the Twilight Zone: both are real products of their respective eras.  The Twilight Zone was crammed with American jingoism and cold-war paranoia - while the X-Files pursued a more Gen-X cynicism and distrust of traditional values and government.

Both were not original in subject matter, but were original in their perspective on it.

Back to the story...  This story did not offer an original perspective on an old idea.  That's why I was bored with it.

[Unblinking]

Back to the story...  This story did not offer an original perspective on an old idea.  That's why I was bored with it.

Fair enough.  I just thought it worth pointing out that few ideas are original, X-Files least of all (though I did like the show).  It's sort of like the "Simpsons did it!" argument.  If you avoided every plot that has occurred on The Simpsons, well, there wouldn't be much left.

[Fenrix]

MK, you read the words, but missed the point. Bless your heart. I get the impression that you're jaded and have oversaturated yourself. I hope your search for happiness and satisfaction goes well.

[Talia]

Bless your heart.

Heheh. Are you an American southerner, by any chance? :p

[Scattercat]

In all fairness, this is a pretty weak story.  It relies very heavily on cliches and doesn't rise above its monster-of-the-week cop-show roots.  I don't really get the sense that it was trying to, and certainly not everything has to be a heartbreaking work of staggering genius, but it's a very workaday story.  I think the comparison to an unimpressive X-Files episode is apt.  (Or a filler episode of Buffy.  Really, any supernatural conflict show with an overplot that needed to kill an hour every now and then with something neither deep nor memorable.)  There's a boilerplate cop and a boilerplate monster, they fight, and Good wins.  Hooray.

Heck, most people couldn't even figure out the setting.  If that's not a sign that a story isn't working all that hard, then I don't know what is.

[Millenium_King]

MK, you read the words, but missed the point. Bless your heart. I get the impression that you're jaded and have oversaturated yourself. I hope your search for happiness and satisfaction goes well.

1.  "Jaded and oversaturated?" Maybe.  If you'll notice, I've been tearing through the entire PP archives.  But I've always been a difficult critic to please.

2. "Happiness?"  Well - no offense to PP - but I doubt I'll find lifelong happiness and fulfillment in a short story.  But, I have found more than a few which I've liked immensely.  I am compiling a "Top 10" list.  It's not done, but you can see it here:  http://ankorsabat.blogspot.com/

Bless your heart too!