Author Topic: Pseudopod 009: Counting From Ten  (Read 3283 times)

Bdoomed

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on: October 07, 2009, 04:00:01 AM
Pseudopod 009: Counting From Ten

By Michael Montoure
Read by JC Hutchins

Jack shoved his chair back, stood, backed away, turned at the last minute and carefully did not run down the hallway to the bathroom. He walked, and raided his medicine cabinet for gauze, alcohol, tape, anything that looked useful.

He came back, led Tommy over to the kitchen sink, and carefully pulled the bandages off.

Tommy’s right hand had only the ring finger and thumb left.



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kibitzer

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Reply #1 on: October 07, 2009, 10:59:02 AM
ooh, just remembered. this one is nasty, just vendetta loser nasty.

loved it.


Unblinking

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Reply #2 on: October 07, 2009, 05:17:59 PM
I really enjoyed this one.  It carried a sense of inevitability that magnified everything that was happening.  Never once did I catch a hint that he could ever get out of this, and losing the fingers one by one is just so terrible.  Genius!

I did see the double-cross coming, but I wasn't bothered by the fact that I saw it coming.  It just added to the inevitability that I liked so much.

The ending was really good, and I didn't see it coming.  I like how the goals of the protagonist shifts at the end from trying to save the fingers, to trying to save his friend any more torture than he has to go through.

The Gypsy-style curse is kind of a worn out trope, in general, but this story made it seem fresh and new with a new sort of curse and well written characters.



Fenrix

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Reply #3 on: October 23, 2009, 11:52:54 PM
This has been one of my favorite pseudopods so far. The reading style was good, and the voices were consistent and well differentiated. The story was solid and had a good sense of building dread.

All cat stories start with this statement: “My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...”


Millenium_King

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Reply #4 on: August 25, 2010, 07:49:41 PM
This was a fantastic little story.  Total classic.  Voodoo curses, gruesome punishment, vengeful spirits and nothing but dashed hopes.  One of the best stories here.  The only thing that's causing me to keep it out of the Top 10 is the ending - I thought it was great, but the gun jamming then exploding violated my suspension of disbelief, voodoo curse notwithstanding.  It's pretty unlikely that a modern gun would (or even could) explode with such force after a jam.  Blackpowder weapons?  Sure.  But that is a whole different animal.  However, I might have believed it if the gun had been particularly high-caliber (say a .357 magnum or a .50 cal) and its recoil had torn the finger off (even that's a bit of a stretch, though - Tommy's weak grip also notwithstanding).

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