EP026: The Ludes

[Swamp]

EP026: The Ludes

By Lisa M. Bradley.
Read by Stephen Eley.

That might seem funny to those who’ve ever bothered to attend these performances, to say that someone didn’t belong. The audience is always a motley sort–faculty and spouses, local musicians and artists, music students and jocks who have to attend so many of these things to get credit for required courses, waitresses and office workers desperate for some culture, their school-age children (alternately awed and bored to tears), homeless folks who need a warm place to sleep for a couple of hours, mentally and physically handicapped folks hauled out as someone’s idea of a good deed, and, of course, recreational drug users with nothing better to do.

Still, he didn’t belong. He was Gothic. Not like those kids who hang out at Hot Topic and think wearing black nail polish expresses their inner turmoil, their eternal angst. I’d seen Goths there before and he wasn’t Goth, he was Gothic–dark and looming, faintly chivalrous in manner, seemingly possessed of a great, tragic secret. I thought of Bronte’s Heathcliff.

Rated R. Contains drug use, some profanity, and codependent creatures of darkness.


Listen to this week’s Escape Pod!

[monkeystuff]

wtf...  I mean really go see the creepy guy at his place?  I dont' think i would have been strung out on drugs or went to visit the vampire.  didn't really connect to the characters.  But it was a nice dark story that was a bit enjoyable.

[Unblinking]

I didn't really get into this one.  I didn't understand his fascination with the other guy.  I didn't really relate to his choice to live life in a drug-addled haze.  I didn't understand his fascination with the gothic man.  It was an okay concept, but didn't really wow me. And why does this druggie have this affect on the vamp that no other druggie has had?