Pseudopod 328: The Suicide WitchBy Vylar Kaftan.
“The Suicide Witch” originally appeared in
Daily Science Fiction, July 2012 and can be read
here. She says “I wrote this story for the Codex Halloween contest. Codex is an online group of professional writers, and every year we trade “seeds” to spark new stories. My seed for this story was to write about a mortician who glues hair for special events. Clearly I have some funny ideas about how morticians live.”
VYLAR KAFTAN has published about 40 short stories in places such as
Asimov’s, Lightspeed, and
Clarkesworld. She’s the founder of a new literary-themed science fiction convention in the San Francisco Bay Area called
FOGcon, which happens in March (click link under the name). She was nominated for a
Nebula in 2011 and blogs at
here. Her novella which will be out in
Asimov’s in the February issue - it’s an alternate history in which the Incan Empire survives into the 19th century, and bargains with America for a smallpox vaccine.
Your reader this week -
Rikki LaCoste - is the creator and co-host of the metaphysical and esoterically flavoured podcast,
Kakophonos Internet Radio available for free from iTunes. At this time,
Kakophonos is undergoing a further incarnation, so if you visit
www.kakophonos.com or search iTunes and cannot find it, check back again in a couple of weeks. His odd, informative, and provocative show often collapses into the silly and the absurd whenever it begins to get a little too serious. Rikki is a writer of
strange articles on occult subjects, is a musician and the creator of
Panthea, the co-creator of a cartoon strip about Aleister Crowley, a Hermetic Philosopher, a Ceremonial Magician, a summoner of daemons, and teaches piano to happy little children. He currently lives just East of Toronto in a dubious little house that emits strange sounds and eldrich odours all hours of the night..
“The suicide witch crushes glass in her leather gloves. Shards crumble like crackers over soup, filling her metal bucket. The witch’s fingers squeak together in the damp cellar air. Glitter escapes over the worktable’s edge, like white stars vanishing in the low torchlight. A peasant girl lies dead on a funeral board, her dress nailed to the wood in thirteen places.
The witch’s name is Yim, but none call her that. She lives under the noble house of Jiang in the province of Kung-lao, in a cellar with puddles like rice paddies. In the summer, fat flies buzz around her face until she swats them down. In the winter, her knees ache, and she coughs in the dampness as if she were an old hag. But Yim’s ragged hair is black without silver, and her face shows no lines. She can still see in the dark.”
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