Tag: horror

FP441 – Deliver Me From Evil

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode four hundred and forty-one.

Flash PulpTonight we present Deliver Me From Evil

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by The Melting Potcast!

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight there’s a man outside. He’s coming up the walk. Are you ready?

 

Deliver Me From Evil

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

FP441 - Deliver Me From Evil

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP408 – Bug Report

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode four hundred and eight.

Flash PulpTonight we present Bug Report

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Paul Cooley’s The Black

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we present a chilling tale of long distance miscommunication and the intimacy of strangers.

 

Bug Report

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

FP408 - Bug Report

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP406 – The Blue Mask

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode four hundred and six.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Blue Mask

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Pop Mockers

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we find ourselves visitors to the shores of the Island of Corosia, and walk among the contagions that rage across it.

 

The Blue Mask

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

The island nation of Corosia supported two cities of size and a dozen hamlets yet unconsumed by the urban march. To its many passers-through there was a familiarity about the nation that had been carried to its shores in the suitcases of beach-bound tourists and over the satellite signals pirated by its inhabitants. It was in the cut of the military uniforms worn at checkpoints and by billboard-displayed leaders; it was in the brightly coloured t-shirts worn by the nation’s teenagers; it was in the chords and rhythms of the music leaking from open-windowed vehicles and kitchen radios.

The beauty of the spot, mixed with its location along the tradewinds, had left it a thick history of exposure to the shifting tide of inquisitive outsiders. Many gods had once swept ashore, then many prophets, then, finally, those mock deities broadcast to the heavens from studios abroad.

Yet, in spite of this familiarity, or perhaps because of it, there was also a deeply ingrained skepticism to Corosian society.

There were few who would not lend a traveller a ride along the isle’s dusty roads, but all would be sure to later joke that they’d checked afterwards that the stranger hadn’t stolen the seat.

Still, the Corosians were as upset as the rest of the world at the televised collapse of the town of Harthomas, Pennsylvania.

Every Western news network shifted its unsleeping gaze to the events in Harthomas, and legends regarding the misinformation in those transmissions would spring up almost as quickly as the arrival of commercial breaks. For forty-eight hours the world observed the quarantined population of ten thousand collapse into madness even as their government raced for a cure.

The footage of weeping faces and inexplicable undertakings was only interrupted by the occasional newsdesk rebuttal to federal suggestions to discontinue broadcasting. Whatever say in the matter the powers in question held, answered the blazer wearing anchors, they had lost it when they’d allowed the virus to escape a research laboratory just south of Pittsburgh.

So viewers watched while packs of wailing children swept through the streets of Harthomas, their arms raised in trembling need of a hug, and as a suddenly famous hard-faced bank teller led them on an extended, if eventually futile, chase. They watched as lovers held each other tightly for hours, their tears staining each other’s shoulder, until, without warning to the patrolling news drones above, they cast themselves down from rooftops and balconies. They watched as crowds of fifteen and twenty would wrap their arms about each other in solace-seeking knots, their chests heaving with their tears, until dehydration and exposure would take them, though their corpses were held in place until the weight of the decaying human web simply became too much for those few fatigued mourners who remained.

FP406 - The Blue MaskThe Melancholy, as it came to be called, was thus well known to the Corosians – although, as the coverage spread into rumours that cases of infection had carried beyond the perimeter of the quarantine, the isle’s inhabitants took some comfort, in the thankful moments of their kitchen table prayers, that there was an ocean between their families and the troubles.

As the threat crept, on aircraft wings and on the decks of fishing boats, ever closer along the chain of islands that flanked their home, deception also slipped into their ears.

Their leaders began to appear before crowds and microphones to declare the illness a conspiracy, a tactic of the greed-stricken developers who had long lusted for their pristine coasts and unending sunshine. Just that week, they declared, they had turned back offers to have the men and women in their thick rubber suits arrive and lay out their needles and tents supposedly intended to heal. With great confidence the khaki-garbed rulers scoffed, pointing out that it was only upon such invasions that their neighbours had even begun to grow sick.

Truly, they said, such ministrations carried sickness, not the cure.

This version of reality gave succor to many, but there were some who doubted.

One such, a physician of some renown who had gathered knowledge from many lands before settling in the place of her birth, was known to publicly ask, “what of the terrible images they’d seen from the heart of the persecutors’ own lands?”

“It is said their black arts can tailor plagues to any need. Obviously a controlled release is simply a tactic to make them appear free of guilt as they steal what they could not buy,” came the response. “If they were willing to do such things to their own people, what mercy would they have for those they wished to unseat?”

The physician was told to hold her tongue.

Divine appeals continued. Rites were planned. Breath was held.

It was not long before any who might be considered tainted by distant infection, visitor or resident alike, were expelled or sent into hiding; be they at hand to help the impoverished at the island’s core, or simply to enjoy the sands along its edges.

Faith became central. In some quarters forgotten gods were resurrected and invoked. Offerings were left upon shop stoops and in the entranceways of homes. Smiling faces in costly suits declared a cure had arrived, but the images from but a few shores away made salvation seem no closer than the newscasters themselves.

Soon the Corosians turned to the traditions that had been handed to them from grandparent to parent.

A night of ceremonies was planned – masquerades of a sort, a culturally ingrained ritual of prayer and pleas for celestial amnesty.

Little could they have known that the infection had been carried into their midst – even as they donned garb in every shade and moved through the customs of dance and religious observance – by fisher folk who’d secreted cousins from the nearby danger, and by smugglers too destitute to give up the opportunity of providing much needed supplies to their beleaguered neighbours.

Nor did the Corosians realize that they themselves then spread the contagion through their sacramental sweat, consoling embraces, and profured handshakes.

On the soft beaches of a half-dozen villages countenances of red, yellow, and green hoped for safety, their exhortations aimed to move a power they thought greater than their own, but, as masked faces, both angelic and demonic, mingled in the shadow of the mountain that marked Corosia’s heart, the most important fact among their missing knowledge was the identity behind the soft-smirk of a sole blue mask roaming the islands eastern edge.

Years later it would be realized that it was their own daughter behind the cerulean visage – the very physician who had warned against isolation. Yet, she was twice as infectious as any other. With every flung droplet of sweat, with every passing brush of exposed flesh, she spread a sickness of her own design, her advanced craft having allowed her to engineer a curative epidemic so furious it would eventually wipe clean the plague of irrationality already incubating in the population.

For that evening, however, the mask simply grinned.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FPSE23 – The Myth of the Big Game

Welcome to Flash Pulp, special episode twenty-three.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Myth of the Big Game
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Nutty Bites

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we relate to you a most dangerous urban legend from the sick beds of Capital City and beyond.

 

The Myth of the Big Game

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

A Skinner Co. Network Podcast
For more on this urban legend visit the Flash Pulp wiki!

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Intro and outro work provided by Jay Langejans of The New Fiction Writers podcast.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP327 – Of the Old School

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and twenty-seven.

Flash PulpTonight we present Of the Old School, Part 1 of 1
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by the Parsecs!

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, we present a tale of the generation gap, creeping terror, and childish misadventure.

 

Of the Old School

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

She didn’t enjoy talking to people – especially folks she didn’t know – but Octavia Archer was determined to offload some Thin Mints.

Sometimes that required patience.

Flash Pulp Horror Podcast“I’m of the old school,” Mrs. Hemming, her current prospective-customer, was saying through a thin-lipped mouth, “but it strikes me that a girl your age shouldn’t be out running around by herself.”

The girl thought, “should I be off learning to cook instead?” but said nothing.

The pair were standing in the front hall of a Victorian-style house that smelled of dust, with the scout holding a bag full of cookies and the old woman grasping two boxes of the sweets while peering into a velvet change purse.

Octavia had often heard urban legends, mostly ghost stories, about the residence, but the girl’s mother had taught her to know that no one could afford such a palace without having some money, even if the place did appear to be collapsing in slow motion.

As the young Archer was preparing to clear her throat in impatience, a train entered the hall. Its approach came in jerky inches, and its choice of direction looked to be largely decided by the coincidence of its orientation after impacting on the floral print of the opposite wall.

“Is that a robot?” asked Octavia.

It moved like a cheap Christmas present her little brother would love, but the two foot high and three foot long engine was made of wood and brass ornamentation. It was painted in a mint green, with gold accents, and its domes and chimney were entwined in an intricate pattern of carved loops. While the thing’s rubber wheels rolled across the oak floor she heard a tick-tick-tick which put her immediately in mind of the baseball cards she sometimes saw in kids’ bike’s spokes.

“Not as you’re used to,” responded Hemming, “My toys were built using ancient techniques, not electricity. As you can see, there’s no plastic involved. Except for his rollers, there’s nothing involved that my mother couldn’t have accomplished in her day.”

At the sound of her voice, the locomotive began a wide turn, seeking its builder.

“There’s also a whistle that I wrought with my own hands, but he never uses it.”

“Huh,” said Octavia. “I’ve got change for a twenty if that’s all you can find.”

Hemming turned from her creation to the girl. Her lips flattened and her nose twitched, but her eyes sparkled.

“Most children have forgotten how to be polite in the last two decades,” said the woman. “Nevermind, though: Come with me, I’ve got a jar with some extra paper money in the basement, but I’m afraid I’ll need you to grab it for me – I’m not as nimble as I was.”

Without waiting for an answer, she departed. It was the sort of house that swallowed noise, and, after turning a corner, the tinkerer seemed to have been absorbed by the rotting walls.

“Tick, tick, tick,” said the approaching train.

Octavia followed.

* * *

The basement appeared to have been fully furnished once, but the side rooms that the youth passed on her way to her supposed payment were now filled with carpentry tools, work benches, and pencil-scrawled diagrams.

Some of the spaces contained more automatons: A half-cabinet/half-man construction whose aimlessly swinging arms looked, to Octavia, like a Rock’em-Sock’em Robot without a partner; a crudely-carved dog that crawled with the same painful inching as the train above, but whose spindly unmoving legs the Girl Scout decidedly did not like; and a series of three boxes that she thought of as moving sculptures – a waving flower, a writhing snake, and a woman’s arm.

It was the limb that made the girl stop. The flower looked to be largely made of felt, and the snake was built from a series of overlapping cloth rings that gave the thing cartoonish scales. The arm, however, was slender, smooth, and absolutely realistic.

Octavia did the math, decided she could simply cover the two missing boxes out of her own allowance, and began to reverse.

“Thank you, thank you, you can pay me later,” she announced, but her hostess had disappeared into yet another chamber filled with tools.

Uninterested in waiting for her return, the girl ignored the pathetic imitation of a mutt that had begun to follow as she made her way to the stairs.

From within her increasingly distant room, Hemming was saying, “I’m of the old school. Survival skills were important then. You youth, you’re all too couch-bound to run, too used to the safety of your carefully padded existences to recognize danger.”

The girl was nearly to the bannister when the train rolled its last. Octavia had left the door at the top open, and as the machine’s cow catcher cleared the first step, it let fly with its whistle. It’s flight was not long, nor graceful, and its descent was largely spent bouncing end-over-end with increasing momentum.

It stopped when it came up against the stone and mortar wall, but not until its oak frame had split and its brass bells had scattered.

Within the wreckage was also the ruin of a man. His left arm had been chipped away, as with a chisel, and his right had been bound tightly to his chest so long ago that his body had grown around the leather and chrome of the belt. Beside him lay the panel that had made up the bottom of his conveyance, and the girl noted a small window that she assumed enabled him to claw at the floor. It was his sole form of transportation, for, where his legs ought to have been, he had only flailing stumps topped in pink scar tissue.

He attempted to say something to Octavia as he died, but his tongueless mouth summoned just whistles and clicks.

“I think he was trying to warn you, but he stopped you instead,” Hemming said into the girl’s right ear.

Octavia did not always agree with her mother, but she knew one thing about the woman: She was of the new school, and she had raised her daughter to be so as well.

The pepper spray cleared the girl’s pocket before her intended attacker could raise her axe from her shoulder, and the modern science of desmethyldihydrocapsaicin flooded the woman’s eyes and nose.

In the time it took to leap the train wreck and sprint out the front door, Octavia had already begun to shout directions to the 911 operator on the other end of her cell phone.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP322 – Emergency

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode three hundred and twenty-two.

Flash PulpTonight we present Emergency, Part 1 of 1
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by The Way of the Buffalo podcast

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight we join Grady Pitts inside a downtown hospital.

 

Emergency

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

As the storm drifted by outside, Grady Pitts shifted in a futile effort to restore feeling in the lower half of his body. He’d held his position for three hours, and his legs had long moved past pins-and-needles and into general numbness.

ChillerTo the left of the bench-row of plastic chairs he was watching a couple of twenty-somethings fretting their way through paperwork while their infant daughter wailed from inside her bright pink car seat. Her mother was rifling a thick purse as the father used his non-writing hand to ineffectually rock the bassinet by its carrying arm.

Grady wondered if maybe the girl had a pea up her nose. Decades earlier, when he was five and his brother was three, he’d shoved a frozen pea deep in his nostril, and, to Pitts’ ear, the girl’s shrill complaint sounded almost identical to his sibling’s terrified cry.

There was a terse exchange between the parents, concluded by a “you said you were going to bring it” from Mom that was too loud to be concealed beneath CNN’s constant muttering, and the woman turned a furious gaze on the room, seeming to dare others to note the disturbance.

Pitts wheeled away and attempted to look as if he hadn’t been staring by generally facing the television mounted on the wall.

There was a big man in dirty mechanic’s overalls sitting beneath the screen, and Pitts’ focus soon drifted to the frayed-edged blue towel wrapped around his right wrist. Blood had soaked through the cloth, and a spatter of drops had mixed with the oil stains on his pant legs. Despite the apparent severity of the injury, the fellow’s face was calm – almost bored – and Grady began to scrutinize his distant state of mind.

Had narcotics caused the man’s accident?

The flow increased from a drip to a steady stream of pooling red, at which point Grady could no longer watch.

Where were the nurses? Why wasn’t the line moving?

There was nothing for it but to keep waiting.

Now trapped between the squabbling parents and the leaking mechanic, Pitts took to counting the ceiling tiles, shuffling a nearby stack of magazines, then, finally, simply staring at the back of the head of the blond woman one row over from his own.

At first Grady believed she was napping, and that the gentle bob and roll of her shoulders was simply the result of snoring, but he was soon convinced she was actually weeping silently. He considered moving to her side and asking if he might be of assistance – at the worst perhaps talking would ease her wait – but he forgot the idea when she was approached by a man he assumed to be her husband.

He wore a gray polo shirt, and the the majority of his face had been removed by some unknown violence, though a sliver of the detached bone remained protruding from the gore of his exposed brain. He appeared impatient for a man on the cusp of death, but Pitts found his own attention drawn to a pulsing within the naked gray matter.

After a few moments a tutting aimed in his direction pulled him away from his morbid fascination, and he turned to see that an orderly in white was beckoning.

“Finally,” said Grady, “bout time I get service.”

Before he could rise, however, the hospital worker frowned and said, “you can’t be here, Mr. Pitts. This is an emergency room, not a bus stop, and your muttering is scaring the patients. If you’re in need of help speak with the shrink at the shelter, because there’s nothing we can do for you here.”

Thus dismissed, Grady collected his tattered ball cap and grocery bags. The rain had briefly broken, and he was eager to be free of the sickness surrounding him.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP295 – The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 1 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and ninety-five.

Flash PulpTonight we present The Murder Plague: Fencing, Part 1 of 3
(Part 1Part 2Part 3)
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This week’s episodes are brought to you by Nutty Bites.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Harm Carter finds a home for himself amongst the infected maniacs.

 

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

The door to the house on Washington was open, but not too open. The driveway was abandoned and the garage left gaping at the street. The backyard faced onto other cookie-cutter suburban homes, but the front had a wide view of a playground that provided no place to hide. The exterior had the look of factory aged faux-brickwork, and the hedges had been painstakingly maintained before having run riot during the plague times.

It was exactly what I was searching for.

At first, though, I walked past it.

The Murder PlagueNow, I should clarify, it wasn’t as if I was strolling about like a grandmother on her way back from Sunday service. The madness of Hitchcock’s Disease had fully gripped my mind by then, and I managed forward momentum only through slow progress and carefully affected casualness.

I thought the rules had changed since entering the city. While hidden riflemen were an issue in the country, anyone crazy enough to shoot a stranger on sight was also too scared to give away their position so easily. So long as I wasn’t rushed by a knife-wielding maniac, I reasoned, I’d be OK.

That’s not how Hitchock’s works, of course – it was always more important to worry about the smiling man with extended hand than the risk that a slasher film villain would come barreling onto the street – but the viral fear running amok in my veins couldn’t consider that far.

Anyhow, I went around the block, moving cautiously, but not so cautiously that I appeared paranoid. Or so I hoped. Everything seemed a threat. A recycling bin brimming with plastic bottles, no doubt forgotten at the roadside during a panicked evacuation, became an improvised explosive device. The abode on the corner, whose door was slamming against its protruding deadbolt with every tug and thrust of the wind, was obviously a deathtrap bristling with shotguns and poisoned broken glass.

Every window contained a watcher, and every useful item I passed was clearly set there to lure me into danger. In my mind my chosen neighbourhood was against me, but I was smart, and sober, and sane, and I would use this clarity to kill any one of those murderous bastards who might attempt to show their heads.

This mix of anxiety and twisted justification carried me back to the molded-cement stoop of 276 Washington.

I did not pause in my approach, as I worried it would give extra time to anyone inside. Despite the fact that the house met the careful criteria I’d worked up during my walk, any delay was an excuse to envision a thousand threats, and my stomach was a knot. I was well into convincing myself that the whole thing was a trick when I finally entered the front hall, but, when I flipped the deadbolt it was like erecting a wall to keep the world out.

I immediately began to fear whatever might lurk beyond the barrier more than whatever might lurk on the second floor.

Moving through a small sitting area, I ignored the staircase and beelined to the kitchen. I located a stout knife, and, after some cupboard fumbling, a flashlight. I searched the ground level, then searched it again. I descended into the unfinished basement – largely used for storage – and turned over the boxes of Christmas decorations and photo albums. Just in case.

When I returned to the main floor, I searched it again. While arguing with myself about being trapped inside, I shuffled around the living room furniture to block the french doors that lead to the back patio.

Finally, I climbed the stairs.

Seven doors. Subtract two, as one was an open closet that had clearly been raided for blankets in a hurry and the other was a laundry room that stood empty in the gloom. The entry on my left I revealed a wall dominated by a slightly risque poster of a woman washing a sports car, and a number of logos and pictures from a number of bands that I’d likely complain about if I were to ever hear their music. I popped my head in and the place was a mess of clothing dunes and forgotten soda cans. Turning back, I scanned the bathroom, then encountered a home office that looked like it had never been fully unpacked despite being used regularly. Next came a nearly antiseptic bedroom, with a plush bed and a flatscreen on the opposing wall. I assumed it was the parents. The final chamber belonged to a girl of perhaps nine. There was a large framed picture of the family on her shelf, but I wasn’t terribly interested anymore as it didn’t seem as if any of them were on the cusp of leaping out to stab me.

Of course, my inspection hadn’t been about trying to piece together who these people were – no, I was allowed only to think in terms of traps and advantages. Could I use that lamp as a weapon? Perhaps I could rig it to the windows somehow to electrify the pane? Was that a murderer in the closet? No, it was just a Halloween mask hung on hook – but could I use the guise somehow? Was there some worth in a scarecrow? Perhaps as bait?

– and so it went until I noticed the spidery fellow.

From the shelter of the pink curtain I could see a square of 6 backyards – my own, the two on either side of my little plot, and most of those belonging to the three houses that faced us.

The creeper moved slowly. He’d peep over the fence, scan the windows of the house, then pull himself over. He was methodical about it, and every enclosure took at least ten minutes to clear. I can’t say exactly what he was seeking, but I suspect food. I did see him try one patio, but it was locked. Rather than shatter the glass and draw attention, he’d simply turned to analyze the next residence.

He’d made it perhaps a third of the way across the lawn directly behind my own when he disappeared.

The turf seemed to fall away beneath him, and I caught a brief flash of aqua blue ceramic tile, then the spring that held up the plank’s hinge must have snapped back into place. There was not a disordered blade of grass, and, even having just seen the trap door magic trick, I didn’t entirely believe it had taken place. At least, I wouldn’t have if it weren’t for the screaming.

The potato sack sound of his landing made it obvious that the pool was drained – and rather deep.

It was then that I realized I likely had a neighbour.

(Part 1Part 2Part 3)

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP280 – Ruby Departed: Circles, Part 3 of 3

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and eighty.

Flash PulpTonight we present Ruby Departed: Circles, Part 3 of 3
(Part 1Part 2Part 3)
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(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Radio Project X.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, Ruby attempts to save a life not from the shambling dead, but, instead, from post-apocalyptic justice.

 

Ruby Departed: Circles, Part 3 of 3

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

Ruby Departed

Story text to be posted.

(Part 1Part 2Part 3)

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

FP277 – Identification, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode two hundred and seventy-seven.

Flash PulpTonight we present Identification, Part 1 of 1

[audio:http://traffic.libsyn.com/skinner/FlashPulp277.mp3]Download MP3
(RSS / iTunes)

 

This week’s episodes are brought to you by Strangely Literal.

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, we tell a chilling tale regarding a risky child in a neighbourhood of constant hazard.

 

Identification

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

ChillerNathaniel Minor had been born with a curious inability to identify danger.

On a September Monday, at the age of ten, Nathaniel had selected his blue and white striped shirt – his favourite, and thus the first be worn after a weekend’s laundry – folded it neatly on his dresser, then tested the temperature by walking out onto the back deck in nothing more than the underpants he’d slept in.

An early-autumn chill drove him back inside, and into a warm pair of jogging pants.

After devouring a bowl of lucky charms, and planting a kiss on his Mother’s distracted cheek,
he was ready to march the three blocks to school.

As he closed the door behind him, Mrs. Minor provided her usual instructions. “Head straight there, no talking to strangers, no goofing around. Be good, love you, Nate. Bye.”

His initial stop came at the midpoint of the chain-link fence that marked the border between the sidewalk and the row of townhouses that marched alongside it.

He began digging through his bright yellow knapsack, and, as he did so, a burly Labrador Retriever he called Mumphrey came bolting through the sliding patio door of the nearest rental unit. Though the animal’s speed made it tough to identify why he thought so, Nathaniel was left with the impression that his visitor was in even more ragged a condition than usual.

Minor had decided to befriend the mutt earlier that summer, when he’d watched the red-brown canine step onto the small porch that lead to the backyard. There was something to the way the dog stood testing the air that reminded Nathaniel of himself, and he’d spent fifteen minutes in idle conversation with his new chum before settling on the name.

The child had also concluded that Mumphrey’s owners must sleep late, as the Lab seemed in constant need of food when he strolled by – why else would the four-legged beast leap against the fence while barking and generally causing a ruckus?

As he’d done every morning since, the boy retrieved the single slice of bologna from his sandwich, and, careful not to dirty his hand with mayo, he tossed it over the metal links.

Mumphrey ceased his intemperate barking to gobble down the processed meat, then he immediately returned to his assault on the barrier. Nathaniel, however, had already moved on.

At the corner the youth encountered Tobias Swanson, his constant companion since an incident the summer previous, in which the slightly older boy had pulled a sputtering Nate from too-deep water at the local beach.

Their conversation began as it had ended the afternoon previous, when they’d parted on the same spot.

“Maybe you’re right about absorbing his atomic breath,” said Tobias, “but King Kong would still be defeated by Godzilla’s physical attacks. He’s got, like, blades on his back and a huge biting mouth. What can King Kong do? Throw his own poo?”

Nathaniel shrugged. He did not have his friend’s love of giant monster films, but he always did his best to carry his part of the conversation.

“Kong is a great climber. He’d get up on top of a building and start chucking people and antennas and stuff.”

“Being hit in the nose by a guy in a business suit isn’t exactly going to stop Godzilla,” replied Tobias.

The debate continued for the rest of the long block, until they encountered a schoolmate known largely as Bull.

“You ladies headed to school?” he asked.

“Aren’t you?” asked Nathaniel.

“Nuh-uh, I’m sick. Mom called and told ‘em – but you ain’t going today either.”

The day before the start of classes, while loitering at the McKinley Playground, Bull had convinced the fearless boy to climb a massive elm. Tobias had been late in returning from his piano lessons, and, by the time he’d arrived, it had been necessary to scale the tree to its midpoint just to have his shouts of “come down!” be heard.

As Nathaniel finally dropped the last few feet to the ground, he’d found his friend weeping anxious tears. It was the sight of his worry that had turned Bull into an enemy of both.

When news of the incident had reached Mrs. Minor over a soothing pair of chocolate milks, she’d been quick to inform her son he was out of the tree climbing business, as well as that of talking to Bull.

To her son her word was law – and it was only this notion that had kept him safe against his peculiar defect.

“Great,” said Nathaniel, as he attempted to edge around his antagonist, “you enjoy hanging out with your mom. We’ve gotta go.”

The problem, of course, was that the apparent act of courage had simply goaded the ruffian further.

“No, I don’t think you heard me, you’re -”

Tobias put his arm out in an attempt to motion the obstruction aside, and Bull responded with his fist.

For a moment Nathaniel stood still, not quite sure how to react – then he caught the split in his comrade’s lip.

Although the violence had baffled him, blood was something his mother had ruled on: Blood meant finding an adult, or at least a phone, as quickly as possible.

He bolted for home.

“Hell no, you ain’t tellin’,” said Bull, as he began to follow.

The accidental daredevil’s speed was also his downfall. A full tilt run had left him with a cramp, and, as he neared Mumphrey’s home, he was forced to slow.

It was the sight of the half-open door, and the memory of his friend’s red chin, that compelled Nathaniel to clamber onto the chain link.

Close up the maroon vertical blinds he’d seen so often from the road were filthy, and the smell wafting from the interior reminded the schoolboy of his mother’s cooking on liver and onion night.

“I need to use your phone, my friend is bleeding,” Nathaniel told the shadows beyond the slats.

When he received no reply, he pushed inside, unaware of Bull jumping the fence behind him.

The attempted-rescuer entered the galley kitchen as the young thug slipped into the living room. The unit’s cooking space was nothing more than an L-shaped counter and a single-seated white-topped table, but there was a second exit, at the far end, which opened onto the front hallway. Much to Nathaniel’s disappointment, there was no phone on the wall to match the one hung in his own home, so he turned a quick eye over the greasy wallpaper and heavily scratched cupboard doors, then moved on to the opposite hall.

As he stepped through, Bull’s Nikes touched down on the dirt-covered linoleum.

Oblivious to the trail of mud which stained the stairs, Nathaniel decided to expand his search to the upper floor.

“Mumphrey?” he asked, as he climbed, but still he received no response.

He found a phone, finally, in the master bedroom. It stood on a small black nightstand beside the decaying carcass of its owner.

The room had been decorated in a variety of unicorn posters, a theme broken only by the black slab of television that had been hung alongside them. What lingered of their owner – a once rotund woman of forty – lay spread across the shimmering moonlight scene of her bedspread.

In many places her remains were little more than bones, as the Labrador, having emptied his dish a month previous, could not afford to be sentimental regarding his meals.

“That’s pretty gross,” Nathaniel said aloud.

It was then that Bull rushed the doorway – but, before he might tackle his target, his feet seemed to meet a terrible resistance at what his mind was observing.

He screamed.

The noise was enough to raise Mumphrey, who’d been dreaming of light and colour and meat in the coolest corner of its den, the bath tub.

The dog awoke hungry.

It paused briefly at its feeding room, to snort Nate’s mix of running sweat and deodorant, then it moved on.

Bull was nearly to the ground floor by the time the canine had picked up his urine-tainted scent, but, nonetheless, it was a tight race to the fence.

Still inside, Nathaniel closed the bedroom door against the noise, and, with a steady hand, dialed home.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Freesound.org credits:

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to comments@flashpulp.com – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.

Flash Pulp 140 – Bearing, Part 1 of 1

Welcome to Flash Pulp, episode one hundred and forty.

Flash Pulp

Tonight we present, Bearing, Part 1 of 1

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This week’s episodes are brought to you by the artistic variety of the Nutty Bites Podcast.

Find out more at http://nimlas.org/blog/

 

Flash Pulp is an experiment in broadcasting fresh pulp stories in the modern age – three to ten minutes of fiction brought to you Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings.

Tonight, we enter the home of a family in transition – a family on the cusp of a life-altering move.

 

Flash Pulp 140 – Bearing, Part 1 of 1

Written by J.R.D. Skinner
Art and Narration by Opopanax
and Audio produced by Jessica May

 

Carlos was pulled into consciousness by the smell of cooking bacon, and the sound of Aretha Franklin. Both were drifting into the bedroom from the distant kitchen, and he took a moment to bask in their potent combination before damning his late start to the day and climbing out of bed.

He hadn’t risen that way in at least a year’s worth of Sundays – and now it was two weeks till their move to Texas, and his wife’s new job, and he considered the swelling brass and frying pork a hopeful sign.

Violet smiled as he entered the kitchen, and Carlos found himself tearing slightly as he closed the distance to hold her.

They took two brief dance steps together before she was forced to attend her preparations.

“Haven’t seen you smile like that in a while,” she said, scooping a double-helping of flapjacks onto a plate.

“I haven’t been staring down the barrel of a meal this big since Billy and I forced the Chinese buffet place, down on third, into bankruptcy.” He took in the pancakes, bacon, scrambled eggs, sausages, and the leaning tower of toast. “Seems like you’ve had a busy morning.”

“Just feeling good – and hungry. Yum.”

Billy dragged his heels onto the linoleum, rubbing at his eyes and tugging at the shirt-hem of his dinosaur pajamas.

“Hey, pal,” said Violet. “You look pretty pooped – have a bad sleep?”

“Yeah.” The five year old yawned. ”It was loud all night.”

The boy’s mother and father exchanged an embarrassed smirk, and Carlos began to transfer some of the bounty onto plates.

* * *

ChillerHe awoke to rough shaking.

The clock told him it was just after three in the morning.

“I heard something,” said Violet.

“Huh,” he pinched the sleep from his eyes, “Can you be more specific? Was it a murderer something? A burglar something? A Billy something?”

A month earlier, they’d discovered that their son had taken up the habit of climbing from under his covers and spreading his various collections of Lego, cars, and Batmen, across his floor. Finally sick of his denials, they’d un-boxed their baby monitor, and set it in his room so they might keep tabs on his behaviour.

“I think he’s out of bed and tossing his stuff around. It’s quiet now, but I’d swear that he tipped over his big bucket of trucks a minute ago.”

As they lay staring at the bar of red lights which would flare at any noisy provocation, he began to doze.

He started to a slamming sound, familiar to any afternoon on which Billy was too excited to carefully close his toy box.

Carlos’ brought his feet to the floor, and the annoyance of being turned out of his own bed sped his footsteps down the hall.

Grasping the door handle, he started his lecture.

“Buddy, what do you think -”, even through the night-murk, it was obvious Billy was sleeping peacefully – and yet Carlos still found his foot impaled on the rear-fin of a rogue Batmobile.

“Dad?” asked Billy, his slumber having been interrupted by the truncated chiding.

“Uh, nothing pal,” replied Carlos. “Lie back down, we’ll clean this up tomorrow.”

Violet was asleep by the time he’d finished his detour for a stolen mouthful of milk from the jug, and he thought it best to wait till morning to discuss the possibility of their son’s sleep walking.

Despite the comfort of his sheets, and the warmth of his wife’s nearby body, something sat wrong in his stomach, and it was a long two-hours, spent with his ears strained for any disturbance, before he nodded off.

* * *

Three uneventful days later, with Violet once again on her side, snoring, Carlos was watching Letterman and preparing for sleep.

“Goob, goob, goob,” said the monitor.

In a single, silent, motion, he stood from his bed and reached for a t-shirt. With a steady wrist, he noiselessly exited.

“Buh,” replied the monitor.

Under the photographic eyes of distant cousins and cherished aunts, a moment’s creeping brought him to Billy’s door, where he set his ear against the thick layer of stickers they’d allowed the boy to apply.

There was a pause, then a thud, as if something had been thrown against the nearest wall.

With a twist and a push, the dim glow of the hall’s nightlight followed him inside. The area was once again in a state of disarray, but he didn’t bother to wake Billy.

He’d finally recognized a familiar pattern in the chaos.

The next day he re-packaged the monitor. He also made a point of adjusting his cellphone’s alarm, so that he might rise early to tidy, before Violet woke.

* * *

Three days prior to their departure date, Carlos’ eyes were black with a lack of sleep. Using packing as an excuse, he’d transitioned the equally unrested Billy into the living room, setting him up on the couch for the final phase of the move. The child slept better, and it gave his father an opportunity to sort and discard action figures, as necessary.

A new concern had made itself known on the previous morning, when Billy, carrying a single, gnawed, plastic-arm, had approached Carlos.

“I can’t find the rest of this guy, and look, I think something’s been chewing on him!”

“Huh,” he’d replied, noting the watchful eye of his wife. “Must be a rodent.”

“That’s disgusting,” Violet had stated.

“Can I have it as a pet?” Billy had asked.

“I’ll get some mousetraps,” was Carlos’ reply, He’d pocketed the damaged limb, then added, “good thing we’re moving.”

The issue was that, as the hours ticked down, it wasn’t just the Bat-appendage – nearly every plastic and pliable surface within the boy’s room began to display the nicks and dents of toothy wear.

Once the job was complete, and the last of the Transformers posters, and Star Wars colouring books were sealed, Carlos used buying steaks for supper as an alibi, then deposited every box that had Billy written in thick black marker across its top at a nearby Salvation Army depot.

* * *

Twenty four hours before their scheduled takeoff time, Carlos slammed his son’s former-bedroom’s entrance, and picked a fight with Violet. It wasn’t hard – they’d both been on edge over the impending relocation, and his lack of sleep had done little to brighten his mood.

“What is your problem?” she shouted.

“You know,” he replied. He knew she didn’t.

“You’re being ridiculous. I’m taking Billy to Mom’s for the night, but you’re staying here.” The whole family had intended on embarking from Violet’s Mother’s, but he was happy to cut open the tape on a few boxes to locate bedding if it meant she was leaving immediately.

She did.

When he heard the screen door bang to a close, he let out a deep breath.

Entering the kitchen, he began to fill a bucket with soapy water. As he closed the tap, he paused, thinking he might have heard a distant crying – he was relieved to be wrong. Retrieving a rag, he carried his load to the room he’d been defending.

Carlos could live with Violet’s rage – he knew it was temporary, and he’d much rather take the blame for griping than divulge to his wife that he suspected the spirit of the girl she’d lost during birthing, fourteen months earlier, was slowly aging inside the house.

As he scrubbed at the looping and aimless marker scrawl that now adorned the walls, he began to weep for the child he felt he must abandon for the sanity of his remaining family.

 

Flash Pulp is presented by http://skinner.fm, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.

Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skinner@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at (206) 338-2792 – but be aware that it may appear in the FlashCast.

– and thanks to you, for reading. If you enjoyed the story, tell your friends.