“The Curious Story of Susan Styles” was originally published in 1893 The Society for Psychical Research was formed in 1882, 11 years before this story was written “Susan Styles,” the name is not a romantic one, and yet it is associated in my mind with a curious series of incidents, which, were I a member of the Psychical (or ghost investigating) Society1 I might have brought under the notice of...

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PseudoPod 861: Swing Batter Batter is a PseudoPod original. A baseball clubhouse is a weird place. You’ve got California prep school kids rubbing elbows with good old boys from Texas and Louisiana, and guys from the Dominican and Venezuela mixing with guys who grew up in the inner city and still found their way to baseball. Nothing in common, and yet, all sharing a love of the game. Most of us...

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PseudoPod 859: We, the Ones Who Raised Sam Gowers from the Dead is a PseudoPod original. CW: Homophobic/transphobic violence Yes, to answer your questions, we were the ones who did it; we were the ones who dabbled into the forbidden arts, who so casually threw away the good Christian values of our country for a flash of bloody vengeance. We are the ones you want, the ones who raised Sam Gowers...

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PseudoPod 858: Flash on the Borderlands LXV: Fecundity is a PseudoPod original. “On the Getting of Husbands and the Spawning of Children” previously appeared in Arsenika in April 2021 “The Chairmaker’s Daughter” is a PseudoPod original “Concerning the Fantastic Native Flora of the Indo-Chinese Padma Valley” is a PseudoPod Original. The story is inspired by the giant flower found in Southeast Asia...

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PseudoPod 857: Of Dark That Bites is a PseudoPod original. CW: Traumatic birth “Where do we go when we die?” asked Bea. She was in her car seat, a masterpiece of straps and safety standards that did less than nothing to assuage the mad patter of Lucy’s heart whenever she had to drive over Brassknocker Hill. The slopes were too steep, the roads too narrow. Recently someone had crashed into one of...

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“Them Doghead Boys” originally appeared in Current Affairs Magazine in their Jan/Feb 2021 issue Things got bad bad once the Ravels was gone. Five-Oh swooped down and arrested damnear eighty of them and after that wasn’t nobody on the corners slingin but things wasn’t no safer. Up at the corner of Brainard and Josephine there was a murder at five or six in the evening. I say “murder” cause what...

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PseudoPod 855: And The Water Said Kneel is a PseudoPod original. Content Warning: Rape Revenge The river claims her like a lover, like someone who needed her whole and open and honest. It feels like she’s supposed to expose her throat, to bow for the very water itself, or at least for the man who put her there. She doesn’t want this though, she never has, not now and not ever. What she wanted was...

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“Bones in It” was originally published in Lightspeed in May 2021 Good Bones by Maggie Smith Besides the vedma who lived behind the stove in steam room three, the banya in Grand Lake Plaza was the same as any other budget day spa on Chicago’s West Side. It had deep-tissue massages and signature facials, plus day passes for the communal baths and steam rooms. There was a cucumber water dispenser in...

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PseudoPod 853: Oni in the Box is a PseudoPod original. Now, Sobo was our late father’s mother. By our mother’s accounts she was mad, if not wicked. Gossip ran muddy in our family. One relative, now deceased, told me she was once the personal Tay? of the now equally dead Abetake Risu; former, and most honorable, Daimyo of Ouja-jo. Another cousin was far more grandiose in his anecdotes–better known...

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“Every Body Depicted Is Exploited” was first published in PopCult’s Gruesome Love anthology as “Crit.” Everyone knew that Pamela was the only real artist there. The rest of us were just play-acting. The sensible ones, like me, figured out pretty early on that the program was a joke. Formulaic. Easy to phone in. Still, there were plenty of students who told themselves they had a shot at creating...

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