Audio Horror | I Only Am Escaped Alone To Tell Thee

art by Steve Santiago

“Whatever you do, don’t call me Ishmael.”

This is the opening line to one of the best stories I have listened to in a long time, I Only Am Escaped Alone to Tell Thee is a genre bending story by Christopher Reynaga. It is the story of Moby Dick and is also unabashedly Lovecraft’s Call of Cthulhu.

In this tale it turns out that the story we know about Ahab is all wrong, that the man was not a vengeful insane sea captain we all thought he was.  He is insane, and he sails to his death to fight the white beast he has hunted, but that beast is no whale.

As Ahab says himself:

“It is not a whale we hunt, but a god. A tentacled and winged god, greater than the greatest whale that ever lived. You must think me mad, and I am, but mad with knowing whats in store for this earth…It means to kill us all, and not because its the Lord’s instrument hailing the end of days, this beast is the end of all gods and men.”

Ahab is dying, his first encounter with the Leviathan has left him marked, the peg-leg is more than what meets the eye, and he hunts the beast for his wife and son. He does not believe that he can kill it, but only seeks to buy time, if only a few minutes, he will not have died in vein.

The story ends as Moby Dick has always ended, but again the light cast on Ahab is much different

 Ahab rode through it, like a titan going forth to meet a god, buoyed up by the strength of his unnatural leg; his blessed spear gripped in his had “from Hell’s heart I stab at thee” Ahab cried…

I do not know why that great man sacrificed himself for you, but no man here deserves his Providence. You believe Ahab is mad; he is the Christ come to try and deliver us all, and there’s not enough blood in him to save us.

Like all cosmic horror it delivers in the ending, dooming us all to the utter destruction at the hands of Cthulhu. This is an amazing piece of writing and is performed fantastically by Graeme Dunlop. It can be found at the DrabbleCast, here.

For me this is the story of a monster hunter.  The monster hunter is one of more fascinating aspects of the horror genre. I have a great deal more to say about it in an upcoming post, but suffice it to say, the horror psychology in play here is largely existential. The hunters are men and women who have found their will-to-meaning and let nothing deter them in their steady march toward it. Ahab found this in this story where as Ishmael does not. Interestingly even in literature the will-to-meaning makes itself apparent plays out as it does in real life. Those that have it find strength to go on or die trying, and those that don’t fall into despair.

Go take a listen to the story above, the whole podcast is only 30 mins long and is well worth your time, and by the end I can only hope that you, like I, are left horror struck.

Audio Horror | The Showers

This little gem of audio horror comes to us from the NoSleepAudio podcast, written by Dylan Sindelar. While it has been out since last October I have been way behind in my podcast listening.

Urban legends are the stock and staple kind of horror stories that are swapped by kids and adults alike. They are are always told to us as though undeniably true because it came to us from a friend’s cousin’s girlfriend and it “really” happened to her or someone she knows. But what would happen if the urban legend turned out to be true?
This kind of thinking is not new to horror. The movie Candyman was about this very theme, and while the ending to this story is not quite as macabre it will still leave you with a nice sense of dread in the pit of your stomach.

It is the last story in this episode of the podcast, I recommend listening to the whole podcast, but if you want to just skip to this story it around 0:45:30.
You can also read the story on the sub-reddit NoSleep here.

 

Audio Horror | New beginnings

I realize of late that I have not posted much, grad school is finally catching up with me, especially since I am rounding the final hurdles for my Master’s Degree. Despite my super-busy schedule between school, work, and being an active father in the lives of my two very busy toddlers I still find time to engage in horror, and I still want to share it with you. The problem is I don’t always have time to expound on a movie or a full novel (let alone watch/read them).

It dawned on me this week that my most active engagement in horror right now is through the podcasts that I listen to every week. Some of the best stuff I have ever encountered has been in these podcasts. SO… I going forward I have created this new category for the blog called Audio Horror. I will link to these audio feed (most of which are free) talk about some of the stuff that I have listened to and take the time to give the authors of these stories a well deserved shout out. These will be nice short blurbs that I should be able to put out regularly and give us all something to think on.

There will also be a new set of links on the side bar that will contain all the horror related podcasts I currently listen to if you want to follow along. As always please feel free to share what you think and give me recommendations.