Lunatics Radio Hour

Lunatics Library 4 - Pyrokinesis Stories

April 11, 2021 The Lunatics Project Season 1 Episode 73
Lunatics Radio Hour
Lunatics Library 4 - Pyrokinesis Stories
Show Notes Transcript

This episode features two short stories on the theme of Pyrokinesis. Both were written by Abby Brenker and read by Bob Daun.

Subscribe to Hidden Oaks and Bob's Short Story Hour to stay up to date on the amazing creative projects Bob's working on. And listen to Bob read some of Abby's story in this episode of BSSH.

Consider donating to Asian Americans Advancing Justice: Atlanta.
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Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback.

Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.

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Speaker 1:

Hello,

Speaker 2:

And welcome to another episode of lunatics library as part of lunatics, radio hour, these lunatics library episodes focus on short stories that are on theme with our larger history, deep dive. So if you've missed our previous episode, which is the history of pyromania and pyro Kinesis with Bob Dawn, please go back and listen to that. But as always, I'm here with Alan Sudan. Hello. And today we have two stories that I wrote that Bob Don reads for us, and he does such an amazing job, Alan, I cannot wait for you to hear them.

Speaker 3:

I've really been looking forward to these simply because I love Bob Don.

Speaker 2:

I know, I know Andy, please go check out Bob short story hour and hidden Oaks, which are his two podcasts

Speaker 3:

Called Bob short story hour.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. Bob short story hour is one where he reads all kinds of, of historic stories, contemporary stories. And it's been so fun for us to kind of catch up on the backlog of that one

Speaker 3:

W one trepidation I've had with podcasts in general is that they lack the, the, the nuanced voice acting that typically comes with audio books. And for me, like, you know, if an audio book is, uh, not very well performed, um, it's, it sucks me out of it. I probably won't finish the book. Yep. So finding a podcast that has this kind of artistry is so rare, and fortunately it is found in abundance on Bob short story hour. Yeah. There are, well, you know, the quality of the writing is incredible because he's pulling from so many, both, uh, famous and contemporary works and then he just lends his talents to all of these.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah. Really, truly. It's, he's wonderful. And he actually just did an episode recently where he reads three of my short stories from my book, my collection of short stories, horror stories, which was a huge honor for me. So we'll link that below as well, because again, it's a treat to hear somebody who is so talented read your work. It really makes it sound better. I feel like. And also just to say like one thing I love about Bob short story hour and Frodo, which is, uh, another podcast that we're working on a collaboration with is that they take some things that for me, at least sometimes can seem inaccessible. Like, you know, I was an English and film major. Like I love literature, but there's still some times, um, so I'm like re barrier to entry to, to read some of these really historic texts, you know, and to get into like the depths of like HP Lovecraft and stuff, it's kind of dense and outdated, but listening to Bob of Bob's horror story hours, and John[inaudible] reads some of these old folklore and historic stories, it really brings them to life in a modern way.

Speaker 3:

Well, I mean, I've, I've talked about this before, but the way that I got into, um, audio books in the first place was because I was trying to read a very dense historical text, um, which was, uh, paradise lost, which is just historical. Uh it's. Yeah, exactly. It's it's, it's it's history. Oh, I mean, it's a book from the 16 hundreds. Yes. Uh, it's very, very old and very, very, uh, wordy and not something it's like when you, like, when you're in high school and you're trying to read Shakespeare before ever hearing it out loud, you know, um, when you hear Shakespeare, it makes perfect sense. You get the inflections, you get the emotion and when all those things clicked together, you get the story. But when you're just reading it as words on a page, without any of that context, it's very difficult. Um, and so when I first, uh, was recommended to hear, to listen to the, um, recording by Anton lesser of paradise lost, that's how it just clicked for me. And that's how I discovered that when you have a voice actor who just has a mastery of understanding of the material, it brings the piece to life. Even if you personally don't understand it. And fortunately, Bob has that with a lot of his texts. Absolutely. Yeah. Where, you know, you see some of, some of his stories are very old and, you know, you can, you can tell just by, uh, simply by the way that the language is written. And if I was reading this, I would trip all over it and get sucked out of the story. But here you have Bob telling you a bedtime story. It's just one.

Speaker 2:

It is, it is wonderful. Yeah. I've said this before too, but I took a whole class in college on paradise loss. And man, I wish I had known about the audio book. And even then we took off, it was a whole semester. And I don't think I read the whole thing because it's just so dense and difficult when you're just left with your mind. But anyway, uh, cheers to all of those wonderful narrators out there. Yep. Today we have two short stories for you. Both are written by me, both are read by Bob Dawn. And again, they go with our pyromania episode, which came out last week and, and Bob who's a psychiatric nurse practitioner had, you know, we had a wonderful conversation about pyromania, what it really means from a psychological perspective, pyro Kinesis, and the stories spoiler alert today. The stories are both about power kinases. So don't get them confused with being about pyromania. But, um, you know, they're on theme because we also cover Pyre Kinesis in the history.

Speaker 3:

Two things. One, if you're still confused about the difference, please listen to the episode. Episode two, one of these stories is based on real life events. We won't tell you which one, but one of them is a hundred percent true. There you go. All we did was change the names, places and events.

Speaker 2:

So the first story is a little bit lighter, more fun it's or not more fun, but just a little bit, you know, lighter in nature. It's actually a row. So on my best friend, Jess had her baby Mila. I wrote a script about it, about a baby who had telekinetic power and we never made the movie because COVID happened and a billion other things. And it would be really difficult to make without a budget, but telekinetic or pyro kinetic. Well, she had it originally had telekinetic. I have adapted that now she has power kinetic, and I think it's, it's cute. And it works really well. And Bob does a great job, which isn't so much of a show of a horizontal shift as it is more of a vertical expansion. That's right. As we discussed as discussed. So shout out to Jess, Kyle and Mila for lending your likenesses for this story. You ready to roll the tape? Okay.

Speaker 4:

Uh, happy breaker read by Bob dog.

Speaker 5:

Mila rolled over in bed. The bright afternoon sun filtered in from the open window above her. She'd been napping with her face smushed into the rainbow toddler bed rail. It left a mesh pattern on her cheeks beyond and sat up just in time to hear the noise from outside Mila skillfully slid out from under the bed, rail and darted towards her bedroom door. She could hear the footsteps already. Her parents. They had heard it too. You go through the office and cut her off. Mila Bob to the left, her blonde pigtails bouncing. As she bounded down the long hallway, she started to know at the duct tape around her wrists. She bit ferociously at the silver adhesive. As she tried to free her hands from a heavy fireproof gloves. It was her only hope. She spit out the sticky bits of binding that were getting caught in her teeth. She's too fast. Her mom's voice came from the next room you were supposed to be on. Watch her dad returned from behind her. He was closing in. She had to think fast. She doubled back. Mila passed through her dad's at-home office. She tipped a pile of papers onto the floor for good measure brat. Her dad called behind her. She nearly had the left glove off. She'd go down the backstairs and double around the house. She could still hear the noise coming from outside. She still had time, but she had to move faster. Huh? Gotcha. Her mom jumped out from the guest bathroom and grabbed for her daughter just as Mila broke free from the left glove, whoosh, a fireball sprang from Mulas hand and narrowly. Mr. Mom's head it connected with the bathroom's doorframe, which caught fire in an instant. Her mom had pulled a small red extinguisher from behind her back and put out the blaze. I like that. Mila. You were aiming for me that time, her mom looked hurt and we just replastered that wall. Her dad's hand almost grasped the back of Milos shirt, but she ducked and made for the stairs. She jumped down two at a time. I think my head is a little more important than the plaster. Kyle, the footsteps followed her as she descended. Mila used her left hand to easily free her right? The back door was right in front of her. She was going to make it this time. A huge smile started to spread across her face. As she reached for the door handle and flung it open, the fresh air felt so good in a second, she was on the sidewalk. She could see her target. Now the noise was closer than ever. The pavement heard her bare feet, but she didn't slow down. She calmly slid into line behind a little boy, the ice cream man handed him a big chocolate cone. She thought that looked pretty good. Why? Hello? Little Mila back again. Mila. Smile that the ice cream man and handed him a crumpled wad of cash. The usual. Yes, please. A moment later, Mila was walking back toward her house. Her face was already covered in whipped cream and chocolate. As she ate her hot fudge sundae, her parents sat on the front porch defeated. She sat down between them, Mila, honey, you can't keep doing this. It's too much. Her mom always sounded concerned. You have to have a balanced diet. Your mother's right. You've had ice cream six times this week, you have to eat some broccoli tomorrow. Her dad held the discarded fireproof gloves in his lap. He sounded desperate. Mila offered him a spoonful of strawberry ice cream. He accepted make me, she said as a small spark liquored on her pole,

Speaker 2:

You know, it's, it's a good thing that Bob's not British. Why? Because then his narration powers would be unstoppable. Well, he actually does do accents very well. I've been listening to, through some of his back catalog and I've noticed he does. He does accents quite well. Well still should I have asked him to narrate this in a British accent? Oh, I couldn't. He couldn't handle it. I couldn't, I can't even, what did you think of the story? Story's great. It it's it's uh, you, you mentioned a story, um, that has a lot of, um, similarities to Firestarter. Yeah. This one, because I'm getting very strong Firestarter vibes from that. I think it's so funny. Cause you haven't seen the movie when you out this. Yeah, I wrote it before and afterwards I was like, Oh man, she's blonde. Oh man. She shoots fireballs out of her hand. Oh man. There's like a scene where they're using a, what did they call it? The kitchen myths. Kitchen myths. No kitchen myths. The kitchen and the movie. So there's, there's a lot of uh, Oh, there's some similarities. Yeah. I'll admit. All right. But the next story I would say is more of a, this was like a little bit of an appetizer, a little appetizer. Next story is more of an entree. You know, it's also a little bit funky. It's it's uh, I don't know what you're thinking. How are we talking? Like disco funky. Yo. Yeah, definitely disco funky. It's a bowl clean. All right. Let's roll the tape

Speaker 4:

Spark. I happy breaker red by Bob

Speaker 5:

Backstage lighting somehow made the twins. Red hair glow, even brighter. Amber smeared, beat dyed lip color onto her mouth. She handed the tube to Ashley who did the same, the mirror reflected back. They're identical faces. If you looked close enough, you'd be able to tell them apart by their mismatched freckles, but no one ever had been that close. The sisters wore sequently ATARs ambers was black matching her tall boots. Ashley's was white. They smiled in unison, pleased with their shared reflection, a black and white framed photo of their parents sat on the table in front of them. The sisters had looked at it before every single performance, their mothers, stunning beauty, their father's stoic stair two of the youngest ringmasters of all time, Amber and Ashley each reached out a hand and slammed the photo down. The glass broke. They wouldn't need it anymore. After tonight, winds up into the stage manager, yelled from behind a velvet, burgundy curtain, Ashley and Amber breathe in deeply. The girls walked onto the platform just as the lights came up on them as always. Perfect timing. Ashley walked stage left as Amber walked stage, right? They stopped simultaneously and posed the crowd 300 strong erupted into applause. They didn't know what was about to happen, but they were excited to find out the sisters held their position. As a third woman, emerged from the shadows and took up at the piano nestled just off stage. She wore a tailored suit and a sharp bow tie. Her hair was slicked back with grease. She held her fingers dramatically over the keys for only a second before the entire tent was flooded with a jaunty melody on cue, the twins moved. It was as if they were mirror images of each other. Amber bent forward while Ashley bent backwards, Amber twirling towards the audience while Ashley retreated toward the curtain, the spectators whistled and cheered. Every single person in the tent was taken by their beauty dazzled by their synchronicity. Every single person in the tent wanted more, but the twins didn't have more to give the pianists fingers moved faster. So did Amber and Ashley red ribbons dropped from the top of the tent. The sisters each took one at the same time. They each wrapped their left foot in the silk cloth before swinging impressively across the stage, Chris crossing back and forth, the assembly oohed and OD the twins. Fake smiles grew deeper. Amber and Ashley reached their right hands up and grabbed the ribbon about a foot over their heads. As they done hundreds of times before the twins arched their backs and created a half moon shape with their bodies, ah, said the crowd, the sisters reached their feet to the back of their heads. They formed a matching human hoops that swayed on the red satin strands. Ooh said the crowd, Amber and Ashley locked eyes. It was almost time. They dangled upside down somehow still graceful and composed. The audience was impressed. The twins were numb, quiet rage, pulsed in their veins. No more. They had no more to give the sisters climbed up the red fabric, getting closer and closer to the top of the tent, the piano player faltered. She was not aware of Amber and Ashley's plan to throw themselves from the top of the ropes to let their bodies shatter against the hard wooden stage to horrify the audience that had taken so much from them, their entire lives. In fact, to end the captivity, even out of routine, the sisters moved in perfect unison. As they ascended. They paused as their hands reached. The metal rings that were suspending the lions. They were inches from the black and white top of the tent. The music's abrupt ending tipped off the crowd. Silence fell across the arena. Anticipation Amerind Ashley's entire life had been performative first for their parents who kept the girls close to the circus, no school, no friends outside the caravan, no opportunity to create a different life in a world. They didn't know existed. Or as adults, a world, they didn't know how to navigate at the top of the tent. Amber and Ashley were looking intently at the other or Amber. It was like looking into a mirror. Ashley wasn't only her physical match. Ashley was part of her. The silence was distracting. Amber wasn't used to the silence to be on stage and be able to hear her own thoughts. It was curious. She noticed the strain on her hands. She could feel her arm, muscles ache. As they held her entire body up at the top of the tent, she felt something warm in her chest grew hotter. She looked down across the stage. Ashley saw her twin move out of turn. Amber was looking down at her chest without eye contact. Ashley couldn't. She couldn't read Amber panic flashed through Ashley's brain panic. That was somehow clarifying. The emotion was foreign. It shook Ashley out of her depressive Hayes for a moment. Amber leaned back as she looked for Ashley, something was glowing in the center of ambers, shiny black leotard. The sequence reflected the small flame and made it seem like it was jumping around in her sister's chest. Ashley gasped. Amber was on fire, but Amber wasn't scared. The fire felt good. Cleansing liberating. Amber bathed in the warm energy. As it spread across her body, she tilted her head back as her body caught flame in an instant, Ashley felt the warmth in her chest. She looked down to see fiery red sparks in the center of her white uniform. It looked like a sparkler had formed in her core. It shot specks of fire out, but it didn't hurt. Ashley. A moment later, she joined her sister, the two women still clung to the red satin ribbons. Their bodies were suspended near the top of the tent, but they were indistinguishable to fiery masses. Women on fire. The audience remained silent. They didn't know if they should cheer or scream and run from the tent. The piano player was frozen in disbelief. This was no illusion or magic trick. She looked around her. She needed to find the stage manager or ring master. But as her eyes finally located them, she saw that they also stood frozen, unable to process the sight on stage in perfect unison. The fireballs that were Ashley and Amber dropped from the ropes with a thud, they landed on the wooden stage. Everyone's complete shock. The flames started to slowly extinguish to reveal the twins still intact, still alive. Whoa said the audience, what the said, the piano player. The sisters were not crumpled on the stage. They were posing. They looked strong somehow, even stronger than before, but something else was different. They're black and white sparkly. Leotards were replaced changed. Now they wore matching blood red outfits with black trains. The fire was now out, almost everywhere, thick smoke clung to the air around them. Amber and Ashley's eyes were sharper. Their hair shiny or their energy denser. The audience erupted into applause, convinced that this was part of the show after all it had to be. Otherwise it would be impossible.

Speaker 4:

Wouldn't it?

Speaker 5:

That story was hat.

Speaker 3:

You get

Speaker 2:

It. I get it. Well, that was a good

Speaker 3:

One. I really liked your, you wrote this. I did. How? I mean how every it's very different for everything else. It's amazing. Yeah. It was not that your other stuff. Isn't amazing, but keep surprising me. It was varied. Let me finish complimenting you, you keep surprising me with these varied writing styles and motifs. That's great.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. I mean, yeah. I, this one got away from me a little, it turned into more of like a Phoenix from the ashes story, but yeah, it felt like what I needed to write at the time

Speaker 3:

You're embracing embracement. I love that you're embracing no, it's gotta be a noun. I'm going to just say I love your embracement. That's not even a word, but it that's what I love of the transformation, power of fire, how it burned away, the old them. Yep. And, but fire is also the spark of creation and they rebuilt a new self, but they're like intertwined because they're twins and that was just cool.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. I, I agree about fire being cleansing and you know, it's one of these things where I feel like in rituals throughout history, it's usually like you turn to water or fire to cleanse for different reasons. Right. Just ask Salem. So I enjoyed playing with that a little bit here and again, Bob did such a great, great job reading it and it really brought it to life

Speaker 3:

And the circus, the circus with circus. That's so cool.

Speaker 2:

The circus, I wanted a very simple stylized, uh, set, you know, where you can picture them in their black and white outfits, the piano player, the stage, the, the S you know, tent, like everything is kind of like black, white, and red. What's black, white, and red all over

Speaker 3:

Your story. That's

Speaker 2:

All. Thanks to Bob. Thanks to Bob. Yeah. So that's it. Those are our fire stories.

Speaker 3:

Great, great fire stories. Thank you. Thank you. You know, we should have like a surplus of stories about pyro Mancy, hire Mancy. Yeah. Romania. Nope. Hang on. Okay. The word that is a hundred percent of word that we didn't even talk about. We didn't. Hi. Romancey which is the magic element of pyro Kinesis. It's fire magic. Fire magic. Yeah. So like, you know, if in, in your favorite game of all time sky room, there's a whole tree called pyro Mancy. Yeah. Which is just fire magic. Yeah. You know, that's not Pyre Kinesis it technically. No, it is tired. It is telekinesis.

Speaker 2:

Oh my God. One thing we forgot to say, sorry to jump in. What that in Firestarter the name of the horse is necromancer. It is, which is also wild. It's like they made it for, for us at this exact moment in our lives. Wow. Wow. An honor. Honestly, Stephen King. Thank you. All right.

Speaker 3:

Thanks Stephen. Thanks

Speaker 2:

Mr. King. So yeah, that that's that right? Sorry. Did I cut you off about pyro Nancy?

Speaker 3:

You did, but you said better things. Okay.

Speaker 2:

As always, if you would like to write a story for lunatics library, you can email us@filmsaboutlunaticsatgmail.com or you can head to lunatics, project.com backslash submit where we accept stories for upcoming episodes.

Speaker 3:

We also accept applications to be a voice actor and by applications is like, no, just do it.

Speaker 2:

So get in touch. If you are a voice actor and you want to, uh, you know, read some spooky as always, you can follow us at the lunatics project on Instagram. And we appreciate you very much for being here. Talk to you next time. Bye

Speaker 1:

[inaudible].