Part 1 of 1
Read the full text, as well as the show notes, at http://flashpulp.com
Tonight, instead of our standard tale, we present The Pale Child, a cautionary urban myth of unreliable provenance. Find out more at wiki.flashpulp.com
The Skinner Co. Network
SE6 - The Pale Child, Part 1 of 1
[Music] Welcome to FlashPulp Special Episode 6. Tonight, we present The Pale Child. This week's episodes are brought to you by the Parsek Nominated podcast, Geek Out with Mainframe. This is Richard Green, aka Mainframe of the Geek Out with Mainframe podcast. That can be found at GeekOut with Mainframe.com. With hundreds of Geek interview podcasts, I have one of them. Interviews have included people such as Michael Plastit, Gerald Axelrod, P.C. Herring, J.R. Murdock, Chris John Ellis, Mark the Encafinated One Killfall, Paul E. Cooley, and Nathan Lowell with more to come in 2011. So come to GeekOut with Mainframe.com, where our geek flag always flies hot. [Music] FlashPulp 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, instead of our standard tale, we present The Pale Child, a cautionary urban myth of unreliable provenance. Find out more at wiki.flashpulp.com, The Pale Child, written by J.R.D. Skinner, art and narration by the Pope and Acts, and audio produced by Jessica May. [Music] A tale told by parents and children, the myth of The Pale Child is commonly found anywhere both groups gather. While many variations exist, most common began spreading sometime in the late 1960s. It's said that should a young son or daughter be left unattended upon a desert playground, they may encounter an ash and lad whose reported age ranges from 8 to 12. Accounts often state that the boy appears suddenly as if he'd remained hidden within a covered tube slide while awaiting a companion's arrival. His approach is always welcoming, and he seems pleased to have encountered a new friend. If he finds himself rebuked in this phase by a shy or otherwise disinterested youth, he intruded retreats by clambering up the structure from which he first emerged. When welcomed though, mischief soon follows. Little ones are discovered alone, panicked and weeping, on swings that have somehow been wrapped about their support bar, to so far an extent as the rider can no longer dismount without risking a broken limb, or bound by hand and foot with their own shoelaces to equipment, so that they may not return home without assistance in unknoting their constraints. Some parents have gone so far as to assert that the stripling has embedded their offspring up to their neck in the sands frequently found in such areas, only to have the process interrupted by an adult chancing across the scene. The story goes however, that not all incidents end so harmlessly. In those cases where the pale child is invoked in a disappearance, regularly believed by authorities to be a mundane runaway or kidnapping, it's usually alleged that the missing remains at the site, buried beneath the playground's soft turf. Flashpulp is presented by flashpulp.com, and is released under the Canadian Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial 2.5 License. Text and audio commentaries can be sent to skier@skinner.fm, or the voicemail line at 206-338-2792. But be aware that they may appear in a future flashcast. We'd also like to thank the Freesound Project, found at freesound.org. For a full listing of effects used during the show, as well as credits for the users who provided them, please check this episode's notes at flashpulp.com. And thanks to you for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please tell your friends. [Music] Sunday is gloomy, my hours are stumbled. Here is the shadows I live with are stumbled. [Music]