The Deadlands
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a new novelette for you
🕑 Added 2024-07-01 15:03:43 +0000 UTChello. friends!
as you wait for the next issue of The Deadlands to be released (and oh! what an issue it is), we have a treat for you
Psychopomp (#1 publisher of The Deadlands) just released an amazing novelette by previous The Deadlands contributor Eugenia Triantafyllou!
it's called JOANNA'S BODIES and while it is available to read on our site for free, we also made a PDF and EPUB version available to people who sign up for the Psychopomp email list.
but for you, we're sharing the attachments here so you can just grab them quick and start reading.
here's the intro:
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THE WOMAN WHOSE BODY Joanna is renting has a nosebleed. Joanna is about to get evicted again and she’s cranky about it. She screams at Eleni in another woman’s voice.
“Hey, this shit’s burning!”
Eleni doesn’t reply. She has been sitting on the toilet long after she’s been done, counting supplies. Waiting for Joanna to get bored and go watch TV. There were ten rolls of toilet paper when they first set up here. Or was it twelve? Eleni swears the woman keeps everything in fucking dozens, she must have an obsession or something. Twelve tubes of mint-flavored toothpaste. Twelve red toothbrushes—two used by them. But does a toothbrush count as used by a guest if the mouth it’s been brushing is the same as the host’s? Does a new soul bring in new mouth germs?
One toothbrush used by them. By Eleni.
“I can’t cook like this.”
A whiff of burned butter and flour and whatever else Joanna is incinerating out there. Hopefully not the entire place.
“I’m coming!”
When Eleni comes out, Joanna is already slumped on the low leather couch by the window watching Eleni’s ex-favorite movie for the billionth time. Jennifer’s Body. Two girls who are best friends: Jennifer and Needy, one of them possessed by a demon, the other one possessed by the friendship itself. Jennifer’s Body used to be their number one, but somewhere between Joanna’s first death and her first resurrection, Eleni stopped caring for it. When fantasy becomes reality it’s not as fun anymore. She prefers Jurassic Park these days—when Joanna lets her pick the movie—because there’s no way in Hell dinosaurs are making a comeback.
Joanna is inside a short, fifty-year-old woman with unusually large hands. Joanna’s hair used to be brown and sleek down her shoulders once upon a time, but this woman’s blonde perm has a will of its own. Eleni tried to brush it into submission but the only thing she got out of it was a couple of bruises on her left arm from when Joanna got tired of the pain and pinched her.
The place smells like a gluten crematorium. Eleni runs to the kitchen and opens the window but it does little to help. Joanna has burned the pancakes and with them the pan that’s currently swimming in soapy water. The pan that Eleni will need to find and replace with a similar one. She hates when Joanna does this. She knows the rules. She knows they are meant to protect Eleni and Joanna and the person whose body Joanna rents and she still does stuff like this. Whatever. They’ll be out of here soon.
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