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The Second Tale of Sodapop: Part 1
8.9k Plays2 years ago
Happy Halloween - enjoy a Second Tale of Sodapop! This story tells the events of episodes 6-10 of Believer: A Paranomal Mystery through the eyes of Sodapop, world's greatest dog. If you are unfamiliar with season one of this show, or you haven't listened to the first Tale of Sodapop, I suggest that you go back. Full episode currently available on Patreon.
The transcript for this episode is available on BelieverPodcast.com.
Stick around for a promo for Hi Nay, a supernatural horror podcast about Filipina immigrant Mari Datuin, whose babaylan (shaman) family background accidentally gets her involved in stopping dangerous supernatural events in Toronto. Find them on Twitter, Tumblr, or wherever you go this podcast.
CONTENT NOTES
- Harm to wild animals
- Loss, abandonment
- Mental illness
- Canine emotions
MUSIC FROM EPIDEMIC SOUND
- A Thousand Parts of My Heart - Christian Andersen
- Traveling in Binaural - Joseph Beg
- Passed Danger - Farrell Wooten
- Swamp Fever - Walt Adams
Recommended
Transcript
Season 2 Announcements
00:00:01
Speaker
Surprise! Happy Halloween! This feed has once again been quiet for much longer than I anticipated, but I do want to reassure you all that the show is not going away. I am, as of this moment, neck deep in final script development for Season 2, so keep an eye out for production announcements early next year.
Soda Pop's Story Recap
00:00:21
Speaker
I also have some interviews with experts and other bonus content to help fill the time, so stay subscribed everyone.
00:00:29
Speaker
For now, please enjoy another tale of soda pop. This story retells the events of episodes 6 through 10 from the perspective of soda pop, the world's greatest dog. This story picks up right where the last tale of soda pop left off, so if you're not familiar with that story or with the events of season one of Believer, I suggest that you go back and listen.
00:00:53
Speaker
My amazing patrons are getting the entire story right now. They will also get a bonus non-believer story in the next few weeks. If you'd like to join them, along with brand new patrons, Sarah Norris, The Beldam, and Justin Cohn, you can find out more at patreon.com slash BelieverPod.
00:01:13
Speaker
Stay tuned at the end of the episode for a trailer for High Nigh, a supernatural horror fiction podcast about a Filipina immigrant whose unique family background gets her involved in stopping dangerous supernatural events in Toronto. You can find a link to that show in the show notes. And now
Soda Pop's Perspective: The Cracked Room
00:01:32
Speaker
please enjoy the second tale of soda pop, part one, written and read by me, Julie Saunders.
00:01:46
Speaker
From a little bed inside a broken room, a little dog watches the sunrise.
00:01:52
Speaker
The room's outer wall is full of cracks and gouges that sharpen the sunlight into lines, blades of light that pierce the musty air. The streaks of sunlight form a dizzying pattern, a series of lines across the exposed wood floor. The lines cross and converge to a point at the center, and there sits a human, her back to the dog, her unkempt hair lit like a halo.
00:02:18
Speaker
She traces the sun lines with a sharp blade, deepens the scars in this crumbling room. As she carves, she hums. The human calls the dog Sodapop. Sodapop doesn't call her anything. She is simply there, simply his, and so she never needs a name. She is his human.
00:02:42
Speaker
Last night, Soda Pop found his human lying near the top of a hill. She seemed like she was asleep, but her eyes were wide open, staring into a sky without stars. He licked her nose until the warmth came back to her fingertips, and she laughed. That laugh rippled through him, spread from his ears to his wagging tail, and everything was okay again.
00:03:05
Speaker
Sodapop followed her down the hill as if they'd never been apart. After all, when the sun comes up, you don't marvel at its return.
Soda Pop's Observations and Dreams
00:03:12
Speaker
You just get up and go about your day. Halfway down the hill, they met Lara. Lara was Sodapop's human's human, or at least she used to be. When Sodapop's human left, Lara had taken care of him, but he didn't need Lara now. So when they reached the creaky old house at the bottom of the hill and she walked inside without Lara, Sodapop followed.
00:03:35
Speaker
She called this place home. What else could it be? The rest of the house is not broken. It's just this room, the one with all his human things in it. There are two other humans in the house. One is named Mom, and she doesn't seem to like him much. Mom is afraid to come into the broken room, though. And there's another human with a raspy voice, but that one never leaves the study. So in the broken room, things are quiet.
00:04:04
Speaker
His human sits on the floor, tracing lines in the floorboards. She hums to herself. Sodapop huddles on the bed. He doesn't want to touch the lines. He watches her.
00:04:19
Speaker
He can't tell if she's really here or not. Well, she's here, but her body responds to something else. When she tilts her head, or looks off into the distance, or when the soft chemicals that tell her nerves what to do gather and respond, it's to something else. Something soda pop can't seem to find. He watches, and he watches, and he watches.
00:04:46
Speaker
but he was out in the woods for a very long time. There were no naps during his long day and night in the forest, just terror and excitement. So here where he is, well, not exactly safe, but certainly settled, he feels the adrenaline drain out of his body. His head grows heavy and his eyes get narrow. Before he knows it, he's somewhere else too.
00:05:12
Speaker
So to pop off in dreams when he sleeps, his dreams are not usually complicated. Most are just moments, a familiar scent, the sight of a squirrel running, the evening breeze through an open door, bits and pieces. This dream is different.
00:05:28
Speaker
In the dream, Soda Pop stands on fine, silver sand. The sand stretches in every direction, farther than he can imagine, and somewhere ahead of him, he hears a huge body of water.
00:05:43
Speaker
It's not the ocean. Soda Pop has been to the ocean. The ocean has birds and saltwater spray and laughter. The ocean smells like sunscreen and fish guts. This place smells like nothing. At least, at first. Slowly, a scent creeps up on him.
00:06:02
Speaker
It's her scent, just like it was in the forest, except instead of cutting through the night like an arrow, it seeps in from everything at once. Soda Pop turns around and around in the fine, soft sand. It's as if she's everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
00:06:19
Speaker
Soda Pop runs, but every direction is the same. No matter where he goes, he's always running toward the ocean that isn't an ocean, and he never gets closer to its edge. Always he can smell his human, and always she's just around the corner and a million miles away.
00:06:37
Speaker
Finally, he sees her.
Confrontation and Escape
00:06:39
Speaker
She sits with her back to him. She draws something in the sand, long tangled lines. Soda Pop runs toward her, but his paws slip on the sand and he falls. He opens his mouth to bark, but something steals the air from his lungs. He feels himself crying, whining, howling into a vast expanse of nothingness, but no sound leaves him.
00:07:03
Speaker
It could be hours that they sit there. Sodapop stuck in the sand, his voice gone while she never turns around. It could be days. He can't move. He can't cry. He can't... He wakes to find her face. Very close to his.
00:07:19
Speaker
Her skin is flushed, her eyes wild. Soda Pop yelps, but she quiets him, runs her fingers along his neck, reassures him that he's safe. The door to the room is open, and from the hallway, he can smell fear.
00:07:34
Speaker
A potent, piercing mix of sweat and racing blood with a pheromone mixture that stabs at his brain. Something bad has happened. He starts to get up, moves to charge out into the hallway and right whatever's wrong, but she shushes him again.
00:07:50
Speaker
She does not smell of fear, but something is still wrong. He presses his nose to her mouth, to her nose, the top of her head. How did she leave without him noticing? Where has she been? There are no clues forthcoming. She buries her face in his fur. She starts to whisper. He doesn't understand the words, she says.
00:08:15
Speaker
When she finally lets him go, he struggles out of her arms and bursts into the hall. The house is unnaturally quiet. He sniffs from Mom and the raspy man. The raspy man is gone. Mom is, yes, Mom is the one who was afraid. The front door is open. The people must be outside. Sodapop rushes out to investigate. There on the lawn is Lara. Sodapop feels a rush of relief when he sees her.
00:08:44
Speaker
Lara is like a water bowl. Something you don't really notice until it's been missing for a while. He races across the grass and leaps up onto her legs. She reaches down and pats his head. Then Lara goes tense. She has come outside. His humans are in one space again. Why don't they ever seem happy about that?
00:09:07
Speaker
His humans say words to each other. One is angry, the other dismayed. So to pop lets out a little sigh.
00:09:15
Speaker
The most frustrating part of having a human is the language barrier. Humans have a whole host of mouth sounds they make, and only some of them seem to mean anything important. Meanwhile, they miss every physical cue. Most of them think there's only one kind of tail wag. You practically have to scream to get them to understand your meaning.
00:09:38
Speaker
Soda Pop sniffs at the bushes and the grass, an age-old way of signaling that everything is fine. This is how much you don't need to worry, the gesture says. The grass is more interesting than either of us. We are so safe that we can be curious. They ignore him. He tries the high tail wag, then the low one. He whines. He even flops onto his back and exposes his belly.
00:10:04
Speaker
Nothing. Instead, they do something incomprehensible. His human picks him up and hands him over to Lara. That part is normal enough. She pats him on the head. That's normal too. But her voice, there's something wrong with her voice. She's sad again.
00:10:27
Speaker
Soda Pop watches her mouth as she talks, hoping he'll recognize a shape even if he doesn't know the sounds. All he can tell is that something is happening. And then Lara carries him away.
00:10:42
Speaker
Sodapop tries to explain that this situation is wrong. He struggles in Lara's arms. He wails toward his human. Has she noticed that he's leaving? Does she know he's not following her inside? I'm right here, his wine says. I'm over here like a puppy away from his mother. I'm here and I need you, he cries. But the sun sets into the house and Lara clips him into a car harness.
00:11:08
Speaker
The car drives for hours down dark, bumpy roads. Or maybe it's minutes. It's hard to tell when you're a dog. Soda Pop whines the whole time.
00:11:21
Speaker
There's a cranky man in the front seat who gives him dirty looks. He doesn't care. This is worse than the last time that Laura took him away. That time, his human walked out a door and didn't come back. This time, he left her with Laura.
00:11:39
Speaker
Lara, who doesn't know how to find the itchy spot on the side of his neck, who doesn't remember that he likes the lamb treats more than the chicken ones. Lara, who takes him away from everything he loves over and over again. He loves Lara. He was glad to see Lara. But Lara is not his.
00:12:02
Speaker
He is so busy whining that he doesn't hear the raccoons until one lands with a thump on the top of the car. It's followed by another and another.
00:12:13
Speaker
He can hear them skittering, hissing, careening off the roof and onto the road. He can hear them running after the car when they land. He can smell that they're wrong, rotted, dark, like the squirrels he met the day before. They're strange like those squirrels too, working in packs, coordinating in a way raccoons normally don't. And there are other animals coming too, some with hooves, some with wings, soda pop, barks. If they know there's a dog in the car, they might go away.
00:12:41
Speaker
They might not realize that he's clipped into a harness and can't actually get them. A cursed raccoon slips through the sunroof and into the car. Lara screams. It lets out a horrible hiss. Sodapop strains against his car harness. Why did Lara restrain him like this? Didn't she know this might happen? And growls deep in his throat.
00:13:04
Speaker
Lara grabs the raccoon and throws it out a window. This is brave, Soda Pop thinks. She still hasn't unclipped him, which is silly of her. But she is brave. A great hooved thing slams into the side of the vehicle. The car careens sideways, fishtails back and forth across the road. Lara and the stranger yell at each other, Soda Pop howls. More things fall on the roof. He can hear the massing along the sides of the car, even approaching from the front.
00:13:34
Speaker
The car turns. The humans scream. They all crash into a tree. The animals run away. The humans slam into the dashboard.
The Forest Encounter
00:13:46
Speaker
The harness pulls at Sodapop's shoulders but otherwise keeps him in place. Lara groans. She's hurt her head. Sodapop can't reach her. He strains at the harness.
00:13:57
Speaker
There is a wound on the side of Laura's head. There is blood. He can't clean it. He can't look intently into her eyes. He can't lick her nose until she pushes him away. He can't make her safe. In the forest, something screams. It is coming closer.
00:14:21
Speaker
In the front seat, Lara rouses herself. She wakes up the cranky man. Soda Pop can smell danger. Just through the window. Just past the bushes. He feels his hair stand on end.
00:14:37
Speaker
Finally, finally, Lara turns to him. She is hurt and a little confused. He licks her nose. She runs her hand along his body, gentle but firm, searching for hurt places. He stares hard at her face, looking for the same thing.
00:14:54
Speaker
She is okay. A little disoriented, but she will live. The smell comes closer. Sharp. Wild. Strange. And close behind it. Nothing. Nothing. The worst thing. Soda Pop looks at Lara. She is hurt. He is not.
00:15:18
Speaker
When she finally unclips his harness, he bolts out the window. He runs without a thought toward the danger. Dogs don't generally understand vengeance. They don't think of pain as transferable, at least over time and distance. What they can do, though, is focus on one particular enemy and keep going until it stops. They do that better than almost anything.
00:15:41
Speaker
Sodapop crashes through the underbrush. At the edge of a cluster of damp ferns, a demonic raccoon appears. It bears rows of glittering, needled teeth. This thing is nearly as tall as he is, and certainly heavier. It raises dexterous paws, edged in thin, sharp claws. It smells of death, decay, and a third thing Sodapop can't place.
00:16:05
Speaker
If Lara were here, she would pick him up, insist he leave it alone, tell him that no matter what he thinks, this thing could destroy him.
00:16:12
Speaker
Lara is not here. Soda Pop hunches his head low, splays his paws out, tenses his shoulders. His tail goes down, ready to counterbalance and get out of the way. He's never truly pounced on anything except for toys, but that doesn't mean he doesn't know how. He can't see himself here, skinny and small, thorns tangled in his hair. Nor can he hear his own growl, a high-pitched parody of a forest wolf.
00:16:41
Speaker
The raccoon can, though, and it stands firm. With a soft thud, another raccoon lands behind the first. A third limps out of the bushes, fresh from fighting the cranky man's car. Soon there are a half dozen of them, bloodshot eyes glittering behind branches and bushes. Sodapop remembers the squirrels from the other night, climbing each other in a frenzied swarm to reach the owl that should have killed them.
00:17:09
Speaker
He remembers them crawling over it, weighing it down, ripping it to pieces. The smell of death, of open wounds and blood. He feels his hind legs tremble. Something ripples against his paw pads. It's an odd sensation like an echo in the dirt. A sort of electric pulse emanating from behind him.
00:17:34
Speaker
Soon after, he hears a terrible roar. Like a bear, an elephant, one of the big creatures he's seen on Lara's TV. The cry of a monster. The raccoons scatter. Sodapop barks at their retreating tails. The scent of death wafts away with them, and in its place he smells something... strange. An itchy smell.
00:17:59
Speaker
It's not wrong, like the animals or horrible, like the nothing smell. It's more like every pheromone at the same time tickling all of his nerves. Soda Pop sneezes. Again, the ripple through the dirt. A heavy footstep. Soda Pop turns. The creature he sees is not an ape. It's not a human.
00:18:25
Speaker
Some of its movements might remind you of a human if you didn't know humans very well. It's a little like a bear, but the dream of a bear. A nightmare from someone who's only ever heard a bear described, maybe. It walks on two legs, but it could drop to four if it wanted.
00:18:42
Speaker
It towers over him, taller than the tallest creature he's ever seen. It takes a step forward. Its hind paws are enormous, wide and flat, but there's something more than that. It's as if it walks on top of the Earth and underneath it at the same time. Its footsteps send out ripples.
00:19:04
Speaker
reverberations under everything. Its movement disturbs roots, splashes in underground rivers. It's here where Sodapop can see and smell it, but it's everywhere else, too. The creature stops, and Sodapop realizes he's been growling. As strange as this thing is, he recognizes it somehow. In Sodapop's deepest, deepest memories, he knows this for an enemy. The thing with the big paws hesitates.
00:19:34
Speaker
Slowly, slowly, it bends forward. It sets its front paws on the ground. It averts its gaze. This looks like dog language, predator appeasement, but this is not a dog. Soda Pop stops growling, but he keeps his eyes hard, his head low, ready for anything.
00:19:57
Speaker
The creature lowers itself completely, lies flat on its belly, and then it rolls over. Sodapop blinks. In canine language, there is no clearer sign. I'm not a threat, it says. I give up. Here are my softest parts all at your mercy. Still, he hesitates.
00:20:19
Speaker
It's always dangerous dealing with a different kind of animal. They don't always speak the right way. Cats, for example, like to show you their belly just before they attack. That's because cats are traitors. Then again, Soda Pop made friends with a cat before, and it helped. Everything is upside down here.
00:20:41
Speaker
The creature bears no teeth or claws. Its massive paws are extended, palm-side up toward the sky. It keeps its gaze averted. Sodapop takes an exploratory sniff. Its smell makes his spinal column ache. He knows it. He does not know how, but he knows it. Like a baby squirrel ought to know an owl.
00:21:06
Speaker
Big Paws lets out a low, soft rumble. It is not a threat. It wants him to know this. But it is dangerous. He knows that in his soul. The trees and bushes smell of calm, as if the forest itself wants to reassure him.
00:21:27
Speaker
He considers this. Carefully, Soda Pop wags his tail. Big Paws gets the message. It rolls onto all fours in one smooth, languid emotion. It keeps its eyes averted, its teeth covered.
00:21:44
Speaker
Above them, a star streaks across the sky. Soda Pop can't make it out well, but the big-footed thing jerks in response to it. Soda Pop takes two steps back and growls again. Big Paws raises one paw in a human-like gesture. In a human, it means stop. This is not a human, but Soda Pop stops.
00:22:03
Speaker
It wants to help him, or it wants help from him. He can't tell. He still does not like the way this thing smells. There's something in him that wants to reject it, to chase it away. But he remembers the nothing smell from a few nights before. He remembers a void that tried to erase the world. He thinks he remembers this creature running away from it.
00:22:32
Speaker
Sodapop relaxes. In response, the monster does too. It stands up on its hind feet. Its movements are graceful, almost plant-like. Its shaggy hair makes a soft whooshing sound like the whispering of trees. It turns its odd, flat face toward the top of the hillside.
00:22:55
Speaker
Then it looks back at him. He wags his tail again. Assured, it turns back toward the hill and begins to walk. Soda Pop follows at a distance. The odd electrical pulse finds him now and then. He knows this thing, but it knows him too, somehow. The way a dog knows a wolf, maybe. The way a dog and a wolf know that they're the same and that they're enemies.
00:23:26
Speaker
Indeed, the big pod creature knows him well. It knows that he crawls up onto the bed with his human after she falls asleep.
00:23:34
Speaker
It knows he likes soft blankets, likes to lay his head on her leg. That he sits when she says sit, that he lets her lead him around on a length of rope. The only things soda pop hunts are toys, small pillows really, full of stuffing that he can't even eat. A nuisance, this little dog with his comical high-pitched woof. A thorn in the side of all wild things, upset her of ecosystems, ally of the enemy.
00:24:04
Speaker
But Big Paws also knows that he dreams of dark places and small creatures that run. That sometimes in his dreams he rips open their bellies and finds not stuffing, but slick, sweet gore. It knows what he doesn't know how to know. Maybe it thinks that he knows something too.
00:24:29
Speaker
A star streaks across the sky. The creature flinches. Soda Pop sniffs the air for danger and growls. Together, they walk into a forest full of strangeness.
Preview of 'High Night'
00:24:45
Speaker
To be continued. Hi, Nai. I know. It's been a while since you last talked.
00:24:59
Speaker
busy. If you've been listening to our show for a while, you'll remember that literal weird stuff have been popping up around the city. Mari, what is going on? I've laid down the salt, put you in the candles. I'm walking home, but I'm doing what I can to
00:25:32
Speaker
Don't stop running. He'll never guess what went down today. You're listening to High Night by Motsi Dapu.