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The Second Tale of Sodapop: Part 2
18.3k Plays2 years ago
The second half (and conclusion) of the Second Tale of Sodapop! If you haven't heard part one, you should go back one episode. 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 further. Full episode currently available on Patreon.
The transcript for this episode is available on BelieverPodcast.com.
Stick around for a promo for Seven of Hearts: A coffee shop. A group of friends. A town where people keep dying under mysterious circumstances. Seven people with secrets to hide. 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
- Swamp Fever - Walt Adams
- Piercing Silence - Ethan Sloan
- Face of the Earth - Jakob Ahlbom
- Into the Void - Ethan Sloan
- Birdsong - They Dream By Day
- Dear Moon - Velvet Moon
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Transcript
Introduction & Advertisements
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi everyone, this is part two of the second tale of soda pop. If you have not listened to part one, you're going to want to go back. If you're not familiar with who soda pop is or the events of the first season of Believer, then you're going to want to go back even further. I suggest you start with episode one or at the very least listen to the first tale of soda pop.
00:00:23
Speaker
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Teaser of 'Seven of Hearts'
00:02:01
Speaker
Stay tuned at the end of this episode for a trailer for Seven of Hearts, a horror tragedy audio drama about a coffee shop, a group of friends, and a town where people are dying under mysterious circumstances. You can find a link to that show in the show notes. All right, here we go.
Soda Pop's Dark Forest Adventure
00:02:21
Speaker
The second detail of soda pop, part two.
00:02:30
Speaker
Sodapop picks his way through a forest gone wrong. His shoulders ache a little, but he ignores it. His bad knee catches, but he shakes it off. Nearby, the thing with giant paws leads him up the hill again. Its footsteps send little electrical pulses through the dirt. They tingle when they reach his paw pads. Sodapop tries to step over and around them, but their trajectory is hard to predict.
00:03:00
Speaker
Here and there, Big Paws stops, tilts its head, and listens. Occasionally, it calls in a high, clear voice. Sodapop never hears a reply, but it seems this creature has a companion, maybe even a pack.
00:03:18
Speaker
The forest has grown uncannily dark, darker even than the room with blackout curtains where Lara sleeps sometimes. Distorted calls from changed animals echo through the night, and the scent profile is dizzying.
00:03:34
Speaker
Big Paws is the scent equivalent of a neon siren, a tangled mass of pheromones under a pungent sulfur smell. The bizarre half-dead animals are almost masked by it, though he can find them if he concentrates.
00:03:49
Speaker
If soda pop's nose is to be trusted, night and day animals are out at the same time and at least a third of them have been dead for weeks. If it doesn't smell of death, it smells of fear. Soda pop has never encountered so many different kinds of fear.
00:04:09
Speaker
While the Big Pod Creature's ultimate goal is unclear, it seems to want to protect the little dog. When it sees him cringe away from an underground pulse, it stops sending them his way. Instead, it turns its head toward him now and then. Once, a group of evil opossums draw near. It stomps its foot then, and Sodapop hears them shriek and run away. He follows a little closer after that.
00:04:36
Speaker
Far above them, the sky begins to scream. Before tonight, the worst sound soda pop had ever heard was the low battery alarm on a smoke detector. The smoke detector is a horrible little creature that lives on the ceiling in Laura's house. It lies silent for most of its life, but sometimes, usually when Laura makes dinner, it wakes up and screams.
00:05:01
Speaker
The low battery sound is shorter than the scream, more of a chirp. But it is infinitely more painful. Its frequency pierces right through Sodapop's brain. Oh, when he first heard that chirp, Sodapop shook all over and he didn't stop shaking until late into the night. Even after Lara took the smoke detector down, took out all its pieces, he still remembered the pain.
00:05:26
Speaker
It hasn't chirped since she put it back together, but he's careful of it all the same.
Encounter with Tree-Bear Creatures
00:05:31
Speaker
That chirp is Sodapop's greatest fear. That is, until he hears the stars. There is something wrong with the stars.
00:05:47
Speaker
They appear in the sky as sickly bolts of light. As each appears, it begins to whine. The high-pitched sound blooms, rises, and falls, hits every discordant note across a thousand scales. The reverberations hit a pitch that Soda Pop can't even hear, but he still feels them, tearing through his eardrums, clawing at his eyeballs, rattling his bones.
00:06:12
Speaker
Sodapop screams, though he can't hear himself screaming. He feels like he's being compressed, every atom crashing into each other, then shaking loose only to settle closer, tighter, heavier. In desperation, he barks at his own body, at the attacker within and without. He cries for someone else to help him, and he cries in case it helps someone else.
00:06:34
Speaker
Then there's a ripple under his feet and the sky goes quiet. Sodapop looks up to see the big pawed creature by his side. It leans over and looks down at him. Its eyes glitter with broken moonlight. Everything smells like sulfur. Sodapop doesn't mind.
00:06:58
Speaker
It walks forward, and this time, Sodopop stays very close, touching when he can. Its fur is rough, like uncut brush. He trembles at the sky. He trembles at the monster by his side. He is caught, he realizes, and he is so very far from home. Suddenly, the monster stops. Its excitement fills the air around it, like static electricity. It lets out a piercing, rumbling roar.
00:07:30
Speaker
This time, another sound echoes back. Many sounds, actually. Rumbles, roars, cries. Big Paws has found its pack.
Rescue Mission in the Forest
00:07:41
Speaker
They loom up out of shadows, differentiate themselves from thickets and grass piles. They could be bears, or they could be trees. Tall, mossy, human-like and plant-like and wild.
00:07:55
Speaker
They vary in size. The one who came here with soda pop, which looks taller than any animal soda pop has ever seen, might be the smallest one. It is the most like a human. The others take strange forms. One has antler-like growths sprouting from its head. Another has long leathery flaps that sweep the earth behind it.
00:08:19
Speaker
All have four limbs, though. All have huge paws. All of them move both above and beneath the ground. By their sides, perched on their arms, following in their wake, are animals.
00:08:34
Speaker
Regular animals, alive ones, untouched by whatever decay has struck the other creatures of this place. Birds, field mice, furry things, and feathery things, and even a few scaly ones. They ought to be afraid of each other, but they're too dazed, too exhausted. Like soda pop, they can only huddle close and worry. The tree-bear beings move into a loose circle.
00:08:59
Speaker
They stand on their hind paws, whatever shape those take, and extend their front paws toward each other. Sodapop feels waves of energy pass between them.
00:09:10
Speaker
It's electric, like before, but not uncomfortable. It pulses like a heartbeat. Gradually, they begin to hum. It's a deep, rumbling note that drowns out the horrible screams of the stars and shakes loose muscles bound by fear. Sodapop looks around and sees the other animals come back to themselves. He watches them relax.
00:09:36
Speaker
He looks up at the little big thing that brought him here. It glances down at him, its eyes soft. Then it looks to its companions and joins the hum. Across the beast ring, Soda Pop spots a familiar spot of white on black fur. The barn cat is here, standing between the feet of a beast that looks like a giant pile of moss. She holds a kitten in her jaws.
00:10:03
Speaker
As he makes his way toward her, she sets the kitten down and cleans its ears. She pauses as he draws close, but a flicker of recognition runs through her and she resumes cleaning. Sodapop sniffs them both.
00:10:17
Speaker
The kitten smells a little like the barn cat, but not much. It came from the same place, perhaps, but it isn't hers. Still, she calms it. Then she turns back toward the space behind the moss beast. She twitches her tail, then plunges back into the darkness.
00:10:40
Speaker
It's horrible out there. Sodapop can feel it. Everything is wrong and the stars still scream. He moves to catch the barn cat to call her back, but she's gone before he can react.
00:10:52
Speaker
He looks at the kitten, tiny and forlorn at the feet of a mossy monster. He whines. The barn cat darts back in with another kitten. Her hair is all on end. He can feel her frayed nerves, smell her pain and panic. Still, she licks the kitten once, sets it with its sibling, and races back into the forest again. The kittens stare up at him with wide, frightened eyes. He sniffs at them carefully.
00:11:22
Speaker
The first kitten reaches up, tiny claws extended and grabs onto his muzzle. He yelps and pulls backward. The moss beast lets out a deep subsonic grumble. Dog and cats freeze in place until it stops with a satisfied grunt.
00:11:40
Speaker
Two more times, the barn cat comes back with a kitten, sets it with the others, and runs away again. Each journey seems to hit her harder. By the time she gets back with the fifth kitten, smaller and stickier than its siblings, she moves slowly, like every joint hurts. Her hair sheds in clumps. She sets the tiny one with the others and leans against the moss beast, exhausted. She looks at Soda Pop, almost as if seeing him for the first time.
00:12:09
Speaker
Her ears twitch. He steps forward and licks the kittens for her. The little one tastes like blood, not its own. It's hard to say when Soda Pop becomes aware that Laura is in trouble.
00:12:28
Speaker
The feeling creeps up on him, a tiny sensation running up his spine. He licks the kittens harder and harder until the barn cat steps between them with a hiss. That's when he realizes how tense he is.
00:12:42
Speaker
He pads back to the Big Pod creature, the young one who led him here. Young Big Paws looks down at him. Soda Pop whines. It seems to understand. It glances at the others. It moves one giant foot, just a little.
00:13:00
Speaker
just enough to open a path to the outside. Soda Pop sniffs the air. He has to concentrate hard. There's a lot of interference now. The Big Pod creatures are overwhelming so many of them all together, admitting a series of pulses and pheromones and scents.
00:13:17
Speaker
He pushes himself though, sulfur, electricity, mice, robins, crows, kitten, moss, sulfur, bat, kitten, squirrel, old dirt, new dirt, decay, water, life, a million cents, a cost him, and he presses past them, all sorts through them, looking for nothing. At the edge of this jumble of smells, there's nothing.
00:13:43
Speaker
and deep inside the nothing, there's a call. It's not a smell or a sound or anything else. It's a force, a pull.
Rescue and Farewell to Lara
00:13:57
Speaker
The thing that pulls the tides beckons waves to the shore and drags them back again. If it's a light, then it's a dull one, but it calls all the same. He glances back at the barn cat.
00:14:11
Speaker
The kittens aren't hers, but she still saved the kittens. He looks up at the young big paw. It meets his gaze. He wags his tail. It nods.
00:14:32
Speaker
The cacophony rushes back the second he leaves the circle. It takes all his senses with it. Sodapop can't understand anything he passes. A group of elk fight over the carcass of a coyote. Bats slam into tree trunks, unable to hear themselves over the screaming sky. Everything smells of confusion, of fear, of blood.
00:14:53
Speaker
Sodapop points himself at the nothing smell and crashes wildly into the underbrush. He careens sideways, unmoored, like the time that a child tried to take him on a swing set and just kept pulling him back and forth. The nothingness is his beacon, a comforting bit of silence in this ocean of input, and he orients himself toward it. At its center is the urgent thing, the compulsion that pushes him on.
00:15:23
Speaker
By the time he reaches the clearing, he is utterly confused. The lifeless dirt feels like soft sand beneath his paws. The screaming stars blend with the voices of distressed animals and humans. To his overspent ears, they become a distant roar, the roiling of a lifeless surf. He staggers sideways, shakes his head, and searches again. This time, he feels it. A strange thump in his chest.
00:15:53
Speaker
He looks toward the center of this dead place. Past a sea of death and decay and panic lies the whole entire world. There is his human and there is Lara. They are there together, very far away.
00:16:17
Speaker
Sodapop summons the last of his strength and sprints. It takes everything he has to move in this place, but because he is a dog, he has everything to give. He runs, and as he runs, he howls to the moon.
00:16:35
Speaker
Lara hears him first. Both of his humans are far away, somehow here and somewhere else. But when he cries, Lara turns. The movement is slow, dazed, but unmistakable. He leaps toward her outstretched arms, and in a moment, she's only here. It's Lara who brings his human back. She reflects the human who is the sun, and she draws her from the darkness.
00:17:05
Speaker
His human wraps him in light, and for a moment, everything is okay, even in this nightmare world. Soda Pop helps Lara, who helps Rose, who helps Soda Pop, just as it ought to be.
00:17:21
Speaker
When his human rises, she is the brightest thing in the night. She throws a lantern into the center of the nothingness and the monsters burst into flame. Lara is cool against the ensuing fire. Her arms secure around his chest as she lifts him up and carries him away. What follows after that is a blur. Sodapop falls asleep in the backseat of another car. When he wakes up, Mom has him.
00:17:49
Speaker
She is kinder than she was before. She gives him treats and takes him to a groomer where he gets even more treats. The groomer picks at his paw pads and pulls at his matted hair. He hates this. But when the groomer finishes, soda pop feels better than he has in days. Which is most likely a coincidence. Time passes slowly.
00:18:12
Speaker
until one day, Mom takes him somewhere new. It's a strange place with slick floors and a bitey antiseptic smell. She hurries him down the hall, though he wants to stop and sniff at everything he sees, and ushers him into a room. There, on a bed, is Rose. He knows that she is called Rose because the humans keep saying it over and over.
00:18:39
Speaker
For the first time since he can remember, she seems happy. She is at peace. She smells of medicine and still carries hints of the forest, but she is well. He licks her face and she laughs. At the edge of her bed is Lara. Lara shrinks away from Mom, who touches Rose's hair. Mom takes care of Rose, he thinks.
00:19:09
Speaker
Mom leaves the room so his humans can talk. He doesn't know the words they say, but for once the tone seems soft and kind. As they make their mouth sounds, Soda Pop watches Lara. She compels him somehow. He's never noticed that before. He feels her movements. There's such comfort to her presence.
00:19:34
Speaker
She is quiet and cool and not always easy to read, but mostly she is alone. Sodapop thinks of the barn cat, watching the kittens that didn't smell like her. He thinks of the big pod monster that saved him, even though every instinct said that they should fight.
00:20:00
Speaker
He thinks of the ocean, the real ocean. He thinks of the moon and the tides. The humans go quiet, and he knows they're going to move apart again. This is the way of them, it turns out. Perfect pieces that never seem to fit. When Lara moves, Sodapop wants to follow. She needs him, he realizes.
00:20:28
Speaker
And he is a good boy. A good boy goes where he's needed. For the final time, his human envelops him in warm, healing light. She says something in a sad, determined voice. She sets him on the ground. Then Lara walks out the door and soda pop follows, like the tide, like a beacon in the night.
New Beginnings with Lara
00:20:59
Speaker
They step out into the parking lot and Lara releases a sharp, shuddering breath. She stares into space for a long, quiet moment. Soda Pop nudges her leg with his nose. Lara looks down at him and laughs. Everything he knows will be okay. The end. Bye now.
Eerie Monologue & Podcast Promo
00:21:56
Speaker
Are you alone? Are you sure? Anyone could be watching? Waiting?
00:22:07
Speaker
You didn't know, would you? No, of course you were. Still smoking, I see. Still acting like I gave a damn about your opinion. There's... nobody here. Nobody here, just... my imagination. Look, you either need to leave me alone or show yourself, because I'm not doing this. You don't even know what's coming. Don't worry.
00:22:37
Speaker
I promise in the end, it will be quiet. You really don't see anything wrong with making a Coke and Mentos volcano in the dorm bathroom. Really? No. Nope. Listen to Seven of Hearts wherever you find podcasts.