TRANSCRIPT: The Second Tale of Sodapop, Part 2

[Music: “Swamp Fever,” by Walt Adams]

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. 

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, or maybe even a pack.

The forest has grown uncannily dark, darker even than the room with black-out curtains where Lara sometimes sleeps. Distorted calls from changed animals echo through the night. The scent profile is dizzying. 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. If Sodapop’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. Sodapop has never encountered so many different kinds of fear.

While the big-pawed 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.

Far above them, the sky begins to scream.

Before tonight, the worst sound Sodapop 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 Lara’s house. It lies silent for most of its life, but sometimes – usually when Lara makes dinner – it wakes up and screams. The low battery sound is shorter than the scream, but it is infinitely more painful. Its frequency pierces right through Sodapop’s brain. 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. It hasn’t chirped since she put it back together, but he’s careful of it all the same. That chirp is Sodapop’s greatest fear.

That is, until he hears the stars.

There is something wrong with the stars.

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 Sodapop can’t even hear – but he still feels them, tearing through his eardrums, clawing at his eyeballs, rattling his bones. 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.

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.

It walks forward, and this time Sodapop 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. 

This time, another sound echoes back. Many sounds, actually. Rumbles, roars, cries. Big-paws has found its pack. 

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. They vary in size. The one who came here with Sodapop, which looks taller than any animal Sodapop has yet 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. 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. 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 Sodapop, they can only huddle close and worry.

The tree-bear-beings move into a loose circle. 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. 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. 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, Sodapop 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. 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. 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.

It’s still 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. 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. 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.

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 tufts. She sets the tiny one with the others and leans against the moss-beast, exhausted. She looks at Sodapop, as if seeing him for the first time. Her ears twitch. He moves in and licks the kittens for her. The little one tastes like blood. Feline blood. Not its own.

It’s hard to say when Sodapop becomes aware that Lara is in trouble. 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.

He pads back to the Big-Pawed creature, the young one who led him here. Young Big-Paws looks down at him. Sodapop whines. It seems to understand. It glances at the others. It moves one giant foot, just a little. Just enough to open a path to the outside.

Sodapop sniffs the air. He has to concentrate hard, as there’s a lot of interference now. The Big-Pawed creatures are overwhelming, so many of them all together emitting a series of pulses and pheromones. He pushes himself, though. Sulfur, electricity, mice, robins, crows, kitten, moss, sulfur, bat, kitten, squirrel, old dirt, new dirt, decay, water, life…a million scents accost him, and he presses past them all, sorts through them, looking for…

Nothing.

At the edge of this jumble of smells, there’s nothing. 

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. 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. 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.

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.

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.

By the time he reaches the clearing, he is utterly confusing. 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. 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.

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 at the moon.

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. His human wraps him in light, and for a moment everything is okay, even in this nightmare world. Sodapop helps Lara who helps Rose who helps Sodapop, just as it ought to be.

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. 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, Sodapop feels better than he has in days. This is most likely a coincidence.

Time passes slowly, 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. 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.  

Mom leaves the room so his humans can talk. He doesn’t know the words they say, but for once the tone seems soft, kind. 

As they talk, Sodapop watches Lara. She compels him, somehow. He’s never noticed that before. He feels her movements. There’s such comfort to her presence. 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-pawed monster that saved him even though every instinct said that they should fight. 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. 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 Sodapop follows. Like the tide. Like a beacon in the night. 

They step out into the parking lot, and Lara lets out a shuddering breath. She stares into space for a long, quiet moment. Sodapop nudges her leg with his nose. Lara looks down at him and laughs.

Everything, he knows, will be okay.

The end. ‘Bye now.

[Outro song: “Dear Moon,” by Velvet Moon]

SEVEN OF HEARTS PROMO TRANSCRIPT

VOICE

Are you alone? Are you sure? Anyone could be watching, waiting…you wouldn’t know, would you? No, of course you wouldn’t.

Pause

ZACH

Still smoking, I see

ALEX

Still acting like I give a damn about your opinion.

Pause

CARM

There’s…nobody here. Nobody here, just…my imagination.

Pause

SAL

Look, you either need to leave me alone, or show yourself, because I’m not doing this.

Pause

VOICE

You don’t even know what’s coming. Don’t worry, I promise, in the end, it will be quick.

Pause

CARMIN

You really don’t see anything wrong with making a coke and mentos volcano in the dorm bathroom. Really?

SAL

No.

CONNOR

Nope.

TRANSCRIPT: The Second Tale of Sodapop, Part 1

SURPRISE! Happy Halloween! This feed has once again been quiet for much longer than anticipated, but I do want to reassure you all that the show is not going away. I am currently neck-deep in final script development for season 2, so keep an ear out for production announcements early next year. I also have some interviews with experts and other bonus content to help fill the time.

For now, please enjoy this story, which retells the events of episodes 6-10 from the perspective of Sodapop, world’s greatest dog. This story picks up right where the last Tale of Sodapop left off, so if you’re not familiar with that story – or with the events of season one of Believer – you might want to go back and listen.

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 Sara Norris, The Beldam, and Justin Cone, you can find out more at Patreon.com/believerpod. 

And now please enjoy, The Second Tale of Sodapop, Part 1 - written and read by me, Julie Saunders.

THE SECOND TALE OF SODAPOP

On a little bed inside a broken room, a little dog watches the sunrise. 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. There sits a human, her back to the dog, her unkempt hair lit like a halo. She traces the sun-lines with a sharp blade, deepens the scars in this crumbling bedroom. 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.

Last night, Sodapop 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. 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. 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. And so when they reached the creaky old house at the bottom of the hill, and She walked inside without Lara, Sodapop followed. 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 of his human’s 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. 

His human sits on the floor, tracing lines in the floorboards. She hums something to herself. Sodapop huddles on the bed. He doesn’t want to touch the lines. He watches her.

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 Sodapop can’t seem to find.

He watches, and he watches, and he watches. 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. 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.

Sodapop often 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 opened door. Bits and pieces. This dream is different.

In the dream, Sodapop 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. It’s not the ocean. Sodapop 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. 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. Sodapop turns around and around in the fine, soft sand. It’s as if she’s everywhere and nowhere at the same time. 

Sodapop 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.

Finally, he sees her. She sits with her back to him. She draws something in the sand – long, tangled lines. Sodapop 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. 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. Her skin is flushed, her eyes wild. Sodapop 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. 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. 

She does not smell of fear. But something is still wrong. He presses his nose to her mouth, 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.

When she finally lets him go, he struggles out of her arms and bursts into the hall. The house is unnaturally quiet. He sniffs for 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. 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?

His humans say words to each other. One is angry, the other dismayed. Sodapop lets out a little sigh.

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.

Sodapop 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. 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.

Sodapop 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. It’s not something that he wants to happen.

And then Lara carries him away.

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 whine 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.

They ride for hours down dark, bumpy roads. Or maybe it’s minutes. It’s hard to tell when you’re a dog. Sodapop whines the whole time. 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 Lara took him away. That time, his human walked out a door and didn’t come back. This time, he left her. With Lara. 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. 

He is so busy whining that he doesn’t hear the racoons until one lands with a THUMP on the top of the car. It’s followed by another, and another. 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 racoons normally don’t. And there are other animals coming, too – some with hooves, some with wings.

Sodapop barks. If they know there’s a dog in the car, they might go away. 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.

Lara grabs the racoon and throws it out a window. This is brave, Sodapop thinks. She still hasn’t unclipped him, which is silly of her. But she is brave.

A 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. Sodapop howls.

More things fall on the roof. He can hear them massing along the sides of the car, even approaching from the front.

The car turns. 

The humans scream.

They all crash into a tree.

The animals run away. Why did they run away? He must have barked very well.

The humans slam into the dashboard. 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. 

There is a wound on the side of Lara’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.

In the front seat, Lara rouses herself. She wakes up the cranky man.

Sodapop can smell danger. Just through the window. Just past the bushes. He feels his hair stand on end.

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.

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.

Sodapop looks at Lara. She is hurt. He is not.

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, especially 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. 

Sodapop crashes through the underbrush. At the edge of a cluster of damp ferns, a demonic raccoon appears. It bares rows of glittering, needled teeth. This thing is nearly as tall as he is, and certainly heavier. It raises dextrous paws edged in thin, sharp claws. It smells of death, decay, and a third thing Sodapop can’t place. 

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.

Lara is not here.

Sodapop 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 there, skinny and small, thorns tangled in his hair. Nor can he hear his own growl, a high-pitched parody of a forest wolf. 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’ve killed them. 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. 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. It’s not wrong, like the animals, or horrible, like the nothing-smell. It’s like every pheromone at the same time, tickling all his nerves. Sodapop sneezes.

Again, the ripple through the dirt. A heavy footstep. Sodapop turns.

The creature he sees is not an ape. It’s not a human. 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. 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, 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 memory, he knows this for an enemy. 

The thing with the big paws hesitates. 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. Sodapop stops growling, but he keeps his eyes hard, his head low, ready for anything.

The creature lowers itself completely, lies flat on its belly. And then finally…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. 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, Sodapop made friends with a cat before, and it helped. Everything is upside-down here.

The creature bares 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.

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. He considers this.

Carefully, Sodapop wags his tail. Big-paws gets the message. It rolls onto all fours in one smooth, languid motion. It keeps its eyes averted, its teeth covered.

Above them, a star streaks across the sky. Sodapop can’t make it out well, but the big-footed thing jerks in response to it. Sodapop 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 Sodapop stops.

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. 

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. It looks back at him. He wags his tail again. Assured, it turns back toward the hill and begins to walk.

Sodapop 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.

Indeed, the big-pawed creature knows him well. It knows that he crawls up onto the bed with his human after she falls asleep. 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 Sodapop hunts are toys – small pillows, really – full of stuffing that he can’t even eat. He’s a nuisance, this little dog with his comical, high-pitched “woof.” A thorn in the side of all wild things, upsetter of ecosystems, ally of the enemy.

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.

A star streaks across the sky. The creature flinches. Sodapop sniffs the air for danger and growls.

Together, they walk into a forest full of strangeness.

To be continued…

[Music: “Swamp Fever,” by Walt Adams]

TRANSCRIPT: Tale of SodaPop Pt 3

A PDF version of this transcript is available here.

 The moon has risen high in the sky by the time SodaPop gets a moment’s rest. The barn cat leads  him along game trails and over streams, and he follows at a plodding pace, his tongue hanging out of his mouth. This night has been very strange, and that makes him tired. Finally, the cat stops at a small thicket blanketed with fallen needles. SodaPop digs out a little bed, circles it a few times to make sure it’s just right, and promptly falls asleep.

The barn cat watches him a moment, then saunters off to hunt. It’s not clear why she’s taken such a shine to the little dog. She doesn’t care much for dogs, normally, or really any animal for that matter. Maybe she feels bad for him. He’s so clearly a city dog, the smell of concrete and exhaust embedded down to the skin. He’s quick and clever, but hopeless in the face of danger. He’d never survive out here on his own. But he also knows humans, or at least has all the trappings of a spoiled human pet, and that is one area of expertise that the barn cat doesn’t have.

She catches a field mouse, plays with it a little, then eats it before going back to check on the sleeping dog. She taps him softly with her paw and he startles awake. See? Hopeless. You don’t sleep deep in the woods, especially here on the ground. It’s a great way to never wake up.

When SodaPop sees the barn cat, he stretches and gives himself a thorough, full-body shake. She blinks slowly at him. He wags his tail. Neither is quite sure what these signals mean, but they don’t seem threatening, which is good enough.

It’s still dark out, though it won’t be for long, and the barn cat decides to put SodaPop’s knowledge to good use. She guides him up a steep hollow to a wide, well-worn hiking trail. Beside the trail she finds a huge blackberry bush, wild and full of thick thorns, and slips underneath it. SodaPop tries to follow, but the thorns snag the feathery hair on his ears almost immediately. He whines, stuck, but the cat just settles deeper under the bush and turns around to watch him. He takes a careful step backward and manages to free himself, but the blackberry bush is clearly not a good hiding spot.

Far down the trail, they hear footsteps. Human footsteps. SodaPop tenses, then sits up and wags his tail. Humans! He loves those!

The cat gives a soft, warning hiss, which he ignores. He steps onto the edge of the path. There are three adult humans of varying sizes. In the pre-pre-dawn, he can really only make out their silhouettes. One of them is very tall, and that one swivels its head back and forth as it walks, keeping a constant watch on their surroundings. There’s a short one, which stares at its feet as it walks. The third one smells strongly of sausages. It chatters to the others. It says the words “Lara” and “dog,” and SodaPop starts to rush forward, then stops. 

There’s something wrong. Beneath the smell of old sausages, the humans radiate fear. Now, it’s true that dogs can smell fear. But not all fear smells the same. There’s the worried kind, which usually needs a soothing response from a dog. And the frightened kind, which means a predator’s near. What emanates from these humans is something else. It’s a slow, dangerous tension, the elevated adrenaline of someone attempting something against their better judgement. This is the smell of humans who are Up To Something.

Of course, while processing all of this, he’s forgotten that he’s supposed to be hiding. So before he can decide what to do, the tall human stops and points at him. Then the short one says “SodaPop,” and all three look in his direction. SodaPop turns to run, but only finds the blackberry bush. So turns toward the humans, squares his shoulders, and barks. 

This activates the humans, who dive in his direction. The tall one reaches for him first. He ducks under its big hands and takes a quick side-step, which sends it off-balance. The short one goes low, bending its knees and holding its hands out wide. It misjudges how narrow SodaPop is, though, and the dog slips between the short human’s legs and out the other side. Then the sausage-y one grabs his tail. This solidifies, in SodaPop’s mind, that these are very bad humans. He whips his head around and snarls viciously. The sausage one, not knowing that SodaPop is actually too good a boy to ever bite someone, lets go of his tail in a hurry. Still too close for comfort, SodaPop spins once and lets out a mighty battle cry.

[SFX: A cute doggy “Arooo” sound.]

What the humans soon discover is that SodaPop is an all-time master at the game of chase. The secret is not necessarily speed. Lots of dogs are fast. But when you’re small, narrow, and long-legged, you just have to zig-zag and turn more tightly than your opponent and you win every time. There’s not a dog alive who can catch SodaPop, not even that Border Collie that someone keeps bringing to the small dog side of the dog park. Clumsy, two-legged humans don’t stand a chance.

He zips just close enough to the tall one to bait it into bending down to grab him, then feints and rushes at the sausage-smelling one instead. The tall one, bent over as it is, attempts to follow with its arms and accidentally clotheslines the short one, who’s racing into the fray. Sausage man swipes at him, but SodaPop slips close to its legs and then fluidly turns around behind it. This leads the man in a small circle, which pushes it just off-balance enough that it must right itself before chasing after the dog. This buys SodaPop time to zip straight away and out of the little cluster of humans. 

SodaPop sprints a few yards away and turns to see that the humans have largely recovered from their mishaps. The tall one now holds a cloth sheet it got from somewhere. This could be a problem. “Come here, doggy,” the short one says, as it fans out to block an easy escape route on one side of the trail. SodaPop hesitates just a half-second, then races toward the short one. Just as a grin spreads on the human’s face, SodaPop jukes hard and whirls off in another direction. The tall one is waiting for him here, though, and it spreads the sheet wide to try to catch him. SodaPop skids into a hard turn and just manages to get away, but the awkward movement makes his bad knee ache. He needs to get out of the open.

SodaPop does a quick zig-zag across the trail to try to scatter the humans a little, but they’re ready for him. He scans the surroundings, but can’t see a good hiding spot that won’t require leaping over a fallen tree limb or two. While there’s always a chance that could make a human trip, it could also pop his bad knee. Therefore, he takes the one option that’s demonstrated to work. Powered by desperate adrenaline, SodaPop lowers his head and runs as fast as he can into the blackberry bush.

Thorns tear at the hair on his ears and muzzle, poke into the gaps between his paw pads, embed themselves in his fluffy tail. Despite this, SodaPop lets the momentum carry him through to nearly the center of the sprawling bush — and right into the barn cat’s hiding spot.

The barn cat, now faced with a thorny, dog-shaped rocket, lets out a piercing yowl —

[SFX: Cat scream]

and flies out of the bush — directly toward the short human. Neither have time to get out of the way, and both scream as cat collides with human, claws first. The barn cat slashes savagely in all directions, landing several vicious scratches before she disentangles from the short one. Then she ricochets off the tall one, digging her claws into the human’s leg so that she can springboard onto a nearby tree. She climbs up several levels and stops to lick the blood off of her claws. Humans are just so gross.

The humans are in chaos now, all shouting and running around. Meanwhile, SodaPop is fully stuck inside the blackberry bush, held in place by thick snarls of thorns. He tries to lift his head, but that just twists the thorns even deeper into his hair. He makes a few more cautious moves, but it’s hopeless. He can only whine for help. The smell of sausages floats ever-closer as the one uninjured human tries to part the thorny bush without cutting itself. It’s only somewhat successful, though it does manage to thrust an arm in far enough to reach SodaPop’s ear. 

Then suddenly, there’s a cry in the distance.

[SFX: Monster cry]

SodaPop has heard this sound a few times since Lara brought him to this place, and it always makes him nervous. It rattles down his spine and into his gut. His lips curl into a growl almost before he actually hears it. But as the sound pierces through the pre-dawn forest, the humans stiffen. They smell of pure panic and anticipation now. As SodaPop finally extricates himself from the blackberry bush, the humans fall to their knees and press their faces into the ground, arms stretched out ahead of them. 

SodaPop chews a thorn out of one of his feet, shakes the brambles he can out of his hair, and turns toward the sound. 

It’s hard to make out what it is, exactly. It’s something huge with long, pulsing limbs that reach across the sky. The non-smell from earlier seeps out from it, erasing all the other scents in the air, confusing his senses again. Wherever the shape’s long arms spread, the sky disappears. It’s not that it’s dark. If you have a good nose, you never confuse darkness with nothingness. This is like a hole in the world. Emptiness.

As it approaches, SodaPop feels his own terror rise. The humans are motionless now, eyes shut tight. Up in a tree, the barn cat also sits frozen, her eyes so dilated they’ve gone completely black.

SodaPop has run far too many times in the last few hours. He wouldn’t run now, even if he could. Instead, SodaPop looks down at the frightened humans, and he knows what he must do. He is, after all, a Good Boy. He’s always been a good boy. He comes from a long line of good boys and girls. And right now, all that breeding says that good dogs protect others. So he gathers himself, growls deep in his throat, and steps past the humans, toward the nothing-thing.

The long limbs radiate out from a thick, confused mass at the center. Between the pre-dawn shadows and the lack of smell, SodaPop can’t tell what shape it is. Its edges seem to ripple and change. Wherever it touches the ground, the plants shrivel and die. Other than that soft rustling, it makes no sound. SodaPop lowers his head, trying his best to look intimidating as he blocks its path to the humans. Then he lets out his deepest, most intimidating bark.

[SFX: Dog barking (mean)]

The thing actually seems to hesitate for a moment. It stops moving, and its limbs stick straight out in a curious gesture. The humans on the ground writhe and scream in response, and though SodaPop isn’t sure how the being hurts them, he barks frantically for it to stop.

[SFX: Dog barking (scared)]

The empty limbs flicker a little, like the being is thinking of what to do next. Before it can act, though, pre-dawn shifts into dawn. The sun crests over the hill, sending bright, clear beams through the trees. The gray mush of the landscape transforms into a mosaic of light and shadow. SodaPop winces only slightly as the light hits his eyes, and in that fraction of a second, the monster is gone. It doesn’t wither or sizzle. It doesn’t cry or run or hide. It’s just there one moment and gone the next, a cluster of dead plants the only sign it was ever here at all. The forest smells rush back in again, knocking SodaPop a little off-balance as he adjusts back to the regular world.

Behind him, the humans stop screaming and groan softly instead. They roll onto their backs, breathless, and lie on the ground. The short one says that they’ve been “blessed,” a word that SodaPop remembers as a good thing. The tall one laughs, wild and incredulous. The smelly one just stares into the sky, motionless.

Just at the edge of his vision, SodaPop catches a little movement. Something large, but living, with wide, quiet footsteps. Its eyes glint in SodaPop’s direction, and then it sprints off into the woods. SodaPop doesn’t care to follow.

He considers the humans for a moment. He protected them, but that doesn’t mean he trusts them. In fact, if he’s going to get away from them, then he should do it now while they’re distracted. So he sniffs once and trots away into the forest. Far above, the barn cat leaps from branch to branch and then scrambles to the ground. She walks next to him, her steps heavy but quick. SodaPop’s tail wags slightly. The cat twitches an ear in his direction. They disappear into the brush.

The walk back through the woods is long, not least because SodaPop doesn’t actually know which direction to go in anymore. The smell of home is long gone. The barn cat seems to trust him, though, and the two range across the hillside amiably. SodaPop’s jangling collar and general enthusiasm ruin the barn cat’s attempt to stalk the just-awakened field mice, but his keen nose is good at finding clean streams to drink from. At one such stream, the barn cat sneaks away and returns with the remains of a bird. She drops it in front of SodaPop and steps back. This one cannot hunt, but it doesn’t deserve to starve, the gesture might say. SodaPop doesn’t really know what to do with a dead bird, though, and the cat looks on in horror as he rolls on it instead of eating it.

SodaPop is a true denizen of the woods, he thinks. His hair is full of thorns, twigs, and leaves. He’s got a few scratches from the blackberry bush, but nothing serious. There’s a layer of dirt settling in against his skin. And now, best of all, he is cloaked with the alluring, complex scent of dead bird. What could be better?

He can’t help but think of Lara, though. Will she be okay without him? Can she find him out here? He thinks maybe she’s at the bottom of the hill, but he can’t be sure. And there are so many smells crowding his senses that he’s not sure he could even pick her out. 

The barn cat notes his tension but continues to saunter casually beside him. He is new here, but he will learn. Maybe he can be a barn dog. There’s a small cat colony in her barn back home, but she can take them on if she needs to. This dog has few useful skills, but he is brave, and that’s something. He could probably scare raccoons away from the food bin, if he really works at it.

Before she can decide whether to adopt him, SodaPop stops walking. He’s frozen, tense all over. The barn cat tenses too. Has the monster come back? The nothing-thing from the night before? But no, this — this seems different.

SodaPop takes a few steps back and forth, sniffing the air. He’s urgent, attentive. Then in a second, his entire demeanor changes. He comes alive. He was always alive, of course, but this is something different. It’s like a spark ignites at his nose and courses through to the end of his tail. His heart speeds up, and every muscle readies itself.

She’s here. The human who is the sun. His person. He’s sure of it.

Pinpointing the exact direction of her scent takes just another second. He’s not really much a tracker, generally more interested in a scent’s complexity than its trail. And there’s no emptiness here to mute the other smells, so he has to pick her out from fir trees, birds, bear scat, barn cats…

The barn cat sits back, exasperated. She knows not to trust these woods. She thought she taught him not to trust them either. But here he is, taken by yet another new sensation. 

Then a branch snaps on a tree somewhere uphill from them. The sound is like a starter’s pistol. SodaPop lets out a wild, desperate bark, like no sound he’s made all night, and he bolts toward the crest of the hill. The cat has seen him run many times at this point, but never like this. This time, SodaPop runs with the whole force of life driving him, something stronger than hunger or fear. He sails over fallen branches, navigates thorny bushes like they’re hardly there. He is unstoppable. 

There’s no point in following, the cat knows. Part of being an apex predator is knowing when and where to spend one’s energy, and whatever SodaPop’s after doesn’t seem to be in her interest. So she watches him instead, a little streak of white barreling uphill and out of sight. 

She waits a few moments, just in case he calls for her or comes back. He does neither. So she carefully licks her paws and smoothes her fur, then walks off in the other direction. Her barn is just past the base of the hill. Along the way, the trees grow mossy and thick, excellent for stalking prey. She can hear a Bluejay calling from somewhere. She’s always wanted to catch one of those bastards.

Above her, the sun glows softly through a blanket of clouds. A dark squirrel with red, glittering eyes settles into the hollow of a tree, where it will sleep until nightfall. The breeze speaks of coming rain. And somewhere in the forest, a little dog runs desperately toward his truest love.

OUTRO

Thank you for listening to the Tale of SodaPop. 

This episode was written, edited, and narrated by Julie Saunders. The role of SodaPop was played by Archie. The Barn Cat was played by Lulu. Music for this episode was provided by Epidemic Sound -- please see the show notes for titles and composers.

Production is about to restart on this show, starting with a full-cast prequel episode and then moving on to the rest of season one. Patreon supporters will get sneak peeks and behind-the-scene looks at that process, as well as early access to all new episodes. Find out more about Patreon and other ways to support the show at believerpodcast.com/support.

Until next time, I leave you with the wisdom of Mister Fred Rogers: “I like you just the way you are.” Bye now.

TRANSCRIPT: Tale of SodaPop Pt 2

A PDF version of this transcript is available here.

Sodapop keeps close to the barn cat. In the flood of interesting outdoor scents, it would be easy to lose her. He uses a similar tactic with Lara when she lets him wander without a leash, shooting a glance her way every time he finds himself distracted. The barn cat never seems to look back at him, though she occasionally flips an ear his way.

Because of his size and his fluffiness, people often assume that SodaPop can’t take care of himself. But he’s been on his own before. He was barely older than a puppy when his first humans took him for a ride, set him on an unfamiliar street, and left him there. He barely remembers those humans, but he’s pretty sure they were nice up until then. He doesn’t know why they left him behind. It didn’t seem like an accident. Those humans only had him for a little while, just long enough for him to grow from a fat baby into the leggy, athletic dog he is today. Maybe they only wanted a fat baby. Maybe they forgot that babies grow up.

He learned a lot of things in that strange neighborhood. Where humans discard food, how water likes to pool. Which animals were good or chasing (almost all of them), and which ought to be avoided (mostly geese). By the time a human finally caught him and brought him to the city shelter, his hair had grown long and matted, and he was even skinnier than he is now. They shaved him and fed him, and he slept in a strange concrete room with lots of stressed-out dogs in nearby enclosures. He didn’t mind that place, really. It had nice humans in it. Humans are almost always nice to SodaPop.

It was there that SodaPop finally met his human. He’d never had a person of his own before, not really. But this one walked into the shelter, smiled down at him, and he knew nothing could ever be the same. She took him to a little apartment on a quiet street in Portland. Lara lived there too. She and Lara were happy, and he was glad because he seemed to make them even happier. The humans called him SodaPop, because it made them laugh. He calls himself nothing, because he always knows who he is. He never learned his human’s name for much the same reason. She was like the sun. You know it has a name, but you don’t really have to use it. The sun is just there.

Those happy days went on forever, at least as far as he could tell. Dogs experience lots of forevers. Time for them is slow and slippery, and they can live in a moment for as long as they want, provided nothing big changes. And nothing changed for SodaPop and his people for a long, long time.

At some point, the humans started fighting. First a little here and there, then almost all the time. They weren’t real fights, of course. More the kind of loud display that dogs use when they have a dispute but don’t want to hurt each other. But they made the house feel tense, and that made SodaPop worried. He started to feel like he had a stomachache all the time. He clung to his human, but she started leaving the apartment at unexpected times, always without him, so that he only had Lara to be with. Lara was nice, but she didn’t speak his language like his person did. His person knew all his looks and signals, every little change in his body language. Lara was much more difficult to communicate with. And she didn’t play with the toys right. She didn’t seem to care about toys at all, in those days.

And then one day, his human was gone. SodaPop isn’t sure exactly when. Dogs aren’t good at noticing when things end. He remembers a long hug around that time, uncomfortable and tight. She didn’t usually hold him like that, and he whined and struggled until she let him go. Her face was salty, and she sat on the floor for a long time while he tried to clean it off. He’s not sure if that was the day she left or much earlier, though. She just wasn’t at home for a long time, and then      one day Lara put all the things that smelled like her into boxes and sent them away. Then he knew. 

Things have been different since then. Not bad different. Just different. Lara is a fine human, and they’ve come to understand each other better over time. SodaPop loves her. But she’s not the sun. They both know that.

Here in the woods, SodaPop’s nose begins to fill with that awful, sharp scent he got from the squirrels and from whatever was inside Jake’s house. It gets stronger as the trees move closer together. He growls softly as it starts to block out other smells. The barn cat pauses and looks back at him, a long, appraising look. He can’t say for sure, but she seems glad that he’s uncomfortable here. He hopes that doesn’t mean she’s tricking him. 

Familiarity prickles at the back of SodaPop’s brain. He’s been here before. Was the smell this strong that time? He can’t remember clearly. He’s pretty sure he came here with Lara and Jake, though. He’d found the sweater then, its scent piercing through this sharp mush like a beacon. But nothing smells like that now. It’s all just…bad.

SodaPop pushes past the cat, through a little tangle of underbrush, and sees a large clearing full of dry, lifeless dirt. Yes, this is where he came with Lara. It’s not a good place.

As he steps up to the edge of the clearing, the sharp smell disappears. In fact, all smells disappear. SodaPop freezes. He sniffs intently. He smells…nothing.

You have to understand, there’s always something to smell. Sometimes one scent masks another, or a nose gets overwhelmed, but there’s always something. Even when all the other senses fail, there’s a scent. Except in this place, right now. The non-smell wraps around from all directions, and soon he can’t tell where he came from or where he’s going. The forest might as well be empty. His own odor goes away. Maybe he’s gone, too.

SodaPop begins to tremble. He doesn’t know what to do. What do you do with the absence of things? Do you bark at it? Hide from it? It feels like if there’s nothing to smell, then there’s nothing he can do. 

The cat emerges from the brush somewhere near the middle of this little crisis. When she sees SodaPop shaking, she lets out a soft, surprisingly high-pitched meow.

[SFX: Cat sound.]

The sound acts as an anchor, pulling SodaPop back into the world. It’s getting very dark now, but when he turns his head to the side he can just see the cat’s outline against the trees beside them. She might be the only real thing in the world.

SodaPop isn’t quite sure what happens next. Maybe the cat, with her expanded pupils, can see more. He just notices that the dead dirt takes on a shifting, churning quality. Long, dark streaks appear, like the fingers of a mole seeking the best path. Then slowly, almost imperceptibly, something bulges toward the surface. He can’t make out what it is, but it seems familiar somehow. He feels like he’s trying to access an old, old memory, something he never actually experienced but has carried in his blood from his mother’s mother’s mother. A bit of knowledge that only lives in his oldest bones. 

Then suddenly, squirrels leap down from trees all around the dead clearing. He can’t be sure, but they look like the Bad Squirrel from earlier — fur a little too dark, eyes a little too bright. They chitter and weave, and to SodaPop it feels like he’s hearing them from underwater. As their paws hit the dirt, their scent disappears. Together with the darkness, this makes them nearly invisible to a dog like SodaPop. He shivers again, and whines softly under his breath. 

Beside him, the barn cat’s tail twitches. The squirrels chatter and run in the dirt. SodaPop can only see shadows, but the ones he sees undulate strangely, as if the terrain is changing shape in front of him. All at once, he gets the feeling that the squirrels are doing something important here. The cat hisses softly, but he doesn’t look away. There is something precious here, something that shouldn’t be left to squirrels. If he can just get a little bit closer…

As he lifts a paw to step into the dirt, the barn cat bites him on the tail, hard. SodaPop yelps and staggers backward into the brush. He whirls around to face the cat. Her hair is all on end, her tail puffed up to at least twice its size. She’s not looking at him, though. She’s staring back at the clearing, her eyes wide. SodaPop follows her gaze just in time to spot a line of dark squirrels, heads all turned in his direction, bodies tensed for a fight.

The cat sprints off into the bushes, away from this horrible place, and SodaPop follows close behind her. Behind them a chittering wail floats out of the squirrel mob, an eerie sound that only barely remembers it’s supposed to be a rodent’s cry. 

Forest smells rush back in, much to SodaPop’s relief. He knows the squirrels are close behind, dozens of them, the sharp scent arcing off them like lightning. He forces himself to focus on the cat, who’s surprisingly agile given her bulk. She darts under bushes, springboards sideways off of tree trunks. There’s no real strategy here, just a wild, frenzied race. SodaPop struggles to keep her in sight as he also bounces over logs, slips down through hollows, whooshes past the ferns. 

At the foot of an old Douglas fir tree, he spies a place where the dirt has fallen away from the roots, creating a small pocket. It may not be an escape, but it would leave him guarded on three sides if he has to make a stand. The barn cat clocks it too, and they zip into it at nearly the same time. Their soft bodies wedge together into the back corner of the hollow. They’re both breathing hard.

Just then, they hear an owl. The sound stops the squirrels, who come to a halt and turn their glittering eyes toward the sky. SodaPop hears the owl shift its flight and prepare to dive. Maybe it doesn’t know about bad squirrels. Maybe it thinks this mass of rodents will make an easy meal. Whatever its reason, it swoops. 

Instead of scattering, the squirrels turn their heads as one to watch the owl’s descent. They’re not afraid. If anything, they seem excited. Hungry.

As the owl’s claws come within range of its intended victim, the pack of squirrels screams. The weird rodents leap into the sky, climbing over each other in a squirming tower of tails and claws. In an instant, they swarm the owl, first pulling down its talons, then covering its entire body. There’s a confusion of screams and growls, and then it’s over. The owl is dead. 

SodaPop knows this is wrong. Squirrels don’t hunt, and they certainly don’t do it in packs. What’s more, they definitely don’t eat other animals. But these abominations don’t hesitate. They fall upon their former predator and devour it. They eat every sinew, bone, and feather. Within seconds, the owl is just…gone.

SodaPop wants to stay in his hiding spot forever, whining and shaking. But the barn cat taps him on the nose and then pads soundlessly out of their place and into the brush. SodaPop hesitates. Nothing about this makes sense. The owl should have taken a squirrel or missed it, and the other squirrels should run for cover. SodaPop should pick out a straggler and try to catch it himself. Or he should chase the squirrels off and see if there’s any owl meat left. The sensible parts of him say that he can still fulfill this last part of this chain. But then, maybe if squirrels don’t act like squirrels, he shouldn’t act like a dog. And so he turns away from prey and prey of prey, and follows a cat into the tall grass.

OUTRO

Thank you for listening to the Tale of SodaPop, part one. 

This episode was written, edited, and narrated by Julie Saunders. The role of SodaPop was played by Archie. The Barn Cat was played by Lulu. Music for this episode was provided by Epidemic Sound -- please see the show notes for titles and composers.

If you want the rest of the story right now, it’s available at Patreon.com/believerpodcast. Find out more about Patreon and other ways to support the show at believerpodcast.com/support. Otherwise, part three will be out next Tuesday. 

Until then, please take care of yourself. Your best is still ahead of you.

TRANSCRIPT: Tale of Sodapop Pt 1

A PDF version of this transcript is available here.

INTRO

Hi, it’s Julie Saunders, creator of Believer and voice of Lara. I thought it’d be fun to surprise you all with a bonus episode today! But first, a few announcements.

This podcast now has merch! Head on over to Teepublic for print-on-demand tee shirts, stickers, mugs, and other items featuring a new Team Sodapop logo, an original tourism poster for the city of Charity, or two versions of our cover art.

And right now you can get 20% off all Believer merch...by joining our brand new PATREON! Monthly memberships start at just one dollar a month, and get you access to bonus material including annotated scripts, blooper and bonus episodes, and much more. Go to patreon.com/believerpodcast for more details.

Production is about to restart on this show, starting with a full-cast prequel episode and then moving on to the rest of season one. Patreon supporters will get sneak peeks and behind-the-scene looks at that process, as well as early access to all new episodes.

This is an independent, low-budget show, so any support you can give will go a long way. I also want to thank everyone for continuing to rate, review, and recommend this show. It makes a huge difference.

Okay! Now to your bonus episode. This is a three-part short story about SodaPop, set after the events of episode 4. I’ll be your narrator this time, as Lara doesn’t appear in the story.

And now, please enjoy “The Tale of SodaPop - Part One: A Good Boy.”

The Tale of SodaPop - Part One: A Good Boy

SodaPop has been alone in the cabin for a very long time. 

He can’t say how long, exactly, but certainly longer than usual. Not that he’s particularly worried — Lara always comes back, even on those occasions when she comes late. She’s not perfect, not like his other human, but she’s pretty good. 

It’s just that SodaPop really has to pee, and Good Boys don’t pee inside of buildings, even ones that smell of dirt and pine and microwave meals like this one.

SodaPop is a little taller than a human’s mid-calf when he’s on all four paws. He’s lanky and leggy, though, so if he gets up on his back paws and reaches with the front ones, he can almost reach a person’s hip. Some people call him a little dog, but he’s over twice the size of Lara’s friend’s Yorkie, and that’s got to count for something. He has floppy, feathery ears and fluffy white fur that has to get brushed far too often for his taste. The nice lady thought he must be part poodle, but Lara never wanted to buy a test to find out.

Above all, though, SodaPop is a Good Boy. So that means he’s got a bit of a dilemma. He paces in circles, but that just seems to make the feeling worse. He lies down, but that doesn’t do much either. He’ll simply have to escape.

First, he tries the door. He gets up on his hind legs and pushes as hard as he can. It doesn’t budge. Scratching on it also does nothing, and the wooden floor is too thick to dig under. He pokes it with his nose. When all else fails, he barks. 

[SFX: dog barking]

He barks a few times, then listens. But there doesn’t seem to be anyone out there. When that man Jake is home, SodaPop can always hear his heavy boots. But now, there are no boots. There’s nothing. Except the slightest little…wait. Is that a breeze? Inside the house? SodaPop raises his nose and sniffs. There is a new smell in here, fresh air mixing with the stagnant wood smell. If he can just track it to its source…

Sodapop circles the one-room cabin, sniffing the air as he goes. For a moment, he thinks maybe it’s coming from behind the kitchenette, but then a crosswind hits, and then he’s got it. The window over Lara’s desk. Lara broke it when she had a bad dream, but Jake came and covered it with a thick plastic sheet. Now the sheet has come away from the wall somewhere.

SodaPop wastes no time. He rushes over to Lara’s chair, which twists awkwardly as he clambers over it and onto the desk. Lara’s mug crashes to the floor, which startles SodaPop into a collision with her laptop. 

[SFX: Ceramic mug breaks]

His paws slide across the keyboard, and he nearly trips over the cords that stick out of one side, but he manages to right himself. He sniffs at the window, trying to locate the open spot. This requires him to walk back and forth, which sends a few more things flying to the floor, but they don’t seem like things he needs to worry about.

[SFX: Pens, papers, and equipment fall to the floor. Dog sniffing.]

Near the bottom-left corner, the plastic is loose. Sweet, wonderful outdoor air pours through. This is it. SodaPop pushes his nose against the loose plastic until he finds the gap between sheet and wall. He wedges his muzzle through it, then his head, and finally his paws and shoulders. After that it’s just a wild, flailing leap, he’s free.

[SFX/Ambient: Forest sounds. Dog shakes himself off.]

The sun hangs low in the sky, lighting up the clouds in a variety of colors that SodaPop can’t really appreciate. It’s a quiet evening. Expectant, almost. SodaPop sniffs the ground, a mixture of gravel and soft tree needles, until he finds a few spots that other animals have marked. He leaves his own mark on them. Thoroughly.

His business done, SodaPop gives himself a little shake and takes stock of his surroundings. There are no cars in front of the cabin. The forest is alive with animal smells. Lara’s definitely missed Walk Time. But even a Good Boy can take himself for a walk once in a while, right?

Still, his first move is to look for a human. Lara may be late, but there’s sure to be another human around somewhere. SodaPop likes humans, and he’d rather go exploring with one than without. Lara says it’s because he’s a “companion breed.” He just knows that things are sort of boring without a human there to watch. 

There are no humans outside at the moment, but he does find the back door to Jake’s house hanging slightly ajar. He paws it open and trots inside.

SodaPop doesn’t usually come into Jake’s house. It has a weird, musty smell that he doesn’t like. The humans never mention it, but he can tell there’s something slightly wrong. He thinks it’s in the walls, whatever it is. Something that shouldn’t be there. It’s there in the back entry, and it’s probably there in the kitchen. SodaPop can’t be sure because he can only smell the lunch meat that someone left on the counter.

Lunch meat! Out all on its own! SodaPop hurries over to it. He stands up as tall as he can on his back legs, but he can only get his nose to the edge of the counter. It’s there, though. He’s sure of it. It smells like bologna. It’s been sitting out for a while, so the scent is nice and settled. Delicious. He hops and scratches over the counter’s edge, but it’s not quite enough. Finally, he takes several steps back, then runs at it and leaps as high as he can. He slams shoulder-first into the counter and falls gracelessly to the floor. In the process, though, one of his front claws just snags the edge of a plastic package, and four whole slices of bologna scatter onto the floor. Jackpot. 

He bolts down the bologna as fast as he can — practically inhales it — then licks his lips and searches for more. The musty smell is so strong it makes him sneeze, but he thinks that somewhere inside it there might be a discarded chicken nugget in the living room. That’s promising. 

Jake’s house is small, though probably adequate for his needs. There’s the kitchen, a bedroom, an entry area, and a long, narrow living room. Soda sets off to inspect them all. In the living room, he finds a couch. The cabin doesn’t have a couch. He hops up on it, rubs his face along the cushions, rolls to scratch his back. It smells softly of cheesy chips, and now, so does SodaPop. He sniffs at an old mouse’s nest in one corner and finds the half-eaten chicken nugget under the coffee table. It’s been there for at least a few days. Delightfully aged, if you ask SodaPop. 

He moves to explore Jake’s bedroom, but stops in the doorway. The musty smell is stronger than before. It’s sharp, here, and extremely unpleasant. There’s a hint of pheromone smell to it, like some spiders emit to try to lure in prey. SodaPop can feel the hair on the back of his neck trying to puff up. He sniffs the air carefully and peeks around. The back wall of Jake’s bedroom is streaked with long, black lines. They curve and bend in a sickening way as they move from floor to ceiling, occasionally branching out into horrible little blobs. 

SodaPop sneezes. Then he shakes. Whatever this is, he can’t be near it anymore. He growls softly and beats a hasty exit through the back door.

When he gets back outside, SodaPop feels a bit shaken. What was that thing? Nothing good, surely. In fact, the more he thinks about it — OH MY GOD, A SQUIRREL!

A REAL SQUIRREL

ON THE GROUND

LOOKING AT HIM.

It’s just a few yards away, oddly dark in color with bright, glowing eyes. SodaPop lunges at it immediately. You can’t delay with a squirrel. The squirrel turns and runs, and the chase is on.

Now, listen: all squirrels are bastards. But this one’s in a league all its own. It zigs and zags through the underbrush, ducks under bushes and sails through ferns. SodaPop sprints after it, clumsy but determined. At one point, the squirrel disappears into a fallen log, and SodaPop barks incessantly until it darts back out. They run a slalom through the trees. He loses it near a little stream and looks around, desperately, until he spots it staring at him from some tall grass. It twitches its tail enticingly before it darts away again. If SodaPop could think, he might wonder why it stays on the ground instead of escaping up a tree. But he can’t think. He can only chase.

It’s impossible to say how long they run, first in the mossy low spots and then far up the hill. SodaPop’s tongue hangs out of his mouth, sending flecks of foam flying back onto his cheeks and chest. And always the squirrel is just ahead of him, almost in his jaws, barely out of reach.

Then SodaPop leaps over a fallen branch and lands hard on his back leg. Pain shoots through his knee just as the squirrel finally, finally climbs up a tree trunk. He cries, a wail of pain and frustration. The squirrel just watches. It practically smiles. All squirrels are bad. But this is a very bad squirrel.

He kicks out his leg a few times, until the knee joint pops back into place. This happens sometimes when he overextends himself. A luxating patella, the vet called it. It’s usually fine as long as he can set his own pace. He wonders if the squirrel knew somehow. It’s hard for him to fathom trickery, but he’d put nothing past a squirrel. Yes, all squirrels are bastards. Every single one.

It stares down at him. It’s all the wrong colors, he realizes. And worse, it has the same sharp smell he found in Jake’s house. Now that he’s got a moment to think, he realizes it’s been in his  nose for a while. Now it jabs at his sinuses, so wrong it’s actually uncomfortable. 

SodaPop doesn’t really know what evil is. But this squirrel might be it.

SodaPop growls, low and menacing. He gathers his weight carefully. Maybe if he can jump high enough…

[Sound of CAT yowl and hiss.]

Something smacks him hard across his nose. SodaPop squeals and spins in a quick circle, ready to face his attacker. 

It’s a cat.

He stops, baffled. SodaPop has never had a problem with cats. Sure, he’ll chase one if it’s already running, or looks like it’s about to run, and yes, sometimes that means running up to them to see if they might like to run. But it’s not like he’d actually hurt one if he somehow caught it. Surely they know that.

This cat is hefty and muscular, shorter than he is but much heavier. Her dark gray fur is fluffy and long, making her appear even wider than she is. The corner of one ear has been clipped cleanly, some time long ago, and there’s a faded scar above her left eye. She smells of straw and mouse blood. A barn cat.

The cat watches him, green-gold eyes expressionless. She holds one paw slightly aloft, claws retracted, like she’s ready to smack him again if he makes a wrong move.

First, SodaPop checks the tree. The squirrel is gone. He whines and throws the cat an offended look. He almost had it. Cats know about squirrels. Why would she let it get away?

The cat just watches him. She is very still, and he is very tired, so he elects to sit. He wipes his paw across his muzzle. There’s no blood, no injury. She lowers her own paw, confirming that the conflict between them is over. The swipe was a warning, not an attack. But it still wasn’t very nice.

SodaPop sniffs the air. The sharp smell is gone, replaced by a tapestry of nature scents and sounds. Songbirds have mostly settled in for the night, and night birds have begun to stir. SodaPop can tell that a family of raccoons live nearby. A coyote’s come through here in the last day or so. A few weeks before that, there was a bear. But he can’t tell where home is. He can’t even locate his own trail. And there are no humans here.

SodaPop looks over at the cat again and tilts his head. She flicks her tail slightly and takes a few steps toward a nearby fern. At the edge of it she pauses, thinks for a moment, then looks his way and lets out a soft, high-pitched trill. He hesitates, then follows her.

[SFX: Nighttime forest sounds.]

Above them, a crow calls out for its mate. Upwind, the raccoon counts her kits before she leads them out of the den. The shadows from the trees are so long they almost blend together. And a little dog follows a cat, who seems to know the way.

OUTRO

Thank you for listening to the Tale of SodaPop, part one. 

This episode was written, edited, and narrated by Julie Saunders. The role of SodaPop was played by Archie. The Barn Cat was played by Lulu. Music for this episode was provided by Epidemic Sound -- please see the show notes for titles and composers.

If you want the rest of the story right now, it’s available at Patreon.com/believerpodcast. Otherwise, part two will be out next Tuesday. Until then, please take care of yourself. You deserve to see what tomorrow’s like.