Hello, gentle listener, and welcome to Nocturnal Transmissions, the fortnightly podcast that brings you dark tales, both old and new, performed by your humble narrator, Kristen Holland.

This episode will be dialing up the weirdness with a deliciously bizarre little tale from Jez Connolly.

Jez Connolly is best known for his non-fiction books and articles

primarily concerning horror cinema,

but during the, you know what, pandemic,

he returned to fiction writing, and it is one of his pieces of fiction we share with you today.

Oh, you say either and I say either, you say neither and I say neither and I say neither either either either neither neither

let's call the whole thing off nocturnal transmissions is proud to present.

Neither by Jess Connolly.

I am a social anthropologist. I mean, actually, professionally, academically.

I'm a fully qualified, highly experienced, bona fide doctor of social anthropology.

Consider me married to my job. In my line of work, it's not unusual to associate single-mindedness with single marital status.

I teach at the University of Cumbria, that's based in Carlisle in case you didn't know,

I mention all this so that you are better able to distinguish

me from the self-declared amateur Desmond Morris types that you see about, by which I mean

the kind of armchair philosopher come pub, bore, who reckons to be able to tell you what kind of a

person you are by the way you scratch your nose.

Although I could go on at great length about non-verbal communication

and have indeed done so as my party trick many a time during the frequent faculty colleague suppers that I've attended.

To be honest, depending how you look at it,

I've essentially made a comfortable living doing precisely this. It's just that I've done so

through the respectable legitimacy of peer-reviewed scholarly papers, well-attended undergraduate

...