You are listening to a Clarks World magazine podcast with your host and narrator Kate Baker.

Greetings Clarksville Citizens. I hope this podcast finds you very well.

There's not much news to report, so again I'll just jump right into the story.

Our fourth story for the month of October 2014.

The piece is titled Pithing Needle is by E. Catherine Tobler.

E. Catherine Tobler is a Sturgeon Award finalist and editor at Schimmer magazine. You can find Catherine at the website E

Catherine and that's E C A T H E R I N E.com. And if you H-E-R-I-N-E dot com.

And if you like what you hear, you can go back to migratory patterns of underground birds in May 2014.

Or the value of R- plus D divided by I equals M in May 2013.

Or to see the other whole against the sky November 2012 and you or she who

abode in June 2012. So I invite you to sit back, relax, and let me tell you a story.

We have run toward enough danger to understand this is unique. This conflict will change everything we know. It will change the Nesik too, but we don't care about them in this

moment because hundreds of thousands of their young are eating our blackout.

We came together,

armed, prepared, and yet not. They sent an entire division, but it will never be enough. We can see that the moment our cargo ship touches down, everything stands in ruin.

Charred and smoking trees, satellites drawn down from orbit, the alien ship itself, a crumpled tin can spy

rising six fucking miles into the clouded sky. The rain is ash and not water,

not washing clean, but sticking, sticking to our armor, our weapons,

to the coiled Nesic bodies that lash out of absolutely nowhere to engulf us.

Swallowed by a thousand tongues,

yanked into a quivering mouth with a sharp beak that bites and bites,

digested even before the creature even swallows.

...