Horror is powerlessness. Here at Sudapod, we believe in giving you power. This week's story whatever Whatever Comes After Calcutta, by David Eric Nelson.

Hey everyone, welcome to Pseudopod The Weekly Horror Podcast.

I'm Alister, your host, and this week's story comes to us from David Eric

Nelson. It first appeared in the magazine of fantasy and science fiction in November 2017

and will be included in the next volume of Ellen Dattlow's best horror of the year.

Your reader for this story is the always magnificent Rish Outfield.

So without further ado, Rish and David have a story for you, and we promise you.

It's true. Whatever comes after Calcutta, by David Eric Nelson, narrated by Rishoutfield.

It was late in the day when Lyle Moramoto saw the hanged woman and almost crashed his Prius.

He was somewhere between Calcutta, Ohio and whatever the hell came after Calcutta.

For hours he'd been sipping warm gatorade and cruising the crumbling two-lane blacktop that

sliced up the scrubby farmland separating Calcutta, Cairo, Congo, Lebanon, East Liverpool, East Palestine.

In southern Ohio, apparently, you could circle the globe without ever crossing the state line.

He understood that he was not thinking clearly, but that seemed okay since it also meant

not thinking about his ear or his wife or detective Jason Good or the gun in the pocket of his suit jacket.

Lyle's Day had begun in court. He'd had every reason to assume it would end there, as would the next day and possibly the day after that.

But midway through jury selection, his client had pled guilty to the charge of fifth-degree arson, despite the fact that she

demonstrably not set the fire. Before being let away, she had leaned in close to Lyle's ear and whispered that she hadn't

torched that trash can, but had murdered two girls that no one knew about.

So she figured this evened things up. She'd looked enormously relieved, almost radiant.

As the court officer led the defendant back to holding, Lyle had struggled to feel something about this.

Frustration at the system, disgust with humanity, pleasure at escaping the dingy hearing room,

...