Speaker 1: Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Book Club book Club book Club book Club. Hello and
Speaker 2: welcome to the Coolzone Media book Club rerun edition. It's
Speaker 2: the Cool Zone Media book Club, the only book club.
Speaker 2: You don't have to do the reading because I, Margaret
Speaker 2: Kiljoy do it for you. And it's a rerun episode
Speaker 2: because I'm on the road and terrible things are happening.
Speaker 2: Not on the road specifically, but I'm on tour, and
Speaker 2: also an election went badly, and so I didn't record
Speaker 2: a new episode. But I thought to myself, you know
Speaker 2: what episode has been a while since people heard, and
Speaker 2: actually it predates Coolzone Media book Club. It's part of
Speaker 2: the precursor to Coolzone Media book Club. When I would
Speaker 2: just come on and read stories on it could happen here. Well,
Speaker 2: I thought I would read a story called the Northern Host,
Speaker 2: which is actually most people call it my no Nazis
Speaker 2: in Valhalla story. And that's fine because for some weird reason,
Speaker 2: a lot of people are thinking about what the civil
Speaker 2: conflict in the United States might look like, and so
Speaker 2: what a good time to tell you a story about
Speaker 2: the Battle of Asheville as fought by some ghosts. Here's
Speaker 2: the story. Well, here's me introducing the story again because
Speaker 2: I don't know what's about to happen. I'm just this
Speaker 2: is the introduction to a rerun episode. Here it goes, It's.
Speaker 3: All right, I did it, Sophy, I'm done for the day, Okay,
Speaker 3: taking the rest off by It's okay.
Speaker 1: We have a cooler replacement for you today. Anyways, we
Speaker 1: sure do.
Speaker 3: Uh So, you know, normally this is a show about collapse,
Speaker 3: all that good stuff, YadA, YadA YadA, but fuck it,
Speaker 3: it's Halloween week. So we're we're we're we're we're making
Speaker 3: sure all of our stuff has a little bit of
Speaker 3: an extra spooky twist. It's like when you make a
Speaker 3: martini and you decide to actually put vermouth inside it,
Speaker 3: as opposed to just kind of waving it nearby. That's
Speaker 3: what we're doing this week, with spookiness being the vermouth
Speaker 3: and mixing up our martini. Today is Margaret Kiljoy.
Speaker 4: Margaret Hello, Hello, I'm a famous mixologist, so literally this
Speaker 4: will be very good.
Speaker 3: Now, Margaret, Today, for this very special episode of it
Speaker 3: could happen here on Spooky Week. You have written us, well,
Speaker 3: you've written a short story, and you're going to read
Speaker 3: it and and and we're all gonna enjoy it? Is
Speaker 3: that is that accurate?
Speaker 4: I hope at least I can. I can testify to
Speaker 4: the first parts, and I hope for the last part.
Speaker 3: Excellent. All right, well with without further ado or with
Speaker 3: minimal further ado. Let's uh, let's let's let's you know,
Speaker 3: with the stuff, with the stuff, Margaret with the stuff.
Speaker 4: Well, and this is great because this is actually a
Speaker 4: short story that you start reading of.
Speaker 3: Oh shit, yeah, where's that link? You tasted it to me,
Speaker 3: but I don't have my phone on me.
Speaker 4: Okay, let me put it in the chat here.
Speaker 1: Based impressive, to say the least.
Speaker 3: Based in fiction, pilled. Okay, I start reading the italics.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's the first couple paragraphs of introduction, and then
Speaker 4: you're interviewing me.
Speaker 3: All right, motherfuckers, let's get it started. The Northern Host
Speaker 3: for all it's lingering horror and misery. The wake of
Speaker 3: a war is rich terragn for a folklorist like myself.
Speaker 3: More people report more supernatural experiences during times of war
Speaker 3: than times of peace. Some of my peers have argued
Speaker 3: the stress and shock of battle leaves our brains more
Speaker 3: susceptible to mass illusion. Others claim that the veil between
Speaker 3: worlds remains thin when so many are passing from life
Speaker 3: to death. The Second American Civil War has been no exception.
Speaker 3: Most famously, of course, soldiers from each of the three
Speaker 3: armies present at the fifteen day Siege of Saint Louis
Speaker 3: reported a wailing man who walked among the wounded, healing
Speaker 3: some and ending the lives of others. On the Cascadian Front,
Speaker 3: rebel forces spoke of black bears, who in effect stood
Speaker 3: sentry for their guerrilla positions. During the White Army's occupation
Speaker 3: of Washington, d C. Civilians and soldiers alike reported apparitions
Speaker 3: pouring out from the Pentagon Crater every new moon. Of
Speaker 3: all the various myths and legends to spring up in
Speaker 3: the wake of the recent conflict, however, I find myself
Speaker 3: most strongly drawn to the stories of the Northern host.
Speaker 3: Never have I heard a myth recounted in such detail
Speaker 3: by such a wide variety of people. My favorite telling
Speaker 3: comes from Private Sarah Dollar in the Battle of Asheville.
Speaker 3: This interview was recorded in the spring of twenty thirty
Speaker 3: five and lightly edited for clarity with permission of the subject.
Speaker 3: Note that the subject refers to the White Army by
Speaker 3: pejoratives throughout these have been left intact for the historical record.
Speaker 3: Could you introduce yourself and tell me what you saw.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my name is Sarah Daher. I'm thirty one years old.
Speaker 4: I live in Ashville, in the Appalachian region of the
Speaker 4: United States of America, on stolen Cherokee Land. My US
Speaker 4: military rank was private. They made us all privates when
Speaker 4: they incorporated the Irregulars into the army, but I only
Speaker 4: served in the Union to fight the White Army a
Speaker 4: year later. I'm one of those crazy radicals who doesn't
Speaker 4: think the reconfiguration goes far enough. I'd never fired a
Speaker 4: gun in my life before the Irregulars, and I hope
Speaker 4: I never fire another one again. By temperament, I'm neither
Speaker 4: a lover nor a fighter. I'm just your average trans
Speaker 4: girl who likes Kats and hates Nazis. I fought in
Speaker 4: three engagements in Weaverville, Leicester, and Asheville. I think I
Speaker 4: killed two.
Speaker 3: One of them.
Speaker 4: I know I killed him. I saw him bleed out
Speaker 4: and I saw him taken away in a black bag.
Speaker 4: The other person was a man I shot in the
Speaker 4: thigh during the Battle of Ashville. I didn't know you
Speaker 4: could die from a bullet in the thigh, But I've
Speaker 4: spent a lot of time looking at casualty records, and
Speaker 4: someone who fit that man's general description died in that
Speaker 4: battle from a bullet to the thigh.
Speaker 3: Does that bother you? Yes?
Speaker 4: No, I don't know. I don't lose sleep over it,
Speaker 4: but I think about it a lot. I look at
Speaker 4: the docks on both of them. The first guy was
Speaker 4: a true believer, a real blood and soil type. It
Speaker 4: doesn't bother me that I mingled those two things for him.
Speaker 4: The second man, though, I'm not so sure, he signed
Speaker 4: up because his son signed up. I don't have any
Speaker 4: kids myself, but I could see myself doing that. His
Speaker 4: son survived the war.
Speaker 3: Have you been in contact with his son?
Speaker 4: No? Fuck that guy. That kid's a fucking Nazi, and
Speaker 4: I don't know how he talked his way out of
Speaker 4: the tribunals.
Speaker 3: Can you tell me what you saw at the Battle
Speaker 3: of Asheville.
Speaker 4: This was during the Fascist Spring Offensive last year. You
Speaker 4: know Hitler's birthday, April twentieth. By that point, the White
Speaker 4: Army was pretty much done, but they weren't about to
Speaker 4: go down without doing some major symbolic damage. So there
Speaker 4: were about forty of us, all irregulars, with our own commanders,
Speaker 4: no army oversight. Morale was down. We felt pretty abandoned,
Speaker 4: common sentiment in the South. I was on the street
Speaker 4: out in front of the library, walking rounds. Downtown was
Speaker 4: half rubble at that point. Only the library was standing,
Speaker 4: because symbols matter and all that bullshit, So that's where
Speaker 4: we were making a stand. Neither side had artillery. Really,
Speaker 4: by that point, the brass had just commandeered even our
Speaker 4: RPGs for the quote real fight. Air support wasn't coming,
Speaker 4: not for them and not for us. Really, the Battle
Speaker 4: of Asheville was like nothing to the rest of the world,
Speaker 4: and we knew it. So I was doing the rounds
Speaker 4: thinking about my shit luck, thinking maybe I was going
Speaker 4: to die, and how so many people had died, and
Speaker 4: what's another dead girl to add to the pile. I
Speaker 4: was thinking about how at least this dead girls going
Speaker 4: to die surrounded by or in defense of books. Then
Speaker 4: I heard dogs from around the side of the building.
Speaker 4: One barked loud and near, the other sort of distant
Speaker 4: and echoey. I went to check it out, turned the
Speaker 4: corner and there was this naked guy. He was pale
Speaker 4: as hell, tall, tattooed and scarred, and like I said,
Speaker 4: he was naked as the sun. I stared at him,
Speaker 4: he stared at me. I got so distracted trying to
Speaker 4: figure him out that it took me a moment to
Speaker 4: realize there were nine others behind him, or maybe they
Speaker 4: weren't there at first, I don't know. Most of them
Speaker 4: were men, mostly of the tall Norse looking variety, but
Speaker 4: there was a Middle Eastern man and three women, including
Speaker 4: one who by my read was Latin X No dogs
Speaker 4: anywhere that I could see. The man closest to me
Speaker 4: he asked me something in a language I didn't know.
Speaker 4: I just kind of stared. He asked me another question
Speaker 4: in another language. What I asked?
Speaker 3: Who are you?
Speaker 4: Who are we fighting? He asked? His accent was thick,
Speaker 4: and I couldn't place it for the life of me.
Speaker 4: I mean, I know now, but I'm sure shit didn't
Speaker 4: know it then we I asked what I was due
Speaker 4: back out front, because I was a century doing the
Speaker 4: rounds and this sure needed reporting. What the hell was
Speaker 4: I going to tell people? Who are we fighting? Where
Speaker 4: are we You're in Asheville? Who are you ah the
Speaker 4: American conflict, the man said behind him, others nodded. Their
Speaker 4: movements were sloppy, dream like they were drunk. I later
Speaker 4: realized one of them had dried blood running down from
Speaker 4: her lip onto her not insubstantial belly. You're fighting the nationalists,
Speaker 4: the first one said, We're here to help you. Who
Speaker 4: are you, I asked this third time he actually answered,
Speaker 4: my name is Bellgear.
Speaker 5: We are the dead.
Speaker 4: We are the ainhear from Valhalla. Every day we are
Speaker 4: sent to a battle to fight, and we die. The
Speaker 4: others behind him nodded, definitely drunk. Now, I know there
Speaker 4: were good folks on our side who were into European paganism,
Speaker 4: but you have to understand that a lot more of
Speaker 4: the fashion were into that shit than anybody else. If
Speaker 4: they hadn't been naked and drunk, I might have mistaken
Speaker 4: them for the enemy and shot them. Valhalla, I said,
Speaker 4: reciting the tiny bit. I knew that's where vikings go
Speaker 4: if they die in battle, feast every day and fight
Speaker 4: every night in Odin's Hall until the end of the world,
Speaker 4: where you like also fight and die. But uh wolf
Speaker 4: feeds the sun or something close enough, Belgar said. I mean,
Speaker 4: Odin only gets half the battle dead, and Viking isn't
Speaker 4: a good name for us. But sure, and you're here
Speaker 4: because we are to take arms alongside you, fight your
Speaker 4: enemies and die today. Am I going to die today?
Speaker 4: Only the seers and the gods know that. I'd been
Speaker 4: calling myself a witch half my life, but honestly that
Speaker 4: was mostly because I like tarot and astrology and panagrams
Speaker 4: and shit. I've never been someone who took the supernatural
Speaker 4: all that seriously. But nothing in the world made sense
Speaker 4: like it used to. Fascists had just been driven out
Speaker 4: of DC. Cascadia had not only succeeded, but was an
Speaker 4: civil war of its own now. Mexico was gone and
Speaker 4: replaced by self governing states of almost every stripe in
Speaker 4: the political rainbow. China had backed white supremacists and other
Speaker 4: nationalist types in an American civil war, and anti government
Speaker 4: leftists were fighting alongside weirdos like me in the damn
Speaker 4: US Army. I can't say those things were as weird
Speaker 4: as naked dead don't call us vikings talking to me
Speaker 4: in the street. But somehow all of that was just
Speaker 4: comparably bizarre. Come let us arm ourselves and fight together.
Speaker 4: You and I belgar said, So that's how I met
Speaker 4: the Northern Host. Most people don't believe me, assume it
Speaker 4: was just some kind of drunk wing nuts, maybe some
Speaker 4: irregulars I'd never met before. But I saw what I saw,
Speaker 4: and I believe it. The rest of us who survived
Speaker 4: they saw it too.
Speaker 3: And how did it go? Yeah? Pardon the battle? How
Speaker 3: did it go?
Speaker 4: We got the einherar into irregular's garb and armed them.
Speaker 4: There were plenty of guns at that point in the
Speaker 4: forgotten hell hole. Afront bullets not so much, but plenty
Speaker 4: of guns. They were all comfortable with firearms, though one
Speaker 4: fellow groused about what he wouldn't do for an axe
Speaker 4: and shield, and another said what we had was fine,
Speaker 4: but monofilament web guns were better than any combat shotgun.
Speaker 4: To hear them, tell it. Fuck it? Why am I
Speaker 4: pretending like I don't believe them. I believe them with
Speaker 4: every bit of my soul, And damn what people think
Speaker 4: of me for it. The Northern Host fight every night,
Speaker 4: and every night there in a different time and place
Speaker 4: most battles in human history were in the past, they said,
Speaker 4: which sounds optimistic, doesn't it? But they said they fought
Speaker 4: in every century up to the twenty fourth. Nothing happens
Speaker 4: after the twenty fourth century. Ragnarok most likely the end
Speaker 4: of the world, wolves eating the sun and the moon.
Speaker 1: All that.
Speaker 4: They stood guard out with me out front. Around midday
Speaker 4: we got hit with an EMP. We knew that was coming.
Speaker 4: It didn't screw us up much. We had a hardened
Speaker 4: phone in the basement, and all our weapons operated just
Speaker 4: as well in dumb mode as smart mode, including our
Speaker 4: own EMPs. The White Army showed up, maybe a hundred men,
Speaker 4: all men. That's their whole shtick. They came in on motorcycles,
Speaker 4: ATVs and horses. More shtick like how fucking folksy they are.
Speaker 4: We hit them with the EMPs anyway, level the field,
Speaker 4: took out the ATVs. The bikes were retrofitted, no electric.
Speaker 2: And a horse.
Speaker 4: You can't e MP a horse. I don't know if
Speaker 4: there was a skirmish in that war that didn't start
Speaker 4: with both sides ritually knocking the other one. Back to
Speaker 4: basically the twentieth century. I think the tactical EMP is
Speaker 4: the reason there's anything left of this country. We took
Speaker 4: a few pot shots while they were still at range,
Speaker 4: but we didn't have the amo to waste on anything else.
Speaker 4: Don't think we did any damage. They took up position
Speaker 4: further up the hill in the ruins of the old Basilica.
Speaker 4: Then we waited. We should have mined the church. That
Speaker 4: old thing was blown half to shit anyway. It wouldn't
Speaker 4: have made the world any worse if we'd either leveled
Speaker 4: it or hidden explosives throughout. But you know, ethical war
Speaker 4: or whatever, don't mind churches. The other side leveled every mosque,
Speaker 4: synagogue and quote heretic church they got their hands on,
Speaker 4: not to mention libraries in universities, and even the goddamn
Speaker 4: Statue of Liberty because they had imigrants. But we were
Speaker 4: supposed to be fighting a quote ethical war. Those two
Speaker 4: words don't got nothing to do with one another, and
Speaker 4: everyone knows it. So they hold up in the basilica,
Speaker 4: and we pulled back into the library and we had
Speaker 4: one of those good old fashioned standoffs where people die
Speaker 4: slowly from sniper fire and everything is awful. That's when
Speaker 4: Laura got shot right in the head because we missed
Speaker 4: a spot when we bulletproofed the facade. She's dead. She
Speaker 4: had natural red hair, but she always died at Redder
Speaker 4: and her favorite show is Buffy the Vampire Slayer and
Speaker 4: she liked to drink water out of long stem glasses.
Speaker 4: She was I think she was thirty seven, way past
Speaker 4: drafting age. She volunteered. It was her first engagement. She
Speaker 4: was only there because she loved books, had plenty of
Speaker 4: time to avoid looking at her corpse while she was
Speaker 4: in there with us dead. Dwight was another one of
Speaker 4: my friends in the unit, one of my favorite people,
Speaker 4: hands down, total weirdo, and he was all obsessed with
Speaker 4: that Viking shit and dark ages in general, as parents
Speaker 4: had come over from Sweden, though his dad was originally
Speaker 4: from Nigeria. Dwight had one degree in medieval studies and
Speaker 4: another in African history, and I can't tell you how
Speaker 4: many times during basic he'd run down the details of
Speaker 4: this or that ancient battle, whether in Europe or Africa.
Speaker 4: If there were guns involved, he didn't care about it,
Speaker 4: but if there were swords and armor or spears and shields,
Speaker 4: he was all in. He started talking to the Vikings
Speaker 4: first thing. He was the first person to believe them,
Speaker 4: to really believe them, and his faith was contagious. While
Speaker 4: we were pinned down. He asked them everything. Mostly they
Speaker 4: were quiet, even taciturn, but there was one thing they
Speaker 4: were very insistent on that I overheard them talking about.
Speaker 4: Nazis don't go to Valhalla. But why not? Dwight asked,
Speaker 4: It takes two things to go to Valhalla. The spokesperson said,
Speaker 4: you have to die in battle, and you have to
Speaker 4: venerate Odin. A bunch of those fuckers are Odina's, He said, no,
Speaker 4: they aren't. They're nationalists, fascists, racial separatists, They're all kinds
Speaker 4: of things, but they don't venerate Odin. Whatever they think,
Speaker 4: what do you mean? They only know one half of Odin.
Speaker 4: They know the masculine side, the heterosexual side, the Christian side.
Speaker 4: They worship a bastardization of our God, a basstardization first
Speaker 4: created by a nationalist Christian eight hundred years ago that's
Speaker 4: only gotten further afield since our Odin practices women's magic,
Speaker 4: the magic of these sexually penetrated. We also worship female
Speaker 4: gods of war, and male gods of the hearth, and
Speaker 4: gods who change their gender when they're bored. Nazis don't
Speaker 4: understand that any of it. In life, we raided sometimes traded.
Speaker 4: Other times, we also did all sorts of things that
Speaker 4: won't fit your modern sensibilities, things that were I alive,
Speaker 4: you might kill me for. But we're not Nazis, and
Speaker 4: people who worship a Christian version of our God most
Speaker 4: certainly do not go to Valhalla. It was as if
Speaker 4: the man had used up every word allotted to him
Speaker 4: for the day, because I don't believe a one of
Speaker 4: them spoke again before the battle began in.
Speaker 3: Earnest And how long was that.
Speaker 4: Another hour? Maybe the sun was still right overhead when
Speaker 4: the White army rushed us. It was a bullshit move,
Speaker 4: rushing us one part over confidence in one part desperation.
Speaker 4: If you can imagine that they knew they were losing
Speaker 4: the war at that point, but they had us more
Speaker 4: than two to one, and we all know the KKK
Speaker 4: commanders don't give two shits about the lives of their men.
Speaker 4: That's when I put a bullet in a man's leg
Speaker 4: while he was in the street running. It was a
Speaker 4: good shot. He was running, and I led the target
Speaker 4: and everything I've been aiming for center body masks, but
Speaker 4: still at least one hundred yards against a moving target.
Speaker 4: I was proud of that shot at the time on
Speaker 4: a technical level, even if I'm not sure I'm proud
Speaker 4: of it anymore now that I know the man's name.
Speaker 4: We expected the charge. What we didn't expect was the
Speaker 4: ordinance that knocked the reinforced front off its hinges. But
Speaker 4: that happened, and almost all the fighting happened right there
Speaker 4: on the first floor among the empty shelves. The whole
Speaker 4: thing felt like it lasted half an hour. I've looked
Speaker 4: it up since, from the time of the first blast
Speaker 4: at the time the last shot was fired, talking about
Speaker 4: three minutes and twelve seconds. We thought they were going
Speaker 4: to pour in through the door after they blew it
Speaker 4: the fuck off. So James got in there with our
Speaker 4: one functioning automatic and he took at least ten of
Speaker 4: the fash down with him before someone got him in
Speaker 4: the neck. It was a faint and they blew a
Speaker 4: hole in the side.
Speaker 3: Of the building.
Speaker 4: Well, well that was going on, and that's where they
Speaker 4: got in close quarters. Combat is a whole different beast,
Speaker 4: a worse one, maybe maybe a better one. I go
Speaker 4: back on forth on that. Sometimes instead of sleeping, I
Speaker 4: think about the pros and cons of various types of
Speaker 4: absolute horror. Is it better to see your death coming
Speaker 4: or to get picked off without knowing it? I would
Speaker 4: have thought the Vikings would expend themselves right off. I
Speaker 4: mean Vikings. They were starting to sober up by that point,
Speaker 4: but still they'd been drinking, and they were already dead,
Speaker 4: and they were doomed to die. But they were smarter
Speaker 4: than that. Never risk themselves unnecessarily. Your next assumption of
Speaker 4: a comrade you know is doomed is that they'll sacrifice
Speaker 4: themselves to save others. None of that either. They knew
Speaker 4: they were the best trained soldiers on the feet, and
Speaker 4: that in order for us to win, they had to
Speaker 4: be in the fight as long as they could. They
Speaker 4: were smart like that. Assholes like that. I stationed myself
Speaker 4: in the back. I fancy myself more of a sniper
Speaker 4: than the assaults sort, so I watched the whole thing
Speaker 4: go down. I also only hit three targets out of
Speaker 4: one hundred and seventeen bullets I fired. But that's another story.
Speaker 4: I watched us win. We took casualties of fifty percent,
Speaker 4: half of those were KIA, but we defeated a force
Speaker 4: twice our strength. I watched the einhear, but bayonet men
Speaker 4: and shoot them. And I saw one of the Viking
Speaker 4: women break a man's face apart with her fists. Soon after,
Speaker 4: a bullet found her heart and she collapsed with a
Speaker 4: smile on her lips. She disappeared, like literally she phased
Speaker 4: out of existence. Beam me up, Scottie. We pushed them
Speaker 4: back onto the pavement. And when I say we, I'm
Speaker 4: honestly not being fair because I didn't do much of
Speaker 4: it myself. We had them scattered and running, most of them.
Speaker 4: Dwight was out there waving a pistol in one hand
Speaker 4: and swinging a wooden stock right like a club in
Speaker 4: the other. A Viking with a shotgun stood beside him.
Speaker 4: I think the same fascy little shit killed them both,
Speaker 4: maybe in the same three round burst. I tagged the
Speaker 4: Fasci in his belly, and his friends helped him get away,
Speaker 4: and the remaining Nazis ran. He survived his wound. Why
Speaker 4: do we have so much information about the war? Does
Speaker 4: it do me any good to know who I killed
Speaker 4: and who I didn't?
Speaker 3: And Dwight?
Speaker 4: Dwight lay alone in the concrete, face down. There wasn't
Speaker 4: much blood, but he was dead. Two ravens sat atop him,
Speaker 4: one on each shoulder. I've never seen a raven in
Speaker 4: Asheville in my life, not before, not since. There were
Speaker 4: two of them, as big as people say those things are.
Speaker 4: They barked and they sounded like dogs. One was loud,
Speaker 4: like it was right where I was. The other was distant, echoing.
Speaker 4: Then they flew away, directly up and towards the sun,
Speaker 4: and I tried to watch to see where they went,
Speaker 4: but you can't look directly at the sun like that.
Speaker 4: I looked back down and Dwight was gone. Okay, so
Speaker 4: his body was still there, but there was there was
Speaker 4: something about him that was gone, and I don't know
Speaker 4: how to tell you what it was. That was that
Speaker 4: we won sort of. They didn't storm the library, which
Speaker 4: I guess means we won. But sometimes I'd think I'd
Speaker 4: burn every single book in that place that would bring
Speaker 4: back Lare or Dwight or any of the rest of
Speaker 4: my friends. The war was over at that point, even
Speaker 4: if we didn't know it yet. So what did they
Speaker 4: die for? I guess for symbols. Maybe symbols matter that much.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: I deserted after that. Half the survivors of the Battle
Speaker 4: of Asheville died less than a week later up in Pittsburgh.
Speaker 4: And I suppose I'd be dead if i'd gone, And
Speaker 4: it probably makes me a coward that I didn't. It's
Speaker 4: not that I was afraid of dying. It's that I
Speaker 4: was afraid of dying in battle because I believe in
Speaker 4: Odin now it's hard not to believe in a god
Speaker 4: without venerating him. I don't want to go to Valhalla.
Speaker 4: I don't want to fight ever again, let alone every night.
Speaker 4: I don't want to serve with the iron and they
Speaker 4: are at the twilight of the gods sometime in the
Speaker 4: twenty fifth century. If I don't want to do that,
Speaker 4: then I don't want to die in battle. Dwight, though
Speaker 4: I expect he's happy. I expect he dies every day
Speaker 4: with a smile on his lips and meat and his belly.
Speaker 4: He won't have to fight alongside the monsters of the
Speaker 4: human race either, because, as I learned in Nashville, Nazis
Speaker 4: don't go to Valhalla.
Speaker 3: All right, that was awesome, Margaret, thank you, Yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1: Stan'll put a bunch of applause noise here because this
Speaker 1: is not translating over.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and and uh, an airhorn.
Speaker 5: Definitely an. I don't think the air horn is going
Speaker 5: to be that as.
Speaker 3: Nope, Garrison airhorn. Thank you, Thank you, Garrison. Margaret. How
Speaker 3: how long did you write that?
Speaker 4: I wrote that I believe in twenty seventeen, maybe twenty eighteen.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, well it's not gotten less relevant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, man, I uh, there's definitely some times where I've
Speaker 3: wished for a platoon of vikings, yeah, to deal with
Speaker 3: some shit.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well this has been it could happen here and this
Speaker 3: has been spooky week. I hope you enjoyed this scary
Speaker 3: story that's also relevant to our theme of collapse. Margaret,
Speaker 3: you want to tell the people where they can find you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Magpie Killjoy. I'm on Instagram
Speaker 4: at Margaret Kiljoy. I'm on Patreon at patreon dot com
Speaker 4: slash Margaret Kiljoy, where this story and many other stories
Speaker 4: are available for anyone who sponsors me at a dollar
Speaker 4: a month. And if you make less money than I do,
Speaker 4: then just message me and I'll give you all my
Speaker 4: ship for free. And I have an upcome because you've
Speaker 4: asked me to plug things and I'm definitely just gonna
Speaker 4: ahead and plug things Hell yeah, I have a book
Speaker 4: coming out from AKA Press. It's a reissue of my
Speaker 4: anarchist yutopian book A Country of Ghosts. If you like
Speaker 4: my very I like writing war stories, but I specifically
Speaker 4: like writing war stories that are actually sad and how
Speaker 4: about how war is horrible? And so A Country of
Speaker 4: Ghosts is such a book and this story will eventually.
Speaker 4: I'm excited to say I just signed a contract for
Speaker 4: AK Press is going to put out a short story
Speaker 4: anthology of mine, which will include the story.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that sounds incredibly rad.
Speaker 3: Yes, great publisher. Yeah, not biased at all of that.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, nor towards stories of the Second American
Speaker 4: Civil War with never heard of.
Speaker 3: Characters I've been introduced to just today. Yes, all right,
Speaker 3: we'll check out Margaret's book Parentheses, s uh and and
Speaker 3: check out this show when and it comes back someday
Speaker 3: one day. You'll never know when, but you'll hear a
Speaker 3: whisper on the wind, and there will be or it'll
Speaker 3: be the next weekday after one of those.
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