WAITING FOR OCTOBER S1 – Prologue – “Story Time”
by D.J. Sylvis
ANNOUNCER: There is a world – one of many that touches ours – known as October. One of the archetypes; one of the realities that is a source for our stories. It is not difficult to reach, if you know the way – you can experience their wildness for yourself, adventure there, and live, and love. But be wary – perhaps more than any other existence, here there be monsters …
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SCENE ONE
(We’re in Karo’s small downtown apartment, it’s Spring, it’s later at night. Yvonne and Karo are settling into bed.)
SOUND: City bedroom, night (a decent amount of background from outside) – ongoing
SOUND: Bedclothes rustling
YVONNE
Don’t get all cocooned up there; I need blankets, too.
KARO
(teasing)
You should have brought your own.
YVONNE
Pardon me? Karo, you’ve got blankets and pillows at my house. With ducks on the pillowcase.
KARO
I’m sorry. There’s extra covers, and I’m here to keep you warm. No ducks, though.
YVONNE
That’ll be a ‘next time’ goal.
(apologetically)
I’ve got to take this side, with my leg and all.
KARO
Oh, sure. Sorry.
SOUND: The bed creaking as Karo moves and Yvonne sits down
YVONNE
It’s all good. I gotta rub in that balm stuff too, it’ll just take a minute …
(she groans a little)
SOUND: A bit more movement in the bed
KARO
Could you use a little help?
YVONNE
You don’t have to.
KARO
(slyly)
I know I don’t have to.
YVONNE
(groans more pleasantly)
Oh … yeah, that’s nice. Thank you.
KARO
Don’t try to stop me getting my hands on you.
YVONNE
That’s a lot better. Now I can lie down.
SOUND: More bed movement
KARO
Back to prime snuggling position.
YVONNE
Come here, you.
(cozy, a little yawn)
You do have a better bed than mine. Points for that.
KARO
I’m sorry it took so long to stay at my place.
YVONNE
It’ll definitely be an easier commute tomorrow. I’m working at Washington Avenue this week.
KARO
The roving Library Assistant, on the road with a badge, a book, and a bus pass.
YVONNE
Somebody’s got to keep the literary peace.
(another yawn)
Speaking of literature … you said you’d come back to that bedtime story.
KARO
Did I, now?
YVONNE
Don’t you play with me. Not about stories!
KARO
All right. Where did I leave off?
YVONNE
I’m … not completely sure. I might have been –
KARO
A little bit snoozley?
YVONNE
Mayyyyybe.
SOUND: Blankets rustling
YVONNE
But you said you’d tell me more about this monster world.
KARO
Yeah. The monster world.
YVONNE
I don’t think you’d gotten very far.
KARO
Someone had a lot of questions about the “when” and the “how” and the “what for.”
YVONNE
That does sound like me.
KARO
I’ll see if I can give you some answers.
(brief pause)
To really get into it, I’m gonna have to go back. Way back. To the beginning of things, to the beginning of … people, really. When they became people; when they began to tell stories. That was the start of it all, whether it was in the caves, you know, or even earlier … there are animals even now who have their own history, their fiction. Whenever people started to tell stories.
YVONNE
(kinda sleepy)
Thirty-six thousand years ago.
KARO
What are you saying there?
YVONNE
There’s this … cave, in France. With pictures on the walls, it’s supposed to be the oldest story.
(she giggles)
Of course the first story was a picture book.
KARO
Are you awake enough for this?
YVONNE
(shaking it off a little)
I am! I’m awake, I’m good, keep going.
KARO
(after a moment)
Nobody knows the how of the written worlds, the places those stories brought into being. But it seems like things come when there’s a need for them – so when imagination grew and needed to express itself, there had to be a place that it could draw from. A real, existing place one step away where those imaginings could have their own truth. A world where stories are the bedrock, the fossil record, the origin of species.
YVONNE
(gentle teasing)
You sound pretty sure for something “nobody knows.”
KARO
That world was needed, and so it came to be. A place where those stories, with their themes and ideas and archetypes, could live and breathe … and walk, and swim, and soar. Where they could meet and intersect and expand.
(brief pause)
They might have expanded a bit too much. The world filled up fast – once people found out what their imaginations could do, things got busy and things got complicated. Every type of story, every way to tell them, all happening loud and wild and close together. Like tuning up before a symphony, when every musician is on their own and no one’s looking for harmony.
YVONNE
That’s when you need a librarian! Nobody shushes noisy folks better.
KARO
You wouldn’t have liked it then. All the stories in big messy piles up against each other …
YVONNE
Like you haven’t seen my bookshelves? Not that I don’t have a system. Taking no questions on that.
KARO
You’re a menace. But finding a system is kinda what happens next.
(brief pause)
The world wasn’t able to hold it all, it started to divide … one world into others, then others still, making more room … evolving, focusing, categorizing.
YVONNE
Now you’re talking my language. Different worlds for different types of stories?
KARO
Give me a chance to tell it.
(brief pause)
Each world found its own theme, its own direction. A world of adventure –
YVONNE
High Seas and Piratical Fiction, Shelf Twenty-Three –
KARO
A world of fantasy –
YVONNE
Speculative Literature, same section, Shelf Thirty-Six –
KARO
A world of romance.
YVONNE
Shelf Forty-
SOUND: She is cut off by an audible kiss
YVONNE
Oh, you.
KARO
But of all the worlds, October might be the oldest –
YVONNE
I forgot you called it October! I love that.
KARO
That’s one of the names. That’s what humans called it when they first crossed over.
(brief pause, starting into storyteller)
October might be the oldest, because it serves one of the deepest needs. It is a world that’s made of monsters.
SOUND: More rustling of blankets as Yvonne sits up
YVONNE
Here we go.
KARO
(getting more into storyteller mode now)
October was born from the shadows, from the silhouette of bare branches trembling in the wind, the first time someone held their breath at an unexpected noise in the dead of night. October began from a heartbeat pounding, from that moment in a dream when you need to run but you just can’t run, from the gasping awake before your eyes adjust and everything is an unidentifiable blur. It is a world seen through a fun-house mirror, strange and singular, unusual and unnatural compared to your existence.
YVONNE
You’re making it sound kinda scary, love. I might need extra cuddles.
KARO
(breaking the storytelling thing for a moment)
There’s always time for cuddles
SOUND: Another quiet kiss
KARO
(back into it)
It’s not, though. Scary. Not in the bones of it. October isn’t based in nightmare, or evil – but instead the inexplicable, the wild mysteries that lurk out in the woods, or at the ocean floor, or in that apartment upstairs that you’re sure wasn’t rented. We are the monstrous exposition.
YVONNE
Oh, it’s we now?
KARO
We, as in …
YVONNE
I like the idea of a place made out of stories. Do they carry around a pen and paper to write their way out of plot holes? Or a laptop – are there laptops in the monster world? Do they have wifi? Asking the important questions!
KARO
There are places as modern as this world, and places that are … not so much. Depending on the tale they’ve been telling.
(working their way back into the story)
October tends to ebb and flow with that need, changing the background, the age of things, the taste of the air … a path you’ve traveled a hundred times might twist in the opposite direction and you wind up somewhere completely new. Your story might be changed without being aware, some force you’ve never felt before pulling the focus, and you’re carried along in the wake …
YVONNE
Curiouser and curiouser. So every story is just being written, right around you, minute by minute? Even a monster must get muddled up by that.
KARO
It can happen.
YVONNE
(more awake again)
Okay, my brain is starting to catch up. Earlier you said, “humans, when they crossed over” – so how does that work? That’s right, I’m gonna challenge your worldbuilding, I didn’t get a Master’s degree for chump change.
KARO
I don’t really know how that part of things started …
(starting to wind back into the story)
But I can tell you how it feels. That world being born from this one, there are places where the connection is so strong, so believed in … that a few steps off the path in a ravine, or down the stairwell of an abandoned building … you can find yourself slipping over, as easy as giving in to an undertow.
YVONNE
I don’t know … I’ve been in my share of ravines … and a few abandoned buildings …
KARO
There are places, but not too many. And they’re guarded. There’s a reason you’ve got folklore about seeing Bigfoot, or the Puckwudgie, or a creature on the lake …
YVONNE
Back in the day, there was a kid in my class who swore he’d seen some sort of swimming dinosaur. He might have been a little too into Jurassic Park.
(she chuckles, then after a moment)
So in this other world, all these things are just yawn, boring, everyday? Of course there’s a monster on the lake, and Bigfoot, he’s probably some kind of park ranger, and there’s Mothmans – Mothmen? mothpersons? – and maybe a Chupacabra or two out in them hills, and like, honey, the jackalopes are getting into the garden again, we better build up that fence … and I don’t know, a zombie might sit next to you on the subway and it’s all fine …
KARO
(laughs)
I’ve never seen a zombie. But the rest, yeah, sure. It’s really pretty great – there are definitely chupacabra, and at least a Mothman … the jackalopes are pretty cute as long as you’re careful during mating season … and there’s The Wilds – packs of were-creatures of every sort, wolves and bears and boars and even were-kangaroo … the Gill Folks in the rivers and lakes and seas – like the one your friend thought he saw, and nix and selkies and the Kataw and mermaids –
YVONNE
Mermaids are monsters?
KARO
Cities full of monsters – gargoyles working construction and gremlins in the machinery; bugbears and trolls and the Lindworm in the forest; wild kaiju beyond the mountains that you can hear no matter how far away; Skrippicut and giant bugs in the desert; the Moonkin and the Wampahoofus and the pooka and I know at least one skeleton by name …
YVONNE
(a little sleepier)
I’m gonna stop you before you get to the Jabberwock and the Jubjub bird. I think I get the picture.
(she yawns again)
And it’s getting past my bedtime. Here, snuggle in again.
KARO
I’m right with you.
SOUNDS: Bedclothes rustling, maybe another quiet kiss or two
YVONNE
(after a moment, sleepy again)
I’m surprised humans took their chance on that side. It doesn’t sound too safe. You know, a high risk of … crunch crunch, ahhhhhh!
KARO
(just a tiny bit offended)
Not so different from this world, I guess.
YVONNE
Fair point.
KARO
There aren’t a lot of always-safe places out there. It’s dangerous like any new place is dangerous – you’ve got to learn to read people, take things in, learn the rules. Some monsters you learn to avoid. I mean, you wouldn’t want to start out there alone, but … it’s not a bad place.
YVONNE
Of course it’s not. I didn’t mean to ruin your story.
KARO
(they yawn)
Now you’re making me do it.
(after a beat, a little sleepy)
You didn’t ruin anything. I just wanted to give you an idea of the place. I wanted … you to like it.
YVONNE
I do, Karo. I like it. I can’t wait for more … except I need to, because sleep is a thing.
KARO
Sleep needs to be a thing. We’ve got lots of nights I can tell you more.
YVONNE
(a little groan, stretching out)
Lots and lots … of nights.
SOUND: Bedclothes rustling
KARO
Hey, that’s my pillow you’re stealing.
YVONNE
Remember the ducks.
(after a long pause, drifting)
Hey, Karo?
KARO
Yeah?
YVONNE
I don’t wanna go to work tomorrow. Can I play hooky with you?
KARO
I mean –
YVONNE
(continuing over them)
We could hide out in your monster world, it’d be all kinds of fun. It’d be okay if you’re with me, right?
(after a moment)
Karo?
KARO
Of course I’ll be with you. Now go to sleep, you goof.
SOUND: City bedroom background fades out
(The scene ends.)
(The episode ends.)
PRODUCERS: Thank you so much for listening!
Waiting for October was written by D.J. Sylvis, sound design was done by Caroline Mincks and music was by Trace Callahan. This episode featured Robin Regalado as Karo and Tina Case as Yvvone.
Our co-producers are D.J. Sylvis, Tina Case, and Sarah Müller. Our associate producers are Fool & Scholar Productions, Kathleen Lucas, Marcus Briggs, Martin Chodorek, Rebekah B.
A special thanks to our Patreon supporters who have helped make all of our stories happen! If you’d like to support our work or celebrate the folks who make it happen visit our Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/monkeymanproductions.
This week we’d like to recommend Witchever Path, an interactive horror anthology podcast we’ve been fans of since day one. They tell darkly thoughtful stories; you vote to decide where the next chapter goes. That’s W-i-t-c-h ever Path, in all your podcast apps.
Thank you for listening! I hope you’re excited to hear where our next chapter goes as well – we’ll be back soon with an adventure in the pumpkin patch! Cross over and join our story – the monsters are waiting.
Note – there may be advertisements inserted at this point in the episode.
