WAITING FOR OCTOBER S1 – E2.5 – “Raven”
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 …
Note – there may be advertisements inserted at this point in the episode.
SCENE ONE
SOUND: Pub background, evening (ongoing) – should feel timeless, with some monstrous touches – the occasional conversation off to the back includes hisses, growls, etc.
SOUND: The Raven caws and flaps his wings dramatically, already a bit tipsy
RAVEN
That was when I swept in – swooped in – who doesn’t love a good swoop? Right on cue, the perfect electrifying moment strutting to centre stage, lines at the tip of your tongue and your beak firmly set in their heart? Who could resist that sweet temptation? I swooped, and their eyes grew wide, their jaws dropped – Karo in particular, set of jaws on that one – and then I quoth, “What release and what adventure; what Our Heroes have become!”
SOUND: Mostly silence, somewhere a chair shifting, someone coughs
RAVEN
I guess you had to be there. But that is how they pulled free of the Lindworm’s wake, that “blood-red thing that writhes from out the scenic solitude!” Who’s got the next round? I’ll take whiskey, port, or brandy, it’s too early yet for absinthe.
SOUND: He pecks his beak into the glass, knocking it across the bar
RAVEN
No one? Not one beast in the Horseman tonight will buy a round for the truest God of Fiction? Before I took this damnable feathered form, I couldn’t have kept you away. Don’t think I’ve forgotten; our past or the secrets we buried under those years.
BERGEN
(note – this will only be heard as a murmur across the bar)
Give the goddamn pest whatever will shut his yap.
SOUND: A few coins thrown down on the counter; a few footsteps and a drink being poured; the sound of a new glass being set down and claws raking gently over the wood
BARKEEP
Bourbon, bottom shelf. Two conditions – do not thank the lady, that’s from her; get back into your corner, that’s from me.
RAVEN
Base prejudice and inexcusable disrespect. Where do you get off –
SOUND: The claws raking over the wood again, harder this time
RAVEN
All right, but I’m lodging a complaint about that perch.
BARKEEP
If you make your joke about the bust of Pallas one more time, you are out the door.
SOUND: Raven’s talons against glass, fumbling a little
RAVEN
You could at least give me a cup with a handle.
SOUND: With grumbling and cursing, we hear him pick up the glass and flap across the room
RAVEN
Damnable vulgarians. “A prophet is not without honor, but in his own country,” after all I’ve done for them …
(he caws and raises his voice)
After all I’ve done for this menagerie!
(back to himself, muttering)
I’ve gone through the maelstrom and back again for you people – gave my corporeal form, my limbs and heart and nerve, now it’s a glass of rotgut and a crooked branch in the darkest corner. Not that it’s any worse than I was treated in my other life.
SOUND: He slurps his drink, and lets the glass fall to the floor (rolling, not breaking)
RAVEN
Damn it!
SOUND: A few footsteps
BARKEEP
Not how you call for another round.
RAVEN
What are you doing in the cheap seats?
BARKEEP
I’m on my break.
SOUND: We hear them sit down heavily in an armchair, sighing
BARKEEP
You’re not making any friends tonight, the way you’ve been carrying on.
RAVEN
I’m not here to make friends. Not at the Headless Horseman, and not in October. I made them once, and turned the worse for it – “to friends above, from fiends below,” as the verse goes. But I’m sure you’ve heard that story.
(after a moment)
As I say, I’m sure you’ve heard my story.
(he clears his throat, ending in a caw)
It was some years after my military experience, which I mention though it has no particular bearing; and well into the perfection of my belletristic career. I had moved to Philadelphia, which is also of some importance – as Penn’s Woods was where I first encountered proof of another world, the source of our supernatural connection and all of the grief and delectation that would ensue.
BARKEEP
I’m only off for fifteen minutes; you might want to pick up the pace.
RAVEN
There was a circle of literary up-and-comers engaged in wilderness exclusions – nick-ninnies, all of them, but I was about to launch my own journal and thus needed to be a bit more in circulation. At their campfires, I entertained with early drafts of Amontillado and House of Usher, then passed around a prospectus asking for their support. With … moderate results.
(brief pause)
I was never a sound sleeper, particularly in that environment – so I took many a walk on many a midnight dreary, the fog reducing my vision and sanity in equal measures. It was on such a night when I first saw something that seemed both more and less than human – a figure completely covered in devilish thick red hair! I thought it must be my fevered imagination, all the more as I’d been researching orangutans for Murders in the Rue Morgue.
SOUND: The barkeep clears their throat
RAVEN
What do you have against the setting of a scene? All right – that’s when I met the Chester Ape Boy – Chester being the region, I’m sure you know his name is Archie. He was sitting by the swamp, lost in a funk, senseless. When I was certain of his existence, I didn’t say a word, I made no sudden moves … I only sat down myself and we watched patterns swirl through the mist. I suppose like called to like. That first night, we only sat and when morning came, I silently returned to camp. The second night, I returned, as did he – I’d brought a bottle and I set it down between us. It was empty before dawn. The third night – still without a word being said between us – he stood and gestured, then led me to what turned out to be his crossing to October. No warning, no preparation – and that is something you should not experience for the first time on a half-bottle of port. But after I’d lost my stomach on my way over, on that side, he spoke to me. He said he never talks in our world; too many secrets not to tell. But somehow, some why – he trusted me. You could tell he’d never been with other humans – they could have warned him that’s a bad call.
(he chuckles – then a caw, then a brief pause)
He showed me the world on this side – like Karoline now shows with their lady love – but without any of the same mythos to ease my way, just leapt to the heart of the vortex with all the awe, horror, and admiration one might imagine. I know what you’re thinking – “Who better to experience the truly monstrous than Poe?” – but it left me reeling. Not just the monsters, but the mutability of reality over here! I’d led a life of ratiocination until then, but all that fell apart before this knowledge of the life our stories inspire just beyond the veil.
(brief pause)
It was there that my eyes widened, that my jaw was permanently unfixed. I’d been brought across by an Ape Boy, met bugbears and minotaurs and goblins, drank with werebeasts beneath an orange moon … how could I go back to publishing in Philadelphia? I spent less and less of my time there, indulging in my addiction to this world, using laudanum to ease the pull until I learned to refuse it … was this my second home or my first by that point? It was difficult to say.
SOUND: We hear him take a step or two across his perch, restless
RAVEN
Once I’d set up my own encampment, I began to bring a few hand-picked followers across – under careful supervision. It was the first human colony – what grew into the Council, but I don’t advise mentioning my name in their company now. I brought Longfellow and Irving and Conan Doyle and Dickens …
(he sighs)
I loved Charles but he did not take to this world sweetly, one visit was more than enough. I’m afraid I ruined the whole second half of Barnaby Rudge with how it affected him. I had to care for Grip, his pet raven, for the rest of his visit … who, despite what you might have heard, was not an influential presence in any way.
(his voice wavers)
Merely a … favour, for a dear friend. Where’s my glass? Well, give me a sip of yours, damn it. I can’t tell the rest without lubrication.
SOUND: Barkeep sighs, sliding the glass over (effect over the sigh); Raven slurps the drink
RAVEN
That’ll do it. Dickens … Dickens was my downfall, in his wake I began to question my own dependence. Longfellow and I had started squabbling over the colony, so I left that to his appropriation and traveled alone once more … until Lenore – Eliza – Virginia fell ill, and I could not bear to leave her side. My memory of those days is dim; I know I wrote my most famous work while my shadow floated there. I know we moved, and moved again – if I still thought of my time on these shores it must have been such as a dream.
(he laughs bitterly)
A demon’s dreaming, to quote myself, thank you very fucking much. Not that I didn’t come running back – or to be fair, mostly stumbling back – in the end. Well, before the end … but not long before, only after the ghosts of my world were closing in. Despairing and desperate, I sought a new crossing – Archie’s had closed, but I’d heard rumours of a serpent in the Chesapeake Bay, and with some effort Poe was back on his bullshit again.
(brief pause)
Or a similar stream, but at least he was back. The Council, that serpent in this Eden, was already changed and he was far from welcome – have I mentioned that prick Longfellow? – but there were other places as yet unspoiled. Or at least, unspoilable – the crowd he fell in with, gargoyles and Moonkin and shape-shifters, had more effect on his behaviour than the other way around. Or it might have been an equal exchange of debauchery – Poe had given in fully by this time to his “Imp of the Perverse,” squandering health and coin and rationality, whichever world he found himself in at the time. Sometimes, he might not even have known which side, or with whom he was drinking, wilding through the countryside, shouting verses to the sea. “To the moaning and the groaning of the bells!” was composed in those Octobering times, during a rampant midnight drive with a pooka at the wheel!
SOUND: His talons on glass, another slurp of alcohol
RAVEN
(more somber)
He spent himself to the last in our world, our Poet Laureate, our darkest Patron Saint. We had to drag him back over, insensate, dwindling, to the doorstep of a tavern, dressed in clothes he’d traded a goblin for that same evening. Four days later, he breathed his last. Requiescat in Pace.
SOUND: Quietly, he takes a step or two on his perch during the pause
BARKEEP
(after a bit, quietly)
You know you switched from first to third person a couple of paragraphs back.
SOUND: The Raven flutters his wings and caws, agitated
RAVEN
You dilberry – have you never heard of dramatic effect? And now you’ve broken the pace of the thing, so I might as well jump ahead to where I obviously did not die, as I’m here to tell the tale. In body yes, no premature burial there let me tell you, but my spirit was entangled with October so surely that this was my Plutonian shore, my golden throne – in a different form, but the same singular soul to reside hereafter.
BARKEEP
You don’t say.
RAVEN
You heard my voice!
BARKEEP
What happened to those shape-shifter types he’d been keeping company with before he died?
RAVEN
(loudly, overlapping)
And in this form I found a replacement for my previous literary purpose. I act as a guide here, advisor to those who need one, wise and experienced companion on quests both humble and heroic.
SOUND: The Barkeep can’t help but snort at this one; and behind the next speech is snickering, barely able to control their laughter
RAVEN
I led Lovecraft through his first crossing, introduced him to the gill folk – though we had to ban him later on; both Wells and Verne were brought in on my say-so, before sci-fi split off into its own separate sphere; I sit on King’s shoulder when he visits – you can find me in The Dark Tower and The Stand in my current form; and of course Poe as himself – myself – dammit, would you silence your editorial commentary?
BARKEEP
(laughing)
I can’t help myself. Every time you repeat the tale, I warn you – if you can’t pull back your ego at the end, I don’t know how I’m supposed to hold my tongue …
(chuckling)
RAVEN
Well screw you, barkeep. After all I’ve done for this establishment and the denizens thereof –
BARKEEP
(still chuckling, dramatically)
Oh, “Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”
(after a moment, teasingly)
Quoth the Raven?
RAVEN
(gritting his teeth)
Nevermore. You asshole.
SOUND: The Barkeep laughs again; the laugh and the pub background fades
(The scene ends.)
(The episode ends.)
PRODUCERS: Hello, and thank you for listening to the show.
Waiting for October was written by D.J. Sylvis with sound design by Caroline Mincks, and music by Trace Callahan
This episode featured Leeman Kessler as The Raven, Mette Marie Fisker as Bergen, and Faux Synder as the barkeep.
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.
Here’s a lighthearted rec after that foul-mouthed Raven – why not check out Wanderer’s Journal? It’s a fantasy fiction podcast about Marigold and Pluto, two adventurers linked by a magical journal and an ancient mystery. The way the story unfolds is truly fascinating – check it out and see what you think!
Next time in our story, we’ll be digging deeper with Karo and Yvonne in an episode that includes a special musical guest! So get yourselves ready for that – but for now, settle in for the night, maybe read a bit of Poe beside the fire, and don’t worry about that knocking at the door, I’m sure it’ll take care of itself. Nevermore!
Note – there may be advertisements inserted at this point in the episode.
