Hello dear friends. Episode 6 of Death Of 1000 Cuts, the podcast, is now up. Thanks for spreading the word about the show. We’ve had over a thousand listens now, which – while modest by podcasting standards – is a lot more than I expected from some random bullshit that I’m learning how to do as I go along. Next week I’m hoping to do record some two-hander episodes. It might take a while to work out the best way of managing those – I mean, it’s not exactly a radical podcast format, two people talking – but fingers crossed something good will arise out them.

In the meantime I leave it to you to enjoy this week’s episode and continue to let others know that this podcast exists and isn’t wretchedly awful.

If you’d like to listen to the podcast on iTunes, that is also a thing you can now do.

Here’s the piece I talk about this week. If you’d like to submit, please read the submission guidelines. You can get in touch via the ‘Contact Me’ link on the right.

Here’s this week’s submission, in case you’d like to read along:

Untitled (by Ben)

The raucous blare of repetitive, brain-numbing music sent the crowd into a frenzied rave. Bright red, green and yellow lights blinked from above and below. If Jack had not already been working there for two years he would have thought he was caught in the limbo between an LSD overdose and a slideshow of kaleidoscope images.

A pair of cackling women stumbled into the bar. One in a gaudy scarlet dress fumbled into her purse before slamming a handful of coins and notes onto the counter in front of Jack.

“Two thunder crackers!” she slurred after a flick of her puffy, pale blonde hair. Jack turned to the shelves of liquors and booze behind him and sent his hands into the meticulously organised collection of drinks. A few moments later he turned back to hand the women their cocktails. They nabbed the drinks from his hands and wobbled off into the crowd, their laughs like the screeching of a fork across a plate.

Jack returned to the counter behind him to return the drinks to their rightful positions on the shelf: two kinds of vodka, rum, whiskey and soda water—a local mixture designed to ignite the throats of drunkards, idiots and thrill seekers.

The lights dimmed, heralding a change of song and a brief lull in the nightclub’s raves. Jack seized the opportunity and quickly shuffled to the water tap at the away from the dancefloor. That end of the bar was much less crowded, visited only by the occasional sober loner.