Bram Stoker tells "The Tale of The Torture Tower", in a special ten-minute mini-episode.
It's Bram Stoker's turn at the campfire and he's brought a new story, "The Tale of The—" oh dear, we might have to do something about that title.
Content notes: Discussion of racism; human and animal death; discussion of violence and torture.
Season 1 Premiere: Our first full episode, The Tale of the Frankenstein, will release on our podcast feed on Tuesday 31st October— but there will also be a special early streamed premiere and open hangout with the cast and crew on Sunday 29th October at 5PM GMT / 1PM Eastern / 10AM Pacific. Join us on Rodrigo "Poe" Borges's twitch channel at https://www.twitch.tv/TheCommanderRod
CAST:
Script, production and music by Robin Johnson, loosely adapted from The Sq**w by Bram Stoker. The Midnight Pals is created by Bitter Karella. All characters are fictitious, especially the real ones.
About the story: Bram Stoker's unfortunately named short story The Sq**w was included in his posthumously published short story collection Dracula's Guest, which can be found on Project Gutenberg at https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10150 (CN for explicit racism, torture, gore, and killing of humans and animals.) In adaptations it has been variously renamed Dungeon of Horror, Cat's Cradle and The Torture Tower.
HP Lovecraft's childhood cat was named either what you're thinking, or something worse.
Find the Midnight Pals at midnightpals.com on bluesky at @midnightpals.bsky.social or on twitter at @midnight_pals. Subscribe to Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Pals now at https://midnight-pals.simplecast.com or via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your podcast site/app of choice.
A transcript of this teaser is available at https://midnight-pals.simplecast.com/episodes/teaser-12-bram-stoker/transcript
[BELLS CHIMING, SPOOKY ORGAN MUSIC]
VOICEOVER: Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Pals, created by Bitter Karella.
[MUSIC FADES OUT. FOREST SOUNDS FADE IN, WITH CAMPFIRE CRACKLING NEARBY. OWL HOOTS]
EDGAR ALLAN POE: Tonight, Bram Stoker is going to tell us a short story called “The Tale of the S—”... oh. Oh, oh dear.
BRAM STOKER: Well, what are we supposed to call them? I can’t keep up.
POE: Well, what tribe does she belong to?
STOKER: Er
POE: (SIGH) You don’t know. Okay, “Native American woman”, I guess.
STOKER: All right. Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Society—
[MAGICAL SPARKLE SOUND, BUT IT SPUTTERS OUT]
CLIVE BARKER: Wait up. Does this tale actually have any Native American women in it?
STOKER: Well... not as such...
BARKER: So why not call it the Tale of something that’s actually in the story?
STOKER: Um. It’s got a black cat?
POE: (QUICKLY) Dibs!
HP LOVECRAFT: (JUST TOO LATE) Dibs! Damn.
STOKER: It’s got a torture tower?
BARKER: There you go. The Tale of the Torture Tower. Everyone loves a torture tower!
STOKER: Whatever. I call this story... The Tale of the Torture Tower.
[SPOOKY ORGAN MUSIC]
LOVECRAFT: Wait... Did you guys just retrospectively rename something to meet today’s moral standards? [CAT MEOWS] Quiet, Global Majority Man!
STOKER: It’s about this newly married young English couple who are on honeymoon in Frankfurt. They’ve been there for a week, so naturally by now they’re bored to tears.
MARY SHELLEY: Riiiight.
STOKER: But happily, they run into a cowboy!
STEPHEN KING: A German cowboy?
BARKER: Are there German cowboys?
DEAN KOONTZ: There’s German shepherds.
KING: Those are dogs, Dean.
KOONTZ: Oh boy!
STOKER: No, he’s not a dog, or a German. He’s an American cowboy in Frankfurt. He’s on vacation.
SHELLEY: Rode on across the Atlantic in between cattle drives, did he?
STOKER: Yes. What do you think cowboys do on their days off? Anyway, the cowboy makes friends with the honeymooning couple and tells them all sorts of stories about his adventures in the wild west, like the time he saw a—a Native American woman take a tomahawk to a half-breed named Splinters, because of—
KING: Did you, uh, maybe consider getting a sensitivity reader for this, Bram?
STOKER: W—
BARKER: Other than Walt Whitman?
KING: Look what you’ve done to Howard. I’ve never seen him so happy.
LOVECRAFT: There are racist tropes here I didn’t even know about!
STOKER: Anyway, this newly-wed groom, who’s at the end of his tether after seven tedious nights in a luxury hotel bedroom with only his attractive young bride for company, and this cowboy, Elias P. Hutcheson of Bleeding Gulch, Maple Tree County, Nebraska—
[COWBOY PIANNY/HARMONICA MUSIC STARTS PLAYING]
BARKER: (LAUGHING) Oh my God.
SHELLEY: (DEADPAN) What you laughing at, Clive? Elias P. Hutcheson is clearly the rootin’ tootinest motherfucker in the West. (LAUGHS)
STOKER: Yes!
SHELLEY: I bet he skins five bears before breakfast.
STOKER: Yes!
SHELLEY: And he can shoot the fleas off a coyote’s back at two hundred yards.
STOKER: Yes!
SHELEY: And he wears assless chaps to the honky-tonk.
STOKER: Yes—[RECORD SCRATCH. MUSIC STOPS] NO!! Ugh!
POE: Mary
STOKER: Anyway, the love-bored groom and the cowboy really hit it off. Just as friends, you know. Bros. Nothing gay, before you make insinuations, Clive.
SHELLEY: Oh, I can’t compete.
STOKER: So the groom, as any red-blooded young man would do on his honeymoon, decides to go out with the cowboy on a date...(PANICKING)...rip!! Day trip. To Frankfurt’s greatest tourist attraction, the famous Torture Tower!
BARKER: What??
SHELLEY: Where’s the bride during this, er… day trip?
STOKER: Who? Oh, her. Sure, she tags along. Maybe faints a few times. And on the way the cowboy meets a cute black cat.
KOONTZ: I like this story!
STOKER: Who’s playing with her kitten!
KOONTZ: I love this story!
STOKER: Which the cowboy accidentally shoots!
KOONTZ: I hate this story!
BARKER: Was there gonna be something about a torture tower?
STOKER: Oh, yes. They get there, and it’s this wonderful place! A fun, wholesome day out for a man and his cowboy. It’s got swords and maces and spiky knobs and murder holes and scorpion pits...
POE: Pendulum?
STOKER: It’s positively cadent with pendula, Edgar. If you like swinging, you’ll love this place!
BARKER: Ahahahahaha!!
STOKER: But the pride and joy of this torture tower... the most heinous, excruciating, unbearable device of them all... the one thing that even the bravest of men could never endure...
SHELLEY: Here it comes...
STOKER: ...is... a life-size metal statue... of...
SHELLEY: ...wait for it...
STOKER: ...a woman!
SHELLEY: There it is.
STOKER: It opens up, you see, like a cabinet, and the inside is lined with terrible spikes. The torturers used to put a prisoner inside and then wham! Slam the door! Because the most horrifying place you could ever imagine being—
BARKER: —is inside a woman?
POE: Clive
STOKER: (MISSING THE INNUENDO) See? Clive gets it.
BARKER: More often than you do, man.
KING: You know, I heard iron maidens were a myth.
STOKER: This one isn’t. And the cowboy wants a shot in it.
SHELLEY: Hang on. Suddenly this is a torture kink story?
STOKER: No, it’s not kinky.
SHELLEY: Hmmm.
STOKER: He just wants to climb inside a spike-lined cabinet... (LASCIVIOUSLY) and have the door slowly closed on him till he cries for mercy. It’s a perfectly normal impulse for a healthy young cowboy.
SHELLEY: Right.
STOKER: So he asks the groom to tie him up with a piece of rope he’s brought along.
BARKER: Why’s he brought a rope?
STOKER: He’s a cowboy!
BARKER: Uh… okay, I’ll give you that one.
STOKER: And the groom obliges, tying up the cowboy’s arms and legs, just something you’d do if your bro asked you to, nothing weird. And then very slowly he starts to swing the iron woman’s door closed, so that Elias P. Hutcheson can have the full Frankfurt Torture Tower experience.
BARKER: (GIGGLING) Is this like a rollercoaster? Do they sell you a photo afterwards?
KING: Bram, is this story, um… Dean-appropriate?
KOONTZ: I wanna know what happened to the kitty.
STOKER: I’m glad you said that, Dean! Because the mother cat happens to show up in the torture tower at that moment.
KOONTZ: Yaay!
STOKER: And launches herself, in a ball of furry rage, right at—
KOONTZ: —not at the cowboy!!
STOKER: No! At the other fellow! So in his struggle to get the cat off him, he slams the door shut, wham! and it’s Boot Hill for Elias P. Hutcheson.
[SAD COWBOY MUSIC PLAYS]
KOONTZ: Aw.
KING: It’s all right, Dean. At least the mommy kitty’s okay, right Bram?
STOKER: Well, as it happens, the groom, who’s tragically bereaved by the loss of his cowboy on their honeymoon, looks at the cat...
KOONTZ: And?
POE: Bram…
STOKER: ...and looks at the array of swords and spiky maces hanging around the torture tower…
KING: Bram, Dean’s had a lot for one night.
KOONTZ: Bram, what does the groom do?
STOKER: He... (PAUSE) he decides to adopt the kitty and take her home and look after her and name her, er…
KOONTZ: Dean!
STOKER: Fine. He names her Dean. The End.
BARKER: So you, uh, you’ve kinda got a thing for cowboys, don’t you Bram?
STOKER: I do not have a thing for cowboys. They just… turn up in my stories, you know? I’ll be writing about vampires or mummies or disgusting floppy worm-creatures and before I know it, there’s a toned cowboy just moseying on to the page, swinging his lasso. Doesn’t everyone have that problem?
KING/SHELLEY/LOVECRAFT/KOONTZ: No.
POE: Sometimes.
BARKER: Problem?
LOVECRAFT: Is that why you always kill them off?
STOKER: Stupid sexy cowboys.
[END THEME MUSIC PLAYS]
VOICEOVER: Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Pals, coming Halloween 2023 to wherever you find podcasts. Find us at midnightpals.com