Tark In The Dark

Tark In The Dark is a horror narration podcast, and one reader shapes the whole thing. Tarkin opens with a set welcome back and gives himself a flattering label, lovable one night and infallible another. Then he names the tale. He says he will just jump right in, and the story takes over from there. The tales usually have one narrator in trouble, speaking as 'I', and they tend to start somewhere ordinary. In 'Decay', a hospital worker lies to a crushed boy about his chances as he is rolled into the operating theater. Later the boy has no heartbeat and still says it hurts everywhere, while the ward waits in quarantine for someone to tell them what to do. In 'Room-Sitting', a temp agency sends the narrator to watch a room under numbered rules, and a voice claiming to be the janitor keeps knocking. 'Fuzzy' belongs to a parent whose five-year-old son, Kevin, announces that his imaginary friend came again. Meanwhile two unexplained holes under the boy's window are larger each time the parent looks. 'Ignore The Earwig', credited to Brian A. Young, starts with the urban legends children grow up on. One of those legends comes back in the narrator's last year of high school, when a kid named Dean Mendez turns up visibly shaken. Not every story plays it straight. The narrator of 'If You Are Armed And At The Glenmont Metro, Please Shoot Me' is on a drug that stretches every minute, and the misery comes through absurd detail: a screaming baby heard as whale song, train brakes as a tuba solo, a computer that seems to take forever to boot. 'A Little Gift' speaks directly to the listener and walks them through a ritual meant for someone who feels that life simply takes too long. It ends by promising a reward instead of a punishment. When a story finishes, the host is back. Tarkin gives a quick verdict, sometimes with a joke, such as wondering whether a childhood imaginary friend was really an old man in a gas mask. After 'Decay' he tells listeners to crawl into bed, hold someone dear and tell them they love them. He also asks for comments and story requests, and most episodes end with a wish for a spooky, scary night and a good night. 'Room-Sitting' is an easy first pick: the rules and the knocking stranger are simple to follow. That episode also opens with thanks to Rebecca Ray for its accompaniment and to Matthew Parrish for the logo. Death, drug use, medical injury and death wishes come up in several of these stories.