PARADOX | New Fiction by Cor Zim

Season One—THE WILD WIND—Chapter 16: During a blizzard on the first day of Spring in 1900, Momma goes into labor. Meanwhile, Pa’s down the road chopping wood for a widow he has fallen for, so Sam, a patient of the Hilltop, personal cook for the family, and recipient of this story, fetches Docter Zolla. Untangling the umbilical cord from Sarah’s neck, the doctor breathes life into her. Bedside, Sam...

Season One—THE WILD WIND—Chapter 15: Pa teaches Sarah to barrel race. When she returns home after a competition, eager to show off her prize to Sam, a chasm forms—not only between the two but also in her mind as she hops off his knee. A darkness isolates Sarah in her room, where she pens Sam a story of trauma and ruin. A PLACE OF PARADOX is a Literary Fiction Podcast Written & Narrated by Cory...

Season One — THE WILD WIND — Chapter 14: Fannie comes down with a case of tuberculosis before disappearing into the night. Her antics inspire other patients to seek escapades of their own. A shy and mysterious traveling nurse named AMY arrives, challenging Dr. Zolla to a battle of minds. But, who will be outsmarted in the end? A PLACE OF PARADOX is a Literary Fiction Podcast Written & Narrated...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 13: Fannie arrives at the Hilltop State Hospital, where she receives a warm yet warning welcome from Dr. Zolla himself. Nonetheless, Fannie wastes no time taking advantage of the open-door policy and escapes with an itchy palm to the streets of Grandview while dressed as a man. Caught and returned, Fannie meets Bookbinder at a Hilltop dance, and it's love at fi...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 12: Fannie is sent off to the inescapable confines of the penitentiary--a "Puritan vision of hell" --where she suffers starvation and abuse at the hands of sadistic GUARD LEWIS. As despondent the circumstance presents itself, Fannie plans her escape, nonetheless. After consulting with Cecil and initiating the first female riot in American history, Fannie sets a...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 11: Meet FANNIE, a whiskey-guzzling swindler who is not your typical widow. She takes advantage of men for survival, who, in turn, attempt to take advantage of her. Fannie, the greatest escape artist the Midwest has ever known, engages in a capricious dialogue with her dead husband, CECIL, while on a quest for the finest food and drink saloons stretching the gr...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 10: Sarah meets a boy named Richie at the rodeo as a teen. The couple falls in love on horseback under the stars, but Richie is soon sent off to WWI, but not before proposing to Sarah, sliding a horseshoe nail ring upon her finger. A numbered collection of love letters to Richie illustrates her growing superstitious obsession as Richie’s shell-shocked mind grad...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 9: Richie returns from WWI, and only months later, Sarah is shocked to discover his shell-shocked, catatonic state as he stares off into the unknown with empty eyes in the stuffy confines of an old farmhouse on a grey winter day. After Richie's parents abandon him at the Hilltop—though the two can now never marry—Sarah devotes her life to caring for her "Dear R...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 8: Doctor Zolla tutors Junior under the Graveyard Elm and inspires him to become a doctor under mentorship about rounds on the Hilltop. Junior eventually goes off to college, marries, and has a child of his own, whom he introduces to his catatonic father, Richie, in Ward E. A PLACE OF PARADOX is a Literary Fiction Podcast Written & Narrated by Cory Zimmerma...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 7: It’s a dark time as PA dies in the cornfield he labored all his life, and the drums of war can once again be heard on the horizon. Sarah weighs the worth of empathy after Junior returns from WWII in a wooden box and Momma is found swinging from a twisted tree, having succumbed to lifelong grief. A PLACE OF PARADOX is a Literary Fiction Podcast Written &...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 6: The last nail in the coffin of Sarah’s impending isolation is hammered by the death of Richie. Sarah confesses her relationship with “Nazi pills” she steals from the asylum, reformed in what she views as a fascist vision of hell since the death of the progressive Doctor Zolla. Sarah begins her rapid descent into a decades-long state of madness. Ronald Reagan...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 5: Hobos, angsty teenagers, and Satanic worshipers invade the deteriorating buildings of the shuddered Hilltop as Sarah stalks them under the influence of pills she scavenges from the abandoned pharmacy. A PLACE OF PARADOX is a Literary Fiction Podcast Written & Narrated by Cory Zimmerman. A RADIO VÉRTÉ PRODUCTION SEASONAL | WEEKLY https://czstudio.works/po...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 4: After being introduced to the array of colorful characters who occupy the dayroom, Doctor Zolla discovers ROSE in a poorhouse. Having been locked in a Utica crib for forty years, she is permanently hunched over like a toad and blind from gouging out her eyes after being haunted by OLD SCRATCH. The doctor brings Rose back to the Hilltop, where she undergoes a...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 3: As Sarah's stash of pills runs out, she is forced to endure the throes of a violent withdrawal. But upon finding a misplaced bottle on MOMMA's dresser that "shakes like a rattlesnake," she pops "two reds and blue," which send her on a drug-fueled, Homeric odyssey into the thicket after blackberries for jam. A PLACE OF PARADOX is a Literary Fiction Podcast Wr...

PARADOX | SEASON ONE: THE WILD WIND - A Novel by Cory Zimmerman The Wild Wind is an American gothic tale about a woman born and raised on the grounds of a psychiatric institution—not as a patient but as the daughter of the asylum’s farmer—who learns of love and loss while grappling with the question of what it means to be sane when insanity is the norm. “What’s to be sane in the garden of madness?...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 2: NURSE KATE embarks on a poignant journey to join the ranks of young nurses at the Hilltop State Hospital after her brother's untimely and tragic death. On her first day, she meets DOCTOR ZOLLA, a figure of hope whose progressive ideals precede him. Later, she accompanies a mute, known simply as BOOKBINDER, at the beginning of a journey of healing from a rath...

Season One - THE WILD WIND - Chapter 1: When SARAH, an isolated old woman, awakes to see a spider in the corner drop down not once but three times, she knows she will die in the same old farmhouse where she was born. Sarah intends to kill herself by consuming a bottle of pills, leaving behind a peculiar manuscript addressed to a man named SAM. In a reverse chronology, an account of a long and ofte...