PenPal | Creep Cast
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We are talking about Pin Pal today, which, Wendy, give us a nice little breakdown on Pin Pal, because this was, once again, a nice little suggestion by you. Absolutely, absolutely. So happy to be here. Thank you, everyone, for being here, and especially thank you to my co-host, the famous 62-year-old Meat Canyon. It's really...

Yeah, the famous AARP member himself. It's really cool to see people from your generation get into this kind of content. It's really encouraging. So it makes me think I'm going to be here a while. So I appreciate it. Yeah, it's all good, man. The internet has really brought a new life to...

to us senior citizens. I love the imagination of these little young'uns out there telling nice spooky stories. Yeah, I can't wait for you to die of a heart attack during one episode. Oh, and it will happen. It'll be so good. I told you when we started this, I'm going to monetize it. I'm making as much money as I can. I've come to peace with it, and I think that as long as I am replaced with an even older

older and fatter gentlemen I'll be completely fine with it man yeah that's we're older than you on YouTube that's gonna take a while it's gonna be very very hard I think that it can't happen but today we are talking about pen pal so pen pal is there's like two camps of old internet creepypasta there's the stuff that was famous and

because it was either a meme or it was some cultural thing like Jeff the Killer, Slender Man, stuff like that. And then there's stuff that's remembered and famous because it was good. Things like Baraska and the one we're going to be talking about today, Pin Pal. So unlike Baraska, I actually...

don't think I've read Pimpel. I think as a kid, because the original story was posted to r slash nosleep in September of 2011, or at least the first part of the story was. We'll talk about that in a second. But it was posted in 2011, and then a bunch of the YouTubers who I listen to, like MrCreepyPasta, CreepsMixPasta, they made their audio versions of it. I don't think I listened to it, because I think...

It was just so long. Cause like the full it's six parts. All six parts are like a three hour audio recording.

So I don't think I ever listened to it, but I remember people saying it was one of the best out there. So now that I am a little bit more mature than I was when I was 14 years old or 13 years old, whatever, I am excited to go back and look at it. Because a bunch of people I trust, a bunch of people whose opinion of stories I care about have said Pimpal is one of the greatest early horror stories you can find.

So I'm stoked. I'm excited to get into it. Like I said, the story is six parts. Originally, the author meant for the first part that is titled Footsteps to be a standalone story. But after a bunch of acclaim from people like in the comments on Reddit, he decided to continue from the same character's perspective, eventually making a story into six parts and actually publishing it, which he did through a GoFundMe. The author's name, by the way, which I should probably mention, is Dathan O'Connor.

or our back. I believe I'm pronouncing that right. Yeah. I think like our back, our box, our box, something, it looks like some kind of like Austrian European name or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's the thought that counts. Uh, but he published this story, uh, on Reddit. He went under the name a thousand vultures when he was writing it, but now you can buy the entire pen pal narrative as a paperback edition, which is really cool. Um,

So it's awesome to see someone go from like, oh, I'm going to make a quick little short story on Reddit into being a published author. That's really sick. So the fact that it got that much acclaim, that they had a Kickstarter for it and everything, it's that popular. I'm excited to see what's in it.

Yeah. I mean, something where it's like you started off and you were able to garner. I mean, I think the Kickstarter I saw was, I think he asked for $1,500 and he ended up making $15,000. And that's just a post from Reddit over 10 years ago. Pretty substantial. And there's something I like a lot about the idea of

these people publishing things into physical formats and being able to have it up on a bookshelf and pull it down, I think it just legitimizes it in a fun way where you can put it up next to your H.P. Lovecraft or Stephen King's, all that kind of stuff. I think it deserves to be there. But once again...

As is the... This is the narrative with every episode. I have not read this. Nor have I really heard of it. It's just another one of these things where... Mostly, it's been people in the comments saying that they want to see people... You know, they want to hear us talk about Pen Pal. They want to see us read Pen Pal, which I'm very excited about, especially... But I'm also very nervous. I'll say I'm very nervous because...

Do we know is it going to be a Baraska situation again or not? I don't know. That's a good point. It might be. I'm holding my breath because now I'm nervous because you don't even know. Yeah, okay. I'm innocent this time. I'm innocent. I have no idea where this story ends. So if it does end up in a Baraska place, that was a happy accident. I didn't do it on purpose. Yeah, a quote-unquote happy accident. Yeah.

It's very, very happy. Yeah, yeah. Without further ado, let's jump into it. And like Wendy said, it's broken into six parts, and the first part is called Footsteps. So you want to start or do you want me to start? Absolutely. And I think the plan is we're just going to run with it for as long as we feel like, and we'll see where it goes. So let's get into it. Why don't you kick us off?

Okay, so footsteps, and it begins with, this is long, so I apologize for that. I've never had to tell this story with enough detail to actually explain it all the way, but it is true, and it happened when I was about six years old. Nice six-year-old story, all right? I'll tell you something, and I don't mean to immediately break this, but being, I feel like I'm trying to think if I can remember much when I was six.

I can't remember much when I was six. I have very early memories of... I remember the house. I remember when I was six or seven, I remember I was playing on a playground and ran into a big black widow spider hanging on a toy. So I have glimpses of stuff like that, but I don't have coherent memories from that time.

Yeah, yeah. I feel like all I can remember is, like you were saying, like childhood home and then something big that happened. Like, I think I tripped. I was running up my stairs outside, these, like, wooden steps, and I tripped and I hit my shins really hard. And I remember I, like, I was like, oh, and I crawled inside. I couldn't even, like, walk. I was like, oh. I remember the pet hermit crab I got from the, I think it was, like, a county fair. I remember when it died. And I remember, like, you scream crying for days. Yeah.

Oh to be six again. Oh to be six. All right. That was the literal first sentence, so I'm not going to stop anymore. I apologize. So he said, but it is true, and it happened when I was about six years old. So in a quiet room, if you press your ear against a pillow, you can hear your heartbeat. As a kid, the muffled rhythmic beats sounded like soft footsteps on a carpeted floor. So as a kid, almost every night,

Just as I was about to drift off to sleep, I would hear these footsteps and I would be ripped back into consciousness, terrified.

For my entire childhood. Hold on. To make it easier on us, you want to alternate paragraphs? Sure. Sure. Like substantial paragraphs. Like if it's a sentence, then you do another one. Sure. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. That way it's just more rhythmic or whatever. Neither of us are losing our voice because we're in this for the long haul. This isn't a sprint. It's a marathon, right? We got to pace ourselves. Yeah. It's a classic tortoise and the hare kind of thing. Exactly. You'd be very surprised who wins that race, huh? Yeah.

Look, I'm not saying I was there or anything, but from what I've heard, it got pretty wild. From what I heard, it was a pretty good race is all I got to say. A lot of upsets that day. All right. For my entire childhood, I lived with my mother in a fairly nice neighborhood that was in a transitional phase. People of lower economic means were gradually moving in, and my mother and I were two of these people.

This coupled with the fact that, due to the nature of our house, there was a fairly large crawl space underneath.

filled my mind with imaginary monsters and inescapable scenarios which would consume my thoughts when I was awoken by the footsteps.

I told my mom about the footsteps, and she said that I was just imagining things. I persisted enough, and she blasted my ears with water from a turkey blaster, once just to placate me, since I thought that would help. Of course it didn't. Despite all the creepiness and footsteps, the only weird thing that ever happened was that, every now and then, I would wake up on the bottom of a bunk despite having gone to sleep on the top. But this wasn't really weird, since I'd sometimes get up to piss or...

get something to drink and to remember just going back to sleep on the bottom bunk. My God, I'm having a stroke. It's okay, Grandpa. So if you hit control and the mouse wheel, the words get bigger. I need to zoom in. I need to zoom in. Sonny, I'm sorry. They're bigger, Grandpa. You don't have to squint so hard. It's easy to read now.

This would happen once or twice a week, but waking up on the bottom bunk wasn't too terrifying. But one night, I didn't wake up on the bottom bunk. I'll tell you something right now. If I consistently went to sleep on a top bunk and I woke up in the bottom bunk, that would fuck me up. That's pretty freaky. It is. I don't even like the aspect. I don't even like thinking that I'm sleepwalking, let alone sleep talking, let alone sleep walking. So just be like, ah, you know, as a kid.

I'd wake up and I'd get on the bottom bunk. That isn't cute to me. I don't like that. I don't like moving when I don't know. Yeah. Like, I've never sleepwalked, but I know people who have. It always freaked me out. Like, the idea that you could just be on autopilot walking around. You all should be put into, I don't know, some kind of isolation from the rest of us. You're weird. Stop it. I used to have a friend that used to go to his house and we would hang out and play PS2 and stuff. You know what I mean?

but he would get up during the night, he would sleep talk, and he would sleep walk. And it was seriously...

Like some of the most horrifying things, like just seeing somebody move around and like he'd be gone for a while and he would just like scream in his kitchen and his like mom would have to wake up and be like, it was horrible. No, I don't know why I kept going over. You know, I think it was, is he just like his mom? And this is this is the inner fat kid of me. And I feel very ashamed about this. But it was just like his mom had really good snacks, that kind of thing, where it's like you go over to his house. You're like, oh, dude, I'm going to be good.

I mean, very well. Banana slices with chocolate syrup, that kind of thing. That is pretty good. So it was like in your head, like I might have to put up with like a screaming possessed child, but I get the banana slices. No, I'm going to. I'm going to. Yeah, I'm going to have to deal with this. That is the reality of the situation. It's how I felt about it. But I was like, ah, he has a GameCube and a PS2 and his mom has good snacks, so why not? Why not?

This was back in the 1950s, right? It was, yeah. I didn't know they had Playstations back then. That's pretty impressive. It was a very, very new console. Okay. Anyway, I had heard the footsteps, but was too far gone to be woken up by them. And when I was woken, it wasn't from the sounds of footsteps or a nightmare, but because I was cold. Really cold.

When I opened my eyes, I saw stars. I was in the woods. No, immediately. Immediately, no. Why? Why? You go to sleep and you wake up in the woods? Man, okay. I set up immediately and tried to figure out what was going on. I thought I was dreaming, but that didn't seem right. Though neither did me being in the woods. There was a deflated pool float right in front of me. One of those ones shaped like a shark.

This only added to the surreal feeling, but after a while it seemed like I just wasn't going to wake up because I wasn't asleep. I stood up to orient myself, but I didn't recognize these woods. I played in the woods by my house all the time, so I knew them really well. But if these weren't the same woods, then how could I get out? I took a step and felt a shooting pain in my foot, which knocked me back to where I had just been laying. I had stepped on a thorn.

Really interesting visuals there. Mm-hmm.

especially the yeah i like the idea of the the blow-up shark just being there it does add to that surrealistic kind of dreamlike state yeah but even just like a forest just laid and like with a bed of thorns is uh pretty creepy the implication i get said he's being carried there because like he got i think got into the middle of the thorns but he doesn't have any scratches on him kind of like he appeared that's what it sounds like but yeah someone's taking him from his bunk that's definitely what it feels like yeah um

I didn't know which way to go, so I just picked a direction. I resisted the urge to call out since I wasn't sure I wanted to be found by who or what might be out here. I walked for what seemed like hours, and I tried to walk in a straight line and tried to course correct when I had to take detours, but I was a kid and I was afraid. There weren't any howls or screams, and only once did I hear any noise that scared me. It sounded like a crying baby.

I think now it was just a cat, but I panicked. I ran veering in different directions to avoid big, thick...

to avoid big thicks of bushes and collapsed trees. And I was paying close attention to where I stepped because by that point, my feet were, my feet were in pretty bad shape. I paid too much attention to where I was stepping and not enough to where those steps were leading because not long after hearing the cry, I saw something that filled me with a kind of despair. I haven't experienced since it was a pool. It was the, it was the pool float pool float. Okay. I was only 10 feet from where I'd woken up.

This wasn't magic or some supernatural space bending. I was lost. Up until that moment, I thought more about getting out of the woods than how I got in. But being back at the beginning caused my mind to swim. Oh, I see. Okay, so he gets up and he's running. And he runs for a while and then he's back at the pool float.

yeah back at the shark okay okay gotcha gotcha yeah i was kind of the way it was worded and how i read it i was also a little confused but yeah i was like is there another pull float no he's been going in circles i see what they're yeah he went in a big circle yeah yeah uh i wasn't even sure that these were my woods i had only been hoping that they were had i run in a huge circle around that spot or did i just get turned around and start making my way back how was i going to get out

At the time, I thought the North Star was just the brightest star, and so I looked and found the brightest one and followed it. That's a very kid logic moment, right? Of like, oh, I've heard there's a bright star that goes north, so that one looks bright, I'll go that way. Also, a six-year-old kid running through the woods with thorns at his feet, I would have been just a puddle of tears. Yeah.

Oh yeah, no, I can barely walk on fucking pebbles, dude. Let alone having thorns stabbing to my feet. I mean, this is like some Hurt Locker, Saving Private Ryan style vibe of a child. I mean, he's got some dexterity. I will say something interesting about that too was it's the first time we figured out that the surroundings of maybe where his house is, so maybe he's not in the suburban environment, maybe he's kind of out in the country a bit. But the idea too where he's like... I got the vibe that it's like a trailer park.

Oh, okay. Because he's like, it's trailer park action. Yeah. He's like, it's the houses that are transported in two pieces. My mom keeps it nice, lower income. That's kind of the vibe I got. A lot of trailer parks where I'm from are like around woods. So it would make sense to get stuck out there. Uh, I do like the scary concept of like, what if these aren't my woods? Um,

Because in the middle of the night, it's hard to tell, right? So you could wake up and you could be right outside your neighborhood or you could be a state away. You have no idea.

Yeah, I mean, even just the idea of like, even if it is your woods, just the idea of like, you don't know how you got how far. He doesn't even know how far away he is. Oh yeah, it's creepy regardless. Yeah, for sure. I mean, there's multi-facets that's very interesting, but eventually things started to look more familiar. And when I saw the ditch, which a dirt ditch, my friends and I would have dirt claw doors in. I know exactly what that is. I knew I had made it out.

By that point, I was walking really slowly because my feet hurt so much, but I was so happy to be so close to home that I broke into a light jog. When I actually saw the roof of my house over a neighboring lower set house, I let out a light sob and ran faster. I just wanted to be home. I had already decided that I wouldn't say anything because I had no idea what I could possibly say.

I would get back in the house and somehow clean up and get in bed. And my heart sunk as I ran to the corner of my house and came into full view. Every light in the house was on. I knew my mom was up and I knew I would have to explain or try to explain where I had been. And I couldn't even figure out where to start. My run became a jog, which became a walk. I saw her silhouette through the blinds. And although I was worried about how to explain things to her, that didn't matter to me at that point.

I walked up the couple of steps to the porch and put my hand on the doorknob and turned. Right before I pushed it open, two arms wrapped around me and pulled me back. I screamed as loud as I could, Mom! Help me! Please! Mom! The feeling of being so close to being safe and then being physically pulled away from it filled me with a kind of dread that is, even after all these years, indescribable. The door I had been torn away from opened and a flash of hope shot through my heart.

But it wasn't my mom. Hmm. It was a man, and he was enormous. I thrashed around and kicked at the shins of the person holding me, while also trying to get away from the person who had just come out of my house. I was scared, but I was furious. Let me go! Where is she? Where's my mom? What'd you do to her?

As my throat stung from screaming, I was drawing in another breath and I became aware of a sound that had been present for longer than I had perceived it. Honey, please calm down. I've got you. It sounded like my mom. The arms loosened and set me down. And as a man approaching me blocked out the porch light with his head, I noticed his clothes. He was a cop. I turned to face the voice behind me and saw that it really was my mom. Everything was okay. I began to cry and the three of us went inside.

Bullshit. Yeah.

Bullshit! I was walking towards the house, what are you talking about? I was confused. What do you mean? We found your note on your pillow, she said, and pointed at the piece of paper that the police officer was sliding across the table. I picked up the note and read it. It was a running away letter. It said that I was unhappy and never wanted to see her or any of my friends again.

The police officer exchanged a few words with her mom on the porch while I stared at the letter. I didn't remember writing a letter. I didn't remember anything about any of this. But even if I sometimes went to the bathroom at night and didn't remember, or even if I could have gone to the woods on my own, even if all that could have been true, the only thing I knew at this point was, this isn't how you spell my name.

I didn't write this letter. Hey guys, we just want to take a quick break to thank today's sponsor, Rocket Money. I recently figured out that I was spending hundreds of extra dollars a month on services that I had no idea I was even subscribed to. Weird streaming services that crawled their way into my bank account after, you know, a free trial period expired. It was insane. But luckily, Rocket Money is here to help. Rocket Money is the personal finance app that helps you cancel subscription, lower bills, and manage your money better.

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Go to rocketmoney.com slash creepcast or click the link in the description to get started for free. You can also unlock even more features with premium. That's rocketmoney.com slash creepcast to get started for free. Thank you so much to Rocket Money for sponsoring this episode and back to the episode. And before we get back to the show, I want to take a moment to talk about today's sponsor. A sponsor that's new to me, but one I've quickly come to know and love, and that is...

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today. Thank you all so much for watching the ad and thank you so much to Mando for sponsoring the show. It really does mean the most. Hope you all check them out. Link is in the description and we are back to the show. That's good. That's solid. I dig it. That's such a, that's such a great way to end it too. Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty sick. Okay. So the original story that, that was all that was originally intended, that story footsteps.

Uh, that's fantastic. I like that a lot. That's a cool, it adds so many surreal moments. So he likes sleepwalks a lot.

And then one day he wakes up in the woods or one night I should say. And there's like the pool float there and he thinks he's running in circles and then he gets away. But then it's like, okay, either he was sleepwalking so intensely that he wrote out a note and misspelled his own name, right? Which would be weird. And then went out in the woods and laid down or someone kidnapped him and for some reason set up the pool float, put him in the middle of thorns and

That's good. That's creepy. I like it. And that last... That ending note's very nice. I didn't write this letter. That's good. Yeah, this is now you spell my name. I didn't write this letter. I think that...

I love a nice... This is going to sound weird. I like a nice home invasion kind of feel. There's something so... I love a nice home invasion. Call me old fashioned. A little something about me, this guy. I like breaking into people's houses and staring at them while they sleep.

I personally love using a child's psychology against him to make him think he walked out in the woods. Ah, you're crazy. You're an insane child. I love gaslighting kids. Put her there. Yeah, exactly. Shake my hand. There's something so creepy about somebody coming into your house when you don't even know it, especially in the part where you sleepwalk. And it's like you're almost gaslighting yourself. But now it's...

the idea that like the the name being spelled wrong and then you have to confront this idea that like oh shit you know i don't think i slept walk it's kind of the vibe i was getting at the end of this but once again you know me in these stories yeah i don't i don't i don't trust the mom don't trust it do not trust the mom the mom thought he wrote a letter about running away no it's true she you know that's what she thinks right

That's what she thinks. That is what she thinks. Who do we know? Out of all the creepypastas we've read, almost always there's a cop there, right? That's true. Oh, you're like, oh, there's a cop. It's like, oh, you know, you're in a zone of safety. Not anymore.

I have read too much to realize that these cops in these situations, bad stuff happens. All right? Not just Baraska. All kinds of stuff. Like, I'm sorry that I did Baraska to you. Okay? I'm sorry that I walked you into that. But look, just because that one was a betrayal doesn't mean they all have to be, right? Maybe someone's okay. Yeah.

And our protagonist is grabbed by his mom. Right. Grabbed by his mom. And he's like, who is this? Who is this gorilla-ish man? Who is this monster behind me? Right. Grabbing me. And he's freaking out. And it ends up being his mom. Seems a bit suspicious is all I'm saying. Is that he's sitting there. He doesn't even know. It doesn't feel like a woman's arm. It feels like a big gorilla, big, enormous man. And then there's a cop on the porch and all that kind of stuff. But still.

I just, I, it's too early on. I can't point the finger in any general direction, but if I had to give anything, I would just say, do not trust the mom. Especially because I think as a society, home alone has done too much damage to what we find acceptable for parents. Why does the mom just let this child walk around or even go outside or anything like that? Sure, she might be sleeping, but how does a six-year-old

Get up and do all this. There's too many questions. And I think I hope some of them get answered, especially to the second part here, which is simply called balloons. Balloons. All right. Balloons. I said it weird. No, no, no. It's cool when you say it weird. I forget you're a voice actor every now that it comes out. And I'm like, oh, oh, yeah, I forgot. I'm a terrible reader. I'm almost wondering if I should just do the quotes.

If somebody's talking, I can voice act very well. I'm finding out very quickly that I believe there's no ridges in my brain. My brain, I think, resembles that of an unshelled peanut. Is what it's beginning to take form. Do you want to try that out?

Yeah, we could try it. Why not? Cool, why not? Yeah, and if my voice starts to give out, I'll just pass it off to you. Or we could hire some poor, you know, like... We could hire someone. Yeah. What's it called? We need a nice third...

I don't know. It would be a nice third-party member, though, that just sits there and reads and we can just cut off. Yeah, what's the word that YouTubers do? Exposure. We could pay them with exposure. Yeah, yeah. Oh, exposure. Yes. So no real money. Yes. The true currency of YouTubers. Yeah, very good. And they're never on camera. Of course. And their voice, we distort it slightly so no one really knows who they are. Absolutely. But they were exposed. They were exposed. You have been exposed. You have been exposed.

We need a gremlin. Yeah. We need a nice little goblin to help us with this stuff. Read, whip. Yeah, exactly. A couple of days ago, I posted it. It starts going into it. Yeah, that'd be nice. All right. Yeah, we'll try that. You'll run the quotes. All right.

So, with that, again, as mentioned earlier, Footsteps was its own standalone story. It got a lot of praise on r slash nosleep, so the author decided to make a second part. The second part being titled Balloons. A couple days ago, I posted a story called Footsteps here on slash nosleep. There were a number of questions that made me curious about certain details about my childhood, and so I spoke with my mother. Exacerbated by my question, she said...

Oh, yeah, sorry. Why don't you just tell them about the goddamn balloons if they're so interested? That's very aggressive. That's super bad, man. Okay, maybe you were right. Maybe you were right. She's sitting there smoking. She's sitting there, like, smoking. She's like, why don't you just tell them about the goddamn balloons if they're so interested? It's like, hey, mom, my story did pretty well on this subreddit. She's like, who cares?

Do you have a wife yet? A job? Yeah, when are you going to move out of this damn house? You and your shark pool float have been here for 30 years. Shark pool float, get out of my house. When you play a character, you're temporarily possessed by that character. Oh, God. All right. As soon as she said that,

I remembered so much about my childhood that I had forgotten. This story will provide some greater context for the previous story, which I think you should read first. Though the order isn't of vital importance, reading that story first will put you in my place more effectively since I remembered the events of Footsteps first. If you have questions or anything, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer them. Although both stories are long, so heads up on that. I'm just hesitant to leave out any details that might be important.

And I think it's worth also pointing out here that he did, in character, respond to people's comments and stuff on these posts. Yeah. Which, just like the dead girlfriend story we covered last episode, I love that. I love the interactivity with that and the kind of community...

collaboration because like because when he is responding to these people they are inadvertently becoming a part of the story too and I think that's just a lot of fun yeah it's fun to make it into like a kind of ARG type thing right

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think it's pretty sick. Like, if you're going to be there, you know, why not go all the way with it, right? Exactly. I mean, like, you're using social media, you're using these online forums. It's like, it feels weird to be like, let's play pretend. But in a way, when you're getting invested in these stories, why not...

It's coming from an anonymous source on the internet. Why not take it that extra step? I think it just adds. It just adds so much more than what a standard novel or a standard movie can do. You're so embedded in a part of it. You've got the format in front of you. You might as well use it, right? Yeah, exactly. When I was five years old, I went to an elementary school that, from what I've come to understand, was really adamant about the importance of learning through activity.

It was part of a new program designed to allow children to rise at their own pace, and to facilitate this, the school encouraged teachers to come up with really inventive lesson plans. Each teacher was given the latitude to create his or her own themes, which would run for the duration of the grade. And all the lessons in math, reading, etc. would be designed in the spirit of the theme.

These themes were called groups. There was a space group, a sea group, an earth group, and the group I was in, community.

In kindergarten... There was the Fire Nation. Long ago, the five groups lived together in harmony. Exactly. There was a child with an arrow tattooed on his forehead. But everything changed when I was kidnapped and thrown into the woods next to a shark pole float. But everything changed when Bryce Michael moved into town. Um...

In kindergarten in this country, you don't learn much except how to tie your shoes and how to share, so most of it isn't very memorable. I only remember two things very clearly. I was the best at writing my name the right way, and the balloon project that...

Sorry, sorry. I know Balloon Project, it's like a kid's project, but I read it as like an MKUltra thing. Like, oh, Project Scorpio or the Northwoods or whatever. So I read it as like, I just remember my name and then the CIA clandestine operation. Yeah, I was the best at creating mustard gas. CIA. I was...

I was the best at writing my name the right way. And the balloon project, which was really the hallmark of the community group since it was a pretty clever way to show how a community functioned at a really basic level. You've probably heard of this activity.

On one Friday, I remember it being Friday because I was excited about the project and it being the end of the week. Toward the beginning of the year, we walked into the classroom in the morning and saw that there was a fully inflated balloon tied off with string taped to each of our desks. Okay, hold on. Not to jump the gun. I'm drawing a connection between this and the pool float in my head. Right? Anyway. You want to explain how? Well.

Well, a pool float is truly the balloon of the water, right? So there's a pool float in the water. That is intuitive. Wait, hold on. Pool floats are like balloons that sit on water. Okay. Write it down. Write it down. Get your notebook out. Jot that down. Jot that down.

If you think about it, but no, it's like there's balloons, right?

And then, because that was the most surreal detail of the first part, that there was a balloon deflated in the middle of the woods, right? So I'm just guessing we're going to see a shark pop up in the story. I appreciate it. I wanted to hear the thought, and I heard it. As I said, balloons, I mean, floats are the balloons of the water. So we walked into the classroom in the morning and saw that there was a fully inflated balloon tied off with string taped to each of our desks.

Sitting on each of our desks was a marker, a pen, a piece of paper, and an envelope. The project was to write a note on the paper, put it in the envelope, and attach it to the balloon, which we could draw a picture on if we wanted. Most of the kids started fighting over the balloons because they wanted different colors, but I started on my note, which I had thought a lot about. All the notes had to follow a loose structure, but we were allowed to be creative within those boundaries. My note was something like this:

Hi, you found my balloon. My name is blank and I attend blank elementary school. You can keep the balloon, but it'll help you get me back. I like Mighty Max, exploring, building forts, swimming, and friends. What do you like? Write me back soon. Here's a dollar for the mail. On the dollar, I wrote four stamps. Four stamps! It was in quotes. I had to do it. I'm so excited. Oh, that was great. All right. All right.

He wrote that right across the front, which my mom said was unnecessary, but I thought it was genius. So I did it. The teacher took a Polaroid of each of us with our balloons and had us put them in the envelope along with our letter. They also included another letter that I assume explained the nature of the project and sincere appreciation for anyone's participation and writing back and sending photos of their city or neighborhood.

That was the whole idea, to build a sense of community without having to leave the school and to establish safe contact with other people. It seemed like such a fun idea.

So it's pretty much like in a way, like kind of like a dare kind of program, like kind of just getting people activity. It's an activity that's about like a group building exercise that also teaches you like safe practices amongst like your own community or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. Like send you, you put your name in a balloon, ask someone to write you back. It's like, Oh, you're learning about people from around. I think I know where this is going though. Uh,

Yeah, prediction time. If we want to do a nice little prediction. Sure. I feel like he's going to get a note from somebody who's not in the class. Is maybe what I'm starting to think. Yeah, well, they send the balloons off. So the idea is that someone from far away writes back.

I thought it was the... Okay. Well, first off, yeah, that's weird. He's going to float off. I imagine this was like the 90s or something back when they weren't really taking that kind of thing into account. Like, oh, let's include a picture of the child with the letter. I'm this old. I'm this old. My home address is this. Please write. That would definitely be something where it's just like law enforcement had no idea. Something like that. We never saw this one coming, really.

Yeah. All right. Over the next couple weeks, the letters started to roll in.

Most came with pictures of different landmarks, and each time a letter would come in, the teacher would pin the picture on a big wall map we had put up showing where the letter had come from and how far the balloon had traveled. That's kind of like... I know we joke about like, oh, what could happen, but that's kind of a nice little thought, right? Like, oh, this is how far your balloon went, and this is where this person's from, and, you know, like teaching kids about like other people existing, you know? So are the kids finding the balloons? No, no. So they...

Okay, so you write a letter. I'm honestly so lost. You write a letter. You write a letter. Right. Saying, my name is this. I go here. This is how old I am. I'm 86 pounds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm four foot two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hair color, eye color, all that. Anyway, you put the letter in an envelope, tie it to a balloon, and send it off.

The letter the teacher adds is instructions from the school. Like if you want to write back to the child, send your letter to the school. So then when people send the letter back from like a hundred miles away, you know, however far the balloon goes, um,

They read the letter to the class and then put a pin in the board and talk about like where this person's from, what that region's like, et cetera. I see. So we're under the impression that the balloon doesn't pop like right above the school far and fall into the parking lot. Yeah. Correct. No, it goes, it goes away. So if I say like a Dr. Seuss object and someone's like, Oh my God, look at this. Yeah. And they look inside. Yeah. Okay. All right. I just wanted to make sure. I just want to make sure. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So the idea is that strangers send in... Like you said, people were sending pictures of landmarks and stuff. So it's people like, oh, well, I'm from here. This is what it's like. I would hate...

hate to see what some of these pictures were. I have a feeling that this is a disaster project is what this is coming to be. Look, like I said, it was the 90s. That wasn't on anyone's mind. It was the 90s. Yeah. No one really... Kids were just flying into vans left and right. That's how it felt. That's how it felt. I have a very... Here's a picture of my van. I'm gonna pick you up from school on Thursday. Oh, yay! I got lots of candy.

I have lots of candy. I've got balloon floats. I've got shark floats. It's a balloon for the water. They say floats are the balloons of the sea. That's what they say. It says in the store. It's in the balloon section of the store. What's that thing I said during Borosco? Oh, mayonnaise is the sauce of the aristocrat. It's the sauce of the aristocrat.

That's what this dude writes back to the kid. It's like, what? What is it? Okay. Okay. It was a really smart idea because we actually looked forward to coming to school to see if we had gotten our letter. For the duration of the year, we had one day a week where we could write back to our pen pal or another student's pen pal in case our letter hadn't come in yet.

mine was one of the last to arrive when i came into the classroom i looked at my desk and once again didn't see any letter waiting for me but as i sat down the teacher approached me and handed me an envelope i must have looked so excited because as i was about to open it she put her hand on mine to stop me and said please don't be upset oh sorry sorry sorry go ahead please don't be upset

Man, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to try to take your thunder there. My bad. I have the quotation. It's mine. Easy, easy. Put it down. You can have your mayonnaise. Please don't be upset. I didn't understand what she meant. Why would I be upset now that my letter had come?

Initially, I was mystified that she would even know what was in the envelope, but now I realize that of course the teachers had screened the contents to make sure there was nothing obscene. But all the same, how could I be disappointed? When I opened the envelope, I understood. There was no letter.

Why would you give the child that? Well, the next line says there's something in it. So we'll see what it is. Okay. All right. Well, all right. I'll hold my tongue for a second. All right. Yeah. She didn't just hand him a blank envelope like loser. Sorry. Yeah.

Bummer. Everybody want to point and laugh at him? He's a loser. This kid didn't get a balloon back. Jimmy, you had the picture of the man touching himself, right? Give it to him. Make him feel appreciated. No, it's mine. I don't want to. It's mine. Jimmy, give the picture of the man touching himself to Bryce. He wants it. No, it's mine. What did we talk about, Sharon?

I don't care, it's mine, I want it. Okay, well, you're gonna have to find a new Polaroid, okay? Because Jimmy loves his picture. That's my favorite thing ever on this earth. Okay. The only thing in the envelope was a Polaroid. But, oh no. But I couldn't really make out what it was. Oh god. It looked like a patch of desert, but it was too blurry to decipher.

It appeared as if the camera had been moved while the picture was being taken. There was no return address, so I couldn't even write back if I wanted to. I was crushed. I mean, still, I have to elaborate. I have to be the voice here that says, if you're a teacher and you screen it and someone has a motion blurred Polaroid, I feel like I'd be like, I'm just not going to give it to him. I mean, that'd be better. Make the letter up. Yeah, lie. Make the letter up. He's five. It's okay.

Yeah, for real. She's like, it's just not ethical. It's like a documentary person on planet Earth, whatever, that documentary, where it's like, we simply can't interfere. Oh my gosh, bro. That is the most... Okay, I know this isn't related to the story. That's one of my biggest pet peeves of anything ever. Those documentary crews who will watch people starve to death. Yeah.

You know what I'm talking about? It's their code, dude. Drives me insane. It's the documentary code. I've been watching Love on the Spectrum and I think the same thing. I can't even... Love on the Spectrum, these people are doing things wrong intentionally and I just imagine these malicious...

in the back being like, let him keep doing it. Yeah, yeah. This is such good content. Don't interfere. And then they walk up to him and they're like, hi, Connor. Yeah. Are you sure you want to do that? Because you look pretty fucking stupid. And he's like, oh, I didn't know. They're like, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Could you go ahead and shape up? And he's like, okay, sorry. Yeah, I'm glad you said sorry about that. I will say, though, this does remind me. I'm actually getting flashbacks from my own childhood. In my music class, we could write to any musician. Oh, did you get a special Polaroid from a musician? Is that what happened? I got a postcard, and I wrote to Adam Sandler. That was the musician I chose. Okay? Okay.

because at the time i had a i had a comedy cd from him called everybody's gonna laugh at you and uh i remember i got a thing back and it was signed and it's obvious it was so obviously fake but i remember at the time i was like whoa holy moly your teacher's fake to signed adam sandler letter that i can only imagine there was never verified so very well could be but like looking back on it i was like there's no way there's just simply do you still have that letter

Bro. I'd have to, I think for a very long time, I was like, this is just fake. I might've pitched it. I don't know. No, bro. If you still have, what if it's real? What if one day, like, what if one day when you're 87 years old, you know, 10 years from now, could you, could you like, listen to yourself? Could you imagine if you had an Adam Sandler signature? I will say, Oh no,

No, no, okay, hold on. I'm looking up images of it right now, and the signature does look very similar. Because he did draw a... He drew a smiley face on mine. And then one of these things here on Google Images... Okay, well, for one, you're making fun of me for the signature thing. I'm saying it would be cool if he sent a signed copy of the CD to someone who became a famous internet comedian personality, right? Yeah.

Like that would be a cool stepping stone. You hear about like, oh, this director got a letter from Scorsese when they were a kid or whatever, right? I'm saying it'd be neat for that reason. Not that... When I was listening to you, I legitimately thought you were being like,

I thought you were legitimately being like, can you even imagine if you had Adam Sandler's signature right now? That's what I'm starstruck by. Oh my gosh, really? Did Mr. Sandler touch that? No. Are you saying Mr. Sandler touched

Touch pen and he touched ink and quill on that picture. What's it smell like? It smells like Adam. Give it. Give me the letter. Give me the letter. Give it. Yeah. Yeah.

No, if it's real, that's neat is all I mean. It's probably in a landfill. I don't know if I still have it. It's probably in a landfill. Well, I'll make sure he knows that when I talk to him. If you talk to him, you know, if I could get a signed copy of Happy Gilmore. Yeah, sure. See, here he comes crawling back. Okay, anyway. Hey, Adam. Okay.

The school year pressed on and the letters had stopped coming for nearly all of the other students. After all, you can only continue a written correspondence with a kindergartner for so long. Everyone, including myself, had lost interest in the letters almost completely. Then I got another envelope. My excitement was rejuvenated and I reveled in the fact that I was still getting a letter when most of the other pen pals had abandoned their involvement.

It made sense that I received another delivery. There had been nothing but a blurry picture in the first one, so this was probably to make up for that. But again, there was no letter at all. Just another picture. My stomach is dropping every time that it says there's a picture. It's a pretty good... I'm liking this build-up right now. This is solid. This one was more distinguishable, but I still didn't understand it.

The photograph was angled way up, catching the top corner of a building, and the rest of the image was distorted by a lens flare from the sun. Oh, man. What if the building is the school?

Oh, that gave me a chill. All right. See, we might be getting into Boroska territory just to warn you. I didn't do it this time. I didn't do it this time. This setup is literal, and I hate to say it. I really don't. I don't even want to go there. But could a story set up like a pedophile scenario anymore?

Then children writing about who they are and sending pictures of themselves. Balloons out into the world. It's like a metaphor for the internet. You take a picture of yourself and throw it into the sky. They're sitting there and then they're getting letters back from these strangers. Like,

There's probably some kid who's like, Joshua, do you want to see who sent you a letter? And it's like, by Fred Jeremy. And he's like, well, what does it say? The first line is, hello, beautiful. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Oh, no. I'm telling you. It is ripe for just horrible shit to happen. Okay, hold on. Because of the balloon thing, like the shark thing, and the looping woods, I think it's going to go in a supernatural direction. I'm praying. But you're right that I think that the red herring is a child predator scenario. I think so. I think it is. Yeah.

Okay, I didn't do it. If that is where this is going, everyone, I'm innocent. You knew. I did not know. I did not know. You knew. I wouldn't have played my hand this early. After Baraska, I would have given it three normal ones, and then I'd be like, Oh, Hanya, there's this cool story called Pip-Pal. We should read it.

I wouldn't have done it this quick. You're a bad man. You're a bad man. I'm not a bad man. I would have been smart about it. This is too overt. This is too overt for me, okay? All right. All right. Okay. Okay. All right. Of course, if I did want to do it right now, then I would pretend like I've never read the story before, but that did happen, so... Don't ever twist me. Don't ever twist me. Expect the unexpected. I imagine your room is completely flooded and you're just on a giant shark floaty. No.

Don't ever twist what you can't see, Hato. Bro, wouldn't it be wild? This would be a great bit if I had read the story previously. Because, again, Hunter can't see me when we record these things. What if I just had a shark floating sitting in my lap? I would be pissed. And you didn't know until you watched the episode when it's posted? I would watch the episode and I would be like, you son of a bitch. That's what I'd say. I'd say, you...

I fully couldn't trust you if that became the fact. There's no way. Dude, okay, I've got to chat, chat, chat. You guys got to keep me accountable for this. We have to do something like that in the future. We got to prank him with some elaborate. Okay, anyway. Come on. Oh, man, that's so good. All right.

Because the balloons didn't travel very far and because they were all launched on the same day, the board became a bit cluttered and so the policy for the students still exchanging letters became that they could take the photographs home. My best friend Josh had the second highest number of pictures taken home by the end of the year. His pen pal was really cooperative and sent him pictures from all around the neighboring city. Oh, God. And sent him pictures from all around the neighboring city. Josh.

Josh took home, I think, four pictures. I took home nearly 50. Oh, no. All right. The envelopes were all opened by the teacher, but after a while, I stopped even looking at the pictures.

However, I saved them in one of my drawers that housed my collection of rocks, baseball cards, comic book cards, Marvel meta cards for those who might remember, and little miniature baseball batting helmets that I'd get out of vending machine at Winn-Dixie after t-ball games. With the school year over, my attention turned to other things. My mom had gotten me a small snow cone machine for Christmas that year.

Yeah, exactly. That snow cone machine's pretty cool. And he goes up to his parents and he's like, I didn't mind to be better for you.

Yeah, and also, like, the story opens saying that this, the rider is, like, from a low-income house. Yeah, exactly. Like, he has this one little thing to hold on to. He has a quote, small snow cone machine for Christmas. And Josh is like, I need more. I need a better snow cone machine. A small snow cone machine for Christmas? I'd be like, what a fucking out-of-season gift, dude.

A snow cone machine for Christmas? This child is living in poverty and Hunter shows up like, really? A snow cone machine? Yeah, hey, you know what? Here's an ice tray. You probably need that too right now. For all your cold drinks you're having right now. Hey, Merry Christmas, Mom! Go outside and get some, idiot! Pick it off the ground!

I got you some swim trunks while you're at it. There you go. Merry Christmas. These are all very usable and applicable daygrapers. That summer, we had the idea that we should set up a snow cone stand to make money. We thought we'd make a fortune selling snow cones at $1. Josh lived in a different neighborhood, but we eventually decided that my neighborhood would be better because there were a lot of people who cared for their lawns. The yards in my neighborhood were slightly bigger.

We did this for five weekends in a row until my mom told us that we had to stop. And I've only recently come to understand why she did that. Oh, no. Oh, no. I knew it. I knew it was coming. All right. On the fifth weekend, Josh and I were counting our money.

Because we both had a machine, we had a separate stack of money that we put together into one stack and we split it evenly. Okay, maybe I was a bit too harsh on Josh. That's cool. That's cool of him. Yeah, it's nice. We had made a total of $16 that day. And as Josh put out my fifth dollar, a feeling of profound surprise consumed me. The dollar said, Four stamps. Ooh! Mmm.

One of their customers was the guy. Oh no! Oh, I feel dirty! Oh, I'm sorry everyone, if that's where... This is gonna be a superna- Look, look, I'm banking on it. This is gonna be supernatural. It's not gonna go there. Yeah. I shouldn't have sold that snow cone to that ghost. One snow cone, please!

It's like a big snow cone. Yeah, exactly. It won't be about a child predator because it'll be about that. For sure. I shouldn't have sold a snow cone to that ghost. Oh my gosh. Okay. All right. Thank you. Josh noticed my shock.

and asked if he had miscounted. I told him about the dollar and he said, that's so cool, man. Hey, hey. Oh, oh. That's so cool, man. Oh, look, I apologize. I was so... Come on, man. Okay, all right. You're right. I keep taking it from you. I apologize. However, the reason I forgot is because I'm still laughing over the concept of a floating bed sheet. Ooh. One spooky snow cone. Ooh.

That's where the story goes. It goes like that, Campy. Okay. Oh. As I thought about it, I came to agree. The idea that the dollar had made it right back to me after changing so many hands floored me. Oh, you naive bastard. Yeah. Yeah. I know. He's six.

He's not even six. He's five. He's even younger in this story. It's a year before the footsteps. Oh, man. That's kind of interesting, too. I just now thought about that. This is a year before the last story. So does this thing correlate with the first? This is going to lead into the events of footsteps. I like that. All right. Josh noticed my hands for me. I rushed inside to tell my mom.

But my excitement, coupled with her being distracted by a phone call, made my story incomprehensible. And she responded simply by saying, Oh, wow, that's neat. Frustrated, I ran back outside and told Josh I had something to show him.

Oh, no. Oh, no.

There were raccoons... Oh, thank God. There were raccoons and stray cats that lived in there, but this was making a little too much noise, and we traded guesses at what it was in an attempt to scare each other. My last guess was that it was a mummy, but in the end, Josh kept insisting that it was a robot because of the sounds that we heard. What? Yeah, what? Uh...

destroy all humans like literally sitting there he's so funny he's like he's like it's a mummy and then just in the bush it's just like it's just like i want to kill all human beings i want to kill all human beings like he's like no seriously it's it's a robot he's like i bet you it's a vampire i'm a robot i'm a robot

What? Do you have a voice modulator just ready to go? It's my mixer. It's very convenient in times like this. Oh, that's great. That's fantastic. Why haven't we been doing this the whole time? You do the quotes. I don't know. Before we left, he got a little serious and looked me right in the eyes and said, You heard it, didn't you? It sounded like a robot. You heard it too, right?

I had heard it. And since it sounded mechanical, I agree that it was probably a robot. It's only now that I understand what we heard. I don't like that. I don't like that answer. It has to be some kind of machine or something. I was hoping that it was going to be a ghost. It's a sentient snow cone machine. No, the ghost possessed the snow cone machine. Dude, like...

Okay, I'm actually a little worried now because I was like, I keep saying it as a joke, but in my head I'm like, yeah, this is like a supernatural story. I was hoping that the thing in the tree sounded like a ghost or a ghoul or something, but it being mechanical...

It's leading us down a trail. I'm very interested to see what's going on. It's been nice. This is great. Yeah, this is great riddance so far. I'm just scared that we're going to have another Baroska. Anyway. I don't think so. I'm hoping not. I hope not, too. When we got back, Josh's mom was waiting for him at the kitchen table with my mom. Josh told his mom about the robot. Our moms laughed and Josh went home.

My mom and I ate dinner, and then I went to bed. I didn't stay in bed for long because I crept out and decided that, due to the day's events, I would revisit the envelope since now the whole affair seemed much more interesting. I took the first envelope and set it on the floor and set the blurry desert Polaroid on top. I laid the second envelope right next to it and placed the oddly angled Polaroid of a building's top corner on top and did this with each picture until they formed a grid that was about 5x10".

I was always taught to be careful with the things that I was collecting, even if I wasn't sure they were valuable. I noticed that the pictures gradually became more decipherable. There was a tree with a bird on it, a speed limit sign, power line, a group of people walking into some building. And then I saw something that vexed me so powerfully that I can now, as I write this, distinctly remember feeling dizzy and capable of only a single repeating thought.

Why am I in this picture? Dude. That's great. I'm so scared. I had a feeling, but yeah. I mean, just... What's even cooler about that, too, is the collage. Like, having... It's like just piece by piece. What's even weirder, too, though, is making a single image out of different Polaroids, because having to snap that many Polaroids, it just doesn't make any sense. It's very... I don't know. It's otherworldly, for sure. I...

I picture this as I can see it so plainly in my head of like a child who's like standing in front of something he should really be worried about. But because he's a kid, the danger isn't fully apparent to him. Right. So, yeah. And all right. In this photograph of the group of people entering the building, I saw myself holding hands with my mother in the very back of the crowd of people.

We were at the very edge of the photo, but it was undeniably us. And as my eyes swam over the sea of Polaroids, I became increasingly anxious. It was a really odd feeling. It wasn't fear. It was the feeling you get when you're in trouble. I'm not sure why I was flooded with that feeling, but there I sat floundering in the distinct sense that I had done something wrong. And this feeling only intensified as I looked on at the rest of the photos after the one that had so powerfully struck me.

I was in every photo.

Oh, that's so creepy. Have we heard anything? We've heard about his mom. Have we heard anything about his dad? No, he hasn't been mentioned yet. All right, guys, I'm sorry. Okay. I'm actually, I am legitimately scared right now. Like, I've got like the chills. I'm nervous about where the story's going, you know? It has a nice, it's a nice buildup. I mean, this is great. Yeah. Yeah.

None of them were close shots. None of them were only of me, but I was in every single one of them off to the side in the back bottom of the frame. Some of them only had the tiniest part of my face captured at the very edge of the photo. But nevertheless, I was there. I was always there. I didn't know what to do. Your mind works in funny ways as a kid, but there was a large part of me that was afraid of getting in trouble simply for still being up.

Since I already had the looming feeling of having done something wrong, I decided that I would wait until tomorrow. The next day, my mom was off work and spent most of the morning cleaning up around the house. I watched cartoons, I imagine, and waited until I thought it was a good time to show her the Polaroids. When she went out to get the mail, I grabbed a couple of the pictures and put them on the table in front of me as I sat waiting for her to come back in. When she returned, she was already opening the mail and threw some junk mail into the trash can and I said, Mom?

Can you come here for a second? I have these pictures. Just give me a minute, honey. I need to mark these on the calendar. After a minute or two, she came and stood behind me and asked what I needed. I could hear her shuffling with the mail behind me, but I just looked at the Polaroids and told her about them. As I explained more and pointed to the pictures, her frequent ahas and okays decreased, and she was suddenly completely quiet and only making a little noise with the mail.

The next noise I heard from her sounded as if she was trying to catch her breath in a room that had no air left in it. At last, her struggling gasps were conquered and she simply dropped the remaining mail on the table and ran to the kitchen to get the phone. Mom, I'm sorry. I didn't know about these. Don't be mad at me.

Oh, boy. That does make me trust the mom more. Like, once she realizes what's going on, she's like, you know, adequately afraid.

Well, what's interesting, too, about the beginning of this is that she's adequately afraid as well. Oh, my God, I can't say that. But how crass, I guess, she was at the beginning, I'm guessing that over the years there's just some kind of weird disturbance, and it seems like maybe she's just like,

a battered soul at the beginning of this like in the present moment when she's just like tell them about the damn balloon you know i mean it's like it's just a character who's been through the ringer that's a good point there's um i know some people who experience some like trauma as a kid either from like an older person or like maybe they got lost or something uh most of the time it affects the parent worse than it does them

Because they'll be like, oh, I remember some glimpses, I remember this, but the parent had every second of it ingrained in them. Yeah, you're right. They have a fully formed brain. Yeah. I mean, like the amount of guilt, all these kind of things. It does kind of soften the blow of what she said earlier, I think. Yeah, I think so. Confused, I thought that somehow one of my Polaroids had slipped into the stack when she threw the mail down.

but when I turned it over and looked at it, I realized that I had not seen this one before. To my dismay, it was me. But this was a much closer shot. I was surrounded by trees and was smiling. But it wasn't just me, I noticed. Josh was there too. This was us from yesterday.

bro i think that i think that that confirms that the person that showed up to buy the snow cone was that guy i'm actually it's how i'm kind of right now i'm kind of wigged out right now bro i'm a little like what's weird is how did how did he it's still there's still some some questions i have about how do they not notice that someone took a picture of them well that remember they heard the robot right

It's the boy. Yeah, the noise was a Polaroid going. Yep. Yeah, this wasn't while they were selling their snow cones. This is while they were playing in the ditch. Yeah, and they were like, do you hear that? Yeah, and they were like looking over. Oh, boy. Yeah.

I don't like it. This is a great story. This is so well done so far. But I don't like it because I'm afraid of where it's going. And it's so viscerally real too, right? What's the thing is that it's impossible to...

I feel like if you're a horror fan, you're kind of thinking of every situation that could come to where you're trying to predict something, right? It's doing a very great line of writing reality, but there's still nothing that says that this can't go off in any direction. That's why I'm having a lot of fun with that. Yeah, it could be supernatural any second. It could not be. It's still holding all the cards, right? It's true, yeah.

I started yelling for my mom, who was still screaming into the phone. I repeatedly yelled for her until she finally responded with, What? And I could only think to ask, Who are you calling? I'm talking with the police, honey. But why? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do anything. She answered me with a response that I never understood until I was forced to revisit these events from the earliest years of my life. She grabbed the envelope off the table and the picture of Josh, and I spun and slid, landing next to the other Polaroids in front of me.

She held the envelope up to my eyes, but I could only look at her and watch as all the color began draining out of her face. With tears welling up in her eyes, she said that she had to call the police because there was no postmark. Oh, man. What a great... Oh, no. That's so good. Oh, he put it in the mail. Yeah, he knows exactly where he lives, everything. What a great use of setting that up.

What was interesting about this one, too, is that the use of time, of it being before, gives even more, like, it's just even more nefarious to the footsteps story. Like, learning hearsay, or, like, learning from after the fact about these characters is very interesting and stuff. And also having the thing, too, about, like,

him getting taken away and he didn't really explain that. There was like a note that he doesn't remember writing. And now there's, there's just so much stuff of this, like,

person or force that's like basically fucking with them now what a what that was that was awesome extremely lovely this is so good this is so well built up already i get really really fun all right like sure any story can crash and you know that this is still kind of first act sort of set up any story can crash after but as far as like intros go very well done i get i get why people were telling me like oh if you like boroska you'll like pen pals right

It definitely has a similar field of the buildup and mystery is the two big ones, too. Also, unexpected children, dealing with that kind of thing. I don't know if it's going to get as graphic or as intense. I hope it doesn't. So far, I mean, it is leaning in the...

It's skewing so heavily into like child abduction, almost in a weird way. It could pull the reverse of what Baraska did. So Baraska hyped itself up as a supernatural threat, the skinned men, and then went to reality. Maybe this one starts in reality. Nose dived into reality. Yeah, exactly. This one could be in reality and then ends up being something much more out of this world, a lot more ethereal or something like that. Yeah.

I'm still wondering the only question I have right now and this might get answered too depending on how the time shift happens is where's the dad in this situation where like I imagine she's just a single mom you know it could be it could be I just think that if that's the case there would be a little thing about like I don't know I feel like there's some kind of something right my mom's a single mother my dad walked out on us or I haven't seen my dad in a while do you think the dad could be responsible for the pictures or something

I don't know. I don't want to theorize too closely on that yet, but we don't have enough info. It's setting up to where there's a lot of stuff, but I'm just saying, like, you know, could be something as equal as that. The mother is obviously afraid because of somebody taking pictures and dropping it off and there's no return stamp, right? But there could be something, too, where it's like...

some kind of fear that we don't know yet because the dad could be crazy or something i don't know i'm just i'm theorizing because it's just odd in these stories usually there's something about like hey there's not this character here because of x my mom's a single mom i haven't seen my dad in forever he's a piece of shit that's all you need right to just be like okay so we know that's not but it just hasn't been elaborated on yet i don't know it'll probably it'll probably come up at some point

Or even if it doesn't, it's fine. But it's just my mind is just like... I'm trying to gauge all of the notes right now in my brain. There could... I'm just like, where's the dad? There might only be just the mom because a single parent makes the family more vulnerable. Because it's like...

Like if the dad was there, you could be like, oh, my mom and dad would stay up with me like taking shifts. But one parent, like they can't stay up forever. Right. Oh, sure. Yeah, it absolutely does. And I think it also lends itself to to where it's like over overworked mother, overworked single parent can't do everything all at once. Right. So it's like it makes the kid vulnerable. It does. Exactly. It does. It does. Yeah. Yeah.

Alright, so now on to part three, Boxes. It's also really cool that he wrote Footsteps and people were like, you should write more. And he's like, okay, and then whips up this. That's pretty solid. It's very interesting. I imagine that there probably had to have been an overarching idea. But maybe it's like one of those things I think with artists when they're just like, ah, maybe I'm just...

You maybe have a more ambitious idea, but you settle with something small in fear of like putting too much time into something that maybe not might not be as reciprocated as well. So I'm wondering if he had this overarching idea, but made it into a digestible short story just because he's like, oh, you know, these are doing well on the site. But then he was able to elaborate further, you know, just, I don't know, kind of fun. It feels so surgically thought out at this moment. So I don't know. Yeah, I agree.

Alright, so with that, we're now on to part three, titled Boxes. If you haven't read Footsteps or Balloons, please do so before reading what's below so you'll understand. For those of you who have read my other stories and asked if there was more and received cryptic answers from me, I want to apologize for being dishonest. I said several times in the comments that nothing really happened after Footsteps, but that wasn't true. The events of the following story weren't locked away in the recesses of my mind.

I've always remembered them. It wasn't until I remembered balloons and spoke with my mother about the following events that I realized how intertwined this story was with everything else. But I originally hadn't really planned on sharing this anyway. My desire to withhold this memory was due mostly to the fact that I don't think I showed good judgment in it. I also wanted consent from another person to tell it so as to not misrepresent what transpired.

I didn't expect there to be a lot of interest in my other stories, so I never thought I'd really get pressed for more details. And I would have been happy to keep this to myself for the rest of my life. I haven't been able to reach the other party, but I would feel disingenuous with holding this story from those who wanted more information now that I've spoken with my mother and another connecting line has been drawn. What follows is as accurate a recollection as I can imagine. I apologize for the length.

Also the story is in an interesting place because the author is alive, right? Like he's telling us this story years later. So it almost makes it more harrowing. Like it's, it's like he's talking about an event that happened to him, but it has foggy memories, which sadly leans more in like the child predator direction. Right. Cause that's what it feels very reminiscent of. Um,

I don't know, it creates kind of a haunting feeling about his whole narrative, you know? Well, there's several things that make you think. One with this beginning paragraph of Box is setting up a lot of anticipation for how somebody in the story is going to be affected that's outside of himself. And another thing while you were reading that I was thinking was we have no idea what this guy looks like.

Right? Yeah. A person's visual experience or visual appearance usually indicates what or where, like how are they in their life right now? He could be very dirty and like, you know, like not well put together. You know what I mean? Yeah. Or he could be extremely clean cut and look very approachable. That's something that's kind of interesting is you have to kind of in your mind think

If you haven't done that yet, try to like put yourself into who this character is. And I think it gives these, these stories, different amounts of weight, different amounts of weight of how he's presenting them and how they could possibly be presented. I think it's just kind of interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. All right. Now getting into more nightmare fuel. Here we go. I spent the summer before my first year of elementary school, learning how to climb trees.

There was one particular pine tree right outside my house that seemed almost designed for me. It had branches that were so low I could easily grab them without a boost, and for the first couple days after I learned how to pull myself up, I would just sit on the lowest branch, dangling my feet. The tree was outside our back fence and was easily visible from the kitchen window, which was just above the sink. Before too long, my mother and I developed a routine where I would go play on the tree while she washed the dishes because she could easily see me while she did other things.

Is elementary, is it, when is elementary? First grade. You're like 10? No. Okay, so first grade, so you're like what, six? Like seven? Six or seven, depending. Yeah, depending on the age. Okay, so what,

So we're back to the point probably right around the time of footsteps. Yes. Yeah. It's the summer before first year at elementary school. So this is around the same time, I would guess. I don't know if it's right before or right after. As the summer passed, my abilities grew, and before too long, I was climbing fairly high. As the tree got taller, its branches not only got thinner, but more widely spaced.

I eventually reached a point where I couldn't actually climb any higher, and so the game had to change. I began to concentrate on speed, and in the end, I could reach my highest branch in 25 seconds. I got too confident, and one afternoon, I tried to step from a branch before I had firmly grasped the next one. I fell about 20 feet and broke my arm really badly in two places. My mom was running towards me, yelling, and I remember her sounding like she was underwater.

I don't remember what she said, but I do remember being surprised by just how white my bone was. Ugh. Brutal. I was going to start kindergarten with a cast and couldn't even have any... Couldn't... Oh, and wouldn't even have any friends to sign it. My mom must have felt terrible because the day before I started school, she brought home a kitten. He was... Oh, no. Oh, no.

Oh, I feel like things are going to go well for the little cat. I don't know if the little kitty is going to be okay in this story. We're going to see. I don't think he's making it to the winner's circle on this one, boys. He was just a baby and was striped with tan and white.

As soon as she put him down, he crawled into an empty case of soda that was sitting on the floor. I named him Boxes. Oh, no. Oh, okay. Here we go. Yeah, here we go. Back at the old creepcast usual. Something horrible happening. Boxes was only an outside cat when he escaped. My mom had him declawed so he wouldn't destroy the furniture. So as a result, we did our best to keep him inside.

He'd get out every now and then, and we'd find him somewhere in the backyard chasing some kind of bug or lizard, though he could hardly ever catch one because he had no front claws. He was pretty evasive, but we'd always catch him and carry him back inside. He'd scramble to look back over my shoulder. I told mom that it was because he was planning his strategy for next time. Oh, no. Do you catch that? Do you see why that's a horrible sentence?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. It being so subtle is just so perfectly placed up. It's easy to read past this and not really see the nuances there, but yeah. It's, yeah, just always the constant idea of someone watching that you don't know is very present in all these stories so far. It's very, it's very, very fun. Yeah, this is great. All right. And terrible. It's great and terrible. Once inside, we'd given him some tuna fish and he came to learn what the sound of the can opener might signal. He'd come running whenever he heard it.

This conditioning came in handy later because towards the end of our time in that house, boxes would get out much more often and would run under the house into the crawl space where neither of us wanted to follow because it was cramped and probably crawling with bugs and rodents. Ingeniously, my mom thought to hook the can opener to an extension cord out back and run it right outside the hole that boxes had gone through.

Eventually, he would emerge with his loud meows, looking excited by the sound and then horrified at how we could run such a cruel ruse on him. A can opener with no tuna made no sense to boxes. The last time he escaped under the house was actually our last day in it. Oh no. My mom had put the house on the market and we had begun packing our things.

We didn't have much and we stretched the packing out a while, though I had already packed up all my clothes at my mom's request. My mom could tell I was really sad about moving and wanted the transition to be smooth for me. And I guess she thought that having my clothes in the box would reinforce the idea that we were moving, but things wouldn't change that much. When boxes got out as we were loading some things into the moving van, my mom cursed because she had already packed the can opener and wasn't sure where it was.

I pretended to go look for it so I wouldn't have to go under the house, and my mom, probably completely aware of my little scam, moved one of the panels and crawled in. She came out with boxes pretty quickly and seemed pretty unnerved, which made me feel even better about getting out of it. My mom made some phone calls while I packed a little more, and then she came into my room and told me that she had spoken to the realtor and we were going to start moving into the other house that day.

She said it like it was excellent news, but I had thought we had more time in the house. She originally said that we weren't moving until the end of the next week and it was only Tuesday. What's more, we weren't completely finished packing, but my mom said sometimes it was just easier to replace things than pack them and haul them all over the city. I didn't even get to grab the rest of my box clothes. I asked if I could call Josh to say bye, but she said that we could just call him from our new house.

We left in the moving man. All right. Wow. So she is, she is just trying to boot scoot and boogie out. I think I know what happened. Um, so yeah. Do you remember? Is this, is this a little prediction time? This is, this is prediction time. More so putting together what we've already learned. Mom goes under the house. Hasn't been under there yet. And then immediately is like, we're leaving right now. Right. Remember how in footsteps he says at night, he hears footsteps around. Yeah. I think whoever this person is, has been living under their house.

Under the crawl space. Yeah. I think the cat's been going down there to see him. And I think that the mom went to get the cat and came across his like his cot or whatever down there. Yeah. His bed. Yeah. Like remnants of him being there. And is immediately like, we're leaving right now. We're not even grabbing your clothes. We're getting out of the house this instant.

It's something, too, where it's like an adult composing themselves to not make the child freak out. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Like, why put that burden on the kid? You know what I mean? I'm actually pretty scared right now. Like...

This is a scary story. Our minds are just running wild. You know what I mean? You're scaring me with these fucking predictions. And I think you're right, too, which is why I hate it. Yeah. I think you're right on the money with it, man. And the way that he's telling this story, it's like... You know, not to overuse the word liminal, because it gets used in places it doesn't fit a lot. But you know how when you think about memories as a child, it's very dreamy? You know, it's very distant. It's a memory that...

is half imagination, half memory. It, the way he's kind of telling the story through that lens makes it feel so much more dreadful. Like it's a creature from the a third that's like appeared around him. Like this is his recollection of events. We don't know how accurate it is, but,

It's very... It's so menacing. It's so menacing. Yeah, I mean, it's very menacing because it's also coming from a man retelling it in the exact sequence of which it's happening, which is all, like, kind of like you're saying, dreamlike, dazed memories and collections put together and only revealing the true stuff at the end or, like, revealing his hand at the end. It's just a very fun way. Yeah. Because you could probably still get something much shorter and it would still be creepy, but the idea that this author is...

like continuously giving us so much like, you know, detailed re recollections or recollections of his memories. Yeah. It makes it very, very fun, very flavorful. I mean, I'm getting a little scared, but we're going to, we're going to persevere. We're going to keep going. Um,

I managed to stay in touch with Josh for years, which is surprising since we no longer went to the same school. Our parents weren't close friends, but they knew that we were, and so they would accommodate our desire to see one another by driving us back and forth for sleepovers, sometimes every weekend. For Christmas one year, our parents even pooled their money and got us some really nice walkie-talkies that were advertised to work across a range that extended past the distance between our houses.

They also had batteries that could last for days if the walkie-talkie was on but not used. That's really sweet. That's really kind. His mom's not doing so well, so they put their money together to get them these stuff. Keep them in touch. Which, you know what? Why not? It actually kind of makes the story worse because it was such a nice life. Such a nice little childhood that's underlined by a monster. See, I was thinking that.

Yeah, it makes it horrifying. I also was just thinking if it's just another implement for something to go wrong. As soon as I heard Waki Taki, I was like, oh, God. Almost definitely. Yeah, yeah. A Waki Taki that works at distance, it's going to show up. Yeah. They would only occasionally work well enough that we could talk across the city. But when we stayed over, we'd use them around the house, talking in mock radio speak that we had taken from movies, and they worked great for that. Thanks to our parents, we were still friends when we were 10.

One weekend, I was staying over at Josh's and my mom called me to say goodnight. She was still pretty watchful even when she couldn't actually watch me, but I had gotten so used to it that I didn't even notice it. Even if Josh did, she sounded upset. Boxes was missing. Oh no. This must have been a Saturday night because I had spent the night at Josh's the previous night and was going to go home the next day because we had school on Monday.

Boxes had been missing since Friday afternoon. I gathered that she had not seen him since returning home after dropping me off. She must have decided to tell me he was missing because if he didn't come home before I did, then I would be devastated at not only his absence, but how she could have kept it from me. She told me not to worry. He'll come back. He always does. But Boxes didn't come back.

Three weekends later, I stayed at Josh's again. I was still upset about boxes, but my mom told me that there had been many times when pets had disappeared from home for weeks or even months, only to return on their own. She said they always knew where home was and would always try to get back. I was explaining this to Josh when a thought hit me so hard that I interrupted my own sentence to say it aloud. What if boxes thought of the wrong home?

Oh, I don't like where this is going. Josh was going to go over to the ground. I'm getting chills. The idea of him like a small child at night going over and there's a man under the floor, bro. It's also, I want to say it's kind of late when we're recording this. I'm alone. I'm also alone. The room's very dark. I don't like this. Yeah.

I think my dog's pressed up against the door right now. Because it's storming outside. Yeah, if it wasn't enough, it's storming outside. And he's afraid of storms. So I can see a shadow moving under the door. He's like, help. Yeah, that's very menacing. Stop reading that story, it's scaring me. Alright, Josh was confused. What? He lives with you. He knows where his home is. He grew up somewhere else, Josh.

He was raising my old house a couple neighborhoods away. Maybe he still thinks that place is home, like I do. Oh, I get it. Well, that'd be great. We'll tell my dad tomorrow and he'll take us over there and we can go look. No, he won't, man. My mom said that we couldn't go back to that place because the new owners wouldn't want to be bothered. She said that she told your mom and dad the same thing. Joss persisted. Okay, then we'll just go out exploring tomorrow and maybe make our way to your old house. No! No!

If we get spotted, your dad will find out. And then so will my mom. We have to go there ourselves. We have to go there tonight. Oh, my God. You stupid fucker. I mean, he's 10, right? Yeah, but still. It's just like, oh, God. And he misses his cat. These kids are so brave in these stories. I'm like, it's nighttime out? No way. Keep in mind, he's under... Not Josh. Our author's under the impression that...

this house has occupants in it. That's like a neighborhood. Someone lives there or whatever, and they may just annoy them. And also that's again, another subtle mention. It's like my mom said that we can never go back because the owners don't want to be bothered. And as a matter of fact, my mom told your parents that the owners don't ever want to be bothered, which is like, why would a mom say that? Right. It's because actually I think the house is abandoned and she told the other parents never go back to that place. There's someone under the floor.

Oh, there's definitely a much more... Like, she did not give him the full shakedown. She probably went to there and she's just like, you do not let him go over there. There's someone under the... I don't like this. I'm not sleeping tonight. I'm actually a little like... Okay. Because this is like... This is like... Sure, I quit being afraid of monsters and Buggy Man and stuff like that. But every now and then I will have thoughts of like...

I what if there's someone you know outside the door what if there's someone you know like that stuff still gets me every now and then oh of course you'd be a liar to say you wouldn't yeah this is like the hard-lined straight to the vein version of that yeah just uh just even a thing of just like no we have to go there tonight you're just like oh god why why lord why why why why why

Maybe if we quit reading, we don't have to know where it goes. Maybe we'll all be safe. What a story. Yeah, good story, everyone. All right, bye. See you next week. We're getting into the good part here. I'm ready. Yeah, great story. It's a great story. All right. There were two ways to get from Josh's house to my old house. We could walk on the street and make all the turns or go through the woods, which would take about half the time.

It would have taken about two hours to walk there, taking the street, but I suggested that we go that way anyway. I told him it was because I didn't want to get lost. Josh refused and said that if we were seen, they might recognize him and tell his dad. He threatened to go home if we didn't just take the shortcut, and I accepted it because I didn't want to go by myself. Josh didn't know about the last time I walked through these woods at night. Yep, that's what I thought. Um...

The woods were much less creepy with a friend and a flashlight, and we were making pretty good time. I wasn't entirely sure where we were, but Josh seemed confident enough, and that bolstered my morale. We passed through a particularly thick patch of tangled trees when the strap on my walkie-talkie got caught on a branch. Josh had the flashlight, and so I was struggling to get the walkie free when I heard Josh say, Hey man, wanna go for a swim? Oh no...

Yeah, I looked over to where he was shining the flashlight, though I closed my eyes as I did because I now knew where we were. He was pointing at the pool float. This is where I had woken up in these woods all those years ago. Dude, I'm actually... You gotta power through! You have to power through! I'm gonna sit in such a way, I'm gonna angle the mic a bit to where I'm like, I have the door in my peripheral. Like the room...

Okay. I felt a lump in my throat and the sting of fresh tears in my eyes as I continued to struggle with the walking. Frustrated, I yanked on it hard enough to break it free and I turned and walked to Josh, who had partially laid down on the pool float in a mock sunbathing pose. As I walked toward him, I stumbled and nearly fell into a fairly large hole that was sitting in the middle of this small clearing. But I regained my balance and stopped right at its edge. It was deep.

I was surprised by the size of the hole, but more surprised by the fact that I didn't remember it. I realized it must not have been there that night because it was in the same spot where I had awoken. Oh, okay. I put it out of my mind and turned to Josh. A hole appeared in the spot that he woke up? Yeah, I'm wondering, are they trying to associate that, like, is it a pool? Is it just a big pool, or is it a big actual hole, or is it a big thing that's like...

A mock pool or something like that. But also where he woke up is just very interesting. Which also, is it a grave? I don't know. These are all things. I don't know. My mind is running. My mind is running! I'm dead sprinting in my head. Yeah, I'm terrified. Okay. Quit messing around, man! You saw that I was stuck over there, and you were just laying here joking around on the float? I punctuated the sentence with a kick to an exposed part of the float. A screeching rose from it. What? Josh's smile...

I'm on edge, man. Okay. I'm just a little bit messed up right now. The shark is screaming. Josh's smile inverted. He suddenly looked terrified and was struggling to get off the float, but he couldn't in a quick manner due to the awkward way he had been laying on it. Each time he would fall back on the float, the screeching would intensify. I wanted to help Josh, but I couldn't move myself any closer. My legs wouldn't cooperate.

I hated these woods. I picked up the flashlight that he had thrown in his thrashing and shined it on the float, not knowing what to expect. Finally, Josh got off the float and rushed next to me, looking at where I was shining the light. Suddenly, there it was. It was a rat. I started laughing nervously and we both watched the rat run into the woods, taking the screeches with it. Josh lightly punched me in the arm and the smile slowly returning to his face and we continued walking. Okay, so there was a screeching. It was just a rat underneath it.

Oh, okay. I thought that it was like the deflating of the deal because he kicked the float. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just a rat. It just scared him. But do you realize what happened there? All this happened after his walkie-talkie got snagged on a branch and then they got distracted. That means, I bet, he left the walkie in the woods.

Yeah, I don't think he still has it. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's going to be left there. And I think they're going to hear Josh's. Someone talk on Josh's. Oh, absolutely. Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they? Of course. All right. We quickened our pace and made it out of the woods faster than we thought we would. And we found ourselves back in my old neighborhood. The last time I had rounded the bend ahead, I had seen my house fully illuminated and all the memories of what transpired came flooding back.

I felt a skipping in my heart as we were finally turning the corner and about to face the full view of my house, remembering last time how incandescent it was. But this time, all the lights were off. From a distance, I could see my old climbing tree, and as my mind traced the steps of causality backwards, I realized that I wouldn't be back here this night if that tree hadn't grown.

Oh, that's true, because his broken arms what led to the cat. And I was briefly in awe of how all events were like that. As we got closer, I could see the lawn look terrible. I couldn't even guess when it had last been mowed. One of the shutters had partially broken loose and was rocking back and forth in the breeze. And overall, the house just looked dirty. I was sad to see my old home in such a state of disrepair. Why would my mom care if we bothered the new owners if they cared so little about where they lived? And then I realized...

There were no new owners. The house was abandoned, though it looked simply forsaken. Why would my mom lie to me about our house having new people in it? But I thought this was actually a good thing. It would be much easier to look around for boxes if we didn't have to worry about being spotted by the new family. This would make it much quicker. Josh interrupted my thoughts as we walked through the gate and up to the house itself. "Your old house sucks, dude!" Josh yelled as quietly as he could. "Shut up, Josh!"

Even like this, it's still nicer than your house. Hey, man. Okay, okay. I think Boxes is probably under the house. One of us has to go under and look, but the other should stay next to the opening in case, you know, he comes running out. Are you serious? There's no way I'm going under there. It's your cat, man. You do it. Look, I'll game you for it. Unless you're too scared.

I said holding my fist over my upturned palm. Fine. But we go on shoot. Not on three. It's rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Not one, two, three. I know how to play the game, Josh. You're the one who always messes up. And it's two out of three. I lost. That's fine. Fun little moment in the middle of all this.

I wiggled loose the panel that my mom would always move when she would have to crawl under here for boxes. I don't like where this is going. She only had to do it a couple of times since the can opener trick usually worked. But when she had to do it, she hated it. Especially that last time. And as I looked into the darkness of the crawl space, I had a greater appreciation for why.

Before we moved, she said that it was actually better that boxes ran under here, despite how hard it could be able to get him out. It was less dangerous than jumping over the fence and running around the neighborhood. All that was true, but I was still dreading doing this. I grabbed the flashlight and the walkie and began to crawl in. A powerful smell overtook me.

Also, I just want to say, too, there's something interesting about that line because she had been down there a bunch of times and it was only the last time that really, you know, made her jolt. So she'd been down there plenty of times before, but then probably saw something the last time. Yeah, maybe it was a Polaroid or something. It could be. It could be. It smelled like death. I turned on my walkie. Josh, are you there? This is Macho Man. Come back. Josh, cut it out. There's something wrong down here. What do you mean?

It stinks. It smells like something died. Is it boxes? I really hope not. I sat down to walk and moved the flashlight around as I crawled forward. Looking through the hole from the outside, you could see all the way back with the right lighting, but you had to be inside to see around the support blocks that held the house up.

I'd say there was about 40% of the area that you couldn't see unless you were actually in the crawlspace, but even inside, I discovered that I could only see directly where the flashlight was pointing. I realized that this would make scouting around the place much more difficult. As I moved forward, the smell intensified. The fear was growing in me that boxes had come here and something had happened to him. I shined the flashlight around, but couldn't see much of anything. I wrapped my fingers around a support block to pull myself forward, and as I did that...

I felt something that made my hand recoil. Fur. My heart sank and I prepared myself emotionally for what I was about to see. I crawled slowly so I could prolong what I knew was coming and I inched my eyes in the flashlight past the block to see what was on the other side. I staggered back in horror. Jesus Christ! Escaped my trembling mouth. It was a hideous and twisted creature. Badly decomposed.

Its skin had rotted away on its face so the teeth appeared to be enormous and the smell was unbearable. "What is it? Are you okay? Is it boxes?" I reached for the walkie. "No, no, it's not boxes." "Well what the hell is it then?" "I don't know." I shined the light on it again and looked at it with less fear in my vision. I chuckled. "It's a raccoon."

Oh, God. Oh, God.

Oh, there's so many things that could go wrong. I looked and saw that he was telling the truth. Some of his points were good, and I doubted he'd be able to get in anyway.

Okay, but be careful and don't touch anything. There's a bunch of my old clothes still in boxes in my room. You can look in there to see if he crawled in one. And make sure to bring your walkie. Roger that, good buddy. I realized that it would be pitch black in there. The power would have been turned off since no one was paying the bill. With any luck, he'd be able to see from the streetlights that might cast some light inside. Otherwise, I'm not sure what he'd do. Before too long...

Oh no. Before too long I heard footsteps right over my head and felt old dirt raining down on me. Josh, is that you? Shhh, breaker breaker. This is Macho Man coming back for Big Tango Foxtrot. The eagle has landed. What's your 20, Princess Jasmine? Over. Asshole.

Asshole. Macho man, my 20 is in your bathroom looking at your stash of magazines. Looks like you've got a thing for dude's butt. Looks like you've got a thing for dude's butts. What's the report on that over?

I could hear him laughing without the walkie and I started laughing too. I had the footsteps fade away a little. He was on his way to my room. This is the most dude conversation. He's like, I'm in your old room. There's a bunch of guys and magazines. You want to explain yourself? Man, it's dark in here. Hey, are you sure you had boxes of clothes in here? I don't see any. Oh no. Yeah, there should be a couple boxes in front of the closet.

I started thinking that maybe my mom had come back and gotten the clothes and just given them away because I'd outgrown a lot of them, but I remembered leaving the boxes there. I didn't even have time to close the last one up before we left. While I was waiting for Josh to tell me what he found, I kicked out my leg, which had started falling asleep because of the position I was in, and it hit something. I looked back and saw something really strange. It might have been a knife.

It was a blanket and all around it there were bowls. I crawled a little closer to it. The blanket smelled moldy and most of the bowls were empty, but one had something that I recognized still in it. Cat food. It was a different kind than we gave to boxes, but I suddenly understood.

My mom had set up a little place for box- oh no. He's way too hopeful. My mom had set up a little place for boxes to encourage him to come here instead of running around the neighborhood. That made a lot of sense. That made a lot of sense, and it seemed even more likely the boxes could have come back to this place. That's so cool, mom! I thought. I found your clothes. Oh cool, where were the boxes?

Like I said, there are no boxes. Your clothes are in your closet. They're hanging up. All right. All right. I'm about... That's it. All right. All right. Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to this week's episode of Good Guess. We will not be concluding the rest of Pinpal.

I felt a chill. Yeah, me too, man. I felt a chill. This was impossible. I'd packed all my clothes, even though we weren't supposed to move for another two weeks when we left. I remember packing them and thinking that it was stupid for me to have to get clothes out of the box and put them back in. I'd packed them, but someone had hung them back up. Why, though? Josh needed to get out of there. That can't be right, Josh. They're supposed to be in boxes. Stop messing around and just come back outside.

No joke, man. I'm looking at them. Maybe you just thought that you left them. Wow. You sure like to look at yourself, don't you? What? What do you mean? Your walls, man. Your walls are covered in polar whites of yourself. No, bro. There are hundreds of them. Would you hire someone to... Oh, God. Silence! It cut him off! Oh, God! Oh! Where'd you go? I'm alone reading this!

I'm scared. I'm about to cry. Okay. Oh, no. There's pictures of yourself all over the walls. There are hundreds, hundreds of them. Living in this room. Put his clothes back up. Put his clothes up. Which also, no, no, no. That's not even his clothes, dude. It's the guy's clothes. Whoever's living there, it's their clothes. It's not even our main character's clothes, I bet. Dude. Okay. All right.

Hey, you know what? Our better character must be a little cutie patootie to have somebody be fawning over him so much, huh? Hunter, I know you're a YouTuber, but... I know we're YouTubers and all, but we gotta lay off. No, I... Okay, alright. Alright. Alright, I guess I need to keep reading, right?

Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I guess that's what I have to do. I guess that's the job. I guess that's where. All right. Silence. I checked my wall. So just to bear it. Probably. So he said, would you hire someone to, and it cuts them off and then silence is in as in it just completely cut out. Yeah. Yeah.

I checked my walk-in to see if I'd switch it off somehow. It was fine. I could hear footsteps, but couldn't tell exactly where Josh was going. I waited for Josh to finish his sentence, thinking that his finger had just slipped off the button, but he didn't continue. He seemed to be stomping around the house now. I was just about to radio him when he came back. There's someone in the house. Bro. I'm gonna throw up.

Yeah. His voice was hushed and broken. I could hear he was on the verge of tears. I wanted to respond, but how loud was his walkie turned up? What if the other person heard it? I said nothing and just waited and listened. What I heard were footsteps, heavy, dragging footsteps, and then a loud thud. Josh. He had been found. I was sure of it.

This person had found him and was hurting him. I broke out in tears. He was my only friend next to Boxes. Okay, all right. Hold on. Hold on, man. You can't... He was my only friend next to Boxes?

I can't believe my only human- my only friend, Josh, is getting beaten up by some stranger in his house! My only friend, next to my tiny kitty cat, pops! It's like, "Don't put them on the same level, dude! Come on!" Well, my friend's getting touched and murdered by a stranger upstairs. Good thing I've got my kitty cat. Well, I hope that I can find my cat so I still have one friend. Man, I hope that if Josh is dead, I can still find my cat.

Well, even if Boxes dies, he still has eight more lives, so it should be fine. Hey, Josh. He gets on the walkie. Hey, Josh, did you hear that? Boxes has eight more lives. Yeah. Hey, Josh, are you there? Josh! Are you there, Josh? Answer! Josh, we have to find Boxes quick. Someone's in the house. What? I can't hear you. You've got to talk louder.

Hold up, I'm gonna scream really loud. Is that you? You're up in my room upstairs to the left of that room? You said you were in the closet underneath in the left corner, right? Why are you hiding in there? Here, follow the sound of my voice. Liddle, liddle, liddle, liddle. I'm gonna keep beeping. I'm gonna keep making noises. Hold on, this thing has a siren function. Let me try it. Please, please, please, please be quiet. What? Okay. Uh...

And then I realized, what if Josh told him I was under here? What could I possibly do? Why would you do that? I don't know, maybe... Yeah, there's a guy under the crawl space. No, no! Leave me, the boy you want, the pictures, he's under the floor. The kid looking for his stupid ass cats under the crawl space. Go get him! What could I possibly do?

As I struggled to compose myself, I thankfully heard Josh's voice through the walkie. Oh, I think I got it. Let me see. He's got something, man. What? It's a big bag. He just threw it on the floor. Can you hear me? Yeah, yeah. Can you hear me? Yeah. Can you not hear my... I was doing a... I have like a microphone, like a walkie-talkie thing. Can you not hear me? Oh, no. Hold on. Try it again.

It's not showing up that you're talking in the Discord for some reason. Yeah, weird. It might just be Discord's gate or something. If you're recording it, you can use it. I mean, that's fine. No, it's fine. We can ask her to just add post if we wanted to. All right, here we go. He's got something, man. It's a big bag. He just threw it on the floor and, man, the bag, I think it just moved. I was paralyzed. I wanted to run home. I wanted to save Josh. I wanted to go for help. I wanted so many things, but I just lay there, frozen.

as i lay unable to move my eyes focused on the corner of the house that was right under my room i moved my flashlight my breath hitched at what i saw animals dozens of them all of them dead they lay in piles all around the perimeter of the crawl space could boxes be among these course these corpses what was this what the cat food was for seeing this broke my shock as i knew i had to get out of there and i scrambled to the board

I pushed on it, but it wouldn't budge. I couldn't move it because it was wedged in there and I couldn't get my fingers around it since the edges were outside. I was trapped. God damn you, Josh! I whispered to myself. I could feel thunderous footsteps above me. The house was shaking. I heard Josh scream. Oh no. And it was matched by another scream that wasn't full of fear. Oh, weird. So Josh screamed in fear and then it was just like another person was like, Ah!

Maybe it was the man screaming, not expecting Josh to be there. Yeah, but yeah, I guess it's true. Match with the scream that wasn't full of fear. I don't know. That's an interesting sentence. Yeah. As I continued pushing, I felt the board move, but I knew it wasn't me who was moving it. Oh no. I could hear footsteps above me and in front of me and shouting and screaming, filling the brief silences between the footsteps. I moved back and held my walkie ready to try to defend myself. And the board was thrown to the side and an arm shot in and grabbed for me.

Let's go! Let's go, man! Now! It was Josh, thank God. I scrambled out of the opening, holding the flashlight and walkie. When we got to the fence, we both jumped it. But Josh's walkie fell. He reached for it, and I told him to forget it. We had to move. Behind us... There we go. There's the setup. There's the setup. Yep. Behind us, I could hear yelling. Though they weren't words, only sounds.

And we, perhaps foolishly, ran for the woods to get back to Josh's quicker and be somewhat harder to follow. The whole way through the woods, Josh kept yelling. My picture! He took my picture! Oh! Oh! But I knew the man already had Josh's picture from all those years ago at the ditch. I suppose Josh still thought those mechanical sounds were from a robot. We made it back to Josh's house and back into his room before his parents woke up.

I asked him about the big bag and if it really moved and he said he couldn't be sure. He kept apologizing about dropping the walkie at the house, but obviously that wasn't a big deal. We didn't go to sleep and sat peering out the window waiting for him. I went home later that day as it was about 3 a.m. already. I told my mom the basics of this story a couple days ago. She broke down and was furious about the danger I put myself in.

I asked her why she made all those things up about bothering the new owners to stop me from going. Why did she think that the house was so dangerous? She became irate and hysterical, but she answered my questions. She grabbed my hand and squeezed it harder than I thought her capable of and locked her eyes to mine, whispering as if she was afraid of being overheard. Because I never put any fucking blankets or bowls under the house for boxes. You weren't the only one to find them. Ahem.

I felt dizzy. I understood so much now. I understood why she had looked so uneasy after she brought boxes out from under the house on our last day there. She found more than spiders or rats' nests that day. I understood why we left almost two weeks early. I understood why she tried to stop me from going back. She knew. She knew he made his home under ours, and she kept it from me. I left without saying another word and didn't finish the story for her. But I want to finish it here. For you. *cough*

I got home from Josh's that day. I threw my stuff on the floor and it scattered everywhere. I didn't care. I just wanted to sleep. I woke up around 9 p.m. to the sound of boxes meowing. My heart leapt. He had finally come home. I was a little sick about the fact that I had just waited a day. I had just waited a day. None of my previous night's events would have happened and I'd have boxes anyway, but that didn't matter. He was back.

I got off my bed and called for him looking around to catch a glint of light of his eyes. Oh no. The crying continued and I followed it. It was coming from under the bed. Oh God. Oh, I laughed a little thinking I had just crawled under a house looking for him because now, because for him and how this was so much better. His meows were being- Oh, ha ha ha ha ha. Oh my gosh. I'm so scared. That, that is funny. That, that's, yeah, let's laugh about that.

Oh, God! Oh, man! I'm so scared. I'm so scared.

We really can't. We got to stop recording these so late. I'm like, I'm in a closed off area. This is like a set that I'm on. And I keep feeling like I want to look behind me at the fake closet. I'm like, why do I feel like someone is behind me? I keep looking over at the door. My dog shadows under the door and it's freaking me out a bit. Are you sure? Shut up. Stop. I hate you. I hate you so much. Oh my gosh. Hunter.

Wow. Amazing. This is so good. This is so scary. It's very good. Just like because he's so helpless and the memory of it's so strange and this guy's so malicious. I just imagine, I imagine like Josh walking through that house and then just a tall, tall man with like these, these like bright eyes in the darkness, like looking at him.

from the doorway. I mean, very reminiscent of the cat's eyes he was looking for in the light. But the thing about it too, though, is we never get a description from Josh.

Never get a description of what the guy is. Just a big guy, right? And now he's moved out from, which is kind of an upgrade, in all honesty. He's moved out from the dirty undercrawl to the house, the abandoned house. That's an upgrade, I would say. You're right. We should be happy for him. You're right. But what's crazy is the theory, the crazy thing about that last one is the theory was correct. Like, boxes did go back home, back to that thing. And the guy did retrieve the walkie-talkie, and he's, like, holding his cat, you know? Pretty brutal. Yeah.

I'm so scared right now. Okay. All right. Well, are we continuing on in the maps? Are we hitting maps now? Part four? I'm good if you are. It's up to you. I'm down. I'm down. We're in it. We're in it. You're certainly right about that. We are in it. Like it or not, we are in it. Okay. All right. Here we go. Part four of this wonderful story that's so happy. Maps.

There's a comment in the last post that made me remember an event from my childhood that I always took as odd but never considered it to be related to any of these stories. I know now that it is. It's funny how memories work. The details might all be present in your mind, though scattered and disarrayed, and then a single thought can stitch them back together almost instantly.

I never thought of these events much because I was focused on the wrong details. I went back to my mom's house and went through my old childhood schoolwork looking for something that I think is important. I couldn't find it, but I'll keep looking. Again, sorry for the length. Most old cities and the neighborhoods in them weren't planned with the thought that the population would begin to grow exponentially and it would have to be accommodated.

The layout of the roads is generally originally in response to geographical restrictions and the necessity of connecting points of economic importance. Once the connecting roads are established, new businesses and roads are positioned strategically along the existing skeleton, and eventually the paths carved into the earth are immortalized in asphalt, leaving room only for minor modifications, additions, and alterations, but never a dramatic change. My childhood neighborhood must have been old then.

If straight lines move as the crow flies, then my neighborhood must have been built based on the travels of a snake. I like that. That's a good, I like that alliteration. That's fun. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, that's really, really nicely written. The first houses built must have been placed around the lake and gradually the inhabitable area increased as new extensions were built off the original path. But these new extensions all ended abruptly at one point or another. There was only one entrance slash exit for the entire neighborhood.

Many of these extensions were limited by a tributary which both fed and drank from the lake and passed right by what I came to call, and have called in these stories, the ditch. Many of the original homes had enormous yards, but some of those original plots have been divided, leaving properties with smaller and smaller boundaries.

An aerial view of my neighborhood would give one the impression that an enormous squid had once died in the woods and some adventuring entrepreneur found the corpse and paved roads over its tentacles, only to withdraw his involvement and leave time, greed, and desperation to divide up the land among prospective homeowners like an embarrassing attempt at the golden ratio. From my porch, you could see the old houses that surrounded the lake.

But the house of Mrs. Maggie was my favorite. She was, as best as I can remember, around 80 years old. Oh, kind of like you, Hunter. Like me! It's okay, Grandpa. We'll get through this one day. But despite that, she was one of the friendliest people I had ever met. She had a head of loose-set white curls and always wore light dresses with floral patterns.

She would talk to me and Josh from her back porch when we were swimming in the lake, and she would always invite us in for snacks. She said that she was lonely because her husband Tom was always away on business. But Josh and I would always decline her invitation because, as nice as Mrs. Maggie was, there was still something a bit odd about her. Every now and then we would swim away and she would say, "'Chris and John, you're welcome back here anytime.'"

And we could hear her still yelling that when we were taught... It sounds like a woman who's like a prospector in the 1800s. Well, that's maybe what that... I'm Mrs. Maggie and there's gold in them hills, I swear. And we...

Yeah, she was really weird. Kept talking about, like, panning for gold. It's called panhandling. It's about trying to sift gold out of basically black sand. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. And we could hear her still yelling that when we were walking back into my house. Mrs. Maggie.

Like many of the older homeowners, it had a sprinkler system that was on a timer, though at some point over the years her timer must have broken because the sprinklers would come on at various points during the day and often even at night all year. While it never got cold enough to snow very much, several times each winter I would go outside in the morning to see Mrs. Maggie's yard transformed into a surreal arctic paradise by the frozen water.

Every other yard stood sterilized and dry by the biting frost of the winter's cold, but right there in the middle of the bleak reminder of the savagery of the season was an oasis of beautiful ice hanging like stalactites from every branch of every tree and every leaf of every bush. As the sun rose, it reflected off and each piece of ice splintered the sun into a rainbow that would only be viewed briefly before it blinded you.

Even as a child, I was struck by how beautiful it was. And often Josh and I would go over there to walk on the ice grass and have sword fights with the icicles. I once asked my mom why she left it on like that. My mom seemed to search for the explanation before she said,

Well, sweetie, Mrs. Maggie is sick a lot, and sometimes when she gets really sick, she gets confused. That's why she messes up yours and Josh's names sometimes. She doesn't mean to, but sometimes she can't remember. She lives in that big house all by herself, so it's okay if you talk to her when you swim in the lake, but when she invites you in, you should keep saying no. Be polite. Her feelings won't get hurt, but...

She'll be less lonely when her husband comes home, right? How long will he be away on business? It seems like he's always away. My mom seemed to struggle, and I could see that she had become very upset. Finally, she answered. Honey, Tom's not going to come home. Tom's in heaven. He died years and years ago, but Mrs. Maggie doesn't remember. She gets confused and forgets, but Tom's not ever going to come home. If someone moved back in with her, she might even think it was Tom.

But he's gone, Sweeney. Okay, that's... We're setting up disaster. Someone's going to move into the house, and she'll be like, My husband came home. This is going to be... Yeah. That or...

I don't think Tom would be the predator, the person watching. I don't know. I'm confused. I don't know if they're going to try to intercept that in or not, but there's something. Every story so far has connected very intricately. Yeah, we'll see where it goes. We'll see where it connects at. Okay, yeah.

I would have only been around five or six when she told me that. And while I didn't understand it completely, I was still profoundly sad for Mrs. Maggie. I now know that Mrs. Maggie had Alzheimer's. She and her husband, Tom, had had two sons, Chris and John. Ah, sad. The two had worked out payment plans with the utility company and paid for Mrs. Maggie's water and electricity, but they would never visit her.

I don't know if something happened between them or if it was the illness or if they just lived too far away, but they never came around. I have no idea what they looked like, but there were times when Mrs. Maggie must have thought Josh and I looked like they did when they were children. Or maybe she saw some part of her mind so desperately wanting her to see. Ignoring the images transmitted down her optic nerve and just for a little while showing her what used to be. I realize only now how lonely she must have been.

Well, that's profoundly depressing, okay? Yeah, extremely. During the summer after kindergarten, before the events of Balloons, Josh and I had taken to exploring the woods near my house, as well as the tributary of the lake. We knew that the woods between our houses were connected, and we thought it would be neat if the lake near my house was somehow connected to the creek around his, so we resolved ourselves to find out. We were going to make maps.

The plan was to make two separate maps and then combine them. We would make one map exploring the area around the creek near his house and make another following the outflow from my lake. Originally, we were going to make one map, but we realized that wasn't possible since I had started drawing the map of my area so huge that the route from his house wouldn't have been to scale.

We kept the map from the lake at my house and the map from the creek at his house, and we would add to each when we stayed the night with each other. For the first couple weeks, it went really well. We would walk through the woods along the water and pause every couple minutes to add to the map, and it seemed like the two maps would come together any day. We had no equipment needed for the job, not even a compass, but we tried to make do.

We had the idea to impale the earth with a stick when we had reached the end of a venture so that if we came upon the stick from the other direction the next weekend, we would know we had joined the maps. We might have been the world's worst cartographers. Eventually, however, the woods became too thick near the water coming from the lake and we were unable to proceed further.

We lost interest in the whole project for a bit and reduced our exploration significantly, though not completely, when we started selling snow cones. After I showed my mom all the pictures I had taken home from school and she took away my snow cone machine, our interest in the maps revitalized. We had to come up with another plan.

Although I didn't understand why, my mom had placed what I considered to be extremely severe restrictions on what I could do and where I could go, and I had to check in frequently if I went outside to play with Josh. This meant that we couldn't stay in the woods for hours and continue to look for a new path. We thought we could just swim when we got to the cutoff in the woods, but that clearly wouldn't work since the map would get wet.

We tried going faster when we were coming from Josh's house, but we eventually ran into the same problem. Then we had a brilliant idea. We'd build a raft. Ah, yes, rafts. The cars of the water, truly. Due to the construction of the neighborhood, there was a large amount of scrap building material that the company would set in the ditch to keep it out of the road and off-site since they no longer needed it for building.

We originally conceived of a formidable ship complete with a mast and an anchor, but this quickly diminished into something more manageable. We set aside the wood and took several large pieces of styrofoam that were backed with foam board and tied them together with rope and kite string. We launched our vessel a little down from a little down water from Mrs. Maggie and waved a farewell to her as she motioned us to come back her way. But there was no stopping us.

The raft worked very well, and while we both behaved and spoke as if the functionality of the raft was a given, I know at least I was a little surprised. We each had a fairly long tree branch to use as a paddle, but we found it much easier to simply push against the land under the water than actually use them as intended. When the water became too deep, we'd simply line our stomachs and use our hands to paddle the water, which still worked, albeit less well.

The first time we had to resort to that method of propulsion, I remember thinking that from far above, it must have looked like a colossally fat man with tiny arms was out for a swim. I just want to also stop and say that that part where they waved to her and she was motioning them to come to them, just a creepy visual. That feels kind of menacing. It does. It really does. Something where it's like a kid probably wouldn't intercept that well, but the idea of an old woman being like, hey...

I want to talk come here. I want to talk to you. It's just that just odd to me, but it's like a it's like a fun riverboat adventure They're like haha. Yeah. Hi mrs. Maggie. She's going down the bayou. Yeah. Yeah. Born on a bayou.

And she's like a murderer wearing Miss Maggie skin. Like some monster over there. Yeah, it's just like a face mask. Yeah, yeah. A seven foot two large man with like... Oh, hi, Mrs. Maggie! Yeah, scoliosis and fucking rickets sitting there. And she's like, come here, boys, I want to talk to you. Bro, it's like...

I know like Alzheimer's and stuff like that's very real disease. I don't mean to make light of it or whatever, but it is a horrifying detail to imagine that someone, a stranger thinks that you're someone close to them. Like they don't understand that you're not the same person. So they keep trying to talk to you like you are that person. That's pretty terrifying. Yeah. No, it's, it's extremely terrifying. Especially the fact that like, it's, it's not even malicious. It's just a, like a,

Something that's out of their control, I guess, is what makes it so creepy. It's also like...

One of the reasons, the best stories, horror stories especially, that revolve around kids, even not explicit horror stories like Stand By Me, right? Stories like that. When you put a child in the role of what's happening, there is this implied sense of helplessness, of vulnerability, right? Because if these characters were 20 years old and it's like, oh, the old woman thinks I'm someone else, it would be like, oh, well, that's sad. And that'd be the end of it, right? But because they're so young, they're what, six years old at this point?

If it's the balloons period, then yeah, they should be like six still. Yeah, so there's this level of anything could get them. They're perceptible. They could be attacked by anything that comes out and would work. Anything. Which makes it all the more threatening. Because if they were adults and that thing happened with that guy, sure, it'd still be scary, the guy in the house. But it could be like, oh, Josh attacked him, right? But they're ten. They can't do that. All right. Anyway.

It actually took us several trips to get the raft to the impassable patch of woods that marked the farthest we had made it. After we had come up with the idea of marking the ground with the stick, we had taken to running through the woods until we got to the stick and then, as carefully and precisely as we knew how, charting our course. This meant that the impasse was actually quite a bit away, so to sail from around my house all the way to the blockade in the woods was taking longer than expected."

We'd sail for a bit and then dock the raft, and then, next time, we'd run through the woods to the raft and go a little farther. We continued this well into first grade. Josh and I were assigned to different groups that year, so since we didn't really see one another during the school day, our parents were more willing to let us hang out all weekend each week.

What's more, Josh's dad had taken on a lengthy construction job that required him to work over the weekends, and his mother was on call, so this meant that Josh would stay at my house most every weekend for weeks on end. We should have been making excellent progress, but when we finally made it to the impasse and had the opportunity to explore past it, we couldn't find a place to dock the raft.

The woods were simply too thick, and the water had eroded the land to the point that there was nearly a two-foot rise of earth over the tributary which exposed the twisting and damp roots of the trees above. We'd have to turn back every time and leave the raft at the same thick of trees that prompted us to build it in the first place. Even worse, winter had arrived, so we couldn't justify leaving the house in our swimsuits. We were getting nowhere. We always had to come home before we could gain much ground.

Oh. What? I remember her well now. No, it can't be the same kind of propose. Because he's, what, nine?

uh yeah i guess it's i guess it's just a couple of years later yeah yeah yeah yeah okay uh i was like what uh when my mom's covers the door her name was samantha and i remember her well now because i would propose to her a couple of years later when i was visiting my mom at work my mom said that she had to go to work to fix a problem that had arisen and that she'd be back that she'd yeah that she'd be back in about two hours

Her car was being repaired, so she'd have to ride with Samantha, but I gather that the problem was Samantha's fault and discussing it in the car was why it would only take two hours. She said that under no circumstances were we to leave the house or open the door for anyone. She was in the middle of explaining that she would call every hour when she got her to check in, but she ended that statement prematurely when she remembered that our phone had been turned off for delinquent payments.

This was why Samantha had just come by unannounced. She looked me dead in the eyes as she was closing the door and said, stay put. Wait. Okay. So hold on. Let me make sure I got the dynamics of this. Right. Samantha needs his mom to help. Right. Is that what's happening here? Yeah. So mommy's will help the mom's like, stay put. Uh, I'll call you when I get back. But then she remembers that she can't call. Right. Right. Because of the phone payments. Yeah. Yeah.

Samantha had come by and announced because of that and said, stay put. Okay. So basically mom's going away for a bit and it's just Josh and him there. Okay. Yeah. This was our chance. We watched her drive down the serpentine road toward the exit. And as soon as the car rounded the last visible bin, we ran back to my room. I dumped my backpack out while Josh grabbed the map. Hey, give a flashlight. No, but we'll be back way before dark. I was thinking just in case we should have one.

Yeah. Don't worry, boys. I got this. Yeah. Walking through the woods. Pew!

Yeah, we're shooting some candles. Light it up for America. We did it, Josh. We made a map. Along with a lighter that I'd managed to take from her some months before. This would ensure that we at least had some light if we needed it. This was a little bit before I had been given an opportunity to be afraid of the woods at night, so it wasn't fear that motivated our search for a light source, only practicality.

We threw it all in our backpack and bolted out the back door, making sure to close it so boxes wouldn't get out. We had one hour and 50 minutes. We ran through the woods as fast as we could and made it to the raft in about 15 minutes. We had our bathing suits on under our clothes, so we stripped off our shirts and shorts and left them in two separate piles about four feet from the edge of the water. We untied the raft from the tree, grabbed our branch paddles, and cast off.

We tried to move rapidly to reach a point beyond the contents of our ever-expanding map, as we didn't have time to waste seeing old sites. We knew that we were slower in the raft than on land, and that we should be in the raft for quite a while after the cutoff since the woods were too thick to walk through and there wasn't a place to dock. This meant that we'd have to ride the raft back to the original docking site even if we found a new place to dock it further ahead.

I think just a little thing here. I think what's going to happen here, a little prediction thing, where my mind is going is they're going to come across something that wasn't initially marked on their map and they're going to go explore it. I would assume. I think so. Is what's going to happen. That sounds reasonable. Especially also going and doing this raft at night. And if Mrs. Maggie's out there at night. Oh, my God. Oh, Lord. Lord, help me.

Delirious old woman. Why did you say that? I know. I'm sorry. I don't like it. I'm alone still. This story's bad enough as is. This story's bad enough as is. Why did you do that just now? I don't know. I don't know. This is very unprofessional behavior from a 54-year-old podcaster. I'm an experienced old man.

Look, you've been on this job for 30 years. All right, get it together. I can't wait to retire. It's only two more weeks to retirement. Let's hope I don't die of a heart attack now. Please, please. After we passed the last chartered part of our map, the water began to get really deep and eventually we can no longer touch the bottom with our tree branches. So we lay on our stomachs and paddled with our hands.

It was getting darker, and as a result, it was becoming harder to distinguish the trees from one another, and we were both becoming slightly unnerved. In the interest of making good time, we were paddling fast with our arms, but this caused a lot of noise as our hands repeatedly confronted and then broke through the water's surface tension. During these periods, we could both... Oh no. We could both hear the crunching of dead leaves and the snapping of fallen sticks in the woods to our right.

As we would slow our pace and quiet our actions, the rustling in the woods would cease, and we began to wonder if it was really ever there at all. We didn't know what kind of animals resided this far into the woods, but we did know that we didn't wish to find out. As Josh amended the map that I was illuminating with the lighter, we were suddenly confronted with the fact that the sounds were not imagined. Rapidly and rhythmically, we heard... Crunch. Snap. Crunch. Snap.

It seemed to be moving slightly away from us, pushing through the woods just beyond our map. It had become too dark to see. We had misjudged how long the sun would linger. Nervously, I called out, Hello? There was a brief moment of breathless tension as we lay static in the river. The silence was suddenly broken by laughter. Hello? So what?

Hello, Mr. Monster of the Woods. I know you're sneaking around, but maybe you'll answer to my hello? Hello? This story has really, in the middle of tension, there's these funny moments between the two. Very realistic banter. Yeah, yeah. I like it. Josh will be like, hello, idiot. You said hello. You fucking dumbass. Did you hear a knock just then? Did I hear a knock? Yeah. No. No.

It was the dog. It was the dog. It was the dog. It was the dog. Okay. Why don't you go check? No, I'm not. I'm not. The door's locked. And you know what? I'm going to sit right here. All right. And I'm going to be okay. Whatever happens, I'm going to be okay. So why the fuck would you say, did you hear a knock? That is so fucked. That is so fucked. I swear. I literally, you're a bad man. I said earlier, you're a bad man. I heard like a, like a very distinguishable knock. Oh God. It was just one though.

Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. You can't see it on camera. I want people to know right now that it's 1030 at night. All right. It's 1030 at night. I am alone. My wife is sleeping. Like, I'm alone. There's not even dogs around me to do, like, the thing where, you know, you can, like, okay, well, the dog would know. Right? Yeah. You have your dog by your door, dude. I hope. I'm here alone. I hope that's where that shadow is. I hope my wife's sleeping, too. She could be dead. I don't know.

Who knows? Not me. I'm not going to find out. Who knows? Anyway, I realized how stupid it was. Whatever animal it was, it wouldn't respond. I hadn't even realized I'd said it until afterwards, but if anything was actually there, it obviously wouldn't get a reply. Josh continued. Hello? In a high falsetto. Hello? I counted it. Hello there, mate. Hello? Beep boop? Oh, hello.

We continued mocking each other, and we're in the process... Oh, no. Dude. Dude, I don't want to read this part. If I don't read it, it's not real. You got to. If I don't read it, it didn't happen. It's not real. If we skip over it, it didn't happen. We continued mocking each other, and we're in the process of turning the raft around to head back when we heard... Hello? Stop. Don't do it like that. Don't do it like that.

Do it in a creepy tone. Creepy is so much better than just like a... Well, I'm imagining it's mimicking them. I know. I know. That's why I'm freaked out. All right. All right. All right. You're not helping. I reckon it works. It was whispered and forced as if it were powered by the last breath in a pair of deflating lungs, but it didn't sound sickly. It had come from the spot just off the map, which now sat behind us since we had turned the raft around.

I slowly shifted on the raft and faced the direction of the sound as I fumbled with the Roman candle. I wanted to see. What are you doing? Josh hissed, but I'd already lit it. As the sparking fuse sunk into the wrapper, I felt it. I held it toward the sky.

I never actually shot one of these myself and thought to just use it like a flare in the movies. A glowing green orb rocketed out towards the star and then quickly extinguished. I lowered my arm more toward the horizon. I could remember that there were several colors, but I couldn't remember how many times one of these fired before being depleted. A second ball of red light burst out and fizzled above the trees, but I still saw nothing. Let's just go, man.

Josh pressed as he turned to face the direction back home and began paddling desperately. Just one more. Lowering my arm directly at the woods in front of me, another red ball of fire was launched from the tube. It traveled straight ahead until it collided with the tree, briefly exploding the light in a much greater diameter. Still nothing. I dropped the firework in the water and watched as one more struggling fireball burst freely only to quickly die, suffocated by the water.

As we began paddling in the direction towards my house, we heard a loud and unconcealed rustling in the woods. The breaking of branches and the trampling of fallen leaves overpowered the sound of our splashing. It was running. In our panic, we jostled the raft too violently, and I felt one of the ropes under my chest loosen. "Josh, be careful!" But it was too late. Our raft was breaking. Before too long, it had completely fallen apart.

We each held on to a separate piece of styrofoam, but the pieces weren't big enough to keep us completely afloat, and our legs dangled beneath us in the winter water. Josh, quick! I yelled as I pointed at the water right next to him. He scrambled, but it was too cold to move quickly, and we both watched as the map floated away. I'm cold, man. Josh shuddered, dejectedly. Let's get out of the water.

We approached the shore, but each time we attempted to pull ourselves up, we'd hear the frantic rustling thundering towards us from the woods just above. It, man, gosh, this is a nightmare scenario. You're floating down the water, freezing, and every time you get close, you hear like getting closer. Dude. Eventually, we were too cold and weak to even try anymore.

steadily we kicked our legs and found ourselves nearing the dock site we toppled off the debris and tried to pull it on land but josh's piece slipped away and floated in the direction of the lake we took off our swimsuits and were desperate to get into dry clothes to shield us from the biting chill of the air i slid my shorts but there was something wrong oh no i turned to josh where's my shirt man i don't like this guy who takes pictures of kids and keeps their clothes oh gosh dude all right

He shrugged and suggested, Maybe it got knocked into the water and floated into the lake. I told Josh to go back to my house and to say that we were playing hide and seek if my mom was home. I had to try to find my shirt. I ran behind the houses and peered out over the water and scouted along the shoreline. It occurred to me that with any luck, maybe I could find the map too. I was moving pretty fast because I just needed to get home. I was about to give up when my concentration was interrupted by a sound coming from just behind me.

hello dude oh no this next oh no i whipped around it was mrs maggie oh god dude in the middle of the night he's alone i'm so scared right now oh i had never seen her at night before dude i'm actually getting pretty this is like have you seen that movie the taking of deborah logan

Exactly, yeah. Yeah, this is how, when she's in the cave with like the eyes that are like black. Yeah, and the mouth. Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm imagining. I'd never seen her at night before, and in this poor light she looked exceedingly frail. The usual warmth that wrapped her manner seemed to have been snuffed out by the chill. I couldn't remember ever seeing her without a smile, and so her face looked strange. Hello, Mrs. Maggie. Oh, hi, Chris.

The warmth and smile had returned to her, even if her memories had not. "I couldn't see it was you in the dark there." Jokingly, I asked her if she was going to invite me in for a snack, but she said maybe another time. I was too busy looking for my map and the shirt to really engage her, but she sounded happy, so I didn't feel bad. She said a couple other things, but I was too distracted to pay attention. I said goodnight and ran down her driveway towards my house.

Behind me, I could hear her walking across the frozen yard, but I didn't turn around to wave. I had to get home. I made it home a couple minutes before my mom did, and by the time she came in, Josh and I had already changed clothes and warmed up. We'd gotten away with it, even though we'd lost the map. Couldn't find it? Nah. But I saw Mrs. Maggie. She called me Chris again. I'm telling you, dude, just be glad you never see her at night.

We both laugh and he asked me if she invited me in for a snack, joking that the snacks must be terrible since she couldn't even give them away. I told him that she did it and he was surprised. And now that I had time to think about it, so was I. Literally every time we had seen her, she had invited us in for snacks. And here I had, albeit sarcastically, invited myself. And she said no. As Josh talked more about Mrs. Maggie, I suddenly realized that the lighter might still be in my pocket and that it would be disastrous for my mom to find.

Uh, dude. Here we go.

remember this is the shorts he left on the side of the bank for a while while they were so the pants were unattended yeah one was much bigger than the other oh no dude i'm so scared right now but neither had faces the paper was torn so a part of it was missing and there was a number written near the top right corner it was either 15 or 16.

I nervously handed Josh the paper and asked him if he had put it in my pocket at some point, but he scoffed at the idea and asked why I was so upset. I pointed towards the smaller stick figure and what was written next to it. It was my initials. I don't like this story. I shook it off and told Josh the rest of the conversation between Mrs. Maggie and I. I'd always attributed the odd exchange to her being sick until revisiting the events in my mind all these years later.

As I think about it now, the feeling of profound sadness for Mrs. Maggie returns, but it's augmented by a looming feeling of despair when I think about why she said, maybe another time. I knew what she had said, but I didn't understand what it meant that night. I didn't understand what her words had meant weeks later when I watched men in strange orange biohazard suits carry what I thought were black bags full of garbage out of her house, or why the whole neighborhood smelled like death that day.

I still didn't understand when they condemned the house and boarded it up a little while before we moved, but I understand now. I understand why her last words to me were so important, even if neither she nor I realized it at the time. Mrs. Maggie had told me that night that Tom had come home. Dude, Hunter. I'm just trying to, I'm trying to. Hunter, don't leave me. Don't leave me right now. I'm about to cry. Mrs. Maggie had told me that night that Tom had come home.

But I know now who had really moved in. Just as I know now why I never saw her body brought out on a stretcher. The bags weren't filled with garbage. Wonder why not tonight. I'm about to cry. I think I am crying. I'm so scared right now. Dude.

This is the most afraid I've been of a story in a long time. Yeah, I was going to say, this is by far the scariest thing we've ever read. At least in terms of text, this is by far the scariest story. There's a man following them through a woods who draws pictures of them together, puts it in the kid's pocket. He comes to this old woman's house and then murders her, rips her into pieces. Wonder why not tonight, though. Because Tom came home.

Sure. I guess that's true. She's out being strange and she goes, hello? And it's like, oh, hi, you want us to come in? She's like, no, not tonight. Tom's home tonight. So tonight I'm going to go be with Tom. So whatever this guy is, he knows the place the kids get in and out of the dock. He follows them through the woods, running as they get close to the water, leaves a message in his shorts, and then goes to the woman that they stay with and tears her to pieces.

So you think, and this is, it could be obvious, but you think that this entity that killed Mrs. Maggie, you think that it's the one who left the drawing in the pocket. You think there's any possibility that Maggie could have been the person to draw that and put it into the kid's pocket? Maybe. It would depend on what 1516 means. That's what I'm wondering as well. That's still stuff that maybe it might become more apparent later. But I would lean towards...

I would lean towards the entity doing it as well. I would lean towards the entity because the entity that obsesses over this boy, takes pictures of him, lives in his old house, is the one more likely to draw a picture of them holding hands. Right. Yeah.

I like how we refer to it as the entity, even though nothing supernatural has happened, but it feels so alien, you know? It does. It does. It's because it's so mysterious that I refuse to just be like the man or even like the woman or something like that. It feels more appropriate. I mean, we're on part five of six. I'm just saying, let's just keep going. Yeah. Yeah.

We're here. I'm so scared. You know what I mean? I'm invested. I don't want to... There's a lot of wind in these sails right now. I'm fucking scared. Oh.

I think I want I'm also wondering where this ends up, where we what we keep learning. I'm so I'm hooked. I'm very, very about to throw up. All right. Part five screens. It's been a emotional roller coaster. We had to take a nice little potty break because it's been a long recording. But let me tell you, it was the spookiest potty break I've ever had. I will say whenever I get scared, I hate walking around, especially somewhere really quiet. Yeah.

Usually if I get scared, I'll put on like, you know, just like random stuff, right? Like, I don't know, like just the office or something. Just like have it as background noise or something like that. Yeah.

And whenever you're recording, you can't do that because it interrupts the audio. So I'm just like walking around like tiptoeing, like, oh my God, it's so deathly silent. You know, someone helped me. Something weird. That's always been like a fear of mine is when I'm in situations where I'm like stressed out. It's really quiet. I don't like making noise, you know, like,

Like if I'm in a quiet area, I feel like if I step too loud, something bad's going to happen. Literally. Yeah, you tiptoe. It's the craziest thing. And like, so right now I'm alone. My wife's asleep. I confirmed she is alive during the break. Like I'm the only one awake in the house and I feel weird that I'm having to speak into the microphone because I feel like something's going to get me because I'm making too much noise. Well, I'll tell you, you really were...

You fucked me up, dude. With the whole deal when you said, did you hear that tapping? That was so cruel. I just want to say that. Look, I swear I heard something. That was so cruel. I thought it was something on your end, which is why I asked. I swear I wasn't doing that to just be mean.

I think in the footage, if we go back and look back when you say that, my eyes just widened. Did you hear that tapping? I'm pretty sure, because I didn't respond for a second, I'm pretty sure my eyes just went as far open as they possibly could. I'm going to set here with one ear off.

of the headset. Well, now I can hear myself talking. I'm too immersed now. If they come get me now, I'm fully immersed at least. Is there anything to your back? I know there's a fake closet door. Is there anything real to your back? It's all fake. It's all fake. And actually what's nice is I have my OBS up so I can actually see myself and see if there's anything behind me. And then my desk faces my door. I don't do... I used to do the thing where my desk was... Like, my desk...

um or my the door entering to my room was behind me i can't do that anymore i refuse to so mine my setup's like that it's to the back right of me it's like over my right shoulder so i'm like i'm sitting in my chair angled so i can like see yeah your sight your side eyeing your door yeah you have to dude you have to doing that as i'm reading too i'm like glancing back and forth this is a yeah i really like this story i haven't been this like

It's the way it's written. It's the way everything's described. I haven't been this scared by a narrative in a while. The best thing is it's building anticipation beautifully. And not only that, it ends... Each section has ended in such a beautiful...

Perfect moment. And by beautiful and perfect, I just mean like very haunting, very chilling. It is not over the top. It has been a like perfect symphony of scares so far. It's how it feels. And honestly, like we're getting in that we're last two parts. I mean, we're rounding, we're rounding third base and heading home right now. And I'm, I'm so excited to see what else that may be, what other pieces are going to be stacked together. And this part five is called screens. All right, let's get this. Let's get this show on the road, huh?

The quicker I get it done with, the quicker it's over. The quicker I can be scared. The quicker I can go and watch shitty reality television and act like, la la la la, nothing even happened. I'm totally fine. The quicker I hang up on this call and then I'm completely alone in this chair. You go in your room and you're like, babe, do you want to watch like

Celebrity feud or something? You want to watch Jeopardy? Yeah, she has to go perform a surgery at like 7am and I wake her up. There's no waking her up. Just selfishly wake her up. Can you hold my hand and watch a funny video? Could you please watch this video with me? You're like watching TikToks as loud as you possibly can right by her.

I have to be up in three hours. You're like, but it's a funny dog. This all goes back to the Kimber Kyle relationship. It's all absolutely. We all every man listening to this are really not even to delineate to genders. I was going to say the the any person listening to this to the relationship. If you listen to this podcast, you better end up a Kyle in your relationship. That's all I have to say. End up like Kyle. End up like Kyle. All right. Here we go. Screens. Let's get it.

Part four. I've intentionally withheld some details from a lot of my stories. I've let my hopes concerning the way things might influence my evaluation of the way they actually are. I don't think there's any point to that anymore. At the end of the summer. What? I said no. I don't think that there's any hope to that. No, absolutely not. Things aren't going to get better. Everything's bad and we're dying. Yeah. At the end of the summer between kindergarten and first grade, I caught the stomach flu.

This has all of the components of the regular flu. However, with the stomach flu, you throw up in a bucket and not the toilet because you are sitting on it. The sickness gets purged from both ends. This lasted for about 10 days, but just before it had passed, the sickness was granted an extension in the form of pink eye. My eyelids were so fused together by the dried mucus generated during the night that the first day I woke with the infection, I thought I had gone blind.

When I started first grade, I had a kink in my neck from 10 days of bed rest and two swollen bloodshot eyes. Josh was in another group and didn't have my lunch, so in a cafeteria bursting with 200 kids, I still had a table to myself.

Something else I like that's kind of an interesting point. In the intros and outros to each section, he speaks with like an eloquence. Like he's like a college level writer, you know, like his verbiage, his adjectives. But as soon as he gets to the stories as a kid, it gets to much simpler. Like I saw this, this happened. It's an interesting, there's like a transition in the form of writing between his framing device for what he's about to say and the actual narrative.

Yeah, I mean, it's important because it helps establish the age of the character. Going back to the simplicity, you're able to put yourself in the shoes of this child. It easily transitions between, like, rider now, rider then. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Really great writing, too, like, from a technical level. Good stuff.

Alex.

Alex was in the third grade and was bigger than most of the other kids. The kids in any grade. Around the third week of school, he started sitting with me at lunch, and this put an immediate end to the shortage of my food supply. He was nice enough, but he seemed kind of slow. We never really talked at length except for when I finally decided to ask why he had been sitting with me. He had a crush on Josh's sister, Veronica.

Okay, so that's what I mean. So, like, in the places before in the intro, he says stuff like, this dynamic persisted. Or the kids who get bullied, lest they have some of that aggression directed toward themselves. And then after this, it's going to transition back into, like, basic kid speak, whatever. It's just a nice note. Anyway, Veronica was in the fourth grade and was probably the prettiest girl in the school. Even as a six-year-old, what'd you say? Yeah.

say that again i just i just said yeah oh no you better be careful as a 47 year old man i know i know how to get out of any social event yeah just one sim just one simple yeah yeah it's like actually you know what i think we'll be fine we'll pick them up don't don't don't worry about it um veronica was in fourth grade

It was probably the prettiest girl in the school. Even as a six-year-old who fully endorsed the notion that girls were disgusting, I still knew how pretty Veronica was. When she was in third grade, Josh told me two boys had actually gotten into a physical fight which erupted out of an argument concerning the significance of the messages she had written in their yearbooks. One of the boys eventually hit the other in the forehead with the corner of the yearbook and the wound required stitches to close.

While not one of those two boys, Alex, wanted her to like him and confess that he knew Josh and I were best friends, I gathered that he had hoped that I would convey his ostensibly philanthropic deed to Veronica and that she would presumably be so moved by his selflessness that she'd take an interest in him. I take back everything I said about the...

There's that classic six-year-old banter. Ostensibly philanthropic, yeah. Never mind. Anyway, I thought I was onto something. I was just yapping. If I told her, he would continue to sit with me for as long as I needed him to.

Because this was during the time when Josh mostly stayed at my house, building the raft and navigating tributary with me, I didn't have the chance to bring it up to Veronica because I simply didn't see her. I told Josh about it and he made fun of Alex, but said he would tell his sister since I wanted him to.

I doubted that he would. Josh was annoyed that people seemed to be so taken with his sister. I remember him calling her an ugly crow. That's a bit much. Jesus. Over a fourth grade girl. Like that's a bit. Ugly crow. Bird. Bird.

I never said anything to Josh, but I remember wanting to say, even then, that she was pretty and would one day be beautiful. I was right. Oh, okay. Looks like our author was putting the moves on Veronica, or wanted to at least. Okay.

When I was 15, I was seeing a movie at a place my friends and I had come to called the Dirt Theater. It was probably nice at some point, but time and neglect had weathered the place severely. The theater had movable tables and chairs on a level floor, so when the theater was full, there were very few places you could sit and see the whole screen. The theater was still open, I imagine for three reasons. One, it was cheap to see a movie there. Two, they showed a different cult movie twice a month at midnight. And three, they sold beer to underage kids during the midnight showings.

I went for the first two, and that night they were showing Scanners by David Cronenberg for $1. Bro, I would have been in there. Absolutely. I would have been so up in there. They show movies twice a month. A dollar for Scanners? Bro, this is the coolest. What an event. This kid doesn't appreciate what he has. You know what? I would pay...

$100 to see scanners in theaters Like man Especially if you did something I would pay regular I do pay regular price still To go to my local theater that does niche stuff like that It's always fun It's always a great time to just be like I just want to get out of the house and go with some friends It's always fun I go to the movies all the time I go by myself too which is sad But when my wife's at work I'm like huh I'm going to go watch this And they show like They'll show classic horror movies like Alien and stuff like that I'm always there

So this is dope. All right. Almost makes me forget how terrifying the story is. My friends and I were sitting in the very back. I wanted to sit closer to the front for a better view, but Ryan had driven us so I relented. Ryan hasn't been mentioned yet, has he? It's a new name, right? I don't think so. Yeah, I think Veronica and Ryan both feel new. Okay. A couple minutes before the movie started, a group of girls walked in.

They were all pretty attractive, but whatever beauty they might have had was eclipsed by the girl with the dirty blonde hair, even though I had only caught a glimpse of her profile. As she turned to move her... As she turned to move her... As she...

What's cooking good looking? You better hope it says she's 19. The 42-year-old woman walked up. Oh, thank God. Oh, that makes her only a couple decades younger than me. Just a couple. I'm still a cradle snatcher. She turned to move her seat. I caught a full view of her face, which gave me the feeling of butterflies in my stomach. It was Veronica.

Fuck! What? I thought it was an older dick. It doesn't matter. I thought it was an older dick. No, it was Veronica. That's why I was like, bro. I know, I know. I goofed. It was a goof. That YouTuber's slipping out of you. No, no, no. Quick, someone check his Twitter DMs. No, no! Wait, wait, wait. No, no, no, no. I didn't see him.

I hadn't seen her in a long time. Josh and I saw progressively less of one another after we snuck out to my old house that night when we were 10. And usually when I'd visit him, she'd be out with friends. While everyone stared at the screen, I stared at Veronica. Only looking away when the feeling that I was being a creep overcame me. But that feeling would quickly subside and my eyes would return to her. She really was beautiful. Just like I had thought she'd be when I was a kid.

When the credits started to roll, my friends got up and left. There was only one exit, and they didn't want to be trapped waiting for the crowd to clear. I lingered in hopes of catching Veronica's attention. As she and her friends walked by, I took a chance. He's six, right? No, dude, this is when he's 15. Oh, okay. They're getting beer at a movie theater for scanners. Yeah, no, no, no. He went for the first two.

I don't know. I still thought he was young. I'm sorry. So he's 15. No, no, no. He says, yeah, yeah. He says when I, he opens the section says when I was 15, I was seeing a movie. Okay. That's where this starts. So Veronica's 18 here. Cause you know what it was is I, I got, I got caught up because it was at the end of the summer between kindergarten and first grade. I caught the stomach flu. I got that. That's what made me. So that, so that was the opening where it's saying that guy. And then when I was 15, I was seeing a movie. I know I fucked up. I fucked up big time. Yeah. Fuck. Be better.

Alright, so 15 year old protagonist Hey Veronica Immediately the spirit of like a nasally acne face 15 year old possesses you I'm like kinda cool She turned towards me looking a little startled Yeah? I got out of my seat and stepped a little into the light coming in through the open door It's me Josh's old friend from way back How have you been?

Oh my god, hey, it's been so long! Okay, so I just want you to know that in my head, when he was like, "Oh, dirty blonde beautiful," my brain went to, uh, what's that girl's name? Sydney Sweeney, right? Yeah, yeah. So now I'm imagining the noises you're making coming out of Sydney Sweeney. That kind of sounds like Sydney Sweeney, right? Oh my god, hey! It's been so long! Sure thing, buddy. Yeah, I was in euphoria.

Madame Web! Madame Web! She motioned to her friends that she'd be out in a second. Yeah, a few years at least. Not since the last time I stayed over with Josh. How is he anyway? Hey, that's right. I remember all you guys' games. Do you still play Ninja Turtles with your friends? She laughed a little and I blushed. No! No, I'm not a kid anymore.

Me and my friends play X-Men now. I was really hoping she'd laugh. Okay, he meant that as a joke. He meant that as a joke. That's better, okay. I was really hoping she'd laugh. She did. You're cute! Do you come to these movies every time? I was still reeling from what she said. Does she really think I'm cute?

Does she really think I'm cute? Does she just mean I was funny? Does she think I'm attractive? I suddenly realized that she had asked me a question and my mind grasped for what it was. Yeah! I said much too loudly. Yeah, I tried to anyway. What about you?

I come here, I come every now and then. My boyfriend- Oh, boo! No! No! Man down, man down! Get him out of there! Aw, shit! Emac, Emac, Emac! I come here every now and then. My boyfriend didn't like these movies, but we just broke up. Oh, we're back! We're back! It was over, but we're back! Let's go!

My boyfriend did not use any of these. Get a team back on the ground. We're going for a second round. But we just broke up, so I plan on coming from now on. That moan. I was trying to be casual, but failed. Oh, well, that's cool. Not that you guys broke up. I just meant that you'd be able to come more often. She laughed again. I tried to recover.

so are you coming the week after next or you know they're supposed to show day of the dead it's really cool yo be here yo okay hold on hold on hold on this girl is described as beautiful she shows up for scanners and then she's like oh i'll be there for day of the dead bro perfect one the bag is there he has to secure it that i will

I will be so mad if she... Look, look. You know what? Take it from a couple married men. You know, we've... Like, I myself have been married for, you know, at least two months at this point. And Hunter has been married at least 40 years, right? So, like...

A long time. Take it from two experts. All of you guys are so focused on like, oh, what does she look like? You know, what she into and stuff. Look, at the end of the day, it's who you're going to be weird with, watch weird movies with, like have strange... Forever. Forever, till you're dead, right? Till one of you die. So...

Because of that, this, the Day of the Dead thing, is infinitely important. The whole attraction, she's hot thing, is window dressing. The fact that she is there for scanners and then wants to see Day of the Dead, she is going from Cronenberg to Romero, that is a prize. That is something he needs to get a hold of. Just advice for the wise. My boy Wendigoon bricked up under the table right now.

I refuse to stand at this point in time. The way, when I first met my wife, when we were friends, it was right before Halloween. And she was like, oh, we're having a watch party for all the Michael Myers movies, all the Michael Myers Halloween. Do you want to come over? And I was like, oh, you're having it? She's like, yeah, I love all the old slasher flicks. Like, done. Here we are. I'm like, that one's not getting away.

Then she was creeped out because you said, you said the magic words. Ring-a-ding-ding, you said the magic words. You're saying it in like a Jesse Pinkman voice. Yeah. Hey, yo, you got Michael Myers? Hey, yo. Hey, yo. Mr. White. Yo, wait. You're going to be watching slasher movies on Halloween? Ah, shit. I think I'm in love. Oh.

Yeah, that's pretty much how it went. That's about right. Okay, so anyway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, continue. She smiled. Yeah, yeah, you're right. You said the L here. She smiled and I was about to suggest that maybe we could sit together when she quickly closed the space between us and hugged me. Oh. Oh, goddamn. It was really good to see you. She said with her arms around me.

I was trying to think of what to say when I realized the biggest problem was that I had forgotten how to talk. Luckily, Ryan, who I could hear approaching from the hallway, came in and spoke for me. Dude, you know the movie's over, right? Let's get the fuck out of here. Oh, yeah! Oh!

Veronica let go and said that she'd see me next time. She was played out of the room by the porn music Ryan was making with his mouth. I was furious, but it dissipated as soon as I heard Veronica laughing in the lobby. So because of this also, so he hasn't seen Josh in a while. Yeah, because he says, remember the...

Part two opens and he's like, I didn't really keep up with Josh after we were 10 or after fifth grade or whatever he says. Yeah, it's been a while. Just suspicious is all. Well, he says, he said there it was after the house thing. So maybe they just, they were afraid to go out and do stuff together in the woods. So they just naturally drifted apart. Yeah, just drifted apart. Yeah, you're probably right. I've got a buddy who like, I, from the time I was in like middle school, we spent like for several years, we would do that kind of thing. Go out in the woods, you know, go hunt stuff or whatever. And,

I haven't talked to that guy in a long time. It'd be good to hit him back up because this is kind of a lot of the dynamic of him and Josh reminds me of him. But yeah, people just drift apart. It happens.

Yeah. The author of this story, Dathan, is that his name? Yeah, Dathan Arbuck. Yeah. This guy definitely is a guy who hung out with other guys a lot growing up because all the dynamics, all of the, oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Hello. Hello, Mr. Monster Man. That's all like, yeah. Hey, I think Dathan knows how to bust some balls. I think so.

I think he does. Yeah. That's our takeaway. I think he knows how to bust some balls. That Dathan guy? Real ball buster. That's what they used to call him. Hey, Dathan, stop busting my balls so hard. Oh, God. All right. I was furious by this favor. You're laughing. Day of the Dead couldn't come soon enough.

Ryan's family was going out of town, so he wouldn't be able to drive us, and the other friends I was with that night didn't have cars. A couple of days before the movie, I asked my mom if she could take me. She responded almost immediately by denying my request, but I persisted, and she picked up on the desperation in my voice. She asked why I wanted to go so badly, since I had seen the movie before, and I hesitated before saying that I was hoping to see a girl there. She smiled and asked playfully if she knew the girl, and I reluctantly told her it was Veronica.

The smile disappeared from her face and she coldly said no. Oh, oh, interesting. Okay, that was an unexpected play, right? That's some Baraska shit right there. That is. That is. Yeah, yeah. Okay, interesting. I decided that I would call Veronica to see if she could pick me up. I had no idea if she still lived at home, but it was worth a try.

But then I realized that Josh might answer. I hadn't talked to him in almost three years. And if he answered, I obviously couldn't ask to talk to his sister. I felt guilty for calling to speak with Veronica and not Josh, but I dismissed that feeling quickly. Josh hadn't called me in years either. I picked up the phone and dialed the number that was still embedded in my muscle memory from having dialed it so often all those years ago. It rang several times before someone picked up. It wasn't Josh.

I felt a mixture of both relief and disappointment. I realized in that second that I really missed Josh. I would call after this weekend and talk to him, but this was my only chance to see if Veronica could or would take me, so I asked for her. The person told me I dialed the wrong number. I repeated the number back to her, and she confirmed. She said they must have changed their number, and I agreed. I apologized for the disturbance and hung up. I was suddenly intensely sad because now I couldn't contact Josh even if I wanted to.

I felt terrible for having been afraid that he might answer the phone. He had been my very best friend. I realized that the only way I could be put back in touch with him would be through Veronica. So now, not that I needed one, I had another reason to see her. I told my mom the day before the movie that I was no longer concerned with going, but was hoping she could drop me off at my friend Chris's house.

She relented and dropped me off that Saturday a couple of hours before the movie. My plan was to walk from his house to the theater since he only lived about a half mile away. They went to church early on Sunday, so his parents would go to sleep early Saturday night. And Chris was fine with not coming with me since he had planned on chatting with this girl he met online.

He said that the walk back to his house would be even lonelier after she laughed in my face when I tried to kiss her. And I told him not to electrocute himself when he tried to have sex with his computer. Yeah, that's good. That's good. I left his house at 1115. I tried to pace myself so I'd get there just a little before the movie. I was going by myself and so I didn't want to just hang around there waiting.

On the way to the theater, I figured that if Veronica showed up at all, it would be too lucky for us to arrive at the same time, so I debated whether I should wait outside or just go in. Both had their pros and cons. As I was grappling with these concerns, I noticed that the steady stream of streaking car lights that had been overtaking me had been replaced by a single, constant spotlight that refused to pass.

The road wasn't illuminated by streetlights, so I was walking in the grass with the road about two feet to my left. I stepped a little more to my right and craned my neck over my left shoulder to see what was behind me. The car had stopped about ten feet behind me. So, okay, so I want to... This story is so interesting because it careens from funny jokes, ha ha, to that line when he said, um...

The car lights had been replaced by a single constant spotlight that refused to pass. Immediately, you're back in. Like, you're shaken with, like, an ice bucket back into, like, he's being stalked by a man in the woods who is taking pictures of him. You're back in the horror. Well, I was going to say, it's also just another thing where it feels like an unexpected person watching you. You don't know who it is. Yeah. It's just that theme keeps popping up, and it's just, it's a fun North Star that this story has. I agree.

All I could see were the violently bright headlights that were cutting through the otherwise... Stygian? Stygian? I have no idea what that word is. I have no idea. I'm just going to say otherwise. Maybe like blank surroundings. Is this a new word? Maybe like dark surroundings? Did I just find a new word? What does that mean? Relating to the Styx River. Oh! Like... Stygian. Like the Styx from Greek mythology. Very dark. Like the river of the dead. So I'm guessing just like empty trees then? Referring to branches? Like Styx? Like in that? Yeah.

Or deathly. Yeah, like deathly. Like there's death. Like you feel empty. Like maybe it's winter. All the trees are dead. You know, it's cold. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good word. I like that word. Thank you, story. All right, anyway. Stygian. Stygian surroundings. Yeah, that's a good one. I'm keeping that. That's going in my pocket. I thought that it might be one of Chris's parents. Maybe they had come to check in on us and see that I was gone. It wouldn't have taken much pressing for Chris to confess. I took one step toward the car.

And it broke its paws and started driving towards me at a slow pace. It passed me and I saw that it wasn't Chris's parents' car or any car that I recognized for that matter. I tried to see the driver, but it was too dark and my pupils had shrunk when faced with the blinding lights from the car just moments before. They adjusted enough so that I could see a tremendous crack in the back window of the car as it drove away. I didn't think much of the whole affair. Some people find it fun to scare other people. I'd often hide around corners and jump out at my mom after all.

You naive bastard. You fool. Oh, yeah. Every time.

Anytime a woman's mentioned. Anytime a singular woman is mentioned, I'm just like, oh my god. Oh yeah, a woman? McQueen. McQueen. Girls? Oh, brother. Oh, brother. Ladies even? Oh, get it out of here. Ladies, ladies, ladies. Who called in the smoke show? Ooh. I waved to her and walked to close the distance.

She smiled and asked if my friends were already inside. I said that they weren't and realized that this must seem like I was trying to make this a date. She didn't seem bothered by that, nor was she bothered when I handed her the ticket I'd already bought. She looked at me quizzically, and I said...

don't worry i'm rich she laughed and went inside i bought us one popcorn and two drinks and spent most of the movie debating whether or not i should time reaching my hand into the popcorn bag which she reached in so they would touch for okay hold on real quick fellas he's playing it way too fast

That kind of move, that's like after your first or second confirmed date. You don't trick a girl into showing up with friends. The friends aren't there, and then you're trying to hold her hand way too fast.

I legitimately thought that you were going to say something about putting your penis in the popcorn bucket. No, no, of course not. That's the third day. Guys, he's playing it all wrong. He's playing it all wrong. You cut a hole in the... Yeah, yeah. You get the dune popcorn bucket. Perfect. What'd you expect?

In the popcorn bag she reached in so they would touch. She seemed to enjoy the movie, and before I knew it, it was over. We didn't linger in the theater, and because this was a midnight show, we couldn't loiter in the lobby, so we walked outside. The parking lot of the theater was big because it connected with the mall that had gone out of business. Not wanting the night to be over just yet, I continued the conversation while casually walking toward the old mall. As we were about to round the corner and leave the theater out of sight, I looked back and saw that her car...

Oh no, wasn't the only one left in the parking lot. The other one had a large crack in the back window. Oh shit. My immediate uneasiness turned to understanding. That makes a lot of sense. The driver of that car works here and must have figured out I was on my way to the movie. Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. That's it. That's why he was slowing down on the road. This guy who works at a movie theater. I bet you this kid's walking to my movie theater right now. Oh, there's a guy on the road? Must be movie night. Let's go. Yeah. Yeah. I'm getting here for my shift at 11.50.

It's fine. Don't worry about it. It's fine. Injecting real horror into the life of a horror fan seemed like an obvious move. Alright. He was smarter when he was six. Yep. Feels like it. You know what it is? You know what it is? Unironically, it's the girl. It's Veronica. Yeah, it makes you dumb. Oh, yeah, yeah. That guy works here. What's up? What's good, bro? Hey, funny prank. Very funny. You should get that window fixed.

We walked around the mall and talked about the movie. I told her that I thought day of the dead was better than dawn of the dead. Okay. All right. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Immediately. All right. Everything. All right. I want this kid to get kidnapped now. After that, after that take immediately get out of here.

But she refused to agree. Okay. Good woman. She's too good for it. Good woman. Way too good for it. That's a good woman. True. I told her of when I called her old number and about my dilemma about who would answer the phone. She didn't find it as funny as I now did, but she took my phone and put her number in it. Oh. Oh. Oh, okay. She commented that it might be the worst cell phone she'd ever seen. Her evaluation wasn't rescinded when I told her I couldn't even receive pictures on it.

I called her so she'd have my number and she programmed it in. Wow. Okay. She told me that she was graduating, but she hadn't done well in school so far that year. So she wasn't sure if she'd even get into college. I told her to attach a picture of herself to the application and they paired to go there just so they could look at her. Jesus. Way too fast. This guy is burning rubber to get. I bet if you take a picture of herself, put her on the application again, it gets you so pretty. Oh my God. Huh?

She didn't laugh at that one, and I thought she might be offended. She might have thought I was implying that she couldn't get in based on her intelligence. Yeah, that's what women love. Women who are trying to go to college, be powerful, career-oriented, they love being told that their looks is what will get them far. You might not be very smart, but you got some nice fucking knockers on you. Is this what it feels like? Is this what it feels like?

she's like okay thanks okay he's like yeah anyways i'll be here up next weekend to watch a dollar film at midnight i hope i see you yeah you're gonna be back oh i hear they're playing um another movie that makes me a hellraiser or something yeah that's cool oh i nervously glanced at her and she was just smiling and even in this poor light i could see that she was blushing

I wanted to hold her hand, but I didn't. So the first good move he's done, not touching her immediately. Don't touch her. Don't touch her. Don't do it. Don't do it. Don't do it. As we walked down the final side of the mall back toward the theater, I asked her about Josh. She told me she didn't want to talk about it. Oh, I asked her if he was at least doing all right, but she just said, I don't know. Hmm.

I figured Josh must have taken a wrong turn somewhere and started getting into trouble. I felt bad. I felt guilty. As we approached the parking lot, I noticed that the car with the cracked back window was gone and that her car was now the only one in the parking lot. She asked me if I needed a ride, and even though I really didn't, I said that I'd appreciate it. I had drunk my whole soda during the movie, and all the walking was putting pressure on my bladder. I knew that I could wait until I was back at Chris's, but I had decided that I was going to try to kiss her when she dropped me off. Dude.

Dude. Playing with fire. Way too fast. And I didn't want this biological nagging to rush me out of the car. This would be my first kiss. Oh gosh. Dude, you never kissed a girl. It's like, hey, I'm going to show up with some friends. Doesn't show up with any friends. Gets a ride, going to kiss her. Ain't no way. I'm focusing on the relationship aspect of this because it takes me away from the scary part.

I could think of no ruse to conceal what I needed to do. The theater had long closed, so I only had one option. I told her that I was going to go behind the theater to piss, but that I'd be back in two shakes.

It was obvious that I thought it was hilarious and she seemed to laugh more at how funny I found it than at how funny it clearly was. What a fucking dork. I'll be back in two shakes. What an actual fucking dork. He's like, I'll be back in two shakes. She's like, yeah. You get it? It's a joke about it. On the way toward the theater, I stopped and turned toward her.

I asked her if Josh had ever told her that kid named Alex had done something nice for me. She paused to think for a moment and said that he had. She inquired as to why I'd asked, but I said it was nothing. Josh really was a good friend. When I went to go behind the theater. Oh, that's a cute note. Josh mentioned it to her. Yeah. Just because he wanted to. That's sweet.

When I went to go behind the theater, I realized that there was a chain link fence extending off and running parallel to the walls of the building. Where I stood, she could still see me and the fence seemed to stretch on endlessly. So I thought I'd just hop it, duck out of sight and return as quickly as I could. It may have been too much of an effort, but I thought it polite. At least he didn't pee standing in front of her. I climbed the fence and walked just a little ways until I was out of sight and urinated.

For a moment, the only sounds were the crickets in the grass behind me and the collision of liquid and cement. These sounds were overpowered by a noise that I can still hear when it's quiet. There are no other noises to distract my ears. In the distance, I heard a faint screeching. Oh, no, man. In the distance, I heard a faint screeching which quickly subsided, only to be replaced with a cascade of thundering vibrations. I realized quickly enough what it was. It was a car.

The growling of the engine got louder, and then I thought, no, not louder, closer. As soon as I realized this, I started back toward the fence, but before I could get very far at all, I hear a brief, truncated scream, and the roar of the engine terminated in a deafening thud. I started running, but after only two or three steps, I was tripped by a loose piece of stone and fell hard and fast onto the concrete, my head striking the corner of a chair as I fell.

I was dazed for maybe 30 seconds, but the renewed rumbling of the engine drew my senses back and my equilibrium was restored by adrenaline. I redoubled my efforts. I was worried that whoever had crashed the car might harass Veronica. As I was climbing over the fence, I saw that there was still only one car in the parking lot. I didn't see any evidence of a crash. I thought that I might have misjudged its direction or proximity. As I ran towards Veronica's car and as my orientation changed, I saw what the car had hit.

my legs stopped working almost completely. It was Veronica. No, no. Her car was sitting between us, and as I closed the distance and walked around her, she came fully into view. Her body was twisted and crumbled like a discarded figure meant to represent a catalog of things the human body cannot do. I could see the bone of her right shin cutting through her jeans, and her left arm was wrapped so hard around the back of her neck that her hand fell on her right breast.

Her head was craned back and her mouth hung widely open toward the sky. There was so much blood. As I looked at her, I actually found it hard to discern whether she was laying on her back or her stomach. And this optical illusion made me feel sick. When you are confronted with something in the world that simply doesn't belong, your mind tries to convince itself that it's dreaming. And to that end, it provides you with that distinct sense of all things moving slowly as if through sap. In that moment, I honestly felt that I would wake up any minute.

Oh, man. Yeah.

in my hand. She was trying to adjust her body to get it into its natural position, but with every spasm and jerk, I could hear the cracking and grinding of her bones. Without thinking, I scrambled over to her and put my face over hers and just said, "Veronica, don't move. Don't move, okay? Just stay still. Don't move, Veronica. Please, just don't move."

I kept saying it, but the words started to fall apart as tears came streaming down my face. I opened her phone. It still worked. It was still on the screen where she had saved my number, and when I saw that, I felt my heart break a little. I called 911 and waited with her, telling her that she would be okay, and feeling guilty for lying to her every time I said it.

When the sound of sirens tore through the air, she seemed to become more alert. She had remained conscious since I found her, but now more of the light was coming back into her eyes. Her brain was still protecting her from pain, though it looked as if it was finally allowing her to become aware that something was terribly wrong with her. Her eyes rolled over to mine and her lips moved. She was struggling, but I heard her. He... picture... my picture... he took it. Oh! Dude...

What a callback. Wow. Oh, I didn't understand what she meant. So I said the only thing I could. I'm so sorry, Veronica. I rode with her in the ambulance where she finally lost consciousness. I waited in the room that they had reserved for her. I still had her phone. So I put it in her purse and I called my mom from the hospital phone. It was about 4 a.m. I told her that I was fine, but that Veronica was not. She cursed at me and said she'd be right there. But I told her I wasn't leaving until Veronica was out of surgery. She said she'd come anyway.

My mom and I didn't speak that much. I told her I was sorry for lying, and she said that we'd talk about that later. I think that had we talked more in that room, if I had just told her about boxes or the night with the raft, if she had just told me more of what she knew, I think that things would have changed. But we sat there in silence. She told me that she loved me and that I could call her whenever I wanted her to come get me. As my mom was leaving, Veronica's parents rushed in.

Her dad and my mom exchanged a few words that appeared to be quite serious while Veronica's mother talked to the person at the desk. Hmm. There's something about Josh and the family. There's some connection. Yeah, there's something that we just don't know yet. I'm curious. Her mother was a nurse but didn't work at this hospital. I'm sure that she had tried to get Veronica transferred, but her condition was prohibitive. While we waited, the police came in and talked to each of us. I told them what happened. They made some notes and then they left.

She came out of surgery and 90% of her body was covered in a thick white cast. Her right arm was free, but the rest of her body was bound like a cocoon. She was still under, but I remembered how I felt when I had my cast before kindergarten. I asked a nurse for a marker, but I couldn't think of anything to write. I slept in a chair in the corner and went home the next day. Man, that's tragic. Yeah, horrible. Yeah, I came back every afternoon for several days.

At some point, they had moved another patient into a room and set up a screen around Veronica's bed to act as a partition. She didn't seem to be feeling better, but she had more moments of lucidity. But even during these periods, we wouldn't really talk. Her jaw had been broken by the car, so the doctors had wired it shut. I sat with her for a while, but there was nothing much I could say.

I got up and walked over to her. I kissed her on the forehead. That's a bit weird. I kissed her on the forehead and she whispered through her clenched teeth. Josh. This surprised me a little, but I looked at her and said, Has he not come to see you? No. I found myself really irritated. Even if Josh had been getting into trouble, he should still come see his sister. I thought. I was about to express this when she said, No, Josh, he ran away. I should have told you.

I felt my blood turn to ice. When? When did this happen? When he was 13. Oh no. I know. Oh no. Did he leave a note or something? Oh no. On his pillow. Oh! Brutal. Oh! What's crazy is that the first fucking story we read, bro, he quote unquote, you know, in the woods left a note saying that he ran away. Oh no.

Because he hated his friend. You know what I mean? Josh got abducted. He got taken out there to the woods. Oh, man. Oh, my heart dropped. He hasn't seen his friend in years. Oh, gosh. Whatever that thing was got him. He had no idea. It's the exact same thing. I feel sick. That's like, oh, gosh. Yeah. It's the exact same thing that you're talking about. You fall out of favor with friends or you just kind of like fall out of friendship and you never even know. And also, years pass so fast.

Hey, you know, how would you know? But man, man, brutal. Oh my gosh, dude. Tragic, tragic. Oh, that thing. God. And what does it do with people? What does it want? I don't know. Takes them out to the woods, puts them in the middle of the thorns. Like what? We don't even know what it is. This thing. We have no idea what it even is. Oh gosh. This is great. Okay.

So think about it. We are this far into the narrative and there's still so many pertinent questions. Not in a way that it's not answering anything, in a way that it's still mysterious. We've had so much visuals of things that are happening, so much tense moments, but yet we still don't know what it is and it's still gripping. It's very interesting. This is good. This is great. All right. She started crying and I followed her, but I think now we were crying for different reasons, even if I didn't realize it.

At this point, there were a lot of things I still didn't remember about my childhood. And there were a lot of connections I hadn't yet made. I told her I had to go, but that she could text me anytime. This is an interesting point. Like he, all these stories he's relaying to us now took him a long time to come up with. Right. So in these, like that 15 year old author, I'm going to call him Dathan. Cause that's the author's name. That 15 year old Dathan within the story is like,

Huh? Yeah, that's kind of like, because remember he opens and says, I just remembered this story recently. So he doesn't consciously remember that he had written the note and put it on the pillow or that something did when it kidnapped him, right? It's just kind of a thought in the back of his mind that he maybe feels glimpses of, but doesn't get yet. That adds another layer of terror. You know exactly what happened, but you can't remember. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, also just any kind of tragic event, anything that you do. I mean, like, you know, people bury those things deep down. You know, your brain subconsciously just erases it. It's just crazy, man. You don't. Oh, man. Just the idea of this creature. Like, you don't remember me. The one who was there, the one who what carried you at night. You don't remember. Oh, gosh, dude. Huh? Huh? I'm getting chills. All right. I got a text back from her the next day.

ah i'm kind of a little uh wigged out right now just the thought of like all these insane events happening to you and yeah i mean it's also it's extremely emotional it's incredibly emotional all that happens to you and you just can't remember but and now it's happening again and you still can't remember but like oh man it's a whew all right

I got a text from her the next day telling me not to come back. I asked why and she said she didn't want me to see her like that again. I agreed begrudgingly. We texted each other every day, though I kept this from my mom because I knew that she didn't like me talking to Veronica.

Usually her texts were fairly short, and mostly only in response to more lengthy texts that I would send her. I tried calling her only once. I was sure she was screening her calls, but hoped I could hear her voice. She picked up and didn't say anything. I could hear how labored her breathing was. About a week after she told me not to come see her anymore, she sent me a text that simply read, I love you. I was filled with so many different emotions, but I responded by expressing the most prevalent one. I replied, I love you too.

She said that she wanted to be with me and that she couldn't wait until she could see me again. She told me that. Why does this feel not real? I know. Something about this feels strange. Does it feel like fictitious to you?

So what makes me suspicious is she texts him, I don't want you to see me like this again. And then keeps sending short responses. And then he calls and whoever picks up the phone listens, doesn't say anything, then hangs up. You hear how labored the breathing is. Labored breathing. Yep. Oh, gosh, man. And then, oh, no. And then they say, I love you to him.

That's what I'm saying, man. Oh, no. It's this creep that's been doing this for years. I love you. Oh, bro. I'm scared. I'm scared again. I wasn't scared because we were joking about, like, cute girls, like, liking movies. And it wasn't scary, but now it's scary again. I'm gripped, dude. I'm here for it. I'm like, man.

She said that she wanted to be with me and that she couldn't wait until she could see me again. She told me that she had been released and was convalescing at her house. These exchanges carried on for several weeks, but every time I asked to come see her, she would say soon. Oh, God. I kept insisting. And the following week, she said that she thought she might be able to make it to the next midnight movie. I couldn't believe it, but she insisted that she would try. I got a text from her the afternoon of the movie saying, see you tonight.

Dude. If her body was mangled, there's just no way. If your body was that mangled. She's dead. She's dead. Absolutely. And now the entity has her phone. It's the same kind of response as the hello thing. You know what I mean? And then to think about this entity that's been stalking him since he was five years old. A decade of following him. Now he has the phone and is like, I love you. See you tonight.

That we hypothetically, that's what I think. That's where I think this is going. I think it's a good call, but I don't know. I mean, I, it's been so up in the air. I'm so right. Yeah. All right. I got Ryan to drive me since Chris's parents had found out what had happened and said, I wasn't welcome at their house anymore. Okay. It wasn't, it wasn't his fault. I mean, sure. He came to stay with Chris and lied to go see a girl, but I mean, like saying he's not welcome is a bit extreme. I think, don't you?

Oh yeah. He said, he said he was coming to see your son so that he could go see a girl at the movie theater. There's no reason to kick him out. But anyway, uh, I explained to Ryan that she might be in bad shape, but that I really cared about her. So to give us some space, he accepted that. And we headed down there. Veronica didn't show. Oh, weird. That's jam. Jeez. Wonder what could happen. I had saved a seat for her right next to me near the exit. So she could get in and out easily. But 10 minutes into the movie, a man slid into the chair.

Here we go. Here we go. I whispered, excuse me, this seat is taken, but he didn't respond at all. He just stared ahead at the screen. I remember wanting to move because there was something wrong with the way he was breathing. There's a labor breathing. I forfeited because I realized that she wasn't coming. I texted her the neck. Ha dude. I texted her the next day asking if she was all right. And I inquired as to why she didn't show the previous night.

She responded with what would turn out to be the last message I'd receive from her. She simply said, See you again. Soon. Hunter. Brutal. I can't, dude. Fucking brutal, man. I don't want to do the podcast anymore. I want to call my mom. I want to watch a silly movie.

Hey, remember when Adam Sandler sent you a sign thing? That was pretty funny, right? That was fun. That was a good time. Let's go back to that. Yeah, remember when it was a funny joke that the kids were going to get creepy pictures in the mail? That was funny. Yeah, good times. Good times. And remember, let's not forget, floats are the balloons of the water. Yeah. And mayonnaise, ha-ha. Remember that? Ha-ha. That was a great time. She was delirious.

And I was worried about her. I sent her several replies reminding her about the movie and saying it was no big deal, but she just stopped replying. I grew increasingly upset over the next several days. I couldn't reach her at her home because I didn't know that number, and I wasn't even sure where they lived. My mood became increasingly depressed, and my mother, who had been really nice as of late, asked me if I was okay. I told her that I hadn't heard from Veronica in days, and I felt all the warmth leave her disposition.

What do you mean? She was supposed to meet me at the movies yesterday. I know it's only been like three weeks since she got hit, but she said that she would try to come. And after that, she just stopped talking to me altogether. She must hate me. Yep. She looked confused and I could read on her face that she was trying to tell if my mind was simply broken. When she saw that it hadn't, her eyes began to water and she pulled me toward her, embracing me. She was beginning to sob.

But it seemed too intense a reaction to my problem, and I had no reason to think that she was particularly cared for Veronica. She drew in a shuddering breath and then said something that still makes me nauseous even now. She said, She had completely broken down, but I knew it wasn't because of Veronica.

I broke the embrace and staggered backwards. My mind was swimming. This wasn't possible. I had just exchanged messages with her yesterday. I could only think to ask one question, and it was probably the most trivial I could ask. Then why was her phone still on? She continued sobbing. She didn't answer. I exploded. Why did it take them so long to shut off her goddamn phone? Crying broke enough to mutter. The pictures. What? Okay.

I would come to find out that her parents thought her phone had been lost in the accident, despite the fact that I had put it in her purse the night she was brought to the hospital. When they retrieved her belongings, the phone was not among them. They intended to contact the phone company at the end of the billing cycle to deactivate the line, but they received a call informing them of a massive impending charge for hundreds of pictures that had been sent from her phone. Oh, God. Pictures. Pictures that were all sent to my phone.

Pictures that I never got because my phone couldn't receive them. They learned that they were all sent after the night she died. They deactivated the phone immediately. I tried not to think about the contents of those pictures, but I remember wondering for some reason whether I would have been in any of them. My mouth went dry, and I felt the painful sting of despair as I thought of the last message I received from her phone. See you again soon. Wow! Oh, man!

it's weird like in a way i mean i'm curious at the end of this i really want to see which one you like the most but in a like in a way i think the build-up has made each of these just get better and better like that that is insane the emotional depth of that one is insane as well i'm just like i can i'm i am in such a state of like paranoid melancholy right now

I'm so scared. This story is so dark. I feel so connected to the main character that I'm sad that these things are happening to him. I need to know what this entity is, but there's no good answer. Are we also to assume that the narrator has been 15 this entire time or is he older? I imagine he's older because he says when I was 15 at the beginning of this segment. So this is such a great story. This is so well-written. This is so well-paced.

I mean, as we come here, I'm curious if this is going to be because I wanted to do a little research after this is done just to kind of do a little final thing of how did he how was he responding to comments and stuff? And also where did I would like to see what the law around it was? Yeah. Yeah. And I think like right here, part six, this is it's titled Friends. This is the last entry of Pen Palace. This is the end. Yeah.

This is it. So I kind of just, let's just dive into it and see if we can't just round this out. And I mean, I have so much I want to say, but I don't want to keep, I want to like keep the momentum rolling. Let's get this show on the road. I'm so scared. For real.

gosh it's so well done it's so well paced i don't want it to end because it's like it's such a good ride um it's been i mean honestly this would be a brilliant mini-series i would love it i would like to look into visual format yeah i would like to also look into what else dathan's put out yeah for real i mean i i don't know if it's going to be something similar to um

my dead girlfriend keeps messaging me where it's just a complete and utter shut off or if there's more stuff but I'm very curious he's earned the investment I'd say anyway part 6 friends on the first day of kindergarten my mother had elected to drive me to school we were both nervous and she wanted to be there with me all the way up to the moment I walked into class it took me a bit longer to get ready in the morning due to my still mending arm

The cast came up a couple inches past my elbow, which meant that I had to cover the entire arm with a specially designed latex bag when I showered. The bag was built to pull tight around the opening in order to seal out any water that might otherwise destroy the cast. Is this also alluding to his broken appendage that he had earlier on the story? Remember he broke it during the summer? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is it. Because he says his first day of kindergarten, so he's still at the cast. Okay.

I had gotten really adept at cinching the bag myself. That morning, however, perhaps due to my excitement or nervousness, I hadn't pulled the strap tight enough and halfway through the shower I could feel water pooling inside the bag around my fingers. I jumped out and tore the latex shield away but could feel that the previously rigid plaster had become soft after absorbing the water. Because there's no way to effectively clean the area between your body and the cast, the dead skin that would normally have fallen away merely sets there.

When stirred by moisture like sweat, it emits an odor, and apparently this odor is proportionate to the amount of moisture introduced. Because soon after I began attempting to dry it, I was struck by the powerful stench of rot. As I continued to frantically rub it with the towel, it began to disintegrate.

I was growing increasingly distressed. I had put as much effort as a child could into this very first day of school. I had sat with my mom picking out my clothes the night before. I had spent a great deal of time picking out my backpack, and I had become exceedingly excited to show everyone my lunchbox that had the Ninja Turtles on it. I had fought... Gosh, man. I just... That... Ugh.

That, I don't know, that hits me like a truck because it's a child being, like we say an entity, but what's most likely a person, right? Like a predator. And it's a child who just wants to wear an outfit to kindergarten and to show off his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunchbox.

And there's a monster. You know, I mean, there's a thing, too, about so many things of the ways that these... It's just little touchbacks. Like, on the last one, what was the thing that Veronica said? Do you still watch Ninja Turtles? Yeah. Right? And she's like, no, I watch X-Men now. It's just like the little... Yeah. It's just the little intricacies of, like, I wanted to show off the ninja. It does time skips or time jumps very, very effectively. But, I mean, yeah, it is...

It's disgusting. I mean, even if it's a monster or something, it's just a helpless kid. That's a good word. It's disgusting. Yeah, that's it. It feels it. Yeah. Man, anyway, okay. I'd fallen into my mom's habit of calling these children I hadn't yet met. I haven't yet met my friends already, but as the condition of my cast worsened, I became deeply upset at the thought that surely I wouldn't be able to apply that label to anyone by the time this day was over. Aw, that's so sad.

Defeated, I showed my mom. It took 30 minutes to get most of the moisture out while working to preserve the rest of the cast. To address the problem with the smell, my mom cut slivers off a bar of soap and slid them down into the cast and then rubbed the remainder of the soap on the outside in an attempt to cocoon the rancid smell inside of a more pleasant one. By the time we arrived at the school, my classmates were already engaged in their second activity and I was shoehorned into one of the groups.

God, this is so sad.

I'm about, bro, this story has tied me so emotionally to this poor child that I'm about to like, I'm about to cry because he didn't get a signature. I think this is going to be the introduction of Josh's friendship. I think this is where he met Josh. Yeah. Yep. Kindergarteners had the lunchroom to themselves in my elementary school, but some of the tables were off limits, so I didn't have to sit alone. I was self-consciously picking at the fraying ends of my cast when a kid sat across from me. I like your lunchbox. He said.

I could tell he was making fun of me, and I grew really angry. In my mind, that lunchbox was the last good thing about my day. I didn't look up from my arm, and I felt a burning in my eyes from the tears that I was holding back. I looked up to tell the kid to leave me alone, but before I could get the words out, I saw something that made me pause. He had the exact same lunchbox. I laughed. I like your lunchbox too. I think Michelangelo's the coolest. He said while mimicking nunchuck moves. While miming nunchuck moves.

I was in the middle of rebutting by saying that Raphael was my favorite when he knocked his open carton of milk off the table and onto his lap. I tried very hard to stifle my laughter since I didn't know him at all, but the struggling look on my face must have struck him as funny because he started laughing at first. Suddenly, I didn't feel so bad about my cast, and thought that this person would hardly notice now anyway. Just then, I thought to try my luck. "Hey, do you want to sign my cast?"

As I pulled out the marker, he asked me how I broke it. I told him that I fell out of the tallest tree in my neighborhood. He seemed impressed. I watched him laboriously draw his name, and when he was done, I asked him what it said. He told me it said Josh. Josh. Yeah, yeah. I didn't want to take it from you, but yeah, Josh. Josh and I had lunch together every day, and whenever we could, we partnered up for projects. I helped him with his handwriting, and he took the blame when I wrote,

sorry i didn't want to take that from you i appreciate on the wall the permanent marker i would come to know other kids but i think i knew even then that josh was my only real friend moving a friendship outside of school when you are five years old is actually more difficult than most remember the day we launched our balloons we had such a good time that i asked josh if he wanted to come to my house the next day to play he said he did and that he'd bring some of his toys i said that we could also go exploring and maybe swim in the lake

When I got home, I asked my mom and she said it would be fine. My enthusiasm was boundless until I realized that I had no way of contacting Josh to tell him. I spent the whole weekend worrying that our friendship would be dissolved by Monday. When I saw him after the weekend, I was relieved to find that he had run into the same obstacle and thought it was funny. Later that week, we had both remembered to write down our phone numbers at home and then exchange them at school. My mom spoke with Josh's dad and it was decided that my mom would pick up Josh and myself from school that Friday.

We alternated this basic structure nearly every weekend. The fact that we lived so close made things much easier on our parents, who seemed to work constantly. When my mom and I moved across the city at the end of first grade, I was sure that our friendship had seen its last day. As we drove away from the house I had lived in my whole life, I felt a sadness that I knew wasn't just about a house. I was saying goodbye to my friend forever. But Josh and I, to my surprise and delight, stayed close.

Despite the fact that we spent the majority of our time apart and only saw one another on weekends, we remained remarkably similar as we grew. Our personalities coalesced, our senses of humor complemented each other's, and we would often find that we had started liking new things independently. We even sounded enough alike that when I stayed with Josh, he would sometimes call my mom pretending to be me. His acceptance rate was impressive.

My mom would sometimes joke that the only way she could tell us apart sometimes was by our hair. He had straight, dirty blonde hair like his sister, while I had curly, dark brown hair like my mother. One would think that the thing most likely to drive two young friends apart would be what's out of their control. However, I think the catalyst of our gradual disengagement was my insistence that we sneak out to my old house to look for boxes.

The next weekend, I invited Josh over to my house, in keeping with our tradition of alternating houses. But he said that he wasn't really feeling up to it. We started seeing progressively less of one another over the next year or so. It had gone from once a week, to once a month, to once every couple months. For my 12th birthday, my mom threw a party for me. I hadn't made that many friends since we'd moved, so it wasn't a surprise party since my mom had no idea who to invite.

I told the handful of kids I'd become acquainted with and called Josh to see if he wanted to come. Originally, he said that he didn't think he could make it, but the day before the party, he called me to say that he'd be there. I was really excited because I hadn't seen him in several months. The party went pretty well. My biggest concern was that Josh and the other kids wouldn't get along, but they seemed to like each other well enough. Josh was surprisingly quiet. He hadn't brought me a gift and apologized for that, but I told him it wasn't a big deal. I was just glad that he was able to make it.

I tried to start several conversations with him, but they seemed to keep reaching dead ends. I asked him what was wrong. I told him that I didn't get why things had become so awkward between us. They were never like that before. We used to hang out almost every weekend and talk on the phone every couple days. I asked him what happened to us. He looked up from staring at his shoes and just said, You left. Just after this, he said that my mom yelled in from the other room that it was time to open presents.

I forced a smile and walked into the dining room as they sang Happy Birthday. There were a couple of wrapped boxes and a lot of cards since most of my extended family lived out of state. Most of the gifts were silly and forgettable, but I remember that Brian gave me a Mighty Max toy shaped like a snake that I kept for years afterwards.

My mom was insistent that I open all the cards that had been brought and thank each person who had given one because several years before on Christmas, I had torn through wrapping paper and envelopes with such fervor that I destroyed any possibility of discerning who had sent which gift or what amount of money. We separated the ones that had been sent by mail and the ones that had been brought from that day. Oh no, I know where this is going. So my friends wouldn't have to sit through me opening cards from people they had never met.

Most of the cards for my friends had a couple dollars in them, and the ones for my family members contained larger bills. One envelope. Oh, no, man. I hate it. I hate that it's like this picturesque, ah, there's a kid, he's living life, he has his friends, everything should be idyllic, but this monster keeps rearing its head.

And gosh, it's so tragic. And I know the reason it's so tragic is because it mimics real world examples of, you know, like this tragedy to cut, obviously not the exact same circumstances, but children being, you know, attacked by animals. Like, yeah. Oh, it's gosh. It makes me sick. It just keeps it. It won't die. It's like a hydra. It just keeps coming back. Oh man. Anyway, one envelope didn't have my name written on it, but it was in the pile. So I opened it.

The card had a generic floral pattern on its face and seemed to be a card that had been received by someone else who was now recycling it for my birthday because I was actually a little dingy. Because, sorry, it was actually a little dingy. I actually appreciated the idea that it was a reused card since I'd always thought that cards were silly. I angled it so that the money wouldn't fall to the floor when I opened it, but the only thing inside was the message that had come printed in the card. I love you.

Whoever had given me this card hadn't written anything on it, but they had circled the message in pencil a couple times. I chuckled a little and said, Gee, thanks for the awesome card, Mom. She looked at me quizzically and then turned her attention to the card. She told me it wasn't from her and seemed amused as she showed my friends, looking at their faces trying to discern who had played the joke. None of the kids stepped forward, so my mom said, Don't worry, sweetheart. At least you know now that two people love you.

I know the mom means it as a joke, but she followed that with an extremely prolonged and excruciating kiss on my forehead that transformed the group's bewilderment into hysteria. They were all laughing, so it could have been any of them, but Mike seemed to be laughing the hardest. To become a participant, rather than the subject of the gag, I said to him that just because he had given me that card, he shouldn't think that I'd kiss him later. We all laughed, and as I looked at Josh, I saw he was finally smiling. Well...

I think that gift might be the winner, but you have a couple more to open. My mom slid another present in front of me. I was still feeling the tremors of suppressed chuckles in my abdomen as I tore the colorful paper away. When I saw the gift, I had no need to suppress the laughter anymore. My smile dropped as I looked at what I'd been given. It was a pair of walkie-talkies. Well, go on. Show everyone. I held them up, and everyone seemed to approve, but as I drew my attention to Josh, I could see that he had turned a sickly shade of white.

We locked eyes for a moment and then he turned and walked into the kitchen. As I watched him dial a number on the corded phone attached to the wall, my mom whispered into my ear that she knew that Josh and I didn't talk as much since one of the walkie-talkies had broken. So she thought I'd like it. I was filled with an intense appreciation for my mom's thoughtfulness, but this feeling was easily overpowered by the emotions resurrected by the returning memories I tried so hard to bury.

When everyone was eating cake, I asked Josh who he'd called. He told me he wasn't feeling well, so he called his dad to come get him. I understood they wanted to leave, but I told him that I wished we could hang out more. I extended one of the walkie-talkies to him, but he put his hand up in refusal. Dejected, I said. Well, thanks for coming, I guess. I hope I'll see you before the next birthday. I'm sorry. I'll try to call you back more often. I really will.

The conversation stagnated as we waited by my door for his dad. I looked at his face. Josh seemed genuinely remorseful that he hadn't made more of an effort. His mood seemed suddenly bolstered by an idea that had struck him. He told me that he knew he'd get me for my birthday. It would take a while, but he thought that I would really like it. I told him it wasn't a big deal, but he insisted. He seemed in better spirits and apologized for being such a drag at my party. He said that he was tired.

that he hadn't been sleeping well. I asked him why that was and he opened the door in response to his dad's honking in the driveway. He turned back towards me and waved goodbye as he answered my question. I think I've been sleepwalking. That was the last time I saw my friend. A couple months later, he was gone. This thing, the monster as I'm calling it, in footsteps, it's underneath the house and it moves him from the top bunk to the bottom bunk, remember? Yeah.

He thinks he's sleepwalking, but it's really just for some reason, whatever this thing is, it just wants to move him just to put him in different spots. It's a sick, twisted relationship he has with this thing. Like a paternal relationship he has with this mysterious thing. And now it's going after Josh. Also, coincidentally, it took his picture. Same with Veronica. It took her picture too. It takes everyone's picture. I really feel like

I really feel like this is Korean and Trubaraska territory because we're at the end and I feel like that's where... I think that's where we're at. I don't know. I'm curious. This is so good. It's so well done. But it does make me hurt thinking about, like, again, real-world scenarios of it in the same way Baraska did. Not to the intensity, sure, but it's the same kind of feeling, you know? Right.

Over the past several weeks, the relationship between my mother and I has grown increasing strain due to my attempts to learn the details of my childhood. Okay, so now we're back to him telling the story now. It's often the case that one cannot know the breaking point of a thing until that thing fractures. And after the last conversation with my mother, I imagine that we will spend the rest of our lives attempting to repair what it took in a lifetime to build.

She had put so much energy into keeping me safe, both physically and psychologically, but I think that the walls meant to insulate me from harm were also protecting her emotional stability. As the truth came pouring out the last time we spoke, I could hear a trembling in her voice that I think was a reverberation of the collapse of her world. I don't imagine my mother and I will talk very much anymore, and while there are still some things I don't understand, I think I know enough.

Man, that is so tragic. Because like you, I mean, like if you were a parent of someone who went through a situation like this, you would pray that they never remember any of it. Of course. Right. And to then years later have them ask questions like they know they remember everything. Gosh, that's got to be true, man.

I mean, the amount of guilt. I think it's just guilt. Oh, yeah. It's so heartbreaking, man. Guilt and shame. Yeah, yeah. And it also... You remember how you had mentioned, like, it's a bit harsh in the beginning where she's like, well, why don't you tell them about the balloons, right? It makes so much sense now. It's this, like... Yeah, spiteful. Yeah. Spiteful kind of thing. Yeah, and it's not so much anger as him as much as it's anger about...

It didn't work, right? I couldn't protect him. Oh, yeah. There's an anger at yourself. Yeah. Gosh, that's completely inward hate. That is so tragic, man. Okay. Oh, after Josh disappeared, his parents had done all they could to find him. From the very first day, the police had suggested that they contact all of Josh's friends' parents to see if he was with them. They did this, of course, but no one had seen him or had any idea of where he might be.

The police had been unable to turn over any new information about Josh's whereabouts, despite the fact that they had received several anonymous phone calls from a woman urging them to compare this case with a stalking case that had been opened about six years before. Huh. Okay. Interesting. If Josh's mother's grip on the world loosened when her son vanished, it broke when Veronica died. She had seen many people die at the hospital, but there is no amount of desensitization that can fortify a person against the death of her own child.

She would visit Veronica twice a day since she was recuperating at a different hospital once before her shift. And once afterward on the day Veronica died, her mother was late leaving work. And by the time she arrived at her daughter's hospital, Veronica had already passed, man. Wow, bro. This was too much for her. And over the next couple of weeks, she became increasingly more unstable. She would often wander outside yelling for both Josh and Veronica to come home. This is man.

And there were several times her husband found her wandering around my old neighborhood in the middle of the night, half clothed and frantically searching for her son and daughter. Kind of feels like a Miss Maggie. It does. It reminds me of Mrs. Maggie. Man, that's harsh. Due to his wife's mental deterioration, Josh's dad could no longer travel for work and began taking construction jobs that were less well-paying so he could be closer to home.

When they began expanding my old neighborhood more, about three months after Veronica died, Josh's dad applied for every position and was hired. He was qualified to lead the build sites, but he took a job as a laborer helping to build frames and clean up the sites and whatever else was needed. He even took odd jobs that would occasionally come up, mowing lawns, repairing fences, anything to keep him from traveling. They began clearing the woods in the area next to the tributary to transform the land into inhabitable property.

Oh no, I think I know where this is going. Josh's dad was tasked with the responsibility of leveling the recently deforested lot, and this job guaranteed him at least several weeks of work. On the third day, he arrived at a spot that he could not level. Each time he'd drive over it, it would remain lower than all the surrounding land. Frustrated, he got off the machine to survey the area. He was tempted to simply pack more dirt into the depression, but he knew that he would only be an aesthetic and temporary solution.

Is this the hole that they were talking about before? I think this is the hole. Yep, by the shark floaty? Yep, yep, I think so. He had worked at construction for years and knew that root systems from large trees that had been recently cut down would often decompose, leaving weaknesses in the soil that would manifest as weaknesses in the foundations above.

He weighed his options and elected to dig a little with a shovel in case the problem was shallow enough to fix without needing a machine that would have to be brought over from another site. And as my mother described where this was, I knew I had been at that spot both before the soil was broken and before it had been filled in. I felt a tightening in my chest and here it goes. He dug a small hole about three feet down until his shovel collided with something hard.

he smashed his shovel against it repeatedly in an attempt to gauge the thickness of the root and the density of the network when suddenly his shovel plunged through the resistance confused he dug the hole wider after about a half hour of excavating he found himself standing on a brown blanket-covered box about seven feet long and four feet wide

Our minds work to avoid dissonance. If we hold a belief strongly enough, our minds will forcefully reject conflicting evidence so that we can maintain the integrity of our understanding of the world. Up until the very next moment, despite what all sense would have indicated, despite the fact that some small but suffocated part of him understood what was supporting his weight, this man believed he knew his son was still alive.

My mom received a call at 6pm. She knew who it was, but she couldn't understand what he was saying. But what she did comprehend made her leave immediately. Down here! Now! Son! Please, God! When she arrived, she found Josh's dad sitting perfectly still with his back to the hole. He was holding the shovel so tightly it seemed that it might snap, and he was staring straight ahead with eyes that looked as lifeless as a shark's. Did we really need a shark?

Yeah. Interesting use of words. He wouldn't respond to any of her words and only reacted when she tried to gently take the shovel from him. He dragged his eyes slowly to hers and just said, I don't understand. He repeated this as if he had forgotten all other words. And my mother could hear him still muttering it as she walked past him to look in the hole. She told me she wished she had gouged her eyes out before she faced downward into that crater.

and I told her that I knew what she was about to say and that she need not continue. I looked at her face, and it was expressing a look of such intense despair that it caused my stomach to turn. I realized that she had known of this for almost ten years and was hoping that she'd never have to tell me. As a result, she never came up with the proper arrangement of words to describe what she saw, and as I sat here, I met with the same difficulty of articulation. Josh was dead.

His face was sunken in and contorted in such a way that it was as if the misery and hopelessness of all the world had been transferred to it. The assaulting smell of decay rose from the crypt, and my mother had to cover her nose and mouth to keep from vomiting. His skin was cracked, almost crocodilian, and a stream of blood that had followed these lines had dried on his face after pooling and staining the wood around his head. His eyes lay half-lidded, facing straight up.

She said by the look of him, he had not been long dead. Wait, how long was this after the disappearance? This was a long time, right? Ten years, I thought this is what they said. Well, ten years. Am I wrong? So currently the author is having the conversation with the mother. And now ten years after this happened, he's finding out about it.

So he's probably 25 now. Right. So that was still three months after Veronica's death. Which means... So that would still be years, though, I thought. No, no, no. It was his 12th birthday. That's the last time they saw each other. My question is, how long was Josh kept alive if he hasn't been long dead? Well, that's what I'm saying, is I...

Because by this time, too, if Veronica had died three months, then our protagonist is 15. So like three years is what I'm thinking. Josh was kept alive for three years. I guess so.

Alright.

And as my mother's mind stretched itself to take in what her eyes were attempting to tell her, she became aware of the significance of the way in which he laid. He was holding Josh. Oh my gosh, dude. Wow. Oh, oh, oh God. Oh gosh. That's like, did he keep a boy alive for three years and then lay down in a grave with him?

It seems like it and just died. Dude. I can't tell if the guy is also dead. I mean, I guess so. Yeah. Their legs lay frozen. Yeah. Dude, dude, that is one of the most being buried alive with a, Oh my gosh. Oh, I, as a kid, I used to have this, I would have nightmares, these waking nightmares. I, I, I'd say I used to get sleep paralysis and I'd have these nightmares about being buried alive.

Where I would dream that I was like, my hands were against me and I was inside of a box and I couldn't see anything and it was getting really hot and I could hear people outside but they couldn't hear me. I would have this dream a lot and I just, I had forgot about it until just then. Oh, the idea of, oh my gosh. That's insane. And fucking, and totally fucked. Okay. Okay.

All right. Oh, man. I just, man, you don't know. Reading those words, it was like I was visualizing. In my head, that's what Josh's last moments were like. But there was someone in there with him. Keeping him there. Gosh, man. Oh, that's brutal. Okay. Oh, all right. Sorry, everyone. It's like flashbacks. It's so weird.

He was la- yeah, yeah, he was holding Josh. Their legs lay frozen by death, but entangled like vines in some lush tropical forest. One arm rested under Josh's neck, only to wrap around his body so that they might lay closer still. As the sun passed through the trees, its light became reflected by something pinned to Josh's shirt. My mother stooped to one knee and raised the collar of her shirt over her nose so that she might block out the smell.

when she saw what had caught the sun her legs abandoned her and she nearly fell into the tomb it was a picture it was a picture of me as a child stapled to josh she staggered backwards gasping and trembling and collided with josh's father who still sat facing away from the hole she understood why he had called her but she could not bring herself to tell him what she had kept from everyone for all those years

Josh's family never knew about the night I had woken up in the woods. She knew now that she should have told them, but to tell him now would help nothing. As she sat there resting her back against Josh's dad's, he spoke. "I can't tell my wife. I can't tell her about our little boy." His speech staggered and fits as he pressed his wet face into his dirt-caked hands. "She couldn't bear it." After a moment, he stood up, still shuddering, and lumbered toward the grave.

With a final sob, he stepped down into the coffin. Josh's dad was a big man, but not as big as the man in the box. He grabbed the back of the man's collar and pulled hard. It was as if he had intended to throw the man out of the grave in a singular motion, but the collar ripped and the body fell back down on top of his son. You motherfucker! He grabbed the man by the shoulders and heaved him back until he was off Josh and sat awkwardly but upright against the wall of the grave.

He looked at the man and staggered back a step. Oh God. Oh God, no, no, please, no, God. Please, God, no! In a struggling but powerful movement, he lifted and pushed the corpse completely out of the ground and they both heard the sound of glass rolling against wood. It was a bottle. He handed it to my mother. It was ether. Oh, Josh. He sobbed. My boy, my baby boy, why is there so much blood? What did he do to you?

As my mother looked at the man, now laying face upwards, she realized she was facing the person who had haunted our lives for over a decade. She had imagined him so many times, always evil and always terrifying, and the cries of Josh's father seemed to confirm her worst fears. But as she stared at his face, she thought that this didn't look like who she imagined him. This was just a man. As she looked at his frozen expression, it actually looked serene.

The corners of his lips were turned up only slightly. She saw that he was smiling. Not the expected smile of a maniac from a film or horror story. Not the smile of a demon or the smile of a fiend. This was the smile of contentment or satisfaction. It was a smile of bliss. It was a smile of love. This is, this is, oh my gosh, dude. As she looked down from his face, she saw a tremendous wound on his neck.

from where the skin had been ripped out. She was at first relieved when she realized that the blood had not been Josh's. Perhaps he had suffered less. This comfort was short-lived as she realized just how wrong she was. She brought a hand up to her mouth and whispered almost as if she was afraid to remind the world what happened. They were alive. Josh... Oh gosh, man. Josh must have bitten the man's neck in an attempt to get free.

And although the man had died, oh my gosh, Josh couldn't move him. Oh my gosh, a kid's buried alive and he dies because he can't move the body? Because the guy was so fucking big. Oh dude, that is one of the most distressing things I've ever read. I began crying when I thought of how long he might have laid there.

She looked through the man's pockets for some kind of identification, but she only found a piece of paper. On it was a drawing of a man holding hands with a small boy, and next to the boy were initials. My initials. I'd like to think that she was remembering that part of the story inaccurately, but I'll never know for sure. As Josh's father carried his son out of the grave, my mom slid the piece of paper into her pocket. He kept muttering that his son's hair had been dyed.

She saw that it had. Oh, no, dude. Oh, gosh. The guy thought the guy thought that Josh was the protagonist. I think that the guy made Josh look like the protagonist. Oh, man. Hence the picture stapled to him. Oh, man. And also, yep, keep reading. She saw that it had. It was now dark brown. And she noticed that he was dressed oddly. His clothes were all far too small.

I'm about to cry, dude.

He was finishing the map. That must have been his idea for my birthday present. I found myself strangely hoping that he hadn't been taken while expanding it, as if that would somehow matter now. She heard Josh's father grunt and looked to see him pushing the man's body back into the ground. As he walked back toward the machine that had found this spot for him, he put his hand on a canister of gasoline and paused with his back toward my mother. You should go. I'm so sorry.

It's not your fault I did this. You can't think like that. There was nothing. He interjected flatly, almost with no emotion at all. About a month ago, a guy approached me and I was cleaning up the site on the new development of Block Over. He asked me if I wanted to make some extra money and because my wife's not working right now, I accepted. He told me that some kids had dug a bunch of holes on his property and he offered me $100 to fill them in. He said that he wanted to take some pictures for the insurance company first, but

If I came back after 5 p.m. the next day, that would be fine. I thought this guy was a sucker since I knew clearing that lot was coming up, so someone would have had to do it anyway, but I needed the money, so I agreed. I didn't think he even had $100, but he put that bill in my hand, and I did the job the next day. I've been so exhausted that I didn't even think about it after it was done. I didn't think about it until the day when I pulled the same guy off my son.

The man comes to the father and says he needs the holes filled because, and he says do it after 5 p.m. the next day, which means he tells this man to do that. He then crawls into a grave with Josh and then Josh's father buried him alive. Yep. Probably didn't even see that the guy was just covering him. Never even saw it. Oh, dude, man. This is insane. This is such a...

Such a heavy story. Yeah. He pointed at the grave and his emotions started to push through as he broke into a sob. He paid me $100 so that I would bury him with my boy. It was as if saying it aloud forced him to accept what had happened, and he collapsed onto the ground in tears. My mother could think of nothing to say and stood there in silence for what felt like a lifetime. She finally asked what he would do about Josh. His final resting place won't be here with this monster.

As she looked back when she reached her car, she could see black smoke billowing, diffusing against the amber sky, and she hoped, against all hope, that Josh's parents would be okay. I left my mom's house without saying much else. I told her that I loved her and that I would talk to her soon, but I don't know what soon means for us. I got into my car and left. I understood now why the events of my childhood had stopped years ago.

As an adult, I now saw the connections that were lost on a child who tend to see the world in snapshots rather than a sequence. I thought about Josh. I loved him then, and I love him even still. I missed him more now that I know I'll never see him again. And I find myself wishing that I had hugged him the last time I saw him. I thought about Josh's parents, how much they had lost, and how quickly that loss had come.

They don't know about my connection to any of this, but I can never look them in the eyes now. I thought about Veronica. I had only really came to know her later in my life, but for those brief few weeks, I think I really loved her. I thought about my mother. She had tried so hard to protect me and was stronger than I would ever be. I tried not to think about the man. What he had done with Josh for more than two years. Mostly, I just thought about Josh.

Sometimes I wish that he never set a cross for me that day in kindergarten. That I'd never known what it was like to have a real friend. Sometimes I like to dream that he's in a better place, but that's only a dream, and I know that. The world is a cruel place made crueler still by man. There would be no justice for my friend, no final confrontation, no vengeance. It had been over for almost a decade, for everyone but me now. I miss you, Josh. I'm sorry you chose me.

But I'll always cherish my memories of you. We were explorers. We were adventurers. We were friends. Damn. My God. My God. You know, a lot of these stories are so impactful, especially the Baraska thing, when it takes that turn right into reality. I've seen some criticisms about people don't like that. I think people are...

You know, I think they're bummed when it turns out to be something so real. But I think that's just because a lot of this stuff is so emotionally heavy. And it puts it in such a layer. Yet this ending does feel still, in a way, it feels almost cryptic. It feels almost... It almost feels supernatural in a way. You know? There's not really a lot of... There's still so many answers to things that we don't know. You know, we don't know this guy. We don't know what...

Why he was so obsessed with our protagonist. You know what I mean? Would it be as simple as to say he was just a child predator? I mean, obviously a devoted one. He's living under the floor or something like that. You know, it's like... It's hard. I think that it can definitely be read that way, but to me it was just a fast... It's like it's just a disturbing fascination.

I don't really know if I read it as much as like abuse. It's weird. I like to think that it wasn't, that it was more some strange obsession rather than just that. Right. But that's, that's just out of sake for my own wellbeing. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, to me, it's just all these things. I mean, the thing that leads it into that predatory aspect is all the pictures. But once again, I mean, to me, at least how I read it, was it was just a pure obsession in a way. It all started with that balloon. Yeah. So maybe it was just an obsession. Yeah, it's just a thing about...

Almost like a weird twist of fate. You know, and there's different ways. I mean, I think that it could very easily be skewed into so many different kinds of thoughts and so many different kinds of interpretations. But to me, it feels like that balloon, that experiment, that thing that was supposed to be something that connects you with the world connected him with somebody that was just so disturbingly fascinated with him. And it feels like a sign in a weird way. You know what I mean? Almost like...

The idea, too, that this guy dressed this other kid up... The only thing that I'm concerned about is that... The only thing that I'm... Not concerned about. The only thing that I'm curious about is...

This guy couldn't wait anymore, right? But the thing about it is that he kept this false reality with Josh alive for two years before inevitably saying, like, it's time. And vindictively and maliciously telling the dad to bury them, knowing that he would.

Feels like a weird way of getting off on something, and it feels like a twisted fantasy come to life. To me, I don't know why. I really don't know why. In my mind, I feel like it feels paternal. It feels like he was trying to be this disturbing father figure to these people and raising...

a child i could see that for sure i think but then again i think that you know who knows i could just be not wanting that other kind of more realistic outcome well think think of it this way right follow the series of events from all this details we get it's kind of established that this guy's like a hermit he's like a homeless man right

So one day, because of the mention of like he's sleeping under the floor, right? And also his, which, and also I think eating cat food, if I understood that right. Like, you know, he's like a homeless guy out there living under the floor. Yeah, it seemed like he was eating the cat food or he- Using it to get the cat.

using it to get the cat to come in because the kid was so obsessed with the cat to think it could get the kid to come in. So I think what happened, this guy lives in the middle of the woods, right? It seems so. He lives in the woods. And then one day a balloon lands on him. And it is a balloon from a little kid who goes to a local elementary school. So he immediately develops a fascination. He gets his hands on a Polaroid camera.

And just starts dropping off pictures over and over. 50 in the school year. Keeps sending pictures in. Develops this obsession with the kid. Figures out where the kid lives. And then from there begins to live under his floor. Begins to move the kid from the bunk to the bottom bunk. Takes him out to the middle of the woods. Sets him in the middle of everything. And takes pictures of the kids. Takes pictures of the kids and his friends.

The thing with the ceremonious thing, too, of moving from the top bed to the bottom bed feels like a precursor to burying him. Oh, man. In a way. Yeah. Is what it feels like to me. Oh, I think you're right. Also, the thing, too, is he wakes up. What I don't understand is the kid wakes up in the woods. The guy just left him there, right? And then the kid walks back. So did the guy leave him there to go get something to where he could be, you know,

He could bury him or like, you know, you know what I think it is. I think given what the, the, I'm going to keep calling them the monster, given what the monster does later in the story where he takes Veronica's phone and he's messaging him and stuff like that. I think he wants the boy to love him too.

So I think he brings him out into the woods and leaves him there like, oh, this is my home. Do you want to stay? He leaves him next to the shark, right? The inflatable shark. He carries him across the thorns and sets him in the open spot.

And I think, I think like this guy was like sleeping on the shark. Remember there's the mention of like, um, Josh falls on it and he's like using it as a bed or whatever. I think that's what this dude was sleeping on. Um, just out in the woods. And then the kid gets up and walks away. So since the kid doesn't want to come live where he's at, the monster will come live where the kid's at. He'll live under the floor. I think that's what that was.

The thing too with Mrs. Maggie, the way that they interacted with him and the way that she took our protagonist and Josh's time makes me think that he killed her out of jealousy. I think so too. I think that's right. I think that's also why he killed Veronica. I think so too, definitely. Because Veronica was getting his attention that he wanted. And then after he kills Veronica, he steals the phone and starts texting the boy, I love you. See you soon. He comes into a theater and

And sits next to him, doesn't say a word, just breathe so that he can be near him. And then sends him a message that says, see you again soon.

It feels weird, because you can look at those things and it feels like he's trying to emulate a relationship. I don't know if it's necessarily sexual, but it does feel... In ways, it feels paternal, but it feels childish. It almost feels like, inevitably, he is jealous of Josh's relationship with this kid. Yeah. Almost like he wanted to be best friends with it. So, in a way, the guy who is the monster...

is smiling, but I think it's just he finally got what he want and now he is going to be with this his friend, quote unquote friend forever. It feels it's just crazy. I mean like such a such a just such a great story. So scary. I mean like such a real intense setup for things where my mind I felt like I was just like watching a movie in my fucking head. To make sure we have like the whole timeline right.

So that happens. He starts to obsess over him. He lives under the house for a while. Uh, what the mom figures out he's down there. They get out of the house immediately. She figures out someone staying down there. Uh, this is after he's been taking pictures of the kid for years or whatever. He moves away. And then it seems like the stalking goes away when they move away. Right. Cause literally this guy's homeless and lives in the middle of the woods. He can't follow them, you know, 30 miles away. Right. So, uh,

He decides to inhabit the now abandoned house to play house, basically hang up the kids clothes, stuff like that. Pretend like the kid still lives there. That's what happens when they go back to the house. Uh, he steals the cat when the cat shows up, right. And plays it over the radio. Like he's playing house basically for where the kid used to live. And then there's no more interactions until a couple of years later when the

Josh and our protagonist began to part ways. And then... Well, that's not true. We still have the map thing. So they're probably like 9 or 10. And they're doing the map at Mrs. Maggie's. They start parting ways a little after that. They start parting their ways after the house thing. After the walkie-talkie. After the walkie-talkie thing. Yeah, yeah. That's when they start to part ways. Okay.

So then a couple years go by. Josh comes to his 12th birthday party. That's where they have their final goodbye. Then Josh goes out to finish the map, which is such a heartbreaking thing, and gets caught by this man.

This the monster, right? Yeah. Who is very established that he's just been there anyways. Yep. He lives. He lives in that thick clearing. They can't get through because that's when they hear him when they're out in the woods on the raft, right? He lives in that thick stomping around stomping around running around.

Uh, so he lives out there in the woods. Also, uh, when they were like nine, uh, that's when he kills Mrs. Maggie. He sees the attention, kills her, gets away with it, goes back to living in the woods. So now when they're 12, Josh goes out to finish the map. He gets abducted by this man. And for two years is kept out there in the woods forced to, Oh gosh, forced to look like the protagonist does God, you know, Lord knows with him.

Do you think that they lived out in the woods or do you just think they lived in the abandoned house? Probably both. I think more so the woods because I'll get to that in a second. There's a reason I think the woods. So he kidnaps him, keeps him for two years, and then...

starts talking to Veronica like or sorry the our protagonist starts talking to Veronica they go on a couple dates somehow the monster figures out about that gets jealous kills her steals her phone begins to send him messages it's what three months or two months after Veronica dies that the events at the end of the story happen and

So the father is now developing new land and the land that the monster lives in and is keeping Josh hostage is about to get developed. So he realizes he can't keep the ruse up forever. That's why I think he's more so living in the woods than the abandoned house. Because that's true. Because it's going to be people are going to find it. We're going to get found out. So if I can't have him, no one can have him.

So he goes to the dad, tells him to fill in the holes. I don't, man. Gosh, I don't know. That's a terrifying thought. Huh? Two years, man. Two years. Gosh. He, we know that also he has a car. Yep. A car with the broken back window. Maybe, maybe he has some like little, maybe he's kind of, he's got some bunker out in the woods or some, you know, shack that he lives in or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

It's got, cause it mentions that there's holes that need filled in. So maybe he has stuff underground. Who knows? But eventually he realizes that area is going to get developed. He's going to get found out, pays a man to bury, to unknowingly bury him alive with that boy. It sounds like he drinks a bunch of ether with the plan of dying down there. Right. And as he's doing this, Josh rips his throat out, but he can't get off of him. And then Josh's dad buries him alive.

While he dies down there underneath the man. And then 10 years after all of that happens, the protagonist's mother finally tells him. Yeah, that seems like the correct series of events. What's crazy, too, is early on, when he first starts talking about Veronica, the mom is very hesitant. Remember that? She's like, no. No, don't. Because he doesn't know what happened to Josh.

Mm-hmm. Neither does Veronica, to be fair. Because remember, Veronica thinks he ran away. Well, exactly. So she knows. So the mom knows that he was abducted, is what you're saying. Because she finds out about that stuff three months after Veronica's death. After Veronica, yeah. So I was just curious why she was so skeptical of like, no, don't go around him. You know what it is? Okay, so remember they said Josh ran away and left a note?

And then the mom's like, I should have told you that he also had a note. I think the mom knew it was connected. That probably makes sense. And you know what? Do you remember that mention in the story? A woman called the police saying they should connect it to the stalking case. That was the protagonist's mother. That was definitely Josh's mom.

Yeah, no, no, no, not Josh's mom, but our characters. Yeah, my bad. I, I keep almost wanting to say Josh's. Oh yeah. Just our protagonist mother because she didn't want to tell them Josh's parents directly that, oh, well, I think this is connected to what's happening to my son because she doesn't want to drag me to, she doesn't want to drag her son back into the whole stalking thing.

She doesn't want to confront that she's been hiding this and never told him. Yeah, exactly. So she doesn't tell them, but when she hears that Josh ran away and left a note, she knows. So the one thing she does is she anonymously calls the police and says, connect it to that stalking case from six years ago.

which is what happened to her son and then after she sees josh's body that's when she's like i should have told them even even if it put my son in danger again even if i dragged this whole world back into the light and threatened the potential that this stalker could show back up in our lives i still should have told them but again now josh's dad so what difference does it make there's a lot of there's a lot of interesting character development stuff of like

The parallels, even with the monster and Josh, is kind of interesting to me. It's like, I think that there's an interesting parallel to me that the monster is probably a guy who had no friends and no connection.

And it's like, in a way, it feels like they are, like, bound. That they are similar, in a way. Obviously, one of them is a fucking monster. The other one's a child. Yeah. But it's just, like, it's the interesting thing of even how...

I mean, like, I don't know if I'm reaching, but even the way that like our main character gets so attached to Josh and loves him. Right. Same way that our character gets so obsessed, almost obsessed with Veronica. Yes, she's beautiful, but it's this like need for love. It's this need for this kind of approval from these things. And in a way, that's what that guy has been doing all of Josh's childhood. Our protagonist, you mean?

Our protagonist, yes. What our protagonist, yeah. So in that way, too, of even having to simply dress this, dress Josh up to look like him is very interesting. And I think, too, it feels like even by choosing Josh, I think that he feels like it's a part of the kid that he's so obsessed with.

Also, I don't know if I believe that he doesn't know where he lives. I don't know. I understand he's a homeless guy, but he does have a car, and he's that obsessed, and he takes that many pictures, and he just never... He stops for a while. I don't know. I wonder if it's just keeping a distance, or if it's him...

like reveling in this house that he's been staying at and stuff. It might be, it might be that too. That might be some kind of like, I think Veronica showing up changed it for him. Cause now if someone else has his attention, so he kills her. Right. Well, exactly. And that's the thing too, where he also stops. Right. To me, it's like, he thinks that he's having this false relationship with this kid because when Josh and, uh,

our protagonists stop becoming friends, that's kind of when the things stop. When they reconnect together, he becomes jealous again and decides to intervene the same way whenever that thing happens with Veronica. Our protagonist really kind of blatantly says many times that, yeah, after me and Josh stopped hanging out, I really didn't make many friends. Like, whenever I had through my surprise party, it wasn't much of a surprise because I had to kind of, like, ask them. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So to me, it's like when they were disturbed and they stopped hanging out as much, to me it was almost like he was obsessed from afar. And he was like in this kind of...

relationship or friendship or whatever with this person from afar and like probably I imagine talking to himself I imagine he was at just a distance feeling that connection in some ways who also knows how many times he was around him and we just don't know right all these obsessive things that he felt comfortable and he felt that he was like close with this person but whenever these things started to intervene again it challenged the um

the hierarchy of that friendship or that like relationship that he had and that's when he intervened and did that thing you know the more i think about the more i agree with you i don't think it is an outright child predator maybe that became some element of it but more than anything i think it's an obsession you know i just think that if it was a child predator i think when he first was he just has had so many times to get him you know you know what it honestly feels more like to me

like a evil version of like Lenny from of Mice and Men right yeah you know like he's just like oh this boy likes me I love him I want to be with him I love that I was even thinking of like even like yeah I mean like a mentally not there person obviously but in a way I mean it does feel like something along those lines I just think that if

Unless the person is very specifically not being gratuitous in that nature, and doesn't want to approach the subject matter in that way, that's fine. But I feel like if you're going to go that route, and you're going to tease that, I feel like a lot of authors would commit and just be like, yes, this thing happened, etc. But all the times where the guy had...

been alone with him and moved him, got into his house, all these different times, right? I feel like there just would have been some indication that something happened in that way. So I really, I just think it was obsessive. I think it was like, especially even the way that she says love, it just feels love in a way that like our main character loved Josh. Our main character loved all of the people that showed him love back, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's a...

I mean, I gotta be honest, too. I mean, this was just, like, horrifying. I think it does this great, because even the ending is cryptic. It's like, I know I've said that before, but, like,

To have that little element of the most cartoonish thing that happened, the most over-the-top thing happened, because even with something like Baraska, right? It's a mine full of people, a mine full of pregnant women. It gets pretty crazy. We talked about it. There is a level of extending your belief, of course. Sure. And with this one, the biggest cartoonish thing that happens is a smile is had at the very end. That's like the ultimate...

tip of the cap because even the something even the thing too of like you kind of have an old crazy woman who is delirious walking around it feels supernatural that like you're saying taking of Deborah Logan is kind of what it made me think of kind of made me think of that M. Night Shyamalan the visit part even like the crawl space scene with that there's like these elements that like something not of this world is moving around and corrupting but it's just a crazy guy who probably in a fit of rage

just like totally cut up this woman, threw her in some garbage bags and people were like, okay, well, what the fuck happened here? You know? Also that too makes me think, you know, he moved, he went to the house, back to the house, whatever, because he was in hiding from killing her. He, he, he lived by her, right? Wait, say that again. He goes, he goes to the house. So when, when he killed, when he kills Mrs. Maggie, right?

He lives in that forest by there. Yes. He chopped a woman up and left her in bags. Yeah. He obviously, to me, that's when also the last time before that time jump was after that, after Mrs. Maggie thing, was the walkie-talkie incident where they go back looking for the cat. Correct? Correct.

The first time... Yes, it's the Miss Maggie incident and then the cat, yeah. And then the cat. So to me, Box's situation is because he's living at that abandoned house to be closer to, you know... He's living in this place that he has been before, but now he's living at the house instead of his normal...

area in the woods because there's probably people looking around investigating the area so he's probably that's why that is a good point that's probably why i was there well i will say that he was already at least semi living under the house because of the footstep stuff right i think that was just because he was the kid was living there though yes correct i think he goes there full time after he murders a woman right yeah because he's not living under the house he's like living in the house is what i assumed yeah i think you're right

So I think that what happened is now he has like a base set up. He also has all those kids' clothes, all that kind of stuff. What's interesting too is I got a feeling early on the story about where's the dad. You don't have that father figure in the story and in a weird grotesque way, it seems like the male figure, paternal figure for the protagonist is this psychopath who is trying to extend this relationship with our main character and

And I don't know why, but maybe that's why I also think it feels more paternal or it feels like that kind of thing because I just... That kind of feeling has been there since the beginning. But the way that this story handles time jumps and the way that it interconnects all of these little things...

It's so fun. I honestly, I truly believe, and I'll say this openly, that this is my favorite story we've read so far. Granted, we're in, we're only episode seven in, but we've read a lot of like really crazy, well-renowned shit. This is, I would like, I would desperately love to see this transformed into like a mini series. I would love to just see this world come to life because it is so vivid. It's so just tragically vivid.

In a way, too, that doesn't feel... Because looking at the comments, too, from Baraska, I can understand how people can feel that way. I still think Baraska is brilliantly written. I still think that it's an amazing, fun thing. But the way that this thing really, I mean, like, grabs you emotionally...

It's so fascinating. There's really... Like, we talk about Baraska. Yeah, I think the way we phrased it in Baraska is the suspension of disbelief is that all of these different people who would be involved with human trafficking are in one location. That's the suspension. There was no suspension with this story. Other than maybe that a homeless guy who killed a woman didn't get caught, but that happens. You know, that can happen. Sure. There was no monster. There was nothing. Every...

Every situation was plausible. Maybe a bit...

not plausible and the idea that if he is kind of like a mentally ill person we're talking about that he didn't get caught after all this time but that's that's a maybe in the real world right so it's just something where it's like it could happen it could happen it's not it's not totally out of the realm where it's like how did this guy never get caught yeah i i think like it's it's just an odd obsession it's something where how many people look the other way in that horrifying way and i think um

I don't know, man. It's just, it's very good. It's very, very good. I think it uses a lot of what's interesting, at least for me, is that it uses tropes against the reader. I feel like I was so not certain of where it was going, but I was like, okay, I'm ready for this thing to kind of take this turn. I'm ready for this turn. I know what happens. Yeah, and I feel like it's so honest with you in its approach that

of like you think that this kind of horror can only be something that is something that is not so real i guess when really the most and that's that's the case with a lot of things and almost everything in my opinion is that the most horrifying things are the things that are real the things that can truly happen and the things that are hard to digest and the things that are hard to talk about um but i think it just does it in a great way of there's so many times where

Using some of the dialogue and the description of him stomping around the woods and stuff feels supernatural. It feels like a monster. But it's just the description of something that is so real. Just the use of describing things makes it feel so ethereal. It makes it feel so...

So it's awesome. I mean, I would be so curious if this guy has written anything else. But honestly, too, I want to get a physical copy of this book just to have up on the shelf here. Yeah, I think he definitely deserves it. So I'm looking through...

his stuff right now under a thousand vultures uh the only story he published is pen pal and then he made post about pen pal like whenever it was it started to go fund me and stuff like that um and apparently according to him a producer who worked on the film undefeated reached out to him and wanted to make it into a film but that was 11 years ago

And I'm not seeing anything about it to my knowledge. It seems like something that'd be picked up by like channel zero or something. Right. I also see here that he wrote something called bad man. Yes. So he has novel from, I was going to mention that he did do other works, but as far as pen pal becoming a film, I think it was in talks, but it didn't happen. It doesn't look like at least, well, there was a TV short in 2018. Apparently, um,

Directed by Steve Morgan. I don't know if this is... There's an IMDB page for it. I don't know how legit it is. Budget $16,000. Okay. Not dunking on low budget stuff, but it was probably an indie film. Yeah, yeah. Which as someone who has made indie films, nothing against them, obviously. But it looks like it didn't go into mainstream as much as maybe it should have, so to speak. But...

Not saying they shouldn't make an indie film. You know what I mean. But the author, what did you say the name of that novel was? The other one is Badman. So it seems like Badman is about an abduction. It's a novel. So look, if his proof of concept was pen pal, then I bet the novel's pretty good.

you know like i'm curious i mean there's a hardcover version of it too i'll i mean i'll buy it why not i'll order it i want to pick up both i want a copy of pin pal for sure and then i think i'll get a copy of a bad i'm just curious to be bad bad man on my own if there's any viewers right now that have like listened to that also i just want to i know this is our longest episode yet but yeah i i gotta be honest i mean like we were thinking about breaking this down into maybe two parts just because we recorded this kind of late right now it's a one in the morning

How long is the total recording? Four hours? I was too moved. I was just too... Yeah. I mean, like, too gripped. I didn't want to wait. So hopefully you guys liked the longer episodes. I know that we see people saying that, you know, they don't mind it, but we appreciate you. Also, we didn't say this at the beginning. I might ask Katie just to make sure that we put it, but...

Please be sure to check us out if you do, if you're like working and you listen to us, check us out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, anything else that, you know, audio stuff. Feel free. We're on all of that stuff. I know I see some comments about it, but we're there.

Every day that an episode gets uploaded, it uploads with the audio version as well. So that, you know, we're just letting people know that we are on those platforms as well. Just wanted to say thank you guys so much for listening along. Pen Pals really, really ruled as always. Such a good story.

Leave your leave your this was one of the ones where people in the descriptions. This was mostly people in the comments. We read this. OK, let me clarify real quick for everyone who says I did the Baraka thing again. I did not. This was your fault. Blame yourself. All the trauma I just unleashed on you guys. You did that. You I'm innocent. You know what? This time I caught it and I'm it's not fun when I'm not in on the joke. So.

I tell you, I am so happy that they recommended this. I am so, so, so happy that I got to read this. That was one of the best horror stories I've read in a while. Yeah. That was unbelievable. I mean, truly, like...

I think all of these reactions that we had are just extremely genuine. I hope that it translates as well into the audio format. I'm also, I just want to say, I'm sorry I cannot read. It's unbelievable. I'm very sorry. We might unironically also get somebody to help us read these. Now, if you like the format, how about this? Let us know in the comments. Because if you're cool with the format of me reading and you doing the quotes, I think that works pretty well.

I think it flowed really well, actually. But I did feel bad because I was like, this is a long story on these longer ones. Dude, I record... Some of these videos I do, I record for like eight hours. It's fine. Yeah, it's true. It's true. But, you know, I didn't want to just, you know, assume. But just wanted to say thank you guys so much. Please, if you have more stories you want us to read, please, you know...

the creepier, the funnier, anything you have, we always read comments and we love it. We'd appreciate you guys to support. And we, we just want to make sure that we're tackling everything that we can. And honestly, with even starting this, all of the awesome stories that I've consumed have been, it's just so fun. Just stuff. I mean, I've never heard of this before. It's apparently legendary. And it's just, you know, you, you think something's like, Oh, that's so popular. He's probably heard of it. I know it's not the case. So,

Just wanted to say thank you so much and hope to see you in the next one. This was a great one. Thank you all for recommending it. Continue to send recommendations, although I'd greatly appreciate if you left child abduction out of it for like one episode. I would love a non-child abduction creepypasta. Who do I have to kill for us to cover a spooky ghost?

I'd kill for a vampire. I would love for like a werewolf or like alien abduction. Maybe there's some kind of like ghoul or something. An alien abduction one would be fun.

I would like, if we're going to, if abduction is the name, make it an alien abduction. Anything that doesn't involve the exploitation of minors, of children. That would be fantastic. Which, which, you know, we're finding it's becoming very hard. That would be, I'm not saying they're not good stories. They're great, but I need a break. We need a break. Yeah. I, they're, they're, they're obviously very effective, but for the love of God, please just, just a couple of weeks, just a couple of episodes. Just,

One mummy, Bigfoot, something. Yeah. A Pharaoh's curse story would go very well right now as an ice pallet glenzer. I tried to get us out of it with the woman dying in a car crash and then becoming a ghost on Facebook. I tried. That is true. But they pulled us back in. They pulled us back in. That's what they did. They said, no more of that. Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in. Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in. Yeah.

All right, guys. Thank you so much. Thank you all for being here. It means the world. I'm so sorry for what just happened to you, but it's really your fault and you're going to keep watching the show regardless. So I don't care. Have fun. Thank you for watching.