Latest / INSPIRE STORY / The Pigeons Around Here Aren_t Real

Transcript

The Pigeons Around Here Aren_t Real · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Greepcast. Today, we are doing a grab.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: Bag of sorts from an author named Manon Lyset and
• 0:23
  I we wanted to read a body of this author's
• 0:27
  work primarily because I found a story called the Pigeons
• 0:32
  around Here Aren't Real and I just thought that was
• 0:34
  a really fun title. And after looking at some of
• 0:36
  the works, they're a bit smaller, so I figured we
• 0:38
  would read, uh, probably with three either like two or
• 0:41
  three of them and just get a feel for the
• 0:42
  author because a lot of these titles of these stories
• 0:45
  are really cool. I think we're gonna start with a
• 0:47
  package marked return descinder, move into the Pigeons around Here
• 0:51
  Aren't Real, and then end off with it all started
• 0:53
  with a hot air balloon. I don't know, I just
• 0:55
  I think that the titles are fun. And also I
• 0:57
  love these little these little dives ons that have like
• 1:00
  shorter bodies of work. It's fun to kind of like
• 1:03
  get the just like quick glimpses of these stories. Mm hmm.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I think, uh, that man in I'm not seeing like
• 1:14
  a ton of published work, but it looks like I
• 1:16
  think he does a lot of is he crafts like
• 1:19
  these little halloween decorations stuff like that, Like he does
• 1:22
  little sculptures of like jack O Lander and so if
• 1:26
  you go to his Twitter, which is the same name
• 1:28
  as his no Sleep manon ilicit or manon lyset, however
• 1:32
  it's pronounced uh. He has a link to an Etsy
• 1:34
  page called Mannon's Pumpkin Patch, and he grafts a little
• 1:37
  like uh Christmas ornaments that are skulls and ghosts and
• 1:40
  stuff like that. It looks pretty cool. He also has
• 1:43
  a children's book he made, apparently, Little Pumpkin and the
• 1:47
  Fairy Lights, which is about like a little jack o'lanner
• 1:50
  and pumpkin patch and stuff, and it looks very cute.
• 1:52
  So this guy's like an artist still figuringes are sick. Yeah,
• 1:57
  he's like an artist, but like not in like just
• 2:00
  talking about dead people and like growth stuff like us
• 2:03
  like it.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Are we sure this is also a man? We are
• 2:09
  we for sure?
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: This is I was assigning I was assigning a gender
• 2:14
  there when I have no idea what that. I think
• 2:16
  the word man in like subtly put into my brain. Man.
• 2:21
  But I don't know that this person, whoever this is,
• 2:25
  does little you.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Know what you said, man, I'm just gonna say woman,
• 2:28
  I have no idea.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, it doesn't really matter to me. I don't
• 2:31
  give a fuck.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: But I like the titles of these stories. I'm very excited. Uh,
• 2:36
  especially just the pigeon one. The birds freak me out.
• 2:41
  I just don't like birds, you know what I mean.
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: I don't.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: I don't like the thousand miles stare that birds give.
• 2:48
  It's just I don't know if you don't have eyelids.
• 2:51
  It's like, what's the point or whatever? Do birds have eyelids?
• 2:54
  It's a quick google.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: I'm almost positive that's gonna be. Yeah, I think it's
• 2:59
  all of it. I'm almost positive that.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: Yes, birds have eyelids. Act they have three eyelids. Okay,
• 3:04
  well that makes it even worse.
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well that's.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Upper lower eyelid and then nicoditating nicoditating membrane, a translicent
• 3:12
  third eyelid that moves horizontally across the eye from enter
• 3:15
  to out.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, the I do.
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I do love a nice parrot, though, very very or
• 3:23
  are two cans like our two canons?
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: The part where you launched into a story about like
• 3:27
  you watched a parrot like get molested or something when
• 3:30
  you were a child.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Or no, no, no, actually I can give you a
• 3:32
  quick story about a bird, but first I just want
• 3:34
  to tell you, UH, be sure to listen to this
• 3:38
  episode on Spotify.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: UH.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Feel free to support us on the audio platforms. If
• 3:43
  you are driving or commuting to work or something, consider
• 3:46
  listening and rating us on Spotify or Apple Podcast. It
• 3:48
  really does help us out a lot. Now let me
• 3:49
  get to you before we move into a package marked
• 3:51
  return to sender. I had this ant I lived with
• 3:55
  whenever I first moved to California. She lived in this
• 3:57
  retirement community in a town that I won't say, I mean,
• 3:59
  I just did not give some specifics, but she did
• 4:02
  live in uh, California, and she had a bird like
• 4:07
  a parrot in her house that would talk to her right.
• 4:11
  And but I always thought was weird. Does she clipped
• 4:13
  the wings so it couldn't fly away? And I remember
• 4:16
  asking her. I was like, that's like, that's the most
• 4:17
  fucking tortuous thing I've ever heard of my life, clipping
• 4:20
  a bird's wings. And it's just like cool, I got
• 4:22
  to walk around. That's what birds are known for, you
• 4:24
  know what I mean.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: So then she's like, Oh, it's not a big deal.
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: It happens. So people do it all the time, you
• 4:30
  know whatever. And she basically made it insinuate that She's
• 4:32
  just like, you know, I I'm letting I'm letting my
• 4:35
  animal do what it wants. It wants to hang out inside,
• 4:38
  so I'm doing that. And I'm like, okay, so that's cool.
• 4:40
  It wants to hang out inside, so I'm gonna cripple it.
• 4:42
  That's a fun way to look at it. So to
• 4:46
  deviate from that, because this is where it gets a
• 4:48
  little spicy, a is we don't even talk about the
• 4:49
  bird at all. One night, I come home once again.
• 4:52
  I mind you, she's in a retirement community.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: I come home.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: She's watching America a Ninja Warrior in the living room
• 4:58
  and her dog is licking her feet like obsessively, like whatever.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: And I was like, uh, what, uh what are you doing.
• 5:09
  She's like, I'm just watching American Ninja Wire.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: And I mean, that little motherfucker is going at those
• 5:13
  piggies like crazy. Her feet are glistening like it's just
• 5:17
  been like licking at it forever. And I kind of
• 5:20
  sit down because I mean, it's it's abhorn. It's like
• 5:24
  o'b scene. It's like watching a car wreck. And I
• 5:26
  was like you, Uh, you're just letting them.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: Kind of go at your feet.
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: She's like, yeah, I just letting my animals do whatever
• 5:30
  they want. And it was an weird parallel where was
• 5:34
  the same thing with the parrot. Right, I'm lazy, I'm
• 5:37
  letting them do. This is what he wants. So I
• 5:39
  clipped his wings. So my ass was thinking, I'm like,
• 5:42
  did this crazy, crazy, old fucking woman lather her feet
• 5:48
  up in some kind of like I don't know, coconut oil,
• 5:50
  honey or fucking peanut butter. And she's just like, you
• 5:52
  want to lick my feet?
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: You like it? You know what I mean?
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: So anyways, the whole thing was like every afternoon she
• 6:02
  would sit there and she would uh watch American Injured
• 6:05
  Warrior and then that dog would come up and lick
• 6:07
  its liquor feet for like hours, like I mean, like
• 6:11
  a long time.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Are you done?
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that was just I thought that might be that
• 6:23
  whenever I hear said parrot, that may just remind me
• 6:25
  of that. So sorry, hello, hello, we'd like to take
• 6:32
  a minute to think today's sponsor Rocket Money. The other day,
• 6:36
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  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Rocket Money. Let's get back to
• 7:31
  the episode. All right, A package marked return to sender
• 7:35
  by men in lysset. Hopefully listen the name right lisetly set.
• 7:40
  Don't know. Let's get into it. My neighbor is one
• 7:46
  of those annoying want to be YouTube personalities. Okay, well immediately, okay,
• 7:54
  they're they're ping guns out. Let's call it that here, Okay,
• 7:58
  out of the gate swinging. Over the years, I've seen
• 8:01
  him cough out cinnamon, lay flat on the Oh, it's
• 8:04
  one of these people. Okay. In that case, yes, I agree,
• 8:07
  we have to kill this guy. I've seen him cough
• 8:10
  out cinnamon, lay flat on the hood of his car
• 8:13
  as it slowly creeps down the driveway and downs himself
• 8:15
  in lukewarm water, all while screaming epic win, epic fail
• 8:21
  or epic maintenance. Would you like to read these in
• 8:24
  a YouTuber voice and an influencer voice?
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Epic win, epic fail, fuck, epic maintenance at the status quo?
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: Who the fuck says that? Where did that come? I
• 8:35
  think that's screaming. That's the author being sarcastic. It's like
• 8:39
  they're streaming epic when epic fail or epic maintenance of
• 8:42
  the status quo for all I know.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: Oh, so this is like this is like a like
• 8:45
  lay lay meme moment whatever or epic maintenance of.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: The status quo. Yeah, I think I think that's the sheepelful.
• 8:55
  It can get tiring to watch him go about his
• 8:57
  shenanigans in the pursuit of viral fame. So when he
• 9:00
  knocked on my door the other day told me he
• 9:03
  was going away for a few weeks and asked that
• 9:05
  I get his mail, Honestly, it was a relief. I
• 9:08
  can't explain the peace of mind I had knowing I
• 9:10
  didn't have to brace myself for any of his stupidity.
• 9:12
  For a while, I was always afraid his stunts would
• 9:15
  wind up bleeding over into my life. I like the
• 9:18
  idea too.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: I like the idea of this guy being like because
• 9:21
  you immediate immediately thought that the YouTube person was like
• 9:24
  a kid. But now he's like, hey, can you pick
• 9:26
  up my mail? I'm like, this is a thirty eight
• 9:28
  year old guy.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well he said, like his car on his own car, right, Yeah,
• 9:33
  I mean.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: I expected like a sixteen or seventeen year old is
• 9:35
  what I was expecting.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I mean, this guy should know. All you need in
• 9:38
  order to be successful on YouTube is just find a
• 9:40
  bunch of stories that you didn't right and then make
• 9:43
  glorified react content. Hey, come on, man, hey, it's a
• 9:47
  kid story podcast, break in the money.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: All right, dude, all right, I you know what, we
• 9:54
  do a good service here and we bring I don't
• 9:57
  have to I don't have to defend this. No, go ahead,
• 9:59
  I want to exercised.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: I want to hear what your defense of this would
• 10:03
  even be. Go ahead? What do we do? That's a
• 10:06
  good work? You know what? Nothing, dude, not a damn thing.
• 10:11
  You know what?
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: I thought it was friendly banter where you could sure
• 10:13
  you could read the story in your own but this
• 10:15
  is reading it with pals, fun voices, fun interaction of bits.
• 10:19
  It's it's basically getting together and going camping with your buddies,
• 10:23
  except less uh probably less homosexual stuff going on?
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Right? How bet? Can I be just building me? I
• 10:32
  feel like I feel like you've done a little like
• 10:35
  you've done with you. I know I'm not. We are
• 10:38
  not finishing whatever that sentence was you were about to say.
• 10:41
  You cut that out right now? You also you can
• 10:44
  never okay, I'm not I'm not getting down. I'm not
• 10:48
  going down to your level. I'm not stepping into the trench.
• 10:51
  You always cross your legs whenever you bring up the
• 10:53
  word can you always do. Okay, you know what you
• 10:58
  phrase it like, got a little scratch and come on, dude,
• 11:04
  tiger tails like that.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: I'm not trying to belittle or make light of the
• 11:10
  things you've done with your buddies in the past. Like
• 11:12
  I'm not trying to like say it's gross. I'm just saying,
• 11:14
  sometimes those scratches nefts.
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, I mean, can I get back to the story.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: There's a famous quote that said there was a famous
• 11:20
  quote forgot who was from but said, sometimes the cucumber
• 11:23
  tastes better pickled.
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: You're referencing your own quotes. That is how desperate we
• 11:29
  are for content. We're cannibalizing our own clips that people
• 11:34
  that was from a show or something. It was to
• 11:41
  have some kind of creepy one. No, no, no, it
• 11:44
  was a it was a Comedy Central show. Can I
• 11:46
  go back to free? To the story's neighbors, a YouTuber,
• 11:49
  he asked him to take the mail. Okay, yes, He's
• 11:51
  come get the mail. Things pretty normal for the first
• 11:54
  couple of days. He received a few bills, but a
• 11:57
  spam and what I could only assume was a birthday card.
• 12:00
  Then one evening I got home to find a cardboard
• 12:03
  box waiting on his front porch, big red letters was
• 12:07
  written returned to Cinder.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: So that's referring to the book, Like the guy sent
• 12:11
  the box and now it's brought back to his house.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: I would think, right, I would think so. Yeah, I'm
• 12:16
  no small fry. But I admit I had trouble lifting
• 12:18
  the box on my own. It was really freaking heavy.
• 12:21
  Lugging it across the road to my house was even harder,
• 12:24
  and I quickly realized there was no way I was
• 12:26
  going to drag it up the stairs and through my
• 12:27
  front door. I decided I'd leave his package in my garage.
• 12:31
  It wasn't like I kept my car in there. The
• 12:33
  garage door was a piece of shit that refused to
• 12:36
  open without a good thug and a whack. It was
• 12:39
  less trouble just leaving the car in the driveway than
• 12:42
  it was to fight with the garage door every morning
• 12:44
  and night. In hindsight, I should have set the package
• 12:48
  down while I struggled to open the tricky door. But
• 12:50
  you know how it is when you've got a good
• 12:51
  grip on something, no point and send it down if
• 12:54
  you don't have to. It was as I kicked the
• 12:56
  door for a third time that I lost my grip
• 12:58
  on the package and it fell to the ground. I
• 13:01
  heard a light crack inside shit. I hoped I hadn't
• 13:06
  broken anything important, but figured I just wouldn't tell my
• 13:09
  neighbor about it and let him assume the break happened
• 13:11
  en route. Wow, what a guy, I mean, what about
• 13:16
  Look if it broke while it was in the box,
• 13:18
  and then it broke while it was in the box,
• 13:20
  you know, like right, I can't. Who am I to say?
• 13:22
  You know, when I'm not omniscient, I don't cracked exactly. Yeah,
• 13:28
  I fucking punted it like a nerve foo. It was
• 13:31
  closed when I found it, you know, so I used
• 13:34
  to say, it is Schrodinger's broken cat. You know, it's both.
• 13:38
  It's neither broken or not broken until you open it.
• 13:41
  Philosophical I try hands free. I finally managed to get
• 13:47
  the garage shore unstuck, and boy did it screeching protest
• 13:50
  as it rolled up and over me. Tracked the box
• 13:53
  the rest of the way, set it in the corner
• 13:55
  for whenever my neighbor would come back to claim it.
• 13:57
  Then I forgot all about it till a few days past.
• 14:00
  That is, I'm not sure exactly how long it took
• 14:03
  for the smell to waft in from the crack under
• 14:05
  the garage to house store, but came in slow progression.
• 14:11
  It was a sickly sweet odor, similar to a skunk,
• 14:14
  and for the first few days after I smelled it,
• 14:16
  I genuinely assumed that's exactly what it was, road killed
• 14:20
  that had left its mark on my house. It was
• 14:22
  only when I realized the scent was growing more intense
• 14:25
  instead of fading, and I went looking for a source.
• 14:28
  That's when I opened the garage stoor. That's when the
• 14:30
  odor knocked me back, holding my nose. So my guess
• 14:36
  right now is that it's a dead person. Yeah.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: It makes me think of one of those like true crime,
• 14:43
  true crime things where the cops go in and it's like, oh,
• 14:45
  there's a dead body in a freezer or something, or
• 14:47
  like in a closet.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: H yes, I think because that smelled, the sickly sweet
• 14:52
  smell is always the way that dead human bodies are described.
• 14:56
  H So maybe yes, I didn't I know that.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: So wait, sick So it's like roadkill, but it has
• 15:03
  like a smells like guess how would it be sweet
• 15:04
  smells like smells like rotten fruit?
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, okay, that there's like there's a toe. It's because
• 15:13
  I think it's because of like the bacteria in people
• 15:16
  or something like that. It's kind of like it's like
• 15:20
  there's a tinge of like, oh, there's supposed to be
• 15:23
  something there that is it rotten, you know, like when
• 15:26
  food goes bad, But it's mostly just like sickly is
• 15:30
  a good word for it. It's like there's a drape
• 15:31
  of like smog on top of it. Yeah, mm hmm.
• 15:35
  The culprit wasn't hard to identify. The only change in
• 15:38
  my garage was the box in the corner. I remember
• 15:41
  thinking it must have been one of those Meat of
• 15:43
  the month subscription boxes. The meat must have gotten rantid
• 15:47
  from being left out of the fridge for so long.
• 15:49
  How much meat could have been in there for the
• 15:51
  box to have been so large and heavy an entire
• 15:54
  freaking cow. I covered my nose as I approached the box.
• 15:58
  A pair of scissors in my hand ans I probably
• 16:01
  wouldn't have needed them to open it, as it had
• 16:04
  become soggy enough at the bottom to poke through with
• 16:06
  a finger. But I wasn't about to put my finger
• 16:09
  into spoiled meat juices that soggy bottom was the reason
• 16:14
  I had to open the box in the first place.
• 16:16
  If I tried to drag it out whole, everything would
• 16:19
  spill onto the floor. I was gonna have to dump
• 16:21
  the pieces of meat, one garbage back at a time,
• 16:24
  take them down to the dumpster, a process I wasn't
• 16:27
  looking forward to. My scissors tore through the tape along
• 16:31
  the top of the cardboard box. I thought the smell
• 16:33
  couldn't get any worse, but as I flipped the flaps open,
• 16:37
  I discovered a whole new gamut of stink. It was
• 16:40
  like opening a burning oven, but instead of a heat wave,
• 16:43
  I was met with waves of piss, sweat, shit, and putrification.
• 16:48
  It was so bad that I staggered back and had
• 16:50
  to force down the puke begging to guzzle out of me.
• 16:53
  I don't think I could have handled that scent mingling
• 16:56
  with the horse coming out of the box. I'm not
• 16:58
  ashamed to admit. I ran out of the or for
• 17:00
  a breath of fresh air, but in the short time
• 17:02
  i'd spin in the garage, the smell had become so
• 17:04
  ingrained in the fabric of my clothes that it clung
• 17:06
  to me like a shadow. Nothing I'd tried to keep
• 17:10
  the smell out of my nostrils. Not air fresheners, not
• 17:13
  a face mask, not three showers in a change of clothes.
• 17:17
  Every second that box I y opened to my garage
• 17:19
  was another second the smell was allowed to foothold into
• 17:22
  my home. I had to bite the bullet. I turned
• 17:25
  to the garage, the flaps of the box still open,
• 17:28
  as though inviting me to look. I was prepared, a
• 17:32
  clothes pin pinning my nostril shut, a garbage bag in
• 17:34
  one hand, the strongest cleaner I could find in the other,
• 17:37
  had long rubber gloves to keep my skin from having
• 17:40
  a touch what was inside. But as it turns out,
• 17:44
  I needed none of those things. I would have to
• 17:47
  touch or clean the contents of the box. I'd only
• 17:49
  have to suffer the nightmares every night. You see, there
• 17:53
  was meat in that box. But it didn't come from
• 17:56
  a cow or a pig. No, it was worse in
• 18:00
  that it was my neighbor dead, still in one piece,
• 18:05
  but dead. Oh wow, that's so wait saying that the
• 18:12
  neighbor is in the person that was like, Hey, I'm
• 18:14
  leaving the Yeah the YouTube wannabe guy? Yeah, can you
• 18:16
  check the mail for so this. It's either he was
• 18:19
  so yeah, he was.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: Either it almost feels deliberate of like he knew it
• 18:22
  was going to be returned back. Yeah, And I guess
• 18:24
  then why would you even send it? Or maybe I'm curious. Well,
• 18:27
  I'm getting ahead myself.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Go ahead. I called the cops, and naturally they took
• 18:31
  me in for interrogation. It's kind of hard not to
• 18:34
  suspect the man with a corpse in his garage, after all. Thankfully,
• 18:37
  they soon realized I wasn't involved. My DNA might have
• 18:40
  been all over the box, the smell might have left
• 18:43
  it mark throughout my house, but there was one piece
• 18:45
  of irrefutable evidence of my neighbor's own hands that proved
• 18:48
  my innocence of logging camera. They showed me the footage
• 18:53
  only once. I'm not sure if they were allowed to
• 18:56
  or if they felt so bad for me they figured
• 18:57
  it couldn't hurt Either way, I saw it. My neighbor
• 19:02
  was sitting in the box outside of a shipping facility,
• 19:04
  laughing as he told the world how he was going
• 19:06
  to mail himself across state lines. He brought pea bottles, food,
• 19:10
  a pillow, and a few flashlights. His friend, a guy
• 19:14
  I'd seen at his place several times to help with
• 19:17
  his stunts, closed the lid and presumably dropped him off
• 19:20
  for shipment. Throughout the next couple of hours or days,
• 19:23
  I'm honestly not sure. My neighbor recorded a few short
• 19:26
  clips about his progress. I think I'm in the truck now,
• 19:30
  I can feel it moving. Must be in a warehouse.
• 19:33
  Pretty warm here, still about plenty of food, that kind
• 19:36
  of stuff. And then on the last entry, the box
• 19:40
  toppled over. He broke his neck, and that was it.
• 19:45
  The camera recorded until either the memory card got too
• 19:47
  full or the battery died. There's one thing I did
• 19:51
  tell the police after they showed me the video. One
• 19:53
  thing I heard in the footage that will haunt me
• 19:55
  to the day I die. Just after the tumble that
• 19:58
  broke his neck, I heard the familiar screen and sound
• 20:00
  in my garage door. That's fine. Oh, I like that.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: That's the little end, that's the Yeah, that's that's a
• 20:09
  fun little I like. You know, this reminds me of
• 20:12
  a bit, is it reminds me of the scary stories
• 20:15
  of Telle in the dark.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just like little microhrre vignettes.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it props up an idea, you think you
• 20:21
  know where it is, and on the last second, on
• 20:22
  the last little line, it kind of subverts it at
• 20:24
  the last second of like, you know, I love the
• 20:26
  idea too, of like uh, because I'm guessing that the
• 20:29
  whole thing was he was like, I'm gonna mail.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna mail myself back to my house, is what
• 20:34
  I'm wondering. Well, the joke is I'm going to be
• 20:37
  a box, like I'm gonna vlog going through all this
• 20:40
  same line and then eventually it's gonna get returned to
• 20:42
  send her So I want to go back to the
• 20:45
  house my buddy or something.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: Well, it's like and then it's like, hey, check my mail.
• 20:49
  So that I expect he's like the big surprises that
• 20:52
  he's going to pop out and be like, oh yeah,
• 20:54
  whatever with this camera. But you grab the you grab
• 20:59
  the thing, I guess because two, the thing is he
• 21:01
  would be quiet because he doesn't want you to know
• 21:02
  that it's him. But didn't the smell already didn't the
• 21:07
  smell already happen?
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: No, So he said, I went back to read it.
• 21:10
  So he drops it, puts it in the corner, and
• 21:13
  he says after a few days past. I'm not sure
• 21:17
  smell the waft.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: In, Okay, So he was gonna do like a little
• 21:20
  surprise tank but didn't expect to fall and break.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he just died. And then he says, so after
• 21:27
  a few days he started to smell something. And then
• 21:29
  he says, the first few days after I smelled it,
• 21:32
  it was slow progress. But then like after a body,
• 21:36
  so after like a couple he probably didn't open this
• 21:38
  guy for a couple of weeks. Yeah, And it's just
• 21:41
  like sitting in a garage or something like a hot garage,
• 21:44
  just basic festering, yeah, exactly, baking in a cardboard ups box.
• 21:48
  You know how funny that footage would be though a
• 21:51
  guy in there.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: It's just like, you know, like heavy breathing, like a
• 21:54
  guy probably laughing a little bit, exactly, And that's that's
• 22:03
  all would be.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: It'd be haunting, don't get me wrong about the same
• 22:05
  time kind of funny. I have to compliment the writing
• 22:09
  here because like it got me like twice, because I
• 22:14
  remember the at the very first time when it's like
• 22:17
  because me and you said from the beginning, like it's
• 22:19
  a human body. It's definitely a human body. But that's like, oh,
• 22:21
  it's a friend's human body. Oh, that's a surprise. And
• 22:25
  then at the end of it, it's like he died
• 22:26
  because he dropped him and that crack mentioned earlier was
• 22:29
  his deck. It's like, oh like it. It kept having
• 22:32
  fun deliveries even though you kind of knew where it
• 22:34
  was going. It's pretty good. It's the fun. Uh.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: I was wondering how it was going to loop around
• 22:39
  two with uh. It's like always a content guy. He
• 22:42
  does a lot of stupid stuff. I've seen him do
• 22:43
  stupid things like choke on cinnamon. And it was one
• 22:46
  of those things where you're probably like, oh, this is
• 22:47
  just describing like not an embe celle, but you're just
• 22:50
  like it's this like kind of just kind of a
• 22:53
  strange doing something for fame.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: So you're wondering. My mind meanly went like, oh, he
• 22:58
  killed somebody and mailed it to his house or you
• 23:00
  know whatever, which doesn't make any sense. But the idea
• 23:02
  of him he did look a prank like this is yeah,
• 23:05
  it makes no sense. He did like a jay station
• 23:07
  like I'm ordering someone from the dark web video or whatever,
• 23:10
  like a body showed up.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So this next one is the Pigeons around Here
• 23:14
  an't real. This is kind of an older one ten
• 23:16
  years ago and it won the Best Title of twenty fifteen.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: Into December twenty sixteen award, which it is.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: It's a great title, very so, you know, we talk
• 23:26
  about the titles, and you know how titles themselves are
• 23:29
  pieces of art as well of like getting people hooked
• 23:31
  and your imagination also running, like a title is just
• 23:35
  as important.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: As the body. Is this the one that won?
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: This just says best Title of twenty fifteen, so I'm
• 23:41
  guessing it won best Okay title, but I'm not sure.
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: I don't know about story. The Reddit thing confuses me
• 23:48
  because sometimes I know it'll show an award, but it's like,
• 23:51
  oh no, that's not the story's award. That's an award
• 23:53
  the author got.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: One time it's like, yeah, the ward the author got,
• 23:57
  or sometimes too, I think it just like put that.
• 24:00
  It puts that award on the author's description, so it
• 24:04
  appears on like maybe every one of their stories, even
• 24:06
  though maybe it's just for one particular thing. I don't
• 24:08
  know how the Reddit award thing works, like you or whatever,
• 24:11
  but uh, yeah, this story is called the Pigeons around
• 24:14
  Here an't Real once again by Man and Lysa. We're
• 24:17
  only reading their stories today, so let's uh, let's dive
• 24:20
  into this one.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Pigeons around here aren't real? Are you ready? Hunter? The
• 24:24
  pigeons around here or not real? I'm ready. It's no
• 24:28
  secret that big cities have pigeon problems. Toronto was no exception.
• 24:33
  Like rats in the Middle Ages, the disease carrying vermins
• 24:36
  spent the past decade running a muck and increasing their numbers.
• 24:40
  It is my job to try and keep Toronto's ever
• 24:42
  growing pigeon population in check. Thankfully, I came across an
• 24:46
  article about a pilot project where researchers replace pigeon eggs
• 24:50
  with wooden substitutes. The birds, too stupid to know the difference,
• 24:54
  spent months caring for the fake eggs instead of producing more.
• 24:57
  The project was a huge success, and the pigeon pop
• 25:00
  decreased significantly in a short amount of time. It sounded
• 25:03
  like the perfect plan, so I implemented the solution in
• 25:06
  my city. What I didn't count on was for those
• 25:09
  fake eggs to hatch and for the abomination's inside to
• 25:12
  be released into the world. That's kind of interesting, weird, Yeah,
• 25:18
  that's cool. Clint, my partner, came in one morning carrying
• 25:22
  a large wooden crate with a straw poking out of
• 25:25
  every crevice. Looks like Christmas camberly this year. What is
• 25:29
  this stuff? I walked over excitedly, helping him set the
• 25:32
  box down on a workbench. This, I said, priding it
• 25:36
  open to reveal its contents is a solution to our
• 25:39
  pigeon problem. Reaching inside, I took one of the eggs.
• 25:43
  I was a little disappointed to see that they weren't
• 25:45
  wooden as promised. Instead, they were thin, light, hollow, like
• 25:50
  those cheap plastic Easter eggs. It wasn't close to what
• 25:54
  I was expecting. Oh well, that's what you get for
• 25:57
  ordering off eBay, I thought.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Clint took a handful. These are the replicas you ordered.
• 26:03
  They don't feel remotely the same as the real deal.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: We were well aware of what the eggs felt like.
• 26:09
  Up until then. The only way to decrease the pigeon
• 26:11
  population was to sneak into their nest and steal the eggs.
• 26:14
  It was a feudle, temporary solution, because the birds would
• 26:17
  just lay new eggs once they realized theirs were gone.
• 26:20
  That's what made the idea of using substitutes. So damn good.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: It's fine, Clint. They don't have to fool us, They
• 26:26
  just have to fool the pigeons. This will work, trust me.
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: Oh's right. The pigeons fell for it, hook line and sinker.
• 26:34
  A few months passed and we started seeing a decline
• 26:36
  in the amount of younger birds in the area. I
• 26:39
  can't tell you how proud I was of what I'd done.
• 26:42
  I'd found a safe, environmentally friendly way of dealing with
• 26:45
  the flying rats at the cheap cost of a few
• 26:47
  hundred dollars and an elevator trip to pigeon nesting grounds
• 26:50
  atop high rise rooftops around the city. The problem started
• 26:54
  about three months in Clint and I were inspecting nests
• 26:58
  on opposite sides of the city. I was halfway up
• 27:00
  the building when Clint called me, Yo, I said. As
• 27:04
  I brought the phone to my ear, the sound of
• 27:07
  wind could be heard in the background. Evidently Clint had
• 27:10
  reached his destination. Hey, sum our eggs broke. The elevator
• 27:15
  came to a stop, doors swinging open to let me off.
• 27:18
  Stepped out and made my way to a small staircase
• 27:21
  leading to the rooftop We'll just have to replace them,
• 27:24
  No big deal. There have been a few violent storms
• 27:27
  since our last inspection, and I figured the eggs must
• 27:30
  have fallen from the nest and shattered on impact. See
• 27:33
  this is why wood would have been better, I grumbled
• 27:35
  to myself as I exited onto the rooftop for my inspection.
• 27:40
  Fuck what, most of my eggs were broken too. The
• 27:45
  strange thing was that they were still tucked in the nest,
• 27:48
  right where we left them. Had the pigeons figured out
• 27:51
  our ploy and attacked the replicas? Were the fake eggs
• 27:54
  too frail to survive our harsh Canadian weather? I groaned,
• 28:00
  same here, We're gonna have to start over, I told him. Defeated,
• 28:05
  it's all good. We can hatch a new plan. I
• 28:08
  paused for a moment. Did you just I begambit? He interrupted,
• 28:12
  Just look on the silly side up of things. Yeah,
• 28:16
  puns at a time like this, puns don't yolk with me.
• 28:24
  The funniest lie there to be was puns at a
• 28:27
  time like this. Puns. It's like, this isn't a joking matter, Clint.
• 28:30
  The eggs are broken, Yeah, the fragile, hollow eggs. This
• 28:34
  is not a time laughter you never take anything seriously.
• 28:38
  This is why Margaret left. We couldn't leave the nest
• 28:41
  unattended for too long, otherwise all our progress would go
• 28:44
  down the drain. I sent Clint to replace the broken
• 28:47
  eggs with what was left from our original order. In
• 28:50
  the meantime, I served sean line for anyone selling what
• 28:53
  an eggs. Unfortunately, cheapest and fastest shipper was a person
• 28:58
  we ordered from the first time around. We needed these
• 29:01
  eggs quickly, and our budget was pretty tight. I figured
• 29:04
  i'd order the subpar eggs one more time. If they
• 29:07
  lasted long enough for city officials to see the plan
• 29:09
  was working nicely, then I was sure I could convince
• 29:11
  them to increase our budgets so we could order better
• 29:13
  supplies next fiscal gear. Just to be sure the pigeons
• 29:17
  weren't attacking our fake eggs, also set up a security
• 29:19
  camera on one of the rooftops. I needed to know
• 29:22
  if they gotten wise to our ruse, though I highly
• 29:25
  doubted they had the mental capacity to do so. Still,
• 29:29
  the project would prove fruitless if the birds weren't fooled
• 29:32
  by our cheap imitations, so it was best to keep
• 29:35
  an eye out. Over the course of the following weeks,
• 29:39
  I started getting strange reports about small animals behaving weirdly. Frankly,
• 29:43
  I didn't pay much attention to them at first. They
• 29:46
  sounded a little insane, to tell the truth. One woman
• 29:49
  claimed she'd seen a pigeon climb a tree. She said
• 29:53
  he crawled up the bark like a squirrel. Another report
• 29:56
  stated that a chipmunk had been seen attacking and ki
• 30:00
  a neighborhood dog. Another witness called in about an injured cat,
• 30:04
  but when he investigated, all he found was a pelt.
• 30:08
  By the time I read the fifth report, I was
• 30:10
  starting to get a little worried. What was even more
• 30:13
  troubling to me was that these reports were coming from
• 30:15
  all over the city. If it had been confined to
• 30:18
  his single neighborhood, I would have suspected an outbreak of
• 30:21
  rabies or a new disease of some sort. But the
• 30:24
  reports were coming in from all around Toronto and its suburbs,
• 30:28
  which span an extremely large area. How could anything spread
• 30:32
  so quickly. It had to be something else. I was
• 30:36
  just about to do a bit of research on the
• 30:38
  subject when Clint came in wearing a scowl, broke shitty
• 30:43
  fucking eggs broke again, grumbled, throwing himself on a chair,
• 30:48
  forced a grin, crack a smile. Would you the puns?
• 30:54
  He tossed his worksheet on the table. That was an
• 30:58
  excellent pun, he replied, releasing a chuckle. Do you remember
• 31:04
  to bring the footage? He ends up his coat and
• 31:07
  reached into his pocket for an SD card. Got you covered?
• 31:11
  Movie time? We uploaded the footage and took a look. Pigeons,
• 31:16
  pigeons sitting on their nests, pigeons preening, pigeons flapping their
• 31:20
  wings at one another, a squirrel, a squirrel getting chased
• 31:24
  away by birds, more pigeons. It must have been the
• 31:28
  dullest security tape in the world, the kind of footage
• 31:31
  that even David Attenborough's lovely voice wouldn't be able to save.
• 31:36
  We fast forwarded through days of pigeons doing pigeoning things.
• 31:39
  Never once did they show any violence towards our replica eggs.
• 31:43
  Clinton had dozed off by the time something finally happened
• 31:46
  on screen. The reason I was still conscious was due
• 31:49
  to the copious amount of coffee I'd ingested that morning.
• 31:53
  It was dead of night in the video. At least
• 31:57
  one of the birds flew off its egg and perched
• 31:59
  itself on the nest, peering inside. This is it, I thought,
• 32:03
  leaning closer to the screen, I figured he'd attack the egg.
• 32:08
  But I was wrong. I washed as the video soundlessly continued,
• 32:12
  and something cracked open the egg from the inside. My
• 32:18
  jaw gaped open. This wasn't possible. The eggs were plastic shells.
• 32:23
  The only explanation was that we'd missed one real egg
• 32:27
  somewhere in the bunch. Yeah, that had to be it.
• 32:30
  I was witnessing the birth of a baby pigeon. Nothing weird,
• 32:34
  except baby pigeons don't look like smoke. A puff of
• 32:38
  dark air came out of the egg. The pigeon head
• 32:41
  inches from it, inhaled the gassy substance. It reared back
• 32:45
  and stood completely still for about a minute before falling over.
• 32:49
  I washed as it started thrashing violently like it was
• 32:53
  having a seizure. Then from it speaks pewed some kind
• 32:57
  of chunky liquid that evaporated as soon as it hit.
• 33:01
  The pigeon's body seemed to deflate like a balloon, and
• 33:04
  so the creature was being hollowed out. I was left
• 33:08
  staring incretiously at the flat, immobile husk of what had
• 33:11
  once been a pigeon. Suddenly, the pigeon's chest bulged out
• 33:15
  and the animal regained its form, at least sort of.
• 33:21
  Its proportions were all wrong. Its wings were bloated and
• 33:24
  angled oddly, most of its girth was in its neck
• 33:27
  rather than stomach, and its mid section had stretched out unnaturally.
• 33:32
  It was like looking at an animal pelt draped over
• 33:34
  the wrong mound, like a lunatic taxidermists cruel experiment. The
• 33:40
  abomination of nature jerked its head towards the ledge. It
• 33:43
  twisted onto its back, legs, contorting and dislocated in such
• 33:47
  a way as to be able to reach the ground
• 33:50
  from its throat. I could see stump like arms stretching out,
• 33:54
  climbing at the cement rooftop in quick and jacket movements,
• 33:58
  the creature skittered over the edge disappeared from view. I
• 34:02
  was shocked, unable to believe what I had seen. I
• 34:05
  had to watch and rewatch the video several times before
• 34:07
  it occurred to me to wake Clint up. He grubbled unhappily,
• 34:10
  rubbed his tired eyes and looked at me. You won't
• 34:15
  believe this. I rebroound the footage and pressed play. His
• 34:18
  eyes widened with the same disgusted disbelief as mine. Even
• 34:21
  on my fifth viewing, I couldn't wrap my head around it.
• 34:25
  This is bad, I know. After watching the video a
• 34:31
  few more times, we went home. I think we both
• 34:33
  hoped a good night's sleep would help clear our minds.
• 34:36
  Maybe upon reviewing the tape we'd realize we were mistaken.
• 34:39
  Maybe it was a trick of the light. Unlikely, but
• 34:43
  we could only hope. Clint was already at work when
• 34:46
  I came in. His eyes were glued to the screen,
• 34:49
  watching it again, not exactly. I kept going. I approached
• 34:56
  the desk and peered at the monitor, kept going. His
• 34:59
  face was pale and his eyes weighed down by large bags.
• 35:02
  How long had he been here? Had he come in
• 35:05
  extra early? There was two days left of footage on
• 35:09
  that card, and you went through it. Yeah? Did you
• 35:14
  see more of those things? Clint pressed his lips together. Yeah,
• 35:19
  and some of them came back. I raised my eyebrows.
• 35:24
  Looking closer at the screen, I noticed something odd about
• 35:27
  one of the nests. There were multiple eggs resting in
• 35:30
  the sunlight. They were neither genuine pigeon eggs nor replicas.
• 35:35
  They were too big for that. Clint pointed to the batch,
• 35:38
  his hand trembling it laid them. I felt a flush
• 35:44
  of nervous energy climb up my spine like an elevator,
• 35:47
  and then turned to the reports I'd been reading the
• 35:49
  day before. Were the eggs at the center of it all?
• 35:53
  We need to call the authorities. We are the authorities.
• 35:57
  I paced around the room, back and forth, back and forth,
• 36:00
  like a pendulum. The phone rang, interrupting my anxious march.
• 36:06
  It was another report about animal behavior. This time the
• 36:09
  culprit was a deer and a spooks and almost disgusted
• 36:13
  tone of voice. The woman on the line explained that
• 36:15
  she'd seen a deer slithering along the river. She said
• 36:19
  its body with sideways, but its head was upright. What
• 36:25
  Oh No, I thought whatever those things were, they could
• 36:28
  affect larger animals. While I tried to comfort the worried collar,
• 36:32
  I heard something from Clinton's workstation crack. I turned around,
• 36:38
  only to see a puff of smoke rising towards my coworker. Oh.
• 36:42
  Near his keyboard was a cracked shell, just like the
• 36:45
  ones on the rooftop. Without a word, Clint bolted to
• 36:48
  the bathroom, holding a hand over his mouth as though
• 36:50
  about to puke. I dropped the phone and ran over
• 36:53
  to the door. It was locked, Clinton, Are you okay? Silence, silence, silence.
• 37:02
  All of a sudden I heard him heaving violently. A
• 37:05
  sound of moist gurgling and boiling water erupted from the bathroom.
• 37:11
  Terrified of what would happen if Clint got out, I
• 37:14
  pushed the heavy workbench in front of the door. I
• 37:16
  stood in terrified silence as the noise came to a stop.
• 37:20
  Was Clinton now lying as flat as a pancake against
• 37:22
  the porcelain throne? Would it turn into some sort of
• 37:25
  bastardization of a human body like what happened to the pigeon? Silence, silence, silence, bang.
• 37:36
  Clint threw himself against the door violently, just one blow
• 37:39
  nearly threw the thing off its hinges. Again and again.
• 37:43
  He slammed himself against the surface, causing the workbench I'd
• 37:46
  placed in front of it to slowly inch away. All
• 37:49
  I could do was push myself against it, trying to
• 37:51
  keep the door closed. Malmy thoughts were to keep him
• 37:54
  from escaping for my own safety. I knew to attack
• 37:56
  me if I let him out. I just knew it.
• 37:59
  The sound came to an unexpected halt, allowing me to
• 38:02
  breathe a sigh of relief. Maybe he'd expired, maybe that
• 38:05
  thing needed fresh air to survive, whatever the reason, I
• 38:08
  thought I was safe. But then I heard a crash
• 38:13
  the window. I've forgotten all about the bathroom window. He's
• 38:17
  out there now, him and those other mutated atrocities. I
• 38:22
  don't know what they are or what they want. All
• 38:25
  I know is that they're roaming the city right now
• 38:27
  doing god knows what. Most of them probably look like pigeons,
• 38:32
  but they can be anyone or anything. I just hope
• 38:35
  something figures out how to stop them, because at last count,
• 38:39
  there were over seven hundred of those cursed eggs planted
• 38:42
  around Toronto. Now that I know these things can reproduce,
• 38:46
  god knows how many more eggs might be out there sick.
• 38:50
  So that was the end before the first update. That's
• 38:53
  a really cool idea.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: I'm guessing that that was their initial end. And then
• 38:57
  now they've ad there's updates to it, like there's more
• 38:59
  to the so we're not done yet.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: But no, that's really cool. I mean, I like the
• 39:03
  idea of uh, it.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Seems like the manufacturer of this of these eggs. Do
• 39:08
  you think that there are some kind of like cursed
• 39:10
  egg or.
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: Something or it sounds like it like hollows you out,
• 39:14
  as he said, and it fills you with some other animal, right,
• 39:18
  because it describes the pigeons looking like squirrels, and it
• 39:22
  describes like the squirrels behaving like like chipmunks behaving like
• 39:26
  other things. So it's like there's different animals that kind
• 39:33
  of it's like they hollow you out and just fill
• 39:34
  you up with something, right, Like the the deer that's
• 39:37
  slithering like a snake. Right, it's like the Yeah, it's
• 39:40
  the soul, the soul almost the figure of a snake
• 39:43
  inside of a deer.
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: It's almost like it transforms things into another kind of vermin, yeah,
• 39:48
  or something, is what it feels like, really putting emphasis
• 39:51
  on the vermin and the skies, you know, and that
• 39:54
  kind of thing. And how if they could just you know,
• 39:57
  have control of this thing, then everything would be okay.
• 39:59
  But it's like a you know, it's like it's very
• 40:02
  much to be in like, well, we can control nature.
• 40:04
  The thing that I'm curious about, I wonder if they
• 40:06
  get into more is like the thing. The place that
• 40:08
  they're manufacturing the eggs. Is that the thing that's like?
• 40:11
  Are they the reason that the things are cracking up
• 40:12
  with the smoke or is it like the pigeons themselves
• 40:15
  or something with like, you know, mother nature being.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: With these things.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: Is it like transforming even these eggs and producing something?
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean. We're gonna get updates that
• 40:25
  may describe it, and that's fine, but I almost kind
• 40:27
  of like, you never see what a human looks like
• 40:30
  when it goes through the process, like goes into the
• 40:32
  bathroom and you hear it throwing it so it goes
• 40:34
  God help me, God help me. If this does not
• 40:38
  end with a pigeon, man, I am going to be
• 40:40
  fucking livid. Well, but don't you like imagining the pigeon? Man?
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: I want to see that motherfucker come back with his
• 40:47
  three eyelids and then being like Oka, he's like, but Clinton,
• 40:52
  He's like, he's like cool.
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Something weird like that as
• 40:59
  a go for it. Yeah, all right, swing for the fences.
• 41:01
  All right, let's read the update. All right, Update one.
• 41:05
  He came back. I should have known he'd come back.
• 41:08
  He warned me before he said creature on our recording
• 41:12
  returned to its nest to lay an egg. Those monsters
• 41:16
  seemed to have the salmon mentality, going back to their
• 41:19
  place of birth when it came time to reproduce. Too
• 41:23
  busy answering a slew of pained calls, all the while
• 41:26
  panicking myself, I didn't hear him when he came in
• 41:29
  through the front door. Thankfully, I caught a shape from
• 41:32
  the corner of my eyes. Without even finishing my sentence,
• 41:35
  I dropped the phone and locked myself in the maintenance closet,
• 41:38
  praying he hadn't seen me outside the thin wooden door.
• 41:42
  The room was quiet. If he was breathing, I couldn't
• 41:46
  hear it. His footsteps were just as silent. Had I overreacted,
• 41:51
  I hadn't actually seen Clint, just a shadow of my
• 41:54
  peripheral vision. Maybe it was my imagination. I needed to know,
• 41:59
  so I knelt down peered through the crack under the door,
• 42:02
  close to eye to get a better look. I wish
• 42:05
  I had it. I wish I could erased that thing
• 42:08
  from my mind to preserve Clint's memory as the man
• 42:10
  I knew him to be, not that anything but that
• 42:16
  on what I saw was a mess of flesh inching
• 42:19
  along the floor like a slug. I couldn't figure out
• 42:22
  what was facing up his back or his chest. His
• 42:25
  spineless torso had folded over, bringing his arms nearly perfectly
• 42:28
  in line with his legs. His head, now completely shapeless,
• 42:32
  lay flat at his midsection. His mouth reminded me of
• 42:36
  a figure in munch, his famous painting The Scream. His
• 42:39
  great eyes stared at me, but I could tell, so
• 42:42
  he continued to slither towards his desk that they were
• 42:44
  useless decorations. He disappeared from view. Then came a horrid sound,
• 42:52
  a squishy and gooey noise that reminded me of that
• 42:55
  old slimeball toys that used to play with the child.
• 42:58
  It lasted a few moments, stopped, started again, and stopped
• 43:02
  for good, shaking in my boots. I remain concealed in
• 43:06
  my dark prison all day, ignoring repeated hunger pangs in
• 43:10
  my own instinct to run. I couldn't afford the risk
• 43:13
  of being caught. As day shifted in tonight, I began
• 43:16
  to wonder if I could sneak past him. On our
• 43:19
  security tape, I'd seen normal pigeons sitting on nearby nest,
• 43:22
  seemingly unfazed by the creature. Maybe Clint wouldn't attack me.
• 43:27
  I had to take the chance. I couldn't hide forever.
• 43:30
  As quietly as I could, I swung the door open
• 43:33
  and stepped into the office. The thing wearing clint skin
• 43:36
  was gone, Thank god, I thought. Out of morbid curiosity.
• 43:40
  I glanced at his workstation, where I'd heard the unsettling
• 43:43
  noises earlier. There were two massive eggs sitting on his desk,
• 43:48
  coated an viscous substance. I didn't even want to think
• 43:52
  of the implications. I didn't want to know out of
• 43:55
  which orifice he laid them. I want nothing to do
• 43:58
  with this anymore. I ran out of my office to
• 44:01
  my car and drove straight to Kingston. I'm not going back.
• 44:04
  I will never go back. Someone else will have to
• 44:07
  deal with this situation. How do you feel about sluck
• 44:13
  a man? Are you okay with that? Uh? No, I
• 44:16
  think that kind of to your point. No, I mean,
• 44:19
  don't you me wrong in a movie sense or something.
• 44:22
  Don't be me wrong. It's cool.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: Like I mean, if I saw the thing, I'd like
• 44:24
  that thing rules. But in terms of like buildings building,
• 44:27
  a building tension and.
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Uh, you know, uh, you wanted the pigeon, the horror
• 44:33
  of it. No, not even the pigeon.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: I think that if you're going this angle where you're
• 44:36
  not even confronting it, I think, don't even look at it.
• 44:39
  I think imagine it. Hear the sounds like let kind
• 44:42
  of like in the last video we read of like
• 44:43
  a The Blind Woman. It's like hearing the thing and
• 44:46
  like not really knowing what it looks like is more
• 44:49
  horrifying than being like, oh yeah, his like you know,
• 44:51
  his face was flattened, and don't me wrong, it's cool.
• 44:54
  But I think to imagine something of like hearing noises
• 44:57
  of like animal noises.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: It was a mixture of man and animal.
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: I think is UH would be a little more effective
• 45:03
  in my opinion, at least for me, because then if
• 45:05
  anything too, then.
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: When you go in and you see the eggs, you're like,
• 45:08
  what the fuck is this thing? You know? Well, that's
• 45:10
  the point I was making UH earlier with like, uh,
• 45:15
  do you like it if it just ended at him
• 45:17
  flying out of the bathroom window right and you're never sure?
• 45:20
  I mean you could.
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: I like the idea of him coming back, Like I
• 45:22
  like the idea of spicing it up or something. Yeah,
• 45:24
  but I think you could be like I think like
• 45:26
  keeping it at the end before the updates it rules
• 45:29
  as well, you know, would you with so we got
• 45:34
  one more update? It's really short, we do, we do
• 45:36
  have one more of it.
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: I was gonna say, would you feel differently if it
• 45:40
  did describe it but it was a pigeon man.
• 45:44
  Speaker 2: No, I mean, if it was a pigeon man he
• 45:45
  did even interact with it, it would be something like
• 45:47
  It's almost like the fly or something where it's like
• 45:49
  you need to interact with it, like you need to.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: Like it's like almost like.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Deriving empathy from a creature, even if the creature is
• 45:58
  like something that is uh trying to attack you or something.
• 46:02
  It's like being able to see your mutated friend and
• 46:04
  talk with it and like understand.
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: You know. That was the best thing of the of
• 46:08
  the fly.
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: Initially is the whole thing is it's like an analogy
• 46:10
  of somebody like you know or that you love, is
• 46:13
  like dying of cancer and you have nothing you can and.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: They can't change it. Yeah, exactly.
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: I think like if you do something at that angle,
• 46:20
  even if you do some fun stuff where it's like
• 46:21
  a monster and it's trying to attack you. Having I
• 46:23
  think you can only go that far and you do
• 46:25
  a pigeon man. I think pigure man rules, and to
• 46:27
  go on my death by'd say picture man rules. But
• 46:29
  I think it's more so it works more effectively if
• 46:32
  the horror comes from like, uh, your your friend, the
• 46:37
  human connection, like you know, the human relationship can never
• 46:41
  be the same, and it's this thing, you know, him
• 46:43
  being like I'm not going back and it's somebody else
• 46:45
  to deal with. I think that's kind of a shitty
• 46:47
  character thing. M hm, like what you say, you're just
• 46:49
  never you don't give a fuck about this guy. Like,
• 46:52
  I think that's like one thing where I'd be like,
• 46:53
  I didn't really care for that, but we got one.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Let's just finish the size up the last up date
• 46:57
  update two. I thought I could get away from them,
• 47:01
  but now I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm imagining it.
• 47:05
  But the pigeons outside look god, not just disproportionate and
• 47:09
  disfigured as what I saw in Toronto, but there's something
• 47:12
  wrong about the way they move. I think those things
• 47:16
  are learning to better mimic the shapes of what they're
• 47:18
  possessing and now they've spread and that's the end of
• 47:24
  our story, you know.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: And I like the humors of somebody being like these
• 47:27
  these pigeons are annoying. We're going to like it's the
• 47:30
  hubris of man's thing, like he could that it could
• 47:32
  control nature.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: I'm going to trigger them into not reproducing. Yeah.
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: And then now it's something where it's basically you've started
• 47:39
  a new black plague or you've started.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: A new plague, you know. And I think that's I
• 47:44
  think that's a lot of fun. I like that angle
• 47:46
  of it.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: I do think it's stronger if you don't do the
• 47:49
  updates at all and you just have your buddy at
• 47:51
  the end gets thrown out and it's like, uh, if
• 47:53
  you're trying to have it be something short and to
• 47:55
  the you know, punchy, and you know it's it's concise
• 47:57
  and there's not a lot of fat on it. I
• 47:59
  think that I think the story reads stronger that way.
• 48:02
  But all in all, I love I think it's a
• 48:04
  really fun story. Even though I was still confused by.
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: The eggs cracking open and like the air coming through.
• 48:10
  I don't think you need to divulge, like, you know,
• 48:12
  you don't need to like harp on like this is
• 48:14
  why it's doing this, but I think just a little
• 48:17
  something more to where it's almost like, oh, I bought.
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: This, I bought these eggs from this dealer, which they
• 48:22
  did say, you know, it's the cheapest one.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: But it's like, is the dealer like is it a
• 48:26
  batched of something that's like curse?
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: Just a little something to where it don't overly explain something,
• 48:31
  but at least give us just a bit more. Even
• 48:33
  though I wasn't really worried, like I wasn't like my mind,
• 48:36
  I didn't really.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Give a fuck.
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: I just like the weird body horror curse stuff that's
• 48:40
  like my cup of tea. But just you know, if
• 48:42
  I had a few criticisms that that's.
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: What would be. And just also the thing of him
• 48:45
  like abandoning his buddy at the end.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: I think that's just kind of a a shitty character arc,
• 48:51
  and tonight would be pudget not even to be punished
• 48:54
  for it too, because that's like a thing where it's
• 48:56
  like you turn your back on your friend and then
• 48:57
  usually having something to where that guy now has to
• 49:00
  reap what he sews, I think is a more satisfying conclusion.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think I like that story. It's a
• 49:08
  fun little vignette of like this thing is like possessing shapes.
• 49:13
  It's very invasion of the body snatchers. Yeah, but it
• 49:17
  starts with animals and then works its way up to
• 49:18
  people and stuff. That was fun. I like that. Yeah,
• 49:22
  say like micro horror, this guy is really I guy
• 49:26
  or girl since we I don't know which one, but
• 49:30
  who knows? Who knows? Who cares? I like their stuff there.
• 49:34
  This is a good author. I'm digging it so far.
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean we can and I think just for
• 49:39
  the sake of threes here, I think it's just just
• 49:41
  to have it be satisfying. We'll read one more, and
• 49:44
  it's but once again about the same author, and it's called.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: It All started with a hot air balloon. Gota like
• 49:49
  me and you our relationship. It's true, me and you
• 49:53
  floating above the clouds.
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: So that's why I'm going to dedicate this last one.
• 49:56
  It all start with a hot air balloon to the viewer,
• 49:58
  to the audience. And if it sucks, I'm sorry, I
• 50:01
  don't Almo shall tell you, but this one's for you.
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: Take it away. It appeared on the horizon early one
• 50:08
  morning at the very far edge of Caleb's field. It
• 50:12
  was just a blip at first, but as a gently
• 50:14
  wafted closer to my property became large enough to blot
• 50:17
  out the sun, my son Henry was captivated. He'd never
• 50:22
  seen a hot air balloon in person before. He washed
• 50:25
  it drift closer and closer, then ran out on the
• 50:27
  porch in his dinosaur Onesie washed it creeping even closer,
• 50:32
  so drank my coffee. I could hear the sputters of
• 50:34
  the fire keeping the colorful thing afloat. It would stop
• 50:38
  and start periodically burst into life and a geyser of flames.
• 50:43
  My son waved excitedly, but his excitement waned as the
• 50:46
  hot air balloon drew near. Hommy, there's no one in
• 50:51
  the basket, I heard the burner puttering, what do you mean, honey?
• 50:58
  I stretched down and peered up at the object in
• 51:01
  the sky. Henry was right, there was no one manning
• 51:04
  the hot air balloon. Weird, I thought, must have gotten loose.
• 51:09
  There hadn't been much wind that morning, But if whoever
• 51:12
  the balloon belonged to hadn't tied it down properly, it
• 51:15
  could have drifted off on its own out of curiosity.
• 51:19
  I grabbed my keys, buckled my son in the backseat
• 51:21
  of the truck, took off after it. The balloon ran
• 51:24
  out of fuel and landed on the outskirts of my field,
• 51:27
  where I finally caught up to it. Caleb was already there,
• 51:30
  sitting on his four wheeler and scrutinizing it with a
• 51:33
  perplexed expression on his face. Morning grace, he said, never
• 51:38
  looking away from the object, as the envelope slowly lost
• 51:41
  its circular shape and fan to the ground like curtains
• 51:43
  in the breeze. Patty, Caleb, any idea what the strackler's
• 51:47
  doing here? I opened the back door to let Henry out.
• 51:50
  My excitable son jumped out of the truck and bolted
• 51:52
  towards the hot air balloon. Thankfully, Caleb grabbed him by
• 51:55
  the shoulders and held him back. No, son, it's not safe.
• 52:00
  My catch fire was to keep your distance, he told. Henry.
• 52:04
  Gaze then fell on me.
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: Hmm, not sure, I reckon it's a runaway tourist attraction
• 52:11
  from a few towns over.
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: He rubbed his bushy chin. Hmm, yeah, that's probably it.
• 52:19
  Henry squirmed at Caleb's firm grip. I want a good look.
• 52:24
  The last of the fabric fell and draped over a
• 52:26
  patch of soil. Should be safe now, said Caleb, jerking
• 52:30
  his head towards my son. I nodded back. He let
• 52:33
  Henry go. My boy squealed and ran towards the basket. Eee, Kevin,
• 52:39
  not to touch the burner. Honey, it's still hot, I
• 52:42
  called out, Hands on my hips. Caleb followed him at
• 52:45
  a much slower pace. It's quiet this morning, did you know,
• 52:51
  I shook my head. It's never quiet with Henry around.
• 53:00
  I picked up the pace as Henry pulled himself aboard.
• 53:03
  Though I knew it wasn't possible, small part of me
• 53:05
  was afraid the balloon would have played and my son
• 53:06
  would float off into the sky, never to be seen
• 53:08
  or heard from again. Just one of the very ridiculous
• 53:11
  automatic thoughts you get when you're a parent. Everything has
• 53:14
  the potential to be dangerous, even when it's not. Thankfully,
• 53:17
  the hot air balloon stayed right where it was, and
• 53:19
  Henry ran around in the basket like it was the
• 53:21
  best tool we've ever seen. Oh now, don't break anything, Henry,
• 53:25
  I said, leaning over the side of the basket. Caleb
• 53:28
  knelt down lifted the fabric and inspected it curiously. Everything
• 53:32
  looks intact. Better not leave it out here, though, Help
• 53:36
  you put in the back of the truck. I'll store
• 53:37
  in the barn until its owner shows up. It probably
• 53:41
  cost a pretty penny. Someone was bound to come claim
• 53:43
  it sooner or later. Maybe I'd convince him to take
• 53:46
  us up for a ride as a thank you. I
• 53:49
  shoot Henry out of the basket and told him to
• 53:51
  go sit in the truck while Caleb and I hooked
• 53:53
  the fabric, rolled it, tossed it in the back, and
• 53:56
  then grabbed the basket and hoisted it up. I whispered,
• 54:01
  straining to lift it heavier than looks, beads of sweat
• 54:05
  rolling down Caleb's face, probably because of the burner. I nodded.
• 54:11
  It wasn't easy, but we managed to force it into
• 54:13
  the truck. Caleb helped me tie it down, while Henry
• 54:15
  watched eagerly from the back seat. Phew, mumbled, wiping my brow.
• 54:20
  I was definitely having second thoughts about bringing it into
• 54:23
  the barn. Maybe I just throw a tarp on it
• 54:25
  once I got home and call it a day. Caleb
• 54:27
  wiped his hands on his jeans. I'll best be hitd back.
• 54:32
  The wife want to know what all the excitement was about.
• 54:35
  He opted on his four wheeler and gave me a wave. Thanks, Caleb,
• 54:39
  y'all take care. We both took off in opposite directions.
• 54:41
  Henry washes Caleb disappeared on the horizon and then stared
• 54:45
  at our rows of corn the rest of the way home.
• 54:48
  As we pulled into the driveway, Henry said, mister Scarecrow,
• 54:52
  doing a good job today. All right, Nope, nope, no,
• 54:57
  all right, Henry, you're going in that balloon. I'm gonna
• 54:59
  light it by that. That's exactly. That's like theo thing,
• 55:01
  like the Bobba Duke. I would beat that kid with
• 55:03
  a fucking hammer, you know what I mean? Good lord,
• 55:06
  mister Scarecrow. Mister Scarecrow's doing a good job today. What
• 55:11
  just the idea of like a kid says one freaky thing,
• 55:14
  and you're like just the most brutal way to murder someone.
• 55:18
  I would do. Oh yeah, oh yeah, mister mister Boba
• 55:23
  Duke scary. You know what else is scary, mister.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: Phillips, It's also scary my fucking ballpin hammer, My de
• 55:30
  Walt ballpin hammer.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: Mister scarecrow's doing a good job today what he pointed
• 55:37
  to the field. Fuck. I followed his gaze to the scarecrow.
• 55:43
  For the first time in years, there were no crows
• 55:45
  calling around it or anywhere else on the property. Stupid
• 55:48
  thing never worked before. I don't know why it was
• 55:50
  working now, I'll be damned. Caleb was right. Without the
• 55:56
  incessant bird calls and with most of the animals still asleep,
• 56:00
  it's rather quiet out, so quiet in fact, that I
• 56:03
  could hear a low atmosphere come droning out in the background,
• 56:07
  kind of sound you only notice when everything else goes away.
• 56:10
  It's neither peaceful nor annoying. It was just a constant,
• 56:14
  low sound, easily droned out by my son's babbling. Well
• 56:18
  that I'm calling as I'm calling aliens very nope to me. Yeah, yeah,
• 56:24
  Like the way that the balloon's like just a vessel
• 56:28
  for like some or it is some alien.
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I almost thought that, like if it was a
• 56:31
  UFO someone got picked up while they're in the air blown.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I don't even think about that. That's a
• 56:37
  great idea. That's crazy, Like like we they're balloon and
• 56:40
  all of a sudden like, oh this like he pulled
• 56:45
  up a tractor made Yeah, I just sucked out of it.
• 56:51
  Spencer or farm hand arrived late that morning. I was
• 56:56
  already washing the dishes from breakfast when I saw him
• 56:58
  driving up the road. He had a bad habit the
• 57:01
  being tardy, so I wasn't exactly surprised when he came
• 57:03
  running through the door, huffing, puffing and apologizing. Sorry, ma'am,
• 57:09
  this is the last time I swear. I stared at him, unimpressed.
• 57:14
  Did you hear what I had been? The hot air balloon?
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was there, and I still managed to make
• 57:20
  it back here on time to feed the livestock.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: He lowered his head in shame. Sorry, ma'am, it's fine.
• 57:27
  Just get to work, all right, he nodded, just as
• 57:30
  he was about to step out the door. However, you're
• 57:32
  a booming noise off in the distance. What the car,
• 57:35
  Nathan with that? Yeah, peering out towards the field, transformer exploded.
• 57:41
  How loud for diet. I know she met transformer like
• 57:47
  a power transformer, but yeah, it must be Optimus Prime.
• 57:55
  I guess to go bout like starter screams like exploding
• 57:58
  over the field. Exactly. I'm going to kill you. Transformer
• 58:04
  exploded mostly.
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: I guess it's me t an Optimus Prime fighting out
• 58:08
  in the cornfield again. Do you mean that the Go
• 58:11
  Box and the Deceptive cons are fighting again? They are
• 58:13
  Maya's that tried Spencer.
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: They have to they have to do this battle in
• 58:24
  order to obtain the cube. What's the name of that
• 58:27
  cube in those movies, the Spark they're trying to find
• 58:32
  for the all Spark.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: And I guess that may But they're trying to go
• 58:36
  out and find the all Spark that are hitting the
• 58:38
  well out back.
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Be sure and throw a tarp over at Spencer. Gonna
• 58:44
  be a long night, yes, ma'am. Just the idea of
• 58:55
  like these two rednecks. There's like thirty foot to robot.
• 59:00
  It's like rolling guns and head like straight bullets are
• 59:04
  hitting the house every now and then. Henry's just like,
• 59:07
  I can't you know this is going on and they're
• 59:13
  used to it. It's like a hot air balloon. Oh
• 59:18
  my god, the hard air balloon. I've never seen that before.
• 59:20
  That's incredible.
• 59:25
  Speaker 2: Their tractors like transforming into like a sat its getting
• 59:28
  like fucking murdered.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Oh god, go with christ tractor. You're not gonna make
• 59:41
  it this time. The hot air balloon turns into a transformer.
• 59:45
  They're like, oh, just another one of those. Yeah, I'm bored.
• 59:54
  We stepped onto the porch and scanned the area until
• 59:57
  we spotted a wisp of smoke in the distance. Looks
• 1:00:00
  like it's coming from the burnfield.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: Probably just a tractor, mister Burns is I mean you
• 1:00:07
  replaced the old thing for years now, I guess the
• 1:00:09
  engine finally gave out.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: I replied, and shoved him lightly. Come on, enough procrastinating,
• 1:00:15
  You've got work to do. She was cracking a whip
• 1:00:17
  on this guy. I God damned it, why don't you
• 1:00:19
  fucking give him time? Word? Let him breathe. There's the
• 1:00:22
  fields are on fire and something exploded, and you're like,
• 1:00:24
  are you get to work? Is a fucking idiot corn
• 1:00:32
  His eyes stayed locked on the small column of smoke
• 1:00:34
  for a moment, but he eventually nodded right, sorry, mayam. Well.
• 1:00:40
  Spencer was doing hard labor outside and Henry was watching
• 1:00:43
  cartoons in the other room. I got to work pickling
• 1:00:46
  vegetables for storage. It was nearing lunch when Spencer finally
• 1:00:50
  showed up again.
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: He was covered in dirt, took care of the cattle
• 1:00:55
  and everything. Mayam, good work, Spence. I'll have lunch ready
• 1:00:59
  in a minute. You mind doing one last thing, but
• 1:01:02
  your turping the barn, bear deer and go get it
• 1:01:04
  for me. Sure I am where exactly in the storage
• 1:01:09
  loft and can't miss it.
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: I'll be back in a minute. I watched him walking
• 1:01:14
  into the barn while I tended to the hash Browns.
• 1:01:18
  Then I waited, waited for a couple of minutes and
• 1:01:22
  five and ten. The hell's taking so long a pace
• 1:01:28
  back and forth? Irritated. His car was still in the driveway,
• 1:01:32
  so I knew he hadn't slipped away to go flirt
• 1:01:33
  with some girl in town with the grunt. Stomped into
• 1:01:37
  the barn, expecting to see him lounging about. I was
• 1:01:40
  prepared to chastise him for his laziness. Spence, I asked angrily.
• 1:01:45
  As the door swung open. A ladder was propped against
• 1:01:49
  the wooden loft, the tarp at its feet grabbed the top.
• 1:01:52
  Peered up, trying to find Spencer.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: Spence, where are you playing at No answer, Spence, lunch
• 1:01:59
  is ready, get down from there.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: Still nothing, not even a single creak from the wooden planks.
• 1:02:07
  All I could hear was the quiet hum from earlier,
• 1:02:10
  this time slightly louder. If Spencer was up there, he
• 1:02:15
  was being perfectly still in quiet. Two things he wasn't
• 1:02:18
  too good at. Tarp weidged under my arm. I grabbed
• 1:02:21
  the ladder and began climbing the rungs. I was about
• 1:02:24
  halfway up when I heard Henry calling hungry. Well I
• 1:02:29
  had what I needed. I had the tar. Spencer could
• 1:02:32
  play a stupid games all he wanted, manchietive Spencer could
• 1:02:36
  play his stupid games for all he wanted all my care. No,
• 1:02:40
  all you can if you want to jack off in
• 1:02:41
  the loft of the bar, and that's fine, but no
• 1:02:44
  food for you later. Oh I had to beat his
• 1:02:47
  beating his big old donkey dick. Well, see what I mean,
• 1:02:50
  you have to go too far, like I'm talking about, like, oh,
• 1:02:54
  you so mean to this guy. You always take it
• 1:02:56
  to something like make him feel like a freak show
• 1:02:59
  some proclivity, some horrendous like it's something there his lips.
• 1:03:03
  See alright, alright, alright out tap out, tap out, tap out. Okay,
• 1:03:10
  Well I had what I needed. I had the darp.
• 1:03:13
  Spencer could play stupid games. All he wanted for all
• 1:03:15
  I cared. I slided back down and went back inside
• 1:03:18
  to serve lunch. There's Spencer.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: He's trying a brand new diet of cold eggs and ham.
• 1:03:27
  He's trying to brand new diet of beating his cocks.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: We weren't there, The store wasn't there, Our bit wasn't there.
• 1:03:35
  You're just accelerated. Maybe if the bit ran its course
• 1:03:39
  like another, like two sentences, that would have got there.
• 1:03:42
  But you are floring to get to the hands of Ransom.
• 1:03:46
  You're gonna be just like them and Yoda. You're a monster.
• 1:03:49
  You're what I mean now you're talking about her speaking
• 1:03:52
  to on that tone of voice.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: Spencer's out back, spitting his hand. He calls it amage lotion.
• 1:03:57
  All right, how had it was a bag of peanut
• 1:04:04
  em and ince.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: And a Coca Cola. I think he'll be just yeah,
• 1:04:11
  he asked for a couple of jolly ranchers. Oh god,
• 1:04:14
  did you give him? Why? I gotta do Spence like that?
• 1:04:20
  Bro like Spencer. Oh gosh. We finished eating with no
• 1:04:32
  sign of Spencer. I was starting to get a little worried.
• 1:04:36
  He wasn't the most reliable guy. He can often come
• 1:04:39
  in late and cut out early. They never run off
• 1:04:41
  of me in the middle of the day, and he'd
• 1:04:43
  certainly never leave his car behind. I figured i'd go
• 1:04:45
  look for him once I was done with the dishes.
• 1:04:48
  Himry was playing with his toys and I was drawing
• 1:04:50
  off the last of the pope pots and pants. I
• 1:04:52
  probably never would have noticed it if the sun wasn't
• 1:04:55
  shining at just the right angle, sending a beam of
• 1:04:58
  light from Florida's ceiling dust particles they were dancing through
• 1:05:02
  the room's air currents. However, about a foot below the ceiling,
• 1:05:07
  there was a visible decrease in the density. I watched
• 1:05:11
  his little flake swam up and disappeared beyond the invisible border. Weird,
• 1:05:16
  I thought, squinting at the empty space. There's something about
• 1:05:20
  it that made me feel unnerved. It's like I knew
• 1:05:24
  something was wrong, but it couldn't quite put my finger
• 1:05:27
  on what. I looked outside. Not a bird inside for miles.
• 1:05:33
  I thought of the hot air balloon and how empty
• 1:05:35
  it had been, thought about Spencer up and the bars loft.
• 1:05:39
  Eh oh, that's cool. A bumblebee buzzed by the window,
• 1:05:45
  flew up beyond the intangible line and disappeared. One second
• 1:05:50
  it was there, the next it was just gone. I'm
• 1:05:55
  gonna get my trucks, squeet tendery. As he ran towards
• 1:05:58
  the stairs, I grabbed him so quickly that he nearly fell.
• 1:06:02
  Don't go upstairs, I warned, my voice a mix of
• 1:06:04
  stern conviction and cackling terror. I gulped down a knot
• 1:06:08
  of apprehension. My eyes were locked on the immaculate separation
• 1:06:12
  between the dusty and nearly dustless air. In that moment,
• 1:06:16
  I can only think of one thing, something I heard
• 1:06:19
  on TV. Dust is mainly comprised of dead skin cells.
• 1:06:24
  My blood ran cold. I could see it moving the separation,
• 1:06:29
  I mean slowly, like the motion of the sun setting
• 1:06:32
  on the horizon. It was subtle, but it was definitely
• 1:06:36
  moving down. That's when I realized that humming sound from
• 1:06:40
  this morning was getting even louder. We need to get
• 1:06:43
  to lower ground. I thought. I wasn't even sure what
• 1:06:46
  was going on, but I knew that something bad would
• 1:06:49
  happen if we were caught under the unseen ceiling slowly
• 1:06:52
  dropping on us. We lived on a plateau surrounded by mountains.
• 1:06:56
  The lowest point for miles. There was no lower ground
• 1:06:59
  except for the cellar deuck in my head. I grabbed
• 1:07:01
  Tindre's arms pulled him towards the door. Mom, what are
• 1:07:05
  you doing? He whined, tugging back. I did an answer.
• 1:07:09
  I didn't know what to say. I closed the door tightly,
• 1:07:12
  unsure whether or not it would help keep it whatever
• 1:07:16
  it was out. The mere possibility that it might help
• 1:07:21
  was enough to bring me some form of comfort. With
• 1:07:24
  my free hand, I nabbed the flashlight I kept on
• 1:07:26
  the top step and climbed down with my son. It
• 1:07:29
  was cold downstairs, perfect for storage. I had shelves with
• 1:07:33
  jars full of pickled vegetables, homemade jams, and sealed meats
• 1:07:38
  lying in every wall. The concrete room wasn't very inviting
• 1:07:41
  to a seven year old, so Henry usually stayed out
• 1:07:43
  unless I asked him to fetch me something. I let
• 1:07:46
  out a sigh of relief and took a seat on
• 1:07:48
  the bottom of the wooden staircase. I could hear frogs
• 1:07:50
  and crickets chirping happily outside. Mom. I did an answer instead.
• 1:07:58
  I went over the facts in my mind. Was I
• 1:08:00
  exaggerating what it compelled me to run? And hide an
• 1:08:05
  empty hot air balloon, missing farm hand. Mom, what Henry?
• 1:08:12
  He bounced around from foot to foot. What's going on?
• 1:08:18
  I paused, thinking it over. What was I supposed to
• 1:08:21
  tell the kid? I didn't even know what was happening.
• 1:08:24
  My eyebrows came together. There's bad air up there, like
• 1:08:28
  a fart, Yeah, something like that. I hung my head
• 1:08:34
  and hid my face behind my hands. I was being stupid,
• 1:08:38
  at least that's what I thought till the croaks came
• 1:08:40
  to a sudden stop, so all the bullfrogs in the
• 1:08:43
  creek out back were suddenly holding their breath. I found
• 1:08:47
  myself holding mine, waiting for the sound to come back,
• 1:08:51
  but all I heard was the crickets. Ten minutes later,
• 1:08:55
  the crickets went silent. The void from the hush that
• 1:08:59
  fell over the room couldn't even be filled by the
• 1:09:01
  pitter patter of Henry's feet as he rained in circles.
• 1:09:04
  Poured out of his mind. This is great, by the way,
• 1:09:09
  this is such a cool the idea of like you
• 1:09:11
  can imagine where the level is because the frogs go
• 1:09:14
  first and then the crickets. Right. Ah man. My fear
• 1:09:18
  only increased as I spotted the jars of meat sitting
• 1:09:21
  on the top shelf of the rack in the corner.
• 1:09:23
  They were empty. I pointed the flashlight up and looked
• 1:09:26
  at the dust particles in its ray. They were disappearing
• 1:09:29
  about two feet from the ceiling, just like they had upstairs,
• 1:09:33
  And just like upstairs, the invisible divide was getting lower
• 1:09:37
  that low hum following suit. All I could do was
• 1:09:40
  watch as, over the course of an hour, the separation
• 1:09:43
  came closer and closer to my son and I, till
• 1:09:46
  it became clear that I couldn't sit on the stairs anymore.
• 1:09:49
  I pulled Henry into my lap and sat on the
• 1:09:51
  cold concrete floor, shaking as I watched the invisible ceiling
• 1:09:54
  falling on us. From time to time I had to
• 1:09:57
  jiggle the flashlight to get it working again. I rocked
• 1:10:01
  to my son gently, praying whatever was falling on us
• 1:10:03
  would stop and pull back, praying, Henry, when it go
• 1:10:07
  rogue on me and run out of my grasp. As
• 1:10:11
  it came closer, I lay down and told my son
• 1:10:13
  to do the same. We had to stay as low
• 1:10:15
  to the ground as possible. Don't move, Honey, Mom, what
• 1:10:21
  are we doing? Playing dead? Honey?
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: If you do good, we'll pick your favorite cake, but
• 1:10:27
  you gotta be perfectly still, right, okay?
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 1: I wasn't sure what to expect. Would it hurt when
• 1:10:34
  it happened? Would we disappear like the people in the
• 1:10:37
  hot air balloon? Could we somehow be saved. I held
• 1:10:42
  my hand against Henry's chest, pinning him down like a
• 1:10:45
  seat belt. I could feel him shivering against the cold
• 1:10:48
  stone floor. I was terrified he'd squirm and disappear forever.
• 1:10:54
  Should have brought a blanket, I thought, no, the blankets
• 1:10:57
  were on the second floor, second floor, or hadn't been safe.
• 1:11:02
  There was a rock digging into my thigh, but I
• 1:11:05
  couldn't risk moving. The threshold was closing in on us,
• 1:11:08
  making me feel claustrophobic in the wide open room. I
• 1:11:12
  dropped the flashlight, closed my eyes tightly, and held my
• 1:11:15
  breath for as long as I could. I waited, listening
• 1:11:20
  to the droning hum getting louder and louder, like a
• 1:11:22
  bug circling my ear. I could feel Henry's body heat
• 1:11:27
  radiating from his chest. As long as I felt the
• 1:11:30
  warmth on my arm, I knew my boy was okay.
• 1:11:33
  Even if I disappeared, at least he'd be lower to
• 1:11:36
  the ground, low enough to be safe. I hoped we
• 1:11:42
  must have been there for at least an hour, maybe two,
• 1:11:45
  before the sound became more distant. Henry had somehow fallen
• 1:11:49
  asleep despite the displeasing conditions. Opened my eyes finally, gathering
• 1:11:55
  enough courage to reach for the flashlight. I flicked it
• 1:11:57
  on and carefully aimed it at the ceiling. The dust
• 1:12:01
  wasn't back, but I couldn't see a divide anymore. Either
• 1:12:05
  we'd been engulfed or the phenomena had passed. I was
• 1:12:09
  afraid to move at first, but I finally raised my arm.
• 1:12:13
  Nothing happened. I sat up still nothing. I let out
• 1:12:18
  a sigh of relief. We'd been spared, somehow, by some miracle,
• 1:12:23
  we'd been spared. When the hum completely faded, I cautiously
• 1:12:28
  climbed up the stairs, keeping my head low, opened the
• 1:12:31
  door and looked around. The sound was gone, the invisible
• 1:12:35
  divide gone with it. It was over. After waking Henry
• 1:12:40
  and warming him up, I headed out to the barn.
• 1:12:43
  It was empty. No birds, no livestock, not even a
• 1:12:47
  single fly buzzing around the convenure. Every single animal on
• 1:12:51
  my farm had gone missing. We got in the truck
• 1:12:55
  and headed towards town. As we passed the Burns farm
• 1:12:58
  saw their crop dust crashed pieces in the field. This
• 1:13:01
  has been the explosion Spencer and I heard earlier. Stopped
• 1:13:05
  to check, but the plane was empty. I knocked on
• 1:13:08
  the burn store but received no answer. Drove to Caleb's
• 1:13:12
  farm and tried them, no answer. I drove to town.
• 1:13:17
  There was no one, not a single living bean, not
• 1:13:20
  even a damn squirrel. I don't know exactly what happened,
• 1:13:25
  but I'm afraid it's about to happen again. I can
• 1:13:28
  hear that hum in the distance. So much as I
• 1:13:31
  want to get out of here, I can't take the risk.
• 1:13:35
  I mean, the only path out of here is through
• 1:13:36
  the mountains, and I don't fancy going anywhere too high
• 1:13:39
  right now. I'm gonna try my luck and hide in
• 1:13:42
  the cellar again. If you don't hear from me, it
• 1:13:45
  means we weren't lucky enough to be spared twice. What
• 1:13:50
  a cool idea, man, Yeah, that's so crazy. That was awesome.
• 1:13:56
  Just like that's just such a creative idea of like
• 1:13:59
  there is a visible line that anything like biological even meat,
• 1:14:03
  jars of meat that go in its threshold just disappear.
• 1:14:06
  It's almost like a rapture story, right, like everyone disappeared
• 1:14:10
  all at once.
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: It's like any like not living organism because the corn
• 1:14:13
  is probably still there, but it's like anything.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: That's like life or something like like biolog like an animal, anything,
• 1:14:19
  any anything with meat. Yeah, just gone. And like the
• 1:14:23
  explosion mentioned earlier, and it's like the plane crashing and
• 1:14:26
  it all started with the hot air balloon. Like what
• 1:14:28
  a fun take or like the the visual of Spencer
• 1:14:31
  walking up a ladder and disappearing, that's so cool.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, uh, I don't know, I still feel
• 1:14:37
  like it's like a fun tale. Like I almost still
• 1:14:39
  read it as like an alien thing or something. In
• 1:14:41
  the humming by I definitely think it is pulling saucer
• 1:14:43
  that's coming through and it's like a new like an
• 1:14:46
  interesting way of like a tractor being.
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: It's almost like like you could imagine aliens have come
• 1:14:50
  to Earth and they've put like, uh like a film
• 1:14:53
  around the planet. Yeah, and it's like it's just like
• 1:14:56
  killing any life that it can catch in like this field.
• 1:15:01
  Uh so they're just doing sweeps over and over. What
• 1:15:03
  a cool This was awesome. That was really cool. Yeah,
• 1:15:06
  it all started with a hot air balloon. That was
• 1:15:08
  by far the funnest thing we read today. What fun
• 1:15:10
  I like. I like everything we read, but I think
• 1:15:12
  that that one was just that was the strongest because
• 1:15:15
  it's it's such an inventive threat.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: Uh.
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: And like that part where she's laying down. I was
• 1:15:21
  thinking to myself, like would it hurt? Would you disappear
• 1:15:23
  all at once? This part you have to touch it,
• 1:15:25
  you have to completely disappear. Like it's just such a
• 1:15:28
  it's so unique, such a unique concept, and it was
• 1:15:31
  delivered so well. Yeah, it's very because like what do
• 1:15:33
  you do? You're just telling that the ape thing of yeah,
• 1:15:38
  you're just kind of waiting.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 2: It's like a you introduced this time element to the
• 1:15:42
  to the threat, which makes it feel even more you know,
• 1:15:46
  crazy of a.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: It starts so high in the it's just as the
• 1:15:49
  day has gone on, it's just progressively gotten line. And
• 1:15:51
  you could, like, very very you could do so many
• 1:15:53
  scenarios with that setting, because that's like a new setting
• 1:15:56
  to me. It's like, oh, maybe you had a group
• 1:15:57
  who was like out deep sea diving and they kind
• 1:16:00
  up and everyone's gone, or you've got like someone who's
• 1:16:03
  like in a swimming pool and they have to decide
• 1:16:05
  between drowning or like falling into it, and so like,
• 1:16:07
  there's just this is a very fun scenario. That was awesome.
• 1:16:10
  I liked everything, but I agree with you. I think
• 1:16:12
  the hot air balloon was the strongest. I think, Yeah, but.
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 2: They were all go far. They were all good, all
• 1:16:17
  really fun. But I'm really glad we at least read
• 1:16:18
  the hot air balloon. Yeah one as well. I'd like
• 1:16:20
  to cap to put a period on this episode, which
• 1:16:24
  we are at that period, my friend.
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: So uh, thank you all so much for watching. If
• 1:16:28
  you haven't considered it, consider checking out the Spotify and.
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: The Apple podcast giving us a nice rating there. It
• 1:16:33
  really does help us out and we appreciate it. And
• 1:16:35
  as always, guys, we thank you so much for listening.
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 1: And supporting the show. It means the fucking the world.
• 1:16:40
  We will catch you at the next scary episode. We
• 1:16:43
  will see you in the next one. And also to everyone,
• 1:16:45
  check out manonlicitlset on Twitter and Facebook, and of course
• 1:16:49
  check out their subreddit user slash man and licet where
• 1:16:52
  uh or not their subreddit their reddit account where they
• 1:16:55
  post all these stories on no sleep fantastic author and
• 1:16:58
  they make really cool little hell allween design, so be
• 1:17:00
  sure to pick them up if you're interested. And thank
• 1:17:03
  you Mannon for making really cool stories. That last one
• 1:17:05
  especially was awesome. I loved it. Thank you all so
• 1:17:08
  much for watching. It means the world. We will catch
• 1:17:10
  you in the next one. Bye. M