Latest / INSPIRE STORY / The Mystery of the Puppet in the Tree

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The Mystery of the Puppet in the Tree · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: He Welcome back to creep Cast another week of scary stories. Today,
• 0:20
  we're going to be reading a story called The Puppet
• 0:23
  in the Tree, which is a yeah, hold on, where
• 0:28
  then is my mouse? The Puppet in the Tree by
• 0:31
  Dopa Bean who did the is it the Dead Girl
• 0:34
  my Yard?
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Right? Dope Bean has done a few stories we've covered,
• 0:37
  so they did. The Dead Girl in My Yard was
• 0:39
  the best friend I ever had all time creep Cast
• 0:42
  banger in my opinion, they told me I was nothing
• 0:44
  but a dog, which is about uh, the one where
• 0:48
  the girl was in the house. Imagine lake at the
• 0:50
  dog and I cleaned hoarder houses for a living. So yeah.
• 0:58
  Dopamine is the name that the righte with online. Their
• 1:01
  actual pen name is R. C. Bowman uh and R C.
• 1:05
  Bowman has a bunch of different stories you can check out,
• 1:08
  as well as multiple books on that you can get
• 1:11
  on Amazon, either paperback or for kindle, such as The
• 1:15
  Monsters We Forgot series or What Monsters Do for Love uh,
• 1:20
  and every I can't think of anything we've read from
• 1:22
  them I haven't liked.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say the the Horder one.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: I always forget that what a weird.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Like fantasy, like it dips into all these different weird things,
• 1:34
  and then I still think that the best thing we've
• 1:36
  read from them so far, at least I had to say,
• 1:38
  is The Dead Girl in My Yard.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: The Dead Girl in the Yard. Yeah, Yeah, that one
• 1:41
  was just so good. It was like it was like
• 1:44
  a macaw bridge to Terabithia.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah no, I feel like that. Yeah, like a fucking
• 1:51
  demented bridge to Tabithia, which bridge to Taribithia is already
• 1:54
  kind of demented. Still can't believe the little girl that
• 1:57
  dies falls in thettle drowned.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: Straights up for hell, she does, and you never see it.
• 2:03
  It's so traumatic you never see it.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: It's just like she's let's play for the best in
• 2:08
  a in a children's movie, if they saw a full
• 2:12
  like eight minutes.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: I'm not saying you show or her dead body. I'm
• 2:17
  saying like, he's not with her when it happens, you know, like,
• 2:20
  oh it's a big tragic event. It's just he comes
• 2:23
  home one day. It's like your friend's dead.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Vergetaria the most horrifying thing we've discussed on on
• 2:32
  this podcast.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: The sterious thing we've ever covered. It really is. But
• 2:37
  check out check out our c Bowman stuff. We'll have
• 2:39
  it linked to the description. There was a banger, and
• 2:40
  I should also mention that their account Dopa being got
• 2:43
  banned off Reddit. I know we talked about this last
• 2:45
  time we covered them. It got banned because of some
• 2:47
  stupid rule or something rather, but you can still see
• 2:52
  stories that get posted by them to their subreddit, the
• 2:57
  North American Pantheon, because they have that huge series. It's
• 3:00
  like a collective lore of supernatural things in the United States,
• 3:04
  and they also have like a Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram
• 3:08
  stuff like that. We'll have linked in the description. So
• 3:09
  be sure to show them some love. They certainly deserve
• 3:12
  it well.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Without further ado as well, be sure to check us
• 3:16
  out on audio platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts and
• 3:19
  give us a nice rating there.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: It really does help us.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: And also just want to give a quick shout out
• 3:22
  to our patrons who are listening and getting some extra
• 3:25
  content on the side.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Isaiah, are you ready, I'm read. I do want to
• 3:29
  mention wee on continuing to shout out the author. Most
• 3:32
  of their stories are now posted to their substack. I
• 3:34
  forgot about that. Yes, we'll have the substack linked in
• 3:37
  the description as well. Correct. Okay, anyway, I'm ready to
• 3:41
  get into it. The puppet in the tree. Let us begin.
• 3:45
  Every elementary school has a ridiculous urban legend. My school
• 3:49
  had Muppet Man, and I hated him. Muppet Man was deformed.
• 3:54
  Ill fated plastic surgery left him with the ghastly proportions
• 3:58
  of a marionette puppet, so old a rainbow animal costume
• 4:01
  from the school theater and bore it everywhere. He lived
• 4:04
  in an ancient oak tree in the recess yard. Some
• 4:07
  kids claimed he lived in the branches, watching us play
• 4:10
  from camouflaged hideouts of leaves and twigs. Well, immedia, Okay,
• 4:15
  off the jump. I want to say.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: I have no idea the age. I guess he gets
• 4:20
  a child, but I will say the it seems fledge.
• 4:24
  I thought it was a teacher. At first, I was like,
• 4:26
  my god.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: Oh no, it is an adult. It has to be
• 4:29
  because it says, you know, ill fated plastic surgery. No. Yeah,
• 4:32
  but you never know. It's not Muppet Boy. It's the
• 4:36
  Muppet Man. You ain't You ain't kidding neither. It ain't
• 4:40
  no Muppet bo. It's a Muppet mane. Yeah. So there's
• 4:46
  just also jumping into the deep end. No introduction on
• 4:50
  my name is. It's just like, yeah, there's a guy
• 4:53
  dressed as a rainbow animal and he like watches the
• 4:56
  kids play from the tree, which.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Also don't like that, by the way, grown a man
• 5:02
  with a rainbow with like a rainbow cape or whatever,
• 5:05
  and then he's just watching people played in the trees.
• 5:07
  I'm trying to think if there was anything in my
• 5:08
  middle school where there was or elementary school that was
• 5:13
  like not in that vein, but like you know, like
• 5:15
  a super like a folk lores like a legend or something,
• 5:18
  and I can't think of any The other thing. The
• 5:21
  only thing I remember was that there was people that
• 5:23
  would uh, they said like, I don't know, like this.
• 5:25
  There's like an old well near our school and they
• 5:28
  said that that was haunted. But I don't nothing never,
• 5:30
  you know, nothing ever, nothing ever struck me as a
• 5:33
  kid to be like, oh my god, you know, so
• 5:35
  I don't know.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I remember one time in middle school, which
• 5:40
  I'm trying to think elementary school, we used to I
• 5:43
  remember running through the empty classrooms and saying like, oh,
• 5:46
  there's ghosts or whatever. But I don't think there was
• 5:49
  any specific story. It was just kids being goofy. But
• 5:51
  I remember in middle school one day some guy apparently
• 5:57
  walked into the onto the school parking lot with the shotgun,
• 6:03
  and all the all the teachers are like, there's a
• 6:04
  guy in the parking lot with a gun. So it
• 6:08
  was like a big lockdown. Everyone freaked out. But then
• 6:12
  it turns out he like just lived next to the
• 6:14
  school and he's like, oh, hey, I'm carrying this from
• 6:17
  my truck or whatever. He's just like kept going, So
• 6:21
  it wasn't really a ghost story. But we used to
• 6:23
  joke that he would come back and kill us.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: When kids are kids are pretty cool though, kids are
• 6:31
  pretty well.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: I mean yeah, kids will say stuff like that and
• 6:33
  it means nothing to them. It's like, what if someone
• 6:35
  showed up with a shotgun and killed all of us.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: This teacher we had, the teacher we had in second grade,
• 6:41
  or he was a teacher at my school in second grade.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: I didn't have him, but his leg had to get amputated.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: He was in like this horrible car crash, which to
• 6:47
  a second grader means I mean absolutely nothing. So everyone
• 6:51
  kept calling him like Blackbeard and stuff, and people kept
• 6:53
  like drawing parrots and shit and like all kinds of
• 6:56
  stuff that was like all by related and he was.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Like, I brought a pirate and would it was prosthetically
• 7:05
  he was shut off. It was so rude Jesus kids.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: So, I mean, I remember my friend was like, he
• 7:20
  was like, he doesn't even drive a car.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: He drives a pirate chip to school. This is a
• 7:26
  second grader.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Evil and no one would think, oh god, I mean
• 7:33
  just necessarily rude. It really does make me think at
• 7:37
  times where I'm like, if a fucking teacher just like
• 7:39
  decked a kid in the face, I'd be like, oh,
• 7:41
  you know what, you get one?
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: I think you get one? Yeah, a semester. I remember
• 7:54
  there's a guy who was a year older than me
• 7:58
  in middle school who like his mom would just buy
• 8:02
  him all kinds of like crazy like he had a
• 8:05
  bunch of guns. I remember what.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: You guys and guns? Did they not just get legos?
• 8:12
  Good god, just Tennessee.
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Thing I do remember, which is this is bad. You
• 8:16
  shouldn't have done this. But I remember he brought the
• 8:17
  guns to school one time because we wanted to go
• 8:20
  shoot after school, and he was like, yeah, check this out,
• 8:23
  just lunch over his backpack. She's just like a bunch
• 8:25
  of guns. Oh my god. But here's the thing. I
• 8:29
  remember all this going cool, that's awesome. Yeah, then we
• 8:35
  went and shot him after school and it was fine.
• 8:37
  You know, there's nothing on toward. But just thinking about
• 8:39
  that now, it's like, yeah, any reasonable adult would freak out.
• 8:43
  The only thing. But I remember his brother like blowing
• 8:49
  up frogs with firecrackers and stuff. Yeah, I don't like that.
• 8:53
  And I remember I remember at the time even then,
• 8:57
  like everyone else is like, is this cool, Like you know,
• 8:59
  it's like the explode and stuff, and I'm like, uh,
• 9:02
  I don't know. I like the kinds of the school
• 9:06
  is fine. I don't know about the blowing up live
• 9:09
  animals thing. I uh, should we tell someone about this? Well?
• 9:16
  Are you a big baby? Are you be a baby
• 9:18
  about it? You know, we can kind a pat out
• 9:20
  this run time. We can't be cutting stuff when you're
• 9:22
  talking about anyway, The Morbid kids said he lived in
• 9:30
  the trunk eating caterpillar larvine torturing the ghost of Jason Hughes.
• 9:35
  Jason Hughes wasn't an urban legend, unfortunately. He was just
• 9:39
  a tragedy, a doomed, anxious wreck cursed with ridiculously outsized
• 9:44
  glasses and an obsession with drawing. I remember feeling angry
• 9:48
  one rainy afternoon because I wanted to color with the
• 9:50
  teacher's new markers. Jason already used all the paper in
• 9:53
  the classroom. Nobody liked him much, including me, But I
• 9:58
  don't know why. He was a sweet kid, fretful, anxious,
• 10:03
  and a little too smart for his own good. Sweet
• 10:06
  that that that's more realistic.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Maybe not the cryptid thing, But I do feel like
• 10:09
  there's always one kid in the class who does who
• 10:11
  gets dogged on way too much, who doesn't deserve it.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: That that, now, that is true. That was me. That
• 10:17
  was me. By the way you got you got dogged on.
• 10:18
  I bet you deserved it. We there's the whole. One
• 10:22
  of the most famous bits of this podcast is me
• 10:24
  talking about being shoved into a trash can.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm listen. I'm not saying to get bullet. I'm
• 10:29
  saying that you deserved it. I'm saying the kid that doesn't,
• 10:31
  I'm saying a child.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I just feel like there's a kid
• 10:36
  you pissed me off. We probably an ironic.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: We would not have been friends, nor reason no rhyme reason.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: I just think about you as a child. I'm like
• 10:47
  that this fucking kid pisses me off.
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: Get the get him in the fun away from me.
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: Me, me, and you would not have been friends because
• 10:53
  like with the with the I guess the lateral nature
• 10:56
  of adulthood, it's kind of like, you know whatever, but
• 10:59
  when you're a kid and you're just like really onto
• 11:02
  one thing, like I was super onto, like you know,
• 11:05
  parents teaching stuff like that, I would you would have
• 11:07
  been one of the bad kids. You would have been
• 11:09
  one of the kids. I'm a fine child.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: That was a fine child. There's this kid in my
• 11:15
  school name fourth that was a fucking menace though. That
• 11:17
  was like no, that that was like one of the
• 11:19
  kids where you're like, like you use a full name,
• 11:22
  I will dox it. I will dox him. If you're
• 11:25
  still out there, he has got to be like in
• 11:26
  his forties now. That child that was that was a
• 11:29
  bad egg. It was a bad egg. There's a lot
• 11:32
  of siting we have to do so far in this episode.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: We just keep going, no, we're good, we're good. Well
• 11:37
  what do you do?
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: He it was like one of those kids where he
• 11:41
  would like free I mean it was obviously like we
• 11:44
  should add I mean, like we should cut this cause
• 11:46
  it's it was like obviously a kid.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Who had like problems at home.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: You know, he would like he wouldn't bathe He like
• 11:53
  he had like ear wax running down his face, like
• 11:56
  his side of his face and stuff, and he'd like
• 11:58
  get really he had like a really bad emotional swings,
• 12:01
  and he would like get up and like throw desks
• 12:04
  at our teacher, like take the desk and throw it
• 12:07
  at the teacher and scream and stuff. And as a kid,
• 12:10
  you're like, this guy's a fucking monster. Hit the fuck down, freak,
• 12:13
  you know, you like that kind of thing. But obviously
• 12:16
  it's like probably lashing out probably has some kind of
• 12:19
  mental like mental things going.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: Like there's so much more to it.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: But as of course, as a kid, you're like, yeah,
• 12:24
  he's fucking he fucking freaked out and hit my milk.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Fucking dickhead. That's all.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: That's all you care about, is like he hit my
• 12:31
  milk on Chicken Patty Day. That fucking fat fuck is
• 12:34
  what you say. You know, like looking at it, cause
• 12:36
  you're because you're young, I mean you're in second grade.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: You know, you don't you can't read all the signs,
• 12:40
  so I don't know those. Are those a remarkable amount
• 12:44
  of maturity out of you? I'm proud, No, thank you,
• 12:47
  that's big. Jason disappeared on a November evening in second grade.
• 12:52
  A few days later, a teacher found his clothes palled
• 12:55
  at the base of the school yard oak Tree, Oh.
• 12:58
  The principal called the school assembly to make the announcement.
• 13:02
  Made it sound like the clothes had been laundered and
• 13:04
  neatly folded. My dad, cop at the time, a cop
• 13:08
  with the bad habit of telling his kids things nobody
• 13:10
  should have to know, told me Jason's clothes were filthy,
• 13:14
  worse than filthy, in fact, mated with urine, feces and blood.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: God damn dude, old boy gets plucked out of nowhere,
• 13:23
  pisses ships himself, and then gets murdered as fucked also too.
• 13:28
  I would seriously be like, Dad, would you stop telling
• 13:30
  us about what happened today?
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I saw this crackhore with broken sharks of glass in
• 13:36
  her face.
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: She was dead for hours in Magata. Don't forget your
• 13:40
  peas you're like.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: God, Dad, Dad, could you just please, I don't want
• 13:44
  to hear about it anymore, please, Dad.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: As as the kid whose dad took him to look
• 13:50
  for a dead body.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: To their situation, I was gonna say, you must feel
• 13:56
  I've strong kinship to this character.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: So far, I do a little bit. I remember one
• 14:00
  time being out with my dad fishing, and while we
• 14:04
  were fishing, the little boat we were in kind of
• 14:07
  floated underneath the cliff face and just unprompted, my dad goes.
• 14:14
  I remember one time when I was about seven, I
• 14:16
  was walking home from school with a buddy of mine
• 14:19
  and we turned a corner at a cliff kind of
• 14:21
  like this, and there was a guy that lived at
• 14:23
  the top of it who jumped off. He was going
• 14:25
  through a divorce with his wife, couldn't take it anymore,
• 14:27
  and he just jumped off. Then I turned this corner
• 14:30
  and his body looked like a snake way the bone
• 14:33
  snapped and the way pieces of him lay it looked
• 14:36
  like he was curled in on himself. I didn't even
• 14:38
  realize it was a person at first, until I got
• 14:40
  closer and saw his face. It's a great data shit
• 14:44
  to use that top water bait. That should get the
• 14:46
  large mouth over there in the regions.
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: Great data sale, Dad, it's a lovely ocean breeze out today.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: Thank you. It just stuff like that constantly.
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Oh, Harold's here, thank you, Harry, Hi, Harry, uh
• 15:06
  you know I yeah, no, I luckily I didn't have
• 15:11
  that with my father. I if I I'd like to
• 15:14
  imagine though, that that cop did. I just tells him
• 15:17
  horrible things that no child should hear. Yeah, yeah, almost people,
• 15:23
  what almost people?
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm just trying to eat my chicken palm. They
• 15:29
  smoke cigarettes with their buttole dad, please don't. I'm pretty
• 15:35
  sure they don't. I'm not I'm pretty sure. I'm not positive,
• 15:38
  but I don't think they do that. They do it.
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: It's that's set up almost like Chinese opium dems with
• 15:43
  the calm hookah lounges, and they smoke cigarets with buttoles.
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: They smoke it out of the buttholes that I know.
• 15:53
  I don't think when you put them together like that,
• 15:55
  it suddenly becomes this. Are you telling me this because
• 15:58
  I wanted to watch a Laddin after dinner? Eat up
• 16:05
  tramp obvious? He yeah, yeah, that's the stuff. That's that good. Good.
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I will say so far, this is very well. We
• 16:26
  should stop sidetracking.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: This is this is actually yeah, yeah, we've read three paragraphs,
• 16:29
  but I like it. It's a good three paragraphs.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: So we have been interrupting so much. I know people
• 16:33
  are gonna be upset. I was just gonna say that
• 16:35
  so far he's talking about some I mean, was some
• 16:41
  middle aged man is in a tree at this at
• 16:43
  a school, and that well, that's the legend. That's the legend,
• 16:47
  is that there's a man in the tree that Michael
• 16:49
  laft or sorry, William Afton from Five Nights of Freddy's
• 16:52
  is in the golden Bonne suit and.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: Pop out and do the Freddy fastbaar scream. Not the uh.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: But it is cool that Jason hughes he's like an
• 17:01
  urban legend, he's a real kid. And that they found
• 17:04
  his clothes all folded up and it was covered and
• 17:07
  pissed shit and blood.
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: Pretty brutal, pretty brutal. He told me. I couldn't repeat
• 17:12
  it to anybody. I never did. It was too horrifying
• 17:15
  to even think about, let alone share. That's why I
• 17:18
  hated muppet Man. Nobody could say his name without some
• 17:22
  snot nose little shit from behind the track saying Jason's
• 17:26
  horrifying schoolyard litany. That was another problem. The kids at
• 17:30
  the school knew Jason was my neighbor, and they knew
• 17:32
  my dad was a cop. After weeks of hysterical interest,
• 17:36
  I was abruptly ostracized. Suited me fine. Over the past
• 17:41
  couple of years, my dad had arrested the parents of
• 17:43
  at least two kids in my class, and they gave
• 17:45
  me hell for it. It was all right. I preferred
• 17:48
  books to people anyway, and spent every recess reading under
• 17:51
  the oak tree. Sometimes I pretended to read to Jason's
• 17:54
  ghost Penance, I guess for treating him so poorly. Man.
• 18:00
  That's heartbreaking that it is. That one day in February
• 18:03
  I got to school two or three hours late. I
• 18:06
  don't remember why. I only remember getting to school and
• 18:09
  plodding across the empty recess yard. February is a bad
• 18:12
  month in that particular corner of the world. Sky goes
• 18:16
  from polished steel in the morning to icy steel in
• 18:18
  the evening, and at night dimmed to a flat, watery
• 18:22
  darkness that makes my heartache. The plants are all dead,
• 18:26
  the tree skeletal except for flourishing colonies of mistletoe. It
• 18:30
  looks like despair. The empty recess yard was no exception.
• 18:34
  Everything was gray and pale and somehow riddled, like it
• 18:37
  would crack and shatter if you touched it. The almost
• 18:40
  preternatural stillness turned that pale winter fragility into something sinister.
• 18:46
  Paranoia scurled through me. Suddenly, what if, just what if
• 18:51
  it was true? What if the universe was broken? What
• 18:56
  if the scene before me was a fragile husk, just
• 18:58
  waiting for a misplaced to break it into pieces. I
• 19:02
  swallowed a surge of panic and took extra care with
• 19:04
  each step, set in my foot down with excruciating gentleness,
• 19:08
  saying it crunched under my souls. Everything felt solid, but
• 19:12
  the sense of glassy fragility persisted. I found the urge
• 19:16
  to close my eyes and walked as quickly as I dared.
• 19:20
  My path took me right past the oak tree, black
• 19:23
  blown glass bark glimmered faintly branches through spiderweb patterns against
• 19:28
  the grim sky. They were bare except for nessa mistletoe.
• 19:33
  The tree was infested with it. Suddenly, with a disconcerting,
• 19:38
  painfully adult burst of clarity, it occurred to me the
• 19:43
  tree was dying. I slowed to a halt, staring at
• 19:47
  it with a kind of hushed reverence you're supposed to
• 19:49
  feel in church. The tree was scary but beautiful at
• 19:53
  the same time. More than that, it was a pillar
• 19:56
  of my memory. It was visible from my backyard, towering
• 20:00
  over the school in my childhood, like a reassuring and
• 20:03
  eternal sentry. Except it wasn't eternal. It'd be gone someday,
• 20:09
  maybe before I left grade school, maybe sooner. My throat
• 20:14
  felt hot and tight. I took in the side of
• 20:16
  the bare branches and tried to mentally edit out the
• 20:19
  missiletoe clusters. It was difficult. They burst from the tree,
• 20:23
  thicker than summertime leaves, and they kept moving, jostled, no
• 20:27
  doubt by the cold winter wind. Except another brutal, bleak epiphany,
• 20:34
  there was no wind. The dark missile toe rustled and
• 20:37
  writhed like a trapped serpent. A cold air stung my
• 20:41
  eyes as they widened. Bright burst of color flickered inexplicably
• 20:46
  among the branches, slithering through the missilete like a multicolored
• 20:50
  feathered boa, and glittering in that senious rope of color eyes,
• 20:57
  glassy round eyes, the color of limes. The rope of color,
• 21:01
  broke into tendrils and grew not unlike the fungus in
• 21:04
  which it nested, overtaking the darkness with eye wateringly brilliant
• 21:08
  neon hues. Then they twined back together, warming behind branches
• 21:13
  and mistletoe, before resolving into a fluffy, ridiculously proportioned caricature
• 21:18
  of an animal, a cartoon incarnate a muppet. Hello, it said.
• 21:25
  Its voice made me jump, full and hardy and unpleasantly friendly,
• 21:30
  a cartoon voice. My lip trembled, tears pricked my eyes,
• 21:35
  scorching and frigid at once. You're not real, Yes I am.
• 21:41
  It fixed me with a sharp, reptilian stare that made
• 21:44
  me want to scream. I might even be realer than you.
• 21:48
  The world looked glassier than ever, faded and brittle, except
• 21:51
  for the obscenely bright monstrosity above me. I stamped my
• 21:55
  foot and held my breath, praying that the world would shatter,
• 21:58
  taking the technicolor monster with it. If I broke a
• 22:01
  broken world, would I break anything at all? But the
• 22:04
  pavement remained solid. The frozen chill bypassed the soles of
• 22:08
  my shoes, and I leached into my feet. The creature stretched, stretched,
• 22:13
  stretched slowly snaking its way down the trunk of the tree,
• 22:18
  simultaneously sloth like and reptilian, bursting with that ridiculous creole
• 22:22
  of fur. Should have been funny. I wasn't it funny?
• 22:27
  Why was I scared? Why wasn't I running away? Slid
• 22:31
  down the bark until its eyes were level with my own?
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: Totally really, real things can hide themselves in plain sight,
• 22:40
  Real things like me and Jason Hughes.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: If French call me muppet Man, and you can too.
• 22:47
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  we are now back to the episode.
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  Speaker 2: Back to the episode, I don't like that. I gotta
• 25:35
  say the writing so far has been phenomenal. That description
• 25:39
  of like I recognized something with an adult clarity. The
• 25:42
  tree was dying, and for a moment it was about
• 25:44
  like the realizing that your childhood isn't forever. You know,
• 25:48
  there's a mortality, there's a time limit to things that
• 25:52
  must exist, which is a cool, very like humbling thing
• 25:55
  for a child to think on. Only then to realize
• 25:57
  that the monster from imagination that's supposedly took Jason as
• 26:00
  real the h I.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: Keep picturing it to like almost like the centipede in
• 26:06
  the end of the first season of Avatar, the guy
• 26:08
  that steals your face something like that. But I keep
• 26:12
  like picturing that mashed with like a penny Wise kind
• 26:14
  of vibe, you know what I mean.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, he's in like a giant. It's like a
• 26:21
  very cartoony costume, but it almost looks like not to
• 26:25
  just reference something you made, but what's your dog character's
• 26:28
  name from the puppet show? Oh tugboat Boat? Oh yeah,
• 26:32
  talk about that's right. It's like when Tugboat switches from
• 26:35
  a puppet to just the guy in the suit. Yeah,
• 26:37
  it's like I imagine the guy in the suit, but like
• 26:39
  the arms keep extending too long, and the legs keep
• 26:42
  going too long and stuff like that. The way that
• 26:44
  they keep describing it too.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I know, people say that it was like a rainbow
• 26:46
  cape or whatever, but it just sounds like he has
• 26:48
  a multiple colored fur.
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: Like. He didn't say rainbow cape, it said.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Uh, rainbow animal costume.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, I see, I see that. So it's just I
• 27:01
  imagine like a giant like unicorn, like bright pinks and blue. Yeah.
• 27:05
  I like that, almost like a Lisa Frank drawing or something. Yeah. Yeah.
• 27:10
  It extended a hand long and absurdly thin, almost like
• 27:14
  distorted frog feet, except for the rainbow fur. I turned
• 27:19
  and ran into the school, screaming all the way. The
• 27:22
  poor nurse tried to extract the story from me. I
• 27:25
  don't even remember what I said. I just remember hiding
• 27:28
  under a desk and sobbing. When I finally bluved the
• 27:32
  words muppet man and Jason, the school went on lockdown.
• 27:36
  The cops came. My father wasn't with them. I watched
• 27:39
  through the window, gagging and crying and trying to forget
• 27:42
  muppet Man's bright green eyes. But how could I when
• 27:46
  everything else, the oak tree and the police, the nurse,
• 27:50
  and the sky and my own shaking hands, looked so
• 27:53
  brittle and faded. Muppet Man was the only vibrant thing,
• 27:57
  the only bright thing, the only whole, the only real thing.
• 28:03
  Sometime later, maybe a minute, maybe ten hours, for all
• 28:06
  I knew, the cop came into the nurse's office. He
• 28:09
  grabbed my elbow over the protestations of the nurse and
• 28:12
  marched me outside the world rushed past me in a gray, dead,
• 28:16
  glittering blur. Tree loomed ahead, dark and blank and terribly close.
• 28:22
  I flailed, but dragged me to the oak tree and
• 28:25
  shoved me forward. I stopped inches from the bark, dark
• 28:29
  and dead and cracked except for absurd tufts of technicolor fur.
• 28:35
  Did you do that? The cop demanded, Do what do? What?
• 28:41
  Did you put that? He pointed to a particularly obscene
• 28:44
  nod of neon pink fur on this tree. I told
• 28:48
  him no, I told him it was muppet Man, that
• 28:51
  I'd seen muppet Man, that muppet Man knew Jason. And
• 28:54
  now he knew me. The nurse sent me home shortly thereafter,
• 28:57
  and my parents packed me off to my grandparents house
• 28:59
  and said, and diego that very night. I stayed for
• 29:02
  three weeks, stayed until I stopped having nightmares of a
• 29:05
  mupp at man eating Jason's bloody shit stained closed while
• 29:08
  I watch, trapped by his bright eyes like a deer
• 29:11
  in headlights. I got home on a Wednesday evening. I
• 29:15
  know it was Wednesday because I remember looking at my
• 29:18
  mom's calendar, big and glossy and full of beagle puppies.
• 29:22
  It always made me smile. My parents fed me burger
• 29:25
  king and ice cream cake, then sent me to bed.
• 29:28
  When I pulled my covers back, I froze. Everything around
• 29:33
  me blanched, turning pale and classy, everything except the dirty
• 29:38
  tufts of neon bright fur on my pillow. Oh oh no.
• 29:48
  My parents assumed I did it and yelled at me
• 29:51
  for almost an hour, but they let me sleep in
• 29:53
  their bed anyway. It's almost like screaming a night or something. Right,
• 29:58
  what just like the fir.
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: It seems like where of he's like coming in contact
• 30:01
  with is like now it seems like the It seems
• 30:03
  like the muppet Man is either after him or it's
• 30:05
  like he's like infected. Nothing's that he's like touching or
• 30:08
  interacting with, right or what.
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: I think the muppet Man's just like stalking him.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, So you're saying that he took the form
• 30:13
  of his pillow or whatever.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oh okay, I see, I see, or like, well
• 30:18
  maybe not the pillow. It's just a tough to firs.
• 30:20
  So it's like muppet Man's been in his room.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, So you're saying it's just like it's been
• 30:25
  where he's slept and okay, yeah, tough to there is
• 30:28
  like he left the tree before the other people got there.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I see. School was a nightmare. It's been
• 30:35
  the entire morning treading recess. When the bell rang, I
• 30:38
  thought about throwing a tantrum just to stay in the classroom.
• 30:41
  But I get in trouble. My parents would be angry.
• 30:45
  I'd go to the principal's office. Besides, there'd be other
• 30:48
  kids on the playground, vibrant, living, colorful, noisy kids. All
• 30:53
  that noise and brightness might be too much for Muppet Man.
• 30:57
  I told myself these things, but still ran to the
• 30:59
  bathroom when the bell I threw up and set in
• 31:02
  the stall until a teacher, someone no doubt by a tattletale,
• 31:06
  came and told me I had to go outside. I
• 31:08
  did it in the corner by the tether ball court,
• 31:10
  as far from the oak tree as I can get.
• 31:13
  Even from a distance, I thought I caught glimpses of
• 31:16
  bright first slithering through the branches. I decided I was
• 31:20
  seeing things. When the days finally got warmer, steal skies
• 31:24
  softening a rich blue in the daytime and easter egg
• 31:26
  colors at night, bare branches spreading buds, flowers growing in
• 31:31
  the planter boxes all around the school, I resume my
• 31:34
  recess ritual of reading under the tree. I understand thinking
• 31:37
  that you're seeing things, but uh, I'm not going back
• 31:40
  under the tree. You know, yeah, maybe another tree, but
• 31:44
  not that tree. I was cautious at first, but determined.
• 31:49
  Every adult in my life had me convinced that I
• 31:51
  was hallucinating. Every kid in the school knew I had
• 31:53
  a breakdown about muppet Man. The taunts alone were enough
• 31:56
  to steal my resolve. Before I knew it, I was
• 32:00
  eating under the tree like always, the glassy winter whrror
• 32:03
  barely more than a memory. One afternoon in April, something
• 32:07
  pulled me out of my book. I didn't know what
• 32:09
  it was at first. Maybe the kids screaming on the
• 32:12
  chunkle gym, maybe the fifth grade girl's gossiping a few
• 32:15
  yards away. Maybe the warm breeze rustling the leaves. I
• 32:20
  looked down and gasped. Larva crawled along my arms, yellow
• 32:25
  white caterpillar worms that lived in the bark, the kind
• 32:28
  all the kids said Muppet Man loved to eat. Maybe
• 32:32
  maybe with the larva, you are right, maybe it is,
• 32:35
  like I just I don't know what.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: I just feel like he keeps reading as like an
• 32:38
  infection or something, or like I don't I just don't
• 32:40
  know why.
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: It just keeps feeling like it's there's pieces of this
• 32:44
  too that almost feel like it's like Muppet Man's representative
• 32:48
  of an actual tragedy. Yeah, kind of like you were
• 32:51
  talking about, like you talking about the kid you knew,
• 32:55
  you know, choking when you were in the eighth grade,
• 32:58
  and it's like, yeah, but the eighth graders think about like, oh,
• 33:00
  lego tires, like that's the Yeah, it sings out to you.
• 33:03
  It's like this kid had the legend of Muppet Man.
• 33:05
  There was a tragedy, a kid was abducted or killed,
• 33:10
  and it's almost like their rationalized, especially the part where
• 33:13
  they said that they were mean to them, so now
• 33:15
  they read almost as a penance.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, it does feel like almost like a folklore
• 33:20
  kind of legend. It almost feels like an anti bollying
• 33:22
  kind of like tail, you know what I mean.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, it's almost like this person is rationalizing the
• 33:28
  bad thing that happened because it was Muppet Man that
• 33:30
  did it.
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, actually putting like a monster, like manifesting a monster
• 33:35
  for bad actions.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, not to not to draw a connection between
• 33:40
  Muppet Man and Anton Sugar, but it's almost like the
• 33:43
  No Country for Old Men thing, where it's like it's
• 33:46
  easier to create a monster rather than to be like, yeah,
• 33:50
  this just happens sometimes.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well just works that way m hm. Almost trying
• 33:56
  to like find a rationale for how like horrible seahs
• 33:59
  can randomly haend ha.
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, kids don't just go missing and terrible things happened
• 34:03
  to them. The Muppet Man did it, you know, the
• 34:05
  monster in the tree. I ran to the tetherball court
• 34:08
  and lingered until the bell rang. When I got home
• 34:11
  that afternoon, I found clusters of neon fur all over
• 34:14
  my bedroom. I ran to my mother. She lost her temper,
• 34:18
  marched me into the backyard and told me to stay
• 34:20
  until she was done cleaning up after me. When I
• 34:23
  finished crying, I settled myself under the africot tree and
• 34:26
  got lost in my book. As the afternoon light deepened,
• 34:30
  rich daylight giving way to copper, something snapped me out
• 34:34
  of my reverie. I looked down and saw white worms,
• 34:38
  soft and tiny, somehow wet, inching over my arms. Hello,
• 34:45
  whispered in an unpleasantly friendly voice.
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: Sorry, it's been so long incause I've been a bad friend.
• 34:54
  Speaker 2: I'm crazy, I whispered, snapped my book shut and closed
• 34:58
  my eyes. Crazy crazy, crazy crazy crazy, scratchy polyestra fur
• 35:04
  crumbled against my skin.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: Not crazy love, A man said, just really like me
• 35:12
  and Jason Hughes. What are you reading?
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: You reached out, blinding multicolored fur blazing in the dappled sunlight,
• 35:21
  and flipped the book over that beauty. Is he good?
• 35:27
  It's great? I wanted to leap to my feet, wanted
• 35:31
  to run screaming into the house, but my bones felt
• 35:34
  watery and frozen. At once. I wouldn't be able to
• 35:37
  stand up, let alone run love. A man brushed the
• 35:40
  worms off my arm. It settled down beside me. His
• 35:43
  fur made me feel itchy. I didn't look up. I
• 35:47
  already knew what I would see, that salothy dinosaur face
• 35:51
  dominated by glassy eyes that were blaze in the dying sun.
• 35:56
  I didn't want to see it. I was afraid of
• 35:59
  what would happen if I did. My mom will see you.
• 36:03
  You should read to me. Tears flooded my eyes. No, strong,
• 36:09
  fuzzy fingers wrapped my wrist. I want you to read
• 36:12
  to me. No, if you read to me, I'll take
• 36:17
  you to Jason Hughes. I almost scoffed Jason Hughes with
• 36:22
  the giant glasses in the caning voice. Anxious Jason Hughes
• 36:26
  stole all the art paper in the classroom just to
• 36:28
  draw stupid fish and stupid beetles. Jason Hughes had been
• 36:32
  reduced to bloody. Should stay clothes at the base of
• 36:35
  the schoolyard tree?
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: Why because we're lonely?
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: Glanced at the house, praying my mother would look out
• 36:43
  and see us. If he's lonely, he should go home.
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: He can't his mom doesn't like him.
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: I pondered this briefly. I thought of my dad, My
• 36:56
  poor dad who worked himself to death with overtime. My
• 36:59
  poor dad who couln't cat to break at work. But
• 37:01
  what if I could help him? What if I could
• 37:03
  find Jason Hughes give my dad all the credit? When
• 37:08
  when I see Jason, it depends on how will you read?
• 37:14
  Oh gosh, I mean the the pedophilia. Your tones are
• 37:19
  very present, right, Like I'm not imagining that.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it seems very predatory in that
• 37:26
  way or just very uh yeah, but I but I
• 37:30
  you know, anything involving a child in the.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Gard hold, it's going to read that way in my opinion.
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that being said in your original penny Wise, what
• 37:39
  was that like? Like the original penny Wise, like the
• 37:42
  Tim Curry one. Yeah, there's much more like child predator
• 37:46
  like I'm your friend, aren't I kind of thing?
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I think I don't know the whole thing that
• 37:52
  you're saying where it feels like it's a manifestation of
• 37:54
  like kids, like the way that even it reinforces a.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Bit when he's just like, you know, stupid and Hughes,
• 38:00
  who drew as stupid birds or you know that kind
• 38:02
  of stuff. It just feels like it's that manifestation thing
• 38:06
  feels more and more akin to what's happening here.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I think so. It's like an imaginary friend,
• 38:15
  almost an imaginary foe. Yeah, an evil thing, responsibility for
• 38:21
  the bad stuff, an evil thing born from yeah, like
• 38:23
  shitty things that people did. Yeah, well, especially the part done,
• 38:31
  Especially the part about like, oh, well, maybe I can
• 38:33
  help my dad. You know, maybe if I go with
• 38:36
  Muppet Man, it'll help out dad. You could equate to
• 38:38
  a kid feeling like maybe because they were mean to Jason,
• 38:42
  that's part of the reason he disappeared, and now your
• 38:44
  dad suffering for it. So maybe if I can help Jason,
• 38:47
  I can help my dad and undo the wrong. Yeah.
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: Multiple, it's like a child manifesting guilt. I was gonna
• 38:54
  say multiple guilt factors.
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. I opened my book to the very first
• 38:59
  page and began to read aloud. The scrape of the
• 39:02
  sliding glass door broke my concentration. Shortly after, I looked
• 39:06
  up and saw my mom. My heart leapt to my throat.
• 39:09
  I spun around hopefully, but Muppet Man was gone. The
• 39:12
  next morning found clumps of me on fur in my
• 39:15
  dresser drawers, clung to my pants and shirts like lint.
• 39:20
  At the end of May, I found a note on
• 39:22
  my window sill, neatly folded construction paper, printed with brightly
• 39:26
  colored marker, coming to.
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: The school tree to night at eleven your friend Muppet Man.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: Coarse strands of yellow, pink, and blue hair sprinkled the note.
• 39:37
  I brushed them off and tucked the paper in my pocket.
• 39:40
  I wasn't stupid. I knew I couldn't go alone. I
• 39:43
  was terrified of Muppet Man, and almost terrified of what
• 39:46
  my parents would do to me if they caught me
• 39:47
  sneaking out. So I went to my father. I showed
• 39:51
  them the note and begged till I wept. He excuse
• 39:54
  me of making it all up for a while, but
• 39:56
  in the end he agreed to take me to the
• 39:58
  school at the appointed time. What it's got to be,
• 40:00
  hopefully for an investigation. Otherwise, what the fuck are you
• 40:03
  talking about? All right? Fine, well it's talking about like
• 40:09
  she He thinks that his daughter is making all this
• 40:12
  up because of the trauma of losing a kid in
• 40:14
  your grade. Right, So then the daughter's like, no, he
• 40:17
  left this in my room, and it's like very clear
• 40:19
  to the father that his daughter made all this up right,
• 40:23
  But she's so desperate to go that the father's like,
• 40:26
  if this helps her get over this, if this helps her,
• 40:29
  you know, get past it, maybe to realize it's not
• 40:32
  really there, The Muppet Man is not real. I'll go
• 40:34
  with her so that she can, you know, it says
• 40:39
  of trauma.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: If that's the intention, I think that should be clarified more,
• 40:42
  because at the moment it.
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: Just sounds like, all right, fine, whatever, Goda. Her dad
• 40:47
  clearly doesn't believe in the Muppet Man. Well, no, I
• 40:50
  don't think that.
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: It's not necessarily about whether they believe it, but it
• 40:53
  does to me that reads more like him just being like,
• 40:55
  oh my god, stop complaining.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Fine. No, I think he's like, fine, go be it
• 41:02
  with the pedophile rainbow color uniform. Man. I think instead
• 41:05
  it's just like, if this is the only thing that's
• 41:09
  going to keep my daughter, you know, that may help
• 41:12
  her get past this, then I'm going to go with
• 41:14
  her so she can realize this isn't real. If in
• 41:17
  her psychosis she's written a letter to herself from the
• 41:20
  Muppet Man, then maybe I should be with her I
• 41:24
  should I never raised or I never I guess.
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: I never came to that conclusion that the dad was
• 41:29
  like that, because so far all they've done is yell
• 41:31
  at them, being like, why would you put this everywhere?
• 41:34
  That's all they've done. So yeah, I wouldn't have. I
• 41:36
  wouldn't have guessed the dad being that earnest or that
• 41:39
  I guess like that came.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: Well, the mom's been described that way. The dad's been
• 41:42
  kind of earnest right with the investigation.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Was telling him about the only did was just tell
• 41:47
  that the clothes recovered in blood, shit and piss.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: That's always done. He's giving her detail. Maybe to me,
• 41:54
  that's what love is. Don't forget the who lounge? Yeah,
• 42:01
  how much means Bob? I got it? Thank you? Yeah, Yeah,
• 42:03
  I got it.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: Aladdins is dirty hippie understood, Yeah, Prince ali Ivey, Yeah,
• 42:07
  I got it.
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's homeless. But also people, what's the deal with that? Yeah?
• 42:13
  I get it. I want to take a moment to
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  a lot. Thank you to Harry's for sponsoring the show.
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  Their link will be in the description. And we are
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  now back to the episode. We lived only a few
• 43:52
  blocks away, so we walked. The evening was unseasonably cold,
• 43:56
  almost as cold as the day I first met Muppet Man.
• 43:59
  I fought back tears the entire way, clutching my father's
• 44:02
  hand with both of my own. The school gates were locked,
• 44:05
  of course, but there was a small gate hidden in
• 44:07
  a passage behind the cafeteria. They did nothing but a
• 44:10
  simple latch. Kids all knew about it, but the adults
• 44:13
  never did anything. I led my father around the perimeter
• 44:16
  of the playground, keeping close to the buildings, in order
• 44:18
  to hide in the shadows. Wait here, he obliged, looking
• 44:23
  tired even in the darkness. I looked at the tree.
• 44:26
  It didn't look sick anymore. Leaves to the missiletoe infestation
• 44:31
  looked full and healthy. The eternal sentry once more stood
• 44:36
  by the trunk and whispered Hello. Something rustled among the
• 44:41
  leaves overhead. Ullo came up at man's warm, full voice,
• 44:47
  Where's Jason? The branches rattled in a dark furze shape,
• 44:52
  slithered down the tree. Glassy eyes caught the light of
• 44:55
  the moon and blazed, He's inside me. Muppet Man twisted
• 45:00
  and stretched down the tree until his eyes were leveled
• 45:03
  with mine. No longer was he vibrant or bright. His
• 45:06
  fur was filthy, caked with mud and sand, and bare
• 45:11
  dirty canvas replaced large swaths of the once lush neon coat.
• 45:15
  Of course, he was missing fur. I've been leaving clumps
• 45:18
  of it all over my room for months. It was
• 45:20
  a wonder he had any hair left. What do you mean?
• 45:24
  My voice issued in a thin, wheezy wine of a
• 45:27
  man crept closer, holding me captive with his glassy eyes.
• 45:32
  His long, thin fingers touched his chin, pushed, sliding into
• 45:37
  his face and pulling it up like a child removing
• 45:40
  a Halloween mask. My heart thudded, heavy and horrid as
• 45:44
  war drum. Enormous glasses glinted at the moonlight tragically outside
• 45:50
  for the decayed little face underneath. Jason Hughes's rotted head
• 45:55
  was gray and so very fragile, gleaming like clouded glass
• 45:59
  under the If I touched him, he would shatter. The
• 46:04
  absurd costume fell to the ground with a whisper, dull
• 46:08
  and faded. Even the eyes were dead. Now costume was dead.
• 46:13
  It had never been alive. Jason's empty sockets bulged, then
• 46:17
  broke and split apart with a series of soft papery pops.
• 46:22
  Something roiled inside, thick and dark and gleaming with a
• 46:25
  thousand dim lights and colors I couldn't name. The world
• 46:29
  flipped in the cold playground, sand dug into my face.
• 46:33
  My dad's scream shattered the glassy silence. Perhaps it shattered
• 46:37
  Jason's poor dead face too. I curled up and lay
• 46:40
  still as my dad screamed and sirens weiled in the distance.
• 46:44
  The ruined costume went into an evidence locker. Jason himself
• 46:48
  was laid to rest several weeks later. They held onto
• 46:51
  the body as long as they did in order to
• 46:53
  find out what happened to him. I asked my father
• 46:56
  about it, but he refused to tell me. I was disappointed.
• 47:00
  I did get relieved, and I never tried to find
• 47:03
  out on my own. I did my best forget everything
• 47:06
  and actually came close. I might have managed had my
• 47:10
  father kept his mouth shut. He has a habit of
• 47:12
  telling me things I shouldn't know, things nobody should know.
• 47:16
  I guess it's a personal exorcism, freeing demons that haunt you.
• 47:21
  It's just that the problem with freeing demons is that
• 47:24
  demons usually go on to haunt someone else. My dad
• 47:28
  retired a few years ago, but he still has friends
• 47:30
  on the force. They get together and talk every once
• 47:33
  in a while. They had one of their visits last
• 47:36
  night and one of his friends brought up Jason Hughes.
• 47:40
  Did they find the guy who did it? My dad asked, no, but.
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: The costume weird pupa costume. It's non evidence anymore.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: It's gone.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Did someone take it? Did they accidentally toss it? Or
• 47:54
  we don't know that alone.
• 47:56
  Speaker 2: Was enough to haunt me forever. But it didn't stop
• 47:59
  at a enough. Demons never stopped enough, if they ever
• 48:03
  stop at all. I know this because when I got
• 48:06
  up this morning, I found dirty toughs of me on
• 48:09
  first scattered all across my bedroom floor. That's a fun
• 48:13
  wint to end it, you know. I think that, like, uh,
• 48:15
  that's the end of this one. We have all do
• 48:17
  you Uh that was really short? We can do another one. Yeah.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: I think that, like you know, this is one of
• 48:24
  those This is one of the stories where it's like
• 48:27
  I like the kind of I like ambiguity in stories,
• 48:30
  but I do wish that there was a bit more
• 48:31
  of like why do you think let me ask you this, then,
• 48:33
  why do you think that the monster chose our protagonist
• 48:38
  especially because cilt?
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: Do you think that it just feeds on guilt? I
• 48:43
  think our protagonist was the only one who had anything
• 48:46
  for Jason Hughes other than like a mocking tone, because
• 48:49
  everyone else would make jokes about him, or like the
• 48:52
  Muppetman be brought up and they'd be like, oh, yeah,
• 48:53
  he Jason's he has Jason's ghost. I like that our
• 48:58
  protagonist would set under the tree read to Jason.
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I like that idea of a monster
• 49:03
  that like feeds on guilt or is drawn in or
• 49:06
  almost seduced by guilt, and like playing into that idea
• 49:09
  that literally by showing compassion for Jason and like reading
• 49:13
  to him was a literal calling card for this thing
• 49:16
  to come and like target the main protagonist.
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so I thought that was pretty interesting. I
• 49:24
  what do you think role? I think the Muppet Man's interesting. Uh,
• 49:31
  I do. To me, it works best as kind of
• 49:36
  the metaphor thing. I think, especially at the end where
• 49:38
  it's like he goes to or our protagonist goes to
• 49:43
  meet the muppet Man and then the Muppet Man shows
• 49:45
  him the body of Jason. The crumbles, so all everyone
• 49:48
  elsees is just the suit with the body in it, right. Yeah.
• 49:52
  It's almost like, if you wanted to make it literal,
• 49:54
  you could imagine like maybe Jason is the one who
• 49:56
  stole the costume and ran into the woods, and then
• 49:58
  both these legends came off of each other and then
• 50:01
  they just found the body one day. You know, maybe
• 50:03
  Jason took off his clothes. Yeah. I was in there,
• 50:06
  you know whatever. I was kind of wondering.
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: If the tree's life had anything to indicate that, Like
• 50:12
  at first I thought it was when Jason. So at
• 50:14
  first I was reading in that like, oh, Jason got
• 50:16
  got abducted, right, and that the like the feeding off
• 50:23
  of Jason gave the tree like a life force, like
• 50:25
  it was that it gave that much life. And then
• 50:28
  that way the tree was dying because it had like
• 50:30
  digested him, it had like used whatever he wanted from Jason,
• 50:33
  so it was looking for another host or like another
• 50:35
  kind of meal to satiate.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: It for the time being.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: But I do think this idea of it just being this,
• 50:43
  I mean, it's just a way of like passing on
• 50:44
  guilt in these different ways. I mean it's it's it's
• 50:47
  really interesting thinking of like a creature that that feeds
• 50:51
  on that because I think that like the one that's
• 50:53
  kind of overplayed is like, you know, something that feeds
• 50:55
  on fear or something. But guilt is really interesting because
• 50:58
  I feel like children feel guilty a lot. I feel
• 51:01
  like the over like very small things or they don't know,
• 51:03
  like I feel like, you know so many things where
• 51:05
  I think guilt hits children in an interesting way.
• 51:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, I think guilt's fun, especially with childhood fear.
• 51:11
  It's also uninteresting, like it's like a punishment almost not
• 51:18
  in the sense that like a punishment for feeling bad,
• 51:20
  but it's punishing. It's like, oh, this one child already
• 51:23
  feels bad, We'll watch how they feel now, and like
• 51:26
  it preys upon that to make everything worse when they
• 51:29
  were already bad. Off the to me muppet Man, I think,
• 51:35
  because muppet Man is bright and vibrant with the tree
• 51:37
  is dying. But when the tree is alive, he's how
• 51:40
  he probably would look living out in the woods for
• 51:42
  days and days on end, decrepit, old, dirty. So to me,
• 51:48
  that's kind of like with the inference I made earlier
• 51:51
  that the tree is kind of like referencing the mortality
• 51:56
  of childhood, like, oh, the Great Century, the tree I
• 51:59
  love so much, isn't going to be around forever. And
• 52:01
  when you have that dread, that's when the muppet Man
• 52:04
  shows up in full force. But when the tree is alive,
• 52:08
  and when there may be answers to questions you have,
• 52:10
  like what happened to Jason, and when there may be
• 52:12
  closure for the family and stuff like that, that's when
• 52:14
  muppet Man is real and what muppet Man actually is
• 52:17
  is a decayed husk with another decaying husk inside of him.
• 52:23
  So to me, it's almost like the two were inverse
• 52:26
  because they represent opposite things. The tree is the protection
• 52:29
  of childhood, while the dead tree and muppet Man is
• 52:31
  the erasure of it, the death of it. So I
• 52:36
  don't know, it feels like again, I think it works
• 52:39
  best as a metaphor for grief, for.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: Guilt, the element of just in terms of like guilt
• 52:47
  of like harbaging guilt or shame or something having something.
• 52:51
  That's one thing that was kind of interesting too, is
• 52:53
  the having bright rainbow colored fur everywhere is just like
• 52:58
  a giant sign for something or trying to hide or
• 53:01
  something that feels like it's like it's obvious, you know
• 53:04
  what I mean, Like it's it's so abundantly clear that
• 53:08
  like it's so noticeable.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: I guess it.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Feels like when you're holding onto guilt, shame, or like
• 53:13
  a secret or something that it feels like everyone knows
• 53:15
  that they can like read it, like they can easily
• 53:17
  see it past you and they can see it. And
• 53:20
  having these bundles of fur or something and like having
• 53:23
  to explain that to other people and you know these things,
• 53:25
  these remnants left over that are kind of being left
• 53:28
  and you're being blamed for it as well. As I
• 53:30
  just thought that was kind of cool, like that's an
• 53:32
  interesting visual.
• 53:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's similar. I mean we made the bridge Tarabithia
• 53:36
  reference earlier, but whereas Tarabithia was kind of reminiscent of
• 53:40
  his childhood wonderlust, and then when the girl dies, he
• 53:45
  starts to see like monsters over there and scary things
• 53:50
  because now the world's soured. I feel like this is
• 53:54
  kind of similar to that. Right, the tree was the
• 53:56
  safe place, you know, the the century of the playground,
• 53:59
  but then when James Hughes goes missing, well now or
• 54:03
  Jason Hughes goes missing, well now it's scary. Now it
• 54:06
  holds the mystery of the monster, the mump, the man
• 54:08
  in the suit. But then you grow up a little bit,
• 54:11
  some time goes by, and then it's just a skeleton
• 54:15
  and it's just a tree.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Do you think that the do you think that the adults?
• 54:18
  I think that kind of well do you think the
• 54:20
  adults know about this creature?
• 54:24
  Speaker 2: Well? They know about the suit? No? No, Well, I
• 54:26
  mean if you want to view the story literally like
• 54:29
  it is a monster in a tree and then it
• 54:32
  goes into police lock up and the suit's kind of alive,
• 54:35
  like the suit itself is a creature. Ye, then yeah,
• 54:39
  I would say some adults probably know about it, or
• 54:41
  there's some legend behind it. But for the sake of
• 54:44
  the metaphor that I'm into, I think that a lot
• 54:48
  of this is just kind of within the mind of
• 54:50
  a child, Like a lot it's the way of view
• 54:53
  things like you remember, did you that four chan post
• 54:57
  I sent you the other night about the dog eating
• 55:02
  cereal to do? So that kind of thing always freaks
• 55:05
  me out, which, well, we may cover an episode eventually,
• 55:08
  but that kind of thing always freaks me out, Like
• 55:11
  the way dogs perceive or dogs the way children perceive
• 55:18
  things that they shouldn't be able to grasp yet.
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, trauma, like traumatic things like trauma.
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, like a kid your age nine, It's like that's
• 55:28
  a lot for a lot of concepts, a lot of grief,
• 55:31
  a lot of heavy stuff for a kid to put
• 55:33
  up with. So it's like the way their brains make
• 55:37
  sense of it is odd. I think there's some really
• 55:41
  good stories that prey on that, and I think this
• 55:43
  is part of it like it's easier to think the
• 55:45
  muppet Man did it right.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that children will find
• 55:51
  I think a lot of people will find any way
• 55:53
  to rationalize or be able to articulate it so they
• 55:57
  can process it through their brain, which is either through
• 56:00
  sometimes it's through joking about it. Sometimes it's like literally
• 56:04
  manifesting something that like might be similar to something that
• 56:07
  like you're like a show or something right, like if
• 56:09
  you watch horror films or something, you might manifest this
• 56:12
  idea that it's like, oh, it's a creature or so.
• 56:14
  I think that you just, however, your brain is able
• 56:16
  to articulate these things that are so uncommon, I think is.
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but there was a this this is super graphic,
• 56:25
  so like, uh, you know, trigger warning whatever. It's a
• 56:29
  scary story podcast. There's a story I read about one time.
• 56:33
  I can't remember. I'm pretty sure it was. It was
• 56:36
  posted as if it was real. If it's real or not,
• 56:38
  I don't know, but I remember reading about a mother
• 56:42
  who was at home when someone broke into the house
• 56:45
  and she shot He came into the bedroom and she
• 56:47
  shot him in the head with a shotgun. It's you know,
• 56:50
  pretty brutal, right, And then she had like a five
• 56:54
  or six year old son who walked into the room
• 56:57
  as she was calling the police, and uh looked at
• 57:01
  the guy that was shot, and then looked at her
• 57:04
  his mom and said, are you going to finish that?
• 57:07
  The mom didn't know what he was talking about. What's
• 57:09
  going on? Well, later the police are talking to the
• 57:11
  boy and they're like, what did you see happen? And
• 57:15
  the boys like I heard an out a loud noise
• 57:17
  and I walked into mom's room and she was with
• 57:22
  the guy who threw spaghetti at the wall. Oh man, wow,
• 57:26
  Like the kid cannot But kid has no process, no
• 57:28
  concept of what's happened, but he can use the pieces
• 57:31
  of what he does know. You know, that looks like spaghetti,
• 57:34
  as gross as it is. So it's like, here, that's
• 57:38
  a lot to talk about a kid being abducted, you know,
• 57:41
  someone your age being abducted by the kind of person
• 57:44
  who would keep them for days and they would soil
• 57:46
  themself over and over and then all their clothes are found.
• 57:49
  It's easier if the muppet man who lives in the
• 57:52
  tree is the one that did it. You know, No,
• 57:54
  I think that makes sense. I very quick story too.
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: It was like definitely like a rip of the band
• 58:00
  aid kind of story, like damn kind of in and out.
• 58:03
  I mean, like start off with such a crazy starting
• 58:06
  your story off with being like, yeah, there's a middle
• 58:08
  aged man in the tree.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: Is quite the is quite a bold move and I
• 58:13
  think it.
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely fucking hooked us pretty good. I think
• 58:17
  we got time for another one, like another short one.
• 58:18
  There's another short one this other show one when we
• 58:21
  got recommended called if you Meet Me, Please Kill Me.
• 58:24
  I thought that was an interesting title.
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's also by someone who I think has
• 58:29
  made some bangers that we've covered on the show before,
• 58:33
  but we only covered them in one multi episode and
• 58:35
  we haven't given them a look again. So I'd like
• 58:37
  to give them a look again. The author her name's Gabby,
• 58:40
  but she goes by E A PA T BP and
• 58:44
  I think I remember what that stands for. It's like
• 58:49
  E pad. Anyway. They wrote the stories about hold On.
• 58:55
  I got the lays pulled up. They wrote the sugar
• 58:57
  Daddy story My sugar Daddy asked me for weird, uh,
• 59:01
  the one about every month there's a parade in our town,
• 59:04
  which is a part of their Point Pine story series,
• 59:08
  and the Man who follows Me around and narrates My life,
• 59:12
  which all three of those I thought were great. Do
• 59:14
  you remember those? Hunter? Yeah?
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: No, I also to the Sugardadedy one. I'm pretty sure
• 59:17
  that's the most up voted story ever on our slash.
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: No Sleep right, yes, yeah, at least when we covered it.
• 59:24
  When we covered it, it was Yeah, it was the
• 59:25
  number one voted story of all time. I'm pretty sure
• 59:28
  it still is. Yeah, yep. And then oh yeah, I
• 59:32
  remember we went through this list and then the second
• 59:34
  most up voted one is my Wife's been peeking at
• 59:36
  me from around corners. Yeah, a banger as well. But
• 59:41
  so EA has written three great stories that we've read,
• 59:46
  and a ton of people recommend them all the time.
• 59:48
  It feels like we get recommendations constantly to be like, oh,
• 59:51
  they wrote this, cover it, they wrote this cover. They
• 59:53
  wrote it, and we enjoyed it the first time. And
• 59:55
  then Ea actually came to the subreddit a few months
• 59:58
  ago when people were discussing the Sugar Daddy story, and
• 1:00:03
  she seemed super cool with it and was glad that
• 1:00:05
  it was covered.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: You know, why not check her out again and Harry
• 1:00:09
  recommended this story to read.
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: With the previous one, so yeah, I'm curious this one is.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: So this is another short one, but I'm wondering how
• 1:00:18
  it fits in as well with these kind of with
• 1:00:20
  this other digestible story too, So.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: Let's jump in. Let's jump into it. And again, of course,
• 1:00:27
  as with Dopa bene EA's information, their subreddit links to
• 1:00:34
  some of their other socials. I'll ask what all they
• 1:00:35
  want is to include, but they'll be in the description
• 1:00:37
  as well. Be sure to show them some love. She's
• 1:00:39
  a fantastic author, so that out of the way.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: If this was uploaded about a year ago. If you
• 1:00:46
  meet me, please kill me. My friends won't believe me.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: My family thinks I'm crazy, and if I keep trying
• 1:00:52
  to convince them, they're probably just going to lock me up.
• 1:00:56
  But I need help, and I think that strangers online
• 1:00:59
  are my last hope. So I'm begging if you meet me,
• 1:01:03
  if you see me walking down the street and I
• 1:01:05
  say hello, if you meet me in a bar and
• 1:01:08
  feel inclined to buy me a drink, or if you
• 1:01:10
  match with me on a dating app and make plans
• 1:01:13
  kill me. End it. I don't care how it's done.
• 1:01:17
  I prefer it to be as painful as possible. But
• 1:01:19
  I know that's probably a lot to ask. It's already
• 1:01:22
  a lot to ask someone who doesn't know me to
• 1:01:24
  commit murder on my behalf. And I'm sorry to put
• 1:01:26
  such a burden on you, but I truly can't do
• 1:01:29
  this any longer. Let me provide you with some context.
• 1:01:34
  I might have gotten ahead of myself, but I came
• 1:01:36
  on too strong. Don't leave yet, Please, please let me
• 1:01:40
  explain to you what's been going on. Maybe hopefully once
• 1:01:45
  you hear this, you'll be on my side. Maybe you'll
• 1:01:49
  believe me. Hell, maybe you've experienced this too. I can't
• 1:01:52
  be the only one who's experienced this. It started two
• 1:01:55
  months ago at Mitch's. Mitch's is a small bar that
• 1:01:58
  my friends and I used to go every Friday night.
• 1:02:01
  They had a karaoke night and everyone got free nachos
• 1:02:05
  with the purchase of a drink. It was a routine
• 1:02:07
  we had been sticking to for almost a year now,
• 1:02:10
  ever since Melly moved into the apartment complex down the
• 1:02:13
  street and found the place. Anyway, it was a Friday night,
• 1:02:17
  probably around ten pm, because I remember that Jonas had
• 1:02:21
  just arrived and he got off his shift to the
• 1:02:23
  hospital at nine. On those days, Melly and I had
• 1:02:26
  just performed a tipsy version of Fleetwood Max Rhiannon, and
• 1:02:30
  we were giggling and stumbling back to our booth when
• 1:02:32
  he intercepted our path. He said his name was Tony,
• 1:02:36
  short for Antonio. He said he was new in the
• 1:02:39
  city and had just moved here from Idaho or Iowa,
• 1:02:42
  I don't really remember. He wanted to talk to me.
• 1:02:45
  He said I had a nice voice, and he enjoyed
• 1:02:47
  my performance, and he would like to get to know
• 1:02:50
  me a bit better. I agreed, because he was my type,
• 1:02:54
  dark hair, green eyes, stubble on his shawline. He spelled
• 1:02:58
  like tide laundry to turn something else there might have
• 1:03:01
  be in my childhood friend Isdra's house felt familiar to me,
• 1:03:06
  so I followed him to a booth near my friends.
• 1:03:09
  We talked for the entire night. Have you ever like
• 1:03:12
  smelled someone or something and you're immediately like, oh, yes,
• 1:03:15
  summer seventh grade so and So's house. Yeah. Sometimes it's uncanny.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: It brings in a very like a deja vous, or
• 1:03:22
  sometimes I almost think that like I'm It almost makes
• 1:03:24
  you think that I'm like, I feel like we've met before,
• 1:03:27
  you know, like this very uncanny connection.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, the green eyes thing though, in combination with that,
• 1:03:34
  I feel like this is going to be like a
• 1:03:36
  shape shifter or something that pretends to be them or whatever. Yeah,
• 1:03:40
  that's my bear trap. Lane it out now. Our first
• 1:03:43
  date was dinner in a movie, a classic first date.
• 1:03:46
  We watched Hard Eyes, which he loved but I said
• 1:03:48
  wasn't my style. We went to this expensive French restaurant
• 1:03:52
  after a small place that was almost an hour away,
• 1:03:56
  and we had wine and ate our dinner while a
• 1:03:58
  woman sat in the corner of the room and saying
• 1:04:00
  Lavilla and rose. It was romantic. It was romantic. It
• 1:04:05
  was a great date. What what was your first date? Hunter?
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: My first date with Alison? Oh, with Allison. I took
• 1:04:14
  her to a hockey game.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: That's cool. That's a good date. Yeah, went we went
• 1:04:19
  to a hibachi place meet Kayle and I me and
• 1:04:22
  Allison went to a hibachi place. Uh, Kle and I
• 1:04:26
  went there and then yeah, sorry Bud, sorry Bud, the
• 1:04:30
  nerd gets the girl. Uh. And then we saw what
• 1:04:34
  Bohemian Rhapsody, which was kind of whatever. A painful first
• 1:04:40
  date movie. Yeah, well, I mean it was like, oh, Queen,
• 1:04:43
  I like Queen. It's like you know, I mean at
• 1:04:48
  the time, I liked it because I like Raymy Mallick
• 1:04:51
  and stuff. But in hindsight, it's just kind of like, yeah,
• 1:04:54
  that is the band. It's a pretty ship. Yeah, it's
• 1:04:56
  a song. Guy know. Yeah, it's kind of like it
• 1:04:59
  fell well Maria thought about it. The more it felt
• 1:05:01
  like a Marvel movie where it's like, how did you
• 1:05:03
  get that reference? It's that song? You know, you know
• 1:05:06
  this song Queen.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: All the music biops have been pretty shit, as like
• 1:05:11
  I didn't I don't know.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it doesn't matter. I heard. I heard that the
• 1:05:15
  Weird album was funny because it was a spoof. Yeah. Yeah,
• 1:05:17
  the Weird al was really funny. Yeah. The first bad
• 1:05:22
  sign didn't feel like a bad sign when it happened.
• 1:05:25
  You know what they say about hindsight started with him
• 1:05:28
  going by his full name instead of Tony. He said
• 1:05:31
  he had always gone by Tony because he preferred it.
• 1:05:34
  He thought Antonio was mouthful, that Tony made him sound
• 1:05:37
  like a fun, easygoing guy, while Antonio made him sound
• 1:05:41
  like the opposite. And then that day he changed his mind.
• 1:05:45
  You've never gone by Ella or Stelle, he asked me
• 1:05:49
  one evening, as we were walking through a small street
• 1:05:51
  fair that the city put on every year. Nope, just Stella.
• 1:05:55
  Was been completely Stella, I replied, as I took a
• 1:05:58
  sip at my soda. Really, you've never gotten by a nickname,
• 1:06:02
  not even as a child. Shook my head. No again.
• 1:06:06
  I remember this conversation vividly now. I'd forgotten about it
• 1:06:09
  soon after it happened because it seemed irrelevant at the time,
• 1:06:12
  But as soon as I realized what was going on,
• 1:06:15
  popped back into my mind like someone had duck into
• 1:06:17
  my subconscious and pulled it out, projected it onto a
• 1:06:21
  big screen right in my face. After that, he decided
• 1:06:24
  he wanted to be Antonio. He wanted to be completely Antonio.
• 1:06:30
  After that step was done, the rest came quicker and quicker,
• 1:06:33
  like an avalanche hit a downhill until it spiraled out
• 1:06:35
  of control. He changed his hair, dyed a light of
• 1:06:39
  brown like mine. His eyes, which I swear to all
• 1:06:43
  of the gods were green when I met him, were
• 1:06:45
  now dark brown like mine. He got slimmer, losing his
• 1:06:50
  broad shoulders almost overnight. His face got rounder, softer, and
• 1:06:54
  less angular. He shrank three inches Jesus. Then he took
• 1:06:59
  my oaks, stole my bits, started saying things that only
• 1:07:03
  I would say. Even my friends would comment on it.
• 1:07:06
  I'll be it in an innocent way.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's such a stella thing to say.
• 1:07:11
  Oh that's so cute. You guys are becoming like you
• 1:07:13
  guys are like peeling like the same person. I love
• 1:07:16
  when people start to adapt each other's mannerisms. Okay, first off,
• 1:07:19
  if anyone ever said to me, I'm like, they shrunk
• 1:07:21
  three inches and they're becoming a they're shorter. Now, hello,
• 1:07:25
  what about this is clearly a fucking demon that's around me.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: What is happening? No? No, not only that, but like
• 1:07:35
  they're now your hair color, your hair link. You're like,
• 1:07:38
  what exactly? It's like, what are you talking? He's becoming
• 1:07:41
  me cute When you have each other's manner, how do
• 1:07:48
  you for me? Oh, isn't that adorable? You'll get you
• 1:07:54
  two kids? Yeah exactly.
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: Oh look he even got you've got ice surgery to
• 1:08:01
  change his eye colors.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 2: That's so romantic. So we've been dating for three weeks,
• 1:08:05
  this is a three weeks. Are the same cup size
• 1:08:08
  now bravestinges.
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: Dude, Me and Alison the same cup size. It rules
• 1:08:13
  love wearing your love wearing your bras feels so comfy.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: You know what's up? We were this is a this
• 1:08:21
  is a embarrassing story to say. Well, that's not really
• 1:08:24
  because it was a joke. But Kayla and I were
• 1:08:27
  walking through Knoxville one night and what oh. I had
• 1:08:34
  left my gun at the house and Kayla was like, here,
• 1:08:37
  just carry mine, so I put her gun in my pocket,
• 1:08:39
  and I also I was We were driving her car
• 1:08:43
  and I couldn't find a T shirt, so I acidentally
• 1:08:46
  grabbed her T shirt. So we get out of the
• 1:08:48
  car and we go She's like, look at us, You're
• 1:08:50
  carrying my gun, driving my car, wearing my shirt. And
• 1:08:55
  then I go, yeah, wearing your underwear and brown. As
• 1:08:58
  I said that, an old Chinese man who was on
• 1:09:01
  a phone and stepped down right by us, and all
• 1:09:05
  that he caught was ME going yeah, I'm wearing your underwear,
• 1:09:08
  and he puts the phone down and just makes high
• 1:09:12
  contact with me and watches me the whole way around
• 1:09:16
  the corner. Well, Isaiah, were you wearing underwear? No? No,
• 1:09:20
  it was it was a joke that you ever, would
• 1:09:23
  you ever wear No, no, no, I'm gonna I'm definitively
• 1:09:30
  on the record, No, that would not happen. That was
• 1:09:32
  a joke. That was it was funny, like hah And
• 1:09:36
  what if I'll tell you this, I'll tell you this,
• 1:09:37
  and then I'll tell you this much that that guy
• 1:09:40
  and you were taking it too seriously? What if I
• 1:09:42
  tell you this much?
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 1: If my wife came to me and she said, Hunter,
• 1:09:45
  I want you to wear with my thongs, I would
• 1:09:47
  do it in a heartbeat.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 2: It's too weird. In an absolute heartbeat, I would. It's
• 1:09:54
  also weird because it feels like you're trying to get
• 1:09:55
  me on board right now. I don't know.
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: I don't give a ship what you do. I'm saying
• 1:09:59
  that if I was approached, I would glad. I'm putting
• 1:10:03
  it on record. I'm setting the record straight. I if
• 1:10:06
  someone said here.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: Where my where my thong? I would say apsobsolutely. Someone,
• 1:10:10
  not even your wife, just anyone, you know what, fuck it,
• 1:10:13
  anyone that I would never wear underwear.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: I pop one of the boys out on each side
• 1:10:19
  and I'd have a curl up like a little like.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay, start flossing. Okay, no, no, no, we don't
• 1:10:27
  look I could all that, all that description you gave.
• 1:10:30
  I figured that's where that would be going. We don't
• 1:10:33
  need it. Maybe I want to be one of the
• 1:10:36
  Victoria's Secret dudes. Man, well I tell this story. I
• 1:10:39
  should have known the passing.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Maybe maybe I'm jealous that girls gonna go to Victoria's
• 1:10:45
  Secret and they get to dig through all those drawers
• 1:10:48
  full of fucking different colored painting.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: Anything for you, Alison, and maybe a past to discuss
• 1:10:56
  this under partner. This is a joint business endeavor. We
• 1:11:01
  do not need it.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: I'm going and this I'm doing it all well, next
• 1:11:06
  time we see I'm not even joking and I did.
• 1:11:08
  I want you to keep this on record because we're
• 1:11:09
  meeting against soon. When you literally see me, I'm going
• 1:11:12
  to be wearing a thong and I'm going to show you. Okay,
• 1:11:14
  I'm going to mentally block that, and I'm not going
• 1:11:16
  to think it's going to be it's going.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: To be a flash bang. You are going to see it,
• 1:11:21
  all right. You don't you give our audience too much
• 1:11:24
  to work with. They say the most obscene things about
• 1:11:27
  this podcast. Anyway, you don't need to make it easier
• 1:11:29
  for him anyway. What the important thing I need to
• 1:11:34
  make note of is bear trap. By the way, I
• 1:11:36
  was right. I said he's gonna like he's going to
• 1:11:39
  start chameleoning ning her and lizard man mimic or whatever.
• 1:11:43
  So I was correct. So that's what's supported, except we
• 1:11:46
  weren't doing that. He was stealing all of my jokes.
• 1:11:50
  He was taking all of my catchphrases. He would use
• 1:11:54
  my references that he didn't even know previously. He stole
• 1:11:57
  my style, swapping out his vans and button up shirts
• 1:12:01
  for thrifted boots and band tees. He got glasses even
• 1:12:04
  though he didn't need them, and he went vegetarian. The
• 1:12:08
  worst part about this, the part that pissed me off
• 1:12:10
  the most as this was taking place, was the fact
• 1:12:13
  that everyone everyone acted like I was insane. They acted
• 1:12:19
  like he had always been like that. He never went
• 1:12:21
  by Tony Stella. What are you talking about? Oh, his
• 1:12:24
  eyes were never green. I think you're misremembering. Maybe it
• 1:12:28
  was the lighting in the bar that night. Oh, he's
• 1:12:30
  always been the exact same height as you. It's impossible
• 1:12:33
  for someone to just shrink. It was such bullshit. It's
• 1:12:36
  making me mad. All over again to think about it now.
• 1:12:39
  Nobody believed me. I tried showing them photos where you
• 1:12:42
  could clearly see the differences, and it was like they
• 1:12:44
  didn't notice them, Like I was the only one who
• 1:12:47
  could see the photo as is. I need to calm down.
• 1:12:50
  I'm not finished telling you my story, and I worry
• 1:12:53
  about you getting bored. I need you to believe me.
• 1:12:56
  So would you believe me when I tell you that
• 1:12:59
  about two weeks ago he became me? I mean he
• 1:13:04
  literally became me. He morphed into a clone of me.
• 1:13:08
  He goes by my name, he wears my face, and
• 1:13:12
  hangs out with my friends. Almost had a heart attack
• 1:13:15
  when I saw it the first time. It was like
• 1:13:17
  I was looking in a mirror, a screwed up mirror
• 1:13:19
  who had taken over my life. My friends actually like
• 1:13:23
  nothing was wrong, like he had always looked like that.
• 1:13:26
  They didn't think we looked alike at all. That they
• 1:13:28
  didn't think it was weird that we had the same name.
• 1:13:31
  Everything was just a big, fat, stupid coincidence. To them.
• 1:13:35
  It's so infuriating it almost makes me laugh. So that's
• 1:13:38
  where we are now. He or I don't know it.
• 1:13:42
  It can't be human. Can it. Whatever it is, has
• 1:13:46
  become me and it's ruining my life. He picks up
• 1:13:49
  my medications, takes my esthetician appointments, takes my pilates classes,
• 1:13:54
  hangs out with my family everything. I need you to
• 1:13:58
  kill him me. Something needs to die. Please. His name
• 1:14:04
  is Stella Cobe. I'm five feet five inches, short, brown hair,
• 1:14:09
  curly collarbone length, brown eyes, big glasses with thick red frames.
• 1:14:15
  I've got a tattoo of a skull on the inside
• 1:14:17
  of my right wrist and a four inch long scar
• 1:14:19
  that runs down the back of my right arm down
• 1:14:21
  my elbow. It's from when I fell off horse as
• 1:14:24
  a child. I'm one hundred and fifty six pounds and
• 1:14:27
  I'm a big fan of rock music, specifically Blondie. I
• 1:14:31
  love action movies, and I'm allergic to cinnamon. You might
• 1:14:33
  meet me out in public in the produce section of
• 1:14:36
  your local supermarket. Maybe I bumble or hinge or grind,
• 1:14:40
  or I'm in thrift stores a lot. Maybe watch out
• 1:14:44
  for me there. You'll know it's not the real me
• 1:14:46
  because I haven't left my apartment in over a week
• 1:14:49
  and I have no plans of doing so. I want
• 1:14:52
  that thing gone. I want it gone from this world
• 1:14:54
  before I ever step foot outside again. I don't know
• 1:14:57
  how it picks its victims, but it's quite charm. Just
• 1:15:01
  be careful. You can try to avoid it if you want,
• 1:15:03
  but your best bets to just kill it. Put an
• 1:15:06
  end of this thing.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: So please, if you meet me, if you meet it
• 1:15:11
  as me, please kill it.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: And that's the end.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: I will say that I don't know why, but I
• 1:15:18
  don't know why. But at the end it started this
• 1:15:20
  as fucked up because I feel like I'm doing what
• 1:15:22
  she's complaining about.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: Why does it feel I don't know.
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: It feels like almost like a schizophrenic person being like
• 1:15:28
  someone is there's someone that's pretending to be me out
• 1:15:30
  there walking around.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, babe, you're just crazy. No, No, you're making it up.
• 1:15:35
  It's not you. I don't know why. It's because there
• 1:15:37
  was this Cronenberg short film that was on.
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: YouTube a long time ago. I don't know if it's
• 1:15:41
  there what it was called The Nest or something, but
• 1:15:43
  it was about a woman who goes to a doctor's
• 1:15:46
  appointment and she says that there's like insects in her
• 1:15:48
  breast and she wants them removed. She wants she wants
• 1:15:50
  the doctor to remove her breast, and it's like you.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: Never see any of the breast.
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 1: She just says it there, and it's like you just
• 1:15:58
  can't really tell if she's telling the truth or not.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: Is it real?
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: It's it's very interesting and I don't know why, but
• 1:16:04
  this for some reason is posted so casually and it's
• 1:16:07
  so informal that it almost feels like a post of
• 1:16:11
  like somebody who has like almost mentally deteriorated. That being said,
• 1:16:15
  the fact that like the people have met Antonio before
• 1:16:18
  and stuff makes it seem like it probably is a monster.
• 1:16:20
  But I do like this idea of so I'm being
• 1:16:22
  like I went on a date. Another person's trying to
• 1:16:24
  be me and you're like, what, really, I don't know
• 1:16:27
  I to me.
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: It feels kind of to tied into like the first
• 1:16:33
  episode's theme of like manifesting something. This almost feels like
• 1:16:37
  a literalized version of when people talk about in relationships
• 1:16:41
  that like they break up with someone and the person
• 1:16:43
  just keeps all their traits, you know, yeah, or it's
• 1:16:45
  like yeah they you know, they got the shows they
• 1:16:47
  watch for me and the music they listen to for me,
• 1:16:49
  and blah blah, blah, and the person is only who
• 1:16:51
  they are because of me. Yeah. Yeah, it almost feels
• 1:16:56
  like that, but drawn out to a very little position
• 1:17:01
  where it's like he's literally skinned walking me and I'm
• 1:17:05
  I'm left over here almost again, like a breakup. I'm
• 1:17:07
  over here a shamble, hide in my apartment and they're
• 1:17:10
  still out there doing things that I taught them, learning
• 1:17:13
  things that I showed them and stuff like that.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: Which is a fun that's a fun feels like it
• 1:17:16
  take a concept for you. Yeah, it's feel like the
• 1:17:20
  yeah mimic. That's a fun horror story concept of like
• 1:17:24
  a breakup that leads to being like the person that
• 1:17:26
  they are has been transformed because of me. Like, I
• 1:17:29
  do actually like that, and then people suck like and
• 1:17:32
  it is funny if people being like siding against her
• 1:17:35
  and being like what are you talking about? He's always
• 1:17:36
  been that way, and like what the fuck are you
• 1:17:37
  talking about? Because it's like because you have the actual
• 1:17:40
  intimate relationship with that person and the other people can't see,
• 1:17:44
  you know, what's on the inside.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: So I do like that as like a fun comparison.
• 1:17:47
  I think that's a good read that you had. Yeah,
• 1:17:50
  because it feels like there's so many times like that
• 1:17:57
  and where after a breakup someone's like, oh, well no, well,
• 1:18:00
  I mean they got some stuff from you, but it's
• 1:18:02
  like they always did that. They were like, it's like
• 1:18:04
  people gas like you as if you weren't the one in.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: The relationship friend groups of a phenomenal way of doing that.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like, oh it's not that bad. Oh you're
• 1:18:13
  being you're being dramatic or whatever. Yeah, yeah, it feels
• 1:18:16
  like that, but literal, especially whenever your friends become their
• 1:18:19
  friends too, the worst, the worst. Yeah, then it's like, okay,
• 1:18:23
  well we're now we have a civil war of sorts.
• 1:18:26
  There's going to be a great divide. I'm telling you, well.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Shit, guys. Those are both their stories to day. I
• 1:18:30
  think they are both a lot of fun. I'd like that.
• 1:18:32
  I like whenever we get these options, whenever there's a
• 1:18:34
  couple quick ones, it's always just kind of fun to
• 1:18:36
  see these both these ideas just felt like a fun
• 1:18:38
  like just like it's like dipping your toe into a
• 1:18:41
  premise that could be fun to dive deeper into. Which
• 1:18:44
  is I think always a fun read, really easy, relaxed
• 1:18:48
  and hope that it was a good listen as well.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: I really enjoyed both of these, and I do think
• 1:18:52
  I see Harry's vision. Well. I don't even know if
• 1:18:54
  Harry thought this, but the connection I made was that
• 1:18:57
  both of these are kind of like metaphors or manifestuff
• 1:19:00
  that really happens. Yeah, yeah, inversations. Yeah.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much to anyone who's listening on Apple Podcasts
• 1:19:06
  or Spotify anywhere you can listen to a podcast. We
• 1:19:08
  appreciate you and thank you for giving us a nice
• 1:19:11
  rating if you have, And also be sure to check
• 1:19:13
  out the Patreon if you want some extra content. We
• 1:19:15
  have some more extra bonus episodes there where we talk
• 1:19:17
  about movies and read stories and stuff like that, so
• 1:19:19
  be sure to check it out.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: And until next time, guys, stay creeped, Stay creep Be
• 1:19:23
  sure to check out the authors in the description and
• 1:19:29
  Hunter and Alison ever break up. I'm gonna gaslight everyoneted
• 1:19:32
  to believe in Allison actually started the channel. I think
• 1:19:35
  that's the metaphor for this one.