Latest / Moey's Laboratory of Extraordinary Stories / YOU VS: The Rearview Mirror

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YOU VS: The Rearview Mirror · Moey's Laboratory of Extraordinary Stories

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, I'm Moe, and welcome to You versus Everybody, a podcast full of creative challenges for anyone who wants to listen or play along.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: Today is a you versus episode, our first one, which means everybody listening becomes the judge.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: But one tiny caveat before we really get into it, this is actually gonna be a practice round because there's only two of us.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's just me.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's just me and my buddy Maddie.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: So no one's getting crowned.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I still want you to go vote because we're testing the machinery.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I want to make sure everything works.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So welcome to episode two, you versus everybody.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Today's prompt is the rear view mirror.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's a writing round.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Let's listen to today's prompt.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: Did I just see what I think I saw?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_02: I quickly pull over and turn off my engine unwittingly.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_02: I lean forward, fixated on the distant shape in my rear view mirror.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, here we go.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Did I just see what I think I saw?
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: I quickly pull over and turn my engine off unwittingly.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I lean forward, fixated on the distant shape in my rearview mirror.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I grab my phone from the cup holder and navigate to my contacts, scrolling down to the name I don't think about.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: The name I ignore.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: The name I avoid.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: The name I can't delete.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: The name I've locked away in a triple-chain vault in the depths of my psyche.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: But it couldn't be her.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: I watched her.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was there.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: That heinous morning by the bend.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: You were so stupid.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was so stupid.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: A tear falls onto my screen, and I realize how hard I'm shaking.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Get it together, I whisper, wiping away another tear daring to fall from my jawline.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I look back at the rear view.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: The shape of a woman is still there, like she stopped walking when I pulled over.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell if she's looking at me or facing the other direction.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is crazy.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's probably just someone who looks like her.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: Should I make sure this lady's okay?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is that creepy?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: I look back down at the name on my screen.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Emma.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I pressed the phone icon.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Accidentally, maybe.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I used to call her phone a lot after the day I lost her.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: To hear her voicemail, almost as if to punish myself.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: As my masochism dissipated, I internally built a massive wall out of a homemade mixture of mild self-forgiveness, necessary acceptance, utter fatigue, and the strongest mortar my brain could generate.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously unaware of the cracks in the foundation.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's rang twice now.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm frozen to my seat, left hand still glued to my steering wheel, navigating the floodgate of emotions I was not expecting to feel tonight.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: My sense of time slowed down like a cinematic transition, my lungs and ears filling with the reverberating stillness between dial tones.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I wait to hear the voicemail greeting of a sweet, innocent laugh from my once alive best friend.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't come.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Instead, someone else answers the phone.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Someone still very much alive.
• 3:47
  unknown: Claire?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Answered a male voice.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: My name.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: How?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: I twist behind me in an instant, spotting nothing but darkness behind my car, phone sliding between my seat and my center console.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello?
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: Claire, are you there?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: His voice is scratching at the vault inside my chest.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I continue wildly searching every angle of my surroundings.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: The sound of fabric and palms and old leather.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I hear a muffled inhalation on the line, a sense of confusion and hesitation as he can clearly hear me twisting back and forth in my seat.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: This was weird.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna assume you butt die.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Heaven! I yell, decidedly.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Emma's brother.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I hadn't seen him since the funeral 13 years ago.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe 22 then?
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: He had been 22.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Which I guess makes him 35 now.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: He seemed so much younger than us then.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Something in my insides shifted.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Something softer.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: Something lighter.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when my internal wall broke.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I cried the tears I hadn't let myself cry since the day after Emma died.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Claire.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: He whispered, still muffled and tucked away somewhere in the void under my seat.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he consoled me.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: From what I could hear.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Claire, where are you right now?
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I began breathing in big, giant gulps of air, exhaling through my nose the best I could with the amount of snot I'd acquired in that short amount of time.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I blindly reached under me, hitting my head on the steering wheel.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: With phone finally in hand, I responded, Ub, I'm not sure.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Me wiping at my eyes to get a better look at the streets, I'm 25 feet away.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't make it out.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I knew it was one of those fruit tree streets.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: Something berry lane, most likely.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: I passed the lake off Oldwood.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm maybe three minutes past that.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's like 15 minutes for me.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be right there, okay?
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Don't move.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of car do you have?
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand what was happening, but I was in a daze and my mouth responded without consulting my brain.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: A 2015 Fiat Lounge.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why would he need to know the year and model of my car?
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's white.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, seriously, Claire, don't move.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: And like that, he was gone.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And like that, he was on his way.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And like that, I was about to see my dead best friend's brother, whom I had subconsciously avoided for over a decade.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so I wrote this.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: I am not a writer.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't consider myself a writer, but I've been writing a lot recently.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so it was really fun working on this prompt.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: At first, I definitely leaned spooky and I wanted to do like a whole thing about the lady behind the car, but then I was like, wait a second.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Our prompts are definitely skewing spooky for the Halloween holiday coming up.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could lean out of spooky.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: I think the music helped.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to set you up for like a romance, but also a possible murder mystery.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: After I wrote this, I really like thought about where this story could go.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So if I can do it, then y'all can definitely do it.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Our second and final prompt submission is brought to you by Matt S.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: W you you can find on Instagram as at oddfox.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: I lean forward, fixated on a distant shape in my rearview mirror.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Squinting, I turn in my seat to look out of the rear windshield, twisting so far my spine pops loud as muffled gunshots.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Sweet marijuana smoke filters out of the windows and up into the stars, like ghosts escaping a clown car and ascending to the next life.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Levi asks me, What?
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: I get out and leave the driver door open.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: My shoes crunch on the roadside gravel.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: Mordener's kill road.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Dutch for murderers creek stretches out into the darkness.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Inky black, country dark.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: My shoes, they stop on the double yellow lines.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: The others get out.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Three car doors shut behind me.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Silently, my white hand, my skinny finger, points at the sky.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Not at something I can see, but at something I can't.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: There, maybe two football fields away, is a hole in the sky.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: A triangular, black void that blots out the night sky.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Each corner is tipped with a small light.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Countless stars and solar systems disappear and then blink back into existence as the shape creeps slowly over the Van Oort's cornfields.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sean's voice from behind me asks, What the fuck?
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Kenzie answers, What is that?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: Levi adds, What the fuck?
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Here is something hanging, hovering above the crops like a helicopter would.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Only there was no sound.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: No pounding rotoblades or rushing air.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: No screaming whine of a jet engine.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: No hovercraft sound of a hundred vacuums.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Just a black triangle, noiselessly floating away from us, deeper over the corn toward the bordering woods.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Silent.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So quiet.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: The country sounds of crickets and peepers and bullfrogs seem deafening.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: The creaking, ticking sound of my car's engine cooling down.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: My pulse quickens.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: I say, we should leave.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: But my feet are rooted to the spot.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: My eyes can only stare.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: My dry mouth can only hang open.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is what anyone would call an unidentified flying object.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: This is what the government would be sure to call classified.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is what no one will believe.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: Levi says it's so low.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: A light flashes on and off behind me.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: My head snaps around, but it's just Kenzie taking a picture on her phone.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: When I turn back, my heart gives another dangerous, terminal lurch.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: Where is it?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I've lost it somehow.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: I scan the night sky frantically for a moment before I find it again.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: There.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Stopped now, still hovering silently.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: The object starts to spin, rotating perfectly around some invisible axis.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: The ship circles around in a painfully slow, extraterrestrial about face.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's the feeling of being watched.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: That itchy, burning feeling like a spider crawling up your leg.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's the slasher film's protagonist hiding in the closet, as the killer, blood dripping from his knife, inches closer to the closet door.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: All four of us shudder.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: My heart wallops against my rib cage.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: It rattles my lungs, making it hard to breathe.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: My mouth, my throat, they're too dry to swallow.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, I badly need to use the bathroom.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_00: Kenzie says, uh.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sean says, it's looking at us.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: Levi says, it's coming this way.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I say, fuck this.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Pivoting on the spot, my legs carry me to the car.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: The others follow, opening their doors and slamming themselves inside.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Sean locks his.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: Levi, his voice rising, says, It's still coming.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: My sweaty hands twist the keys in the ignition and flick on the headlights, not wasting any time with a three-point turn.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: I slam the gas and crank the wheel.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: All three voices scream at me, Go, go! The engine roars.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Tires squeal.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: Gravel flies and peppers the underside of the cars.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: I speed back up, Mordener's Kill Road.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Too terrified to look back.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh! I love aliens so much.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: FYI, Maddie sent this story in and then said, by the way, this was a true story.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, I don't think I have the ability to withstand an actual alien abduction.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: I would be such a scaredy cat, but all things paranormal have a massive home on this show.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Give me all of your alien stories, please.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Matt.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: I loved your story.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: It was awesome, and it was a lot of fun to sound design.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's it for this week's round.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: This was our practice round.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: So both me and Maddie are the winners of this episode.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: But voting is open at you versus everybody.com.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's y-o-u-v-severybody.com.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: Go tell me which store you liked best.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: We're testing this out.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna really help if we can get some votes on the website.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: And feel free to call the hotline and tell us what you think.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: 802-308-3131.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Wanna play along?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: For our next U versus episode, which will be in two weeks, we have a prompt picked out.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_03: Fuck.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_03: It's the third night in a row that I've heard this weird sound.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_03: I think it's coming from the attic.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_03: The attic I haven't stepped in for two years, three months, and five days.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: This episode of U versus Everybody was hosted by Moey.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Today's stories were narrated by Moey.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: This week's prompts and next week's prompts were read by B Mo from Vermont.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Episode production and sound design by Morgan Foods.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: Music licensed through Epidemic Sound.