Latest / History Dark / The Last Normal Day _ Creepypasta

Transcript

The Last Normal Day _ Creepypasta · History Dark

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Before we begin tonight's story, I just want to say
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: thank you for listening to Macabre Horror. If you enjoy
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: my horror narrations, you can also follow the Macabre Horror
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: podcast on Spotify, where I upload new stories regularly. And
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: if you'd like to help support the channel and keep
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the stories going, you can also join the Patreon. Even
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: following as a free member helps a lot, and there
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: will also be bonus stories and extras for supporters. This
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: will help you stay connected to the channel, regardless of
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: what happens. Now, turn down the lights, get comfortable, and
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: let's begin tonight's story. I keep checking the ladder, not
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: because I think someone's coming up. More like I need
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: to remind myself that I pulled it up behind me,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: that it's folded there against the hatch, that nothing can
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: get through unless it has thumbs. So far, that's still
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: a meaningful distinction. My name is Daniel Okafor. I'm 34
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: years old. I work, worked, in logistics for a frozen
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: food distributor in Coventry. I have a seven-year-old niece named
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Jess who does this thing where she puts her shoes
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: on the wrong feet on purpose because she thinks it's funny.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I'm writing these things down because I need to remember them.
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  Speaker 1: Because I'm sitting in my attic with a torch A
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  Speaker 1: legal pad I found in a box of old uni stuff.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: And a biro that's already starting to run dry. And
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  Speaker 1: I think that if I don't anchor myself to something
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  Speaker 1: specific and true, I'll lose the thread of who I
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: am before the other thing takes it from me. I
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: want to write down what happened. All of it, or
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: as much as I can. Not for drama. I genuinely
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: couldn't care less about drama right now. I'm writing it
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: because someone might find this. And if they do, they
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: should know the shape of how it started. Because I
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: think we all assumed it would be obvious that there'd
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: be a news broadcast or a government announcement or at
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  Speaker 1: least a phone alert. We assumed whatever ended the world
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: would announce itself. It didn't. The first strange thing, and
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: I want to be clear, I didn't know it was
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: strange at the time, was the pigeons. I noticed it
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: on a Tuesday morning, about three weeks ago. I was
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: taking the bin out before work, still half asleep, and
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  Speaker 1: the roof of the terraced houses across from mine was
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  Speaker 1: completely empty. No pigeons. I remember thinking that was strange,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: and then thinking about whether I'd left my phone charging,
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  Speaker 1: and that was it. I forgot about it immediately. It
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  Speaker 1: was the kind of thing your brain files away as
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: mildly odd, and then discards. The way you might notice
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: a shop has changed its sign, but not remember the
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: old name. That evening, my neighbour Margaret knocked and asked
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: if I'd seen her cat, Bertie. Ginger Tom, indoor cat.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: She said the window had been left open, and he'd
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: just gone. She had this look on her face that
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: I kept coming back to later. That specific look of
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: someone trying very hard not to believe in the thing
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: they're starting to believe in. I helped her make some
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: flyers on a printer. I took six of them and
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: said I'd put them up around the street. I put
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: up three and forgot the rest. I should have kept
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: looking for Bertie. Thursday. I noticed that I hadn't heard
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the couple next door arguing in a few days. That
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: sounds grim. I don't mean it that way. They argued
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: the way some couples do, loudly and constantly, and about nothing.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: And it had just become part of the ambient noise
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: of the house. Hearing them through the wall was as
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: unremarkable as the central heating kicking on. But Thursday night,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: it was quiet. in a way that felt slightly too
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: big for the house, and I turned the TV up
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  Speaker 1: without fully knowing why. Friday morning, I tried to call
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: my mate Chris. He texted me on Wednesday about going
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: to the pub that weekend, and I'd forgotten to reply,
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: which I felt bad about. The phone rang and rang.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I texted. Nothing. I told myself he was busy. He's
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  Speaker 1: got two kids. A job that eats his time. A
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  Speaker 1: wife who I suspect monitors his phone a bit too closely.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: It was easy to explain. I went to work. The
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: motorway was light. Unusually light. I noticed because I usually
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: sit in the same stretch of roadworks for 20 minutes minimum.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: And that Friday, I sailed through it. I remember thinking,
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  Speaker 1: someone's done something right for once. and I put on
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: a podcast and didn't think about it again. There were
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: only five people in the office. Normally, we're about 40.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: Sarah from her account said there must be something going around,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: because she'd had three separate emails that morning about people
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  Speaker 1: calling in sick. We shared the kind of look people
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  Speaker 1: share when they think someone else will handle it, and
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: we got on with our work. I left at four
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  Speaker 1: because there wasn't much point staying, The office felt wrong
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: the way a theatre feels wrong when you walk in
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  Speaker 1: during an empty afternoon. Not scary, just incorrectly proportioned. Too
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: much space for too few people. I stopped at the
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: supermarket on the way home. The self-checkouts were all out
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  Speaker 1: of service, and there was only one staff till open.
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  Speaker 1: The young lad running it looked exhausted and slightly unfocused.
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  Speaker 1: like he was listening for something underneath the beep of
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  Speaker 1: the scanner. I bought bread, milk, some soup, a bottle
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  Speaker 1: of wine I didn't end up opening. Saturday is when
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: it stopped being something I could explain. I went to
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: get a coffee at the place on the corner. An
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  Speaker 1: independent place, nothing special. I go most weekends. The door
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: was locked. Not just closed, actually locked. with a handwritten
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: sign that said sorry, closed today. No explanation. The lights
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: inside were off. I stood there for a moment, with
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  Speaker 1: my hands in my jacket pocket, and I had this
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: feeling that's very hard to describe. Not alarm, not quite.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: More like the feeling you get when you're reading a
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: word you've read a thousand times, and suddenly it looks
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: like it's spelt wrong. like reality has shifted one or
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  Speaker 1: two degrees, and I hadn't moved with it. I went
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: home and pulled up the news on my laptop. The
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: articles were there, but they were odd. They just looked disjointed.
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  Speaker 1: There'd been some sort of incident in Birmingham, a public
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  Speaker 1: health emergency apparently. There was a piece about a hospital
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  Speaker 1: in Manchester on lockdown. The language was the careful, antiseptic
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  Speaker 1: language authorities use when they want to say something without
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  Speaker 1: saying it. I read the comments, which I know you shouldn't,
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: and most of them were people being dismissive or cracking jokes.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: But there were a few people from Birmingham who sounded
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: genuinely frightened, in the particular way that people sound when
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: they're trying not to frighten other people. I went to
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: bed that night, telling myself it was fine. In the morning,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: it wasn't fine. I can't write the whole of Sunday
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  Speaker 1: in detail. I don't think I could do it even
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: if I wanted to, but I'll tell you the shape
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: of it. I was woken up by sound from outside
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  Speaker 1: that didn't make sense. Not screaming, I want to be
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: careful about how I describe this, but a kind of
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  Speaker 1: crowd noise that didn't have the quality of any crowd
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  Speaker 1: I'd ever heard. Crowd noise has some kind of rhythm
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  Speaker 1: to it. But this didn't. It was ungrouped, uncoordinated. Like
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: if you recorded a crowd from a stadium and then
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: played it back at the wrong speed with the pitch
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: shifted slightly down. I looked out of my bedroom window.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: I won't describe what I saw in detail, but I
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: will say that I understood quickly, completely, And with the
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: particular clarity that comes when your body just bypasses your
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: brain and just knows that everything had changed. And that
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: the things on my street weren't behaving like people behave.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: I rang my sister. She picked up on the second ring,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: which surprised me. And she said my name once. And
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: then the call dropped and I haven't been able to
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  Speaker 1: reach her since. I don't know where she is. I
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  Speaker 1: don't know where Jess is. I've been trying not to
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  Speaker 1: think about it, because thinking about it uses up something
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  Speaker 1: I need. need for other purposes right now, and I'll
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  Speaker 1: think about it properly later. I'll let myself think about
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: it properly later, but not yet. I'll tell you about
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  Speaker 1: the next 24 hours quickly, because the details don't add much.
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  Speaker 1: I stayed inside, I watched from windows. I tried to
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  Speaker 1: understand the logic of what I was seeing. There's a
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  Speaker 1: part of your mind that keeps trying to find a
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  Speaker 1: rational framework, even when the situation has made it very
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: clear that no rational framework applies. And mine kept cycling
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: through explanations. Drugs in the water supply, some kind of gas,
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  Speaker 1: mass hysteria. even as the evidence kept piling up against
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  Speaker 1: all of them. By Sunday evening, I'd moved as much
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: food as I could carry up into the attic. Not enough.
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  Speaker 1: I knew it wasn't enough when I was doing it.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: A few tins of soup, a box of crackers, some cereal,
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  Speaker 1: a pack of biscuits, two litres of water. Maybe a
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  Speaker 1: day's worth if I'm careful, maybe a bit more. I
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: pulled the ladder up, and I've been here since. I
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: should tell you about the injury, because I think it's relevant.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: I think it's actually the most relevant part. When I
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: was bringing things up from the kitchen, I had to
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: unlock the back door to check if the alley was clear.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: It wasn't. I tried to close the door before I
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  Speaker 1: fully registered what was on the other side of it,
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: and in the scuffle, and I'm going to call it
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: a scuffle. because I need some kind of bland word
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  Speaker 1: for it. My hand got caught on something. Bottom of
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  Speaker 1: the doorframe, or I thought it was. I told myself
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  Speaker 1: it was the doorframe. But now, I can see there's
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a bite mark on my left hand, between my thumb
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  Speaker 1: and forefinger. Not large, ragged edges. It's not bleeding anymore,
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  Speaker 1: but it stopped bleeding faster than I expected, which is
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: an odd thing to notice about a wound, and I'm
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  Speaker 1: not sure what to make of it. I've wrapped it
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in a piece of cloth, torn from an old t-shirt
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: I found up here. I've been telling myself it was
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: the doorframe. I'm aware that's not what it was. It's
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: been throbbing for the last hour or so. Not painfully,
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: not yet. It's pulsing. My hand has its own pulse.
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  Speaker 1: and it's out of time with my heart. And that's
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the thing that keeps pulling my attention away from the page.
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  Speaker 1: I'm going to be honest with you, whoever you are.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: I know what the throbbing means. I watched what happened
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: to people outside. I understand the timeline, at least roughly.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: I don't know if it's hours or less, but I'm
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: fairly sure it's not days. The fact I can still
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: write this, that I can still construct a sentence and
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  Speaker 1: mean it, feels right now like an extraordinary privilege that
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  Speaker 1: I'm trying not to waste. I'm not frightened of dying.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: I don't mean that in a noble way. I just
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: think fear requires a focus on the future that I'm
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: struggling to maintain. What I feel is something more like grief,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: mostly for Jess and my sister Partly for Chris, who
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: I never texted back. Partly for myself in the abstract.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: For all the small things I was going to do,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: that now won't get done. I was going to repaint
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: the hallway. I'd been putting it off for two years.
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  Speaker 1: The colour I'd picked out was called Pebble Shore, which
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: is a silly name for a paint colour. I hope
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: it's quick. That's my main hope. The specifics of what
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I saw on Sunday suggest that nature doesn't especially share
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: this preference. But I'm choosing to hope anyway, because it's
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: one of the last choices I ever get to make.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm taking it. Here's what I want whoever finds
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: this to know. It came slowly, and then, all at once.
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  Speaker 1: The way everything does. There were signs that none of
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: us read. because we'd been trained to assume that signs
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: would look like signs. We thought the end of the
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: world would come with a news broadcast, with authority figures
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: and emergency procedures and an orderly system for knowing what
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  Speaker 1: to do. We didn't think it would look like a
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: quiet motorway and an empty coffee shop and a cat
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: that went out the window and didn't come back. Pay
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: attention to the small absences. The pigeon-less rooftops. The neighbour
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: who's usually noisy going quiet. The friend who doesn't text back.
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: The world pulls threads before it unravels. And the threads
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: look like nothing until they're gone. My hand is really
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: throbbing now. Not painful. It's just there. I'm aware of
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: it in a way that I haven't been aware of
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: my hand before. like it's something separate from me that
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I'm carrying. My name is Daniel Okafor, and I'm 34
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: years old, and I worked in logistics, and my niece
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: puts her shoes on the wrong feet because she thinks
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: it's funny, and I'm trying very hard to finish writing
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: this before I can't. The torch is getting dimmer. I
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: hadn't noticed. I'd been looking at the pages. I'm going
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: to put the pen down in a moment and I'm
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: going to sit in the dark and I'm going to
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: think about Jess. The specific realness of her. The sound
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: of her voice. The way she laughs too loudly at
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: her own jokes because she already knows they're funny. I'm
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: going to hold that. I'm going to hold it for
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: as long as I can. If you find this, please
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: know that we were here. We were ordinary people in
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: ordinary houses. And we were here. And we mattered. Take
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: care of each other. That's all. That's the whole thing.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to tonight's story. If you enjoyed
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: it and would like to hear more horror narrations, you
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: can follow Macabre Horror on Spotify, where I post new
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: stories regularly. And if you'd like to help support the
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: channel and keep these stories coming, you can join the Patreon.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: Free memberships are also available, and paid supporters also get
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: access to bonus stories and other extras. All the links
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: are in the description. Until next time, keep the lights
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: low and the doors locked.