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SYSK's Halloween Horror Fiction Winner! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you stuff you should know from how Stuffworks
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com.
0:11
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
0:14
Speaker 2: Charles w Chuck Bryant. This is stuff you should know
0:17
Speaker 2: and friends, it is almost folloween. Just do that, then
0:25
Speaker 2: Jurie doesn't have to do any seventy time.
0:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, just step my mouth making like wind blowing and
0:30
Speaker 1: Woolve's alley. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's good, Chuck. Happy Halloween.
0:35
Speaker 1: Happy Halloween, buddy. It's good to be back in the
0:37
Speaker 1: old studio. It feels nice, you know. Yeah, we have
0:41
Speaker 1: the lighting dim. It's actually a little spooky. No, it's here.
0:43
Speaker 1: It is Friday's is like twenty eight days later.
0:45
Speaker 2: Right, Our guest producer Matt, survived the zombie apocalypse. Ye're
0:49
Speaker 2: still here and still normal, right, Matt? Pretty normal, says Matt.
0:56
Speaker 2: And so I guess if you hadn't figured out, I know,
1:00
Speaker 2: what we're about to do is read our annual Halloween
1:03
Speaker 2: scary story. But this one's a little different.
1:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.
1:05
Speaker 2: I know some of you know, but maybe not everybody
1:08
Speaker 2: knows that we held a Halloween horror fiction contest. We
1:12
Speaker 2: reached out to our fans and said, hey, scarce, thanks right,
1:15
Speaker 2: some of them did.
1:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, And hats off to you, my friend, because this
1:18
Speaker 1: was Josh's idea, and I think it was a great idea.
1:20
Speaker 1: And we got over one hundred stories and one hundred
1:24
Speaker 1: and four yeah, and you guys ultimately decided in the
1:26
Speaker 1: bracket game. But I would have been happy with any
1:28
Speaker 1: of those sixteen yeah and strong entries. Yeah.
1:31
Speaker 2: There were probably even more than sixteen, because it wasn't
1:33
Speaker 2: it wasn't easy to pick those sweet sixteen. We got
1:37
Speaker 2: one hundred and four entries that were qualified. I believe
1:40
Speaker 2: we had another maybe eight that were disqualified for hundred reasons.
1:44
Speaker 2: But I appreciate you taking your hat off to me.
1:47
Speaker 2: I take my hat off to everybody who took the
1:50
Speaker 2: time to send their stuff in.
1:51
Speaker 1: Agreed.
1:51
Speaker 2: Some people sent stuff they had sitting around. Other people
1:54
Speaker 2: whiped this stuff up just for us. And thank you
1:57
Speaker 2: to all of you who sent in a story. Yes,
1:59
Speaker 2: and we want to say that obviously, if you send
2:02
Speaker 2: us a story, we could tell by the caliber of
2:04
Speaker 2: the writing that we got that you are professional writers
2:07
Speaker 2: or aspiring to be professional writers. So if you publish
2:11
Speaker 2: a book, whether it's horror fiction, short stories, or whether
2:15
Speaker 2: it is a children's book or anything like that. We
2:18
Speaker 2: want to show our appreciation to you for entering the
2:20
Speaker 2: contest by saying, let us know, and we will tell
2:23
Speaker 2: everybody about it, yep, on social media, on the podcast whatever,
2:28
Speaker 2: and we can start that little courtesy now, Chuck, because
2:33
Speaker 2: one of the guys who made it to the Sweet sixteen,
2:35
Speaker 2: his name is Adam pract and he submitted a story
2:39
Speaker 2: called Frame Story, which was awesome, and he went ahead
2:44
Speaker 2: and published it in a book. He's got a book
2:47
Speaker 2: called appropriately enough Frame Story. It's seven stories of sci
2:52
Speaker 2: fi and fantasy, horror and humor. It's available in Kindle
2:57
Speaker 2: as a Kindle e book. I think he's got pretty
3:00
Speaker 2: much every ebook covered he's got. It's a dot mobi file,
3:06
Speaker 2: which means that you can use it on just about
3:09
Speaker 2: any eReader. You can go to uh smash words dot
3:14
Speaker 2: com and find it. You can find it on Amazon,
3:17
Speaker 2: and you can find it as a print on demand
3:20
Speaker 2: paper book if you're not into that whole new fangled
3:22
Speaker 2: eReader thing at createspace dot com. Slash four zero, two, three, five,
3:27
Speaker 2: seven six. So Adam Practice Frame Story, seven story collection,
3:33
Speaker 2: heck of a deal, and it's out there already.
3:35
Speaker 1: Wow, look at you. Yeah, uh so I guess we'll
3:39
Speaker 1: explain quickly. We divided the story not by paragraph this time,
3:43
Speaker 1: but by style, because this story deals with a communica
3:46
Speaker 1: that someone is sending. Yes, and there's another part of
3:49
Speaker 1: the story where this man exists, and so I will
3:52
Speaker 1: be reading that, Josh will be reading the communica. A. Yeah,
3:55
Speaker 1: and I think that was a good way to do it.
3:56
Speaker 2: Oh, I agree, and that was your idea. So let's
4:00
Speaker 2: continue the pat on the backfest, and we should probably
4:04
Speaker 2: tell everybody what story we're reading. Yes, this is the
4:06
Speaker 2: winner of the stuff you should know horror fiction contest.
4:11
Speaker 1: Ever, I would.
4:12
Speaker 2: Say inaugural, but that would indicate that there's more to come.
4:15
Speaker 1: Yeah, we haven't decided that. Yeah, and he technically should
4:18
Speaker 1: never say first annual. People say that a lot, right,
4:20
Speaker 1: until there's a second year, it can't be annual.
4:22
Speaker 2: Right, you say inaugural?
4:23
Speaker 1: Oh, is that what the replacement is? Okay, gotcha.
4:26
Speaker 2: Well that's a good point. But the winner is a
4:28
Speaker 2: guy named Brett s Arnold, and mister Arnold submitted a
4:32
Speaker 2: story called Sign Forever and Ever, and we think it's
4:34
Speaker 2: awesome and we're proud of one.
4:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed.
4:38
Speaker 2: Again, Thank you to everybody who submitted your stories. You
4:41
Speaker 2: can go to the bogs at HowStuffWorks dot com and
4:44
Speaker 2: read all of the Sweet sixteen. They're still up there.
4:46
Speaker 2: They will be in perpetuity and lead some nice comments.
4:51
Speaker 2: Nice comments. Okay, yeah, okay, so let's read it.
4:55
Speaker 1: Huh, all right?
4:56
Speaker 2: Henceforth here with here too we read Signed Forever and
5:02
Speaker 2: Ever by Brett s Arnold.
5:09
Speaker 1: Edmund thought of holding his breath as another splinter formed
5:11
Speaker 1: in the window. The creaking of vessel under the pressure
5:14
Speaker 1: of well, what exactly was it brought to mine images
5:18
Speaker 1: of the Titanic at the bottom of the sea, and
5:20
Speaker 1: suddenly he was cold. Some people think all they're doing
5:23
Speaker 1: in death is returning to the sea, but no, he
5:25
Speaker 1: thought that's too short sighted. He would be returning to
5:29
Speaker 1: the stars. For the moment, everything was stable, He exhaled
5:32
Speaker 1: and returned to his electronic courier.
5:38
Speaker 2: I never told you the truth because I didn't want
5:40
Speaker 2: to hurt you. But we're past that now. When she left,
5:44
Speaker 2: I was destroyed. I didn't know how to raid you.
5:46
Speaker 2: I feared you would be different without your mother. How
5:49
Speaker 2: would they treat you at school? What about when you
5:51
Speaker 2: were older? Her leaving hurt me too, of course, and
5:54
Speaker 2: very deeply. But it was you that I was worried about, Sarah.
5:58
Speaker 2: I want you to know I've thought about this every
6:00
Speaker 2: day since she left. I shouldn't have told you she died.
6:03
Speaker 2: That was wrong. Still, worse things have happened since, and
6:06
Speaker 2: I need you to know the real story.
6:08
Speaker 1: After she left, I.
6:09
Speaker 2: Found it was to chase down another man. It makes
6:12
Speaker 2: me sick to think about, sick to my stomach. Who
6:15
Speaker 2: was he anyway, some nobody, a drug dealer. Whoever, It's
6:19
Speaker 2: a good thing he died, Sarah. Bad things happen to
6:22
Speaker 2: bad people, but that's still not the worst of it.
6:29
Speaker 1: He paused to look at the small crescent window, twenty
6:31
Speaker 1: six inches thick out to the sun. The direct light
6:35
Speaker 1: hurt his eyes, and when he closed them he saw
6:37
Speaker 1: small purple streaks. When he rubbed them, there was another
6:40
Speaker 1: murmur from the vessel, metal compressing in on itself on him.
6:44
Speaker 1: The vessel turned on its end and threw him in
6:47
Speaker 1: its courier to the ground. He caught the edge of
6:50
Speaker 1: the bed frame he was sitting on and steadied himself.
6:52
Speaker 1: The vessel's course smoothed. The splinter in the window was
6:55
Speaker 1: longer now with new smaller splinters fracturing away from it
6:59
Speaker 1: like cobwebs. He was panting and out of breath. He
7:02
Speaker 1: picked the courier up from the floor and propped it
7:04
Speaker 1: against the dashboard.
7:11
Speaker 2: I love you, Sarah. I wish I had more time
7:13
Speaker 2: to say that to you right now, and back at
7:15
Speaker 2: home too. When I heard that the man had died,
7:19
Speaker 2: I was at work, sitting at my desk reading the
7:21
Speaker 2: newspaper about the problems the Mars colony was having and
7:24
Speaker 2: how the first settlers were facing more challenges than they'd expected.
7:27
Speaker 2: I received a message via post from your uncle. He
7:31
Speaker 2: said the man died from disease, a slow moving cancer
7:34
Speaker 2: whose long treatment bankrupted your mother and him. And then
7:37
Speaker 2: after she was coming back to the only place she knew.
7:43
Speaker 1: He studied his gray standard issue uniform with the red
7:45
Speaker 1: circular insignia and the numbers five two seven below. This
7:50
Speaker 1: far passed the Moon. Communications other than electronic courier was impossible,
7:55
Speaker 1: and even those took hours to transmit across the cosmos.
7:58
Speaker 1: He had sent one to Cape Canaver forty minutes prior,
8:01
Speaker 1: only to alert them that a red light on his
8:03
Speaker 1: dashboard titled relay Valve, was suddenly on and he couldn't
8:06
Speaker 1: recall from his brief training what that meant. He was
8:08
Speaker 1: sure it was serious. There's no reason for me to
8:11
Speaker 1: be here, he thought, or anyone. The world isn't ending.
8:14
Speaker 1: There's no impending cataclysmic event, no threat to the species
8:18
Speaker 1: as a whole. It was a just in case. That's
8:21
Speaker 1: how they'd phrased it to him in training, just in case.
8:24
Speaker 1: He mulled the words over angry.
8:29
Speaker 2: I don't know if she was going to try to
8:31
Speaker 2: contact us. I heard it from a friend that she
8:33
Speaker 2: was staying at the Late Sleeper motel outside of town.
8:36
Speaker 2: I like to think that if you had been in
8:38
Speaker 2: my head then and heard everything I was thinking and
8:40
Speaker 2: experienced the rush, that you would have done the same
8:43
Speaker 2: thing I did, and I wouldn't be here. But that's
8:47
Speaker 2: not how life works. I couldn't stand the thought of
8:49
Speaker 2: her meeting you after I raised you, or her asking
8:52
Speaker 2: to come back or coming to take you away. That's
8:57
Speaker 2: when I took the lumber axe in the yard and
8:59
Speaker 2: drove to the motel and pushed your mother on the
9:01
Speaker 2: bed and laid the blade into her, missing the first time,
9:07
Speaker 2: but not the second, or the third, or fourth. I
9:11
Speaker 2: lost count That night, I didn't sleep. I thought about
9:16
Speaker 2: what you would have done if you saw me when
9:17
Speaker 2: I came home and showered, and grabbed your sheets from
9:20
Speaker 2: your bed and wrapped them around your mother in the
9:22
Speaker 2: back seat of our automobile, and drove her to the
9:24
Speaker 2: lake and dumped her in on the north side, which
9:27
Speaker 2: was more shallow than I had thought. I watched the
9:30
Speaker 2: current move her body down to a small pocket of
9:32
Speaker 2: water lined with rocks that her clothes must.
9:34
Speaker 1: Have snagged on.
9:35
Speaker 2: A tree grew overhead.
9:37
Speaker 1: It was pretty in its own way.
9:39
Speaker 2: It was colder the next morning, in overcast I tried
9:42
Speaker 2: to ignore everything, like I'd done before.
9:48
Speaker 1: The vessel shook again, sending Edmond to the floor, his
9:52
Speaker 1: face hitting the side of the bunk he had been
9:53
Speaker 1: sitting on. From that perspective, he could almost make out
9:57
Speaker 1: the shape of the milky Way and the landscape of
9:59
Speaker 1: lights blinking on his dashboard, red and orange and yellow.
10:04
Speaker 1: He reached to study the sharp pain in his jaw
10:06
Speaker 1: with his left hand, but jolted when he made contact.
10:09
Speaker 1: He could barely move it, and when he did, he
10:11
Speaker 1: could hear a loud clicking sound against his ear drum,
10:14
Speaker 1: probably broken, he thought. The blood ran thick like half
10:18
Speaker 1: frozen water down his neck and chest, where it collected
10:21
Speaker 1: in pools, and the folds of his uniform pants. He
10:24
Speaker 1: sat as quiet as possible and tried not to think
10:26
Speaker 1: about the window and its new splinters and fractures. The
10:29
Speaker 1: silence is good, he thought.
10:38
Speaker 2: By the time I thought to move your mother before
10:40
Speaker 2: anyone else found her, it was too late. The sides
10:43
Speaker 2: of the river and all the shallow areas had frozen
10:45
Speaker 2: over in a matter of days. I came at night
10:48
Speaker 2: and discovered this. I tried kicking through the ice with
10:51
Speaker 2: my boot. I used the tire iron nothing. The second
10:55
Speaker 2: time I came was in the day. I walked past
10:58
Speaker 2: the spot, never stopping, and looked in past to see
11:00
Speaker 2: if I could see her, if she was still there,
11:02
Speaker 2: But the ice was like frosted glass. Every few minutes
11:06
Speaker 2: a truck or some other vehicle would pass on the highway,
11:08
Speaker 2: and I would croped low to the ground. I let
11:10
Speaker 2: a week go by and came back at night. I
11:13
Speaker 2: parked on the shoulder of the highway half a mile
11:15
Speaker 2: up and walked back to the river with my flashlight off.
11:18
Speaker 2: I tested the ice with my boot again and walked
11:20
Speaker 2: out onto it. I laid my head against the ice
11:23
Speaker 2: and looked down for your mother. I couldn't see her.
11:26
Speaker 2: I put my ear to the ground, as if testing
11:28
Speaker 2: for a coming train by listening to the tracks, but
11:30
Speaker 2: all I could hear was ice splintering in the distance,
11:33
Speaker 2: a low echoing sound. I turned the flashlight on and
11:36
Speaker 2: pointed it to where I left her beneath. I saw
11:39
Speaker 2: the faintest blur of her, the smooth edges of the
11:41
Speaker 2: structure of her face. Her white sweater was clear against
11:44
Speaker 2: the brown river bottom. Tiny air bubbles were frozen everywhere
11:48
Speaker 2: in the ice, but most of them seemed to be
11:49
Speaker 2: around her head, and I wondered what caused that. From
11:52
Speaker 2: then on, I came back every night. I waited until
11:55
Speaker 2: a few hours before sunrise. I put my ear to
11:58
Speaker 2: the ground and listened to the shifting eye. And I
12:00
Speaker 2: waited until I had seen no headlights for several minutes
12:03
Speaker 2: before I turned on the flashlight. Impressed my face as
12:05
Speaker 2: close to the ice as possible for as long as possible.
12:09
Speaker 2: The blue moonlight mixed with my yellow flashlight made her
12:11
Speaker 2: look green. It did not matter what color she was.
12:14
Speaker 2: I hardly recognized her after all those years. Anyway, I
12:17
Speaker 2: felt sick at home when the sun came up. But
12:20
Speaker 2: every night I went back. I think more than anything,
12:22
Speaker 2: I was waiting for spring, for the ice to melt.
12:30
Speaker 1: There was too much blood. He felt light headed and
12:33
Speaker 1: stood up and immediately fell back down. He felt short
12:36
Speaker 1: of breath. Outside his window, the red planet was bigger.
12:40
Speaker 1: He could see individual caverns in the details of ridges.
12:43
Speaker 1: The color was more vibrant, where Earth was still so
12:46
Speaker 1: blue in the distance. He could now be sure first
12:49
Speaker 1: hand and not by a matter of faith, that there
12:51
Speaker 1: was no water where his vessel was heading. It would
12:54
Speaker 1: be nice, he thought, if he could fly the vessel
12:56
Speaker 1: far enough to at least make it into orbit or
12:58
Speaker 1: the red planet. He remembered setting benchmarks for himself, most
13:03
Speaker 1: of all as a young man about his death. If
13:05
Speaker 1: I could only make it until Christmas and die the
13:08
Speaker 1: day after, if I have to, that would be best.
13:11
Speaker 1: Then Christmas would come and go, and he would think,
13:14
Speaker 1: if I have to die now, at least let it
13:16
Speaker 1: be after vacation, or at the very least during vacation,
13:20
Speaker 1: so I can go while looking at the beach, or
13:22
Speaker 1: the cabin or the city lights. He ripped the sleeve
13:25
Speaker 1: off his standard issue uniform and held it firmly against
13:28
Speaker 1: his wound. The harder he pressed, the more it hurt.
13:31
Speaker 1: He put his full weight into it, eyes closed, sweating,
13:35
Speaker 1: thinking of the window.
13:39
Speaker 2: In September, before all of this, I received a letter
13:42
Speaker 2: thanking me for my application, et cetera, and that yes,
13:45
Speaker 2: I had been selected to join the second colonizing group
13:47
Speaker 2: of Mars. I had not decided if I would go
13:51
Speaker 2: with you going to college. It seemed like the right thing,
13:53
Speaker 2: a fit, a way to support us while you were away.
13:56
Speaker 2: I could not protect you anymore while you were away,
13:59
Speaker 2: but I couldn't do it. I took out loans I
14:02
Speaker 2: borrowed against the house. I would be there for you
14:04
Speaker 2: when you needed me.
14:09
Speaker 1: He reached for his wallet and took out a small
14:11
Speaker 1: picture he kept in one of the card pockets. He
14:13
Speaker 1: could not remember his daughter's eye color. He remembered when
14:17
Speaker 1: Sarah was four or five, his wife and him had
14:19
Speaker 1: a fight at a restaurant about what color her eyes
14:22
Speaker 1: were blue or green. The night ended with them being
14:25
Speaker 1: asked to leave and Sarah crying all the way home.
14:28
Speaker 1: Edmund didn't speak to his wife for a month. The
14:31
Speaker 1: photo was of her on her seventeenth birthday, with two
14:33
Speaker 1: of her friends at her side at the aquarium, but
14:36
Speaker 1: her eyes were too small to see the color of
14:38
Speaker 1: a large blue tank with a school of silver fish
14:41
Speaker 1: filled the background. Felt trivial now, but also fundamentally basic.
14:45
Speaker 1: Any other father would know this answer, and probably whispered
14:48
Speaker 1: it in their sleep. My daughter's eyes are but the
14:52
Speaker 1: answer didn't come.
14:55
Speaker 2: I didn't have hopes for the program, knowing they took
14:57
Speaker 2: a local geologist with my credentials, if you can even
15:00
Speaker 2: call them that, I'm guessing I was chosen because I
15:03
Speaker 2: could be spared. Older single men seemed to get that wrap.
15:07
Speaker 2: The first wave of colonists was mostly hard laborers and
15:10
Speaker 2: criminals and their elected leaders. But all we were good
15:13
Speaker 2: for was bringing supplies. We had almost no training. These
15:17
Speaker 2: vessels fly themselves. I had only a passing interest. The
15:20
Speaker 2: forms were too easy to fill in and submit. I
15:23
Speaker 2: was told I would be taking part of the future
15:25
Speaker 2: of mankind, a planet for tomorrow, one we needed yesterday.
15:30
Speaker 2: People never change humanity, that is, but as people as
15:34
Speaker 2: individuals too. It applies both ways. No one cared who
15:37
Speaker 2: we were, just that we were healthy and willing. I
15:40
Speaker 2: was still not committed in full to go through with it.
15:44
Speaker 1: Its slow hits began in the machinery somewhere beneath them.
15:47
Speaker 1: In the vessel, it was quiet at first, then louder.
15:50
Speaker 1: It stopped. Suddenly the overhead light turned off. Edmond sat
15:54
Speaker 1: very still, his pulse visible from his jugular, the lights
15:58
Speaker 1: of his electronic courier illuminating his sweaty face. The air
16:01
Speaker 1: conditioning unit was no longer functional, and the absence of
16:04
Speaker 1: his white noise made the silence even more pronounced. He
16:07
Speaker 1: felt lightheaded. The vessel will not make it, he thought.
16:12
Speaker 2: I was going to leave town a few days before.
16:14
Speaker 2: We were set to leave on our individual vessels. By
16:17
Speaker 2: then spring was coming, and something changed my mind quickly.
16:20
Speaker 2: There was no moon out one of the nights I
16:22
Speaker 2: was visiting your mother. The ice had begun to thaw
16:25
Speaker 2: slowly over the past few nights, and I could make
16:27
Speaker 2: her out more clearly.
16:28
Speaker 1: Now.
16:29
Speaker 2: I had no plan for when the ice melted. I
16:32
Speaker 2: wanted to be there when it did, though, to move
16:34
Speaker 2: her out of there. I was looking at her then
16:36
Speaker 2: brown skin and the deep cuts that exposed bone. All
16:40
Speaker 2: around me. It was black and cold and completely silent.
16:43
Speaker 2: No cars passed.
16:44
Speaker 1: I was alone.
16:46
Speaker 2: A branch snapped somewhere near the shore. I was laying
16:49
Speaker 2: down and turned off the flashlight. Had I been followed,
16:52
Speaker 2: I waited, turned the flashlight on towards the sound's source,
16:55
Speaker 2: but didn't see anything through the trees. I didn't want
16:59
Speaker 2: to leave the body there. The sounds could have been anything.
17:02
Speaker 2: I waited all night with my small pocket knife drawn.
17:05
Speaker 2: At first daybreak, I walked back to the automobile across
17:08
Speaker 2: the highway and drove home. I did not go to
17:10
Speaker 2: work that day or ever again. The next night I returned,
17:14
Speaker 2: I made sure I was not followed. I wore black
17:16
Speaker 2: and felt stupid. The ice was thinner. I looked at
17:19
Speaker 2: your mother, the strands of her hair that were beginning
17:22
Speaker 2: to break free, and the current swayed back and forth.
17:24
Speaker 2: The next night I planned to bring a hammer and
17:26
Speaker 2: break through the ice and move her. The purple rings
17:29
Speaker 2: on her skin that formed just before I threw her
17:31
Speaker 2: in the lake were now black. I sat waiting in
17:34
Speaker 2: the silence for the first time, without meaning to, I
17:37
Speaker 2: fell asleep on the ice. I awoke with a startle,
17:40
Speaker 2: covered in cold sweat. Something didn't feel right. I turned
17:44
Speaker 2: the flashlight on and scanned the trees and saw nothing.
17:47
Speaker 2: Another branch or twigs snapped under the weight of something
17:51
Speaker 2: I was too far away to see. I turned the
17:53
Speaker 2: flashlight off, and another branch snapped closer, then another. Then
17:58
Speaker 2: there was the sound of ice breaking on the shore,
18:00
Speaker 2: like metal striking metal. I turned on the flashlight and
18:03
Speaker 2: pointed it at the sound, like a spotlight. A thin
18:06
Speaker 2: woman in white stood looking at me, her eyes knee
18:08
Speaker 2: on yellow in the reflection. She was older and midstep
18:12
Speaker 2: on the ice, coming toward me. I dropped the flashlight
18:15
Speaker 2: and ran across the lake in the other direction. I
18:17
Speaker 2: hid all night in the woods on the opposite end
18:19
Speaker 2: of the lake, completely separated from the highway. Had the
18:22
Speaker 2: body been found. When I finally got back to my automobile,
18:26
Speaker 2: I didn't know where to drive. I headed for home,
18:28
Speaker 2: turned around, and drove through to Florida. I went straight
18:31
Speaker 2: to the mission base and waited to go to Mars.
18:35
Speaker 1: The vessel was quiet outside the window of the blackness
18:38
Speaker 1: was almost beautiful. He thought soon he would be part
18:41
Speaker 1: of it.
18:43
Speaker 2: I wanted you to know the story from me before
18:46
Speaker 2: anything happens. And you hear about all this from someone else.
18:49
Speaker 2: You don't have to lie about it if you don't
18:50
Speaker 2: want to, you don't have to say anything about it,
18:53
Speaker 2: you won't hear from me again. I want you to
18:55
Speaker 2: know I don't understand any of this. There was never
18:58
Speaker 2: a plan, but I can tell you, and not many
19:01
Speaker 2: people get a chance like this to say it when
19:02
Speaker 2: they really need to. I love you, Signed Forever and Ever, Edmund.
19:10
Speaker 1: He directed his fingers across the glass surface of the
19:12
Speaker 1: electronic courier to hit send.
19:16
Speaker 2: One more thing. If you haven't decided for yourself yet,
19:19
Speaker 2: let's agree your eyes are blue?
19:20
Speaker 1: Is that okay with you? And the message was sent
19:25
Speaker 1: off to the blue planet so far away from him.
19:28
Speaker 1: His daughter would not receive the message for several hours.
19:31
Speaker 1: Even if she replied right away, he would never receive it.
19:34
Speaker 1: This he knew. He closed his eyes and thought about
19:37
Speaker 1: his actions leading up to this. He realized what he
19:40
Speaker 1: wrote to Sarah was true. That he didn't understand the
19:43
Speaker 1: meaning behind anything that had happened. He didn't want to,
19:46
Speaker 1: and if he didn't understand the past, he thought there
19:49
Speaker 1: was no way he could comprehend the present or the future.
19:52
Speaker 1: So he thought of nothing. As the vessel rocked violently
19:55
Speaker 1: in a gasket? Was it a gasket broke in the
19:58
Speaker 1: dashboard and shot white smoke into the cabin. The vessel
20:01
Speaker 1: shook again, and the glass windows splintered more and more.
20:04
Speaker 1: That fat Lady sings, He thought. It happened very quickly.
20:08
Speaker 1: There was immense pressure from within his body pushing outward.
20:11
Speaker 1: His sight was accentuated with purples and blacks, his heart
20:15
Speaker 1: beating rapidly and then hard and slow. He could hear
20:18
Speaker 1: it in his ear drums. The wound on his chin reopened,
20:21
Speaker 1: and the last thing he saw before suffocating to death
20:24
Speaker 1: was his blood rushing out of the window and then
20:27
Speaker 1: floating in outer space and tiny red, impossibly beautiful globules
20:31
Speaker 1: made magnificent by the unfiltered sunlight. Dying this way was,
20:35
Speaker 1: to his surprise, pleasurable way to go. Wow, that is
20:46
Speaker 1: a heck of a story.
20:47
Speaker 2: Signed Forever and Ever by Arnold.
20:50
Speaker 1: Do you know what it read like to me? Was
20:51
Speaker 1: a graphic novel? Yeah, the way he wrote it. And
20:54
Speaker 1: I think some artist out there should get in touch
20:57
Speaker 1: with us, to get in touch with him and like
20:59
Speaker 1: make this sing a graphic novel. That would be awesome.
21:01
Speaker 1: We could be middlemen. Yeah, we get like a cut
21:04
Speaker 1: of that or something.
21:04
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll call ourselves collectively.
21:06
Speaker 1: Colonel to publishers, right, yeah, that's what they call us. So, man,
21:10
Speaker 1: that was awesome. That was great. Man. Uh.
21:14
Speaker 2: There were plenty of other awesome stories yeah uh, and
21:18
Speaker 2: they are published. You can go onto the blogs at
21:20
Speaker 2: HowStuffWorks dot com and look for read the horror fiction
21:24
Speaker 2: Contest Sweet sixteen here yep, I think, and yeah, I
21:28
Speaker 2: think you'll enjoy all of them. You can, and then
21:31
Speaker 2: you can email us and be like, no, this should
21:32
Speaker 2: have been the winner. Well are you two idiots?
21:35
Speaker 1: Yeah? I almost feel like, I don't know, we don't
21:37
Speaker 1: even need to have another contest. We can just We've
21:39
Speaker 1: got like fifteen years worth of episodes. Yeah, we do,
21:43
Speaker 1: you know, we do. So we'll see what happens next year.
21:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, I know. Yet, and maybe we'll even publish one
21:48
Speaker 2: of the one or two of the others that didn't
21:50
Speaker 2: quite make it, including like that one disqualifying.
21:53
Speaker 1: One that we like. So man, that was good. Yeah.
21:55
Speaker 2: Uh. Well, in the meantime, everybody, have a very safe
21:59
Speaker 2: and happy Halloween. From Josh and Chuck agreed all the
22:02
Speaker 2: people here at how stuffworks dot com and Discovery in general.
22:10
Speaker 2: If you want to get in touch with us, you
22:11
Speaker 2: can email us, but first you should try us on
22:15
Speaker 2: Twitter at s y SK podcast, Facebook at Facebook dot com,
22:19
Speaker 2: slash stuff you should Know, and then if we still
22:22
Speaker 2: don't respond, try the email at stuff podcast at Discovery
22:27
Speaker 2: dot com.
22:35
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
22:38
Speaker 1: HowStuffWorks dot com