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SMNTY Fiction: Delete Culture · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. I don't put to stuff.
0:07
Speaker 1: I never told you a protection of I heart radio.
0:18
Speaker 1: Oh my voice kind of gave out and that it
0:20
Speaker 1: true things to come. What I'm just kidding? What Please
0:27
Speaker 1: don't put a curse on my my money maker, moneymaker
0:33
Speaker 1: and my money maker. So this brings us to another
0:38
Speaker 1: edition of Sminty Fiction. I have a little teaser for
0:42
Speaker 1: you all. We're at the end of my one shots,
0:45
Speaker 1: which means we're going to move into a longer form,
0:49
Speaker 1: continuous one what yes, which I'm very excited and nervous about.
0:55
Speaker 1: Kind of nervous putting the us out there, but I
0:57
Speaker 1: am excited. I think it'd be great, as always is.
1:00
Speaker 1: If this is not your deal, totally cool. We only
1:03
Speaker 1: do this once a month. It won't hurt my feelings. Um,
1:05
Speaker 1: if you're like nope, not for me. Also, as always, Christina, amazing,
1:09
Speaker 1: Thank you. These would not happen without Christina. She brings
1:13
Speaker 1: it to life. Love it she does. So Samantha and
1:18
Speaker 1: I have a lot of stuff going on in personal lives.
1:22
Speaker 1: I know we've alluded to some I know everybody does.
1:25
Speaker 1: But so this one might be a bit shorter because
1:29
Speaker 1: there's some moving, there's some vacation perhaps. Yeah, yeah, so
1:37
Speaker 1: a lot's going on right now. This one might be
1:39
Speaker 1: a bit shorter. So this one is interesting for a
1:42
Speaker 1: couple of reasons. We've talked before about dreams and dreaming, uh,
1:48
Speaker 1: and how women's gender differences in dreams, but also how
1:52
Speaker 1: in the pandemic my experience has been my dreams have
1:57
Speaker 1: become more vivid and more wild than they ever have been.
2:02
Speaker 1: And as of late, I've noticed I have a lot
2:08
Speaker 1: more sleep paralysis happening where dreams are happening with the
2:12
Speaker 1: sleep paralysis, and it's terrifying. It's so scary, but I
2:18
Speaker 1: do get what I feel like, and I know that's
2:21
Speaker 1: kind of a trope, and people make kind of it
2:23
Speaker 1: really good ideas from my dreams. Hey, that's even better though. Yeah.
2:30
Speaker 1: There's been so many I've written down where I just
2:32
Speaker 1: have like the title in the basics and they are
2:34
Speaker 1: in our like spent fiction folder because it might come
2:36
Speaker 1: back to them. I had one last night where Sebastian
2:41
Speaker 1: stand trying to kill me, but then no, I didn't.
2:47
Speaker 1: I didn't, and then he became best friend. He was
2:50
Speaker 1: mad about Winter Soldier costume, and so I guess that
2:53
Speaker 1: was the grounds to kill me. And then he became
2:55
Speaker 1: best friends with my my one of my best friends,
2:58
Speaker 1: and I became very jealous. But anyway, this story comes
3:05
Speaker 1: from that because this is actually a really vivid dream
3:08
Speaker 1: that I had and my love of time travel horror.
3:11
Speaker 1: Do you have any like thoughts opinions on time travel?
3:15
Speaker 1: I love, I love a good trouble on time travel,
3:18
Speaker 1: for sure. I like. I like that whole perspective because
3:20
Speaker 1: I I really lived wishing we're And again, this is
3:25
Speaker 1: very much may being a part of white culture, not
3:27
Speaker 1: realizing how damaging it was. But like in the nineties
3:30
Speaker 1: forties because I love the old school musicals, I love
3:34
Speaker 1: so any of that, and I think fifties really wanted
3:36
Speaker 1: to be a part of that, um not realizing as
3:40
Speaker 1: an Asian woman, I wouldn't have done much. But yeah,
3:43
Speaker 1: like their moments. And then also because the unknown of
3:46
Speaker 1: way back when it like interesting, like you can get
3:50
Speaker 1: some good stuff like Witchcraft and all of that, like
3:52
Speaker 1: and it's just today and we know the good horror,
3:54
Speaker 1: but when we talk about the vetch and stuff like that,
3:57
Speaker 1: but it throws it back, it feels even more ominous. Yeah, yeah,
4:02
Speaker 1: and I Also, I'm somebody who loves puzzles, and I
4:04
Speaker 1: feel like a good time travel movie. Our story I
4:08
Speaker 1: like trying to put together like the pieces, and I
4:11
Speaker 1: think there's a horror in thinking you can go back
4:13
Speaker 1: and fix something and then it makes everything so much worse,
4:16
Speaker 1: even worse. Okay, So with all of this in mind,
4:21
Speaker 1: let us get into the fiction portion of this episode.
4:37
Speaker 1: When I was eleven years old, a man knocked out
4:40
Speaker 1: my door for crisp demanding knocks, and goose bumps broke
4:45
Speaker 1: out over my skin. The hair on my arms stood up.
4:50
Speaker 1: You are a long black coat. The skin was pale,
4:54
Speaker 1: strikingly so. His eyes dark, had no hair, col permeated
5:00
Speaker 1: the room, the heavy kind of cold that froze everything
5:04
Speaker 1: in its tracks, that slowed time itself. My mom, a small,
5:10
Speaker 1: petite woman, was swallowed in his shadow. He smelled like vinegar.
5:17
Speaker 1: It was overwhelming. He looked out of place in our
5:22
Speaker 1: small apartment. A specter looming in the doorway. They spoke
5:29
Speaker 1: in hushed tones, his voice avoid I watched out up
5:32
Speaker 1: the corner of my eye from behind my couch. I
5:36
Speaker 1: thought he might be a tax collector, or there to
5:39
Speaker 1: evict us. There was a seriousness about my mom's shoulders.
5:43
Speaker 1: That reminded me of how she held herself when she
5:45
Speaker 1: spoke with a bank on the phone. She stepped back
5:49
Speaker 1: to let him inside. The way he moved was unnatural,
5:54
Speaker 1: as though he was gliding. They went into the small kitchen,
5:59
Speaker 1: my mom taking a seat at the table as the
6:01
Speaker 1: man stood in the corner. The harsh fluorescent light of
6:04
Speaker 1: the kitchen painted shadows on his face, of scaring his
6:07
Speaker 1: features from his jacket. He produced a piece of paper,
6:10
Speaker 1: sliding it onto the table, followed by a pin. I
6:14
Speaker 1: watched my mom as she read it, her head in
6:16
Speaker 1: her hand. He stood in silence, watching, waiting. My mother's
6:21
Speaker 1: shoulders slumped. She signed the paper in the corner. The
6:27
Speaker 1: man smiled, a thin, garish smile in the light. Something
6:33
Speaker 1: shifted in the air shivered. I couldn't see his eyes,
6:39
Speaker 1: but I knew he was looking at me. He collected
6:44
Speaker 1: the paper with reverence, pocketing it in his long black jacket.
6:49
Speaker 1: He murmured something, stepping out of the kitchen and into
6:52
Speaker 1: the dining room. My mom followed behind him, her arms
6:56
Speaker 1: wrapped around her middle. For the first time I looked
7:01
Speaker 1: into his eyes. They were empty, though I desperately wanted to.
7:07
Speaker 1: I couldn't look away. Ten years from now, your life
7:12
Speaker 1: is going to change, he said. The statement was flat, lifeless.
7:18
Speaker 1: The moment passed, he showed himself out, walking out of
7:21
Speaker 1: our lives. I assumed forever. I hoped forever. I stared
7:28
Speaker 1: at the door until my mom came and knelt in
7:30
Speaker 1: front of me, blocking it from view. Happy birthday, sweetheart.
7:37
Speaker 1: Over the years I asked my mom about this incident,
7:39
Speaker 1: but she just got the same guarded smile, with a
7:41
Speaker 1: vague explanation about a mortgage before she changed the subject.
7:45
Speaker 1: Not one birthday went by I didn't think about it
7:49
Speaker 1: my twenty one birthday, and the life changing promise loomed
7:52
Speaker 1: a larger and larger the closer I got to it.
7:55
Speaker 1: That wasn't the only reason I could never forget that day.
7:59
Speaker 1: I saw him the man. I saw him everywhere. Sometimes
8:05
Speaker 1: it was just a flash, a reflection in a window
8:08
Speaker 1: and the TV. Others it was more of appealing, a
8:13
Speaker 1: pervading sense of dread and cold, always accompanied by the
8:17
Speaker 1: strong smell of vinegar. Once I was in a movie
8:21
Speaker 1: theater and this presence was so strong I swore there
8:24
Speaker 1: was a hand on my shoulder that I could feel
8:27
Speaker 1: his empty, vacuous smile next to my ear. I ran
8:32
Speaker 1: out of the theater. My friends made fun of me
8:35
Speaker 1: for it for years. Sometimes I saw him, not a shadow,
8:41
Speaker 1: not a reflection, standing there, watching, smiling. I pretended I
8:47
Speaker 1: couldn't see him until he went away, but he never
8:51
Speaker 1: truly went away. I jerk awake in the middle of
8:54
Speaker 1: the night, convinced someone had been standing over me only
8:57
Speaker 1: moments before. I only told one person about this, my
9:03
Speaker 1: best friend Katie. We jokingly called the apparition fine car.
9:10
Speaker 1: There are things you don't question as a kid. We
9:14
Speaker 1: moved into a house, a big one, after so many
9:17
Speaker 1: years in a small apartment worrying about money. It was
9:20
Speaker 1: the height of luxury. My mom became increasingly distant, hurt,
9:26
Speaker 1: but her armor was seemingly unyielding. Soon after the move,
9:31
Speaker 1: my friend Katie bought Awuiji board over for a sleepover.
9:35
Speaker 1: With nervous anticipation, we laid it out, giggling, unsure what
9:39
Speaker 1: to do. We asked it about boys, jerking away and
9:43
Speaker 1: laughing at the first signs of tentative movement, asking each
9:46
Speaker 1: other if the other moved the cursor, and both the
9:49
Speaker 1: humanly denying it. Let's talk to fine car, Katie asked,
9:55
Speaker 1: excited to her, the specter that followed me around was
9:59
Speaker 1: a source of morbid curiosity, or she felt excitement. I
10:03
Speaker 1: felt fear. I wanted to know more about him too, though,
10:08
Speaker 1: And whatever he'd spoken to my mom about, whatever contract
10:11
Speaker 1: they signed that left me with his shadow, is fine
10:16
Speaker 1: gard here, she asked. The cursor stayed resolutely still. My
10:22
Speaker 1: friend tried again. For a long moment, nothing happened. Then slowly, surely,
10:30
Speaker 1: it slid across the board, the window, coming to a
10:34
Speaker 1: stopover Yes. We both stared at it, then at each other,
10:40
Speaker 1: shaking our heads at the silent question. Neither of us
10:44
Speaker 1: had moved it. What do you want? Another pause? We
10:50
Speaker 1: waited with bated breath. The familiar cold settled heavy in
10:54
Speaker 1: the air, the faintest sound of a whisper, the smell
10:59
Speaker 1: of vinegar. We read the letters aloud as the cursor
11:02
Speaker 1: skittered across the board, as oh oh, and my stomach
11:12
Speaker 1: clenched with fear. Then the cursor twitched and we both
11:16
Speaker 1: kerked away from it. As it burned. It began moving
11:20
Speaker 1: erratically on its own as we watched, and growing horror
11:23
Speaker 1: with jerky movements. The indicator darted and halted over a
11:26
Speaker 1: string of numbers the date of my twenty one birthday.
11:33
Speaker 1: Suddenly he was right behind me. I knew if I
11:36
Speaker 1: turned around, I'd see his two pale face and two
11:39
Speaker 1: empty black eyes. I frozen terror, the cursor's movements growing
11:45
Speaker 1: even more frantic, My heart pounded against my ribcage. Racing
11:49
Speaker 1: out of control. Panicked, I threw the board against the wall.
11:54
Speaker 1: Silence descended, interrupted only by my gasping breaths. Then my friend,
12:00
Speaker 1: um awesome, she declared it. I never used the Wigi
12:05
Speaker 1: board again. By the time I was twenty, my mother
12:10
Speaker 1: and I may as well have been strangers. My impassioned
12:13
Speaker 1: fee for her to talk to me, to look at me,
12:16
Speaker 1: was met with silence, her expression unmoved. The specter was
12:21
Speaker 1: an almost constant, now a shadow I'd been forced to accept.
12:25
Speaker 1: Dread saturated my life, and I became a shadow of myself,
12:30
Speaker 1: a certainty taking stronger hold every day that I was
12:33
Speaker 1: getting closer and closer to my execution. And then scientists
12:39
Speaker 1: announced that they discovered time travel, that they were working
12:45
Speaker 1: on a machine and training their first travelers, as they
12:48
Speaker 1: called them. Everything was about to change. They said, jubilant.
12:54
Speaker 1: They set the date for the first voyage, the same
12:58
Speaker 1: date as twenty one birthday. I was in my apartment
13:03
Speaker 1: when I found out. My stomach dropped, tried to swallow
13:09
Speaker 1: and couldn't. This couldn't be a coincidence, couldn't The news
13:17
Speaker 1: reported on their progress. As the day ticked closer, they
13:20
Speaker 1: speculated about the date they'd go to forward or back.
13:25
Speaker 1: I already knew what date they choose, ten years earlier,
13:30
Speaker 1: the same day the mysterious specter first knocked on my door,
13:35
Speaker 1: but my twenty one birthday arrived at the entire world
13:38
Speaker 1: watched with excitement as they powered up the machine, wires
13:42
Speaker 1: and coils whirring, a city hum filling the room as
13:45
Speaker 1: scientists gave updates on the status of machine. The travelers
13:50
Speaker 1: stepped in the glass case, four men and women, excited, nervous.
13:55
Speaker 1: The term I count down blaired or the humming intensive,
14:03
Speaker 1: then zero. A tearing sound d the air, one that
14:10
Speaker 1: you could feel in your bones. The travelers were screaming
14:14
Speaker 1: horrific primal sounds as they were ripped apart and reassembled
14:18
Speaker 1: again in again, until they seemingly were shorn out of existence.
14:22
Speaker 1: The broadcast cut out the world ended that day. I'm
14:30
Speaker 1: not sure how long I stared blankly ahead, waiting. There
14:36
Speaker 1: was a knock on my door, four sharp knocks, dream like.
14:43
Speaker 1: I answered it. The man who had haunted me for
14:47
Speaker 1: years stood there fully corporeal, just as he had a
14:50
Speaker 1: decade ago. Behind where once the landscape had been burdened,
14:55
Speaker 1: it was now desolate, the sky purple and angry, even
15:00
Speaker 1: though it was the middle of the day. Strange creatures twisted,
15:04
Speaker 1: all teeth and claws and tentacles, snarling, shambling and galloping
15:09
Speaker 1: and screeching. The man smiles that lipless smile, his eyes
15:14
Speaker 1: brighter than I'd ever seen them, some unidentifiable quality burning
15:19
Speaker 1: within With purposeful movements. He reached into his jacket pocket
15:23
Speaker 1: and pulled out a crisply folded piece of paper. He
15:26
Speaker 1: held it out to me. Shock dictated my actions. I
15:31
Speaker 1: reached out and took it. When I unfolded it, certain
15:36
Speaker 1: words stuck out to me. Tethered fixed point, my mom's signature,
15:44
Speaker 1: the date of collection, today's date. You're one of the travelers,
15:50
Speaker 1: I said, as the fabric of reality was torn asunder
15:53
Speaker 1: behind him. He smiled. Images invaded my head as he
15:58
Speaker 1: stared at me, sharing his memories, images of a cavernous
16:02
Speaker 1: darkness and screaming and pain of being reputedly torn apart,
16:08
Speaker 1: impossibilities and monsters and demons as time lost meaning and
16:12
Speaker 1: reality collapsed in on itself, gigantic creatures roaring, evolving and unnatural,
16:19
Speaker 1: the answer to our summons, rushing into the tear we created,
16:25
Speaker 1: watching existing, aging and ending pain, loss of self, mutating,
16:32
Speaker 1: and then arriving finally to the location in time they'd
16:37
Speaker 1: sought after, no longer quite human, aged and monstrous, unable
16:44
Speaker 1: to return home, furious, Ten years to weight seemed like
16:51
Speaker 1: nothing compared to the near eternity they'd spent in a hellscape,
16:55
Speaker 1: exposed to so much horror as the world was unmade,
16:58
Speaker 1: but they were unmore from time outside of it. Discordant
17:04
Speaker 1: the contract was only meaningful, and that the intent inherent
17:08
Speaker 1: in it provided a thread for a lost traveler to follow,
17:11
Speaker 1: a guiding light my mother signing that contract rang across
17:15
Speaker 1: the universe until it reached its terminus, a fixed point
17:20
Speaker 1: in a destabilized universe. He'd followed me, shifting in and out,
17:25
Speaker 1: a shadowy constant in my life, tethered to me as
17:29
Speaker 1: I guided him back home. His energy manifesting and starts
17:33
Speaker 1: and stops as he grew more powerful. The closer we
17:36
Speaker 1: both arrived at our destined meeting at the end of
17:40
Speaker 1: the world, and in return, I was not unmade, as
17:45
Speaker 1: humans all around us screamed, transformed as their cells destabilized
17:50
Speaker 1: and reconstituted into twisting, mindless, pained creatures. But now, I asked,
17:58
Speaker 1: He smiled and held out his hand. Haven't we been
18:02
Speaker 1: here before? Maybe we will be again and we're back.
18:27
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that fiction bit. Okay, So a
18:30
Speaker 1: couple of things on this one. Like I said, this
18:33
Speaker 1: was based on a very vivid dream that I had
18:35
Speaker 1: and my love of time travel. So I believe I've
18:38
Speaker 1: talked about it before on the show. But vinegar is
18:44
Speaker 1: a real thing. I hesitated real, but it is something
18:48
Speaker 1: that I believed that I saw as a child, and
18:53
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was like the creepy child from a
18:55
Speaker 1: movie who can see ghosts that they can't see or whatever.
18:59
Speaker 1: I am very very confident that I was just dealing
19:04
Speaker 1: with trauma. And also I had a friend who would
19:09
Speaker 1: really prop up. We both liked horror, we both like
19:13
Speaker 1: these kinds of things, and she would really prop that
19:15
Speaker 1: up so I would smell this vinegar and I would
19:21
Speaker 1: see this figure, and uh, my friends knew, they knew
19:27
Speaker 1: about vinegar. And the Luigi board instant is also true,
19:34
Speaker 1: and I just want to, you know, put out there.
19:38
Speaker 1: I love horror. I don't particularly believe in ghosts or anything,
19:43
Speaker 1: but I don't dismiss that I was going through something
19:47
Speaker 1: and it felt real at that time. But yeah, it
19:50
Speaker 1: did feel like something always hang over me and always
19:53
Speaker 1: watching me. And I again, I think that was my trauma,
19:58
Speaker 1: but that was part of the inspiration of this story too.
20:01
Speaker 1: The title I got from again. I love these technological
20:07
Speaker 1: um of applying these technological terms to these human, deep
20:13
Speaker 1: human experiences that we all go through. Uh. Delete culture
20:19
Speaker 1: is a term that refers to an idea that you
20:21
Speaker 1: can just post something and then delete it and it's gone,
20:24
Speaker 1: but it's never actually gone. And so this idea in
20:29
Speaker 1: terms of like contracts and time travel, I don't know,
20:34
Speaker 1: I just really like the title. I do think it's interesting.
20:37
Speaker 1: The idea of a parent selling the future of their
20:42
Speaker 1: child knowing that in like a ten years time in
20:45
Speaker 1: this case, their life is going to go terribly wrong.
20:49
Speaker 1: But in that ten years you're going to have your fame,
20:53
Speaker 1: your fortune, or whatever it is. I find that really fascinating,
20:57
Speaker 1: especially in our culture of and this is broad generalization,
21:01
Speaker 1: but in our culture of seeing kind of like pushing
21:03
Speaker 1: kids from a very young age to be Olympic athletes
21:08
Speaker 1: or actors or whatever it is that the parents kind
21:11
Speaker 1: of making this decision and then really pushing. Uh. And
21:17
Speaker 1: in the best case scenario, that works out great for everybody,
21:21
Speaker 1: but it doesn't always. It doesn't always. So that is
21:25
Speaker 1: one thing that I've just been thinking about, I guess
21:29
Speaker 1: on my mind and kind of that whole signing of
21:31
Speaker 1: a contract and not worrying like we're not gonna worry
21:35
Speaker 1: about that now. We'll deal with that later. We'll find
21:37
Speaker 1: a way out of it. We'll find a way out
21:39
Speaker 1: of it. And then you can't. And I clearly have
21:42
Speaker 1: a whole thing about like knocking and somebody coming, like
21:47
Speaker 1: somebody being there, that it's mysterious. So I'm getting like
21:53
Speaker 1: vibes just thinking about it. But also, and I'm going
21:58
Speaker 1: to be real honest to admit the because I bet
22:00
Speaker 1: some of you picked up on it. I can't remember
22:03
Speaker 1: how it ended. The dream. I don't remember how the
22:06
Speaker 1: dream ended, so I made up like I remember all
22:11
Speaker 1: the stuff leading up to it, but it's kind of
22:13
Speaker 1: without an ending, and it felt appropriate for a time
22:17
Speaker 1: travel story. Also, those are my nightmares when something doesn't end,
22:22
Speaker 1: Like when something doesn't end on the movie. I need
22:24
Speaker 1: an ending. I needed closure, which is one of the
22:25
Speaker 1: ways I prevent from being scared from a movie is
22:28
Speaker 1: I need to see an ending. So right, no, it is.
22:32
Speaker 1: It's upsetting. There's no real ending, and I just wanted
22:35
Speaker 1: to put that out there. I'm gonna be a real
22:36
Speaker 1: honest because I'm sure some of you were like, wait
22:38
Speaker 1: a minute, I'm not the only one that does it.
22:43
Speaker 1: They're playing movies that just sort of end. So as always,
22:51
Speaker 1: we hope you enjoyed, and yeah, I look out for
22:54
Speaker 1: more interesting fiction content in the future. And as always too,
22:58
Speaker 1: if you have suggestions for something in the public domain
23:02
Speaker 1: we could read, that would be awesome, So police in
23:05
Speaker 1: those are way our email step media, mom stuff at
23:07
Speaker 1: iHeart nea dot com. You can find us on Twitter
23:08
Speaker 1: and moms the podcast, or Instagram at stuff I've Never
23:11
Speaker 1: told You. Thanks as always to our super producer Christine
23:14
Speaker 1: making the magic happen us, and thanks to you for
23:17
Speaker 1: listening someone ever told you. Subrotection of I Heeart Radio.
23:20
Speaker 1: For more podcast on I Heart Radio is via radio app,
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Speaker 1: Apple podcast or regul listen to your favorite shows