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Transcript

TURN IT OFF · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Greek guest. Welcome my friends to twenty
• 0:19
  twenty six. Isaiah, tell us what we're read today, and
• 0:23
  I'm going to tell you I'm gonna start the year
• 0:25
  off very strong. Can I start it off strong?
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: For them? It's already been twenty twenty six. There's been
• 0:30
  like two or three couple sets uploaded before this one, but.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: This is the first actual, the first actual.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Recording, aren't they aren't they getting the aren't they getting
• 0:38
  Marple Hornet's three before this?
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Yes, but that's Creep TV. That's a completely different property.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: That we don't own, so I think we do on that.
• 0:45
  There's like two other recordings we've done before it too.
• 0:48
  I don't think you know what you're talking about anyway.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: It's just the first one, and I want to start
• 0:52
  off the year extremely strong. And that's why i want
• 0:55
  to say, I'm gonna I'm gonna throw a curveball out there,
• 0:59
  and I'm going to take a risk because that's what
• 1:01
  good men do. And I'm going to say, this is
• 1:03
  going to be the scariest fucking story that we've ever read.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Okay, you would you describe yourself as a good man?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: Well? Absolutely, Well, Isaiah it's opened up to it's open
• 1:18
  to interpretation.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: That's telling.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you what. Today, We're going to be reading
• 1:22
  a story, and viewers, I really for this is mostly whoever.
• 1:26
  If you're watching this podcast on YouTube right now, on
• 1:31
  Spotify or something, please close your eyes for this section.
• 1:34
  Audio listeners, do what you do best.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: And just listen. We're reading a story today, and I
• 1:40
  don't really want you to think about this. It's called
• 1:47
  turn it off, all right, turn it off? Isaiah hit
• 1:59
  him with the author and.
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: From I don't like this, No, no, no, just smar voice.
• 2:05
  This is my natural voice. This is just high talk.
• 2:08
  So why don't you tell him about the author?
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: So the author is called polum chill or polem chill
• 2:18
  chill is only don't do that. He's only posted this
• 2:22
  story to the Creepypasta wiki in twenty sixteen, and as
• 2:25
  far as I can tell, nothing else, and no one
• 2:31
  like I'm looking for more information about him, I don't
• 2:36
  not seeing any of this link to it.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: I fucking love you know what I love about these
• 2:40
  kind of authors, dude, These are what I like to
• 2:43
  call the babe ruths. All right, this motherfucker took his
• 2:46
  bat he pointed it at center field and hit a
• 2:49
  home run. And then he's just like, I'm good, you know,
• 2:54
  like I I this is gonna be a fucking scary story.
• 2:57
  Like I hope you realize that this is going to be.
• 2:59
  This is going to startle you. You're gonna be a friend.
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: The one hits, the one hits are either incredible or abysmal.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: Well, my boy, mister Chill fucking dropped this, dropped this
• 3:11
  log ten years ago and he said, drop this log. Yeah,
• 3:16
  he dropped his fucking log in the in the bowl
• 3:19
  and it's not you would think, oh, is that a
• 3:21
  turn in there?
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: And it was.
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: Absolute fucking gold because that's what he was shitting, Okay,
• 3:28
  and I'm excited like that.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Okay. Well, anyway, m paulham Chill has written this nothing
• 3:35
  else in twenty sixteen. But this story seems very highly
• 3:38
  beloved online. I hear a lot of people talk about
• 3:41
  to see people make fan art for it, which you
• 3:43
  see out a lot of the recurring characters and stories,
• 3:46
  but not the one off. So I'm interested in what
• 3:49
  all the hypes about, so to speak. I've never read
• 3:53
  this one before, but I've heard of it before.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: As our first recording of twenty twenty six. This we're back.
• 3:59
  We're recording now. I want I want us to do
• 4:02
  something for that. We need to. We need to make
• 4:03
  some rules for this year. I think it's a new year.
• 4:06
  We should have some new rules, and I think one
• 4:09
  would be at the beginning of the episode because a
• 4:12
  lot of these we're getting into territories now where even
• 4:14
  Isaiah has not read the stories. Right, We've covered all
• 4:19
  the stories that I have not read before. Well, yeah,
• 4:21
  but I'm saying that. Before it was like, oh, I've
• 4:23
  read this one. I've heard about like blah blah blah.
• 4:25
  I'm saying now you're.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: Just said I've heard about this one.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but you didn't really know much about it. Just
• 4:29
  fucking let me talk for a second. How does that sound?
• 4:32
  Can I do that? Can I breathe? Can I breathe?
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: I don't.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: I don't have a choice. I don't have any other choice.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: To go ahead.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: I want us to do a thing where starting right
• 4:41
  now until the end of the year, it can change.
• 4:43
  This is a yearly thing. We don't have to do
• 4:45
  it forever. But we're gonna guess what the story is
• 4:48
  about based off the title alone, and we guess, and
• 4:53
  whoever is the most right at the end you get
• 4:54
  a point, and at the end of the year we'll
• 4:57
  tally it up and we'll see who wins. Try to
• 5:00
  tell me that isn't fun. Sure, sure we can do that.
• 5:06
  Do you want me to keep track of it in here? No,
• 5:08
  we'll have we will have the editors and the fans,
• 5:11
  the editors. We will have ways. We don't have to
• 5:14
  worry about it, all right, the scores. I don't want
• 5:16
  to fucking think about it until the end of the
• 5:18
  year when it's presented to me, because I will forget.
• 5:21
  But I'm gonna I have to keep this alive. I
• 5:23
  have to keep this, these rules alive. And I already
• 5:26
  have a kind of an idea of what I think
• 5:27
  this is going to be about, which I think would
• 5:29
  be scary. But I'm curious to hear what do you
• 5:31
  think this is going to be about? Off of a
• 5:32
  title called turn It Off?
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Okay, why don't you go first? Since this is your game.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: I just told you I wanted to hear yours first.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: I want to hear yours first. That's not feel like
• 5:46
  whatever I say, you're just gonna piggyback that I'm not going.
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: To piggyback off your fucking idea.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: Dude.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: I presented you this question, what off the hip? What
• 5:57
  are you thinking this is going to be about?
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I think this is going to be about two kids,
• 6:05
  like teenage age in the woods who discover something strange
• 6:10
  while they're out camping.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: You know what I like about your answer is that
• 6:14
  you did nothing to solidify the mean like this turn
• 6:19
  they're turning nothing off in your thing.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: They could they could think mine, turn it off. Turn
• 6:24
  it off, could be a flashlight or like something they're
• 6:27
  holding in their hand they have to turn off so
• 6:28
  no nothing sees them mine.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking it's going to be more literal. I think
• 6:32
  that they found and I don't know if this is
• 6:34
  real or not right, this is just this is me
• 6:36
  shooting a three. This is me shooting for the first
• 6:39
  points of the year. Is I think that they're going
• 6:43
  to find some mysterious tape and it's going to be
• 6:46
  children are going to find mysterious tape and it's going
• 6:49
  to be one of the people. If they're not related,
• 6:53
  it's like one of the parents or whatever, and it's
• 6:55
  like it's like their their dad, Like uh, there there's
• 7:01
  someone not a sexual tape mind you right, because I
• 7:05
  know you think I'm going there, but I do think
• 7:07
  it is something where it is like a dad massaging,
• 7:12
  like what would be something weird that you can massage. It's
• 7:17
  not sexual because massage.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: Is talking about what are you talking about? What are
• 7:21
  you talking about?
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: I'm saying that they're going to find something where the
• 7:24
  dad is rubbing something down. It's not sexual, So get
• 7:28
  that out of your brain. Like a ham, like like
• 7:31
  he's rubbing a ham and they they watch it and
• 7:39
  the guy's like, turn off. That's that's that's my that's
• 7:46
  that's condition.
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: For this story, is that two kids are going to
• 7:50
  find a video of their dad rubbing a ham.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: You try to tell me, and I want you to
• 7:54
  be I want you to be completely honest because you're
• 7:57
  I know, I understand that you like to bully me
• 7:59
  and that's becoming your news. Yes, that's what you think
• 8:03
  that the dynamic of this that is, that is the
• 8:05
  dynamic of the show. You put me down and I
• 8:08
  have to fucking scrape my knees and get back up.
• 8:11
  What it is? So you try to tell me right
• 8:14
  now that if you were like, let's play this tape,
• 8:17
  playing the tape, it's your dad, candlelit room. He has
• 8:20
  a massage table. It's like your dad practicing changing. Is
• 8:24
  he rubbing the ham or is he like massaging them?
• 8:27
  And it's not changed yet. I'm saying that he's still
• 8:29
  massaging the ham. I'm giving more details, which would be
• 8:32
  the dad. It's like think of like a massage room,
• 8:35
  candles something that you know, the music like an ocean sound.
• 8:43
  The dad is intensely digging into this ham like a
• 8:48
  full like a full Christmas ham on the table and
• 8:53
  try to tell me like actually finding that tape. You
• 8:55
  show it first, you'd be like, yeah, sure, whatever, But
• 8:57
  if it kept popping up, that would be a little
• 8:59
  fun and freaky. If I'm being honest, I mean, I
• 9:02
  I could be completely wrong, but that's I mean. And
• 9:05
  I'm not saying it's the most creative. It's I'm you know,
• 9:08
  this is just my first thing. So we'll see and
• 9:11
  we'll see who's closest. I don't know. I don't know.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: Are you done with your warm up?
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: The what?
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: He doesn't get it into character and everything.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry, Isaia, am I disappointing you with my performance
• 9:31
  of me trying to conversate with you on a podcast.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: So before before every before every episode, Hunter is like, hey,
• 9:38
  can you give me a minute here, and I'm like sure, buddy, whatever,
• 9:40
  and he's like, yeah, just uh, I just want to
• 9:42
  try something out at the beginning, Okay. I just I've
• 9:44
  been thinking about a skit for for the tallest episode
• 9:46
  and we're gonna see what it goes. And I'm like, yeah, man, sure,
• 9:48
  go ahead, and I regret it every time in a while.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Let him do it, Okay, hurtful. I'm just trying to
• 9:54
  bring a little bit of light into this crazy dark
• 9:58
  world of internet horror stories. So I apologize and I
• 10:01
  won't do it anymore. There you go, I won't do anymore.
• 10:04
  And you've already for our creepcast listeners, this is mom
• 10:07
  and dad fighting immediately the beginning of the year. So congratulations, Isaiah,
• 10:11
  you're splitting the family apart. Thank you for that.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: You know what, You're welcome. I don't care anymore. I
• 10:18
  can't do this. I can't.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Hey, last year, last year, for our first.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: Story of the year, it was my best friend tried
• 10:27
  to ruin my life. So what's that tell you?
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: Thank you for listening on Spotify and Apple Podcast, and
• 10:38
  for all of our YouTube viewers as well, thank you
• 10:40
  for sticking with us on the third and possibly final
• 10:45
  year of the show, depending on how Isaiah wants to
• 10:47
  keep ruining this friendship of ours, because I am a
• 10:52
  beacon of support to him. A lot of people, I
• 10:56
  see this in the comments to a lot of people
• 10:58
  say I'm the kind one. I'm the one who lives
• 11:00
  them up, that kind of stuff. And to be met
• 11:02
  with this constantly is like that of a single like
• 11:07
  like like a single mom.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Fifteen minutes ago you texted me and said, almost ready, daddy.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: All right, Well poo Pooky needs to get stuffed too,
• 11:21
  sometimes did.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: Okay, okay, if you're coming at me in your hair,
• 11:32
  between the ham talk and the massage and everything else,
• 11:35
  you were, you're beating around the bush a little already,
• 11:38
  but there a you.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: No beating around the bush. I am in the bush. Okay, Okay,
• 11:45
  I am the bush.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Okay, all right? Turn it off by paulham Chill. Thank
• 11:53
  you to all of our audio listeners. Thank you so
• 11:55
  much to our Patreon supporters. We love you guys a lot.
• 11:58
  Appreciate all the support that you guys have been giving us.
• 12:01
  I got a lot of cool new projects on the
• 12:03
  way that we'll be announcing very soon hopefully, so stay
• 12:05
  tuned for that. But thank you, guys. Is that it
• 12:10
  is that anything else? Weaning? Toad Hunter?
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Do you think that this is gonna be a scary story?
• 12:14
  You didn't? Really, I'm thinking this is gonna be a
• 12:16
  scary one. Do you think this is actually be scary?
• 12:18
  I I'm trying to go into this year, and I'm
• 12:22
  going to tell you guys right now, I am raising
• 12:24
  the bar of excitement. I am too negative too quickly.
• 12:29
  And that's that's my new Year's resolution is I'm going
• 12:32
  to be more positive and I'm gonna I'm gonna try
• 12:35
  to enjoy these stories more and I'm going to get
• 12:38
  into it, you.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Know what I mean.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna. I'm making that fucking promise right now because
• 12:45
  I strag I saw the ending of Stranger Things, and
• 12:47
  it's just it's turned me for the better.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: Was it good? Did it end well? I thought everyone
• 12:53
  hated it?
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: No, it ended very well.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: I feel like there's some sarcasm there.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: But what no? Man?
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: All right, are you ready?
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: Yes?
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Turn it off? I rested my arms behind my head
• 13:14
  skim reading the credits of a movie I just watched.
• 13:17
  After seeing them through about halfway, I lifted myself from
• 13:20
  the sofa and walked to the kitchen, stretching my arms
• 13:22
  out above me. I opened the fridge door and found
• 13:25
  a full carton of juice. So I sat down on
• 13:28
  the kitchen counter by the window, cracked open the lid,
• 13:30
  took several long, noisy gulps. I'm not gonna drink anymore.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: I gas to let a new air and wipe my
• 13:37
  mouth on the back of my hand. Jesus, all right, okay, first,
• 13:40
  I okay, I'm not this is not me. I'm not
• 13:42
  gonna immediately be negative, but I will say this is
• 13:45
  some David King energy of who the fuck reads halfway
• 13:50
  through the movie credits. I just say it, Who's like,
• 13:54
  oh key grip book Brian, Oh okay, awesome, who the
• 13:58
  fuck is doing that? And so to immediately go to
• 14:01
  the fridge and slam down sunny d and be like.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Drinking loutch God three sentences in. You know, maybe I know.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying it caught me. Sorry. That's like some
• 14:20
  little kid energy, though, isn't it.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: That is like that is like a four year old
• 14:24
  thing to do where they grabbed drinks, like while they're drinking,
• 14:30
  they're afraid they'll never be able to breathe again, that the.
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: Death has never tasted so good.
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: All right, My evenings were uneventful around this time in summer.
• 14:45
  It was nine to fifteen on a Saturday in July.
• 14:48
  School was out for the holidays. My parents had gone
• 14:51
  to visit my aunt and uncle who lived by the coast.
• 14:53
  It would still be gone for two more weeks. What
• 14:58
  they left, they left a chop I old for like
• 15:00
  three weeks.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, so I think that this is no, no, no. I
• 15:03
  think that this is going to be like a high schooler.
• 15:05
  And I likeways liked that my evenings are uneventful. It's
• 15:10
  a Saturday during it is a Saturday during summer break,
• 15:15
  and your parents are not home. I mean, they are
• 15:17
  saying that this is a fucking loser. Can we at least?
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: I think that's the idea. I think the idea is
• 15:22
  he doesn't have friends, he's not like partying hanging out.
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah at all.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: I declined the invitation to join them. I didn't dislike
• 15:30
  the place where my relatives, but we usually stayed there
• 15:33
  so long that I'd miss out most of summer break,
• 15:36
  and I truthfully rather spend it with my friends in town.
• 15:39
  I was a good kid who knew how to wash
• 15:41
  clothes and use an oven, generally not an idiot, so
• 15:45
  they let me stay at the house so long as
• 15:46
  I kept it clean. As I sat looking out into
• 15:50
  the garden the check for anything scary in the dark,
• 15:53
  it was empty and black. I kind of wish we
• 15:56
  had a pet. A dog or a cat would be
• 15:58
  nice about now, but their hair always made me sneeze
• 16:01
  and my eyes go red and itchy. With that in mind,
• 16:04
  my dad said no, even though I wouldn't mind it.
• 16:07
  At nine to twenty two pm, I put the rest
• 16:09
  of the juice carton back in the fridge store and
• 16:12
  went back over to the window, hoisting myself onto the
• 16:15
  counter again. I glanced out to the garden and identified
• 16:18
  the shadows one by one to make sure everything was
• 16:20
  in its place. Bushes for their usual shape, two small
• 16:25
  trees stood together by the back fence. The metal table
• 16:28
  with four chairs set casually on the patio. They have
• 16:31
  not said how old this person this child is? Right right, Okay.
• 16:36
  The hoisting up on the counter did make it seems
• 16:41
  it's jumping between nineteen or eight.
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: That's that's the brilliance of chills. That's that's what I love.
• 16:53
  If I'd guess this kid's thirteen, I think that's fair.
• 16:57
  It's a healthy split between the two.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: I think it's thirteen. He's a very short thirteen, like
• 17:05
  a dwarf. Yeah, okay, I don't know a boy that
• 17:09
  like a thirteen year old dwarf. Okay. I like to
• 17:13
  check these things, which is largely why I wasn't scared
• 17:15
  of the dark. I'd always get up to investigate small
• 17:18
  noises in the night, and I hated sleeping with my
• 17:20
  face to the wall. If someone was in my room
• 17:23
  at night, I'd rather know about it, so at least
• 17:25
  there was the faintest chance of getting away. Somehow, this
• 17:28
  met that my worries were quickly put to rest, as
• 17:30
  I either found nothing downstairs but the radiator popping with
• 17:33
  the heat, or opened my eyes to see an empty bedroom,
• 17:37
  not knowing what could be making the odd noises coming
• 17:40
  from the kitchen or on the stairs or in my room.
• 17:42
  That's what makes my skin creep. At nine thirty PM,
• 17:46
  I got down from the counter and wandered back into
• 17:48
  the living room to turn off the TV. I decided
• 17:51
  to take the rest of the juice upstairs. Man, this
• 17:54
  he's about this juice.
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: I I'm drunk so hard not to jump in. I
• 18:01
  just saying. He drank juice for seven minutes without doing
• 18:04
  anything else, which they count shadows, shadows, which, if you
• 18:08
  think about it, is a long time. And he sat
• 18:13
  on a counter. He was able to jump up with
• 18:16
  dwarf and strength. Look and he was counting shadows for
• 18:20
  another seven minutes before proceeding to grab the juice and
• 18:24
  go downstairs or upstairs. So this is I don't know,
• 18:30
  it's good. I like this. I bet you do also.
• 18:33
  I like how specific the times are. At nine two pm,
• 18:39
  at nine fifteen, ny is first story of twenty twenty six.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: We got a atven and it got to keep it together. Yeah,
• 18:50
  last year it happened again.
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: No no, no, I'm not and I'm just it was.
• 18:54
  I was. I'm having fun. Go ahead, okay.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: I went back into the kitchen, open the fridge, store stop,
• 19:01
  turning my head to focus outside. I could see someone
• 19:04
  was standing in the garden. Shut the fridge door and
• 19:07
  turned off the lights so they couldn't see me so
• 19:09
  easily then moved slowly, leaning on the kitchen counter to
• 19:13
  get a better look. All the doors were locked and
• 19:16
  all the neighbors were home. Took a moment to remind
• 19:19
  myself this. Still, my heart quickened a bit as I
• 19:22
  stood there, straining to see his or her shape in
• 19:25
  the darkness at the end of the garden. I had
• 19:28
  to keep glancing away to keep their fuzzy outline clear
• 19:31
  in my vision. They were standing very still and were
• 19:34
  a little thin. That's all I could see. I couldn't
• 19:38
  tell anything else. Oh, I said out loud. It was
• 19:43
  the garden umbrella leaning up against the back fence. I
• 19:46
  forgot that we used it for barbecues. I smiled at myself,
• 19:50
  pleased that I didn't get too worked up, and went
• 19:53
  upstairs to my bedroom. I laid on the bed and
• 19:55
  propped my head up on a pillow, opening my laptop
• 19:59
  on my stomachs if anybody was online, apparently someone else
• 20:03
  was born and saw my name pop up. Hey, Hey
• 20:07
  you okay?
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Bored? Are your parents still away for.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: A couple more weeks?
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: Why don't I come round?
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be rude, but I kind of
• 20:17
  can't be bothered to hang out tonight. Lol, I think,
• 20:20
  so what why.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Why drinking juice? Said your night was uneventful? You've dread
• 20:28
  drinking juice for ten minutes and counting shadows. Sorry, buddy,
• 20:31
  this is this is a full.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: Night for me. He's laying on his bed, like typing
• 20:37
  in the juices next to him, and he glances over
• 20:39
  at the juice and he's like, I've got plans this evening.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: And then also like amongst amongst us talk of juice,
• 20:47
  because I also like and I don't like sleeping face
• 20:50
  to the wall. Did I mention I count shadows?
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: I got a long Friday.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Night tounting shadows and drinking juice. I don't like sleeping
• 20:59
  with my face because if someone tries to break in
• 21:01
  and murder me, I at least want to see their eyes.
• 21:06
  Speaker 2: I want to see that hatchet flying at my face
• 21:11
  while I'm drinking jewet. Do it?
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: He says to the murderer.
• 21:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's the freaks. The story so far, he pretty
• 21:26
  much fucking is.
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: So deep.
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: Before you kill me, he breaks into people's houses and
• 21:34
  kills them for their juice, like he raised the fridge.
• 21:37
  The end of the story, like he goes back home
• 21:39
  and he he opens the fridge and there's like forty
• 21:42
  juice boxes. Like he's been doing this for a year.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: He's getting killed. He's getting strangle on his bed, and
• 21:48
  then under the covers, he's like feeling around in the covers.
• 21:51
  He grabs a giant wilches grape juice thing and props
• 21:55
  up and just dumps it on his face. I know
• 21:59
  what you mean. It's cool. What about tomorrow?
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that sounds better cool.
• 22:05
  Speaker 6: I'll be round about wine. Guys have family stuff to
• 22:08
  do the morning. Okay, you saw a tit by the way,
• 22:13
  we can camp at the garden or something.
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: Oh slumber party.
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I love you too, bro, whatever.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: You got the tit though, Yeah somewhere, let me check
• 22:24
  b RB. I got up from my bed and had
• 22:27
  to check the cupboard under the stairs. I didn't know
• 22:29
  where the tin was, but it seemed a good place
• 22:31
  to start. I opened the cupboard door and started shifting
• 22:35
  coats aside. Some cardboard boxes were stacked up at the
• 22:39
  back and might be hiding it, so I started unstacking them.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Why give us that level of detail, which like, I'm moved.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: Cardboard boxes.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: They were stacked up.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Maybe the tin could be behind those who's to say,
• 22:55
  I unstacked the boxes.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: Like it is important to show the level of juice
• 23:00
  boxes and boxes in the house. Yeah, I imagine this
• 23:06
  is like Costco palettes of juice, Like.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: The ending of Creep where he goes to open the
• 23:13
  cabinet and there's like hundreds of HS.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: Tapes, a bunch of thousands of.
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: Ye, this was all the jooeboxes, which one Today I
• 23:23
  took out a.
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: Couple of the easy to reach ones and had a
• 23:26
  stroke of good luck as the tin bag came into view,
• 23:29
  leaned over the other boxes and picked up the bag
• 23:31
  and took the big garden umbrella that set beside it too,
• 23:34
  just in case it rained tomorrow. I paused, put the
• 23:37
  tent down. Took me a couple of seconds to get
• 23:40
  back to the kitchen window and focus on the darkness outside.
• 23:44
  My eyes weren't yet adjusted to the dark, so I
• 23:46
  couldn't see all the weight to the back fence. Oh oh, okay,
• 23:52
  that actually you know. I was making fun of it,
• 23:55
  but that actually worked pretty well because like the level
• 23:59
  of detail. I wasn't thinking when he mentioned that he
• 24:02
  moved the garden umbrella, but my head did go, oh,
• 24:05
  is it like the one outside, but I had the
• 24:07
  realization the same time the author did, like, Oh, if
• 24:11
  the umbrella is in here, then what was that out there?
• 24:14
  That's pretty good? Turning off the kitchen light, I leaned
• 24:17
  on the counter and continued staring. At the same point,
• 24:20
  the other garden features began to fade into view one
• 24:23
  by one, put in my previous mental image. I wasn't
• 24:26
  sure what I wanted to see. The darkness gave way
• 24:29
  to the familiar forms I knew, and after a while
• 24:33
  I was certain there still stood a figure against the
• 24:35
  back garden fence and had it moved. I stood there
• 24:39
  for fifteen minutes looking at it. I couldn't tell it
• 24:42
  shaped properly, but it did look like someone standing there.
• 24:46
  I decided it wasn't a threat. I thought, if I
• 24:49
  was in any real danger, would have been a lot
• 24:51
  more worried by now. That thought kept me calm, but
• 24:55
  I also wanted to find out what it was. I
• 24:57
  couldn't stand there forever. Upstairs, picked up my laptop brought
• 25:02
  it down to me with the counter. Uh could you
• 25:05
  come around now?
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Uh?
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I can see something in my garden.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: That is it an animal?
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: No, it's tall, I thought, it was an umbrella.
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: Now you're sure it is it?
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I thought it was someone, but now
• 25:22
  I'm sure it's not a person. It just looks weird,
• 25:26
  and I don't think it was there before before ed,
• 25:31
  I don't know earlier today. Maybe you can't remember.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Are you scared?
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: I'd feel better if someone else was here.
• 25:40
  Speaker 6: Well, I did offer to come around, and I'm bored,
• 25:44
  so yeah, yeah, i'll come suit cool, thanks, use the
• 25:49
  front gate.
• 25:51
  Speaker 2: I sat there, watching the black shape lean against the
• 25:53
  fence for another ten minutes. Eventually the doorbell rang. I
• 25:57
  opened it. Chris ran in bear huh me, it's been
• 26:01
  too long, Chris Mauck cried, Yeah, it must have been
• 26:06
  a whole day the torbid, he replied, pretending to ignore me. Look,
• 26:13
  come over here, I said, pushing him off and walk
• 26:15
  into the kitchen. I switched off the light and pointed
• 26:18
  in the figure's direction. Look, give me a second, can't say.
• 26:23
  Probably a minute later he noticed that black thig. Yeah, ummmm.
• 26:32
  We both stood there looking at it for a while.
• 26:35
  I have expected it to be gone when he looked
• 26:37
  leaned over the counter.
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: It's just a big plan, or a plank of water
• 26:41
  or something. Let's go watch TV.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: Will you check with me to make sure?
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: Do you have a torch?
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: Oh?
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Gross? Oh he's British. They're British. Oh. I don't know
• 26:54
  if we can continue the story in good conscience.
• 27:01
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• 29:45
  slang for British flashlight.
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: That's what they call it in like the UK they
• 29:49
  call flashlights torches. You no, I admitted, well, we.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Could check if we keep the kitchen light on it
• 29:56
  open the back door a little.
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: I thought for a second and a cree but said
• 30:00
  we should stay right by the house. The Uh, it's
• 30:05
  amazing that he has a tin and he knows where
• 30:08
  that is, but there's no flashlight in the house. And
• 30:13
  also I was so right with my prediction at the beginning,
• 30:16
  like I was cheating a bit with the camping thing
• 30:17
  because Harry had mentioned it. I said, oh no, maybe
• 30:20
  turn it off like a flashlight or a flash a
• 30:21
  light so they don't get spotted. And with the mention
• 30:24
  of the light switch going on and off, I think
• 30:26
  I was correct. So well, we're not done with the
• 30:28
  story yet. There could still be a tape of some
• 30:31
  kind or there's no nose tape, there's no hamp tap.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: It might not be a ham tape, but there might
• 30:35
  be a hand There might be some kind of tape
• 30:36
  or ham still involved in this.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. Now.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: Also the figure that's standing out there, which is kind
• 30:42
  of creepy. You have a guy standing out there for
• 30:44
  fucking twenty five minutes to an hour.
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: But he specified it doesn't look like a human, right
• 30:50
  or something. Something's out there right leaning into the fence
• 30:53
  right right. What makes you so much creepier to me
• 30:56
  is that the casualness of it. It's leaning on the fence.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: Mmm, it's like a it's like the Marborough Man or
• 31:03
  something like that, you know, just like chilling out there.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Do you think that it's like eyes are just looking
• 31:09
  right at it or is it just pure black silhouette.
• 31:12
  He said at first that it looks like a human banet.
• 31:15
  It's not so sure. So I think it's just kind
• 31:17
  of like a tall shape. I don't think he sees
• 31:19
  eyes or anything like that. I think it's just so
• 31:21
  well because they're they're both in denial that it's even
• 31:23
  a person. They're like, is it like a giant board
• 31:25
  or something.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, they're definitely doing that kid saying where it's like,
• 31:28
  it's just like he's probably like a shrub, because in
• 31:30
  the back of your mind you're like, yeah, I'm so scared. Right,
• 31:34
  there's like three jackets piled on top of a horse.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: You know, it's.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: Frining at you. It's just jackets. That's a horse. That's
• 31:43
  a horse with jackets. That's what they chugging juice.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: Through this whole conversation, Like he just has juice running
• 31:55
  down shirt. I have.
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: Not pictured boy. This child, however old. This child is
• 32:03
  without a carton or glass of juice somehow in his vicinity,
• 32:08
  or if he's just been holding it the whole time.
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: As they go to open the door, he's like shaking
• 32:15
  the lids open. Juice is spilling everywhere.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: Ye Come on, Chris, you guys are juice to I
• 32:22
  cannot take water. He just like started growing up.
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Chris is talking to his friend. He's like, yeah,
• 32:27
  my mom says I should hang out with him more
• 32:29
  because he doesn't really doesn't get a lot of friends.
• 32:32
  So we slipped on our trainers and opened the back door.
• 32:35
  Stepping onto the patio, I felt the air was heavy
• 32:38
  and warm.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: That night.
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: Chris walked behind me. We stood very close to the door,
• 32:43
  peering at the back fence.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Should we I.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Had just started to speak when he quickly stepped into
• 32:49
  the house again, still looking at the fence. What I asked?
• 32:53
  Following him in, I turned and realized that the figure
• 32:57
  was gone. It was obvious from the light coming from
• 33:00
  the back door at the fence and the rest of
• 33:02
  the garden was just as it always was.
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: Where is it?
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: If it was leaning against the fence, it probably fell
• 33:08
  over into a bush or something. I tried to convince us.
• 33:11
  Both stared out for a few seconds longer and decided
• 33:15
  that you were too nervous to go and check. I
• 33:18
  don't usually give into my night tears, but now they
• 33:21
  were just beginning to click into my head. Can you
• 33:23
  stay over for the night. I asked Chris, H yeah, sure.
• 33:28
  It didn't sound like he really wanted to kept his
• 33:31
  eyes on the fence. We both went inside and locked
• 33:34
  the door. Before going up to my room, I got
• 33:37
  out of sleeping bag for Chris and drew the curtains
• 33:39
  without looking outside into the garden again. Talked about stupid
• 33:43
  stuff for a couple of hours to take our minds
• 33:45
  off the garden, and fell asleep. I really like the
• 33:49
  vita juice and the pomegranate. What about you? What's your favorite?
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: Chris is? I gotta say respect gain from Chris right.
• 33:57
  If it was me, I would be gone. I think
• 34:02
  a lot of people would be like, no, I don't
• 34:03
  think it's a good idea. Why don't you go to
• 34:04
  my house instead? Chris is a fucking that? What a
• 34:07
  what a good friend? I plus two points for Chris.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: It's also in that weird place where it's like, why
• 34:13
  don't they go to Chris's house? But they're both thirteen
• 34:15
  and they don't know they saw something. So maybe it's
• 34:17
  the idea of like, well, I don't want to bother
• 34:19
  my parents, and you come over and like make it
• 34:22
  a whole deal. So it's just plausible enough that they
• 34:24
  would stay there, I think, because it's not like they
• 34:27
  saw a giant guy with like bloody teeth or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
• 34:30
  it's they still maybe they saw a shape.
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: They still don't really even know what they saw, so
• 34:34
  there's still there's still plausible deniability in their brain, right.
• 34:38
  But yes, if I the reason I think that they
• 34:41
  don't leave too is that, once again, it's the thing
• 34:43
  where it's outside. To be able to leave is outside.
• 34:47
  They're probably I wonder if it's some psychological thing where like,
• 34:50
  if we go outside, it's gonna get us. So why
• 34:51
  don't we just you just want to stay here tonight?
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: Uh?
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: Sure, you know that kind of thing?
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think so. In the morning, I found
• 34:57
  Chris is sleeping back empty. I call out to Chris
• 35:00
  and he said he was downstairs, So I throw on
• 35:02
  a T shirt and went down sleep.
• 35:05
  Speaker 6: Well, I asked, pretty well, they kept thinking about the guard,
• 35:09
  did stuff. Hey did you find that tent er?
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Er er, yeah, I think I found that tent.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: Er. Chris, You're gonna want to see this and it's
• 35:27
  just another fridge full of juices.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: We gotta go to the store. I get more juice.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: I get more juice, I answered, remembering that shape, which
• 35:36
  I had forgotten about until now.
• 35:38
  Speaker 6: Well, I was thinking about the camping thing, and so
• 35:41
  I maybe we could bring the tent to my house.
• 35:43
  It would just make a change, you know.
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: Didn't have to ask him why I wasn't too keen
• 35:49
  on staying in my garden after last night. Wait, last night,
• 35:54
  come to think of it, some was up and I
• 35:56
  wanted to check the garden while it wasn't pitch black,
• 35:59
  I asked Chris, and he hesitantly agreed. We put on
• 36:02
  our trainers and stepped out into the garden. I don't
• 36:05
  know what we were so worried about. It was bright
• 36:07
  and colorful, The plants and bushes around the edges of
• 36:10
  the garden smelled good, and there was a bird in
• 36:13
  one of the small trees, singing out for its mate somewhere.
• 36:16
  We walked to the back fence to find nothing out
• 36:18
  of place, and looked over the bushes in front of
• 36:21
  the paneling to check if anything lay behind them. We
• 36:24
  found nothing. I walked around the edge of the whole
• 36:27
  garden once more while Chris tried whistling to the bird
• 36:30
  cocked its head from side to side trying to figure
• 36:32
  him out. It was a warm day, perfect for camping.
• 36:35
  That evening, I decided we talked as we filled a
• 36:39
  couple of rucksacks with sleeping bags and some food from
• 36:41
  the kitchen. We didn't want to set up a fire,
• 36:44
  so we packed some tinned hot dogs, bread, packed tomatoes
• 36:48
  and chocolate, swalled some bottles of water.
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: As a far as just next to my house, which
• 36:53
  is actually pretty good, our garden backs to the edge
• 36:57
  of it. I stayed to tit there with my dad
• 37:00
  for my first little camping trip when I was like seven,
• 37:03
  and I remember I was so excited at the time.
• 37:06
  I thought we were really roughing it like some hardcore mountaineers.
• 37:10
  If we get too colder and need some more food,
• 37:12
  we could.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: Just go to my house. My parents are out, so
• 37:15
  we'll have we'll have a free run of the place anyway.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Yours are a way too.
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: That is suspicious, is it?
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: No'm hmmm interesting.
• 37:23
  Speaker 6: It's their anniversary, so they're out for the night. They're
• 37:26
  staying in a hotel in the next town over. We'll
• 37:28
  be back in the morning.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: Apparently leaving your kids behind was in fashion this summer.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: It seems like I wonder if it just seems too planned,
• 37:38
  too calculated.
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: Well, I think what it may be is this creature
• 37:42
  shows up when kids parents are away, or the parents
• 37:47
  are like, well it's time for the yearly child sacrifice.
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: That's what That's what I want to believe. I want
• 37:51
  to believe the fucking They're just like, well, we'll see
• 37:54
  what the we'll see with the juice goblin who he
• 37:57
  wants to pick up tonight. Yeah, we'll see whatever with
• 37:59
  the goblin comes for.
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: We've been fattening our son up with juice for months
• 38:03
  at this point, so that's.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: Actually such a sweet idea. It's like all the kids
• 38:08
  in the town are forced to drink juice and stuff
• 38:11
  get all plump on juice.
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: So it's a movie like that where the parents are
• 38:14
  fattening up the kids for something.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: I think I'm thinking of hands On Gruttel or something.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean yeah, but.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: I mean probably there's probably something like Feeder horror movie.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. At about noon, we left my house with the
• 38:28
  two rucksacks sleeping back for each of us and the
• 38:30
  tent made our way to Chris's house. It was fairly
• 38:34
  close by and a part of the same place at
• 38:36
  neighborhood talked and joked a lots, walking side by side,
• 38:40
  nodding and greeting a couple of familiar neighbors as we went.
• 38:44
  It was a crazy nice day. Some was almost too much.
• 38:47
  It was hot on our necks, and the trees by
• 38:49
  the sidewalk seemed to glow green from underneath as the
• 38:52
  sunlight passed through the leaves. Sprinkler offered us some water
• 38:56
  as we walked by one house, and it felt good
• 38:59
  on my hot arms. I was already sweating by the
• 39:01
  time we got to Chris's place, we'd have been walking
• 39:04
  for more than twenty minutes. We didn't go inside his
• 39:07
  house immediately because it was so hot, so we went
• 39:09
  straight to his garden and dumped our bags into shade.
• 39:13
  He wasn't joking. The gate of his garden back straight
• 39:16
  on to an impressive forest. Very tall, thin trees stood
• 39:19
  high above the house and continued as far as I
• 39:22
  could see. Some bushes and shrubs littered the forest floor,
• 39:26
  but most of it was either grass or fairly smooth
• 39:28
  sections of dirt. I didn't see how this forest was
• 39:31
  classed as small. Looks good, right, It's awesome, I admitted,
• 39:36
  opening the gate and surveying the area. Also like this,
• 39:40
  this explanation works better because after that first night, I
• 39:42
  was like, there's no way they would reasonably camp in
• 39:45
  that backyard, But now it's like, oh, we're going to
• 39:47
  my friend's house, so that's more reasonable. We also didn't
• 39:50
  see anything, but this is a way where they saw
• 39:53
  something suspicious that still made them want to go out
• 39:55
  into the woods. So like the setups make sense. I
• 39:59
  walked out in between the trees and found a flat
• 40:01
  spot for the tent. I turned around to asked Chris's
• 40:04
  opinion and paused a little disappointed. Didn't feel like real
• 40:09
  camping when his house was so obviously in our faces.
• 40:12
  Let's go a little further in so it at least
• 40:14
  feels legit, I said, and walked back to pick up
• 40:17
  my bags. Chris objected to carrying his quote heavy shit
• 40:21
  any further. We walked in a straight line from Chris's
• 40:24
  house and kept checking behind us until the house was
• 40:27
  just about obscured by trees in front of each other.
• 40:31
  We had only gone a very short way in, but
• 40:33
  the forest was already thicker and greener. There was even
• 40:36
  a long rope swing hanging from one of the trees,
• 40:39
  but it looked too old to hold our weight, so
• 40:41
  we decided to keep our spines unbroken and given a miss.
• 40:46
  I unpacked the tin and set it up with Chris's help,
• 40:48
  and we threw our sleeping bags inside. I lay down
• 40:51
  inside to test it out. It was so warm and humid.
• 40:55
  I had to adjust my breathing for a second. I
• 40:58
  stepped out again asked if he had a torch for
• 41:01
  the evening. I could do better than that was his response,
• 41:04
  and he took off towards the house. I was too
• 41:07
  hot to run after him, so I opened my rucksack
• 41:10
  and cracked open a bottle of water, down in half
• 41:12
  of it and putting the rest back in the pack.
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: Took a lot of restraint for that to not be juiced.
• 41:16
  By the way it's it was juice at one point,
• 41:19
  and then soon was like, hey, cool with the juice.
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: Cool with the juice thing.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Much really good.
• 41:25
  Speaker 2: After the second paragraph, you need to drop the juice thing.
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: What do you mean? Why? Lips lips chapped, lips completely
• 41:38
  covered and stained from grape juice? What do you why?
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: What do you mean? Why why would we not?
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: Are you thirsty?
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: No?
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I'm not, I'm not thirsty.
• 41:47
  Speaker 2: I laid down on a patch of grass and looked
• 41:49
  up at the canopy. The leaves were shifting gently in
• 41:52
  a breeze. I couldn't feel from down here, and watched
• 41:55
  them sway and mess together until I heard Chris return.
• 41:58
  Did you get a torch? Close? In my eyes? The
• 42:01
  sun shone through my eyelids and colored my vision red.
• 42:04
  I listened to the soft sound of his footsteps on
• 42:07
  the grass as he walked past me towards the rope. Swing.
• 42:11
  That's not gonna hold you.
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: Oh mmm, I think for sure, for sure, not Chris,
• 42:16
  by the way.
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's not gonna hold you, I warned, as
• 42:20
  I heard him tug the branch with a small creek.
• 42:23
  He tugged it creaked him response. I listened. He tugged
• 42:28
  it once more, and again there's a moment of silence
• 42:31
  as I guessed he was still weaned up, and then
• 42:34
  another tug. Continued to tug a few more times, and
• 42:38
  the creaking followed each one. I was sure it wouldn't
• 42:41
  hold his weight, and I smiled, predicting one big creak
• 42:44
  and a snap as the rope with the branch broke.
• 42:47
  I waited as some final tugs were made creak, creak.
• 42:52
  I waited still, create, create, crea yo. I heard Chris's
• 42:59
  voice coming from his garden man. I sat bolt upright,
• 43:06
  almost spraining my neck as I snapped my head sideways
• 43:09
  to face his house. He was jogging through the trees,
• 43:11
  holding in an electric lantern. I switched my gaze in
• 43:14
  the other direction, towards the rope swing. It was hanging
• 43:17
  still nothing nearby. I stood up and turned full circle.
• 43:20
  Nothing in any other direction. I love that little payoff,
• 43:24
  what I mouthed to myself. Walking towards the rope. I
• 43:28
  tugged it gently. It didn't creak. I pulled it harder.
• 43:32
  It didn't creak. My mouth went dry. I jumped up,
• 43:35
  grabbed hold, and yanked it down. The branch bent a
• 43:38
  little as my feet touched the floor, and still it
• 43:40
  didn't make a sound. I kept holding of it as
• 43:44
  I stared up towards the branches, but eventually the rope
• 43:47
  gave way under my weight somewhere in the middle, and
• 43:49
  a soft thud fell on my ears as a thick
• 43:51
  rope fell in front of me. Chris was rattling the
• 43:54
  lantern as he came by.
• 43:56
  Speaker 6: I've never used this before. I got it for Christmas,
• 43:58
  for my cousin buy some weird presents. I see the
• 44:02
  swing is dead. Let's have a proper bearer memory of
• 44:05
  all the joy gave us.
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: The big characters like fighting demons right now, scared to death.
• 44:12
  He's like, I got this for Christmas. Oh my cousin God,
• 44:15
  but she always gets weird gifts. I love that idea though,
• 44:19
  of like you're sitting there. I love whenever it's just
• 44:22
  a thing, if you assume it's the person you know
• 44:25
  behind you making the sounds that are all familiar, of
• 44:28
  like playing a swing that they've been on before. And
• 44:31
  I love the kid like approach if coming back and
• 44:33
  you know, and being like, oh, the thing snapped, like
• 44:36
  not understanding the weight of like how fucking creepy the
• 44:39
  thing just happened?
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: Was it? Really?
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: It really just helps sell the idea of like just
• 44:43
  innocent kids just like trying to camp mm the.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: The it's such an easy play, but doing the whole
• 44:55
  I think this is something, but it's something else standing
• 44:58
  next to me.
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: It always works. I at least for me, I always
• 45:02
  gobbled that shit up. I'm sure some people are like, eh,
• 45:04
  cause it's it's kind of like you know. I mean,
• 45:07
  obviously you see it coming, but I just it's still fun.
• 45:09
  I don't know, I like I like that. I like
• 45:11
  to do the creaking too, Yeah, because it's like like
• 45:15
  bending or not bending, but like stretching and stuff. It's
• 45:18
  just a fun.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: Well, it almost sounds like it was the thing making
• 45:22
  the creaking noise, because the rope never made the noise, right.
• 45:25
  He assumed it was the rope or the branch, but
• 45:26
  it wasn't either. So it's like, whatever this thing is,
• 45:29
  it makes creaking noises when it moves.
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: I love the idea of like a monster two getting
• 45:33
  on like something that's like a rope ropes such a
• 45:36
  straining almost like bone breaking sound that like I like
• 45:39
  to think of the creature just in his moment, just
• 45:43
  in his movement, makes that kind of sound too. So
• 45:45
  it's like this weird like almost like stacked auditory like
• 45:51
  sensory fucking overload of like just this stretching breaking sound
• 45:55
  kind of sick.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: Pretty hard, you know some of my complaints from the beginning.
• 46:02
  I apologize, pretty good, Pretty good, I did it, respond,
• 46:07
  I continued, looking up at the branch with half a
• 46:09
  rope swing tied to it. Hey are you good, just
• 46:15
  followed my gaze. I thought you'd already come back, said immediately.
• 46:20
  I was in the tip to let things slide with
• 46:22
  an Oh, it's nothing. What someone walked by me and
• 46:26
  was messing around with the rope swing.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: Who was it?
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: Are they still around?
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: I don't know. And my eyes closed and I was
• 46:36
  laying just there. But then I heard you shout. So
• 46:38
  I looked around and there was nothing here. I heard
• 46:40
  them walk by my head. I felt a bit sick.
• 46:44
  Speaker 6: Look calm down for a second. It's the middle of
• 46:47
  day with thirty fruit from my house. And even if
• 46:50
  there was a person, so what, It's just some public woods.
• 46:54
  Anyone can come through here, all right, Chris. So, I
• 46:56
  thought you were based before, but this is you're a
• 46:58
  little you're being a little too carefree. Give me a
• 47:01
  little too care for me, Chris, Right.
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought you were based and red pilled. I
• 47:04
  thought you were a Chad. I thought, I thought, I
• 47:07
  thought it just really you're just virgin cell.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: I thought that he was Gigachad for sure. But now
• 47:12
  I'm like, you're hanging a little too loose there. Brother,
• 47:14
  Also like it just be like it's a public it's
• 47:16
  a public forest. It's thirty feet from your house. Uh, sir,
• 47:22
  how about you don't walk in my bag my literal backyard,
• 47:25
  please and thank you.
• 47:27
  Speaker 2: It's a public forest. That's why they come and touch
• 47:29
  our walls and like, you know, look into our bedrooms.
• 47:31
  It's a public forest.
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: That's why they tuck me in every night because it's
• 47:36
  a public forest. It's a public forest.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: He comes in. That's why they.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: Drink all of our juice. And go ahead, you're about
• 47:42
  to say. He comes in and gives you what gives me,
• 47:44
  gives me kiss someone for it, tells me I'm a
• 47:46
  good boy.
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: Kisses on the what on the head? Oh? Okay, you
• 47:52
  wrap belly kisses into a lot of stories. So that's
• 47:54
  where I figured that was coming from.
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: You have a raspberry. Yeah, Chris is kicking and giggling
• 48:01
  in his room.
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: Got like their twelve year old in the bedroom. It's
• 48:08
  like some neighbor comes into the bedroom and the parents
• 48:10
  are just like, oh, he's that way public forest.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: You know, what can you do? Yeah, where's Chris? He's
• 48:15
  down in his room. Good night Chris. Wherever he started off.
• 48:21
  I just think that's the whole thing.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: The mom and dad will watching TV and they can
• 48:25
  hear it. They're just like, ah, come back, public forest,
• 48:29
  what can you do? That made some sense, and he
• 48:31
  was right about it being public. But then where were
• 48:34
  they glanced around one more time whenever the tree is
• 48:38
  quickly layered up, and I couldn't see far at all.
• 48:40
  I guess it was possible for me to lose track
• 48:42
  of someone here in a short distance. Okay, man, I
• 48:47
  can stay alone in the house for weeks on end,
• 48:50
  but I can't handle the short walks with the woods
• 48:51
  on a summer's day.
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: That's why he buught some mussels.
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: Cleared Chris, wielding the lantern above his head, and I laughed.
• 49:00
  Spend the day walking around the forest and return to
• 49:02
  the tent to get some water when we were too hot.
• 49:05
  We talked about school and what our plans were for
• 49:07
  the future, talked about dreams we'd had, and ghosts and
• 49:10
  creatures that looked in the dark. Neither of us were
• 49:13
  too scared of things like that, but they made for
• 49:15
  good camping stories. Chris told a particularly good one of
• 49:20
  a woman who lived in the woods. She had the
• 49:22
  head of a cat, and if you heard her raspy
• 49:25
  me out, that's I've read raspyes, raspberry for a second.
• 49:30
  She had the head of a cat, and if you
• 49:32
  heard her raspy me out that bench, she was trying
• 49:35
  to find you. If she stopped me owting signified you
• 49:39
  were found, and she was quickly making her way towards
• 49:42
  you made my skin crawl a little and we stopped
• 49:45
  telling stories soon after that.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: I wish the head of a cat. I wish that
• 49:50
  was the fucking monster, like you know something like I
• 49:53
  love those just kind of like folk Tailey Grim's fairy
• 49:56
  tale kind of creatures.
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, if she stops me owing, it's like, like, yeah.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: How far craepy is that? You start hearing a cat
• 50:03
  and you're like, what the fuck and then it goes silent.
• 50:06
  That actually reminds me. So.
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: The most scared I ever was of a Goosebumps episode.
• 50:13
  What was it called cat Scratch? It was about a
• 50:18
  cat or no, it was a dead cat, you know,
• 50:23
  the one I'm talking about, Shirley, Right, I'm trying to think.
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: I don't think so.
• 50:27
  Speaker 2: It's about a cat that if it's the cat got
• 50:29
  ran over by a car. Cry of the cat, That's
• 50:34
  what it was. Cry of the cat. Yeah, the cat
• 50:36
  got hit by a car, but it kept coming back,
• 50:38
  and it's like, if it scratched you, you caught like
• 50:40
  the zombie plan like it had anyway. At the beginning
• 50:43
  of a story, there's a woman who gets scratched by
• 50:47
  it and starts to transform into a cat person, and
• 50:50
  you don't see what she looks like till the very
• 50:52
  end of the story. Now I'm about to send you
• 50:54
  this picture hunter. When I was I think I watched
• 50:57
  this when I was eight, maybe nine. I did not
• 51:00
  sleep for weeks. I saw this image and lost my mind.
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: Hold on with those?
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: Hold on where those I just saved it to my desktop.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Where did you go? Okay, that is fucking haunting for
• 51:15
  people that a mute. It's not even like a regular cat.
• 51:19
  It's like a fucking like dying. It looks like a
• 51:22
  twenty five year old cat. If they stretched out and
• 51:24
  gave it like human appendages. It looks haunting.
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: This is this is the first shot of it too.
• 51:29
  She steps out of a dark hallway like this, bro.
• 51:35
  I was freaking fucking yeah, it's loosing my mind.
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: And then the actual zombie cat shows up at the end,
• 51:44
  but I didn't care. Zombie cat, zombie cat now I've
• 51:49
  seen the face of hell right before this.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: Hold on, here's the zombie cat that shows up at
• 51:55
  the very end of the story. Didn't bother me. I
• 51:57
  was like, Yeah, that's a cat monster thing. Who care?
• 52:00
  This is God. The effects of the show are so
• 52:01
  sick did goose bumps went hard? Goose bumps went super hard.
• 52:06
  They did great.
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: But man, I'll tell you what, that face freaked me
• 52:11
  out anyway.
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: So, but that's what when they're talking about the woman
• 52:15
  with the head of a cat, that's what I thought
• 52:16
  of that thing in the woods. The light of day
• 52:19
  eventually faded and it was getting hard to see, so
• 52:22
  we headed back to the tent for the night. The
• 52:24
  impressive heat during the day killed our appetites, so we
• 52:27
  left the food for now and decided we'd need it
• 52:29
  at to night if we got hungry. Chris hung the
• 52:32
  electric lantern at the front of the tent, flicking it
• 52:35
  on as he did so. It was surprisingly bright, spilled
• 52:38
  a yellow light onto the ground and onto the trees
• 52:40
  that faced us. The warm glow looked dramatic, but whatever
• 52:43
  was beyond the light had hidden in blackness. Our immediate
• 52:47
  area was clear, but after a few paces the light
• 52:50
  seemed to stop dead. It looked weird. Chris ducked under
• 52:54
  the tin opening and I followed him. Sleeping bags looked
• 52:58
  inviting as the heat from earlier had gone and it
• 53:00
  was too cold for shirts and shorts. We got inside
• 53:03
  and took the lantern with us. Can you hear me owing?
• 53:07
  I said, bro, I said, My head tilted as I
• 53:10
  strained to hear.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I can hear some bullshit too.
• 53:17
  Speaker 2: That would be you.
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: That's one year round. I'm too much of a pussy.
• 53:21
  I'm telling I'm too much of a pussy like Chris.
• 53:23
  Chris is. He is actually doom pilled. He is black pilled, Chris,
• 53:27
  for sure, this little my fucker wants to die. Why
• 53:30
  why are you smiling? Are we not afraid? Chris? Hello,
• 53:37
  we're out here all alone and people walk in this
• 53:39
  public force all time and come and give me belly
• 53:41
  kisses at night? Yeah? What's so weird about it? Dude?
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: There's like a line of people outside of the tent
• 53:47
  coming to give me kisses. Yeah. Maybe get with the times, dude,
• 53:51
  Maybe maybe open up mind, Chris. Chris smiled and sipped
• 53:57
  up a sleeping bag. Damn, I thought I had him. No, well,
• 54:01
  I zipped up my own back and we laid there
• 54:03
  talking for a little while, and then the exhaustion of
• 54:06
  such a hot summer hit us and we fell asleep.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: All right, Thank god, it was just a joke, all right,
• 54:11
  So Chris is really tearing the line. I can't tell. Yeah,
• 54:13
  it was.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He was messed around, like can you hear me out?
• 54:17
  And he's like, yeah, I can hear some bullshit too,
• 54:19
  like yeah.
• 54:21
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• 55:28
  Speaker 2: I had a dream that we were walking to Chris's
• 55:30
  house again, but there were more trees than before, and
• 55:33
  it was getting dark. Very quickly, I blinked. Suddenly it
• 55:37
  was night. The forrests brawling in every direction. The rope
• 55:42
  swing hung in front of me. I turned around and
• 55:44
  Chris was gone. I heard a creek behind me. Feeling
• 55:48
  came over me like I missed step on the stairs.
• 55:52
  For some reason, I couldn't turn around. I started walking
• 55:55
  straight ahead, and the rope swing soon came into my
• 55:58
  view again. I was aware was in a nightmare. The
• 56:01
  rope swings slowly lifted itself up into the trees, and
• 56:04
  I watched it disappear. I walked over and stood beneath
• 56:08
  where it had been, and there was a brustle above me,
• 56:11
  so I lifted my eyes to the canopy. A black
• 56:13
  figure with the head of a cat came hurtling downwards
• 56:16
  with its mouth open horrifically wide. One of its teeth
• 56:20
  touched my left eye, and I tore myself awake, gasping.
• 56:24
  As I sat up in the tent, my back was
• 56:27
  damp with the sweat, and Chris was asleep next to me.
• 56:29
  The lantern was still on and I could see our
• 56:31
  backpacks at the end of the tent. Took a moment
• 56:34
  to breathe and then let myself lay back down. I
• 56:37
  had thumping on the floor a little too hard. I
• 56:40
  winced and reached for the bottle of water to my
• 56:43
  side down in a few mouthfuls. I couldn't fall asleep
• 56:47
  with the glow of the lantern on my eyelids, so
• 56:49
  I set up and searched the tent for it. Quickly
• 56:53
  realized the light was coming from outside woo, Chris. I sat,
• 56:58
  still confused from sleep, mumbled something in reply. Chris, where's
• 57:03
  the lantern? He said, slowly and sleepily, before turning over.
• 57:07
  Looking around again, the light was obviously coming from outside.
• 57:12
  I wake up. The options either some murderer had stuck
• 57:14
  into our tin and done nothing but take the lantern outside,
• 57:18
  or we didn't actually bring it into the tin and
• 57:20
  I'd remembered wrong. That sounded more convincing, so I knelt
• 57:24
  by the tent door and unzipped it from the opening.
• 57:27
  I looked around. It wasn't immediately obvious where the glow
• 57:31
  was coming from. Why couldn't I see it? I looked up.
• 57:37
  The lantern was resting twenty feet in the air and
• 57:40
  over in the dark. Goosebump swept across my skin, and
• 57:44
  I zipped up the door before shaking Chris.
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: That's pretty that's pretty good.
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: I like that.
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: That's pretty solid.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's something that's taken the uh the lantern and
• 57:55
  like tied it to the rope swing it was tested earlier.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: Chris, please wake up.
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: He heard the urgency in my voice and set up
• 58:04
  what rog Chris said, rubbing his eyes. The lanterns hanging outside,
• 58:09
  but I brought it did I felt sick as my
• 58:12
  reasoning broke. We both looked at the front of the tin.
• 58:16
  We should go back to the house, I said, my
• 58:19
  resolve buckling. I was just a kid in a forest
• 58:21
  whose parents were away. I'm not walking to the dark,
• 58:26
  he replied. Chris was now looking worried. We've got a lantern.
• 58:30
  I stopped myself. We looked at the front of the
• 58:33
  tin again. Couldn't sit there forever. We were getting scared
• 58:37
  as we sat there doing nothing.
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: So this was the plan.
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: We weren't going back to sleep. We would get the
• 58:43
  lantern back somehow, leave everything here, and spend the night
• 58:46
  in Chris's house. I hated being the one to go first.
• 58:50
  I wanted to turn back, even just crouching by the
• 58:53
  tent entrance, unzipping the fabric doors, I looked around. Nothing
• 58:58
  appeared over the tent behind us, nothing inside, literally nothing.
• 59:03
  Everything was black outside of the light. I took a
• 59:06
  step out, and it was cold. Chris said the same
• 59:09
  as he stood right by my side. Looking over his shoulder.
• 59:12
  He turned back and saw the lantern in the air.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Oh my God.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: Stood there looking at it for a few seconds. That
• 59:19
  seemed to crawl by. Eventually I worked out which tree
• 59:22
  it was hanging from. The broken rope swing at my
• 59:25
  feet confirmed it way up out of reach. The lantern
• 59:29
  hung above our heads, tied to the other end of
• 59:32
  the rope that still dangled from the darkness. I couldn't
• 59:35
  work it out. It was high up, too high up
• 59:38
  for even a ladder. The trees were thin and bare.
• 59:42
  Besides the leaves that made up the canopy, there was
• 59:45
  nowhere to climb. Picking up the length of rope that
• 59:48
  snapped off earlier, I buckled it up and tied a
• 59:51
  knot and aimed it at the lantern. I took a
• 59:54
  step back and jumped, tossing it out of the air.
• 59:57
  It caught the lantern on inside and sent it swinging
• 1:00:00
  through shadows rocking around us. I suddenly wished it hadn't
• 1:00:05
  hit it. The light made the shadows lean from side
• 1:00:09
  to side with the lantern. The horrible, unnatural swain made
• 1:00:13
  me panic, and my eyes became wet as fear took
• 1:00:15
  a solid hold of me. I picked up the rope
• 1:00:18
  again and lopped desperately at the lantern. I missed, and
• 1:00:22
  the bundle of ropes sailed off into the darkness helplessly.
• 1:00:26
  I turned to Chris, who had already grabbed his backpack.
• 1:00:29
  He span around and threw it with a yelp, and
• 1:00:32
  it hit the lanterer dead on. It fell and thudded
• 1:00:35
  to the floor with a crack. The light was still
• 1:00:37
  on and I ran to pick it up. I turned
• 1:00:40
  to Chris and almost cried with relief. Okay, go go, go,
• 1:00:44
  let's go, I urged, and he started jogging quickly towards
• 1:00:48
  his house as I followed. Bro that idea the image
• 1:00:52
  of it hanging up in the tree and like as
• 1:00:55
  it sways, all the shadows of the near trees are
• 1:00:58
  like swaying back and forth.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: Man, Yeah, really creepy.
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: And also the idea of like whatever did this did
• 1:01:06
  it to mess with them by hanging it up in
• 1:01:08
  the tree, and it's almost made them like they're in
• 1:01:10
  a fish bowl, right, Like they're not going to step
• 1:01:13
  out in the darkness, so they're stuck to this like
• 1:01:17
  this chosen area.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: That's so it's literally becoming like a shark in open wall.
• 1:01:22
  Yeah kind of thing. Yeah, But I do like the
• 1:01:24
  the use of that shadow. It makes the threat feel
• 1:01:26
  like bigger, and it makes it feel like they're like
• 1:01:29
  they're actually dwarfed in size, and they're like.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: Something had to read there's nowhere to climb. Something had
• 1:01:34
  to reach up that big tie. Well, even if you
• 1:01:36
  are if you just think of the light, the shadows
• 1:01:39
  are going to make it just makes everything. It makes
• 1:01:41
  you feel small, like you're trapped in a cage or
• 1:01:44
  something with the way that's swinging. But yeah, just really
• 1:01:46
  really cool. Yeah. We half ran, half stumbled off into
• 1:01:50
  the dark, checking over our shoulders and working ourselves up
• 1:01:53
  as our thoughts were consumed by everything that may be
• 1:01:56
  waiting in the trees for us. I don't know how
• 1:01:58
  long we were moving, but it soon became apparent that
• 1:02:01
  Chris's house wasn't in this direction.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: For God's sakes, where is it?
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Chris attension taking hold of his voice.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: We'll have to fight the ten and try again.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: A couple of tears were forming at the corners of
• 1:02:13
  his eyes. They were probably online too, but my heart
• 1:02:16
  was thumping so hard I didn't notice. Okay, I took
• 1:02:21
  a breath, and we turned around and in a straight
• 1:02:23
  line directly behind us. Wait, okay, so what happened there?
• 1:02:28
  I don't know. Oh, they were running the wrong way.
• 1:02:33
  I see, they've been going further into the woods. Yeah,
• 1:02:36
  because they don't have to. They don't have the lantern,
• 1:02:39
  so they're just like, oh man, wait, no, they got it.
• 1:02:44
  They knocked it on the ground, remember, and they grabbed it. Okay,
• 1:02:48
  they grabbed it, but they're going the wrong way. Yeah,
• 1:02:51
  what if we didn't find the ten? I couldn't stop
• 1:02:53
  myself thinking that over and over. So we retraced our steps.
• 1:02:56
  We walked for it seemed like twice as long before
• 1:02:58
  the light finally fell in the side the tent. We
• 1:03:01
  ran up and stood close to his side, looking around
• 1:03:04
  to try and figure out which direction we should go.
• 1:03:06
  The silence was like the build up of a nightmare,
• 1:03:09
  right before some horrible thing lurches out at you, screaming.
• 1:03:13
  The comparison made me gag and I scratched my eyes shut,
• 1:03:16
  the hair on my skin lifting. My temples were so
• 1:03:19
  hot it felt like my brain was studying against the
• 1:03:21
  inside of my skull. I could have began to guess
• 1:03:24
  where the house was. We could see about ten feet
• 1:03:27
  from the lantern, and then pitch black. There were no clues.
• 1:03:31
  Every direction looked wrong. Chris took the lantern from me
• 1:03:34
  and walked in a small circle, straining his eyes to
• 1:03:37
  try and see I stayed put Chris to turn it off,
• 1:03:42
  I whispered to him hurriedly. What I stepped quickly and
• 1:03:46
  quietly towards him, bringing my face to his there's something
• 1:03:50
  in the tent. Okay for one bear trap. Because at
• 1:03:59
  the beginning of the story I said, perhaps they're in
• 1:04:01
  the woods and there's afraid there's something out there, so
• 1:04:03
  they turn it offs in reference to a flashlight.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: I was right. Also, Oh my gosh, I'm very curious
• 1:04:11
  to know what this thing is.
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we may not get a direct answer, and that's
• 1:04:18
  fine because I've given us so much to work with.
• 1:04:20
  But man, his gaze shifted pass me towards the tent
• 1:04:23
  and he stood there staring. We were standing on the
• 1:04:26
  left hand side of the tent. From this angle, I
• 1:04:28
  could just about see the unsipped door hanging open, but
• 1:04:32
  I remember leaving it that way, so that wasn't what
• 1:04:36
  was making me clench my teeth together. A few feet away,
• 1:04:40
  my rucksacks sat outside on the dry earth. The food
• 1:04:43
  I'd packed now neatly arranged trailing from it. Our sleeping
• 1:04:48
  bags were also nicely laid out in to end, making
• 1:04:51
  the line of belongings straight into the mouth of the tent.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: Dude.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's like breadcrumbs leading inside of the tent.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: I do love it. This is like the way that
• 1:05:06
  this keeps kind of coming back to that grim fairy
• 1:05:08
  tale thing is really it really is like a child's
• 1:05:12
  like just tail, you know what I mean.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like a giant trapdoor spider like something that
• 1:05:17
  they're waiting.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, oh not they could hear, I promised, Just
• 1:05:21
  just candy and juice, Come on in.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: I took a careful step forward so that the light
• 1:05:26
  passed more easily through the fabric. Couldn't have been a
• 1:05:29
  trick of the light. Something big and dark was obviously
• 1:05:33
  crouched with what I guessed was its front facing the
• 1:05:36
  open door. I hated myself for not seeing it sooner.
• 1:05:42
  It didn't move at all or seemed to breathe. It
• 1:05:45
  just sat waiting for us to investigate the display it
• 1:05:48
  had made. Turn it off. I whispered again. Chris continued
• 1:05:54
  staring deaf to me. Chris, I've pleaded in a whisper.
• 1:06:00
  A voice from nearby joined in, Chris, that's fine, that's sick, dude,
• 1:06:09
  that's awesome. We both heard it, and the blood fell
• 1:06:13
  in our veins. It came from the tent, a slow,
• 1:06:17
  strained rasp of voice that sounded like a parrot copying
• 1:06:21
  a new word. The sound clicked across my skin and
• 1:06:24
  crept into my ears. The light flicked off with a click.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: That was too loud.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Chris grabbed my shoulder and I clenched my fist, closed
• 1:06:33
  painfully tight. We stood there in complete darkness. I didn't
• 1:06:38
  want to move, I didn't want to stay. My brain
• 1:06:40
  fought for control as my legs waited for a decision.
• 1:06:43
  Rooted in place, we breathed shallow, quiet breaths, Blackness pressing
• 1:06:49
  on our eyes like water. Sweat ran down my neck.
• 1:06:52
  I couldn't see the tint pee turn it. My stomach
• 1:07:01
  flipped inside out as the thing in the tent played
• 1:07:04
  with my words. I quickly grabbed Chris's hand, yanking him
• 1:07:07
  in the opposite direction. I ran like I never had before,
• 1:07:11
  Chris's legs studding alternately with mine. The sprint continued for
• 1:07:15
  about a minute. We lost ourselves as we ran through
• 1:07:17
  absolute darkness. I forgot where we were, and I couldn't
• 1:07:20
  see what was in front of my face. I read
• 1:07:23
  hand into a tree and my forehead struck its side
• 1:07:26
  with a sickening hollow knock. Sparks slid up inside my
• 1:07:30
  eyes and I choked back the pain. It hurt so
• 1:07:32
  much I couldn't breathe. Chris tried to pull me on,
• 1:07:35
  but I buckled to the floor on my knees and
• 1:07:37
  threw up. As I collapsed onto my back, my head
• 1:07:40
  went numb. Chris lifted me up.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: Please don't stop, please, please, he begged. I couldn't reply, Please,
• 1:07:48
  please keep going.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: I forced my legs take my way as I locked
• 1:07:52
  my knees up right leaning on Chris. My body felt empty,
• 1:07:55
  and a little blood rolled down my forehead and into
• 1:07:57
  my brow. I wiped it away as I tried to
• 1:08:00
  grasp the situation again, but the pain was too much.
• 1:08:05
  I can't just wait, just wait. We stood together in
• 1:08:09
  the inky woods, but we could have been anywhere. I
• 1:08:12
  couldn't see Chris as he huddled next to me, and
• 1:08:15
  didn't feel like darkness. It felt like someone had wrapped
• 1:08:17
  my head in a blanket. Neither of us said a
• 1:08:20
  word as we waited, but our breathing was loud, and
• 1:08:23
  I wondered from what distance it could be heard. Reality
• 1:08:26
  began to return to me, and the pain was now
• 1:08:29
  just about bearable. I straightened up, grasping on what was happening.
• 1:08:33
  The pins of fears sank into me a second time,
• 1:08:36
  and I started counting in my head. One minute passed
• 1:08:39
  without any sound in the world. The wind was dead
• 1:08:42
  and the birds might be two. Another minute went by,
• 1:08:46
  continued counting. Three minutes we were still alone, Stephen looking
• 1:08:51
  for us. I reached for Chris's arm in the dark,
• 1:08:55
  jumped when I touched it, but I steadied him with
• 1:08:57
  the other He was still holding the lantern. Good. We
• 1:09:01
  had light on our side, now, if only we could
• 1:09:04
  use it. I went over the events hurriedly in my mind.
• 1:09:08
  The lantern was hanging from a tree. We got out
• 1:09:10
  of the tent, then couldn't find our way home. By
• 1:09:13
  the time we returned to the tent. Something was in it.
• 1:09:15
  But then, why did it take the lantern and do
• 1:09:18
  nothing while we slept? If it was sheer luck that
• 1:09:21
  we were alone when we were trying to get the lantern,
• 1:09:24
  I wonder just how small the possibility was us getting
• 1:09:27
  a second chance. I stayed silent for a moment and
• 1:09:30
  then whispered as best I could, Chris, we need to
• 1:09:36
  turn on the lantern. We need to get away from
• 1:09:40
  here and we make a run for your house, but
• 1:09:42
  we need to see.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: No, please, we have to stay here. We could wait
• 1:09:49
  for more if we have to. You can't turn it on.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: Could hear in his voice that a sab was breaking through.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: Just can't quiet you fucking' have to please, part.
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: Of my lips to try again. But as I did,
• 1:10:03
  I heard something, a very faint clicking sound from somewhere
• 1:10:07
  in the dark. It was almost inaudible, but it was there.
• 1:10:12
  An irregular, stuttering, clicking sound sounded like fingernails on a
• 1:10:18
  wooden table, and it was moving. It came from in
• 1:10:22
  front of us, I was sure of it. A steady
• 1:10:24
  click filled my ears as we tried to gauge the
• 1:10:28
  distance it was drawing closer, click stopped. I was glad,
• 1:10:35
  for the first time of my life that I couldn't
• 1:10:37
  see what was waiting in the dark. Perhaps that meant
• 1:10:40
  we were also hidden. As my thoughts fired off in
• 1:10:43
  every direction, I gave the thing in the darkness the
• 1:10:45
  image of the cat headed woman, and it terrified me.
• 1:10:50
  I was just waiting to hear that me out, but
• 1:10:52
  my ears were met with something else. I tensed my
• 1:10:57
  throat and tried not to cry, and said his name twice,
• 1:11:04
  and I cupped my hand over my mouth. The horrible
• 1:11:07
  scraping dialogue sounded a few steps away. The words were
• 1:11:11
  said oddly, with no meaning behind them. There were just
• 1:11:14
  sounds that this thing had picked up and was now
• 1:11:17
  using them to catch us out in the dark. Chris
• 1:11:20
  let go of my hand, and I heard his foot
• 1:11:23
  plant softly on the grass behind me as he prepared
• 1:11:25
  to run. Don't you dare, I try to project into
• 1:11:29
  his mind. Don't you make a sound? It sounded so wrong,
• 1:11:40
  drawn out like a door slowly opening. Chris let out
• 1:11:43
  a whimper as it called him. I froze and waited
• 1:11:46
  for something, anything, to happen. There was a long silence,
• 1:11:50
  and I held my breath for as long as I could.
• 1:11:53
  I couldn't wait anymore. Very slowly, I reached out to
• 1:11:57
  Chris and put my hand on his shoulder. Very carefully,
• 1:12:01
  we both lifted our feet and managed to step without
• 1:12:04
  making a sound. We back stepped away from the voice
• 1:12:08
  and didn't stop moving, but ever so carefully, so so slowly.
• 1:12:16
  I didn't care how long it would take us to
• 1:12:18
  get somewhere. If it took us an hour every step,
• 1:12:21
  we were going to get out. Chris backed into a
• 1:12:24
  tree and gasped audibly. The clicking started up immediately it
• 1:12:31
  rolled on, consistently, moving towards us. I didn't know what
• 1:12:36
  to do. All I could think of was to screw
• 1:12:39
  my eyes shut and try not to scream. As we
• 1:12:42
  stood there, the clicking came to a stop and arms
• 1:12:45
  length away from where we stood, Silence fear took over.
• 1:13:01
  Chris switched on the light and tore off in the
• 1:13:03
  other direction, without looking behind him. I wheeled in place
• 1:13:06
  and held the lantern in my sight like nothing else existed.
• 1:13:09
  We didn't dare look at that thing, but we could
• 1:13:12
  hear it. Our footsteps thudded on the grass, and the
• 1:13:15
  thing pursued us with the tap tap tap top now
• 1:13:17
  like scurrying little claws on hard earth. As I ran
• 1:13:20
  desperately to catch up to the light, the sound suddenly
• 1:13:23
  rose up behind me and over our heads in between
• 1:13:26
  the trees. This wasn't happening. It was going to drop
• 1:13:28
  down on us. Turn I screamed. I didn't care anymore.
• 1:13:32
  If we were going to get out with our lives.
• 1:13:34
  We were going to have to run for them. We
• 1:13:36
  suddenly changed course. The tapping stopped for a moment, long
• 1:13:39
  enough for us to gain a few feet before it
• 1:13:41
  came in our direction again. My legs were cramping horribly
• 1:13:44
  and Chris was gasping hard. We couldn't keep this up.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: Where were we?
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: I saw the light from the lantern come to an
• 1:13:49
  abrupt haul top ahead. I didn't have time to stop
• 1:13:52
  embrace myself to thump into Chris, but the light passed
• 1:13:55
  beneath my feet. You dropped the lantern. I turned my
• 1:13:59
  head and watched it recede into the darkness. It was
• 1:14:02
  immediately too far for me to go back. The thing
• 1:14:04
  would be on me in a second. Chris, I was
• 1:14:07
  crying and swiping tears from my cheeks as I ran,
• 1:14:09
  preparing for my face to connect with the tree at
• 1:14:11
  any moment.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: Keep guying.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: I heard Chris from up ahead, there's a light. My
• 1:14:17
  vision was bleary from tears, but could see it, an
• 1:14:19
  orange glow hanging in the air in the distance. Another one.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: What was happening?
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 2: I wanted to scream at him to avoid it, but
• 1:14:27
  I realized it was a street light. My legs felt
• 1:14:30
  like I was running through water, but I pushed them
• 1:14:32
  harder with a gold in sight. Gradually and painfully, the
• 1:14:35
  light drew closer. Askedd the clicking. This thing could move
• 1:14:39
  like nothing I knew. I saw Chris's figure pass underneath
• 1:14:42
  the street light, and then he was gone again. Don't stop,
• 1:14:45
  I yelled as I approached the edge of the forest,
• 1:14:48
  and my legs adjusted as the forest floor gave way
• 1:14:50
  to his solid footing. I could see a row of
• 1:14:52
  more street lights leading off to the right, and Chris's
• 1:14:55
  figure was passing regularly underneath each. When I was sure
• 1:14:58
  I was completely out of the tree, I didn't stop.
• 1:15:01
  I ran under several more street lights, putting in as
• 1:15:03
  much distance as I could manage between us and the
• 1:15:06
  edge of the woods. I realized after a while that
• 1:15:08
  the clicking had stopped. I needed to see we were okay.
• 1:15:12
  I turned my head and looked back along the row
• 1:15:14
  of lights. Give me my gaze. On the first light.
• 1:15:18
  My pace slowed as the pain in my head and
• 1:15:20
  legs came back. There was silence once more, and the
• 1:15:24
  lights revealed an empty pathway. I jogged on and kept
• 1:15:28
  my eyes on the glow, expecting to see something at
• 1:15:30
  any minute, but it lit up nothing but concrete in
• 1:15:33
  the edge of the road. Isn't there The question pulsed
• 1:15:37
  my mind over and over. As I turned my head
• 1:15:40
  to continue catching up to Chris, I caught sight of
• 1:15:43
  something passed under the first street light. An almighty shock
• 1:15:47
  went through me. As my fears were confirmed. I let
• 1:15:51
  out a cry and picked up the pace once more,
• 1:15:53
  sprinting between the lights. The image was burned into my mind.
• 1:15:58
  I hardly caught a glimpse of the thing, but it
• 1:16:00
  was white and massive, almost brushed the street light as
• 1:16:04
  it went under it. It had a long, upright body
• 1:16:08
  full of kinks, like it had just unfolded itself. That's
• 1:16:12
  all I was able to tell. Must have had a
• 1:16:15
  face and limbs, but I didn't have time to see.
• 1:16:18
  I didn't look again. The path gave way to more
• 1:16:20
  lights than soon I could see the glow of windows
• 1:16:22
  and some houses on either side of the road. I
• 1:16:25
  recognized where we were, close to my house. By some miracle.
• 1:16:28
  A little further and we would be there my house.
• 1:16:32
  I yelled, and Chris listened, turning left onto a side
• 1:16:34
  street and dashing down a panic on my side. I
• 1:16:37
  reached the turn and looked down the road to see
• 1:16:40
  Chris jumping the fence into my garden. Hurry up, I
• 1:16:43
  heard him scream. Reaching the fence, I planted my hands
• 1:16:47
  on top, hoisting myself over and shredding my elbows in
• 1:16:50
  the process. My ankle stung as I thudded it into
• 1:16:53
  the garden and spread it towards the kitchen door. Chris
• 1:16:56
  stepped aside, gasping for airs. I fumbled the key into
• 1:16:58
  the lock and rushed it sideways. We both flew into
• 1:17:01
  the kitchen and slammed the door behind us. I locked
• 1:17:04
  it from the inside, and we both sprinted upstairs into
• 1:17:06
  the bedroom, locking it behind us. What was that? I
• 1:17:10
  managed to stay in a panicked whisper, wondering if it.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: Would get in?
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 5: Did you say it?
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: No?
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 2: Chris crouched under the window, letting tears roll.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: Shit.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: It was so tall it was I couldn't tony. Chris
• 1:17:26
  cut me off. I molded over again and again. As
• 1:17:29
  we sat there, minutes slowly ticked by into hours. My
• 1:17:34
  head was fizzing all the while, and I could still
• 1:17:36
  hear its voice, a disgusting voice. My elbows and forearms
• 1:17:41
  were sticky with blood, and we both looked at the floor.
• 1:17:44
  The occasional sob coming from the two of us. Our
• 1:17:47
  hearts banged in our chest and we spent the night
• 1:17:49
  that way. Light streamed in from the window, but we
• 1:17:52
  didn't unlock the bathroom door until noon. Crept downstairs. The
• 1:17:57
  kitchen door was still locked. Nothing was in the house.
• 1:18:00
  Looked out the living room window, another perfect day. No
• 1:18:04
  people walked by, The sprinklers were on, and I could
• 1:18:07
  hear birds again and helped calm our nerves that ten
• 1:18:11
  can stay there, I said, at last, yeah, Chris agreed.
• 1:18:17
  We stayed in the living room with the TV off
• 1:18:18
  all day. We didn't know what to do. Talked about
• 1:18:21
  if we should call the police or something. The day
• 1:18:25
  crawled by as we tried to break our thoughts together
• 1:18:28
  and think of what to do next. But all that
• 1:18:30
  went through my mind was what had just happened, not
• 1:18:33
  what we should be doing. By the time it was dark,
• 1:18:36
  at about nine pm, phone rang. It was Chris's parents
• 1:18:41
  asking if I had seen him, as they were getting
• 1:18:44
  worried just got back from out of town. I let
• 1:18:47
  them know he was okay and asked if they could
• 1:18:49
  come and pick us both up from my house because
• 1:18:51
  something had happened. They wanted to know what, but I
• 1:18:55
  said we'd both tell them when they get here. Said
• 1:18:58
  they'd be here soon. Relief watched over us as adults
• 1:19:01
  were on their way to make everything all right. They
• 1:19:04
  would believe us We didn't lie about these things. Even
• 1:19:07
  if they were skeptical, it at least believed that some
• 1:19:10
  dangerous animal was in the forest, and that was good
• 1:19:12
  enough for us. I went into the kitchen to get
• 1:19:15
  some juice from.
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: The Of course, of course it begins with juice, and
• 1:19:23
  with juice. It's only it only makes sense with our
• 1:19:25
  main character at this point. Both our loves juice. Motherfucker
• 1:19:31
  cannot get not cannot go a day without juice. Good lord, bro,
• 1:19:37
  I've been so locked in, I know. And then just
• 1:19:43
  and then and then mister mister Chills was like, and juice.
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 2: We can't forget what this story is all about.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: It's just to push ju juice. Oh.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: I went into the kitchen to get some juice the
• 1:20:00
  fridge and realized I had a drink all day. I
• 1:20:03
  could hear water dripping in the sink, so I turned
• 1:20:06
  the faucet tighter and clugged some juice. So I headed
• 1:20:09
  towards the living room, the water started to tap again.
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 4: Oh.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: I flicked the light on and realized it wasn't coming
• 1:20:17
  from the sink or anywhere in the room for that matter.
• 1:20:21
  It sounded like it was coming from further away. I
• 1:20:24
  looked out into the garden could just about see a fuzzy,
• 1:20:29
  tall silhouette leaning up against the back fence in the dark.
• 1:20:33
  Actually tapping sounded more like clicking. The figure slowly moved
• 1:20:38
  away from the fence and clicked across the grass towards us.
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: That's the end.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 2: That's the end.
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 1: That was good, that was solid. I think it's interesting.
• 1:20:55
  I was gonna say, there's there's so many stories out
• 1:20:59
  there that I feel like, are just a person who's
• 1:21:02
  like understands what it takes to just make something kind
• 1:21:05
  of spooky, right. I do like these stories. Every time
• 1:21:09
  we read one of these kind of stories where it's
• 1:21:10
  like a really fun, little spooky hook, because that's you know,
• 1:21:13
  it is what it is. It really doesn't give you
• 1:21:15
  anything besides being like it was pale blah blah blah,
• 1:21:18
  but you almost like these are the stories where I'm like, fuck,
• 1:21:20
  I wish this was like the length of you know,
• 1:21:23
  a barasca or like something kind of long where you
• 1:21:25
  could get into these characters and have these kind of
• 1:21:27
  like big swinging moments and stuff. Do you think that
• 1:21:30
  those that can't exist in the same realm of like
• 1:21:33
  some of the other like longer stories you read. I
• 1:21:35
  feel like whenever we read a longer story, it becomes
• 1:21:37
  a character drama, which you have to have a character
• 1:21:41
  drama for the length of things and develop characters and
• 1:21:43
  have payoffs and all that kind of stuff. But do
• 1:21:45
  you think that you could what it just have to
• 1:21:47
  be basically like a series of vignettes between these, like
• 1:21:51
  you know, a series of spooky vignettes that happen in
• 1:21:55
  between all of these character developments and stuff.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: Wait ask that question, we're time.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: Basically, what I'm saying is, sorry, if I'm saying it weird,
• 1:22:06
  I guess what I'm saying is that these stories, there's
• 1:22:09
  so many stories where it's like a shorter story like
• 1:22:12
  this where it's punchy, probably because the person had an
• 1:22:15
  idea of like, hey, you're out in the woods, you
• 1:22:16
  don't know what it is, and this thing chases you.
• 1:22:18
  Even if it's something like that, and you kind of
• 1:22:19
  like you branch off on that, what if we read
• 1:22:22
  something like Braska or something, or you know, even like
• 1:22:26
  Stolen Tongue. Stolen Tongues is probably the closest thing to
• 1:22:29
  this in the realm of like, on a longer story,
• 1:22:32
  you have to have things where there's conflicts with characters,
• 1:22:35
  there's arcs to a character. A character starts here and
• 1:22:37
  it goes and the character is fundamentally changed by the
• 1:22:40
  end of the story. But I don't think that we
• 1:22:41
  ever get like these like big pounding moments. I mean not,
• 1:22:44
  you know, not always.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 2: Like I said, Stolen Tongues has its moments as well,
• 1:22:49
  but kind I guess like you have to sacrifice one
• 1:22:53
  for the other, you know, like can you have these big, exciting,
• 1:22:57
  fun chasing moments.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: Or in these longer stories or is it because that's
• 1:23:04
  it's so ambiguous that it becomes something like when it's short,
• 1:23:07
  it can be ambiguous and quick and because of that
• 1:23:10
  it takes on whatever scary things in your mind because
• 1:23:13
  there really is no description. And still in times it's
• 1:23:15
  kind of it's very descriptive, right, you know, And these
• 1:23:18
  longer stories, the more that you're with it, the more
• 1:23:20
  that the character is going to see it. To have
• 1:23:22
  it just be this long drawn out story would be
• 1:23:27
  not silly, but it would just be like you'd want
• 1:23:30
  to like you're it's a payoff, like you want to
• 1:23:32
  see the monster, you want to know what it is,
• 1:23:33
  all that kind of stuff. But the shorter ones have
• 1:23:36
  the advantage of it being this kind of like I think.
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 2: So, I think it's far more common to get these punchy,
• 1:23:45
  powerful moments out of short stories. And this isn't a
• 1:23:48
  discredit to shorter stories, no, but it's because you don't
• 1:23:53
  You can build a story around the punch in a
• 1:23:56
  short form, right, you can have like because I mean, man,
• 1:23:59
  you want to talk about a punch the light dangling
• 1:24:02
  above the ten, well, that's definitely to see the food.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you can tell me all time. Incredible you can
• 1:24:09
  tell that moment with because that's how you can tell
• 1:24:14
  too for people that are like I guess, trying to
• 1:24:16
  get into writing and stuff. Because we've been seeing a
• 1:24:18
  lot of people writing on our on this new subrette
• 1:24:21
  that we have called Tails from the Creeps, which is
• 1:24:24
  all of our It's like a new subrette that we're
• 1:24:27
  doing that's just all stories and it's awesome. But I
• 1:24:31
  see a lot of people asking him, like I just
• 1:24:33
  don't know how I'm supposed to get into it. I
• 1:24:34
  would say all of these start with like that. That
• 1:24:38
  moment is probably the first thing that was the hook
• 1:24:40
  where the person was like, oh, that's fun, and then
• 1:24:43
  they build a story around that, which is why you
• 1:24:46
  have some things, which it's fine for short stories having
• 1:24:49
  stuff that's like, yeah, the kid, he's fucking obsessed with
• 1:24:52
  the juice thing, and there's like an over excessive amount
• 1:24:55
  of like for nine twenty two, I did this, from
• 1:24:57
  nine thirty, I did that, like whatever. These are just
• 1:24:59
  like things that you could tell the person just like
• 1:25:02
  maybe just didn't care about as much and they're just like,
• 1:25:04
  get me to that part that I want to do.
• 1:25:07
  Or you're building backwards, you know, you set it up,
• 1:25:09
  you build backwards and then for and you're kind of
• 1:25:11
  just building the entire story around this thing, which is
• 1:25:13
  the fun point. But you know, like you're saying that
• 1:25:15
  doesn't discredit the short stories because it's the same thing
• 1:25:18
  of like critiquing a short film in the same way
• 1:25:20
  that you would critique a feature. Like they're just two
• 1:25:22
  different things, you know, Like that's the they're objectively different,
• 1:25:26
  even though they're still telling stories. They're just fundamentally doing
• 1:25:30
  a different thing. They have a different purpose. But I
• 1:25:35
  just think that's kind of just kind of interesting because
• 1:25:37
  it's just you really get nothing out of these characters.
• 1:25:40
  There's really no kind of arc. It's just a fun, spooky,
• 1:25:45
  like rip off the band Aid kind of thing. And
• 1:25:48
  I feel like we get these a lot, but I
• 1:25:49
  don't know why. It just kind of it kind of
• 1:25:51
  hit me where it's like I wonder, I wonder, like
• 1:25:57
  it's nice as a palate cleanser, but I do wonder
• 1:25:59
  if they're something where it's like, is there something more
• 1:26:01
  to the story? You know, can't can't How ambiguous can
• 1:26:05
  you be through these stories versus just focusing solely on character,
• 1:26:09
  you know, like you can't just go through a whole
• 1:26:11
  story and not give away the creature, right, am I wrong?
• 1:26:15
  I guess that's kind of one. Have you ever read
• 1:26:17
  a story where it's like the it's like a feature
• 1:26:19
  it's like a I want to say feature length because
• 1:26:21
  I'm thinking of film, but I guess I mean like
• 1:26:23
  like a full narrative book where you just don't even
• 1:26:27
  see the thing, Like it's just kind of ambiguous.
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 2: In The Shadow Whistlers, the whistlers.
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: I guess that's true. Whistlers that's really.
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: Long, and they never revealed what they looked like. There
• 1:26:36
  was the dog thing that it turned out was the
• 1:26:39
  thing hunting them, but the greater whistler that was using
• 1:26:44
  humans as bait to hunt that thing. We never see
• 1:26:47
  what that looks like.
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: I guess that's true, and I think that I think also.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: Like the description we get of this monster where it's
• 1:26:55
  like it folds itself up to be smaller, but we
• 1:26:58
  don't get any more than that, like it's a giant, white,
• 1:27:00
  lanky thing, but that's all the description.
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know if you felt the same. Whenever they
• 1:27:04
  said that it was large and white, it made me
• 1:27:05
  think of the moth from that story the guy has
• 1:27:08
  sex with like the giant moth mother. I thought of,
• 1:27:11
  long course, Oh is that what you Okay? Yeah, I
• 1:27:14
  think as soon as I heard like large white, I
• 1:27:16
  just thought of like a giant pillow body, which kind
• 1:27:19
  of fucked me up. Of like this giant insect. I
• 1:27:21
  was kind of hoping in the story that the creature
• 1:27:24
  would hold onto the light and it would be like
• 1:27:26
  moving through the forest, almost like it's like a giant
• 1:27:30
  lightning bug or whatever, just like floating through the forest,
• 1:27:34
  and like you know, like just that that shadow play
• 1:27:37
  is so fun and picturing that you're like, oh fuck,
• 1:27:39
  it's almost like a spirit because then it takes on
• 1:27:41
  a new form where it's like, yeah, it's a monster,
• 1:27:43
  but now it almost feels like a ghost or something
• 1:27:45
  floating through this forest. It's a lot of fun. I
• 1:27:49
  think that, Like you know, once again, it's it's fun
• 1:27:51
  whenever these stories are on the shorter side that have
• 1:27:56
  like a fun hook to them, versus it really sucks
• 1:28:00
  when we read a story and it's like six hours
• 1:28:02
  long and you're like, what the fuck, even like there's
• 1:28:04
  no no.
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 2: It's shortly punch I will say, I think it's more
• 1:28:09
  impressive when someone can have that level of I guess
• 1:28:17
  quality or punchiness and they do it for longer. I
• 1:28:20
  think that's more of a feat it is because first
• 1:28:23
  example that comes to mind is pin Pal. Yeah, because
• 1:28:27
  I mean Pal had several little vignettes like that that
• 1:28:30
  all connected and each one was like strong, kidding, satisfying.
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: I feel like that's more impressive.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: But that's not to say like the setting, the lander
• 1:28:37
  and the ten and stuff like that, wasn't incredible, was
• 1:28:40
  it worth? The story didn't well flows over together.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: The difference and the reason why it's so satisfying is
• 1:28:45
  because Pinpal is.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 2: All about character. You have to have strong characters, like
• 1:28:49
  you care about the characters these I don't. I could
• 1:28:51
  care less, like I really sure there's nothing. But at
• 1:28:54
  the same time, the uh like the moments in pin Pal,
• 1:28:58
  those individual punches I think on their own, like the
• 1:29:01
  scene they and down the river, Yeah yeah, are getting
• 1:29:04
  hit by the caller outside of the theater and stuff
• 1:29:06
  like that. They just think it works so much better
• 1:29:08
  because we do care about the characters exactly.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: I think that they do. They they are their own
• 1:29:12
  and you could have them be their own, but it's
• 1:29:14
  just so much more effective when you're rooting for this character,
• 1:29:18
  like you're really you're with them, You're like you want
• 1:29:20
  to see where this is going. You'd establish a relationship
• 1:29:23
  with them. But then I think that's also just writing
• 1:29:25
  something that's real. It's understanding that like this character is changing,
• 1:29:29
  things are unfolding. That's just so hard. It's a very
• 1:29:31
  hard thing to do. So whenever you do come across
• 1:29:34
  stories that kind of like move you in that way,
• 1:29:36
  it's almost always because the character, like the author is
• 1:29:39
  writing good characters, and that's like, that's the backbone in
• 1:29:43
  my opinion of I mean, just story in general is
• 1:29:46
  conflicting characters and stuff. So these are nice too, though,
• 1:29:49
  I mean, like don't bet wrong. Like I said, I
• 1:29:50
  love the like Peel the Band aid off kind of
• 1:29:53
  uh stories like this where it's just like, I don't
• 1:29:55
  fucking know, it's a stupid kid who likes juice. Let
• 1:29:58
  me get you to where I want to get you.
• 1:30:00
  I think is a fun way too. So I think
• 1:30:01
  it's just a the reason I want to say too,
• 1:30:04
  it's just people who are writing this or are going
• 1:30:05
  in things differently. It's like it's not that like one
• 1:30:07
  diminishes the other. It's just a completely different approach, you know,
• 1:30:11
  and that shouldn't you should look at it like, well
• 1:30:12
  I have to have X, Y and Z. It's like
• 1:30:14
  sometimes it's just nice to be on the ride. Uh so,
• 1:30:18
  but that's our episode. Guys, we appreciate you. Thank you
• 1:30:22
  for listening on our audio platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts,
• 1:30:26
  and give us a nice rating there it helps, and
• 1:30:28
  consider signing up to our patren for bonus content uh,
• 1:30:31
  and if you just want to support the channel, we
• 1:30:33
  got some fun stuff planned for this year, and Isaiah
• 1:30:36
  is getting ready to be a dad, so if there
• 1:30:39
  is any kind of.
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: Future, I've actually never addressed that publicly before, so thanks
• 1:30:44
  for having me.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: You have, I have not. Oh, well we can edit
• 1:30:49
  it out. Nope, nope, no, this is this is a
• 1:30:51
  good way for it to announce you. Okay, Well everyone
• 1:30:55
  out there completely sorry. Well I thought that it was
• 1:30:59
  public not I apologizing. Kayla has mentioned it. We can still,
• 1:31:05
  we can still.
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: No, no, I think that's a perfect way to just
• 1:31:08
  leave it at the end of an episode with you
• 1:31:09
  without consulting me bringing it out loud. I think that's
• 1:31:12
  a good.
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: Alright, Well, his wife's get ready to shut out a
• 1:31:17
  baby here pretty soon, you growth, I'm like, shot out
• 1:31:20
  a baby. Isaiah is going to be in dad mode
• 1:31:25
  for a while as well, So this year is going
• 1:31:27
  to be very It's just interesting. I'm very excited for
• 1:31:30
  you guys, and also excited just to see how this channel.
• 1:31:36
  You know, it just explores that new feet in your
• 1:31:38
  life and stuff. I'm just curious. I'm curious to see
• 1:31:39
  how it changes you and see how maybe even if
• 1:31:42
  you look at stories differently or something just from the
• 1:31:45
  perspective of being a like a new dad.
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 2: I'm about to reread The Road, which the core thing
• 1:31:52
  off that's like a father and son. So I'm about
• 1:31:55
  to reread that, and I'm going I fully expected to
• 1:31:58
  put me into a coma.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 1: Are you going to read the Is it the gift
• 1:32:02
  I got you that one? Actually? I will say so
• 1:32:06
  as much as I make fun of Hunter, hold on,
• 1:32:09
  we show this off. Hunter sent me.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: This is an incredible gift for Christmas, A first edition
• 1:32:18
  copy of The Road like in the original like eighties
• 1:32:21
  publication title with Cormick McCarthy's signature is who is not
• 1:32:26
  only my favorite author, but he has now passed away.
• 1:32:29
  So this is incredibly an incredible gift, very incredible gift.
• 1:32:34
  So I appreciate it very much. At the when you
• 1:32:37
  go to the front where it says also by Cormick McCarthy,
• 1:32:40
  if you look at any.
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: Modern publication, it's his whole bibliography.
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: But since this was published, then it stops at the
• 1:32:44
  Orchard Keeper, because that was the most recent thing he
• 1:32:47
  did before the Road, so that, yeah, this is really
• 1:32:50
  this is spectacular. So he Hunter did quite well. I
• 1:32:53
  appreciate that very much. His favorite book something that got
• 1:32:56
  him into reading. I listen, well, I actually very impressive.
• 1:33:00
  It's very impressive. I appreciate that, of.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 1: Course, But also I think that, like this year too,
• 1:33:06
  it'd be interesting to see if we could try to
• 1:33:08
  get we tried last year, you know, to the best
• 1:33:12
  of our ability, to try to get in and like
• 1:33:14
  read publish work. I know there's kind of a weird
• 1:33:16
  debate of people online that are like, well, I want
• 1:33:19
  them to check out publish works, or people are like, oh,
• 1:33:21
  just stick to the online internet stories. We're gonna try whatever.
• 1:33:25
  You know what I mean. I think you just some
• 1:33:26
  people don't know what they want until they actually get it.
• 1:33:28
  But there's things where we would like to read some
• 1:33:31
  longer stories just because I mean, you know, we've we've
• 1:33:35
  been reading creepypostas for so long and these internet horror
• 1:33:39
  stories that it would be cool to kind of get
• 1:33:41
  like a big, longer chunk of something recorded. So that's
• 1:33:47
  in the future. The only reason I say that too,
• 1:33:49
  is that just you know, new episode or new year,
• 1:33:52
  new episode kind of thing, just thinking about it. So
• 1:33:55
  if you have any suggestions below, feel free to let
• 1:33:57
  us know. Otherwise, stay beautiful. You guys are the best
• 1:34:01
  fan base on Earth and we appreciate you so thank
• 1:34:04
  you so much. Guys, we will see you in the
• 1:34:07
  next one.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: By bye bye bye everyone, Stay creep. That was just
• 1:34:11
  a really good story. And then watch goose Bumps and
• 1:34:15
  oh yeah, funny mention. What did I get Hunter for Christmas?
• 1:34:17
  Absolutely nothing, because I'm a great friend. Yep, all right, yeah, yes,
• 1:34:22
  all right.