Goatman, Laughing Jack and more... | Creep Cast

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Hey guys, just wanted to let you know that for a very limited amount of time, you can get in on this creep cast merchandise.

We have three items.

They're very cool.

And I'm telling you right now that if you head to the link in the description and get some while you can, I will do everything in my power to ensure that Hunter never sees a dime of it.

Okay.

And I'm going to use this money to try to get out, to try to make something of myself because I can't do this anymore.

So

if you can support us, heading to the link in the description,

It would mean everything to me, and maybe together we can stop it.

Thank you.

Hunter said we were doing costumes.

Welcome back to Creepcast.

Thank you all so much for coming out tonight.

And first and foremost, happy Halloween.

Let's go.

We are very honored that you all decided to spend your Halloween with us.

We promise it won't be that lame, probably.

And also, as part of the Halloween tour, you guys are the special ones who got to actually show up on Halloween.

So hopefully this is worth the wait.

Now we have three deliciously evil tales for you tonight.

We have three stories that we are going to be reading.

The first one is an internet classic that I'm sure many of you all are familiar with.

The second one is also a classic, but for incredibly different reasons.

And then the third one is a story by a very special author that we are going to need your all's help with, but we'll get to that when we get to it.

Are we ready to get our cast creeped?

Let's fucking do it!

So for tonight's first story we have Goatman and a show of hands I'm sure pretty a lot of you all are familiar with like goatman the cryptid but who here is familiar with the Anansi's version of the story

No way

Wow, usually it's

left.

Okay, great.

This is great.

I get to do this to you for the first time.

So a lot of you probably...

Raise your hand if you know the cryptid Goatman.

That's what I thought.

Oh, fuck you, guys.

Yeah.

Well, I know him.

I just.

I mean, we all know Goatman.

Yeah.

So Goatman, the Cryptid, we're all familiar with it.

Goatman really entered like the modern culture with this horror stories, you know, creepypasta, stuff like that from this story.

This was originally uploaded to 4chan on the Xboard in 2012 by an anonymous user.

And then from there, it made its way onto Creepypasta sites, circulated to like YouTube channels and things like that.

So this story really is like the inception of Goatman in the modern age.

And a lot of the things you know about the character come from this tale.

So if you haven't heard about it before, that's fantastic because it is not what you think it's going to be.

So I'm excited.

But with that out of the way, are we ready to begin?

Oh, I'm ready.

I'm ready.

Can we cue the scary music?

There we go.

Let's go.

So scary.

So scary.

So, so scary.

All right.

Beginning.

Goatman.

Here's my story.

B16.

Be black and have family down in Alabama.

They farm and own a huge amount of land.

Why did everyone laugh at the 16 thing?

B16.

Get some every time.

Is it because we have a bad track record on the show whenever children get involved?

It normally doesn't go too well.

It's not going to get any better, bitch.

It's, it's, this is, we're up here.

The show's going to end down here tonight, so get used to that.

Yep.

Uncle owns a big house and a bunch of trailers they put out in the woods for hunting or camping.

Down south, cousin suggests that we go out there to camp.

No, I'm a city kid from Chicago, so they tease the fuck out of me.

I'm going to read over the rest of them for the story, but I just, I need him to do that once.

Collect food, kill a pig and some chickens, and bring necessities to camp out for a few days.

We get to the camp and it's obvious something's weird.

Air has this weird electric smell like right before a storm like ozone.

We think nothing of it and unpack and go down to a little creek to swim for a few hours.

All of a sudden some older white guy and a white teenager come out of the bushes.

He has a shotgun in the crook of his arm and says hello and asks us what we're doing this far back in the woods.

Tell him about my uncle, who he knows, and say we're camping out.

He tells us we need to be real careful out here.

Stick together because there's a big animal animal in the woods.

His son, who's my age, asks if he can stay and hang out with us.

He says, okay.

I'm going to stop green texting because the story is fairly long and the format's harder to write in.

So thank God we move into actual storytelling now.

I like how you just couldn't start with that.

Yeah, like it's not just, he had to be like, I have to do the thing for a few lines, and now I actually get to tell the story correctly.

Yeah.

So we have our basic like horror movie setup.

You have a group of kids who are going out into the woods, and then some old farmer from the region says that there's something out there, right?

So we end up playing football, digging around with me, he's going to use that word a lot, digging around with me.

There's a white kid Tanner, five of my cousins, and then four of their friends.

In total, there were five girls and six boys.

We all were around 15 to 17 and we ended up just digging the day away.

Eventually, we head back to camp and pull out some stuff for a campfire.

Even though the trailers both had kitchenettes, Tanner says that his family's property sits up against my uncle's.

He wants to run home and ask his dad if he can come out camping with us.

His cousin Rooster says he's going to go with him since it's going to get dark soon.

I hate that name for my cousin.

My name's Tanner.

This is my cousin Rooster.

Hold on.

You a million percent, if I had to put money on it, you would have a cousin named Rooster.

I would.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's why I'm so bitter about it.

Yeah.

Who would have been there when your grandfather shot your dog?

That's true.

Rooster might have applauded it.

Yeah, woo, dead dogs.

Woo!

Yeah, wee!

Fuck you.

Someone made, someone earlier brought him like a painting they did.

It's like Hunter as a child scared with like a wheelchair.

A silhouette of my dog.

Why?

Oh, that's so good.

At the Phoenix show last night, his mom was there.

And I was like, did it happen?

And she stood up and was like, oh, yeah, he shot that dog.

So unnecessary.

Yeah, so keep talking bad about Rooster.

Like you have any room.

Anyway.

My cousin Rooster says he's going to go with him since it's going to get dark soon.

One of the girls also wants to tag along.

It's about 7 o'clock and it's starting to get pretty dark.

They grab flashlights and take the trail toward Tan's property.

The rest of us chill.

We make s'mores, drink, and kiss on the girls.

Hell yeah.

Well, don't support that because I was immediately said that only someone who has zero interest in the ladies would say a phrase like, kiss on the girls.

He's dicking around, dude.

Yeah, exactly.

So you're getting a little ahead of my conspiracy theory because

he mentions like male genitalia five times in this story.

And his only mention of females is like, well, we kiss on them.

That's what you do, right?

That's like, that's the normal thing to do.

I'm a little suspicious of his intentions.

About 30 or 40 minutes later, there's the smell of ozone again.

You can notice it over the center of the fire we had started.

It's really nasty, coppery smell, like right after you've had a nose fleet and it stopped.

It wasn't exactly like dried blood, but it was that metallic back of your throat smell.

We immediately think that it's some kind of electrical malfunction.

Every time I hear that sound effect, I think a plane's about to hit the building.

Electrical malfunction, or that someone left a hot plate on or some shit.

We search the trailers and nothing's on, but we can all smell it.

All of a sudden, we can hear people booking it down the path toward us.

Rooster, Tan, and the girl.

Her name's just the girl.

There's no name for her.

She doesn't get a name.

I kid you not.

There's a part coming up in the story where he speaks of the girl and girl too.

He doesn't.

I couldn't be fucked another name.

Look, it's 4chan in 2012.

This could have been much worse.

That is true.

They all come running into the clearing out of breath, and they don't even break stride.

They all run into the trailer right by where the fire is.

We all get out of there and into the trailers.

They end up calming down.

Even Rooster is crying his eyes out at this point.

All the while, the fire is guttering lower and lower.

So my other cousin says, screw it, and are about to go outside to get the generator out of the shed between the trailers.

Tanner goes, fuck no.

Lock the front door.

Ain't nobody else going outside.

That started as like, no.

That started.

No, no, no, that was good.

It's like, no, what?

No.

No, no.

No.

No, don't quit.

Quit.

There you go.

You get it.

That was a good Tanner voice.

Well, what should it?

What should a Tanner turn?

For one, I've had the guy in the Hawaiian shirt clap for him.

That was ridiculous.

Was it too gruff for a Tanner?

No, you started as a 14-year-old boy and ended as a 57-year-old Tajian man.

Okay, okay.

You went

locked the front door.

Ain't nobody else going out here.

Ain't nobody else getting out of here.

Come on.

Well, let me retry it then.

Let me be a 14-year-old again.

What I wouldn't give to go back

Fuck no lock the front door ain't nobody else going outside.

There you go.

That's better.

There you go.

Okay.

He's been crying too.

His eyes are bloodshot and puffy

Don't go out there seriously

I'll do anything if you don't make that noise again.

Okay.

His eyes are bloodshot and puffy, and his pants are dirty as shit.

He shit himself.

Yeah, thank you.

Stinky.

Stop.

I can't.

I was in medical school before I.

Okay.

He goes on to tell us that they went up to his house.

His father said, sure, he could go out camping, but to make sure they were careful on the way back, and that maybe they should take one of the hunting rifles just in case.

Evidently, Tanner had seen something in their yard a few days before.

One of their pigs had been ripped up and half-eaten.

They assumed it was just some big cats or coyotes, even though they don't usually mess with live animals.

Tanner went upstairs, packed his stuff, and told his dad they would be okay without the rifle because coyotes avoid people.

Then they start walking back toward where we were camping.

Okay, so two notes about this.

One,

he sees a pig mauled to death, ripped into pieces, And his dad's like, do you want a gun?

And he's like, nah, no.

Pops, it's coyotes.

They won't fuck with us.

We're human.

His dad's like, right.

That 400-pound pig, he had it coming.

But me, a 90-pound 14-year-old,

I'll be able to take him.

And also, I didn't think about it.

We have read this story.

This is our fourth time reading.

I have not thought about this until now.

Tanner just met all of these guys.

Yeah.

Right?

Because

he was the aforementioned guy who came down with the dude with the shot

on his arm.

Yeah, digging around.

And he shows up and he was like, oh, I've never met you guys before.

Can I come camp with you in the middle of the woods for days on end?

Is that just.

You haven't done that before?

No, no, I can't say I have.

Have you done that before?

Have you ever met a pack of bros and just want to

hang out in the woods?

Make a few mistakes, maybe?

I'm

I'm looking to make some secrets.

Hey, I don't know, Michael.

You want to dick around?

All right, we're, I did not mean to tell.

Okay, we're gonna...

The music.

Sorry, stay on.

Wait, sorry, sorry.

Michael?

No, no.

Ah, Gwen.

You want to dick around?

Put the music on.

Cut him off.

Kill that Mike.

Sorry.

It was almost...

Pitch black by this time, so they weren't sure at first what it was.

The girl says that she heard something in the bushes right off the trail they all beam their flashlights over there and there was someone standing in the woods in a little hollow

he says that's when he realized that the guy was facing away from them they keep walking and they start smelling the nasty coppery ozone smell

They say that they look off into the forest on the opposite side and there's a dude standing there too.

Oh my god.

Backward,

slightly closer to the path.

Oh my god.

okay.

So now they start power walking and Tan keeps going.

I should have

taken the fucking rifle.

I like the mention to

that, yeah, the power walk.

Why not just fucking jog, dude?

You're in the middle of the woods with a group of people you've never met before, and there is just a man.

And you're like, hey, and he's just...

Like facing away and they're like, well, I better speed a little bit, but not a lot.

Yeah, my mom does this on Saturdays.

We should be there in no time.

I like to think that they see the guy.

He's twitching.

There's fucking blood coming out of his eyes, right?

And they're just like,

so you guys think s'mores like right away?

Why not?

Completely unfazed.

Yeah, absolutely.

As they're telling the story, the smell is super strong, even inside the cabin.

They say that after they started walking faster, a kind of low gibbering had begun coming from both sides of the wood.

As they booked it back to the trailer, the girl said she flashed her light out to the side of them and saw something jerking itself through.

Motherfuckers dead sprint through the woods.

I don't know what it was, but god damn it, I knew what he was doing.

Tanner's like, whoa,

he's dicking around too.

That's pretty good.

Come on.

It's just everything.

It's you making the jokes.

It's me in a sonic costume.

It's like...

A seven-foot-tall goat man.

Yeah.

Jackass popped off running through the woods.

It makes it way scarier, I agree.

I like the music.

Because if you see him normally, it's like a new shot.

But if you see him doing that, it's like, ah!

Way more intense.

If I I just saw him running, that's one thing.

Jerking it and running, now we're in some seriousness.

It's terrifying.

He's doing that through the woods.

Then they just flat out ran as hard as they could to the trailer, which would be, that would be the thing to escalate it to running.

I agree.

I agree.

So we're out in the woods, and we're assuming at this point it's some rednecks or something trying to mess with us.

All of a sudden, my other cousin, Junior, starts going on about how he went to school with a native kid that was telling him about the goat man or some shit.

Well, I knew this boy down in there.

Yeah.

From being from Tennessee, this is an accurate quote.

We promptly tell him to shut up because we don't need any spooky talk right now.

I love that.

I love every time you read that line.

I love it so much.

Dude, seriously, Junior, stop.

No more spooky talk right now.

For real.

I'm shaking right now, man.

But he just keeps going on and on about how it's the goat man and how we're in his woods and blah blah blah.

Now, at the time, I never heard of this goat man or any of that.

But then a couple years ago, the year before I graduated from college, I had a minom for a roommate.

I ended up asking him about it.

And to sum it up, it's basically a man with the head of a goat, as the name would imply, and he can shape-shift and get among groups of people and terrorize them.

It's also supposed to be kind of like the Wendigo.

Before you clap, it's bad mojo to even talk about it.

And even worse, if you see us.

That's all of you.

Good luck.

Keep in mind, I didn't know this back when I was 16.

So my cousin's going.

The Goat Man's going to get in and fucking get us.

Just the difference.

He just said he's 16.

His name is Junior, dude.

You're describing a Confederate general that

you know.

The Goatman's real.

I heard it.

I'm just imagining now, like, it's just a bunch of kids, and then he's in, like, a cavalry uniform with a giant mustache, like a kid.

Yeah.

Are we kissing on girl shit?

When are we going to really start dicking around?

I brought my costume and everything.

Okay.

The girls are all terrified, and my cousins and I are all trying to figure out if it's just some hillbillies or an animal.

All of a sudden, smell just goes away.

To this day, I haven't even experienced anything like it.

Obviously, smells usually fade away or lessen, but it literally was just there one second and not the next.

We figure it was just some assholes trying to mess with us.

So we don't go back home because we think if we do, they'll chase us through the woods or something.

Nothing else weird happens that night.

We say another night.

For the main part of that night, nothing happens.

But at about one in the morning, we're outside getting drunk, telling ghost stories.

Someone is finishing some too spooky story, Timmy Taffy or something.

I don't remember.

We added that.

That's not enough.

Yeah, that's in 2012.

They weren't bringing it up.

Show of hands.

Who liked Tommy Taffy?

That's about people.

Split eye expression.

There's going to be a lot of fucking enemies made tonight.

I like that the one guy doesn't like raised his hand, and the person next to him is just like,

How many of you deeply despise Tommy Taffy?

All right.

Boo.

Yeah.

What's funny is I caught a couple couples out there,

a couple, couple, whatever, who like, he raised his hand on the first question,

and then she did and looked over at him on the second one.

We're done.

Yeah.

Smell comes back.

It's so strong that one of the girls literally starts vomiting.

I said, is that funny?

And she's like,

I mean, like, immediately?

Damn.

You ever smell some bad potatoes before or something?

God damn, dude.

Calm down.

I stand up, and you can feel how clammy the air is.

I say we should have get inside and this isn't right.

We should have just left.

We all go back inside and we're standing around.

My cousin keeps going on about how it's the goat man.

My other cousin Rooster tries to shut him up.

And all the while, I'm just feeling that something's wrong and I can't figure out what it is.

We end up sitting there for a while.

Smell is just as strong and we're terrified and all huddled in this camper.

We ended up cooking brats.

Brats.

Brats, dude.

I've been corrected by every audience.

Damn man.

In Boston, they wanted to throw me out.

Brats

for everybody because nobody wants to go outside.

It's one of those packs with four brats.

Thank you.

We have a total of three packs.

I grill them up on the stove and give everybody a hot dog and get mine.

That's when the girl that had been out with Rooster rooster and tan just starts screaming

jesus oh lord get it out

that was better than the child voice i guess a little bit my voice can't go that high dude she gets a voice now though kira so yeah finally she gets a name congratulations you graduated she's crying and shivering and then it dawns on the cousin standing up what's wrong me and him both glance around the room and i feel my heart sink I run out of the cabin and the girl runs out with us.

She's back to the girl now.

Never mind.

The trailer door is banging against the side of the trailer as everybody books it out.

One of my cousin's friends asks us, what's wrong?

Start counting us.

There's only 11 now.

I shit you.

Nope, sorry.

Don't

sorry, dude.

I shit you, not.

There were 12 people in that cabin.

I was about to explain, like, if you'll, I was going to be sarcastic and be like, if you remember, there was three packs of four brats, but then I forgot you've got, like, your

child line.

I don't know what you're talking about.

What am I doing?

The child line.

You got the line.

Yeah, yeah, June.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whatever.

Anyway, okay.

Because

everybody didn't know each other that well.

Nobody had noticed the whole time that there was an extra person.

And then we'll get there.

And then I realized earlier that I'd kind of noticed something was off.

You know, when you're just...

Digging around and having a good time that you don't sweat the small stuff and you don't always keep track of certain stuff.

I'm dead sure that someone else had been in the trailer with us and that they had been there for at least a day eating with us.

What makes it worse is that I couldn't figure out who it was because I don't think anyone ever actually interacted with the other person, Goatman.

The girl kept praying to Jesus and we're all sitting outside.

Eventually, we get big ass sticks and go back to the cabin, but there's nobody in there.

When we were in Louisiana, I read that line and the whole audience went, woo!

Like started cheering and everything.

Get the stick.

She gotta.

We count again, and there's 11 people.

We go back into the trailer and lock the door.

We explain what happened.

The girl says that she realized too, and that when she was about to say something, the person sitting next to her had grabbed her like hard, leaned over toward her and said something she couldn't understand.

Pause.

Pause.

The person sitting next to you grabbed your thigh really quick and does

And he don't say a single thing to anyone Okay, so there's a lot there's a lot happening here first of all first question

What is the number of people in a group?

This isn't like at a bar or like a public space.

You are in the middle of woods on private property.

What is the number of people that have to be there that you don't recognize a new person suddenly appear?

It is way more than 12.

I would say 20.

More than 20.

I'd say

yeah, 20.

It has to be like, was she with so-and-so that night?

But 12 is like, you've been there all day, too.

And apparently kissing on each other and whatever that is.

Dicking around doing it.

Dicking around, yeah.

So it's like another person shows up, you're like, oh, that must be like Jamie's friend or something.

Like, no, that doesn't make any sense.

It gets worse after this.

I just still want to go back to the idea that you're eating brats, right?

Someone squeezes your thigh again.

And like I said,

someone you've never seen before.

Yeah.

Someone you've never seen before.

They have the brat in their hand.

They're just like.

not face at all, yeah, yeah.

Just like, all right, well, that must be that must be one of those guys.

I think, in any instant, no matter what age, I am, if I was eating a hot dog or a brat, if someone touched me in any way, I feel like it would be just the worst time to touch someone.

That is a sweaty meat.

I just would not want anybody to physically touch me.

You'd let me touch you, right?

Come on, dude.

Hey, Hunter.

What?

I love you.

Thanks, man.

So pretty.

I'm not.

He won't.

I've done it in every show, and he won't.

He always says thanks or okay.

Fuck him.

He hates me.

So Primo.

Yeah, who hurt you?

Who did that?

My grandpa.

So

we're pretty much scared as we huddle together and I fall asleep.

When I wake up, the sun's just coming up and half the people are asleep and the other half are packing their shit up.

We all want to walk back home, but like four people want to stay until the sun's all the way up and some people think that we're just messing around and still want to stay at the trailers.

I just want to get out of the woods.

The girl's name was Kira, the one that the goatman had touched.

Anyway, I asked her if she was if she really thinks it was something bad and she says that she just wants to go home and that she doesn't want to be out in the woods alone for another night.

So we decided to split up.

The four that want to go can go, but I have to stay because I have the keys to the cabin and it's my uncle's and I have to lock up.

That is an insanely, that is infinitely stupid, good lord.

Well, it's stupid, but also at the same time, that is 14, 15-year-old logic.

I can't leave.

I have to lock up.

Not when a shapeshifter is touching you.

No, no, that escalates beyond any like childhood story.

Oh, not me, man.

If I was 15 or 16, I would definitely just be like, my dad's going to kick my ass.

I can't.

I have to stay.

So you'd stay with the demon goat in the woods?

We really don't know what it is yet.

I just think, we got some bronze.

I just think, let's ride out the storm.

Not kidding.

You should talk to someone about that.

Anyway, I'm super pissed at this point because I feel like people aren't taking this shit seriously.

And I definitely didn't want to go out in the woods for another night.

I spend the rest of the day trying to convince the rest of the people, now four girls and four guys, to get out of Dodge.

Tanner leaves with him to go get a rifle and says he's going to be back so there are just seven of us left by 4 p.m.

At around 5 p.m.

he hasn't made it back yet and we're getting extremely antsy.

The only reason I stopped begging them to leave was because he went to get a gun.

At about 5.30 or so, the one cousin that did stay says that the girl Kira is outside.

We all look outside.

Sure enough, she's just standing by the fire pit with her back to the cabin.

I'm thinking to myself, if she was so scared, why would she come back?

And I get this nasty feeling in my gut.

Keep in mind, the whole time, the coffery smell has been gone.

Now I realize I can smell just a twinge of it.

I say this to the rest of them.

Everybody, and these are the people that wanted to stay in the woods after we had the goat man in our midst.

He's laughing at me and asking, if I set this up to scare them, why did the lights get darker?

I'm looking at them like

I'm not, I don't.

Don't want to, okay.

You're not going to believe this.

We have no idea who that was

That was a guy at the back door for like three and a half hours You should be way more frightened.

I'm gonna

figure that out

Did they say anything to you

Stop dicking around

You have a quote now go ahead Let me the fucking stop fucking playing

Is that the quote?

Wait, where are we?

That's what I have here.

Wait.

Oh, no!

Oh, I'm not fucking bullshitting you all right now.

Wait.

It wasn't highlighted.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

All right.

Get it together.

I asked them.

Oh, shit, dude.

Why would I play like that?

So one of the girls goes outside to get Kira.

She gets halfway to her and stops cold.

Kira starts heaving.

I don't know how to describe it.

Sort of like if someone with their back turned was laughing without actually making any sound.

It was this fact that made me realize there was not a sound in the whole woods.

It was dead silent.

So to keep track, this is the girl who was freaked out so the goat man had whispered something to her and she goes off with the group who left immediately.

Now she is standing back at the camp at the campfire facing away from them and she's like twitching and convulsing them.

Everything is silent.

So what does this group decide to do?

This was like late September, so it was still fairly hot at the time, but super chilly some days too.

You could usually hear big-ass geese honking or some kind of answers.

No, again, why not?

Take your time.

He's really not going to do it.

Okay.

All right, fuck us, I guess.

Okay.

He gets a little stage fright.

You can hear those.

Some kind of birds or squirrels chit-chatting.

Okay.

All right.

I hope that goat man guy comes back.

I step out the door and tell the girl to come back in the trailer right now.

She backs up into it and we lock the door.

We pull down all the shades except one and put a guy there in a chair to watch Kira.

She stands there for another 20 minutes or so.

Eventually, the guy turns to say that she's still there, and there's a huge bang on the door.

We all jump up and scramble around the living room of the trailer.

The banging's super loud.

My cousin is holding one of the girls, the other two are kind of giggling with nervous laughter, and me and the other two guys are shitting bricks.

Then we hear Tan.

He's screaming, Let me the fuck in!

Stop fucking playing!

We go

There it is.

For sure.

He didn't make it up.

I am also about to burn to death in this thing.

It's getting progressively hotter.

Dude, pop those guns.

No, no, quit.

Take it off.

Hell, stand up and give us a twirl.

It's a t-shirt.

Damn.

My wife will find everyone in this room.

There's one, I think.

Samantha?

Sam, yes, Sam.

Okay, so at the stalker tour, Sam plus one, I remember Sam because she was wearing goth makeup.

And I, no, not the reason you think.

And I was out front, and she comes up.

I'm like, hi, what's your name?

And she goes, I swear it's not Jacoby.

So be polite and not make the woo noises.

Thank you very much.

No.

You're all on the list.

Stumbles in with a rifle.

There's nobody else outside.

Evidently, he had walked up to the campsite.

Nothing weird happened in the forest, but he had seen a girl.

Mind you, he said it was not Kira standing there.

When he had got to the edge of the clearing, she had turned toward him with a slack-jawed look, just stared him down.

slowly tracking him as he walked around the outside of the clearing towards the camp.

He said it wasn't until he was almost halfway to the trailer that he'd realized she was getting closer to him.

She had started off by the fire, and without him even seeing her move, she had been turning inching closer.

He said he just ran the rest of the way back to the cabin, thinking it would open.

When he got to the door and it was locked, he turned and it was about half the distance to the door.

He looks around the room and then gets super pale.

He pulls me to the side and whispers in my ear,

You know there are only seven of us in here, right?

I get that feeling where your stomach drops to your nuts.

There's another mention.

It had been back inside the trailer while we were sorting out who was going where, and then we all went outside to talk earlier in the day.

It just slipped right back in.

Okay.

There are.

Someone laughed at that.

It's immature.

There are

seven people in your group.

You already almost got got once because the 11 of you couldn't recognize a 12.

Five leave, you're now seven, and four leave, you're now seven.

And somehow an eighth person comes and you're like, oh, they must be with Alex.

Yeah, how do you let it slip by twice?

I think they deserve to die at this point.

Oh, absolutely.

Is there anyone you care about in the story?

Like, you don't want to.

Tan.

You don't care about Junior or Rooster?

Fuck Junior and fuck Rooster.

That's mean.

Why?

I don't know, dude.

Rednecks.

I don't know.

So you're in the LA crowd, so you play towards there.

You know.

Like everyone's just like this.

Is the show going to be good soon?

We look out the window, and there's nobody there.

So we recount, and then I go over and ask everyone how many people were here earlier.

And everybody says eight.

I say, well, how many are there now?

They all do the count and realize there are now only seven people in the cabin.

Tan had brought back a couple boxes of ammo and his rifle.

He had told his dad that there was some kind of animal in the forest because he didn't think he would believe him if he said it was the goat man.

He says that his cousin is supposed to be coming down in a few hours and that in the morning we can all go back to his place and his cousin will drive us home.

Now I'm really terrified, but I at least feel better because we can be American and shoot whatever it is that comes back.

That's right!

That is right.

USA!

USA!

USA!

USA!

You know what, LA?

I misjudged you.

I apologize.

That was kind.

I feel at home.

Well, debatably, no, I'm kidding.

But then my cousin gets into his huge argument with one of the girls because she thinks that I'm trying to be be funny and prank them.

She's getting really scared and thinks I'm not funny.

He keeps telling her I'm not that kind of person and she says, well, girl too.

Yeah, I'm girl two.

How do we know the girl wasn't just Tanner in a wig?

Why didn't we think of them?

Well, how do we know the girl wasn't just Tanner in a wig?

Or if it's really the goat man, How do we know this is the real Tanner and the goat man didn't just kill Tanner in the woods and take his gun?

Okay, a lot happening here.

For one, she's like, there's two options.

Either this is a break, this is a prank, or we kill Tanner right now.

That's it.

Two scenarios.

That is it.

Yeah.

I understand why she's girl two now.

So we get into a huge argument about this where me and Tanner, like.

We could seriously be in danger.

Oh, then what, then, vo-book?

You have gone from a child to like.

Dude, I am trying to keep it fucking together here.

Can you?

Okay, hold on.

Okay, sorry, sorry.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

Actually, can you do an LA accent?

I don't.

Go ahead.

We could seriously be in danger.

Because at the very list, someone has been sneaking themselves into their fucking trailer without us knowing and mingling with us.

And at worst, something bad is in the forest fucking with us.

That was pretty good.

I like that.

One of the girls is crying and saying she wants to go right now.

I don't like that.

She's saying she wants to go right now.

Please.

Girl three.

Let's just get out of here before it takes one of us.

And we're trying to tell her we shouldn't because none of us are walking through the woods in the middle of the night.

At this point, sun is starting to go down and it's getting a little cloudy out.

We need something to turn on the radio for a while, but we can't really get a station out there.

Is there anything decent?

I thought for a second, I I was like, is that guy about to fall through the ceiling?

So we turn it off at about the time that Tan's cousin shows up.

He was like 19, I think.

Now, the sun is just barely over the horizon, and he has one of those heavy-duty lantern flashlights and another rifle.

He walks up to the trailer, and we whisper to Tan, asking if he's sure that's his cousin, and he says yes.

The guy looks behind him and all around the camp, then walks in.

He kind of glances at all of us and looks a little confused, and then he says, Where's your little buddy at?

I figured she would meet up at the cabin.

She a little slow or something?

That's where you get off at?

I think I mean speed, but I can't tell if it's mental or not.

I think he means literally slow because of what, like, she is walking at a slow pace.

Yeah.

He also asked whether we had been choking choking blood.

Cooking blood.

Like, cooking's any better.

Cooking blood in the cabin because it smelled like blood in hot pans all the way up the trail.

We're all like, nope.

We ask him what he's talking about with the girl he saw.

I came down the same trail Tan used, and when I did, I ran to one of you's guys' buddies.

That threw me for a loop, dude.

He just randomly becomes a bad guy.

Well, yeah, it's like

I came down the trail, the same trail Tan used, and when I did, I ran into one of you guys' buddies.

Just Tony Soprano, too.

yeah just immediately

tanner's cousin continued to explain the person he saw was standing in the middle of the trail looking at him slack jawed he had asked her a bunch of questions but all she did was just look at him then she smiled and he said he kept walking

she couldn't seem to keep up with him and kept lagging a little behind He said he asked her if she was hurt or something and if she needed any help, but she continued to stare.

Eventually, he turned around a bend in the trail.

But when he went back to see if she was okay, the trail was empty.

We'd assumed she had taken, he'd assumed she had taken some shortcut through the woods to our trailer.

We tell him the whole story of what's been going on.

I half expect him to say we were full of shit, but he just listened and then sat down on the couches in the living room.

Tanner's cousin gets back to the girl.

He says that when she had kept trying to lag behind him, it kind of weirded him out.

So he tried to keep her in front of him.

But no matter how slow he walked, she was always lagging a little behind.

He smelled this nasty smell, and it got stronger as he got to the camp.

Eventually, it got really strong.

She had said something really low that he didn't catch, and when he had turned around, she had been right on him.

He stepped back from her.

It was at this point that he asked her if she was okay.

If she wasn't, he offered to carry her back the rest of the way.

She just kept staring.

He said he reached out for her as if to grab her on the shoulder, but he must have misjudged the distance because she was off to the side of where he had put his hand.

Like she had moved while he was looking dead at her.

So at this point, we know the shit's real.

Unless Tan's playing a joke, which we can tell he's not because he's almost busy in his pants.

They load up their rifles, we eat some more, and we just kind of sit around until about 11.

To this day, every time I think about this, I really pray to God that it's some huge prank that my cousins played on me and just never revealed, so I'd shit myself for the rest of my life.

At around 11, the stink of copper turned into an actual gross, blood-like smell.

Like cooked blood and singed hair.

Tan and his cousin, Rhys, get up instantly and grab the rifles.

There's like a half knocking, half clawing at the door.

And I shit you not, there's this voice.

It sounds like like when you see one of those YouTube cats and dogs whose owners teach them how to talk, it says in this halting, weirdly toned voice, let me the fucking

stop fucking play.

That's really good.

I dig that.

I can bear that every time.

Yeah, it's almost like there's no cadence.

Like it's like it's a breathe in almost like the way like a bark could kind of get distorted into a noise.

Yeah

It made my nuts.

There's another picture.

sky loves bringing it up.

Keep in mind, one mention of kissing on girls, about 12 of these, creep up against my body, and one of the girls just starts crying and calling for Jesus.

It was so obviously not a person talking.

It didn't have the right cadence.

That's some shit that I never realized until that moment.

But all people have a certain cadence when they talk, no matter the language.

All people have a certain kind of rhythm when talking.

The shit didn't have any kind of cadence or rhythm.

So now I'm in full-on terror mode.

We keep yelling outside, who is it?

Stop fucking around, man!

And it just keeps saying,

or, let me the fuck.

Let's go.

For almost 15 minutes.

Then the smell goes away for a while, and for the next hour or so, you can hear someone basically creeping around in the woods and shit.

After a couple minutes, it comes back to the door and says something.

Finally, the smell fades away at around 2 in the morning.

Rhys says, man, fuck this.

He opens the door, walks outside with his rifle, he fires a shot into the air and screams something like, In the name of Jesus Christ, go away!

It's funny to imagine.

He goes from like a redneck with a gun to like, the Vatican has sent me on a mission.

Like, yeah.

Yeah, monster.

Yeah, no joke.

He fires two more times, and then from the woods, right up against the river, across from the trailer, it sounds like something is slowly gibbering and hooting.

Okay.

Then it starts screaming, and it sounds almost like a woman and a cat in a bag screaming together.

Yep.

I guess that's what that would sound like, yeah.

It's a weird phrase, because normally you say, like, oh, it sounds like this, as if it's like a relatable point.

Like, oh, it sounded like a car, like a gun, but it's like, oh, we've all, you know, you had seen a woman and a cat in a bag screaming together.

Like, I don't think the author had enough of that in his life to be like, right, it's exactly like that.

You know, mom and fluffy.

Who among friends has not from time to time?

Like, I seriously have never heard any shit like that.

We can hear the brush over that way start to shake.

Rhys fires over into the tree line and then starts backing up into the building.

We lock the door and we can hear this shit keening and screaming.

Rhys says something had come out of the bushes, super low to the ground, and was crawling toward the cabin.

He had shot at it.

Pretty much, that was how the rest of the night went.

Literally constant screaming for the next two hours and shit moving out in the tree line.

But it never came back up to the cabin until everyone had finally fallen asleep.

Tan had been sitting in the chair watching the door with his rifle.

Nobody else heard or saw this and he told me two days later after the whole thing was over

He said he had been nodding off after the screaming and noises finally stopped He'd been almost asleep when he saw someone come out of the bathroom and then lay down in the middle of the floor and go to sleep

He just assumed it was one of us

and that the guy had nodded off.

Then he said he kind of realized something was wrong, and while pretending to be sleeping, he counted us.

There were nine people in the cabin.

He didn't want to try to shoot at the thing and have it kill us all then and there, or have Rhys wake up and start shooting and us kill ourselves.

So he just stayed awake all night, pretending to be asleep.

He said sometimes it would stand up and kind of do this weird jittery thing.

or heave like it was laughing, but then it would just lay back down.

The story closes pretty weak because, from my perspective, nothing happened.

When we woke up, I noticed that Tan was a little jittery and that he was avoiding looking at us at all of us.

But we ate some breakfast, packed up, and started walking to his house.

He stayed last in the cabin and said he'd lock up and bring me my uncle's keys.

He told us, Start walking, I'll catch up.

Which I didn't really want to do.

We got a little bit up the path, and when he came running up, we just jogged back to his house.

His cousin took us home.

There was a window in the bathroom.

Tan had gone back to lock up and looked in there.

We were too stupid to lock a screenless window, and it was up when he went in there.

I'm guessing it had been doing that all along.

Waiting for us to fall asleep or slip up and then getting in among us.

It walked with us all the way back to his house, and then he said it lagged to the back of the group, looked him dead in the eyes before walking into the woods.

End of the goat man.

That we have the end of goatman.

I want to say this right off the bat.

I want to just...

Just say off the bat, Harry is evil for throwing the Among U.

I was thinking in my head, like, no one reacted.

Thank God.

The first time, you guys were going to be aware of it.

The first time, and he decided to...

Whatever.

Okay.

I want to say just right off the bat that how the fuck do you fall asleep after all this stuff has happened?

I like how people are just like,

you witness, you go through hell.

He said two hours of screaming and gunfire.

Screaming and gunfire.

And I like how people are just like, dude, I just can't stay up anymore.

If I don't get my eight hours, it's going to mess up my rhythm.

Yeah, dude, seriously.

I got this whole thing going with my heart rate.

I got to do it.

I can't.

Also, him, the guy who is on guard initially being like, oh, well, the new person for the third time now?

I'm sure I've met them before.

Right.

It's just dark.

Yeah, like insane.

But I will say, it's a fun story, though.

So I love, I like the story a lot because for one, kind of the way it was posted, this wasn't like an author like publishing a story or like a no-sleep or anything like that.

It was originally posted on X.

I believe the original post was someone asked the question, and again, it's all anonymous.

Someone was just like, hey, does anyone have any like creepy stories in the woods?

And then someone's like, yeah, I have one and did this whole thing.

So it's not like it was...

a fictional story or someone trying to you know make something up it came across in such an earnest way that that it started to gain traction from there.

And a lot of stuff about the goat man Mythos comes from this story.

Things like he smells like blood, or others will adapt it to say he smells like rot in general.

The idea of him being a shapeshifter,

the idea of him having sort of presence that like can be felt even if he's not there.

All that comes from this.

And like most people just associate that with the cryptid in general, but that's how impactful this narrative was.

So it's cool because it just came out of nowhere.

I remember this being one of the first creepypastas like I ever read.

I remember listening to this in high school and then at every subsequent sleepover I went to for the rest of the year, I would play it, Mr.

Creepypasta's reading to terrify people.

I didn't have a lot of friends.

But I would always play it just because

I enjoyed the story so much, thought it was scary that, yeah, I really like it for what it is.

Like, sure, it has a weak ending, but again, this wasn't some grand narrative.

This was like, oh yeah, this happened to me one time.

Yeah.

And there's another note I like that I didn't think about until this final reading.

But there's the mention earlier, the girl in the cabinet grabs her, like, whispers something to her.

And then the next time we see her, she is like a vessel.

Or she's dead and it's now taken on her form, right?

And then there's a mention of it like kind of speaking or gibbering to them.

And he's writing the story now, but he could still be marked.

It could still be out there.

Yeah, like afflicted or something.

Yeah, it still like leaves the door open for like, well, that doesn't mean our writer or friends are safe just because they're out.

I don't know.

It's a really fun narrative for what it is, and I've always liked it.

How did you all feel about it?

Well,

it's a fun starter.

It's a fun starter, right?

You get a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but you need a nice palette cleanser between these stories, don't you?

You certainly do.

So now we have just that.

So the next story we, oh, yeah, Creepcast logo.

The next story

that we have for tonight is.

All right.

So raise your hand if you know this this story or are familiar with it.

Awesome.

I love that this is

a lot of people.

The other half of black are in for something.

Okay.

Yeah, I love this one.

So to give, this should give you the context you need.

This story was originally posted to DeviantArt in 2013.

And it is about a murderous clown.

To give you an idea of how much joy we feel for this little guy, the original plan was for all four of these live shows.

We were going to read a different palette cleanser in the middle.

And after the first one, Hunter said, We are reading this at every show.

I love this story so much.

This is not a quality story.

We know that.

But we also know that.

Oh, it's quality.

We also know that you all are probably expecting that kind of thing.

We should also mention, very importantly, the typos are not our own and are instead part of the original.

So we're going to go get that.

But first, for this story,

I forgot to mention we have a little special guest tonight

Coming in to help us read this very funny, funny story is someone who makes

good work.

Dare I say admirable work.

He's from this area.

Have you guys seen the movie Hereditary or Midsummer?

Right?

If you don't know him, his name's Ari Astor.

And he's here to read Laughing Jack with us tonight.

Give him a round of applause.

That's not happening.

I think

I would have to imagine Ariaster has a lot of better things to do at this time.

We want to take a moment and thank today's sponsor, Saley.

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Thank you, Saley, for sponsoring this episode.

Let's keep reading.

So are you familiar with the story at all?

As always, no.

So what we're doing is the first,

to let you all in, the first and last stories, we're going to read, oh man, we're going to read our last story at every show.

But each middle one is going to be a different

short one.

That is, it is not here to be scary because you all like that for some reason.

So, we are going to look back at this one.

I think the other ones we're doing are what, sonic.exe,

yeah, to give you an idea, and some other ones like that.

Yeah, so like this one's for fun, it's sort of palate cleanser.

Uh, it's I haven't looked at this one since I read it years ago, but I just have a feeling.

So, we're gonna go ahead and get into it.

Written by Steve Aikens, written by Steve Aikens.

He went by snuffbomb when he posted it in

March.

No, it was earlier than it says 2017 here.

No, no, I have March 3rd, 2013.

2013 sounds more rapid.

Yeah, and it was uploaded originally to DeviantArt.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, to give you an idea.

Another

little factoid for you.

Yeah.

So Laughing Jack,

there's been Eyeless Jack.

Was Jack around this time just...

No, it was just because everyone would make, there'd be like a creepy image or something, and they'd be like, what if it was a monster whose name was Jeff, Jack, Ben,

Trying to think of it.

Just random, just like

basic names with adjective, common first name.

Right.

Ben drowned.

Laughing Jack.

Jeff the killer, adjective, whatever, you know, just stuff like that.

So it was just like either they made the picture, they saw a picture of like a creepy clown, and then the story comes off of that.

Right.

So we're going to get into this and let's see how this goes.

All right.

Story two: Laughing Jack.

It was a nice summer day, but my five-year-old son James was playing.

I immediately forgot about how violent this story gets until I read five-year-old.

Well, this will be fun.

All right.

Good luck, Hunter.

Five-year-old son James was playing outside in the backyard of our suburban home.

James has always been a quiet boy.

He plays by himself mostly.

He never had many friends, but

he always had a wild imagination.

It was in the kitchen feeding our dog Fido when I heard what sounded like James talking to someone in the backyard.

I'm not sure who it was he could be talking to.

Could he have finally made a friend at my house randomly?

Fucking brutal, dude.

Thank God.

James, did you finally make a friend?

Being a single mom, it's hard for me.

Nice.

It's hard for me.

It's hard for me to always keep an eye on my son.

Yeah, it is.

So I decided.

So I decided to gross to go outside and check on him.

When I went into the backyard, I was a a bit confused because James was the only person back there.

Was he talking to himself?

I could have sworn I heard another voice.

James, it's time to come outside.

What was that?

You're laughing, Jack.

James, it's time to come inside.

He came inside and sat down at the kitchen table.

It was about lunchtime, so I decided to make him a turkey sandwich.

Yeah!

James.

James?

I like to imagine he's not looking at her.

James.

James.

Who were you talking to out there?

James looked up for a moment.

I was playing with my new friend.

I poured him some milk and continued to pry as any good mother would.

Does your friend have a name?

Why didn't you ask him to have lunch with us?

James stared at me for a moment before replying.

His name?

Jack.

I was a bit.

Are you scared yet?

I was a bit taken back by what he had said.

Oh,

that's a strange name.

What does your friend look like?

Go ahead.

He's a clown.

He had long hair and a big thwirly cone nose.

He'd got long arms and baggy pants with stripey socks.

And he always smiles.

It's like a weird cartman thing, almost.

I realized my son was talking about an imaginary friend.

I suppose it's normal for kids his age to have imaginary friends.

Especially when he has no real kids to play with.

How normal are imaginary...

Who here had an imaginary friend?

Okay.

Oh wow, that's way more normal.

Freak, freak, freak, freak, freak.

Yay!

Kill all of those people.

What about up top?

I can't say up top.

Just yell if you have.

That's way too many people.

You all are not safe in this.

That's why they're up there.

They're like, more room for you, Mr.

Pringles.

Just nothing but empty seats up there.

Well, they have to.

He's so tall.

Okay.

I can't see them, so that might have been the imaginary friends laughing.

Exactly.

The rest of the day went by as per usual, and it was starting to get late, so I put James to bed.

Tucked him in, gave him a kiss, and made sure to turn on his night light before I closed the door.

I was pretty tired myself, so I decided to go to bed not long after.

I had an awful nightmare.

It was dark.

I was in some kind of rundown amusement park.

I was scared, running through an endless field of empty tents, broken-down rides, and abandoned game huts.

The whole place had a horrible look to it.

Everything was black and white.

The prize-stuffed animals all hung from nooses in the game huts.

What's funny is I know like the time period this was written on DeviantArt, he was like, this is so good.

The fucking plush is appearing in it.

All with sick grins stitched on their faces.

Felt like the whole park was looking at me, even though there wasn't another living being in sight.

Then suddenly I began to hear music play.

The sounds of Pop Goes the Weasel being played on a squeeze box echoed through the park.

It was hypnotizing.

I followed Stuart to the circus tent almost in the trance, unable to stop my legs from moving forward.

It was pitch black.

The only light came from a single spotlight shining on the center of the big top.

As I walked toward the light, the music slowed down.

I found myself singing along, unable to stop.

All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chased the weasel.

The monkey, though, was all in fun.

That's pretty creepy, right?

That's pretty good.

It's not the monkey, it's monkey thought twas all in good fun.

Oh, I don't know that.

I don't know that.

You don't know pop goes the weasel?

I have heard it maybe once or twice.

When you were born,

did your parents keep you in a box until you were like

it was a lot of ACDC in my house.

That's what it was mostly what it was.

I still have no idea how old he is, by the way.

The music stopped right before.

Oh, did it all go?

It does go all.

All right, well, we're there now.

The music stopped right before its client.

Don't read ahead.

And suddenly, the lights shot on.

The intensity of the lights was practically blinding.

All I could see was a small dark silhouette shuffle towards me.

Then another one appeared, and another, and another.

There were dozens of them all coming toward me.

I couldn't move.

My legs were frozen.

All I could do was watch as the haunting figures drew near.

As I got closer, I could see they were children.

As I looked,

yes,

I had the same thought.

As I looked at each one, I noticed they were all horribly disfigured and mutilated.

So that was the thing back then.

It's like insert child into story, words like disfigured, mutilation.

By the time this is over, we are going to see the words disemboweled.

We are going to see the words

probably, well, it's not a picture, but if it was to be photorealistic or something like that,

some

had cuts all over their body, others were severely burnt, and others were missing limbs, even eyes.

The children enveloped me, clawing at my flesh, dragging me to the ground, and tearing inside of me.

As the children tore me apart and I faded away, all I could hear was laughter.

Horrible, evil, awful laughter.

Is something funny?

This is just, it develops so quickly.

Hi, children.

Like immediately.

I woke up the next morning in a cold sweat.

After taking a few deep breaths, I looked over and saw that a few of James's action figures were positioned facing me on top of my nightstand.

I sighed.

James had probably woken up early and put these here.

I gathered up the toys and made my way to James's room.

However, when I opened the door, James was sound asleep.

I just shrugged and placed the toys back into his toy box and headed out to the living room.

A little while later, James woke up and I made him breakfast.

He was quiet and seemed a bit groggy.

Perhaps he didn't sleep well either.

I decided to ask him about the toys.

James, honey,

did you put the toys in mommy's room in the morning?

Or?

His eyes shot up at me for a moment and quickly glanced back down at his cereal.

Laughing Jack did it.

I rolled my.

Now I want this kid to be disemboweled.

I rolled my eyes and responded.

Well,

you tell Laughing Jack to keep the toys in your room.

James nodded and finished up his breakfast, then decided to go play out in the backyard.

I went to relax in the living room, and I must have dozed off because I woke up a couple hours later.

Shit, I need to check on James.

Any rational mother's first thing is to say that out loud.

Yeah.

Instead of just being like, oh, wait, there's like a, oh no, I need a check on James.

Looks at camera.

Yeah.

I was a bit worried.

It had been over two hours and I haven't checked on him.

I went and stepped out into the backyard, but James wasn't there anymore.

I was getting nervous, so I called out to him, James!

James, where are you?

Wouldn't it be insane if like right now it was like, I look in the front row, James had been hit by a truck at the end.

Laughing Jack means nothing.

I think it's all just about neglectful parenting.

I was like, two hours is excessive.

To what, not check on a child?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Your five-year-old who's just like, I have an imaginary wind.

He's probably just in the backyard, like, spinning his arms or something.

so

carry me jack

i heard a giggle from the front yard i rushed through the gate around the front of the house james was sitting on the sidewalk i breathed a sigh of relief and walked over to him

james how many times have i told you to stay in the back yet

james

what are you eating

James looked up at me, then reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of hard candies in all colors.

This made me very...

I forgot.

Gosh, parts of the story are coming back to me as I remember them.

Like, I just remembered where the candy goes later in the story.

This is so insane.

Okay, this made me very nervous.

James,

who gave you that candy?

James just stared at me, not speaking.

James,

please tell mommy where you got that candy.

Laughing Jack gave it to me.

My heart sunk.

I kneeled down to look him in the eye.

James, stop saying his name.

Yeah, she keeps using the foot.

Like, that's what mothers do.

James, I've had enough of the damn Laughing Jack thing.

He's not real!

Now this is a very serious situation, and I need to know who gave you the goddamn candy

I Can see my son's eyes tear up

But mama

Laughing Jack did give me the candy

I Just this is so funny because I remember being a child and reading this like this is the scariest thing I've ever seen.

Scrolling like

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.

James had never lied to me, but what's he telling me is impossible.

I made him spit out the candy and I throw the rest away.

James appears to be fine.

Maybe I'm just overreacting after all.

He could have gotten it from Tom and Linda from next door, Mr.

Walker down the street.

Worse.

So much creepier.

Mr.

Walker.

Who gave this to me?

Mr.

Walker down the street?

You're like, oh my god.

This immediately becomes much more creepy.

I have to call the police now.

Either way, I'm going to have to keep a closer eye on James.

That night I put James to bed as usual and decided to go to bed early myself.

Suddenly, I was woken by a loud band coming from the kitchen.

I sprung out of,

it's like a heavy metal band, just in the house.

I sprung out of bed and hurried down the stairs.

When I got to the kitchen, I was horrified.

Everything on the counters had been thrown on the floor, and our dog Fido hung dead from the line picture.

Just straight uphill.

Oh my gosh.

I was kind of thinking to myself, like, who else isn't that over the side?

And then, bruh, like, oh.

Our dog Fido hung dead from the light fixture.

Does that bring back any memories?

Oh, God.

You know what actually made me think of was in the Urban Spook episode with the baby flying on their light.

So now I'm just thinking of the dog being like,

the baby.

Now, the funniest part about the Urban Spook was is like there's a mention of the ceiling fan spinning with a baby on it.

So I imagine it like fully pulled out to the side like oh it's fast.

Yeah yeah.

Yeah.

His stomach was cut open and stuffed with candy.

There it is.

The same type that James was eating earlier that day.

My shock was quickly broken by a sharp scream coming from James's room followed by loud crashes.

I quickly grabbed a knife from the drawer and moved up the stairs with the speed only whose, oh, only whose child is in danger danger could have okay only a mother i imagine yeah only mothers can go this fast

sorry olympics i burst through the door and flicked on the lights everything in the room was knocked over and tossed on the floor my poor son in his bed crying and shaking with fear pool of urine staining the sheets oh my god i pissed myself

i scooped I scooped up my child and ran out of the house and went next door to Tom and Linda's house.

Luckily, they were still still awake.

They let me use their phone and I called the police.

The boy that's written is funny, like, Tom and Linda, you'll remember them from the candy mention earlier.

It didn't take them long to arrive, and I explained what happened.

They looked at me as if I were crazy.

They searched the house, but all they found was a dead dog in two trashed rooms.

The officer...

Nothing to see here.

Okay.

A disemboweled dog with candy in it.

Yep, it's a normal Tuesday.

Well, I guess that's just what it is.

The officer had told me that someone had probably gotten into the house and done this right before making a quick escape when they heard me coming up the stairs.

Yeah, one of those dog disinvalues.

Oh, wait, I was right.

Yeah, he said disembowel, did they not?

Did they not use the word?

Hold on.

No, no, no.

Hang it.

You're high.

It'll happen.

Just wait.

Shut up.

I knew it wasn't true.

All the doors were locked and none of the windows were open.

Whatever was in my house didn't come from outside.

The next day, James stayed inside.

I didn't want him to leave my...

I only think this is him looking out the window.

But I want to go outside.

I went into the garage and found his old baby monitor and set it up in his room if anything comes in at night.

I was going to be able to hear it.

I went to the kitchen and grabbed the largest knife from the drawer and put it on my nightstand.

Imaginary friend or not, I'm not letting anything hurt my little boy.

I like that.

Soon enough, night came.

I put James to bed.

He was afraid, but I promised him that I wasn't going to let anything happen to him.

I tucked him in, gave him a kiss, and turned on the nightlight.

Before closing the door, I whispered to him, Good night, James.

I love you.

I tried to stay up as long as I could, but after a few hours, I felt myself drifting off.

My baby would be safe for the night, and I needed to sleep.

Just as I lay my head on the pillow, I heard a soft noise come from the baby monitor I'd put on my nightstand.

At first, it sounded like interference, like the kind of a radio would make.

Then it turned into a soft moan.

Was James asleep?

What?

A soft moan.

Keep going.

Then I heard it.

We're not going there.

Then I heard

the laugh from my nightmare, that horrible laugh.

I sprang up from the bed and grabbed the knife from under my pillow.

I rushed over to James' room and creaked the door open.

I tried the light switch, but it wouldn't come on.

I took a step in, and I could feel the warm, thick liquid on my feet.

Suddenly, James's night light came on, and I could see the absolute horror laid out in front of me.

James's body was nailed up on the wall.

Something funny, Hunter.

The nail piercing through his hands and feet.

Oh, I forgot he was crucified.

Fucking little James is being crucified right before I...

Mama, why?

Mama is a woo!

His chest was cut wide open and his organ sung down to the floor.

That's basically disemboweling.

His eyes and tongue had been removed along with most of his teeth.

How much time did he have?

I was disgusted.

Were you?

Crucified in his

gross.

That's what she said.

James.

Oh, my God.

I could hardly believe this was my baby boy.

Then I heard it again, the soft, desperate moan.

James was still alive.

Oh, my God.

My baby.

I like the guys who are like, woo!

My baby.

My poor baby.

In so much pain and barely clinging to life.

I ran across the room and vomited on the floor.

Jesus!

But my sickness was interrupted by a horrible cackle coming from behind me.

I spun around while still wiping boy.

It's supposed to be wiping, it says whipping bile from my mouth.

Then, out of the shadows, emerged the fiend responsible for all this horror, laughing Jack.

His ghost white skin,

His ghost white skein

and matted black hair

and matted black hair hung down to his shoulders.

He had piercing white eyes surrounded by dark black rings.

His twisted smile revealed a row of sharp jagged teeth and his skein didn't look like skin at all.

No!

It almost looked like rubber or plastic.

He wore a patchy black and white clown outfit with striped sleeve and socks.

His body itself was grotesque.

His long arms hanging down past his waist and the way he was poised made him look almost boneless like a ragdoll.

He let out a sickening laugh as to let me know he was pleased with my reaction to his work.

Oh my god.

He then turned around slowly in front.

Why did you say it for that?

Well, just, I think he's like, he's like, heh heh.

Oh, I thought you were like, the nerve.

Like, that's what got you.

The laugh.

You know what?

I'm going to go with that one.

All right.

I like that better.

How dare you?

Laughing jacket.

Uninappropriate.

He then turned around slowly in front of James and began to laugh even more at the horrific sight he had laid out.

That was enough to shake me from my terror.

I snapped.

Get away from him, you bastard.

I rushed at the monster, raising my knife above my head and stabbed him.

But as soon as the knife touched him, he disappeared in a cloud of black smoke.

It's like a vampire.

The knife passed through and pierced James still beating heart.

Mama, no!

Splashing the warm blood on my face.

No, what have I done?

My baby, I killed my baby.

I immediately fell to my knees, and I could hear the sirens in the distance.

Where's the police coming?

That's every one of them.

Tom and Linda.

That's one.

Yeah, Tom and Linda probably.

That is every one of these stories.

It's like Jeff the Killer did that.

Like, the beginning, like, he's just in his room, and the police are like, boo!

Like, I just know.

This is Jeff the Killer.

Yeah, it is a smile it is.

Yeah, all there.

There's a trend of all these, like,

like...

guys who like laugh or enjoy it or whatever like just mutilate children that was like a big thing around the time they just all copy pasted each other and then deviant art made them into like e-boys and like made weird artists

yeah yeah pretty much yeah yeah.

I immediately don't move that.

And I could hear the sirens in the distance growing louder.

My boy, my sweet baby boy.

I promised mommy would.

I don't like reading that.

I promised mommy would protect you, but I failed.

I'm sorry, James.

I'm so sorry.

It's okay, mom.

Police soon arrive to find.

Yeah, he has the knife sticking out.

He's like, It's really not that bad.

I think I'll be okay.

Police soon arrive to find me in front of my son, still wielding wielding the knife covered in my baby's blood.

The trial was short.

Insanity.

We're going to the trial!

Yeah, we're just skipping there.

Yeah.

God.

I was placed in the...

The fuck kind of Harry Potter shit is this?

The Ferobulus?

Jesus Christ.

You know what?

I promise you, this is what it is.

That is some obscure reference to some fandom or lore thing in 2012.

And he's like,

they'll like that.

The same shit that's like Arkham, like Arkham Asylum.

Yeah, if this is just where I'm like, I was placed in the Arkham, you know, asylum.

Arkham House.

Yeah,

sure.

For the criminally insane, where I've been for the past two months.

It's not so bad here.

The only reason I'm awake now is because someone is playing Pop Ghost the Weasel

outside my window.

I'll talk to the orderlies about it in the morning and the end.

You know what?

I'll give it having it become a,

you know, it's.

Do you think she just went insane and killed her kid?

That's got to be an idea.

You are giving it way too much credit.

You think so?

A skiing clown showed up in her bedroom, in the son's bedroom, crucified him, then turned into smoke, and she stabbed her child.

I see it more as a mother.

No, do not do this with this.

A mother looks at her kid, who's kind of a loser, and she's like, I really wish James was kind of fucking cool.

So she goes insane and she's like, stabby, stabby, bitch.

Oh, I don't want to go to the middle.

There we go.

So he just kills him.

No, no, stop.

Not for this.

Exactly.

Okay, so

with that, I'm not giving you any more floor with Laughing Jack.

I hope you all enjoyed that reading of Laughing Jack at least.

Thank you.

Thank you all so much for being here.

And with that, do you want to go ahead and get into the first story?

Enough of the bickering.

I'm ready to dive dive in.

Let's get into it.

So we'll go ahead and go on to the first one.

We've got.

Okay.

Hold on.

Oh, shit.

I forgot about this.

Did you do this?

I just.

Spoils.

You did this?

It's a lucky crack.

Okay, so this, at every show we've done, they've put stuff in the PowerPoint without telling me about it.

I was supposed to hit next and we were going to the first story.

So do you know what's going to pop up here?

I do.

If it's it's on the screen, can you at least read it?

Can you read it?

Phoenix?

You're going to want to see this.

I'm scared.

Uh-oh.

What did daddy do?

Am I right?

Were you just sitting around earlier and you're like, hey guys, guys, I've got a great idea.

That's right.

Okay.

All right.

We're going to the first story.

So our first story of tonight is The Tall Dog.

The Tall Dog is written by Elias Withero, who you all will know from both Tommy Taffy,

very mixed reaction.

No, no, no.

Everybody who's shaking their heads is bullshit.

All right, it's creepy stuff.

As well as Feed the Pig.

now the same person mind you who decided to throw the picture of us in the hot tub up Harry our guy uh in the back has assured me that the tall dog does not contain the elements that Tommy Taffy contained

however hold on hold the hold on however Harry loves to lie to me

Has done it a lot, so I wouldn't put it past him to be like, yeah, just read it on stage.

We have not read this yet.

Yeah, so this is a Phoenix first.

at the previous two shows.

We've done the same set list, and we're like, let's switch it up a bit, change the story.

So, any reactions we have to this thing are earnest, and I promise you, if something terrible happens, kill that guy who's in the back in the sound stage.

If we're going into hell, at least we're going in together.

We're going in together.

All right.

What's also really funny, I realized midway through this, there is a girl sitting at the very front up here who, on the way in, said, Hey,

my boyfriend dragged me here.

I have no idea who you two are.

She's like,

So

the whole time I was sitting up and like,

it doesn't contain the Tommy Taffy.

I mean, she's looking at me like, what are you talking about?

What is that?

Is that a sweet treat?

Don't worry about it.

It's fine.

So anyway, we're going to go ahead and get into the tall dog.

But with all that out of the way, are you ready to start creeping your cast?

Let's get it.

Let's get into it.

May we have the music.

We always expect life.

This is so weird because there's just eyes over the top of the screen.

I will say, yeah, I just.

I'm going to hold it a little bit more.

I just want to point out.

It is a lot of...

Usually we're on Discord during these calls and have you all this closest?

It's a fucking theater.

I could just hide and it's pretend they're not there.

There are one, two, three, four, five, six people, whatever.

Sure.

Be brave.

We always expect life to be easier than it actually is.

Why is that?

Why do we assume we are owed happiness?

Why do we act so surprised when things go wrong?

Is it the society we live in?

Society.

Why does society have to be so fucking cruel?

Can we talk about that for a second?

Thank you.

Was that a Phoenix accent?

What is a Phoenix accent?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Society is a bit cruel.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

Is it the false advertising that surrounds us at all times?

What are we going at?

Is it because of the things we watch or the books we read?

Why is tragedy always so shocking?

Life is a slog of disappointment and misery.

This is such a great first note.

I'm fucking depressed.

Sometimes we are graced with pockets of joy, brief respite from all the hardship.

In these moments, we feel like we have figured out what the purpose of our existence truly is.

Love, family, culture, travel, natural beauty.

But it's all bullshit.

Man, this guy.

What a great.

Thanks, Harry, for the suggestion.

Yeah, what a fucking wet blanket.

God damn, dude, ride a roller coaster.

Those fleeting hours of contentment are nothing more than a quick breath between breeding.

Watch out, ladies.

A A quick breath between beatings.

Thank you.

It's a ray of hope that gets stuck inside our minds like a cancer.

We hold into it, we beg for it, we scream for it.

During times of unbearable mental agony, but you can tell this guy wrote Tommy Taffy, having something to hope for is worse than if there was no hope at all.

Hope is a lie.

It's a disease that tricks our minds into thinking this painful reality is going to evaporate like a puff of breath on a cold wind.

And let me assure you, reality is a brutal, bloody corpse.

Someone went, oh, okay.

Now, you might be reading this and thinking, I'm not like this.

I have a good life, a healthy family, and I'm financially secure.

Let me tell you, I hope you enjoy your quick breath of clean air because there's a bomb falling over your head.

Did you write this?

I might have.

In a drunken stupor, I might have written this.

We were on the plane yesterday, and I look over, and he's like 18 pages into a Word document.

I'm like, what are you writing?

And he's like, nothing.

I tried so hard to write a creepypasta for this show and just

couldn't get it going.

Was this it?

Is this the opening of it?

Like, just being depressed?

I don't know.

You might not see it yet, but it's descending at a tremendous speed.

When you least expect it, it'll land and devastate your entire existence.

It will destroy everything you love, and it will leave you broken and weeping in the fucking gutter.

Why am I telling you this?

Why should you listen to me?

Because the bomb's already dropped on me.

The fallout's unbearable, and I can't seem to find a gasp of clean air in this toxic wasteland of life.

My throat burns, my eyes water, and I can't speak for fear of

tearing my silent throat.

My wife is dead.

Can we

hold on?

Pause!

Is it the story's called tall dog?

There has not been one dog mentioned yet.

No, no.

Can you imagine Marley and me playing out in this?

It's just Owen Wilson be like, oh my god,

holy shit.

I have

absolutely zero idea where this story is.

A dog shows up somewhere, unless it's a metaphorical dog or something.

No, fuck that, dude.

Give me a dog.

This This better be a big-ass dog.

Oh, do you?

Oh, hold on.

Are you?

Is there like perhaps, I don't know, maybe some trauma you have with a dog or like a memory?

Hey, hey, easy down on.

Okay, no, no, no, no.

No,

no,

I just want you.

Hey, I want all you fuckers to know that my mom is here tonight,

okay?

And she's pissed.

Where is she at?

Raise your hand.

Right there.

There she is.

Yeah.

I crawled forth from that woman.

So

just for the record, because this girl's very confused.

Yeah, she's like, what?

So just for the record,

did Grandpa Ernest shoot that dog?

Yes, he did.

Okay.

All right.

So you all witnessed it.

Thank you.

Can we get back to the dead wife?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

Please.

Back to the wife.

Bring the music back, yeah.

Instead of dead dogs.

She died a year ago and left me alone to raise our little girl, Heather.

Ugh.

Bad name.

Sorry, any Heathers in the house?

Raise your hand.

Oh, Yanks!

Frungstiner!

Just kidding, Heather.

Good name.

Heather.

Heather is all I have left.

She's the gas mask I struggle to hold on to.

She's the choked cries of desperation I emit from between bloody teeth.

Heather.

God damn.

This is the.

Okay, what are his two stories we love?

Tommy Taffy and Feed the Pig.

Do you remember the best part of Feed the Pig?

A like 10-minute description of someone being chewed to death.

That was sick.

Yeah.

So I imagine everything else is also gross.

He's like, I'm in a loving marriage, and he writes this.

Yeah.

Well, no, she's not.

She's my gas mask.

Well, he was in a loving marriage.

The daughter's his gas mask.

That's true.

That's true.

Did you forget the thing I read one paragraph ago?

I remember.

I have a bad memory, but I remember.

Hey, real quick, Hunter.

Every show he fucking does this shit.

I have been asking him questions about previous Creepcast episodes, and he has gotten one right so far.

Okay, Hunter.

What is the Creepcast episode?

No one say anything

that Mr.

Wellers comes from.

Oh, shit.

No one, no one.

Oh, fuck.

I actually don't.

Well, I remember Mr.

Willows sounds a little like Diaz.

And he's got a blood bank down the south.

Fuck, dude.

The showers?

Yes.

Oh, my gosh.

Whoa.

I thought you had completely memory-holed that story.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you remember any details about the story of the showers?

No.

Wait, wait.

The Victorian child who's just like,

crawling around the tunnel, right?

She had like the little fucking gas.

Yeah, they saw like a kid through the flashlight or something like that.

Yeah.

Do you remember why there were showers, why they were in a tunnel?

No.

Okay.

All right, that was all.

You know what?

That was actually insane.

I never would have thought Williams.

I was very excited.

Okay, I'll think of one to stump you in a minute.

I'm impressed.

Good job.

All right, anyway.

Quiz me again, bitch.

Heather is five now.

Good age.

We did.

To be five again.

Come on.

God, people are like, ah,

riding bikes.

Remember riding bikes when you were five?

Good time.

Yeah.

God, you sick fucks.

Well, I just, you're a YouTuber.

You have to be careful with, like, phrasing.

We did put the music back on, quick.

Yeah, quick, quick, quick, quick.

We did our best to recover from the pain of my wife's death.

A loss of a companion.

A removal of a mother.

I shudder to think my daughter has to face the bloody blade of life at such a young age.

She needs to be sheltered from it.

She needs protection.

For a while, I thought I was providing that.

But that was before...

That was before the nightmare started.

That was before the tall dog.

There you go.

There's your dog.

No.

I scrubbed sleep from my eyes, rolling in the darkness to check the clock.

3 a.m.

I groaned and pulled myself from the warmth of my sheets.

Heather was crying from her room, calling my name.

She must.

Please, I'll do anything for you to not do that.

Dad!

Please.

Pretty good.

That's pretty good.

Stop.

Okay.

All right.

Fuck me.

Yes.

She must have had a bad dream.

In a daze, blinking sleepily, I shuffled out of my room and down to hers.

The house was silent, and my feet scuffed over the cool hardwood floors.

Heather never has bad dreams, I thought, yawning.

Did I let her watch something scary before bed?

I entered her room, the space illuminated by a pink ballerina nightlight, and went to my daughter's side.

She was curled up in a ball with her hands over her face.

She was sniffling, and her pillow felt damped with tears.

Cooing, I scooped her up and told her everything was okay.

After she calmed down some, I asked her if she had had a nightmare.

She looked up at me with big, teary eyes and nodded.

She hugged me and asked if she could sleep in my bed.

I told her, of course.

It won't come in your room.

Dude, I'm playing a five-year-old girl.

I know, I know.

I'm doing my best.

That sounded like a 58-year-old man pretending to be a five-year-old girl.

It won't come in your room.

I don't like that character.

It won't come in your room.

I don't, sure.

Whatever makes you happy, I'm going to keep it.

I'm trying.

Okay.

I thank you.

Hey, Hunter.

I love you.

Thanks, man.

Every show I do that, someone's like, aww.

Heather asked me as I

picked both up off the bed.

I picked us up.

You can read it, what it says.

I paused.

Sweetie?

What are you talking about?

Are you...

Oh, wait.

I am.

Okay, you can do the...

I'm sorry.

Sweetie?

My little angel.

What are you talking about?

She wrapped herself tight around me and whispered, don't, don't.

The tall dog.

I hated that.

Oh my gosh.

That was the scariest thing that's happened on that podcast.

I didn't know what to make of it.

The phrase nonsense.

And so I told her there were no dogs coming into the house and that we were safe.

I felt her relax against me as I walked us back into my bedroom.

I laid her down in my bed and stroked her hair hair until I heard the soft snores of sleep.

I lay down next to her and exhaled heavily.

Sleep returned to me in a rush of heavy fatigue.

The next day, life resumed its predictable repetition.

I got Heather ready for school and then rushed to prepare myself for work.

I left her downstairs in front of the TV, happily munching on some toast as I scurried to shower and shave.

It was like this every morning, but I was used to the frantic pace.

As I threw my sports jacket on and bustled into the hallway to go downstairs, I paused.

I bent down and wet my thumb with my tongue.

I scrubbed it along the hardwood floor.

Why did someone laugh at that?

I scrubbed it along the hardwood floor, wiping away a streak of dirt that ran towards Heather's room.

I grit my teeth and reminded myself it wasn't a big deal.

She was five years old and couldn't be expected to remember to take off her shoes all the time.

Hold on a second.

I grit my teeth.

I had the same thought.

I was like...

It's a bit aggressive for a dad.

God damn, dude.

It's a good five-year-old.

She's not ready to go.

I like how he's calming himself down.

You know,

okay, I have to be careful how I bring this up.

Do you remember the joke in Tommy Taffy when we were talking about how he was like WWE slamming the child into the walls and stuff?

I'm very much aware, yeah.

Is that what the father does if like her shoelaces aren't tied?

It's like drops from the staircase.

Good parenting.

Standing, I hurried down the stairs and collected my daughter to begin our day.

I switched off the TV and grabbed Heather's pink Barbie backpack, asking her if she had to go to the bathroom before school.

When she said she didn't, I snatched the car keys off the kitchen counter and ushered her to the front door.

As I followed Heather out, I hesitated, my hand freezing before I closed the door all the way.

I stuck my head back inside and listened.

I could have sworn I had heard something from upstairs.

After a second, I shrugged and closed the door, locking it tight.

The day passed like so many before it.

The hands on the clock pushed forward triumphantly and finally announced the end of the workday.

Not long after, the trumpets of freedom were blown.

It was a bit dramatic.

I found myself at home once again.

He was a bit, dude.

He works at an enterprise car rental company.

He's like, the trumpets of freedom are blaring hot right now.

Didn't you work at Enterprise?

No.

Didn't you work at a car rental thing?

No.

I swear you've told me a story.

This is maybe somebody in your past life.

I don't know.

No.

Did you lie to me at some point?

You do that a lot.

Possibly.

Okay.

But that could be.

I still have no idea how old he is.

Yeah.

And he won't tell me.

46.

Okay.

I ordered pizza for us, a rare delicacy for my daughter.

What kind of a dad is he?

Does he even look at her?

You can't out-pizza the hut, sweetheart.

And Smith

throws her through the wall just like

every time.

I spent the evening watching children's shows on Netflix, not with his daughter, by himself.

Yeah, she was upstairs.

Well, you know how it works, sweetie.

You can't have pizza and cartoons.

Choose one.

I barely saw the images on the screen.

The fatigue from the day washing over me in heavy waves.

A stomach full of pizza didn't help either.

Heather shifted and snuggled into me, resting her head against my chest.

I smiled and kissed her shoulder, telling her that after this episode it was time for bed.

She put up her usual resistance, but I battled it valiantly.

That was something I had to learn how to do.

My wife had always been the one to say no and knew when to say enough was enough.

I was always the softy, allowing Heather to get away with a multitude of activities.

It was hard to say no to her, her big cute brown eyes rimming with innocent pleas.

My dad's heart melted every time and I would eventually cave, begging her not to tell her mother.

But after the brain tumbled, gosh.

After the brain tumor took my wife from us,

I had to learn how to balance my daughter's request with fatherly affection and parental standards.

I thought I had a reasonable balance.

With each passing day, I would discover another piece of the puzzle and take another step closer to becoming a functional single parent.

The crazy drops weren't like, that was before the accident.

I'm trying to just remain happy during this story.

It's really sad.

The fucking brain tour was another bullet in my chest, dude.

Yeah, just think of the, as he's saying this, he's like frisbeeing her through like a glass pane or something.

That makes you happy, right?

I'm a good dad.

I'm a good dad.

Yeah.

When the show ended, I told Heather to go upstairs and brush her teeth and get ready for bed.

Groaning, she obeyed and I began to pick up the kitchen.

I placed our place in the dishwasher and threw out the empty box.

I checked my watch and saw that it was almost 11.

I sighed, not realizing how late it had gotten.

Should have put Heather to bed two hours ago.

I exhaled.

It wasn't the end of the world.

After the kitchen was clean, I turned off all the lights and made sure the front door was locked.

Satisfied, I climbed the stairs and went to check on Heather's progress.

To my delight, I found her already in bed and asleep.

I went to her and gently kissed the top of her head, smiling to myself.

She really was a good girl.

Yeah, because you were not going to put her to bed, this dad, I swear.

I turned on her night light and closed her door behind me.

I went to my own room and prepared myself for bed.

As I slid into the cool sheets, I decided that tomorrow after school, I would take Heather to the park so she could ride her bike along at the community bike trail.

Content with my plans, I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

Darkness, haze, groggy.

I slowly peeled my eyes open in the black, head spinning.

Why was I awake?

What time was it?

I rolled over and looked at the clock, 3 a.m.

I blinked and closed my eyes, deep drowsiness filling my body like hard liquor.

Heather was crying.

I forced my eyes open again.

I realized now it was a sound effect, but there was a brief second of like, am I imagining that?

I think this place is just fucking haunted, dude.

I don't know.

Yeah, we're going to get done with the show, and Harry in the back is going to be like, oh, that was a great sound effect.

How do you guys do that?

That's why I was awake.

I pulled myself into a sitting position and scrubbed my face with the palms of my hands.

Why was she crying?

Another nightmare, or perhaps because dad keeps throwing her through the upstairs window

as I stood.

I prayed that this wasn't going to turn into a regular thing.

Your daughter's crying upstairs.

Heather, come on!

Dad's gotta get re- gotta get up real early in the morning and fucking rent out some Toyota Camrys.

Come on.

She's five.

This isn't like a 15-year-old who's like screaming every night.

It's a five-year-old, and he's like, I told her if it happens again.

I stumbled around in the darkness.

and pulled my door open.

I stepped out into the hall and paused, cocking my head toward the stairs.

I thought I heard something moving downstairs.

Another wave of cries from Heather's room forced me back into motion, and I shuffled down the hall and opened her door.

The room was bathed in soft pink light, the tiny ballerina illuminating the walls with her glowing body.

I went to my daughter and knelt by her bed, whispering softly that Daddy was here and everything was okay.

She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me tight, soft sniffles escaping her bubbling noise, her bubbling nose.

I stroked her hair and asked her if she had had another nightmare.

She pulled away and looked up at me, her eyes brimming with tears.

Yes, Daddy.

It was awful.

And

when I woke up,

I didn't like that.

She trailed off, struggling to get herself under control.

My eyes.

Are you being a five-year-old?

What is that?

Well, she's getting up.

Oh, I thought you were like whipping your hair back.

Maybe I am too.

Okay.

My eyes melted.

What is it, sweetie?

When I woke up and the tall dog was whispering in my ear.

That one was better.

Thank you.

Thank you.

She sobbed, collapsing.

I take it back.

I don't like this line of direction.

We are like 10 minutes into the show.

You gotta quit.

Collapsing against me.

I felt my stomach churn slightly.

Prickles of unease rose along my arms like tiny mountains of fleshy fear.

This was the second night in a row she had mentioned this tall dog.

I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, what it was, but it was clearly bothering her.

I don't know how to talk to her or anything, but I think she's upset about it.

Get used to the tall dog, sweetheart.

Would you?

Now daddy has to drink.

I wondered if someone at school had told her something or she had seen something scary on TV about a dog.

Whatever it was.

It was giving my daughter nightmares, and I needed to find a way to make it stop.

Suddenly, Heather squeezed my neck and I heard her gasp.

Before I could react, she buried her face against me and started sobbing even harder, her whole body shaking.

Confused, I pulled her off me, cuffed her face in my hands.

What is it?

What's wrong?

Heather pointed behind me towards the open door.

It just peeked around the corner and was looking at you.

Don't look at me.

I spun around, my heart thundering.

There was nothing there.

Of course there was nothing there.

Why would there be?

Putting a hand over my chest, I forced myself to settle down.

There's nothing there, honey.

It's just shadows.

It's late.

Do you want to sleep in my bed again?

Her eyes, that sound effect sounds like a train's gonna hit the building.

Her eyes remained locked on the open door as she slowly nodded.

I picked her up and rubbed her back as I walked us out of her room.

There's nothing to be afraid of.

She had just had a bad dream.

As I walked down the hallway, I paused in the darkness.

I looked to my right, down the stairs, down into the gaping maw of black.

Did I...

Did I hear something moving down there?

Heather squeezed me tight and whispered into my ear.

It's going into the basement.

Don't like that.

Oh, that's fucked.

You ever get scared by your spouse or just anybody?

You're just like, stop.

I would hate to have to say that to my child, but enough.

I remember there was one night where it was me and Kayla, and like

every now and then she'll sleep talk, and it's normally like, you know, nonsense or whatever.

And I remember it was one night right before she had some presentation, something she had to do the next day.

And she was sleep talking and it woke me up.

And I was like,

okay, she has a big day tomorrow.

I'll just try to, I won't wake her up to change it.

I'll just let her go to sleep.

And I curl up.

And like, as soon as I do that, she's like,

He's covered in chains.

And I'm like,

Okay, get up.

Like,

whatever you have tomorrow is not that important.

Who are you talking to?

Yeah,

I've had moments like that of things freaked me out.

This is kind of reminds me, honestly, tonally, it's a weird detail, but I picture myself in the same house I pictured the author in in Stolen Tongues.

Yeah, like, yeah, just out kind of the way that I'm going to be.

Where like his wife was like being possessed slowly, and he kept seeing like

he kept thinking there was something in the darkness downstairs.

Like the way the house is set up became that house in my mind as he's describing it it's like the same dark staircase the same like kind of void around the edges of the frame um

i'm i'm into this so far no it's been great other than the father being incredibly abusive i think no i'm kidding

no i'm i'm vibing with it so far as long as we don't get any tommy taffy elements i'm sold so I shifted her weight in my arms, her words sending a shiver of unease down my spine.

I told Heather there was nothing down there.

I brought her into my room and tucked her into bed.

I sat beside her and rubbed her head until she drifted off to sleep.

It took longer than it had the previous night, but once she was breathing easy, I went to my bedroom door and stepped out into the hall.

In the dead of night, when surrounded by heavy darkness, fear has a way of making monsters out of the shadows.

I forced myself to remain calm, reminded myself that I was an adult, and

went and stood at the top of the stairs.

I looked down, the enclosed staircase revealing nothing but the square black mouth at the bottom.

I listened, holding my breath.

Silence.

I shook my head, telling myself that I was being ridiculous, and went back to my room.

I closed the door and lay down next to Heather.

I stared at the ceiling, mind alert and awake.

I knew I wasn't going to be falling asleep anytime soon.

I pulled my phone off the nightstand and brought up the internet browser.

After taking a moment to think, I searched the term tall dog.

I scrolled through some dog show sites that popped up and finally found a link to a message form.

I clicked it.

I know this is going to be somewhere important, but it's very funny to me to imagine you typed in tall dog and saw like a greyhound and was like, of course, like this explains everything.

That dog is

tall.

She was right.

My heart skipped a beat as I read the question at the top.

My son keeps having nightmares and complaints about something called the tall dog.

Does anyone know what the hell this is?

It's happened three nights in a row.

It's driving me crazy.

Help!

He's being like attacked by the dog as he's typing that.

Oh my god!

The top answer sent a chill rocketing through my body.

It read,

Your son is telling the truth.

Give help!

The tall dog is real, and it will keep coming back.

It's attracted to deep sadness, and it won't leave your son alone until it gets what it wants.

It is very dangerous.

I know this sounds insane, but I'm telling you the truth.

I've come across others who have encountered this thing.

It is very real and very dangerous.

All right.

Well, okay, what a poll, first off.

For one, just a a Google search of tall dog.

The word tall dog, of which there's nothing else on the internet with those words in it.

Oh, you mean the ancient deity?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

You're talking about the old elder god.

Yeah, it gets him every day.

Oh, for sure.

Okay, so we're going to play Game Hunter.

You're dad.

Okay.

I'm a dad.

You're this dad.

Okay, you're the dad of Heather.

Just your wife named her.

I know you hate that name.

Sorry.

I don't hate it.

Okay.

You're right.

In this scenario, you don't.

So you have your daughter, Heather, and she keeps having dreams about the tall dog.

It's keeping you up at night, whatever.

And then stop making that face.

And then

you decide to search it, and you go on a message for it, and someone's like, My son's been going through this.

And then you see a reply that's like, get help, get help, quick, it's going to kill you.

Ah.

What's your first course of action?

I would believe it immediately.

Okay.

So what do you do?

What can you do?

I don't know.

Well, first of all, I feel like I would.

What's weird is they say get help.

How?

Get help.

I'd go to Ask Jeeves and I'd do

tall dog help.

I mean, if the last answer was so easy,

I would assume it means like religious of some kind, like a priest.

Oh, I wouldn't do that.

What would you do?

What am I going to go into in church?

Dude, I got the tall dog.

Well, he's like, oh my god,

I spooky.

I can't.

Gets out like a big book.

I can't even.

It toldo, I have no idea.

I can't even remotely think what accent that was.

Oh,

I'm an old Italian.

Oh, okay.

The Vatican.

Okay, so you're the Pope.

Kinda.

Okay, all right.

So

what I really am getting at is how many times have I asked this question before you just say, you'd abandon your your daughter?

Oh, very quickly.

Oh, extremely quickly.

I'd be like, well, sweetheart, I can make another.

The mom's dead.

Yeah, well, I can get a new wife.

Okay, yeah.

Just a clean slate.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, it was a good run.

Shake it.

Keep the house.

And I'd leave.

So do you just like abandon her at the house?

Oh, absolutely.

Okay, and you just drive away.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The exact same scenario you pulled on your fictional wife in Stolen Tongues, funny enough.

Correct.

You love abandoning women.

You know why?

Every time

it incites a new vacation.

I'm always going to tropical places when this happens.

So if anything, abandon the daughter, well, some just booked this ticket to Honolulu.

All right.

I keep getting married and having children so I can take two-week vacations periodically.

Easy peasy.

No, anyway, it's scary music.

Yeah, whatever.

I put my phone down and stared into the darkness.

My heart heart was racing.

This couldn't be true, could it?

It's funny to imagine it's just like one Reddit post.

Like,

man looks at one Reddit post, he's just like.

Every part of me wanted to write it off as a bizarre coincidence, but it was so specific that I couldn't.

What am I supposed to do with this information?

I thought.

This is crazy.

Stuff like this doesn't happen.

It doesn't exist.

Yet here I was, staring at a warning on my phone while my terrified daughter lay curled up next to me.

It was unnerving.

I turned on my side and stared at the closed bedroom door.

Just outside the door were the stairs leading to the ground level.

As I closed my eyes, I pictured something long and lanky, pulling itself up them, its snout dragging along the wood.

I forced the image out of my head and shivered.

There was nothing out there.

The next day, Heather didn't mention anything about the nightmares and I didn't ask her.

I wanted this to go away and bringing it up in the daylight didn't seem like it would help my cause.

I prepared her for school and got myself ready for work.

The guy whose face is right over the top of the monitor, when I was like, I didn't want to ask her about it, I just saw him go

like,

good call.

As we left the house, I realized just how tired I was.

The lack of sleep last night was taking its toll on me, and I made a mental note to stop and get more coffee after I dropped Heather off.

While I drove, my mind wandered back to the message board warning.

In the daylight it seemed a little silly.

I pushed the fear back into the corner of my mind and scolded myself internally for being so irrational.

I reminded myself again that I was an adult and didn't believe in monsters and things that go bump in the night.

After I dropped Heather off, I went and got another cup of coffee and then drove to work.

My brain accepted the caffeine gratefully gratefully, and as I sipped on the steaming liquid, I pondered what my wife would make of the whole thing.

She'd probably say I was being stupid and to man up.

I see now why he's such a mean guy.

It's a cycle that was in the household.

Honey, the doctor keeps having these nightmares.

You ever thought about being a man about it?

Just man up.

You ever thought about

God damn?

This is an awful household.

Yes, Yes, dear.

The thought made me grin, and I suddenly missed her.

That was a good minute.

That was a bad follow-up mine, what you said.

Ha, she would yell at me, wouldn't she?

She was a bitch, yeah.

Eventually, I pulled into the office parking lot and began my day.

Being Friday, I was hoping I could leave a little early.

Chris morning air, a prelude to a possible beautiful day.

I still planned on taking Heather to the park.

I had hopes that the fresh air and sunshine would erase her nightmares, burning them away in a blaze of brilliance.

Well,

things didn't go as planned.

Go ahead.

I know my brain did the same thing.

Go ahead.

A little millennial smirk there.

Well,

things didn't go as planned.

Well, that did happen.

Irm, that just happened.

You're going to want to see this.

It's right behind me, isn't it?

Whatever, all the infants.

Yeah.

Halfway through the day, I got a call from Heather's school.

Knowing this daddy'd be like, I didn't answer it.

I didn't want to.

I sat dumbfounded as the principal told me I needed to come pick my daughter up.

When I asked why, he informed me that Heather had started biting her class.

God damn.

Well, it just, I have no idea how you're gonna respond to that.

It just changes like visually.

I was imagining like a very scared little girl and now it's like a piranha mouth like onion.

She like.

Started biting her.

She probably learned it from her mom

and wouldn't stop until a teacher forcefully pulled her off somewhere.

Like the teacher's got a foot in the other kid, like trying to rip him up.

She killed three other classmates.

It's brutal.

Also, classmates, more than one.

So they sat her back down.

They're like, don't do that again.

And she's like, it jumps at the next person.

Ah!

And immediately has to be ripped off.

Get back up and grab it.

How many kids were bit before they had to call the dad?

Oh, five.

Yeah, five.

Easy.

I closed my open mouth.

Shock erupting across my face.

There had to be some kind of mistake.

My daughter didn't do things like that.

Only her mother did.

The principal assured me that he was just as surprised as I was, but that she needed to be taken home for the day.

The other kids were scared of her, and the parents were being notified.

What?

The kids.

Dude, that was a pretty rational response.

Hey,

your kid was bit to death.

Hold on, no.

I was in like...

I had to pull him off.

Hold on.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I'm saying that, like, I was in the first grade.

I remember like a kid biting someone else.

And, like, one, like, kids get into a fight and bite someone, right?

And it's not...

Don't do that.

Don't do your whole, like...

You know, the school of werewolves.

Hello?

Is that your accident amino?

Oh, my God.

You know, the school of werewolves.

Come on.

What I was saying is, like, you're not afraid.

You're just like, that kid's weird, right?

The The kid that bites is weird.

How how terrifying is this five-year-old that they're calling parents and the kids are like scared and afraid and stuff like that?

They've had the phone prepped.

Yeah,

this is the girl that brings like tortilla chips and dips them in ketchup at lunch.

Yeah.

And all in like she had played she like she pretended she's like the pony girl.

Yeah.

Everybody had a pony girl at school.

Did anyone was okay.

Did anyone in here know a horse girl like slash wolf girl?

Okay.

Everybody.

I swear I heard someone say my wife was one.

Yeah.

married her.

Wow, that you that's gonna be battle up.

That's a weird car ride home.

I call her Heldago.

Was anyone in here...

You don't have to raise your hand.

I'm sorry that he did that to you.

Was anyone else in here, the pony girl or the wife?

Okay.

I see.

You're way too eager to admit that.

Great, I thought.

It'll be the single, I'll be the single dad with the violent child.

As soon as the thought popped into my head, I got angry with myself.

Who cares what they think?

I need to go see if my daughter's alright.

For the first time in the story.

Bullshit.

I informed my boss of the phone call and he nodded me out the door.

I thanked him and told him I'd make it up on Monday before bolting to my car.

As I drove, I tried to make sense as to the possible reason why Heather would act like this.

She wouldn't just do it.

One of the kids must have been picking on her.

One of them must have provoked her.

She wouldn't just start biting kids.

I sat at a red light, anxiously drumming my fingers against the steering wheel.

Something was going on with my daughter, and I needed to get to the bottom of it.

First, the nightmares, and now this.

Clearly, Heather was going through something, and as a responsible parent, I needed to find out what it was.

It's like he's trying to convince himself.

Could it not be the fucking brain tumor from her mom?

Or could it be like she's been having nightmares and he's driving like, I'm a good parent.

I'm going to say, don't do that or something.

Yeah, like, it's funny, the boss nodding him out the door, like, oh, his freak daughter did something again.

I grit my teeth.

He does that a lot.

As the light turned green and I gun the engine, I wondered if it had something to do with my wife.

Maybe.

Dead mom might.

That could, I'm not saying it is, but potentially could be a reason.

I missed mom.

Why?

You're like five.

Do you even remember her, idiot?

Stupid.

You know what?

No pizza tonight.

Wait, didn't I just buy you a fucking Nintendo Switch?

Hello?

Was your mom Mario?

Didn't think so.

Yeah, goddamn.

I wondered if this was Heather's way of coming to terms with her death a year later.

I felt my eyes suddenly well up and my knuckles turned white.

Oh, crying.

I thought he was getting mad.

I thought he was like, stupid kid.

It wasn't fair that she had been taken away from us.

What had we done to deserve such sadness?

What was going through Heather's young mind in the absence of her mother?

What could I do to fill that sorrow?

And I started to panic.

The creeping thoughts of Heather's upcoming teenage years.

What if this was the end of our good relationship?

What if she started blaming me for her mom's death?

Okay, I knew she was only five, but time has a way of preserving deep hurt and forming scars that never heal.

I realized how much I needed to be there for my daughter in these early years,

for the first time, these crucial developmental times.

how I acted could make her break the way she viewed everything.

I'm a father?

I have to do stuff?

As the thoughts scrambled my mind, I pulled into the school parking lot and was slammed with a realization that chilled me to the bone.

I remembered the message forward warning.

The tall dog is attracted to deep sadness.

You're just now remembering this.

I shook my head.

No, don't start going down that road.

That's insane and there's no such thing.

She's forming waking nightmares in order to deal with what she's she's going through.

Skilling myself, I ran into the school.

Before I knew it, I was sitting in the principal's office listening to him apologize for making such a big deal out of this and that it was more for the other kids than for Heather.

I barely heard him, nodding as his words washed over me in ways of numb noise.

Finally, a teacher led Heather into the room and I scooped her up into a big hug.

I kissed her on the cheek and saw that she had been crying.

I told her I loved her and that we were going to go home.

She nodded silently at me, her big brown eyes filling with tears.

I told the teacher and principal that I was sorry for the incident and assured them it wouldn't happen again.

They both smiled and thanked me, but I saw something else behind their masks of public decency.

Judgment.

They saw me as a single father with no idea how to raise a little girl.

They saw a struggling man with no answers.

They saw someone who had lost his wife and was still finding a way to live without her.

No, dude.

They saw a fucking monster biting other kids.

well it's funny way to also make the situation about yourself entirely so what I guess I'm the bad guy it's like there's dry blood all over a mouth

this is all about me now yeah

I like the idea too I know we made it up but I can't get the image out of my head of him like throwing her through the house periodically So the daughter's like has cuts and like a cast and everything.

And he's like, I wonder what the parents think of me.

You must think I'm a real monster.

I suddenly got angry.

A spike of adrenaline coursing.

I know he's angry at the other teachers, but it's funny to imagine he's like, You're going through the window again.

A spike of adrenaline coursing through my bed.

This must be so weird for people who are dragged here and don't know the show.

Like, do they joke about debt, like, abuse children all the time?

And yeah, this is that fuck them, ask the person, ask the person who you came here with.

This is incredibly light compared to the normal run.

Ask them what Baraska is on the way home and see what they say.

But I kept my mouth shut.

I turned and left, hugging my daughter to me

as I stormed out of the school.

I didn't know if it was righteous anger or embarrassment, and I didn't care.

They had no idea what I had gone through.

what I was dealing with.

Who were they to judge me?

I put Heather in the car and drove us home in silence.

I fought to get myself under control.

I reminded myself that this wasn't about me.

You had to remind yourself it was about my daughter.

She was the one who needed help.

She was the one who needed loving support.

Why are you telling yourself this?

We eventually arrived home and I checked my watch.

It was almost four.

I abandoned the idea of going to the park and instead set Heather down on the couch.

I placed myself next to her and told her I needed to talk to her about what happened at school.

Sweetie, are you doing okay?

I asked gently, gauging her mental state.

She looked at her hands and nodded.

I cleared my throat.

I was always so bad at this.

Is it true you bit those kids today?

I saw her lip quiver, and she slowly nodded without looking up at me.

I smiled.

Honey,

you can't bite.

You know that, right?

Why did you bite those kids?

She shrugged again, and I saw a tear roll down her cheek.

Be brave, I told myself.

You can't back out now.

Were you mad at them?

Did someone say something mean to you?

She put one hand in her pocket and slowly shook her head, eyes still downcast.

Heather,

can you look at me?

She turned her eyes to mine and I saw she was crying openly now.

She kept fidgeting in her pocket.

Can you promise me you won't do it again?

More

he's getting mad.

More tears ran down her cheeks and she cried out.

I'm sorry, Daddy.

I'm really sorry.

I did not like that.

Good lord.

I leaned down and kissed her on the head.

It's okay, honey.

I know you're a good girl.

Daddy loves you.

Just please don't bite anyone again, okay?

She's...

It's not, I know it's not like anything like weird or anything in the story it's reading, but I just it kills me to hear Hunter say things sometimes

while we were in New Orleans he had

an uninterrupted 10-minute fight with two of his own different characters

Like we were in the car and he was doing two separate bits and then one of the bits overheard the other bit

and they were yelling at each other.

Why are we talking about personal shit right now?

I just I just it just I just need someone else to understand what it's like every day.

I finally noticed and patted her leg.

What's in your pocket, Heather?

You have something you want to show me?

She suddenly looked embarrassed and shook her head.

But I prodded her and after some coaching, she finally pulled out a handful of brown nuggets.

Hold on.

I blinked, wondering why my daughter was carrying around a pocket full of dirt and then my heart slammed so hard against my rib cage I thought it would break try to keep my voice under control

Is is like dog food?

Oh, that makes so much more sense.

Okay,

I was like

I thought it was crap.

I thought she had it.

I was like she's like I made Dookie

She starts barking at him.

She balled her fist up and hugged the nuggets to her chest, staring at her feet that dangled from the edge of the couch.

Where did you get that?

I felt a dist.

Was that in there?

Oh, you went.

Okay.

Give me time.

Sorry.

I felt a deep disturbance roll over me now.

I found them.

What?

No,

we're not there yet.

Where did you get that?

What?

Look at the screen.

Turn around.

Oh, shit.

That's different than all it's on paper.

Okay.

Where'd you get that?

Okay,

under her breath.

I found them.

Okay, thank you.

You can keep going.

I'm just making sure.

And

what are you doing with them in your pocket?

A flurry of nerves fluttered in my chest.

Heather looked up at me.

They taste good.

Gross bitch, dude.

My girl's eating pedigree.

All right.

We were a little harsh on the dad for throwing her through the.

Oh, justified immediately.

But now I get it.

I think it's totally fine to abandon your child in this sense.

Thank you.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

I misjudged you.

I forced myself to breathe and held out my hand.

Why don't you let me hang on to those and I'll make us an early dinner, okay?

Reluctantly, she handed over the nuggets and I plastered a smile to my face.

I asked her if she wanted to watch some TV while I made dinner and she offered me a small grin and nodded sheepishly.

As I turned on her shows, I fought with the voice screaming in my head.

Something was going on here.

Something really, really awful was happening to my daughter.

I didn't know what exactly, but the past couple days seemed to mark a turning point in her behavior.

I started preparing dinner, begging myself to stop overreacting, but I couldn't shut it out.

The nightmares, the tall dog nonsense, the biting, and now she was eating dog food.

I didn't know what to do.

Didn't know what to say to her.

I wanted to ask her about her mom, ask her if she had been thinking about her recently, but I was afraid to.

I didn't want to open up a wound I couldn't close.

I didn't want to deal with the trauma of her dead mom, so I just never mentioned it.

What if she started asking questions I couldn't answer?

What if her behavior got worse?

I began to wonder if I needed to take her to see a therapist.

Yes.

As she thought and as the thought entered my mind, I violently slammed the door on it.

There was nothing wrong with my daughter.

She was just a vibrant little girl who had a few nightmares and bit a couple kids.

So what?

When I was her age, I'm sure I did things much worse and turned out, quote, fine

What the fuck is this guy doing?

He's like I did a lot of pain

Yeah, like the dad's talk it's gonna come out.

It's like well the reason the daughter's mad is because I actually killed her mom and said it was a tumor

Yeah, like and she won't get over it Yeah, this dad's insane like she

I have a daughter who's going through a lot of complex like, you know, time in her life and she's understanding social dynamics and missing a mother.

Should I take her to a a professional?

No, because biting people and eating dog food really isn't that bad if you think about it.

Like, yeah.

I hope the dad dies.

Yes, but what is the raise your hand if you're in support of the dad dying?

Thank you.

Okay, all right.

I go there's a couple people that do raise their hands, they're just like

those were the plus ones.

I think today,

this isn't funny.

This is a very serious situation.

What does that mean?

I shouted internally at myself to stop thinking about it.

There's no such thing, and I needed to face the problems I could handle.

I finished making dinner in mental agony and prepared two plates.

I went to the couch and sat.

He's so mad all the time.

I went to the couch and sat with Heather, both of us eating in silence as cartoon images danced on the screen.

When I woke up, the tall dog was whispering in my ear.

Alright.

I grit my teeth, he does that all the time, around my food.

I wasn't thinking about this bullshit anymore.

Okay, hold on.

What was that?

What does it mean the tall dog was whispering?

Like, he was thinking about it?

It's got to mean like you were thinking about it when you were.

Yeah, like he could get out of his head.

Not that literally there was a whisper.

Okay, all right.

Yeah, that's better.

That's much better.

I thought something was whispering in his ear, and he was like,

Well, that's a little strange.

But hey, when I was her age,

I crawled into into bed mentally exhausted it had taken me forever to get Heather to sleep she had begged to sleep in my bed but I told her no and I'd keep my door open in case she woke up scared and wanted to start forming bad habits that's your concern right now

I rested my head against my pillow and stared out into the dark hallway from the crack in my door I shut my eyes and said a silent prayer that Heather would sleep through the night Maybe then all this would be over.

She would go back to being the little angel I knew she was.

Then she'd go back to acting the way I want her to.

I didn't want to continue down this road of brintal speculation and continue assuming that every little bad action was a foretelling of a bleak future for her.

That's right, so you should just ignore it.

I let out a long breath and waited for the gentle arms of sleep to rock me into the world of dreams.

Didn't take long.

My eyes snapped open, bloodshot and wide.

I was soaked in sweat.

The horrific nightmare still clinging to my brain with razor-sharp claws.

I rolled onto my back and wiped sweat from my face.

I swallowed hard and waited for reality reality to clear away the cobwebs of slumber.

My heart was racing and I put a hand over my bare chest, willing it to slow.

My wife.

I'd been dreaming about my wife.

She had been in a hospital bed, screaming my name and clutching her head.

I had been beside her, crying, begging her to tell me what was wrong, but she just kept screaming.

I began to scream for a doctor, and that's when I realized all the lights in the hospital were off and no one was in the halls.

I kept screaming for help, pleading with my wife, until I finally heard a noise.

From the blackness of the hall, a doctor in a bloody lav coat came crawling into the room on all fours.

His eyes were wild and he started barking at me.

That's sick.

His mouth foaming.

I backed away from him, shock and terror rising in me like a dark mountain.

The doctor lunged at me, teeth bared.

And that's when I woke up.

I pulled my hands across my face, forcing the images from my head.

What a horrible nightmare.

I I realized my stressed mind was probably mixing all my current worries into a terrifying nighttime cocktail, sneaking up on me and pouring it down my throat while I slept.

I looked over at the clock, 3 a.m.

I snorted eyes wide

just real quick.

Eyes wide, grateful that at least it was me instead of Heather who had woken up tonight.

If I could take her fears from her, I would gladly.

I just needed to be careful I didn't end up burning myself out.

As I rolled on my side to face my door, I heard something from from downstairs.

Immediately, my mind exploded into alertness, the nightmare fear still fresh on my breath.

I lay in silence, ear cocked and listening, my heart racing.

There.

It sounded like something was walking around.

Get up.

You have to get up, I thought, fear tingling my stomach.

It's probably nothing.

It's probably the house settling.

Maybe Heather got up for some reason or sleepwalking.

In which case I, as a father, will not investigate further.

I pulled the covers off me and swung my feet over the side of the bed.

I jumped as I heard more movement.

What is going on?

Tense and terrifyingly nervous, I crept to the door.

I paused, staring out into the empty hallway.

I didn't hear anything.

I slowly opened the door and went out into the hallway.

Something was making noise at the bottom of the stairs.

I balled my sweaty hands into fists and steeled myself.

The house was impossibly dark, every corner filled with grinning

black.

The floor underneath my feet creaked as I slowly edged myself over the top of the stairs.

I looked down.

Something was looking back up at me.

I stifled a scream, terror clinching my throat like an iron grip.

My eyes bulged and my breath rushed from my lungs in a wave of cold fear.

It was long and slender, its hairless body a sickly gray.

It looked like a dog, but it was greater in length and bone thin.

Its snout pointed up at me from the foot of the stairs, easily two feet in length.

Its eyes were completely wide and swollen in their sockets like floated marshmallows.

It was on all fours, its front two legs resting on the first two steps.

As it gazed up at me, it began to pull itself upright.

My knees turned to liquid, and I watched in absolute horror as it rose to stand on two legs, its head towering towards the ceiling.

Its neck was long, too long for a dog, and it snarled at me, its mouth full of black needle-like teeth.

It started slowly walking up the stairs towards me.

I backed away in frantic desperation, unable to comprehend what I was looking at.

I tripped over my own feet and fell, not able to tear my eyes away from the advancing monstrosity.

As it neared the top of the stairs, it crouched back down on all fours and I saw its swollen white eyes pulsing with excitement.

I tried to scream but found that I didn't have the breath.

It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen, and every alarm in my head was blaring with furious urgency.

I scooted backwards with my hands into the safety of my room and stood, grabbing the door and slamming it shut in one violent gesture.

I stood with my back against the wood, sucking in hungry lungfuls of air.

What the hell was that thing?

What was it doing in my house?

Where had it come from?

Heather, now he thinks about it, sir.

Oh fuck, I have a dog.

Oh no.

I pressed my ear to the door and heard footsteps pad down the hallway toward Heather's room.

Thank God, maybe it'll go for her and I'll be safe.

Please, please.

I scrambled in the dark for some kind of weapon.

I grabbed my discarded work pants that were lying in a pile of the floor and slid the belt from the loops.

I wrapped it around my knuckles, turning the buckle outwards.

Yeah, bro.

I appreciate the dedication, but I'm sure you can punch this thing to death.

I went to the closed door and took a deep breath.

I couldn't let that thing hurt my daughter.

I opened the door and stepped out into the dark hall.

My eyes scanned my surroundings, but I didn't see it.

I knew it had to be in Heather's room.

I cautiously crept down the hall, ears trained to pick up any sound of the creature.

Heather's door was wide open, and a faint pink light drifted out from the inside.

I entered her room and froze.

The monster, the tall dog, was on all fours by Heather's bed.

Its snout was inches from her ear, and its mouth moved rapidly, but I couldn't hear any noise.

It was like it was speaking directly into her dreams.

Heather's eyes were shut, but she had begun to stir, soft cries escaping her lips as the tall dog silently filled her mind.

Suddenly, it realized I was in the room and whipped its head around.

Its eyes seemed to vibrate in their sockets, thick white pus leaking from the gelatinous milky scleras.

It silently bared its teeth at me, its mouth filled with sharp, ebony darkness.

I took a step back, feeling my throat tighten, and gripped the belt harder in my hand.

I needed to get it away from Heather.

My heart was seizing in my chest and my back was coated in a cold layer of sweat.

I forced my knees to lock and I licked my dry lips.

The tall dog turned away from the bed and rose up on two legs, towering over me.

Despite its appearance, it didn't move like an animal.

Its balance was perfect and its legs and muscles twisted and flowed with the confidence of a human.

What do you want?

Would it have been that calm?

Hey, whispered.

Be more.

What do you want?

Thank you.

Okay, alright.

You were like, what?

Like you were annoyed by...

Not to kill the pacing, but...

Yeah.

Sorry.

Okay.

I'm still on the edge of my seat here.

Okay, alright.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I killed the moon.

Sorry, goes back.

Back in.

I whispered, holding my ground as a trickle of sweat slid down my face.

Then it leapt at me.

I screamed.

Okay, now I, you, bro.

Okay, whatever.

Raising my hands to protect my face as its long body crashed into mine.

I fell to the floor.

Its sinewy flesh pressed mine to the wood.

Its breath was hot on my face and stars exploded across my vision, my head bouncing on the ground.

With the energy battered out of me, I blinked back darkness and scrambled desperately, trying to get it off of me.

It pinned me where I lay, its powerful legs digging into my sides.

I looked up into its hideous face, and the white ooze pouring from its eyes dripped into my hair.

It leaned down and opened its mouth, its jaw parting to reveal rows and rows of black teeth.

I watched in horror as its throat began to open, folds of dark flesh parting like oil and water.

Then I heard my daughter screaming from deep down inside.

Daddy!

Daddy, help me, please!

Go in and take me!

Daddy, Daddy, please!

Heather's voice was shrill with panic and it sent waves of chilling terror through my body.

No, this wasn't happening.

That wasn't my daughter.

It couldn't be.

Please, God, no.

The tall dog snapped its jaws shut and I shoved it off me.

A surge of energy ignited my muscles.

It skittered on all fours towards the open door and I scrambled to stand, breathing heavily.

What did you do to her?

What have you done to my daughter?

The tall dog crouched and eyed me,

sniffing the air.

I waited for it to strike, waited for it to move.

This creature was going to kill me.

I knew that, but I was ready.

I stood my ground in the dim light, trembling, accepting whatever happened next.

Instead of charging me, though, it turned away and sprinted down the hall.

In shock, I listened to it crash down the stairs and onto the ground floor.

More footsteps followed then faded as I realized that it was gone.

leaving me shaking in horror.

I turned to Heather, who lay motionless on the bed.

I threw the belt onto the floor and went to her side, prayers flowing from my lips.

Tears leaked down my cheeks as I grabbed Heather and lifted her head to rest on my lap.

Her eyes were closed and her body was still.

Please.

Please, God, I'm begging you.

No, no, no.

Heather, baby, my angel, wake up.

Daddy's here, please, sweetie, wake up.

I shook her, pleading, drool mucus bubbling from my face as reality tore my exhausted brain in two.

Suddenly, her eyes flickered and then she opened them.

She stared up at me, blinking rapidly as if she wasn't sure where she was.

I let out a cry of raw relief and hugged her tight against me, more tears pouring from my eyes.

I sobbed, rocking back and forth on the bed, clutching her to my chest.

I thought I had lost her.

I thought she'd been taken away from me.

And then Heather began to bark.

Oh, fuck.

Oh, fuck.

My blood, it's a testament to this story that that the reaction to that wasn't as much laughter as it was like, aww.

My bloodshot eyes widened and I pulled her away to look at her face.

Her eyes roamed around the room curiously and her tongue lolled from the side of her mouth.

Drool leaked from her lips as she sat on my lap, panting.

She finally looked up at me and let out a series of yaps, all signs of humanity draining from her eyes.

Ella, stop it, stop that!

Don't do that!

It's okay, it's gone.

It's gone, sweetie.

I cried out, shaking her.

her.

But she didn't stop.

She jumped from my arms and began to run in circles as if she were chasing an imaginary tail.

She stopped and cocked her head at me, shouting a sharp bark as if she wanted me to play with her.

I sat on the bed, watching her, and gritted and gripped my face with sweaty hands.

I began to scream.

Heather will never be the same.

That night, I rushed her to the hospital and begged the doctors for help.

After examining her and bringing in a multitude of specialists, they informed me that she wasn't in control of her mind any longer.

They told me she would never regain it.

Something had been taken from her that couldn't be replaced or repaired.

I don't know how long they ran tests on her as I desperately expended all my options, desperate to try anything.

I couldn't imagine a life without her.

I couldn't imagine a life alone from her.

I wept and prayed until I had nothing left to offer.

Nothing changed, nothing helped.

I wondered if anyone even noticed.

You see,

life's an unflinching monster.

It doesn't care about you.

It doesn't take your side.

It simply is.

It took my wife away and opened up a wound in my daughter's mind.

A wound I didn't even have the courage to ask my daughter if it even existed.

Something horrible had caught the scent of that gaping wound.

Something had grown hungry for it.

It had entered our life and slipped into the gory cracks of my daughter's hidden, suppressed sadness.

It had replaced her mind with its own and had devoured the fractured remains of a confused and hurt psyche.

And I know I've lost Heather forever to it.

So now I stand here in the darkness over my daughter's bed.

I grip the pillow with shaking hands.

Oh,

tears roll down my face and I beg God to forgive me.

But whatever's laying in this bed, I know it's not my daughter.

Ooh, it's very good.

And that's the tall dog!

Woo!

Fuck, that was good.

That was really good.

Rough for a live show.

Sorry about that.

All the plus ones.

But no, I love that.

That was great.

I had so many inklings of Feed the Pig in there with the description of like, you know, whenever he gets into the pig actually eating the people, the way he describes the dog.

And, you know, it's...

Yeah,

I'll never forget the way in Feed the Pig, when he's actually being mauled to death, where it's like the wet bone pops from my leg.

Like,

adjectives like that do such a good job at describing the terror of it.

And there, when he's describing

the brutal depictions of of the dog with like the sharp teeth and things like that,

it just does such a good job at painting an image of it.

I really do like Elias' work.

I think he's a very talented author.

Everything I've read of his bothers me a little bit.

Yeah, it's hard because it seems like you could say that the dog is like a demon feeding on the sadness of people, but at the same time, it seems like he just likes making torture porn for people.

What do you mean?

Like in a way where the stories, it's just fucking miserable the whole time.

Oh, you're saying the author.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think,

yeah, I think, and that's not a discredit to him as a writer.

I think he likes the misery of it in the same way that, like, if you're writing like gore horror, the way you like the bloodiness of it, right?

So this stories like Feed the Pig, like Tommy Taffy, are like just someone like misery, misery, misery on top and on top.

And a lot of his outcomes are very brutal.

But I, I mean, I love that kind of thing.

There may be some people who know, I mean, heck, heck, you guys watch Creepcast, you probably like it at least a little bit.

Yeah.

But no, I like the brutality of it.

And the ending of the story is harsh, but it's like, part of me is glad it went through.

It's very, it's a very cold reality to it.

Yeah.

It is.

Honestly, I'll tell you right now, I would not raise a dog girl.

All right.

Would I take the pillow to her face?

Maybe.

I was about to be like, but you wouldn't, but okay, all right.

Well, tell on yourself there.

Not to keep drawing it back to like feed the pig, but like the way feed the pig, the ending realization was he had tried to take his own life and this was like his trial to get out of it basically uh it kind of reminds me here where like the end result is something that heavy um which some people may not like but i personally like i think it's great i think it's a fine for what did you all think of it

i've i like that one it's pretty good now i also understand it's a pretty heavy story i just hold on let me go to our logo I understand it's a pretty heavy story.

I understand that's something that a lot of you may be like, well, that was rough or whatever.

Admittedly, at the previous two live shows, we would open with Goatman, which is a much, much lighter tale

with just a bunch of teenagers being very stupid in the middle of the woods.

So everyone else got like a light kind of intro.

You guys got the heavy one.

You're welcome.

But I feel like you guys deserve a bit of a palate cleanser.

Oh, yes.

So for our second story, we have.

Appropriate response.

So you've heard of it.

Raise your hand if you're familiar with this one.

Okay, about half, I think.

Raise your hand if you didn't just raise your hand and you also came here as a plus one.

Okay, yeah, that's why.

There we go.

A lot of people in the back, they're just like, fucking me, dude.

I'm a total Sonic the Hedgehog fan, much like everyone else.

Hey, hey, hey, who the fuck is it?

I like one guy.

Woo!

This is from like an age on the internet where people, this is like around the time of Jeff the Killer, around the time of like Laughing Jack, stuff like that.

Like people were just coming up with these quick horror stories about anything and then uploading them.

And much like Eyeless Jack that we read on there, you can probably guess most of these were made within like an hour.

Sure.

Right.

So that, just know that going in.

Anyway.

But I don't mind playing the classics.

I don't think I've ever played glitchy or hacked games before, though I don't think I want to play any after the experience I had.

I started on a nice summer afternoon.

I was playing Sonic Unleashed.

I liked how you get to explore the towns in it.

Thank you for that.

Until I noticed, out of my peripheral vision, that the mailman had arrived and put something in my mailbox as usual and left.

See, what's funny is I've never played Sonic games, so in my head, it's like a human mailman that's like not digital, like a live-action man walks up, and the kid's like, well, that's kind of weird.

I paused my game to go see what I got in the mail.

Oh,

I'm not going to, I thought I fucked up for a second.

I was like, I was like, I thought this was a real guy.

I don't know.

Is this a blue fucking animal walking around delivering mail?

I have no idea.

I thought, okay, I thought.

Oh, no, he's gaming.

He's like.

He's gaming.

And out of his actual vision.

He

walks up to the door.

Okay, well, the way it was written, I was playing and I noticed out of...

Okay, whatever.

Sure.

Sure.

Sure.

That my bad.

I thought that a mailman.

Okay.

I got the mail.

The only thing in the mailbox was a CD case for computers and a note.

I took it inside.

I looked at the note first and realized it was from my dear friend Kyle.

R.I.P.

Kyle.

Let's just call him that.

Whom I hadn't heard from in two weeks.

I know that because I recognized his handwriting.

Though, what was weird is how it looked.

It looked badly written and scratchy and somewhat difficult to read, as if Kyle was having a hard time writing it down and did it in a hurry.

This is what he wrote.

Tom,

I can't take it anymore.

I had to get rid of this thing somehow before it was too late.

And I was hoping you'd do it for me.

I can't do it.

He's after me.

Fucking sonic is after him.

And if you don't destroy the CD, he'll come after you too.

He's too fast for me.

He's too fast for me.

Let's go.

I'm pulling.

Please, Dom!

Destroy this God-forsaken disc before he comes after you too.

It's too late for me.

Destroy the disc and you'll destroy him.

But do it quick, otherwise he'll catch you.

Don't even play the game.

It's what he wants.

Just destroy it.

Please, Kyle.

I like how he's just like, seriously, you are going to want to play this.

Destroy it.

Do not.

Don't play it.

You got to destroy it.

Don't play it.

Destroy.

Don't play.

One more time.

The biggest, and I don't want to, I don't want to ruin the pace either.

You're really going to kill the pace.

No, no, no.

This is art.

The biggest anomaly in my life is finding out why the fuck people are so dedicated to the sonic fandom.

So to me, this read is legitimate when he's just like, you're going to want to

pop this bad boy in quick.

But don't do it.

And the guy's like, what do you mean, don't pop it in quick?

I always pop it in quick.

You know, so I'm hooked.

I'm bought in right now.

That's what I want to say.

All right, you're locked in.

Well, that was weird.

Irm,

even though Kyle is my best friend and I haven't seen him in two weeks, I didn't do what he asked me.

Hell yeah.

I didn't think.

Yeah, Kyle said three times destroyed, and he's like, eh.

I don't fucking think so, Kyle.

I didn't think that a simple gaming disc would do anything bad to him.

After all, it's just a game, right?

Boy.

was I wrong about that?

Anyway,

I looked at the disc, and it looks like any ordinary computer CD

CD-R disc, except it had a black marker on it written sonic.exe.

And it was much unlike Kyle's handwriting.

Meaning that he must have gotten it from somewhere else, like a pawn shop or eBay.

The places you you get this.

When I saw Sonic on the writing of the CD, I was actually excited and wanted to play it.

God damn.

Since I'm a big Sonic fan,

this, you know, Kyle was right.

Kyle, I don't know why he had to send it to this guy, but he was like, I know he's stupid.

He's going to play it.

I better reiterate this.

I better say seven times.

And then he looks at him.

Sonic?

I'm a big fan.

I went up to my room and turned on my computer and put the disc in and installed the game.

When the title screen popped up, I noticed that it was the first Sonic game.

I was like...

Awesome!

Because, like I said earlier, I like the classics.

He has to keep telling us.

The first thing I noticed that was out of place was when I pressed start.

There was a split second when I saw the title image turned into something much different.

Something that I now consider horrifying before cutting to black.

What could it have been?

You have just like a man's gaping,

just like right there.

He's like booting it up.

He's like.

That's a different kind of ring, honey.

Don't.

Don't worry.

You're going to find out in just a second.

I remember what the image looked like in that split second before the game cut to black.

The sky had darkened.

The title emblem was rusted and ruined.

The Sega 1991 was instead Sega 666.

Oh no!

And the water had turned red like blood, except it looked hyper-realistic!

I love it!

So there's this thing

back in like early creepypasta culture where every story for some reason had to include a mention of hyper-realistic blood.

So in other words, you're looking at like a picture, but the blood in the picture is hyper-realistic.

His eyes were hyper-realistic.

Hyper-realistic.

Like Squidward Suicide did that.

The Ben Drown did that.

Like, all of them had some mention of hyper-realistic blood.

So this is our obligatory one for the story.

But the freakiest thing that was in that split-second frame was Sonic.

His eyes were pitch black.

And bleeding with two glowing red dots staring right at me.

And his smile

had stretched wider up to the edge of his face.

I was rather disturbed about that image

when I saw it, though I figured that it was just a glitch and forgot about it.

After

it cut to black, it stayed like that for about 10 seconds or so.

And then another weird thing happened.

The The save file select from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 popped up, and I was like, what the fuck?

What's this doing in the first Sonic game?

I, as a Sonic fan, know all the save files.

Anyway, then I noticed something off.

The background was the dark, cloudy sky of the bad Stardust Speedway level from Sonic CD.

What the fuck does that mean?

That is insane.

And there were only three save files.

The music was that creepy Caverns of Winter music from Earthbound.

This guy.

You know, there was like one guy at the back of the day just like, oh my God, of course.

There's one dude like sitting over there somewhere who's like, how could they not know?

Yeah, there's definitely one guy with his arms crossed right now just like...

This is easy.

Elementary work.

I think this is reasonable myself, yeah.

Only it was extended and seemed to have been in reverse.

Oh my God.

Another classic.

And the image for the save file where you see a preview of the level you're on is just red static for all three files.

What freaked me out more was the character select.

It showed only tails, knuckles, and to my surprise, Dr.

Robotnik.

Now I was sure that something was up.

I mean, how can you play as Robotnik in a classic Sonic game for crying out loud?

I was going to add a for crying out loud as a joke, joke, but it's in the text.

That's when I realized that this wasn't a glitchy game.

It was

a hacked game.

Chinese Sonic.

Yeah, it definitely looked hacked.

It was really creepy.

But as a smart gameplay, fucked up.

Oh, my God.

Oh, this is great.

I wasn't scared, or at least I tried not to be.

I told myself that it was just a hacked game and there's nothing wrong with it.

Anyway, shaking off the creeped-out feeling, I picked file one.

It shows tales

and when I selected and got started.

The game froze for about five seconds and I heard a creepy pixelated laugh that...

Oh, that was cool.

Yo!

Pixelated laugh that sounded an awful lot like the Kefka guy from find this is just Nintendo reference that well Sonic Sega whatever but just reference reference reference he's gonna talk about his Funko Pops in a second

Before cutting to black

The screen stayed black for about 10 seconds more and then it showed the typical level title thing except the simplistic shapes were different shades of red.

Ooh, and the text showed only Hill Act 1.

As a Sonic fan, you would know that at the first text

the screen faded in and the level title vanished, revealing Tails in the green hill zone from Sonic 1.

The music was different, though.

It sounded like a peaceful melody in reverse.

Yeah, reverse music, same as Hyper Realistic Blood.

It was all the rage.

Anyway, I started playing and had Tails start running like you would in any of the classic Sonic games.

What was odd was that as Tails was running along the level, there was nothing but flat ground and a few trees for five minutes

that was when the peaceful music started to lower down into slow deep tones very slowly as I kept going I suddenly saw something and I stopped to see what it was it was one of the small animals lying dead on the ground bleeding

that was when the music started to slow down Tails had a shocked and saddened look on his face that I never saw him have before

So

I had him move along and he kept that worried look on his face.

As he kept moving, I saw more dead animals as tails moved past them, looking more and more worried as the music lowered and he moved past more dead animals.

I was shocked to see how they all died.

They looked like somebody killed them.

Oh, that's the AC.

I was like, what?

I'm like, do we have a sound effect for that?

In rather gruesome ways.

A squirrel was hanged on a tree with what appear.

Oh, this is great.

Oh god, I gotta lock in.

Oh my gosh.

What appeared to be his entrails hanging out.

A bunny had all four of his limbs torn off and a duck had his eyes gouged out and his throat slit.

I felt sick to my stomach when I saw this massacre and apparently so did tails.

After a few more seconds, there were no more animals and the music seemed to have stopped.

I still kept Tails to continue.

After a minute passed after the music stopped, Tails was running up a hill and then he stopped.

It wasn't until I saw why.

Sonic was there on the other side of the screen with his back against Tails with his eyes closed.

Tails looked happy to see Sonic, but then his smile faltered.

Obviously noticing that Sonic wasn't responding to him, If not acting as if he was totally oblivious of Tails presence, Tails walked slowly towards Sonic and I noticed that I wasn't even moving my keyboard to make him move, so this had to be a cutscene.

Suddenly

I began to have a growing feel of dread as Tails walked closer to Sonic to get his attention.

I felt that Tails was in danger and something bad was going to happen.

I heard faint static growing louder as Tails was but inches away from Sonic and stopped and stuck his hand out to touch him.

That foreboding feeling in my gut was growing stronger and I felt the urge to tell Tails to get away from Sonic as the static grew louder.

Get away!

Tails, stop!

Tails!

No!

Tails, stop it!

Suddenly, in a split second, I saw Sonic's eyes open and they were black with those red glowing dots, just like that title.

Though there wasn't a a smile

with when that happened the screen turned black and the static sound was off it stayed black for about seven seconds and then white text appeared forming a message saying

hello

do you want to play with me

at this point I was creeped out I didn't want to continue with the game, but my curiosity got the better of me when I was taken to a different level with the level title now saying hide and seek.

This time I was in the Angel Island, let's stop referencing Sonic levels from Sonic 3 and it looked like everything was on fire.

Tails looked as though he was scared out of his wits this time.

Oh boy, he actually looked at me and made frantic gestures to me as if he wanted to get out of the area he was in as fast as possible.

I was starting to get freaked out by this.

I mean, Tails was actually breaking the fourth wall, trying to tell me to get him out of there.

So I pressed down on the arrow key as hard as I could, made him run as fast as he could.

A pixelated version of that creepy theme when you meet Shadow at stop referencing Sonic.

When you meet Shadow at the arc as Robotnik from,

I guess, Sonic Adventures 2 was playing as I made Tails trek through the desolate forest, trying to help him escape from whatever he was trying to run from.

Suddenly, I heard...

This is the fourth paragraph that's open with Suddenly.

Suddenly, I heard that creepy laugh again.

That awful Kefka laugh.

Right after 10 seconds have passed as I helped Tails run through the forest.

And then I started seeing flashes of Sonic popping everywhere on the screen again with those black and red eyes.

And the music changed to that suspenseful, drowning jingle as I see Sonic behind Tails slowly gaining up on him, flying.

Sonic wasn't running.

He was flying.

The flying pose his sprite was making looked very similar, do not, he's about to make a reference, to Metal Sonic's flying pose.

It's like,

gosh.

Right.

Except

it was just Sonic.

And he had, you don't get this.

Sonic can't do that.

Only Metal Sonic can do that.

It's true.

And he had the black and red eyes again.

Only this time, he had the most deranged-looking grin on his face.

He looked as though he was enjoying the torment he was giving the poor little fox as he came to vote.

Suddenly.

Fuck off with it.

Suddenly.

When Tails tripped.

another cutscene, the music stopped and Sonic vanished.

Tails laid there and started crying for 15 seconds.

I timed it.

The scene was rather upsetting to watch, and I kind of teared up myself.

Oh my god, Tails.

No.

But then,

Sonic appeared right in front of Tails, and Tails looked up in horror.

Blood started to come from his face, and he looked down at the horrified fox.

I could do nothing but watch.

Just in a split second, Sonic lunged at Tails right before the screen went black.

There was a loud screeching noise that only lasted five seconds.

The text returned only this time, and it said, You're too slow.

Wanna try again?

And then that god-awful laugh came with it.

I was so shocked by what had happened.

Did Sonic murder Tails?

No, he couldn't have.

Him and Tails are supposed to be best friends.

Right?

Why did Sonic do that to him?

I have no idea.

I shook the shock off as I was brought back to the character select.

The save file that had Tails was different.

Tails was no longer in the box itself, but in their TV screen itself, which was flickering with that red static.

Tails' expression scared me.

His eyes were black and bleeding, and his orange fur had gone black, and he had an expression of anguish on his face.

Trying to ignore it, I picked Knuckles next.

I like how he keeps playing the game.

The laugh came again.

The laugh came again.

Is that a goose?

Sorry for asking you to do your job.

I apologize.

Thank you.

The laugh came and the screen cut to black again and stayed there for 10 seconds.

This time the level said, You can't run.

I was really freaked out by now.

I couldn't really tell if this was a glitch or a hack or some kind of sick and twisted joke or anything, really.

What's that mean?

But despite my fear of what happened next, I kept playing.

The next level looked much different.

It had the ground of the scrap brains.

Stop referencing sonic levels.

It's a good zone.

But the sky background looked like the main menu.

It had the dark, reddish, cloudy sky.

He's going to make another reference.

But it was the music that creeped me out the most.

It sounded like Geigest theme right after you beat Poke in Earthbound.

Okay, yeah.

I also noticed...

I also noticed that Knuckles looked afraid just like Tails did, though not as much.

More rather, he looked a little unnerved.

Thank you.

He broke the fourth wall just like Tails and looked as if he wasn't sure about going on, but I made him move anyway.

What a sadistic fuck.

He ran down the straight pathway in this dark level, and as he did, the screen started to flicker red static a couple times, and then that maddening laugh came again.

Then after a few seconds of running, I noticed several bloodstains on the metallic ground.

I felt a growing sense of fear again, thinking something horrible is going to happen to Knuckles.

He looked nauseated walking down this blood-stained road, but I still kept him going.

Suddenly,

as Knuckles ran, Sonic appeared right in front of him with those black and red eyes, and then Red Static appeared again.

When the static vanished, showing nothing but black screen with text saying, Found you.

I was now scared.

Sonic found Knuckles already?

What was going going on?

Anyway, Red Setic came again, and then I was back to the level.

Knuckles looked like he was panicking, and Sonic was nowhere to be found.

And this time, the high-pitched squealing from, give me a reference, Silent Hills Ones final boss was playing.

Good boss.

Was it someone went, yes.

Oh my god.

Was this some kind of boss battle with Sonic?

I hope to God it was.

Suddenly,

dear fucking Lord.

Sonic appeared right behind Knuckles in what appeared to be pixelated black smoke, as opposed to real black smoke.

I made Knuckles turn and then punch Sonic, but Sonic vanished in black, pixelated smoke before I could even land a hit.

That terrible laugh went off again.

I'm not even going to wait on it this time.

Then Sonic appeared behind Knuckles again.

Thank you.

And then a hair late.

Just a hair.

And then I made him punch again.

And Sonic vanished again, laughing.

Knuckles was panicking.

Knuckles.

Knuckles was panicking even more.

And even I felt like I was going crazy.

Sonic was practically playing with us.

He was playing a sick, twisted little mind game with me.

Stop it, Sonic!

Knuckles.

You're tearing me apart.

Another.

What a timely room reference.

Another cutscene played as Knuckles fell to his knees and clutched his head, sobbing.

I felt his agony.

Sonic was actually driving us both crazy.

And then, in a split second, Sonic lunged at Knuckles, and then the screen went black with another distorted screeching noise that lasted for at least three seconds.

So many souls to play with, so little time.

Would you agree?

What the hell?

Just what's going on?

What happens?

I started to think Sonic was actually trying to talk to me through the game.

But I was too scared to think that...

You just said you thought...

Okay.

I was starting to think...

I was too scared to think.

Anyway,

I brought back to the main menu, and this time the second file box had knuckles in the the TV screen.

His red fur had darkened to a reddish gray.

Oh my god.

His dreadlocks were dripping with blood.

Oh my god.

And his eyes were black and bleeding, too.

Oh God.

Who's left?

And he had a look of sadness on his face.

I regret asking that.

Someone's like, oh, there's like five characters left.

Sorry.

I began to think that those are actual characters trapped at what?

Wait.

I looked at the sadness of Knuckles,

and I began to think those aren't those are actual characters trapped in those screens on the save file.

But I couldn't believe it.

I didn't want to believe it.

So he's like, maybe Knuckles is real?

Knuckles has a consciousness inside the

CD.

We're just going to power through.

So I shut off the game and took a break.

I took a nap.

Oh, God.

I need to sleep on this.

I wish I hadn't.

Because I then began to have the most disturbing nightmare.

It's so fun.

Okay.

So if you were reading creepypastas around this time, there was always like a scary dream.

There was always photorealistic blood.

There was always backwards music.

So this author's like, I need to do all of those at once.

God.

Hell yeah.

And there's no natural way to incorporate sleeping into a video game.

So he's like, in the middle of this, I fell asleep.

So I got pretty tired and I took a nap.

I was in pitch black darkness.

I was under the light given off by a lamp,

as lamps do, that hung high above my head.

I could hear the cries of Knuckles and Tails nearby.

They were saying stuff like, Help us!

Why did you give us to him?

Run away before he kids you do.

Their cries died out as I then heard Sonic laugh his laugh.

It sounded a lot like the distorted Kefka laugh.

You said that!

He has mentioned that stupid laugh three times.

You're all the fun to play with, kid.

Just like your friend Kyle.

Though he didn't last this long.

I like the person who said what.

Like, this is where they get off.

Like,

Kyle got it too, really.

I want to say that's a kind of fuck sentence, though.

What is?

Just the you didn't last as long as Kyle.

Just kind of, I don't know.

What?

Gone sexual 4K addiction.

Sonic backshots 4K.

I hate.

Because now I'm picturing a demented evil Sonic, like twerking.

And he's just like, You're pretty good, kid.

But can you last this long?

There's like rings.

Every time he's bouncing up, rings are popping out.

I'm a fucking demon.

No?

Alright, well.

Just me, I guess.

I was in medical school.

Okay.

I was scared and looking around for the source of the voice.

Won't be long now until you join him and all my other friends.

I saw him walking toward me, flickering in and out in several directions.

You can't run, kid.

You're in my world now.

Just like the others.

Now I'm imagining like Macho May and Randy Savage in a Sonic golf.

Oh, yeah.

You can't run, kid.

When he grabbed me and I saw his bleeding black and red grinning face, I woke up with a fright.

After a couple of hours, I decided to continue playing the game.

Of course.

I don't know why, but I had to know.

I had to figure out why why this was happening.

So I turned on the computer, turned on the game, and selected Robotnik next.

I still thought that was wacky.

Playing as Robotnik.

This is downright strange.

Robotnik's the weird part.

No, okay.

He's having fever dreams.

He's like, really?

Robotnik?

Okay.

But anyway.

The level title appeared again, and this time it said,

which I found really freaking.

You might go threaten to kill me in my sleep if you will, but mess with my Sonic game.

Yeah, really, no title for this one.

This time, I was in some kind of hallway.

Didn't really look like it was from any of the classic Sonic games, though it had the pixelated style.

The floor was shiny and checkered.

The walls were dark grayish-purple with animated candlelights, and a few dark bloodstains here and there.

And there was a dark red curtain hanging above on top part of the screen.

Every 12 seconds or so, that red curtain sways very slowly.

But whenever you're playing the game, you can barely see it move.

The music, oh, I can already feel,

because he's describing the scene.

I haven't looked at the end of the paragraph, but there's going to be a reference to something.

The music was oddly pleasant, a piano playing, a rather sad yet peaceful song, but I knew better.

Do you knew better?

Where's it from?

This was the song that played in Hill Act 1.

Right.

Only it wasn't in reverse.

Oh, Jesus.

Robotnik didn't look entirely nervous like Tails and Knuckles did.

But he did have a suspicious look on his face as if he was just a bit paranoid.

How are you telling this on like a pixelated little...

Anyway.

He did a little animation.

When I just left him standing, he would turn his head to the left and then to the right at least twice and then shrug at me as if he had no

as if he had no idea where he was or what was going on.

Even though I was scared out of my mind about what was going to happen, I had Robotnik continue onward.

He did his casual running animation, you know, when you've beaten him at the end of the classic Sonic game and you chase him.

Thank you!

As we continued through the hallway.

I'm getting mad.

Then I stopped at a long flight of stairs leading downward.

Now I was less nervous.

Even Robotnik seemed unsure of himself, though I pressed onward.

As I led Robotnik down the stairs, I noticed that the walls had gotten darker and more reddish.

The red torches were now an eerie blue.

And then we leaned, landed, yes, landed onto another hallway.

This one was longer than the last one.

Stop explaining.

Okay.

Or at least it felt like it.

And then we headed down another flight of stairs down.

This one was much longer.

It took at least one full minute.

Thank you.

And I heard...

I'm so mad, I'm slamming the keys.

And then I heard that horrid, horrid

that laugh again,

and then thank you, and then the music slowly faded until it was quiet.

And it did the wall, and and oh, wait, it doesn't, I was right.

And it did, the walls turned more dark red, and the torches were a black flame now.

Ooh, when Robotnik landed onto the third hallway, I noticed he now looked really creeped out.

Then he tried to hide it.

I couldn't blame him.

I was scared too.

Suddenly,

Sonic popped right in front of Robotnik the same way he did Knuckles and then Red Static.

The Red Static lasted for 15 seconds and then it showed me a most unpleasant image.

The image showed a.

You got it.

Blank

of Sonic standing in the darkness where you can only see his face while his head and torso faded into black.

Hold, what is blank?

A hyper.

Realistic blank.

I don't know.

Probably.

Probably, if I had to guess, it's they're trying to do the SCP thing and be like, oh,

redact stuff.

It's too horrible.

It's too horrible to say what it was,

which does kind of imply.

It's like,

yeah.

I didn't know if we were bringing back Twerking Sonic or not.

Maybe blank.

And when I say, oh, he's going into detail.

When I say I'm realistic,

I mean, like, he looks so real, you could see the lines in his blue fur.

Holy shit.

Maybe this is something a little

as if you could actually feel the fur if you touch the screen.

All right, now

that's a little grossed out.

Oh, my God.

His face.

Oh, God.

Oh, my God.

He had the most horrifying smile I had ever seen.

Oh, dear God.

And that saying something, considering I I saw that image at the start of the game.

His eyes are wide and black, and once again, crying blood, which also looked hyper-realistic.

And there were two small glowing red dots in those black eyes staring right at me, as if staring into my mind.

His grin was wide and demonic.

It literally stretched to the sides of his face like a Cheshire cat.

He somehow made another reference.

Except Sonic had fangs.

Very sharp fangs.

Much like, here we go, the werehog's teeth, except more vicious looking.

Somewhat.

How are you doing over there, Chief?

I'm in hell.

Somewhat yellowish.

And from the look of it, he had stains of blood and small bits of flesh on his lips and fangs as if he ate some animal.

Oh my God.

I stared at the gruesome image for a good 30 seconds.

He's timing the seconds like so every time.

I like to think they're Mississippi's too.

One Mississippi.

Two Mississippi.

Never taking my eyes off it.

I felt as if he was actually looking at me, smiling at me.

That face.

It just took 10 seconds for it to etch itself into my brain for good.

Although, if you'll recall from earlier, I stared for 30.

Then the screen flickered with red static again three times and on the third time I heard the Kefka laugh except this time it sounded distorted demonic even

do we have one for them no okay it went back to the image again except this time there was the text again though it was messed up but it was pretty much one of the most horrifying things I looked at since I had this game

I

am

God

The wall, Sonic.

What?

It's Sonic.

You know, from Sonic Adventures 2.

Was that a Sonic constant?

I really

hope he doesn't have any concussion.

Okay,

we have to be close.

I'm God.

It was when I read that message while looking at Sonic when it hit me, I realized right there and then, what are these sentences?

This Sonic was a monster.

A pure, evil, sadistic, all-powerful, nightmarish, demented monster.

And all of his victims, including Tails, Knuckles, Robotnik, and possibly Kyle,

are all just his little toys in the game in this very gateway to his chaotic, nightmarish world and the very hell his victims are trapped in.

Suddenly,

in an actual split second, an actual one, I screamed as Sonic lunged at the screen,

screeching loudly with his mouth wide open to an unnatural length, revealing nothing but a literally spiraling abyss of pure darkness before the red static came again.

This time, much louder and distorted, so loud that it hurt my ears.

I yelled and grabbed my ears as the red static screeched for a good count them, seven seconds.

Then

it stopped and showed nothing but black screen.

As I sat there staring at the black screen, one last text came up.

Ready for round two, Tom.

The Kefka laugh.

Now sounding more clear as if Sonic was right behind.

It's right behind me, isn't it?

Played again.

Count one, two, three times as I looked at that text in shock and confusion.

Then I got booted back to the main menu, and this time the third save file had a TV image of Robotnik in the same tormented state as Tails and Knuckles.

Robotnik's skin turned a dull gray, his mustache drooped and had blackened, his glasses broke and his blood is coming from them and he had a mere dead-like expression on his face.

I looked at Tails, Knuckles, and Robotnik and cried a bit.

I pitied them for the agony they're going through.

They were forever trapped within the game, forever tormented by that horrid hedgehog.

Oh, fuck you, Son.

And always will be.

I sat there for maybe 25 seconds, horrified by what had just happened.

Sonic is the very embodiment of evil.

True.

He tortures people who play his game

in more ways than one.

And then when he gets bored, he drags you into the game.

Literally, drags you to hell

where he can play with you always as his toy.

I can't get the game out of my computer.

I think it's stuck in there.

But at least I managed to turn it back on now after I sat there for

I heard a voice right behind me like a whisper.

Try to keep this interesting for me dad.

Now, okay, the thing about the Roll34 Sonic may be accurate now.

I turned around to see where the voice came from and what I saw made me scream.

Sitting on my bed.

Staring right at me.

Was a Sonic plushie.

Smiling with bloodstains under its eyes.

That's Sonic!

The end.

It is there.

My God.

My God.

That was rough.

We have covered some losers before,

but at least they were like, they were fun.

Like Eilish Jack, for example, is, well, I was going to say an equally bad story, but Eilish Jack, well, okay, that's the one where like they left the body in the house and he realizes his liver's missing because he's holding it.

Like,

that one's pretty bad, but at least that one was fun.

This one was just like, I can reference,

I can reference your guidance in this one, like, yeah, it was just

insufferable.

Yeah, like, I mean, it's insane how insufferable it is.

Like, Sonic saying, I am God, is great.

The story ends with that plushie.

I thought that's the end-up scare.

I thought that it was going to be that people who have played the game, their consciousness gets trapped as the characteristics.

You are giving it way too much.

No, no, no, definitely.

But I'm just thinking, that would be a cool concept, right?

Well, that's people trapped in the video game.

I've been showing in stories before.

I'm trying to think if there was a creepypasta that did it.

I can't think of one, but that's definitely showed up in horror before.

I mean, like,

what is that Black Mirror one?

Ben Drowned, right?

Yeah, Ben Drowned.

Duh, yeah.

I completely fucking got rid of that with that Jeff Goldblum shit.

That shit's just been wiped.

Been wiped from my fucking mind.

You can't get rid of me, Hunter.

Ah, fuck.

Well, I mean, you know.

It's always me.

We are now on to the third one.

And the third one is one that is very near and dear to our hearts, as it will soon be to yours.

And that story.

Oh, wait, hold on.

I keep forgetting I'm supposed to switch to this, whatever.

Our next story, our final one for the night is

Mayhem Mountain.

Mayhem Mountain.

Now, we could just sit up here and do the same old goddamn thing.

Well, hold on, hold on.

I think they need context of why the story is so special.

Oh, yeah, yes, actually, good stuff.

So, this story was written by Rebecca Klingle, who many of you all will probably be familiar with as the author of Baraska.

I feel like that holds less weight now after the Deepwoods episode.

Yeah, now the Deep Woods episode's out, so you are like, oh, raise your hand if you watch the Deepwoods episode.

Okay, I have, now that time has become separated from that, us recording that, appreciated making part two and three funny.

Yeah.

Because they are funny.

And part one still exists on its own to me.

I'm not as emotional about it right now that I was when we recorded that.

I was listening back to it today.

I was like, we were pretty mean.

I got pretty harsh on it.

Yeah.

But Rebecca is a fantastic author.

And this is a great story.

Well, Varasca is one of my all-time favorite, like, creepypastas internet horror stories.

You all watch the episode.

You know how it goes.

So this is another one that she did.

Now.

So, like I said, we could just do the same goddamn thing and read it all.

But there's so many characters in this that I say we need to pick three people from the audience to help come up here and play some of the characters.

So hold on, hold on.

Should we turn on the house?

Hold on, hold on.

We got to announce the roles.

So first of all, I will be playing Mark.

And then did we...

I think we changed it up since we made this slide.

I'm going to be Brandon and Danny.

So yes, so now Scott will be one of you all as well.

So the three roles we need are for Charlotte, Koji, and then Tyler and Scott.

They're both like pretty minor roles, are going to be played by the same person.

We have your scripts pre-made for all of that.

We need three volunteers.

Now, whoever...

Hold on.

Hold on a second.

Whoever volunteers is going to be asked to do an embarrassing audition from their seat.

We need to make sure that we make sure for the internet, for us, and everyone else to make fun of it.

We need to make sure that you have the chops to be up on this stage.

All right, Hunter, you can pick first.

Well, I can't see.

Can we turn just the lights a little bit?

Thank you.

You right there waving to me at the top.

Let's see.

Hold on, you haven't given best rendition yet.

Let me see here.

Hmm.

Koji first?

Koji?

Yeah, we'll do Koji first.

Koji first.

Hmm.

I want you to give me,

like, act as if Laughing Jack just killed your son and you have to say, my boy, my dear baby boy.

My baby, my dear boy, stop fucking baby.

I want to say, hold on a second.

I thought that that was coming from the same person.

And I was going to be like,

I did, unfortunately, point up top.

So that was a crazy effect.

All right, hold on.

Hold on a second.

I was looking at you and there were two voices like,

for a second, I was like, that is fucking awesome.

That was crazy.

You know what, Koji?

Yeah.

Come on.

Come on.

All right.

We need two more.

Let's do the Tyler Scott character, right?

Yeah.

This is somebody.

You have to play two roles here, so two separate voices.

So whenever you do the audition, make sure they do two voices.

Okay, this guy right here.

Okay, hold on.

You haven't passed your audition yet.

Don't get your chickens before they hatch.

All right, I need you to be.

What's a good.

What do you think?

This is the audition.

I know.

Like, what's a good audition?

If it's two separate people, then you need to choose an.

I would do something like the Titanic scene when Rose is on the thing.

And then he's looking...

And then Leonardo Caprio is in the water looking up.

Okay, you have to be both Rose and Jack.

You need to say something like...

I'm cold.

And then you need to give me a very convincing Rose like, it's okay, Jack.

So something along those those lines.

We need that from you now.

Get up here.

Let's get up here.

Get on up.

Start handing those out.

All right, I need one more.

This is the person who

this is the person

who is going to play

my girlfriend in the story.

so it know

Can I speak?

My wife is in the backstage right now, and if I

if I if I pick a woman, we're both dead, okay

Hold on the audition you black shirt bald head.

All right, what what's his audition for Charlotte

For Charlotte?

I think it should be like a sex in the city thing, right?

Charlotte's Charlotte's a character from Sex in the City.

So she should spend.

I don't know that.

I love Sex in the City.

Okay.

So I think you should say something like, you should say, take me to 7th Avenue.

I'm going to stop by the Prada store to get some shoes.

Take me by 7th Avenue and go to the Prada store and get some shoes.

As long as you promise to not do the character in that voice get on up here.

All right.

Hi, hi everyone.

Hi, by the ways.

Okay.

All right.

So,

you all have been given scripts that have your characters part.

If Hunter did it correctly, then, which you probably didn't, your character stuff should be highlighted as we go through the story.

But to start off with each of you, you got to be pretty close to the mics for them to hear you, so you can pull them in, get them comfortable, wherever need be.

If you want to go down the road and each one of you, introduce yourself.

If you want to say one thing that isn't offensive and won't get get us, you know, canceled, that'd be cool.

All right, all right.

Hi, my name is Zane.

I'm an 18-year-old.

And I am.

Horror is one of my special interests, so I'm super excited to be here.

Sick, let's go.

Koji!

All right, Koji, Koji.

It's wireless, yeah.

Yeah, it's it's wireless.

Yeah,

the future's now.

Hello?

It's not working?

I was gonna say,

hello?

There you go.

You all may need to to share if that's cool, but it works.

My name is Carrie, and I'm really happy to be here.

Wow.

There you go.

Okay.

Hell yeah, okay.

In the role of both Tyler and Scott.

And then finally, my girlfriend, my dear Charlotte.

Well, my name is JC.

I'm just a country boy from Patton, Mississippi.

All right.

That's our Charlotte!

That also sounds like the kind of woman I date.

Perfect.

All right, so I guess also to set the the tone for all of our beautiful voice actors on stage, we should probably say that this is about a charismatic group of people coming back to buy an amusement park.

Yeah, it's about a group of people, as Mayhem Mountain implies, it's about a group of people coming to buy an amusement park.

So we're all friends.

We've all known each other for years.

We're reuniting.

So be happy and joyous until people start dying.

Yeah, talk to me as if we've known each other for 30 years.

Yep.

And if you don't, I'll fire you on stage.

There are cameras all over.

That's true.

Fair enough.

All right.

So,

would you like to begin?

Hold on.

We need the music.

We need our setting.

Thank you.

There we go.

In two miles, take exit 19 for Valley Park Drive South.

The directions chirp from my sister's phone.

Charlotte, turn that.

Oh, I'm Mark, by the way, if I didn't address that.

Charlotte, turn that.

Oh, wait, hold on.

Charlotte's not my girlfriend, it's my sister.

Whatever, dude.

Oh, no.

I am from Mississippi now.

You are from.

Proper

I'm from Tennessee.

We can make this work.

All right, not off the table yet.

Charlotte, turn that off.

I know where I'm going.

You sure about that?

I mean, it's been a couple decades, Mark.

Please, like, I could ever forget where Adventure Valley is.

Come on, we spent every summer of...

There it is!

I swerved briefly into the oncoming lane as Charlotte thrust her arm in front of my face and pointed excitedly out the window.

There's Adventure Valley.

My God, what ride is that?

That coaster, it was called Steel.

Something, right?

No, no, no.

Wait, that's Mayhem Mountain, isn't it?

That's good.

I like it.

Let's go.

Awesome.

I gently pushed my sister's arm out of my face and back over to her seat.

I couldn't falter for her excitement while I was trying so hard to control my own giddiness.

It felt like we were kids again, yelling and bouncing in the back seat.

Hold on.

All right, I'm alive.

Thinking about kissing his sister again, dude.

Yes.

I just get so excited.

Yelling and bouncing in the back seat of my parents' car as the first shining rails and wooden planks of the park's roller coasters came into view above the treetops.

That's the Steel Viper.

Mayhem Mountains on the other end of the park.

And that wooden coaster over there is the Excalibur.

Oh yeah, I remember those.

I was always too much of a wuss to ride the Viper, but I rode the shit out of the Excalibur.

I'm so happy we picked you for Charlotte.

Well, Charlotte, you're an adult now.

I think it's time to take on the Viper.

That's not a damn.

Are you 12?

Woo!

Hold on, just did you.

When we were reading, when I was reading Goatman earlier, every time I would read a word like I entered the trailer or like it threw back at me or whatever, everyone's like, oh, this section specifically is disgusting.

Kill everyone over here, please, whoever's up top.

And there's a couple more.

A couple more.

Keep it going.

That's enough.

That's probably enough.

I get the point.

As long as the contractors have tested it and given it the okay, I'm in.

Shut up.

Good God.

That was really the question, wasn't it?

We didn't know which rides had been inspected and cleared and which ones hadn't.

I sent up a silent prayer that Mayhem Mountain was counted among the rides that had.

I'd left Brandon several voicemails asking about it since he was the one in charge of everything.

But with how fast things have been moving since we'd bought the park, I couldn't fault him for being a busy man.

If you told 12-year-old me that my crazy, hyper, wild-eyed friend Brandon Decker would end up graduating cum laude from Northwestern business school.

See?

That's insane.

That's like,

we're outside, guys.

Like, calm down, Lord.

Business school.

I can't wait for my parents to see this and be like, what was that about?

What were they laughing?

From Northwestern Business School, I would have laughed in your face.

Brandon, no way.

Tyler, maybe, but never Brandon.

In fact, half the reason I think he chose a business designation was because of Adventure Valley.

When the park closed in 1989, Brandon had gathered us all together in his basement and, with a gravitas and solemnness I've never seen in him before or since, asked us to make the pact.

At the time, the promise had been the most serious vow that five 12-year-olds could ever make.

High off an entire summer of Adventure Valley fun, we agreed, with all the ceremony of a meeting of Parliament, that we would one day come together and buy Adventure Valley Amusement Park.

Of course, back then we planned to just buy it and ride the roller coasters into the ground.

We decided which friends from school we would let in and which enemies would be barred from the gate.

It had always been our park and it was only right we should have it.

It had taken 20 years, but we eventually did fulfill our promise.

With a hell of a lot of pushing from Brandon and a sizable offer of collateral from Tyler, the bank had agreed to give us the multi-million dollar loan to buy, repair, refurbish, and reopen the park.

Size of the loan that the six of us were responsible for gave me nightmares for several weeks.

What kind of bank

has six people...

Oh yeah, it's a very timely Wells Fargo joke.

What kind of bank has six people walk into it and be like, we want to buy an amusement park?

And they're like, how much is it?

Six 32-year-olds.

seven yeah six 32 year olds and it's like how much is it it's like several million dollars why are you buying it well we told each other we would when we were 12.

my 12 year old self needs it yeah exactly we got collateral we got collateral though okay if you say so

how would this place ever turn to profit

it had been closed decades ago after operating in the red for several years The county had experienced a high number of runaways and missing persons in the area in the last year of the 1980s.

The entire region was on edge

as the cases mounted, and people in the area became depressed and suspicious of each other.

That absolutely killed park attendants.

Seeing the first cresting waves of roller coaster rails through the trees made me all but forget about my financial worries.

I mean, this was Adventure Valley.

If we opened the gates, people would come.

There, there, there, that's our exit.

That's awesome.

I'm shocked.

I pulled off the interstate, took a left under the bridge.

Less than a mile later, we came upon the Acres of the parking lots.

The Acres of the

Parking Lots to our right.

There we go.

We turned in and drove all the way up to the front near the gates where several other cars were all parked.

Alexis, a Minnie Cooper, an old Chevelle, and Honda Civic, another rental car like ours.

Looks like we're the last ones here.

All right.

Sis,

I don't appreciate the tone you approached me with that item.

She was right.

As we pulled up next to the Lexus, I noticed a group of people standing next to the ticket booth, waving to us excitedly.

Oh my god, is that Tyler?

Jesus, he's lost some weight.

He's so skinny now.

And Brandon's losing his hair.

Holy shit, is that Koji?

Koji got hot.

Oh boy.

Calm down, Paris Hill.

These guys are

what?

So timely.

Yeah, what an ageless joke.

These guys are my friends.

They're off limits to you.

Same roles as when we were teenagers.

Besides, half of them are married.

Really?

Which half?

Charlotte's like anything that moves.

She's just whatever's over there.

Charlotte's over there bricked up, dude.

Good lord.

I raised an eyebrow at Charlotte and shook my head in amused bewilderment.

My little sister never had outgrown her boy craziness.

Wait.

Who's that?

What?

That's Scott.

You know Scott.

Demure.

Very demure.

Not Scott.

Shut up.

So when I said in the last during Laughing Jack, there was, I read over it so quickly there i said the phrase among us

and this i i was looking down and off at the top of my eyes i saw like three rows of people go like all at once

we're doomed it's like working with children we are doomed

charlotte sorry sis go ahead

Not Scott.

Scott looks exactly the same.

The girl next to Scott.

Oh, Charlotte's interested in the girl next to to Scott.

Okay.

Oh,

I had put this off so long that I actually forgot to tell my sister at all.

That's Danny, Scott's girlfriend.

This is likely an effective error of editing on someone's behalf.

The stories or ours, I don't know.

But if it is one of our guys' fault, just have them executed.

Death to them.

Kill them.

Danny, as in Danielle Bircher.

Well,

yeah.

My sister gave me such a horrified look that you'd think I'd betrayed her to her death.

But it was fleeting and quickly replaced by a sly smile.

Fine by me.

I'm sure she's not the same person she was in high school.

We're all adults now, right?

Come on, let's go.

So I think...

I do, I want to say this.

I like the little

tea session we have with Charlotte.

Well, I like...

Huh?

I think the implication is supposed to be that they had like beef in high school.

Oh, absolutely.

But it's much funnier to imagine they hooked up.

She was a bitch.

Yeah, it's much funnier to imagine they hooked up.

Especially with how Charlotte's acting constantly, the whole story.

I will say I do like this.

So

now, those of you that have seen Deepwoods know, and also Baraska.

Rebecca does such a great job at making me care about what's otherwise just kind of like paint-by-numbers characters, right?

Like in Baraska, you have characters like Kyle and yeah, Kyle.

I know, right?

Exactly, yeah.

Someone who otherwise is just kind of like the dumb character in the story, and you have Kimber, who's a generic love interest, but the way that Rebecca like writes around the two and like gives them so much personality and cutesy little moments and stuff, you feel like emotionally connected to them.

And kind of going back to what I was talking about Laughing Jack earlier, how when you want to run to the punchline, it's not as effective.

One of the reasons Baraska hit so hard in the end is because, like, I cared about Colin Kimber.

So to see that happen to them was absolutely heartbreaking.

Yeah, I like the way she writes dialogue between characters.

She does, yeah.

She can take kind of what would otherwise be trope characters and be like, here, this is fine.

Cause now we're making jokes like, oh, what if Charlotte and Danny, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And it makes me care about Charlotte more than just

character within story.

Sure.

Yeah.

It's just something I appreciate about her writing.

A sigh of relief escaped my chest as I slammed the car door and followed Charlotte over to the entrance.

Though I saw saw most of these guys every year, seeing us all here together standing at the ticket booths of Adventure Valley brought me a sort of happiness I hadn't experienced in many years.

Mike fucking Lannis.

I can't believe it.

He has been dying for that lion read.

Yeah, all the blood forced to his face just like.

He's been vibrating in the chair.

I love it, dude.

He got some big, dig energy.

This is by just so far, by the way.

Louisiana, you are beating Boston to death with your energy.

Yeah.

Boston was fantastic, but just like the absolute hoot and hollerness, I appreciate it.

Tyler had an edgy, commanding voice that probably made his many employees shudder and scatter.

But I am like a brother, so his bravado just made me laugh.

Can you believe it?

I asked as I gave him a hug and a slap on the back.

Back at Front Gates, 15 a day doesn't seem so ridiculous now.

I forgot to highlight mine.

Wait, wait, what have you been marking over there in your script the whole time?

This is.

I've just been messing with my Charmie.

Alright.

Now, if I may.

15 a day, my ass!

He said, shaking my hand.

By my math,

it looks like we'll be charging about $65 a day.

Gotta make money, guys.

How much, it's been so long since I've been to an amusement park.

How much do amusement parks cost now for like general reasons?

$7,000.

$200?

That's not $500.

No.

I have been a dollar, but it's been forever.

Well,

Disney charges.

Disney for one Someone's very mad about it, but Disney's also like here's the church of the mouse that will be $8,000 and people are like okay That's different but $65 for an entire day is fine.

I'm okay.

I can let that slide I think

We charge you all $35 for this crap shoot so I don't want to like

I'll pay it

Charlotte yeah, I don't like that tone.

Charlotte smiled and gave Koji a hug.

Are people really gonna pay $65 a day?

Even Disneyland only charges $85 and

there you get access to two parks.

How could I forget?

One of our investors works for the mouse.

Pity!

They won't let you design any artwork for this place.

Come on, man.

I'm not an artist.

I'm an engineer.

Don't you mean imagineer?

Yeah, I fucking do.

I hate that line.

Good lord.

as Brandon and Charlotte tease Koji I may

did you Koji did you read that lesson yeah I did oh yeah I thought yeah I did I'll read it again

y'all making Koji run through lines twice lord

As Brandon and Charlotte teased Koji, I made my way over to the side of the ticket booth where Scott and his girlfriend were conversing.

I didn't know why Scott was being so standoffish, but I thought it might have something to do with the investment.

Scott, the least well-off of us six, worked at his dad's collision shop and hadn't had a whole lot of money to invest.

I thought,

that's really funny that they're all going in on a multi-million dollar loan.

And they're like, Scott, I know your family business has fallen apart and you're paycheck to paycheck, but you promised.

You said and you were told.

You said that you'd give us $780,000.

He's like, fuck.

You know, the deli shop really isn't doing as hot as I thought it would.

We wanted to buy the amusement park.

I guess there's my grandma's estate.

I guess I could send that.

Yeah.

I stole a bunch of money for grandma.

I thought maybe he was embarrassed about the money, but now, watching him lean against the booth with slowly shifting eyes, I realized it wasn't that at all.

Scott was just stoned.

Same old Scott.

Hell yeah, weed, yeah, brother.

Hell yeah, brother.

No, that was not.

No, okay.

What's up, burnout?

What's up, burnout, my brother?

I haven't seen you in like 15 years.

How about a broad go?

Good God.

Oh, my God.

Good, good God.

I know this was written in 2015.

It was 2015 to a T, I guess.

Good lord.

Yeah, it's about to be like a bro fist, whatever.

Yeah.

Our special guest, PewDiePie, here to...

Scott smiled and pushed off the wall to come give me me a quick hug.

Hey, how's it going, man?

Fuck, look at you.

What's your diet, man?

Rabbit food and lettuce?

You're not going to get any ladies with that skinny body.

That was great.

Oh, yeah.

That was good.

Yeah.

You know what I love?

I love that we gave Tyler and Scott.

They're just two big, dick energy guys.

Yeah.

Dude, are you even going to pick up chicks with this tiny little body you got?

Well, I was thinking in my head, like,

is he going to switch for Scott?

And you absolutely did, so I appreciate that good job hell yeah

your mom doesn't seem to mind

hey Mark I'm Danny do you remember me Danny Bircher

Scott's girlfriend gave me a shy smile and stuck out her hand so we could engage in a stiff handshake.

Yeah, I think...

I can move the chair without dying, good lord.

Yeah, I think so.

You were in my sister's class, right?

Charlotte Lannis.

Danny had the decency to look embarrassed.

Yeah,

but we weren't really friends.

Yeah, they definitely hated each other.

Sure.

That's putting it lightly, I thought.

We were freshmen when you guys were seniors.

Yeah, I do remember that.

Maybe I should just get it over with.

Called Charlotte over and the reintroduction of the two girls, while awkward, was over pretty quickly to everyone's relief.

That you all were.

Charlotte, Danny?

Oh yeah, our our awkward, our awkward moment.

Are you two done?

We were all eager to get into the park.

It was odd not stopping at the window for tickets and even odder to walk around the rusting turnstiles at the front gates.

I delighted in reminding myself that we own this place now.

Brandon gave us a tour of the park.

Not so much of the geography, we all knew that inside and out, but of the hypothetical layout, reorganization of the park as he saw it.

The Excalibur is going to need the most amount of work, according to Rich.

A roller coaster made of wood, exposed to the elements for all these years, will keep as much of the original structure as is safe, but we might have to rebuild most of it.

Do we even have the money for that?

Yeah, we have the money for that.

Ah, Mr.

Moneybags, that mini dealership treating you good?

I nudged him hard with my shoulder.

Tyler stumbled, but kept it.

Did someone just laugh at hard?

Good lord.

Yeah.

Tyler stumbled, but kept enough composure to push me back into a passing churro stall.

God damn, dude.

Yeah, good joke.

Those six BMW dealerships are treating me very well.

Well enough to

serve as the sizable collateral we needed.

Thank you for the back swearing.

Charlotte runs up behind us and throws her arms around Tyler and Koji.

So can we like ride some rides?

Are you kidding me?

Why do you think we're here?

I'm just here for Mayhem Mountain.

All right, fine.

Tidal drop?

All right, fine.

I thought you guys would be interested in how our investment's coming along, but I guess I'll go fuck myself.

Can you stay on script?

Thanks.

Sorry.

All we're enjoying.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

What?

Big snort.

Give us a snort.

Oh, God.

Okay, I'm trying.

I told you you'd be embarrassed on cameras.

No, if I could, I would, I swear.

I'll do the sound.

Please, God, I can't.

Beautiful.

That's good.

We'll work off that.

Okay, okay.

We're trying here.

We're not professionals.

That's not the script.

I'm kidding.

I can be mean to Hunter.

I feel so bad.

I'm sorry.

That was the show.

No, it makes me part of the show.

Okay.

So in that case, do better.

I'm doing my best.

Yes, Captain.

All we're interested in is

the projected Roy, and more importantly, which rides have passed safety inspection.

A little over half of the

story.

Hold on, I'm having a

Fully recovered.

Don't worry.

I'm still the sharpshooter of this group.

I thought

half of them are rideable.

It sounded like you were trying to do an Elvis impression first.

A little over half of them are ridable.

Brandon stopped walking and tried to look annoyed, and failing that, he smiled.

Suddenly, everybody was talking at once.

Is Steel Viper open?

Yep, that one's on.

What about the Snapdragon?

That one is good to go to.

Renegade Falls?

The water's not on.

Damn, shit!

High roller?

Yes.

Spacebin?

Oh, yeah.

Power tower?

They're doing the inspection this week.

Isaiah, one more time.

Power

tower?

Stop.

What are you doing to me with that?

Don't look at me when you say that.

There was only one ride I really cared about.

Mine and Brandon's favorite.

What about mayhem, Mount?

Fuck yes!

He answered this to the collective groans of the rest of the group.

There you go.

Damn it.

It's like such a drag.

I was in my fourth year of a medical school program.

Shouldn't have dropped out, bitch.

Mayhem Mountain had always been our thing.

The others had always been happy to ride High Roller and Snapdragon into exhaustion.

Brandon and I always flit off toward the end of the day to ride Mayhem Mountain into the twilight hours.

I hate that ride.

It's boring as hell.

I helped design something similar for Disneyland, Hong Kong.

We put it in Fantasyland for fuck's sake.

Hey, that ride's awesome.

It's long and it goes upside down.

Charlotte is shipped.

That was the show.

Thank you, everybody.

Charlotte is just too scared to ride it.

I'm not stocked.

I'm not going to address it, Charlotte.

I'm not scared of that ride.

It just gives me the creeps.

Something about it just, I don't know, seems off.

All right, look.

We'll start at the end of the park and work our way towards the back.

That way we can ride every ride that's past inspection, including Maya Mountain.

And Snapdragon.

The others all nodded excitedly.

Yes, every ride.

And of course we can ride them, you know, as many times as we want.

Hell yes, brother.

Nice.

Coaching i5 branded and we headed down the street towards Space Spin.

Our progress through the park was blissfully slow.

Everyone wanted to ride every ride multiple times, and one person always had to stay in the loading area to operate the ride.

Is this not incredibly unsafe?

Super.

Well, I thought that whenever you get on a ride, I thought that, like,

you're buckled in, and then someone's just like, well, that's what I put.

Someone is operating the ride in the loading area, but that's one person.

Right.

So if there's a malfunction or anything like that, it's like, have a good time.

No,

they can buy an amusement park.

It doesn't mean they know how to fucking operate that.

Yeah, if it gets stuck, or they're just like, well.

Well, we own it.

yeah take that

I'm gonna die on a track that I own exactly

it only took an hour or two to forget that I was a fully grown 35 year old man

being

I'm just glad it's not a child again

Amen.

Being back here, running through the lineways with my friends, arguing who got the first row of the first car, it was like being 12 years old again.

Still, my eye was constantly drawn up over the buildings into the distance to the back of the park where the high, gleaming rails of Mayhem Mountain shined in the unobscured sun.

There'd be no arguing who got front row on that coaster.

It was me and Brandon.

It was always me and Brandon.

Charlotte, Tyler, and Koji were the most like children.

Constantly running ahead and arguing over which ride to get on next.

Hey.

Yelling back to ask Brandon if this one or that one had been cleared by the contract.

Hey Mark what it's me and you buddy

Always it's always me and you front front front car always

Hey Brandon.

Yeah, I love you.

Thanks man

What what if I died right now and you're like I never said it back What was that?

What if I died right now and no one ever said it back like I just got shot in the head and you're just what would you be what would you what what would I do if you died right now?

Yeah, that would be startling.

Yeah.

No, I mean, like, because I said I love you and you didn't say it back.

So, I would live with that.

Yeah.

If I died right now, what would be your biggest regret concerning me?

God, good question.

Good question.

If you died right now, what size shoes do you wear?

I didn't like that line of questioning.

Look, at least Paul Piel said it once today, at least.

We got hunter at the beginning, and I say it later, so we got once perhaps.

Kill all three of them when they leave the stage.

I don't even own a microphone like I do.

He's just here.

Have you come up with your regret yet?

You know,

I like to think I live with no regrets.

Okay.

So you wouldn't feel bad about anything.

You know, I think we had a good run.

Okay.

All right.

I'm going to go back to the story now.

Okay.

Charlotte, Tyler, and Koji Koji were the most like children, constantly running ahead and arguing over which ride to get on next.

Yelling back to ask Brandon if this one or that one had been cleared by the contractors.

Brandon and I held back from the group a bit, discussing ideas and possible improvements for the park.

Scott Danny took up the rear of the group, quietly talking and lighting joints.

Shut up.

When we arrived at the Enterprise, a simple ride that consisted of spinning cars on a circular track, I offered to flip the switch while the rest of the group rode to excess.

The Enterprise always made me sick when we were kids.

Brandon offered to stay on the platform with me to chat while everyone else rode the ride.

I flipped the switch to turn the ride.

Wait, who's chatting?

Brandon and I chat.

Oh, okay.

It's me.

Chat.

It's me, man.

What's that in your pocket?

Just kidding.

Boys being boys, you know?

Just dudes being dudes.

Guys being dudes.

I can't be mad at the audience because you're the worst proponent of all of that.

Just two guys digging around.

Yay!

Going on, Rise.

Kill that guy twice.

I mean,

I sighed.

All day I've been trying to ignore the bright graffiti sprayed all over over the park, but the words painted over the signage for the Enterprise were impossible to ignore.

Where did the missing kids go?

And the rest of the graffiti in the park was much the same.

Most said things like, where are they?

Runaway Row.

Find Ryan Kinske.

And the missing are now dead.

Similar sayings could be found in towns sprayed across a few dilapidated buildings in the industrial district.

Brandon's eyes avoided the sign, but I could tell he was thinking about it too.

Do uh...

Do you think the reason they shut this park down?

I mean, um,

you've seen that being an issue for park attendance?

Brandon was quiet for a few moments as he waited for the ride to slow to a stop so he could flip the switch again.

Nah, I don't think so.

Low attendance issues aren't actually what shut the park down.

They they aren't?

Nope.

That surprised me.

When we were negotiating the sale of the park, I was given the access to the park's financials in the 80s.

So they weren't operating at a loss?

Oh, they were.

But this park has operated in the Red since opening day in the 70s.

Half of their revenue was being fed back into something called

county services.

Whatever that is.

The bank couldn't tell me, and I believe, and believe me,

I tried to find out.

Now,

I appreciate that.

Just because

this is the author of Barosca.

What was the name of that silly little machine in Barosca?

The shiny gentleman.

That's right.

County services.

Look, just because this is the author of Barosca,

and just because there's now missing children, and just because

there is a suspicious amount of money being funneled from the park into county services, and just because our audio guy decided to play the droning noise when he read that line,

doesn't mean that this is going where you think it is.

But if it is, we're going to go there together.

That's right.

And if you're not.

And if you're not, well, guess what?

No refunds.

So.

County services.

Yep.

Bizarre.

And according to the paperwork, the park was closed because the owner didn't want to live here anymore.

And he couldn't be bothered to wait for a decent offer on the property.

So he just sold it to the bank

for next to nothing.

So I said next morning.

That doesn't make sense.

Wow, Brandon, what a weird thing to say in the middle of a

celebration.

I just get lost in those eyes.

What was that?

What was that sound effect?

I don't even know.

I'm afraid to say that.

I don't know what that was.

So he was a rich guy and an idiot.

Yes.

To an extreme in both cases.

Excuse me?

I wasn't done reading it.

Sorry.

I leaned back against the railing to stretch my back.

Now, if you want to go.

Yes, to an extreme in both cases.

The owner of the park was Abel Bissett.

What kind of fucking name is that?

Bissett.

I'm going to stick with Bissett.

Yeah.

You could call him Biscuit.

Biscuit, Biscuit.

Oh, Biscuit.

Abel Biscuit.

Abel Biscuit.

Abel Biscuit.

Abel Biscuit.

All right.

Related to that French French billionaire, I'm guessing.

Michael Biscisco.

That's why you all knew it.

It's French.

I hate you all.

Michael Biscuit built this park for his son in the 70s.

Abel was never really

what we'd call business-inclined.

I've always heard him described as

simple.

I can't believe the son of a billionaire lives in this area.

Well, not anymore.

He moved on decades ago.

I shook my head in disbelief.

Who would ever have thought that our simple little park was owned by a famous billionaire's son?

Hell, I may have even sat next to him on rides and had no idea.

You guys want to go again?

Do you guys want to go again, Tuan?

Yeah!

Thank you.

The rides come to a stop.

The others eyed us from the safety of their ride cars.

I'm ready to move on.

Anyone want to ride again?

So on three, two, one.

Nope.

Nope.

Okay.

From

the 3-2-1.

Nope.

Okay, we're going to do 3-2-1.

Nope.

Nope.

That's how it works.

You say 3-2-1, and then someone says nope before the countdown actually starts.

I'm sorry.

I apologize.

I feel immediately bad if it's not Hunter.

I deserve it.

It was near 5 o'clock when we finally arrived at Mayhem Mountain.

As the sun began to set, a familiar panic and urgency welded in the pit of my stomach.

It took a moment for me to realize that we didn't have to leave when the park closed this time because the park didn't close.

We could stay until sunup if we wanted to.

As I eagerly, someone went, oh my god.

As I eagerly approached the turnstile for Mayhem Mountain, Tyler spoke up behind me.

Listen, can we run to the town and grab something to eat before we ride the Mayhem?

Wait, what the fuck?

Take your time.

I'm having a hunter moment.

I'm sorry.

Listen, can we run to the town and grab something to eat before we ride mayhem?

You really want to ride mayhem after we eat?

Good point.

There's only one loop.

Two, don't forget the inline roll.

Irm.

Herm, actually,

there's an inline roll.

Yeah, fuck off.

Yeah, Irm.

Brandon, Irm, it's right behind me, isn't it?

No, it's not.

It's already happened.

Kill that guy.

Scott?

Yep.

Two, plus it's a two-minute ride.

If your food isn't sitting well, you've got a long wait till it's over.

Look, let's ride it a couple times and then go eat.

When we come back, we'll see how we feel.

Everyone nodded and we started walking through the line.

through the lineways up to the platform.

When we reached the loading dock, I was excited to see our favorite green car sitting on the track.

Front seat!

Oh, that was so in tune.

I'm staying here.

I'll just work the launch pad thingy.

I'm sorry, somebody forgot to highlight my part.

Still scared after all these years, Cher?

I like, Chair.

There's a lot of stop, stop.

Everyone pause.

You can't make fun of Hunter when he starts the whole

thing because then he likes it.

Then it's like a...

It gets him off.

So you have to just ignore him, and that's what actually hurts his feeling.

Yay!

Raise your hand if Hunter's your favorite creepcast host.

Raise your hand if it's me.

No, it's what I'm.

Isaiah Gang.

Isaiah Gang for life.

Thank you.

Thank you for voting for me more.

The loser is going to be executed after the show tonight.

Where are we even at, Scott?

Yeah.

Still scared after all these years, Share?

Share.

Yeah, just share the singer set in there.

Share.

Shut up, burnout.

Scott laughed and tousled, tuss,

toussled her hair before running and jumping into the first car behind Brandon and I.

Danny got in next to him, and then Tyler and Koji took the second car.

Pulled the shoulder restraints down, and they locked in place.

Ready?

Yep, send the car through.

Charlotte pulled the lever and the brakes disengaged.

As the car moved forward, I turned to Brandon.

Wynn.

I've been with you for the past like five days straight.

Go ahead, Mark.

Did we get the green car on purpose?

I yelled to him as the coaster clacked.

What?

I just left the purpose?

Did we get the green car on purpose, Bobby?

Is that your impression of me now?

Guys,

just that line.

Oh, that made...

Oh.

Did we get the green car on purpose?

You know when people draw fan art of me now, it's just a pair of lips.

Damn fine lips.

Who would ever do that?

Yes, sir.

The damage you, I have, I think I have reason to sue if I wanted to.

Like, the damage you've done.

Do it.

They're so much better in person.

Look, unless that's brings me out.

Hey, I'm giving Hunter shit.

I gotta give you some.

Kayla, I'm scared.

Come help.

This magic moment.

I yelled to him as the coaster clacked around the load platform and began the clattery climb up the first lift hill.

Yep.

We sent cars through here all morning, but I made sure Rich knew to leave with the green machine in the loading bay.

Awesome.

As the train climbed up the lift hill, I made no attempt to hide my underbelief.

Looked out over the expansive park, couldn't believe it was mine.

Every track, every car, every turnstile, every screw.

All

from the front gate to the overflow parking lot in the back.

It was all ours.

I wished I could go back in time and tell a young me waiting in the two-hour line for Mayhem Mountain, one day you will own this place.

And as we crested the hill and the train fell into the first drop, I realized I essentially had gone back in time.

At least I was screaming like a 12-year-old, as was everyone else behind me.

We dipped into the first tester hill and then banked hard enough to the second lift hill.

We dropped from there there down into the vertical loop, banked around a set of gift ships, up briefly, and then down a small hill into the inline roll.

We arrived back at the loading bay.

We were all screaming and whooping.

Charlotte didn't even have to ask, just smiled at us and sent us through again.

We went twice more before we finally got off the ride.

Koji walked over to check out the control panel while the rest of us taunted my sister.

You sure you don't want to go, Char?

It's awesome.

It's awesome.

It's awesome.

It's great.

It's awesome.

It's amazing.

It's so good that I'm dizzy still.

I can't speak.

Nah, I'm good.

I have no problem being the carney for this ride.

Come on, Charlotte.

Just one more time.

Oh my god.

One time, and we'll leave you alone.

Tyler's like coughing up blood on the ground.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, way.

Not interested.

I'll ride anything else, though.

Charlotte still got it.

Hey, do you guys know what track B is?

Track B?

What do you mean?

Brandon walked over to Koji at the control board and raised an eyebrow.

That's weird.

It's probably just the track that used to get the cars to the storage bay.

No, that's called a transfer track.

Track B has to be something else.

Yeah, well, I've been on this ride enough times to know that there is no other track.

It definitely is.

So,

should we try it?

Fuck no.

If you don't know what Track B is, that means the contractors didn't know about it either, which means it hasn't been inspected at least 20 years.

That's suicide.

Look, if Track B exists, then even the most incompetent engineers would have found it during an inspection.

And Rich cleared this entire ride.

It's probably just the ride in reverse.

We're good.

Well, we're in.

What kind of roller coaster has the ride in reverse?

You had no shit.

Mario Kart.

So we should make this to where it goes both ways.

Mario Kart mirror race.

No, thanks.

He was speaking for the both of them, though.

Danny didn't look quite on board with the idea.

Mark?

Yeah, I guess I'm in.

What's the worst that could happen?

Get funneled into a repair bag?

Alright, then I'm in too.

He flipped the switch over to track B and a moment later a loud metallic scraping some distance away filled the park.

Sound?

Uh-oh, uh-oh.

Look, look, look, look, look.

No, no,

look.

Just because

and literally everything else has been the same

up until the metallic noise part.

It's okay.

I hope.

I don't know.

Are we sure?

We're here together either way.

So

I studied the familiar silver roller coaster under the pink sky of the setting sun, but I saw no physical changes to the track.

I looked over at Brandon, and a shrug of his shoulders told me he didn't either.

Shall we?

He gestured to the train cars we had just disembarked.

I gave Charlotte a questioning look, but she shook her head with an emphatic no.

So it was just the six of us again.

It's only right you two take the bow of the ship.

Oh, captains, my captains.

He gave a mock salute.

I laughed and hopped into the right side of the front row.

Brandon crawled into the seat next to me.

Tyler and Koji got in behind us, and Scott and Danny took the back.

We pulled the shoulder bars down, and they locked into place.

You sure about this?

Danny said something from her place, a few hours back, but all I heard was Brandon say, Pull it!

The brakes released, and the train rolled away from the platform and into the twilight of dusk.

The lights had lit up on the track while we'd been arguing, and the roller coaster looked absolutely beautiful.

I was filled with awe and reverence at what this place truly meant to me and my friends.

It was a symbol of our youth and innocence, blissful ignorance of the world.

It was our own little bubble of happiness.

The coaster again climbed the lift hill.

From the top, Brandon and I studied the track, but in those few seconds I saw no difference.

Brandon looked over and I shook my head at him in disappointment.

By the time we reached the vertical loop halfway through the ride, it was clear that there was no track B.

But it was hard to be upset because I was still on Mayhem Mountain and and still found it an impossible challenge not to smile.

We banked around the now brightly lit gift shops, up the small tester hill, and then back down the inline roll.

Except, the inline roll was suddenly above us.

We'd missed it.

Instead, the track now descended into a large square hole in the ground.

Behind the gift- no, behind the gift shops, and we were headed directly into it.

I was in too much shock to scream or even move.

The black hole swallowed us in an instant, and we descended into complete darkness.

I felt a comfortable pressure leave my shoulders and realized that the shoulder bars had released.

I gripped the front lip of the ledge of my seat and heard the terrified screams of my friends behind me as the coaster suddenly spun into what felt like an inline roll.

Friends, do you want to scream?

I knew they'd be too enthusiastic about it.

I was too scared to do anything, but hold on for dear life.

Though some part of my brain registered that the g-forces of the the roll probably would have been enough to keep me in my seat if i'd let go probably

we came out of the inline roll and dropped again hard as the roller coaster dropped the room suddenly lit up around us i saw the track below arcing up into a light tester hill as we hit the bottom of the hill the shoulder bars lowered mechanically the car went over the small tester hill and then braked to start up another tall lift hit i took my first breath since dropping through the ground and looked around, tuning out the screams of Danny and Tyler behind me.

We were in what can be described as a cavernous room and I only assume it stretched in farthest reaches of the park above.

There were lots of vertical loops, high drops and sharp curves that put the tracks perpendicular to the ground.

Throughout the entire sublevel building, lamps dotted the wall every 30 feet.

They put out a dreary yellow glow for as far back as the eye could see, but many were burnt out and in parts the track disappeared into darkness.

But in the dull, yellow edges of the light, I saw something that registered in me a horror beyond death.

Far away from us, in a section of shadowy track, I saw the high crest of a peak hill which reached almost the ceiling of the giant room and then the track just ended.

Suddenly, I felt the horrible reality of the world outside my mind begin to bleed in.

Danny was screaming uncontrollably.

Tyler was crying, bawling even.

Koji was yelling at Brandon who was looking straight at me, hitting my leg hard and repeating my name.

As the cars continued to climb, I finally gave him my attention.

I didn't want to be alone in the fear anymore.

What is this?

We have to get off this ride.

We We have to get off this ride, Mark.

I know, man.

We're going to die.

I know, man.

I yelled at him as we reached the top of the lift hill and dropped over the other side.

I squeezed my eyes shut until I felt the shoulder bars once again release and I bit my lip to keep from crying.

I opened my eyes and choked as I watched the track ahead of us bend up into a vertical loop.

I reached up and tried to pull the shoulder bar down, but it was locked in place.

Hang on, hang on to the seats!

As we approached the loop, I felt the brakes engaging, slowing the car and the tow cable catch beneath my feet we were being pulled up through the loop but too slowly for gravity to keep us in our seats As the train began to invert, I felt my feet rise from the floor of the car.

My hair fell over my face and my butt left the seat.

I closed my eyes and tried to block out the screams of terror from behind me.

I concentrated on my death grip of the ledge on my seat as we grounded the track.

We remained upside down for what felt like eternity.

Finally, the pressure began to ease, my butt dropped to my seat and my feet to the floor.

The white noise subsided from my ears and I heard Koji screaming.

Tyler!

Fuck!

Fuck, he fell out!

Fuck, he fell!

He's dead, man!

He's dead!

He hit the track down there!

He had a crazed look in his eye.

I was finally seeing the brandon for my youth.

The shoulder bars descended again, this time locking in tighter.

We came out of the loop and sped up and down several tester hills.

I tried to study the track ahead of us as we went through the safer parts.

I thought I saw water reflecting off the metal rail somewhere in the distance.

Brandon sobbed in his seat.

Mark, what are we gonna do?

I don't wanna die, man.

I don't wanna fucking die!

I don't know, I don't know what to do!

I'm sorry, I'm scared too!

We banked around a corner of the room and the shoulder bars released again.

This time, we dove into a curve that put the left side of the train parallel to the ground, and it was a long drop.

I gripped the edge of the seat tightly as before, but this time I kept my eyes open and was able to catch Brandon as he began to slip out of his seat.

By the time the train rided itself, I couldn't tell who'd been lost.

Most of the screaming behind me had turned to loud sobbing or silence.

The shoulder bar didn't re-engage and I felt the car's brakes slow the train down again.

I didn't have to loop to know what was coming next.

It was another inverted loop.

This one was tall and large and I could tell we'd be upside down for longer.

Someone behind me began screaming again, Danny, I think, as I tried to take measured breaths and positioned my hurting hands back under the lid of the seat.

Brandon did the same, looked over at me as the car started off the loop, tears streaming down his face.

I don't want to die here, man.

I shook my head back at him because I couldn't think of anything to say.

I felt tears leave my own eyes as we reached the tipping point of the loop and my feet again left the floor.

Before we were even completely upside down, I felt my back begin to slip down the seat.

I thought if I lost my grip, I could try to grab for the shoulder bars when I fell off the car.

The car suddenly stopped and I opened my eyes to see we were completely inverted.

I grunted loudly at the pain and immense effort it was taking to keep my grip on the seat.

The car started to move again slowly and I heard Brandon say something to me.

I looked over at him just before he slid out of the car.

One second he was there next to me and the next he was falling, falling away from the car.

I saw Brandon try to grab the shoulder bar on the way out but we couldn't keep his grip on it.

I watched him fall and I saw him break his back on the trap below and he stopped moving.

I stared down at him as the car continued to move slowly around the loop.

He stared back up at me, dead or dying.

By the time the car hit him on the way out of the loop, he was completely gone.

Shoulder bars re-engaged and we went through a dreadfully long period where nothing happened.

We were secured in our seats by the restraints as the coaster spent what felt like several minutes racing over hills, banks, curves, even an inline roll.

Without the adrenaline pumping through my veins, I felt the shock begin to wear off.

It was replaced by a panic and fear unlike I'd ever experienced, and I decided that was the point of this section of the track, to build and facilitate an unbearable fear.

I felt the brakes engage finally, and I looked ahead to find the loop we were surely entering was, but there was none.

We were high, almost to the top of the ceiling and we slowed to a stop on a straightaway directly ahead was a drop and at the bottom of the hill a series of four different tracks with a transfer stack just before they split off each track had five or so feet of color red orange green and blue before racing off in different directions I felt an urgent shaking on my shoulder and turned around to hear what Koji was saying which track are we connected to

I looked at the transfer stack.

Green!

Where does green go?

It was hard to hear him over the sound of Danny sobbing from the second car.

I tried to trace the green track through the building, constantly losing and finding it again.

I wasn't sure, but it seemed to end at the lift hill I'd seen earlier, the hill with no track at the top.

I yelled back and pointed.

It ends at the hill!

Danny cried louder.

Fuck!

While we were stopped, I rubbed my hurting hands together.

As I looked down at them, I noticed something new in the car.

At some point, a small blinking panel had flipped over in the wall at the front of the car.

It had four colored buttons and an old analog timer.

The timer was so old and damaged that though the numbers were clearly changing, I couldn't see how long we had.

We get to choose.

Can you see which track ends where?

I followed all the tracks as best I could, but the rails circled and slid in between each other.

It was hard to tell which track went where.

I think the blue track ends in that big pool in the corner.

The red track ends in a wall, and the orange one just drops into a hole in the floor, like the one we came down here through, I think.

There's no way out, dude.

They're just telling us how we're gonna gonna die.

We can still find a way out of this.

Choose the pool.

I've heard drowning isn't an awful death.

I've heard.

What the fuck?

Yes, it is.

You know, Scott, I gotta say, you're probably wrong.

Your brain shuts down and again you get it.

Scott, not that I've ever been there or anything, but I'm gonna guess, no.

Choose the pool.

I've heard drowning isn't an awful death.

I've heard it's calming at the end.

I could hear him choking back tears.

Okay, I'm sorry, Scott.

That was...

That's better.

No, choose the hole in the floor.

It's possible it drops down into another cavern like this.

There might be more track, which means more time to figure out how to live.

You don't think we'd be the first to choose that option, do you?

And no one that went missing ever came back.

There's just more death in that hole.

I don't want to die like this, and at least it's a chance.

Danny was still whimpering in the back and offered no suggestion.

It seemed the decision was up to me and I had to make it fast.

I knew I didn't want to die by dropping off the track.

I didn't want to drown.

Perhaps the quickest death was the wall.

Stuck head.

I had a boy, Mark.

You're going to car crash us?

I'm trying to hang with it and get through with the idea of just like wily coyotes smacking into a wall.

If anyone survives, they're going to have serious whiplash.

Yeah, I hear it's peaceful towards the end.

Yeah, I hear a brick wall is peaceful near the end.

It's a slow death, really.

More than likely, we would all be killed instantly.

Less suffering, less time to think about our fates.

But the truth was, I wasn't entirely positive which track into where.

It was all educated guesswork, and my time was up.

The orange!

Let's go down to the second floor if there is one.

Scott and Danny said nothing, and Koji choked out the last words I'd ever hear him say.

Push it before it chooses for us.

Before I could think about it any longer, I pushed the orange button and committed us to whatever death it led to.

We heard the metallic scraping of the track transferring below.

Once the orange track was

securely connected, the brakes on the car released and the train rolled slowly toward the drop.

Danny started screaming again.

As we dropped down the hill, I got a better view of the orange track.

There was a vertical loop ahead that didn't look as high as the others we'd been through.

In fact, it looked like there was a chance to fall.

It was a chance the fall wouldn't kill us.

If it wasn't an optical illusion, and if the shoulder bars disengaged for that loop, we might have a shot at living through this.

I yelled back to everyone behind me.

Let yourself fall out of the loop, loop, the one up there.

No one responded to me, which didn't matter because I didn't think I'd have the courage to let go of the seat anyway.

We raced along the track, in and out of the banks and curves.

At one point, we passed along the pool and I looked down.

Below the water's surface, the track ended above an even deeper pool.

I could see the shadows of several coaster cars at the very bottom.

I suddenly felt the brakes engage and I realized we were coming to the loop.

I tested the shoulder bar by pushing up on it, but it stayed locked.

I was somewhat relieved in that moment to know I wouldn't have to make the decision to fall out now or gamble on the orange track, but suddenly the restraints released.

As we started up the loop, I gripped the lip of the seat tightly and turned my head back to look down.

It looked like we were very high, and I only hoped the ground was the loosely packed dirt that it looked like.

I had to choose now, fall or the hole, I chose to fall.

As I began to slide up the seat, I yelled at the others to let go and fall out of the car, and then I closed my eyes and let go.

I felt my head crack the shoulder bar on the way out.

It wasn't like a slow motion fall.

It was over before I realized that I actually let go.

One moment I felt an intense pain as my head hit the bar and in the same moment I realized I was on the ground.

I hadn't even had the time to realize the possibility of hitting the track below or getting run over by the cars.

Over my eyes in time to watch the cars speed over the track above me.

The pain didn't hit me all at once.

I had one long, blissful second before I felt it.

And then I was in agony.

I'd hoped my body was so in shock that I wouldn't feel much of the pain, but I felt it all.

I concentrated on keeping my eyes open and trying to catalog the damage.

There's blood on my clothes, but I didn't know what part of my body it was coming from.

I heard screaming as well, but I didn't know if it was in my head or coming from my friends as they approached the end.

I didn't want to move, didn't think it was safe to move, but I knew I had to, if only to pull out my phone.

With trembling fingers, I pulled the thing from my pocket and brought it to my face, trying to focus on the screen.

But it was shattered and refused to even turn on.

I threw it away from me, then I realized the silence.

The ride had ended.

With a great amount of effort, I rolled over onto my stomach and dragged my broken body across the ground towards where I thought I remembered seeing the hole.

I crawled for what seemed like hours.

Maybe it was.

Sometimes I tried to stand or even kneel, but the pain in my back and ribs was too great.

I passed out several times from shock and pain, but eventually I made it to where the track disappeared into the ground.

I pulled myself to the edge and looked down inside the hole.

The track ended just below the surface.

It was a natural shaft with walls made of rock.

I didn't know how deep it went and I didn't want to.

It was a fate I'd only narrowly escaped, but then I thought my friends were down there and maybe someone survived.

Goji!

My voice echoed loudly down the shaft.

No answer.

Scott?

Nothing.

I reached for a nearby screw and dropped it down the hole.

It took half a minute to land, and when it did, it was with a tink as it hit something metal.

Small sound echoed up the shaft and out into the cavernous room, and I realized this place was built with acoustics in mind.

I rolled over onto my back and studied everything I could see from where I was, staving off my body's desire to pass out again.

I felt nothing but numbness when I finally saw what I was looking for.

A long, panoramic window in the far wall.

I knew what Track Beat was for, and I finally let myself slip away into the darkness.

I remember very little of my rescue.

There were lots of people in uniform and my sister yelling in pain.

Lots of pain.

I was in and out on the way to the hospital, but I remember I passed through the room behind the window at some point.

From my stretcher, through the chaos, I saw in that room a single chair facing the window.

It was covered in a deep layer of dust.

I was never visited by anyone official, let alone asked to give a statement.

Charlotte stayed by my side at the hospital for months while I recovered.

She wouldn't say much about that day, although she finally did tell me something.

She said that they wouldn't let her ride with me to the hospital and that someone offered her a ride.

On that drive, she'd been spoken to by two people that had convinced her to never speak of what had happened and to convince me of the same.

Whatever they threatened her with, had her begging me to agree, and I did at the time.

I am still to this day learning to walk without aid.

I never saw a mayhem mountain again.

The loan defaulted in Adventure Valley was bought up by an unowned LLC which bulldozed it and built a block of apartments over the top.

They're still empty to this day.

I don't like the dark anymore.

It reminds me of the horror my friends experienced as they looked down and saw the track end before they disappeared into that hole.

I try not to think about what they must have felt as they fell down the shaft in complete darkness, strapped to a roller coaster, waiting for the terrible end.

I wish I'd chosen the pool, if only to save them from that fate.

As for the billionaire's son, well, he was only simple in the fact that he was a man of simple taste.

And he still is.

I looked him up once, only a few years ago.

He owns several amusement parks now, all sizable but small enough to be popular only in their specific regions.

In fact, one's not very far from where I live now.

I've thought about going many times just to check, just to see,

but then I realized that I probably didn't need to search all the rides in the park to know.

Because I know somewhere in that part, some ride in some corner, has a track B.

That's Man Mountain.

That's the end of Man Mountain.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

That's such a good one.

You know what's so funny is you sit there and you get completely immersed by the story.

And I mean, like

you were a joke around the beginning, but then there's just an exact moment.

Everybody just stops and listens to you.

Well, I mean, I was going to make some jokes and stuff.

I'm like, oh, I kind of feel the vibe.

No, no, I think so.

It's good.

Because, I mean, you mentioned it at the first show.

For one, can I just say, so glad it wasn't a pedophile, right?

Yeah.

Yep.

The first show, I didn't know that going in, and I kept being like, uh, like I was scared to death.

Um, no, you mentioned at the first show that it was like a saw movie.

It very much feels like a saw movie.

That's what it really was.

Like, why would someone with all this money and stuff want to kill people for fun in like crazy ways?

Or even just building

the amenities that you would need to build a pedestal movie.

Yeah, you need billions of dollars to hide all.

It's also funny.

I didn't think about it until this time, but when Charlotte was up there, it's like, oh, there's a track B.

Like, some 16-year-old high school kid was like, I guess I'll send this batch to the dead room.

Like, yeah, just like switching over every now and then.

But no, it's a fun story.

Like I said, like,

she's able to take these otherwise basic characters and make me care about them.

And it's a ton of fun.

Like, you go through a giant roller coaster underground and people are dying, and then you have to choose how you die.

Yeah.

It's just a fun, campy little story.

And I'm glad we got to read it for you all.

And also, a round of applause for these guys for doing such a great job.

Beautiful.

Thank you so much.

You may all depart the stage.

Yeah, you may go back to your seats.

You can keep the scripts, though.

Those are yours.

So have a good time.

Keep them.

Round of applause again.

Get up.

Who up creeping?

They cast.

That's right.

All right, get the hell out of here.

You can get off the stage.

Get out or blow up.