My Job Is Watching A Woman Trapped In A Room | Creep Cast

Charlie Sheen is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with any class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Yeah.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

Welcome back to Creepcast.

Today, we have...

This is a bit of a salty title, if I do say so myself.

The only way I can say it is it's a little salty.

The story we're reading today is, My Job is Watching a Woman Trapped in a Room.

Which is aka's, isaiah's

isaiah's day job no no no no no no all all i'll say is hunter was like hey the story we're reading today is my job is watching a woman trapped in a room

and i said

okay um

okay that's all right that's cool hunter thanks for uh thanks for that i can't wait to read it with you my friend on our show so that's what we're doing now right now and uh i definitely I'm so happy about it.

It has a very captivating title, and I'm curious to see where it goes.

Captivating.

Captivating.

Yes.

It was uploaded five years ago.

So it's not one of the older ones, a little 2019 story meme here by Veristahl.

Veristahl.

So we will be putting...

links up to other stuff if we find out that this author has any other kinds of published work or any books that you can read.

If you so choose, we'll make sure and link it below so you can go grab them.

I do love seeing all the people, by the way, on the Reddit and online purchasing like stolen tongues and pen pal and all that stuff.

It's really cool to see people actually going out and getting the physical copies of this stuff.

I've had a ton of people come up to me at shows and had me sign at the live shows, and they've had me sign copies of

pin pal, um,

stolen tongues, stuff like that.

Like a bunch of people have like brought books books from the show, and uh, it's been cool enough to have my signature in them, which is really weird and definitely doesn't give me a complex about things.

Uh, but it's cool that people are buying the books and into the stories and stuff, so that's awesome to see.

Yeah, yeah, I uh pen pals, especially.

I've signed a bunch of pen pals, it's the best one.

What can I say?

It's the best one, I'll say it.

Um,

hunty, hunty likes pin pal the most.

So, I'm looking at Veristahl's Reddit right now, He has a ton of stories.

A lot?

A lot of stories?

Yeah.

He's got a bunch of stories that are like multi-parts.

And then he has a bunch of single-part stories.

I'm trying to see if I recognize any of the old Mr.

Horsehair.

I feel like I've heard of that one before.

Mr.

Horsehair.

Tickhead.

No one believes I have a twin.

Knife control.

There's a bunch of these.

There's so many stories.

No, this guy's pretty.

No one believes I have a twin.

It's pretty fun time.

Pretty well established.

So, if this, if this is good, then similar to last week's episode, this may be a honeyhole, maybe a content farm for you and I, if you get what I mean.

I like that.

I also like the term honeyhole.

You like the word honeyhole?

I do.

I don't know.

Is it two words or is it one word?

All I know is...

Have you never heard that before?

Honeyhole?

I've never heard honeyhole in my life.

What the heck?

Where is Kansas?

You said it.

You said it last week, too.

And I was like, that's just, that's diabolical.

A honeyhole.

Let me get a look at that honey hole.

Well, no, not stop.

I don't like the way you're phrasing it right.

What are you talking about?

Sweet.

Stop it.

It is a place that has a lot of good stuff.

Like, you can form it for good.

Okay.

That's right.

Without further ado, let's start reading.

My job is watching a woman trapped in a room.

That's a series.

This is a multi-parter.

Hey, now that you're done talking about your job, can we get on to the story?

Am I right?

This is my job.

This is from the perspective of me.

So let's just, I'm very excited for you all to be able to get a glimpse into my life and my job.

Yeah, of course.

So

before we get into it, thank you so much, everyone, for the support on everything.

It means the world.

Continue to like and watch and do stuff on Spotify and Apple.

Again, I don't know what it means, but there is a number next to our name on the Spotify charts, and I want to see that number go up.

So

that's the biggest reason.

I saw a guy today.

He was like, stop selling Spotify.

And I was like, I said, I DM'd him.

I said, listen here, you little bitch.

And so I said, don't ever fucking comment on my shit like that.

No, I said, you know what?

Docs, also, here's your address.

The police are on the way through five minutes.

I've told them you have a bomb and are a threat.

Yeah,

I called the cops and said that

you have a bomb attached to your chest and that you have a gun pointed to the back of your grandma's head and they're coming right now.

No, the

but people,

we like seeing, apparently it helps us when we're high up in the charts so we do like to push that so if you do want to help us just give us a listen on spotify apple and all this stuff it just helps us out so without further ado let's get into it yes let's get into it i will quickly mention baristall it seems his real name is brandon faircloth and he has a book published called roadside sarcophagus which is a very fun title i like that title can we get that on let's see can we get that on uh amazon Roadside sarcophagus?

Let me see.

Looks like it's just available on Kindle.

No, I see it on Amazon.

it may just be a digital book yeah maybe but it has four and a half stars not a bad rating not a bad rating

hopefully this story is cool and if it is cool y'all check out his stuff brandon faircloth faircloth

so without further ado let's get into the story let's get into the story

my job is watching a woman trapped in a room

Three years ago, I was looking at the local job classifieds online when one of the ads caught my eye.

Not because of what it said, but because it said so little.

Best I remember, the ad just read, job available, good pay, no benefits, discretion required.

It then listed an email address and that was all.

At the time I was managing a music store, but I had already started hearing rumors we would be shutting down within the next year and the likelihood of a transfer to another store was slim.

I'd been morosely looking at job listings for the last few days, but this was the first one that stood out, if only because I was bored and it was weird.

So I sent an email.

Oh, actually, did you see the?

It has the email here.

What?

The email is actually listed, windagoon at youtube.com.

Oh, okay.

Yep.

Yeah, that's how emails work.

I put

at youtube.com, which everyone knows when you make a YouTube account, you just go ahead and make your domain youtube.com.

It's true.

Oh, oh, oh, what's this?

Hold on, hold on.

We We have the name of the woman who's trapped in a room.

It is Hunter Hancock.

Isn't that strange?

That's a weird name.

Hunter Hancock's whore mother.

At gmail.com.

Every time I'm at a level, you're like five levels past me.

Okay.

And not in a good way.

That's not a problem.

Mommy.

You should be worried.

Mom?

Why is your email on this website?

She's like, it's called LinkedIn.

Your entire,

this story is about you, but there's no job and you just trap your mom in a room for no reason.

I'm going to have you make peanut butter sandwiches all for the rest of your life.

Is there

some kind of thing between you and your mom?

Because last episode, you were like burning hell, you old goat, or whatever.

Is there something you want to talk about?

You know what, dude?

Me and my mom.

We just have a silly relationship.

Is that what they call it?

I think that's what they refer to it as yes.

Okay.

All right.

Half an hour later, I had a response telling me to go to a particular office building in an upscale part of the city at a precise time for my screening.

I went, and after waiting for a few minutes in the lobby, I was taken into an office where I was given a series of forms and questionnaires to fill out.

They collected them and told me they would be in touch.

I'd almost forgotten about the whole thing until a month later, I got a call saying I had moved on to the second stage of the hiring process.

I was again given an address and time, and when I arrived, this time it was a different, nice office park 20 miles away from the first one, I was met by a man who introduced himself as Mr.

Solomon.

That's a

don't trust that guy.

Gosh.

Yeah, what am I thinking?

Oh, Solomon Grundy.

Solomon Grundy, yeah, yeah.

Born on a Monday, married on, yeah, yeah.

He escorted me into a large room that contained a chair and a desk.

On the desk were two large green monitors, a keyboard and a mouse, and a bolted-down metal box with two oversized buttons on it, one red and one green.

He told me this room was a model for the place I would be working if I took the job.

He described the job as follows.

I would be working seven shifts of six hours every week.

My job would be simple.

I would arrive at work 10 minutes early and enter an outer area that was like a locker room.

I would have my own personal locker.

I'd store all my belongings in the locker and change into the provided work clothes.

I was never, under any circumstances, to carry any item of my own into the surveillance room.

I was never, under any circumstances, to take any item with me from the surveillance room.

As for what I was to do in the surveillance room, I was told that the monitor on the left would constantly show a live stream of a high-definition camera in a remote location.

My job was simply to watch the camera.

Once an hour, I would get onto the computer attached to the right monitor and enter a brief vlog describing anything interesting that occurred in the last hour.

I would have no pens or pencils or paper, and I should never try to take any kind of written notes about the work.

As for the red and green buttons, the red button was only to be used if there was an emergency.

This meant something on the video or in my workspace that required outside help.

The green button was to be hit if I saw something on the video feed that was particularly noteworthy.

It would tell other people somewhere that, at least in my opinion, something interesting was going on.

Solomon stressed that while I was given discretion on when to use this button, I should err on the side of only using it if and when something of real significance occurred.

He pointed out the camera on the ceiling of the room we were in.

He said the real room would be the same.

My work would be observed and other people were watching the room on the video feed as well.

He said I was only a redundancy in case case other systems failed.

He then smirked and asked if I knew what he meant by redundancy.

I nodded, trying not to show my irritation.

I don't talk that good to people, so sometimes I think I'm dumb.

That's okay.

Let him think that if he paid me good enough.

The pay was very good.

$35 an hour.

These are two Samsung OLED computer monitors with 244 refresh rate.

Do you know what that means, son?

Do you know what that means?

He's like, Yeah, and this is a creamy keyboard.

That's why it sounds so refreshing to the ears.

So, you're going to load up Apex Legends, and you have two buttons.

He's like, you're going to load up Apex Legends, and if this woman in this room moves at all,

you start one of the games, and you don't stop playing until she sits back down.

See,

that would be a real horror story right there.

That's 76 grand a year.

That's good money.

Not bad, not bad money to just sit in a room.

It's monotonous

work, but there are,

yeah, no benefits, sure, but

and it's monotonous or whatever, but it is way better than manual labor that has much worse pay.

So you got soft hands.

You got soft.

Did I tell you first time I ever met

my wife's dad?

So we met in college.

I go home with her for Christmas.

I meet her dad, say, hi, I'm Isaiah.

Nice to meet you.

Shake his hand.

And he goes, you've got soft hands, boy.

Did you say, Thank you.

Okay, I was like, I was confiding a story in you that I thought was funny to kind of like get it because we're married now.

So it's like, oh, it all turned out happy in the end.

But then you bring it back to like my voice and me being like pathetic and stuff.

And now it's like, well, I thought it would be funny.

You know what you should say?

You should have just been like, you should have been like, yeah, I have soft hands because I'm a coder.

What do you do?

You work manual labor?

Okay, so you're dumb.

You're a dummy.

So you should have said to him.

Yep, that's like

that's what you say to your girlfriend's dad.

Well, if he's trying to be an alpha, you have to be an alpha back.

You have to say, you have to.

He's your girlfriend's father.

Exactly.

That's a great idea.

You puff out your chest and you say, you don't even realize the fucking wolf pack you just brought in on you, buddy.

That's what you say.

And I go to his ear.

I go to his earlobe and I do,

just like that.

I'm like, you want to take this outside?

You'll see how you'll see how soft these hands are when they're fucking meeting your face, asshole.

That's what you should have said.

The very first time I met my dad,

my wife's dad, he got up and he shake my head.

I said, sit back down.

i said sit back down old man let me get a look at you is what i said i'm like i scoffed at him i did

yeah that'll do so i said i walked off and did did you ever see him again or did you kidnap your wife or how did how did that work oh yeah no we're really good buddies now he learned his place he learned his place in the wolf pack

he's my pup he learned he learned his place

yeah he's one of my pups i cannot wait to meet your parents and in-laws i have so much to tell them oh gosh they're gonna be like oh you mean they call they're like oh you mean ezekiel because that's my dog name don't i can't what is that dog name yeah that's my pup name it's my alpha name

ezekiel

you better not catch me on a full moon dude that's all i gotta say

i'm gonna keep reading now

this worried me I was already thinking this was some kind of psych experiment or secret government job, which I was okay with.

But the kind of money to sit and watch a screen?

My mom always told me that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.

And this was seeming too good to be true.

I asked if I was going to be doing anything illegal.

Solomon laughed and said no.

I asked if anyone was going to get hurt.

Again, he shook his head no.

He said the reason they were paying so much was because they needed employees that were motivated to be professional and discreet.

The work they were doing was important, and for various reasons, it couldn't be discussed.

If I took the job, I would have to sign papers promising I would never discuss my work there or I could be sued or locked up.

I'm only breaking that now because of everything that's happened.

So I took the job, and because they wanted me to start

right away, I had to quit the store with no notice.

I felt bad about that, but I was excited about the new job too.

It was a lot of money and seemed like easy enough work, if a bit boring.

I was nervous nervous that there was something more to it, but I told myself I would just have to see.

No point in chickening out and wasting a good chance because I let my imagination go crazy.

I was given the location of the job itself, and when I went there, I was amazed that it really was just like the model room I had been shown with only a few differences.

There was a locker room you had to pass through to enter the surveillance room, and there was a small bathroom attached to the real surveillance room also.

The real room had a small water cooler in the corner, but because I wasn't allowed to bring anything in with me, I had to eat before or after every shift.

The biggest difference, of course, was the monitors were turned on.

The right monitor was just a black and white terminal like you see in movies sometimes.

I could type in my logs, but no internet to look at anything.

Wait, no internet to look at or anything like that.

The left monitor,

well, it was a video from a room.

You would call it a bedroom, I guess, because it had a bed in it, but it had lots of other stuff too.

A TV, a sofa, and chairs, a couple of tables, and plenty of empty space in between.

This camera must be high up in a corner because I could see pretty much everything except for the far side of furniture.

At first, though, I didn't notice any of that stuff.

All I saw was her.

The story's getting good, but I have to mention where it said a TV of soap and chairs.

I read that as I said a TV.

I was going to be like, holy shit, that's awesome.

Yeah.

Like, it's a woman tracked in a room and she has a ramp.

She's just like, she's like doing donuts.

There's a woman in Travis Bristana doing backflips on a four-wheeler in the room

into a giant foam pit.

And it was pretty awesome.

It's like she does a jump and he hits the green button and then they call in and they're like, only hit the button if she she does a can can yeah i hit the green button and cether came out and started playing

all i saw was her she looked to be a little older than me and was very pretty when i first saw her she was laying

on her please when i first when i first saw her she was laying on her side on the sofa That was the part of the room farthest from the camera.

But the picture was very clear and I could tell that she was sleeping.

I found myself leaning into the monitor more so I could see her better, and then I thought about what I was doing and felt embarrassed.

It's like I was spying on her.

A peeping tom, my mom used to call it.

I didn't want to be a peeping tom, but I didn't want to be silly either.

I needed to think about it slow.

It was a good job, and I wasn't doing anything wrong, right?

I wasn't hurting anybody.

The woman looked fine, and the room was nice.

She probably agreed to be there, and it's all some experiment or something.

I was just overreacting.

So I sat down in the chair and began my work.

Don't know about that one, buddy.

Don't know about that one.

That's all I gotta say.

Dude, I'm probably just overreacting.

This is a full dining room table set.

The girls sleeping in a locked up room and I got big goofy cartoon buttons in front of me.

This is fine.

Why am I being such a weird, negative Nancy about all this?

Also, I want to say too, just a little gripe so far, bringing up his mom too much.

My mom used to say this.

Well, okay.

So, yes, but he's mentioned it twice, and I have a feeling that the mother may come into the story later.

Oh, which is why you want to know my gut reaction so far.

I agree.

If not, I agree.

What?

Yeah, my gut reaction so far is I think he's the experiment, dude.

Yeah, I think so.

The red button or the green button for sure.

That sounds very,

what's that one experiment where they like told the in real life where they told the participants to electrocute someone?

Oh,

yeah, yeah, yeah.

I forget the name of it, but basically, it was like, how long will a person electrocute someone if a researcher tells them to?

Yeah.

I think it's going to be a situation similar to that.

Like, how long he'll let this go on for?

That is my theory.

My theory is that, uh-oh, our protagonist is the experiment.

If I'm fucking right, you owe me $100.

Okay.

And if you're wrong, you owe me $5,000.

That doesn't seem equally fair, but that's...

I think it's a 50 to 1 odd.

I think

40 to 1, $4,000.

Okay.

It didn't take long before I understood more.

The woman I took to calling her Rachel wasn't there of her free will.

I never saw her.

What?

Wait, hold, hold, tie out.

It didn't take long before I understood more.

The woman I took to calling her Rachel wasn't there of her free will.

Hmm.

Wow.

Oh, I didn't even process that because I'm so brain rotted the moment he said Rachel, all I could think of was Rachel.

So he took it from Dark Knight to Batman.

Rachel!

Rachel!

Where are they going, Rachel?

Rachel, where is she?

Where is she?

I like how the next line, he's just like, well,

the reason I'm stopping, we need to stop because people are going to start bitching, dude.

dude i already know it but the reason i want to stop is he's just like

i was just overreacting so i sat down in my chair and began my work the next line it didn't take long before i understood more the woman i took calling her rachel wasn't there of her free will okay so you weren't overreacting

you were you were being completely you you are peeping tom

I knew she was.

Also,

how psychopathic is that?

I took to calling her Rachel.

That's not her name.

You just made

her Rachel.

Yeah.

The way she peed and farted in the porcelain bowl.

Maybe, okay, maybe this guy is like a Lenny from Of Mice and Men type because he says earlier, I don't talk real good, right?

I don't talk real good.

Yeah, and now he's like, oh, well, I call her Rachel.

I took to calling her Rachel.

Yeah, yeah, maybe he's like a bit slow, and that's why

he's not like I'm not going to speculate on this man being slow.

Not

when we're at least when we're not even through part one.

I'm just saying, hey, if I'm going to speculate on his mom coming in the story, I'll speculate that.

He does, okay, I'm saying that's the one saving grace he could have if he's not mentally capable of recognizing how wrong this is.

What?

What?

Mr.

Hawkings, I hear your theories, my friend.

I hear your theories.

All right.

Okay.

I never saw her hurt, but it was clear that she never left that room except to go into what I think is a bathroom area that my camera couldn't see.

Well, she never left the room on her own.

Periodically, usually a couple of times a week during my shifts, men and women in strange-looking outfits would come in and take her from the room.

So

he's like, that's kind of peculiar.

It's like a guy in like a Chuck E.

Cheats outfit.

He says, he can have her go to her boom boom room again.

What is going on with that?

Oh my God.

The next line.

Oh my gosh, you're right about the next line.

Sometimes she would struggle, but usually she would just go along with her head hung low.

What a job.

What is going on?

Okay.

All right.

I'm watching it.

I'm watching this woman get periodically kidnapped in this trapped room every day.

It's like, oh, well, that's kind of funny.

That's a little weird.

Yeah, a guy dressed up like Chuck E.

Cheese and a guy dressed up like Markiplier would come in and take her off.

And sometimes she looked pretty bum about it.

They would always bring her back.

That's very so funny.

Well, she wouldn't stay, God.

They would always bring her back.

I mean, she came back.

It's fine.

Yeah, I mean,

she would sleep on the couch.

What do you want me to do?

Tell them to stop.

Oh, great idea.

Why did I think of that?

Though the times when she wasn't brought back during my shift were always the worst for me,

I would worry about her until I got to work the next day and saw her in the room watching TV or painting.

She never looked hurt or even that upset, except for when they took her.

And even when she fought, they were always gentle with her.

I doubt that.

Still, I knew some.

Okay, hold on.

All right.

I'm being a bit too goofy of the story early on.

I'm trying to lock in.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's lock in.

What if this is maybe someone who, like, let's think of a real world scenario?

What if he's watching like a mental health facility, right?

Maybe this is someone who like has harmed themselves or something.

So it's like a wellness thing and he's just watching to make sure she doesn't hurt herself or something like that.

Then that could be, you know,

right?

Maybe probably.

Yeah,

I'm trying to picture.

I'm still under the impression that he...

I'm going to wait till I'm going to finish part one.

Okay, all right.

I'm going to speculate.

Still, I knew something was wrong.

I considered quitting the job, or hitting the red button and getting someone to come so I could get some answers.

Or calling the police and showing them what the camera was showing me.

Except, I was scared.

Scared of losing my job and scared of what these people might do to me if I quit or told on them.

Solomon had told me when I took the job the part of being discreet was not asking questions.

I would never be asked to do more than I had already been told, but I could never tell anyone what I did or saw, and I could never ask questions about what I was doing or why.

So I made excuses.

It was all an experiment.

She was crazy or sick, and they were trying to help her.

She was doing a job just like I was.

Or if she really was a prisoner somewhere, at least I was watching to make sure that she was okay.

If they ever tried to hurt her, or I saw that she really didn't want to be there for sure i could get help then

in a way i told myself i was helping to protect her by watching

i don't expect you to think much of my excuses i don't think much of them myself especially now but in my defense when things changed i didn't ignore it or try to explain it away i knew something had to be done I uh yeah, I can I can believe this so far, like the level of what he's seen, that you could rationalize it in your head.

Bruh, $35 an hour.

First off,

here's the thing.

$35 an hour, okay?

No internet in that room.

I'm just watching this chick paint and go take a shit for six hours, seven days a week.

And then also,

I mean, like, she's like fighting them sometimes.

I mean, there's no way.

This is not worth it.

So the moral.

After we're done with the pay, which let's be clear is the biggest part of it.

The moral implications are also a problem.

what i mean is like i even for 35 an hour and i i feel like i'd be they'd be haunting my dreams i don't i don't know how it could go about

what about fifty dollars an hour

well we don't need to we know what the price limit is i won't i won't you're not going to find out what i would be paid to do such said work but 100

i would i would be against it I would be against this.

And I don't have a lot of respect for our protagonist.

I'll say that much.

$1,000 an hour.

No.

I literally don't believe you.

Rachel would usually paint for an hour or two every day, and it seemed to always be during my afternoon shifts.

The room had no windows as far as I could tell, but I guess she either used a clock or her own body's time to keep to a kind of schedule.

I always liked to watch her paint.

The thing she was painting was always facing the wrong way for me to see it, but I could see her face as she worked.

She always looked peaceful and happy when she was painting.

And seeing her that way, smiling serenely from time to time as she got something the way she wanted it, it always made my day.

She is totally going to paint something like, Help me!

Yeah, yeah, or it's going to be like a bloody face or something like that.

Jeff the killer painted.

Yeah, yeah.

That's whenever she told me her name was Jeff.

Red, red, red, red, red, red.

Where's the kill agent?

Where do I fill the chamber with nerve gas?

No, shit.

I guess I'm just a little cuckoo for cocoa puffs just like the lady just looks at you who's watching and it's like oh what if I'm painting Jeff what if it's Jeff Colbert

what you think I forgot

you think I forgot about Jeff

I'm just waiting I don't even remember where we were at.

There it is.

Okay.

I first noticed something was wrong when she started painting more frequently a few weeks ago her expression was more focused and serious and there was a tension to her movements that i wasn't used to seeing at first i thought she was just really trying to work hard on something and i wanted to tell her not to worry every few weeks the others would come in and take the old paintings out anyway bringing in a new stack of

i think the word is canvas okay this i have to be right about my my theory maybe not slow but uneducated right

there's too much infamous yeah there's too much emphasis given to like, well, mama used to say, and I think the word is canvas.

They're building him to be naive.

Yes, correct, correct.

Yeah, maybe, maybe slow is the wrong word for it, but definitely unaware, right?

Yep.

But it was more than her being focused.

Something was wrong.

She didn't look happy, and she was going for hours at a time.

In the span of three days, she had finished four paintings.

I had been growing more and more worried watching her work, and when she finished the fourth, I found myself telling her to just stop and rest a while.

I had grown accustomed to talking to the monitor, talking to her in my own way,

but she didn't stop.

Instead, she began moving the paintings, arranging them on the back and seat of the long sofa at the far end of the room.

This was the first time I had gotten to see any of the paintings.

Even when the others were taking them out, they always seemed to be turned away from the camera.

I was still worried about her, but I was also happy to finally see what she had worked on.

Happy and amazed.

They were beautiful.

One was a beautiful green forest.

Another was an old stone well.

A third was a house sitting alone on a small island.

The last was an old-fashioned-looking movie theater.

All of them looked like something out of a dream, with trailing lines of color mixing in the air around them like leaves caught in the wind.

It was only when I looked close that that I realized the lines of color weren't random.

They were words.

Easy to miss if you weren't looking close, and by themselves, they didn't seem to mean much.

Just the ghost of a word somewhere in each of the paintings.

Easy to lose in everything else that was being shown.

I leaned into the monitor and squinted, trying to read the words.

Then my heart started thudding as I made them out.

Blinking and rubbing my eyes, I looked again, reading them out loud in order, left to right, top pair, then bottom.

Please help me, Thomas.

Pushback from the monitor, my hand over my mouth.

I didn't know what to do.

I didn't know how any of this could be happening.

It wasn't just that she was asking for help.

That was a big part of it.

It was that my name is Thomas.

Ah, that's a fun.

Okay.

That's a fun end to part one.

I like that.

Meh.

Shut up.

What do you mean, meh?

I don't know.

I'm like,

I'm not, I'm not totally bought in yet, dude.

I hate fun.

I don't hate fun.

I don't hate fun.

I just, I'm, I feel like it's the if he feels like he's a part, he's the experiment.

You know what?

This actually kind of reminded me a little bit of is uh that movie Ex-Machia.

I like the idea.

I think it's got legs.

Uh, I'm certainly there conceptually.

I want to see where he takes it now that he's laid out the puzzle pieces.

I um, I'm, I'm locking in.

I will say the only thing is

a dude creeps me out.

He's a weirdo.

Don't like him.

I'm hoping these next part think he's just kind of dumb.

That's my.

He's having conversations with the monitor.

He's like, it's a beautiful painting, Rachel.

I'm having a conversation with my monitor right now.

Yeah, but

you're talking to somebody.

You're having a conversation.

Am I?

He's sitting in a quiet room.

Prove it right now.

Prove to me.

You're not in my head.

Prove to me you're real.

Prove to me any of this is real.

Go.

He's sitting in a quiet room.

and he's just like,

you look very pretty today, Rachel.

That's what I do to you.

That's what I do every time I watch a pop-up of meat video.

Well, that's fine.

And you know what?

You text me about it and I say, keep, keep going, buddy.

I sat there and

if Rachel could do the same and like going on a different thing.

And I'm like, oh,

you're so funny, Hunter.

I can't wait for us to talk together again.

I can't wait to talk.

Thank you.

And I would say, oh my God, thank you.

We're supposed to.

I would say, oh my God,

thank you.

I get it.

I get where Thomas is coming from.

All right, so part two.

Let's just die.

I need to lock in.

I need to get sucked in this story, dude.

Because a lot of the viewers, dude, they're like me.

They're getting sucked out.

I can feel it.

What?

Can you grow up?

Can you be an adult?

I am an adult.

I'm 73 years old.

All right.

Anyway, yeah, part two.

Part two.

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i thought about the camera buff me and took my hand away from my face rolled back to the desk and sat there trying to stop from shaking trying to make myself take a breath think about it slow the first thing was should i hit a button yeah red button was for an emergency if she was a prisoner or something she was trying to escape they might think that was an emergency But no one had been hurt that I knew of.

And I think Mr.

Solomon meant to save that for something that was like a police or ambulance emergency, not something like this.

But what about the green button?

This was definitely something noteworthy.

Not only that she was asking for help, but that she was asking me for help.

I made myself stop for a moment.

I couldn't know for sure what she was asking me.

I had gone to school with several boys named Thomas.

It was a common name.

Oh my god.

Yeah, bro, I'm sure.

Well, it could be.

It's probably a coincidence.

I don't say.

Hold on, let me call mom.

Hold on a second, Barbara.

My mom said that Thomas is a moment.

Thomas more than one Thomas.

If a girl says your name is Thomas, the Fordo, I guess she's an angel.

I think I'm watching an angel.

Am I watching an angel from heaven?

But the chances of her painting that name when I was working here, I didn't want to be silly, but I wasn't trying to be too.

What's that word?

Mom used to say it.

Okay.

Oh, God.

No.

Mom used to say it when she read her angel books.

No.

Whoa.

What the fuck?

Whoa.

That was actually not planned, and that is so fucking weird.

That is, whoa,

whoa, that was so...

Yo, that was wild.

You, okay, we made the joke.

Haha, mom said it was an angel.

And then the story says, quote, mom used to say it when she read her angel books.

Skeptics.

Yeah.

That's so, I don't even think it was the same joke we were making.

No.

That's such, that's weird that it's mom than angel in the same way.

Like, what are the, okay, whatever.

I didn't want to be silly, but I wasn't trying to be too, what's the word?

Mom used to say it when she read her angel books.

Skeptics.

I didn't want to be a skeptic either.

I had to believe it was probably meant for me.

And that was something they would want to know.

Okay, so he's definitely like not well off.

We get that.

Man, that was weird.

That was so strange.

I'm not going to lie.

That fucked me up a little bit.

But that was pretty weird.

Also, I just want to say, too, that we're definitely getting like,

I'm kind of buying into the slow southern drawl that you're talking about, him being a simpleton, kind of simpleton.

Yeah, I mean, mom used to say it when she read her angel books.

Yeah, yeah.

I didn't want to be a skeptic either.

Yeah, yeah.

Maybe I should throw some more drawl into it.

But yeah, yeah, you get the vibe that he's...

He's not that well off, which is why he's someone who can be manipulated by the people around him.

Yeah.

Yeah, sir.

But should I hit the green button?

My hands were drifting towards the metal box on the desk, but I hesitated.

I didn't like breaking rules, and I was scared of what would happen if I broke these.

If they really were holding her prisoner, they were probably very bad people.

But I didn't know that.

Maybe they were good and she was bad, but I just...

I looked back at the monitor for the first time since reading the words.

Rachel was already moving the paintings back off the sofa, as though she knew the message had been received.

A canvas in each hand, she glanced up at the camera as she moved across the room, and it felt like she was looking right at me.

My chest tightened as my hands moved away from the buttons.

No, I didn't think she was bad.

I watched her for years.

Years?

He's been on the job for years at this point.

I had watched her for years.

When the fuck did that happen?

I thought this had been like a couple weeks.

I thought this was like day fucking one or two.

Oh, I knew it was longer than that because he was like, I only talk about it now because of what happened after a while.

But years, I didn't realize it was that long.

My word.

I'd watched her for years.

I felt like I knew her, would know if she was bad.

Strange as it seemed, in a way, she was my friend.

And I was going to try and help her.

I spent the rest of my shift trying to act normal and think of what to do.

I knew whoever else was watching might have noticed the paintings or seen how I acted, but I couldn't worry about that.

I would try to play it cool and try to think how I could help her.

The only people I'd actually met connected to this job were a couple of people when I filled out the papers and then Mr.

Solomon when he showed me the model room and told me of the job.

I had no way of contacting any of them except through the buttons.

My checks were deposited electronically and I had never run into anyone else who worked at the surveillance room.

The thought made me stop a second.

I'd always thought it was weird that I never ran into someone when I was coming or going.

The person I was taking over for, or the person who was taking over for me.

I'd always figured there must be other people, other surveillance rooms, even, and they just scheduled us so we didn't run into each other.

And I still thought there were others.

Part of why I told that was because it seemed like I wasn't the only person who used my surveillance room.

The water cooler, the toilet, the soap, it all seemed to go down faster than I think I was using it by myself.

If that was true, maybe I could figure out who they were and maybe they would be safer to talk to than whoever it was that I worked for.

I got off work at 8 that night.

Instead of grabbing some food and going home, I drove my car around the block and then parked down the street from the building where I worked.

Nothing had changed while I drove around for a minute.

No new cars had parked or anything.

And if I was right, they didn't send anyone to replace me until they were sure I was gone anyhow.

So I sat and waited.

For one, by the way, I really like this idea, like the concept of you can't talk to the higher-ups.

You try to communicate with the people at the location because you notice that like supplies in the room are going down quicker than just you using it.

Right.

What could be interesting if if, say,

well, I don't, I want to, I'll wait.

I don't want to talk about stuff I would would have done differently while the story is still going on.

I'll let the story run its course.

I was tired and the street was pretty empty and boring, but I was too excited and scared to fall asleep.

Every time a car passed or someone walked down the sidewalk, I tensed.

I kept imagining an SUV or van pulling up behind me, men getting out and pulling me from the car, taking me somewhere like where they had Rachel to kill or torture me.

Half a dozen times I almost cranked up and drove away, but every time I would think of her alone in that room, she had no one but me to help her, and I had to try.

Two hours later, a fat balding man parked and started heading for the building.

As soon as I saw he was able to unlock the door and enter, I opened my car door to go talk to him.

Then I stopped.

I needed to be smart.

I didn't know where they were, but I was sure they were hidden cameras in the locker room and outside the building.

If I go running in there and confront that guy, he'll know for sure that I'm up to something.

Sighing with frustration, I shut the door back and waited until his shift was over.

I considered tailing him like in the movies, but I was scared I would just lose him or he would call someone for help.

So I waited until he was walking back to his car after a six-hour shift, hopefully far enough away that the cameras wouldn't see.

Then I met the man I came to know as Charles Jeffries.

Hey, hey man, can I talk to you for a minute?

His back was to me and he just waved his his hand absently without looking up.

Sorry, I don't have any money.

Have a good.

He froze as he glanced back at me while talking.

Oh, God.

No, no.

You need to get out of here, kid.

We aren't allowed to talk.

I could tell he was scared, but I couldn't risk letting him go yet.

Not after all this.

I stepped up and pushed the door back shut as he was trying to get into the car.

So you know who I am?

I tried to not sound mean, but I could hear how mad I was in my voice.

He yanked at the door again, but I was still holding it, and I was stronger than he was.

After a second, weaker tug, he turned around, his face strained and tired-looking.

Yeah,

I know who you are.

You work here just like me, and I'm telling you, we aren't supposed to be talking.

We aren't supposed to meet ever.

I frowned.

Mr.

Solomon never told me that.

He never said it was one of the rules.

The man shook his head.

Mr.

Solomon, yeah.

Well, there are plenty of rules they don't tell you.

I bet they didn't tell you you were going to be watching before you started, did they?

When I just lowered my eyes, he went on.

Yeah,

me either.

I've been at this job for 10 years.

I've seen other people come and go.

Usually because they broke one of the rules they never mentioned.

The only reason I'm here is because I keep my head down and my mouth shut.

You should do the same

if it's not already too late.

I felt my stomach curling into a cold knot.

Too late?

The man rubbed his face.

Kid, do you think they don't know what we're talking?

Do you think anything happens that they don't know about?

He looked back towards the building, a look of sadness and fear in his eyes.

Hell, for all I know, you've already killed both.

You've already killed us both.

Let me restart that.

Fuck!

Hell, for all I know, you've already killed both of us.

I've already fucked it up again.

Hell, for all I know, you've already killed us both.

Fuck, god damn it.

There.

My eyes are so shit.

I can't read anything.

Hunter's adapted the role of the aging bald man.

So what is he?

His glaucoma sent.

I need weed.

Lots of it.

Alright, give me,

keep it going.

I need to stay locked in.

Shaking his head, he pushed me back and started opening the door.

Either way, I'm done risking it.

You need to stop asking questions and just do your job.

It's a lot healthier.

With that, he got into his car and shut the door.

I didn't try to stop him this time.

Even though I'd already been worried about what he was telling me, hearing it confirmed was paralyzing.

What exactly was my plan?

He probably didn't know any more than I did.

And even if he did, what could I do with anything he told me?

I walked back to my car with a heavy heart.

I was still afraid, but more than that, I was sad and ashamed.

I wanted to help Rachel, but I wasn't sure how.

I wasn't giving up, but as I drove back to my apartment, I couldn't think of what I should do next.

This wasn't a movie.

I wasn't a hero.

And the only ideas I had left were either to go to the police, who might be controlled by whoever I worked for, or try to get proof of her being held prisoner myself.

As I parked my car and walked into the apartment building, I made a decision.

Unless I thought of something better overnight, I would do both ideas.

Tomorrow, I would break the rule about carrying anything in.

I'd use my phone to record a video of the surveillance room, of Rachel, and how she was trapped somewhere, and of me telling everything else I knew.

Then I i would email it to every newspaper website and internet channel i could think of i'd then go to the police and give them a copy too if i could make it that long without getting caught maybe if i did all that even if they got me someone would help rachel i will i will say this further uh backs my theory of him being dumb because that's a very dumb plan very very dumb You'd have to assume, too, if they're doing a public posting like that, that they that like the government somehow is involved or like there's no way the cops can do anything like that.

If they're flaunting it, for sure.

Yeah, yeah.

I was filled with worry and dread at the idea of being hurt or killed.

Part of me kept saying I should just do as I was told and hope that it all went away.

But I couldn't live with myself if I did that.

Even if I messed up, I felt like I had to try.

I was so preoccupied that I didn't hear the person coming up behind me as I unlocked my apartment door.

Thomas?

I turned around and felt my legs weaken as I stumbled back against my door.

I had to be dreaming or crazy.

I grabbed the doorknob for support as I looked at the woman in front of me.

Couldn't be her, but somehow it was.

Rachel?

I'm interested in where it's going from here.

I feel like...

They're gonna get a little bit more to the dynamic.

The only problem is he just seems really dumb.

Like this idea seems dumb.

The idea too is here's not gonna going to enact the idea anymore because obviously, plans have changed if she's right in front of him.

The plans have changed.

Somehow, she's there.

I still am like totally under the idea that this guy is in some kind of experiment.

I don't know what it is exactly.

I think, even the interaction he had with the

man in the parking lot, I think the guy was surprised because he's just like, fuck, we're not supposed to talk here apart.

Like, he, I think even he knows that he's a part of an experiment or something like that.

Um, I don't know.

I, it, I'm, it, it was better than part one.

I'm a little more intrigued.

I will say that, but

I'm still, I don't know.

I am going to make our protagonist, though, a dumb redneck guy, though, for now on.

Okay, there's, that's fine.

As a redneck myself, I don't support the stereotype of redneck accents equating to dumbness, but I'm willing to accept that he is a dumb guy that is also a redneck.

Okay.

Well, as long as that's, you know, as long as we can put that on the docket and move it forward, then that's what we're doing.

Exactly.

Yep.

Yep.

You got my, you got my, my seal of approval on it.

I mean, all in all so far, I'm like, this is like,

I feel like I'm like,

it feels like something where it's like an electric current.

I'm trying to push myself forward a little bit, but the current keeps getting broken a little bit.

It's like, oh,

push me forward a little bit.

I wanted, okay, well, I'll say now what I was going to say.

I thought the way it was going is he's like, I can't talk to other people.

I have to talk to whoever else is in this room.

So I thought maybe like under the toilet seat or under the soap dispenser, he was going to leave a note.

Yeah.

Like he was going to find a way.

And then it's like, I wait for my next shift and we're corresponding one sentence at a time about what's going on or what Rachel is, or something like that.

And I was, I was hyped for that.

That felt like it'd be pretty cool.

Uh, but then he just like waits for the guy to come out.

Part three, I'm curious.

Part three, we'll see how she even got out.

The thing is, I'm like, it feels like almost like a Truman show thing

where they're

treating.

He knows he's being watched.

I think the point is how he reacts to all of this rather than Rachel.

Right.

I feel like.

I don't know.

We'll see.

Part three.

She hesitated a moment before breaking into a smile.

Is that what you call me?

I like it.

My name is actually Melanie, though.

Is that what you call me?

Is that what you call it?

Is that what you watch me through my video?

Is that what you call me when you watch me through a camera when I was trapped and I was shitting in a bowl?

Yeah, I like it.

But my name's actually Melanie, though.

It's like, oh, who are you?

Why are you reacting like that?

It's odd.

Yeah.

I felt my face reddening.

Of course, her name wasn't actually Rachel.

That was just something I made up in my head.

How you read that line?

It was just something I made up in my head.

Well, because in my head, it's like, if you, dear reader, will recall, Rachel was the name that I made up.

But in reality, her name is likely not Rachel.

Yeah.

Like, okay.

All right.

Still, my embarrassment was couldn't keep up with my confusion and joy.

Is it really you?

She nodded.

Yeah,

it's me.

I could tell, I could tell where you're at mentally with these stories based on.

I won't go cartoonish and I won't do it.

I know.

People get upset about that too.

I'll stop.

Well, it depends on the story.

Like, if you go cartoonish on, like, Jeff the Killer or like something, it's fine, but it depends.

Well, these are just getting so.

I'm like, I need it to, I need it to do something for me quickly.

It's getting that, it's getting a bit outlandish between like she shows up.

It's like they

have great ideas, bro.

This is feeling so reminiscent of the thing in the basement thing.

I'm telling you, yeah, it's not there yet.

It's not there yet.

No, no, no, I'm saying it's reminiscent of it when we were like, oh, this is kind of an interesting idea, and then all of a sudden, it just fucking hits you in the face with a brick.

Plus, okay, plus

this story,

it has like I was so hyped for the like, oh, there's someone else in this office with me.

I need to communicate with them, and then it's like, I'll do that by talking to them.

Like, okay, well, there was a cool concept, and you kind of stepped over it.

We'll see.

I'm trying to really, I'm trying to read it all the way through because people also bitch that we

let's just keep going.

I don't care.

It's hard.

Start your own podcast.

Bye me about it.

I'll take it.

I hate on setting them up.

They get mad at me.

Where was I?

There we are.

Okay.

Rachel.

Melanie.

Rachel, uh melany grunted as i stepped forward and started hugging her

what the

whoa why would you do that what the so he just like he's like oh you've been stalking forever and you're like oh like okay okay hold on hold on hold on hold on just keep going hold on hold on he's a guy who has been worried about her safety and he has a parasocial relationship watching her through a screen much like several of you if i had to say and he like now sees that she's okay and he's relieved over it.

Sure, yep.

So, this is uh, this is Isaiah saying, Whenever you guys are on the tour or whenever we meet, just hug him, hug him without permission.

Go ahead, people.

People hug me at the shows all the time, it's fine.

There you go, don't even, don't even, you know, what you know, what hug Hunter, give him a big old bear hug, he'll love it.

I'm not doing it, just get all up in there, get all up in there.

I'm not doing it, don't talk to me, absolutely, do it 100%.

Laughing, she hugged me back for a moment, but then she whispered in my ear,

Thomas, we need to talk

and not out here.

Can we go inside?

I didn't like how close you were to the mic

that was in my brain.

I'm right in your ear, Thomas.

Stop.

I'm going to actually put it.

I hate it.

Oh, God.

She had Taiwanese food for the first time in years.

So much.

I hate you so much.

This is so gross.

What are you doing?

Quit.

I can't stand it anymore.

I can't take this show.

Shut up.

Can I read the story?

Yeah, go.

Go ahead.

You complain about sidetracking it, and here you are talking about Taiwanese food.

Yeah, no, that was bad.

That was bad.

I'll admit it.

That was bad.

I know.

Yeah, you

complained for five minutes about how I derailed the show.

I'm sorry.

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We are now back to the episode.

I broke away and nodded, wiping at my eyes as I tried to finish unlocking the door with a shaking hand.

My heart was pounding and I still felt like I was in a strange and wonderful dream.

But when we had gotten inside and sat down on my living room sofa, I forced myself to focus on the biggest question I had:

How?

Melanie had still been smiling as we sat down, but now she looked worried and sad.

Thomas,

that's what I'm here to tell you.

Things aren't like you think they are.

They never have been.

I need you to tone down the Valley Girl accent by like two notches.

Just a little bit.

Because I could tell, I could tell, I know you.

I can tell that you are trying to

drive this into the realm of parody, and we're not there yet.

Okay.

All right.

All right.

I'm sorry.

I frowned.

A new line of fear cutting through my happy haze.

What do you mean?

She held the bridge of her nose for a moment, looking down like she was trying to figure out how to say whatever it was she had to say.

Thomas, you're part of a psychological experiment.

Okay, alright, you can bring back the Valley Girl accent.

I've been a part of it for longer than you have.

Longer than you have, as one of the actors.

And I still don't know all the details.

I'm pretty sure it's run by some government agency.

And I know they're investigating.

I know they're investing.

Fuck!

I know they're investing a lot of money and time into it.

But for what reasons?

That I'm not so sure.

Why would they choose Thomas?

I guess that's probably the mystery now.

Why him, but still?

I know.

I fucking, I can't fucking read for shit.

God damn it, dude.

I'm so fucking mad about this.

The way you said that was like it was in character.

Like, she got stumbled and like transformed into a grown man for a second and then went back come on i i need to take some kind of class to help with this this is fucked

i realized i was wringing my hands no that wasn't right couldn't be right this was some kind of trick melanie went on what i do know is that you're being watched as a long-term subject.

They have constructed this whole scenario where you do a secret job watching someone, me,

who looks like they might be trapped.

They give you instructions and a way of making choices.

You've got buttons or something you can choose between, right?

I nodded weakly, my tongue thick in my throat.

Yeah,

a red one and a green one.

She sighed and nodded.

I think they're testing how much you'll obey.

What choices you'll make based off your morals, your intelligence, and your fear.

It's interesting, or at least I thought so when I first joined up six years ago.

They've never officially given me any details.

Just the overall gist.

The people talk.

The other actors and me, sometimes we hear things.

And we gossip.

That's what caused me to start feeling bad.

I started feeling really bad six years in.

I knew we were like,

I knew we were psychologically torturing you for this while, but after six years, it was kind of bad.

Me and the actors got together, and it started getting kind of depressing.

Six years

got together, and we realized,

yeah, this is bad.

This is not good.

Oh, yeah, then he interrupts.

other actors melanie's eyes widened oh yeah sorry i think they still call him mr solomon and there are others too

when i just stared at her she went on

anyway for a long time it was just a normal job right i spend six hours a day acting like i'm this trapped girl mainly faking painting or watching tv you know boring stuff

you fake the painting?

Yeah, that's what he's upset about.

You fake the painting?

You aren't really painting those wonderful pictures.

Don't lie!

Who's painting those beautiful pictures?

I think about them daily.

Oh, God.

You fake the painting?

You are really painting those wonderful pictures?

he's he has to be mentally gone this is

okay hold on hold on hold on i think

i think

if someone that wasn't me and more specifically me with you in the room was reading this

maybe that would hit as like oh he's he's not mentally well And that's why, that's why the test is around him, because it's about someone with like mental deficiency.

I'm afraid for Melanie.

She is in danger.

She is in danger.

She is in danger.

Hold on.

But

I can't just take that phrase seriously with like you here and like the stuff we've already set up.

I do fear it's lost on me a bit, but just that

you weren't really painting those wonderful pictures.

It's like, are you serious?

That is your problem.

She, Melanie.

You are in a psychological experiment.

Melanie.

She has spent six years acting for some reason.

Melanie is in a gorilla pit right now, and she needs to leave this apartment immediately.

She is the proverbial four-year-old to his harammate.

Pretty picture.

She's like, what?

You're no paint pretty picture.

Pretty picture.

This is a Travis the chimp situation getting ready to happen.

And I am so scared for Melanie.

If anything, it re-incited the horror in this story, at least for me.

Okay, why did she say, help me, Travis?

Or help me?

Because it's probably part of the job.

They're probably saying, hey, you need to show this to him.

They're fucking.

Yeah, that's right.

Act like you need to help out or whatever.

Yeah.

And they probably have a camera on Travis or Thomas in the

Travis, the chimp.

They have like a camera on Thomas, so then they could probably communicate with her, like, hey, okay, you could take the paintings down now or whatever.

Now Melanie looked embarrassed.

No, sorry.

I can't paint a bit.

I'm a pretty good singer, though.

She tried to smile, but faltered.

Reaching forward, she touched my arm.

That's why they always have the paintings turned where you can't see them.

They're already done beforehand.

All you ever see is some blank canvases, and, well, when they want me to show you something.

Her expression darkened as she went on.

That's why I had to break the rules and contact you.

When I started doing this hidden message mind game bullshit, I got worried.

Worried you would take it too serious.

That you could get hurt or even hurt yourself.

As soon as you left your shift tonight, I talked to one of the guys in the video department.

He told me about how you reacted.

Showed me how you were still parked on the street from the building.

I drove over.

The bedroom set is in the building outside of town.

I saw you sitting in your car and I almost approached you then, but I was scared of getting caught and fired.

So I parked and waited until I could follow you somewhere else and let you know I was okay.

She blinked back tears.

I'm ashamed to say I almost left a couple times.

I don't want to lose this job.

And I tried to tell myself you'd be okay after a day or two.

I couldn't get them to change the script enough that you felt like I was okay and wouldn't worry too much.

I felt an angry heat growing in my chest.

Well,

that's nice of you.

You were right about the Travis's ship thing, by the way.

Get out of there.

He's about to go ballistic.

Well, that's nice of you.

Now I'm literally imagining Heath Leather's Joker and Rachel.

My father was a drinking man.

Well,

that's nice of you.

She looked up, her eyes red.

Like, no, I've been shit.

I'm shit.

I'm so sorry.

And I was being selfish and cowardly, but I didn't actually leave.

And then when I saw Charlie leaving the building, saw you running over to talk to him, I knew they were escalating it even further.

Charlie?

Belani rolled her eyes in frustration.

Shit.

Yeah, sorry.

Charlie Jeffries.

He's another actor.

What did I say?

In an earlier version of the experiment, he actually played Mr.

Solomon, but but they decided he wasn't scary enough.

So now,

he usually in one of the

suits.

Sorry, the snort got me.

I laughed at my own joke.

But they decided he wasn't scary enough.

So now he's usually in one of the suits.

He's actually done that for your version a lot.

Can't recognize them under all that get up they wear.

What experiment has been going on for six years

that they just have just for this one guy who's kind of dumb and they have like 800 actors as a part of it.

They have all these facilities all over the city for one guy.

They're paying Thomas.

They're paying Thomas.

Over the course of two years, I've given this man like $160,000

to be like, oh, Rachel, my beautiful bride.

How do you look?

Paintings are very beautiful.

This one actor.

And now she goes conscious over $60.

Rachel.

I do have a pain for this.

I love you.

And now she grows a conscious after six years.

She waits.

She's like,

okay, hold on.

Now, this is kind of screwy after six years.

She's emotionally manipulated someone in experiment, but the hidden messages were too much for you.

She has consciously known that she is like acting like a victim.

in a jail cell.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

She knows that she's put it this way.

And for years it's been fine, but the messages, messages, that's too much.

I have to break everything now.

Well, surely they won't fire me over this.

Like, what?

Yeah.

And also, like,

okay,

I'm saving it.

Like, just, she has explained so much to him that didn't need explained.

Like, that's why I followed you and got your cards.

Like, yeah, we get that.

You're at the house now that you tailed him, right?

Like, it's just like,

okay, whatever.

I kept curling and uncurling my hands on my lap.

It was all too much.

Felt like a pinball going between anger and relief and embarrassment and confusion.

So all that stuff he told me?

That was all just to scare me?

See how I'd react?

She nodded as she sniffed.

You snoring it, waiting so funny.

She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hands.

Yes, I'm sorry.

That's why I knew I couldn't wait any longer to tell you.

I could see how worried and scared you were going back to your car.

I pulled my arm back from her touch.

Well,

thanks, I guess.

At least you stopped me before I went to the police and looked like a joke in front of them, too.

I just wanted her gone, her sympathetic, pitying eyes off of me.

Thanks for stopping by and letting me in on it.

I tried to make my voice sound hard and unfeeling, but it came out watery instead.

Standing up, I turned away from her so she couldn't see as I started to cry.

If you don't mind,

I need time to think about everything.

It's a lot.

A moment passed, and then her hand was on my shoulder.

Thomas,

you don't have anything to be embarrassed about.

They are very good at what they do.

All you did was what you thought was right, because you're a good man

i shrugged

i thought that you were in trouble

and i wanted to help

she gently turned me toward her when i looked up she smiled and sniffed again

i know

But you need to realize, most people wouldn't have tried to help.

Not when giving up their job or risking themselves like that.

Not for a stranger.

I wiped up my face as I looked away.

Well,

I still feel dumb.

But I'm glad it's not real.

I'm glad you're okay.

I paused and caught her eye again.

We are, aren't we?

Safe?

I mean?

I I imagine that I imagine where this is going, by the way, is that she, this is part of the experiment as well, her coming to him and saying it.

Exactly.

She hesitated before nodding.

Yeah, I think so.

Like I said,

they have a lot invested in whatever this is.

And the fact that they're willing to go as far as they have with you makes me wonder.

But I've never seen any signs of anyone getting hurt.

I think the worst that could happen is one of us gets fired.

Yeah, do you think it's like, oh, she gets fired?

They put a new one in there and pretend like he doesn't know.

Like, what it,

yeah, like, oh, I guess I'll sit down at my job.

Yeah, let's hope there's a girl who isn't in trouble.

Yeah, I wonder which one of us is getting fired.

I felt my face getting red again.

So

don't worry about that.

I'm gonna quit tomorrow.

I'll finally get to hit their damn buttons.

Maybe both of them.

I started to smile, but then I saw the look on Melanie's face.

Thomas, please don't do that.

I don't think they would hurt us, but

if you up and quit, they'll figure out I've talked to you.

I don't think they watch us all the time, but I don't know what they can find out.

You know, tracking cell tones, spy satellites, whatever.

Spy satellites.

I'm taking a big risk just being here.

And I don't want them catching on.

Okay, so everything she just said was really stupid, but I imagine this is a script given to her by the facility to manipulate him, who is stupid.

Once again, the stupid guy.

Spy satellites.

He's a salesperson.

Spy satellites.

That makes sense.

Also, just the idea of like they don't watch us all the time.

So anyway, let's go back to our job where they've invested 10 years and millions and millions of dollars into figuring out if you'll press a button or not.

If you, Thomas, will press a button or not.

I took a step back from her.

So you want to keep getting paid to trick people like me?

She reached out and grabbed my right hand.

I've been clinching it unconsciously, and it relaxed at her touch.

No, I don't want to.

But I wasn't expecting this.

How the experiment has changed?

Getting to actually meet you?

I can't do it long term, but another month or two to save up money?

Now that you're in on it, and won't be scared or hurt by it anymore.

That I can do.

That we can both do we can keep going like normal take some more of their money and then one of us can quit the next month the other one can how does that sound this is really funny

uh the funniest outcome would be if they uh slept together like if that would be the most 80s action movie thing ever of like i was i was hired to trick you and then they like they they like make out and there's like a romance scene and then afterwards he's like you tricked tricked me like that would be the

you tricked me

you tricked me why'd you do that

i shrugged uncertainly it made some sense and once i had calmed down it would probably make more she gave my hand a squeeze and when this is all over i want to get to know you better oh my gosh i was right i was right I was right.

Oh my gosh.

I know I've been playing a role, but for the most part, that's been me you've been watching all this time.

I think it's only fair I get to see more of you too.

Assuming you're

interested in that.

I joked about

Thomas, she's laying on!

Well, that's what I'm saying.

I joked about them

with sex, but sure enough, that's...

Thomas is hard and he doesn't, he's confused.

He's hard and confused.

That's what apes don't like that.

He is a classic James Bond.

The seductress has ruined

clutches.

I

Only to find out that she's a spy for the Chinese government.

I felt my hand growing clammy in hers as my stomach fluttered.

Well,

I mean,

yeah, yeah,

I'd really like that.

Oh, yeah, baby.

Swallowing, I added a gulp.

How long do we have to wait to see each other again?

Melanie grinned at me.

Work another month or so, save what you can, and then quit.

I'll wait another two or three weeks, and then I'll do the same.

And then she looked up at the ceiling fan as she pondered it for a moment, and I was struck again by how beautiful she was.

Oh my god, even if she was a little different in person than I had imagined,

just not as hot as I thought, but still pretty good.

Three

I mean, in my head, she was like a died out of ten, but after seeing her, she's more like a seven, I guess.

Three months from tonight, we'll meet right here.

I'll come over, and we can start getting to know each other better.

How's that sound?

Returning her smile, I nodded.

That sounds great.

That's just really funny.

Like the three months.

I'm gonna get I'll come over and we'll make out.

We'll keep

on the couch.

Cocky, want boing, boing.

Pretty much.

When she left a couple of minutes later, part of me hated to see her go, but another part was relieved.

I was so exhausted, and while I was so happy she was okay and we had finally met, I felt like the burned-up wire in an old light bulb.

I needed time alone.

Time to think and calm down.

Most of all, time to rest.

I didn't really even remember falling asleep.

And when I woke up, I realized my alarm had been buzzing for over 30 minutes.

I jumped up and raced to get to my shift at work.

As she had been leaving, Melanie had stressed again how we needed to act completely the same.

That meant not freaking out, but it also meant not acting like everything was okay either.

If I suddenly showed no signs of being worried about her, that would tip them off too.

I promised and she left after a brief hug and kiss.

Remembering that now, through the haze of my tiredness the night before, it felt like a dream.

I will say I have zero confidence in Thomas.

I fully imagine him to walk in there, like whistling, like,

oh, look, time to go to my job.

I'm so worried about this woman.

Oh, no.

I'm definitely not going to have sex with that woman.

Also,

I won't have sex with you.

Can I put in a vote here?

Yeah.

Or can I put in a guess?

I think when he goes in, it's going to be a different woman.

Yeah, probably.

If I had to guess.

Still, I went into the surveillance room with a much lighter heart.

I didn't have to worry or feel guilty anymore about not helping her.

And there was.

Yeah, that was a real drain on my day worrying about this

captive woman.

Waking up and having to wash this broad off locked up in some room.

Kind of made it hard to enjoy my morning coffee, but thank God that's over.

Yeah, that's done.

Thank God.

And there was some satisfaction in finally pulling one over on the people that had tricked me for so long.

Besides, three months I would be done with this place.

Get to see Ra Melanie again.

I hate the way that's worded.

In person, at least.

Because I got to watch her on the video feed as soon as I came into work.

She was asleep when I first got there.

I found myself wondering if she was as tired as I still felt.

I hate the way he talks.

When she woke up later and started reading a book, I found myself beginning to smile and had to stop myself.

You old dog.

I should still be worried acting, not smiling like I had a crush.

I had to do better so Melanie didn't get in trouble.

An hour or so later, she started working on another of her paintings.

I hate these winks at the audience, like the aha, her, quote-unquote, because I now know, if you'll recall from a few paragraphs above, she's actually not painting them, dear reader.

working on another of her paintings watching her work i was amazed at how real it all looked it was hard to see everything from my angle but i would have sworn she had paint on those brushes and was really painting whatever was on the canvas i found myself feeling proud of her she really was a great actress

not only didn't I see her giving any clues that we had met or talked, but she really did seem different in the room than she had in my apartment.

I suppose that was what she had meant by playing a role.

Because that's what she meant by acting.

Playing a role.

A phrase, dear reader, you may not be familiar with.

But it implies that one, being an actor, is playing or performing in a role.

This effectively means that the actor is being someone that they normally are.

Also known as actor.

Oh, okay.

I was almost,

I'm being way too, I'm being

spiteful i'm being a bit spiteful you're right i need to i need to calm down i don't i'm not again just because i'm in a room with you and you make me you make me a worse person

blame it on blame it on daddy yeah

i was almost at the end of my shift and while i hated to leave her i had to admit that i was ready for some more sleep trying to guard my reactions all day had been exhausting and I was dreading the next few weeks.

But then I realized she was done painting.

I expected her to just go and do something else, but instead she picked up the canvas at its edges and carefully walked it over to the sofa.

Her body was blocking it at first, but then she stepped aside.

It was a painting of a massive tree.

Bark was a dark red with a huge twisting trunk that broke off into a dozen branches.

Those branches were covered in leaves that were so deep green, they almost reminded me of storm clouds for the top of a tree.

Like all the paintings, I felt touched by it, even now that Melania Melania told me she didn't paint them.

The images themselves, combined with the colors and small details, they're really amazing.

Just like this one.

If you look close enough, you could see that there were several small blackbirds in the branches of the tree.

It's funny, but they almost looked like they were...

it almost looked like they were made out of words.

I felt my heart start to hammer and I forced myself to stay calm.

No point of being silly.

It was all a game now and I just had to play my part a little while longer.

Still, the worried me would want to know what the words said so I might as well try to read them.

I squinted following the birds right to left and top to bottom.

That

girl isn't me.

I looked away from the paintings to see Rachel staring up at me.

She looked terrified.

Oh, would you look at that?

It's a clone or something.

Oh, no.

All right.

I gotta get, I gotta get...

We're locked back in.

Lock it in.

All right, so now we figured out that he was, it's a double ruse.

It's double, it's a double entente.

It's a scare, some would say.

Part four.

Part four.

I had to do something, and I had to do it right now.

If Melody was somehow a fake, that meant they must have sent her.

And if they sent her, that meant they knew.

They knew about the messages in her painting.

They knew about me asking questions, and they knew I didn't hit a button during any of it.

I felt panic and fear crawling up my chest, making it hard to breathe.

Standing up, I started pacing, periodically glancing back at the monitor to see if Rachel could help me tell me what I needed to do next, but...

She had laid down on her bed.

It was hard to tell for sure with her back to the camera, but I think she was crying.

No, I needed to fix this, get her out of there, and if I didn't have a better plan, I'd just have to go with the one I already had.

Feeling the hard eye of the ceiling camera on me, I went to the door and stepped back into the locker room.

My phone was in my locker, and after messing up the combination the first time, I got the door open and got it out.

Gripping it tightly, I tried to hold it by my side casually, but I knew there was little point.

If they knew everything, I wasn't going to be able to hide hide anything.

I just had to try and be fast, get some kind of message out to people that could help Rachel before they got to me.

I opened the camera on my phone as I re-entered the surveillance room and hit record.

It made a small beeping noise, and once I was sure it was recording, I turned the camera on myself.

My name...

My name is Tommy.

Thomas Calhoun.

And my job is watching when I'm entrapped in a room.

This is not a joke or a movie or whatever.

This is real.

For three years, my job is to sit in this room.

I moved the camera slowly around the room, taking in the door to the bathroom, the water cooler, the desk with the monitors, keyboard, and button box.

I watch a video feed of a woman locked up in a bedroom somewhere.

I stepped closer to the desk and made sure the monitor showing Rachel was clear and in focus.

I didn't know this woman was a prisoner at first or tricked myself into thinking she wasn't because the money was good.

Either way, I know she is now.

She's in danger, and so am I.

Rachel, the day before, be chill and don't do anything weird at John at the job.

Him the next day.

Attention, gamers.

A woman has tried to talk to me.

Attention, gamers.

S-O-S.

After lingering on video of her for a few more seconds to make sure every detail could be seen, I turned the camera back on myself.

I had to hurry, or the video might be too big to sing quickly.

I was trying to stay calm, but I felt myself tearing up as I went on, and I did my best to keep my words clear.

Please help her.

I don't know where she is.

I don't know who has her because I don't know who I really work for.

But they are bad people, and she is not safe.

All I know is that I work at a building at

blank right outside of San Antonio.

I only know the names of two other people connected to this place.

The man who hired me, Mr.

Solomon, and a man who might have job, who might have a job like me, Charlie Jeffers.

No, Jeffries.

Jeffers.

I think.

I don't know if these are real people.

I mean, I don't know if that this is the real names.

Please.

I'm not crazy.

I know how this all sounds.

Just come here.

See the room.

Figure out where she is and help her.

I heard the muffled sound of the outer door opening into the locker room and I I frantically fumbled with the phone to stop the recording.

How do I send?

Oh no, how do I...

There it is.

I hit the button to share and felt a new panic rising.

Who should I send it to?

I had only a handful of contacts and I just selected them all.

Maybe at least one of them would take it seriously and get help.

So I heard the door to the surveillance room opening behind me.

I hit send.

Not connected to data service or Wi-Fi.

Please send again when connected.

What?

No, no, no, no.

I turned to see Mr.

Solomon entering the room.

He was flanked by two large men in dark suits that looked like bodyguards or something.

Raising a finger, he wagged it at me.

No service in here, Thomas.

But then you should never need service in here, so long as you followed the rules.

They took me easily.

I tried to make it to the bath.

They took me easily.

They took me easily.

I've never heard that one before.

That's pretty funny.

It's always they i put up a fight or i went down swinging i've never heard

it could be easily

more easy for them i've never heard someone describe being taken to their death as quote easily

i tried to make it to the bathroom and close the door but the two guards stopped me and pulled me down they put the what do you call them zip ties on my hands okay so god whatever zip ties on my hands and feet and pulled a black bag over my head Then I was being carried out of the room and it felt like they must have put me in the back of a van that was pulled right up to the building.

I was laying on what felt like thin, weird-smelling carpet that covered a hard metal layer underneath.

I heard someone get into the van with me and I asked where we were going.

If they would just take me and let Rachel go.

There was a short laugh overheard and then Mr.

Solomon's voice as he told me that he would explain everything when we got where we were going.

For now, he said, I needed to relax.

It's a long drive and I would need the rest.

I went to say more, but then I felt a sharp pain in my neck.

They had stabbed me.

Or, no, they injected me with something.

I was feeling so strange now, but I had to stay awake.

I had to try to get away.

I had to.

Also, I know like a lot of the writing does this a lot where it mimics how he was feeling in the moment, but the opening of this says he is now writing in hindsight about everything that happened.

So why is he writing here like it's happening in time that he's falling asleep from the drug?

I had to, dot, dot, dot.

When this is all like a text post retroactively, whatever.

Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Hello again, Thomas.

I blinked as I began looking around.

My mouth is dry, my head hurt, but otherwise I felt okay.

I wasn't tied up anymore.

Instead, I was laying back on a padded table like I'd seen when I went to the doctor.

But this wasn't a doctor's office.

Oh, really?

The room was large, and aside from the padded table, it held a small bed, a desk with a computer monitor on it, and a couple of chairs.

Sitting in one of those chairs was Mr.

Solomon.

I raised up slowly, blinking at him.

Where is she?

Is Rachel okay?

Where is she?

Rachel,

where is she?

Where is she?

The man smiled.

You really are something, Thomas.

Trying to be the hero?

Even if you don't quite know how.

I respect that.

Licking his lips, he leaned forward slightly.

In fact, I respect it so much that I've decided to start our new relationship with

as much honesty as I'm allowed.

Some of my colleagues disagree with this approach, but you know what?

Fuck them.

This is my project, and I think you deserve to know what's going on.

Looking more serious, he stood up, lifting the gun he had been holding casually in his lap.

But before we go into details, would you like to see Rachel?

I slid off the table and nodded as I caught myself from falling.

My legs were still wobbly from whatever they had given me, but I barely noticed.

Yes, please.

Let me see her.

The real her.

Mr.

Solomon gave a small laugh and gestured towards the nearby door.

Yes, reality is always best.

She's just there in the next room.

I've stumbled my way forward, my legs getting better as I walked.

When I grabbed the doorknob, turned easily.

I expected the door to lead to her bedroom, but instead it opened into another room a lot like the one I had been in, though the stuff in it was different.

Strange machines filled the walls, and in the back of the room was a large aquarium.

I didn't know.

It was a big cylinder taller than I was, and it was filled with some kind of gray liquid.

There was a shape in that liquid.

Go ahead, Thomas.

Feel free to go have a good look.

You've earned it.

I felt my stomach clinching tighter as Mr.

Solomon's words and the meanness in them.

My legs felt heavy again now, but it wasn't from the drugs this time.

Shuffling forward, I could see the shape was a person.

Oh no, or at least a body, because it was clear from just looking at it that the person was dead.

It was very well preserved, but I could see how the skin hung wrong and looked bloated in spots.

Oh, no, no, no.

Its hair, which had been floating like seaweed in front of its face, drifted away as I reached the class, and I could see Rachel staring out at me.

Murder!

It's just like you have...

This is now a super villain movie.

Where it's like, there were clones or whatever, and you had spoken to this girl who you found out was a clone.

And now you have Solomon holding a gun, swinging it around.

Like, if you ever want to see your precious Rachel.

Yeah, very like two-faced offense

shit.

I turned on Solomon and started to run towards him when he shot me.

Suddenly, I was on the ground, convulsing.

That would have been just ended there.

Got me!

What if it just ended?

That'd be great.

And there it is.

All right, well, that was the end of the story.

Suddenly, I was on the ground, convulsed, as he stepped closer.

Don't worry, Thomas.

It won't kill you.

Just make you unable to move much for a bit.

I heard more footfalls as my body began to still.

Get him up.

Take him to the other room.

I could barely feel anything as I was carried back to the padded table and propped up into a sitting position.

This time I was strapped down, but I guessed it was more so I didn't fall off because I couldn't move anything other than my head, and even that just a little.

I could hardly see at all for crying, but I recognized the blurry shape of Solomon sitting back down in front of me.

Before you ask, well, when you're able to ask anything again, yes, that is Rachel.

Not a fake Rachel, not a dummy, and not some kind of trick.

As I said, the time for tricks is past.

Now is the time for truth.

Frowning slightly, he went on.

Thomas, I understand that showing you that, showing you her body that way, might seem very cruel.

You may hate me for it right now.

I would understand if you did.

But you called me a murderer.

And at least in this specific context i think that is unfair because i didn't kill rachel in truth i've i've been with this aspect of the project for only seven years

he gestured back to the door behind him and rachel has been dead for over eight

felt my eyes widen as though they belonged to someone else's body There's more lies, more tricks, all of it.

God, it had to be me.

Do you know what remote viewing is?

Sorry, right?

You can't talk right now.

I'll just assume you don't.

Remote viewing is a broad term for the ability to see things that are far away from you physically.

You know, things you shouldn't be able to know through your normal five senses.

Some describe it as a physical, or some describe it as a psychic ability, though there are several schools of thought as how or why it works.

Okay, I was gonna say this earlier, but I didn't want to sound dumb.

Now Now I really wish I said it.

I had the thought, what if Rachel is like a supernatural person or has some supernatural capability and she can see through the camera to see Thomas?

And that's how she knew stuff about him.

Are you saying that she's like a ghost?

No, no, there's Rachel in the room.

That she has like, I mean, maybe he'll be a clone or something like that.

That she has like ESP.

Like she has like psychic abilities, basically.

And now I wish I said that earlier because it would have been cool, but oh well.

His eyes fixed on mine intently.

process that was ran as a psych as a psychological test that paid subjects well at the time when Rachel was looking to make some good money.

Three months after being identified as a good candidate, she was taken.

And after the initial adjustment period, she became a largely compliant asset that quickly rose to the top of our talent pool.

Were you thinking the same thing I was?

That like that was all just a bunch of like fluff.

I mean, I don't even fucking know anymore.

we're getting into some like x-men origin shit yeah like what i was saying it's like it's like a superhero i am folding in like a neutron star myself now and i'm i'm

solomon folded his hands on his knee i knowed you care for her thomas so i think this is worth sharing rachel was never treated badly other than her confinement and the occasional test that was mildly unpleasant

no

We all treasured her.

She was enormously talented.

Not just as a remote viewer, but as an artist.

That's how she would convey what she saw.

You understand?

She would enter into an almost trance-like state when she painted.

And when she was done, she would have given us paintings of images and words that provided, well,

it was very valuable information.

If you ever wondered, that's why there was always such care that the paintings were never shown to the camera.

Picking out his pants, he went on.

Rachel was so talented that she selected for a new program that we thought might greatly enhance or alter her ability.

We introduced something foreign into her body.

At first, nothing seemed to change.

If anything, the accuracy of her remote viewing was declining, which was a problem for us and for her.

But then we realized we were reading the new paintings wrong.

She was able to see more clearly than ever.

She just was no longer bound to only current events.

Now her sight transcended time.

He paused and I realized he was enjoying telling the story.

The bastard was having a good time.

The bastard was having a good time.

The bastard was having a good time, pausing to make it more dramatic.

I would kill him.

While this made some of her paintings less immediately useful, they became much more valuable as we were able to decipher them.

For a time, it looked as though everything was working better than we had ever hoped.

And then one day, she showed a painting to the camera.

It said,

please help me, Thomas.

This immediately sent up all kinds of red flags.

She knew not to show the paintings to the camera, and now she was trying to communicate with someone?

We didn't disrupt her routine, but an intensive investigative investigation began into who she was talking to.

Was it one of her handlers, one of the technicians, someone from her past life?

But nothing checked out.

Leaning back in his chair, a look of pride grew on Solomon's face as he continued.

I was the one that first suggested the idea that she was, intentionally or not, knowingly or not, seeing and talking to someone in the future.

I was immediately fired from the project.

As they said, quote, that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

I was also a ketamine addict for six years.

I was still an outside consultant at the time, but by that point, we had more strange behaviors from her, including the second messaging, message painting.

That girl isn't me.

My theory made some sense, but it very quickly ran into a greater obstacle.

My God.

The introduction of the form material had not been as seamless as we'd hoped, despite her having been stable for almost three years since it was implanted.

Whether it was due to her increasing emotional upset...

increasing emotional upset and stress or simply the passage of time, she suddenly began to deteriorate.

Her work became more erratic and hard to understand as her body began to decline.

We were monitoring her health closely, but didn't matter.

Five days after she painted, that girl's at me, she suddenly went into cardiac arrest and died.

Somewhat inexplicably,

we weren't able to resuscitate her.

This was a great loss.

And it required the adjustment of my theory.

Based on everything we knew, it still made sense that she wasn't talking to someone.

Someone with access to the camera feed.

And very likely, someone named Thomas.

If Thomas was viewing that camera footage in the future, as I believed, then he must be working for us in the future.

And whether you believe that the future is set in stone or not, I'm all for giving it a helping hand.

Seven years ago, I began the Thomas Project.

Oh my god, dude, fucking fucking kill me.

Jesus Christ.

Seven years ago.

God, seven years ago, I began the Thomas project.

Over the course of that time, I had overseen the screening and hiring of 43 men named Thomas at several sites.

All was one very specific job.

To watch the videos of Rachel from just before her implant at the time of her death.

I tried to speak, but my mouth still wouldn't work.

I wanted to say he was lying, that it didn't make sense, that it was another trick, but I think I wanted to hear it more for myself.

Because I didn't think he was lying.

I didn't think it was a trick, and I thought I was starting to understand.

The point wasn't really them watching the videos, of course.

It was how they reacted to watching the videos, what they did, and how they matched up with what Rachel had done in response in the past.

I'll also say this: it is very funny

how

all the stuff about like he's just explained a book's worth of information, and then Thomas is like,

I think I'm starting to understand.

I think I'm getting it now.

I think Rachel is dead.

13% quit after the first day.

38% hit either the red or green button after the first message asking for help and saying their name.

22% attempted to contact the authorities before reaching the stage where Melanie was introduced.

I wish I could take credit for her introduction, but it wasn't my suggestion.

We assume from that the girl isn't me message that there was a double of rachel introduced to you at some point perhaps to kill you or dissuade you or find out what you knew but it took a few tries until we felt it was well refined and that i've pointed out only 27 made it that far and all of them failed the next test

her name

I'm just just the insanity of like all of that like

well we we assume that that girl isn't me that they had the idea it could be a clone of rachel so we set one of those up and sent it towards you and 27% made it that far like what what is going on what are we talking about I feel like I'm watching a word salad right now you see the girl you've been watching that talented wonderful girl whose body is preserved in the next room her name was Rachel Donovan

I had always wondered if Rachel was merely seeing you, or if there was some kind of connection between the two of of you yeah yeah when you called melanie rachel i knew that we had finally found the right thomas the distant point of light that our rachel was looking at across space and time

i swallowed thickly and found i could feel my tongue if only a little slurring badly i pushed out a single word

why

so solomon looked surprised I'd have thought that'd be clear by now.

You're our only remaining link to one of the greatest treasures.

Perhaps you have a similar ability.

Or it may be that she forgot the link purely through her own talent and will.

But either way, you are important and you have more work to do.

He stood up and moved over to the table where he turned on the monitor.

As it came to life, I saw it was a frozen image of Rachel's room.

The tape paused where I had left off watching.

Turning back to me, the man looked solemn.

You have to watch the rest of it.

Because Rachel painted you more pictures before she died.

And we have to know what they mean.

Okay.

For one, it's really funny to imagine that, like, it's just clearly says on there, like, that isn't me.

And they're sitting there, like, what could it mean?

And then he looks at it.

He's like, it means it's not Rachel.

And they're like, of course.

Oh, my God.

Are you serious?

Why didn't we think of it that way?

Write that down.

Someone write that.

It'd be really, I'm saying it right now.

This would be the funniest ending ever if he reads the last one and he's like,

there is a bomb

oh my god it's gonna kill the president we have to go it gets to the last one and the message is like september 11th 2001 a plane will we have to go we have to fly

all right let's just please god let's just finish this last part

okay part five

I spent the next five days watching Rachel die.

From the outside, just watching the monitor, it didn't seem that different than what I had been watching for the past three years.

Rachel slept, she watched TV, she read, and she painted.

But there were signs if you were looking for them.

She seemed tired and tense, and she had taken to sleeping more.

And occasionally, just every once in a while, she would glance up at the camera, at me.

It was then that I could see the fear and sadness in her eyes.

Inside, well, inside I felt like a burned-out house collapsing in on itself.

At first I refused to watch, to do anything they wanted me to do.

Solomon didn't get mad at me, but just shrugged.

He said while cooperation was preferred and could go a long way towards making my stay with them more comfortable, it wasn't required.

If he was right, Solomon said with a thin smile, things would play out as they were meant to, regardless of what I wanted or thought I'd chose.

Either way, he added, the video was about to start back plain and would not stop for another five days.

Whether I wanted to spend that time again to see her again was entirely up to me.

Okay, hold on.

Was the Rachel that showed up to his house a clone they made?

I think it was an actor.

Okay, it was an actor who looked just like her and is supposed to like seduce him or whatever to convince him to go back to work, I guess.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yep.

Okay.

I tried to not watch, but a part of me knew from the start I was going to.

Maybe I would find some clue that they were lying about her being dead, or Rachel could give me some advice or warning about what I needed to do next.

I didn't know.

What I did know is that I couldn't miss the chance to see her again.

And despite knowing in my heart that she was dead and everything on the video had happened a long time ago, I still felt that by watching, I was with her somehow.

She had been taken away from everything she knew when she was barely grown.

Trapped for years just for being special.

Experimented on, treated like property, kept from ever having friends or family or life.

And yet through all that, she was still beautiful.

Not just on the outside.

But this guy has a one-tracked mind.

Not just on the outside, but on the inside too.

I'd spent years watching her, getting to know her in a thousand tiny ways that so few people ever truly know each other.

I'd seen her kindness and grace in her actions, even when she was fighting against the people holding her.

I'd watched her strength when she woke up day after day in her prison and never gave up.

I saw the beauty of her soul in her paintings, full of swirling colors and what was the word?

Wonder.

What was with these word searches?

I don't understand.

She was able to paint these things she saw with such care and love, despite living in a world that had abandoned her so completely.

Well, I wasn't abandoning her.

I would watch every bit of the video I could manage, try to burn into my memory memory every frame of her I saw.

Not for them and their stupid project, but for me and for her.

I may not have much left to do in my life before they lock me away somewhere to kill me, but I can do this one last thing.

Rachel wouldn't die alone.

I watched nearly all of it, stopping only to eat quickly and use the bathroom until the last two days.

I would ask the guards to pause it, but they would only shake their heads and say Solomon said it had to play normally until until it was finished.

By the fourth day, I was in a stupor.

I'd already dozed some of the first three days, but when I woke up on the fourth day, I could tell a few hours had passed.

There were two trays of food on the bed, one breakfast and another lunch.

I looked back at the screen in a panic, worrying I'd missed something, but Rachel seemed to be just waking up too.

I noticed her putting her hand to her stomach as she got out of bed and felt my own stomach twist.

She was already hurting.

Rachel glanced at the camera and tried to smile before moving to set up a new canvas for painting.

This was the second of three paintings she did in those last days.

The first had been the inside of an old-fashioned movie theater from the viewpoint of someone sitting in a back row.

On the movie screen was just the image of a sledgehammer propped against a brick wall.

I didn't understand what it meant, and I found myself scanning the picture for some message or other clue.

Eventually, I found what might be one, though I didn't understand it either.

It was the album The Wall by Pink Floyd.

That's why I legitimately thought of that too.

I was like, yeah.

Rachel must have come to understand they knew what she was doing with the paintings and didn't want to stop her, because these last three she set up much closer to the camera.

I was still squinting and studying the painting closely when I realized the flipped up seats in the next row up had brass number plates along the front edges of the seats.

Though they were upside down from the viewpoint of the painting, the angle was good enough that once I noticed them, I was able to read them.

2, 43, 26, 89.

I like how this super high-tech laboratory with like full government access,

you know, above the law and millions of dollars

can't see four golden numbers drawn onto a painting.

You're the only one.

And they can't do anything with that.

You're the only one.

You're the only one who knows what numbers are.

We're completely illiterate.

We didn't even read the golden numbers.

Not a single one of us can read, actually.

In all of our experiments, no Thomases can read and none of us can either.

It's the darn.

Thomas, my name is Hunter Hancock.

I'm illiterate.

I can't read.

That's what it feels like.

I didn't understand any of it, but I committed it all to memory, focusing all my attention on the painting until she finally took it away.

Even that early on, I could tell painting was taking a lot out of her now.

And like I had for so long, I found myself talking to her, telling her to go rest before I remembered her body in the next room.

I almost stopped then but no.

Maybe she couldn't tell I was talking to her maybe she could.

Either way me talking to her couldn't hurt or made me feel a bit less lonely and sad as I watched her.

The second painting, the one she started after I woke up from falling asleep for a few hours, stranger than the rest.

It looked like it was in a room with curved walls made of tree roots, and in the center of the room was a little table made of the same stuff.

Some of the roots around the room were a deep red but other parts, including the table thing, looked burned and black.

I looked closer and saw that I could see a person's shadow over the table, hands holding some long, oval-shaped bundle.

I studied it for a long time, going over it again and again in my mind after she took it away.

Couldn't make sense of it, of any of it.

I wasn't smart enough, and I was failing her.

Rachel slept for a long time after after that painting.

Then she got up on the fifth day, her last day, and immediately started working again.

This time, she was painting faster, and while I saw her wince occasionally, she never lost her look of determination as she slashed lines and colors across the canvas.

When she was done, Rachel picked up the painting and turned it towards the camera, giving me a small, tired smile as she was blocked from view.

It was looking out from the front porch of a house somewhere.

It was out in the country, and the morning view of the yard and the land beyond were wonderful.

But closer up, the painting was of two hands, holding on to each other tightly.

Their interlocked fingers seemed to glow red and orange in the light of the rising sun.

I found myself crying as I looked at it.

Part of it was because I didn't know what it meant, and I felt a growing sense of desperation at the thought that Rachel's last works might be wasted on me.

Part was because I knew it had been five days, and I could sense I was close to the end.

To her.

There's something more to it than all that, too.

The last painting, even with everything else in my head and my heart pulling me down, gave me hope.

Hope of what I didn't know.

But I started to think that maybe the only message Rachel had for me in that last painting was that somehow, somewhere, everything would be okay.

Outside the edge of the painting, I could see motion in the room, people hurriedly coming in with some kind of medical equipment, and then the monitor went black.

You've done well, Thomas.

Very, very well.

For the last five days of the video, we had charted 1,047 micro-variations in Rachel's behavior.

But we can't count four numbers on a series of chairs.

No, no, no.

For

1,047 micro-variations in Rachel's behavior that we believed might correspond to your behavior, your reactions, and your emotional states while watching the video.

Like before, the two of you remained in sync as though you were in the same room.

It really is remarkable.

I sat staring at Solomon.

I listened to what he said, but I didn't care.

I just wanted it over.

Whatever this shit was, I just wanted it over.

Clearing his throat, he went on.

That's why we've decided to move the implant from Rachel's body to your own.

That's one of the many reasons we preserved her so.

The foreign body was still showing signs of life all this time, but just barely.

And we're afraid to attempt the removal.

Our hope is that given your connection to Rachel, it will accept you.

Perhaps even thrive in you more than it ever did, our girl.

What is this foreign body?

They still have it said, right?

Foreign body.

Are they going to make him pregnant?

Is it a baby?

Yes.

I'm going to put a baby in you, Thomas.

Really?

Yes.

I was suddenly on my feet and I was...

And it was only the raising of Solomon's gun that stopped me from attacking him.

That Region, just like those guys who were like, I couldn't be in the army.

I would have punched that drill sergeant he got up in my face i would have fought him like yeah but he had a gun so i stopped yep don't you talk about her like that like even if you gave a shit about her i'll kill you leans into rachel's body i'm sorry are these guys bothering you hey sweetheart do i need to take care of this bozo

solomon's face darkened slightly as his lips thinned No, you won't.

But if idle threats make you feel better, go ahead.

It will only make things harder, not easier.

Feeling a stab of panicked fear, I sat back down.

What is the state you're going to put me in?

Or put in me?

The man looked at me for several seconds before responding.

I'm tempted not to tell you after your stupid and frankly hurtful outburst.

Who is this man?

What is this like?

But I'll be

the bigger person.

Letting out a small sigh, he went on.

though we cannot say for sure as we have never been able to find it it is either hidden away very well or it is able to hide itself from those it wishes

Okay, I just looked at him trying to kill him, but

I don't what is this that it's I just looked at him trying to kill him him by just wanting it to be so.

In any case,

we have the next best thing: an ancient clipping from the tree.

Hold on, what?

Hold on, that was about a tree that I didn't show up in the paintings, but the tree's there, and they don't know where it's going, but they have an ancient artifact from the tree

secured at great cost and sacrifice, and studied for a long time without much success.

We have, however, in recent years been given

advice that this clipping could be grown in the right soil.

That soil is a human body.

That's what the foreign body is.

We thought the soil was Rachel.

But while it did develop further inside of her, she died before necessary growth was finished.

We're trying to make you into a tree.

That's what we're going to do.

Leaning forward, he smiled at me.

We have it on fairly good authority, however, that you might succeed where she failed.

I fought them when they came, but it didn't matter.

I woke up sometime later with a dull ache in my chest.

Yeah, because there's a tree in your chest.

With a dull ache in my chest and a small, already healing scar on my upper stomach.

I didn't really feel that different other than a little bit of pain, but I knew that would change with time.

Maybe I had more time than Rachel, or maybe I had less.

It didn't matter.

I just...

Wait, what was that?

There was some kind of soft voice.

I'm gonna guess it's Rachel.

Coming from where?

It wasn't in the room.

It was in my head.

I felt a thrill of excitement.

Maybe this was Rachel's voice?

She had somehow stayed in the tree thing they had put inside me.

What am I reading?

I'm in hell.

Maybe Rachel's in the tree thing inside of me.

But no.

I had never heard Rachel's voice, but I sensed this wasn't it.

This voice was too delicate to really be heard or understood, and it reminded me of music coming from a distant room that you felt in the back of your mind without realizing it.

As we all do, it was a melody, a kind of song, but it wasn't Rachel's song.

I realized with a shiver that it was the song of the thing inside of me.

Whoa, Black Betty, Baba Down, whoa, Black Betty, Baba Down, Black Betty had a child, dabbed down to them thing all wild.

Yeah, it's like he listens really closely.

He's like, shot through the heart.

You give love a bad name.

Or what if it's the world is a visitor?

Meant to train.

That's

good when bring it back.

I appreciate that.

At first, I was afraid, but that didn't last long.

I was petrified.

Sorry, buddy.

It wasn't trying to hurt me.

It was trapped here just like I was.

But it started to sing.

It was time for us to be free.

I stood up and walked to the door, and as I did so, the lights went out.

The door in front of me clicked, and when I reached out and turned the knob in the dark, it opened easily.

How was this possible?

If it could do this, why hadn't it helped Rachel get out?

There was no answer, but there also no time.

I could already hear boots around the corner as the glow from flashlights began to light up the far end of the hall.

I'm gonna guess that she's she painted his escape.

Yeah, yeah, that's what it is.

It's gonna be those numbers are gonna be the code to something or something like that, and it's like the series of events for him to get out or something rather.

If I only could, I make a deal with God

and I'd get him to swap up, please.

I fucking hated that in Stranger Things, Jesus Christ.

They would be running up that road, be running up that hill.

When did they play that in Stranger Things?

I've only seen the first season.

Oh, it's the newest season.

That's the whole thing.

She like listens to it when she's being possessed by like a burnt hot dog man.

Oh, I only watched the first season and I was like, that was good.

I don't need to see anymore.

That's the perfect plan.

That's exactly what I should have done.

They would drag me back in there.

Chain me up or take this thing back out of me before we could get away.

If I was ever going to get out, it had to be now.

The voice was singing again, pushing me to go further into the dark to run until we were safe.

So I listened and I ran.

Every door unlocked for me.

Every turn kept me barely out of sight.

The people looking for me were barking orders over a radio, asking someone what was the holdup on the generator kicking on.

Whatever the response, the hallway stayed dark as I drifted through them, blind but not falling, lost but not being found.

When I reached the final door, I opened it into a brief afternoon.

A bright afternoon.

My lungs burned a little at the first fresh, unrecycled air I had breathed in a week.

Blinking, I waited for the voice to tell me where to go, but it had fallen silent.

Closed the doors, panic began to rise in my chest.

All this, and I would get caught because I didn't know where to go.

I was outside a plain brown building in the middle of nowhere.

There was a road going off to the right, and to the left, there was

Rachel's forest from her first painting to me.

I'm also thinking now that the researchers are also stupid for being like, so we're going to take this person who has a psychological link to our immortal dead body and we're going to put the ancient tree relic in it to see if it gives it some kind of crazy power.

No, I don't see how that could backfire.

Thomas, despite all your rage, you are just a rat in the cage.

You are still just a rat in the cage.

I knew it was the same forest immediately, not just because of it matching the painting so closely.

I had some strange sense that felt like kind of magnetism.

So the painting's unnecessary.

So literally, literally, the paintings are necessary.

Yeah, the paintings are no longer needed because you don't need a visual.

Yeah, you don't even need the visual.

I just feel it from the fucking like the acorn in my chest.

From the acorn in your chest, but read how funny this line is.

I had some strange sense that felt like a kind of magnetism, or how birds know which way to fly

it's like all right those are two different things

no

i don't think birds run on magnets

looking around for a second i felt like i was being pulled when i looked again at those woods this was right somehow i knew this was the way i needed to go okay you knew it was the way you needed to go because of magnets and birds and the painting and then he's like i looked the other way no this wasn't right imagine if all that and he goes the other direction

yeah but I went the other way because I was scared

so I went I'd made it to the edge of the forest when I heard the noise of men coming outside the building I thought about hiding but I knew it was a bad idea they would just catch me and I felt a drive to go deeper into the woods I plunged ahead, running at close to a reckless speed.

Not a reckless speed, but close to a reckless speed, but never tripping or stumbling as I went.

I would occasionally hear a noise behind me as they spread out to search, but the sound grew fainter as I ran.

I almost thought I had lost them for good when I heard a short cough that was quickly muffled off to my left.

Someone had got close without me knowing it.

Panicking, I looked for any places I could hide.

There were only bushes and trees and over there, a well, not just a well, but Rachel's well, with the same worn gray stone walls capped with a weathered wooden lid.

And let me go, so there's a sledgehammer and you have to break it.

I felt a moment of happy recognition but then it faded away how did that help they checked the well if they

they checked the well if they found it

and I didn't have any way to get down in it without getting hurt or stuck then an idea stuck me crouching low and staying to the brush I moved to the well and gingerly pushed on the lid At first it resisted, but when I pushed a bit harder, the wooden circle slid aside enough that you could clearly see someone moved it.

Glancing around, I eased back into the bushes as I heard soft footfalls approaching.

We need to check this out.

You think he went down the well?

Better hope not.

He probably broke his neck if he did.

And then it's our asses.

I could see the two men approaching.

Both of them were wearing dark body armor and carried assault rifles.

But

why is everything

happening so quickly that everything's getting dispersed?

We can deal with God.

This is just like strange of

The older of the two shrugged back at the other one.

Better than he was hiding in there and we didn't check.

Looking irritated, the younger man nodded.

I'll look.

He went over to the well and shoved the wooden lid aside, causing it to clatter to the ground.

Hitting a button on his rifle, a flashlight sprang to life on the barrel.

He started to shine it down into the well as the other continued to look at it in every direction.

I was worried he would see me if I moved, but I couldn't wait.

Just had to stay calm, think slow and move fast.

I kept expecting to hear them yell or feel something or someone strike me in the back, but nothing came.

As the afternoon light began to dim, I saw the trees thinning ahead.

I was approaching a road.

It looked like a normal public road, too.

Several cars passing one way or the other as I walked out of the forest and up the hill to the asphalt.

The idea of hitchhiking, especially this close to where they held me, was frightening.

but I saw little choice.

I was wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt they had given me and my own shoes, but I had no money or ID or phone.

My only chance was to get far enough away that I could try and get help.

I jumped slightly at the hiss of hydraulic brakes as a large semi rolled to a stop next to me.

Passenger window rolled down and an older man with a white hair and a grey mustache leaned over and peered down at me.

You look lost, son.

Hit me in a ride?

I looked down at the door of the truck.

It had a logo that said, Martinez and Sons Construction and Hauling.

Below it was a cartoon man hitting a wall with a sledgehammer.

Looking back up, I smiled at him.

Yes, sir, I do.

I woke up five hours later as we pulled into a truck stop somewhere in Nevada.

I had planned on staying awake the entire trip, but that had only lasted a few minutes before exhaustion overtook me.

I glanced over at Oliver Martinez and he gave me a toothy grin.

I'm tired, but you were plumb-tucked out.

I've got a few left.

Shower up and get some grub.

I'm going on to California after that.

If you want to ride further, just be back here in an hour.

Sound good?

I nodded and thanked him again for the ride as I got out.

I felt groggy from sleeping, but otherwise okay.

I just needed to decide whether this was a good spot to ask for help or if I should ride with Martinez further.

He seemed like a very nice guy, and he would probably try to help if he could, but I wanted to avoid putting more people in danger if I could help it.

Looking around, I saw we were in a fairly nice little town.

I decided I would go look around for a few minutes and then decide what to do.

It was only three blocks down the street when I saw the flickering lights in the distance.

It was a movie theater.

As it got closer, I felt my chest tightening.

It was the one from Rachel's painting.

I looked at the man.

He then continued, Hi, my name's Rob and this is Bristol.

Would you like to get in?

We're playing a game.

The guy standing at the candy counter of the theater looked like a little younger than me.

While he seemed friendly enough, he looked he also looked slightly concerned.

If you're here for the horror double feature, I'm afraid the second movie is about 30 minutes in.

I can give you half a rate if you want to see it, though.

I shook my head and tried to not look as strange and crazy as I felt.

No, that's okay.

I will.

I recognize this place from a picture a friend of mine painted, so I came in to ask if you knew anything about her.

Raised his eyebrows and shrugged.

Okay, weird.

Weird, but interesting.

Who is she?

Swallowed.

Her name is, well, it was Rachel Donovan.

I expected him to look surprised or excited or angry.

I could see right away the name meant nothing to him.

Shaking his head, he shrugged again.

Sorry that doesn't ring a bell.

I'd say you could ask the owner, but he's on vacation this week.

Nodding, I searched my mind for something else to ask.

Some way to make this place matter the way her other paintings had.

Is there anything unique about this place then?

It's history or something?

The man grinned.

Buddy, you're clearly not from here.

This place is super boring.

Not just the theater, but the whole town.

Frowning in thought, he added.

The only thing I knew about the history of this place is that there used to be a house here that burned down.

This was like in the 1920s or 30s, when this wasn't even a part of the town.

Didn't tell you the first thing about that about it beyond that, but I still bet it's the most interesting thing that's ever happened happened here do you know anything interesting about the town no well there was the ghost fire of the 1920s

but that probably isn't unrelated to anything you have to talk about and because i and the author have mentioned it it certainly won't come up later in the story perhaps right now

i let out a disappointed sigh

okay well thanks i turned to leave when the guy called out again hey man sorry couldn't help more if you come back i'll get you a discount on a movie.

Half off?

If it's not working, tell them Marshall said it was okay.

I waved and tried to smile as I headed for the door with a heavy heart.

Why did you leave me here, Rachel?

What's here that will help?

I was outside again, staring up at the theater's bright blinking signs, as though they were going to give me some kind of secret signal.

And I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye.

There's an alley that ran along the side of the theater and went behind it to...

something.

Whatever I was back there, the light of a distant security lamp cast shadows along the wall of the alley, and those shadows were moving.

Instead of feeling afraid, I felt excited as I started down the alley.

Rachel had led me here, and I just had to trust that there was a reason for it.

Keep looking until I

was suddenly mugged and beaten to death by his various

stomach three times.

The shadows were made by leaves blowing in some wind I couldn't feel.

As I got to the far end of the alley, I saw there was a small backyard behind the theater surrounded by a chain-link fence.

On the other side of that fence was the tree from Rachel's painting, with its deep red twisting bark and the foam of green leaves waving to and fro in the night air.

I felt a surge of warmth in my chest as the distant singing began again.

This was the place.

The special tree that could not be found unless it wanted you to find it.

I sat at the edge of a small overgrown lot surrounded on all sides by buildings and yards.

Somehow forgotten when whatever this land had once been was divided up, and despite its location, I had a strong sense that I was the first to see it in a very long time.

Climbing the fence, I felt a jagged wire dick into my leg and ripped my pants as I fell over the top.

I was bleeding a little, but I hardly noticed.

My asshole, my balls, and dick were now exposed.

Climbing the fence, I was bleeding a little, but I hardly noticed.

I could smell the tree now, and it was a rich, good smell, unlike any I had smelled before.

Reaching out to it, I felt the singing grow louder as I touched it.

I felt stronger and less afraid then.

And when I saw the light opening up at its roots, I didn't tremble.

I smiled.

There's a hidden tunnel under the tree.

Oh my god.

Yeah, like

this pan's labyrinth.

What the fuck am I reading, dude?

Sorry, you imagine the music like, oh,

yeah, in my head, it's like,

what is that?

You remember in the original Grinch cartoon, the way the Whovils sang.

Yeah, that one, that's what it is in my head.

Like, and all the Who's down in Whoville.

I like to think that there's also the witch in there where it's like the

and they have like start having like the voices that are kind of like wiry through it.

Whatever you play it through that.

There's a hidden tunnel under the tree.

A tunnel filled with sweet-smelling air that was like the tree smell, but also different.

If he meets like a squirrel person that he talks with, I'm fucking done.

If he meets a fucking squirrel.

If like Frodo showed up.

If he fucking meets a squirrel with a vest and he's like, I knew it was going to be some time, but not so soon.

Or whatever.

I'm not taking you to Rachel.

Imagine, like, the way that's,

the way he describes stuff too kills me.

Or the way the author describes it for it's like a tunnel filled with sweet-smelling air that was like the tree but also different

God kill me and the tunnel wasn't dark no not at all it glowed with its own golden light that called to me urged me for

rain was beginning to fall as I looked around the dark lot I had the thought that I was leaving this world behind and I found I didn't mind that much at all

The tunnel had continued to grow, slanting down gently and tall enough that I walked in without stooping.

The roots of the tree went on and on, woven through the dirt walls as I went deeper.

I looked back and saw the tunnel had closed behind me, but I wasn't surprised.

The way forward was the only way that mattered.

I walked for what might have been hours, but I never felt tired or hungry.

And I never worried I was lost, though I had no idea where I was or where I was going.

Still, I felt a surge of happiness and excitement when I turned a corner and saw something in the tunnel ahead.

As I got closer, I realized it was a brick wall, but just as I began to think I had found a dead end, the wall faded away, revealing a dark room.

Why was there a brick wall?

Why was there a brick wall in this?

Why was there a brick wall if it disappeared?

No one else is in this tunnel.

No one else is in this secret underground tree tunnel.

Sorry about that.

Didn't mean to put that illusion there.

Oops, my bad.

That was for a different part of the story.

Anyway,

I paused at the edge of the tunnel, looking out at the floor of what looked like a basement.

It was empty, but in the light from the tree, I could make out something scratched into the floor.

It was the number two.

And then

it was the number two.

I felt my pulse quicken as I thought back to Rachel's painting with the theater seats.

And then I stepped out into the room.

I know!

Thanks for explaining it again.

I fucking know!

It was the empty basement of a house.

And as I went up the stairs and opened the door, guess what?

It's going to be the room that he saw in the tree branch room earlier.

I saw the rest of the house was empty as well.

No lights were on, but bright sunlight poured in through every window and in the distance I could hear what sounded like small waves crashing on a beach.

I wanted to go out and see where I was.

Yeah, it's going to get to the ending where he's holding her hand in the sunlight.

I wanted to go out and see where I was, but I forced myself to check the house first for any people or clues, but there were none.

The house was utterly bare of any sign of people other than the numbers scratched into the floor below.

My nose tingled with salty air as I stepped outside.

The house was near the beach, and what I soon figured out was a small deserted island.

And what is happening?

And I realized with little surprise that I recognized the house from Rachel's paintings.

As I stepped off the porch, I saw no signs of people, but I wasn't entirely alone because sitting some distance from the house was the tree.

I knew it couldn't be the same tree as in the abandoned lot, but at the same time, I knew that it was,

or at least, a different part of the same tree that made the tunnels and appeared in my old world and whatever place this was.

Why is everything explained four times?

Because I had some.

This is actually.

I'm so done.

I'm so done with this story, dude.

Oh, God.

What are you doing?

I feel bad for our listeners.

Click off.

Click off the fucking video if you're still listening.

Goddamn.

Next week.

It's just, it's just, it will be four paragraphs to say it was the same tree.

Like,

because I had started, the number 43 is going to show up in a second.

Because I had started having that thought as soon as I stepped out of the house.

I didn't think this was my world.

Really?

I'm going to punch a fucking hole through one of my monitors, dude.

Not exactly.

I could see a larger island some distance away and it might have people on it.

Hotels and cars and planes.

Or it might not, as those things might not exist here.

Either way, my newfound intuition was growing stronger and I could tell that the

what was it called?

The con?

No.

Stop saying what was it called?

Stop, stop fucking.

Just remember words.

Stop writing it like this.

What is the...

It's like the stupid what the my little mermaid song.

What is fire and what is it?

What's the word?

Burn.

What was it called?

The con?

No, the texture of things was different somehow, if only a little.

Not bad or scary, just

different.

Still, after a couple of hours exploring the island and checking the house, I began to feel terribly lonely, even with the tree nearby.

I decided to go back into the tunnel and keep going.

The basement wall faded away as I walked up to it, and I entered the tunnels again.

It was only a short time later that I found my second version of the house.

Much like the first, the wall faded away into a basement.

But this wall was far from empty.

It was a workshop of some kind full of tools I wasn't familiar with.

I glanced down and saw 43 scratched onto the floor.

Who was doing that?

And why?

I was going to explore the house more carefully this time as it looked like there were people here, but then I froze.

Propped against the brick wall next to a small stack of boards was a sledgehammer.

Oh, look at that.

There it is again.

Trying to be quiet, I crept over and picked it up before heading back into the tunnel.

When I was little, before daddy died, he thought,

What?

I'm dead, dude.

I walked away, and that's the first thing I came back to.

How fucking much longer is this?

I'm actually getting mad.

It's got like five paragraphs left.

Oh, my God.

Or five little sections.

You didn't hear any of that.

Okay, all that description about the tree and the beach, he just goes back into the tunnel.

It was entirely just a sign.

He sees everything.

He's like, this is weird.

And then goes back into the tunnel and then finds another house.

Please put me on my misery, Jose.

When I was little, before daddy died, he loved to hunt.

I never went with him and didn't remember much of what he hunted, but I do know he had an old hound he'd had since before I was born.

The dog had only loved him.

Why are we still getting introductions to stuff?

Two paragraphs before the story's over.

The dog had only loved him, well, him and being on the trail of something.

When Rocker, his name was Rockefeller, I'm gonna stop over-explaining stuff.

His name was Rockefeller.

I don't care.

Call the dog Rocker.

Got a sit.

It was like he was in a trance.

He would go and go this way and that, and to look at him, it looked like he was having a fit.

Both lost and certed at the same time.

But whatever Rocker do or did it know, he always found what he was looking for.

Great.

Now,

I felt like Rocker now.

I was moving faster and faster as I went down this turn and that.

I felt like I was on the trail of something or traveling on memories I didn't have.

Gripping the sledgehammer tightly, I could hear the rising hum of the distant music in my head as I turned the last corner, and then it fell silent.

There was another brick wall, and as I approached it, it fell away.

Are you there, Hunter?

Yeah.

You need to be here for the ending of this.

I am.

It was another basement room, but this one was much smaller.

It contained a table, a clothes chest, and an old metal bed that had been broken apart.

At the far brick wall, a woman was using one of the metal legs from the bed to attack the wall and whatever lay behind it.

I felt my head began to swim as I looked at her from behind and as she turned to look at me, eyes wide with surprise and fear, I felt the sledgehammer slip from my grip as I stumbled back against the now solid wall.

I could barely breathe at all, but I managed to get out a single word.

Rachel.

If I'm reading this, you got to give it some more emphasis.

Rachel.

Thank you.

The woman looked at me, her expression less fearful but still guarded.

She had the bed like partially raised and warninged.

Yeah, do I know you?

It was her, but it wasn't.

Much like the tree on the island, this Rachel looked a few days older.

And while she looked stressed and confused at the moment, her eyes didn't seem weighted down by the same quiet sadness I had come to recognize watching the other Rachel for all that time.

Still, I didn't know how to answer her question and not sound creepy or crazy.

I stared at her for a second, floundering when she asked another.

You came out of the tree tunnel, right?

I nodded, grateful for something I could answer easily.

Studying me, she said.

Where'd you come from?

Before the tunnel, I mean.

I flushed as I tried to think of the right words.

Um, well, I came from Texas originally, I mean.

I hope the story ends with him getting his eyes gouged out by crows.

She greened at me for a second before catching herself and trying to look serious again.

Yeah, okay, but like, do you know how the tree works?

How do you find out about the tunnel?

How'd you get here?

Sign I rubbed my head and just started into it.

Oh, cool.

We get we get everything that just happened explained.

Go ahead, Hunter.

Look, I know this all will sound crazy, but I had a job watching a woman trapped in a room.

What did I say?

And that woman was you or another version of you.

And she asked me for help.

I couldn't help her.

And then they took me.

And I found out she was...

She had been dead for a long time,

but could see me in the future.

and then they put something from the tree in me that had been in her that killed her and then i escaped and then i figured out where to go to find the tree from the sun for the things she had painted and somehow i knew uh how to go in the tunnels to find different spots i'm pretty sure the tunnels led to different worlds and i got this sledgehammer

Hold up, goddamn.

Take a breath.

You're going to pass out.

Okay, hold on.

That paragraph was actually funny because, like, this has been so absurd.

It's like, well, there's a woman, and that woman was you anyway.

I found out it was about me, and they put the tree that was in her.

It's in me now.

I've got a hammer.

Oh, my God.

She was smiling again, and this time she didn't try to hide it.

She looked over what was left of the beds where the sledgehammer was laying on the floor.

And did you say sledgehammer?

And Irm, it's right behind me, isn't it?

The sledgehammer, because I dropped it on the floor.

Whack.

See, yeah, I believe you.

Whack.

I've been in those tunnels too.

My ex-boyfriend tricked me into moving here so he could tie me to the tree in this place.

What?

What?

What?

To the tree in his place?

What the fuck?

Did your ex-boyfriend trick me into moving to the hyper-dimensional tree so he could tie me to it?

Whack.

Well, not tie me to the tree, literally.

Take his place as what?

The tree's buddy or something i don't really know it's all pretty fucked up and don't really understand at all of it whack

but but what i do understand is that the walled me up in here at first i thought i could just pry loose some bricks over time but nope he put a layer of concrete on the other side of this time on the outside this time my bad good old phil or justin or whatever i mainly think of him as fuck face now yeah

I that this in any other situation, this would make me furious, like the story, like just getting to the tone of like, oh, me i'm a bit of a punk i'm a little different i that oh phil justin whatever his name was my ex-boyfriend tied me up in here like all of a sudden adopting like a scott pilgrim attitude to everything uh but i'm i'm honestly over it in every way so sure whack

this is taking forever you ain't couldn't i stepped up and put my head on the sledgehammer

let me do it for a bit we can take turns we had cleared away even more brick than she had already managed but the concrete wall was only starting starting to show small cracks.

I wanted to just keep looking at her,

have her talk to me, but I knew she was tired.

She nodded reluctantly and let go of the hammer.

Before I swung, I looked back at her.

How long have you been here like this?

Back.

It's hard to say for sure, but I think about eight months.

I let the hammer drop down again as my eyes widen.

How'd you survive all that time?

Her scowl deepened.

It's the tree.

It won't let me die.

I just dip into the tunnel every day for a bit and never get that hungry or thirsty.

A thought occurred to me then.

Why didn't you just escape through the tunnels?

She quickly shook her head.

No, thank you.

I've had enough of seeing other worlds.

Some of them aren't so nice.

And I don't want to be more tied to the tree than I already am.

I just want out of here into my own world.

And then I can try and figure out how to get free of my connection to get to the tree for good.

Hey, I would have done it eventually with the stupid bed parts, but who knows how long it would have taken?

Uh, I'm very happy you came to help and brought a sledgehammer with you.

Returning her smile, I nodded as I lifted the hammer again.

Me too.

We were both.

Oh, it's the final one.

Okay, we were both ringing with sweat when we crawled through the hole we'd made in the outer wall.

Rachel told me that she thought her ex-boyfriend was long gone, but she couldn't be sure.

So we had to be careful.

Grabbing the sledgehammer from inside the room, we had our way towards the stairs.

Is her ex-boyfriend Solomon or something?

I don't know.

The house was decorated, but quiet, and we saw no sign of anyone as we walked to the front door and opened it.

Outside, the sun was coming up on a new day, and as we walked out onto the porch, I jumped a little as Rachel took my hand and gave it a squeeze.

I looked over at her.

I had been able to help the other Rachel, but maybe that had never been the point at all because I thought now she had been able to see more than just other places or the future.

She had been able to see into other worlds and possibilities.

Like this one, where another version of her was trapped and needed help, a place where I wouldn't be hunted and she could be free.

In the end, even when she knew she was dying, Rachel had been determined to help us be together and happy.

The morning sun painted beautiful colors on Rachel's face, and looking into her eyes, I saw how much she was like the woman I had watched and cared about and tried to save.

The woman who, in the end, had saved me instead.

I wanted to tell Rachel so many things, ask her so many questions, but all that could come later.

Squeezing her hand back, I walked with her away from the house.

For now, this was enough.

In terms of like, it's not the worst written thing.

It was just, it was so draining.

Like, I had almost no fun reading this.

And I feel horrible saying that because I feel like that's rude.

So when we got to that one line from Rachel, it branched off to another story called Come Live in the Ashes of My Heart.

That's four parts and is about Rachel.

So I assume that story ends the same place place this one did with her in the tree trying to break out.

It probably has to do with her ex-boyfriend and all that.

So it's probably how Rachel wound up there.

So there is a second part to it.

Here's the thing.

This could be somebody's cup of tea.

It just wasn't mine.

Someone could enjoy it for sure.

This story very well might be a crowd pleaser.

People might like the turning doors and stuff like that.

I should also mention, I'm just poisoned because mainstream media does it so much now about stories actually being revealed to be some super cosmic, extra-dimensional, multi-time travel, whatever.

That I'm over it.

For me, it kills the stakes in a story, it makes it less interesting.

But again, that's just me.

You said up.

I just was just

not even lost.

I just

okay.

Let me also say this about it, right?

It seems that just looking, this was one of the author's first stories, okay?

And it's six years ago, and since it looks like he's posting stories like every single month for the past six years, and then putting out books that are compilations of them.

So, I would be happy to give another story a shake in the future and see it.

It's very possible this might have just been an early story, had a lot of ideas, wanted to make them all fit together, even if, in my opinion, they didn't necessarily all need to fit together.

But there's literally hundreds of stories across the past six years, and I think that's awesome.

And

I want to see this author get some love because there's a lot of really cool ideas there.

That opening when it was the it was him watching her through a monitor and he starts to figure out, okay, there's other people in the building.

Maybe I can talk to them.

Like that was all really cool and exciting.

But I feel like there was one story that was about that, the woman in the monitor.

And then there was this other story about

a

multi-dimensional girl who is talking to a man through paintings and she's actually in the past and getting him to change his future and stuff that maybe was its own thing.

I think both of them could have worked as long as they were separate.

And I don't think either of them really had a place on no sleep.

At least in my opinion, there wasn't really any like horror thread to them.

But Another thing I'll say is whenever you reveal something in a story, the rule of thumb is it needs to be more interesting than what the audience previously thought it was.

It needs to be a satisfying reveal.

And I feel like with every reveal in this story, the stakes got lowered for me and I become more disinterested.

Again, part of that's just because, like I mentioned, these grand super multi-dimensional stakes kill a story for me.

But I'm sure there's someone out there that could enjoy it that maybe those twists work for, that maybe some of the suspense was scary.

Maybe the early parts about the camera were terrifying or something.

So it's not like lost.

There were pieces there that I would love to see an author work on.

And considering he's been writing for years since this story,

and like apparently good enough to have multiple published works.

It looks like that one,

the sarcophagus one, isn't the only published work he has.

Probably has some really cool stuff, and we're probably viewing an early one.

But yeah, judging the story solely on its own merits,

that was rough.

Yeah.

I think you summed up perfectly.

I have found stories that I wrote years ago.

Because, like, what?

Let's see, I'm 25 now.

Eight years ago, I was in high school, right?

Eight, nine years ago.

I have found stuff I written in high school that makes me cringe so hard that my blood turns cold, right?

About like just how poor the writing style was, how stuff, stuff way worse than what we read today, right?

And I like to think I've become a more apt writer in the time since.

So

I don't feel fair judging an entire author by that one story, but judging that one story in a vacuum, not a fan.

Just like I wouldn't expect people to be a fan of my early work.

Like that's just, that's just how it goes.

You get better as time goes on.

Look at my earliest YouTube videos and compare them to now.

I like to think there's a difference.

But yeah, it's just that that was rough.

It going from like creepy, I think I'm a part of an experiment to we're traveling through the movie theater tunnel to get to the island where the the tree is.

And yeah,

it just became a slog to get through because I wasn't interested in the stakes.

And that's why I had such a negative reaction to the story kind of drawing itself out because it had me and it lost me.

So yeah.

I don't think it ever had me.

It had me at the very beginning.

I like the premise.

Part one had me.

I think I just, I think it felt

kind of, I guess, obvious.

Like, I feel like I kept calling everything.

I don't know.

Think about this.

I think also the, I think the biggest problem, besides it being disjointed, was I had no sympathy or understanding or care for the main character at all.

Yeah, there's also stuff like him being uneducated or kind of strange that never went anywhere, even though I've thought that's what the story was setting up.

It's just like a bunch of quirks, like a bunch of like stuff of like, why do you have to keep saying,

what's that word again?

But like, why are you typing that?

Also, if this is supposed to be something where it's like

him recalling this after the fact, like where and why is he recalling it especially to the end of this story is to where we're at now doesn't really lead us to why he wrote about this it's just him still walking through narnia i think yeah i just i just for me personally i just didn't care for the story yeah not not really up my alley but put it this way what if there was a story where a guy is at a ignore the part about it being an experiment or like a psychological study or whatever take that element out of it a guy has a job job where he goes to, you could even make it more literal.

Maybe he's a prison guard or something, right?

And he has to watch

a prisoner like day in, day out.

And he starts to get weird vibes about what's happening in the cell, but he can't communicate to anyone.

So he starts leaving messages for the other guards at his post.

And then there's communication that way.

And then ultimately, there's a reveal at the end of the story that this happened years ago, that none of this matters, that it's old.

I think you could get a pretty interesting story out of that, premise-wise.

I think you can get an interesting story out of anything.

I mean, this isn't even like, I'm not even trying to necessarily shit on this person or like discourage anybody from doing anything.

I'm just saying that this iteration of what I just read, I personally didn't connect with.

I think that there was just a lot.

That doesn't mean that the idea or the core structure of the idea couldn't have been there, but it felt too disjointed.

It dipped into fantasy, which also just felt, it just felt sporadic and random.

There's too many loose ends that didn't tie up.

And then also, it could be a matter of you have to read all of these different stories to have this thing connect.

But

I'm never a fan of that where you have to read that.

And I just don't like that.

I don't understand something.

That just feels that ending where it links off.

I'm not a huge fan.

Yeah.

I almost want to say sorry.

I do.

I do feel.

Look, my first

mood is ruined at the end.

I'm like, I'm not even like, I understand my demeanor has completely shifted.

I want, I want,

it's late in the day.

I'm tired.

I just spent three hours.

I just spent three hours recording this after we all both just did a workday just recording this to, you know, cap the day off.

And it ended with this Narnia thing.

I feel like I'm just, I'm frustrated.

Maybe I'm a little hungy, right?

A little hungry.

I'm a little miffed.

I'll give you that.

Maybe I'm a little hanged.

So that's not a great situation to get into, admittedly.

Like I said, at one point, I needed caffeine to keep me going.

I'm a little tired.

I get that.

I apologize for being angry at some parts.

It was frustration because for me, at at least, I was in at the beginning and then every reveal made me less in.

So I was like frustrated because I wanted to like the story.

I wanted to get in the premise and I just wasn't happy with the way it went.

But hey, I'm just one guy.

Maybe this story kills.

I'm reading through the comments right now on the no sleep post and people seem to like it.

People seem to be a fan.

So

people are connecting it.

Yeah.

People are looking at symbolism.

They're connecting it to Yigdrasil, you know, the tree from Norse mythology and stuff like that.

Good for you.

If people enjoy it, it, then people enjoy it.

We're just two guys on the internet.

What do we matter?

But for me personally,

this wasn't it.

There it is.

There's your creepcast episode.

Hey, please show up next week.

We promised they're, you know,

show up next week.

Thanks.

Show up next week.

We promise you you'll have shown up next week.

Thanks for being here.

Thanks for watching this long.

If you have,

you guys are great.

I'm going to go eat something and cry.

Bye.