My Dad Ate Meat From A Deer That Walked On Two Legs | CreepCast

Speaker 1 Let me ask you something

Speaker 1 before we get into the story.

Speaker 1 I really need you to kind of snuggle in because today's story is going to be a creepy one from a very good author. So I'm going to get you extra scared right at the beginning.
beginning.

Speaker 1 What would you do? Picture yourself laying in your bed. It's like 3.30 in the morning.

Speaker 1 There's a small lamp on illuminating

Speaker 1 beside your bed, right?

Speaker 1 What would you do if there's a man my size, completely nude, sweaty as shit? You have two options. Would you rather he sings beginning of Jackson 5's ABC

Speaker 1 or if he sings that Gary Jules cover of Mad World that was popular in Donny Darko

Speaker 1 Which would which would you which would you rather he sing

Speaker 1 Can I kill myself that is out of the question

Speaker 1 Then probably ABC

Speaker 1 See I was gonna say Mad World

Speaker 1 So that that tells a lot about us and i guess our sleep paralysis demons

Speaker 1 so what what what's your point in asking that did you welcome back to creepcast today we are going to be reading my dad ate meat from a deer that walked on two legs now

Speaker 1 he's acting kind of strange

Speaker 1 isaiah why don't you tell us about this seasoned author that we've read before

Speaker 1 Oh, you just, you take me from these scenarios and you ask me questions and I'm expected to perform. as if nothing happened.

Speaker 1 This story is from okay. This story is from two three

Speaker 1 seasons

Speaker 1 This story is from Christian Wallace, who I'm sure you guys are very familiar with.

Speaker 1 Every time we've covered one of his stories on the show, it has been a banger. If you have forgotten, he's the guy that did the roleplay video.
So my wife has taken our role play too far.

Speaker 1 My husband's taking our role play too far. And he also did the only other astronaut on this mission.
Died six weeks ago. Mr.
Floppy. Everything.
And he's also under the pen name C.H. Wallace.

Speaker 1 or Christian Wallace, I believe. He goes by both.
He has his website, chwallace.com or.co.uk. And he also has several books out that are anthology stories.

Speaker 1 So with teeth, webbed, more teeth, the shimmering tree. We're going to have all this stuff linked linked in the description.
Be sure to check him out. He is one of the goats.

Speaker 1 So we're going to be hitting him again today. Hunter, what made you choose this story specifically from his catalog?

Speaker 1 Well, one, I thought I saw some people talking about it, and then me and Harry were talking about it too.

Speaker 1 But there was just like a regular, there was just an image of a deer standing up on its hind legs. And I was like, oh, that's kind of a fun

Speaker 1 story idea. And then when I clicked it and I saw it was Christian Wallace, so I said, oh, shit, this is the one.
And it got me excited. Also, it's been a while since we've read Christian's work.

Speaker 1 And I feel like every time we read it, we have a good time. Every time, yeah, yeah, he's a perfect dad.
Always gets, he's a good, he's a good, good, good shooter for sure. Uh, so

Speaker 1 I'm excited to get into it. I'm looking forward to it.
Uh, now, granted, this story has the title of dad in it, uh, which last time we read a story that had the title of dad, it did not go so where.

Speaker 1 So, do you have a contingency in place to blame Harry for everything if this goes wrong? I'm gonna have to, but also, uh, you sound sick.

Speaker 1 Damn. Are you sick?

Speaker 1 Yes. Are you going to power through? You're my little soldier.

Speaker 1 I'm not that, but I'm going to do the episode.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, for people that don't know, after this recording, we're going to play No.
I'm Not Human. It's a new horror game that's out.
We played a little bit before on the Patreon.

Speaker 1 So if you want to go there and support the channel, feel free to check out the Patreon. We got an exclusive interview with Dathan Auerbach, the author of Pin Pal.

Speaker 1 So we've been having a fun time getting to interview some of the authors that we've been doing over on the patreon if you want to get that content hey go over there and check it out all right also just want to shout out all of the audio listeners on spotify and apple podcast and hey thanks for giving us a positive review there it sure does help and then last but not least on this shill on this shill train is we got merch

Speaker 1 Creep cast

Speaker 1 merch it's up it's below the video probably in the dashboard we'll have a link in the description or probably the the comment section just look for that but if you want some nice swag

Speaker 1 you want to be swagged out then go uh check it out otherwise look at this look at this bear trap look at this bear trap isn't that cool the bear trap shirt does go hard the backpack is comically large and fun oh it really it is the shirts go are very sick i'm very stoked on them

Speaker 1 Yep, yep.

Speaker 1 They knocked it out of the park with these. So if you guys want to get in on that, they're available for a limited time.
Get them while you can. And we appreciate it.
Love you.

Speaker 1 All right. Well, Hunter, are you ready to talk a story about a dad and deers that won't involve you know that kind of violence?

Speaker 1 I hope I don't think there's gonna be that kind of violence, but I'm gonna try to. I'm gonna think that this guy, if he's eating a deer, how do we know?

Speaker 1 Like, do you think he's gonna grow antlers? Can we set up some bear traps now?

Speaker 1 Uh, there's gonna be some mention of CWD.

Speaker 1 Uh,

Speaker 1 what is that?

Speaker 1 There,

Speaker 1 that's all I got, really. It's probably going to be like a not deer/slash Wendigo kind of thing, you know.
Oh, I see. I have a feeling that this is going to be a son.

Speaker 1 He's like, Yeah, my daddy, he he ate this weird meat, and he's being weird.

Speaker 1 And I have a feeling that at the beginning, the dad are going to be going hunting, and the kid's going to be like, I never really liked hunting, I'm not good at it.

Speaker 1 And at the end, he's going to have to kill his fucking dad, is what I think it's going to be.

Speaker 1 Yep, good chance, good chance. Well, you're ready to read it.
Let's Let's do it. Let's do it.

Speaker 1 The party was two weeks ago. I stole a few beers when the adults weren't looking and shared them with Lucy Sitkins away from the crowd.

Speaker 1 She drank hers greedily as we sat beneath the bow of a low tree, speaking low so no passerby could hear. Every time we whispered, we tilted our faces a little closer and closer.

Speaker 1 There's a moment where I thought she was going to rest her head on my shoulder as she told me about how she wanted to be a vet, and my heart skipped as I debated putting my arm around her waist.

Speaker 1 It was all cut short when her father, Larry, stood in front of everyone in the party and forced a beer can down his throat. I didn't see it.

Speaker 1 I only heard the cries that had us both sitting upright beneath the branches. By the time we got back to the party, the adults were escorting the kids away and ambulance sirens were fast approaching.

Speaker 1 Dad was there and he told me to take my little sister home. The grim and frightening look on his face made me forget Lucy and the smell of beer on her breath.

Speaker 1 I try hard to remember if she ate from the barbecue. Sometimes I think she didn't.
Other times, I swear. I can picture her biting into a burger, and it's so vivid, I think it must be a memory.

Speaker 1 It's moot either way. I'll never see her again.

Speaker 1 Interesting. That sounds like a total you move or like a move someone in your family would pull randomly, just like, oh, guys, watch this.
And then it becomes like a tragedy.

Speaker 1 Yeah, did you guys know that you can actually eat beer cans? Ah, ah, ah, and then immediately someone's like, oh my god, call the police.

Speaker 1 I like how quickly it escalated. He's just like, yeah, the cores, the mountain on the can is blue, so it's cold.

Speaker 1 How did he get that? Also, I want to say it is impressive that he got it down that far.

Speaker 1 Well, I think the implication is that her father was like

Speaker 1 a

Speaker 1 Wendigo tainted or something like that. It's where you consume everything.

Speaker 1 You eat everything yeah so he just shoved it down his mouth which like tore open his throat and while the police ambulance got called and stuff but the mention of i'm trying to remember if shape from the barbecue means he was probably feeding everyone human meat or like meat from the deer that had this disease or whatever yeah um

Speaker 1 so he tainted he infected everyone he he he served them some deer yeah yeah yeah I felt a little gross when I went into school the next day and asked around if the stories about her dad were true.

Speaker 1 When my father got home the night of the party, he hadn't spoken to me or mom. He just went to bed and didn't tell us what happened.

Speaker 1 Come morning, I saw some of the older kids by the school gates and overheard them talking. The details made my stomach churn, but I wanted to know more.

Speaker 1 I didn't want to act all excited about something terrible, but this felt like the kind of thing people would be talking about for years. Larry Sitkins had swallowed a beer can.

Speaker 1 Shoved it down his throat like a fucking boa constrictor eating an egg. At least, that's how one kid described it to me.
There was more, of course.

Speaker 1 He'd praised Satan before slitting his own throat, gotten pissed drunk and fallen hard onto the ground while chugging a beer, tried to catch the can mid-air. Someone had punched him mid-sip.

Speaker 1 There were a lot of variations on what happened and how, but they were only theories that got turned into rumors. A lot of us were just trying to make sense of it.

Speaker 1 Larry was a pretty run-in-the-mill guy. He was a landscaper who made lame jokes at kids' birthday parties.

Speaker 1 He was about as nondescript as they came, at least least as far as a bunch of teenagers were concerned. We got halfway through the day before Mr.
Straub shut the bleachers on his neck. Oh, well.
Okay.

Speaker 1 He was in front of the cheerleaders. There were ambulances again, crying girls and boys and even some of the teachers.
Most of them just looked confused, except for Mr. Straub.

Speaker 1 I managed to catch a glimpse of him as I jogged over to find out what all the screaming was about. He looked empty of all thoughts and emotions, with his head set on a crooked angle.

Speaker 1 I was figured that was how people must look when dead, but apparently he'd been like that during the act. Hmm.

Speaker 1 He'd walked up, perched his neck between the slided benches, and hit the remote button to slide the bleachers closed.

Speaker 1 Whole time was just slack-jawed and stupid-looking, even as the metal mechanism crunched vertebrae and cartilage.

Speaker 1 I later learned Larry had been like this too when he killed himself.

Speaker 1 He was getting ready to pop the tab on a fresh beer when he simply stopped, looked up at the sky, and forced the whole thing down his throat in a single world-shattering moment.

Speaker 1 Two instances too where they it's both uh like neck like like cutting like you know what I mean clogging the neck and then also pinning it on their neck.

Speaker 1 I wonder if like you know it just feels a bit too coincidental. Yeah, I was wrong about the whole Wendigo thing about it being like to consume everything.
It looks like they ate the

Speaker 1 meat equivalent of birdbox. They ate the bird box to go order.

Speaker 1 What's that other movie where everyone, oh, the happening. They're just sort of

Speaker 1 building stuff. That's such a funny movie, dude.
I love that. Oh, it's a great movie.
I love when it's. Yeah, but when the plants are pissed and they're killing us.
But I love

Speaker 1 Mark Wahlberg's at the house. The woman's like, the woman they're staying with is down the hallway.
She's like, do you plan on killing me in my sleep? And then Mark Wahlberg's like, what? What? No.

Speaker 1 Murder me. Gag me while I sleep.

Speaker 1 Ma'am, what?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 What? It's like one of the worst line reads ever.

Speaker 1 I want to to know what jokes the guy is saying at the birthday parties.

Speaker 1 Before he kills himself? No, I remember he's like, oh, he's the kind of guy that made lame jokes. He's a landscaper and he made lame jokes at birthday parties.
Oh, yeah. Well, just kind of like that.

Speaker 1 Honestly, like that character you did for the slip story. Like that, who called the pod popper?

Speaker 1 Oh, it's me. Okay.
All right. So pretty innocent stuff.
I didn't know if he was going more raunchy with it. Like if he was.
No, no, no.

Speaker 1 No. I don't think it'd be.
I don't think he would phrase it as lame jokes then. I think it's kind of like,

Speaker 1 oh, is this party for me? Huh? Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, are you? Sorry, my bad.
Like that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I didn't know if he was walking up and being like, yeah, so a Chinese guy, a black dude, and a rabbi walked into a bar.

Speaker 1 You're like, what? Whoa, easy.

Speaker 1 I mean, if that's what you want the character to be.

Speaker 1 No, kids, come here. Come on.
Where are you going? It's a good one. Here, I'll tell you.
So, anyways, they said

Speaker 1 someone gets like, help, help.

Speaker 1 Dude, I've gotten trapped so many times by fucking like white trash families.

Speaker 1 Like a white trash family member's like, I don't know, birthday party or, you know, Christmas morning or something. You get trapped with like just somebody who's telling you like a joke like that.

Speaker 1 It's the fucking worst. The absolute worst.
There's like no payoff either.

Speaker 1 And they almost always forget the joke. They almost always forget it.

Speaker 1 what is a

Speaker 1 man leaves first? Yeah, so then I got a horse walks in the punchline. Like a horse walks in.

Speaker 1 I don't know, but pretty much they're all mad at each other. That's like the gross a bit.
You're like, okay, okay.

Speaker 1 It's a commentary on like race relations in the United States. That's what I was trying to say.
Fucking right.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's commentary. He's like, yeah, I don't know.
I just thought that was funny as fuck. Pretty much all they would say.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's pretty much the funniest fucking thing I've heard in my life. So

Speaker 1 yeah, this is actually a joke that centers around like social issues and like, you know, economic downturn within communities since 1800. So it's pretty, pretty good.
Pretty good joke.

Speaker 1 I'd be like, wow, Uncle Rob, you're so, you're absolutely, you're so smart.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, thanks, man.

Speaker 1 Really, I just have a passion for, you know, like social change. And, you know,

Speaker 1 welfare policies to people that need it. So people thought I was crazy.

Speaker 1 This joke's really just to highlight the issues with that. People really thought I was crazy going into the big city and getting my master's degree at DeVry University, but I proved them wrong.

Speaker 1 So that's all I got. You learn a lot there.
You learn a lot. And there's a lot of tragedies that are kind of hard to express or

Speaker 1 to talk about in an honest sense. But if you package this as a joke, if you make people laugh, you make them listen.
So, you know, that's why I tell these jokes. It's because I care.

Speaker 1 It's because I care.

Speaker 1 Where are we at in the store?

Speaker 1 I didn't know it back then. World shattering moment.
Yeah, yeah. I didn't know it back then, but there were others just like Larry and Mr.
Straub.

Speaker 1 A barista in a coffee shop steamed half the skin off her arm while keeping eye contact with a guy in the drive-thru, doctor at the local clinic. How big was this party?

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's my dad's birthday party and 700 people showed up. You're like,

Speaker 1 really? Also, this really is kind of turning into like the happening. Like people just kind of like forcibly

Speaker 1 killing themselves in like such a brutal way, it seems like.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, did you ever watch Bird Box?

Speaker 1 No, the one with Sandra Bollock.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. Do you know the premise of it? Yeah, like you can't see the thing, so she has to have a blind or like a.
If you look at it, you kill yourself. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 And like, all nearly all the deaths of that movie are comedic, because it's like they just walk into traffic, like jump off of buildings and stuff like that.

Speaker 1 So this is this is this is the meet bird box. You, it's a great movie about people killing themselves.

Speaker 1 what there's this great japanese horror film called i think it's called club have you heard of that oh yes yeah yeah yeah yeah it's from the 90s right uh yeah i mean early 2000s like 2001 whatever apparently it's kind of cool it's like a j-pop song uh over the radio makes people want to kill themselves looking into it It was like apparently around that time in like the mid to late 90s, there was like this huge like unemployment wave in Japan and like tons of people were killing themselves.

Speaker 1 And that movie was

Speaker 1 just a response to that.

Speaker 1 It was just kind of interesting. I don't know.
But the movie is very interesting. It's really good.

Speaker 1 Also, sorry, YouTube. The Unalive Club.

Speaker 1 Oh, thank you. Yeah.
So I just had to.

Speaker 1 Did I say, can I kill myself like 30 seconds into the video, though? That's fine. You just can't say a naughty word.

Speaker 1 Lots of people shot themselves, but not one of them aimed for the head that's a weird touch if you think about it these people obliterated their torsos or limbs with high-powered rifles at point-blank range no reason offered just to fake an expression as they deleted bits of their bodies and left nothing but ragged stumps you might be on to something with the whole throat like they did something to their neck theory it just seems a little too coincidental doesn't it

Speaker 1 the only one that doesn't match is uh

Speaker 1 well it's okay maybe they're going for the heart not the throat or like the neck or something. Because it says a doctor put an embolism, like an air embolism into his heart.

Speaker 1 And then the coffee shop girl steamed half the skin off her arm, but that seems like just a bad attempt. Yeah.

Speaker 1 There was no school the next day, which was the only real clue I got about how panicked the local authorities were.

Speaker 1 Wouldn't be long before the national authorities joined in on the panic too, but that would come later.

Speaker 1 That morning, my parents left the house at 9.30 for a meeting at the town hall, and they dropped me off at my grandma's on the way.

Speaker 1 I waited for them to leave before I told my grandma I was heading out. It was a hot day, and she only nodded her approval as she sat reading with my sister.

Speaker 1 She hated seeing me play video games and always encouraged me to go make my own adventures outside. I had no plans.
Didn't even want to see any of my friends. I thought a lot about Mr.

Speaker 1 Shraub's face as I crossed empty farmers' fields and walked into the woods. I've been to an open casket funeral once.
It was for Father Dennis, who'd christened me as a baby.

Speaker 1 Not that I remember anything about him except his stony face resting gently in the soft white folds of his casket's interior.

Speaker 1 That seemed so long ago and so sterile that the thought of it was a bit sad, but not a whole lot else. But Mr.

Speaker 1 Straub's face had frightened me with his swollen lips and bulging eyes, alive one moment and dead the next, with only pain to separate the two.

Speaker 1 And yet he looked so bored hanging there from his own broken neck. still wearing those ridiculous red shorts he'd always had on no matter the weather.

Speaker 1 Took time to recognize that seeing the dead body had freaked me out.

Speaker 1 I felt like it shouldn't have messed with me as much as it did, and I guess that's why there was a little bit of anger mixed in with all those thoughts in my head.

Speaker 1 It's also why I pushed on through the woods until the trees began to thin, marching in the humid summer heat till my t-shirt was soaked and my legs ached. I wanted to feel tired.

Speaker 1 Wanted it so the only thing I could think of were my throbbing hamstrings and sunburnt forehead. It ended when I reached the tracks.
Shaggy rocks and boulders rose steeply on the opposite side.

Speaker 1 Only other ways to go were left into town or right into a dark tunnel, its mouth bristling with ivy.

Speaker 1 At least the air coming from it was cold, so I took a second to stand and catch my breath, feeling the sweat cool and evaporate as the wind billowed gently out of the darkness. I wasn't stupid though.

Speaker 1 I paid close attention in case I heard the sound of any passing trains, and when I did hear one, I raced off the tracks as quick as I could. It honked as it came past.

Speaker 1 Another day and I might have worried that I was going to get in trouble for playing on the rails. But all I could really think of was a thing I'd seen lying by the tracks.

Speaker 1 It had been lit up by the train as it came roaring out of the tunnel, not far from the entrance.

Speaker 1 In the strange silence after the train had gone, there was only the dim light of the setting sun to see inside the tunnel. Everything looked the same.

Speaker 1 Old clothes, broken bottles, discarded crates, trash strewn around wherever it found space.

Speaker 1 But I knew what I'd seen in the harsh white light of the train's passing beams, and it was a hell of a lot more than garbage. I'd seen a man.
He was lying face down.

Speaker 1 There'd even been a hand, bright and pale like the moon in the night sky. I was sure of it.
I didn't know what to do, not right away.

Speaker 1 I was afraid and didn't want to go inside, but I couldn't just pretend I hadn't seen anything either. I tried shouting to them.
If someone down there heard me, they gave no sign of it.

Speaker 1 It wasn't until I actually stepped into the darkness and let my eyes adjust that I confirmed there really was a man lying down down in there.

Speaker 1 He was draped across the tracks, and he didn't have any legs. Judging by the way the blood stains turned the color of shit, he'd been there for a while.

Speaker 1 Hell, half a dozen trains must have gone right over him, thinking he was just an old bit of cloth or something. That's if they saw anything at all.
In that time, he dried out a little.

Speaker 1 He wasn't a mummy or anything, but the blood on his stumps and coming out of his mouth looked more like jelly than corn syrup.

Speaker 1 I was sobbing by this point, crying hard as I tried to make sense of what I was meant to do, while also feeling like all of this was terribly unfair to me.

Speaker 1 There's a moment where I could almost feel myself wanting to be a kid again. A proper one.
Little. One who doesn't have to do things.
One who can get upset and scream and run away.

Speaker 1 I'd only just started to appreciate how badly I'd been messed up by seeing Mr. Straub.

Speaker 1 And then God went and dropped that kind of nightmare in my lap. Teeth stained black with blood and open eyes that looked at nothing.
It felt like a nightmare.

Speaker 1 Not just the moment with the body, but everything else too. Everything since that beer beneath the tree had felt like it wasn't part of reality anymore.
But nightmares end.

Speaker 1 I was outside, gasping, vomiting, crying my eyes out, when I heard something shuffle in the tunnel I'd just run out of.

Speaker 1 Part of me thought that a sound must mean someone was alive and close by, and that meant I wasn't alone. But another part of me thought something else entirely.

Speaker 1 It was the part of me that took over, stopped me crying or making any more noise. My mouth turned dry as a desert, and all of a sudden I was no longer hot all over, but cold.
Freezing cold.

Speaker 1 My legs were backpedaling away from the tunnel with short, quiet steps. The noise persisted.
It was the shuffle of something getting dragged over gravel and old plastic bags.

Speaker 1 It had a rhythm to it that was slow. The word that springs to mind is one I got taught in biology class a long time ago.
Locomotion. Something down there was moving.
It was moving towards me.

Speaker 1 It sounds slow and broken and feeble, but that didn't matter. Somehow, even though I knew it was completely insane, I just knew what was going to come out of that tunnel.

Speaker 1 I knew it the way the rabbit knows the wolf or the ant knows the spider.

Speaker 1 But still, when I saw him crawl out of the dark and into the light, I screamed so loud I'd have a sore throat for the next few days.

Speaker 1 It was the man from the tracks, and even though he moved, he was not alive. I tried telling myself that he couldn't have been dead because only living things move, but that was horseshit.

Speaker 1 He dragged his bloody legless torso with one working arm while the other lay dislocated across his back, the fingers of both hands curling as he heaved himself along and that face.

Speaker 1 That same empty gawking expression. Just like Mr.
Straub's, he wasn't alive. He was a dead thing, and that made him some kind of impossible monster.
I turned and ran screaming through the trees.

Speaker 1 Whole time, I could only think of the thing that was behind me and was trying to close the distance. It didn't matter that it was slow.
It It didn't matter that I ran for over an hour.

Speaker 1 Didn't even matter that I wasn't sure if I knew my way home or was even running in the right direction.

Speaker 1 All that mattered was putting one foot in front of the other until there was nothing left inside me. Time turned funny.

Speaker 1 Seconds moved in strange staccatos until eventually I collapsed on legs made of rubber. Then I dragged myself into an old tree hollow to hide and that was where I lost all consciousness.
Interesting.

Speaker 1 So this this like old corpse, it's almost like there's a thing inside of it. Like

Speaker 1 when he says locomotion, it reminded me of the way that like bacteria are described when they move around and stuff like that. Right.
Yeah, that's what I was about to say.

Speaker 1 It's like it's not necessarily a zombie. Like it doesn't look like the thing has sentience.
It's more so like a parasite that's controlling it inside.

Speaker 1 So it's like basically piloting a dead body, which I think is pretty sweet.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So it's like it wants them to kill themselves maybe so that it can take control, like to

Speaker 1 so it has like a full system. But this thing was just laying there getting ran over by trains and and then crawls out.
That's so sick. Such a cool visual.

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Speaker 1 We are now back to the episode. When I woke up, the sun had set and it was dark.

Speaker 1 I vomited some, then found my way back to the beaten path and stumbled achingly through the cold night air back to my grandma's farmhouse. Dad was sick.

Speaker 1 My grandma screamed something to this effect at me as she held down his right arm while my mother tried to grip his head in her blood-slick hands. He resisted with dumb determination.

Speaker 1 My little little sister cried, watching the scene like a shell-shocked soldier. There was grunting and sobbing, and suddenly, a bang.

Speaker 1 Then a puff of plaster rained down onto my head, and everyone began to yell and shriek a little louder. Dad had a gun.
That was what my grandma was trying to wrestle out of his hands.

Speaker 1 She held a knife, and that's why there was blood, but I didn't know whose it was. I wasn't sure what she was planning to do with it until she tried to use it to cut his trigger finger off.

Speaker 1 The scuffle resulted in another bang and a window exploded outwards.

Speaker 1 I finally ducked and grabbed my sister, rushing her into another room, but there were three more explosions and each one broke something inside me.

Speaker 1 By the time I heard my name being called, I was half deaf and twitching at things that weren't there.

Speaker 1 My sister pleaded for me to come back, her pink fingers grasping for me as I put her down, but my mother was shouting for me to come help and I wanted to keep my family safe.

Speaker 1 She told me to get something to tie dad up while she and my grandma used both arms to pin each of his wrists to the ground.

Speaker 1 His hand bled weakly as my grandma used used every inch of her strength to simultaneously pin him and stop the flow.

Speaker 1 He thrashed slowly beneath him, his movements languid and easy, but I could tell it was a struggle for them to keep him down.

Speaker 1 As I ran to the garage, I saw the gun on the ground with my dad's severed finger nearby.

Speaker 1 I kicked it out of reach before returning shortly with the rope my grandma used to tie the garage door open during hot summers. Mom tied the knots.

Speaker 1 My grandma tried talking to my dad, and it was one of the few times in my life I saw her as the woman who'd once changed his diapers owl oh gosh

Speaker 1 kind of a sad one

Speaker 1 yeah

Speaker 1 she was so soothing and tender and her constant muttering that everything would be okay seemed so fragile she was scared for him mom just did everything in her power to wrestle some safety out of the moment only once his arms were securely behind his back and she was confident he wasn't breaking free did she stand back put her hands behind her and then immediately hunch forward and sob call an ambulance my grandma told me as she walked into the other room to get my sister.

Speaker 1 Before I got the phone, I briefly hugged my mom who didn't seem to notice. I risked a glance at my dad who didn't look at anything at all.

Speaker 1 Dead eyes gazed vacantly at nothing as he fought to free his arms. When he finally looked at me, it was no different to how he looked at the floor or the wall.
That's so it's so cool.

Speaker 1 It's like the parasites or whatever's in them. I assume from the meat because of the mention at the beginning, but whatever's in them is like

Speaker 1 possessing them and causing them to

Speaker 1 become like these

Speaker 1 zombies.

Speaker 1 It makes you think of

Speaker 1 like the voodoo zombie. It makes you think of stuff like that movie The Crazies or

Speaker 1 any of these kind of movies where basically somebody has lost control and they become either hyper-violent towards themselves or other people. Pretty interesting, like the sadness even to an extent.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. But this idea of starting the story and we don't know any of the characters.
There's no buildup and it's just right at the point where the party goes south is very interesting.

Speaker 1 And now we're just getting these little vignettes of like very strange moments of this kid who we really don't even know either is taking us through this town and his experiences and all the weird shit he's saying.

Speaker 1 It's just,

Speaker 1 it's like an interesting way to tell the story, you know. I feel like there'd be a lot of like build up first, and then you would get into the,

Speaker 1 you know, the big

Speaker 1 changing moment, but it's just uh, it's cool to just be immediately be brought in as like a fly in the wall when shit goes south.

Speaker 1 Pretty interesting. And we're going to add little bits of information about the family as we, you know, get into each of these little segments.
It's a fun

Speaker 1 motif to have the character walk in in the midst of the chaos where he's like, she, there's blood. Why is there blood? She's holding a knife.
Whose blood is it? He has a gun. It goes off.

Speaker 1 Like, that's a fun.

Speaker 1 It's a fun way to piece stuff together. It's a lot.
It feels like tidal waves of just new shit where you're like, what, what? You know, like, it's kind of like like unrelenting so far, the story is.

Speaker 1 Christian does a really good job at... For one, his exposition

Speaker 1 has weight to it, mostly because it's, I mean, it's written well, but it's so

Speaker 1 careful where it's placed. A lot of the story is just actions, like, this is happening, this is happening, this is happening.

Speaker 1 So the exposition feels almost like a breath. And it comes in at good times and stuff like that.
It's just a good writer. Yeah, the exposition doesn't feel like it's holding the viewer's hand.

Speaker 1 It It feels like, yeah, like you're seeing like an air brevity for a moment.

Speaker 1 Yep. And a lot happens very quickly.
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean, it's a fucking, it's been a roller coaster ride so far. I didn't go to school the next day either.

Speaker 1 Some men from the government came to take dad in the morning, and mom ordered me to my room when they arrived. She asked them a thousand questions, but their replies were short and stern.

Speaker 1 All I managed to overhear were a few muffled phrases. Please say put, ma'am.
Two will be in contact with you shortly.

Speaker 1 When I ran to my window to look at them walking down the drive, I saw that they all wore masks. One of them saw me staring.
Thought he was going to wave, but he didn't.

Speaker 1 There's a biohazard symbol on their clothes. After they left, mom focused on making dinner and looking after my sister.

Speaker 1 She kept me close the whole time, barking anxious questions whenever I tried to leave the room. Where are you going?

Speaker 1 To just the bathroom. Oh.

Speaker 1 Okay, then.

Speaker 1 It felt like she was painting normality onto tissue paper, desperately afraid of breaking it. I tried my best to seem like I was okay.
That's another...

Speaker 1 That was great enough.

Speaker 1 I tried my best to seem like I was okay. Last thing I wanted was to feel like some kid who needs his mommy.
We mostly just talked about mundane things, but it was hard for both of us.

Speaker 1 The only time the atmosphere seemed to change was when she asked me something strange halfway through dinner. Did your father...

Speaker 1 When you both went hunting a few months back, what did you do with the meat? I don't know. Dad took

Speaker 1 Then with a fragile smile, have you done your homework? They told me your teacher would send you some assignments online.

Speaker 1 Just like that, the thin pretense of normality came back, but I was left with a wriggling feeling in my stomach. It didn't go away as the evening marched on.

Speaker 1 In fact, it only grew worse until I found myself in bed rolling from side to side and thinking about mom's question. The men who bundled dad off hadn't seemed like the kind who messed around.

Speaker 1 Must have some idea what was going on, so why ask about meat? On some level, I knew the moment she'd asked me why it was relevant.

Speaker 1 Dad loved to hunt, and he always brought meat to parties and barbecues. Wasn't it obvious? He brought something back from the woods, hadn't he? I hadn't gone hunting for a long time.

Speaker 1 Nearly three months. Every time he asked, I'd refused, and I think he knew why.
On the very last trip, Dad shot three deer, but he certainly did not have tags for those.

Speaker 1 That might have been a a little of illegal hunting. That's okay.

Speaker 1 Dad got a little excited. He saw that.
There's so many things here.

Speaker 1 It's so weird. We were out there by dad's corn feeder, and it was the middle of the night, but he had a big spotlight.

Speaker 1 Those jokes make no sense to most of our audience.

Speaker 1 Dad shot three deer, but we only brought back two. One for us, one for the town barbecue.

Speaker 1 Okay, this meat this meat we killed. One for the family, one for the doctor, the barista, the barista, your teacher, everyone.
Everyone gets a deer.

Speaker 1 The third he shot, but we left it out on the forest floor because by the time it had died, I was pale and shaking, and even dad couldn't keep the tremor out of his voice.

Speaker 1 Neither of us had expected the deer to stand up on its hind legs and walk towards us like a man. Oh, that's fun.
Its gait, a heavy heavy and broken thing as it lumbered over the forest floor.

Speaker 1 So why he did it was because it was like probably self-defense or something. Yeah.

Speaker 1 He's like, all right, these are,

Speaker 1 yeah, these are two tags from the season. Get back in the show.
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 I also love how that comes out of nowhere. How it's like, not nowhere.
I mean, obviously the story set precedents for strange things.

Speaker 1 But it's like a truck hitting you because it's just like, well, on the last trip, you know, I shot two, one for the barbecue. We didn't bring the third one, though.

Speaker 1 We were terrified because it was walking on two legs. Yeah,

Speaker 1 setting up something strange and then revealing it at as the

Speaker 1 end point of the paragraph. Like, it's just a really fun way to reveal that information.
Yeah. Yeah, this episode's sponsored by Mando.

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Speaker 1 And it kept coming even after dad shot it six more times.

Speaker 1 One of the rounds struck it in the head, but still, it shambled forward on two misshapen legs as its brains painted the ferns a pestilent gray.

Speaker 1 When it finally fell, even dad had gone pale and in the silent aftermath. aftermath, I had to go off and be sick in a bush.
After that, we cut the trip short.

Speaker 1 Dad walked me gently back to the truck where two deer we'd shot and trussed earlier that day lay waiting in the pickup. I don't think either of us even remembered they were there until later.

Speaker 1 He still asked if I wanted to head out with him each weekend, but he never seemed surprised when I made some excuse.

Speaker 1 The only time we talked about it was not long before the barbecue when he drove me to school one day. Didn't deal with it head-on, skirted the topic.
Sometimes deers get sick.

Speaker 1 A little like old folks do. Remember grandpa? He got real scary towards the end, didn't he? Well, deer gets sick too.
But we don't have to worry. Same way you couldn't catch what grandpa had.

Speaker 1 Well, we can't catch what the deer have. Us humans are safe.
Just an uncomfortable part of nature.

Speaker 1 Dad, you're wrong.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this is clearly a sick deer, son. It's like falling over two legs.

Speaker 1 I think your grandpa dying of colon cancer is a bit different than a fucking

Speaker 1 than a fucking uh a deer standing upright and withstanding six bullets, dude. Don't worry, daddy can't get sick.
Daddy, you look like you're completely yellow and you have gray eyes.

Speaker 1 Don't, daddy's not sick. I'm totally fine.

Speaker 1 I totally just eat your meat.

Speaker 1 I want to look like this. It's okay.
It had come out of the blue, or at least it seemed like it. I figured it was dad's way of trying to get me back on board with hunting.

Speaker 1 I knew he liked me going with him. I liked it too, at least until until I seen that deer walk towards me on two legs.

Speaker 1 But lying in my bed that night after mom had gone to sleep, I started to wonder if maybe he hadn't really been trying to convince me.

Speaker 1 Maybe he carried a little doubt in himself about something he was going to do.

Speaker 1 What have he been trying to convince himself it was okay?

Speaker 1 Two deer. I tried remembering what they'd been like.
I hadn't checked them after we got in the truck. Why would I?

Speaker 1 I seemed as normal as any others as we tied them down, but I hadn't really been paying attention either. I'd been hunting since I was seven.

Speaker 1 Helping dad was automatic to me, and to top it off, I hadn't known what I was meant to be looking for. I squirmed beneath the sheets and tried so hard to remember every detail of that trip.

Speaker 1 Most of all, I tried to remember what the first two deer Dad had shot were like. They'd gone down so quick, they seemed normal.

Speaker 1 But Grandpa had been sick with Alzheimer's a long time before he got scary. And I had to figure the same could be true of those deer.

Speaker 1 Who was to say that the one on hind legs was the only sick creature in the woods that day? I couldn't have forced these thoughts out of my head with a crowbar. At some point I accepted.

Speaker 1 I wasn't getting any sleep that night and I settled down to torture myself some more until I realized it didn't have to be that way.

Speaker 1 Dad had an old freezer in the shed and he sometimes kept meat in there. Not for long and usually not for eating.
He'd used it for things he wanted to skin or try and make a trophy out of.

Speaker 1 which he rarely did since mom didn't like that kind of thing in the house. But if the deer weren't in the freezer in the kitchen or the garage, then they might be in the shed.

Speaker 1 And if I did open up that chest and saw two deer bodies in there, that meant whatever was going around and making people hurt themselves couldn't have come from our little hunting trip.

Speaker 1 I stuck out my room as quietly as I could. Mom was on the phone with my grandma and she was crying.
I stopped briefly by our door and listened to see if maybe they knew something I didn't.

Speaker 1 But after she started talking about how scared she was, I just felt bad and moved on.

Speaker 1 At least it meant she was too busy to notice me creeping down the stairs. I wanted to see if I could get some more info, but my mom was just crying and that's I don't like that, so that's boring.

Speaker 1 I never liked the shed at the end of the yard. It was rarely used, even by my dad, who kept the lawnmower and some old junk in there.

Speaker 1 It wasn't the kind of place you kept food, but I had this feeling he didn't keep these deer with the rest of the meat he got from hunting.

Speaker 1 As I opened the back door and looked over at the shadow-covered yard, I found myself thinking about the tunnel and what I'd seen back there.

Speaker 1 With everything that had happened since, I'd done a good job of convincing myself it had never really happened.

Speaker 1 The man with no legs who dragged himself out of the darkness had become little more than a half-remembered nightmare. A moment out of time that was incompatible with all logic and reason.

Speaker 1 But suddenly, it was back with me. All the emotions and thoughts that raced through my head as I'd stared at his rotten flesh and glassy eyes.

Speaker 1 The walk to the shed wasn't easy. I fought the urge to turn around the entire way there.
Each step was like walking on feet made of lead.

Speaker 1 At the door, I paused with my hand poised by the lock. The house seemed so distant behind me, and I became painfully aware nobody knew I was alone out in the dark.

Speaker 1 Inside was nearly pitch black. My phone helped me light it up a little, but I didn't touch the nearby switch in case mom saw it from her window.

Speaker 1 Cobwebs hung low from the ceiling and shadows crawled across the floor and walls as I moved closer to the freezer. The entire time I kept kept expecting something to happen.

Speaker 1 I even imagined that deer rising from beneath the lid, pushing it open to stand unnaturally tall on its hind legs where it looked down at me, the same dead eyes I'd seen in my father.

Speaker 1 The thought scared me so bad I nearly hyperventilated myself straight into a panic attack. But before I had time to really worry about any of that, I found my hand on the freezer latch.

Speaker 1 I pushed it open and looked inside. The misty vapors cleared to reveal a pile of meat and fur encrusted with ice.

Speaker 1 There was only one head visible, but I so badly wanted confirmation that there were two animals in there that I took a deep breath and reached in to try and pry some of it loose.

Speaker 1 Some of it came away from the sides with a sound like duct tape, but no matter how deep I rooted around in that mound of bone, antlers, and rock-hard flesh, I couldn't see a sign of the second deer.

Speaker 1 Had that really served everyone's sick meat?

Speaker 1 Was that really what Larry Sitkins, Mr. Straub, and all those other people have killed themselves? The thought made me feel ill.

Speaker 1 I slammed the freezer shut and walked back to the door in a daze, trying with all my might to swallow the painful weight that settled in my gut.

Speaker 1 I had one foot outside when the freezer door rattled against the latch.

Speaker 1 The entire world spun around me. My heart sank and my skin froze in a sensation that was growing increasingly familiar.

Speaker 1 I turned to face the sound, both hands braced against the door, and watched as the hatch slammed itself into the lock once more.

Speaker 1 The light inside the chest came on for the briefest of moments and I glimpsed thrashing fur and teeth.

Speaker 1 Then it happened again and again and each time I saw bits of hoof and bone and strange musculature that frightened me so deeply I fell down onto my ass and didn't even realize.

Speaker 1 When the latch finally gave way, the lid flew open and stayed there. Light poured out of the box and I waited, breath held, for that thing to emerge.

Speaker 1 to come roaring out of sight and bear down towards me on unnatural legs. But nothing happened.

Speaker 1 Silence stretched on for what seemed like an eternity until, at last, there was a crash louder than any before and the entire freezer rocked back and forth and slowly fell over.

Speaker 1 The deer, or parts of it, fell out with a hard, wet thump.

Speaker 1 Bits of its chin and face shattered on the hard packaged ground, sending little shards of meat and bones skating across the floor on melting streaks of blood. Some of them even reached my feet.

Speaker 1 The thing inside moved with the sound of snow crunching beneath your feet, its thick neck and broken head twisting side to side, scanning the shed's interior with faulty eyes.

Speaker 1 I've never seen anything move like that, not before or since. This was worse than the man in the tunnel.
Worse by a thousand times.

Speaker 1 The deer was still mostly frozen, but some impossible force was making the crystallized water in its own cells, and the result was skin that ripped like tissue and the muscles that cracked and crunched as they tried to flex and contract.

Speaker 1 It lifted its head and tried to scream. The breathy sound that left its muzzy black the breathy sound that left its fuzzy black lips made my heart start skipping beats while my bladder emptied.

Speaker 1 I couldn't help it. Couldn't stop myself.

Speaker 1 And when I looked down and saw pieces of melting flesh start to writhe and wriggle, I tried with all my might to stifle the cry building up in my throat, but it still escaped as a desperate, high-pitched whine.

Speaker 1 The deer turned its head towards me with a violent swing. Another breathy shriek, and then it began to thrash its stiff and frozen legs in a terrifying attempt to get closer.

Speaker 1 To say it had a predatory look would be inaccurate. Anyone who's seen a predator in action knows that nature is mostly indifferent when it kills.

Speaker 1 A bear tears into its prey with the same dull look of someone opening their McDonald's. Predators don't hate the things they hunt.
But this thing, I could feel its hatred, its malice.

Speaker 1 It was nothing like what I'd seen in my dad's eyes or even the eyes of the man in the tunnel. But it had spent months in that box, hadn't it? This was the disease when you skip three months ahead.

Speaker 1 Anger. Hatred.
God, I couldn't even say if it was going to eat me. That's what you think when you see a zombie, right? It's going to try and take a big bite out of you.

Speaker 1 But this frozen clump of hair and meat and brain lips dragged itself across the floor with an expression like murderous rage, that looked of someone ready to beat another living thing to death using its own hands if it had to.

Speaker 1 Unable to face it a moment longer, I dragged myself back onto my feet and fled, shutting my eyes as I entered the cold night air. I made it three steps before I slammed into my dad.

Speaker 1 Oh no!

Speaker 1 Oh no!

Speaker 1 It was like I'd run full speed into a tree. I bounced back and hit the earth, pain flaring up in my coccyx as my father loomed over me.
It felt cold for the brief moment where we made contact.

Speaker 1 My mind blocked out the sound of something hideous scrambling in the shed behind me, and the entire world narrowed until it was just the face of the man who'd raised me, looking down with pale, dead eyes.

Speaker 1 Dad? He swallowed, then briefly examined his hands. I think I'm dead.
He muttered almost as if he was talking to himself. When did I die? Okay, so that's actually one of the most haunting.

Speaker 1 That's one of the most terrifying lines ever.

Speaker 1 You're starting to freak me out a little bit, okay? I think I'm dead. When did I die? Being asked by some presence inside of

Speaker 1 whatever his dad, or whatever the thing is inside of his dad. Oh,

Speaker 1 man. Or like he's still, he has some consciousness in there that's infested with all of the whatever it is.

Speaker 1 Man, that's so good.

Speaker 1 I pulled myself up and grabbed his hand. He was cold, but his pulse was racing.
I could even see the veins in his forearms throb sickeningly.

Speaker 1 Dad, are you okay?

Speaker 1 They told me I'm sick. He said, his eyes gazing vacantly at the empty space behind me.
I think they're right.

Speaker 1 But there's more.

Speaker 1 He looked at me, the intensity of his gaze so powerful that I let go of his hand and took a step back. For the first time in my life, I was scared of him.
I'm not alone in here.

Speaker 1 Oh my gosh, dude. Whoa.
Oh, that's terrifying. You're conscience of the thing trying to take you over?

Speaker 1 Oh, man. He said, his voice pleading for help.
Slowly, his expression twisted into a grotesque mask of agony and desperation.

Speaker 1 Jesus, it isn't just me in here.

Speaker 1 I tried to move, but he was a big man and his arms wrapped around me like steel bands. Dad!

Speaker 1 I cried, struggling to pull myself loose as he sobbed louder and louder. Dad, Jesus,

Speaker 1 you gotta let me go.

Speaker 1 The shed door burst open. I managed to twist around just enough I could see what came out.
I felt an urgent terror crawling up my flesh.

Speaker 1 The deer had pulled itself loose from the freezer and it now stood in the doorway on two legs. Its body looked all wrong in that posture.

Speaker 1 Like when you twist the limbs around on a doll, probably not far from the truth, thinking about it. Dad didn't react, but I began to scream as the nightmare coalesced around me.

Speaker 1 My father gripping, holding me in place as that horrible thing lurched towards me on two legs.

Speaker 1 It moved like Claymation or a puppet show had gone wrong, but it was quicker than I feared. Each step brought it closer.
I found myself losing what little control I I had.

Speaker 1 I started to scream, started to shriek. I beat at my father with my fist, but he didn't budge an inch.

Speaker 1 My clinched hands just bounced off his strong shoulders and it was like I was trying to hurt a punching bag.

Speaker 1 I started to swear too, started to scream things I thought were bad, then worse, then so bad, I'm not even sure I can blame other people for putting those words in my head. I told my dad I hated him.

Speaker 1 Called him a son of a bitch. Called him even worse.
All that commotion got the attention of others. Neighbors' lights started coming on.

Speaker 1 My mom emerged from the back door, wrapping a robe around herself as she squinted at us in the dark. What the hell is going on?

Speaker 1 She cried as she stumbled towards us, but when she saw that deer, she started screaming too. I don't know why, but I thought that other people appearing would help somehow.

Speaker 1 That is two, three, half a dozen people came stumbling into the open lawns, peering over waist-high fences. It had stopped the slow but inevitable onslaught of that monster.
It did no such thing.

Speaker 1 I had to listen to their confused shouts and cries while gesturing and begging for help. The entire time, the sound of the creature over my shoulder getting closer and closer.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, my hands tried to pry away my father's thick arms, but each time I got leverage, he simply flexed and his grip tightened around me.

Speaker 1 He was muttering something the whole time, but I couldn't hear it. Finally, my mom screamed and ran, swinging the old rake at the space behind me.

Speaker 1 I heard the impact, the splintering of the wooden handle.

Speaker 1 Then she stumbled backwards and I had to twist to get a look at the deer that was now just six or seven feet away, the spokes of a rake still sticking out of its face.

Speaker 1 The monster looked right at me, it opened its mouth, and I swear to God it was going to talk.

Speaker 1 But right then, someone shouted, For the love of God, Alice, get away from that thing! Alice was my mother's name.

Speaker 1 And she fell to the floor just seconds before an explosion broke the night, silencing all voices and shattering the deer's head like a crystal ball hitting the ground.

Speaker 1 My heart raced so fast, I thought for a moment I was going to die. Then I looked down at my dad and finally heard what what he'd been mumbling the whole time.
It's in us and it wants us.

Speaker 1 It's in us and it wants us. It's in us and it wants us.
There isn't much left of dad these days. I got to visit him a couple times.
That lot of good it did.

Speaker 1 As far as I'm concerned, he died that day in the kitchen when he first tried shooting himself. They're treating us in this special hospital.

Speaker 1 Mom was real upset that visitations are limited, but I think it might be for the best. Her and my sister tested clean.
Most Most people did. I didn't.
Oh, shit.

Speaker 1 Mom stuck me in this phone a couple weeks ago, and I've been using that to write. Funny thing is, one of the orderlies saw me on it a few days ago and just laughed.

Speaker 1 I think that maybe the government aren't too worried about this story getting out. At first, I didn't really get why until I started actually putting all this down into writing.

Speaker 1 Got to the part where the half-man came out of the tunnel, and I realized... No one's going to believe me.
Still, I got to try. Partly because I want to protect people.

Speaker 1 Whatever this disease is, it's a hell of a lot more than some twisted prions, and I think that the government knows that. Dad certainly did.
Most infected did, too.

Speaker 1 That's why they killed themselves. They wanted out.
The voice that comes with this illness is like...

Speaker 1 It's like if your brain is just words in a book, and when someone dipped that book in a can full of used motor oil,

Speaker 1 you just... want to give in hand it all over it wants your body so whatever you do don't fight that's worse.
Give it up. In hindsight, we should have let dad kill himself.
What he went through was,

Speaker 1 well, it's probably a lot worse than the others who got to die. I sometimes think about going into his room with the pillow, but security's pretty tight around him.

Speaker 1 As for me, the infection is still in its early phase. It takes everyone differently.
And for me, it's taken quite its time. I think it's because of my age.

Speaker 1 Still, I can sort of feel it under there, growing. I think it's why I'm writing this.
It wants me to.

Speaker 1 The sickness, it lives out in the woods, way, way out, in parts of the soil where the sun hasn't shown in millions of years.

Speaker 1 It's old enough to remember a time you could walk from Appalachia to what's now called Glasgow. It's been fumbling around out there in the brains of deer and other things.
The sickness tells me this.

Speaker 1 Tells me it's learning about this new world. Tells me how my mind tastes.

Speaker 1 But most of all, it tells me it's getting closer.

Speaker 1 And that is the end.

Speaker 1 That was a great one.

Speaker 1 That was, that was excellent. My gosh.
Back when you could walk from Appalachia to Glasgow. So that's before, that's like Pangea, you know, before the continental split.

Speaker 1 So it's like this thing was from the primordial earth, and it's been out there deep in the soil, and it started to infest and crawl about. And the whole part is dad.

Speaker 1 So I assume the explosion and his dad falling over is because his mom or someone else shot dad, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 One of the half dozen people. Yeah.
Yeah. Someone shot dad and then he is now infected and he feels it crawling inside of him.
That was, man, that was such a cool story.

Speaker 1 And also, the prion thing, the thing I mentioned earlier, chronic wasting disease is a prion disease. It's this illness deer get

Speaker 1 that make them lose their mind and in some cases kill themselves. I haven't witnessed it, but there are stories of deer getting infected with it and like beating their head on a rock

Speaker 1 until they're dead. So I imagine the idea is like the the when he says this is more than a pry on

Speaker 1 I imagine the idea is that the

Speaker 1 the government's like oh, it's just an outbreak of CWD nothing to worry about and like obviously people don't know how bad it is

Speaker 1 So it like uses a real world kind of analogy, but man gosh, that was so cool. That was very well done.
It's well written. It's a cool horror concept.
That was sick. Yeah, I like that it

Speaker 1 is very short and sweet. I mean, like, as short as in, I mean, you know, it's an hour, but still,

Speaker 1 I guess it's like this story could have been something way more flushed out.

Speaker 1 But I just liked how kind of bare bones it was, just kind of giving us into this world really quick, figuring out all this like weird shit going on, not divulging too much, but not leaving too much out either.

Speaker 1 You know, it also didn't feel too one-note of like, oh, yeah, they just horribly killed themselves. I feel like they kind of added on to it.

Speaker 1 I think my favorite imagery was really like the meat cooler of like that thing popping open and having the light come out. You can imagine some of the cold fog pouring out of it as well.

Speaker 1 Really, really creepy.

Speaker 1 Also, too, at the end, when the dad was hugging him or like wouldn't let him go and the thing was moving towards him, I almost wonder if the deer wouldn't have even killed him or if he was like actually gonna speak to him.

Speaker 1 Like there are, you know, because he knew that. I mean, the kids have infected now.
I'm wondering if he was going to just like talk to him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, like as

Speaker 1 the like the disease speaks to him. Yeah, or just you know, I mean, like zombies don't attack each other, right? I just didn't know if it was going to be something.

Speaker 1 I just didn't know if it was going to be something where it comes up and it's like just either and like, I don't know, enhances the parasites, does something. It just,

Speaker 1 I always wonder, or like I've been wondering since, you know, because it looked like it was going to speak.

Speaker 1 I was wondering if it was going to say something to him or do something else that might have,

Speaker 1 you know, just been fucking creepy before its head was blown off.

Speaker 1 To the idea that the dad is just still alive and it's just like basically a corpse that they're just examining is pretty uh

Speaker 1 pretty gruesome and also two he's just now even the kid is stuck up there too at the hospital pretty interesting i also like the line earlier that was like uh i waved at the people in the hazmat suits i thought they would i thought that i thought that they might wave back but they didn't just kind of shows i guess how like futile or like how they're not even looking at them like people in a bit of a way.

Speaker 1 Like it's like, oh shit, they're gone. Yep.
That's it. That is what it is.

Speaker 1 This is one of those things, too, where,

Speaker 1 I don't know, his stories, man.

Speaker 1 This has got to be the shortest one we've read by him, right?

Speaker 1 I feel like the astronaut one was pretty short, too. The episode was longer because there was like a 15-minute tangent about your Mr.
Floppy friend.

Speaker 1 But I feel like most of them are right around like 40 minutes to an hour. It's interesting.
I guess it's just, this is the first one I feel like

Speaker 1 the characters are very generalized i feel like the other stories it's like we get a very intimate understanding of like the people

Speaker 1 where they're going what's going on here it was just kind of an interesting way it just felt a bit different it didn't feel like a typical christian wallace story the only time i was like oh yep there it is is whenever there's like really great one-liners and also uh really fun reveals Like that's like the biggest thing.

Speaker 1 I ran outside and then I bumped into my dad. It's just like it's always like an afterthought.

Speaker 1 It's always something where you're riding, you're riding around the ride and then all of a sudden, boom, you stop and you get hit by a fun reveal or some kind of thing that's taking the story in a darker direction or creepier, like, you know, some kind of like scare.

Speaker 1 So that's a lot of fun. But that's your creepcast episode this week.
Be sure to come back next week for some more scares.

Speaker 1 And also, like, like we said before, we'll leave all of Christian Wallace's stuff. in the description below.
Be sure to pick up some physical copies of stuff. Physical books are dope.

Speaker 1 I really recommend reading this dude's stuff, even if it's just just on, like, like, of course, support the artist.

Speaker 1 But I mean, scrolling through his Reddit, some of these stories are titled, like, Yeah, Do Not Pray to God in the Desert.

Speaker 1 I've been squatting in a condemned high-rise, The Second Coming of Christ already come and gone. I should know, I performed his autopsy.
Like, titles like that are awesome.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, like, we're gonna read this guy's stuff. We're gonna have to keep diving into his stories just for our own

Speaker 1 reading pleasure here on the show, because every time we read it, it's just it's it's always a good time. He don't miss.
He don't miss. He's too good.
He don't miss. And if

Speaker 1 you're an audio listener and you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you.
And also thank you to the patrons who support the channel as well.

Speaker 1 We appreciate you as well. And also the, you know, we still got merch.
So be sure to go check the merch in the description below or in the comments. It might be pinned or something.

Speaker 1 Check it out there at creepcast.store. And until next time, guys, stay creeped and have a beautiful rest of your day.
Say creeped. And

Speaker 1 don't, you You started this episode talking about you being naked next to my bed. And I think that's thrown me off the whole time.
So

Speaker 1 if you see Hunter naked or close, really,

Speaker 1 it's now a self-defense situation. So you should kill him.
You should kill Hunter. Bye.