Lot 068 : My Job Is To Watch People Die

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get It Now on Digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer and is hell-bent on revenge.

As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer.

They discover this happened before, so they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Hauer King, with Freddie Prince Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Cruciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home.

X equals Q.

Hello, friend.

Come by for another stroll through the dark, did you?

I've got just

the thing.

A gorgeous violin made in France, circa 1880.

It does have a broken string, but can still carry a tune.

I've got a seat just for you.

Front row center, N.

My job is to watch people die.

Before we begin, I want to point out some of the customers whose names have been etched in brass on this beautiful plaque I had made above the front desk.

These are some of the members of the inner circle of the antiquarium.

We go by the Obsidian Covenant.

Recent initiates include J-Class 115,

Cerbero Oya,

Felipe Cervantes,

Higuriu,

William Schoate,

Destiny Silva, Justin Peterson, Sarah Eberly,

and Bradford Zygmontowitz.

We are ever appreciative of your devotion to the Order.

Go to theObsidian Covenant.com to receive the sacrament.

Now,

where were we?

Oh, yes,

welcome to the Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings

and Odd Goings On.

My job is to watch people die.

If you met me on the street and asked me what my job was, I would tell you that I work from home, consulting from an industrial laundry company.

That is, after all, the cover story I've been provided with.

The reality,

my job is even simpler.

Every Friday night, I dress up nice.

Report to a certain theater downtown, have a seat, and watch a performance.

That's it.

All it takes is a couple hours into my week and end up making six figures a year with every benefit you could possibly ask for.

I know, I know, it sounds too good to be true.

Pretty much anybody on the planet would kill to have a job like mine.

At least, perhaps.

Until they find out just what kind of performances I'm made to attend.

Before I start, though, I need you to keep in mind that I'm a good person.

I donate thousands to the Rainforest Fund out of every paycheck, and me and my kids volunteer at the food bank weekly.

I'm a devout believer, and I'm going to heaven when I die.

After all, I myself have never hurt anybody.

Never raised a hand to injure any living soul.

How could you possibly call me a sinner when all I ever do is

watch?

It started about three years ago, when their job offer found me when I was at my most desperate.

All I was told was, every Friday night, I would attend a performance at my city's fanciest theater.

That was it.

I was baffled at first.

What the hell do I know about theater or ballet or orchestras even?

Had they gotten me mixed up with some big shot critic?

During our talk on the phone, however, they politely reassured me that no critical ability would be required.

All we ask

is for you to be there to bear witness.

No distractions, no diversions,

no lapses in concentration.

Remember,

you are here to bear witness.

Everything about it screamed scam, but I figured, what the hell?

Worst case scenario, I listened to a pitch for some MLM or timeshare, politely declined, and then walk out with some pocket money.

I was shocked when I pulled up to the theater.

Dozens, maybe even hundreds of people were streaming in, all in nice suits and gorgeous gowns.

I had thrown on the fanciest clothes I could afford, yet I still felt severely underdressed.

The theater was totally rented out by my employer.

and only my fellow co-workers were allowed in.

How much could it have cost to hire such a massive crowd just to attend this one performance?

Who could possibly bankroll something like this?

I tried to empty my mind and simply merge into that human tidal wave flowing through the doors.

Every staff member was dressed in a refined all-black suit with black tie and undershirt, to the point they seemed to darken the air around them.

Each wore a white comedy mask.

The neoprene stretched into a grin of perpetual laughter, which struck me as almost

mocking.

They demanded that we hand over all electronic devices, even patting us down and running a metal detector over us.

Then, they reminded all attending not to leave their seats under any circumstances during the performance, recommending we take bathroom breaks before the show even started

and to remain quiet and to keep our eyes open.

They kept repeating the same mantra.

All we ask is for you to be there to bear witness.

No distractions, no diversions, no lapses in concentration.

Remember, you are here to bear witness.

If I'd been alone, I would have left right then and there.

There was a tickling in the back of my brain.

Some primate part of me screaming that there was something terribly wrong here.

But mob mentality is a hell of a thing.

Everybody else seemed calm, non-plussed, handed their phones over without a fuss.

There were a few holdouts, probably other newbies like me.

But eventually, they too relented.

If everyone else is going along with it, I figured, why shouldn't I, right?

Who wants to be the one single paranoid bastard who missed out on an easy paycheck?

Stepping into a gorgeous theater like something out of three centuries ago, I was most struck by the make of the stage.

It looked like the back action of a piano.

Strange levers and mahogany hammers, looking like fingers manipulating countless lines of piano wire.

Some over a dozen feet long.

All the taut wires stretched in bizarre formations across the stage reminded me somehow of a spider's web.

I could not fathom a machine so complex.

It was such little apparent purpose.

The nature of the performance also varies.

Sometimes it's a work of Shakespeare, a ballet, an opera.

Hell, even a puppet show.

That day, It was a concert, featuring a small chamber orchestra of around 35.

Students, it looked like, young and inexperienced, with a nervous air about them, as if this was their first time performing before such a crowd.

Mostly a string section, plus one of each woodwind, and just a couple each on horns and percussion.

The conductor was one of the staff members in the comedy masks.

Who would put forward this much cash just for a small green orchestra to play in such a massive, prestigious venue?

One of them must be a billionaire's kid, I figured, was the only explanation.

This, I've since realized, is always the best part.

The beginning of the performance.

When you can, if you try, lose yourself in the display

and pretend everything is okay.

That it's all normal.

It was best on those lucky days when the performers on stage were completely unaware of just what sort of danger they were in.

That always makes it easier for everybody.

On that first day, I was as oblivious as they were

and simply enjoyed the music.

Maybe some snob of the orchestral arts would hear their amateurish mistakes, but to my untrained ear, they sounded just fine.

Pleasant, even.

But one question began to worm its way into my head.

A small nagging at first, which crescendoed into a hammering on the inside of my skull.

How much time has passed?

At a certain point, I suspected the intermission was long overdue.

But there were no windows.

And I had to part with my electronic wristwatch at the door.

So really, Getting any sense of time was...

impossible.

I dismissed it as my lousy attention span at first.

But eventually, others began taking notice.

No one dared speak.

But among the fellow newbies, I noticed furrowed brows and sideways glances, confused and concerned.

The performers seemed to be getting restless as well, whispering and gesturing to each other.

And the conductor, who never ceased those robotic, sweeping motions of his gloved hands

it must have been two hours by then if i had to guess

and they were starting to look exhausted

dehydrated

some even looked as if they were about to quit playing

continue performing

in a moment all of the piano wire loudly reverberated and stretched taut with the movements of those mechanical contraptions on stage

As the whole thing bristled and tensed, as though it were a living thing.

And that voice, cracking like thunder, seemed to emerge from the stage itself with a mechanical roar like the grinding of metal on metal that seemed to frighten them into submission for a while.

It wasn't until a half hour later that my life changed irreparably.

They'd been playing a quiet sonata,

so everybody could hear the sudden

accompanied by a pained yelp.

My eyes leapt to one of the violinists.

One of her strings had broken and happened to snap her right in the eye.

I could see the streak of scarlet bifurcate her pupil.

Before the emerging blood replaced the entire eye with a thick redness,

she stood, clutching a hand over her eye and blindly grasping with the other, gesturing for medical help.

And as she did so, the strange lattice of levers and hammers and pulleys all roared and clacked to life, like a bear trap being sprung.

The machine's efficacy was just as sudden, just as brutal.

Those clockwork edifices moved like a pair of robotic arms, aiming a wire for her neck as if trying to garot her.

But they moved at such a speed that the wire seemed to pass through her, like she wasn't even there.

For a moment, she seemed fine, unaffected, as if nothing had happened at all.

And then,

things began to fall off of her.

Her head,

severed at the neck, alongside the hand she'd been holding over her eye, and the very fingertips of her other hand with which she'd been grasping a little too high.

All had been cut cleanly, with surgical precision.

Time seemed to slow as they all went clattering wetly to the floor.

And the girl's body soon followed, as if it took a few moments for gravity to set in.

Or perhaps for her body to realize she was dead.

It happened so fast, it was hard to be properly horrified.

It was more like

awe,

maybe.

Everybody stared at the chunks of meat that had once been a promising young woman with hopes and dreams.

That spider web of wires was still rumbling and shaking all around them, and the mechanical voice roared once more.

Continue performing.

They were given no further warnings.

A few of them jumped from their seats out of sheer instinct, not even thinking.

None of them made it more than a step before the wires divided them in twain.

The rest just kept playing exactly as they had been.

As if their brain froze up at what they'd witnessed and simply ran on autopilot.

Until their faculties slowly returned to them and they realized that this instinct had saved their lives.

Where once beauty filled the room, now the orchestra had been reduced to a discordant sound, like a long, shuddering whine,

like a mocking parody of music.

They gripped their instruments with trembling, sweaty hands, playing just well enough to avoid stoking the ire of those quivering wires stretched taut all around them.

They realized gradually that they were allowed to speak.

Immediately, they began wailing hard enough almost to mercifully drown out that dismal cacophony that was once music.

Some begging and pleading with the staff, others screaming out threats, be they legal or physical.

Nothing they said could shake the unmasked men and women in the slightest.

They stood at order like statues, unflinching.

Realizing this, they turned their attention

us.

A wall of red, weepy eyes scanning the crowd for any hint of mercy, begging us to band together against the staff, calling us all sick bastards for just sitting there and watching them die.

A blonde woman on violin had the most genius and cruel strategy of all.

I believe it is time for the intermission.

I do hope you've been enjoying the performance.

The orchestra is going to tune up their instruments, and we'll resume shortly.

Those who are still left, anyway.

The Toxic Avenger is out now.

Experience the long-awaited, totally unrated monster mayhem exclusively in theaters.

Get tickets now at tickets.toxicavenger.com.

Today's episode is sponsored by I Know What You Did Last Summer.

Get it now on digital.

When five friends inadvertently cause a deadly car accident, they cover up their involvement and make a pact to keep it a secret rather than face the consequences.

A year later, their past comes back to haunt them, and they're forced to confront a horrifying truth.

Someone knows what they did last summer and is hell-bent on revenge.

As one by one, the friends are stalked by a killer.

They discover this happened before, so they turn to two survivors of the legendary Southport massacre of 1997 for help.

Starring Madeline Klein, Chase Sue Wonders, Jonah Howard King with Freddie Prince Jr., and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

I know what you did last summer is a perfect summer slasher, says Jordan Crucciolo of NPR.

Your summer is not over yet.

Don't miss a killer movie night at home.

Why, hello there.

You've reached the antiquarium.

If you wish to leave a message, please do so with the town and have a great day.

Hi,

yeah,

I had bought a puzzle from you guys a little while ago and it was really unique.

And

I started

to work on it and

I nearly finished it.

I'm just missing a piece.

The day after I finished it, this weird hourglass showed up.

I don't know how somebody got into my house, but

I'm a little worried about what happens when that hourglass runs out.

I need that last piece.

And

wait,

wait.

Are these pieces made out of

this skin?

Oh, God.

Does that mean?

please call me back

end of messages?

Welcome back.

And just in time.

They're just about to start the second movement.

Oh, and

I know you have the best seat in the house, but uh

try not to get any blood on you, okay?

A blonde woman on violin had the most genius and cruel strategy of all.

She merely began telling us about herself.

Everything she could think of poured out in between sniffles and tears.

My name is Vera.

Vera Hayes.

That's

that's my

husband over there.

She gestured to a dark-haired man on drums.

He'd been the quietest of them all, seeming to be saving his strength.

We um

We have a little girl.

She's eight years old

and

she loves

her mama and her papa.

Her name is Lucy.

She loves horses, and I was

saving us to maybe give her

writing lessons one day.

I desperately wanted to cover my ears, but I knew it would be against the rules.

Why can't she just shut the fuck up?

I truly hated her.

Hated her more than I'd ever hated before.

But why?

Some dim remnant of my reason asked.

She's a victim here.

She's done you no wrong.

But I realized, I hated her because she kept reminding me that she was human, reminding me of what I was doing to her, what we were all doing to her sitting here in complicity.

And it almost worked too.

I almost resolved to save her.

But then came the boom of a shotgun from far behind me.

The shot had come from one of the tragedians standing amid the upper gallery.

I was certain.

I almost made the mistake of looking back.

Instead, I kept my eyes locked forward and merely imagined who it was that just had their brains splattered across their seat.

Had they snuck a phone in and tried calling 911?

Had they tried making a break for it?

Or maybe they just couldn't take it anymore and made the fatal decision to look away from the horror.

I tried to distract myself by studying the impossible mechanism animating the blood-soaked piano wire,

existing in defiance of all basic laws of geometry and seemed to have no means of controlling it.

Instead, operating automatically with some malign intelligence.

Perhaps it was an extension of whatever creature composed the stage itself.

It was a living thing, of that much I was certain.

It breathed beneath the performers, and their blood soaked into its floorboards in moments,

as if consumed.

After some hours, the orchestra had gone quiet, having screamed themselves hoarse.

I couldn't imagine being in their shoes.

Even just watching them perform was a test of endurance.

Many of them were oozing blood all over their instruments, from scarlet cuts where the skin had split.

The woman on the French horn was struggling hardest of all, her lungs and hands burning with exhaustion.

I can't.

She eventually cried out in a hoarse little wheeze,

horns slamming to the floor as her body gave out.

I'm so sorry.

A wire passed through flesh in an instant, and suddenly she had no mouth to speak, no eyes to see, no mind to think with.

I can't do it.

All of it lay splattered upon the stage, which sated itself upon that spilled V-Tai.

Another gunshot.

I quivered in my seat, sweat beating on my forehead from the terror.

Someone in the audience had looked away, and I realized I had just been about to do the same thing, had the sudden sound not knocked me out of my stupor.

Most of the performers went in similar ways over the next few hours, either making mistakes or their bodies giving out.

As monstrous as it may sound, I was quietly praying for them to get it over with.

They were dead the moment that they walked on stage.

Why drag it out for all these hours, just for the inevitable to happen anyway?

I recognize now that it's almost impossible to make that choice, to simply give in and accept death in defiance of all our natural instincts.

But the auditorium now reeked from audience members voiding their bowels.

And the damn woman next to me just wouldn't stop crying.

Wouldn't stop at all.

Vera and her husband lasted the longest of all, perhaps because they had each other.

Over a dozen hours had passed, maybe even two, and they were still playing a little duet in perfect sync, despite everything.

By now, they were simply talking to each other, as if nothing was was wrong.

As if we weren't even watched.

Baby, when we get out of here, I'm going to take you to Martha's Vineyard.

I know I've been saying that for a long time, but

God, I wasted so much money on that stupid fucking motorcycle.

Lucy's gonna love it.

I don't know.

It might be boring for a little girl.

Isn't it a bunch of old people up there?

Maybe in town.

But you know her.

Once you get her in the water, you can't get her back out.

She's a natural-born swimmer, I swear.

Think we'll see her in the Olympics someday?

It was surreal to watch.

Like I was peeking in on a private conversation a couple was having in their own home.

But I could tell both of them were trying to maintain some illusion of normalcy.

Anything to keep themselves psychologically intact as the hours pass.

Even as they tried to smile and laugh, there was a quiver in their tone.

A desperation.

A fear of what might happen if there was a single break in conversation.

A lot of what they said was too personal to relay here.

They went into old regrets, past mistakes.

resolved every argument they ever had in all their years together.

It was like they wanted to make sure they said everything they've had to say before the end came.

I think I owe him, at least,

their privacy.

But the husband was slowly deteriorating.

He'd moved too quick, caught the symbol with his hand, leaving a wide gash along his palm that was gushing blood at a terrifying rate.

Now he was getting woozier and woozier, swaying dizzily, his eyes unfocusing, his speech becoming slurred and his playing sloppy.

Vera desperately tried to keep him focused.

Talk to me, baby.

Think of the beach.

Lucy's going to love the seashells.

She'll pick her favorite and she'll put it on that little stand in her room, you know,

with her little trophies.

She rambled on and on, but by the end, all he could manage was half-hearted grunts of affirmation.

He was leaning in his seat, and then his drumstick went flying right out of his hand, sending a cloud of pink mist through the air along its path.

And yet, he kept going through the motions of playing, as if he didn't even notice.

Then, a sudden clarity formed in his eyes, and he stared at his empty hand in disbelief.

And then the piano wire was tensing and strumming all around him.

In an instant, he was up from his seat and racing towards us.

Why are you watching this?

You sick bastard!

You sick twisted!

He threw his remaining drumstick, and the trajectory would have delivered it right to me.

But the piano wires lacerated it in mid-air, slicing into it from a hundred different directions until it disappeared into a cloud of sawdust.

And then

they did the same to him.

Vera didn't scream or sob.

She just tensed and let out the tiniest little gasp.

Like when you're at the doctor's and know the shot is inevitable, but it still stings anyway.

And then

she was all alone.

She looked at us like she wanted to speak.

Wanted to say something to express what was happening inside her.

But what was there left to say?

She'd spent almost a full day screaming herself hoarse with every combination of words she can think of.

None of it helped.

None of it meant anything.

Instead, she expressed herself through music.

She began to play the most mournful, sobering solo I had ever heard.

One I knew she's making up as she went along.

One with which she communicated those parts of herself that words could not encompass.

She stared us all down,

eyes red and bloodshot.

making eye contact individually as if to remind us that we were not a shapeless mass, that we were all individually responsible.

I only remember the sound of it now, as if I'd heard it in a dream.

And yet, even now, the memory tears at my heart.

She performed for what felt like an eternity.

And then, in the end, she slowly, calmly, set down her violin,

stood up, and took a bow.

And then

she was unmade.

Everyone stood up around me all of a sudden, and I was immediately caught up in two,

performing a standing ovation that dragged on and on.

We screamed, shouted, cried, threw things, smashed our fists against seats, tore at our hair, laughed and danced with each other.

It was the ultimate catharsis after all that silence, after a full day of holding it all in.

Never before had I felt so connected to a crowd of people on some deep, spiritually

level.

We marched out of the theater.

stumbling like a procession of ghouls with blank faces and tired eyes.

The staff were as polite as ever, thanking us for for attending the performance and hoping that we enjoyed the show.

Some were dragging the bodies of shot audience members out of the theater.

As I finally emerged into the outside world, I was stunned to find it was still the same night I had entered.

At least 20 hours had passed inside that theater.

I was sure of it.

But for the outside world,

only two hours had passed.

Exactly the duration listed on their job offer.

I'd never been explicitly told not to reveal what I'd seen there, and now I knew why.

Nobody believed me.

Or worse,

maybe they were covering it up.

I swear to God, the police dispatcher laughed at me over the phone.

I swore I'd never go back.

I'd been part of something evil.

Something unfathomable.

And it would haunt me forever.

But the next year was one of constant desperation.

Debt climbing as job opportunities declined at equal rates.

I held out for about a year, but eventually, I gave in.

And to my horror, The next performance was...

easier.

Now that I knew what to

And then the next was easier still.

And the next.

The performance is always different.

But the end result is always the same.

I have to remind myself that I'm not culpable for what they're doing there.

All I do is watch.

We watch people die every day.

in the news and online.

How are my actions any different, really?

We all have to accept that terrible things happen in this world, and all we can do about them is either look away or look the horror right in the eye.

Is choosing to look away more moral,

or is it only more cowardly?

And besides, wouldn't it be worse for them if there wasn't an audience?

If they had to die there in the dark,

alone?

No one seeing,

no one caring,

No one remembering.

After all,

someone

has to bear witness.

L-T-T-H-H-U-K-Q-H-J-R-D-P-S-S-Y-L-A-B-Y-U.

Thank you for your patronage.

Hope you enjoyed your new relic as much as I've enjoyed passing along its sordid history.

It does come with our usual warning, however.

Absolutely no refunds, no exchanges, and we won't be held liable for anything that may or may not occur while the object is in your possession.

If you've got an artifact with mysterious properties, perhaps it's accompanied by a history of bizarre and disturbing circumstances.

Maybe you'd be interested in dropping it and its story by the shop to share with other customers.

Please reach out to antiquariumshop at gmail.com.

A member of our team will be in touch.

Till next time, we'll be waiting for you whenever you close your eyes.

In the space between sleep and dream.

During regular business business hours, of course, or by appointment.

Only for you,

our

best customer.

You have a good night now.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings.

Lot 068.

My job is to watch people die.

Written by Nomas39.

Narrated by Trevor Shand, starring Dee Quintero as the violinist, Addison Peacock as the French horn player, Romy Evans as Vera, Jeffrey Allen Sneed as the husband, Ryan Lee as the voice, featuring Stephen Knowles as the antique dealer, additional music by Coag and Vivek Abishek.

The Antiquarium of Sinister Happenings is created and curated by Trevor and Lauren Shand.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Antiquarium Pod.

Call the Antiquarium Antiquarium at 646-481-7197.

Hello, and welcome to the world of Scare You to Sleep.

I'm your host, Shelby Novak, a show for those of us who need something a little stronger than counting sheep, who find horror to be a strangely relaxing escape.

Here, you'll find a myriad of fright-filled tales, from fictional to true stories, to high strangeness to guided nightmares, where I take you on a journey through your own personal nightmare.

So come get lost in the terror with me.

Listen to Scare You to Sleep, wherever you listen to podcasts, sweet screams.