Night Shift & Have You Seen The Construction Workers?

With this camera, you just have to do everything.

Now, with the Telecom in Best Nets,

“the new Xiaomi 17T Pro, with Leica camera for photos and videos”

from ProVie, for no one at all. And there, there are about 224 Euro Cashback, but for short time and only with the Telecom. [MUSIC] No.

[MUSIC] Yes, it is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened,

or a simple fabrication is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listed discretion is advised. [BLANK_AUDIO] Hey, y'all.

Hope you've been having a good week. I rolled up to the station today and felt a little nostalgic. Probably because of how old I am, and the fact that social media seems largely catered toward people of my age and making us feel on the subject for how life was back in the '90s,

which I'm not even going to pretend was the best time in the world for me. But there is some stuff that I really do wish that I just, I don't know, I just wish I'd been around for. There's something about old stories about working of radio stations that just absolutely fascinates me.

I don't really remember much of that zoo crew type stuff

“that I think people on the coasts got more of than the flyover states.”

But just the craziness of the business, the money, the substances. When rock stars were living, what we actually think of as a rock star lifestyle, which is the same making choices. There are great stories and probably not so great for their internal organs. I just love hearing about the lawless days of certain industries and how

there are those moments when things just grow fast for the people who are prepared to adapt with. Kind of how we are with social media now, except fun. Then I'm walking to an empty building after everyone's gone, walking to a dusty basement, and sit by myself listening to disembodied voices.

So, you know, there are worse ways to spend your time. Anyway, I hope you all are finding the little moments that terror to lose yourself in. And if not, let's see if we can help.

“First up, from writer Nicholas Waller and you're able to bid you me for error.”

Creepy presents, night shift. The car was struggling as much as I was on the drive-in to work. We both groaned as we struggled up what felt like the world's steepest hill. Every shift I hated, driving up that fucking hill. The little rattle in the dashboard seemed to match the persistent dull ache behind my eyes.

I truly despised working the night shift. The upside-down schedule. How the world feels tilted and strange at 3am.

The way I always end up feeling like a dam zombie.

The only reason I transferred was a difference in pay from working days. It was how I made the math work. Regardless of my feelings, I sucked it up and told myself it was a small price to pay for the peace of mind I provided. Rent was paid.

Fridge was full. The drives to it from work always gave me some time to reflect on things. Home had been feeling like a constant, delicate balancing act. And lately I wasn't entirely sure it was one I was able to maintain. When I wasn't a silent safety net for my elderly father-in-law, who's pride outpaced

his limitations, I was doing my best to keep a tune to the subtle shifts in my wife's moods, while she clawed her way back from the darkest months. So grieving her mother's passing. I did my best to be an anchor for both. It was a role that I took on gladly, but one that left me perpetually exhausted.

Hospital sighed loomed ahead.

It was a glowing reminder that my second shift of the day was about to start.

preparing myself for whatever the night I had in my brain.

“I reached over to the passenger seating grant my lunch.”

Once I'd gotten out of the car and confirmed the doors were secure, I slowly. Becrudgingly, made my way towards the emergency department entrance. The automatic doors to the E.D. slowly hissed open. A sudden draft of sterilized chill there caused the hair on my arms to stand on end. I gave it not to fill.

One of my day shift counterparts on the way in. He was stuck at the metal detector until one of our crew came to relieve him after debrief. Lamy was a liminal space at this hour. The bay that did a glimmering institutional hum, and populated only by the weary.

I had a quick scan to see if I could spot any obvious problem children. But these folks seemed okay.

“The television flickered the usual muted news loop.”

The ticket presenting whatever new chaos was going on. The light from the screen reflected off the lowly and floors like moonlight on water. I didn't linger. I was keen to get the day shift's debrief over and done with as quickly as I could. Most of that crew was fine.

But Joe, the lead, Jackass. I kept my gaze fixed ahead. My boots rhythmically clicking against the floor as I bypass triage. I managed to dodge any potential small talk with the staff. They were thankfully too caught up in their own conversation.

I always moved with a practice invisibility.

Once I punched the code in, it was through the door I turned down the narrow, dimly lit corridor towards the security office. The tiny wire glass window had the familiar, sickly glow of dozens of surveillance monitors. Here we go. I thought as I took a deep breath.

Mentally stealing myself for whatever bullshit was going on behind that door. I stepped in. The security office smelled of stale coffee and Joe's shitty colon. He was regaling the rest of the team with tales of his "come man" presence. I tuned him out, because I reached for a radio and checked the battery.

His ego was a physical weight in the room. I lacked the band with to entertain it. I just needed to grab my keys and get the hand off. Watch the green elevators, many muttered, cutting right through Joe's narcissism. They're sticking.

There's a guy in room 16 that's not here that squirrels shit, so watch yourself.

“I grabbed my key set off the hook and nodded.”

The office was always this way as ship changes.

Combination of dayship, bitching, and night shift fatigue. Kirk and Victor walked in. Thank God. They were on my crew. Two of the few guys I actually liked.

They gave me their usual grimaces of solidarity. They gave me an empathetic pad on the shoulder. No, how are you bullshitting? He knew it looked like hell and felt worse. Dave, our fourth was already scallowing at the monitors.

They pointed a thick finger at a grainy feed of a basement corridor. Look at this shit. Something's leaking out from under the janitor's closet. How the hell dayship missed that? I'll take it.

I said, my voice sounding gravelly even to me. I didn't want to sit in the office and listen to any of Dave's political diatrives or nurses gossip in the ED. The solitude of the hallways sounded great just what I needed. I grabbed a flashlight from the charging rack.

I'm all over it. I said, while I'm backing out of the room, I'll find the source and get a hold of maintenance. Good luck, Dave granted. I exited the office and headed for the stairwell that led to the basement level.

The ambient noise of the ED had faded, replaced by the drone of the hospital's heart.

The air was heavier down here, scrubbed of humanity by industrial filters. Even though it worked here for years, I still managed to get lost when it came to the maze that this floor was. Once I oriented myself and headed in the right directions, I turned the corner and approached the janitors' closet.

That's when I saw it. Holy fuck, Dave had not been exaggerating.

An amber sludge was pulling under the door.

“I think, clear and crawling, it looked alive.”

Like a raw nervous system laid bare on the linolean. Its tendrils weaving into tight pulsating webs. I couldn't believe my eyes, and then I heard it. The steady metal hiss of the age fact that I was used to stuttered, replaced by a wet head, heavy weas behind the ceiling tiles, like a lung, struggling for air.

What the hell? Trust me to volunteer myself for a timekill, only for it to end up being a huge pain in the ass. I pushed the door with the rim of the flashlight, bracing myself.

“I didn't create on its hinges, instead sliding open with a wet, sickening pop.”

As if it was being pulled back by living tissue, that can't be good. I blindly reached for the light switch. My fingers failing to find the plastic toggle. My metal and ring fingers suddenly dipping into something that shouldn't have been there. It didn't feel like liquid, and it certainly didn't feel like a wall.

The context certainly wasn't what my brain had expected. Instead of the wet resistance of whatever coal biological matter had taken place at the switch, the sensation felt like a betrayal of physics, no squelch, wet viscera, or the cold slide of some kind of slime.

“Whatever the substance was, it didn't only push back, it vibrated, jolting me which such”

high velocity that I felt like my fingertips were suddenly being sanded down, once my skin had made contact. Sound of the room vanished, not into silence, but into me, wet, matricle thrum, thrum. Completely bypassed my ears, traveling up the radius and all my form like a live wire. Fuck, I yelled as I yanked my hand away in a spike of panic.

I shine the flashlight on my fingers, revealing a thin, gooey thread stretching between them. My breath started to hitch and tremble. Told with dread, shifted the flashlight towards the source of the bizarre sounds I'd heard in the hallway.

Finally landing on what could only be described as a biological obsidity.

It clung to the wall like a tumourous growth, glistening, a disgusting weeping mass of raw, translucent tissue that was oozing directly out of the HVAC. On the light hit it, the substance seemed a pulsant time with my rapidly quickening heartbeat. What the fuck is this? I thought, I'm out of the gap.

I put the flashlight under my right armpit and started to glow up, examining this thing. This chaotic weave of what looked like a thick, wet cluster of vocal cords. Ringe, yoke cartilage, and microscopic cilia fused into a convulsive hive-like structure. What the hell have I found?

I wondered while trying to get a closer look.

“Where the sun-known meat, as I decided to call it, met the floor.”

The strange fluid which had been seeping into the hall continued to spread. I caught the threat of my boots. Fuck, these are relatively new. I shifted my weight so I could try to move to a dry area of the floor. But strangely, the sound of my soul's moving didn't echo through the room.

The mass suddenly shivered.

Then a split second later the distinct crunch of my footsteps emanated from the center

of this thing. I've located perfectly, but much louder, unnervingly saw. It was as though this thing had drunk the noise, tentatively I reached out with my glove to hand, breath still hitching.

“Only to realize that this meat was reacting to my silence already.”

I started to emit a soft, wet mimicry of my now panic respiration. I pan my flashlight downward, and landing on a glimpse of synthetic blue fabric. Have some merge within the translucent sap. This goddamn thing was leaking everywhere. Oh shit.

My ribs tightened until it hurt to breathe.

This wasn't some discarded uniform tangled in this mess. The scrubs were pulled tight, woven into the meat's wet in size. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Instead of running like anyone with half a brain, I stepped closer. As I did the background home-changed, the HVAC drone died out.

Short by a wet, bubbling rasp.

“Like someone trying to clear a congested throat, the mass shifted, exposing the unlucky”

first witness. Nausea tasted like copper in my mouth. A hand still in a latex exam glove was melted straight into the wall, finger-splay, vibrating so fast they blurred. There was no blood.

No signs of a fight either. The skin ended at the shoulder. Blurred into the thick pulsating trunk of what looked like throat cartilage. The meat hadn't just killed the staff member. It had unmade them.

One of the sting-the-raw parts needed to become larger, louder. The fingers suddenly slammed against the wall in a frantic, erratic rhythm. The sound wasn't a tap. Instead, a crystal clear looping recording of a woman's voice. Cold blue.

It's surged room 2-035, over, and over, and over. The pitch climbing with each repetition until it scratched at my ear drums. The air in the closet felt razor thin. My flashlight shook as I followed the line from the cartilage to the glove-tand. And I saw it, but distinct rose-gold wedding-band pressed tight against the inside

of the glove. Lindsay, the nurse, I recognized it from yesterday.

She'd been complaining about the vending machine, how it never took card payments.

I felt the marrow in my own arms start to ache sympathetically. Flashes of times her daughter came to visit her plate in my head. My stomach turned. Lindsay wasn't trapped inside this thing. She had been digested into a function.

I watched as her hand became more glass-like. The ridges smoothed into the same rip texture as Trakia. I voluntarily uttered her name softly into a choked breath, and the meat not only mimicked my speech, but perfected it. Lindsay, not only reverberated inside the closet, but rang out from the hallway walls, sounding

of.

On instinct, I reached for my radial.

“Fingers hovering over the plastic casing of the hand mic, then I froze.”

Don't be stupid, I thought. Any words that come out of your mouth, this thing is just going to absorb them. My eyes darted back and forth across the cramped space. The landing on the industrial floor buffer, bingo. Without hesitation I lunged for the handle, jamming my thumb down on the dead man switch

while my fingers clamped the dual trigger levers.

The motor grown in the massive polishing disc began to spin deceptively fast, spooling up

tool-line. I girded my teeth and wrestled the machine forward, tilting the handle back, to force

“the edge of the spinning plate to go directly against the thick stainless steel rim of”

the floor sink. The consequences were both simultaneous and violent. The disc and gnash against the stainless steel, causing the closet to explode into a sustained metallic shriek, high-frequency vibration that felt like a drill, pressing against the back

of my skull, or horrific, jagged discordant sound that had no place in the natural world.

My arm shook violently. The muscle's screaming while I fought the torque of the machine, as best as I could. Trying to keep the metal on metal contact grinding, to force the frequency to hit its peak.

“Let me didn't just vibrate though, it contoured it.”

The sillier lashing back and forth into a blind frenzy, unable to find a pattern within the industrial roar on the floor, spiked upward, as though it were under a sonic blast. The perfect imitation of Lindsey and I's voices shattered into serrated overlapping shards of white noise. The rose gold rang on her hand, vibrate so intensely that the latex gloves began to smoke.

The friction from the meat had started to generate a blistering heat. I felt a wave as I saw the creature's suffer. I felt a wave of relief as I saw the creature's suffer, but the victory was short-lived. Within seconds the mass started to thicken, its surface began to harden, into a dense calcified reach, like a row of giant, fused teeth.

It began swallowing the vibration. The metallic shriek became muffled while the meat pressed its new bone-like mass against the metal rim of the sink, so it could dampen the oscillation. Fuck, the meat wasn't dying, it was adapting. It was no longer being hurt by the sound instead, using the chaotic frequency to build itself

a new skeletal framework. Expanding outwards along the ceiling tiles rapidly, a serrated wave of a bone-colored tissue. My attack hadn't just failed. It provided this thing a fucking conduit. The meat absorbed the final, dying wine of the buffer.

In a series of mechanical clicks, began to echo down the corridor, following the electrical pulse to the wiring, and surging into the central nervous system of the hospital. The inner com. The overhead speakers all suddenly hissed alive. The sound of the meat breathing, blaring through the building, causing the entire hospital

to exhale the low-frequency drone. I could feel it in the soft tissues of my stomach, instead of the ears. Above me, I heard the muffled shouting of the staff. Their voices instantly caught within the building's new throat.

Mix sucking in all the beeps of the monitors, the crying of the infants, bringing

“a phones, and feeding all of it back into the central mass.”

The horror had shifted from physical threat to total sensory override. The frequency began to renegotiate reality, causing my vision to oscillate. The edges of the hallway started to fray. The horror-firing sound achieved a palpable, heavy quality, which made me feel as though I'd been submerged in oil.

Light itself failed.

The fluorescent bulbs didn't flicker.

Instead humming in a visible violet spectrum, rhythmically and sync with the respiration of the meat. Connecting, I attempted to shout.

“For no other reason beyond sheer terror, but the meat swallowed the sound before it even”

left my throat. I was plunged into an acoustic vacuum, trapped in a configuration that continued to warm. Corndoors began to curve and stretch like the interior of a massive, fleshy gullet. The walls morphed into a vibrating, semi-transparent membrane, then the meat spoke. Bettering something that wasn't exactly a word, but a concept of sound, the human ear

could never process. It started with the metallic screech that simultaneously blasted through every speaker. The palm of the live mic replaced with that disgusting, wet stretching noise. As though vocal cords were spazzling behind the ceiling tiles, I felt the resonance rumble through my marrow.

“As though a thousand voices were attempting to say the same thing at once, but slightly”

had a phrase. There was a sickening layering effect in the air. No consonants, only a raw, glottal stop that felt like a lasted for an eternity. As a soundpeat, the ceiling tiles began to weaken more of the sound. This squeezed out of the speaker grills like sweat from a floor, turning the air hazy,

a bruised purple.

The meat had spoken its first word, as a living cosmic instrument, and when the sound finally

ended, the silence was worse. It was heavy. As though the meat was awaiting some kind of response, terrible sound lingered within me. I felt the sickening looseness in my joints, as if my connective tissue had vibrated right off the bones.

I would have wept if I could, but my body wouldn't let me. But I'd reach for the wall, my fingers sank in, now because the wall had suddenly turned into mush, but because I had, I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a small mirror that the staff had placed in the closet for grooming. I had become obscured, blurring into a pink, featureless mirror.

My eyes were like elongated ovals of dark fluid, and my pulse was visible in the air around me. A faint ripple of light. No, I wanted to scream, as I tried to get away, I couldn't run every step I managed. Not like a stone being skipped across the lake of static.

My boots were leaving behind acoustic shadows, shimmering outlines of footprints that continued to hum, a sharp frequency after each step passed. The air had become a dense vibrating medium, resisting my every moment, as if I were in deep water. Then it hit me, the power, I thought, my mind racing against the reverberation rising

in my core.

The meat suddenly spoke again, letting out a monosolabic roar, began tearing the physical

laws of the basement apart. The pipes rippled like liquid. I felt my teeth resonate until they cracked. I tried to howl from the excruciating pain but the meat just swallowed it. I continued towards the main power room, struggling through the pain.

Every step taking everything I had to give. I kept picturing my wife's face. I had to make it back to her.

When I finally reached the door to the main power room, the meat began to sweat its disgusting

viscous sap all over it. I fumbled for my belt.

“My hands shaking so violently that the brass key ring chimed with a dissonant melodic ring.”

I struggled to isolate the master key. My fingers fell like a bundle of wet glass. Finally, I managed to get a decent grip on the right key, shoved it into the log. The metal groaned. The tumbler began vibrating into a perpetual state of flux.

Nearly refusing to accept the solid shape of the key. I had to lean my full weight against the door.

Using the key until the lock finally gave way.

The click disturbingly replaced with the sound of a snapping bone. I shoved the door wide open.

“Using every ounce of strength I could muster.”

My eyes immediately assaulted by the new heart of the meat. Massive transformers that no longer drawn. Instead, singing a course of industrial agony with the veins of translucent tissue wrapped around the high voltage bus bars, siphoning power directly into the meat's expanding nervous system.

The air smelled foul and suffocating. I desperately reached for the lever, fighting the nausea and the pain. My hand now blurred glassy fan of fingers. I prayed that a total blackout would destroy this monstrosity as I slammed the lever down.

“The ventilation fans groan, slowly spiraling into a dead hollow silence.”

The violent hum, suddenly disappear and darkness enveloped the entire floor. Did it work? I wondered, as I stood there, panting, waiting for my body to solidify. For the looseness to return to Sinu, please say it worked. But the silence didn't last.

Suddenly I noticed a tiny rhythmic tick in the center of my chest. It was the exact mechanical cadence of the HVAC system. I tried to clutch my chest in a panic, only for my fingers to sink into my uniform, feeling like soft, fibers tissue, a creature hadn't failed, it had simply found itself a more portable vessel.

I opened my mouth to scream, but I felt a strange, uncomfortable sensation in my throat. And the only sound that emerged was the unmistagable chime of Lindsay's rose-gold wedding ring, hating the floor as it flew out of my mouth. In desperation, I exited the room to make one last attempt to escape, barreling towards the stairs that led to the exterior of the hospital with everything that I had.

As I tried making my way up, the basement stairs felt wrong, each riser wet and malleable. Underneath my boots, like a roof, tongues. I pulled myself up by the handrail, the metal felt warm, pulsing beneath my grim. Once I reached the ground floor, I frantically stumbled towards the exit, nearly drained

The heavy crash borrow slick with the sound, as I shoved the doors open, the hinges didn't

“creak, they groan like the sound of a waking lung.”

I staggered out into the gray, pre-done light of the parking lot, unable to feel the cold air. Only the internal friction of my sounds rubbing together.

Like a million miniature tuning forks, I reached for my radio, fingers still as crystalline

a sponge glass, and keyed the mic, but didn't have to speak. Radio no longer emitted static, instead radiating the sounds of a typical shift, clattering trains, the worship ventilators, and Lindsay saw the tired laugh. The sounds were coming from my chest cavity, amplified by the hollow resonance of my ribs.

“I tried to choke the noise back, but continued to transmit.”

Across the street a stray dog stopped, sniffing the grass until it's had. I looked on in horror, as the animals breathing began to synchronize with my own.

The same wet mechanical hiss click, as I tried to keep walking, the pavement under my boots

began to whip a clear, viscous fluid, and the street lights started to home up perfectly clear, see sharp, I wasn't going to make it home. I had become a walking antenna, living broadcast for the meet. I looked up at the pale and different moon, suddenly feeling my throat stretch and tightened into an inhuman shame.

“I attempted to gasp for air, only for a violent roar to erupt out of me.”

A call, the vacuum of space was finally ready to answer. Now, let's go to the next episode of the new Xiaomi 17th day, with a new camera for photos and videos like the Pro-Vi.

The construction workers, working on the roads at night, always busy, but it's never clear

and just what they're working on, I've seen them, and I know that they've seen me. I'm a little drunk right now, so forgive me if this isn't the most coherent. I'm hoping the alcohol will call my nerves enough so I can sleep even for a little while. I don't really get a lot of sleep in the first place. I never have, ever since I was really young, I've always had the worst insomnia.

I'll lie in bed, but my brain just won't shut off. My thoughts race at a thousand miles per minute. I can't make them stop, questions, worries, self-doubts, the list goes on. I'm an anxious man by nature. The calm needed to drift off doesn't come easily to me, and sleep only comes quickly when

I'm well and truly exhausted. Sometimes I'll go on my phone, but that really doesn't help. I just stay up browsing all night. Sometimes I'll get up and play a video game or something, but really, I'd no better than spending the night on my phone.

Clearly, I've been driving. I don't know about you, but driving calms me down. It suudes my nerves. My mind doesn't race or anything. I forget about the anxiety, I can just sit and focus on the road and whatever I'm listening

to. A podcast, some music, whatever. Mainly, I've been listening to creepy pod and John Grills as a very calming voice. I'll go out for a couple of hours and drive through the dark country roads.

and abandoned in the early hours of the morning.

“If you've never seen it, you should, it's something special.”

There's something so serene about being the only one around in the dead of night. Makes my heart race and, in a way, makes my anxiety spike, but I love it.

Anyway, during these drives that I saw them, I never put that much thought into the

random construction workers I'd sometimes pass. I just slowed down and made a point not to hit them, like a decent human being. They'd go about their business and I'd go about mine. Nobody ever really thinks that hard about road work, it's just a little annoying thing you deal with.

There's a lot of traffic, it's frustrating, but usually, it's just a mild annoyance at the best. Sometimes while passing their work sites, I'd catch a glimpse of the workers and briefly imagine myself living their lives, scheduling my life around late night construction shifts.

I've never really been one for manual labor, I don't think I could do it, but I admire

those who can. Most of the construction workers I've seen on my drives were just ordinary people. I asked midnight, fixing potholes, most of them, and every now and again, I'd see something different, and I'm not entirely sure how to describe it. While I was out in my late night drives, I'd sometimes pass work sites that hadn't been

there during the day. I know, I know, it doesn't sound that weird when you say it out loud. A lot of road work gets done at night when there's less traffic out and about, but stay with me here. I know the area I drive pretty well.

I know if they were doing road work in these areas during the day.

“They weren't, and the road work they were doing at night?”

Well, I'm not even entirely sure if I could call it road work. See, these work sites had a setup like they were doing road work with orange and black construction pylons keeping cars away from their area, but they didn't really seem to actually be working on the road. I only ever caught a few glimpses of what they were doing, but in every instance that I saw

them, there was always a car in the sectioned off part of the road, and they were always doing something to it. Does that even qualify as road work? Then, there were the workers themselves. If you've driven past a construction zone at night, you might have made eye contact with

some random worker. If so, you'll know that it's a very surreal moment.

“Kind of uncomfortable, but I mean, you're still just looking at a person.”

But passing these guys, something just fell off about them. It always always be tall and skinny as in weirdly tall and skinny. They'd be dressed in baggy uniforms in their facial features, never seemed quite right. Their hair looked like a badly applied wig. Some of them were inexplicably wearing sunglasses, and those that weren't had a sort of vacant

looking their eyes. No weirdest part was how they'd all just sort of stop and look at me as I drove by. In Unison, they'd halt what they were doing and just stare. Eyes fixated on my car as I passed, as if they were waiting for me to leave.

The first few times I saw them, I never thought too much of it.

I mean, you see, weird looking people all the time. It's not exactly unfathomable that some of them might work in construction. What they were doing was never really my business anyway. But as I started seeing them more and more over the next few months, those little weird traits they had stood out to me, more and more.

Like I said before, I never thought about it too much. If anything, it was just one of those funny things you see while driving at night, and I never mentioned it to anybody. Why would I? Whatever they were doing, it wasn't any of my concern.

And I guess it really was never any of my concern now that I'm thinking about it. Nah, I don't know. I couldn't leave well enough alone, not after seeing what I saw. I'm beating around the bush, I'm sorry, putting it all into writing as hard.

I'll try to get to the point.

“It was a few days ago, and I was in the middle of another bout of insomnia, so I did what”

I'd always done. I went for a drive. I didn't want to go too far from home, so I stayed in town for the most part, skirting along some rural roads as I drove a familiar circuit I'd driven a thousand times before. I put on a podcast and let myself relax.

It was nice and soothing. After about an hour or so, I was skirting along one of the roads that separated the suburbs from the endless farmland that dominated the back roads when I saw the orange and black pylons up ahead.

I cut my speed and moved into the other lane to give the construction a wide berth.

As I passed, I spotted a white pickup truck inside the pylons. This didn't look like a work truck, and it weighed too many bumper stickers, most of them referencing God.

“The truck was idling, but I didn't see any trace of the driver inside.”

Only several tall pale figures were working on the body of the truck, and as I passed, they all turned to look at me, fixating on me with wide, un-blinking stairs. I looked back at them only briefly as I slowly drove past. On the ground, a few feet away, were four or five other workers. They were standing around something I didn't immediately get a good look at.

Like their bodies, they all stared vacantly at me as well. And as I drove past, I caught a glimpse of what it was they were standing over. It almost made me stop the car. It was hard to see clearly between the figures, but I could have sworn that there was a man lying on the ground.

No, no, that's not the right phrasing. That implies I have some doubt about what I saw. I did see a man lying on the ground. I saw him looking at me. His eyes locking with mine for a moment as I sat inside my car. I saw that he was terrified.

That look, I don't know how to describe it, really. I felt like it pierced my very soul and left me slightly sick to my stomach.

I've never seen the face of a man who knew he was about to die before.

I've never had someone beg me for help with just their eyes. But that night, I was sure that was exactly what I was looking at. And the longer I looked, the more I realized was off. The man that stood over didn't appear to have any legs. He was as pale as a ghost.

And there were dark stains on the hands and uniforms of the workers. Stains that looked an awful lot like blood. I stared at them. I stared at the man. And they all stared right back at me, silently warding me off. I took the hint.

I hit the gas and sped away from the road work looking in my rear view mirror. I could see every tall pale figure at the construction site. Still staring at me as the darkness of the night consumed them again. My mind was racing as I left the scene of the road work behind. I tried to understand what I'd just seen, but no answer really seems satisfying.

Maybe they'd been helping someone who'd gotten into an accident. But why were construction workers doing that? Why were they set up around as car like that? Did nothing else they seemed to be working on? I had so many questions and none of them made any sense.

I tried to justify it in my mind, but every logical explanation I came up with collapsed in on itself. Maybe it was just that my mind was tired. I wasn't thinking straight. Maybe it would all make sense in the morning. Maybe. After driving for a little while longer,

I eventually found my way back home. Went up to my apartment and collapsed into my bed. I wish I could say I slept soundly, but I didn't. Not even close. Come morning.

I was inclined to dismiss everything I'd seen the night before as some sort of a bad dream or an exhaustion-induced misunderstanding.

“I mean, realistically, what were the chances that there was anything suspicious going on out there?”

Probably zero, right? Yeah, I still couldn't shake the memory of the man watching me from the ground as the workers surrounded him. I still couldn't justify the fact that those workers looked to be covered in blood.

Perhaps, I don't know. But if it were, wouldn't there be some record of it?

When that idea crossed my mind, I had to look into it more. I scoured the local news for any reference of a car accident last night, but found nothing.

“That, in and of itself, shouldn't have been too suspicious, right?”

The news can't cover every little fender-bender. Oh, what was I saying? This wasn't a little fender-bender. In a best-case scenario, that man had to have been at least injured. There'd been no other cars at the scene, so he had to have crashed into something, a guardrail, a signpost, something?

That was it. If he had hit something on that road, there would be some sign of it, wouldn't there? It hadn't looked like his truck had hit anything when I passed him, but, well, it had also been dark, and hadn't stuck around for long. I still had time before work started. I could drive down, get a coffee and a donut, take that road, and see what damage was done.

“It would alleviate all my fears. No problem.”

So, it's exactly what I did. I took a long route to pass by the spot where I'd seen the accident. And I expected to see Pylons, or maybe even a police car. Judging by the time, the accident had only been about six hours ago. There probably wouldn't be any trace of the truck or its driver,

and I had little doubt I'd seen what he'd hit. Yet, as I drove down the highway, I saw nothing.

I'd never really stopped to closely study the signs and guardrails

long that road before, or more accurately, the lack of them. What few rails and signs I saw had no damage, and when I passed the area I'd seen the truck in, there was nothing there that could have hit. Let's say the driver had been drunk and it got off the road. It would have ended up in a farmer's field.

Now, perhaps he had, and those workers had carried him out, but wouldn't there be some sign of it? Some evidence? My saw had none.

After getting my coffee, I passed that way a second time to get out and take a closer look on the off-chance.

I could find more evidence. The golden glow of the rising sun didn't offer the best light to investigate by, but as far as I could tell, there was absolutely nothing. No signs that anything had gone off the road. No evidence of blood stains, no chip pieces of paint or signs of damage, nothing at all. I almost wondered if I was in the wrong place and spent the next 15 minutes walking up and down

that stretch a highway, searching for something, and yet there was still nothing. After a while, I got back into my car and went home to start getting ready for work. As I meandered through my workday, my mind kept wandering back to that car accident from last night. Why did this matter to me? Why was I putting so much effort into this when

“really it shouldn't matter? Was it the look in that man's eyes? Why would that drive me?”

I sat mindlessly at my laptop, replaying those precious few seconds I'd shared with them over and over again in my head as I'd driven past. Maybe it was that fear that I saw a mortal fear that was hard to describe, but that was stupid, wasn't it? It shouldn't be bothering me. Why was it bothering me? When I had a moment, I scanned the news again. I looked for any announcements of recent deaths and found nothing of note.

Eventually, I gave myself two shots of espresso and shifted my focus back to work, or as much of my focus as I could spare at least. Then, when my day ended, I had a microwave dinner and played a video game until I got sleepy. I woke up at around one in the morning. Usually I wake up gradually, but that day was different. I don't have a lot of nightmares, and the ones I do have are pretty minor. The most recent one I can remember involved me putting

too much soap in the sink while washing the dishes and being terrified that my parents would find out. Don't ask me why I thought this was so terrifying. I don't know how to explain it. But the nightmare I'd just woken up from was far more vivid than any of the others. In it, I was back in my car, coasting along that back road and watching as the strange, tall construction workers stood over the man with the Jesus truck. I watched as they tugged at his body.

Not as if they were trying to help him up, but as if they were trying to take him apart.

I got to see the terror in that man's eyes all over again.

“The mortal fear he felt, and it was intense enough that I felt at my own heart, too.”

I wanted to help him, but the workers were staring at me. Their eyes burning into me, silently willing me away, warning me with an unspoken threat should I get closer. Then my dream, I drove away, like I'd driven away than I'd before. I'd woken up in a cold sweat, but the knot in my stomach was anything but a dream. And though I tried to lay back down and rest, my brain was wide awake.

That didn't feel rested. I still felt exhausted. But after an hour, sleep wouldn't come, and browsing on my phone quickly felt like a hollow distraction. So I got up, got dressed, and grabbed my keys to go on another drive.

“I passed by the spot where I'd seen the truck again, although there was still nothing there.”

No evidence of roadwork. I didn't linger there for much longer. I moved on, taking a back road that I knew would lead me to one of the small towns just outside the city I live in. I didn't listen to a podcast this time. I just wanted to be alone with my thoughts for a little while. I don't know what I was expecting or hoping to accomplish. I just figured it would help. Perhaps it did. Perhaps it didn't. I'm not really sure.

Roughly an hour into my drive, I noticed a flash of orange just down the highway. Roadwork. Even from a distance, I recognize the tall lumbering forms of the workers. These were the men I'd seen before.

“On instinct, I slowed my car down, pulled over to the side of the road and killed the engine.”

My lights fell dead, immersing me in darkness. I saw one of the workers look over in my direction, and for a moment, I dreaded that they might stare at me, noticing me through the darkness. But they didn't. They just went on with their business, seemingly, nonetheless. I felt like I was doing something wrong. At the very least, I was doing something weird, spying on random construction workers. These probably weren't even the

same guys I'd seen that I before. I mean, they look similar, but I had no proof. But I still figured that I'd watch them for 20 minutes or so before getting bored and driving off. I'd probably spoof the hell out of them, but it would put those nagging voices in my mind at rest. So, I sat. I waited. And in time, I saw. I watched as the workers set up something on the road. Just walked, I couldn't say. Some sort of strip right across the highway, though. It came out,

like a jack. Not only enough, they didn't seem to mark where it was. They just laid it out, then went back to the safety of their orange cones. I wondered if perhaps this was some sort of road

treatment. I never thought it'd be anything dangerous, and yet when the next car came,

I'd seen a car's tires pop before. The sound is hard to forget, as at the smell of burning rubber. The second that car ran over whatever they'd put in the road, the tires shredded instantly. I watched the car skid and struggled to break before veering over to the side of the road. And as it did, I watched the workers approach it, carrying their pile on silently and doodifully, probably just to help them, right? But if so, why were a few of them picking up

whatever they'd laid out across the road? Why did whatever they'd laid across the road look like it had spikes on it? I watched as the driver, a man in a warm looking sweater with a matching

scarf got out. He didn't seem to notice the workers coming towards him at first, and while I

considered getting out to check on him, my instincts told me to stay put. The workers were almost on top of him when he finally noticed them. And when he did, I saw his eyes light up a little. He spoke to them warmly, almost like friends. "Hey, sorry, something blew up my tires!" Before he could say anything more, he trailed off. His eyes followed the pair of workers taking their road spikes off the road, but I could see him piecing together what had just happened in his mind.

His warmth immediately faded away and was replaced with rage. Then panic, I heard him yelling at them.

They just kept drawing ever closer to him. And when they started to grab him, he fought them,

“screaming and thrashing all the while. But there were too many of them, and only one of him,”

he fought, but in the end it meant nothing. In the end, they dragged them to the ground and his screams of rage, all too quickly became screams of pain. I watched as they began to pull him apart. Not cuts. They had no tools. All they had were their bare hands, and they just pulled. I heard the squish of flesh being ripped from flesh that inhuman

throaty screams of a man being eviscerated while he was still alive. Then the choking gasps,

the horrified sobs, the begging. Stop! Please stop why you're doing this, my heat! Then the vomiting, as the horror of what was being done to them settled upon him,

“within 10 minutes, all was silent. The workers who had pried off parts of his body took them away,”

disappearing into the night with them, like ants carrying pieces of their prey. I watched it all with a growing feeling of nausea in my stomach, and I knew that this was the hell the man I'd seen the other night had gone through. They started on his car next, praying at the metal before ripping chunks of it off, once again, with only their bare hands. I didn't stay long for that.

The spikes were off the road. I didn't want to wait around for them to finish with his car, in case they spotted me and decided to make me the next victim.

“That wasn't stupid enough to drive towards them, for all I'd knew. They'd seen me,”

and it set up another spike trap up ahead. Instead, the moment my engine came to life, I made a violent U-turn and hit the gas, speeding away from the workers. In my rear view mirror, I could see them all looking up at me as I fled.

I haven't slept well, never since that night. I barely slept at all.

I can't unhear the screams. I can't forget the sound of the flesh being ripped apart. Part of me doesn't want to forget. I saw a report on the news the other day. They found parts of several disassembled vehicles dumped in a nearby lake. Some of them even date back to the 1960s. There was even some video of the vehicles being pulled out. One of them looked like it used to be

part of a white pickup truck and it was even covered in decals and stickers, praising Jesus. Hard to say for sure, but I can hazard a gas as to where it came from. I haven't left the house in a few days. I don't think the workers go out and daylight, but I don't want to chance it. I know they've seen me at least twice now. I don't know if they can find me, but I've seen a lot of construction on the street outside my window lately.

And it seems more active at night. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit CreepyPod.com. You can also follow us at CreepyPod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative comments, share a light licensing, or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be

rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the CreepyPod podcast production team and the story's author.