Wine & Dine

[MUSIC PLAYING] This is Creepy.

“A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling”

and disturbing creepy pastors and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened, or most simply fabrications, is for you to decide. These stories made in teen graphic depictions of violence and explicit language.

Listener discretion is advised. Hey, everyone. Yep. No radio station today. Custom changes going on that I want to talk about real quick before getting into the stories.

But first, a quick moment to welcome and thank new patrons.

Join Kunlin, El Vogel.

“You'll have me sent to us Martinez, Anthony Herera, Alyssa Morgan,”

and Brittany Anna Conchilo. To see all you can get rewards like shout-outs and really commercial free access to episodes, please check out the donation to www.patreon.com/creepypod. OK.

Some of you might have seen it mentioned on social media, and others might have seen on the podcast player that Creepy is no longer a part of the bloody disgusting podcast network. We're officially now with to new be afraid podcasts network. As I would like to stay ahead of things and not let people speculate about this,

there is no ill will between me and bloody disgusting. I love bloody disgusting. I did before we were with them and I do today. There is no question the impact that BDS had on the horror community. And I'm grateful to have been a part of their company for these last eight years.

Nothing has changed that. I still think Megan Navarro is the single best movie critic out there. Someone who's opinion on horror I hold in the highest esteem. That said, I had an opportunity to take on a new role and I went with it. I've officially taken on the role as the head of podcasts

for the Be afraid podcast network, who part of Dred Central. This is an opportunity for me to work more behind the scenes on the business of podcasting, while still hosting and running creepy. Sorry, can't get rid of me that easily. Although I'm sure I'll still get people asking me if I'm leaving the show.

This was an opportunity that I just couldn't pass up. And I'm so excited to bring what I've learned as a podcaster to Dred and be afraid

to help grow their new network and do what I can to help other podcasters have the same amazing opportunities

that I've been so fortunate to have.

“I mean, you all have heard my journey through the years, right?”

It's out there and available to everybody. It's been a rollercoaster, but it's been an amazing ride. And I really do hope more and more podcasters get to experience the same things I have. Which is also why I'm not a radio station right now. I just don't have the time at the moment getting things up and running.

However, I did make a deal with radio station and I'm going to honor that. So I'll still be there on Wednesday nights as we keep going through the old archives. Honestly, I'm glad to be able to step away. I'm sure the last few weeks, or more, my emotional state has seemed a bit erratic. And I'm fairly sure the working at the station has been a contributing factor.

But that's not your problem, and technically it's just a problem for Wednesday, John. Sunday, John, on the other hand, is just excited for this new phase of things.

But first and foremost, my main focus is still this show, and bringing you all the best stories we can.

So please keep those submissions coming in, particularly stories from a male or gender neutral POV, so the jense on the show don't get too lonely. Okay, let's get to the things that started it all. First up, a grocery shop or chronicles the slow unravelling of a world facing a food crisis. We're shortages, misinformation, and everyday routines gradually transform the world around them.

Fromwriter Bianca Riddle, creepy presence, wine and wine. Iowa Farmers have started implementing sawdust into their livestock's diet. Alcohol adverts are still legally barred from showing actors drinking their product. Avian influenza outbreaks led to the slaughter of out inventory and the bleaching of walls.

who built a brand around from scratch baking with western kitchen appliances and other gadgets purchased abroad.

109 days before.

“As a personal grocery shopper, you've become an expert in spotting pre-wrought.”

The signs white fur is about to sprout, trailing across the shoulders of strawberries, green hairs, black fuzz, the sweet and sour vapor of red meat does it over oxidizes before the promised state stamp done the label. You can get a hint of it underneath a cellophane, browning, graying, punjently raw. In and out, fruits in vegetable softening, preparing to sit in their own wet. Bruises forming pockets of mush under thin rinds and skins, pasty craters of expiration to cut around, eat around.

You have a sensitivity to it now that almost puts you off food entirely. All the handled slime from package chicken, the vinegary starch from potatoes once they spoil.

You think of a world in the distant future, which people of your profession evolved beyond their stomachs, the non-eaters.

The ones that feed from sunlight and nothing more, do as the plants do. The sci-fi fantasy goes nowhere. It's ridiculous.

“You think food is so nasty I'll never touch it again.”

But you do. Quite often. When months rolls around, you're sad. Can't build or come your body's need. Subtemper by earth wind and fire, is playing as you survey the fatty weight marbling of the porter house stakes on the shelves, behind the invisible cold curtain.

That dome of chili air that keeps everything fresh. Last summer, when the afternoons here record highs, regulars repressing their hands at the back of the wet walls that shower the leafy produce to cool down. They congregated on the floor waiting for the next misting cycle. The outtowners, and it's obvious who they are, didn't entirely gawk. But you could tell they were jealous of bringing their decorum with them, carrying it over state lines.

You want to make sure your clients get the most out of their purchase, that they know that you know their dollar needs to stretch.

“That they have a buffer of reasonable neglect.”

The ingredients for dinner don't necessarily have to be cooked tonight. Life happens. Fatigue means things sit in a shopping bag. In one of the fridge drawers. You're not supposed to freeze me twice.

Despite that, you've done it numerous times. Let something thaw, realize you had been to ambitious, naively trusting in your morning's bandwidth to carry on well into the evening. Would make spaghetti and meatballs another day. From the ice box to the frost in the microwave, back again. You have an emotional support drink that sits in the infancy to the shopping cart.

Swallow to stay upright in the nest of your sweater. You pick it up now to sip and poke at the slush with your straw, as you watch two men set up the seafood case. Level out the ice they shoveled before setting out stainless steel trays on the angled flatbed. Crab legs are the exception. They get buried in the ice chips at plants. Long red succulents that smell like sea water and meat.

The raw peeled shrimp in a way looks symbiotic. Gummy clumps of indecent nakedness. Unbundness and shameful vulnerability. If you were a shrimp, you'd be humiliated to be seen without your shell. You'd be between the fingers of some well-dressed socialite saying, "God smother me in something and eat me fast.

This is embarrassing, and I'm cold!" That's how your imagination goes. It passes the time, but it really makes you forget your at work.

You always start with a "Hey to ask so early, but you need a butcher or a daily associate or a baker to fulfill an order."

It feels inconvenient to ask someone to do their job. Two soon to request an eight o'clocker to perform their duties at 8.10, 8.15. Where's the fire? You have a sort of alliance with the workers who divided loyalty between you and the sir miss your fetching for. You understand the pound of roast beef being finely shaved won't be eaten this very hour.

And you say as much to the employee while on their way to receiving tennis elbow from working the handle. The blade stays put, the meat gets pushed. The platform gets adjusted a notch when someone complains about the thickness of the cut. You try not to think about being shrunk down, running from a blade so fine and sharp it looks like the waterline of a clear lake.

No blue. No black.

“Exactly the right shade to hide something.”

A body. An aquatic monster. It's possible half of all intrusive thoughts are violent. You can't help but imagine miss-haps at turn bloody or being on their ceiling end of a horrible accident. 60% of household injuries happen in kitchens.

A grocery store is just that. One massive kitchen.

The building wakes up at five, though the lights never go out.

You can see them all the way from the terrace of your apartment up on the hill. A string of lights above the blooming dogwood. The savers in porium. A proper daunting high rise. A capitalism whole sock.

Some of the levels don't have windows. Creates time blindness like arcades. Everyone's guilty of looking. Self-conceiving to buy. Losing an hour.

“In the check-out lane unlocking a card or moving money from one account to another.”

This place has everything.

You can indulge in a foot bath on the fourth floor. Have your circadian rhythm realigned on the tenth and get your tires rotated in the parking lot. One stopped shop in town square. All that's missing is a chimney for a crematorium. Maybe an inferno to burn all the bags turned in for a cycling.

Because you don't believe they actually follow through. How can they when people keep mixing in garbage? Sometimes you think of your shit and termingling with someone else's shit at the landfill. Maybe your trash has befriended another trash. Maybe they got married.

And you're a grandparent to a few ungrateful waste babies. Because the we of humanity still hasn't learned how to bust up mass. Completely disappeared. Other than disintegrating it and tearing a hole in the ozone or blasting it into space. So occasionally you think about the inanimate objects growing sentience and multiplying as the humans do.

And sometimes you shut your brain up and you drink your six dollar coffee. The data shows the pollution you personally have a hand in is non-existent to that of a billionaire. It must be sad for everyone. The first time a person realizes they're on a metaphorical hamster wheel or elliptical or trapped in a nester painting. The Sicifium plate isn't exclusive to retail work.

But you do have to wonder when you jump in to give a fellow shop or directions quicker than the employees. When this is your third lap around the store on a slow day in the evidence that you were here previously as marked by the shelf space you've created. The manager on the third level of this gilded cage goes by Mike. Not Michael, but sometimes Mike man by the milk delivery guys.

He has a dry nihilistic sense of humor that you like, despite not always catching which parts of sarcasm.

He's paid more, but he's another cog and he knows it. One time you cut him shopping on his day off. Up on the 20th looking at putters wearing a t-shirt that read, the world's on fire shut up about it. The script on the back saying, "The world's on fire." Ask me about it. Neither of you mentioned that the air this high up gets thin and influences your purchasing power.

You laughed with a 12 pack of golf balls, never haven't played. Not having much to hit them with other than the sheet colored flat back of a frying pan. Why did you get them?

“More importantly, where did you put the receipts you can return them?”

Second hand unintentional learning. Rum pairs well with vanilla. Tomatoes can be fermented into wine. Blue laws and religious observance. Beer has more rights than wine or hard liquor.

Our response comes through as banter on the top of your phone screen. You once again have to remind one of your customers that you can't purchase any wine today when they insist. Any burgundy will do. Since here in one of the Bible Belt states, you can't buy wine on Sundays. Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma, all dry states.

No booze, do not pass go. Get your nicotine fix, your sugar fix, your. I could be a millionaire from this one ticket and it'd be so different because I'd be nice to people and share my winnings. Fix. You're adrenaline fix.

Go up to the 29th floor where you're just barely conscious enough to sign the waiver to pair a glide down to the garage. Ironically, there's a directory framed inside the door of each bathroom stall. Every week, there's a new floor, gutted or placed with a coming soon liquor barn sticker.

Like the all leather crafted goods shop, in a place that only sells lamps and light fixtures.

“And a yarn in textile spot with dump bins that tempt you to stick your hands in.”

Up to the elbows. Yak, mama, opaka, tickles between your fingers like velvet spaghetti. If you ever started a garage band, repeat call yourself that. Velvet spaghetti. After your shift, when you have time to mill around, you buy a manual vegetable chopper.

You could have sworn you already have one, but since you can't immediately recall where it lives in your kitchen, you get another. Besides, this model is slightly different. That, you're sure of. You don't think about the summer you were at your nanas house in accent. I took the tip off your finger using hers.

You don't think about how trace amounts of blood still live on the blade despite the dozens of vinegar baths since. You don't. 82 days before. Most of us have need food, even if it's doing something to us. Is it fair that they can handle poison?

“There's a viral trend right now, letting ice cream sit out overnight,”

filming the bowl of sludge you find in the morning. There it is, preservative oils and pig fat, a soggy clump of a thing. Dumpling adjacent as opposed to milk soup.

First water gate, now frozen dairy dessert gate.

There's a margin of lie that's allowed within the nutrition chart. Calories reduce and misleading percentages of fruit toasts. Companies that substitute mango pieces in real fruit, peach flavored yogurt, cut manufacturing cost. Take a trip abroad and you won't find red dye or ice cubes and they cut back on red meat.

More chick peas and black bean salads. Also, you shouldn't drink from a water bottle you've left in a hot car. On and on, you know these things. Know what's good and bad for you. But the options are limited.

The system works against people.

“The organ battering stuff is what's cheap.”

You know that organic produce never looks particularly fresh because it decomposes

on an actual timer. You've noticed there's no more organic. Sure, there's the packaging, which led to repackaging. Cock glimpses of it from the tiny windows and the swinging doors that led to the backroom storage and walk-in cooler.

Barry's moved from one plastic prison to another. Everyone's happy with what they believe they're paying for. You had a dream recently involving a muddy farm, miles away from anything else. The type of place that implied you are completely alone. Along the rows of crops there are these metallic semi-circles.

Half hoo-hooook stabbed into the wet earth, find mesh netting draped over their arcs. Nothing like a bomb shelter, but in your mind it was sturdy enough. You lied still in the bed of filled lettuce, while every bug known to manplotted out the sun and chewed to the veil.

They had bloody mouths, both pincers and teeth, squirt off like humans. The noise, the clacking of their tiny teeth that belonged to porcelain dolls. And it's automatically correct from the shoulders up. Pinsize nostril holes.

Hollow ear canals too. Large enough for a curious spider to burrow. You hear grasshoppers with their loud buzz and the different kind of old men. But that's Rattle, a Geiger counter for something else. The social aspects, maybe.

Mike's chipper today. He passes you on his morning store walk, makes a reference to a movie you're just old enough to get,

but you admit you've never seen it.

He rattles off a few more, testing your pop culture knowledge. These titles are on an invisible list. You admit, I wish I watched more form films. There's a whole emotion you feel you're missing out on in that regard. Cut yourself saying it definitively.

Like all time the will pass has passed and you're never allowed to change. Panic, because it's too early to be so serious and honest. You pivot the bitch about the traffic on the way in and ask if you've seen the smoke in the sky. That's a controlled fire, some car dealership running tires. He says, "You've prolonged it long enough.

When you ask him, innocently, like your livelihood, couldn't give less of a damn.

The corners of his mouth turned down. Scratched, shorted, zilch, no dice.

“So you think the nicest way to phrase, don't have, not getting.”

To the dozens of people who pay you to help feed their families when they immediately pounce upon receiving quantity of zero notifications. I can substitute red grapes for green. Instead of bone broth, can I pick up stock? They don't have bananas.

Is there another fruit? No. Your two-year-old is fussy, and this is the only fruit they'll eat. Okay. Well, there's dried banana chips.

Would you like to give those a try?

Second hand unintentional learning, the sequel.

They don't call them blood oranges anymore. It's off-putting. Bad marketing. They're raspberry oranges now. He's nice rebrand, huh?

Furthermore, the item of poetry stores sell the most bananas. Note, some of these numbers might be inflated due to the whole bunches versus singular pieces count discrepancy. It's a whole standard versus metric thing. We have a universally agreed upon how it talian. It's a pride thing.

Gotta be. Conformity ultimately means someone was right, and someone else was wrong. The date goes on like this. Lists have items shrinking. Offering alternatives that in turn changed the menus of everyone's taco Tuesday.

Tunic Tuesday. Two can on the box cereal night Tuesday. Too bad I wasn't born into problematic generational wealth Tuesday.

But third stage of grief is bargaining.

Understanding that there request for sour cream is futile. Wouldn't be if they kept a dairy cow in the back feed of milk. But this is the handy-bendelt. You receive pleas, location pinpoints out of the way destinations to scoop up last minute sundries. You quiet the tiny voice in your head that says, "If the savouring pouring doesn't have it, no one does."

Not some squat one-story spice place back behind two apartment complexes or underneath the bypass beside a vape shop or carpet cleaning rental. That night you unwind in front of the silver screen, fussing with the sofa.

“The only thing on cable at this hour is trash TV and decades old cold cases.”

Commercials are pushing the new fizzy canned alcohol so much that the taping plays back back. You think sarcastically? Well, now that I've seen it twice in a row. The most dimming thing about what's being shown to you is how far the can is angled above the glass before the liquid starts pouring. A literal tipping point.

Drink companies are following in chip companies' footsteps by selling air. If the bottle is in transparent, you'll have to start feeling out water levels. Another egg comes on. Then another, then that canned hard lemonade one or whatever. 60 days before.

You've come to understand that you're in a fortunate position to watch it happen. The holes in the shelves slow to be replenished. If at all, the floating coolers and open bunker freesure with rotating seasonal items being permanently cut off once the stock was cleared out. The freestanding cooler with all the specialty meats and cheeses was the first to be disassembled. You watched as one of the workers scrubbed the cold grates, taking a sparkling spatula to the remaining bits of old cake gone labels.

The prosciutto used to be here. Over here is where they had 10 different kinds of stuffed olives. What all can you stuff in an olive? Well, you're glad I asked. There's diced ham, cashews, that red stuff that's most definitely in the gelatin family.

Don't think about it too hard. A smaller olive and beeswax. Revolutionary. A delicacy. Yum.

“What happens to seasoning when there's hardly any raw to dust?”

No sprigs ever grained to shove up the empty cavity of a dead carcass and stitch closed with a grade 3 needle and food safe twine. No delicious golden brown heap to pull from the warm mouth of a brick oven. Speaking of dust, so much food comes in convenient dried forms now. You've started grabbing alternatives, unconsciously prepping. The stuff's astronautic.

Gravity defying and extreme temperature proof. Powdered ranch, powder chocolate, dehydrated spinach flakes. I can garnish an omelette you pour out of a milk carton. Instant this, instant that.

Candy dorn slices that never stale.

The future is present and ever frozen with these ripe options.

Eat it. And you'll be even hungrier. Society, it's too late to put the toothpaste back in the tube. And you think, I think I want to die.

“I think the food is actually running out.”

Amit's the old cry for conglomerates to do better. A global soda brand collaborates with one of the guilty ice cream giants and there's this new wonderful flavor. It promises the taste like that one perfect day in your childhood. Where the memory has hazy golden edges. You remember the orange if you're closed eyelids in the back, see if your mom's minivan.

Everyone's too distracted living in a stellage at a notice, Santi Histom means disappearing from standing displays.

On top of that, sleep aids become the favorite hot commodity.

It's not malicious, but wistful. Self-medicating being at its zenith. All these pseudo doctors who are just television personalities, be rating troubled kids in ways that are so confrontational. It's antithetical to what receiving help should look like.

A therapy session with an audience. Organic laugh track.

“That night on the couch under the glow of the TV when you think,”

"Hey, whatever happened to the viral, I'll beat your ass outside girl." Fifty-one days before. Someone said they came like locusts, moved like them, took over the horizon like them, ate like them. Which is to say, if their teeth were made of glass, they would a strip bark

and gone down to the root. They would have disappeared herds of animals and their bones. Probably would have broken up the bird and formed craters like crop circles. Red-eyed horn beetles. Toward to the leaves of every orchard and about four inches off every short branch.

Any young sapling growth. The news is covered in 300 different languages. Something about bad leaves stunts the output. Amage puts the tree in shock, makes the fruit small, tough, almost petrified. Worse, the larva.

“Their talks of a firestorm being the only effective pest control.”

It didn't start with the insects. Everyone either glasses over or ignores that fact. Alcohol is the distraction. It's the band-aid that will put a dark spot in your mind with a government scatters to fix it. What if they can't?

They're sure and under the table deal is being made right now for a whole cargo container of carrots or oranges. Guns for oranges. Bombs for oranges. Fighter jets for food. The factors for blood oranges.

So what do they do? They lower the drinking age. And what do you do? You have a glass of wine before bed to help you sleep. Wash down your saltine cracker dinner.

Pretend that this will all blow over. In a week you'll be laughing about how you needlessly moderately stockpiled and heavily rationed. That you hold yourself in your apartment too much and you let your echo chambers of the end is nigh, scare you. Although, if the belief is at a butterflies' wings can cause typhoons, then surely the stomach of a beetle can cause the extinction of different larger species.

43 days before. Lately you've had to stop and ask yourself of the air taste different. If you can tell that fires are happening all around you at the tip of your tongue. Despite this side of the world still so blue. Last summer you tried mustard on watermelon.

You came across it on the timeline of one of your three apps you cycle through. Someone confided in someone else and then the sensationalism machine did what it does best. Push this particular way to snack to the corners of the country. 15 years ago, you grabbed a table spoon in a bowl. Made a mustard maple syrup pepto-bismal concoction with the explicit purpose to make yourself

throw up so you can miss school that day.

There's always that sort of wastefulness in youth.

Catch up in corn mixed into mashed potatoes. A chocolate and a river running through the whole mess. Boredom meeting culinary abominations. Five dollars if you eat that, that's outright dears with no monetary incentive, but short-term social credit if you can beat the kudis allegations.

You pray that sort of access can find you again. Enough food security to make the things around everyone's disgusting games and ponds again.

Second hand intentional knowledge, the reckoning.

“You can boil pomegranate skin, making it extremely beneficial, yet done conventional tea.”

The kind of regulates hormones and promotes brain activity. You can use that battered flesh over and over and it takes a while to completely leach the thing of its potency. Your 17th cup of pomegranate bath water will be just as rejuvenating as the first. It's leathery, a flesh. But apparently, one quick search says a lot of people blend fruit hole, the peel, the piss, the pulp.

You test the resilience of all food this way. Liquify. Water down bananas.

Shaved down chocolate with a greater.

Water that down too. Stretch the longevity of foods in a way that seems like an offense. A total lack of integrity to consume in this way. Not everything can be soup. The internal monologue says this, or starve.

“You can live like this because you have to.”

You don't know why you're embarrassed to admit that at the seeming end of the world, you've become a shut-in. All outside noise worries you, especially the zombie shambling from the drunks. They get loud, aggressive.

Any signs of life you hear at night and they're banging on the other side of the door.

Last time you went out, you saw the result. Tenants who once respected, sleeping on the landings between the next floor up and the next floor down in the stairwells. If not on the concrete stairs themselves, one long human sentipede of a trip hazard. You glare every single body down, waiting for a hand of pop-out and grab a wrinkle. You spend your limited phone data trying to stay informed, learning practical survival skills and wilderness tips.

What is self-sufficient look like? There's again the desert with tattooed eyeballs and his tongue split into. Though he has a lisp, you listen as he works on the frame of his house and tells you all the ways in which the world is burning. Corruption A leads to corruption B leads to C, which has no accountability. He mentions seeing all the semi-trocks, and any mentions that dump trucks that carry a clinking sound.

Like glass, with glasses and empty, it's full of acid. I'm telling you, the guy parts by telling you the system is designed to keep your attention divided. To cut you so thin that you're stunned into an action. Don't get discouraged, he says. What do we do?

Do we eat the locus? Who's to say this wasn't all one big social experiment?

“That's what they say about the internet.”

It is and remains to be the biggest. What's the almighty search engine saying now? You and 14 of your friends visited the front page of this grocery store change website to see all the items that are listed as out of stock with their images great out. That the questions will rocks do, has gone up in popularity. That's an infamous myth, right?

That during a famine, the quail hunger people used to fill their guts with stones to take up space is to be full. But let's not forget the hot singles in your area, even in the state of Master S, sex will be pushed. It might go back being the most lucrative profession. You can imagine a world in which people stage hookups only as an excuse to be fed, or as an easy access point to rob what's in a fridge. Once, Eons ago, radio show hosts were laughing at this woman who invited a stranger over and had her computer stolen while she was in the bathroom.

Now it's that, but with milk and eggs. The vapor from all your food boiling makes your hair frizzy, your skin ball me. You got the pomegranate recipe from him. Guy with the tattooed eyes. Twenty-seven days before.

And it's all gone to hell. When alcohol replaces water, planes fall out of the sky. Entire grids go down for a few hours each night for weeks. Then the world just shuts off without warning. You've heard more than seen.

The last new broadcast you watched was about how to keep the kids safe. Turns out it should have been every man from south. The children abandoned their parents, and no one cared.

The world had unanimously become anti-natalist, once it was all in our heads that kids are just another most of feed. In response, they ran into the wild.

“Probably built villages for themselves, are thriving in a world in which they're about to inherit.”

You can't blame them for knowing better than to stick around. The cities become a husk. You've been able to move freely now for several days.

At first, the mobility was terrifying.

The death around you haunting. Every noise was designed with the intention of hurting you. Thought like you were in one Django on this house that was still settling. In a way, you were rescued. Found leftover people sensible enough to understand your new roles, scavengers.

You don't interfere with one another, but you understand strength and numbers. You see them out, make eye contact where your mind's eyes stays on the knife in your back pocket. You're mindful of where you're headed to look in the areas they seem to favor. Two days ago, you found a pot of citrus plant on the balcony even abandoned Italian restaurant. You're doing good, that was a good day.

Day one, you don't mind this new normal, though you're in rags.

“Though you have to bathe like a bird and your neck is now permanently tight from stress.”

You've found whims you again. You're at the tipi top of the Emporium, dropping your new golf balls

at heights like the killer person if they were down below. When they hit the ground, they've cracked like a handful of poppers. A few of you do whack with your frying pan. There's a satisfying whiz to it. It hurts your ear drums, rattles your teeth.

Makes it feel like the whole world around you is aluminum, and you can take your non-stick skillet to anything. You make a point to smell every ball before you send it far away from you. Smells like plastic. Makes you hungry. Every smell makes you hungry now.

Even shameful ones out of repulse the old you.

Now you look at smears of roadkill and bank.

If I had to, before you know what you're doing, you open your mouths. Second hand. Oh whatever. Do you know what golf balls are made of? They've condensed rubber cores inside of your hand casing.

“So, how is your teeth cut into one like a hot knife through butter?”

Isn't that a fun revelation? How long have you been able to make a meal out of anything? The next time a small aircraft lands within a reasonable walking distance you're there. In the guts of the shredded cockpit. Chewing on exposed wires.

As easily as anything. It's a wax-stage prop against a 2,000-pound bike pressure. What's it tastes like? And next. On what should be the final dive of a dream honeymoon?

Anulua couple explores a mysterious deep sea ship wreck and discovers something ancient lurking on the ocean floor. From writer Pickle's Pickle's one-two-five inherited by Daniel Hewitt. Creepy presents. The bends.

Calm down. Slow your breathing. You need to slow down and think. My panic subsided. And the sound of my heart pounding in my ears dissipated as my body focused. My ragged breathing became calm and measured.

The gentle lull of the water's currents flowed past as the muffled silence of the sea closed in around me. My air tank red just under 10% left. Damn. I've been sucking air like I was running a marathon. My left hand gripped the anchor line, leading back to the inflatable dinghy waiting on the surface.

Down below. The prow of the ancient ship wreck stared up at me, partially obscured in the shadows at the bottom of the sea. Fifty feet to the surface. Fifty feet to escape. I checked my watch.

Forty more seconds until the decompression break is over. Forty seconds until I can resume my slow ascent. I tried to ignore the shadow bobbing on the surface next to the dinghy.

Mark isn't moving anymore.

He stopped a few minutes ago.

“I catch a sob in my throat, and my eyes sting in my goggles as tears threaten to break free.”

Stab roast directions repeated in my head. I can almost see him standing in front of Mark and I at the resort villa. Sounds of splashing and laughter drifted in from the pool, as we were briefed on today's dive. Now listen up. The bends are no joke.

Under no circumstances do you ascend at any rate faster than 30 feet per minute. On this dive you especially need to be careful. With how long we'll be down there, we'll need to take decompression breaks. Our bodies need time to adjust, and off-gas the extra nitrogen. I can feel Mark's hand around my waist tighten.

His eyes are light with anticipation. My heart skips a beat.

I'll never see those eyes again.

“This was supposed to be the start of our life together.”

The start of our great adventure. Our honeymoon. Scuba diving in Greece with our own personal guide was a dream for us. Years of pinched pennies, over time, and the generosity of family helped us make this dream come true. After a backyard wedding, we packed our bags and hit the airport, excited for the adventure awaiting us.

Eight days and four dives later. We were one away from our advanced diving certification. This morning was our fifth and final dive. The grand finale as Stavros dubbed it.

An unexplored shipwreck, 110 feet down.

When Stavros told us his plan over dinner, we both agreed immediately. An unexplored shipwreck was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That night, as the warmth from the wine and food lulled us to sleep,

“Unknown treasures came to me in my dreams.”

We set off on a beautiful summer day. When we arrived at the location, our eyes scanned the water looking for a sign. After a few minutes, Mark spotted a darker blue outline against the blue of the bottom of the ocean. The excitement was palpable as we geared up, checked and double checked each other's equipment. One by one, we sat on the edge of the inflated dinghy and launched ourselves backwards into the water.

We all let air out of our BCD slowly, as we started to descend, our diving weights, controlling our slow fall into the sea below. Thirty feet to the surface. I looked down at my gauge. Seven percent left in the tank.

I continued upwards at an agonizing pace. As I swam closer, details of Mark came into view. His mouth and eyes left open, trickled blood into the water, enveloping him in a pink case. His wrist, tangled in the rope, jerks his body as another wave bobs the dinghy up and down. Who he feel as the compressed air tore holes in his lungs.

And as bubbles of nitrogen were introduced into his bloodstream. Did the panic mask the pain until it was too late? The wreck came into view as we sank closer. It wasn't a modern ship wreck, but much older. It was an ancient Greek warship wrecked on the sea floor.

Rows of holes, pucked the sides where dozens of ores would have once been sticking out, propelling the ship. A forest of coral, covered the hull and bright pinks, oranges, blues and yellows. Small shapes danced in and around the reef. A school of small fish flooded by. Their scales were a pearlescent gradient of blues and pinks that sparkled in the low light.

They danced around us before darting into the ship's roars deck. A large green octopus with yellow rings observed us before sliding into a crack it had made its home. After taking in the rare beauty of the wreck, we began to explore. Whatever sunk the ship left a giant jagged hole near the stern. A snaggle tooth moths shattered mossy wooden planks laid open, and we eagerly swam toward it.

Thoughts of future discoveries clouded our judgment. We didn't notice the slow current that helped us along, slowly guiding us toward the opening. We didn't notice that the water in the cabin was bitterly cold and stagnant. Outside was teeming with life and movement, but inside the small cabin, we were completely alone.

Covered in broken planks and shattered ceramic, it stood four feet tall in two feet wide.

“We could barely see the sparkle of intricate gold carvings on its surface.”

Stavros, Mark and I, that to work moving aside planks in a hurry to lay eyes on the discovery. A low groan from below roused me from the memory and reverberated through the sea. The temperature dropped as the sunlight dimmed. I spared a glance down at the wreck, and regretted it almost immediately. Clouds of inky black below doubt of the hull.

A pure darkness raced along the sea floor obscuring the wreck, the sand, and the rocks surrounding it.

The darkness was too deep, as if a trench opened up under me, going down miles and miles,

or nothing could live in the bitter cold and crushing pressures. As I stared, twinkling lights blinked into life from the abyss.

“I turned, kicking my legs faster, ascending toward the dinghy.”

Stavros wasn't enough for this thing. It was coming for me. After a laborious few minutes, we cleared the pedestal from the debris. It was a sight to behold. A black on-ex pedestal that depicted pictures of a battle thousands of years in the past. The glistening carved lines in laid with gold, stood in contrast to the midnight rock of the pedestal.

Carvings of warships charged down massive waves, ramming into their enemy.

Above the scene, in the inky black night, a large golden eye surveyed the battlefield. Mark gestured to the top of the pedestal, and we saw a half spherical depressions dead empty. We began searching the ground, brushing aside shattered ornate ceramics, and decayed wooden planks. Searching for a lost artifact knocked loose from its pedestal millennia, though.

“I let out a cry, and a burst of bubbles from my regulator, as my hand brushed by something hard.”

Lying on the ocean floor was a sphere. The artifact was the size of a grapefruit. It shone in the beam of my flashlight, a brilliant gold. Mark and Stavros made their way to see my discovery as I reached down to pick up the artifact. The artifact was warm to the touch, a feeling of overwhelming comfort wrapped around my hands as the sphere shone like polished gold in my flashlight's beam. Mark put his hand on my shoulder and leaned in to take a closer look.

The light of his flashlight glinted off the edges of swirling patterns engraved into the surface. As the light danced across it, the swirls almost seem to be moving. The three of us stared at the fortune in my hands, the warmth spread out my arms, and into my chest. As the current gently nudged me in towards the pedestal. As if in a dream, I floated to the top and placed the warm golden sphere into its place on the top of the pedestal.

We all floated. Transfixed, as the sphere began to rotate slowly in the depression of the pedestal. The engravings swirled up and down like the waves of a great ocean, as a low-thrumming filled the room. Faster and faster the waves crashed on the side of the ball until it was a blur of spinning gold. Mark grabbed me by my shoulder and began pulling me toward the exit.

Stabrow stood transfixed, and I just watched as the sphere stopped moving. A sickly crack of yellow light worked its way across the artifact. It hissed and screeched as the crack grew larger and larger. Like golden eyelids, the crack opened, revealing a massive yellow eye, with a jet black pupil that filled the room with a sickly light. It stared at us, moving from one to the other,

Pournia contracting and relaxing as it took in its surroundings. The eye shot up on a torrent of tarry black liquid that spewed from the top of the pedestal. It poured over the sides and spread along the floor. What once was the sea floor of the cabin, became a vast nothingness, stretching miles below the floor of the sea.

My transfiction was replaced by fear as I launched myself towards the mouth of the cabin. The blackness covered the sandy floor, and when it reached the walls of the ship, began climbing. Mark led the way, with Stabrow's behind, as we swam with all our might out of that wrecked ship. A low-grown emanated from the nothingness. The sound coming from the depths of the cabin sounded like a whale's death cry.

Something thin and dark had wound its way around his leg.

And began pulling him into the ship.

“His hands scrambled for purchase, but the smooth hull offered no salvation.”

He pulled his diving knife, bearing deep in the ship, anchoring himself as his legs were pulled inside the hole of the wreck. I doubled back, reaching for his hand our fingers touched before he was pulled again, by the inky black tendrils snaking their way up his leg and around his hip. His knife held, but his shoulder dislocated with a muffled pop. As his hips were dragged into the hole.

I reached out again, as another chorus of cracking bones, in cries of pain came from Stabrow's. As his body was stretched beyond its limit.

His eyes wild with fear caught mine.

His hand could no longer hold on under the tremendous pressure, and his scream echoed through the sea as he disappeared into the blackness of the wreck. I screamed as I turned around, and swam as fast as I could up and away from the wreck. Now listen up, the bends are no joke.

“Stabrow's words rang in my ears, and I looked forward in horror.”

Mark hadn't stopped to help. He was already 30 feet above me, kicking as fast as he could toward the surface. I yelled again in a rush of bubbles, but he couldn't hear. I could see the panic in his body.

Nothing I could do would stop his suicidal assent.

All I could do was watch, as Mark slowly killed himself with every panicked foot he swam towards safety. The pit in my stomach grew as I checked my instruments, and began my slow ascent. 20 feet to the surface. The ocean has grown frigid cold as the clouds continue to cover the sun. The waves tossed Mark's body, and the bone, back and forth.

Below me, the darkness has spread.

“It continued to reach up, getting ever closer toward me.”

I kicked my feet furiously ascending as fast as possible. 10 feet to the surface. I could feel the gaze as the yellow eye stared into my back. I saw it's sickly light reflecting off my instruments. I felt a swish below me as something grazed my flipper.

I have no time to look back. 5 feet to the surface. Something tangled itself around my left flipper and pulled down hard. I kicked back and the flipper was yanked free. I crystallized in my mask, and my joint screamed out in pain as my body reacted to my fast ascent.

Mark's body and the dinghy were almost within reach. Then I was faced a face with Mark. His eyes, grey and lifeless, stared deep into mine. The same eyes that teared up on our wedding day as I walked down the aisle. The eyes, I was going to grow old with.

I'm sorry. I climbed, and overhand, using Mark's scuba equipment as handholds. The wind whipped sea spray into my face as my body tumbled onto the inflatable dinghy. I was in the middle of a storm. The boat was rocked by waves as I stumbled to the outboard engine.

Through sea spray and rocking waves, I pulled the starter cord. I thanks Davos for taking care of his equipment as the engine spotted to life. I pulled the throttle hard. The boat accelerated forward before it whipped around, anchored by the line tethered to the front of the ship. I was thrown to the floor of the dinghy, and scrambled my way to the bow where the anchor line was tied.

I reached for my diving knife at my hip, and began hacking at the cord, as something pulled from below. Black tendril sneaked their way up Mark's body, pulling him deeper. As he was dragged down, the front of the boat dipped below the waves, taking on water. His hand wound around the anchor cord, pulled us below the waves. I took a breath as the icy water engulfed the dinghy, as the front was submerged.

Yellow golden light poured from the great eye as we came face to face. An abyss of starry night surrounded us, as its tendrils pulled Mark and the dinghy. Stars and galaxies twinkled in the infinite ocean of space.

It was the finite and the infinite, bloating in a deep black space.

“With another hack, the cord snapped. Mark disappeared under the waves as the dinghy rocketed toward the surface.”

The sputtering of the motor motivated my screaming joints as I threw myself at the tiller. I caught it in my hand and twisted heart on the throttle. The dinghy shot forward, speeding up to the nearest swell and cresting it with ease. I spread backwards toward the island. The wind whipped my hair. Tears stung my face as I let out a muffled sob.

Clouds above grew more and more sparse. The sun began to peek through in the waves settled. I left the storm behind as I skipped across the water. I came to, in a hospital, bed a week later. My mother held my hand as my eyes flitted open.

“For the next few days I underwent tests, and took questions from the police.”

I told as much as I could, and they let me go. I feel empty, drifting through days through work, friends, and life. I am a shadow of my former self. I lay in bed tossing and turning anxious for sleep.

When I finally drift off, the great eye calls to me from another place.

It thanks me with warm, comforting dreams. I long for the peace it promises me, a future. Holding hands with Mark as we drift from star to star, exploring a new galaxy all our own. A future without pain or worry. In my dreams, I feel whole.

“Deep below the waves, in the embrace of its infinite gaze.”

And finally, a cynical reseller discovers a bizarre anti-candle lefted as apartment door, and becomes increasingly obsessed with lighting it, despite the warning that grows harder and harder to ignore. From writer Michael King and narrated by Colbert Kart, creepy presence, do not light this candle. Josh looked at the hideous thing on the door mat, then down the hall in both directions. He resisted the urge to grab kitchen gloves before stupid to pick it up.

It was heavier than it looked. A trace of the spicy clone his old upstairs neighbor had worn, tainted the air. He remembered the thin fluff on the man's upper lip. But what the heck was his name? Josh had no idea why, but that guy had hated him.

That stepped in shit look on his long pale face hadn't always been there,

but it hadn't taken long to appear either. Josh told the door shut. He wondered if someone had figured out what he did for a living. This thing just had to be worth something. Josh wanted to light the candle.

It was a strange compulsion even for him, but the pressure had been building steadily ever since the doorbell chimed a few hours ago. The question of who had left it still naded him, but nowhere near as forcefully as the urge to light the goddamn thing. Here and there, the thick black candle had bits of some milky substance in it.

The three demons surrounding it stood no taller than eight inches. Bulbs of wax concealed what Josh imagined were linked, claw-tipped fingers connecting the demons to the candle. The detail on the faces and legs and feet and sharply talented toes was astounding. He had the suspicion that removing a few layers of dust

might reveal that creepy little burgers were separate pieces altogether, not simply part of the single mold.

It looked old, real old,

“but the top of the candle was smooth and flat,”

and the wig, yellowed and unraveling, had never been lit,

not a hint of char-crusted its fibers, beads of wax clung near the tiny feet, and the whole thing seemed to slant towards what Josh now realized was the smallest of the nasty boaters. He figured it must have been stored near a fireplace

or in someone's basement a bit too close to the furnace. Ring around the rosy. Josh sang under his breath. He set the candle in a square of soft leather on the desk, crammed in between the wall and one arm of the couch,

then opened his laptop. He swiveled his ergonomic office chair, grabbed the remote to off the coffee table just behind him, and shut off the television. He opened the browser,

typed three demons around a candle,

and danced at the handful of unhelpful results. Concentrating wasn't easy. He wanted to light it. He hefted the candle, thinking again that it was heavier than it looked.

He turned it over and read the words someone had penned on a scrap of parchment affixed to the base. Do not light this candle. He knew himself well enough to realize that those words were a big part of why he wanted to do

it exactly that. Josh had long ago tired of people telling him what to do. It wasn't his fault people were assholes that they wouldn't give him enough time to learn a job and do it right.

“That's why he liked driving the bus part time for the schools.”

He got him health insurance and other than his boss and the kids.

He hardly interacted with anyone. But if he hadn't figured out he was good at selling a repurposed junk online, he wouldn't have his small apartment or the car in the lot,

or the money for a two liter bottle of mountain dew or the family sized bag of taco flavored monster chips, which these days was pretty much dinner, plus or minus a delivered pizza. Do not light this candle.

The stream's glare became too much. He closed the laptop with a snap he regretted. Laptops were not cheap. He rubbed his eyes and stared at the wall, a twitch at the edge of his vision

dragged his attention back to the candle. Had he just seen one of their eyelids closing? The color beneath it hadn't been black,

“but a red, so deep and plotted and murky”

as to appear so. No, he'd seen no such thing because that would be scary. Josh got up slammed his shins on the coffee table and wind milled his arms to keep from going down.

He stand at the room and sniff to the air. He'd better clean up. At least collect the pizza boxes and walk them out to the dumpster. And after that, he'd like the candle.

He shook his head. He didn't yet know what the candle would bring, but part of its charm was that it hadn't been used. Someone would buy it, warp to end all. He'd probably sell it as it is,

not that he would. He would find a buyer and ship it out in pristine condition. Maybe I should keep it. Stepping over the coffee table, he faced away from the candle and forced himself to snatch the remote

and turn on the flat screen. He threw the remote on the couch. A squawk of noise burst from the speakers and the TV snapped off again. Maybe the remote landed on a button.

Leave it, just leave it. He reached out to close the bathroom door. It was either that or reach in and turn the lights on. The darkness in there had become too eerie.

He stepped off the carpet and opened the fridge. Then he remembered what he was doing. He shut the fridge and grabbed a trash bag from the box to top it. Refusing to acknowledge the candle, he studied the room.

Josh filled one bag and grabbed another. He bent at the waist to snatch a green twist high from the floor and lost his balance when his traitorous eyes locked in on the candle. The lighter he tapped in the junk drawer flashed through his mind.

He would clean it up and get it out of here.

If it didn't sell right away, October was right around the corner. It just needed a good dusting.

“A couple of brushes, a paint, a can of forest air”

and a bit of patience. Josh didn't understand why he was so focused on the candle. It was not unlike him to get stuck on an idea and carry it with him for days. But this was different.

It was as if the thing were calling him, tugging him towards it. No. He stopped and pulled inward, meeting a break from his surroundings.

In his mind, the candle dripped. Little feet dislodged from the base. Shadows shifted on the wall. Oh shit. The idea that such a thing existed

may Josh feel both small at the top of a roller coaster and too big for his spin. If inanimate objects could animate, if things really weren't as they seemed, what other secrets might the world be hiding?

Maybe the floor would one day open under his last step and then close, leaving behind an empty space

as if Josh had never existed

“and he'd fall, fall and keep falling into the dark.”

A world like that would be horrible. He needed to light the candle. He had to prove it was only that. An ugly candle. Josh heaved less from exertion of cleaning

and more from the spike of anxiety. He wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. His face was hot and itchy. He clashed his hands, squeezed and sucked in air. Do not light this candle.

The foreman from his last factory job but popped into Josh's head. The guy only let him sweep and mop, take out the trash and man the recycler. He never let him make anything,

not the bubble wrap or the hardboard boxes

or the packing peanuts. Stick to what your good ad, Jamen, and don't you dare light this candle. Josh lost it. He closed his eyes in the living room

“and opened them and crouched over the junk drawer”

in the kitchen. He rummaged through the drawer than jerked it free from the cabinet. The contents spilled across the floor. He tossed the drawer on the stove top

and fell to his knees, spreading the mess with both hands where the fuck was the lighter. He stood, closed his eyes, opened them, stared down.

Tatchs, spools of colored thread, a meat thermometer, a shoe string, a clay batteries, a magnifying glass, a remote for a television he no longer owned. He slammed his palm on the countertop.

The lighter was under a pair of scissors. He lit the candle. The whip caught with a crackle and a flash and the smell of the wooden matches his father used to use to light the candles

on his birthday cake. Josh's eyes shut tight. A red squittle shone behind his eyelids when he opened his eyes. He screamed.

Something like a large thumbprint clouded his vision and his eyes hurt. He pressed his palms against them. Like a child, Josh sobbed from the pain.

Snot hung heavily from his nostrils. He leaned forward to keep it from touching his shirt. At thud to hit the carpet beside him, he gasped and stood bolt upright.

His body locked in place. He couldn't make himself move. Slowly, a breath whiskled out his clawed nostrils. A sound, like a snake slithering through dead leaves, sharpened into a tippy tippy tapping.

The carpet had gone unchanged for years. He'd only bothered moving his furniture if the landlord insisted on replacing it. A blur of motion flittered to his right. A bolt of pain shot up from his leg to the base of his skull.

He stepped on something. There was a small, clean, crack, like a snapped wishbone. Whatever was beneath his foot, dropped it down a notch. It felt as if a mouse were trying to scrabble out from underneath him.

A sharp, black, tweed-looking object. Lay on the floor beside his loose fitting

It wasn't a tweed.

Blood seaped into the cotton,

where the black claws gripped his foot. The creature peered up at him. It's eyes flared red,

“than dimmed to the smoldering murky orbs he'd seen earlier.”

The tiny arms shook with effort. It severed foot. Lay beside it on the carpet. Josh staggered back, but the creature held fast.

The pain of flaring in his foot. A flicker of movement to his left. Too fast to see. A series of standing sensations like drips of acid worked its way up his spine.

A black face full of shard-like teeth. Snapt into view beside his eye. It's eyes flared, than the teeth closed on Josh's cheekbone. He yanked at the bony, swirming mass, but it wouldn't budge.

As he struttled, another shape scrambled up his leg, stittered across his chest, and latched onto his throat. There was a wet pop.

The pressure relented. A black streak darted under the couch. Josh let go of the thing on his face

“and clutched at his throat, trying to keep it in.”

He needed it. The world tilted. His cheek rested against the stiff carpet. Warm with blood he couldn't hold. When his vision cleared, the demons had their backs to him.

They looked like dolls, like action figures, like the collectibles he tept in boxes all over his bedroom. They stood in a row, seeming to study the front door.

Josh watched their jagged backs, waiting for the floor to fall away. His vision narrowed to a point. The demons waited for days. They slaughtered the landlord

and the first responders.

Then scattered into the apartment complex, trouble-making, taunting, killing, reveling in the messes they made. Then, as if responding to an alarm, they reconvened around the candle.

Their red eyes fixed on the wax until it softened.

“And one by one, they dipped their claws into it.”

Their eyes flared once more than blinked out. The candle duttered with a puff of dark smoke. Butty Wellington found the god-awful thing in the alley behind his restaurant. His staff didn't clean up their cigarette butts back there,

not consistently anyway, so he did it himself. He hunted down, pretty damn limber for a man's age. And I'd the candle.

One of the ugly little bastards was missing a foot. He checked the alley, opened his spot, whoever had left it. Someone dressed in black, covered in geometric tattoos.

The missing foot, nodged at him. Somehow, it reminded him of a kid he'd known back at the factory. God, he'd been an asshole then. He still felt bad about it.

He bullied the kid. He had. The men in the Wellington family tombed rapidly as they aged. Butty, hefted the eyes sore and turned it over.

A piece of parchment cloned to its base. He's squinted to make out the scroll. Do not light this candle. We'll see about that. Butty hated it when people told him what to do.

What the hell did they know? He could still hear him. Why try you old fool?

You'll never own a restaurant.

With three quit breaths, he blew the dust off the little monster's heads. He left the broom, leaning it on to the brick wall, and carried the vile thing inside to show his took.

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