S24 Ep5: NoSleep Podcast S24E05

Water. It gives us life. We are drawn to it.

Yet it holds immense power over us.

It can bring unspeakable horror to the most familiar places. Your morning shower, a tranquil river bank, or the endless ocean. [MUSIC] It's time to dive deep into the abyss.

[MUSIC] From the dark waters of the Cape Fear River, Immers yourself in horror as you embrace yourself for the no sleep podcast. [MUSIC]

[MUSIC]

Welcome to the no sleep podcast.

I'm your host, David Cummings. With March now upon us, we start to welcome nicer, warmer weather coming our way. And speaking of nice weather, it's exciting to see how many of you have signed up for the Crime Wave at C2.0 Cruise next year.

In fact, we've added even more cabins to meet the growing demand. And it's not too late to sign up.

“All you have to do is go to [email protected]/no sleep”

to get your code for the $100 discount and access to a special meet and greet with the no sleep crew. It's important you use this code because it shows that our fans are part of the cruise. Links are in the show notes for more info, and to sign up. We hope to see even more of you on board for the Crime Wave at C Cruise next February.

Now, since we're speaking about March weather, have you ever heard the saying in like a lion out like a lamb when it comes to the weather in March? If March starts out all stormy and blustery, we'll say the month will end with calmer, warmer weather, like an innocent little lamb. It's nice to think about things that are sweet and innocent.

Things that surely won't harm us or cause nightmares.

“But what if you encounter things that you assume are safe and innocent?”

Only to discover that they're the exact opposite. Well, on the show this week, we have tales that present you with just that. Things that should be harmless that are the exact opposite. It's almost like you can't trust anything or anyone these days, right? Well, don't worry, you can trust us.

We make no pretence about being a calm, relaxing show. So yeah, brace yourself, won't you? Because it's time to plunge into the horror of our sleepless tales.

In our first tale, we meet a man who seems rather distant.

Well, actually, people have learned to keep him at a distance. You see, in this tale, shared with us by author Andrew Kozma, we learn that the man has come to town with a bizarre ability, the ability to kill anything that gets too close to him. Performing this tale, our coilakers and Danielle McCray.

“So let's uncover the secret about this strange man,”

and why they said of him as he walked the land died. As he walked, the land died. The land died as he walked. City officials had to use a bull horn to talk to him, special glasses too. One scientist referenced a clipses and the atomic tests.

The need to protect the eyes. But instead of going blind or suffering the slow decay of radiation sickness, those who be held him openly and too close simply died. The mayor and the chief of police were in panic, eager to keep the man from walking through the city.

The talks with him went on for days.

No reason. What do you want? Nothing, really.

What can we give you to go away?

You're one true desire. That means he has a wants. No, it means he has a need.

“My half-sister Bernie and I stood at the far end of the field where the man stood.”

Police had erected a fence around him. The safe distance marked by the bodies of those who strayed to an ear. Either from curiosity, like our cousin Gil, or because they'd been ordered to. Like Deputy Bridger. The bodies smelled, but they didn't really rob.

I guess the bacteria died. Now the fly is certainly dead. Drone by the smell. Collecting in little piles of black jewels. The bodies just lay there.

Slowly shrinking in their clothes.

Momifying under the autumn sun.

Nearly a week had passed since the man arrived. Photos had been posted in the paper. The photographer using a telephoto lens to get a close-up. The photographer went blind and then entered the hospital. The photo in the paper looked crisp upon first glance,

but then distorted and blurred until all that was visible were the man's eyes. Staring out as if he could actually see you. People canceled their newspaper subscriptions. TV stations refused to run any footage. Videos on social media flourished until sickness did too.

And the city put a moratorium on any recordings. Jailing those who refused to stop live streaming.

“The only way to know what was going on now was to be there in person.”

So burning and I came to watch for a few hours every day after work. I don't know what we expected to see. The man never moved. A few people who thought the man a prophet used a t-shirt cannon to shoot him foil wrapped hot dogs and bottles of coke.

Though the man drank and ate what was sent he didn't seem to need to.

He never used the bathroom.

He never even sat down. Originally we'd felt just as scared as the rest of the city. The man's approach was unprecedented. No other cities in the country had ever reported anything similar. And now they weren't reporting what was happening to us either.

As if there was a media blackout. There was nothing on the local nightly news. We'd expected the FBI or some other federal agency to come in. But it was as if they had a blind spot. And so we came to see him as a local disaster.

A house burning down that threatened the immediate neighborhood. Instead of a forest fire preparing to consume the entire city. He's going to move tonight. No. Not tonight. He's too relaxed. On the third day, Bernie and I had started placing bets on what the man would do.

We weren't the only ones either. Not making bets, I mean, but watching him. All around the perimeter people were scattered in small groups. Some had picnics brought their entire families. Maybe it was fatalism.

“But what else are you supposed to do with death standing on your doorstep?”

Now, six days into it. We had a bottle of cheap scotch burning taken from her dad's house. We brought shot classes too. So we wouldn't be tempted to drink from the bottle and get so fucked up. We wouldn't make it to work tomorrow.

Maybe she'd be okay missing a breeze to shift. But Walmart would can me. I was already on thin ice. Seems strange worrying about this while lying a man who could kill us just by strolling a few dozen steps forward.

But as our mom used to say, you just have to keep living until you die. We sipped our scotch. It tasted like burnt plastic, but felt good once it was down. This can't go on forever, can it? Can't it?

And maybe it could have gone forever, just like that. The man becoming a fixture on the edge of a city. A tourist attraction even like Niagara Falls, or the volcanoes in Hawaii, a danger that you get used to. That hurts no one except the foolish and the stupid.

But the mayor and other city officials couldn't let that happen. Scientists couldn't guarantee the safety of any level of exposure. theorizing that everyone in the city could be a risk no matter the distance. And we wouldn't know for sure until years or even decades had passed. The man's poison building up in us like silk choking a river.

It didn't go on forever. Not because the man decided to walk again. Not because the city somehow gave him what he wanted. But because a man with a gun decided he had the answer to our problem. And it was his right to use it.

Why hadn't a gun been used before? The police had snipers on top of nearby buildings with an hour of the man's arrival. They could have shot him in any time. But because no one understood really what was happening or why. They decided not to shoot the man unless he advanced on a city.

And now a guy living off disability and retirement.

“He was bitter and mean and abusive but he was trying to get better.”

He said the city couldn't take the risk of shooting him because what if it just made everything worse.

I told him that it never seemed to stop cops before and after a sharp intake of breath

and some uncomfortable silence he said that yeah, it was probably right. He's learning. But I still refused to meet with him in person. Of course the man with a gun didn't know about this theory or care about it. He was just doing what was right.

There was a pop pop pop in the man in the center of the circle of death died. His head knocking back twice in quick succession. A half a dozen or so other bullets kicking up in the dirt around him. The man who killed the land when he walked, who killed everything living, who breathed, we assumed. And a drink we saw was now dead.

There was a hush as everyone watching realized what had happened. Our brains catching up with our eyes. I expected the cops to start shooting too. I started at my feet ready to run but burning grabbed my arm and pulled me back to the ground. Don't make yourself a target.

She poured another shot for each of us and we downed them.

The expected return fire never came.

“Instead that's when people started walking.”

The deputy mayor moved first. He'd turned at the gunshots. The security around him closing in like a curtain. But now he walks towards the dead man at the center of it all. His face deliberate.

When he passed the edge of the circle of death, the deputy mayor died. Following first to his knees, then flopping onto his chest. Momentum keeping him going for that one extra step. It first is security yelled out for him to stop but their voices went quite quickly. Even before the deputy mayor died, they started walking too.

What are they doing? Bernie's face was flush with fear or with alcohol. The bottle full when we arrived was already half empty.

I didn't answer her because I didn't know.

Movement from all around us distracted me. A family of four on a picnic blanket put their paper plates on the ground and headed for the circle. Two women who seem to use the crisis as an excuse to practice their guitar strolled in toward the dead man. The shooter began screaming at people to stop. This wasn't supposed to happen.

“He fired his gun at the closest to the circle but they ignored him.”

The stray warning shot took a woman in the leg knocking her to the ground. But she crawled forward, leaving a smear of blood on the trampled grass. Everyone who reached the circle of dead grass died themselves. The shooter had stopped screaming, stopped shooting. E2 was walking towards the man he'd killed.

Gun hanging limply from his hand until it caught something on the ground and was pulled free. The police snipers fell from the roofs they had been stationed on. Laying unconscious where they fell or dragging themselves along, in spite of their mangled limbs. Now was those who weren't moving that I noticed. Scattered all along the perimeter were a few like Bernie and me.

Empty cans of beer littering the grass around them. Wine bottles with their side. One older man with a fifth of whiskey and his hand ran. Just bolted away. Dropping the bottle is he stumbled and weaved.

We should go. I told Bernie. But she wasn't there. She was about 20 feet in front of me, walking towards her death. More slowly than the rest with hesitant steps.

Bernie? She paused for a moment. Barely noticeable. But didn't turn her head. I got up to run after her in the world swung wildly around me.

As I ran to Bernie, every step threatened to bring me down to Earth. My stomach feeling at one moment empty. The next full and the next is though it wanted to jump out of my mouth. I grabbed onto Bernie to hold her back but I lost my balance and toppled us both to the ground. My hand bending back painfully as I broke my fall.

Can't you feel it? I could. I could feel it. A yearning like a hunger pulling me toward the dead man. And the aura of death he brought with him.

It wasn't a desire for suicide or a wish for death. I didn't want to die. Bernie didn't either. I was sure. But I could feel a promise there out ahead of us.

And that circle. A promise for something better. Something certain. Something sure and pure. I wanted it.

I wanted to go there. Yet the Scotch hit fast. Bernie struggled to keep moving but our bodies were tangled up and I wasn't going anywhere. I looked at the circle blinking away at the blurriness. And felt sick at all the dead bodies.

More every minute. There was something off about them.

My thought hitching just before I understood.

“Until I realized they were getting closer.”

Every person walking in got a little bit closer to the dead man. The circle was shrinking. Eventually it would be gone. And we'd be safe. But the people didn't stop coming.

There hadn't been that many of us looking on and the official contingent was permanent. But small. I tore my eyes away from the man. The circle. The people dying.

The place something in my chest wanted me to crawl to. And witness dozens, then hundreds of people approaching. Old people from the nearby nursing home.

Along with their staff and scrubs.

Business casuals from the bank and few office buildings. An entire shift from the canning plants still wearing aprons. Rubber gloves and rubber boots.

“The entire population from the trailer park.”

We have to go. We have to go. I managed to sit up and get my arms around her and scoot backwards until I could reach the bottle of scotch. But it toppled to its side.

Most of it having dumped out into the grass. But there was enough left I hoped. I swaked a bit. The taste of it made me gag. And my stomach roiled and twisted.

Then I put the bottle to Bernie's lips until she finished off the rest. I fell back and she rolled beside me. Both of us facing up with the sky now bruising in the evening. The stars wobbled in the blackness as they appeared. All around us there was a silent shuffle.

I was horrified. Or I wanted to be but all the scotch and my body tried to come back up. Burning my throat.

“And I was convinced if I threw it all up my brain would clear enough that I would follow”

everyone else into the circle. And I did not want to go. Even as a tiny fragment of me screamed that I was missing out on paradise. I have been refused to believe in. How far did the dead man's influence go?

Would it draw on the entire city? What about our moms? Our dads? The friends we had? The friends we'd given up on?

Our exes? Our teachers? Our bosses? The fuck our bosses? The darkness in the sky was dragging at my brain.

Pulling me into something like sleep. Burning coffee weekly and then snore. I grabbed Bernie's hand and intertwined our fingers. Try to lock us together like orders sleeping on the open ocean. I thought of how the dead man had failed in whatever he'd planned.

The government had failed to protect us. The man with a gun had failed to save us. But maybe when we woke up this would all be over. We could pick up the pieces then, Bernie and me. Maybe our parents would still be alive.

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If you've ever worked at a pet shop, you know there's plenty of work to be done.

“It's not a place to do little, especially if you have a unique ability with the animals.”

And in this tale, shared with us by author Jennifer Lesch Fleck. We meet Francie and learn how her job in a pet store brought about a strange and dangerous set of circumstances. Performing this tale, our Christendie Maccurio, Danielle McCray, Nicole Goodnight, Sarah Thomas, Lindsay Russo, Jeff Clement, Aaron Lewis, and Graham Rowett.

So consider yourself blessed if you never encounter the young holy person known as Saint-Francie.

The agent and the ghost writers struck their deal with me fast. They want a good hot take. With sequestering, officials careful not to call it quarantine. Oh, so careful. It's still localized and contained. We've been through this before. Let's avoid public unrest. I've got time. We all do. At home, cooped up, our unaffected companion animals and urban livestock locked in beside us,

or humanely euthanized, or not so humanely taken out with a shotgun blast.

Gunshots echo across my neighborhood day and night, or still out there, right now.

Creatures set loose from understandable human fear, or a mistaken sense of pity. The pets we knew, skulk in alleyways, skitter across rooftops, flat against windows, or hurled bloody bodies against our doors like so many persistent, deranged furry battering rams, saying, "Mommy, let me in." Saying, "Papa, I'm a good boy. Let me in." I'll apply it here at Shez-Rancie, though. My parakeet PD wasn't exposed.

He's nestled down for the night in his covered cage in my basement apartment here in downtown Bakersfield. I'm francie. The so-called "Saint-Francie" of East Ridgeway Plaza, who was right there when everything spun out of control. The only person immune to the terrors that began at our local mall ten days back. The animals outside, rampaging within the Metroplex? Okay, so these backyard chickens and former pets of yours aren't exactly friendly to me. Instead, they're, I guess you'd say, attuned, sympathetic to my wishes and desires, so I'm safe, and though it's forbidden, I can go outside,

and some nights when the ghetto birds aren't making a racket overhead, training their lights on yards and streets, I do sneak out. I wander freely in the smoky summer night, encountering animals, crouching, run fingers across your snarling tabby's back as it squeezes under your fence. The briefest electricity exchanged between us like a coded note between spies. At age 28, you wouldn't think becoming ad hoc manager at the Clause and Pause Pet Center was a coup, but in a slipping down life, it's an upgrade.

Finally, I could chip away at debt, maybe even pull ahead. The shop owners? More an idea than a reality?

I got the sense they spent their time basking under a foreign sun, palm shadows falling under in the lint well-tanned limbs.

“At least, that's how our manager Billy Baskin's painted them.”

In their absence, he basically did whatever. Having recently inherited money, he did it with Swagger. What Billy B. wanted was both a steady mall store paycheck, but also his freedom. He fed me an extra cut under the table to take his hours and assumed his role. And if some of his offshore and crypto investments took, the promise was, I'd become manager. Thing about working like a dog for weeks on end is, you start to see things.

Corner of your eye, trick of the light, stuff, a shadow that detaches itself from a wall and moves funny. Minor hallucinatory business. Lack of sleep, running on host to snap cakes and fumes, trying to wrangle sense out of years of coffee-stained inventory sheets Billy B has royally Eft. Reality becomes wiggly as a gummy worm.

“That's why the strange bird didn't surprise me, not at first.”

Now, the leading theory you hear from the media is 'we' caused this. Clause and Paws, I mean, imported something funky, shipped in from one of those balmy tropical aisles patronized by our absentee owners.

No friends, this plague or scourge or contagious whatever, it came from a wild bird. I saw it happen.

“10pm, Flaws are closed, alone in the fun zone play pit, perched on a questionably shaped purple fiberglass mushroom.”

I nod, a stale-ish, grape PB&J. Nobody nearby, but a couple security goons shooting the shit on walkie-talkies, and that one stone guy going round and round on the floor polisher. So, this quick, flitting thing, slips through the busted window in the atrium.

Comes down from the night sky, goes zipped through the rafters, moving all erratic like a bat, but faster than any bat I'd ever seen.

Leaving a smudgy contraille like somebody ran their finger across a wet canvas.

“I blinked. This was no regular sparrow. There it was. On the treasure cat's slide, it's strawberry pink tongue carved with cusswords.”

Blank-paged white, that bird. Eyes glinting like pinheads. Long ink black wings and tail like a red mashed with a bird paradise. I felt austrican, intrigued, confused, but also super bad. Probably endangered like our hopeless burrowing ground owls and our hapless kit foxes. How would this wild thing find a way back out of this spooky cavernous space? Here, on the east end, built near the canyon where the current river exits the foothills. It whitewater diverted into concrete canals.

This place, this second, less popular mall, constructed on what had been relatively untouched, scrubland full of California poppies and songbirds, had always felt cursed.

“The leaning edge of expanding city sprawl, a failing proposition from day one.”

Shopping centers were dying everywhere, so we were extra herding. Sears and may company belly up. Smaller storefronts empty like gaps in a skull's grimace. A popular church, how it's next door to claws and paws, kept the whole mall half afloat. For big consecutive spaces, their clientele more tent-revivalist than suburban Episcopalian. During services, their unholy clamor thumped and thrumbed through the adjoining wall, trembling hanging leashes and collars. Strict-need and writhing serpents, filled my head while the puppy's frozen place, listening. Kittens and hamsters, too. On earthly still. Fish hanging in the tanks like they'd been hit by a stun gun.

Kittens covered the church storefront so you couldn't steal a peek at all this humming and hooha. Stressful as hell to work adjacent to, though, made the mind go besirkers. So anyhow, tonight, this zebra-colored thing that had wandered in from the wilderness had all my attention as I chewed my miserable sack lunch. And on its wings, it seemed to lift me to the rafters and threw them, zipped zaps it, my hopes and dreams trailing that damn bird like bows on a kite's tail. Up lifted, inspired, I'd get money together, go back to school, this hair-brained notion, deepened, broadened. I'd become a writer, perhaps even the next Stephen King, or Brandon Sanderson, or whatever the girl version of them was.

Now, the bird re-materialized on a bench airbrushed with lured blossoms, cocked a TED, and regarded me, just like the owl in Blade Runner, and eye leaps to action, thinking, "Let me help you." I squeezed under the shop's roll-top gate, fetched a sack of bird seed, stuffed intended for wildlife, squeezed back under, spread a pile on the rump of the mad hat or ride on the one that pinched kids on the regular with its springs. That bird, lidded to the hat or sass, peck peck pecked up some seed, gave me another cocked head look, then streaked up.

Seconds later, something hit me on my forearm, a glob of zebra-colored bird-shit searing like a chemical burn. Ah, thanks for nothing, asshole. Sniffling, I rubbed my arm clean on the astro-turf. Feeling funny, like I'd been cracked wide open, made aware of the immensity of the universe, and my miniscule spot here in the self-perceived middle. An ant, tiny enough to crawl on a crumb, a crumb, which was the entire world, a world out of balance and in trouble. The poop left a painful spot above my wrist, like someone put out a stogi on me. It's healed now, a shiny pink circle.

Next day, I was freshening up the litter lining the glass-fronted cases. These cock-a-pooves lived up to their name, the rascals.

Curled up in warm sleepy clutches. The thin stream of shoppers still regularly gathered, becoming an appreciative puddle.

“Smiling, saying, "Oh my god, look at this one! Falling in love on the spot."”

Sometimes, someone even purchased an animal. So, I worked extra hard to keep their enclosures spotless, inviting instead of gross into pressing.

My coworker Jail was on break, leaving me alone and vulnerable, so in flounced the three bees. As they always did, back in high school, bees meant blondes, now obviously it's bitches.

Mickey, Nicky, and Ashley M. Now grown up, married off, each with some nebulous, career, yoga teacher, influencer, and whatever it was, poor third wheel, Nicky did. Her mouthy roots always coming into fast. My tormentors, my adult bullies, their afleisureware, filled the shop with loud, unasked four color, I smelled the cocktails they'd guzzled at chilies. Hey, friends, hard at work, are hardly working! Mickey, fake baked and smug under the fluorescence, clocking my sweaty braids, rumpled apron, and late in poop bag.

"Oh, can I hold a pop?" Nicky, greasy and frazzled from trying to keep up at lunch.

“"Actually, never mind, don't then want to give puppy factory germs to my pure bread, Leverdoodle."”

"Phew, Leverdoodle. I rolled my eyes." "It's puppy mills, Mick, and Francia, don't forget my petition to get this shit whole shut down."

Ashley M. never bothered with fake friendliness.

"I've got the ear of the newspaper, dude, who writes opinion." "Our queen bitch growing up, Ash M." "She'd also been my best friend. Back when we were the three blondes and one red head, like a bad coverband. The blondes fluttered off to college, leaving red headed me and my poverty and 2.0 GPA behind. I took a gap year to work and save up. It became gap years."

“"Charming is ever Ash. I found that the acrylic monstrosities on her fingertips, the giant a pink, a jeweled, costly."”

"Go get that manicure refresh. You're going to show me your claws. I'd rather they were pretty." "That's red."

"Come in from somebody with a breast crack pipe burn by her wrist."

"The three bees exploded into a barnyard worth of squeals and snorts." "I slung off to wipe down the aquariums, my wound tinging." "Eventually, they lost interest. Leaving me to symbolically sweep away their filth with aggressive strokes of the pushbrough." "Listen, I knew a small pet store full of sketchily sourced, overpriced animals wasn't a great business model. But it's where I was. I kept the place nice, clean, bright, tidy." "If I could convince some sweet modern dad or granny to take home a questionably bread-shelty, then I refused to feel super bad about it."

"All living beings deserve love, even the byproducts of a greedy grey market. Helping get them into decent homes was more good than bad, right?" "The bird should burn on my arm, give a sharp pang of agreement." "Anyone who's worked the plaza is adept at reading its particular signs. We'd entered the low belly slump of Thursday afternoon." "Shoppers left to pick up school kids, make dinner, be with family and friends." "Pret from the close, chemical scent of consumerism."

"Equiparts, cosmetics counter, food court, rubber tennis shoe sole." "I call these painfully drag-y hours, the horse latitudes." "The phrase comes from the days of exploration and colonialism, ships mired in the windless subtropical calm. Their sales hanging stark and still." "To conserve food and water, cruise sometimes, jettisoned, living horses, hurling them overboard." "You can head home now, Jail."

"This meant, I'd plock her out myself when her shift ended at 10pm. My co-worker, grin gratefully." "On piter apron." "Oh, dance of sight of tomorrow. I can use the practice." "Last time I saw sweet Jail." "Whether Jail's alive or dead now, I can't say."

"My texts sit unread, lost in some cellular bermuda triangle." "Before she departed." "Jail did that, friendly, valid expin on her toe she used to do." "It started with that one punk kid." "Late teens, beetle-browd, glasses constantly slipping."

"Today he cornered me, shoving a ziplock bag filled with guppy fry in my face."

"Kame from here, their mom's did."

“"Fact is, they were already knocked up when he sold 'em."”

"I've seen the bulges on their thums. You sold me slutfish." "He shook the bag, the tiny fish, like, living shards of blitter." "Only fair you buy their bastards back." "I shot a pointed glance at the clock." "Poor 22. Only for 22."

"Mix boys and girls together in your tank, and this'll happen." "We don't buy from the public. We've had this conversation before." "Something flickered at the edges of our exchange, like a mygriness crackle." "What it was, didn't register." "Huh, store credit then."

"The bag hung from his babyish fist, rocking, tish darting." "Mom says I got a scaled-down operations." "Fact is, it's getting out of hand and my bedroom stinks."

"Listen, we've got regulations. Don't you have buddies you can give these little friends to?"

"By them, or they get flushed." "Last week you had baby rats before that hamsters." "You don't want to know what I did with them." "Memels don't flush easy."

“"Punko's rubbery lips cracked a slice smile."”

"And his eyes widened." "The fuck's that." "There it was again." "That freaky wild bird." "White breast, jet wings, and tail."

"Now, inside claws and paws." "Fluttering, streaking, zipping through aisles, zapping around the register." "Not like something trapped and frantic though." "But strategic." "On a mission."

"Is that thing dropping juices?" Like a small, nimble Boeing B-17, the bird released its payload in quadrants. One for the aquarium zone, one for rodents and bunnies, one for puppy and kitten case.

Finally, birds and reptiles.

A cacophony of yallling and yapping and shrieking erupted, a smell like burning plastic filled the shop. Fumes emanating from the avian colonic splatter, stench of reality burning, holes opening up. The church next door kicked in, harp music and human voices, a catter-walling mournful and joyous and equal measure. "I don't dig this scene." "Punko shoved the guppies at me."

"You figured out. I got to go." Instinctively, I stepped back. The bag hit the floor. Contents flooding out like a rupture to a yard of bleeding. "Damn it!" I grabbed a net and set to work saving the guppies, my jeans wicking up dirty water. The wild bird perched on our African graze cage, an intelligent glint in its pinhead eyes.

Chester the parrot, began to shriek. "Man, I'm break! Man, I'm break!" Nobody knows who taught him that. He's 50 years old. Outliving his wild cousins by decades.

“Did he still dream of steamy jungles and light unencumbered?”

A freedom from bad men and their barred cages. Near the entrance. The kid shouted something unintelligible. "Farrets!" Five kids loose.

Now charging punk ol' like fuzzy animated noodles. Illegal, ferrets. Another of Billy B's side operations. Their cage hidden under the counter. Chaos.

All around me. Pandemonium. The strange bird circled. One final time. Then swooped over Punko and out.

Never to be seen again. The ferrets were inside the kid's clothes. Shrieking. Punko pummeled at his baggy quarters. His eyes wild and glasses gone.

Long, sinuous bodies twisted under the fabric. Worming up, up, up, up. Hey bud, stop, drop and roll. Punko obeyed, taking out a rotating display of collars as he went down. He squeal, twisted, grinding into the industrial tiles.

Slobbering, nose running, trousers full of chirping, humped forms. Dashing to his side, I shoved an arm up one pant leg and was immediately nailed in the chin by his Nike. Watch it, man! "I've been fighting!" "Fastards!"

Get him out! I'm trying. Unzip and get these pants off. He had the button popped but couldn't manage the zipper. One by one.

All five ferrets, squeezed free. Extruding from his waistband like furry toothpaste. I snatched a small albino female, her ruby eyes met my gaze. And she fell limp and compliant. I draped her around my neck.

The other four clamored over Punko's chest, scaling his stained tea with their claws. He rose and stumbled, screamed and cursed.

The four folk hats scrabble and snapping, hissing like furred snakes. Dogs and cats, howl and yowl. "Ah, man hoggraze!" The song next door swelled. The organ thundered.

Strict knee, I thought. Serpent.

“Three ferrets sank neatly teeth into the kid's neck.”

While the fourth, a fixed itself to his face. Flapping as he spun. It struck again like a cobra as Punko collapsed into our display of stacked fish tanks. A knife-like shard of aquarium glasses, the thing that killed him. Not those sinuous kits ripping out his main line with growls of glee.

But the ferrets couldn't have helped matters. Unthinkingly, I stroked the female at my neck.

Limp and client as a first-door.

I marvel at how much blood was inside a human. Greater mayhem ensued. Somehow, the African Grey was now out of his cage. Chester was busy, swooping from cage to cage, setting loose the rats, the mice, and those cranky, introverted Syrian hamsters.

The room was ripe with that smoky, plastic stench. The same smell I remembered from the one-time years back, I let the three bees talk me into shoplifting.

“It had been Ashley M's idea, giggling in those dressing room stalls,”

taking our lighters to plastic security tags, stuffing close-in to our curses and school backpacks were tight as well-fed ticks. I was the only one caught. The one cuffed and labeled the troubled girl. A probation officer haunted me till age 18.

No, I never snitched, of course I didn't.

You change, once you've entered the system. Even if your juvenile records are expunged, you still feel the metal encircling your wrists. Smell the greasy backseat of the squad car. You quit researching scholarships.

Throw away your creative writing journal. Skip school. Chester, man, what are you doing? I knew I should stop him. But I didn't want to stop Chester.

Out there, weighted an entire shopping center full of people with far more resources than me. Let them cage this creature with his cruelly curved beak and claws. As the church music reached a crescendo, I realized I wanted Chester to keep going. I released the ferret to scurry and join her team.

Then I lifted each furry body out of the puppy and kitten enclosures. Blessed the top of each head with a kiss. The church next door felt quiet at some point. It occupants left, unscathed, sneaking through a back door. On security footage, violet hoods obscure their faces.

Whoever they were, they knew of what was to come and worked to help bring it forth. The strange procession I led through the East Ridgeway Plaza, like the Pied Piper of Pets, went unnoticed.

For whatever reason, video surveillance never captured me.

You'll have to take my word. Reports say the claws and paws escapees swiftly dispersed, moving to attack shoppers. Food court invaded by king snakes and corn snakes, assorted deadbeats and teens at the arcade shrieked

as parakeets dove at their faces. Hot topic Goths ran screaming as a phalanx of tarantulas advanced. And the kiosk selling dead sea salt scrubs, tortoises snapped at crying patrons and vendors.

“The panty displayed Victoria's secret was a lousy with hamsters.”

Meanwhile, the PA entoned in a phlegmatic pre-recorded voice. Ladies and gentlemen, this is an important announcement. An emergency situation has occurred within the Plaza. The country asked all shoppers and staff to remain calm, leave all belongings behind,

and proceed in an orderly fashion to the nearest exit. Everyone scattered. Everyone ran, clutching blood-streaked purses and shopping bags. I saw children dragged by frantic parents, wailing like fire engines.

My feet knew where I was going before I did. Bath and body depot. The three bees' favorite spot to camp out after harassing me, sprinting body sprays and fondling soaps, making fun of everything, creating disarray and shop-worn product.

Loud, messy pains in the collective ass. Their flashy jewelry and local high status left the young workers cowed. Sure enough, I heard them at the back of the now empty store. Either completely oblivious to the bedlam or presuming themselves exempt. Finally, I led the animals in, then rolled down the security gate.

Mickey and Nikki sat with legs displayed, cackling and passing a flask.

her manicure and rings catching the light as she told some lipstick smeared story.

“Another spray-tanned inside joke that perversely made you think it was about you.”

That you, with the butt of the humor, and always had been.

If they had their way, it'd remain like this forever. People like this, they rule our world. Silently, I regarded my array of animal companions. Then with cross-arms, I watched, as they slithered and stalked and flew down the aisle, a muzzac rendition of Blink 182, what's my age again, muffling their approach.

For Nikki, dear Dolm Nikki, I sent the puppies and kittens she'd been too leery to touch. They tackled her from behind, snarling playfully. Bottles tumbled, jarred candles burst, and the other two bees scattered. Sweetly, the kiddies and pups piled onto my former friend.

Unnatural, hyper-real, a blur of squirming bodies that float as one, tails wagged as they toppled her onto her back.

What the actual?

“Concentrating their weight on Nikki's face with happy yips and mues, a puppy and kitten pile from hell.”

Just like my imagination was a remote control, and they were the receiver. My furry companions carried out my darkest, unspoken wishes. Seemed only fair and respectful that I acknowledged, the human monster I was killing. I approached, gazed, deeply into Nikki's mascara ring to eyes. Week from colorech restriction and the chain restaurant cocktails, Nikki didn't struggle long.

Her body slackened, under purring fur, and warm bodies. I whispered my goodbye, then turned my attention to my other ex friends. Our pricey albino boa constrictor, Mabel, was already entrenched around Mickey's scrawny neck. Mix eyes looked like they'd burst from her scarlet face as Mabel's buttery yellow coils tightened. Her lipstick fog gulped like a goldfish.

She looked super pissed. Her sky blue nails scratching and crying as the muscular snake doubled down.

“Finally, Mickey fell limp, sliding to the floor.”

Last but not least, Ashley M. Ash, my bestie. Halfway up the security gate, shaking the metal latticework, she hollered into a now empty plaza. "Tell me all y'all security, anyone get your asses here, stat I made it!" I tapped her shoulder. I wanted her to fully behold the feathered majesty of Chester.

As he came bearing down in the perfumed air, talents and beak open, he hit Ashley full in her chest, then retreated, ended it again, again. "Francy, France, what the fuck!" Ash M. fell, dropping into a crouch. "You're in charge here, bitch do something, call it off!"

"Not my store, just an hourly employee at Clause and Paws." "Not even manager, not really." "I shrugged." "Sorry." "Sorry."

"Sorry." "Sorry." "Sorry." "With Ash, I admit we went overboard, with Chester's talents and beak.

I mean, first, Ashley M's tongue hit the floor. Still wagging."

Then her face came away in one piece, like a Halloween mask, and now hung rakeishly by an ear. Hard to watch, but I stayed riveted until she was girbling and sobbing. Thought about keeping her around as the three bees' sole survivor of leaving a witness, even one medically and psychologically unfit to stand trial, wouldn't do.

Before I could finish these thoughts, Chester's beak was at her throat. I vacated them all to go into hiding. Meanwhile, my animal friends remain out there, creating mayhem, doing good work. Nobody really knows me, not yet, but that'll soon change. Not because of someone else's book, either, because you know what I'm thinking.

That I've sold myself short, same as ever, so I'll fire the agent and the ghost writer. This story is mine to tell. I can help remake and resettle the world with my vision. News stations, court yard steps, town centers, churchyard pavilions, village squares, Instagram lives, all the good people out there ready to receive my message,

all the douchebags will ignore it to their own peril, I say.

A reckoning is not.

There's been enough fair warning.

I open PD's cage. They'll be infected, but it's okay. With me, he's safe. Carried on my shoulder. We go out together.

Into the summer night, I stride.

“Armed with the twin blessings of freedom and undeniable support.”

For soon, they join me. All your animals. As one, we move, slithering on bellies, fluttering, marching on our various paws and claws, a cavalcade in the dusty streets. Your dogs and cats fall in line.

Your chickens mysteriously loosed from backyard coops. They're part of this growing parade, too. Your ill-capped, ill-advised crocodiles, monkeys and other illegal exotics. Also the skinny coyotes, edged out by sterile neighborhoods, the golf course kit foxes, the burrowing ground owls from the last dirt lots.

You've staked with your fluttering plastic bags. My devoted underage. My foul tempered cortisay.

“My kingdom of gathering, prowling, doom.”

The horror keeps flowing. After a word from the folks who make all this free content possible. I'd like to talk to an animal. Like the groundhog whose prognostication messed up winter for so many of us. Spring can't come soon enough.

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and making this time a year feel a little lighter. Now let's plunge back into the deep waters of horror. Back in the olden days, like when I was a kid, the fenceiest thing a doll would do is speak to you. You pull a string in the doll's back and a voice would say a phrase or two. It was quaint and decidedly low-tech.

But in this dark and disturbing tale shared with us by author Abbey Vail, a girl finds one of those old voice boxes and gets her mom to repair it. And when it speaks, there's a lesson to learn. Performing this tale, our Mary Murphy, Lindsay Russo, and Erin Lilis.

So I would never tell a woman to be ladylike. That's a job for what Grandma made.

My fingernails were more dirt than nail, but nothing new. New to me was the robin egg blue voice box I dug from earth's crusty blanket of likened and leaves. I hooked my finger through the ring of the pole string, but there was no pole. It dangled long and stuck, stained off white from being buried for God knows how long. The thing is, I didn't think God knew.

Somehow, I'd leave the box slipped through the cracks. It's knocking to the world and asked me to notice.

Special enough to listen.

“I sprinted from the woods through the backyard, the back porch, and muddied the kitchen lenolia to show mom what I uncovered this time.”

Can you fix it? Can you fix it? I bounced up and down, eager for her to work her mommy magic. She smiled. Let's see. Her callous fingers gripped along the factory glued scene. She pressed a button on the side and cracked its split. I rushed over her shoulder to see the inner workings.

Well, it looks like a tiny record player. That's because it is. Mom reached for her glasses from the stack of grandma's recipe journals.

Which, come to think of it, I'd never once seen her reference.

It was one thing to have never met mom's mom, but another thing to have never tasted what need mom's bone so strong. The yoyo was a little less complicated.

“Mom found. Recalling the last toy found in the woods needing a little attention to function properly.”

Oh, Atlas. The glasses settled on the bridge of her nose as she scrolled Google. If this is the governor, she glanced back and forth between the diagram on the screen and the guts of the object. Then this piece under here must be the oaring. It's loose.

She jiggled a thing or two. Pressed a thing or three. Then tight into the pole string on something she called the clutch. So it went back into the retracted position like it was just another day of being a complete and utter hero. She closed a kidney bean-ish shaped box with a firm snap. My heart knocked against my chest as I reached for the loop in the string and pulled. Winding nylon awakened the voice. I listened.

My eyes met mom's and she tilted her head. I pulled again, relishing the perfect tension. The voice was an older woman's. Sweet, yet stern. What's that supposed to mean? Mom stared straight ahead for a moment. Her eyes glist over like glass donuts. You know, lady like...

She drew her attention back to me. It's what someone might say if you were sitting crisscross applesauce and address. You don't want anyone seeing your undies. She paused. Her gaze threatening to lead her to another faraway place. Then snapped out of it and poked my side.

Or if you farted at the dinner table. We both erupted and laughed her at the thought. I pulled the string again.

“Mother, may I go home with her and teach her how to play while sitting shoulders back?”

This time, I tilted my head. And as a long one, kind of weird too. Must be from an old etiquette doll. Mom's chair scraped against the floor as she moved. Her lips formed a straight line and she grabbed a hand towel, draping it over grandma's books, covering them completely.

She ripped a sheet of paper towel from a roll and bent down to wipe my muddy trail. Speaking of sub-the-table scene, okay? I snatched the voice box from the counter and rubbed my thumb against it. As if I'd be granted any phrase I wish to for only I got about it hard enough. If that were the keys, I'd have it tell me both stories.

One sentence per pull until I was satisfied with an ending. Or I'd have it tell mom to set the table herself. Grissey? Gris Zelda? Yeah, I will in a bit. I jerked only halfway from the arms of imagination and drifted upstairs.

As I entered my room, I froze. Net with a doll sitting on the bed, legs crossed. I didn't own this doll.

I'd never seen it a day in my life. Gusbump stalked my arms.

A lace collar constricted her neck. Her braided perfectly neat without a single strand escaping the synthetic ropes. Pink blush powder to her plump cheeks. I held out the voice box in my palm.

Dolls didn't appear out of thin air.

“Then again, things did slip through the cracks.”

Gently, I gripped the doll's waist to turn her over and there it was. An empty space in her back where her little record player belonged. It fit like a cloth. The hook and loop fasteners lining up nice and flat around the string left to stick out. I sat her up and pulled. Yes, ma'am.

And pulled. Yes, ma'am. And pulled. Grissey over head, yes ma'am. My breath caught in my throat.

How did she know my name? Her eyelashes bluddered as I tilted her up and down.

Her legs were sewn together under the dress.

So I grabbed crap scissors from my desk and snip the stitch to free them. If she knew my name, I needed to know her still. Eddie for etiquette, I determined. Under my arms she went. Mom needed to know I didn't find the doll.

It found me. When I reached the dining room, food was already on the table. I laid Eddie by a plate of spaghetti and made a mad dash for the kitchen. Mom wasn't there. Wish meant she must have been in the bathroom,

which gave him time to set the table before she sat down. Perfect. I taught some books and buttermaps on the placements. Including a separate my new friend too. Eddie sat up.

Not how I'd left her. I gulped and looked to the archway. Hoping mom would walk through.

“Mother, may I show her the sharpest tool to reach the dirt under her nails?”

I didn't pull the string. The voice box must have been malfunctioning. Mom fixed it a little too well. I sat slowly.

Never breaking contact with the dolls and sipping these.

Dread branching my spine. My hand reached for a sharper knife. Mom left by the bread. When I wasn't allowed to touch. But I wasn't reaching for it.

It was a magnetic pole. A compulsion I couldn't explain. I tried stopping myself with my other arm, but there was no use. My fingers crawled around the knife handle with minds of their own. And desire to dig washed over me.

My cuticles cried by the bleed. But I pushed them back like bodies at a barricade. I scraped beneath my fingernails until they bled. Ground dirt replaced by raw red. I was clean and ready to eat.

I worried blood drops in the tablecloth when it come out in the wash. But mom could fix anything. Where was she? I scooped saucy worms into my mouth. Warm noodles scraping my chin as I slurped.

The doll blinked.

“Mother, may I so her mouth shut if she dares to wouldn't open?”

Buzz from the record distorted. And lights over head blickered. She's courteous enough to dig me up. I must be sure she's nothing shy of a lady. The fork that it when I dropped it.

My body gone cold all over. No, no, no. I murmured while the idea still repulsed me. But impulse quickly overthrew disgust. The magnetic pole led me to the drawer where mom kept her sewing kit.

I threaded the needle with black. And sat straight as a board back at the table. Eddie looked pleased. My inside's wrestled. Sweat pooled under my nose.

My skin rebelling against its feet. The needle point kissed just beneath the left corner of my lips. And I pressed. I pressed until it pierced and guided the thread through my flat. I shook violently.

And the wood table shook with me. I sucked in air. Squeeze my eyes shut. And search the corners of my thoughts for any semblance of a normal one. I hunted for willpower.

Crouched within the fog of this nightmare, I found it.

It's swung by my neck like a pendulum.

I'd won. Or so I thought.

“When I opened my eyes again, Eddie lends to cross the table.”

She grabbed the needle and forced another notch through my mouth. Pushing easily is through sponge rather than muscle and cartilage. That's when tears poured and mixed with blood streaming down my chin. A salt and copper combination filling my nose. Crying was more painful because it tugged and stretched my sutured mouth.

I wanted so badly to open wide and scream, but even the smallest amount of tension made my tender wounds burn. I threw myself to the floor. Rhything. I caught Eddie's little butt slide a recorder across the floor.

Compulsion filled me again.

This time she wanted me to talk. She wanted to record my voice. I shook my head. My lips herred with pain as I fought words.

“Words were my second worst enemy right now.”

The first being Eddie. Boomed over me, poised with a wicked smile. I kicked my feet on the rug with each syllable. But I knew she wanted me to say it louder. She demanded it.

We reversed roles somewhere along the way. I'd become the doll. My movements dictated by something bigger than myself. I swallowed.

My mouth filling with saliva and spilling between threads.

Me lady like doll. I wailed. Boursing the stitching to tear through my skin and up to get the words out. Blood and spit blew. The recorder clicked off.

Eddie took the knife from the table.

“And the magnetic pole coerced me to lay flat on my stomach.”

She ran the sharp edge along my back. She was stuffing me with the voice box. My torn mouth was so excruciating my back with numb. Shock was a gift. Things went supply she white for a while.

But when I regained consciousness, I pulled myself by my four arms to find mom. I needed help. She needed to fix me. Each inch I managed to slither was an impossible beat. I left a gruesome helix.

My wrist and elbow slipped to my own blood on the kitchen panolium a few times. Finally, I found mom. She lay in the pantry with a needle and thread resting in her open palm. Twitching. Her pants strewn by cans of corn and peas.

Blood ran down her thighs. She'd sewn her leg shut. She must have been compelled by the same horse. Duty bound to punish herself for having me. For not making sure this all stopped with her.

Those weren't my thoughts. They were eddies. And I knew because her voice filled me. She told me everything. That's when it hit me.

I collapsed on my elbows and rolled on the side opposite mom. Because I couldn't bear to see her that way. Tears blurred my vision. But I stared at the covered mound of grandma's recipes on the countertop. It's no wonder we didn't replicate the things grandma made.

Eddie's voice filled me again. She told me we had to be good, obedient girls. Unless we wanted to get hurt. She told me to clean up the blood before having guests. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me not to run away like mom did. She told me to listen. From behind, Eddie pulled my string. And my voice box ramed it her conventions. She told me God didn't need to know about anything happening here.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

“She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.”

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She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

“She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.”

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

“She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.”

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom.

She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. She told me I had the chance to be a better daughter than mom. [BLANK_AUDIO]