S24 Ep8: NoSleep Podcast S24E08

Your morning shower a tranquil river bank or the endless ocean.

It's time to dive deep into the abyss.

“From the dark waters of the Cape Fear river, immerse yourself in horror as you brace yourself for the no sleep podcast.”

Welcome to the no sleep podcast. I'm your host, David Cummings.

You know, we always appreciate the great support we get from our fans. You guys are amazing to us.

And there's a way you can support us and get some cool swag at the same time. Truth be told, I so rarely mention the no sleep podcast merch we have available, so I'm doing it now.

“And the timing is perfect because we've just launched a new merch store in conjunction with void merch and designer Jordan Shivley.”

We have some classic logo designs along with some new looks available in various formats like shirts, stickers, tanks, totes and even buttons. Check the link in the show notes to see our new designs and we'll have many more designs coming soon. The world you love to stay sleepless with your no sleep podcast merchandise. We just couldn't do this without you. And speaking of not being able to do things alone on the show this week, we meet people who go through things with their partners. With our friends, lovers, family members or even strange inanimate objects, there's something about doing things with and for others that makes life more bearable.

And of course, in our world these partnerships rarely are of the warm and fuzzy kind, leaving you feeling sweet and sentimental.

“No these tales feature people whose actions will leave you feeling alone with your fears. So what say we delve into these tales together?”

Hand in hand, let's jump into the dark water and plunge into the horror of our sleepless tales.

In our first tale, we meet two buddies, a couple of school kids trying to hone their skill at sports.

What better way to do that than by tossing around the old pigskin? But in this tale, shared with us by author, John Kiet, one of the boys spots something watching them and when it chases them, there's only one place they can hide from it. Performing this tale are Jeff Clement and Matthew Bradford. So when the three hours stand for reading, writing and running for your life, you'll want to figure out how to survive after school. We've shed cotton white turtlenecks, collared shirts, neckties, its navy blue emblem polos and wrinkled chinos were in. It means summer, or that it's close by.

We're on the baseball diamond after school, the grass is high. Our team won't use this field, it's junk. We play off campus in the neighborhood. Mr. Madsen's are coach. We practice Tuesdays and Thursdays, but today's Wednesday. I'm on the team, so I know this stuff. Landon's not, so he probably doesn't. He swims and has abs. Not even a six pack, but more like an eight. No one else in seventh grade has muscles like him. I'm glad we're in our polos. It's like we're the same this way.

Mine's shorter, dirty blonde with no chlorine color. Mr. Madsen says, "For baseball, you need good hand eye."

“I think I have that. Landon? Not really. We're tossing around a football on the junk field. It's not official size, which means my hands can fit around it just fine.”

I've tried stretching my fingers over a regulation ball, and I can almost get there, but it hurts. I do better on this one. My throws are Peyton Mannings. I chuck it up to Landon. The ball's ovular, like a torpedo, and whizzes a zipline hum through the blue May. Landon flails his pale white arms, his wide hands, better fit for butterflies and breaststrokes. And completely botches the catch. Me? I'd snag it like TO. It's Landon's turn to quarterback.

He drags his arm back to do it. It's so ridiculous, a shot-foot motion that I laughed straight out.

A chuckle that plays melodically off the warm evening air. I like hearing my own laugh.

“It's five o'clock, which means our parents should be here soon, but it's a toss-up for who's will get here sooner.”

Mine both teach it in another school. He just sure would. It's an all-girl's high school. Landon's, well, I only know they're divorced. Everyone knows that. It's kind of like a mark you wear here. Landon is still in his happy Gilmore wind up when he stops. Just stops outright, like some forceful magnet grounded him. The football drops from his fingers and vanishes in the tall weeds.

I can't make out his face holy, but something's off. My first thought is that it's a seizure.

I've heard about epilepsy. Some kids have it, and we'll see that in nowhere. I haven't seen it, though. I don't know if Landon has epilepsy, and I don't know what to do if he does. They don't teach us things like that. In health we talk about sex and look at illustrations of tadpole sperm. I hope Landon isn't having a seizure. Hey, are you okay, man? My voice is not melodic anymore. It's mousy and dumb, which is about how I feel.

I know nothing about seizures. I can't save my friend, but I race to him anyway. Landon's frozen. His face is wider than normal. Dad calls Landon's face only. He says it about other people too, mostly guys, and the way the dad says it makes me think it's an insult. I haven't checked for myself.

“But the guys he says are only, I kind of like. I think they have nice faces. Landon's face is nice to me. He has blue eyes, a trait we share,”

but his are bigger and wider. Muppetish with thick lashes. He has lots of freckles, various shades of brown, thin, bright pink lips and his nose like mine is a little big, not too much though, and he's not having a seizure. I look in his eyes, the life inside them wavers like shadows over the artificial blue and swimming pools. Landon, what's wrong? You're scared of me, man? Snap out of it! I step back. I clap my hands in front of his face, how characters do on TV. It's fireworks cracking. He blinks. It brings him back.

What? What's wrong, man? There. What? There. Landon raises his hand. It goes up like a slow elevator, and points his index finger over my left shoulder. I follow it. There's something over there. And that sends chills through me. Electric icicles, that thick fear in his voice, it strokes the name of my neck. Has he ever been this scared? When we watched the sixth sense, I'm pretty sure he was, but not really, not in real life.

His finger guides my eyes to the street, over the low stone wall that perimeter's our school. To the sidewalk across the ever busy Eastwood-Bine Avenue. A white Subaru races by, late sun sparkles in the dash and then it's gone. A gold Volkswagen convertible with a black canvas top-up replaces it, zooming the opposite direction. It's hum like a well-throwed spiral. The school's speedlight doesn't flash, too late in the day. Do you see it? And yes, I do. I see something. A man. He wears dark jeans and a dark gray hoodie.

It's soft, smooth, cold. I don't like gripping it this way, tight and hurtful. I wish I didn't have to. His arm is pale on the underside and freckled on top.

“I've seen pictures of leatherback turtles swimming in blue water. I think they have freckles like landins. The veins in his forearm twitch. He wants to break for it.”

Landin. What's wrong? What he doesn't answer. Just tugs fast and gets loose. And of course he does. He's stronger and dope done adrenaline. I shout after him, but he's already hit black top. His legs pump as in the pool. Pat, pat, pat. The rubber souls on his buck Oxford's the swayed tan we all wear echo off the pavement and carry to me.

I'm furious. Impressed. I don't want to look back to the street, but I do. And I see him there. The man. Not a man. Closer.

“Just beyond the low stone wall. It's crossed woodbine. It's features are more definitive now. It's not clothes that are gray, but skin, which is scales. Grace scales head to toe, but its eyes are wide and white.”

It's long, sharp, snaggle teeth are white too. It's mouth protrudes slightly from the rest of its face. A bit like a horse's muzzle. Some anthropomorphic monster, where its fingernails should be lengthy, gray tendrils wire out. Even more snake out from around its neck.

A sick, skin-frailed collar. I pair it land in, and run. The junk field has become massive, stretching miles, not yards.

I check over my shoulder and the monsters clearing the low stone. Chasing, its gray feet are immense, human-like and shape. The veins there bulge. In lieu of toenails, there are claws. I hear its hard-boneed heels beat the ground. Wavy. Each hit, rips traceable vibrations through the earth to its core. The quakes are enough that I'm thrown from my own feet and tumble into the high grass. It brushes my cheeks, my ears, stinging the skin and is sensitive. I'm among the weeds now, ready to die beneath the heavy-heeled gray foot, which rattles, rattles, rattles. I regain my run. It's awkward, clumsy as landing, as wide receiver, but I'm up, moving, not looking back.

“I know how close it is, the monster. The ground shakes tell me, a bound on the black top. There are no cars in the parking lot, no tikes in the wood-ship playground, though I think a black rubber swing seat rocks nominally without breeze.”

I can't be sure. Everything shaking in my vision as blood wells up in my eyes, and I beat feet. Faster, faster! Hurry! Landons at the school, holding one of its hollow metal doors, the doors that gasp open, that lead us after schoolers out into sunlight to yard football and freedom. But the outside is compromised now. Come on! I do. I am. I try to disassociate to imagine rounding third base, pounding chalkline and needing to score, and needing to run. I can't waste a second craning my neck, checking the throw, checking the monster. I need to get inside.

I hustle in. Landon drags the door closed behind me. It clicks shut. Did you? But I can't finish. I'm bent over, huffing. There isn't room for words. My lungs are greedy for air, and I do my best to comply. Sucking. Weezing. The walls shake. The monster. Battery. Its efforts come like atom bombs on a fallout shelter. It's dark gray body flashes across the door's small cut window. Landon and I stumble back. We race the check the linoleum hallway that holds eerie glimmers of the overheads. Florescent spirits ripple beneath our schoolboy shoes. Red rubber shoes. I look back. Landon won't. In the window the monster lowers its gray muzzle. It might be grinning. It might always look that way with saber teeth long enough. They don't fit its face.

It whiffs its equine nostrils and fogs the glass. Its eyes are pupolis white marbles. Can it see? The lights blow. One of their frosted panels falls, smacks the tile floor.

Uselessly I cover my head as in a war movie. We duck inside the nearest room. I swing the door shut and I lock it. We're in a kindergarten classroom. There aren't any windows.

And with the lights now blown it's tough to see it in the dark. But after a minute my eyes start to adjust. It's imperfect. But I can make out the traces of things. Our parents sign us out in this room with the aftercare staff. But there are no aftercare workers here now. No parents or kids. We're alone. And have been. The floor is a bright orange carpet, and there's an avalanche of well-loved purple and navy beanbags stockpiled in the corner. Opposite those, there's a jumbly AV cart. It trophies a bulbous Sony television and a line of family-friendly VHS tapes, encased in thick, thick plastic.

Where is everyone? Early tears puddle in my eyelids. I feel their weight, their density. Come on, help me move this. Behind the long and hefty hardwood desk, the infamous three ring sign-out binder lays open on it alongside a gaggle of walkie-talkies that stand upright like toy soldiers. They teeter, but refused to fall as he tries shoving the desk. What the hell's going on?

I whispers shout. It's becoming part of a new dialect, survival.

“Land and size, abandoned's desk, and comes to me. He grabs my bicep. Our faces are close. Have they ever been this close?”

His is severe. I don't know.

There are tierlets in his eyes too.

I thought. His bright pink lips tremble. It's also how they go when he's holding a laugh down, but he's not laughing. And I might be more scared if he was. I wish we could laugh and blew me in late throne spiral sky. What? This morning, my parents were fighting about something. My dad was picking up.

I couldn't hear, really, I was in the car, but my mom was saying something to my dad and it sounded serious. I don't think she wanted me to come in today. Land and ofverts his eyes. The tierlets flatten. One brim's over in falls. It stains his fruckle cheek. I want to wipe them. Something really fucking bad is happening, man.

He spaces the words out. It's how adults talk sometimes on grave matters. He brushes the tier as a way himself. Just help me move this desk. Shit, shit, shit, come on. Staring at the locked door.

“Through it, envisioning the nightmare outside.”

Each charge, more ceiling tiles falling. It's just a matter of time. What? What if it can still get through? So stendrils? What?

And won't, that we need to block the door. Do it now! I... Before I finish, we hear glass break. It fatters. Back there. Down the hallway.

Jesus, man, help me move this desk. Land and commands the instruction through gritted teeth, exerting all his energy. His face is flush. The desk budges, then catches momentum on the carpet, which kisses under its legs.

The walkies tumble. Some slide at the floor. Land and who can't stay here? What happens when it gets in?

“It rolled. Where the hell else are we going to go?”

I sketch a mental map of the first floor.

Scan for the exit routes. It's an odd power, bolstered by years' worth of aftercare. I imagine that everyone has these places. Rooms we can mind walk uninhibited. That we know intricately.

Even the dark-copped webed corners. Most of all those corners. I know this room opens onto another classroom and beyond that is the music room. I see bathrooms there.

I see a water fountain. And across the hall. A stairwell. Where we can take one floor down to the basement. An idea which doesn't thrill me.

Like walking yourself in your own funeral casket. Or up to more hollow metal doors which lead outside. We can go out of that room and into the stairwell. How's that better? It'll just get us out there.

I stop wheeling through my mental map, indulging in the fantasy of re-knowing sunlight. And I consider that he's right. It isn't better. It would just get us out there.

You're right.

finally crash open. We do with a gun blast.

It shakes the classroom walls.

The whole school. We're huddled in the corner. We've hobbled together a makeshift fort of beanbags built it up around us.

“It won't do anything when the time comes,”

but it distances us from the nightmare, I guess. Just a bit more. The footsteps follow. The flat feet and heavy heels I already know. Running.

And then it's appounding. On our door. That's how it goes this time. The door gives marginally on each blow. The desk bracketed against it shifts a millimeter at a time, too.

It goes on like this. I'm not aware exactly how long. Seconds and minutes. Like reason and logic dissipated on Eastwood Vine. Has did reality.

Land and staring at the door. Maybe through it as I was before. I'm certain now that it was the sixth sense we watched together. His face is the same as it was then. Horror struck.

It was September.

The night after our first mixer.

I slept over at his dad's house.

“I got halfway through the movie before falling asleep.”

When I woke up later, land and was still awake. Watching. His expression like it is now. I had missed the scenes that could do that to your face. Freezed.

And your spirit, too. Ice it. Eventually, the battering stops. Land and looks at me. We hear a single, short, equine-huff.

Then the creature walking off. Flat feet. Heavy heels. Further into the school. I'll lose it.

Had a want to cry. It's a reactionary emotion I've come to hate. But occasionally as with any other body function. It just breaks through. Part of the design.

We have to emotes. It's survival-based. Crying is a signal. A warning sign with. Raising red letters spelling.

Danger. Has land and seen be cry? I'm ugly doing it. I prefer how he does. When his parents split.

It's a temperate act. Like his laughter. His swimmer arm slips behind my neck. His fingers light my shoulder. Hey.

I think he's been crying, too. In his solemn way. He drags me into a hug. I hear his muffled sobbs. Feel them in the crook of my neck.

I'm doing the same on his. We have to get out of here. We have to. And with the admission of that. Something passes through me.

It's hard to say what it is. It's dark though. Or at least a kid to darkness. An emotion of guilt and selfishness. The thought.

If we never escape.

I'll always have land and.

It fills me with sadness. Soul deep. I cast more tears into his clavicle. Two days. We've hooked the Sony up.

The television runs a microstatic tingle. And an enduring digital blue glow that travels far in this darkness. It colors part of Landon's profile as he contemplates the walkie in his hand. We've tried it, but it just buzzes.

“I think it might be afternoon outside, but that world's a thinning dream.”

Slipping slowly from my conscious mind. I think to start counting new time in here. As you do on distant planets. During the early trapped hours we raided the closet. Besides packs of tycon deroga pencils.

Layers of construction paper and a fleet of orange-capped glue sticks. It offers sustenance in the forms of chipsahoy and goldfish crackers. Not a long-standing diet. More importantly, we wrestled out the six mini water bottles. Luke warm in their half empty plastic case.

Treasures from a mermaid's purse. We've had two each. Two remain. I know we'll have to make it to the water fountain soon. Neither of us are excited by the prospect. The thuds on the classroom door had come once more.

I don't know how long ago. A while. Yesterday? But not since. Come on.

No one's picking up, man. Who's the last person you remember seeing? I take care to answer. We're playing images of 48 hours past. Ms. Ruth.

Yeah, I thought I saw a couple of second graders on the swing. But I know I saw Ms. Ruth, too.

“From the far end of the hall, there's a crash.”

That still happens intermittently. There are hushed wimpers, landings crying, and it's my turn to console. I drape an arm over his broad shoulders. He falls into my lap where I hold him.

He shakes like a thunder scared pop.

What if we never get out?

I walk him. I don't know. And it's all I can think to say, because the dark shadow that feeds my intrusive and selfish desires is growing.

Has been growing in here. I hug land in tighter,

“and it won't allow me to say anything more.”

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If you live life always feeling guilty,

always thinking you deserve to be punished for your actions, you'll be able to relate with Marlena. She feels cursed and in a way far more extreme than you might imagine. And in this tale, shared with us by author Christine Legeski, Marlena and her partner find disturbing ways to deal with air conditions

and the solution is rather hard to swallow. Performing this tale, our Mike Delgado, Lindsey Russo, Graham Rowett, Danielle McCray, and Nicole Goodnight. So Marlena tells us why her blood pressure rises when she has her heart in her throat.

Almost every day for the past decade, Marlena ate her own heart. The tissue would tear free from arteries and veins and squirm up her throat. She'd hold the lump in place, hoping this time she would choke.

It always sprouted hooks and heaved itself into her mouth.

She surrendered and ate it, sliced by bloody slice, because what waited for her was much worse.

She shut her eyes as shards of pain stabbed her chest.

“In the blackness, she saw the cavity left behind”

and the rim of light marking the abyss within. The black hole tugged at her lungs, diaphragm, intestines. Rather than consign herself to the bottomless void, she took a bite and swallowed. Then another, and another, until once again, it can gealed into a pulsing mass in her chest. It tasted like a slimy body dredged from the bottom of a green lake, like Danny, like Debbie.

Again, babe? Adley poked his head in from the bedroom. "It's so not necessary. I haven't done it for months." "I know, I know." Marlena sank to the floor and pressed a fist into her sternum.

Over the years, she had learned that eating someone else's heart staved off the horrible, discouraging for a week.

But she never liked doing it. She already had too many lives to account for.

Adley, on the other hand, enjoyed his craft.

“He was like her, a sinner with a singularly terrible punishment.”

In the past year, they'd found comfort in each other's shared experiences. Although, she wouldn't call it love. Marlena's unforgivable was a sin of omission. Adley admitted to multiple sins of co-mission, stretching back a century. Although, he didn't look a day over 40.

He was elusive on the details, but she did some research and suspected he was a con man who married multiple women at the same time. All of them disappeared. It seemed several of them were pregnant when it happened, a two-for-one. Adley was a renter nurse, moving from hospital to clinic to assisted living,

picking off the vulnerable and moving on if he had any hint that someone had become suspicious. Marlena worked in the kitchen of a nursing home, where she could do the same if she was clever enough, desperate enough. It was one of dozens of jobs she'd held across the country. Still living tomorrow?

He helped her to her feet and nodded. I clinic and know I probably won't be gone long. It's only a four-week gig, although it has potential to go much longer. Some of these areas are so desperate for help. Alaska, of course, she thought, a lot of indigenous women went missing up there

with only perfunctory investigations. She'd eaten hearts of stone before. She suspected one beat in Adley's chest. He was good to her, however, and she had learned most of what she knew from his vast experience. To be honest, he was an improvement over the man she had hooked up with in the past.

She would miss him. He wrapped his arms around her. Seriously, you look terrible. I know what you need. He kissed her neck and pulled her toward the bedroom.

They lingered after love making. You're still depressed.

“You keep inflicting this pain on yourself and you should just go with the remedy.”

I just rather not kill. Then when you can't stand it any more, you'll eat someone else's heart anyway. Has it occurred to you that all this is a test? I mean, sure, I failed so many times. But if we could withstand the temptation, maybe we might get to go someplace better.

Like the Abyss?

Patley always denied it, but he couldn't tolerate the pain of the discouragement.

He was even more terrified of the black hole on his chest. There's no instruction manual for our situation, maybe. If I found something that works for me, I don't want to screw around with it. I meant we might be allowed to die. Didn't you ever try killing yourself?

Once. When I did the first one, forgiveable. But I don't dwell in the guilt anymore. I lost count of how many times I tried. Jumping, shooting, burning.

None of it worked, I'm still here. Hadley suddenly grew very quiet, then he squeezed her close to his chest. You know, that's one thing that might do it. Someone would have to eat your heart. The pit of her stomach turned cold.

We'll see. For Temples pounded as she pulled away from him.

Even if it did kill her, finally and forever,

the thought of Hadley turning on her, frightened her. She didn't want him to have her heart anyway. He didn't deserve it.

The young man about to be released from the hospital's psych ward and transferred to a rehab facility.

“So, you'll pretend to be a zebra driver?”

Something like that. I need a heart before I travel. Don't want to barf up my guts at TSA.

Marlena scowled. She never chose the innocent,

or anyone who had a chance of recovery. When she could no longer bear it, she took people who were terminal, or those who didn't deserve to live. In fact, she had one picked out.

And orderly, she caught molesting a bed-ridden old woman. It would be meeting her that night, buying her silence, in return for $5,000. She caught the orderly, and she caught the orderly's eye in the hall that afternoon.

Time for us 11 p.m. Marlena arrived now or early in hit her car off road. She hid and listened to the wind. It always carried the voices of children. Never laughing, always weeping with the ache of broken hearts.

When the orderly reached the designated trailhead, she stole up behind him, stabbing him in the kidneys. He barely had time to register a shock before he drops to the ground. His heart was black, bathed in its own blood,

“it tasted meaty and sweet, like justice.”

She sighed, anticipating days of relief from the rotten burden of her sins. She pocketed the money, then dragged his body deep into some heavy brush for the scavengers to enjoy.

Adley was pacing, chewing on his fingers when Marlena came through the door. He got away. He leaned his forehead against a window, rocking side to side.

I can't fly tomorrow if I don't get a heart. He was such a baby, just anticipating the pain made him frantic. He's a gohunting. She watched him from the corner of her eye.

It's not like you've never done it before.

I have to clean up. I got blood in my hair. She knew what was coming. She slipped a chef's knife under her shirt. She ran the shower hot,

steaming up the bathroom. He was nude when he entered. He got into the tub, kissing and fondling her. She slid her hand outside the curtain,

“pulling the knife from the folds of a towel”

on the back of the toilet. As his hands moved to her throat, she thrust the blade under his ribs. He cracked his head on the faucet as he fell, pulling her down on top of him.

She quickly cut out his heart before he could revive. In place of cardiac muscle, was black stone, the sign of a truly evil man. She soaked it in the blood,

pulling in his abdomen, kneading it with her fingers to soften it. It was one of the most delicious things she'd ever eat. Two hearts in one night. How would last her a while?

Marlene attacked Hadley's sectioned remains in a big suitcase, cleaned the apartment, and in the gray light of dawn, left town.

She was almost too exhausted to drive. I'm so tired of this life. Ten years earlier, Marlene has been deserted her, along with four-year-old Danny

and two-year-old Debbie. He started in a fairer with someone on the town council. Marlene swore he loved her, that he would gladly leave his wife, except for one snag.

He didn't want kids. The relationship was going nowhere, but she loved him too much to send him packing. Every time he walked out the door, she wondered how different,

how much better her life might be if she had no children. Then she would panic at the very idea of losing Danny and Debbie.

Never, never, never, don't listen to me.

I don't need it. She was driving the children home one December night after a tree lighting ceremony. On a dark back road, she hit a patch of ice,

spun around and shot down a bank into the icy river. For face smashed into the steering wheel, dazed, Debbie and Danny whimpered softly in the back seat.

Marlene squeezed to the window into the black freezing water. It stabbed like a hundred knives. Yet somehow she made it to the riverbank. Wind rushed across the river,

carrying a faint plaintiff cry. It was the first time she ever felt her heart in her throat. She waited into the killing waters to save her children,

and froze. She stepped to shore. In an instant, her decision was made. The wind was saying, "Mom, the car sang and Marlene agreed."

The morning after the funeral,

“her heart tore loose for the first time.”

Marlene vomited into the kitchen sink, staring as it pulsed. It was white, a flag signaling cowardice. She saw the black hole inside herself. In agony and terror,

she could only think of one way to return the organ where it belonged. Pan-extricant, she crammed it into her mouth. Knowing, gagging, chewing, swallowing, even as the muscle spazoned,

the heart reconstituted itself in her chest.

Marty, never called, never even sent condolences.

She saw him coming out of a restaurant with his wife. The woman must have been eight months pregnant. Her face was rosy, luminous as she leaned her head on his shoulder.

“He padded her swollen belly and smiled fondly.”

Marlene stumbled into a deserted alley and regurgitated her heart for the second time that day. He was the first and only time she had to do that. She quickly snatched it up and wolfed it down before a hungry rat could pounce on it.

She haunted Marty's steps until he asked her to meet at a hotel far from town. She waited on the side of the road instead where he would see her in his headlights. As he pulled over, she turned and fled.

He chased her down a wooded gully where Marlene established. Overwhelmed with hunger, she consumed his black heart. She left him on the tracks to be dismembered by the next speeding train.

“Marlene replayed the crimes, first and last”

that brought her to this latest escape to a new town in a new state.

She wondered, not for the first time,

if she should have just let that rat eat her heart. She took a job at a soup kitchen. It was there that an idea for a final exit came to her. If it didn't work, it would be nothing she hadn't earned. One morning, she broke in and waited for the final discordment.

The organ had flushed pink, a sign she hoped that her gift was acceptable. And trembling, she diced to the heart into bits. Then added it to a stockpot of soup and the refrigerator. As the void opened in her chest,

she lurched into the alley. A wind alive with the cries of children swirled trash around her legs.

Marlene has intestines with the first to disappear

into the widening interior chasm, followed by stomach, lungs, abdominal muscles, and hurt like hell, and she weapon. Faith voices, welled up from the abyss. As eyes and brain and skull caved inward,

she saw her children waiting for her. There was a bottom to this hell, after all. (music) (music) (music)

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Those gorgeous stars who people can't take their eyes off.

I assume you do, 'cause I sure don't. And those people may be pretty, but they usually need a bit of help to look that way. And in this tale, shared with us by author Hannah Mescon. We meet an LA esthetician who makes pretty people beautiful.

And her inspiration requires her to be on the cutting edge of beauty. Performing this tale, our Marie-Westbrook, Danielle McCray, Dan Zabula, Catebell and Sari, and Nicole Goodnight. So even if she's not real, there are real reasons why you won't find much beauty within Cynthia. (music)

Nothing says true love. Like giving a sloppy blow job after you've finished your skincare routine. The saliva mixes with the moisturizer. The come with your serum, and the next thing you know, you've got to watch your face and start over. It's at least $30 worth of product, completely wasted.

“That's why I always tell my clients to exhaust their libidos before they do their regimens.”

This is how I know Alex must be in love. She hasn't taken my advice, and even worse seems to not cleanse at all after the deed, which is why I'm presently vacuuming her sebum jammed pores with a P&D microdarmaly pro. Two instances when I carve the tool into the corner for nose. In ancient Greece, we speckled lead-based makeup over our blemishes.

In China, we cracked the bones in little girls' feet. All across Europe, we traded regular bowel movements and full lung capacity for a 15 inch waste. Now, I stab and squeeze and scour and scrape and suck and cinch the skin of the luckiest girls in LA.

I won't tell you my theme. There's a wait list you'll never get off anyway.

But, there are pros pleasureing the geriatrics of Beverly Crest that would trade myriad body functions for my hourly rate.

“After my last client of the day, one of the housewives?”

I've lots of excess oil for my nose and slick on a tinted plasma lip compound. I do it all, the injections and the lasers, the exfoliating acids and the slugging, but I'm not beautiful. I'm not fishing when I say that. I'm okay with it, and have the professional experience to say so objectively. Some things you just learned to live with, and my enduring plainness is one of them. I swap my scrubs for jeans and the vintage fritney tea, and head out to meet Callie for one of the great transactional and lino pastimes, via state sale.

Callie's my best friend, and like every 35-22-35 woman worth her 95 pounds of bodyweight in gold, she's an actress. Me met when I was still an employee at a corporate spa, and she was still self-tapping to play a lawn-order prostitutes. We'd go to the den every weekend, find some finance bro to pay for our vodka sodas, dance until we could barely walk, and end the night at the McDonald's drive through. Now I have my own studio, and Callie is on that billboard above the sun's at Coffee Bean. Neither of us drink to excess or eat fast food, because it makes for a picky complexion.

It's packed, so Callie parks her Tiffany Blue Bronco on CeroCrest and we walk. Oh Jesus, fuck, babe! Look at this place! Callie may have a Blumhouse movie coming out, but she's not LA Real Estate Rich yet. The house, Mansion, is Spanish Colonial, the kind that was popular back in the 20s, with white stuggle walls and a red barrel tile roof. We passed through the courtyard with its arcing fountain and colorful tiles.

Finally, slipping past the metal stud door. She was so elusive. It's weird to be in her house. It's like a violation. Ruby Delmar was a noir actress from the 40s who had a Norma Desmond-like trajectory, but with even more death.

She had a string of hits, but in something like five years, lost her husband, her mother, and her daughter.

After that, she never did another film and became a complete recluse.

Reminiscent of a red-headed Veronica Lake, she's considered one of the all-time great beauties. I'm still of the opinion that women were more beautiful when they didn't do too much to their faces.

“I think Kelly over fills her lips, but at this point, it's too late to say anything.”

I feel like that whole seductive but mysterious thing isn't possible now.

If I take a compelling shit and don't post about it. Cros. I pick up a brass candlestick and I'm shocked at how heavy it is. Oh, close. Kelly yanks me into the living room where there are rows of wardrobe racks holding vintage coat tour.

She throws a mink coat over her shoulders.

Okay, I know fur is obviously a no-go these days, but it's second hand.

“Calth, it's 75 degrees out, and I think it's about not like perpetuating animal cruelty.”

I'm just saying he's already dead. She palates as she hangs a back-up. My gaze drips outside to the pool, where vultures pick over what's left of the rod iron patio furniture. I realize I have an instance breakfast, and I'm about to ask Kelly the leave. When I see it, a mannequin.

She's unlike anything I've ever witnessed. Poorless, porcelain skin. Blonde, lustrous hair, and a victory role. Multi-strand pro-color above a bias cut dress with a creamy lace cape. Her lips are painted ox blood.

Trilashes are dense and glossy. Align from one of Ruby's films wriggles into my brain. Beauty is never free.

Someone always picks up the tab.

It's a currency like any other. I reach out to touch her.

“My fingers just grazing her arm, and she feels strangely warm.”

Like she'd been sitting in the sun. Wow. Creepy? I'm buying it. Oh, why?

I could put her in the studio as decoration. Okay, Bates Motel, whatever you say. It's not until I set her at my dining table that I realize she has freckles. A light, dusting of them across the bridge of her ski slope knows. These state liquidators had filled me in on her history.

Her name is Cynthia. She was made by a soap sculptor in the 20s who wanted to make a more realistic mannequin. The traditional ones were made of wax, heavy, prone to melting, so he made Cynthia out of plaster. I could have sworn that skin was porcelain. When the sculptor passed away, he gifted Cynthia to Ruby.

He said she was the only woman whose beauty rivaled his creation. What the fuck?

“I turned to see Jake Scott out to go back from his restaurant.”

A gastropub on Melrose with $20 burgers and $30 negronies. His jaw hangs open and he can't take his eyes off her. It's where the studio. I offer, hoping that's enough of an explanation. You sure that's a good idea?

He cautiously approaches the table. Won't it scare your clients? It's chic. I got her at the Ruby Delmore estate sale. OK. Jake unpacks a plastic container filled with penny-elevada.

She's not gluten free, is she? My nightly ritual takes about 40 minutes. There's the dental, including tongue scraping and oil pulling. Time my hair around a satin rod for heatless curls. Jake calls it a muppet intestine.

Then, most importantly, the skin. Triple cleanse, BHAs, repair serum, snail mucin, retinol, and finally, a peptide moisturizer from my own line of products. Tonight, I'm plagued with a brewing pustule on the left side of my chin. So I dab on a mandelic acid and sulfur spot treatment.

Most of my clients couldn't handle a routine this rigorous, but my skin has trained like an Olympic athlete. Sometimes I record the whole ordeal for my socials. But today took it out of me. I tuck into bed and scroll through Instagram.

My clients like to tap me post-facial, and I try to repost. Cherina, the housewife has shared a selfie. Select back to Pony, the sunlight bouncing off her glass skin. My porous abstinence is going to be slammed tomorrow. Jake slides in next to me, also glued to his phone.

We are the worst type of cliche. Okay, we cannot be this couple. I plug in my phone and set it on my bedside table. But Jake won't look up. Come on, tell me about your shift.

He's been the chef with this new restaurant for about three weeks, so he's still settling in. One sec. He's typing away, probably notes for the menu. Inspiration will strike him at the oddest hours.

He's always jotting down a new reduction for the doc or a clickbait idea,

a $50 martini served with a caviar topped devil dig. He's been especially distracted since he started the new job. Either that, or he's planning a proposal. I have a feeling it may be the latter.

Fine. No talking it is. I give him a kiss on the cheek and slap on a piece of mouth tape. The apartment is quiet. Save for the home of the age back and the occasional creek of the bed as Jake shifts.

But twice I hear something softer. Like a wrestle or an exhale, coming from the dining room. Probably the neighbors, or the wine. Micro-needling changed the game. The fillers and hawks are great.

“But if you really want to see a change in the quality of your skin, you have to needle.”

I always recommend upgrading the PRP.

I draw your blood, then we're at around in a centrifuge into the white blood cells separate from the red. We call those white platelets, liquid gold. Because the resulting product is a cytokine and growth factor packed substance more valuable than any precious metal. Then comes the needle. A jab, tiny holes from hairline to jawline.

Then smear the plasma over the raw, stippled openings like putty over a nail hole. A little bit of trauma, a lot of results. But unlike any effective beauty enhancing modality, the whole process hurts like a bitch. I recommend numbing cream, but today Emma says she doesn't want it. Mental toughness.

We have to increase her tolerance to life's unpleasant trees. Today, this is my unpleasantry. Hmm. Beauty is never free. I flip on the luminous legend of Pro, and its mechanical home drowns out my thundering pulse.

Something about this feels dangerous. Listen. Powerful. I began to trace the fat needle to hit pen over her temple. Pin-pric drops of blood beat at her skin's surface.

A snail trail of crimson blooming in the pen's wake. Some of a bitch. I freeze. Can't like a teenager with her first pack of cigarettes. Do you want me to stop?

I have to ask. Emma's wallows fortifying herself. No. Keep going.

Someone always picks up the tab.

I continue guiding the device over her cheekbones. Her nose. Her chin. Tears pull in her eye troughs, and I whip them away so they don't seep into the trauma sites. By the time I'm finished, Emma looks like she's leaned too close to a hot stove top.

Her face is a lattice work of blood-bright pinholes.

“What are a statisticians in their clients if not sadists and massacists?”

Feeling capitalism in the patriarchy's ideal of beauty. Hmm. Once I've sent Emma home with some add-dillon aquifer samples, I head back to my office. When I open the door, Cynthia is sitting on a large box in a half-dark. And I swear as lights the marks shock her lips.

A flip-a-switch in the overhead lighting snicker snacks the life. There's no smirk, of course. She looks exactly as she did when we first met. I catch my reflection in my minotes standing mirror and half-double-take. That's zip on my chin. It's gone. That a spot or scab or a scar in it's seed.

Just even smooth supple skin.

As if it was never there at all.

It's a currency like any other. Since it's Jake's night off from the restaurant, I decide to make him toughest for dinner. Hunks of rustic bread with fresh tomato jam and chowies ebaricoham. Tuna carpaccio with lemon zest.

Braini olives, white beans, pickle, grindias, Glugs of peppery olive oil, flaky-south, And a chilled Verdeo to wash it all down. It doesn't really involve cooking, that's his domain. But I know he appreciates the gesture.

You're an angel, Bill.

“You should come to the restaurant already.”

Let me return the favor. Well, you are excellent when it comes to returning the favor. I swallow a sip of wine. A lascivious smirk crawling my mouth. Later, we lay in bed above the sheets.

So at cooling our worn out bodies. That kitchen's going to wreak of anchovy carcass in the morning if I don't do something about us. Be right back. No way. The whole point of tonight was for you to relax. Eventually, we agreed to tag team it.

I rinse out containers for recycling. And all of jar, the wine bottle. Then the anchovy tin. But when I pass in the can, he grabs it without looking. And the curled, gilded aluminum slices into his palm.

Shit! Blood seaps out of the fresh wound. Oh, God! I'll give the kit hang on. I fish under the bathroom sink until I find our first aid kit. When I return, Jake has a lot of paper towels pressed into his hand.

Confusion pinches a line between his brows. Did you just put on makeup? Plain laugh at the absurdity of his question

But later, when I look in the mirror,

“I notice my flush cheeks may be stung lips.”

A dark thought emerges from the wet lume of my brain. Then, for a crazy moment, I imagine Cynthia's eyes burning through my sternum like cigarette holes. Work gets weird. Madison gets a liquid rhinoplasty. The viscous hyaluronic acid filler warming between the hollows of her imperfect nose.

No anesthetic. She wails, my body joltz. Cynthia thrones with satisfaction. I lose an inch and a half from my waistline. The more fierce aid, a tool that wouldn't be out of place in 2004, Abu Graib. Dances across Isabella's all-feeling jals.

Her whimper shoots through my body like heroin. My lashes grow longer. Thensor, darker. Hundreds of little sides reaching skyward. I feel Valerie's shrivel lips with a canula.

Only group-on singing strip mall meds balls inject directly with an needle. She blinks back tears. I'm alive. Cynthia is too. My poor shrink.

Invisible to the naked eye.

“I zapped varicose veins from Francesca's thigh.”

The network of blue sharpie lines blitzed into oblivion. A CO2 laser sears Ella Michelle's cheeks. Raw is rug burn. The chemical peel melts the outer dermis of Mariah's malasma written forehead. They groan and gasp and cry and wine.

My body sings. Chance. Hulls. Celebrates this dark energy that crackles through me like a charged air before a storm. Cindy is proud.

Slaked. Full-filled. Anointed.

And I've never looked fucking better.

Kelly has a red carpet event tonight, so I'm doing her pre-glamskin. A facial of the day of an event is a world away from a typical appointment. No moisture stripping chemicals. No overly abrasive exfoliation.

“The goal is to calm and hydrate, not to batter and abuse.”

I'm painting the final strokes of a colloidal oatmeal claim mask under her daycage when her phone vibrates on the bench beside us. Hmm, let me guess. Booty call from the guy you've absolutely been seeing and definitely not telling me about based on the collection of Higgies on your neck. Kelly can't speak since the globby mask is smaired across trillips, glue-like. [humming]

I can not hear. Huffering the plastic brick in front of her sludge covered visage, despite the witch hazel pads resting on her eyes. A modern corona's oval, the facial recognition still registers and her phone a mocks. It's from Daniel. Oh, I don't recall hearing about a Daniel.

How about right now? Ooh, commanding. I narrate as I type a flirty response for Kelly since she's otherwise occupied. Can't write now, getting a Brazilian. When you face, how about later tonight?

Send. [humming] Daniel types. Holipsies, holipsies. Holipsies.

The response comes through and a sickening truth nails my stomach to the floor. No go. Viv is coming to the restaurant. My tongue sweeps my mouth. Dry and bitter.

[humming] I assess my tools. The blading lasers. Derma planning blades. Black head extractors.

Lansing needles. My fingers home with anticipation. I crank the skin out facial ozone steamer to its max. Beauty is never free. I slam the hot mist outlet into her cheek and scalding vapors blister her freshly laundered skin.

She screams. Finally breaking the clay mask seal. It drips and globs back toward her tonsils, which ring like alarm bells. Her ever-derma's bubbles and pops like a witch's cauldron. A tangy mix of sulfur and meat rides the air. Coding my throat.

Vivian, what are you doing? She thrashes, but I pin her down. Securing her body to the table with a spary electric cord. The cotton pads, the from her sockets, and her eyes glisten with terror. Like the cold belly of a slug.

The CO2 laser pecans me. I flip it on, and aim the focused beam of light right at those slugs. I recall the childhood afternoon when I once tried to family events with my mom's rating glasses.

Someone always picks up the tab.

At first, they turned glody.

“Then they charred and blackened before there's a wet pop.”

And they rupture like an over-right grape left in the sun. Her screams are horse now scraping against her throat. Which gives me an idea. The derma-planing blade. Ideal for ridding dead skin cells and unwanted peat fuzz.

Today, I have another use for it. I jerk the petite blade across Callie's neck in a wet sweep. And the tauntskin breaks loose. Spilling therapy blood down her cleavage. The snap of her fascia and the squelch of her flesh are owed to joy.

And I am Beethoven. Cynthia looks on with a penny-wise smile, as I slough off Callie's pretty face. I sit at my vanity and admire my cosmetics as though they are precious jewels. I twist open a top house tube of mascara, and coat my lashes. Inky.

“I snap open a moonstone collar-chon, dusting my cheeks with the pressed flush.”

Finally, I glide a ruby glass over my pillowy lips.

Kiss my haunting reflection. When Jake walks in the door he finds me on the couch, and nothing more than crimson lingerie. And the wolfish smile. His breath catches in his throat at the sight.

My hair in a 1930s victory curl. Fish nuts crawling up my thighs, breasts lifted to the heavens. It's a thought someone retouched me with a flesh and blood filter. Smack me with a pretty stick. His growing need is obvious from here.

He dries wallows and drifts toward me as if pulled by an invisible thread. He wants to reach out. Touch me. Feel me. Take me.

But then he goes still. Like, he's seen a bear and isn't sure if he should back away or run. He's seen her through his peripherals. Cynthia. She's on the other length of the sectional.

Which is why Jake didn't notice her at first.

He cranks his head. Notched by notch. So he can drink in the full splendor. Despite the rigidity of her plaster limbs. Cynthia sits in a new pose now.

Relax crossed. Still flicked sassily over the hump of her knees. Her head is cocked. But the scene stealers her face. Her lips carved into a snare.

“But I believe what's caught Jake's attention is her veil.”

Mike, a piece of stock baloney. Callies flayed skin. His stretched top over Cynthia's face. Callies once delicate features. Now nothing more than a macabre mask.

Cynthia's glass eyes staring through the gaping holes. Frozen, in eternal, silent torment. A scream boils out of his throat. It's a currency like any other. [Music]

As our stories sink beneath the waves, we claw our way back onto dry land. Join us again next time when we plunge into the chilling depths where water hides its darkest secrets. [Music]

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