CreepCast - I Solved The Fermi Paradox | CreepCast

Episode Date: August 16, 2026

Use code CREEPCAST50OFF to get 50% OFF, and free breakfast for a year at https://factormeals.com/CREEPCAST50OFF Try Rocket Money for FREE or unlock more features with premium at: https://RocketMoney.com/Creepcast 3 Million Butts Love TUSHY. Get 10% off Tushy with the code CREEPCAST at https://hellotushy.com/CREEPCAST #tushypod #sponsored While solving the Paradox, Hunter begins his own theory while Isaiah screams into the void. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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When Westcham first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit dim. different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion. Inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at Westjet.com slash 30 years. Welcome back to Creekass. Today we're going to be diving into a story called I Solve the Fermi Paradox and I regret it. We're not alone. This is by grand theft motto the author of the whistlers also the author of maria in the moon uh i really liked

maria in the moon i think that it was a very uh beautiful story so happy to dive back into this and uh get a little uh get a little i don't know i don't know what the fermi paradox means though don't know what the hell that is i say do you know what the firmy paradox is um do you do you want an honest answer do you want me to lie well do you well do you think that would be actually fuck it It might, do you think, well, do you think that it's going to ruin the, like, would it ruin a reveal? Or do you think it's just like going to be pretty obvious? I think it'll be pretty obvious. So the Fermi paradox is the paradox between the supposed high probability of there being life among the stars or aliens and the reality that there's been no evidence of them.

Ooh, we don't get a lot of alien stories, do we? We don't get a lot of alien stuff. But it might not necessarily be alien. It could be like he realizes Earth is in a simulation or like there's a giant creature that's destroyed all the other civilizations or something like that. I thought I saw a UFO, but it was only the creature. Yeah. It was a creature that eats UFOs, leaving us to be the only. Yeah.

I thought that there were other civilizations in space, but then I saw civilization eating creature. But I saw the civilization was eaten by the creature. by the creature. I like that. I like aliens as a concept, you know, there's so many, there's so many silly images of aliens,

uh, that I mean, I personally when I was younger, I was just like, aliens are fucking stupid. I was like, I was never thought that. I was never like,

aliens are cool. It wasn't, it was very boomer. I was never into him, you know, yeah. It's definitely, um,

yeah, exactly. And I remember that it was like, at some point in my teenage years, and I started actually, thinking about like space and stuff and I was like oh no I was like oh god that's that's kind of frightening and I I like whenever a movie the problem with aliens in horror movies is that like in terms of like at least abduction is the one that I think is thrown around the most not necessarily

like alien where it's like xenomorphs and all that stuff I'm talking about like on earth gray alien meme right or whatever they usually drop the bag quite a bit but I'm always hyped to give it a a chance. At least in terms of movies and stuff, you know? Even like, I don't know, man. It's because there's so much you can do with monsters and the supernatural. I feel like the whole aliens take me to your leader, Grayman thing is so played out. And there's never that much interesting done with him. But even when it is done well, I'm kind of like, eh. Like the best examples of alien stuff I can think of are like, honestly, probably signs in how it actually treats the aliens. and then like the fourth kind close encounters of the fourth kind that movie is pretty creepy

but i feel like it's always like oh well this would be a better movie if it wasn't a gray alien are you talking about the mea jova was there name mea jovillich or whatever that the that fourth kind where's pretend to be a documentary are you talking are you making yeah yeah yeah the found footage one that's yeah that's it that's it that's it yeah which one the found the found footage one with the aliens. Yeah, yeah. That should be the fourth kind. Well,

at least it, well, I don't know. It's mixed media. They did the, uh, the found footage or at least the fourth kind, which was one of this like when I was younger,

scared the fuck out of me because it presents itself as like, fake documentary and then like reenactments of things from like this found like from a, like a therapist, uh, like the camera she uses in her sessions. It's actually from when I was younger, it was very effective. I don't know if it holds up.

I haven't seen. I haven't seen that movie in forever. I just remember I like to I just like me a jovial itch or whatever the fucker name is because I really loved the fifth element and I love the rest of the evil movies when they came out when I was younger I was like she's beautiful um so I remember uh that really freaked me out at the end because there was pretty bad she uh the guy's like shaking at the end and it's like there is no god we are your gods and I remember being like no I got really scared by that But the most, and then I remember, I love the idea of horror films where they're based on, like, found footage horror films, where it's based around people like trying to uncover truths about aliens or like Area 51.

I like a lot. Like, there's this horror. I think I've said this before, but the movie Area 51 looks like a really cheap, like rental movie you can get on Amazon. It's actually a pretty fun found footage film of people trying to sneak into Area 51. That one's pretty cool. but I remember like, you know, movies like Phoenix Phoenix Rising, I think is what it was called or something. It was something about kids that get

that like go into the Phoenix desert for the Phoenix Lights because that was like a big UFO thing too is the Phoenix Lights and it was based around that and it was kind of a letdown. But I don't know. Moral of the story is the idea of I don't know, creatures or entities or things that have super superior technology

is frightening in theory, but then I was just like, what the fuck are they like wanting to do with us? Why would they even come here? That would be. If I was an alien and I came to Earth, I'd be fucking bummed. You traveled all that way

and then you get you ended up here. You know what I mean? It's a lot of stuff with them where it's like, all right, you're all the way here. You have intergalactic travel. So you're either here to decimate us and take our stuff.

And if not that, then what are we doing? do you think the probing phenomenon of people have been like was taking a probe was that people just trying to hide the fact that they were having like gay sex back in the day

no but that's a really funny theory I mean I'm just trying because like out of all the stars I think I've heard people say this before but it's like you go everywhere and like the first thing you do is play with your butt like what are they so fascinated with the butt for what oh oh aliens

I thought you were saying that's an old saying like if you go somewhere first thing you do yeah exactly that's a saying in my household at least yeah yeah um go mess with the butt um the uh well the idea is like oh well the idea is like oh well they're taking samples or whatever of what um i don't know how the joke started but what what might have happened is someone got really high because this is in the like the 60s and 70s right so someone's

maybe in 50s right well it started in the 50s but I feel like the 60s with the space race stuff or whatever yeah yeah and then like I feel like 70s was really when like the little gray man became popular sure in media so like around that time people are like getting really high out in the desert and then someone probably

you know, to be honest, took a little bit of advantage or a lot of advantage of them. And then they come out of it and they saw the gray aliens and the gray aliens probe their butt. I can imagine that it's happened before, but I think the Fermi paradox is people, gay men in Kansas, closet of gay farmers in Kansas. The Fermi paradox is figuring out if they can flatten their cornfield enough to have gay sex in it and then have people come over the next day and you're like, yeah, you're waddling funny. It's because there's an alien. And you walk over and then there's the there's the crop circle.

And it's like, that's where he picked me up. And it's an all elaborate ruse to have gay sex. That's the Fermi paradox in my in my eyes now. That's what that's what it will be. Like that's what conspiracy theorist and scientists will be saying when I hear, oh, the Fermi paradox. I'm going to say, oh, yeah, sure those farmers out in Kansas. That's all I'll say.

So before editor, before Hunter tries to tell you to cut that in post. You leave all of that. You leave everywhere he said. I think it's a sound theory. I think it's a sound theory that the Fermi bought, the Fermi paradox is so far closeted farmers in Kansas. Yeah. Can make air because they need whole fields apparently.

They can't do it in the home. No. They need a whole field. Someone's going to catch me. What was what, which, which, as I can't tell which if that's a willing participant or an unwilling.

That's a willing participant. but for sure. It's something I mean like, you know, I'm giving it into my, at first there's probably like religious things where they're just like, you know,

I feel like in the Bible belt, people are so repressed. I mean, think about almost every serial killer. It's just a guy who's unable to be like, yeah, I'm gay and I like what, like it's people repressed.

And it's like they're around them. They feel like they can't be themselves, all that kind of stuff. So they have to like fabricate these like lives or realities to fit, to either suppress. their feelings or to like have like some kind of guilty shame about doing stuff right like Jeffrey Dahmer fucking uh I'm pretty sure BTK like all this all this weird stuff which I could

be wrong with BTK I don't know he but he's actually from Kansas and he's a fucking loser but uh they're all losers whatever I'm back of myself in the corner here so this is awesome this is awesome editor don't cut any of this so your your take is that the majority of serial killers were just gay. I think closeted homosexuals who couldn't who couldn't express themselves. Yes.

Not that wouldn't say the majority, but I would say there is a, there is a vast majority of people who feel well, like they, yeah, like the, the, the, like I guess like the fucking people that they're around. Because wasn't that kind of the same thing

with even Ed Gain or am I wrong? Or is it literally just, it's not just Jeffrey D. The mommy issue stuff. Oh, well, Mommy issue stuff too. It's always something though. I mean, I don't fucking know.

It's always something. Ed Gein was the one who, uh, like, dug up his mom's body and like used cadavers of women to make like skin lamps and stuff like that. Yeah. I don't know. Well, the story is we're reading a, uh,

we're reading a alien story today. Uh, the Fermi paradox. All that felt like, you know, it's like, you go, your buddy. make a corn fill you don't have serial killers most often. Anyway, grand theft motto, Furby Paradox.

Yeah. I don't know. If any of that makes sense, feel free. Otherwise, if it's just rambling or whatever. The, yeah, I saw the Furby Paradox and I regret it. We're not alone. That's what we read today. If you are watching this and you hate how disgusting I look on camera, feel free to listen on Spotify.

It's a nice little place that you can support us. So feel free to go over there. And if you're looking, if you're looking to for some extra content, maybe more talks of aliens and other things. Feel free to check out our Patreon where we got other episodes, exclusive episodes for Patreon. We thank you a lot for it.

You forgot. You forgot to mention the author. You forgot talking about the author. No, I did. And I said, Grant Theft's motto. Everything. Okay.

Well, that's not all the information about them. So. Oh, feel free then. You jump in. This is a two-o-man show here. Yeah,

but you didn't, you didn't leave the door open for me. You just, like, shut the door. You were like, have fun with the shut door. So. I see. This is me opening the door back up and now talking.

Same former seven, yeah, gay sex and a corner field. Yeah, that's all I got. That we got all of that before we even said to breathe the name of who wrote it. So, so Grand Theft motto, we have covered on the show before. Real name is Travis Brown and Travis is a fantastic writer. On the show, we have covered Maria on the moon and something walks whistling past my house at 303 a.m. I believe that's the only stories from him we've covered. There may have been another one in a grab bag.

I'm missing. We can put on screen now if I forget it. But Travis is a very accomplished author. He has this story, which is very highly rated online as well. And he also has some books, including the house with 100 doors and how to build a haunted house, which, to my understanding, are both anthology books. But, I mean, he has his own website, TB writes. And he posts short stories constantly. So we'll have all of his stuff linked in the description.

If you enjoy his writing style, be sure to check him out. He certainly deserves it. And last time that you all, last time we covered him, you all were very supportive and a bunch of people win and supported him, you know,

on his side, buying his books and stuff like that. And that means a lot. So we really appreciate that. All right. You ready? Yeah. Now I think I've got that at my system.

I can be ready. So, without further ado, after much ado, I solve the Fermi paradox and I regret it. We're not alone. Part one. The Fermi paradox is, in a nutshell, an expression of how odd it is that there's no proof of alien life when it seems so likely given the extraordinary size of the universe. With an infinite number of suns, each cradling a ring of planets in their orbit, why haven't we encountered any sign of someone? else out there. No radio signals, no transmissions, no visitors. Existence was too vast for us to be alone. So where was everyone? I wish we never answered that question. The first man to make

contact with alien life was Calvin Myers. Born blind, Calvin was the first patient to receive prosthetic eyes developed by predacted, a medical miracle. But from the moment his new eyes opened, and Calvin started screaming. He was sedated. It was several hours before he was calm enough to tell doctors what happened. It turns out that Calvin saw the devil, or devils actually, demons, monsters, slouching, sharp things infesting the corners of the room. He watched warped reflections across the mirrors, shadows ripple, evil faces stared down

from the ceiling. ripped his plastic eye from their sockets. Darkness was better, he told his doctors. Calvin saw farmers in Kansas. He saw obese farmers in Kansas and he's like, get me out! That's always all he said.

So I think it's interesting because as established, you know, you're in Alaska now, but you've talked about being from the Kansas, Missouri, Midwest area, right? Yeah. So I think it's fascinating that when you tell a story about repressed men being put in uncomfortable positions because they can't act on their desires, you choose to place that character in the

same location you're from. That's interesting. What does Popeye say? I am what I am. And then I don't think you're obese. I've never called you obese. Oh, I mean, the textbook medical definition is morbid obesity. Look, look, look. The doctor looks at me. The glasses are on the edge of their nose, and they look at me and they do. I mean, they should just start calling it grim reaper obesity instead of morbid obesity. I think it would sink it a little more.

Does that make sense? Do you hear that knock? Doc, what's that knock? I can't hear it. What? I can't hear the knock. Oh, I hear it's knocking. It's death.

It's out of your door. Grim ripers is outside my door all times. So my point being, like, I would never refer to you as obese, but you often refer to yourself as obese. So now when you're describing this morbid obese, and now when you're describing this closeted farmer from, again, the same area you're from, you have now added the adjective of obese to the farmer.

So I feel like we're getting closer to you. kind of fully bringing this back around to yourself. And I just want to know, I just want you to know that, uh, you can be comfortable. I'm your friend. We're all your friend. You can talk to us about anything you want to talk to us about. Um, and you don't have to hide behind these euphemisms. I, uh, I, I, I understand that I am a flyover state specimen.

I'm a lizard in the tall grass, you know, uh, but I was, I was just saying that if I saw, like, the first thing I saw when I got plastic guys apparently. And it was it was a overall overall wearing Kansas farmer. I would take a spoon and I would gorge it out myself. Even if it is just a farmer. Nothing super natural about it. Yeah, no, no, that's it.

Literally that's it. Yeah. The specimen that walk around the Midwest Isaiah are more hunting than anything. I'm sure. The Appalachians can produce. Well, I mean, we've got our own class of people. but I'm sure that it's a it's similar font different flavor kind of thing it's

probably true anyway aliens yeah demons whatever a full report was made to redacted there was never any serious consideration of killing the project too much money was invested market goals were set and management had expectations so more devices were produced distributed tested and each time it was the same The moment the test subject opened their new eyes, they witnessed a world crowded with horrors. I'll never forget what I saw when doctors removed my bandages. Eye, staring back at me. They were huge, the size of truck tires, blue and bloodshot, connected directly to my wall.

I could tell the guys noticed me. Worse, they hated me. There were other abominations in the room as well. A hairy imp with the face of a child A woman made of spikes and red light A coiled pile of limbs Each jagged hand opening and closing slowly So I really love that description of like a woman made of spikes and red light

Like it's so vague what does I even mean? You know that's so cool I've been trying to even think about the eyes Like when someone looks at you and they feel like you need you feel like there's a Almost a thread or someone hates you It's kind of very uh feral response. It's, it's,

it's, uh, very primal almost with how it's, uh, with how they're talking about it. Just like it kind of like, you know, I mean, I've been trying to even,

I'm trying to just trying to think with how it would look at someone if I hated them. Well, most of that's in like your face, right? Like your brow furrow and stuff like that. How your mouth is position. Yeah. All that stuff.

So maybe just and I would be like it's like it's locked on you and it's like bloodshot and and shaking a little bit or something, you know. a farmer trying to repress his sexual urges. There we go. There it is. We're back around. No, we're back around.

We're bringing it back around. Yep. Hey, it's your world. We're just living in it. And we can talk about whatever you want to talk about, buddy. Why is the guy looking at me? Oh, that's just a farmer. Try not to have gay sex.

Steering at the wall, I hate myself. The doctor's Mr. Wide Mouth. Yeah, exactly. What we're going. I'm trying. trying, Doc. I'm gonna give you these new eyes

so you can see stuff, but I'm telling I don't know what I don't know what it is about these eyes. It's happened like a dozen times now. Doc, he's that guy around the corner is handsome. I don't know what you're talking about. What do you be? Oh, not again.

I'm gonna go stare at the mirror and glare at myself for 45 minutes. Okay. It's going to happen again. Oh, no. I'm going to be sick. It's incredible, Mr. Widemouth, that you got your practitioner's license. I don't lose a lot of hard work. I'm a pediatrician.

Okay, well, I'm 53, so I don't know why you're talking to me. I'm coming to you from the Wall of the Crypted Iceberg. Don't ask to talk about today's sponsor, Factor. Factor is here to make eating healthier easier. Though over 175 banned ingredients, Factor meal is designed around what supports a healthier lifestyle and nothing that does it. Factor makes healthy eating easy with fully prepared meals that are designed by dieticians and crafted by chefs.

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and code creepcast 50 off to get in on their incredible offer today. Thank you to Factor for sponsoring the show. Their link will be in the description, and we are now back to the episode. I screamed until my throat was raw until I passed out. When I awoke, the first thing I did was try to take my eyes out. But the doctors had learned their lesson with Calvin. I was restrained, monitored, forced to look. Every day was a parade of nightmares.

Shadows melted and ran like a roar shack across the ceiling, tripping down onto my chest. I couldn't feel them land, but I saw them puddle into violent faces that stared back into my new designer eyes. Everything was worse at night. I begged the doctors to keep the lights on. If I had to see monsters, I wanted to at least see them clearly. But my requests were ignored. Terrible figures danced down the hall outside my room. Something crawled above my bed, wheezing and out the window.

My doctors recorded all of my rants. It medicated me, tested me, poked and prodded and disbelieved. Occasionally, I heard shrieking drift down the hallway when my door was open. I knew I wasn't the only one in the hospital with new eyes. could see. Bear Trap, he's in the UFO, potentially. That's a good option. I could take that.

I mean, it seems like, I'll put 30 on that, 30 over under us. I like the, I like this idea, though, that like, it's kind of interesting when people are like, oh, well, we're giving you this miracle treatment, but like it's causing people to almost go into a psychosis whenever they wake up,

so you have to restrain them and they have to get used to it. It's fun, but I can also see a world where like, these people have been abducted and they're being experimented, on and like they're seeing uh you know like they're almost put in like a simulation that is a normal hospital but they're like seeing through that like kind of almost like oculus barrier you know like in an oculus where it's like you have to have like a certain square parameter and if you go out of it and it like breaks it um i'm like wonder give it's like that like that i really like the rorschack description that's a fun way to describe like seeing entities kind of come like looking at like weird

uh people kind of coming in and out of your periphery rolls are like in and out of your eyesight. Yeah, I do. It's kind of a funny image to me that like this company keeps implanting eyes in people. And they're screaming. And they're like, huh? Another success. We'll do it.

Yeah, we'll do it down the hall in one hour. Like just. All right. Well, let's go do that again to another. Yeah. Because it's like I can hear multiple people screaming down the hallway. And it's like, uh, they just like,

if your plugs in, just la la la la la. But don't, why are people screaming? They just had the beautiful gift of eyesight. Okay. And I will too, right? Yes. As long as yes. After nearly a month, they finally released me.

I'd lied to them last week. Told them I couldn't see the creatures anymore. So I was set free. given meds and a journal call us if you observe anything unusual they told me they have no idea I was gonna have gay sex

out in the cornfield that's when I met the creature the creature the creature that has sex in the cornfield oh that's a scary cryptid that's the kind of thing you gotta stay away from

what's your name handsome like yeah 12 foot tall like tenicle monster you get over here you kiss me the way you said that what's your name handsome made it sound like he was picking it up in a bar exactly it's 12 feet tall it's huge

the guy's just like well my lucky stars that's like against the walls screaming hell I thought Christmas only came once a year you get your ass over here and you you dance with me. Kind of romantic, actually. It's kind of nice.

Like this, this eyeless snarled beast monsters blushing. He's like, that's fine. We'll flatten the corn. We'll flatten the corn and we'll just say we got to get in here. We got to flatten the corn fields.

Yeah, we're going to be rolling around the hay. Actually, that's what it was. It's farmers having sex and they're rolling around. And it's in a circle. And they're like, this UFO.

If that's, if that's what it is, heads off to him because that's a crazy surface area. Oh my God. It's so huge. Ah, man, that's passion is what that is. Holy hell. That's a farmer in that 12 foot man beast thing.

No shit. For a romantic night. Fold on those corn stocks and stuff. He's like, I thought we were mud wrestling, not doing origami. They like, they get married,

have a beautiful life together. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, the 12-foot-tall monster. Oh, come on now. Give me some sugar. Sending their kids off to school. Yeah. Growing old together.

I figure we could take Timothy and Sarah to the pumpkin patch tomorrow. All right. So we, hey, come here. You give me some sugar before you leave. They like rips a portal to hell and jumps. or whatever. All right. See you tonight.

Have fun at work. It goes straight into the abyss. Yeah. Goes and murders someone on the other side of the world that comes back. Made you some suck attach. All right. Make you some sick atash. It's fun.

I love how wholesome you're describing. Oh, it's a beautiful. Beautiful thing. It's a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful home, loving family. Oh, it could be better. just blood all of the floor

driven it's constantly pressed into the ceiling it's so big yeah the house is nowhere near big enough for this creature mud room clean up in the mud room oh man

I've told you once I'm not gonna tell you again when you come home from work you go through that door because that's the door that's got the drain in the floor and the floor now I'm making spaghetti

he's got to go wash up it's spaghetti and Texas toast nice yes it's the Texas toast from Walmart come on just just them sitting on a truck bed but like the monster side is like broken into the ground like

pus pud pud puddules and stuff popping on his negative he's like how the hell that I get so lucky. No, so tell me. You're a gift sent from God. Iskark, Kabbalakar-Karskar. He's like trying to pronounce his name. Iskhar.

Zegar glum. Bringer of doom. Yeah, I'm so glad I unearth that monolith and had gay sex with you. Just alone. I like how the farmer, like this thing doesn't have a job. it's like some other being but he still calls it a gay sex yeah

he's a farmer from Kansas why else does he know he doesn't know what the hell is I mean I get yeah yeah it's just like them floating above the bed like like astral projections get down here

oh you always talking your sleep don't you it's all right he gives buys him so he he takes his el tongue. He takes to this

sleep app yeah gets him a CPAP machine now you're not going to be snoring it's like

I'm floating objects in his room come on you're snoring again sweet fucking put it on

we should probably actually read the story I mean I was just gonna let you run with that as long as you

yeah oh yeah Oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna remember them. Also, every time, every time that it says redacted, I'm gonna say that it's the state of Kansas, by the way. Okay, I'll just say Kansas when I'm reading. All right. On my bus ride home, I saw three named men with goat heads and swollen bellies.

It's just tall as a sycamore tree, sprinting down the highway. Jesus. A rotting whale floated over us. White guts spilling out like spoiled milk. It ate the clouds. It passed, and when it came into the light, I could see through it, every bone in vain. I've thought about removing my eyes, plucking them from my skull like jelly from the jar, but I'm too afraid.

Not just of the pain, but also the creatures will still be out there. Maybe not seeing them, but knowing they're watching me would be worse. You haven't heard about my eyes, I'm sure of it. Kansas won't let the word out until they're ready. I'm breaking every NDA on the planet by posting my story online, but you need to know. Because now that some of us have seen the invisible abominations that exist out in the open, they've become bolder. I feel them now at night.

Touch my neck gently or slap me. Some take little bites, testing, poking, prodding. It's only a matter of time before they make themselves known. I'm not sure what we can do to protect ourselves or if we even can, but knowing is the first part. Believing. So believe me when I tell you, wherever you're reading this, if you think you're alone, you are not.

You never are. You can't see them, but they are very aware of you. Stay steady. Don't rattle. Try not to panic. I've spent every night sleeping in my tub with every light on in the house. Fear is crippling, a chain around my throat that keeps me from leaving my home. But I'm so tired of being afraid, of being alone.

You might not have my eyes, but I think you can see them if you look carefully. Focus. Use the corner of your vision. Watch your mirrors carefully for movement. Maybe you'll see something or maybe something will show itself if it thinks you're searching. like I said you're getting bolder there's the end of part one

it's kind of an interesting take on aliens is uh this reminds me a lot of like being able to see things that others can't that exist among us or is like uh sorry to say it it's like a lovecraft story where the story called from beyond where like there's a machine that uh that basically uh fucks with your pineal gland

and you're able to see an alternative like universe that's like overlapping ours and it's like all the monsters that exist around us that we can't see. And that's a fun idea for, uh, the idea of like aliens or something or like the, the, the idea that like some of the aliens that people have seen are people that are able to see through that veil, see through that threshold into things that are just always existing around us is kind of a fun concept. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think it's, uh, I think it's interesting to play with the unseen. It's very, uh, they live, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. just the idea that there's like another dimension that's kind of overlaid on top of ours we normally don't interact with um i like the idea that i always like the idea that rather than like extraterrestrial beings it's extra dimensional beings so it's like they're around us but they just exist beyond our three dimensional reality so because of that they operate it's like us trying to comprehend a two or one dimensional being it's just something that's so different from us it would be hard to

understand and vice versa. So I think the idea of like extra dimensional beings are very interesting. It's kind of a fun route too when he get rid of like the concept of like the UFO style alien where it's like they had to fly here. And then they like, you know, made some kind like they made some kind of contact via like spaceship instead. It's something that's just always been around. But we perceive it as like something that's from the stars is pretty cool.

Yeah. And I really like this on the second part here. It's fun. It says I saw the Fermi pair. paradox and regret it, but now in the title says, we regret to inform you that you're being hunted. Pretty fun. Oh, that's pretty cool.

And also, like, I know it's like kind of a, a trope and people do it all the time, but I love when stories are like, look at the corner of your eyes, look in your mirror. Do you see something? Because that plays on like the natural fears we've all had, you know, thinking we see something moving behind us and stuff like that. Like a very almost like fucking primal, uh,

yeah, almost like an evolutionary way of like scare, scaring someone or whatever. Yeah. You know the thing you saw you saw in your corner? It's there. It's real and it's a fucking It's real. It's going to get you. It will kill you. You're going to die. Awesome. You should run right now.

Yeah. Part two. That's a really good start. That was really good start. I'm excited to see where it goes. Yeah. It's a part two. Someone is following me whenever I leave my apartment. My new eyes are good at picking up little details. Seeing the same car driving around my block each day. Slowly.

Also at my heels. few cars back. If you missed my first warning, you can find it here. I've noticed other things watching me as well. Faces in reflections, massive figures in the clouds. Some days I'll be riding the bus and notice a face on the street where the features are all in the wrong order. I don't go ahead and I'd anymore at all. Some of you ask questions after my last update. I'll do my best to answer. If you're wondering why I mentioned the Fermi paradox, the truth is I would was just passing on a theory from a friend. There's a whole group of us online,

former lab rats for Kansas, with shiny new eyes and fresh nightmares. I don't know any of their real names, only their handles. Ribbon and Violent, Calico and Cheshire, Dublin and Barrow and Matilda. There are others,

but those are the seven I speak to the most, nearly every day. We share updates on what we see, support each other after sleepless nights, and more than any, anything, we theorize. If you're wondering what my name is, you'll have to keep wondering. You can call me Waltz if that helps.

Cheshire is the one who brought up the Fermi paradox. They're convinced that the horrors we're able to see are disguised aliens from a galaxy or two over and that our artificial eyes can somehow see past their camouflage. Butilda has a different theory. The creatures were observing are from another dimension, one that's bleeding over into ours. My question is, Barrow posted to our chat one rainy afternoon. Are the entities hostile? Friendly or ambivalent?

I was nursing a hangover that day, most days actually, ever since the operation. Rain drizzled against my bedroom window. It had been three months and my life was in limbo. Quit my job, too afraid of what I might see if I look too closely at my coworkers. Kansas provided me with a stipend for my service that was enough to live on, but quickly running out. Barrow's question banged around my head like a bat trapped in the attic. Before I could reply, I saw that Violet was typing. They sure look hostile. A few days before, I'd gone out for groceries. I was nearly at the checkout when I noticed an old woman standing in produce. Her face was gushing

blood from her eyes, nose, mouth, maybe even the pores on her skin. I stood, paralyzed, just staring. She noticed me The thing began making cooing noises like it was trying to entice me to come over I dropped my groceries and sprinted out of the store They sure look hostile But do we know for sure?

I wondered Something knocked on my door There was a pause And scratching I tried to ignore it Now that I could see the creatures There was a connection I heard them all the time

little laughs or sighs. I felt them too on a few occasions. One that appeared to be made entirely from fog and teeth had even taken a nibble out of my shoulder. I'd call that a little hostile though. Maybe it was only hungry or curious. Scratching on my door turned into pounding followed by silence. Matilda was typing.

I think they might be like us. Some are good, some are bad, some are ugly. Dublin added. Cheshire, who communicated entirely in emojis, added a laughing face to the chat. There was the usual course of LOL and pop culture jiffs, so immediately they have to kill Cheshire. The smoker has dull teeth. Ribbon posted. But a razor tongue.

Are you okay? Calico wrote. Not at all. I saw the girl in the mirror, or was the mirror in the girl? What? Rubbin. Are you steady, friend? Borrow asked.

Yeah. Yeah, Riven's doing great. Yeah. It's kind of like, I don't know what's that thing where I saw the girl in the mirror or the mirror and the girl. I'm trying to think about it like vision. Well, it doesn't matter.

Go ahead. I think it's funny how Ruben's like, it's a bored to talk about the weird hallucinations of other dimensions you see. And then a girl's like, this one has a razor tongue and there's a mirror girl. And then Barros like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hold on. That's not. A mirror on a girl? Whoa.

We did that with each other a lot. Are you steady? Which was the polite way of asking if the little hairline fractures, we all felt to our sanity, we're beginning to crack. Ribbon was typing again. They told me you're next after me, Waltz. Well, you know, maybe maybe. Maybe it's a little too harsh.

Maybe we could. I do like that idea of, I do like this idea of like a group of people basically from an outside looking in would look like a bunch of like almost psychopathic people talking about like the insanely weird shit that you would never see. Right. Or even saying stuff like, oh, was it the girl in the mirror or the mirror and the girl, whatever?

But then I like the idea though of checking in and being like has this person completely snapped. And I hope that we get to see that though to see like, do they try. to help or is it just a thing where it's excommunication and you just like have to sever the tie. No, I think they just kill them if I had a guess because considering they can touch them. Are they they're all in the same? Are they all in the same town? Have we established that or because it's no, no, no, no, they're typing, but they all went to the same place. They all have the same procedure to get this procedure. Okay. But they're talking online. We're talking to like a chat. Right, right, right, right. Well, that's what I'm wondering though. I just didn't know if the procedure

happened in the redacted Kansas place, whatever. Or if it's, It's like, oh, I had the same, the same thing, but I live in a different area. But I assume that they're all just got it from the same spot. I reckon, yeah. I felt my stomach dropped through the floor. My apartment was boiling, but I still began to shiver. Ribbon has left the chat. The other spent 10 minutes trying to convince me everything was fine, that ribbon was only worked up.

I lied and told them I wasn't worried. You're okay, Waltz. I'm told to sit me in a private chat. Stay steady and contact me anytime if you need to talk. Thank you. I signed off and closed my laptop. Outside, the rain was picking up, tapping at my window like a guest asking to come in.

My television was humming quietly on the wall. I glanced up and saw that it was a rerun of a show I'd watched a dozen times. Only now, I saw that the comic relief character had a second mouth on their throat, their head flopping up and down every time they told a joke that was the closest I came to ripping my new eyes from their sockets my fingers stopped when I pushed down my eyelid

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck with nothing else to do I turned off the television got in the shower and didn't leave my apartment for the next week one new message I will say it's just funny to imagine

that like Andy Griffith is on the TV and he sees Don Knott's with the neck and he's like that's it I'm going blind Are you digging this so far? Um, I'm in a, it doesn't have me yet, but it has. I still, I still feel like I'm in the, the buildup phase. YARG! This year I'm focusing on limits.

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or click on the link in the description to get started for free. Text overla, blah, blah, blah, blah. Thank you so much for Rocket Money. This was watching this episode. Back to the episode. This episode is sponsored by Tushy. If your idea of cleanest dragging dry paper requests your backside after a long day, I've got bad news for you.

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it was an absolute disaster of pizza boxes and empty six-packs. I'd set makeshift alarms on my doors and windows by stringing together some of the loudest looking bottles. The alert was an email from Cheshire. It wasn't the first they'd send me, but it always made me anxious. I'd asked them before where they found my email address but didn't get a response. Usually, Cheshire would send me odd pictures. A house, a hospital, a tree surrounded by glowing lights. This message was different.

For the first time, Cheshire used words. Are you there, Waltz? I need your help. They found me. Can you call me? If you call me as soon as you can, ASAP, don't use your own phone. The email ended in a phone number. I stared at the screen for a long time.

It was blind and bright in my dark living room. The shutters were closed and my sense of time was becoming flexible, but I knew it had to be sometime after midnight. For a moment, I considered deleting the email, closing my laptop, hurling it out the window. I didn't want to get involved. But Cheshire sounded desperate and, At the end of the day, our weird little group was the nearest thing to family I had left.

A bunch of lab rats with machine eyes who could see monsters. Maybe we were friends. We were something, even if we were only online. Don't use your own phone. There was a gas station down the block that had one of the last remaining pay phones in Baltimore, possibly the world. Realistically, I'm sure there were others, but that was the only one I knew about. And it was only a block away at night.

Every fiber and my shaky soul wanted to wait until dawn, but Cheshire said they needed my help immediately. A tiny slice of my deepest lizard brain uncoiled for a moment. What if it's a trap? That's a paranoid. I said out loud, standing up to hunt for some almost clean street clothes. Cheshire was a friend, kind of, and besides, other than the biting fog and a tall shadow that it slapped me, none of the creatures so far had actually been trying to hurt me. Maybe they weren't hostile.

Slammed a Red Bull for my Uber Eats delivery before opening the front door. The hallway outside was dim. No signs of motion or life at all. I made my way to the elevator, hesitated, then took the stairs down to the street instead. Baltimore slept but restless. The city never turned all the way off. There were always lights, traffic, trash.

It wasn't pretty, not all the time, but after spending so many years in the dark after I got sick, being able to see the beautiful mess again never failed to give me goosebumps. I drank in the skyline, tried to memorize the rhythm of tall buildings, pressing shadows into the cloudy night. Okay. I said, breathing in air and smog. Okay. Every streetlight shadow made me skittish. Every distant hornhawk made me jump.

But I made progress. Snakers chewing up the sidewalk, bringing me closer to the gas station, to a phone, to a friend. Can you spare a light? I very nearly shit my pants. I did Yelp and spend to find a man leaning against a nearby wall just outside of the yellow haze of a streetlight. His face was covered by a cloud of smoke. There was ash in his voice, a rasp of a lifelong smoker, probably something heavy like cowboy killers. I don't smoke.

Biddy. The man croaked, stepping into the line. When he did, his limbs and neck stretched and became wire thin. His body warped and split and bubbled and then collapsed in on itself as he walked out of the glow of the lamp. Now he was close. He smelled like cigarettes and cordite. I couldn't see his face, only the cloud of smoke.

It moved with him like a fail. Those eyes don't belong to you. Give me. I ran. Other figures began to emerge from the shadows. I stayed in the lights as much as I could, dashing from street lamp to street lamp. A massive figure with a bloated body

and lots and lots of thin legs ran up the side of a skyscraper. I passed by a sore window and saw a woman's face, pretty and furious, reflected back at me. Her eyes were shining and I realized that they were mirrors catching and amplifying the line. She screamed and the glass shattered, but I was already halfway down the block. I made it into my apartment at a dead sprint.

Once I was behind a locked door, I slid to the floor, shaking. The adrenaline dump made me nauseous. I threw up what was left of the pizza and gin in my system. Donned was burning behind the window shutters before I pulled myself together. one new message I left my phone on the table when I had set out for the gas station another alert was visible on screen

numb moving like a zombie I opened my laptop to see a new email from Cheshire we regret to inform you that you're being hunted the sentence was punctuated by a winking face emoji end of part two

end of part two the uh so real quick to just to make sure I'm on the same page. So he's in Baltimore. He's doing all this stuff. The outside world is, which is believable as the edge of the universe, by the way. Yeah, Baltimore.

Yeah, Baltimore. There's still normal human beings, though, in the city. It's just the ones that they can tell that they can see them, right? Almost like the guy asking for a light, whatever, and him responding was an indicator to be like, oh, you can see me. and then he's like, you know, I wonder if that's also why he's like,

those eyes aren't yours. Like he's like, how the fuck are able to see me? Yeah. If that was a test or something. It also seems like, do you think that, uh,

the email he got was just to lure him out of the apartment? So he could get, um, yes. Okay. Yeah, I don't think his friend was actually at the phone because he gets back and that's where the emails like,

we regret to inform you with the emoji. Right. Yeah. So they've killed, they've killed at least those two right the first one and then cheshire well i was wondering there for a second if like in the group of friends of the seven people if uh any of them were like plants by the people who implemented the eyes you know like somebody who is like almost like they're an experiment or something because the way that the story is reading it almost reads a little bit like the uh the moon is on fire

a bit where it's just these obvious things out there and they're like it's just someone feeling almost like they're going through psychosis where it's like, am I fucking crazy? Can no one else see this? You know? So there's like a conspiracy of foot that they're being tracked down because of like maybe it'll turn out the entities are actually fine.

It's just the people who like can't have us knowing about the entities that are the threat. Right. Right. Or it could not. I could stick with like. And I really like a lot of the descriptions of these multi-dimensional beings, how it looks like they keep moving like their shape changes and stuff like that. The wire thin neck.

It's our brain trying to comprehend something beyond us. That's pretty cool. The wire thin neck was a lot of fun. I also really, I'm always a sucker too. What was the name of the story Isaiah where it's the people at the party? And then like they have to hide in the apartment and they hear the person like coming in or like grabbing people. Was that an alien story too that we read?

Was that alien or was that just monsters? They're in a party. It's like friends at their apartment. And they're like, oh, fuck. They like see something I think across the way. and someone else's apartment, and then they have to,

like, one person has to hide the closet, someone hides under the bed, whatever, and they hear, like, knocking or, like, the door breaks open, and they have to, like, basically hide. Do you remember that?

I don't think we did that story. Well, well, I'm almost paused. It was something, but anyways, it reminds me of that idea, though, of, like, there's something just super creepy, obviously, about,

like, you're in your house and someone's, like, knocking on that. Someone is, like, right outside. Or they know that you're in there, but they aren't, like, actively, like something is stopping them from just like barging in

it's almost like that anticipation is always so much more creepy I was just but I just like that with the guy at first it was tapping and then all of a sudden he's just like really loud fucking banging pretty creepy Mm-hmm yeah

Part three I really thought you were gonna say when you were talking about you were talking about something I'm gonna go about monsters or demons and I thought you were going to bring it back around to the loving relationship

of the um the cowboy and his Eldridge abomination. No, no. Unfortunately, I feel like that time has passed.

That's big of you. That's actually like rare. You do that. So I know that takes a lot of restraint and I respect that. Thank you. Part three. I was trapped in my apartment.

Every night it was the same. Knocking and tapping and screaming and a silence that was too absolute to ever naturally exist in. the city. Some evenings, I'd find smoke leaking into my living room from under the front door. There was never any fire I could see. I'd have to cover all of my mirrors since the faces were starting to come in a little too clear. I missed my first warning. You can find it here. After

that, things got uncomfortable. Is anyone there? I typed, cowering in my empty bathtub with my laptop. It was nearly a week after my failed excursion to the gas station. A week since Cheshire's warning, or threat that I was being hunted. Each day since, one of the members of our group chat, which I started thinking of as the Blindsight Blues, had gone offline and not returned.

First went Ribbon, then Barrow, followed by Dublin, Violet, and finally, Gallico. Now only Matilda, Cheshire, and I remained. Smiley face. D, smile. Can you do that smile for the camera? there you go thank you i'm just going to assume you did it um i was kind of worried initially when it's like seven characters introduced at once uh i was like man that's a lot to keep up with

but now five of them are dead so we don't have to worry about that yeah i mean like man between between one part five people just like missing is pretty brutal this could have been a thing too where if this was like a longer story or like an actual uh novel or something i'm guessing that we'd probably go through each one of those people or like a star which they uh this stuff but would have been cool but maybe it still wraps up in a fun way i mean you could have like a left right game with a bunch of characters but that's also a very different kind of story you know that's more like an honesty and there's time to spend with everyone also they're in person you can interact with them this whole thing with uh private messages and stuff makes it very uh informal i hope you know

every time i think of the left right game i think about all of them standing there and i think of apollo creed from rocky with the gloves and shorts on like amongst them for some reason. Yeah, every time I hear Apollo, yeah, same. Yeah. Yeah.

That's a, that's a testament to how good the story is because you remember Apollo. Yeah. You love, my memory is terrible. Yeah. Well,

that's why I mean, you love forgetting characters and like stuff. You remember Paulo. I'm sure you remember Bristol and Blue Jay and all that. Yeah, Blue Jay is the worst.

So, man, I just really love, love for a game. Anyway, Cheshire's reply was not helpful. Childer's response came 10 minutes later as a private message. I know you're in Baltimore. Can we meet?

Something was scratching at the top strain. I leaned over, then scrambled out of the bath when I saw a blue eye with a dozen irises looking up through the hole. If my bathroom was breached, I didn't have any good options left. I decided I might as well die comfortably, so I curled up in bed with a soft blanket and a mug full of dark rum. How do you know where I am? I wrote back, anxious but almost comforted.

If she was a friend, then I had someone in my corner. And if she wasn't, at least maybe the nightmare would be over quickly. Your IP address. You should really invest in a VPN. Is that some kind of cable news network? Tilda. Are you still there? Yeah, sorry.

I wrote something sarcastic and decided to delete it. Can we meet? I'm in town. A little chill kick-step to. its way across my neck. I thought for a moment and then sit Matilda the name of a restaurant and a time to meet in the morning. Friend or enemy and face her soon. But I'd have to make it through the night first. I closed my laptop and prepared to start my new sundown ritual. There are some amazing resources online offering advice for protecting a residence from

otherworldly incursion. Step one was salt. I visited each door and window in my apartment, adding and a thin line of salt on the ground to block the entrance. I've insulted all of my closet doors just in case. Next came sage and incense. Pulley water splashed on the windows. Dream catchers and crosses added to the walls. You can find almost anything in Baltimore if you know where to look. Turns out, there were two mysticism supply stores and one apothecary

all within a short daylight sprint from where I lived. Feeling about it as protected as a pinwheel farm and a hurricane, I retreated to my bedroom to drink myself to sleep. For the last two days, I've been crippled by migraines. An issue I never had before my new eyes. Not long after the headaches began, I also started to notice strange patches of dry skin on my arms and legs. More than just dry, the spots were hard to touch, cold.

It was somewhere between metallic crystalline. At one point, I'd thrown up a handful. full of teeth, but found none missing from my mouth after a frantic check. Nothing was changing in me. Without any mirrors to check, I couldn't be sure, but even my face felt different, sharper, younger. The night before I met Matilda was the worst I experienced. A vicious odor crept in around 10 p.m., a mix of cinnamon and dust, and the porta-potty section of a summer music festival. My bed began to rock gently around. midnight, then not so gently. After less than a minute, it stopped. I pulled myself out of the fetal

position. Cracks formed in the ceiling above my bed, opening and closing like gills. When blew down from the openings, hot, bitter, followed by a horrible tugging sensation as the air was sucked upwards. The holes narrowed and split into a network of woven red lines. I saw faces in the lines, including my own frightened one reflected back at me by a pair of mirrored eyes. I jammed my lid shut. Please stop. Please stop. Please stop.

Look! Voice shouted in my ear, their mouth so close I could feel their cold breath on my cheek. I didn't open my eyes. Eventually, I might have slept. Smirky. The next sensation I was aware of was a sound coming from outside my window. Something was whistling? I finally opened my eyes to stare at the spot where the noise was coming from.

My bedroom was back to normal. The window was covered by both blinds and a drunk curtain. The whistling was pleasant, friendly, some tune I didn't recognize. I felt an overwhelming curiosity to find out who was making the sound. My hand was already on the curtain before I snapped out of my trance and stopped. For a few minutes, stood by the window, unable to pull myself away. It wasn't long before the whistling grew fainter, the whistler moving on their way. Once the night was quiet again.

Well, it's quiet as Baltimore ever got. I collapsed on the floor. I was breathing like I'd been practicing wind sprints in the stairwell. Somehow I managed to drag myself over to the corner of my room, farthest from the window. Then I passed out. So your opinion, Hunter, that part about the whistler walking by his window is definitely a reference to his, you know, something and walks whistling past my window story, right? How do you feel?

Because I'm kind of split on it. This one's fine, I think. It's kind of cool. It's kind of neat for the author to be like, oh, well, this thing for my other story could be one of these unseen things, you know? That just crosses over sometimes. So now it would make sense for it to be in this world. How do you feel about that in general when authors will use a previous work and tie it in to whatever they're doing now like that.

I mean, I don't think it's super egregious. It's not as bad as like in a movie when something's like, I don't know. They're like, what's the address? 14, 14, 14, John Carpenter Drive. Or whatever. Like that kind of thing, I think is a little more. I mean, otherwise, it's because if you had never read

the other story, it doesn't feel invasive to me at all. I mean, we've read the story. So it does feel like, oh, there's the tip of the cap. But I don't, I don't think it's anything. I don't think, especially with the amount of like other weird shit going on. It doesn't feel like it's too out of the left field. You know, I think the way

you phrased it is a good rule of thumb. Like if you didn't know the Whistler story, that's just another weird interaction. It doesn't do anything. So the story doesn't stop to tell it. But I can see it, you know, it's like fan service without it,

like, without it ruining everything. If the entire thing was that, I'd be like it would feel a little self-indulgent. But to me, that's like, I mean, if you're a fan of this writer, which we are, we can catch it and just be like, oh, that's cool. I don't think that it's, I don't know if it's the same entity. I think it's just supposed to be like it's something that is resembling of that. You can be like, oh. Yeah, yeah, it doesn't have to be the same entity. But the mechanics are the same where it's like there's a curtain. He almost looks, but he decides not to look. So it doesn't come in, that whole thing. Yeah. I think it's, I think I would agree that, you know, it doesn't halt the story to tell it. And it's kind of cool. Um, um, now there have been stories we've read in the past where they've done that and it hasn't been cool like what was the story the one where it just became 20 minutes at the end where they're going they're walking through vignettes from other stories oh my job is watching a woman trapped in a room

yeah how the whole ending of that was like like 14 different stories that we had it read all compressing at the same time that was that that's the story stopping to tell I always wonder if I always wonder if that was our, I was wonder if that was our fault, though, for not, for like, for not knowing that it's, uh, no, no, no. The, the, the audience has tried to gaslight me on this for so long. No, it wasn't my fault. Because if, if I have to know 16 stories before I can read this story that's labeled my jobs watching a woman trapped in a room, then label it part 17 or do, like, do something to indicate that this is part of a, or work. The ending won't make sense unless I've read other work. And I understand like that author, he's written some cool stuff

and I really liked. I wrote a letter to myself, which I could be getting those way off. And if I am, editor beat me for it. But like, there are, like, it's not that they're a bad writer. There's a lot of good stuff.

But like that interconnected web of stories they have is so complex that it's like, I'm not like, like I want to read the stuff and I want to engage with it, but I don't want to commit to another Marvel Universal, Marvel Universal, Marvel Cinematic Universe kind of thing, you know. Yeah.

Well, I mean, so far with this story, which also to clarify, it's a free country, write whatever you want, do whatever you want. If you and your audience like it and have fun, I'm just not going to enjoy it is my point. Go ahead. Now that we're just going to stop a stopping point here, even with just talking about kind of where we're at, this story so far, I think it's fun. I think the only thing that is I keep finding these parallels

at least so far while I'm reading this where I'm listening and it's the kind of randomness that we have had in other stories where there's a lot of like very heavy character stories like tales from the gas station or I work at a voodoo shop or Lucille's

snack store or whatever the fuck that was called I think like there's this thing where there's a vignette of like weird things right like we're kind of like right now i don't really know who this main character is and i like that's like been the biggest thing so far in the story and this could turn around we're only halfway through but if i had to just you know air out some stuff now that we have some time is like i don't this whole idea of like then something was in the drain looking

at me there was a giant beetle that walked across the skyscraper there was a thin wiry thing that went through the the you know whatever there was a man who walked past my window it's like these are interesting creepy vignettes but they don't none of it so far is really serving um anything that's like latching me or kind of making me freaked out it's happening so frequently too that nothing feels like a like a threat or nothing feels like uh nothing feels like it's standing out because it's so it's so heightened everything's so heightened versus something like tills from the gas station you're so focused on that main character and kind of the the vignettes of what happens each night that makes them feel a little more special or like it makes these

like little there is a collection of like odd things but but you but you have that central character to kind of ground you the same way with like I work at a emergency watchtower or a radio broadcast station or whatever it's like yeah I'm I'm I'm down to have all these kind of weird vignettes but I you know I wish I knew the character more to understand like how they're feeling what are they going through I know that our character is like freaked out and he's like all these eyes But that's about it. And I'm hoping that that kind of so far, that's just where I'm standing at. And I'm hoping that that kind of opens up a bit more.

It's just give me a bit more with the character and give me a bit more with, uh, you know, more of these threats are like just let me in a bit more besides just describing, um, you know, creepy stuff that's happening that doesn't really go anywhere. Or it's just kind of him being like, oh, and then running off. Yeah, I think it needs to, I think it needs to do more with it. Uh, I'm willing to, uh, I'm willing to, accept we're still in the buildup phase. Oh sure, sure.

I'm just going on for a bit. I'm just where I'm at right now with my thoughts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. If it was to just keep that momentum, I would totally agree. But I feel like with him wanting to meet the girl and stuff, we're going to get to some more meat. Sure.

On the bones. I would hope soon. Yeah. I was just a little nervous once it's like we skipped from part two to part three. And then five people died or five people have now exited the chat. That doesn't mean that they're not going to come back. I mean, who knows, right? But I just,

for me, for me, honestly, that was kind of relieving because I needed the board cleared because I'm like, there's no way

with this story structure I'm going to care about seven people, right? Right. But now it's like, actually just two. Everyone else died.

I'm like, oh, all right. Well, that makes it easier, you know. Mm. But we'll see. Mid-morning light

filtered in yellow and haze through my close blinds, waking me. Galvriette arrived. I was safe. A long night left me cramped and sore.

I stood cracking my back, one hand against the wall as leverage, and I tried to twist the other direction. I found my hand stuck to the drywall. Not only stuck, but merged. It was hard to see where the wall began and my flesh ended. I struggled, ripping, pulling, trying to escape. I braced my foot against the wall to help, and that became trapped as well. Everywhere my skin made contact, I bled into the surface.

It drew me in until I was fully submerged. Clostrophobia nearly fried my sanity. I was only held for a minute or less before becoming suddenly unstuck and falling back into my bedroom. Stopping only long enough to grab my phone, keys, laptop, and wallet, I left the apartment to wait for Matilda at the restaurant. I was still wearing my pajamas. At that point, I had zero shits left to give.

Are you here yet? I glanced around from my booth after reading Tilda's message. The diner was nearly empty, caught in the limbo between breakfast and lunch and not fancy enough for a brunch. I'm in the back. The booth in the corner. I'm in the red flannel. Before I'd finished typing, a small blonde woman darted into the seat across from me. She's wearing a denim jacket covered in patches and novelty buttons as well as aviator sunglasses.

Try not to look at my reflection in their lenses. I thought it was you. I just wanted to check before inviting myself over. Uh, hello Matilda. I'm Waltz. Well, my real name is... Don't! I don't need to know, and I...

And you're sure as hell not going to learn mine. No offense, but... You look like 10 pounds of horseshit. Somebody stuffed into a doggie bag. Some offense taken, it was a hard night. Sorry, yeah, I know the feeling. Have you heard from any of the others recently? No, not recently.

The last one before you was really Cheshire. It was a week ago, and, uh, and there was some issues. Tilda's lips closed in a hard line. Cheshire is up to no goddamn good, Waltz. They, it's pretty good. What is? Matilda and Waltz.

Waltz-Matilda. You don't get it? Is this like the VPN thing? Oh my God, bro. Please kill me. Get me. It must have been the win. This must have been the win.

This must have been the win. Yeah. Tilda only sighed and stole a sip of my coffee. We sat in silence for a minute while she changed. her lip. Suddenly, Tilda ling close. Don't freak out. She said, pulling off her sunglasses.

I freaked out. Chill. Attilda said, glancing around with empty eye sockets to make sure no one had noticed my yelp. Your eyes. Yeah. You don't have any. You're very observant.

All right. So I was actually fine with the You're Very Observant line until you read it in that donation. You're very, you're very observant. I've fixed it. Yeah, you put some stink on that. I feel like it didn't deserve by giving it the quirky millennials ring at the end. She's empty,

she has empty eye sockets and she, it doesn't matter. It's the wind. I focused on my breathing until I felt like a rabbit. Just ate a burning cherry bomb. What? Is that an expression? I don't know.

What happened? To put her glasses back on. I heard them out last week. Tried to get them back to, whatever the thing was that won to them. Oh, did it work? They took the eyes, but I can still see the creatures. I can still see everything.

I think the eyes are like, like a seed? Does that make sense? They planted those fucking eyes into our skulls and something took root. Other parts of me are changing. And last night, I started floating for nearly 10 seconds. Have you noticed any... Yeah. That bad, huh?

Drain the rest of my coffee. I'd rather not talk about it. Whatever's half. happening? I think you and I are the only ones left. Cheshire is sending me cryptic emails, pictures and weird shit, and all the others have gone dark. I've got somewhere we can go and I've got a plan, but I'm scared shitless to try it on my own. Are you with me? I looked out the window. There was a was a wast nest the size of a Ford Fiesta dangling from a stoplight across the street. The nest was pink and wet. The insects that floated

out from the hive were covered in hundreds of wings. The wasps were each as big as a seagull. Sure. I told Matilda. I guess I'm in. Isaiah. I know. I know.

I know. I'm here, too. I'm here too. I can see the story. I can see the same story. I'm here. Yeah. We are,

we are floating dangerously close to something that is that, that, you know. I know. You what's weird so far since. All right. So also this is, we're, this is part four of six. that we're on right now. And I know people say Hunter, oh God,

they complain so much. Well, you know what, dude, it's our show. And I'm going to have to say what's on my mind, which I'm not going to, I'm not going to dive in because we haven't finished a story.

We don't know what happens, right? I'm going to give it at least that respect. But I will say, I was really stoked on the setup of like in the dock, in the hospital and like recovering and seeing visions in the hospital and stuff. I thought we might linger there a bit more. You know what I mean?

yeah but i mean i don't know i just this idea of the uh it's a lot of good stuff in this story i'm gonna be honest man careful i feel like careful i feel like we're in for it just i mean there there were some like there was some wording choices and stuff like that previously that i kept thinking to myself like in a lesser story Really, really because the author, lesser story I would have like made a joke about it or whatever, but I'm like, I'm fine.

I'll keep going. But then her walking in there and it doesn't just say sunglasses. It says she's wearing aviators. She's wearing a patch jacket. She's wearing a patch jacket with buttons. She's a cool alt girl that's just like you. I just pictured the, I just pictured the trope in a movie where it's like,

it's like the girl in a movie that's like her dad's mechanic. See, you just, Just give me it. Yeah. And she's the one who fixes the car. Oh, thanks.

Yeah, your carburetor is messed up. What's up? My name's Delaney. Is that kind of thing? No, it's always one of those gender neutral names like Jesse or Taylor or something like that. Yeah, my name's John.

Well, that's not John. That would call John a gender neutral name. They're all gender neutral. You can name whatever the fuck you want. Listen, we don't know. We're jumping ahead of ourselves.

We're jumping ahead. But I'm just, no, no, no, I tell you, I'm just, Isaiah, Isaiah, Listen, we're jumping ahead.

Let's let's let's get a time. Here's the thing. We not we are seasoned. We've been, we've read a lot of stuff. I think we might be being a little presumptuous here, right? For the sake of the viewers, for the sake of ourselves, well, maybe let's go on with the next one with an open mind. No, I'm not.

I'm not. No, no, no. My mind's shut up. My mind's close. You can come back at 9 a.m. for breakfast. And then there's going to be an hour break. and then it'll serve lunch and an hour and a half break

and then dinner at 4.30. But until then, my mind is closed. Let's go out with an open mind. How does that sound? Yeah, I don't. I don't. COVID killed open mind businesses. Everyone switched to the difficult.

No, no, no. Let's go on with an open mind. Five cycle. You know what? Actually, I really like this. So part four, I sold the Fermi paradox and I regret it. And this one, it's machine hearts and electric eyes.

Huh? Gosh. You like that? Tell me that's not the title of it. Would not believe your eyes. Machine heart and electric eyes. They make me want to have gay sex. There it is.

All the way around. I'm in the cornfield in the state of Kansas. And I plan on kissing a monster. He's 12 feet tall and speaks. a different language. And I'd rather unearthed a monolith and have sex with a monster. Right?

In my dreams. In my dreams. We're coming slowly. The, uh, actually we should get someone. Someone write that story. A farmer, a farmer who's,

uh, married wife and kids. And I don't. Unearth, unearthed a monolith. He's like, what the hell is? Oh,

oh, oh. Hold on. I didn't know that detail. So the farmer, the farmer had a family that he abandoned for the monster. That kind of creates a complicated. That's a, that's a new,

that's a new development. I still, I like, I do like the wholesome chungis version where it's just a guy. I don't know. Personally, I like the like,

the like, idyllic life. Yeah, I mean, I really do like the, the, the perfect life of this farmer and this monster. But it does make for a more interesting,

kind of like, uh, broke back mountain. kind of conflict of a man who is like, who has a family and then he has to like basically, but he has a true love, you know, you can't fight love,

Isaiah. And that's what he has for this elder creature. And if anything, too, what could happen is he's like, oh, and it could be a really scary first interaction that he has with this monster,

right? What the? Yeah. Who the hell are you? Whatever. And then he sits there and then the monster like grabs his head and he's able to speak to the monster after that. Like he sits there and then he starts seeing some weird shit too.

But then the first. time he interacts with the monster, it's like, whatever, all that stuff. And then the next time, he's like, he's like, so you came back to me. I can understand you. Well, you know, it's like, and now they're able to communicate with each other.

I see, I see. That's a good. That's a good plot development, I think. I think, I don't know. I think maybe, maybe the farmer had a family, then left it. Because I don't want, I don't want the idea to be that like, you know, our monster's a homewreck or anything. No, he has to be.

be. But see, that's the thing though, Isaiah, is that you can't fight love, right? The thing about this farmer was living a fake life before that is a whole thing. And I think that there's going to be a spot where, yes, the wife, the children upset, you know, maybe even the kids are like, you ruined my fucking life. But then in years come, they're just like, he can gain their respect back. He gives them, he gives the family the respect they deserve because he's not living a fake life anymore. And I'd like to make my self-believe. machine hearts turn slowly yeah all right so this yeah the story title uh i'm just telling you man after the i guess i'm in thing it's like all right you better i say you better you

you better stand up straight and act right in this next part i'm gonna we have got to go in with with open eyes people our viewers are going to be livid where this is a horror story tell us i'm livid i'm livid i'm livid do you know how much it drives me up a wall in these when they make them quirky. When it's like, oh, there's a cool horror concept or something. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, and then they'll drag in a character.

Shut up. Shut up. I've never been quirky once. There's never been an instance of me and my, in my professional career where you could ever describe me as quirky. It is, I have been,

I've been aloof and potentially even whimsical, but never quirky. So, whimsical. Fuck you, dude, God. Fuck off. If you,

I've been whimsical. I would. I think there is a stage early in my career where the adjective of whimsical would certainly apply. Wimsy. You know what? What I can't, but I can't. You know why? You know why? Because whimsy can add to his story, but quirkiness debases a story. Oh, that's the difference. That's the difference. Oh, you're being too hard. Look, I, I am. I am because I cannot tell you how many times you've been doing one of these episodes. And I'll be really into it. And I'll be excited and going. And then Monster is a character. Yeah. Yeah. In waltz is a character.

There's like, like they wear a bow tie or they have like suspenders or they're like like, you know, and I, and I, I'm getting still keep it up with mind. All right. Machine hearts and electric eyes. And you know what? And you know what? And you let me speak. Shut up. Shut up. I'm talking.

I'm telling you that right now, I will say there was an arrow that went through my body as soon as the word aviator sunglasses. Because I was like, oh God. It's just the specificity of like, yeah, they're aviators. Yeah, just say sunglasses. Just say, yeah, exactly. That's because you know that's how it was meant. And like for me, it was like, it was like a shotgun rack and then the shot because the shotgun rack was a denim jacket with patches. And I'm like, hmm, how's he's, does you mean that?

She's, but she can still see because the thing has seeds, which is like part of the story or whatever. Okay. So it's like a seed. Okay. Okay. So that I just want to make sure. Because at first, I thought it was. She can see because the eyes have granted her the ability.

It was the seed. It rooted. I understand. I remember that part. But I'm just saying that I didn't know if it was a thing where it's like she's blind, but she still sees like visions or those creatures, but she can't see.

But I mean, it doesn't make sense because she like moved over. But yeah, no. So it's like daredevil for Marvel. He can effectively see. Yeah. Like,

yeah. No, for me, the shot gun rack was denim jacket with patches. And then the blast was the aviator. You know what? Part four. Part four.

Let you want. Let the story. Let the story when you're back. I know what. Hold on. Hold on. I'll give it this. I'll give it this, right? Tales from a lonely broadcast station. Right. There was a point in that story where I forget his name, that character showed up and he was literally wearing suspenders in a bow tie. The assistant or whatever, right? The assistant, yeah. And I was like, here it goes. Here. And we ended up liking that character a lot. He was awesome. And it did not over say it's welcome. Like he said a couple kind of like, funny things or like kind of cringe things or whatever. To be fair.

And the rest of the story did not suffer for it. The world and the setting stayed creepy, stayed consistent. To be fine. To be fair. Maybe this story will do this thing. The tells from a lonely broadcast station also had a more tongue and cheek approach from the from the gig.

Yes. I think this one, I think this one was set up in a cool kind of, you're like, okay, where's this going? And then it's, it's all the quirky chunk of stuff only hurts when you're halfway through. And then it just whips you in the fucking back with it.

just shows up. It just shows up. Yeah. But I, you never know. Keep my eyes open. Keep my, my heart and my soul open. Right. Machine hearts and electric eyes. It's going to be the name of my, uh, my memoir. Go ahead. Hard for. M. He is, uh, the initials for machine arts, electric drives would be mother horse size, um, MHE. And, uh, that just makes me remember how much I miss mother horse size. What fuck are you talking about it?

It's mother horse eyes eyes. It's two different. M-H-E-E. It's two E's. I'm just saying it made me think of mother-horse eyes. And I miss it. That's all I'm saying. All right.

You don't want the entity in mother-horse eyes to show up in a denim jacket with buttons and an aviator sunglasses? Did you imagine? That'd be awesome. Actually, now I'm on board. I'm fully on board. All right. That would actually be, imagine, imagine like you get to part 85 of mother horse eyes. And it's like, the mother had cool aviator sunglasses and went, are you in?

Speaking through the cicadas. We've got to stop the queen. You guys like, then like the CIA people come out of the flesh interface and they're like, guess we're back in action. Or no, Slim Shady starts playing. Guess who's back, back, back, back. as Charles Manson's coming out of a flesh in her face. I agree with you're gonna be monster, but no one wants to see a monster ball.

Let's see it. Let's say it's top of Lila. What a fuck? Cancel M&M? Yeah, right. I love those videos so much. I heard Gensis.

I heard Gensis trying to cancel Eminem. Good luck with that one. I could hear the, I could hear the smirk in your voice. I hated that. Part four, part four. Say the title. I don't want to say this.

No, say the title. Hunter, if you want me to interact with the story positively, I can't say the title. Say the title. You have to. You say it every time. Part four. I say part. I solve the Fermi paradox and I regret it.

Machine hearts and electric eyes. Yeah. Like, do you get to hit the CSI? Like whatever. whenever they do that was at CSI Miami they do the yeah and it goes into the uh the theme yeah it's CSI Miami matilda's plan involved an RV a long drive and possibly an assassination more likely a persuasive interrogation she assured me no no no Isaiah come on go let's care more likely a persuasive interrogation

Pop, you put in the sass lot. I'm not, no, that's what I, there's just a regular read. More likely a persuasive interrogation. She assured me. Does that mean torture? That sounds like torture. Matilda Grinned. It's only torture of chestache doesn't spill their guts.

There you go. You just, there you go. I knew you had a landmine. No, no, no, no, no. That was you. That was you can't get on to me for my attitude and then pull one of those out. No, I was holding a burp. That's why I sounded like that.

Okay. No. Hit the first line again. Until the grand. It's only torture. Cheshire doesn't spit the guts. Because if they don't, then we spell bad guts.

Guess who's back? Back again. Again. Trying to cancel him and am. Every time. Why? Why? Does this do well?

We don't know. It could be good. It could. Could be good. Is there, is there an audience of people out there who's like, I like when I start reading. Oh my. I start reading scary stuff. Yeah.

But then it gets silly. Oh, yeah. Yes, dude. Yes. 100%. Who are they? Who are they? I don't think I've ever met one.

Yeah, who are they? I think they're the majority. I think I would, I would say that this is like, I think that there'd be a lot of people. I think that we're skewed it too much being bad. There's a lot of people who'd be like, I was they really enjoying it until they fucking derailed the story and maybe. want to drive my car. I don't care.

I don't care. Oh, wait, you're talking about, I thought you were talking about us. No, that's what I'm saying. We are doing. No, no. We are doing that. We're the ones driving the car. Yes, I am in fact driving my car for bridge.

You are correct. No, no, no. I'm saying that we as hosts are ruining the story, all right? And it is our job to give an unbiased approach to the story. We never get of our opinions, Isaiah. That's what makes this podcast so good. You're right. You're right.

You had me up until that line. Actually, hold on. Here, I say, hold on, hold on, hold on. Ready? Ready? Okay. Yeah. It's only torture of Cheshire doesn't fill their guts. Because if they don't, then we spill their guts.

We all know what makes this podcast so good is that it is simply an audio book. And we don't discuss how we feel or our opinions about anything related to horror storytelling. And the only reason people watch is. for us to shut up and read the story. So why don't we just shut up and read the story? You can't find. You can't find audio books of these things. No.

Online. No, anywhere. They don't exist. No one does readings of scary stories. That'd be absurd. You definitely come to this podcast for that because no one else is doing that, apparently.

So, yeah, it would make sense to complain when the host of a comedy horror podcast talk about comedy or horror. Because if they don't, we spill their guts. trying to cancel M&M I see. Good luck with that.

You know, and it also like, it just deflates all the stakes you've set up in the story. Because I thought this was real. I thought this was a scenario that humans were going through and they were worried and scared. And it's like, would a human who is seeing demons and it now has to battle with the supernatural, the other and stuff? You're looking at the wrong way. We'll spill their guts. You're looking at the wrong way. You're looking out the wrong way because now you have to hope that the story ends their ends the lives of these characters and it doesn't keep them alive and that's what keeps me on board is that something's going to go on and everyone's like we might go but we like it once again part four

part four machine hearts and electric guys. Let's let's see what we can do here. I was that machine heart. I'm not going to read that in accidents because that's just the whole red of thing of. they always put that in to just be like oh here's links to the previous no this is an actual this is an actual line though this was not how I pictured my life going

when all this started but at least now I wasn't alone in the mess there are you happy there you go I fixed my eyes on the road and made a mental note to never get on Matilda's bass I'm so mad I'm so bad right now because I was into it I was into it okay don't cancel Eminem in front of Matilda got it Okay, Matilda is a real slim shady. She has stood up.

Let me know. You never get on your bad side. All right. Look, if, like I said earlier with the whole Connect 100 stories in one universe thing, if you like that, if you like stories like this, more powered to you,

I don't. So I'm going to act accordingly. So then just read and just, you know what? Try to sit back and enjoy. How does that sound? We were heading west on the interstate towards California, west towards Cheshire, and maybe some answers. All around us, spring was waking up. Trees caught between life and death. Cars zipped by us like fighter jets dodging a blimp.

Matilda's RV was an aged, patched up Winnebago with maroon strips on the side and a carpeted interior that might have been white ones. The old machine rumbled when I pressed on the accelerator. The engine seemed to take the pedals input as more of a suggestion than a command. We struggle to keep up with the highway speed limit. Dilda had her feet on the dash. It's just her feet on the dash.

It's fine. No, because I know how it's saying it. I know how it's saying it. And like, she's just, she's just a cool girl who doesn't live. Oh, I'm sorry that there's a cool girl, Isaiah. I'm sorry it's a cool girl in a story. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. You know what? make her goth and mean to me and then maybe we'll talk. But until then, like I'm not interested. Matilda had her feet on the dash, window down,

a perennial cup of coffee in her hand. She kept her sunglasses on even after I promised her missing eyes didn't bother me. Do you really think Cheshire is going to be that easy to find? We've got his IP address and I'm a natural born bloodhound baby.

Hunter, I need something about the needs something about the farmer and his monster. quick. Oh. I didn't know I could have been like that. All right. You didn't have to take it straight there. Because like the wholesome angle was really what was tying me to this narrative.

But of course, no, no, no, no. Is this why they called a Chinese finger trap? No, no, no, no. The whole, the reason I was playing with you on this one, passing the ball of yarn around is because it was the one wholesome bit you've had in like months. So we were going to leave it there.

And even then, your wholesome bit still involved gay intercourse. But you know what? I was fine with that. That was a peace treaty. But then as soon as I'm in a vulnerable position, you immediately make it into. Hey,

he, Gelletorff? No. Hit me that roll of brownie paper towels. I need to wipe this up. No, see, see, you just, you ruined it. You ruined all that. You ruined everything.

I came to you just didn't confidence. I came to you as a friend who needed something and you rejected me. We've got his IP address and I'm a natural born bloodhound baby. Matilda held one small hand out of the window for any of her fingers through the breeze. I really can't believe both of you, Walnuts forgot to use a VPN or disguised your signal in any way. Walnuts. I can't.

Every, I wanted you to know. Every single quip is like a gunshot to me. Just a giant, a cloud of smoke and you're just on the floor. Sorry, I didn't realize I was living in an episode of Get Smart. What? That was the... All right. I didn't realize I was living in an episode of Get Smart.

Get what? The man from uncle? I don't understand the word you're saying in the order you're saying them. Mission impossible? Okay. That one I got. Like, whatever, man. Yeah, you're right.

Why should anyone care about your story? Like, I don't care. It's monsters. Who cares, right? This is quirky and funny. I don't care. Who would care? That's stupid to care.

would anyone care about stories? That's, that's dumb. Am I being too harsh? Yes. Did you say yes? Yes. There's going to be a large, there's going to be a large minority of people. I don't care. I don't care what they see. I don't care what they say. I really don't care what they say. What I care about is, I feel like a dozen times I've been super invested in a story and they're like, what if we were like Batman? What if this was like a comic book story? I don't we're like, man.

That'd be pretty cool. I think that you have to at least admit that people, I mean, like, even if it's not your cap of tea, it, it's, I will say, so because of Marie on the moon was not like this. We've read. Somebody walks whistling past my window was not like this. What we've, what we've read so far, this author probably was just like, I want to write like a comedy thing or I want to write something that's like a little, little less serious or like a little, it has a little more.

It, it has like a different character. Like he's writing a different character here. or they are writing a different character here that's different. So at least there's versatility in what they're doing. You know, we know they can do this. It's just, this is probably just what they were interested in writing. So we need to at least show respect in that way. Okay, I'll do that.

I'll do that. We drove all day, alternating who had the wheel every two hours. Whenever we needed a rest off, we pull over onto the shoulder. The RV had its own bathroom, kitchen, even a shower. Honestly, it was a pretty princely way to, travel. Twice that day, Matilda signaled me to make an emergency stop. She'd spread from the Winnebago into the trees and brush that lined the highway. Then I'd hear the sound of vomiting. Dilda told me she was fine, but she looked pale. Like me, she had strange dry patches of skin

that shine like dull knuckles. Her neck was also red on both sides of her throat. Some was setting, washing the sky in a gradual shade of violet when we started looking for a place to parked for the night. We passed a massive accident, a dozen cars wrapped around each other. Ambulances and fire trucks and cop cars swarmed, lighting up the evening with red and blue lights. One truck across it in the median and lay flipped over in the grass. There must have been a terrible fire because the vehicle was barely a shelly, blackened, warped. I saw paramedics lifting a covered stretcher into an ambulance. Standing over the entire scene was a shadow of the covered in stars nearly as tall as the tree line entire galaxies rotated across the absolute

darkness of the creature constellations drifting like leaves on a pond the entity turned in my direction and cocked its head curious felt a deep chill there was this pull and Jesus watch the road snap back and looked at the road a horn honked the RV had drifted over halfway into the next lane sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry said correcting our course. What the heck, dude? I thought I saw it. I stuck a glance back towards the accident fading in the rearview mirror.

There's no star-filled shadow leading over the wreckage anymore. Never mind. A few hours after sunset, we pulled into a rest stop. Matilda navigated the RV into an empty space and a gravel parking lot under one of the sparse light poles. There was a cluster of trees around us and a picnic table. Across the lot was a bathroom and some vending machine. vending machines. We raided the ladder for a quick dinner and went to bed. Matilda in the back room and on the pullout couch. I stared at the ceiling for a long time.

Shadows from the light outside crept in through the blinds, painting streaks across the kitchen. There's a tiny TV, but I didn't want to wake Matilda. I was just beginning to drift off when I heard something whistling outside the Winnebago. My heart made a nearly successful escape attempt from my chest. The sound grew louder and louder. Peaked at the the window directly above my bed and faded as the whistler moved past us. I lay in bed and held my breath until it was gone. I didn't sleep that night. On day two of our road trip, Matilda told me more of her plan.

When we get there, you'll hold, you'll hold Cheshire down while I slug up a few times. Just to let them know we're serious. Then we'll ask Cheshire about the cryptic emails and make them tell us everything that they know about the eyes and the creatures. What if they don't know any more than we do? I swallowing a yawn Or what if trying to beat the answers out of Cheshire It doesn't work

But he'll crack delicate knuckles Oh The beating will work The beating always works She looked at me with the blank face And stuck out her tongue I winked and turned on the radio It was a gorgeous day

What? Perfect hold on She looked at me with the blank face Then stuck out her tongue I winked, I winked and turned on the radio. What kind of weird silent interaction was that? You told me that if I didn't have anything nice to say, shouldn't say anything at all.

Oh. So the beating will work. The beating always works. And not have anything nice to say about it. So I guess I should just keep reading. Right, Hunter? Yep. should I continue Hunter?

I said yes. I said yes like three times. I haven't. It's the, it's the Discord thing. If it's, if you speak, you have to speak longer than like half a second or I just don't get it.

Yes. No, see, I heard that one. Thank you. Okay. It was a gorgeous day. Perfect for a drive.

Sun soaked the road. We had the heater running to counter the dawn chill, but there was a warm edge on the wind that suggests the cold was only temporary. I tried to focus on that over the alarming condition of Matilda's skin. Sometime during the night, the red patches on her neck had turned yellow-purple. Thin scars and parallel lines stretched across each plumish. I also noticed that Tilda was hiding her right hand for me, keeping it tucked in the pocket of her denim jacket or hanging out the window.

Her condition was troubling. Not that I was doing much better. I caught side of my face in the mirror. metallic spots I'd seen earlier were fading, but now the veins in my neck and cheeks had darkened to the point they were clearly visible. Little scratches that appeared in clusters around my eyes, giving me the appearance of someone who had gone through a briar patch face first. I felt dizzy and my joints were sore. As we pulled into a fast food place to grab breakfast, I prayed that we'd find Cheshire and that they'd have some kind of answers. clouds began to spill into the sky around midday puffy white at first clouds quickly darkened and the nice day i'd predicted became dreary rain lashed at the windshield faster than the old RV's wipers could keep up we rocked and rattled with every gusts after an hour it became clear we were pushing our luck so tilda found an exit to a half empty mall we parked the RV and spend the rest of the day sitting on the cramped couch together watching whore movies. I woke up after dark. A gentle hum of the rain on the window and the warmth of the

Winnebago must have put me to sleep. I felt something present against my shoulder. Apparently, Matilda nodded off as well. Outside, the world was bright white, lit by the parking lot's infinite rows of fluorescent lamps. Beyond the glow of the lights, the sky was dark, clouds obscuring any stars. Adilda's glasses had slipped off as she slept. As or no, she was Fox featured. As or no, she was Fox featured, stunning and lovely. I tried to wake her up, but she grumbled and held her arms out. Took me a moment to realize she wanted a lift.

When I did, I felt a little rush and smiled. I carried her to the bedroom, took off her shoes, tucked her in, and then slipped out to return to the couch, closing the door between us. I was still grinning as I fell back asleep. A small smoke caused me to snap awake. The first thought was fire. Then I saw the figure sitting on the edge of the couch. So close, he was almost touching my feet.

You're not looking so good. Smoker croaked. In the dim light, I could see that he was wearing a wrinkled and stained gray suit with the shirt untucked in no tie. Same cloud of smoke hung over his face, hiding his features. Though I thought I could see the air. outline of a trilby of a trillby hat through the haze am i dreaming smoker grabbed my leg i yelped he pulled my foot towards his face i heard the crunch click of a jaw unhinging and started to struggle smoker dropped my foot and i

jumped to my feet did you feel that was shaking standing with my fist raised yeah then they're not Simon. Sit down. An invisible force slammed into my shoulders. I fell to the floor, then dragged myself into a sitting position. Smoker's side, causing a puff of smoke to blow out. I warned you about the eyes. Offer to take them from you.

But now it's too late. The seed is planted in you and you're nearly ready to bloom. Do you feel it? My face was tight. I reached up and touched my cheek. The veins there were as hard and cold as stu-est. hard and cold as stone, stretching against the skin. What's happening?

The usual change. I told a scream from the bedroom. I tried to stand up, but the same unseen pressure knocked me down. Smoker stood over me. Then he was gone and I could move. I ran to the bedroom door. It was locked. I told him screamed again and I heard whispering. Fuck the spooky shit.

I kicked the door. Twice was enough to snap the cheap lock. The room was. was dark and looked empty except for Matilda. She was scrolled up near the top of the bed, one arm raised to protect her face. Tilda, where is it? She slowly lowered her arm. Gone.

I think it was, there was a girl. Her eyes were, waltzed they were awful. She bit me. She bit me. I could see a bloody ring just under Tilda's wrist. Small teeth marks were clearly visible. Why? What did we do to them?

Like There's a little Mark Wahlberg on that one Just just a little bit I could hear him speaking through her All I could do was shake my head You stay here tonight Hey Pick or drop the floor waltz

No funny business Just I feel better if you slept in here Okay Okay Don't get hard hard. Also, I fart while I sleep, so I hope you don't mind anything stinky. You know what?

I actually have some criticized other than just the obvious, other than the obvious. I don't like that Matilda was introduced as like a character who knows what she's doing and is capable and has done things like torture and for some reason to get this stuff done and she's like uh and our and waltz is kind of like just a clutz who is afraid who she's rescuing and then as soon as like she brings him along she suddenly needs rescued and she becomes the weak character who needs to comfort in and blah blah blah okay uh Isaiah you can try to cancel them and then all you're obvious but uh you're right you're right yep you're completely right I agree.

Part five? I got into bed. There's still a sentence left. Oh. I got into bed, then immediately out when Tilda asked me to switch on a light. Finally settling in,

Tilda lifted my arm and moved close to me. You stayed like that until the pigeons outside announced the break of dawn. Part five. Part five. All right. Only ten more parts. Do what?

Only ten more parts. No, no, you know, not getting me this time. I checked. I checked before we started. Oh, you know how like, yeah, like when Kanye was doing all of his Kanye stuff, people would be like, he made graduation. He made graduation, you know, he made graduation. Right now, I'm like, bro, you cannot compare. You cannot compare, you cannot compare the motto to fucking. Kanye's Nazi rants, dude.

No, I'm not, I'm not saying it's, it's in the same sense that graduation was as culturally impactful as, you know, Marie on the moon. It's like scaled. It's not the same kind of issues at all. I'm just saying that right now, I, like many more with Kanye, for good reason, uh, was having issues with the work of an artist. Uh, but the previous work was so good that I'm like, we got to give, we got to give credit where it's due, right?

that's all I'm saying. We're on part five. At least. Part five. You'll read the title? I solved the Fermi paradox and I regret it. We chase the cat. Cheshire cat probably.

The what? The Cheshire cat. Yeah. Yeah. Cheshire cat. And also I was right about the entities not being bad per se trying to save them from the people making

the eyes and bear trap and blah blah blah. Matilda was sick. She tried to hide it, but the farther we drove, the more clear it became that she was falling apart. Little cracks kept appearing in her skin. They were thin, almost scratches, and under them, something caught the line. The fingers on her right hand were fusing together,

and the lines on her throat had widened and turned a reddish purple. More than a few times that week, I saw Talda sit down, looking either short of, breath or dizzy. Wasn't very much better. The dark veins spread throughout my body,

hard enough that I could feel them when I pressed down on my arm or leg. There were like thick wires threading over my muscle and bone. Rough gray patches were also popping up all over my body and my limbs were so stiff in the morning that tilled us sometimes had to pull me out of bed.

We started sharing the RV single bedroom after the night we ran into the smoker and the girl with mirror eyes. so all things considered it wasn't an entirely bad trip this was not how I pictured my life going this all started at least was so on whatever

would you like to stop and see the world's third largest ball of yarn told her ass she was riding shotgun feet I told her till the till the kind of girl to pass a semi

and try to get him to honk dang it he must be having a bad day I love you saying that because I feel like I feel like that's something they would ride into one of these stories is like a thing

cool people do she was writing shotgun feet up on the dash and window down as usual we were somewhere in the Midwest more than halfway to California Cheshire field stretched out around us

flat and green and endless I looked over to one and saw a man in a 12 foot tall altrich abomination barreling through the hay lovers The sky looked like it could spit out a tornado any second, but there was no rain. I was driving, thumping along on the serial world and the song on the radio. At that moment, monsters seemed so far away.

Tilda with her sunglasses and quick grin, so very close. I opened my mouth to reply when I felt my stomach curl in on itself like an alarmed armadillo. Gotta stop! I mumbled, swerving to halt on the shoulder. Thankfully, we were the only vehicle inside on the two-lane highway. I barely made it into the bathroom before a guy's with neon blue fluid came bursting out of my mouth. Are you okay? Tilda ass knocking on the door.

Yeah, I feel fine. But maybe we saved the yarn for the return trip? We drove on for most of the afternoon. I told the night I didn't talk about the weird things we saw along the way, but I could sense things were getting worse for her. I know they were for me. Some nights I would look out at the sky and see unfamiliar stars and impossible configurations Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck Some nights I call it a draw

But I still wake him Once I'd woken up to see something like the northern lights outside Only the ribbons of color were all shades of red Something massive swam through the lights A black shape the size of an aircraft carrier Covered in dangling tentacles one of them brushed the top of the RV and the vehicle shuttered

pressed myself into the bed holding my breath all to stir next to me but didn't wake up see stuff like that I like separate it from everything else going on just these descriptions of like sky beast and stuff like that

that's all really cool to me oh yeah I like all that most of our encounters with the creatures were like that bombs and close passings oddities observed at a distance distance, the majority of entities ignored us. Maybe they didn't notice us at all. A few came near or at least followed our path, usually with way too many eyes. I always sense curiosity from

those run-ins, but I only ever felt in danger once. The day after we missed the yarn, Matilda and I were having a picnic lunch and a rest stop discussing our plan of attack for where we finally found Cheshire. If you hold him, I can him until he tells us how to reserve whatever the is going on with us. I nibbled a sandwich and I can no longer taste. I just, I don't know. I feel like we should have a more nuanced approach. You need to hold them while you hit him?

We don't even know Cheshire as a he. We don't know anything about them. They might not even be human. Tilda cut into an apple. paused. What if Cheshire is a cat or like a group of cats all working together? I fucking hope not. I,

the rest of my sentence died in my mouth. The picnic area was surrounded by more fields, a motive green bordered on one side by the highway and the other by a thick forest. Standing just outside of the tree line was a tall figure with a long, thin neck. It was hard to tell at that distance, at least 200 yards, but it looked like the creature was at least 12 feet tall. The thing was standing still facing us. Its head dropped down, turning the top of its body into a question mark. Maybe it couldn't support the weight of its own skull. Something about the creature reminded me of a time I'd walked into my garage and heard a hissing sound.

This was only a few months after I'd originally lost my sight. The world had gone dark and every noise stood out. I wasn't sure what kind of animal made the hissing, but I'd backed out of my garage and slammed the door. There's danger in the sound. Sense of violence coiling. I got the same vibe when I looked back at the tall thing on the edge of the field. Get in the RV She turned to where I was looking

and froze when she noticed the creature Tilda even took off her sunglasses to get a better look with empty eye sockets What do you think? She began Floppy Floppy head The clever name I mentally assigned the monster

began to stumble towards us through the tall grass Arvi I shouted jumping in Pettilda was right on my heels, diving in on the passenger side. For a panic second, I couldn't find the keys. Floppy was moving faster now, sprinting towards across the field, head bouncing like a ball on a string. He was clumsy, but quick.

Way too quick for a creature that gangly. My brain suddenly decided to work, and I pulled down the sun visor. Keys fell into my lap. Floppy had covered almost half the distance between the trees and the RV before I finally turned the ignition. filled out of the rest areas parking lot so fast I worried we might roll over. But then we were on the highway, gaining speed, and I felt every single muscle in my body unclench.

Floppy burst out behind us onto the road. Fuck, shitting fuck! I said slamming on the gas. The creature looked ridiculous when it ran, all windmilling arms and wobbly neck. But damn, it was fast. We didn't start to put it firmly into our rearview mirror until the Winnebago was wheezing along at 50 miles an hour. drove in silence for a while.

I think we should limit our stops. Yeah. We made it to the state line that night, while we were searching for an exit to another rest off our parking lot when Tilda bolted upright in her seat. Look! She said, pointing around a bend in the hill ahead.

Do you see it? I turned to where she was gesturing. I did see it. Tree taller than any building I'd ever seen towered over the horizon. Setting sun looked the shape from below and cast a shadow across the forest. Blue lights flew.

loaded around the tree's trunk, moving back and forth and wide, sweeping circles. It was breathtaking and beautiful and seemed so intentional, like we were being signaled. Head that way. Let's see it up close. I wanted to. I really wanted to. Something about the dancing lies in the scale of the tree pulled at me. I felt drawn towards them. A honking horn snapped me out of the lock. We drifted across lanes and cut off a car. I put us back on, course and stepped on the accelerator. Maybe we can check it on the way back. Let the yarn.

But Waltz, no, no, we can't. Something isn't right. Oh, are you sure? Yes. Okay. Tilda stared out the window at the tree until the sun was fully down. Darkness and distance hid the shape, but the blue lights were still visible for the better part of an hour.

Drifting. Calling. I do, I do, uh, I do like imagery of giant trees. I think that's cool. I think that's just a cool addition to any story. We crossed in in California just before midnight and decided to keep driving until we reached the coast. That's where Tilda expected to find Cheshire.

She was tracking their online activity, sitting at the RV's tiny kitchen table with my laptop. Is this really going to take us right to Cheshire? Like, at their front door? Probably not. The IP should give us a basic idea, but we might have to stake out the neighborhood for any signs. It could be at least a few days.

I saw Tilda through the rearview mirror scratching at her cheek. Strange scars on her throat had started to bleed. She saw me looking, sunglasses lingering on the mirror for a moment. And she picked up the laptop and went to the bedroom. We didn't have to search along for Cheshire's house. Tilda directed me down a series of turns until we were in a sparsely populated neighborhood. The area was caught between suburbia and sticks. House is spread out with large yards populated by resting cars on cinder blocks

and stray cats. There was no doubt which was Jess Sharve's property. Thunderstorm word over a single home at the end of the street. I inched the RV closer than parked a few houses back. Storm was off somehow. Great clouds jerked and stuttered against an otherwise blue sky. Rain fell in. When I looked closely, I saw that the rain wasn't actually falling.

It was rising up from the ground like iron shavings lifted by a magnet. An indigo whip of light also started from the yard and crawled towards the sky. It moved in slow motion like a snake striking in a flipbook. The house was hard to see through the ascending curtain of rain, but looked old and huge and hungry. Tilda and I sat in the RV, surrounded by a beautiful spring day, watching a pocket storm pressed down on a house. Do we knock? Just go say hello or should we be sneaky and have like a steak out? I told it didn't reply.

I turned to see her staring at me. Glasses off. Empty eyes fixed on me. Her throat was bleeding again. Gentle drips of red staying in her collar. She was wheezing slightly with each breath. I'm scared. I reached out and squeezed her hand.

Yeah. Same. Well, there's one part left. Final part. Here we go. Read the title, Isaiah. Part six, baby. Final part.

Are you excited, Hunter? Oh, man. I can't wait to see what Cheshire is. I'm excited. I think it's really cool. Yeah, also, so far, stories aren't related to the Farby Paradox at all, by the way.

I think it's really cool how Matilda's established to be like this cool kind of killer knows her way around town character, and then she's scared and her and the hero has to comfort her and keep her safe and blah, blah, blah. You know, dude, sorry that she's a fucking human being, man. You know what?

You know what, man? Maybe I just hate love. Maybe I just hate being in love. Maybe I hate it. Maybe that's what it is. Maybe I'm just an aromantic guy who doesn't care about poetry or writing at all. Maybe that's my problem. Trust me.

I know. Wouldn't I know? No. You wouldn't know. You wouldn't know. I said you have sent you flowers time and time again to no response. Hunter, Hunter makes passes at me constantly. And you would think that if I was receptive to it or if,

he was receptive to the rejection, you get the hint. Here we are. I'm sorry, I'm in love. So. You know, you sent me yesterday, everyone? You don't know you sent me yesterday? A bouquet of roses. Nope.

No, no, I just sent me yesterday. He sent me a photograph of his pants and underwear around his ankles. And he's sitting on toilets, so you can't see anything from this perspective, but the implications there. And he said, going through it right now. And I said, that's a rough one man, Godspeed. And he said, probably the most poetic phrase of his entire life, muster seeds into a pot of honey. There's meaning to that.

There's steepness to it that whatever luck would be wished would be meaningless in the face of oblivion like that. And that is how you described a bathroom experience so extreme you had to text me about it. I had it hurt for you for a while. I was, I was, I just wanted to communicate with you somehow. I was wanting to connect. And that's what I was experiencing.

I had a, a long day. This is also the image you sent me earlier. Hey, if you don't want to check that out. I'll put it on Reddit or something. You see you guys can have it for your own. Devious means anyway,

part six. It's such a strange feeling. Walking through rain that's rising from the ground. Till the night of beda driving away and waiting until morning to confront Chesshire, but after an hour, Tillta just stood up and walked out at the RV. I followed. Pass through the yard with its little upside down storm quickly. Water was cold and had the consistency of motor oil.

Tilda hesitated once we reached the porch. No, this is, this is just, this is how I pictured. That, they do, they put these in there to just be a link off to it. You've got to read it. This isn't how I pictured thing. Hold on. Oh, my God. Compose yourself first.

Hold on, hold on. Um, wow, I love, this isn't how I pictured things ending when all this started. At least we'd finally found Cheshire. There, is that better? Do we knock? She asked, leaning against the wall to catch her breath.

The lines on her throat were bleeding again. I could kick the door down. I lied. My legs were stiff. My muscles felt like jello was cement crawling through my veins. Thunder broke gently above us. ramping up until it was a roar. Another jack of lightning rose in slow motion from the ground towards the clouds until

the reach for the doorknob. It was unlocked. Fuck it. She said entering the house. It was like walking into a bad ass a trip. Nothing in the house was level. The floors were crooked, the walls even. The little furniture I could see was mismatched, broken, almost hostile.

The entry room was dominated by twin staircases that twisted off. into the ceiling. There was a bear-skin rug covering the wooden floorboards. Only someone had replaced the bear's head with a dirty blonde wig. I reached down towards the hair and recoiled. It wasn't a wig. We shouldn't be here, said, turning for the door. It was gone. There's nothing but a blank, grimy wall. Tilda made a sound that was either a cough or a laugh. Guess we gotta keep going. We pressed on. The halls were narrow and seemed to stretch on far longer than they should.

They were full of blind corners, abrupt turns, and the occasional dead-in. Some halls were dim. Others were so bright I had to squint, shade my eyes with my hand. On and on they rolled. Must have walked for more than an hour. I told it was struggling to breathe the entire time, rasping and stopping every few minutes. I wasn't very much better. Each step felt like I had cinder blocks chained to my feet. One of the hallways was lined with pictures.

I tried not to look at them too closely. There were portraits with blurred faces, a landscape under a night sky where a single red star made the paint look like it was bleeding. Halfway down the hall, Tilda stopped. What is... I started to ask. Then I saw the picture. It was an oil painting of Tilda and me crucified to the side of the RV.

Limbs nailed and... That's spooky. Oh, we got our crucifixion. That's scary. Is that scary, Hunter? Are you scared? Yeah, imagine going to a place and then you see an oil painting of yourself. You're crucified.

And it's like, how did you get that painting? It's creepy. That's pretty scary, man, because realistically, you know, most people probably don't have a painting like that. No. But here's their painting. So that's creepy that they have one. Our faces were both warped with absolute pleasure.

We were laughing so hard that our jaw stretched. down in our chest. Let's try to go a little faster. Tilda said, turning, took a breath to calm myself, made the mistake of glancing at the picture again. I felt my stomach heaved. Tilda waited while I got myself together. Finally, we came to a door.

The knob was brass and warmed to the touch. I noticed a hum coming from the other side, almost a buzzing. What do we do if Cheshire's in there? I don't know, Waltz. I don't know what to do anymore. Tilda reached for the knob. All I can do is roll with it. The room was gigantic, cavernous, and uncomfortably human.

Thick, hot air slammed into Tilda and me as we entered. Space was dark, with only enough light to pick out silhouettes and shapes. I fumbled for a light switch in. To my surprise, actually found one. Click. Light flooded the room. Hello! Cheerful voice called out.

I think I screamed. or Matilda did. Maybe both of us. We'd found Cheshire. He was the size of a bear, a never-ending tumble of wet skin. Cheshire reminded me of a partially deflated balloon, somehow both bloated and saggy at the same time. His body appeared stuck to the wall,

flesh merging with wood in a bloody whirl. Every time he opened his mouth, fat black tongue dropped out all the way down to his navel. Cheshire was also completely, naked. You shouted, bouncing up and down, causing his skin to ripple. Cheshire? Tilda asked, the creature bounced again.

Yes. Hello, friends. Hello, Waltz. Hello, Matilda. Walter Matilda. Waltz and what the flog? What the fuck took you do? What the fuck took you do so long?

At the beginning of this story, you know, we had Mr. Wide Mouth as a, uh, a doctor. and we had a cowboy with his Eldridge love interest and like, I didn't know how good I had it, you know? Yeah. It's like that thing from the office. I wish you could know you were in the good times

before the good times were over. Didn't know what I had two hours ago. Rewined through the video right now. Go look at me. Ben, that was a happier man. And then, we're reading a, we're reading an alien's

today. I was a different man than the man I am now. Don't worry, I'll do the line better. Yes! Hello, friends! Hello Waltz! Hello, Matilda! Walton!

Matilda, Walton! What the fuck took you do so long? Shout sent me scrambling for the door, but of course, it was gone. I hated that house deeply. You're the last two. Why don't you have a seat? Glanced around. The giant room was entirely empty except for a bed the size of a swimming pool in the corner

The sheets were staying in freshly dripping material that looked terribly similar similar to Cheshire's skin Set on the floor till to sit next to me come closer Cheshire asked we did not well fine then well you found me I mean as easy as I could but you all stuck you all still took so very long The others have already gone even came Calvin and Violent. I thought you might leave before them, but no, no, no, no, no.

Calvin went off in his cloud of smoke and little violent fell into a looking glass. She always liked you. Cheshire turned towards Matilda. You've seen them, haven't you? He's gotten some visits, yes? What's going to happen to us? You'll change.

You'll become. What? What are we going to become? Cheshire shrugged. At least, I think he shrugged. The slabs of flesh where his shoulders should be rolled like waves against the shore.

It's not for me to know what you'll become, only that you will. The eyes are seeds, you see. Ha! You see? And once the seeds are planted, there's no way to know of what you'll grow. Grow, grow!

And what you've changed, you'll need to leave. Why? and leave for where the change will make this world unsuitable the air will become poison the sunlight will become heavy enough to break bone but you're in luck there's so many other worlds and so many many holes between this world and the others jeshire's small tongue dropping so low nearly touched the ground there's a house with a hundred doors that you could travel forever and never explore at all there's a night with a starless sky where they're

and crawl back home and a clearing in the woods where the devil's dance and lost children decorate the trees. There's a dying place where a coward king waits on a throne of glass and in the middle of it all. A neighborhood sitting on a slow hill wedged between a crack in reality. Oh, the places you could go. At a time, you might even learn how to visit here, how to travel back and forth, and how to find hopeless things, how to feed. you don't make any sense why me why are you doing this to me because you were there because you needed something from us because you accepted a gift and now you're and now we're giving you more have you felt the call yet the doors have all certain the doors all have a certain pull for those who can see them

i thought of the tall tree with its blue light drifting in the sky the way it tugged at us and and how much Tilda wanted to see it. If we passed something like that again, would we be able to stay away? Tilda stood up. Enough. I'm tired of listening to you, rambled bullshit. You're gonna tell me how to stop whatever's happening to me.

I'll hurt you until you tell me. I'll hurt you permanent. I promise I will. Jet Shire smiled and smiled and smiled. Mouth stretching until his face split in half. Something fuzzy crawled out of the hole. it was a skull with a spine attached all the bones covered in thick black hair

see you on the other side skull said in Cheshire's voice slither down the mountain of sagging flesh that used to be its body that shot across the floor too fast to follow Tilda dove of the creature trying to grab hold Cheshire slipped through a seam between the wall and floor he was gone

Jesus as much else to say Tilda slammed her fist on the ground Fuck, fucking, freak, fucking, fuck all of this! Cheshire's flesh was slowly dripping onto the floor, sliding off the wall like yogurt. It already reeked of spoiled meat and for some reason, strawberries. Behind the skin was a door. Nowhere else to go, we went through and found ourselves standing outside of Cheshire's house on the porch.

The storm had stopped. The sky was a perfect April blue. What now? maybe we can track him down maybe we can Tilda silently crossed the yard and headed towards the RV after a moment I followed by the time I got inside she'd already gone into the bedroom and shut the door

it was locked but Tilda she didn't answer I heard her crying I wondered what it was like for her crying without eyes were there still tears sat on the small couch in the RV's kitchen and waited 20 minutes later Tilda emerged calm and pale sunglasses on.

How about we go see that ball of yarn? Sure. I said getting up to start the RV. That sounds like a good trip. We didn't hurry. Took our time driving, exploring random exits, stopping off and to get out and just walk around. Both of us were dissolving slowly. Telt his fingers and toes were growing into each other.

A lumps of her hair in the shower each day as well as teeth. She stayed bundled up, shivering even in the heat, always struggling to get enough air. My veins continued to blacken to become hard, pressing against skin that had become as rough as bark. It wasn't so bad. We had good times, even then, sleeping in until noon, staying up until dawn, always together. We saw more and more strange creatures each day. buzzers with antlers and human eyes, clouds that dragged tails across the ground as they drifted, and we saw doors, or usually, I guess we felt them.

Cheshire was right. They called to us, pulled us. Tilda felt them stronger than I did. One night we were driving past a hospital and Matilda grabbed the wheel, tried turning us into the parking lot. I wrestled control back and slammed on the accelerator. Once the building was out of sight, Tilda settled down. I hurt so much. She told me, rolled up in the passenger seat.

I don't think we can stay here, but I'm afraid to go. We'll be okay. We'll find a way to fix things. Last night, we slept at a rest area near a forest. When I woke up in the morning, Batilda was gone. Found her trail easy enough. Bloody footprints leading off into the woods. Soon I started coming across her clothes.

Reservor hair, all of her fingernails and toenails. The grizzly procession led to the edge of a small, still lake. The water was chilly and threatened me with my own deteriorating reflection. I felt the pull then. The lake was a door, a thin spot where the fabric of reality was worn and frayed, a hole into another world. I doubted the lake was deep, but I sensed that I was standing on the cusp of a terrible drop. If I went into the water, I knew I would sink until all light was gone, then further still.

I wondered what was on the other side, what things might live in all of that darkness and pressure. Most of all, I wondered if I'd ever seen Matilda again. There was another pull, overwhelming, a riptide trying to drag me down. I panicked and slipped, stumbling away from the lake as fast as I could. That door was not my door. I put some miles between myself and the rest area. Even during that short drive, I felt other doors calling to me. If I stay here too long, I know I'll die, but if I leave, I'd never be able to come back.

And who knows what I might be walking into if I cross over? The doors whisper to me, promise and beg and threaten. There are infinite fields, unfamiliar star. pits, eyes, and hungry things all waiting. I won't be able to resist much longer, and I'm so scared at how inevitable it feels. But I'm going to see that giant ball of yard if it's the last thing I do.

Just wish I didn't have to do it alone. I'm so tired. Miss Matilda. And that is the end of I solved the farm, the Farmy products, and I regret it. It was good, man. it was crazy that he never I don't think he ever brought up

the Fermi paradox at all after the intro he did he said aliens or life or stuff like that he said well you know it's the friday paradox but it's not really that he's like it's just a theory is what he said very beginning you know this is a

this is a good this is did uh did uh the maria of the moon come after this or before this before it's an interesting thing to see someone kind of take the thing about no sleep and I'm curious to see this um is this feels like an idea where each time they were posted they didn't I don't think it didn't really feel like there was

I doubt I'm curious to know if at the beginning of the story if that's how the writer knew that it was going to end that way and I feel like a lot of people in no sleep use these uh parameters and they use these rules that monosely pass to kind of like just try out new creative things or like unravel ideas or see how they connect connect stuff. Like it's not the same as like a traditional book where you know it's like all in a completed thing. It's just per like just whenever you want to do a new post, you just add to it. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And I'm curious if this was just an experiment or a thought or something because to me this is also this is a good example of a person that obviously knows how to like make a story, write something compelling. and it seems like somebody just trying to like take a bucket of ideas of things they've thought and utilize them into a story or just like pour them out and they're not sure how to navigate. It's like dumping a big bucket of puzzle pieces onto a table and kind of just looking at it. Like it not really like formulating it into a giant picture and just kind of like realizing

that there's a bunch of pieces that need to be put together. But it's just like, yeah, it is what it is. it's a good example of like I mean by the end it becomes almost like left right game in the way that like two people are going it's it's all these crazy things are happening

they're mutating they're ascending there's really no end to this journey it is just kind of like a ever expanding kind of idea but it's it's lessened by which whatever you're about the millennial humor

what are the character like that you know that that's like just personal preference but i do think that the uh it's so abrasive and so surreal from the get go that by the end none of the stuff really has any grabbing weight to it like the the the cool like the idea that like bettilda's like dissolving the same way that cheshire was and that they're like ascending almost like cheshire to me was like a pinhead s character who's like you asked for a gift and this is like you know we have such sights to show you kind of thing

um and then like their physical body decays and they get slip off into whatever unknown world which maybe this story connects with another thing um but it this idea that like there's these doorways and stuff and that you know matilda's dissolving she crawls into the lake which is a door there's a lot of like interesting ideas but since the beginning we've seen we've heard of like creatures with a billion eyes looking at them from drains and stuff um i think that it's just a it it's an interesting way of of showing that like building on you like setting things up to keep building and not uh you know burn out too quick to where there's no way to there's nowhere to go you know like if you if you

bust that load early there's no way to uh recapture that magic later in my opinion um so yeah i think uh i think if you look at it objectively even removing all the all my grimes and how furious i am right now just looking at objectively uh uh people have weird experiment done to them. They can see supernatural things. They go to a guy who supposedly knows something. They see some more weird things. And then the guy tells them that they're actually part of a lot of weird things.

And then he like effectively dies or leaves. And then the story ends. So, you know. Also, you probably saw the hyperlinks. All of those things that the thing was describing are other stories. stories from Grand Theft motto. So it is just like throwing of their universe. It's just like throwing your whole catalog into a thing,

which is fine. And if people want to do that, I think a good rule of thumb. And this is more so for Harry than anyone else. I think a good rule of thumb would be, uh, don't, don't give us stories that require prior reading or extended universe.

Because there's some people who like him, but I ain't going to like them. People aren't going to like what I have to say about them if they do. The original concept, which the original concept of a guy, like of a blind person, which they didn't really harp on him being blind very long, which is also another thing too. I don't even think they mentioned it.

They're just like, I have eyes now. Only one time, I think in part four or part five, was he just like, oh, well, you know,

this is before, this is whenever the world was like dark and, you know, whatever. And now it's a different, it was like a one, it's one line, but,

um, I still think like the concept of an idea of like, a person getting their eyesight changed and then like you're able to see into like an alternate universe or something though we've seen that before I still think that it's a fun concept or even the idea that like you go in for a routine surgery or something and it's like you are being kept by aliens or like you're being experimented on like this idea of like the setup of the hospital I thought was just kind of fun I just wanted to live there a bit longer and I mean it just shows two of like it's it seems like he was the person the author was writing a story and then

halfway through either they just didn't want to they just didn't care not that they didn't care that they're just like I just don't know if I like that idea I'm just going to pivot it because we get interested in these characters and then the next beats like all of them are gone it just seemed like it seemed kind of rushed uh versus like there was a lot of angles to maybe set up and like play with some of the characters and you know it just comes down to like how much did they want to invest into the story, which it seems currently, in my opinion, that that was, uh, the, the investment. They were like, I, I, I, I just want to wrap this up. Um, yeah, is how it felt. Yeah. Um, I agree. I would agree with. But, you know, we got gay Kansas, uh, sex and we got some pretty good with the monster.

And we got the, once again, Mr. Wide Mouth, the doctor. And that's pretty good, I guess. It's a, uh, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a surreal thing, though, of seeing. I'm always curious if people see stories do well and then they want to try a version of that thing. Like was it a thing where trying to do a version of like left right game? Is it like because so many of these stories also lean into characters who experience like weird anomalies. And they use the post format to be like, hey, so this weird thing happened today. You know, not that that's necessarily what this was, but there was a lot of like tales from the gas station.

Lonely Radio Broadcast Station. Like all that, like it had that that vignette of like very weird surreal things happening to a character. But it just didn't have any of the buildup of like making you understand who this person is. What are they want, whether they're mode. Like who there was all those things. And I'm curious if like people see those things.

They're like, oh, I'd be curious to try. Like I'm curious to try to write a story like that. You know, which there's no problem in that either. I mean, like just being like,

yeah, you know, whatever. At the other day too, Isaiah, it's like these are just free story. stories that people are posting out and like just throwing out into the ather just to kind of be like and I respect at least the idea of like someone wanted to do a story to be creative and stuff

yeah I think that I think even then there's like a misunderstanding of how left right game and stuff like that can maintain like brevity while also being scary because the brevity was never at the cost of the situation or the creatures the brevity was always character based so there would be light moments or like funny comments made between rob and bristol um but it was never about the monsters or the situation no one no one turned left and then the character's like let me guess next is right or whatever um or they didn't see like and i think it large rob's son's dead's wife ghost and being like what's her problem you know like they never cheap they kept the stuff that needed to be scary scary and then the lightness was between each other whereas all these stories

like this one and my property isn't normal and stuff like that love to make the jokes about the threat so therefore they quit being threatening yeah I you know and I do think that stories like the left right game or other stories that we've read that

have that brevity I think is just because we spend so much time with the characters you build them up to where you feel like you know them and you have that kind of almost casual cadence with them you know whenever you're looking at something and you feel like you don't know a character I feel like you are the weird essence like the weird uh what is essential escentricities what is it called eccentric way

just the whatever a character kind of like goes and makes like that big of a change it's kind of it just kind of hit you a bit harder because you're just like well fuck oh I you know I why are we joking like that because we have no build up to who they are or their character or anything and especially in a story like this where it's like we're three parts in and that's when we get hit with it was a bit tonally a whiplash as well. I agree. But you know, my feelings on it have been pretty clear.

And like you said, don't be mean. So that's my thoughts. It was a nice. You know what? I'm glad that we got to sit down and re-history today. And I'm glad we got to hang out for a bit. And we thank you guys for hanging out with us as well.

If you're listening to this on Spotify, be sure to give us a nice rating there. I appreciate you. If you're watched it on YouTube, thank you guys. And thank you for sharing the story and supporting the authors. And also if you wanted to get some extra content, feel free to sign up to the Patreon.

We got exclusive episodes there. And until next time, guys, stay creeped. We love you. We'll see you then. I didn't realize it until after I got done reading, but precisely at the time that I was getting on to Hunter about making it explicitly, like making the story with the cowboy and the Eldridge,

thing not wholesome. He was sending me, I think these are VHS or DVD covers for gay porn. He was sending them to me on Discord, such as riding with gay daddy. So he's, yeah, he's sending me these in the middle of the recording. So if I ever, if you ever see me reading and like I look over and I'll just stop or do something, just know it's probably something like that. whatever.