CreepCast - My Wife Has Taken Our Roleplaying Too Far | Creep Cast

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

Can role play physically change you? How long should it last? After a man quits his job and begins to wear diapers, where can it go from here? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adch...oices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 There is the cold habitual, and it is the froy of the mountains blue. The frost at its summit. Coors Light, t'en've been a fraud. Celebrate in a fashion responsible, you have to have the age legal to consume the alcohol.
Starting point is 00:00:13 Woo! Stop! Do you know how fast you were going? I'm going to have to write you a ticket. To my new movie, The Naked Gun. Liam Nissan. Buy your tickets now. I get a free Tilly Dog.
Starting point is 00:00:25 Chili Dog, not included. The Naked God. Tickets on sale now. August 1st. Welcome back to Creek cast This week we have a two-parter This is kind of an interesting one The story is called
Starting point is 00:00:45 My husband has taken a role-playing too far Followed immediately by My wife has taken our roleplay too far You know This is something I feel like all of our viewers and listeners can probably relate to in some way. Somebody, the freakiness of this fan base is disgusting.
Starting point is 00:01:05 Well, I'm sure that the kind of people who listen to multi-hour podcasts from two men they've never met are just all the time just getting whatever they want. So yeah, I bet there's a huge overlap. But now, this story's been recommended a lot
Starting point is 00:01:21 by you all in the comments. At least the first part has been my husband's taken a role playing too far and after some looking, it looks like the same author made a sequel called My Wife has taken a role playing too. far. So we're going to read these two back to back. Hopefully it makes a cool little story. Hopefully you all are right. But I will say once again that you all have a very shifty track record
Starting point is 00:01:40 when it comes to recommendations. So I am going to be judging this with a critical eye, not for the author's sake, but for your sakes because it's something I can hold against you. You said that there's a physical copy of this book, right? A physical copy of several authors. So the author is Christian Wallace. And on his subreddit. He links off to some copies of his books. It looks like you can get them on Amazon. So it looks
Starting point is 00:02:07 like they are, what's the word I'm looking for? Anthology books, right? And it looks like he actually has a lot you can pick up. So I imagine that these books are included or sorry, these stories we're going to read today are included in some of them. But yeah, it looks like he's got a few
Starting point is 00:02:23 works, I believe. Yeah, it looks like the anthology or like the stories of horror and supernatural. It's called With Teeth. Oh, wow. August 25th of this year, 2024. Oh, wow. Very cool. Awesome. So very recent. Or sorry, this may be the only
Starting point is 00:02:38 the only one. I may have been looking at other people's. I'm just stupid. Ignore me. Yeah, with teeth, stories of horror and the supernatural. So if you like this story, if you want to support the author, which I certainly will, go ahead and get a copy of his stuff with teeth. Buy a copy.
Starting point is 00:02:55 Buy a copy. And hopefully the story's good. I know I rag on you guys a lot, but I want all stories to be amazing because I like good stories. It's that you people won't give them to me. But, you know, it's been kind of hit or miss. I've talked about this before, how like this naming title can go both ways, right? Like on the high, on the high end, you have stuff that's kind of in this like, hey, Reddit, I need help. You have stuff like stolen tongues. That's pretty good. You have stuff like my dog is running as fast as he possibly can back and forth. I thought that somebody was trying to break into your, your room there.
Starting point is 00:03:28 is sprinting out to the end of the hallway, then back in right behind me as hard as he can. He can't even breathe. Look how fast he's going. He just drifted. That was cool. Anyway, there's like stolen tongues and then there's stuff like my wife is peeking at me from behind corners. But then there's other times that becomes like the thing in the basement's getting better at mimicking people and it kind of loses me a bit. Or my dead girlfriend keeps messaging me on Facebook. So we'll see where this, what side this story falls in on. I'm very curious. I'm ready, dude. I'm ready to get freaky with it. Big time freaky. Let's get freak you with it. Before we do, though, as always,
Starting point is 00:04:01 thank you all so much for supporting us on audio platforms. Continue to show some love there. It means a lot. I actually, let's see where we're at in the Spotify rankings. Apple Podcast. Get us up. All right. We're fighting against Ben Shapiro, dude. Yeah, hold on. Let me check real quick. See where we at. Because I know that like we had just
Starting point is 00:04:19 overcame Ben Shapiro last time. It was the biggest highlight of my life overcoming Ben Shapiro. We're currently 45, but at the time of recording, we haven't dropped one. in like a little over a week. So that's actually down. So we're normally higher than that.
Starting point is 00:04:33 Where's been at? Yo, he's 50. We're five points. We're five spaces ahead on our off day. Look at that. Let's go. Now all you have to do is get past the talk to a podcast and that's how you know that you've made it. Oh wait.
Starting point is 00:04:46 Where's that one out? But if you had to guess, talk to is like three. We're one spot ahead of Brittany Broski. Talk to it with Haley Welch's number five. That is depressing. All right. There you. That's horrible information.
Starting point is 00:04:57 Say, sorry that you, sorry that. that you fucking sorry that you're in a shit show like this one dude we got to step it up big time now let me tell let me ask you this based off this title my husband is taking a role playing too far Isaiah what kind of role play could go too far here are we let me let me let's make some predictions as look as long as there's not a child involved I'm going to be happy we have a history on the show of running into stories that like to involve that for some reason uh I guess it's because we're YouTubers can't help ourselves but um I think we both know what kind of roleplay, the title is inferring to. I don't know if it will go that way.
Starting point is 00:05:34 You all assured me in the comments it doesn't go that way, but I'll be surprised. I'm going to say it's going to be some weird dominatrix thing, right? Going to be a dominatrix thing. It's going to be locking up and all of a sudden it's going to go to Haywire did. I was had a weird thing. The dominatrix thing of being locked up and someone just being like, no, I think I'm just going to leave you there. That frightens me. That's the plot of that, uh, what's that one, Gerald's game? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, doesn't he have a heart he has a heart attack when he yeah he like yeah he handcuffs her and then has a heart attack so she's stuck there that's horrifying yeah to just be like i'm just trapped here i'm gonna die
Starting point is 00:06:06 yeah so maybe it goes to gerald's game route maybe tie up and left to die we'll see we'll see what i'm curious to see i'm excited to get what if what if someone's like into furry stuff right they want to dress up like furries and then all of a sudden the guy comes home one day and he's part like let's see he wants to be a fox he's like he cuts off his arms and places him with fox arms and he's like he's like welcome he's like welcome to the jungle baby is what he tells her and uh he he he starts to want to he medically surgically manipulates his body to look that of a fox would that be i look to me that'd be taking the role play too far maybe we might get into some weird body horror stuff i'm hoping i like
Starting point is 00:06:51 uh all he does hope you thought all of this out that would be a fun horse short like it starts as like a furry thing, but then they're like, they're converting themselves into an animal. That'd be fun. Yeah. It'd be cool.
Starting point is 00:07:01 I think it'd be cool. And like like full horror. Like you get to like a tusk level of like, you know, encasing yourself in the skin. That'd be cool. I want to see him break his legs to form what like a fox leg would look like. Like breaking his finger.
Starting point is 00:07:14 Oh, that'd be cool. Yeah. He's just like, you know me and you can just make stuff like this, right? I mean, we have, we have the resources.
Starting point is 00:07:21 Get on. He's like, baby, I'm a saddle. Hop on. Can you imagine saying that. to a guy who's like, he looks like a dog and he's on his back. Gidey up,
Starting point is 00:07:29 cowgirl. Dude, me and you should make a short film. Just some weird gross horror stuff. We could pull it off. I doubt it, dude. Okay, all right. Well, yep, terrible idea. Whatever. Anyway, let's go to, all right. Before we continue this episode, I need to talk to you about something. I am cursed with a sharp sense of smell.
Starting point is 00:07:48 Oh, my God. And if there's a foul scent, ranted meat, hot dog burps, bad B.O. I will pick up on it immediately and it will ruin my day. Working in a studio with a bunch of dudes, I'm always buying candles and spraying cologne to make sure the area
Starting point is 00:08:03 smells great. And that's why I stay stocked up on fragrances by scentbird. Here are the four cents I got this month. Punkstar by Moodo. Designed for the bleary nights of the after party, Punkstar is a letharry, peppery smell that hangs in the air like cigarette smoke.
Starting point is 00:08:18 With notes of moss, apple, and honeysuckle, the fragrance exudes a fearlessness that stands out from the ground. Or I liked the fragrance, this is not a blue bottle. It's a fancy French word that says this. A bloody orange sun rises over a rose and saffron blazing circle. Liberating leather is endless power. This is the perfume of fire.
Starting point is 00:08:35 We all know why I got this one, but how does it smell? It's a clean floral fragrance with notes of rose and saffron. Kind of reminds you of spring. Last fragrance are received with steamed rainbow by D.S. and Durga. It's the perfume's attempt at making a scent that smelled like a rainbow. Using materials that have colors from the spectrum of the rainbow, it's very light, it's ephemeral and ethereal. At times, you'll get bits of orange or the notes of cedar or violet, then they're gone. Much like how you've seen certain colors for the rainbow.
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Starting point is 00:09:29 sponsoring this episode back to the episode into the story my husband has taken our role playing too far are you ready to get into it oh i'm ready to dive in slippery wet dude i got my baby oil ready and everything all right all right you didn't have to add that last part but let's go sorry when he told me he wanted to play pretend I thought it was something to do with sex and the funny thing is if he'd had whipped out a Wonder Woman costume I would have gone along with it
Starting point is 00:09:56 good woman go ahead things have been cold between us for years one word replies to Tins conversations had become the norm I was prepared to do what was necessary to try and patch things up when he clarified he wanted to pretend to be young oh no Hunter Hunter Hunter already
Starting point is 00:10:14 Hold on, man. Hold on now. These people, they keep putting us to these positions. I hate this. I don't care for this at all so far. You want me to play pretend. Pretend to be young, he said. Mother of God. Why do we do this?
Starting point is 00:10:31 You promised me. Okay, I'm going to read it to the end of this paragraph. You all promised me it would not go this route. Let's see. Okay. When he clarified, he wanted to. pretend to be young, I felt a lot more hesitation. If this was a
Starting point is 00:10:48 sex thing, I thought it could get pretty weird. Even as he explained it all, I just kept waiting for it to turn in that direction. I figured that's what it had to be, right? But he said it wasn't like that at all. He just wanted some time now and again
Starting point is 00:11:04 when he could behave like a child. Oh, dude, is he going to go into like a baby fetish? But he, hold on, to finish the paragraph. Nothing too weird. just sort of therapeutic role play. Okay. This sounds like baby fetish.
Starting point is 00:11:18 But she's clarified twice in the opening paragraph. There was nothing sexual to it. So this could be just like a mental regression he's wanting to go into or something. Give me the baby. Give me the giant man baby. He's like, she comes home and she's like, where's the bed? And she's just a giant fucking crib, dude. He starts shitting in his diaper and stuff.
Starting point is 00:11:38 You made a, I feel like you made a video about this at some point, didn't you? I did. I did. I talked about adult babies. Yeah. there's that's normally like a fetish thing right well i mean not entirely i think that there's some people like you're saying it's like uh age regression and type stuff whatever in my opinion it's it's one of the things online where the line is so blurred you know who knows right
Starting point is 00:12:01 people say it's not sexual but then they're like you know their titties are out their dicks and pussies are out and they're wearing diapers i mean what you know what are we supposed to do i mean yeah yeah it's like sure whatever you say bud right um I'll admit it wasn't what I thought. He wanted me to pack his lunches and kiss his cheek before going to work, he said. He wanted me to give him the kind of things you'd give a kid. So I packed him a yogurt, a ham sandwich, and an apple. There's also a small carton of juice, all tucked neatly into a brown paper bag.
Starting point is 00:12:32 This whole face lit up with joy when he saw it. I came up with the brown bag myself, and he told me it was a nice touch. I remember thinking it was the first sincere compliment he'd paid me in years. I felt a rare pang of pride at that. After that, I got the gist pretty quickly. He wanted me to run in baths and sit there beside him while he played with toys. Dude. Yeah, okay, you know what?
Starting point is 00:12:57 I'm glad it's not going to sexual direction, for one. I make my stomach fucking turn. But it is, is this not way grosser, you know? I've, I sat there and I was like, I'm picturing myself my big fat ass in a bathtub. I'm, like, farting bubbles and stuff. My wife's watching me play with, like, a parcher and Lieutenant Chip Hazard toy. I'm just like, it feels like, I'm getting like secondhand embarrassment reading about this fictional character, right? But here's the thing like, okay, I guess I should clarify, it would be more gross if it was a sexual thing and age regression.
Starting point is 00:13:31 But it is more scary to read about because here the motive's kind of hidden, right? It's like, what are you getting at? How the fuck are you playing with hot wheels in the tub and all of a sudden going to bring up your dick game later on in bed. You know, that's what I'm like, how lost in translation, I don't, I don't think that's happening. I don't think that's happening at all. No, I'm saying that because I'm, I'm saying that he's, he has his like little baby fit. And then, and then he has like his adult time.
Starting point is 00:13:56 Well, that's what I'm saying. I think what he's getting at is zero adult time that he's like completely going away. He's perpetually forever in this. That's where I think this is going. That's where I think it's going. He wanted to ask me for permission before going. knowing out to play in the yard. He wanted spaghetti and hot dog for dinner
Starting point is 00:14:15 and jelly and ice cream for dessert. Jelly and ice cream? I did it all with a smile. He never really looked to me all that much as a wife. But as a caregiver? Oh, run, girl, run. It was like, yeah, I, okay, so hold on,
Starting point is 00:14:30 I'm interested now. I went from scared to intrigued. This feels like a psycho, like Norman Bates scenario, you know? We'll see. It was like every little gesture was the greatest thing to him. I thought it was messed up, sure.
Starting point is 00:14:44 I don't know. Those first few weeks were actually quite nice. One day he came home and I had the telly set to... Oh, he's British. Okay, we have to quit. All right, thank you all for watching Creepcast. I appreciate it. Sorry, that a British person, I'm kidding.
Starting point is 00:14:57 Gross. One day he came home and I had the telly set to old cartoons from his childhood and he just burst out into tears. About the DVDs is a little surprised, but didn't expect that kind of reaction. ran over and held him and we stayed like that, huddled on the sofa for hours. I never felt that kind of closeness or vulnerability from him, or, well, anyone else I'd ever met. It was confusing, but I liked it.
Starting point is 00:15:29 We'd always been each other's closest friends, and now he was spending more time with me than ever before. And he cared about what I had to say and genuinely paid attention to me. I once baked him a cake, and he sat on the counter, kicking his legs, asking me questions the whole time. I told him about the recipe, about how my grandmother had brought it over with her when she immigrated, about how it had been passed down for generations, and I could see that he wasn't play acting. He really was blown away by the whole story. But the request just kept coming, as to the amount of time he spent role-playing. It started out as something before and after work, but he soon.
Starting point is 00:16:08 quit his job and without notice it became an all-day activity girl run run girl get out of there is what I want to say my God I mean how does he quit his job it's like well I guess we don't have a house now
Starting point is 00:16:22 well what kind of so she has to get all of the income now and herself also the whole thing she had enough income to support them I don't know we'll find out I feel bad I feel bad so far for him because one I can sympathize with somebody being like I never got this is a child, blah, blah, you know, you fall into that deal.
Starting point is 00:16:40 But I sympathize with her as well because she's probably like, it's been years since she's had this kind of interconnectivity with this person that she loves. But how do you come back from this place? You know what I mean? That's kind of my, that's kind of my, I feel like that's where the story's going. You don't come back from it to the degree that it's getting to, but also like, like, sure, what you said, you could sympathize with someone who never had it as a kid, but all the, even then to a degree, right?
Starting point is 00:17:05 because like I get like I'll have a peanut butter jelly every now and then and be like oh yeah this is nice reminds me of being a kid but when you're using someone else especially a spouse to treat you like a child that's like I don't have sympathy anymore like it's too far I could just see some people being with the age regression thing I could see some people having a lot of I guess sympathy for that thing albeit odd or whatever but I it's I guess the point I'm making with that is even if it is people being like well I think it's normal I just think for a relationship how do you come back from that place that's all I was saying yeah I see I see like I said it was part of the fun and I didn't put any limits on it he did what I imagine most kids do
Starting point is 00:17:49 all day long watch TV played with toys and video games ran around making silly noises he also wanted to the less fun stuff maybe she did the last stuff oh he also wanted to do the less fun stuff yeah so I had to set him chores bathe him
Starting point is 00:18:05 brushing cut his hair making me vegetables he even asked me to start organizing him homework so I bought some old exercise books for low level masks and English God damn dude she is bought in he was I mean like she's taking it way too far like when he quits his job it's like okay
Starting point is 00:18:23 I'll treat you like a child like she's also insane that's that's I'd say no this is a fictitious story because you already know it's like if you came home and your wife is like hey what's up I quit my job it would be there'd be hell to pay it would be over hell to pay Hey, Kail, I deleted the YouTube channel. I need you to treat me like I'm six now.
Starting point is 00:18:38 What? Yeah, exactly. Buy me homework. Buy me homework, please. Thank you. And she just beats me to death in the living room. Okay, so that actually raises an interesting question. We're kind of cheating a bit knowing there's a sequel called my wife has taken it too far.
Starting point is 00:18:54 But it's like, why is she going along with this, right? You know? I agree. Interesting. He was never a naughty, but he did like to make a fuss when I told him to do the things. Sometimes I catch a slice smile or twinkle in his eye, and I knew he really liked it. There was something inherently bizarre and actually kind of funny about watching an accountant sit there and struggle when carrying the one.
Starting point is 00:19:20 Still, it was a far cry from the very guarded and deeply arrogant man I'd married. I guess I'm just trying to put it all in order for you, but I'm not sure I can. There were times I felt wrong. I suppose. All my attraction to him went right out the window, but I didn't care because we didn't have sex that much as husband and wife. And even when we did, it wasn't very good. Maybe if you understood that I'm not a social person, you could see why I let this all happen. I don't have friends, never have, not even when I was in university. His company, his placid, warm, and adoring company, it worked a kind of magic on me. I think also that I actually quite liked looking after
Starting point is 00:20:05 someone. In hindsight, I probably should have just got a cat. At the time, I just liked the change of pace and always suspected there was some dark secret lurking beneath him. The mother had warned me about this with men, and I was just glad he didn't like killing hookers. You would be kind of crazy too. It's like if you had, if you did end up making a, uh, like adult baby video, if a guy, if it turned into a thing about a guy wanting to like go back in the whim and that was kind of the, that was like the fucking titular piece of like danger that was happening. Oh, I feel like I've heard that
Starting point is 00:20:41 somewhere. It would be crazy. If the guy's like, I must crawl inside you. It's pretty crazy. Oh, House of the Dead overkill. That's it. Yeah. At the ending of the game, the main character crawl.
Starting point is 00:20:56 Gosh, this is so weird. I can't remember if it was his mom or if it was like a girl he just pretended was his mom, the antagonist. At the end, she gets mutated in like this super giant monster, and then I'm pretty sure after you kill her at the end, he crawls back inside of her.
Starting point is 00:21:13 Damn, I'd be down to see it. Anyway, sorry, sidetrack. This seems safe, harmless, at least at first. As we settled further into a routine, I started to feel lonely again, only it was different. This wasn't the bored listlessness of a day spent at home trying to look busy. He was more like standing over an ocean and looking down.
Starting point is 00:21:37 I think it was the way he started to change physically. I thought they were all deliberate changes. Things he did you look less like an adult. Sometimes he looked at me and I didn't like it. It was a hungry look. I met a boy once when I was younger and he looked at me like that and I liked it. But coming from my husband in blue pajamas with a pacifier in his mouth, Oh, and a rattle in one hand.
Starting point is 00:22:06 God, I could have been sick. You are sick, dude. You're in hell. Welcome to hell. Gosh. This is effective so far. This works. And come nighttime, the house started to feel different.
Starting point is 00:22:19 Larger, colder than usual. I started drinking for some reason. Some reason. Like we all don't understand. I think partly just to unwind. When things broke, it was up to me to fix them, or to answer the phone or deal with bills. We had plenty saved up, so don't get me wrong, it wasn't like we were in dire circumstances. But there was no one else to share the endless responsibilities with, and I felt like a weight on my shoulders.
Starting point is 00:22:50 Come morning, I'd have to go through the motions with a pounding headache, and I found that the day started to blur. Months passed, maybe even a whole year. It's hard for me to remember of these events in a straight line. and that's not all my fault. I remember thinking that he was a growing boy, but that wasn't true at all. What? What you mean? He was growing?
Starting point is 00:23:17 Okay, we ordered new shoes for him online, and they were a different size than usual, smaller. He said it was because he wanted the light-up ones, but he'd been a size 11 as an adult, and the ones we bought were for a young boy. I don't know how, but he wore those new shoes just fine. I pinched the toe and told him he'd grow into them. I had vivid memories of watching him struggle to put a stuffed toy to the top shelf,
Starting point is 00:23:45 but he'd always towered over me at six foot three. Even now I'm putting it all back together in my head and finding little surprises. There's always the sense that if I stopped too long to think, that everything would rush past me and I'd miss it. even trying my best to just go with it I found myself feeling like a stranger in my own house things moved rooms were rearranged and new toys just appeared
Starting point is 00:24:10 all without me knowing how a whole swing set was installed in the garden without me remembering but when I checked my signature was on the invoice it's called alcoholism yeah she's just so drunk exactly he's out of the role play by now he's like
Starting point is 00:24:29 he's like, can you, babe, can you please stop? And she's like, that's my little boy. You're my little angel. A little boy. You'd be gross too as like a grown man doing the baby stare. You know, like the stare of kids do where they're not like looking at you or anything. Like they're looking past you, right? That's like soulless eyes.
Starting point is 00:24:45 They're just like mouth slightly open. Yeah, like it's like their brain is trying to put stuff together. You know, it's like it's trying to run math or something. Yeah. How are you feeling? I'm vibing with this so far. I like, I'm waiting for, there is a storm coming. This woman has not ran away.
Starting point is 00:25:05 She needs to run away from the situation. The man is getting smaller. Magically, magically smaller. Got to get out. He is going to wear baby booties after a while, dude. Good little God. At one point, he began wearing diapers and I didn't even notice until days past. Just kind of made sense somehow.
Starting point is 00:25:26 In the moment, it had fun. felt so natural and looking back, I seemed to remember my husband as a child, not a fully grown man. I've been feeding a toddler, hugging a toddler, watching a toddler play games. But at the same time, it wasn't any of that. It was my husband sitting there with his long legs crossed and crumbs in his beard. The adage of facial hair there is pretty disgusting, honestly. It doesn't it make it so much worse? It's like, eh.
Starting point is 00:25:56 It does. It made me think of like a homeless guy or something. I don't know why. One morning, I woke up to a dog, and the next day it was gone. I searched for hours, feeling like I was going insane, but sure enough, there was a bowl and dog food right by the kitchen door, so it wasn't like I'd imagined it. There was no dog in the house, though, nor in the garden.
Starting point is 00:26:20 Exhausted and beaten, I went into my husband's room for a final check when, at the side of him, this strange apprehension came over me. I couldn't get the thought out of my head that he'd done something. After all, if he was a child, he was a bit odd, wasn't he? He didn't play with other children. He didn't misbehave. He barely spoke. He was a good little boy.
Starting point is 00:26:43 Sure, but not necessarily all that normal. And of course, he wasn't a child. He was something else. Standing there, I appreciated just how odd he had started to look. his hair was thinning, not just falling out, mind you. It felt downing to the touch, soft like a newborn's peach fuzz. And good God the smell. It was like, oh gosh!
Starting point is 00:27:15 Good God the smell. It was like a baby smell, but foul like sour milk. And it clung to him no matter how much I bathed him and washed his clothes. there were days when it felt like I could choke to death on it and I learned to breathe carefully through my mouth whenever we were together. His pupils were huge, too large for those small sockets. His eyes had always been spaced far apart
Starting point is 00:27:43 but placed on a child-shaped head. He looked like he was wearing a bad Halloween mask with doll's eyes instead of his own. Sometimes I catch him staring at me from around a corner or at the bottom of a long corridor sometimes that met him standing there in the dark audibly breathing as his shoulders rose and fell with some unseen thought excited him
Starting point is 00:28:06 so like it's almost weird like the breathing of his shoulders there would raise it's like when you ever think of someone being excited right you assume that their heart rate gets fluttered so I imagine he was just like and he's like it's like an animal like he's physically like bouncing up and down
Starting point is 00:28:25 Yeah. Right? Yeah. This is good. This is getting me so far. I'm, uh, yeah. Wow. Other times it met glimpsing his gray head disappearing behind a wall or door the second I turned.
Starting point is 00:28:39 He drooled almost constantly, wiped the excess on his sleeve, but a lot of it landed on the floor anyway. There were times I'd find a small puddles of spit and locked rooms. Uh, often just behind where I'd been standing. Oh. Other times I could hear his difficult breathing inches from my back, but he was never actually there when I turned around. I was afraid of him, I realized. I nearly cried out when standing in that dark and quiet room.
Starting point is 00:29:08 He rolled onto his back as he slept in the crib. He opened a gummy smile, and I saw that all his teeth had fallen out bearing just a few. I love it. And the closer I looked, the more certain I became that even those were not his original ones. They were too white, too small, too peg-like to be
Starting point is 00:29:31 an adult incisors. I secretly hoped I was going insane. The alternative somehow even worse. The idea of a guy actually like what is it? Diverting back into a baby
Starting point is 00:29:46 like slowly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's so fucking creepy. Especially when it's gummy teeth. dude. I wonder if he still has a part of his beard. He has the peach fuzz on his head. He felt like a little fuzzy beard
Starting point is 00:30:01 maybe like little baby hairs over his face. Exactly. Could you imagine a guy and his eyes are too big for his like tiny head? Yeah. Like the way a baby looks. Right. Yeah. This is great. I love it. This is good so far. I'm into it. I was on the toilet when the doorbell rang.
Starting point is 00:30:18 Taking a shit. It was a, thank you. It was a shrill screech that graded and I jumped so badly. I drop my phone. I quickly finished up and waddled over the window with my pants still down. There was a van just outside the front gates, which were open, but there was no sign of anyone walking around down there. Normally, this kind of problem would just go away, and they'd leave the package on the
Starting point is 00:30:41 doorstep. Something felt wrong. I couldn't hear my husband anywhere in the house. No footsteps, no babbling, no clacking toys or rolling wheels. That van looked strange. The driver's side door was still open. The engine's still running. I tried to digest what it all meant while running downstairs,
Starting point is 00:31:00 stopping only when I saw the front door open. The gust of wind blew through the main house, drawing out all the homely warmth. I had images of our roleplay being found out and fears of humiliation and embarrassment filled my head. There was something else muddled in with all the thoughts as well. We'd spent so long locked up together, my husband and I,
Starting point is 00:31:21 safe and far away from the rest of the world, how would he react to this intrusion? As if in answer, someone cried out from the living room. I ran down the last few stairs and pushed open the door to find a small man shaking where he stood, brown cardboard box clutched to his chest for protection. What? I put my arm around his shoulder and started to move him towards the door.
Starting point is 00:31:49 I couldn't see my husband, but he was never too far away from me and I couldn't help but notice one of his favorite toys line on the floor. He let me in. Look just, look just like a... Suddenly he turned to me and gripped both my arms. What's wrong with him?
Starting point is 00:32:06 I've never seen anything like that before. I don't remember what I said, but I kept pushing him towards the front door, out of the living room and into the kitchen. A quick turn to my head and I saw my husband ducking back down beneath the sofa. He was the wrong size, to be so quick and sneaky, but he had a way of hiding and moving around the house so that you almost
Starting point is 00:32:25 never saw him unless he wanted you to. Come on. I muttered, but the delivery man's feet were slow and cumbersome. It was like his head was all muddled up. It was just a child. He cried like it had just dawned on him. Oh, no. I frightened him, didn't I?
Starting point is 00:32:42 He tried turning back, but I stopped him. No, I didn't mean to scare him. I just, I just, his face. He stopped resisting. and his shoulders slumped back down. What's wrong with him? Why do my eyes hurt? He's sick.
Starting point is 00:33:00 I answered, finally pulling him the last few feet to the door. I shoved him back past the threshold and stood panting to catch my breath. He's just very unwell. I said, stifling a sob, part lie, part truth. It's a condition. The delivery man looked as if he still was trying to sort of his own head out, but it seemed like he bought it. He went to leave,
Starting point is 00:33:25 putting one foot down on the porch steps before suddenly deciding that he needed to make amends. Please don't report me. He cried, and I jumped a little. I didn't mean to come off as rude. My heart started to race. I could smell my husband.
Starting point is 00:33:40 Ugh, the stench nearly overpowering. He was so close I could practically feel him, but where he was, I couldn't say. I just needed to get this man away before something terrible happened. He was babbling endlessly about offending me. Please. Please leave.
Starting point is 00:34:00 Did he understand? I wonder. Sometimes when I think back, I see a flickering of understanding in his eyes. It looked like empathy. I can't be sure because it all kind of just blurs together. The shock in his eyes as my husband's arm grabbed his ankle cannot be understated. neither of us expected him to be down there
Starting point is 00:34:21 I still don't know how he did it but he was down there giggling in an unhealthy falsetto rasp before anyone could speak he yanked so hard the delivery man fell down backwards and his leg disappeared into shadow oh god with one hand the crying man clamped down
Starting point is 00:34:41 on the thigh as if to soothe some unseen pain and with the other hand he tried to push himself back out from between the wooden slats. Oh! But my husband was always a big man. And now he had a strange sort of air about him. A quiet, crackling power that followed him from room to room.
Starting point is 00:35:04 The struggle was one-sided, and the delivery man screamed and howled. He gave up holding the one leg and tried using both hands to pull or push or drag himself away. I didn't know what was happening out of sight, but his face drained of blood and his screams just kept getting worse. I've never heard a man make a sound like that before, not an adult man. It was scary in a way I wasn't prepared for. I think he asked me to help at one point.
Starting point is 00:35:30 I contemplated calling the police but never did. I was so terrified I couldn't even bring myself to move. Occasionally one of my husband's thick-knuckled hands could be glimpsed as he pulled more of the man inside. Those hands looked so large, so pale, so deeply unhealthy. I could hear what he was doing, but that didn't really come to my attention until I unpacked it all mentally long after it was over. But yes, I could hear bone crack and something like paper being torn.
Starting point is 00:36:00 Was it an hour? Just a few minutes. I don't know. The man just kept crying, pleading, and my husband just kept pulling and pulling and pulling. The stairs started to buckle. the wood was thick and strong. The final question came down to what would break first? A pelvis or a post?
Starting point is 00:36:25 The delivery man's cries told me what he thought would happen. He was right. With a tremendous yell of joy, just like a child on their birthday, my husband latched another fist around the man's other leg and pulled so hard there was a sudden crack. And his victim fell limp like a toy losing power. What followed was a silence so heavy. it hurt my ears, broken only by the faint, wet sound of my husband dragging the rest of the man
Starting point is 00:36:54 into the dark. The space between each step couldn't have been more than six inches, but brute force won out. The last I remember of the man's face, he was pale with bulging eyes. The arrangement of his arms and legs didn't even make sense anymore. He looked like a spider after you step on it. I stayed there for a while longer. hoping to hell him back out here an ambulance or police siren. Like I said, we lived far out of town. By the time it occurred to me that no one would rescue the man, or me, the blood on the steps was congealing.
Starting point is 00:37:33 My husband was still just out of sight, giggling and clapping like a kid making mud pies. Come on. I finally managed to say, speaking like the doting mother I was. Put your new toy away. I'll make you some lunch. Bro. Bro.
Starting point is 00:37:53 Really, really fucking cool way to take this man. That was so cool. So the whole thing is he was dragging a guy in between like the steps, right? Like wooden steps and he was kind of pulling him through. Yeah. Right, okay.
Starting point is 00:38:05 Yeah. Pretty brutal. I wonder why. He gets under there and like, like she could smell him before she saw anything because he was under the porch. And then he just, he like rips him through the in between steps. because he has the strength of a fully grown, you know, large man,
Starting point is 00:38:20 but like the absent mind of a child just pulling on something till it breaks. The visual, the visual two of him still having like giant man hands. Yeah. It was pretty sweet too. Like just very, uh, just weird. Also him hiding, giggling and stuff. Uh, put your new toy away.
Starting point is 00:38:37 He looked like a step spider. Uh, I'm curious to see. I don't want to speculate too much by the end. I want to, I have some questions for the end. but I want to see if they get answered just to the rest of this. I'll say right now, I love it.
Starting point is 00:38:51 Yeah. This is awesome so far. Like, I don't know where it's going. I don't know what explanation it's going to pull, but I am locked in. I love this. I was washing dishes and staring into the yard. It resembled somewhere I'd seen before, but I couldn't remember where or why. My husband was somewhere upstairs, and I was alone.
Starting point is 00:39:11 I'd often hear him thunder around up there doing God knows what, spare feet slapping on hardwood floors he once picked out in a turtleneck and chinos. That seemed like a different person's life now. Yeah, man, that's a wild sentence thinking about that, yeah. He's now a child, but he was once, you know, at a department store picking out wood, you know?
Starting point is 00:39:32 Yeah, yeah. Hard to believe it was the same man who brought me something just days before that made me sick. Made it himself and it had hung on the fridge for a whole afternoon, just like another piece of macaroni art. Is that thing where the dog ended up? I wondered running a dishcloth over the same plate for the second hour in a row. Man, this is just like, I love the writing style too.
Starting point is 00:39:57 Just like the way stuff's described, right? Like, I mean, I look at the front yard. It feels like a place I've been before talking about their own house, right? Or like, I wondered the second hour of washing the dish cloth. Like it says so much with just like some, some little alliteration and stuff. I like very good writing. I like it a lot. It's an interesting way to show a person's descent into insanity in a very casual way,
Starting point is 00:40:23 like how casual somebody's mind can just kind of slip away with something kind of traumatic or crazy. Especially with how absent-minded she's been. She talks about like a playground showed up that she didn't remember signing for, stuff like that. Like she's just spacing out moments of time to make her brain work with it. Do you think that's supposed to be a way of her? basically saying that this has all been tremendous. I mean, this might sound stupid,
Starting point is 00:40:48 but is it a way for her narratively to say like that she's had like basically just traumatic experience participating in this thing? Like, yes, I did like it. But after a while you kind of realized that like lapses of time, like maybe when the thing you thought was okay was actually much more sinister and it takes your brain like how long to catch up with the fact that like you're actually being traumatized with this entire experience maybe. Yes.
Starting point is 00:41:13 I think it's her brain. trying to quantify everything that's happening around her. I would think it'd like. Right. Movement caught my eye. Out in the garden, something floated down past the tall hedges that walled in our yard and landed plainly on the overgrown grass. It was a bright, luminous yellow that glowed like a safety vest.
Starting point is 00:41:34 For some reason, I held up the plate in my hand, looked between the two. God, I was so out of it. It was like a worm in my head. I could feel it, maybe even reach out and grab it if I could just focus on it for long enough. Each time I close my mind around it, each time I started to feel out the shape of the intrusion, this rewriting of my own brain, it slithered away. Frisbee? I muttered.
Starting point is 00:42:05 And then just like that, she was there. She was maybe nine or ten. How would she wound up here? audience there's a real child real young female child inserted in this story you this better not go where it might go how would she wound up here i wondered maybe she was lost she was looking around like she didn't know where she was i could see she was scared and my heart sank as i realized how awful our homeless have looked to her also they live out in the middle of nowhere you know i mean like they live outside of town so it is extremely odd that someone is there
Starting point is 00:42:42 What was that whole paragraph before? She's washing the dishes and then something floats past the hedges. And then... I think it was the kid's head. I think it was the frisbee, right? The yellow thing that floated through. Oh, so she, so the child was probably throwing the frisbee and she's like... And she came over the fritz to get...
Starting point is 00:43:02 Or she came through the hedges to get it now. Right. Okay. That's, yeah. But the part where it's like, I was sort of, it was like a worm in my head. I could feel it, maybe even reach out and grab it if I could just focus on it for a long enough. Is there something in her brain that's like supernatural
Starting point is 00:43:15 or physical or is she just kind of like talking about her own condition? I think in a way she's talking about her own condition. She's so out of it. Like she's, I think it's her saying that like yeah, I think it's her talking about her own dissent. This may be because there's
Starting point is 00:43:31 definitely something beyond just psychology happening to the husband, right? Like it is some there's some physical flag, right? Yes, there has to be. Maybe if it is some kind of like possession, spirit, whatever, maybe it's doing the same thing to her to make her more of a mother, right? Maybe that's where her lapses
Starting point is 00:43:48 are coming from, who knows? Do you think that, and not to divert the story too much longer because I want to keep going, but do you think there's any way that because of this traumatic thing that she's perceiving her husband as like this monstrous child? And that he's actually still a full grown man who is also mentally unwell?
Starting point is 00:44:05 Oh, I didn't think about that, but that would be interesting if like he has zero physical changes. Yeah, and she, just her perception of him of being not necessarily grossed out but like how your perception changes of this person and how now she's like I'm looking at you because before she's like oh he's a good boy but then it's just once again your brain starts to catch up and because she keeps doing this thing where she feeds into it even here where she's like well he he was never fussy like she talks about him like he's a kid out of nowhere which is interesting I still like the idea of it actually being a
Starting point is 00:44:35 physical thing like I in terms of like the narrative I would prefer it to be like he is just I mean like regressing back I think it could go either way depending on how it wraps up I could hear it out either direction right now honestly just kind of depending what it does with it I think but it does have me right in the middle ground
Starting point is 00:44:53 where I don't know which one is more likely there's a time I was house proud but now we lived in decrepit filth of course little girl looked scared I thought this was the scary house every child feared with broken windows and overgrown bushes that choked a yard
Starting point is 00:45:10 filled with rusted swings and abandoned toys. And this poor girl had lost her frisbee and... No. I said first to myself, then once again to the room. No! It was too late. I could hear him scuttle around before the house fell into quiet. From outside, the girl started to say something.
Starting point is 00:45:32 Greeting, perhaps? There was a knife in my hand that I didn't remember taking. And I was outside before I had time to even think. A little girl looked to me and instantly burst into tears. I was sprinting towards her with a knife in one hand and a murderous look straight out of a horror film. But before that, before she'd seen me, she'd been looking towards a thicket of grass with disgust on her face. No! I screamed, not at her, but at him.
Starting point is 00:46:00 I picked her up in my arms, even as she batted me away. I didn't care if this girl thought I was Satan himself. If she ran back home and told her parents about the mean, creepy lady, and they called the police, and this all ended with me, safe and warm behind bars. I didn't care. I clutched my arm around her waist and willed it into a bane of steel to keep her safe. She squirmed, but could not break free, and I ran towards the gate as fast as I could carry her. It's okay. He won't get you. I was halfway there when her screaming and wriggling stopped. Her head was over my shoulder, and all of a sudden, she gripped me like I was a life raft.
Starting point is 00:46:39 The change was instant, and it made me falter. For a brief moment, I heard his feet pulsing towards me. I turned brandishing the knife like a torch against the darkness, but nothing was there. The girl started screaming again, the sight of my husband sinking, and she held onto me with dear life. Not the baby! No, no, no, not the baby! Not the baby! I won't let him! I backed up to the gate carefully and began to wonder, what next when out of nowhere he leaped into sight and grabbed the girl's hair yanking her head back
Starting point is 00:47:16 while she screamed so hard her face turned beetroot red he jumped up and down hollering and crying like a giddy toddler with the christmas present his misshapen face was grinning his gums black and bloody but his hands threatened to tear the girl's scalp right off i started to feel nauseous at the side of him his size seemed to change with every glance. I couldn't make sense of it, and I felt that worm inside my mind wriggle and dislodge more of my thoughts. Sometimes he was waist-high, sometimes a full-grown man. But always those hands were too large for his frame, and the brown flakes of blood still trapped beneath his chip nails reminded me exactly what he wanted.
Starting point is 00:48:01 No! I screamed and lashed out with the knife. The motion that came to me in the moment was a downward thrust, knife was left embedded in my husband's right shoulder. He let go immediately and started to howl and sob. He seemed to shrink before my very eyes, and I quickly set the girl down and pushed her through the gate. I pulled the bar shut, screamed at her to run, they quickly turned back to my husband who was sucking his thumb and trying to pull the knife out with his remaining hand.
Starting point is 00:48:29 After some awkward fumbling, he grabbed the handle and threw the knife to the ground. It clattered to the floor, blood glistening in the sun. you're just like her he said his voice breaking and returning to the calm authoritative man i'd once known his beady eyes bored into me and i could have collapsed under that stare the changing cadence was as sudden as a sheer drop off a cliff i just wondered what she never gave me but you're all the same suddenly his whole face bunched up into a twisted infantile smile and he declared with joy and delight in a voice identical to a child's I'm going to crawl inside you. I knew it!
Starting point is 00:49:08 Yes! I knew it! I knew it! Yes! Oh my gosh. Fucking Kobe from the three, baby. Damn! For one, I'm not that nice to you on the show off,
Starting point is 00:49:26 but I will say, great call. Thank you. Great call. Well done. Also, I'm so happy. This is so good. This is incredible. also i was not expecting the story to hit this hard but it is like it is going it is
Starting point is 00:49:42 question for three for three right now question yes him changing shapes like that does that not read to you that she is like it almost seems like you know it's when you're sleep like when you're sleep deprivation and it can be like you almost begin hallucinating like i remember i was driving a long time from kansas city to um la and by the time i got to las Vegas i was so tired before I pulled off that like the road was almost making like a warping like it looked like a wave like it was very odd how it was I have seen people I've been so tired I've seen people standing on the side of the road who aren't there like I blink in there exactly yeah yeah what I'm saying what I'm wondering is with this traumatic like going back to the traumatic thing is she just like
Starting point is 00:50:25 loopy like in a weird way I'm like almost wondering with just some of the other stuff not that is she imagining this but is her like I wonder how much of this is actually actually him physically changing sizes and more so her just being completely insane. Okay. So it depends. It goes back to what we were talking about. It depends if this is a physical change or a mental one. Because if it's a physical one,
Starting point is 00:50:47 I think that worm in her brain could very well be literal, right? Like it dislodges itself at moments and stuff. Could be a similar thing to whatever's happening to him. But if it's psychological, then I think that
Starting point is 00:51:02 maybe this is just how she's perceiving him. Like, she sees him as a kid, but then he'll do something that snaps her out of it, like the size of his hands. For one, the visual element of this is incredible. Like, you see a child, but when it reaches out, its hand is like a full-grown man's, and then the rest of him becomes a full-grown man. Like, you, it kind of reminds me.
Starting point is 00:51:22 It's weird to say shot, but it's shot so well, like the way that's described. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the, um, the child out in the woods in left-right game when it's like you shine the light on him. And it grows in certain. areas? Yeah. I like to think that it's the proportions of all these different things are they're aging differently. But it is interesting to think that it's fluctuating. Like it's almost like he is continuously moving and his arms are breaking and cracking and reforming and but his hands are always these like giant kind of like man hands compared to his probably smaller stature even
Starting point is 00:51:59 when he's taller or shorter. So I'm like I am locked in dude. This is exciting. dinner was cold. It's the first meal I'd made him after our little fight. I'd fidgeted over it for hours, filled with doubts and fears, but it all came to not. He was too smart to fall for that, whether he'd seen the rat poison or not.
Starting point is 00:52:21 Man, she's ready to end it at all. Also, what a terrifying scene of like there's a little girl and then, like, he's chasing her, so she stabs him. That's like the realization of this has to end, right? the visual of him grabbing the root of her hair and like pulling her head back. I actually thought that he was going to like rip her scalp off or something.
Starting point is 00:52:43 He had it come for dinner. Now I was left with the problem. I'd stayed fixed to the spot in the kitchen, working away with endless looks over my shoulder and night had fallen. The only light was in the kitchen and it was a big house filled with inky black shadows that swallowed entire rooms and corridors.
Starting point is 00:53:03 Often, I would glimpse a sliver of movement, like shark's fin cresting a wave. I might see a blue piece of fabric catch the moonlight before disappearing back into the dark. He was out there. Man, this is so good. Just like the... I had a new knife, at least. Something about the adrenaline in my veins helped me think more clearly. When I looked back in my thoughts, I no longer saw a child,
Starting point is 00:53:28 but something twisted and deformed with delusion and malice. a disease had festered not only in our heads but the space we shared and the world we lived in spilling out into reality like a migraine aura made real I didn't know if it was an intruder or just something dark that had spread from within but it belonged to me one way or another I couldn't let it live
Starting point is 00:53:54 dinner's ready come on there's a shuffling somewhere out front by the stairs. I don't know why I bothered saying anything. He must have seen me. I cried out again, my voice faltering from fear and exhaustion.
Starting point is 00:54:12 I picked the plate up and put it by the threshold of the kitchen. Its edge just inches from the darkness. You must be hungry. I said, doing my best to smile. Please eat it for me. Could you just like, just like just, the visual of this is great right it's dark in the house there's like a just blackness like closing off the kitchen from the rest of the house and the food put on the edge like a prisoner's meal like
Starting point is 00:54:43 oh yeah i mean who hasn't been into like a weird house where there's like one light source but it looks like as you look into the darkness of a hallway or downstairs it kind of looks like an endless black void just because there's absolutely no light trickling down into those areas I'm so happy. A single chubby finger peeked through the doorway and slid the plate across. It was so loud in the silence, grating across tile. Something felt wrong. But in the moment, I just hoped it was the sheer panic trapped deep within my chest.
Starting point is 00:55:22 The plate whipped out of the darkness and struck me in the face. My nose cracked and my head snapped backwards and before I knew it, I was on the floor. Plate rolling to a noisy stop a few feet away. it was whole but one edge was coated in blood I became aware of a coppery taste in my mouth and realized it was mine all over the plate it felt like I was lying there for a good few seconds agony ringing in my ears while I opened and closed my jaw
Starting point is 00:55:49 and disconcerted shock slowly layer by layer things started to write themselves there was a sharp pain in the back of my head and I realized I must have hit it when I fell over and there was a weight on top of me pressing down making it hard to breathe and I broke in a rib I wondered
Starting point is 00:56:07 but it didn't feel much like that it felt like something was moving around something sharp and painful I looked down and saw husband's cabbage-shaped head bobbing away at my breast huh oh man he's trying to get some of the milk
Starting point is 00:56:25 dude can I just say to cabbage-shaped head is such a good cabbage shaped head is so good for a baby's head that is so fucking nasty
Starting point is 00:56:38 bobbing away at my breast dude so that little motherfucker is sucking that tit raw dude okay so when it was reading it's like I felt
Starting point is 00:56:48 a sharp pain like I'd broken a rib I thought he was stabbing her I thought that's what it was but I think it's no it is his teeth it is his teeth that that's why like
Starting point is 00:56:58 it hit me in waves the realization of what was happening. Oh, all right. I screamed and pushed him away, but he clamped down hard, those nasty little peg teeth burying themselves into my flesh and refusing to dislodge.
Starting point is 00:57:14 I was overcome with disgust and started beating away at him, scratching deep gouges in his scalp and shoulders. Only when I buried a thumb in his nasty little eye did he relent and let go. He sat up and my thumb slid out of the socket with a pop. For a moment,
Starting point is 00:57:29 He looked overcome with naive sadness, but then hatred washed over his face and his remaining eye glared at me with murder. He started to choke me, those terrible fists clasping around my throat like bands of iron. I struggled, lashing my hands out at the floor and furniture, desperate for something, anything that might help. Thankfully, my hands alighted on the knife and I drove it hard into the soft flesh of his armpit. Her moment he carried on as normal, but by the time I drove the blade,
Starting point is 00:57:59 between his ribs once, then twice. The blood had already drained from his face. It soaked us both. And to my horror, it stank of sour milk and talcum powder. Fucking talcum powder is so good. I watched the realization of his wounds stole the fire in his eyes. He stumbled backwards, his face scrunching up
Starting point is 00:58:21 as he let out a horrific ball. Pink foam seeped from his mouth, and he gasped and choked. His lungs were filling with blood. and I watched him die slowly before me. By the time it was done, he was a man again. Strangely dressed, emaciated wretch of a man, but nothing more. I touched my throat and it felt sore, but my chest was a rag and mess.
Starting point is 00:58:47 Was it good for you? I asked, a laugh rising unbiden from my lips. Sound of my own voice scared me. I sounded deranged, but I couldn't stop, laughing up the joke I'd made. Before long, my breath became short, consciousness slipped away in its entirety. It's so good.
Starting point is 00:59:08 It's such a good story. It's so well done. It's been some time. How long? I don't know. And I still wonder whether he was ever real. I burned the house down and I finally got to hear the sound of sirens
Starting point is 00:59:21 coming to take me away. It was a weird problem to explain to the police. They had evidence of a child living in the home. but no body. They thought I'd off to kid and burn the house to hide the evidence. Later on, they found one adult body, but it was the delivery man's on my husband's, and I was arrested just a few short weeks later.
Starting point is 00:59:44 Of course, I told them the truth. Just barring a few of the weirder details. My husband had gone insane, I said. He'd snapped, started acting like a child, killed one man, and tried to kill me. Unfortunately, there are no records, of my husband, nor our marriage, nor our life together. I lived alone, unemployed, because of a wealthy trust granted to me by my family.
Starting point is 01:00:10 The mortgage was not paid by my husband, but rather the trust. All of this was news to me. He was real. I know that much. I still have the wounds to prove it, and they found that little girl who testified somewhat in my defense. She really had seen a man dressed as a baby, she said. Although when asked to give a description of what he looked like, she broke down screaming and had to be sedated. I knew what that felt like.
Starting point is 01:00:39 I couldn't tell you my husband's age, his eye color, his birthday, or even his name. It's all worked against me. I think I'm on my second appeal, but my lawyer told me to lower my expectations. No marriage certificate, no wedding invitations, no relationship status on Facebook, no photos, no plane tickets for the honeymoon. no official documentation. Every conceivable trace of this man's life simply doesn't exist. I managed to get a brain scan.
Starting point is 01:01:10 They say my brain should belong to a dementia patient, except I'm just 36. It's all full of holes. Lesions, they call them. It's a good name for it. I said there was a worm, didn't I? He was eating through my head like an apple core. Not a literal warm, of course.
Starting point is 01:01:28 Well, I don't know that for sure. But still, I think he did something to my head because even now, just the thought of him can give me a nosebleed. I don't remember much of my life before. He rode over it like a computer file and deliberately blotted out whatever didn't suit his purpose. And of course, they never did find his body, did they? A bit of a cliche, I know.
Starting point is 01:01:53 I think it was childish to me to ever believe that a few holes in the torso would kill him. It. would say. After all, he was playing pretend of being human just as much as being a child. And that is the end of my husband has taken a roleplay too far. It's interesting. I'm, it's, well, let me ask you this. Are you happy that there is a follow-up story from apparently the husband's perspective? Or do you like it being kind of open-ended here? Okay. So I'm going to digest this story on its own. And I, for one, I want to say that was
Starting point is 01:02:29 a home run, right? That it was tight. It wasn't longer than it needed to be. Right. And the ending of this story does not give you a certainly defined. Yes, he was real. This was all physical. No, it was a manifestation of my mind. No, whatever. Right. It plays the middle ground. And I think it does it in a satisfying way where it's kind of whatever answer you want to take it, right? Yeah, it doesn't feel like an ambiguous ending that feels cheap or doesn't feel like they knew how to end. To end, it. I like the element of really playing her as being someone. Like I said, I mean, the entire time I was asking, do you think this is a traumatic episode? Do you think this is her? I mean, these lapses of time. So they were building to that, to that ending in a really
Starting point is 01:03:16 great way where I'm still under the impression too, where I was like, maybe he did get up and leave. Maybe this thing wasn't even human or whatever. And it's fun thinking, was this person just insane and she was pretending that she had this weird adult, you know, child thing or whatever. Who knows? I mean, it's the, the emphasis on the lack of documentation of their marriage is very interesting. That's like a really interesting little detail that at the end to really hark on to. Dude, I'm just so, I feel like I just like succeeded at something. I'm just so oh that was great yeah no i will say extremely well done i am curious to see like as a single story this is the part of this is the kind of part of storytelling where i'm like i almost
Starting point is 01:04:07 wish i didn't have anymore i like i like where it's at i'm hoping that this sequel can add in a fun way but these are the kinds of stories where i'm like you just need to let it be even if it's popular just leave a bee it's a great it's like a fun piece totally told from the it's all from the perspective of insane person too. Like there's, there's no way you can read this story too and be like, oh, the wife is insane.
Starting point is 01:04:32 She's definitely crazy by the end of this. Everything she's been through. I think she's just bad. Yeah, but that's the thing. Was the inception of this her own craziness? Or is that just a symptom of what she experienced? I like to believe the latter because like she said,
Starting point is 01:04:46 the little girl did see something, right? And the delivery man is dead. Well, you have to think too, if it was, if there was anything and all of a sudden, she just got attacked by this woman out in her, who was like who was in my mind if she is making the husband up that means that to me i'm like she's probably playing both roles and she even did pull the little girl's hair and she was like screaming to stop it while she was doing it so it might have just been an extremely traumatic
Starting point is 01:05:11 thing for this child too yeah that's true it couldn't be man gosh it's it's such a good middle ground the descriptions of violence at that end were so good yeah i i want to say too i love the little detail. I didn't even think about what their house looked like until that's when the little girl showed up and she's like, this place is disgusting. There's broken windows. So it seems like she's almost living in essentially an abandoned house is what it seems like how it's
Starting point is 01:05:37 kept. But I pictured like crayon drawings over the walls. Like toys all over the floor and like unkept dishes and stuff. Because also whenever she was watching her dish, she was washing the same one for two hours. So I imagine that there's just tons of dirty dishes. It's like a child
Starting point is 01:05:53 house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, should we just hop immediately into the my wife has taken our role playing too far? Man, I'm just so excited. Okay, so I'll say this. Whatever the next part is, I think the first part works perfectly well as a standalone.
Starting point is 01:06:07 And as a standalone, I honestly, maybe a little love struck right now. But honestly, it's one of the best we've read on the show. I definitely put it like top, maybe it's top five, but definitely like top six or seven. It's just so tight. everything about it works well the ending's great the setup's great the violence
Starting point is 01:06:28 is great like I really love that story that was awesome I will I will say it's very it's very well-paced it doesn't linger too long on anything but yet when it when it does go for the punches it hits really hard it hits hard for sure and I think that's really cool all right so now I'm interested to see where this is
Starting point is 01:06:44 going to go because I honestly have no idea it's the title of it is my wife has taken our role playing too far so it's implied to be from the husband's position but the vibe I got from the first one is that the husband may not exist or some ethereal being uh which if this if this story if i don't like this story i'm just choosing to believe that that the first story exists without the second if there is a perspective from the husband here it could very much be that the wife was insane and just when she burnt
Starting point is 01:07:11 down the uh the house we don't know the the time laps the jump the the lapses of time who knows what she did during those lapses of time like destroyed pictures doing whatever to like almost erase its existence. Plus, we also mentioned that she is being kind of suspicious, like some of the way she phrases stuff. Like, she refers to him, even to us as she narrates the story
Starting point is 01:07:35 as a child. And that's kind of weird, right? So it's not out of the realm of possibility. I don't think. My wife has taken our roleplaying too far. It was my wife who suggested roleplay, despite what she may say elsewhere. They'll just have to decide who you think is being honest.
Starting point is 01:07:53 When she first suggested acting out roles, I was hoping for pigtails and pleaded skirts, but I should have figured it wouldn't be like that. Okay, to be, for one, the pigtail skirt thing is pretty weird. Just like, like in real life. Like a schoolgirl thing. Yeah, yeah, that's, that's, I know it's not expressly like,
Starting point is 01:08:16 you know, like they're a child or teen or whatever, but it is wrapping at the door of it. And I've always found that strange. I will say that is like probably the most, I would say that's the most when people say like role play they usually think like what nurse and like that kind of thing
Starting point is 01:08:28 so I guess it probably is just a generic thing of him being like oh this is why I expect yeah sure I'm not saying it's I'm just saying in real life it's always weirded me out a bit oh sure yeah like like like in real life I'm like it's a little strange
Starting point is 01:08:42 if I'm honest there isn't much that I wouldn't have agreed to at that point in our relationship things weren't bad but, well, they weren't good either. One morning I woke up to a packed lunch and an orange juice on the breakfast table. I tried to make myself a cup of coffee.
Starting point is 01:09:01 She told me that growing boys shouldn't drink things like that. I typically skip breakfast and headed right out the door each morning, but the way she sat there looking at me made me feel like I was missing something. It took me a minute to realize that this right here was the start of our little pretend play. So I sat down and ate the series.
Starting point is 01:09:20 cereal and drink the juice. All right. So I see where this is going. This is going to be like a manipulation game, right? Like which one of them? Well, I think she's taking the motherly role is what he's going to say. She wanted to pretend that she was his baby. And she's saying that he wanted to pretend to be the baby.
Starting point is 01:09:40 So I'm interested how like some of the later events of the story go from his perception, right? The whole scene made me pretty uncomfortable. I guess I just felt on the spot. It sounds weird, but I've always had a bit of a thing about people cooking for me. My mom died when I was eight, and my dad didn't really pay me much attention. I had to cook and clean and iron my uniform every night before school, and no one ever did my homework for me. Later on, my dad married some poor waitress half his age,
Starting point is 01:10:09 and treated her like a servant, and I realized that must have been exactly how he treated my mother. Not saying that this taught me to be the perfect man or anything, far from it. I just didn't like things that made me feel like I was becoming my dad. But there's my wife, baking me cereal for breakfast, and then handed me a neat little lunchbox with cartoons on it that I'd watch as a kid. Goku. That was a throwback. What cereal box has Goku on it?
Starting point is 01:10:42 And I'd be lying if I said I didn't like some part of it. Driving to work that day, I decided that this role play was probably just some kind of therapy and that it was best to go along with it. Even after I got home that night to find that she'd run me a bath. Not only did she want me to be a quote, clean little boy,
Starting point is 01:11:02 she'd even laid out some brand new pajamas. It was deeply uncomfortable. That would be extremely uncomfortable. That would be so weird. She perched on the toilet lid while I was set upright in the tepid water not sure what to do with myself. A grown man with a beer belly
Starting point is 01:11:19 hunched over. in gray water. I felt so stupid. Do you need help washing yourself? Uh, sure. I replied, and she came over and pulled out a fish-shaped bottle of no-tier shampoo. She washed my hair using a small plastic cup to rinse my scalp. I had to lean back for her to get it all, and she held my head in her hands.
Starting point is 01:11:44 I hated it. My eyes wouldn't stay shut. Her hands were too cold. water too warm, the porcelain of the tub too hard. And every time the water flowed over my head, I would reflexively lurch for it and try to sit up, which of course meant I got suds in my eyes. Shh, just lie back. It won't hurt.
Starting point is 01:12:07 I won't let it. So I laid back and controlled my breathing and told myself that it was for her sake, not mine. One of my last memories of my mother was her reading a book while I sat in the bath, And I guess I didn't like how I fell to my wife's arms at that moment, but she just kept talking to me in that soothing voice. And somewhere along the lines, I let go of conscious thought and focused on the sensation of the warm water rolling down my scalp. You can let go. She said, wiping some water from my face. And when I looked up at her, I realized that I was shaking and my heart was pounding.
Starting point is 01:12:47 all of a sudden it all just came out all the tension all the anxiety the constant state of near panic that I suppressed for my entire life you're meant to say this kind of stuff feels cathartic but I hated it
Starting point is 01:13:03 it made me feel physically sick even a little ashamed she held me in her arms while I sobbed like a baby in the tub and when it was finally to over all I could think was Thank God I can breathe again I let her dry me as I stood dripping wet on the tiles
Starting point is 01:13:23 Then I let her dress to me in the cool dry pajamas she laid out Ready The silky fabric raising goosebumps on my skin By the time I curled up into bed Her arms cradled my head like it was a precious jewel I was exhausted like I just gone for a quick 30-mile run Last thing I remember was the theme tune to Ed Adenetti and the flood of nostalgia combined
Starting point is 01:13:47 with the feel of fresh bed linen put me to sleep hard and fast several of you in the audience would immediately fall for this by the way I kind of like actually how therapeutic his version is her presentation is like he wants it
Starting point is 01:14:01 so she kind of like allows it but his is like I have to release this like you know it feels well his his is so weird because it's like she kind of just randomly does this and he's like oh okay but he already has some like deep deep seated like deep rooted problems you know what i mean so then in a weird way he feels stupid about it
Starting point is 01:14:21 but it actually ends up letting him be able to like let down his guard and actually like let out some of these emotions that he probably has just kept him for so long yeah just kind of an interesting the mirroring of the stories it's very interesting normally i don't like sequels especially to stories like these because i'm always like okay you did the first one was fine you don't have to like tack on or whatever right um but this one so far this one is at an interesting context or an interesting way to look at the first story, right? Yeah, it's still pretty early in the story before I want to get to.
Starting point is 01:14:51 It's still pretty early for sure. Yeah. But, okay, so let's, let me ask you this, Hunter. You and, you and Allison are at the house, right? And Alice is like, hey, hey, babe, I made you a lunch today, right? Nothing weird about that, right? Yeah. Okay, so you get, you go, you go to eat your lunch.
Starting point is 01:15:09 And, uh, you open it up and she made you like, there's like an apple juice in there. and there's like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or something, right? Right. Would you have any level in your mind of like, well, that's a little strange? No, I wouldn't say so. I mean, I don't think I would either.
Starting point is 01:15:28 I don't think I would either. Knowing me and my wife, knowing me and my wife, I know that we would be, like I'd be like, I definitely would make a probably a comment on like, oh, I feel like I'm in first grade again. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:15:40 You'd probably laugh about it. But I wouldn't, it's not like I'd be like, what the fuck weird. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. There's like a level of plausibility there, right? The pajama thing and the bathing, I would not do that.
Starting point is 01:15:52 So that's what I'm saying. Okay, so we have like one end established is like, that's fine. And then another end of definitely not, right? Setting up in the tub while she washes your head. My question is, where on the spectrum do you like say something or do you realize something's weird? Well, the thing here, I think it's important to realize is that he is telling us, Oh, I feel so weird doing this.
Starting point is 01:16:15 I secretly think that he really wanted this. Or in a way, I think that it is beneficial to him. Yeah. Where you can feel like that cringe of like, oh, God, what am I doing? But it's one of those things where once you start doing it, I think he's going to be like, I really enjoyed it, you know? I think he's, I bet you anything. I'm wondering if he gets bought in a bit more.
Starting point is 01:16:36 Like if he's like, I don't know, it feels weird. And they just more little things keep happening until it gets too far. I don't know. I'm curious to see. kind of falls into it a bit, yeah. Yeah. I think the cutoff would be, because I'd be the same way,
Starting point is 01:16:49 if Kayla, like, made me a lunch and it was like stuff, I wouldn't think anything of it. I think the line is when she started doing stuff for me, you know? Well, how does so... Like, okay, so, like, making me food
Starting point is 01:17:03 wouldn't think of think of it. Trying to feed me food. You see what I've been? Like, going a little too far with it. I would immediately say something if my wife said growing boys need to have that. Like growing boys need to have this. I would say, what the fuck are you talking about?
Starting point is 01:17:20 What if it was said in like a sarcastic tone, though? Well, she's like, oh, what's different. But yeah. Yeah, that's different. I'm saying I think that she is the way that the wife is acting in this.
Starting point is 01:17:30 I imagine that she is saying very sincerely. Yeah. Probably. Yeah. Probably. I can't think of a scenario where like running me a bath. I would be like, unless it was like romantic.
Starting point is 01:17:41 like, oh, I've made the bath or whatever. I can't think of Sedaro where that would fly over well. You know, the one time of bath. Hey, only bad situation is that door better be cracked and them. Titties better be covered in suds, dude. That's all I'm saying. And I better, I'm better be the one to, you know, I mean, ain't no way. I'm going to be like, draw a bath and be like wash my hair.
Starting point is 01:17:58 You kid me, my apish body. Look at the goddamn jungle book rolling around that bathtub. Ain't no way, dude. I'm going to have that. Okay. Well, normally when your wife draws a bath, it's not to actually use the bath. what I mean. That's what I mean. That's the only scenario where it doesn't become strange because otherwise it's like, oh, I made you a bath so you could clean up. It's like, what are you talking about? I'd be like, I would probably, you know, I had to me and say, do I smell like shit? You know, times I've said that to my wife is unbelievable. But I'm like, oh, do I smell bad or something? Because she'll like, she'll say like some comment or whatever. And it's always like, oh, no, I was, I meant it this way. But I've, I could say, if someone drew me a bath like that or, you know, I feel like I would definitely be like, oh, do I smell like shit? I must be like shit.
Starting point is 01:18:43 Y'all take a bath. I don't like baths though in general. So I don't, I don't, I wouldn't fuck with the bath. Yeah, you know, actually,
Starting point is 01:18:48 you know what I think would be the cutoff. Like, I was trying to think on like the spectrum of like where you get off. If she started dressing me, right?
Starting point is 01:18:55 If she was like, not physically, physically is way too far. But I'm saying if like she has outfits laid out, like here's what you're wearing today. Oh. Oh. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:19:03 The physically dressing's too far. I think that is right on the line where I'd be like, oh, okay. I'm a grown man. I can put on pants, dude. And she'll do stuff like, she'll do stuff like,
Starting point is 01:19:13 oh, you should wear a different color shirt or stuff. Like, that's normal wife stuff. But if it's like she has it laid out on the bed, that's when I, I think that would be the breaking point where I'd say something,
Starting point is 01:19:22 right? I don't even like that, I don't even like that. Don't fucking put my clothes on my, dude, I'll get my, I can dress myself. You dressed yourself.
Starting point is 01:19:28 I'll dress myself. We're all right. Yeah, I know. I'm saying that would be like, that is like the lowest level of something that I would be like, no.
Starting point is 01:19:35 Sure. Yeah. Anything lighter than that, I could probably, like the making me lunch and it's like kids food and stuff, I'd probably like, I wouldn't think anything of it. Yeah. Unless it was like, unless it was like peanut butter jelly every day for like several weeks, then I might be like, all right, what's going on here? I honestly, I, to be fair, I probably wouldn't fight that very hard. I do like peanut butter jelly quite a bit. I think I'm saying. I'm saying if she sat there, she may be appearing really
Starting point is 01:19:58 jelly in like apple slices. I'd probably, I don't think you'd hear my ass. I can't think of a scenario where my wife makes me food and I'm mad about it. You know? Yeah. The next day at work, I felt dirty. And I didn't much enjoy the thought of going home. I knew what was waiting for me. And sure enough, she was there with SpongeBob pajamas, brand new, in one hand, and a plate of food in another.
Starting point is 01:20:22 Now, me and you were respectable men of character who would step off from this. I guarantee you at least 40% of the men in our audience would kill for this. Oh, my God, in a heartbeat. A woman who acts like their mommy and gives them. pajamas to watch TVs and make some food. I just, I don't know, dude. That shit grosses me out. Well, yeah.
Starting point is 01:20:50 Yes, I think that's the correct answer that treated your wife like your mother is gross. And also like your, all I'm saying is, dude, some, some dudes like that. You're like, Brave takes only on this podcast. I'm just saying, Yeah. This is kind of weird. A little bit, a little bit peculiar.
Starting point is 01:21:11 Can't hold me back. This is what the woke media doesn't want you to know. It's kind of strange. At first, I told her I wasn't up for it that night, but she just told me to stop being silly and to sit down to eat. And well, the food did look good. And stupid as this is, I told myself it was me doing her a favor, you know? Like if I just agreed to have her do all this.
Starting point is 01:21:36 stuff for me, it would be okay. So long as I agreed, begrudgingly. So I ate the food and wore the clothes, and I tried not to cringe when she called me her baby boy. Several of you would fold. As much as I hated it, she was being really nice to me. I just wanted her to like me. She hadn't liked me in so long, and this whole messed up business meant she was being genuinely affectionate to me. For years, she'd always kind of looked at me like I was a dick. I don't know where, but somewhere along the line I stopped being her husband and just became a... A husband. Just another emotionally stunned guy with a receding hairline.
Starting point is 01:22:18 I could have been more attentive. I know that. But nobody told me how exhausting mediocracy is. And by the time I got through barely surviving work each day, I'd find very little energy left to give to her. I felt lonely all the time. And something about being in her arms made me... feel a little less alone. I secretly hope that this roleplay was about dismantling the walls we'd both put up.
Starting point is 01:22:44 It wasn't on my terms. I would have picked literally anything else. But hey, when is life ever fully on anyone's terms? Being in love really means being held hostage. Yeah, things were bad, but man, I loved her with everything I had. So, I had to work with what I had, and what I had was this weird roleplay. I figured that it makes some sense that some women didn't want a daddy
Starting point is 01:23:12 that instead some women actually wanted to be a mommy. You see it online all the time, right? Daddy this, daddy that. You can't throw a stone online without founding some pornographic image of a woman being fanatized. So why could it go the other way around? So long as it wasn't sexual,
Starting point is 01:23:34 I figured I could do it. I wear the pajamas, watch cartoons, and ask for help coloring in the lines. I guarantee you, that sentence is a cope. He a million percent would have let it become sexual. I don't believe a guy who's wearing SpongeBob cartoons, kicking his feet going,
Starting point is 01:23:52 can we color now? What would it whip it out? As soon as, as soon as it was put on the table that he'd get his dick and ball sucked in some pajamas, like in a pajama, like a fucking SpongeBob onesie, that would, that shit would have happened in a heart. then a heartbeat.
Starting point is 01:24:08 Once again, our audience much the same I would imagine if I had to guess these ingrates. There's a lot of them that are getting excited just hearing this I'm sure. I'd wear pajamas, watch cartoons, and ask for help
Starting point is 01:24:24 coloring in the lines. In the end, I didn't just go along with it for a few nights. I went along with it every single day that followed, and I found that every day there was a little more of it to go along with. Packed lunches became more elaborate. Food I ate grew simplified
Starting point is 01:24:39 until I was practically the kind of stuff you'd feed a toddler. One Friday, when I finally told her I wanted to break, she just told me to stop being silly. Oh, don't like that. She used that phrase a lot during the roleplay. Also, them continuing to use the phrase roleplay makes it just a bit more uncomfortable, you know?
Starting point is 01:24:58 Yeah. And this is going to sound stupid, but she made me feel silly when she said it. Her voice immediately made me feel, small and shame, just like I had in the bath. And before I even realized, I was doing it, I was sliding the pajamas on and booting up my Xbox while she messed around in the kitchen.
Starting point is 01:25:15 Now that, now that sentence taken out of context of everything else, that sounds nice. Just got your pajamas on playing Xbox. Why I'm just making dinner? Like, ain't nothing wrong with that. It's everything else around it. I talk big game, but aside from the actual child stuff, The idea of like, just wearing for javas, play video games, like,
Starting point is 01:25:39 yeah, okay, well, it's not, it's not, not twisted my arm as much. Yeah, yeah, as long as it ain't become graphic or nothing. I believe it's Christian enough. I actually planned on talking to her that night about going to couples therapy, but she spoke to me like a little boy, and I just couldn't stop myself reacting like one. It was like I'd been trained. That weekend I listened to her tell me stories as I sat on the counter kicking my legs. and I think I felt something die inside me.
Starting point is 01:26:09 So interesting hearing that whenever it was like from her side, she was like, he was genuinely interested. He was so excited. And meanwhile, he's like, kill me, kill me, kill me, kill me. On some level, I have to take some responsibility. I ate the food I wanted to eat. And when she asked if there was anything I wanted, I always had something to say.
Starting point is 01:26:29 I watched the TV I wanted to and wore the clothes she put out for me. Pretty soon I got used to not thinking about those things. pretty soon every single day was spent with her. Some nights were movie nights and we watched her favorite films while she told me all the memories she had at first watching them. Some nights were mommy nights where she'd sit and drink wine and watch her own shows while I play games. We made forts out of cushions, camped in the backyard,
Starting point is 01:26:58 played cowboy and Indian using earth guns, chased each other around the house for hours at a time doing hide-and-seek or some homebrew version of tag. You and your wife just like running through the house. Play tag. Once again, it's so messed up. They're like both 36 years old. It's just weird.
Starting point is 01:27:18 Fucking weird, dude. I've had to describe this time. It was like being in a waiting room only I didn't have a number or a clock or any way of knowing how much time was passed. The only way I could even tell the time was passing was that I lost weight. In fact, I lost a lot of weight. My wedding ring slipped right off my finger one day. And where it went after that, I'll never know.
Starting point is 01:27:41 I still don't understand this part of it, but I remembered that I just kept getting thinner. For about three weeks, I fell ill with some stomach bug, and I spent my days in bed, watching Talley while she checked my temperature and fed me chicken soup. By the time I came out of it, I was wearing a child's large set of pajamas. I mean, how does that even work, right?
Starting point is 01:28:02 I started the year wearing weighing 120 kigs in the end I got down to 45 oh gosh God damn I think 120 kicks like 250 pounds maybe something like that 260
Starting point is 01:28:15 and now you're down to like 120 what the heck or 100 man yeah not only that but my hair started getting thin and downy and I couldn't even remember when I last needed a shave asked her about this one day and she played it dumb like she didn't know what was
Starting point is 01:28:32 happening to me. Now the two of us, she must have known because it was literally right in front of her eyes. I was changing. She recommended that I stay home until I felt 100% myself again, which of course meant that I never went back to work because I never ever felt like myself again. See, this is interesting. His point of view compared to her point of view about that, you know? Looking back, it wouldn't surprise me if she forged a resignation letter of mine or did something similar to keep me at home. Either way, by the time the stomach bug passed, I was trapped in that house. The outer gate that had once barely reached my chest now towered over my head, and I could
Starting point is 01:29:09 barely get my fingers around the bars. It wasn't a new gate, or at least I didn't think it was. It was just somehow taller than me all of a sudden. They stopped making sense around this time, and looking back, it's hard to disentangle certain memories and ideas. I don't even remember the crib arriving. I was just... It was just there one day, along with a whole new room in the house that physically shouldn't have been there.
Starting point is 01:29:33 I checked one late night when I felt lucid, and sure enough, the bathroom and master bedroom had it magically shrunk by 50%. But somehow a whole new room had just sprung up between them, and it was painted in baby blue, and the walls were covered in paintings of airplanes as if I stared at them too long. I'd feel real sleepy, and my head would get heavy, and boom, next thing I'd remember it'd be morning, and I'd be staring at a bowl of cereal. Okay, that's a really interesting thing that didn't come up in the first part, right? It's like some house of leaves action.
Starting point is 01:30:03 The house is like adding dimensions to it. This is all very spectral and different. I'm wondering. I'm wondering if in his depraved state, if she is completely just reorganized. Like he says they're new rooms, but I'm wondering if he's like stripping rooms and like redoing them to be more baby.
Starting point is 01:30:22 Like is what I'm wondering. It right, again, it rides that point that I don't know. I think honestly both of them might be in, affected by something at this point, right? I'd be curious to see if there's like a brain scan for this guy too. I don't fucking know. Whole chunks of time were purged from my head.
Starting point is 01:30:38 And not just the recent stuff either. I was an accountant who suddenly couldn't do long division and struggled with his multiplication tables. Normally my brain was like a cacophony of fireworks that took every ounce of my willpower to keep under control. Stray thoughts just pinged off all the time and it was like it was chaotic, but it was me. But with my wife, and with everything going on,
Starting point is 01:31:00 it had turned into something more like a cop wed with holespoked in it. Wonder if she's poisoning him, too? Uh, she certainly could be. Again, it's like, it's a weird middle ground. Yeah. You know, when you listen to someone and their voice just turns into a drone and you realize that you stopped listening after a few words? It was like that, but with my own thoughts.
Starting point is 01:31:20 As soon as I got any momentum going, I lost interest and time faded, and I'd come to a few hours later bouncing up and down on my wife's knee. I hate that. That's awful. I could practically feel bits of my mind sloughing away like candle wax, leaving big patches of nothing behind, and it hurt so bad. It hurt worse than anything physical that ever happened during that messed up time.
Starting point is 01:31:46 Something was cutting my mind up like a scrapbook or getting at old magazines, and I could feel it happening in real time. There are times when she takes something off me, like the remote, and put it on the counter, and I just hang there over my head and that just doesn't make sense to me. And the harder I concentrate to try and figure that out, the more it feels like staring right at the sun.
Starting point is 01:32:11 And it wasn't just me. There were absolutely a couple of moments when she'd look at me and I wouldn't see my wife. Actually, that's not right. She was my wife, absolutely 100% my wife. She just had an extra two pair of limbs and, whoa. Weird. Whoa
Starting point is 01:32:28 She had an extra Two pairs of limbs Okay If this keeps up We get like new events That were happening In the background During the first part
Starting point is 01:32:38 This may be one of the best sequels For sure we've seen on the series I like the idea too Of like they both have perceived Their uh Relate their spouse As like physically changing to It's kind of interesting
Starting point is 01:32:53 Coming from like Oh we're in a back relationship, right? You're in a bad, like, it's almost like the kind of actual physical altercations and like physical modifications that your, that your mind will look at when you're in a bad relationship with somebody. You know what I mean? Certain things become painful or something like somebody's laugh. Like when you're really, I used to date this girl back the day when I always liked her laugh when we first started dating. But then as like it kind of got on and we
Starting point is 01:33:18 relationship started falling out. It's almost like you perceive the laugh differently. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Things become different. Yeah. Yeah. yeah and it's interesting to see how like oh physically they're like perceiving each other in these new ways regardless if it is real or not i just thought that was it's kind of an interesting relationship take i've got to say the way information's being fed and stuff like that even though i know like broad strokes of where it's going i'm still so engaged to see where his perspective of it goes like this the real really like hats off to christian christian yeah hats off to christian dude like banger banger so far man i don't i don't What I like about the sequel is I'm glad that it's the same story, but it's interweaving in these new sections, like new perspectives of things, but then also filling in where her time gaps are. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:34:07 When she's like, oh, I just, I happen to be in this new spot now. Feels like he's been filling some of those, feeling some of the spots. Yeah. It hurts even now to try and remember too clearly.
Starting point is 01:34:18 What I do know was that as time went on, I felt less like precious cargo and more like a leaden weight. She had to lug from place to place. Some nights I'd wake up and spotter stood in my doorway looking at me and the expression on her face, holy shit, it was murderous. I'd have to lie there and pretend for hours that I was snoring gently because on some level, I just knew it to be bad news. The time we spent together started to change,
Starting point is 01:34:45 and more often than not, I'd try to stay out in the garden and play with toys. Only, I wasn't really playing. I was just pretending, hoping that if my performance was good, then she wouldn't get any more irritated with me. Without knowing when, why, or how, rules were introduced. I go to do something like make myself a drink and stop, hand frozen halfway to an empty glass. I remember that I wasn't allowed to get glasses out of the cupboard by myself.
Starting point is 01:35:15 I didn't know how I knew that. I just knew it. I was allowed to play games past seven. I was allowed to get my own snacks. I was allowed in the garden without telling her where I was going, and if I broke these rules One time I threw a ball and broke a window and she exploded out of the screen door like a bull
Starting point is 01:35:33 it felt so wrong to feel scared of her she was meant to be looking after me those were the roles we were meant to be playing she grabbed my arm and pulled it so hard it pops right out of the socket and I begged for the game to stop but nothing I said could snap us out of these messed up roles we'd made she dragged me into the house
Starting point is 01:35:52 and I passed out around about the time I had bounced off the third step of our porch. When I woke up, I was set in a high chair and strapped in real good. Something hurt, but I ignored it. All I wanted was for this pissed off woman to love me again. I was so terrified I would have done anything she asked. She was the only thing I had to keep me safe in the world, and my head was full of all the amazing stuff she did for me.
Starting point is 01:36:16 The food, the gifts, the movies, the clothes, the bathing. I could see how tired she was. It was me making her that tired. So I cried and I sobbed and I said, sorry so often my throat got sticky and dry and I started to heave. When her terrible frown finally broke, she ran towards me with her arms wide open
Starting point is 01:36:35 and pulled me out of the chair. She told me to never make her hurt me again. Saying it over and over again as she's sent me down on the sofa and rolled up my pajamas to show me my chubby legs. Something was jutting out of the skin and before I could figure out what it was, she pinched it with her fingers and thumbyes.
Starting point is 01:36:55 and drew it out in one long motion. It was a needle, a little sewing needle that had been slid painfully into the thick, fatty muscle of my thigh. There have to be rules, and there have to be consequences. But don't worry.
Starting point is 01:37:14 I want you to know it hurts me just as much as it hurts you. We both suffer when you break the rules. I want you to know that. You don't just hurt yourself. You hurt me. I watched as she placed the bloody needle on her tongue and swallowed it. Oh.
Starting point is 01:37:30 Oh. Ha ha ha ha. When the doorbell rang, I was looking at the diapers around my waist. I didn't know when or how they had gotten there. And weirdly, I remember thinking the exact same thing that morning, in the morning before that. The longer I thought about it, the harder it was for me to remember when I last actually used a toilet.
Starting point is 01:37:51 Oh. Realization horrified me. some of the memories flashing into my head. It's like I was experiencing them for the first time all over. The timid woman I'd married was somehow suddenly so strong, able to not only overpower me, but able to actually lift me off the ground. To pick me up and lay me down on a small table and hoist my legs up and...
Starting point is 01:38:15 She changed me, I thought. My whole body flushed with unspeakable humiliation. I think it was the feeling that let me keep my head together when the delivery man came. like I had this little bit of defiance that stopped me trying to hide from the stranger. This is my chance, I thought. Wait, no, I'm not allowed to open the door,
Starting point is 01:38:33 not for strangers, but I can speak to him. Maybe he can help. Someone has to help. But if she comes and finds me that I'm in trouble, I don't want to be in trouble. It was like being drunk, like having my thoughts handcuffed to a maniac. I had to fight every step of the way
Starting point is 01:38:49 to stay a man and not a child. And I pulled at the handle eager to get some person. on what was happening to me. Only I never got to even see the guy because that was when the bathroom door slammed shut. She's coming, and I knew that if she found me, then I'd get one hell of a punishment. The legs and arms already hurt so bad.
Starting point is 01:39:10 I wasn't a very good boy, I knew. I broke a lot of rules and didn't help that the new ones were popping up all the time. I fled towards the kitchen, turning the corner just in time for the door to swing open and for the delivery guy to get a good look at me. I briefly turned to face him and the way he reacted to the side of me
Starting point is 01:39:27 I expected to feel embarrassed but I just felt scared something was happening to me and the fact that this guy could see it made it horrifyingly real my body had changed no matter what my wife wanted I wasn't a child
Starting point is 01:39:42 I was changing into something but it wasn't a normal kid this wasn't Benjamin Button whatever happens when you cram a chubby middle-aged guy into a three-foot package It resulted in a cute little kid It's a nightmare I ran crying from the look in his eye
Starting point is 01:39:58 Got as far as the garden When I heard my wife thunder into the living room Who let you in? I have children in this house Who are you and why are you trying to be in my home? Poor guy was dumbstruck I could hear him stammering away As I ran under the porch steps and waited
Starting point is 01:40:15 I learned this was one of the few places Where she couldn't physically fit A few times I'd hit in under there she had to calm herself down and that made things a little easier on me, at least in the short term. Now I hope it'd keep me safe long enough that I could maybe even make a break for it when the guy left the gate. She child-proofed it with some infuriating mechanisms that my fat fingers couldn't work, but it sure did take a long time for that gate to swing open and closed, and that right there was the best chance I was ever going to get.
Starting point is 01:40:46 Get out of my house! She screamed at him as he flew down the steps. She followed hot on his heels. Who's your manager? Who do you work for? I want to put in a complaint. I want you to know exactly how goddamn badly you've messed up. This guy was stuttering and mumbling and fumbling,
Starting point is 01:41:05 unsure of whether to run away or turn and give this woman a decent account of himself. I hoped he would leave. I was hidden so well, and if he opened the gate, then I would finally have a chance to get the hell away from this living nightmare. This guy was still trying to answer
Starting point is 01:41:18 when my wife stepped down, onto the path and turned to me slightly, raising one eyebrow right in my direction, or I thought I was hidden. God, the terror I felt. I pissed myself. I thought I got one over on her, but she knew the whole time and she had something planned. Look at this. Look at this step. This wasn't damaged until you came along. The guy looked confused as hell, and I couldn't blame him. He been bombarded with conflicting complaints. It was like he was grasping at air to understand everything he'd seen. It wasn't just my wife going off at him. It was the memory of what he'd seen. It was the memory of me. He bent down to take a look and my wife encouraged him to get closer. I wondered why she was
Starting point is 01:42:04 making him get so close to my hiding spot. Did she want to humiliate me? Did she want to parade the little freak around? I thought she must have known how much my body upset me and she was going to used that fact to torture me a little bit. But it was nothing that tame. Without warning, his face slammed into the middle step. His head bounced off like a coconut. Only she was there, ready to catch it, and before
Starting point is 01:42:31 either one of us could figure it out, she had shoved his head right back against the wooden step. He started to swear, then shout, then cry, and then finally he screamed and screamed and screamed. Fun parallel. That is really fun parallel.
Starting point is 01:42:47 Well, yeah. It lasted so long. She never stopped pushing and somehow impossibly he started to give way. Besides of his skull started to crumple. His eyes bulged. His teeth popped out.
Starting point is 01:43:00 It fell on the floor like coins from a slot machine. I'd have to pull my legs up just to keep them from landing on my bare feet. I had front row seats to the worst horror show I could ever think of
Starting point is 01:43:11 watching that guy get scalped in slow motion. Well, he didn't stop at his head. she kept pushing until his shoulders started to pop and crack arms bit backwards bone snapped muscle and skin were peeled off with a sound like Velcro and then he poured out that little six inch gap and fell into the floor and a quivering pile of skin and flesh the only thing left on the other side was my wife's face staring at me through the
Starting point is 01:43:36 gore-coated wood come on put your new toy away I'll make you some lunch interesting great I love how that's consistent. The consistencies in the story are really fun to see how they make it to see how those marry each other. So my current working theory is that both of them are infected by the same like plague or like mind virus or whatever that's making them each like outwardly they're each fully committed to the role. But each of them still have their consciousness in there. So we're hearing their consciousness that doesn't want these things to happen and is coming up with ways to justify it when in reality both of them are fully committed. think she was pushing him through the stairs as much as he was pulling the guy through the
Starting point is 01:44:19 stairs. Oh, interesting. Okay. So you think that even he was, uh, even, so you're saying that they're both at fault. Like they are, like if you were a third person, if you were a camera witnessing this, they are both a hundred percent fully committed, but both of them are basically possessed and still conscious in their heads. I kind of like that idea. Convinced it's the other one that's forcing them into this because both of them are like, I don't know what's coming over me. whatever they're doing is making me go along with it when in reality
Starting point is 01:44:49 that's the same thing the other one's thinking but outwardly they're both acting the part I was sitting outside pretending to watch the clouds go by aware that she was behind the kitchen window
Starting point is 01:44:59 and pretending to wash dishes that's fun yeah stuff like that the parallels right like she's been washing the same dish for two hours and then he's like oh she's pretending to wash
Starting point is 01:45:08 yeah she was looking right at me even if I couldn't see her I watched her clean that guy up watched her dump him in an old compost pile around back. It was the only one down there. I saw my old clothes, my laptop,
Starting point is 01:45:23 my phone, my keys, my mail, everything that used to be me. I was just talking about things. I never really thought of it much, but I'd shrunk and changed, and I guess all that meat and bone fat had to go somewhere. I just hadn't realized that she
Starting point is 01:45:40 tied it up in dripping bed sheets and plopped it in the farthest point in our yoll. yard. I don't know how to explain it. I just knew it was me down there. Bits of me I never get back because it had been sun baked in a leathery awful. Is that not fun? His body is rotting off and she's got it tied up over there in a bag. Gosh, that's cool. Man, that's so, this is such an inventive idea. Oh, it's so cool. Also, like, yeah, again, I think they're both equally, like on the outside. Both of them are equally a part of it, but their consciousness is like still fully aware. So like he probably helped peel the skin and muscle off himself, but his brain's
Starting point is 01:46:24 convincing him that it was her. Man. Yeah. Couldn't even begin to tell you how it feels to grieve your own body like that. Whatever defiance I had was gone, especially after seeing what she did to that delivery guy. Coming in terms with who, rather what I was, meant that I lost all desire to escape. I'd have tried to overdose if it wasn't against the rules for me to go anywhere near the medicine cabinet. I ran the thumb across the purple and yellow flesh in my thigh. Skin riddled with a thousand infected puncture marks.
Starting point is 01:46:58 Can't break the rules, I thought. Those brief instances he sees where he mentioned like she has extra pairs of limbs or whatever, I think that is the true thing causing this, the mind plague, possession, the spirit, whatever. I think that is it showing its face for a millisecond, right? Like maybe every now and then out of the corner of their eye, the other one looks monstrous. It looks demonic or whatever, right?
Starting point is 01:47:24 Like, it's its true form for a moment. I think they are the same person. I think it's either the wife or the husband who believes that they're playing both roles and one of them doesn't exist. Which is also why he shifts up tall and short, tall and short. It's because they're perceiving both them at the same time. I never even considered that.
Starting point is 01:47:43 Yeah, that's what that's where I keep leading. My mind keeps leading me. It is one person that is both the, the baby and the mom and the mommy. Correct. Whoa. And all of this is just like an acted out like a split both sides. Oh. And I love that.
Starting point is 01:48:00 Like I really, I really like, I really like like. Like I keep leading myself to believe this. I'm curious to see the ending to see it also. Because at the ending, if it's like, oh, she never existed, then I will, I'll be like, oh, yeah. You'll say you were definitely right. Yeah. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:48:17 I'll be more convinced that, okay, this person is believed that they are both the same. Like, oh, this person never existed, blah,
Starting point is 01:48:23 blah, blah. Oh, man. Okay. When a frisbee floated freely over the hedge, I stared at it
Starting point is 01:48:29 for a moment like I was a disinterested cat. Myers tracked it, but nobody was home upstairs if you get what I mean. Only when it landed gently on the grass
Starting point is 01:48:38 and I heard the gate clang open did it dawn on me that I wasn't alone out there. as a little girl her reaction wasn't all that different to the delivery man's she stopped dead in her tracks to start to cry aloud distressed whale i wanted to ask her for help but i didn't want to face the way she looked at me so quietly scuffled off towards the bushes to hide or at least i started to it's when i heard the screen door bang and my wife came down the steps with the big smile on her face it's okay she cooed reaching out to hold the girl only our visitor couldn't see the kitchen knife, my wife clutched behind her. I won't let anyone ever hurt you. When she started walking towards our kitchen door, something broke.
Starting point is 01:49:22 I felt a special kind of hatred burned inside me. It wasn't a defiance, so much as pure spite. Kind of feeling that it would make you scream. I hate you over and over at your parents just to see them hurt. Sounds stupid as much, but as part of me wanted to keep that little girl safe, another part of me was just plain old jealous. After everything my wife had done to me, I couldn't bear the thought of her bringing another child into the house. I started to run towards the two of them and my wife, spotting me, hoisted the girl up into her arms.
Starting point is 01:49:55 Only that slowed her down so much that I reached them both before she'd even got up the first step. I tried to grab the girl's coat when I jumped, but wound up grabbing a fistful of hair. Everything that happened next was a jumble, but my wife slashed my arm and wrist with that big knife of hers, and I pulled so hard on the poor girl's head that a load of her hair came free in my arm. In the end, though, I think it helped because the girl started screaming like hell and when she got a good look at me,
Starting point is 01:50:23 that was when the fear really kicked in. And she started wriggling and kicking and punching. My wife, who really wasn't ready for just how hard it can be to keep a hold of a pissed off kid and ended up dropping the little girl. Once her feet were on the ground, that kid just zipped right out of there and I did everything I could to keep my wife away from her.
Starting point is 01:50:42 It wasn't a whole lot, but I think it helped. I think between the way my messed up appearance got the girl running and the way I managed to hold on to my wife's legs for long enough to trip her up a little, I think I saved that kid. Looking back on everything that my wife cost me, I guess that was one of the few little victories I ever had. As soon as the gate clings shut, all that feeling of triumph dribbled away. I crawled back towards the porch steps as quick as I could,
Starting point is 01:51:12 And the best way to describe it is that even though I wasn't looking at her, when my wife's eyes found me I could feel them. Her rage, it must be what it's like to stay next radioactive waste. I swear my shadow got darker and the ground got a little hotter. And the noises I heard, they didn't sound like they came from an upset woman. Not sure what they sounded like, really, except maybe a strange kind of clicking. When I finally got under the house and turned, I saw that she looked big enough to crush a man like a bug.
Starting point is 01:51:40 I don't know how to describe it except it was a little like looking at something with 3D glasses or the way your eyes feel funny just before a big migraine. I guess for just a second I saw her as something that wasn't human
Starting point is 01:51:55 but the part that really hurts my head is that she never changed. It was the same entity I'd married on the altar only now I got the same feeling I did looking at dead spiders or leathery roadkill. She never really had been human, had she? It was my memory shocking.
Starting point is 01:52:10 got to shit. I wasn't even willing to bet that I'd even married this thing. Read about those parasites that lay eggs and their hosts. Looking at her, she scuttled towards me. Yeah, I got the sense that's what she was. Some kind of parasite. She stopped just a few inches from the steps.
Starting point is 01:52:26 Her face peering at me through the gaps. She blinked with a third set of Ila as it smiled so wide, her skin started to lose its color and break. I will drown you in my womb. She said as calmly she would ask if I wanted to cut up hot dogs and my spaghetti. I believed
Starting point is 01:52:44 her. I didn't come out of those stairs for the rest of the day. Not even when my wife stood out on the porch, she called me for dinner. I didn't fancy my chances with whatever was shambling around up there and pretending to be a wife or a mother or whatever else it felt like. I didn't want anything she prepared
Starting point is 01:53:00 and as time wore on I found that the hunger in my stomach sharpened my mind so that I didn't mind it too much. Again, the parallels are fun because at the same time she says the adrenaline sharpened her mind, right? And he's saying the hunger did. It's just these fun dichotomies.
Starting point is 01:53:15 Besides, I could hazard a guess that she wasn't being honest about what was in my food and I didn't want anything she prepared. Whenever this was between us, it wasn't really a game now. The stakes were too high. And for me,
Starting point is 01:53:28 tucked away under those steps with my stomach growling and my mind growing more lucid with every passing second, I really started to hate her. I hated that she hurt me and she was supposed to protect me. I hated that she lied every second of every day until the sick little plan of hers had come to fruition.
Starting point is 01:53:45 But more than anything, I hated her for what she'd done to me. I wasn't a man, but I sure as hell wasn't a child. It's more like a monster and a joke, and I just knew that somehow she'd be the one stripping meat and fat off my bones until my frame withered to its pitible size. I had to leave. I had to. She since locked the gate, and I needed the key. and if she stopped me, well, I guess I needed a knife, didn't I? Need something to keep me safe.
Starting point is 01:54:17 I waited until sunset and crawled out from under the house, making sure to stick to the shadows. Peaking through the kitchen window, I saw her stood there with a plate in one hand and a blank expression on her face. She looked a little broken, like she didn't quite know what to do now that I wouldn't listen to her cries of dinner time.
Starting point is 01:54:35 She just stood there and shivered until some flicker of movement caught her eye, and she pivoted around to track it like a bird of prey. I had to drop out of sight more than once because of how sensitive she was to change us in the light. Although I think I managed to avoid her line of sight because when I finally snuck into the house via the back door, she was in the exact same spot, staring into the darkness like a blind man.
Starting point is 01:54:58 For a moment, I thought I was safe in the shadows. But whatever this thing was, it didn't seem so committed to playing a human. as soon as I got near the stairs her eyes fixed on me like a hounds she came barreling forward on every limb she had what little of her was visible in the moonlight looked almost fish like like she had been pulled out of the bottom of a lake she still had the general shape of a person I guess
Starting point is 01:55:23 only it was like something wearing a human suit one that was falling apart her joints slipped up and down her bones like they were on a pulley and they bent backwards and forwards and sideways As she got closer, I smelled her, and it was like rotten milk and dog shit left in a hot car. It hit me hard enough to water my eyes and make climbing the stairs difficult. Of course, I didn't get very far. Between my short legs and the side of her coming at me, I didn't have a chance. I got maybe four steps up before she grabbed my ankle with one hand and hauled me downstairs.
Starting point is 01:55:56 She mounted me, legs on either side, and slowly undid part of her sundress. Oh no. Hunter, don't make me read this. I'm scared. Titty-sucking time, dude. I'm scared. I didn't know what the hell is going on, nor did I have the strengths to fight it.
Starting point is 01:56:14 The last thing I remember was the side of her ribs pressed against her skin like fingers trying to poke through a rubber sheet. They were alive inside of her and wanted out. Baby need a feed? She asked before grabbing my head and slaming it backwards
Starting point is 01:56:31 into the step behind me. I awoke with a foul taste of my mouth. I'd been strapped into a high chair, and I looked around grogly until I laid eyes on a baby bottle. The congealed contents were the color of a smoker's fingers with visible lumps of pink matter lurking towards the bottom like syrup in a milkshake. Oh!
Starting point is 01:56:54 Straight from the source. My wife said her misshapen figures stroking my hairless head. Oh, it's like black and, of like blood looking clumps. Yeah, it seems like bloody, like a bloody pulp is what I pictured. And also like, like this point, at least to him,
Starting point is 01:57:15 she doesn't even look human. It looks like a bug person inside of a skin suit, right? It's like, don't you want to drink? Like, ugh. Huh. I realized that my legs were in agony and I saw that there must have been a dozen needles poking out of my skin
Starting point is 01:57:29 and right through the pajamas she dressed me in. She pressed a finger against one and for a second the pain became so white-hot that I nearly passed out all over again. I fought hard to stay awake, desperate to avoid another feeding, although part of me wondered if I wanted to endure the second one while awake. But when it all came down to it, it was just her in my way, wasn't it? That hatred inside me burned up like a pyre, and I realized that I wouldn't mind dying all that much.
Starting point is 01:57:57 I'd secretly hope for so long that I could maybe fix this somehow, maybe even get back to normal and get my body back. I didn't know how, but I let myself think that it could be possible. Setting there, looking at her loom over me, I decided that living like this wasn't really an option anymore. My hands were free. Who could blame her for leaving them like that? I couldn't hit her or kick her. I didn't have the reach or the strength.
Starting point is 01:58:22 But it'd have something sharp, so I reached down and tore a needle-free, and before she could try and get it out of my hand, I shoved it through her palm. It went right through like she'd been made. of nothing more substantial than some thick wool. It didn't even make a noise, although the stint she admitted became unbearably strong. She looked angry. Good, I thought, and I reached down and grabbed another,
Starting point is 01:58:46 and this time she tried to be quicker, but it just meant her face got closer. So close that the moonlight hit it, and for a moment I hesitated because I finally saw just how God, awful she really was. You could see where all that skin was just slipping away and hanging loose, like a badly, made mask and whatever was underneath, it looked a little like a spider.
Starting point is 01:59:08 Not a spider's face mine, you know, like she had a spider for a face. Only it was a spider with too many legs that were all curled up like it had been stamped on a few times, like her whole skull was a ball made out of the furry rubber bands. But she still had eyes, and they looked mostly human. And like I said, she got it in so close I could see those hairs twitch and wriggle. That meant I could lunge forward and jam the needle right into her eye, pushing so hard that by the end it was as embedded in the palm of my hand as it was in her skull or whatever she had. I don't know what exactly was in there, but it must have hurt because she let out
Starting point is 01:59:44 a scream that drew blood from my ears and she ran off into the dark, desperate to get far, far away from whatever it caused her pain. I didn't have much time. I slipped loose from the chair and ran from the house, stopping only long enough to catch a glimpse of a shadow passing over the house as if something had flown over. It's hard for me to say what exactly, but I'd have vague notion that some of the lampposts in the nearby street were moving, but they reached way too high into the sky. I felt to relieve. God, I felt to relieve, and it was like the popping of a cyst.
Starting point is 02:00:17 It hurt bad. It hurt like nothing I'd ever, ever felt. It wasn't a protracted injury. It's just more like being shot, I imagine. I don't know. It just, I reached the gate and saw somehow that my hand wore. wharf the lock, and by the time I'd fumbled it open, I was already hurtling towards the ground like a falling tree. When I woke up, the house was blazing. I felt like I just eaten 150 pounds
Starting point is 02:00:43 of raw meat, but at least I was the right size again. Okay, what do you think of that altercation of the fight? It's an exact parallel of like she gouged out the guy's eye, he gouged out her eye. So what I think happened is, I think it once again, it's just leading into a person is like wrestling themselves almost like it's a fight club kind of thing is that not i love that visual of like it wasn't like she had a spider's face she had a spider for a face like it was like a ball of like hair and fangs and points and stuff what a what a abstract thing for like if you're right through the other half of yourself right yeah it's kind of interesting the the the neat the use of needles in this one makes it seem they talk they both have both the wife and the husband
Starting point is 02:01:35 kind of have like it feels like a bit of guilt so it almost seems like you know like how there's cutters people that cut themselves um makes you think that almost like the needles are someone who like pricks themselves with needles and stuff for that kind of that sadistic kind of pain or you know to feel something and it makes you think that the needles were just there and the person like stabbed their eye out the right of the right. thing on the ground they probably like set the house of fire crawled outside and then they were like realized himself again as like a man a full grown man you know what I mean yeah I like that one where it says uh when he gets out it says a slip loose from my chair and ran I caught a glimpse of a shadow
Starting point is 02:02:13 passing over the houses if something had flown over is that implying again we're talking in a literal sense not like symbolically is that implying literally that his wife like fully shed the skin and became like a gargoyle thing and took off that's that's kind of what I'm picturing. Yeah. Almost, yeah. Yeah, actually, this whole end sequence kind of reminds me of the first VHS clip. Day night or whatever.
Starting point is 02:02:37 Yeah, where her face is like peeling apart and you can see something underneath and then she takes off. It kind of reminds me of that a bit. Yeah. And then as soon as he comes out, he's the right size again. So when she leaves, it's like he is unburdened from this thing he's been going through, basically. The illusion's gone.
Starting point is 02:02:53 I want up having to take a trip to the hospital that same day so they could get the remaining needles out of my leg. I was laughing so damn hard that they wound up keeping me for my own safety, which, well, I guess I can't blame them for. Between the needles and the children's clothes and the way I screamed with joy at the side of my own hands and my hairy arms, I guess I must have really looked like a real loon. I didn't feel too bad being stuck in that place, though, and they didn't keep me for long. It said something about spores in the lungs. I don't know. I don't even care. I did tell them what happened, of course, but they just told me it was all a product of my mind. They say my head's messed up. I mean, they say it a little more politely than that, but that's the
Starting point is 02:03:37 gist. It's screwed. They showed me a scan of my brain, and it looked like an apple after it had spent three weeks on the ground in mid-August. I guess I'm not an accountant anymore. Most days I'm lucky if I can work a remote. I don't really care, though. For a long, Long time, she kept leaving me a packed lunch on the doorstep, my new apartment. Nuts, but I almost ate one or two of them. It was that strong of a habit, you know? But instead, I always made a big show of throwing the food right in the bin. The last box was full of divorce paperwork, although it didn't look official.
Starting point is 02:04:18 More like a bad joke. But that was the whole marriage, wasn't it? Just a bad joke. I signed them in crayon and left them outside I love that ending I mean I am fully bought in that it's the same person
Starting point is 02:04:33 okay so from her perspective she has like holes in her head and the marriage never existed right and then from his side she escaped the whole marriage seems a joke but she still haunts him leaving food out
Starting point is 02:04:51 and sure he's resisting that but she's still appearing there. So if this is the same person, because they both have the same holes in their head, right? It's like that alternate personality is tempting them. Actually, we can even put some pieces here together because her side seems more literal in the stuff at the end, like there were no divorce records,
Starting point is 02:05:11 there was no marriage records, stuff like that. And then at the end, he's just kind of living in an apartment, but there's that mentioned the accountant over and over, but we never hear what she does. So maybe this was a girl who was also an accountant who developed this, like, brain disease, like split their personalities. And then at the end, they are being held for the murder of that guy. And the little girl said she did see a big baby, but then freaked out afterwards.
Starting point is 02:05:36 The big baby being her in the baby costume acting as both the attacker and the defender, right? Yep. I think that's very feasible. If this is two people, I like my theory that they're both fully conscious, but they're also both fully possessed and given to the role play. I think physically the like the the lapse of time between each others where there's parts where she's like, I don't remember doing this. There's points where he's like, I have a diaper on. I don't remember putting that on.
Starting point is 02:06:05 And it makes sense that he is that the person, if it's the woman, she's allocating the time between each of these characters where there are lapses of time, which each of the character, they're losing bits of their head space. Like they're losing time and all this. It's, um, this is a fun. story, man. I'm like, I'm still trying to process all of it. I really actually love. I'm not the biggest fan on all, you know, like having tons of sequels and stuff like that. But the sequel enhanced it. The sequel made it better for sure, I think. It felt like a part two of being able to see on both sides of that mirror, which I think it elevated the story a lot. This is a this is an upper echelon story. I really enjoyed this. Also, great timing too. We're at here. We did both of these. I know we stopped and
Starting point is 02:06:50 we've had some pauses and stuff but the like right around two hours for both of these like yeah when you read it comes in right in it too probably more like an hour and a half if you didn't talk in between just you know read straight through and stuff um gosh yeah the second story enhanced the first one so well it's so creative i love your idea that it's just one person who's like experiencing this breaking of their mind into two different personalities and then they're causing the damage to themselves and stuff like that that's why both both sides like the physicality doesn't make sense it's one thing then it's another. This was so good. I want to emphasize too again, guys, that the author Christian Wallace does have that with teeth horror stories. Go buy that book.
Starting point is 02:07:31 My word. I will be picking up mine right now. There's a hardback cover of it. And I think that it'd be cool to even get some of these and maybe do another little grab bag of some more of these stories in this. Oh, I'll also say I just look.
Starting point is 02:07:41 So if you go to C.H. Wallace.c.0. UK, it seems to be his own website. That is all of his stories like on his own blog, basically. It's always cool. I just love that this subreda has just gave birth to all of these, like just gave people a platform to become authors and stuff in a really kind of natural way. It's just cool. Gosh, that was so good. Yeah, but watch more of his stuff. A lot of his other stuff. Like, I'm just looking at some of the titles now on his blog, a carnivorous chapel or do not pray to the God in the desert. Or my ship has been stuck in the Arctic and something keeps leaving me coal. Like these are all such fun title ideas and stuff. Like, I think this guy, look, off of those two stories, absolutely loved it.
Starting point is 02:08:25 That I will, dare I say, that is a top five creepcast story, I think. We definitely need to revisit Christian Wallace's work again in the future. Yeah, we need to come back. This is a lot of fun. So good. And we'll link the book in the description. Please go support him. He deserves it.
Starting point is 02:08:40 But for now, this is the, my husband and my wife have taken our role playing too far. Like you're saying, I, you know, top five creepcastle? I think what do you guys think here at home, huh? also thank you again if you've been watching listening to this on spotify or apple podcast all that jazz if you can give us a rating and a thumbs up or any of that jazz that really does help um but until next time oh my god also by the way creepcast tour guys like four weeks now it's coming up okay three and a half weeks all right so if you got tickets to that we can't wait to see it it's going to be such a great time uh really look forward to that and uh until next time everyone stay creeped stay creeped stay crept creep your spooks. Did you see the picture they put in the subreddit of me and you six to nine in each other in a cave? Okay. That's the ending in the record. Bye, everyone. Bye. Don't forget to check out Simpert if you want to smell real good. Thanks for watching.

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