CreepCast - The Animals On My Farm Kill Their Newborns | CreepCast

Episode Date: May 17, 2026

This episode we read two fan stories from r/TalesFromTheCreeps and another story from Gretelcat to round out our animal themed grab bag. And, we've also got Merch!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We got merch. That's right, for a limited amount of time, you can get in on the iconic episodes collection. At the link in the description at crepecast.com store, we have shirts available for now, like the little frog that I found on Hunter's set. Or Hunter's canon accurate smile dog depiction, or the picture of my teeth that I will remind you is a hippa violation, and I reluctantly consented to. All these shirts are available as a bundle or individually for a limited time. So get in on them while you can at the link in the description at Creepcast.

store and above all else enjoy the episode and also you know thank you for supporting us or whatever it's a creepcast today we are reading from the tales from the creeps subreddit our subreddit we have two lovely stories that we're reading today the first one being breathless and the second one being the deer pit these stories that become recommended uh we have a few authors who we've read stories before who have come to the tales from the creep subreddit and uh they have like given a ton of advice to writers, and we've been kind of in communication with them about what they ping of some of the better stories that the community really likes. One of them being Imperial Invective, friend of the show, who's recommended stories like this,

and also these are ones. A lot of the time, if you scroll through Tales from the Creeps, a lot of stories will have people saying, like, oh, I hope the boys read this and stuff like that. So these are a couple of those. Tales from the Creeps is awesome because it's people who enjoy the show, who, you know, not to say they're just submitting stories hoping they get read, but they can. get to have a community of writers who can give them feedback, you know, people enjoy reading scary stories. And every now and then a few of them do get read it. And I think that's great.

And so I always like covering stuff from them. But our two authors today is the author from Breathless, The Republic, and the author of Deer Pit Verdant Voideling. Both of them post a ton in R-slash-Creebcast and Tells from the Creeps. So they seem pretty into the, pretty down with the community. Obviously, they posted stories here. I'm excited to read about them. I like the idea of reading some viewer stories. It's always been something that we've been talking about for a long time wanting to do on the channel. So now letting the back catalog build up a bit more. At first, when we were first doing it, it was like, we were like, do we just actively start reading these right away? It's been, in my opinion, a good way of letting things build up,

letting an audience actually build up there versus people just rushing to dump something out there hoping that, you know. I will say everything we've read, we have a very talented audience. Oh, yeah. There have been some bangers. All good eggs. so far. Yeah, the one we read recently about the mermaid. Gosh, that was good. That was a lovely one. I love that one. Wonderful. The more I think about, the more I stood on that one, the more I

like it. So we got that. We also have something else cool for the audience. Yeah, stand up and show it off here. We have one of a new piece of merch. You guys might remember the last time he's on this set. It's the frog shirt! We'll show up some graphics as well. The frog shirt. We also have Isaiah's dental

photo shirt. We have the shirt. of what you can't. We've got a shirt that is the photo of my lips because it was inevitable it made it on to sun. Here, go ahead. Harry's going to toss him one.

Go ahead and stand back up. I'll give us a nice run down here while you stand up and show it off. His beautiful shirt here with his dental record, you can show that off to your family and friends. Looks very nice.

And of course we have the Smile Dog shirt. Throw us the Smile Dog. We're going to throw this one back. It's like we're at a basketball game. And then the smile dog shirt, which is going out pretty soon. I know people have been asking for some merch. We got the nice smiled dog shirt from my lovely drawing.

Yeah, there was going to be a huge cock on it, but no, people, they've said that that probably wouldn't, that probably wouldn't fly. So more new merch coming very soon. If not right now, link will be up or it will be up soon. So be looking out for some new merch coming up. Also, just want to take time and say thank you to our audio listeners over on Apple Podcast and Spotify, all that jazz. Thank you for giving us a nice rating there. It actually does help quite a bit. And of course, last but certainly not least is our patrons who get extra content on the side. We did a vlog. We did a haunted house walk.

Hunted house vlog. We're going to go, we're doing like a little movie chat about the Lee Cronin's mummy coming up to. There's a couple author interviews coming up. Yeah, there's a couple author interview. There's more stuff coming and also exclusive Patreon stories that we just read that are either too short here or just something that's just little goodies for the patrons. So if you're interested in supporting the channel, please consider signing up. It does help us out a lot. All right.

Ready? Ready? Ready. Let's begin with... Breathless. Breathless. I think I lost them. Surely. I ran as fast as my muscles could grant me.

I crossed rivers. I trekked through the mountains. I burned my feet and hands on scalding hot sand. I ran and ran so hard my breath became fiery and aching. My eyes can only see so far, but that's good enough for me. There's no way that they could cover all of that distance. I'm certain of it. The hills have always offered refuge from the bitter, biting wind,

but I seek them with a different goal. I need to rest on lush, soft grass. They're the only tree for miles around. There are cuts up and down my legs, some so deep I can see the stringy muscle underneath. I take my long overdue seat by the lonesome tree's trunk. Sensation drains from my overworked limbs. More hot breath escapes my lungs and scalds my tongue.

Breathing was never this hard. Don't know what to do. Usually, all it took to escape were quick burst. before the dust even settled It'd be long gone This was different It started at the valley When the herd was at its most vulnerable

Long marches take their toll On even the hardiest beast That long-awaited drink of water kept everyone moving I was near the helm of the herd My steady pace afforded me A more comfortable stride It's always a chore to live so far

From the water's edge But the best yield of fodder grows further away It should have been like any other march The wind had died down The sun wasn't as abusive Our health was in order The shimmering ripples signaled to the herd And invited them to dip their lips

And clear, Chris sublime That's when it happened At that moment, our soft Underbelly exposed, an ear blistering chant booming out Among calm waters Pointed tip skewered the helm Went down without so much as an exile

What is with our viewers being mid-century poets. So many of them will have this like, in a good way. I mean, this is a compliment. We'll have this flowery language. And like, because I feel like we read so many creepypastas

and like no sleep stories and stuff where it's just like, I'm a guy who's scared. You know, it's like I'm just talking. I don't know what's going on. But then our audience will always be like long, in the time long ago when land was free. I don't know. I feel like there are a lot of,

they're trying to be a little show ponies. and I think that they know that it's going to get your jimmies all riled up. You know, honestly, what I think it might be part of it. We read so much no sleep, right? But the whole thing of no sleep is it has to be someone posting the story. There has to be a reason it's there. So you can't be, like, I'm reading this story, and I don't know if we're hearing, like, a herder or if this is from the perspective of an animal.

I keep thinking it's a perspective of the animal. Yeah, it sounds like a buffalo or some animal, like a gazelle or something's talking about. ban! Yeah. Post removed. Oxes can't use computers. A gazelle from the 1800s could never type like this. Yeah.

So, but it creates more room for creative writing when you don't have such tight restraints on it. So I think that's the reason that we see the potential for such better language out of Tales from the Creeps, the No Sleep, because there's not such a strict parameter

that someone has to be posting to Reddit, you know? us just making an advert for our subreddit instead of our slash no sleep. Yeah, so actually, ours is actually really cool. That's half the podcast at this point, us dunking on no sleep and then talking about why our stuff's better. Don't really believe that, but we're just,

we're making jokes. I want to preface that's a joke. But the number of times we've been like, banned. It's a joke. I don't know about, yeah. A joke.

I want to be, I want to have an audible record that it's a joke. Let's remember that whose story was it? One incredible story we read, It was the one Gosh, I feel like we didn't Stuck in the basement? No, not that one.

Not that one. Why did you bring that one up? Because it's bad. Oh, well, yeah. Monster Hunter, huh? Yeah, well, yes. I mean, obviously, but that's not the one I'm thinking of.

I'm thinking of the one about the guy who his family was being turned into aliens or something like that. It ends with him in his room and he can hear them on the other side of the door and he sees his dad's mouth. And that guy in the comments was like this. He posted, that's right,

he posted it to our creep cats. before Tales from the Creeps. And he said, thanks for all the support here. It got banned from no sleep because not enough happened. We should ban it. It's like, what do you...

Yeah, we should have got rid of it too. We should remove the post. What the fuck even happened to us? But I mean, rules like that's insane. Like, well, it's also... I think it's all dependent on the mod. Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

Sure it is, yeah. But, um, that being said, I think that's why we see such potential for writing ability here. Because this is beautiful so far, the way it said. Yeah. A reign of barbs followed closely behind.

our young didn't stand a chance. All at once, the once united herds scattered like a flock of birds. We bolted in every direction. All of us, the young, the old, disoriented, clean and fragments. We abandoned the herd. My group was filled with many able-bodied, but there were inklings of heavy burden among our ranks. After a long sprint into the mountains, we rested on soft pastures. The air became thick with gasps. It wasn't that unusual, for we recovered well from these shepherds. short burst. We became settled in and all fell asleep. All except me. I ruminated on the earlier events. Mouths full of pointed teeth. Never fashioned those kinds of tools. Small ones would swarm. Big ones would clamp down. Slender ones would ambush. These things surrounded us and formed a kill

circle. Quick succession, they brought down their instruments and bashed in the unfortunate skulls. even though they sparked a new sensation in all of us that day I was certain we never see them again in the mountains I was ready to fall asleep the exhaustion of running finally catching up to me as I closed my eyes snap as it waves through us those not quick enough to get to their feet were dealt with

I bolted with the others but as I turned my head there I saw with the horrible beings they stood on top of felled elders an icy pike pierced through me, the sensation became reinforced. That became our new norm. I am not ashamed to admit I was the last one left. I don't feel guilty for being the fastest, the most endured, or the most agile.

It's not my fault the others fell because we all had a chance. It's not my fault that I never looked back. I'm not responsible for their failings. Every time they cut up to me, I pushed my body to its limits. Still, they close the distance, and I would try to create a little. create a gap between. They never failed to trail close behind me. When I rested, they kept moving. When I ate, they grew closer. When I needed to heed the call of nature, they wouldn't be far behind. Time and time again, they took advantage of my exhaustion and stalked me intently. Every close call

left me scarred. Every near fatal encounter bled me of my energy. Once, they nearly caught me. My legs were shaking, my eyes of blurry haze, and saliva was pouring out of my mouth. One of the monsters brought a cold, sharp stone to my throat. Squirmed my way out. It cost me my shoulder. My trot became a hobble, and even that grew into a limp. You must understand. I'm not supposed to feel this way.

I'm not supposed to keep using my last resort. I'm not supposed to feel my heart pumped so hard that my whole chest groans in pain. I'm not supposed to keep looking over my shoulder, worried that something is ready to lunge out and in me. I'm not supposed to feel anxiety. Yet I do. It's so wrong. No matter how hard I try, no matter how fast I run, no matter how fierce my will to live became,

couldn't escape to slow death. Until now. I'm set by a weathered and lonely tree atop a tall hill. Can't smile, but I felt relieved and fulfilled at my efforts. Can't see them. Matter how hard I strained my eyes, nothing. I'm free. the sky must have felt reprieve

for in that moment I saw a gathering of black clouds in the horizon I would finally fill their gentle touch and their soothing rains it lulled me through a well-deserved sleep funny as the clouds closed in on me could have sworn their thunder sounded like heavy footsteps this is pretty good it's just like an animal running being hunted by people It's kind of weird though you can kind of interpret it in a way

that it's another human being or something if you wanted to. I mean, I believe, I mean, you know, the trot and all that kind of stuff, but still, it's, you have a fun, there's a fun way to decipher it that it could be human, but, I mean, yeah, coming from the perspective of an animal with unrelentless humans hunting them. I mean, there was even lines of being like riding the elders, which means like horses or, you know, so they were using other animals to hunt them. It's pretty fun. But I do like this idea that it's a little, it's pretty open, but it's a fun, it's a fun

I guess a game of cat and mouse with humans and just from the perspective of the hunted animal Yeah yeah yeah Which I think it was pretty fun Yeah But I think it's it's It's uh

Yeah just nice And there's a description of like they're all The watering hole and then there's a cluster They don't know where to run Everyone fragments out and stuff like that How terrifying that would be from that perspective Yeah Yeah

What year did you depict this? It depicted it like 1800s kind of like 5th Well well I talk about bow and arrow Yeah not so not rifle hunting Yeah yeah it's like bow and arrow So you go even further back Say it's like 1700s or something

15 hundreds They wouldn't have 14 hundreds I don't think they were doing Well I mean they had the long bow Back then Or but 13 hundreds

We just keep going If you're 12 hundreds It's like a crisis friend 1100s 1,000s 1,000s 900 eight, a hundred.

The thing about I'm never supposed to feel anxiety or like tear behind me. Maybe it's like a predatory animal of some kind, something that hunts others. Maybe it's something mighty. It's not like a bison, I think. Bison's a good one because it's like what would they have to fear naturally other than man, right? That's what meant by. I'm not supposed to feel fear. I'm not supposed to feel anxiety, stuff like that.

There's a lot with just the language that's used. There's a lot you could gleam on or make different. Just even the story from the perspective of an animal is, is just fun. Yeah. A fun approach. Yeah, very, uh, ooh. Oh, uh, mother horse eyes, the cat segments.

I do think that the, uh, it is funny thinking that a bison's on like a Mac typing the story. Took him a long time. He has tiny glasses and he's like, pushes it up. You ever seen a bison before? Yeah, they're huge. Mm-hmm. They're awesome. Yeah.

They're very cute and they do. Oh. Yeah. I like them. And their tiny eyes. Mm-hmm. very small eyes proportionate to have huge. I love it. They're so big and they like sit there and you like drive by them.

People are always like, whoa. They always just look at you like. I remember I went to, it was like this old reenactment camp and they had a bison there that had been like raised from a baby by people. So it was real friendly. And the lady was trying to explain to us like this is Tom, the bison or whatever. And it comes up to her real slow and it gets behind her. And it just like, its head is her entire body size. Right.

and it keeps pushing her, like trying to gently nuzzle her, but every time it does, it, like, knocks her on the ground. And then she's like, he really likes to be pet, and she'll pet on him a little. And the moment she stops, he's like, muh, and just topples her over again, just by, like, moving his head a little bit. So they're very sweet.

If you had a bison, what would you name it? It's got to start with a B, right? That's not true. That one was named Tom. Well, I was just kind of making up a name, but, oh. I like Bobby. Bobby the Bison.

Bobby the Bison? What would you name a bison? With how bison's look, I'd name a meatloaf. Aw, that's a cute name for a bison. I like that. Meatloaf. 1,300. All right.

So that was our story. Again, the author of that story is named the Republic. They've posted a lot to like Tells from the Creeves. Be sure, check out more of the stuff. I'll have linked in the description. You don't have been kind of a fun angle of that story, too. It was the angle from the bird watching it all go down, huh? Just potential, hey, Republic, sequel bait, that you can have that one for free.

First line, I'm a cardinal, and I just witness something bad. Sounds Catholic. Yeah, I watch Father Moghery touch a child. It feels like, have you seen in like, I'm a card. It does, I'm a cardinal. I see one of the show, okay. Have you seen those like those posts on Instagram or like in the comments where someone will say something and someone else pretends like they were there that keeps going? What do you mean?

Like a class like a girl will post a hot pick of herself and someone will comment be like I just fell to my knee. What she looked like? Someone will comment and say I just fell to my knees in Walmart and someone else will come and be like I just watched a guy follow his knees in Walmart. Someone else will be like I'm on the security camera. Control Mart and someone. Yeah, they'll do that. Someone the other day where these guys, contractors were talking. about like messed up stuff they did in people's houses. Some girl posted was like,

we hired a group of guys to redo our drywall and then a whole, someone knocked a hole in the drywall, and it was full of McAultra cans, like in the wall. And someone else replied, it was like, I did this house a while back and we got hammered and we just threw the Mick Ultra cans under the wall. And someone else was like, I worked at McOltra and I sold, like,

they keep the joke going. You could do that with this. Whereas like from the Cardinals perspective, from the horse's perspective, from like another bison's perspective who just watch the whole thing go down but on the third installment I would go bison cardinal

and then I would go I'd go little boy little boy why is that because then you get the perspective of man but the innocence of man right that's deep man that's cool

and then God could be your fourth one it's like God watch it what do you think God looks like man man because the Bible says we're made in the image of God I look to think that God

I think he fibbed about that I think that was a fib right the deal I look like you I think he looks like a fucking sick storm cloud I mean he's he's capable of anything

so when when he's nothing but Spanish that's how okay when Moses goes to I'm a rique all right when

Moses goes to the mountain top who's Moses? God speaks to him through the thunderstorm through the lightning and then Elijah when he goes to Mount Horib he has spoken to eventually through a still small voice but says

before there's like lightning and thunder and fire so God can appear as whatever he wants the burning bush speaks for the burning bush. Why? Why? So God did. When Moses gathered up all those animals. That's Noah.

That's Noah. Moses didn't. Moses didn't. He did the Ark. That's Noah. Noah's Ark. Noah's Ark. What did Moses do?

He was the one who led the Israelites out of Egypt and then wandered through the desert, Ten Commandments, all that. He did the Ten Commandments? Mm-hmm. Kind of a Buzzkill. It's like Martin Luther,

hammering those laws on it. You consider Martin Luther a Buzzkill? Kind of. Right. Oh, no, he was just like, actually, these rules suck. Oh, I was thinking Martin Luther King. I thought you were saying him, okay, was a buskin. I'm like, it's a crazy thing.

His name's Martin Luther, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I had the other day, I was like, I feel like that's not correct. No, it's Martin Luther. He was fucked up. I suggested his name was Derek Luther.

And I'm like, there's no way. His name was not Derek. No, not. I, Derek Luther, don't agree with these rules. No, Martin Luther, yeah, 95 theseses on the church door. Yeah. You and I was pissed me off about that. Why can you just make it 100?

95, really? Couldn't add five more in? That's true. Just an even 100, I mean? How many is it? It looks like 100. You couldn't be more wrong. It's 95. I haven't read all of them, but I wonder what the last like 10 are.

It's like how net picky could he get? Let me see. This is a fun aside. Creek cast reviews of Martin Luther's 95 thesis. So it just in bold, it says 67 through, 65, he says, he attacks the partners who promote indulgences over the gospel, arguing that money should be given to the poor rather than buying indulgences. Basically, it's him just being like, why the fuck, why do we have a gold door? Well, indulgences were specifically payments that you could make for prayers to get people out of purgatory and into heaven. Oh, the heaven bonds, whatever.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which was a big no-no and like, like historically a bunch of people freak out about that time has come during like, you know, some bad stuff going on in Europe and whatnot. Like what? Like the, let's see, that was 15, I was 14? The Red Scare?

No. It happens with my wife every month. Okay. So there was a... We can get back to the story. So not on the earth. original schedule, but we wanted this episode to be a bit longer for you all. And we found an author we really liked from an episode about a radio that may or not may not be up yet. I'm not sure

when all of these were batch recording. We'll get posted. But this story is also about animals. We thought this was the perfect place to slot it in at. So hopefully you like it. It's called The Animals on My Farm Always Kill Their Newborns. This is one of two stories, as far as I can see, ever posted by the Reddit user Gretel cat to R slash no sleep. And the other story they did was phenomenal. No, it was really good. That's why we saw the title like we read that one on a previous day. And then we thought we should just put this in with the animal episode because it's...

Yeah. I mean, it's like they've had two stories. One was a banger. We're like, we should read the animal one. And then we were talking about this episode. And it's like, oh, this could use another one. I know the perfect animal story to add. Well, it's just a great title too.

I mean, yeah. Yeah. It adds intrigue and stuff like that. And if I, again, I don't know if the radio one's up, yes or not, but we really liked it. I imagine you all would like it too. So I'm excited to see what else they have in story. Yeah, I mean, let's fucking dive in. So another creeple, creeple, another creepy animal story.

Animals on my farm always kill their newborns by Grego Cat. Link in the description, of course. Before I take my life tonight, I need to write down what brought me to this point. All right, well, you know, what was that? Some of them got to build up. Some of them just jump right in. Just for my own sanity. just as a catharsis.

If I'm feeling brave, I'll post it on the internet when I'm done. And if I do, if I'm actually talking to some human soul out there, know that I am at eternal peace as you read this. My favorite animal on my fiance's farm was sausage. She was an enormous hog who might have been intimidating if she wasn't so lovy-dovey. Sausage acted like a dog whenever I came around. Always wanted to be scratched behind the ears and made little grunts and snorts if I wasn't giving her enough attention.

In fact, she was the one who sold me on the whole farm thing. It was scary for me to move in with Anthony and his sheep, goats, chickens, turkeys, pigs, donkey, and cats. Before that, I had owned a total of two fish and a hermit crab. Do you guys have pigs? No, not any pigs. Have you ever been around pigs and stuff like that? Oh, yeah. They're fun.

They're like chill. Okay, they're dicks. You don't like them? It's not they don't like them. They're just assholes. They're just messy. dickheads. They can be very aggressive and dickheadish. You know the whole thing about... They're so

smart and they're just like fucking rolling around the mud. They're just like screeching. Young pigs can be really mean. Boers mostly but yeah. Have you ever you've heard the thing about like you can throw a dead body to pigs and they'll like clean it super fast? Eat pieces of it and stuff.

Yeah, they can be mean. But I was in love with him and he was in love with me. Even in spite of all my anxieties and manias and foibles, I took a leap of faith, moving on to his 40-acre Midwest ranch a few months before the wedding. His father had raised him here, but had passed away a year before we met. After only a few days, I stopped nagging him about selling the property and moving closer

to a city. Just a few days. That's how long it took for sweet sausage to teach me that farm animals were not pets, but like, judgmental of you, so I'd originally told Tony. She was smart and affectionate. She was my friend. It didn't take long before I developed similar sentiments towards the rest of the of my new family. Sausage was pregnant when I moved in. She was due to give birth just one week

after Anthony and I returned from our honeymoon. Though I was on the verge of having a panic attack the whole time, I was there from start to finish delivering all four picklets. They seemed healthy and I was overwhelmingly proud of myself. The following day, he brought over the two little boys who lived across the street, as was tradition, to name the newbies. The runt was, not so creatively, christened pee-wee. For a few days, everything went well. The new piglets required a lot of care, but were super cute. Besides, I was confident that between sausages nurturing disposition and Tony's expertise, they could make up for whatever I messed up.

The piglicks were only a few days old when everything happened. After the chores were done for the day, Tony and I fell asleep holding each other like the happy newlyweds we were. I hadn't been out for long when a deafening squeal shattered my sleep. I spasmed away from Tony and whipped my head towards the window. I can't even describe the feeling that swelled in my chest at that noise. It was shrill, desperate, horrified. The two of us flew downstairs and across the field to the pickpin.

By the time we had reached the front door, Squill tapered off like a stereo being unplugged. With just the light of the moon to guide us, I didn't make out what was happening until we were a few steps from the pin. God, I'm in tears remembering this. Or pee-wee. His little body was just destroyed. It looked like he had been banged against a wall repeatedly.

His legs were dislocated, his body swelling with bruises, his tiny nose twitching as though it were the first step to being able to move again. But he would never move again. His glassy little eyes rolled towards us as we burst through the gate, and there was sausage, calm as ever, looming over her newborn. Mechanically, almost gently, she gathered pee-wee by his scruff and jerked back her head. No, sausage, no! I shouted.

I was about to lunge at her, but Tony grabbed my arm. I made a hysterical whimper as the pig slammed it snout into the ground with peewee in her mouth. The ensuing, crunchy noise almost brought me to my knees. Tony whispered, it's over Wanda. He's gone. He was right. Peewee was probably dead the instant he made contact with the dirt. I wasn't sure how many times sausage had smashed him into the ground like this before we arrived, but I understood why Tony had held me back.

if I'd stopped her just then who would have been responsible for a mercy killing most humane thing was to let nature take its course what the hell was natural about any of this have you ever have you ever witnessed like an animal just do something really messed up yeah I mean like one thing that was brutal was fucking I mean yeah living on

this farm and stuff it's like coyotes and coyotes and possums killing all the I mean my favorite favorite farm animals are donkeys and ducks I love them. And yeah, we've had like, before we had a lot of, like, fortified stuff. We've had to, like, reconfigure how, just to approach, like, how to keep the ducks super safe and stuff from the best you can. I mean, shit's going to happen, but coyotes are ruthless, man.

Yeah. Coyotes are fucking ruthless. Possons are ruthless. But it's mostly coyotes just will tear the shit up and you kind of come out and it's just a massacre. Yeah. It sucks. Yeah. Yeah, we, most of the people around home, like, if they get a coyote, it's like, all right, everyone.

bring the guns yeah I just uh and I I'm the worst with it my wife is way way better my wife and her boyfriend really handle it no the uh I just let you play the switch I can't I have never ironically

I've never been good with like killing animal like even like my dad didn't take me on hunting trips all that shit I just can't do it I just even even when like it's it's just fucking can't it's yeah so it just it tears my fucking

heart open. I remember one time. I remember being a kid. Not when you're a kid and you see like your dad or like an adult do something, you're like, wow, that's, he's cool. One of the first moments I had that with my dad is when I was five or six years old. We had found a kitten. We lived like middle of nowhere, Kentucky way out in the woods. One night, a little kitten showed up. And like, we were like, oh, mom, can we keep it? And I think we named it kitty because I was the oldest at five so like my four and two year old sisters were like kitty's perfect so we we would feed it milk and we would like hand it little pieces of ham and stuff like that um and we had it two days and i was like excuse thing ever blah blah and we were outside with it one night and uh we were on

the back porch and it was kind of nose in the morning it was kind of like wobbling around looking and sniffed and it went under the porch we had a little wooden porch and then we heard it scream and i was like, how what's that? And my mom hurried us inside. And what happened is it got down there and a possum was down there and just shredded it. Oh yeah. And I remember being like so heartbroken about that. Like, oh, little kitty. Like I just, I still remember seeing the wood porch and seeing blood up the side of it. And my dad was like, never again. So that night, he got a bunch of leftovers trash. And he went out, we had this huge open backyard. And he just laid leftovers all out in the yard. he got up on the second story of the house with a shotgun

and he sat in that window and I remember laying down in bed that night and all night just boom 20 minutes boom dad set up all night and just killed anything that came into the yard the next day he had killed

11 possum Garbage man and four raccoon Garbage went up picking up stuff But I remember I remember after that being like wow My dad really loves me. Just obliterated, though.

Dad's like, you'll never hurt Kitty again. But now, animals do some worse stuff. I remember we were a guy had asked us to come shoot prairie dog because they were like getting all of animals sick and destroying farmland. We had shot one, and then another prairie dog had come out of the hole and dragged it back down into the hole. And I was like, oh, that's kind of sad. You know, like their friends dying, so they drag it in.

Like, that's heartbreaking. We walk up to the hole later, they were eating it. Oh, yeah. The moment any of them got hurt, the others were like, it's like, okay, well, I don't feel bad anymore. Animals are stupid. Animals are fucking dumb. They're just hungry.

They want to fuck and they want to sleep. It's pretty much the only one to do. Tony had tears in his eyes as he scooped up the three remaining picklets who were cowering in a corner. Meanwhile, sausage nudged the body of her run and satisfied that he was thoroughly dead, gandered over to the slop tub. I watched Tony deposit the picklets in the next pin over so that a swath offense separated them from their mother.

He told me to wait inside while he buried peewee. I was all cried out by the time he came upstairs. He looked more innervated than I had ever seen him, soaked in sweat and smudged with dirt. Tony set across from me on the bed. He didn't say anything for a long time. Finally raised his brown eyes to mine and said, Honita, there's something I haven't told you.

I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard him call me by my full name Chill ran up my spine What this what happened tonight is nothing new All the animals in the farm kill the newborns One by one unless they are separated immediately I don't know why I mean honestly there's no explanation I've ever found for this behavior It's just it is always happening on this farm He looked away I scared closer how was that possible? I don't know

I'm sorry it's not a satisfying answer, but it's all I can tell you. But, but even saucy. I asked him, invoking the nickname I'd give him my favorite farm animal. All of them, Wanda. All of them. And I know you're wondering why I didn't separate the babies right away, and it's just because I was being selfish. Watched him clench and unclinch his fist. I didn't want to have it, I didn't want it to tell you this ever.

And I guess I just hope that it had been in my head all along. You know, now the dad's... gone and you and I are starting our life together. I just thought rather than separating them like my family had been doing for years, you should see what would happen. Maybe the curse had never existed in the first place and I would never have been in this awful conversation with you, but look where that got us. Tear fell onto the bed. I like that. That's a very human thing. We're like, if your family's just been like, we got to keep him separate, got to keep him separate. And like, you never saw it firsthand. Your dad's gone. You're like, yeah, maybe not.

And then it happens. You're like, okay, well, maybe. Maybe so. Right. For the next several days, Tony wouldn't look me in the eye. You would think it was him out there torturing peewee that night. That's how ashamed he was. Seeing how profoundly this instance affected him just made me love him more. I've told him as much time and again since that day. He has never believed me. There's one, that's a very sweet thing. There was one time. I know I keep talking about animal stories. Be kind of crazy, too, if they have a kid and the mom just wants to kill the people. That's where I feel it's going. I feel like it's going that way. I think that's what the tone in this is going to be. And also, at that point what counts is not a kid anymore. How long does the mom have to be away from the kid? I remember one time we found

mice in the garage and I'd found a mother that was nursing a bunch of them and I saved it and literally everyone I knew made fun of me but Kayla thought it was very sweet. That's cool. Then my dad came to slamming. Boom! Boom!

Yeah. Don't never take kidding. Daddy. It's 24. You're like rustic with that. He's going to answer it, yeah.

They went down to Petco. And that was the first infanticide I witnessed on Anthony's family farm. Four years in and several deaths have transpired since then. We try to keep the animals separated, and obviously they needed to reproduce

to sustain the farm, but sometimes the killings happened before we even knew the mother was giving birth. I want to make a laundry list, because obviously these things aren't pleasant for me to relive, but one other episode that I constantly have nightmares about, snoozers.

Snoozers was a barn cat who would appear curled up, napping, in random places on the farm. Sometimes we wouldn't see her for days. Tony and I have been talking about She was getting big enough for us to assume she was pregnant, and we tried to keep an honor, but, you know, cats, she came and went as she pleased. We really started to get worried when we didn't see her for almost two weeks. That's when I was certain that she had given birth, and I feared for the lives of those helpless infant kittens.

What could we do? I went on with my farm chores, having taken on more responsibility once Anthony got promoted. He was a quality assurance specialist for the USDA, and his new position many occasionally had to travel to conduct trainings. mid-morning was when I got around to changing out all the food and water. As I walked over to the goats pin, I noticed snoozers lounging on a pile of hay. Snoosers! I chirped at once thrilled and terrified. She was noticeably thinner.

I didn't see the kittens. Oddly, this made me feel much better. It would have put a maddening pressure on me to rescue them, and I would spend every second until Tony came home, feeling like I had to protect them with my life. I just wasn't equipped to handle something like this in my own. honestly I was fine pretending she had never been pregnant at all I slipped into the pen and knelt down to pet snoozers

clump of orange fur stretched and did a happy cat blink as I stroked her at the insistence of the goats I stood up and went to give them fresh water now the water was in a big black 10-gallon tub in the corner of the pen we changed it every few days by day three the water was murky with hay dirt food and whatever other yuckiness goats had on their mouths when they went to drink Tiny as I am, I struggled to pick it up and pitch it over the fence. I heard the water splash onto the ground, followed by five or six distinct ploppy noises. I was so shocked I dropped the tub.

Lying on the ground in front of me were the shriveled, soaking wet bodies of snoozers' kittens. There was so little that their eyes had not even opened yet. Shakily, got to my knees and stared with tearful eyes at the corpses. The most frightening part was the lack of injury. They didn't even have the self-awareness or strength to fight for their lives. All I could imagine was snoozers, taking her kittens in her mouth one by one, and systematically holding them underwater until they stopped moving. None of the food or water got switched until that evening.

I spent the whole day in bed trying to get Tony on the phone. He'd be home tomorrow afternoon. Until then, he suggested, put a towel over the kittens, and he would take care of them when he returned. And I wish I could say the reason I'm writing now is because, because I'm fearing for the life of another animal. But God, it is so much worse than that. Of course, Anthony and I had a discussion about this shortly after we found out I was pregnant.

Uh-oh. What if it happens to me? What if I try to kill the baby? Wanda's sweetheart. He said running a hand through my hair. I promise. That's not going to happen. I was raised on this.

I was raised on this farm, remember? Our baby's going to be happy and healthy. If you have to separate the humans, surely to God his parents would tell him that. Right. You would think, but also... This ain't gonna be a Tommy Taffy scenario

where they don't mention to them for years. Oh, shouldn't have done that. Uh-oh. Also, I legitimately, when they were talking about, like, heard the plops on the ground, I just picture your dad going over with the cats and just being like, and dropping them into the bucket.

My dad, my dad killed the animals to save. My daddy killed them to save them. Not hurt them. Well, it's more like a vengeance. There's more avenge it. Well, we got kittens after that. Oh. So dad was like, if we get more, they're not going to, yeah, they're not going to be around to kill him again.

No. My dad would never kill it in this an animal. My dad would never kill an innocent animal. No, no. His evil laugh. My dad's a nice man. Meow. Bobbing in the other deal, picking him up with his mouth.

Wow. Daddy? they wronged me ever again I would do the exact same thing a million percent if my if my daughter had a little kitty

yeah Tanka comes up Dad look at this if Tanka comes up and her little kitty gets killed by a possum I'm nameballing the woods everything I can kill you have to pick up the bantle yeah

immediately anything of that woods is dying the turkey the deer another cat doesn't matter Dad, where's my hamster? I'm j-damming the property. You're like, what evil the possible? It's been excessive to head, thank you. Yeah, I guess it's just vengeance.

I hate myself for being too scared to point out that he was raised solely by his father. His mother, as the story goes, died during childbirth. Sure. Uh-oh. Sure. Uh-oh. But as I look back,

now, I wonder if that's just what he was told so he wouldn't ask questions. No. Tonight, I'm in the house by myself. I gave birth a week and a half ago and all that time. I have never been alone. Anthony, my parents, our families,

our neighbors have been incredibly supportive. And with all the attention and company, it's been easy to ignore the thoughts I'm terrified to be having. Thoughts of killing my child. At first, I tried to tell my that it was psychosomatic, that I in effect cursed myself by believing this curse existed

in the first place. Every night since JJ was born, I have laying awake reading about postpartum depression on my phone. I was dying to find something, anything validating these feelings. And of course, if you search long enough on the internet, you can convince yourself of anything. But each time I put down that phone and looked at the little lump in the crib beside me, all I could think about was how much I wanted to kill it. I don't even understand why. And that's what's devouring me from the inside out, is I can't even try to reason with myself.

I haven't breathed the word of this to my husband. If he thought for a moment that leaving JJ alone with me was endangering our child's life, he might do to me what I'm convinced his father did to his mother. Besides, I love this child. What's so maddening really is the genuine, maternal attachment that I have to, JJ, I love him so much,

I can't even put it into words, but I don't know how much longer I could fight this impulse. Even sleep doesn't give me a respite from this hell. The nightmares have gotten increasingly worse. The night before Tony left, I dreamed that the baby and I were hiding from a killer. I clutched him to my chest and ran through a dark cornfield, pausing only to catch my breath and hear the telltale rustle of the murderer. Finally, I found my way out of the field. A small farmhouse was in sight.

I ran as fast as I could to safety and locked the door. I sat on the sofa with JJ in my arms until I calmed down, then I placed him on the table in front of me, took off his clothes, and began peeling away his skin. He didn't make a sound, just stared at me with omniscient eyes. When I tore off a slice of skin, I placed it in a neat pile on either side of him. One by one, I exposed his organs until all that was left of his skin was the patch between his eyeballs. We stared at each other until they rolled back into his head.

I woke up then. I darted to the bathroom and vomited before Tony could ask me what was wrong. I called through the door that I had food poisoning or something and showered for an hour and a half until my heart rate slowed back to normal. It's nighttime. I put JJ down after I finished dinner and went to watch some TV, trying to take my mind off the thoughts I was having. The last thing I remember is feeling like I was nodding off, but not quite falling asleep. Just now, just 20 minutes ago, I woke up. came to I just suddenly realized that I was halfway upstairs with a kitchen knife in my hand

I screamed and flung it away from me and collapsed where I was into hysterical tears I have no control over myself anymore god who am I I can hear JJ crying he's been at it for a while wailing from hunger I haven't fed him sincerely this morning because I fear that if I try to feed him him, I'll choke him to death before I could stop myself. Even if I did call Tony or my mother or a neighbor or the police, I know that the moment I put the phone down, I would kill JJ before anyone arrived. Writing out these truths, these thoughts is the only thing that has kept me from taking the life of my child. I am shaking so hard now. I know I don't have much time left before I can't take it anymore. And since the instant, the first murderous thought popped into my head, I have been using every mental faculty to figure. out how to prevent this, and I did. Tonight I figured out how to save JJ's life.

I cannot risk another blackout like I just had on the stairs. Recording all this has been glorified procrastination. Anthony, I love you. JJ, I love you. Please never forget that. I hope you can both move on and live long, happy lives. I just have one last request before I take my life tonight. Burn this farm to the ground.

That was good. That was really a good story. I enjoyed that. Yeah. That was brutal. I like that they didn't give you all the answers to. I think that like having a... I like that the keeping...

Keeping it vague is kind of cool. But I do think it's... I do like that it's... It translates to humans as well. It's just kind of fascinating. Yeah, I like it. It's a very... I feel like it's really grandpa's fault.

Because if he did kill his wife, and he just did not tell his son about that this was going to happen. That's crazy. If it is a locational curse, not a family curse, just go somewhere else. Yeah, it's a weird thing where he probably did do it to help. Maybe he thought that he wouldn't come back to the farm or something. I don't know why you wouldn't tell. That is one thing you should definitely divulge to your head.

You should disclose that. You should just go. Hey, if you have a kid here, your wife's going to try to kill it until you kill her. All right, buddy. Have fun out there. All right, have fun. A good game out there. It was great, though. Yeah, I enjoyed it. That was fun. Again, very well written.

It was paste just for any right time. I hope that they write more. Two stories is enough. Yeah, this was like eight years ago, right? Yeah, eight years ago. So they wrote two stories eight and nine years ago, and then not another story since, which is tragic, I think. So, yeah, Greidel Kett, if you're out there somehow,

I wish you write more with this. This also fits perfectly in the middle of those stories, because the first story was a man attacking animal. Second story, man attacking man, right? And then the third story is man hunted by something, some other creature. So that's pretty cool. But I thought this was fantastic.

We'll have Gretel cat stuff linked in the description. But I think that was the perfect addition to this episode, and that was creepy. And the stuff about the dream with the baby, that did get me a bit. That was a lot. So. Why are running all the way through the house,

or running through all the cornfield, to strip the kid's skin made it seem like the person that was chasing after was trying to stop her from from the... Yeah, that's her husband like, wait! Yeah, exactly. Stop it! Baby, JJ! Don't kill it!

She's like, thank God I got away from him. Now, to kill the baby. On to the next story? On to the next story. All right, well, Verdant Voiling wrote a story that a lot of people like called the Deer Pit. Uh-oh, and there's a tag on it, Isaiah. It says, Creature Feature!

Excellent. Guys, can we get a quick round of applause for creature features? Oh, Caprice on. That's your fifth one? No, it's my fourth. Yeah. Alright, the deer pit by verdant voidling. I can still remember how the steam pulsed in steady rhythm from beneath the frozen leaves.

When I was a kid, I had this place I would go to on the frozen mornings of winter, clearing that never seemed to suffer under the cruel frost of East Tennessee. Oh, baby. The clearing was set deep in the woods, far enough away from civilization that the sound of robber tearing across tarmac bled away and abject silence. Living so close to the interstate, even in a town as small as mine, left peaceful moments as a rare commodity. Everywhere I went, I could hear the distant ribbon of passing cars rumbling towards far-off places. I treasured the clearing. The pristine silence there is so stark and thin, I felt that even a single breath might cause it to burn.

I've been a bomb for my soul, and it's warm to the salve for my aching limbs after long days at school. Seventh grade was when the cracks began to show, all starting with the disappearance of Heinrich Eisen. Heinrich had been an exchange student from Germany. Pudgy kid with suede blonde hair and eyes the color of emeralds. I had a German exchange student in my school when I was younger. Really? How were they? He was in the grade below me, so I didn't know him too terribly well, but I do know that he

took our German class at school and he corrected our teacher all the time. That had to be annoying. I think she, she fucking hated it, yeah. Was he nice otherwise or was he just like a know-it-all? He was like a really big kid. I think that they brought him in because he was like a big football player.

So he came in and he's like, oh, that's not how you say that. That kind of thing. And she's like, thank you, thank you. Yeah.

Thanks. Shut down. That kind of thing. Yeah. Otherwise, I was thinking I've ever met any other. German person before my life. Have you?

Like a fluent German speaking person? Really? You have? I feel like I've known people from Germany. I mean, especially if we count online interactions. No, I'm talking about in person. Yeah, we had a friend of ours at the church we went to when I was younger who would have foreign exchange students coming in all the time. And one girl that they had visited a couple times.

Her name was Innes, I believe. Anness. She was from Germany. And... I always feel like religious people from like your... would have like a more radical approach. What do you mean by that? Just more old-timey from the old country, you know?

More like conservative approach, I mean, religiously? I don't know, I'm just being crazier. Just because they're from Germany. It's not still old over there. If you go to Germany now, they have modern things. It's not like... Yeah, but I would say that... I would hope that the tradition would stay over.

Like, you know, she's like, yeah, drink the blood. It's not wine, it's fucking blood. Oh, well, I mean, that's transubstantiation. of like Catholics still believe that and stuff. Trans what? Transubstantiation. What does that mean? That's the belief that communion,

wine, and bread become physical blood and flesh. So they actually do drink blood? Well, they drink wine and bread, but the idea is like as it is consumed, it becomes... Oh, it becomes a deal. As it's digested. Does there any sect that actually drinks blood?

Not that I know of. That wouldn't seem... I mean, maybe like there's some weird offshoot. You're saying within Christianity. Yeah, yeah. What was the whole, or is it just Christian or is it Catholics that do the whole? Well, same thing. I mean, so, okay, so you had the church, right, after Jesus died, follow me.

And then people had different interpretations. If that's the Catholic Church, Orthodox, you know, they split in the great schism, became their own thing. And then you have Protestantism, which came after Martin Luther. But then Protestants will say that, like, well, they're the actual remnant of the original Christian church. And the Catholics will say, they're the original, and the Orthodox will say, They're the original several beliefs, but they all believe in Jesus Christ. And then they just have different tenets of like what worshiping him looks like.

If it requires priest and fathers, if it's just a pastor or whatever. So you found out there was a sect that was like, oh, instead of drinking water, we're drinking blood, the people would be like, I don't like that. They're actually, so there's historical precedents that that was used as part of the early criticisms against Christianity to kind of like propaganda against them. Because there would be, like Jesus, when he gave the last supper, he said, this is my this is my blood, as often as you take due and remembrance of me, as he passed the bread and the wine. So that's where, like, transubstantiation comes from, like, it's physically, it physically becomes

the flesh as you consume it. But Rome, like Nero, when there was, like, they were trying to blame the Christians for the fires and stuff like that. This information would get passed around. Like, yeah, the Christian, yeah, well, the Romans executed the Christians. Yeah, I know, because they were like a little, they're like a little, fucking gutter dwellers. They were, dude. Can you imagine seeing the Christian back to the day?

You'd be like, what the fuck are you talking about? Well, come down here. I want to tell you something. Well, keep in mind, this is also in a polytheistic realm, too. So this was in a realm where animal sacrifices were common, and things like that were standardized thing. And then you had this group show up who believed, aside from the polytheism, this one man who was executed by at the hand of the Roman state was God.

made manifest as man and then died and resurrected. So it was very different than the Roman idea of worshipping Mars and Saturn and Jupiter and stuff like that. I always thought those were sweet. I love that painting of Kronos Eaton. Yeah. Yeah. As opposed to that, the Christians were like this one person who was killed is, you know, God made

and the killed. Do they have telescopes back then? Yes. Really? Yeah, they had planetary bodies, yeah. Holy shit. Well, they didn't have telescopes. Galileo is the one who invented the telescope.

They had star-christ. charts and they can map locations because that's how like that's how they would sail and stuff like that. I bet you Galileo was insufferable. I think you have it backwards too is they named the planets after the gods, not the gods after the planets. Oh really? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, but. Can you see, can't you see that though? Galileo like trying to have a conversation with that motherfucker? Oh my God. Show you a sort of compasses. He's like, what do you think of this? You're like, what do you fucking can we are, are we going to eat duck or I don't know what the fuck they ate at them, but training some duck.

You can still eat duck. Yeah, but I'm just saying like a probably more common back then. I suppose. Anyway, my point is, Rome would say things like the Christians eat blood and flesh, like using that as a thing. It's like, yeah, they talk about all the time. They probably fucking dead back then. No.

In the gutters? No. In the sewers. I bet you down in the sewers. I bet you down in the sewers those motherfuckers are drinking blood. What do you mean sewers? What are you talking about sewers? Dude, they were in the sewers.

They were not in the sewers. But I will say, that's what they did. Because they're like, they're being prostitutes. They're like, we're going to do all of our, we're going to do all of our sermons and shit. In the sewers. The church was in hiding. The church was in hiding, sure. Well, it was in people's houses.

In sewers. During the New Testament, you can hear Paul writing to the churches, which are in people's houses. That's why all the Romans are like, I keep hearing all these Bible verses under my floorboards. You get it. The amount of people who say online, I'm not a real Christian because I hang out with you is alarming. because I hang out with me? Yeah, well, it's just like he sets on a podcast where like his co-host just berates him about his religion. I don't, I'm not berating you.

I'm just saying that back of the day, there were some gutter fiends. There were some TM&T. Yeah, they were in hiding from the government for sure, for sure. TM and T actually, once again, that's probably that's why they did in the comics. It put them in the gutters because Da Vinci, Michelangelo, all that kind of stuff. I realize now you're talking about the teenage mutant. Yeah, TMNT, yeah. The prop game about Christians eating

The blood's been around for a long time Yeah, yeah, yeah, as a spite against him. I just didn't know, I mean, I understand, I get it, I just didn't know it. Because there's, like, there's sex of Christianity down in the South where they're, like, they hold fucking snakes up and stuff. So those actually came in, like, the 1950s. That's actually you have that,

sure, yeah. Wherever it came from, I'm just saying that if there was any sex, it would be like, we drink blood and also we eat fucking skin. Yeah. Yeah. Because how brutal would it be? Would that be kind of fucking sweet if the pastor's like, all right, Time for the deal. And they bring up the robe up the robe up his back. And everyone just goes up and they just off his back a little bit.

You know, like whatever, you eat a... That is a really cool visual. Eat an apple with like a knife. You just like, you... Imagine going out to some old motherfuckerback and he's just like, take it. It's a priesturkey. Yeah. Well, see, that would be some like horror game shit.

Like the, what was that? What is it? Fucking, what's the out? Outlast? the second one where it's like the creepy Oh yeah the pastor got that one Like that would be where it's like drink my blood It's like that kind of shit

Yeah I would obviously This would be cut if they could hear it But I would think that if there was People that were practicing like actual cannibalism And drinking blood I guess it would pretty much be cannibalism It would probably be illegal Well it'd probably be not in the United States

Oh Also you know what if you had a pastor doing that too It makes it seem like he probably thinks he's God Yeah. Right? It's like the woman in Silent Hill movie. I'll tell you what, though. You can tell a church's quality by the fucking bread or crackers they give you.

When those motherfuckers give you those thin round crackers, oh my God. I'm like, can you not go to the store and get some fucking sourdough? Some sourdope, huh? Like the, when they do it. They do the Welch's grape, whatever, and then they do the little, the thing. When they, when they, literally, though, they've done that. For children, yeah. of them that haven't gone through community that can't have the wine.

But I will say when they put those thin crackers on your fucking mouth, I'm just like, in like, in all the churches I went to growing up, it's grape juice all around. That's probably, I was always against, like, drinking in any regard. So the, that makes sense. Yeah, so it'll be, it'll be great juice. I grew up Catholic and went to Catholic school and you did your second, your first Holy communion in second grade. I went to.

And then they, they let you do the grape juice first. And then at second grade immediately, they were giving these, they were giving us wine. I can see Catholic. I remember the one that I went to, this one fuckers were giving us red Kool-Aid. Yeah. Okay. Jim Jim.

He went to Jim. Well, I mean, well, that was right aid. Different. But I will say, but I was like it because I guess people complain that the Welch's taste bad. So they switched it up to, which I kind of, I always appreciated that.

Switching up the taste. Early Christian writers such as epiphanous and salamis claim that certain Gnostic sex, which isn't really Christian, but they use Christianity as a starting point. Engaged in immoral rituals, including the consumption of human remnants. Interesting.

You just figured there's always, there's got to be one. Gnostics would be the one to do it. The Gnostics, like, they believe Jesus was like a god, but there's several gods. It's kind of like a pantheism tied to Christianity.

They've got some really wonky beliefs the more down you go. So I could definitely see like some auto-cannibalism thing coming out of. You can kind of get a, this is with anybody too, but you can kind of get some, when people are getting to these church situations,

you can get some, you kind of see who has the kind of crazy beliefs when people kind of push it past whatever they want, they make what they want to believe. I bet some people before, like in the church distance when I was younger, like had like, I was like he would thrive in a Puritan society, that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Just creepy. For sure. I mean, like, there's a, I mean, it's so varied, you know, because all that Christianity is at its core is the belief that Jesus Christ was, died for our sins and was resurrected as the son of God. That's, that. That's, I mean, is it. So any other belief that you have that adds on top of that

comes later is all still Christianity. There's some people that are, in my opinion, are so heretical in what they do later that it kind of negates the title, but technically. You would be a sweet book for us to read. I guess it's kind of a horror. It may be because I said Puritan, we should see if we could fucking read the

Crucible. You read the Crucible? Yeah, yeah. Charles Corrie. That's a fucking crazy idea. Also, Dana Day-Lewson in that. Just say it. It's just your name. But it's my name! that whole line. It's great. That'd be cool. Have you read that book? I haven't read The Crucible. No.

It's all about a it's all about a guy. I think his name's John Proctor or something. John Proctor, he fucks this like 14 year old girl or something like that. I mean, it's like the fucking it's like Puritan times, whatever. It's young chick, whatever, and he's like, hey, so actually, probably shouldn't do this anymore. You're kind of crazy.

So then she says that she's a witch, or she starts blaming other people, all the women in town for being witches. And it's like witch trial. It's very cool. It's very good. But yeah, Dan O'Day-Lewis is. and this. It's probably into theaters. I always thought it was a straight to TV movie. No, if Daniel Day Lewis was in, it had to be

theatrical, yeah, no way. I've heard the movie talked about before, so I imagine. Because I saw that one, that one came around at the same time as the other one. Was it Scarlet Letter? Scarletter, yeah. Yeah, was that Gary Oldman and Demi Moore? I haven't seen the film. That's Nathaniel Hawford. I'll tell you what, though. We watched that in school.

Holy shit. Boing- You know, like fucking crazy. Okay, all right. Alright. Okay. Seventh grade was when the cracks began to show. All started with the disappearance of Heinrich Einsom. Imrich had been an exchange student from Germany.

Pudgy kid with suede, blonde hair, and eyes the color of emeralds. I had known him, but only just barely. He had been in town for a couple of weeks. In those two weeks, the shifty-eyed kid with the messy hair had yet to make eye contact with me or anybody else. I could recognize it for what it was. an attempt to become invisible, to shrink himself down so small that the starving, gluttonous egos of burgeoning adults might overlook him. The trouble with shrinking yourself away from others, ever scraps of your person who had remained visible or left entirely up to interpretation.

The stories started almost immediately. Tightness of his lips and constant pale shade of his skin twisted by rumor into some latent sign of wrongdoing, and Heimerick's uncle worked for the Department of Transportation, specifically in the removal of roadkill. Kids at school and shout accusations at him, calling him bizarrely terrible names like Rotmouth and Street in her. None of us were overly surprised to hear that he'd gone missing. Figured he'd probably just ran away.

Search was exhaustive, with everybody coming through the Walmart in the center of town and broadening the surge from there until we had covered nearly six miles of woodland. I was surprised, at the end of that day, to find myself in the unusually warm clearing. The afternoon heat of summer shrank away as the sun sank in the west.

The warm air rose from beneath the leaves, caressing every part of me, driving the cool evening winds from my bones. The only sign of him was a scrap of his scalp snagged on a tree branch behind his uncle's house. They eventually arrested the uncle, but I got the sense that nobody felt very good about it, as if it were something they did just so they could say that they had done something.

I'm a little ashamed to say I never really thought about him much after he disappeared. I moved on with my life as if nothing at all had happened, because from my perspective, nothing really had. Heimrich had kept himself as something distant, an oddity only to be observed. I never truly come to know him, and thus had never grown to feel any attachment. I was 23 years old before I even remembered that he existed.

Coming home from college to visit my folks, I found the same shrinking tables I had left behind. It seemed as if every year gave cause for one less chair, whether it be death, feud, or simple logistical issues. It hurt in a way that sits just beneath the surface, an almost imperceptible, constant agony of loss poisoning the air. When the typical heated political discussion arose, I excused myself from the situation. Not due to a lack of interest, simply because I felt that whatever ideological victories might be scored wouldn't be worth the chance of another empty chair.

The woods were silent as a grave as I drudge past fallen logs. A small family of deer wandered across my path. I remember wondering what life might be like through their eyes. Many people hold animals to be base creatures devoid of real feeling, but I know that's not the case, at least for some. Several years prior, when I left for college, I had been driving down country roads on my way to the new school. Excitement and possibility danced through my head,

rhythmic joy of it all coming to a screeching halt. A head on the road, I could see a young fox laying near the median. There were no visible signs of injury, yet even so it was immediately obvious the kid was dead. Its mother and siblings crowded around it, rotting gently with their noses, and I could hear through my open window the sounds of their gentle whining. It was as if I had found myself in the middle of some disastrously disheartening Disney movie. I don't know if the animals of Earth feel all the same things as you or I,

but I know without question that they mourn just as we do. I followed the deer at a distance, all the while thinking of my own family and the family of foxes. I was so lost in my aimless, meandering grief that I didn't even notice when we entered the clearing. It was the same as it ever was. The images of the swaying trees heaving their heavy branches to and fro. The wind carried sweet, warm air to the tree line where it seemed to wrap around every inch of me. Change in temperature said it enough that I jumped in slight surprise. The flood of memory broke loose in my mind, threatening to carry me away with the torn of recollection.

Coming here to cry after Sadie rejected my invitation to the dance, bringing my first girlfriend, Heather, to experience the warmth and tranquility, which marked this place. I was wrenched back from my trip down memory lane by a sudden cacophony of panicked deer calls. I couldn't have looked away for more than a couple of seconds. The deer had somehow disappeared from the clearing, with the sound of their desperate cries now oozing up from beneath the leaflet or ground. I don't know if it was down to the state of my own family or just a streak of naive caring that prompted me to march out and investigate.

The idea of deciding not to intervene never even occurred to me. It just seemed obvious to me that I should help. Stopping across the ground, I became aware of faint groaning clunk, like wet wood underweight. The deer quieted beneath the thumping of my heavy boots until there was no sound at all. I knelt to the ground, clearing half-decade leaves and revealing a wooden surface much the same. I don't know what came over me. Maybe it was desperation to help the deer, or perhaps reckless abandon, born of despair. Maybe even something so simple as The Call of the Void.

I jumped once, twice, and with the third, the boards gave way. It's never easy to tell how long you were falling. Each moment stretches out before you, your mind running uselessly at top speed to find some way of avoiding harm. I slammed against a terrain both bumpy and sharp, great clatter resounding all around me. The smell hit me first, a thousand years of rot, coated in a thick sheen of freshly baked bread. My eyes adjusted slowly to the dim light, the hole where I had fallen through acting as the only window. I was in a pit. The size of it was impossible to discern amid the crushing darkness,

But the shape was easily surmised from the angle at which the walls were set. When finally I could see my fingers, I felt a rush of panicked horror boil throughout my being. The ground here was comprised entirely of bone. Discarded femurs and rib cages intertwined until they reached a point of resembling stability. I stood slowly, moving with careful steps across the shifting floor. A rogue vertebrae sent my feet flying out from under me, and I braced for the pain as my face green towards the jagged surface. Instead of hard bone, I was met with the warmth of living tissue.

Fresh, wet, blood coated my cheek as I pulled away from the corpse of the father deer I had seen. I scrambled against the wall, struggling to keep my footing as the bones slid effortlessly across each other. My knuckles crashed against abandoned skulls and hooves as I slipped cartoonishly in the stinking darkness. I stared in raw, stunned terror as a tinkling rumble sounded from somewhere deep within the heap of rot, a harbinger of things unknown gliding through a sea of death. A ripple close the space between us, sliding in seconds through 15 feet of near solid bone matrices. So this is just like a literal deer pit, like a death pit, a death pit of death and blood and stuff. Stuff's come down here,

died and decayed for a long time. And this is a place that he's been before, that he's known. This field, yes, but obviously he hasn't been down. But he hasn't been to this. Yeah. Yeah. Just boarded up for some reason. Somehow the deer got in there without there being an obvious opening. Stopped at my feet. For a moment, all was still. Then a rattling

shuffle began from below the surface. I listened as whatever it was grew closer. Shivers of fear racking my body. I was shaking so violently that the bones had begun to displace themselves around me, leading me to sink slightly down into the pile. A rotted

hand. All horrid blacks and greens with glimmers of stark white below burst forth and then another. Slowly and exorably, the being extracted itself from the tangled mass of putrid discarded flesh. Decane viscera lay draped across his exposed skull. All the meat above his upper lip have been eaten away. His ears, pushtilous craters, rising with life as the insects living with him fled from his ear canal. the blackness of his empty eye sockets suddenly parted at their midline as if phantom eyelids had opened to reveal the bloodshot emerald eyes of Heinrich Einsom

that's cool that's pretty cool almost popping out like uh they'd return to living dead tar man whatever yeah just imagine that's what he looks like all droopy and stuff skin rotting off of him and uh the empty eye suck it's parted so as if phantom eyelids had opened

so it's like the skull but then there's a supernatural tone where like the eyes appear. Well, I imagine it's like a deep set. And then in the deep set, it just like... Oh, you see the green. It opened up. Yeah.

Yeah. I think Tar Man's a pretty good. It's usual I think of, yeah. Like zombie-esque kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. I will say at the moment, it sounds like a fucking reverse. The, what's the, like, water that makes you...

Youth forever? What's the Fountain of Life? It's like that kind of thing. Fountain of Youth. It's kind of like a reverse version. of that, it seems like, almost like things that are like born from death come out of it. What is that, like, is that like a Lazarus pit? What the fuck is that called again? Well, the Lazarus pit is like, well, it's from Batman, but it's dead people are laid in it and resurrected.

That's what I mean, yeah, like that kind of live. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Only in the Lazarus pit pit, they're made young. Also, it seems too, with the things bordered up so far, it almost seems like somebody was like, hey, don't go, don't go over there. Hey, don't go into the Lazarus almost like a, almost like a pet cemetery kind of meme. Yeah. Or whatever. Like, hey, that, like, you know, Dad is bad off. Like locals of some, whoever knows how long ago, did that. Do you think Heinrich fell in? Or do you think he died in the forest and that it took him there?

Well, there's that piece, they said a piece of his scalp was seen outside of his uncle's house. Maybe his uncle found him dead. And like, I know what can save him and knew about the pit. That or unless something fucking bludgeoned him and dragged him back. Yeah, we don't know what the pit's for yet. If it's to serve something or if it's just like a thing that happens. Right. Heinrich finished extruding his torso from within the pile.

I wished desperately for my body to stop quaking. I wanted to disappear to become as close to invisible as possible. That's a good line because it calls back to Heinrich in school wanting to be invisible. He turned his gaze to me. His skull rolling limply to the side as he fixed me with a single blazing green eye. Hey! His voice was a wet rasp as if he were speaking through a wasp nest soaked in viscera. I found someone beneath the bones.

You should see her. As he finished the sentence, he tried again to turn both eyes to me, leading his head to rotate around to the other side. His jaw hanging uselessly for weak, dry tendons mummified by decay. His torso was a writhing mess of maggots, blot with botfly larva dotting his shoulders from end to end. His chest pulsed loudly with each ragged breath as the pungent air disturbed the insects nested in his lungs. Chittering sounds echoed through the chasm as Heinrich brought himself to loom over me.

Boul odor of rot overpowering as he seeped decomposition across my chest. Come with me below the bones. You have a home here. Lashed out with my boot, caving in a large section of his decrepit rib cage. and setting swarms of insects to buzz through the close space. I moved as quickly as I could to create distance, but it was impossible to keep track of him in the endless, buzzing storm. I could feel a million legs crawling across my skin, and I had to swat uselessly at the air to keep them from my eyes. I wretched as a fly crawled briefly into one of my nostrils,

imparting the stench of rot it carried. Imrich let out a cry of terrible rage, causing another uproar of tiny wings within his chest. The way as agony warbled and wove itself through the wrathful echo of his kneeling well caused my head to thrum with horrible pressure. I clapped my hands to my ears and scanned desperately for any possible way to get out. On the far side near where I'd fallen through, there was a ladder leading up to a small hatch. My clumsy, panicked feet betrayed me as I moved for the ladder, leaving me sprawled out on the shifting floor. From where I lay, feeling the infinite jagged edges of wrought-soaked bones poking against my chest, I could see Heinrich emerging again.

You entered the pit. You belong here now. You belong to her now. Nothing of her sees the sky. You go below. His voice stretched wildly between rage and reverence, filtering through meters of desiccated bone and echoing off the walls of the pit. He slid effortlessly through the bones, and I get to hear the shifting rattle behind me as he breached the surface. He wobbled slightly, as if maintaining balance were a constant effort. His half-divoured skull lolling uselessly from side to side as he swayed. I scrambled like an animal, raking, discarded femurs and abandoned forelimbs back past my head as I crawled desperately toward the ladder, shards scraping my face as they flew.

He slammed down, splintering the tips of his fingers into tiny shards. He had fallen short. I didn't waste my chance. Rinching myself upright, I ran for it. the exit. My heart dropped as the wet wood flexed beneath my weight. I made it up one rung, and then another, before searing pain tore through my leg. From where he had fallen, Heinrich had dragged himself across the room. A chain of deer thoraxes lay behind him, a sinuous rope of shadowy darkness, chaining them each to Heinrich's writhing form. He had dragged himself up and

shoved his devastated fingers through my calf, in behind my shin. I panicked and tried to pull the leg away. The pain brought white-hot oblivion, bleeding into the edges of my vision as my head swam. The muscles binding my calf to my shin stretching themselves against Heinrich's fingers, threatening to shear away completely. Hot yellow bile rolled from my throat as the pain threatened to drive me to unconsciousness. I was dragged back to reality by the feeling of a splinter, slowly piercing my right thumb. The hand had fallen away from the ladder, dangling down behind me. There, beyond the tips of my fingers, I could see the gleam of terrible, hungry malice suspended in the cloying, fetid air.

He used the fingers planted in my leg for support, sending waves of brutal agony tearing through me. He stretched and writhed until he had positioned each of his jaws around my index middle and ringed fingers. He chomped down, cheering each finger at the knuckle. I sucked the foul air into my lungs as he raised himself up for more. and then there was a horrible tearing sound. The weight of his form had been too much for his desiccated tendons to hold.

His wrist had come unbound from his arm. The sudden shift in weight was too much for his tentative sense of balance. He toppled to the ground, casting bone and viscerer across the room in a wide arc as he fell. I cried in desperation as I wield my battered body to climb. One rung, two more, and I had reached the hatch. I felt the slam of Heinrich's remaining hand against Rung after. rung as I pushed the hatch. Once.

It was useless to flee. She will come for you. You must go down there, but oh, the bones. Twice. So I didn't want to go. Not at first. But she has shown me things.

She will show you as well. Thrice. Clamped his jaws around the rubber of my boot. I yanked wildly, sending teeth careening from around the pit as my shoulder slammed against the hatch. sunlight burst in

illuminating Heinrich's infested decaying form tumbling down into the pit scrambled out into the afternoon air the sun against my skin gave me a feeling that the nightmare was over even as disembodied fingers

still wriggled in my calf I carefully remove the hand fingers curling themselves in an attempt to hook into my flesh as I pulled each one loose stumbled across the clearing collapsed against a fallen tree So that entire segment was really cool.

There's a giant pile of bones and he still kept alive for some reason to serve whatever her is. How many years has passed has happened since he's been missing? Well, he was in middle school right before. And now he's 23. Yeah. So at least 10 years. More than, yeah, 10 years. 10 years, I'd say.

So it's been a decade and he's been down there to Kane, but still alive. Well, it seems like whatever this, whoever her is, it seems like it's using her memory or it's using our protagonist's memory of Heinrich in this whole passing to manage. to manifest him again. Oh, it could be. That's a point. Yeah. Well, I mean, his, Heinrich's body did fall in there.

Oh, it did. But I'm just saying that, like, I wonder how many victims there are. And it just seems like very convenient that it's like, oh, I know this kid. Yeah. You know. Yeah, that's true.

I see what you're saying. I wonder if it just, if people just come in this clearing and they're pulled under. And no, it's actually. Seems like it. This works, too, because there's a bunch of kind of, like, random fields you'll come across in the Tennessee Mountains. Like, you come over the bow of a hill and it's like,

hey, it's just a clear spot for some person. or something like that. Yeah, it's like, or it was at one point, but now it just looks like grown up grass and flowers. And for some reason, no trees grow there. Yeah, you just fall down the pit. Yeah, it makes you think. And it also, like, Appalachians got a ton of sinkholes in it where the mountains are so old. There's random times where, like, holes will just cave in.

So it's kind of, this ties into that with, like, maybe one of those clearings is home to something like this, you know? That's pretty cool. My eyes were heavy. The warmth of the sun was richly intoxicating, graphing me in its embrace and it's embrace and begging me to be still. I looked down to my leg, my fingers. It was bleeding horribly, so I used my belt for a tourniquet on my leg

and did my best to keep my hand above my head. Clenched off the belt, suddenly becoming aware of a dragging, thump, and an incoherent, wrathful voice. Heinrich had dragged himself from the pit and up into the clearing. The effort costing him his ragged arms,

which lay flopping in piles of shredded rot ripped away from his torso. I also like a lot how all the pieces of the body continue interacting and after they're detached from him. The remaining flesh of his face had been lost in the effort as well, leaving only his wild,

verdinized to lure at me. He inched forward now by using his upper jaw to gain purchase in the earth. He was about seven feet away when a set of ribs snagged on the edge of the hole, causing the strain to overcome the bonds of his vertebrae. His skull disconnected from his neck with a soft click.

His eyes experiencing a dead. decade of decay in an instant. It blistered and boiled away into a greasy, vaporous dust. The chain of torsos with Heinrich at its end wriggled twice before back sliding into the pit. That's cool. It's like a tentacle almost of like bones. The motion, openly deliberate, drove icy despair into my heart. I began to crawl away, looking back only once when I heard the heaving, ragged breath of a dying animal. The slam of a buggy, paw drawing my eye back to the pit's edge. Claws longer than my ring finger protruded from gangrenous, fleshy stumps.

Round, furry ears, just barely peeking over the edge. Sound of wood splintering, the sight of that monstrous paw, slipping off the edge were enough to set me sobbing as I dragged myself home. That's cool. It's like a living pit that's like beckoning for him up there. A neighbor found me a few miles down the road. I was covered in bites and stings Some of them incurred in the pit and others on the journey home Dad was hysterical in the hospital

But mom was there for me She always had a way of setting herself aside when I needed her Even as she caressed my bandaged hand and petted my cheek I could see in her eyes how badly she wanted to break down in tears The mournful welling of her heart prying desperately at the corners of her mouth Eventually, when I was able to speak again I told my story You can guess how that went.

It took a few weeks of begging before they'd even bothered to check the pit. When the sheriff finally made his way out there, he found Heinrich's battered skull sitting at the edge of a chasm. The empty pit stood 30 feet across and more than 60 feet deep. They had it backfilled before I left the hospital, but he showed me pictures once. The thing I couldn't help but notice about those pictures, yon how infinite the darkness seemed to grow.

So the hole banked off at the bottom I couldn't help but shudder and thinking something massive had tunneled its way out of the deer pit Sometimes late at night, the rumbling of passing cars starts to sound familiar in a way that makes my heart sink. Oh, oh, that ending's awesome.

It's like the giant, this like a thing, like a pile of flesh like the thing is tunneling under the mountains. Yeah, well, it seems like something that's underneath. It's, I keep picturing like, almost like a giant worm or something. Yeah. Like some kind of entity that's collecting bodies and like making itself larger. That's kind of a picture, whatever.

It's like, oh, the Heinrich's body collapsed, but then the rest of the thing fell through. To me, it was like Heinrich's body fell off and then the worm kind of, it went back in the... And knowing now that it'll be seen, it just goes somewhere else and goes to a different area. What do you think the connection was with the connection between people that are like, Heinrich trying to be not, not to be seen, and then we have a similar thing

with our protagonist here with his own family of not wanting to intrude or impose on certain things because he doesn't want people to whisk away or he doesn't want people to go away, right? Whether through death or through feuds, it seems something very similar there with... So with that, with the death thing, I think going back to Pet Cemetery

sometimes dead is better. Maybe it's like, well, I don't want to lose people, I don't want to that. It's like, well, if you hold on too long, you know, what would that look like? And then the deer pits of physical manifestation of that where it's a giant growth where nothing can die in it. That's also didn't know, too. That's why I didn't know. It's like, yeah, no one's found that pit yet.

I wonder if just like, if it isn't coincidental that it's like, is there something that lulled him to it? Does it feed off people that are like, have that kind of like. That's a good point because he was talking about like how he thought about his family. And then he thought of the foxes. He saw a fox die. There's this continuing theme that he, like, death is bad. like he fears death or losing things. So he sees the deer and he follows them off.

And it's almost like the deer, at least symbolically, lead him to the realization that maybe it's okay if things are dead. Maybe it's okay if some things aren't around forever because if they are around forever, they just rot. I'm trying to think of a different way of saying that, like, almost like like the temporariness of life and also just like the change of time or something. There's something there. I'd have to process it more.

but the ending had a lot of fun to it. The gross kind of body horror visuals and stuff, I mean, I always eat up. But I do think, like, showing the entity at the very, or revealing the entity at the very end and then just having this idea that it's, like, kind of burrowing and digging. And it almost seems like it's following him. It was a great dripping of information.

Because when we first see it, it's like, oh, there's bones down here. And then Heinrich comes out, and it's like, oh, he's like a zombie. But then you see he's connected to everything, and it's all one flesh and it's like, oh, this is all one thing. And then the tentacle and the paw, and then to realize this isn't just a pit, it moves. And I love that last line because there's so many times you'll be hiking, like where my house is.

I'll be hiking in the woods around my house, but the interstate's nearby. So while you're hiking, you can still hear the, yeah, like the gentle humming of rubber on the asphalt. But then that idea that sometimes it's like, it sounds similar, but that could be something else, something tunneling under. That's so, that's such a cool note.

It ends on a high note. It has remnants of like kind of, I guess what I was trying to say was like your past comes back to haunt you in a lot of weird ways. It's just the idea that it's almost like he felt guilty about Heinrich a little bit for forgetting him and stuff. It feels like to me it regurgitated him. Because he didn't kind of talk in the beginning. To lure another body to the pit. Yeah, he talks at the beginning like he was almost like he'd be embarrassed to be his friend because everyone else called him. Oh, oh, what was that?

Hold on. That note. What? Rott mouth. Yeah, yeah. They made fun of him because his dad would clean up dead animals from the road. And then he becomes a part of this dead animal. Wait, was it his dad or his uncle who cleaned dead animals?

I think he said dad. Okay. His dad cleans. Or you're trying to say his uncle killed him or something? No, he didn't kill him. That if he died, he would know where to put the body, that the body can live forever. Because if he cleans up dead animals, maybe they just go into the pit, right? And maybe, like, there's some people.

people in the mountains who know of it. This entity living in the... That's a cool note. His dad cleaned up dead animals and he's in the dead animal pit. This entity is also very indicative of Heinrich himself and our... I mean, like, it's hiding in a pit. It's like not revealing. It doesn't want to reveal itself.

Yeah. And there's a girl at the base of it. That's a, that's an interesting note. Yeah, I kind of forgot that. That was kind of very like quick. Yeah, and it's just what Heinrich says. So you can interpret that as kind of like they, he refers to the entity as her, whatever the quote is is.

or maybe a woman started all this. Maybe this is some ancient being that's been in the mountains for centuries. Or was the first victim. Yeah, a woman was cursed with something and then other bodies piled on tour and she's at the core of it. It gives you enough that you can tell there's purpose to it, but there's room to speculate on what stuff means. And those are always my favorite, like the thing, right? Those are my favorite movie monsters where you see enough that you're like, there's clearly a design here. But then it's like, but what does this mean?

What would that mean? and you get to like wonder in your head with details and stuff. To me, that's like where the best horror is, where you can tell there's a blueprint, but we don't get a look right at it. Yeah, well, it always seems to be the most effective. I think one of people also come out,

I will say that I have a huge respect for people who have an idea of what something is and they present it to be judged. I think sometimes I feel like people hide behind the ambiguity factor a lot. They can. But I will say this. Yeah. I think it serves the story. Also,

I don't need to, I don't want there to be a part where he's like, I looked it up online and I found out about a woman in the 1700s. Just hearing her and just seeing like the flesh growth, the tunnels, that's enough for me that I'm... The animal motifs in both these stories were a lot of fun. I like that we got the POV of the animal and almost both of them of like a literal animal and then like this creature presenting itself to another person. With the first story, because I do think it was an animal being hunted by people. I like the idea there that it's like an animal afraid of people.

And then it's like people afraid of an amalgamation of animals, like something great, like were hunted by something greater. We just may not realize it yet. That's a really cool like furtherance idea, I think. Two home runs from The Tales from the Creebs. Two home runs. As always, hey, I tell you what, the guys who watch the show, the guys and gals who watch the show,

they can put a story together. I will say the, uh, just speaking to the Tales from the Creeves as well, I just, if you're ever interested in writing a story and you actually want feedback on both of the stories, there were a lot of comments of people. A ton of people in the replies. They're actually engaging with the stories. I think that if you're ever interested in writing,

even if it's something that's just like you don't even want to be read. I think it's just an idea of if you're trying to get into storytelling or if you're just trying to get into writing, I think it's a great opportunity because there is just such a fun little fan base there. And I hope that it keeps growing. But guys, that's our episode today. Thank you so much for watching on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Give us a nice reading there.

And thank you to our beautiful patrons for supporting the channel. We do appreciate you. And until next time, we will see you in the next one. Stay creeped. Thank you.