Creepy - A Story Of My Own

Episode Date: September 11, 2023

Written by: Zachary A. Bakht and Narrated by: Rissa Montanez***Bonus Episode: "Items Returned" written by: Mike Robinson***Sound Design by: Pacific Obadiah***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents. A story of my own.

Written by Zachary A Bachd, and narrated by Rissa Montanez. Now that I know my story, I rarely miss a chance to tell it. There was a time, you see, where I was a time. wasn't sure that I was real. This stems from not having a story of your own, one that is solely and perfectly yours. As such, I'd always considered myself something of a background character, someone who found listening easier than speaking. The advantage, of course, to such a life, is that I've heard them all. Every story of every sort. A good story has a good story has to has the ability to overcome that burdensome narcissistic need,

that slavish devotion to oneself that is a constant for so many people, that desire to be the speaker instead of the audience. A story, no matter how good, has to be told well. There must be suspense, a slow, dreadful build. Breadcrumbs dropped along the way to lead your audience in the right direction. Bonus points if there's a ghost. Everyone loves a good ghost story. And a good story is always true.

People have a way of knowing a lie, even when they can't actually prove it. Now that I have mine, I choose to let it define me. You'll see. Irrelevance is a choice. Some wade in the shallow pool of anonymity, and others decide to make themselves interesting. My story is mine, and no one can take that from me. Listen now, there's even a ghost. He has his own parts to tell.

One does not simply wake up to the start of their life and decide to play the part of the extra. This role is not anyone's natural position. It's not what we were designed for. In one's own mind, we are all the main character. Everything that happens happens for us. This is logical and easy to understand. Life is experienced through one single frame of reference. Everything that ever was, is, or will be, is viewed through this specific personal perspective.

So with that understood, how do so many people find themselves doing nothing more than taking up space? How is it that there are so many extras and so few protagonists? If we're all so important, how come none of us is important? The answer, for many, myself included, is someone put us here. There are people in this world that are like magnets, or like great massive objects. They have gravity, a compelling, irresistible force that sweeps us up, sweeps us in, and gradually we find ourselves rotating around them, a moon, or a satellite. The answer, for many, myself included, is, someone put a person.

here. You see, there are people in this world that are like magnets, or they're like great massive objects. They have this gravity, a compelling, irresistible force that sweeps us up, sweeps us in, and gradually we find ourselves rotating around them, like a moon or a satellite. These stars, however, it's quite often that they don't know their own power. Not at first, that is, but in time, they always realize what they have, and even the best of them is corrupted by it. But that comes later. Let me not rush in.

A good story takes time. Does the sun know that an entire system of planets, many with moons of their own, revolves around it, spinning hopelessly without the chance of ever reaching that glowing yellow spot in the sky? the warmth that gives life to everything? Well, I found my role at a young age, and everything that follows can be attributed to my own floating into the path of such an object. His name is Jordan.

He is the center point of my own revolution. His existence is why I grew so comfortable with insignificance. For many quiet kids, Making friends with a charismatic, popular type is something of a lifesaver. It elevates you, makes you real in the eyes of others. What you don't know, at least at first, is that you're giving up certain opportunities to become you, so that you may become, or try, at least, to become them. We met when we were six years old.

It was during recess at George Washington Elementary School. There was a group of boys that played football every day. I remember the football was blue and far too big for our tiny hands. I would watch the boys play, never quite daring to insert myself, always standing nearby when the teams were being selected. But not near enough to make it clear that I was volunteering. There was a natural resistance to including me. One day, mid-September, a few weeks into the new year.

Jordan was made captain of one of the two teams. He was taller than most in our grade, lean and wiry, the type of kid that would put on muscle quickly come high school. You could tell that just by looking at him. He wasn't the fastest, but he could throw the ball further than anyone. And there was me.

I was doing my usual, standing on the outskirts, slowly shuffling closer to the ranks, head down, At that time, I was afraid to lift my head and make eye contact. The one time I'd done it, the boy picking had held my stare for a moment and then looked away with embarrassing quickness. It was a look that said, Neither of us want this.

Why did you make me do this? There was an implicit agreed upon standard. I wouldn't make you ignore me. I would ignore myself. Save us both to try. trouble. That day, when I lifted my eyes, Jordan was looking right at me. He didn't look away. He pointed, you. He didn't know my name. None of them did. The kid standing half in front of me started walking forward. Not you, Derek. Her. And all eyes were on me. They turned their head.

heads. Smirks. A loudly whispered comment that I chose not to hear. Me? I said. You want to play, right? I think it's likely I would have said no if I'd been capable of saying anything at all. Jordan didn't give me the chance. He made my decision, the same way he would go on to make most of them. You look fast, he said. He said. Come on. With team selected, we lined up on the gray waterlogged field. Both quarterbacks took a turn throwing the ball as far as they could to decide who would get the opening possession. Jordan won, and the game began. We ran two plays before I said my first words.

Looking back now, I realize this is the first time I ever spoke with my best friend. It was third down, and we needed to reach a vaguely. marked, arbitrarily chosen spot in the field to keep our drive alive. Jordan was scheming up a play, running lines across his open palm, telling the boys where to go and what to do.

I wasn't listening. I was working up the nerve to speak. I'm going to be open, I said. He stopped, turned his head. They were all looking at me again.

Past two plays? No one has covered me, I said. They don't even notice me. Can you catch? he said. If I throw it to you, can you catch it? I nodded. And then Jordan counted it out, hiked the ball, drop back three steps.

The boys on my team ran their routes, rushing up field, cutting in, outside posts, short curls. I ran straight ahead and stopped at the first. down marker, and turned around. No one was within 15 feet of me. Jordan threw the ball. In my mind, I see it traveling 20 yards, a tight spiral, a perfectly delivered laser.

Surely it was nothing of the sort. But that's the beauty of those fabled memories. We can make them whatever we want, and a good storyteller knows where to embellish. I said before that people have a tendency to. spot a lie in a lineup to force it forward and check its alibi. But this is no lie. It's simply an enhanced version of the truth. I caught the pass, and then I ran a few yards before a pair of hands pushed hard into my back, knocking me down. Jordan lifted me up from the muddy trench I was floundering in and clapped me hard

on the shoulder. Nice catch, he said. That's a first down. We lined up again, and once again I was uncovered, and once again, he saw this. We got another 10 yards, or whatever counted as 10 yards to us. This time, run as far as you can, he said in the huddle. And I did. I slipped behind the defenders unnoticed. Jordan leaned back, twisted his entire, higher body into the throw, launching the football like a catapult. I knew as certainly as I knew my own name that I was going to drop the pass, squander the touchdown, undo every bit of credit I just earned. Perhaps it would have been better for everyone if I had. I tripped over my own feet, splashed in the mud, but I never took my eyes off the ball. Maybe if I weren't the protagonist,

the reason the world continues spinning. The ball would have floated over my head. Instead, it fell delicately into my lap. The boys on my team cheered. And for the first time in my life, I was happy to be seen. The next time we got the ball, Derek, who'd been the pick after me, and was now on defense, pointed at me and said, Hey, someone cover her. I didn't get any catches the rest of the day,

but my place in the group had been cemented. I was worthy of coverage. And those were the best words I'd ever heard. This leads us to a confusing place. Before Jordan, it seems that I was no one. And that isn't exactly true. I was me. It's just that very few people knew who I was.

I didn't even know myself. In time, I'm sure I would have discovered just who that is, or who that could have been. Because of Jordan, I never did. By the time we reached middle school, people knew to associate one of us with the other. We were best friends. People, when talking to me alone, or to Jordan alone, would refer to us as you two. It was understood that we were a package deal. And I was very grateful for this.

Jordan liked to talk. It came so naturally to him, and he was quite adept at persuading, enticing, encouraging. People wanted to listen to what he had to say, and it was only natural that I would take a backseat in most of these situations. When people asked us what we had going on, how we'd spent the weekend, he would know how to answer,

how to make it seem better, bigger than it really was. Where I would have said, Oh, not much. He could create a tale. He could give us purpose. But he never lied. He only provided his enhanced, more spectacular version of the truth.

An example might serve us well here. The summer before eighth grade began, Jordan and I spent every day together That is not an enhancement. That is pure, untainted truth. Every single day of that summer he was at my house or I was at his. Jordan was the oldest of three children. Beneath him there was a younger brother and an even younger sister. I am most like any only child, given that my only sibling is a brother much, much older than me.

My parents had done the whole mother and father thing. They'd had their son, raised him, and were close to getting rid of him when I was accidentally conceived, forcing them to restart the process. These words were never said to me, but the spirit of them was in everything they did in relation to me. When I was at his house, we sometimes involved Sam, his brother. Sam was two years younger,

just enough at that age, to make him feel distinctly different. At my house, we were generally left alone. More and more as that summer went on, we found ourselves at my house. My mom was retired by then, but never at home. I can say without exaggeration that I have no clue where or how or with whom she spent her time.

My father was still working part-time and spent his homebound hours in his office, drinking whiskey and reading book after book on military strategy and history. And most days, we did absolutely nothing, Jordan and me. We killed time upstairs in my bedroom playing video games. And when we got bored of that, we would pedal our bikes farther and farther away from my neighborhood, feeling exhilarated at the thought of getting lost. Sometimes we'd swim in a pool, or I would.

Jordan never learned to swim and chose instead to sunbathe on the deck. But then Sam would clamber all over us, involve himself, and stare at my uncomfortable half-child, half-woman body. And then we'd spend the next week at my house, killing time, passing the hours, bored mostly, but alone, without the influence of anyone else. Only one thing worth noting actually happened that summer. We got drunk for the first time.

My father favored Scotch. I remember bottle after bottle of Lagovulin would appear, drain, and disappear on a disturbingly, upon reflection, regular schedule. The man loved his scotch, past tense not because he ever changed his mind. It was the exact opposite, actually, that drove him to an early grave. My mother drank on occasion and never enjoyed it. She would have two drinks, vodka and something fruity, and would invariably spend the night in the hallway bathroom wretching so loudly that I can still hear it today. The vodka would not be missed.

Even at 12 years old, I knew this. We weren't smart enough to replace the lost volume with water, but our ignorance was never punished. The taste, somehow like rubber, And the scent, so barely different from isopropyl alcohol, will always take me back to high school and my best memories with Jordan. But that comes later. That day, and this had to be early August, deep enough in the summer to be bored of it, but still desperately attached to it,

we filled a water bottle to the halfway mark with room-temperature vodka and set off on our bikes. Our destination was nearly four miles from my house, and by the time we got there, we were dripping with sweat. Our shirts were stuck to our backs, and our armpits were stained in dark, damp patches, and the vodka felt as if it had just emerged from a microwave. No matter. We had virgin tongues. It was disgusting beyond belief.

I found myself relating to and feeling for my mother for the first time, and possibly last time in my life. But our excitement carried us through. As part of our expeditions that summer to, get ourselves lost somewhere far from home. We discovered an abandoned paper factory on a dusty lot surrounded by a chain link fence that was broken in many places. I still have a set of scars on my leg. These nasty twin gashes that I used to tell people were from a bobcat, running down my left hamstring from the first day we'd found it, and made the mistake of trying to scale the wobbly,

unsteady fence. I chickened out halfway over, legs straddled and fell back. The spurs at the top of the fence caught my skin and flayed me in the process. This was our third visit to the place, and we were privy to other entrances, as were others we were soon to learn. This was on the far north side of town, a place known for its vagrants. All these fantastic stories used to pass through our school, all about gangs of traveling orphans that ravaged the poor north side of town, with their home. father leaders giving commands, instructing them to steal, to hurt, to kill even. In our previous experiences, these rumors seemed to be greatly exaggerated. With our bikes pulled

around back, facing the mostly dry canal, we sat down, wiped our sweaty foreheads, and uncapped the bottle. It was brutally still that day, hot and windless. Jordan allowed me the first sip, as it had been taken from my parents' house. I think he was scared. That, more than any respectful concession he could ever have, encouraged me to turn the bottle to the sky and nearly drown myself with vodka.

I remember coughing, really hard, feeling the vodka shoot out of my nose. The burning was like nothing I'd ever felt. My sinuses had been coated in sulfuric acid, it seemed. Jordan slammed his hand on my back several times, as if that would help, and encouraged me to breathe, breathe. It was awful. When he asked me how it was, I told him,

Not so bad. And passed the bottle. He took a smaller sip, grimaced, twisted his head left to right as a shiver ran through his entire body, and then flashed me a smile. Not so bad, he said back. The bottle changed hands an uncounted and unremembered number of times, and before long it was empty. I remember feeling strong.

I crushed the bottle in my hand, stood up, and threw it as hard as I could toward the canal. The wind, the only gust of that day. blew it backwards over my head where it sailed into the brick wall of the abandoned building we were shaded by. And Jordan laughed until tears ran down his face. It was hot, disgusting, unpleasant in so many ways, but at the same time good. Better than anything before it and most of what came after. It was a special thing, you see.

A new thing. And it was just for us. something only we would be able to remember, a story only we could ever tell, until it wasn't. Naturally, as most young drunks will do, we decided to walk. Perhaps we'd forgotten about the four-mile return trip

that stood before us, or perhaps we just didn't care. The latter seems more likely to me now, but truthfully, I can remember very little about what happened between those first, hot, awful sips, and rounding the corner of the factory, where we found the dying man. Back against the wall, he lay slumped.

Homeless, quite obviously, indicated by the sad state of the clothing he wore. He was the first of the infamous vagrants we'd come across. Pratruding from the inside of his right elbow was a hypodermic needle. We heard choking sounds escape his throat through purpling lips. His breathing was shallow and uneven, and we sobered quickly. What do we do? I was first to speak, but only because I was so accustomed to Jordan taking charge. And his stunned, red-faced silence was quickly unnerving me.

We should go home, he said. I was looking at Jordan, and Jordan was looking at the dying man. He nodded and repeated himself. We should go home. I don't we call 911? I asked. We did not have cell phones, nor would we for many years. I tried to remember how many stores we passed and how far they were.

He's going to be dead soon. How do you know that? Look at him. We should tell someone. We watched his frail chest rise and fall in silence. I wanted to cry. I wanted to throw up. Let's go, he said, turning.

Jordan. Who are we going to tell? It's too late. There's got to be a house or something nearby. They can call the cops. And what are we going to say when they ask why we were here? They're going to tell our parents, you know. And your dad will know we were drinking.

He's always wanting to smell our breath anytime we're away from your house for too long. He was right. and it wasn't that I didn't care. I just hadn't thought that far ahead. Now my head was spinning with his ideas. Seeing my compunction, he continued. This isn't our fault. He didn't want anyone to find him.

Why else would someone come all the way out here? He didn't know we'd be here. We weren't supposed to be here. Jordan kept talking. I remember him latching onto that concept. Those words. We weren't supposed to be here. Maybe he was right about that.

Mostly, I wasn't listening. I was trying to think of some way to get help here while we got away. But what happened next happened fast. The factory had window spaced at intervals along the ground floor, and most of them were broken. We'd stuck our heads inside, the first few times we'd been here. I remembered heaps of paper stacked unevenly all over the floor,

and it looked as if the factory hadn't shut down, but had been abandoned in a mad rush, like the building was a nuclear reactor melting down instead of a paper-making facility. Do you have your lighter with you? I asked, but I knew my friend well enough to know the answer, and was already making my way to the only broken wind

that had no jagged pieces of glass jutting out. Loose me up. I threw as much paper through the window as I could, and then jump back out, landing hard on my knee, and opening a wound that I wouldn't notice until we were back home. As much as seeing the dying man

had seemed to clear my head, we were both still very drunk, and getting closer to sick by the minute. Jordan had begun building a pyre as I threw the paper out. We never even communicated our plan out loud, and we didn't need to. By the time I was scrambling to my feet, he was striking his grandfather Zippo at the bottom of the heap. The flame grew quickly, and a long ribbon of dark smoke rose straight into the air, lingering, with no wind to push it away.

We have to go now, he said, and we did. and that was it. Our distress signal, our SOS. Someone would see it and call for help. Or they wouldn't. It was out of our hands now. What I remember of the rest of that day was running to the hole in the fence, mounting our bikes without stopping, pedaling hard,

getting far from the factory as quickly as we could. We weren't even halfway home when we had to. to pull off the road for Jordan to duck into the trees and puke. I'd been soldiering through, hoping to puke in the hallway bathroom, to feel that sense of connection with my poor mother. But at the sound of him losing his lunch, I slowly made my way into the trees and joined him. I think we stayed in those woods for the better part of an hour,

puking and coughing and laughing at how stupid we were. Eventually we made it home. He stayed the night. night. We took turn showering, struggled through dinner, went to bed early. I can't speak for Jordan, but I'd mostly forgotten about the dying man. I need to take a moment to clarify something. The way I told what happened at the factory, it might seem that I was trying to paint Jordan in a poor light, or to build myself up in some sense. But that is not my intent. Jordan was not a bad person. He was a good person and the best friend I ever had. He is the reason I am who I am today. I owe so much to him. He helped build me. He gave me my freedom. Good people, when scared, sometimes do bad things. Like leave strangers behind to die. He was not a bad person. He was not a bad person.

person, but a good person doing a bad thing. I feel it is important to tell the truth and leave an accurate impression of a person. The world is full of good people doing bad things, and my own desire to help was not built from a superior sense of morality, a greater ability to ignore my own self-interest and the interest of others. There was no altruism in my actions. I was simply more short-sighted. When faced with the thoughts that came naturally to him, I froze as well. He should not be punished for being ahead of the curve. We learned of the dying man's fate from the news. Jordan was at my house, and we were eating lunch on the couch, with the TV playing in the background. Neither of us was watching until the story began. Someone had seen the smoke and called for help,

and the paramedics had managed to save the man. He had no memory of lighting a fire, he told his rescuers, and had no apparatus with which to strike a flame. They believed him, given that he had no reason. The temperature had been nearing the triple digits that afternoon. The man told reporters that he believed it to be an act of God. The Lord had bigger plans for him than dying alone outside of an empty building. He was an addict, and he needed help.

And now he would seek it. His best days were still ahead of him. When school resumed a few weeks later, Jordan and I were eating lunch in the cafeteria when the all-too-familiar question of how we'd each spent our summer breaks was making it circuit. You guys want to hear something crazy? He said.

I nearly choked on my Capri Sun. No way, I thought. he can't. The way Jordan told it, we were exploring, not with alcohol in our back pocket, but with honest, open, good-natured curiosity. We came across an empty building. And being the brave young people we are,

we had to have a look. And what do we find? A man, a lonely man, dying in the shadows. It's at this point that I say in his story, we have to do something. I'll give Jordan credit for that. He gave me the hero's role. He knew just how much of the truth to insert that I would have no choice but to play along. According to Jordan, we scrambled away, found a way to get help.

Always vague. Not a lie. Just an enhancement. Being modest and humble, such as we are, we kept ourselves out of the story. We didn't want any reward. This man getting a second chance at life, that was our reward. Let him think he has a guardian angel. This fantastical tale, Jordan declared.

Did the other kids believe us? You might be surprised to hear that they did. Now, if I had been the one to take them, tell the story? Surely I would have been mocked. But people listened when Jordan spoke. They wanted to believe him so they did. And I benefit from that. I was able to sit quietly as legends were spun, as my story was told, as my own character was built from the ground up. In time, though, One longs to tell their own stories. Things continued like this into adulthood.

I was one of the lucky few that did not have to begin high school alone, tossed from a small pond into a slightly less small pond, floundering and panicked. We took the bus together. Our first class was the same. We enjoyed a shared lunch hour. Not a week had gone by before the other kids. in our class came to the conclusion that those in our middle school had. And this was aided by the fact that many of these were the same kids.

I was never me. No one ever asked what I had planned this upcoming weekend, or if I knew a particular kid. It was always, what are you two getting into? Or, what do you guys think of? Insert any band or sports team or movie. Did anyone tell you guys Tyler was having a party next weekend?

My entire stretch in high school. I was never invited anywhere. But we were. In so many ways, this was great. Who doesn't want a friend they can always rely on? Someone that knows your every thought. That person you can speak with in a private language. Building inside references on top of inside references.

I had someone in my corner for every argument, even when Jordan secretly disagreed. And this he would tell me after the fact. In the moment, he was my advocate. Always, without fail. For many, college is the single most impactful time in one's personal development. It is during those four strange, turbulent years that a person really starts to know themselves, to bud,

to become whomever it was they were always going to. to be. I realized quickly that this would not be the case for me. I'd arrived with a best friend and therefore an identity. And that's the wonder of college, the anonymity. One can be whomever they want. Reinvention is commonplace. A person brings what they desire to keep, and then tosses the rest somewhere along whatever road they drove on to get there. I was not allowed to be anonymous. By my side, through every step, was a young man that knew me. He knew my past.

He knew my present. So I had to keep on being me. You meet a lot of interesting people in college, and that might be the institution's single biggest value ad. Interesting people always have interesting stories to tell. They have a way of getting you to settle down for a moment, to shut off the noise and be present while they transport you elsewhere. And that's something I learned early. Playing cards in the common room of our dorm, doing icebreakers in class, leaning over wet tables with drinks in hand, eyes have closed, slurring sloppy sentences that told of childhood adventures.

But notice my choice in language. Our dorm. Not my dorm. Even today, I cannot escape this shared existence. The best people have the best stories. Of course, I didn't have any stories. We had stories. Yes, we had many of them, and Jordan was happy to tell them.

I added my own flavor to these when I could, but more often than not, I was listening. I never regaled a small crowd with some nonsensical juvenile trouble barely avoided. I never captivated an audience. Not once did I earn the pity or the respect or the admiration of my classmates. Because of some survived tragedy, a linchpin in my past, a fork in the road that could have gone either way. I tried to at least be interested if I couldn't be interesting. And that worked well enough. I had friends. We had friends. We were well liked, but I was never to be well known. The problem,

it seemed to me then, was that I didn't have a story, not a single one, that was mine. None that I could tell and decide what mattered and what didn't. Everything was shared. It was not up to me to assign value to experiences. I did not get to interpret the world as I saw it. The solution then was rather simple. I needed a story of my own, one that was just for me. And by this point, halfway through sophomore year of college, I'd heard enough stories from other, more interesting people to know the proper mix of ingredients, the perfect combination of pathos and inspiration. the tragedy and triumph. I needed conflict and resolution

and character development along the way. What you're hearing is not that story. You're hearing the genesis of that story, how it came to be. Now that you know, all that's left is to sit back and hear the best part. and please listen well

because this and this alone is my story it belongs to me no one else I don't have to share this part this story more than anything else will show you who I am have I ever told you about the time I visited the Oregon coast

No? Well, it's not a story I like to visit often, but it's important that I do from time to time. I've only been once, and I'm sure I'll never go again. This was during winter break of my sophomore year of college. I drove there with my friend Jordan, just the two of us in my weathered suburban. We were excited to see it, the Pacific Ocean. It was to be the first time for both of us. He was my best friend, Jordan, the best I ever had. When I was young, he saw potential in me, potential that I did not see myself.

I'd never really had anyone in my life that believed in me. Until Jordan, it was easy to believe that I might not actually exist. it would take all day to list the ways he improved my life. The memories. It seems he's ingrained in all of them. My father passed away when I was 16, and this led to the deepest depression of my short life. My mother reacted poorly, which is understandable.

After his death, she was vacant, bombed out. There was an absence in her eyes that left her looking like a porcelain doll. all, left to deal with this alone, and I was, even with her, alone. I think it likely that I would not be here today. But Jordan made sure I was never alone. When I cried, he cried with me. When I didn't have the energy to talk with anyone, to accept their sympathy at school, he accepted it for me.

Jordan built a bubble and placed me inside. He maintained it and rolled it where it needed to be, with no ability to concentrate on anything but my own despair. I was in danger of falling behind, repeating a year in school, graduating late. Jordan made sure that did not happen, and it was his actions which allowed us to complete our childhood dream, to move far from home and live together. He'd finish his homework and then start on. mine, forcing me to engage, to learn with him.

When it became apparent that I would need to find a job to replace some of the income that had been lost with the death of my father, he drove around town dropping off resumes. He coached me through interviews, and on my first day, and many after, he let me borrow his car because I didn't have one of my own. There were days when he could not be without it, and on those days, He dropped me off and picked me up, always working me into his schedule. And it is here where I must make my first judgment call. A good storyteller is perceptive to the needs of their audience.

For most, this is enough detail. They see Jordan. They know him already. And they love him with me. When their faces tell otherwise, I add a bit more. Jordan, helping me through my first tough breakup. Jordan, protecting me from childhood bullies.

It's important to find the right combination. And a good story is always a work in progress. You must find the effective details and omit the rest. With his help, I graduated. And we found ourselves men. many miles from home. College freshman. Our relationship the only constant

in an ever-changing landscape. For summer breaks, we went back home. Jordan's home, to be specific. My mother had moved south to live with my older brother, hating the empty house. I would see them on occasion, but mostly they were okay without me and I without them. Jordan's family accepted me as their own blood.

Secretly, I believe. they wanted us to get married. But that was never us. Neither of us had to say so. It went unspoken. Winter breaks we would spend it on campus or somewhere nearby, taking trips with friends,

exploring the beautiful rainforests of the Pacific Northwest, camping, hiking, renting cabins, all inundated with the green-gray smells of mist and moss and pine tar. As the first semester of our second year progressed, we decided to finally take the two-hour trip to the coast and see the mighty Pacific. There was a house on the beach that was available for rent at a reasonable price if split between several people.

We amassed our group of friends and submitted the deposit. There was one boy, a capricious, extraordinarily wealthy kid named Steve, whose parents paid for his tuition, his off-campus apartment, his new car, and all the booze he could drink. So when I say that we submitted the deposit, I mean that Steve submitted the deposit, and we all made half-empty promises to pay him our fair share as we came into it. Steve wasn't very concerned with such petty sums,

and one week before the trip, decided that he'd rather head north to Vancouver and Whistler. The others, with no money of their own lost, agreed promptly. Both Jordan and I had very little interest in the Canadian snow and attempted to change their minds. We stopped this fruitless endeavor when Steve realized he could not get his deposit back. And he told us to go to the beach house if we wanted. We could pay him back later, just our original shares, whatever. It didn't matter to him.

And that's how Jordan and I ended up alone in a five-bedroom luxury rental that stood tall on a hill, overlooking the steel-colored, never-ending frigid waters of the Pacific. In the year and a half, I'd been working various campus jobs. I'd managed to save up enough for an old outback that one of my professors was selling. She had been an old-school West Coast hippie, and she literally lived out of the car for a few years while traveling the coast. The car had over 150,000 miles on the odometer, but it was so well-loved. The back seats had been removed, not folded down, removed, to make room for a place to sleep and live while on the road.

The paint was the same silver color as the constant mist that rained down on us as we drove. The place was ours for a week, and naturally each of us wanted the master bedroom. It offered a splendid view of the jigsaw coastline and the dark gray reaches beyond. The easy solution was to alternate. One night for me, one for him, and we did just that for the first two nights. Inside the room was a fireplace, a king-sized bed, and also a couch. On the third night, we decided to just alternate between the bed and couch, both of us staying in the lookout room, as it was called. We had an entire house around. us, but mostly when we weren't outside hiking, trying our best not to get lost on slick trails

that twisted through low hills and plateaued at rocky viewpoints, weaving our way around and under slimy moss-covered trees. The two of us were in one room with a low fire and various craft beers we'd purchased from the local brewery. If all this sounds a bit romantic, it is unintentional. at least in the common amorous sense of the word. But if by romantic what is meant is a perfect, idealized version of reality, then yes. This trip had all the qualities of romance. We were outside of the real world.

That's how it felt. There was a small, sparsely populated town down the hill from us and, in the other direction, standing somewhere over the curve of the earth. I suppose there were scores, of people, entire cultures different from ours. But inside that house, and on those trails, we were alone.

After spending almost an entire lifetime as best friends, there was no one else I'd have chosen for such a stay. Jordan and I played cards, sometimes betting pennies. But it wasn't about the money, of which neither of us had much of, but in the money. but instead the competition. We were fiercely competitive in everything we did, whether it was intellectual, playing chess in the mornings,

or poker in the evenings, or physical, racing from the house to the beach and back, trying to push pace on a long hike. There was a sense of camaraderie, even on the occasion that one or both of us took it a bit too far, becoming sulky after a loss, making unsubstantiated claims of cheating against the other. On the penultimate evening of our trip, I'd take into the living room.

Earlier that day, after a grueling, not particularly enjoyable hike, we'd gotten into an argument. The funny thing is that now I can't remember what it was we argued about. That all got swept up in the ensuing waves, pulled out. to the ocean where I'll never see it again. Whatever it was, we'd both been animated and completely sure of our own positions. The result was upon returning home, sweaty, dripping wet from the incessant mist, shivering in our rainjackets. Jordan went upstairs to shower and lay down, and I stayed in the living room, eating chips and flipping through the channels on the massive television

that dominated the center of the house. Here is another tactical device. Earlier, I mentioned enhancements, things that aren't lies, added to our stories to make them better. An omission is also not a lie. There are some details that completely change the message of a story. They distort the theme,

leading the listener to what may be a faulty conclusion. Those things need not always be mentioned. Watch, for instance, how the story changes when you see me there in the living room. Stop for a moment to watch the news broadcast talk about the forecast for tomorrow. High potential for dangerous sneaker waves, he sang. Exercise, extreme caution. remained that way for the rest of the night. I opted to sleep on the large couch in the living room, and Jordan stayed in the lookout room. In the morning, I woke to the sound of him making

breakfast in the kitchen. He offered me a plate, and we ate our food sitting in high bar stools at the long quartz countertop that ran half the length of the room. By the end of the meal, we were friends again, back to normal. Neither of us had the energy for another hike and we spent the morning and early afternoon playing cards by the fire, drinking beer, keeping the game light and pleasant. As the sun started to set, always an incredible sight on the Pacific coast, we decided to head to the beach and watch it. The view from the lookout room was more than acceptable, but it was our last day. We didn't know when we would ever be back. So it felt right that we put on our rain jackets and brave the gentle drizzle,

the frigid winds that blew off the sea. It was as if we wanted to gather as much sensory data as possible as to imprint this final night, and in a sense, the entirety of the trip into our brains. Somewhere deep where it could be treasured and revisited later in life. Walking out the door, the sky was mostly the same blank, featureless, gunmetal expansive clouds it had been since the day we arrived. But over the ocean, where the sun was descending, was the most captivating mix of pink and orange and purple, stretching up above us where it would meet the encroaching darkness at our backs. I will never forget the cool, refreshing kiss of the ocean. The mist that blew off that rocky, jagged line that separated land from sea. The air smelled of salt, mixed with the low, unpleasant

scent of marine life that washed ashore. We never dipped our toes. Jordan said to me as we were starting down the hill. This was something of a joke between us. We'd been to the Atlantic many times. I'd swam in it, and Jordan had waited up to his ankles, the farthest he could go and feel safe. The idea of wetting those same feet in water from an opposite side of the country had begun as something we said in jest but had taken on a certain talismanic quality. We were determined to do it, even if neither of us wanted to openly admit the fact.

But here was our last chance. So we set off to the dark peak line of rocks that stood just above the tidal line. This strange formation acted. almost as a barrier, barely letting the ocean past, except for it high tide. When the tide was out, as it was that evening, water might splash over the barrier and spray you, but nothing more. We'd have to walk to the rocks to touch the water. Climb on them if we wanted to wet our feet in anything more than the ocean's spit that happened to breach the border.

The walk was short, although with a sun setting at its rapid, winter pace, plowing headlong into the stiff, wet wind, toward an ocean quickly turning from gray to black, felt like a task. When we reached the rocks, our feet turning numb in the soggy, hard-packed sand, shoes forgotten some 30 yards behind us. The burning colors on the horizon had dulled. There was a deep, dark red ridge poking out at the line where waves met sky. Everything else had been swallowed by the clouds. I found a rock, black and slick, that stood roughly equal to my chest and mounted it, using my arms and legs to launch myself. I scrambled too quickly to my feet and almost lost my footing. There was a horrendous paralyzing moment where I felt myself being pitched

over, my center of gravity swimming up from my gut to my mouth, just as my head bent close enough to the dark ocean for my eyes to sting. Careful, Jordan shouted, diving toward me to grab my leg. I stood that way for a moment. Darkness at my back, eternity ahead. The wind was increasing. Each gusts caused my diaphragm to spasm

to give me that excited, breathless feeling you get from jumping into a cold pool. I lowered my right foot and let the ocean consume it. In an instant, my foot went from cold to hot, burning deceitfully. Thousands of pinpricks over every inch of exposed skin before detaching completely. A numb, stupid block at the end of my leg. Somewhere I had to trust beneath the dark surface.

My first thought then was the same one that it haunts me still when I close my eyes and let a similar darkness fill me. How would it feel to fall in? To lose not just my foot, but my entire self in that black, angry void. To feel it'd carry me greedily away. Another lost, stolen treasure taken from the world. Left to rest in dark depths. Jordan was ten feet away when I jumped back down to the beach.

I could see the lights inside the lookout room burning above us on the hill. a distant star that promised warmth. He turned and started toward it. What happened to getting your feet wet? I had to shout to be heard. The ocean felt louder now that it was almost full dark. There are plenty wet right here, he said. Water straight from the Pacific.

I knew you'd chicken out the first day I saw it, I said. It's different than the Atlantic. meaner somehow. Whatever, man. That's your second loss to me in two days. Grab your wallet on the way in and we can make it three. I pushed past him, smirking. The hike was still a sore spot,

and I knew exactly how to push his buttons. You have to remember, we'd been friends since we were old enough to have memories. I sometimes think I was more like a sibling to Jordan than Sam. his actual brother ever came close to approaching. I knew the effect my words would have. I guess that makes everything that follows my fault. This one will stick too.

I was yelling now. Had to if I wanted to be heard over the crash of waves beating against the rocks. Who knows if we'll ever be back? I'd made it another 30 yards up the beach before I turned to Prattam again. But Jordan wasn't following me. with the final light draining from the sky, I could hardly see him. He was standing on the rocks,

arms careening wildly as he struggled to keep his balance. I ran in his direction. More like zero losses in two days, he screamed, throwing up both middle fingers. His smile, wild and defiant, held on his face a moment longer. And that's how I choose to remember him, watching that smile fall, seeing his eyes go wide as the sneaker wave swept around the rocks

and rushed up shore toward me. It's not something I'll ever be able to forget, but I won't allow it to replace that final smile. The one I'd seen on the face of a boy many, many times before I saw it on the face of a man. Within ten seconds, the beach had been mostly erased. Between where I stood, my frozen feet submerged to my ankles, and the long line of rocks from which Jordan was screaming for help, was now 50 additional yards of water. The ocean had extended itself in the darkness. I had never in my life experienced anything so fundamentally terrifying as watching that dark water come to life and sneak up behind me. It waited until we weren't looking, until we were separated, to make its move. I would swear on it. The worst part was the helplessness. I knew I should do something,

get someone, but I couldn't move. I knew that to turn my back would be to accept never seeing my best friend again. Instead I watched. I watched it happen. Jordan screamed more, but what he said, I couldn't tell you. He tried moving to his left, my right, the line of rocks eventually curved back toward the shore, but he had no chance of making it that far. The border was uneven, each boulder its own shape. So many sharp black peaks jutting out of the water, he made the first leap. The second, landing on the third, he slipped and fell behind the border, into the big ocean instead of the little one between us.

That's the last I or anyone else ever saw him. his body was never found another treasure lost at the bottom of the sea i went back to the house numb and sat in front of the fire i have absolutely no recollection of that night i remember sitting very still and then i remember it being morning when the waves were gentle again and then it was time to check out the sun was shining for the first time since we'd arrived the waves were so gentle The beach was back, dry and safe, and I was alone. A person does not decide to become a background character. No one shows up to a casting call for the role of the extra. Yet, life, the universe, fate, call it what you must, puts us there. Most of all, other people put us there. They don't always do this with purpose, with malice, but instead often with complete indifference.

Potential lives, the protagonists we all could have been, are destroyed in one fell swoop. Like an oblivious hiker crushing down an ant-home with their boot, there is no reason, no intent. But, on the contrary, a person can decide to fulfill their potential. A person can decide to become interesting. They simply need an interesting event to attach themselves to. That's the key to all of it. Give people a reason to tell your story for you. That does not diminish your power.

Even those that have heard it before will want to hear it from you. A primed, expectant audience. is the best asset to a storyteller. When they've already decided, even before you begin, that they want to believe you, that's what gives you true freedom as a creator. It allows you to take risks, to enhance your story with additions or omissions.

Let the emotions sweep them away when they least expect it, like a cold, dark sneaker wave. Let the pain of it all numb them. When they're too taken by the forest, they won't stop to analyze the trees. That's how special weather reports on the news are overlooked. People don't see what they're not looking for. When it's your story, you get to tell it. And when you get to tell it, you get to be whoever you choose.

The victim. Not the person who goaded and taunted a person with a fear of water to an early grave. The survivor. They'll assume you didn't hear his screams for help because the water was too loud. The wind was too loud. Your own pounding heart in your ears was too loud. They won't even stop to consider that you put earbuds in. That you had a song ready to silence those cries.

One with lyrics perfect for the personal film you were to. directing in your head. Tell them you have no memories of the rest of the night and they will beg to believe it. They will want that for you. You poor, hurt, soul. A person would have to be cruel to suggest that perhaps you sat up by the fire playing solitaire, smiling, and you fell asleep warm in the master bed, already telling yourself that the story that you would tell so many others. Let their minds do the heavy lifting. Let it be them who turn betrayal into tragedy. Force them to convert a living, breathing man into character development for another person.

Becoming the interesting person you always knew you could be. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents, items returned written by Mike Robinson I'm not sure what happened 10 years ago in the grocery store my brain still turns it over sometimes when I'm asleep

or more often and that's because as of a month ago it's still going on though I experienced several reprieves during which I dared to entertain that the weirdness might be totally over. I've now resigned myself to the assumption that this might never end.

Or if it does, it'll end badly. So, as stated, started about a decade ago. How was at my nearby grocery store? A supermarket chain I won't name. Sorry, I'm kind of paranoid about everything now. I walked in, got my push cart, and started my journey among the aisles.

Checking off the usual items, pasta, pasta sauce, paper towels, frozen chicken, bread, cheese, strawberries, chips, milk, yogurt, wine to celebrate a recent promotion, etc. I won't bore you with the whole list. I was in the condiments aisle, probably getting peanut butter or something. I'm being my usual and decisive self, especially since at the time I was trying to be healthier, less salt, organic, all that. Anyway, I picked a brand, turned around and put it in my cart, and the cart's gone. Well, unless I pass through some micro-black hole or time distended somehow without my knowledge,

I couldn't have been more than 20 seconds in my decision-making, and the cart wasn't anywhere in sight. I don't know how it's physically possible, and it's one aspect of the mystery. one of many that plagues me to this day. The normal trip to the store, one of hundreds, which likely would have been forgotten two weeks on, branded itself on my mind, brushed me against what I can only describe as forces beyond. I was alone in the condiments aisle. I looked up and down. No one.

No sign of my cart. I picked a direction and hustled down towards a check-lestone. out lanes. The store wasn't terribly busy, and I knew what was in my car, so I figured I could identify it right away. No sign anywhere. I ran the opposite direction, toward the butcher's station, where I found a cart with only a couple items in it. All I recall is Triscuits, but no sign of mine. And there's no way anyone could have wheeled my cart away without me knowing. only to empty everything I had into some other cart and whisk it away. My car was packed by that point, as in pretty much full.

I asked three people near me, two employees, one at the butcher station, and the customer who returned to her sparse cart with triscuits, but none of them could help. None of them had seen anything. mystified but also supremely frustrated I spent the next hour re-adding everything to a new cart which I was mindful to keep my hands on at all times

nothing happened I returned home without incident and everything that night unfolded as expected the episode is ready to go down in my personal history as one of those scalp scratchers as my dad called them a hiccup and some natural rhythm destined for dinner party conversation and little else.

Needless to say, that's not what happened. The first one came back to me about two weeks later. It was the frozen chicken, waiting for me in my mailbox. Now, am I certain it was the same frozen chicken I got? No. For one, the package still had some freezer burn. No, it could have been in someone else's freezer. But it was the same brand and amount I'd picked out.

Tyson, eight legs. Touching it, I noticed it was coated in some strange, semi-sticky liquid. Of course, I threw it out immediately. I rationalized it as another scalp scratcher. There may be some drunkard or attic had stuffed it in there, or a prankster kid. Two days later, my girlfriend texted me. L.O.L. What is this?

with a picture of a cheese package lying on the hood of her car. Yes, the very same cheese package I usually get. I asked her why she texted me about it, and she said there was a sticky note on it that said, From Lyle. As in me. She'd taken it off. From the get-go, she'd had doubts about it being from me,

because the handwriting, as she said, wasn't yours, and seemed like someone trying to imitate child writing. I asked if the package was sticky. She said it was slick. Naturally, neither of us touched this little gift either. Nothing for about a month. Then I'm at Starbucks. Sitting at a window-side table.

I drop a napkin. I bend down to pick it up. And what do I see? Tape to the underside of the table? My package of Linguini. the pasta that I usually get. Once again, it was a little wet. At this point, I call up a friend's dad who's a retired cop.

After a brief rundown of the scenario, or what seems like this scenario, I ask how possible it might be to get the liquid tested. He says all I have to do is box or bag the sample, not touch it anymore, and it'll hook me up with an old contact who will run it through a lab. Well, the tests come back. Based on the salt content, ions, proteins, and enzymes they found,

they think it's amniotic fluid. You know, the water that breaks when a woman goes into labor? I had no possible theory that could assuage the expressions of the officials who looked as perplex as I'd been now for weeks. It seemed to die down after that for about six months. It then happened in rapid skin. session. Yogurt splattered on my car, strawberries littered across my balcony, potato chips on my doorstep. My mother called me to say that I had mailed her a tub of salsa, the very brand I get. Mine was the return address. I asked her to send me a picture of the box with my writing.

I could see what my girlfriend meant. The handwriting was stuarting. The handwriting was stuiting. silted, crooked, like someone with an uncoordinated hand trying real hard to keep it steady. Certainly wasn't my own. Clearly, these were either the items I'd purchased that very day, or they were similar items that someone was taunting me with, for whatever reason. And obviously, this person knew me and my life. I consulted the police again, but aside from nightly patrols and a nightly patrols and a occasional drop-bys, they couldn't do anything. No one ever saw anything, not even my

neighbors. I asked my mom about keeping the package that Salsa K-Man to dust it for fingerprints or something, but the results were inconclusive. How was it a loss? Meanwhile, life moved on. My girlfriend and I broke up. I got a new job. I moved. By the time I settled into a new place and job, it had been about two years since I'd received the last shopping item. So I figured, especially with all the shake-up in my personal life, that I was in the clear. Not exactly. On one Christmas Eve, my pasta sauce was placed on my porch with a nice little Christmas bow atop the lid. My cereal came back to me when I was at the movies, sitting there neatly under my seat as I went to put down my popcorn.

I know all this sounds unbelievable, but it's fucking true. Beyond the seemingly psychic nature of whoever was behind this, there was a weirder aspect too, which is that some of these food items, the more immediately perishable ones anyway, still looked in good shape years later. None smelled, were curdled or had mold. If indeed they were the same items,

which I can't prove, but I'm positive they were. And again, each one, up until the last item received, which was a month ago, has been coated in that slickness that the lab told me, but which I refuse to believe is amniotic fluid. Is some sick pregnant woman sticking these up or you know what? How does that even work? It's been years. What the fuck's going on here?

I'm now my most paranoid, which I suppose is why I'm writing this down once and for all. As I just said, the last item I got was the bag of tangerines about a month ago. Each tangerine I noticed had what looked like a crude eyeball drawn on it in black ink. Keep in mind, we are now at the 10-year mark of this. It's been about a decade since I made what was supposed to be a normal. morning shopping trip. Included in the bag of tangerines was a note,

which I never personally received before. Same stilted handwriting, written in what looked like the same black ink used to draw eyeballs on the tangerines. The note said, one item remaining, wine to celebrate. For more information on this podcast,

including how to submit your own story for consideration. Please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through

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