Creepy - At My Most Human State

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

In his words...***Written by: EmpyRealInvective and Narrated by: Joey Sorliss**Bonus Episode: "i bought a totally Safe and pErfectly Normal abandoneD lightHouse from the governmEnt and i’m definiteLy not going to die in this Place" written by: Jamie Polizzi***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex AldeaHosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. 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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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, at my most human state, written by Empy Real Invective, and narrated by Joey Sorless. I gotta type this out. The people out there don't want to listen to the full story about what happened. They just want to focus on that one part. They're the type of people who flip to the end of a mystery novel to make sure their theory was correct.

They're the type of people who would love to talk about what they would do in a situation, but hate to listen to one's experience. I'm writing this because I want someone to understand. Those people want to condemn me, screaming, how could you? And my response, only what was necessary doesn't seem to satiate them. I have to explain myself and be heard. I guess that's why I'm typing this. I can already see that this is going to take a while.

I'm only allowed one hour of time with the computers before the guard shoved me back in my cell. For the sake of honesty, I will confess that I am typing this from a correctional facility. I am not incarcerated yet. I am waiting to be tried, and from the disdainful looks I have been earning from the jury, I have no delusions as to the nature of the verdict. My daily one-hour limit on my computer time is really going to prolong. this but after all the trial is going to take a while due to the media circus this case is generated so I do have time I am also writing this because I am quite lonely the guards want nothing to do with me

and I have been placed in isolation until the hearing is over I'm alone in here and I am put in solitary when my multimedia time is up there has been some speculation as to why this is the court reasoned that it was for my safety I could believe that if I hadn't seen the way they look at me. They want me isolated due to their disgust at my appearance and my actions. Ever since the accident, I've had this ghoulish appearance, which I don't feel much like talking about. And since there are no mirrors, I don't really have to confront the damage done to my body. I'll start at the beginning.

I wanted a new start. I wanted to get away. I packed my belongings, which was not a whole lot, into two suitcases, and hopped across country. flight towards Colorado. I was in a rut in my home state. I am going to gloss over the reservation in which I was born. I don't really consider it all to be part of my heritage. I wanted a fresh start and new experience. I watched the snow fall outside the window and thought of my dreams. A new beginning by laughing and cruel gods. The engine stalled mid-flight. Our plane fell out of the sky and collided with the mountain. The impact should have killed us instantly, but the pilot had attempted a breach landing.

We slammed through trees that tore the plane apart, and we came to a skinning stop amongst the snow. I had blacked out from the sudden drop in altitude, but the shivering cold revived me within minutes. In a state of shock, I unbuckled my seatbelt and tried to stand up. Everything looked blurry, and I took my first tentative step. I fell flat on my face and would have broken my nose had something not shielded me from the floor of the plane. My hazy vision returned to me in increments, and I recognized I had collapsed on someone. I began to apologize profusely as my vision cleared, and I realized that my apologies were falling on deaf ears. The dead are unable to hear. The man, what remained of him, had been horizontally

bisected by his seatbelt and laid in two messy pieces on the cabin floor. His death was a quick one. He bled out in seconds, while others filled the air with their moanings and supplications to gods who were no longer listening. The first thing I did was move around the plane and check on the other passengers. Most were concussed and looked like they would never wake up due to their injuries. I guess I'm lucky that I was in the middle of the plane and wasn't whipped around as badly as the others. Most of the passengers were lost causes. One woman had been lashed forward into the fold-down tray, which had pierced her neck and killed her relatively quickly. The sudden impact of the plane crashing had hurled an unrestrained child into the seat in front of him and broke his neck.

He gurgled pitifully as I passed by him. Knowing I could do nothing for him, I continued down the aisle. I saw more carnage. The most gruesome instance that I can recall was the stewardess. She had been helping the passengers into their seats while the plane went down. She didn't have time to get safety as the food cart bore down on her and smashed her into the cargo door. I could only tell the remains were a stewardess by her name tag that red Marge Reed. She was a red, splattered mess that was spayed against the door to the carco,

her exposed ribcage jutting out of her ruptured abdomen like a macabre spider that sought to ensnare me. I would have thrown up had I not been in such a shocked state. I moved up towards the cockpit checking on any other passengers who might have survived. I passed by more dying and dead people. One arrested my progress. It was a man. He was dressed in a jacket with a tie, a business type. He groaned in pain.

He pawed feebly at the metal protrusion in his chest. Upon closer examination, I learned that it was the metal part of the seat tray that had impaled him into his seat. They must have missed his heart, but judging by his rasping breaths, I knew it had probably pierced and deflated a lung. He was dead. He just didn't know it yet. The impaled man pled. Help me. His hands clawed at the metal bar and he coughed up a red substance.

I responded, You're dying. His eyes dilated and he whimpered. It hurts. I nodded, embraced myself. I told him to close his eyes. And when he did, I pressed the palm of my hand over his mouth and pinched his nose shut. He shifted in his seat and tore the wound in his chest deeper. my hand held fast to his mouth and nose as I gave him the only mercy that was left to give.

It didn't take long for his struggling to still. I held my hand over his mouth for a few moments longer until I was sure. Once I knew he was dead, I threw up in the aisle. I continued up the aisle. Most of the other passengers were beyond help, but their end was a fast approaching and merciful thing. They had only minutes left as opposed to the impaled man who might have lived through his injuries for a few agonizing hours before finally giving up the ghost. The door to the cockpit was stuck. I rammed my shoulder into it a few times before it gave way, enough for me to look in.

I did not like what I saw. The nose of the plane had collided with the side of the mountain, and the cockpit had taken the brunt of the damage. It had crumpled like it had been in the hands of an angry god. Through the wreckage, I could only see a few things to confirm that there had actually been someone in the cockpit, one of which was a hand sticking out of the crumpled metal. It twitched spasmodically, and I lied to myself and said that it was the electricity from the sparking equipment galvanizing the body. I returned to the cabin of the plane, unwilling to stay as a witness to the gruesome scene before me. It was as I started down the airplane aisle again that I first became aware of the cold. It cut through my core and sent me shivering. I looked to my right and

noticed that there was a massive ragged hole in the side of the plane where the wing had once been attached. The cold air was blowing in and throwing a few wayward snowflakes into the aisles. A sound snapped my head up towards the back of the plane. Someone was in the lavatory, but the food cart was blocking their exit and trapping them inside. I pulled the cart aside, wincing as the wheels dragged through the messy remains of March. The man hobbled out of the bathroom. He had a few bruises and bumps, but he was going to survive. He walked with a limp, which made me assume that he had pulled something or injured himself in the crash. He introduced himself as Jim Donner, and as I was about to give him my name, a shout of surprise interrupted me. There was another survivor. The other survivor,

who had only addressed himself as Tamson, had just regained consciousness next to the corpse of another passenger. We managed to wrestle him out of his seat, and Jim slapped some sense back into him. We each rehashed the story of the crash as if retelling it would change the outcome. Tamsan swore that we had hit something and Jim proposed that the engine had froze over due to the unnatural cold. It was at that suggestion that the thought dawned on us that we could freeze if we didn't do something about the cold. We began pulling luggage from the overhead and blocking up the gaping hole in the side of the plane. This helped prevent some of the cold air from blowing into the plane and keep the predators out. The sun non-set of adrenaline that we each experienced at the start of the crash had ebbed,

and we were now just enervated. We spent the first night huddled together for warmth in the aisles, surrounded by the dead, while the wind howled at us through the wreckage of our plane. That night I dreamt of the pilot's hand sticking out of the wreckage. It twitched to life and began to beckon me with its fingers as if inviting me somewhere. I didn't sleep so well for the rest of the night. We raided the food cart for food and ate chips while discussing our plans. I knew that the airport would know something went wrong when we didn't arrive, and they would come for us.

Tamson disagreed and pushed us to leave the wreckage and seek salvation. Jim opposed this, and that was when Tamson became agitated. Tamson told us that he wasn't going to stay in this steel coffin to freeze and starve to death, and that he was going to leave and find help. I was about to point out the ridiculousness of venturing outside without protection against the elements when Tampson put his plan into motion. He began stripping the dead of their clothes and wrapping them around himself. He made an effective coat against the snow. He wished us luck before venturing outside with nothing but a bag of airplane chips, a bottle of water, and his makeshift coat. I never saw Tampson

again after that. I would later find out why Jim was against the idea of walking to freedom. In the plane crash, he had injured his leg. He had rolled it and dislocated his ankle. By the end of that day, his ankle was swollen to the size of a softball, and the slightest movement was agonizing. The shock of yesterday had covered the pain, and now that the adrenaline was gone, he was effectively disabled. It all fell on me to care for him and try to survive. I took advantage of Tampson's idea and undressed the rest of the corpses to fashion a makeshift coat for Jim and me. I then began the less-than-pleasant task of moving the corpses back into the cargo hold. The hardest part of that job was dealing with Marge's corpse.

I was almost afraid to touch her body because she looked like one of those monsters from John Carpenter's The Thing. While I dragged the 57 deceased passengers into the cargo hold, Jim was taking stock of the food and water. When I finished, he'd told me the news that I already knew. We had enough food for two more days. We crashed after in-flight service and the reserves were depleted. At the end of the third day, we were out of food.

During those days, we speculated about how far away our rescue was. Jim told me that they were only a few days away, but I knew better. If they hadn't found us for three days, they had no clue where we were, and the search would take weeks. In my darker moments, I wish I had joined Tampson and abandoned Jim. It would have been a lot quicker, one way or the other. After depleting our stock of food, our discussions began to grow darker. He spoke of death and the hopelessness of our situation. I knew that Jim's ankle had now swollen to the size of a grapefruit

and hurt him so badly that he was drinking his way through the plane's mini bar to ease the pain. The alcohol self-medicated him, but it made him have to use the lavatory frequently. I had to help him up, which hurt his leg, and made him want to drink more. It was a vicious cycle. When he was drunk one night, he told me that we had to survive one way or another. He proceeded to suggest that we eat the corpses of the other deceased passengers. By then, a week had passed without food and my stomach was filled with a dull hurt. I told Jim that the thought was insane.

I waited until he passed out before I snuck back into the cargo to examine the corpses. They were practically naked, save for their underwear and their skin was covered in frost and frozen. They had begun to rot, and there was no way we could eat them without getting sick. The smell of the decomposed bodies was so pungent that I almost threw up in the hold. The cargo hold was not insulated like the main cabin of the plane, which is why we had been able to survive for so long. When I returned to the little nest of clothes I had made, Jim was awake. He read my expression. They're rotten.

I told them we couldn't eat them and that we would just have to wait for rescue. He laughed at that. He laughed maniacly for the rest of the day. Desperation began to set in the next couple of days. Time was a relative thing. I began to lose count of the days we had been stranded out on this mountain range. Jim drifted in and out of delirium as the pain and his dislocated ankle grew greater with every passing moment. He had moments of clarity where he was able to form coherent sentences and befuddled moments where he had only laughed or wept for hours.

I retreated into myself as the hunger slow. began to eat me from the inside out. The jury wants to know when I made my fiendish decision and how I came to it. I can't give an exact time or sentiment. The days had settled into a dull malaise, and the nights had contorted into nightmarish phantasms of hands and wreckage and ribcages closing around me like teeth. I felt nothing. I existed in a semi-conscious, stupefied state. All I can tell you is that before I did what I did, I lifted up the slat and looked out at the frozen landscape. No one was there, and I was all alone. I made my decision. I drank a tiny bottle of Jack Daniels to steal myself. I slammed the bottle on the armrest and it broke into a sharp edge.

I turned to Jim, who had shifted into a state of uncontrollable laughter. I had tried to talk to him for days, but he just kept laughing and shrieking nonsense. I had no other choice. I stabbed him in the throat, and the mini bottle cracked as it pierced him. Blood welled up on the surface, but it hadn't penetrated deep enough to be a fatal wound. Having lost the weapon, I straddled and began choking him. I had lost a lot of my strength by that point, so it took a lot of time to strangle the life out of him. He resisted feebly.

His hands beat at me, but I was wrapped in clothes and barely felt it. I continued to choke him until I was sure he was dead. His eyes rolled back in his head and his struggling stopped. I kept strangling him for a few minutes to be sure. I throttled him and shook him until his neck gave a sickening snap. I placed my head over his chest and listened for his heart. I heard nothing. He was dead.

Once I was certain that he was gone, I rolled off of his chest and threw up bile. I was hunched over on the ground. I wept bitter tears into the bile. There was nothing of any substance in my stomach. to begin with, but I knew that I was about to fill it in the most macabre way possible. My hunger overtook me. I knelt to his open wound and placed my lips over it, the feeling of having something warm after what felt like an eternity of living in the frigid environment, coursing down my throat

filled me with such vigor. Once I had quenched myself of the copper and crimson elixir. I set to the grisly task of separating the flesh from bone. I had nothing to aid my task, but my hands in my teeth. I tore the flesh of my friend off and hunks with my teeth. I won't describe it in any more detail as I have already done. I am ashamed of it. But if put in the same situation all over again, I would do the exact same thing.

After eating Jim Donner, who had been my only source of companionship in the desolate ruins of the plane, I lost all semblance of sanity. I drifted. I divorced myself from reality. I returned to a sort of primal state. I was a feral and fiendish creature. I don't know how much time had passed while I was in this primordial state. I don't know if days or weeks had elapsed since I consumed my friend before help finally arrived. I only knew the circumstances in which my rescuers found me. Judging from their witness testimony, they breached the plane through the massive hole in the side. They had to tear out the luggage, bearers, that we had erected. At first, the search and rescue team thought that there were no survivors. They did a search of the aisles and found nothing. It was when they moved into the cargo hold that they found me and the other passengers. The cargo hold was dark. They couldn't see anything, so they had to use their flashlights. Before they could switch them on, many attested to having heard a sickening crack. When they finally trained their lights on me, I had just

broke and opened the bone of one of my fellow deceased passengers. My mother, my mother mouth was firmly attached to the woman's fractured femur, and I was sucking the marrow out of it. The light startled me out of my state. At first I thought that the light from their flashlights was a product of my fever dreams. It was only until I looked up at them and into their faces that I knew I wasn't hallucinating. They looked at me in a mixture of shock, terror, and disgust at having seen me at my most human state. They weren't sure if I was a monster or man. I'm still not sure of that myself. I don't know how long I had been in the cargo hold, but I am aware of a few things. At some point, I had stripped off my makeshift coat. I must have been in the cargo

hold for at least a couple of days, feeding off the marrow of other passengers' corpses. The cargo was not insulated. It was so cold in there, but I couldn't leave. It was nice, dark, and comfortable at the time. They took me back to civilization, a shell of my form. herself. My first concrete memory of being back in civilization was when I first caught sight of the monster. They had put me up in a hotel for the night while they decided what to do with me. They wanted to charge me with murder and desecration. I couldn't think of anything to do so. I paced in my room for hours. It was in this boredom that I first caught sight of the monster that plagues me to this very day. I was still pacing when I first saw it. It was a fiendish and grotesque thing.

thing. Its nose and fingertips were black, and there was a feral, knife-slice-ed grin plastered across its face. It was gaunt and emaciated. I wanted to scream, but I was paralyzed. It took me a few moments before I realized that the monster I had seen was my reflection. I recall something Elie Wazel wrote. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, have never left me. I stared at the fiend transfixed for hours. I couldn't tell who or what had survived that plane crash. That is my story.

This will be my last days in here. Tomorrow morning I will be gone. The image of the jury standing and declaring me innocent of murder is burned into my mind. He stood and said, We the jury, find the defendant, Keneo Keneas, Mr. Blackwood, to be innocent due to the extenuating and debilitating circumstances. Tomorrow, I will be released back into the world. To be truthful, I am ambivalent about the verdict.

I am not sure if I should be released back into the world. A part of me yearns to be free, and another part of me demands that I be caged. Every night, I wake with a scream trapped in my throat, and the salty iron-esque taste of marrow is fresh in my mouth. I don't know what is worse. The memory, or that when I remember that taste, my stomach growls and I begin to salivate. I experienced such a frightful hunger in the pit of my stomach. That sounds crazy, right?

I know it is crazy. That's why I'm going to erase this, all of this. Even if I decide to delete this entire narration, I'm glad I told it. I'm glad to get all of this off my chest. After the departure of Kenaneskita Blackwood, the prison guard sank into the chair with an over-exaggerated sigh. He was glad to see that freaky-looking man leave. The trial was over, but the media shitstorm still swirled around them. The news stations were clamoring for information.

He glanced back and forth to make sure there were no witnesses before he began. He turned on the computer. and began searching for any relevant data Blackwood might have left behind. Anything, a letter or email to family or friends would fetch a high price with them. The guard found no email, but he did manage to recover a document that had been deleted hours before Blackwood was released back into the world. The prison guard leaned forward and began to read the document with a hungry expression on his face. This would fetch a high price indeed for your bonus episode.

Creepy Presents I bought a totally safe and perfectly normal abandoned lighthouse from the government and I am definitely not going to die in this place. Written by Jimmy Politsy I'm sure you've heard about how the U.S. government is selling off parcels of land for incredibly cheap. You could get your very own lighthouse or abandoned Department of Wildlife building for a few thousand dollars. They say it's so these buildings and sites can be maintained by private citizens rather than continue to spiral into despair.

Recent experience has led me to the conclusion that the real reason is far more sinister. I knew it was going to need some work when I saw the pictures. Peeling paint, doors off their hinges, the things. the spiral staircase leading to the top was missing a step. But with the starting bit of $1,000, on the off chance that it worked out, it was worth it. I threw it a dollar over the minimum bid late at night and then went to bed with zero expectations.

None too fondly recalling the old eBay days when someone would jump in and outbid you at the last minute. So I was genuinely shocked to wake up to an email that I'd actually won. It didn't take long for me to realize I was in way over my head. The excitement I'd felt overwinning a place of my own dissolved the moment I saw the tall gray structure looming above me on the horizon. The picture on the website had shown the quintessential red and white striped lighthouse with turquoise waters and the deep blue skies the backdrop.

This building was a stark gray pitted stone tower, sitting atop a windowless cement base. I checked the paperwork. This was the correct address. I tried the code on the lockbox. It worked. I emailed the contact information from the website, but I wasn't sure what else to do while I was waiting other than check out the inside.

As I walked the narrow and winding path to the door, I couldn't help but notice how the beech grass and flowers that dotted the rest of the landscape stopped abruptly at the beginning of the pathway. Seabirds too stayed far away. Walking in, I was overwhelmed by the amount of work I could tell that the place was going to need. It was even worse than the pictures had indicated. Paint had long peeled off, revealing large patches of discoloration on the walls and ceiling.

Doors from the small rooms have been taken off their hinges and used to board up the entrances to the cement cylinder that served as the base. There was a sort of heaviness I felt the moment I stepped over the threshold. At the time, I chalked it up to buyer's remorse from seeing the level of despair it had fallen into. I've since come to believe that when a place has exposed to centuries of death, loneliness, and madness, it becomes as much part of it as the floors or walls or roof. The company replied, They seemed as confused as I was about to pictures and apologized for the mix-up. It seemed like an innocent mistake.

It probably should have deterred me, but I was still caught up in the high of owning my own land. Pictureing moving out of my apartment, not having a rent or mortgage. No, I was right in a way. I certainly won't need to worry about rent again, or a mortgage. or anything else outside of this place for that matter. I'd reached out to several contractors trying to line up repairs, floors, walls, doors, stairs. You name it, there was something wrong with it. Most had straight up turned me down when they heard where the job would be.

Some politely but nervously declined. Others just hung up on me. It took me weeks to finally find something. someone from two towns over and was willing to come out and even take a look. He was a friendly guy that introduced himself as Joey, and offhandedly mentioned he was surprised to see the place with another new owner so soon. Before I could ask any follow-up questions to that, he was off measuring and jotting down notes and then disappeared up the stairs. As the sun began to said, I realized it had been hours since I'd last seen him. I saw his pickup still sitting

outside and called around for him. I walked up to the very top, careful to avoid the missing step, taking in the briny air while searching the perimeter. I checked each of the small rooms with their peeling paint and stained floors. I went to the bottom and then, reluctantly to the only place I hadn't looked yet, the cement cylinder at the base. I stuck my head down there the very first day after moving the barricades and immediately decided it was a place I'd prefer to never visit again. It was made up of a series of narrow and dark concrete tunnels, stained with rust and filled with a dank mildewy smell. Without windows or power, it was pitch black there even during the brightest days. I opened the door and called out for him, but my own voice echoing back in me

was the only response. Reluctantly, I descended. shining my flashlight around the interior of the tunnels and trying to convince myself that I definitely could find my way back, and probably wouldn't be trapped down there forever. At the end of one of the passageways, I saw something that surprised me. A set of ancient-looking stairs that led downwards. I was confused, because the cylinder was at the very bottom. Anything below it would have been solid rock, and eventually the ocean. I found my palms sweating so profusely at the thought of going down those stone steps that

I nearly dropped my flashlight. I called his name weekly, but I heard nothing. It was unnervingly quiet. A sort of thick silence that was heavy on the air. I hesitated. Part of me just longed to be in the lighted interior of my car. Doors locked on the way back to my crappy apartment. It would have been easy enough to get lost down there.

and the thought of otherwise abandoning someone else of the darkness encouraging me to fight through my own fears and continue onward. I took a deep breath and cautiously took the first step. The tunnel is just a dark blur behind me. The stairs formed a spiral downwards. As I descended, it felt as if the pitted walls began to close in around me as I continued down would seem like an endless amount of stone steps. I knew I had to have been impossibly far down, at least ten stories below the ground level.

I still saw no sign of Joey. My voice had long since stopped echoing as the space around me had narrowed. Every so often I'd come across graffiti, drawings, tally marks scribbled or scratched into the walls. At the top of the stairs, someone had started in the middle of a long and rambling letter to a love. loved one that wrapped along the ever-narrowing walls and cramped handwriting. The further I continued downwards, the content devolved into nonsense. Words were written on top of each other and strung together to form meaningless sentences, and then eventually stopped altogether.

Different handwriting had been picked up where it left off and it simply said, They are waiting. Others seem to have underlined and circled the first of the first of the writing. phrase in agreement as they too walked by. After I passed and I'm not ready yet, that looked to have been written in blood, I decided that I was done reading graffiti and that I'd focus strictly on the stairs.

The darkness, the narrowing walls, the slick steps, I paused at one point and wondered why I was still going. But besides the guilt if I gave up, I felt compelled to, eager almost. As the space became so tight that the stone painfully scraped against my shoulders, the stairs sharply stopped at a small platform that opened into a tiny room. The first I'd seen since I've been down here. The walls were covered with apologies, goodbyes, confessions, love letters.

Some written, some carved into the stone. Of those that were still legible, some were written in anguish, others with fear, some were just pure madness. But not one of them expressed hope. Someone had written exit here in large disjointed letters, with a crudely drawn arrow pointing downwards to a hatch on the floor. I hesitated for a moment, knowing there was nothing below us but rock and ocean, and I should have hit those hours ago. but decided I'd come all this way and might as well keep going. It led to even more stairs. But this time the steps were that of a...

But this time the steps were of a wrought iron spiral staircase. One step missing. I felt a sudden stale breeze as I descended. There were windows around me that opened into the pitch black night. It was so dark outside that... I hadn't even realized they were windows at all at first. I froze, confused. I wasn't sure how I managed to get myself so utterly turned around.

I knew I'd been walking downwards the entire way. I was certain of it. Yes, I was tired. It was dark. But I knew up from down. I heard a sound from below. A whirring that I'd finally found Joey or somehow some sort of exit. Something. Anything but more stairs. Relieved, I decided to continue downwards, or upwards,

the direction I'd been going. At the bottom was a ladder leading to another hatch on the floor. I climbed down, opened it, and, to my utter confusion, found myself standing at the top of the lighthouse. I grasped with the railing to orient and brace myself against a strong, stinging wind. I couldn't see the moon, stars, any light reflecting on the water around me. It was somehow darker outside than it had been in the tunnels and unlit stairwell, darker than I previously thought possible. The choppy black waters of the sea were indistinguishable from the sky, the land, Even with the steady flash of the strangely tinted automated light,

the worrying I'd heard, I could see very little. At first, I felt a wave of relief at seeing Joy's car was gone. He'd made it out. But it was sure lived when I realized that mine was gone too. The shore, the beach houses in the distance, everything was gone. The wind had picked up, instead of the light and briny sea air, it was heavy in my lungs and had a smell, earthiness mixed with something else that I couldn't place at the time. Although I couldn't see much of anything beyond the railing when the light above flashed, I could just make out pale, nearly translucent forms being tossed along in the black water far in the distance. when I finally managed to look away from the hypnotizing motion of whatever was floating in the waves,

I realized the slick floor was littered with items, Joey's shoes, notepad, and tool belt, a woman's purse, leather peeling from the constant barrage of the black water, piles and piles of neatly folded clothes. I panicked, opened the hatch I'd come down, up through. I was relieved to see steps leading down. I rushed back down the metal stairs, slipping from the dark water that splashed against my shoes before making it back to the platform.

I ran as fast as my legs would allow. Past hundreds of additional, they are waiting, messages I'd missed the first time. It wasn't until I reached the top of the stone steps that I paused for the first time. And I took deep coping breath. and relief. Until I saw it, exit here, the arrow pointing upwards. I told myself I must have missed that on the way down. I laughed, even chiding myself from my forgetfulness as I reached for the

opening to the hatch, eager to return to the dark interior of the cement cylinder. I never would have thought I'd be happy to see that pitch-black series of tunnels again. My laughter turned to I think I sobbed that first time when the fetid breeze hit my face, bringing with it that smell of old things, welcoming things. My phone said it was 6.45 a.m., but it never got any lighter outside. The pale things in the sea below moved along with the waves. Their tangled limbs just a bit clear in the closer proximity. I opened the hatch and climbed back down, but slowly that time, wobbly with exhaustion, when I descended and reached the platform in little room again. Exit here pointing downwards at the hatch.

I didn't even bother opening it for the longest time. Eventually, I knew I needed to. Just in case. I needed to see. I started to lose track of how much. many times I made that fruitless journey that always ended the same way, with me stepping outside and at the endless night. I didn't start my own tally marks right away, but it's been 40 trips since I started counting.

By the seventh or quarter of time I had stepped out into the darkness. I was laughing. I needed to see the water. I had to breathe in that air. It was an urge that I could not fight. The pale forms and the dark waters moved with the current Closer further away Closer further

Closer further Closer Closer Closer still I've been trying to conserve my phone battery Ever since I've found I have a faint signal In the exact middle of the stairs I've been so tempted to call for help

An overwhelming urge that's still hard to fight even though I knew I'd be dooming them as well. According to the date, I've been stuck here for a week with no food or water. No clue how my phone's still working. At one point I tripped and smashed my head on the stone steps. Based on the sound and the blood, the injury that should have been fatal, even death refuses to grant me reprieve. I've memorized every they are waiting written along the wall.

every word of each confession. I have even written a few messages of my own. One is on the wall with the others, short, streaky, and written in the only medium I could find. For whomever it is unfortunate to follow in my footsteps, end this message. A warning to others that may also be tempted to accept a deal that seems too good to be true,

although much of it's illogible. I do think the graffiti was right about two things. That out in the stale air, into the embrace of the dark sea, that is truly the exit, the only way out, and, judging by the slap of wet footsteps on the hatch above my head, they are waiting for me. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration.

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