Creepy - Blockage

Episode Date: August 4, 2025

Blockage***Written by: No One of Consequence***To be a Puddle***Written by: Seth Hart and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***The Nephilim Cult Kidnappings***Written by: Julian Voss and Narrated by: Owen McCuen***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***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.

No. 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. For our first story this evening, a struggling horror writer, desperate to break into the booming romance market, purchases an antique pen said to hold a dark history. Soon, he realizes to pen's influence isn't just inspiration.

Creepy presents blockage, written by known of consequence. It stares at me blankly. the vastness of it never-ending. The white stretches on and on, blank of any meaning or purpose. I know what has to be done, what's required of me, but I can't seem to do it. That single thin line blinks in and out of existence. Mocking me because the words aren't coming like they should. Why must you mock me, you stupid?

Stupid cursor. Writer's block is a serious bitch, especially when you can't shake it. Like a weighted blanket, it hangs heavy on me, keeping the flow of words from traveling from my brain to the blank page on my computer. Why the hell did I agree to do this in the first place? Oh yeah.

It was the money. But what the hell were they thinking asking me to do something like this? I've been a published author for a long time. Not on the bestseller list or anything like that, but I've done pretty well for myself. I mostly write dark fantasy, horror, and sci-fi, and I can be overly descriptive at the right times. The readers gobble that stuff up. But my numbers have been declining over the last two years. It's so hard to come up with something original and putting a twist on an existing trope.

isn't enough. With that being said, I'm still somewhat profitable, but not near as much as I used to be. Part of the publishing gig is researching what genres and styles are popular these days. Well, there's usually a decent market for my kind of work. There's one that's really booming now. In my younger years, I dabbled in what they're asking me to do, but I feel like those early attempts fell kind of flat. very one-dimensional

but it changed when I got into darker things action-oriented thrillers and futuristic epics that's where I made a name for myself the thing about a name if you value your privacy you use a fake name commonly known as a pen name or a pseudonym even though I wanted to be famous and successful I went that route because my real name sounds goofy

you don't even need to pronounce it right right for it to sound funny. And most people can't get it right even if I tell them first. It's memorable, but not for the right reasons. Going from one genre to another can be difficult, especially if you've made a reputation for writing a certain way. Having a pen name helps with this because you can simply change the name to something else altogether. The tricky part is not letting anyone find out the two different names are actually the same person. Romance is really hard to write, especially when your own romantic life is non-existent. I can't remember how many times I struck out before I found someone crazy enough to date me. And the three times I managed it, none of them turned out well. By friends

ranging from high school all the way through graduate in college, I've been called a hopeless romantic, I've idolized relationships, romance, and sex to the point where nothing can live up to the dream version, which shouldn't be surprising. My failed attempts and blunders have painted the world dark from my eyes, and those rare occasions when I've gotten lucky have brought me to a sad conclusion. The reality of sex isn't worth the effort. That might sound strange and just plain wrong to most people, but for people like kids, me. If there are others in this world like me, it makes a lot of sense. How can I put this delicately? Not everyone can meet someone, hook up, and have the evening end in an enjoyable way. Oh God, that's terrible. You know what? Fuck, delicate. Not everyone

who manages to randomly hook up with someone can achieve orgasm. There. Can't be more blunt than that. Yes, I am one of those unfortunate people that rarely ever get off during sex. I've been told by a number of partners that I'm too much in my head, and that I'm not in the moment. I honestly think it's because I need to be comfortable with the person I'm with, and that kind of thing takes time. Time's a big problem when the most meaningful relationships you manage to get are one-nighters that have no interest in exchanging information. Hell, I'd be willing to bet the few people I've hooked up with didn't give me their real names. How the fuck am I supposed to write a romance novel? Oh, wait, it's not just a romance novel, but a spicy romance novel.

Those are very popular from what my publisher tells me. Either that or they were always popular, but thanks to the wide reach of social media, it's more obvious. I can't tell you how many little videos and my little videos are you. posts I've seen that go on and on about various spicy books and the like that lit someone's world on fire. With my sex life, how the hell am I supposed to write something spicy that'll tingle someone's nether regions, let alone set them on fire? I'd need gasoline and a match to manage that.

I really need to figure something out. Otherwise, I'm going to have to send back the advance my publisher gave me, retire my laptop, and get a conventional job. Unfortunately, my way with words is the only marketable skill I have, and it's not conducive to writing inner office memos and emails. I'd have to get a crappy job at a gas station or something. Maybe something in finance? I do have a degree in accounting.

Grumbling at the persistent blinking cursor, I close my laptop and moved to the bathroom. If I'm going to write this damn book, I need to figure out what the story's going to be. So far, the only idea I've had is to write romance. That's not a fucking storyline, it's a genre. Maybe I should go to a play or something. I hear the local theater is premiering a new Arthur Stoker play. But those tickets are pricey and likely sold out.

I usually have to wait until mid-run to be able to score one of those. Unfortunately, I've missed a bunch of them, and from what I gather, plays are on a linear timeline. You can enjoy you to play by themselves, but you lose. something to the story and meaning when you don't see them all. Needing to get out and do something to get my creative juices flowing, I head to the bathroom for a shower. The only place I can think to go is a bar I occasionally go to that's only a few blocks away

from my apartment. It's a little nicer than a regular neighborhood bar, so going in my grubby around the house closes isn't an option, especially if I try to chat someone up. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky in more than one respect. If I managed to score, it could help inspire me to finally start developing a story. Fifteen minutes later, I walk into the bar, and just shy of an hour after, I walk out with my head hanging low. The place has been packed with bright-eyed and beautiful people and joined the beginning of a happy hour. But something about me made most of them look right through me, as if I wasn't there.

Shit, about the only person who took notice of me at all was the bar-trial. and that's because I tip well. Normally I stay for a few hours and get decently drunk before leaving. But I felt a lot of eyes judging me after I got shot down by someone that was less than discreet about rejecting me. Okay, so I'll admit, I've made this walk more frequently than I let on earlier. When I was a bigger success and didn't have to worry about inspiration, I'd come down this way maybe three times a month.

Over the last two months It's anywhere from one to three times a week And usually after I've had a staring contest with the damn cursor Seriously that thing fucking sucks It's been in my existence Maybe I should go back to writing by hand That's why I wrote my first two books Though transcribing them was a giant pain in the ass

If I'm going back to doing a handwritten manuscript I don't want to use just any sort of stupid pen. New genre, new style, new pen. Makes sense to me. The question is, what kind? Ballpoints are fine for everyday crap, but maybe I should go with something unique, something with character. I was pretty good with a fountain pen once upon a time, and when I was in high school, I had that idea for a romantic comedy set in medieval times. Shining Armor was supposed to poke fun at the whole damsel and distress trope of old fairy tales. Perhaps it won't be too hard to keep the comedic element, but I'll add in some serious drama and a lot of sex.

For the latter, I'll probably draw on porn videos for inspiration since I can't count on any of my sexual encounters as good ones. Even if I could, they were so vanilla, even vanilla would think it was too plain. As I walked down the street, the son only knows. starting to move close to the horizon, I consider where to get this unique pen from. It'd be easy to order something like that off the internet, but everything there is going to be mass-produced stuff. I don't want something that a crap ton of other people are going to have. I mean, there are sites where I could probably design a pen, but that sounds like too much effort. There's got to be someplace that offers what I'm looking for.

Glancing around at the shops and strips along the street, A vintage sign catches my attention. It's an open sign that oddly reminds me of old black and white movies where restaurants had signs that simply said, Eats, outside, instead of the joint's name. Above it's a much older-looking sign that somehow still looks brand new. The name alone sounds perfect for what I'm looking for. I mean, antiques can be extremely unique and have character.

Crossing the street, I nearly miss getting hit by a spackling, cherry, vintage Camaro. The driver had been an irate-looking blonde with the frisiest hair I've ever seen. She peeled out of a parking spot not far from the antique shop and nearly fish-tailed out of control as she turned down to the road while stomping on the accelerator. Crazy bitch is going to get someone killed driving like that. Hopefully it'll be her and not some innocent bystander trying to cross the road. Pushing open the door, a bell from above chimes, letting the proprietor know someone's come in.

There are three other people inside looking at the large selection items, all of which look to be an excellent condition. Aside from the items on display, the place has an air of newness to it that seems odd. Two feet from the door is one of those number dispensers with the sign just below asking newcomers to please take a ticket. I do so. Waiting for my number to be called, I have a look around. There are some truly remarkable items on display, and the cases themselves are marveled.

Dark wood with a shine to it is either brand new or very well kept. I can't figure out which. On the left side of the store, past some furniture and shelves of items are display cases. Some of the items are on glass counters while others are on curio cabinets. I do notice that not everything is behind glass, and I wonder what makes an item worth being behind the protective barrier. There are a number of items that pique my interest and spark ideas in my head, but nothing like what I'm trying to write.

Maybe if I was working on one of my dark fantasies, but not a spicy romance. It's not until I come to the far corner that I find exactly what I'm looking for, and the section's larger than I thought it would be. I count at least two dozen pens that I've promised, but I won't know what the right fit will be until I can get my hands on them. Some have intricate designs while others are rather plain. But that doesn't mean they don't have character. My mind races over the pens and I start to feel a bombardment of emotions flowing through me.

This is pretty strange, even for me. I have been mesmerized by the pens for longer than I thought and after a while the bombardment starts to dissipate. The closest I can equate to it is if I was in a boat with a hole in the bottom and I'm taken on water. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the proprietor slowly moving in my direction. When she's within mere feet, the bombardment completely stops. Not like the boat is finally sunk, but more like a cork is plugging in the hole.

Damn strange if you ask me. The woman introduces herself as Leanna, and I gave her my name as well, noting the small purple book in her hand. It has no title on the spine or markings on the cover, which I find odd. As a writer, I tend to take note of such things, whether it warrants noticing or noticing. or not. She asks what she can do for me, and I take a breath trying to figure out where to begin. I explain my writer's block predicament as I try to create something outside my wheelhouse, and she only smiles. I did have an antique typewriter, but another author purchased it some

time ago. I do believe it's still in use to this day. There's a gleam in her eye, she says this, an odd sort of satisfaction that I can't identify. Perhaps that's for the best. Pointing to the collection of pens, I tell her I'm interested in something like that. As the words leave my mouth, I notice her empty hand idly taps on the spine at the purple book. Not like a nervous habit, but more of a contemplating one. She takes serious consideration with this, and I can't begin to figure out why. Perhaps she was trying to figure out how to steer me towards the most expensive of the bunch.

She is in sales, after all. moving over to the case and opening it from the back she asks how i heard about her shop wondering if someone referred me here i tell her the truth that i was walking home from the bar when i got the idea to get myself a unique pen i leave out the part where i horribly struck out at the bar even though i have the urge to say so not sure why but i do tend to tell anyone who will listen about that sort of thing her hand hovers over the selection carefully considering the options. Those piercing eyes are on me the entire time, as if assessing me more than the pens. Finally she lands on one, and it's not one I noticed before. If I didn't know any better, I'd say it hadn't been there before she put her hand into the case. But that'd be awfully strange.

Taking it out, I happened to notice the pen sticking out of her breast pocket. It's a shiny silver pen that borders between ordinary, and remarkable, two traits that really shouldn't go together. I consider complimenting her on it, but she begins to talk before I can. Apparently, the pen she picked has a history. The pen itself writes in red ink that looks an awful lot like blood. The previous owner was given this pen as a gift from her husband before he left home during the Great War.

She used it to write him love letters as he fought in Europe, allowing them to stay connected in the most intimate way possible at the time. It said that the love she had for her husband was imbued into the pen, and as she wrote the words, she'd get images of the two of them together. I'd take that to mean in bed, even though she doesn't say it. As the husband read the letters, his mind was taken from the war-torn landscape and whisked the way to those intimate places she saw while writing. Unfortunately, due to the horrors he endured while fighting, the intimacy was twisted. While the love they shared remained, the setting of their union was plagued by blood and death. This did not stop them from doing what they did before, but it did taint it.

When the husband finally made it back home, a different man than the one that left, their love remained, but it wasn't the same. With the two reunited, they picked up their lives as best they could, but their lovemaking was different. They both felt like something was lacking, and it wasn't until the husband had a flashback of the battlefield that they figured out what it was. It was the absence of blood and death. The pair went on to be one of the most successful serial killer duos the world never knew about. The last is what makes them successful. As I tick the pen from her outstretched hand, I realized something that I hadn't before. Just because I'm trying to write a spicy romance novel doesn't mean it can't be dark.

Everything I've ever written was dark in nature. So why did it never occurred to me that that was exactly what my publisher asked me to do? Sure, there's been some minor elements of romance and lightly touched on sex in my works before, but it's never been the focus. I think that's what tripped me up so much. Once the pens in my hand, I feel a heat I hadn't expected from the medium-white topic. It feeds into the skin of my hand, travels up my arm, past my shoulder, and settles in my chest.

From there it spreads to my entire body, ending up in my head. Immediately my mind is flooded with images and desires of things I can only dream to have with another person. Just like that, I'm inspired. Just the briefest touch and I feel like I could write a sex scene so descriptive the reader could taste the sweat and smell the desire in the air. If this isn't a singular moment, this pen could be the answer to my success. Who knows, if this works out well enough, I could be looking at a new series to revive my career.

With that in mind, I ask her how much she wants for the pen. Standing behind the counter, she moves over to where the register is. An older woman, the only other person currently in the shop, is standing there with items on the counter. Her suit looks expensive and there's a coldness to her that I can't explain. Probably a rich, snobby bitch that doesn't like to wait. I know she could easily afford to spend a shit ton more in this place than me, so it makes me wonder why Leanna came over to talk to me when this woman was standing there. Leanna addresses the woman by name, Katya,

and asks if she minds finishing up with me before getting to their business. The woman responds with a thick accent, possibly Russian, that she doesn't mind. I guess my first impression of her was wrong. Nothing surprises me. I often find myself being wrong when it comes to women. Well, people in general, really. Leetta consult something below the register that I can't see

and she begins to mumble something to herself. Then she moves something and continues mumbling. After nearly half a minute of this, I realize what she's doing. There's no sticker on the antique, anything to indicate how much it's selling for. So she's looking through some kind of ledger. Considering how many items are in the shop, the list must be long. Concentrating a little harder on what she's mumbling, I pick up on a number of words. They appear to be either names or brief descriptions of the items.

The last one she says is 4-0-069 pen of dark lust. Looking up at me, she tells me in a tone much easier to hear. $100. I don't even hesitate. I just pull out my wallet and count out the cash. After the purchase, I've got less than $20 left. And if this pen's going to work its magic on my mind, I'm going to need to pick up a pack or two of smokes at the corner store before getting home.

Thankfully, there's one quite literally on the corner by my apartment. As I head toward the door, pen in my pocket, I catch the two women talking. I assume they're discussing prices of the items on the counter. The only words I honestly pay attention to are. Practically harmless. I dismiss it as soon as I hear it, my mind back on the scene I flashed on when I first held the pen. It should be interesting.

Within 20 minutes, I'm back in my apartment, a blank notepad on the table next to an ash train, a cold beer on a coaster. I've been trying to stop using my credit card and stick to cash, but the case of beer and two packs of smokes cost more than the cash I had. I didn't go for the cheap beer either, but my preferred brand. I've got some high hopes for what's about to happen, and I'm sort of already celebrating.

Very odd for me, but I'm getting a confidence that hasn't been with me since after I wrote my second successful book. Without the ever-present cursing blinker on my word processor to haunt me, I pick up the pen, uncapped the end, and put the tip to the paper. That heat creeps into me again, flowing through my entire body, and the scene forms in my mind.

Hot, writhing bodies lit by candles and sheets that smell of perfume. Shadows playing along the walls as the figures move together. The pen flies across the paper, filling one, then two pages with every detail I can gleam. By the apex of the scene,

I can feel sweat on my brow, as the explosive ending comes closer and closer. It's almost like I'm there, one of the two on the bed and not a spectator. If sex ever felt this good in real life, I could see why people obsess over it so much. As I write, a thought pops into my head and I wonder where the story's going to go.

Starting off of the spicy scene is good and all, but there's got to be more to it than sex. After all, I'm not writing porn. I no longer see the paper in front of me, and the sensation of holding the pen as a distant memory. Looking down, I see the face of my lover, passion and ecstasy playing over their face. Such beauty, such grace.

Even in my wildest dreams, I never could have imagined something like this would happen. This swipe on my forehead starts getting to be too much, and it beads together running down my nose. Falling, it lands on their cheek, but even in the golden glow of the candles, I can see it's the wrong color. Sweat is clear, not red. As soon as I see it, I identify something different in the smell permeating the air. It smells like sex, obviously, but there's a metallic undertone that had gone unnoticed until now.

Looking around, not letting this new development stop what we're doing, I see more blood on their body, on the sheets. There are small wounds on their stomach and arms, but there's far too much blood for those small cuts. Taking stock of my own body, I find even more bleeding cuts and even some teeth marks. I've heard of rough sex before, but not the kind that actually draws blood, let alone this much. Compassion really runs so deep that it would allow us to not only do this, to each other, but not let it stop the coupling?

Knowing that very question populates the page I write, my lover reaches over and draws a nail across their upper chest. A new line of red comes from the flesh, and a new hunger envelopes me. My writing increases, and I manage to bend down, my tongue and lips playing over the red. The taste is incredible and spurs me on further. That fire inside rage is hotter and have to stop myself from bringing my teeth to their throat to bite down.

The pulsing vein is just below the surface, and I know it wouldn't take much to free it to flow into my mouth. The struggle is real. Just as I bring my mouth away from their chest, that mouth that had just been smiling up at me moves and meets mine. Our tongues wrestle, sharing the taste of it. blood and those loving hands I know are capable of great violence dig into my hair. Suddenly my head is wretched to the side and teeth embed themselves in my neck. I can feel the same compulsion I felt as in them. But while they dance the edge of taking it all away, they pull back at the last moment.

The pain from those teeth does something to me, and I plummet over the edge of pleasure. We fall at the same time, lying next to each other while trying to catch our breath. It's the best I've ever had. But in this place, I know something's missing. The French call it La Petit Mort's a little death. And knowing that makes me realize what's missing. We need a big death to make the little one seem grander. But killing my lover isn't the answer.

My world swirls to the point where I don't know where what I'm writing ends and what I'm living begins. The following night we go to a seedy bar and seduce a beautiful stranger. It was so easy, so predatory that I could barely contain myself, both in the lust and bloodlust. My god, the mixture of the two is a heady thing and I can practically taste the blood in my mouth. the moment we open that large artery in the neck and bathed in the blood. Yes, containing myself as a feat, but I manage. I can only imagine how explosive our combined climax will be when we end them. It'll be something to echo through the ages.

A first of epic proportions. How will we ever reach such heights again? I suppose we'll have to up the ante next time. but I'm getting ahead of myself. Now is the time for tonight, and the evening is just beginning. We'll have a few more drinks before suggesting we take this party back to our place. My love has the young woman wrapped around their finger, occurring to nearly anything. I have to come up for a breather before the sea nuns.

Already I'm looking at several pages in front of me, but there's something else on the table. Several red droplets thought the table are on the notepad. Each one looks like it was dabbled with something small and sharp repeatedly. Looking from the droplets to the pages, I realize it's blood. My blood. I lower the pen to the table and search my face for open wounds, but a pain in my neck stops me from moving. Slowly I reach a hand up to my throat,

and under my fingertips I feel the impression. There's a perfect set of teeth marks on my neck. My fingers come away with spots of crimson. This isn't a wound I could have given myself, so how did I get it? The sensations I wrote about were intense and felt 100% real. Could they be real? Taking a long pull from my beer, I contemplate the possibilities. If my readers get even a tenth of what I experienced from this,

and the book is going to do very well. At least now I know what the book's going to be about. I wonder how well a spicy horror romance will do in the market. As I light another smoke and open another beer, what the shopkeeper at the antique store said as I walked out comes back to me. This time I recalled the whole sentence somehow, not just the last snippet. It's only a level one enchantment, practically harmless.

The wound on my throat begs to differ. Hopefully I'll only experience things in reality from my main character's point of view and not that of the numerous victims that two will share together. I suppose this is the first time I could possibly consider my losing streak a plus. If I was more successful in my romantic endeavors, I might be tempted to do as my characters do and just see if it really heightens the pleasure, as much as I describe. Then again, merely writing these words is given me. a level of confidence that I've never felt before.

You know what they say? Confidence is key. Oh yes indeed. Whether this book is a success or not, the possibilities are endless. For our second story this evening, a grieving mother and her son play a bedtime game of dream imagining. But when a simple question spirals into tragedy,

She's left with an otherworldly mystery. Creepy presents To be a puddle Written by Seth Hart and narrated by Michelle Kane. Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds

that choke the life from your dream. Lao Z. Dow de Ching Mommy, what is it like to be a tree? The snow continued to splat against the window of the little burgundy bedroom as it had for the past two weeks, and I was already a bit buzzy from the wine. Mildly nauseous, wildly, sleep deprived, faking it as best I could. Gotta be a good mommy. Gotta be a strong mommy. Gotta be.

I don't know, sweetie. I'll tell you what. When you're falling asleep tonight, I want you to think real hard about being a tree. Picture yourself as tall as our house, or even taller. I sat up to take a sip and set the glass down, stretching my arms out to the side, stretching my neck upwards, eyes squinting. Picture your head as a fluffy tree top. Your arms are their branches, your body and your legs are the trunk, your feet are the roots. I stretched my legs and wiggled my toes, raising one eyebrow and sort of of a wink, eliciting a slight chuckle. His little self was wrapped in some faded Spider-Man

pajamas that he was just about outgrowing. And when you dream tonight, if you think super hard, you will dream about being a tree. And tomorrow morning, you can tell me exactly what it's like to be a tree. I settled my arms and neck back into myself and opened my eyes, touching my hand to his cheek. Okay? Honestly, more than anything, it was an attempt to end the back and forth. Charlie's new favorite game after I read him his bedtime story was, What is it like to be a, fill in the blank? Mommy? What's it like to be a dog? Mom, what's it like to be a train? And I would answer, and he would give his thoughts, which I would entertain, and we would rinse and repeat until the dreariness

overcame him, and his eyelids became heavy, and I would kiss him soft on the cheek, making sure to keep my footfall's light as I closed the door to his bedroom and made my way to the kitchen. Well, specifically to the Pinot Grigio that lived in the kitchen, to continue my own night. Rinse, repeat. This night, though, I'm tired. I am grumpy, and I am not in the mood. So the solution? No back and forth. Just dream about it. And we'll talk later. So simple. Just dream. The next morning, Charlie came to the living room where I lay, passed out on the couch. And he told me just what it was like to be a tree. My stomach churned with whatever the hell I had put in it the night before. But my child was thrilled, so I played along. I smiled best as I could muster as he told me how he was oh so tall as a tree,

how the wind tickled his barky skin, how an owl had made a home in his chest, and how the squirrels and birds would dance and play all along his arms. What a wonderful thing to be, he would say. What an awesome thing to be. A tree in the ground. And so our nightly routine of what is it like to be, evolved pretty quickly. To be completely candid, it was a wonderful accident that I fell ass backwards into. Instead of protracted back and forths, either Charlie or myself would introduce the question,

but with the expressed intent of dreaming the answer, not guessing it. In the morning, he would tell me his dream and I would tell him mine. Well, I would make mine up. I suspect he was often guilty of this as well, but far be it for me to call out my six-year-old son on such imaginative and harmless fibs. Never an easy sleeper, this game gave Charlie a newfound love of bedtime. For the first time in his life, despite the occasional nightmare, he was looking forward to sleep. One night in late November, as we continued to shelter in place from the generational blizzard that raged outside, Charlie was settling down. We had just finished our nightly bedtime reading.

Our current venture was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Ascabat. What are we going to dream about tonight, Mama? All this snow. I took a sip before replying. What about all this snow, baby? What are we going to dream about? All this snow. Charlie was sleepy, barely legible.

I answered nonetheless. I could have let him drift away unabated. I should have let him drift away unabated. Regretfully, I answered. Tonight, well, you know all this snow is falling, and I suppose it will keep falling. But all this snow and all this ice is eventually going to melt.

And when snow melts, it makes water. And I bet there will be that giant puddle in our backyard that shows up after each big rain, don't you think? I cuddled his head and took another sip around him. What's the difference anyway? Lots of snow, lots of rain. It's all water. How about this? Tonight, let's figure out what it's like to be a puddle. I've always liked that word, puddle. Let's dream on it, okay? I snuggled him to my chest. It's all water. It's all water in the puddle.

Okay, he smiled. Within moments he was out, and within minutes, I was in the kitchen, pouring more wine, and eventually to the couch in the living room, which had become my unofficial bedroom. I rolled a spliff and loaded a record, and let the smoke and Miles Davises in a silent way take me to sombre distant places, somewhere high beyond the bounds of my little house,

and my little life, and maybe even over the rainbow, as I drifted on some sleepy, distant cloud, lonely and far away, far past my being, until the later hours of the night, still awake, not watching anything, listening, and the record ended and started tirelessly. I kept flipping it over and over, to be fair. It wasn't a magical sort of record, until I chose to let the silence linger and float in that cloudy miasma. I thought of Donnie.

I missed him sharply. His death seemed to permeate everything, to wander through every room in this house, every moment. More prominently, I thought of Charlie. I loved him. And I didn't ever want to miss him like that. I didn't sleep well that night, but I did sleep, which was better than some nights. The alcohol helped, in the short term at least, but I rarely dreamed, not since last winter.

I still feel dawn in the bedroom. The space seemed empty since, and ghastly, cliché as that may be. My, used to be our bedroom, sat horrifying, a heavy air I didn't dare tempt. That was his place now, and maybe forever. We had been drifting apart before his death, and I had been spending an awkward amount of nights on the couch anyway. After he died, alone in our bed, he owned the room. That's where he lived. That's where he died, and sometimes I feel like that's where he lives again, but unpleasantly and anxiously. It was easier for me out on the couch. A fireplace, my wine, windows, my record player, the television, which I usually left off. But the simple possibility of immediate distraction was enough most nights. I didn't want to dream, no. And I could hear if any door in my house was open. That night, though, I was shaken from my drunken, stony slumber with a slight,

push against my shoulder sometime in the very early morning. Nothing but a cold black peered through the window lattice above the couch as I opened my eyes. At my side, pushing on my shoulder was Charlie. His pupils were wide, his brows slanting down and fresh rain tracks lined his cheeks. Charlie, sweetie, what's wrong? It's so early, what are you doing up? "'Mom?' he said his voice soft and shaky. "'Mama, I don't want to be a puddle.' "'Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?'

Bill Waterson, Calvin and Hobbs. An hour or so passed with mostly unanswered questions in empty space. Charlie vaguely speechless. The most he could muster were variations of, I don't want to be a puddle. I don't want to be in the puddle. Or I don't want you in the puddle. A couple of times, he said Daddy, but wouldn't expand further. His daddy, Donnie, died about a year before, and it wasn't completely unusual for that loss to manifest itself in dreams. Nightmares every couple of months. But this night was different. The vast majority of the hour was spent asking questions.

and trying to reach a catatonic child. Eventually, I snuggled his head close to my heart and laid back on the couch with him lying on my chest. And I told him to breathe, relax. Breathe, relax. My hazy, drunken self took my own advice better than he did, and I was quickly in deep sleep. I vaguely remember waking briefly

when the sun was just starting to nudge the moonlight out of the window. And Charlie was sitting on the couch at my feet. He wasn't sleeping, just staring straight forward. His hands clasped in his lap. He seemed content, even peaceful. At least that's what I've told myself since. I drifted away again. When I awoke several hours later, Charlie was dead on my chest. My neighbor was the one who called 911. She heard my screams. The police came. They broke through my front door while I stayed lying on the couch with Charlie on my body. And I kept screaming. They took him off my chest and gave him CPR on the floor beside me. I think they used one of those buzzy defib things on his little heart. And he remained very dead.

and I kept screaming. And when they lifted me to my feet and walked me outside, well, dragged me more so than walked me, I kept screaming. I don't remember when I stopped. I don't remember the coroner. I don't remember the funeral director. I barely even remember the fucking funeral. I remember now feeling away from my body during my body during my.

those days. I remember not knowing how to pump gas at a gas station. I remember not knowing how to order delivery food which I desperately needed because I definitely didn't remember how to cook food. I remember brief moments of complete cohesion when I became entirely aware and surprised at the ways this particular shock was affecting me, almost like myself and my brain were separate entities, and myself was rather annoyed with how my brain was handling everything. I had grown to know some of the effects of such loss due to my husband's death a year prior, but this was an entirely new experience. losing a child, especially so soon after losing my husband. Even more than that, I didn't find or even see my dead husband.

But I saw and even fucking felt my child's dead body all on top of me. And that did things to me that I simply never conceived of. and wouldn't wish on anyone. That changed the very core of me in a distinctly awful way. I marched onward pretending. The snow let up. I'm aware that very interesting things happened in those days.

I think I even went to a family Christmas gathering, but I couldn't recount anything specific with confidence. Things must have happened because time moves forward. And surely many winds changed and many stones turned. And moments occurred that changed the lives of other people significantly. I am sure a friend had a baby or someone I know knows someone who died and is sad about it. And I would wager some human that I cared about got promoted or fired or arrested or arrested. or anything, but I absorbed nothing.

I trudged along, unwell, but seeming better. That's what my family said anyway. You seem like you're doing a bit better? Thanks. A better person than myself would recognize that the drinks I had been leaning on since my husband's death were contributing to my malaise and would further recognize that the increased usage since Charlie's death was something that could quickly get beyond my control,

and the most honest among us would acknowledge that it already was. And they would do something about it. I'm not a good person. I did nothing about it. Each night I would drink and sit on Charlie's bed and turn over variations of these quills. questions. What did he see in his dream? What frightened him so much about being a puddle? A puddle? What is the puddle he was so frightened by? Does it matter at all? The doctors say he died of cardiac arrest. He never had

heart issues. What kind of six-year-old dies of fucking cardiac arrest? What, was he scared to death? What a stupid fucking game I made him play. Cardiac fucking arrest. Seriously? One night in late January, a heavy and chilly rain fell, and the next morning I noticed the giant puddle that always formed in our backyard during such events. I remember deluding to such in my last conversation with Charlie.

It was beautiful. This sort of rain happened a few times over the last couple of months. But this morning, I was drawn to it. I marched mindless to the yard and looked in the puddle. I saw myself, muddied and muddled and mostly out of sorts in the water, which I was. My reflection seemed truer to my essence than my body, truth be told. But I saw something in the underneath, just be it. beyond my reflection, a shifting and ugly shape, dark and undulating just beneath the surface.

It's awful form briefly peaking above the water and causing strange, misshapen reflections of my own self. I rubbed my eyes and looked again, seeing only my shaky and shimmery reflection in the puddle. When I looked to the other side of the pedal, standing on the opposite shore, which was merely two or three yards away, but felt like miles of dark, empty highway. I saw Charlie. He was standing there, staring blank ahead, just as I saw him on the couch. And I heard in my head a high but heavy voice that said, Join me, Mama.

Join me in the water. But his mouth didn't move. It remained still, smiling. He stood there across from me, dripping and grinning, and I closed my eyes and screamed. When I opened them and looked across the puddle, he was gone, and the black highway became again a simple gray, murky, pool of water. I looked down at the puddle to see my reflection, to connect myself with myself. But that is not what happened. I saw Charlie again, but nothing like his normal, beautiful self.

He was lying just below the surface of the water, dead and open-eyed and smiling, his rotting teeth and yellow lips and entirely empty eyes, somehow laughing and staring up at me, little silverfish swimming through the sockets. and I screamed again. Not enough for the neighbors to phone authorities, fortunately, and before I could think, without knowing how I moved, I was inside leaning against my kitchen sink, trembling a glass of water and trying to find my head.

Some could look at a mud puddle and see an ocean with ships. Zora and Neil Houston, their eyes were warm, watching God. I labored through a few more months until the unanswered questions consumed me. Each night I would set down to sleep in Charlie's bed. His had become the only in the house where the shadow of death didn't linger. My old couch was now Charlie's couch. My bedroom was Donnie's. This was mine now. I laid and obsessed on the question, even more focused and aggressive. than before. What is it like to be a puddle? What is it like? What is it like? Hoping beyond hope, I could perhaps get a dreamy glimpse of what Charlie dreamt the night he died. I knew in the deepest

part of me that it was a fruitless effort, and in all likelihood his dream and his death were medically unconnected, but some part of my brain for reasons I can't figure, latched on to the notion, as if it were utter fact, as if finding the answer about that stupid dream about the puddle would somehow bring me the catharsis that I had been unable to find for months on end. Well, you know what they say about the best late plans. I didn't dream about puddle. I didn't dream about puddles. I rarely dreamt it all, and when I did, they were strange amalgamations, formless shadows and shapes, cutting through the snapshots of memories with Charlie, sometimes Donnie, work dreams, childhood dreams, sex dreams, they were all non-existent. Even my past memories of

such dreams were absent. I would usually wake up tearful, and my day would be spent frustrating myself with an inability to function in the manner I wished I could, still frequently caught up in the same question and non-answer loops that persisted without obstruction since that awful fucking morning. I eventually got back to work sporadically, but both the patrons and work friends of that dumpy little diner must have noticed my change. They were simply being nice. letting me play a cute little work version of myself, playing along with the facade, though I shouldn't complain, those sympathy tips were amazing. I tried, truly, I think I tried hard.

But when you're done, you're done. Unintentionally, or I suppose fortuitously, I amassed a stockpile of Ambien and anxiety medication over the past year, various doctors throwing prescriptions against the wall. They seem to be the only ones outside of myself that even almost understood the depths of my grief. Not that they cared to talk about it much. I would take them periodically,

but more often than not, I simply accepted the non-sleep, accepted the anxiety. Let it have its way with me. Let it destroy me. To put it plainly, I just didn't have the desire to get better. What I did desire, though, and still actively do desire,

and I recognize to a truly unreasonable extent at this point, is to find my baby's puddle, to see his dream. With time, I accepted that the only way to that place, if it existed at all, would be by, well, dying, dreaming and dying, to put it frankly, follow his footsteps. So that was my decision, which I now admit began forming gradually in my subconscious. The very morning Charlie died on my chest. The world was not meant for me from that moment onward, and I have reached the end of pretending. I recognize the absurdity of it all. No matter how hard I try to tell myself otherwise,

I'm smart enough to recognize that finding the puddle is almost certainly just my brain's way of excusing the inevitable self-destruction in more self-compassionate terms. I want out, and yes, I hope to find something in it. But this was the necessary conclusion. The snowball was forming from the moment I woke up that morning. About two hours ago, I started writing this, and I also started downing a massive handful of Ambien, Vicodin, Xanax, Zophran, whatever the fuck else I could find, and pushing it down with a bottle of wine. I'm working now on my second.

Shout out to Yellowtail. My stomach is turning against. so I will stop my rambling. I don't believe in the whole life flashes before your eyes thing, but if I am indeed dying soon, which I think and hope I am, the last couple years have been flashing pretty fucking hard. Hence this whole fucking essay bullshit.

Please don't call it a suicide note. I will find the puddle when I go. I don't know what it will be. I hope it brings me close to Charlie again. Even in whatever metaphysical manner that these things might happen, I just want to understand. And for those who care about me, if you exist at all, I'm sorry. It's not the sea that drowns you.

It's the puddle. Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the first circle. Her body laid still on Charlie's bed for almost exact, 96 hours, dead for most of it. I wish it could be said that her body lay elegant in death, but bloody vomit lined her cheeks, pillow, and bedside. Her eyes were swollen in bloodshot, her skin empty of color, and when she was discovered, bloated, bloated had set in. She was found near midnight in late October by her neighbor, after days of missed calls. Herself, though, the rest of her, and everything else that made her her,

found itself floating, slowly downward, and an opaque and hazy atmosphere. There was a sense that she had not just entered this place, but had been there before, perhaps many times. There was a hint of light, but not much. The amount of full moon might illuminate a field in deep summer. Black, fluffy clouds split and cracked for her as she fell. A calmness around her, a warmth that contrasted sharply against the strange and soft cool of the encompassing darkness through which she was descending.

Somewhere seemingly miles and miles below, a sort of surface began to take shape, a sleek, slowly rolling surface surrounded on all sides by black shadowy mountains that stretched unfathomably high around it. She continued her downward drift for hours, thinking little, feeling like the space around her, gray, soft, cloudy, the shimmer below slowly revealing itself to be a sludgy sort of lake or sea, with large rolling waves that stretched to unseable shores, curving off a distant horizon, stretching toward those impossible peaks. The waves seemed to push it in all directions at once. not driven by a traditional tide, but instead by something unknowable, that slept far beyond the depth of the water and the height of the mountains and everything around her. She continued her gentle descent for hours and miles until she was finally approaching the oily water, which seemed to have a slight glow in it, illuminated by something deep under its surface. In it, she saw writhing, formless, and shifting shapes rolling and squirming beneath, some of them absolutely massive. In her peripherals, she saw small spindles, the sludge being

drawn upward from the lake, lifting into the atmosphere and twisting about, slowly forming into something or some things. These thin vertical plumes almost resemble water spouts, but ones that formed in slow motion, and whose end results were pulled upward, not toward the clouds, but to something far beyond her field of vision. She fell even closer, unable to control her descent, but calm in it. The ethereal sort of moonlight, and the backlight from the water were sharpening her vision, and amidst these strange morphing forms in the water, very difficult to make out in the dark. were people, dead people, the faces uniform only in their death stare, corpses rolling and twisting

in the sea. Some of their bodies seem to be stretched and pulled in possibly long. Their extremities drifting out until they simply became part of the water, part of the sledge. Some of them had their heads and neck stretching off their bodies, becoming one with the look Others looked far more normal, as if someone had recently plucked their fresh corpses from the morgue and placed them in the black water. She saw Donnie. His body was one of the more elongated ones, but she recognized his face, though his expression was one she had never seen, simply void of anything. She felt an eerie and pervasive calm. His arms were stretched outward above his head, reaching, upwards in her direction. His body mostly vertical in the water. Everything beyond his elbows was indiscernible from the sludge he was part of. She couldn't see his legs if they existed at all anymore.

His bottom half was so stretched that it was obscured by the other bodies and by those strange, undulating shapes that seemed to swim and roll amongst the people. She registered this all, but felt little. She saw Charlie soon after, herself merely 20 yards from the surface now. He was almost directly below her, just beneath the water's peak, rolling slowly among the shapes and people. Charlie was not very stretched at all. He looks so much like the beautiful little Charlie that used to entertain her with his dream stories, who made her laugh.

By the way he pronounced dump truck. like dumbfut, and who raced through her little house dressed as a superhero, using all his little powers to make her smile. He was still very dead, of course, but that mattered less now. So was she. To her left, another water spout started to slowly lift and drift upwards. She couldn't see the little forms taking shape far above her head, the little bodies the spout would become.

She melted into the puddle, breaking its viscous and shiny surface with her form, immediately enveloped by the warmth of the water. For now, she would remain there, near to the outstretched remains of Donnie, but much nearer to her Charlie, both of them floating, gently rolling amongst the bodies in the oily sea. In time, over many years, she and he, like everything else, would lose themselves entirely to the sledge, to the water, abysmal and beautiful and black,

the great and terrible puddle that sits at the center of everything, drifting there, dissolving slowly amongst all endings, all beginnings, drowning and drawn from the water. For our final story this evening, a man investigates his sister's disappearance among a string, of ritualistic kidnappings, and maybe, just maybe, the cult prophecy may have been more than madness. Creepy presents the Nephilim cult kidnappings, written by Julian Boss and narrated by Owen McCune.

Some of you may recall the infamous Nephilim cult kidnappings from the beginning of the century, but for those who don't, a brief recap of the official narrative. In 2001, a series of disappearances perplexed investigators throughout the Midwest. The first to gain national attention, a 20-year-old student at Grand Valley State University named Kat Grigis, went missing in late August. Her story gripped the American imagination for the usual reasons. Pretty, smart, young, white, and, of course, the circumstances of her disappearance were maddeningly bizarre. It happened sometime between midnight and one in the morning on Saturday the 18th. She'd been drinking with friends in the student townhouses just off campus, by all accounts

having a good time, not particularly wasted. She left about an hour before her roommate, who traveled the same route home and saw no trace of her at that time. When said roommate awoke to find cat absent that morning, panic set in. She began calling all their friends to see if they'd seen her. But the last anyone saw of Cat was at the party the previous night. Retracing her steps, the roommate discovered Kat's party outfit, neatly folded and placed in the center of the footbridge that spanned a forest gorge.

The initial presumption was that Cat jumped, something a few other students in previous years had done. The bridge's height, over 60 feet, is a lethal drop. Why she might have stripped naked before taking her own life was uncertain, and a question shortly abandoned after search parties failed to uncover a body in the ravine. Then, two weeks after her disappearance, a pair of student documentarians shooting a piece on the Greggis case, uncovered peculiar tree trunk carvings in the ravine under the footbridge. They featured what had been described as hieroglyphs, depicting some sort of ritual sacrifice

to a giant deity. Local papers picked up the story, which quickly gained national attention. Met with heavy skepticism, the young documentarians were swiftly scorned by authorities for their disrespectful stunt, until Thomas Peterson. Much like Gregus, Peterson disappeared at night without a trace, until his wife discovered his neatly folded clothing placed on a forest path in the woods near their home. The ensuing search effort uncovered identical hieroglyphs to the Gregus case. Peterson lived in Big Bear Lake California, 2,000 miles away from Grand Valley.

Then there was Regina Altmeier from Reno, Nevada. Michael Innsman from Little Rock, Arkansas. Hector Garcia in Flagstaff, Arizona. Different backgrounds, ages, finances. All vanished in the middle of the night with their clothes discovered neatly folded on a trail several hours later, nearby trees bearing the curious symbols carved into their wood. Speculation ran rampant. So-called experts crawled out of the woodwork to cash in as talking heads,

hawking books about cult conspiracies and underground extremists networks. I haven't been able to identify the individual who introduced the name, but from this farago of commentary arose the moniker Nephilim cult. It came from an interpretation of the carvings, a group of cultists in worship of their Nephilim God. By the end of July, a total of 18 disappearances have been attributed to the Nephilim cult, including my sister Luna.

Just as the others before her, she vanished in the dead of night. Her folded clothes were found on a wooded footpath, and nearby trees bore the Nephilim carvings. Here's what you don't know. Every missing person in the Nephilim cult kidnappings left behind cryptic journals of one form or another. Luna had a diary, others scrawled notes on napkins, receipts,

others floppy disks with text files. Their contents were mostly gibberish, and every decoder in the FBI employed failed to make heads or tales of the symbols. However, every one of them, without exception, featured somewhere the phrase, It is coming. Two dozen years' time, wash clean, the world of filth that follows.

Verbatim, word for word, exactly that in every document. Nobody knew what that meant, but the families of victims were shaken by the discovery. None of us knew of the documents prior to the investigation, nor did any of us witness strange behavior exhibited by our loved ones. Luna had just started college,

was the first member of our family to do so, and was ecstatic about her life prospects. Neither myself, nor our parents had ever seen Luna writing in that diary, which was found stashed beneath her bed two days after she went missing. My sister was the last person to vanish. It was July 30, 2001. The investigation ceased abruptly six weeks later.

The towers fell, and the nation found a new boogeyman. The special task force assembled for the Nephilim cult disbanded, the federal agents it comprised, reallocated to various anti-touching. terror initiatives. Years passed. The families kept in contact, conducting our own investigation, such as it was. We surveilled the crime scenes to see if Nephilim cultists might return, but only ever encountered teens or other freaks out looking for a spooky thrill. We hired our own PIs and cryptographers, and the desperate among us turned to various new-age grifters for answers. None were supplied. In 2008,

the widow of Hector Garcia received a letter promising the return of her beloved in exchange for her faith. Many in our network of bereaved families latched on to this, despite the claims of the skeptical few insisting it was nothing more than a scheme. Nevertheless, we asked old FBI contacts to review the letter, who performed a cursory examination and no further investigation. The letter offered no instructions on how Isabel might demonstrate her faith, or in whom or what she was to invest her faith in. So we all anticipated follow-up communications.

None came. Hope dwindled. Some in our network passed away. Others withdrew. Our number shrank to a handful of stalwarts still hunting for answers. In the fall of 2015, the nightmares began. Visitations of the missing haunted our dreams. but never our own relations.

I dreamt of Regina Altmeier. Isabel Garcia dreamt of my sister Luna. They came to us deformed, as if stretched. Their grotesquely gangling bodies, shambling out from the trees, hoarse voices repeating the cryptic phrase they'd each written down prior to their disappearances, only the countdown amended.

It is coming. Ten years' time, wash clean, the world of filth that followed. A warning? Directions? It felt simultaneously prophetic and instructional. Night after night the same dream, and it went on for weeks. None of us knew what it meant, but there were plenty of wild theories.

Conspiracies about mind control, radio frequencies that broadcast messages from the Nephilim cult directly into our brains. It's the same tech they tested out in Havana. They hijacked 5G tower. to reach us. It's a plea for help. They're angels now, warning us about encroaching end times. I didn't think any of these theories held water, but I had none of my own to offer. Like everything else, however, the nightmares fizzled out. The next development happened in 2020 when three bodies showed up. Patricia Reeves, Matt Templeton, and Zosha Dreyfus. Amidst the pandemic, the Many bodies sent for burial on Heart Island in New York,

contained among them the remains of three missing Nephlin cult victims. Patricia, Matt, and Zosha were discovered in the freezers. Each body preserved perfectly from the date of their disappearance. Despite nearly two decades passing, they looked the very same they had in 2001. None of them had any remaining family, but instructions had been given to relay any discoveries related to them to members of our network,

which was how we found out. We otherwise would never have known, given what authorities did next. The resurfaced trio were buried quietly on Heart Island, while feds scoured hospitals for clues. None arose, nor any additional bodies. The FBI suppressed the story and asked us not to go to news outlets. It would only complicate our investigation, and we foolishly believed them.

But after no immediate leads presented, themselves, they gave up the hunt. That was five years ago. Over the ensuing half-decade, I've seen members of our group splinter away, coalescing around absurd theories, some going so far as to suggest the government is responsible and calling for violent action against politicians, federal agents. This all started when I was a teen in 2001, fearing for my sister's life, fearing where she might have gone, wishing she would come back. Now, I find myself wondering where she went to, if I might be able to join her. The clock is almost up.

Two dozen years dwindled to nothing. What will happen? Will it come to wash clean the world of the filth that follows? 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 Creative Commons Share-A-like licensing or with written consent from the authors.

No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.