Creepy - Darkling Children & The Abattoir

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

Darkling Children ***Written by Joshua Bryant and Narrated by Nate DuFort ***Content warning: imprisonment, murder ***The Abattoir***Written By: Prior McRae and Narrated By: Alicia Atkins***Content Warning: Detailed Descriptions Of Gore, Cannibalism, Parental Abuse***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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. which listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents. Darkling children.

Written by Joshua Bryant. And narrated by Nate DuFort. I remember my dad in the backyard chopping wood. That repetitive sound. So seamless, it was as if my dad was back there trying to make music. I could hear it from my bedroom, and I would stop whatever I was doing when he started. and listen until he finished.

Sometimes I would lay in bed and close my eyes. Other times, I would pace the length of my bedroom, without thought, and without any tangible purpose, just listening. I remember so vividly the last time I did this. It was a couple days past Christmas, and I was well into my winter break. Outside it was freezing, but in my room it was that pleasant sort of temperature

somewhere between chilly and warm. My mom was in the living room, watching her stories. I was walking back and forth, imagining the rise and fall of the axe, hearing the split of the wood. Suddenly, I saw movement beyond the frosted pane of my window. I hadn't really comprehended what sort of movement it was. It was far too fleeting. Yet I knew that it had come from the ground next to the neighbor's house, the neighbors

being a couple my dad referred to as the screamers. The screamers were the kind of people that seemed to forever be locked in a state of codependent misery. They were not very friendly and had a terrible habit of holding yelling matches almost every night between the times of midnight and 3 a.m., hence the title. I stopped pacing and stepped to the window, trying to determine what it had been I had seen. My breath fogged up the glass, making it impossible to see through, so I unlocked the window and opened it. Cold splashed my face like water. I smiled. I enjoyed winter so much. My eyes fell upon an open gap between their house and the ground. I had noticed this gap plenty of times before as it was covered in

chicken wire that was nailed to the wood paneling around it. It was a hole just barely big enough for a small person or a child to fit through. The darkness there created impressions of itchy dust and rusted pipes, and I seldom spent time thinking about it. But with my head stretched out of the window, and my eyes fixed so heavily on it, I couldn't help but wonder what purpose the chicken wire served. I had almost forgotten the movement that at first caught my attention when I saw it a second time. Again, it was fleeting, but without the window obstructing my view, I could make more sense of what it was. I stopped smiling. Something was under there. It didn't move like a cat or a mouse or any other animal I could think of. It was furtive, staying within the inky shade of the crawl space.

It looked very pale, and it was this contrast against the surrounding darkness that it allowed me to see it at all. I was trembling. Hello? I whispered at the hole. The movement ceased. I called out again, but there was only the sound of my dad, still chopping wood. I rubbed my hands together and thought about what to do. I looked along the walls of the screamer's place and saw that between our houses there was nothing but the browned weeds and frosty ground. I ran to my closet and pulled a hoodie over my head. I put my shoes on and climbed out the window. Stooped like a criminal, I crept to the hole and knelt down. I took one last look around and then lowered my face until I was almost touching the wire. I saw only cinder blocks and pipes. The pale thing had withdrawn somewhere

it could hide and remained quiet. Coughing my hands around my mouth, I repeated my call. This time, however, I heard something. It was a small sound, weak and grating like the throat that had produced it was dry as sawdust, and from behind a heap of insulation, I saw what looking like a tiny hand wave at me. I jumped up, the blood surging through my ears hot enough to chase the cold away. I didn't waste any time thinking. I ran to the shed in our backyard and grabbed one of my dad's pliers off a shelf. I ran back to the hole and slid to my knees in front of it. I began cutting the chicken wire, determined to save whoever was beneath that house. I parted the wire and said, All right, come on. There was neither a pathetic sound nor movement. My heart sank. Perhaps it would have

been smarter to go get my dad or my mom, but the smarter things were not on my mind. I pulled my hood over my head and began crawling beneath the house. The wires ripped my sleeves a little, but I was able to shake loose of them. The white dust clouded up and clung to me. It made me cough. Hand over hand, I made my way to the heap of insulation. With a sweep of my arm, I knocked it aside, but there was not a person waiting for me there. It was just a shoebox, covered in a film of dust and mouse-drops.

I blew a puff of air onto the lid, yet there was nothing that gave any indication as to what the contents could be. I considered turning around and going back to my room. I even felt a pang of embarrassment. But I was 17, and there was something in my heart that demanded I solved this mystery, even if there was nothing in the shoebox except spare parts or lint. I took it under my arm and went back outside. My dad had stopped chopping wood, and I knew dinner would be on the table soon.

Quickly, I vaulted back through my window and shut it behind me. I slid the shoebox under my bed and began patting the dust from my clothes. My mom called me. I kicked my shoes off and trotted out to the kitchen a little out of breath. I felt I had a secret, a secret that I wanted to hold on to with both hands. I felt even a little defensive as if I had rescued something. as if I had lifted a chain from someone's shoulders. Yes, it was strange, and I acknowledge that,

but it was a good feeling, a sweet feeling. After dinner, I rushed back to my room. My thoughts were populated with what could be within the shoebox. I was doubly curious because of the strange circumstances that had led to its discovering. It was also tantalizing. I pulled the box out from under my shoebox. bed with shaky hands. I had made sure to shut the door, yet I still shot a glance over my shoulder

to make sure that no one was watching. Satisfied, I began removing the lid. Inside, there was a great pile of dark hair. It was so full of the long, straight strands that some spilled out onto the floor. They sheened like crow feathers in the yellow lamplight. I ran my fingers through them and felt how cool and soft and smooth they were. There was no breakage, no split ends, no coarseness at all, and there was the softest fragrance of lavender that exuded from it like a whisper from an undisturbed past. I was entranced by the loveliness of the hair, and I dipped my hands deep into the box. I touched something cold and rigid within. Recoiling, I scooted backwards, staring with unblinking eyes at the pile of hair. I was certain I had touched skin. I swallowed the lump in my throat

and inched back to the box. Nothing stirred, and I reasoned that whatever was hidden beneath the hair must surely be dead. Regardless of this objective reasoning, I pulled the housekey out of my pocket and used that to part the black strands. I couldn't help the low gasp that escaped my lips. Cradled within the box There was a tiny, desiccated body It wore no clothes And was curled into a loose fetal position The skin was pallid and taut

Over bird-thin bones The hands and feet were a ruddy color As if they'd been powdered with rust The face was wizened The lips black And the eye sockets were deep and empty All the long black hair that smelled so nice and felt so fine grew from the little person's scalp. I was aware that my lack of

revulsion was strange, but I couldn't help the feeling of awe that had overtaken me. I even made my breath more shallow for fear that I would disturb the little sleeper. I knew that I'd uncovered something delicate, something untouched, something precious. A word came unbidden to my mind, a word that I'd read somewhere before and had some knowledge of its definition. This word, waif, seemed to radiate from the girl in the shoebox. When I said it aloud, even in a whisper, she moved. I didn't shrink away. It didn't even seem wrong for her to be alive.

In fact, I found it exhilarating. Very gently, I slid the box and the waif back under my bed. I returned to the kitchen and made a little bit. cup of warm milk. My parents were watching television, and if they noticed me, they saw nothing unnatural in what I was doing. I returned to my room and retrieved the box. The waif had twisted her dainty head in a manner that implied she was looking up at me. I felt a blush come on. I dipped my finger into the warm milk and then held it to her parched lips. She opened them and allowed the white drops to fall into her mouth.

As I did this again and again, the deathly pallor retreated from her flesh, the wrinkles on her face smoothed, and the general emaciation in her body ebbed. Her movements became less torpid, and, as I finished feeding her, she was sitting up. I felt a little awkward on account of her nudity, so I gave her a bandana to put over her shoulders like a shawl.

She wound it about herself and held it tightly at her pencil-fin neck. Then we just looked at one another. Or rather, I stared into the pits of her eyeless face and assumed she was looking back at me. I hadn't noticed the time, but when I heard Mrs. Screamer start in on her husband, I knew it was past midnight. The waif heard them too. With a pitiful cry, she began burying herself in her hair.

I saw minuscule tears leap from her sockets and sparkle briefly in the light before disappearing. A protective desire suddenly urged me to put my body over the shoebox, to shield the waif from the horrible verbal dispute the screamers were engaging in. I listened to her wretched little sobs. My heart ached and I longed to help her, yet I could think of nothing beyond what I was already doing. So we spent the duration of the screamer's argument. like that. When there was finally silence, I got into bed. Of course, I took the shoebox in the waif with me. She was still hiding within her hair, but I chose not to disturb her. I figured she would

come out when she was ready. I even hummed a lullaby to her before fading into sleep. The next morning, I awoke to the rattle of hangers in my closet. I hadn't opened my eyes. I just told my mom to get out of my room. There was no answer. I rolled a little and bummed the shoebox with my hand. It bounced away, empty. My eye shot open. I looked only for a moment at the vacant box before turning my gaze towards my closet. The waif was pulling one of my shirts over her head. She had grown considerably in the night, but my shirt still fit her like a loose dress. With a thin forearm, she drew her long hair out of the neck. and it cascaded over her back with a soft sound like feathers falling.

She turned around and once more stared at me without eyes to stare with. Her hands and feet were still red and her lips still black, but I'd never seen anyone so beautiful. She was special in a way that defies all words. I coughed and looked down at the carpet. Good morning, I said. The waif made a sound. in response, like a breeze passing. I got out from under the sheets and stood in front of her,

unsure of what to do, and embarrassed at the way my heart was beating. Looking at her bare legs, I decided to get her some pants to go along with the shirt. I chose an old pair of denims that I had outgrown and handed them to her. I turned around to give her privacy as she pulled them on. After a moment she made another sound, and I felt her gentle fingers grazed the back of my elbow. I turned back towards her and saw that she still needed to hold the pants up to keep them at her waist. Quickly I got her a belt. As she put it through the belt loops and drew it tight, I knelt down and began rolling the cuffs up so they didn't drag on the floor. Revealing her feet, I saw that she had no toenails.

I clenched my jaw in pity and looked at her hands. They were without nails as well. I stood up and tried to think of what to say to her. Her very presence communicated some unalterable tragedy, one that I sorely wished to be able to rectify for her. She, however, seemed not to notice my predicament. She was pointing at the window and smiling. I looked out and saw that it was snowing.

Come on, I said, getting in. us both jackets. She waved the one I offered her away. I didn't press the point. Together, we went through my house to the back door. Both my parents were at work, so I wasn't worried about them discovering my new friend. I threw open the door and sprang out into the backyard. The snow was coming down in flakes that moved in the air like descending pendulums. They had such a slow grace. It was as if they would never touch down. The waif still smiled. The waif still smiled. was reaching out with tentative fingers to catch the drifting snow. The flakes did not melt on her skin, but rested atop it in the most pristine quality.

Everything was so quiet. As a boy would, I felt the need to disrupt this piece. I ran to the block where my dad's axe still rested and scooped a handful of snow that had accumulated there. I spun and lifted my arm to throw the snowball at the waif. I stumbled back as her own struck me full in the face. And so, as our little play-battle ensued, our snowballs flew back and forth without much accuracy, but we laughed and shouted enough to make up for our lack of skill.

Her laugh, I shall never forget, was like the ruffling of leaves in autumn trees. Her shout was tremulous and uncertain, but so full of genuine playfulness, I can't help but smile at the thought of it. it. This is my sweetest memory. Yet, just as quickly as it had begun, the snowball fight ceased. The waif had stopped mid-throw, letting her handful of powder fall forgotten to her feet. I hushed, straining my ears and eyes to perceive what she obviously did. Her face grim,

she gestured for me to follow her. With cautious steps we made our way to the corner of my house, the one that was adjacent to the screamer's place. We huddled close to the wall and peeked beyond the corner. I saw Mrs. Screamer. She was squatting beside the hole that had been covered by chicken wire. The expression on her face was not one of indifference. The waif moved back, just as Mrs. Screamer looked our way. My eyes met hers, and she snarled.

She demanded to know if I had been the one that cut the wire. as she stabbed a finger at me. I jerked back, fear sealing my lips. Mrs. Screamer began stomping towards me, her eyes wide and gleaming in the gray light. She repeated herself. She was loud and shrill enough to make my ears ring. I dove behind my house and felt the waif take my hand. We raced to the back door and threw ourselves inside. I locked it behind us and waited for Mrs. Screamer to try and tear it down. She didn't. After several minutes catching my breath, I figured she'd let it go. The waif and I were walking back to my bedroom when a sudden hammering at the front door made me nearly jump out of my skin. I looked at her and she at me. We were quiet. Again,

the hammering sounded, this time accompanied by a hostile voice. It was Mr. Screamer, and he was telling me to open the fucking door. I was always an obedient child, and it had never crossed my mind to not do what an adult told me. In the moments that it took me to walk to the front door, I thought that all I would have to do was apologize to Mr. Screamer, to say I would never do it again, and that if he wanted to talk to my parents, they would be back sometime that evening. I was definitely afraid, but not truly worried. I opened the door, and the cold seeped in like dead snakes. Mr. Screamer was a very tall man with very wide hands.

His eyes were bloodshot, his neck thick. Purple veins crisscrossed his nose. I didn't even have the chance to say anything before he took me by the collar of my shirt and yanked me close to his face. You ever fuck around my place again? I'll kill you, he said. Then he dropped me, glared at me for several more uncomfortable seconds and left. I shut the door, my heart was pounding, my chin trembled. I felt tears welling in my eyes, though I fought to choke them down.

The waif, as quiet as a book opening, put her arms around me. She squeezed me tightly, and I felt her face pressing into my back. Her presence was soothing. She drew the tears out of me and made them feel warm and invigorating. I'd never had a friend like her, had never felt someone like her. We went to my bedroom and stayed there until my parents came home. I didn't tell mom or dad about what Mr. Screamer had done. I was truly scared of the man and took his threat seriously.

I was more subdued than usual, but Mom and Dad didn't comment on it. We ate dinner, they watched television, and we went to bed. As I got under the covers I thought the waif would join me, but she sat at the edge of my bed, her empty eye socket staring implacably at the window. I asked her what was wrong if she was scared of the screamers. She didn't answer. Despite my concern, I eventually went to sleep.

But the slumber did not last long. It was interrupted by a sound like wood being chopped. There came a scream, another chop, the scream died. I sat bolt upright and immediately saw that my window was open. The waif was gone. I could hear my mom and dad fussing in their room. I could hear them calling the police. Intuition told me all I needed to know.

Without thinking, I leaped out of bed and out the window and into the snow. I could see her barefoot. footprints all over the place and quickly set about, swiping them away. I followed the waif's path to a window she had forced open to gain entry into the screamer's house. I crawled through it too, and then called out for her. There were no lights on, and the place stank like cigarettes. It was so unfamiliar, and I was so frightened. When the waif answered me, it was in a sob. I bumped into chairs and knocked over lamps as I made my way through the house. I followed the sound of her frail crying.

My heart was aching again, and I just wanted to find and protect her. She was in the screamer's bedroom standing on their mattress. I turned the light on and covered my mouth to smother a scream. My dad's axe was in her shaking hands. Her shoulders were bobbing up and down with her ragged whales. She was standing over two still bodies, with two bloody messes on soddened pillows. The faces were pulverized, and I never knew what a person's molars really looked like until then. The waif looked back at me, tears streaming down her face.

She was even more terrified than I was. My feelings pushed me into action. I took steps over to her and helped her off the bed. She dropped the bloody axe to the floor and tried to hug me, but I could hear sirens in the distance. The image of her tiny frail body being shoved into a police car by apathetic hands streaked across my mind. Without further hesitation, I grasped her rail thin wrist and ran,

pulling her behind me like a paper kite. I took her outside and around the house. We came to the hole. She tried to hug me again, still crying, her voice like glass crunching underfoot. I pushed her away and pointed to the hole. I told her to crawl back, to hide, to stay until I came back for her. The waif nodded.

I touched her cheek. She touched mine. I dream of that touch every night, and it torments me. I watched her disappear beneath the house. I breathed in the last of the lavender scent that lingered in the air. Then I ran back into the screamer's house, back to their bedroom, back to their bodies. I picked up my dad's axe and rubbed my fingers all over the handle. I heard the police at the door.

I heard them yelling. I heard them break in. I waited for them, hands over my head, axe at my feet. Yeah, I pled guilty. I've been here 23 years now, and only the walls and the bed and the toilet know my secret. I'd never betray her, just like I know she'd never betray me.

Someday I'll get out of here. Someday I'll go back home and crawl under that house. I'll find her again. I'll take her red hand in mine and look into those empty eyes, and we can be happy children once more. Creepy Presents Apertoir Written by Pryor McCray.

and narrated by Alicia Atkins. I was ten when the world shriveled. Still ten. Just when the cockroaches rose back up, twisted and leaking, no matter how many times you broke their backs. And then nothing new was born or grown, and nothing dead kept still. That was when my parents put me in the attic,

bolted the doors and windows, and began to feed me through a room. cat flap. I don't know if it was madness or fear or insurance. Who knew what they might need a body for in this dried-up world? Ten years later, an abattoirteur appeared on our property, a new inhabitant of our unliving wasteland, wandering, carnivorous sheds that drink the dying but never let them die. When they found it, my parents rejoice so hard they cry. That would have been the end for me if a drifter hadn't chance to walk through a few days later. He came heat-leathered and scrap-laden, and smelling like the sea and the sun had a fight and a rubbish skip and both died.

I inhaled him from the cracks in my window as he scraped onto my parents' porch. My heart raced. He was like the wind from a foreign country coming to blow open the walls of our terrified world. I should have leapt out that window. and picked up his rubbish bag and screamed at him and at me, and every year I have let my parents keep me still. Run. But I've spoken to no one since I was ten years old.

I have looked into no one's eyes in the decade since my parents shut the door to my room. The drifter didn't see me behind the years of dirt on my window. He thanked my parents and ducked into the shade, and I tried to make a sound. a week earlier, and he could have drifted through a tense spite of decaying orchids and wandered off up the road, probably to a lonely death on the dry flats a few miles up the coast. But that's his business. I respect these later-day drifters, doomed as they are. But the couple he met was one human sacrifice away from a lifetime supply of meat to keep them in this starving world.

He came to us five years ago. And he's been here ever since. I have not seen him, but I have eaten him. And every night I lay in my airless attic, atop my sheetless mattress, and I hear him. The loaves of an animal, who believes it will shatter if it just screams long enough. While I crouch in my room and wait for the years to pass,

because my parents have left two people to die by degrees inside dried out ancient wood. And I am screaming, too. Only my screams are my silence during the breathless days and the endless nights. My screams are the knowledge that I am waiting for my life to be over.

I want to feel the sun on my skin. I want my neck to burn after hiking a skeletal road. I want to wander, desolate, as the derelict miles spin out behind my bloody feet, and I knock on burst wood doors and croak. Anyone's still alive in there?

I want to walk and walk and sleep on the sand, cry from the bitter salt of the poison sea. I want to walk until every part of me is splitting and raw and seeping and stinking, and I stumble one day suddenly and stupidly into the arms of a wild abattoir. I don't care if my parents think the world has. died. I want to live in it. But every time I imagine leaving, I freeze. I watch in silence as a drifter walks to his death. I wait in silence for my own, as I have been waiting since I was 10 years old, waiting for my parents to open my door. But when they do, it will only be because the first

source of meat has finally failed them. I hear the same cadence in our circumstances. I hear the same cadence in our screams. But I'm not the one locked in the abattoir. Maybe the reason I'm still trapped in here is because I've never tried to leave. I wait until the weeest of hours, pacing, nail-biting, watching the window, my stomach and fits. My parents plow back through the wet grass near 4 a.m., faces black, arms and chest shining with him. It is though I have never known them. They mow through the grass under my window without looking up once, without even thinking to glance. There's no one up here they could imagine wanting to see. They retire, and the house settles in relief.

Silence falls over the property. He is not screaming now. I ease back the broken locks of the window. They are 15 years old, and not the jailer they were. I tore them loose after a few days of fiddling and some bloody nails. I slide up the pain, swing myself out. The blood-warm air lifts me, extends my borders, clings soft and wet to my limp skin. It swells with citrus and wet grass like wool, and my chest catches.

But the glint of coppery blood and putrefocation lines my nose as I breathe out. I swish on bare-cracked feet Through the slow death of the Mandarin groves My heart hammering as I approach Everything I touch is too much Too hard, too dry, too wet My eyes are saturated in shadow and depth I have grown up learning to see

Only as far as the opposite wall I come out in a clearing and freeze The wandering abattoir hunches in the long dead grass Perlescent, whisper-dry wood breeze of years weathered on foreign shores. Hot, pale planks, engraved with the deep groves of ceaseless drought, like it has laid down its roots and sucked up only death. It smells of bones. Moonlit, the door waits, cut into the planks.

Silvery gray eroded wood dry as an ancient crumple of bone. I steal out of the brittle cover of the black mandarin trees and approach, washed in light. I don't want to touch the dead wood of the door, but I do it because this is living and I am alive. It feels like teeth, enamel smooth and deeply grooved, and warm, as though it has somehow retained all the heat from the day. I enter, and I know I will not be saving him. The smell engulfs me as I step into the dimness, the only light, the shafts of silver moonlight, piercing the miasma of holes in the dry wood.

It is putrid, still decaying around the edges, like something almost sweet. But the center of the smell rises up, like a flower and affixates the air with the quick perfume of fresh, raw, flesh. It has an almost basic scent, like diluted beach, or the wet underside of a starfish. And in the center of that florid bouquet, he is spread out like a flower himself, glistening and trembling. His arms and legs are sprained, and they sink into the wood at the joints. So the black,

blood-tared floor of the abattoir swallows his shins and forearms, as though he were built into the structure from the beginning. His thighs and upper arms look normal, if fevered and slicked with five years of spurting blood. His head, as it rests on the floor, pillowed on overgrown, clotted hair, twitches routinely.

His eyes gape like screaming mouths. His actual mouth hangs slack. I see nubs of teeth in there, puckered with rot, in his chest. It is spread out from him like the petals of a nightmare, great folds of fat, pillowed skin, peeled back and pinned down. The white, pink-streaked fingers of his ribs exposed, cupping his precious organs like hands. These bones are scarred and chipped, as though they have been glanced by a knife,

many, many times, as the breastmeat is removed over and over. I shrink until I'm squatting in the doorway. He has seen me. That blood clot head turns to me, and those screaming eyes gape at me. His mouth works, and for a second I think I will hear him speak. But he doesn't. He just screams in silence, like I've done. room. Every day. I creep closer. The floor is enameled in blood, garnet black and smelling like

carrion. Chips get under my fingernails, growing tacky as I get to him. The flesh and wet cradle of his chest quivers before me. The raw scent of fat and rock pools engulfing my senses. He is trying to move away. I see it in the increasing twitches of his head, the further widening of his eyes and the jerks in his breath. And I think about how much I want to live, and how sometimes this is what that looks like. If I walk out of here, I have to accept this as a possibility. His peeled chest trembles and glistens. I think both of our throat sees as I lay my palm flat on his sternum. It is wet and bony and cold. His heart beats through it, little frightened pants.

There are globes of tender flesh regrowing already, like a wet pink moss. I forget the open door behind me. Forget that if he dies, my parents will not just let me run. Forget that despite everything, he is not yet asked. I look about for something to do it with. There are tools along one wall. Long knives, cleavers, a sharpened prong. Could I force that through his brain?

I'd had to push it through with my foot. My palms are wet. My sweat mingles with his blood. I hope it doesn't sting. The sweat, but also the spike through the brain. They probably both will. But he can handle that. by now. I rise and fetch the spike. It drags my arm down. The wooden handle is still warm. It makes me want to

rub the skin off my palms. My parents have held this sharpening prong too much. I come back and hold it over his forehead, and I'm shaking and shivering and hot like I'm sweating on the inside. But I'm going to do it, even if it's messy, even if it's horrible. It's the only thing I can give him. I meet his gaze, and he looks at me, truly looks at me. Not the glazed scream eyes from before, but real, brown human eyes, staring up at me like my own eyes are a ladder he can climb up and out. Curl up in my brain until I spit him out on the grass. safe.

The first person who has met my gaze since I was ten years old. I can feel a scream starting in my chest, a real scream, loud and broken and unbound. It will hurt, and I'm terrified.

But then I hear the house door slam and footsteps leaving the porch, shushing through the grass. I go so still I don't breathe. If my parents find me here, I will not leave again. There is a sticky intake of breath below me, and I look down and he looks up. Those deep brown eyes dried up from screaming, but not used up. He blinks, slow, offbeat, like one eyelid is damaged little, and with a hitching pant, like it hurts.

He shakes his head. Never breaking eye contact. It is the know of someone telling me to leave. To finally just get out. As if I could have done from the beginning, and I'm still somehow not doing. I imagine I could still end it quickly before they come in. But I know I can't.

Not when he doesn't know what his death will bring. Not if he doesn't want me to bring. him to it. Not if it means exchanging my place for his. So I leave him. I leave him gasping and panting and emitting little mulling huffs as my parents come back to do whatever it is they do when they aren't harvesting him. I drop the prong and pick up my feet and run out the back door, through the wet fields in witching our darkness, and through the skeleton bodies of the mandarin's. I race away until my throat is bloody, and my chest hitches almost the way his did. I leave him in that abattoir to live out his days, and there will be many of them.

But I'm not in there with him. I got out. I left that house and my parents and the walls they used to imprison us, and the screams that soaked into them, and I walk and walk and walk. and walk as the sun rises over the orchids. A man lives screaming in a box, and every night my parents fillet the meat from his chest. He lives there now, and he will live there forever.

And that truth lives in me. I will never leave it behind or put it to bed. But I do not live in that abattoir. I live now in the blistering sun, in the waist-high grass, and the long-deged citrus-bearing fruit filled with yellow pus. My stomach is alive with hunger, and I have already lost a part of my mind to the endless walking. But I want to lose the rest. I want my hunger to eat me alive. I want the road to wear my feet down to stubs.

I want the world to use me up, because now I am out. Now I am here. I may be in prison sometime again. I may be splayed out in a box of my own, but I will never watch it happen. I will never wait for the years to pass by while my window is open, and I could have just run. I will never wait for the screams to fade. I will never wait until I stop wanting to leave my room. 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 Sherylite 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 story's author.