Creepy - Day 14 - Last Will and Testament

Episode Date: October 14, 2021

Being of sound mind and body...***Written by Oliver Hoffman and narrated by JV Hampton-VanSant***Bonus episode: "Circle of Six" written by Liam Hogan***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the bloody disgusting network. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or not simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of. violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Creepy presents. The 31 Days of Horror. Day 14. Last Will and Testament. Written by Oliver Hoffman and narrated by J.V. Hampton Van Sant. It's easy to forget how much death there is in a supermarket. Death that's pre-Portman.

Portioned and tasteless, advertised in gallon spray bottles with cartoon insects plastered on both sides. Death, viscous, and sweet, lemony. Death in every bathroom cabinet and kitchen sink in America. I knew this death well, feared it, and so I left for it very early Sunday morning. seeing every porch light lit, every dining room facing the street cold, empty, dark. There were skeletons and jack-o-lanterns in every house, sometimes with smoke billowing out, or dew running down from the rain the night before. A few times I had to stop to dig out my notebook or wait at a stoplight.

In those moments, when the light was low and the car followed, sinking and humming into the street, I could hear them breathing. Every man, woman and child, every shivering figure with their eyelids squeezed, mouth open, their knees recoiling into themselves. I knew from that alone that my plan was going to work. Really, I had already won. I had to sit in my car for a few hours, without sunlight, without food, without caffeine. Someone wrapped on my windshield with their elbow, nodding to the exit of the parking lot, which was now caught in the early sun. glare. I drove out, baseball cap pushed down tight so the light wouldn't burn my eyes,

and left the car next to a park nearby. The walk back wasn't too bad. I needed to calm myself anyway, but I could feel the wetness in my souls when I finally walked through the doors. Next to the carts was a stack of sodas, a mosaic of ghosts and witches that seemed had been slowly picked apart. The ghosts losing a mouth, the witch losing an eye. I pushed the whole thing down, staring, smiling at the near empty store around me. Nobody cared as I rooted through the wreckage. the walls still echoing the fall. I took until my cart was full

and kept going through the multicolored aisles, grabbing hungrily at the shelves in a wide hug until I had seasoning stuffed in my pockets and chips tearing at my chest. A look, a single look from one of the employees, and I was gone, rushing through the aisles, placing everything back meticulously. Once I could see the bottom of my cart, I grabbed what I needed, a see-through

bag of tiny cylindrical pellets. Rat poison, in all capital letters, keep out of reach of children. I sucked in my expression and headed over to the cashier. It took only a moment, a bleary smile and two gallons of milk with the rat poison flung like an afterthought beside them. In that supermarket, I did not speak. And I did not hear anyone else speak. It was silent, very silent. I kept that silence, deciding against the radio, tuning out the breathing, no matter how loud it was getting.

And taking each item, watching, by one into my home, snacking them on the stove. I awoke to the smell of plastic burning. When I got to the oven, it was already too late. The milk, yellowed and bubbling, oozed into the cracked corners. The rat poison laid triumphantly atop them, proud and unscathed. It took me an hour to clean up the kitchen, another. to clean up my bedroom, and then the living room, the bathroom, and of course, my car.

At the dinner party, dressed in a suit and the phantoms mask, I unwrapped the foil carefully, building the anticipation. My casserole was good. I ate more than half of it myself, but as I made sure to insist, the black pepper was amazing. I dressed it in a round, shiny cap, regal twisted glass. It almost pained me to give it to Medea, my only sister, the only other heir to our childhood home. She hated it, wanted to sell it and split the money, surely. But I couldn't let that happen. It wouldn't happen, thanks to my black pepper. I got it from the farmer's market in the corner of Creon and 34th Street, when it was still pellets in a see-through bag. I was the one who had ground it and placed it in the cap and glass.

After that, we ate, talked, and left, six cars in single file driving away from the cul-de-sac for the many roads, for the skeletons and jack-o-lanterns. Medea and I were the last ones to go. We hugged the gold-colored scarf she was wearing, leaving its thread on my collar and chest. I went through the front door, laughing for her, crying for her. I slipped off the mask, shoes, and jacket, then slept, dreaming of Black Pepper, and her funeral.

It only took a month for me to do that. see how true my dream actually was. The wake was in a church. It had far less than the labyrinthine hallways and towering steeples I dreamt it would, but the terrified, nauseating excitement I felt was the same. Her coffin was made of dark wood, placed on a stone pedestal under this stained glass skylight. Under it, she was touched by the sun, and her jewelry shined as the coffin closed. When the light was almost gone, and I couldn't see her face, she opened her eyes.

I know she did. She looked at me with hate, shock, horror, and her gaze didn't lift as they took her to the cemetery. As we all walked, I could feel her asses. Loathing burning through the back of my neck. Through the entire service, I had to hide my happiness at her death. As she was lowered into her grave, though, while she still faintly smelled of the wood and sunlight, I sobbed. There was no way for me to stop.

I've had one. I had the house, but I knew what was coming. Even then, I knew how I was going to die. As the weeks went by, I lost myself more and more. I took a vacation after the funeral down the Appalachian Trail. It started normal enough, but as time went on, I felt a force against my feet that was not my own, pulling me down, and I knew it was her.

I abandoned my tent, of course. I stopped laying down in the earth, preferring the security of sleeping upright, tying my chest to a tree, candle wax in my ears like Ulysses. The reading of the will was always a set date. November 24th, exactly five months after my father's death. I was the last to come into the office thickly covered in thorn. morns and brambles, my hair sticking to my face like mud, my clothes and tatters. There was something, some force on my side. It's the only way to explain how I survive for so

long in those woods, only collapsing exactly where I needed to, clutching the envelope with the deed I had come for. I cradled my home, letting it sit on my chest like a sleeping child. I didn't let go, even as they took me away. I left the terror of the ground, headed back only seeing the sky. Waking up in the hospital is a precious thing. You know where you are instantly from the machinery around you, from the synthetic, constant stream of sound. The green spikes and dips, like mountains and valleys, stripped of their dimensions, unrecognizable, with no hope of returning to who they were. You move each part of your body systematically, checking your heart, your head, your arms, your legs, your feet, your hands.

Every time something is cleared, you feel relieved. And once you come to your injured foot, the pain has lessened, and you're at peace. I didn't make it far down this list. My thorns and brambles were gone, so I could finally see what they left in their wake. My heart was fine, but I could feel the sharp pain in my temples, long stretches of red running down my arms, my hands which were gnarled and bitten covered in dirt. Medea's husband had been arrested under suspicion of her murder. He had been questioned about the film of poison that coated some areas of his home, and the twisted glass that had been thrown onto the floor minutes before she

died. Once I was presumed dead, they had enough evidence to start a trial. After that, he escaped. He was free. But there were enough people intent on making sure he'd have nowhere to go. I spent that week dreaming about coming home. I had been back a few times to see my father on his deathbed and to touch the curtains to slide my hands across the railing on the stairs. This time, though, I would stay. When I was released, I grabbed my car and headed to Medea's grave. It was late, and I had raccoon eyes from the blinking monitors at the hospital. No one else was there. I was alone. I needed to be for what had to be done.

I took the shovel from the back of the trunk. It was small and wide, digging in sharp, shallow dives. When I moved to break ground, I collapsed onto the wet grass. I could feel the earth filling my mouth, the flies and mosquitoes buzzing in my ears. I could feel her staring. She must have recognized me from the sound of my cough. Throw it down, she told me. Throw it down. Let me win. Rain started.

We could both see the outline of the house keys in my front pocket. No, I said. They're mine. You can't take them from me. You're supposed to be gone. I will be, Jason, soon. But I'll stay here with you until I win. I reach for them slowly.

I wanted to hold my victory as a little. long as I could before I had to give up. I didn't find my pocket, but smooth skin, soft palms that were everything they should have been, but warm. Instead, they were terribly, freakishly cold. I grabbed the blade of the shovel with both my hands, full of fear and void of feeling, slamming down on her wrist with everything I had.

Blow after blow, I heard her screaming in pain, shrieking at the top of her lungs for someone to help her, to make this right. But it was all in vain. There was nothing she could do. I had already won. It was not a perfect victory. That battle left scars all over. I was chewed up and Pollock spotted, half dead with my trophy swallowed, the taste of its metal clinging to the raw in the back of my throat.

The shovel blade made straight narrow cuts past my palms, each one centimeter from tendons and veins. I was finally able to dress them when I got to the house out of bandages abandoned in the pantry. At night, cocooned in yellowed familiar sheets. I traced them. Roads in my flesh suffocated under the tight veil of white, but still going, turning and intersecting their way into the warm oblivion beyond.

I could see their patterns fading when I closed my eyes. For about a week, I was blissful. In his old age, my father hadn't bothered to put down the Christmas decorations, so I lived in a state of constant holiday joy. There was the occasional mushroom, but I stomped on each without a second thought, and then I left that room and didn't come back in and I could carry on. The only reason that week ended was because of my mistake. I accidentally brushed my hand against a swath of black mold in one of the doorways.

It felt almost like dried paint, but it was fuzzy, too. It had a give to it, and I could feel it crissue. creep under my bandages. That night, my hands itched. They felt soaked, but I couldn't bring myself to look. I slept with my hands in the pockets of my father's old suede jacket, hoping that the lack of oxygen would kill it off. I spent my days kneeling bricks and boards to the windows and stairwells whenever I felt my sister's gaze, making sure that she could never reach me again. I stopped going down to the first floor. I was in my bed, always. It wasn't my father's anymore, it was mine. I kept the jacket on for as long as I could bear it,

but I could sense the mold climbing into the wounds on my arms, even without seeing it. When it got to my shoulders, I shivered, but I never took off the jacket. Without it, it would have all the oxygen it needed to crawl further into my skin and farther out to my stomach and chest. I was asleep when it took my face. I woke up at the dead of night and knew it instantly, not even needing a mirror to see the piles of it hanging. under my mouth and the uneven circles it made around my eyes. I had run out of the bandages long before, but I ran down to the basement coughing and retching from the mold in the air,

but continuing my search, leaving with three bottles of hydrogen peroxide stacked in my underarm. I stopped the drain with the swayed jacket, letting the light shine on the mold, around me and turned on the faucets to no avail. The mushrooms had overtaken the upstairs bathroom, but I didn't bother with them, leaving them to spread their frail white limbs

to climb up the tile and ceramic. I opened the caps one by one, bracing myself with each breath. Then I grabbed all three and let them pour over me, down my head and shoulders, until they stung my ankles. I shrieked my whole body consumed by the chemical fuel for its invisible inferno. I could barely breathe, and when I did, I felt it rush down my throat into my lungs. I couldn't scream, not anymore, and I could only hear Medea laughing maniacally. Her name spelled out in the black spots forming in my vision.

The last thing I saw was my whole body, black from the mold and topped with froth and white. I lost my voice, my vision, but I kept my hearing. and pain. It only stopped when Medea stopped, both cut in at the same instant. Her laugh was gone, and my pain was gone. In that moment, I could hear the whole world breathing. I could hear every chest rise and fall. When it was all over, I had only my breath. And after I finally stopped fighting, I lost that too. I lost. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents, Circle of Six, written by Liam Hogan.

If there's anything that came before the wasps, I didn't notice. The wasps, I did. Six of them. dead in a near perfect circle on the patio I'd installed over the summer. If what happened later is anything to go by, there's probably a perfectly perfect circle. Before some gust of wind or perhaps a scuff of my shoe dislodged one of the yellow and black striped corpses as I took out the compost.

I didn't think much of it. Who would? It was late in the year for wasps, the last week of our. October. I figured the following night temperatures had probably killed them off and good riddance. The next morning, there was a ring of mice. I spotted a cat from the kitchen window, behaving oddly, assumed it was stalking something, or working out which bit of previously unmarked border to mark. I was eager to distract it before it got down to business. Deliberately noisy, I stomped outside in unlazed trainers.

The cat scampered, clearing the fence in two swift jumps, and as I went to investigate what it caught its attention, I saw the dead mice. Six of them. In a circle on the patio, I probably tutted. Made a mental note to chase the neighborhood cats away whenever I saw them. These were gifts I could do without. I went and got a plastic bag.

using it as a glove to deposit the limp furry bodies in the black wall converter. It was either that or carry them through the house to the wheelie bin by the front door, which I didn't really fancy. The next day it was small birds. A wren, three tits, a robin and a sparrow. I stood in their midst on the patio, staring up at the pale blue sky. The birds looked unmarked. no scattered feathers you'd expect if a cat had pounced on them, no sign of a mauling that a fox would give.

Did it click that they were in exactly the same position as the mice? The same stations around an invisible, perfect circle? Not really, no. It was weird enough without getting the tape measure out. The sad little corpses went the way of the mice, which was already beginning to decay. A musky waff over the earthy smell of rotting vegetable scraps and used tea bags. When the rats appeared, I thought I had to call the council. Started thinking bad, or more accurately worse, thoughts of my neighbors.

I'd seen rats in the garden before. There was a section of double-layered fence I suspected they lived behind. But as long as they kept out of the house, I didn't really mind. Dead rats, though. That sounded like a health hazard. In the end, I figured the council wouldn't do anything, not without charging me for the privilege. So I dug a hole between the rose bushes and used the same spade to cart the bodies out one by one into it. I refilled the soil, poking down a protruding cable-like tail, and then, as an afterthought,

put half a paving slab over the mass grave to prevent the cat or fox or whatever from digging them up again. I did wonder what might be next. Turned out to be cats. That messed up my morning. I'm more of a dog person myself. But the sight of a half-dozen dead maggies splayed across the dew dampen paving stones gave me an anxiety attack. Imagine having to knock on your neighbor's doors, ask them if they had a cat, asked them to describe it, before handing over the cold, stiff body in a shoebox. What I say?

How would they respond? What would happen when they got to talking to each other? Realize that theirs wasn't the only pet to mysterious to expire in my back garden that morning. I didn't even have that many shoeboxes. I called the police. They took a while to arrive. While waiting, I phoned the office and told them I'd be working at home that day. I guess dead cats aren't too high on the MET's agenda.

I doubt they'd have turned up at all if it wasn't for the unusual number. Any disputes with the neighbors, Mr. Watson? The policewoman asked as her colleague checked the callers, waving a device to look like a game controller over the bodies to see if they were microchipped. No? Well, nothing significant. Insignificant being? She said, raising a sculpted eyebrow.

I pointed at the old sycamore tree growing at the back of next door's garden. The regular ring of pale bark just above the level of the fence. The neighbor behind attacked it with a bread knife, I said. Guess they weren't happy with it blocking the light. I, um, remonstrated with her. And why would you do that? Well, I could feel myself reddening. You can't do that sort of thing, can you?

And if she succeeded in killing the tree or damaging the branch that overhangs the shed somebody's probably living in, that branch has to go somewhere, and I'd rather not have it fall on my fence. She nodded slowly. Did you report this? No, it didn't really feel necessary. That being the case, Mr. Watson. Why do you think six dead cats might have anything to do with your neighbor?

Not her. Her kids. She's got a couple of teenage lads. Twelve and fourteen-ish? Um, I don't think they like me. I didn't describe in detail the ambush that would stage, me walking past, the younger them leaning nonchalantly against the wall at the corner,

vaping device in hand. I'd try and skirt around. That wasn't one for confrontation. But then the other, bigger, kid would start crossing the road in my direction, forcing me onto the pavement. Just as the loiter exhaled a dense cloud of fragrance smoke in my face. It didn't matter how many FUs or raised middle fingers I gave them.

They just laugh and heckle and start planning their next attack. Any theories? The policewoman asked. I did wonder if it was Halloween-related. Some sort of a cult spell? Wouldn't they need five cats to make a pentagram? I scratched my head, half laughed. Not a cult, no.

More like a sick trick-or-treat? Six dead cats is a bit extreme for a trick-or-treat, Mr. Watson. Even a sick one. No, I mean, when it was just the rats. The rats? So then I had to explain about the rats the day before, show the photo I'd snapped at my phone, indicate where I'd buried them.

They didn't seem keen on lifting the grave marker slab. Was there a reason I'd have? didn't mention the birds, the mice, the wasps? Would anything have worked out any different if I had? As the guy begged dead cats to be carted off to a forensic veterinarian, the policewoman summed things up. The thing is, Mr. Watson, what you've described here is a repeated pattern of escalating criminal behavior.

And six-dead household cats is definitely caused for concern about the mindset of the perpetrator or perpetrators. So, obviously, your safety is a concern at this point, especially as today's Halloween. With your permission, we'd like to station a police watch here overnight. Well, if you really think that's necessary, I shrugged. Won't it be cold? She laughed.

We were rather hoping we could watch from your kitchen. Outside, inside. I suppose that was fine. And there was the added bonus that with an unmarned, dark but blatant patrol car parked out on the street, none of the local embryotic thugs would bother knocking on my door for their usual extorted Halloween handouts. I slept well. Slept late. I guess, thanks to the reassuring presence of a pair of coppers and the fact the matter was now safely out of my hands.

The kitchen was empty. A couple of mugs washed up and left on the draining board. There's considerate policing for you. That, plus presumably scaring away from. whoever been trying to scare me, preventing the delivery of six still warm, very dead dogs or foxes or whatever. With Halloween now over,

so surely was my ordeal. I was slightly surprised not to have had the police leave, but glad, I suppose. Only they hadn't, had they? Left, that is. The back door was unlocked. A shiver of alarm at that. And as I stepped out, there they were, neatly arranged in a circle on the patio, head to toe.

The two police retired Mr. Malloy from number 48 in faded gray sweatpants and a model that once was white vest, the tree-attacking woman from the house behind, clad in a fluffy hotel bathrobe and pink bunny rabbit slippers, and her two young sons. All innocent in superhero pajamas and bed-tosseled hair. The six of them lay peacefully and still. Their dew-sparkled faces matching the mica from the paving stone. They looked asleep. But of course, I knew they weren't.

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