Creepy - Day 22 - All You Can Eat & The Couch

Episode Date: October 22, 2022

All You Can Eat***Written by Kevin Cooley and Narrated by Nate DuFort*** Content warning: Compulsive overeating ***The Couch***Written by: Johnny***Tickets for the "Creepy" live show can be purchased at: https://bit.ly/BloodyFM***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.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 pastors 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. Silence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Creepy presents. The 31 Days of Horror. Day 22. All you can eat. Written by Kevin Cooley. And narrated by Nate DuFort. Look, I'll comply. I know you all mean business.

I'm properly terrified of everything you did to make sure I show up for this. I'm here and I'm offering to let you know what I saw, you know. But don't think, don't think that means for a minute I can help you understand it, okay? This will be difficult for me to tell you, but not difficult at all for me to remember. I don't know how much longer I'm going to live or how long anyone's going to live for that matter, but my memories of that day will never fade. I was a student worker at the dining hall where he ate. It was a cold day.

I mean, you know this already, but the school I go to is pretty high up in the hills. And fall feels a lot more real there. There's so many colors up in the hills, even in October. Still, so many more than I'd ever seen growing up in Queens. I wore a thick marino wool sweater over the ugly blue polos we students workers had to wear. There's my favorite sweater. I wish I had worn it. I don't know if it's just my imagination or the difficulty of washing something these days,

but I feel like I can still smell all of it, all that food of my sweater. But you probably care more about him. He's a large man with a lined and unamused face. He's wearing a black suit and a solid red dye that was much too bright. Most people have a specific way about them when they enter a dining hall. It makes it clear somehow that they've done it so many times before. They check a text message while around in the corner. They chat with friends and the shuffle through bags for an ID card or a text.

book. They exchange words about whatever class they have after this and laugh and joke. I see it all the time. Whenever I'm wiping down the dessert island or restocking the mustard dispenser, they blow in like a breeze. Social circles buzz around each other in the dining hall, but this man walked through and it was like, like in disaster movies, where you see a power grid die block by block from an airplane. People just faltered and sputtered and stopped. Some people were still walking, but you could only hear his footsteps. And it wasn't like he was stomping or anything.

I think it was because he measured each step. It wasn't on purpose. There was a sharp and exact half second in between every rise and fall. He was in the habit of this. It was not an effort. He grabbed a plate. Most adults go for the trays, and that's how you know that someone doesn't really know what they're doing,

or that they're just visiting to see their niece or whatever. So he selected it carefully, as if it were somehow different from the hundreds of plastic, off-orange plates stocked on the rack. He spent minutes doing this. I knew then that this man did not. have a niece or any family or anything of that sort. I don't believe he was a man. The odd thing is that he started with the salad condiments. He emptied the entire bucket of cherry tomatoes onto his

plate, then half of the slice onions, and then he found a seat. Look, you need to understand this. Dining all is divided into different stations for a reason. They curve around, the room in a buffet wraparound, leading the diner onward systematically like a neat assembly line. Each food station runs from cheapest to most expensive, in hopes that customers fill up on whatever's the cheapest. For a standard lunch session, this would go from the daily special, which is most often composed of whatever ingredients we need the most to desperately get rid of, to the salad and sandwich bars, which, as gold stations are, still on the cheaper end. Next, comes the deep-fried station, which has fried and grilled food,

usually fries and burgers. What the administrators call the home station comes next. It's decked out with cute little rustic signs and sayings about mothers and kitchens and that kind of thing. Naturally, during October, it's covered in that goofy, boys and ghouls-branded, cheap, plastic spooky decor. The decorations are mostly just someone's cute idea to ease the freshman's transition. They serve cornbread and meatloaf and the other things you'd eat on the Tuesday at home. Items that require more specific investment and can't be served in hotel pants come next. Things like pizzas and calzone and baked artisan sandwiches.

Then desserts, of course. Out the option station, which also has the gluten-free, options and the vegan grill is removed from the wraparound line entirely. In hopes that it might not be used at all, I'd imagine. The buffet line reads like a book. There's a first word on the first line, a second word on the first line, then a second page until it ends. But this man, it was like he couldn't read that book.

He used silverware for the tomatoes and onions. He just shoveled it into his mouth. He hung low over his plate. His elbow stuck out at the sides, and his hands only had inches to move to press more salad toppings into his mouth. The surrounding diners rubber neck now, and then to take notes of his odd eating habits. That was all it was at this point. In minutes, his plate was empty.

He gave it a hearty lick like a dog. It was like he was washing a circular mirror with a wet rag. The plate was as clean as if it'd just come out of the dishwasher. I remember one of my professors pulling a hand on my shoulder. It was like a literary theory professor. She said something odd. You should leave. You shouldn't see what's going to happen here today.

I should have listened. The man rose and returned to the buffet line. He piled the rest of the onions onto his plate and the croutons and shredded cheese too. He grabbed a jug of balsamic. Onion and crouton debris fell here and there from the mounds on his plate, but he's here unaware or didn't care yet. He ripped the lid off the balsamic, even though it was a twist off.

He removed the aluminum plastic sheet they put in for freshness, and he licked a dressing from its underside. It was an actual bucket of dressing. I don't know. exact amount, but there must have been gallons. This was when, when it became a thing. He put the lid on the jug to his mouth, tilted his bottom end toward the ceiling, torqued his head backwards until it dangled above the seat of his chair. This was when the cell phones came out. You've probably seen the videos. He was unperturped. The jug pumped like a heart

with that much thick dressing gushing out. And his throat made the horrible squelching noises, like the sound of boots breaking air pockets and mud puddles. His hands knew exactly how to measure the poor. I've never watched the video. I don't want to see it again, but they always talk about it now. I guess there's not much else to talk about these days, after all. They say you can see him put the jug down

in 14 seconds, empty. He went back for the ranch and the rest of the lettuce. Someone must have called the manager. They must have had to after students were being turned away from the salad bar. I can't imagine anyone wanted to try and explain that away for $8 an hour to students who have their debt figures memorized. Don slinked out of his little tucked-away office and buzzed around the large man's table. There were four empty buckets of ranch and,

Five of balsamic on the table, and the entirety of the salad station had been cleaned out. I was supposed to be wiping down the unused tables, and under any other circumstances, I would have started doing that as soon as Don came out. Didn't matter now. The old room was watching. This is e'er say, of course. I don't know what Don said to him when he went up to a table, but he talked for a while. All I know is that the man didn't.

respond. He had a little sheet of paper he showed that eating man, I've heard. I've heard that it was some kind of a meal pass that they give out at promotional things, and it said, all you can eat on it. And he pointed to those words and stared at Don. Don just let him go after that. He was right to, of course. What can you really do? The man stopped using plates. That was only slowing him down. Every shred of vegetable matter and condiment of any sort that had previously populated the salad station was inside him now. The handmade station was next. He grabbed two full trays of calzone's, stacked them together.

He unplugged a crock pot full of marinera sauce, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and carried it back to the table. If the bottom of the pot burned them at all, but you didn't show it. He would place each calzone in his mouth with one hand. erect his pointer finger on the other and press it down his throat in one motion until it was gone. The trays were empty in seconds. A woman making pizzas seemed determined to beat him out and redoubled her efforts overstocked the station.

She didn't stand a chance, of course. He stacked all the pizzas. There must have been 16 stories of crust. He bit into that stack like a single-year-old. A single organ made a cheese and meat. A guy didn't even care about the cuts between slices. In time, the man reached the hour mark. I remember Don leaning against the dessert island, massaging his temples.

We were well past lunch hour rush. And the main room was more crowded than it had been all day, or even in weeks for that matter. People tweeted and texted their friends and sent Snapchats and uploaded. and everything you've seen to Instagram. It was all over the place. They milled around him, but left him a 20-foot radius of space on all sides. Whenever the tail end of a sub-roll

or the last glob of Alfredo saws it vanish down the man, the crowd turned like waves for him into a path toward the food. I don't know if it was out of courtesy or fear. The table was littered with crockpots and dressing jugs and food trays. and hotel pans and crumbs. That was fine.

He no longer needed the table anyways. The crowd followed him as he toured the buffet line at random. Wasabi, hot sauce, Tabasco, taco sauce, hot chili sauce, saracha, horseradish, mustard. We're all grouped together in the general condiments area. Each of them was stored in those leader-sized squirtubs where ketchup sometimes comes in. He guzzled him.

He was a man downing a line of shots at a bowl. bar, and the crowd behaved the same way. It all might as well been milked to him. His eyes didn't water. His pace didn't falter. I didn't know where it was going. Should have been dead. The mayonnaise only gave him difficulty in that it was a bit gelatinous going down his throat. I remember two punk kids laughing, dude, this shit's crazy at that moment, but he sucked it down in six butters, like a choking person. A woman emerged from the crowd and said, I know the heimlich just in case, okay?

But his face contorted into a scowl, and he held out a hand to command her to cease all movement. He downed drums of ice cream before it could melt, didn't bother with scoops or spoons, but slurped like a pig at a trough. The baked beans must have been scalding hot. I know this, because one really determined cook, had prepped extra in anticipation, even though the lunch period was long over.

It didn't stop him. He did something that was almost eating and almost drinking. And then they were gone? He ate crushed red pepper flakes and corn flakes with equal ferocity. He systematically decimated our dessert island, brownies, cookies, tom thumbs, pastries, key lime, cherry and pumpkin pie. gelatin, yogurt, chocolate-covered fruits and pretzels, pudding, and a lemon tart. It was just a snack for him.

All the food from lunch hours was gone. He'd eaten a good chunk of dinner, too. Students flocked to whatever available station they could to guarantee dinner before the inevitable happened. I hadn't cleaned a table or changed the chaffer pan in hours. He dropped a lot on the floor, but his suit still didn't have a sense. single stain or crumb. It was at the beginning of dinner hours that the news stations arrived. Don rallied a posse at dining services, employees, and university security cards, and barricaded

the entrances, and reporters pushed to try and make their way in. This image, for some reason, will always stay with me. A reporter angling her camera to try and catch the man vacuuming up a hotel pan of spaghetti and a security guard covering the lens with their hand. They stopped letting students into the dining hall, even though they paid for it for the whole year, of course. It got ugly. Protesters congregated outside.

Rumors somehow spread that they were cutting the man off and unnecessary chance of let him eat, let him eat, resounded to the dining hall. And he did eat. The taco bar and its carefully mapped out assembly line was a matter of irrelevance to him. He barreled down every hard shell, then every soft shell, and he only busied himself with the meat, salsa, rice, and guack afterwards. There was no taco sauce left after lunch, so he didn't need to worry about them. Workers gave up.

They fought their way through the throngs of reporters and student protesters and just went home. Don called the police, him to try and shoe away the media. It felt bad for him. He manages a dining hall at a college, and this was where he was. The man ate. That was when the rocks and bottles started to hit the windows.

The police set up a perimeter. Everyone but employees were forced to leave the dining hall. I mean, you know all this already, but to see it happen there, here, it was something else entirely. It was just us blue shirts in Don and him. The protests raged outside. Don sunk into the nearest chair and let his head sink into his cradling hands.

Hours passed. There was half past midnight by the time it was all gone. We could still hear the unrest buzzing outside. We were off shift, but we couldn't just leave. By rules, I suppose. We were closed and could have kicked them out, but we couldn't have, really. I mean, we really couldn't have. It just wasn't a thing that could have happened.

For whatever reason, he'd saved the fruits for now. Oranges, apples, bananas. He didn't peel anything. It burst open the supply closets of the excess ovens and the prep rooms. He'd eaten 12 industrial boxes containing single-serving packages. of oyster crackers, plastic at all. There was no longer food in the dining hall. Sort of.

He hadn't drank anything yet, unless you counted the sauces, the dressing, or the baked beans. He worked his way down both of the soda founts, craning his head backwards so that jets would empty directly into his throat. Coke brown, piss yellow, bubbly clear, artificial orange and purple,

the juices, the coffee, and the ice, met the same fate. He'd down the hot sauce like milk, and he'd drink the milk. Well, like it was milk, too. He toured the tables again, emptying every salt and pepper shaker into his mouth. Don told us to unscrew the tops for him to speed up the process, so we did. He dobbled the trash cans and ate what was edible. Most of the dishwashers had left when things got ugly,

so he tore through the dirty dishes to scrape pudding and hardened barbecue sauce off plates with his teeth. He gathered all the chafing water from the hotel pans, and he drank it in a pitcher. Don tried to mop the area, but the man lapped up the brown water from the mop bucket till it was gone. He grabbed a fork and scraped gum off the bottoms of the tables, chewed it with heavy effort like a horse, and pushed down a dry, gravelly gulp. I thought it was over then, but it wasn't he stuck his head underneath the sink

turned on the faucet and froze there I turned to Don and he just shrugged Don turned the lights off it was time to go we checked the cameras for the whole day there is no record of him leaving or entering the building

but he was gone when we came in the next day all I know is we came back back the next morning. And then you all know what happened. Then the faucets didn't work. And the lakes ran dry. And the fish were rotting in the sun. And I think that's how we wound up, dear. And that is all I know. Written by Johnny.

Okay, disclaimer, to the very best of my knowledge, this story is true. I don't expect to convince you, and first be told I had a hard time coming to terms with it myself, cliche as it may be. I really am a rational person, and if not for this, I'd probably be the most stone-faced atheist you'd ever met, but after much internal struggle and debate,

I've come to the conclusion that there are things in life that simply can't be explained with reason, at least not in the form which we know it. Logic, for all the trusts we place in it, is really nothing more than a candle, all too easily snuffed out. And when it's gone, we're left alone in the dark, and everything we would scoff at by daylight suddenly becomes very believable. All right, before I wax too melodramatic, here's my story. I was very young, only four or five at most, before either of my siblings were born.

It was just mommy and daddy and me living in our little house in Great Ben, Kansas. Very quaint. We were a young family without much money, and most of our furniture was secondhand. It was the middle of the day. summer, hot, boring. I was playing marbles by myself on the thin carpet beside the huge old flower pattern couch. Mom was down the hall in the kitchen and dad was at work.

Why I was trying to roll marbles around on the carpet, I don't know. We had a perfectly good linoleum floor after all. But there I was, swishing the marbles back and forth, happily bouncing them into each other. Then, in my overzealous enthusiasm, I rolled too hard. My favorite marble, a clear ruby red one, zipped into the dark space under the couch and was lost. Damn it. Dad wasn't home. He was the only one strong enough to move that huge old couch for me.

I'd have to get the marble back by myself. I reached my hand under the couch, tentatively at first, then deeper. Encountering no marbles, I pulled my hand out and disdemeanor. disappointment. Then a hand reached out from under the couch back at me. I remember the image vividly, and I suspect I always will. It was a slim hand with tapered fingers, a woman's hand. It was gnarled and wrinkled as if aged, and it were dead black. Not black as in African, black as in dead. Of course, back then I didn't know the corpse is black. as they decomposed, so I didn't know what the black meant.

The hand reached out to me as far as it could, which was just up to the wrist. Then it retreated under the couch. Then it emerged again, this time pushing with it had a little crumpled-out plastic bag with a logo on it that I didn't recognize. It waited, as if expecting me, to take the bag. Then, when I didn't, it pulled the bag back under the couch and was a little. gone. I got up, walked down in the kitchen, and told my mommy what had happened. Why didn't I run screaming, or at least run? I really don't know. All I can say is I was a little kid.

A hand reaching out from under the couch in me didn't seem like a huge deal. I hadn't yet learned what was and was not permissible in reality. I had no worldview. Mom was skeptical, but walked me back to the couch and explained how I was probably imagining things. She even reached her hand under the couch to convince me that nothing was down there. Later, Dad lifted the couch up for me. The only thing under it was, of course, my missing marble. Plus a few more marbles I didn't even remember losing. But here's the scary part.

For years, I remembered this. I even developed a weird fantasy of little hand people living under the couch. and I, in my childlike innocence, believe that they would catch me and take me away if I ever reached into their domain again. Then as I grew older, I wrote the memory off as a dream I had as a child. Cute, but silly.

Then a few years ago, I recounted this story to my mother. She gave me a funny look and told me she remembered it because, after all, she'd been there. She told me that she remembered me coming to her in the middle of the day and telling her about the hand under the first.

couch and remembering being highly disturbed by my story since I was an extremely quiet, well-behaved kid who could never lie. Then she told me about the couch itself. According to her, she and dad had gotten the couch from the estate of an old woman who had actually died on it. And this was the first time I'd heard about it, but it sure explained why they got rid of the couch within a month of my story. But here's the part that truly frightens me, and even to this day,

the part that I have to try so hard to get out of my mind some nights. Remember that bag the hand pushed toward me? I've never forgotten the logo that was on it. And recently, as in a few years ago, I saw the same logo again on what looked like the same type of bag in a hardware store. It was a bag of utility razor blades. For more information on the...

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