Creepy - Day 4 - Meat Wagon & Don't Stop at the Stay Awake Motel

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Meat Wagon***Written by: Owen McCuen and Narrated by: Owen McCuen***Bonus episode: "Don't Stop at the Stay Awake Motel"***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/***Donate to the show and get rewarded 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. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents. The 31 Days of Horror.

Day 4. Meat Wagon. Written and narrated by Owen McCune. Wait a second. Owen's been here? The gravity had just let go of me, I suppose. Like a pulse from the infinite dark of a black hole. There's a pocket of folks living in a miniature,

collar between two medium-sized hills just off the highway in southern New Jersey. You get there, and there you stay, until you leave, which most people don't. Some folks do, I guess, and they probably don't wind up there again. After what I've seen and heard and done, you might wonder how nobody comes to snatch you up after you're gone. The folk there ain't afraid that you'll send the authorities or anything because, you've walked in their shoes and left some strange tracks along the way. Besides, I wonder if the place isn't cloaked by some means or other, making it invisible for people to find on purpose.

Ever look up at the sky and try to look directly at a star, only to find that it's not visible when you do? You can only see it out of the corner of your eye when that ancient twinkling pinprick is searching in the dark part of your vision to make itself seen. Then you look back and, poof. I was living on my own, doing vagabond jobs to make ends meet. They met on occasion, the ends, I mean.

I was fresh out of family and friends and wasn't working this particular week, so one afternoon I headed down the highway to shop at a farmer's market I knew of way down south. The chickens were biggest turkeys, and the turkeys were gods. damn dinosaurs. Free range and juicy they were and cheap. Per pound they were good eating for the money and worth the drive down $2.95. Drinking coffee, smoking a cigarette, reading a map while I drove with my knees, I reckon ordered a back road that appeared to be a shortcut to the delicious meats I'd been craving. Lorraine was fairly biblical that afternoon, as I recall. My wipers were Flip-flapping across the windshield.

I cranked the radio to cover the noise of all that storm. Then, like a nightmare sequence in a film, the music started to slow down and sound all sickly. The wipers slowed down too. And everything went all weird, like I was sitting inside a car-shaped snow globe full of hand sanitizer. The gauges wound down as my car drifted off to a stall. I steered it over to the side of the road.

road so I could check for any call boxes or pay phones nearby. I hadn't been able to afford my first cellular device yet, so finding telephones on the roadside was inside my bones. The car was useless, so I didn't even bother to grab my keys from the ignition as I got out of the vehicle to walk up the road a piece. I didn't peep a phone box, but I saw an appliance garden up ahead of ways. The rain had slowed down just a little, so I was only mostly soaked as I squished my way along the road toward a graveyard of refrigerators, washers, dryers, hot dog rollers, and industrial-sized microwave ovens. Looked to me like some of those machines had been planted there, while others had been on earth, like mummified monoliths waiting for a scientist with a brush to dig them out of antiquity.

A clothes-ringer lay there like the shattered visage of Ozymandius, beckoning the mighty to look upon its works and despair. After a brief moment of despair, I approached a small storefront that seemed to be part of the Frigidaire estate. A small hand-painted sign was propped up against the porch. Deer processing and tire repair was written in a scrawl that one might describe as aggressive. The front door squealed open and I stepped inside. Shelves and pegboard lined the walls of what was essentially a screened-in porch. The counter was piled high with stuff that.

nearly hid the wide-open register. I looked around at the wares, wondering if there was anything that I could purchase as a penance for seeking assistance. On one shelf was a box of fan belts and a jar of pickled pigs' feet. Another shelf was set aside for cans, apparently. There were cans of off-brand WD-40,

Roach Killer, compressed air for cleaning keyboards, and a single warm can of bushlight, with a typewritten price tag that had been torn from a piece of decent quality, resume paper. The tag was taped to the can. Seventy-nine cents. Not bad, I guess, if you're really thirsty. Rolling papers, herbal supplements, beef sticks, pet toys, pacifiers, rat traps, hemorrhoid cream, toothpaste, a yellowing box of pregnancy tests, and a mismatched socket set. There was even an alternator for sale in a greasy box, nestled in between a jar of Sanka

and a rusty pipe wrench with an adjustable jaw. Nobody was behind the counter, so I ventured a little farther in, dripping a trail of rainwater behind me in lieu of breadcrumbs back to the door. An archway joined the storefront to a larger warehouse-looking space. There was a counter back there, too, more like one you would see at an auto mechanic's garage, though no automotive repair equipment seemed to be anywhere near this place. Next to the counter stood two men with their backs to me. They were watching televisions. five or six TV sets were playing assorted programs. One was just static, and at least two were in black and white.

Were the shows in black and white? Or were they color shows on black and white sets? Couldn't say. I watched with the guys for a bit, then spied a service call bell on the counter. I gently slapped the bell, naively expecting a dinging sound, but the clapper didn't work. The dull clank served just as well. though, since the men slowly turned around to regard me with blank stairs. For a moment, I puzzled over how to ask for assistance without seeming vulnerable in this

stranger in a strange land scenario. But in the end, I laid myself bare with the most honest declaration that could have fallen from my lips. I need a gas station and a cash machine. The men looked at each other, then back at me. The guy on the right was wearing coral-colored coach's shorts and a member's only jacket over a bare chest. He shrugged. The fellow to his right, my left, wiped filthy hands on a filthier butcher's apron and turned back around to watch the programming already in progress. Back then I smoked camel reds, camel with a k, quit these 20 years now and I don't want another cigarette ever again. But damn, those smokes were delicious. Can cigarettes be delicious?

In any event, I reached into my pocket to pull out a smoke. It promptly disintegrated, having been soaked by the rain. Members only tossed me his soft pack a pall mall unfiltered. Together, we killed the pack while watching whatever it was that we were watching. The relative silence was broken by the yowling of the shop door being opened in the front room. I went back to the storefront area to find an elderly lady at the counter, waving the can of bushlight and a $1 bill in the general direction of the cash register. In the till were three $100 bills and two quarters.

I took the dollar from the old woman and placed it in the register. I tossed the two quarters on the counter, and she left without either of us saying a word. Behind the counter I found a fresh pack of Paul Malls, so I took it back to members-only guy, and we smoked and watched into the night. And there I stayed. Time passed, or it didn't.

I took up residence on the floor next to the deer fridge. The floor of the warehouse was mostly concrete, like a garage, but there was an irregularly shaped patch of linoleum over by the salad spitter. It looked like someone had murdered a kitchen on that spot, but never bothered to clean up the crime scene. Most days I watched TVs and operated the register when someone upset the door to come in and buy something. I did leave now and again to do the stuff that people do in a small town.

I would buy food that wasn't pickled pigs' feet and beverages that weren't warm bush light. I dabbled in spirituality at this really sick church, but reptile handling wasn't my thing. I became aware of an undercurrent of stranger danger that had folks on edge when new people came through town. I could tell that they weren't welcome and was pretty sure that most of them were probably killed by the town. Which begs the question, why was I still alive? Maybe it was my admission of the naked truth when I first entered that shop. Maybe it was because I knew how to make change. Either way, I'd become a local, I suppose.

Life in that place was as slow and quiet as you please. People did seem to have stories of their own, though they weren't telling them to anyone. I interacted from time to time when I went to this place and that. There was a dilapidated theater about two blocks away from our shop. To most eyes it would appear closed. The boards on the windows sort of gave that impression. But performances were held there once in a while. Mostly interpretive dance troops and haphazard instrumental bands that played to scant audiences.

Out in the streets, the residents shuffled about as if in a fugue state, like the entire population wandered out of the huge abandoned sanitarium that now served as a makeshift zoo. That being what it was, the town folk did come to life once every few weeks to gather on the main drag on the first Friday night slash Saturday morning of the month. The general store was an open-air flea market of sorts that popped up on those Friday nights. All kinds of goods were on display on card tables and snack trays along the strip. You could buy wedding rings, dress socks, hair pieces, dog collars, wallets, bike tires, and any other known. of worldly possessions that someone might no longer be in need of.

They were makeshift cocktail bars and tents into which one could slip for a game of Chase the Dragon. The festival lasted into the night and part of the morning. Those who had gotten a decent night's sleep, stepped over those who hadn't, when the meat wagon rolled into the center of town, blaring a rusty tune from the old horn speakers mounted on top. The jingle was clear and bright, calling peckish townspeople to gobble up all manner of savory meat treats, steaks, chops, burgers, sausages, you name it.

Rusty grills and trash-canned smokers got to cooking, and the sacred fragrances rose to the heavens, lifting the town's spirits on high. There's no twist here, where you find out that the mystery victuals were actually human remains. It wasn't a mystery at all. Everyone knew that they were grilling up man meat, along with pets that had been put down, and horses that had broken a leg. Elderly family members who had fallen asleep under a pillow, careless bike riders who had gotten too close to traffic,

and strangers who had come through town unannounced. The general store gave their possessions a chance at another go-round, and the meat wagon sent their bodies on a journey they never dreamed they would take. Eating your own takes a certain kind of nerve and grants a certain kind of power. Huh. in a small town. The first Saturday morning in October was a special day for the kids in the neighborhood.

They heard it before they saw it, that telltale jingle blaring away, getting louder as it approached. The tune was a little less clear this time around. Maybe some moisture had gotten into the electronics and was causing a little bit of static. At any rate, the meat wagon rumbled down the main drag and set up its standard carnivores delight, while a small kiosk on wheels followed closely behind, staffed by a crumpled old woman whom all the youngsters called Nana. On and about this cart were displayed all manner of eye-popping garments made of luxurious fabrics. There were velour pants and shirts studied with jewels.

There were child-sized business suits crafted from automotive upholstery. Red riding hood style cloaks were always popular, especially those that vaguely resembled swaddling blankets. I even saw a sock-hop poodle skirt that had been fashioned from the remains of a man's sport coat. But the most popular items were always Nana's masks. They were hyper-realistic human faces, not superheroes or cartoon characters, just everyday people like you and me.

And they all bore Nana's handwritten guarantee neatly printed on the inside. Genuine leather. Here comes the part where the story, gets a little dark. Close to a year later, one night in mid-September, the guys and I were in the back watching the televisions as the channels surfed themselves. Four of the channels were static,

and at least one of the others was playing American Gladiators. The front door groaned and heavy footsteps stomped around in the front room of the shop. Seconds later, a man's voice shouted, Yo! Hello! Anybody here? more static, more gladiators. The footsteps got closer as a strapping young fellow in a tie barged through the archway and stalked up to us.

Clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, went to call bell. Members only tossed his cigarette on the ground, but didn't crush it out. The brash young man fairly yelled at our backs. Bro, customer here. I got a flat just up the road. I'm on my way to someplace important. so I need it fixed quick. You guys except Diner's Club?

We three turned around slowly and looked the man over. His face could be considered classically handsome, I suppose, characterized by a strong nose and a square jawline. A dimple in his chin gave the face just enough character without being distracting. He had slapped the credit card onto the counter, but scooped it up after he was met with silence. When he did this, I noticed a chunky collard.

ring, the gold kind with engravings on the sides and a faceted jewel in the setting. I admired the ring and wondered what hallowed halls this man had walked to obtain his higher education. It would require a closer look to find out, I had imagined. Of course not. Jesus Christ, at least tell me you have a Mac machine. That was what we called ATMs back then. So here was a man with car trouble in need of a gas station and a cash machine. members only looked me in the eyes I walked past the customer

through the archway into the front room and over to a shelf by the counter I fingered the jar of Sanka and the greasy box then picked up the stained rusty pipe wrench returning to the back room I walked up behind Bro as quiet as a church mouse I raised the pipe wrench and swung it down hard

like leather face disposed batching a nosy teenager, I pounded the back of dude's skull until he stopped twitching. At last, the peaceful white noise of the static channels had reclaimed the room. Members only turned his gaze to filthy apron who picked up a telephone. I don't remember him dialing. I know for certain that he didn't say anything. Members only picked his smoke up off the floor, but I restocked the shelf. Instant decaf, greasy box, wet wrench.

Half an hour later, the meat wagon pulled around back. I helped to load it up with meat from the deer fridge and some other stuff that we had recently acquired. We smoked and watched the TV sets. Eventually, I noticed that my coworkers had departed from the room sometime during the evening, and I was left alone. Stretched out by the leaky refrigerator, I dreamed of nothing. Two weeks after that, the October General Store was back in town. I bought myself a complete set of popular mechanics, automotive DIY magazines, and a big old college ring.

Barron State College. Next day was Saturday, so the meat wagon rolled up like a parade flow. The jingle was all but gone now, playing faintly under a crackling hiss. I ate like a Viking, though, feasting on grilled jerk chops and a savory meat pie. Nana's costume cart was a hit, as usual.

highly anticipated by the kids for a whole year now. A few weeks later, the town celebrated Halloween. The guys stood in the back room watching the television sets, which were almost all playing static now, while I stood in the front room and handed out candy and matchbooks to the kids who came trick-or-treating. They were all polite and grateful, except for this one little prick who stared into his candy sack

and shook his head before leaving without so much as I thank you. While unsure of the child's gender, I say his because of the masculine-looking mask, but the square jaw on the dimpled chin. As he left, I eyed a nearby shelf with three lonely items on it. Decaf, box, French. With Halloween over in the Meat wagon Thanksgiving feast, now in the rear view, meat sweats for a week and all the smells. The winter holidays were rapidly approaching.

Not the least of these is the return of the light. What would the new year bring? Now that every single television set in the back room was tuned exclusively to static, voices within the white noise spoke of change. They revealed things to me and offered some welcome advice. I shuffled among the town's residents

until the meatwagon's final trip of the year. There was no tune left to hear, just a crispy wash of all the four. frequencies all at once. I ate and drank and picked up a few trinkets, but change was on the winter wind. Deep into the chill of the bleak December, I sat on the front steps next to the deer processing entire repair sign and watched the stormy sky suck all the color from the world. Hands on knees, I pushed myself to a standing position and turned to face the front of the shop. That shelf by the counter had something I needed.

The front door screamed as I entered. Grabbing the item, I strode with purpose past the counter, through the archway, and into the back room. The front door whispered behind me when I left. Down the steps, around the sign, past the appliance debris field, and along the roadside. Wasn't long before I passed a fancy car with a flat tire on the side of the road. Shortly thereafter, I came upon another car that had seemingly been there for years. Opening the hood was weird. You had to know the trick, which I did. Beside me, I placed a few items I had taken from the shop,

a patchwork socket set, the popular mechanics magazines, and the grimy box that had been sitting between the Sanka and the murder wrench. After disconnecting the battery and some other wires, fiddling with a tension or pulley and loosening a few bolts, I was halfway there. I removed the alternator from the soiled box and installed it where the dead one had been. Droplets, then sheets of freezing rain, abandoned the colorless sky, and plummeted to a splashy demise as I reconnected the battery.

I turned the key that had been left in the ignition. The car had no business starting up, but it cranked a life just the same. A quick K-turned-and-I-turned-and-I-was-on-the-road back to the road. world that most folks recognize. I don't know exactly how long I was away, but I reckon it was nigh on three years. That was just before the World Wide Web had taken hold, and since I was living mostly off the grid anyways, it wasn't too tough to start over, as it were. A few menial jobs in shops and stores led to more steady ones, and eventually some sales,

leadership and middle management opportunities. Turns out that retail was sort of my calling. I'm a functioning member of polite society and pretty popular on two or three of those internet dating sites. Hit me up, ladies. I'm eligible. In fact, I've been thinking about going back to school. A degree from Barron State College would go nicely with this really sweet ring. Naturally, you won't find that back street on any New Jersey Road, Alice.

I looked a few times, but it's best not to check too closely. I don't lose sleep over my time spent in that weird little hamlet, partly because I switched to decaf coffee, but mainly because I found something soothing that puts me under every night. The interstellar soup of radio waves that play out as static on a television that seemingly has nothing else to broadcast. For your bonus episode, creepy presents

Don't stop at the stay-awake motel I was driving cross-country for reasons that don't really matter for this story The point was I'd been driving for almost 16 hours It was one in the morning And I was barely able to keep my eyes open I was in the great dead middle of America With barely a gas station around Let alone a rest stop

Not that I like sleeping at rest stops but it was better than the idea of my car going off the road 100 miles from help. That's when I saw the glowing red motel sign in the distance. Wasn't even a consideration not to stop. I used the wheel to the side of the road and coasted into the gravel parking lot near the main office. There weren't any other cars in the lot, and at first I thought the place might be closed, which would have been okay. I'd just sleep in the parking lot for a couple hours.

I'd have been better off. I walked in the office and at the exact same time, a woman with the biggest smile I'd ever seen came out of a back room. It wasn't anything too weird. But if she told me she'd just won the lottery, it would have made sense for as happy as she looked at one in the morning. She gave me a cheery hello and asked if I'd like a room for the night. I couldn't even muster sarcasm at that moment, particularly because I was so tired, but also

She just seemed so damn nice it was hard to be snarky about what else I'd possibly be doing there. I asked for a single room for the night. She asked for a credit card and said it'd be $40, plus a refundable security deposit. I've done enough road trips and stayed in enough motels, now that even cheap motels run more than $40 bucks a night. But again, I was tired, and she was nice. I gave her my card, and she set an actual key with a little green fob on the corner. The fob said, stay awake motel.

I picked it up and looked at it, thinking it was a misprint or someone had tampered with it. Nope. When I asked the manager, she just kept smiling and said, Yep, stay awake motel. With rooms like ours, you won't want to fall asleep. I couldn't help but smile at her genuine enthusiasm. She asked if I'd ever stayed there before, and I said, nope, first time to that particular part of the country.

Then she really confused me saying there were over 500 locations. I'd never once heard of or seen a stay-awake motel, but I figured that was like how certain parts of the country didn't have things like Kroger's or Rolfs or 7-Eleven. None of that meant to rat's ass anyway and could wait until morning if I really needed to keep thinking about it. I just wanted to fall onto a bed and sleep for a few hours before getting out on to the road again. Instead, I learned why the motel used that particular slogan. At first, the room was just about like any other room I'd ever been in. Bed, shitty TV, little table with two chairs, and the bathroom on the wall opposite the door. That was about as much inspection as I made before

lying down on the bed. I didn't bother getting under the covers, partially out of exhaustion and partially out of not wanting to see what might be under the covers of a $40 a night bed. You know how sometimes when you fall asleep, you just bolt up right awake and think it's been hours when it's really only been a few minutes? That was all the sleep I got. It started with scratching sounds, like mice or some other rodent was in the walls. Disconcerting, but not surprising. But the sounds got louder.

More like fingernails running down the other side of the wall. wall in long strokes. I looked out the window, but from what I could see, I was still the only car in the lot. Maybe someone was staying there without a car? I tapped on the wall, hoping to either scare away the rat or let the other occupant know I was there and heard them, and the scratching stopped. I closed my eyes again, but part of me was just waiting for the scratching to start again. Instead, there was a knock at the door.

Whatever patients I had left at that point completely drained out of me, and I got up, ready to tell off whoever was at the door, but as I'm sure you guessed already, no one was there. No one was at either end of the rows of rooms, and when I looked down towards the office, I noticed that the manager was in there, standing behind the front desk, smiling at me. I don't mean just smiling, as if that wasn't weird enough to be just standing alone smiling

in the middle of the night, but I mean staring at me and smiling. She didn't wave or nod or anything. Just smiled a smile that felt a lot less inviting than it had before. I closed the door and laid back down, but sleep felt even further away. I went to the bathroom to pee, and as I stood there in front of the toilet, I heard a sound. Something soft, like a whisper. At first I thought it was just some weird echo in the bathroom, but after I flushed, I could still hear it. It took a few moments, but I realized the whispering was coming from the tub. More specifically, the tub drain. I went over and craned my ear near

the pipe, wondering if somehow I was hearing a conversation from another room. But it was just a whispering sound, like the kind of child would make when they're pretending to tell a secret. There was a faint chuckle of laughter between the whispering sound, and just as I brought my ear down toward the tub plug, the tub faucet turned on, blasting the side of my face with boiling hot water. I screamed in pain and fell backward, swatting at the water on my face and scrambled to the sink, panicked and trying to get some cold water on what I envisioned to be my blistered skin. but as soon as I looked in the mirror, not only did my face look fine, but I was completely dry. There was no thought of, did that really happen?

It happened. I felt the water on my face. I've never been so tired or even so high that I suddenly thought I'd been soaked with water. That was enough for me. I didn't know what was going on, but I was awake enough that I knew sleep wasn't going to happen and pissed off enough to sleep in my car. I opened the bathroom door and took two steps into the room only to slam my shin on the edge of the bed frame. I swore and dropped to the ground, rubbing my leg.

How the fuck did the bed move right in front of the bathroom? It didn't. When I fell, I fell right in front of the room door on the opposite side of the bathroom. The pain in my shin lit up my whole leg, and I rolled up my pants to see that not only was I bleeding, but there was a gash on my leg so deep that I could see bone. Immediately I felt vomit building up in the back of my throat. I looked away and saw, instead of the table, the floor was bare. Above it, however, hung a noose.

A small tag hung from the knot that I could just make out. Leave complaints here. I ran the few steps of the front door, not even realizing the might. my leg was somehow completely healed, anticipating the night air and smell of burning rubber as I sped away. Only the door was locked. I powned it on it, begged, cried out to no one that I needed help. Not knowing what else to do, I picked up the phone to call the police.

I was just about to dial, but the moment I brought the receiver to my ear, I heard the disgustingly cheery voice of the manager. How can I help to make your stay unforgettable, sir? The words caught me off guard, and I stuttered. My stay had already been unforgettable. I'd never be able to forget it. Somehow I managed to spit out, I need to leave. And she responded,

Do you like to check out? When I said yes, she told me that my deposit would be refunded pending inspection of the room and to enjoy my day. When I screamed at her that the door was locked, there was a pause then, in a flat tone, she said, are you sure? I set the receiver on the table but didn't hang it up. I walked to the door, staring at the handle, then turned it.

The door opened without resistance, and I was met with the still dark sky. From the table I heard a faint, Thank you for choosing the stay-awake motel. We'll see you soon. As I tore out of the parking lot, those words repeated over and over in my head. It's been weak since then, and I can't tell if what she said was a pleasantry or a threat, but I have started to notice more stay-awake motels, often on the side of a dark road. At least once I could have sworn that I heard panicked banging on one of the room doors as I sped up and drove off into the darkness.

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-Lite 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.