Creepy - Fill ’er Up & Eidetiker

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Fill 'er Up***Written by: Jay Seate and Narrated by: Nate DuFort ***Eidetiker***Written by: William M. McIntosh and Narrated by: Cole Burkhardt***Content Warning: Bugs, insects***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, fill her up, written by Jay Seat and narrated by Nick Dufort. There's a tale about a beautiful woman who, above all else, took pride in her delicate feet. She soaked them in warm oils.

Lanolin was applied to the souls, arches, and ankles. The result was feet of perfidates. affection without calluses or blemishes. They were powdered and perfumed to smell as fetching as they appeared and were admired by all. It was no wonder the woman took such pride in her tantalizing tutsies for. As a child, her arms had been severed from her body by a hatchet-wielding madman. And I guess the moral of the stories to make the best of one situation. Make lemonade and all that tripe.

but that's the tale that always comes to mind whenever I think of Johnny. He was luckier than the woman, for he did have one arm that served him well. Tired of working for others as a file clerk in a less than lucrative business, I purchased a rundown filling station on the edge of our small hamlet. I suppose I was searching for something more finite. Gas and oil felt like a ticket to personal salvation. Johnny O, as he called himself, had worked as an attendant and gopher for the former owner, and I decided to keep him on.

This was back in the day when pump jockeys were common. With a big grin, Johnny could fill a gas tank, look under a hood, and wash windows, lickety-split. Some called him Johnny one-arm, but not derogatorily. It was more of an homage to his skills in spite of his disadvantage. Johnny never mentioned his origins, but there was something he seemed to love more than his employment. A rusty old silver bullet of a trailer, his former employer, allowed him to place at the rear of the property out of the way of traffic. I never asked how it got to its present location since Johnny didn't drive,

but it was his haven, serving his sanctuary from the overly nosy as well as the outside world. My station eventually modernized and became as much as much. a convenience store as a gas station. Johnny continued to live in his home on wheels and dealt with my modernizations with a plumb. He displayed an incredible work ethic, pumping, straightening, cleaning. It seemed that many patrons continued giving business to my rather out-of-the-way location just to watch Johnny nimbly plucked cigarette packs and sundry items from shelves. Then something very bad happened. Johnny was alone pulling the late shift when the station was held up.

Some scoundrel fled with the till's modest amount of cash, and for whatever reason, he saw fit to put a bullet into the middle of Johnny's forehead. Maybe it was because he only had one arm to raise. What was left of Johnny's head was a red and gray splatter of blood, oatmeal-looking brains, and bits of bone on a wall, creating an abstract painting, not unlike. a work by Jackson Pollock without its frame. No one else was around. No one knew Diddley Squad. No evidence was found by the local sleuths, not even a shell casing. I was called to identify Johnny and bear witness to the horrible scene. I'd never installed security cameras and don't think I could have stood

seeing Johnny blown away. As for his trailer, I locked it up and let it remain on its concrete slab, like a deteriorating sentinel, waiting for some form of habitation. Small towns love their stories of love, hate, and mayhem as much as their preserves they put up in glass jars. The murderer Johnny O. played well. I hoped fanciful tales would quickly burn out, but in the months to come, a heavy gloom found its way into the business. Many regular customers seemed to miss Johnny as much as I did, but some felt spooked by a presence believed to be that of a dead kid. I planned to get rid of his humble home on wheels, but something prevented me from following through in tribute perhaps to the one-armed happy-go-lucky

station attendant who'd asked for little more than a kind word now and then. I filled his position with a parade of those needing a job, but none stayed for long. They were put off by the creepiness of working where a deadly robbery had occurred, or by the feeling of the feeling of the of being observed in the aisle and in the restrooms, and especially in the restrooms. On more than one occasion, an employee came from the ladies' room in an unsettled state. I was taking care of business when I sensed a shadowy-like presence,

the woman breathlessly said. As I left, I saw a man cleaning up the sink. Nothing to worry about, I said. Neither ghosts nor illusions can hurt you. I wanted to ask her if the ghost had one arm or two. Johnny'd spent a good portion of his life at the station, and I'd come to accept that he intended to spend a good portion of his death there in ritualistic fashion, haunting and cleaning. I held my breath whenever a female went to powder or nose.

I never saw him, but I too sensed his presence. Sometimes, usually after dark, a patron would come inside to pay for gas in advance, only to return and find their gas cap off, and the tank's nozzle pumping in the octane. No one was physically harmed, but business began to drop off considerably. The novelty of strange occurrences had become more frightening than mere curiosity. Uneasy looks on customers' faces revealed discomfort. It was only a matter of time before my outpost was christened with monikers, such as Ghost Gas House or the paranormal petrol place.

And there was an event yet to come, something more horrible than mystifying. I was returning from the hapless chore of restocking shelves in the storeroom and headed for the sales counter when a flash of light lit the far wall, once again painting it with a nightmarish scene of slithery blood and brains, of forced reflections of Johnny's death. His missing face and cadaverously splayed three limbs swam around inside my conflicted brain all the while knowing it could have been me in the store that faithful night rather than him.

I locked the place up early and drove home to indulge in two of my proclivities. Bourbon straight up and the Eagles' greatest hits. Was the bloody image from the past a warning for my future? That same evening, I decided to retire from the gas station minimar rat race. I even got paperwork assembled and planned to list it for a song. It seemed clear that I needed a change of scenery and some other form of salvation. Then one night, soon after my flashback, a car pulled up between the storefront and the island to pumps for what I reckon to be a quick in and out, just a pop in for juice or cigarettes.

And yet a peevish foreboding fell upon me like sticky flypaper threatening another blast from the past. A man climbed out of his vehicle, tossed a cigarette, and pulled a ski mask over his face. Somehow, I knew it was Johnny's killer. I would reach for a weapon beneath the counter if I'd had one believing that no good could come of such possession. As he quickly approached the door, the most incredible event of my life played out in blazing white-hot color. The nozzles from the two pumps lifted from their moorings and sprayed the man's transportation and apparently kissed the still burning cancer stick. Before he got inside my store, the car blew up in a fireball, pushing him against the front door glass, cracking it.

He beat at the flames that had lit his sweater and mask, then ran into the night, a screaming, flaming, flaming marshmallow. I shut down the power to the pumps and grabbed what I did have, a fire extinguisher. I put down the flames and then called 911. I thought about how badly this encounter could have turned out. And then I thought about Johnny. The hapless perpetrator's car was quickly identified. He was found and taken to a hospital with third degrees, his life of crime, hopefully at an end.

I felt sure they could hang Johnny's murder on him as well. news travels fast even in humble settings. An attempted hold up with a fireball and the burning flesh of a crispy critter was an even bigger story than the compulsive cleaning and brutal demise of one late filling station attendant. After police reports were filed, the locals hung around to get the details rather than to purchase. By late afternoon, the authorities and the looky-lose had wandered off. I sent my current employee home. My good fortune concerning the magical gasoline hoses was taken a while to set in. I never drank on the job, but if my bottle of bourbon had been handy,

I would have guzzled it down. Alone, I looked around my humble business endeavor without seeing anything, just at the corner of my eye, or the feeling of organization Johnny's ghost seemed to crave. I looked at the stack of documents prepared for the proper, pretty sail, more determined than ever to unload this albatross and turn my attention to some less compelling endeavor. I hung a close sign on the spiderweb glass door. So entering to the back, I stepped out the rear door and lit a cancer stick in my own. I studied the rusting bohemouth,

squatting on the far edge of my lot, and wondered what the station's new owner might do with it. It wouldn't have surprised me to find the locked door ajar, but no such intervention had occurred. I knew enough to not leave a lit smoke anywhere near a gas station and crushed mine with the sole of my shoe before turning to go back inside. Then I heard the smallest of sounds. It could have been the rustling in the trees or whisper of the wind, but I knew it was neither. It sounded too much like, Philly's a little bit of the trees. "'Ler up, sir.' I turned back toward the trailer.

Perched on the top was a one-armed man with a grin on his face, a revenant visible to me for the first time, his one thumb pointing skyward. "'Now I owe you one, Johnny,' I whispered. "'Maybe you owe me one, too, since our gas station lured your killer back to the scene of the crime.' "'Salvation at a gas station.' I ogled as the smiling ghost evaporated. Nah, I won't sell the place.

You can keep your trailer home and keep cleaning up the place if you're a mean to. The rest of the world will just have to adjust. I walked inside and picked up a handwritten missive intended from my perspective purchaser. The shredder roared to life, grinding the letter into tiny pieces of confetti. Creepy presents. I Dediker. Written by William M. McIntosh. And narrated by Cole Burkart.

I can remember everything. When I say everything, I don't mean to say almost everything. I mean to say everything. I mean to say that when I see a thing, it becomes lodged inside of me, and I see it over and over ad nauseum. The details of it deepen with each recollection, the way it appears to me wears in like the grooves of a favorite record. Memories are like snapshots to me, static and unchanging.

The albums in my head are packed full with the good, the bad, and the men. many. Every brief bit of elation and every stark sliver of sorrow all in crushing, vivid view. I can remember two months ago when the insects started crawling inside me. Enter my usual nighttime ritual. Tepid bath, followed by up-close grooming in the vanity mirror. The flossing and the brushing, the toning and moisturizing, the toning and moisturized. I looked at my reflection and noticed the broken blood vessels in my nose and cheeks were back, as was the anxiety. The doctor said that might happen, a side effect of the treatment. My internal portrait of me shifted to include them.

It was when I finished cleaning one ear and started for the other, fresh cotton swab in hand, that the tingle caught my attention. I turned my head just in time to catch a glimpse of the tiny ant-like creature as it disappeared into the crusted canal. I tried for an hour to flush and suction it free, but nothing emerged. I eventually convinced myself that it wasn't real and went off to bed, making a mental note to tell the doctor about possible hallucinations. I might be a landmark case with a first time. symptom, I thought. That would be something. In bed, I dreamt for hours, dark visions of formless

fear. I saw impossibly large chasms of sucking vacuous shapelessness and shivered in sweat. I knew those scenes of fresh hell would linger with me forever, like all the ones I'd seen before. I reeled from the realization and felt the pest burrowed deeper in my inner ear, where it whispered vicious lies. The next day, I could hear everything, every idea, mundane and malicious alike, from every source imaginable. I heard the thoughts of small children riding bites and the mental mutterings of the mailman as he pounded pavement. I listened as passer-byes anguished over their morning shifts and daydreamed about early lunches. The grocery clerk thought about her sick mother in hospice, and the man in the cereal aisle thought about following the grocery clerk home.

By the time I was back in the bath that night, I ate from all the inadvertent eavesdropping, as I was washing my face and trying not to blink, A second tiny bug came crawling around my neck and onto my cheek. It performed two fast figure-eightes before looping into my nostril up, up, up into my sinuses. In my sleep, I smelled burnt toast and scorched flesh. I smelled iron-rich blood and almonds. The next day, I gagged at every. intersection and winced at the waist wafting all around me. The city presented pungent at every turn,

and the likeness of those two tiny bugs stayed seared on the inside of my islands, promising to never leave. It's enough to make a person crazy. Each evening, I'm visited by these nightly neardue wells, these invasive species who mean me much harm. They move in without permission, and they instigate my origin systems into open rebellion. They shack up in my mouth, and I curse and damn and get thrown out of corner shops. They catch it in my throat until I can't keep food or water down,

causing me to wretch until my esophagus is raw, and my tongue is singed from stomach acid. They hole up in my heart And I cry and cry Heartbroken and helpless Until my forehead accumulates new wrinkles From all the furrowing of my brows

Every night More bugs Every day More exhausting experiments in empathy More parts of me Under six and eight-legged control The cuterie of creepy crawlers has me threadbare in the brain, and I can't help but feel like this 24-hour cycle of infestation is more of a movie I'm watching than a life I'm living.

When they fill up my feet, I run for hours, blood soaking my shoes as I pull at my hair and scream for it to stop. Every part of me is now fair game for the feared foster bugs. I don't bother bathing and I don't look in the mirror anymore. I already know how it looks when they come out into the light. I already have that photographic memory of tiny feet marching into my skin and open holes. Now I just lie in bed with the lights on and watch as they descend from the rafters.

Now I just let them envelop me. Tonight, they've set sights on my eyes. They trudge by the two and slide slick under the slur. They blot out the light and blur my vision, obscuring everything but the pulsing parade of their legs as they dance over my dilated pupils. With any luck, they will feel at home enough to stay and keep me from minting any new memorizations.

With enough mercy, they will cut out camera on this production and roll credits. No more scenes of muted horror. But even if they did, I'd still be doomed to the reels inside me. I cannot scrape those sights from my mind's eye any more than I can pull their wriggling bodies from my own.

I can remember when I cared enough to feel fright at the sight of a spider before one called me home. I remember aversion and alarm at the mere mention of roaches before I hosted one, literally. My temporal lobe is the last part of me, I figure is free of them. It fires, frenetic, and shows no sign of slowing, but I have hope.

When they finally find it within themselves, to take it over, like they've taken everything else, I won't be sad. I won't see under the pressure of having to hear the world's honesty anymore, and I won't smell the stink of its sincerity. I won't fall down fetal with fear and cry and cry with heartache. I won't feel anything at all. Nothing but the relief as it comes in waves of devoured recollection.

Nothing but the ecstasy of images gone grey and neurons nixed neurotic. I will celebrate each passing picture. and rejoice until there is nothing left but the gnawing sounds. They used to stare me, but now they bring me peace. Now I can finally sleep. Now I can live in the moment, and now I can say I never remember anything. Now I know what it's like to forget. And for that, I am truly grateful.

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