Creepy - Hell Hounds

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Hell Hounds***Written by: Jules Rowlen and Narrated by: Nate DuFort***Content warning: animal death***Deep Tissue Massage***Written by: Vincent Vermeulen and Narrated by: Jimmy Ferrer***Why Are They Bringing Me Their Legs***Written by: Mr. Michael Squid***Content warning: animal death***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***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.

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For our first story this evening, when a lonely police officer lands a dream date with a seductive stranger, you can never imagine the nightmare kennel he would soon find himself, a part of. Creepy presents, Hellhounds, written by Jules Rowland, and narrated by Nate DuFort.

Tonight is my sixth blind date in the last two months. The first, a friend of a friend, had a mustache. I also have a mustache. It was one thing I didn't want us to have in common. The second had a lot of cats. Not a deal-breaker outright, until tufts of fur from her clothes wound up in my mashed potatoes.

I can still feel them sticking to my tongue. One woman was taller than me by a foot. Also, not a deal-breaker, until she drank too much wine and threw me over her shoulder and carried me down the block like a sack of potatoes. Yeah. That really happened. I'm a cop and fairly low on the totem pole, and the last thing I need is for any of my superiors or, God forbid, my peers,

to see me getting hauled down the street by an Amazon woman, my cousin Trish, knew from the gym and thought would be perfect for me. If I sound bitter, it's because I am. And it isn't just the women. The whole town of Plank, Illinois, has been going to hell lately. First, the cats start disappearing. Twenty total. The only traces we found were a few bloody collars and a scattering of bones picked clean in backyard bushes.

Then, the kids. We've lost five so far. Five kids who went to school or the park or simply walked out the front. front door their homes to vanish into thin air. I'm grateful we haven't found any bones or anything else. But where the hell are they? Today I was shamefully relieved that the lightest disappearance to cross my desk wasn't a local kid, but a 20-something waitress whose roommates emailed me dozens of pictures of Barbara

Holmes, the blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman with a butterfly tattoo on her ankle, who left for work two nights ago, and never came home. I'm thinking about the recent detour my neighborhood has taken down the stairway to hell while I wait for Dina. Tonight's blind date is another friend of a friend. We've texted a few times, and she seems normal. Works as a receptionist in a reputable office, likes the Beatles, and lives in an apartment only a few streets away from mine. My friend assures me that the picture Dina sent me is,

is accurate, so I know she's a petite brunette with a friendly smile, not an Amazon with a mustache. And she doesn't have cats. While I sip water from my usual table at the restaurant I've met all the women, I check my phone for the tenth time. And for the tenth time, there are no new messages. Dina is late. The waitress, who knows me by name,

refills my water and asks if I'd like something stronger. She's cute, but I know from past encounter she has a boyfriend, and it's serious enough that she stopped flirting with me the minute I asked about him. I should have found a new place to frequent, but I like being within walking distance of my apartment, so there's never that awkward pause at the curb while my date decides whether or not to get in my car. Not that I've taken any of them home lately, I tell the waitress I'm fine.

She tries not to show it, but she feels sorry for me because it's obvious I've been stood up. I don't know what's worse, picking cat hair off my tongue or drinking a whole decanter of water waiting for Dina and having to pee before I leave alone. The waitress walks away and I'm about to text my friend something spiteful since Dina bailed on me when my phone buzzes in my hand. Be there in five. Dina doesn't ask if I'm still waiting, 20 minutes after our date was supposed to start, or apologize or even give me a reason why she's late.

I'm annoyed, but also relieved, and I wave the waitress back over and ask for two glasses of red wine. She gives me a knowing smile that I hope Dina will wipe off her face before the waitress walks away with a nod. The wine is on the table. I've taken a few sips, and the minutes pass. I'm officially pissed and about to leave a 20 on the table and just walk the fuck out when the most beautiful woman I've ever seen strides through the front doors.

I stop, half-standing, as she looks around like she's looking for someone. Then she sees me, and she smiles. and it's the smile of an angel or a devil or something equally wonderful and terrifying because she's smiling at me like she knows me and she's walking over to my table. I stand the rest of the way as she apologizes for being late and says I look exactly like my picture.

Nothing but a few stuttered syllables make it out of my mouth and she smiles wider and sits in front of the second glass of wine that I've downed between minutes eight and ten when I was sure Dina wasn't coming. You look. I stop. My gaze trailing over the siren's bright red hair tumbling over both shoulders

and the breasts stressing the seams of a skin-tight black dress. She's easily the most beautiful creature I've ever seen. You look nothing like your picture, I finally say. Her cherry red lips form a pout, and she asks if I can forgive her for that too. Short of finding out she's a serial killer, I'd forgive this woman of anything, and maybe even that.

The waitress returns and is visibly surprised. Not only that a woman actually showed up, but that this woman is sitting with me and hasn't taken one look at my completely average brown hair, completely average build, and completely average height, and turned on her bright red hair, and ran out.

Dina reaches a finger into the wine glass in front of her and scrapes it along the bottom, coming up with a drop of red wine that she licks off the tip of her finger before telling the waitress that we need two glasses of the same and make it quick because she owes me a few more apologies. When we're alone, my date has a confession. She's not Dina, as if I didn't know. Her name is Nikki. Dina is a friend who agreed to help her out.

I ask why, and she gestures to her body, her breasts nearly resting on the table, the creamy skin of her flawless neck, those lips that turn up in a tentative smile as if I might refuse her. Me, the loser gaping like one of those goddamn dogs in a cartoon with my tongue rolled out on the white tablecloth. This woman, this siren,

who could have any man crawling on his hands and knees to worship her, and I want to. I want to worship her with my whole body, my soul. We sip wine and order dinner. I usually get the chicken roulette, but Nikki orders veal, extra, extra rare. And I know chicken isn't the kind of food her lover would eat, so I order the steak, medium rare, and marvel. at the way her mouth savors every tender bite, as if it's the most satisfying meal she's ever eaten, before mopping the young blood off her plate with a dinner roll. A dribble of pink slips from the corner of her mouth, and for the briefest moment I stopped fantasizing about what else she could do with those lips,

and wonder what kind of a woman actually enjoys the taste of blood. It's a small thing, not cat hair in my mouth or a mustache, But enough to give me pause until she flicks her gaze up to mine. And those emerald eyes say bedroom. So I gently wipe the trickle of pink off her chin with my knuckles and decide that I'd offer up my own vein if she wanted a drink. And I shake the thought away. I've seen too much this summer.

It's no wonder the macabre is only a breath away, even in the company of a goddess like Nikki. A goddess, I realize. That's what she is And the goddess Says she wants to take me home Not to my home But to hers

She asks almost shyly If I'll come As if I would do the gentlemanly thing And refuse Maybe I should But I won't I can't And that smile

Changes from shy To something wicked That makes me feel like prey We're a few blocks from the restaurant when a car alarm sounds in the distance. She stops and abruptly faces me with another confession. I'm waiting for her to tell me she's actually married or used to be a man or really is a serial killer. So I try to lighten the mood by asking, what? Do you have a hundred cats or something?

Her eyes widen in disgust. She hates cats. Actually, this latest condition is. Confession is that she has dogs, six of them, in a one-bedroom apartment. I wonder if they're Chihuahuas or Pomeranians, and she laughs and tells me they're nothing so domestic. Nikki touches my arm and asks if I'm mad, and my relief must show on my face because her porcelain cheeks flush with her smile.

She laces her fingers with mine, and we continue walking, talking easily, enjoying. the late summer evening. Another car alarm sounds from somewhere down the block. I think I hear breaking glass and a scream, and I'm about to ask if she heard it too when Nikki stops and surprises me with a kiss. The feel of her soft but insistent lips stifles any questions, any possible objections, her tongue sweeping away the last of my common sense from the corners of my mouth. No one has ever kissed me like that before. I'm dizzy when we part. Her taste lingering on my tongue and in my lungs is if I've taken a breath from her body, and it's sweet and a little smoky, and reminds me of cherry pipe tobacco. I think I hear more glass-breaking. There's definitely

shouting from somewhere behind us. In the back of my mind, behind the cherry tobacco smoke, I know I should call it in. I'm still a cop, even if I'm not on duty. Something is happening, but I don't know what. And Nikki isn't worried. And if she's not worried, then neither am I. And I let her pull me the rest of the way to her apartment. It's fully dark outside when we arrive.

The light outside her apartment building is burned out, and it takes a beat to realize that my shoes are crunching on glass. from the shattered front door. It's too dark to be sure, but I think I see drops and smears of blood in some of the glass shards and a cement walkway beneath them. I pull her back to keep her safe from the mess.

And as I reach for my phone to call the station, I ask if her apartment was like this when she left. She stops my hand before I make the call and tells me her dogs must have gotten out while she was gone. Your dogs did this, I ask. What the hell kinds of dogs would break through a window pane? I glance around the front yard and don't notice anything unusual beyond the broken glass and smeared blood we're standing on. All the windows in the two-story apartment complex are dark,

except for a faint yellow glow in one of the windows on the second floor. Nikki guides me by the wrist through the broken door into what I assume is a little. blackened foyer. I lift my phone to turn on the flashlight and look at the screen for the first time since we left the restaurant. No, I can't be right. I have 17 unread messages and eight missed calls. Holy shit, Nikki, I start to say, and she lowers my phone and urges me forward. She tells me to stay close to her, apologizing for the lights that are out and the smell in the stairwell, promising she'll explain when we get to her apartment upstairs. My foot slips on the bottom step, and Nikki helps steady my right arm, while my other

reaches out for the wall I can't see on my left. I choke on a coppery, meaty smell, and I think I might vomit. For a moment, I remember the veal blood dripping down Nikki's chin. What is this, I force out, swallowing my nausea and climbing up another step with Nikki's help. It's my neighbors, she says with a sigh. They're absolute pigs. This is very wrong. Every instinct, police and otherwise, is screaming at me that I don't want to be here. It isn't just the slippery stairs underneath my feet, the squishy pieces of something I occasionally step on, the harder pieces that crack beneath my shoes, the stench, or the messages on my phone I haven't checked, more than I'd get in a week if things weren't going to hell.

It's a fuzziness in my head that I don't think is the wine. Her kiss still lingers on my mouth, so I follow Nikki, who leads me through. the dark, her own heels crunching and squishing on each stare until we reach the top. Her apartment door is open. It's mostly dark inside, but there's a light from somewhere in the back, and I think I can see. I hear the crack of my skull and feel the pain at the back of my head for a split second before the world goes black. My neck aches from the weight of my head, lolling from side to side. There's a sharp, stabbing pain at the back of my head and a dull throb through the rest. When I peel my heavy eyelids open, I wish I didn't. The first thing I see is a severed leg

with a butterfly tattoo on the ankle. Tonight's steak and mashed potatoes roll up in my throat and out my mouth in a brown slurry that gets stuck between my teeth and lips. I'm dragging, my tongue through the chunks and spitting it into the wet mess on the front of my collared shirt when I hear someone tisk and say, Such a messy boy. Nikki is standing across the room in the doorway to the kitchen, watching me. I'm momentarily mortified by what I must look like covered in vomit, and I try lifting my hands to wipe it off,

only to find my wrists bound with rope to the arms of a wooden chair. What the hell? I try to stand, but my ankles are tied to the legs of the chair, and my attention shoots to Nikki, who is smiling softly, holding a red rag in her hand. She's still wearing the black dress from dinner, still so goddamn beautiful. I almost forget I'm tied up,

or that I puked all over myself, or that the reason I puked is the severed limb on the floor that looks as if something with very sharp teeth as chewed it from the body it belonged to. Barbara's body, Barbie, her friends called her, Barbie with the butterfly tattoo. Nikki pushes off the doorframe and kneels in front of me. I tense as she runs the damp rag along my chin, talking as she gently, almost lovingly collects the vomit and begins unbuttoning my soiled shirt. She should have cleaned before she met me, but she was already running late.

Yes, that's a leg on the floor. She has six dogs, or did I forget? Six dogs, I whisper. I'm staring at the limb, at the bone coming out the top of the mangled flesh, when Nikki uses the tip of a crimson fingernail to cut a strip in my shirt down the right arm, then the left, so the whole thing falls away and doesn't disturb the ropes on my wrists. She presses a warm kiss to my collarbone. I flush at the contact and feel a rush of calm through my body.

She's smiling at me in a way that is both sympathetic and sexy, and I'm torn between terror at being half naked and bound and wishing she'd kiss my lips again. How, I breathe. Nothing else comes out. She collects the leg and round the leg. the corner into the next room. In her absence, I start feeling like myself again. Terror, as it should, seeps in. I pull up the ropes on my wrists until they burn red marks into my skin, knowing I'll bleed

long before they break. I save my energy and swallow a few deep breaths. I need to stay calm, real calm, clear calm, not whatever fuzziness I feel when Nikki gets close, and I forget that I'm in trouble. Because that's what this is. A whole fucking lot of trouble. But I'm not helpless. Even bound to a damn chair? I'm not helpless. I'm a cop, damn it. And I have training and skills that are going to save my life today. Once I've settled my breathing and relaxed my hands from their white-knuckled grip on the armrests, I look around. I'm in a living room or what is left of one. There's a Beatles poster on the wall beside a couch that has been torn to shreds by something with deep claws. The ivory chair next to it is stained brown from whatever is bled out there,

and end tables on its side, glass from a shattered lamp underneath. it. The TV is hanging off the mount. The screen splintered and bloody as if someone tossed a basketball at it, or a severed head. I closed my eyes and take a few more settling breaths. When I open them again, I clock blood on the floor and walls, on the broken blinds on the window behind me. On the ceiling, the ceiling. I'm sweating, despite being shirtless. I'm getting dizzy, trying to understand the blood

and what I think is a massive paw print on the carpet. But it can't be. The goddamn thing is bigger than my head. I jump when Nikki comes back from the kitchen, muttering about her dogs roughing up the place. I should be scared that she's returned, and I am, but I'm also glad to see her. Like her smile

Relief some of the tension in my body And I wonder if Things aren't as bad as they seem What the fuck happened here? Who are you? Really? I ask Niki kneels in front of me again And rests her arms on my legs I should cower away from her

Everything in me, every cop part of me Screams that this is wrong But her touch settles the shaking in my veins, the quaking in my body. She smiles. Then she lays it out for me. The truth. It was never a date.

Part of me shrivels and dies when she admits it. No, she wants me. She chose me to help her with her dogs. I mean to protest. Tell her no, or she's crazy, or, Something. But nothing comes out of my mouth. Not even after she tells me it's time to meet the hounds. She stands and presses a kiss to my lips. I kiss her back because I have to. I need to. And her breath on my tongue gives me strength and courage. And I know I'll do anything for this woman.

She smiles again like she knows it and runs her nails over the wrong. ropes that fall away from my wrists and ankles. A tiny, unaffected part of my brain is throwing a tantrum, begging me to subdue her or grab the broken end table and smash it over her head to give me a chance to run. But instead, I lace my fingers with hers, ignore the pounding in my skull from where she hit me earlier, and let her lead me through a kitchen and down a dark hallway,

toward the sounds of snarling that gets louder as we approach the end. Nikki opens a door and ushers me inside what used to be a bedroom. Now it's a kennel. Instead of crates, six giant iron barred cages take up one side of the room, three on the bottom, three on the top. Two cages on the bottom are empty. The iron bars on one have been twisted and pried apart by something, impossibly strong. The other's door simply sits open, as if unlatched from the outside.

It was the twins who got out, she tells me. They used to be conjoined, even though they've been separated for some time now. They do everything together, including escape. My eyes trail from the empty cages to the beasts still locked behind the iron bars, and even the traces of Nikki's last kiss don't quell the terror that erupts in my chest. Something warm runs down my legs. It isn't just the ripped pieces of flesh littering the floor or the blood or the stench. God, the smell. That makes me piss myself.

It's the saliva dripping from gaping mouths. Pink-stained canines gleaming in wicked smiles. Glowing red eyes, staring out through the bars at me, through me. As the four remaining hounds take me in, she calls them marvelous, intelligent, cunning, absolutely lethal. Tension brackets her mouth,

and for the first time since we met, she looks nervous, afraid even. It's her boss, she tells me. He can't know that she doesn't have all the dogs under her control. Boss, I whisper. I drag my gaze away from the cages, and my attention snags on a picture on the wall. It brings me back to myself long enough to narrow my eyes and ask,

Dina? Nikki notices the cock-eyed picture of the sweet receptionist with curly brown hair hanging on the wall above where Dina's bed used to be. This was Dina's apartment. She takes my hand, sending a jolt. through my body and my head spinning back to her lovely face. The tiny part of my brain still throwing a tantrum remembers the walk to this apartment,

the breaking glass and car alarms and screams. Remembers the missed calls and messages on the phone Nikki must have taken since it's not in my pocket. Remembers Dina and wonders if it's her body I smell, her entrails littering the bottom of the cages. Two of these dogs? are loose in my neighborhood? I'm trying not to shit myself, since that's the only thing I haven't done, as Nikki introduces me to her hounds.

If Fila, the leader, accepts me, they'll all follow my commands, our commands, and it will be our job to keep them contained until it's time to let them out. Let them out, I shriek. Why would we do that? Two got out already. What if they're killing people? Nikki puts her hands on the sides of my face and forces me to stare into her bright green eyes.

Some of the hysteria that has been rising in my body ebbs back down. I can taste her smoky breath on my tongue. I need more, and I lean in for a kiss, but she's already pulling me to the cages, pointing at the beast in the top right corner. Phila, the oldest, is named after her father, Mephistopheles. None of the hounds have fur, not in the traditional sense at least. The one on the bottom is covered in spikes that look like porcupine quills, only thicker, longer, sharper.

The two others on top are covered in scales, one mainly black, the other in iridescent green. But Phila, the leader of the pack, is on fire. Her skin is charred and cracked, a red pulsing light emanating from within her body. Flames roll off her in elegant waves, smoke curling and black tendrils around her legs, between the claws at the end of her massive paws, through razor-sharp teeth with saliva that sizzles on the front floor of her cage.

Nikki introduces me to the hound like it's an actual person. Fila chuffs, a puff of smoke and more boiling saliva spurting from her mouth. The other dogs chuff in unison, a snarling, a beastly chorus of feigned disapproval. Nikki tenses, but only for a moment, before she coos gently to the dogs in a language I don't understand. feel a pause at the iron bars, and Nikki reaches inside to stroke the hounds burning flesh. With her other hand, she takes mine. I see the string of what looks like intestines strung between two of the upper cages, as if the hounds have been fighting over the meat.

I smell the blood, bile and excrement from the chunks of body that haven't made it to the bellies of these beasts yet. horror runs bone deep in my body, and still I let Nikki bring my hand to feel his nose for the creature to sniff. The hound blows a puff of smoke from her snout that singes my palm and I try to pull away, but Nikki holds tight and urges Fila to the edge of the cage. Through the bars, the hound paws at the floor,

fighting it like a stubborn child, before begrudgingly smelling my fingers. I wait, wondering if she'll bite or unleash a breath full of fire, while Nikki strokes feel his face and speak softly in that strange language again, until the hound grunts and lays her head between her paws and a gesture, even I recognize his submission. Nikki turns to me with her widest smile yet, and rewards me with a kiss. I'd barely return.

and tells me it's time to go find the twins. We're walking away from the cages when a sound punches through the room, and the closet door buckles from the inside. Nikki swears and grabs a bloodied baseball bat from beside the closet doors, then yanks them open. From where I'm standing, I see a sliver of bare leg kicking out, then a spray of curly brown hair, as the bat hits something hard with a dull thunk.

The leg stops kicking, and Nikki uses her foot to push the body back inside the closet so she can close the door again. I don't know why, after everything else, that it's this thunk, the sound of a bat crackling against the side of a skull that breaks the spell that gives the tantruming part of my brain agency to take over again. But it does, and I feel my own head throbbing, with a renewed vigor as I appraised the bloody bat, the brown hair matted to the wood, and I know it's poor Dina in that closet, dead or dying because of me.

The escaped hounds are killing and I haven't been out there helping my fellow officers, so every death is on my hands too. In this flash of clarity outside of Nikki's influence, I know what I need to do. This is still a very real, now very annoyed part of me that follows at her heels because I'm desperate for more of her. And I try to ignore it. I try to focus on the thunk that cleared my head, the throbbing in my skull, the carnage in the kitchen. I didn't realize it before. Passing through with Nikki, I hadn't seen.

There isn't a surface that hasn't been either ravaged by the hounds or smeared in the brightest blood. Chunks of flesh and twisted bones of all sizes are scattered around the room. The amount of blood pooled beneath the round kitchen table tells me that's where Barbie bled out while Fila and her brood ripped the poor woman apart. Dina isn't far behind. I'm thinking about the girl in the closet when I kick something that clatters across the floor. Nikki is in front of me, talking, something about me getting dressed and heading out on the hunt for the twins. I'm barely listening as I reached down for the bone shard I just kicked, a femur. I don't dwell on how much force it must have taken to crack it in half. Having seen the hounds myself, I know they are capable of much worse.

The part of my brain that is desperate for Nikki's affection is screaming. It's so loud, and I'm afraid she can hear it, and she'll turn and catch me before I have a chance to do this. With the bone in my fist, I spot my cell phone on the counter. I hadn't noticed that before either. It buzzes with another new message. She's reaching for my phone when I slam the bone shard through the back of her neck. Nikki's body shudders. Her hands go to her throat when she stumbles in a clumsy circle to look at me.

She's clutching the bone protruding through her skin. Her fingers already red with the blood flowing from the wound. I know my eyes are as wide as hers, and part of me is just as confused by what I've done. But her dizzying effect on me is slipping away because she's slipping away. Her grip on my body and soul finally loosening. Blood spurts out of her mouth and onto my face. Then she falls to the floor. Still in that black dress and heels, still stunning with that bright red hair pulled around her,

even as her own blood mixes with it, matting it to the linoleum. I'm stepping around her, reaching for my phone, when the hounds start to growl. I ignore the dozens of messages and missed calls and dial the precinct directly. I tell the dispatcher who I am, and they demand to know where I've been. I cut them off, telling them I need an ambulance. I turn and leave Nikki on the floor. She's gurgling, fighting for life as the blood pours out of her mouth and the wound in her neck that I know she can't come back from.

There is one woman in this house I hope to save, so I stalk back down the hall to where the dogs are losing their fucking minds, pawing and clawing and snarling, chewing at the iron bars that won't hold for long. I hope like hell I have enough time to get Dina out of here. I throw open the closet door and see her slumped on the floor. Her eyes are open and glazed. Her curly brown hair crusted with old blood,

while new blood seeps from the wound down the side of her face. Fuck! I spit. I can barely hear the dispatcher's voice on the other end of the line over the snarling in the cages and the roaring in my own head. Fila blows a bolt of fire from her mouth. She can't reach us from where she's caged, but I shield Dina from the flames anyway, then work an arm underneath her shoulders and hoist her to her feet.

I get the phone back up to my ear and ask the dispatcher about the ambulance, but she's screaming. I think I recognize the voice, but I've never heard Officer Hale losing her shit like this. Over the snarling behind me, I make out a fraction of what she's saying. No ambulances, animal attacks, all boots on the ground. Where am I? Hell has broken loose in plank.

Help isn't coming. I hauled Dina out of the bedroom door with a quick glance at Fila, who is bending one of the iron bars that she's heated so intensely with her own internal fire that it glows bright orange between her teeth. "'Shit! Shit!' I scream. "'Dena's feet slip and drag and through the blood on the kitchen floor. By some terrible turn of luck, Nikki is still gurgling. Dina whimpers, nestling her battered head into the crook of my neck.

I say something to calm her and limp us around Nikki's prone form to the living room. As quickly and as gently as I can, I lowered Dina to the floor beside the front door and put the phone back up to my ear. Listen, I say. There are four more of those creatures locked up in this apartment. They're caged, but in a couple minutes, they're going to be free and out on the streets. Do you hear me?

Six total. Six fucking hellhounds. These aren't dogs. We need firepower. Anything that packs a punch if we hope to put them down. I'm going to hang up and share my location with you. Minutes hail. We have fucking minutes.

I end the call on whatever else dispatch is asking and press a few more buttons to send the precinct to my location. Then I pocket the phone and gingerly work my arms around Dina. I've forgotten about the light being out until we hit the landing and almost toppled down the pitch black stairwell. Dina whimpers again and her fingers curl into my skin. She's trying to form words and I realize I've brought her from one horror into another. Quickly, I tell her who I am, and I don't know if she recognizes my name. It might have been Nikki texting me the whole time, and then I'm a cop, and it's going to be okay. It feels like I'm lying, but it's enough to draw her nails out of my chest.

I bring us a step further into the dark and feel her press into my side. Our feet crunch on whatever is covering the steps, and I've forgotten about that too. Hold on, hold on, I say, and we pause while I put my phone out and turn on the flashlight. Dina lets out a horrified scream that probably splits her already broken skull. The light shakes in my trembling hand as it illuminates the stairwell that would have been better left in the dark. The stairs are covered in blood and bones, severed limbs, sticky organs. people, many, many people. I walked up these stairs earlier, felt the bones cracking under my weight, shoes slipping in gore.

It's my neighbors, Nicky had said. They're absolute pigs. I pulled Dina tighter against my side. Her trembling body and the muffled snarls behind us snapped me from horror and into brutal determination to get us out before we end up like the other resident. in the apartment complex that were dragged from their homes by the twins and ripped to shreds on the very steps that Dina and I begin to descend. Our shoes squish and slip on intestinal ropes, crack on small bones that might have come from hands or toes or something smaller. I push an intact rib cage aside with the tip of my toe and Dina's breath catches as it clatters down the steps. We're halfway down now, and the sounds of the hounds are being drowned out by sirens and car alarms.

Breaking glass and agonizing screams. We need a plan. My car is parked at my apartment a few blocks away, my gun in the safe beside my bed. If this were the movies, I'd be able to make a call and have this place fire bombed. I'm confident no one is alive inside anyway, except for the movie. or maybe Nikki who just won't fucking die. But this isn't the movies. This is Plank.

We don't have an armed helicopter or access to bombs or even high-powered weapons. This whole place will fall before the National Guard or anyone with sufficient power can step in. Doesn't matter, I suppose, because the first thing I need to do, the only thing is get Dina to a high. hospital. She's walking, but the wound on her head is severe and still dripping blood onto her face and my chest. She slips on an organ, something that squishes under her feet and sends her off balance.

I'm trying to steady her when my own feet slip, and I go down on my ass into the gore. She screams and then cries, not in pain, but in pure horror at the blood and guts that now cover her hands and arms. I choke back vomit and bile when I pull us back to our feet, promising her, lying to her, over and over, that it's okay. We're okay. We're going to make it. She's hysterical, but we stumbled on the last of the steps to the front door. I push aside the metal frame and our bloody shoes crunch on the broken glass as we finally make it out onto the landing and into a street that's on fire. Sirens sound from every direction. The town's two fire trucks blare from opposite ends of the road, attending to separate fires. A nearby apartment complex

is fully engulfed in flames. I bring Dina to the sidewalk and appraise the hysteria that surrounds us. People running, cars careening through yards since the road is blocked by other cars that tried to leave and failed. Bodies. Some hole. Some in pieces. None quite in the state of carnage that we encountered in the stairwell. There are police cars, too. Blue and red lights flashed down the block. Two blocks north, a block south, everywhere.

They've all come, and they've all been calling me. An unholy sound suddenly pierces the night. An ancient howling from down the block, and the apartment behind us that rattles my eardrums, vibrates my veins, and shakes the ground beneath my feet. I know then that Nikki is dead. The hounds are howling and mourning of their caretaker. A promise that we humans will suffer. And I believe them.

We've got to go, I muttered to Dina. I try pulling her along, but she's frozen. her bloody head looking at something behind us. I hear the chuffing and know what it is before I turn around. Fila, in all her horrific glory, is standing on the broken glass outside the front door. The molten fire beneath her skin churns like the depths of hell itself, and I understand then truly what she is and where she came from.

Vila isn't the worst thing. Coming out of the dark behind her, bones still protruding from her throat, is Nikki. There's blood in her hair, on her chin, and down the front of her dress. She's still beautiful. I hate myself for thinking it, but there's a part of me that is still ensnared by the enrapturing demon. She rips the bone from her throat with a snarl and tosses it to the ground. ground. The other three hounds emerged from the shadows to surround Nikki and Fila. Dina's grip tightens on my arm. She understands at the same time that I do. We are going to die.

Did you really think you could stop me? Nikki says. I can't take my eyes off the hole in her neck. Can't fathom how she's alive and talking to me in spite of it. It wasn't her death that set the hounds howling. It was her rebirth. You could have had a front row seat, she says. My hounds are here to usher in the end. The end of what, I breathe. Nikki runs her fingers along Fila's blackened skin, and the hound responds with a burst of fire from between her teeth.

With a casual but pointed flick of her hand, all four hounds push off the ground and sprint for me and Dina. There's nowhere to go, so I put my arms around her to shield her from the first blow. The last thing I hear before they overtake us is Nikki's fatal promise. The end of life as you know it. And the beginning of hell on earth. For our second story this evening, desperate to heal the right. Running injury, a man visits a masseuse whose methods go far beyond muscle work.

Creepy presents. Deep Tissue Massage. Written by Vincent Vermoulin and narrated by Jimmy Ferrer. My life is a stolen shopping cart. Basket's busted. Handles bent. One wheel doesn't spin and there's a plastic bag pinched between the grates. gasping in the wind.

Someone used to live out of it. Used to push it around the city. Now it sits alone on a hill. The only reason it hasn't reached the bottom, ironically, is because that broken wheel that probably caused it to be abandoned in the first place. But it's only a matter of time. After all, who's going to push it back up? The train shutters and I sway.

into the man next to me. Sorry, I say. He doesn't look up from the newspaper in his lab. By the time I turned back to the window, the shopping cart has passed out of sight. I'm left staring at my plain, glum reflection. Where to begin? With my childhood. I could tell you about my parents.

It wouldn't take long, seeing as they were never home. No. How about my job? I could tell you about my career as a financial analyst. Same position at the same desk, with the same salary that I've held since I graduated from university a decade ago. No, not that either. Running? Now there's a possibility.

I could tell you that I've run 10 kilometers six days a week, every day since university. I could describe how it calms me, how it resets all the little chemicals inside my brain. But no. Begin, I think, with my wife. The first time I saw her, I was rendered mute by her beauty. She had long legs, thin wrists, and a smile like a light bulb in a dark room. She was wearing a short skirt. an oversized sweater.

Her hair was tied into pigtails. She asked me a question and repeated it three times, I think, before I managed a response. And then it was probably unintelligible. We got married two years later. She gave my life meaning. The light of her smile gave me the strength to poke through the hard crust of my childhood and grow and flourish and blossom. So when she asked for a divorce, I withered. It was all very matter of fact.

I came home from work she served dinner and over a steaming bowl of Odin. She told me that she didn't love me anymore. She had been having an affair. She said for months now. She was surprised that I hadn't noticed. I asked what she wanted to do next. And she informed me that she had already packed up her possessions. She had used one of my suitcases, and she hoped I didn't mind.

I said I didn't. She cleaned the dishes, and she left. That was months ago. I haven't seen her since. I felt depressed, shocked, depressed, sicken, depressed, angry, and then depressed. But I managed by running. Because if I ran long enough, I ran hard enough.

The memories of her, of us fell behind. And sometimes they wouldn't catch up again until hours later. And that was the only piece I knew for weeks, enough to sleep, if not to smile. But I must have run too hard or too long because I injured my hamstring. What started as a gentle ache five days ago was blossomed to a nerve-wrenching twinge. I can't even walk on it without limping and gasping. I phoned my doctor, but he's away. I won't see me for a month.

I can't wait a month. I need something now. If I can't run, I can't go on. This black cloud in my brain that I've known since childhood will settle, suffocating my every emotion until I don't feel anything at all except cold, bottomless. misery. No, I need a masseuse or that moment. A strangest thing happens, very instant. The very one that I think of the word masseuse. I see it. On the border of a man's newspaper beside me, and add deep tissue massage, works miracles. Call for an appointment. 033257-017017.

There's no price. There's no name. Just the phone number. I fumble through my pockets for a pen and paper but come up empty-handed. Excuse me, I asked the man. Would you mind if I ripped out that ad? That one right there. The massage.

He only stares. His eyes are sunken. And his pupils aren't centered quite right. Never mind, I say, and aim to memorize the number instead. muttering it under my breath. When the train stops, I hobbled to the nearest payphone. The tone rings once, twice. A woman answers.

I ask about the advertisement I saw on the paper, trying to keep my voice steady. I even explain the problem with the hamstring, an injury that's worsened. And how I thought she might be able to help. There's silence on the other end. Hesitation. I press further, asking if she treats injuries. Still no reply. Then I start to ramble.

I tell her about the doctor how he's booked for weeks, how I need to run again. Soon. That I'm desperate. A pause. Then one word. Midnight. I blink. I'm sure I heard that correctly.

I start to ask about early. about earlier availability, mentioning my early shift in the morning. But the answer is final. Just, no, I wait. I listen to my breath, still rampant after the walk from the train to the payphone, I say. She recites in her dress and hangs up. I hold the empty phone for several seconds. Slowly, I place it back into its cradle. On the way home, I stop at a food truck for dinner. I rat down the address on the back of my receipt. I shower, I watch a movie.

Shortly before 11 o'clock, I dress and leave. The address is Ueno on the other side of Tokyo. And requires three separate transfers. When I arrive, I'm sure that I've made a mistake. It's a convenience store. A woman sitting behind the counter. She stares at me as I enter. Uh, is this the correct address for the masseuse?

I ask. She doesn't blink as she raises a finger to point to the back of the store. I walked down the aisle, passing between shelves of bright potato chips and fridges of beer and milk. The luminescent lights flicker. In the corner stands a small door. It's half a hit shorter than me. and held shut by a hook and eyelash. Employees only is scrawled across the front of a strip of duct tape.

I look back at the woman behind the counter, she nods. I popped the latch and the door swings open into a spiral staircase. Once again, I look at the woman behind the counter. Once again, she nods. As I descend, it occurs to me that this is a bad idea. No matter the circumstances, it's not wise to enter the basement of an unknown building. I am reassured, however, by the lady at the bottom. Not because she's welcoming.

She stares at me like the man on the train and the woman behind the counter. But because she's short and because she's frail, her skin appears so thin that I think it might tear like newspaper if she twists the wrong way. She attacks me. I'm confident I can win in a fight. She welcomes me with a flat expression, not confirming anything allowed, but I know I'm in the right place.

The space is strange, concrete underfoot, walls obscured by thick red drapes, a single light bulb dangles overhead, flickering faintly, the kind that needs a pole chain to switch on or off. The air is sharp with an unfamiliar scent.

In the middle of it all sits a massage table next to an old tool chest. She gestures towards the table. I hesitate, but then I begin undressing. First my shoes, my pants, and then carefully unbutton my shirt. I fold everything neatly, unsure where to place the pile. She offers no suggestion. So I set it down beside the table, close enough to reach if needed. My gaze drifts to the tool chest, and curiosity rises.

I ask about it casually, expecting a dry joke in response, but there's no levity in her face, only the steady calm of someone with a purpose. She instructs me silently with another gesture. I climb onto the table and lower my face in her face. of the cradle. The world narrows to a single patch of cold cement, gray and scratched, like a small window into a darker universe. It's my left hamstring, I say. Like I mentioned on the phone, I can't run with it. And how? She wraps a hand around my leg just above my knee. How long has it been like this? About a week.

She grips my leg again. Her motions firm and clinical. The pain flares as she probes the muscle just above my knee. She seems to assess the damage through touch alone, hands moving deliberately, measuring resistance. Her verdict is simple and certain. She can fix it. I try to lift my head in surprise,

but she presses it back down with a firm palm. Obedient. I let it rest again in the ground. cradle. The kneading begins. Her fingers work deeper now, slow and strong. Her muttering is almost to herself. Something about tension. I breathe through it, discomfort sharp and rhythmic. My eyes trace the blemishes in the concrete. Each scratch a tiny constellation. I wonder what caused them. I wonder what else this place has seen. A pause.

And then pressure again, heavier than before. I brace myself. If this pain is the path back to running, I'll take it, whatever it takes. She laughs. I haven't seen her smile, and now I've made her laugh. I can't imagine what's so funny. I turn without thinking and she presses my head back into the cradle again. Right.

She digs her elbow into my hamstrue. and I gasp. It feels awful. Her elbow rolls back and forth, squeezing my leg like a chef with a rolling pan. How such a small woman can produce so much force beyond me? She examines the leg with clinical detachment, murmuring something about deep knots. Muscles clumped and twisted in a way she rarely encounters. What can we do?

I ask. Her silence stretches before she finally makes a decision. There's another technique, she states. What's the problem? Let's do it. It's one she's confident in, though it's not standard. She needs to go deeper. I brace for more pain, but she doesn't continue right away. Instead, she steps to the tool chest again and retrieves something.

A syringe held delicately in long fingers. She explains that the anesthetic will allow her to bypass my natural tension. It digs straight into the muscle. It won't knock me out, just dull the body's defenses. A simple temporary aid. I hesitate. The idea of a chemical entering my system in a place like this, lit by a single bulb, hidden by rinkered.

red curtains with a sharp tang of unknown things in the air. Feels wrong. But she's right about one thing. I am desperate. So I nod. The vinyl of the cradle squeaking against my forehead. I came here to get my hamstring fixed if this is what is required. Okay, I said.

I still can't see her, but I imagine her smiling. It would be a wide smile, a tall smile, toothy and revealing. One of the tool chest drawer scrapes open then shuts. Her hand reappears. Surringe ready. There's no countdown, no time to prepare. The moment arrives in a blur. She presses the cone into my nostril and fires of liquid with a quick practiced motion.

My reflexes a stutter. I want to flinch to shake her off, but the urge dissolves before I can act on it. The world softens, loses shape. My sense of sound becomes slow and syrupy. I forget why I was tense. Forget almost everything. Then comes a voice, distant, and strangely hollow. Can you feel it?

Gildas. Yes. The masseuse. Her voice sounds distant, and it takes several seconds for the words to organize themselves inside my head. No, I say. There was a movement near the tool chest, a drawer slid open. She was describing something, an incision, long and precise. From the base of the glued to the start of the Achilles. I hear myself say. I felt wrong. I feel a slight tug. No more than a catch of a zipper, really.

She kept talking. Something about needing to go deeper. Past the skin. Needing to feel the muscles directly. As if the surface of my body was just in the way. What do you mean? I say. She treated the skin.

like an obstacle, something to be bypassed in favor of true healing. Her methods were invasive, almost reverent, as if real therapy could only begin beneath the surface. When she reached the inner tissue, an itch bloom deep in my leg, strange and ticklish enough to make me laugh, you're tickling me, I accuse her. I try to live for her. my head, but it's too heavy. She continued working down my leg, hands methodical and clinical. The pressure wasn't painful exactly, but it was too much. Too invasive. Yet I didn't protest.

She told me that I should be grateful after all. She hadn't given up on me. Unlike so many others might have. I am lucky. I agree and I laugh again. Again, I'm struck by a sense of wrongness. Something about this situation is unexpected, but I can't grasp what it is. I asked her to fix my hamstring, and she's fixing my hamstring. So what's the issue? I soon lose interest in thinking so hard and go back to wondering about the stars and the cement.

What constellation is that? It seems like only a minute or two have elapsed when the lady breathes a word done I blink she smiles commenting that it wasn't that bad no I say thing came stillness the procedure if that's what that had been was finished she made a few final adjustments cleaned her tools I felt the tug of a suture a pinch a pull The kind of motion that signals an ending. There was a promise in the air. Something about being able to run again.

My body felt distant, light. As if it might lift away entirely. The room began to dim. The stars in the concrete blinked out, one by one. And then I wake up, I have no idea where I am. The last thing I remember was the convenience store. the staircase, the syringe. Oh, God.

I fling my eyes open. I'm in my bedroom. In my house. What? I tear the sheets away. I twist on to my front and look over my shoulder desperate to see. The back of my leg, from calf to glute, is bisected by a long, straight scar. My head reels.

I don't I can I'm suddenly hot I get out of bed expecting pain but there isn't so much as a twinge I bend I squat

I stretch nothing okay I say to calm myself I grab my coat and walk to the metro I think I see the man with the newspaper on the platform but no

it's someone else I get off at Oeno Hirokoji Station and retrace my steps to the convenience store. There's a young man behind the counter today, and I stalked toward him. Explain yourself, I say. His response was calm but evasive, as if he has no idea what I'm talking about. I press harder, recounting what happened the day before, the massage, the basement, the incision. He stares at me blankly. No recognition.

Around us, customers grow in easy. He shakes his head. In the basement, with the lady, she cut me open and touched my muscles. He shakes his head again, telling me that he has no idea what I'm talking about. But I am upsetting the other customers. I went through that door, I shout. I turn and point to it, just like the woman had. He looks at me very warily, while he informs me that that is a closet, not a door to the basement.

Oh, yeah? I marched towards it. A mom and daughter cower against the fringe. It's not a closet. There's a spiral staircase inside that leads to a basement with red curtains and a tool chest, and I tear open the door. Inside is a mop and a bucket. You see? The man says.

Man behind the counter watches warily, offering help, asking if there's someone he should call, a family member, a doctor. The closet doesn't change. Even after I close and reopen it. My breath shortens. My chest tightens. Nothing makes sense. I walked down the aisle, hesitant.

Then quicker. The man behind the counter is saying something, but I don't hear it. I burst out at the convenience store. Blinking into the sun, I begin to run. For our final story this evening, facing the sins of his past, a man wakes one day to find a spider leg on his lips. Thinking nothing of it, he never could have imagined what would come next. Creepy presents Why are they bringing me their legs

Written by Mr. Michael Squid So here's the backstory I'm a pretty normal child from a lower middle class family I grew up near the woods And there was very little to do As my mom hired a babysitter to watch us Actually the TV

My sister and I were creative In figuring out how to entertain ourselves We'd build forts, draw, play tag, and whatnot. Our house was a bit old, in the attic, where we often played, had a lot of daddy long-legs spiders. We weren't sadists in any other regard, but I was unfortunately guilty of ripping off their legs. I was about five, my sister seven at the time. This was a short phase. We quickly abandoned as we grew up, went to school, then college, and then graduated to the job world.

The rest of my life I've owned a cat and then a dog and have never heard anything except swatting mosquitoes which I think is fair game. I recently moved into an older building and noticed a daddy long-leg spider walking about. I had a flashback of sorts and used a cup to capture and free it outside the apartment. I thought nothing of it until I woke up the next day and used a bathroom.

I was about to brush my teeth when I looked in the mirror and saw a thin black line on my lip. I was taken aback, thinking I had a cut when I realized it was a thin insect leg. I wiped it away and washed my face thoroughly before heading off to work. I was a bit repulsed, but didn't make much of it, as I assumed there was a dead one that I'd rolled onto during the night. A few days passed before I saw another one. I was home unwinding with a beer in the television when I saw it out of the corner of my eye. There was a daddy long-leg spider slowly approaching me.

Something seemed off about it, though. As I bent down to observe it, I saw it was carrying one of its detached hind legs in its mouth. I watched as it slowly approached and then freaked out a little bit, scooping it with a piece of paper and rushing to the apartment entrance to toss it outside. I was a bit grossed out and immediately called the landlord to complain. The exterminator would come the following day, he said, and so I did an extensive search to make sure no bugs were in my room before finally relaxing and falling asleep that night. The next day, I woke to an irritating cough, wiping something off my mouth and bolted to the bathroom.

There were dozens of spider legs in my mouth between my gums and my teeth. I completely lost it. I brushed, rinsed, flossed, mouth washed, and repeated the process over and over, holding back tears and trying to avoid a full-on panic attack. I was half an hour late after cleansing my mouth and calling my landlord expressing the urgency until finally reaching him. After he swore to me that the exterminator was arriving that day, I took a train to work, but achieved very little. I was Googling everything to understand what was going on. on. Researched their behavior, looked on message boards, but found nothing even remotely similar to what was happening to me. I became more confused and was nauseated to the point of skipping lunch.

I called the landlord to verify the exterminator had sprayed before even considering returning to the apartment. I looked everywhere, behind the couch and cupboards and even in the bathtub drain to make sure there were no signs of them. The next day I awoke and was relieved to have nothing anywhere near my face resembling spider legs. I sighed, releasing the ball of stress in my belly, and began making breakfast when I saw them on the floor. Three severed, gnarled, rodent legs were resting in a crimson pool of blood on the floor near the trash cabinet. I flipped out and called the landlord, sending him a photo using my phone camera.

He apologized and promised to come by that day to address it. I called out of work that day, too angry and disturbed, even try to work. I hit up a friend who lived nearby and asked to crash on the couch, explaining that I had an infestation and that they needed to fumigate. After assuring him they were not bedbugs, he agreed, and I headed over to his place later that day. He seemed concerned, looking at me like I was insane. as I told the story.

But I showed him the photo of the rodent limbs, and he was as soon as dumbfounded as me. We shared some beers, and the mood lightened. Eventually I crashed and slept like a baby for the first time in at least a week. I woke up with a stretch, and my heart sank, as I felt something in my mouth. I ran to the bathroom,

and in the mirror was shocked to see white hair as caked on my, lips with blood. I washed it all off and went to knock on my friend's door when I heard some muffled sobbing. I knocked again and called for him and when I heard no answer I pushed open the door to see him hunched over the lifeless body of his cat. Both of its front legs were missing in a mangled mess that implied ripping or biting wounds. I tried to console him and he shouted at me, bulging eyes and raised fists. On the way out I said, I saw him. drops of blood on the floor the couch had slept on. I noticed the trail of blood as well.

I called my parents, who calmed me down a bit, and who suggested seeing someone. I agreed when all of a sudden my stomach began stinging me with a sharp, acute pain. I bought anacids and pepto, advil, and aspirin, but the pain wouldn't subside. Eventually, I hail the cat. to take me to the yard. A few hours later, a visibly concerned nurse informed me there were two entire cat legs

blocking my digestive tract in that I needed surgery. My stress levels were through the roof. I felt I looked like a monster, but I knew I didn't perpetrate this. I imagined the possibility of sleepwalking, but realized this was not the case a day later when recovering from my surgery. The following day after being knocked out and operated on, I woke gagging and dry heaving as something large was being shoved down my throat.

It was a foot. A human foot. The patient sharing my room, a 72-year-old thyroid cancer patient, was shoving his freshly severed, thin and wrinkly leg into my mouth, yellow toenails, flex of blood, and all. I freaked out, shoved him and called the nurse who screamed and vomited immediately upon arrival. I was crying and punching it to me, but he kept hopping forward and trying to feed me his severed leg before passing out from blood loss.

I ripped out my IV drips and stakered out the door. crazed and terrified. Doctors shoved me aside to rush to the man's aid. A man who was now likely dead from his self-mutilation. I was cracking. My world, a terrifying, unending nightmare. And tears were running down my face. Taste of the man's fungal feet were in my mouth,

forcing me to gag as I ran towards a highway. I approached the nearby river and gazed into the black wall. water, nearly considering suicide before finally calming down. This was days ago. But I'm not sure exactly how many as I haven't slept. Delirium is setting in and I fear for what may happen if I slip into unconsciousness. I can think of no explanation and I'm on the verge of breaking down and doing something drastic. Then I saw it, like a neon beacon in the darkness.

Crown fried chicken I'm breaking in and sleeping there tonight it's worth a shot 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 Sherrillike 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.