Creepy - My Child's Skin

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

Written by: David Bennett Black***Narrated by: Nate DuFort***Content warning: child death***Bonus episode: "Here and There" written by: N.G. Lancaster***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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These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents My Child. 's skin, written by David Bennett Black, and narrated by Nate DuFort. The Wake, London, Ontario, Canada. My son is dead, but his skin is right in front of me, lying in the open casket. As lively as when he breathed, the mortician's makeup is a mighty tool. No, this is all my boy, as fresh as last week.

His lungs may still sit, but the insides are no more than meat. The casing is what matters. My wife left last year, but I was too late, both leaving me from the same ailment, me and my hand. Her skin was stiff and rotted once I'd realized what I must do. But not today. Not my boy. Not his fresh skin. Not after I've planned it all out.

I've greeted so many. Their condolences bawled into one as I wait for them to leave us be, as I wait for them to let us start over again. I hope the minivan is cool enough. I did crack the window, but is that enough? The priest comes to me and his words flow through me like light, unaware of the occurrence. I turn from his moving mouth and face. my son, forcing a deceitful tear down my cheek. The jackass will leave me be now. I'm a father mourning, nothing more, nothing less. I close my eyes and picture the church behind me,

hiding from my own thoughts to keep the others at bay from my plan. The stained glass is useless, lighting the room like a failing bulb made by Edison himself. The dark brown pews illuminated by the same. I picture the crowd, all teary-eyed and unaware that my boy wasn't gone forever. Not with me around. I open my eyes and double-check his skin, touching his cheek softly and feeling warmth. The heat of the dozens of bodies in the small hall has warmed my boy, and for that, I thank them all. Soon enough, the skin will walk again. I wait for another hour as the crowd. The crowd. I wait for another hour as the The crowd fades to none, the priest asking if I'm going to eat with the rest of the patrons. I tell him, I need more time with the body, and he buys the lie.

Technically it wasn't a lie. I'd indeed be getting a lot more quality time with my boy in his skin. I'm glad they all left before the meat began to properly decay. So is the other, the one waiting and sleeping. Alone with the flesh of my son, I thank the Lord. that his casket is on wheels and begin my trek. I push him to the door as the creaking wheels are hidden by the tears and talk coming from beside the feeding trough. For an eight-year-old boy, Jesus Christ, is he heavy? Or maybe it's the casket itself. What kind of wood is used for a child's

burial home? The most dense to hold their decay in longer? Do casket builders think of such things? They should. I exit the back. of St. Justin's church and scowl at the cross. His lies so loud. My boy was gone, but not for long. God can wait for his soul. He may have him now, but if the almighty is the ever-growing grass, I am the blade. If he is the jail cell, I am the key. My minivan waits under the lone tree in the lot as I jimmy my eyes back and forth, making sure the coast is clear. I run. I run. the wheels of the casket bumping up and down, the lid cracking open and closed with each step. The smell of the mortician's chemicals follow me, but by the time I'm gone, so will they,

faded to the wind like manure in the country. My vehicles unlocked, the door automatically opening from the press of the button in my hand. Like a rag doll, my son's warm and fresh skin touches my hand as I drag him up and place him in the trunk. next to our tent and other camping gear. On top of it all is his favorite baseball glove, mine below, and two balls ready to be thrown, ready to be caught. Two duffel bags, the one is large and open, the contents hidden from the world as the other is small and light, my clothes for the weekend trip inside, rolled and bound and elastic like a good camper. My boy only has one pair of clothes, but he'll survive. I slid him. I slid,

slam the door and leave the casket, knowing my time will be short to escape. As the dumb and blind eat and belch with wet eyes, I drive, I drive, I drive. Not a long distance to our destination, everyone will believe I went much further. This is the first step of my plan, or is it the second, or third. Either way, I feel it's important to mention. We drive down Bradley Street, matching the limit and hiding in the open. My car is at home. This rental will give us time and using a fake name has given us even more.

With 35 minutes to go, I make sure the permit is tucked in my visor and ready myself for a weekend of father-son bonding. I know the way, but follow the map nevertheless. Its wide paper sprawled across the passenger seat to ensure I don't lose any time with a missed turn. I smell the formaldehyde in my son's veins as my memory kicks in, the night that led to this weekend flashing before my eyes. He shouts, he yells, he threatens to run away, and I meet his threat. I lock him in the closet, the heat glaring through the house. I turn off the air conditioning and break the thermostat, blood trickling down my fist from

the broken plastic to the floor. Gotta wipe that up before the cops come. Gotta make it look like an accident. Gotta make it seem like he locked himself in. I clean the blood and sweep the shards of the thermostat into my hand, placing it in my pocket, ready to be disposed of on the road. He cries and screams, but I know it will get better once he has his new meat. My memory shifts to my wife, her dead eyes on the forest ground staring at me,

wondering why I sent the final blow. I shake my head and forgive myself for failing with her skin, promising to succeed with my sons. Driving the backroads to our sight, I estimate about ten minutes left and turn on the radio, switching from station to station and receiving nothing but static. Thank the Lord. No service means less people, which means less attention. I ask my son if he's ready for a weekend of fun, and the crickets answer for him, possibly even the maggots in his corpse. Then the deep breathing begins,

his new meat waking as I smile for the excitement ahead. Father and son back together at last, or we will be soon enough. Appearance is everything, and I do believe I have the right flesh to fill his casing. The skin, Fangshaw Conservation Area. We drive over the Fanshawn Dam as we enter the park, and I'm reminded of my own childhood,

returned to the ninth grade. My own father brought me here for Bring Your Kid to Work Day, and I got a full tour of the dam. I even got to climb in the no trespassing area to stare at the falls. I promised that, with his new meat, I'll give my son the same experience my own father gifted to me. But now my mind shifts as I slow, looking at the dam's mechanisms and wondering, wondering what would happen if I removed the dam, if I tainted its power and flooded the city, the forest city, London, Ontario, completely covered in water, the stains that will think what I'm doing is wrong, gone from the earth, a city vain enough to name itself after a place with true historical

significance. Maybe they do deserve to swim. Along the dam are hundreds of spiders, mating and creating and webbing while unaware of the rest of the world. In their own orgy of bliss, copulating to pass time, I think of my son and his obsession. The new meat better share the same passion for the creepy crawlies. At least I hope so. I need something to prove him to be worthy of carrying the torch. I returned to the speed limit and exit the dam, heading towards the entrance to the camping area that I'd already checked into this morning.

I grabbed the permit from the visor and flash it to the attendant who dutifully waves me through. We're in, and the meat is ready to fill the skin. Passing the campers in open areas, we head to the back of the park, the radio free zone, and the only sites within the conservation area that provides privacy. The number of campers fades as we venture deeper into the woods, most still wanting the comforts of running water and power. We reach the dense forest and

thin road and I know we're close. The site number is growing closer to our own. Arrival, I park and leave the rental before inspecting the site for past campers garbage. No trace camping, I always say, and I won't camp in a filthy sight. It comes up in spades and I take a deep breath along with a wide smile, ready to work on my boy. I'll still have to wait until morning for the fun and games, but until then, the work has to begin. I set up my tent within minutes, my skills from a lifetime of camping present. As my gear in bags and sun wait in the car being cooled by the open windows, and large pine-given shade. No one will die of heat stroke today, especially not the meat.

Speaking of the devil, next I remove the bags from the rental as my son's empty eyes stare at the sky. One light, I drop the other to the ground from its weight and hit myself in the forehead from the stupidity. Checking the living, I unzip the duffel and inspect the child I have kidnapped, the child matching my own sense. eyes and wait. Still sleeping from the dosage I'd administered, I assume I have another while until he wakes and I get to it. Leaving him in the bag to rest the drugs off, I grab my son's corpse and drag him behind the tent, checking my pocket to make sure I have my fillet knife. Into the bush we go. The child in the bag was a lucky find, for me, but not as parents. I was lurking at the park, looking for someone that matches, looking for proper meat, and there he was. Fiery and chubby,

just like my own boy. They were even the same height. I thought I was going to have to abandon my plan and live alone, learn to accept my wrongs, but this boy gave me hope. Going to the bathroom, I entered the opposite doors as I heard him complain to his parents about his age, about how big boys can use the bathroom alone. After groans in a short argument, he entered alone, and now he sleeps in my carrying bag, ready to give life to my boy.

I wonder what happened to his parents. The newspapers are much too depressing to check, and the televised news is nothing but fodder for ads. I hope they're doing okay. With my boy's veins drained, no blood falls as I slice into his bed. back and smell the chemicals seep from the posthumous wound. I continue, carefully dissecting like a surgeon near retirement, with steady hands and a history of successful procedures.

Then the suture, tight and compressed, holding the skin together again as his rotting meat sticks to the pine needles scattered along the forest floor. I leave the remains to the woods, ready to be devoured by the vultures of the land and carry the skin back, a trophy holding a soul. The eyeless holes in toothless mouth of the flesh suit hang to the ground as I grab a clothes hanger from my bag and stretch the back of the neck wide, placing it deep within. Hanging from the inside of my tent, my boy's skin waits to be worn by another as he yearns to return to me. The meat is dragged to the tent, his sleeping mind drugged and still, placing him beneath his new costume. I click the light off, and the moon brightens the tent, the swaying skin shadow reflecting to all corners.

Drifting to sleep, the sounds of the forest's critters snacking on my son's former meat fills my left ear as my right hears nothing but the new meat's soft breaths. I enter another land, dreaming of what's to come, and wake before the kidnapped. Father, son, fun. He whimpers just like my boy, a good sign. As the drugs leave his system, he slowly wakes and I watch each moment, looking for the glimmer of familiar eyes. The sun fills our tent as both sleeping bags are full, me in one, and my son's skin and the other. his new meat filling the vessel.

From a waking dream to full consciousness, he snaps back into existence and grasps at his new face, the suture holding his new addition tight. He begins to cry, and I finally see that my child has returned to me. I wish him a good morning, but his response is dull. No words flowing, but more tears reminding me of the comfortable past. I reach out to his face and maneuver the new flesh, flattening the forehead and allowing each new eye to see properly. He asks me who I am, and I tell him the truth. I'm his father.

He asks where he is, and I tell him the truth. We are on our yearly camping trip, just him and me. What a dumb kid! How could he forget? We've been planning this for months. even before I killed him the first time. He doesn't come freely, but he will soon enough. I drag his legs from the tent as the skin squishes against his thigh

before slapping back as I force him to stand. I plate his favorite breakfast and deliver the French toast to the picnic table, signaling him to eat. He refuses at first, but I remind him it's his favorite and that not listening to Dad won't end well. He obliges and eats, his salty tears surely souring the taste of my perfect cooking. As he slowly digests, I remind him frequently to continue and that he needs his energy for the day. I ask what he wants to do as I eyeball the canoe on the edge of the sight, but he says nothing,

the only sounds coming from his mouth, chewing in sobs. I decide for us to grab the paddles as he finishes every last bite, something I damn well make sure of. And, off to the water we go. I selected this site for the specific reason of private water access, not wanting any looky-lose to spoil a good father-and-son camping trip. His tears begin to blubber as I lose patience, needing his help to carry the canoe through the bush.

I lose my character and shout, threatening the new meat, promising he will never see his parents again, assuring him of a painful death if he doesn't play along. I feel like an actor breaking during a play, forgetting his lines and making up some bullshit to fill the dead air. A deep breath enters my lungs as I force a smile and inform him again of his new job as my son. I return to character and again enjoy the weekend.

I'm impressed. My boy sure can paddle. I know I taught him, but I also believed the new meat would force me to re-teach, but here he is at full power. Now, if you would only stop the never-ending cries, the constant hyperventilating and the loud fear, does he not know that a father's here to protect his son? I'm here for a reason, and I remind him of that. I decide maybe fishing will cool his jets and grab the pole lying on the canoe's floor and then the box of worms. I begin stabbing the creature, but remember that a good father always teaches his son, and I look his way.

His back facing me as he continues frantically paddling. His golden hair flows in the wind, his perfect strokes, cutting the water like a knife in butter, but he must learn the circle of life as well. I grab his attention and hand him the hook, the worm and my advice as he coweres at the thought. The skin bends around his neck as he looks at me, crimping and freezing like putty as he returns his gaze to the front, ignoring my request. My ask turns into a demand as I raise my voice before my son decides maybe learning is a good task for the day. He follows my direction and stabs the worm with the sharp brass hook and winces at the sight. His eyes convey the pain of the bait, but he mustn't be that hurt.

My boy loves fishing and no worm has ever and will ever upset him. Shit and guts fall to his hand as he drops the hook and I shout, my voice echoing through the lake like a wolfmother barking at their young. His tears grow stronger as I grow more angry, demanding him to cast the rod like the son of mine he is. The tranquility of the water and act of fishing swims into my blood from the lake as I begin to love again, both my boy and the woods. No one, not even myself, can take him from me again. I watch a group of Canadian geese swim across the lake, curious about the smell coming from our canoe.

They grow closer and I begin to smile, loving that I was able to enjoy this up-close and personal moment in nature with my son. Now, only if he wasn't acting like a teenager and actually had some fun out, here. He's only eight. When did he get such an attitude? The geese leave us be as I paddle us further, my boy holding the line in the water as we move. I regale him with memories of my youth and fishing with his grandfather, but he keeps his gaze away from me, his twisted skin growing more obscured on his body by the moment. I'll have to fix his flesh once we get back to the sight. The boy needs a shower, too. He smells like a goddamn core. He smells like a goddamn core. Then the shouts begin, coming from the meat within.

He will learn soon of his new role, but for now a threat will suffice. Trying to get the attention of the kayak across the lake, I stop him in his tracks and inform him that the hook goes through human flesh easier than the worm. Of course, he stops and returns to fishing like the good boy he is, and I slowly bring us back. Only two days left at Fanshaugh before hiding in another camp. I had lots I wanted to do, and lots of fun was still to be had.

Next we play catch like father and son should, his favorite glove fitting him like one. Using the road as a play space, I keep my gaze in the distance to hide from any incoming eyes. The boy refuses to throw, but I remind him of the hook and the ball comes my way, my dusty glove exploding in aged powder as I make the catch. He coweres as I return the baseball, no catch happening and it rolling down the road.

I thought we'd gotten over his fear of the ball last year, and I remind him of the fact, but he does nothing but deliver more tears to the ground. My shouting returns as I demand him to get the ball as fast as he can, feeling like a coach as I do so. Maybe next summer, once he learns his play, I'll enroll him on a team, but who am I kidding? No one will accept him now. No one will accept either of us now.

When should I tell him that this camping trip is going to be much longer than the weekend? He throws the ball my way a second time and it lands meters in front of me, as if the boy didn't even try. I shake my head in disappointment and ask him if he needs a refresher on how to throw, but he simply sobs quietly, uttering something about his mother. I remind him that his mother died last year, and I apologize to him for failing with her skin. I tell him that maybe someday we'll find someone new to love us, but until then, it's just us.

He asks me when he can see his parents again, and I change the subject, rolling the ball his way and forcing him to try again. Then I saw the switch in his eyes, as if his balls had just dropped, thinking he could actually outsmart me. An eight-year-old versus his father, his own flesh and blood, who do you think's going to win? He grasped the ball tight and suddenly remembered the physics of the game,

throwing with a tight aim directly at my own balls. I fall over in pain, my stomach feeling like it's eating itself as my son begins to run down the road. I swallow the feeling and smile at his mesquite. stake as I slowly rise and walk the opposite way. Running down nothing more than a loop, I rested my aching balls by leaning on a tree as I waited for my son to turn the corner. Oh, the joy I feel when he sees me and realizes his wrong, the joy I knew that was going to continue as I slowly walk towards his trembling skin. I pull the cloth from my pocket, already drenched in chloroform,

and I know the lies of the movies. I know that this will take time, minutes even, and I brace myself for a father-son hug. He begins to turn, but I whistle, and he stops. The smartest decision he could have made. I tell him that I love him and that soon enough he will love me again once he gets used to his new meat. It just needs to be tenderized a little first.

I embrace my son and wrap my arms around him, thinking of the hug he gave me when he first went to school, how long it was and preparing to go longer. The cloth touches his face and covers his mouth as I leave enough air and a slight amount of oxygen to flow through the ordeal. He begins by fighting, but soon he gives in, not by the drug, but by a fearful soul. We hug like father and son at a mother's funeral. long and tight and teary-eyed as the chloroform begins to take effect. First, the meet's eyes under my son's skin begin to flicker like a star dying in the sky, millions of years before, but for our view now. Second, he shakes, a vibration to a convulsion as he falls to sleep in my arms like he did as a baby.

I don't want to, but I must, so I enact the next step and ensure no escape for my son. He wakes in the tent trying to scream, but my handiwork shuts him up, the sutures closing the meat's mouth beneath my son's skin. A mute boy is better than no child to this father. The moon is returned and is lighting our evening with no need for a lantern or flashlight, a perfect condition for a night hike. Of course, my boy would surely have trouble walking after his sleeping procedure, but how else can I ensure his safety and not running away. Grabbing at his swollen foot, he tries again to

scream, but nothing comes out, not even blood. My suture is tight and medical. Practice makes perfect. Another lesson I'll be sure to teach my boy. I explain that his foot isn't broken, but if he wants it to be, it can. Simply a sprain. His mind might not be willing, but the meat is nothing but meat and the skin is wanting to see the stars. He limps his way down the rocky road as the sky reveals itself more every second, yet his gaze holds to his sprain. I resist the urge to shout and quietly remind him how much he loves this, more blubbering coming from his closed mouth. It sounds like choking, like vomit fighting its way from the throat, but gravity being not so kind.

I only knew what was happening because of the red eyes wetting my boy's drying skin. At least there's a silver lining. That reminds me, when should I start moisturizing the skin? Preferably, when should I force the boy to moisturize on his own? The park is dead. The camper is asleep or tending to their fires as the darkness hides my son's shifting skin. I tell another story of my youth, at this same conservation area and the same playground we were passing. As a child I'd fallen and my father was forced to bring me to emerge.

I wore a cast on my leg for three months, a blue cast. I made a blue mask to match the blue cast and refused to take it off until it was removed. I laughed and hoped the sounds coming from his sewn trap were laughter but too deep down. I knew the meat was far from it. Was he not worthy of my son's skin? Does the meat have to do more than just fit? We exit the camping area and arrive at the dark road on the way to the spider-infested dam

for a final test to squash my doubts about the expiration date of the encased meat. Is my boy still fascinated by the Arakhaned kingdom, or will he cower like a stranger? The clouds move, to the moon and we are left under nothing but stars as I force a break in the hike, most likely needed by the limping boy. I point out the constellations as his tears create their own on the ground,

but soon he will learn to enjoy this life or life itself will be stolen from him. We arrive at the dam as the moon returns, the world of spiders displaying in reality, and shadow. Web's woven to webs from years past to days before. Moving arachnids are matched with their still exoskeletons, showing a clear passage of time and society. More beautiful than those in the city, they fight and love and cuddle and hiss as we grow closer. I tell him how wonderful it is that they all look the same, yet are complete individuals on the inside and how he is quite the opposite. He is nothing but an interior exoskeleton, ready to be shed and replaced with another's meat. I chose him because he was the perfect image of my son, and I forgot what I was teaching him all along.

Now it's up to him to decide if he wants this life, if any at all. Like cotton candy at a bug-infested carnival, my hand becomes the stick as I begin wrapping the webs in my cold arm, creating a cocoon of silk and spider in my fist. A boxing glove brought to his face. My boy's cowering grows to a haze as he moves as if to faint. He tries to scream, throwing his hands to a stitched mouth below my son's skin, but again my suture is tight and unforgiving. I move closer, spiders falling from fresh webs and landing on my boy's shoulders before they each crawl in their own direction. They find the unstitched orophices of his eyes and enter the skin suit as he begins to run, his bruised foot slowing him. The other spiders noticed their family's new home,

and crawl over his chest to his face and make their entrance as I grab him by the arm. I can see the movement in his body as he jigs and shakes, fighting to remove the arachnids on his own skin spinning new webs. This meat is a failure, and I mourn the day as I begin to think of the next interior exoskeleton and what to do with this coward. Then it comes to me, like a shooting star above our heads, and I drag him to the edge. I watch his body fall and remember where he lands as I go to retrieve my son in order to try again. A short hike around the road, I find a path leading to the water and take my time, staring at the stars and looking forward to the future, now knowing what I need and meet.

The only foe to my fabled suture, I pull my medical scissors from my pocket and notice a dozen friends crawling along my body, hitching a ride from the carnival, leaning my hand touches a tree, and I shoe them away to their new home and new life as I ponder my own. Then I cut. Walking with my son's skin, I hug the shoulder and stay in the dark, hiding from the park rangers as they pass by on their patrol. We both stargays as I talk, and he finally listens. His emptiness, a temporary gift.

For I cannot paddle or height with just his skin. I cannot truly camp, without the meat. I return to our sight and climb in our tent, wondering if the dam's water will wash my mess away, or if we'll be leaving sooner than wanted. I sleep like a baby beside my son's skin. The next morning, I wake ready and leave my boy in the tent, telling him to behave and to not do anything I wouldn't do. His vacant build lies deflated in his sleeping bag as I kiss him on the forehead and go on the front. prowl. I end up in the public washroom because, why not? Why change a formula that has worked in the

past? I wait like a vulture as families come and go, waiting for that one brave child ready to void his bladder alone. And then he comes. I ask him if he likes spiders and, to my utter joy, he smiles and points to his shirt, feeling pride in the graphic of the tarantula as he shakes his head yes. For your bonus episode, Creepy presents. Here and There. Written by N.G. Lancaster.

Here is a house. It looks like a house you've seen before, in an older part of town. Not sprawling, but hunkering on its lot. Humble. Solid. Brick, probably. Maybe stone, but whatever it's made of, it's really made of it.

Not a facade, not something trying to look like something else. Take note of the third nail connecting the northernmost end of a pine collar tie to the easternmost rafter. That nail has distant kin. The iron in the nail sources back to a stone that fell, smoking onto the property of a blacksmith centuries. dead. The blacksmith stone and the iron within made its way to earth after a much greater stone fractured up there in the void, and the other portion of the broken meteor, the larger sibling, ended up somewhere else. There is a structure. No perfect descriptor, but a few to get close. Fortress, Cathedral, Abattoir.

Curling wretched spires spool out from a bulboid foundation, scratching at a green sky. Its surface is seamless but textured, an autolangological topography. No nail in this place, no steel, but the iron is there. Abducted from its trajectory through the cold nether, a tidal will pull the capped meteor down onto these sickly sands. Cyclopean things found the rock in its crater. They pulled it apart, making a dough of silica, iron, and nickel, glimmered by that same influence with gravity enough to ensnare comets. These servile horrors pressed and shape the citadel with fingerless limbs.

Back here, at the house, a man tracks days with a complimentary champion bank and trust calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. Today is Tuesday. Repair the roof. Wednesday, chemo at Grace Medical. Thursday through Saturday, laying around vomiting. Or thinking about vomiting. Yes, the roof has to get done today.

Up he goes on the ladder. Shingles, hammer, silicon brushes piled into a bucket. He hoists that in one hand while he climbs with the other. He knows it is not safe. But if he falls, break something. Maybe they'll push his chemo back. Or maybe he'll just fall and die and be done with it. Quick and easy.

No, he chides himself. Shut up with that sort of shit. You decided you weren't going to be selfish. You're going to think about Victor and Rosa. They're coming for dinner on Sunday. And he's going to feel good enough to grill and make conversation and be the kind of old bastard the kids visit because they want to, not because they have to. The only way that happens is if he doesn't break his neck. Only if he gets that treatment tomorrow and spends the rest of the week getting over it.

So he takes it slow. Firm grip on the ladder. Careful steps across the roof to the northeast corner. place the shingle, set the nail, drive it home, or try anyway. The nail catches on something. He's really got to hit the sucker. Three strikes to get it flush. Inside, in the bones of the roof, the tip of the galvanized steel nail,

constructed two years ago with the Rockwell B hardness of 84, hitches against the older, softer steel of that third nail noted earlier, the one with the distant cousin. The second strike scores a deep gouge into that older pin. The third hammer blow shears the antique nail in two. Out there, the servant creatures turn their single eyes upward. One of the curling spires they constructed. It's quaking, reverberating, with a long,

groan, it breaks away. The rigid black tower drops to the sand, its fulcrums outward, slapping down across the dunes, it shatters in a cloud of dust. When the air clears, those boneless servants not crushed nor impaled by shrapnel gaze upward once again. If they looked hard enough at their citadel's base, at the sharp-edged stump, they'd see a glint of freshly exposed iron, where the elemental metal hadn't been fully rendered into the primordial mortar, right at the base of the fracture, at the origin of the fault line, it shines. None of the creatures notice. They stare instead into the clouds, up there, slithering in and out of verdigris smog, is there enslave or god? It floats, half-summoned, hazy in the atmosphere.

This deity looks down with hundreds of its own eyes, and gnashes teeth beyond tally within round parasitic orifices. This will not do. In the breaching of realities, architecture is paramount, and while the citadel's structure on the sands never conformed to cemetery the man in the house would understand, there had been a shapelessness in its nonsense. A discordant harmony the titans Gaia and Ornos might remember from the darkness preceding time. The angles and radii of that blasphemous geometry are broken now. Scattered across poisoned sands in a thousand thousand razor-edge shards.

The planter bridge is broken. The god's body cannot cross the gap. Long has it dreamed of dining upon quaking electric. and rich cosmic foam, but no tentacle nor tongue can span this divide. Only its will may cross and its fury. Here in the house, Friday night, a storm, a big one too. The Great Plains are one of the God's personal heavy bags, on which the bearded guy in the sky can line up his knuckles and go 12 rounds when he has a mind.

During storms, the man likes to sit out on his porch with a can of beer and watch the match. He'd be doing that right now, if he could. Instead, he's lying on his couch, writhing with his twisting gut. The bucket he used to fix the roof is next to him, a filmy layer of sick at the bottom. It smells, and he'd cover it if moving didn't make everything well. horse. Instead of a beer, a cold can of chicken noodle yons open on the coffee table. He sipped the broth earlier. That had been his mistake, and now he's paying for it. How an inch-long noodle, a shred of chicken, and a dime-sized carrot slice became a box of razors in his gut

he'll never know. The house groans right along with him. The storms pounding the hell. out of his little cottage, raindrops coming at it sideways in the wind. The groaning of pine beams draws his attention to the north wall. It's just a blur to him. Dark wall, darker ceiling, darkest window, but for the flashes of lightning.

But he sees that new shingle in his mind's eye. Red and black in color, it stands out amid faded comrades. They've all weathered a hundred storms, but who knows what this fresh from the hardware store rookie is going to do. Don't you go flying, he grunts from the couch. You hold your post. Speaking was another mistake.

He's got a fist in there, just coiling up around his innards and turning. One rotation for every word. He moans, the house echoes. Screwing his eyes shut, he does what hurts. the least. He thinks. He imagines a cave, a smoldering fire, a proto-man is there, wrapped in furs. He doesn't know what to make of the agony in his heavy-browed skull. All he knows is that his eyes go blind when he opens them, that a rock is scraping at his head, but from the inside, and he doesn't know how to get the rock out.

The ancestor lays there on the stone floor. In all his short and brutish life, no weather nor fanged beast has done such harm. His fire doesn't chase it away. His spear cannot stab it. His furs do not insulate from its bite. He's in a cave, a fire in front of him and solid rock to his back.

He's as safe as he's ever been. He's also naked, exposed, and defenseless, on a hilltop. For where else are you? What armor do you wear when you cannot see the predator, though its claws are already inside? Storm rages, guts twist, thoughts spiral. The man is in his house, but he's also out there on that same hill. He lays in a depression worn away by a hundred and seventeen billion.

billion people before him, all squirming on the rack of maladies unnamed, untreated, or unknown. What malicious God hovers in the ether above the human with the first migraine? Above an embryo, unknown at ectopic, or the gunshot soldier whose bed is the empty morphine cabinet. Here is a man, writhing in his house during a storm, the bottle of antinodic anti-nautia tablets might as well be on the moon, for he'll never make it to the medicine drawer. Moving hurts too much. He's not a dramatic person. He knows that others have suffered, are suffering, more than he ever will.

But the worst pain you've ever known is a subjective torturer. It respects no external scale. Go ahead. Imagine those who have suffered more. Think of the brazen bull's interior, or a woman, before language, with a tiny cut on her foot gone dark and stinking. Perhaps you can even see them, arrayed out on the ground around you. But they'll never draw its attention away. Up on that hill, you're always alone, and above you, in a roiling olive sky,

a merciless and angry god stares down at you, and only you. with every one of its hundred bloodshot eyes. For just a moment, the man in the house is there instead of here. Around him, the broken citadel, the dying cyclopses, pulped bodies smeared into the grit by furious bursts of gravity. For a heart's beat, he lays upon a dune of poisoned sand among them. And up above, in the green, the merciless deity blinks an eye every time the man's gut churns. How does he see that other place?

From inside his house, eyes screwed shut in the middle of the storm. Perhaps it's the kinship of the iron, or simply the kinship of souls suffering to depths, heretofore, unknown. 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-like licensing or with written consent from the authors.

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