Creepy - Naming My Demon & Strange and Unusual

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

Naming My Demon***Written by: Rosalie A. Peng and Narrated by: Michelle Kane***Content Warning: Topics of miscarriage, stillbirth, post partum depression and grief***Strange and Unusual***Written by No One of Consequence and Narrated by: Nate DuFort*** Content warning: Divorce ***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Meet us at Crypticon KC 2024 at booth BR-199!***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepypastas and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. which listener discretion is advised. Creepy presents. Naming my demon.

Written by Rosalie A. Peng. And narrated by Michelle Kane. My husband was silent as he listened. His smile faded and the sharp crescents of his nails dug into the skin of my belly. What is it? I asked. I tried to push him off. eager to relieve my bladder, but he refused to budge.

His ear was glued to my distended abdomen, and his brows were furrowed like he was detangling a logic game. He asked if I could hear them. What are you talking about? I shoved him off and rubbed my stomach. I can feel them, though. Baby A is a kicker, and Baby B will give Simone Biles a run for her money.

The strangeness of his question hit me. The new moms in my pregnancy support group have shared the most bonkers things their husbands have said in the delivery room. But this was four months premature. What do you mean by here then? He shook his head and gave me a dismissive wave of his hand while he said it was nothing, sweetheart. He must have seen that flicker of anxiety on my face. After two miscarriages that quaked our marriage and my preeclampsia diagnosis, my burned out nerves stood ridges like the ends of fried hair as we inched into the last trimester.

It didn't take much to send me spiraling into dark ruminations. It's nothing, sweetheart. That was easy for him to say, but the dark thoughts didn't go away. Pregnancy could be a one-way ticket across the rainbow to a land of sunshine, carpools, and the joys of motherhood, if you were lucky. But if you were like me, whose treacherous womb managed to convert every what-if into somber reality, pregnancy was a deep, dark void and filled the female mind with too many worries and unknowns to name. Those unknowns were the scariest. Things are scarier when you can't name them. This, I learned when my therapist finally slapped the OCD label on my intrusive thoughts and immobilizing anxiety. Psychologically, knowing a what-if's name makes it less intimidating and reduces its threats.

My therapist explained it that it's kind of like how an exorcist bellows the demon's name in horror movies, and in the name of the Lord banishes him to the pits of hell. She told me that naming my demons gave me power over them. I knew some of their names. Morning sickness, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, miscarriage. Postpartum depression. Prolapse. Stillbirth. Stop. If I went down this rabbit hole, eventually I'd encounter those nameless what-ifs. My therapist would be disappointed. My husband would be annoyed. I'd be terrified. Instead, I distracted myself with putting together the nursery. The twin cribs were made of iron, set with soft blankets and shielded by canopies of muslin and lace.

I sat fluffy teddy bears and delicate porcelain dolls on shelves above both cribs. Rocking horses and dollhouses awaited on their sides. Blankets, wensies, and itty-bitty little shoes filled the drawers. I hung the glow-in-the-dark stars in their skies, delighting at how the vinyl florettes, florest when I flicked off the lights. When the day's work was done, I lay next to my husband, tossing and turning, until I finally found a comfortable position. The clock struck midnight, and I awoke. There was a rustling noise, like leaves scraping on the sidewalk, as the wind pulled them into flight. Did we leave a window open? A quick look at the window answered in the

negative. Then I heard it. And felt it. My heartbeat breaked to a halt. Cold sweat oozed from my pores as small, disembodied voices haunted my ears. Where were they coming from? They sounded close, uncomfortably close. For a moment, I thought I'd finally lost it and started

heard voices in my head. But the voices spoke again, and shuddering with misplaced relief, I realized they originated from much lower in my body. It was different from how my voice vibrated in that spot between my breasts. These little quakes came from my lower body, and my stomach tumbled each time the sounds rang. I rubbed my belly, muffled gurgles rumbled in the night, as though the speakers were trapped underwater. Or, I realized, trapped in a sack of fluid. I could have sworn that I heard a voice saying,

Stop kicking me, your foot's in my face. While another rebutted, it's not my fault you're fat. I don't have space. The skin of my belly rippled. My hand jumped away like my stomach was some dirty thing. What's in there? My mind swam through catalogs of alien creatures that could be chirping away inside my womb. Shivers weaved through my vertebra and my skin erupted in goose flesh.

But then the voices were gone, silenced like an interrupted dream. How, I must have dreamt it, I decided, as sleepy groginess rolled over my mind like a fog descending over a quiet. Lake. It cloaked everything in a sheen of surrealism and numbed my fear and revulsion for the lump on my abdomen. A dopey smile twitched my lips. What was there to be afraid of? These were my girls, my babies. Honey, I hear them. I muttered as I fell asleep. When the sun rose, I thought no more of those tiny bickers I heard. Sure, they were the stuff of dreams and nightmares. My husband and I had met at a college book club, and we named our girls after our favorite books leading ladies. Two months later, I held Mina in my arms, but her sister Lucy went

the way of her tragic namesake. It wasn't Count Dracula who took her from me, but instead her umbilical cord. During birth, it became her noose. I had hung my daughter, my husband and I grieved as we fed and changed Mina, then grieved some more during those hours when she slept. Finally, when I could no longer stand looking at that pink nursery with its two cribs, two sets of teddy bears, porcelain dolls, blankets, little shoes, and rocking horses. We took down the spares. I gave the crib and horse to a neighbor and wept as I tucked the rest into a large chest for storage

in the attic. I cried myself to sleep that first night, postpartum, and cried myself awake, just past the witching hour. The rustling of voices made me gasp, and my hand leapt to the and leapt to my empty stomach. I gripped the loose skin searching for my lost child in vain. Her weight wasn't there. Nor were the vibrations

that filled my abdomen when she spoke. The baby monitor creckled on the nightstand and Mina's shrill cries barged into our room. I dabbed at my eyes before my husband could see my tears

and I shushed him back to sleep. I'll take care of her, I said. I wanted to hold my baby. One night, I heard the voice. Lucy's voice again, I sat up gasping. On cue, I patted my stomach feeling for her, but felt no vibrations. Throwing my pillow over my snoring husband's face, I listened hard into the night. Disembodied whispers, crackled over the staticy baby monitor. I sprang out of bed and grabbed the speaker. My footsteps gentle as I crept down the dark hallway toward the nursery. Sounds spilled from the monitor.

My lips clamped into a stiff line, as though sewn together by a mortician, refusing to let the bubbling scream free. It's cold out here. I miss mother's womb. Mother's womb was warm. Outside the amniotic sack, the girlish voice was high and crisp,

as light as a cloud. Stop complaining, Nina, said the other voice. The other voice had a breathy translucence to it, misting about like a dancing phantom. You'll have it better. Your flesh keeps you warm. I'm so cold. I'll freeze to death.

The nursery door was ajar. My fingers splayed against my mouth, turning white as I crammed them into my mouth to stifle my screams. Darkness swarmed behind the crib's canopy. Two infant silhouettes were black against the muslin and lace. They sat on their pudgy bottoms like teddy bears, facing each other in the crib as they convert. Lucy's name fluttered over my mind as saliva-sicked fingers dropped from my mouth. Fear locked my body, a desperation for my child. To hold her, to know her, pushed me into the room.

I approached quietly as the baby monitor croaked garbled static that droned on and on. I flicked on the lights. I ran to the crib and whipped. open the canopy. Mina lay flat on her back, looking at me with big eyes. Her blankets were askew, and despite knowing better, I yanked them away in case they hid another infant. My breaths were choking, sobs as I tore apart the room, opening closets and pulling out drawers, searching for another child. At last I leaned my head against the dresser and sank to my knees. There was no other child.

Giving one last sob, I wiped my eyes and studied my breaths. Pull yourself together, I chastised. My therapist had named my most recent demon, postpartum depression, but coaxing it back to hell, would take more than a few sprinkles of holy water and hail mary's. My husband was already walking on eggshells around me. I didn't need him or my therapist questioning my sanity. Wiping my eyes, I tucked Mina into the blankets.

Are you cold, sweetie? I whispered. I swallowed before speaking again. If you're cold, Mommy will bring you another blanket. Her eyes glittered with an old intelligence that shouldn't belong to a child. For a second, I feared she'd answer, that she'd reveal herself to be some new what-if that had no name, and I'd lose another child. But she said nothing. She was still my baby.

My husband was short-tempered on a good day, and good days. came fewer and fewer as Mina learned to talk, talk back, and then swear. She was a wild child, loud, disruptive, sometimes downright nasty. In preschool, she pushed other kids on the playground and tore up their artwork. In the first grade, she threw rocks at passing kids on bikes and yanked the neighbor's cat's tail. Her vocabulary was as colorful as her raging temper. was frightening. She was only docile during those odd hours at night when I'd catch her whispering into the dark. I was doing the dishes when my husband's roar echoed through the house, followed by Mina's enraged shriek. The plate in my hand slipped and crashed as shouting erupted

from the attic. I hurried upstairs. I suppressed a wail at what I saw. The large chest was opened, its contents scattered in pieces on the musty cobweb floor. Hurricane Mina had swept through the attic, leaving none of her deceased sister's keepsakes untouched. Tears welled in my eyes as I saw Lucy's decapitated teddy bear, gleating white fluff from the stump of its neck. The bear's head was nowhere to be found. The porcelain dolls, curly ringlets, and chiffon dress had been torn off, and its limbs ripped from the hollow torso. Mina had tossed the blankets and never worn baby shoes carelessly onto the ground. My husband's opened hand landed,

Wham! Wham! Wham! On Mina's buttocks, asking what the hell was wrong with her and for her to look at him. He grabbed her face. Her lips parted mid-whisper, her eyes never meeting his as she stared into the dark corners of the attic. She clutched her old baby monitor in her hands. My husband's eyes flashed as he knocked the monitor from her hands and shoved her to the ground.

He announced that he was going for a drive, but what I heard was, I'm leaving. years ago during my pregnancy, I would have tolerated this behavior, would have begged and pleaded for him to stay, as I had after each miscarriage. But now I was angry. Mina ignited fires wherever she went, and I was too tired and sleep-deprived to put them out.

I no longer dreaded, feared his rage. All I felt, was anger. How dare he lay a hand on my child? Scouring every last wrinkle on his face, I couldn't see a trace of the man I had married. I wanted this tyrant out. Leave then! I screeched, speeding to my daughter's side. He was seething as he told me that he was most definitely leaving, and that I was going to have to deal with the demon I had birthed. Before I could retort, Mina seethed up at her father. The crown of her head barely reached his

pelvis, but for a split second, he cowered as though she were a giant. Mina quietly said that he was going to die tonight, that Lucy had told her. He sputtered, His face had disgruntled purple shade, and she continued. Lucy told me so. He stomped out. We listened to him slammed the front door, and Mina skipped downstairs, quite unperturbed. I stared after her, too shocked and distressed to ask about her outburst.

Unwilling to part with Lucy's belongings, I traipsed through the attic in a daze, tidying the wrecked toys, back to the chest. Hours later, two uniformed officers knocked on my door, their cruisers lighting up the neighborhood with red and blue flares. My mind was blank as they told me how there had been an accident, man, and were very sorry for your loss. It wasn't your husband's fault. The cops assured me the other driver had swerved into oncoming traffic, right into my husband's car. The driver stated that she swore a little girl was standing in the middle of the road. If she didn't swerve,

she would have run over her. The police stood there investigating. No little girl was ever found. As my mother and I worked in the garden, she asked if I had seen her dentures. She thought she had lost them somewhere in the house. Oh, I'll ask Mina if she took them. I sighed. She's been squirling things away. She's taken coat hangers from my closet and snipped the buttons off my jackets. God knows what she's up to. What if? I hesitated to verbalize the rest. But with my mother as my only audience, tales of Mina's disturbing behavior burst from my mouth in a deluge. I caught myself beginning every other sentence with those cursed words. What? What if? What if? What if there's something wrong? No evil, I whispered. I told my mother everything,

from how I heard the whispers from my womb to the two silhouettes in Mina's ominous proclamation the night my husband died. I'm a jumpy sack of nerves around her. Her eyes don't look like a kid's. Oh, I must be a terrible mother to think of my child like this. I blinked away tears. I'm just so tired. My daughter was the exorcist's

worst fear. I knew her name. Her favorite color was blue and that she hated Brussels butselsprouts. Yet there was something about her I couldn't name. She carried that nameless thing through the house, and I flinched each time I tried to make sense of it. She brought my what-ifs to life, and I feared a future with her.

My mother never believed in the supernatural. She attempted to soothe me by saying that it was all coincidence and that I had had some rotten luck, that's all, that Mina was a sweet child. With my husband gone, I rejoined the workforce and often left Meeleaf. Nina and my mother's care. She had taken to teaching Mina how to sew during those hours. She smiled while she told me that she was good with a needle, too, but feisty, and said that I should dry my eyes, dear. I was in slightly better spirits when we strode back into the house, but upon entering the kitchen room, my mother gasped, and my heartbeat tripped erratically.

The thing sitting in my dining chair was grotesque, and I fought the urge to vomit as I recognized the jigsaw pieces that formed its body. It wore the porcelain dolls tattered chiffon dress and its tangled blonde wig on its head. The decapitated teddy bear's head sat under the wig, its brown fur dirty and matted. The jagged edge of its neck had been neatly seen. stitched into the doll's dress. Someone had ripped a gash in the bear's head right where the mouth should be. The gash stretched across the bear's face into a too-wide grin. My mother's missing dentures were stuffed into the gash.

The pink guns looking almost red next to the exposed white stuffing. The bear's eyes were mismatched buttons from my jacket. The right one was small and red. The left one was nearly triple its twin size and pitch black like coal. The doll's stubby legs wobbled from beneath the dress, wearing Lucy's baby shoes. The arms protruding out of the dress's balloon sleeves were the curved hooks of the missing coat hangers. The sharp wires glistened. I stared at the thing and mentally named it, Frankenstein.

the thing looked like Victor Frankenstein's preschool project, built of stolen toys from his classmates' cubbies instead of body parts from robbed graves, a hellish effigy of an anthropomorphized stuffed bear. She stomped to the table and held the thing up to examine it while confusedly asking what the hell it was. Were these her dentures? What has that daughter of mine been doing? Meena! I screamed and scrabbled into the hallway. No response. I ran back to the kitchen. Mom, Mina's gone! My mother stared at me, jaw slack. Blood leaking out of the sides of her mouth. She clutched the thing at chest level. The thing's hooked arm. No, it's a hanger, not an arm. threaded through her throat like a curved needle.

My mother reched twice. Each time the rounded end of the hanger bulged under her skin. Her terrified eyes met mine as she mouthed. Help me! No! I screamed when her arm twitched and I knew what she was about to do. She shuddered. A spurt of life and strength shocked through her,

and she tore the hanger. of her neck. Blood sprayed onto the tablecloth. Flex of flesh followed suit, splattering onto my pristine kitchen floors as a dark red pool formed at my mother's feet. Her eyes rolled wildly, and she fell forward. I stood in shock for a full minute before regaining my senses. I screamed and ran to her. Suddenly my eyes popped and I tripped to the ground as her body jerked. Her upper body bobbed and two curved, wired hands clawed out from underneath her bulk, dragging its deformed body. The head tilted up to stare at me through mismatched eyes.

My mother's blood-staining dark streaks on the bear's fur. The stuffing between my mother's denture eagerly soaked up her blood. The thing stunk of mold and iron, and I reched as it wobbled toward me. From behind the stuffing came the awful, familiar sound of crackling static. Though it had been years since I used it, I recognized its grainy drawl immediately. The baby monitor. I realized, is inside the thing's body. A quiet voice called to me.

Mina stood in the doorway, oddly calm, as she surveyed her grandmother's exsinguinating body. I tried to warn her, tried to tell her to run away, but fear and shock rendered me speechless. She carried a musty old baby blanket in her own. arms, and her bare feet pit-pattered as she stepped around the pooling blood and picked the thing up. To my horror, she kissed it on its bloody cheek and sat it back in its chair. She smiled as she wrapped the blanket around it.

She cooed and said, There you go, Lucy! The effigy's grotesque head twitched around to face me. and I named my little demon. I remember thinking as I passed out. The last of my consciousness drained away as her voice cracked over the baby monitor, saying, It's finally warm, Mommy.

Creepy presents, strange and unusual, written by no one of consequence and narrated by Nate DuFort. When we were kids, our parents told us we could be anything, so why not shoot for the stars? Back then, we were wide-eyed and full of wonder. So, of course, we believed them. Why wouldn't we? They were our parents, and they wanted the best for us. That was also during a much better time in the world, or at least it seems that way when I look back on it. These days, it's all about working a job you

hate in order to provide for a family that doesn't appreciate the soul-sucking shit show you have to go through on a daily basis, that same family who does nothing but complain that you're never there and that your works consuming your life. When you're the sole provider for a family of four, what do they expect? I needed to put in the hours to pay for all the things they wanted and couldn't live without. Well, that's not the case anymore. They let them. They let them. They let them, left me for greener pastures, and I suddenly found myself coming home to an empty house after twelve hours at the office on a Saturday. The divorce papers weren't far behind, but alimony wasn't going to be an issue. My ex got married nearly as soon as the divorce went through.

Honestly, I thought I was handling things pretty well, until a cop showed up one night to my front door, multiple neighbors called in noise and domestic violence complaints. The cops were surprised to find me alone, but the house was trashed. The doctors kept referring to it as a nervous breakdown. They claimed the loss of my family was shattering my world, and I wasn't coping with things in a healthy manner. I really don't know what happened. All I know is that I sat down to a TV dinner,

burn my tongue on the cobbler that apparently was still hot as molten lava, and then there was nothing. I came back to myself out of breath as the police pounded on the door. The moral this story is, don't go for dessert before you eat dinner. Spending court-mandated time in the hospital wasn't as bad as I always thought it would be. Sure, there were some seriously deranged nut jobs in there, and they truly belonged, but not me. I was as laid back and straight-laced as it got. According to my therapist, I wasn't dealing with my problems. I was ignoring them.

That's what caused the blackouts. Before that first appointment, I hadn't known I'd had more than one. The doctor informed me that there'd been an incident at my office earlier that day. My boss came into my corner office and dumped a giant project in my lap. It was crunch time and the three people that had seen, started it, had completely screwed everything up. He was tasking me with fixing all the mistakes, revamping the entire face of it, and needed it in two days. A project of that magnitude takes a minimum of a week and requires the work of two or more additional people. Not only was that

a big ask, but rather typical. I can't count how many times the same thing happened to me in the 15-plus years I'd been with the firm. Well, it turns out that it was also the last time. The doctor didn't give me the full details, but there's a bit of an altercation. My boss made it out of there with a few bumps and bruises, but the office itself was trashed. Do nothing else that explained my busted knuckles and cuts. I spent a few months in the hospital with near-daily counseling sessions. On days I didn't have one-on-one, there were group sessions. My God, those were a freaking nightmare. So many times I wanted to get up and walk away, but I stayed in my seat and stared off into space. I couldn't bring myself to give a shit about someone's

out-of-control eating disorder or the nymphomaniac with unresolved mommy issues. I knew spending time in the hospital was going to break me if I had to be there any longer than was necessary. I took my meds, shared my feelings half-heartedly, made major strides during my one-on-ones, and suppressed my anger. And I became a model patient just so I could get out of there. Going back to my life wasn't an option simply because I didn't have one to go back to. My job was gone. My family left and wanted nothing to do with me.

The only thing I had was my aunt and uncle, but they were out of the country. I did reach out to them and caught them up on everything. They said something that nearly mirrored what my therapist said. I need to get away for a while and recharge. My aunt and uncle have a place in the mountains. It's a nice cabin that they use for weekend getaways in the middle of nowhere. I've been there a few times and it is really isolated. As long as I bring enough food to last me for an entire stay,

I won't have to see another person unless I really want to see. want to. And after spending a couple months in the hospital, constantly surrounded by other mental patients and medical staff that didn't want to be there either, less people is definitely better. The outdoors wasn't really my thing growing up. I didn't like camping, direct sunlight, or the bugs that always find you outside. As I got older, I started to appreciate the solitude of the forest, but not enough to buy a tent. The few times I came out to their cabin were great, but I didn't do it very often. Maybe if I had, my family wouldn't have abandoned me, and I wouldn't have blown up my life.

Driving through the forest, I marvel at the tall trees. There are snow patches on the ground and in the high limbs, but the road is easily passable in my second-hand four-by-four. I got rid of that stupid luxury SUV I hated driving for something more suited to my current circumstances. I've gotten the damn thing more for the family than for myself, though I don't know why. We always piled in my ex's car whenever we went anywhere. As my four-by-four glides over the wet road and I climb higher and higher, I can feel the isolation seeping in. The worries and cares of the rest of the world are melting away as quickly as the snow is. Granted, this eye up in the mountains,

the snow can come back quite easily. It rarely, you can't. It rarely gets warmer than 70 up here, but I'm okay with that. There's plenty of firewood, and I don't need much in the way of electricity. I'm not going to spend all my time up here on the computer or watching TV. Hell, I don't even have a computer at the moment. It got trashed in my last blackout. It doesn't take much longer for the road to start leveling out. Just like that, I'm at the cabin. I park right in front of the porch, but instead of heading for the front door, I round the side of the house. There's a tool shed over there, and I find the keys exactly where I was told they'd be. Next to the shed's door is a series of softball-sized rocks.

The keys are in a baggy underneath the middle one. Before bringing anything inside, I inspect the cabin, which is freezing cold. The first order of business is to turn the inside. the power and water pump on. Those switches are located in the laundry room. Once that's done, and I can turn on the lights, I check to make sure all the windows are intact and no animals have managed to get in.

From what I was told a few years ago, there was a bit of a raccoon problem, and a repeat occurrence isn't out of the question. I probably should have asked for more information on that. As I'm searching, I swear I hear noises. like kids laughing or something like that. But there's nothing.

I search every room, but there's no broken windows, no holes in the wall, or any evidence that something's been inside. I declare that there's nothing out of the ordinary with the cabin, so I start bringing my things in. It's going to take a while for the fridge and freezer to get cold, so I keep the cold stuff in the cooler. I'd love to crack open a beer,

but I decided to forego such things. Alcohol and medication don't go together. Going outside, I find the firewood shed, which is different from the tool shed. Since my aunt and uncle rarely come out here anymore, they had a small shed built specifically for storing firewood. The doors aren't locked, so I pop it open, start bringing in as much as I can carry. There's even a couple buckets with smaller pieces of wood. My fire building skills are limited, but,

I know you're supposed to use the small stuff to catch the larger pieces. It takes me a couple tries, but I managed to get a fire going in the fireplace. Again, I swear I hear voices talking and whispered or distant tones, but there's no one around. I even check outside for the third time to make sure there isn't another car here. There isn't even an old stereo or anything in the cabin. I'd just write it off as my imagination. We brought the kids up here once, but it ended up being a short visit.

Daniel was chasing his little sister around and tripped on a rock. He'd smacked his head against a tree root and got a two-inch gash on his forehead. We hadn't been up here more than 15 minutes and had to get to the nearest emergency room. That was nine years ago. In the minutes before Daniel's accident, the kids seemed so happy. I thought maybe this could have been a thing we'd do as a family every once in a while, but we never came back. In my time of self-reflection,

I wondered if things might have turned out differently had Daniel not cut his head open so badly. I shut down that thought quickly as I go back outside for another load of wood. The stockpile's only about half full. Perhaps during my time here I can grab some tools and find a near-byter, fallen tree to cut up. It would give me something to do and replenish some of the wood I'm going to end up using. The fireplace is the only way to heat up the cabin. As I return to the front door with another armload of logs, I see movement through the front window. I'm quick up the steps and look in, but what I see has me dropping the logs at my feet. There's two high school-age

kids sitting in front of the fire, laughing and joking with their parents who sit down. on a couch nearby. For a moment, I think my aunt and uncle double-booked the cabin, letting someone else stay here while I'm here. But that's not the case. I know that because the parents sitting on the couch are me and my ex. I stand there for a flabbergasted moment, not understanding what I'm seeing. The other me glances up just in time to see me dart for the door, but when I yank it open, the living room's empty. What the hell? I go back to the window, but all I see is what was there before.

No people. My heart rate starts climbing and questions starts spouting from my mouth. There's no one around to hear me ask them, but it doesn't stop them from coming. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and reach into my pocket. I've been keeping the pill bottle. in my pocket since I was discharged from the hospital, but I haven't needed to take one outside my normal twice a day before now. Without water, I pop one of the little pills in my mouth in dry swallow. Thankfully, I've become an old hand at this, so the pill doesn't get stuck in my throat.

Once the pills down my throat and my heart rate comes back down, I pick the fallen wood back up. I make it a point not to look in the window again, but just get the wood. inside. This is just my imagination acting up. Something my therapist said might happen from time to time. It's likely that similar things happened in the moments before my blackouts. I'd had three of them at the hospital, but I never remembered what triggered me. Getting the wood onto the pile next to the fire, I go into the kitchen to make myself something to eat. The fridge and freezer have finally gotten cool enough for me to store my food in it, and I start to transfer. things from the cooler. As I do, I notice two slips of paper stuck to the fridge with magnets.

One is a list of emergency numbers, one of which being animal control for the raccoons, I surmise. Oddly, the animal control number has been crossed out. The other slip has one name and number on it. Instead of saying in case of emergency, it says in case of strange and unusual activity. What the hell does that mean? Ignoring it, I cook up a steak over the fire with a cast-iron skillet and nuke aside of the macaroni and cheese. I keep having to add logs onto the fire, more than I thought I would. It figures, though. The tub for holding wood is big enough that I need to bring in four arm loads.

By the time I've eaten my dinner and cleaned off the dishes, it's still light enough out. I put a few more logs on the fire to keep it. going and decide to walk around the outside of the cabin for a while. If the fire wasn't going, I'd venture farther away. The immediate area is still surrounded with some of the tallest trees I have ever seen. Just past the woodshed is a little path that only goes about 50 yards away, and it stops at a couple of benches. They're made of large logs and face a magnificent view of the valley below. I take it in for as long as I dare to be this far from the fire. Truly magnificent. The kind of natural beauty that words can't describe. I could sit out here

for hours just looking at it. This is a spot to recharge the soul for sure. I stay outside for a while before I decide to head back in. Picking up my first armload of wood, I have to finagle my way into opening the front door, which isn't easy. After dumping the first load into the tub, I drop a couple more logs onto the fire, which was starting to get a little low. By the time I'm retrieving the third load, it's gotten significantly dark out, and the sky starts talking. Great big bellows of thunder belt out from the dark clouds and heavy gusts of wind nearly knock me down. The temperature is dropping quickly and I hurry to the front door. If a storm's going to drop a crap ton of snow on me,

I'm going to need more wood than what that tub can hold. I made sure not to close the door all the way when I came out this last time and I nudge it open with my foot. The wind has other ideas about how gentle I tried to open the door and it crashes open. Just as it does, the back door slams open and a figure stands in the doorway with an armful of wood just like me. In fact, aside from having more color to their skin

than generally looking healthier than me, the person at the back door is me. Our eyes lock and we mirror each other's confusion, but the other me reacts quicker. They drop the wood, all save for one thick log, and the other me raises it up to use as a weapon. Who are you? What are you doing here?

The voice is the exact same as mine as these questions are fired off. I am truly at a loss. There's a deranged look on the other me's face, and I know I'm in trouble. I have the urge to get something more substantial in my hands than an armful of wood. Next to the fireplace is a metal poker, and I'm about to make a move for it, but the other me speaks again. I'm yelling at the other me. Don't you see?

My eyes never leave me, but clearly the other is talking to someone else in the room, not that there's anyone else there. Go into the back bedroom and get the rifle under the bed. Okay, clearly this is escalating, and I really need a weapon. I take one step toward the fireplace, which happens to be in the same direction as the bedrooms. The other me shouts, Hey! and hurls the log at me. Not only does the log hit me in the forehead and knock me on my ass, but I hear glass shattering a moment later. As I lie on the ground, I hear multiple people running from the living room to the bedrooms.

When I look up, the other me is gone. Getting to my feet, my head throbbing from where the log hit me, I glance at the window and see it's completely intact. I'm really confused, but I ignore it in favor of getting the fireplace poker. With the cold iron in my hand, I press my back against the wall near the hallway and wait. A minute later, I see the barrel of an old Winchester rifle slowly peek out from the hall. I let whoever it is come a little closer before swinging the poker.

The hard metal connects with the other me's head, and the gun goes flying. It lands hard on the ground and goes off, the bullet tearing through my arm just below the shoulder. Looking to the me lying unconscious on the floor, I expect to see a bloody gash on the forehead, but all I see is an angry red mark. I could have sworn I saw blood a moment ago, but there's none. Now that the thread is down for the moment, I inspect the wound on my arm, only there is no wound. This doesn't make any sense. I felt the bullet hit me.

Going for the pill bottle in my pocket, I take a little bit of my pocket, I take a little bit of a another one quickly. My therapist said to take one of these any time I feel my mind's grip on reality slipping, and I'd say this qualifies. Talk about strange and unusual. That rings something in my memory. The number next to the list of emergency numbers on the fridge. I bound across the room for the landline next to the fridge and quickly dial the number. It doesn't even fully ring once before a tired voice comes on the line. Instead of a greeting, the guy on the other side asks, How many raccoons are there?

The question's so unexpected that I actually look around. Of course, there are none, and I tell him so. Shit, okay, I was told this might happen. Are you the one with the family or the one without? I couldn't be any more confused, but I tell him the truth. Okay, I'll probably be having the same conversation before too long, assuming you two idiots don't kill each other first. I'm about to start asking questions, but he cuts me off.

This'll go faster if you just let me talk. I shut up. There are places in this world where the veil between realities is thin, like your aunt and uncle's cabin. If you happen to be in one of these places at the, the same time as another you, the two of you will be able to interact with each other. It's not advised because people tend to try and kill the other of them before they realize what's going on. I advise you, get the hell out of there. Unfortunately, with the storm overhead, that's not going to

happen. Through the open back door, it looks like four inches of snow is already fallen. Then I suggest you calmly sit down with yourself and figure out a diplomatic solution. Otherwise, the other family is going to lose you too. Yeah, talk about strange and unusual. But I wonder, what does this have to do with raccoons? 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 common share-a-like 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 story's author.