Creepy - Roadwork

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Never look in the trunk...***Written by: Cameron Suey***Story link: https://creepypasta.fandom.com/wiki/Roadwork***Story is licensed under CC-By-SA  ***Bonus Episode: "First Freeze of the Year" Written by: No One of Consequence and Narrated by Nate DuFort***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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If you sign up for the full year, you get 12 months for the price of 11. To see how you can support the show and be rewarded for it, please check out the donation tiers at patreon.com slash creepy pod. So yeah, you can probably tell you. all from my voice. I'm just doing another quick check-in from camp. I'm still alive. Mostly.

Things are progressing. I think it's really coming together. Kind of thought I'd have a little more help in all this, but that's okay. I've built stuff from the ground up before. Plus, phone me this tarp, and there's stuff. around here for me to eat.

I'm good. Fine. I'll be fine. I think. Probably. Well, just best to get to this week's stories. No. This is creepy.

A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastors and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Presents. Roadwork. Written by Joseph K. When Connor arrived at the gas station. He exited the car with a speed that surprised even him. He took a few quick steps,

almost at a run, before turning back towards the car. Under the garish sodium lights of the service station, the little blue sedan looked as sickly greenish-gray. It looked squat and malign at its stillness. The little throbbing headache at the base of his skull seemed to diminish with every step, and he began to catch his breath. He took the phone. from his pocket and raised it high into the night sky, waving it from side to side like a signal flag. Nothing. The signal meter defied him by remaining empty, not even a flashing roaming message.

Connor scowled at the little phone and thrust it back into his pocket. He glanced around at the station. Two solitary pumps in a closed convenience market. An isolated island of pale yellow light in the texed. dark of the North Carolina forest. The silhouettes of the trees bit sharply into the starry night sky, surrounding him like a ring of teeth. The grating hum of electricity mingled with a crackling of insects from the woods beyond,

drifting in the warm summer night air. Judding from the side of the shuttered market was a scraped in-listing payphone, its metal stock visibly bent from some long-ago impact. Connor approached it, digging a quarter from his pocket and gripping the scarred plastic handset. For a moment, nothing happened, and the sense of isolation deepened, like the ground being pulled out from under him, and the panic returned. A series of quick clicks bit into his ear and the dial tone chimed. His fingers felt numb as he dialed. Even at a few hours past midnight, Reynolds answered on the first ring.

An old drolling baritone was silky and unmarred by the late hour. It's me, Connor. He was unable to keep the quaver out of his voice, and he had a sudden urge to look back towards the car, suddenly afraid that it might have moved or left him there altogether. Arnold's liquid voice darkened, almost imperceptibly. It's a payphone.

Ain't got signal out here. Middle of fucking nowhere. Listen, Ren, I... Connor bristled at the mild calculated condescension in the older man's tone and inhaled slowly, measuring his next words with caution.

Well, shit. I don't rightly know, Ren. But I got a real bad feeling about this. Service station. Just got off the freeway. About dead south, Renatala. Like I said, there's something fucked up about this one. Didn't like the guy I picked the car up from.

Don't like whatever it is. It's in the fucking trunk. I know this sounds fucking stupid. But it's given me a headache. I feel like I can smell it, but I know I can't. Something just feels rotten about it. I mean, rotten, rotten. There was a long silence on the other end, and Connor knew that Reynolds was unmoved.

Even as Connor said the words, he knew how stupid it sounded. The old man said at last. The heart? Connor answered without hesitation, seeing the white styrofoam cooler steaming with ice, strapped in the front seat like a baby's car seat. Not till after the fact? paused. The smooth rhythms of his voice already calming the younger man.

Yes, sir? I'm a specific instruction. I understand. It called, Connor. How stupid he'd sounded. How stupid he'd been. Panicking and calling Reynolds late in the night. Thank you, Ren.

I got you. Of course, Ren. Look, I'm awful sorry for calling. I guess I just got spooked something fierce. up before Connor could reply, and he returned the hand-side to the cradle. Keys in hand, Connor returned to the car, driving himself forward, even as his newfound confidence waned as he approached. The phantom odor, more like a memory of a scent than an actual smell, returned, something sweet and corrupt. As he turned the key to start the engine, the gentle pain in the back of his head returned,

rising slowly. He gritted his teeth and pulled out of the service station. The Natala National Forest closed around the two-lane road and the darkness swallowed the service station behind him. Connor focused on the destination. The route laid out, the starry sky outside, anything but the trunk.

It worked for a few minutes. Conner's blood coursed with caffeine And a tiny dose of some high-grade speed Just enough to keep him awake But still After a half hour on the dark road His eyes began to flutter At first they simply felt dry

And he batted his eyes to wet them They began to stay closed longer Seeming to stick at the zenith of each blink The tires hit the yellow reflectors of the center lane And with a sick jolt of adrenaline He realized he'd been drifting Ahead the headlights illuminated a hundred yards of road And picked out reflectors for another hundred

The glowing dots chased out in front of him like tracer bullets Outpacing the lit road And marking his path into the darkness They curved upward ahead signaling a rise in the road before it could be seen. Connor focused on the reflectors, letting them swim by him like the gentle dripping of water. He watched the phantom line of glowing points dip and rise with the road,

and then, with numb disbelief, watched it whip upwards, above his line of sight, twisting skyward. Connor thought absurdly of a sharp, upward rise, wondering if the car could take such a steep ascent. Then the line whipped like a snake, striking across the night sky, and his foot struck the brake with all the force that his terror could muster. The car slid to the right, and he corrected, pulling back onto the road and jerking to a halt. From the trunk there was a hollow and dull thumping noise, and Conner's heart surged. Ahead.

The road was perfectly flat. The yellow reflecting lights fixed back in reality. With the car no longer in motion, Connor's guts saying to him to leave, to flee into the relative safety of the dark woods. His hands clutched the steering wheel, bloodless in their intensity. From the trunk came another small thud,

and Conner's heart seemed to stop. Connor was out of the car, Before he knew it, the keys rattling in his grip. The fear had become something like a manic curiosity now. If he could simply see the thing in the trunk, he could move on, could start driving, could do another line and stay awake long enough to dump the fucking thing and just sleep. The trunk opened with grease deficiency. The smell caught him first.

It was the phantom smell from before. But now it felt cloyingly real, clinging to his nostrils. Putrid meat, dead dog in the hot summer road. Burst belly and cloudy-eyed rock, he gagged, choking on the intensity. When he blinked the tears from his eyes, he could see what was inside, but could not understand at first. shiny emergency blankets, silvery on one side and gold on the other, reflecting the trunk's meager light, were wrapped loosely around a large man-sized bundle.

Connor's hands were peeling back the metallic sheets before he had time to think, the drive to know almost painful, even as his mind screamed what he already knew. He was carrying a fucking corpse. Beneath the first shining layer was a woolen army blanket, soddened in black and oily fluids. The smell was even stronger now. Connor debated briefly, stopping there, but he reached out and peeled back the blackened sheet, feeling the wet fluids adhere to his slender fingers.

The corpse was naked to the waist and horridly disfigured. One arm ended in a shredded. stump, an unmistakable bruised and pierced field, a buckshot wound, patterned the gray and sunken chest. The head was cracked open. One hand-sized chunk of skull, clotted and matted with thinning gray hair lying next to it. Black and rotten teeth grimaced through a frozen rictus of pain. One dull, dark eye stared up at him. Around the neck was a black leather collar, cinch tight against the mottled gray skin, what looked like metallic wires in delicate filigree curved around the leather,

tracing a circuit board like design. At the clasp was a small metal box where the wires met and joined, encircling a small green LED that winked rhythmically. Connor stared, disbelieving for some time. in the silent forest around him, and his eyes held fixed on the corpse, the dead hobo with an electric collar in the trunk. He wanted to be angry. He knew he should be terrified.

But it simply didn't make sense, and he could muster no single emotion, despite the hundreds vying for a lease. The headache pulsed sharply, and it pushed him out of his train. where he found himself staring off into the woods. He shut the trunk after wrapping up the body and wiping off his hands. He found himself back in the driver's seat,

staring ahead at the flat road, his breathing oddly calm. He was tired again, and the nameless dancing fear was far at the periphery. It was simple now. He had to drive the car. That was all there was to it. He sped now, against his own rules and instincts, taking the forested roads with reckless velocity. Music cranked loud to hammer him awake.

It didn't work. The drowsy fog seemed to tug harder at him now, and the ticking regularity of the tall trees and the rhythm of the white reflective paint on the road beat out a tattoo of hypnotic regularity. It was a while before he came to realize that the radio was no longer on. It was only the steady lulling white noise of the engine, the hiss of the tires peeling away from the asphalt,

and the knocking from the trunk, a steady beat of impacts, sharp wraps, fists on metal. Connor closed his eyes tight. grinding his teeth together. The headache took on a new pitch, a sudden sharpening, and a chill spread across his body.

He pressed the accelerator as if he could speed himself bodily away from the trunk and its cargo. But he felt it speeding with him, pursuing him with a matched intensity. When he opened his eyes, his heart leaped into his throat. The forest was gone. He was on a four-lane highway, but the terrain was foreign to him. He resisted the urge to stop sharp again, trying to quell the hammering in his chest. But he couldn't settle the panicked animal desperation.

Everything was wrong. Despite the massive road, he was the only driver in either direction. There were no road signs, no mile markers. He'd lost time on the long drive before. But he always stayed on course, coming out of the trance precisely where he wanted to be. And he'd never been lost. Connor knew every thoroughfare and backwoods trail for a hundred miles in every direction. But he could not tell where he was.

The clock on the dashboard proclaimed that he'd lost mere minutes. He'd been a dozen miles from any road of this size. It's not fair. he thought and then repeated it again aloud his voice was pinched in den a child's protest that's not possible the broken field of black top and reflective plastic and paint rolled away beneath him and behind the trunk was now silent but still lingered malignant behind him he grabbed the telephone beside him and flipped it open Nothing. He only had one course of action that he could see.

Take the first exit, find another service station, reorient, deliver the fucking car. The little threat of hope, woven by as solid a plan as he could muster tugged at him. And he pushed the little blue sedan even harder. Together, driver and passenger hurtled down the road. He felt a surge of elation. As up ahead, an orange sign broke the monotony of the Phantom Freeway. It resolved from the gloom as he approached. Tall black letters reading,

Roadwork ahead. It wasn't what he'd hoped for, but it was a change. It's something to break the impossible blankness of the unknown road. The left lane was blocked off by a sloping line of bright orange traffic cones, pushing Connor one lane over. The line continued, disappearing into the dark. Connor strained to see the lights and hear the sounds of construction vehicles, the late-night shift adding a fresh layer of tar.

Nothing. The line of cones veered again, blocking the next lane. Connor emerged with it, feeling his hopes seep away into the dark. The line moved again, forcing him into the far end. right lane. Finally, as he understood it would be before he even saw it, the plastic traffic cones blocked off the last lane and then the shoulder. One bright orange line bisecting and blocking any further progress.

Connor slowed, ingrained instincts to obey all rules of the road screaming as they tried to process this logical contradiction. It didn't take long for him to do. decide. He knew he didn't want to be out here, alone and unmoving, with the thing in the back, the thing that might not be dead. If he was rolling, he was at least getting closer to being done with it all. He gunned the engine, brought the car back up to speed, and plowed through the line of cones. They folded beneath his wheels, tossed high into the night, and illuminated by the red of his brake lights as they bounced off the road into the night.

Everything in Conner's career had been focused on not drawing attention. He'd not been pulled over since he was caught joyriding at age 13 with a phone book beneath his seat and a tin can tied to his foot to reach the pedals. He'd made a career of escaping notice, but now he found himself wishing to see flashing blue and red lights behind him. He didn't know how he'd explain driving into a roadwork zone, speeding, or the hideous wreck of flesh in the trunk. He didn't care. He'd give anything to see another person if you could just reach Reynolds, hear that calming voice.

Ahead the four dotted lines of reflective paint vanished. The four lanes evaporated into a featureless plane of smooth black, car. Conner felt empty, beyond shock. Hot tears welled up in his eyes. Without the lines of the road, he suddenly felt he was drifting, veering from the road. Impulsively, he turned sharp to the right. The smooth field of blacktop spread away into the distance of his headlights. Fuck this! The sound of his own voice shocked him, causing him to leap slightly. and he led his foot off the pedal. The car drifted to a stop.

He opened the door and stepped out onto the black plane. The brittle pain in his head flared as he did, but he knew that if he could just get away from the car, he could think straight. He picked a direction and began to walk. The night sky was starless, the horizon featureless. He looked behind him, once, seeing a pool of bright light where the car still sat.

His head throbbed, and he picked up the pace, jogging now. The night air was clean and sweet, and although the throbbing in his head still continued, he felt refreshed by the freedom of being on his own two feet. After what felt like several miles, walking blind across the asphalt field, he began to worry if Reynolds would ever hire him again. such a relatively mundane concern, absurd in his current situation, hooked him like an anchor. He was hallucinating, he realized.

Although he couldn't tell where his sense became unreliable, he knew that was the only possible answer. And sooner or later, he would stop, and he'd likely never work as a courier again, would likely have ruined Reynolds' business with his soon or later. strange, wealthy client that paid to have corpses of transients shipped across backwoods roads. But so fucking what? With a dry chuckle, he realized that

Reynolds would be better off without the sort of client even if the old man didn't see it that way at first. Because who knows what the client would ask of him next. And hell, he'd find work again. Even if he had to uproot and find a

backyard to get familiar with, because he was the best goddamn driver there was. Up ahead, he saw a light, a tiny deviation in the darkness, and he began to run, a smile spreading across his face. As he approached, the skin on the back of his neck seemed to prickle, and the icy point of his headache pushed deeper. He knew what he was looking at. But he still couldn't accept it. It was the sound that made it real.

The engine he heard first. Then the other sounds. The chirping of his cell phone on the front seat. The bleeding of the car's open door alarm. And then at last, the steady tapping from the trunk. He didn't want to look at it. Wanted to turn away and run off into dark forever. rather than confront the car and its evil fucking cargo just a few feet in front of him when it should be miles away.

He picked one errand thought out of the confused and desperate whirlwind of his mind. The phone. It was still ringing. He pressed in closer to the car, feeling its presence like a thick fog, blacker than the darkness around it. It seemed to yield to his incursion. allowing him in to shut off the engine and grab the phone. He clicked the phone open and pressed it to his ear,

trying to ignore the noises from the trunk. Hello? He whispered into the receiver. It was Reynolds' voice, but something was wrong. The sharp, precise diction, the smooth tone. Some indefinable quality was gone. Oh, Jesus, Rent. I think I'm in a lot of trouble.

Fuck, no, sir, but I don't think that matters. Think I can look in there? I think it's still alive. Hunter felt the heat rising in him again. The paralyzing anger and the absolute bullshit unfairness of it all. And he yowled wordlessly at the sky before shakily approaching the rear of the car.

He slid the key in, fingers trembling uncontrollably, and swung the trunk open. This smell hit him, but it had changed. The rot had gave away to some predator musk that put Conner's hair on end. The silver blankets were shredded and pushed aside. The thing inside was almost unrecognizable. The shredded arm was now a thin and reedy limb, pink and newborn with too many jointed elbows.

The buckshot wound was almost a little. almost invisible, and Connor watched in horror as one of the few remaining holes disgorged a small lead ball before closing up around it. Both eyes stared out at Connor, one shrunken and glistening, but filled with malevolent light. It grinned, revealing not the black and rotted teeth he'd remembered, but a shark's grin, Connor found himself on his back. not remembering falling, scuttling feebly away from the car.

The headache was suddenly gone, and a confusing flood of stimuli crashed against the beach hat of his senses. He was still in the woods. The car was pulled off to the side of the road. In the sudden painless clarity, the broken parts of the last hours fell into place. He remembered opening the trunk that first time, seeing the body. He remembered stripping the collar from the corpse,

tossing it into the woods. He remembered wondering why he'd done it, even as his fingers closed around it. He remembered forgetting. He remembered wondering why he'd found himself staring off into the woods. He still couldn't find his footing, could only crawl away from the open trunk.

The thing now rearing upward, silhouetted by the wan light of the trunk's single bulb. One of the two long limbs with the impossible joints slid up, a spider emerging from a drain. The phone was still in his hand, and he saw without any real surprise, that it was still searching fruitlessly for a connection. He tossed it away, using his hands to pull himself upright. It was out now,

Crouched and waiting Its dark eyes flickered in the moonlight Connor raised himself slowly to unsteady feet The thing mirrored him Extending to its full and horrid height The bloody scraps of pants clinging to its pale And now unmarked frame Discourged of its hideous cargo

The little car now looked like sanctuary Like hope Like freedom But the thing stood between him and any chance of escape. He leaned forward toward him. The shark teeth glistening was spit. Connor began to laugh. A hopeless and mournful sound.

His limbs locking in fear as it reached out for him. Its spider-legged hands curling around his arms. Its touch was cold. and the knobby fingers felt like the tightening of vices. The thing laughed with him. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents, First Freeze of the Year, written by known of consequence and narrated by Nate Dufort.

For those of us in the South, winter's a different beast than it is for the rest of the country. where northerners will still be wearing shorts, we're breaking out jackets and gloves. The South isn't meant for below freezing temperatures. That's why it's the South. I wake up this morning and go through my routine like it's any other day, but the problem is, it isn't a normal day. Typically, my region only gets about two weeks of real winter, and it usually hits us in February. Mother Nature's thrown us for a loop this year because it's only jam.

January, and I step outside only to slip on ice in my driveway. I land hard on my side as a gust of wind blows in hard, freezing me down to the bone. I hate the first freeze of the year. Slowly get into my feet, I remote start my truck and head back inside. I'm not wearing nearly enough layers to battle this Arctic chill. Thankfully, lit on my travel mug was closed, and I didn't splash myself with coffee. Getting back inside, I stripped down my underwear and put on some thermals. With my pants and shirt back on, I had on a flannel shirt and pull over hoodie before putting my jacket back on. From a box at the top of the coat closet, I get a big, fluffy skull cap and a pair of gloves. This time, I take my time walking to my truck, avoiding the ice now that I know it's there.

It takes another 10 minutes for the truck to heat up enough to fully melt the ice off my windshield. Had I realized how bad it was outside, I'd have remote started the truck when I was still enjoying my first cup of coffee. There are other cars on the road, but not nearly as many as there usually is. A lot of people are calling in, but I don't have that luxury. Even though the posted speed limit's 70, I'm only going 50. There's an occasional vehicle that'll speed past me in the middle lane, but I'll leave it to them to risk their lives for faster speeds. I'm sticking to the right lane and doing my best to keep my tires and the tracks of the vehicles in front of me. At least this way, I stand a chance of not hitting a patch of ice.

I normally hate it when people drive like this, going so much slower than the limit, but that's when they're doing it in the rain. It's understandable when it's a heavy rain, but that's not what I'm talking about in this instance. They'll slow down like this for a medium rain, the kind of thing I used to love running around in when I was back in high school. I think driving tests need to be more intensive and difficult to seriously make sure people can handle bad road conditions. Case in point, I'm driving along and approaching a bridge. and weather like this, bridges are treacherous because they tend to have more ice on them than any other section of the road. I know this, and I'm slowing my speed by another five miles as a precaution.

Some people aren't doing this, like the dumbass coming fast in the far-left lane. I can see his headlights with my side mirror, and though he doesn't look like he's going the full 70, he's going exceedingly faster than me. In the ten minutes I've been on the freeway, I haven't seen a single car in the far-left lane. To any rational mind, this would indicate that there's a high chance that there's ice in that lane. I mean, really, there's got to be a reason why no one else is using that lane, but here this dipshit comes tearing past in a V8 sports car. Oh, and look at that.

Not even five seconds on the bridge, and he's already losing control. That $70,000 car just bounced off the sidewall and like an air hockey puck is sliding to the other wall. Unfortunately, that's bringing him right to me. And slamming on my brakes makes me slide too. Fuck me. The car slams right in my front end, pushing me to the guardrail on the right. We just managed to get off the bridge before I hit it. But the downside is that's where the cement barrier ended.

I don't just hit the metal and wood guardrail, but I go through the damn thing. I'm expecting to fall into the ditch between the highway and the access road, but I don't. The embankment on this side of the bridge slopes up for ways before it levels out. My truck falls off the road and slams into a steep part, crashing hard enough than my airbags deploy before falling the rest of the way. I don't know how long I'm passed out before I wake up, but I'm very dazed and confused. used. Cold wind blasts me in the face, and my entire body is one giant ball of ouch. I blink my eyes a bunch of times trying to clear the darkness from my vision, and it takes a while for things to come into focus. Either that or my brain's having trouble understanding what it's seeing.

I see the inside of this truck every day, but it all looks wrong. The dashboard has a giant crack in it. The touchscreen is smashed. The windshield is so broken that I can't see out of it, and there are airbags all over the place. The window on my passenger door is completely gone, allowing the wind to rush in that side and escape through the gap between the truck and the top of my door. My body is slow to respond as I try to move around, and I'm having trouble unbuckling my seatbelt. As I struggle with it, my mind is catching up to the facts, and I find myself getting seriously pissed off. off. For a moment, I lose my shit. Fighting against the restraint and screaming like a mental

patient, outraged that some fucking moron just totaled my truck and nearly killed me. I want nothing more than to crawl out of this wreck, climb up the embankment, drag him out of his car, and beat the shit out of him. This animalistic outbursts lasts 20 seconds before the spike of adrenaline dissipates. Twenty seconds of screaming is a lot, and I'm breathing heavily. I actively try to calm myself taking deep breaths to prevent me from hyperventilate and then slow my heart rate. Panicking is only going to make things worse, and the rational part of my brain knows it. Fighting with the seatbelt near my right pocket, I barely managed to get to my pocket knife. I sharpen it fairly regularly because I use it to open boxes at work, so when I finally get it

open, it makes quick work of cutting the seatbelt, and I put my knife back in my pocket before doing anything else. else. Climbing over the center console, I try the passenger door, but it won't budge. I don't have the strength to try and force it, so I climb out the window. For a brief moment, I wish the truck had flipped and landed upside down. At least that way I wouldn't have a drop between the window and the ground. Holding on to the door, I point my head toward the ground and start slithering the rest of me out. Once my feet clear the window, I like gravity do the work. My feet hit solid ground, and that's where my hands slip. The rest of me lands with a thud, and the entire backside of my body suddenly feels colder if that's possible.

I guess I should be grateful that there wasn't a rock where my spine landed. With my hands, I reach out to the sides of me for something to hold on to, but all I encounter is a slick, flat surface. There must have been water in the creek when the freeze rolled in last night, I'm lying on top of at least three inches of ice. Planting my boot heel on the ground, I try to leverage myself well enough to flip over, but the ice is slick, and the wind hasn't let up yet. A strong gust hits me just as my boot slips, and I slide a few inches away from the truck. I reach out to it for something to hold on to, but I'm too far from it now.

In fact, I'm still sliding away. Somehow the distance between me and my wreck truck keeps getting longer. It's almost as if there's a downward slope to the creek. I try to slow myself, but there's nothing to grab onto. My speed picks up, and all I can do is scream as I slide into darkness. I panic again. I don't know how long or far I've gone, but my feet hit something solid, and I come to a sudden jarring stop.

This is the fourth time I've slammed into something, hard and it hasn't even been an hour damn it i really wish i'd have at least considered calling in today there's no light where i am and i start feeling around at the thing that stopped me it's a wall but so cold that i can feel it through my gloves it's as smooth and slick as the ground so it's either made of ice or at least covered in it i can't see a fucking thing and i reach into my jacket pocket for my phone, but it's not there. Curcing, I realize where it is. I always plug it into the charging cable in my truck because it has trouble connecting through Bluetooth. The damn thing, still in my truck. Using the wall for support, I try to move to the left, but the wind hits me strongly in the face.

Instead, I turn around, pull my hood up, and start moving the other way. Either way should lead me back to the embankment along the creek, and once I'm up top, I can make my way back to the freeway. I find a little strange that the wall I'm touching's perfectly vertical, though. The wind is a constant presence at my back, and I'm grateful for the layers I put on. I'm still fucking cold, but think of how bad it would be without the extras. I'd be well on my way to freezing at death and stud only halfway. I always knew that I rely on my sight to move around, but never a couple. occurred to me just how much until right now. I am completely lost in the dark, relying on only

touch to navigate. It's not like I can hear or smell anything with this fucking wind at my back, not to mention my nose is too cold to function beyond breathing. The only upside is that I'm in a stupid creek and there's only so many ways to go. At least that's what I was thinking when the wall I was using as a guide suddenly stopped. One moment, my hand was sliding along the solid mass. The next it was touching nothing but air. I take a few steps back and find it again trying to figure out what just happened. My hands slide along the smooth side and discover something quite alarming. If I was wandering inside a building with no lights on, finding a wall that makes a sudden 90-degree turn wouldn't be a big deal. If anything,

it would be perfectly normal. Finding something like that while walking, wandering around in a creek bed is completely unheard of. What the hell? Instead of following the new wall, I start walking directly across from it, looking for the other side of the creek, because that's where I am, right? Could I have gone so far that I actually found the entrance to a drainage tunnel that run underneath the city? If I made it that far, I should be seeing streetlights or something above.

When you live in a city, there's no such thing as complete darkness, not when you're still outside. Now I made it about five steps before my outstretched hands find another wall. This one's perfectly vertical, too, and just as icy. There's no way I'm still in the creek bed. So where the hell am I? Trying to backtrack doesn't work out too well. The wind kicks up even stronger with each step I take in that direction,

until it knocks me on my ass. I start sliding again, but don't make it very far before I come to a much less painful stop. against yet another wall. Stumbling around in the dark, I keep finding different walls, or the same wall several times. I'm not really sure. I've gotten so turned around. The only way I can tell where I came from is the direction the wind is blowing. Since going against the wind only tires me out, I keep moving with it. After what seems like a really long time, but it can honestly be about ten minutes, the wind kind of stops. Not completely, but it's considerably softer now, almost gentle.

Still, cold as a witch's tit, though. And I stand in the darkness trying like hell to come up with some sort of idea where I am, but getting nowhere. Now that the wind is so low, I can begin to hear something, but it's awfully quiet. It's not the low hum of electricity, the distant rumbling of vehicles, or the consistent clatter machinery.

It almost sounds like an echo of my, my feet shuffling against the ice, but that can't be it. First off, I'm standing perfectly still and have been for two minutes. Second, the noise my boots make when sliding across the icy ground doesn't make enough noise to echo. Whatever the noise is, it seems to be getting louder, and I start feeling uneasy. In my mind, that can only be the sound of something moving in this darkness. it's using the wall as I have been, or it knows exactly where it is, and can possibly see.

I don't find this reassuring because, in my mind, whatever is out there is after me. It's not like I've been able to detect anything else alive here. Doing my best to determine the direction of the shuffling, I make an educated guess and immediately start moving the other way. My hands weigh frantically in front of me as I move, my boots managing to find traction and enough for me to move a little faster than before. I think I'm moving in a straight line, but for all I can tell, I could be gone in circles. At least I'm certain I'm not moving in a serpentine pattern. I've gotten myself up to a decent walking pace, but in order to do that, I have to stop shuffling my feet. Taking real steps increases the chance that I'll slip,

but with that noise getting louder, it's worth a risk. I can hear it better now, but it doesn't sound like it has legs and feet to walk on. It's more like the shuffling slither of a giant snake or something equally horrendous. My hand comes into contact with another wall, this one leading off to my left. As soon as I start going that way, I hear the worst sound I've ever heard in my life. A roaring growl like a predatory animal finding the first prey it's seen in weeks. I know I'm projected my fears, but that sounds like a hungry roar. I quicken my pace. With my left hand keeping contact with the wall, I reach my right hand to my pocket. My knife is only a four-inch blade, and far from my first weapon a choice, but it's all I have at the moment. Pulling it out,

I press the button that flicks open the blade and hold it at my side with the blade pointing away from me. The shuffling slither is getting louder and more frantic, so I throw caution to the wind and start running. It's hard to keep contact with the wall, but I manage it, for a while at least. Running in the dark is fucking nerve-wracking. I keep expecting to run into something like a low part in the ceiling, finding a wall in my path that I smash my face against, or for the ground to suddenly drop out from under me. Since I've gotten back to my feet, I haven't run into anything that wasn't a wall, but it doesn't mean there won't eventually be something there. The sounds of my movement have gotten louder, but it's drowned out by the sounds of my pursuer.

It still sounds like something large slithering along the icy ground, but I know of nothing without legs it sounds as big as this fucking thing. I'm almost glad I can't see. My hands have been pressing into the wall harder than I realized, and would have continued being oblivious to that if it wasn't for the fact that the wall suddenly disappears. The unexpected dead air is so jarring that I fall into the open air. Landing on my side, something rushes past me, hitting my legs and sending me spinning against the ice. I managed to curl into a ball, keeping a death grip on my knife. Under the circumstances, spinning on the ice like this might be fun, but right now, it's just disorienting the crap out of me and making me queasy.

Something heavy lands on me, bringing my movement to a dead stop. The weight on my chest is breath-stealing, and I bring my knife hand up to strike at whatever is on me. Bringing my other arm up to shield my face, a pair of icy hands grabs onto it. Something bumps into the watch on my wrist and hits the light button. The illumination's normally too dimmed to be useful as a light source, but it's practically blinding in this pitch black. The thing on top of me screeches at the light, and for a brief moment I catch a glimpse of it. I don't get a lot of details, but I know I see a lot of sharp teeth and way too many eyes. I've seen more than enough and just start stabbing.

I get a few good hits in as it screams in my face, those vice-like hands trying to break my arm. Bringing the knife higher, I try stabbing it where the face had been a moment ago. The blade sinks in and gets stuck on something as I try to bring it. back. Those hands on my arm are gone, and the weight on my chest slithers off to the side. I can breathe again, but my knife hand is still gripping the handle, and I can't get the blade free. Something slams into me throwing me across the ice, and I never let go of my knife, and the force that sends me sliding across the ice helps rip the blade out. I get away from whatever the hell that thing is, but not before I'm splashed heavily with what I'm guessing.

is blood. This feels a lot like when I was sliding away from my truck, and I'm trying to brace myself for when I slam into a wall again. For a brief moment, the ground is no longer underneath me, and I crashed through a sheet of ice. As I lay on the ground recovering from the hard but odd impact, I open my eyes and realize that there's light. In fact, I can see a truck right next to me. I must be back at the creek bed because that's my truck, only it looks wrong. Slowly getting to my feet, I see there's no damage to it. My truck looks exactly as it had when I was sitting in my driveway an hour ago. Wait, what the fuck?

It is sitting in my driveway. I'm back home. It's like nothing happened after I slipped on the ice the first time. Looking at set ice, I see it exactly where it was before, only it looks considerably thicker and like a broken paint of glass. Could I've hit my head when I fell and everything that happened after was a hallucination? I'd be willing to believe that, but my knife is still in my hand, and I'm covered in some nasty smell and liquid.

Oh, and I'm still wearing the layers of clothing I put on after slipping on the ice. What the fuck happened to me? More information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration. Please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at CreepyPod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative Commons Share-A-Lite licensing, or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast,

or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.