Creepy - Smile & Between the Rows

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Smile***Written by: Ben Labelle and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***Between the Rows***Written by: EM Otero and Narrated by: Jimmy Ferrer***Content warning: Child death***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

Written by Ben LaBelle. And narrated by Danielle Hewitt. I didn't used to look like this. As late as last week, you could have passed me on the street and not known anything was wrong. Maybe you did. It started... Uh... Sorry.

Talking as hard. for me now. It started about two weeks ago. We'd brought in a man for motor vehicle theft, and I was going to handle the interrogation. McDonald usually took care of those, but no, I insisted. I was fresh off traffic duty and I wanted to do real cop stuff. Shine a hot light in the suspect's eyes and say things like, don't lie to me, you sick freak. I know where you were Saturday night. It wasn't much like that. I interviewed him in a brightly lit room that looked like a small office. We sat on either side of the table that I swear I'd seen at IKEA. And he was cuffed, though not to the table. He was ready to confess, impatient even. That's probably why I was allowed

to interrogate him. It was a secretary job. Take the confession. put it on paper, let him sign. But I was happy to do it, both because it meant a first crack at real crime work, and because whatever his story was, it had to be good for a few laughs. They gave me his file before I went in. Dr. Penn, a psychiatrist,

no prior arrests, in good standing, reasonably wealthy. He had a BMW parked in his driveway at home. So why had he slipped into a 20-year-old Mazda a block from his house and spent the day driving in circles downtown? And when evening came, why had he parked the car on the sidewalk and fallen asleep? I was so eager to find out that I shook his hand when I entered the room. The other officers made that the joke of the week. I read Dr. Penn his rights.

He didn't want an attorney. And I told him he'd stolen a car. He agreed. He would take sips now and then from a small paper cup, and then he'd massage his cheek. His jaw was inflamed, and when he opened his mouth I saw why. He had the same condition, I have now, but not as far gone. I tried not to stare. I tried hard. But I doubt I succeeded. He didn't care. He knew how it looked.

I shook it off and told him to go ahead with his confession. Okay, he said. He'd cooperate fully. Not a question. He'd go limp if we wanted. But on two conditions. First, no recording was to be made. That wasn't a problem.

We were a casual bureau, and nobody had ever even thought to take out the tape recorder, not for pen. Second, nobody but me, was to listen. That includes audience on screens and speakers and onlookers behind one-way mirrors. That was a problem. I couldn't go unsupervised on my first interrogation.

I tried to talk him out of it, but Dr. Penn was firm on the conditions. So I went to McDonald. He said not to worry about it. I could take the next one. But I wanted this one. I was being offered a special position. the one representative of the law and the only witness to whatever mad story this man had sealed up. My curiosity got the better of me, like the proverbial cat.

I can handle it, I told MacDonald. I made it sound like no big deal. He talks and I just have to write it down. If I do it wrong, which is almost certainly not going to happen, then you can take over if he had pushed back. A bit harder. But he was feeling generous that day, and I was stubborn and persistent as always.

If I get out of this, tomorrow is a new year for me, and my resolution is to give up sometimes. Go with the flow. Take pushback as a sign from God. You still get in trouble that way, but no one can say, hey, this is what you wanted.

Maybe I should talk to Dr. Penn about that. I checked his file the other day. Charges were dropped, settled out of court, and he's back to tampering with mines. He must have gotten better. I can't imagine spilling my childhood trauma to him like he was then. Like I am now. I returned to the room. His breaths came in whistles, and he had to take deep ones before beginning.

He wanted to be caught. That much was clear. wanted to confess. Maybe, I thought. When you're a psychiatrist, you spend too many hours as an ear, and too few as a mouth. And maybe he just needed someone who would listen to him. Me.

But then why send the others away? He said his story would sound completely irrelevant at the start, but I had to be patient and not interrupt, and it would make sense. He said, I didn't use to look like this. Then he told a story that was, in substance, a lot like the story I'm telling you now.

That's why I don't need to repeat it. The characters were different, the details. But when you strip off the decorations, it was the same. I didn't know what to think when he told me. I didn't believe it. But I didn't have any alternatives. You can bet I believe it now. In the next few days, Dr. Penn's story was a frequent visitor in my daydreams.

In every idle moment when I was driving, when I was filling out forms, eating lunch, his story played over in my head, like a song you can't get rid of. Being catchy, I always said, doesn't make a song good, but it does make a bad song unbearable. That's how I felt about Dr. Penn's confession. On the fourth day, my gums started hurting. I had expected that, whether the story was true or not. I guess everyone's a hypochondriac on some level. If you hear about rabies, you wonder if those red marks on your wrist or bites.

You're told a friend came down with something. You start coughing. You walked through a spider web. you feel little legs moving across your neck. So I figured that's why my gums hurt. It was in my head. Or maybe it's normal for them to hurt now and then, and I only noticed because Dr. Penn's condition was on my mind.

Still, before bed that night, I stared into the bathroom mirror and peeled my lips back, like examining a horse. As far as I could tell, I looked the same as always. Were my teeth a little whiter? No, that was the light. I went to sleep. My mouth felt uncomfortable the next day.

And the day after. Most of the time you don't feel your mouth. But when you start noticing it, you can't stop. Try biting down so hard that your teeth are forced into your gums. Or push them with your tongue until you're afraid they might pop off. That's what I feel all the time. Only worse. It made it near impossible to sleep at night.

If I didn't take melatonin and over-the-counter knockout pills, I'd be up for hours, conscious of nothing but stinging gums and throbbing teeth that didn't seem to fit together right. I wouldn't say I believe Dr. Penn's story. Not yet. But it was a heck of a coincidence. I decided to test it. After brushing my teeth in the morning, I found a ruler in my old school bag and measured.

My front teeth, the big ones, were 11 millimeters long from gum to biting edge, maybe 11.5. I popped a painkiller and left for work. That night I measured again. I remember leaning towards the mirror, my eyes dark and tired, the metal ruler leaving imprints on my palm. I almost decided not to measure. I didn't want to find out and it was true. but I lifted my lip anyway and held the ruler flat against my teeth.

Eleven millimeters. I let out a chuckle. Of course it wasn't true. The next morning I measured again, but only to start my day off with some relief. I didn't expect any change. Thirteen millimeters. I checked again, but I'd measured right.

My teeth had grown two millimeters in my sleep Or so it appeared That had to be a margin of error though, didn't it? You get different readings holding the ruler at different angles You read the notches a little differently You round differently I tried measuring in other ways But couldn't get it down to 11

Or maybe, I thought, Gums just grow and retract in natural cycles Like tides I risked being late to work to look bad up pages and pages of searching and I found nothing about gum cycles. My last idea, I looked into this on my lunch break, was that my gums were plain old receding, that it could be from peridontal disease, aggressive rushing, genetics,

or a number of other things. It's a common condition, and symptoms include, guess what? Tooth sensitivity. That was it. It was a condition. but a treatable one, a disease, a lack of oral hygiene, not a bizarre, horrifying, unexplainable curse. I booked a dentist appointment, closed my research,

and decided it needed no more thought. Of course you can't just decide to stop thinking about it, can you? I thought, do gums recede that fast, that suddenly? I thought, haven't you taken good care of your mouth? I thought, why now? Why right after hearing Dr. Penn's story? At night I tossed until there was nothing to do but get up and measure again. In the sharp light of a bathroom at three in the morning, 15 millimeters. I spent the rest of the night picturing Dr. Penn in his grand, unwilling smile. It kept changing. 17 millimeters. 20. There was no

denying it now. My teeth weren't getting sharper or thinner, only longer, like ivory columns. Not just the front teeth, all of them, top and bottom. I took vacation time. I ate food I already had in the house. No one could see me like this. I looked like a monster fish that lives on the ocean floor, the kind you only see in expensive documentaries. They grew faster. Twenty-five millimeters. Thirty. When I closed my mouth, my lips wouldn't touch. It became hard to talk, hard to breathe. I had to quit solids. Moved to a diet of soups and juices. I called the dentist and moved my appointment to that day. It was an emergency. When he saw me, he saw me, he saw me. he was dumbfounded. He'd never seen anything remotely like it. I remembered Dr. Penn's story,

how he'd first heard of the curse through a client of his, a dentist. It's easy for dentists to get caught in the crossfire, I imagine. I said to the dentist, I didn't used to look like this. I began telling my story, but he cut me off. A curse, he said. No. A genetic anomaly, I'd bet. He probed with miniature replicas of medieval instruments, poking, scratching, grating. He knew some researchers who'd have to see me. But not right away.

If I wasn't treated soon, he said, and if my teeth kept growing, they would either break my jaw or push up through my head and sprout from my scalp like horns. He sent me to a specialist who could see me that day. She didn't care to hear my story. I lay on a cold surgical table, and she looked down at me like a puzzle. I heard them talking as the anesthesia hit.

They were asking if the columns were all dentine and enamel, or if the pulp extended through. They were asking if this would be more like cutting an elephant's tusk or amputating a limb. Then I passed out. I woke up in severe pain, but I felt empty space in my face in my chest. mouth. Closing it took more strain than usual, but it did close. I smiled what must have been a

strange, hideous smile. I'd beaten the curse. I was human again. The surgeon explained that they'd sawed my teeth off and given me temporary caps. Now get out of here, she said. I've got another operation in ten minutes. The next day, I woke up searching. the inside of my mouth with my tongue. I was back to 20 millimeters. I broke into sobs and gasping breaths. If I wanted to live like this, I'd practically need a personal surgeon,

filing down my teeth as I worked. Dr. Penn told me that, as best as he could tell, the curse, the disease, whatever it was, came out of an underground club around Vancouver. He couldn't begin to imagine how it started. Neither could I. But it had been built to survive.

You can't cure it. It won't go extinct. The only way to get rid of it is to pass it to someone else. God forgive me. But I've spent these last few days looking for that someone. But nobody wants to talk to one who looks like me. Nobody can stand hearing from this unholy mouth until you came along. I'm sorry. I'm really sorry.

But it's too late now. Dr. Penn told me that's how you pass the curse. You tell them the whole story. From the time you contracted the smile, until now. You have to start it with. I didn't used to look like this. Creepy presents. Between the Rose.

written by I.M. Otero, and narrated by Jimmy Ferrer. The solar panel stretched for miles and miles. And I had to keep the space between the mode for ease of maintenance. So every morning. I put on my noise-canceling headphones before I started the mower. My boss said that the mower was so loud it was damaged my ears, so safety first. I didn't mind. I got to listen to whatever I wanted.

I especially loved listening to books. It was easy to get lost in the stories while mowing. I stared out into the solar field. The rows seemed to go on forever into the horizon. I have always wondered. Who needed this much power? Miles of solar panels like these could power just about anything. Yet there was no grand city, no metropolis, and no towns.

Simply a small remote facility. I had to drive over an hour to get here. And half that drive was through the solar field. Even though I asked, they never told me what was in the facility. They just told me that if the panels go down, they need to access them quickly and efficiently. So the grass needed to be short. After all, I wasn't paid to wonder. I was paid to mow.

So I mowed for miles and miles. By the time I would finish mowing all the rows, it would be time to start all over again. It took nearly a week to mow it all, and the grass in the beginning would be almost knee-high, so I would start over. Mowing between the panels, the endless row. grows for miles and miles. Under the panels grew tall, and I would have to zigzag underneath them. Sometimes. I would let the plants grow tall, and they would peep up between the panels.

It was my personal little protest to assist nature against the miles of panels. It was harmless, though. Just a couple flowers here and there. a while when I would come back to check to see how tall the plant grew, it would be gone. I didn't think there were any other people mowing. I never saw anyone. But then again, I never really looked. I thought about it, and in the garage where they stored the mower, there was only room

for one. So I was pretty sure it was only me mowing. Sometimes the ground trembled below my feet. like an earthquake that would go on for too long. The tremors would shake consistently for hours. The only way I was able to tell at first was seeing the panel shake. I wondered what would cause that. Mining?

Underwater rivers. I couldn't help but wonder. I asked my boss about the trembling, or if there were any other people mowing, and what the facility was for. He would always cross his arms and say they pay me to moe not to ask questions, not to be curious about what was going on and not to wonder. So I continued to mow between the panels for miles and miles.

The rumbling continued and became more frequent. Once I almost fell off the mower, it had shaken so bad. I couldn't help but keep wondering its time went on. The facility was so small, barely larger than a grocery store. Was there something underneath? If they were mining, why would it be so secret? I tried to come up with explanations as I mowed. Occasionally I saw shadows under the panels from the adjacent rows.

The panels came so low to the ground that I couldn't look underneath very well. It was like looking under a door. I would have to drive to the next intersection and look, but no one was ever there. I started looking at every intersection I came to, and I never saw anyone. Sometimes I thought I saw movement down the rows peeking at me from around the corner. Whenever I went to investigate, the only thing I found was trampled grass. So I knew there was something or someone walking around. Or maybe it was the wind, or rain, or maybe even an animal.

As long as they weren't interfering with my work, who cares, right? I heard once in one of my books that the brain made up stuff when it was born. If someone stared at a mirror long enough, they would see things that weren't even there. That made me feel better. Staring at endless, repeating rows of identical panels was my mirror. My mind had been playing tricks. So I continued to mow between the panels for miles and miles. My boss eventually asked if I saw anything in the road panels.

His tone made it feel like an interrogation, so I lied. I told him no. I haven't seen a thing. Then I thought, was it really a lie? I never truly saw things. I just thought I saw things. I wondered where the questioning came from. My boss said a maintenance man saw me get off the mower and look under the panels,

and then down a central row to look in one other row. He thought I had gone mad. I tried to recall if I saw anyone working on the panels. And I didn't. Actually thinking about it, I have never seen anyone working on the panels. I felt like I should have, especially since it always seemed like there were more or more panels being built. Yet I never saw any construction.

I told my boss that I thought I saw an animal. I thought that if there was one, it would be important to report, since an animal could damage the panels, but I was mistaken. I thought about the trampled grass, but didn't mention it. My boss let me leave without more questions. But I still wondered what was going on underneath. facility. I continued to wonder while I mowed.

What could it be? So many things had been strange here, and it only got stranger. At first I would be pelted with grasshoppers as I mowed down the rows. They would land on my sun-bronzed legs and leap back off into the taller grass underneath the panels. I would see butterflies, and they would land gracefully on the infrequent flowers and flutter about me. I would see in life. Even mice and moles would skitter about and the snakes that ate them would be out bathing in the sun. But now? Nothing moved besides me

in the miles and miles of panels, except for the shadows. Some moved along with me. Others stood still. Some I swore looked like the shadows of people walking. I wondered if it was actually my brain playing tricks. If it wasn't that, then what was it? But I wasn't paid to wonder, I told myself. I still couldn't let it go. Something was off. I knew it.

So instead of getting lost in the music and books in my headphones, I would pay close attention. I had to figure out, what was going on. I watched and stared at the sky. Nothing. Not even birds. I watched for half the day and I didn't see a damn thing.

Second half of the day I changed directions and I was mowing back towards the facility. I saw something strange after a while. Over the facility, the clouds seemed to move together and then meet and disappear only to reappear. almost as if something was there and mirrored. I kept staring as I mowed between the panels for miles and miles. As I watched large clouds moved beneath the strange reflective surface, I realized the shape was a pyramid.

I was so distracted that the side of my mower clipped one of the panels and I was jolted in the seat. The headphones fell from my head to the grass. in front of me. After I reoriented, I realized the mower was not loud enough to necessitate them. I had thought it was ear-splittingly loud, but it only hummed. So I mowed the rest of the way back with one ear out. I didn't want to look like I wasn't wearing them just in case I was being watched. I heard a rhythmic thrumming and clanging. It wasn't loud, but it was no noticeable without the headphones. It sounded like it came from the ground below.

I tried to look for the pyramid again, but I couldn't seem to locate it. I wondered if I had imagined it. I continued to mow between the panels, but now I listened to the world around me. The next day I decided to inspect the grounds around me and the panels and the intersections. I noticed the shadows still seem to follow along, and in the morning due I even noticed small footprints, smaller than my own. I swore. I heard voices too sometimes, whisper so quiet that the hum of the mower concealed their meaning. I didn't dare stop the mower.

They would know I was listening. I was scared. But I didn't know why. I couldn't blissfully mow any longer, ignorant of the strangeness around me. There was no going back. Then I saw it. A figure peeking around the corner of the panels at the next intersection. I wasn't certain at first, but as I got closer I could see, it wasn't my mind playing tricks.

The sun was in front of me, and the small figure was silhouetted against the sun. I stopped when I got close and stepped down. The person was the size of a child. I walked slowly, cautiously, and called out to the child. And then I noticed there was another huddled at its feet. The children giggled audibly and ran around the corner. I followed and saw them turn into another room. I kept up the chase and followed again, hearing the soul.

small feet in the grass. The same childish giggles continued on. When I came to the row they turned into, I saw nothing. Only miles of panels. They didn't reappear until the next day. This time, I approached slower, and they let me get closer. They disappeared playfully into the rows again. This continued for days. I would see these children and they would tease me and then vanish. I thought about bringing this up to my boss, but I knew I would be told, you're not paid to chase children, you're paid to mow. The children started to not just tease and taunt me.

They started being disruptive. Sometimes they would be on the panels and throw small rocks or handfuls of cut grass that would fall into my shirt, make me itchy for the rest of the day. Every time I got off the mower, they disappeared. There aren't many places to hide, but somehow they did. The days were getting shorter and I was finishing mowing closer to dark. This made me nervous as the children were more brazen as it got closer tonight. Despite this, I persevered and still mowed the miles and miles of panels.

After a few days, and getting battered by small stones, I had had enough. I needed to know. I mowed, and I was ready like a coiled spring. I waited for one of the children to pop up and I knew what it was going to do. It didn't take long for one of them to appear. One popped half its body over the top of the panels with handfuls of grass to drop down, and I jumped up to grab it. I grabbed the child by the wrist and pulled it down.

The children screamed and fought like wild animals. I noticed immediately that the child, child had strange grayish pale skin. I pinned down the arms and heard the other children around me scream and shout and protest. They threw sticks and stones, but I was frozen. I stared into the child's eyes. It was nothing like I've ever seen. The eyes were black. No whites, no iris, two pits of black in the small face. Its mouth was unnatural. wide as well. Its long, black, coarse hair clung to its face. The child yelled for helping they descended on me. One leaped off the panel and onto my back, clawing and biting. I pulled

the child off and threw it and frantically ran to my mower. It wasn't fast, but they never approached me on it. It was my beacon of safety. I was pelted with small objects as I ran. I ran. I was pelted with small objects as I ran. I shielded my face and thankfully the mower was still running an idle. A child ran in front of me and I kicked it with my heavy boots and kept running. I leapt into the seed and pushed forward. The front tires lifting from the ground for a second. A child landed on the front of the mower and hissed.

He didn't have a chance before I kicked it in the face and it fell backwards in the path that I was going. I couldn't stop it in time. I had run over small animals such mice and snakes, but this was no small animal. It sounded horrible, as the spinning blades chopped up the body. A child screamed for only a moment before it abruptly ended. Blood, viscera, and bone sprayed out of the chute, painting the glass red and bits of bone audibly struck the panels.

I was filled with fear. My heart thumped in my years as I saw there were now nearly a dozen of them chasing after me. I couldn't see or remember where I came in. The facility was miles and miles away from this spot. All I could see was endless rows of panels. A child jumped from the top of the panels and tackled me off the moor. Others jumped in it too. They stomped, bit, and torrent me.

I screamed as I felt their teeth. teeth gnawing into my flesh. They pulled my body apart and dragged me under the panels into the taller grass that I neglected to cut. I couldn't help but wonder as I bled out. Their teeth crunching on my flesh and bone. Where did these children come from? Was it the facility?

The pyramid? Or something else? Were they always here? hiding in the dirt, in the grass. The last thought I felt was regret. I should never have wondered. I wasn't paid to wonder. The grass grew longer between the miles and miles of panels and a new person was hired.

They wondered why the blades were all chipped up and rusty. It looked like the person before them had tried to mow a tree down. They sharpened the blades. and sprayed off the mower deck. Bits of white came off as they sprayed and the brown bits of what they thought was mud had an acrid coppery smell to it. They wondered what happened,

but not too hard. They were just grateful for the job. And they knew they weren't paid to wonder. They were paid to mow between the panels for miles and miles. For more information, on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration. Please visit creepypod.com.

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