Creepy - Some Body to Love

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

Some Body to Love (starts at: 2:49)***Written by: Hinda Chadwick and Narrated by: Rissa Montanez***Gooseflesh (starts at: 40:17)***Written by: Jes Malitoris and Narrated by: Megan McDuffee***Content warnings: animal death, self harm***Reborn (starts at 1:04:16)***Written by: Mark T. Bates***Support the show at patreon.com/crepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

Hey, everyone. Before we get to today's stories, I just want to sound out a quick thank you to all the writers who saw our story submission call on social media and sentence stories. The call was for male POV stories, as we only have a few left. And before that, it was for female POV,

so it makes sense we'll go back and forth like that. Just as a reminder, our submissions are always open from male or female POV. And we love when the POV is gender neutral so any of our narrators can read the stories. And thank you to those of you have already been sending in 31 days of horror stories.

As soon as we can get those in, the better. And I do want to make sure that any writers out there who haven't had luck getting their stories accepted don't get too down on themselves. I know it doesn't feel great to have your story passed on. But we just can't accept all stories, even if we'd love to be able to take everything that gets sent our way.

creepypod.com slash submissions outlines what we're looking for. And even then, sometimes it just doesn't seem like a good fit. That's not a knock on the writing. It's just if we think the story fits with how we do the show. So please, keep writing and submitting. I still very clearly remember how it fell to get my first story accepted from no sleep, and it still remains one of my favorite parts of podcasting getting to pass that feeling on to others. You got this.

Oh, and a quick shout out to No Sleep Who just passed their 15th anniversary I think that I've talked them up enough in the past But if not, and you haven't listened to No Sleep Come on, go check them out Okay, enough of this old and improved John Who's positive instead of Well, what I have been

Let's get on with horror First up, in a strange world where people can leave their skin behind a lonely abandoned skin sets out on a desperate journey to find a body that will truly love and need it. From writer Heidi Hinda Chadwick, the narrated by Rissamontanez. Creepy presents, somebody to love. Getting into and out of your skin was something all children had to learn at some point. Alongside learning how to use the toilet, tie your shoelaces, and blow your nose, it was all part of growing up.

To begin, you struggled. You were clumsy. You got your arm stuck. Your flesh got all twisted and out of shape. It hurt, too. So much that you'd cry out in pain and just sob and controllably and had to be held and rocked and consoled and hushed until you calmed down. It was okay. You'd just try again tomorrow. You did so well. You really did. By the time you got to primary school, you had it pretty much down. Sure, there was room for refining, but it was adequate enough. Still, there were those children who hadn't quite mastered it yet. The same ones who would accidentally wet themselves during class or who looked dirty and smelled bad, their clothes old and frayed and ill-fitting. The other kids

cruelly pointing at them, sticking gum in their hair and laughing. In high school, their were other matters to contend with, such as puberty and breasts and hairs and hormones and pimples, and sex. If you were lucky, you had parents who educated you with the basic knowledge of how you slipped off your skin in order to be intimate with someone else. They would teach this without emotion, factual, and practical, not taking into account the slithering of self-consciousness or the squirm of wanting to be desired by the other. The first time you had been intimate with another, you hadn't known what you were doing.

Neither of you did. You fumbled and groped, and when it came to stripping off skins, you were shy and horny and did so in such a hurry that you'd made a mess. There was blood everywhere, handprints, footprints, and buttprints all over the cream furnishings at his house.

The next day you were both ashamed for making you. such a scene and as punishment had to scrub and clean and wash away the evidence of your evening right in front of angry parents. What you didn't know was that these adults remembered their own first times and how awkward they were too, how much of a mess they had made. Though some would say that that's what dark blankets are for, or that's why you should put down plastic sheeting first, or that's why doing it outside in the woods was preferable. But no one said any of this to you. Instead, they just watched you clean up with pursed lips.

By the time you reached adulthood, you had it sussed, and besides, there were other issues to contend with, such as making money to pay the bitch of a landlady who never repaired the leaking tap, or your brother who couldn't look after him. properly and was living in that place with the bars in the windows and nurses and visiting hours. Also, the groping hands of your boss that you spent far too much time avoiding while working nine to six at the job that you were very indifferent to. But you had a secret, something that made all of this daily heaviness fade away into insignificance altogether. At night, when all was quiet and everyone was sleeping, you would slip out of your skin,

and go running. Along the streets, under orange lamps, weaving in and out of shadows. Through the park, feeling the soil and the grass against the bare soles of your feet, across the roofs of buildings, leaping for a moment, suspended in the space between,

before the wind found its way through the fibers on your back. You weren't meant to do this, though. to slip out of your skin for no reason, to be raw and red, and leave the trails of your body's fluids as trails all over the land. It was frowned upon. It was uncivilized.

It was seen as symptomatic of other, more serious issues. And it was dangerous. For while you were running and jumping and leaping and watching the waves against your body, your skin was up to something else. Despite the absence of flesh, your skin had an intelligence of its own. And all it knew, all it wanted and needed and desired,

was a body, some body, any body, to feel the pulse of the living. You see, it was lonely. It ached for a body to love as its own. For whatever reason, it would immediately forget that it belonged to you as soon as you slipped it off. And while you're out cavorting, your skin would be searching for the right body. Any body.

Which meant that if it found what it was looking for, you would have no skin to put back on. And that would be a huge problem. Huge. And so it came to pass that one mild summer night, at an hour when all are most likely in the land of dreaming. You slipped out of your skin, just as you usually do, and set off running into the velvet silence. On this particular night, your skin, after watching you disappear and feeling that familiar feeling of loss and loneliness, set off into the night too. It didn't have to go far, as you lived in the suburbs, all green and men. manicured with the same shuttered windows and porches with swinging chairs and rattan mats.

It hadn't been out on its own before, and so it was tentative as it stepped into the street. Each step was more of a drag, as without the muscle that enables it to walk and run and leap and jump, the skin's mobility was seriously impaired. It dragged itself along the pavement, leaving streaks of fresh red and deep rust browns as a it went. It stopped in front of number 56, the house with the happy yellow door, with three balloons, red, orange and pink, tied to the door knocker. The skin watched the balloons as they gently swayed and bob. A memory of dancing in a circle, holding hands, small hands, all sweaty and sticky, going around and around as the music played. You were giddy with play and

sweets and as soon as the music stopped, you ran to the nearest chair and placed your bottom on it at the exact same time as your friend did. You both fell off and laughed and laughed. The skin's eyes smarted. It didn't know what it was feeling, but it decided to go into this house. Maybe its body was in here. A body it could cling to and know that it was safe. A body that was a body that was wanted it, unlike its current owner. The skin dragged itself around the bushes that hugged the side of the house. Upon occasion it could feel bits of itself being caught upon a branch, and as it moved, it could feel little slithers of its flesh left hanging from these places.

No mind, it thought. Its intent becoming more defined as it approached a window that was not fully closed. Perhaps it was meant to be shut, as it was. only open a crack. Maybe it was to air the kitchen, as that was the room the skin saw as it piered through the glass. Though it was barely open, without bones or muscle, the skin found that it was able to squeeze itself through the opening, landing with a thud, which sound like raw meat being dropped into the large porcelain kitchen sink. All was quiet in the house. The clock on the oven flashed 2.17 in neon green,

illuminating the skin as it pulled itself over the edge of the sink and onto the counter. It took a few moments to draw itself back into shape. One arm was longer than the other. Bits of flesh on its torso had been pulled and cut, and its edges were frayed and raw. It was tired from such exertions and for a brief moment, considered going back and waiting for you, to return. But it had come too far now, and the ache for a body to be loved by was stronger.

It dragged itself towards the stairs. The carpet, a cream-colored short pile. As the skin pulled itself up the stairs, the carpet act like a sandpaper upon its flesh. It hurt the skin, and this time the sting of its tears fell on each step until it reached the landing where it paused. If it had a heart to wrap and protect, then it was certain that that heart would be beating very fast right now. But it didn't. Not yet, that is. It chose to enter the first room that it came to because the door was slightly ajar. In the shadows of the dark, with only an orange light from the street illuminating the occupant, the skin could see that the bed held a sleeping person. It crept nearer, until it could lift itself to take a closer look.

The child was about eight or nine years old, sleeping peacefully, hugging a large gray and pink rabbit whose eyes were large and shiny and staring directly at the skin. With panic, the skin fell to the ground and dragged itself under the child's bed. It lay there for a time,

even considering sleeping here for the child. night, for the room was cozy, and it was tired, and the child sleeping above made it feel safe. But it remembered why it was there, and pulled itself back out from under the bed, and with a lingering glance towards the sleeping child, left the room. That body was too small, and besides, The bunny was never going to let anyone as close to the kid as it was. The skin needed to find a bigger body that didn't have anything keeping guard, which is exactly what it found in the next room it went into. The girl in the bed was older.

It could tell that by the length of her in the bed, a glance around the room saw posters on the wall, a mirror with photographs of smiling girls, a chair piled up with jeans and t-shirts and on the table beside the bed, a framed picture of a girl and a boy kissing. The picture frame was red and heart-shaped. The skin looked at the photo of the girl, and then turned to look at the face of the one sleeping.

She looked kind, the skin decided, and immediately it felt overcome with sadness and confusion. Didn't its owner love it? Didn't its owner care about it? Didn't its owner not want to share all of life's experiences with it? Sure, they had tried running together, but the skin recalled you getting frustrated and hot and remembered how you sat on a bench and wondered what it might be like to live without being

bound by you all the time. You had felt wounded by that comment, but you dismissed it quickly. You were joking. Surely. It wasn't too long after that, that you began your nighttime running. The skin decided that this was the perfect body for it to have and to hold forever. You can be damned, it thought, if you don't appreciate me. This will be my home now.

By now, the moon was fat and full and visible, lighting up the room so that the skin got a clearer view of the sleeping girl. It felt warm towards her already. An open closet caught its eye, just as it heard the sounds of footsteps followed by a yawn and a door being opened and closed. The skin dragged itself towards the closet, which was stuffed full of clothes and boxes and teddy, and squeezed itself into a space between two large backs. These felt soft, and it wasn't long before the skin fell asleep. The girl's alarm went off at 6.30. With such swift movement, that meant she'd done this many times before.

She'd hit the snooze button. This happened three more times before a voice broke the repetition with a yell that they were leaving in ten and to get your ass up now. The girl did so, though her eyes were not yet fully open. and she grabbed the clothes that were piled on the chair and left the room. But the skin was hungry. It hadn't occurred to it that once the dawn rose, and you had returned from your run,

all breath and bright-eyed and muscles pumped and visibly pounding with fresh oxygenated blood, that the first thing you did after slipping back into you was eat. The skin didn't mind that it could feel the remnants of sweat and the particles of dust and the night coating you. For in that instance, as soon as you ate, it felt revived once again. Safe, too, that you hadn't forsaken it forever, that you and it belong together, that you were needed, cared for and loved. The skin lay in its crumpled heap in the closet for another hour, making certain that the house was empty of life. It crawled its way out, leaving a trail of pus along the pile of stuffed animals that were now to be spending the rest of their very long lives in the darkness of that closet.

The girl was too old to play with these anymore, and yet she was too young to release her attachment to them just yet. The skin felt faint. If you were to catch sight of it, you would be alarmed to see it looking piquy and pale, and with a slid. light dampness to it. It looked clammy, feverish. Promising itself that it would come back tonight and claim the girl's body for itself, the skin knew that it needed to be fed. It needed a home. And so it set off once more. This time, it was trickier. For a start, it was the daylight hours, and people were walking on the sidewalks and driving their cars through the streets and hanging out chatting with each other. It looked impossible for the skin to maneuver in any way without being seen.

For a while, it stayed behind the large bushes in the front garden of the house, watching. The skin did get to wondering about you, whether you were missing it. How it must have been when you got back and found it missing. if you were even searching for it now. The skin also knew that it wasn't okay to slip out of it in general day-to-day public life, and that there were consequences. You could be fined, spend a night in jail or worse, in one of those centers designed for people who didn't take kindly to the rules of the society.

You could be awarded a guardian, someone whose purpose was to stay with you 24-7 until, you appeared, to all intents and purposes, like a well-adjusted member of society, and wouldn't be inconveniencing the login any time soon. The worst that could happen, though, was that you would be named and shamed. Put on a list. One that was available for the public's perusal. A black list that gave your name a mark, one that would work against you if you applied for certain employment or status positions in society. Lovers could access this list when dating.

Just one cross, and you would become a pariah. For a brief moment, the skin felt a pang of guilt for you. As quickly as that arose, anger set in. A feeling of unfairness. No, the skin thought, you left me. You don't value me. I deserve better. The skin's thoughts were then interrupted by the sound of a garbage truck.

The family had three large bins outside their house, and the garbage men set about emptying them. This was its chance. The skin knew it, and then slid itself under the truck, squeezing between two steel poles that held two large wheels on either side. The truck made a few more stops along the same street before taking to the main road, and there it went across the Grand Bridge to the city, along roads that were home to the city's undesirables and those who survived on the fringes.

It was here that the truck stopped. The skin slipped out and then crawled to hide behind some empty steel bins. In the daylight, the road was a mess of papers and cartons, fried fast foods and needles, and the bodies of those who slept there. There were three men fast asleep near the skin. Two were laid close to each other. The third was a few feet from them. The skin made its way towards him.

The man was not asleep, but he was drunk. He had his eyes closed most of the time, and every few minutes, the man would reach out for a label, bottle that he brought to his lips for a swig. The liquid mainly missed his mouth and dribbled down to his beard and onto the thick orange anorak that was all that lay between him and the cardboard sheet on the pavement. The skin watched him for just a while. The man must have been about 30 years old and without the beard and the dirt would be handsome. The skin felt a sudden twinge of

pride, has it thought that it deserved to be in a handsome body and decided that it would have this body for today, and tonight, it would be with the girl. Happy with its plan, it waited until the man stopped swigging from his bottle, and the skin could hear the gentle rumbling of soft snores coming from him. It came up close to the man, and slowly began to unzip his anorak, slipping itself. over this man's body was no easy task. Each time, it would enclose part of his body, such as an arm or a leg. The man would twitch and mumble and stir. The skin knew that it had to be careful so as to not awaken him from his slumber, and so it maneuvered itself slowly. Also, the man's

body was longer and thicker and hairier than yours. It could feel itself being stretched, and the hairs on the man's body, which seemed to coat him everywhere, tickled and bristled on the skin's insides. It nearly abandoned this whole mission when finally, it slipped itself over the man's broad shoulders. Pausing, it looked closer at the only part of the man still showing, the head and face, and gave itself one last pull,

easily slipping itself over to cover all that was, left of the man. Adjusting itself so that it could feel eyes, nose, ears, and mouth behind each appropriate hole, the skin felt so exhausted that, lulled by the gentle snores, and hugging tightly the man's warm body as if it was its own, it fell asleep. The first thing the skin was aware of, even before it opened its eyes a few hours later, was the smell. It hadn't been able to smell anything without a body.

So this particular smell filled its nostrils with such intensity. The smell was accurate and sour and felt as if it was burning the sensitive lining of its newly acquired nose. The skin felt sweaty and clammy and itched in all sorts of places. It realized, too, that it couldn't think straight. Its mind was hazy. It felt like it was still dreaming even though its eyes were now open and staring up at the gray sky above.

Its lips were dry, and its mouth felt strange and furry and tasted unpleasant as if the man hadn't brushed his teeth for a very long time. It thought of you, and how meticulous you were with caring for it, how you would brush your teeth and apply all sorts of magical potions and lotions onto you ones that felt so good to feel. You made the skin feel loved.

This body didn't seem to love you whatsoever. And with that thought, it started to panic. The man had brought his hands up to the sky, turning each slowly back and forth, looking at the skin, all taught and so tight that it had become translucent, so much that you had become translucent, so much that you. you could see the bones and muscles beneath. It was beautiful in a way, all purples and lilacs and ivory. And for a brief moment, it appeared that the man thought so too. That was,

until the skin felt its mouth begin to open wide, and an awful sound came out of it. The man stood up, or at least he tried to. Because the skin was so tight and smaller than he was, it had contorted the shape of him, and he wasn't able to stand properly. He fell back down and curled himself into a ball, and the skin heard itself making a deep sobbing sound. Not unlike that of an injured animal. This wasn't working. and the skin really was not enjoying being with this body. It wasn't a loving embrace and feeling of comfort that it was after. This wasn't the right body after all.

It began to slip off the man, who by this point was rocking on the ground. As the skin uncovered itself from his face and slipped off his body, leaving behind a trail of pus and streaks of blood, he became silent. It was too much for the man. He froze, which made the skin's job easier. Once it had slipped completely off of the man's body, it lay beside him.

The man's eyes were so wide that all the skin could see was a pale yellow where his white should have been, staring at the skin in pure horror. It wasn't surprising, really. The skin was not in a good state. It had been stretched, its inside scratched and sore. It didn't even really look like skin anymore. More of a misshapen lump of its former self.

The skin for its part felt sad. It imagined you driving. by and picking it up lovingly from the side of the street, and placing it back over your body with words that soothed, with promises to never leave you again. But this was not going to happen anytime soon. Besides, no one knew where it was, including the skin itself. Yet it knew that it did have to get out of there, for it could hear the other two men beginning to murmur and call out the man's name. The man, who by now, was completely paralyzed on the spot. For a moment, the skin feared that he was dead. But no, he would blink every now and then, and there was a spittle forming a trail

down from the side of his mouth and onto his beard. Tears, too, fresh and new coming out of his eyes. The skin felt sorry for the man and made an awkward attempt to pat his hand, but his hand was now no more than a flapping appendage, and the skin simply slapped against the man's hand like a wet fish. The skin knew that it had to get back to the girl's house, but how? And that's when it saw it. A dog, a mongrel. Looking over, licking its lips, the skin knew that it had to act fast lest to become dinner for the dog. And so, it pounced. Pounced as a preposterous word to describe the skin's movement.

To be fair, it's unlikely that it would ever pounce on anything ever again. It was misshapen and very soiled. The grit from the street lodged in its folds. It had become drier, too, no longer oozing any of its furled. life as it moved. The skins pouncing was similar to a fish flopping upon the shore. As it did so, it caught the front legs of the dog and hauled itself upon the animal's back. The dog swirled around and around, as if chasing something other than its tail, furious and frenzied and confused. It spun around so much that when it stuck, it faltered.

reclaiming its balance, the skin held on. The idea was to use the dog's body as a place of warmth, and perhaps to forget momentarily where it was and the sorry state it had found itself in. This proved to be rather challenging as the animal's shape was not aligned with that of you. Its body was even hairier than the man's had been, yet the fur felt comforting something.

and as the skin inched its way around the animal's body, wrapping itself over its legs and head and tail, it felt big, fat drops leak out from its eyes. Tears that had been threatening to seep their way out, but had nobody to shed them on its behalf. Until now, the dog looked as if it had turned itself inside out and was whimpering. With its skin, Wrapped, tail hanging low. It began to walk slowly down the street. By now the sun was hanging as low as the dog's tail. It had been many hours since the skin had left you.

But with the dog as its body, all the skin could think about was food. It was hungry, ravenous. Its stomach rumbled. It sniffed the air. Among the torrent of scents and smells was the faintest whiff of something that made the dog's ears prick up. Well, prick up as much as they were able to, considering that they were squashed by human skin. The dog raised its nose once more to the air, and after a few moments, turned towards an alley and began to walk towards it. The alley turned into a street.

The street turned into a road. and the road was long and wide, and as the evening traffic carrying people with lives and thoughts and homes to return to, passed by, the dog kept to the shadows as it continued on, gathering its paces, confident in its direction.

It stopped a few times. Next to bins that had overflowed, polystyrene takeout boxes discarded. Alongside those pit stop fans, parked at the side of the street selling fast food for fast cash. Often, the dog was shoeed away. Sometimes people shrieked upon seeing it, and they would step back,

lest they too should be inflicted by whatever this disease the animal was carrying. Sometimes the dog got lucky, and found remnants of last night's dinner, or a freshly dropped piece of freshly fried chicken. whether the skin was aware of any of this was debatable it had lost all thought all thought of you of it of life of belonging warmth or love of even having a body to hold fast to it was all senseless by now And so it let itself be carried far into the night. It was late when the dog stopped and laid down,

its tongue hanging out of its mouth, panting, thirsty and tired. All was silent around them. They weren't in the city any longer. It was the scent that awoke the skin from its delirium. The scent, so known that as soon as it became, aware of it, the skin felt this huge well of longing. The dog howled then, a piercing sound that filled the space and the silence and the stillness. It could smell you. With one last push, the dog climbed up onto the porch before collapsing in exhaustion outside the front door. All that was to be

done now was to wait and to hope that it wasn't too late. It was just before dawn that you discovered the dog outside your front door. As you look closer, you felt this awful horror rising inside you. You turned away and then vomited. Your stomach turned, eyes wide open, and disgust and grief. The skin was gray. Carefully, you peel it off. Then mechanically brought the dog some water to drink. It looked at you with its huge dog eyes.

You then bring the skin inside and laid it out onto the kitchen table. It no longer looked like the shape of you. It had been stretched and torn and wounded. There were welts that looked sore and raw, pus that had turned rust and pink, and it smelled very bad. But it was your skin. That's when you get to work,

and you bring in all your pots of lotions and potions. You wash the skin with a wet cloth, with great tenderness and care, removing the dirt and grit as best as you could, You slather on the oils and the creams, willing the moisture to work its magic as promised on the jars that they came in. You were delighted to notice that some of the skin's color was coming back, even if it no longer bore any resemblance to the skin that you had known forever. You begin to slip the skin over the muscle and bone that had been ever so lonely all day.

You hadn't known what to do upon returning from your run to find the skin. this skin had gone. What could you do? You weren't supposed to simply slip it off for your own pleasure. But now, now, it was home. Your skin. Though the skin no longer covered your legs and arms all the way to your toes and fingers, or where it slipped over your head, no longer in line where your eyes or ears were,

So all that you could see was the dark purple of its flesh. You wrap yourself as best as you could. All the while, you were saying soothing words. Words of care. Whether you were saying these to yourself or to the skin was no matter. And as you lay down in bed and pulled the blanket up over your shoulders, you felt the skin hugging you tight, and the words echo in your mind.

I'm sorry. It's okay, you thought. It's okay. You're home now. We're home now. And I'll never leave you again. Promise? Thought the skin.

Promise. And next. A reclusive retiree investigating a strange winged corpse near her. Her mountain cabin, uncoveres a hidden species whose existence challenges everything she believes about identity, transformation, and the natural world. From writer Jen Milatoris, and narrated by Megan McDuffie, creepy presents, goose flesh. In a ditch where the road met the dirt drive up to the cabin, an impossible corpse lay half-eaten and shining with frost.

Naked femurs threaded through the sledge clumps, but much of the body was intact. and lightly dusted with last night's snow. The face was buried in mud, dark hair matted over bear, death blue flesh, and appendages rather like wings. Human arms with gangrene black fingers and a thick coating of flight feathers, the dark brown of a Canadian goose, scaled up to human size. Dad loved that cryptid shit, and I could imagine one of his society journals crowing about the goose man of whistling gap. I nudged the body with a muddy boot, expecting plaster or feathers to flake away, but the corpse remained as it was. I crouched beside it for a moment, trying to find the seams that would prove it was a hoax

and weighing whether to call the cops or animal control. Penny didn't like it. She snuffled once at a darkened hand, grumbled a low bark at me, and then trotted away, waiting for me to follow her. That decided it. No need to break its peace with the stomping feet. feet of authorities of any flavor. Let it lie, the best policy in the Appalachian backwoods. I whistled to Penny and set off across the snowy slope toward the forest opposite. Penny sprinted

on ahead, eager for a smell and a dig and a piss. Deer season had long ended, and the spring hunt would not start until April, so Penny and I refilled the deer feeders and then went for a hike. Dad had taught me everything he knew of deer hunting. Consolation for the sun he had not gotten. unsure what else to do with the daughter he had. And all the while, I could not explain what I thought I might be to him or mom. These were things I wanted to be for both of them, and things I wanted to be for myself that always seemed incompatible with that vision. In the solitude of the cabin, my what no longer haunted me so closely.

Penny and I only visited the house sporadically until I hit retirement when I decided I would rather keep Grandpa's old, rotting cabin than my tidy city house. Two weeks after the movers had dropped off the last boxes, the place finally felt like home. Town was a 20-minute drive into the valley, and the closest neighbor was a mile off. I could live without the pressure of others' eyes, and I pulled down every mirror that reminded me my body was an unsolvable alien thing. All I needed to do when closing night threatened to throw my face back off the windows was draw the curtains. I made new ones myself on mom's old sewing machine. After dinner, I tonged at the hoax corpse's possible flaws like stuck food.

I couldn't believe it was real, but a dreamy part of me wanted such a hybrid body to be possible. To set my mind at ease, I excavated boxes of dad's stuff from the disorganized piles of basement detritus and hauled them into the kitchen. His crypted society journals and newspaper clippings were as useless as I expected. them to be, but Dad's own scrapbooks gave me a shock. A few grainy photos stuck out from between the pages of a small notebook. One clearly knocked me from my chair, likely taken from a deer stand in the cold, early morning dark, brown feathered arms drooping at their sides, reflective eyes, bright discs in the camera flash, nose and mouth joined in what looked like a dark beak. Dad's chicken scratch labeled the Polaroid Mountain Goose.

Dazed and puzzled, I read the tracking record. October 17th, fresh tracks north of the property, bare feet circling the deer feeder, shortened gait on landing, heavy in the toes on takeoff. They seemed to like the feed, could use it as a lure. November 6th, the mounted feeder seems effective. More tracks, probably nocturnal, need to narrow down active hours. April 15th. Fresh tracks by the deer feeders. I assumed they were migratory, but they would probably be widely known if that were true. Nesting grounds must be nearby. May 24th. New hunting blind mounted near the westmost feeder. They seemed to prefer the winter feed, monitoring active hours this trip and preparation for the hunt. Dad had tried to research his geese, hoping they might have wandered into folklore, but they were nowhere to be found in any library. books and locals were tight-lipped against a man who only visited for the hunt, no matter who

his father had been. So, Dad thought maybe these were just like any other hybrid beastie, our strange critters and our strange slice of mountain. Penny finally got my attention, whining and scratching at the back door to let me know it was time for a final piss before bed. I left Dad's tracking journal on the table, marveling at the obsession that had apparently consumed much of his final years. It stung to realize he probably never told me because he knew I would, at best, humor him. Sorry, Dad. I sighed.

Penny looked up at me with puzzled eyes. Nothing, girl, I said, just realizing we were both keeping secrets. Penny woke me, snarling and snapping at the bedroom window, as I had only ever heard her do at bears and bobcats. Adrenaline swept away groginess. Easy, girl. I hauled myself out of bed, thinking a cougar might have climbed into the rickety balcony. I flicked on the table lamp, feeling for the shotgun under the bed. As Penny barked and jumped at the window, I nosed the barrel between the curtains and drew one partly aside.

I couldn't breathe. In the glow of the ancient lamp, the creature outside my window looked like a ghost. A moon pale, living version of the corpse beside my front drive perched on my banister. The light startled them, and their heads snapped around quick as an owl. I could see all the details of Dad's indistinct photo, now clear and irrefutable. They crouched with feathered arms, resting knuckle down on the banister. Just as in the picture, their eyes shone bright and round as new coins, reflecting the lamp's glare. A dark beak streamlined cheeks and jaw into one narrow shape, smeared with remnants of whatever they had been eating.

perhaps the deer feed I had just set out that afternoon. I was still frozen, still trying to process the evidence of my eyes when the mountain goose reared their head back to call into the night. The sound bore only the barest resemblance to a goose honk, transformed by a human throat to a resonant shriek worse than any fox call. Penny fell immediately silent beside me, and I gripped the window-sill to stay upright. All the hair rose on my arms and now.

The beaked mouth was a horror. Worse even than the maws of geese I had shot before. Thangs and sharpened molars formed a tight, serrated edge along the inside of their jaw and their tongue. Bits of food had caught between them, and they looked less like grain than shredded skin. But then the mountain goose took flight. They were no ethereal fay creature. Takeoff was no easeful motion, but laborious and flesh-bound. The body was heavy, but the body was heavy, but they were. their wings seized the air and bore them up. The goose tucked their legs beneath them and flew off

westward beyond the reach of my lamp. Never had I seen something so lovely, so mesmerizing. I let the curtain drop. Penny had folded herself under the bed, and I knelt to coax her out. After I settled us both back into bed, I lay for a long time, thinking of those wings, and the shape coiled tightly beneath, beyond gender and definition. I had given up hope of a body that felt like me, but in such a creature, it seemed real. As I understood it, after pouring over the rest of his journal the next morning, seemed logical. Injura mountain goose's wings, so they were forced to walk to safety, then follow them to their nest. Dad never got to follow through with his machinations, but he had done all the work for me. I would find them. I would give us both.

This gift. In a few days, I had prepared all the necessary materials. I stocked up at the recently opened chain hunting store and built a hunting blind where Dad suggested. Worried that any artificial light might scare the geese off, I propped up a night vision camera on a tripod to serve as my eyes. Only three nights after I found the mountain goose by my drive, Penny and I climbed up into our camouflaged hut a little after sundown. I turned off my headlamp and we got comfortable. No moon showed itself from behind the clouds. Cold set in as we waited, but Penny and I had done this often. She lay across my feet, and I cracked a few hot packs in my pockets when my fingers started to feel it.

Then there was movement. A green shape crossed the still picture on the camera, and I jumped at it, over-eager. Penny knew me well and only raised her head for a moment to check whether it was time. She relaxed again as I watched a deer stride into the camera, frame and I chuckled to myself. Of course, the creatures that the feed was intended for. A whole herd strolled into the clearing. They mailed about, acting as I had ever seen them do, except that normally it would be the ass end of dawn. It was strange to see them so active closer to midnight, something that only happened when feeding schedules changed, either theirs

or those of predators. As the herd snuffled at the feeder, I started to worry they would take it all and leave none for the mountain geese. I tapped my fingers on my knees, a nervous tick made silent, and watched an owl settle on the tree opposite through the camera viewfinder. It seemed to be watching the deer with me, visible only as a pair of flashing eyes.

A few minutes later, something heavy landed on a branch of the tree under which we sheltered. Penny whimpered. The deer alerted in a ripple of raising heads. Tense silence descended as dozens of ears swiveled, and I cradled Penny's head to calm and quiet her. More owls had roosted in the trees across the clearing,

and I realized they weren't owls at all. A flock of mountain geese dropped on the deer. They did not bother with flight, but leapt, feathered arms outstretched. The herd reared and turned. One goose got their beak around a doze throat and shredded it with serrated teeth. The deer screamed and fled as the flock swarmed. The first victim already shuddered and died on the ground, geese dragged others down, clinging to their flanks and shredding sinew and muscle with their

terrible maws. Penny shook at my side, now silent, but that frightened me more than the carnage. I wondered how Dad had never mentioned this. Much of the herd fled, but the geese came away with four or five bodies. When their prey finally went still, the geese took their turn to feed. In the quiet, I remembered my purpose and prepped my shot, easing the muzzle of my my rifle out of the blind's window. I stared into the dark, willing my eyes to adjust. The moonless forest was unyielding, and I could barely distinguish the huddled forms of the mountain geese from their food. I aimed by sound and the aid of my camera and waited, newly afraid of the creatures, but even more terrified of losing what felt like my only one chance. The clouds shifted.

The moon barely showed its teeth, but in all that dark, even the bare. The fairest light was enough. I fired. The shot ripped through the night, and the geese scattered, howling their horrible cries as one of their number dropped motionless. Fuck! I leapt from the blind, flicking on my headlamp and sprinting into the clearing. I had hit one too squarely, and their skull hung open across a deer's mauled flank. I spun as the geese scattered, palest ghosts, accusing eyes flashing in the lamplight.

They screeched at me and tore off into the night. Hope drained away until I glimpsed one pallid figure lurching into the undergrowth, awkward hands full of the good half of a deer carcass. Their determination would leave a trail to follow. I swung away, desperate not to scare them off with my light. Penny! There was a small yip from the blind, and with more impatience than was fair to her. I commanded, heal.

She came at a wary trot rather than her usual run. Most of the geese seemed truly gone, and Penny managed a wag as she reached me. I turned on the small light attached to her collar so I would be able to find her again. I kissed her once in the middle of her velvety forehead and scratched an ear. She panted and wagged harder, already better at ease. I stepped back. Penny, guard. She followed the point of my finger and took up her post beside the new corpse of the mountain goose. I flicked off my headlamp and jogged into the woods after that lone goose, feeling Penny's stare in my heart.

The mountain goose dragged the half-corps through the woods, and I crashed through undergrowth after it, terrified of losing it. I only stopped when I heard the whir of over-large wings overhead. Flattening myself to a tree, I rested my rifle against one shoulder and smothered my panting breaths with the other hand. Two more pairs of ungainly feet hit the ground, and after a moment the sounds of dragging resumed, bearing the deer away even faster. I almost despaired. but the smell of blood and the deer's intestines were heavy in the air. Ears primed for more sweeping predators.

I trailed after the geese. Their path led straight, varying only to avoid trees, and I wondered if they obeyed instinct or intelligence. I felt rather than saw the woods surrender to gravely soil. When I stumbled and banged my shin on a sharp rock, I risked turning on my headlamp. Earth had given way to raw mountainside. The deer carcass had run dry a half mile back, but the sweep of its passage disappeared into a gap in the cliff face.

The breeze from within stank of shit and old bodies, but the hole looked large enough to crouch through, and I would not be deterred. I had found the place I sought and disposed of stealth, had lamp bright and rifle held before me just in case. The passage was not long. Soon my light cut into the thicker night of a wide cavern. I emerged, the cave filled with the echoes of flapping, rustling, and the whisper of sweaty skin-on-skin. The cavern's dimensions seemed impossibly large. The eyes of the mountain geese barely sparks in the light of my lamp. I stumbled over old bones and nearly went down when I tripped over the gnawed half-deer. When I found my balance and looked up again, I gasped so hard I nearly swallowed my tongue.

One of the flocks stood before me, not hunched, but tall. and proud-shouldered, intense eyes utterly impenetrable as they contemplated me. They had raised my rifle instinctively, but when they made no move to attack, I lowered it. The mountain goose turned away, walked on a few feet, and looked back, waiting for me to follow. Feeling the prickle of many eyes upon me, suddenly certain that the deer carcass had been a trap, I slung the rifle on its strap and went after them. Stairs emerged out of the gloom, shiny and slick in my lamplight. At the top of the stairs stood a basin that could only be of their make,

all sticks and sinew twine and leather. A deer hung above it on a rope that vanished into the dark above. It dribbled fresh blood from its ravaged neck into the basin. The mountain goose paused beside it, instructed me with a single flicker of their eyes, and then disappeared into the blackness. I stood a moment by the basin, feeling the weight of the gun on my back, the brush of clothing against my skin, the strain of the elastic lamp strap against my sweaty forehead. I smelled must and death, and listened to the shudder of feather against feather, and I knew what to do.

I knew how I should enter what I now understood was a temple. I stripped from the waist up and did not care about the cold that puckered my flesh. I pushed my palms into the blood and painted my face and chest with it, and then crossed the wet floor into a dark that seemed to open beyond the mountain, beyond stars, so massive a dark that it could have swallowed the world, and in its center a shape that twisted my sight, reality sloughed off it like so much water off duck feathers. It was white as absence, zero made color. It wholly resisted shadow, and in my eyes it it was at once a flat shape and beyond our dimensions, vaguely organized like a water droplet as huge as a mountain. The point of its tip wriggled and stretched. It parted and sipped the air. My skin chilled as the blood smeared across it evaporated,

reduced to its component cells. Then that snout dipped. A figure they sprawled on the floor before it. No mountain goose but a human stretched out in supplication. The droplet took the figure into its mouth and drank them down. The white shape rounded itself into a perfect circle. It simmered and bubbled, and then with a shudder stretched and distended as a bulge moved up its throat. From the spout emerged a blob of star stuff and black holes, a black egg, the color of life at its first.

The droplet laid its egg carefully against this plane. For a moment the egg knew it was an egg. Then it burst, yoke deep as well water oozing away. A child pulled itself from the muck fully formed. A long snout, curling horns, reptilian wings, a long tail and a pair of hoofed legs. A creature like the worms of old, the things scalds warned of before a church came to call them demons. It looked, I thought, like one of Dad's cryptids. As soon as this crossed my mind, reality reasserted itself.

The newborn creature saw that I was out of place and screeched out a call that rebounded horribly off of rock walls invisible in the gloom. I watched sluggishly until I realized the droplet had vanished and the chimera was wobbling to its feet. I ran. I abandoned my belongings and sprinted blindly back toward where I hoped the exit lay. My feet gripped the slippery ground unsteadily. I heard hooves behind me and threw myself to one. one side. The stairs tumbled away below me, and I screamed as my hip cracked on stone. The beast stumbled and skidded past me, yelping as it crashed down the stairs. Limping, I ran. Bones crunched beneath my boots.

When I heard the monster rise again, I veered out of its path. The air was freezing, tearing my throat and stabbing my bare skin. Then my eyes, starved so entirely of light, glimpsed a whisper of moonbeams. I followed that blue glow, weaving through a cavern filled with hoofbeats and wing beats and the baying of mountain geese. I tripped on a deer carcass and put my hand through its ribcage as I caught myself. Bone splinters speared my palm, but I could only roll off it and away. Oh, suddenly before the door, I threw myself into the passage and left the shrieking chaos behind. As I sprinted back to where loyal, obedient penny awaited me, I could think only of that strange god and its eggs. By the time we brought the goose corpse home, I knew what I

planned to do. Dad had taught me how to mount deer hits. Several that we had made together still watched me from their places on the wall. I couldn't have Penny around, though, when she deserved better. I called a neighbor up on the ridge, who had known Dad. She has a Christmas tree farm with lots of space to run. I said I needed to go to the hospital in the city and asked if she could take Penny until I got back. I gave her 500 bucks and a list of Penny's commands. It would be a good place for my sweet girl to grow old, and I didn't cry until I had closed a cabin door behind them. Then I worked. I stored the corpse in the barn, where the cold would keep it just this side of freezing. To maintain the skin's freshness, I would flay it in chunks as I knew. I knew. I would

needed it. I started with the shoulders. The elation that sparked in my blood as I worked my knife underneath the first feather follicles was so intense I felt high. I had many years of practice on deer and the skin parted smoothly from its flesh. I stared at those sheets, lightly oozing blood thickened by cold, with a pride never felt before. The first cuts from my own body were much worse. I had curved needles, thread, and an expired bottle of Vicodin, but I could not have prepared for the pain. My first cut, tracing the curvature of my shoulder blade, was wobbly and uneven. I could barely twist my arms around enough to reach my back and had to watch through a system of reflections as my blood splashed the bathroom tiles. Drawing my skin from my body was relief and agony,

With every strip of slippery hide that I cut, I freed myself a little more from the prison of a shape I hated. But I struggled to focus and even to maintain my grip. I made it through half of one shoulder before I passed out from pain and blood loss. When I woke, I set the knife to myself again. I blacked out twice more before I even began sewing. But I needed to be able to knit bare flesh to bare flesh so that when it healed, the skin would be true. truly mine. I lost all time. Several nights came and went, and I grew hungry and ate several times more. Perhaps it was a week. When I was done, I took as many pain meds as I had in the house

and slept. And when I could stand again, I went back out to the barn to cut the next flaps of skin that sheathed the biceps from shoulder to elbow. I might die yet. A few of my new feathers have fallen out, so there's a good chance my body will reject its new skin and alien follicles. Maybe sepsis has already taken root, and when I reach the cavern, any number of things within could kill me. But the moon is rising tonight, and I know the way. For the two hours it will take to walk back to that impossible cavern and that god of new hybrid flesh, I will be a winged thing. For two hours I will dream of bearing myself laboriously into the sky. to ride the thermals over the ridge to new hunting grounds.

And finally, a murdered man remains conscious after death, trapped in his coffin alone as his thoughts begin to drift. From writer Mark T. Bates, creepy presents, reborn. Darkness. Cold, empty darkness. Accompanied with a deafening silence, as I lay paralyzed in fear and internal suffering, as I have done now for God knows how long.

The silence is eventually broken as the sound of loose soil being scattered over my casket takes over my senses. The sound becomes heavier, and the noise becomes a humming drone inside my head, while a sickening, dank, musk slowly fills my lungs. the taste of a premature death. Then I am visited by a ghostly silence once more, and the feeling that I'm falling,

my numb body dropping uncontrollably in slow motion. Pins and needles shudder through me, traveling upwards from my toes before exploding in my mind, like a crescendo of smashed ice, and somehow it then seems even darker and my body succumbs to the infinite gloom. I am left only with my thoughts of a life left behind.

Now just fading memories, I had a family that loved me, a family I still loved deeply. A wife, a young daughter who had recently started school, a daughter who now faced, an uncertain life without the father who cared and provided for her. A father she adored. A father murdered as I walked home alone at night after an evening drinking at the local tavern.

A ten-minute walk along the cobbled streets of our village. A walk I had done countless times before. My body left dumped in an alley, not 500 yards from home. By all accounts, I have come to understand that no witnesses have come forward to name any potential killer. No clues found upon or near my body, which had been stripped naked and drained of its blood through various carefully made incisions. I have no real memory of the exact moment of my death.

I had been stumbling along quite happily, a belly full of ale and the thoughts of a warm loaf of bread when I arrived home, before plans of retiring to an even warmer bed beside my sleeping wife. Then I was hit from behind with a violent force, and I recall falling face-first toward the floor. Then there was nothing, except the total darkness I have now become accustomed. At some point I regained a consciousness of sorts. Facing the sky, I was surrounded by the constant flow of people coming and going. about my body, prodding me, examining me, defiling me. But despite the strange and unpleasant awareness of my surroundings, I could not move,

and I could not speak. For some unknown reason, though, I could see, I could hear, I could think again. And I was scared. The black bag was placed around me, and I sent me. movement as I was lifted, followed by the sensation of traveling on what felt like the back of a cart. Eventually, after I know not how long, the bag surrounding my corpse was removed and I could but stare upwards or candlelight flickering around me.

I suffered my autopsy in silence and felt no physical pain. But the pain would come soon enough. In the distraught faces of my wife and daughter leaned over mine, kissing my forehead, their tears dripping down under my cheek. They whispered that they would never forget me, that they would always love me. My wife told me she would cherish our time spent together. I then suffered what felt like an eternity shut in the pitch blackness of what I could only assume was a mortuary.

Eventually I was moved to the coffin I've been laying in ever since. And finally, I could only listen as a priest conducted my funeral before I was placed down into my final resting place. Here lieeth Sebastian Doyle, voted husband-be-father, born 30th January, 1835, died 1st May, 1862. And now I lay still, victim to an eternity of nothingness. It dawns on me, that one finally discovers what happens in death. The body might decay, but it would appear the soul and the mind is not. And I fear I will be left to contemplate my existence, as well as the existence of life itself forevermore. I would have shaken my head in disbelief if I could have moved a muscle.

I have now lost all sense of time as my thoughts drift to dreamlike. always soon returning to the faces of my wife and daughter. I am petrified that if I go too long without gazing upon them in my mind's eye, that I may forget my loving family. I will do everything that I am still able to never let that happen. I yearn to hear from my God. But I fear I am desperately alone. Why hath thou forsaken me, Father?

Suddenly, and without warning, there's a flash of light. My head begins to throb. Colors engulf my every thought. A twisting kaleidoscope within my mind. I see a face. The face of a demon. And I am scared. Our eyes locked together.

It's horrific, yet hypnotic, gaze drawing me deep within. The demon smiles, and as it does so, blood drips from its mouth. As I look deeper into the yellow eyes of this despicable vision, I see a reflection of my own face staring back from within its pupils. The reflection of my mouth is also dripping with blood, and I can barely recognize the demented expression upon my face. Then the damnedest thing happens. My fingers began to twitch. My toes began to uncontrollably spasm, a spasm which starts traveling through my body.

I began twisting, turning, contorting within my chamber. The muscles in my face begin to move as I grimace. It feels like my jaw is expanding. I can hear the bones creaking, and then I feel them cracking as my eyes begin to bulge. It feels like my front teeth are moving forward, meaning to escape from the confines of my mouth as my jaw changes shape. Sharp, serrated teeth which no longer feel like they belong to me. I start violently convulsing, and a natural instinct takes over as I begin. kicking upwards, while I also begin violently hammering the roof of the casket with my fists.

I feel strangely strong now, and the lid of my confined prison begins to crack. It soon gives way, and before the earth can fall through the gap and bury me tight within the soil, I sit up and begin pushing myself upwards. My arms raised above my head in the shape of a church spire. I push hard with all my weight, my strength continuing to surprise. me, but everything is coming so naturally and I'm moving on pure instinct. I find myself burrowing upwards, the earth easily subsiding at my hands, and before long I break the surface. Rain pours down on me as I part my arms to create a whole large enough to pull my whole body through.

And as I do so, I gaze upon the fullness of the moon. The moon that I intuitively know is providing me with fresh life. Free of the earth, I open my mouth to scream, but all that comes out is a gargled snarl. My jaw feels dislocated, and I become aware that my tongue is paralyzed in my mouth, its tendons ripped and torn. I cry out as saliva drips down my chin.

And I know I have become a monster. I begin walking through the grave, yard, shuffling with the top half of my body bent forward. I am guided by the moon through a labyrinth of paths that snake between the gravestones. But the light of the moon, which seems brighter than I have ever known it before, bears me no shadow. It would be a short walk from the churchyard down into the village I had once called home. I do not know the hour, but there is no one around and it feels like the very dead of night.

As I walk, I close my eyes for a brief moment, and the despicable demon's face flashes before me. Its teeth dripping with blood. Blood. Each time my eyes close, I see the same image and begins to speak to me. An unwelcome sound inside my mind calling, teaching. Blood is sustenance. Blood is life. You must feed.

Before the night ends. I keep moving onwards. I was aimless at first, but now I have purpose. Now I have clarity. And I know where I am headed. Where I have always been headed. As I passed the shop fronts that line our village's main street, look at each one but see no reflection.

I am a mere shadow. And I will soon be home. I hope to my family still miss me As I have missed them The images of my wife's loving smile And the sweet, innocent face of my daughter Draw me forward step by step And as I reach the front door to our cottage

I know We will finally be together again Forever For more information on the podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration. Please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative Commons share-a-like licensing

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