Creepy - Sonic.exe

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Gamers...run!***Written by: J.C. The Hyena***Story link: https://creepypastatoo.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic.exe***https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/***Bonus episode: "Stigmata" Written By: Ciara Broderick and Narrated By: Alicia Atkins***Content Warning: Child Murder, Religious Trauma***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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Listener discretion is advised. Creepy Presents Sonic. by J.C., the hyena. I'm a total Sonic the Hedgehog fan, much like everyone else. I like the newer games, but I don't mind playing the classics.

I don't think I've ever played glitchy or hacked games before, though I don't think I want to play any after the experience I had. It started on a nice summer afternoon. I was playing Sonic Unleashed. I like how you get to explore the towns in it. until I noticed out of my peripheral vision that the mailman had arrived and put something in my mailbox, as usual, and left. I paused my game to go see what I got in the mail.

The only thing in the mailbox was a CD case for computers and a note. I took it inside. I looked at the note first and realized it was from my dear friend Kyle. Let's just call him that, whom I hadn't heard from in two weeks. I know that because I recognize his handwriting. Though, what was weird is how it looked. It looked badly written and scratchy and somewhat difficult to read, as if Kyle was having a hard time writing it down and did it in a hurry.

This is what he wrote. I had to get rid of this thing somehow before it was too late, and I was hoping you'd do it for me. I can't do it. He's after me. And if you don't destroy the CD, he'll come after you too. He's too fast for me. Please, Tom, destroy this godforsaken disc before he comes after you too.

It's too late for me. Destroy the disc, and he'll destroy him. But do it quick, otherwise he'll catch you. Don't even play the game. It's what he wants. Just destroy it. Please. Well, that was certainly weird.

Even though Kyle is my best friend and I haven't seen him in two weeks, I didn't do what he asked me. I didn't think that a simple gaming disc would do anything bad to him. After all, it's just a game, right? Wrong about that. Anyway, I looked at the disc and it looks like any ordinary computer CDR disc. Except in a black marker it had written on it, Sonic.exe. And it was unlike Kyle's handwriting,

meaning that he must have gotten it from someone else, like a pawn shop or eBay. When I saw Sonic on the writing of the CD, I was actually excited and wanted to play it, since I'm a big Sonic fan. I went up to my room and turned on my computer and put the disc in and installed the game. When the title screen popped up,

I noticed it was the first Sonic game. I was like awesome. Because like I said earlier, I liked the classics. The first thing I noticed that was out of place was when I pressed start, there was a split second when I saw the title image turned into something much different. Something that I now consider horrifying before cutting the black. I remember what the image looked like in that split second before the game cut to black. The sky had darkened.

The title emblem was rusted and ruined. The Sega 1991 was now instead Sega 666. And the water had turned red like blood. Except it looked hyper-realistic. But the freakiest thing that was in that split-second frame was Sonic. His eyes were pitch black and bleeding with two glowing red dots staring right at me. And his smile had stretched wider up to the edge of his face. I was rather disturbed about that image when I saw it,

though I figured that it was just a glitch and forgot about it. After it cut to black, it stayed like that for about 10 seconds or so. And then another weird thing happened. The save file select from Sonic the Hedgehog 3 popped up. And I was like, WTF. what's that doing in the first Sonic game? Anyway, then I noticed something off. The background was the dark, cloudy sky

at the bad Stardust Speedway level from Sonic CD. And there were only three save files. The music was that creepy caverns of winter music from Earthbound. When it was extended and seemed to have been in reverse. And the image for the save files where you see a preview, at the level you're on, is just red static for all three files. What freaked me oh more was character select. It showed only tails, knuckles, and to my surprise, Dr. Robotnik.

Now I was sure that something was up. I mean, how can you play as Robotnik in a classic Sonic game for crying out loud? That's when I realized that this wasn't a glitchy game. It was a hacked game Yeah, it definitely looked hacked It was really creepy But as a smart gamer I wasn't scared

Or at least I tried not to be I told myself It was just a hacked game And there was nothing wrong with that Anyways Shaken off the creeped out feeling I picked File 1 and chose tales And when I selected it got started

The game froze for about five seconds, and I heard a creepy pixelated laugh that sounded an awful lot like that Kefka guy from Final Fantasy before cutting the black. The screen stayed black for about ten seconds or more. Then it showed the typical level title thing, except the simplistic shapes where different shades are red, and the text showed only Hill Act 1. The screen faded in and the level title vanished, revealing tails in the Green Hill Zone from Sonic 1. The music was different, though. It sounded like a peaceful melody in reverse. Anyway, I started playing and had Tails start running like you would in any of the classic Sonic games. What was odd was that as Tails was running along the level,

there was nothing but flat ground and a few trees for five minutes. That was when the peaceful music started to lower down into slow deep tones. Very slowly as I kept going, I suddenly saw something and I stopped to see what it was. It was one of the small animals lying dead on the ground, bleeding. That was when the music started to slow down. Tails had a shocked and saddened look on his face that I never saw him have before. So I had to move along, and he kept that worried look on his face. As he kept moving, I saw more dead animals.

His tails moved past him looking more and more worried as the music lowers, and he moves past more dead animals. I was shocked to see how they all died. They looked like somebody killed them in rather gruesome ways. Gwrel was hanged on a tree with what appeared to be his entrails hanging out. A bunny had all four of his limbs torn off and a duck had his eyes gouged out and his throat slit. I felt sick to my stomach when I saw this massacre. Apparently so did Tails.

After a few more seconds, there were no more animals and the music seemed to have stopped. I continued on with Tails. After a minute passed, after the music stopped, Tails was running up a hill and then he stopped. It wasn't until I saw why. Sonic was there on the other side of the screen with his back turned to Tails with his eyes closed. Tails looked happy to see Sonic, then his smile faltered, obviously noticing that Sonic wasn't responding to him, if not acting as if he was totally oblivious of Tales' presence.

Tails walked slowly towards Sonic, and I noticed that I wasn't even moving my keyboard to make him move. So this had to been a cutscene. Suddenly, I began to have a growing fear of dread as tails walked closer to Sonic to get his attention. I felt that tails was in danger and something bad was going to happen. I heard faint static growing louder his tails was put inches away from Sonic and stopped and stuck his hand out to touch him. That foreboding healing in my gut was growing stronger. I felt the urge to tell tales to get away from Sonic as the static grew louder.

Suddenly, in a split second, I saw Sonic's eyes open, and they were black with those red glowing dots. Just like that title image. Though there wasn't a smile, when that happened, the screen turned black and the static sound turned off. It stayed black for about seven seconds, and then white text appeared forming a message saying, saying, hello, do you want to play with me? At this point, I was creeped out. I didn't want to continue with the game, but my curiosity got the better of me when I was taken to a different level with the level title now saying,

Hide and Seek. This time I was in the Angel Island level from Sonic 3, and it looked like everything was on fire. Tails looked as though he was scared out of his wits this time. He actually looked at me and made frantic gestures to me as if you wanted to get out of this area he was in as fast as possible. I was staring to get freaked out by this. I mean, Tails was actually breaking the fourth wall, trying to tell me to get him out of there. So I pressed down on the arrow key as hard as I could and made him run as fast as he could.

A pixelated version of that creepy theme when he meets Shadow at the Ark as Robotnik from SA2 was playing. as it made tails trek through the desolate forest, trying to help him escape from whatever he was trying to run from. Suddenly I heard that creepy laugh again, that awful Kefka laugh. Right after ten seconds passed as I helped tails run through the forest, then I started seeing flashes of sonic popping everywhere on the screen. Again, with those black and red eyes,

the music changed to that suspenseful drum. sounding jingle as I saw Sonic behind tails slowly gaining up on him, flying. Sonic wasn't running. He was actually flying. The flying pose his sprite was making looked very similar to Metal Sonic's flying pose in Sonic's CD. Except it was just Sonic, and he had the black and red eyes again. Only this time, he had the most deranged-looking grin on his face. He looked as though he was enjoying the torment he was giving the poor little fox as he came

up on him. Suddenly when Tails tripped, another cutscene, the music stopped and Sonic vanished. Tails lay there and started crying for 15 seconds. The scene was rather upsetting to watch and I kind of teared up myself. But then Sonic appeared right in front of Tails, and Tails looked up in whole. horror. Blood stared to come down those blackened eyes of Sonics as a grin slowly grew from his face as he looked down at the horrified fox. I could do nothing but watch. Just in a split second, Sonic lunged at tails right before the screen went black. It was a loud screeching noise that

only lasted five seconds. The text returned only this time. It said, You're too slow, want to try again. Then that god-awful laugh came with it. I was so shocked by what had happened. Did Sonic murder Tales? He couldn't have. He and Tails are supposed to be best friends, right? Why did Sonic do that to him?

I shook the shock off as I was brought back to the character select. The save file that had Tails was different. Tails was no longer in the box itself, but in the TV screen itself, which was flickering with that red static. Tails' expression scared me. His eyes were black and bleeding. His orange fur had gone black, and he had an expression of anguish on his face. Trying to ignore it, I picked knuckles next.

The laugh came again, and the screen cut to black again and stayed there for another ten seconds. This time the level said, you can't run. I was really freaked out by now. I couldn't really tell if this was a glitch or a hack or some kind of sick twisted joke. Or anything, really. But despite my fear of what happened next, I kept playing. The next level looked much different. It had the ground of the scrap brain zone.

But the sky background looked like the main menu. you. It had the dark, reddish, cloudy sky, but it was music that creeped me out the most. It sounded like Gygus's theme right after you beat Pokey and Earthbound. I also noticed that Knuckles looked afraid just like Tails did, though not as much. More or rather, he looked a little unnerved. He broke the fourth wall just like Tails and looked as if you weren't sure about going on. but I made a move anyway. He ran down the straight pathway in this dark level,

and as he did, the screen started to flicker red static a couple times, and then that maddening laugh came again. Then after a few seconds of running, I noticed several bloodstains on the metallic ground. I felt a growing sense of fear again, thinking something horrible was going to happen to Knuckles. He looked nauseated, walking down this. this blood-stained road, but I still kept him going.

Suddenly his knuckles ran. Sonic appeared right in front of him with those black and red eyes, and then red static appeared again. When the static vanished, showing nothing but black, screened with text saying, Found you with uppercase and lowercase letters. I was now scared. Sonic found Knuckles already? What was going on?

Anyway, red static came again, and then I was back to the level. Knuckles looked like he was panicking, and Sonic was nowhere to be found. And this time, that high-pitched squealing from the Silent Hill One's final boss was playing. Was this some kind of boss battle with Sonic? I hoped to God it wasn't, honestly. Suddenly Sonic appeared right behind Knuckles, and would appear to be pixelated black smoke. I made Knuckles turn around and then punch Sonic.

But Sonic vanished and black pixelated smoke before I could even land a hit. That terrible laugh went off again. Then Sonic appeared behind Knuckles again. And then I made him punch again. And Sonic vanished again laughing. Knuckles was panicking even more. and even I felt like I was going crazy. Sonic was practically playing with us.

He was playing a sick, twisted little mind game with me and Knuckles. Another cutscene played as Knuckles fell to his knees, clutching his head, sobbing. I felt as agony. Sonic was actually driving us both crazy. Then, in a split second, Sonic lunged at Knuckles, and the screen went black. with another distorted screeching noise that lasted for at least three seconds. Another text message appeared. So many souls to play with so little time.

Would you agree? What is going on? I started to think Sonic was actually trying to talk to me through the game, but I was too scared to think that for long. I was brought back to the main menu, and this time the second file box had none. knuckles in the TV screen. His red furred darkened to a reddish gray.

His dreadlocks were dripping with blood and his eyes were black and bleeding too. He had a look of sadness on his face. I began to think that those are actual characters trapped in those TV screens on the save files. But I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it. So I shut off the game and took a break. I took a nap

I wish I hadn't except then began to have the most disturbing nightmare I was in pitch-black darkness though I was under the light giving off by a lamp that hung high above my head I could hear the cries of knuckles and tails nearby they were saying stuff like help us and

why did you give us to him and run away before he gets you too. Their cries died out as I then heard Sonic laugh. His laugh. It sounded a lot like the bestort of Kefka laugh. You're a lot just like your friend Kyle, though he didn't last long. I was scared and looking around for the source of the voice. Won't be long now.

I saw him walking toward me, flickering in and out. in several directions. You can't run, kid. This is my world now, just like the others. When he grabbed me, and I saw his bleeding black and red eyes, a grinning face, I woke up with a fright. After a couple hours, I decided to continue playing the game. I don't know why, but I had to know.

I had to figure out why this was happening. So I turned on the computer, turned on the game, and selected Robotnik next. I still thought that was wacky, playing as Robotnik. But anyway, the level title appeared again, and this time it said, well, just three dots, which I found really freaky. This time, I was in some kind of hallway. Didn't really look like it from any of the classic Sonic. games. No, it had the pixelated style. The floor was shiny and checkered. The walls were a dark grayish

purple with animated candle lights, and a few dark bloodstains here and there. And there was a dark red curtain hanging above on the top part of the screen. Every 12 seconds or so, that red curtain and sways very slowly. But whenever you're playing the game, you can barely see a move. The music was oddly pleasant, a piano playing a rather sad yet peaceful song. But I knew better. This was a song that played in Hill Act 1, only it wasn't in reverse. Robotnik didn't look entirely nervous like Tails and Knuckles did.

but he did have a suspicious look on his face as if he was just a little bit paranoid. He did a little animation when I just left him standing. He turns his head to the left and then to the right, at least twice, and then shrugs at me. As if he has no idea where he was and what was going on, even though I was scared out of my mind about what was going to happen, I had Robotnik continue onward. He did his usual running animation. You know, when you've beaten him at the end of the classic Sonic game and you chase him,

as we continued going through the hallway. Then I stopped at a long flight of stairs leading downward. Now I was nervous. Even Robotnik seemed unsure of himself, though I pressed onward. As I led Robotnik down the stairs, I noticed that the walls have gotten darker and more reddish. The red torches are now in eerie blue. Then we landed.

This one was longer than the last one. Or at least it felt like it. And then we headed down another flight of stairs. This one was much longer. It took at least a full minute. And then I heard that horror Kefka laugh again. And then the music slowly faded until it was quiet. As it did, the walls turned more dark.

red, and the tortures were a black flame now. When Robotnik landed onto the third hallway, I noticed he now looked really creeped out, though he tried to hide it. I couldn't blame him. I was scared, too. Suddenly, Sonic popped right in front of Robotnik the same way he did Knuckles, and then red static. The red static lasted for about 15 seconds, and then it showed me a most unpleasant.

image, the image showed a hyper-realistic of sonic standing in the darkness where you can only see his face while his head and torso faded into black. And when I say hyper-realistic, I mean, like he looked so real you could actually see the lines in his blue fur, as if you could actually feel the fur if you touch the screen. His face? Oh my God. He had the most whole horrifying smile I had ever seen. Not saying something considering I saw that image at the start of the game. His eyes were wide and black and once again crying blood, which also looked hyper-realistic. There were two small glowing red dots in those black eyes staring right at me.

As if staring into my mind, his grin was wide and demonic. It literally stretched to the sides of his face. like a Cheshire cat, except Sonic had fangs, very sharp fangs, much like the werehog's teeth except more vicious-looking, somewhat yellowish, and from the look of it, he had stains of blood and small bits of flesh on his lips and fangs as if you ate some animal. I stared at that gruesome image for good 30 seconds, never taking my eyes off it. I felt as if he was actually looking at me, smiling at me. That face.

It just took ten seconds for it to etch itself into my brain for good. Then the screen flickered with red static again three times. And on the third time I heard the Kefka laugh. Except this time it sounded distorted. Demonic even. I went back to the image again, except this time there was the text again. though it was messed up but it was

pretty much one of the most horrifying things I looked at since I had this game it was when I read that message while looking at Sonic when it hit me I realized right then and there this Sonic was a monster a pure evil

sadistic all-powerful nightmarish demented monster and all of his victims including tales Knuckles, Robotic, and possibly Kyle, are just his little toys. And this game is the very gateway into his chaotic, nightmarish world. And the very hell his victims are trapped in. Suddenly, in an actual split second, I screamed as Sonic lunged at the screen,

screeching loudly with his mouth wide open at an unnatural length, revealing nothing but a literally spiraling abyss of pure darkness before the red static came again. This time much louder and distorted, so loud that it hurt my ears. I yelled and grabbed my ears as the red static screech for a good seven seconds. Then it stopped and showed nothing but black screen as I sat there staring at the blank screen. One last text came up, the Kefka laugh, now sounding more clear as if Sonic was right behind me. Played again three times as I looked at that text in shock and confusion. Then I got booted back to the main menu.

And this time the third save file had a TV image of Robotnik in the same tormented status tails and knuckles. Robottenic's skin turned a bell gray. His mustache drooped and it blackened. His glasses broke, blood was coming from him, and he had a dead-like expression on his face. I looked at tails, knuckles, and robotic, and I cried a bit, I pitied them for the agony they were going through. They were forever trapped within the game, forever tormented by that horrid hedgehog, and always will be. then the computer shut itself off. I couldn't turn it back on no matter what I did.

I sat there for maybe 25 seconds, horrified by what had just happened. Sonic was a very embodiment of evil. He tortures people who play his game in more ways than one. And then when he gets bored, he drags the end of the game. Literally, drags the end of the game. you to hell, where he can play with you always. As is toy. I can't get the game out of my computer.

I think it's stuck in there, but at least I managed to turn it back on now. After I sat there a while, I heard a voice right behind me. Like a whisper, I turned around to see where the voice came from. And what I saw made me scream. Sitting on my bed, staring right at me. was a sonic plushy, smiling, with bloodstains under its eyes. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents, Stigmata, written by C.R. Broderick, and narrated by Alicia Atkins.

As soon as we were old enough to be let out alone, we would go and sit in the rusted-out car on the Adams Road. We were 11 by then, and probably would have been let out earlier if it hadn't been for those little girls murdered two towns away a few years before. They caught the guys that did it, but still our parents never got over it. The parents of our town were masters of not getting over things. No one knew who had driven that car off the road and into a fence post. Our town was small enough that you could say for certain it wasn't anyone local. Our town was miles from anywhere, and on the way to be. to nowhere, so the car would have been caused for concern if there hadn't been prayer beads

hanging from the mirror and a plastic virgin on the dashboard. Whoever was driving must have been someone like us. The car sat there for years before we claimed it as our own, the soil and the high grass slowly swallowing it. We liked the car because it kept us off the ground, just out of reach a bug that climbed up from the dry grass and across our skin. It shielded our eyes from the yellow dust that rose in the gusts from the gusts from the side of the road with passing trucks and wind.

In the summers, the sun warmed its leather seats, and cocooned in it we would tell ourselves we were warmer than we really were. In the tank tops and shorts we wore to cycle past the neighborhood boys, the skate park, the garage that took on guys straight out of high school. In the winters, we would bring blankets to wrap around the hand-me-down coats we pretended not to know we're ugly, and pile in altogether on the back seat till the only sun. sign that we were cold was the white mist of our breath, and the frost sitting on the cracks of its

windows. No one else ever came out by the wreck, so it was always just ours. It was in the car that Indy first told us about her powers, the things she could see that no one else could. She said God spoke to her, and gave her messages to give us. She said she saw angels and demons all around us, knew things we didn't, saw the personal. ghost that trailed us. We didn't pay much mind at first. Indy was always telling lies. Before, she had been a princess in hiding, a witch with secret powers, a shapeshifter. We had always played along because there wasn't much else to do around town. And Indy had an imagination good enough to make us forget sometimes that we didn't believe her. This God's story was new.

Probably came from her mom starting to go to church on a kind of her hot new Catholic. boyfriend. We felt a bit old for this nonsense, but we were also at the age of turning ugly, of pimples and stretch marks and thin dark hairs under our arms and between our legs that made us leave our clothes on when we swam in the river. We were learning quick that we, and the world, were not as special as we'd hoped, or at least not in the way that we'd hoped. and part of us wanted to hang on to that magic just a tiny bit longer. Besides, we thought, if Indy needed the attention so bad, it wouldn't kill us to give it to her. We often overheard our parents talk about her home life, saying they'd pray for her.

So when she told us all her stories, we said, wow, and asked her questions. When she claimed to see the spirits move within us, we cried, we feel it, we do. When she told us she had been visited in a dream, we followed her on bikes past the wreck and up the rocky path to the grotto in the mountain. We claimed we saw the statue move, the lambs, the light, the son of God.

We said, We cannot hear the voice, only you, Indy, who the Lord speaks to. When she told her mother and the teachers and the black-clad priests in her mother's new church, we had no choice but to agree, or reveal to her that we'd never believed her in the first place. That would have been the same as saying we were more best friends with each other than we were with her, which was too cruel a thing to admit.

We were also at an age where we would rather sell a fantasy than admit that we had played along with such a childish game. We wanted adults to take us seriously, and we were willing to take our chances. We knew that it was wrong to lie, just like we knew our parents didn't believe us, even though they badly wanted to. They drove us to the Diocesan office and took us one by one to woodclad rooms that smelt of polish and old carpet. We sat in leather chairs and answered questions about the vision, the bishop reminding us that lying was a sin as he made eye contact with other men over the tops of our heads. We didn't get one wrong. We added in the details of the other times. The premonitions we could pretend in hindsight had come true.

The way the centers of our palms and feet sometimes would tingle when Indy touched us, curing us of minor ills and cuts and bites. Bystanders backed us up. They had heard us tell these tall tales monks ourselves in class and on the playground. The priest conveyed and nodded their heads, agreed that this could mean big things for the community. They spread the word. When the visiting clergy asked to speak with us, we told them the same story.

Then the pilgrims. Then the TV crews. We knew the game had gone too far, that it had slipped from our fingers and spilled like spoiled milk on a new carpet, leaving us suspended in the memory of the moment right before it fell, convinced that if we just thought hard enough, we could go back in time to grip it that small bit tighter and spare the mess.

But we couldn't. When we weren't stationed in Indy's bedroom, we gathered in the wrecked car on the Adams Road and talked about what we should do. We had become part of the spectacle, a harem of pure white witnesses to this new virginal icon. But the visitors had started bringing money and with it, expectation.

It was no longer just enough to look and have our Indy lay her hands on them. The people wanted more. The day she told us she would fast, we all sighed in relief. She said the Lord had told her that when he visited in a dream. At last she seemed to see that we were close to getting caught.

She knew she needed to do more for the people that used their paychecks to fill their cars to travel miles and line up in her shotgun hallway to see her, trailing over the porch and down the street. Their savings clutched in hands blacklined in coal, or hardened by labor, then dropped in the collection bucket that the parish representative shook as they passed, reminding them that even that which came from God didn't come for free. Her mother's eyes in the corner gleamed, matched the buttons on the brand-new coat she had bought to wear with the new dress, new boots, new hairdo.

Her mother undershirt our pickle, too. She counted the collection money each night. So, Indy fasted. It lasted almost four months. Indy grew thin. Her bones stuck out, and pimples rose on her newly furred skin. Her mother concealed what she could with makeup, but still she repelled us. We shivered at her cold, insistent touch, her broken yellow fingernails scratching at our skin.

Re recoiled from the sweet, wrought smell of her breath, like the dust cloud in the wake of a garbage truck. The pilgrims claimed she healed their migraines, back pain, dusty lungs, that she brought prosperity to their farms and luck to their lives. The priest took daily prayers alone with Indy, when even we were not allowed to eat. enter. He drove a brand new truck. Despite how she disgusted us, we slept beside her every night and fed her blended concoctions through a straw. From bottles we concealed inside our night shirts in case anyone were to look in. But still, she grew weaker. Indy said, I can't keep doing this. And we told her that she had to. Indy said, Father Peter says, and we shusked her.

Indy said, Can we tell them? And we told her it was all of us who told a lie, and all of us would suffer. We told her we wouldn't be friends if she told. And she went quiet for a while, until her teeth grew looser, and her hair came out, and then she asked again.

We gathered in our car wreck and decided what to do. We had insisted so many times to teachers and clergy and the sheriff. Our parents were so proud that we were part of something special. The other kids at school were circling us, jealous and sniffing for weakness. The truth just couldn't come out. We had to make a plan. We struggled with it, worked it over in our heads, but in the end we all agreed

this was the way it had to be. That day, Indy slept because we hadn't brought her our concoctions in a while. We told her mother and the priest that she had asked to be alone tonight because she felt that something was about to happen. We went home and up to our bedrooms, brushed our teeth and went to bed, and when we heard our parents climbed the stairs

and settle in with groans and creaks of the floors and their old bed frames, re-rose again. We met out by the car wreck and took stock of her inventory. We crossed the dry grass fields right up to the back of Indy's house and jittered up her window that we knew from years of sleepovers didn't lock. Climmed inside. We don't know if she woke up when we pulled the pillow from beneath her head. We didn't want to see her face.

We circled around her body. taking turns, holding her arms, her legs, the pillow. For as long as the library computer had advised us, it would take, plus five minutes more for good measure. It was better this way, because none of us would get tired, and we would never know which of us had done it. It would always be us all. Before we left, we placed the Bible beneath her hands and feet,

and drove a nail through each, puncturing the soft skin and pushing past the resistance that lay beneath it till it reached the other side. When we pulled the nails back out, the smallest drops of blood ran from the wound, thick black in the dark. We shone a hunting torch for twenty seconds out the window,

so any neighbors praying towards the house could say they saw a bright white light on the night, their almost saint had died. Then we went home and slept. We woke up early the next morning, made sure to set alarms on the plastic character clocks we kept beneath our pillows, so we could be up before our parents worked up the courage to come and wake us with the news. We tripped down to our kitchens,

telling them what a strange dream we'd had last night, where Indy came to us with blood on her palms and spoke to us. Our parents gasped and cried, dropped their coffee mugs that didn't break against the lino, turned pale, then spoke. They told us of her cold white body. The stigmata crusted in her child's hands. They called the priest. We played the part as best as we could, wept and held hands in black along her graveside,

crying real tears. People were so kind to us. Some hopeful we'd inherited whatever powers had taken Indy, but we hadn't. That the glory died with her. As Rue grew older, we would think in our own private moments of how lucky we had been. Lucky that Indy's mother didn't love her more. Lucky that the coroner saw nothing in this world beyond whiskey and Jesus. Lucky that no one cared about our backwards, dust.

town, or our strange, lonely friend. All they cared about was hope and mystery, and there was more of that in the death of a girl than the slow decline of one whose touch no longer cleared their warts or saved their crop. We had thought we were such clever, clever girls, but really, we were just discardable. For years we saved coming to our car wreck on the Adams,

road, just meeting up, then smoking, then drinking. Throughout our teens, we drifted in and out, pulled away by older boyfriends, or new friend groups or jobs save for colleges whose acceptance letters never arrived. But we always came floating back to each other. We never spoke about what happened. We let it blend with all the other symptoms of the psychosis of adolescence. The other, deranged things we did that were excused because everyone knew teenage girls were a little unhinged, but harmless. At times, we could believe it hadn't really happened at all. But other times, it sat with us in the car, in the weight of the air when we fell silent,

in the way we often picked up branches or glass or the corkscrew end of our bottle openers, and worked them absently against the soft centers of our pocketers. palms, broke skin, the way we lit the blood well, then pause, then run down our hand, drip, drip, dripping through the rusted bottom of the wreck, and landing on the grass below. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at Creepy pod on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative Commons Share-A-like licensing or with written consent from the authors. 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.