Creepy - Thank You & Those Who Await Us

Episode Date: September 12, 2024

Thank You***Written by: Laura Shell and Narrated by: Danielle Hewitt***Content Warning: Domestic Abuse***Those Who Await Us***Written by: Noah Watson and Narrated by: Owen McCuen***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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

Written by Laura Shell, and narrated by Daniel Hewitt. Dear Jacob, remember the very first time I got sarcastic with you? And you gave me that look like you would kill me if I ever said anything like it again? Your eyebrows met in the middle and that vein in your forehead. The one on the right side of your head. the one that looks like a tuning fork. It started to throb. I want to thank you for that moment,

because it told me that you have something dark within you that I needed to pay attention to. I didn't pay attention at the time, but looking back now, so I thank you for showing me a hint of your true self at that moment. Sad to say I should have started to pull away then, or even walk away. But I didn't.

And that's on me. Thanks. Dear Jacob, after three months of being together, you told everyone in school that I was your girl. At the time, I thought it was romantic. Now I know it was actually a warning. A clue to your possessiveness. Any guy who looked my way got cornered in the hall by you or one of your boys.

I didn't think much of it back then. Now I know how shady that was. Especially since, you didn't even know that some of your boys looked my way. One of them even touched my cheek. It was kind of nice. So for what I have to do now, I thank you for not regarding me as a human being, a young woman, a partner, a friend, a lover. But as an object,

a thing, a piece of property. Thank you. Dear Jacob, when I told you I wasn't going to meet you at the football game, because I wasn't feeling well, you squeezed the shit out of my right arm. I had bruises, imprints of your fingertips,

purple, and spittle on my face from your harsh words. The spittle? I could wipe away. Not those bruises. Not the worry in my father's eyes when he saw those bruises. For what I must do, I thank you for showing your insincerity,

for making my father worry, for causing me physical pain. I can do the same, you know. I thank you for that. Dear Jacob, I thank you for knocking me unconscious. There was broken glass and blood and a head wound and punching and shoving and throwing and backhanding. The ambulance came.

My father called the police. You spent time in jail. I spent time in the hospital. You gushed that you would change. Never lay a hand on me again. promised to treat me like a princess. And you did. Ultimately, I didn't press charges.

But instead of physical abuse, there was verbal and mental. I thank you for that, too. Dear Jacob, six months since the unconscious incident, as it was known. My father checked on me every day, sometimes twice a day, because we had moved in together. against my father's wishes. I should have listened to him. Your verbal and mental manipulations continued.

In fact, everything you said was meant to hurt, but I didn't notice. I took everything you said as the truth, and it beat me down. For instance, hold my hand when I walk with you so I can protect you. Really? I didn't ask for protection from you or anyone. I didn't need it. At the time, I believed you. You don't look as pretty in the green dress. The red one's better. Believe me as your boyfriend. You held the door open for me, but for no one else. Not the old man, nor the old lady. You told me time and again that I was incapable of doing certain things, and I believed you, instead of the voice in the back of my mind that told me you were full of

shit. You went out of your way to do things for me. You went out of your way to do things for me, just so you could score points and hopes that I would have sex with you. But I thank you for your verbal and mental manipulations and abuse. They showed me who you really are. They showed me who I really am. Thank you. Dear Jacob, the day you told me you wanted to have a child, I said the very first thing that entered my mind.

What makes you think I would let you father a child? The look on your face was unlike any, I'd seen on you. Dark, maniacal, wrong. You marched across the living room and smacked the crap out of me, back handing me in the cheeks, the arms, the thighs. Guess that must be your signature move? The backhand.

My skin was on fire as I cried out for you to stop. I kept trying to block you but you were too fast. We eventually ended up in the kitchen, in a corner. And you eventually stopped hitting me. You stood there. Over me. As I wept.

My skin red, already welting. Who says I'm not already a father? That's when I realized. The magnitude of your depravity. So thank you for physically abusing me again. For showing me who you really are deep down again. for confirming all the suspicions my father has had all these years, for proving the voice in the back of my mind was not wrong,

and that things are just going to get exponentially worse from here on out. Thank you. Now I know what I must do. Thank you. Dear Jacob, it's been done. I'm not sorry I had to do it. Not at all. I'm sorry my father got involved. He's not.

Nothing I can do about that now. But it took the both of us to get the job done and done properly. There was a knife. My father and I took turns. I looked into your eyes just to see if there was anything behind them. I didn't see much. And there was blood. A lot of blood.

But there was also bleach and buckets of soap. And buckets of bleach and soap. And then there was a construction site and cement. People will ask questions, but they won't suspect us. And if they do, it won't be for long. So thank you, Jacob. for showing us how to be dark, how to be bad, how to turn wrongs into justifications. You taught us well. Thank you.

Creepy presents, those who await us, written by Noah Watson, and narrated by Owen McCune. They say you find yourself in a dark tunnel, moving towards a warm heavenly light. the light always in front of you gleaming welcoming as long as you look ahead all you see is the light it fills your vision fills your mind fills your heart and soul with radiant comfort as you transition into eternity some report that if you turn around you can see your body right where you left it as family weeps around you or paramedics try desperately to revive the that was once you. Or maybe you look back and see no one. Maybe you died alone, with no one to see, no one to know,

no one to care. It no longer matters, however. Now you have the light. The light welcomes all. Always the light in front, always your life behind. That's what I always heard, at least. Turns out that's absolutely right.

but no one ever tells you what you see when you look down. Looking down, in a way, is what killed me in the first place. A friend of mine had dragged me out hiking on some nameless mountain in some forgotten Tennessee County. I was hesitant to join him, as the mere thought of a height was enough to make my stomach lurch. I had, however, made the mistake of confessing to him just how seldom I left my dingy apartment. Just how many hours of how many days I spent.

in the dark, staring at the ceiling. He was understandably concerned, and practically dragged me out the door on that crisp autumn morning. I confess, the beginning of our trek was rather pleasant. The breeze nipped playfully upon our skin, and the colors of the leaves beginning their own journey into death cut a striking beauty in the eastern sun's cool rays.

My friend and I chattered pleasantly along the path, but as we snaked up switchback after switchback, My sweat became equally of fear, along with exertion. Frequently my steps would send rocks clattering down the rapidly steepening embankment we trod along, sending my heart skittering as I tried not to consider how long they took to hit the bottom. I did not look down. My friend was largely oblivious to my mounting anxiety. I was not in the habit of discussing my phobias,

and he was preoccupied in telling me about a new girl he had started seeing. He was pretty sure they were. would get married. He was always pretty sure they'd get married. The rocky snaking path narrowed us into a single file and then narrowed again. My breathing came quickly now. I was extremely aware of the plummet that seemed mere inches from the edge of my boot. I dared not look down. The air felt thin at this height, though I knew it couldn't be. We'd only been walking for an hour and a half or so. Still, my breaths were increasingly shallow and ragged, and my heart hammered in my ears. Before along we came to another switchback, the trail narrowing to a razor's edge as it hair-pinned

one final time before beginning its terminal ascent to the summit. My friend hurried along, eager for the assuredly wonderful vista the top would bring. As I surged to keep up, I felt a sudden shock of pain in my ankle as it rolled unnaturally inward. The loose stone I had trodden upon careened over the edge of the trail, and as I lurched forward, off-balance and unsupported by my already swelling ankle, I saw over the edge. I'm not sure of the exact distance it was to the rocky shelf below. They can't have been too far, as I did not die on impact, but it was far enough to make my stomach churn. My head spun in nauseating vertigo, and the ground below me was at once incredibly close, yet impossibly far.

I was so disoriented that I barely noticed myself slip. I heard my friends scream from somewhere, and I think I was screaming too. I wasn't sure much of anything until I hit the ground feet first, at which point I became acutely aware of my feet crushing into stone. The bones in my legs shattering into slivers and large shards ripping their way through my flesh like fangs jutting from a horrible maw. Mercifully, I was only fully aware of the agony for a matter of seconds before blacking out completely, coming to in spurts and remembering the following events mostly as a haze of

horrible sensation. I think I died in the ambulance, though it can be hard to tell. I remember hearing dimly my friend making a panicked call to 911. lung. Another passing hiker did her best to help, though little remained of my legs to try to save. I felt new rolling waves of agony as uniformed paramedics shifted me onto a board. I could smell the sharp scent of blood, surely mine, and the pungent stench of vomit, from whom I didn't know. I caught a glimpse of the face of one of my medics. She was pretty. She looked grim. I tasted blood as a gurgled between my lips while some shape injected me with some fluid.

I heard the beeping of machinery and the crunch of tires on the road. Then I felt nothing at all. It was dark. Very dark. It seemed as if I had been plunged into the depths of a vast, endless ocean. I could see nothing. I could hear nothing. I was bitterly cold.

And yet I distinctly was. Call it my essence or my spirit, or soul, but some part of me was where all else wasn't. Unsure of any other course of action, I willed myself to move. I floated in this primordial ocean of nothing for a time. I don't know how much. I moved aimless, directionless, unsure of even my orientation. I was cold and alone, yet strangely calm.

I was dead that much was clear. But I supposed that if this is how it is, then there were much worse things to be. Then I saw the light. It was just a pinprick, a photon of light in the carnivorous dark in which I was mired. But it was there. An impossible distance away, but I had eternity to travel. I began to set out a journey I was sure would take an infinity. but I would have several more to spend.

The light, distant though it was, filled my vision as I swam towards it. What might await me? I thought back to the lessons I was taught in Sunday school. Was I seeing the light reflecting off the pearly gates, a glint of golden cobblestones? The light of a creator itself? A bolt of fear pierced my heart. I hadn't actually practiced my faith in years. Would I then be disqualified, denied entry, forced to swim this sea forever?

To my surprise, the light had gotten a little bigger. How long had I been traveling? I began rehearsing a plea for forgiveness and hurried along. We're losing him! The voice pierced the deafening silence like thunder, and I spun on my heel. There, through the darkness and opaqueness, I looked longingly over my shoulder. at the growing glow, but reasoned that it wasn't going anywhere.

The light would still be there for me. I wrenched my gaze away and turned to the frosted window at my back. If I focused, I can make out the shapes of people. Two ran quickly, but professionally, around the prone frame of a third, while another sat huddled in the corner. The image sharpened as I stared, and I dimly became aware that I was looking at myself. I suppose I should have been horrified, and indeed I was a very bad sight. My legs up to my knee were a mesh of shard and meat, crushed and rent open by their own jagged bones.

Both of my femurs had clearly broken, and my skin bulged pregnant as the bone tried to push its way free. A beleaguered paramedic was piercing an IV into my vein, bag filled with isotonic solution. Put pressure on it. I assume it was meant to counter the growing pool of sticky blood around. me, though I had a distinct feeling that it wouldn't matter. My blood leaked with every heartbeat, and I faintly wondered if my femoral had been nicked. An EMT was desperately trying to bandage my wounds, but my vitality saturated the gauze near instantly. My friend sat in the ambulance as well, crying and holding my gray hand.

As awful a sight as I was, I was not scared. I wasn't even surprised. I just felt numb recognition. After all, isn't this how it goes? You die, you have an out-of-body experience, then you leave the mangled corpse that was once you behind and go into the light, your life behind, the light in front. Always.

I turned back to bask in the light's cold glow. Had it gotten closer? Yes. What seemed an infinity away was now a short stroll. Fresh bandages. Barely the length of one of the soccer fields I ran so often in my youth. I must have been floating towards it as I observed my dying husk. It's hard to tell where and when you're moving. Eagerly I swam a few yards more towards the blinding white.

Or maybe, I thought as I slowly closed the distance between me and eternity, it moved towards me. The thought gave me pause, though I wasn't sure, why. I stopped swimming. I was, of course, being ridiculous. Heaven doesn't move, and that was assuredly what I was seeing. The blinding light of heaven. I must have moved faster than I realized, or perhaps was caught in some primordial current that drew me nearer. I began to move towards the light again. Hesitantly at first, but when I looked in the white light, my fears left me as I was washed in a wave of serenity. I would see my brother again, taken for me last year at the hands of a

drunk driver as he was coming to pick me up from a bar too drunk to drive myself. I could finally see him, throw myself at his feet and beg his forgiveness. Maybe if he forgave me, I could forgive myself. Don't go. Not yet. A different voice now. Familiar. With effort, I pulled my gaze from the harsh light and looked back to my death. The window was clearer now, sharper. It looked as if I could practically step through. My friend was clutching my cold hand in both of his, tears mixing with my blood. I felt a twinge of guilt.

I would be leaving so many people behind. But why would I stay? Even if I could return to my body, it was clear I would never walk again. My friend would make peace with that. with my passing. It wasn't his fault, after all. I just wish I could hear his eulogy at my funeral. He was always such a good speaker. But I had to go. I turned back again and froze. The light was much closer, maybe half the distance it was before. I was bathed in its cold heat, and I had to squint to see through the piercing luminosity. I hadn't moved. I was sure of it. Perhaps all so

are naturally swept towards the end, and I was merely being paranoid. Or perhaps it was advancing on me. I instinctively floated back slightly, suddenly unsure of my next move. I don't think he's breathing. Gazing into the light awashed me in peace, but an icy spike of fear had wormed its way into the back of my mind and affixed itself like a parasite. I floated in place, studying the harsh glow,

looking for any detail other than the bright. from this near proximity was blinding. I squinted. Come on, pull through. And through the haze I saw a figure, a shadow blindingly backlit by the frigid light. It raised a hand, beckoned me. I swam a little closer and somehow knew. It was my brother, waving, welcoming me into the end.

He was here. Healthy and vital, I knew, though I still couldn't make out his details. Forgetting the window behind me, I hurled myself towards the light and my brother's forgiveness. I'd made it about halfway when the light bobbed. Just a simple up-and-down motion, the figure of my brother moving as if cresting and then falling on a wave. I barely would have noticed, but the parasitic fear that had attached itself into my brain flared ice-cold. No pulse. It had noticed something as the light dipped.

something beneath the light, a landscape gray and lumpy, briefly in the gloom, and two points of reflection. They vanished as soon as they appeared, but I had definitely seen something. I looked back at the figure of my brother, waving more frantically now and promised to return momentarily. Beginning compressions. I began to swim down towards where I had seen that alien landscape. It was hard.

hard to pull myself away from the light, away from my brother, and it was hard to move. Moving towards the light felt like swimming through air, but swimming downward was thick, viscous, as if I were moving through treacle or some embryonic fluid that did not wish to let me leave. Still, I pushed on, forced my way through the black tar which clung to me, tried to force me back into the tunnel, towards the light. Get an AED. But through the great sea of blackness, something began to take shape, a monolithic land, vast and barren. From my limited view, it seemed as if I were swimming towards the edge of a cliff, two large

reflective stones towards the top, then a sharp slope into a large cavern. Pressing forward became harder, but not so much that I could make no headway. I thought again of my brother and was filled with an intense yearning to turn back, to go to my brother, to go to the light. But I had to know. There may be a light at the end of the tunnel, but what lies outside the tunnel itself? Shock advised.

I pressed further and further down, gray landscape coming ever closer. I could see the cavern was lined with stalactites and stalagmites, though I still could see little clearly, except for the two gleams of the light's reflection. As I continued to force my way toward this alien land, progress slowed immensely by the very void around me resisting. I felt a membrane in front of me. My hands pressed into it trying to force my way out. I heaved and the glassy membrane bulged with me. I could barely perceive it,

thin and taught it pulsed with unnerving vitality. I ran my hands over it, feeling for a seam or whole. All I felt were criss-crossing veins. With a spasm of panic, I heaved against this lining to no avail. Gathering all my strength, I lunged in a frenzy, shoulder-first, and with a sudden jolt of energy burst through. Clear! All at once, sensation returned to me in a rush, and I heard the screaming. Void leaked from the flesh behind me, but I barely noticed. I was frozen, deafened by the agonized cries of the thousands in front of me. What I thought was a cavern was a mouth full of jagged, translucent, black curved teeth. And it was full of souls.

The teeth were stained crimson where they gnashed, piercing and crushing those trapped in the maw. I made eye contact with a man in Renaissance clothing. He looked at me pleadingly, his torso half-crushed and pierced through. Shock advice. Before I could react, the maw closed again, and a fan. pangs pierced his head with the ease of an all through leather. He screeched and was lifted into the air waving his remaining arm. The fang had pierced his forehead and was protruding from his upper back, an instantly lethal wound.

But still he squirmed and screamed. He was but one of many. I looked further into the mouth and was overcome by nausea. A mix of viscera and body parts, lins still twitching, eyes still blinking, hearts still blinking, hearts still beating, churned in the thing's gullet and disappeared down its throat. I became aware that I, too, was screaming. I wrenched my gaze from the cavernous maw yawning before me and followed the gray, slimy flesh upwards.

I saw the light, reflected in the bolder eyes of a monstrous cosmic angler. They regarded me with the dim aggression of a predator viewing its prey. No malice, only hungry indifference. It was hungry, and I was here. It lazily began to move toward me. I tried to back away, but was rooted in terror. As I numbly awaited the end, I averted my eyes from it to look at the light. The comforting, soothing light.

From here I could clearly see the stalk that connected the luminescent bulb to the angler's head. I could dimly see a thin strip of translucent flesh extending from the orb, extending to the window to my corpse. It seems so far now, but I could clearly see the medics pumping oxygen into my limp mouth, AED, strapped to my chest. I turned back to the light, allowing one last wave of serenity to wash over me.

The angler was nearly upon me now, its cavernous mouth, yawning open to welcome me. And in the light, I saw my brother, not beckoning, but screaming. but screaming, warning me to get away, to flee, anywhere except here. I gazed upon his face,

twisted in agony, and a jolt ran through me. Clear. I scrambled backward, flailing in the ocean of nothing, faster than I realized I could. The angler's jaws snapped shut where I was a moment before, and a fresh chorus of agony erupted from the damned souls as bone crushed, muscle ripped, and limbs severed. I had to find the way back.

I rushed towards the window, seeing a medic compressing my chest. I heard another crunch behind me just at my heels and dared not look back. Frantically, I found my way to the tear in the angler's tunnel I had made before and pulled myself back through. Thick void surrounded me, mercifully muting the screaming and gnashing of teeth. The void pulled, resisting my every move back towards my broken body. I risked one last look back, and what I desperately hoped was not my brother. But it was. I saw his face contort in pain as arcs of electricity,

shot from the center of the light into his joints, forcing his muscles to contract and his arms to beckon welcomingly, as he screamed for me to run. Shock advised. Forcing my way back towards the rapidly closing window of life, I found myself running out of strength. This thing, this cosmic angler, was pulling me back. fiercely. I reached out, fingertips just out of reach of the window. It was narrowing, now barely

large enough for me to fit through. I looked down. The angler's tongue flicked greedily, freeing a colonial woman who had been stuck between its teeth for who knows how long. She disappeared down the horror's throat. I looked beyond the angler. I saw many more lights. Clear! I felt a final jolt of energy, one last burst of vitality in my numbed soul. I lurched forward, grabbed the edge of the window, and heaved myself through. I crashed back into my mangled body, coming into the screaming ambulance with a painful gasp. I had never been so happy to feel agony.

My legs, a mush of pain, which translated itself to nausea, I wept with joy to be back, to be alive. my friend wept too i think i blacked out again shortly after but mercifully remained firmly in the land of life not swept in the currents of the cosmic ocean or the anglers dwell that was thirty years ago now long before this cancer took hold i fought it i fought it so hard chemotherapy radiation i even tried oils and acupuncture But this is it. Terminality. Soon I will go back to that ocean, to that which awaits us all to swim. I know there won't be any way back this time. I suppose I'll try to tread water,

maybe swim my way upwards. But I implore you, listen to me. I do not know where else there is to go, but when it's your turn to swim, Don't go into the light. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit creepypod.com. You can also follow us at creepypod on social media and YouTube.

All stories told on this podcast are done so through Creative 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.