Creepy - The Blood Hunt & There's A Strange Machine In The Nursery

Episode Date: May 12, 2022

The Blood Hunt***Written By: JD Arguelles and Narrated By: JV Hampton-VanSant***There's A Strange Machine In The Nursery***Story Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/uexeei/theres_a_strange_machine_in_the_nursery/***Written By: Saturdead and Narrated By: Alicia Atkins***Find our reward tiers and how to get your bonus magnet at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Title music by Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the bloody disgusting network. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastors and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of books. Violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Creepy presents. The Blood Hunt. Written by J.D. Argyles. And narrated by J.V. Hampton Van Sant. I'm not afraid of the dark. I've never slept with a nightlight, even as a child. I work late, but that's pretty normal for a bartender. Working at a gay bar in the gay mecca of the West Coast, the Castro in San Francisco,

I always stay till closing, and sometimes a couple hours more. I tend to see more sunrises than sunsets, but I like it. As a Bulldike, I tend to give a, I'm pissed, so fuck off, missed, so very few fuck with me. Honestly, it's not the unhoused or even someone tweaking that makes the nighttime dangerous. It's the drunk people. Some drunk asshole yelling at me because I cut them off is normal, but annoying. No, it's when some meathead gets pulled to the castro by one of their girlfriends. admittedly, not all, just the ones with short-temper, small minds, and limp dicks.

Instead of having a good time and enjoying the party, those dummies usually start with the, I don't like being looked at by guys, and the, hey, stop hitting on my girlfriend. That first one is on them. and whatever lack of masculine security they have, the second one is on me because I often am hitting on their girlfriends.

Some ladies see arms full of tattoos, a mohawk, and a torn-up t-shirt that says lesbian friends, and simply can't resist. I tend to handle these punks well enough, most of the time, that is. I'm stocky, can throw a punch, and can even take one, if needed. Luckily, I've mellowed out over the years, and now just grab the guy and push them out of the bar. If things get really nasty, I have a necklace in the basic shape of a cat's head.

This cat head is made out of flat neon pink steel, with two holes where the eyes would be. while the cat ears on the head are sharpened, creating two short but sharp spikes. Mine has seen action once and only once. The neighborhood was scared then. There'd been some disappearances, three in fact, but fortunately no one I know. I know it's horrible what happened. But this fact made it feel less tangible of a danger for me. People started to leave earlier than the last call.

That's the thing about the LGBT Plus community. We look out for each other because no one else does. My coworkers bitch about tips, but I told them that at least people were at home safe. I'd be fine with making a little less. The police were useless. No matter the city, the police don't care about us. This was no different. Three people all disappeared on their ways home.

Bo was the first. Young and barely started dating her first girlfriend. Police said she returned to Minnesota, But they hadn't bothered to follow up with a phone call to her folks. Jonathan Marsh disappeared somewhere between our local grocery store and his home. They found the groceries while his partner and their two kids found themselves with a hole in their family. Mahogany was a few weeks ago. A black trans woman who had been an advocate for trans youth.

I think that one really shook the neighborhood. That's when people started leaving in groups by the time the sun went down. Like I said, we look out for our own. So when one Friday night came, I told my co-worker PJ, a tiny twink of a guy, to take off for the night and I'd close by myself. PJ's boyfriend, Danny, had been coming by before clothes just to make sure PJ got home okay. It was a sweet thing to do, but Danny worked a cafe job way early in the morning. Danny was practically falling asleep when I turned to PJ and yelled, sashay away.

PJ laughed and called me a bitch before moving to nudge Danny wake to leave. Nothing much happened. Only saw a couple of guys walking by, one of which I hope got home safe. The other, well, I know what happened to him. I zed out the register and closed shop. I enjoy a joint after work. What PJ once told me was a dog walker,

named so after the amount of time it took to smoke the joint was equal to that of a short piss run for a mutt. Radical, I told him. Well, that dates me now, doesn't it? I took a sharp left up the hill to the next street. I loved this time of night. Since I lived in the Mission District east of the Castro, I liked this route as it treaded through Dolores Park, one of the larger parks in the city.

I lit my joint and proceeded down the semi-lit street. I hadn't gotten a puff in when I saw something down the block moving slowly towards me. I cocked one eyebrow and squinted to get a better look at what I was sure was a man's shape. The street itself only had a few street lamps with large patches of darkness between them. I was at the end of the block and under the street lamp that illuminated it. This guy, plastered, I thought,

was shambling forward with a limp. He stumbled at one point. The man made his way towards me from down the block, as he did, I could make out that it was in fact a man in a red shirt. I recognized him. Usually, I am pretty good at faces, so I recognized him as one of the two guys who walked past the bar earlier. I could have sworn he was wearing a white shirt, and from the look of it, he was. plastered. I had no idea where this guy got that loaded that fast, but it was my duty to at least

make sure this guy could get home. I walked closer as I took another hit on my joint. I called out to him. Hey man, how are you feeling? He disappeared into the darkness between his street lamp at the opposite end of the block. I could see his silhouette as I, too, entered the darkness, between my light and the single street lamp in the middle of the block. I saw him silently tumble forward a few steps and find his balance again. We were both about to meet in the light that shone out from the street lamp when I called out again, Hey man, you feeling okay? When we both entered the circle of light, I gasped as my back stiffened and my blood ran cold. I was finally close enough to see this man, but he was merely only a part of a man now.

He had stumbled into the light with his hand shielding his eyes slightly from the glare. His hand unfolded longer than a hand should, as though it was a fan partially unfurled. The pinky finger drooped longest of all and swayed lightly as though it were a pendulum in a lazy grandfather clock. The arm it was attached to was so fleshy, with a putty quality, with a large, large vein of white in it. I realized that the white strip was bone. The poor man's body had begun to melt off of his bones. The red shirt had in fact been white when I saw him earlier in the night. The red color came from a series of postules, ulcer-like marks on the part of the man's neck, that oozed, pus-ridden, foamy blood in the cold light of the night.

That's when the man lowered his hand. And I could hear a yell far away gaining in volume. I realized that the yell was coming from me. Oh, Jesus! I found myself yelling. His face drooped in his face drooped. in layers, from parts of his skull, like a candle holder after candle after candle had been burned down to nothing on it. I could see most of the right side of his skull through the thin, melted flesh of his face.

The right eye had partially liquefied and had run partially down his face like a yoke of an egg. Hair had sloughed off his head in a waning trail from his left to his right. The left side of his face had not begun the melting process, but I could see whatever sloughing effect was eating him alive, slowly continuing its horrifying march. I will never forget the longing, the pleading in his remaining eye. It swam in tears as it twitched in pain. He was trying to speak, but his mouth had elongated and slumped into one side in some terrible caricature of a stroke victim.

He could only mumble as the half of his mouth that had already succumbed was stuck together, blocking any plea or possible warning to me. I stood in shock with my hands forward in front of me, trying to understand what I was looking at, and more so what this melting man meant for the reality of this world. Is that how the others disappeared? Did they just melt away? I thought to myself. The man had continued to shamble into the light. As he came closer to me, he put out what remained of his other hand in a sign for help.

I fought the urge to recoil as I stammered out something about wanting to help him and how it would be all right. All lies I knew. That's when I saw The Beast. The space between me and the man grew smaller. when I saw something come up from the block behind him. I thought for a second it was another person, but this creature was far larger than the man before me. It was humanoid, yet tall and lean,

as though someone had taken a frail body and stretched it by its arms and legs. I could not see its face as its head was tilted downward and bobbed ever slightly with each step. Every step it took would have been two of mine. It was silent, snake-like. Not even the sound of scraping as it partially dragged its feet. I know the melting man before me didn't see the creature,

but he could see that I was looking at something that terrified. me. The melting man tried to double his efforts to move forward just as the creature behind him disappeared into the darkness between the street lamps. This time, though, I could not make out a shape in the shadows as I had previously been able to. As soon as it entered the darkness, it appeared to have vanished as though someone had flicked a switch and it had just vanished. Oh, shit. I whispered out as I began to realize I'd lost track of it. I reached out to the man before me without any thought of what might happen if I touched him. The only thing that mattered was to get him off of the street and hopefully he would survive whatever happened to him.

The beast landed on top of the man. stood in shock and the man went down hard. I could hear the crack of what was probably his jawbone breaking against the cement. The creature crouched on the man's back, pinning him to the concrete. The creature stared down at his prey. I stared down at them as a pool of blood grew from where the man's head lay. Now that it was so close to me, I could. see that the creature's head was smooth and hairless.

I couldn't place the off feeling I had looking down at it till I realized that it had no ears. It slowly tilted its head upward to meet my gaze. I wanted to run in terror. My mind screamed for my legs to move, to take a swing at it, anything. than just stand there. I felt all of this

till I could finally see its face. I would have been looking down at its eyes, but there were none. Where I expected to see some set of eyes straight out of a nightmare, there sat nothing. The entirety of its face was only that of a gaping,

wiggling hole. It puckered, quivered, like the sucker of an octopus. Each layer of the giant circular mouth was stippled with short yet sharp teeth. They wiggled and pulsated in short waves. It's like a stadium doing the wave back and forth, I thought. Then, In the black dot, in the center of the mouth, a long vine-like tongue slowly came. It moved slowly and wiggled back and forth, making me feel like a snake charmer from hell. This is how I die, I thought. Yet nothing. The tongue darted at the ever-growing pool of blood.

and began to slurp. I didn't think so. I ran. I would be safe at home, playing repeatedly in my mind. I don't think I've ever run so hard in my life. I was panting and could feel a stitch in my side

begin to double in pain. Can't stop, not now. I ran towards the park. I think that I would have run forever if it hadn't overtaken me. I was just across the street from the park. The last street stood between me and the bridge that acted as an overpass for the public transit train lines that ran down the hill at the side of the park.

As I cleared the last few steps, I could hear the noise coming from apartments around me, cars honking streets away, the train giving a small ringing, signaling its doors closing. The city was full of life even this late at night, right as a silent, flesh-melting monster landed directly behind me. I flew. It landed so hard that the force knocked me from the entrance of the walkway and over the railing of the side of the road. I landed on the hillside below and lost my breath as I rolled downward. I had enough momentum to not only skip across the first set of tracks,

but almost on to the second. I could feel pain on the side of my head that hurt like a motherfucker. My sight steadied as I saw movement, on the small grassy hillside I had just tumbled down. I saw it. It sensed me. I began to push myself backwards, managing to push myself backwards across the second set of tracks.

I pulled my cat head chain from my neck and pointed the sharp end right at the bastard. It slowly stalked toward me on all fours. Its tongue moved back and forth, sniffing the air like a dog would. I realized it was sniffing, smelling for me. It knew where I was, laid out next to the cable car tracks, but it couldn't see the beaming lights at the head of the car

as it crested the hill and made its way quickly down the rails. My kitty head knife wouldn't do anything to that thing, but I held it in front of me. I had no chance now that there was nowhere to run or hide. No more flight, only fight. It crept forward like a cat stalking its prey as its intestine tongue darted in and out searching for me. It coiled backwards slightly, preparing to leap.

It leaped, I yelled, A horn braid. The driver must have seen me and thought I was just someone snoozing off a high, because I'm sure that as the train came down the hill, its lights would have fallen on me first as it curved to the left down the hill. Beep, beep, bitch, stay out of the way. Tons of steel and momentum headed you away, I thought. The momentum of the train caught.

caused it to move quickly downhill. And as the beast was leaping through the air so close, I could feel its tongue whipping through the air at my outstretched arm. It was in front of me, and then it was simply gone. I blinked as the train's horn brayed again, and the emergency brake squalled, causing the train to screech to a halt, and I heard short screams of a few passengers. The doors opened across the train car. Light and passengers spilled out.

The driver practically leaped down the steps as his head was on a swivel, looking to the front of the train, back to me, and lastly at the fellow passengers. He yelled something before going to the front of the train. He moved before I could warm him. But surprise, he came back around the train again, looking more confused than before. He headed towards me and started into a lazy jog.

That's when the adrenaline must have ended because I woke up in a hospital bed. In the haze of waking, I felt the creature, tongue wrapped around my arm, and I sat up as though I was being tased, ripping at my arm to get the damn thing off me before I started to melt. The fuss I made caused a nurse walking by to come in and finally convinced me to not pull out my IV bag. What I learned later is that the driver thought I was being chased by a rabid dog. That was everyone's guess, and for my own sanity I didn't correct anyone, because there was no dog left behind.

Just a collection of pus, ooze, and blood. I don't know for certain, but I can feel it, really feel that this thing was dead. Honestly, I think it was eating people so quickly to keep from unraveling like it did. I believe that in my heart. The disappearances, murders stopped after that. Luckily, I mended quickly. I don't know if it was the only one of its kind. I can't do anything about that,

but I can keep my friends, my community, and my chosen family safe. So keep your ears open if anything happens and let me know. Get home safe. Creepy presents. There's a strange machine in the nursery

written by Satter Dad and narrated by Alicia Atkins. My mother died when I was 12 years old. It was the single most traumatic experience of my life, and I'd be lying if I said I've gotten over it. But that isn't what has affected me most lately. Whenever a parent dies,

most people just talk about the death itself. There's a lot of how and when, but not a lot of then what happened. It is that lasting legacy of what happens afterwards that really marks you for life. As my dad had to pick up extra hours to make ends meet, I had to help take care of my sisters. At that age, I barely made my own bed. Now I had to cook and bug my sisters about taking their showers.

My younger sisters were far more depressed than I was. I didn't have time to be depressed. I had shit to do. So now, as an adult, I can kind of see that I got stuck in that rut. I'm still taking care of people. Maybe I'm afraid of what'll happen if I stop. Originally, I wanted to be a doctor, but we just couldn't afford that kind of education.

I considered studying abroad, but my sister still needed me long into their teenage years. Instead, I studied to become a nurse, which was the cheaper option. No less work, though, just slightly cheaper. Once my sisters and I moved out, I got my own place, and I bounced around various hospitals and nursery homes around the state. I worked at a rehab clinic, an open clinic, as an in-home nurse, all kinds of positions.

I had eight different jobs all and all, changing back and forth between them as one clothes and another opened. But it wasn't until a few years ago that I saw an opportunity for a stable job. The biggest hospital in my home area had an opening for a nurse in the maternity ward. While I hadn't worked there before, I knew most of the procedures around the LDR rooms and the NICU unit. Sorry, I'll stop with the abbreviations. I got my first interview just days after the wanted ad went up. I was called in to talk with two of the nurses and one of the doctors. I could tell it was sort of rushed, and it all seemed like a bit of a formality.

By the way they acted, I figured they could really use the help right away, especially Dr. Gillen, who never even sat down. She was asking me questions while still pacing around the room. Surprise, surprise, I got the job. Starting Monday the following week, I got my first tour of the place. The first few weeks, I would mostly act as a helping hand while they figured out a more static position for me. In the meantime, I'd be moving from nurse to nurse assisting them one by one.

I didn't really have any responsibility of my own. at first. The first few days I spent with Dr. Gellon, helping out in the LDR. I had pretty good bedside manners, and several expecting mothers were happy to have me distract them from whatever they were going through. I also had to run a few tests, sit in on ultrasounds, and help deliver some bad news. I don't want to go into the details,

but pregnancy isn't always this amazing and beautiful thing. After a few days, I helped out in the reception. then at the emergency room, and so on and so on. After about a month of working there, I'd been pretty much everywhere but the nursery. You know, the fancy room with the glass windows where newborns rest up? I had seen it in passing once, but it was sort of off limits to newbies like me.

There's a lot you must be aware of when working with someone that helpless. It was when I was assisting Nurse Rina that I finally took my first steps into the nursery. It was this large square room with several units lining the walls, well lit with cheerful colors. It was empty when we went in there, having been cleared out for a proper spring cleaning, so it was a bit eerie. We usually have a half or dozen or so in here at the time, said Rina. A few more around August and September. I was a bit distracted. I kept hearing this strange noise.

You with me? She asked. What did I just say? Sorry, I sighed. There's this noise. There's going to be plenty of noise, she groaned. You better get used to it. No, it's like...

It was hard to describe. It seemed to come from the center of the room. Some sort of machine noise. A broken vent? A thump. Some kind of machine. I continued. Focus.

What did I say? It was there. Somewhere in the middle of the room. But what was it? Sorry, I smiled. One more time. As we left the room, the noise stayed in the back of my mind. It felt familiar somehow.

But from where? The following days, things were getting busy. About half the patients we received had either some sort of of condition, or were oddly particular about their care. One woman had her partner sing-scream, some kind of poem, for example. They had to be escorted out of the room. Another woman refused to have her baby without her favorite plant on the bedside table. Never seen a blue sunflower before.

Never saw the kid either, for that matter. I was still assisting Rina in the nursery, and I got the opportunity to spend some time alone in that room. Even days later, the sound persisted. It was low, more like a hum, but it was definitely there. I thought it might have been a heating issue, but I couldn't locate where it was coming from. I suspected the ceiling, but it had this strange echo to it that made it just as prominent near the floor. Strange. At one point, we had five kids in the nursery at the same time.

Rina had the main responsibility. But she took me along every now and then just to quiz me and see how well I fared on my own. But now that there were little patience in there, she had no tolerance for mistakes or hesitation. One Friday night, as I was working the evening shift, I went into the nursery to roll out one of the children. Rina was already halfway down the hall, calling out to Dr. Gellon, so I had this short moment completely alone with all five kids. The lights were a bit dimmer, and at first I didn't notice anything. But after a few seconds, I could hear that sound again, but there was something else. As I looked around the room, I could see all the kids breathing in sync with the sound.

Little chest heaving up and down. I gently pushed one of the units, accidentally waking up my little patient. As she stirred, she let out a soft cry, and for a moment my mind blanked. I was just standing there in the middle of the room, and it felt like I was about to do something. and the machine noise was louder than ever. The kids were stirring. Maybe they could hear it too. It started to bother me.

I asked a whole bunch of staff about it, but no one seemed to have any idea of what I was even talking about. If anything, the nursery was the quietest room in the entire ward. It had to be. You don't want to wake the patients. So when I started rambling about machine noises, they all just sort of tuned out. Even Dr. Gellon.

Even after my time with Nurse Rina was up, I started coming back to the nursery every now and then. Sometimes, on my lunch break, I'd just stand there and listen, trying to find the source of the sound. That's actually how I got started here on Reddit. I started asking other medical professionals what that noise could be,

and no one had a clear idea. I tried recording it, but it just wouldn't stick. Also, it is generally frowned upon to stand with a cell phone in the nursery, recording what could be a video. Big no-no. I went back over and over again, and it actually landed me in a bit of trouble. I had a private meeting with Dr. Gellon, who tried their best to understand my strange fascination with the nursery. Finally, I had to agree to leave my phone in my locker. I didn't go back there for a long time, but it was inevitable.

The nursery is somewhat central to the entire ward, and you have to actively avoid it to never pass it. One night, as I was passing the glass window, I stopped to listen. But that time, I had a good reason. There were four kids in there, and they were the first thing I heard. Not the strange machine noise. The kids were crying, but they were crying in unison. Short bursts of screams. It was rhythmic in a way.

I stopped to listen, and my mind immediately returned to the noise. I was sure that if I stepped inside, I'd hear the noise again. The kids. They were screaming in unison with the sound. I could feel it. And that was just the start. I could start feeling it even at home. I get frustrated whenever I heard my washing machine,

as it was out of sync with the sound that haunted. wanted the back of my mind. Every rhythmic noise I heard just seemed off by comparison. It bothered me just how stuck that sound was, and I still had no idea what it was. And where had I heard it before? It came to a point where I sat up all night, listening to a four-hour recording of a construction site. Nothing. Nothing sounded like that goddamn machine. At the end of a particularly long shift, as I was changing into my ordinary clothes, I stopped to listen to the hum of a fluorescent light in the bathroom. I could almost hear the rhythm of the electricity, and right there, behind my

eyelids, was that rhythmic thumping again. I held my breath, and it felt like the sound was growing louder. I could feel my pulse go up. Why was I getting angry? Or was it fear? But it was real. The sound was real. The longer I closed my eyes, the clearer it was. With my eyes closed, I turned my head. The sound changed pitch. There. A direction where it was louder than ever.

Loud enough to change the beat of my heart. It was coming from the nursery. God damn it. I slammed my locker shut and hurried out. I had to get to the bottom of this. The sound was so prominent that I could. could just close my eyes, and it'd be there. It was beating in rhythm with my heart.

I didn't care about anyone seeing me. I had to find out what it was. As I burst into the nursery, the newborns woke up. There were seven of them in total. One by one, they started screaming. A steady, rhythmic scream. How had no one noticed this? How was I the only one?

Scream, scream. It wasn't a pain scream, more like a chant. This primal, instinctual grunt scream. Almost melodic. The sound grew louder, and my chest was pounding harder and harder. I thought I was having a heart attack. My fingers were aching, like someone was slowly turning my nerves counterclockwise. I didn't even realize it at first, but I was screaming too.

to the rhythm of the grinding machine. I closed my eyes as hard as I could, trying to force the sound out of my head. Instead, it became clear. And there, in the dark of my closed eyelids, I could finally see. It was a strange feeling, looking around the room with closed eyes.

There were lines of beetles on the floor, reaching from the unit of every newborn to the spot in the middle of the room. It was clear as day, despite the darkness of my closed eyes. Black and gray beetles marching to the rhythm of the machine, carrying little globs of white. And in the middle of the room was the source of the noise. From the side, it didn't look like much. It was a sort of pipe with a faint yellow shine.

It was about three feet wide, positioned in the center of the room. line after line of beetles dove into it the little globs of white falling out of their mouths despite my body screaming for me to get away to get out to take a breath I had to look with my eyes closed I crawled forward I looked down the pipe

it is strange not being able to close your eyes to make something go away when you watch a scary movie you can turn away you can hide behind a pillow. But looking down that pipe, there was nothing I could do. I couldn't turn away,

and my eyes were already closed. It is hard to describe. It was deep, impossibly deep. Somewhere, miles below, there was a fire so bright that it burned my closed eyes. I could barely see it, shrouded behind hundreds of cogwheels, chains,

lie wires, and steam pipes. I just stared, watching the little beetles tumble over the edge, bumping against the absurd machinery. I could hear the little clicks and clacks of their shells as they struck the moving parts.

Something was moving, something organic, something living. There were hands reaching towards me, hands getting burned on steaming pipes, getting mingled by cogwheels, But still, it kept coming upwards. I hadn't even realized that I stopped breathing.

I'd held my breath for so long that I was getting lightheaded. I was being pulled away from the center of the room, away from the machine. Something pushed against my back, forcing air back into my lungs. There was a distant voice. Two people were carrying me. My eyes opened and I could see the nursery with my open eyes again. All seven kids were lying on the floor outside of their units. They were screaming at the top of their lungs, just like me.

They heard it. I heard it. But somehow, I think they knew more about it than I did. I was carried away. They tried to get me to breathe again, but it was like my body forgot how to do it. It wasn't until I got a mask over my face, forcing air into my mouth that I snapped back to reality. My heart was hammering away so fast and hard that my head hurt. I had no feeling in my hands, and both my feet had fallen asleep.

My face was burning hot. Dr. Gellon was shining a light in my eyes, but it felt so far away. For a split second, I blinked. And there, in the darkness, I sensed something. It was a different shade of dark. It had followed me here. It was so impossibly tall, able to cross the room in just a few steps. As it reached for me, beetles tumbled onto my chest, little globs of white getting ripped from my chest.

Then, nothing. I must have passed out. They say it was some kind of psychotic episode. Hyperventilation, seizures. It didn't look good. I could no longer be around the children, so they were going to have to fire me or find somewhere else for me to go. It took me two days to recover, and I was so scared to close my eyes that they had to give me eye drops. My hands cramped from grasping the side of the bed, terrified of being picked up or pulled away in the middle of the night.

At times, I could almost feel the little beetles crawling over me, picking globs of shining white out of me. Sometimes I felt the presence of something in the room. Even with closed eyes, I was scared to look. Some things can't be unseen. I was going to have a short interview with Dr. Gellon about the incident, but he was swamped that day. Instead, I got to talk to the chief physician, an older man who was a full head shorter than me. He asked me several questions about my medical history and my experience. It didn't really lead anywhere.

That is, until we started rounding off the interview. As I read my Social Security number to him, to make sure he had my insurance info, he stopped. Were you born in the area? He asked. I guess, I said. You can tell? The area number, he nodded.

It is quite unique. There are three hospitals that cover that area, but two didn't have fully staffed maternity wards at the time you were born. Handing my papers back to me, he gave me a long look. You were born here, in this hospital, weren't you? He asked. I had no idea, but it made sense. Mom had lived in this town all her life.

I just nodded. He didn't respond. Instead, he just looked at me and sighed. Without a word, the meeting ended. The following week, I lost my job. While one could think it was because of my psychotic meltdown, I'm pretty sure it's because of that meeting with the chief physician. I think he knows something.

If I'd been born there, maybe I'd been in that room long, long ago, before I could even form memories. But if so, how could that noise sound so familiar? year. This was a few months ago, but I'm still looking for answers. That, and I think I'm going insane. I can still hear the click-clacking of little beetles falling to their deaths, and if I concentrate hard enough, I can hear the machine. It's not a memory. It is always there. I think there's a piece of me down there, inside it, still connected.

something listening from the inside something that hurts little globs of white i don't know what to make of this i just want it out of my head some days i can distract myself enough not to hear it but other days i can barely hear myself talk it has always there no matter what it is like a rhythmic haunting tonight's a rhythmic haunting tonight's but I know there's more to it. Sometimes, as I close my eyes, I can still see a faint glow in the distance. Sometimes not even in the direction of the hospital. Sometimes it is closer. Sometimes it has eyes.

But the sound is the same. Always the same. 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.

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