Creepy - The Dripping Clock

Episode Date: August 26, 2021

It's all about art...***Written by FloydStreet and narrated by JV Hampton-VanSant***Content Warning: Covid-19 pandemic, Police Violence***Check out our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko 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 Tripping Clock. Written by Floyd Street. And narrated by J.V. Hempton Van Sant. I am a graffiti artist. My passion is to go out at night with a backpack full of spray paint cans, a respirator mask to cover my nose and mouth, and put my art up on empty wall.

I write uppers. That's my word, sometimes shortened to U-P-R-S. I need to get the word out about something I saw a few weeks ago that really fucked me up. I can't get it out of my mind, and I want to share the story because I think something terrible is going to happen. Things have been crazy in the city for a few months. Protests, riots, militias. Oh, and of course, the pandemic. Every night, there are people marching in the streets, crowds chanting, flashing police lights and barricades block streets all over town, so that you have to turn around and go back the other way. There are armies of riot police, I mean hundreds of cops, in lines and formations, marching around

downtown. And sometimes your throat will start to hurt, and you'll cough while you're out just doing normal shit, like getting groceries, because the last, misty remains of a tear gas cloud drifted by. But then, other times, everyone is staying home and the streets are empty because of the virus. So life is switching between quiet, boring lockdown, and then yelling, fighting, and mass arrest. What this means for us graffiti writers is that the cops are, busy and distracted downtown. So it's actually a good time for us to go out and write. The only drawback is that police helicopters are buzzing over the city all night every night,

shining searchlights through the neighborhoods. That can make it hard to find a place to bomb, that is a wall to put a piece up on, where the damned helicopters won't see you. So, that night a few weeks ago, I had scouted out a good wall a few days before. It was up on this railroad bridge that goes over a lot of major streets east of downtown. And it's not one of those skinny-ass railroad bridges that looks like a bunch of corrugated sheet metal. It's really old and stout, and made of stone and concrete, and wide enough for train tracks going both ways. On top, the tracks go through a building.

I suppose it used to be a train station of some sort, but now it's abandoned, and the walls are poked with holes and crumbling, and covered with some pretty dope graffiti, and some not-so-dope graffiti, The interior is where a lot of new writers go to practice, so you can see some shitty old pieces from people who have gotten really good in later years. A crooked but still intact overhang pokes out over one outer wall,

and that wall is visible from the street below. That makes it a perfect spot. My piece would be seen, but the search list, wouldn't be able to see me from above. I went out to start on my piece about 1.30 at night. I was with this kid who I'll call Diz, because that's what he writes. I know his real name, but sometimes we just call him Diz, and I'm not going to write his real name here.

Diz is a weird one. A lot of other writers don't like to write. like going out with him, but me and him are cool. People say shit like he's flaky and backs out too much, that he has issues. All that's true, but I still like having him around when he's around. We usually chat when we go out, graffiti scene gossip, or all about the shit going on with the cops and the virus. or just life in general. But that night, we were stalking around the railroad tracks in silence. Not because we were trying to be sneaky.

That was just the mood. The tracks leave the ground, and the bridge starts over by the stockyards. You aren't supposed to get shook by walking around abandoned places at night, if you're a graffiti artist, but I've got to say, walking on the bridge is creepy. It's completely dark, and there are no lights on that old-ass bridge.

And then there are ruined little shacks along the tracks as you go. To your right is the east side, and then downtown. Even from the bridge, bridge we could see downtown lit up by flashing blue and red lights. And then, to your left, are the slaughter yards. It's basically a big expanse of mud flats with a few buildings connected by a maze of metal fencing.

I never see any animals, but I hear them. A chorus of low moans drifted over the mud the whole time we were walking along the bridge. We got to the dilapidated train station. I was walking ahead of Diz several paces since we weren't talking. The wall we were going to write on was on the other side of the building from the tracks, so I headed through the building. You can still make out how there used to be little rooms inside the building, but most of the walls are just piles of rotten wood and plaster now.

I noticed a familiar smell as I neared the exit. Fresh spray paint. When I came out the other side of the building, over by the wall with the overhang, there was someone there, just a few feet away from me, another writer, tall, and broad. So I assumed a man.

I froze in surprise. He was wearing black, baggy pants, and a dark gray hoodie with the hood up. I could only see a respirator poking out from under the hood. He was facing the wall when I came out. A backpack dangled by a strap clutched in his right hand. I was about to put my hands up and say something reassuring. You know, like tell him not to worry and sorry to spook you,

and were up here writing too. But then he very casually turned and looked at me. And I realized he wasn't spooked at all. His body language was so relaxed that I realized he was barely concerned with me at all. He slung the backpack over one shoulder rattling the spray cans inside it, and looked at me full on for just a second.

Whatever I was going to say, never made it out, because when he turned to face me, I could just see his face under the hood, the part of his face that wasn't covered by the respirator. He looked like his skin was, barely there, just darkness, or black smoke in the shape of a face. Inset into the hollows of the black cloud where I should be, two small points of purple light floated in the murk and cast a slight purple glow onto the top of the respirator.

Then, with the same casual, unconcerned movement, he turned away, walked to the edge of the bridge, placed one hand on the low stone barrier, and jumped off the bridge. Now this bridge is only about 20 feet above the street, but it's still farther than I would just jump off. like it was nothing. I stood there for a few seconds, thinking to myself, What the fuck was that? A few times. Then I nudged my feet over to the edge and leaned over to peer down at the street below.

I remember I was shaking a little at this point. He was gone, though, just an empty sidewalk and boarded up buildings. At some point, Diz had come out behind me, and I heard him say, Oh my God, what the fuck? I guess I thought he had seen the guy too, because I said,

he's gone, as I turned back to him. But Dizz's back was to me. I don't think he even heard what I said. He was looking at the wall. And the newly finished piece that took most of it up. He was motionless, like he was transfixed. And as I walked over next to him to check out the piece, I could see why.

First of all, it was good, but it was a weird style I hadn't seen before. Sharp white lettering against a dark purple background he had rolled out. The white was cool and faded to a blue-gray around the edges. It was a good piece, but the overall effect it had on me, was unpleasant. Just looking at the piece made me feel a little sick, a little disgusted by the world, like when you see some hateful person's violent and predatory rant online or watch a video of a shooting. And it's weird, but I couldn't read the letters at all. Not like they were sloppy or just in hard-to-decipher wild style, because I can usually read that shit.

They weren't letters I knew, like maybe it was Russian or Arabic, but then stylized for graffiti. But I don't think that's it. Because I've seen Russian, Arabic, Japanese, and tons of other alphabets in graffiti. They didn't make me feel like this, just unrecognizable letters from an unknown alphabet. But as I stared, I felt like I was starting to be able to sound it out. I tried at the same time as Diz. Guriarek? My tongue stumbled through it.

Carrurek? Diz said at almost the same time, stuttering out a string of syllables not too different from what I was saying. At the top right of the piece, just next to the last symbol, was a black outline of a clock. there wasn't even any fill.

And it had a lot of drips, that is, the artist went too heavy and sloppy when spraying, and the paint dripped down in lines from the clock. It was weird to throw up a drippy black picture on top of such a clean and skillful piece, and that caught my eye. The hour hand was pointed straight up, and the minute hand was sticking out to the left,

15 minutes till 12. Let's go, I said. Diz just nodded and started walking fast back the way we came. We threw up some quick tags and a fuck 12 at the base of the bridge, just to make ourselves feel better, I think. But the desire to start work on a real piece had gone out of both of us. I dropped him off at his house and went home,

even though it was early. It's been over a month since that night. I'm writing this on my laptop, sitting on my balcony, outside my apartment. The protests have died down a lot, but the virus has gotten worse. People seem to be losing their minds everywhere.

I've seen several street fights in just the last month. People are shutting themselves in their homes. People are driving like maniacs more than And the cops are still flying their helicopters around and deploying their armies. Diz has become a total recluse since that night. He was more shook than me by all of it, and I don't think he even got a good look at the face of that other artist like I did. I'm worried about Diz, but he does this from time to time.

just drops off the face of the planet for a month or two, barely leaves his house, doesn't answer text. It's just different now, ever since we saw that word. I think it really got to both of us. I haven't felt inclined to go out and do graffiti myself. And I keep seeing the word around town. He keeps putting pieces up. I've seen it three more times. It's not always as big as that first night,

but it's the same word and the same style and the same purple background. I saw one over the expressway, one on the back of a closed-up mall in the east end, and one under a... an overpass, and every time that dripping clock is still there. Except on every new piece, the minute hand is a little further along. Ten minutes till midnight, eight minutes till midnight, five minutes till midnight. I've been thinking about it a lot.

Obviously. And there is one thing that I've concluded. I'm not sure why I think this. It's just the hunch I get from the word and from seeing that writer's murky face and that damned dripping clock. I don't think it's writing its own name. It's someone else's name.

Something else's word. Something that isn't here yet. So I'm here, on my balcony. I can hear gunshots, police sirens, and the ever-present helicopter above. People are yelling and crying somewhere nearby. The stores across the street are still boarded up, and all I can think about is that word,

something terrible is coming to this city. For more information, including pictures and videos of the stories told on this podcast, please visit creepypod.com. If you'd like to submit a story for consideration or recommend a story, please see our submission page at creepypod.com. slash submissions. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative comments, share-a-like licensing, or with written consent from the authors.

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