Creepy - The Soul Eater

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

I have a story to tell...***Written by: Jules Rowlan and Narrated by: Joe Stofko***Bonus Episode: "Despair" written by: Dave Kavanaugh***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.

Please join me in welcoming and thanking new patrons. Nikki Spano, Marilyn Ludwig, D. Howarder, Ian Emery, opposite of Rick, so, Morty, Christopher, Joe Barbarria, Mike Schultz, Ria, and Melissa Elborn. All patrons enjoy early commercial-free access to all episodes. From their tiers also include an additional one-to-four weekly bonus episodes, immediate access to all previously posted bonus stories for their tier. which is over 1,200 at the $7 a month level and logo merch.

Memberships are either months by month or yearly. If you sign up for the full year, you get 12 months for the price of 11 as a special thanks. To see how you can support the show and be rewarded for it, please check out the donation tiers at patreon.com slash creepypod. And just a quick peek behind the curtain. Currently, I'm packing, getting ready to head down to summer camp for the month with the crew for our third annual creep boy camp. I can tell the narrators are all excited

Or at least they would be If they knew when and where it was happening Anyway Be on the lookout in April For what I can only assume Will be a trip that they'll never forget But we'll probably desperately want to Okay

I gotta go finish getting ready I wonder if I'm up to date on my malaria vaccinations 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.

The Soul Eater Written by Jules Rowland And narrated by Joe Stofco Andrew, come here, sit down. My voice is weak, barely a croak. I try not to pay attention to it, just like I try not to pay attention to the man across the room

who isn't a man at all, who only looks like a man for my benefit. My grandson, Andrew, turned nine in November. I know this because I've been watching the solemn-looking brunette boy from what I thought was a safe distance all these years. His big brown eyes are just like his father's, my son. I wasn't there for much of Kipp's life either. He was Andrew's age when I asked a favor that changed the rest of my life forever. And I stopped being Kip's father and Martha's husband and became something else.

I'm certain the only reason Kip agreed to let me meet Andrew is to honor an old man's dying wish. I don't want to meet Andrew this way. If I could spare him this, well, I wouldn't meet him at all. But such is the nature of the favor that I asked all those years ago that I am bound to have this conversation with the boy who already looks afraid, even if he doesn't know why. Death isn't something that happens. It's a feeling. As much as good, as much as evil. It's tangible. Like the warmth of the sun on your bed. skin on a summer day, or the stinking, icy breath of the grim reaper standing behind you with his scythe. My name is Willem Green, and I'm here to tell my grandson about how I became a soul-eater. He enters the room slowly and looks back at his dad, my son, out in the hall. I promised Kip

what's left of my money, a mighty fine. some for this time alone with Andrew and I've assured him that everything will be okay. I'm lying through my rotting teeth, not about the money, but about everything else. Everything certainly will not be okay. I don't like to lie and I'm not a bad man. Once I thought myself a very good man, but I don't have a choice. What I did, what I've done, all been for the love of my mother, and for that I wouldn't, I couldn't change a thing. But then I look at Andrew. He sits in the chair to the left of where I'm lying on the bed. Monitors attached to my arm, beep in time with my heart, reassuring me that, for now,

I'm still among the living. Behind the bed, a fluorescent light brings out the dark circles under Andrew's eyes. If the skin of a nine-year-old looks pallor in this light, it's no wonder he's afraid. I must look like death itself, which isn't far from the truth. Hello, I've waited a long time to meet you, I tell him. He shifts farther into the seat like he's getting comfortable. Kip must have promised the boy a bike or a fancy new game console if he humors his old grandpa for a few minutes.

Aside from some discomfort over not knowing me and spending time this close to death, I'm sure Kip assumes his son will come away with the encounter unscathed. I wish that was true. I want to ask another favor, but I am plumb out of anything to offer. When the boy finally speaks,

he asks the usual question, How come I've never met you? Why haven't you come for Christmas? He tells me about his other grandpa, Grandpa George, who does come for Christmas and longer visits every summer because he's refired. I chuckled despite the heaviness in the room and I tell him that Grandpa George is retired, not refired. Andrew, stubborn as his father, insists he's right. and he goes on to ask me if I'm also refired, and I tell him, eh, almost,

although in my case, refired is certainly more accurate. That's why we're here, I say. I want to tell you about my job. It's very special. Would you like to hear about it? He looks out into the hall, but his parents aren't there anymore,

They probably went for coffee or a snack. It's better if they aren't here. They can't stop what's going to happen any more than I can, but it'd be better if they didn't have to watch. Andrew agrees as if sensing that the only way out of this room is through the story I'm about to tell. So I commence to telling it. The events leading to my unique and unique,

employment actually started many years before I got the job, specifically on the night of July 8, 1968. It was blasted hot that summer. The heat made people do crazy things. Robert and Janice Green of suburban Chicago were not immune to the weather. Theirs was not usually a happy home, but the first weeks of July were worse somehow, as if ensuring things could not have gone any other way that sweltering summer night. Robert was an investment banker by trade and violent drunk by nature. A living portrait of a man who

hated himself to the very depths of his soul. After long days at the office, a commute by train, and a few nips at watering holes that knew him by name along the way, Robert would burst through the front door of the two-story house he'd never finished paying for, tie as skew, and reeking of scotch, and spending hours before bed punishing his wife and son for everyone who ever wronged him. Neighbors drew their shades at the sound of breaking glass and strangled wails from a desperate woman's throat that cut through the quiet street at ten o'clock at night. Everyone had their own problems, of course. When confronted with Janice's latest bruise or broken arm,

it was easier to look the other way. And look the other way they did, when on the night of July 8, 1962, when the heat and the emotions that ran with it swelled to unnatural levels, Robert Green died quietly in his sleep. I remember that night well, because it was the last time Mama cleaned her own blood off the bathroom floor. I hid underneath my bed clutching the tooth that my old man had knocked from my skull

when I put myself in his path to spare my mother another smack. Now, I don't know how long I was under there, but the house was quiet, unnaturally so, and so damned hot I could barely breathe when my mother gently pulled me from my hiding place and up into bed. I spent the rest of the night with my ear on her chest sweating through my pajamas while she stroked my hair and hummed a gentle lullaby.

The next morning, after my father missed his alarm, we found him in bed, his skin hard and cold, despite the unrelenting heat. The doctors asked the usual questions. Was he prone to seizures? Did he have a bad heart? Was he allergic to anything?

Mama didn't think so, but mentioned he was under a lot of stress at work. The collection of empty bottles piled in the garage were all the proof anyone needed that Robert Green had a drinking problem. His death was chalked up to a garage. organ failure from too much booze. After a small funeral and a few weeks with our heads down to give the pretense of grief, Mama and I packed up our house, cashed in my old man's modest life

insurance policy, and moved to Oregon, where the weather was cooler, and nobody knew our names. I scarcely thought about Robert Green after that. It wasn't until many of the years later when I had my own wife and son that Mama got sick and decided she couldn't leave this earth with a burden on her soul. She called me much like I've done with Andrew to her bedside with a story. Running a tongue over her dry, cracked lips, she reached for my hand with barely enough strength to squeeze it and said that ever since that night, in 62 when my father died, she'd lived with a terrible secret. One she hoped I would understand.

One she hoped the Lord would understand too. I tightened by grip on her wrinkled fingers and kissed the knuckles that protruded through her skin. She looked so scared in that hospital bed. It reminded me of those nights as a child when she had shoved me into my room to keep me out of the fray. her eyes wide with apprehension at what was coming.

I hated hiding then. It always felt like I was letting her down. A man would have taken care of his mother, and I wanted nothing more than to ease her pain now. She coughed into the bedsheets, and I braced myself for her confession, the one meant for a priest that wouldn't get there in time. but nothing could have prepared me for my mother's truth.

It wasn't a heart attack or a seizure or anything natural, Willie, she said. Then with a set jaw, she admitted it was arsenic. The air left my lungs as I looked at my mother as if seeing her for the first time. The word started pouring out then, apologies, promises that she wasn't an evil woman. woman, professions of fear over not being able to protect me. When I started stepping in, she knew she couldn't let him hurt me. Once she got her hands on that bottle, she swore she never meant to use it, but then he knocked my tooth out.

She broke off crying, weeping the last wails that would ever leave her body. I bent to hold her head against my chest until she was ready. to continue, imagining my mother's delicate fingers, squeezing drop after drop, after drop of poison into my father's scotch. Through her tears, she cried from my forgiveness. There's nothing to forgive, I whispered into her wispy gray hair, and I meant it. Remembering the way she cradled me that night, how she stayed with me until morning, I should have known then. She never slept anywhere but beside my father, but he was already dead.

Then she asked the question that would change the trajectory of my life forever. What if they don't let me in? Where? I asked. To heaven. She was white as stone, her eyes, those of a frightened child, and no wonder, a Christian woman minutes from death, with a murder on her hands, on her soul. She was unsure of where she was going to wake up after her last breath. What could be more terrifying?

That she could be damned to the pits of hell, where men like my father burned for all eternity seemed horribly unfair and entirely possible. I fled from my mother's hospital room, and down several floors before stumbling into the empty chapel. The small, stuffy space with stained glass windows to nowhere, and tiny church pews, was like a generic miniature of a real church. It's mauve, carpeting, and bare wooden cross,

lacking the godly essence that made a man feel connected to something higher than himself that I'd felt on those visits to Mass when I was a child. God was supposed to be everywhere, but I didn't think heaven would hear me in here, and I was right. Since I was desperate, and my mother was out of time, I fell to my knees in the back row of pews

and prayed to anyone or anything that might be listening. Please, please, God, my mother is a good woman. If you know her, then you know that. Please, I'll do anything, anything. She's always taken care of me. She was just doing what she thought she had to do to keep me safe. She doesn't deserve to go to hell. Please, if her crimes will keep her out of heaven, please give them to me.

Give them to me, Lord. I'll take them. Unburden her soul, and I'll gladly carry her soul. sins. Please, please, just let her into heaven. Please. I closed my eyes, leaning on the pew in front of me. Tears I hadn't cried in my life pouring down my cheeks. Bargaining. One of the stages of grief I've heard, but this was different. I wasn't begging for the Almighty to give a dying woman more time. I was fighting for her very soul. I didn't say it, but I knew in my heart I'd sell my own to the devil himself to save my mother. As soon as that horrifying realization materialized, I heard the

sound of someone clearing their throat. I'd been alone in the chapel, but when I looked up with the source of the sound, there was a man sitting on the other side of the aisle in the second pew. I jumped back, startled by his presence. It wasn't just that I didn't know where he came from. He must have quietly snuck past me while I was bargaining, but there was something off about him, something unsettling that I could sense from the back of his head and the upturned collar of his dark jacket. I shivered, and the man cleared his throat again. Was it my imagination, or had the light changed? It looked darker than when I entered, a subtle orange glow emanating from the scones on the wall that were previously unlit.

And there was a smell, something dank and filthy that I couldn't place, that tasted ashen on my tongue and coated my lungs with what felt like soot with every breath. I glanced down at my arms and saw that my skin had taken on the slightly greenest hue of pea soup. That couldn't be right. It must have been the tears, so I wiped my eyes to clear my vision. The room was still glowing orange, and my skin was still green. And as I pondered this, the man in the second pew shifted in his seat. Without turning to look at me, I heard him,

ask simply, well? I choked out. Well, well, what? I was too afraid to ask, too stricken that this chapel had suddenly connected to something otherworldly, but perhaps not something holy like I had hoped. Then I remembered why I was there, which was more important, than fears that might send me running from that room and back to my mother empty-handed, I approached the man.

The gritty air closed around me with every step, like it was denser near the man, the very molecules of oxygen trapped within his orbit. Once I reached the end of the second pew, also fully in his orbit now, he pulled me to the seat. beside him. The man looked like a man, mostly, if he didn't dwell on the fingers that were a little too spindly, or the neck that was a little too long. Sitting perfectly still, staring with

interest at the pulpit, he smiled, and said he'd been waiting for me. The blood in my veins froze, then reversed direction, and the room grew darker still. I asked him if he was, if he was him, the devil. A beat of sweat slipped down my forehead as I waited for his answer. It was getting hot in the chapel. I wasn't imagining that. He said he wasn't the devil. Not the way I knew him. He certainly couldn't. meet me in a church if he was. He was right, I supposed. What I knew of evil, the kind they warned us about in preteen Bible study, was that churches were sacred, safe havens from the scaly cloven creatures that lurked below the ground. Even tiny hospital chapels should have provided

sanctuary. I turned to the cross in the front of the room, expecting to find, and it upside down, like in the movies when evil with a capital E made its presence known, but it was right-side-up and slightly brighter than the shadowy pulpit around it. As if reading my mind, he told me that the lines between good and evil weren't as fixed as my religion would have me believe, and then reminded me that we didn't have time to unpack my misbegotten philosophies because I had a life to save, or rather, a soul. He turned to me then, and I wished he hadn't.

I wished I never got a good look at the face that was mostly average, mostly human. It wasn't his features that bothered me as much as what he could do with them. A twist of his smile, the gleam in his eyes, were so unnerving, They could upend a man with a single look, and I was upended. She's a good woman, I managed to shake the words from my body. I don't know if there's time for her to repent. He snarled at the word repent, as if it was just another lie told in Sunday school,

before informing me that repenting wasn't enough. "'Sins didn't just disappear. "'They must still be accounted for. "'And sins like my mother's, sins like murder, "'no matter how she wanted to paint it, "'always came with a one-way ticket. "'But she's a good woman, doesn't that matter?' I cried. "'She prays every night, goes to church every Sunday.

"'She's not a heathen. "'My father was a heathen. "'He belongs in hell for what he did. to us, not her. The man, who wasn't quite a man, shrugged and said she also wasn't God, and couldn't make godly decisions without punishment, that a balance must be maintained, a life for a life. My father, vile, though he was, didn't kill my mother, she killed him. Most killers, besides the very colorful few, did so out of the same. and could argue that they had no other choice at the time.

He beat her, I insisted. He beat me. Every day, for years, she acted in self-defense. She was just trying to protect me. There's a special place in hell for this sort, the man who's not a man said, and a special place in hell for hers. The room had continued. darkening while I pled my mother's case. How was it happening? Tendrils of black mold curled from the

corners of the ceiling, reaching for the pulpit, and the air was prickly now, scraping my lungs like burning fingernails with every breath. No, she can't, I weased, please. All she ever did was try to keep me safe. He let me sob for a moment before saying, He didn't make the rules, but was sensitive to my plight. Said he knew my offer to take my mother's sins as my own was serious, or he wouldn't be there. He'd come, it seems, to make a counteroffer. Before he laid out the terms, he told me that not every man and woman who quaked with fear on their deathbeds for something they did in their youth something they felt they had to do something that haunted them every day since their lives diverted into darkness had a devoted child willing to sell their own soul to save their beloved parent

sell my soul i whispered because it was such a strange horrifying thing to discuss but that's what we were doing wasn't it more sweat dripped down my face and off my chin The man who's not a man tipped his head and told me the simple selling of a soul wasn't enough. If I wanted to take on my mother's sins, I needed to take on all the sins. Not the whole world, he said, but as many as I could with the rest of my life. In exchange for wiping my mother's slate clean from the moment of her death, I would become a soul-eater. Soul-eater. Even as he said it, the room plunged into darkness I could no longer deny,

until his face was barely visible through the shadows, and the eerie orange glow was now a deep, pulsing red. I doubted we were in the chapel anymore. You're sure. We were sitting in the second pew, and the cross at the front of the room was still. still there, but subtle and not so subtle changes had occurred around us. The Bibles, lining the pews that had once been forest green, were now black with the same mold that covered the

entire ceiling, and the stained glass windows depicted scenes of carnage instead of biblical promises of hope. A glimpse of where I was headed if I accepted this offer. the man who's not a man waited while i considered and my gaze fell on the window closest to us where an old woman preyed on her hands and knees before the grim reaper in his frayed black coat if i wanted to save my mother i would inherit the burdens of as many souls as i could for the rest of my days at the end of my life i would carry those burdens my mother's included to hell for all eternity i've been talking awhile andrew is rapt with interest now and probably fear too this is if nothing else a ghost I know he's too young for it, but we're out of time. The man who's not a man is no longer standing in the corner, but a few feet behind Andrew's chair.

I don't know when he crept forward. I've been so engrossed in the past, in the story. I must impart on Andrews, so he understands his own fate, that I somehow missed his progression. The sand is almost out of the hourglass now. Do you follow me? I asked my grandson, the boy with the two wide eyes whose skin is beginning to look green

like watery pea soup. He asks me in a barely there whisper if that's what I am, a soul eater. With tears in my eyes, I say it was her soul or mine, so I took the deal. What else could I do? It was her soul. I asked the frightened boy

if he knows what a soul is. I didn't know if Kip raised Andrew Catholic, as I had been, or any religion at all. The boy nods. I wonder if he can feel the man who's not a man at his back.

The other-worldly have a way of pressing into this world. that we might feel their weight without knowing why the room grows darker still and black tendrils of mold reach from the corners of the ceiling tore at my bed and andrew's chair ben you know how important my job is i say he cast his eyes down into his lap i've been a soul-eater ever since on that day i said good-bye to me my mother as she ascended into her rightful place in heaven and goodbye to my wife and son, your father, because there's no time in a soul-eater's life for anything other than seeking out the repentant. Do you understand what it is to repent? He nods. Good, I say. But instead of giving their sins to God, people give their sins to me.

I go out looking for the truly sorry, truly repentant ones, the souls I can rightly save. He asks how I find them, and I tell him that I have plenty of help. In the beginning, I spent a lot of time in shelters and tent cities. Many of the homeless don't just have a run of bad luck. They are overwhelmed by true horrors and regret. Or I'd wait outside confessionals in church for the really damning confessions.

If the person was besotted with grief for their sins and their sins were big enough, I stepped in and absolved them. Eventually, I made friends with a priest who seemed to understand what I did without me having to tell him, and he has sent many, many souls my way. The boy is getting interested now, more curious than afraid, like I'm suddenly more interesting than Grandpa George. He asks me what it feels like when I save the souls. I explain that most people carry their burdens on their shoulders. It's symbolic, but also true.

So usually I set my hands upon their shoulders, and, for a moment, I can read them. inside of them I can feel their goodness behind the anguish the bright white light of a pure soul behind the burden the sins rise up out of their bodies and into my hands and the weight of their sins becomes a part of me the longer I carry it the lighter it becomes making room for more used to be I could cleanse many souls in a day But as I got older, a single soul could wipe me out for weeks. My own soul is nearly full with as many burdens as it can hold. Andrew listens rapidly.

Ben glances at the door as if he suddenly notices the darkness in the room. He asks where his dad is and if he can leave. Soon, Andrew. Very soon, I promise, I say. it's a terrible lie to let the boy think he'll ever leave this room a sin no one is coming to save not that it matters the weight of lies vary depending on the severity of the falsehood and how many lives it affects this lie is terrible deadly to the boy and will devastate his parents and his grandfather george but in all This lie doesn't weigh nearly as much as the sin that led to this moment. I still have to tell you about my one mistake, I say.

He looks at me again. Kip has taught him manners, and he doesn't want to be rude. Reluctantly, his pea-green fingers slide out of his lap and clutched the sides of his chair. Her name was Betty Klaus. I tell him, and she reminded me of my mother. I met Betty after she murdered her husband. There was no doubt she did it. She was in the kitchen holding the bloody knife,

and somehow the picture was in all the papers before anyone thought it was too vile for front-page news. She was young and beautiful. I can't pretend that she didn't have something to do with it. I had called in a favor with a detective I absolved a few years back so I could have a private visit in her cell. I sat my folding chair up in front of her and sat down. From behind a curtain of red hair,

she murmured something about me being brave for coming alone and asked if I was a lawyer. I told her I was just a man named Willem who wanted to help. Quietly, almost to herself, she whispered that there was no helping her. I swallowed what was starting to feel like familiar grief and asked her to tell me the story of what happened. Not the version in the papers, but in her own words.

She was sitting on her bed a metal rack with a wafer thin mattress. Benny lifted her hands to push the red curls out of her. of her face, and I was suddenly arrested by the wide, haunted eyes I'd seen at the newsstands and on TV, like giant emerald lassus drawing me in. I leaned over in my chair beside the bed, and she surprised me by taking my hands, the shackles digging into her wrists as she clutched my fingers in an ice-cold grip. Her fingernails were still painted red, i was getting old by then but not so old that i wasn't affected by the touch of a woman that might have had something to do with it too within that cell she shared with me the story of a young woman who fell in love with the wrong man a strong woman who never thought she'd let herself get knocked around her husband was a gentle man a kind man until he killed their son

She blamed it on the bottle that brought his demons rushing out. While my father's love was scotch, Betty's husband preferred vodka. She could handle the occasional drunken slap, she said, and she was sure it would get better after they had a child. Tears began streaming down her porcelain cheeks. It was a mistake. She was adamant about that. If she had known her husband was drinking before he came home,

she never would have left him alone with their son. That night she was folding laundry in the bedroom, when she heard shouting in the kitchen. Then the screams. Her grip on my hands tightened, I didn't need to hear any more. I had already decided to help her, but she insisted on finishing, like so many of them did.

She told me it happened so fast that by the time she got to the kitchen, her son was lying in a pool of blood, and her husband was on the floor with a knife in his hand. When she saw her child, she went out of her mind, swearing there was nothing else she could do. Do you understand why I had to do it? Her panicked voice echoed through the cell. For a moment I was back in that Chicago's,

suburb on that hot summer night in 62, wondering what would have happened if the arsenic hadn't worked. My mother could have been the one in shackles, and I could have been the little boy who died at his father's violent, vengeful hand. Yes, I understand, I whispered because I did. Without another word, I stood and put my hands on her shoulders, allowing the blackness of her soul, to fill me. It was pouring in as heavy as tar when her pupils dilated, and she asked me in awe what I was. I didn't answer, just kept pulling, lifting her sins, trying to find the light beneath them, but it never came. It never came. It was always white underneath the sins, the pure essence of a repentant soul. If I could just get there.

as she pulled her face started to change the corners of her mouth curled up in a vile mocking smile and she laughed god she laughed and it was a horrible maniacal sound i didn't need her to tell me that i'd gotten it wrong so very very wrong then as if she was somehow showing me my own folly i was somehow showing me my own folly i was watched the scene replay in the kitchen, as if I had been there myself, under those harsh lights, standing on that checkered tile floor as blood flung in wild splatters, painting the yellow walls and sheer curtains with crimson specks that continued to drip, even after the first slaying was over. Then I saw her husband, who really was a good man that married a very, very bad woman, holding his briefcase in stunned shock at the sight of his wife,

standing over the lifeless body of his precious child, so frozen with horror that he didn't see her come at him with the knife until it was jutting from his guts, and a bright red stain crept through his button-down shirt. With her laugh still ringing in my ears and around the small jail cell, I tried to break the connection. God knows I tried, but it was too late.

I had absolved the stinking sludge of a soul that should have burned for all eternity. It would never be clean, but it would also never rot in the deepest pit of hell where it belonged. When it was finally over, Betty's cheeks were straight with tears of blood. She licked her lips and thanked me for a good time. Behind her, the man who's not a man materialized from the shadows on the cell wall, with news from below. I trail off. The man who's not a man isn't a shadow now. He puts his hand on Andrew's shoulder.

Andrew doesn't see it. Maybe he doesn't fully feel it. But he slumps like he can sense the change. I'm out of time. He's out of time. I continue quickly. There is only one rule when saving souls, and it's that you can only save the truly repentant,

the ones who were inherently good and would have a place in heaven were it not for their mistake, and I... I failed. The room is almost black now with a faint red glow from somewhere behind Andrew. it isn't in this room at all. The boy knows he's in danger,

but he doesn't know what he can do about it. Now that the man who's not a man's hand is on Andrew's shoulder, he wouldn't be able to leave if he tried. He coughs on the ashen air that scorches his throat. Air will both be breathing for a very long time. I'm sorry, Andrew, I utter as the remaining, light goes out, and the room becomes very, very warm. I'm so sorry. I think back to the chapel the day my mother died, to what the man who's not a man said from the second pew when

laying out the rules of my new job. Cheating hell is cheating the devil himself. Do you know what happens if you cheat hell? he asked. I didn't, of course. He said, A soul, for a soul, no one cheats hell. No one cheats hell. If I explain that to Andrew in these final moments, when we're not quite there, but we're not quite here either, before the blast of nuclear heat sets his lungs on fire as he fights to live, he won't understand.

It was an honest mistake, something in the fine print of the other. Otherworldly contract I signed many years before Andrew was born, and it isn't fair. As the big brown eyes melt from the sockets of a truly innocent little boy, he won't understand that either. Fair or not, the devil always gets his soul. For your bonus episode, Creepy Presents, Despair, written. by Dave Kavanaugh. My mind wakes, but my left hand remains asleep beneath the pillow.

I sit up, yawning, and stretch out my arm, but something's wrong. Bleary-eyed, I look at the hand trying to understand. My fingers are missing. I make an involuntary noise somewhere between a gasp and a scream. My wife's not around to hear it. Her side of the bed is empty, and I can hear the shower running. I hold the hand out before my face, blinking and rubbing my eyelids with my right hand. But the ghastly sight doesn't change.

My left arm is fine, all the way up to the wrist and even the palm. But I stopped there. I stop with knuckles. There's no gash, no blood, not even scar tissue. It's as if I've never had fingers. my hand before. A strange dream, I decide. And stuffing the limb back under my pillow, I lay down again and wait for the dream to be over.

The shower turns off. I hear my wife pull the shower curtain, then the droning of her hairdryer. Some minutes later, the bathroom door creaks open and she asks me if I'm still asleep. I am. She tells me not to be lazy and that she has. I guess to go to work soon. Then she leaves the room. I open my eyes.

Hold my breath. Pull out the arm to see. No fingers. The apartment's cold, but I'm sweating as I tug on clothes with my right hand and stuff my left arm deep into the jacket pocket. I run to the stairs. The cat is on its way up as I descend. I step aside as it passes.

But without my left hand to grab the rail, I lose balance and fall into the wall with the thought. The cat hisses. My wife calls from the kitchen. I barely hear her. Something about waffles. I rush out into the back garden. The sun is low in the sky but already bright.

Bright and cold in the first days of spring. And dew drips off the branches of the paper bark maple like tears. I march across the slippery grass and exit through the back gate. I think maybe I should see the doctor. But the thought of it sickens me. I don't want anyone to poke at my hand or take notes or x-rays. I worry about what the x-rays might reveal. No.

No, the doctor wouldn't understand. Just like my wife wouldn't understand. She'll assume I have work, but I haven't booked a shoot today. and she'll see that I left my camera equipment at home. She'll be suspicious. But I can't worry about that now because of my hand. Because I couldn't find my fingers in the sheets or under the bed. I couldn't even find a single drop of blood or my wedding band.

All vanished. Like the memory of a dream. Speeding up, I jogged down the street with no destination in mind, eager to be lost. to kill the day so I can sleep again. Perhaps all I need is another night's rest and I'll find the fingers hole again. My wedding ring intact and shining once more. Good as new, I come home late, hoping that my wife will be asleep. She had been asleep but sits up and turns on the lamp when I enter,

demanding to know where I've been. I say nothing. I kick off my shoes and push my left arm deeper. in my jacket pocket, then crawl into bed, still dressed. The next morning I can't remember my dream. Something about stars or moons. Something about teeth. My wife still on her pajamas is speaking, pleading with me to talk to her, to explain,

to at least look at her because I'm acting weird and she knows I'm not really asleep. She can see my eyes are a little bit open. then why won't I speak to her? God damn it. Eventually she leaves the bedroom. I go to pull my left arm out of the jacket pocket, but it's already slipped free during the night. The sleeve hangs limp and empty.

Carefully I use my right hand to take off my jacket and examine my arm open to find that the fingers have grown back. Instead, the arm now ends just past the elbow, bending and I'm bending the joint like some sickly newborn bird I gag and taste vomit I throw the blankets off and start to run for the bathroom but my right foot must be asleep because I trip and hit the carpet I swallow my mouth sour

then turn to look at my feet there are no toes on my right foot they're just gone And now I feel something worse in my chest too, on the right side, just under the rib cage. It's like a hole. But when I touch it with my right hand, the skin feels normal. Something's wrong on the inside. A hollow feeling.

Slowly I rise and limp to the bathroom. I locked the bathroom door and sit in the tub until I hear the front door slam, and I know she's gone. I'm shaking. The bed beside me is cold the next dawn. She must have slipped in the couch. She must be really upset. I tried battling the call of sleep last night, forcing my exhausted eyes open, even in the dark.

I don't know how long I made it. Hours, maybe. But in the end, sleep won. And I remember even less about the dream this time. Just something about a name or a word or a sound. Something I've never heard of before. I try to conjure up the term, but it's like it can't fit into my mind. In moments, the memory of the dream and the name is faded beyond any recognition.

I move the sheets around me. Cold cloth, damp from my sweat. This time I'm not surprised to find. find new parts of me missing. My right leg ends just above the knee. My left leg at the ankle. My stomach appears sunken and my chest is lopsided. I think some ribs might be gone and more things within.

But whether gallbladder or long or coils of intestine, I can't tell. Can a person live without part of their digestive tract? I think I saw that on a medical documentary once. I followed a bed when I try to rise. The noise must alert my wife downstairs because she calls out, asking what was that, and am I ready to talk to her yet? Reaching out with my right hand, I pulled myself along the carpet, reach the open bedroom door and yell down the stairs.

I call her vile names. Tell her I don't love her anymore. Maybe never did and that she can't stay. I don't know if I mean it or not. But I don't know how else to make her leave. Something's happening now and she can't be here. It doesn't want her here. She starts to cry and moves into the hallway at the bottom of the stairs, but I duck so that she won't see me.

She screams at me and calls me vile names and says that she will go to her mother's. The front door slams. I crawl the bed, hoping to find my way back into last night's dream. And now I am smaller still, with only stumps for legs, no left arm, a right arm with a shrunken hand and one finger. My hair has been vanishing in patches. Not falling out. I can't find any hair on my pillow. It's just gone.

like the rest. Maybe sucked into my scalp or burned away into air by each dream. My ears are gone too. The skin's smooth except for small holes through which I can still hear. I hear the cat downstairs meowing for food. And neighbors outside. Children, bicycles, distinct thunder, now rain. And the echo of its,

name ringing still from my latest dream. It is hungry and will have its fill of me. It, who has made itself known, but only as an ancient, unsayable name and a yawning hunger. Only as a half-forgotten nightmare. After a week, she comes back. I assume to get some of her things or else try and convince me to leave the apartment. Or maybe just to collect the cat. I hear her coming up the stairs.

I roll myself over to the door and manage to shut it. Go away! I shout through the door. You can't see me like this. It's almost over. I'll vanish soon and then you can come back and get your things. She sobs from the other side. She tells me to let her in,

that I'll be all right, that she knows I haven't been. been taking my pills and that I need to let her come in. She tells me I'm unwell again, and that she knows maybe it's her fault this time. She tells me she's sorry. She's sorry about everything, about the affair, about the lies. She tells me that she misses me. I tell her that I miss me too. Then she tells me she loves me. I tell her to leave. Eventually she does. For good, I dream almost exclusively of stars now.

Great oceans of stars arranged in constellations I've never seen before. Their light is cold, and in that coldness I can see its gaping form in the shape of its name. If I had hands, I might try and sketch out the nightmare in pencil or paints. But I guess I never had a talent for art like that. My artistic eyes always needed the lens between it and its subject. I do not create art. I search for the artist around me. Capture it, process, and develop.

But I haven't picked up the camera in weeks. Now I lie inactive and alone, thinking about distant stars, about armies of iron asses, about dark matter, is that the origin of it who consumes? Perhaps it is the ruined heart of a once mighty star with supernova fury in the insatiable appetite of gravity gone wild. Is it lonely or just hungry?

Of all things, it is my flesh it craves. My skin, muscle. sinew bone. My blood, bile, sweat, and acids. I wonder what it could need with such humble materials. Then I wonder why I ever needed them either. I'm still here. Aren't I? Only smaller, lighter. Less than. The tiny bones in my ears are no more. I can no longer hear, but I can see so I know how small my abdomen has become

jutting shoulders a sunken chest then a round edge and nothing and no more right arm I can't move from this bed I can only roll my shoulders and turn my head from side to side

and open and close my mouth and eyes will you take them from me next Should I worship you, though I have no knees to bend? Should I ask you to stop, plead for you to vomit out my missing parts and return them to the natural places? Do you want me to offer myself up completely and invite you to finish your feast? All those options sound like work. And I'm too tired to work. But here, take my sleep.

My nightmares are yours. My mind wakes. Without eyelids, I cannot help but stare at the bedroom walls and the black and white photographs encased in their steel frames. A pine tree on a gray hill. A car accident on the freeway. The car is on its side and smoking. A fishing boat on a canal.

Taken from a bridge above. From a pigeon's eye view. I wonder why I ever have. framed them. Why took the photographs, traveled to the locations, bought a camera, held up thumbs and four fingers, and tilted double ls to frame the space before me. There's a picture of our wedding day. She's smiling, and her dress glows in the sunlight.

I wear a white tuxedo. Back then, I had enough body to fill out the suit. Now I could only manage the bowtops. Do I still have a heart beating in this shrunken lump of a body? I can't hear it. I can't feel it. But maybe I still contain some stunted version of the vital organs, gathering oxygen to feed what's left of my brain.

I think most of my brain is still there, though much of my skull is gone. I can feel the pillow through my skin. pushing gently against soft tissue. Then I remember something else from my most recent dream. It spoke. In a voice like air being sucked into a cave. It said it was time. It said it wants to meet with me out of doors in the open air.

I want to say yes, but there's no tongue in my mouth. So instead I will have to show it. my obedience. I must go outside. Yes. Yes, it's time to go outside. I roll myself to the edge of the bed. It isn't easy.

I still have shoulders, but the muscles within are little more than threads. I concentrate, flex, tilt, and after several minutes fall out of the bed. I hit the ground hard, but there's no pain or feel. feeling is there are no nerves to feel. I begin to wriggle like some oversized inchworm toward the open bedroom door, my hollow cheeks scratching against the carpet, my brain loose in my skin. The staircase waits for me and I move over the precipice. I tumbled on the stairs, rolling and bouncing.

I lay at the bottom and try to get my bearings. Without inner ears, it's almost impossible. Put my eyes fix on the sight of the back door and I will myself forward. I have no way to reach the doorknob, but I won't need to. I use the cat door, falling in a heap on the cold bricks outside. The sun hasn't risen yet, and the sky is inky purple. For moments, I wait. Perfectly still. No need for breath. Then the light of an inverted star embraces my eyes.

I must still have tear ducts from my eyes leak even as they burn. The inverted star is in the garden with me, framed in the branches of the maple tree, waiting from me as it hovers over the grass. Like a black hole, but with color. So very many colors. Centred in the inverted star, I see its face. Ancient beyond mortal's comprehension. And I am naked and minuscule before its vast indifference. As I wriggle forward, approaching the yawning void beyond its mouth, I am worshipful, I am eager, and I am afraid.

I feel lightning on my scalp as the mouth grabs hold. to the top of my hat. Gravity pulls me up off the ground. My sight goes dark as I slip inside. The lips tighten around my neck. My shoulders are squeezing, my brain shrinking. My thoughts fading. And so I am devoured, erased.

Nothing but peace at last. 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 a... otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the creepy podcast production team and the stories author.