Creepy - The Tiny Psychos That Live in Your Wall & Dead End Wash

Episode Date: May 28, 2026

The Tiny Psychos That Live in Your Wall (starts at 1:57)***Written by: Anthony D. Herrera and Narrated by: Alicia Atkins***Content warning: suicide, abuse, animal cruelty***Dead End Wash (starts at 22:19)***Written by: Dev Solovey and Narrated by: Cole Burkhardt***Support the show at patreon.com/creepypod***Sound design by: Pacific Obadiah***Title music by: Alex Aldea Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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. Hey, what's up y'all?

Jazz had to come up for air for a minute. I've been digging around the radio station looking for an entrance into the back rooms. No, this isn't a plug for any movies that are coming out right now as much as I just freaking love all the horror in the world we have right now to escape... Well, to escape the horror in the world right now.

Huh. Funny how that works. Anyway, I got to thinking that most of the time when I'm here, it's pretty quiet, unless Gene brings in brownies, which is always an adventure since her nephew is saying with her, and sometimes the batches get mixed up, if you know what I mean. And we all end up spending the shift giggling and scaring the hell out of each other. But anyway, I've gotten really into liminal space stuff lately, and I don't think many places these days exemplify a lot of that as much as a radio station

and farm country in the middle of the night. So I'm going to get back to wandering around all the halls downstairs and see if I can find a random tube slide or something to spice things up. Gotta have fun with the life you got, right? Okay, first up, from writer Anthony D. Herrera and narrated by Alicia Atkins. Creepy Presents, The Tiny Psychos that Live in Your Walls. Dear Giantess of 1701 Rolling Oak Lane. My name is Lorelei Wisp, and I am one of the tiny psychos that live in your walls. your walls. I am writing to calm your fearful heart. We watch you through the holes we've dug in

the plaster and the hairline cracks in the kitchen ceramic. We see the gray creeping into your fine brown locks, and the twitch in your eye that you've only just become aware of, but which my Uncle Broad, comedian that he is, has been replicating for over a week, much to our amusement. You do not yet comprehend the peculiar and downright ghastly signs and wonders which have been plaguing your life since the last full moon. You count yourself as one of the rational giants, meaning that you use logic to lie to yourself. And so have falsely concluded that you are falling into the grips of the archangel insanity, who will spirit you away to the pandemonium at the end of the ocean. But I am here to assure you that those are not angel wings you're hearing, and you're not going insane.

Please, take comfort in that fact, for that is the only comfort you shall have. The reality, I'm sorry to say, is much, much worse than you could ever imagine. We keep our true name hidden from your kind. The bastard priest, charlatan shamans all, declared this to be the first and most profane taboo of our people. And though everything else they teach is a poison of the mind, and though we are now outcast from the greater society of our kin, we still observe this taboo. It only makes sense. We could never allow you that power over us. You freaks already have it good enough as is.

all of which to say don't call us no goddamn pixies midgies, brownies, gnomes fairies, borrowers, littles, or leprechauns because that would really piss us off and there ain't nothing more vengeful

than a pissed off wisp there are six of us that being me little brother quaint uncle broad who I have mentioned stranger fib who is not a wisp and Mama and Daddy When me and my twin brother Dil were born,

the Wisp family was already on the run doing its great work. There were more of us then, not just Wisp, but others of our race like Stranger Fibb, who heard what Daddy had to say and knew it to be the truth. Time is never kind, and no one has ever been kind to a Wisp. So our numbers have dwindled. But, as each,

Each one falls, the devotion to our mission grows ever more sacred in the beats of our hummingbird hearts. Daddy first saw the black angel one frosty morn back when the whips still lived in the forest with the rest of our kind. He was with three others gathering herbs for the old magics, when suddenly they found themselves surrounded by screaming flame, a carousal of fire. The trees cried out in agony as they exploded into fine ash, and the life-giving stream that fed the tribe flash-boiled, and the sand of the shore turned to red glass. Daddy and the other three were so afraid. They clung to each other, praying the old prayers and invoking the old spirits.

And then from the flames arose the angel, glittering and gleaming like lustrous onyx. From its back grew a stone beetle whose wings kept the angel hovering as its eyeless, skeleton face gazed upon the four frightened wretches. Their prayers grew louder, which angered the angel, and it swooped down and tore through the other three, until there were nothing but stains on the forest floor. The angel then approached Daddy, who readied himself for death. but the angel took him gently by the shoulders and whispered a single word in his right ear

which puckered and blistered and to this day has never healed this word this singular command came from a reality beyond ours where what's true is true and in its syllables there was a clarity and purpose and planned so simple and undeniable

that daddy was reborn on the spot The angel then took hold to Daddy's hands, and they were covered in a purple flame, and Daddy's skin drank in the flame like a thirsty man in the desert. He knew then that his hands were the key to fulfilling the promise of the angel's word. There is more to the Wiss family history, but, as you can imagine, it's a real bitch maneuvering a pen that is as tall as your own body. I've not even reached the meat of the matter, and already Brother Quaint and Stranger Fib grow bored, waiting to help me flip the pages of your sketchbook on which I am writing. Truth be told, they are illiterates who have never seen much point in my pinning these letters. But Daddy makes them help me, because he knows I love writing them just as much as you love

doodling in your sketchbook. You're very talented, by the way. You have a gift for capturing something of the story. soul in your sketches. You are, in fact, the first real artist we've ever terrorized. But you're far from the most fun. The most enjoyable are always the religious types, especially the older women. They really put on a show. Just scribble some cocks in their Bibles and watch them go. The screaming and speaking in tongues and them clutching crucifixes are rubbing those beads until their hands bleed. Honestly, I don't know who's having more fun. Us or them? Mama says it doesn't even

count as torture because we're bringing them closer to their God than they've ever been. Excessy or terror, it's all such a hoot to watch that we really don't mind either way. The best part, though, is when the priests come to bless their mess, because then Daddy and Uncle Broad get to work on the electrics. They scramble up and down those walls, fiddling with the wires, and setting the lights to flicker in or overload them so bulbs explode. The rest of us sneak around knocking things off shelves, as that peteris priest stands his ground, thinking himself some kind of goddamn superhero, with his prayer book and pronouncements. Well, we're just laughing our asses off. But I am straying from the point. Let's get back to you. The first thing you've probably noticed were the mutilated

mice on your doorstep. You assumed, rather naively, that some unseen neighborhood cat had adopted you, and your horror was tempered by the thought of making a new feline friend. There was, as you probably guessed, no such feline, and these mutilations were courtesy of quaint and stranger fib. They are our hunters and provide us with the hot and bloody flesh that us wisp so crave. Fib is a master of poisons and can fit enough toxicity

on the end of a sewing needle to take down a Rottweiler without spoiling the meat for the rest of us. We like mice and rat just fine, and those are always abundant. But when you really want to celebrate, and the occasion is special enough, nothing. And I mean nothing. beats a pregnant cat.

When you slice one of those fat tabby's open and those sightless pink bundles come spilling out, especially on a freezing night with the steam billowing up off the blood and the fluids, and you get your incisors around their unfinished flesh, well, let's just say that's the closest that any wisp is ever going to get to heaven. A little glove of drool just ran down my chin and fell to the page. I'm circling it now with the pen. Notice the slight pink hue resulting from my saliva reacting to the paper?

I don't know what that means, but it's interesting. At least I think so. Speaking of food, we've been mixing the mouse intrials with your meals. We grind the organs up and then sprinkle them into the pots as they're boiling on the stove. We do this with the mouse shit as well. We'll grind it into a fine powder and sprinkle it. on your bread and cereal, and mix it with the brown sugar that you put on your oatmeal. I know that this aspect of our torture will come as a surprise to you,

but I imagine that there's some relief in discovering why your insides just haven't been feeling right this whole time. The disappearing objects and things not being where you left them were down to us, of course. It's basic and childish, I will admit, but the sheer volume of these occurrences seem to rattle your mind just fine, and so serve their purpose. The strange smell that seems to follow you everywhere is from us pissing all over your clothes, and into your shampoo and lotion bottles. Our insides really do bubble up a frightful brew, which Daddy tells me was a defense mechanism to scare off predators when we lived in the forest.

We've noticed a lack of callers to your house in the month we've been living with you, and though this could be a symptom of artistic introversion, more likely it's because you smell like creature piss. And while eating shit and being covered in urine are bad enough, I think we can both agree that wasn't anywhere close to the worst part, was it? The nightmares were courtesy of Mama. No one knows where she got this power. Magic gifts such as that are not inherent to our kind.

Daddy got his gift from the black angel. who Mama never met. And besides, she claims she's been putting nightmares in people's heads since before Daddy made her a wisp. And he only did that because she insisted. And he is terrified of her. Hell, she scares a shit out of all of us. I was raised on her poisonous lullabies.

The atrocities she can summon with her tongue as you sleep make any world war seem like a cotton-candy dream. Me and Dill feared the nighttime. Because we knew when sleep took us, Mama would get to whisperin. Her silky voice would wrap around our dream selves like a barbed wire anaconda and squeeze so tight so that we could not move or scream. Our eyeballs bulged out so far that our lids could not cover them as we were dragged across the razor-blade floor of the house,

where the foul ones hide from the light. And they did to us all the things that were, can never be spoken of. These dreams were meant to prepare us for the life of a wisp, to show us that there are worse things you can be and do. I took the lessons to heart, and it made me stronger. Dill took the lessons to heart, and purposely snapped his own fucking head off in a rat trap one day.

Different strokes, I guess. Mama doesn't move too well these days, so I have to help her up onto your bed. It's also up to me to make sure that Mama doesn't get crushed once you get to thrashing. Of course, sometimes I think she's just playing up her infirmity because she can climb up your hair quick enough and lean over your ear for a good long while as she whispers her wickedness. I have to cover my own ears as your body drenches with sweat

and your lungs forget how to work, and your hands claw wildly at invisible horrors that I can somehow see because they were once my childhood playmates, and I could never forget them. Despite her great age, Mama is still very pretty when she smiles. But this preamble has gone on long enough. I told you the purpose of this letter was to calm your fearful heart, and I would like to make good on this promise. In my experience, the foremost cause of fear amongst giants

is the anxiety stemming from the uncertainty of how and when one is going to die. I would like to relieve you of this stress by telling you exactly when and how you shall soon perish. It'll be on the day of the next full moon. You will not feel the sting of stranger fib's needle. Though fib is older than Mama and Daddy, he's still a swift surgeon, and the only record of his work that he'll leave behind is a miniscule dot of blood on your left ankle. The poison takes about five to ten minutes to work. Based on your size, I would lean closer to five.

Fib's powder is of such subtle quality that you will feel no ill effects until your body suddenly seizes and your legs give out from under you. Most giants hit the ground face first, which I'm hoping will be the case for you as we find this very funny. At this point, you will discover that your body is completely paralyzed. But you will still be able to breathe, see, and think.

This is when the Wyss family will make our introductions in person. I should warn you that we will be completely naked, save for a length of twine wrapped around our waist, from which we'll hang small bendels. In these bendals are our few possessions that we have packed for the upcoming move. You will know Daddy because he is the largest, being almost as wide as a beer can.

Quaint is the smallest in every aspect, save for his teeth, which are much too large for his tiny head. Fib will have fiery red hair, as opposed to the silver of the wisp. You will know me because I am very beautiful. And you will know Mama because you have seen her in your dreams. Broad will be covered in his own shit. He just seems to enjoy that sort of thing. After the introductions will come Daddy's lesson. He will relate the saga of the Black Angel, in much grander terms and far, far, some might say

unnecessarily far, greater length than I already have. I would ask that you try to act surprised, but the look on most of your paralyzed faces tends towards shock anyhow. When the saga is finished, he will climb onto your face and whisper her into your right ear the word the angel spoke, which, while being said, simple and composed of three sounds we may as well call syllables, is impossible to render into text. At this point, tears will fall from your eyes,

and we will take a few respectful moments to lick them off your chalk white cheeks. Daddy will then summon the purple flame from his hand, the angel's gift, remember? And fashion the flame into a saber. And with that saber, he will slash a hole in your lower back, right above whichever kidney is most accessible. Each of us will then take our turn climbing inside that hole into the welcoming warmth of your torso. We will swim inside of you, vagabond parasites, nibbling here and there, but not enough to kill.

That would be foolish, seeing as how you are now our vessel. And we are your passengers, and Daddy is the captain. While the rest of us swim free, for our kind can hold our breasts for a very long time, Daddy will make his way to your upper vertebrae. With his fiery hands, he will take hold of your spine, and the flame will travel up into your brain, conquering the lobes and hemispheres. And then, Daddy will be in control. You will be Daddy's puppet, and you will feel us pressing against your belly,

like a foul litter. You will dance on broken glass. You will carve sigils into your flesh. You will visit cruelties on yourself that Daddy envisioned oh so many years ago whilst in the embrace of the black angel. You will feel every second of it. And if you listen closely,

you might just hear our tiny little giggles. When the ritual is done, for that's what it is, Daddy will then force you to get into your car and drive. This is Daddy's favorite part. Motor vehicles are the only giant invention which Daddy holds any jealousy towards. He's just crazy for cars. I mean, that old bastard is like a child again when he gets behind the wheel.

Last year, Daddy got a little speed crazy, and the police tried to pull us over. Daddy was so riled up that he made the sacrifice take his gun. from the glove compartment in open fire. A long-ass chase ensued that ended up with the car stalled, and the police turning the sacrifice to pulp with their shotguns. We had to tear ass out of him to avoid being exploded ourselves. It sure was fun, but not an especially sustainable practice. And that night, Mama gave Daddy an Earful, if you know what I mean.

And there have been no Dairy Devil antics sense. You will drive us to a faraway city or town. This is to make sure that our rituals can never be linked to each other. When we are far enough away but near enough to a new place we can call home, we will claw our way out of your belly, and Daddy's Fire will leave one last command in your brain. You will drive off and destroy yourself in such a way that our intrusions can never be detected. Wood chippers are good, and trains make a fine enough,

mess for our purposes. Daddy will go with you to make sure the deed is done, and when he comes back, he will tell us all about it over supper. We will then find a new home, and the cycle will begin once again. We have killed hundreds of giants in this manner, and there are hundreds more to go. The angel is free. I'm not certain when you stopped reading this. I don't know if you'll even have the chance, really. I tell Fib to time the needle strike for when you're about to find this note, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. These notes are inessential, much like art, but like most art, the artist usually gets more out of it than the audience. I just love writing, and I think it's a very fine way to pass the time. The sun is rising now on the last day of your

life, so I must rest this pen before you wake. If you've made it this far, I would just like to say that it has been a pleasure being a tiny psycho living inside your walls. And I am very much looking forward to swimming inside your guts. Peace and love. Lore Lye Wisp. P.S. I lied.

Your drawings suck, bitch. Next, from editor Dev Salivay and narrated by Cole Burkart. Creepy Presents, Dead End Wash. There's a wash at the end of the road I live on. probably no more than 10 feet wide. It's there to keep the rain from flooding the streets during the monsoon season, and the rest of the time it's a refuge for pop-up fentanyl dens and inner-city packs of coyotes looking for water. Mostly, it stops the cars who occasionally drive through my neighborhood,

thinking they can escape the traffic, only to find themselves facing a barrier they could have avoided entirely if they had just read the large yellow, extremely obvious dead-end sign on the corner. I see them get confused. I laugh. I get annoyed when they use my driveway as a turnaround, and then I don't think about it for the rest of the day. When the mural appeared, however, I started paying more attention to it. The painting was on the west wall of a decrepit strip mall on the other side of the wash, separated from it by a chain-linked fence. Whoever leased the building barely maintained it

to the point where I was surprised it hadn't already been bulldozed several years ago. But now, in the year 2025, someone had painted a mural on it and had somehow done so without my knowledge. I chalked it up to the fact that I had never been very observant, but the mural had so many vibrant colors that it was hard to imagine myself not noticing it until now, especially since I usually faced towards the wash while coming home every day.

The painting depicted a mother and her two children, standing on a hill and watching the sunset over the Sonoran Desert landscape. The mother wore a traditional white Mexican dress with frills and intricate embroidery. Her daughter wore something similar, as well as a collection of wildflowers embellishing the braids in her long, dark hair. Her son wore a brightly colored woven serapae and her ashes. They faced away from the viewer, towards the sunset, which painted the landscape in hues of fuchsia, vermilion, and gold. This kind of thing wasn't out of place in Tucson. Having lived there my entire life, the city's culture of murals was sort of. so normal to me, I almost didn't notice when I passed by them on my way to work. It added a

unique visual ambiance to what would otherwise be a concrete jungle. So, when I first saw the mural across the wash from my house, I welcomed the addition to our bland suburban street. It was only once I had time to sit and think about it, that it really started to bother me. the people in this neighborhood, I should have been the first to notice it, observant or not. I watched my dogs religiously, twice a day, every day. In recent years, I had also resolved to stop bringing my phone with me on walks in an attempt to curb my social media use. This meant I would spend at least an hour of every day doing nothing but noticing all the little details of my neighborhood. If anyone would have seen a mural in the process of being painted,

it would be me. I should have noticed it. How could a massive mural have appeared out of nowhere? I still had yet to give my dogs their second walk, which I always did right before sundown, and I decided to take a slightly different route. Before grabbing their leashes, I rummaged through my closet, eventually finding the high-powered flashlight I normally used for camping trips. I clipped it to my belt, then leashed up my two dogs and headed out the door. The wash was pretty easy to circumnavigate. All I had to do was go west to the crossroads, walk one block north, and then take the next street east.

There was no dead end on that street because it had a bridge that led over the wash and conveniently, the bridge was right near the strip mall that the mural had been painted onto. When I arrived, I looked around, then stepped off the sidewalk, leading my dogs towards the west side of the building. My eldest dog, an Akita Rottweiler mix, named Beefsteak, didn't want to follow me. I might have chalked it up to the fact that he didn't like walking on gravel, if it weren't for the fact that Nugget, my much younger Yorkshire... Terrier, wouldn't follow me either. Nuggett was a trailblazer. She was naturally curious and insisted on investigating every little thing that drew her attention. She had never been averse to

exploring a new area, but for some reason, she would not go near this building. I gently tugged the leashes and called their names, but they wouldn't follow me. Beef State even went so far as to flop down on the ground and make himself dead weight. They weren't going to budge, and I didn't want to force them into going somewhere that made them nervous anyhow. So I just inched as close as I could without dropping their leashes, about 30 feet away. I turned on my flashlight and pointed it at the mural. The brushwork was messy in an impressionist way. It had the feel of a project done by a high school art class rather than a professional painter. I noticed that some of the colors seemed to fade in areas, as though they had experienced a few years of weathering.

I could imagine a painting getting sun bleached within a few months of being subjected to the summer here, but in less than a day, there had to be some other explanation. The paint was chipped in a few places, and I wondered whether the mural had been there. there for years and was just hidden behind a wall that was torn down recently. But that kind of construction is something I should have noticed, too, even if it had only taken a day. They would have come out early in the morning due to the hot weather, and Nugget would have woken me up by barking at it. Even if they did it while I was away from the house, there should have been some debris and a clear line along the ground where the britches used to stand.

Neither forms of evidence were present. My only other idea at that moment was to find the name of the artist who painted it, but when I stand it with the flashlight, I didn't see a signature anywhere. As best I could tell, the mural had appeared on its own. I had never been the kind to buy into spiritual or paranormal stuff. As a lifelong desert dweller, I knew that haunted hotels and Old West ghost stories were just tall tales meant to bring in tourists. For some of the smaller towns,

gimmicky ghost tours made up most of their income. I had, throughout my entire life, been given every possible reason to be skeptical of such things, to the point where I had been called a buzzkill on more than one occasion. The only stories I ever gave weight to were the bits and pieces of native folklore I'd heard here and there,

Since, like most ancient folklore, they always had a basis in the archaeological reality of this place, even if not every supernatural detail was true. I was certain there had to be an explanation, and that it would eventually present itself. But, in the moment, my dogs were trembling. Night was falling, and the pins and needles of dawning dread were crawling up my throat. I went home, made my dinner, and spent the rest of the evening cuddling with my dogs and try not to think about it. A week passed. Pushing the experience out of my mind proved impossible.

It hung on my mind like a leech. I'd turned down the road towards my home and I'd be face to face with a mural, forcing me to remember that night whether I wanted to or not. I had come up with a few other theories since then. Maybe they gave the paint some kind of aging treatment on purpose. Maybe it had been painted over the years earlier, and they had simply uncovered it, so on and so forth. It bothered me enough that I considered going out to investigate it again,

but every time I did, an uneasy feeling in my gut told me I shouldn't go there alone. The monsoons hit the next day. Our first storm of the year was a massive one, flooding the streets so high you could have sailed a boat through them, only to be shipwrecked by the violent wind and rain a few minutes later. While taking one of two detours on my way home from work, I passed by a few stretches of road populated by beached cars, their passengers wading through the water towards any building

that might give them shelter until it passed. The gutters were flooded, and I had a feeling the wash would be in a similar state. The drive home was stressful, but I eventually found my way back to the neighborhood. I saw the big yellow dead-end sign, and with a sigh of relief, made the final turn towards my home. I stomped on the brake. The car screeched to a halt. I froze, knuckles white around the steering wheel, staring straight. ahead of me without blinking. The mural

had changed. All of the warm colors had been sucked out of it. What had once been vibrant rays of sunlight were now billowing storm clouds, blanketing at the dead landscape in a

rain of hostile blues and grays, dark and tempestuous as the monsoons themselves. The woman was distraught. She was drenched and kneeling in the muddy earth, hunched over and weeping inconsolably beneath her long, dark hair. Her tears formed into a river that wound through the landscape beyond her. Her children were no longer in the picture. I didn't want to keep driving. Every cell in my body

screamed at me not to get any closer to the weeping woman in the painting, and I knew I should listen. I wasn't stupid. Even as a staunch skeptic, I still knew who I was looking at. I'd lived in the Wild West long enough to know that if you see a weeping woman by a river, you turn around and go home, even if it's a painting next to a man-made wash. But that, well, the problem. My home was right near the wash. It was on a dead-end street with no other inlets. If I ever wanted to get back to my house, I had to drive towards the mural, and worse, once I got out to my driveway, I would have to get out of my car and into the open, completely vulnerable and well within the weeping woman's range. My guts,

wound themselves into knots. There had to be a different solution. Monsoon storms didn't last terribly long. In a few hours, the water would likely clear up. Maybe if the wash was what brought her here, then she'd leave when it dried out again. Worth a try. I shifted my car into reverse,

preparing to go somewhere else and come back when the sun came out. I almost did, until I heard a high-pitched bark echo down the street. I stomped on the brakes again. I knew that sound. It was nugget. She was barking in the backyard. I darted my eyes back up to the painting,

fixing them on the weeping woman, and I watched, heart crashing into my gut, as the painted figure looked up. I clenched. my teeth. I did hear the slight wine in Nuggett's bark, and I knew it was out of fear. She thought she was defending the house. Be quiet, Nugget, I pleaded under my breath. Please, please be quiet.

She barked again and again. The weeping woman began pushing herself to her feet, brushstrokes of the painting distorting with every achingly slow movement. I wanted to hope she'd leave my dogs alone, since they weren't human, but I knew better. I called them kids all the time, and if she could hear, she probably heard me call them that when I investigated the mural a week prior. She wanted children, and the closest ones she could find were announcing themselves in my backyard. In a burst of adrenaline and paternal instinct, I floored the accelerator, skidding on the gravel as I barreled towards my house.

Our street is mercifully short, but it still felt like ours. As I grew closer the brushstrokes, distorted outwards, curling into three dimensions and weaving themselves into the shape of a woman. She dropped out of the mural, landing silently on her pale, bare feet. When she fully materialized, she trudged towards the chain-link fence between the mural and the wash, curled her dirt-caped fingers around the wires, and began to climb. I swerved into my driveway and rushed to the door, nearly forgetting to put the car in park. Nugget was still barking in the backyard, which was probably where the weeping woman would be heading right now, meaning she was ignoring me.

I fumbled with my keys, finally finding the right one and shoving it in the lock. I just had to get Nugget and B-State inside, put a shield over the dog door, and my kids would be fine. She turned her head. I didn't see the woman yet, but I could hear her sniffles and moans. The crunch of her footsteps on gravel was getting louder. Nugget turned to come to me, excited to see her. see me return home from work. Yeah, good girl, come on.

I glanced behind Nugget. The woman's foot appeared at the edge of my back fence. Nugget paused, noticing the weeping woman, then turned and barked again the fur on her back, standing on end. No, Nugget, leave her alone, I pleaded, my voice tracking. Just come inside. The weeping woman ran her fingers along my fence, searching for the gate latch. my date was not locked. Treat, I shouted.

Nugget, do you want a treat? Her ears perted up again, and she turned back to look at me. Come get a treat, Nuggett, I shouted, even louder. Treat, come on, time for treats. Finally, she turned around. She started racing towards me, and I prepared the shield for the dog door. When I looked up again, the woman had unlatched the gate. She stared at me her hair parting for a moment.

I met her eyes, red from crying and blackened from rot. The wimper's faded, and her face twisted into a snarl, fury and envy bubbling to the surface. If a look could kill someone, the glare she shot in my direction might have eviscerated me where I stood. Nuget ran inside, and I slammed the door. I secured both lots and put up the dog door shield, then grabbed the salt off my spice rack and poured a line of it in front of the threshold. I heard somewhere that this kept bad spirits out, and I figured any advantage was better than nothing. I placed salt lines in front of every door and window in my house, eventually running out and doing the rest with my remaining darlitz salt. For the remainder of the storm, I sat on the floor in the corner of my bedroom, huddled up with my dogs.

I heard her walking circles around my house, alternated between whimpering and distraught wailing. It occurred to me that, to her, it might feel like I had just stolen her children, and the moment of empathy I felt for her almost made me forget what she usually did with those children after. When the rain began to let up, her wailing became more violent, sounding less like grief and more like a tantrum. In her desperation, she began banging on my windows, and I grabbed Nuget's snout to keep her from barking. When the storms subsided, her tears dried up with it. I realized that this was my reality now. Until I could afford to move, I had to to keep a constant watch on my dogs during every single monsoon storm of the season, never knowing when they could happen or how long they would last. If I didn't, the weeping woman would come to take my children away. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration,

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