Full Body Chills - Do You Love Me?

Episode Date: October 21, 2021

A story about a lonely janitor seduced by a fatal attraction.Do You Love Me?Written by Joshua BatesYou can read the original story and view the episode art at http://fullbodychillspodcast.com/ Looking for more chills? Follow Full Body Chills on Instagram @fullbodychillspod. Full Body Chills is an audiochuck production. Instagram: @audiochuckTwitter: @audiochuckFacebook: /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck

This episode was produced with audio effects in full surround sound. For the best experience, we kindly recommend you listen with headphones. Hi listeners, I'm Nikki Boyer, and I have a story I want to tell you. A story about a lonely janitor seduced by a fatal attraction. So gather around and listen close. Henry Genflin, who was referred to as Henry Phlegm by the majority of his classmates, pushed his broomstick down the deserted runway of Fester's fun world and adventures. Autumn wind licked at his pre-balding head in hungry laps. Scraps of funnel cake paper and soda cups crumbled under the oncoming plow of his stick.

The rundown amusement park saddled itself on the hip of the Pacific Ocean, and Henry could taste the salt swirling about the air. It left a residue on his tongue like acid snowflakes. As he swept, he thought, maybe she could love me. The she in question was Miranda Skychant, and to him, she was the most beautiful creature to have ever crested these shorelines.

Her hair was the golden color of honey against cream and was often topped with a puffy white bow tie. Henry also believed, as he sat behind her in literature class, that she radiated the wonderful smell of a July thunderstorm. Once, she had looked directly at Henry while passing back an assignment their teacher had shuffled out. Her eyes were twin chips of blue ice that had frozen him in his chair. Frozen starlights were the words he had scribbled up and down his assignment in frenzy, his heart beating faster than it ever had before. He hadn't a clue what his actual homework was when leaving class that day. Henry continued pushing his broomstick up the main boardwalk of the park. The echoes

his sweeping maid talked back to him in snake speech. During its peak, Fester's Fun World and Adventures could see up to 300 guests a day. Most of them were families that stuffed the kids in the minivan and dumped themselves upon the park. Dressed in his khaki uniform, Henry would bounce up and down the park, sweeping away the vomit and garbage that humans seemed to frequently spill. Vividly, Henry can recall having to clean up an especially steamy pile of puke that had been a vibrant shade of bubblegum pink. Floating in the midst of the mess was a paper sleeve of a snow cone. It was as if someone had gorged their frozen treat with a single bite.

Were people that close to animals then? Nothing more than flashing teeth that chewed and spit? As Henry made his way towards the ferris wheel that sat on the edge of the boardwalk like an old watermill, he thought the answer to that question was closer to the affirmative than not. He swept, and as he did so, a foot-sized rat wiggled its way from under one of the carnival stands.

It sat only a bit away from him, its whiskers shifting in the wind. For a moment, Henry felt as if the rat was telling him something. Suddenly, it scattered back down the way Henry had come from. It left brown pellets like popcorn kernels against the wooden floorboards. Henry swept those up too. The difference with humans, he realized, was that most of them had no idea what it meant to live in the dust, feeling the boot prints of those around you crush your spine on a daily basis.

Unlike animals, humans used phrases like, Snot you later, Henry Phlegm, or Phlegm bag Henry, or Phlegm boy, or... Henry realized he had come against the railing of the Ferris wheel. His broomstick whacked against the metal bars with every insult his mind coughed up at him. Feeling a little like a man coming out of a dream, Henry let the broomstick fall from his hands. Its spine made a feeble kick in the air when it landed.

Above him, seagulls screeched in voices almost recognizable. He knew in his heart, Miranda Skychant would never love him. She probably would never even know his name. At least, not his actual name. This thought of her indifference, one that has tried to plant itself many times in his brain, was yanked from the soil of his mind like a weed. He knew she could love him. He just needed to remember the frozen stars of her eyes that day she handed him their homework.

Remember the way the corners of her mouth had tilted upward? Henry stood in a pile of human garbage, his mouth open as his fantasy draped around him like a magician's cloak. Henry whipped his head around towards the him like a magician's cloak. Henry whipped his head around towards the opposite side of the boardwalk. At first, he couldn't identify what had made the sudden noise. Perhaps it had only been a wave slapping against one of the support beams down below. Just as Henry was forgetting the noise even happened, his eyes fell on the splintered doorway. It was, he realized, the entrance to the attraction called Mystic Mirrors, Find Your Mystique. A 10-foot Egyptian

princess stoically stood on the roof of the building. Her gaze seemed to follow Henry around like that painting he had learned about in his cultural arts class last year. The broomstick forgotten, Henry trudged his way towards the attraction. For reasons not known to him, mystic mirrors had been boarded up during the season, which was strange since it was a relatively new attraction. Purchased from another park, it was only open for a few months before being closed to the guests. No explanation had been given, not even a heads up from his manager Steve. Simply one day, the front was found with a sheet of plywood covering his mouth. Should he go and find Steve? Just thinking about his boss

made Henry's flesh crawl, like skeletal knuckles were rubbing him up and down. It was the feeling one has when being surveyed by the doctor. You know the doctor has something to say that in all honesty, you don't really want to know in the first place. That's how Steve made Henry feel. As if he, Henry, had a secret wrapped inside of him. Some great, terrible secret that Steve could see and would soon tell others about. No, Henry would not go to his boss quite yet.

Why put this on his plate when all that really happened was a board coming loose? No sweat. Henry would put the board next to the entrance and go find a hammer to put things right. With this in mind, Henry picked up the fallen board and rested it next to the entrance. He did not go looking for a hammer, though. Instead, Henry poked his head into the dark cavern of the entrance. He had never been in this attraction before. There was a smell to the place that he didn't recognize.

He chalked it up to wet leaves left somewhere to rot. Hello? He whispered inside the entrance. Henry wasn't what his teachers would have called bright or attentive. At his best, Henry functioned well at completing single-stepped tasks that required little in the thinking department. He was a plotter, a mule with harnesses strapped around him to pull through the barren dirt of society. The tool of choice for Henry would be the broom sitting a hundred yards behind him, dropped and forgotten. The smell he could not quite identify continued to seep from the room with invisible fingers.

Henry. A voice echoed from within. Henry, do you love me? With a beating heart, Henry stepped across the threshold and inside mystic mirrors. Just barely, he could make out a wall of mirrors a number of yards ahead of him. The sunlight stood around him like a friend as he tried to discern more of the room. Like blowing out a candle, Henry was pitched into sudden blackness. He fumbled back. The air around him felt suffocating now. He could feel the darkness squeezing in on him like a pack of hungry wolves. Henry's back bounced off the sheet of plywood that now covered the mouth of the entrance.

Scrambling around, Henry pawed at the sheet of wood. He began delaying blow after blow upon its frame. Help me! He screamed. Already, sweat was soaking through his uniform. A silk hand brushed his neck with webbed fingers. Henry, do you love me? The voice at Henry's back held the same gentle cadence of waves breaking the horizon.

Heat vibrated against his skin as if lips were breathing on his neck. He spun around. There was nothing. Henry tried to fight his growing fear. There has to be a light switch, he thought to himself. Slowly, Henry began to inch his way forward through the dark. Stretched out in front of him were his hands. They groped blindly, frantically, looking for a way to end the blinding blackness.

His hands made contact against the bank of mirrors he had stood facing. Dimly, the silhouette of his reflection stood in various shapes and sizes. Everywhere he looked, his body was rearranged into grotesque forms. Henry stopped before a mirror which condensed his extended stomach to a more flattering and slimmer angle. He craned his neck, taking time to appreciate his faux physique. But there he saw her. Standing behind him was Miranda Skychant, her pale face moon-like in the glass reflection.

Adrenaline once more had him paralyzed. Closing his eyes, Henry forced himself to slowly turn around. One. He counted. His breath begins to stutter. Two. He whispered. He hated the silence, and wondered if not even a spider scuttled in this dank and stinking place. But now that he thought of it, why was that smell of rot so strong in his nose? Three, he began to say, opening his eyes at the same moment. Where Miranda's blue-chipped eyes were supposed to be, Henry now stared into the hollow sockets of a dead woman. Maggots, bone white in the darkness,

clung to her eye holes like leeches sucking on skin. Her cheeks looked clawed and mangled, and Henry could see her entire row of teeth on the left-hand side of her face. The remaining skin hung in tatters like rotten stales against her cheek. A black serpent sprang from her mouth before realizing he was looking at her tongue. My lover. The Miranda creature breathed out to him. His sinuses suffered in the smell of a skunk being roasted alive. A tongue stained the color of ink lapped his neck as he stood frozen in horror.

Listen. It cooed in Henry's ear. A termite dropped from her nose and began to make its way inside Henry's eardrum. Suddenly, he felt a flash of hot knives puncturing his neck. The bite left Henry less than a throat to scream with. The only thing he could do before the darkness took him was to listen. Listen to the mad scrambling of a termite burrowing in his head, and listen to the suckling of his Miranda,

chewing at his neck. At last, his wish came true. Now he was hers. Till death did he part. Bates and read by Nikki Boyer. The story was modified slightly for audio retelling, but you can find the original in full on our website. Full Body Chills is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?