Full Body Chills - Radio Hell

Episode Date: October 1, 2021

This is a story about a highway that you don’t drive… because it drives you.Radio HellWritten by David FlowersYou 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

Hi listeners, this is Ashley Flowers, and I have a story I want to tell you. A story about a highway that you don't drive, because it drives you. So gather round and listen close. Hey there, my name's Lauren and thanks for tuning in. This is a story about me. Listener discretion advised, this isn't going to be a happy story. So if you're looking for some wholesome and uplifting content, then go back to watching videos of dogs and babies on YouTube or whatever because you won't find wholesome and uplifting here.

I guess you could call my story a tragedy, but not like a sad romance movie kind of tragedy. More like one of the old ones. You know the ones where an audience watches the main character make a terrible decision, yet she's completely oblivious to how bad she's messing up her life? Yeah, that's this. I think they call that tragic irony. Anyway, life's been tough recently.

Well, no, life's been a huge pile of shit recently, if I'm being honest. After breaking my leg in a skiing accident with no insurance, I've been practically drained of any savings, which means once again I'll have to delay going to college and still work my job at the mall where Sharon will be asking why I haven't left yet and consequently blame it on my poor attitude and the fact that I don't smile enough. Shortly after the injury, my boyfriend left me and I don't blame him. It was my fault. I mean, he was kind and smart, but obviously too

tied down by a girl who's only got a high school diploma and can barely afford her rent to really follow his dreams of traveling the world and teaching advanced physics to students in Berlin. And I was too much work, ruined by my first boyfriend and traumatic abuse that left me, to quote my therapist, vulnerable and defensive, shutting out the few people who might have ever come close to loving me

whenever I needed their support the most. And then, three days ago, my mom died. Police say it was an accident. She was going above the speed limit on that highway that passes through Mount Adath. This time of year, the mountain road is sleek with ice, so you could be going 20 under the speed limit and still wind up down a 100-foot drop. It's easy for them to explain how she died, but no one can tell me why. Why was my mom even traveling on that road? I keep thinking that maybe she was coming to see me, not like she normally

does, but even then you would have to go out of your way to take that old highway. I mean, my mom lived back in her hometown of Copse Hill, so it's less than an hour drive west of Weird, but that highway splits through the mountains to the south. So I don't know where she was going. And another thing, my mom hated driving. It's the reason she always asked me to pick up her groceries whenever I'd come to visit. Well, that, and always asked me to pick up her groceries whenever I'd come to visit. Well, that, and she knew I would never pressure her to pay me back. She was very much a stay-at-home mom, but not really in a good way. So why? Why was she driving, and where was she going? I mean, there are some rumors, stories local to weird,

about the mountains and the abandoned highway, about even all the hikers who go missing and whose bodies are never found, about the highway calling people and those who drift away at the wheel or even purposefully steer off the road. But my mom wasn't like that. I mean, maybe she was reckless up there, but why? Now she's dead and I'm left planning her funeral and figuring out her estate and I don't even have the first clue of what to do.

Why did she have to leave her only daughter with no extended family to manage the grief and aftermath of her death alone? I had to trade some of my off days at work just so I could sort out all of mom's belongings. I mean, you'd think a death in the family would be the one excuse to get some time off. Well, apparently not when your attendance and support is required during this busy season. And I would have called in sick, but I've received enough verbal warnings to know I'm a step away from being fired. You never realize just how much junk you have until you have to move it.

It's worse when that junk isn't even yours. I don't think my mom was a hoarder, but she didn't make my life easy by saving every souvenir to go cup and mail-in magazine. There's a thousand little knickknacks she must have called antiques, but were really just aging memories of a time she could never get back. Without her, they look to me to find some

sentimental value. They only remind me she's dead, so I sort them in the bag marked trash. Somewhere in the field of stuff, I find an old picture book. I never saw my mom as someone who would save photos. I mean, her antiques were one thing, but I'm sure she justified her collecting, believing she could, I don't know, resell odd items for some small profit. But family photos don't buy you cigarettes. I open the book to find a vibrant young woman. She appears to be maybe 16, 17. Her hair is a lush amber tone that blooms into frizzy curls.

Her makeup and clothes scream 80s, and even though her fashion is out of style, I'm taken back by just how beautiful she is. I can see it in the frozen hazel gaze and by the thin line of the mouth. This is my mother. I flip to another page. My mother sits at the bottom steps of a pearl white porch. An older couple looms above her, her parents.

The patio itself is cracked and peeling and the calm poses of the family are decidedly staged. I never knew my grandparents, and my mother always seemed to withhold her comments about them. I ignorantly wrote them off as your stereotypical grandparents, caring and humble, always with their door open and a plate of dinner to take home. But the rough features of my grandfather's hands, the tight leer of my grandmother's face, the photo makes me doubt their kindness. I see less and less of them as I turn the pages. Taking their place is my father. I barely knew him more than my grandparents because he died when I was four. Murdered, actually. Beaten and left for dead late one night when he was strolling town.

I just remember my mom being in shock. I mean, I was still too young to fully understand what had happened, but just old enough to miss him. He appears charming, but he has that look of immaturity that you'd see in any high school boy. I'm sure my mother loved him. I mean, their prom photos beamed that bright, naive romance. There are their wedding pictures. High school sweethearts that married as soon as they turned

18. My grandparents are absent here, but I'm there though. My mother had me when she was only 17. She actually dropped out of school to take care of me. The following pictures tell of our short time as a family. I remember my father in little ways. How he would play with me, pick me up and tossing me in the air. How he would settle me down on my bed and some nights read to me. But the photos don't share my idyllic memories. Instead, I see a family struggling to survive, both financially and emotionally. We cycled between trailer homes and two-room apartments,

very transient life that I don't really remember. Around this time, my mother took up smoking as her glow of innocent joy became increasingly dim. My father is missing more and more from the pictures, presumably away working longer shifts. But then I remember how he died and I'm forced to wonder what a young man in a struggling marriage was doing strolling the city late at night. And I know it's probably an odd thing to say, but I'm surprised at how few pictures there are of me. If I'm in them at all, I'm clearly not the focus of the picture. I'm hardly caught with my mother, and at some point I stop showing up in pictures altogether. I mean, any reference to my life

past the age of seven is just missing. Nothing of my band concerts, school dances, graduation. The rest of the photo book is filled with more pictures of my mother's forgotten youth. The lively 17-year-old girl with amber hair stood in sharp contrast to the aged, monotone woman of late marriage. You know, I'd always assumed my mother's quiet distress came at the death of my father. But now, I don't know, as the cloudy haze of nostalgia is clearing, I see that she had been this way long before. When I think back to that, I can't help but think of mom's frequent accidents and her several bruises. I mean, the present lack of dad's image around the house. And I start to debate the meaning of her cold morning following his death. Was it really shock that I saw? Or was it actually

relief? I mean, did she even really love my dad in the end? Or did she hate him? Did she feel ruined by him the same way I felt ruined after my first boyfriend? I don't know why she didn't talk to me about it. I guess I know why. It's probably the same reason I never told her that my first boyfriend raped me. I was ashamed. Of course she wouldn't tell me. She depressed? I mean, she had to be.

She was beautiful and vibrant and had her whole life ahead of her. Of course she wouldn't tell me. Was she depressed? I mean, she had to be. She was beautiful and vibrant and had her whole life ahead of her, and then a man stole it from me, from her. What was she feeling before she died? Was she in pain? Was that why she was on that road? Did those stories get in her head? Did she go there? I wonder if she just couldn't bear the pain anymore.

No, she wouldn't do that. She wouldn't do that to me. But how do I know? How do I know if it was an accident or if it wasn't? There's really only one way I can be sure. No more wondering or second-guessing myself. I drop what I'm doing and grab my keys. I'm only at a quarter tank of gas, but I won't stop. I can't stop.

It's the only thing that matters now. I take the 30-minute drive southeast where the landscape bends higher and the turns wind closer. At last, I come to the exit and turn onto that damned highway. The sky is drowned of color as a heavy sleet starts to fall, showering my windshield. As expected, the road is rough, ridden with potholes and layers of wet, rocky mud. I cling close to the jagged walls of Mount Adath. On the other side of a flimsy guardrail is a deathly drop into nothingness, and the shadows of the growing storm only allow me to see so far before I hit a wall of black. The thin painted lines of the road are constantly disappearing, and I'm filled with panic as I steer each turn. A few times I catch

my car jolt in an odd direction, set off by a pothole or patch of ice. I feel like I've been traveling this road forever when I realize I have yet to see another vehicle. I'm both relieved and anxious at this point, but also dangerously impatient to get my answers. So I slowed down to take a wide turn and come to a short stretch of road. I stopped now because there, 50 feet in front of me and at the edge of my brights, is the exposed railing. The exact spot where she... I wasn't going fast on the turn. She couldn't have gone fast on the turn. She couldn't have gone fast on the turn.

I slowly bring my car forward and examine the scene. I can see the splintered guardrails, the fresh tire tracks leading into darkness, and the signs. There's a pair of bright yellow turn labels pitched high, where everyone could see them. Why? Why would she do it? Why would she do this to me? It's because she doesn't love me. I pound at the wheel. I want to break it, to break her and break myself. The tears start to come and I blast the radio. There's nothing but a sea of static. I want to drown my thoughts in it. I want to be lost in the sound, lost and far away from here. But my thoughts speak clearer, clearer over the static, clear enough where I realize it's not my thoughts at all, but the voice on the radio. Hey there, it's me, Lauren. Well, technically you.

What the hell? Listen, this is weird, okay? I get that, but you just need to listen. Calm down and we'll get through this together. I've lost my mind. I've lost my mind. We've lost our mind. But I mean, hey, that's just spoiled milk for our list of shit gone wrong. But I'm here for you now. Or we're here for each other.

And you want to know the funny thing? I'm the only person who's ever said that to you and meant it. You, you don't know. I don't know? Girl, I am the only one who knows. Dad died, grandparents never there, first boyfriend, screw him, new boyfriend, ditched you,

and mom? My mom was sleeping and speeding and got into an accident. Don't lie. Come on, we're not stupid. She didn't love us. She never even came to visit us. We always came to see her. And for what? To pick up groceries? That's all we were to her, an errand girl. But you know what the really messed up part is? She didn't kill herself because of Dad. She killed herself because of us. Having that baby, having us, it ruined her life. When our grandparents found out, she was practically dead to them.

She had to drop out of school to take care of us, and afraid of being a single mom, she was forced to marry an abusive man who couldn't hold a job who cheated on her. She didn't want anything to do with us and who could blame her? Look how we turned out. A sad lonely and abused little girl with nothing but a high school diploma and minimum wage job. Oh and now she talks to herself like a crazy lady. Was anything good in my life ever real? No. All our life, people just used us. But they don't get to do that anymore.

Because we are in control. It'll be quick and easy. You don't even feel the impact. We'll show them all. Make them regret the way they hurt us. We'll finally be happy. We'll be free of our pain. I speed towards the empty blackness,

only to turn at the last moment. I shut off the radio. Ironically, it's the memory of my mother that made me stop. A recent memory about nothing that significant. But I was with her. At home. And we were just sitting together, talking. And laughing.

We were happy then. And it was real. But that's okay. Because even if you survive today, even if you tune out the radio, the voice will be there, and your tragedy will never end. This series was produced by Ashley Flowers and David Flowers. This episode was written by David Flowers and read by me, Ashley Flowers. This 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?