Let's Not Meet: A True Horror Podcast - 1x20: Season Finale - Blueberry - Let's Not Meet

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

In this special Season 1 finale, a telling of the most popular and requested Let's Not Meet story to date...Blueberry. Let's Not Meet will return with Season 2 on June 9th! To try Shudder free for 30 days, go to shudder.com and use promo code meet. Follow Let's Not Meet: Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/groups/433173970399259/  Twitter - https://twitter.com/letsnotmeetcast  Website - http://letsnotmeetpodcast.com  Patreon - http://patreon.com/letsnotmeetpodcast  Twitch - https://www.twitch.tv/crypticcounty   

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Limited time offer restrictions apply. Visit cinch.com slash offer for details. My name is Andrew Tate. Welcome to the special season one finale of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast. I've given a lot of thought as to how and when I plan to carry out the finale. I'm recording my live show today and I've been working on some original stories for a different podcast. Also, I'm pretty booked up for the next weekend or so. So now, I felt like the perfect time to bring it to an end. And I'm only taking a week off, so don't worry about missing out on new episodes for too long. I will return on June 9th with a brand new episode for season 2. In the meantime, you'll be getting more than the usual dose of content from me.

Next weekend, I'll be releasing the live show, assuming all goes as planned, and in between, I'll drop a few bonus episodes with extra content to keep you all satiated. This week's episode is the most requested story I've had for the show. Today, I will share with you the story of Blueberry, a troubled, and dangerous person. Now, I started recording this story and trying to tell it all over again, but I went back and listened to the original recording from the archives and felt that my performance was something that I couldn't top or even replicate for that matter.

I put a lot of effort into this one, including all original music and sound effects, and one of the longest single stories I've ever read on the show. I'm sure there's a good portion of new listeners that have yet to hear the tell, and I'm proud to present it in its original and finest form. So listen now to the story of Blueberry. I'm sorry. Not too many people know about what happened with Blueberry. I never told all of the confusing bits and pieces strung properly together.

It took me two weeks to finish writing this. I would start typing in some memories and details that I had filed away, extra well, would emerge, and they'd come flooding back to me. I showed this to my husband before putting it up here so that he could know about this before the internet does. I think he's still stunned. He knew Blueberry well, but I think now he better understand some of my quirks and nervous ticks.

Sophomore year in high school is when it started. That would be 2003, I believe. His real name was Michael D. But he was called Blueberry by our circle of friends. I have long forgotten the story behind that moniker. He was a tall, gauky, acne afflicted junior who had a hands-in pocket angry walk, a deep temple in the middle of his chin, and an absolutely unintelligible manner of speaking, unintelligible to the point where his secondary nickname was Michael Mumble. I don't remember anything in particular about that meeting really, just a few passing words,

a mutual friend stepping in to wave an introductory hand back and forth while repeating our names to others and quick bursts, like the squeeze on a rifle. I was a spunky 15-year-old discovering a whole new, diverse world out there, and in retrospect, I see now how my naïve-giddiness left the door wide open for Blueberry to step through. I struggled to understand what was said beyond his tight lips that hardly moved, so our interactions were usually just brief and consisted mostly of me smiling brightly and nodding along before politely excusing myself. I often picked up on his awkward anger and aggression which was stuff so deep and snug inside his six foot three frame.

All teenagers are angry, hell, even Spunky Me had moody sprees. But Blueberry's anger was different. It was a warp-twisted stubborn, narcissistic, permeating, calm, and autistic kind of anger. I remember thinking to myself that it just burned the air around him. Being 15, I had no car, so I took my lunches at a subway that sat two blocks away from my school. Sometimes I went with friends, but more often I went by myself. I liked the quiet, and, chance to regroup from school's chaos. He appeared one day, mumbling away across from me in a booth while I paced it on a slightly

puzzled smile, lips tight over my mouth full of food, wondering what on earth he was saying. Then the letters came. See my friend Kristi and I wrote tons of notes during our class periods to fold up into neat squares and swap with each other in the halls. This is how we plotted and schemed before the advent of text messaging. We had designated hallways where we would hand off our paper squares. One of these hallways was where I would also see blueberry. One day, I had just slightly

palmed Christie's note in my hand when I suddenly felt a tap on my shoulder and a paper slid into my other hand. It was blueberry, staring fixately at me with a slight smile. It was blueberry, staring fixately at me with a slight smile. With a surprise chuckle and a nod of acknowledgement, I tucked blueberries' note into my purse with Christie's. I soon found out that not only was he Michael Mumble, but he was also Michael muddled. I was far from a literate, and while his handwriting was neat and printed, I couldn't make heads or tails of his train of thought. He wrote just as he spoke, in a mashed and verded manner, wherein the

subject matter was vague at best. All I could make out from the letters that he would give me from that day on was that I was part of the subject matter. Something about my considerations, or me not seeing, filling up the paper margins were badly drawn frogs, babblings about druids, and more frogs. I got these letters often, usually every day. I probably wrote a short note back to him once, maybe twice at most, but they came steadily as ever. A spring wound down, I began to get more than uneasy around him. To the group, Blueberry was Blueberry, just a normal little oddball in the background.

I began to avoid him, but he seemed blind to that. In retrospect, at the age of 25, I can now safely say people pick up on when you're trying to avoid them, but not blueberry. The lunchtime interceptions and notes continued when you could manage, then came the gifts. I was a writer back then. I always had notebooks that I consistently filled up with any scribblings that came into my head. I wrote in cheap, smaller, sized spirals that you can pick up at any drugstore. I knew better than to buy nice fancy ones. They last me about

a week at best. But it was a fancy, heavy-bound journal that Blueberry gave me one day in the hallway after school. I didn't know what to say. It was an odd gift from someone who I barely knew. There was something tainted about the journal. It was a beautiful plush notebook etched with the design of an ancient map of China, and I swear the covers were of suede. It was expensive and chanting, and it gave me the chills. The first ten pages consisted of yet another letter he had pinned to me. The first several paragraphs talked about how I was the only one who understood him, and he loved me.

I stopped at that point. I could never bring myself to write in it or throw it away. Instead, I tucked it in a keepsake box that I kept underneath my bed, along with all the other notes and trinkets. I told myself I was giving off the wrong signals. I told myself that I was being silly and overreacting to someone who was being perfectly nice. Christy told me, you're lucky that somebody buys you something so nice, without even

trying to sleep with you. Friends told me, uh, Blueberry's just a goof, but he's all right. I was grateful in some erold around. you attain or retain certification to individualized coaching services, to programs that hone your leadership skills and business acumen. Management concepts optimizes your professional development, online in-person, individually, or groups. It's training that's measurably better. Learn more at managementconcepts.com.

That's managementcononships.com Fast forward to my junior year. When school started back up, I had a boyfriend named Adam, who had brightly dyed red hair and a red card. Blueberry inevitably faded into the background, whether he liked it or not. He had no driver's license, nor a wish to get one. He didn't ride a bicycle, but he walked everywhere. Looking back, I realized that this made it a lot harder for him to intercept me at lunch when I zipped off to meet my older boyfriend at home for the hour-long break. The only time I would see Blueberry was when I was pulling out of the parking lot.

He would be making his brisk, frustration-fueled strides in whatever direction. His eyes were always either angrily fixed at a point off in the distance, or seemed to be searching the sea of high school students flooding from the parking lot. Maybe for me. Every now and then, he would spy on my cherry red volevo station wagon, which was embarrassingly hard to miss, because he would stare. For the most part, humans can get a decent read on others. This wasn't the case for Blueberry.

I could make neither heads or tails of him and his behavior around me, and eventually my teenage Toromones finally said fuck it, and by fuck it, I mean, I made no more efforts. I decided that the best way to fix a situation was not to give a shit. If he talked to me, I would respond with short sentences then bluntly turn around and walk away. I didn't avoid him, neither did I approach him or waive at him in the hallways like I had the year before. He was just another guy in the background. Let me also add that in the meantime, the letters never stopped and the gifts almost came like clockwork.

First, there was a journal left in my car, with the first four pages scribbled with words I'd never bothered to read, then a banquet of daisies or roses given to me in the hallway that I promptly gave to a lonely looking freshman as I turned the next corner, or a book of fairy tales by Hans Christian Anderson to be exact on my birthday, also with an inscription on the inside. The journals, books and letters were hardly ever read or used, and all found a new home in the keepsake box underneath my bed. I could never explain why I felt compelled to tuck them in the keepsake box, but I just did.

At times I would feel guilt, and I would look for anything that I was doing to lead this insane boy on. One on earth compelled him to buy things for a girl that just didn't care. But in the end, my teenage psyche always lost interest and went back to scheming over how I was going to work around curfew and catch that wicked show happening at the local music venue on a school night. When school led up for the summer, I was just happy to be able to be with friends and not worry about Blueberry. He was a senior in that had been his last year at school with us. I came home one afternoon and went into the kitchen to grab a snack.

My father had just come home from work and he barely beat me by five minutes. I could practically time the man by his routines. He was leaning against the kitchen door and plucking the bills from my mother's overflow of catalogs when I came up to peck him on the cheek and offer him one of the two apples that I had got. Hey there, hun. He mumbled, taking the apple. Whoa! Hold up there, kid. You've got mail. Lucky you. He flipped a manila envelope towards me and I took it. Who's sending me snail mail? I think to myself popping open the sealed flap?

Maybe it's grandma. Ooh, does it feel like there's a check in here? I start to hum a Smith song as I start to pry open the brads that anchor the flaps. Pull the letter out and it's a single page of line notebook paper. I shake the page, my eyes focused on the first line. Shit, shit, I know that handwriting. Blueberry. I remember yelping and surprising, dropping the letter as if it had burned me. Then flipped the envelope over to see where the address should be. I don't know why. I already knew it wouldn't make me feel better to see the

street numbers I called home, along with my name carefully printed in the center. It did make me feel better, however, to see that a city in Colorado was listed on the return address. Blueberry had left Texas, so I hoped, because it sure made me sick to see that there was no postage stamp. He had to have it hand-delivered in my home, which he had somehow tracked down. The letter frightened me. Both in its content, as well as the fact that Blueberry had found out where I lived. I grilled all of our mutual

friends, and they all swore that they hadn't been the ones to give out that information. In the letter, he sounded almost anger with me, or upset that I hadn't made good on some sort of agreement. Who knows? Thankfully, that was the last I heard from Blueberry for several years anyway. All of those events took place in 2005. So let's skip ahead to spring 2008 where I was living in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but preparing for a fresh move back to my hometown to kick a nasty drug habit and for a fresh move back to my hometown to kick a nasty drug habit and get a fresh start on life. I had taken a break from packing up my apartment and headed to the library to clear my head and check my my space. Yes, again, this is 2008. There was a friend request waiting for me when I logged in. The cliche reappearance of that protagonist soon rose. It was blueberry.

Still to this day, I have no idea what possessed me to accept the request, but I did. God damn it, I accepted it. Immediately, I got a message from him. And it was quite civilized, actually. He asked me how I was doing and even offered an apology for his behavior in high school. He asked me how I was doing and offered an apology for his behavior in high school. I was pleasantly surprised, and I also appreciated the gesture and sentiment of response saying so, along with the brief synopsis of my plans in moving back home. This was only after ensuring that he was still in Colorado, as his profile said. By the time I clicked send, my lauded time on the computer was up, so I logged out and headed back to my place to prepare for the move back home the next day.

Three days and one state later, I was back home and finally feeling human as the bumps and bruises of the move subsided. It had been a busy few days and I gladly plopped down in front of my father's laptop to check my email and social media. I logged into my space and began to work through a stack of accumulated messages. I opened the reply from Blueberry. It had been sent almost instantly after I sent my reply several days ago. While that's a coincidence, Blueberry is moving back to our hometown as well. Well, Godspeed to him and all of his endeavors was all I thought of it. I didn't

think I would be running into him often, as our old group of friends had long disbanded and gotten married, moved away or locked up. I had just picked up a job, waiting at Denny's, and enrolled in summer college courses, so life just went on. But not for that long. I had just started the swing shift at work and I was sending up the counter. I was filling up the salt and pepper shakers and sending up the floor for the dinner rush. When he walked in, I knew who he was while he was still in my peripheral. He slid into the

swivel chair and mumbled what I could only assume was a hello. Then he put his right hand on mine which was wrapped around a salt tumbler that I had been refilling. Terror and confusion paint my insides. Another spike in blood pressure as he squeezes down hard, if only for a second, before releasing his grip. He stares, and he mumbles. I should have told him to fuck off that day. I should have listened to my gut which was screaming at my brain. I knew that he moved from Colorado back to our hometown because I was there. I knew that he had taken my reply on my space as a sign of declaring my undying love to him

in that twisted mind. I knew deep down that he was the same scary fucker that found out where I lived in high school. But part of me had truly thought that we had matured past that point and all that wishful thinking. Instead, I smiled politely, nodded, and excused myself to do anything but be around him. I ended up in the bathroom, dry heaving. Anxiety is a bitch. I was stuck. I was the only waitress on the floor until 7.

That was a good three hours away now. I couldn't leave the floor. I remember talking to myself like a crazy person. He had only said one word. I was being ridiculous. Nobody's twisted enough to do that over a girl who barely ever said a word to him or returned any affections. It's ludicrous.

And who knows what he actually said back there or what he meant by touching my hand. He could just be surprised to see me. So who's the crazy person here? It's me, right? Then why had he looked at me as if he were gloating, as if he was hungry? Here's the plan. Dry heave to the porcelain gods again,

dart off to the floor, stay busy, stay away from the counter, and stay away from Blueberry. Unbeknownst to me, while I was trying to avoid him, Blueberry applied for a position as a dishwasher, which is always open in diners. And he was hired on the spot. I found out the next day as I clocked in and saw him carefully studying the employee's

schedule. I should have said something then, but I didn't. I was afraid. I didn't have time to think either. I managed to somehow, change clothes, time I apron, dry he vey yet again from anxiety several times, all before my shaking legs found their way to the floor. So much of this was a blur, and I'm typing this as fast as I can to get to the fucking end of this nightmare story.

I don't remember any specific incidents leading up towards the end, but I do remember Friday Night Barwush when he yelled at a 65-year-old man, which was a regular of mine that I'd come to think of as a grandpa, because he thought he was looking at me with quote unquote, pervert eyes. I remember how many times he tried to stop me while I was neck deep in the weeds with drunk and hungry customers, catching my arm. It was rougher each time, just to make me stop and look at him. The last time he grabbed me so hard, a bruise bloomed in the place where his fingers were the next morning.

I remember the look of pure hatred and frustration that he gave every one of the male customers, and I remember how he said he would slit them from ear to ear if they ever touched me. I remember when my shift ended and I had held it all in until I made it to the walk-in freezer. I had just let out a half-sob when the freezer door swung open and Blueberry had himself right in front of me. I remember the metallic taste of fear as I looked up at him. He said he was looking forward to the talk we would have after work. To talk about us. I remember wanting to scrub my forehead with a lie from where he bent

down and kissed me before exiting the walk-in. He made me so sick, being so close to me. I remember the desperate need to leave. I clocked out knowing that he wouldn't be off until hours after I was. I needed to escape. I pulled out of the parking lot and stopped at a red light two blocks down. I needed to find a friend to stay with. I just needed to figure all of this out. And God, I need my job. I'm sitting at the red light. The passenger door opens.

Fuck, it's him. When the hell did the passenger door not lock? Fuck, did- He broke the lock! He's in my car. I'm numb. He acts like this is a normal thing for us to do. And my logic freezes.

He gives me directions to his house telling me how happy he is that I came around after all these years of denying what was between us was real. I can't breathe. A part of me is giving up. A part of me is still so mad at myself for being so weak and unable to stop all of this. Wait, I'm not completely numb. There's still some anger in me. I'm starting to get angry at this person, who's repeatedly refused to

take no foreign answer. Who intentionally came back to our town with the narcissistic, presumptuous intent of claiming me, now that I had supposedly come around. He came into my job and made sure to move in fast, hard, and aggressively so that he knew this was what I would do. The only words I ever heard him speak clearly without any mumbles was a threat to slit my customer's throats from ear to ear. He walked out of his first night on the job just to follow me and get into my car as I was at a stoplight. Fuck that! As I had the opportunity to sit and process the absurdity and increasingly disturbing levels of the situation, I became temporarily lost in a fugue state of memory,

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Your wine? Thanks. I'll pretend I know what I'm doing before saying it's good. And I'll pretend I don't know you're pretending. Are you a gigillionaire? Yeah, I have AT&T Fiber. The straightforward pricing has inspired me to be more straightforward. Me too. Ugh, this wine. I'll fetch you a Gagillionaire? Yeah, I have AT&T Fiber. The straightforward pricing has inspired me to be more straightforward. Me too. Ugh, this one. I'll fetch you a better one.

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His roommate had thrown a keg party and drew enough people to fill a high school stadium. To this day I considered that the only reason I felt brave enough to do what I did next. There were too many people around to see and hear things. I knew it and he knew it, and he didn't seem happy with it. His face that night still haunts my nightmares. It was a rage like a child having his toys taken away from him. That's exactly what it was to him. I later realized this. I followed him into the house and let him take me to his room.

I stood in the open doorway and walked as he tugged at my wrist and wanted to pull me into the room for God knows what reason. And it was like another person was speaking through me. Stay the hell away from me. I have never and never will be interested in you as a friend or anything else. You know what the hell you've been trying to do and you've been trying to do it since I was 15. Don't come near me again.

You need professional help, you son of a bitch. Then I realized how quiet it was. I swear to God that everyone at the party stopped and stared at us. It was so quiet, all the blood in my body was just pumping in a war dance of fear, disguised as rage. I saw him falter and we locked eyes. I could tell he was grasping, and then I tried to pull away, but he was strong. Fuck. Then he screamed. God, I'll never forget. Then he screamed.

God, I'll never forget how angry he looked. He wasn't mumbling. He was screaming and so clearly. Just fucking lay with me tonight. Why won't you just lay on the bed? He lurched forward like a tension-bearing spring and tried to drag me into the room. It was at this point that bodies just blew at him, several of them. They tackled Blueberry the floor. Beer was flying everywhere. The froth was landing in my hair. My shirt was wet with the faint scent of fresh hops.

There was screaming, hands on hands, girls' hands, nails digging into Blue blueberries, iron fingers. I could fill my bloodsloin at the pockets where he had me firmly. My arms must have been blue. I socked three girls. Blonde and red. Run, come on, get away from him, they all yell. His fingers are slipping claws.

But the long solar nails of the three women are just too much. He flinches with the jerk that forces him to let go. He disappeared under the heap of bodies. My legs finally worked again, I ran to my car, I ran the fuck away. I still don't know who the men who tackled him were. Neither do I know the names of the women who scratched their own nails in the blueberry skin so that he would have to let go, and they could flank me as I ran for protection to my car. Still to this day, I don't think that I've ever been faced with the true definition

of solidarity, then that act right there. They didn't even know who I was when they all dove in. that act right there. They didn't even know who I was when they all dove in. I don't know what kind of spiritual forces out there roaming the purple evenings with those who are alone, but more nights than not. I say a little thank you to the skies, hoping at least one of them hear me. I owe those strangers a great deal. Now that I've said that, the thing of it is, my story is not over yet. It hasn't gotten bad yet, not by a long stretch. The final part was the hardest to write, and I still get sick to my stomach when I think about it at times. At this point, I wish I could say that it's over, but it's not.

Stockers are persistent. They don't think like you and I do. What I had done the night I told Blueberry know was something good and bad. Good and that I had acted loudly enough to become a person to him, not just an object, bad in the sense that I had set down boundaries that conflicted with his intents, and I had done it in a crowd of people which embarrassed him. I knew that where he had just seen me as a living doll before, he would now see me as someone to be punished.

I barely slept after crashing through my front door, quickly and desperately checking each window and door's lock in my father's house before collapsing into a heap by the bed. My father was in home, as he usually stayed over at his new girlfriend's place. I didn't mind, it was nice to see him in love. It took years off of his face. And I didn't want to put those years back on with my predicament. I didn't want to see the look in his eyes if he saw branches of broken blood vessels, blossoms that ran up my arms into dull spirals of pain. I didn't want to see him in blueberry in the same room. I didn't want him to feel disappointed or upset with me. I had kicked the habit and worked diligently on my decision, but my helplessness in dealing with blueberry seemed to me a return to a life that I thought I'd left behind.

No, I better figure this one out myself. He had spent enough sleepless nights worrying about me. I was suddenly thankful for my parents, recent divorce. My mother stayed behind in the house I grew up in, and my father had rented out a lovely house and an adjacent neighborhood. Blueberry couldn't possibly find me here. With that comforting thought, I pulled myself out of bed and dressed. I remember picking up a shirt with sleeves to cover my bruises that he had left. I didn't even care that it was easily a hundred degrees outside, anything to keep from

seeing and remembering his brand on me. I padded towards the kitchen, stopping at the large glass window-pains that faced the open school yard across the street. Pulling back blinds, I took in the greasy, sun-drenched view. I liked the house. It was open. I could see anybody coming. But it was quiet for now. In the kitchen, I stepped into the cupboard and plucked a fresh bag of chips. I was starving. I had just started to pull open the bag of chips when suddenly the banging started.

They were loud booms as if parodies of polite knocks. I had no idea how he had found me. Still to this day I don't, but it doesn't matter how. It's just that he did. But I knew who was behind the door, just as that person knew that I was hiding in there somewhere. At the very first echo of Blueberry's fist hitting the front door, my legs turned to dust beneath me. The bag of chips burst as I collided with the linoleum. My body's momentum transforms the potato shards into a million traders echoing every move.

I was sobbing silently, hiding behind the of bridge and watching the shadow slide along the floor, where I had just been seconds ago, gazing out the window with that all sense of safety, and again, the banging. Then all of a sudden there was silence. My phone buzzed on the counter. I stretched my arm upward and clutched that little electronic beacon of freedom, a text from 303 area code. Colorado.

It's him. The text illuminates the screen. My dear, I know you are in there. Let me in. I have your favorite subway sandwich for you and it's a surprise. Jesus, how did it get my number? My sleeve has been pushed back from the reach for my phone. I see the bruises again, a friendly reminder of blueberry. Some of them are the same shade of his name. The nox had been quiet, and there was no more

shadow on the wooden floor by my window. I remember there was a click in my brain at that moment. Something finally connected, my survival instincts are finally triggered, and I shift from frozen into overdrive. I'm no longer a human. I'm a fucking gazelle, running from a lion. Chips they crunch under my shoes as I snap up to my feet. Keys and phone in my hands, and I run for the sake of everything I love in this world.

I hear metal creak behind me back in the kitchen just as I slam the front door. All that sunlight outside charges every cell in my bruised body. And from the front steps, I dive into the car through my passenger side window. I leave a perfect arc of rubber marks on the driveway as I reverse, swivel my head, and scan the arc ran. There's nowhere to hide in this wide open neighborhood. Nothing, he's unseen, and the gas pedal is one with the floorboard. I'm thankful the students of the elementary school across the street are not out the recess because I would have braided them into a sticky tarmac without a second thought if they

stood between me and safety. That was the level of my fear. I just keep driving, blowing through all the yields and stops. I wonder if I'm crazy. My phone buzzes with another text from that Colorado number. No, not crazy. Scared. Not of death, not yet anyway.

Scared of what he will do to make me return to his normalcy. I am a doll to him. What happens when dolls start to speak? When they run like gazelle away from his playroom rules. What happens if the lion catches the gazelle? I dry heave and sob at once, a fear. I feel like he's with me right now, watching. It does occur to me to call the police, but what do I tell them?

They would look at me like I was crazy. Just like everyone else had assured me that Blueberry was fine. Just odd. So very, very odd. Maybe I still am the crazy one. I'm going 55 and a 25 after all, but I know that I can't be alone at this moment. I pick up my phone and dial the number for Brandon. He lives the closest.

I have to redial twice. Blueberry keeps texting me and the alerts make me exit my keypad. His messages tell me that I have a lack of appreciation for the things that he does for me. I dry heave yet again. Still going 55. Finally, I'm able to input all seven digits. Hello?

Brandon's voice is almost an angelic sound. I cry. All that comes out is the name of the street I'm on. He directs me to park a block away from where I am. I see him. He sees me. I leave the keys in the ignition but turn the car off. I run across the green field to him.

I feel like I can't do anything but run through dear life. Brandon catches me and holds me tight in the arms with two big hands. My bruises hurt under his palms. My lungs are on fire. I can't stop my legs from twitching. I just babble. I'm not crazy. I'm not crazy. He found me. Please don't

tell him where I am, Brandon. Please. I collapse on the soft grass. Brandon tells me later on that he pieced the story together from what he could hear me say, curled up in the fetal position on the grass babbling about blueberries bruises and being an object He wasn't sure what to make of it It admits that he thought I was back on the shit and was having a bad calm down Then he goes to retrieve the keys to my car from the ignition My phone is on the front seat still lighting up incessantly with messages from a 303 number Brandon sees this. He opens my phone and reads

several of the 52 messages sent in the last half hour. He said he couldn't bear to read one more after seeing the one that included a photo of my open underwear drawer. It dawned on Brandon that Blueberry is inside of my home, and enjoys letting me know. Brandon hugs me and talks to me until Carly and Kate get to the park. Carly and Kate will take me to their house where we can call the police. Brandon has warrants so he can be there with us. But before he leaves, he hugs me so fiercely it reminds me that I'm real, not plastic. He whispers into Carly's ear and advises her to check the messages on my phone if she

doesn't believe. She makes it to the messages where he tells me he will shave my red harlots hair off if I don't come back and be good. My phone rings. Carly answers. It's my father. Kate drives my car home. They stay as I hear what happened.

The next door neighbor had been in her kitchen when she saw me run out the door and peel out of the driveway. The clue she said was how I had thrown myself into the car through the window as if I couldn't waste a moment with opening the door. She went closer to her window to watch the scene. As my dad's car faded away, she looked at the front door of our house. She saw a tall thin man coming out of the front door and staring into the direction I had gone.

She said he looked very angry and I looked terrified, so she called the police. My father unaware of all this came home soon after the neighbor called the police. Blueberry was back outside on the porch by then, perched on the step, watching and waiting. My father stared at the strange boy on his steps. He saw the tire tracks from the absent car. Blueberry calmly looked up at my father, met his gaze, and blankly said that he was thinking about getting me a vanity for my birthday. My father tells me that Blueberry stood up and placed himself between my dad and the

door. My father was a criminal defense attorney for 30 years. He is a stoic man who has defended countless rapists, killers, thieves, and addicts, and the truly innocent before a jury of peers. Not much shakes him, yet the trimmer of my father's voice is perceptible as he tells me all this. He stares blueberry down and simply says, do you pay for this house boy? I don't answer to you. Get out of my way. Blueberry moves. My father goes inside, disturbed by the boy on the stairs. And it's just glad that I'm not here.

disturbed by the boy on the stairs, and it's just glad that I'm not here. In the kitchen, he sees the crushed bag of chips on the floor. The mess in the kitchen, he sees the signs of frantic movement etched in the carpet of chips. He can see that the back door is wide open. I would never leave it like that. He also remembers that the front door had been unlocked. like that. He also remembers that the front door had been unlocked. He and I shared a paranoia of unlocked doors and it was then that my father knew something was very wrong. He feels sick. He sprints to the front door. Hey kid, he roars at Blueberry, reiterating back. He had taken off down the street when he heard the sirens. The police cars called by the neighbor pull up at this point. One patrol goes in percittablooberry.

The other stays to talk to my father who was calling my phone. He also talks to our astute neighbor who relates what she had seen through the window. Later on, the police ask if I know who this man was who was on the stairs. Carly gives them my phone as an answer. My father sees over the cop's shoulder, turns pale and closes his eyes. I see the years go back on his face. I can't stop crying. I can't get a word out.

All I can do is lead them all to my bedroom, where Carly holds up the bed skirt, as I reach underneath and pull out the three keepsake boxes that I have filled with the last five years worth of blueberry's gifts, and mostly unopened letters. Carly brings me a yearbook. I cry harder and harder as I open up to the page with his class photo on it and point to his full name. I'm crying this hard because it's over. I'm crying this hard because it could have been over long before this point. The officers bag up the contents of the boxes and the flashes of cameras capture any trace

of what had happened that afternoon. I give a short statement once I can speak coherently. They don't find Blueberry, but my father's secure is protective orders quickly with the connections he has. He looks so tired. It must have been so easy to protect me when I was small. When he could be the barrier between me and the monsters he dealt with on a daily basis, but that time had long since passed.

All he could do now was make his phone calls and pray to a god he did not believe in. He didn't tell me about the journal left on my doorstep until years later, the one that he didn't turn over to the police. The one that had the photos of me sleeping, photos of me naked, and fresh out of the shower, even some of me kissing my ex-boyfriend. Adam's face in these pictures was scratched out and left hollow. All of them taken at times when I had assumed that I was alone. I arranged to stay the night with Carly. She tells me in the next morning that I had started

to scream in my sleep and didn't stop until she called into bed with me and wrapped me in her tiny arms. I'm very grateful to her. I think her touch is what kept me from remembering any nightmares that I had that night. It felt so good just to sleep. My father and I moved soon afterwards. We spoke of the incident only once more. When I walked into the kitchen of the new house and saw my father at the table with a tumbler of urban in his hand, flipping through a mound of papers with the other.

They were letters from Louberry. He had retrieved them after evidence processed them. I'll never forget the grim reasoning behind his voice, as the lawyer inside him spoke. Well, if you ever turn up murdered, at least I'll have this, and that fucking journal deproved exactly who did it. I haven't seen or heard hurt a blueberry since that day. It's been five years and it's taken two weeks of writing to get all of this out. There's so much to this story and it's so fucking harrowing yet,

relieving to be able to put it all down, together in chronological order, and know that I lived through it. Thanks, let's not meet. I needed this. AT&T Fiber presents A Straight Forward Moment You're wine. Thanks. I'll pretend I know what I'm doing before saying it's good. And I'll pretend I don't know you're pretending. Are you a gigillionaire? Yeah, I have AT&T Fiber. The straightforward pricing has inspired me to be more straightforward.

Me too. Ugh, this one. I'll fetch you a better one. Straight forward is better. No equipment fees, no data caps, no price increase at 12 months. Live like a Giga-Gillionaire with AT&T Fiber. Limited availability and select areas.

Visit atct.com slash hypergig for details. Thank you for listening to season one episode 20 of Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast this week you have heard Blueberry by Le Violent Thim. Now, as I said earlier, I had a lot of trouble trying to replicate the feel and performance and sound of the original recording of Blueberry. And I think that the reason that I really couldn't reach that is the amount of time that

I put into this recording. This happened either last year or 2017 I can't remember exactly when it came out, but I put so much time and effort into this episode recording all brand new music. And like I said, this was the longest story that I had read at that point on the podcast. It was the first of what I considered to be a special episode of Let's Not Mead, and I haven't really done anything like that this season. That being said, in season 2, you can expect to hear some new music and sound effects, assuming that I'm able to pull that off in the time that I have to put into the podcast.

I'd like to really go back and try to replicate that feeling sound of the first run of Let's Not Me because it was so impactful and I really enjoyed just listening back to it as I hope all of you did. So with that being said, I would just like to thank everybody for supporting the show this far. I really look forward to season 2 and all the news stories that I'll be presenting. Don't forget next weekend, I will be airing the live show. Like I said, assuming all the recording goes properly and it doesn't sound like shit. Thanks to all of my Patreon subscribers for supporting me. Every little donation helps even if it's just a book. It's really nice to have that incentive to be pushing forward,

especially because I'm going to be focusing on putting more work into the show. In the meantime, if you'd like to send in any of your stories to be heard on season 2, please email me at Let's Not Meet Stories at gmail.com. And if you have any questions or inquiries email me at Let's Not Meet Podcast at gmail.com. I'll still be active on the Facebook group and on Twitter if you'd like to visit Let's Not Meet Podcast dot com for links to all of that junk. I guess this is a good buy for the next two weeks or so. However, I will curate as much as possible in the meantime for the bonus episodes and the live episode next week.

I'll see you guys on June 9th for season 2 of Let's Not Meet. 18T fiber presents presents A Straight Forward Moment You're wine? Thanks. I'll pretend I know what I'm doing before saying it's good. And I'll pretend I don't know you're pretending. Are you a Gigillionaire? Yeah, I have 18T Fiber. The straightforward pricing has inspired me to be more straightforward.

Me too. Ugh, this wine. I'll fetch you a better one. Straight forward is better. No equipment fees, no data caps, no price increase at 12 months. Live like a Gagillionaire with AT&T fiber. Limited availability in select areas.

Visit ATT.com slash hypergig for details.