Radio Rental - Episode 29

Episode Date: June 10, 2022

On today’s tapes… >> Standard Procedure > Laundromat

I am so dreading groceries this week. Why? You can skip it. Oh, what? Just like that? Just like that. How about dinner with my third cousin? Skip it. Prince Fluffy's favorite treats? Skippable.

Midnight snacks? Skip. My neighbor's nightly saxophone practices? Uh, nope. You're on your own there. Could've skipped it. Should've skipped it. Skip to the good part and get groceries, meals, and more delivered right to your door on Skip. What could make your listening experience even better? Your feedback helps us grow and deliver the content you care about most. It's super simple. Just fill out our quick survey.

You'll be part of determining what stories we tackle next. Plus, you could win a nice prize just for sharing your thoughts. Head over to tenderfoot.tv slash survey and let your voice be heard, and you'll be entered to win a $100 Amazon gift card plus a Tenderfoot merch pack. It only takes a few minutes and it makes a big difference. Thank you for being part of our community. We can't wait to hear from you. Uh, didn't you see the sign on the door? Terry's not here at the moment. Go away.

Go away, please. Huh? Oh, it's just you. Hey, are you alone? Good. Okay, good. Good, good, good. Oh, me?

Oh, yeah, I'm fine. Yeah, I'm fine. Everything's good. Well, if you must know, I did have a little misunderstanding with the IRS. Just a tiny issue. Didn't cross my T's and dot my I's and, well, they have no sense of humor. It's actually their fault for not being clear on why Malachi is not considered an office expense. Anyway, enough of my bureaucratic nightmares. Let's create some new nightmares, shall we? I have another tape for you right here. I hope you're sitting down. Here we go. This was about 13 years ago. I was 19 years old, just about to get into college.

I was working a couple dead-end jobs, mostly restaurants, things like that. But this particular job was at a laundromat in a very bad area. It was in Woonsocket, Rhode Island. Not many people have heard of that town, but if you grew up in Rhode Island, you know it. It's a terrible area. A lot of bad, very weird folks around there. Because it was a laundromat, it was in probably the lowest income area in the town. This part was particularly bad because it was off of Arnold Street.

And Arnold Street is well known for being an area with a lot of crackheads, hookers. I can't tell you how many times prostitutes would come in asking to use my phone. People walking in with their eyes all beamed out. You could tell they were on something. There was actually a huge crack house right across the street. These people would go and have this particular like, whoop whoop, right outside. And that's what they would do to each other. That's how you knew that there was a crack deal about to happen. There was somebody in the morning shift. I would go relieve them.

I would work some mornings, usually Sunday mornings. And I hated that because I'd get there when it was dark, and they're meth heads. That's usually the people that I would run into, the ones that have been up all night. Any time you were going to be there that was dark, you have to watch out in that area. I always worked alone. That night, everything was pretty much normal to start.

I was sitting there reading a book for a while. It was actually kind of dead that night. I think it was probably in the fall, because it was darker earlier than normal. And then this couple came in, this Spanish couple, and they had their really young son with them. They were just nice, like, doing their laundry. They didn't really bother me. I didn't bother them. And then some guy came in, this big Rastafarian guy. He was huge. He was a lot bigger than I was. And he came in and I just remember being alarmed immediately. As soon as he walked

through the door, he looked pissed off and his eyes were all beamed out. He looked like he was on something. He was sweating. And he just looked like he wanted to fight somebody. So he walks in and he starts going towards this couple with their kid. And I was like, oh shit. I was thinking he was going to fight the guy or something that maybe he knew him or he owed him money or something. I don't know. But instead he walks over to the kid.

He starts saying all kinds of shit to him. He's, like, rubbing his hair at one point. He just seemed like he was trying to make friends with him or something, but it was really, really weird, and he just was touching him. And I could visibly see the parents getting upset. They seemed like they didn't know what the hell to do.

I could tell right away they didn't know him at all. So I'm like, all right, I got to say something. Get this guy out of here. He wasn't doing laundry. So I walked up over to him. And I was like, excuse me, sir. If you're not doing laundry, my boss doesn't really want you in here. That directed all of his attention now onto me. He was like in a crouch position from when he was talking to the kid he gets up and turns towards me

he just like looked at me like who the fuck are you talking to he looked pissed we're probably only like five feet apart from each other he could just knock me into outer space if he wanted to. He took it like I was attacking him for some reason. Points his finger in my face, and he's like, you're the reason my people were manipulated to getting into this country. It's your fault. You're a racist. Blah, blah, blah. He's, like, screaming.

And as he's screaming all this, he keeps walking closer and closer to me. So at one point I can find myself backing up. I didn't know what he was going to do. I thought he was going to hit me. I thought he was going to like attack me or something.

He got right up into my face, probably like a foot away. And he screamed at me, one day someone's gonna throw you in a dumpster. One day someone's gonna find you in pieces all over the ground. Okay.

I didn't really know what to say after that. I just like kind of shrunk smaller and smaller as he kept saying it. He started off quiet, pissed, and by the time he got up to me and said that to me, he was screaming, and his finger was up in my face, and he was talking so loud that spit was coming out of his mouth. He stormed out, slammed the door,

and I was shaking. I just remember looking around for any kind of weapon that I could use if he came back. I remember seeing a pen, you know, trying to think like maybe I could jam it into his neck or something. I had my hand gripped around the pen that I thought I could use as a weapon so hard that my knuckles were white. That's how scared I was. The Spanish couple, they were like looking at me like, what the hell was that all about? So I called my boss.

Hey, this guy just came in. He's fucking with me. He just told me that basically that he would murder me. He just hinted that he would throw me in a dumpster and chop me up in a billion pieces. That's what I was saying to my boss. He told me he called the police. I was just an anxious wreck after that.

I didn't know what to do. I locked myself in the back room. I called my boss. There were still people in there. I was asking him if I could lock the door. A couple hours went by, so I'm thinking, all right, whatever, this should be fine. The Spanish lady comes back in, and she said, hey, I just want to let you know that guy is still outside.

I looked, and he's sitting on a cinder block kind of near my car in the parking lot. He's just staring inside, just glaring. So I got scared again. My boss came. He did escort me out that night, just to my car So I got scared again. My boss came. He did escort me out that night, just to my car, got in my car. I didn't say anything to him outside. I didn't tell him that I was calling the cops. I didn't say shit. And once I was safe, I didn't give a fuck. You know, it was fine. About three days later, I was sitting and I was playing my N64 by the soda machine, and two nicely dressed men walked in.

Excuse me, ma'am, did you place a call or were looking for whoever placed a call about a guy who was harassing you the other night? Yeah, that was me. They wanted to ask me some questions about it. They asked me his description. I told them, you know, big, burly, Rastafarian guy. Long, grayish, blackish dreads. Thick accent.

Seemed all beamed out like he was high on something. They said, yeah, well, that matches the description. There was a stabbing here that night. Really? They asked me to call my boss. We all went into the back room and we watched the video together. They looked through it and they said, yeah, that's definitely the guy. Matches the description.

Give us a call if you see him in the area. And that was the last I ever heard about it. I just couldn't believe it, that somebody actually got stabbed, that he really went that far. I was definitely scared the night that he was there, but it made it a lot more scary, my experience with him, after finding out that he actually did stab somebody. I worried that he thought that that lady was me.

Is that why he stabbed that woman? Was it somebody he knew? Was she okay? Did she die? Did they ever fucking catch him? I never found out any of that. I tried to check the news, never found out anything, never found out if the person lived or died, that he stabbed.

I was looking through the list of mugshots from different criminals, and I couldn't find him. That was it. I might have escaped death. If I had pushed in any kind of way, his reaction would have been a lot worse. That's part of the reason why I was too afraid to speak, because I could see how angry he was.

I feel like you know when to try to talk somebody down, and you know when not to. And that was definitely a situation where there's no point in trying to talk any sense into this guy, because he's not fucking here. He's somewhere else, whatever the hell he was on, that's where he was at. There's no coming back.

I found no reaction when you're dealing with somebody who's on any kind of substance is a better reaction than anger. Any kind of confrontational attitude on your part will get you in a lot more trouble than if you just play it calm, don't say shit. You'll get your way out of there. You don't want to piss off a crackhead.

You don't want to piss off a meth head. You don't want to get any kind of rise out of these kind of people. You just want to keep to yourself and just show them that you are unfazed by them, basically. That was definitely the most terrifying experience of my life. Scared out of your mind yet? For me, that was almost more frightening than an IRS field audit. Not enough? Well then, how about I subject you to some audio-based, demographically-focused marketing pitches. In other words, ads.

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hand-picked just for you. While you were watching that last tape, I think someone, possibly a government official, began lingering around the radio rental shop. Not that I have anything to hide. No, not at all. I am a law-abiding citizen who enjoys nothing more than obeying rules, paying taxes on time, and not arguing with authority figures. But just out of an abundance of caution, I'd like to ask you, dear listener, to keep your voice down and maybe we'll just turn the lights off too. There, isn't that cozy?

And perhaps I'll put on another tape for you in the back room, hmm? Oh, an excellent idea, I think. Let's do it. Quietly. It's 2014 and I'm 27 years old. I'm living in Los Angeles suburbia and I'm living with my ex-boyfriend and I'm not happy. I also wasn't at a point in my life where I felt strong enough in my own skin and ready to tell him that I was having those feelings. So I hid that from him and I was trying to arrange an exit plan so I could sort of break

up with him and then just have somewhere else to go so I wouldn't have to think about it and it would already be ready. I worked with his friends, I worked with him, we all had this really big professional and personal network. I knew I was going to throw things on its side if I did this, and I wasn't ready to talk about it yet. I had to do some of my own work within me to get there. I open my laptop and I get on Craigslist and I see what kind of living situation is available.

I'm looking at apartments, I'm looking at rooms for rent, and I stumble upon this room for rent in a hilly mountainous area with a gorgeous view and a really nice big room, floor to ceiling windows, A-line frame. It's so perfect for me. I'm a creative person and this had amazing energy and I was so thrilled to find this place. I decide to do my due diligence and I'm emailing back and forth with the person that's made the listing. I say, well, I'd be more comfortable if we talked on the phone a little bit. I call him, and we're talking. I'm saying, you know, I'm sorry to get all crazy like this, but I just, I really want to make sure

that I know what I'm getting into. And he says, no, absolutely, yes, I completely understand. We set a time and a date, and I leave work early. I lie to my work about where I'm going. If I were to chicken out and not do this or if I were to stay with him, I wouldn't want this rumor mill to start going. I'm in my car. I'm out of work. I'm by myself. It's a drizzly day and I'm cranking my music and I'm listening to the directions coming through my car speakers and I'm thinking about the next chapter.

I pull up and I see the house for the first time. It's the same house as it was in the photos, but it's different. It's a little more drab and dark and weathered and tired and falling apart. I kind of wrote it off. I parked across the street and I went and I knocked on the door. A man answered the door. I was taken aback.

He's big and he's panting and he's out of breath and he's physically sweaty. His face is red. He's wearing, like, longish cargo shorts and white tube socks. His hair was, like, plastered down in, like, probably a nice pomade of sweat, grease, and mud. He was muddy all over and his socks especially were like stretched out and muddy. And I thought, this is a weird way to answer the door when a person that's gonna rent a room from you comes by he said are you here to see the

house are you here to see the room for rent yeah absolutely this is not right this is not what a person who's professionally showing a home for rent looks like but I went in the house and he shut the door behind me. Immediately around me, I noticed that the house is empty. It was dark. There was no furniture. There was no TV. I had my cell phone in my hand because I felt a little off. I felt like I wanted to be safe and protecting myself. And if I needed to like call for help or record something, I wanted it at my disposal. He really immediately looked at me and said, put that away now. Put your phone away now. In that moment, I knew I had to pretend nothing was wrong. In the kitchen, there was food trash,

half-empty things, containers of soup, mac and cheese boxes, chips bags. There was a hot plate in the kitchen, and that was it. I looked out the big windows and I realized, okay, yes, it's beautiful, but it's also super isolated. No one's around. No one could hear me and no one can see me. And I'm in a house with a dude I don't trust. I started to think about my exit plan and I started to sit with my decision and lean more into my decision to act like everything's cool. He directs me over to a kitchen table

where there's a piece of paper and he says, fill this out now. I kind of go over to it, and I see that it's like a really old take on a rental application, but the paper is faded brown, and it looks like it's been typed on an old typewriter. I was asking for, like, my social, my mom's name, her maiden name, where I work, where I currently live. And I said to him, oh, well, I'm just looking. I'm looking at a lot of places right now.

You know, I'm not really at that stage yet. And he said, do it now. This is standard procedure, do it now. I said, all right. I picked up the pen and I was writing information. Pretty quickly into writing things, I realized, okay, well, I can at least lie about this stuff. I can at least not give him my real information. I finish it and it was discussed that I was going to go see the bedroom. Ever since the moment I walk in the house, this man is trying to get behind me.

You know, normally if I were to have like a one-on-one conversation with a landlord or somebody trying to sell me something or lease me something or something like this, we're standing face-to-face and there's a face-to-face interaction, but this guy was trying to get behind me. He was moving slowly.

I was moving with him. It was like this really terrible, horrifying dance. It never stopped. He did it the whole time. He's trying to get behind me. It wasn't a conscious thought I had. I just knew in the core of my being like in the wiring of my human body this man can't get behind me I don't want him to be somewhere where I can't see what he's doing so I was sort of moving with him and it was a slow awkward heavy moment it felt like anything could happen at any time it felt like both of us were playing a game I was falling back into this gut feeling I had I don't want to raise question with him I don't want to trigger him I don't want to send him off we were gonna make our way up the stairs to check out

the bedroom that was for rent. I remember standing at the base of the stairs. He motioned for me to walk up this narrow, dark staircase. The carpet was dark green and thin, like it'd been walked over a hundred times. The last thing I wanted was for this guy to be behind me going up a staircase. I declined his invitation to walk first, and I let him walk first. He was reluctant. I get up to the top of the stairs, and I see the room that's allegedly for rent. All the excuses of like, maybe he was gardening, maybe he just likes Doritos, all those kind of went away

and I really realized this is bad. There's no way to talk yourself out of this situation. The blinds were drawn shut. There was a mattress on the ground. It was stained and like this brown, ugly, scary color with like these floral patterns on it. He looked at me and he said, you know, green looks really good on you, wink, wink. Like he said, wink, wink to me.

I had a green shirt on, and I think my hair might have been green. This look he had on his face, I remember at that point, I thought, okay, really, Victoria, no one knows where you are. You can't get to your phone. I understood deeply that I just had to get out. My face was smiley and my posture was straight. And I kept doing that weird tango with him as he tried to walk behind me. And I said, okay, yeah, this, I love it. This room is great. Let me just get on home and crunch some numbers. And oh, I forgot, I have a really important meeting with the city officials today.

I told him that I worked for the local government, which at the time was true. I had a job with the local government. And so it was within the realm of possibility that I really was a very important figure and had an important meeting. I just started painting this picture of a person that would be super missed and looked for and questioned and not an easy person that would just disappear quietly into the night. I politely ran down the stairs.

It was not walking, but it wasn't like hauling ass. Got to the door, and he was standing there at the foot of the stairs. And he was watching me, and I said, OK, yeah, thank you for your time. I'll see you later. And I turned the doorknob, and I threw my weight forward, and nothing happened.

I watched him the whole time. He did not lock the door. He was never out of my sight. I don't understand how the doors got locked. It's not like I walked in there and he immediately locked the door. It was a surprise to me that the door was locked and it was not a surprise to him that the door was locked. I really wondered if somebody else was in the house with us. He said, huh, seems like you're locked in. Yeah, yeah, it seems like I'm locked in.

And I'm fucking freaking, I'm dying. I'm honestly standing there as I'm fidgeting with the locks going, I hope it's quick. I really hope it's quick. I sat there fidgeting with the locks because they weren't all installed in a way that made any logical sense. Some of them were like the hotel locks that have the slide bar and the chain, but they were on either upside down or crooked. The diagonal locks that you normally spin to the

right to lock and spin to the left to unlock, they were installed upside down and backwards. And there was a series of like four or five locks and he just stood there watching me. I eventually get the locks off. I say eventually, but it was quick. When I opened the door and I got into the drizzle outside in the gray and I saw my car, it felt like a gift. Hastily walking toward my 2005 Mini Cooper convertible that I bought like fifth hand. I am hoping it's going to start. Lately, it's been doing this real cool thing where it just doesn't start sometimes.

Turn the key, and it fires right up. When I called the police department, I called from work the next day. They sent an officer to my work. I went into the break room, and I told him the whole story. At the end, he was like, well, this is out of my jurisdiction, and there's not really much I can do about it because no crime was committed.

Well, you don't understand this, like, last part. In the night between when this happened and when I called the police department, I looked up the address online. And I looked on Redfin and Zillow and pages and pages popped up explaining that the house was in foreclosure and that nobody legally lived there and there were no tenants. When I found that out, I knew it wasn't gaslighting myself. This was messed up. Someone had lured me to a place that they shouldn't have been to do something that they shouldn't be doing.

It opened my eyes to the fact that some people are bad and some people aren't just gardening in the drizzling rain and some people don't want the best for you. And some people want to overpower you. It really changed how I see the world. That last little bit of blind sunshine was kind of rained on that day. And I look at things a lot differently now. Crime Writers On is the podcast where authors and journalists talk about the latest true crime series, documentaries, and podcasts. Talk about what's on the charts and find those up and coming

podcasts you'll be talking about. It's like a fun and smart book Talk about what's on the charts and find those up and coming podcasts. You'll be talking about. It's like a fun and smart book club discussing what makes good storytelling and teaching how to become a critical listener or not. And stick around for the crime writers, thumbs up, thumbs down reviews. It's the original true crime review podcast crime writers on wherever you get your podcasts,

like probably right here. Horrific, turbulent, and yet satisfying. Those three words, besides being my epitaph, also describe my last trip to Target. Not that I'm shopping a lot these days. Of course not. I'm saving every penny for the government's fair share. So how about we just change the subject? Oh, thank you for joining me today, dear friend. I love sharing my collection of tapes with you. Unfortunately, this will be our last session together for a while. I'm going

out of town to an undisclosed place for an undisclosed amount of time. Totally above board stuff. But I promise, I promise I will never forget you and the time we have spent together. Now, how about you go out the back this time, okay? And if anyone asks, you saw a different smoldering hunk in a black turtleneck and gemstone pendant. All right? Out you go. Go on, go on. And we'll see you next time at Radio Rental.

Shh. Go on. Get out of here. Bye. Radio Rental is created by Payne Lindsay and brought to you by Tenderfoot TV. Executive producers Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright. Hosted by Rainn Wilson as his character, Terry Carnation. Produced by Payne Lindsay, Mike Rooney, and Meredith Stedman. With additional production by Eric Quintana.

Written by Meredith Stedman. Additional writing by Mark Laughlin. Sound design by Cooper Skinner. Original score by Makeup and Vanity Set. Cover art by Trevor Eiler and Rob Sheridan. If you have a Radio Rental story that you'd like to share, please email us at yourscarystory at gmail.com. Or contact us via the form on our website, radiorentalusa.com. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter at Radio Rental. You can also follow the illustrious Terry Carnation on social media. Just search at Terry Carnation. Thank you. and the team at Cadence 13. On behalf of the Radio Rental Store, we'd love it if you'd subscribe, rate, and review.

And don't forget to share our show with a friend of the genre. Thanks for listening. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for 20 years and have taken people into haunted places to uncover macabre tales and dark secrets.

On my podcast, Haunted Canada, I share bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you're listening right now. Then join me if you dare.