Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep - Escaping The Loop

Episode Date: June 29, 2022

🎧 Check out my new True Crime podcast called Crimehub. Just search Crimehub in the search bar to find it. 🎉 Ad-free episodes + bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/drnosleep 🎥 YouTube:��https://youtube.com/c/DrNoSleep ✅ Send all advertising inquiries to: [e-mail] Author: Matt Doggett Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/MatthewDoggettAuthor/ Website/Newsletter sign up: matthewdoggettauthor.com New Book Releases: https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-G-Doggett/e/B08FD5378Z DISCLAIMER: This episode contains explicit content. Parental guidance is advised for children under the age of 18. Listen at your own discretion. #drnosleep #scarystories #horrorstories #doctornosleep #truescarystories #horrorpodcast #horror Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fan of soccer, you could assist a moment historic. You could get any of the final of the Cup of the World of the FIFA 2006 with Visa. It's just to have a card of credit visa BMO for participate. Inscribe you at BMO.com bar-oblique concourse. The reglements of the concourse is slack. My boss's face goes slack. The emotion leaving his eyes like a breaker has blown somewhere in his mind. His unseeing eyes stay fixed on mine.

We're standing next to the large picture when. in his massive fourth-floor office, looking out over the forest of tanks, vessels, pipes, and towers that comprise Burleson Chemicals production facilities. My boss, Jerry Vickery, holds two glass tumblers with brown liquor in them. I know something is wrong as soon as I see the life go out of Vickory's face. But I don't have time to mull it over right now, as if on cue, I hear a commotion from the other side of the office door. They're coming for me.

Vickory's corner office has a balcony. Judging by the sound coming from the other side of his office door, it's the only way to go. I move past Vickory to the French doors that lead to the balcony, opening them up as the inner office doors slam open. A glance over my shoulder reveals a half-dozen police officers rushing into the room. One of them, a woman, I think I recognize. Doesn't matter.

No time for that now. All the upper management offices on the top floor have balconies, although none of them are as big as vicaries. Each balcony is separated from the one next by two-foot steel eyebeams. As the cops run out onto the balcony, I'm already reaching across to the next one in line. There's a sheer drop below me, making my palm sweaty, but it's not hard to get across.

Now on the other balcony, I keep going, knowing that the cops will just run around inside and meet me. I move across the third balcony and onto the fourth. It's the last one on this side of the building, so I swing over the railing, yanking open the door and running past Himes, who sits at his desk, his face as slack as Vickories was when I left him.

I make it into the hallway, and the cops immediately spot me from down the hall. I book it away from them, heading for the stairs as heavy footsteps follow me. They don't shout at me to stop. They don't say anything, which is always undemned. I yank open the heavy metal door to the stairwell to see a burly cop standing there.

I shoulder check him, but he's too big. He gets his arms around me and subdues me for the three seconds it takes the other cops to get to me. Now that I'm no longer running, the fear comes on with full force. I can't do it. I can't take it. I plead with them to let me go, tears running down my cheeks as one of them cuffs me. Please, I say, I haven't done anything yet. Please, just let me go. I can't do it again. Please.

I look for the female officer I thought I recognized earlier. But all the stern faces that look back at me are foreign. There is something there at the back of my mind. Something about that face. If I could only see it again, I feel it would unlock a door in my memory. It seems important in a distant sort of way. But what's more important is getting away from the police. That's my number one priority.

They take me out of the stairwell, clearly heading toward the elevator. I can't run away if I'm in a metal box. There's a window at the end of the hallway, right next to the door to the stairs. I know what lies on the other side of that window. I know every inch of this place. I've worked here for many years. One cop has a hand on my right arm, just above the elbow. Another is walking behind me.

The rest of them are ahead. It's now or never. I yank my arm away. Turning around as I do, I shoulder-checked the cop behind me. This one is smaller than me, and he goes down. With my eyes on the rectangular window, I run, gaining as much speed as I can. When I'm about a yard from the window, I throw myself at it, turning so my shoulder hits the window first.

The glass shatters as I fly through, sailing out into the quickly dwindling four-story gap between me and the parking lot below. I kick my legs as I fall, turning my body all the way around. I see the asphalt race up at me just before I shatter against it in one brilliant moment of immense pain, followed by serene nothingness. The insistent buzzing of an alarm clock prods me back to consciousness. I open my eyes, revealing a wall in my bedroom. My phone vibrates on the nightstand as the alarm sounds.

I reach my left hand out to turn it off. As I sit up on the edge of my bed, something drips onto my thigh, just be on the hem of my boxer shorts. It's only when I look down that I realize I'm crying. I don't have to look at the phone to know what day it is. It's the same day I've been living repeatedly for so long I've lost count. It's the worst day of my life. And not just because I have to live it over and over again.

It was the worst day of my life the first time I lived it. I know what deviating from my original schedule will get me. That's why the cops showed up outside Vickory's office a couple of minutes before I killed myself. I deviated from my schedule. I did things differently. Every time I do, they come for me. I don't bother wiping the tears away. Instead, I get in the shower.

Then I get dressed and leave the house with a thermos of hot coffee. I stop at Dunkin' Donuts because it's my Friday to bring in treats. I've learned that I can change small things without consequence, as long as they don't affect the original trajectory of my day. So instead of listening to a Michael Connolly audiobook on my way to work, which is what I do when I originally lived this day, I listen to nothing. I think about the movies or shows I've watched, where people are stuck in a loop like I am. There are quite a few. No one does any original stories anymore. There's Groundhog Day, there's Palm Springs, Boss Level, and Russian doll. There are several more that I've never seen.

But I can tell without seeing them that they all have one thing in common. The main character always finds a way to end the loop and make things right. This usually involves some kind of revelation, like learning to love or some bullshit like that. So there must be a way for me to end the loop, and I think I know how. But every time I try by doing something different, the police show up out of nowhere and capture me. And what comes at the end of the day after I'm captured, well, avoiding that is more important than anything. But if I do nothing, I have to live the worst day of my life over and over again. And each time I do, it makes things worse.

The memories build on each other like weights stacked on my shoulders. There must be a way out. There has to be. I get to work, parking in my normal spot, and bring the donuts for everyone on my floor at the office building. I go through the motions, doing my job, not deviating, but always thinking. Thinking about what I need to do to make this stop. Around 4.15 in the afternoon, Vickory calls me to his office.

As I step inside, I know I won't deviate. now. It didn't work last time, so why would it this time? I have something else in mind, something for later. Vickory congratulates me on the quarterly numbers from my department, handing me a glass of scotch as we stand by the window. This time, I accept the scotch and drink it, just like I did the first time I lived this day. We move over to the couch. Vickory does most of the talking, as he always does. He poured. Me another drink, and I can tell that he's already had a few. His pore is heavy, and he insists I finish it.

So I do. I look at my watch at 453, knowing what comes next. Vickory's secretary, a woman named Rainey, knocks on the door and pokes her head in. Excuse me, Mr. Vickory? Mr. Basham has a visitor. Vickory looks at me. His eyes struggling to focus under his bushy black and gray eye. brows. Oh yes, he says. Your little brother, your volunteer work. He says this half-mockingly,

like volunteer work is beneath him. It's something I never noticed before, not until the second or third time I lived the day. That's right, I say. His mom is dropping him off. She works nights at St. Francis. So, I better go. I'll see you Monday. Vickery throws a mock salute as I get up off the couch. I want to smack him, but I don't. That would be deviating from the original, but it would probably be worth it. As I head back downstairs, I fish a packet of mints from a pocket and pop one of them in my mouth. Awaiting in my third floor office is Miss Darza and her 12-year-old son, Gabriel. One time, I didn't suck on a mint before, and Miss Darza smelled the booze on me. She refused to let me take her son anywhere, big brother or not. As soon as she

dragged Gabriel out of the office, the cops came up. I couldn't get away that time. And those things got to me in jail. This time, everything goes as it should. Miss Darza gives me a strange look before she leaves. It's a look she gave me the first day this happened. I just didn't realize what it was. Now I know she smells the booze on me, but probably thinks she's being paranoid. The mint masks it just enough to make her second guess herself, and she heads out of the building, leaving Gabriel with me. How are things? I ask him. Okay, he says, simply. He's a shy kid, but he's slowly opening up to me, or he was before. I never found time for a wife and never really wanted kids. But once I found some success in my professional life, I decided I wanted to give a

little back. And I also started to regret not settling down and starting a family. So I signed up for the Big Brother program. I'd only been doing it for a few weeks when the day I'm stuck in happened for the first time. As I look down at Gabriel where he sits in a chair in front of my desk, I get a flash that's half memory and half premonition. I see his bloody, mangled body lying amid bits of glass on the road. I feel the glass and asphalt scrape under my useless legs as I crawl toward him after dragging myself out of the car. I know by the blood and the angle at which his head sits that he's dead, but I crawl toward him anyway. The cyclist I swerved to miss runs up, talking on his cell phone to 911. The streetlight I hit creaks as it shifts

toward the ground back behind me. If I wasn't drunk, I would have noticed that Gabriel never put his seatbelt on. If I wasn't drunk, I would have seen the biker earlier. I could have slowed down, or taken some other action instead of just jerking the wheel to the right. But I was drunk, and I killed Gabriel. And by the time the day was over, I was in the hospital,

dying myself while doctors and nurses tried to fix me. At least, I think I was dying. For all I know, I'm in a coma now, reliving the day over and over. Maybe I'll wake up, maybe not. Are you okay? Gabriel says from where he sits in my office. You're crying. Fine, I say, turning away and wiping my eyes.

My heart jumps into my throat, and I listen hard for the sounds of boots in the hallway. Unsure if this is enough of a deviation to bring them. After a few moments, I compose myself and tell Gabriel it's time to leave. We're going to see a movie and hit an arcade. Gabriel is excited as we get into my car. After 15 minutes of driving, we're approaching the stretch of road where it happened. My hands are sweaty, gripping the steering wheel tight. My eyes filled with tears again as I grit my teeth.

Not much further now. No, I say, pulling over into a fast food restaurant's parking lot. I can't do it. I look at Gabriel, who sits with a slack expression. Police lights swirl behind me. A cruiser has appeared out of nowhere. Police officers quickly approach on both sides of the SUV. I can see the one on the right in the mirror, and I think I recognize her. There's something about her face that's frustratingly familiar. I just can't place it. A knock on my window startles me. I step out of the car, putting my hands behind my back. The cops say nothing.

One of them cuffs me, and the other one comes around. Her face no longer familiar to me. They transport me to the police station without a word. They've left Gabriel in my SUV. It's not like it matters. Everyone but me seems to be an NPC in this world. For all I know, they disappear whenever I'm not around. The jail cell is small and smelly and uncomfortable.

There's no mattress, just a concrete slab for a... bed. They've taken my belt and my shoelaces and everything else I could possibly use to kill myself. And they've left the cuffs on. I could try to smack my head into the wall or the concrete slab, but doing it hard enough to make it count would be nearly impossible. I'd have to do it repeatedly. Cracking my head open before the cops came in to stop me would be the trick. And it's amazing what your body will do to keep you safe. Believe me, I've tried. So I sit in the jail cell, waiting. I spend the time thinking about what I could do to stop the cycle, the loop.

There's a reason I'm living this day over and over again. There must be something I'm missing, something I did or didn't do on the day that would make all the difference. I've tried ensuring Gabriel wears his seatbelt. I've tried cancelling with his mother. I've tried calling in sick. I've even tried hurting myself at work on purpose. so I have to go to the hospital. I've tried not drinking one or both drinks. I've tried taking a different route, driving slower, and even having an Uber pick us up from the office. None of it

works. I've brutally analyzed myself and found that I am sorry for killing Gabriel. Of course I am. It tears me apart. I've been selfish most of my life. I realize that. But every time I change my day to do something for other people, the cops come. come after me. I gave all my savings away to a charity one day, but it made no difference. We still crashed. Gabriel still died. There's no woman in my life, no relationship in which I could find true love. I've called everyone I've ever conceivably wronged in my nearly 40 years of life, apologizing and asking for forgiveness. Most of my trespasses are little things. I'm not a great guy, but I'm not a bad guy either. I've led a pretty normal life. I had some wild times in college,

but who didn't? I can't think of anything that would make me deserve such a hell. I'm missing something. It's the only answer, something right under my nose. I grow drowsy thanks to the booze and the constant strain I'm under. Sitting on the concrete slab and leaning back against the wall, I close my eyes. That hauntingly familiar woman's face floats in my mind's eye. She's important somehow. I've seen her face every time the police have grabbed me, or attempted to grab me, is important.

But I've looked for her, thinking that I passed her on the street on the way to work. Maybe I had a chance to stop something terrible from happening to her, but I didn't. Or she works at Burleson Chemical, and I somehow influenced the course of her life. I've explored these possibilities before, to no avail. Yet, I know I've seen her face before.

She's young and pretty, probably in her early twenties. She has an innocent face, big brown eyes, and a petite nose over a perpetually smiling mouth. I know her, somehow. A snarling sound erupts. My stomach knots, and I become nauseous with dread. My eyes shoot open. and I find that I'm not in the jail cell any longer. I'm in a circle of dim light,

surrounded by inky, preternatural darkness. I'm still sitting on a concrete slab, my feet on a concrete floor, but the rest of the cell is gone. No, it's not midnight yet, I say. It can't be, but it is. Another snarl sounds from the darkness. Two glowing amber eyes appear,

moving as the creature approaches through the lightless curtain around me. A grinning snout appears in the circle of light. Its leathery skin, scarred with different shades of gray. The amber eyes join the snout in the light, followed by the rest of the creature's head. Two curving horns come out of the beast's head, where ears would warmly be.

The rest of the demon comes into the light. Long, contorted arms with overly large hands, drag across the floor. Its torso is peppered with knife hilts. The blades buried deep in its flesh. Fowl-smelling yellow fluid seeps from around the knives. Its legs fold backward at the knees, and then forward again at the ankles. The muscles there bulging against the skin.

Bone growths emerge here and there across its body. The clawed feet look like they belong to a dinosaur. The creature's snout falls open and a whip-like tongue rolls out on the moon. wave of putrid breath. The tongue splits near the end like a snake's. I look up at the demon, unable to do anything but breathe in shallow gasps. The tongue shoots out at me. The two tips, piercing my eyes like thick needles. I scream out at the blinding pain just as one of its hands comes up and grabs me around the waist, lifting me up and squeezing, shuddering my hips like poorly made pottery. The most terrible images flood my brain. Images of a billion people

tortured by this creature, interspersed with the vision of Gabriel, mind broken on the road, and the occasional flash up the young woman's face. I can feel all their pain, their fear, their regret and guilt and dread, even as my own pain builds to a crescendo and stays there for hours or days or weeks. Other demons move like wraiths from the blackness, taking their turns with me, feeding off my screams and my whimpering pleas for respite. through death. Time becomes a joke. There's only never-ending pain. Nothing else. Nothing else but the regret that I didn't kill myself this time. I should have. The insistent buzzing of an alarm clock pulls me out of an eternity of torture. I open my eyes, revealing a wall in my bedroom.

My phone vibrates on the nightstand as the alarm goes off. I let it continue buzzing, only reaching a shaking hand out once I realize it isn't some cruel trick. The torture is over, for now. I get another chance to live the worst day of my life over again. This should seem like a well-earned vacation after what I've been through, but it doesn't. A different sort of dread constricts my bowels. I have to get up and go through the motions again, so I do. I'm driving to work, going over and over the same thoughts and memories I've gone over countless times. I'm coming up on a bridge over a busy highway when the futility of it all presses down on me. My foot slams down on the gas pedal, and the needle quickly creeps up towards 70 miles an hour.

I jerk the wheel to the right, aiming directly at the edge of the concrete barrier where it curves up from the ground. My SUV runs up the side of the barrier, launching into the air and spinning slowly on its axis as it sails out toward the traffic rushing past below. I come down roof first onto the cab of a semi-truck in a blast of shattering glass and grinding metal. I wake up in my bed to my buzzing alarm. I shut the alarm off and close my eyes. Wishing it all away, sleep crowds in. I wake up to the sound of tires screeching outside my house. I've slept in long enough to mess with the important parts of my day. My front door smashes in, just as I scramble out of bed and into the bathroom,

slamming the door. I grab one of my disposable razors and start struggling to get one of the tiny blades out. When I hear them getting closer, I realize there's no more time. I punch the mirror as hard as I can, shattering the glass. I grab a large shard with my bleeding hand and drag it across my throat. They bust the bathroom door open, but it's too late. Bloods, pours out of the wound in my neck, soaking my torso and making me warm from the outside as I get cold from the inside. I wake up in my bed to my buzzing alarm. You would think killing yourself would get easier the more you do it. But it doesn't. If anything, it gets harder. It takes emotional and physical energy. I can't do it again. Not yet. So I get out of bed and take my shower. I drive to

getting donuts on the way. On my lunch break, I decided to continue searching for people I might have wronged. I've covered all the major ones, but maybe there's someone else. Maybe the young woman whose face I keep seeing isn't a person I've interacted with in recent years, but one I knew back in my college days. I quickly find a website that offers to find college alumni from any university for a fee. I pay the fee without a second thought and fill in the information. The website does its thing and then brings up a list of my graduating class. It also lists a bunch of news stories from NAU around that time. I scroll through the names first, seeing if any of them jump out at me.

I recognize several names, but they're people I've already contacted, or those I had little interaction with. When I scroll down to the news stories, my heart jumps as I read the fifth one down. Police charge two men with the rape and murder. with the rape and murder of a young local woman. There's a flicker of memory that surfaces with the headline. My hand is shaking so badly I have to concentrate to hover the mouse over the link.

When I do click on it, I'm taken to an old, archived news page from the Flagstaff Sun newspaper. The piece features a full-color picture of her pretty young woman with big brown eyes, an innocent face, and the lips that curl up naturally, giving her a happy look. The caption underneath says her name was Shelly Warburton. After reading the headline, seeing her photo brings it all flooding back. I was at a house party off campus toward the end of my senior year. The house was off in the woods on the outskirts of town. The long driveway was packed with cars,

and there were a ton of people dancing and drinking and talking and acting a fool both inside and outside. It was late, and I'd been drinking pretty heavily when I stumbled away from the house and into the woods, thinking I was going to vomit. I soon found myself far away from the house, heading to where I thought the residential road was. There was no reason for me to be out there. I was just wandering around, stupid drunk. But when I pushed through some bushes near the road, I saw some movement off to my right, down in the wide but shallow drainage ditch that was hidden by bushes on both sides.

There were two men and a young woman there. The woman, Shelly Warburton, was on her back in the ditch, with one man leaning over her on his knees. The other man was standing to the side, looking down. Both their heads moved to me as I stepped through the bushes. I looked at them, and right away I knew something bad was happening. Even through my drunken haze, it seemed wrong. The men were considerably older than the young woman.

Nothing inherently wrong with that, I guess, as long as everyone's legal and consenting. But then I saw Shelly's face, and she didn't look like she was in any state to consent to anything. She was rolling her head slowly from side to side, mumbling. Her eyes were half closed. Her lips pursed together when they weren't moving. I wobbled there, looking at the two men. Whoa, I said stupidly. What's going on?

Don't mind us. The man standing said, We're just trying to get our niece home safely. She's had a bit much. I just stared, trying to compute his words through my reduced IQ. Come on, Dave, the guy said to the man on all fours. Let's get her up. They each took an arm and lifted her up.

I noticed she was wearing a skirt and that it fell back down over her legs when they lifted her up. I wondered why it had been up in the first place. A bad feeling took hold, adrenaline shooting through my body. I walked across the shallow drainage ditch and threw the other bushes to see that the men had a car there on the road. They were struggling to get the limp girl into the car while she murmured at them. The two men kept glancing back at me.

I knew they weren't her uncles. I knew they were about to rape her when I came through the bushes. And I knew I was the only one who could stop it. There was no one else around. no cars passing on the road, no people wandering out this far from the party. I stood there, frozen with a combination of fear and drunken stupidity. And when they finally got her legs into the car and were shutting the door, She seemed to have a moment of clarity.

She said, No! Just before they slammed the door. One of them looked at me, then got into the front seat. The other one tracked around the back of the car and opened the driver's door. He looked back at me. And he smiled. As the car started away from me, I saw Shelley's head pop up in the back window, big eyes wide as she looked back at me.

Then the man in the front passenger seat reached back and yanked her head down. I stood there in the road until a car coming up behind me honked. The driver yelling at me to get out of the road. I walked back to the party, still drunken body, but sober in mind. and I never told anyone about it. This was 2004, and I had my first cell phone. But I didn't pull it out to call 911. I didn't share what I'd seen with anyone, ever.

I was ashamed. I'd been too shit-scared to do anything about it, and those two men knew it. They took one look at me and knew that I didn't have it in me to stop them. As the days passed, I convinced myself, I'd seen it wrong. It really was a couple of caring uncles helping their niece out, I told myself, purposely avoiding the news until my graduation wasn't difficult. Smartphones weren't around then, so it was easy to avoid the headlines. Soon, I was gone from Flagstaff, gone from that campus

and those people, and I managed to bury the memory, the shame. I buried it deep, but now it's back, making me sick. I can't bear to read the article. Instead, I close my eyes, wondering what I can do to help myself out of the hell I'm in. I'm not reliving that night over and over again. So how am I supposed to break the cycle? What am I supposed to do?

It makes no sense. You're not supposed to do anything, a woman says, her voice sweet and angelic. I open my eyes and see that I'm no longer in my office. I'm still sitting in my chair. but in a bright white room that seems to go on forever. Shelley Warburton stands across for me, wearing the same black skirt and white halter top she was wearing the night I saw her.

I'm sorry, I tell her. I really am. I should have done something about it. I should have stopped them. Yes, she says. You should have. Why didn't you? I...

I don't know. Because I'm a coward. I've always been a coward. Shelly nods. She stares at me, smiling, and not saying anything for a long time. So, is that it? I ask. Is that why I'm here? To remember that I wronged you?

Shelly smiles. The white room suddenly goes dark, all except for a circle of light encompassing Shelly and me. No, you really don't understand this, do you? You're not here to change anything. You can't change anything. There is no secret key to getting past this, no epiphany that will set you free. This is hell, Jared Basham. You get to live the worst day of your life over and over again.

But now we'll be able to use this memory, your memory of me, to make things a little worse for you. We'll continue to dig up your guilt, your worst fears, and your greatest inadequacies. There is no escape. Your choices in life have brought you here, and here you'll stay. No, I say, feeling the little glimmer of hope I had dwindling away. I don't deserve this. I didn't kill you.

I didn't rape you. And killing Gabriel was an accident. I didn't mean it. I didn't mean any of it. Shelly's face cracks open as she steps toward me, the craggy, terrible face of a demon ripping through her skin. And what about all the good work you've done during your career? She says.

Her voice changing just as her body does, going from angelic to demonic. What about all the cancer, the poisoned water, the birth defects, what about your testimony to Congress, your lies? How much money did they pay you to uphold their lies? If you think you wouldn't have to pay for all the lives you've helped destroy. Now fully transformed. The creature pins me down, pressing me against the concrete slab that's suddenly there.

It digs right into my arm with its razor-sharp claws, then proceeds to rip out the bones in my arm, one at a time as I scream. Pain becomes all. Memories of that night play over and again in my head, taunting me, while the demon rips my bones out of my body. with agonizing slowness. Time becomes a joke. I teeter on the edge of insanity,

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