Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep - I Wanted to Become a Famous Killer. Then I Met a Real One.

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

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I'm sure the first thing they'll get wrong is my apartment. They'll shoot it in the morning, and they'll get the light wrong because the light only does the thing I like at this hour in November. The crew will probably be there in July, with sweat on their cameras and sea stands. They'll do a slow pan across the bookshelf, and they'll linger on the Valano and the Zabalt, and the Patty Smith memoirs, and the move past the Pynchon too fast because nobody has have a red pension. Even me. They'll show the typewriter. They'll show the bar cart. They'll show the framed saw lighter print I bought at the freeze fair in 2023, with money that wasn't mine.

They will not show the kit yet, though they may allude to it. The title sequence would have just finished, fading to black. We'd begin to fade back in. There's a baritone voiceover, possibly Morgan Freeman, but dialed back half a notch, so it would have been a little. We'd begin to fade back. it's not so overtly him. The camera tracking through the front room. Asher Van Sickle grew up between Greenwich and Manhattan. Morgan would start. The only child of a hedge fund manager and a woman who served on three boards.

By 28, he was living alone in a Cobble Hill brownstone left to him by his maternal grandmother. A fact, he rarely volunteered. The light is doing the thing it does in November, even though it's October now, because the weather has been generous to me. lately, which I take to mean something. I make a pour over with beans I picked up recently from De Bacian. I drink it standing at the Kitchen Island, then open the journal to the entry I was working on, which is two sentences long. I read them to myself. The city is alive with violence, and no one is paying attention. They will be. I closed the journal. I've arranged my bookshelf by spine

color in the section that faces the front room and to buy author in the section that doesn't. The saw lighter print is hung so that anyone in the reading chair has to half turn to see it, which is a choice I made because I read somewhere that you should make people work for the things you love. I don't remember where I read it. I may have made it up. Either way, it's true. I sit in the reading chair, I open the journal, then close it again. Back to the documentary.

Friends and acquaintances described Asher as private, even with holding, He kept his real life, said a friend only known as Jay. Like in a separate room? There is, in fact, a separate room. It's my bedroom. The kit lives under the bed in an ESOP shopping bag, because the bag is an olive green that photographs well, and because the ritual of unpacking matters,

and the ritual is better if it starts with the rustle of paper. I bring it out and spread everything on the duvet. The Polaroid first. From the late 80s, with a brown leather strap I sourced separately and loaded with film I purchased secondhand from a flea market. I haven't taken a photograph with it, so I don't know if the film is any good. There's also a knife, a buoy I had made by a man on Etsy. The handle is wrapped leather with an angel wing tooled into the grip. My idea is execution.

I asked him what kind of person commissions a buoy knife with an angel wing on it, and he said, A guy with a story, and I have thought about that sentence almost daily since. There's the moleskin, of course. Also, olive green, large, soft cover. On the front, in fat black Sharpie, I wrote, If You Must Know. Inside, 11 pages. Some of it is rather derivative of Camus, some of Legati. A bit as dialogue I flat out. stole from a conversation I heard at the table beside me at a hinge date. The rest of the genius, the madness, is mine. Or close to mine.

Then there are the gloves. Lambskin, black, never worn. And finally, there's a battered mass market paperback copy of In Cold Blood. I have underlined the passages that move me and starred the passages the documentary will linger on, or the podcast will read aloud if licensing allows. I look at everything spread out on the duvet, my inner world. I smile. Moments like these are fleeting, and I know I won't get them back.

The front door downstairs squeaks open. I don't startle. I have heard this door open every Tuesday at 10 for seven years. My housekeeper is named Rosa, and she will probably also want to be anonymous in the show about my life and crimes. So pretend you don't actually know her name. I have about two minutes before she makes it upstairs to strip the linens from my bed. I pack the kit. I pack it well. Polaroid, knife, moleskin, gloves, the paperback, in that order.

Just in case today's the day it is found, God forbid. The bag goes back into the ESOP bag. The ESOP bag goes back under the bed. I push it with my foot. I straighten the duvet. I'm not afraid of being caught. I am not afraid of jail either. or my mother, or anything that could be done to me.

What I am, in the two minutes between the door opening and her footsteps reaching the second floor landing, is livid that the scene could go wrong. She cannot find the kit, not because she would judge me, she would not. She is a woman who has cleaned my underwear without comment for seven years. But because she has no role in this, she is not in the credits, she is not in the show. Her finding the kit would be like the boom mic dipping into frame in the cold open. A continuity error and a story I have spent my life storyboarding. I am on the stairs when she reaches the landing.

I say good morning. She says good morning back to me. No one suspects a thing. I walk to the cafe. It's called Hemingways. I have been a regular for several years, and the regularity is not a vibe I cultivate. But the regularity is, by now, mine. I order my usual cortado and a slice of olive oil cake and sit at the corner table.

I take out the journal first and set it on the table. I take out my copy of Cormac McCarthy Suttery, which I'm reading because it's one of his books no one has read. Blood Meridian is fine, but I found the necrophilia in his previous novel, Child of God, quite compelling. I think I could go that far. I know I could, actually. I set the book cover up on the table. Cut to Hemingway's exterior shot. Golden Hour. Ambient noise of cars and a passing siren. Cross dissolved to interior. The corner table. Asher in profile, the book visible. He was in here every day.

The owner of Hemingways, a woman I'd interacted with numerous times, but never knew was the owner, tells the camera. You don't pay attention to the regulars until you have to. Another woman I know slightly. She lives on my block. She's formerly a producer at HBO, comes in and notices me while in line. She raises her eyebrow in the way that, in our exact demographic, means I see you, but you don't have to come over here. I raise mine back. She gets her drinking leaves. I write in the journal. She is not seeing anymore. None of them are. A man comes in with a child on his shoulders. The child is maybe three. The man orders an oat milk, latte, and an apple juice. The child looks at me. The child holds my eye for six seconds,

maybe seven. I look away first. I read in the journal. Children sense it. A few years ago, we decided to launch No Sleep Coffee. We already had the audience and the concept, but we needed an easy way for people to purchase our products. That's why we went with Shopify. What surprised me the most was how straightforward it was to create the storefront and list our items. We got our coffee online in no time and could focus on what we love, dropping new blends, expanding the brand, and engaging with our customers. And when a customer is ready to buy, the checkout process makes all the difference. Shopify's checkout is super seamless, and returning buyers can have their details saved for quick and effortless repeat orders. For us, that translated

to spending less time stressing over the site, and more time growing the business and connecting with even more customers. With Shopify, nothing stands between your idea and a business, so go make it one. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash DNS. Start your free trial at Shopify.com slash DNS. If you're into horror with a heavy dose of sci-fi, classified experiments, and things humanity was never meant to understand, check out my other podcast, the SCP experience.

Each episode pulls you into the hidden world of the SCP Foundation, where dangerous anomalies are studied, contained, and sometimes unleashed. These aren't just scary stories. They're classified nightmares. Click here to listen now or search for the SCP experience wherever you get your podcasts. Dinner is in the West Village at an Italian restaurant on Hudson that Rob has chosen. Rob is a litigator. He bills ours.

He has, on his fourth finger, a wedding ring I have not yet processed, because I'm I missed the wedding. I was at a rider's residency in Marfa I had paid for myself, or rather, my mother had paid for it, admittedly, and I had not gotten on the plane to Boston for what would turn out to be the wedding of my oldest friend. He did not seem upset at the time. He doesn't seem upset now. Jackson is already there, on his second Negrani, a glass of water in front of him that he is not drinking. Jackson works at Stripe. He has a son named Henry. I have seen the son once on a FaceTime, and I had said, He looks like you.

And Jackson had said, He looks like Laura. And I had said, He looks like both of you. And Jackson had said nothing. We hug, we sit, we order. Rob orders for the table. Because Rob orders for the table now.

The wine is a barolo. The waiter is good. Still writing that book? Jackson says, looking at me and not asking. I have been waiting for this. I prepared three answers earlier on the subway, a flippant one, a sincere one, a wounded one, and I use none of them. It's coming along, I say. Yeah?

Rob says, taking a sip of his drink. Yeah. You know? Rob says. My buddy at work was telling me you can just list your own books on Amazon now, KPD or KDP or something. I know this, and hate that anyone can have a book now. I opened my mouth and stop, because what was about to come out of it was so past Rob's comprehension. That's kind of sick, Jackson says. I had forgotten he was there.

Yeah, I say. Yeah, I guess. Rob says. Cut to Rob. Rob, 10 years older, being interviewed by someone who sounds like the girl on Rotten Mango. He's sitting in front of a microphone in a chair in front of a softly lit window in his Brooklyn Brownstone. He's not really looking at anything while he speaks. He was the smartest of us growing up, Rob says. I just had no idea. Back at the table, the food comes. I push the orequiette around my plate.

Jackson notices. He doesn't say anything. He pours me more wine. How's your mom? Jackson asks. She's still going somehow, I tell him. That's good. Yep.

He nods. He doesn't push. This is the thing about Jackson. He does the Lewis the Row thing. He asks one question and waits, and the silence is supposed to be the second question. And most of the time I tell him things I haven't told anyone, because the silence is good at its job. Tonight, the silence does not work. I change the topic to regain control.

I'm thinking about getting out of the city for a few days, a verbo or something, to finish a draft. That's a good idea, Rob's. says where Jackson says upstate somewhere where upstate I haven't booked it yet some of the listing when you do Rob says always looking for a new spot to escape to sure I don't think anyone would see it coming if I killed Jackson it would be a cool full circle moment for the documentary like I came back to where I started he's an ancillary character in all of this well I have to be up at six Rob announces we split the check. Outside, on Hudson, Jackson hugs me longer than he should. He says into my

shoulder, Hey, Ash. Yeah. You good? I'm good. Yeah? Yeah, man. I'm good, Jacks. He lets me go. He gets in an Uber. Rob has already gotten in his. I stand on Hudson Street alone for a long time and consider going to another bar to write, but realize that would be a fruitless. endeavor. The moment is two on the nose. I know better. I walk to the subway. I'm mindlessly swiping whenever I have service on the F-train, and I match with Nicole. Her profile says she is 27 and works in publishing. Her photos are good. One of them is her at a bar I recognize but cannot place. Her opening line, when I send mine, is fast and dry and slightly mean. I write five drafts in the notes app, and I send the third. We move quickly. By Bergen Street, we are talking about a drink.

By Carroll Street, I am suggesting Wiley's, which is in Astoria, which is in Queens, which is not on the way to anything for either of us. And which is therefore, I tell myself, a suggestion that signals, I am a man willing to leave Brooklyn for a woman. She says, I like Wiley's. She says, tomorrow? I say, tomorrow. I put the phone down on the seat next to me, and I look at my reflection in the dark window across the aisle. And the man in the window looks back. And the man in the window is, I tell myself, a man on the precipice of a thing. Smash cut to surveillance footage, low angle, 4K, upscaled from 480P, the entrance to Wiley's at 240129th Street.

A man in a charcoal turtleneck walks in. The timestamp reads 7.43 p.m. A graphic across the bottom of the frame, Wednesday, October 23rd, the night before. The voiceover is back. Investigators would later piece together where Asher Van Sickle was in the hours before. I decide I'll wear a charcoal turtleneck, dark wool trousers, and Margiela boots to my date with Nicole at Wiley's. I do my hair like I haven't done my hair.

It's a shaggy mullet that looks simultaneously effortless and calculated. I'm wearing thin gold rim. glasses that look like Dahmer's. I leave the kit at home under my bed, because when I convince Nicole to come back here, I lead her upstairs and the kit will already be ready. From then on, the cold open of episode one will write itself. I leave and get on the train. I grab a seat and think about Nicole. I think about how Nicole, if the night goes the way it should go, will be the enticing incident. She doesn't know this yet. Then she will. will. Slow push in on a man at the end of a bar, a martini in front of him. There is a simple

graphic in the left lower third that reads, Asher van Sickle, 28. The voiceover would not say anything yet. It would let the man sit. Wiley's is warmer than I expected. Brick walls, dim, a corner booth where two old men are laughing about nothing. The walls are hung with sheet music. I have opinions about this and file them away. I sit at the bar for now and order the umami martini, because it is the strangest thing on the menu. It's vodka with fermented tomato, parmesan, and basil. Ordering it will signal to Nicole that I am a man unafraid of the strange thing. She walks in shortly after eight. She's wearing what she is wearing in her photos, which is, and I will admit this only here, not what I expected. I expected her to dress for me, for the occasion, for the

life-altering encounter she was about to experience. She has dressed for herself. A black sweater, jeans, a coat, she does not take off all the way. We hug, sort of. She orders a Guinness. That's a choice. Strong opener, she says, looking at my martini. Umami martini. I smile. Wanted to try something new. Is it good? She asks, also smiling. Not really, but I think that's the point.

She tries the martini and scrunches her face and disgust. Oh my God, that's diabolical, she says. Guess that's why I like it. I guess that means it's made for people like you. Nicole giggles. I like that. So we talk. She tells me about a book she is.

editing, a memoir by a woman who once worked at the Strand. She is dry, exact, more present than she was on Tinder. I don't interrupt her, well aware of the security camera stealthily placed in the corner of the room. I think the miniseries will need this footage to establish more context about the night. Nicole finally stops talking. I'm sorry, I'm just yapping about whatever right now. What do you do for fun? She asks. In that moment, front of her. I can't think of anything I do for fun. Part of the groundwork I've been laying for my character is that I do nothing that truly brings me joy. I write, I decide. Yuck, that's not fun, Nicole says sarcastically. Not really, but it can be sometimes. Sure, she says. She sips her Guinness.

Then I sip my umami martini and try my hardest to not dry Eve. Someone at the other end of the bar, behind me, gets Nicole's attention. Her eyes had been wandering the last few minutes, like she was trying to place someone. She excuses herself and goes over, and they hug and talk and laugh. I decide now would be a good time to look up at the security camera. Just hold its gaze for a moment. I think about sawing Nicole's head off with the buoy knife, and believe it is giving me a haunting aura from the camera's point of view. If you're into horror with a heavy dose of sci-fi, classified experiments, and things humanity was never meant to understand. Check out my other podcast, the SCP Experience. Each episode pulls you into the hidden world of the SCP Foundation,

where dangerous anomalies are studied, contained, and sometimes unleashed. These aren't just scary stories. They're classified nightmares. Click here to listen now, or search for the SCP experience wherever you get your podcasts. Nicole finally comes back. I've given up on the Umami, Martini. So what are you right? She asks. I had been patiently waiting for her to ask me this question. It's like a character study, I say, trying to hide my excitement behind a facade of disinterest.

Oh, cool. Nicole says, clearly losing interest in the date by the second now. Who's the character? Well, he's a guy. Is this like slice of life or a specific guy? Who's the guy? I don't have an answer for her. I do have an answer. Just not one I'm willing to give her. This is the mystique I enjoy so much. Before I can say anything, Nicole chimes in with.

I'll say it now. I don't have any say in who or what gets published. She laughs. I just clean up prose all day. AI could be doing all this shit. And I think going through a publisher is kind of dumb now anyway. Did you know you can just self-publish on Amazon? It's super easy. station peters out as soon as she finishes her beer. She looks at her phone and says she has to be up early. I almost let her go, but decide it must happen tonight. We could get one more somewhere, I say. There's a bar I like in Cobble Hill. In Brooklyn, it's not as far as it sounds. It's pretty far. I could... I don't say the rest of the sentence. The rest of the sentence was get us a car. She watches me not say it, and I briefly want to

if she was hoping I would say it. Well, it was nice meeting you, Asher. She says, and she means it. We split the bill. Nicole insists. She walks out before me. Out on the sidewalk, on 29th Street, she gives me a small wave from about 10 feet away.

She turns and walks around the corner, disappearing into the night. The voiceover would be here. It would say something about how Asher, 28, stood on the sidewalk of an unfamiliar street in a borough he had never visited and considered for the first time how much of the world had been kind to him while he was not paying attention. He'd find the line. The director would workshop it with him. I crossed the street to get on the subway, but choose to walk past it. I tell myself I need to gather material. The street thins. I find myself two blocks from the bar,

and then four and then six. The blocks are residential. Apartment buildings, parked cars, a bodega. There is a man asleep against the wall of the bodega. He is wrapped in a sleeping bag. There is a tarp under him. There is a small cart next to him with a pillow and a plastic bag, knotted at the top. His face is turned to the wall. He is breathing. I can see his shoulder rise. I stop. I look at him. I look up at the street. The deli is closing. The man inside is sweeping. He has not noticed me.

There is no one else on the block. A car passes than nothing. I look back at the man. This could work. This would be, I think it, before I can stop thinking about it. This would be the perfect cold open. The real one. The one that retroactively makes the surveillance footage from Wiley's mean something.

Investigators piecing it together later. The director finding a through line. The walk from the bar traced, street by street. The first one. The first one is always the messiest. Every doc says so. Every podcast says so. And that's the texture they go for.

I take a step closer. The man does not move. I take another step. I have nothing on me. No knife, no gloves. My kit is at home under my bed. I could use my hands, though. I lift them in the street light to see if they are the right hands

for it. And they are someone else's hands attached to my arms. I cannot make them do anything. And I am not breathing. And I am aware of the sound my own jacket makes against itself when I move. And I am aware that I have been aware of the jacket sound for some time. And I am aware that being aware of the jacket sound is not what a man on the brink is aware of. And I do not know how long I have been standing here. And the man on the tarp is closer than he was. Or I am closer to him. I cannot tell which. The man shifts in his sleep. He makes a sound that is not a word and is not a moan. A sound like a child makes.

His shoulder turns toward me, and his eyes are still closed, and the sleeping bag rustles. I take a step back. I take another. I am twenty feet from him when I turn around. I walked the way I walked when I was a child being told not to run by the pool in the Hamptons. At the corner, I open my wallet. I have eight twenties. I go back and do not look at his face.

not look at his face. I lay two of the twenties on the tarf near his cart, waded with the stone I pick up from the gutter. Then I reconsider and give him the other six. I walk to the train. On the platform, I try to write the journal entry in my head. The first line is, I could not. No good, I take it out. The next line is, I am not a... I have no definitive conclusion to the sentence, so I abandon it. By the time the train comes in, I've got, I let a man live, and I hold it in my head all the way across the bridge like a sacred jewel. I sit and look at my hands. I then look at the dark window across the aisle. The man in the window does not look back. I leave Friday morning for the verbo I told Rob and Jackson about.

I rent a car, because I do not own a car. I think about owning a car the entire drive up. A man my age should own a car. I feel I'm not like other men. The absence of a car could be a quiet failure of mind the podcast series could latch on to. Last podcast on the left may make fun of me for this. The documentary would focus on the drive itself. Maybe an aerial shot following a car moving north. The man with Morgan Freeman's voice would say something about how Asher Van Sicle

took to the woods to begin what he wanted to do from the start. At a red light outside Hudson, I checked the rear view. My mullet was perfectly styled. My glasses still oozed and effortless sleaze. The look was a choice, and the choice was correct. I stop at a gas station and purchase three things. A bottle of water, a bag of almonds, and a New Yorker. Because I want the New Yorker to be on the kitchen counter of the cabin

when the investigators photograph it. I pay in cash. I get to the verbo at 1.30. The driveway is gravel. The host, a woman named Susan, has left a key under a clay frog by the door. The clay frog is a touch I appreciate. Inside, the cabin is clean, wood floors, a wood-burning stove, a loft bed up a ladder, a kitchenette with a Mr. Coffee on the counter, and a French press in the cupboard, which I take to mean Susan had instincts. I take the New Yorker out of the back and place it on the the kitchen counter, centered on the wood grain seam. I unpack my kit on the kitchen table and lay

everything out in order. The Polaroid first, this time with intention, because I am going to use it. I photographed the kit. I hold the print by the white border the way you are supposed to, and watch it develop. Then I prop the camera on a stack of books, framed so the kit is just visible over my shoulder, and find the self-timer. I do not smile. I look, slightly, slightly off camera, slightly down. The way I have practiced in mirrors I will not now name. By the fourth take, I have a frame I would license for the cover art. On the white border, I write, evil intelligence. I open the journal and write, Day one, the work has begun. I know I will be caught quickly. It isn't 1989, which means everything has to count. I attempt

to draw Nicole's decapitated head in the margin the way Pat Bateman does at work, but I'm no good at drawing. I consider going into the woods to drag down some small animal to slaughter, but recall that animal mutilation is something killers do as children, so it would make no sense for me to start now. I take an afternoon coffee out to the back porch. In the far distance, through the trees, I think I see a bear moving slowly toward the house. It is standing upright, taking a few steps and then stopping for a long time before taking another. I go inside and make dinner. Farrow, a jar of artichokes, a bottle of Etna Raso I had been saving for an occasion

I would recognize when I saw it. The occasion I have decided is this. I pour two glasses and leave the second one on the counter, because rotten mangoes will need to wonder about the second glass. It's dark by six. I light the lamp by the leather couch and the candle Susan left for guests. The cabin is one room with a loft. The cabin is mine.

I draft three new pages. They are better than anything I have written this year. They're about a man who knows what he is and what he is for. About the moment a man crosses from preparing to being, and they are clean. At the top I write, for inclusion. I think about Nicole turning the corner on 29th. I write, She did not know who she was leaving. I read it aloud.

She did not know who she was leaving. That's good shit. I take the Bowie knife from the kit. I hold it the way I had thought about holding it at Wiley's. When Nicole had been at the other end of the bar with the man, and I had been looking at the security camera in the corner I wanted to look at me. The knife is heavier than I remember. The wind picks up outside.

A branch hits the roof. I don't jump because I am a man on the brink now. If you're into horror with a heavy dose of sci-fi, classified experiments, and things humanity was never meant to understand, check out my other podcast, The SCP Experience. Each episode pulls you into the hidden world of the SCP Foundation, where dangerous anomalies are studied, contained, and sometimes unleashed. These aren't just scary stories.

They're classified nightmares. Click here to listen now, search for the SCP experience wherever you get your podcasts. An hour goes by, and I am washing the wine glasses when the front door opens. I think for a moment that I have not closed it, well, I think for another that the wind has done it. Then I see, in the reflection of the kitchen window, a man stepping into the cabin. He isn't, Susan. He is not anyone I know.

He is just a man. He's wearing a black jacket. He's gripping a rusted tire iron. I turn around. Hey! I say. He looks at me. He looks at my glasses.

He looks at my hair. He looks back at me. He shows nothing. I'm just a man in this home. Hey! I say again, because the first, hey, did not register. He does not say anything. There's somebody in here, I say.

He looks at the room. He looks at the leather couch. He looks at the bottle of wine on the counter. He looks at the key. kit on the table. The Polaroid, the knife, the moleskin, the gloves, the in cold blood. His eyes pass over all of it and then come back to me. He doesn't seem to know who or what he's looking at. He finally speaks in a gruff tone. Give me your wallet. The documentary, I think. I am thinking this in this kitchen. With this man in the cabin, the editing crew needs to know how to

handle this. This beat is unexpected. My wallet's in my coat, I say. Where's the code? On the couch. He walks to the couch and picks up my coat. He searches the pockets. He finds the wallet and puts it in his pocket. Phone, he says. Right there. I point to the counter.

He takes it. Keys. In the bowl. By the door. He grabs the keys. He looks around the cabin one more time, and his eyes pass over the kit again. He doesn't seem to be aware of whom he has encountered.

Who he has crossed paths with. He keeps looking around the cabin. Hey, I say. He doesn't stop scanning the cabin. The man doesn't know what the hell he has wandered into tonight. This is where he can start. I think quickly. I have a lot of money.

I say, I can get more cash. I'm rich. I live in New York. Brooklyn. He turns to me. Intrigued now. The man takes a step toward me. Then another.

He tightens his grip on the tire iron. I grabbed the buoy knife. This is worth a lot. $4,000. You can have it. He takes one. more step toward me. He doesn't realize I'm going to disembowl him. I'm going to pull every inch of intestine out of him and dress the room in red and pink viscera. I will keep him alive for as

long as I can so that he can see me decorate the verbo with his insides. It's a nice knife, see? I also take a step forward, knife out. I wonder if Susan has a security camera in here somewhere, filming this interaction. They will need to censor the ensuing bloodshed, but that will be good for dramatic effect. I pretend to be an idiot. I turn the knife around, carefully holding it by the blade to reveal the angel wing on the handle. Look at that, carved by hand. The man raises an eyebrow. He looks at the knife, then at me. He smiles. What the fuck is that? It's a custom, one-of-a-kind knife, I explain. That looks like some hobby-lobby bullshit. He scoffs. No, it's a knife. In one swift motion, the tire iron shire.

shatters the bones in my hand into hundreds of little pieces. The knife flies across the room and actually gets stuck in the wall. My hand, my now useless hand, dangles helplessly while I cradle it in the other. What the fuck? I yell in my ugliest voice. He doesn't know what he's done. I take a step toward him in a blind fury, and the tire iron hits my shoulder. I crumple to the floor.

He hits me again on the back of my head, but I don't feel it. I only hear it. A hollow wet thud. This isn't how the Dateline special is supposed to go. I'm not a victim. I will not be the victim. I cannot be the victim. I am a killer.

The tire iron shatters my jaw. My eye immediately swells shut. I grab at the man's pant leg with my good hand. And he destroys that one too. I'm now writhing on the floor like a worm in the sun. The tire iron flattens my nose, and I feel blood explode all over my cheeks and chin. I have words, but I cannot physically make them.

I'm terrified now. I am no longer the subject. I'm not the darkness you stare into to better understand yourself. The voiceover is gone. There is no Morgan Freeman. No two-parter on Netflix. If I can escape, maybe they will interview me about this man. I tried dragging myself across the floor,

and the man digs the tire iron into the back of my knee, sending shockwaves through my entire leg. All I can smell now is copper in cinnamon. Must be a base note of the candle Susan left for me. He strikes me again. In the stomach this time, and I curl up. I'm not crying. No matter what you hear or what you see, I'm not crying.

This is just an involuntary reaction. With my one good eye, I see the man has turned his attention to the photo I took. Evil intelligence, he reads aloud before tossing it aside. What the fuck does that even mean? He strikes me again and again and again. I have no more pain left to feel because I am simply pain personified. That would be a good line for me to say when interviewed from the heart. hospital bed. I want my face to be shown on camera. I won't be backlit, won't be anonymous.

I want them to see me. I want Rob and Jackson and Nicole and my mom and all of you to see me for what I am. He's moved from my stomach back to my head. Each strikes squelches and squishes, and it's really quite visceral, but poetic. I wonder how this looks right now. I'm trying to remember every bit of this, so I have a story to tell. Tuning in, if you enjoyed the story, be sure to follow or subscribe and share the show with a fellow horror fan. I'll see you in the next one.