Scary Horror Stories by Dr. NoSleep - Night Jog

Episode Date: November 11, 2022

🎧 Check out The SCP Experience podcast here: https://spoti.fi/3juM1og 🎉 Ad-free bonus stories + exclusive uncensored animations: https://www.patreon.com/drnosleep 🎥 YouTube: https://youtube.com/c/DrNoSleep ✅ Send all advertising inquiries to: [e-mail] Author: John Beardify Check out more of his work Here: https://www.reddit.com/user/beardify/ New Book Release Here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QJXLHF4 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

Before the story, I would like to thank my three new patrons, Derek, Ban Alex, and Big Ben. If you'd like to support the podcast, head over to my Patreon page where you will receive ad-free episodes and new exclusive scary stories every week for just $5 a month. Link is in the description below. Now back to the story. I used to love going for long runs before dawn. There's something special about those odd hours between midnight and morning. the hushed rustling of the sycamore leaves, the golden glow of streetlights and the foggy dark, neon reflections, and ink-black oily buttles. Everyone you meet on the street at such an hour has a story.

From the laughing teenagers swaying on each other's shoulders to the couple arguing in front of an idling taxi. Everyone arrives at those pre-dawn hours with their own personal baggage. Everyone except me. I can't remember anything that happened before my 37th birthday. Even the years immediately after are blurry, like the view through a rainy window or the face of an acrylic portrait liquefied by paint thinner. George Taylor is the name on my passport, but I feel no special attachment to it, or to the town where I was supposedly born. When I visited, I didn't recognize anyone, and no one recognized.

recognized me. Standing in front of my parents' gravestones in the rain, I couldn't even recall what they might have looked like. Endless medical tests have only confirmed what I already know. My memory functions just fine from the piece that's missing. I'm honestly surprised by how little my lack of a past has impacted my life. Occasionally, while I'm chatting with the retirees in the gym locker room or placing my order with a cute girl at the bakery, I get this overwhelming sense of dread, like I've forgotten something terribly important. But then it passes. And when I smile, I know that no one sees behind my mask.

In fact, it's safe to say I led a quiet, enviable life. Until the man with his shaven head found me. I saw him for the first time on the metro, a sunken-eyed, scrawny figure, little more than a living. coat rack for an oversized gray jacket. There was no strength in the bird-like little hands he was using to grip the metal metro pole, but his knuckles were white with anger and his eyes. His eyes were black with hatred. Hatred of me. Why? How? I'd never seen the man before in my life. At least, not that I could remember. I got off the metro a few stops later, in the most crowded station I could find. I was far from my destination, but I knew the mass of people would

make me harder to follow. I took a circuitous route, sure that at any moment the shaven-headed man would grab my shoulder with one of those claw-like little hands, spin me around, and screamed something incomprehensible into my face. When I finally surfaced from those stuffy tunnels, however, I was alone. Ordinarily, when I'd lace up my jogging shoes and zip up my jacket for a pre-dawn run. I did so with a sort of lightness in my heart. Maybe that was because while I ran through the deserted streets, I was only focused on what I had in front of me. The echo of my footsteps on the concrete, my heartbeat pounding in my ears, the strange beauty of the sleeping city. I was living in the present while I ran. And my forgotten past didn't seem to matter at all.

and now the shaven-headed man had ruined that for me. Since our encounter in the metro, I just couldn't focus. The pre-dawn world is a world of shadows, and I imagined his scrawny form waiting in all of them. Instead of losing myself in the moment as I ran, I found myself wondering how it would happen. Would I turn a corner and find him there with that mad look in his eyes? Or would he be waiting at my door when I returned like,

a film noir villain, with a hat pulled down over his face and cigarette between his lips. And why did I feel like I knew him? Sometimes I think we make our worst fears come true, just by obsessing over them. I bent down to drink some water at the fountain in the park. Apart from the bronze statue of a war hero that rose eerily from the mist, I was alone. Or so I thought. As I straightened up and stretched, one of my headphones slipped out, and I heard footsteps running toward me. They didn't sound like the footfalls of a jogger or a hurrying worker late for their shift. They sounded like a berserk warrior charging the enemy. A formless dark shape moved closer through the fog.

I took off. Although I ran about five days a week, I was used to a gentle trot, not running for my life. My pursuer was close, so close I didn't dare to turn around. But I could tell they were out of shape. Their steps were ungainly, desperate, fueled by some strong emotion. Like hate. Soon, I heard them falling behind. Hey!

A breathless voice shouted the pre-dawn silence. Stop! I looked over my shoulder, but only saw a gloomy figure receding into the hazy darkness. I didn't stop. Not until I had two locked doors between myself and whoever was out there, whoever was hunting me. As I tried to scorch and scrub away my fear with a hot shower, an even more horrible realization occurred to me. The words the man had screamed at me weren't in English, yet I'd understood them. I didn't speak any other language as far as I knew.

I rested my head against the wet tile. What was happening to me? If I hadn't needed groceries so badly, I doubt I would have left my apartment for the rest of the day. Soon, however, anger overwhelmed my fear. Who was this stranger to disturb the rest of my well-deserved retirement? Why should I let him dictate my life? I'd confront him somewhere in public. And if he gave me a problem, well, that's what the police were for.

I let my imagination get the better of me. That was all. My brave thoughts disappeared when I turned to close the door of my apartment building and felt a bony arm slammed my neck against the glass. You! The shaven-headed man rasped, in that harsh language that I didn't know I knew. There was more he wanted to say, but he was too enraged to speak. A vein throbbed his forehead and his teeth were bared.

Like he wanted to bite me. Imagining his rotten-looking teeth, sinking into my cheek was what gave me the strength to act. I shoved that hateful man away, surprised by how easy it was. He looked disheveled, like he'd been sleeping in the street, like maybe he'd made stalking me his one goal in life. I slipped back inside the apartment building. The way he threw himself against the door behind me, reminded me of a shark trying to chomp through aquarium glass.

The elevator couldn't come fast enough, but somehow the glass held. The police had already answered my call by the time I reached my friend. floor. When the two officers arrived, the shaven-headed man was gone. Long after those two weary officers left, however, their questions lingered in my mind. Did you recognize the man? Do you have any enemies? Do you know of anyone who might want to hurt you? I ordered some Chinese takeout and sat in my armchair in front of the television thinking. The truth was, the police didn't have anything to go on, and we all knew it. And while I couldn't hide in my apartment forever,

I was terrified of confronting the shaven-headed man again. I wasn't sure if I was more frightened of what he might do to me or of what I might learn about myself. But what if I was just protecting my own fears and insecurities onto a nobody, an obsessive lunatic from the streets? Such people existed, and maybe I'd become one of their victims. I was still lost in thought when I heard a buzz from the intercom.

My takeout. The screen of the video caller was oddly blocked out. I picked up the receiver. I flung the receiver away as though it had been a poisonous snake. What frightened me most wasn't the shaven-headed man's threats. It was the fact that his voice wasn't the only one snarling into my intercom. There were more of them. The gang outside buzzed me again, and I disconnected the intercom.

When my phone rang a few minutes later, I jumped. It couldn't be. How had they gotten my number? An irritated delivery driver explained that he'd been ringing my bell for five minutes. Couldn't I come down and pick up my order? A few hours later, there was a half-empty whiskey bottle beside my empty takeout cart. The dusty single malt had been a gift at my retirement party. And although I hadn't touched alcohol in years, I felt like I needed it now.

I needed something to give me an oblivion, to help me forget. Instead, I found screams in the abyss. In my dream, if it even was a dream, I was in some dark and cavernous place, yelling in that strange language. The whales, shrieks, and gunfire around me were deafening. I couldn't hear what I was saying, or imagine what I might be doing in a place so horrible and far from home.

I woke with a headache that pounded like gunfire. The dream had felt so real. My digital clock read sometime after midnight. I clawed my way to the toilet and vomited up what was left of my chicken lo-may. The noodles seemed to squirm like maggots in the toilet bowl as I rested my head against the cool porcelain and tried to recall my dream. The awful darkness was full of people screaming, but my voice had been there too, shouting in that harsh language that I spoke but couldn't name, shouting what it seemed like orders.

When I woke again, I was laying on the tile with my head twisted at an awful angle, my cheek resting in a puddle of vile-smelling yellowish liquid that had formerly been my dinner. Groaning, I pushed myself to a crawling position and looked around for what might have woken me. My phone, buzzing, the police. Oh, hello?

It was past noon. and I had the worst hangover of my life. The attitude I found when I arrived at the station was nothing like the pitying condolences I'd received from the two officers who'd come by my apartment. Everyone treated me with a cool distance that made me feel like I'd done something wrong.

Conversations stopped when I passed by, and I could feel staring eyes on me as I entered the interrogation room. After the miserable night I had, it was enough to make me angry. Who were they to treat me with suspicion? Wasn't I the victim here? Agent Kinsey turned out to be a sharp, no-nonsense,

a young woman with Auburn hair and a clipboard. One look at how she dressed and carried herself told me she wasn't city police. So what was she doing assigned to my case? Instead of offering any insights about the shaven-headed man or the group who'd threatened me the previous night, Kinsey wanted to know all about me, where I was from, what my childhood was like, how long I'd lived in the city, and so on.

My vague, stumbling answers made it clear that I was hiding something. My biggest secret. The fact that I knew nothing about my past. Kinsey latched onto that weakness like a bloodhound sniffing out a trail, relentlessly asking me question after question until the facade I'd built up crumbled. By the end of it, I was clutching my throbbing head in my hand. hands while I stared at the stainless steel table, pathetically repeating, I don't know, and I can't recall. There was a weird smile of triumph in Agent Kinsey's eyes when she asked to see my documentation,

a smile that faded as she leaped through my paperwork, from my passport and birth certificate, to my driver's license and tax records. Everything Kinsey had asked me to bring was perfectly correct and in order. That will be all. Agent Kinsell. Kinsey handed me my Manila folder with a tight-lipped frown and walked me out of the station without another word. On the metro ride home, I was relieved to see no sign of the shaven-headed man or anyone else staring at me with hatred. I used my phone to look up Agent Melissa Kinsey online. It appeared that the woman I'd spoken to was an officer of the ICC, the International Criminal Court, an organization charged with investigating genocide,

war crimes and crimes against humanity. But what did any of that have to do with me? Lost in thought. I forgot to pay attention to my surroundings. I had just turned down my own quiet, sycamore-lined street when I felt something cold and hard slide between my ribs. The alien object inside me twisted, and my left lung seemed to deflate somehow.

Only then came the excruciating pain. The sudden loss of air and blood as it sprayed from the hole in my back. I collapsed on the sidewalk. My vision blurred. Like a striking snake, the knife came for me again and again. I raised my arm in a pathetic attempt to swat it away, but all my strength was pouring out from the hole in my back. The last thing I saw before I lost consciousness

was the colorless coat of the shaven-headed man as he stepped over me, a triumphant smile in his mad face. I came too in the hospital, attached to beeping machines. I never left it. Paramedics arrived in time to prevent my death from shock and blood loss, but in the course of examining me, they uncovered something even more deadly, untreated late-stage cancer. It seemed that the confusion, weakness, and vomiting I'd experienced recently weren't just symptoms of alcohol and fear. The doctors gave me four weeks, at most. I passed them laying in a hospital bed, stunned by the impossible turn that my life had taken, wondering who

I really was, wondering what it all had been for, wondering how my plans for a quiet retirement had suddenly turned into this, plastic tray food and a bedpan, and the inescapable reek of disinfectant. I began writing about my experience, partly to pass the time, partly to have some proof that my insignificant little life had even happened at all. That's what I was doing when I had my first visitor. His custom suit and fashionable haircut told me immediately that I was looking at a man of wealth and taste. I got the feeling that I'd seen him before, but I couldn't say where. Do you remember me, Georgie McEaravidze? I tried to sit up and shake my head, but I was too weak to do either. I slid back down to my hospital bed, helpless and woozy.

A flood of names and sensations came back to me. Abkhazia, Kamani, massacre. The smell of incense mixed with gunpowder. Blood splatter on the crumbling painted faces of saints. Screams echoing off stone walls. I remembered it all. My whole life in a different country, a different culture, as a different person. Once upon a time you and I made a deal, Georgie,

you would have a chance to forget and live peaceful. with no memory of the atrocities you had committed. As for my side of our bargain, you can probably imagine what I'll be taking from you in return. After all, you know who I am, don't you, George? In a flash of memory, I saw myself fleeing to the pagan ruins my grandparents had whispered about, sacrificing a young lamb on a cracked stone altar.

The tall, emaciated, inhuman being whose horns rose in front of the full moon, before it twisted itself into a vaguely human shape. I gripped the cold bars of the hospital bed, dragging myself back to the present. But when I did, the man in the tailored suit was no longer alone. The light in the room had become twisted, wrong somehow, and dark figures were materializing in its corners.

I tried frantically to summon the nurse, but the plastic button did nothing. As the shadowy figures took shape, I recognized them. During a war in a far-off land, I'd ordered their deaths, and I'd paid with my soul to forget about it. You've probably heard people say that a person relives their entire life during their last moments. The man in the tailored suit smiled. That really is true, you know. What they don't tell you is that the moment lasts forever.

Would you like to take a guess which moments you will be spending eternity with Georgie? I suddenly realized that I knew the man who'd stabbed me, or at least, the boy he had been. Davit, that was his name. His mother had screamed it before they shot her, and he ran from his hiding spot beneath the pews to the forest beyond. Now I could see his mother's face among the colorless figures who advanced from the corners of the room. Shadows bled from the three black holes in her shattered forehead, and her eyes were as full of hate as Davids had been. It's not me!

I screamed, mashing the emergency button harder than ever. I'm not that person. Not anymore. I didn't march through forests and paramilitary gear. I didn't order anyone's death or torture. I was a gentle retiree who enjoyed long runs before the sunrise and read the newspaper at my usual table in the bakery. I had a pension and paid my taxes and always gave a coin to the beggars on the street.

It wasn't me. I'm going to leave you for now, but your memories will remain to guide you to me when the time is right. They are so very eager for that moment, Georgie. The man in the tailored suit looked tenderly down at me, stroked my cheek with the back of his palm. It was somehow icy cold and burning hot at the same time. I squeezed my eyes shut against the pain, but I couldn't close my ears to his voice. Don't worry. long now. What? What is it? The hands touching my forehead and taking my pulse now were soft and warm.

A nurse. As she checked my vitals and shone a light in my eyes, I saw that the man in the tailored suit was gone. But the others weren't. The nurse couldn't see them, of course. If she could, she wouldn't just be standing by my bedside with that concern to look on her face. She'd be cowering in the corner in terror. Another nurse skidded into the room, passing through the shade of a girl with a half-melted face. As he raised me to a sitting position, the girl looked at me with ash-gray drool dribbling down her scorched jawbone. At first, I could only see them, those vague, smoky figures of the people whose deaths I'd caused. I thought I could ignore them by averting my eyes, but they creep closer with each hour that passes. Now, I can smell them as well.

Evacuated bowels, rotting blood, singed flesh. Soon they will be close enough to touch me. That will mean the end. The nurses and doctors aren't even aware of their presence. They walked through the shades of my victims as though they were empty air. And they don't understand why my eyes are so full of terror. It won't be long now, the man in the tailored suit it said. Not long at all.

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