Stuff You Should Know - SYSK's Halloween Horror Fiction Winner!

Episode Date: October 30, 2012

Josh and Chuck have been planning this thing since spring and it's finally here! Tune in to hear which listener's scary story won the SYSK Halloween Horror Fiction Contest -- and prepare to have your socks scared off just in time for All Hallow's Eve. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Flooring contractors agree. When looking for the best to care for hardwood floors, use Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner. The residue-free, fast drying solution is specially designed for hardwood floors, delivering the safe and effective clean you trust. Bona Hardwood Floor Cleaner is available at most retailers where floor cleaning products are sold and on Amazon. Also available for your other hard surface floors like Stone, Tile, Laminate, Vinyl, and LVT. For cleaning tips and exclusive offers, visit Bona.com slash Bona Clean. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call,

like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid work. Be sure to listen to the War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff You Should Know and Friends. It is almost Halloween. Just do that. Then Jerry doesn't have to do anything. Yeah, just do my mouth making like wind blowing and wool sowing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good chuck. Happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween, buddy. It's good to be back in the old studio. It feels nice. You know, yeah. We have the lighting dim. It's actually a little spooky. No one's here. It is. Friday. It's just like 28 days later. Right. Our guest producer, Matt, survived the zombie apocalypse. He's still here and still normal. Right, Matt? Pretty normal, says Matt. And so I guess if you hadn't figured out by now what we're about to do is read our annual Halloween scary story. But this one's a little different. Yeah. I know some of you know, but maybe not everybody knows that we held the Halloween horror fiction contest. We reached out to our fans and said, Hey, scarce. That's right. Some of them did.

Yeah. And hats off to you, my friend, because this was Josh's idea. And I think it was a great idea. And we got over 100 stories and 104. Yeah. And you guys ultimately decided in the bracket game, but I would have been happy with any of those 16. Yeah. And strong entries. Yeah, there were probably even more than 16 because it wasn't it wasn't easy to pick those sweet 16. We got 104 entries that were qualified. I believe we had another maybe eight that were disqualified for sundry reasons. But I appreciate you taking your hat off to me. I take my hat off to everybody who took the time to send their stuff. Agreed. Some people sent stuff they had sitting around. Other people whipped the stuff up just for us. And thank you to all of you who sent in a story.

Yes. And we want to say that obviously if you sent us a story, we could tell by the caliber of the writing that we got that you are professional writers or aspiring to be professional writers. So if you publish a book, whether it's horror fiction short stories or whether it is a children's book or anything like that, we want to show our appreciation to you for entering the contest by saying, let us know and we will tell everybody about it on social media, on the podcast, whatever. And we can start that little courtesy now, Chuck, because one of the guys who made it to the sweet 16, his name is Adam Pracht. And he submitted a story called frame story, which was awesome. Yeah. And he went ahead and published it in a book. He's got a book called appropriately

enough frame story. It's seven stories of sci fi and fantasy horror and humor. It's available in Kindle as a Kindle ebook. I think he's got pretty much every ebook covered. He's got it's a dot MOBI file, which means that you can use it on just about any e reader. You can go to smashwords.com and find it. You can find it on Amazon. And you can find it as a print on demand paper book. If you're not into that whole newfangled e reader thing at create space.com slash four zero two three five seven six. So Adam Pracht's frame story, seven story collection, heck of a deal. And it's out there already. Wow, look at you. Yeah. So I guess we'll explain quickly. We divided the story not by paragraph this time, but by style because this story deals with a

communique that someone is sending. Yes. And there's another part of the story where this man exists. And so I will be reading that. Josh will be reading the communique. Yeah. And I think that was a good way to do it. Oh, I agree. And that was your idea. So let's continue the pet on the back fest. And we should probably tell everybody what story we're reading. Yes. This is the winner of the stuff you should know. Horror fiction contest. First ever. I would say inaugural, but that would indicate there's more to come. Yeah, we haven't decided that. Yeah. And you technically should never say first annual. People say that a lot, but until there's a second year, it can't be annual. Right. You say inaugural. Oh, is that what the replacement is? Okay,

gotcha. That's a good point. But the winner is a guy named Brett S Arnold. And Mr Arnold submitted a story called signed forever and ever. And we think it's awesome. And we're proud of one. Yeah, agreed. Again, thank you to everybody who submitted your stories. You can go to the blogs at how stuff works dot com and read all of the sweet 16. They're still up there. They will be in perpetuity. And at least some nice comments, nice comments. Okay, yeah. Okay, so let's read it, huh? All right. Henceforth here with here to we read signed forever and ever by Brett S Arnold. I never told you the truth because I didn't want to hurt you. But we're past that now. When she left, I was destroyed. I didn't know how to raise you. I feared you would be different

without your mother. How would they treat you at school? What about when you were older? Her leaving hurt me too, of course, and very deeply. But it was you that I was worried about. Sarah, I want you to know I've thought about this every day since she left. I shouldn't have told you she died. That was wrong. Still, worse things have happened since. And I need you to know the real story. After she left, I found it was to chase down another man. It makes me sick to think about sick to my stomach. Who was he anyway? Some nobody, a drug dealer, whoever. It's a good thing he died, Sarah. Bad things happen to bad people. But that's still not the worst of it. He paused to look at the small crescent window,

26 inches thick, out to the sun. The direct light hurt his eyes. And when he closed them, he saw small purple streaks. When he rubbed them, there was another murmur from the vessel, metal compressing in on itself, on him. The vessel turned on its end and threw him in his courier to the ground. He caught the edge of the bed frame he was sitting on and steadied himself. The vessel's core smoothed. The splinter in the window was longer now with new smaller splinters fracturing away from it like cobwebs. He was panting and out of breath. He picked the courier up from the floor and propped it against the dashboard. I love you, Sarah. I wish I had more time to say that to you right now and back at home, too. When I heard that the man had died,

I was at work sitting at my desk reading the newspaper about the problems the Mars colony was having and how the first settlers were facing more challenges than they'd expected. I received a message via post from your uncle. He said the man died from disease, a slow-moving cancer whose long treatment bankrupted your mother and him, and then after she was coming back to the only place she knew. He studied his gray standard-issue uniform with the red circular insignia and the numbers 527 below. This far past the moon, communications other than electronic courier was impossible, and even those took hours to transmit across the cosmos. He had sent one

to Cape Canaveral forty minutes prior only to alert them that a red light on his dashboard titled Relay Valve was suddenly on, and he couldn't recall from his brief training what that meant. He was sure it was serious. There's no reason for me to be here, he thought, or anyone. The world isn't ending. There's no impending cataclysmic event. No threat to the species as a whole. It was just in case. That's how they'd phrased it to him in training. Just in case. He mulled the words over, angry. I don't know if she was going to try to contact us. I heard from a friend that she was staying at the late sleeper motel outside of town. I'd like to think that if you had been in my head then and heard everything I was thinking and experienced the rush that you would have done

the same thing I did. And I wouldn't be here. But that's not how life works. I couldn't stand the thought of her meeting you after I raised you, or her asking to come back or coming to take you away. That's when I took the lumber axe in the yard and drove to the motel and pushed your mother on the bed and laid the blade into her missing the first time. But not the second, or the third, or fourth. I lost count. That night I didn't sleep. I thought about what you would have done if you saw me when I came home and showered and grabbed your sheets from your bed and wrapped them around your mother in the backseat of our automobile and drove her to the lake and dumped her in on the north side, which was more shallow than I had thought. I watched the current mover

body down to a small pocket of water lined with rocks that her clothes must have snagged on. A tree grew overhead. It was pretty in its own way. It was colder the next morning and overcast. I tried to ignore everything like I'd done before. The vessel shook again, sending Edmund to the floor, his face hitting the side of the bunk he had been sitting on. From that perspective, he could almost make out the shape of the Milky Way in the landscape of lights, now blinking on his dashboard, red and orange and yellow. He reached to study the sharp pain in his jaw with his left hand, but jolted when he made contact. He could barely move it. And when he did, he could hear a loud clicking sound against his eardrum. Probably

broken, he thought. The blood ran thick, like half frozen water down his neck and chest, where it collected in pools in the folds of his uniform pants. He sat as quiet as possible and tried not to think about the window and its new splinters and fractures. The silence is good, he thought. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that in on the prime example. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses

to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty, exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil asset for it. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey witches, I'm Ilaria Baldwin and I'm Michelle Campbell Mason. And together we host the new iHeart radio podcast, Witches Anonymous. I am a health and wellness expert. I am an author. I am a mother. I am a wife, although I feel like putting that in my bio makes me slightly uncomfortable because

I have an identity separate from that. He is a husband. Okay, Alec is a husband and he can be Mrs. Ilaria Baldwin. Come to the coven where we don't hold back and we don't shy away from tough topics. We are going to go really deep into women's relationships with each other. So bring your brooms and join us as we tackle why women are pinned against each other and what we can do to stop this vicious cycle. Consider this your invitation to Witches Anonymous because Witch please, we're in this together. Listen to Witches Anonymous on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. By the time I thought to move your mother before anyone else found her, it was too late. The sides of the river and all the shallow areas had frozen

over in a matter of days. I came at night and discovered this. I tried kicking through the ice with my boot. I used the tire iron, nothing. The second time I came was in the day. I walked past the spot, never stopping and looked in passing to see if I could see her if she was still there. But the ice was like frosted glass. Every few minutes a truck or some other vehicle would pass on the highway and I would crop low to the ground. I let a week go by and came back at night. I parked down the shoulder of the highway half a mile up and walked back to the river with my flashlight off. I tested the ice with my boot again and walked out onto it. I laid my head against the ice and looked down for your mother. I couldn't see her. I put my ear to the ground as if testing for a

coming train by listening to the tracks. But all I could hear was ice splintering in the distance, a low echoing sound. I turned the flashlight on and pointed it to where I left her beneath. I saw the faintest blur of her, the smooth edges of the structure of her face. Her white sweater was clear against the brown river bottom. Tiny air bubbles were frozen everywhere in the ice but most of them seemed to be around her head and I wondered what caused that. From then on I came back every night. I waited until a few hours before sunrise. I put my ear to the ground and listened to the shifting ice and I waited until I had seen no headlights for several minutes before I turned on the flashlight and pressed my face as close to the ice as possible, for as long as

possible. The blue moonlight mixed with my yellow flashlight made her look green. It did not matter what color she was. I hardly recognized her after all those years anyway. I felt sick at home when the sun came up but every night I went back. I think more than anything I was waiting for spring, for the ice to melt. There was too much blood. He felt lightheaded and stood up and immediately fell back down. He felt short of breath. Outside his window the red planet was bigger. He could see individual caverns in the details of ridges. The color was more vibrant. Where Earth was still so blue in the distance he could now be sure firsthand and not by matter of faith that there was no water

where his vessel was heading. It would be nice, he thought, if he could fly the vessel far enough to at least make it into orbit or the red planet. He remembered setting benchmarks for himself. Most of all as a young man about his death. If I could only make it until Christmas and die the day after. If I have to that would be best. Then Christmas would come and go and he would think if I have to die now at least let it be after vacation or at the very least during vacation. So I can go while looking at the beach or the cabin or the city lights. He ripped the sleeve off his standard issue uniform and held it firmly against his wound. The harder he pressed the more it hurt. He put his full weight into it. Eyes closed. Sweating. Thinking of the window.

In September before all of this I received a letter thanking me for my application etc and that yes I had been selected to join the second colonizing group of Mars. I had not decided if I would go. With you going to college it seemed like the right thing. A fit. A way to support us while you were away. I could not protect you anymore while you were away. But I couldn't do it. I took out loans. I borrowed against the house. I would be there for you when you needed me. He reached for his wallet and took out a small picture he kept in one of the card pockets. He could not remember his daughter's eye color. He remembered when Sarah was four or five. His wife and him had a fight at a restaurant about what color her eyes were blue or green. The night

ended with them being asked to leave and Sarah crying all the way home. Edmund didn't speak to his wife for a month. The photo was of her on her 17th birthday with two of her friends at her side at the aquarium but her eyes were too small to see the color of. A large blue tank with a school of silver fish filled the background. It felt trivial now but also fundamentally basic. Any other father would know this answer and probably whispered it in their sleep. My daughter's eyes are but the answer didn't come. I didn't have hopes for the program knowing they took a local geologist with my credentials. If you can even call them that. I'm guessing I was chosen because I could be spared.

Older single men seemed to get that rap. The first wave of colonists was mostly hard laborers and criminals and their elected leaders but all we were good for was bringing supplies. We had almost no training. These vessels fly themselves. I had only a passing interest. The forms were too easy to fill in and submit. I was told I would be taking part of the future of mankind. A planet for tomorrow one we needed yesterday. People never change humanity that is but as people as individuals too it applies both ways. No one cared who we were just that we were healthy and willing. I was still not committed in full to go through with it. The slow hits began in the machinery somewhere beneath them in the vessel. It was quiet at first

and louder. It stopped suddenly. The overhead light turned off. Edmund set very still. His pulse visible from his jugular. The lights of his electronic courier illuminating his sweaty face. The air conditioning unit was no longer functional and the absence of this white noise made the silence even more pronounced. He felt lightheaded. The vessel will not make it, he thought. I was going to leave town a few days before we were set to leave on our individual vessels. By then spring was coming and something changed my mind quickly. There was no moon out one of the nights I was visiting your mother. The ice had begun to thaw slowly over the past few nights and I could make her out more clearly now. I had no plan for when the ice melted.

I wanted to be there when it did though, to move her out of there. I was looking at her then brown skin and the deep cuts that exposed bone. All around me it was black and cold and completely silent. No cars passed. I was alone. A branch snapped somewhere near the shore. I was laying down and turned off the flashlight. Had I been followed? I waited. Turned the flashlight on towards the sound source but didn't see anything through the trees. I didn't want to leave the body there. The sounds could have been anything. I waited all night with my small pocket knife drawn. At first daybreak I walked back to the automobile across the highway and drove home. I did not go to work that day or ever again. The next night I returned. I made sure I was not

followed. I wore black and felt stupid. The ice was thinner. I looked at your mother, the strands of her hair that were beginning to break free in the current sway back and forth. The next night I planned to bring a hammer and break through the ice and move her. The purple rings on her skin that formed just before I threw her in the lake were now black. I sat waiting in the silence. For the first time without meaning to I fell asleep on the ice. I awoke with the startle covered in cold sweat. Something didn't feel right. I turned the flashlight on and scanned the trees and saw nothing. Another branch or twig snapped under the weight of something. I was too far away to see.

I turned the flashlight off and another branch snapped, closer than another. Then there was the sound of ice breaking on the shore like metal striking metal. I turned on the flashlight and pointed it at the sound like a spotlight. A thin woman in white stood looking at me, her eyes knee on yellow in the reflection. She was older and mid step on the ice coming toward me. I dropped the flashlight and ran across the lake in the other direction. I hid all night in the woods on the opposite end of the lake completely separated from the highway. Had the body been found. When I finally got back to my automobile I didn't know where to drive. I headed for home turned around and drove through to Florida. I went straight to the mission base and waited to go to

Mars. The vessel was quiet. Outside the window the blackness was almost beautiful he thought. Soon he would be part of it. I wanted you to know the story from me before anything happens and you hear about all this from someone else. You don't have to lie about it if you don't want to. You don't have to say anything about it. You won't hear from me again. I want you to know I don't understand any of this. There was never a plan but I can tell you and not many people get a chance like this to say it when they really need to. I love you. Signed forever and ever, Edmund. He directed his fingers across the glass surface of the electronic courier to hit send. One more thing. If you haven't decided for yourself yet let's agree your eyes are blue.

Is that okay with you? And the message was sent off to the blue planet so far away from him. His daughter would not receive the message for several hours. Even if she replied right away he would never receive it. This he knew. He closed his eyes and thought about his actions leading up to this. He realized what he wrote to Sarah was true that he didn't understand the meaning behind anything that had happened. He didn't want to. And if he didn't understand the past he thought there was no way he could comprehend the present or the future. So he thought of nothing as the vessel rocked violently in a gasket. Was it a gasket? Broke in the dashboard and shot white smoke into the cabin. The vessel shook again and the glass window splintered more and more.

The fat lady sings he thought. It happened very quickly. There was immense pressure from within his body pushing outward. His sight was accentuated with purples and blacks. His heart beating rapidly and then hard and slow. He could hear it in his eardrums. The wound on his chin reopened and the last thing he saw before suffocating to death was his blood rushing out of the window and then floating in outer space in tiny red and possibly beautiful globules made magnificent by the unfiltered sunlight. Dying this way was to his surprise pleasurable. Way to go. Wow. That is a heck of a story. Signed forever and ever by Brett S. Arnold. Do you know what it read like to me was a graphic novel? Yeah. The way he wrote it. And I think

some artist out there should get in touch with us to get in touch with him and like make this in a graphic novel. That would be awesome. We could be middlemen. Yeah. We could like a cut of that or something. Yeah. We'll call ourselves collectively Colonel Tom. Publishers. Right. Yeah. That's what they call ourselves. Man. That was awesome. That was great. Man. There were plenty of other awesome stories. Yeah. And they are published. You can go on to the blogs at howstuffworks.com and look for read the horror fiction contest sweet 16 here. Yep. I think. And yeah. I think you'll enjoy all of them. You can and then you can email us and be like, no, this should have been the winner. Where are you two idiots? Yeah. I almost feel like,

I don't know. We don't even need to have another contest. We can just we've got like 15 years worth of Halloween episodes. Yeah. We do. You know, we do. So we'll see what happens next year. Yeah. And maybe we'll even publish one of the one or two of the others that didn't quite make it, including like that one disqualified one that we like. Yeah. Well, in the meantime, everybody have a very safe and happy Halloween from Josh and Chuck. The great all the people here at howstuffworks.com and discovery in general. The war on drugs impacts everyone. Whether or not you take America's public enemy. Number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told

me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute 2200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah. And they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And on the prime example, the war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey witches, I'm Ilaria Baldwin and I'm Michelle Campbell Mason. And together we host the new iHeart radio podcast, which is anonymous. I am a health and wellness expert. I am an author. I am a mother. I am a wife. Although I feel like putting that in my bio makes me slightly uncomfortable because I have an identity separate from that. He is a husband. Okay. Alec is a husband and he can be Mrs. Ilaria Baldwin. Come to the coven where we don't hold back and we don't shy away from tough topics. We are going to go really deep into women's relationships with each other. So bring your brooms and join us as we tackle why women are pinned against each other and what we can do to stop this vicious cycle. Consider this your invitation to witches anonymous because

which please we're in this together. Listen to witches anonymous on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us. But first, you should try this on Twitter at syskpodcast, facebook at facebook.com slash stuff you should know. And then if we still don't respond, try the email at stuffpodcast at discovery.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. They just like pillaging. They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The Zen teacher Suzuki

Roshi says each of you is perfect the way you are and you could use a little improvement. The one you feed podcast is here to support you wherever you find yourself at the beginning of this new year. This month in particular, we're covering topics such as how to incorporate healthier eating and exercise, reducing stress and finding more calm and even learning about different approaches to sobriety. So here's one small step that you can take that will have a big impact this new year. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.