The Lets Read Podcast - 319: MY CREEPY NEIGHBOUR WAS COLLECTING "PARTS" | 7 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 304

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about Video Games & Creepy Tenants HAVE A STORY TO SUBMIT? [e-mail] FOLLOW ME ON - ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/letsreadofficial ► Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/letsread.official/ ♫ Music & Cover art: INEKT https://www.youtube.com/@inekt Today's episode is sponsored by: - Mood

From Adams Morgan to Anacostia Park, we all want safer neighborhoods. But what does real safety mean? Real safety means preventing crime before it happens, by having police work with communities to disrupt cycles of violence, by supporting families with stable housing, and providing more mental health and drug treatment. We know that adding more police and locking up more people doesn't make us safer. Real safety means investing in the things that help prevent crime.

Learn more at Real Safety, D.C., We're going to be. I used to be a property manager in London back in the 80s. For one reason or another, the flats I managed weren't strictly legal, so it was basically my job to collect rent, arrange repairs, and be a buffer between the real owner and the council, should they ever find out he was flouting regulations. It was a proper cash under the table sort of thing,

and we didn't discriminate when it came to tenants. If you could give us the month's rent, which was about 60 quid back then, then we'd give you a bedroom in a shared house with communal kitchen and bathroom facilities. These days, a lot of landlords ask foreigners for proof of their right to be in the country, and I think you can get into trouble

if you're found to be housing illegal immigrants. But back then, we weren't in the least bit interested in who you were or where you were from. All we wanted was money. And the same applied when I met a guy called Yuri. Yuri mentioned something about being from Latvia, but I never saw any papers to confirm that. His name could have been anything, and he could have been from anywhere.

I met him outside this crumbling-down house in Finsbury, one of the properties that I managed. Heavy emphasis on those quotation marks there, and the room that he was after was a mess. There was peeling wallpaper, damp patches everywhere, and a stink that was sort of half-mold, and half despair. It was the kind of place that you'd give a rat the hump, and Yuri didn't quite seem desperate enough to rent it. But after a brief look around, he told me

he'd take it. I was surprised, honestly, but I wasn't about to argue with the man. I just took his money, gave him his keys, and that was that. Next month, when I went around to collect the rent, Yuri wasn't in. He cleaned the place up quite nicely, gotten rid of all the mold and the peeling wallpaper, and he'd left a little note on his bed that just said, busy at work, money and pillowcase. We dealt with some quite unsavory characters on a regular basis, and I'd had someone try and run a scam like that on me before. As they say, if you play with feathers, you get your arse tickled. When their rent money wasn't in the pillowcase, they said someone must have gone into their room before I did and pinched the cash. And since it wasn't their fault,

They didn't think that they should have to pay twice the rent money, and that caused an awful lot of trouble for that character, let me tell you. I was thinking, good God, not another one of these. But then, when I put my hand in the pillowcase, Bob's your uncle, there was the money. It was like that every month, too, but it suited me down to the ground. I never had to chase him or go looking for him. He was reliable as anyone was, old Yuri. But then came the month when, well, you'll see what I'm.

I mean in a moment, won't you? It was a grim Tuesday lunchtime, all gray and dreary out when I drove over to the house in Finsbury to collect the rent. The place was dead quiet, with most outgrafting in some manner or another, nothing but the hum of traffic outside and the occasional cough from the guy down below's ground floor flat. So I knocked on Yuri's door, just out of habit, really, and when there was no answer, as per usual, I just pushed it open.

His room was just the same as ever. bear except a single bed, a rickety old chair, and a wardrobe that was well on its last legs. I went for the pillowcase, expecting to find the cash in the usual place, but there was nothing. I patted it down and shook it a bit, but still nothing fell out. That wasn't like Yuri at all. He'd only been renting about six months, but he'd always paid on time and in the same fashion, good as gold. Then I opened the old wardrobe to see if his clothes were still there and saw they were all gone. It was completely gutted. I hardly ever found a reliable tenant like him, not in our game,

so it always stung a bit whenever they decided to move someplace else. I was about to leave and I was right on my way out the door when I spotted something under the bed. It was a suitcase, brown leather and bashed up around the edges. I'm not one for poking my nose in where it doesn't belong, but something didn't feel right. All of Yuri's stuff was gone and he hadn't left any rent. money either. So what was the suitcase doing under his bed? I thought for a second, then said to myself, stuff it. I'll have a quick look and see if there's a note or something. I walked back in, shut the door, kneeled down next to the bed, and pulled out the suitcase. I flicked the latch, lifted the lid, and my heart stopped. There was Yuri. Inside the suitcase, his body all twisted

up and broken, like someone had to fold him up to fit him inside. His arms looked snapped and bent at odd angles, while his legs were tucked under him backwards. His face was all gray and his eyes were wide open, staring out blankly. There was nothing else. Just him, stuffed inside like he was something to be thrown away. I got up and stumbled back, hand clamped over my mouth to keep the smell out of my nose, but I still felt sick. The room started spinning, and the next thing,

I'm out the door and taking the stairs two at a time. I pulled the front door open, ran out into the street before I stopped. I remember how my hand shook as I fumbled for my pack of cigarettes. I lit one and took a long drag, but it did nothing to calm me down. And as I paced back and forth outside the house, I wondered, what the hell was I going to do? At the time, I knew the owner of the property, a man who will remain nameless, was quite an active figure in London's criminal underworld.

I just didn't know to what extent. That meant that he probably go mental if I just phoned the police and invited them into one of his gaffs. But this wasn't just a broken window or a tenant who wouldn't pay up. This was a goddamn body. I dug out a few coins from my pocket and walked to the phone box around the corner, and from there I rang the owner. and from there I rang the owner, the sig burning down my fingers as I dialed his number. His missus picked up the phone, handed it over to him, then I told him all about the body in the suitcase. I obviously didn't just come out and say it, not over the phone, but we had a way of

talking back then where you said things without saying them. Once he'd gotten to the gist of it, I thought that the owner was going to flip his lid, but instead he stayed calm, a bit too calm under the circumstances and asked me if I was sure the tenant had departed. When I told him I was sure as eggs as eggs, he told me not to involve anyone else and asked where the tenant was right now. Then when I told him, he asked me to help the tenant move out. I told him in so many words anyway that if he thought that I was getting involved in a murder, he was mad. I said we needed to call the police. what they were told about the properties and the tenants, then hope they breezed past us

without getting a whiff of what we were doing. But the owner wasn't having it. He said if I went to the police, not only would I be out of the job, but I'd also be in serious trouble. Then before I could argue further, he hung up. Until that day, all I knew about the owner of the shared house was that he was involved in renting flats, well, dodgy ones at that. I might have been a bit of a geezer back then, but I wasn't stupid, and what he said on that phone clued me into the fact that whatever else he was involved in, it was a lot more illegal than just some dodgy flat shares. My heart was pounding after that phone call, my head spinning with all kinds of frightening realizations. For the past God knows how long, I've been working for someone who was now

casually telling me to dispose of a body like it was nothing. This was more than just being some dodgy landlord. You'd have to be a real dark kind of person not to even flinch at something like this. But this guy knew my name, my family's names, where I live, everything. But at the same time, my fingerprints were on that suitcase. And if I didn't get out ahead of it and tell the coppers that all I'd done was stumble across it, then there was a good chance that I'd be going down for something, maybe even murder. I didn't want to go back to the house and I didn't want to just drive home, there, so instead, I went to the pub. There was a place called the Red Line down the road from the phone box, and even though it was only a bit past 12, I drank a pint of logger in about

four or five gulps just to steady my nerves. The barman clocked me and gave me a funny look, but didn't say anything. He just left me to drown my sorrows in peace. Then I sat there, staring at my glass, wondering how everything could go from normal to nightmare so quickly and so drastically. Uri was a good tenant. He was quiet. He paid me on time. He seemed like a nice bloke, too, so who'd do something like that to him and why? After maybe 15 to 20 minutes of staring at the bar top and weighing up my options, I decided to do the smart thing. I fished around my pocket for some more change and walked back to the phone box and phone the police. The cops turned up about 20 minutes later, two of them in a panda car with their lights flashing,

and I was back outside the house by then, so I gave them a wave as they drove down the street and showed them the upstairs to where Yuri's body was in the suitcase. I only told them what they needed to know, and they said that I'd done the right thing by calling them, but still, I was terrified, because I knew that as soon as my boss got wind that I'd been talking to the police, I'd be in deep, deep doo-doo. That night, I crashed up my mate Dave's plays sober in Camden. I couldn't go back to my own flat. It'd be too risky, so he gave me a place to sleep for the night. But all I did was lie on his sofa, eyes wide open thinking about how my life was about to change

completely. The next day, I heard word had gotten back to my boss, or by then, my former boss, that Yuri's body was with the coroner and that the police were talking to the tenants in the house that he owned. Assuming that was true, my former boss had almost certainly sent people out looking for me, So I asked Dave if I could lie low at his place for a few days until it was safe to return to my flat to grab my stuff. He said that was fine, but I didn't exactly tell him the whole story. If I had, I'm not sure that he'd have let me stay. I didn't go out at all, and Dave definitely knew something was up, but he didn't ask questions. I just kind of hung out on the couch, drinking his logger and wondering if I was going to end up moving to Brighton, Birmingham, or maybe even Manchester.

About a week later, I went around to my flat in the middle of the night to grab a few bits and bobs, but when I got there, the place had been trashed. Whoever my boss had sent had done something to the lock because it didn't look like anything was wrong until I tried to put my key in the door, and it creaked open from the force. Inside, my flat looked like a bomb had hit it. They'd smashed my telephone, ripped up my sofa, I'd broken all my records, and from the smell of the bedroom, they'd gone to the toilet all over my clothes. I didn't take anything with me.

It was really nothing to take. The only thing that mattered was getting to my mums, and then getting her on a coach to Manchester, the furthest of my options, before anything happened to her. Two guys had already been over asking where I was, so she knew that I was in some sort of trouble. But it still took some convincing to get my mom to pack a bag. She didn't know how I made my money,

so I had to spill the beans on my. her son being a bit of a naughty boy before she understood how serious things were. I told her the men looking for me were bad people, and that the next time they darkened her door, they might hurt her as a way of getting to me. The next day, me and mum were in a B&B up in Manchester. I had a few quit in my pockets, so I found us both places to stay quite quickly, and then after that, it was a case of trying to go straight and earn an honest living for the first time of my life. No one ever found us, but at night the nightmares did. I dreamed that someone was zipping me into a suitcase and then shoving me under a bed and

I'd wake up scared thinking someone was at the door. But no one ever was. It was just my imagination. Sometimes I wonder if the cops ever got anywhere with Yuri's murder. I doubt it, but I also don't think that it was my former boss that had anything to do with it either. He just wanted me to get rid of the suitcase and if for some of my first, Some reason he had wanted Yuri dead, then he'd surely have given the job to someone more cold-blooded and reliable than myself.

No, I think someone else put Yuri in that suitcase. I don't know why, but I know they'd have to be pretty scary to be able to best a six-foot barrel-chested Eastern European guy like Yuri. Then to twist him up like that, to snap his arms and legs and fold him in half. It takes a very frightening person to do something like that. A person I'm very glad I never had to meet. or ruffle anyone's feathers, but I'm not always convinced that some of the stories people send in are entirely real. Yeah, I'm the kind of irritating guy who fact-checked details

even when it doesn't matter. I will say that I'm surprised how many of them hold up to scrutiny, though, but occasionally, I can't find any info on a few things and it kind of bugs me. Ultimately, I don't care, though. I enjoy listening to the stories whether they're embellished or not, and I'm certainly not trying to gotcha anyone when I look things up. It's more because I'm fascinated by the fact that sometimes the least believable stories are the ones that end up being totally dead true. I've given this preamble because the story that I'm about to share sounds like it's obviously made up, and in this case I can't prove that it's 100% true.

However, there are a few other instances of the same thing happening, which I'm going to share first. They are demonstrably, provably true, and it's actually going to blow your mind. You see, there are some video game arcade cabinets out there that flat out, straight up, kill people stone cold dead. Most of the time when a gamer dies from gaming, it's because of deep vein thrombosis or something similar. They just simply sit still for way too long and they don't take enough bathroom breaks or drink enough water. A charity live streamer, this guy named Brian, died from a heart attack after playing World of Tanks for 22 hours straight. And multiple people have died from extended MMO session.

There was an 18-year-old Taiwanese gamer who died after renting a private room in an internet cafe and playing Diablo 3 for 40 hours straight without a single break. Another Taiwanese man had died at a PC in a public internet cafe room without anyone even noticing, and they just carried on gaming while a man laid dead beside them for hours. This British guy, he died from DVT after a lengthy halo multiplayer session. And of course, pushing your body beyond its limits can lead to harm, and video games are just as capable of pushing you too far, especially in the case of poor Tim Eves, a young man with no prior health issues who died of a heart attack while jogging in Wii fit. Or Zhang, who essentially ate himself to death while playing World of Warcraft, as he stopped exercising or taking care of himself entirely.

Now ignoring your surroundings can put you in danger too. multiple people have died playing Ingris, the predecessor to Pokemon Go, and one person walked into traffic and got hit by a bus while focusing on that game, and another walked off a pier and drowned. All of these incidents can be easily checked and verified on Google. There's a subset of video game deaths that get a bit weird, though. And info becomes more scarce, but it is still there. And the one that fascinates me the most, because it's the closest event to my own experience I'm going to share with you, is the case a berserk.

Released in arcades in 1980 by Stern Electronics, berserk was a rudimentary shoot-em-up with maze-style levels. Controlling a little green human, players were tasked with shooting a bunch of wiggling robots and then making it through the level to freedom. This task was made harder by the appearance of evil Otto, a bouncing smiley face that would come after you and kill you. And the game was notable for being one of the earliest games

to feature digitized speech, and it's not hard to find children of the 1970s who are still haunted by Evil Otto's cries of The Intruder Must Not Escape. I've personally spoken to a few people my age online who can recall having distinct night terrors about Evil Otto. He was just a yellow bouncing smiley face, and it makes you wonder if there's something more to him, especially when you find out that, allegedly, multiple people have died after setting a high score on the same arcade cabinet of Berserk. And I say allegedly, but it's confirmed that at least one person died after setting that high score on the berserk arcade cabinet at a friar tucks in Illinois. However, evidence starts to conflict here. Growing up, I've always heard that the arcade cabinet killed two, and that other berserk arcade cabinets killed a handful more.

Definitely a young man named Peter Berkowski dropped dead shortly after setting a high score on berserk. And many sources claim that he was the second victim of that capital. though, and that Jeff Daly, his best friend, had died a year prior after setting two high scores on the same cabinet. Finding info on John Daly's death seemed to be a bit harder, but I distinctly remember looking this up some years ago and finding very clear, concise evidence that Jeff Daly died moments after playing Berserk. And looking again, I can find the same evidence about Peter Bercowski. It could be a simple mistake, but hear me out. The creator of Berserk, Neil claims on record in the magazine Retro Gamer that one player definitely died while playing

berserk. In the interview, he claims that the gamer was obese and had just run up the stairs before setting high scores on the game. However, this is not Peter Berkowski. Peter Berkowski is reported to have been in great physical shape, with his cause of death while playing berserk, coming from scar tissue that was present on his heart. And yet the prevailing story, at least in my research was about Jeff Daly dying. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems far more likely to me that both men died while playing Berserk when there's so much evidence to back this up, with the only missing piece really being a clear news report or death certificate for Jeff Daly that states Berserk's involvement. The story definitely came from somewhere anyway, and it seems extremely

unusual to me that the second death reported later but able to be verified is somehow the only correct one. I hate being unable to prove my suspicions for sure, which is why I'm barely even going to talk about Polybius. You probably heard of this one. It's a video game allegedly from 1981, but there's no proof it ever really existed. Legend has it that it's some kind of government's experiment, with the arcade cab itself gathering various biometric data. Numerous reports claim that men in black would be seen around Polybius cabinets and rumors of vague deaths around the nebulous game. Polybius is likely little more than an urban legend.

But given the things we know for certain that have been conducted in the name of Project Artichoke, M.K. Ultra, M.K. Chiquit, and the like, is it really so hard to believe that intelligence agencies might gather data through an arcade game. What drives me nuts is knowing that the experience I had growing up fall somewhere between berserk and Polybius. My rational, skeptical nature means I technically technically have to file it as urban legend, but here's the problem. I saw it. I experienced it, and I lived through it. The cabinet popped up in a local diner called Bruce's. It was an 80s independent owned joint, the kind with bootleg cartoon characters on the menu, and a mishmash of theme

decor that shot for Planet Hollywood, but fell closer to Space Station thrift store, if you know what I mean. The logo was a terrible cartoon picture of 60s Batman. who for some reason had a green color scheme instead of blue, and he was winking and doing a thumbs-up pointer finger. I guess Batman was the only person called Bruce that the original owner could think of to appeal to the youth. This was in 1986, and I heard they took the cartoon down pretty fast when Batman got big again in the late 80s after the Burton movie,

preempting a cease and desist, I guess. Bruce's had two arcade machines in back, and to a kid in the 80s, any arcade machines, machine was like the promised land, and any new kid who first set foot into Bruce's would make a bee line towards them. One of them would usually be occupied, but the other was amazingly free, and that kid would scurry over, all excited to see what adventure this backwoods diner held. And they'd be met with Snacks and Jackson. If you've ever played Snacks and Jackson, I cannot express enough how garbage that game was. No apologies to any die-hard fans of the title,

but why? It's just so bad. control a clown's head and have to catch food and bounce his nose around, and it's a pain in the balls to control. The arcade cabinet in Bruce's was already kind of broken and battered, and that just made this infuriating quarter-eating game all the more abysmal. Many a kid would waste a quarter on Snacks and Jackson and get maybe 30 seconds playtime before failing. Then they'd simply wait in line to play the far more superior, 1942 cabinet next to it. And it felt like Bruce's had the Snacks and Jackson cabinet forever, but in reality, it can't have been more than maybe two years. There was one kid who was actually good at it and even claim to

enjoy it, but the rest of us who hung out at Bruce's hated it. And that's why me and my buddy Tom basically cheered aloud when one morning towards the end of summer break, we approached the arcade machines and saw that Snacks and Jackson was gone, replaced by something new and exciting. The manager of Bruce's, who wasn't called Bruce, but Danny, followed us proudly up to the cabinet. Got it from a buddy out on the West Coast, he told us. Going to be the next big thing. I'd never seen the cabinet before or read about the game in the occasional issue of computer gaming world I saw. It had almost no decoration in the cabinet itself, just the title along with the header in bold.

It was a very powerful font. Die fast, it said. And then the title screen repeated the name and insert coin. I don't remember if it had copyright info and all. You don't really pay attention to that as a kid. I only saw the screen a few times for reasons that you'll come to understand. I inserted my quarter. It took longer to the load than I was used to, and for a moment I thought it had broken,

stuck as it was on a black screen. And then text appeared. I've never been able to verify exactly what it said, but it was something like they're coming for you. They will catch you. You will die. Better to die fast. And then the game started up. You played as a little white guy running along a straight line, and occasionally obstacles would appear like spiked balls or pits or ledges. You had to press up to jump, down to duck, and then towards the end of the level you had to mash the single button to put an extra burst of speed in. Honestly, it was mostly kind of boring, like a lot of arcade games.

games were post-1983, but along the left side of the screen, whatever was chasing you sort of lurked into a scrambled mess of pixels. You couldn't see exactly what they were that was trying to catch you. When you got caught, and you would, because the game was stupid hard, you never saw them. A hand would shoot in from the left side of the screen, grab you little man, and then drag you away. Then the machine would let out this horrific, shrill, high-pitched screams and quit to the title screen. One quarter got you one life. To this day, I couldn't tell whether hitting obstacles in that game even had any effect. I wasted three quarters on the thing, and every time I got to the button-mashing section of level two,

and no matter how hard I hammered that damn machine, I could not get past it. Same for Tommy. In the end, we gave up and discussed, bummed out that we hadn't spent our 75 cents on something more enjoyable, and almost missing Snacks and Jackson. manager danny seemed kind of disappointed too, muttering how his buddy had promised him it was the next big thing and a one-of-a-kind. I didn't think anything of it until a couple of weeks later. I've been into Bruce's a few times since and noticed that some of the kids had gotten really

into playing Die Fast. To me, it just meant that 1942 was unattended more often, so I finally got on the top ten scoreboard for that game. That day, school had just started back in the fall. And Tom came rushing up to me after class. Geez, Colin, do you hear about what went down at Bruce's? He asked me. And I hadn't.

And he told me all of these terrible details. Apparently some kid had died of a brain aneurysm after hitting level five and die fast. According to Tom, something in this kid's brain had just straight up burst, and his eyes had suddenly turned red with blood and he'd fallen to the ground. Of course, Tom wasn't there, and even if he'd even, Even now, I don't think that's really how it happened. It was true, though. A kid had actually died of a brain aneurysm, and he had been playing die-fast when it happened. It was a college kid,

the brother of one of our female classmates, so it was kind of a big deal for a few days. Then, a week later, some kids were talking about how they thought they'd accidentally killed a trucker. Apparently, they'd been playing die-fast and got caught just as a trucker was heading to the bathroom out back. The machine had let out its usual death screams, and the trucker had turned in shock, slipping, hitting his head, and dying. We didn't believe them at first, but it was at least true that a trucker had dropped dead in bruises on his way to the bathroom. The third alleged victim of Die Fast was kind of obscure as hell, but I'm including it.

A kid swore up and down that he'd been telling his grandpa about Die Fast when the old man had a massive stroke. His grandpa was in the hospital and had always been amused by hearing about his grandson's video games, so the kid was telling him about this new one. According to the kid, he was halfway through doing an impression of the death screams when the old guy had a stroke that killed him. The reason I'm including it is that the kid was super cut up about it. Whether the game somehow killed his grandpa or not, the kid sure believed it did,

and he was genuinely blaming himself for it. even though the man was in his 80s and already in the hospital on borrowed time. As part of the legend of die-fast in our small town, though, the grandpa sure gets included in that telling. The final death occurred another couple of weeks after that poor old grandpa. I saw this one firsthand, sort of. Tom and I had agreed to meet at Bruce's, although all the rumors swirling about die-fast were kind of putting us off the place,

truth be told. But still, we were tough young men, and there was a kind of morbid curiosity about the idea of a cursed video game that kills you. So that day, we decided to actually play the game for ourselves again. At worst, we'd waste a few quarters. Neither of us had even the slightest concern that we might genuinely die. Neither did most kids and some adults either. You'd think an arcade cabinet would lose popularity if there was a chance that it could kill you, but there was always a group of kids gathered around it. It must have been raking in good money for Danny, especially now that some people had gotten as far as level 10.

All sorts of rumors abounded as to how you could get that far. Some insisted it came down to how hard you mash the button. Others claimed that you had to do it rhythmically. Others still said that it was total luck and that the game was a complete con. They kept paying to play it regardless, though. One kid even insisted that there was a cheat code for each level if you hit certain obstacles in the right order.

We'd never get to find out the secrets of Die Fast, though. When we showed up to Bruce's, paramedics were outside, along with the town sheriff and a deputy. A group of kids were loitering nearby. The paramedics wheeled out a stretcher, and it was clear that there was a body on it. We asked one of the kids what happened, and she seemed to be holding back tears. Apparently, the body belonged to Danny. that day the kids had gotten further than ever and die fast level 12 and then they died at the end apparently when you hit level 12 a message appeared saying there was only one more level after that seems like danny got wind of them reaching the end stages and came over he said his buddy told him the trick and he was taking pity on them and would show them the final level on the ending well danny never got to the fabled level 13 although that

would add some credence to the rumors of a curse. No. Danny was happily making his way through the third level when suddenly his heart just exploded. And we found this out a bit later, of course. At the scene, all anyone could tell us was that he died, but it turned out to be a massive fatal heart attack brought about by who knows what. Could it have been years of working in a diner, eating unhealthily, and being somewhat overweight, or did his heart just give out due to playing die fast. One thing's for sure. The game's title proved to be true for all four of those deceased. They did indeed die fast. Whether the game killed them or not is another matter, but we have demonstrable evidence from all throughout the history of video games showing that games can kill.

I've searched high and low for any proof that die fast even exists. Bruce has shut down upon Danny's death and when I next time got into that place, it had become a chance of chain restaurant. The arcade cabinets were long gone. If you or any of your listeners have ever heard of Die Fast, then please let me know. I would love to put this mystery to bed once and for all. Danny had said his buddy Ot West hooked him up with that arcade cabinet, and from the way I remember the cab, it could easily have been some kind of home brew unit. It certainly wasn't a game that had a mass market release, but you'd find arcade machines like that all the time back in the 80s, especially shortly after the video game crash. All sorts of wild, unusual, forgotten relics,

some of which are forgettable, some of which are harmless, and some of which, in the cases of berserk or die fast, and maybe even Polybius, could be the very last game you ever play. Hey there. Did you know there's a cool online cannabis company that can ship federally legal THC straight to your door? They've even mixed it with some awesome functional ingredients to help with just about any mood or health concern you might have. I'm talking about mood.com's incredible line of functional gummies, and you can get 20% off your first order at mood.com. with promo code read. Ditch those generic supplements that just give you a buzz. Mood's functional gummies are crafted to get you feeling great in as little as 15 minutes, helping

you reach that perfect vibe you're after. Whether that's mind magic gummies for deep work and creativity, PMS support to ease cramps and balance mood swings, or their sexual euphoria gummies to help you feel ready for action and turn every touch into a full body experience. Listen, you can find gummies to just get you high pretty much anywhere these days, but moods functional gummies combine premium, federally legal THC with targeted botanicals to help you get into the perfect mood, usually in as little as 15 minutes. And everything ships discreetly right to your door, no dispensary lines, no awkward conversations, just better days and nights delivered to your doorstep.

Best of all, not only is every mood product backed by a 100-day satisfaction guarantee, But, as I mentioned, listeners get 20% off their first order with code read. So head to mood.com, find the functional gummy that matches exactly what you're looking for and let mood help you discover your perfect mood. And don't forget to use promo code read when you check out to save 20% on your first order. I'm from the south side of Chicago, and I'm a landlord who keeps a few run-down buildings afloat. My pops left me three six-person apartments in Englewood. Still owned two of them, and I've been wrenching pipes and cashing rent checks ever since.

It's hard work, and sometimes I think that I'll end up in a padded cell one day because of it, but I'm just too damned old to do anything else by now. Most of my tenants are decent, hard-working folks just trying to make it through the month. But every once in a while you get a real closet psycho. And let me tell you, of all the ones I ever dealt with, Gerald tops that list. His name was Gerald, or at least that's what he put on the lease, and he moved in during the summer of 96. He was a skinny dude, he had a scruffy beard and dark eyes that just never seemed to blink. And he always wore this ratty trench coat, too, even in July when the city's absolutely cooking.

And I really wasn't sure about him at first. and I guess in the long run, I was right to be unsure. But he always paid his rent early, always in cash, and he used to slip the envelope under my door, very quiet, first thing in the morning. The only downside was, is that every so often he'd come through the door at 3 a.m., carrying whole cases of what sounded like glass bottles.

He'd go jingling all the way up the stairs, waking almost everybody up as he went, but aside from that, he was a pretty good tenant, right up until he wasn't. Gerald had been living there for just a couple of months when the sewer line in his building crapped out. The whole basement was a swamp of this stinking sludge, and tenants were starting to lose their minds. There was an old widow in one of the apartments who swore that her cat got sick from the smell and that if it died, she was going to sue me. And I couldn't afford

a plumber till the city reimbursed me for the damages, so to keep my ass out of court, I figured that I had the snake that drains myself. I grabbed the heavy-duty drain snake that I kept at home, the kind that you actually cranked by hand, along with some gloves in a bucket. Then I threw some rags and a flashlight into my car before I drove over to the building. When I got there, I found the bypass clean-out plug in the basement, set down a bucket to catch any mess, and then popped off the trap and started feeding that snake's cable into the pipe. I started easing it around the bends, probing for any blockage, and then there it was.

I felt something kind of squishy but solid, and that was obviously blocking the pipe. I figured it was probably a combo of hair and grease and who knows what else, so I started poking and prodding at it with the drain snake to try and dislodge it. I was pulling, pushing, twisting, and yanking, and then suddenly pop. The mass of whatever comes unstuck. And it was mission accomplished in my mind, but it also meant a bunch of toilet water was about to come spilling out into the bucket, so I took a step back and prepared myself for the smell. All kinds of slop came splashing out, and as it did, the force dragged out the

offending cloggers, so to speak, which splashed down into the bucket with this very disgusting plop. Like I said, I figured it'd be one of those hair and grease balls that I've seen so many times before, or maybe a kid had flushed their teddy bear down the toilet. Stranger things have happened to me. But when I saw it coming out of the that pipe, it didn't look like any kind of hairball I'd ever seen before. With my hand covering my mouth and nose, I walked over to that big old plastic bucket and looked inside. There, floating in the water, was something I can only describe as a huge snail without a shell. It was like a big lump of slimy, gray, green flesh, but when I poked at it with the head of that drain snake,

it didn't move. And I thought that it might be some kind of fungus or slime mold or something like that, but, like I said, I've never seen anything like it before in all my years of unblocking drains. Seeing as it was floating in a bucket full of sludge, it's not like I went in for a closer look. I just poured the buckets contents into a larger sewage drain outside, flushed the pipes in the house to make sure that they were all totally unblocked, then went home and took a shower after cleaning up the basement. And I felt like Hercules, after completing a task like that, but there was still the issue

of the blockage and how it had gotten there. So after a well-earned rest, I drove back to talk to my tenants. It was early evening when I arrived the best time to catch everyone at home. Everyone opened their doors and assured me that they hadn't been flushing anything that might have caused a blockage. All except Gerald, who I figured was out working at his night job. I didn't make a habit of entering a tenant's apartment without their express permission, but let's just say that I had a sneaking suspicion about old Gerald.

See, I had exactly zero troubles with the drains of that house until Gerald moved in, and in the few months that he'd been there, I'd never seen inside his apartment. So since the whole sewer water in the basement thing constituted a health violation, I figured that was as good a reason as any to grant myself emergency access, and do a little apartment inspection. I knocked on Gerald's door for the second time just to make sure that he wasn't home. Then when I got no answer,

I used the spare key I had and let myself in. Inside, the place was like a museum of weird. That's really the best way I can put it. None of the furniture matched, and everything looked really old too, not the classy antique old, the rickety, rotten kind. There were houseplants everywhere,

weird, creepy-looking paintings hung on the walls, and there were stacks of books lying around with words that looked like Latin running down the spines. I called out Gerald's name again, just in case he definitely wasn't there, and then threw in something about checking his pipes, too. And when I got no reply, I was 100% convinced that he was at work, so I started towards the bedroom, and that's when I saw it. The utility closet at the end of the hall, and it was pad locked shut. Now, I don't allow any locked utility doors in my apartments.

If you want to keep a safe or a lockbox or something, that's your business and I'll allow it. When it comes to utility closets that contain things like boilers, pipes, or fuseboards, I need to access them 24-7 for safety reasons, obviously. As I went to get my bolt cutters, I remembered that was the closet Gerald's water heater was in, and I wondered what the hell he needed to padlock it for. I snipped the lock, pushed the door open, then the second I looked inside, my stomach did a flip. Up and down the walls above the water heater, Gerald had installed a series of shelves and lining them were a series of glass jars. They were filled with murky-looking water, and in each one, something was floating.

From where I was stood, it didn't look like pickles or peaches or anything like that. It was something organic, sure, but it looked more like chunks of something familiar. And that's when it hit me. They were the exact same things as what had plopped out of that pipe in the basement. And not even a second later I heard a floorboard creak behind me. I spun around, and there was Gerald, standing in the doorway, trench coat hanging over one arm. And he asked me, What are you doing?

And I told him about the drains, about the blockage, and then asked what the hell was in those jars. Gerald just looked at me for a second and smiled. Then, in a tone so eerie that I remember it, clear as crystal, even all these years later, he told me. They're my friends. Like he was talking about pet dogs or something. I told him to stop playing with me.

Anne asked him again what the hell he'd block my drains with. Gerald just kept smiling like he knew a dirty secret about me and then said, You shouldn't be here. And he was right. I had no right to be in there, not unless it was an actual emergency. But since I knew that it must have been him that was responsible for blocking the drains somehow, and since he had no right to be locking his utility closet like that, I gave him a little talking to before I booked it out of there.

Now, back in my truck, I called my cousin Nicky. See, he's a cop, and I told him about the freaky stuff that I saw in Gerald's apartment. How I thought that it was probably drug-related or something like that. But he said unless Gerald was either cooking meth or skinning people alive in there, there wasn't much that the police department could do. Now, before he hung up, he told me to just serve an eviction notice and get him gone legally. So that's what I did. I typed up a 30-day notice that night, citing lease violations, unauthorized modifications,

health hazards, whatever the hell I could throw to make it stick. Then, the next morning, I slid it under Gerald's door before I lost my nerve. And he didn't fight it. He didn't even try and talk to me about it. He stayed quiet, but his neighbors didn't. The old woman said that she'd heard weird noises coming from that apartment at night. And then an old friend, Jamal, in 3A, mentioned seeing Gerald carrying a jar down the fire escape at night, cradling it like it was a real precious thing to him.

And I told them everything would be fine. That Gerald was leaving soon, but I have to admit, it definitely creeped me out, too. The day before his 30 days were up, I got a call from that old lady saying the hallway outside Gerald's apartment stank to high heaven. And not only that, but she'd heard him screaming and crying in the middle of the night. night. I drove over right away, and the stench inside Gerald's apartment was unbearable, but it didn't take long to figure out where the smell was coming from. And by the looks of things, he was long gone. There was no note, but all of his stuff was missing. Everything except a single jar which laid smashed on the kitchen floor, with a puddle of what smelled like liquid

death surrounding it. The smell was so bad that it stung my eyes. I gagged, covering my mouth with my sleeve and then turned around and walked out again. I eventually called a hazmat crew thinking that it must have been some kind of biohazard, and that cost me a solid grand that I didn't have, but they cleaned it up, and they didn't ask any questions either. I figured that was the end of it. Gerald was gone, the unit was empty, and I could just re-rent it once the smell aired out. But that stench stuck around, kind of sharp, acidic and rotten, like it had seeped into the walls and flowed. board's. Tenet started moving out. The old lady said that she saw something in her bathtub one night, pale and wriggling, gone when she turned on the light, and I told her it was just her imagination,

but Jamal said that he caught his kid staring at that drain up there, and when he asked what he was doing, he also said that he saw something. I comped them a month's rent just to reassure them that everything was fine, but they eventually moved out anyway, not long after. And by the summer, The building was half empty, and I was hemorrhaging money. I hired a priest from St. Sabina's to bless the place, figuring that it couldn't hurt to get a little positive PR going. And he walked through that area, sprinkled holy water, but it didn't help. I was stuck for a while.

I couldn't rent it, but I couldn't afford to lose that building either, and it got to the point that I thought about burning the place down just to collect on the insurance. But knowing my luck, I'd have been caught right away. in the end i was forced to sell and i lost a lot of money on the sale too because the folks buying knew that they'd have to tear the place down and start again they kept asking what caused the smell but all i could tell them was the truth i didn't know and i wish i did or i wish i had because that way i'd have thrown gerald out on his ass the second i saw those jars in his utility closet because whatever was in them if they had gotten out or if whatever that was was growing inside of that building, there's no getting rid of it now. VR and virtual reality is dope. Like most people, I was skeptical at first, and I was far from an early adopter of the technology. I didn't like the idea of ma-gaming having to involve a clunky headset or a huge open-plan room.

I think, really, I just didn't like change. Then I tried my buddy's Oculus Rift, and I became a convert, just absolutely amazing room-scale gaming. Then I got a quest. The first cable-free one, and I was blown away. Now I didn't even need to connect it to my PC. I could play the game straight off the headset. And after that, I became the kind of guy who gets almost every version, and now I'm on the MetaQuest 3.

I know, I know Mark Zuckerberg, and I know there being a better VR headsets out there, and trust me, I'm doing my research. But the quest gives you so much bang for your buck, and it's so easy and integrated. Change my mind, but I'm currently a sucker for me. meta. And to stop this from seeming like a sponsored post, though, it's not, I promise. It's just me setting the scene. I just have a lot of fun with my meta-quest headsets. Too much fun, you could

say. And this all went down one day when I was an hour into a marathon blade and sorcery session. It was the meta-quest, too, that I had at the time. Now, I won't go on and on about that game, but, oh man, it's so cool. Describing it as Skyrim and VR doesn't do it justice. It's like Skyrim, Iron and VR on steroids with extra sharp edges and cool decapitations and, oh my God, it's just so cool. And so cool that it's very easy to lose hours at a time in that game. And it's a VR game, so it's hella immersive. And all of this to say, I was playing blade and sorcery in my room. I had these really cool noise-canceling headphones in, and I'd just taken a bio break, and I was back to it,

really immersing myself in the vibe, hacking off heads and kicking fools and the fires. You know how it goes. Now, a few hours had passed. I was absolutely worn out, physically and mentally, and I threw the headset onto the bed, carefully, of course, and went out into the kitchen of the three-bedroom apartment that I currently shared with this one other guy and my roommate Chris. And for a second, something seemed odd. Then I felt a draft on the back of my neck. Looking back, I saw the front door of our apartment was open. We were on the first floor and I could feel from beyond that door that the entrance to the building must be open also, because a chill wind was blowing through.

Then I looked down and saw the filthy, muddy footprints embedded in a hall carpet. What the F, I thought? Chris was going to be mad. We were both kind of neat freaks, but he was especially precious about that carpet, and so was the landlord. And I followed that trail of filthy footprints down the hall. The kitchen was absolutely trashed. The dining table had been smashed to smithereens.

The fridge was ransacked with food and milk just thrown into a huge disgusting pile in the middle of the floor. It looked like someone had taken a baseball back to the cupboards. Further up the hall, there were three more rooms. The bathroom, Chris's room, and the locked spare room. The door to the spare room was closed. The bathroom was open, though. Christ. The toilet had been smashed.

Water was gently flowing out of the shattered porcelain. The shower curtain had been torn down. All of our shampoes, body washes, and the like had been emptied all over the bathroom, and it was just utter chaos. Bizarrely, though, I remember noticing that our toothbrushes were completely untouched, sitting in their glass holders. Strange. Well, I wasn't falling for that.

That's how they get you, these home invaders. Smash everything, but leave your toothbrush alone. But really, they've shoved it somewhere a toothbrush should never be. I'm just kidding, but... I went back out into the hall and down into Chris's room. Geez, if the rest of the apartment was bad, then Chris's room was the epicenter, ground zero, I called it. They had absolutely decimated Chris's entire living space. His huge 42-inch 4K flat screen had been smashed, impact wounds dotted all across the surface.

At least it was still on the wall, I guess. His Xbox was on the floor, shattered into oblivion, just pieces of plastic. and metal with the Xbox X logo visible among the debris. All his clothes have been torn out of his closet and strewn around everywhere. Some of them were hacked up and a lot of them were covered in paint. Oh yeah, the invaders had brought paint. Not big paint pots, but spray paint cans. There were a few discarded cans around Chris's room that I knew didn't belong to him.

He wasn't exactly the artsy type. The cans have been used to spray paint all manner of crowsy. on his bedroom walls. His movie posters, band posters, his photo wall, all scribbled over with neon pink green and purple spray paint. Someone had drawn a wiener on the window. His bed. Oh my God, his bed. I don't exactly know what they dumped onto it, but it stank. Not what you're thinking. More like bleach or some kind of chemical. And the liquid was staining the sheets white, so bleach did make sense. But it was causing my eyes to sting. And his beloved good gaming PC was fractured into complete ruin. He'd spent so much money on that thing,

and now coolant and computer parts lay strewn across the ground, and his ultra-wide monitor was snapped almost clean in two, like someone had grabbed it and smashed it down over their knee. It was complete and utter devastation. But none of this was the worst part. The worst part was the deep gouges and the plasters of the wall. They look like they'd been made by some kind of blade, and judging by the damages, that's exactly what had happened. The home invaders had taken some kind of machete to Chris's belongings. Who, how, why? That's all that was going through my head so fast in all of this. And then the real scary question dawned on me. When? I stopped staring like a goldfish at the wreckage of my roommate's life. Practically tripping over my own feet,

I ran to my own room, grab my cell phone, then fled the apartment building. You see, it dawned on me that the culprits could still be in the apartment, obviously, and I hadn't checked inside the spare room. Machete-wielding maniacs could have been waiting for me as I stood there like some idiot. And so I called the cops, and then sat inpatiently on a bench across from the apartment while I waited for what seemed like forever. If the culprits were still there, then I sure as hell wanted to get a look at them if they tried to leave. Maybe I had some grand delusions about vigilante justice, but more likely, I wanted to be able to ID them if I had to.

They never did come out of the building as I watched because they'd already left. We found this out later, thanks to the security cameras from the apartment lobby and nearby businesses. They'd pulled up in a dark van, hustled inside with hoods up, and entered our apartment. Yeah, they'd let themselves into the building and our apartment with a key. Then they were in there for over 30 minutes, absolutely smashing the crap out of the place and left. Of course, the van had some cloned plates and nobody's faces got caught properly on that camera, but that was far from my biggest concern at the time. The camera inside our apartment building lobby had audio,

and while nothing identifying could be heard on the cameras, it was possible to hear the music they'd started playing loudly after entering our apartment. Luckily, they played it on Krista's sound system because that was the one, thing he owned that wasn't completely demolished. Now, maybe you're wondering where I was during all of this, or maybe some of you eagle-eared listeners had already worked it out. Where was I? Well, I was in the apartment at the time, wasn't I?

And I was in the apartment playing blade and sorcery in VR with sound-canceling headphones like an oblivious chump. I was there, flailing my arms and fighting undead skeleton warriors with a sword while just two rooms away, genuine machete-wielding maniacs were hacking up my roommate's possessions to send a message. And I'll get to that in a second. Now, I can't be sure, but I am absolutely certain that I had my door open during the VR session too. And I'm absolutely sure that the invaders broke in, came through, saw me playing VR, and decided to just wreck the place while leaving me to it. I don't know what they would have done if I'd stop playing and caught them in the act.

Chris reassured me later that it would have been fine, quote-unquote, but I was already pissed at him by this point over numerous things relating to it. All I know is that these guys did tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage and cost us our security deposits. I know they weren't afraid to use spray paint and blades on the walls. Would they have hesitated to use machetes on me? Maybe. but I'm pretty sure that they would have given me a very harsh beating at the absolute best.

Instead, they left me to my freaking VR video game immersion, and I can only hope it's because they found the idea funny. Or maybe my VR combat prowess was so pathetic that they knew that I wouldn't put up a real fight if it came down to it. So why did these guys break in, you're probably asking? Chris had been screwing around with one of their girls. He said that she told him they'd broken up. I'm not so sure, though, I never got to find out, of course, because Chris played dumb to the cops and claimed that he had no idea at all who might be so mad at him that they destroyed his stuff.

He only confessed to me a few months later, by which time things had died down anyway. Even then, he didn't tell me exactly who these people were, which is fine by me. I don't want to know. I did want to know why they had a key, though. It turns out the girl who had been cheating on the gang guy had stolen. and Chris's key and handed it over to her violent boyfriend as penance for cheating. She basically sold Chris and me down the river without a freaking paddle. And Chris, the infinite genius, never even thought to tell me that his key was missing or suspected that it could be related to his little Minaj Etois with his gangster's girl,

or whoever these people were. Needless to say, I was unbelievably pissed that Chris hadn't come forward at the time, especially when I was the one who almost got killed. Chris had the audacity to tell me that I was lucky, if anything, and that he was partly doing this for me. He said the guy and his crew were the type of people you don't screw with. So why were you screwing his girl then, huh, idiot? Anyways, of course it was never worth arguing with Chris, so I just gripped my teeth, told him I understood why he let the culprits get away Scott Free,

and then as soon as our lease was due for renewal, I moved the hell out of there. And now I live in a much safer, more comfortable area in the suburbs with my beautiful girlfriend. And I'm glad I do because, man, I couldn't quit VR even if I tried. I have the MetaQuest 3 now, and it's even better than the two. Thankfully, my horrible experience didn't ruin gaming for me, but you can be damn sure that I take regular awareness breaks for VR gaming these days. I don't use sound-canceling headphones anymore either, and I never ever play VR, one of my alone in the house.

From Adams Morgan to Anacostia Park, we all want safer neighborhoods. But what does real safety mean? Real safety means preventing crime before it happens. by having police work with communities to disrupt cycles of violence, by supporting families with stable housing, and providing more mental health and drug treatment. We know that adding more police and locking up more people doesn't make us safer. Real safety means investing in the things that help prevent crime.

Learn more at Real Safety, DC. Cisco for damn near 40 years, long enough to see every kind of tenant you can imagine. Hippies, tech bros, deadbeats, you name it. I'm just a working-class guy, born and raised in the mission, scraping by on the rent from a couple of old apartment buildings. They're not anything special, but they're home to folks who need a roof. Most tenants come and go, leave nothing but late rent notices or maybe a couch too heavy to move, but there was a guy in apartment 2B, and his story.

still haunts me even all these years later. Now, this was back in 1989 when James first moved in. He was a scrawny-looking kid in his early to mid-20s, with wire-rimmed glasses and a very nervous smile. You know the type. He said he was a grad student, studying some kind of chemistry, molecules and compounds, stuff like that. He had a deposit, good references,

and a promise to keep things very quiet, and he seemed like the perfect tenant, and for a while he really was. Rent came on time and there were no parties and he had no complaints. And I barely thought about the kid. He was just another name on a lease. And then maybe four months in, that's when the trouble started. Apartment 3B, as in the one directly above James,

was home to a girl named Maria, a young bartender who worked nights at a dive bar and she called me up one morning with a complaint. She told me something was stinking up her place. something that smelled like chemicals and burnt plastic, and after doing a little investigating on her end, she'd discovered it was coming from 2B, as in James' apartment. And I figured it was a one-off,

that maybe James spilled some cleaning stuff or accidentally started a small fire, something like that anyway. I've seen it before. I told Maria that I'd check it out and let her know how things went. I knocked on 2B that afternoon, but James didn't answer, so I left a note under his door asking him to call me. He didn't get back to me. Then about a week later, Maria called again, only this time she was angry.

She told me the smell had gotten worse, and that she couldn't even open up her windows without gagging. In response, I left a message on James' answering machine, and I basically told him that I had to inspect his place, that the lease said that I could, and that I didn't want him to make things any harder than they had to be. He called back that night saying he was busy with research, then asked if it could wait till the weekend. I told him, sure, but that if he wasn't true to his word, I'd be considering eviction.

A little harsh, maybe, but I had other tenants to think about. So that weekend, I finally got access to 2B after almost two weeks of trying. Then, what I saw once I got inside, damn near put my jaw on the floor. James opened up, looking like he hadn't slept in days. His eyes were all bloodshot. His hair was greasy, and the shirt that he was wearing was stained with God knows what. Then the second he welcomed me inside, I caught the smell. The place reeked, like a mix of bleach and something rotten.

Then when I saw the kitchen, I realized what the source was. His kitchen barely even looked like a kitchen anymore. James had turned it into a goddamn home laboratory. There were like glass beakers and test tubes and several bunsen burners as well as dozens of bottles containing liquids with names that I couldn't even imagine pronouncing. There are all kinds of wires running around the counter, all hooked us some buzzing machine that looked more like something from a sci-fi flick than a harmless high school chemistry experiment. And I asked James what the hell I was looking at.

and after politely telling me not to touch anything, he said it was his research. I thought it might have been drugs, you know, like he was making them in his apartment, but he swore what he was doing wasn't illegal, and that he was happy to have the cops come over to inspect his work. Legal or not, it was still causing trouble for people upstairs and having smelled it myself, I understood why everybody was distressed. In fact, I could tell the fumes were drifting up from his kitchen window, which he kept cracking to vent the stink.

I told him flat out that he had to stop what he was doing, that he was annoying his fellow tenants, and that if he didn't stop by the end of the month, he was gone. James nodded, then mumbled something about how he'd scale back. I thought that might be the end of it. But boy, howdy, was I wrong? Less than a week later, Maria called again, and at that time, she sounded like she was almost in tears.

She told me the smell was back and that it was worse than ever, and how it smelled like something was dying down there. I remember sighing as I rub my temples and then told her that I was done playing, and that I'd served James' eviction papers by the end of the month. And she sounded relieved, incredibly relieved, actually, but less than an hour later, she called me a second time. I remember thinking, Christ, what is it now? His meth office has exploded? But when I did, that wary frustration transformed into another emotion entirely. I answered Maria's call, and I was halfway to putting on the most polite and patient tone of voice I could possibly muster.

When Maria started yelling down the line at me, she was saying crazy stuff like James is up there screaming now like he's hurt. I've already called 911, but I figured I should let you know. I immediately got this sick feeling in my stomach, like something terrible was about to happen, so I jumped in my car and drove over to the apartment building. By the time I got there, cop cars and an ambulance were already clogging up the street, and neighbors were out on the sidewalk, gossiping and kind of craning their necks as they try to get an idea of what the hell was going on. I remember pushing through the crowd before coming face to face with a cop who looked far too young for the job.

I said I was the owner of the building and that I had proof in my car if he needed to see it. He told me he couldn't share anything right then, and that if I waited outside, they'd come talk to me first chance they got. It was frustrating, not being allowed into my own goddamn property, then maybe a minute or two later. I saw Maria among the crowd. She rushed up to me and thanked me for showing up, and then told me the cops had smashed their way into James' apartment,

but wouldn't tell her what they found. I stayed outside for maybe another half hour or so, reassuring the rest of my tenants that they'd be allowed back in the building once the cops had made sure that it was safe. After that, I spoke to that same young-looking cop who told me to expect a phone call in the next few hours, and after that, I drove home. The young cop was right, and at around 8th that evening, I got a call from a detective about what happened to James. I figured that he'd been taken to the hospital, but to my shock,

The detectives told me James was dead. And that changed the whole situation for me right there. And I suddenly went from angry and confused to feeling terrible for him in any family he might have. Once the shock had worn off a little, the detective started asking me all kinds of questions. Things like, when did I last see James? What was he doing? And was there anything weird about him the last time I saw him? And I told them everything. from the lab to the smells to how he looked like he hadn't been sleeping.

The detective didn't tell me much in return, only that they suspected murder and weren't entirely sure yet. I was also warned to stay away from that apartment until the cops were done with their investigation, but I didn't argue. The last thing I wanted was to walk in on whatever mess they'd found. Days dragged by, and the cops still wouldn't let anyone near the apartment, so naturally, the rumors started swirling. Maria told me that she heard the cops muttering about burns and stuff like that, and another one of my tenants claimed they saw guys in hazmat suits going into that apartment.

I try not to let my mind linger on it too much, but still, questions got under my skin. Namely, what the hell had James been trying to do? When the police finally cleared the scene, I went into the apartment to see what they'd left. The place had been stripped almost completely bare, and they'd taken all of James's lab gear and books. It was almost like he'd never been there to begin with, except for one thing, the bathtub. It was old, cast iron covered in enamel, same as every unit in the building. But after James' death, this one had burn marks on it. They were black charged streaks, curled into the shape of someone lying there.

The burn was deep, too. into the metal, but the rest of the bathroom was spotless, and there were no smoke stains and no ash. Just that terrible silhouette burned into the enamel of the tub. I stood there, staring, feeling this sort of deep unease creeping over me. And then I walked out, my hands shaking a little as I'd locked the door behind me. It was no way that I was renting that place out again without replacing that tub. And it cost me near 800 bucks to replace it at the time, but I didn't care. I just wanted that gone. And the cops closed that case a few weeks later, saying that it's all just been some terrible accident. Apparently, James had been warned

already about lab safety at the school that he was going to, something about volatile compounds. And they figured that he was running some rogue experiment or selling drugs or something too wild for the university, and it backfired. Then when it did, he jumped into that tub and tried to put himself out, but I guess maybe he couldn't, and so he died. I agreed that it all sounded like some horrible accident, like that kid with wings who flew up too close to the sun and got his ass burned. But a part of me doesn't see how it all adds up. I'm not some scientist, but I know fire. So how does a guy burn so bad at scars metal, but the rest of the apartment stays completely fine? And if water didn't stop it, what the hell

kind of chemical fire was that. But maybe the worst thought of it all involves whatever James was chasing. I mean, what was he chasing if even the scientists at the school he went to didn't touch it? And as the months went by, life went back to normal. I got a new tub and a new tenant there, but they didn't stay long, as no one really ever did. They would oftentimes complain about weird smells, faint and chemical, even with a place scrub top to bottom. And I couldn't get that smell out of the apartment, no matter how hard I tried, and the same applied to my mind, too. I'd be fixing a leak or collecting rent, and that burned silhouette would flash into my head, just as clear as the day that I saw it. And I did some digging, asking around, and found a guy

who knew James at that school. And he said James was obsessed with rewriting matter, something about breaking down the building blocks of life and putting them back together. And to me, that definitely sounded like he was on drugs, or maybe some mad scientists, I don't know. But not only had James believed in this, but he also claimed that he was close to cracking it, too. These days, I have a whole new section added to my rental agreements all about the use of volatile or flammable chemicals within the apartment complex. Some potential tenants, swore. reading it, though, have said things to me like, wow, what a weird thing to have to write into a rental agreement.

And I tell them that I've seen everything in my years as a landlord, and I imagine I sometimes smile when I say it too, but I don't imagine that smile reaches my eyes at all. Because whenever someone mentions that little chemical claws, as I call it, I'm reminded of what they say about rules, and how more often than not, they're written in blood. In the early The world was in the grip of Star Wars fever. Unless you were a teen in 1919, 99 to 2005, you can't imagine what it was like.

We hadn't had new Star Wars movies since the 80s since we were little kids, and it was very likely that we'd be stuck with movies 4, 5, and 6, and that was it. The Phantom Menace was revealed and dropped and, well, it was a bit crappy, but we loved it. Then Attack of the Clones released and it was a bit better, and everything was Star Wars, merchandise, action figures, toy lightsabers, they filled the aisles at every time. Target or Best Buy. It was a great time to be a Star Wars fan. On top of that, video games. I'd grown up on the movies, my dad had a DOS gaming PC, and my brothers had a PlayStation and Nintendo 64, so I played all the older Star Wars games as a girl. Tye Fighter, X-wing, Rogue

Squadron, and my absolute favorite on my brother's N64, Shadows of the Empire. I don't care what anyone says, Dash Rendar was the coolest. Imagine my delight when my brother told me about Star Wars galaxies, coming soon, an online RPG where you could create your own Star Wars character and explore the galaxy with friends. Now, this was before World of Warcraft, so MMOs or massively multiplayer online gaming hadn't really even hit the mainstream yet. And to my 19-year-old Star Wars nerd girl mind, this was like magic. I was away starting college at the time. I grabbed a copy of the game from my local game stop a couple of months after release. And wow, I was hooked. Now, I won't bore you with

geeking out over it, but let's just say that I'd found my gaming love. I rolled three characters, but my favorite was Jankatalas, a Twylic dancer who was pretty nifty with a rifle. I'd go on hunts and gun down four switches and rancors, then dance for my squad to heal their wounds and buff us up. Yeah, this was a thing that you could do in SWG. You could also be a musician in a canteen-a-band or a creature handler, a martial artist expert, or a hairdresser, for real, and it was awesome. I played with a few friends. My tight crew consisted of two guys that I'd gone to high school with, then my roommate to college and her boyfriend who went here too. Then there was a German guide that we met on this SWG server, who none of us knew IRL but hung out with and chat a lot.

I can't remember what we used for voice calls back. then, but it was some program with a green icon and then later Skype. When we were in-game, though, we mostly used the in-game chat, because VoIP was pretty limited back then, and it also meant other players could join in our conversations if they were in proximity. To make things easy, I'll refer to my crew by their in-game player names. There was me, Janka, and then two male friends, Karn, and Jedi Ian. My roommate and her boyfriend were Glittersaber and Sith Manson, and the German guy was Noodle Walker. One day, me, Sith, Manson, Glitter Saber, and Noodle Walker were exploring some deep caves on Tatooine.

We were just farming for materials and killing trash mobs and looking for some objective quests that one of us was working on. We were communicating using the endgame chat, which meant anyone nearest in the world could see what we were saying. We didn't expect to meet any other players down this deep in the cave system, though, so we were talking about IRL stuff to do with college, when this happened. Another player's name appeared in the chat and asked us if we were talking about a certain class at our college. Huh, we said that we were, and asked where he was in game. He told us to keep heading down the cave, so we did, and eventually came across this guy meditating in the middle of a small open area. His in-game character was a very cool-looking human character. None of the rest of us played as humans, and he was called Make-Wookie. Childish,

but it made me laugh at the time. It turned out that Make Wookie was a student at the same college Glitter, Manson, and I attended. And we chatted for a bit, and I remember he was very cagey about almost everything. Glitter and I were playing on our PCs in the same dorm room, and I remember we even discussed whether maybe Make Wookie was bull crapping us about going to here,

because he didn't seem to want to give any details at all about who he was and what he studied or anything. We hung out with him in-game for a while, eventually leaving the cave system, and then we all added him to our friends list so we could reconnect. By that point, we were fairly certain that he didn't actually go to college with us and had maybe just said that he did as an excuse to hang out with people, which seemed harmless enough. He was fun and very funny, but most importantly, his character was high level so it was worth befriending him for that alone. Over the next few gaming sessions, we introduced him to

Karn, and Jedi Ian, too. And soon the seven of us were having awesome adventures in a galaxy far, far away most nights. Still, Make Wookie wouldn't meet up with us or introduce himself in real life or even give away any other details about himself. It soon became clear, though, that he definitely did attend the same college as me, Glitter and Manson. He'd remarked that he'd seen us earlier that day crossing the quad or in the student bar or down by the lake. Nothing ever too intimate or specific, but he always got the locations in time of day right. Weird, but nothing unsettling. He was entitled to his privacy, and after a few days, though,

Manson asked if we'd ever actually identified ourselves to make Wookie directly, and when we thought about it, we hadn't. We told him what we'd studied, which dorm buildings we lived in, etc., but we'd never sent him any pictures or even told him. our full names or anything. When Manson laid it out like that, it was a bit weird, especially because it was specifically me and Glitter, the two females that make Wookie always remarked upon seeing around campus. Still, we didn't think too much of it, but decided that we'd try and get to the bottom of it by encouraging him to come out of his shell and meet up with us in person.

Those plans changed when one day I got back to our dorm after class to find a note that been pushed under the door. Glitter was still at class or somewhere with Manson, so I snatched the note up quickly and noticed my name was on it anyway. The paper was folded in half, but when I opened it, it was just a single handwritten message. It said something like, you looked really good today. Maybe we should make wookie. Nothing dramatic at all, but it still sent a chill down my spine. Maybe Make Wookie was just socially awkward, but this felt like a very clear attempt to say, hey, I'm watching you, and I'm close. And then the innuendo, of course. I was open-minded about meeting someone through the internet, but at this point, this guy could have been anyone,

and it was creepy. Glitter, Manson, and the others agreed that it was weird, so we confronted make Wookie in the game that night, and he just laughed it off, saying that he'd been in the area, so he decided to surprise me. He was very charming, and it was real hard to stay mad at him, but I told him that next time he should just introduce himself. He said he'd think about it. And I took care not to acknowledge the innuendo to try and stop things from being awkward.

Next time, he didn't introduce himself at all. Instead, he left a gift for me in the common room. It was a cuddly little Ewok that talked when he pressed the tummy. It was a pretty cute gift, and the note with it, simply said that he was sorry. In game that night, I told him that no apology was really necessary, and I really appreciated the gift. But again, he should introduce himself so I could thank him properly. Now, fast forward through a few weeks of us playing the game together without drama.

In that time, I've been playing less because I had actually met a guy. He wasn't a Star Wars galaxy player, although I was working on wearing him down and trying it. We've been on a few dates, nothing too serious, and I was having fun with him. him and thought that I'd like to start seeing him actually. In that weekend, in Galaxies, the seven of us were adventuring together, and I kind of made a remark that I'd have to cut the gaming session short because I had plans that night. Make Wookie asked if I was going to be hanging out with my boyfriend. I hadn't mentioned this new guy, and I'll just call him Dave in the game chat.

Glitter and Manson knew about Dave, of course, but I hadn't brought it up in Galaxies precisely because I was worried that Make Wookie's might be weird about it. I asked how he knew about Dave, and Make Wookiee said that he had seen us holding hands around campus. Maybe I was a little short with him, but I don't think that I said anything too dramatic. All I remember saying is something along the lines of, I didn't super love being watched by someone whose identity I had no idea about, and I just meant it in the sense that he should introduce himself. And Make Wookie absolutely lost it.

An expletive, filled message popped up in the game chat, filled with asterix from the foul language sensors, and he just kept going on like that. Calling me all sorts of horrible names, skank, ho, and much, much worse, and we were all absolutely horrified and taken aback. Nothing I'd said or done should have led to this. Then, an alert popped up saying make-wookie had gone offline. None of us knew what to say or do. we had no idea who this guy was other than he went to our college we couldn't reach out to him to try and calm him down or even apologize not that i had anything to apologize for i was really shaken and upset and it took glitter about an hour of calming me down to persuade me to still go on a date with dave that night and to tell him about make wookie just in case Dave and I grabbed a movie and dinner that night, McDonald's, very fancy, and I told him all about Make Wookie's outburst. Dave knew about the guy because I brought him up before,

but I downplayed any weirdness and hadn't mentioned the cuddly EWalk, and now I told him everything. Dave was understandably concerned, especially because we had absolutely no idea who Make Wookie actually was or who to look out for or anything. Dave offered for me to stay over at his dorm that night, and I was kind of hesitant because I hadn't been planning to go that far with him yet. At the same time, I really didn't feel safe with Make Wookie on the prow, so I agreed with a promise from Dave that it would be a platonic night. Dave's roommate was away for the weekend, and honestly, Dave was a perfect gentleman, and it was a relief. He said he didn't want our first time together to be under a cloud anyway, and we're no longer together. Dave's married with kids now,

but it was eventually an amical breakup and we're still friends on Facebook. I've jumped ahead of myself, though. When I came back home to my dorm that night, there was a note pinned to my door. It was another curse-filled tirade, calling me all sorts of names saying, You've led me on, etc. And of course, it was signed again by Make Wookie. We've asked around the dorm to see if anyone had spotted a guy putting the note on my door. It was a female dorm, but the rules weren't real strict about it.

male visitors, so it wasn't uncommon to see guys kind of hanging about. Nobody could remember a suspicious person, though, and we had no choice but to log into Star Wars galaxies and hope that Make Wookie would show up. And nothing happened for a few days. His username showed up his offline constantly, and then one day he showed up his online. Karn and Jedi Ian tried to message him asking what was going on, trying to see if they could dig up any info about him since they were my friends from home and not college. Maybe he would let something slip. But Make Wookie simply didn't reply to them. We managed to locate him endgame and he was just sort of standing in a spaceport, not moving, and eventually went idle. And so that

night, Glitter and I were asleep in our dorm room on the second floor. I was just drifting off to sleep when a loud crash sound came from the window. Someone had thrown a freaking rock through the pain. And by the time I switched on the bedside lamp and rushed to the window, avoiding the glass and the floor, the person was gone. I can't say for sure that it was make-wicky, but if it wasn't, then damn we got unlucky. The quad did have cameras, pretty crappy quality back in 2004, but all the security guys could see was someone dressed in all-black walking past and then just absolutely yeeding a rock at the building and jogging off. Could have been anyone. Except when we logged into SWG the next day,

MakeWookie had sent a private message simply saying, Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Maybe he was just laughing at our misfortune, but who knows? It was starting to ruin the game for us, knowing that every time we logged in, some deranged stalker might just be there watching us. Even worse, he was watching us IRL somewhere, too. So Glitter, Manson, and I put our heads together

to try and work out who Make Wookie could be. We'd encountered him in-game and believed it to be coincidence, but what if it wasn't? What if he'd already been watching us and somehow used Star Wars galaxies as a stalking tool? Manson was the one to first suggest it. The first day we'd met Make Wookie in game, Manson, Glitter, and I all had a lecture together.

We've been the last to leave, gathering our things up as we talked about the evening's plans. It was entirely possible that we'd talk about going questing in the caves of Tatooine. Glitter and Manson swore that we actually had, and we tried to work out who else had been in that lecture hall with us. The only person we could recall was John, the freaking TA. I mean, surely not. Surely Make-Wookie couldn't be our sociology professor's TA, but he had been in the classroom that day, and he was the kind of guy who could just lurk around without being noticed. He did live on campus.

somewhere, so he could have been out jogging that night when the rock came through the window. And we sat on that information for a few days and only told Karn, Jedi, Ian, and Noodle. And then one day, MakeWookie was back online in SWG, ignoring us, so we sent him messages flat out asking him if he was John, the Sociology T.A. And we expected him to deny it or freak out, but instead he responded with, ha, ha, ha, ha, over and over, spamming it to each of us in turn. One final incident happened, I don't know when or how or who, but someone slipped a note into my bag at some point later that week. It was yet another slur-filled diatribe calling me all manner of names, accusing me of being someone who sleeps around, and Dave being a filthy pervert.

Of course, we've been reporting all of these events to campus security, but yet again, there was nothing they could really do about it other than tell me to be vigilant and careful. The note had been slipped into my bag, so it could have been from anyone. We never shared our suspicions about John the TA with security. It didn't seem right. We kept an eye on him, but he seemed like a totally normal guy. Maybe a bit shy, and the only proof we had pointing to him was the fact glitter and Manson were sure that he'd been the only one in the room when we talked about questing on Tatooine. Hardly a damning legal argument, I guess.

And so things kind of just ended a bit flatly. We stopped playing Star Wars Galaxies. It totally ruined the game for us. Make Wookie got away Scott free with stalking and harassing me, and for the last 20 years, I felt just a little more unsafe than I used to. Sadly, there's no happy ending, and it really disturbs me because those notes from Make Wookie were really unhinged. They were incredibly vile, threatening, and violent,

to the point that I haven't even used the exact language here when I'm emailing you because I don't think that you could read it actually on YouTube. And he threw a rock through our window, obviously. Someone like that doesn't just do this once, and then stop because he got away with it or because he was worried about getting caught. They find new targets, new people to terrorize, new people to stock. I found John the TA on Facebook recently, and he's a full tenured professor now. I'm not sure that it was him, though. But I did a little digging into the college that he teaches at, and I set up a fake account to join the closed Facebook group for college students there,

and there's quite a bit of talk from students about anonymous harassment and threatening behavior going on around campuses at random. Of course, this happens everywhere. But it could it be that John the TA is still tormenting students anonymously, even as a married, tenured professor? Whatever is the case, MakeWookie is still likely out there, bubbling with barely concealed anger and rage at the world,

ready to snap. at any moment. From Adams Morgan to Anacostia Park, we all want safer neighborhoods. But what does real safety mean? Real safety means preventing crime before it happens. by having police work with communities to disrupt cycles of violence, by supporting families with stable housing, and providing more mental health and drug treatment.

We know that adding more police and locking up more people doesn't make us safer. Real safety means investing in the things that help prevent crime. Learn more at Real Safety, DC. I was slinging keys as a landlord here in New York City, managing a couple of walk-ups over in the East Village. They weren't fancy, just a couple of crumbly brick buildings with tenants who paid late and pipes that grown louder than a drunk on St. Paddy's. I had some real crazy tenants from time to time. Not all of them were bad.

There were some good ones, don't get me wrong. But out of the bad bunch, the worst guy was the guy that lived in apartment four. because sometimes what happened there still crawls into my head at night. It started with a phone call one afternoon in July. It was hot as hell outside, and I was in my office in the back of a deli on Avenue A when the phone on my desk started ringing loud. The lady's voice on the other end was polite, almost sweet, and she said something like, "'Excuse me, sir, I'm looking for my uncle, Albert Russo.

I think he rents an apartment from you on East 10th.' And I figured that she was talking about Al. He was a quiet guy in his mid-60s who always slipped the rent under my door in an envelope like clockwork. And I told her, yeah, I had an Albert in four, and then asked who was calling. It was his niece, a girl named Clara, and she hadn't heard from him in weeks. Uncle Al hadn't been picking up his phone, and she was getting worried, but since she didn't want to risk the cops kicking his door down just to find his phone unplugged, she figured

that she'd call me first. I appreciated that, a whole lot, actually, and when she asked if I could let her into his apartment so she could check on him, I was only too happy to help her out. A few hours later, I grabbed my keys and headed over there to meet that niece, Clara. When I got there, I saw a blonde lady

who looked to be in her 30s, standing outside No. 324. I introduced myself, and she thanked me very politely before we went inside, but there was still this kind of background tension. We both knew that there was a chance something bad had happened to her Uncle Al and whatever that thing was. We were about to walk right into it.

We climbed the stairs to apartment four, then when we got to Albert's door, I knocked hard. I yelled something like, Hey, yo, Al, it's me, Tony, open up. But it stayed quiet on the other side. I knocked again, yelling a little louder, but still nothing. As I fished the key from my pocket, I remember Clara's face getting very tense, like she was bracing herself for whatever was inside.

Then I unlocked the door, pushed it open, and the smell hit us, like a brick to the face. It wasn't just bad. It absolutely turned our stomachs inside out, like a mix of something sharp and sour that stung your nose. And I gagged and covered my mouth with my sleeve. Clara was coughing before her hand flew up to her face and I don't suppose either of us wanted to go inside but I guess I figured that we had to so we did the curtains were drawn tight so the apartment was very dim

I fumbled for the light switch and when I flicked it on I wish I hadn't a place was disgusting trash bags were piled in corners there were plates crusted with old food and there was a low hum that I quickly realized was flies buzzing all over the place. We took a few steps inside the small, cramped apartment,

then Clara pointed toward the half-open bedroom door. I nodded, trying to keep it together, then moved towards it. I kept my mouth and nose-covered, but every step felt like wading through molasses as the air got thicker and the smell got even worse. Then when I got to the bedroom door, I pushed it all the way open and froze. There on the bed was...

something. To me, it looked like a decomposing body, lying under a stained sheet. Flies were swarming it, dipping in and out of the fabric like it was their own personal buffet. I'd seen bodies before, but nothing as bad as that. Nothing even came close. I remember how Clara gasped and clutched my arm. She asked if that was her uncle, but I couldn't answer. I know I shouldn't have, but I stepped forward and reached out and pulled back the sheet, and my hands were shaking. But what we saw underneath was absolutely horrifying. It looked like a person at first.

At least it had the same shape. There were what you could imagine to be arms, legs, a head, but the skin was bloated and splitting open in places like rotten fruit. Flies poured out of the cracks and the eyes. Jesus Christ, the eyes looked like they were completely gone, just black pits with nothing inside of them. I stumbled back, but Clara was already out of the room. I remember hearing her shoes on the stairs, hitting them very fast as she bolted out into the street. And I followed her down. She was outside completely in tears. I told her to wait where she was and then ran to a pay phone

to dial 911. And my heart was hammering at a hundred miles an hour by the time I got there. And although I could barely get the words out, I did, screaming that there's a body. Please hurry. I told them the address and the cops showed up quick. Two tough-looking sons of bitches who looked like they'd seen everything. And they took one whiff inside apartment four and gagged, muttering something about another damn decomp. EMS rolled in and I saw the Vaseline in their noses as they hauled their gear upstairs.

Claire and I went outside and I did my best to try and console her. But after maybe 15 minutes of EMS being up there, things started to get weird. I overheard one of them saying something to the coughs about calling forensics in and I knew that wasn't right unless they suspected some kind of foul play. Within the hour, the building was crawling. with guys in white suits carrying all kinds of equipment along with a couple of cameras. And after a while, one of them, the short dude with glasses, came down looking like he'd just seen a ghost. He walked right up to me and asked if I was the landlord.

Then when I said I was, he told me how the thing on the bed, the thing we thought was Uncle Al, was not human. And this made Claire's head shoot up because, as messed up at the situation was, It was great news to her. If the thing on the bed was not human, then it couldn't have been her uncle, right? And she begged the guy with the glasses to tell us more, but he said that we had to wait for the lab results to come back. After that, the cops decided they wanted to ask us a few questions, and I told them everything I knew, but Clara knew more. Al was a retired school teacher, and he lived alone, and he didn't appear to have any known enemies. The cops then searched the apartment, and for the most part, found nothing but more trash.

But in the freezer, the lowest compartment was almost full to bursting with all kinds of meat. And a couple of weeks later, I got a call from the precinct. The results were in, and they were worse than I could have guessed. The thing on the bed, it definitely wasn't Albert, but what it was, was a pile of mashed-up animal corpses. Apparently there were pigeons, rats, squirrels, raccoons, even some missing cats and dogs from around the neighborhood. Forensics said they'd only been arranged to look human,

with the bones and flesh stitched together with wire like some kind of sick art project. And I almost threw up when I heard that, and I never saw how Clara took it, but it probably wasn't good. Sure, her uncle Albert was probably still alive, but what kind of condition was he in? No sane man disappears and leaves a meat sculpture lying in their bed. So even if they found him, what kind of a person were they bringing home? I heard the cops were looking for him for a long time. They put out missing persons reports, checked local hospitals, and they even dragged the East River, but they never found anything. I kept.

in touch with Clara for a while, calling every now and then to check in and see if she'd heard anything about it or not, and she'd always answer, but the reply was always the same. No news. I'll let you know if he turns up. She never did call back with any good news, and after a while I just stopped calling, not because I stopped caring, but because I figured all I was doing was giving her painful reminders. I always wondered if Clara knew more than she was letting on. Was there a history of odd behavior with Al. Some additional reasons she came to his landlord first instead of just calling in a welfare check.

I never pushed her on it. Clara was always very sweet and I know families can be complicated. I just wish I had the answers to all the questions I have about old Albert. And that meat person he left behind in his bed. Hey, friends, thanks for listening. Don't forget to hit that follow button to be alerted of our weekly episodes every Tuesday at 1 p.m. EST. And if you haven't already, check out Let's Read on YouTube, where you can catch all my new video releases

every Monday and Thursday at 9 p.m. E.S.T. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode. From Adams Morgan to Anacostia Park, we all want safer neighborhoods. But what does real safety mean? Real safety means preventing crime before it happens. by having police work with communities to disrupt cycles of violence, by supporting families with stable housing, and providing more mental health and drug treatment.

We know that adding more police and locking up more people doesn't make us safer. Real safety means investing in the things that help prevent crime. Learn more at Real Safety, D.C.