The Lets Read Podcast - 348: SHE COMPLETELY LOST HER MIND | 8 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 334

Episode Date: June 2, 2026

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

I think my first six months of trucking must have aged me by about five years, and for the first two, I felt like I was in pure survival mode. Everything I was taught in CDL school seemed like it was written by someone who sat behind a desk, not a wheel. And no matter how many pamphlets you read or video seminars you watch, nothing prepares you for backing up a 53-foot trailer in a truck-stop fuel island at 2 a.m. and with four other drivers waiting behind you. I must have burned through a hundred gallons of gas, just practicing backing up in empty lots, ideally at night too, when nobody could see me sweat. And although I've obviously gotten better over the years,

I still get tight in the chest whenever I see a truck parking in rear on a receiver that looks a little too tight. Needless to say, the learning curve was brutal. And in my third week, I forgot to crank my landing gear all the way up, which cost me a damaged trailer and an $800 deductible. And I also learned really quick that the whole 11-hour driving limit isn't a suggestion.

I remember I hit 10.59 one night and I thought that I could push for another 45 minutes or so to get home. Maybe 20 minutes later, I literally started seeing the reflectors on the white lines start dancing in front of me. I ended up pulling over into a Walmart parking lot where I slept like the dead for eight-hour solid. long-haul trucking is 20% learning to drive the truck and 80% learning how to live in it. It was a real grind, and then for around four or five months in, things started to click. I got my sleep scheduled down with a five-hour split and a six-hour bunk nap that actually worked for me. And then after a while, things like chaining up in the snow or dealing with four-wheelers who think the left lane is their own birthright, started to become second nature to me. It was humbling, exhausting, but honestly kind of addicting once I realized that I was actually

getting good at something that scared the hell out of you in week one. And I remember being on one particular run and thinking to myself, yeah, this is the life for me. But it wasn't all sunshines and rainbows, and back in those early days, I made a couple of seriously grave mistakes, and one of them almost cost me my life. And so one morning I'm cruising through Oregon just after crossing the Idaho state line on the 84, and it's one of those gray Pacific Northwest days. I'm in the middle of nowhere, and it's me, my radio, and a flask full of go juice. It's all quiet on either side of me, and then suddenly, I see a truck of some kind zooming up the highway behind me.

Now, as it got closer, I realized that it was a blacked-out Chevy pickup with tinted windows and no markings, and it was flying at my driver's side so fast that I might as well have been parked. Now, I remember thinking, who the hell is this asshole? But no sooner had that question entered my head, my rear view lit up like the Fourth of July. The driver of the black Chevy had placed a set of red and blue LEDs on the top of his truck, and the moment I saw them, my heart jumped straight up into my throat. Unmarked units freak me out, man, and they still do. So as those lights are strobing so hard it looks like a damn rave was popping off in my mirrors,

I flicked on my four ways and then slowed as I tried to find a spot that isn't a six-inch shoulder with a guardrail. After my tires hit the rumble strips I threw on the parking brakes and then sat there with my hands at ten and two like I was taught. You don't reach for crap when you're getting pulled over in a rig because cops do not like that height difference. Anyway, the truck's driver hops out and he's wearing a full tactical vest and pistol belt. He's got no state police hat, just a badge attached to the same belt as his holster, but I couldn't make out any details on it. And as he came walking up to my driver's side like he owned the highway, I was running every possible thing I could have done wrong in my head. Be it my logbook, my lights, my plates, my overweight or my IFTA sticker. I rolled my window down slow as the guy got closer and then stopped and peaked around my cab for a second before he spoke like he was looking for Escobar hiding in my bunk.

I wished him a good evening, even called him officer, and then when he asked for my license, registration, logbook, and medical card, I handed them over. Now, I waited a couple of seconds as he looked them over and then asked who he was with. And without even looking up at me, he just simply replied, state, and then kept up. on looking over my stuff. Now, he looked for no more than maybe 10 to 20 seconds, but it felt like much longer. Now, meanwhile, I'm just sitting there with my hands at 10 and 2, hoping he's just going to tell me that I got a faulty tail light or something and then send me on my way. But then instead, he told me to step out of the cab because he wanted to see what was inside my trailer. Now, my stomach just about dropped straight through the frame rail when he said it,

not because I was doing anything wrong, but because I was still. so terrified of making a mistake and losing the respect of my boss and my fellow truck drivers. And after putting on my high viz and climbing out of my cab, I walked around to the back with the guy in his black uniform, and he tells me to break the seal and open her up, both doors too, because he wants to, quote, see all the way up the nose. And all the words and terms he used, they made me think that he had a lot of experience, so, even though I didn't recognize the badge on his belt, and didn't have any name tag. or an insignia on a shirt or vest, I just sort of went with it.

I pulled my Gerber and cut through the plastic bolt seal, number 78-291K. I still remember it, and then dropped it into my pocket like I've been taught. I swung open the right door first and then the left, making sure to latch them both back. And the whole time the guy was watching me, arms crossed, cold as ice. I wasn't 100% sure what the load was, I just knew that it was written. and as sporting goods, but that's not what a cop would have been interested in, not unless they got a tip that we were moving drugs or something. Now, instead, I figured he just wanted to check my pallets,

make sure that they're floor-loaded, tight, no more than three tiers high, etc. Some cops get antsy about voids either as in like small spaces between your pallets. But this guy didn't strike me as a regular traffic cop, and neither did he seem interested in the spaces between the pallets. I told him my bills were clean, that there was no hazmat inside, and nothing which required temp control either. But he didn't say a single word in reply. Instead, he just kept on checking what I was carrying until he suddenly started poking his lights

between pallets, kicking straps, and checking for false walls. I figured it was useless to ask the guy what he was looking for, so I just sort of stood there watching him as he took one last look in the scuff. And after that, he came walking back toward me, before... hopping out of the truck and looking like it was something he'd done a thousand times before. I asked the guy if I was good to close the trailer over again, but I knew that he wouldn't leave just yet because I needed the paperwork to explain why the seal was broken. But then instead of answering my question, he asked if I got the truck's keys on me.

I told him no, that they were in the cab. But the guy told me to stay where I was and that I needed to hang tight for him. And it was only then that I started to get frustrated, but I didn't get mad. I just asked him what was going on. But once again, the guy ignored my question, and then he raised two fingers to his mouth and blew a loud, ear-piercing whistle. This is the part where I started to get really confused, not to mention nervous, too, because the second the guy whistled all loud like that,

maybe 12 to 15 of his buddies appeared from the nearby tree line and then came running towards the truck. I panicked, and my first thought was to run for the cab, but as I started to back up away from him, the guy pulled the pistol from his holster and told me not to move. All I could do was freeze at the side of the gun and raise my hands in this sort of don't shoot me kind of way. I didn't have the right certification to drive long haul with a gun,

so I kind of just screwed up either way, so like I said, all I did was freeze up. And the only thing that got me moving again was when the guy told me to get on my knees. And since I really, really didn't like the eye, idea of that, I told him, no, while I just kept on backing up towards my door. Now, I'm proud of myself for that little piece of defiance, no matter how brief it was, but it didn't last. And after the guy cocked that pistol back, had it ready to fire, and gave me the order a second time, it was like

my knees involuntarily buckled underneath me. I didn't want to comply, but I also knew it was my best shot at staying alive. If I ran, I had maybe 20% chance of getting away. But lunge at the guy and try to be a hero, then I was a dead man. So I kneeled, put my hands behind my head like he asked, and then watched as he took a few careful steps towards me and put his pistol right up to my forehead. Now call me dumb all you want. I know I was, but it was only then that things really click for me. Not even the biggest a-holes among the state troopers or feds would be dumb enough to put a gun to a man's head, let alone an innocent trucker. Whoever these guys were, they weren't police, and I very much doubted that they worked for the government. Saying that, I couldn't rule it out entirely, not in the moment.

And that's what pushed me to ask him, who the hell are you guys? And as you can probably guess, he didn't answer my question. Instead, he did that same thing of asking one of his own. And with that gun pushed right up against my forehead, the guy asked if I was an American. And then when I told him, yeah, he told me, not just a citizen. And then asked if I was a real American. I didn't know exactly what he meant by that, because what the hell does a real American even mean? But all the same, I told him I was born and raised in New Jersey, so yes, I was a real American.

And there was a moment after that where I was kind of thinking, is this guy from immigration or something? What the hell is this? But then, just from the look on his face, I knew this was almost personal for him. He didn't look at all that satisfied with my answer. And then after asking my name, he asked me, Are you a Jew? Now, I'm not Jewish, and although my dad was also born and raised in New Jersey, his parents are both from Turkey and I inherited some of their darker features.

And that actually wasn't the first time that I'd been asked if I was Jewish, but the first time, I just calmly explained that, no, my dad was Turkish Muslim. But obviously, given the implication of the guy's question, I knew it was not a good idea to tell him that. And so instead, I thought on my feet and told him my dad was Greek. Greek Christian, too, just because I figured that that was what he wanted to hear. But again, he didn't seem entirely satisfied with that answer. Now, it looked like he was thinking for a second, and then he was. He nodded and gave me the closest thing I got to an explanation.

He said since I was a real American, I should be happy that he and his buddies were getting their hands on the contents of my truck. He told me to be a good little citizen and reported exactly what had happened so I wouldn't lose my job. But he also said that I could be happy that the goods were going to a very worthy cause, and that what might hurt me in the short term, and very superficially at that, would benefit me a whole lot in the long term. And while he's saying all of that to me, his buddies, who were also wearing all black military gear and a lot of face masks too, were busy unloading my truck. And I later found out that the sporting goods that I was trucking were more like a home defense hall, because it consisted of a lot of ammunition, a ton of MREs, and even things like bulletproof vests, too.

It wasn't all stuff like that. There were a lot of blazed orange hunting clothing in there, too. but those boys in black seemed to know exactly which palettes they were supposed to be looking for, and once they had as much as they could carry, they hauled ass back in the direction of the tree line carrying two or three boxes apiece. The guy in front of me, who was just wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, kept that gun on me until all of his buddies were out of sight. And then he asked me something which had my heart pounding in my chest.

He asked me if he needed to shoot me, because if I was going to go rushing back to my cab once he took him, turned his back to grab a gun and try to be a hero, then he'd just blow me away right there and then and save us both of blood and ammo. I told him I didn't have one, which, like I already said, was the God's honest truth. And he just laughed as he put his own gun away and told me that I should really see about getting something to protect myself with. Then after telling me to stay on my knees till he'd driven off, the guy walked back to his truck, climbed into the driver's seat, and took off down the highway in that blacked-out Chevy of his.

Procedure stated that I was to inform the cops of any kind of robbery as soon as I was physically able to. And so, that's the first thing I did. I then called my route manager from the same payphone to let him know that I'd be delivering late and light. And he actually laughed as he told me that I was the first truck to be robbed in just over 20 years, the only one driving for our company, at least. I know he was only laughing because I was only laughing because I was. was okay and that only the trailer had been stolen, not the semi itself. Now, I'd be lying if I didn't feel a sort of rush from it too, having gone from thinking

that I was going to die to smoking a cigarette at the side of the highway and making jokes with the cops photographing the open doors of my trailer. I was later told that the people who robbed me were most likely members of what the cops called, the Silent Brotherhood, some militia-type group who were based in the Pacific Northwest. They went on to do a bunch of other. stuff like that, robbing and killing, and I always felt very lucky that I got to walk away, and I didn't end up like that radio DJ guy that they ended up murdering just a couple of years later. I heard the FBI ended up bringing the Silent Brotherhood down, but I also know that there

were many more militias out there. Maybe not all of them are the DJ murdering trailer robbing kind, but just them existing is enough to give me the Willies. A few years ago, after I'd left college, and wasn't really ready to become a career adult yet. I took a job working as a fry cook at a local fast food restaurant. It wasn't a chain restaurant. It was one of those where the signage and font, try and make it look like it's KFC or something, but it obviously isn't.

And everything from the hygiene to the menu to the prices make it clear that it's knockoff, and people freaking love these places. Fried chicken and fries for a dollar cheaper than KFC? Hell yeah, sign me up. and so it was actually rewarding work. I didn't get paid much, but I was pushing my body to the limit, while at the same time I was doing a long-term master's degrees,

so it felt like a really productive member of society, you know, and I don't know why I'm justifying all of this to you, and if you want to spend your entire damn life working fast food, more power to you. The world would be an inferior place if we couldn't just go to our local McDaniels or Arkansas Fried Chicken or out-in-about burger or, you know, the official ones.

Now, anyways, the point is, I'm not really sure how the hygiene and waste disposal and official things work in the big brand franchise restaurants. What I do know is that at the little local-owned store that I worked at, which I'm just going to call Bugger Kong, things worked in a very certain way. And one of those ways was we had a big metal oil drum out back where we dumped the used oil from the friar when it was time to change it. and then we just kind of left the barrel alone until it got full enough to get one of the guys to haul it to God knows wherever it was that they disposed of a big old barrel of vegetable oil.

I should also mention that while the barrel had a lid, it was kind of just placed on there, just enough so it didn't fill the barrel with rain and cause us to have to take disposal trips early. But if someone had wanted to go into the barrel, then they could pretty easily. But why the heck would anyone want to go into a barrel of used dirty cooking oil? It's not like there was any good reason to keep it under lock and key, right? It was out back and the chain fenced off area with the dumpsters and all other types of gross crap. So I was General Chick who does whatever needs doing is my official title. Go to Georgie, they called me, because, well, my name's Georgia,

and people would come to me whenever some crap needed doing. short of staff on the front counter, asked Georgie. Need puke mopped up from the floor in the tiny seating area? Yep, me. But my main job there, which I was damn good at for what the job entailed, was fry cook. I flipped a burger meaner than a dad with a midlife crisis and a kiss-the-cook apron on. And I had more than one customer, always middle-aged men who liked the cut of my uniform, I mean jib, tell me that they liked coming in best when I was on the grill.

And yeah, look, I was a sassy, fairly hot post-grad working in a grungy fast food restaurant. I've seen Kevin Smith movies, and I know it makes me look cool to play up to this. Sue me. And if you want to picture me, at least back then, I looked a bit like that chick who's the singer of Lincoln Park now, but in my early 20s, with more piercings and a singing voice that it make your ears bleed. And I know none of this is massively relevant, but I want you to have the perfect picture of the scene, just so it makes sense when I perfectly, in minute and explicit detail, describe the visuals of what happened that day.

You'll thank me, trust me. So one day, I've been working the griddle all day, and I was just about DWTS done with this crap, but I used to say it like that, to A, make me sound cool, and B, avoid getting scolded by my very sweet Christian mother. And so, of course, right at the end of my shift, just as the son was about to set, My manager Karen, yes, their actual name, who never liked me, told me that I had to haul my butt out into the back lot, lugging that oil with me, and dump it in the barrel.

Oh, and that should be the last of it, so I had to call on the boys to come collect it in the morning. And sure, they're going to love that. And there's a way that you drain the oil of our friars that lets you drain the oil into five-gallon buckets. Thankfully, it was all cooled by now because the friar hadn't been used for a while, so it was safe to drain the fuel. first five-gallon bucket and strain my whole entire butt dragging it out the back door backwards. And as soon as I got outside into the little chained-off backyard that served as our exterior area, I knew something was wrong. I'd spent plenty of time out here on my cigarette breaks and it always stank, but this time it stank to high heaven. So I placed the oil bucket down in front of the back door

to stop it slamming shut and I turned around to see exactly what had caused our garbage area to stink worse than Satan's taint. First thing I saw was rotten food just sort of strewn all over the ground. The wild thing here is our dumpster had been emptied that morning, so there was no way that the rotten food had come from our restaurant. Someone had brought it here, and that someone, well, it was pretty clear who she was. And the first thing I noted was a shopping cart, adorned with all types of trinkets and decorations like you often see homeless folks pushing around.

And then I saw the presumably homeless lady herself, and she was, I kid you not, in the oil barrel. She was absolutely covered in weeks of old, filthy cooking oil. She hadn't seen me looking, and as I watched, she ducked into the barrel and submerged herself in the liquid. I actually counted. She was down in that oil for 45 seconds, and then she burst out, letting out a gasp of what I can only describe as ecstasy. Her mouth was thrown wide open, cooking oil pouring from her mouth, and then she saw me. She spat a wad of cooking oil straight at me. Thankfully, nowhere near close enough to hit me, but still, I backed away. And did I mention that this woman was extremely

depressingly old and also extremely naked? I could only see her bare saggy chest at this point, but I later saw the full glory of her nudity, so I can say with confidence that she was naked, diving in our oil barrel. Despite what I said, I'm not going to go into detail describing an emaciated, sore-ridden, octogenarian covered in cooking oil coming bursting out of the barrel.

You can probably imagine what that looks like. But when she saw me and spat the oil at me, it was like a switch flipped in her brain. Maybe it was the shame of getting caught taking an oil bath surrounded by rotten food, but I doubt it. She did, however, start absolutely shrieking at me and pointing a very gnarled accusatory finger. If it had been the 1690s, then I would have been straight up on WhatsApp to the latest witch finder, telling them that we had some witch burning to do.

But alas, this was 2023 at the time, so all I was able to do was kind of back away and say, hey, lady, chill out. You just can't stay in our bare. barrel of oil. And the oil lady started thrashing, shrieking about this, and I could tell what was going to happen. She was angrily reaching out towards me, flailing with rage and fury, so of course, yes, the entire barrel of oil tumbled forward, sending foul-smelling vegetable oil flooding across the lot. I tried to jump back further, but hit the wall. And my infinite wisdom, I decided to kick the bucket. Not in that way, but I mean the bucket that was propping the door open. I didn't want any of this

crap getting into the kitchen and giving Karen an excuse to Karen at me. And the barrel of oil managed to topple forward towards this woman in the back door of the restaurant slammed shut, i.e. locked. And this meant that I was trapped with this oil woman in a small fenced-in area. Another thing I noticed was that the oil barrel appeared to be filled with more rotting fill. food, and we certainly hadn't been putting it in there, and I had this horrible feeling from the state of it that the old woman had taken the food into the barrel with her and had been eating it underwater, well, under oil, I guess. The ancient oil-covered naked woman was crawling across the asphalt toward me, occasionally trying to get her feet and then slipping

each time. Now, I was torn. What the hell did I do? I felt bad for this clearly, mentally ill, old lady homeless person covered in cooking oil and chowing down on rotten garbage. But she was also crawling towards me like some kind of disgusting fetish weirdo from the garage. And from the look on her face, she had slippery murder in mind. The fact that she was screaming at me, calling me a witch and saying that she was going to tear my insides out and fill my hoo-ha with oil wasn't exactly filling me with charity towards helping this lunatic chick either. And so I did maybe the most epic move of my life.

I ran around the oil spill, aiming for the dumpster. I was going to climb on the top, but then leap over the eight-foot chain fence, leaving this woman trapped inside the lot, and then I'd go around the front of the restaurant and call the cops. This was mostly a good idea, except I misjudged how fast the oil woman could slide across the ground in her oily nakedness,

and I was almost at the dumpster when she grabbed. my ankle, her slippery hands trying to drag me into the slimy puddle that she was rolling in. Hell no, I was having none of this, and so I did probably the worst thing that I'd ever have to do in my life. I stamped on an 80-plus-year-old woman's wrist. I wasn't proud of it, but it worked, and she howled and let go. Now listen, if you saw her, if you saw how clearly strong and weird this woman was despite her age, then you wouldn't judge me. Hell, for all I know, she was in her 40s and just aged really badly from meth or some other drugs. So, as she rolled around in pain, I knocked her stupid, dumb shopping cart out of the way and threw myself on top of the dumpster

and took the leap of my life to expertly vault over the chain link fence. The oil, coating my sneakers and hands, didn't quite allow this plan to come to pass. I almost managed it. I was it. Instead, my pants cut on the chain-link fence and I was left hanging upside down, blissfully on the outside of the yard, but somehow caught by the tear in my knee of my jeans, so I was just sort of hanging there upside down. And there was a moment where I was considering that I could undo my belt and slip out of my pants and fall to the ground in my underwear, but there was already a naked elderly lady in gallons of oil. There was no way that I was turning this into more of an effed-up weird concept that it already was. And instead, I shamelessly and tearfully started

screaming for help. Thankfully, a passerby saw me and helped me down and then recoiled an absolute horror when they saw the scene that I just escaped from. Now, short ending to a long story, I limped my way back to the restaurant while this passerby very kindly kept an eye out on the old woman just in case she found some way to try and escape. And how'd she gotten in, shopping cart included, was absolutely beyond me. And the best I could think is that she'd pick the padlock to the yard and then for some reason locked it behind her again. It didn't feel like this was the first time that she'd taken a bath in our oil.

It felt almost too planned. Now, Karen handled it, called the cops, and I gave a statement, and then got sent home for the day. I never really found out much about that old lady. All I knew was that she definitely wasn't pressing charges, and she was getting the help that she needed, so I guess that was nice. Now listen, I tried to make this sound as funny as possible,

but the whole thing was absolutely freaking terrifying, and the only way that I can handle the story is really by joking about it. I still have genuine nightmares about her bursting out of that barrel, oil pouring from mouth and screaming just gibberish at me. I still get sick if I smell anything rotting, and I absolutely do not work in fast food anymore. I just can't. And I know the event could have happened anywhere, anywhere with a drum of oil, I guess, but I can't handle the idea of ever encountering anything like that again.

I mean, could you? No matter how I try and turn this into comedy, it's the most horrifying thing I've ever dealt with, and I hope to all that is holy that I never ever have a reason to share a story like this ever again. But, you know, if you want to use a terrifying woman bursting out of an oil drum as the video thumbnail, I think that I'd probably be okay with that. Maybe. At least something positive could come from this absolute crap show.

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and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. In my 25 years as a long-haul trucker, I've been to some incredible places, and I've met some incredible people, too. It never ceases to amaze me how kind, compassionate, and downright wholesome folks can be to one another and to me. But it also never ceases to amaze me just how damn creepy some folks can be too, and it stands to reason that it's always the ones you least expect. Many, many years ago I was driving a big rig through Colorado snowdrifts, and on this leg of the journey, I was somewhere between Denver and Aspen, and it must have been close to one o'clock in the morning. Driving an 18-wheeler at night is one thing, but driving through snowy mountains at night is another thing entirely. Accounting for

wind chill, outside temperatures reaching negative 10 degrees Fahrenheit, and then while it's snowing, all your high beams do is create a wall of bouncing light that can cause some really nasty headaches. And all your road markings, reflectors, and shoulders just vanish under the drifting snow, and then there are patches of black ice that you don't know are even there until it's way too late to do anything about it. Mirrors turn to useless bricks of snow. Gas jelling can cause a whole bunch of engine problems, then hit the brakes in the wrong way, and you can jackknife an 80,000 pound piece of hardware. Needless to say, it can be really tough on a man's nerves, especially if he doesn't have much experience out there on the road. That's exactly what kind of situation I was in,

and something just about scared me half to death. So, I was rolling down I-70, and I was rolling down I-70, and I'd just passed Wheeler Junction-headed westbound, when out of nowhere, this little pink blur stepped out in front of me from the snowbank on my right. It was like time slowed down for a second. I knew it was a little girl. I knew the only thing that I could do to save her life was slam on my brakes, and that's what I did. The Jake brakes screamed, and the trailer groaned as my ABS, the anti-lock braking system hammered like a machine gun. I yanked the wheel to the left, trying to put the whole damned rig into the oncoming lane because the right side was nothing but guardrail and would look like a 500 foot drop on the other side. Snow was flying up the tires,

chains were rattling like they were fixing the shatter, and there I am, praying harder than I ever did in church that this trailer doesn't jack and take that little girl with it. She looks up at me with these big eyes, frozen like a deer while it still feels like time is dragging, and I remember the split second where I thought, oh God, this is it. I'm going to be the guy on the news who flattened a kid on a mountain highway and die myself. And the rig slowed, and somehow the good lord gave me just enough room because I ended up missing the girl by no more than the width of a Bible, I'd say. I slid past, doing maybe 15 with a trailer, fish tail, and while I'm sliding, I catch a glimpse of the girl in the mirror.

She just stood there, having not moved a muscle while the snow swirlies danced around her. I got my rig stop maybe a hundred yards down when it finally came to a halt. My heart was pounding so hard it felt like it was about to explode. I looked out into my side mirror, which I could now see out of thanks to all the snow having been shaken from it. And there she was, still standing there, looking like she was half frozen already. I set the brakes and turned on my four ways so that people could see my lights before they saw my truck and then hopped out into the powdered snow piled up on the shoulder. The wind was cutting through my jacket as I sort of went back up the hill,

back when the little girl came into view again, and I called out to ask if she was okay and where her mama was. But all she did was look at me with those big eyes, all quiet, and then when I saw how blue her lips were, I walked over and scooped her up. up. She was as light as a sack feather, and she didn't even fight. She just buried her face in my jacket as I hustled her back to my truck. I climbed in, pulled the door shut, and then after sitting her on the passenger seat, I cranked the heat to a Mexican wedding, as they say, and then grab my old car heart coat and wrapped her up like a burrito. She didn't talk for maybe a good 10 minutes.

She just sat there, all bundled up with her teeth chattering so hard that I thought that she might hurt herself. I poured a little bit of coffee from my flask into a cup and she managed a few sips and then just curled up and stared at my dashlights like they were hypnotizing her. I eased us back on the road very gentle like and keeping it under 30. And then as the heaters were roaring, the colors started creeping back into her cheeks, but she still didn't talk until we were maybe 10 miles down the hill. And when she did, it was like crawlers creeping over my skin. Because all she said was,

He's going to get me. I asked, Who's going to get you, sweetie? Who are you talking about? But the cold must have had her head all scattered because all she said again was, He's going to get me. Please don't let him get me.

I asked her again, who was going to get her. And then after thinking for a minute, she told me she didn't know his name, just that he was going to get me. to get her. I told her she didn't have to worry, because there was no way anyone was going to get her out of my damn truck, but not without a damn good fight anyway. And that seemed to calm her down a little. And then when I told her I was going to get her back to her mommy, I saw her smile for the first time. And then maybe a minute later, she said, you better go quick. The man who's

going to get me can run really fast. I told her not a little bit of a little bit of a little bit. I told her not as fast as my truck, thinking it would reassure her, but she responded right away with, he can run even faster than a truck. I told her I doubted that very much and that she didn't need to worry. It didn't seem to satisfy her. But she stayed quiet as she screwed up her face like she was thinking something that she didn't know how to put into words. And a few minutes later, after realizing that I hadn't asked her yet,

I asked the girl if she knew where she lived. She said she was from some place near Denver, some kind of suburb, but I can't remember the name. And then when I asked how she ended up in the snow, she explained that she escaped from the man who was keeping her. And it was like talking about him jogged her memory because she immediately began telling me to drive faster. Because if I didn't, the man who'd kept her was going to catch up to us. Now once again, I'm telling her, that's not going to happen, kiddo. ain't nobody driving this thing off the road. But she shook her head and told me,

he doesn't need to drive faster. He can fly. And at first, hearing her say that just kind of made me sad. Some sick monster had obviously tried to scare her into obedience by telling her all sorts of crap about him being able to run really fast or even fly. But then, as I wondered what kind of freak would do something like that, just picturing some creep running as fast as my truck, or flying through the night sky before landing on my cab.

It just about creep the hell out of me. And I'd be lying if I said that it didn't make me want to drive a little faster, even though I knew damn well that what she was saying was impossible. Now, it didn't help that I asked her if she would tell me anything about the man who'd taken her. And we'd already established that she'd been taken from the parking lot of a grocery store because she mentioned something about shopping with Mommy, and then the next thing that the man was holding her hand, and telling her that they were going to find her mom.

Obviously, that was a lie because she hadn't seen her mom since. But when I asked her for some specifics about him, what he looked like or what kind of house he lived in, all she said was that he lived out in the woods, and he looked, in her words, real scary. Now, I know it might sound dumb because this was a kid saying it in some scared little girl voice, but when she said he looked real scary,

It sent an actual shudder through me. I guess it tapped into my own long-lost sense of childlike imagination, and I guess it figured that some freak who'd abduct a kid would be real scary looking, but just the thought alone scared me. I then asked the girl if she could tell me anything about where she was kept, and when she said no, that it was always dark and she could never see anything, I just figured I better stop asking. I was taking her to the cops who'd know,

doubt ask her a ton of their own questions, and I doubted I was helping anybody making her talk about it. But I also had this terrible fear that for some reason she might not survive until we got to the cops. My sister is a nurse, and the thing she told me about kids that really stresses her out is how they hang on and hang on and hang on, then bang. They just slip away on you real fast. The girl was talking, and she looked way better than she did out on the high highway. way, but there was a part of me that thought, what if she doesn't make it? And not just because of the hypothermia that she might have suffered, but because the person chasing her might still have caught up with us at that point. And I knew well enough no man could fly, and that no one

could run as fast as a truck either, but he could most likely drive. And if he wanted to keep his ass out of prison, he'd be on the road behind us looking for that girl. And that was my thought process at the time anyways, and as you can imagine, I was creeped the hell out on top of everything the girl had said. But no one caught up with us. The girl made it to the county sheriff's office in a place called Vale, and that boys and girls is where we parted ways. Now I still think about that little girl sometimes, though.

She'll be a woman by now, maybe even with kids of her own, and while I have no doubt that she remembers the trucker who pulled her out of that snow and stopped her freezing to death, I hope to God that I get to meet her again one day, so I can find out why she was out there in the first place. Now, I didn't read anything in the local newspaper about it. No reporters came knocking on my door to take a statement and no cops either, so I don't know if they ever caught that scary-looking guy. I'm just hoping that that little girl is reunited with her mama and that she grew up to be happy in spite of whatever she'd endured. My first job at a restaurant did not last all that long.

I messed up, and I messed up big. It was a small Greek restaurant, all low-light mood lighting and authentic music. The owner, Mr. Tavalores, was a larger-than-life character who could be the friendliest, funniest guy in the world, unless he was in one of his moods, and then merely being in the restaurant felt like life or death. A couple of weeks into my work there, I was a waiter, Mr. Tavallorius came to me and told me inexplicably that I'd be in charge of front of the house.

Not only that, it was going to be a quiet night, so I'd be the only wait staff on hand, and to call his brother if things got out of hand and I needed a hand. Alternatively, if we had no diners arrive by 9 p.m., I was to shut up shop early, send the sole member of the kitchen staff home, and then hang around until my shift ended at 11, cleaning up and keeping an eye on the place. I didn't really like the sound of this, so I politely asked why I needed to stick around. Tavolourius told me that a guy might be dropping by, but don't worry, he was a professional, and I'd know what was up when I met him.

Now, this was classic Mr. T. He liked to turn everything into an epic mystery saga. I'm not sure if he had a poor grasp of the English language or just liked to pretend he did. There was a rumor circulating some years later that he wasn't even Greek and had ever even been to to Europe. And having worked for the man, even for a couple of weeks, I honestly could believe this. 9 p.m. came and went, and we hadn't had a single customer all night. I sent the chef, an extremely young woman by the name of Maria, home early, and went about doing God knows what, and I set the sign to close, did a half-ass job of cleaning up the already immaculate restaurant, and ended up my Game Boy Color. Now, this was back in those days. Now, near 10 p.m., there was an urgent

knock at the front door. I paused whatever game I was playing and headed over to alert the potential customer that, sorry, we'd close, and no, I didn't know why, but them's were the brakes. And then I remembered that Tavalorius had told me to expect a guy, and it was pretty clear looking through the glass door that this was the guy that I'd be expecting. It was an exterminator, all kidded out in gear, and I could see his purple van parked back over in the handicapped spot, and that the guy had a hand-rolled cigarette hanging between his lips. The label on his jumpsuit read Roach a go-go. It was cute, so I just let him in.

He told me in a thick Serbian accent that I had been expecting him. Didn't ask, just told. And I was like, sure, buddy, you're the guy, right? And he seemed to like this, declaring that yes, he was the guy, and he had a problem to take care of for Tavolores before things got out. The exterminator told me that he had to go work in the kitchen. And this kind of unnerved me because what the hell did we have living in our kitchen? I asked him and he said not to worry.

It was preventative that Tavalurus's bosses didn't like the idea of rats in their establishment. I didn't even know Tavolores had a boss. I'd always assume that he owned the restaurant, but hey, I guess this all made sense. And so the exterminator headed through and maybe my alarm bell should have rang when all he took in with him was a huge, black plastic crate that he held by a handle. But what the heck did I know about extermination and laying poison or rat traps? The guy wasn't in the kitchen too long. He quickly stepped out of the dorm. Too quickly, I realized much later, and then click the latch shut. The fella told me that I should just go home and leave the kitchen overnight for the poison to settle and deter any rats.

None of this seemed weird to me, and Tavalloris had basically told me the same thing to go home early. So I ushered the roaches of go-go to his van and bid him a good night and got into my own battered Buick 8. My pride and joy. Now, I'm just going to jump ahead a little here and explain something about what Tavolores actually intended by having me stay alone at the restaurant. Now, he was expecting some very angry guys to show up and punish him for some transgression or other because shock and horror, my dodgy Greek boss was in with the mob, gasp. Who could have seen that coming? And so what he figured, I think, was that this mob boss's thugs would find me there alone,

figured that I might be a big deal to Tavalas and dish out a beating that I wouldn't soon forget. At least I hope he only expected a beating. The idea that I was being cast out as a sacrificial lamb is a little too terrifying to actually consider. The thing is, these mob guys were smart. smarter than your average gangster. They didn't play things by dishing out beatings and burying Joe loose lips and concrete or whatever these guys usually did. They specialized in fear.

I heard later that their enforcers were nicknamed the ghouls, and I can understand why. Their intimidation came in the style of scaring the absolute living crap out of their target, and their target was Tavalloris, not me. Unfortunately, it was still me and the kitchen girl from the night before, Elle who made the discovery. Davalorus had arranged for us to open up that next morning, too, maybe to test if I'd actually show up for work, get a vague scope of the situation.

I did indeed show up to work, none the wiser and explained to Elle as we entered the restaurant that the Exterminator had been there the night before and laid down poison in the kitchen to deter rats. Now, Elle was young, probably too young to be running a kitchen, but she was whip smart. and immediately her face went whiter than usual as she told me, hey, that's not how an exterminator works.

You can't just lay rat poison down in the kitchen where we prepare food. This was effed. We were probably going to have to dispose of any of the food the exterminator had access to. And thankfully, that shouldn't have been very much since the pantry and the freezer were locked, and Elle and another chef kept the key, but at the very least, we might have to replace some pans and some fresh veggies. That's a bummer, I thought, as I opened the door. And then the next thing I'm doing is letting out the most high-pitched, girlish scream of my life.

I slammed the door shut and began trembling, shaking like I was in septic shock. I could barely get my words out. I was almost sobbing, and bare in mind, I'm a grown-ass man. Elle was shaking me, asked me what the hell was wrong. Was someone dead in there? Did we have to call the cops? As she moved to open the kitchen door and I'd just about scream, no. I think I scared her more by grabbing her than anything else,

at least until she looked through the window into the kitchen. To Elle's credit, she wasn't quite as freaked out as me, but she didn't suffer from crippling arachnophobia. You see, the thing is, the kitchen was absolutely filled with bugs. These were the same type of bugs, mostly around the same size, about four inches long maybe. And at first I thought they were spiders. But Elle, who was able to study them a bit more,

pointed out that they had ten legs and not eight. There were hundreds of them. They were just sort of milling around the kitchen, kind of just panging out. And at first I couldn't believe that they were real. They looked like spiders by way of some messed up horror writer and then some, and this was freaking New Jersey, not the Australian Outback or the Middle East.

Things like this just didn't live here. House centipedes were bad enough, but seeing the kitchen of our restaurant filled with these monsters was enough to absolutely break me. I begged, pleaded with hell to latch the door back up and broke into a sobbing pile on the floor as she called Tavalloras. And the man himself showed up ten minutes later, furious that we interrupted him.

Of course, there weren't monster spiders in the kitchen. Maybe a handful had gotten in, sure, but we must have both lost it. I didn't even have time to tell him about the exterminator or yell for him not to enter the kitchen before he unlatched the door and storm straight in. Now, I've never seen a fat, unfit man run quite so fast as I did then. Tavalus came crashing out of the kitchen, hollering and howling, yelling at us for not telling him what to expect, and cursing the redacted family who I don't want to draw the ire of even to today. Elle, thankfully, had the foresight to rush over and pull the door shut, locking it again. But not before a couple of these beasts had come ambling out into the restaurant.

Elle somehow managed to trap one of them under a glass, and the others started coming towards me. It looked at me, and I looked at it. His face looked like, well, let's just say it looked like lady parts. Somehow this made this hideous spider being a little less terrifying to me, and I couldn't really bring myself to kill it. And instead, I slowly backed away and let Elle capture that one too. But there was still the problem of the absolute hundreds of these horrible bugs in the kitchen. Tavalaurus was just screaming, no cops, no cops,

and eventually calmed down enough to call an actual exterminator pal of his. Elle and I were sent home for the day and the restaurant was closed for the next three. Needless to say, I didn't return to work when my unpaid, I may add, vacation was over. I was done with that job. If Tavilloris had pissed off the redacted family, then I did not want to go between him and the ghouls. Now, this was their harmless warning, their opening gambit, so to speak. Things would escalate from here, and I wanted no part of that. Now, I later found out from Elle that the creatures were camel spiders, not spiders at all, or were they scorpions, despite their other name of wind scorpion? They're wholly their own

thing, not really dangerous at all, but they do have a painful bite. But what creep me out the most was that the ghouls had collected enough of these to release around a hundred into our kitchen, and you could bet money that this wasn't the only stock of horrific creatures and creepy crawlies that they actually had. It made me sure of one thing. I didn't want to work in the service industry. I didn't want to work with anyone who mess with that redacted family or became the target of the ghouls. And I certainly didn't want to find out the kind of thing that they'd do to escalate if releasing a hundred camel spiders into a restaurant was their initial warning. A few years later, long after I had moved out of New Jersey, I heard that Tavaloris restaurant had

closed down, some kind of health inspection issue. Apparently it was really bad. A guest had found a baby bird fetus in their falafel or something. Whether this was another threat from the ghouls or just Tavilloris being a really terrible restaurant owner, I'll never know. And really, I never want to know. So back in 1988, when I was just 18, I was slinging boxes at a warehouse for minimum wage. I had no plans for college, no plans to do just about anything, really. Until one day, this good old boy rolls up in this shiny red Kenworth. And he seemed like a character, so we got to talking, and that's how I found out that he made four times what I did just for driving a big rig across the country. And I remember looking at my busted up sneakers and thinking, hell, I could do that.

So I took all the money I'd saved up to buy a car, and I used it to get my CDL instead, which for those of you who don't know, is a commercial driver's license, which you need to operate trucks, buses, or anything that. that transports hazardous materials. And about a month later, I was driving over to my first job interview, and I've been trucking ever since, coming up on damn near 40 years now. And like any job, trucking's got its ups and downs. When the freight's rolling, the money's great, and if you run hard and stay mostly legal, you can clear six figures a year, no problem at all.

Dispatch might decide the destination, but once the keys in the ignition, it's just you, the CB, and 36 tons of steel and rubber. I've seen the whole country on somebody else's dime, and as long as the loads on time and you ain't tearing up equipment, there ain't nobody breathing down your neck. Only trouble is, those damned air ride seats still feel like concrete when you're sitting on them for 10 to 12 hours a day,

and then forget about things like Thanksgiving because you're eating your turkey and yams out of a Tupperware container on the side of the I-80. But if you ask me, the worst part of the job isn't the fuel prices, the insurance, or the shippers and receivers that treat you like something stuck to the bottom of the shoe. It's not even the lumpy bunks, the truck stop, slop, or the showers that look like a damn crime scene. Those you can get used to. The worst thing about the job is ironically the very same thing that sometimes is the best thing about the job. And that's the people you meet while out on the road.

Six years into my career, I was hammered down and eastbound in the I-80s, somewhere just west of Lincoln, Nebraska. Now, it was around two in the morning, and it was just me and my engine doing about 68 while she sang that old Detroit song of hers. My CB was quieter than a church mouse, and the only thing breaking the silence was the wind whistling over my cab. And then suddenly, out of the dark, I caught a glimpse of something pale moving on the shoulder. I slowed the rig a little and flipped my high beam down, and then there she was, a girl of no more than about 19 or 20 years old wearing a thin white sundress. Her hair is all wild and she ain't got nothing but sandals on by the looks of things, and she's sticking her thumb out, trying her damnedest to get me to notice her. Now, I've heard every scary story from here to Reno about picking up hitchhikers. the ones about scamming lot lizards, the ones about nutcases or robbers,

even the old vanishing girl's spooky story that every trucker must have heard a hundred times by now. Usually I'd have just kept on driving. Ain't my circus, ain't my monkey, as they say. But like I said, something about the way she looked had me easing that 389 Peterbilt over onto the shoulder. And I set the parking brakes, hopped out of my cab, and then started walking back slow so I didn't spook her. And when I was close enough, I called out to her, asking if she wanted to ride. And she just nodded, and then came bounding down the shoulder toward me. Now, up close, the backpack that she was wearing made her look even younger.

I noticed the mascara streaks down her cheeks and the little bruises on her arms like somebody grabbed her a little too hard. And when she got close, she thanked me with a very shaky voice and then walked around the passenger's side and helped herself into the cab. Now, after I got us rolling again, the girl stayed silent in the passenger seat for maybe 10 to 15 minutes. I told her that whatever ran her out there in the middle of the night was none of my business. But whatever it was, she didn't have to worry about it in the cab of my truck. She told me her name was Riley and thanked me for giving her a ride. I told her it was no problem that I'd like to think someone would do the same if that was my daughter out there at the side of the highway. When she told me I sounded like a good dad, but that she never got to know hers, I just apologized.

I didn't ask any questions. I just said the world can be a cruel place for good folks, and I was sorry her old man wasn't around for her to know. No, I didn't know what kind of reaction I was expecting, but I sure as heck didn't expect the girl to laugh. But that's what she did. She suddenly let out this loud burst of hyena's laughter at what was supposed to be a heartfelt consolation. She'd been so quiet that the sudden outburst kind of shocked me a little, and then I stayed shocked when she told me her father was just a sperm donor, her words, not mine,

and that he'd done her a favor staying out of her life. Now, I'm no shrinking violet, so I'll admit to letting out a bit of a laugh of my own upon hearing that donor line of hers. I figured that in a get-tuff-or-die sort of world, this young lady had simply gotten tough. But there was more to it than that, much more to it. I tried to change the subject away from family and ended up asking her where she was headed and if she was in school. She gave KG answers to both and then decided to ask some questions of her own. Now, I was open and honest with her, told her where I was headed and what I was hauling. She asked what it was like being a trucker, if I slept in my truck and if I ever got spook staying up overnight and some shady truck stop. But then, Riley asked if I was

married. It wasn't suggestive at all, just curiosity. But once again, I told her the truth and said that I'd been divorced for coming up on five years by that point. I put it down to how young she was, you know, having not learned all her social graces yet, but she did not avoid the topic. Instead, she asked, did you love her? And I nodded, but stayed quiet, a hint that it wasn't exactly my favorite topic for small talk, and that's when Riley asked, did you hit her? Now put it down to some fatherly instinct, but my reaction as that little doozy of a question was way different

than if a grown man had asked me that question. I didn't yell, I just simply told her no, and then figured the reason that she asked was because she'd seen her own father do the same thing. Riley replied that I didn't look like the type, and then there was a brief silence before she asked if I had, had any kids. I said yes that I still considered myself a father, but the daughter that I shared with my ex-wife passed on about ten years before when she was just 18. Now, I figured Riley wouldn't exactly treat the subject delicately, but I also figured maybe that was just her way. And so when she

asked me, did you touch her? I almost slammed on the brakes. I said I wasn't sure where she'd come from or what her story was and neither was it any of my business. But I also advised her that questions like that, especially when asked of perfect strangers, would only invite trouble on herself. And her face turned very sad, and then she stayed quiet for a minute, almost like a scolded little girl. And it felt really uneasy, but more at the question of what in the Sam hell happened to this girl that made her so comfortable asking questions like that. Now, I stayed quiet myself, letting that question bounce around my brain as the answers got scarier and scarier.

And then finally, Riley spoke again. She turned her head and with this sort of sly look on her face said, Come on. You never once found yourself looking at her. Felt your eyes wonder. I wouldn't say I exploded. And again, it was pure paternal instinct, which kept me from kicking her out of my cab. but from there on out, it was no more Mr. Nice Trucker.

I asked her what in God's name was wrong with her and told her that wasn't my kind of humor, instead if she made any more jokes like that, she'd be back on the side of the highway sticking her thumb out again. She didn't pull the scolded little girl act again. Instead, she let out another one of those hyena laughs before sighing like it was the funniest thing in the world. She told me to lighten up that she was just kidding,

and she was sadly wrong to think a road hard trucker like me could take a goddamn joke. I told her I could take them just fine, but there were some things she just didn't joke about, and she'd do well to learn that before she pissed me off. Now, I thought that might at least silence her for a while, but instead, Riley started asking me stuff like, Oh yeah, what's wrong, trucker gonna do me, huh? And then putting on this little girl voice to ask the same question, What's a big old twunker gonna do to a little girl like me? Now, I finally yelled at her to shut up.

If it wasn't so cold outside, I've kicked her out of there while we were driving. But it only took a minute of silence before she said. I meant what I said. You don't look like the type to hit a woman. Now, I guess that lowered my blood pressure a little because I didn't feel like slamming my foot on the brake anymore. But then she hit me with, But you do look like the type to F your daughter, pervert. Well, I just about blew a goddamn gasket.

I didn't actually slam on the brakes. You can't do that in a big rig without risking some serious damage to your coupler. But I did slow us down and bring us over to the shoulder, and then once we were there, I started yelling at Riley to get the hell out of my truck. I had a snub-nosed 38 in my glove box, but this girl was tiny, said the other idea of reaching for it never even entered my head, but it should have. Because just as I unbuncleed my belt and opened my door, saying that I was going to drag her the hell out of the cab if she didn't climb out herself, Riley pulled a gun on me. She pulled it out of her backpack when I opened up my door

and put a foot on the step. Now one second she was empty-handed in the necks. There it was. It looks small, like a 22 or something, but she had the drop on me, so it didn't matter how some. It was a little bit. small it was. The lack of recoil on that thing meant that she could pull the trigger as often as she wanted, and the lack of recoil on it meant that it'd be a goddamn miracle if any bullet missed me. She told me to sit my ass back down in the seat and close the door. And I just briefly considered lunging from my glove compartments and hoping for the best, but I also realized that one shot to the head and it was probably game over. Now, this wasn't checkers anymore. It wasn't a case of just getting that bitch out of my cab. We were playing.

playing chess now, and I had no choice but to play a long game. After climbing back into my seat, we got back on the road again, only this time I was driving much slower because if anything happened and we went off the road, I didn't want to be driving so fast that the cab burst into flames. When I asked how far she was going, Riley, which most likely was not a real name, told me to shut up and keep driving. And this was just my anger talking and I know that I've been better off keeping my damn mouth shut, but something slipped out anyways when I asked her, do you even know how to use that thing? She told me, of course she did, that her daddy taught her to shoot so she could keep

herself safe from perverts like me. Again, this was her choice of words, not mine. And believe me, she wasn't saying it because of some scar that she'd had deep down. She was saying it to taunt me, nothing more, and I could hear it in her voice. When it came to knowing how to use that pistol, Riley said that I could ask the man who tried taking her to his hotel room back in Denver, who also believed she wasn't capable of using it. But the girl was also quick to add that I'd have a pretty tough time talking to him since she left him lying on the floor of that hotel room, dead as a door now. And I noticed that she said that about her father, and since I couldn't resist, I called her out on it. I reminded her how she told me that she didn't know her father, and in response, she gave me

another one of those hyena laughs. She told me I was a dumb mother effort for believing such a sob story, and that I shouldn't be so gallible in the future. I remember how she smiled when she asked if I believed her, about killing a man back in Denver. I told her I'd be a fool to believe anything that came out of her mouth by that point, and once again, she laughed. She said she figured I might say something like that, so she brought something along with her from Denver to prove she wasn't lying. She asked if I wanted to see.

And with both hands on the wheel, I told her I didn't think I had much choice in the matter. The girl laughed and then reached into her backpack again and pulled out a Tupperware container filled with what, at first, appeared to be mud. And when she cracked the lid and the smell hit my nose, I knew it wasn't mud. with some type of congealed blood and whatever was floating at it was starting to turn. At first, when the girl told me to look at what was inside, I ignored her and kept my eyes on the road. But this only made her angry. She pointed the gun at arm's length, dramatically like, so I could see it clearly. And then she said that she didn't give a good God damn if it made us crash,

because she'd scramble my brains if I didn't do as I was told and look. Now, I can't express how certain I was when she said that she was serious. I mean, this girl sounded unhinged, truly unhinged, like her sanity was holding on by just a few thin threads. I've had a gun pointed at me maybe a half-dozen times in my life, but I only twice truly believed that the person would pull the trigger. Once I was being robbed by a meth head that I described as barely human, and the other time was in the cab of my truck with that girl who wasn't named Riley.

And so, since I believed wholeheartedly that she was crazy enough to risk her own life, by shooting the driver of the big rig she was sitting in, I looked at what was in that container. And when I did, I almost puked. Floating in what looked like dark red jelly were two meatball-sized oval-shaped organs made of a much paler flesh. I knew what they were from the first second I looked at them, and as I stared at them for that brief moment, the smell of them turning hit my nose, and I almost

lost my stomach there. I turned my eyes back to the road and kept one hand on the wheel, but I had to cover my mouth and nose with the other as I gagged to keep myself from throwing up. The girl thought that was the funniest thing she'd seen so far, and she cackled like a witch as I coughed and wretched. She told me not to worry, because she cut them off of the guy in Denver after he was dead, and not before, so I wouldn't have to worry too much when it happened to me, too. And that was the most terrified I'd ever been in my life, without a shadow of a doubt, and I'm not ashamed to admit it either. I knew that the girl had lied to me once before and just for kicks,

but the evidence of what she'd done was right there in front of my face. At least, I thought it was, because when I asked Riley if those things in the container really were what I thought they were, she started laughing again. She said they were pig testicles, and I was a coward and an idiot for thinking that they were anything else. I knew better than to say anything by that point, and I just kept on driving. And thankfully, we didn't have to go much further before the girl demanded that I pulled over at an upcoming truck stop. I did as she asked. Watched as she pulled her gun closer to her chest, so anyone outside couldn't see it.

And then before she got out, she gave me some big speech about how she normally killed a man before leaving, so they wouldn't come after her once she got out. But in her mind, I was the exception. She said that she knew I wouldn't come after her, and that I wouldn't try to hurt her either. She figured I had a gun somewhere in the cab, and she was right, but she also knew that I wouldn't use it on a girl who reminded me of the daughter I'd lost.

No matter how much I hated her, no matter how much I wanted to make her pay for being such a goddamn demon, and she knew I wouldn't take away her chance to live, not without feeling like the same kind of evil that had taken my own daughter away. And the worst thing, she was right. Even after she climbed out of the cab and went walking off to find her next plaything, I couldn't bring myself to do anything but drive off, praying that she'd find her way and make a decent life for herself after,

whatever it was that she'd endured. I only came out from under that spell once I was. I was about 30 miles down the highway, and I decided the only thing to do was reporter to the cops. I ended up stopping at a diner and calling in the whole thing to the local sheriff's apartment, and they gave me a reference number that I could use when calling them back in the future, but after calling maybe half a dozen times, I heard that there was never any progress, and they didn't find the girl. I still hope she found a way to get better.

I don't believe anyone is born evil, but a part of me thinks that if that girl pushed her luck a little too far one day, day, that she might not even be around anymore, let alone getting better. When I was around 18, myself and my now husband went out to a fancy restaurant for dinner. We live in a small rural town, so the restaurant was one of those which is out in the middle of nowhere and pretty exclusive. Now, this was many years ago, and my husband's father was kind of somebody in our small town, so we managed to get a booking. And we turned up at around eight and were seated and, as an 18-year-old girl who grew up poor,

I felt like a darned celebrity. As the restaurant was filled with other diners, mostly middle-aged, upper-class folks who definitely looked like they belong there. And I felt a bit like a fish out of water, but I guess this is why I was so relieved when the couple seated beside us struck up a conversation. They were clearly rich and well-to-do. The one was one of those glamorous old women. who look like they're the murderous widow and some drama.

And the husband, though, he clearly had done pretty well for himself and clearly enjoyed doing well for himself. His fingers were very swollen, and his nose was red with these sort of burst blood vessels. And he had a very well-groomed and well-trimmed white beard in this balding head, but there were nicotine stains on his teeth and facial hair that I could see. And this was back in the days before teeth whitening made every rich person look like they had immaculate. dental hygiene. I don't remember what we chatted about, and frankly, I didn't care. It was pleasant and fun, though, and they made us feel extremely welcome. Well, they made me feel welcome anyway. My husband

was more used to attending higher-class restaurants like this with his family. And speaking of my husband, he stepped outside for a cigarette break. You could smoke inside restaurants back then, but we always opted to sit in the no-smoking section, because even back then it was pretty disgusting to eat your dinner surrounded by other people's secondhand smoke. My husband would typically spend about 10 minutes on a cigarette break before a meal, as he'd have a couple beforehand so he could go until after dessert for the next one. Food used to take between 30 minutes to an hour to arrive from the kitchen back then, and it was considered totally normal to wait for your meal for that long,

so this was his first cigarette break. Now, a minute or so after my husband stepped outside, this rich wife excused herself to powder her nose, and I just sat there sort of playing with my cutlery and giving the rich husband a polite smile every now and then because I couldn't help notice that he was kind of looking at me a lot. And then the rich husband looked around the restaurant, leaned across the table towards me and whispered,

I love you. And then he sat back in his seat and loudly began to talk about how great this place was and said hi to another nearby group who were dining that he clearly knew. And it was so bizarre, and I almost wondered if I'd actually misheard it. I looked over my shoulder and saw my husband outside smoking, and I tried to catch his eye. Nothing doing there. Now, the wife still wasn't back from the bathroom yet.

And this husband took a sip of wine, which stained his teeth reddened, and he leaned towards me again and whispered, I love you. and then went back to acting normally. As wife returned from the bathroom, my husband returned from his smoke break. Three more times that evening, I ended up alone with this rich husband. At no point did I manage to end up alone with my husband to tell him what was going on, though. I was alone with a rich wife at one point, but she was engaged in conversation with a group of

old ladies two tables over, and on top of that, I just felt too nervous to bring it up with her. Remember, I was literally just 18. I grew up poor, and I was surrounded by people who I could easily imagine eating someone like me just for the thrill of it. And the next time I was alone with that rich husband, he did the same thing three more times, leaned in and whispered, I love you, and then sat back with a sort of satisfied smile on his face. The second time, there were two I love yous and one, I really love you. Now, I was bracing myself for things to start turning weirder. you could tell from the way he was looking me up and down.

That pure romantic love was not exactly what he meant by his words. And the third time it was, I love you, and then I really love you, and then glancing around the restaurant to check nobody was looking. He directed his, and thus my, gazed, to the tabletop at his waist. And I couldn't see anything, obviously, but the way the tablecloth was bunched up and the way his arm had disappeared beneath the table, he was definitely giving the impression that he was squeezing himself down there. And then he leaned across, and in the most weird and creepy whisper yet, he said it again,

I love you. And then conveniently, his wife got back to the table, and he started telling her about something that had happened at the office that he'd forgotten to tell her about, but absolutely positively had to share with her. And I just felt frozen, sick, and scared. I had no idea what to do. And of course, I had unpleasant experiences with men before as a blonde-haired blue-eyed teenage girl, but you kind of expected to avoid that type of thing in this very high-end restaurant

when your partner and his wife were so present. And to top it all off, I felt way too concerned about embarrassing my husband to be in front of his people. He knew some of the other diners, if not this couple themselves. And other than the weird I love yous, the conversation. with the couple had been entirely pleasant and, dare I say, even enjoyable. I would have happily befriended them if not for this creepy weirdness that was coming out of the guy. And as it happened, and at the time I believed it to be a coincidence, we finished our meal at the same time as the older couple, both paid at the same time, and both made to leave at once. My husband paid on his credit card,

but the rich wife was the one to handle their bill. The rich husband sort of sidled up next to me, and I sort of froze, terrified of what he was going to say next. Instead of saying anything lewd, he just simply said it would be absolutely charming to meet myself and my partner, and perhaps we could officially dine together at some point. And then he gave me his business card. And, yes, it was one that Patrick Bateman would have scoffed at in case you're wondering, but the point is, not only did he give me his business card, but it had his home telephone number on it. The rich husband and rich wife sort of walked us to our car, and as I climbed into the passenger

seat, he said, remember what I told you? And when my husband looked at him sort of confused, he said that he suggested that we all dine out together again, and I had their card. But I know that's not what he meant, though. I knew that he meant the I love yous. So that was my creepy first encounter where rich people go to dine. Was it really scary? Well, not yet. but believe it or not, this was the prelude. On the drive home, I told my husband to be everything. He is a very calm and peaceful and spiritual man. But back when we were both 18, as he's just three months older than me,

he was, well, let's just say, pretty hot-headed and protective of me in a way that verged on jealousy. And now he was so angry that he almost steered the car off the road. But I made him swear to keep him calm and listen to me and promised that he wouldn't turn that car around or pull in and wait for the couple to pass so he could chase them down or anything stupid like that. And to his credit, he agreed with me. And then I got to the final bit, and I told him that I had the guy's business card.

Now, he smiled quietly, and then when we got home, he asked me to give him the business card. And I lived with him at his mom and stepdad's house for reasons I won't go into. They were pretty bohemian about it since we were technically together before men. marriage. And I gave him the card after he swore me two things. One, that he wouldn't do anything for a few days until he had time to think about it. And two, he wouldn't just go around to their house, which we discovered was almost this sort of stately home. And when we swore to both, I gave him the business card. And what my husband did should have been the perfect revenge. It should have absolutely effed things up for the rich husband and revealed him for the weirdo that he is. But it

didn't, and that's what creeps me out the most. What my husband did was call up the number and ask to speak to the rich wife, and it was her that he confronted. He told her all about her husband's harassment of me, and he may have embellished a little even because, screw it, but he made it very clear that her husband had been trying to behave creepily towards me and hinted that I should contact him for some kind of encounter. I was listening in on the other line, as that's how landlines work those days, and I was completely chilled when I heard the rich wife start laughing in a very cold and callous way. Now, my husband to be kept on ranting about how uncomfortable the creepy old dude had made me, and maybe she wasn't grasping the fact that he intended to cheat on her. And this rich wife said

something like, are you finished? He only told her that he loved her. Gareth can be a bit much sometimes, she says. And then it hit me. Pretty much every time I'd been alone with that rich husband, my own husband had left first, and then rich wife had found an excuse to take an extended break from the table, and always ensured that I was alone with her husband. Then she said one final thing that I'll never forget, which creep me out more than any way rich husband, aka this Gareth, had made me feel. She said to my husband, that maybe he should stop taking things so seriously and take them up on their offer of dinner today, and that she was sure a couple of our means would appreciate being able to dine with the likes of them,

and we both look like our company could help rejuvenate their marriage. Now there was no doubt about it then. They were goddamn predatory swingers, maybe worse, who thought that we were just some young poor couple spending what little we had at some swanky restaurant. My husband had a tendency to dress down because he had the whole embarrassed rich kid thing, so it made some sense. And so my husband, keeping calm, said thank you for the invite, and maybe he'd check in with his father because perhaps he was familiar, and maybe we could all dine together as a family. As soon as rich wife had heard my husband's father's name, she responded rather quickly that maybe we'd have to see, but perhaps it was best that we took a rain check. And then she hung up.

And that was just about the one time when my husband was actually to use his birth father's reputation in our small town to scare this pair of creeps. And you can probably imagine the type of rich character my father-in-law was, given that the very mention of his name caused a pair of very creepy, probably even murderous swingers to back off in fear. But that, my friends, is a very much different story. I used to work at this truck and company out in California. Not 18 wheelers, though, just regular four-wheelers that had cold storage in the back. I worked there for four years, never once took a day off for any reason, and that was partly down to liking my own coworkers so much.

Now, for the most part, the other drivers were a great bunch of guys. Management was another thing entirely, but all the guys down on my level were great workers, and I'm proud to still be able to call some of them friends. But then, about five or six months before I quit in protest, they hired a guy named Jerry. Jerry seemed like an okay guy at first. A little quiet maybe, but he delivered on time and he didn't have any problems with anybody. But then came what I now consider my first clue to there being something off about Jerry,

and that's when Tony tried showing him a picture of his niece. She just started elementary school, and Tony's getting all teary-eyed, saying, look how fast they grow up, and passing around his phone to people to show them pictures of her. But when he tries showing Jerry, Jerry just gives him this icy cold, no thank you, and then just carries on with his business. Now, Tony was really offended, actually, and he was joking when he said, was that asshole's problem. But the more I thought about it, the more it bothered me.

Even the guys who clearly didn't give a crap about Tony's niece at least took a look and said something like, ah, she's cute. happy for you. But there was Jerry acting all awkward like we were trying to show him a booby magazine or something. And like I said, I guess that was my first real clue right there. Everyone else figured that that was just him. Quiet, verging on antisocial Jerry. And after a couple of months, it just drifted into the background and slipped from my mind.

It only came back a few months later when I was driving back to the depot that I spotted one of our trucks parked near an elementary school, just not in the parking lot. I slowed a little, hoping to spot one of my coworkers so I could honk my horn at them, but when I did, it didn't honk. It was Jerry, and that's when I realized why his truck wasn't in the parking lot. He wasn't making a delivery. He was just standing there, watching the kids play in the yard. Now, I'm thinking, what is he doing?

But I didn't stop, not that first time. I figured he probably had a kid at that school, or that maybe he just delivered there and was taking a smoke break or something. But like I said, the truck wasn't in the school's lot, and I didn't remember Jerry ever smoking back at the depot. Now, this was weird, but I wasn't Jerry's boss. And I'm also not so much of an a-hole that I'd try and act like Jerry's boss. And if he wanted to goof off or do some family stuff from company time,

that was his problem, not mine, and I didn't mention it to him either. But then, not even a week later, I spotted him doing the exact same thing on my day off. I was driving by the exact same school when I spotted one of our trucks in the exact same place that had been the previous week. It was like deja vu, the school, the truck, and then Jerry, right there in the same spot. That time, I had a sort of double moment of what the F, because what was he doing there a second time? But then as I slowed and watched him in my side mirror, I could have sort of. sworn that he was holding his phone up against his chest and a way a person might do if they were

secretly recording. Now, I guess I am kind of an a hole to risk ruining a working relationship over a suspicion as weird as that. And if it turned out he was holding his phone, then whatever, I'm the a-hole. But if he was out there recording those kids, that was something that I wasn't going to tolerate. Now, I'll admit to feeling kind of crazy as I walked up to him because after parking my car and getting out, I didn't so much as walk up as sneak up. But then there he was, holding his phone maybe six inches from his chest, and his screen was all lit up with what was clearly a recording of the school yard in front of him. I said, Jerry, what the hell are you doing, man?

And obviously because he hadn't seen me, he just about jumped out of his skin before blocking his phone and sliding it into his pocket. Now, he told me in that very quiet, weird voice of his, Just taking a break, man. But I knew what I saw. And when I demanded that he show me his iPhone gallery there to prove that he hadn't been doing what I thought he was doing, he refused. Now, I was causing such a ruckus that some of the kids

and one of the teachers started to pay attention to me yelling. And when Jerry realized that we had an audience now, he hopped back into his truck and just drove off with me still yelling at him. I remember calling a couple of the guys that night who told me that I should do the right thing and tell our supervisor what I saw. And so I called him and gave him the full story too. Everyone was being very understanding and saying stuff like, what the hell? That's messed up. He's doing that on the job to get him fired.

And the same was true with my supervisor who said that he'd bring it up with management and work that slacking off on the job angle so they could actually fire the guy. My supervisor did have kind of a warning for me, though, like it wasn't all smooth sailing, because when he asked if I'd taken any pictures of Jerry and I said no, he said, dude, really would it help if you did, but now it's just your word against his. Now, I figured that might be an issue, but like I said earlier, I put more than three and a half years into that company, and I busted my butt every single day I was on the job, too. I figured that might count for something, but it didn't. and it didn't count for a goddamn thing.

I had three days off and I spotted Jerry on the second one, so it wasn't until a day after that I was back at work again. Now, I figured I might even stroll in to see no sign of Jerry, with his locker having been emptied. But Jerry was still there and I barely even clocked in before my supervisor said management wanted to talk to me. I knew it must have been about Jerry. There was nothing else that I was expecting it to be about, and I was right.

but what I figured would be little more than a recap of my story turned out to be anything but. I was in there for like half an hour and a lot of crap got said, but the gist of it was this. It wasn't Jerry that was in the wrong for taking pictures of kids. It was me because I was harassing him. Okay, so management didn't exactly say that he wasn't in the wrong taking those pictures. They just didn't see it that way at all. Based on what they've been told by Jerry, he had an interest in photography, and when I decided to violently accost him, he was standing nowhere near the elementary school in question, and neither was he facing it. Jerry claimed that I'd taken a dislike for him ever since he started, and what I was doing was nothing but an attempt to get him fired and force him out.

I told management that was a lie and that me and all the other guys have been nothing but all right with him, and I also offered to get pictures of him doing his thing, just like my supervisor suggested I do, but they told me if I did, I'd be fired. Now, I say the meeting was with management, and it was more like between me and the HR guy that had been hired around the same time Jerry was. He was the one laying down the law and saying that I'd be fired if I carried on harassing Jerry,

and he did it all while looking and talking at me like I was some brainless idiot. Now, I told him, just because he had a college degree, didn't mean that he could talk to me like that, at which point the big boss stepped in and told me to calm down. He was a good guy, so I did like he asked. But that didn't mean that I was going to take it. Since it was being treated like a nobody, and management was sticking by HR and siding with that pervert Jerry,

I quit that same day. I gave my two weeks, and I wasn't about to leave anyone there, but I didn't want to have to work a single second more than I needed to at a company that had hired that goddamn Chomo. And no one liked what it was happening, but this HR guy was from corporate, and they could hire and fire just about anyone they wanted to and often did. That meant that no one wanted to stick their head out above the clouds, so to speak. Now, I might have quit, but I kept in touch with the guys, and I've stayed friends with a few of them even all these years later. And that's why, maybe even seven or eight months later, I was one of the first people to hear when Jerry got arrested at work.

He was a part of some FBI sting involving online child predators, as in like he thought he was talking to a 13-year-old girl, when really it was some FBI agent in his 30s. And, well, when I found that out, I drove straight over to that old job and almost got myself arrested when I demanded to talk to the HR guy that almost fired me for pointing out who Jerry really was. I know that was a jerk move,

and I ended up apologizing to my old boss on the phone later that evening, boy was I fuming. And I'm actually glad that the HR guy wasn't there that day and that I didn't catch him going to his car because I really would have ended up in jail for beating his ass. Now, the guy never showed up for work again either. My old buddy said that he quit the same day the cops showed up at work to arrest Jerry and even though he left stuff on his desk and he didn't pick up his phone whenever they tried to call.

I guess he figured that they were as mad as I was and in one case they were. But all management wanted to do was return his stuff and do a brief exit interview over the phone, but still he didn't pick up. If there's two things that the whole thing taught me, it's this. Always trust your gut. And HR people are a pain and a goddamn neck. In my very early 20s, I was a waitress at a small family-owned chain in my hometown. There wasn't anything particularly notable about the restaurants.

It was pretty beloved in my town, and the food was great quality. Man, our chefs were chefs' kiss. and in the evenings it had this lovely mood lighting that made the place feel incredibly romantic, even if it was a bit dark at times. I got the job after dining there with my then-boyfriend, Jono, for around the fifth time, and he noticed a help-wanted sign in the window. It seemed like a perfect fit since I was looking for a job for my last couple of years of college, and I already knew a bunch of the restaurant staff, either through dining there

or because I was friends with a couple of the waitresses. things went great for the first few months there. I was having a blast and genuinely enjoying the work while still finding time for my studies. Unfortunately, working at the restaurant led to a little turmoil in my life as well. There was a male co-worker who I'd become good friends with, purely platonic, but my boyfriend couldn't be convinced to see it that way. And one day he turned up at closing time to catch me and my co-worker Brandon at it. by at it in this case, he meant Brandon was walking me to my car in the dark,

something he did every time we worked the night shift because, well, I don't need to explain why a male friend might do that for a female friend, do I? Unfortunately, my boyfriend couldn't quite grasp this concept, and he absolutely lost his goddamn mind. He accused Brandon of trying to steal his girl, and then started screaming in the parking lot about all types of these STDs, had. Now, it didn't stop there either. He started coming into the restaurant during busy evening hours, pointing at me and yelling to everyone that I was a, well, loose woman, and that even more

embarrassing, he was deciding that to start sharing very intimate, very true facts about my body that were just kind of things that you don't want diners at a restaurant or your colleagues to hear about, you know? It was horrible. Having someone show up out of the blue to randomly yell something unpleasant about how one of my breasts was smaller than the other, and I was insecure about it, or the kind of things I liked in bed. And my now ex-boyfriend was banned from the restaurant, and I was given a couple of weeks of compassionate leave. During this time, I got a restraining order filed against him, and the security camera footage from the restaurant, as well as witness testimony, made it pretty simple and easy of a process. But still, I was devastated. I felt like I had no choice

but to quit my job because the longer I stayed, the more sick that I felt about going back to face everyone. And eventually Brandon gave me a much-needed pep talk and convinced me that I was super valued as an employee and that they'd be gutted to lose me. And his well-meaning Giltrip worked and I eventually returned to work. And now, enter the third player in the story. His name was Howie, and he was the assistant manager of our little family. Up until this point, Howie had been polite but distant with me, not rude or anything but not particularly interested in me as anything more than a colleague either. And on the day that I returned to work, though, he called me into his office and told me that Jonah would not be darkening the door of our establishment again and

that he'd personally make sure of it. I wasn't sure how he could promise that since it would require him to work the exact same shifts as me, which surely he wouldn't be doing. But it turns out I was wrong. He'd arranged things so we worked at exactly the same times, at all times, and that was just the first red flag. The next, which I should have taken more seriously, was when he called me into his office again, a few days later and started addressing the horrible things Jonah had said about me. He said that he knew that I didn't have STD's Jonah claim because I obviously wasn't that type of girl, which isn't how STD's work, buddy, but I like my job and wanted to keep it so I just kept quiet on that. Now next, he started talking about how I shouldn't be insecure by my breasts.

So what if one of them was smaller than the other? He'd never noticed, and in fact, he thought they looked great. And he took this as an opportunity to gesture and stare at my chest as if he was doing me a favor. And then, the third and most intolerable red flag, there had been a certain proclivity that Jono had repeatedly yelled that I was into in front of colleagues and customers. Nothing I think anyone should be ashamed of, but not something that a young woman particularly once broadcasted to coworkers and strangers. And Howie reassured me repeatedly that it was fine that I was into this particular thing. And then he started telling me about how one of his current girlfriends, yep, phrase just like that, was also into it and she told him that he was really good at pleasing her in that manner. And then he sort of paused as if waiting for me to respond with, I don't know.

A request to experience this, I guess. The man was in his goddamn 40s, by the way, and surely he knew that that wouldn't work. And so now, I'd gone from one surprise abusive X to a surprise, creepy boss. They always say bad luck comes in threes, right? And so that night, at a bar after work, I got a bit tipsy and told Brandon everything. Brandon, who'd rapidly become my best friend, who I thought I could trust with anything. And his response, I probably misinterpreted Howie.

That Howie was a good guy. He'd known him for years, and he'd never behaved like that towards him. Now, just imagine me yelling loudly and incoherently at this point. So that was just me done with that job, but not before Howie had one final trick up his sleeve. Again, he called me into his office and this time made me sit on his side at the desk, which I reluctantly did because as much as it sickened me, I needed to part on good terms so I could get the references I needed. Now, I couldn't believe what I was seeing when Howie pulled up the folder on his computer. It was a series of photos of Jono, taken with a

telephoto lens, like they'd been snapped by some kind of private detective. And they chronicled his daily movements since we'd broken up. Now, I stared at Howie, who looked at me like he was extremely proud of himself, and he went on to explain that now we had a good enough data on Jonah's day-to-day activities that we could surely make it look like an accident. Make what look like an accident, I asked. But of course, I already knew. How we had it in this head that together we were going to kill Jono to restore my honor and then what?

I dropped my panties for this balding middle management a-hole because he roped me into committing murder. Now, I told him that I severely appreciated the effort he'd gone to and asked him if you could just even email his dossier over to me so I could spend the night coming up with a plan. And that buffoon actually did it. He emailed me the photos, his random, barely legible.TXT documents about how we could hit Howie with a car or cause him to walk under some unstable structures or all manner of Looney Tunes' nonsense. But his most coherent idea by far was that we'd invite him to the restaurant under the

guys of me wanting to get back together with him and then serve him poisoned food. I immediately called the cops and forwarded all the information. Thankfully, they took it extremely seriously and apprehended Howie that same night on intention to commit murder. Eventually, he entered into some kind of plea deal and it was proven that he was most definitely not of sound mind. And really, I didn't care as long as he got the help that he needed and wasn't a danger to others. But for me, I was left pretty tight. devastated. First, Jono, then Howie, then Brandon. I didn't really have any close female friends, so it just felt to me like everybody I'd gotten close to it turned out to be a goddamn

psychopath, and honestly, I'm still struggling to shed that belief. I'm in therapy, but every time I meet a new person, every time they're nice to me, I find myself gripped with the terror of waiting for the other shoe to drop, as they say. All because I followed up on the help-wanted sign in the window of my favorite local restaurant. They say you are what you eat, but frankly, I do not remember crazy being on the menu. 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. EST. Thanks so much, friends, and I'll see you in the next episode.

I don't know.