The Lets Read Podcast - 365: HE WAS NOT WHO I THOUGHT HE WAS | 9 TERRIFYING True Scary Stories / Rain Ambience | EP 350

Episode Date: September 22, 2026

This episode includes narrations of true creepy encounters submitted by normal folks just like yourself. Today you'll experience horrifying stories about people with secret identities & nightshift encountersHAVE 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:- Betterhelp --> Code: [READ]- Murder: True Crime Stories

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Etihad, Beyond Borders. I'm a 35-year-old woman, and I work as a nurse. I've done so for the last 10 years now. I doubt it's a career that you can really relate to, being a literary expert in linguistic YouTuber, but it feels like we live in entirely different worlds altogether, although apologies if I'm wrong. Now, maybe you have family who worked in the profession,

and I'll admit I'm not a die-hard regular viewer, but I love it when your videos come on autoplay and actually help me sleep. Some friends of mine encouraged me to email this story in, so I hope I'm making the right call in doing so, and I think it was scary as H.E. Double Hockey sticks anyways. So this story takes place when I was 25. I'd already done a degree, so I was on a fast-track program at nursing school, a little two-year qualification. Now, this meant that there was a lot of the on-the-job training early on, which suited me just fine. I've been in school since I was like four years old, and I was eager,

to put the books away and start emptying bedpans or inserting suppositories into people's butts. And maybe the whole sometimes saving people's lives things. I don't know. I forget why I got into the profession. Now anyways, as a part of my training, I was required to spend two months working on a number of different wards. Really, they just wanted to toughen us up and throw us into the deep end. I'd already done a stint in the pediatric floor, an oncology floor, and a burns unit. Now, it was absolutely insane, particularly the burns unit, honestly, and I'm pretty sure I could spend a whole story talking about what various types of burns do to the human body. And I would traumatize your listeners more than half the serial killer of stalker stories did that they might have heard.

Now, I was pretty relieved when my next assignment seemed like the administration were giving me a break. Now, I was set to spend two months working on a coma ward. I mean, okay, yeah, this was emotionally pretty devastating, but it was pretty different from consoling a guy whose face had been permanently disfigured by an electrical fire and whose nerve endings would never, ever stop reminding him of this fact, let alone the visual aspect. But just thinking about it now, and this one guy in particular, it honestly breaks my heart, and I'm not going to talk about him or even think about it. Instead, let's talk about comatose people. and the majority of these comatose people were old. We had some younger people, but the bays that I was assigned as a junior trainee consisted of old men and old women.

Now, this coma floor was surprisingly busy because during the day there were a lot of visitors. And this surprised me, as you always hear about loved ones being abandoned since they'd been in a coma for a long time, but maybe it's something to do with the area that I live in. Almost every coma patient had visitors almost every day. and then there was the cleaning, the massaging, the daily care. Now, it was pretty chill work, but hard and important work at the same time. And after a week, I was asked if I could cover the night shift for three nights.

And of course, I said yes, because the night shift on a coma ward is honestly notoriously quiet, and I had a bunch of studying to catch up on. There were only three of us on shift during that three-day block, and I think there was supposed to be a fourth nurse, but they had actually called in and sick and I never saw him. There was Yvonne, the charge nurse, and Soa, a junior nurse who'd passed her training. Not that this is in any way relevant, but Soa was one of the most beautiful girls had ever seen before or since. And part of me wondered if this is why she worked on that coma floor, to avoid the inevitable harassment that would have come her way on a bunch of other floors. Maybe I was just thinking

too hard or maybe I was just jealous. I was not the kind of woman who was going to win any beauty pageants or fit into any MetGala outfits. I'm happy to add, though, that 10 years on the job has cost me 120 pounds, and I couldn't be happier. I still can't do anything about my piggy-looking face, though, but all well. I soon found out that working the night shift on that coma floor wasn't the quiet, relaxing chill-out zone that I expected it to be. The work was no harder than I expected. It was the usual emptying catheters and kilosmy bags, taking patients' obes, that sort of thing, charting, etc. Checking the machines were functioning and that nobody had secretly died while the machines happily beeped away. It was the human silence. None of the comatose

patients snored. You couldn't even hear them breathing over the sound of the machinery and a handful of them couldn't even breathe without medical aid and I guess their loved ones couldn't bring themselves to switch off the machines. I don't even want to think about having to make that choice myself. It was my first night shift and I was around three hours into the adventure. Yvonne and Soa had disappeared somewhere and I assumed that they both headed toward the end of the ward, but I hadn't seen them leave and they hadn't said anything. So it was just me sitting at the nurse's station, trying and failing to force the contents of my

textbook into my brain. I'm frustrated at my inability to learn. I glanced up to check that the image. movable patient had it moved. Now imagine my shock when I saw a figure, dressed all in black, standing over the woman in the far right bed off the bay in front of the nurse's station. The figure was dressed entirely in black, not a cloak or some kind of death garb, but black workout pants, a black hoodie, and most notably black leather gloves. The figure was leaning down, whispering something into the woman's ear who continued to sleep the

sleep of the dead in her coma. And I convinced myself that the other nurses were pranking me and that this had to be SOA in disguise. It wasn't anything remotely like I expected from either of those two, though, and I think deep down I knew that the figure was a man. There was no way that I was even willing to consider any other possibilities, though, as I left the nurse's station and stepped into Bay 5. I called out to the figure saying that I wasn't falling for that prank, and he continued whispering, into the old woman's ear as if he hadn't even heard me. Obviously, deep down, I knew that this wasn't something Yvonne or Sowa would do. Now, one of the orderlies or the nursing assistants, maybe. Some of those guys could be freaking weirdos. I became even more certain that the figure

wasn't Yvonne, who was nearing 300 pounds and was quite clearly not this slender black-clad figure or Sowa. Now, this was reaffirmed by two sets of footsteps coming from my distant left. And I was a heading from the direction of Bay One and Yvonne's voice calling out in the stage whisper that we adopted in the coma ward. Now, she asked who the heck I was talking to and what was going on. Now, I looked up, hoping that that black-clad figure had to be some sort of figment of my imagination. But of course not. He was no longer leaning down to whisper into the old woman's ear, though. He turned to face me, and I could see that under his black hoodie, he wore a black garment.

It's sort of like a balaclava, but thin and not made of wool. I'm not even sure what those are really called. I started pointing at the black-clad figure who in my mind I'd already taken to just calling death. And I started muttering and stuttering, trying to explain that someone was in here, but I have no idea what actually came out of my mouth. Almost nothing coherent, I'm pretty sure. Now, it must have been enough to alert Yvonne to something, though, because she started freaking out and so.

said Soa. Not in a, there's a ghost on the coma ward, death has come for us all type of way, though. She charged forward and began sort of whisper yelling at the intruder to identify himself immediately because security was already on their way. I don't think this was true, but he didn't know that. Yvonne ran forward and used her considerable bulk to manhandle this black hoodie guy away from the patients and into the corridor. That's when he began screaming that we wouldn't keep him from his grandmother, that we were stopping him from being able to say goodbye, and that the angels in his head would melt the flesh from this fat, unclean demon, which clearly meant Yvonne. Now, I was frozen on the spot, like a complete useless fool.

Soa had already ducked behind the nurses station and called security, God bless her. Meanwhile, Yvonne was furious, and I'll never forget what she said. You can call me fat, and you can call me a demon. but nobody calls me unclean, she yelled. And halfway to the elevator, the door opened and a handful of security guards emerged, followed by a neurology doctor. Now, this couldn't have been the security that SOA called because they appeared far too quickly. Now, the doctor quickly explained that this patient had been in an overflow area,

suffering a head injury that didn't appear too severe, but something had caused him to make his way to the ICU coma ward. Now, we later found out that his grandmother had died on this very floor after falling into a coma when the patient was just a child. Now, more gently now, Yvonne escorted the patient toward the doctor in the elevator, and the patient paused and removed his hood and that mask thing that he was wearing. And I don't know if it was the removal of that mask that caused everything to go to hell, but something did. The patient turned and stared directly at me. He made perfect, direct eye contact, and such a little. Suddenly, blood began dripping from his nose, his ears, and most violently his eye sockets.

And then as I watched, the patient, whose name I still didn't know, had the most violent seizure I'd ever seen and collapsed directly to the floor. Everything felt like slow motion, but sped up at the same time, and the doctor pronounced that black-clad man dead, right there on the scene as they tried to work on him. Now, the short version of this mild concussion he'd received had triggered some type of aneurysm in his brain, a weakening of his brain tissue that nobody could have even possibly predicted. Now, I'd love to say that the comatose woman he whispered to had made a full recovery, but she remained in her coma for another couple of years before also passing. The whole thing could have put me off being a nurse, but it didn't. It reminded me that so many people need our help, people who might appear sinister at first glance,

people who are at the end of their lives, everyone. We're all vulnerable to the inevitability of death, and I feel like it's my calling to try and help that transition feel a little easier for as many people as I can. My grandpa came over to Cuba from Spain in the late 40s after the war ended, and although Spain wasn't a part of it, he grew up hearing all about it on the radio at the hotel that he worked at. You see, just because Spain didn't take part in World War II,

didn't exactly escape that period unscathed. They had their own civil war in the mid-30s, and it was a really bad one too. The country lost a lot of good men and from all over as well, so when all was said and done, there just weren't enough good workers available to fill all the jobs. And that's how my 13-year-old grandfather ended up working as a bellboy in this fancy Madrid hotel. It was a real old-fashioned setup, both in the architecture and the job description. And my grandpa was a live-in bellboy, and that's half the reason that his mom pushed him to apply. She loved him plenty, at least that's what he told me, but she was also a war widow who could barely afford to defeat any of my great aunts and uncles who were in some cases considerably younger than my grandpa. And so off he went, from this little village just outside Madrid, to one of the city's fanciest hotels.

And from what he told me, it was like going from living in a hut to living in a palace. palace. Now, even though he lived in the staff quarters where conditions weren't nearly as nice as the guest rooms, he got to do stuff like sleep on a feather bed with pillows, take hot showers every day, and eat at least two sit-down meals, one in the morning and one at night. It was a quality of life his mother never could have provided him, and so while he missed his mom and siblings very much, Grandpa said such luxury was easy to adjust to. His quality of living, he was a lot of might have improved dramatically, but his bosses worked him hard for the privilege, and as a bellboy, he had to do a little bit of everything.

Grandpa said that he didn't mind working hard. He was used to that. He said the only really downside were rude guests who treated him in the hotel's other staff, like something they found stuck to the bottom of their shoes. They had all kinds of fancy people from all over the world staying there, diplomats from the Americas, royalty from Europe, as well as many, many, many members of the Spanish aristocracy. But no matter where they were from, or who they prayed to, or how they made their money, my grandpa said that they could always be divided into one of two categories, the kind and the A-holes. And the man from Lisbon most definitely fell under the kind category. Grandpa said that one morning, in the summer of 1940, a very smartly dressed Portuguese man checked into the hotel.

Grandpa could tell that he was Portuguese from the way he spoke Spanish, like his accent, I mean, and from the way he dressed, and he seemed either very wealthy, very important, or both. He introduced himself as Mr. Felix, said that he'd been staying in Madrid until some business was concluded, and then my grandpa was given the job of taking his bags up to his room. Some guests would simply watch his grandpa struggled with the heavier bags, but Mr. Felix insisted on taking up the heaviest one personally. He was strong and gentle and smelled of the expense of Cologne, and then once his services were no longer required,

he slipped my grandpa a few pesos to say thank you. That was only the second or third time Grandpa had ever received a tip from anyone, but he assured me that Mr. Felix's generosity wasn't the only thing that made him so popular. He was gracious with all the staff and he was generous with compliments, and he had a way of making you feel at ease, even though he looked like he might be the prince of such and such place. Mr. Felix was staying indefinitely, much to everyone's delight, since he didn't quite know when his business in Madrid would be completed. So he was still a guest to the hotel when a delegation of German scientists arrived from a Berlin university. They were there to meet with a group of Spanish scientists with discussions taking place in the hotel's conference room,

and although my grandpa had absolutely no clue what they were talking about, it seemed like they were some very smart people. They'd spend all morning in the conference room, taking a short lunch in the hotel's restaurant, and then return to the conference room for more of that fancy science talk that my grandpa couldn't understand. But then in the evening times, even if they all went out to dinner someplace in the city,

they'd always return to the hotel bar for brandy and cigars. Mr. Felix also liked to hang around, the hotel bar after dinner, and with him being such a friendly, sociable kind of guy, he gets talking to all these German scientists about who they are and what they're doing in Madrid. Apparently, Mr. Felix was not only a talented pianist, but he was quite the party animal, at least for his day anyway, because within a few hours of drinking and puffing on cigars, he had them all gathered around a piano, singing songs and laughing together until late into the night. Mr. Felix made a phone call as the night wore on, and then grandpa said maybe 30 minutes later,

a car full of beautiful ladies showed up to have drinks with the scientists. Now, he said it was the wildest party he'd ever seen in that old hotel bar, nothing raunchy, just drinking and dancing and what have you. But inevitably, when the party was over and such as the way of the world, some of those young ladies just so happened to accompany some of the Germans to their rooms. Maybe an hour or so goes by, and my grandpa used to work the night porter shift sometimes, and he's sort of sitting in the lobby, trying to stay awake when he hears a scream. He and this other member of the hotel staff go running upstairs, only to find one of the young Spanish girls out in the hallway,

sobbing her eyes out and nothing but her delicates. The scientists that she'd been with had carried on drinking while back in the room, and then after walking out into the room's balcony, had started serenading Madrid's sleeping citizens. His lady friend tells him to come back to bed and that he'll fall over the balcony if he's not careful. She said he spun around on the spot like he was about to start singing to her,

but then after leaning back on his little spin a little too hard, he'd lost his balance. He fell back, hitting the railings so hard that the momentum just carried him over, and then down he went, all four stories, but not quite to his death. After his fellow scientists rushed to the man's aid, they found that he was still alive, but he was barely hanging on.

Grandpa heard that they rushed him to the hospital, but then they put the guy on a plane so they could fly him all the way back to Germany into one of their top brain surgeons they had there. It was the most distressing thing to happen to the hotel for quite some time, and my grandpa assumed that that'd be the end of their conference. But then, I guess, having the kind of clinical minds that they did, they decided the conference had to continue even if they were a man down. From what grandpa can remember, the mood in the hotel bar that night was pretty somber. There were brandy and cigars as usual, but instead of toasting the conference,

they drank to the injured man's health and to his speedy recovery. Mr. Felix soon joined them, professing his heartfelt commiserations upon hearing of the man's terrible accident. Then after taking to the piano, he led the Germans in a rendition of a popular song from their homeland, which made them all remember it fondly. Those scientists came to love Mr. Felix just as much as everyone else at the hotel did, at least until the final night of the conference when something my grandpa experienced became part of the scariest event of his entire childhood. Like I said, he used to work as the night porter sometimes,

mainly to give the usual guy a rest from working the night shift all the time, and he was working it on the final night of the scientist's conference. Now, since it was their last night together, and seeing as it was almost a whole week after their friend's accident, the scientists saw fit to throw a little party in the hotel bar. Naturally, Mr. Felix was invited to join them, and for a second time, he summoned a car of beautiful young women to drink and dance with the German and Spanish scientists. Mr. Felix was the life and soul of the party, and upon the bar's closure, there was a great deal of handshaking and thanks exchanged between Mr. Felix and all the scientists.

and once all was said and done, they retired to their rooms. Grandpa said that there was a great deal of warm feeling in the air, but even so, he couldn't help but feel a little wary. The last time the scientists had partied like they did, one of them had gone tumbling over a balcony. So as quiet hours began to creep in on the hotel's upper floors, my grandpa decided to go walking the halls up there just in case anything happened. He said it was up on the third floor when he heard something like, like a glass falling off of a table in one of the rooms. He stopped and listened, heard what sounded

like a window opening, but then all went quiet again. Grandpa said he breathed a sigh of premature relief and exhaled it just in time to hear a much louder commotion coming from a room downstairs. And as quiet as he could, he rushed back down to the second floor and down a hallway to where he'd heard a similar sound like something falling from a table. It wasn't quite loud enough to wake the their guests, but my grandpa sure heard it, so off he went fearing someone might actually be hurt. Well, someone was, because no sooner does he get to the end of the hallway, but the door to the room opens and outsteps Mr. Felix. Only this time, and the way my grandpa put it, still sends chills through me. It was not Mr. Felix. He looked like him. Heck, my grandpa said he even

smelled like him, but from the way he moved and from the way he looked back at him, my grandpa could tell it wasn't Mr. Felix anymore. It was his whole demeanor, like he'd taken off a mask of his own face, and it scared the hell out of my 13-year-old grandfather. Oh, and that's before he saw the bloody knife in Mr. Felix's hand. Grandpa said that he'd been scared to death as it was, but seeing that knife had him running through the hotel hallways until he found a service closet to hide in. From the way Mr. Felix had been looking at him, Grandpa said that he'd been scared of his. he was convinced that he'd hunt him down and that he'd hear his heavy footsteps coming up the hallway any minute. But he didn't. There was just silence for what seemed like hours until he heard

the sound of the other night porter who'd come looking for him. Apparently, the other guy liked to take naps on shifts, so grandpa really was hiding up there for about an hour before the other guy came looking for him, and that's when the crap hit the fan. Two of the German scientists had been murdered, one on the third floor and one on the second. The police were called and they cordoned off the affected rooms while staff kept the guests calm, but there was no hiding what happened for long, especially not after the room belonging to Mr. Felix was found empty. The police searched high and low for him, but he was nowhere to be found. They put up checkpoints on roads surrounding Madrid as well in the hopes of cutting off his escape, but no one fitting his description was ever stopped.

Police at the border between Spain and Portugal were alerted too, and they must have kept a particularly close eye out for anyone named Felix, but they never did find that man from Lisbon. It was like he'd vanished into thin air. Officially, Mr. Felix was some kind of thrill killer, who'd murdered the two German scientists for nothing but the thrill of it, after having befriended them over the course of the previous week or so. Police thought that he might well have had a hand in the accident which took place

earlier in the week, perhaps via the girl who'd been staying in the injured man's room. But obviously, the focus was on the two German scientists who had had their throats cut while they slept. It wasn't just two random guys. The two murdered men had been the head of the delegation, along with his personal assistant, while the guy who'd fallen from his balcony was said to be the delegation's most brilliant scientist. Grandpa said that in the aftermath, he heard people talking about how angry the Germans were, and that someone high up in the Spanish government had been summoned to the German embassy to explain the situation. But by then, they had the story straight. Mr. Felix was some psycho-con man who'd wormed his way into the scientist's trust before he

killed and robbed them, totally random, totally unexpected, nothing they could have done about it. But that wasn't true at all. You see, the first two people in Mr. Felix's room were the grown-up Knight Porter, the one who liked Naps, and a Spanish police officer. The cops knew it was that delegation of German scientists that had been affected, so they were all well aware that, depending on what they found, the murders could turn into a diplomatic crap storm of epic proportions. And so naturally, they were very interested to know exactly who Mr. Felix was. He'd left all his Portuguese identifying papers with him, his passport, his travel papers, even an insurance policy filed under that same name. But Mr. Felix was not the name of the man who had been

staying in that room. No one would ever know what his real name was, but the man left a clue on the desk of the room he was staying in, one that gave a pointer to his true nationality. And the moment that Spanish police officer realized what it was, he snatched it from the desk and told the night porter not to breathe a word of what they'd found. Well, he did breathe a word of it, though not to be a word. for a long time after, for fear of what the police might do. And then when he finally told everyone there was no denying it, the man calling himself Mr. Felix had left a king's shilling on the hotel room's desk,

one minted in London, England. The man who'd acted so naturally and so convincingly as a Portuguese gentleman, the one who'd so brutally murdered those German scientists, had been a British spy. all along. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you could wake up tomorrow and be better at one thing, what would it be? For me, I think it would be handling stress in a healthier way. Life can get pretty overwhelming sometimes, and I'd love to be better at taking a step back, not overthinking everything, and just being a little more present. I think that's something a lot of us can relate to.

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It's progress. And for me, that means getting better at handling stress and giving myself a little more room to breathe. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com slash read. That's better, H-E-L-P-com. slash read. Hi, Joel. I grew up in Britain, although my parents are French.

You'd never know it, though, because I have the most posh, London-sounding accent that a French girl could ever have. This might be because of the school that I went to or because I left school in college, and I took some time out before university to work as an air hostess. I loved that job and ended up staying in the air for five years. Not literally, of course, but you get what I mean. I left sixth form college in 1997, and the story that I'm about to share with you took place in 1999. This was a couple of years before, you know, everything changed with the planes, and security was very different back then. Things were a lot more lax, and it was much easier to get up to high hijinks.

For one thing, you could still join the Mile High Club without too much trouble. Not that I ever did that, of course, I honestly would never. I shouldn't joke about that kind of thing, considering the story that I'm about to share with you, or joke about anything, really. So this story took place on the first ever red-eye flight that I was working. I'm sure everyone knows what a red-eye flight is by this point, but if by some small chance you don't, it's a flight, generally a shorter one, that takes place at night and often involves the passengers sleeping for the duration.

If you take the red-eye, you're meant to stay quiet, calm, and well-behaved. I can't remember if kids were flat-out banned from our red-eye flights, but I don't ever remember any kids or babies on the handful that I worked. Now, this was 27 years ago, so bear with me. I've not worked as an air hostess for almost as long, and I haven't thought about planes in a long time. From what I can recall, the plane, run by some long, bankrupt airline that you probably never heard of, was divided into two sections.

The front section, closer to the cockpit, was for passengers who wanted to be able to to stay quiet and chill but weren't intending to sleep. It was the cheaper option and usually the busier one. Then the back of the plane, in reverse of the usual, was sort of the first class section, except this was for people who wanted or needed to sleep, so it was filled with bed seats. I was working up front, which suited me just fine because I didn't want to tiptoe around snoring old businessmen. And the sleeping area always smelled like farts too, so that was lovely. A red eye typically doesn't have as many flight attendants as a regular flight, or at least it didn't back then. I think there were just three of us on that flight, although I could be misremembering.

What I do remember is that I was up front, obviously, and my dear, queer, gentle friend, Adam was working the sleeper section. Do you remember H from Steps? I don't know if Steps was that big in the United States, so maybe you never knew him, Joel, but if not, Google him and stick a picture up on screen if you can. Adam looked just like H from Steps only he was a lot calmer, quieter, and more gentle than H, who always seemed like he had the energy of 50 men. Now make sure you Google H from Steps and not his real name, Ian Watkins, otherwise you might get that nuns from Lost Profits,

another singer who unfortunately shared a name. Now, he did some really, really terrible things, and you should do a true crime story about him one day, actually. That'd be actually very interesting. He was shanked in prison recently, too. Died. What a tragedy. Now, anyways, Adam was like a really calm and gentle age from steps, and I promise this is important eventually.

Partly it's important because the villain of this story, who we'll call Ian, looked kind of like the lost profits guy. Although he wasn't really famous at the time, and we didn't know he was a major criminal, so maybe I'm just misremembering. I'll call him Ian anyway, because nearly every guy called Ian I've ever met was a proper prick, if you get me, except for my cousin Ian, who's an actual right laugh.

So anyways, back to the red eye, because I was working at the front of the plane, most of the passengers ate late-night airline food, and that meant that it was my job to collect up the trays with their rubbish on them. No, I did this on autopilot, pun intended, sticking them on my trolley with a little thank you, sir, or thank you, ma'am, or thank you, lovely. if they were some old biddy who was so wrinkled that they could have been a lad or alas. Or, how do I put this tactfully? Someone who was very, very large and made it impossible to tell their gender.

Now, anyways, you had to be really careful about that back then. Christ, I mean, I feel bad for air hostesses in the 2020s. And I bet there had been some actual moments where a 20-year-old sweetheart had called a bearded passenger, sir, and been chewed out for not recognizing that they were a pretty print. Princess. Oh, Christ, I shouldn't have had those last couple of glasses of wine before writing you this email. Now, anyways, I got my trolley full of trays and crap to the center of the plane and began chucking away the plastic boxes that the dinner had come in. And that's what I noticed it. A napkin with writing scrawled across the whole thing. I know what you did on that

plane, they'd written. And then a crude picture of what was definitely supposed to be me because, well, I could just tell, okay. Now, there had only been about seven or eight passengers who had dinner, so the note couldn't have come from too many people. I don't know why I even cared, because I hadn't done anything on any plane by that point, but the drawing had been very rude and insulting, and I was young, so I guess I felt kind of threatened by it. It didn't take long for me to notice Ian, even in the low, dim lights of the red-eye flight.

Now, he was a guy about my age with slicked back hair and a goatee that made him look like a proper wronging. Now, he kept giving me the evils, looking at me like I was a bit of dog poo on the sole of his shoe, but then also sometimes like he wanted to lick it. Now, I'm going to stop this comparison there because I'm squeaking myself out, but you get the idea. I was disgusted by him, but he still wanted a piece of that, you know? And so I guess he was watching when I was looking, and he saw me looking. and then he started calling me over and asking for things like, Hey girl, can I get a bottle of water?

Or got any napkins, I seem to have lost mine. And my favorite, way up, o'las, can you handle these nuts for me? I haven't had any complimentary airline peanuts yet. So, can you get them? And that's what he said, word for word, and I swear on the Bible about it. As an air hostess back then, at the dodgy flight company I worked for, you were taught to always smile, be as flirty as possible, and take as much crap from passengers as you could tolerate. I remember once before this red eye, I got chewed out for telling a passenger off after he touched my butt,

and he said it was an accident and apologized, so apparently I was in the wrong for muttering purve under my breath as I walked off. Now, anyway, after I gave Ian his nuts, he called me back again about ten minutes later and said that they really were salty. and then he asked me if I like salty things, which I pointedly ignored. And so he just laughed and said he needed another bottle of water and asked if I could be a good girl and go fetch him one. Of course, I did just that. What I didn't realize was that Ian got right out of his seat and followed me into the middle of the plane, where we kept things like bottled water and complimentary peanuts. The bathrooms were nearby, so at first I wasn't alarmed by the sensation that someone had followed me.

Unfortunately, it was Ian, and he wasn't headed to the bathroom. Instead, he grabbed me, pinned me against the wall, and shoved some kind of hand towel against my mouth to gag me. And then he leaned in close and started whispering in my ear about what a terrible person I was. He didn't say it exactly like that, obviously. He said some proper vile stuff, stuff that now, as a grandmother in my early 50s, I'd give a lad a good lick in the dick for.

But back then, though, I was just a little wee thing and I was terrified. I started crying almost immediately and Ian was all cruel and callous, saying that I brought this on myself. And he said I'd betrayed him after what I did on the last flight and asked how I was okay with throwing away seven years of our relationship. And that's when I realized that this guy somehow believed that I was someone totally different, specifically his girlfriend or ex-girlfriend, who was also apparently an air hostess and had cheated on him on a flight. I didn't know it at the time, but his brain was absolutely fried from a cocktail of alcohol, MDMA, and Coke, which I guess explains his temporary insanity.

And things escalated when he tried to force me into the bathroom, pushing the hand towels so deep into my throat that I couldn't even try to scream. None of the passengers were turning around, and it was just me and Ian and a curtain separating us from the sleeper section. The best I managed was slapping the wall, trying to do some type of SOS. I got maybe two short slaps in before Ian grabbed me between the legs over my skirt and squeezed in a way that made it very clear that he'd do worse if I kept going. I guess my beloved friend H heard the slapping because suddenly I saw all four. five foot five of him peeking through the curtain, and then holy God he stormed toward Ian, and then holy God he yanked him off of me. My gentle, sweet buddy, H, didn't hesitate. He smashed his forehead into Ian's face, and the crunch of a bone sounded like a gunshot in that silent

plane, and then H was yelling that a man was trying to assault his colleague, and H. absolutely bodied him. It turned out he was a brown belt in Krav Maga. He floored Ian in seconds, tied him up with plastic ties, and even broke bones in his foot when Ian tried to kick out. Ian spent the next three hours hog-tied in an out-of-order bathroom next to a toilet full of poop. We radioed ahead, and police were waiting at Heathrow. This Ian guy was arrested immediately, and after that, things changed. I became more cautious, I went to therapy, eventually, and I gained a whole new respect for H. I stayed in the job for another three years and then left and life moved on.

But I'll never forget the terror of that night, or the man, who saved me. Growing up, I thought I had the perfect family. No. We lived in a nice house in a small town with my younger brother and sister, and my parents both working cushy office jobs. Some kids talked about their parents arguing or how they were divorcing, but mine were still, like, annoyingly in love. with each other. They seemed actually boring, too. I remember when I was 13, my friend's dad had a bit of a midlife crisis and bought a motorcycle. Another one went off with his friends to the Himalayas to climb some mountains and came back all tanned with souvenirs and photos. But my dad liked doing the same thing

week in and week out. He'd work seven until seven, including his commute five days a week. Then it would be sports on Saturday, uh, dinner on Sunday, and then he'd do it all over again Monday to Friday. He had a lot of friends, people from work or people from college, with me and my siblings getting to know one or two of them pretty well. Now, there was one guy whose name was Carl, who me and my sister nicknamed Carl with the funny shoes. This was down to him wearing a pair of fancy suede boots and a shade of deep purple, and with him being such a nice guy and so close to my dad, we all grew to love him very much, and then one day we got some bad news. Carl had passed away, and not of natural causes or a disease.

He'd been murdered. Now, we didn't find out until years later when mom and dad figured that it was time to tell us what actually happened to Carl, and why it had all been so hard on everyone. Carl had been walking home from the bar one night, a local that he visited maybe four or five times a week, when someone had tried to mug him at knife-pillar. point. Now, most likely being drunk, probably very drunk too, Carl either didn't see the knife or decided to be a bit brave. Now, he tried to fight the mugger, and this guy stabbed him and took his stuff away, and then by the time he managed to get himself up, it was just too late.

And that's why it was so hard on Carl's family, not to mention my dad, whenever the anniversary of his death came around. It wasn't just a case of mourning his loss, it was remembering how he'd been snatched away from everyone, and so needlessly too. Mom told me Dad had been involved in a campaign to try and bring Carl's murderer to justice through things like public appeals and digils and stuff like that. So supposing they wouldn't be able to shield us from it for very much longer, they decided that it was time to tell us about it. It was the first serious tragedy I'd ever been a part of by that point.

All my grandparents were still alive and we didn't even have a goldfish that had passed away in the house, let alone a dog or a cat, of which we had both. Carl's sudden death was hard enough on his kids, but finding out someone had killed him, that traumatized us in the exact way our parents feared it would. I remember walking around feeling like a big black cloud was following me around, just these near-incessant thoughts of, how can people be so evil to each other?

But time heals all things, as they say, and eventually the sadness faded into the background. And slowly but surely things got back to something approaching normal. And then at the time I was 17, talk of me going off to school was in the air, and I was very excited about it. I was on course to getting all A's and Bs, which would secure me a place in my first choice of college, and the worst thing on the horizon was the prospect of saying goodbye to my current school friends. I was actually really anxious about it. We'd said that we'd keep in touch and that we'd always be friends,

but I think I knew in my heart of hearts that we'd end up drifting apart, and it just made me sad. But then suddenly, and from completely out of the blue, something a million times worse reared its ugly head. I remember the night Dad didn't come home from work. When I asked Mom where he was, she said that he was on a birthday night out in the city with a few of his friends. And then since he was staying overnight in a hotel, they wouldn't be back until the afternoon the next day. I just said, oh, okay, then when about my evening, completely unaware that Mom was secretly in complete panic, because she had absolutely no idea where he was,

and he wasn't answering his phone either. It wasn't until the next day that a police officer knocked on our door to tell us what had happened, and he wasn't alone either. There was a whole team of officers with him, ready to search our house from top to bottom for evidence. And obviously the only question on my mind was, evidence of what? While the police searched the ground floor, Mom made us stay upstairs in our rooms, and it was then that she found out that Dad had been arrested. The police told Mom that dead had been arrested at work the previous day, and for a lot of different things, too.

But all the charges boiled down to two things. First, Dad was accused of trafficking Schedule I narcotics into the country on a massive scale. And secondly, Dad was being accused of conspiracy to commit murder. Mom couldn't believe her ears, and she never truly believed it until maybe the second or third time she spoke to my dad. The first time he denied everything and said it was all just a case of mistaken identity. But then I suppose after his lawyers told him just how messed up he was, the jig was up and he had to admit it. You see, despite looking pretty boring, my dad had something of a secret identity. He went by a certain username on something called Enam.

which is or was like an encrypted messaging or phone service used by all kinds of very dodgy characters. He was known by this username to all kinds of people across the country who only knew whom by that name and very little else about him. And to them, he was a man that could have pretty much any kind of narcotic delivered to them and practically to their doorstep too, like a literal Amazon for drug dealers. He'd been doing it for years too, stashing away the money in some account my mom did. didn't know about, and she didn't search his office like the police did, and why would she? She trusted this man to tell her everything. But even with how bad all the drug stuff was, it didn't shock mom anywhere near as much as

the conspiracy to murder, and mostly because of who it involved. At the time, I thought conspiracy to murder was only when someone hadn't been killed yet, and the potential killers were only in the planning stages. But it also applies in retrospect, too, and if the police can prove, someone had a hand in the planning of someone's murder, they're charged with said conspiracy. Well, after decrypting these messages, the police found that Dad did truly have a hand in someone's murder. That of his business partner, after a mutual associate suspected him of skimming hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of their arrangements. And that business partner was Carl

with the funny shoes. His death hadn't been a rock. robbery gone wrong. It had been bought and paid for by my dad and the people he did business with after they secured concrete proof that Carl had been stealing. I can't blame my dad for being angry, but having him killed, words can't explain how that felt for us. I'd watch my dad at Carl's funeral, hugging his family members and consoling his wife, and I know I was only young, but never once did I suspect him of feeling anything other than genuine grief. Mom thinks dad was a psychopath, maybe a clinical kind, that learned how to mimic human emotion, even though the only person he really cared about, was himself. To her, that's the only thing that explained why he was

okay with planning the murder of his best friend, or one of his best friends anyway. But sometimes I suspect it was more than just a case of get rid of Carl. I think the reason Dad was able to do what he did was because his own life was under threat, maybe even ours too, if the people he worked with were willing to go even further to stop the theft. I think it was the case of them saying, the best way to prove that you weren't in on it is to help us get rid of the thief. And so, that's what Dad did. He never admitted it to my mother, not like face to face anyway, so I don't think she ever fully believed it until she watched him plead guilty. That was the only way to get a sentence under 20 years, to plead guilty, guilty, guilty to everything that was thrown at him.

and then off he went to prison, which is where he's been ever since. Mom went to visit him a few times in the beginning, but it never went well. I try and go see him myself once, but he didn't turn up, and apparently he told the guards that he couldn't do it, and I'm assuming couldn't do it, was just short for, couldn't look me in the eyes and admit what he'd done. He gets out right now in less than 18 months now, and it's been on my mind, and I suppose that's why I finally got around to writing this and sending it in. I know people weren't shy about letting their thoughts known in the comments too on your channel,

so maybe some of your listeners and viewers can offer some advice on what to do and think and maybe even feel about it. I know I want to have some kind of familial relationship with him. He's the only dad I've got after all, but I just can't see myself forgiving him for what he had done to Carl, or the danger he put our whole family in during that time that he held a very secret. identity. Some murders make headlines. Others change everything they touch. On murder true crime stories, host Carter Roy digs into history's most notorious murders like you've never heard them before, going beyond the crime scene to find the real story, and the lives it upended, from century-old crimes to cases that are still in the courts today. Carter's storytelling pulls you inside

each case from the first sign something was wrong to the moment the truth came out. Case closed or not, every case leaves you understanding exactly why it needed to be told. New episodes Tuesdays and Thursdays for a deep dive into one murder, plus Fridays for the unsolved cases that still haunt us today. Follow murder true crime stories on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Amazon music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I grew up in Melbourne, Australia, and it's safe to say my childhood was quite a rough one. I don't want to give you the whole sob story. That's not what this is about.

But I went from an unhappy kid to an unhappy teenager, and then I got addicted to heroin. And the only thing that made me unhappy then was not having any heroin. I didn't need to swallow my pride to start robbing houses. I didn't have any left by the time that I'd run out of things to sell. I was a 26-year-old man with nothing to lose but my life and my freedom, and since neither really mattered to me anymore, I took every available opportunity to make some cash. Like this one time when a junkie made of mine sniffed out a potential score while mooching off his brother-in-law, he'd been up to his old tricks while staying with his sister and her husband,

because after he'd found out his brother-in-law worked in gold, he went sneaking off into his office while they were out to see if he could find any. There obviously weren't any gold bars sitting around this bloke's desk, but junkies don't give up easily, so he went through this guy. entire setup before he came across something useful, and was it ever? He found a list of gold shipments to private citizens all over Australia, and it took him on a bit of a roller coaster. At first he thinks he's on to something, but when he sees how small all the amounts are, he realizes it's not worth to burgle an entire house over such a small amount. But as he's reading, he's realizing

something. About two dozen of the smaller amounts listed had all gone to the gone to the same address, and all in the space of the last 18 months or so. He does a little bit of mental maths and then realizes that there might well be about $2,000 re-dues worth of gold stashed away in this guy's house somewhere, and that is worth the risk. The only problem is, he's putting on the reformed junkie act over at his sisters and can't slip off for a whole night without breaching the little drug-free arrangement they had going on. So in exchange for a small cut with a loot, he was willing to give me the address, so I could burgle the place. I agreed, he gave me the address, and then off I went to case the place, but for two days

straight I didn't see this guy leave or come home at all. I ended up putting on the last of my respectable looking close, knocking on the door of his neighbor, and then selling him some story about trying to buy a car from him, and him not answering my calls. And that's when I found out that the bloke was on holiday in that he was back in exactly three days' time. Now, I was thinking, eh, no problem, oh, gives me plenty of time to get the job done. And then that night, I broke in with another junkie maid of mine since he had all the know-how about disabling burglar alarms. Now, we're not just there for the gold. We're looking for just about anything we can sell. But the gold took priority, and after a thorough search of the bloke's bedroom, we found a

wall safe behind a nightstand. My mate brought a drill with him, and he'd handled a lot of wall safes before, so it was no drama to drill the lock and get her open. And then once we did, there she was. I didn't really know what two grand's worth of gold looked like until that moment. I thought that it'd be a full-on bar of it, but as it turns out, it was more like a nugget, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, let alone my pocket. I snatched the thing before my mate could. No honor among thieves and all that, but then there was all this other stuff at the back, too. Big envelopes looking pretty full and a little cardboard box with something electronic inside of it. We had no idea what was in there, but it wouldn't be in there unless it was expensive, right?

So we pulled out all the envelopes in the cardboard boxes and opened them up. We went for the box first, thinking the electronics might have been worth a few bucks. But inside was just sort of a modern-looking thing. It felt pretty light, which usually means it's not worth very much, and even if it was, we wouldn't have the first idea as to who to sell it to, and so we tried the envelopes. I say we, it was my mate who grabbed the first and only one we pulled out of the safe, and I was still looking at the little plastic device wondering if it had important information on it, bank details or something like that.

He opened up the envelope, poured the contents out onto the floor, and then when a load of what looked like bank cards came tumbling out, my friend kneels down and starts going through them to see if there are any that haven't expired. I put the device back in its box and then started taking a look through some of the cards myself, only to notice the same thing he had. They weren't bank cards. They were ID cards. And there weren't just old IDs either.

There were passports, too. My mate said it out loud before I did that all the eyes were. IDs were under different names. They had all the same picture, or at least pictures of the same older white guy, but the names were all different, even in the passports. Now, they weren't all from the same country either. They were mostly Aussie passports, but there was one from New Zealand, another from Argentina, and another from the United States, all with different names. I remember saying something about how the bloke must have been dodgy in some way, because no one has different IDs like that unless they're either a big fan of name changes or they're doing something they're

not supposed to. And it wasn't long at all before we found out what that thing was. My friend was still going through all the passports and IDs as I opened up the second envelope. And then after taking a quick look inside using my light, I could see that there were photographs inside. I just couldn't make out exactly what they were until I pulled a couple out. And when I did, I dropped them. like they were made of bloody asbestos. Now, I can't get into too much detail about these photos depicted, and not from lack of memory either. I can actually remember the only one I really looked at in incredible detail, even though I've since tried everything in my power to forget it.

And that's because it showed a grown man and a small child doing something no adult and child should ever be doing together. I dropped the photos and swore like I'd just stub my toe on something, and then ended up sort of walking away with my hands in my head as I struggled to process what I'd just seen. My mate was confused for a second asking what the matter was, and then he saw it too. I remember hearing a very muted but very horrified, Jesus Christ. And then I turned back just in time to see him literally kicked the photos away from him. I'd never seen him look that scared before.

I really do mean scared too, not like disturbed or disgusted. He looked straight up frightened at what he'd seen, but I imagine he could probably say the same about me in that same situation. Because what we saw, it was awful. It was a bit chaotic after that for a minute or two with my mate going into the guy's living room and putting a boot into the guy's TV. I had to tell him to cool it before one of the neighbors heard and called the cops. But then as we were wrapping up, stuffing our pockets with his watches and palm-sized electronics, a thought occurred to me. We'd left the envelopes, the photos and the IDs scattered around the bedroom floor,

so I walked from the guy's home office back into his bedroom and started shoving the pictures and some of the IDs back into an envelope. My friend followed me into the room a second later, and when he asked what the hell I was doing, he did not sound happy. I told him we had a chance to make some money, a lot of money. We just needed something physical to show a certain someone. When my mate just about flips his lid, saying that I must be out of my mind if I think he's going to let me sell that crap to someone, I told him to shut up and listen to me. Then, in a lot fewer words, I told him what I'm about to tell you.

Around the time this all took place, there was a big-time Lebanese gangster in Melbourne, and he had a stake in quite a few enterprises, both criminal and legitimate. Now, this gangster had a nephew, one I'll just call Leb, who, acted as one of his most trusted lieutenants, and this guy was a real enforcer type. Everyone was scared of him, and for bloody good reason, too. The fellow was an absolute psychopath, and he loved hurting people. But what I also knew is that Lebb would pay very good money to know where the house was, especially after I brought him proof of who this guy was. My mate wasn't having it, because while he'd also heard rumors that the Lebb

hate bounties to any convicts who killed people who hurt kids while in prison, he also knew that the Lebb hated junkies. But the thing is, I knew something he didn't. You see, I spent some time in Juvie when I was a kid, and so did the Leb. And to look at us, you wouldn't think that we were about the same age, but we were. And not only were we about the same age, we've been sent to the same detention center and at roughly the same time periods, too. Juvie was rough, and I don't just just mean that there were fights, gang feuds, crappy food, and even crappier beds. The screws were bastards, too, but one of them was even bigger of a bastard than most. Now, he never ended up getting his hands on me, thank God. Maybe I wasn't pretty enough. But if this predator's

screw wanted you, he got you, and it was next to nothing any of the boys could do about it. And unfortunately for the Lebb, he was one of the lads that this screw took a liking to. I don't know how many times he got him, probably only once after he found out who his family were, but a lot of you might be asking, well, why didn't he just tell his dad what happened and have the screw hanging from a lamp post? Well, to those people, I'd say that you're sort of fundamentally misunderstanding the implications of being targeted like that. Boys don't want to talk about it after, let alone talk to their own dads about it. anyone who even suggested it had happened ended up getting bashed by the leb so by the time we were all grown-ups it had mostly been forgotten about but i hadn't forgotten and if those jailhouse bounties were anything to go by

neither had he so if he was willing to part with ten grand for the scalp of some boneyard purve bone yard meaning protective custody then what would he be willing to pay for someone major on the outside I mean, you, the reader, probably put it together faster than I did. The little modem thing was probably some kind of small portable server unit, something he could use to back up a website with hundreds of thousands of pictures and videos. The photographs, I think, were more personal, but all the identifications, they were what gave me that aha moment that this guy wasn't just some online pervert, but he was traveling to different countries under assumed names and identities to distribute

and maybe create his own images of abuse. This bloke wasn't just some monster. He was freaking Godzilla. So the only question of my mind was how much his scalp might earn me with the leb. I knew he'd want it, but getting to him would be another thing entirely. And by that time, I had just over 50 hours to do it before the bloke came home, realized that he'd been rumbled and did a runner. At which point, the information I had would be worthless.

Admittedly, the first time I tried to approach him, it was a clumsy effort, and that's putting it kindly. I was out and about trying to score, so I'd have junk for the effort to come, when I just so happened to see him out and about getting lunch with his crew. Not wanting to miss the opportunity while it was right in front of me, I ended up running across a busy street shouting his name. and then before I even really got close, he told me to screw off before he aired me out and did it so angrily that I knew I'd fluffed my chance. Not that a public place was even nearly the right place for a conversation like that, but the point is, I dropped the ball. The next thing I tried was approaching a cooler-headed member of his crew to see if he'd pass

a message along for me. But then, the only way that I knew how to do that was through a nightclub that he ran security for. He didn't so much oversee the club's security as he did the sale of pills and baggies, but again, the problem was getting to him. After fairly recognizing I was a scumbag junkie, a member of the club's door staff stopped me from entering. But after pleading and persisting for longer than I'd care to admit, the guy relented and said that he'd call his boss. But when the Lebs associate came downstairs and saw some scruffy-looking attic standing in his nice shiny club's doorway, He wasn't happy.

I tried to keep it short and sweet, so the first thing out of my mouth was, I've got a business proposal for you. But that just made him even angrier. He practically dragged me down the street away from the lights of the club and into the dark, saying I had to be dumb as a bag of ball sacks to bring business to his front door. I mean, fair enough. I probably should have turned up earlier and banged on the back door, but since I was busy scoring, I couldn't show up until I did.

But anyway, the Lebs Associates isn't best pleased with me to start off, but at least now I can talk to him because he's marched me down the street a bit. But then here's where I really messed up, because zipped up in my jacket was the envelope full of IDs and photos. I thought he might want to at least see the envelope, just so that he'd know that I was for real and it wasn't just some scam I was trying to pull. But as you can imagine, the fact that I brought that stuff to his club, had him simmering with the kind of anger I can only describe as volcanic. I could see him struggling to keep himself from kicking the crap out of me in the street. Doing so would bring heat down on him, which would bring heat down in the lab, too. And that's the only thing that stopped him.

He said if he ever, ever saw me again, I was a dead man. And then he walked back to the club and walked inside. Two swings, two misses. As he can imagine, I was shattered. I only had about 30 hours left by then and I was quickly running out of options, so the fact that I'd mishandled two of them, let's just say that I wasn't taking it very well. I needed a fix and I needed it badly, but I also knew that spending time nodding out under a bridge probably wasn't the best use of it.

It also wasn't a good idea just walking around with a bunch of child abuse imagery zipped up in my jacket, because if I was caught, I'd probably get more time for that than the heroin. And so, with all that going on through my head, I made an executive decision. I was going to head directly to the Lebs' house, get inside somehow, and talk to him directly. Pretty much anyone who was anyone knew where the Lebb lived, and even though he lived in one of the nicest suburbs in Melbourne, his place made all the other homes look like dollhouses. It was in this big compound with high walls and a solid electronic gate at the front, not a barred one. The house was a floor taller than everyone else's, but the top had these big panel glass windows, almost like a watchtower so he could look out over the city and see who was coming.

But I couldn't have that. I couldn't have anyone see me coming or I'd never get inside. And so I went right around the back of the place, out to this little strip of bushland where the back wall was. And then I climbed a tree, lowered myself onto the top after scrambling along one of the thicker branches, and then dropped down into the Lebs' backyard. It was about 2 o'clock in the morning by that time, so very dark out and very quiet, too, as I crept through this big, beautifully tended garden.

I kept my eyes peeled for any security on patrol, but then, as I'm creeping towards the pool, I look up, and there on the other side, sitting in a lounge chair, is the Lebb. He hadn't spotted me, and I obviously didn't want to scare him either, so the only thing I could think to do was stop creeping, stand straight up, and then walk really slowly along the path until I was lit up by the pool lights. And then once I'd done that, I set his name to get his attention. When he heard me speak, he didn't jump. He just very calmly stopped puffing on what looked like a joint, and then turned to me

and spoke a soft greeting in the form of, oh, it's you. He was as cool as a cucumber, not remotely scared or concerned, even when an almost total stranger was standing just a few feet away from him. I could have had a knife, a gun, or anything, but he just sat there eyeing me up almost curiously before asking me, so what can I do for you then? I started explaining I had some information that he might be willing to pay for, info that would be dear to him, as I put it. It might sound bizarre, but after searching for him high and low, when it finally came time to talk, I could barely get the words out. I could barely bring myself to say crap I needed to, and I tried and tried, beating around the bush until suddenly I couldn't anymore. A member of the Lebs' personal security

team suddenly walked out of the back door, blowing on a hot cup of something to cool it down. It was actually quite comical looking back on it, because when he appeared, the Lebs suddenly cut me off with a sort of, excuse me, mate, and then turned to the bloke with a hot cup of coffee and said, Bloody hell, Lenny, what the F of my pain you before, mate? He then gestured to me, and Len put his cup down, and then as much as I tried to accelerate the explanation process, it was too late, and within seconds, Len had me in a chokehold. When Len asked what he should do with me, the Lebb basically said, kill him, do it nasty too, and then dump him somewhere public with a sign stabbed into him.

Everyone should know what happens to a junkie that breaks into my house. And as I was being dragged away by Lenny, the security bloke in one of his mates, I sounded like I was stark, raving mad. I was shouting about photos and passports and burglaries in the club, and none of it made sense. And then I remembered something. Back in Juvie, the Lebb had a nickname. I won't say it, but I remembered it, so I said it.

and I said it loud. When the Lebb called out for them to stop and let go of me, I felt a wave of relief wash over me, the likes of which I'd never experienced before and haven't experienced since. I could tick off all the cliches like feeling weak in the knees or breaking out in a cold sweat, but for me, it felt like God just winked at me, saying, you're all right, mate, I've got you.

I turned around, absolutely shame. then was finally able to take the envelope out of my jacket, tell him why I was really there in just half a dozen words. I got a predator for you. The Lebb sat me down as he peered into the envelope. He didn't take any of the photos out, but he saw them, and all I remember thinking was he's not scared at all. But then again, it wasn't the first time he's seen it, if you know what I'm saying. He was way more interested in the IDs, and like me, they're definitely what convinced him that this guy was like a major figure and not just some small-timer. Also, none of the addresses on the IDs were the one we burgled.

There had been some with that address, but I'd remove them so as not to give it away. The Lebb asked about it too and said that he could just try all those addresses until he found them, but I promised him that wasn't the case. And while I wasn't after a heap of cash in exchange for my services, a generous enough amount would most definitely loosen my lips. I obviously didn't quite phrase it like that. I was so frightened that I was monosyllabic, but I did think that I made a very persuasive argument to my own special way. The only trouble was, the Lebb didn't see it that way at all. I remember him going very quiet when I started talking

about money, a tried and tested negotiation technique to try and force me to lower my price sort of thing. I hadn't actually named a price, but his attempt to sweat me worked anyways, and I ended up proposing a split. A bit of money now, and the rest when my info comes good, and he bags himself a predator to string up or burn or God knows what with. But like I said, the leb had other ideas. We'd already had a little ketchup after I'd used his nickname from Juvie. He wanted to know how I knew it, what my time had been like there, and how I'd been doing since. and that's how I got a firsthand taste of his hatred for junkies. He very openly said stuff to the effect of,

how could you have let yourself go like that? And to be honest, I didn't really have an answer for him. He was visibly disgusted by me, and to be honest, I can't blame him for that either. But the juvie connection meant that I'd secured an audience with him. Yet although he'd looked through the envelope and decided he did want the guy's address, he didn't want to offer me a single cent for it. And instead, he proposed another trade, give him the address, or die. It was a very simple decision, if I'm being honest.

Now, I'd like to say that I tried to bargain with him, or that I gave him any kind of pushback at all. But I was in no position to bargain, not after sneaking into his yard looking like I did. And so I did. I told him, and I didn't lie either. There was really no point. If the Lebb wanted me found after sending him to the wrong address, he'd have me hunted down and skinned.

And so I told him the truth and then left with nothing. I mean, I didn't end up with nothing. I still had my gold nugget, the cash from pawning the watch I stole, and a bag of brown to get me through the rest of the night. But my genius plan to make thousands of dollars had fallen through completely and all because I was too desperate and too stupid. If I'd have had more time, then maybe I'd have been able to. to pull something off, but it didn't matter by then anyway. And as I'm sure you'll agree, it was lucky to still have my life. Life went on as normal after that for a while, at least as normal as it gets for a semi-functioning heroin addict,

whose life is slowly falling apart. And then one day, I'm out on the hustle when a big black car pulled up next to me, and after the window rolled down, the driver told me to get in because the LeB wanted to speak to me. I didn't say a word and argument. I just did as I was told, partly because I think I kind of knew what was coming, or at least I was hoping for it, but mostly because I didn't have a choice. I was driven somewhere subtle. I won't say where, but there was the Lebb, and he looked strangely happy to see me. This was obviously on account of what I'd done for him, and by his own admission, he was only that frosty with me back at his house because there was a chance that I could be lying to him.

Junkies are scammers. It just comes naturally to us. We lie to make money, we lie to keep secrets, and sometimes we lie just for the hell of it because who cares, you know? But in my case, every word I'd told him was true, and when he sent his boys over to the address I'd given him, they saw it all for themselves. When he got the word, the Lebb had them camp out in the bloke's house until the next morning, when the guy was due home. And then after he walked inside, totally oblivious to what had been going on back in Oz, they nabbed him. The Lebb told me he lasted for days before his heart finally gave out. I wasn't kidding when I said the Lebb was a psycho, and the whole time he's telling about it, he's laughing and doing little impressions of the guy as he's being tortured.

Now, I'm not a squeamish person either. I mean, you don't get many squeamish junkies at all, really, but even I was thinking, bloody hell, mate, as he's telling the story. Yeah, regardless of the He was very happy that I'd gone to him with the address, very happy. But not just because he'd had the chance to get a little bit of payback, but because he got his hands on that bloke's computer. He paid some computer guy to go through it just in case there was anything on there that he could use. And that's when he finds a list of bank details, all belonging to the people who paid for pictures and videos which showed those images.

It wasn't even so that he could nab all the ones, living in Australia either. He had someone send blackmail emails to anyone who lived abroad, and they netted about a hundred grand in the last week alone. It reminded me of a line from the Bible that I actually once heard, and I looked it up so I could get it spot on, and says, whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him. It was my score. I took all the risk, but all I got was a gold nugget while the Lebb got to kick off an entirely new enterprise that was clearly making him megabucks. But then I didn't end up with just a gold nugget. And while that would have still been a

great thing to walk away with on its own, the Lebb saw it fit to reimburse me for bringing him the address, instead of just washing my hands of the whole thing. I won't say exactly how much I was given, but let's just say it was enough to keep me afloat for quite some time. I'd like to say that I spent it wisely and used it to get off of drugs and back onto my feet, but I didn't. I got clean in the end, but that was many years later. And while there's some stories from my time on the streets that I'll never breathe a word of for as long as I live, there's others I'm not quite as ashamed of. And having a hand of that scumbag monster's death is one of them.

So I'm a vet, and I specialize in farm animals, livestock, and particularly horses. This means I'm often on call in working the night shift. I was on a call on this particular night when this happened, and I thanked the lore that I was, and also wish that I wasn't. It was not a nice night, but ultimately I feel like if I haven't been there, at least two other human beings would be dead, if not three, and a horse, which to me is just as important. I was on a call watching some garbage on Netflix when my cell phone rang.

It was Irene Capson, one of the two ranchers. owners along with her husband, who lived out on Iron Roadway. Now, I was a big fan of the Capsons. They'd been clients of my father before me when I was still just a little girl and longed to join the family business. They were in their late 60s, and they only called if there was a really, really good reason to. They were the kind of farmers who rarely had need for a vet because they knew how to take care of things themselves for better or worse. And this is one of those cases that was worse, though. Their eldest, most beloved mayor, Dapel, was on his last legs and there was nothing they could do to ease his pain, and that meant that it was up to me. It was a 40-minute drive to the

Capsin Ranch, but it took me about an hour in the dark, as a careful and somewhat paranoid driver, especially on country roads, which are absolute death traps if you've ever had to navigate them at night. When I pulled up the Capson Ranch, I cursed because my Jeep had already gotten stuck in the mud, which was unusually left without sawdust. I was also a little concerned because, as well as the Capson's vehicles, there was an ATV I didn't recognize. It didn't even look new, but I guess it could have belonged to one of the ranch workers. Irene Capsin had told me that it would only be her and her husband present at the ranch, though, and to meet them in the barn, so alarm bells were already kind of ringing in my mind.

The first thing I did was grab my heavy, highly important equine medical work. case from the back of my Jeep, and then, cursing again as I waited through the mud, almost losing my gumboots multiple times, I headed toward the barn. Now, before I even reached the barn, I could tell something was wrong. Now, the door was open more than a crack, and I could hear an unfamiliar voice coming from inside, who did not sound at all friendly. I managed to find a crack in the barn slats that allowed me to spy through without hopefully getting noticed. And the narrative I began to piece together filled me with incredible dread.

A younger man held the Capsin couple at shotgun point. I could make out everything they were saying. I won't recount it at all because a lot of it simply involved the younger man whose name was Daniel, cursing a lot at his parents. He was throwing some really vile, unrepeatable language out there, things I'd be ashamed to say to anyone, let alone my own parents. And that's something else I learned. Daniel was their son. His purpose for being at the farm was to try and persuade the couple to loan him $30,000. He made no secret of the fact that this would help fund his lifestyle,

which largely seemed involved taking meth and some kind of lunatic plan to set up a lab with his friend. Apparently the friend was providing the lion's share of the funds, and the capsons were begging Daniel to realize that this was a scam. There would be no meth lab. They would not become the real-life Walter and Jesse, and at best, he would blow the money on drugs. Daniel's response to this was to threaten to blow them away and simply take everything he could. He claimed he knew the safe code, and as much as it would destroy him to kill his own parents, it would destroy him even more if he couldn't get the money.

I knew I had to step in. I snuck away from my spy hole and slipped through the crack in the door. Now, the kid hadn't noticed me, and neither had Irene Capson. Unfortunately, the dad, Capson did notice me and couldn't stop the look of relief from crossing his face. And while I was flattered that Mr. Capson saw me as their savior, it did unfortunately mean that the younger Capson's son saw me as a threat. A world around.

The shotgun was now pointed at me. I just stammered and stuttered, almost peeing myself because I had never had a gun pointed at me before. I faced out angry charging bowls. I've been kicked by a horse. I've climbed a tree to avoid 30 to 50 feral hogs. Now, granted it was more like seven, but that's not a joke. And I operated on a tiger who started to wake up during the procedure.

I've calmed an angry hippo, but nothing has left me as terrified, as shaken, and unsure as the young Daniel Capsin pointing his gun at me. I'd almost forgot what I was there for. and then I noticed his eyes flicked a dapple in the stall nearest me. Without taking his eyes off me, he asked his parents, Is dapple okay? And I remembered from growing up as a little kid when he was a teen that dapple had been his horse, his beloved horse, back before whatever the hell happened to him happened.

Now over his shoulder, Irene admitted that no, Dapel was not okay, that I'd been called to the ranch late at night to see if there was anything I could do to ease Dappell's suffering. The Mr. Capsin started pleading with his son, begging him, asking him if that's really what he wanted Dappell's final memory of his beloved boy to be. And at first I thought that Daniel was too far gone, that his love for drugs outweighed his love for Daple.

And then he began to cry and asked me if I could save him. I lied and said yes. I told him that I needed to reach into my medical bag to grab some equipment to help make Dapple better. Not many people know this, but some vets carry pistols as part of their medical kit, particularly vets who specialize in horse care. It's often the easiest and most painless way to put a horse to sleep, a bullet through the center of the brain.

And that hadn't been the plan for Dapple, let me just say that, but it was certainly my plan for their son. I pulled the pistol out, aimed it at him, and unwaveringly told him to drop the shotgun. Daniel was a broken man at this point. He told me through tears that the shotgun wasn't even loaded, that he'd never shoot his parents, and that I could shoot him in the head if I wanted to end his pain as long as I promised to do all I could for dapple.

I had no such intention of shooting him, but I did demand that he dropped that gun. However, to all of our horror, the shotgun was loaded. I'm guessing by accident or somehow including a single shell left, leftover, the gun bounced off a wooden plank on the barn floor and managed to fire into the ceiling. It scared everyone, but caused no damage, thank God, but it caused the other three horses in the barn to go absolutely crazy. So now I was surrounded by three screeching, braying horses, as well as a wailing caps and family. From the fact they'd all collapsed to the ground at this point and pulled each other

into a reconcilatory family hug, I figured I was safe. I still made a point of grabbing the shotgun and tossing it out of the barn, then immediately went to Daple. The rest can be summarized here, though. Dappled, despite being an old horse, just had an infection. He wasn't dying, and I was able to save him, and... The local cop showed up before any of us had a real chance to call them. The current deputy sheriff grew up with Daniel, was one of his best friends, in fact, and between all of us and an unwillingness to ruin Daniel's life even further,

we were able to avoid any criminal charges. The caveat was that he had to spend the required amount of time in a rehab facility, which, to his credit, he has. Five years later, Daniel is a head rancher on the farm, giving his parents a chance to enjoy semi-retirement. I'm his go-to veterinarian, and I'd spend a lot of time there. Now, I wouldn't say that we're romantically close, but we are becoming good friends. Sober, clean, Daniel, is the lovely, lively, smart team.

teenager that I remember. So while that was the most terrifying night shift of all time and the most terrifying moment of my life, I can't help but feel proud. I saved a family. I saved a man from addiction, and most importantly, I saved a horse. Daple lasted a few more years until he passed away peacefully in his sleep, and Daniel is currently training Daple Jr, and I'll be honest. I'm putting a little extra effort into that horse's medical care and upkeep. A dark story with at least currently a happy ending. And I wish they could all end like this. Ready for your next adventure?

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Word of advice, never work in a gas station at night. This might sound kind of dramatic, but I'd rather crawl over broken glass, work down in the sewers, or be Hassan Piker's dog, than work night shift at a gas station again. Maybe day shift is better, but my A-Hole boss, who I really want to call a slur but don't want to get you demonetized, forced me to work night shift and night shift only. I was a 22-year-old high school dropout who'd spent six months in juvie and bounced from foster family to foster family, so I guess I was lucky enough to find work at all. But good God, I am very sure that it wasn't legal to force a 22-year-old to work five night shifts a week every week without ever changing to day shifts. And there were a lot of things about Gary's gash and groceries that weren't strictly legal, but I'm not a rat, and Gary's been buried in the ground for nearly 20.

years now. Not to mention the fact that I'm now with his daughter and she has my kid on the way, so I got to play nice. So I'm not trying to sound like some jerk here, but Lana, Gary's daughter, is the one baiting me to write this right now. I'm actually a very nice guy in my personal life and I'm going to pop the question to Lana before our baby boy is born. You know, what's a better place for a proposal than a freaking let's read video? Lana, you make me the happiest I'd ever been, and I can't wait to raise our son with you. Now, through the power of Joel of the golden voice, I'm asking, will you marry me?

Now, let's quickly move on to the story in case she says no. If she says yes, though, well, this will be the first serious proposal you performed on the channel, and I hope so. Now, anyways, the point is, Gary was a greasy, greedy dude. And let's just say that I'm glad Lana inherited certain things from her Catholic mother, rather than certain things from her father. But enough about that. We had some absolutely effing weirdos who dropped in during the night shift. It was this one guy who would spend a sickening amount of money on scratch cards,

and I don't think he ever won a single cent. And from the way he dressed, he was clearly trailer trash too, and a few times I remember saying, Buddy, do you think he should cool it with the gambling? I'm genuinely concerned about you. And you know how he responded? he hissed at me. Not even a word, he just hissed. After three times of that, I just gave up. So there was that scratch-off, jack-off, and then there was the seven-foot tall man who came in at precisely 2 a.m. every day and bought a single red bowl, a pack of marble lights,

and one of those massive pickles in the plastic packets. Just those three items every single time. And the guy looked like he was about 90 as well, and sure, he was a skinny mofo, but there was absolutely no way that I was questioning him on his purchases, especially not after the hissing gambler. Now, finally, we had this kid, and he looked about maybe eight tops, who would come in at around five in the morning every single Tuesday and Thursday, and we'd ask if we had any X-Men trading cards for sale. And I explained to him every single time that we didn't sell trading cards of any kind,

but that didn't put him off. He'd be there every Tuesday and Thursday like clockwork, and when I told him no, he looks so upset and despondent really. And so one day I went to the local comics shop and just got like six little packs of X-Men trading cards. And when the kid came in next, I presented him with the packs because surely one of them was the right brand that he was looking for. And the kid looked at the pack of cards, called me a retard, and then threw the packs back at me and stormed out. Now, to this day I have no idea what I did wrong.

The guy in the comic store told me that these were all X-Men trading cards that exist. but I guess I really don't know what I guess, but I never saw the kid again anyway, and that was kind of a relief. And I'm pretty sure that in the future someone met this kid, and he was the inspiration for that duck song about the lemonade and the grapes. And if you know, you know, Google it. Now, speaking of kids and short people, it's time to start the creepiest of these stories. I'm standing at the counter, minding my own business when I just hear this rich, deep voice demand that I cook him a hot dog because all the ones on the machine are overcooked and look like crap. I glance over and yeah, fair enough. The hot dogs had been on rotation for about

three days if I knew Gary's, so a fresh batch wasn't out of the question. The problem was, I had no idea where the request had come from. The voice demanded that I get a move on and said that he didn't have all day. And so I leaned over the counter, trying to get a better vision. view of the store and that's when I saw a little person standing as close to the counter as he could get without face planning. Now, I'll admit, I was a little thrown that he decided to position himself somewhere that would clearly not be visible to me, but whatever. Now, I apologized profusely and said that I had no idea that he was a little person. And the guy just sort of harumped and huffed and said that calling him a little person was deeply offensive. And so in my infinite wisdom, I apologized again

and said, I'm sorry, I meant midget. And I saw his face go red with fury, and I knew that I messed up. Now, I scoured my mind. What else did small folk like to be called? And this was back in the 80s, so the differences weren't as well known then. And the man explained that he had dwarfism, and so obviously I should refer to him as a dwarf. Fair enough, I have no problem with that.

And I will refer to people however they want. I guess the thing that riled me up is that during my first time in June, juvie, I took an extremely nasty acid attack to the face, and it left me permanently disfigured and blind in one eye, so I clearly wasn't so intentionally abelist against people with different body types, but that's neither here nor there. I told the dwarf that I would happily make him a new hot dog if he'd head over to the machine with me so I could cook the wiener to his perfect perfection. And somehow, of course, this managed to offend the fella tremendously again, and he began screaming at me in what sounded like a Shakespearean monologue about how he shouldn't have to move,

and it was my job to go and cook him a hot dog with all the trimmings and blah, blah, blah. No, actually, it wasn't. It was a self-service hot dog machine, but I wasn't going to argue. I told him that I'd head over and cook him up the best hot dog he'd ever had. Now, the dwarf replied by saying that it was too late now. I'd screwed everything up, and it was time to face the consequences. In complete shock, I watched as the little man rose to his full height of around six foot. At the same time, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a sawed-off shotgun. He told me that if I went for the panic alarm or anything like that, he'd blast a hole in my chest the size of a foot-long hot dog. And you know what? Screw it. Screw Gary. I wasn't getting killed

over a job that barely paid enough for me to live and forced me to work five nights a week at Garry's. And I told the now six-foot dwarf to chill and emptied the register for him. He filled a bag that he'd produced from nowhere and gave me a very cruel smile and just strutted out of the gas station. Or he almost did. For some reason he paused to unload a shotgun round into the hot dog station and blasting that thing into pieces, leaving my ears ringing, and then he left. My heart was pounding harder than it had when I'd done four lines of, well, never mind. Immediately I pressed the panic button and I called 911 for good measure. Screw Gary. Those cops could actually wake him up.

And so when the cops got here, we discovered a bunch of things. One, Gary was too cheap to actually buy an outdoor security camera, so that one was actually fake, and so we had absolutely no footage of this fake dwarf leaving the premises. However, the interior cameras did work, and I was able to see how he'd tricked me. He'd been kneeling on shoes, positioned in a perfect practice pose, so I had no chance of seeing his real legs. This explains why he didn't want to accompany me to the hot dog machine, though. And hilariously, this fake dwarf had been the suspect in a bunch of local robberies.

He'd never fired his weapon before, and you know. know what got him caught? The fact that he took the time to shoot the crap out of that hot dog oven. They were able to trace that buckshot of the gun to the owner and get his ass busted. He'd robbed enough places that I'm pretty sure that he'd actually die behind bars. What a shame. And as for me, I got my ass absolutely chewed out by Gary for handing over the cash and not risking my life by grabbing the baseball bat under the counter. I quit on the spot. I got my life together and I went back to school, I graduated, then got a degree, and some years later I met a woman that I fell head over heels for. Now, imagine how shocked I was when I discovered that she was Gary's daughter,

and hated him even more than I did. We originally bonded over drinks, where she shared our glee that he was dead, and, no, I know I sound like an ass, but you didn't know the man. He wanted me to die rather than hand over $200 or so to a fake dwarf. Screw Gary, screw the fake, dwarf. I work in a very lucrative field now and my life's freaking awesome. And that's why I'm writing to another awesome person, you let's read, and I hope you enjoyed my story of a bunch of weirdos, at least one of whom nearly murdered me. And if you didn't, well, I know people who shove a hot dog where the sun don't shine. Have a beautiful day. I work at a grocery store that I won't name in Detroit. And I work almost exclusively on the third shift, so thankfully I don't have to deal

with customers, and I spend most of my time stacking shelves and doing busy work. It might not sound like a glamorous job, but it's something to earn me a little money while I finish my college degree, which I'm actually set to graduate with honors. Well, it's very, very rare that anything weird happens during the third shift. Some of the workers can be a bit weird, but aren't we all who work at night? No, I'm just projecting, but I usually arrive at the store during closing time, by which all the customers have been tossed out on their butts. I don't know what happened in this particular case. Maybe she was hiding in the bathrooms or tucked away in a display or God knows what. But short version

shorter, there was an elderly female customer left in the store with us when it should have been just us workers. Now maybe you'd imagine her wandering around lost or looking for her dead husband or demanding to know where we keep the pasta. Isle three, by the way. But no, she snuck through the whole of the store unseen, like solid freaking snake, and none of us had a clue that she was even in the store for the first hour of our shift. Now, the first sign that something was wrong was a sudden foul smell emanating from the fish department. Myself and my colleague, Jerry, rushed over there, curious as to what had suddenly caused a fish to just go rotten, had a tuna exploded or something, but nothing could have prepared us for what we saw. The old woman had crawled inside the

iced fish display, which was actually due to be emptied by one of us at some point. And she was rolling around inside of it, tearing fish apart with her bare hands and somehow treating them like her worst enemies. We watched in horror and, I guess, kind of amusement. We could only stare as she saw the goddamn octopus sitting there, some kind of delicacy that they'd imported in because God knows why. Apparently people eat these things and squid. And she was muffled by the but we heard her screaming something like, There you are, at the octopus, and began trying to tear into it.

Now, octopi are stretchy, and pretty hard to just tear with your hands. So this old lady had the brilliant idea to just sort of gnaw on the octopus with her teeth. Only it turns out that she wore dentures, and after a number of attempts of biting the octopus's tentacles off, she got her dentures stuck in its forehead. Thankfully, someone to call the cops by now who showed up,

but it was like nobody wanted to intervene. We wanted to see what she'd do next, and unfortunately, what that involved was smashing her way out of the glass cabinet, housing the fish, creating an even more disgusting smell as she charged towards us. We soon realized that there was more to it than fish. She'd soiled herself. Now, this might all seem funny to you,

and frankly it was right up until this moment. Then, covered in broken glass and bleeding profusely from shards, She lunged at Cherry, tackled her, calling her an octopus woman and accusing her of inserting eels into various orifices. And I think some troll grandson of hers had shown her some of the famous shock memes and it had just broken her brain. And the whole thing ended with the cops having to actually tase her and try to bring her down. But she was having none of it. She somehow withstood the entire taser blast. I guess it was pretty weak since they thought that she was just some old woman.

and then she charged back to the fish counter, grabbed as much seafood as she could carry, and then jumped on cherry again. Now, the next thing we know, she's trying to force an entire octopus down Cherry's throat while whipping me with some eel, and I know it sounds funny as hell, but it was honestly terrifying at the time. The fish were pierced with broken glass, and she was forcing broken glass down Cherry's throat, and she was pierced with broken glass herself, meaning that she was cutting Cherry up. And so here's the final kicker. The old woman wasn't an old woman at all. She was an old man who had made a living as a fisherman and lost his livelihood thanks to commercial fishing and grocery stores like ours switching from locally sourced produce.

He had dressed us his wife because after he went bankrupt during the Great Fish Recession, she died of a heart attack and he blamed just about everyone he could, but mostly us. Apparently our store chain had been his biggest local client, and so it ended up being a tragic and horrifying and scary incident. Cherry suffered severe damage in bleeding to her trachea, as well as some scars all over her body from the broken glass. And the store managed to keep almost all mention of it out of the papers, and the poor psychotic fisherman was taken away to spend his remaining years in psychiatric care. I still work at the grocery store on third shift, but hopefully not for much longer after I graduate. Jerry's doing just fine now,

but we all insisted that we were not willing to stock and ported Octopi in the fish counter from there on in. 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. Ready for your next adventure? Etihad's global sale is here. Witness Nairobi's living traditions. Set sail on Phuket's pristine waters. Or let wonder be your guide in Kuala Lumpur. Book by Thursday and take off to over 50 destinations on sale. Travel from October 26 to March 27.

Book now at Etihad.com. Etihad Beyond Borders