The NoSleep Podcast - Nosleep Podcast #5

Episode Date: August 7, 2011

Our fifth frightening episode of The Nosleep Podcast features five fantastic fables that will make you feel like you’re the focus of fear! Featuring stories from the No Sleep forum at Reddit.com, these stories will make the dark hours of the night creep slowly past. This episode features these stories: Tales of a New York Subway written by Colin Thomson (Redditor ivysaur) and read by Jinny Sanders (Redditor Spookykittens). A Game of Flashlight Tag written by William Dalphin (Redditor TwilightSparrow) and read by Drew Cummings (Redditor EarlMcFisticuffs). I Couldn’t Resist You written by Chris Coffman (Redditor snapjamma55) and read by David Cummings (Redditor MikeRowPhone). Safe written by Makana McDonald (Redditor Pufflekun) and read by Matt Hansen (Redditor clever_imposter). The Smell of Gasoline written, read & produced by Chris Holland (Redditor slamgauge). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the dark hours when you dare not close your eyes. No sleep. It's the No Sleep podcast. No Sleep. Featuring stories from Reddit.com's No Sleep Forum. No sleep. Join us as the sleepless hours. Our first tale is entitled Tales of a New York Subway,

written by Colin Thompson and read by, Ginny Sanders. A girl named Laura was traveling back to her apartment from work late at night in New York City. She was a little nervous about taking the subway so late, but she figured that there probably wouldn't be many people riding it. She decided against the cab and headed down into the subway. When she got on the subway, she was surprised to see that there were, in fact, three people already sitting there.

Two large, suited men and dark sunglasses, and a little girl in between them. Laura was surprised to see such a young girl on the subway at this time of night, but based on how she was dressed in her designer sunglasses, Laura figured the men were escorts or bodyguards for the daughter of someone wealthy. Laura took her seat across from the trio. If anybody else gave her trouble, she was sure the strong men would help her out. At the next stop, a man in his late 20s or early 30s got onto the subway at the other end of the car from Laura. He was clearly very, very tired.

and quite unkempt. His shirt was wrinkled and definitely not clean, and he had what looked like a few days' worth of stubble. The man was exactly the type of individual Laura hoped to avoid on her ride home. Still, the bedraggled figure was certainly no match for the men who sat across from her. As the subway moved on, though, Laura noticed something very odd. The man at the other end of the car would glance up, look slowly at Laura, then at the men,

and at the girl, and back to Laura. He did this several times before the next stop, at which point he got up and moved a few seats closer, to Laura and the trio across from her. Understandably nervous at this point, Laura was so confident the suited men could fight off the creep. However, the men didn't move even as the homeless-looking man repeated the process of looking at the other passengers

before moving a few seats down. After several stops, he was seated almost right next to her. and yet she was the only one who seemed to be bothered. The suited men and the girl didn't move. Laura's heart pounded as she counted two more stops until her apartment. How much longer would the suited men allow the threat to go? With dread, Laura realized the subway was slowing as it approached the next station. The instant the doors opened, the sketchy man grabbed her around the waist and carried Laura screaming out of the subway.

The man ran with Laura over his shoulder as fast as he could, visions of being robbed, raped or murdered, flashing through her mind. Eventually the man set her down. He was panting. He quickly gasped out. Ma'am, I need you to calm down. My name is John. I'm a student at Columbia Medical School.

I work with cadavers all day, and I guarantee that that little girl was not alive. Our next tale is entitled A Game of Flashlight Tag, written by William Delphin, and read by Drew Cumming. When I was 10, I played a late-night game of flashlight tag with a bunch of neighborhood kids. If you don't know what flashlight tag is, it's the same as tag, but you play it in the dark.

The person who's it gets a flashlight, and they have to yell the name of the person they see with it in order to tag them. It was really cloudy that night, and most people had their curtains drawn, so it was the perfect level of darkness for hiding in. The side of the street my house was on was skirted by a broad length of woods. That was basically the boundary for our side of the game. You could run through any yard. You can go across the street and run through their yards, but you weren't allowed to hide in the woods because it was too difficult to find anyone in there,

and it was very easy to trip over tree limbs or end up with poison oak. Of course, this rule was frequently and flagrantly ignored when people got too close to being caught. They'd duck off into the bushes for a few seconds or run behind a group of trees to evade capture. I don't remember who was it at the time, but I was hiding in the backyard two houses down from my house. The family that lived there had a little playhouse for their daughter, a swing set in a doghouse, but no dog. I would periodically duck into the doghouse whenever I saw the flashlight's searching beam approaching. Those of us trying to

hide from the it person like to spook each other in the dark by jumping out of nowhere and making each other scream, giving away our positions. I thought I knew where the it guy was, but I got comfortable hanging out on the swing set. Suddenly, a person with the flashlight came around the corner of the house and angled it almost directly at me. I jumped and ran for the edge of the woods. When I got there, I hovered

in case they saw me and were going to yell at me for cheating. The beam of light seemed to to explore the swing set where I was, then came in my direction. There was no sense of hurry at all to it, and I wondered for a second if maybe I had attracted the attention of the homeowner. Most people on the block knew we were out playing the flashlight tag, but you can never be sure that someone won't get nervous if you stay in their yard for too long. So I crouched down in the grass and waited to see who it was. They shined the light right in my face, and I tried to cover it with my hand to avoid identification. The creepy thing was they never

said anything, just shine that light on me. You got me, I exclaimed, hoping that if it was a homeowner, they'd realize I thought they were the flashlight dagger. Then I realized the two houses down, people were yelling and that there was the it guy's flashlight beam, chasing them around. I stood up and tried to see them shining the light on me. They just stood there, not moving, not saying anything. I felt a little freaked out. If you don't want us playing in your yard, I'll go tell them it's off limits, okay? The person started walking toward me.

I didn't feel right, so I started walking toward the edge of the yard. the person just kept shining the light on me and coming toward me. So I ran. When I looked back, the person with the flashlight was running too, and they were an adult much bigger and much faster than me. I felt scared now, not sure why this person was chasing me. I was running towards where the other kids had been, but they were gone now.

It just seemed to be me and the person with the flashlight. So I turned right and ducked into the woods. I dropped to the ground, shaking bushes and stuff to try to confuse the person, then shibbed under a ring of thick bushes and curled up. I could see the flashlight in the woods with me, looking around. I could hear the person's footsteps breaking sticks and crunching on pine needles. I didn't know what the fuck was going on, and I just wanted to get back to all the other kids. Eventually, the flashlight wandered deeper into the woods, and I crawled quiet as a mouse back to the edge of the trees,

and then got up and ran toward the street. I was immediately caught by the person who was it, but I didn't care. He yelled out that I was now it, and I tried to tell him that there was someone else with a flashlight wandering around in the woods, but he took off into the dark yelling about no tagbacks Don't go into the woods I yelled but nobody responded Of course anyone who heard me would just assume I was talking about not cheating at the game But I was sincerely worried about that person wandering around in them Of course now I had the flash out of my own so I thought

I should go and see if I can find out who that was just to make myself feel better I went back behind the house I'd come from and a bunch of laughing shadows scampered out of sight in the neighboring yards I ignored them and headed straight for the trees I couldn't see any other light in there so I thought maybe he went home home. I didn't know if it was a man or a woman, but I didn't imagine any women trudging through through the woods at night. So I went about playing the game again, albeit anxious because of the lingering thought that there might be someone wandering in the woods who didn't seem to be playing the game with us. I ran across the street and chased people through the backyards there, but after a

while I found the lots empty, and realized they must have gone back across the street. I ran back over and was exploring the beach's backyard. Mrs. Beach had a clothesline with a bunch of drying sheets on it, and her daughter Charlotte liked to hide among the linens and stay close to home, in case she got too scared of the dark. She was only eight year younger than me. I thought I heard something at the tree line, so I went over and was waving the flashlight around into the woods. Stay out of the woods, I remembered yelling. I waved the flashlight back and forth a couple more passes, then saw someone off in the distance. I held the light on whoever it was. There about half a jog into the woods, hard to make out, but it looked to me like Charlotte. Charlotte had brown hair that her mother

insisted on keeping shoulder length. We always dressed dark for flashlight tag, and Charlotte liked to wear this deep purple sweatshirt, so it's usually easy to tell when you found her. "'Charlotte, I see you,' I yelled. "'I just stood there. I continued to hold the light on her and call her name, but she didn't seem to move. She just stood there, partially obscured by a tree and looking at me. The distance between us was enough that I couldn't see if she was blinking or not.

But she had her head propped in an angle like she was looking around the trunk of me with the mouth hanging slightly open. Every now and then she sort of twitched or squared. It was a real freaky kind of movement. "'Charlotte, come out of there!' I yelled. "'Everybody! Charlotte's it, but she won't come out of the woods.' Some kids, including my friend Dustin, appeared behind me and started joining in my yell for Charlotte to come on. Do you see her? I asked.

Yeah, she's open behind that tree. Charlotte, get over here, Dustin said, but she wouldn't come. Charlotte, are you okay? Get over here, dummy. Charlotte seemed to stand up straighter and then disappeared behind the tree. We could hear movement, but it seemed to be going away rather than toward us. Dustin started shouting Charlotte's name again and trudging into the woods after her. But I grabbed him and gave him a flashlight to take with him. I was scared again because this all seemed surreal.

I went to Charlotte's house and knocked until her father answered. Mr. Beach, Charlotte won't come out of the woods and I'm worried about her, I told him. I wasn't sure if he'd take me seriously, but he rolled up his newspaper and disappeared into the closet behind the door for a moment, before returning with the huge flashlight strapped to a car battery. Show me where she is, he told me, so I led him to the woods and pointed to where I'd seen her. She was right there, I said, by a tree, but she wouldn't come out and she was acting like she was sick or something. A bunch of the other kids kept calling Charlotte, Charlotte, and I could see death. Dustin's flashlight being moving around through the trees.

Mr. Beach went after him. They explored the woods for a good 15 to 20 minutes, and Mr. Beach started getting real angry. We could hear him yelling very loudly for Charlotte, threatening her with all sorts of punishments if she didn't get her ass back in the backyard, that instant. The game was over by now, and we kids just stood there in the beach's backyard among the linens and watched.

Dustin came running back out of the woods with the dead flashlight. Eventually Mr. Beach came back out of the woods. Came over, kids. He said, get inside, ask your folks if they can help me on to bring flashlights. We all ran back home. My dad went out with three different flashlights. My mother went and turned on all the lights in the back rooms and opened the curtains and shades to help illuminate the backyard. I sat on the couch all upset, and she eventually came back and hugged me and sat with me while I told her about the person with the flashlight chasing me. Now I thought maybe Charlotte had run into him.

Mr. Beach had gone inside and called the police to report his missing child. They brought huge lights and did a march through the woods, checking very thoroughly but didn't find her. My mother told my dad what I'd told her. He told an officer, and I ended up giving a statement. They went to the house three doors down and knocked, but the folks who lived there had been asleep and didn't know who would have been in their backyard. The police asked all up and down the neighborhood,

and nobody claimed to know anything. The other end of the woods came to a back road mainly used by logging trucks. They found, Charlotte, two days later, on the other side of the logging road, down an embankment that ended at a stream, stuffed into a drain pipe. Her neck had been broken, and she was apparently stabbed multiple times afterward.

My parents wouldn't tell me about it. They thought it would upset me, but Dustin told me all the details in school the next day. It was the most awful thing our town ever had happened. The police blocked off the logging road and spent months tracking down loggers and truckers who frequently used it. There was a curfew for months, and he were told not to play flashlight tag anymore, but he didn't argue. What leaves me shaking to this day is the memory of Charlotte's face hanging out from behind the tree looking at me.

Sometimes I wonder if at that moment I've been witnessing her death and I wonder if that had almost been me. Next tale is entitled I couldn't resist you written by Chris Kaufman and read by David Cummings My heart pounds

Can you hear it? I can The blood rush is intoxicating. What I'm seeing right now is so wonderful. Your beauty dazzles me. Everything about you really. I can tell you're special. You always stay late at school. You're involved. Your walk is full of pep, leaving the house every morning with a face that says, today is going to be the best day of my life. And you know what? Tomorrow is bound to be even better.

How I envy that beautiful face. I've seen you with your friends smiling, laughing. I've seen how your parents look after you with such pride. You make them so happy. You make everyone around you happy. Most of all, you make me happy. You gave me a reason to continue Before you I was on the verge

I was ready to end it all I had given up Nothing I did was good enough No one could satisfy me But then like destiny You came along You were there at the store I noticed you picking everything out so carefully

I bet you thought I was just some random person who got behind you in line. You saw me with my alcohol and bread and you let me go first. You smiled your great smile, looked directly into my eyes and sacrificed your precious time for me, a complete stranger. Never before have I received such unwarranted graciousness. You pretended not to notice my stammer. It was captivating. So I waited for you in my car.

You didn't even notice me staring, mesmerized by your confident walk, the air of grace in your posture. I giggled at the way you loaded your heavy groceries into that little Honda. I've never seen anything so endearing. But the best part, you didn't even notice as I followed you all the way. back to your house. You aren't very observant or careful, are you? I bet you think everyone has something good to offer the world. You don't need to look over your shoulder or check the rearview mirror.

You don't even think twice about locking the back door. Your naivete is precious. And your hair, oh Lord, your hair is so soft. I've waited months to run my fingers through it. I've seen how you care for it, brushing every night before bed. Beautiful. Even the way you sleep is enthralling. The way you tuck your hand under your face curled up on your side,

the little alarm clock illuminating your body. My darling angel, I hope you know that I really cared about you. I put all your things back just the way you left them. I was so quiet, too. I never once woke you from your sweet little dreams. Tonight was different, though. I really don't know what came over me.

The note in the kitchen about your parents being out of town got my adrenaline pumping. I tried, I really did, but I just couldn't stop myself from getting in the bed. I'll never forget that face. You were terrified when you woke up. None of the others ever screamed that loud. I'm bleeding, by the way. Why did you hit me with the lamp?

I wasn't expecting such tenacity. You might have even got it. gotten away if you hadn't tripped down the stairs. That was actually pretty cute. You know you would have ruined everything for me? I had no choice but to knock you out. I didn't even want to put the tape over your pretty mouth, but you forced me. You know that, right?

I was afraid you'd cry out as I dragged you into your basement, and for good reason. Look, you're trying to scream right now. It's pointless, though. I'm the only one who hears you. God, now you're crying. Why? Why are you crying? Stop it. Stop crying.

Stop fucking crying. I can't stand the crying. It looks so weak, weak and pathetic. Is that really what you are? All the time I spent getting to know you and you turn out to be a worthless, quivering sack of tears. This is how you repay my devotion? Tears? You know what?

Now that we're better acquainted, I guess I don't really like you as much. At all. It's a damn shame you turned out to be so rotten. Such a pity. I must compliment your father on his workshop, though. His collection of power tools astounds me. I can almost hear the whine of the motorized blades now. Is that a blackened-decker drill?

And the chemicals? Oh, oh boy. I doubt you really have a clue, but let me assure you, There's some really fun stuff in those bottles. There's got to be some tarps in here somewhere, and I'm sure those heavy-duty garbage bags will be handy later. I haven't even pried open the cabinets yet. To be honest, I really wasn't planning on staying past dawn,

but this night took quite an unexpected turn for the better, don't you think? I do. I'm going to make myself at home for the weekend, if that's all right with... I told you to stop crying. Our next tale is entitled, Safe, written by McConnell McDonald and read by Matt Hanson. Many people have irrational phobias. I have the opposite.

My apartment always makes me feel safe. to the point where some might call me crazy. No matter what problems I might have, I don't have to worry as long as I have a locked door, and a few tightly shut windows up on the third floor of my complex. Nothing can get in. Nothing can get me here. I'm safe.

This is why I didn't particularly care when I first saw her outside my bedroom window. Besides, her appearance wasn't something you typically associate with a horror movie. Her skin was a light. healthy, yellow white, and she had long, dark amber hair that flowed elegantly behind her, despite not being the least bit affected by the windstorm that was testing the strength of the oak trees. Yes, she was transparent, and yes, she was hovering outside my third-story window, and yes, she was lovingly caressing a long, rusted razor blade. But I was home, and the window was shut, so I was safe.

I began to study her, looking up at her face from my seat, and she appeared to do the same. For some reason, her transparency didn't strike me as being odd as much as it should have. In fact, it almost seemed normal. There was definitely something about it that made it seem as if it wasn't supernatural. She certainly didn't appear to be a ghost or a phantom, at least not in the way one normally pictures them. And she wasn't exactly levitating either. She was just standing there, as if on a flat surface which couldn't really be there.

She finished studying my own face, nodded to herself, and moved towards the window. She brandished her razor. And then I smelled her. A nauseatingly pungent aroma of flowers being used to mask the odor of decaying corpses. I began to feel uneasy. Was the scent really so intense that I was noticing it through the closed window? No. I felt absolute, sickening fear.

All the pieces fell into place. Why her transparency seemed natural. Why she was standing instead of levitating? Why her hair wasn't affected by the wind? Why her lifeless, gray skin and sickly hair appeared healthy when bathed in the glow of the yellow light bulb behind me. and reflected in the window. Our final tale is entitled

The Smell of Gasoline, written and read by Chris Holland. It was 232 when the tones woke me up at the station. Damn it, I just dozed off. I slid my boots on, I grabbed my radio as I made my way out of the sleeping quarters to the bay where my partner already had the ambulance started. The hot and humid Texas air,

hit me in the face and fogged on my glasses. We like to keep the sleep in quarters Arctic cold, so that tends to happen. I jumped in the truck and my partner gave it the diesel. The voice on the radio told me about the single car accident towards which we were speeding. I was still in the process of shaking the sleep out of my head as I soaked in the details of the chattering radio. Four passengers. Fire crew on scene. Roll over.

Additional fire crew requested. That's not a good sign. The five minutes that took us to arrive flew by as I tried to get my head out of the sleet-deprived fog. As we pulled up to the wreck, I can see the tire marks this spell out the story. The driver probably swerved to dodge an animal, or maybe they were just drunk. This sent the car sliding towards the median. The soft ground let the front rim dig in and catch, sending the car into acrobatics across the oncoming lanes. The car lost momentum and came to a remote.

arrest wheels down on the shoulder of the opposite side of the road. The fire crew was scrambling to put out the flames that were linking up from the engine. To facilitate the process of getting the fuck out of there with our patient, ASAP, we came to a stop as close to the wreck as we safely could. I jumped out and ran over to the back corner of the ambulance to grab our fire jackets, and I see that one of the fire crew already made it to the compartment. He had our fire extinguisher and yelled out to me. Our extinguisher spent, and we're not close enough to a hydrant to pump water,

as he turned and raced back towards a growing inferno. The fire crew had already pulled two kids out of the back, and my partner ran over to assess their injuries while I went over to the wreck to see about the two still trapped in the car. The smell of gasoline soaked the air. That's not a good sign. By the time I got over to the driver's side, the guy that had taken the extinguisher from the car,

truck had seemed to put out the flames in the engine compartment. I heard him call out all clear. The driver's side roof had considerable damage. It was caved in a good 12 inches and had to, and I had a bit of a hard time seeing the patient as I walked up. Now, as I was kneeling down to get a better view inside, I could see that the kid had a massive skull depression that matched the roof of the car. His head kind of looked like a pumpkin the day after Halloween when the neighborhood kids had gone around, and smashing them all for kicks while they were all hopped up on the night's sugar cache. This was the kind of injury that we write up in our reports as,

Injury Not Compatible with Life. Just in case, I reach in and feel his neck for a pulse. Yep, the guy's DRT. Dead right there. I glance over when I hear the girl on the passenger side starts to moan. I jumped up and grabbed the airway and trauma backside, I'd throw down beside me in one swift motion as I hopsle over to attend to the a lot less dead girl. As I stepped up to the passenger door, she looked up at me.

She had curly brown hair and bright blue eyes that I could clearly make out even in the poorly lit roadside conditions. I remember this because it struck me as rather odd how pretty she was in spite of the blood running down the side of her face and the broken glass in her hair. I called out loud and clear to her. My name is Chris and I'm a paramedic. I'm here to take good care of you. Don't move your head. I promise everything will be okay. She cried out back to me.

My legs hurt. Please, my legs. She was talking, so at least I knew she was breathing. I reached down into my trauma bag and grab a collar for her neck. As I stretched my arms around her neck with the collar, I asked her to tell me what happened. There was a deer in my boyfriend almost. I was hit it and my legs. Can you move your legs?

No, I think they're stuck. I turned to one of the fire crew and yelled out to him. How long before we can extricate this girl? He yelled back that they had just pulled the jaws alive out of the truck and it would be a five to ten minutes. Just then I heard someone else shout. The engine's burning again. Get back! I stepped back a bit as the white powder shot out at the engine once again.

A steady blast was held on the flames until the extinguisher started to sputter out and gave up. Still, there were flames. They kept growing and spreading. Faster now without the white blast to beat them back. The flames crept towards the dashboard while the fire crew scrambled to find another red canister. Where the fuck is the other truck? I heard one of the fire crew curse out as they were forced to stand by watching the time run out. The girl began screaming even before the flames made their way through the dashboard.

She flailed against her restraints in a futile attempt to free herself from the death trap. She let out another blood-curdling scream as she all locked eyes with me. Save me! She screamed. I tore off my bunker jacket and tried to cover her with it in a last ditch attempt. I stepped towards the car and thrust my arms in, just as the flames broke through the dash and began licking at her legs and belly. My tom was cut short by the sting of the flames on my forearm,

and I instinctively snapped my arms back out of the heat. I had managed to get my fire-retarding jacket over her chest, but her face remained exposed to the flames as they crawled up the fabric of her arms. Her screaming became hoarse and guttural as the fire engulfed her. Six men stood around the car, helpless to do it. a thing as her screams became muffled and faded away below the growling of the fire. That was three years ago. Since then, things haven't been good for me. Soon after that, I started experiencing visual disturbances. That's what the psych doctors

call it, at least. It is a standard procedure after a particularly extreme incident that everyone involved must attend a debriefing. The higher-ups do this. to keep an eye on the medics that might crack after seeing something particularly grisly. Most medics handle their shit just fine, but some are more sensitive than others. I usually just go grab a bottle of whiskey, and that's all I need.

But that incident was different. I didn't mention it during the debriefing, but I had been seeing things since the wreck. It started out subtle. Once I was watching, TV and I saw my wife walk across the room into the kitchen out of the corner of my eye. I got up to follow her and pour myself another drink, but when I turned around the corner into the kitchen, I was alone. Another time I had just arrived home from work when I heard a girl crying upstairs.

I ran up thinking my daughter might be hurt, but once again I was all alone. My wife had taken our daughter shopping with her. Similar things kept happening. I heard voices and saw figures, but nothing was ever there. As these occurrences became more and more frequent, disturbing, I began to question myself. I have never been a superstitious or religious guy, and I like to think of myself as fairly objective. I have been an atheist since I was old enough to reason, and I outright reject the existence of the soul or spirits for that matter. But how could these things be? happening. I saw only two explanations. I was either losing my mind or I was being haunted,

but being haunted seemed ridiculous. In my profession, I get to deal with schizos on a fairly regular basis. We are trained how to spot and handle these people. We also have drugs that help with their symptoms. And honestly, I was starting to see some of these schizo symptoms in myself. That probably means they're much worse than I realize. My wife had been begging me to drink less and spend more time with her and our daughter. I've been holding myself up in my study pretty much any time that I'm at home, attempting to drown out the constant whispers in my ear and hallucinations. In my desperation, I decided to borrow a bile of haloperidol from work.

I rarely give the excited and highly agitated. paranoid schizo's this drug to help bring them back to reality and tell the difference between their ideas and the real world. And if I am going schizo, then this drug will make an immediate difference in my mental state. Maybe I can get some rest. Hell, if it works, I'll have a good reason to swallow my pride and go see the doctor. A few nights after I took the vial from work, I was sitting in my study. It was getting laid, and my wife knocked on the door. I didn't realize it was her at first, so I was kind of startled when I look up and she didn't disappear like all the other figures I see. She had a sad look on her face, and she asked if I was going upstairs to bed with her tonight.

I told her I just wanted to be alone. At this point, she'd gotten used to this response, and so she just turned and silently walked away. I looked at the vial of howl appeared all on the desk and thought to myself, no, not tonight. I called out to my wife. She stepped back into the doorway with a confused look on her face. I forced to smile on my face and I said, Hey, babe, I'll be up in about 15 minutes, okay? I love you.

She's so beautiful when she smiles. Okay, I love you too, she responded. Then turned and headed upstairs. And I could hear her footsteps all the way up the stairs as she went. Turning back to my desk, I once again trained me. my focus on the vial. Tonight will be a good night. I dosed myself and chased it with what was left in my glass of whiskey.

I leaned back in my chair and waited for the liquid to hit my bloodstream. The minutes ticked by and the whispers melted off into the night and my mind felt clear. It was as if a plastic bag had been pulled off my face and I hadn't even known I was suffocating. For the first time in the last year, all I could hear in the background was that, the gentle blowing of the air conditioning. Well, that settles it. Tomorrow I'm making a doctor's appointment. I smiled to myself and this time I didn't even have to force it.

I took a deep breath through my nostrils and let out a heavy sigh. I picked up a subtle whiff of gasoline in the air. Hmm. That's not a good sign. I stood up and turned to investigate when I saw it, standing right there where my wife had been in the doorway of the stomach. study was a figure. Its face was charred and disfigured. I was frozen in fear. It had no ears, no nose, no eyelids or lips. It stood before me breathing fast and heavy and I could smell burnt flesh.

It began to scream in a raspy and hoarse and haunting tone. You just stood there and watched me burn. That was two years ago. I don't remember what happened after I saw the girl. I must have blacked out. The next memory I have after that was waking up in the intensive care unit. I'd been badly burnt and I was in a coma for two weeks. I was told that my wife and daughter had died in the fire as my house burnt. When I was well enough, there was a trial and I was prosecuted for arson and the murder of my wife and daughter. They found me to be mentally incompetent, and since then I've been moved from one facility to another. Eventually, a fire gets started, and they moved me to another facility.

No matter what therapy or drugs I am subjected to, I keep hearing the voice of that girl whispering in my ear. You just stood there and watched! Every time I hear that voice, I wished to myself that I had died in my house. that night two years ago. Our sleepless tales have come to an end. Close your eyes. Drift off. And don't look under the bed.

The No Sleep podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons license, 2011. Some rights reserved.