The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S15 Holiday Hiatus 02

Episode Date: January 3, 2021

Season 15 pauses for the winter holidays. We’re presenting a story from Season Pass 14 for your enjoyment. “Mr. Empty-Belly” written by Alexander Gordon Smith (Story starts around 00:03:30) TRIGGER WARNING! Produced by: Jesse Cornett Cast: George – Jeff Clement, Andy – Sammy Raynor, George’s Mom – Nichole Goodnight, Andy’s Mom – Erin Lillis, Police Officer – Jesse Cornett     This episode is sponsored by: Mint Mobile – Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/nosleep. And for a limited time, buy any 3-month Mint Mobile plan and get 3 more months FREE by going to mintmobile.com/nosleep.     Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast  Click here to learn more about Alexander Gordon Smith    Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone “Mr. Empty-Belly” illustration courtesy of Audrey McEvoy   Audio program ©2020 – Creative Reason Media Inc. – All Rights Reserved – No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's 2021, and the new year is the perfect time to get your butt got. Butt got? What does that mean? Well, you know the term Bogo. Sure, the acronym B-O-G-O. It means buy one get one. Buy one item, get another for free. Precisely. Well, this is a but-got from Mint Mobile. Why does my butt need to get got by Mint Mobile? Let me explain. This holiday season, the best deal in wireless, can only be found at Mint Mobile.

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to just 15 bucks a month. Then imagine getting three months for free. We're talking potential savings in the three digits. That's a great deal for you, or it would make the perfect gift. But the holidays are over. Listen, after the year we had, I think extending some gift giving into 2021 makes perfect sense.

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has you covered with their seven-day money-back guarantee. Simply put, it's time to get your But Got. Switch to Mint Mobile and get premium wireless service starting at just 15 bucks a month. We should really stop talking about butts. But no, we have to get the listeners behind this. It will help their bottom line. And make you look like an ass. Okay, okay, here's the deal. For a limited time, buy any three-month Mint Mobile plan and get three more months free by going to MintMobile.com. slash no sleep. That's mintmobile.com slash no sleep.

So move your butts and cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash no sleep. Hey, I thought we said no more butts. Agreed. Let's move from butts to bellies and start this week's episode. Happy New Year and welcome to the No Sleep podcast. I'm your host, David Cummings. We're finishing the leftover show. champagne and cleaning up after a raucous New Year's celebration. Alone, socially distanced, and all that. And before we resume season 15 with episode 18 next weekend, we have a tale to satiate your appetite.

Let's hope the New Year is a good one for all of us as we kick off our second holiday hiatus episode. In this week's tale, we join George as he returns to his childhood home to pack up his deceased mother's belongings. He's racked with guilt, but it's not his prolonged absence praying on his mind. No, you see, in this tale, shared with us by author Alexander Gordon Smith,

we take a journey with George into the past as he recalls a terrifying, traumatic event that happened when he was young. Performing this tale are Jeff Clement, Sammy Rayner, Nicole Goodnight, Aaron Lillis and Jesse Cornett. So remember, the games we play as children can stay with us in deep, dark ways. At least if you played the board game, Mr. Empty Belly.

My mother finally passed away in the summer of 2014. It had been a long illness that had consumed her mind as much as it had her body. By the end, she didn't know me or the orderlies and nurses who watched over her. And that was only partly to do with the fact I'd barely seen her during the decade or so before she left us. We'd been close once, Mom and me. But as so often happens when you grow older and leave home, you become untethered. You forget how to find North, how to navigate your way home. I'd had my own issues as well.

First marriage, kids, then a nasty divorce and custody battles. I knew mom would be able to see the pain on my face, so it was just easier not to show her my face. It took me two weeks after her death to work up the courage to visit her house. Our house, I suppose, because I'd lived there with her for nearly two decades after my birth. On the outside, at least, it was different. It wasn't the house I remembered. It too had shrunk away. crumbling into itself as if mirroring my mother's own decline.

It was your typical ranch house on the outskirts of the city, half of its battered face taken up by the garage. It was the kind of house that had felt small even when there were just two of us living there. On that day in 2014, though, it reminded me of a bird's nest, scratched and broken and almost lost in the branches of the laurel and the ivy. I still had a key, something I felt horribly guilty about as I walked up the unweded cobblestone path.

I'd always had a key, but something had stopped me from using it. I only lived an hour away, two hours, really, when you factored in the traffic, but I'd put off coming home time after time. Part of it was mom's illness, but the truth is it had started a long time before that. I couldn't put my finger on exactly when. I couldn't remember if there had been an incident of some kind, an argument. It's just that whenever I thought of coming here, of seeing her, something cold exploded inside of me.

A dark supernova right in the middle of my stomach. I felt it again right there, standing next to the faded front door. I had a notion that as I was reaching for the moment, the lock, something would open the door from inside and grin at me from the dark. I had the inescapable feeling that even though my mom was beneath the ground, something was still here waiting for me to come home. I couldn't stand outside all day, though. It was the kind of neighborhood where there were only seconds sometimes between twitching curtains and 911 calls. I slid the key into the lock and twisted the hand.

the door opening with a shuddering creek, as if warning me of some unseen danger, or screaming at some terrible injury. It was dark inside. The drapes had been pulled tight, so thick and so dirty they looked like scar tissue that had grown over the windows. I hesitated before stepping fully over the threshold, turning my attention back to the sun-drenched street. There were ghosts of memories inside my head, the thrum of bike tires on hot asphalt, the spray of sprinkler water on skin, and a face suddenly rushing up toward me from the forgotten

past, a face I hadn't thought of in years. You know when sometimes memories hit you like a fist, like a physical blow? This one took my breath away, left me grasping for the doorframe as the world reeled and wheeled beneath me. Andrew Gillespie. Dandy Andy, my mom called him, because he always dressed in buttoned shirts and suspenders. His little gold spectacles polished within an inch of their life. I saw us right then, racing up and down the street,

Andy's chopper leaving my rusted black BMX in its dust. Man, how many times had I asked him for a go on his bike? dozens, hundreds. But he'd been glued to that thing, and it flew. What had happened to him? He'd moved away when we were maybe nine or ten, I seemed to remember. Military parents or something. That cold flower of anxiety bloomed inside me again,

and I couldn't fathom why. I took a deep breath and walked into my old house. wondering why I was thinking of Andy instead of mom, wondering why it seemed suddenly colder out on the street than it did inside. I couldn't quite bring myself to close the door behind me. I just pushed it halfway shut, blinking away the day to find that I'd somehow traveled back in time. It was the same, exactly the same.

In front of me was the little entrance hall with its telephone table and stool. The old phone still wired into the wall, its spiral cord pulled on the carpet like a dead snake. To my left, drowning in the dark, was the lounge and kitchen. To my right, the door to the garage. And past that, the two bedrooms and one bathroom. Something stood there, a tall, stooped figure who moved to greet me. My reflection, of course, in the full-length mirror that hung beside the bathroom.

I reached for the switch, which resisted for a moment before giving in. A weak yellow light seeped through the house. A sick light. One that made me think of cataracts and cirrhosis. Everything else was brown. Dark wood furniture and dark blossomed wallpaper and shit-covered carpets that I'm fairly sure had been there when I was born. I looked sick, too. Pale and shiny with sweat.

At 34, I barely recognized myself. I half expected to look into that mirror and see the kid I'd once been, nine years old, barreling into the house with Andy right behind me, both of us red-faced and wild-haired hunting for snacks and drinks. He'd come here every day after school, or I'd gone to his house across the street. We'd been inseparable, and yet somehow the memory of him had slipped out of my skull altogether. There was more there, too. Something in the recesses of my mind that I couldn't quite grab hold of. It was leaving me with a feeling of nausea, a roiling sickness in my gut that had nothing to do with my mom.

Something was telling me to turn around and leave. There was nothing good here anymore. Good or not, though, it was my job to sort it out. Fortunately, mom had been bird-like and every respect. She'd never owned much and anything she didn't need was stored in the garage. Her nest had always seemed bare, and when I walked into the lounge, I saw that nothing had changed. Aside from the G-planned sofa and chair and the crate-sized TV with its bunny ear antenna, the room was empty. The kitchen was the same, and it broke my heart a little to see the single plate and cup and tiny saucepan that sat alone in the cupboard. My grief appeared to me in that moment. Grief for a woman who had raised me well, raised me right, and whose smile had always been

waiting for me, first thing in the morning and after school. I was all she'd had, and she hadn't deserved such a lonely end. It wasn't remorse that I had felt when I made my way to the bedrooms, though. It was that same insidious, creeping anxiety. It infected every piece of me, every thought and muscle, as if I was trying to walk through wet cement. Something had happened to me when I was younger, an incident that I'd pushed into the shadows of my mind. It darted in front of me like a dragonfly, a flash of color, too fast for me to snare. I glanced back at that front door. Still open, and once again I was possessed by the almost irresistible urge to leave. Then I was at the bedroom door, the first room, the smaller of the two. My mom had taken it, knowing that I would be happier in the big bedroom with a view over the yard. Her old, single bed had been taken away, replaced with a hospital bed that looked far too modern for mom's ancient decor. A crucifix hung above it, and I was.

wondered if one of mom's nurses had put it there, or if mom had found God in her later years. The room was empty except for a wardrobe, which held a grand total of three outfits and a table in one corner. A sad collection of framed photographs met me there, dressed in dust, and I picked up the closest one to find myself maybe eight or nine, grinning like a loon. Somebody was standing next to me. I could see their shoulder, my arm around their neck. Working at the clasps, I opened the frame and unfolded the photograph. It was Andy, of course. My arm around him like I was worried he was going to run. It was hard to tell what he was thinking, because somebody had pushed a pen through the photograph paper where his little gold glasses were. The two

holes made him look alien, mad, and they made me feel sicker than ever. They made me remember something. I put the photo down and walked to the next room over. It had been cleared already, apart from a bed, but a few of my old posters still clung to the wall like strips of sunburned skin. I had stayed here a couple of times in the last decade or so, never for more than a night, though. Being back home had always felt like being underwater.

There was only so long I could hold my breath. I performed a cursory search anyway, still grasping for those memories that nudged the surface of my mind. I could see the room as it had once been. Ghostbusters' bedding, the old wardrobe, a little white desk, and underneath that desk. Another recollection hit me like a wrecking ball. I had to stagger to the bed and let it catch me. I had to sit there for a moment. moment, doubled up because I literally couldn't remember how to breathe.

Just relax, just inhale. But it wasn't easy, because I once swore to myself I'd never think of him again. I once promised myself I would forget, and I did forget. I forgot until the moment I'd stepped back inside this cursed house and remembered his name, Mr. Empty Belly. It was as if the cork had been pulled from a shaken bottle of champagne. I couldn't stop the flow of memories. Me and Andy sitting right here on the bed and opening up that game for the first time. The lid is sticking and squeaking as we worked it free.

Mr. Empty Bill. I couldn't even remember where it had come from. Who had first found it? Had there been a yard sale, perhaps? Or had one of our friends lent it to us? I just remember our excitement when we dug it out, blowing dust from the top of the wide, shallow box. There had been a picture of an old man with a fat red face and a halo of graying hair, holding his bulging naked stomach, as if he hadn't eaten in a month.

There had been something about his eyes that had made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. A kind of animal desperation. Mr. Empty Belly, it had read. He's a hungry, hungry man. Can you fill him up without making yourself sick? You've probably played Operation, right? If you have, you know what the kind of game it was. There was a cardboard surface with an image of the same man. Holes cut into it in various places that led to compartments in the tray underneath. With Operation, you use a pair of tweezers to collect the pieces. from those compartments, and a buzzer goes off if you hit the sides. But with Mr. Empty Belly, there hadn't been any tweezers or a buzzer.

There hadn't even been anywhere to put batteries as far as I could see. No, there'd only been those gaping holes, one on his left hand, one where his nipple should have been, two for his eyes, one for his mouth, another on the top of his head, an obscene one over his crotch, and the biggest by far was over his belly. It had just been a game, so why did the memory of it now make me feel like I'd thrown myself into an icy river? I was actually shivering, but it was more than that. I felt as if I was thundering through the rapids, gasping for breath and reaching out for anything to anchor me. I knew then that my initial feelings had been right.

Something terrible had happened here. So why couldn't I remember it? All I wanted to do was keep forgetting, walk out of that house and leave the past behind me. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't face the thought that a piece of my life had been erased. I couldn't live with that kind of absence, a whole cut into the fabric of my being.

So I closed my eyes and swum deeper into the cold and the dark. There we were. It had been the summer, maybe 89. That would have made me nine years old, Andy too. That year had been hot. The streets had actually melted. If you went out on bare feet, you got blisters on your souls. There was no shade on our street, no woodland.

And when the air felt like it was boiling, Andy and I had come inside to play. I had an NES. Andy had a brand new Genesis. But when we were at mine, we weren't always allowed to play, especially not right after school. We had a ton of other games we loved, though. And Mom always found new ones in yard sales.

Maybe that's where Mr. Empty Belly had come from. Had Mom given it to us? No, that didn't feel right. It wasn't her sort of game. And there had been bits missing. I remember that much. The instructions for one. The box hadn't come with any information at all,

just that piece of text on the lid. He's a hungry, hungry man. Can you fill him up without making yourself sick? Andy poked his finger through the big tummy hole. That doesn't make any sense. He'd been chewing his nails. I remembered it as clear as day. He always chewed his nails and spills.

bat them out on my bed. Shouldn't it be, can you fill him up without making him sick? Why would you get sick? I had felt sick. It was the same sickness that came the time I'd found a nudie meg in Andy's dad's home office when I was six or so. I felt sick because I knew it was something I shouldn't be looking at. And there had been something similar in the eyes, too. The girls in that mag, yeah, I peek.

had been strange, distant, all forced smiles as they spread their legs for fat, hairy, faceless men. Mr. Empty Belly had seemed the same way, as if there had been a panic boiling over inside him. The image of him on the actual game was even worse than the one on the lid. For a start, you could see he was completely naked, and he laughed his head off at the big hole in his crotch. There were no eyes, but the holes punched there were somehow worse. Mr. Empty Belly looked like a corpse, a mutilated corpse. Andy spit a nail onto my duvet. What do you even do with it?

No idea. He tried to pull the cardboard picture off the top to get into the tray beneath, but it had been glued pretty tight. There must have been something inside because there was a weight. to the game, a solid heft that reminded me of carrying encyclopedias. Put stuff in there, I guess. Feed the bastard? Feed him what? I remember Andy had laughed, then dredged a booger up from somewhere close to his brain. He'd slid that wet, green luggy right into Mr. Empty Belly's crotch hole.

Christ, I think the whole bed leapt in the air when the game went off. I'm pretty sure Andy had screamed. Or maybe it had been me. The trays slid off Andy's lap and hit the floor with a meaty thud. And my heart just about clawed its way out of my throat. And then we laughed, howling with it. A couple of lunatics cackling so loud that my mom had showed up and asked what we were doing and what we were playing.

Hmm. It hadn't been mom then. She'd never seen the game before. Where the hell had it come from? From what I remember, we'd spent a good few hours putting as many different things into Mr. Empty Belly as we could find, paper clips, pencil shavings, a load of stuff from the kitchen. And each time, the damn thing had set off its alarm and spat them right back out. How it could tell what we were feeding it is anyone's guess.

I can't even remember why I'd done it. Andy had gone home. I remember being alone in the room. I remember being scared because Mr. Empty Belly's gaping eye sockets were just staring at me. His hands grasping the flesh of his belly, pubic hair sprouting over the hole where his ding-dong should be. He'd been beeping at us all day, and I'm not lying when I say my nerves were shot to hell. There was just something about him, though. I could feel how hungry he was.

It's hard to describe. It's like, I don't know, like you're sitting on the street and a stray dog comes up. It's ribs showing and its eyes full of pain and desperation. All you want to do is feed it. So I fed him. I fed him the only thing I could find, a scrap of nail that Andy had spat onto my bed. I almost dropped it into his crotch hole because Andy had found it so funny. Instead, I dropped it into the hole where his hand should.

should be. No buzzer. The game looked dead. I wonder if maybe we'd run the batteries out, wherever they were, and thought maybe that wasn't such a bad thing. Only I felt suddenly calmer, as if I'd been the hungry one and had just been fed. There had been a tension in the room, I realized, and it had dissipated almost instantly. Perhaps it was just that, and it was just that Andy had left. All friendships have cracks in them, no matter how solid they feel. And the relationship I had with Andy wasn't perfect. Had he already talked to me about moving away? Whatever it had been. I remember going to bed that night with a strange sense of calm satisfaction. Last, I woke up with a grumbling stomach and cold sweats. I remember my hands were shaking, and that's what had

scared me the most. They were shaking so hard I could barely lift the duvet to climb out of my bed. My teeth were chattering, cutting my feeble cries for mom into pieces. What little noise I could make, though, died in my throat when I stared into the darkness beneath my desk. I'd tossed the game there so I wouldn't have to look at it, and I could just about see the outline of the box. It looked almost as if there was a fat lump of shadow sitting on it. A hunched, obese, naked figure who squatted on fat legs. His face tucked into his knees. I don't think I ever screamed like that before or after that and screamed.

And even when mom burst into my room and flicked the light on, nothing beneath my desk, of course, except the discarded game. And wrapped me up in her arms, I still screamed. I can still remember her voice the way it used to be. Just a dream. Just a dream. She says, you're burning up. Look at me. Look at me, Georgie. Come on. It's a fever. Fever dreams are the worst. Let's get up for a bit. Get you some water. It wasn't water I needed. It was food.

Mom made me a sandwich, cheese and pickle on white, potato chips on the side, even though it wasn't even 2 a.m. I wulfed it down and demanded another. Then another, although mom refused because she didn't want to make me sick. I wouldn't go back to bed, so she brought me in with her, wrapped herself around me and rocked me until I finally fell asleep. Man, I was so hungry, though. I'd never felt a hunger like it. It wasn't any better in the morning.

I'd eaten four bowls of cereal, two bananas, and I still felt like somebody had carved out my insides. I remember thinking that I was like Mr. Empty Belly, that there was a giant hole in my middle. Mom told me I could stay home, but I pulled on my uniform over my damp skin and picked up my bag with trembling hands, partly because I couldn't face being alone with him,

and partly because I needed to see Andy. I needed to know if he felt the same way, and I needed to know if he'd woken up in the night to see a hunched, mumbling, figure rocking back and forth beneath his desk. It turned out that the answer to both of those things was no. Andy was a picture of health. His shirt collar buttoned, his cheeks rosy beneath his spectacles.

His eyes were bright, his teeth were white, his hair brushed neatly back the way his mom did it every morning. He looked good, almost good enough to him. No, no, this couldn't. Are you real? I couldn't seriously be sitting here on my childhood bed remembering a real thing. It had to be one of those distorted recollections from youth, a mix of fact and fantasy. Right? And yet, the memory kept on growing. I saw Andy at recess, both of us sitting on the low window ledge outside the nurse's room,

flicking pebbles at pigeons. You look awful. What's wrong? It's... It's what. What could I have said to him? It's Mr. Empty Belly. You want to play it after school?

That stupid game? Why? It doesn't even work. No, I'm going to ride my bike. Please. Just one game. I made it work last night. I found out what to do. Andy chewed at his fingertips and spit scraps of nail onto the floor.

I had to resist bending down and picking them up. Really? Really, it's good. I promise. It's fun. One game, and we'll ride our bikes together. We can ride them all the way to Maine. Just one game. He'd given me a look like he didn't even know who I was, but he'd nodded and we'd gone to class.

I barely made it through the afternoon, gripped by shakes and sweating so much my t-shirt was soaked through as the bell rang, particularly dragged to Andy back to my house by the scruff of his neck. And by the time we staggered into my bedroom, my stomach was twisting itself into knots. It was the hunger. I'd never felt anything like it. But it was more than that. I remember being excited. I slid the game out from beneath my desk.

So, how does it work then? Even in my desperation, I saw the dent in the top of the box, almost as if something heavy had been sitting on it. It even smelled somehow human, sweaty but sweet, ripe in the way a butcher shop is in the middle of summer. I ripped off the lid and dropped the heavy game down onto the bed next to my friend. It had been a lie, of course. I had no idea how Mr. Empty Belly worked.

All I knew was that I'd put one of Andy's fingernails into the hole, and it hadn't buzzed. And it had felt so good, so satisfying. You have to put a bit of you in, like your nails. Bite off a bit of nail and put it in. George, you're acting weird. I... Just do it! I had one hand on my aching gut.

My other was bunched into a fist, although I had no intention of hurting handy. Not yet. Do it. He did as I asked, chewing off a piece of his thumbnail. His hand was halfway to the game when I stopped him, physically stopped him, working that sliver of nail out of his wet fingers and dropping it into the hole where Mr. Empty Belly's hand should be. No, it worked last night. The hunger was greater than ever.

I picked up the game and shook it. And he was already up to his feet, edging to the door. I've got to go. Mom's expecting me. It was his lie that made me angry. He'd never used that excuse before. I jumped up after him, looking at those cheeks at his bright eyes, his perfect air. His hair.

Wait! I pulled my desk drawer open so hard the whole thing came out, vomiting pens and tape and erasers all over the carpet. My little crafting scissors nearly bounced all the way underneath my bed, like they were trying to get away. But I snatched them up and I held them like a knife. Just let me do this one thing, yeah? Indy?

I promise it will work, you'll see. He backed into the wall and I moved without hesitation. He was bigger than me by a couple of inches, broader too. But there must have been something in my expression that frightened him into submission, because he just stood there, wide-eyed, and let me do it. He let me snip a lock of hair from his forehead. It was only when I backed away the prize in my hand that the rage caught up with him. What are you doing? Mom's going to kill me.

I didn't care. I'm not sure I even really hurt. I just stumbled to the bed and held that little wisp of golden hair over the hole in Mr. Empty Belly's scalp. And then I dropped it in. The relief of it was incredible. Like I just wolfed down a dozen greasy cheeseburgers. I could feel the warmth of them expanding inside me, that satisfaction of a full belly. It was so overwhelming that I'm not even sure how long.

long it was before I looked back and saw that Andy was gone. The sun through the window had shifted and dulled, and I could hear mom in the kitchen humming a tune. An hour then, maybe a little more since I'd fed Mr. Empty Billy. I had no idea what had happened to the time. I was only aware of one awful fact. I was hungry again. Dinner was a blur. I must have eaten enough food for three people and still went to bed with a gurgling stomach

and that same hollow ache right in the middle of me. Mom asked me if I was okay and I lied because I didn't want to tell her the truth. I didn't even want to think of the truth. That it wasn't me that was hungry. Not really. When Mom closed the bedroom door behind me, I immediately got the game out from its box and chewed off one of my. own nails, too close to the quick, the sharp agony of it making my eyes water. When I dropped it into

the handhole, though, the game buzzed, long and hard enough to shake its way across the bed. I tried some of my own hair, a lot of my own hair, but this too was rejected. I slid the box beneath my desk again and switched off the lights, waiting, waiting, until I woke from a fevered dream to see that hunched slab of shadow rocking back and forth behind my chair. He moaned quietly, like a starving man, and I could feel his hunger. Tell me! But the man did not hear me or did not respond. He just wrapped his arms around his legs and pushed his head into his knees and rocked until sleep took hold.

Andy didn't speak to me the next day. The couple of times I saw him, he turned to him. and walked away, or just kept his head down and ignored me. His hair was swept back, as usual, all except for a short blonde curl that hung over his eyes, like the joint of a severed finger. He refused to sit next to me in science class, sitting next to Scott McKinty instead. I found myself staring at him, at his little round ears, his rosy cheeks, his button nose, all the while working saliva around my mouth with the tip of my tongue. Nobody in the class knew how hungry I was.

Nobody could ever know. Not even Mr. Coulter when he held me back after class to ask if I was okay. He must have been able to see my hunger. It radiated from me in growing painful waves. He must have seen the feral need in my expression. I ran off before he could finish. slamming the door behind me and uttering a bestial shriek in the hallway outside. I wasn't sure if I wanted to remember anymore.

There was a reason I had pushed it so deep into my unconscious mind. The same sickness roiled in my belly as I sat there in my old house. Not hunger, no. I wasn't sure right then if I would ever be able to eat again. But the horror of something once buried, now coming to light. I wasn't me during those few days. It wasn't me who did those things, who took Andy's nail, who took his hair, who took his...

Oh, God, his teeth. I hadn't set out to do it, I swear. It... It just happened. I remember running all the way home and seeing Andy on the street. His bike tires thrumming as he sped up and down and up and down. I called to... him, but he acted like he couldn't hear me, even when I was on the sidewalk right next to him.

He just kept accelerating up the street, skidding hard enough to leave tracks, then racing back the other way. He was drenched in sweat, his cheeks on fire. His glasses steamed up like a bathroom mirror. Andy just stop and talk to me. I want to say sorry. I didn't want to say sorry. I had a hole inside me, an abyss, and I needed to fill it. Come to my house, let me apologize. I'll chuck the game away. You can help me. Come around just for a minute. Up and down, up and down, faster and faster and faster.

He didn't care about me. He didn't care about how hungry I was. I remember that sudden fury. A concussive blast of heat and noise inside my head. I lunged at him as he tore past me, planting my hands on his arm and shoving hard. That noise, I can still treat the wet crack of teeth on asphalt, bloody scream.

I found myself running to him, but any thoughts I had of comforting him were consumed by the hunger in my belly. Any thoughts I had of my friend were wiped clean by the... sight of his two front teeth gleaming in the sun, resting in a pool of blood that was so bright it didn't look real. I ignored his mules. I ignored his snatching fingers. I just grabbed those teeth and vaulted over his bike, the wheel still spinning, running back to my house. I was so excited as I hauled the game out from beneath my desk. I didn't even make it to the bed. I just

ripped the lid off and held those teeth over the hole where Mr. Empty Belly's mouth should be. There was a pain in my mouth, too, but it had nothing to do with my teeth. I was grinning so hard that it felt like my lips might split. Mr. Empty Belly's empty eyes stared back at me, shuddering with the delight of it. I dropped the teeth into the hole. It was as if I had been. been healed of some terrible injury I didn't know I had. I felt sated, healthy, and I lay there on the carpet, one hand on my bulging belly, the other wrapped around the game. I lay there until I heard a

knock on the bedroom door, and my mom looked in. George, why is it so dark in here? What are you doing? I hadn't even remembered to closing the drapes. God only knew how much time had passed. I sat up, my stomach gurgling like a broken drain, that same, endless hunger. His mother is here. Is it true you pushed him off his bike? I followed her into the hall. Andy and his mom were faceless silhouettes framed by the front door, and I was glad I couldn't see the damage that had been done to my friend. When he spoke, it sounded like he had a mouthful of Toffee. Where are my teeth, George?

I didn't have time to answer before Andy's mom jumped in, a dangerous undercurrent of anger beneath her usually calm tone. He says your son took them, Mary. He picked them up and ran off. What kind of person would do that? Listen, Annie, can we just give him a chance to tell us his side of the story? All eyes on me, waiting for an expert. I couldn't give.

My stomach roared, the sound of it like laughter, even though it felt as if somebody had their hands in my guts, twisting. George? I was grateful for the shadows which hid my burning cheeks. It's a lie. I don't have them. Andy fell. I didn't see his teeth. Back, if the dentist has any hope of fixing them. I felt a current of cold dread.

flow through me as Andy spoke. I know where they are. It's this game he has. He puts them in there. He took some of my hair, too. What, George? Is this true? I can't remember what I said. I was too afraid.

Andy broke into a run, pushing past me into my bedroom. I shrieked for him to stop. I chased him. Mom grabbing for me and Mrs. Gillespie jiggling after us. All of us bursting into the room to see Andy holding Mr.

her empty belly upside down, shaking it hard. They're in here. I know they are. I threw the box to the floor, stamping on it. To my immense relief, nothing had spilled out of the holes. No hair, no teeth. Andy looked up at me. His face illuminated by a shaft of golden light that cut through the drapes. He was monstrous.

His face cut to ribbons, his lips swollen, his glasses bent. He looked like a piece of meat which someone had started to carve. And my only reply was another gurgle from the depths of my stomach. As if something lived down there. Mom picked up Mr. Empty Belly, struggling with the weight of it as she handed it over to Andy's mom. There must be some mistake. Look, there's nothing there.

It's just a stupid game. I'm so sorry, Andy. I really am, but I don't think George took your teeth. Andy's mom did look. Her face warping into an expression of disgust as she took in the obese, naked figure, those gaping holes. She swallowed hard, slammed the box onto my desk, took hold of Andy's t-shirt and steered him out of the room. I don't want your son anywhere near, my Andy. Is that clear? Words were nothing compared to the look that Andy gave me over his shoulder.

an expression of pure, instinctive horror, an expression that belonged to an animal that knows danger is near, that knows death is stalking it. I couldn't. It couldn't be real. I wondered if perhaps this was some story that Andy and I had been working on,

one of those childhood fantasies you half remember from your youth. Maybe it was a movie we'd seen, huddled together in Andy's lounge. One of his dad's horror VHSs. Had I somehow incorporated that terror into my memories? Rewriting the code and corrupting it entirely? I hadn't been sleeping well since Sally and I worked out our divorce, and Mom's death had rendered me a diagnosable insomniac.

Sitting there in the swirling dust and heavy shadows, the remnants of my old bedroom arranged around me like a shrine. Perhaps my exhausted mind was simply dissoning. dissolving like so much salt and water. It made me dizzy, nauseous. And I stood from that little bed, swaying in the half-light. I needed air, and I made my way out into the corridor, heading for the front door. I didn't make it, though.

Something stopped me dead, almost brought me to my knees. I felt as though somebody had picked me up like a rag doll and hurled me into the past. That noise, that awful noise. It was coming from the garage. I might as well have been a boy again, curled up in bed, and trying not to see the fat lump of shadow that twisted knots beneath my desk. I wasn't a boy anymore.

I was a man. I was 34 years old, God damn it. What I was hearing was an animal of some kind, something that crawled into the garage to die one day when the nurses were in the house. I marched to the connecting door and twisted the handle as confidently as I could, pushing it open into an unfathomable void of darkness.

I thought the noise would stop then. With the door open, it was louder, somehow purer. It was the sound of somebody who was desperately, unthinkably hungry. As my eyes adjusted to the weak light that pushed in through the cracks around the garage door. I saw that the space was absolutely full, a labyrinth of towering boxes, half of which were covered with dust sheets.

The whimpering cry grew louder still, and my skin almost crawled off my body when I pictured the ghost of my mom floating up to embrace me. In truth, it would have been a welcome sight, because the alternative, the alternative... Hello? I realized I was staring into the dark of the garage, the same way a child stares into the dark of his bedroom. And I had to remind myself again that I was not a child.

I reached out and flicked the switch, the lights blinking on reluctantly. There was one last cry, chased away by the sickly yellow glow, and I turned to the deepest corner of the garage. A dust sheet bulged over a sack of contents that had to be four foot tall and just as wide. I tried to work out what might lie beneath it, but my mind could make no sense of the soft, fleshy angles, the sharp edges that might have been knees or elbows. A dome crowned the pile, one that almost seemed to twist my way,

to study me with eyes that I could not see. It was terrifying, and yet the fear I felt was somehow disconnected. It was as though I knew, I needed to feel afraid, but that I could not remember how to be. I felt instead a kind of excitement. I should have walked away. I can almost hear you screaming for me to leave that garage, leave that house. I could have called in a clearance team, told them to destroy everything they found and let an estate agent get rid of the property.

I could have left there and then never returned. All I could think about was this. This memory that was unraveling inside my mind. A spool of horrors that was revealing some terrible, long-forgotten truth. I made my way down the steps into the garage, almost tripping on the detritus that had accumulated there. There was no car, of course. Mom had never owned one.

As I passed the boxes, I examined them, finding a graveyard of dusty tupperware and musty, moth-eaten mounds of her clothing, mouldering corpses made from ancient magazines and newspapers, and a discovery that made my throat reject the very air. My old BMX. More rust now than bike. I brushed a hand over its sandpapery surface as I passed, squeezing brakes that were frozen solid by time. I felt as much sadness for that bike, trapped there in the dark for decades.

as I had for my own mom. All I had to do was close my eyes and I was riding it again, speeding down the road so fast it was like a coaster. Andy by my side, whooping and cheering and scream. Another part of the puzzle clicked into place. A scene from my past projected onto the inside of my skull. I screwed my eyes shut, twisting the balls of my fists against them,

and praying that the rush of fireworks might burn away the truth. But there was no hiding from it, switching it off. Oh, God, no. I'd gone to school prepared. I remembered that much. I couldn't recall sliding the game into my backpack. The hunger had been all-consuming. It had devoured me and every rational thought I might have had.

I was only nine, damn it. I was only a child. How could I have known any different? I remember walking into the kitchen and taking the knives, though. Not all of them. Just the little paring knife that Mom used for fruit. And the bread knife, too. I'd put them into my bag next to the game

and covered it all as best I could with my gym clothes, even though we wouldn't have had gym that day. It rattled something. terrible all day. I was terrified that somebody would ask me what the noise was and find the weapons. I'm sure Andy heard them. And even if he didn't, he knew something was wrong. He avoided me that day the way a gazelle avoids a lion. And even though his fear made me feel sick, it made me feel powerful, too. I enjoyed it. I savored it. I can't tell you. I can't tell you. I can't tell. you how empty I felt when the final bell rang out. It was as if a black hole had opened up inside of me,

one that sucked out every fabric of my being. I could have eaten a truckload of pizza that afternoon, I knew, and still felt like I was starving. It drove me to do what I did. It wasn't me. It was the hunger, him. I knew Andy would be off like a shot after school. So earlier in the day, I'd snuck one of the blades out of my bag and weasled it into the back tire of his bike. After the bell, I watched from a distance as he climbed onto his chopper and started to ride, only to wobble and almost fall.

He walked it out of the gate as fast as he could. If he'd left it behind, he might have survived what happened next. But he loved that. I caught up with him on the quiet street that cut between Harvest and Patrick. All big houses set back from the road, shielded by hedges and fences. I don't know why he went that way when he was on foot.

Maybe he just wanted to throw me off the scent, or maybe something in his head convinced him that he was imagining the danger, that things weren't as bad as they seemed. His face. Oh, I felt a rush of sympathy for him. For his torn skin, those missing teeth, and those wide, frightened eyes framed by his broken glasses. I almost stopped and let him go.

But the hunger, it was impossible. It chewed me up from the inside. The first thing he did was climb onto his bike and pedal, as if some miracle had repaired his tire. He was screaming as he went. his shrieks the loudest thing I'd ever heard But half the school shrieked And shouted on their way home And nobody appeared from their front doors

Nobody twitched the curtains I caught up to him in a heartbeat For once my little BMX Beating his hobbled chopper My bag was over my shoulders I couldn't reach inside So I rammed my front wheel And we both came off hard

Even all these years later I could still hear his voice, as if he was standing right there in the garage. But George, don't! I could still hear my own voice, too, hoarse and ragged and barely human. It's not me. It's him. It's him. He's so hungry, Andy.

Just a little game. Just to make the hunger go away. Making a break for the nearest house. I followed, fumbling into my bag and slicing my own thumb on the blade of the bread knife. I caught him behind a giant conifer tree in the front yard of one of those houses. I tossed the bag at his feet and he went down, smacking his already injured face. He was trying to turn around when I reached him. He wasn't trying to get up.

He was trying to turn around so that he could look at me. I was with myself to think about what happened. the next. I fell back into those garage stairs, and I put my head in my hands, and I just sobbed as those memories slid like cold steel into the hot mess of my thoughts. I couldn't see it so much as hear it. The wet thumps, like somebody striking a side of beef, the gargle of blood and a freshly torn throat. The pop of cartilage As the little paring knife Worked its way into a joint

And came free again and again and again It lasted for some time Far longer than I'd ever thought possible Minutes, I think I know it's hard to be sure of time In a moment like that Eventually though In the shade of that giant tree

In the warm breeze That drifted over the yard The muted quiet of the afternoon, Andy had sucked in on last wheezing breath. I killed him. I killed my friend. I killed Andy. No, killed him. Mr. Empty Belly.

I'd helped, of course. I had pulled the game out of my bag with sticky fingers and pried off the lid. I had used that bread knife to hack. and sawed Andy, lifting dripping nuggets of his flesh and dropping them where they needed to go. The nipples, the rancid guts, the crotch. Every time I did it, I felt a shudder of relief. The immense satisfaction of a good meal. And when I'd squeezed the final thing into its place,

the jelly of his eyeballs almost too soft to push through the hole in the cardboard. I had lain back on the grass and drifted into a welcome satisfied. I don't know how nobody saw us there. Two boys, one dead and dismembered, the other sleeping in a nest of bloodied pine needles. I guess we were far enough in the road to not draw attention. And the house must have been empty, thank God. I remember waking. only once, stirring as if from a dream, and seeing through blurry eyes, a naked lump of flesh

squatting just in front of me, its chubby fingers gleefully working in a banquet of ruptured orchards, the crack of a rib, and a groan of pleasure through grinding teeth. Then sleep had me again, pulling me down. Wait, had I awoken again? Because I could see that same shape hunkered over me. A long, pink tongue, lapping at the blood between my fingers, slow and steady. Over and over and over. Its eyes like somebody had gouged their thumbs.

It was dark when I woke again, although the moon was up and the stars were out. Their light showed me. showed me what exactly. A conifer tree. A board game lying on the patchy grass with its lid cast to one side. There was no sign of Andy. I scrambled to my feet, refusing to even think about what had happened. There was no blood on the floor, none that I could see anyway, or on me.

And the two knives had been wiped clean and arranged side by side next to the game. The most important thing, the most amazing thing, was that I was no longer hungry. That ache in the middle of me had completely gone. I remember looking down at Mr. Empty Belly, that image just as disturbing and desperate as it had ever been. The holes were empty, not even a smudge of blood on the box. When I slid the lid on, though, I found that I could barely lift it. It weighed a ton. I had to pull my backpack over to it and drag it onto my bike.

There I slung it over the handlebars and wielded the last few blocks back to my house. There was a cop car parked outside the Gillespie house, and when I dumped my bike in the yard and dragged my backpack to the front door, I found my mom in the front hall, wearing trenches into the carpet. She'd wrapped herself around me so tight I thought it was being smothered. Oh, George. I thought you were gone. My boy, my sweet boy. Where were you? What happened? I was riding my bike, Mom. Same as always. With Andy?

I shook my head. We fell out. He wasn't. exactly a lie. She'd run off then, telling me to stay put while she talked to the cops over at Andy's house. I took the opportunity to wrench that bag into my bedroom and push it under my desk, returning the knives to the kitchen. Then I walked to the hallway mirror and looked at myself. It was then that I knew I must have dreamed it, because if I had really split Andy open, then where was the blood? I was as friends.

as I had been that morning. My skin as pink as ever, and only ever so slightly sticky. Like sap, I remember thinking, or saliva. The rest of that day is a blur, a phantom memory. I know I spoke to the cops

because one of them gave me a quarter. I think he could see how rattled I was by the experience. I told them what I told Mom that I had cycled home alone because Andy and I were. weren't talking, and because Andy's chopper had a flat. I'd ridden around by myself, soaking up the sun. Andy's mom accused me of all kinds of things, of course. She told the cops about the game.

When they'd picked up Mr. Empty Belly, though, grunting with the weight of it, they'd simply shrugged and given each other a look before telling Mrs. Gillespie to head home and get some rest. Her desperation must have had an impact Because they asked me outright Before they left I'm sure you didn't hurt him You sure you didn't hurt your friend If he did something

He won't get in trouble Was it you? No I looked him in the eye when I said it And I didn't flinch Because it was true I hadn't hurt Andy I hadn't stabbed him and pulled him to pieces, and Mr. Empty Belly had.

He never found him, and they looked everywhere. They had cops crawling all over the street where Andy had died, where his bike had eventually been found. I remember cycling past them the next day, seeing them nitpick their way through the needle-thick grass. But they never found him. Andy's mom and dad hung on in the street for a few more months, but they ended up selling their house and moving west. California, I think, maybe Oregon. It must have been hard for Mrs. Gillespie,

living across the road from the boy who killed her son, and she knew it. She must have. Mothers have instincts. They know these things. But she couldn't prove it. There was no evidence, no witnesses, and I never opened that game again. I vowed never to even think of it again.

I remember dragging it out of my room one night when mom was asleep, thumping it down the stairs and somehow getting it right into the corner of the... The garage? Surely it couldn't still be there. It couldn't be there. Because none of this actually happened. It was a false memory. a piece of fiction that I dreamed up when I was nine,

and then pushed right to the darkest part of my mind. They were the twisted dreams of a boy who lost his best friend and who invented a story to cope with the grief. If I was truly recalling a genuine moment in my history, if that had all really happened, then every law that held the fabric of the universe together would be dismembered. I glanced back one final time at the front door of my mom's house, seeing the street beyond bathed in golden light.

One last thought of escape. But I didn't take it. Of course I didn't. Would you? I made my way to the corner of the garage, breathing deep lungfuls of dust and mold. Every part of me was shaking. I wore a suit of sweat.

The lumps beneath the dust sheets seemed to writhe and twist, a collection of limbs opening, up to welcome me. Tricks of light and shadow, nothing more. I knew what lay there, though. I could almost feel the weight of it, that immense gravity pulling me in. And when I reached out and lifted the greasy fabric of the dust sheet, Mr. Empty Belly sat there. The box yellowed with age and almost invisible beneath its shroud of dust. A frame of old wicker chairs and decomposing coats covered it. like the bones of a church, as if something in this place had thought to worship it.

I wiped a fist over the box, revealing the same awful, desperate expression. I fell to my knees, arching over the box, and attempting to move it. It was lighter than it had been on the night, but still far too heavy to be just cardboard. I worked off the lid, afraid to even brue he was. Mr. Empty Billy. That same naked, obese body, those gaping holes in his skin where his head and eyes a crotch should be.

The box wasn't just heavy. It seemed to vibrate the softest movements. I could almost see it expanding and contracting like a sleeping beast. It wasn't real. It couldn't be real. The whole thing felt warm against my cold.

to fingers. I had to know. I had to know the truth. I grabbed the corner of the box, my fingers working at the cardboard, pinching it, trying to twist and rip it to reveal its secrets. The game seemed to shudder in my grip. I fought my way in my feet and ran to the kitchen. There were knives in the drawer, and I recognized one straight away. The little paring knife I had used on end, still here after all these years. Running back, I slid the tip of the knife through the edge of the cardboard, sawing up and down until I had a hole big enough

to work my finger into. It was warm in there and wet, as if I had pushed my finger into a bowl of fresh oatmeal. I ignored the horror, pulling the cardboard up, peeling that gruesome illustration from the tray beneath and seeing What was I seeing? What was I seeing that pulsed wetly, that squirmed and writhed beneath my touch?

A gift basket of withered organs, compressed into one another, splinters of bone, leathery strips of flesh. I saw two teeth gnawing at the riot of flesh, rips of blonde hair wrapped around those eyes. Oh, God. They swiveled in their pockets of warm, wet meat, milky yellow as if they were filled with pus. The pupils pinpricks. They rotated insanely, and somehow they found me. They found me, and they saw me, and I groaned his name,

the words spilling from my lips like vomit. Andy! He was alive in there. It was impossible. And yet how could I deny it? It consumed him. And he was right there. He had been there for 25 years,

imprisoned in that cardboard sarcophagus. No. No! I kicked the game away. Those lunatic eyes pleading with me. Flexing so hard, the box lurched and slid towards. me. In the wet movements were almost words, breathed from the top of a grisive pipe of larynx. A whistling chant that filled the quiet space like water. I almost felt my sanity escaping my skull,

like steam from a kettle. I almost lost it right there and screamed myself into oblivion. Instead, I grabbed the lid of the box and slammed it onto the game, pushing it down as if I was fighting a vampire back into its grave. Then I pushed Mr. Empty Belly back beneath the dust sheet, scrabbling backward on my ass until I hit the garage steps. These years. All these years of mindless, aching horror. Oh, God.

Andy... Andy, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. What did I do? What did I do? Did I do? Joining us on our journey posed by Brandon Boone.

Our production team is Phil Mike Holsky, Jeff Clement, and Jesse Cornett. Our creative content manager is Olivia White. I'm your host and executive producer, David Cummings. If you would like to find out how you can hear the extended editions of our audio program, please visit the no sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season pass program. 25 episodes, each over two hours long, and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 2499.

On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. As the darkness phase, it feels like you write 2020 by Creative Reason Media Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media.