The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S16E20

Episode Date: August 22, 2021

It's Episode 20 of Season 16. Our correspondence plunges us into the dark waters. "Come to the Sea" written by Martin Fisher (Story starts around 00:06:30) TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Jesse CornettCast: Narrator - Atticus Jackson, Neal - Matthew Bradford, Louis - Graham Rowat, Curry - Dan Zappulla, Jackson - Kyle Akers, Henshaw - David Ault, The Neal-Thing - Matthew Bradford, Mother - Erika Sanderson"In the Pipework" written by A.T. Thomas (Story starts around 00:52:00)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Erin Lillis"Dear Laura - Chapter 3" written by Gemma Amor (Story starts around 01:02:40)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Kristen DiMercurio, Laura - Mary Murphy, Bobby - Matthew Bradford, X - David Cummings"The Final Dive of Walter St. Clair" written by Manen Lyset (Story starts around 00:57:55)Produced by: Jeff ClementCast: Narrator - Jeff Clement, Walter - Jesse Cornett"Dinner Plate" written by Mark Towse (Story starts around 01:13:05)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Graham Rowat, Jen - Erika Sanderson"The Bog King's Daughter" written by Robin Furth (Story starts around 01:34:35)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Erika Sanderson  This episode is sponsored by:Betterhelp - Betterhelp's mission is making professional counseling accessible, affordable, convenient - so anyone who struggles with life's challenges can get help, anytime, anywhere. Get started today and get 10% off your first month by going to betterhelp.com/nosleepShipStation - ShipStation makes it super easy to manage and ship all your orders from all your sales channels faster, cheaper and more efficiently. You can import orders from any sales channel and ship with any carrier using their deeply discounted rates. Go to shipstation.com and click the microphone icon at the top of the page. Enter code NOSLEEP to get a 60-day free trial.  Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast team Click here to learn more about Brandon Boone's new album, "Neon Classica" Click here to celebrate the 500th episode of the "Tales to Terrify" podcast Click here to learn more about Manen Lyset Click here to learn more about Robin Furth  Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone"The Bog King's Daughter" illustration courtesy of Naomi Ronke Audio program ©2021 - 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

Hi folks, Cummings here. We're diving deep into the horror this week, so stick around. But first, I want to remind you that the horror found within your own head isn't something you have to deal with alone. That's why we love BetterHelp, because they can help even when all you need is someone to listen and guide you to a better way of thinking. Better Help is online therapy that assesses your needs and matches you with your own licensed professional therapist.

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open and honest. And finally, he listens and supports me, makes me feel comfortable and to have hope about the future. So you see, with better help, you'll get timely and thoughtful responses. Plus, you can schedule a weekly video or phone sessions so you won't ever have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room as with traditional therapy. Better Help wants you to start living a happier life today. In fact, so many people have been using BetterHelp that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states. So visit betterhelp.com slash no sleep. That's better H-E-L-P.

And join the over one million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp and No Sleep listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash no sleep. And now, let's plunge into the horror and start the show.

In the dark hours, in the letters long lost and forgotten, our tales of horror to frighten and disturb. Come, join us as we delve deep into the darkness. Into the sleepless hours, when you dare not close your eyes. For the no sleep. Welcome, sleepless listeners. I'm your host, David Cummings. As you know, we recently celebrated the milestone of our 10th anniversary,

and I hope you're well aware of another excellent long-running horror storytelling podcast, Tales to Terrify. They're celebrating a special milestone of their own, their 500th episode. And it's an event so big that it's spilled over into two episodes. On August 20th and 27th, they'll release. episodes 499 and 500, each in honor of the milestone. I encourage you to celebrate with them and listen in. You might even hear a familiar voice on one of the episodes, he said, winking. Tales to Terrify.

There's a link in the show notes or find them wherever you get your podcasts. And speaking of things well worth listening to, our very own maestro of malevolent music, Brandon Boone has released his latest album. album. It's titled Neon Classica, and it features tracks from many of the stories we've done here on the podcast. Brandon's music is always outstanding, and his albums are great to put on and immerse yourself in when you want to sink into the sound. There's a link in the show notes, or find it on your favorite music streaming platform today. Neon Classica by Brandon Boone. Now, as I recently

mentioned, Joanna and I are convinced that our mysterious adventure is close to an end. We feel that way because we're seeing more and more that the books and the letters are morphing from the printed words into audible sounds. Maybe that's why last week's hint of words no longer matter hold so much weight. I mean, go back 500 odd years or so, and we had good old Gutenberg inventing the printing press, which revolutionized how we communicate. But these days, The ability to communicate via audio has allowed us to amplify our signal, so to speak, not just radio waves being broadcast across the airwaves, but now over the Internet and beyond. Why our podcast alone reaches millions of people across the planet,

all originating from a single point in Canada. And so, as the mysterious message or signal continues to get amplified via the podcast, there must be a limit to how far it can go. Maybe that's why the end is close, because the signal grows weaker the farther out it spreads. Like standing by the water and yelling across the lake, the water allows the sound to travel farther and be heard on the distant shore. Perhaps we are the proverbial water across which the sound is traveling. It might be an apt analogy because Joanna shared with me an old journal she found in the whispering pages. It's an old waterlog book washed up on a forgotten shore.

She says the name Martin Fisher is barely legible on its cover. We asked some of the team to perform the words therein, including Atticus Jackson, Matthew Bradford, Graham Rowett, Dan Zepula, Kyle Akers, David Alt, and Erica Sanderson. So if you want to hear the message as the sound spreads out across the waves, You should come to the sea. When I was a young boy, no older than the age of eight, my mother drowned in the ocean off the harbor of Cobb's End.

She was not a perfect mother, known to make many mistakes, and many of them were with me. She married an abusive man, raised me in squalor. Days would go by where I would not see her until well into the, midnight hour. She was not perfect, but she was mine. One last gift she gave me before I witnessed her suicide was a song, a short melody. Still to this day, I wonder why she gave it to me.

Was she trying to inspire me, cheer me up? Or was it just the creation of a woman who had finally fallen off the ledge of sanity? I can still hear her voice now Even so many years later Oh brave young sailor Do you wish to be free Then pull up your bootstraps and come to the sea Is your life in the god or a life you wish you could flee

Then pull up your bootstraps and come to the sea This morning, that song Of the years of being absent from my mind came back with a striking fury fueled by the ocean water which smashed into the ship's portside. Nausea had long since danced across my bowels, causing an uneasiness in my body. I pulled myself up from my bed. My legs trembled under the weight. Tumbling against the walls like a babe in its first few days of being on foot,

I swayed with the current outside. I slammed against the door leading into the nearby bathroom, the wood splintering from my weight. Peeling myself from the door, I opened it, and not a moment passed before my head dived into the toilet bowl. Dinner had finally come up. A healthy serving of spiced rung. A whole bottle. We were adrift for three days before the captain had decided he would wrap. rather take his chances swimming home than remain on the ship any longer.

As he leapt from the stern of the ship, his body collided into the sea with a thunderous clap. As he swam off north, my crewmates and I swore he would always be remembered. I have since forgotten his name. We have been sailing aimlessly now for eight days. Well, I believe it to be eight days. I tried keeping count by leaving marks on the wood next to my bed, but a piece of dead tree had splintered and collapsed in my hand three nights ago. I had finally pulled myself from the ball. Looking into the mirror, even through the cracks, I could see my beard had grown to an unruly size.

This, in only the span of a few. days. Out here on the pale blue, days felt like months. It had not been months, though. I am sure of that at least. I nearly jumped at the sound, making its ominous return to my brain. I thought that it must have been my mental state escaping me. As a sailor, I've spent much of my life at sea. And because of that, I know the impact such a life can have on the body. Even then, I know especially well the impact it can have on the mind. I knew far too many men who would fall apart on their travels.

We were not all built for such a life. And I honestly am starting to believe that neither was I. I had been prescribed medicine long before I went on this voyage. Yet even after taking them daily, these sounds have found their way into my own. my mind. After the time spent at sea, my supply was running low and was likely the only thing keeping a layer of sanity over my view of the world. The same could not be said for my crewmates. As I ascended onto the main deck, I was immediately assaulted by the foul stench of rock and decay. It was a smell I had grown more accustomed to as the days passed, but even now, it was a smell I had grown

more accustomed to as the days past, but even now it still causes my stomach to churn. As more of the crews started dropping dead from hunger, dehydration, or their own self-harm, we decided to keep the freshest ones for food. The problem was the bodies tended to spoil, leaving the cabin boy meal to throw them overboard with the rest into the great blue below us. The Oliver has gone rotten. Neil tossed the body of a man whom we had shared many dinners with into the sea. Always was rotten. Now he just looks how he is.

I was doing my best to keep spirits up. The body that was once Oliver smacked into the waves quickly sinking to the depths below. We have no food. Patience. Where's Lewis? Neil pointed to the port bow. I can make out the tall figure of Lewis as he was looking off into the distance. The man was well over six feet tall, but his body had become sickly,

lacking the definition it had at the start of our voyage. Lewis was second in command when the captain was still around, taking the reins after the man had gone for one last swim. Lewis had a strong and motivational command over the crew for a time, but starvation and heat caused all spirits to drain. That is what months adrift does to a man. I mean, days. Did I write months?

I stood next to the man I would caution to say was a friend. He did not turn to look at me, but I could feel his acknowledgement as if his soul reached out to touch mine. We stood together in silence for what seemed like an eternity, and it damn well might have been one. No gulls. What's that? He moved his finger to the sky, hanging over the horizon.

The sky was empty of anything living. Only the bright sun and blue color of the heavens. Look, not a goddamn single seagull today. Did you see any yesterday? Lewis, when was yesterday? He looked back to the horizon and sighed. His stomach made an audible groan. No gulls, no dead men, no provisions.

All we have is liquor. That's not so bad. We can drink ourselves dead. I don't want to die. I looked back up to his face and could see clouds of anger pass by. They formed a giant storm over him. Well, what do you propose we do then? We have no seagulls, no fish, and no new dead men to nibble on.

I can't just kill one of ours, can't we? Alert the crew that we're having a meeting tonight in the Hull kitchen. Aye. I must confess, as I am writing this all down, picking the meat from my teeth. A strong feeling of regret and anger has taken over. Is it angered Lewis? Myself. The whole damn situation we have found ourselves in.

Of that, I am not sure. I do know. that I regret what I took part in tonight, an act that has undoubtedly turned God away from ever lending help to us. I would go to church every single day for the remainder of my life if it meant we could go home, if it meant that I could forgive myself for all of this. Once night came, I went below deck into the kitchen

to find the rest of the crew already waiting for me. We had started our voyage over 30 strong, but now found ourselves whittled down to a weakening six. The other three who remained were newcomers to the ship. The few torches placed around the room caused a brilliant shine in their eyes. One was a man named Henshaw, a strong name for an even stronger man. The captain brought him aboard believing we needed more muscle to handle the rougher seas. The other two were Jackson and...

Curry. Two men that I suspected had a deeper relationship than just friendship. But I had no evidence on the matter. They kept to themselves most of the time and sought comfort in each other while the world fell apart around us. Jackson's curly hair bounced in the winds when he was above deck while Curry's bald head was kept safe under a sweat-stained cap. Hinshaw broke the silence. Why are we here? Lewis looked at us with a solemn face, filled with the regret for the decision that must be made. Lewis? We have to eat.

We have no food, but we have to eat. There's nothing for us to catch. No more provisions in the back quarters. All we have is liquor and each other. Liquor can help ease our pain, but it doesn't fix the hunger that's always there. knocking in the back of our stomachs. As such, we have to make a choice. Lewis placed an empty bottle,

my empty bottle of rum, onto the table. Whoever this bottle lands on when I spin it, we'll make a donation to the crew. Donation? We'll need to take a part of them to eat. Not all of someone, mind you. We can last longer that way. A hand here, a foot's worth of toes there, just enough to keep us fed.

One hand between the six of us could mean we wouldn't really need to eat for another day or so. No. This is completely insane. Look outside. You look out there and tell me if any of this is sane in any way. How long have we been out here? Do you remember? What about you, Curry? Because I don't. I don't remember the last time I saw land. I don't know what day of the week it is or even what month it is. It's June. It's November.

Whenever it is, we need to do something to keep us going. We have to eat. He's right. Lewis, we do not have to do this. I've seen things swimming out there at night. Fish rising out of the deep to shine in the moon. Some even look like women We all looked at the cabin boy with utter confusion

Mermaids Fairy tales from the little boy Piss off Neil tried to leap at Hinshaw But I had already put my arms around the boy We were at a boiling point And I refused to let it tip over Get in a circle

I won't entertain this any long This must be done. Once we gathered around the table, Lewis spun the empty bottle. The sound of glass gliding across wood became a droning sound of impending danger. I could see every man break out to a sweat as the bottle would slowly pass them by. I will not lie and tell you I felt no fear in that moment. I knew the pain that would befall me. And it filled me with terror not felt since.

I saw my mother drown, that fear that I could do nothing to change what was happening, and that soon someone would pay for that. The bottle slowly crawled to a stop. The droning hum came to an end, like the sound of a life cut short. The bottle pointed at the cabin boy. Neil began to back away. Terror filled his eyes as the men fell on him. Hinchaw snatch the boy up, slamming him onto the table. What should we take? A leg. The boy has good, strong legs. No, it'll be useless on the ship without it.

His hand. We'll take his hand. Get your hands off of me! Boy, don't forget that you'll be fed too. Make peace that this pain will bring you food to heal your ailing. stomach. No. There was pointed at me. You, grab a knife and hand me a torch. You have to cauterize the wound.

Following his command, I felt lead in my shoes as I went towards a nearby drawer. I pulled out the shiniest knife we had. Ophal, it would make the cleanest cut. Guilt moved through me. I did not want this. But it had to be done. God damn it. It had to be done.

I handed Curry the torch and Lewis the knife. Jackson was holding onto Neil's left hand. Cut it. Lewis placed the knife over Neil's hand. The blade rested directly above his wrist. I am sorry, boy. Once the blade began to cut, then Scarlett drops of blood,

pit-pattered onto the wooden kitchen floor. Neil let out of blood-curdling scream. I have tried my best to block out the rest of what we had done with the boy, but I can still hear his screams. Even now as I drink a new bottle of rum and wash the taste of human flesh from my mouth, I can still hear that scream. My eyes grow heavy now, and I must get some rest.

I have taken my nightly dosage of medicine, downed with the best rum on the ship. With a belly full of food. I hope that tomorrow our luck will change. I hope that Neil can still look at us as humans. I do not think I can. June 21st. I saw her in my dreams.

The ghastly, pale, bloated body of my mother, came to be in my sleep last night. In the dream, I found myself on that same beach I saw her drown in as a child. I was still a grown man, but I felt so small as I watched the corpse that was once my mother rise from the ocean. She broke through the layer of water and seaweed, standing atop the waves. Her lips that were once so red were a dark blue, standing out of the seaweed, standing out of the waves. from her paper white skin.

The dress she wore that day was completely soaked through. A muted pink that was dangerously approaching the same scarlet drops of blood that came from Neil's wound last night. After a few moments, her mouth finally parted in what she said. Sent a cold shiver of my spine as her words echoed across the ocean. Oh, brave young sailor, do you wish to be free? And pull up your bootstraps and come to the sea. She did not sing it as I remembered, but simply spoke the words. She had taken her own self-made shanty and turned it into a haunting prose.

Against my own control, my legs began to move. The chilled water splashed against my bare feet. I was not standing above the water as my mother did, but was slowly descending. below the ocean waves. Soon I was up to my neck. My breathing was a panicked cry of hell. The same cries my mother let out as she drowned. Water filled my mouth, finding its way into my lungs.

I sank like a rusted anchor. And the spirit that was my mother did nothing but watch. As I had done to her. The dream left a pit in my stomach once I awoke. As I had done every morning prior, I vomited up the rum that had filled my stomach the night before. Looking into the bowl of my toilet, I saw chunks of Neil's thumb. That nightmarish vision will stick with me forever. I discovered the rest of my medicine were gone.

I have no idea where they have gone, too. When I took my dosage last night, I could see. at least another week's worth remained. That was last night, right? I need my medicine. I start to get bad thoughts. Without them. Opening the door to my cabin, I found Lewis waiting for me.

Sweat fell from his face and played along his clear expression of anger. Neil is gone. Curry tells me he heard the lad leave his quarters. in the middle of the night. He'd gone above deck and never came back down. We think he jumped. I must confess, even now as I write this well into the night. The thought of why Neil would jump is not lost on me.

We had done something truly awful. And Lewis had promised we would continue to do that awful thing to each other until we found a way home. Like I have, Neil must have survived. that such a task was impossible. Instead of putting himself through that torture, he jumped into the sea. I hope he found those mermaids.

When Lewis and I went on deck, Curry and Jackson were looking into the ocean. He's down there. We should be, too. Don't say that. We can still make it. We have time now, thanks to Lewis. I feel terrible about what we do.

to that boy, and I refused to take part in it again. I would rather be dead. The two continued to argue as Lewis went portside to look at the horizon. Still nothing. I resigned myself to looking to the sea as well. Given how things were, it was just about the only entertaining thing to watch. I believe I was only there for an hour at most. Lost in thought about the dream I had.

lost in regret over what had happened to our cabin boy yet when I looked up from the ocean I found it to be well into the night and I looked around the ship's deck to discover that I was alone even now thinking back on all of this I struggled to comprehend how this happened I do not remember so much time passing I do not remember seeing that blazing

sun finally set, but do not even remember my crewmates saying a word the entire time. I leaned against the wood railing to collect my thoughts, to find some balance for my mental state. It was then that I heard a voice rise from the waters behind me. It sounded vaguely human, but like a throat filled with scales. This is why I need to be. my medicine. Things that are not there begin to appear. They speak to me and tell me to do things I do not want to do. Yet the voice persisted. The voice had a familiarity to it. It reminded me of Neil, thinking it was the poor boy I had to look. I feared that he had simply fallen over the night before and spent the whole day clinging to the side of the ship.

I looked down to find a shining, brilliant collection of scales atop the ocean layer. They glittered in the moonlight. Colors I have never seen before, nor that I can properly recollect, would bounce from each scale. Then, some of them began to move away from each other. The mass of hard skin parted to reveal none other than the face of the cabin boy. His face glistened in the moonlight. Patches of scales formed over his face. Neil?

His voice was altered, changed like his body. He lifted his left arm out of the water. To my shock, I could see five fleshy digits on a newly formed hand. A kidn free is your life in the gutter. The life you wish you could free. Neil's voice changed, morphed into something more. feminine until it had fully transformed into the voice of my long dead mother. Then pull up your bootstraps and come to the sea.

It was then that the powerful odor hit me. I still struggle to find what it was. The best I can say is it reminded me of the final hours of a fish market in the summer. The smell of ocean and rot. I do not know why the smell drew me closer when I should have been repelled by its stench, yet I found myself reaching my arm down to Neil. His left hand extended out, farther than any normal man's hand could go. A wicked grin past his face, but I could not stop myself.

The awful odor drew me further in. Just as our hands began to touch, a large pike of wood smashed across Neil's face. I fell to the floor of the ship, having lost my balance, and looked up to see Henshaw carrying the wood. It had splintered and snapped against Neil's face. Are you stupid? It was then that a monstrous cry shouted out from the ocean. I pulled myself back up and looked over the edge. It was Neil.

Or at least what I once thought was Neil. The smell was gone and somehow my vision became clearer. The scales have lifted from the Neal Thay's face to reveal loose flesh. The skin dangled from the body. The mouth bounced in a comical fashion as the thing began to move. It pulled itself above the water, standing on top of the floating mass of scales. The body was a trend. loose and white.

The skin of the creature was constantly moist and slippery. I once saw a dolphin leaping from the waves, and while I never actually touched it, the skin of the creature looked like it would be a perfect match. Lewis, Curry, and Jackson joined us on the deck. They nearly leapt away from the edge after seeing the monsters standing above the waves. The thing still wore nearly.

Neil's face. A mask hiding what I'm sure was an even more horrific visage. Blood, a brilliant green glow of liquid dropped down from one of Neil's eye holes. What is that thing? Neil's mermaid. The voice was a mockery. My mother, Neil, countless other unknown people smashed together into a horrific opera. The creature crouched down on its two very various.

on its two very human-like legs. The hands made of similar wet skin, and far longer than our own, dangled to the floor of scales. We observed the beast for a moment before it suddenly leapt towards us. It was at level with the ship, and with a quick grab from its hands,

pulled Hinshaw down with it. I would like to say we all reached out to save the man from his awful fate. I would like to say that Hinshaw was not pulled below the ocean, screaming for help while we watched in horror. I cannot say these things. The creature stayed below the ocean, out of view. I felt my legs give out.

All the energy was sapped from my body. I felt a searing pain in my head, a throbbing that resembled cannon fire. Touching the creature had left a mark on me. Not physically, but in my mind. I was fractured. No medicine. No salvation.

No hope. I could hear Curry crying while Jackson vomited over the edge of the boat. Footsteps overcame their noise, booming steps of a man who had given up. I looked up, doing my best not to pull away from the pain in my head. to see Lewis walking around the ship. Over and over he crossed the hole, taking laps one at a time. I could hear him say those same words again and again

as his pacing walk became a sprint, dashing across the wood. Hopelessness had finally overtaken him. Something then caressed my face. A gentle touch I had. had not experienced since I was a boy. I looked up to see my mother standing over me. She was no longer bloated and pale as I had seen in my dream,

but a beautiful, vibrant young woman. She pulled me up from the ground and began to lead me below deck, but do not believe the other saw her. Now I am in my cabin, and she is singing to me. The song is so faint I can barely hear it. The words in this moment do not matter. What does matter is I can hear her voice. The gentle tone of it is slowly pulling me to slumber.

I know her being here is impossible. That it makes no logical sense. Yet everything I have gone through has refused logic just as strongly. This is something I have. needed. Now, I will rest, and in the morning, I will. June. I have stopped riding the days down, as I cannot keep lying to myself that these days have been happening as I believe them to be. I do not remember the year either. I have scrubbed it from these journal entries.

These things, days, months, years, are just ways of telling time. And I have learned out here that time has no construct. It does not exist. I would like to say that the previous entry happened yesterday. That I have not completely lost track of the world. But I am no longer sure it did. I know it happened. I know it did. I just do not know when.

I have no more medicine. All I can think of now is what Lewis said last night. This is hell. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps we are trapped in a hell that has found its whale. to our world of existence. Yet, I am not even sure we are in our realm anymore. Do you wish to be free?

As far as I remember, the proclamation Lewis made that night were the last words I ever heard him say. I have not seen him since. His cabin door is locked and tries I might. I do not have the strength to break it open. I heard no noise from his room. room, nor protests when I attempted to break the lock. I believe our new captain is now dead.

Curry is gone as well. As Jackson told it, Curry had gotten up from their cod in the middle of the night and made his way into the kitchen. Once Jackson came to investigate a few moments later, he found the man had slid his own throat. I weeped for the man as I knew the grief he had felt in his final moment. He was a compassionate man before all of this. I need my medicine.

Jackson is alive, but he is not himself anymore. Curry's death broke him and has morphed him into a monster that could only be birthed from this situation. You see, when I came across him and he told me what happened to Curry, he was eating the body. He licked at the blood which had once poured out of Curry's body. neck but had now become crusted. The body's fingers were chewed down. I say Jackson became a monster, but I mean purely that he has fallen into insanity. Perhaps he is doing the sanest thing, keeping himself fed. I no longer know. Morals are gone when you are damned. Come to think of it, body was changing. His eyes seemed different. His mouth, a constant grin, and his hands were the

claws of a hungry beast. I can still hear him eating in the kitchen. Oh God, I can still hear the sound of flesh ripping off the bone. It is a wet sound. My mother has been with me as I write this all down. She has been singing that lovely song since I opened my eyes, and I feel a strong compulsion to leave this place. I mocked the idea that the ocean out there could offer any sort of freedom, but now I see, perhaps I can just swim and swim and swim and swim my way to land. some way any way to escape this ship

that has morphed into a nightmare will I wake up in heaven or will I wake up back where this all started I feel myself repeating a strong sense of deja vu have I lived through all of this before

mother tells me that I can see her soon if I go I want to see her See her how she used to be. I still hear the Neal thing out there. Mermaid. Siren. It beckons for me.

It wants me. Mother says it wants to help. Leave her. She is my mother after all. It bumps against the whole of the ship, tapping its hands against the walls of my cabin. I am leaving. this place. I will tear these last pages out of my journal and place them in a bottle. I would let them

float out into the ocean. I do not wish for my store to be seen for, if it is, that means someone else is experiencing what I have. Please, understand. If you are reading this, I am truly sorry. found your way into this abyssal nightmare. I will pray for you. We both will. Mother and me. If you want to escape, go into the water. Mother says it will hurt it first, but then you will find peace. Come to the sea. I beg of you. We must. We must. We must. We must. We must. We must. We must be able to find peace. Come to the sea I beg of you We must go now

Goodbye fellow traveler May we meet in a place Far better than this Together In the sea Straps You come to the sea Gutter

The life you wish you could Please Bootstraps We'll return to these deep tales in mere moments, but first, let's think about the best ways to pull up our bootstraps, like the things you're passionate about, the things which push us to do big things in life, like, say, selling your crafts online.

I have friends who make and sell their own soap. They not only love it, but their quickly growing business is loved by their customers too, totally gratifying to love what you create and generate some revenue. you at the same time. Sharing your creations with others, all out of a deep burning love for logistics and order management. Wait, no one's passionate about that part. That's why there's ShipStation. They make it easy to manage your orders and get your products out the door, so you can get back to doing

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Just go to Shipstation.com. Click on the microphone at the top of the page and type in No Sleep. That's Shipstation.com, enter offer code No Sleep. It's the best way to make ship happen. And now, let's keep working at the show as we clean up with more horror. When you're a teenager, finding your first job can be a valuable experience and a chance to earn some spending money. But when a job is needed just to help support your family,

there is far more pressure involved. And in this tale, shared with us by author A.T. Thomas, a woman recounts the experiences of a local team who worked in a restaurant where his shifts kept him working late into the night, all alone. Performing this tale is Aaron Lillis.

So wash up those pots and pans. Take pride in your work. Just make sure you avoid whatever is in the pipework. Here, what happened to the Atwood boy? The Atwood boy. The Atwood boy. Oh, fuss, yes, you do. You do know the Atwood boy.

Missy's little urchin? He went around with everybody thinking him slow, but it turned out he was just a little death. Yes, yes, the Atwood boy. He turned 15 just a few months back. And on the poor lad's birthday, his lousy stepfather ran out on his mother and the boys. Took their savings with him, too. We always knew that, Harold. That's her previous husband.

It was a bad egg. Seems Missy has picked up quite the habit of taking home, rotten men. Well, the boy, he had no choice. He had to go out and get a job. He'd be no good in the Army, the mines, for that matter, not with those ears. What a liability he would be. So tucked up and out of choices, he inquired at the restaurant across from the shop. Yeah, that's right, Tony's Italian place. Nice grub, or so I hear. Never been in there myself. I don't really care for ethnic food.

Anyway, they put him to work. He was a little too young to be in the kitchen. Couldn't risk the health inspector popping around and finding a sprout in the kitchen, you know. As it turned out, though, he was just a little too useless as well. They put him behind the bar, but he dropped all the bottles. They tried to set him up as a waiter, but he kept spilling soup on the customers. So they had no choice. The boy just wasn't up to the job. They had to let him go.

But they couldn't do it, you see. When Tony went to go fire him, the boy starts blubbering, saying how badly he needed the job, how his family, his mother especially, were relying on him, how his no good stepfather had disappeared with what little money they had. Well, they took pity on the boy, of course, who wouldn't? Missy and her lot have had it pretty rough these last few years, ever since her husband died. Rotten, though he might have been. So they made him a pot wash.

At least the boy couldn't poison anyone down there or spill a hundred dollar bottle of champagne all over the waitresses. Uh, from what I've seen of the place, it's very similar to the place. the shop, just much bigger. The dining room is on the ground floor, then the kitchen is down in the basement with all the sinks right down in the back. The Atwood boy told me they load all the dishes around there all through service day and night. Then after closing time, he'll go in and scrub away. Takes him all night. They weren't happy about it, or so he told me, leaving him down there on his own in the basement. They knew all about his clumsy habits and were half certain that he'd somehow burn the building down or at the very least flood the place.

But they took pity on his plight, as many of us do nowadays, and took a chance on the boy. It paid off, too. The boy had found his calling and flourished. Everything came up spotless. I remember Tony coming into the shop one afternoon telling me that he'd never seen the place so clean, not even when he bought it. Then, a few nights ago, just after getting started, the boy felt like he wasn't alone. Not quite like someone was watching him, but he was certain someone was in the restaurant with him. Every groan and uneven noise the Atwood boy heard, he was sure to be an intruder. For the first time since his employ began, the boy yearned for the hustle and bustle of opening hours. Then he heard scratching.

He had to go searching. He was terrified, but he couldn't halt his fervor anymore. He had to find whoever or whatever was in the restaurant with him. The scratching, he assures me, was coming from upstairs in the dining room. He grabbed himself a set of matches, lighten the path ahead of him. He was worried that if he turned on all the house lights, someone would tell Tony what was going on and then Tony would come to him with questions. Upstairs, the restaurant was empty. Still, almost silent.

The only noise was the blasted scratching, except now it was coming from beneath them in the basement. He tried to convince himself that it was just a rat, Maybe one that had gotten itself caught in a trap, and though it hadn't died, was mortally wounded, and while it tried to find a quiet place to pass, dragged the trap around on his neck like some sort of macabre necklace, he checked beneath the sink, nothing but pipes and a few bottles of cleaner. He traced the skirting board with his finger and found a deep crack in one corner. He told me it was strange because the rest of the wall and the skirting were without blemish, crack,

or any sign of accidental damage. Yet there was this crack, wide enough for the outward boy to fit his pinky finger into, deep enough for it to swallow his finger whole. When he pulled it back, he recoiled, up to the knuckle, the boy was covered in ooze. A purple, primal slick that he assured me smelled just awful. When I eventually went down there, I must concur with the boy. The odor was something truly nasty, like an old fish. or some rotten chicken fresh out of the packet. Whatever was in the crack and was now on the boy's finger,

he must have disturbed it because, just as the boy retrieved his digit, more of the ooze started seeping out of the crack, almost as if the skirting was bleeding, a bust artery from within the walls. He rinsed his hand and tossed a rag into the wretched gloop. In seconds, it was soaked, overcome. The smell had worsened, too,

making the boy feel quite unwell. He just about managed to hold on to his supper and tried throwing paper towels at the floor to clear up the oily slick. Of course, the towels were no match for the, well, whatever it was, so the boy grabbed him up, but that was no good either. It, too, was consumed. He lit a match, if only to dissipate some of the foul smell, but he burnt his finger and dropped the match. Upon contact with the flame, the ooze recoiled, yelp like a pit bull that had been crushed by a truck. and retreated. Of course, the boy told his employers, but they thought him quite mad. Thought maybe he'd mixed one too many chemicals and started seeing things that just could not be.

He even started to believe it too. But just as I started this morning, the Atwood boy comes running up to the door, banging and hollering like he'd just seen our Lord Christ in the soap bubbles, except he was scared out of his mind, near to drowning and sweat and covered in horrific bruises. I opened to it. up the door and embraced the boy. He hugged me so tight while he trembled and cried. I never thought he'd let me go. But he did, and eventually he told me everything, everything I've just told you, and more. He told me how he'd been at the dishes for a few hours when he heard a plate smash on the floor, then another, then another. A pile of dishes hadn't been piled right, and as the boy

moved a heavy pan away, the whole lot toppled to the tile floor. He'd broke a little. He'd broke in plates before and Tony didn't pay it any mind, so the Atwood boy wasn't worried about that. But he noticed that he'd cracked the tile beneath the pile of crockery. Tony would be right mad about that, he was sure. Only when he was sweeping up the mess did he notice that the purple ooze was seeping up through the cracks in the tile. The boy tried to stomp it down, force it to retreat once more like it had before. But it was no good. As his shoe hit the ground, the ooze gushed up in eruption of thick slime. As the ooze fell, it began to take shape, almost like that of another person.

This horrid structure stood close to seven foot tall, towering over the boy, consisting of a liquid that had somehow hardened into shape, but was also still wet and sticky. The boy tried to run, but his bones wouldn't allow his exit. The smell was horrific now, but his legs just wouldn't go. The ooze lurched at him, grabbing and attacking the boy. As the boy was thrashed, he remembered that he still had a pack of matches in his pocket. After last time, he vowed to always keep a pack with him just in case. He managed to get his arms free and strike a match.

He threw it at his attacker. My God, how it yelled. I thought I had heard something from the shot, but I thought it was just a lot. those damn kids again after a late night's drinking and loitering. You all know what they're like. In an instant, the ooze and the figure it was built from were gone. He quit, don't you know? Left his notice on the counter and ran out the door. He must have seen the lights on in the store and dashed on over. He told me he was planning on going to New York, was going to try and find his grandfather. After he told me everything, I told him to sort himself a glass of water while I took a look at the place.

The basement was a mess, but I saw no ooze, though like I said, the smell down there was something foul. When I came back to check on the boy, he was gone. You'd never know he'd even been there if it weren't for the purple footprints on the floor and the unstruck match laying in the sink. Every year, on her birthday, Laura gets a letter from a stranger. That stranger claims to know the whereabouts of her missing. friend, Bobby. I love you, Laura.

But there's a catch. He'll only tell her what he knows in exchange for something personal. So it begins Laura's sordid relationship with her new pen pal. Built on a foundation of quid pro quo. Something for something.

Her quest for closure will push her to bizarre acts of humiliation and harm. Yet no matter how hard she tries, she cannot escape her correspondence demands. The letters keep coming. And as time passes, they have a profound effect on Laura. For she knows, deep down, but she can't trust her single word, he says.

The No Sleep Podcast Presents, Dear Laura by Gemma Amor. Chapter 3. Once the dark had turned its gaze on the forest, there was no stopping it. Soon, Laura was surrounded by the full force of the night, and moving on became impossible. Every space grew treacherous, every surface unreliable. It was summer, so the night would be short, and dawn not that far away. But she was afraid she had no time to wait for it. She was supposed to be at her destination by 7.30 the next morning.

The last letter had been very clear about that. 7.30. Or I will come after your boy, and I will take him like I took Bobby. Eventually, as she struggled to make her way along the route she had plotted on her map, wondering whether to press on or rest, the decision was taken out of Laura's hands. It was too black a night for her to reliably keep the course. Every misstep she took in the dark, jolted her swollen, tender ankle, and brought her immense discomfort. When she crashed into a low-hanging tree branch, almost spearing herself on another pointed twig

and narrowly missing puncturing her right eye in the process, she admitted defeat. Even though her heart was intent on moving forward, only forward, she offered herself to the knight, because sometimes all you could do was give in. Sometimes you had to let the knight win. Lose a battle, win the war. And the heavy, towel-wrapped bundle in her backpack,

tugged at her mind. Once Laura resigned herself to sleep, it came quickly. There was little point in fighting the dark. It comes for everyone in the end. Better to accept this and work harder when the light returned. Laura bundled herself into a small, aching ball at the base of a rhododendron bush, wrapped a tinfoil survival sheet around her shoulders for extra warmth, and closed her eyes.

And for the first time in many, many years, Bobby came for her in her dreams. Hey, Dork. Hey, weirdo. Where have you been? I missed you. Ah, I had a ton of homework to do. Plus, mom grounded me for staying out too late the other day.

Who were you out with? Just a friend. You said I was your only friend. Yeah, you are, but I'm allowed to hang out with other people, Dufus. So what's this new friend like? He's cool. He's older. And he smokes weed.

Did he let you smoke any? Yeah, I've smoked it before. It's no big deal. What does it feel like? Man, it's kind of cool. Relaxing. It makes you feel a bit stupid. You laugh a lot.

So you just hang out and smoke weed? Sounds boring. Nah, we do other stuff. What stuff? Yeah, I don't want to talk about it. Why not? He doesn't like when I talk about him to anyone else. But I'm your best friend.

Yeah, but still, he has all these rules and stuff. He's a bit weird sometimes. Rules? What I'm allowed to say to Mom and Dad, where I have to meet him, what time of day, the clothes I have to wear. He tells you what clothes to wear? That is weak. Why do you hang out with such a weirdo? Hey, you want to try and sneak in an army of darkness?

The plaza is showing it at six. Isn't that like an R rating? There's no way we can sneak into that. Anyway, aren't you grounded? Not anymore. Laura? Yeah? Why didn't you try to find me, Laura?

What? It's cold down here in the soil. What soil? Why didn't you try to find me? I miss my mom. I miss my house. I thought we were friends. I don't...

I don't understand. Why are you crying? Why didn't you try to find me, Laura? Laura woke with a racing heart, cold dread filling her from head to toe. The alarm on her watch beeped insistently. Dawn was already ahead of her, spreading its pale fingers through the fronds of ferns, nudging awake the birds and the trees all around. A squirrel leapt from one limb to another above her head, chuckling away to itself as it did so.

A small shower of pine needles knocked loose by his movements, drifted down onto her head. where they remained, for she was too tired to brush them away. Her dream faded to obscurity as quickly a spilled water disappearing through a crack, and although she knew she had been dreaming about Bobby, she couldn't remember anything more than that. Her mind was foggy, and it was hard to get a grip on her surroundings. She knew, however, almost immediately after waking, that there was something wrong with her body.

It was racked with a feverish type of shuddering that she just couldn't seem to control, like a palsy. She added this new discovery to her growing pile of inconveniences. How many more obstacles could there be in her way? She hastily crammed an energy bar into her mouth and tried to quell the shakes. She followed this up with a handful of painkillers from her first aid kit and washed it all down with water that was still refreshingly cold thanks to the cool night air. She had to tip her head back away to get it.

There wasn't much left. but she didn't plan on being out in the forest for much longer, so didn't feel the need to be conservative with it. She checked her watch. 4.45 in the morning. She needed to be where she needed to be by 7.30. She calculated that she had just under three hours to travel another five miles, which should be more than achievable.

She thought that, and then she stood up and put weight on her bloated ankle. Once again, her screams echoed around the forest. Three days after Laura's 14th birthday and her first letter from X, one year and however many days after Bobby Evely disappeared, Mr. and Mrs. Evely held a memorial service for him. Technically, Bobby was still listed as a missing child on the police files. His case marked unsolved, open. Tara Evely had been very outspoken about this definition

because missing child encompassed a range of scenarios in the eyes of the law at the time. a child who had left home voluntarily, a child who was abducted, or a child who had simply gotten lost, all very, very different things. And what the term missing child didn't specify was the likelihood of whether or not that child was still alive. There had been no public acknowledgement

that anyone thought Bobby was dead. Not yet, despite the passage of time, and no explicit mention of foul play. The prevailing opinion amongst those involved in the case was that Bobby had, indeed, run away. This belief was largely fueled by Laura's testimony, something which made her very uncomfortable, and fed Mrs. Everly's unjust,

yet furiously intensifying loathing of her, because Laura knew better, or did she? Had Bobby willingly run away, or been tricked, coerced? Laura wished she understood what it was that she had seen that day when the blue van disappeared, but she didn't. She didn't know what she had seen. Not really.

The Eveleys held a service anyway. Something concrete for them to do as they waited in vain for their golden boy to return. Despite there being no body, no burial, and no specific use of the word death, the service still had all the uncomfortable, itchy trappings of a funeral. It was held on a Sunday in the local church, and there were candles, poems,

large-framed photographs of Bobby wreathed in flowers and football memorabilia. His smile echoed around the congregation, all of whom wore black. Laura stood alone at the back of the church, her own parents absent because of work commitments, and she felt hatred for the first time in her short life,

hatred for Bobby's mother and father and little brother, and rage, pure white-hot rage, rage that burned through every filament of her being because this service was an admission of only one thing, that everyone else was giving up on Bobby. She vowed then, as she looked about the church and saw other pupils from her school holding hands and crying,

boys and girls who had never spoken to Bobby in their lives, who never knew him at all. She vowed, as she took in the smirk of a small kid from four houses along, who was pulling a funny face at his sister, bored. She vowed as she let her eyes settle for a moment. moment on the careful, neutral expression of the priest as he delivered the Lord's prayer. She vowed as she clutched a printed hymn sheet with white-knuckled hands and screamed internally, that she would go along with the letters written by the man she only knew as X.

She would do whatever the mystery man wanted, if it meant that she could find answers to it all. She may have been too young to understand the circumstances surrounding Bobby's disappearance, but she was not too young to understand what closure meant. She was not too young to feel the agony of not knowing. She crept away before the service ended, wanting to avoid all the other attendees. As she left, she made a mistake and glanced backwards into the church, where she met the eyes of Tara Evilly, who was watching her leave. Her gaze was dark and dangerous, and her tears bright, glittering on her cheeks.

Laura felt the burden of that stair all the way home, where she found another dirty envelope, waiting for her on the doormat. She opened it and read the following words. Underwear. Laura blinked. She had been expecting, well, not this. The statement didn't make any sense at first,

so she went back over the word and then kept reading. Underwear, one pair of your panties. Not clean ones, used panties, folded up in a plastic bag. Leave them on your front doorstep tomorrow morning, behind the small tree in the pot on the porch. When this is done, I will give you your first clue. I want to be able to trust you, Laura.

Help me to trust you by doing this. Yours with respect. Confused, Laura put the letter down and walked away from it, feeling sick to her stomach, the skin on the back of her neck prickling, as if someone were breathing on it from behind. No way, no way. Red spots of embarrassment pooled on her cheeks. Humiliated and deeply disturbed, Laura nonetheless found herself with a decision to make. The letter had said no police, but what she was being asked to do was wrong and she knew

The next step should be to inform an adult. The next step should be to throw the letter away, burn it, and forget it ever happened. But then, what about Bobby? The child that she still was wanted desperately to fix everything, to bring him back. And this letter might. It might just be her chance. And really, what did she care about a pair of old panties when it came down to it? If she could just give Mrs. Evely some answers,

Maybe the woman wouldn't hate her as much as she did, or continue to blame her for Bobby's disappearance. It never occurred to Laura that it was unfair of Mrs. Evely to blame a teenage girl for something as profound and terrible as the loss of her son. Crushed by the weight of responsibility and exhausted by the idea that even if she told her parents what was happening, they might not believe her or take it seriously. Laura's resistance crumbled.

She did as she was told. She went upstairs to the bathroom laundry basket and pulled out one pair of her plain cotton panties. She found a plastic bag and folded them up inside, a hot, lurching, urgent feeling in the pit of her tummy. Then she tucked the plastic bag behind the small potted bay tree by her front door, out on the porch, just like she'd been told. Afterwards, Laura hid in her room,

ashamed and terrified of what she had just said in motion, Knees drawn up to her chest, blankets wrapped around her shoulders, and a pillow over her head held there until she almost suffocated herself, a useless, pathetic shield against the boogeyman lurking outside her front door. Eventually, she decided to check for any more letters, in case her mother came home from work and stumbled across something she shouldn't. She extricated herself from her soft bed cocoon and crept downstairs, checking to see if there were any large shadows moving behind the frothed glass, before opening the front door a tiny crack wide and peeking out. The bag with the panties inside was gone. In its place, there was another yellow envelope. Inside that was a scrap of paper,

which looked, on closer examination, like a fragment of a map that had been torn up. Although she didn't recognize any of the scant few place names on the fragment, most of it was green, featureless, denoting forest. upon this map fragment she found the first clue, such as it was. Laura frowned as she tried to decipher what she saw written there. Two long numbers with multiple decimal places, accompanied by two strange symbols, one before each number.

Coordinate 50.9025. Coordinate minus 1.6340.0.0.0.0.000. coordinates minus 1.6.6340. which made absolutely no sense to her whatsoever. The symbols before each long number were oddly shaped, one looking like a stylized knot in a piece of string or a pitchfork, and the other like a wigwam or a witch's hat. She had never seen symbols like that before, and she briefly wondered if they were math symbols,

like those used in algebra or geometry, but then decided that didn't feel right. She didn't know why. But she knew they were important. She knew she had been given something. She just couldn't figure out what. After the numbers and symbols, the stranger had written three simple sentences,

and it was these that confused her most of all. I loved him, you know. This would have been a good point for Laura to have burst into tears. But she didn't. She took the scrap of paper back upstairs and pinned it to her notice board, where she could lie in bed and look at it. The numbers,

After an hour or so of staring at them without comprehension, burned into her brain, committed indelibly to memory. She slept, and digits danced around her as she stood apart from the rest of the congregation in a candlelit church, the sound of Mrs. Evely's weeping rising and falling like the tide all around her. After the first clue, there was nothing. No more letters, no more scraps of paper, no more codes. Laura waited, heart constantly in her throat, so that she felt as if she were always swallowing, always massaging her neck to get her heart back into the right place, sure that any day now there would be another letter, another request, another clue, another tit for tat.

She waited, and disappointment became another rock to carry. A rock painted a different color, but a rock the same size and weight as the rocks she already bore. those smeared with the colors of guilt and grief and shame. She could not stand the thought that she was being fooled in descending underwear to a mysterious pervert taking advantage of Bobby's disappearance. Laura held a thin belief that people were inherently good, not evil, although that belief was eroding quickly.

So she waited, but her patience was met with one thing, a resounding silence. Still, she had the codes and numbers, and that was better than nothing. She eventually figured out that the strange symbols were the symbols for latitude and longitude, respectively, and the numbers on the scrap of map that X had left for her pointed to a geographical location.

That was why each number was so long, with so many decimal places. Each number was a line, and according to an encyclopedia she found in her father's study, all she had to do was draw the latitude line first on the right map, followed by the longitude line. Where the lines crossed was the location of the coordinates, which made her brain hurt a little, but it was a welcome distraction to thinking about Bobby.

Her father, by stint of his employment at a surveying company, happened to own a vast array of local topographical maps. Laura made it her business to look at each and every one of them in his possession, holding the green scrap of paper she had been given up to each map to find a match, feeling like a crazy person as she did so, but what else was she going to do with her? time. She had no interest in schoolwork, and no close friends to hang out with, so she poured over maps instead, pretending she was a detective, and eventually her dedication paid off. She found a match.

The green scrap of paper found its twin imagery on a map of the old forest, a vast and sprawling woodland that lay to the west of her town about 20 miles away. After plotting the lines, heart pounding with excitement, she finally had a location. a spot in the middle of a road that ran through a part of the old forest she'd never been to. From that point on, Laura became convinced that this was where Bobby's body was buried. It consumed her every waking thought, that one single location. It dragged her out of her grief and threw her into action. She got a job delivering papers, worked hard every day, saved her money, bought a compass,

bought a brand new topographical map of her own, took a bus, then walked to the exact spot in the old forest that the coordinates pinpointed, and found herself standing by a quiet roadside next to an empty parking lot, which was little more than a ragged square of mud and decaying asphalt, on a place called stony plain. To either side of her, there was scrubland, ringed by the huge, far-reaching mass of woodland that stretched into the horizon and beyond. Behind her, there was more road, leading back the way she'd walked.

In front of her a freeway bisected the horizon, bracketed by cattle guards meant to stop livestock from wandering into oncoming traffic. Aside from a dog walker loitering in the distance, she was alone, and she cut a forlorn, thin figure as she dithered on the roadside. It had taken all her energy to get to this point, and now she was here, she didn't really know what to do. She scanned the ground to either side of the road, couldn't see anything that looked obvious, like a grave or a trench,

and then sat down wearily on the scrubby verge. What am I doing here? She let her head drop into her hands, and then the last words in the last letter, the words that kept her up at night, raced through her mind. I loved him, you know. Moments later, she gave in to the realization that Bobby wasn't there, after all, that she was on a wild goose chase.

Embarrassment and shame landed heavily on her. The dog walker shuffled past as she sat there, a picture of misery. He was accompanied by a large black and white collie dog on a lead. He stopped, eyeing her curiously. You all right, miss? He stooped so that she could better hear him. The man was large and tall, very tall, and very broad. But Laura didn't register this.

Didn't even look up. If she had, something in her memory might have been triggered. Instead, she hid her eyes behind her hands and refused to answer, furious at the intrusion. The man waited, wrestling with himself internally, then spat into the verge. Suit yourself. With that, he shuffled off, the dog trotting at his heels obediently. If Laura had been watching, she might have noticed the man's reluctance. to leave. If Laura had been paying attention, she might have seen that he held an envelope in his

free hand, a dirty, yellow envelope very similar to the type she received on her birthday, and she might have seen that he wore a strange, excited smirk on his face, too. But Laura wasn't paying attention to anything except her own predicament. And eventually, she realized she couldn't stay out here for the rest of the day. So she retraced her steps, got back on the bus, and arrived home to an empty house with all the lights off. Drifting upstairs, pale and weary, she collapsed on her bed and didn't move from there for three days.

Eventually, Mrs. Scott realized that all was not well with her daughter, realized that she was, in fact, not eating, not drinking, and not going to school. She sat on Laura's bed on the morning of the fourth day, registered the pallid, drawn face, the thin, ghostly limbs,

and the hollow sun sunken eyes. She realized with a burgeoning sense of sorrow that this was confirmation of something she had long been trying to ignore, that her daughter, despite all outward appearances of resilience and strength, was really not okay. She put in a request to reduce her hours at work and then took Laura to see a doctor. The doctor loosely diagnosed her with nervous exhaustion and wrote a prescription for some pills with a long name that Laura couldn't remember. Laura took the pills for a week and then started flushing them down the toilet. If anything, they made her feel even more numb than she already did, coding her thoughts in an unpleasant layer of fuzz.

The silence from X continued. After a time, Laura learned not to wait for the sound of the doorbell, or the quiet rustle of something being pushed under the door. It became painfully apparent to her that she had been the butt of a particularly cruel joke. She continued to grow, in both height and pain, and the memory of Bobby's face softened further, until he became like a smudged finger painting in her mind. And she blamed herself for forgetting him like this,

because she considered it her duty to remember him when everyone else was, apparently, moving on. And then, her 15th birthday dawned. And finally, after a year of radio silence, nestled in amongst the birthday cards on the doormat. She found the letter she'd been waiting for. Dear Laura, did you miss me? Laura's teeth began to hurt.

Dear Laura was written and adapted for audio by Gemma Amour. Produced for the No Sleep Podcast by Phil Mikulski. Musical score composed by Brandon Boone. Starring Kristen D. MacGurio as the narrator, Mary Murphy as Laura. Matthew Bradford as Bobby and David Cummings as X. Join us next week for Chapter 4 of Dear Laura. We place the letters back in their envelopes.

It's time to take our leave for now. The musical score was composed by Brandon Boone. Our production team is Phil Mikulski, Jeff Clement, and Jess Corknett. Our creative content manager is Olivia White. Our editor-in-chief is Jessica McAvoy. 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

$25. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening and for being ever curious. This audio production is copyright 2021 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, Inc.