The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S16E22

Episode Date: September 5, 2021

It's Episode 22 of Season 16. Our correspondence is terrifyingly therapeutic. "The Basement Sessions" written by Derek Walker (Story starts around 00:06:00) TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Dan Zapulla, Adam - Kyle Akers, Jimmy - Elie Hirschman, Trey - Atticus Jackson, Scared Boy - Matt Bradford, Bradford - Jeff Clement"Skin Deep" written by E.E. King (Story starts around 00:46:45)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Peter Lewis, Janice - Sarah Ruth Thomas, Boyfriend - Mick Wingert"Dear Laura - Chapter 5" written and adapted for audio by Gemma Amor (Story starts around 00:56:00)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Kristen DiMercurio, Laura - Mary Murphy, Frank - Mick Wingert, Laura's Boyfriend - Dan Zappulla, Mrs. Eveleigh - Erin Lillis, X - David Cummings"Get Them Out of Your Head" written by Sarah Naughton (Story starts around 00:50:45) TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Jeff ClementCast: Narrator - Penny Scott-Andrews, Ben - David Ault, Dr. Scotus - Graham Rowat, Eliza - Erika Sanderson, Thea's stepfather, Phil - Andy Cresswell, Nurse - James Cleveland"Adelaide and the Paper Man" written by K.G. Lewis (Story starts around 01:16:25)Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Dr. Morrigan - Kristen DiMercurio, Adelaide - Nichole Goodnight, Adelaide's Mom - Wafiyyah White"A Man Walks into a Bar" written by Anneliese Amelia Boyd (Story starts around 01:27:40) TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Jesse CornettCast: Narrator - Atticus Jackson, Jed - Jeff Clement, Shaw - Erin Lillis, Marcus - Mike DelGaudio  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/nosleepUpstart - Upstart believes people are more than their credit score. We take a holistic view of an applicant, rather than write them off because of their credit score. We want to empower people to take control of their debt and financial future. Get started by going to Upstart.com/nosleep Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast teamClick here to learn more about Derek WalkerClick here to learn more about E.E. KingClick here to learn more about K.G. Lewis  Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone"Get Them Out of Your Head" illustration courtesy of MiggeaAudio 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

Hey there, David. Hi, Erica. Does this review sound okay to you? He is a master at his craft, no matter how tense I feel he brings me relief and makes me feel better. And he has a lovely voice, too. Did you write that about me? Oh, that is so sweet.

No, I wrote that for... That means a lot to me. I've been struggling a bit lately, feeling a bit lost, hard to motivate myself. But knowing how much you enjoy what I do is a really big boost. Thank you. Um, you're welcome. But to be honest, I wrote that review about... It's helpful to share our struggles with others. That's why we love recommending Better Help.

It's professional counseling done securely online. Better Help is great. They will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapists so you can start communicating in number 48 hours. And BetterHelp is available for clients worldwide. You can log in anytime and send a message to your counselor. You'll get timely and thoughtful responses. Plus, you'll be able to... can schedule weekly video or phone sessions. And they get great reviews too. Here's one from BetterHelp User K.A. after counseling with Alison Kundiv for two weeks on issues concerning depression, stress, and anxiety. She is nice and understanding to talk with. She made me feel heard and safe to open up.

I'm very grateful for her and everything she's done for me so far. I look forward to the future. And here's a review from Better Help user, TE, after counseling with Sharon Coltis for one year on issues concerning self-esteem and career difficulties. Sharon is kind, compassionate, patient and thoughtful. I'm immensely grateful for her attention and insight, and I highly recommend her. I guess I'm not the only one who gets such glowing reviews. So listen, BetterHelp wants you to start living a happier life today. So much so that they're hiring more and more counselors to help people like you talk through

the issues which are holding you back from a better life. Visit betterhelp.com slash no sleep. That's betterhelp.com slash no sleep. And join the over one million people who have taken charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. And we have a special offer to make it even more affordable. That's right. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp

and No Sleep listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash no sleep. Thanks for helping me with my review. No, thank you for being so kind about me. They actually wrote it about my massage therapist, but, you know, whatever. Sorry, what's that? I said, you're welcome, boss. Happy to help.

And we're happy to begin this week's descent into sleepless horror. The dark hours. In the antique. In the letters long lost and forgotten. There are tales of horror to frighten and disheartened. 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 Podcast.

Welcome, Sleepless listeners. I'm your host, David Cummings. Last week, you'll recall I mentioned how we were having problems with the audio on the show. I still don't know how it's connected to the storage unit, Joanna's Whispering Pages bookstore, or anything else for that matter, but things have gotten even stranger. Last Wednesday, September 1st, members of the No Sleep team started reporting a strange occurrence with their audio. This happened across various time zones around the globe, and the bizarre audio stuff only happened when they played audio files they've created for

the podcast. I managed to record some of the audio. from some of the team who were able to record it as it happened due to the fact that the strange audio seemed to loop for about 15 minutes. Separately, the audio files sound like gibberish. That is, until I layered the audio files together. When I did, it sounded like, well, like this. Bizarre. Even worse?

Ever since that very same day, I haven't heard anything from Joanna. She's gone completely silent. That can't be a good sign. I'm getting really worried for her, especially now that the scream has seemingly happened. I'm at a loss to explain all of this. My head feels like I'm having a bad trip that's bending how I perceive reality.

And I don't do drugs, much, certainly not experimental, psychedelic, hallucinogenic drugs that would evoke such mind-waping realities. And definitely not after a drug. experiencing something which was conveyed to me by a person named Derek Walker. I didn't ask where he got this story, but thanks to Dan Zapula, Kyle Akers, Ellie Hirschman, Atticus Jackson, Matthew Bradford, and Jeff Clement, we can all find out what happened. I don't know. No matter how strange things get with me, they're not as bad as what happened during the basement sessions. I met 12-year-old

Bradford only an hour ago. Now, his head is smashed in, and he's lying in a pool of blood in the middle of my basement floor. The police will be here any minute to arrest me, no doubt. They'll gather testimony from the other three boys that were here tonight, then from the nearly 100 other boys that have visited my basement over the past 17 years. All right, writing that down makes me sound like a pervert, but I'm not a pervert. Let's get that out there. This is my final confession. It all started in the year 2002. I had just graduated with the Masters in Psychology and was working at Top Hat Video to pay the bills while pursuing research on psychedelic therapy on the side. While exiting the local Cinemark after seeing M. Knight-Shammelan's signs on opening night,

I noticed a group of four boys gathered around the ticket booth, one of whom I recognized as a neighborhood kid, Jimmy McConkey. They had just learned that the 1115 p.m. showing was sold out and were trying to figure out whose mom could pick them up. Jimmy saw me and called out. Hey, Marcus, how's it going? Jimmy, what's going on? Signs is sold out.

Damn, sorry, man. I just saw it. His face lit up and his friends gathered around. Well, how was it? It was horrifying. So good. Oh, man. Well, we'll have to try tomorrow. His friends nodded in affirmation. Then I started thinking. My latest research had been on the use of psychedelics to treat early childhood trauma.

In theory, the drugs would help access a higher plane of existence, which, with the guidance of a licensed profession, which, with the guidance of a licensed professional, could be used to gain a deeper understanding of the trauma. Of course, much of what I was studying back then is almost common knowledge in progressive psychiatric circles today. LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin as found in mushrooms are used regularly in underground guided therapy sessions nowadays. But back then, no way. In the 1960s or 70s, sure.

Early 2000s? No. On a whim, I invited the boys over to my house. I told them I'd give them a preview of signs without spoiling too much. Since the kids still didn't have a ride home, they accepted my invitation. They packed into my Subaru outback and I took them to my home. For all the talk about stranger danger, these 12-year-olds were much too confident coming with me. Though again, I had no ill intent. I never did at any point.

It sounds so creepy writing it down like this, but a handful of willing kids was exactly what I needed to test my methods. If the combination of psychedelics and hypnosis could work for trauma, why not for fun? I served the four of them Pepsi while I got the basement ready. I set up four chairs in the middle of my unfinished basement, turned on the surround sound speakers, and got a bell from the storage room.

I ground up tablets of MDMA and fed them into the dry powder inhaler. I brought the boys down and invited them to take a seat. I handed them blindfolds. I'm going to set the scene for you. Imagine you're on a farmhouse in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. Once their blindfolds were fastened, I started the binaural beats on the speakers. You are surrounded by hundreds of acres of cornfield. field. After ringing the bell, I took the powder inhaler to each one and instructed them to

inhale on my count. I sprayed the ground MDMA. One, two, three, breathe in. This will help you envision the scene a bit better. They were giddy with excitement as I walked them through the story. I could tell when the drugs kicked in because their reactions became more animated. Once I realized my power, I'll admit I embellished the details a little bit, but the boys were having the time of their lives. Although I wanted to go deeper, I stuck with the story, making sure to get their permission before veering into spoiler territory. I ended on a strong note, then let the high wear off before driving them home.

The boys decided, on their own volition, that they'd tell their parents they saw the movie as planned and that it was fantastic. They knew it was sketchy going over to a single neighborhood man's house under the radar, so they promised each other to keep quiet. As the months went on, that same group of four boys returned a few more times, asking me to take them on some sort of adventure. Sometimes they had specific requests. I want a fly, let's do a haunted house,

how about a creepy version of Disneyland, etc. Other times, they let me call the shots. The process was simple. enough. I played around with drug types and dosages, along with my hypnosis techniques and music. Eventually, I had formulas for every type of occasion. As that group of four boys got older, they brought their younger brothers and other neighborhood kids as a kind of sacred rite of passage. In 2007, Jimmy graduated high school. He went on to other things, and I stayed in the same place, continuing my research. Eventually, I got a job teaching Psychology 101 at the community

college. By that time, I had myself a group of about eight regulars aged 12 to 15 that would come over about once a month and allow me to take them on whatever adventure they or I wanted. Again, not a pervert. After applying blindfolds, dimming the lights, putting on music, and giving each of them a couple inhales of my special powder, I told them to imagine various scenarios. I'd give only a basic level of detail and allow their drug-infused brains to fill in the gaps. I'll admit, I pushed the boundaries sometimes

to see what kind of reaction I'd get. It was around the year 2015, when I made my first real breakthrough. I had a group of six boys, I think. After the regular setup, I decided to do. to do something a little different. To the best of my recollection, here's how the session went. I want you to imagine

you've arrived at an abandoned mansion in the middle of the desert. It's the biggest house you've ever seen. Very dark, very creepy. You open the rusty gate that guards the property and walk through, kicking your feet through piles of moldy leaves.

You slip past what remains of the front door and walk in on a grand entrance. Double staircases, a giant crystal chandelier, granite floors. It smells of mildew and dust like it hasn't been touched in years. Cobwebs cake seemingly every corner. As you step in and take in the utter beauty of this masterpiece of a mansion, you hear something. The faint lull of a cello.

Intrigued, you follow the sound, taking you down long, winding corridors to a two-story library. The shelves are stocked with books, but they are dusty and rotted, much like everything else in the house. The faded sun makes its way through the large stained glass windows, giving off glares of all colors. In the center of the room is a beautiful woman. She is the composite of every beautiful woman you have ever seen.

Each of the boys shifted, smiles creeping on their faces. I couldn't help but smile too. That beautiful woman is the one who's playing the cello. She plays with such fervent passion. The way it reverberates through the library sends a chill down your spine. As you stand there watching her play carefully with seemingly her whole body, you notice that the second floor mezzanine is beginning to fill up with people.

People you know. Friends, family, acquaintances, they wear somber looks as they take their place standing above you. None of them seem to notice you standing there. Suddenly, you realize why they're there. Off to the side, behind the cellist, is an open casket. Your heart sinks as you begin to underwent.

understand the situation you have walked into. You cautiously approach the mahogany casket as the cello croons in the background. You lean forward to get a closer look at the body. There, with taut white flesh, closed eyes, and caked in makeup is your dead body. One of the boys yelt and fell out of his chair. The others snapped out of hypnosis, ripping the blindfolds off. A couple of them had tears streaming down their faces. I turned off the music and nervously watched them compose themselves in silence.

There were so many emotions in the room I couldn't get a good read on the boys. Eventually, once things relaxed a bit, one of the boys approached me. I'm going to go home. Okay. Do you need a ride? Are you okay? The poor boy was holding back tears. I'll be fine. I just, I've been an asshole to my little brother lately. I'm worried that I'll die or he'll die before I have a chance to make things right.

I don't want things to end like this. I want him to know that... He looked around to the other guys and saw that their emotions seem to match his own. I want him to know that I love him. He walked upstairs, out the front door, never to be seen again. A few of the other boys expressed something similar, that there were a few people in their lives that they had been jerks to, that they had lied to, that they hadn't been nice to. They wanted to make things right. For the first time since I had begun this endeavor, I felt good about myself.

It was the first time I had dared do anything meaningful with the therapy, and it seemed to be effective. These boys' lives were changed for good because of this simple session. Fast forward a few years, and I have had almost a hundred different boys come to do guided psychedelic therapy sessions with me. They all understood the gravity of keeping it on the down low, a point that tended to be baked into the initial invitation. Tonight, however, I took things too far. Rather than using the therapy as a method to help the boys explore themselves, I attempted to use it as a method to learn the secrets of the universe. Just a few hours ago, a group of four boys, two of which I had hosted before, stopped by, asking if I could conduct a session.

I had nothing else going on aside from a little reading and late-night solo drinking, so I let them in. They had just come from basketball practice. They followed me into the basement and took their seats. The two boys that had been there before, Adam and Bryson, explained the process to the two new boys. Radford and Trey. The two new boys seemed nervous, as most first-timers are, but they trusted their friends enough to proceed. I started the music, dimmed the lights, and instructed them to place the blindfolds on. I took another sip of whiskey, then walked the inhaler around, giving each boy three puffs of my special sauce. Aside from generalities, I don't usually plan these adventures

too far in advance. I suppose it was the late-night reading of Lovecraft infused with alcohol and a relentless thunderstorm that led me on tonight's particular excursion. I started the session slowly, allowing about 30 minutes for the drugs to take full effect, all while occasionally ringing the bell. You find yourself in the middle of the woods one evening, the pink sky filtering through thick rows of pine trees. You walk carefully, mindfully through the woods,

the soft padding of fallen pine needles cushioning your every step. The boys slouched in their chairs as they fell deeper into hypnosis. As you walk along, smelling the sweet smell of the pines, hearing the chirping crickets, you find a fallen wooden sign, half buried in the ground. You dig it out and brush it off. On it, read something quite. peculiar. This way, to the end of the world, it reads. You find a tree with an old rusty nail

about six feet up and determine that this must be what the sign was attached to. You continue trekking through the woods all while keeping an eye out for whatever the end of the world might be. The further you go into the forest, the darker it gets. Pretty soon, you start to feel something. You start to internalize the gravity of the situation. Although you thought the sign was silly at first, you now believe it. You become confident that you are about to discover something groundbreaking. The chirping crickets suddenly stop. Ahead of you is a metal stairway that leads down into a wide hole, about 50 feet in diameter.

You edge closer to the hole and realize, that the fading daylight doesn't offer you enough to see the extent of its depth. You consider turning back, but the unwavering sense of curiosity gets the best of you, and you decide to descend the stairs. You go slowly at first,

testing the load-bearing of each step carefully. After about 20 stairs, you feel safe and start descending quicker. Another hundred feet down, you happen upon a heavy metal door with rusted bolts and hinges. You push the door hard and it squeaks open, revealing a man playing basketball, alone in an empty arena. Each time the ball bounces, it echoes through the building and into the stairwell you occupy. Some of the boys sit upright, smirking.

After making a long three, the man grips the basketball and turns out. He turns slowly to face you. He walks to you very carefully. As he gets closer, you realize the man is huge. The boys grip their seats. Once he's about 50 feet away, you recognize him. It's LeBron James. The boys laugh in excitement.

One of them stands up and pumps his fist. I can't help but chuckle to myself at my spontaneity. LeBron James is probably the only current NBA player I can name. When he gets to the doorway, standing right in front of you, a serious look passes on his face, and he begins to speak. I clear my throat and drop my voice. I know that you think you're just having a fun time, going on a psychedelic adventure. But you have to understand something, he says,

this journey is important, very important. What you are doing has the potential to unlock all the mysteries of the earth. You just have to keep going. Promise me, you'll keep going. One of the boys swallows hard. All of them nod in agreement. Then the ball he's holding turns to fire. He dribbles it a few times and spins it on his finger, apparently unfazed.

He hands you the ball and you hold it with both hands. The flames dance around the ball without burning you. This will help light your path. He says, then slams the door. LeBron James is gone. You continue down the stairwell, your path lit by the flaming basketball. After another hour of descending the stairs, you reach a second door. This one is equally heavy and rusty as the first.

As you push it open, you hear the sound of wind. waves crashing. You lean your shoulder into the door, as you did with the first one, and shove it open. Sand spills onto your feet. You look upon a beautiful, endless beach of white sand, bordered by blue crashing waves on one side and lush jungle vegetation on the other. A cool saltwater mist touches your skin. When you hear the ding of the bell, the sun will disappear.

Here. One, two, three. I dinged the bell and waited for a moment. A couple of the boys leaned forward. You can still hear the waves crashing and feel the ocean mist, but the world is pitch black. No stars, no moon. You can only see the few feet of sand in front of you as illuminated by the flaming basketball. As you focus on the sound, you hear someone walking toward you. When I count to three and ding the bell, the sun will reappear, and your mother will be standing there. One, two, three.

I dinged the bell again. The boys smiled nervously. This woman brought you into the world. She fed you, clothed you, changed your daughter. diapers. Your mother sacrificed so much for you. You feel this. In this moment, you internalize an undying gratitude for your mother. You would do absolutely anything for her. You'd take a bullet for her or jump in front of a bus. Absolutely anything. I wait for a moment, allowing my words to marinate. Your mom stands in the sand about 50 feet back, looking at you with a smile.

She invites you in, but you can't move. You're stuck in the stairwell. As soon as you realize this, you see someone else approach. A man dressed head to toe in black emerges from the jungle with a machete. His identity is concealed by a black leather mask. Your mom continues to smile, unaware of the man in black approaching. You try to call out, but you can't speak. You wave your hands furiously until she pays attention. A look of fear passes over her. As she turns around to confront her attacker,

the man hits her over the head, knocking her unconscious. You notice for the first time that there is a large cage in the sand behind the attacker. The man drags your unconscious mother into the case, cage, slams the door and locks it. You look at her limp body sprawled out on the metal floor of the cage and are filled with rage. You try to move again, but you can't. You try to scream, but you can't. The man in black notices you and approaches. When he's standing right in front of you, he dangles the key to the cage and laughs a deep, ugly chuckle. He then throws the key out of the door,

Over your head, you hear it clanked down the staircase, disappearing far, far below you into the void, revealing a horrific, warped face with gaping bloody holes where his eyes should be. He speaks again. One more door. The door slams shut, booming into the stairwell. One of the boys shakes his head furiously. The others look angry. It's working, I thought.

As you continue descending the stairs, lit by the flaming basketball, you feel brave and confident, like you can confront whatever lies in the third and final door. You can get the keys to the cage. You can save your mother, and you can find the secrets to the end of the world. You just have to keep going. You have to be... The thunder cracked loud enough to make me jump and snap the boys out of hypnosis. They ripped their blindfolds off and stumbled to their feet, breathing heavily. Oh, my God.

That was intense. You don't want to keep going? Man, that was enough for one night. Great trip, though. I loved meeting LeBron James. That felt so real. Didn't that feel real? The boys nodded in agreement.

Damn lightning woke you guys up. Trey picked up his hat. Well, thanks for having us over, Mr. Marcus. As they started up the stairs, I noticed that not all of them had snapped out of the hypnosis. Bradford sat still, blindfold on, still gripping his chair. Should I wake him? This was Bradford's first session, and I didn't want him to freak out when he awoke. You guys go ahead.

I'll wait for Bradford to wake up. Bryson and Trey disappeared a couple minutes later after making pleading. plans with Adam to meet up later at Bradford's house. Adam then took a seat in the corner, excited to watch the session with Bradford proceed. You continue descending the stairs, a blast of cool air blowing past you. Bradford visibly shivered. What's your strategy? I turned the music up, allowing Bradford a few minutes to descend the stairs.

I walked over to Adam. The key is to get each of the patients in touch with. as many emotions and feelings as possible. Happy, sad, afraid, amused, etc. Then I try to create sensory experiences, exposing them to heat, cold, smells, tastes, and so on. The more the hypnosis can infiltrate their brain, the more effective it is.

What's your end goal with this session? Well, we have five senses, right? Yeah, sight, smell, touch, taste, and... What's the last one? Hearing. He nodded. But a lot of our brain is unused, right? Yeah. So what if we can experience other senses but don't know how to activate them? Like in the same sense that birds or whales know how and when to migrate,

or how any number of animals and insects can locate food or water in almost any scenario. They have these intuitions that we don't quite understand. And do you think these sessions can act? I don't know if it's possible to activate them in the real world necessarily, but I do believe that we can activate them within the hypnosis. What kind of senses? I took another sip of my whiskey. It's still a theory, but I think we can tune our inner antenna, so to speak,

to understand the secrets of the universe. Like what? Like if we're alone in the universe, like how all of the universe, Like how all this came to be? Like what happens to the souls who have passed? Adam sat in contemplation for a moment, then smiled. Damn. Well, let's hope Bradford can bring us home.

I tipped my glass to him, sipped my whiskey, then took my place at the front of the room. Bradford hadn't moved an inch. As you descend the stairs, you begin to hear voices calling from above. You hear your dad, your siblings, your friends. friends, they all voice their support. You can do it. Keep going. You're almost there. Be brave. Bradford sat up tall in his chair. Getting closer, I thought.

The flaming basketball finally finds an end to the staircase. You step onto a cobblestone landing and look around you. You have descended into a large silo of some kind, maybe a cave or a well. with nothing but a door of similar size and configuration as the first two against the wall. On the ground, a flicker of light reveals the location of the cage keys wedged between two stones. However, before you pick the keys up, you realize that you must first open the door. Just then, someone descends the stairs behind you, but you don't feel scared. The person steps into the light of the flaming basketball,

and you realize that it's you. You are standing face to face with yourself. He smiles at you, and you smile back. Bradford smiled, and I looked to Adam. He gave me a thumbs up. The other you puts his hand on your shoulder and looks into your eyes. He's almost like a more self-assured version of yourself. He's fearless. He's brave. He's a hero. You must understand, he says. You have been endowed for this mission. You were chosen long ago for this mission. Behind this door lies a cloud of knowledge. When you open the door and step inside, you will be immersed in this cloud. You will be met with a deep understanding of the mysteries of the universe. You will be met with a deep understanding of the mysteries of the universe. You will be met with a deep understanding of the universe. You will.

will see the origins of creation. You will understand the immensity of all that exists. You will know these things and understand them in a way that will allow you to communicate your findings to others in the real world. I took a deep breath and looked over to Adam again for approval. He nodded and mouthed, do it, with a look of utter anticipation. dissipation on his face. The other you stands aside and disappears, leaving nothing between you and the door. You understand what you must do.

You take three steps forward, place one hand on the cold metallic door and apply pressure. As you do so, you feel something trickling down your upper lip. You stop pushing and wipe your nose. You are bleeding. Adam and I watched Bradford carefully for about 15 seconds, before he gently wiped his nose. He motioned his head to look down at his hand and opened his mouth in surprise. There was blood, actual blood, on his hands.

Frankly, I was more shocked than he was. Bradford was my first completely immersed patient. He was in my complete control. This was not an empowering thought, mind you. It was a horrifying one. I briefly considered pulling the plug on the whole thing right then, guiding him away from the door and back up the staircase to the real world. But I didn't.

God damn lovecraft. I swallowed hard and held my bell steady. Now I'm going to count to three and ring the bell. When you hear the bell, you will push open the door and become immersed in the cloud. After a few moments in the cloud, I will ring the bell and you will exit the cloud and close the door behind you. I repeated the instructions, then took a deep breath. I mouthed to Adam. Here we go.

He nodded. One, two, three. Then I dinged the bell. Bradford jolted, flailing his arms and grunting. His chair rocked violently. I instructed Adam to steady it so he didn't tumble off. How responsible of me. The jolting stopped after a minute, and Bradford sat still.

Both his nostrils were bleeding now. Now when I ring the bell again, you will exit the room and close the door behind you. One, two. Bradford stood up abruptly, sending the chair and Adam sprawling onto the floor behind him. He ripped his blindfold off and looked around, frantically like a trapped animal. Bradford, it's all okay. But I knew it wasn't.

He didn't wake up on his own volition, nor was there an external stimulus to wake him up. My bell or a loud noise like the thunder before. Something inside of the hypnosis woke him up. Adam stumbled to his feet, reaching for him. Bradford, it's all right, buddy. It's me. Adam, right here. No, don't touch him.

him, come here. Adam obeyed and stood next to me against the wall. Bradford looked around anxiously for another minute, his feet unmoving, then fixed his eyes on the concrete block wall on the opposite side of the room. Stay here. I walked to the other side of the room between Bradford and the wall. The bell clutched in my hand. Frankly, I didn't know what to do. I had to assume he was still under some kind of hypnosis, though I didn't know whose. Bradford, when I count to three and ring the bell, you will come out of hypnosis. Again, when I count to three and ring the bell, you will come out of hypnosis. He bolted straight at me, knocking me to the side and plowing straight into the wall.

Head first. I stumbled back to my feet. Adam ran over. Between the two of us, we held Bradford down. He had a large gash on his head and a steady stream of blood pouring down his face, but he didn't seem to be in pain. Bradford, listen to me. He turned his head toward me, revealing jittering pupils as if there was an earthquake behind those eyes. Adam was crying.

His phone buzzed across the room, diverting our attention for a moment. Do we call the cops? Yes, call 911. I incoherently tried to piece together a story in my head. Once Adam got to his phone on the other side of the room, Bradford began seizing, knocking me on my ass. I backed up, recognizing my feeble body to be no match for his apparent raw animal strength. Please, Bradford, breathe with me!

He again eyed the block wall and ran at it with full force, his skull crunching on impact. Blood spattered on the wall and the floor. He fell onto the ground with a hollow thud. Adam screamed. Oh my God! I tried to lay Bradford's lifeless body straight when his eyes shot open. A look of pure terror on his face.

He rolled away from me. He got onto his hands and knees, breathing heavy. As I carefully eased toward him, he let out a loud grunt and began hitting his head the concrete floor with inhuman intensity. The sound of his head repeatedly crunching against the floor like that will haunt me forever. Blood continued to pool beneath him. I backed away from him, helpless. Adam screamed in horror. After five or six hard hits, Radford finally collapsed onto the ground, splashing in his own blood. Tears were streaming down my face.

Adam was sobbing uncontrollably. A few moments passed in bone-chilling silence. Did you call anyone? Adam stared unblinking at Bradford's mangled head resting on the ground. Adam, he snapped out of it. Uh, no. I... He started swiping through his phone.

Okay. The story. Our story. Then Adam's eyes grew wide. What? Adam stared at his phone, with his hand covering his mouth. The others. Trey and Bryson.

He looked up at me. When they got to Bradford's house, they found Bradford's mom on the kitchen floor. She's dead. Shit. It's the hypnosis. It has to be. No, no, no, no. That's impossible.

The hypnosis can't control someone who isn't under hypnosis. You can't be related. No way. You said that the goal is to tap in other senses, right? To activate other parts of the brain? Well, yeah, that's a theory. But either way, how would that kill Bradford's mom? He slipped his phone into his pocket.

I don't know. The only thing I can think of is that clearly Bradford was all in. I mean, you hypnotized him into a bloody nose, didn't you? Maybe when you put our moms in a cage on the beach, I don't know. Which? Oh, shit. I need to check on my mom.

Then he darted up the basement stairs. Now I sit here in my cold mildewy basement with this dead boy's body, penning my final haunting confession. For the record, I want to apologize to Bradford's family. I take full responsibility for his death. and in the case that I am the cause of Bradford's mother's death, I apologize for that too. I don't really want to think through the scientific implications if that is the case, to be honest. All I know is that whether I spend my days as a free man or behind bars,

I don't know that I'll ever be able to sleep again, wondering what Bradford saw when he opened that door and stepped into the cloud. Something he saw drove him to this madness. That much is clear. I hear the police sirens outside now. One last note to the psychiatric community

or those who may be looking to build upon my research. Some things are better left unknown. Dr. Marcus Klein. Wow. Just say no, kids. Don't be messing with those drugs.

Not for love. or money. Money? Did you say money? How much you need? 50? A couple hondos. A cool grand. What? You're offering to give me money? Well, I didn't say give. More like loan you some. At a good interest rate. What's a good rate? For you? Let's say 50%. Compounded daily. Ha ha ha. You, my friend, are nuts. Why would someone borrow from you when they can use upstart? Up a what now? Upstart. Look, so many Americans experienced financial hardship in the last year.

Upstart can help them regain their footing and get things back on track. If you're carrying a credit balance month after month, it can feel like you're in a never-ending cycle of debt. Upstart can help you make that final payment so you can get ahead. I don't know. You sure they're a better option than me? Definitely. Upstart is the fast and easy way to pay off your debt with a personal loan. online. Whether it's paying off credit cards, consolidating high-interest debt, or funding personal

expenses, over half a million people have used Upstart to get one fixed monthly payment. Upstart knows you're more than just your credit score and is expanding access to affordable credit. Wow, that's a lot of people. Just a few more clients than you, right? And unlike other lenders, Upstart considers your income and current employment to find you a smarter rate for your loan. With a five-minute online rate check, you can see your rate up front for loans between $1,000 to $50,000. You can receive your funds as fast as one business day after accepting your loan. Well, I'm easy to reach, but what about Upstart? Even easier. Find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments today when you go to upstart.com slash no sleep. That's it? Just Upstart.com slash no sleep?

Exactly. Don't forget to use our use our use. URL to let them know we sent you. I'm sure everyone knows that loan amounts will be determined based on your credit, income, and certain other information provided in your loan application. Of course. So go to upstart.com slash no sleep today and avoid the pitfalls of dealing with certain unscrupulous people. Hey, relax.

Too much stress will give you wrinkles. That's something to keep in mind as we return to the horror and our next skin-crawling story. There's something that every single one of us is doing right now, getting older. And that means we have to deal with our bodies slowly, inexorably breaking down. And as we learn in this tale, shared with us by author E. King, some people, like the woman we'll meet herein, are desperate to keep that youthful glow in their appearance no matter what. Performing this tale are Peter Lewis, Sarah. Sarah Thomas and Mick Wingert.

So remember that aging can be a good thing. It's not all about beauty, because as we know, that's only skin deep. Janice was getting old. She could see it, but she didn't feel it. Inside, she was still 22, but looking out of the mirror was an older woman. She worked out. She dieted. She fasted, cleansing her body of the toxins of daily life.

She toned and tanned. She tinted her skin with creams and sprays till it glittered like polished bronze. Her hair glistened with golden highlights and amber lowlights. Her lashes were lengthened by serums and glue-on extensions. She waxed everywhere. Her face was as hairless as a bowling ball. Her genitals, equally naked, like an exotic breed of cat.

She thought her face. too round, so she'd had the fat suction out and inserted apple-sliceed silicone wedges into pockets above her cheekbones. She'd had fat injections, though not the same fat, inserted below the implants, as a gaunt face was a sign of aging. Her silicone breasts protruded round like perfect half-domes of cut cantalopes, firm and unmovable. Her lips were full, sensuous. and also silicone. She'd had tummy tucks, nose job, lid lifts, liposuction, Restelaine, Botox, Juvederm, Thermage, and mesotherapy,

but still tiny wrinkles crept in, silent and sure as cats scratching down her upper lip. She began to get peels, stripping away the first layer of epidermis to reveal the new skin beneath. At first she frequented salar. Spending hours and dollars freely as breath. Her face became a series of burns and regrowth, acids and serums.

And then she discovered the website. www.regression.com. Professional peals online. 5% 15, 20, even 60% off. They pledged youth. They guaranteed a visage, smooth and untouched is glad. She began to experiment, at first slowly and gently, but then more intensely. Her face barely had time to grow new skin before she would once again smother it in acids, hoping to reveal a younger self.

One morning, after recovering from a series of particularly virulent peals, she examined her face minutely in a magnifying mirror. It was not perfect, not yet, but no doubt about it, she looked at least, Five years younger. Janice was startled from her reverie by a knock on the door. A stranger stood in the doorway. He was handsome, deep brown eyes, graying temples, and an air of familiarity that was unnerving. He reached down to kiss her cheek.

Hey, babe. You look great, younger than ever. Although, I'd trade the wrinkles for some more playtime any day. So you can ask me in? Janice stood frozen in shock. Should she slap him, call the police? Somehow in pausing, she felt she had lost the momentum to slap. She drew herself up to her full height.

Only five two. Too bad height implants were so difficult. Who are you? You're kidding, right? If you don't offer an explanation for your outrageous behavior, I will call the police. She had considered just demanding he leave, but some inchoate feelings stopped her. There was something about this man, something known, and nothing dangerous. Janice, are you serious?

How do you know my name? Janice, baby, what's wrong? He bent to cup her face in his hands, but she pulled away. I mean it. I'll call the police. What are you on? Janice bristled. What do you mean? You come here like you know me.

You kiss me for God's sake. Now you accuse me of taking illicit substances? If you knew me at all, you know that I never ingest anything non-organic and pure... We've had this discussion before. Just because it's nature and organic doesn't mean it's good for you. Organic just means relating to or derived from a living organism. Arsenic is natural. So is hemlock.

Hell, even apple seeds have cyanide, natural organic cyanide. And how you and your organic girlfriends justify bodies full of plastic. He threw up his hands and turned to go, cupping his cheek where she had slapped him. She placed her hand on his shoulder. Wait, don't go. I'm sorry, I slapped you, but I don't know who you are. You seem harmless, but... He looked shaken.

You're serious, aren't you? That's scary, babe. You feel scary. Perhaps you should let me in. He held out open palms in a universal gesture of disarmament. I'm Jerry. I've been your boyfriend for the last three years. Janice stiffened.

What was the scam? Why would he lie? She hesitated between slamming the door in his face or inviting him in. He looked into her eyes. Searching for recognition. Look, why don't you call Kathy? She will vouch for me. And maybe you will listen to her if you won't listen to me.

Kathy? Please, please don't tell me you don't remember. Kathy, she's been your best friend for the past four years. You guys talk every day, probably ten times a day. She introduced you to me. Don't you remember? You met her at an airport. You and she have told me that story so many times,

how your eyes met across a ticket. line, how a kindred spirit recognized a kindred spirit, how you ran into her in the lounge, how you hung out together until your flights diverged, how I was lucky that one of you was not a man or gay, because you probably would have run away together. Janice remembered none of this. How about Sarah? Your sister. Surely you remember your sister, don't you? Janice was insulted. Of course she remembered her sister. Who was this man in Zorro? Who was this man insinuating she didn't remember her sister, saying she didn't remember her best friend and who the hell was Kathy?

Of course I know my sister. I shall call her. If you care to give me your number, I'll get back to you. Jerry looked deeply wounded. It's very, very wrong with you. You don't seem to realize it. But you need to see a doctor, a neurologist, end right away. Janice smiled frostily, extending her head.

hand, palm up. Thank you so much for your concern. Your number, please? Jerry looked haunted, but reached into his back pocket. Damn, I don't have a card. May I... Here. Janice thrusted pen and paper into his hand.

When he was done writing, she snatched the paper and slammed shut the door. She rushed to the phone to call Sarah, but on the way she was stopped by her reflection watching from the mirror. She smiled, and no doubt about it, she had erased at least five years. 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 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 5 Laura was certain her nose was broken, but she didn't go to the doctor. Neither did she call the police. Involving other people only made everything worse, and Laura had learned her lesson. X had been very clear, after all. No police.

Her fear of the outside world, where the murky shade of her attacker, her stalker, her burden, lurked in the shadows watching, always watching, held her prisoner. The memory of the photographs X had sent her, filled every space in her brain, and the idea that X had been inside her apartment this time, casually walking into her bedroom while she slept, standing over her, close enough to touch, close enough to kill, spurred her into a frenzy of panicked activity. She ignored the internal voice that said,

But he didn't kill you, Laura, and pulled every curtain in her apartment shut, stacked every available piece of furniture against every window and door, stripped off all the bedding, pulled all her clothes from her hangers, and slammed them into large garbage bags, wondering if he had rummaged through her things, sniffed her shirts, fingered her underwear.

She tied each bag up tight, trying to seal away every single last particle of him. She pulled her mattress from the bed, and used it to block the bathroom door off, hoping that if ex-cited to climb in again through the broken bathroom window, the temporary barrier would give her enough time to escape out the apartment's main door.

When she was done, she sat on the floor in the very middle of her living room, surrounded by garbage bags and chaos, and wondered what was next for her. Her nose hurt, her brain hurt, her very soul hurt. She was in the bad way. She was tired of this, so very, very tired.

Her mind ever so slightly rotated then, towards something she had never considered a possibility before. But as she looked at the stacked up furniture, waiting for a knock on the door or the sound of someone scrambling in through her window, she realized that she might not be able to do this for much longer. She was tired and without hope. The idea of not having to cope with X's incessant attention for the rest of her days was suddenly very appealing. After all, Bobby was dead and had been for a long time. There was no mystery left to solve. Dead is dead.

Anything that was left of him now would be bone. Laura thought how easy, how peaceful it must be, to be made merely of bone. As she sat there thinking about that, gradually entertaining the idea of her own bones, another letter came. It slid under the apartment door like a snake. making a soft hissing sound as the paper traveled across the floor and poked out beneath the coffee table Laura had dragged over as a blockade.

Laura watched it, whimpering. As she read the letter, a cold sheen of sweat collected on her brow. Dear Laura, now you know I'm not fucking lying, don't you? I'm sorry about your face. I think I broke your nose, but I couldn't let you take my photos to the police. Those are part of my personal collection, you see? I am so disappointed in you, Laura. I thought we were building trust.

Now it feels like we've gone back a step. I was upset by your letter, Laura, the one you wrote me when you moved out of your parents' house. Did you think I wouldn't follow you? Did you think I would give you up? Just because you gave me up? That is not how this was. works, Laura. You don't get to give me up. You don't get to write the letters. I'm the one that has what you want. You don't get to tell me what to do. Only I get to make the rules. I've decided

to forgive you for not trusting me. But in exchange for the next clue, and as a way of proving to me how sorry you are, I need something different. Something special. Laura felt the power balance pitch in Exus favor once again. He held the keys to her future, her happiness, and her peace of mind. And he knew it, delighted in it, fed off of her helplessness. He was watching her. Any attempt she made to go to the police now could and most probably would end in her death,

and a photograph of her own, filled with red. But would that be seen? so bad. Yes, something special, Laura. A molar. Give me what I want, and I'll give you a clue. Deep down inside, you know you can't live without me, don't you? And I can't live without you for much longer, Laura. If you don't do as I say, I'm not sure I'll be able to hold myself back. No cheating. I will know if it's not your tooth. Yours with respect. Laura dropped the letter and watched as it glided to the floor.

And she realized something as his words stared up at her from near her feet. This was no longer about Bobby. Maybe it never really had been. This was about her and him. This was his obsession coming to a climax. All he had ever wanted to do was own pieces of her and hurt the rest. Bobby was long dead, and she was now the target. If she didn't obey, he would kill her.

She remembered the size of him, the weight of his fist, and he knew where she lived. Her mind raced with a thousand different scenarios, all of them ending the same way, with X, pinning her down, reaching into her wide open mouth with a chisel or some pliers or maybe even a knife. X using a marker pen to draw a thin line around her neck just above the clavicle.

X working on her body with a sharp tool like an electric saw or a kitchen knife. He had killed Bobby this way, and he would kill her unless she did as she was told. Wouldn't he? Was there really no other way? She could run again. But even if she up and left the apartment today somehow without him noticing, which seemed impossible. She had nowhere to go.

She couldn't afford a hotel, and he knew where her parents lived. Her boyfriend would take her in, but she didn't want to put him in any danger, because that's what this was now. A question of danger. A question of life or death. She didn't want to be responsible

for any more death, any more grieving, not when she could protect someone by keeping her secrets safe. There were other options, she knew. She could hitchhike her way across country, go to a women's refuge, take shelter in a church, hide out somewhere in the forest. But it wouldn't matter where she went ultimately. The pictures of Bobby would follow her around forever. She thought about everything until her brain ached, and then came to a single, devastating conclusion.

What was her life worth, really, when she thought about it? What could she measure it by when push came to shove? A full set of teeth? Maybe, after this, he would stop. Maybe after this, it would be enough. It would be so nice to have a body to give to Bobby's mother, something she could bury and visit and plant flowers above. And this was the impossibility of Laura's situation,

because X still had something that Laura needed. Bones. It's only a tooth, Laura. She went to fetch a hamlet. and a pair of pliers from the toolbox she kept under her kitchen sink. She downed a cheap bottle of wine. Then she took a hold of her right-backed molar with the pliers. She pulled, hard.

The tooth didn't budge. God damn it. How hard can it be? Laura tried again, swollen eyes spilling over with tears of effort and pain, but an innate and instinctive desire to protect her own body from willful mutilation kicked in, and she had to stop. She realized she was not going to be able to pull the tooth out without some extra creativity. Haunted by the image of Bobby, with his arms wrapped around the mystery man she hated and yet needed so much.

She searched for and found more alcohol and a small wrap of cannabis that her boyfriend had hidden on top of a kitchen cabinet. She rolled a large messy joint and fantasized about what she would do when she was free of it all. A house by the sea, perhaps. A dog, maybe even a child one day. The possibilities were limitless. If she could only break free of this terrible bondage, this terrible pact she had somehow entered into, command and obey, suffer in silence,

an eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth. She picked up the pliers again, and this time she didn't stop. Laura's boyfriend found her lying on the floor of her kitchenette, blood everywhere, a single broken molar lying in the palm of her hand. What the fuck? He stared speechless as she lay in her own mess, conscious but unmoving.

Her nose was swollen and lopsided with two blood-soaked tampons still protruding from her nostrils. Her eyes were two large haunted shadows in her face, and her mouth dribbled, congealed blood and splinters of tooth. In a panic, he took her to the hospital, where he stayed with her as emergency physicians reached, set her nose and patched up her mouth. He was angry, confused, and aware suddenly that Laura had secrets beyond his comprehension. Unbeknownst to him, a tall man in a dark blue shirt ambled up and down the parking lot outside the emergency department, pulling a now very old black and white collie

dog behind him on a leash. The man did this for hours, walking up and down, up and down, until Laura was discharged, when he stopped, stock still, and watched as she slowly climbed into a car with her boyfriend. Then he left, and the collie dog left with him. Laura broke her relationship off four days later. A parting of ways had been brewing for a while anyway, largely due to her own fear of intimacy. And she realized that she just couldn't bear to let anyone else

into the sad, desperate triangle that was Bobby, X, and her. Her boyfriend, now her ex-boyfriend, seemed relieved. She thought he might, after their trip to the hospital. Who would want to date a woman who pulled out her own perfectly healthy teeth? He wished her well, politely, and she did the same. And that was that. She was alone again, apart from X. The tooth, she wrapped in cling film and left in a small,

alcove in the wall near her apartment's front door. One hour later, the tooth was gone, and she allowed herself to tentatively hope for a small respite as X enjoyed the fruits of her labor. And, true to form, she heard nothing more for a while. No clue came, no scrap of paper, no coordinates, nothing. Eventually she went back to work, as if nothing at all of consequence had happened. Her face bruised, her cheek swole.

her nose patched up with surgical strips. And nobody much questioned her about it, because she made it pretty obvious she wouldn't tell them anyway. She was mystery, wrapped in silence. And sometimes, for those around her, unwrapping the secret just wasn't worth the struggle. By six in the morning, the forest was fully awake. A much older Laura limped along and breathed deep of the cool, sweet woodland air.

She saw wild horses in a clearing. cropping at a patchy carpet of grass with strong, blunt teeth, tails swishing as they flicked insects away from their sensitive hides. She wished she had time to stop and appreciate the beauty of the moment. But she didn't. She was on a tight schedule. Her proximity to her goal gave her renewed strength, and adrenaline helped her where resolve began to fail. She had come such a long way, such a long way, and the thought that this could all be over soon was tantalizing. magnetic.

She did pause later, just long enough to apply a fresh wound dressing to her swollen ankle. She winced as she unwrapped the old blood-soaked bandages and ripped off the old wound pad. The skin around her injury was red, puffy, and putting any sort of pressure on it at all was excruciating. An odd smell also came from her when she first removed the bandages, a smell that made her nose wrinkle and her stomach turn. She recognized the signs of infection. recognized them and ignored them, swallowing down more painkillers and applying clean, fresh dressings, hoping for the best. Laura was always hoping for the best.

As she returned her first aid kit to her pack, her hand brushed against the bundle that sat at the bottom of the bag, the heavy item wrapped in a towel that she'd carried all this way. She hesitated and wondered if now was the time to unwrap it, tuck it into the waistband of her trousers, as she'd seen people do in the movies. She decided against it. It would get in the way there, be a nuisance as she walked.

The gun therefore stayed where it was. She felt the weight of it pressing into the small of her back with every step she took. As she walked, she tonged the empty spot on her gum where her back molar had once grown. After the tooth, Laura's world descended into darkness, paranoia, and extreme caution. Her gum turned septic, and despite her best efforts to stay away, Eventually, she had to take numerous trips via taxi to the dentist, trips that she couldn't afford to remove bits of the molars route that had been left behind by her clumsy extraction, causing the infection.

She carried on working, but her habits changed. She switched to day shifts so that more staff were on site, and even then often called in sick, feeling too afraid to leave the house. When she did manage it, she learned to run, fast, to the bus stop. She took the bus into work rather than walking, so that she was always surrounded by other people. She never got on the bus if it was empty, preferring to wait for a more crowded one and sat as close to the driver as possible. In between visits to the dentist chair and shifts at the supermarket, she waited for the clues she was owed, but nothing happened. She found this impossible to bear, particularly after the photographs.

She tried not to think about what X did with the things she sent him. What had he done with her tooth? Put it on a thong around his neck? Placed it in a trinket box? Slotted it into his own mouth, pretending to be her. Thrown it away? Somehow the last option was the worst of all, because it implied that her sacrifice was unimportant.

The pieces of herself she gave had no worth or value, and the only thing that mattered was controlling her. Her anxiety increased steadily until she began to experience crippling physical symptoms, panic attacks, vast insurmountable waves of dread that crashed into her at the most unexpected of moments and rendered her incoherent, unable to breathe or move or do anything except sit, frozen in paralysis until it passed.

She was lucky that her job was not a customer-facing role. When the attacks happened to her during a shift, she was largely unobserved, as she mostly stayed out back while she worked. She simply stood there, packaged food in hand, rigid, hyperventilated, shaking, mouth hanging open uselessly until it passed.

At home, she developed a reliance on cannabis to help her manage. She took out alone, and then another

to finance her habit and her dental work. She also moved. She couldn't stay where she was, knowing that

X could walk in at any moment he chose. She knew she was only staying there out of fear, and because she had been

conditioned by him to wait for the next clue. And this was keeping her in place. stuck like a fly on gummy fly paper, and she hated it. She hated him.

So eventually she wrenched herself free of the paper and found a new apartment. She planned the operation with military levels of precision, so that she left via taxi in the middle of the night. Leaving the majority of her possessions behind, she took only what she could fit into a large canvas duffel, including the bundle of letters and map scraps exit center over the years, and relocated under the cover of the door. dark. She insisted that the taxi driver met her at her door and escorted her right up to the next.

Her new place was a top floor apartment, where the windows were too high to climb into and had safety bars bolted on the outside for good measure. She made sure that her new door had a peephole in it too, and that there was no gap underneath it through which a letter or note could be pushed. But even though her new place felt safer by degrees than the last, she still lived in fear. Because X was smart and persistent, and she didn't really think she could escape him that easily. He would find her eventually. She was sure of it. But for now, she could at least sleep on a mattress again, instead of using it to block her bedroom door shut each night.

And so Laura struggled on with her miserable, anxious routine, and grew thin, diminished, consumed by her neuroses. Then, somehow, her birthday arrived. Another one. Another day she simultaneously feared and hated for so many reasons. It came and passed uneventfully. And not only was there no letter, but she had little in the way of anything, as her mother had been taken ill and wasn't able to post her a card. Laura woke, another year older, and sifted through the mail on her doormat with a racing heart. She found only bills, junk mail, and a flyer from the bar around the corner, advertising happy hour. Was she being punished still, she wondered, for trying to go to the cops? Or was X just torturing her, because that was how he operated?

Or had she done it? Had she really done it this time? Had she slipped the net? She stared at the door for hours, waiting. She pressed her eye to the peephole, looking for the distorted fish-lens version of him in the hallway. But it remained empty. And no letter came. Not that day, or the next.

or the next? Time went by, during which it began to dawn on Laura, that maybe, just maybe, something might have happened to X. There had been silences before, but this was different. They had unfinished business. He owed her a clue in exchange for the tooth, and so far he'd always paid his dues. He had a strange and warped coat of honor, and not fulfilling it was very against his character. Laura began to tentatively speculate as to what had happened to her pen pal.

He'd moved away, or was in prison, or even, and this hurt her more than she could bring herself to understand. Maybe even he had died. Imagine that. Imagine if X were dead. She couldn't. She simply couldn't countenance it, because on the one hand, she would be free of him.

But on the other, She never would. Not as long as she remembered that photo of Bobby, the one painted in red. X's silence dragged on, and the nature of it almost broke her. Almost. Laura spiraled into a hole of work and weed, work and weed, and fretful broken sleep. She began to lose grip on all sense of what was real and what wasn't. Bobby came to her in dreams, his hair long and matted with blood, and his face was always a blank featureless smudge that shimmered and jittered the longer she looked at it.

She found that her memories were being eaten away one by one, and it was only through old photographs and notes that they had written to each other at school that she could recall much about him at all. Such childish notes they were, too, riddled with scribbles and doodles and superlatives, notes about stupid things like television shows and music and who was on which sports team.

notes which held no hint of the things to come for either of them. They made her sad and furious at the same time. She longed for a time when her mood and her health were not governed by the words scrawled onto a piece of paper, childish or otherwise. Eventually, Laura's workplace forced her to take some time off. They were reluctant to let her go because she was a good worker when she actually showed up. And as a family business, they valued loyalty. but the owners found themselves unable to deal with her increasingly bizarre and unpredictable behavior.

With so much time on her hands, Laura cocooned herself in a duvet in her bedroom and crashed further down into despair, getting high and sleeping for days on end, then using a manic surge of anxious energy to revisit each and every location from the letters that she had coordinates for, ritually one by one, first in her mind and then by way of taxi. But when she got there, to each of these points on a scrap of map, she found that the passage of time had not changed anything about her predicament at all. Bobby was still not there. Bobby was not anywhere.

Bobby was dead. His body in pieces. Once again, she thought about burning the letters. Once again, she thought about going to the cops. She did neither. Instead, she longed for release. One day bled into the neck. and the next and so on with no word from X,

until she looked in the mirror one day and saw a single gray hair. Years had passed. Five more. She was still living in the same tiny studio apartment, and she still had the same job. The store had taken her back after a few weeks off. And she still had no new letters. Instead of being happy about it,

she was wretched, held captive by something so complicated she didn't know how to give it a name. But then one day, whilst hoisting a pack of rice up onto a high rack at the store, she met Frank, and everything changed. Frank was unlike anyone Laura had ever met before. The first thing that struck her about him was how much he resembled Bobby, or how much she thought he resembled Bobby, given her patchy memory. He was tall, unusually so, and had blonde straight hair that fell in a curtain across his face.

When she first saw him, she nearly fell off the step ladder she was perched on top of. When she first saw him, she thought that Bobby had come back for her after all this time. For a fleeting moment, she held on to the hope, and then she remembered the photo. Bobby was dead. This was somebody else. Frank drew closer. He smiled up at her, and Laura could see that it wasn't Bobby, but the resemblance was strong enough to trigger a massive response. He asked her a question. Are you okay?

Laura saw his mouth moving, but couldn't hear the words he was saying. A cold rush of adrenaline had rocketed through her veins, and she fought desperately against a new panic attack, fought and lost. Her nostrils flared, the blood pounded in her ears, and her mouth dropped open as she fought for breath. Frank did something very unexpected then. He stood on tiptoes, reached up and,

and took the bag of rice from her hands and dropped it on the floor. It split, rice spurting out everywhere, but he ignored it. Instead, he joined her on the stepladder, resting his leg on a lower rung so that she stood higher than him, but they were still close enough to touch. He reached out and placed a hand carefully on her shoulder. She reared back, almost toppling from the ladder, and he removed his hand.

Then slowly, as if approaching a wounded animal, tried again. This time, without knowing why, perhaps more out of surprise than anything else, she let him touch her. If you can, try to breathe out more than you breathe in. It'll help. I can show you if you'd like. Laura couldn't reply. She just stared at him, her eyes wide. Who was this person? What was he talking about? Could it be possible? Did he understand somehow what was happening to her? Frank didn't wait for confirmation. Instead, he took a great, deep breath and blew it out gently through his cheeks, a long exhale, longer than the inhale. He repeated the movement, and then did it a third time.

And Laura realized distantly that he was counting in his head. He breathed out for double the amount of time he breathed in. He was counting it silently, just for her, so that she could learn. In, one, two, three. Out. One, two, three, four, five, and six. In one, two, three. It was almost like dancing, except the only music was her distress.

Gradually, her own chest began to rise and fall in sync with his. They kept eye contact throughout the entire extent. exchange. Franks was steady and kind. Hers was frightened, yet compelled. Laura had read somewhere once, in one of those magazines friends used to buy her, in that brief period when she'd had friends, that it took only a few minutes of steady eye contact to fall in love, steady eye contact and steady breathing, and one bag of spilled rice. They stayed like that for a long time, and all thoughts of Bobby and X vanished from her mind in that small, blissful window where Frank took control of her life and her mind and cared for her. He explained it to her later when they were naked in his

bed. She was too afraid to take him to her place, but Frank had a car, and she figured that if X was still watching her, he would find it more difficult to track her in a stranger's vehicle moving at speed. So she took a risk, the first one she'd taken in years, and the risk felt at least like it was worth it. It's to do with the oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in your body. Frank stroked the soft skin around Laura's nipples. They hardened in response. When you freak out and have a panic attack, start hyperventilating.

You breathe too much. Take too much oxygen in. You need carbon dioxide in your brain too. Laura said nothing. Just lay in the crook of his arm, letting his fingers move down, tracing the line from navel to groin, and marveling at how unafraid she felt lying next to him. You're probably wondering how I know all this, aren't you?

Laura didn't take the bait. She didn't want to know at that moment. All she wanted to do was to lie there and enjoy something for once. He seemed to understand this and stopped talking, his fingers working inside of her. Laura mesmerized by the sensation, felt like she were slowly waking up from a terrible nightmare, which is exactly what she was doing. Later, she found out that Frank had been in a car accident as a child, a serious one.

He'd struggled with anxiety ever since. Laura took this information and thought about swapping it for her own story, the story of Bobby and the letters and X and the codes and her missing back molar, but she didn't. Even years later when they married, she didn't. Even when red-faced and roaring, she pushed out her beautiful baby boy and called him Robert and marveled at his thick crop of white blonde hair. Still, she said nothing.

Laura kept her secrets, and time flew past like a leaf tumbling across a great fall. And her family took root, flourished, blossomed. And she learned to smile again. smile and laugh and sing and dance. And still, no letters came. As she thrived, conversely, others did not, as if the scales of life found themselves unbalanced and compensated accordingly.

Mr. and Mrs. Evely divorced, grew older, and developed health problems, and eventually Bobby's mother died, having never found out what happened to her boy. The newspapers loved the tragedy inherent, in her not knowing, and circling around her more insistently as she deteriorated, pestered her for interviews. She gave one eventually to a local paper about six months before she passed.

It was the usual fare, a harrowing plea for information that felt, because it was, like a drowning woman, gasping for air. The worst thing is not knowing what happened to Bobby. It's the not knowing that destroys your life. eats at you, if only I could just, if only I could just know. Laura, the keeper of secrets, wondered how true this actually was. She suspected that knowledge would be just as dreadful for Bobby's parents to cope with as the lack of closure.

She suspected that not knowing had saved them some considerable distress. Who was to say? Mrs. Evely had dwelt in anger for such a long time. It was unlikely any news in either direction would have repaired her lost equilibrium. Her picture haunted Laura for a whole day as it stared out of the folded newspaper on the breakfast table. Mrs. Evely's eyes, rendered dark and flat by the poor print quality of the paper, followed her around the room, and it felt, beyond. Why didn't you do more?

They said accusingly. Why didn't you tell us what you knew, Laura? Laura didn't go to Tara Evely's funeral, not out of anger or spite, but out of a desire not to upset the family any more than they already had been. Seeing Laura might remind the Evelees of just how much they had lost. The chance to watch him wed, the chance to hold a grandchild, and the memories of Bobby's service still clung to her even after all this time.

Candles and prayers and meaningless, insincere words floating up into the vaulted ceiling spaces. and Tara Evely's eyes, staring her out of the church. Laura kept her secrets, time passed over her, and she folded all the parts of herself that related to Bobby and X and the letters into a neat, compact package, and mentally filed it away. She finally allowed herself, as she approached Middle Age, to admit that X was gone. He had finished with her. Maybe the tooth had been enough after all.

Maybe he had found a new obsession. Maybe he had died. This thought no longer scared her like it used to. She was a parent now, and X was a threat to her family, a threat she couldn't afford. She had her own path, her own responsibilities, her own Bobby. She had purpose and identity. X belonged in the past, along with her youth. And then, when she was 44, on the morning of her birthday, it happened.

She got another envelope. Laura, it said, on the front of a dingy yellow packet. The word was written in a familiar hand, shakier, but instantly recognizable. The world fell away from her. Or was it she who was falling? Endlessly through a dark space. The ground continually threatening to surge up from beneath and smash her to pieces,

only it never seemed to get there somehow. She just kept falling. Inside the envelope were two things, a letter with a string of coordinates. This was par for the course for X. And a piece of fabric, which was not. The fabric was worn and furry. The color bleached.

But Laura knew instantly what it was. It was a piece of fabric that had been cut from a dark green woolen sweater. The same type of sweater Bobby had been wearing on the day he climbed into the van. It was spattered with a dark, Rusty brown substance that she knew without question was blood. Bobby's blood.

Laura saw this and still could not cry. Instead, she just kept falling. Dear Laura was written and adapted for audio by Gemma Amor. Produced for the No Sleep Podcast by Phil Mikulski. Musical score composed by Brandon Boone. Starring Kristen DiMecurio as a little. the narrator, Mary Murphy as Laura, Mick

Wingert as Frank, Dan Zapula as Laura's boyfriend, Aaron Lillis as Mrs. Evely, and David Cummings as X. Join us next week for the final chapter 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 Jesse Cornett. 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.