The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S3E14

Episode Date: December 1, 2013

It's episode 14 of Season 3! We have six tales for you in this episode, featuring stories about creepy crawlers, crazy coworkers, and shocking school scares.The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales. "You Won't Hear About This On The News" written by Meghan O'Hara Murray and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:04:45)"The Cocoa Jumping Spider" written by Matthew Christopher Benner and read by Peter Lewis. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:19:35)"A Sketchy Interview" written by Matt Dymerski and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:35:00)"My Coworker Killed Himself" written by Malices Dank and read by Peter Lewis. Music by Brandon Boone. (Story starts at 00:44:45)"Bits & Pieces" written and read by Michael Whitehouse. Learn about the true story behind this tale. (Story starts at 00:54:45)"8th Grade Math" written by Forrest King and read by David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:06:20)Click here to learn more about Chilling Tales for Dark NightsClick here to learn more about Meghan O'Hara MurrayClick here to learn more about Matthew Christopher BennerClick here to learn more about Matt DymerskiClick here to learn more about Michael WhitehouseClick here to learn more about Peter LewisPodcast produced by: David CummingsMusic & Sound Design by: David Cummings, unless otherwise notedThis podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License 2013. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the sunlight fades to darkness, the frightful tales creep into your mind. There will be no sleep. And now I was listening to. There's little boys who died. Peace in the window. Brace yourself for the no sleep podcast. It's episode 14 of season three. Welcome to the show. I'm your host, David Cummings. We have six tales for you in this episode,

featuring stories about creepy crawlers, crazy co-workers, and shocking school scares. I want to highlight two of our authors for this episode, one newcomer to the podcast, and a returning favorite. Matthew Benner shares a tale with us that is part of a larger body of work. Matthew currently has three books now available, free of charge, in all the major print and e-book formats. I highly encourage you to check out the show notes for the link to his smash words page, where you can find all about Matthew and his writing. In the new year, he will be publishing a new novel, which is a much expanded version of the tale you will hear on this episode. I think you'll be motivated to read more from Matthew when you hear his unsettling story.

story. Returning to the show with a tale he both writes and narrates is Michael Whitehouse. Michael has also been busy with the pen, and I'll include links in the show notes to where you can keep up to date with his excellent writing. I would also like to plug a project that I have recently partnered with for some cross-promotion and collaboration. It's called Chilling Tales for Dark Nights, and they produce horror stories. stories that are very similar in style to what we do on the no sleep podcast. They pull from a wide range of online writing, including popular creepy pastas and many no sleep stories. I recently produced a story for them called The Contract from writer Aaron Shotwell, so you can check out the

link to that story and many more at chilling tales for darknights.com. I'll include a link in the show notes for this as well. Before we start the show, I want to remind all those listeners who have chosen to rent to own their season pass that this is episode 14. That means if by purchasing this individual episode you have reached the 14 episodes purchased mark, you will be eligible for a free upgrade to the season pass. Once you purchase this episode, log into your member page and confirm that you have all 14 episodes on your list. Then email me with the subject Season Pass upgrade and I will manually set you up with a full season pass. There are quite a few of you that will be eligible so please be patient and I'll try to get you upgraded as quickly as I can.

And finally, make sure you check out our next episode coming out on December 15th. It's our Christmas show with stories about the dark side of that festive holiday. Well, that's all I need to say, so let's settle in and start the show. Our first tale revolves around the unsettling topic of school violence, but as author Megan O'Hara Murray writes, the reasons that force a person to these extremes are never this bizarre. The motivation behind this nefarious deed, is kept hidden for good reason, because you won't hear about this on the news. Fighting this in my dorm room, it's way after lights out, but I know damn well no one's going to bother to check. Not tonight. Not while the walls of our room strobe with blue light from the police cars in the

parking lot, and the building hums with tense anxiety. My roommate's downstairs, talking to the cops. His name was at the top of the list, and they had questions for him. My name's on the list, too, but not nearly as high. I guess they'll get around to me. I've got to figure out what I'm going to tell them. I sure as hell can't tell them what I'm about to tell you guys. I go to an all-boys private school in the southeast. It's about evenly split between day students who live in town, and borders, out-of-town students who live in dorms. I'm a border, and this year I'm in Stuart Hall, the oldest residence on campus. It's a real dump.

They stick juniors, 11th graders, in there. I guess they figure that by then you're too invested to bail. To add to my bad luck, I got Kevin for a prefect. Our prefects aren't like in Harry Potter. They're just seniors who volunteer to live in non-senior dorms. There's one per floor, and they're in charge of writing you up for rule violations, checking that you're home by curfew, that kind of stuff. Kevin's one of those dudes who doesn't sneeze without considering how it would look on his application to Harvard.

He applied early decision in October. And ever since, he's been an even bigger walking panic attack, waiting to find out if he was accepted. Maybe the stress was what did it. He's been a real pain in the ass, honestly. Dude looked like he chased five Adderall with a gallon of Red Bull and was handing out demerits by the bucket load. He was paranoid as hell, too.

We're allowed to go down to the vending machines after, curfew, but Kevin would grill us anyway, convinced we were sneaking out even when we were holding the freaking Coke we'd gone down for. A guy down the hall had some leftovers go bad in his room, so he'd sprayed a bunch of air freshener, which convinced Kevin that the guy was smoking pot. Kevin kept trying to bust him, even though I'm pretty sure Kevin wouldn't know pot if it tap-dance naked on his dresser. Point being, when Kevin started spouting all this shit about how someone was bringing a guy into the dorm at night, everyone thought it was just more of his paranoid crap.

I heard about it more than most of the others. My roommate Josh is the only openly gay dude on our floor, so he was Kevin's first suspect. I'm pretty sure that's what the list the cops found really. really is, just Kevin's theories about who might be sneaking that kid in. Under the circumstances, though, I can't blame the cops for thinking something else. Anyway, yeah, for some reason, one random day, Kevin just quit talking about the guy to anyone. We all thought he'd realized he was wrong and didn't want to admit it, especially when he started being way less of a tight-ass about rules than usual.

We figured that was his backhanded way of apologizing for accusing everyone. You could come in a half an hour after curfew and he'd barely even look at you, just waving you down the hall. Kevin really looked like shit too, like he hadn't slept in weeks. I actually started to feel sorry for him, wondering what kind of type A parents he must have to be so wrecked over getting into one particular college. Then, last week, I was heading down to the vending machines at about midnight. I passed Kevin's room and heard him crying.

I mean, guys cry sometimes. A grandparent dies. They get dumped. The rest of us have a pretty rock-solid, pretend it's not happening, never mention it, policy. I'm pretty sure it's somewhere in the bro code. Something about this was different, though, and I found myself drifting toward Kevin's door. He was talking on the phone,

pausing like he was waiting for someone else to speak, sobbing softly. As I got closer, I realized Kevin was begging. He kept asking the person, on the phone to leave him alone, that he didn't want to do whatever they were asking him to do. He was babbling, almost hysterical. I could hear him doing that snort sniffle you get when your nose is running everywhere. I backed away, feeling like an eavesdropping jackass, and convinced that my theory about his overbearing parents was correct. When I got back to my room, I told

I told Josh a sanitized version of the story. I left out the part about Kevin crying and begging, but mentioned the asshole parent phone call. I knew Josh would make sure the whole floor heard it, and I suspected it would make the other guys feel a little more sympathetic towards Kevin for a while. The dude could use a break. He sounded like he was on the verge of snapping, and today,

There's an all-girls school across the river that we exchange some classes with and team up with for crap like choirs and plays. And just after dinner, about 25 of them showed up for Christmas choir rehearsal. They were walking right past Stuart Hall from the parking lot when the first shots rang out. I had practiced tonight, so I missed the worst of it. But Josh was here, and he described it. The blasts of sound overhead, girls screaming, scattering across the courtyard. Prefects pounding through the hallways, mellowing to stay in the rooms as they rush to the stairwell. The broken lock on the hatch to the roof.

The pale terror of the guys who decided to try and stop him. Josh was one of the first to realize that the girls didn't know the campus well enough to realize that Stuart Hall wasn't another locked academic building. He'd thrown our window open and yelled for the girls to take cover within. With his body half out the window and gesturing frantically, he'd realized in horror that he was just a few feet beneath Kevin. Kevin had been tackled from behind by the first floor prefect, a varsity wrestler who'd pinned him down while another gingerly retrieved the gun. And this part may be bullshit, but I've heard it from several of the guys who claim they heard it straight from that wrestler. They said Kevin started cackling like this crazy, loony laugh at the kid who'd ended up with the kid who'd ended up with the man. the gun. It's okay. It's okay. He laughed. Tricked him. It's okay. Practice was canceled as soon as words

spread through the campus and I got back to the dorm just as they were putting Kevin in the ambulance. He wasn't laughing then. He was hissing and spitting. His eyes all bulged out, muttering this crazy, homeless dude patter of just four words. Bitches, slats, whores, skanks. And over and over. I overheard one of the cops tell the other to check if Kevin had been rejected by a girl lately. I slipped by and headed up the stairs. It was pretty much exactly what I had expected.

except for one thing. They asked me if Kevin had been friends with Mitchell Barnes. It took me a minute to even remember why that name was kind of familiar. He was two grades ahead of me, and he'd left school the year before. I didn't know if he'd been friends with Kevin or not. Josh was asleep when I got back, but I asked him this morning if the cops had asked him about Mitchell too. He said they had and added some details I hadn't known.

Mitchell hadn't left. He'd gotten admitted suicide afterwards. I don't really see him and Kevin being buddies, Josh said. They probably just found some of Mitchell's crap in Kevin's room. Mitchell was the prefect on this floor last year. Maybe he left some stuff behind. How come I never heard about it? this. One, you live under a cozy rock with Master Chief, and two, Barnes Hall, Barnes Field,

not to mention Barnes' investments, the Barnes Foundation. Ah, right. Maybe it was because I wasn't local, or maybe I did live under a rock, but I'd always been two steps behind recognizing which kids came from big deal families with big deal last names. Mitchell's family had sunk tons of money into both the town and our school in particular. How did a kid like that get kicked out in the first place? What did he have to do? Stab the headmaster? Josh set his book aside, voice dropping to a conspiratorial tone. Remember last year when they made us watch all those videos about respecting women? And they suddenly decided it was okay for girls to park in the visitor lot.

I did remember. There'd been a lot of bitching about how unfair it was. Unlike the normal parking areas on the other side of the campus, the visitor lot was super close to class. This year, the girls were back to parking with the rest of us. My face went pale that his suicide note was nothing but a bunch of crazy raving about how much he hated women, calling them names and shit. Biches, sluts, whores, skanks. Class was canceled today, but, of course, we boarders had to stay.

Exams were supposed to start tomorrow, but we've been told they're postponed. Everyone's pretty sure they're actually cancelled, and we're going to be sent home early, but the faculty knows if they tell us that, there'll be chaos. They've been running movies for us in the common lounge. Unsurprisingly, nothing violent. And the dorm head ordered us a shitload of pizza. Rumors have been running wild, and I've heard a whole bunch of crap that I don't know whether or not to believe. Like that Kevin's fat acceptance envelope from Harvard arrived three days ago.

Like that Kevin didn't own a cell phone, and his parents were super chill. Like that the reason none of the girls were hurt was because Kevin had loaded the gun with blanks. And I keep thinking of how Kevin laughed, how he said he'd tricked someone. how he said he'd won. Don't you love spiders? We all do, right? Well, then this story by Matthew Benner will be both thrilling and educational. In it, you'll learn about a certain species of spider that has grown quite fond of expanding its territory.

As narrator Peter Lewis reads the tale for us, we'll become all too acquainted with The Coco Jumping Spider For the South American tree on which they most commonly nested, the cocoa jumping spider also has a dark brown fur covering its 8 to 12 inch body diameter the color of cocoa powder. From the genus Phoenutria, meaning murderess, they use a sudden change in blood pressure

to shoot themselves forward. The spiders contract cephalothorax muscles to decrease the volume of blood in the legs causing all eight legs to rapidly extend, thus propelling them forward at great speed, but not before they secure a silk dragline to the substrate beneath them. The cocoa jumping spider was indigenous to coastlines

before migrating inland due to rising coastal water lines. They burrowed deep in the jungles of Bolivia and Argentina, where they quickly became a hazard to the original flora and fauna. It didn't take long before they adapted to their new jungle environs in two major ways. First, as their prey had grown in size, they began to inject more Ph.TX-3 venom into their bites. More interestingly, the spiders also developed a new method of aerial attack. They began to use thin, rounded webs like parachutes, leaping from the top of trees and swimming downward in an attack. to land on larger animals.

Cut to present day, a Tuesday evening on a suburban street in Sugar Point, Texas. The neighborhood is white collar, mainly wealthy but not rich Texans. It consists of a straight line road with newly painted ranchers and manicured lawns on either side, and it ends at a doorway to the desert. The last three houses of the neighborhood are clustered together, but far off from the rest, with a few hundred open, grassless feet in between, where a large section had been demolished by fire, cleared away, and never rebuilt. Duregard owns one of the three houses.

He's a curmudgeonly war vet in his late sixties. Across from his house is the McCluster family, two boys, mother and father, with Anne and William Francis in the house next door. Duregard had lived there since before the fire separated his house from the many others. The McCluster Pack picked the house specifically for its seclusion, so Mr. McCluster could, without distraction, brainwool. A home school, his boys, and wife, if need be, in the good lord's name. And Anne and William Francis, the most recent to move in, chose the locale for its cheap market price.

They all keep to themselves mainly. Duregard sits at his bedroom window, binoculars out, watching dusk settle out over the desert. He has his rifle across his lap, window open. His black Labrador, Biscuits, is resting beside him, tired and old like his owner. There's a heavy wind in the air, and Duregard mentions it several times to Biscuits.

This wind is a wind. Ain't kicking down none. Keeps picking up, seems. And then Duraigard looks over, down at the dog. Biscuits keeps his head to the floor, but glances up, unimpressed. He stands from his chair, stretching his shoulders and thick chest, with the rifle between his arms and behind his head. Bending down over to pull a beer from the cooler he keeps in his bedroom, DuraGard sees the McCluster boys passing the football to one another in the street. He blows a raspberry toward the two nancy's, tossing the pigskin underhanded.

Like everything else in their life, they seem to be misinformed. Duregard does feel a ping of sadness, as had he been younger and more able-bodied, he would have gone down and showed them boys a thing or two. Before hobbling back to his chair, cold beer in hand, he checks for the boy's father, whom he detests. Man's a Nazi, as far as Duraigard is concerned. Back in his seat, Duraigard looks out into the wind.

He twists open the bottle of beer, looks out toward the desert with narrowed somber eyes and sips. But he cuts his sip short. He squints. It's getting darker, but there's plenty of sun left and no clouds. Well, no clouds except those approaching. Well, look at them clouds. "'Cloods, would you?' he says, looking down at the dog. Biscuits keeps his head to the floor but glances up, unimpressed.

"'Eh, well.' And so goes their routine. But Duregard continues watching these clouds with growing fascination. They're low and thin, weaving with the wind moving quick over the desert. They dip and raise unnaturally a series of large cotton-gownessing. candy-like clouds ebbing and flowing with the wind. It isn't until these clouds are right on top of him that Duraigard realizes that something is wrong, that these aren't clouds.

They begin landing, two shy of the house, and then one seemingly just above his window. What in the name? He mumbles, leaning forward. One landed just several feet outside the bedroom window. Dura guard sticks his head. head out to inspect the fallen cloud. He notices that the mound of white fluff is pulsating. Nope, no way.

He instantly shuts the window before traveling to each room and ensuring that each window is closed and locked. He returns to the bedroom and notices the window over the cooler is still open. Shutting and locking it, he sees that the McCluster Boys have stopped poorly tossing the football. Instead, they're inspecting one of the car. of the giant cotton balls. Duragard also notices that these cotton balls have landed on the other two houses and that one on top of the Francis house has popped like a balloon and deflated. His eyes revisit the two boys inspecting the large white ball, one of them poking it with a stick. He wants to tell

them to leave it alone, but he doesn't want to open the window, and he's a bit curious to see what happens when it gets poked. The screaming starts far off, the boys from poking the thing with a stick. Dora Guard can hear it even through the window. A woman scream loud, passionate. The door to the Francis house opens and Anne runs out, swinging, stripping off clothes, running her hands through her hair. She has her shirt over her head, her black nylon bra exposed. The two boys, thoroughly distracted. Her scream grows hoarse. She takes a deep breath, starts screaming again, sprinting into the street. She looks like she's on fire without the fire. Unable to see with her shirt over her face, frantic and running full sprint, Mrs. Francis runs headfirst into one of the

McCluster boys. He's knocked back hard, stumbles, and together they fall onto the large white ball in the street. Duragard hopples over to his chair, gets his binoculars, and hoppels back to the opposite window. The boy and the woman are struggling in the white fluff. The other brother standing back, watching, panicked. The white fluff has blown out like a pinata spilling a thicket of brown over brown. Through his binoculars, he can see that the two on the ground are being swarmed by something, hundreds of somethings. Their bodies disappear under a moving blanket of brown. The brother, standing nearby, runs for it, brushing at his socks and feet, hopping as if the ground were on fire.

He runs for it, heading the opposite direction, running as fast as he can. And then Duragard sees what it is, and he sees it large right into its face, into its beady eyes. Horrified, he steps back and almost falls. The spider dangles outside the window he had just been staring through, hanging from a single silk thread. It's large, with eight spindly legs twitching. It continues to lower to the window sill. Another follows alongside faster. Duregard is appalled.

He turns and finds his other bedroom window already had several spiders. on the glass, which they've begun to enshrine in web. There are so many spiders on his roof that now joining the sound of his heavy breath, he felt like he could hear a hundred thousand legs shuffling. He checks out the front window once more. Over a dozen hairy brown spiders now crawl and dangle outside his window. Just past, he finds that the other two houses are taking on a thin white sheet over top them, webs encircling windows and doors, garages and rooftops.

He hears clinking something in the pipes. They're in the pipes, but which, he thinks. Not the sewer line. And then it dawns on him, the stove pipe. He hobbles quickly for getting the pain in his knee. The stove is clinking. He cracks the oven door and two brown blurs dash out, leaping faster than the eye can follow,

both landing on the kitchen floor. He yelps low, glad no one could hear him, slamming the oven door shut. Before dealing with the trespassers scurrying across his floor, he sets the oven temperature to 400 degrees. Suck on that, you bastards, he growls, turning to face the two hairy monsters on his floor. They're both on the linoleum side by side with their legs sprawled out. The first leaps from its spot on the floor toward Duregard's shin. His legs already out of the way.

The spider passes and lands against the wall. The squish is satisfying beneath the toe of his boot. There's a tickling on his shin. The second spider already crawling up his calf. He dances, shimmies, yelps again and flings the spider off, but not before he's been bitten. The sting hurts, but is short-lived. Dura Guard already has a toaster in his hand, unplugged.

He wraps the cord taut around his fist, watching the spider scurry right and left on the floor. He lets the toaster hang from the wire around his hand, waits an extra moment, swings the toaster gently, backs a step, and slam. He smashes the second spider so hard that it explodes. And again, this is satisfying. Duregard knows that there's a significant chance the spider. was poisonous and that his only chance of survival is to make it to the hospital. After grabbing a few things from beneath the sink, he approaches the front door, knowing full well that he can't just open it. While he thinks of his next option, the stove can be heard sizzling,

almost screeching, and a thin black smoke curtains out. There's a scratching sound coming from the base of the front door, and as he inspects it, several dozen baby spiders. pour in through a crack in the wood-base frame of his front-door threshold. With the materials he grabbed from under the sink, DuraGard lights an aerosol spray can with his red-bick lighter, the baby spiders curl and wither and sink and disappear into ash. He plugs the hole with cement putty. Not today, sons of bitches, he says. Then Biscuits whimpers from the bedroom.

No. Dura Guard dashes without a hobble and then sighs in relief as his dog is merely whimpering at the webbed catacombs now surrounding their rancher and the dozens of spiders lining the windows. It's fine, boy, he reassures him. There's the sound of pressure on the glass, a slight fracture. Biscuits cries and DuraGard leads him to the living room, to the couch. Unlike every other day, today he lets Biscuits up on the couch next to him. He pets the black lap behind his ears. Biscuits rests his head on DuraGard's lap.

Guess I coulda let you up here all this time, he says of the couch. It was a silly rule, he realizes. A window cracks enough to break, but DuraGard is unsure in which room. He doesn't look either. I'm glad it's you I'm with. And he just keeps petting Biscuits behind his ear. From the bathroom, the wall and carpet begin to wobble and move as dozens of long-limbed, hairy brown spiders crawl over every surface.

You were a good boy. Biscuits keeps his head on his lap but glances up, unimpressed. Yeah. For episode has come to an end. Thank you for spending time with us at the No Sleep Podcast. If you would like to learn how you can hear the full-length version of this episode, featuring many more stories,

please visit the Noseleeppodcast.com and click on the Season Pass link. Purchasing a Season Pass will help support everyone who contributes to the podcast, and in return you'll get 25 full-length episodes and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999. This is David Cummings. Thank you for listening and join us again for the next episode of the No Sleep Podcast.