The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S5E16

Episode Date: June 7, 2015

It's episode 16 of Season 5. We have five tales this week featuring stories about unnatural nature, morbid memories, and terrifying tenants. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales. Trigger Warnings "The Ant King" written by William Dalphin and read by David Ault & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts at 00:03:25) "The Anomaly" written by Luke Hartwick and read by Jeff Clement & Mike DelGaudio & Jessica McEvoy & David Cummings. (Story starts at 00:24:25) "Corn" written by I.B. Kharibian and read by L. Bentley & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts at 00:50:35) "Renovations" written by Sarah Piper and read by Susan Knowles & David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:12:30) "I Should Have Known" written by Rona Vaselaar and read by Peter Lewis & David Cummings. (Story starts at 01:41:50) Click here for the iTunes page for The Black Tapes Podcast Click here to learn more about Chilling Tales for Dark Nights Click here to learn more about William Dalphin Click here to learn more about Erika Sanderson Click here to learn more about Jeff Clement Click here to learn more about Mike DelGaudio Click here to learn more about Sarah Piper Click here to learn more about Susan Knowles Click here to learn more about Rona Vaselaar Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings "The Ant King" illustration courtesy of Lukasz Godlewski This podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons License 2015. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Warning. This is a horror fiction podcast. Beware. It's intended for mature adults, not the faint of heart. Aware. Join us at your own risk. Close your eyes. Cales of horror to frighten and disturb as the sleepless hours tick past.

Brace yourself for the no-sleep podcast. Episode 16. to the No Sleep Podcast. I'm your host, David Cummings. We have five tales this week, featuring stories about unnatural nature, morbid memories, and terrifying tenants. I want to thank the many people who tweeted about their newfound love for the Black Tapes podcast, which I mentioned last week. It's nice to know that a lot of you have gotten hooked on that great new show. If you haven't already done so, make sure you check it out. One of the things which can really help a new podcast get noticed is to leave them positive reviews on iTunes.

If you're a fan, please consider giving them five stars and a few glowing words. And while you're in iTunes and reviewing stuff anyway, you can always leave us a nice review too. Every little bit helps along the way. As you've been hearing in recent episodes, we've been joined lately by Jeff Clement and Jesse Cornett, two of the executive producers over at Chilling Tales for Dark Nights. Jeff and Jesse, along with Chilling Tales head haunt show Craig Groshek, have been really expanding the scope of what they do lately, and they have recently made an announcement about some new and exciting stuff they're offering.

Make sure you keep in touch with their YouTube channel and website, for horror audio productions I know you'll love. The horror audio fiction community is a small but supportive one, and I'm happy to let listeners know where they can find other great sources of good quality audio. I urge you to share what we and our friends do so many more people can call themselves fans and supporters of the horror audio fiction fraternity. Now that's enough talk about horror audio fiction. let's listen to some of it right now and start the show.

In our first tale, we meet a family dealing with that all-too-familiar arthropod known as the aunt. To most, a minor pest, but to their eight-year-old son, ants proved to be a source of great fear, one which the parents try to help him overcome. But as we learn from author William Delphin, there are consequences to our actions, even if those actions are as simple as squishing a bug. Narrators David Alt and Erica Sanderson read the tale for us as we discover why it's best to avoid messing with the Ant King. It's just an ant.

I remarked calmly as I felt it crunched beneath my shoe. Buggy, buggy! I picked my foot up and watched as the maimed and dying ant twitched and tried to run away. My son screamed at the sight of it and fled to his bedroom. I couldn't understand why he was so afraid of insects,

especially ants. He was eight years old, for Christ's sake. He watched from the doorway to his bedroom, hugging a blanket, as I plucked the dead ant off the floor and took it over to the trash can. You do realize that when you go outside, there are literally millions of insects

out there with you, When you're playing in the front yard, there's probably hundreds of ants around you, you just don't notice. I'm never going outside again. He declared, slamming the door. You're being ridiculous. I hate buggies. You love caterpillars. They don't count.

Look, just use a shoe or a book or something. I'm not going near them. My wife, Lisa, came up behind. me. What's going on? Brandon saw an ant. Oh. Brandon, honey, it's lunchtime. I'm not coming out. There are buggies out there. I killed the ant, Brandon. Are there more? He opened the door and peeked out. Not any that I can see. Lisa pushed his door open the rest of the way and held his hand. Now come on and have lunch. I didn't I didn't say anything as she led him away, but I watched him looking all around desperately, sure that he was going to see another ant coming at him.

Every spring, our house develops a bit of an ant problem. I don't know where they get in, but we kill them left and right until Lisa gets fed up and calls an exterminator. They pop up for a couple more days afterward, then eventually disappear for the rest of the year. It was just the start of ant's season. It was a Saturday, and I was coming upstairs from the basement where I'd been handling a load of laundry when I heard Brandon screaming. I dropped what I was carrying and sprinted up the remaining steps, through the kitchen and into the hallway where I heard him in the bathroom. Oh, for fuck's sake. Just kill it, Brandon.

His voice indicated full-on panic mode. I was determined this time to resolve this fear of insects and make him handle a situation on his own. I'm not coming in. You're just going to have to kill it yourself. He started screaming, demanding I come in and save him. When that didn't work, he cried, begging me. Save me, save me, buggy, buggy. I stood outside the bathroom door calmly, repeating to him over and over again.

I'm not killing it. If his mother had been home, she'd probably have finally come to his rescue. You. Mummy's at the store, Brandon. You're welcome to wait, though. Or just pick up a book and squish the ant yourself. Walked away. I didn't say another word.

I just walked away. He heard me go, and his screaming and crying got louder and more shrill. He screamed again. He said things I couldn't make out, partially because he was halfway across the house, and partially because he was blubbering so much that he wasn't making any sense. Then I heard it, the sound I had been waiting for. A loud, f-hm, of something heavy and flat, hitting the bathroom tiles and then the squeak of the door opening, and the scamper as Brandon sprinted out like the devil was after him.

He jumped onto the sofa and covered himself with pillows. See, you did it. Don't you feel better now? He didn't say anything. He just sobbed and hid. I went into the bathroom to clean up the ant. He had dropped the biggest, heaviest book he could find on it, some fantasy novel Lisa had been reading. I picked it up to see what was left of the terrifying buggy.

Please shit. Jesus, it was big. An orangeish, brown-looking monster of an ant, about as big as my thumb. There was a weird, pattern on its back like a series of pale yellow dots. It was crushed, but still struggling to drag itself away. Only its thorax was mashed to the floor. I held the heavy tome over it, ready to put it out of its misery, and for a second it seemed to turn and did it look at me.

I dropped the book. Then I dropped it again, just for safe measure. Looking at it again, it was not like any sort of ant I'd seen in the house before, and it made me really uneasy. Where had it come from, and worse, were there more like it? I shivered at the thought of those things crawling in the walls. Good on Brandon for killing that behemoth. If I'd known how big it was, I would have been less inclined to make him do the deed himself, but I felt proud of him for taking care of it nonetheless. Grabbing my phone, I took a photo of the ant before wadding up some toilet paper and wiping it off the floor and book and then tossing it in the bathroom trash.

Then I went and consoled Branton in his pillow fort. That was a big ant. I know. I'm proud of you for killing it. I petted his head gently. I didn't know that they got that big round here. It was going to eat me. Nobody. Our ants don't eat people.

After Lisa got home and I helped her unload the groceries from the car and get everything put away, I told her about Brandon's running with the monster ant. It was big. I've never seen one that big. I showed her the photo on my phone. Jesus! She stared at the picture. I'm calling the exterminator. It was two weeks earlier than usual, but I didn't disagree.

The next morning, Brandon woke me up, bursting into our bedroom, screaming what was quickly becoming his catchphrase. I was still mostly asleep, so I groggily rolled over and brushed him away. But he is. Just kill it yourself. You can do it. Lots of them! I jumped out of bed, my mind whirling with thoughts of more ants like the one in the bathroom the day before, all crawling all over our house. I pulled on a shirt, looking around my bedroom, wondering if there were any ears. in there with us right then. Nothing.

Brandon ran out of the bedroom ahead of me, leading the way. He turned the corner into the bathroom and started up his shouting again. I breathed a sigh of relief. A line of small, normal-looking ants were crossing from somewhere behind the radiator on the far wall, past the tub and up into the trash can. Just a procession of ants moving with odd determination. What were they doing? Right.

I grabbed a book off the counter and started squishing. The ants scattered running in their typical confused patterns. The ones that were on and in the trash can continued their march though, disappearing somewhere behind the sink. Within a few seconds, the parade dissolved into chaos with several dozen dead ants and the rest retreating or gone. Brandon was hopping around in the hallway in a panic. but he settled down quickly.

I took him into the living room and got him set up with a bowl of cereal before going into the bathroom and cleaning up the dead ants. We definitely needed that exterminator. I had never seen the problem so bad before. Monday, I went to work. It was a school holiday, so Lisa and Brandon got to sleep in and relax, but my office was still open, so I took the opportunity to go in early,

with the plan to get out early and go home and take Brandon to the park, for an hour or so. It was a beautiful day. Around noon, I called the exterminator to see if he could stop by the house later that day and spray for the ants. We'd been using the same exterminator for the past several years, so he knew us by name and knew we'd be calling sometime soon. I told him that we'd had a run in with a new type of ant, something bigger like I'd never seen before. I told him how Brandon had squished it and I'd even got a picture of it. Can you, uh, text me the photo? You bet.

I opened the picture on my phone and sent it his way. Just FYI, that thing was about as big as my thumb. Hang on, I'm looking. I sat there, the phone to my ear, waiting for him to express his shock at how big the ant was. I know, right? No, no, you don't understand. His voice sounded weird. I'd known him for years now and he'd never sounded that frightened.

This ant, are you saying you killed it? Brandon squished it with a book, why? Get your family out of that house right now. I felt a chill run over my entire body. And these ants poisonous. Is that a fire ant? He didn't answer me. His voice seemed to be trembling. Call your wife.

Get her to grab your son and get out of there. What's going on? My arms were starting to tremble. I felt a wave of panic and confusion wash over me. Is this some sort of infestation? Are there more like that in the house? I only have a one like this. Then what's the problem?

You never kill it. What? You never kill this end. What? What happens? I had my work phone in my other hand, desperately trying to dial Lisa's cell phone number, but at the same time my head was in a fog. I wasn't sure if I was punching the right numbers or not. On top of that, she has a bad habit

of not answering her phone when I call. I don't know why. She answers every other call, but when it comes to me, I always end up having to leave a voicemail. As a queen, you know? Yeah, was this a queen? Lisa's phone kept ringing. Come on, pick up. Pick up! No, this is more like the king. I've never even heard of a king ant.

I'm not saying it is a king. Look, just get your family out of the house. Lisa didn't answer. I called the landline. It rang and rang, and then I heard our voicemail intro and slammed my phone back in its cradle in frustration. I've got to go. The house was eerily quiet when I pulled up.

Only the sound of our air conditioning unit broke the silence. My stomach was in knots, but even with the confused thoughts rushing through my head I could sense what was wrong. There were no birds chirping, no squirrels making noises from the branches of the trees. Everything was dead silent. Sitting out on the lawn was Brandon's bicycle, tipped over. No, that was okay. He often left it like that when he had to run inside to use the bathroom or get called in for lunch.

There's nothing ominous about a tipped over bike. The front door was unlocked. That's okay, I thought, just another sign he ran inside for some reason. Sitting in the front hall were Brandon and Lisa's shoes. I called their names. Nobody replied. The living room was cold. Lisa usually ran the air conditioning on hot days like that one until the inside was a reasonable temperature. Then she turned it off.

Nobody had turned it off this time. Honey? I said loudly as I instinctively turned off the AC. Brandon? Our cat, Sebastian, was lying in the middle of the living room, or rather Sebastian's bones were. He had been picked clean. Nothing left but tufts of black and white fur and his skeleton.

Oh my God. I ran then. Ran into the dining room where the two of them had abandoned a lunch of soup and sandwiches. The table was covered with a swarm of black ants, a carpet of moving bodies as they picked apart the sandwiches and carried the crumbs off. The moment I entered the room, the army of ants dropped what they were doing and converged, pouring off the table in waves towards me. I've never seen anything like it before.

They just tumbled over each other to get to me. I felt a scream, lodge itself in my throat, and suddenly knew the terror that Brandon had felt when he had seen these buggies. Crazed and panicking, I stomped through the tiny attack. attackers. He swarmed over my shoes, even as their brethren were crushed beneath them. They moved so fast. They just kept coming, tearing at the fabric and laces and up toward my socks. I ran through them, just charged through, shouting at the top of my lungs, even as I felt them on my ankles and calves, swatting at my legs as I tried to keep them off me, but prevent them from getting onto my hands.

one giant gulliver versus hundreds of lilliputians somehow I made it through to the other side of the dining room and into the kitchen ants were crawling up the legs in my trousers but I crushed them with my hands never stopping to let the rest catch up a dozen or so continued to pinch or bite at my ankles and I tried to mash them against the insides of my shoes as I ran in the far corner was a small fire extinguisher

I didn't even know if it worked but I planned to find out Pulling it from the wall without stopping, I held it up as I continued to retreat into the back hallway, reading the instructions. Jesus, don't let it be a fucking Mensa test just to use this thing. No, okay, there was just a pin I had to pull, and then it was ready to use. The tide of angry ants skittered across the kitchen floor. There weren't many, just a hundred or so, just the leftovers of the ones who'd stuck around to loot the lunch from our table. Something bit me near the back of my knee, but I ignored it. I angled the nozzle of the extinguisher at the mass of little fuckers

and with a roar squeezed the handle dousing them in white foam. Their assault was slowed by the cloud of chemicals. The entirety of the attacking force got a good dose and with relief I watched as they reacted with confusion and then hopefully agonising death. Within seconds every last ant had stopped moving. I reached behind me and pinched the wall. one on the back of my leg, squeezing it till it popped. Fuck you. Lisa and Brandon, oh God, please let them be okay. I found them in Brandon's room. Lisa had tried to keep the ants out by

stuffing clothes under the door, but the ants had gotten in anyway. What was left of her was curled up in a fetal position in the middle of the room on a blood-soaked rug. I guess the ants had found her harder to pick clean than the cat. and they'd given up halfway. When I saw her, I fell to my knees crying and horrified. My stomach was a knot and I vomited before I even realized I was going to. A noise from the closet brought me back to my senses. Brandon, I whispered, still afraid that I hadn't seen the last of the ants.

Buddy, are you in there? I crept past Lisa's remains and pulled open the closet door. Slowly, fearful. Brandon was propped up against the wall, seemingly unharmed. He just stared off into space, his mouth hanging open, his body slowly rocking back and forth. I stood between him and Lisa. I didn't want him to see his mother's courts.

I whispered, kneeling down to try and get him to look at me. It's going to be okay. We've got to get out of here. He made this noise like a gurgling sound. Brandon. I leaned forward and touched his arm. And then I saw the way the front of his t-shirt was moving and the dark, wet, stain. And then I saw the ants. The ants in the far back of his mouth and the ants that crawled out from under his eyelids and the ants that started pouring out over the neckline of his shirt with pieces of his insides. And I ran. I ran out of that house just got in my car and fled.

I don't sleep these days. There's ants everywhere. I don't know if they're still hunting me. I kill them every chance I get. I don't take joy in it. I do it simply for self-preservation. So far, they haven't tried to fight back. I don't know what I'd do if I ever saw another one,

like the one in the bathroom that day. Whether I'd let it live or kill it and run the risk of invoking their wrath again. I think I might kill it. For Brandon. In our ever-changing social world, it can be quite reassuring to understand the consistency of the natural world. The sky is always blue, life forms are carbon-based, and mommies give birth to babies. But in this tale from author Luke Hartwick, we meet a young man who takes no comfort in nature's laws,

because, you see, this young man is pregnant. While he and his doctors scramble to understand the bizarre case, it becomes clear that nature is not in control of this situation. Narrators Mike Delgado, Jeff Clement, and Jessica McAvoy read the tale for us about what's going on with this young man and why his case is understandably labeled, the anomaly. They told me I had a hernia at first. From the descriptions of the pain to the physical manifestation in my abdomen, I believe they were right.

But no matter how many physicians I talked to, no one could explain why the mass was moving so much. When you move, any large appendage will obviously sway or jiggle with you. Dr. Thompson told me this over his little round glasses. He let his white hair grow long, down to his shoulders. Like when a fat man waddles away and his belly waddles with him. He smiled about that. But I didn't feel like smiling. I wasn't fat, but I'd been getting my share of jabs in class.

Even my biology professor cast me a sly kind of grin. As one of the students asked him if men could get pregnant too, looking from me to him. Was I really getting that big? Then, come April, they dropped the news. I had indeed become a freakish anomaly, the first known case in history. I had testicles, a penis, a beard, and a baby growing inside of me. Dr. Thompson wasn't smiling anymore when the technician brought him the results of my ultrasound. I couldn't tell what he was feeling by the look on his face.

Was he confused, disconcerted, disgusted? I knew I was. I wouldn't blame him if his thin mouth was grimacing and disgust as he flipped through the printouts, knitting his brow tighter with every page. I was extremely disgusted. I'm still a virgin, I blathered without thinking. I felt at the moment like he needed to know this bit of information, though I was sure it would only confuse him even more.

He looked back up at me with a blank stare. I've never had sex. The doctor softened his voice as if he was suddenly speaking to a 10-year-old. Mr. Peterson, I can assure you that in the present circumstances, whether or not you've had sexual intercourse is not even a blip on the radar of the absurdity of what is happening here. You are a man, yes? Yes. When you masturbate, white sperm comes out the end, yes?

Yes. You do not have a tiny little vagina hiding somewhere between your testicles and your anus, yes? Yes. I mean, no, I don't have a vagina. That was fucking awkward. I was almost tempted to reach my fingers down to my scrotum to feel just to be sure, but I resisted the urge. Suddenly I was reminded of all those vicious teenagers on League of Legends, assuring me that I must have a vagina by the way I play. The good news is that he's developing? normally.

The doctor couldn't help but giggle to himself about this. Without realizing it, I had taken to stroking my belly the way I had seen pregnant women. The bad news is that by law, it's too far along to abort it. He emphasized the words, by law, as if spitting on them. What the fuck? I blurted out before I could stop myself. I'm a man. How am I supposed to give birth? As flustered as I was, it felt absurd to be saying those words aloud.

Not in a thousand years could I have imagined that I would someday be saying that. But the thought of people slapping legality on this was absolutely insane. You should know that there are protesters outside right now. Some people think this heralds the second coming of crue. Christ, not only born from a virgin, but a man. That really hit home. Others knew what was happening? I didn't have to ask about the news.

If a group of protesters outside knew it was happening, then surely the news would be broadcasting my face and my protruding belly on all of their channels. But the second coming of Jesus? If there is a god, he must fucking hate me. There is just one thing you should know. There is something very strange about this child in your abdomen. Obviously, you do not have a uterus or any type of device for distributing nutrients to the growing fetus.

What this means to us is that this thing that seems so human must be exhibiting parasitic qualities. I felt the blood run from my face. He must have known what kind of effect that word would evoke. He had to know. So we need to keep you hospitalized, so we can monitor how much it is absorbing of your body. And we need to make sure its growth doesn't cause too much more impact on your internal organs as it has already done.

You should actually be thankful that you were, hefty boy to begin with. It cleared out those fat pockets like a little nursery for itself. Needless to say... Here he stopped again. The whole time he had been creeping around what he truly wanted to say,

choosing his words as wisely as he could. I couldn't blame him. This whole thing was like a nightmare. Needless to say. A host of other physicians and myself will be putting our heads together to make sure everything goes as smoothly as possible. Great, I said, unable to keep the contempt out of my voice. That makes me feel so warm and fuzzy. They taped oven mitts on his hands because he couldn't stop scratching.

Even now, he can't stop trying. He says all the time that his belly itches to nine levels of hell. Before they put the mitts on, Evan scratched so hard that his stomach started bleeding all over the place. He pulled pieces of his skin from under his fingernails, but he said he didn't feel a thing. Not anymore. At this point, I suppose I should introduce myself. My name is Edward, and I've known Evan since we were kids. I could tell he was reluctant to call me, but he said the people of the internets needed to know what was happening here.

So I agreed to become his ghostwriter. Actually, I'm not quite sure I'm a ghost writer at this point. Now I'm feeling more like a documentarian because Evan is becoming increasingly incapacitated. At first, he was dictating to me, but now I am observing and reporting. For some reason, they started a morphine drip into his IV, and he started lapsing in and out of consciousness.

I don't know enough about pregnancy to say if this is weird, Then again, the whole fucking thing is insane. Turns out the only reason I was able to come be by his side was because his adopted parents don't want anything to do with him or the publicity surrounding everything. I had to get a letter from them stating that Evan has no family anymore and to let me assume the kindred responsibilities of being by his side because if not me, then no one else would be there.

But I haven't told him that. Not yet. Several hours ago, I slipped out of his room to get something to eat from the cafeteria. When I was just past the nurse's station, I could hear some doctors talking with them about the patient in room nine. That was Evans' room, so I leaned into here as much as I could. We are seeing signs of it exhibiting profound reactions to the intravenous nutrients. The fetus is literally absorbing all of it, leaving trace amounts for the host. for the parent.

We might as well call it what it is. We know the thing is exhibiting parasitic qualities. Why are we even treating this as if it's a human child? It needs to be removed. Even the host knows. Don't flinch, Sandra. The boy is a host. He's a host to a freakishly giant parasite,

and even he knows it needs to be removed, or else he wouldn't have been clawing his stomach to shreds. The silence was thick as ice. Without seeing their faces, I knew the woman doctor was probably reeling. She spoke again at last, a little defensively. It looks like a child, though. You've seen the ultrasounds and the CT printouts. If it is exhibiting parasitic qualities,

then why does it look so much like a human fetus? Only way to know is to cut it out and see. You can't do that. No, but... with the hospital administration support I can. Suddenly, the male doctor was walking briskly out from behind the walls. He gave me a quick, suspect look before turning on his heels and capering down the hallway. My stomach growled, but I still remain rooted to the spot for a little longer.

The slight against the woman was too obvious, too reproachful. Finally, she spoke again. Did you hear that, Michael? She was whispering, even I could barely hear her. I leaned in closer and held my breath. We don't have much more time. There was a crackling sound like a radio transmitter buzzing with static. The static broke with a beep and a voice replied simply,

As hungry as I was, I knew I couldn't leave Evan now. I turned back from the corridor to walk back to room number nine. But before I reached it, I heard someone scream from his room. It was one of the nurses calling for a doctor. She threw the curtain aside, revealing a bloody mess in the bed where I had left Evan. In her hand was a scalpel dripping red from the blade. The nurse left the door open and ran for a doctor, otherwise they probably wouldn't have let me in. I was never able to handle much gore.

The whole incident with Evan clawing at his stomach was enough to leave me adequately unhinged, but I knew that he would want me to see what was happening. He wants the internets to know. As soon as I stepped into the room, a wave of nausea hit me. It smelled like he had shit all over himself. But if he had, he made no attempt to tell me or apologize. He was just sitting there, smiling at me while flailing his arms around wildly. Blood was trailing from his fingertips, spattering across the white walls and the white of his bedsheets.

I won't tell them you gave it to me. me? He said in a wicked kind of voice that sounded nothing like him. I'll tell him I found the scalpel. Scalpel? What are you talking about? But before he could respond, his head fell back against the pillow. He must have blacked out again. They said it was a symptom of the growing fetus's impact on his body, but it was getting more frequent. What really worried me, though, was the fresh blood creeping out of his belly region through

his gown. Then I saw why he was talking about a scalpel. He had dug a hole right into his abdomen with something sharp enough to carve into skin. I remember him telling me that the fetus was embedded just beneath the skin amongst the fatty tissues, not far at all. He must have tried to cut it out. He had said something about this in his morphine haze, but I never thought he was serious. Hand strong as iron wrapped around my wrist. someone was telling me I had to go now.

There was a whole army of nurses and doctors rushing to his side and checking his vitals, but as I was being dragged away, I saw something. I know I saw it. Since that moment, I've questioned myself a hundred times, but I have to trust what I saw. A tiny, pink-looking finger coated in a thick layer of blood was reaching up from his abdomen. It was rising from the bleeding hole he had cut into himself, groping like a worm from soil. Then the door snapped shut.

The last thing I heard before being taken farther away was the shout of the woman doctor I had heard talking before. It's time. Let's get him into OR. For a second, I almost thought she sounded giddy as she said that. Once word went round, I thought the protesters would have hauled off their signs and gone home. But the news of the child's birth only sent them capering around and cheering. I wasn't sure what was more horrifying. The fact that Evan passed away during his child birth? Or that the pro-life supporters only gave a shit about the child and not the host?

Host, yeah, that's what he was. That's all he was supposed to be. Dr. Thompson came to me in the waiting room, where the second hand on the clock had been ticking away eternities, one after another. My nails are bitten down to stubs now, a couple of fingers bleeding where I bit too far. Somehow I knew this was what was coming. That pink bloody finger protruding from the cavity Evan carved out of his own stomach was never far from my thoughts. You're Evans' friend, yes?

He peered at me over his oval glasses. Yes? Evan had told me about this doctor long before he became part of the group of the group of of physicians supposedly better suited to see him through the operation. He said he trusted Dr. Thompson and only him. I wished he would have been coherent enough for me to tell him about the other doctor from yesterday, the one who sought the administration's support to abort the abomination nestled above his intestines. But what good would it have done? He would still be dead all the same. Come with me. He turned to leave before giving me the chance to reply.

He took me past the ER rooms where Evan and I had waited a couple of days prior. We swept down a few more halls until he stopped before a set of double doors with a key card access. He swiped his badge and the doors opened to a flight of stairs that only led down. Where are we going? I asked, still too mentally fatigued to really care. In response, he merely closed the doors behind us and he came up close to me. His breath stank of vodka and chicken. Sherry's. Only then did I realize just how intoxicated he must have been, steadying himself by laying a hand on my shoulder. That bitch did this. Tell me, did Evan come to the ER before this started

happening for any reason at all? He had. I knew that because I was the reason why. We were pledging a fraternity and I pushed him to drink way more than he ought to have. He always said he was sick of being a virgin so I thought the alcohol would bring him to brave it out better. But all it gave him was a hefty dose of alcohol poisoning. He had to go have

his stomach pumped. And yes, it's occurred to me. Yes, he told me they took a blood test to confirm that he wasn't mixing other drugs as well. Your friend has, or rather, had a rare blood type.

Any other physician would have recognized it as O positive. But this woman has been waiting for someone with this subtle variation that he had. The type of variation that could support

a parasitic being. All I could do was laugh. You're drunk. You're living some kind of drunken, sci-fi fantasy plot in your head. He only shook his head and stared at me in silence. Now caught, he boldly lifted a flask from his inner pocket and took another nip before offering it to me. I refused, and he stood there for moments longer before an idea illuminated his eyes.

Down the staircase, three levels. He was pointing to the stairs. Take a right, pass two doors leading left, and then take the first one to over. Open up on the right. What? You won't believe me, yes? See for yourself. And do what must be done.

What do you mean do what must be done? Do what I could not. Before I could raise another repeal, he disappeared behind the doors in a brisk pace. The word registered several more times in my head, with no more meaning than the first. Still, there was a feeling bubbling in the pit of my stomach, a kind of subterranean knowledge. Do what must be done.

So I took the stairs leading down. I followed his directions as instructed. Once three flights down, I felt as though I was in a different complex entirely. The walls were bare concrete, and the floor was spotted with puddles. Even those I could barely see because the only lighting was a same. single trail of light bulbs hanging from the ceiling, spaced out at least 10 yards apart. Beyond the feeble yellow circles, all else was black as pitch. I passed the first door without looking in. Was I going to find his body here? I couldn't imagine why it would not be above ground

where the rest of the rooms and physicians were. Once I reached the second door, I was pulled in like an insect to a filament. I looked through the square window and saw a man with a belly almost as large as Evans was, but he wasn't moving. He was laid upon a bare mattress, which was the only piece of furniture in the room. Beneath him, something green and black was pooling into the fabric. Below that, the liquid spilled out onto the concrete floor, amassing in a tar-like puddle. Reluctantly, I pried away to continue down the hall. After ten more light bulb markers, the first door on the right stood wide open, an arc of yellow spilling out into the corridor. This room was different, very different. The floor was carpeted in baby blue colors that mixed well with the navy-colored walls.

On the walls were painted white balloons and teddy bears floating around the walls. I stepped in farther to find an oversized crib painted as white as the wall decor. Four aspen pillars twisted up like candy canes all joined together with ornate wood strips linking them together. Closer I stepped to find what remained of Evan's body. I apologize if I sound heartless as I say this. When I found him, I was mortified, but more than anything, I was confused beyond expression. I felt as though I had walked into an alternate dimension. Enough time has passed that I do not feel the wound so fresh anymore.

Even after I found his bleeding corpse in the crib, I stepped in closer still because I thought I saw something small, making a crunching sound beside him. But as I got closer, the door behind me snapped shut so fast that I dropped my tablet on the carpet. I ran back to the window and tried to tug it open, but nothing happened. Looking through the window, I saw two faces, one sneering and one ashamed. Dr. Thompson spoke first.

You have to forgive me. I have no choice. His voice was muffled as it came through the door. So too was the woman's voice muffled. But even so, I recognized it as belonging to the female doctor I had overheard at the nurse's station two days ago. She sneered as she spoke. He had a choice, just like you did. You could have chosen to walk away.

But I'm glad you didn't. Dr. Thompson here would have made a horrible feeder for the child. He's all bone and grisle and alcohol. I'm so sorry. Someone will find me! I couldn't completely understand what was happening to me, but I knew I should be scared for my life. All the other nurses, the doctors, everyone knows I've been here.

They all belong to me. She smiled in that same sick. kind of way. We have been waiting a long time to find the right host for this experiment. Our day will finally come. I beat on the door until my knuckles grew bloody and I screamed as loud as I could until I lost my voice entirely. The two of them merely stepped away and I saw no one else since.

Again I heard the crunching sound coming from the crib. cautiously I came in closer and I found the source of the noise. There, beside Evan, was the small baby boy. No, not small for a baby. It looked like it might already be the size of a toddler, almost as though it was growing right before my eyes. But it paid no attention to me. It merely continued crunching away on Evan's ribbones,

licking the marrow as its sharp teeth cracked them open. Then I knew what I was. I was the second course for this fast-growing thing. If it could grow this fast, I would certainly feed it into young adulthood. And then what? I didn't have long to ask myself that question before I approached the crib and reach down to strangle it. But before my hands could reach its neck, it looked up at me. Its vertical slit pupils dilated as it looked upon my face.

For a moment, it looked demont. but then the moment was gone. And it smiled. I can't explain it. Even now as I sit here trying to express this to you people, I don't know why, but I don't want you to come look for me. I do not want to be found by anyone. Suddenly, I feel more fulfilled than I've ever known.

Who knows, maybe he won't devour me. Maybe I am supposed to be this being's father. Nothing would make me happier. Our 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 next week for the next episode of the No Sleep Podcast.