The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S6E09

Episode Date: November 22, 2015

It's episode 9 of Season 6. On this week's show we have five tales about undead urchins, miniature misery, and frightening filth. The full episode features the following stories. The free version features only the first two tales. "We Were Wrong About the Zombie Apocalypse" written by Rhonda Hussey and read by Corinne Sanders. (Story starts at 00:04:00) "Sleepless" written by L. Chan and read by David Ault & Erika Sanderson & James Cleveland. (Story starts at 00:21:10) "In the Backyard" written by Manen Lyset and read by Aiko van Wingerden. (Story starts at 00:59:00) "The Ballad of Sadie and Madeline" written by Rona Vaselaar and read by Jessica McEvoy & Nichole Goodnight. (Story starts at 01:09:40) "Be Careful Whose Messes You Clean Up" written by Dylan Pecelli and read by Peter Lewis. (Story starts at 01:34:30)   Click here to learn more about artist Matthew Kocanda  Click here for the podcast's Facebook page  Click here for the podcast's Twitter page  Click here for the podcast's Tumblr page  Click here to learn more about L. Chan  Click here to learn more about Manen Lyset  Click here to learn more about Rona Vaselaar  Click here to learn more about Corinne Sanders  Click here to learn more about David Ault  Click here to learn more about Erika Sanderson  Click here to learn more about Aiko van Wingerden  Click here to learn more about Jessica McEvoy  Click here to learn more about Nichole Goodnight  Click here to learn more about Peter Lewis  Podcast produced by: David Cummings Music & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings. "Sleepless" illustration courtesy of Matthew Kocanda Audio program ©2015 - Creative Reason Media - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a horror fiction podcast. By listening to our stories, you are choosing to be frightened and disturbed for your entertainment. You do so at your own risk. Brace yourself for the No Sleep Podcast. It's the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us. On this week's show, we have Five Tales.

about undead urchins, miniature misery, and frightening filth. I want to welcome and thank a new illustrator sharing his talent with us for the podcast. This week's creepy illustration comes to us from Matthew Kokanda. Matthew is a graduate of the American Academy of Art in Chicago with a degree in illustration. There's a link in the show notes to Matthew's site, so check out the excellent visual. art he creates. Every now and then I like to remind our listeners about our presence on the various social media platforms out there.

It's been great to see how many of you keep in touch with us on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr. If you've yet to join us, it's never too late to come on board. We're at facebook.com slash no sleep podcast and at no sleep podcast on Twitter and the no sleeppodcast.tumbler.com. and there are also links in the show notes for you. One thing to keep in mind about social media is that it's not the best way to contact me. If you have questions about the show, and especially if you need tech support for your season pass,

I really must insist you use email, David at the no sleeppodcast.com. I know to most of you kids these days, email is practically the same as sending a telegram, but it's really the only sure way to reach me. I answer tech support questions very quickly, and for other questions, well, yes, I admit it can take me weeks or months or years to respond, but I'll continue to do my best getting back to you all. And while you're online doing all manner of typing and messaging and whatnot,

perhaps you'll consider tapping your way over to iTunes to leave us a gloriously friendly review so others can find us and not sleep with us. Or is that what Tinder's for? I can never figure that one out. Anyways, sharing, reviewing, following, it's all very helpful for what we do, and it's very much appreciated.

And now we'll show our appreciation and present some stories for you by starting the show. In our first tale, we are confronted with a world in which, the undead no longer reside in the fictional realm. As explained by author Rhonda Hussie, the dead are rising from their graves and wreaking havoc upon the population, but before long people start to realize there's a pattern to the

mayhem and there are reasons why certain people need to be very afraid. Performing this tale is Corinne Sanders. So forget everything you've learned from stories like The Walking Dead, because you see, we were wrong about the zombie apocalypse. Some called it Judgment Day. Some called it Armageddon. It took a while before anyone called them zombies. We just didn't want to face the truth, I think.

Murder happens all the time. Even vicious, brutal murders hardly rate a headline in the morning. news these days. A few random murders, however grisly, didn't arouse real concern at first. As a society, we had become largely inoculated against such brutality. Daily, it seemed, another child was taken, sometimes found raped, sometimes found murdered, and more nefariously, some would claim, never found at all. We told ourselves it had happened somewhere else. It had to someone else. Never here, never to us.

But sometimes it did. It had become a backdrop to our waking lives. The milk carton kids had been replaced by walls of the missing in the vestibules of big box stores. Rarely did anyone pause to look. But for those with missing people, life was an excruciating exercise in stasis. Always waiting to hear of news. or breaks in the case, unable to breathe,

unable to move. But there was always hope. People clung to hope against astronomic odds that their loved ones would be found. After all, several children, some now adults, had been recovered following a rescuer and escape.

Their tales of captivity were dire. However, who could argue that they would prefer never to know than to have them back? But it gave false hope to millions and prolonged the agony of the bereaved. Hanging on was a kind of a living death in itself. Then the reports started coming in. It began as a trickle, which quickly grew to a flood of sightings coming into 9-1-1.

America's most wanted call centers, police stations, radio stations, to whoever would listen. This child or that young woman was spotted. I can't be sure, but she was definitely wearing the same clothes as on the posters. And... It can't be him after all these years, but it looks just like him. Servers crashed. Operators were overwhelmed. And there was widespread disbelief at first.

But soon enough, the evidence mounted. It was impossible. It was incredible. But however you cut it, there was no denying that missing people, many presumed dead, from all over the world, had come back. People tried to approach them, but the zombies were unresponsive to discourse. So many missing people had come back that people took to calling them the returned instead of zombies. They were the lost ones, the ones we hoped would be recovered alive but never really believed they would be. They had come back, but they weren't the same. They were filthy and lethargic.

They didn't or couldn't interact with others or their surroundings. They seemed disconnected from the world. None of them spoke nor showed any recognition of those around them. In fact, they didn't seem to communicate in any way. They were unnerving in their catatonia, and although they seemed to have a destination in mind, whether or not they actually had a mind was debatable. Yes, they had come back, and they seemed to have somewhere to go, for no placations or pleas from the living would stay them from their journey for long.

They would eventually amble on, inexorable and unwavering, shuffling towards destinations unknown. Something had returned, but what these things were and what they wanted was a mystery. But they were not the people we knew. They were alien and alienated, foreign to our hearts, and they carried the odor of rot about them. From shallow graves and swamps they rose. Some even clawed their way from cemeteries and churchyards. From vast fields and shuttered basements they came.

Somehow they'd become imbued with a powerful, unnatural will to seek out something or someone. It was truly terrifying to see them shuffling up the high road or down the lane, doggedly pressing on to untold destinations. Then the first reports that they were killed. killing people came in. They were unlike the zombies of cinema, however. These were not fleshed crazed, slavering automatones, hungering endlessly for entrails and brains as envisioned by Romero.

The return showed little interest in consuming those they killed. Their main objective was clearly to kill. There was substantial evidence of ripping and chewing, but it was most likely the result of the result of, of the return having only their hands and teeth for weapons. There were no indications that they consumed what they killed. Mastication was a means to an end. They did not kill indiscriminately.

They were very specific about who lived and who died. Among those targeted by the returned were policemen, politicians, lawyers, teachers, movie stars, mechanics and convicted pedophiles. They were from virtually every walk of life. They seemed to share no common denominator, although they were almost exclusively male. Many of the victims were pillar of the community types, but nothing seemed to connect them.

It was a popular television host who put forth the first tentative guesses at what lay behind the mystery of the returned and those they selected to die. He knew the meaning of loss and tragedy better than nearly anyone, and it was he, with his dark adapted eye, who saw past the veneer of legitimacy of these men, and a few women, and began to connect the dots. It was this icon of the missing, speaking from retirement, who ventured the first credible theory for the gruesome deaths at the hands of the dead. His proclamation met with a dubious reception. He was vindicated with a little help from a young journalist and blogger who illegally accessed the National Criminal Database

and obtained a list of accused and convicted of sex crimes suspects. And it was he who presented overwhelming evidence that the targets of the returned were most likely responsible for their murders. Panic ensued. Hordes of men swamped. the police stations, confessing to unsolved or in some cases unknown murders, sometimes confessing to crimes in which someone else had been convicted, confessing, confessing, confessing to anything they could think of. All with one stipulation, immediate remand. Jails had become the last refuge of the guilty. Prison seemed to be the only true safe place for the wicked.

Then even these safe havens began to fail. There were rumors that the guards didn't fight too hard to keep the returned from gaining entrance, and there was a whisper or two of complicity. After it was realized that the returned weren't indiscriminate in their retribution, more and more of them accidentally made their way onto the Max Sec wards. How they gained entrance to the electronically locked cells is anyone's guess. Although one fact is indisputable Those tasked with the imprisonment of criminals

May also have friends and relatives who are the victims of evil And are not necessarily opposed to a little Deuteronomic justice Being meted out on their behalf In the beginning there was fear and panic and mayhem But once it became apparent that the returned were not attacking at random Indeed could not be provoked into violence not even when savaged themselves. We began to relax a bit.

As time passed, we simply grew accustomed to them. We began leaving our homes and shelters, going about our business as usual, even while they shuffled ever onward. I saw one walk across the freeway once. Driver slowed to allow it to pass. They were just a part of the scenery, no more remarkable than a rock or a dry.

tree stump. Hindering them didn't work for long. Injuring them didn't work. Even shooting them didn't work. If they had so much as a single arm or leg left with which to drag themselves along, they kept going. Patiently and emotionlessly, they just kept going. The old adage about getting them in the head was wrong.

Some had clearly been killed via varying degrees of head tron. Whatever force had animated them didn't seem to rely on the central nervous system or an intact cranium. We relaxed because an image seen over and over will eventually lose its power to shock or alarm or even inspire notice. We relaxed because they seemed to be on a mission. It was a mission of revenge, and we could live with that. I think some people welcomed them. They were cleaning house, as it were, doing for us what a proper democracy could never hope to accomplish. They were unerringly administering a biblical justice, an eye for an eye, a life for a life.

I think we actually started to feel safer. The most insidious threats to society were being removed, the oft-times invisible threats that shared our homes and shared our beds, One could walk the streets at night. The returned were a better deterrent to crime than the death penalty. Pleading couldn't save you from their justice. Money couldn't save you from their justice. It was horrifying at first, yes, but it was also satisfying.

As far as we knew, they never hurt an innocent person. They never made a mistake. But of course, eventually all good things must be interfered with by the government. The people in charge began rounding them up. What became of them after that, I do not know. But there were many, and they just kept coming. That was when the wife of the television host died, killed on camera by the headless body of her young son.

John took a gun from his own bodyguard in the country. confusion and ended his life in a resounding bang. Not a soul could blame him. Shock and outcry were immediate. Possible explanations were more elusive. Speculation ran wild. Why her? Had she been involved in her son's death? She had never even been seriously considered a suspect. Nothing in the media had ever pointed to her, and her grief and guilt at having left him unattended, albeit very briefly, were plaintive and wrenching. Their dramatic loss had played out across millions of televisions. I can't name a single person who questioned her innocence. The answers came soon enough. As more and more parents of murdered children began to be taken by the return, it became clear

that they held those who had failed to protect them as responsible as those who had kidnapped and murdered them. When this unfathomable concept began to sink in, many parents of murdered or missing children took their own lives. Their fates were sealed, convicted by their own hearts long before they could be silently accused by the returned. There was little fanfare, although there was great sympathy. Many others simply resigned,

themselves to the inevitable and awaited their fates. They waited on lawn chairs and on stoops, on car bumpers and tire swings. They seemed to be everywhere. I never realized how many people have lost children. Having been tormented by their secret failures for decades in some cases, these parents grimly and stoically welcomed their wayward child's final toothy embrace. Across the lonely expanse of years, I've prayed she would find her way home. I've hoped for it.

I've dreaded it. Knowing the horrors most children are subjected to when kidnapped. I've berated myself and hated myself. I've blamed myself and blamed everyone else. I've made deals with God and I'd make deals with the devil if I thought he would keep his end. I've fantasized about it I've mentally prepared feasts and homecomings and grave sites

I've imagined many many scenarios but this one that never occurred to me seems to fit the best somehow it fits my guilt and desire to be punished you see I sent her out to play that day because I was busy busy with chores and cooking and laundry, busy with things that matter not at all. The only thing that ever mattered was her,

and I was too preoccupied to know it. As for me, I'll await my end in my old rocking chair. I've left the kitchen door ajar for her, for my Ruth. Sleep disorders. You might think. think we hear at the podcast enjoy our contributions to this problem, but we recognize that many people suffer from insomnia and other conditions which force them to seek treatment in order to get a good night's rest. But as we learn from author L. Chan, a man working at a sleep clinic

meets a woman whose restless nights are from a cause much more external than internal, and his desire to help her puts both of them at risk. Performing this tale are David Alt, Erica Sanderson, and James Cleveland. So be thankful when you close your eyes tonight. It's far better than ending up sleepless. The irony about talking about sleep here is not lost on me. Perhaps one of the precious few things I have left. There is a certain catharsis in letting it out this poison in me. I fear that it would otherwise eat me from the inside. A lifetime ago, the smells in my room would have been enough to draw the hot bile straight from my gut.

Pale food, the unwashed stench of a man wallowing in his own fear. Straightly enough, Chalk. The smell of chalk is getting stronger. I would know. It's my fault. There's a series of lines of chalk on the wooden parquet floor of my room. A little reminiscent of those lines your parents drew on the wall to remind you of your growth every year. It starts at the corner of the room, just like it did for the others. It's more than halfway to work. I sleep. He's not going to get me have a system now. The first 72 hours I spend hopped up on caffeine. Coffee is pretty much all I drink now. I know a guy that helps me get some of the stronger stuff when the caffeine isn't working that well. The money will run out eventually, but tomorrow is the only day that matters. After the hours run by, it's time for a cocktail of downers, a sleep bomb, It. Five separate pills and I'm unconscious. Down so deep that I've pissed my bed twice without

waking up. I don't care. And as long as I don't. Place to start a story. High school literature told me is at the beginning. So to the beginning we go. Ever seen a sleep clinic? Probably not, but there's one closer than you think if you stay in a big city. I used to work at one. You went in for a night, they'd hook you up to something, take all sorts of measurements and charge you an arm and a leg. If you were lucky, they'll help you with your insomnia or your sleep apnea or any of a dozen problems. Me, I'm not a doctor. Didn't have the grades. Got a certificate that set me up for nursing, but managed to wangle a recommendation to this place.

Cushy job, really? I was part nurse, part nurse. butler part technician and because i worked nothing but the night shift full-time internet addict i brought people a spotted breakfast from the cafe down the road made sure all the monitors were hooked up right and made sure they got a good night's sleep we had six rooms website said they had state-of-the-art equipment actually the owners got it at a steal from another place that closed down but hey it worked Rooms were nice, like hotel, nice, best fucking beds you'll ever see. I remember that night because it was the busiest we'd ever been.

All six rooms were booked. They got another guy into help out with wiring everybody up and monitoring them for the evening, otherwise it would have been too much. We called him Barnes, partly because that was near enough to his real name, partly because he did bear a more than passing resemblance to the purple dinosaur said name. It was busy work, but straightforward. We wired up the patients one at a time in their rooms. That's when the first Nafu hit. Five of the patients were men. The last was a lady. We should have gotten a female technician in. Obviously someone had botched the schedule,

but the patient didn't mind. Maybe it had been better if she did. Christabel That's what she said her name was But everyone called her Christy She rocked that post-goth look That so few people got right Black pixie cut almost to her shoulders Sheed bones just high and round enough

To frame her smile perfectly She didn't smile much Not in the short time we had But when she did it was It was like watching a light bulb A flicker or two Shy at first and then damn did the whole room light up.

You'd fall in love with that smile if you saw it. I know I did. I asked her if she minded if I put on the electrodes for the machines. She was okay, pulling down the top of her oversized t-shirt enough to reveal the hollow of pale skin above her collarbone. Up close it was clear why she was checking in. Her eyes were red from lack of sleep, the skin underneath, pouched, nearly bruised looking.

She asked me the strangest thing, the first time. Yes, the first time someone had asked, actually. Will you be far if I call? No, ma'am. We're just outside by the reception. There's a call button by your bed. Is there anything you need? Christy is fine.

Forget I asked. She gave me a smile then, her first, and the tiredness just vanished from her face. It lasted for, moment, the sun peeking out from behind the clouds, and then it was gone. Barnes and I settled down for the evening. We were just there to prep stuff for the morning and make sure none of the clients knocked their monitoring apparatus off overnight. Happened about as often as you'd think, given our clientele. We'd watch the screens in our

room, tracking the meaningless squiggles of brain, heart and lung activity as our charges slept. Barnes had a predilection for some of the more esoteric reaches of pornography, which he watched openly, given our long association and his inability to adhere to the invisible lines which kept society orderly. Huh, that's odd. I was a little wary of looking in his direction. Odd could mean an equipment failure. Odd could mean midget lesbian dominatrices. What?

Look at the graphs. Not the midgets then. The squiggles had taken on the familiar peaks and troughs of REM sleep. They look fine to me. He flicked the mouse wheel, pulling the zoom back until more of the graphs were visible. They all started at the same time. He was right. That was odd.

But odd was just the beginning. I was back with another. of the clients, this one a gruffman in his 40s. He didn't have much to say, one of the types for whom the serving class had become effectively invisible. There was a slightly discolored patch on the carpet in his room halfway between the wall and the bed. I made a note to remind the cleaning lady to look out for it later, bending down to rub it with the back of my hand to see if the snob had actually spilt something. The patch on the floor was cold, not damp, cold. Ice cube from the freezer cold. So cold that I swore I actually felt a slight suck from the

floor as I ripped my hand back. Rubbing at it vigorously brought some feeling back as I fled the room. Christy's room was next. She was sitting on the bed, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs rocking back and forth. If anything, the lack of sleep was even more evident that morning, a haggard mask on her otherwise delicate features. I greeted her and got silence in return. Guesses that she wasn't much of a morning person. No matter, sleep disorders do strange things to people and the cold shoulder wasn't the worst I'd gotten hit with running mornings at the clinic. The room was almost done when I saw a familiar patch on the ground, bringing with it the slight vertigo of deja vu. I rubbed at the patch with my

shoot foot, the cold sharp enough to feel through the layers of rubber. Don't. Don't what? Stand there. That's where he stands at night. One of the crazy ones then. Psychological problems often spilled over into insomnia and other ailments. Who? The small man. The one who stares at me at night.

The one who looks at all of us who checked in. There's a simple response for this. one which people fail to grasp. It works on the young, the old, and the deranged. Just smile and nod. There's no challenging of world views, no unpleasant friction. Just smile and nod. And I got out before she said anything else.

You know what they say about crazy? If only crazy didn't have to be so damned attractive all the time. Burns and I were knocking off. Clean up and stowing all the monitoring devices have been a pair of. pain. The clients would get there half an hour with one of the doctors and go over their charts in gory detail another day. Hey, you want to know something else that's odd? Come on, Barnes. You find a blip in the charts and all of a sudden you fucking rain man. At least I'm not fucking one of my clients with my eyes. You like the emo chick, huh? I felt that unbidden burning in my earlobes as the

blood rushed in. I don't know what you're talking about, Barnes. Sure you do. Can't blame you. She's pretty. Not my type, though. Doesn't have the... He mined a pair of comically large breasts in front of him with spread fingers. You're quite done, Barnes. Nah, just watched them head off earlier. You know that three of them know each other. They were all high and how's it going as they left? Weird shit, huh? I'd have written it off as coincidence. These things happen.

hadn't I run into an old neighbor at Cancun when I was on spring break? What were the chances? Six clients, six anomalies on the EEG at the same time. Two cold spots on the floor. I left something back of the clinic. I'll see you around, but. He stopped short, looking at me through narrowed eyes. You take care now.

Messing about with the records gets people fired. Make sure you're thinking with the right head. He tapped a dirty face. fingernail to his temple and vanished down the street. For applauding sexual deviant, he did have flashes of acuity. Shit, maybe he was, Rain Man, because he was exactly right. The doctors were out for lunch. Guidelines stipulated that patient records had to be under lock and key, but people got sloppy. The six clients did stay at the same apartment block. Nice part of the city. Of course, they wouldn't have been able to afford the treatment otherwise. Six clients, one address, one single

episode across the night. One condition. Sleep paralysis. That was odd. We don't know much about sleep paralysis, to be honest. I've educated myself off the brochures and posters they have at the clinic and snatches of conversations with the doctors. Imagine, waking up but the rest of your brain is still dreaming. Rarely people got out-of-body experiences, but more commonly hallucinations of an intruder in the room or the feeling of being crushed. It's where he stands at night, she had said. A coincidence, that's all. Lightning does strike twice. People win the lottery. Except the floor was cold enough to freeze skin in not one, but two rooms, maybe all six. I could have let it go. You walk by a thousand people a

year. Ever wonder if one of them was a serial killer? Same thing here. This could have passed me by. Then Christy came back. There was nothing magical or coincidental about her coming back. Everybody got a follow-up after all. It was just after my shift and I was sorting some stuff out by the reception. I gave her a smile. A girl like that walks past, you don't just let her go. You smile even though the odds are 99 out of 100 she doesn't remember you, smiles the cost of a lottery ticket. And sometimes, like that day, the girl smiles back. Not one of those megawatt smiles, a simple curling of the lips, a slight crinkle to the eyes, and then she was gone into her appointment. Does it sound like I was a little in love? Probably. This is her story as much as mine.

So many forks in the road, so many branches. I could have gone home and all would be well. Instead, I filled the owl with busy work, organizing the stationery at the counter and chatting with the receptionist until Christy came back out. She was not doing well. Her eyes were slightly redder than insomnia would suggest and there was a hint of a stagger to her step as she stumbled from the clinic. I caught up with her just past the front door. Are you okay? Stupid question. She wasn't. Oh, it's you from the other night. Sorry I wasn't better in the morning. I'm not a morning person. I take it that things didn't go well with the consultation.

No. I didn't have great hopes for the doctors in the first place, but I'll try any For the hallucinations? Well, they're well documented. She stopped short. The next words coming with more force as the color rose in her pale cheeks. The small man is not a hallucination. Christy took a deep breath and let it go slowly. I'm sorry about that. I've been on the edge lately. We were talking about drugs and stuff and I don't think he believes me. Try me. We had coffee down the road from the clinic. Christy majored in maths and programming, classic geek chick. She spoke in short bursts, pausing in between snippets to think. I sipped my coffee as this seemingly well-adjusted angel spun a tale of madness with a face so straight that you could have been discussing Java or Python.

I've read up on sleep paralysis. What I have is exactly what they describe. I can't move breathing is difficult you know they say it's like someone's on your chest they're exactly right but there's more

he's in the corner of the room the small man if my head is just right I can see him from the corner of my eye I can't move he doesn't either just stands there he's hard to focus on

like blurred around the edges you're a Remember when we got TV through an antenna as kids? It was sort of like he was in between stations. Sometimes he's wearing a suit, sometimes a robe like one of those Toga things. He's pale, and he just stares. His mouth is moving and it's too fast to see, too soft to hear.

I first saw him two months ago. I cast my mind back to the files back at the clinic. Did all six of them start their problems at the same time? It wouldn't have surprised me one bit. The entire episode smelt bad. It felt wrong. I shivered despite the warm morning sun. I don't think the small man sees me.

Not really. The thing is, he's not at the same place every night. I think he's getting closer. Every night he's getting closer. I don't want to know what happens when he gets to me. That's where I could have stood. stopped it all. I lied earlier. Irony isn't all I have left. Irony and regret. The kind that replays things in your head over and over. There's a little bastard voice kind of soft that

whispers. That's where you could have changed it all. Except that choice was yours and so is the voice of regret. I told Christy about the cold spot and the others. Her place was how I'd imagined it to be, a little small with rent in the city being what it was. Firefly poster on one wall, de Gras Tyson on the other. She wasn't a neat person, clothes were strewn on the floor, the table was in disarray, but she'd created space for something, a swathe of empty floor from wall to bed where she'd taken to the ground with chalk. The closest of the lines were so close to her bed that an outstretched hand could have smudged it. He's almost at the bed.

I know he's saying something, but the mouth is moving as so fast, almost like his teeth are chattering. She took my hand in two of her hands. I don't want to hear what he has to say. Suddenly conscious of herself, she dropped my hand and looked away. I'll sit you up over there across the room. I'll pay you the same as you would have earned back at the clinic. PayPal or check, we'll sort it out later. The task was simple.

watch her while she slept, watch the spot on the floor for the small man. Record it on my phone if I could. Not the worst thing I've done for money. It was passing strange that she'd invite a stranger into her house to do this, but people hook up all the time for far less. Christy was already asleep, breathing deeply. Sleep had taken the pinched frown lines from her brow and the slight pursed look from her lips. So peaceful.

I wandered to the kitchen for a glass of water. I didn't even have to turn on the lights in the hallway they were motion activated. Nice. Guess her parents must have had real money or something. I settled back onto the beanbag she dragged into the room for me as the lights in the hallway winked off. Getting through boring nights was one life skill that work had taught me.

Time dragged. That's what it does when you have nothing to do. I imagined five others in the same building as Christy all asleep, all waiting. There's an absolute clarity in my recollection of the events of that night as I was sitting there surfing the internet with my phone. Then the lights came on in the hallway. I strained for the sounds of a flatmate walking around the thud of footsteps. Nothing.

Motion activated those lights. There I was, a grown man, alone in the dark, afraid of the light. Irony again. The door was miles away. My heart hammered in my chest a wild thing, but what it pumped through my veins was ice. No, it wasn't my blood that went cold. My breath coalesced into a white puff before evaporating back into the dark. Something else had triggered the lights outside and something else was in the room here with me.

The slice of light from under the bedroom door was no help. I hit the light switch and turned to face Christy. Have you ever seen a face transfixed by fear? Probably not. Not like this, not like what I saw. Christy's face was so twisted that I thought I could hear the creek. in the tendons of her jaw. The source of her torment was clear the patch of floor next to her had grown a delicate

desolation of frost. There was no one there, no tiny man, no whispering chatter, nothing but the strained breathing from the woman on the bed. Her voice, when it issued from her throat, was strangely calm. Don't touch me. Don't come near her. Don't touch me. Don't come nearer.

Don't touch me, don't come nearer. Over and over, soft but urgent. I put my hand in the empty space where the small man would have stood and snapped it back so fast that I slapped myself in the chest. It was like putting my hand in a blast chiller. More than that, there was a feeling, something that we don't quite have words for. Reeling from that discomforting sense. I decided to take action.

The glass of water from the kitchen felt heavy in my hand. I threw the contents of the glass onto Christy's face. I've been doing a lot of thinking about the small man. Christy tucked the edge of the towel behind her head. I tried filming him once. Nothing came out. But he still triggered the motion detector. What do you think happens to us when we sleep?

I didn't have a good answer for that. just as well that I wasn't a doctor. I stammered out something about rest and the formation of long-term memories. Yes, yes, but what do you think happens to you? Okay, look at all this around you. Form, shape, dimension. How much of it is real? Or do you think it's all just here?

She poked me on the forehead with a finger. The gesture at once childish and rude, but her proximity. was intoxicating. I think our brains make the world as we see it because our brains are trapped by the mundanity of the flesh. Something else happens to us when we sleep, though. We, not the collection of neurons, the essence of us.

It's free to fly. But I don't think we're alone there. The sea's big, but it's deep, and darker things lurk there. I was halfway between right, her off completely as some third-generation hippie with this sudden turn towards this new-age bullshit. But there was a moment when I reached out earlier when the world had gone sideways, lines blurring and bulging as though something was pressing inwards from somewhere outside.

Outside of everything. Christy nodded. It reminds me about the time between high school and college when my friends and I drove out to the middle of nowhere, dropped a tab of acid and looked up at the stars. There's more than we experience here, that's for sure. Did you ever read Flatland? Never was a big fan of science fiction, but the book sounded familiar. I was written ages ago, mostly about shapes existing in a two-dimensional space, interacting with a three-dimensional being.

But they could only see it in slices. She picked up a sheet of paper and a book from her desk, holding them up to eye-level, sliding the book past the edge of the paper. See, just a bit at a time. like us and the small man. It hit me when you told me about the clinic, that all six of us had had our episodes at the same time. There aren't six small men.

There's just one. The book hit the floor with a thud. She spread her free hand into a claw and rested each fingertip on the paper. Just one small man, something different from us. He's getting closer and there's not a thing I can do about it.

She brought the fingers of her hand together into a fist, crumpling up the paper and letting it drop to the ground. The very idea of it was ridiculous, but it stuck with me on a visceral level, twisting in my gut like a knife. There was no reasoning with this woman or what she felt, but there was something that happened an hour ago that defied the logic I had grown up around.

I don't have much time left, I think. There's one thing left to try. I'm going to talk to him. Christy hadn't just made an appointment at the clinic. She'd been feverishly reading up on everything related to sleep paralysis and its associated conditions. It was there that she came across the idea that you didn't have to be helpless in dreams. A small minority retained lucidity in that drifting state, but control is something that can be developed.

There's something about the way the small. man looks and moves. I think he knows where I am and at the same time he doesn't. That's why I never dared to try this. If I reached out to him. The sentence hung in the air, unfinished, open. She shook her head. I called in sick. Barnes was covering for me. He'd sent me a text with an asky depiction of a penis and a thumbs up sign. At least some things didn't change. For the second time in as many I found myself staring at Christy's sleeping form. Before going to bed, she'd spent a good ten minutes reciting to herself that she was in control of her dreams, a little mantra to help her get into the right frame of mind.

The time came again as I knew it would. An unnatural chill took the air again, as sudden as a plunge into a pool of ice. Christy began to thrash on the bed, her flailing so violent that her covers, and pillows were scattered. When she came to rest, her eyes were open, staring at the spot on the floor from which the cold emanated. Her face again took on that mask of fear, the look of an animal with its leg in a trap. I put my hand tentatively to the place where the small man would have stood and again felt the edges of the world distort and waver. It was too much. I pulled my hand back, rubbing it against my thigh to chase away the cold.

I see you. I'd have expected something harsher to come out from that twisted visage, but her voice was calm. I don't want to go with you. Fear is an insidious thing. It creeps, it infects, the air was thick with it. Why me? Why us? Christy again. I won't go with you.

I won't. I won't. I won't go with you, I won't, I won't, I won't go with you, I won't, I won't, I won't go with you, I won't, I won't go with you, and over the words coming hard and fast. Yes, I can. I hear it. The music, it's under everything. You're right, everything sings, it's beautiful. A single thin thread of scarlet ran down from her ear across one ash and,

cheek and blossomed on her sheets. Her eyes were open, unblinking, staring right through me to some unseen landscape only she could see. Christy's voice continued in that flat monotone in terrible contrast to the mix of emotions written on her face. I see it now. I see outside of everything. Colors between colors. Space outside of space. To hear is to see, to see, to see. To cease to understand. To understand is to take that first step. Her voice rose with the last pronouncements higher and higher almost sing-song. When she finished, she reached out with one arm, straining so hard that the corded muscles stood out against her pale skin. She was going for the small man. That was the only signal I needed. Avoiding the cold spot on the floor,

I leaned forward and seized her hand. then you were supposed to wake me up not the other way round the morning light through christie's window was bright too bright too bright for eyes that had seen what exactly she pulled me to my feet from the beamback what happened christie frowned and tilted her other ear towards me say again i said what happened I saw things Not just the little piece of the small man that made it to this building All of him, her, it I know what to do now

You don't have to worry She smiled I don't understand I heard you speaking to him And then when I touched your hand You barely slept in two days It was too much for me to expect That you'd have seen through the whole of last night

That's me being selfish You know I read that if you think too hard about things, they're liable to spill over into your dreams. I don't think it's a good idea for us to see each other after this. But the least I can do is buy you breakfast. Breakfast sounded good. She was right about the lack of sleep. I'd been running on empty before I woke up. My body was grateful for the rest.

The events of the night before had already taken on the fuzzy veneer of a nightmare. If Christie seemed at peace, then, Who was I to judge? I let Christy lead me from the room as I pondered the single splash of crimson on her bed. It would be good if the story ended right here. The boy doesn't get the girl, but they both live happily ever after. Go away, then, stop listening here and take that away. It's better than sharing what I know now.

I was true to my word and did not look Christy up. I didn't have to. The place where she stayed was in the news once after we met, but that's how I knew. It was, in Barnes's words, odd. Five people dying unexpectedly in their sleep. Two were in their middle years, already suffering the predations of a rich diet and a sedentary lifestyle. The other three were younger. The newspapers speculated about sudden adult death syndrome. Conspiracy theorists went wild for a spell, but it all fizzled out. I knew Chris, Christy was gone too, but it took me some time to find out how.

In the end, I got the information from her building super. He'd seen me once when I'd come over and related what he knew for nothing more than the price of a drink, or several as it turned out, for the information discomforted him almost as much as it did me. She did it for herself in the end instead of waiting for the small man. Enough painkers to take her to the brink of senselessness and the razor edge of a box cutter did the race. vest. Two vertical lines down her forearms, bifocating those thick arteries and drifting to sleep one final time. He'd found the body. Christy had made sure of that in her own thoughtful way, asking him to check out a leak in the pipes that afternoon and leaving a bottle of moderately priced

whiskey in the living room with a note for him. The police hadn't cared very much. She was alone at the time of her death and the hours before. Her depression and insomnia were well documented. What puzzled the police and the super was why, after she'd bled out so much that her sheets were soaked through and spilling to the floor, that she'd taken the time to plod through her own blood and leave a trail of footprints from her bed to the corner of the room. The small man came for me soon after, as I knew he would.

He was everything Christy said and more. I hear the whispers through the thin walls of my room and know that I'm not the only one he plagues at night. But I found a way to keep him a bay. I've got my plan to plunge so deep into sleep that he'll never find me in that space in between. It's not the idea of the small man that terrifies me. Not the idea that there are things lurking and hungry. It's the idea of those space. Spaces in between.

Hidden where we drift between the waking and the dreaming. Spaces where things like the small man lurk and hunt. Spaces with colours that aren't really colours where the music is so beautiful that it deafens. Spaces which I could get to. If only I took the first step the same way Christy did. She's out there, I know. somewhere in that unnatural expanse that I saw when I took her hand a sight so wrong that it quickly drove sense from my mind. Perhaps one day I'll give in. Let the small man take me.

Then I'll see her again. See what she's become. That's what scares me. We thank you for being with us for our devilishly dark tales. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions 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 1999. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us again next week when the darkness pulls you away from sleep.

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