The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S7E20

Episode Date: August 21, 2016

It's episode 20 of Season 7. On this week's show we have six tales about sinister sitters, unbalanced unions, and virulent voices."Jenny Martin"* written by Addlynn Oshua and performed by Corinne Sanders & Jessica McEvoy. (Story starts around 00:04:20)"My Grandma Lived Under the House"* written by M.P. Camus and performed by Jeff Clement & Erika Sanderson. (Story starts around 00:16:00)"Continuity and Equilibrium"** written by Henry Galley and performed by Nikolle Doolin & David Ault. (Story starts around 00:30:45)"Perfection"** written by Kerry H. and performed by Peter Lewis & Kyle Akers & Atticus Jackson & Matthew Bradford. (Story starts at 01:01:00)"The Psycho from Sophomore Year"** written by Matt Richardson and performed by Atticus Jackson & Jessica McEvoy. (Story starts at 01:20:30)"Stolen Tongues - Pt. 3"** written by Felix Blackwell and performed by Mike DelGaudio & Jessica McEvoy & Atticus Jackson & Kyle Akers. (Story starts at 01:41:40)Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast Click here to learn more about "The Worst Kind of Monsters" by Elias Witherow Click here to learn more about M.P. Camus Click here to learn more about Henry Galley Click here to learn more about Kerry H. Click here to learn more about Felix Blackwell Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon BooneAudio adaptations produced by: David Cummings & Jeff Clement* & Phil Michalski**"My Grandma Lived Under the House" illustration courtesy of Krzysztof WasilewskiAudio program ©2016 - Creative Reason Media Inc. - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media Inc.. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Be forewarned, 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. Season 7, episode 20, Jenny Martin, my grandma lived under the house, continuity and equilibrium. Perfection. The Psycho from sophomore year. Stolen Tons, Part 3. It's the No Sleep Podcast. I'm David Cummings. Thanks for joining us. On this week's show, we have six tales about sinister sitters, unbalanced unions, and virulent voices.

It's my pleasure to bring to your attention a new book by one of our regular authors on the podcast. Elias Withero has captivated a lot of listeners and readers with stories like The House in the Field, 10 Days, 10 Pills, and The Tall Dog. Elias has recently released his first book, a collection of many of his great short stories. It's called The Worst Kind of Monsters. I'll include a link in the show notes to where you can find the book on Amazon. It's available in paperback form. or for the Kindle.

I'm always thrilled when the many talented writers we featured on the podcast take that next step and publish their works. I hope you check it out and treat yourself to some excellent stories while at the same time supporting the community of writers who bring us these horrifying tales. And speaking of authors and horrifying tales, we have six of them lined up and ready to go. So let's wait no further and start.

start the show. In our first tale, we meet a woman who recalls when she was eight and enjoyed her time spent with her friendly and attentive teenage babysitter. But as we learn from author Adlin Oshawa, it was only when her babysitter needed to stay the night that things took a very dark turn. Performing this tale are Corinne Sanders and Jessica McAvoy. So if you're a parent in need of a sitter, just make sure you don't ask, Jenny Martin. When I was younger, about eight, Jenny Martin from down the road would come babysit me. For the most part, Jenny was a really great babysitter. It was during the summer when my parents had to work, so she and I would spend the whole day together. From memory, she was really tall, but that could be because everyone is tall when you're eight.

She had brown hair, brown eyes, and freckles. I think she was 15 or 16. Jenny always loved doing the things I loved doing. She would play Barbies with me and finger paint and give me a cookie at lunch. Sometimes we'd walk to the park and have a picnic lunch. She was really great. My parents would come home at 4.30 because she always left just before dinner. And my mom and dad would ask how my day was,

and I would hop around and tell them all the fun I've had. Those summer days were great, but then school started. My parents wanted the occasional date night and sometimes worked longer hours, so Jenny would come over after school and stay really late. The first few nights were fine. We had things like chicken nuggets or mac and cheese or hot dogs for dinner. One night I remember really clearly, though, we were having chicken breasts. My mom had left a recipe in all the spices on the counter, but I remember Jenny didn't touch a single one.

And when dinner was served, sitting beside some raw veggies was an equally raw piece of chicken. I remember being really confused and pointed out to Jenny that I didn't think it was cooked right. Raw is a delicacy. Eat up. I didn't know what delicacy meant, but it sounded fancy and I trusted her, so I ate the meat. Jenny did too. She tore into it like a starving dog and blood dripped off her fingers and fat smeared her mouth. She licked her lips and sucked her fingers before cleaning up. Since I was eight years old, my bedtime was 7.30. So at 7.25, Jenny would help me brush my teeth and get into my PJs and read me a bedtime story before tucking me in. I always fell asleep rather quickly, I think most little kids do.

And since I didn't have a clock in my room, I have no idea how long it was before I woke up to strange sounds coming from the downstairs. If I had been any older, I would have investigated. But my eight-year-old self would hunker under the blankets and squeeze her eyes shut, trying desperately to ignore the faint gurgling and scratching coming from the living room. The next morning, I'd tell my parents there were funny sounds from downstairs, and they told me Jenny heard them too. Apparently the water heater needed a new pipe or something. I don't remember exactly the story Jenny told them, but I bought it. I'm pretty sure I was an accident.

Now that I'm older, I've heard stories of how neither of my parents wanted kids, and a drunk Uncle Finn told me that I was conceived in the bushes of a Van Halen concert. My parents were pretty good parents, are pretty good parents. But even as a kid, I could tell they didn't. like having me tag along. So the nights with Jenny slowly became more frequent as they trusted her more and more. About a month after the water heater story, I decided to see if it really was the water heater. Like usual, I brushed my teeth, changed, read a story and went to bed.

And like usual, I woke up who knows how much later to weird noises. I grabbed the flashlight I had previously stashed under my pillow and slowly crept from my bed. I creaked open my bedroom door and made my way towards the sounds. I remember being confused because the gurgling seemed to be coming from the living room, where Jenny was, and not the basement which was in a different direction. I reasoned the sounds must be coming from a vent or something. I turned off the flashlight because I didn't want Jenny to catch me snooping around, and besides, the TV light was plenty to see by. The noises were really loud in the living room. I slowly peeked my head around the corner of the doorway.

Jenny sat on the couch, with her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her knees and her hair falling over her downward tilted face. She wasn't even facing the TV. She was facing me. I might have been a dumb eight-year-old, but I knew when to run. I bolted up the stairs, dropping the flashlight behind me. I stopped at the top of the stairs to look behind me. me and Jenny was now sitting at the bottom of the stairs in the same position.

Except now her face was tilted to look at me and instead of gargling, she was laughing really quietly. She was really pale and her eyes were dark. I screamed and I think I peed my pants as I ran to my bedroom. I dove into the bed and threw the covers around me as though the flimsy layer of blanket would protect me. I managed to stop crying and hold my breath. breath. I couldn't hear her, but possibly my heart was beating so loudly I couldn't hear anything. I remember I dared to peek out from under the covers, if only for a second. This time I know I peed.

Jenny stood in the doorway, rocking back and forth. When she saw me peeking at her, she made her way to my bed with her arms outstretched. I screamed as loud as I could, pulling the covers back over my head, crying hysterically. Somebody ran up the stairs, their feet echoing loudly, and I could hear my dad yelling, asking what was going on. Through my covers, I could see my light turn on, and I heard Jenny talking to my dad. I pulled the covers off my face, and Jenny was normal again, talking animatedly to my dad, pointing at me and herself. I leapt out of bed, still crying and jumped in my dad's arm, my pee staining his jacket. That night is a bit of a blur after that. Basically, Jenny claimed I had a horrible nightmare and I was crying and she came upstairs to comfort me.

I told my dad Jenny was scarier that she scared me or something, but I couldn't really get the right words to describe what happened. My parents ended up believing Jenny, and there were more late nights with her. Every time Jenny babysat me at night, I would hear those. I would hear those gurgling sounds from downstairs, but I would not have gone downstairs for anything. Sometimes they would get really loud and I would start crying under the blankets, but nothing ever happened. One night, though, it got worse. As usual, I woke up. This time, it was not to gurgling.

It was to crying. I could hear Jenny downstairs crying and sobbing, loudly, theatrically. And when I refused to investigate her crying, it would escalate, and she would start sobbing my name and begging for me to help her. This went on for three nights. On the fourth, she was being tortured. I could hear her screaming in pain and crying and the sound of her being gutted like a fish, all the while crying for me to help her, begging for me to help her. I never went downstairs, though. I would grab the chair for my desk and wedge it under the doorknob and hide under my blankets with a stuffed bear.

The whole time she cried, I cried. I was so terribly frightened that some nights I didn't sleep at all. And always, always when my parents came home, Jenny would return to normal. She would share pleasantries, collect her pay and leave. Even when I told them what happened, my parents never believed me. One day when I was nine, my parents decided to move. I remember it being really random, like one day we just packed up and left. I asked why we were leaving.

I was told it was because, Daddy got a new job, honey. But I knew a few weeks ago he had gotten a promotion at work. Surely a new job couldn't be better. Now, years later, I was recalling these strange events and asked my mom if she remembered my stories. I believed I had an overactive imagination as a kid because surely Jenny wasn't some sort of gurgly creature. I was talking to my mom over the phone and she got so quiet I thought she hung up.

Finally she told me she did remember and then she told me the real reason we moved. There was no Jenny Martin who lived down the road. There was no Jenny Martin in our neighbor's list of friends. There was no Jenny Martin. Jenny Martin in our town. When my parents talked to the police, they admitted other parents had told them about this mystery babysitter. One child was even found gruesomely murdered, eviscerated.

Somehow this didn't make the news. For over a year, there was no mention or report of this mysterious babysitter. That was the year I was babysat by her. The year before my parents caught on to the distrable. disturbing truth about her. That unknown teenage babysitter who claimed to be Jenny Martin. Many people can fondly recall spending summer vacations at the home of their grandparents. Days spent playing in new surroundings while being spoiled by grandfokes.

But as author M.P. Kameis shares, one young man had a very different experience at his grandmother's country home. Grandma was acting peculiar and something just didn't seem right with her. Performing this tale are Jeff Clement and Erica Sanderson. So pay attention to the subtle changes in your elders, like this man did when he realized my grandma lived under the house. During the months of June, July, and August, I spent many hot summers of my childhood at my grandmother's house,

further west on the island of Cape Breton. The forest was plentiful. The plains were a vibrant green, and my grandmother's house was a rickety old two-story that was built sometime in the 1950s and looked like it didn't belong. Despite its shortcomings, my childhood summers spent here

were some of the best I ever had. There were no other children to play with for the next few miles towards town, but I made my own fun, running through the fields of grass and smelling flowers in my grandmother's garden. I can still recall the smell of my nana's butterscotch muffins, wafting through an open window, sweet and heavenly,

and beckoning me inside. I can still remember the sound of cicadas in a warm breeze brushing my skin. I can still remember my grandma's face, watching me from underneath the porch step, smiling with all her teeth and, calling me to come inside. There were a lot of rules at my grandma's house, like no running inside the house with my shoes on and no playing in the garden. Some of them didn't make sense to me,

like locking the windows and doors before bed, even though we lived miles from society. Turning off the television at 8 and being in bed by 9 was the worst on a night with no school. There were even unspoken rules, ones that I didn't ask. my grandma about. Things like not sleeping with our arms and legs off the bed. Things like checking the windows and doors twice. Things like not pulling the shower curtain closed all the way, or hiding under the beds and in closets, or pulling the cord of the attic off the nail it was wrapped around. Though some things were odd, my grandma was a very well-liked woman. She was lithe, and her hair was long, shining a bright silver that looked like it reflected the moonlight. Well, she usually

kept her hair up in a tight bun, making the frown lines on her face prominent. When her hair was down, she could have been called beautiful. When my grandpa was alive, he would call her a silver fox, as once she was young and beautiful and quick-tempered. But she was the only one who could say something witty and clever to one of my grandpa's quips. Age made her soften herself. Her children made her emotional. My grandpa, passing away, made her sad and distant. But never once did I question her love for me.

Grandpa spent a lot of time out west, so his visits home were rare, but wonderful. My grandma used to say she liked having me around when he was gone during the summertime because it made her feel useful. I guess now that I look back on it, my nana was lonely. And my grandma lived under the house. I never saw her go to bed once. I never thought too much about it as I was a big kid that could sleep in a bed alone

with my covers tucked around me and my fingers and toes tucked safely away from the edge of the bed. There were quite a few times, though, that she would visit me from the window, standing in her garden bed to whisper things to me from behind the glass. My grandma's face was pressed up against the window pane, smiling with all of her teeth. Her hands cupped around her face to see inside a little better. I never questioned it. Why would I? I was just a kid with a silly grandma. There was nothing else to it.

She told me, I'm a little chilly out here. She told me once, her lips moving just slightly to sound out the words she spoke from behind the glass. The window was up high enough that I would just see above her collarbone, but I could see that she wasn't wearing anything. I laughed a childish laugh, and I responded with something like, That's silly, Grandma, you have a key to get inside. Come in before you get cold. My grandma wouldn't respond after this, but her smile would never waver for not even a second. She was still standing in what would have been my Nana's Garden,

one of the things my grandma wouldn't let me do. Though she wouldn't say anything directly to me, every time I turned away from the window I could hear her whisper things to me. I couldn't make it out, and I thought it could have been just nonsense. I didn't turn around to face her. I was uncomfortable with facing her for some reason, and I would lay in my bed, listening to her mumble incoherent things until I would fall asleep. It became like a routine. I would listen to her whisper softly until I slept, and by the morning she would be in the kitchen, making breakfast and pretending like nothing happened.

My grandma would call me silly when I tried to confront her about it and told me I had a vivid imagination in the way adults. would tell kids. I never really brought anything up to her after this. It was like a game between us. Every couple of nights, my grandma would come to the window and tell me to let her inside. Sometimes she would tell me that I was a good kid. Sometimes she would tell me that I was a bad child. Once and only once did I see her smile drift from her face.

She had been pestering me every night since she had started. at this game between us, I would ask her, beg her, plead her to just go away and let me sleep, that I was too tired to play and I didn't want to anymore. It wasn't until I got aggravated enough to yell at her that she left me alone for a few days, but not very long. I already told you I don't want to play anymore. Just come inside yourself and go to sleep. Her smile turned into a frown, but the look in her eyes made me uncomfortable.

She didn't whisper to me that night, but for every few moments I would turn around and find her watching me, frowning and glaring. I didn't know how I managed to fall asleep, but I do remember waking up to the smell of bacon on the frying pan in the sound of my grandma humming a song. One night, I decided to purposefully unlock the door. I waited until my nana went to bed to creep across the cold floor, unhooked the latches from the front door, and ran to my room to wait underneath the covers from my grandma to finally give the game up. She didn't come to the window that night. She came through my bedroom door.

I could hear her get on all fours. I could hear her get on all fours. I could hear her shuffle across the floor. I could hear her crawl under my bed. And that night, I heard her whispering from underneath my mattress, with my ear pressed up against the bed and the covers pulled over my head. Smell you. I shifted on the bed, with my back facing the wall and the window.

I didn't want to play this game anymore. I could smell you. fucking liver. Helplessness of knowing there was no one I could call to, to wake me up from this bad dream, was a feeling I'd like to never experience again. I'm gonna crawl into your inside, you little bag of shit. I can't tell you what she continued to whisper to me

from underneath my mattress. I blocked a lot of it out. curled myself into my blankets and made sure there were no parts sticking out before I slept. I can tell you that when I opened my eyes a crack, peered out from my blankets, I could see my grandma's eyes watching me from the bottom of my bed. I don't know how long I laid there, paralyzed with fear, but I did fall asleep and managed to wake up the next day, without my nana watching me from under the bed.

If she noticed the unlatched door, she didn't say anything. The look she gave me was a curious side eye as she put eggs on my plate. I can tell I broke her heart a little when I asked to go home. From that night on to the next few nights before I went home, I made sure the door was locked twice. She visited me repeatedly until I left. I didn't look at the house getting smaller in the rearview window, feeling like if I did, I might have seen her watching me back. I didn't go back to that house over the summertime.

My grandma came to visit me quite a few times at my house, but there was nothing out of the ordinary as far as I can tell. The nightly visits were over, and a few years after that, my grandpa was diagnosed with late-stage Alzheimer's. My grandma and my grandpa were two of the most in-love people that you could have met without being overly showy. My grandpa's sneaky kisses from behind the back of grandkids, and the smile on my grandma's face when he would ask her for coffee was proof. I could see the pain on her face when she would talk about how we forgot her name again that day, or couldn't remember the name of his kids. I watched my grandma suffer through my grandpa's disease as he slipped, slipped, slipped, and finally slipped away. My grandma died a while after that, hooked up to hospital tubes and being sassy to nurses. Thankfully, she never had to experience the deterioration of her mind as Alzheimer's took her away from us.

My grandma was spry, beautiful, clever, weird. It wasn't until we went back to clean her things from her house that I asked my mom about it. She told me a lot of things that I wouldn't have been told as a child. She told me my grandpa was a war veteran who married a much, much younger girl who worked at a flower shop. They lived in poverty for most of their lives, and when he couldn't afford an engagement ring, he built her a house with his own two hands instead. I asked her in the middle of this about my childhood. I didn't mention the things I experienced.

I felt like she too would have given me a flippant wave and a spiel about my imagination as a kid. My grandma was a little superstitious. For a short time, we thought she might have been getting Alzheimer's herself. My mother sighed as she tucked photographs into a cardboard box. They were just little things, like not remembering where she put her keys, forgetting about doing things in her garden, just little things. Suddenly, I felt like there was a weight lifted off my chest. That could have very well been the explanation for the oddities and the weirdness.

I felt kind of rude saying it out loud myself. My mother got me to help her pack boxes into the back of her car, ready to start moving out her things from the house and let it become an abandoned shack in the middle of nowhere. When we finished packing, I hopped into the passenger seat, lit up a smoke, and looked back to give one final farewell to the place where I spent a lot of time with my favorite grandma in the world. The only thing is, as we were driving back home, why did I see her watching me from underneath the step? with a smile on her face and far too many teeth. In many of the world's philosophies, the notion of balance and equality is a core component, like the yin and yang.

But in this tale from author Henry Galley, a woman encounters a tragic real-world example of this idea, and it involves her family and a mysterious gentleman making her an offer to restore balance. Performing this tale are Nicole Doolin and David Alt. So bear this in mind. No matter what choices you make, there will always be continuity and equilibrium. There's an old saying that goes,

we always hurt the ones we love. And yet, I can't bring myself to believe that there was any love in Harold Kaufman's heart. when he strangled my little sister to death in the back of his car. Grizzly, isn't it? It almost sounds like something you'd hear in an urban legend these days. But Harold wasn't a hook-handed maniac or some monster-licking hands under a child's bed.

He was a valedictorian, a promising college football player, and my sister's loving boyfriend at the time. I don't want to say her name in the same. same breath as his. He lost the right to share even a sentence with her when he killed her in cold blood. Harold had turned 21 that day. The birthday boy did the courteous thing and turned himself in after the murder. Meanwhile, during his confession, my sister's corpse was still laying rigid, blue and pitiful in the trunk of his car. My family and I didn't see any ligature marks on her slender throat when we were called in to identify the body either.

No, Harold had squeezed the life out of her with his bare hands. We all got to hope that it was quick, like stranglings are in movies. But we knew in our hearts that it wasn't likely. She died suffering for sure, but she would have had plenty of time to look at him while he did it, perhaps giving him a pang of guilt and offering her a final moment to wonder what she must have done to deserve such a fate. Hell, maybe she already knew.

I don't think I ever did in the end. If the strangulation was the slow death of my sister, then the trial was the slow death of my family. Nobody outside a little community like ours cared about a small town crime of passion. This was the mid-90s, the American. and fetish for glamorous crimes had plateaued earlier in the decade, and computers were still in their infancy. Nobody outside the city limits would give it a passing glance,

but in our little world, the case became a ravenous maelstrom. None of us got away unscathed. My sister, dead and buried, but unable to rest in peace. Her memory was being constantly exhumed and rendered by underhanded, lawyers and tabloid scumbags. My mom and dad divorced halfway through the trial when the stress of it all became too much for them to take. The thought of my sister's death made their love and happiness taste like sour milk,

and they just couldn't stomach it anymore. Mom got real quiet after they broke up, almost catatonic. And you'd be lucky to get a sentence out of her once the trial was finally over. A few months after the sentencing, my dad, her was living in a cheap motel off a highway with the name that's faded from my memory, ate his gun. The verdict wasn't innocent, but it might as well have been. Harold would only see prison for a year, but anyone with a brain in their skull could tell you that he'd get out early for being such a good little boy behind bars. Though I have to admit, even at the very depths of my depression at how the case was progressing, I couldn't help but marvel at the dexterity of the lies being weaved by Kaufman's top-of-the-line defense team.

Honestly, it was Lifetime Original Movie Theatrics. The narrative of the defense was that my sister had been cheating on him for months, lying at two-time and all the way, and when Harold discovered an incriminating article of clothing in her bag, he flew into a monstrous rage and killed her in his fugue state. At the time, he had no knowledge of right and wrong, so his lawyers had repeatedly insisted, and only after leaving his state of fury did he develop the mental clarity

to understand his wrongdoing. Then, like a good citizen, he promptly turned himself into the authorities. Halfway through the trial, the defense even brought in this dirty-looking hippie type who claimed to be my sister's secret lover. Just looking at the guy made me want to gag. I could tell from a glance

at his messy blonde dreadlocks and glazed over eyes that my sister had never seen this man when she was alive, but he was more than willing to play pretend on the bench if it meant enough money for another. a dose of whatever he was taking. It's not like his involvement with something that could easily be disproved. All in all, the Kaufman family buried justice

under a pile of money so big it had no hope of crawling out alive. The judge was an old college buddy of Harold's father, and the jury was won over by the dishonest portrait of the all-American former Boy Scout that was Harold Wayne Kaufman. The entire process was a farce from the outset, a bad joke told by a sadistic comedian. I spent seven months after that inn and out of bars, doing shit jobs and getting paid shit money,

living from drink to drink. Mom was crazy, dad was dead, and I just burnt out completely, counting down the days until that monster would be walking free again, coasting off of daddy's money. People had bounced back from worse, and people with rich, well-connected families were always better at it. So much of it is a blur.

Whole pages of my history are drowned in booze and misery. At the rate I was going, I figured I'd be dead of a pickled brain and a bum liver by my mid-30s, slipping off the mortal coil like a drunken tramp off of a, a park bench. Then everything changed.

I couldn't tell you the date or the time that it happened, but the circumstances are and always will be branded into my memory. It was a sweltering humid day in the middle of summer, and I'd spent most of it blowing my income on a deluge of tequila shots at a local bar called Quixote's. Latin music boomed purposely from speakers on either, side of the cramped room, and light strobed pink and green in an effort to make the dying institution look more alive. I'd just drained a tall glass of Corona and chased it with another

shot, feeling my throat burst into white heat that faded quickly after impact. Harold Kaufman had weaseled his way into my mind again, and I'd have downed a cord of drain cleaner to dull the ache of my hatred towards him. Back in those days, my shrink was Jack Daniels, and my stress therapist was Captain Morgan, and I'd visit both when the suicidal thoughts started to creep back in, as they often did. But then my thoughts were interrupted. I heard the soft clunk of someone sitting on the barstool next to mine, and pivoted slowly to face them, longing for some kind of distraction.

The man sitting next to me was overdressed for Quixote's. He wore an immaculate suit, jet black, contrasting sharply with the shock of silver-white hair and ghost-pale skin. He looked to be in his early 50s, sporting a hard angular face that suggested the aura of a deeply serious man. His eyes, though, were so soft and blue. They hinted at a sort of kindness that didn't fit the rest of. of his appearance. I remember them looking almost sad. Mind if I sit here, madame.

He spoke with a British accent, which wasn't something you normally heard around little Midwestern towns like mine. Be my guest, it ain't my bar. He nodded politely and scanned the menu, which was chalked up onto a blackboard behind the bar. I couldn't help but notice you sitting up here. by yourself. It seemed like a terrible shame.

It was almost as though he was speaking to nobody. I know plenty about shame. Don't worry. I'm pretty much used to it. I took shallow swigs out of another corona bottle. The man looked down towards the table and let out a sullen sigh. His gaze then snapped upwards, turning to face me directly. The court verdict. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. Immediately my body seized up and my muscles turned to concrete. Months of trying to escape these thoughts and suddenly a stranger appears and drudges them out of a sea of liquor still kicking and screaming. When control returned, I tried to get up and walk away, but he grabbed me gently by the wrist.

No, please. Sit down, just hear me out. But desperation shone in his eyes. I'm Mr. Burgess. I don't normally meddle so closely with personal affairs, I assure you, but I took a real interest in your case. I rolled my eyes and gave a spiteful sneer, but returned to my seat. Let me guess. You want to write a book.

Tell my side of the story. You're not the first wannabe. True crime author I've turned down. I don't need any more tragedy tourists in my life. He raised his thin eyebrows looking almost offended. What happened to you was more than a tragedy, my dear. He took on a grave tone. It was a monumental and unnatural lapse in justice.

A tip to scale and put things out of order. What? A rich white kid. who can throw a football gets away with murder? You must be really new here, buddy. That is the order here. Nothing unnatural about it. The corners of his mouth plummeted into a grave frown,

and his eyes took on a deadly glint, like light shining off a knife edge. The justice I speak of, Miss Nash, is far greater than what's meted out in any court of law on Earth. Compared to the body I serve, any concept of rules you may imagine are just shadows on a wall, utterly meaningless, a silhouette of true law. The incident with your sister and Mr. Kaufman strayed beyond the abilities of your courts and into the realms of mine. At the time, it seemed almost laughable to hear him talk about these odd concepts in such a grandiose fashion. I almost brushed him off as a particularly well-dressed lunatic,

but the alcohol in my system drove me into goading him further, seeing what I could dredge up. So what does that make you then? God, maybe? I suppressed a chuckle. Burgess grinned. No, miss. The devil then?

Oh, beazzle-bub. Think a little bigger, my dear. Bigger than God and the devil. What's bigger than that? What if I told you that there is no God and no devil? He said it's so calmly as though talking about something as a name as the weather. No great and mighty beings beyond the clouds, toying with the cosmos from afar.

There are just certain rules that have existed prior to space and matter, that have influenced all it was and wasn't, since before the passage of time even began. What does that make you then? No, no, I'm just getting to that, Miss Nash. I'll need you to be patient. I'm a busy man and I have very little time. You see, the two laws in this and all universes are continuity and equilibrium.

Cause and effect must always be in action, and forces acting in the cosmos must always be balanced. Light and dark, form, and void, and what you might refer to as good and evil. My job, you see, is to keep the books in order, but it's simply to keep things even. I took another sip of my drink and sat quietly for a time, soaking in the claims, feeling equal parts curious and bemused.

Where do I fit into this whole grand scheme of things then? Mr. Burgess smiled again and nodded his head knowingly. You don't. Not directly anyway, but Harold Kaufman does. He's the source of this imbalance. Justice is a lesser form of equilibrium, you know, and Kaufman cheated justice, which means he cheated both of us, does it not? I nodded in return. Good. Then we're on the same page. Now, what I need from you, my dear, is your permission. My permission. For what? To do away with Kaufman, permanently.

Oh, it's nothing personal on my end, but I assumed you'd get a degree of satisfaction from it nonetheless. There's a caveman in all of us. A violent, brutish thing that doesn't want justice, that doesn't want things to be even, belongs for nothing more than bloody Old Testament retribution. Devil or no devil, it couldn't be denied that in hindsight I should have thought about the deal more. I should have considered the terms more.

But I didn't care about myself. I was a write-off by that point anyway. An alcoholic deadbeat. All I wanted more than anything else was to see Harold Kaufman suffer for what he did to my family. In my mind, there was only one question left to ask. Why, though, if you are so powerful and these rules are so important, why do you need my permission? You said it yourself.

I'm not even a part of all this. His mouth became a thin, rigid line. His tone slits from jovial and charming to completely austere. I'm asking your permission as an act of courtesy, Ms. Nash. Disposing of Kaufman will solve one inequality, but it will create others. Death is a very serious thing, you see. Especially death that happens outside of the grand plan, a natural death. We'll be forced to correct that inequality too, my dear.

I can't promise I know how that will happen. It didn't take me long to think of an answer. Do it. You have my... Permission. Mr. Burgess smiled and stood up. It's been a pleasure, Miss Nash. It really has.

As Mr. Burgess began walking towards the exit, one more question fluttered through my drunken mind. Mr. Burgess, he stopped walking but didn't turn to face me. My sister's death, was that a natural death? Was that part of the grand plan? There was a pause filled with a deafening, oppressive silence. Goodbye, Miss Nash. He walked out of the bar.

Everything happened so quickly after that. I felt the first ripple of my deal with Burgess when I sobered up the next morning. My phone was inundated with texts and missed calls from a... reporters asking for quotes and local news channels were frantic with spreading the latest developments. But as fate would have it, I got the news from a late edition of the Daily Paper where it had made headlines. Harold Kaufman hangs himself in cell, parents distraught. A full-color picture of Kaufman's weeping father and sobbing mother graced the front page. There was a familiar scene.

I remember seeing my own parents acted out when my sister was murdered. A judder of sadistic enjoyment shot through me. A feeling of twisted satisfaction. I didn't regret anything. Hell, if given the chance, I'd have probably killed him myself. The article expressed bafflement at why such a promising young lad would choose to take his own life three months before he was scheduled to be released. The hanging was a bonus, really.

If Burgess was right, then the universe had a satisfying sense of irony to it. I'm not ashamed to admit that I got a lot of enjoyment from the thought of Harold dangling there, a bulging purple tongue forced out between his teeth by exphyxiation. His parents spending nights with tears, streaked cheeks, wondering where they went wrong. Perhaps that made me no better than him, but I didn't want to be better than him. I just wanted him and his family to be punished for what they did to mine. I felt the second ripple the week after. It was a Monday morning, and I found myself throwing up.

I couldn't remember having a second ripple. single drink the night before, but I got over it nonetheless. Then it happened on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and Thursday. And Thursday. Death is a very serious thing, you see, especially death that happens outside of the grand plan, a natural death. We'll be forced to correct that inequality too, my dear. I hadn't had sex since the incident. There was something about how. having your sister strangled to death by her own boyfriend that kills your desire for sexual intimacy.

I'd never been a religious woman either, but it was seeming more and more apparent that I was dealing with a twisted form of immaculate conception. Another one of Burgess's fixed inequalities, a life or a death, the books were even. At first, I considered her turn to. At first, I considered her terminating the pregnancy. I was a fuck-up. I didn't want to ruin some kids' life, too. But it got me worrying about Burgess's words, about what exactly constituted natural and unnatural death,

about what exactly was in the grand plan who so often mentioned. Yes, to begin with, I kept the pregnancy out of fear for what would happen if I didn't, but in the end it became something else. It became a reason to go on, a reason not to smoke and drink, a reason to not let myself hit rock bottom. It was my chance, my chance to bring something good into the world, to correct some more inequalities. That was what I kept telling myself to get through the nine months of pain and suffering, with no family of friends for support, to get me through work. working three jobs and saving whatever money wasn't spent on the bare basics of survival.

To get me through getting myself clean of all the vice his heartache gave me. Harold Kaufman became an ugly memory, relegated and filed away in the back of my mind to make room for more pressing concerns. His death didn't dull the ache, but it'd be foolish to expect it to. You can't feel something empty by taking it. more away. That's not how the world works. That's never been how the world works. There are just those two laws, Burgess told me. Continuity and equilibrium. When he was born, I named him Stephen after my father, Stephen Nash, Jr. He was the most beautiful thing I'd ever

seen. I raised Junior as best I could. He was a special boy. No father at all, but single mothers became more and more common as time went on. I had taught him right from wrong, told him about the family I'd had once, but didn't mention how those stories ended. We even went to visit Mom now and then, but she didn't say much. She never really said much after the incident. She died eight years ago, in fact.

Junior cried his eyes out. When he wasn't looking, so did I. For many years, I believed Burgess was some kind of angel. He'd come to me at my lowest point and offered me redemption, and through accepting it, I got a hidden blessing. Harold was gone, but that never would have made things better, not on its own. It was Junior that saved me. Wanting to be a good mother to him kept me going when giving up was looking a lot,

easier. I'd have nightmares about the bad times now and then. But when I saw his face, the fear would melt away. That little boy was the child of angels. For the first 15 years of Junior's life, we were in heaven. Then something strange began to happen. Something that began to change everything. When junior turned 16 years of age, I started to recognize him. It was faint, but the resemblance was there. It seemed every day, every week, every month he began to look more like him. I wanted to deny it. I wanted with all my heart to deny it, but facts aren't flexible. The truth is just the truth. There's no wiggle room there. I had to accept what my eyes and ears were telling me.

Stephen Nash, Jr. looked and sounded almost exactly like a young Harold Kaufman. The resemblance was striking, and with every year of Junior's life, he looked closer and closer to how that monster looked when I met him at age 20. I loved that boy more than I loved life itself, but it was getting to the point where I was. I couldn't stand the sight of him. It was all Burgess, that treacherous bastard. He hadn't taken Harold's life.

He just recycled it, and he needed my permission to be used as a goddamn tool. That was his equilibrium. No elements were ever taken or given they were just moved and substituted, like chess pieces on a board. He'd played both of us, and I was determined to stop him from winning whatever twisty little game he was playing. Junior may have looked like Harold, but he wasn't Harold.

Harold had hanged himself in jail. Whatever part of him was a monster had died and a noose made of bed linen. Little boy I knew wasn't like that. I'd brought him up myself, brought him upright. Even when he hit 20, I still loved that boy. He was mine. He was my perfect little junior. No matter what he looked like.

He got amazing grades. He was a fantastic athlete. He had a beautiful girlfriend and a perfect network of friends. He was the closest I ever got to brilliance. Heck, he was the closest to Nash name had ever gotten to brilliance. I was so proud of that boy, it was almost killing me. I felt the third and final ripple of my deal with Burgess, once I'd finished frosting a cake

and placing the 21st candle right in the very center. 21 years since I'd met Mr. Burgess on that fateful night amidst drinks in Latin music and Quixotets. 21 years since Harold Kaufman hanged himself in jail 21 years since my son was born it came in the form of a phone call from the local sheriff's department Why I asked the question even though deep down I knew the reason There was a long ugly pause after that In that moment, I was Mrs. Kaufman.

I was the mother of the devil, the monster, the fiend. But I couldn't believe that my Stephen would do anything like that. It had to be Harold. It was a hideous cycle that I just happened to be trapped in. Not my fault. Not his fault. Not his fault. A cycle doesn't have a big.

nor an ending. There is only equilibrium, a series of inequalities that need to be fixed. And continuity, the guarantee that one thing will always lead to another, and the progression will keep marching forwards. It's a loop that's been there since time started, and will be there until time stops.

I realized then, what it was all about. There will always be Harold's and juniors. There will always be people like me and Mrs. Kaufman, all victims of the loop. There will always be Mr. Burgess,

arriving in the aftermath of each iteration to make sure the loop continues. Getting wider and hungrier every time, eating more lives and more. families. It's left me with two questions, the very last questions. How many have gone before, caught up in all this, just victims of the loop, and how many are still to come? I think if I ever met

Burgess again, I'd ask him the first question, just out of morbid curiosity. The second question, I already know the answer to that one. That's why I'm here, after all. Just like Berger said, telling you is an act of courtesy. A little kindness from one victim to another. Be it sooner or later, the loop is going to come to you too.

You won't be the first or the last to be inside it. Broken parents, grieving relatives, the killers and the killed, the loop will come to everyone eventually. ...loods our nocturnal presentation. Now it's time to drift off into your own nightmares. 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 past 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. We'll have more stories for you and whatever that is standing right behind. This audio production is copyright 2016 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.