The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast – Sleepless Decompositions Vol. 1

Episode Date: August 23, 2020

It's the first of our Sleepless Decompositions. Tales that fester from within. “The Door” written by Candace Vazquez (Story starts around 00:06:30) Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Narrator – Nichole Goodnight, Dad – David Cummings “House of the Flycatcher” written by Olivia White (Story starts around 00:20:30) Produced by: Phil Michalski Cast: Livs – Erika Sanderson, Max – Jessica McEvoy, Ted – Atticus Jackson, King of Flies – Jeff Clement Click here to learn more about Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm David Cummings, showrunner for the No Sleep podcast. Horror can be about many things. Abysmal beasts that snatch at you from under the bed. Demons that possess you and try to steal your soul, ghouls, goblins, and witches. But sometimes it can be about very real things that people face in their daily lives. Trauma, loss, fear, these are all things we deal with and can seem like real-life horror stories when they're happening.

And even when they're over, they can leave scars physically and mentally. And sometimes even when that traumatic thing happened a long time ago, it dwells in your mind and you need to talk about it. That's where services like BetterHelp come in. If you need someone to talk to or just to listen, they're a great option. Better Help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist. You can start communicating in under 24 hours. It's not a crisis line.

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BetterHelp can offer that helping hand. So visit betterhelp.com slash no sleep to get 10% off your first month whenever you need it. And welcome to the No Sleep Podcast's inaugural release of an all-new brand on... An all-new brand in? We're finally replacing him with an upgraded model? Ahem. An all-new brand on our feed.

A new type of show. Something wild. Something wild. never before seen. A stand-alone episode. As in, it's not part of a season? That's correct, Jessica. And up until now, we've absolutely never run any episodes outside of a season that were available for everyone. Wait, but what about at the start of the year when Olivia and I were...

We don't need to hear about what you and Olivia get up to. No, I mean, didn't we do a certain standalone miniseries called the new... Type of episode. Yes, the new type of episode. That's exactly what I'm trying to say. This is a brand new type of episode. And it even has a name, a cool, catchy pun that only a genius could come up with. The first time we've ever had a pun in the title of a No Sleep Podcast episode. And that pun is, sleepless decomposition.

Oh, I get it. Sleepless because tonight there will be no sleep. And decompositions because they'll contain in-house compositions, such as spooky stories by one of our staff writers. But decompositions because, you know, we're all spooky and such. That is 100% accurate and astute. Ha ha, clever girl. Thanks.

I absolutely got the pun on the fly and didn't reel off that explanation. because Olivia's written it here in the hosting script. So, this is a brand new episode, but it isn't part of a specific season. Yes. And speaking of specific seasons, did you know that season 15 starts next weekend? And did you also know that season pass 15 is on sale right now? All people have to do is go to season pass. Dot the no-slapepodcast.com.

And you'll be able to order season pass 15. right there. 25 full-length no-sleep podcast episodes over two hours long, plus three exclusive bonus episodes, well over 66.6 hours of audio horror entertainment for only 2499. Oh, that's cool. I'll certainly be tuning in. Um, well, I'd hope so.

And did you also know that one of our beloved authors, S.H. Cooper has a new collection of short stories out? It's called All That's Fair and is available from Amazon. I did know that. Exciting stuff. And speaking of exciting stuff, let's get on with the first entry in our new Sleepless Decompositions series, shall we? We call this episode Sleepless Decompositions, Volume 1, Bad Vibrations. I think I get the massage.

Oh, puns. You've been spending too much time around, well, me. But anyway, in our first tale, we join a young woman who suffered a tragic loss. When you lose a loved one, it can often feel like time stands still for you while everything else continues on around you. It can be jarring and scary. But in this tale, shared with us by author Candace Vasquez, time hasn't stood still.

It's looping. I join Nicole Goodnight in performing this tale. So let's live through a day in the life of Annie, and again, and again, and again, at least until she opens the door. I wish I could say that my day started off like any other. An unreasonably loud alarm clock, the brightness of the morning sun across my face. Hell! Even a crowing rooster would have sufficed. No, I didn't get mornings or nights.

I got afternoons. the same afternoon like some twisted Groundhog Day rerun. My days started in study hall, the last period of the day. Freshman year, high school. January 2015. Five minutes before the end of Daybell. No matter what I did, no matter what I said, everything was always the same.

It didn't matter if I chose not to answer Mr. Penmore's question. He went on as if I had. No matter how fast I tried to get home, I always arrived at the same time. 3.04 p.m. I tried staying after school, and once I even ran directly to my bedroom as soon as I got home in an attempt

to avoid the horrifying event altogether, but my efforts fell on futility. When the clock struck 306 p.m., I was always standing in the doorway of the upstairs bathroom, looking at my mother's exanguinated corpse. Every time I found her lying in a mixture of her own blood and water, her dead eyes staring up at the post. popcorn ceiling. Whatever force held me in this limbo allowed me to stay in that moment, just long

enough to scream and shout, why? After a while, the why became less about the reason my mom had done this, and more on the motive behind the constant repetition. Had I done something wrong? Did I cause this? Was I being punished? This went on for an innumerable amount of time. The boredom was constant. The outcome never changed. I couldn't go anywhere I hadn't been or seen anything I hadn't seen. Pages of books that I recognized yet never read were blank. Everything was the same until it wasn't. The bell rang releasing the students into the hallway. I lagged behind as usual, weary and depressed. My feet shuffled along. I gazed down at the multicolored tile floor as I went. my forehead smacked into a solid object which sent my body toppling backwards.

I rubbed my smarting head shock that I could feel pain that wasn't emotional. I grimaced as a headache began to form. I looked up in search of the thing that had effectively stopped my forward momentum. A door stood in the middle of the hallway. It was a pretty generic wooden door, one you might find on the front of any cookie cutter home, soft brown with a brass knob. I reacted the way any reasonable person would.

I got up, righted myself, walked up to the door, and cranked my head around to the other side. When I didn't find anything over there, I pulled back and stared at the doorknob. A few things crossed my mind. Is this the way out, or is this a trick? Hope was standing right in front of me. What if this was my only chance? Could I let it slip away? I found my hand reaching and grasping the knot before I made the conscious decision to do so.

My hand turned, but the handle didn't. The damn door was locked. I kicked it and cursed at the sick sense of humor of the damned force that held me here. The moment I made the decision to turn and leave the door behind, it was as if the day had sped up. I had only been in front of that door for a few minutes, yet I found myself in the upstairs bathroom once again gazing down at my lifeless mother. I let out the same scream that left my lips when I found her the first time.

Everything was raw again, and then it was study hall. I felt worn out but never tired. Not like I ever slept anyway. More days passed, at least that part of the day. When the door showed up again, it was on the bus right home. A regular-sized door in the middle of a school bus, The aisle wasn't wide enough nor the roof of the bus high enough to accommodate the door. None of this seemed to matter.

The edges of the wooden door simply phased through those areas, and the children passed through as if it didn't exist. The door had a window in it this time. As soon as I made a move to interact with it, the world around me stopped. The bus, the movement and voices of the other kids, even the goings on outside the vehicle. I tentatively peered through the glass. I saw only what was currently on the other side of the door.

The inside of a school bus and children were frozen in time. I sighed in disappointment and turned away. My mom looked like a porcelain doll, pale, wide-eyed, and unmoving. I didn't scream this time. In the following days, I began writing letters to my mom that I knew she would never see. It wasn't just that I knew I would never see her alive again in this world of repetition, but that I knew deep down, if I ever would ever see her alive again in this world of repetition, but that I knew deep down, if I ever managed to get past the upstairs bathroom, that she was really dead.

The understanding that this world was not a nightmare, but a memory, was gradual. With it came the memories of the events leading up to the last five minutes of study hall. My morning really had begun with an alarm clock, only the sound was set to resemble that of a rooster, and I had opened my eyes to the blinding glare of the morning sun coming in my bedroom window. I showered and got dressed. My mom had breakfast waiting for me like she always did. We talked about sleep and my upcoming math test. She told me she loved me and kissed my forehead goodbye,

then told me I was going to miss the bus. This made me lurch off the bar still at the kitchen island and bounce for the front door, backpack in hand. I had barely made it out the front door when I realized I forgot my pencil back. I ran back inside into the living room, barely glancing at the bag as I snatched it up. I yelled out to Mom as I flew out the door to the awaiting bus. Bye, I love you. The school day passed as normal.

I'm pretty sure I flung to my math test. But as study hall was nearing the last five minutes, a thought that had been roaming in the back of my mind all day pushed its way to the front and shoved a mental picture before my eyes. When I grabbed the pencil bag off the stand that morning, there had been a small pill bottle next to it. I could chalk it up to the busyness of the school day or the inner workings of an absent-minded teenager,

but honestly, I don't know why it took me so long to register what I had seen. A second after this memory, the clock ticked a five minutes remaining of class. Right after I regained this memory, I was thrust back into the doorway of the upstairs bathroom. I looked over at my mother as I had done so many times, but this time I felt a weight in my hand and held it up. A prescription bottle of pills was clutched in my fingers. My mother's name, along with the name of an antidepressant, was printed on the label. It was a bottle of 30 dated for six months ago, and it was full.

I guess we see more than we think we do. I didn't know how long my mother had been depressed. No matter how long, she hid it well. How could I have known? Not once had I felt its effects. My mom always treated me like I was the most important thing in her life. She was the kindest, most attentive mother I had ever met. In that moment, the realization dawned on me that this was not my fault,

and there wasn't anything I could have done. My mom loved me. She just hadn't loved herself. Annie? Someone called my name. My head whipped around, and I looked into the upstairs hallway. The door was back and perched on the edge of the staircase. I made my way to it and looked through.

the window once more. A fatigued and slightly plumber version of my dad sat on a leather couch in a room full of books. He was looking back at me with the hopeful gleam in his eyes. I hadn't realized I had a hold of the knob until I was pushing the door open. The room on the other side was suddenly much larger. I sat across with my father on the leather couch. I was dressed in what looked like white button-up pajamas and there was a man with glasses sitting in another leather chair on the other side of us. Where are we? I glanced back at my dad for the answer. He burst into tears with a smile on his face and gathered me into his arms.

I welcomed the hug as my own tears began to spill over. Then he and the doctor began to talk. The new information on top of my own revelations was a lot to take in at once. The words catatonic and years were passed around, as well as my father informing me that my mother was dead. All I could say was I know while I cried and hugged him some more. We finally got to experience the shared grief that had been denied us for so long. But I didn't blame myself anymore.

Now I know that if I ever get lost again, all I have to do is search for that door. And now we take a quick break from the horror to bring you news of a brand new product from an old friend of the show. That's right. Quip are back. And they've been brushing up on their talents to bring us all something new. and exciting. When's the last time you got rewarded for brushing your teeth? With Quip's new smart electric toothbrush, good habits can earn you great perks, like free products, gift cards, and more. So not only does your mouth get rewarded, but you do too. The Quip Smart Brush, for adults and kids, connects to the Quip app with Bluetooth so you can track when and how well you brush,

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Spelled G-E-T-Q-U-I-P dot com slash no sleep. Quip, better oral health made simple and rewarding. And now, back to the horror. That first story was tragic, but hopeful and uplifting. Our next tale isn't quite so heart-wrenching, so you won't need the tissues out for this one. Ah, this is the in-house composition of Decomposition's fame, isn't it? That's right.

For this inaugural episode, I wanted to showcase one of the No Sleep podcast's best and brightest writing talents. But in the end, I didn't have time to write a story, so I asked Olivia to do one instead. Oof, sick burn. I'd call it more of a quip, personally. Oh, I get it because the ad was just... Yes, yes, yes, yes. And someone's been dying to make that joke since 2018.

Speaking of 2018, which happens to be our next author's IQ and age, let's get on with the show. In our second and final tale of the first iteration of sleepless decompositions, We join a young British woman as she's just moved into a new house in the States. It seems like her new life is set. Awesome roommates, an excellent kitchen, beautiful scenery and a lovely backyard.

Except in this tale shared with us by author Olivia White, there's something weird in the trees outside. I join Erica Sanderson, Atticus Jackson, and Jeff Clement in performing this tale. So let's all enjoy this new abode, in an idyllic location. We'll just have to hope that its nearest neighbor isn't the house of the flycatcher. I remember seeing it when we moved in. Max frowned. I don't think so.

But I didn't check out the backyard that much. Yeah, I was kind of more enamored with this. I gestured around the kitchen. Shiny countertops and modern appliances. A far cry from the dilapidated kitchenette I'd just. shared with my previous roommates. You were more enamored with trying to call dibs on the biggest bedroom. I smirked.

Yeah, well, I needed it. You never know when I'll be entertaining company. Dude, the last time you entertained company, they hadn't even invented calendars for you to mark it on yet. Ted stood in the doorway, one elbow leaning against the frame. I grinned. Action figures count as company. Besides, I did the right.

thing and let you two have the largest room in the end. I'll make do with the box room. It's fine. Your box room is still bigger than our last entire ass apartment. This place is amazing. Besides, it could be worse. You could be living in that. Max turned back to the thing that had caught our attention in the first place. A rickety old birdhouse nailed to a massive mottled cedar.

Ted approached the sink where Max and I stood. Oh, yeah, that. I noticed that yesterday when we moved in. What's got you two so fascinated by it? It's a birdhouse. It's a weird birdhouse? It's a birdhouse. All birdhouses are the same.

Their houses? For birds. You think everything's a weird something, lives. No, seriously, Ted, it's weird. Just look at it. I'm looking at it. And... Holy crap.

What was that? That? See, you saw it too. Well, you said the birdhouse itself was weird. You didn't say there was something weird in the birdhouse. Listen, semantics. There's something weird in the birdhouse. Ergo, the birdhouse is weird. What the hell is it, Ted?

We can't decide. We've been deliberating for like half an hour. I mean, it didn't look like a bird or a rodent. It's like red and multi-stranded. But why haven't you just gone out and looked? You're both meant to be super badass horror chicks. Are you really cowering in the kitchen because there's a creature in our birdhouse? I mean, we were also making coffee.

And before that, we were working out how to use the coffee maker. Look, we even made you a cup. Ted reached for the proper drink, took a sip, and grimaced. It's cold. Listen, we haven't quite gotten to grips with the part where you make the water get hot. Anyway, this isn't important. There's a thing in our birdhouse, and you, as the man of the house and Max's protector, have to go and check it out. Whatever have a door quality.

And what? My protector? We all know if we suffered a home invasion. I'd be the one you sent out there to take down the intruders. Dude, I'm covering for you. What happened to? I'm not fucking going out there by myself. That's because I wanted you to come.

And I shall. Let's all go. But, uh, Ted's going first. Yeah, fine. let's all be massive babies and investigate the birdhouse together. Our new backyard opened onto acres of Montana forest. We had a small patch of grass and a siding that I'd allocated to grow chives, and the rest of the yard was bordered by ancient towering cedars

that led off into sun-dappled woods. The prospect of exploring the woods to find a secluded writing spot had been high on my to-do list ever since we'd put the deposit down on the property, and I wasn't going to be stopped by a birdhouse nailed to a tree. At least not one birdhouse. Look at all of them. Okay, I'll admit, this is very weird. Our cedar wasn't the only one with a birdhouse.

Every few rows of trees back into the forest, another identical little abode had been nailed to a tree. They went back as far as I could see, before the darkness of the woods made picking them out impossible. And the first one was on a tree in our garden, in full view of the house. Can you feel that? Ted was closest to the birdhouse. Max stood slightly behind him and I took up the rear.

I couldn't feel whatever it was, but I noticed that despite it being a hot day in June, Ted was shivering. Max took a step towards him and began shivering too. I hung back. I was underdressed compared to them in a tank top and unreasonably short shorts I'd been given by Max's sister Lily as a housewarming gift.

Is it like cold here? Come here seriously. You've got to feel it. Her teeth were almost chattering as she spoke, but other than that in the shivering, she didn't look cold. Tentatively, I stepped forward. I felt it almost immediately. It wasn't a change in temperature like I'd been expecting.

It was like the air itself was vibrating, and anything caught in this pocket of strange pressure was vibrating too. I could feel it in my muscles, my bones. It wasn't at all pleasant. Nothing like sitting in a massage chair or anything like that. My organs started feeling like they were being displaced. My teeth began to grind together. It felt like the membrane covering my brain was tightening.

And then I really felt it. My spine, being twisted and pulled, the structure of my torso starting to come apart. A metallic tang filled my mouth and I braced myself for a feeling I'd experienced once before and had hoped never to experience again. I think you should get out of there. Yeah. Come away. I couldn't focus on anything.

Nausea rose up in me. All I could do was stare at the birdhouse, the only thing that seemed to remain unmoving while everything around me distorted and became a blur. I stared into the little hole in the splintered green-tinted wood. The black circle seemed to grow, filling my vision while at the same time the molecules of my being felt like they were coming apart.

I saw movement inside the hole, the brief protrusion of something, red strands, like caterpillars attached at the base. What looks like an individual eye at the top of each one? My own eyes felt like they were vibrating in their sockets, like when you stare too hard at a magic eye picture. I felt like I was sliding forwards. The ground itself shifting me towards the birdhouse,

towards the thing inside whose visage I'd only just seen but was already beginning to forget. Hands grabbed me around the waist, pulling me backwards. My whole body felt like it was snapping back into being. The more I sensed myself being pulled away, the more it felt like I was being drawn back together. I felt a pressure on my heart like the organ was being squeezed by a warm hand. My legs gave out and I collapsed onto the grass, feeling another tug on my wrist, pulling me across the warm ground. I lay there, staring up at the summer sky.

My body felt like what I imagined Jello would feel like if it was sentient, settling and solidifying. I could hear Max breathing heavily to my left. I tried to move my head and pain shot through my skull, so excruciating I closed my eyes against the tears. Holy shit. Is she okay? I don't know. Lives, can you hear us? I could, but I couldn't respond. Why did it affect her so badly? I wanted to answer, but couldn't.

I turned my head to the right and felt my neck cracking, my vertebrae loosening and popping. I tried to move my limbs, but all I could do was make them twitch. All the trees with the birdhouses have the circles at the base. Circles? I forced my eyes open. Mere inches from where I was, I could see a discoloration in the grass, stretching out around the tree in a circle. It looked like the tree itself stood at the center.

Judging from how far I could remember being pulled, I must have been almost to the birdhouse before they rescued me. Liz, can you hear us? Can you move? Ted was much closer. I caught a glimpse of knee and realized he was kneeling beside me. It took all the willpower I could muster to raise my head and speak. Yeah, I can hear you. I don't know if I'm okay.

Max was back, her hand on my shoulder. Can you stand? Can you walk? We need to get you inside. Getting me inside had not been an easy task. By the time I reached the back door, I was walking just fine, albeit in a lot of pain. but the period between had felt like a super sped-up version of learning to walk again after spinal reconstructive surgery, which I believed was the key to explaining what it happens to me. So, do you know how, like, my spine's, like, partly reconstructed with metal, yeah?

Max nodded. Well, when you two stood in the circle, did it feel like your bodies were sort of being shaken apart? Yeah, a little. It wasn't very nice, but... Nothing that felt unsafe. I think that's because you're like both 100% biological matter. I think something about the vibrations caused an extreme reaction with the metal work in my spine,

like it was trying to separate the biological from the man-made. At least that's what it felt like anyway. And then, because the non-organic matter is literally on my spine, which houses, you know, my spinal cord, that's why it fucked me up so badly. It felt like the brief split second sense, I had when the metal work snapped after my first surgery, only it wouldn't stop. I mean, I've experienced some pretty crappy physical sensations in my life, and I can tell you

that it was hands down the worst by a country-ass mile. I was sitting on the couch now, having been previously guided there by Max and Ted, while I tried and failed to get my theory out. They could clearly tell the amount of pain I was in and wouldn't let me talk until they were sure I was comfortable. Comfortable was something of an overstatement, though. My spine felt like it was on. fire and every time I moved my head I was worried that I was going to dislocate something. It was the kind of pain I hadn't expected to experience again since having a broken back over a decade ago. But the good news was that it was fading, fast, like something had come

apart and was now rapidly healing. So, uh, one, the hell was that? And B, what do we do about it? I mean, I guess it was related to the birdhouse somehow. Did you guys see the thing pop out again when I was going all Kronenberg and waiting for my body to explode. We were too focused on working out how to save you. It's not often that my best friend starts vibrating themselves to death on the spot. If Ted hadn't noticed the circle on the ground and taken a guess that may be getting you out would help. Okay, if we're going to live together, I need you to promise me something.

Focus on investigating the possibly supernatural mysteries first, save me second. I can handle being eviscerated if it gets us into the cryptosolome. I always said I wanted to go out with a bang. Max rolled her eyes and patted my head. Nope, sorry. We save you first, then investigate the killer birdhouse. Every time. I'm not living with an exploded roommate on my conscience.

I grumbled, although of course I was seriously grateful that they'd opted to save my life. Fine. And thank you for bodifying me to safety, Ted. It's what I do. Tared flexed a bicep muscle. He was looking towards the kitchen doorway, though, through which we could see a glimpse of the window looking into the backyard. Right? There's only one thing for it.

We've got to get back out there and investigate. I've got just the tools in my room. And no, don't worry, I won't be going into the circle again. I stood up, arching my shoulders back ready for action, and immediately let out a cry of agony. Oh! Oh, my actual... Fucking...

Max smirked, then fell serious, clearly torn between laughing at my vulgarity and worrying about the excruciating pain coursing through my body. Dude, take it easy. It's been around ten minutes. I took a step forward, and pain shot up my legs, into my crotch and the small of my back. I only just managed to stop myself stumbling and falling.

Max put a hand on my arm. Seriously, I'm worried you've been actually damaged or something. I shook my head, although even that was agony. Then gingerly tested my joints, twisted my spine from side to side. No popping, crunching or snapping. That was good. I knew what to look out for.

Nah, it's hard to explain, but I can tell the difference between something damaged in there and it's just hurting like this. Oh, I just need to walk it off. Oh. Ted was in the kitchen. I made my way in there, each step easing up the pain slightly. Dude, you're not going out there without me, right? Max and Ted exchanged a glance.

No, seriously. If you don't let me come with, then I'll never forgive you. Serious risk to my health be damned. Besides, do either of you have an idea of how to investigate without going into the circle? They looked at each other again, and Ted shook his head. I was just going to risk getting close. It feels weird as hell, but it doesn't affect us like it did you. Well, I know how we can do it without any of us being at risk.

So you're just going to have to wait on me to get what we need. And maybe take some painkillers. My chest feels like I've been motivated by Daniel Bryan. Why do you have so many selfie sticks? Max looked down at the same. the pile of telescopic poles on the grass with her hands on her hips and disapproval on her face. Right, listen, you may not realize this, but it's incredibly hard to get a good picture of your ass. Max frowned.

Okay, I get that, but like, one selfie stick would suffice, surely. Not when you keep losing them. Then find all of them when you come to move into a new house with your friends. So, now I have three. I'm going to pretend this makes sense, because... because it does make things extremely convenient. We both glanced over at Ted, who seemed done with duct-taping the three selfie sticks together.

He stood up, handed it to me, and brushed grass off his knees. There, now we have a makeshift selfie stick long enough to reach the birdhouse without any of us having to step into the circle. I inserted my phone into the clip, outward's camera facing out, and waved it about carefully. In my other hand, I held up the Bluetooth remote. I can switch between flash and night vision with this thing,

Going to try the latter first and the former. Whatever's in there won't escape the terrible gaze of Liv's Pixel 2XL. Unless it's deeper in the birdhouse. Or standing just to the side of the opening. Solid snake style. Despite their chiding, I could tell they were impressed by my ingenious idea. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with you being the one to do this. Ted nodded in agreement.

What? Why? I tried to ignore the aching that was still present. in my spine, knowing full well what they were going to say. What if you trip and fall into the circle? Come on, I'm not that incompetent. And you can hold on to me if you're really worried. It had been a joke, but that's exactly what they decided to do. Max gripping me by the waist while Ted gripped her,

like we were trying to reach over a cliff to rescue a person hanging there. I felt a little ridiculous, but it did give me a little more balance for the selfie stick. So I gently reached it out, the titanium poles doing their job. job and Ted's skilled duct taping holding nicely. When my camera lens was less than an inch away from the whole of the birdhouse, I began to take night vision photos. I'd made sure to silence the camera click so as not to disturb whatever was inside. And I made Max and Ted work as I leaned side to side, trying to capture slight angles, just in case Max had been right about the thing hiding against the front wall.

I was in such a good position with the camera that I didn't really want to reel it in before taking the flash photography, so I went with that next. The first three picks produced no response from the birdhouse, but then as I clicked the button for the fourth, and the flash went off, we all heard the beating of wings and a frantic scuffling inside the tiny abode. Quickly I reeled in the selfie sticks, eager to see if anything was going to emerge. The commotion died down. I thought I caught a flash of red in the hole, but nothing else.

We stood there for five minutes, just in case, but it soon became clear that whatever lived in the birdhouse had felt more threatened than angry by the flash and wasn't going to come charging out to confront us. Inside, Max grabbed my phone from the end of the selfie stick and took it to her laptop. I don't want to try scrutinizing them on a phone screen. Let's all look at them together on here. Wait! The panic in my voice caused Max and Ted to look up an alarm.

I blushed. Just don't scroll too far back in my camera roll, okay? "'Max rolled her eyes and looked me up and down. "'I'm pretty sure it's nothing I haven't seen before.' "'Pretty sure it is. "'Just be a good friend and don't go snooping, okay?' "'She connected the phone with the USB cable and immediately went snooping. "'I appreciated Ted keeping his distance,

"'his face averted from the laptop screen. "'Meanwhile, I dived down onto the couch next to Max, "'try not to let the pain in my spine show as I landed hard. to see, isn't it? Hey Ted, come check this out. Do I really want to? No. Yes?

Look, it was just for the clout. This shit blows up on Imager. We all stared at the elaborate 100 photo Transformers' Tea Party photo shoot I'd set up. Star Screen was wearing a tutu. Megatron sported a bonnet. Optimus Prime held a tiny cup with his pinky out like a British gentleman. Can we just look at the potentially sinister. creature in our birdhouse. Max wiped her eyes. I guess. But I am absolutely going through your phone

one day when you're sleeping to find more like this. I made a note to transfer all my action figure photography to the cloud and leave only nudes behind as a revenge. The mood soon grew more somber as we brought up the photos from today. The first couple of night vision picks were useless, just blur and movement. In the third and fourth, we could see what looked like part of a bird's face and belly. The fifth was again too blurry to make out. The flash photography proved to be much more illustrative, though. The thing inside the birdhouse was most definitely... A bird.

No, wait, look. Max had scrolled to the next photo. We stared. It was a bird, sure. But it had something strange on its crown, something I'd never seen before. It looks like it has a peacock's ass on its head. He wasn't wrong. The bird had a plume of feathers that looked very much like a peacock's tail, but on its head.

You know, I was expecting something horrifying, but this is just kind of cute and adorable. Oh, I've heard about that myself from basically all the people I've ever dated. But they soon default back to horrifying again. It's probably secretly really vicious. Or Yanderey with its bird BFF, or, I don't know, just not willing to give away all of its money to let a partner leach off of them. I think we're swinging into lives projects too much territory here. This bird is weird, sure, but so are lots of birds. There's absolutely no indication why the whole vibrating death circles relates to it.

We should find out what the bird is. Someone on Twitter is bound to know. 15 minutes, 24 incorrect answers, three awful jokes and one correct identification later. We had a name for our baffling birdie. It was, in fact, a royal flyer. catcher. A bird that, we were assured, most definitely did not live natively in Montana or anywhere in the US. Do you think the previous owner bred them or something? Seems unlikely. They're just like loose in the trees. And they live in the Amazon, a much warmer climate. Can't imagine

they'd survive outside a protected aviary. Also, there's nothing online about them being responsible for vibrating death circles. The next step was to try and discern whether all the birdhouses contained a royal flycatcher. It took all afternoon and evening and some very careful maneuvering of the death circles in the woods, but eventually we'd captured photographs of at least 20 birdhouses. Plenty more extended deeper into the forest, but we decided there was no need to keep looking. Every single one of the houses seemed to contain a flycatcher, or at least a blur that looked basically like one. We retired to the living room for the evening and collapsed back on the couch.

So, we have an army of Amazonian birds living in little houses in our trees. And those trees are surrounded by circles, force fields, electromagnetic pulses? That fuck us up. Me especially. Hey, could it be electromagnetic? It did seem to mess with the metal in your spine. But not the selfie sticks. My spine and the selfie sticks are both titanium.

titanium is extremely weakly magnetic, but you'd need the world's most powerful magnet to really even affect it. Besides, we all have bits of metal on our clothes and stuff, zippers and buttons and that. None of us got forcibly stripped naked by the circles, thankfully. Well, based on what I felt, my gut's telling me it's specifically some kind of vibration that's causing the issue. So what next? Just leave it alone and try avoiding those lethal circles? Get a specialist in? Move?

Not sure what kind of specialist we call here. Torn between an ornithologist, a landscape gardener, and an exorcist. I say we sleep on it. I glanced at the clock. Just after nine. I wouldn't be doing any sleeping for a while. I lay in bed, listening to the sounds of Ted and Max playing Xbox through the wall. I tried to work or play games of my own, but I couldn't concentrate.

The pain meds had worn off so I'd redosed, but I was antsy waiting for them to kick in again. Today had been agony, a lot more so than I'd let on to the others. But here was the kicker. Part of me wanted to go back out and stand in the circle, alone, where I couldn't be pulled away. Even as my body had felt like it was tearing itself apart, I'd been able to sense some kind of end goal hidden in the torture. Like if I could withstand it enough, something rewarded. would happen. It was insane, and I had a strong worry that it was the intrusive thought part of me that had previously allowed me to regularly engage in self-destructive behaviour when I was younger,

but I'd gotten very good at recognising those intrusive thoughts and combating them. This really didn't feel like that. Not to mention, there obviously was actually something unusual going on here with the circles and the flycatchers. I tossed and turned in bed. Around half ten, The sounds of the Xbox died, and I heard Max then tear to the bathroom and retreat to bed. The house was silent. I felt a little lost, and I couldn't stop getting up to look out the window, pressing myself against the glass to try and catch a glimpse of the edge of the death circle, all I could see from my room at the side of the house.

The room opposite me was empty, though. Our final housemate hadn't moved in yet, due to their lease not being up until later. Pulling on some underwear under the long t-shirt I wore to bed, I padded across to the empty room, wincing when I turned my door handle. Thankfully, the empty room's door was ajar, and I was able to push it closed without clicking it. I heard no sounds of stirring from Max and Ted's room. Once inside, I headed straight for the large window that looked out onto the backyard and peered through. Idiot!

I all but slapped myself in the forehead. Of course I couldn't see anything. It was pitch dark out. And the light pollution around he was minimal, meaning I could see a beautiful night sky, with a thousand stars, but nothing in the immediate vicinity of our backyard. I could only just make out the tree that hours earlier I'd stood in front of, shaking and feeling my body get torn apart. What if I slipped the window open, just enough to climb out?

I wouldn't go far. I'd stay by the wall of the house. I wouldn't put myself in any danger. Even with my aching joints, which were easing up again thanks to the next dose of painkillers, I was able to easily climb out of the window and drop soundlessly to the grass below. The lawn felt luxurious against my bare feet, and I took one step, then two, then another, just to appreciate the feeling. And a few more, and a few more. It's not intentional that I'm walking in the direction of the tree. I'm just walking, and then I'll stop, and then I'll look, and then I'll go to bed.

A breeze sprang up, catching under the hem of my thin t-shirt, causing goose flesh to ripple over my skin. A shivered, rubbing my arms. Maybe coming outside in a t-shirt and panties wasn't the best idea. I, of all people, should know that's a peak horror-troped death sentence. But I was here now. Too late and too noisy to go back in and change. My eyes had adjusted to the dark, and I could see I was closer to the tree than I'd realised. I looked down, trying to discern where the circle began.

In the darkness, all the grass looked grey. There was no telling where the regular lush green lawn ended and the discoloured circle began. I had two choices. Give up or test how far I could go. As soon as I feel anything, I'll book it. I tried to suppress the memory of how I'd walked unbidden into the circle earlier in the day and had to be pulled to safety. Fool me once, etc.

Okay, this was new. The sound growing in crescendo as I gingerly stepped forward. It was definitely coming from the tree. I tried to focus, to decide if this was the vibrations messing with my head, or if this was an actual sound echoing through the night. I was sure it was the latter. It was a familiar sound. I'd heard it before many times, and yet I couldn't place it.

One of those noises you hear in the background on and off, but don't really place until you have cause to look for the origin of the sound. I decided not to take any further steps, and instead stood listening. The buzzing filled my ears, so loud I could feel the vibrations. in my body again, although there was no pain here. I wasn't in the circle yet then. As the sound grew, the memory of a smell began to form in my mind.

Something horrible. A memory I'd suppressed into the deepest recesses of my mind for many years, but one I'd never forget. None of my current friends knew about this. It had happened when I was in my early teens, maybe 12 or 13. Back in the UK, we'd lived near a canal in a river, the latter serving as a dog-walking path. It was a relatively safe route, despite just being outside of town,

with usually plenty of people there, so my parents let me walk our dog John down there. Running adjacent to the riverwalk, bisecting the river and the canal, was a railway. And some ways down the riverwalk, a small bridge led under the railway. Nobody ever went in it. The entrance was overgrown,

making even the opening dark, and just a few feet in it was all pitch black, even in daylight. Other said that homeless people, lived under the bridge, which was more like a cave, really, and that it was best avoided. Certainly, a 12 to 13-year-old girl should not be going in it. John had never run into the tunnel before, never did since either. But that one day, he made a beeline for the opening.

And of course it was the one day where nobody at all was around on the river path. I called and called to him, but he would not come. Eventually I heard him barking, sounding far more distant than I would have expected from what should have been a small tunnel. Then I heard him whine, but he would not come out. My survival instincts went out the window, as they won't to do if any of my pets were ever in trouble. No matter what dangers faced a young girl in a dark tunnel, I wasn't about to let my dog get hurt. Perhaps someone had caught him, or maybe he'd gone through and was now up on the railway itself.

I didn't care. I didn't even stop to think as I crashed through the undergrowth and entered the tunnel. It was a lot lighter inside the tunnel than when you were looking in. and John, who'd sounded so far away, was about ten feet down, staring at something against the wall, and navigated past a dirty mattress, trying to avoid stepping on needles, kicked aside what looked like an alarmingly recent grocery trash. The smell hit me before I saw it, and then the sound, the buzzing sound. John just stood there staring at this thing as I joined him. It was still gloomy in the tunnel, even though light from both ends reached where we were at, and at first the thing in front of me appeared just to be a teeming mass of black movement.

Irritionally, my first thought was flying ants. The summer before, they'd been an infestation of the bugs around my town for like two days, and they'd cover cars and signs and all sorts. But it soon became clear that what I was looking at were flies. Just flies. Thousands and thousands of flies, all congregating on something that I gradually realised had a horribly human shape. I don't know if it was me or John, but one of us disturbed the insects,

and as one, they buzzed angrily and swarmed flying at me. I batted them away, keeping my eyes and mouth closed, horrified, but within a split second they were gone. And as soon as they were, I longed for them back. I wished they hadn't flown away, shown me what lay under them. When it was all done with, and I got help, and the police had arrived, I found out an elderly homeless man, someone I'd seen on the riverwalk, in fact,

and who'd always been friendly towards me in a wholesome and cheery way, had tragically died of a heroin overdose down in that tunnel. I'd suppressed most of it, the sight of his body, what the flies had done to him. If I tried to picture it now, it was just a blur. But the smell, that had stuck with me no matter how much I tried to bury it. And the sound, the buzzing of flies. That's what I was hearing.

The buzzing of flies, but it was so, so much louder than when I'd been in the tunnel, even with the buzzing echoing off the dank walls. No, not louder, denser. The volume of flies was vastly higher. I glanced about in the darkness for a cloud of the insects but saw nothing. Of course I didn't, because it was coming from the tree. It was coming from the tree and the ground surrounding it. I pictured a maelstrom of flies beneath my bare feet.

spinning and cavorting in a diseased whirlwind, flowing up into the tree on which the birdhouse had been placed. I pictured it at this tree, and at all the others on which the Royal Flycatchers have been given homes. Royal flycatchers. Things were beginning to connect, if not add up. But what did it mean? Pillars of flies beneath the earth held at bay by birds.

As if on cue there was movement in the darkness in the vicinity of the birdhouse, A flash of red and peacock blue, barely catching in the moonlight. Slowly, quietly, I raised my cell phone and activated the flashlight app, shielding the light with my hand as I gradually aimed it towards the birdhouse. I immediately saw two things. One, the Royal Flycatcher had its head through the hole and was staring intently. Two, the bird wasn't staring at me. In fact, it was staring just ahead of me, right at my feet in feet.

I looked down following the bird's gaze and almost jumped back in alarm. I was at the very, very edge of the circle, so close that my big toes were just over the line. And now, with my flashlight app on, I could see the discolored patch clearly. But even without polychromatic vision, I'd have been able to see it. The circle was moving. The ground, the very surface upon which I almost stood was rippling and displacing like an ocean. Not the short, neatly mowed blades of grass, but the very earth itself. It writhes and squirmed and pulsated.

I felt myself being drawn into it, hypnotised. No, not drawn in. I was falling, falling forward towards the circle that had merely torn me apart just 12 hours ago. Somewhere, in the infinite distance, I heard the frantic chirping of the flycatcher. A warning, I thought, but I couldn't take heed of it because as if in slow motion I was falling towards the sea of undulating grass, the flycatcher's cries becoming increasingly drowned out by the buzzing of flies. And another sound that struck me as I plummeted towards the floor.

The sound of the earth crawling, wriggling, writhing, squirming. In the split second before I made contact with the dirt, my mind flashed back to the old man's body, to the image I'd suppressed for so long. The gifts of life the flies had left behind on his cadaver. It hit me like a riddle moments before my body hit the ground. What comes before the flies? The maggots.

I had managed to summon the strength to roll over, hoping at least to gaze up at the stars. But the stars were hidden by a living shadow that filled my vision. It hovered above me, that cloud of mother bugs, ducking and weaving and cavorting like a living Rorschach test, illuminated like a laser show by the flashlight from my phone which had landed face down. What could I see in that inky, cloud of insects. A moth, an owl, a minotaur, a ribcage, a vulva somehow obscene and terrifying,

a spine warping and breaking, and flashes of red, brown and blue, disturbing the rapid fire imagery. I couldn't tell if I was shaking from fear or the vibrations from the ground. I was being pulled into the earth, the children of the flies dragging me down, wriggling and grub-like. The cloud of flies lunged at me and then pulled back, like a schoolyard bully asserting, his dominance, and despite them coming nowhere near close enough to touch me, I felt it like a punch to the solar plexus. I felt my shoulders and hips dislocate from their sockets as my torso sank further and let out a scream of abject agony. The flies scattered, breaking their current formation of an old man's angry face, and more flashes of blue and red and brown displaced the glistening

blackness. It was the flycatcher, pecking and snapping and snatching at the flies with a ferocity I found admirable. But the catcher's actions were clearly futile. Whatever role it had played in keeping the flies contained had been disrupted. And I had a horrible sinking feeling that it had been my presence in the circle earlier in the day, which had driven the flies into a fury strong enough for them to overpower the sentinel bird. And when it came to sinking feelings, the more my body was dragged into the earth, the more excruciating the pain grew. My skin felt like it was tearing, rending from my body as my bones were tugged and dragged in impossible directions. The fly-catches fight against the flies grew more distant as I sunk further and further down.

Grass and dirt began to fall on my face, despite my head proving a sticking point for the maggots dragging me down. Then I felt a pop and heard a snap, and suddenly all pain in my body was gone. My neck had broken. Blackness closed in on me. I thought my vision. was fading and I was finally dying. I wondered how Max and Ted would feel, believing that maybe I'd upped and left in the night without so much as a goodbye. Or maybe the earth would spit out my remains when it was done with whatever it was going to do to me, and they'd at least have closure. Then I realized death wasn't coming that swiftly or mercifully. Rather, the cloud of flies had overpowered the flycatcher and was swarming towards me, blotting out the stars, turning everything into darkness. Red and blue

feathers fluttered loosely among the cloud of insects, and the flies hit me like a jackhammer, finally thrusting my broken body down into the earth to whatever awaited me beneath. I awoke to the worst pain I'd ever felt in my life. Whatever blissful paralysis my descent had caused had miraculously hellishly vanished. I tried to move and had the grinding of bone and tearing of muscles. I could tell that I lay in a broken, impossible heap on the floor. What floor? It felt like I lay lay on shards of broken glass. But I could see the ground was rough-hewn rock, covered in a thick layer of bone-white dust. I had no idea where the light source could be coming from, but I could make out a cavern lit as if with candles. I tried turning my head. The pain had

reached a threshold so impossibly unsurvivably high that I no longer cared about it. My limbs were wrapped about and under me. My spine felt like it had been snapped at a right angle. It seemed as if I was somehow being kept alive despite injuries that would obviously kill a person. I would have been well within my right to pray for death, but I was too curious, too stubborn to succumb to the pain. I had to know what I'd become a part of. Somehow I managed to drag my decimated and fractured body into some kind of sitting position that allowed me to survey the room. When I saw what faced me, I wasn't even capable of fear. The pain blotted out any possible emotions I might have experienced. The cavern I was in appeared to be connected to numerous tunnels.

Flies and maggots crawled across every surface. In my caverns strange cocoons hung from the ceiling. They were pallid white and shiny, twitching like grubs, but the size of toddlers. And in the centre, atop a rock that could almost be considered a throne, ride the largest grub of all. It had one wing, emaciated and broken, hanging from its left shoulder. It had a leg, and an arm that looked like the limbs of a fly. One eye was tiny, a squinting pool of darkness in the off-white flesh. The other was large and multifaceted.

Only some of the surfaces had shattered like mirrors, leaving only abysses behind. The thing reached up with its one fly arm and slashed across where its mouth should have been. The worm-like flesh parted, Ica spilling forth from the cut. The wound opened as it powered by muscles and the thing spat away slimy globules of its own flesh.

It sounded both strangely human and impossibly insectile, like a single voice made up of thousands of tiny ones. I wanted to ask for clarification, but all I could do was cough up blood. The grub thing waved a hand, as if telling me not to expend the effort, as if in response the buzzing from the ancillary flies intensified. I spat out blood again and forced my torn vocal cords to enunciate. I'm dying, broken, far. Far beyond human repair.

Live! It gestured to its lower body with its one arm, where I now saw a fleshy, bulber sack emerging from its wormy skin. I couldn't even allow myself to think on what I was about to do. I could only let myself focus on the pain as I dragged my shattered body across the cavern floor. As I reached out and gripped the bounty

the thing offered me in broken fingers, as I took the first bite of its heart. I awoke the next morning in my bed. I was almost relieved to find that my body still ached little as I climbed out, showered and dressed. I could still feel. I could still feel human. In the kitchen, Max and Ted were staring out at the garden with disbelief. Max handed me a coffee without even having to ask.

This time, it was hot. What's up, y'all? Max gesture to the garden. So, uh, something happened overnight? Best if we show you. I went outside with them. My spine still hurt enough that I needed the cane I walk with on and off, but I knew that it would only require a short-term use this time.

Outside, all the discoloured circles had vanished. The grass was entirely, completely normal, undisturbed. What's more, all the distant birdhouses on the trees had collapsed. I could see fragments of wood littering the bases, leading back into the forest. All that is but the little house on the closest tree. the one we'd seen that had first started it all, the one that stood still, and within, I caught movement, a flash of red, blue and brown, a head darting out and back in, a head I was sure that was absent a few feathers compared to yesterday, but otherwise unharmed.

I smiled and walked confidently up to the tree. No vibrations, no pain. In fact, I could already feel my spine easing up and barely even leaned on my cane. Looks like we've got a pet then. Let's just hope the cats don't take a liking to him when they get here. Oh, I don't think that'll be a problem. I've got a feeling this little guy is pretty savvy. I turned to look at them and smiled, and then my gaze drifted down to the earth,

to where just the night before I'd been dragged to my underneath and somehow lived to tell the tale. And I felt something then. A rhythmic pumping. Deep, deep, deep within the earth. Far deeper than I'd been the night before. I focused on the pulse, the vein of the world. It hit me like a rush of blood to the head.

Synapses, firing, connections being made. My brain traced the veins and I saw them. All the stories, all the truths. Tales of Belfagor and the things that live in the gaps. An island that appears on no map beneath which slumbers the worm god in tattered yellow rags. Men who make deals with devils. and darker, more terrifying things that I instinctively knew humanity must fear. These truths did not overwhelm me.

I realized I could trace them, filter them, see and understand them as a chronicler, tell the stories, ease people gently into revelations of the reality that beats beneath our own. I had not only been given my life the night before. I had been given a gift, too. I had fed upon the tiniest, most infinitesimal fragment of the heart of the world, world, and it had tasted sweet. I could follow its paths now, and I could share what lay at the end of them. Hey, what's this? Ted broke through my thoughts, and all the knowledge I had been studying switched off for the moment. Isn't that your cell phone lives? Sure enough, my phone lay face down on

the grass where I dropped it the night before. I picked it up. The battery was dead. How the hell did this get out here. I know you didn't leave it out here yesterday. We got the photos off of it. Did you come back out here last night by yourself? I flexed my shoulders and gave a bow. Does it look like I've suffered any more damage? Max rolled her eyes. Just to get that thing charged back up. I want to snoop through your camera roll. With a spring in my step, I headed back inside to put the phone on charge. When they thought I was out of earshot, Max and Ted began to talk. Do you think she did come back out here last night? Nah, she's not that foolish.

She wouldn't put herself in that much danger. The flycatcher tweeted cheerily in response. That was something. I'm not a big fan of maggots. Royal flycatchers are exceptionally pretty, though. As are you, David. As are you. Oh, and on that note, it's time to bid everyone a sleepless night.

I would say don't have nightmares, but, well, that's where a lot of our best submissions come from. And speaking of submissions, remember, season pass 15 is now on sale at seasonpass.com. We've got some great things in store. Some great, weird things. So thank you for joining us for the first volume of sleepless decompositions. We return next week with Season 15. Episode 1. So brace yourselves.

And in the meantime, stay sleepless. This audio production is copyright 2020 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.