The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast - Waiting for 13 - Micro Dresses

Episode Date: June 9, 2019

We're in-between Seasons 12 and 13 so we have two tales to keep you sleepless. "The Cabinet of Dr. Micro"¤ written by C.M. Scandreth. (Story starts around 00:01:50) Produced by: Jesse Cornett Cast: Narrator – Nikolle Doolin, Keith – Kyle Akers, Toby – Matthew Bradford, Caesar – Jesse Cornett "Prom Dresses"¤ written by Amanda Isenberg. (Story starts around 00:38:00) Produced by: Jesse Cornett Cast: Andrea – Jessica McEvoy, Jenny – Nichole Goodnight, Jenny’s dad – Jesse Cornett, Dress store owner – Erika Sanderson, Chris – Atticus Jackson, Chad – Kyle Akers Click here to learn more about the voice actors on The NoSleep Podcast   Click here to learn more about C.M. Scandreth   Executive Producer & Host: David Cummings Musical score composed by: Brandon Boone "Waiting for 13" illustration courtesy of Krista Neubert Audio program ©2019 - 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

Welcome to our sleepless sanctuary. You enter at your own risk and choose to be entertained with dark and disturbing horror stories. You have been warned for the dark hours when you dare not clit. Tales of horror to frighten and disturbed as the sleepless hours tick. Brace yourself for the next. No Sleep Podcast. Welcome to the No Sleep Podcast Sanctuary. I'm David Cummings.

Thank you for joining us. We're currently in between seasons 12 and 13, working hard on our season 13 premiere on June 23rd. And don't forget, season pass 13 is on sale now. Just go to seasonpass.com. But we want to ensure you have some sleepless nights before the start of season 13, so the sanctuary features two tales this week. And now it's time for our service to begin. Bow your heads and hear our words.

In our first tale, we visit the granddaddy of all video game experiences. Before consoles, PC gaming, and mobile apps, there was the video. arcade. And as we learn from author C.M. Scandrith, we meet a group of friends who play all the classic games in their local arcade until they find one particular game which presents challenges far beyond getting the high score. Performing this tale are Nicole Doolin, Kyle Akers, Matthew Bradford, and Jesse Cornett. So grab your quarters and see if you dare play The Cabinet of Dr.

Charlie's arcade was the coolest place to hang out in our little town. Filled with the latest and greatest video game cabinets. It was the premium place to waste time, provided you had the coins to stick around. Kids flocked there when school got out, cramming the dingy, cramped space with chattering bodies and the sickly smells of bubble gum and warmed flat soft drinks. Adults came too.

under the pretense of chaperoning their kids. But everyone knew they were really there for the games. In the 80s, nobody gave a damn about where their kids were before dinner time, provided they weren't getting into too much trouble. The eponymous owner of the arcade lorded it over kids and adults alike, reveling in his pseudo-celebrity status. To a wide-eyed 10-year-old with bucked teeth and a terrible lisp, Charlie was literally the coolest person on earth,

the sort of living legend you would kill to trade places with. My older brother, Keith, was slightly less enamored of the man himself, but he loved the video games as much as any other kid. Just like everyone else, he saved up every coin from chores and mowing neighbor's lawns, so he could feed them into those finger-polished metal shoots and get his precious few minutes of digital heroism on the full. flickering analog screens. Pretty much every game from the time period

ended up passing through that arcade. From Pac-Man to Bomb Jack. The classics stuck around, while the less lucrative machines were eventually wrapped in ripped gray blankets and packing tape, then hauled away by Frank, the guy who serviced the games.

But only one game lasted until the end of the arcade's life. A three-screen burger time Donkey Kong ripoff named Dr. Micro. The game wasn't hugely popular at first, but once people realized it had no end, a sort of digital one-upsmanship began on the high scoreboard, with everyone keen to oust the current record holder from their throne. As the months passed, the ever-changing pattern of three-character monikers slowly resolved into a stable list of initials, with the handle M-I-C-old.

always at the top. Rumors abounded as to who M.I.C. was, with none of them confirmed. Nobody had ever seen the mystery person enter their name, and nobody could get near the stupendous high score they'd posted. In that endearingly unsubtle childhood way, I imagined MIC is some shadowy figure in a black Panama hat. The collar of his coat pulled up so high that only his nose and mirror glasses showed. The lenses reflecting the neon glow of the screen. Several kids claimed to be M-I-C, including myself.

But like me, all those children were immediately shamed into admitting their lies once they tried and publicly failed to top the high score. Of course, the most likely candidate was Charlie himself, whose surname was Martin, making it quite possible that M. I.C. were his initials, only backward. But Charlie didn't play the games much at all, preferring to bask in the adoration of his numerous fans. All greedy to butter him up for a chance to free play their favorite cabinet. The other primary candidate was the science teacher of our local high school, Mr. Prendergast, who was a renowned audio file and kept a vintage collection of microphones from the 1920s onward.

Indeed, Mr. P, as he was known by my brother and friends, spent a considerable amount of time in the arcade some evenings, having neither a wife nor a girlfriend to keep him otherwise occupied. But M.C.'s identity remained a minor and annoying mystery for a good six months. With nobody particularly invested in finding out, the mystery itself was more fun than an answer. At least, it was until James Jeffrey Jones went missing. Overweight and always angry.

James Jeffrey Jones was three inches taller than any of his peers and very used to getting his own way. With red cheeks and redder hair, he was unmistakable in both the dimly lit arcade and the open air of the schoolyard. A bright beacon of bully, always ready to pillage your pockets for your lunch money. I suppose it was inevitable that he'd be the one to knock M-I-C off the leaderboard,

given the ill-gotten coin he had available. For weeks on end, he stood there. Belly pressed against the console of the Dr. MicroCabinet, his hands slick with sweat. I still remember him hurriedly wiping them on his striped red-and-white t-shirt. In between every repeating level, his florid face nearly jammed against the screen. The day that he finally beat the legendary M-I-C, we were all there,

killing time before we went home for dinner. His scream of victory brought us rushing from our respective loitering spots, and we crowded around and stunned awe, watching him input his triple-letter nickname, J.J. We all bore silent witness as it bumped the legendary chiselry. champion down to second place. M.C. had been defeated, but nobody was overly keen to congratulate the new record holder, because none of us liked James. That it had been him who had stolen the crown from mystery

MIC, somehow cheap in the nascent mythology that had grown up around the Dr. MicroCabinet and its secrets of aunt. Nor was James shy about his victory. immediately marching up to Charlie's counter and declaiming the owner as a fulgin loser, who couldn't even keep the high scores on his own machines. James was summarily ejected from the arcade after that, whence he stopped for a celebratory ice cream at the corner shop next door, then presumably made his jolly way home, buoyed up by his victory.

In actual fact, he never arrived home at all. James Jeffrey Jones was never seen again. Back in those days, parents didn't tend to worry as much if a kid went missing for an evening, assuming their kid was staying over at a friend's house, even without evidence. I suspect the Jones family quite often went 48 hours without seeing their flame-haired progeny, and that his absences might even have been a welcome relief. Like many families in the area, they had been badly affected by the layoff, when the local chemical plant shut down,

and Mr. Jones lost his job as a foreman. Consequently, the man sat around the house all day, drinking home-brewed hooch and yelling at his three children to fuck off and play outside. The search for the missing boy didn't begin for three days after his escapades at the arcade and was called off after two weeks. When Officer McCulloch turned up absolutely no leads

in the disappearance of James Jeffrey Jones, To all intents and purposes, the boy had simply vanished somewhere between the corner shop and his house, just three streets over. If that had been the entirety of the story, things may have turned out very differently in our little town, but events took a much darker turn from there. The day after the search for James was called off, his name was knocked a second place on the Dr. MicroCabinet by none other than M. I.C. himself. The rumors started immediately. M.C. had murdered James for daring to break his record. We kids speculated that the cabinet itself was somehow cursed and that James had been sucked right inside the circuits,

enduring an eternal, agonizing existence. The young storytellers amongst us wove playground horrors about him, trapped in a two-dimensional world of endless, pixelated deaths. Indeed, the idea that the Dr. Microgame itself was somehow to blame became such a potent concept that it stuck fast in our fertile young minds. And that seed quickly blossomed into something huge and impossible and terrifying. Caesar had been another victim of the factory layoffs, but one with far less security than James' dad. Instead, he'd become the local drunk,

sleeping in alleyways and drinking the cheapest, nastiest booze he could afford, with the coins he could sponge off the townsfolk. He could often be found near the arcade, begging for loose change from the passing kids, and his hacking cough was audible, even through the chaotic electronic orchestra, jangling from the dozen machines inside the place. Already unhinged,

Something about the disappearance of James affected Caesar in a way that none of us could have expected, turning him from a harmless hobo, a bit of a joke, into a real frothing lunatic. He'd come into the arcade and start yelling about the devil in video games. Blood spattering the linoleum floor as his shouting exacerbated the damage to his chemical rattled lungs. The doctor, Michael Michael's in these machines. The doctor microcabinet, shrouded within its darkly enticing aura of burgeoning tragedy, seemed to particularly agitate him. Charlie had to ban the old bum from the premises,

after he'd started hauling on the console with bloody fingers, trying to tip the machine over. And that just added fuel to the narrative fire already burning. Reithed in Caesar's mad prophetic rantings about digital evils, the doctor microcabinet became more than just the flash and the paned fable it would have been. It became a real and enduring myth amongst the children of our town. A genuine cursed artifact, a thing at once utterly terrifying and unrelentingly exciting.

We'd play it on a dare, bolstered by group courage, pooling our coins together. You weren't allowed to do it half-assed either. Every time one of us played, we were playing to win, trying to provoke the machine into smiting us with its indomitable powers. It became a ritual, like spitting in Milton Pond whenever you passed it, or jumping the stain of the dead hedgehog on Sycamore Street. It shouldn't have surprised us when one of us eventually won.

All elbows and knees. Toby Thornton was the tallest of my brother's friends, and definitely the smartest. The son of the local doctor, he also had a status amongst the boys, due to something few others could claim. His dad had a stable, well-respected, and well-paid job. Toby also liked me. In fact, he seemed to be almost the only person I wasn't related to who did, apart from Mr. Prendergast.

But that was more of a teacher thing, not the way Toby liked me. Mr. P. gave me special encouragement in my science studies, telling me that the world needed more female scientists and that I had the talent to be one of them. On that fateful autumn afternoon, Toby stopped by the arcade to offload some of his spare change, myself and my brother in tow,

joking around that he was in the mood to release the curse, he fed his coins into the ominous cabinet and started playing. Deft in practice. He anticipated the platforms and predicted the patterns, moving from screen to screen with enviable ease. This wasn't unusual. He was always pretty good. And unlike us, he generally had money to burn.

So we'd had a lot more time playing. But as his score, he'd... continued to rise. So did our anticipation. Nobody had ever gotten this close to the high score before. No one we knew of anyway. I saw Toby's features contoured as he wrestled with the implications of what he was doing, and his hands began to shake. Nobody would have blamed him if he had made a mistake and called it quits there, settling for second place. But the boy was committed now, and of course there was a girl watching, a girl he liked, so there was no way he was going to lose face by suiciding. When the score counter finally slipped past the previously legendary number, I suddenly felt

like I was going to throw up. Stop! Stop, Toby! You've done it! Trembling and clammy, he let go of the controls and gave us a weak grin. So much for the curse, eh? He turned his back on the cabinet to wipe his hands on his pants. As Toby's on-screen character died, Keith gestured to the joystick. Hey, don't forget to put your name in, man. Oh, yeah, for sure. We stuck together tightly on the way home, taking the long way around to escort Toby to his house.

Nobody was saying anything, but we were all thinking the same thing, that after the last such feat of video game mastery, James had vanished. When Toby's mother finally, opened the front door. She was confused about why we had knocked so furiously for those terse two minutes. But it was only then that Keith and I allowed ourselves to relax. We'd beaten the curse. There was plenty of chatter about Toby beating the high score,

and for a while there he got to enjoy the status that came with his victory. But whilst outwardly, he seemed pleased. He carried a tension about him, visible. to anyone who knew him well. He began to speak and eat less and less. But when questioned about either, simply claimed he was worried about upcoming tests and assignments. Just three weeks after his win at the arcade,

he missed his first day at school, the first of many. Keith tried to soothe me when I found voice for my concern. His dad is a doctor. I'm sure he'll be fine. And in that way that little sisters do, I believed my big brother. I believe that somehow Toby would be okay. But when I saw my friend again, he was sallow-eyed and sunken-cheeked.

The knobs of his always gangly joints were sharp, poking out starkly even through his thick woolen cardigan. His blue eyes darted about wildly, taking in everything around us with frenzied paranoia. I dream about it. dream about the game, about being inside the game. Not knowing what to say, I just stared, wanting, but not wanting to slip my hand into his, willing him to continue. He leaned in towards me and his breath smelled like nail polish. He's coming for me, I think. M-I-C, he knows it was me that beat him. He's going to get me just like he got James. He's going to put me inside the machine. We were standing at the front of the

supermarket. Our mother's waiting at the checkouts as their shopping was bagged. With every chime of the cash register, every squeak of a shopping cart wheel, Toby flinched. His stick-thin fingers fluttered in and out of his pockets, hovering, raised as though ready to fend off an imminent attack. Gotta go. That was the last time I saw Toby Thornton. Two days later his parents phoned mine and told them that their boy had fallen from the railway bridge

smashing his skull open on the jagged floor of the rocky gorge below Nobody said a damn thing But all the kids were thinking the same thought The cabinet had claimed another victim And just to cement that thought firmly in our young minds Wedding mythology to the bedrock of reality the letters M.IC had reclaimed their place at the top of the high score screen of the Dr. MicroCabinet. It was the opposite of how it had been with James.

The scale of this investigation was massive, with everyone being interviewed, from the lowliest school caretaker to the proprietor of the arcade himself. A detective even came from the next town over to investigate the sudden suicide of the always happy Thornton boy. He wasn't at all like our local cops, a grizzled, stubborn pit bull of a man who seemed hell bent on uncovering some grand conspiracy. With Officer McCulloch dogging his footsteps, the detective moved from house to house, grilling wives and children until they wept,

and interrogating husbands and bachelors until they shouted at the dark-suited man to get the hell out of their homes. But whilst his methods were nothing short of bull, bullying, no one could deny the results. Within a week, he determined that Frank the arcade repairman had no alibi for the evening of Toby's death, and even more damning that Frank wasn't his real name at all. The quiet microwave specialist was in fact a convicted child molester who had changed his name and moved across the country to escape his past. There was no way something like that could be kept quiet in such a small place, and the information spread.

like flame through the tinderbox of our town, fueled by the shrill ringing of dial-pulse telephones. Only a day later, Frank was found beaten half to death next to the dumpster out of the back of the arcade, a heavy, bloody bag of coins left on the ground beside him, his attacker's ironic weapon of choice. Whether or not Frank had been involved in the death of Toby Thornton was now moot. The damage to his skull was so severe. that the man was practically a vegetable. People tried to rationalize the attack, tried to blame Frank's past.

But more than that, everyone was scared. Parents escorted their children everywhere. Teachers wouldn't allow themselves to be caught alone with students. My friendship with Mr. Prendergast ended abruptly, scorched to ash by the wildfire of paranoia that had engulfed our town. Toby's funeral was a silent weird pavon, a morbid eggshell dance around the blackened embers of our community. As the town attempted to process the death of Toby

and the attack on Frank, everyone tried to carry on as best they could. Children found solace in school and the company of their peers. Adults put an extra time at work, finding comfort and stability in their mundane jobs. But people that didn't have jobs, and there were many of those, looked to their vices to deal with their feelings about the events spawned by the machine in Charlie's arcade. Caesar drank heavily, anything he could find,

and bawled incoherently at the children who still sought the familiarity of the arcade. Bloody froth speckled the corners of his cigarette-burned lips, as he shouted his lunatic imprecations at us, All wild hair and neglected stink. The machine is the only way out. Then boys, out through the machine. Truly frightened, tears pricking my eyes. I wrestled out of his grip and ran into the arcade's embrace

of faded neon steel smoke and familiar electronic noise. Caesar stopped dead at the entrance as though he'd hit an invisible, wall, his roomy, bloody brown eyes darting towards the Dr. Micro Cabinet. Then he stumbled away, coughing red over the bubblegum spackled pavement. His words borrowed into me, even as I tried to distract myself, pushing my precious few coins into the Zevius slot. The Dr. MicroCabinet loomed huge and foreboding in my periphery, daring me to play it, to plight. To plumbus. them its dark secrets. But nobody played it now,

not after Toby. Not even the bravest kid went with an arm's length of that machine. Watching our feet and sucking in our bellies to skirt even the air around it. The square of linole marking its territory. And I certainly wasn't going to buck that trend.

There it sat in the corner. The screen flickering dimly as it rotated through its pre-programmed demo sequence. When I went to bed that night, I dreamed that the game transformed into a portal. A sucking singularity, like the one from the Black Hole film we'd watched on VCR for my eighth birthday. Caesar stood to one side, torrents of blood pouring out of his nose and mouth, as he gestured for me to jump inside the whirling black chaos.

Then his features blurred and distorted. until they were Toby's, and he leapt into the hole. It shouldn't have surprised anyone that Caesar would try to destroy the machine, especially after his previous attempt. I think maybe Charlie wanted him to wreck the cabinet. That way the cursed thing would be gone, and maybe his suffering business would start to pick up again. After all, prior to Toby's death,

half the reason anyone went there was to play Dr. Micro. What Charlie hadn't anticipated was that the old fool would break into the arcade in the middle of the night and toppled the machine onto himself. He died wretchedly. There on the gum-scarred linoleum, with the weight of the cabinet forcing all the air out of his desperately compromised lungs, the cabinet of Dr. Micro had claimed another victim. One of Keith's friends, Danny, claimed to have seen Caesar, lying gray and dead under the machine.

He'd been on the way to the corner shop to get bread, so he said when he'd noticed the broken glass in the door and looked inside. Danny said there was blood all around his mouth and nose, and bloody handprints on the side of the machine. Sickly fear curdled in my stomach as the images from my dream flashed to the foreground of my thoughts. It seemed Caesar really had found his way out of the town through the machine. Just like he'd said, school didn't seem important anymore after that. I just numbly went through the motions,

aiming only to garner no attention and cause no trouble. I told Keith about my dreams, about what Caesar had said, hoping that telling him would stop me from seeing Caesar's dream face every time I closed my eyes, that sharing it would help banish that ghost. I wish I could really do something about that damned machine. I wish there was some way of ending at all. What if Caesar was right? What if the machine is the only way out of this town?

Keith looked at me like he wanted to slap his hand over my mouth. Don't talk like that. It's stupid. It's just a video game. But even as he spoke those words, I don't think either of us was convinced. The town awoke to the wailing sirens of the fire engines. Family stumbling out of their houses. and dressing gowns and slippers. Smoke billowed a few streets away,

where the shops and the arcade squatted at the bottom of Church Hill. In the morbid excitement of disrupted routine, as we speculated with the neighbors, it took us a good ten minutes to notice that Keith wasn't on the lawn with us. It was a short drive to the shops, but much faster than walking.

When we pulled up near the sweet shop, the huge jets of water from the fat red fire hoses had already soaked the gutted wreck of Charlie's arcade, and the fire was out. But off to one side, laid on a stretcher, was the still small shape of a human body wrapped in a blanket. Mom ran over before anyone could stop her. Dad only a step behind.

When she pulled back the blanket and saw Keith's slack, soot-streaked face, she wailed like her world had ended, collapsing against the side of the fire engine, her mouth a perfect oh of unstoppable anguish. Me? I'd already known. I'd known the instant that we'd noticed Keith was missing. The fire had been worse on the west side of the arcade,

where the roof had fallen in, and the gaming machines there were just blackened crowns of melted teeth on the floor. But the flames had lost their fury toward the east end, where the less-played consoles got moved, and whether through some quirk of architecture or some unknowable twist of fate, just one machine remained, totally blackened by smoke but completely intact.

The doctor micro-cabinet, Charlie replaced Caesar as the town drunk, and he was joined by my father. The two of them would sit out on the back of the house, saying nothing. just drinking grimly and staring out over our hopeless patch of dilapidated suburbia. I cried a lot, as did my mother. Sometimes we'd just stand in the kitchen and hug,

my tears staining her apron dark with my grief. Nobody knew what we were supposed to do. Nobody knew how to deal with the grief properly. As though it would make a difference, Officer McCulloch took the day. Dr. Micro-Cabinet away. He locked it in the storage room of the police station, where it sat wrapped in layers of black tarp, taped up so securely that not a trace of light could touch the damnedable thing.

Through my bedroom window, I heard Charlie slur drunkenly to my father that the machine still worked, that McCulloch had let him splice a new power cord to replace the melted one, then turn it on. He said it was. stuck, though, that it just sat on the title and high score screens. Nothing else. You couldn't play it anymore. I thought it sounded like it was for the best. Charlie's arcade was bulldozed and turned into a parking lot, with a bronze plaque embedded into the concrete for Keith. The story that

everyone told was that Keith had decided to put an end to all the madness, and it set the arcade on fire, but somehow got trapped inside. People called him a hero, told me that I should be proud of my brother. Indeed, I knew that Keith would have been proud. Whenever we played Star Wars, he was always Luke and I was always Leia. He'd always been obsessed with being the good guy. Charlie himself perished a year to the day after my brother,

found dead in his car after drinking industrial pesticide. Methyl isocyanate. His insides burned to sludge by the potent chemical. Though it appeared to be a guilt-induced suicide, every kid still whispered that it was the video game that had claimed him since he'd been the last person to touch it. There was almost nobody at his funeral, just my dad, me, and Charlie's a strange sister,

a far cry from the time when Charlie was virtually the most important man in the whole town. As we left, I couldn't help but notice his full name was displayed on the church notice board, carefully written in cursive. Charles Isaac Martin On the drive home, we stopped at the local picture theater, which was finally showing the last starfighter. Toby's family had lobbied to have the film banned from the town when it first came out, due to the darkly similar nature of the story to our own town tragedy.

Eventually they'd relent it and let it run, but ticket sales were pretty scarce. Nobody had the heart to watch it. Our real wounds were far too raw for fiction. After it was pulled from the film roster and the last poster was torn down, a pall seemed to lift from the town, as though the final chapter of the story

had come to a dissatisfying close. The town stumbled on from the tragedies and the kids began to grow up. up. Keith's plaque grew scuffed and scarred by foot traffic, and people began to forget Charlie's arcade had ever existed. Mr. Prendergast eventually renewed his interest in my scholastic abilities, and encouraged me to take an electronics course through correspondence, with a view to learning how to make video games. I was 18 when the Dr. Microcavna came up for sale at a police auction, and with no other bidders, I took ownership of the blackened box.

After it was delivered to the garage of my new apartment, I stripped it down to its components and cleaned away as much as I could of the black smoke residue and water damage. Then I reassembled it after learning exactly how it worked. There was nothing supernatural about it. There was nothing even special about it. The title and score screens looped because of a bad, integrated circuit, easily fixed when I sourced a spear from the next town over. Eventually, I earned a scholarship in electrical engineering and shipped myself off to university,

far away in the big city. As I sat on the late bus after one long day, playing my brand new Nintendo Game Boy, I smelled spilled booze and body odor and was slammed backwards in time. There was Caesar, grabbing my sleeve outside the arcade. His cider-stinking breath foul in my face. She. And I had, too. If I hadn't been so hell-bent on getting that blackened old cabinet working again,

I wouldn't have pushed myself so hard to learn Boolean logic and how to solder I sees. I still have it all this time later. Thirty-four years after Toby's suicide, I've built a little arcade in a show. shitty part of the city where the rent is low, and I've filled it with the retro classics. Almost nobody comes to mix arcade. And even when they do, no one is any good at the warped three-screen old Donkey Kong clone in the corner. And so the top five high scores will always remain. M-I-C. T-O-B. M-I-C. J.J.J.

K.E. In our final tale, we meet two high school friends from the mid-90s. A time when going to the mall, checking out CDs, and shopping for clothes was a big part of life. And as author Amanda Eisenberg shares, with school dances on their minds, they find a rather special dress shop. One where the dresses themselves are worth paying for to try on. Performing this tale are Jessica McAvoy, Nicole Goodnight, Jesse Cornett, Erica Sanderson, Atticus Jackson, and Kyle Akers. So make sure you pick the right store when you're shopping for prom dresses. The first time I heard about the dress shop, I was in the back row of my best friend's minivan, and we were on our way to our favorite mall, Tavistock Galleria.

It was 1995. Jenny and I were sophomores in high school. Honestly, Jenny wasn't just my best friend. She was my only friend. We were not exactly popular. I was a bit overweight, and while that seemed to be fine for some girls, I was teased mercilessly for it.

Likewise, Jenny was teased for her prominent, crooked nose. I thought her nose made her look distinguished, but she couldn't wait until she grew up. up and could afford a nose job. Add in our shared love of reading and our near-perfect grades in school, and we were quite the outcast pair. That particular trip to the mall was different. Jenny said she had a surprise for me. I begged her to give me a hint, but she refused. You'll see, Andrea. Jenny's dad dropped us off in front of the mall, reminding us to call when we were ready to be picked up.

And do you have change for the pay phone? Yes, Dad. Plus, I have my pager. She lifted the hem of her t-shirt enough to show the bright red pager sticking out of her pocket. I coveted that pager. My parents said I had to wait until I was 16 to get one. Girls have fun.

As soon as we were safely out of earshot, Jenny rolled her eyes. Jeez, he's. So annoying. I just snorted in reply as we entered the mall. I didn't find Jenny's dad to be annoying at all. He really seemed to care about her. And he was always kind to me when he saw me.

My own parents barely seemed to notice me. We walked in silence for a while, passing the familiar stores. The gap, which neither of us felt cool enough to shop at. Sam Goody, where we browsed for CDs while trucked. trying not to gock at the cute sales staff. Clairs, where Jenny's mom had lied and said I was her daughter so I could get my ears pierced last year. My eyes darted around from stores to shoppers and back, hoping to notice any of our crueller classmates before they noticed me. The mall was awash with spaghetti straps and flannel, and the scent of CK1 permeated the air.

At first, it seemed like Jenny was leading us toward our favorite store. Jenny, this surprise better not be a sale at Wet Seal. You said it was good. I had been really excited for the surprise, and I wasn't in the mood to be let down that day. Relax, Andrea. It'll be good, I promise. We walked past Wet Seal and soon found ourselves in a part of the mall we typically avoided. It was a short corridor off the main walkway. There wasn't much down there that I could remember.

an off-brand cookie shop, a store that sold tacky jewelry, and that's it, I thought. But at the very end of the hall, there was a new store. Bess's dresses read the sign. Inside, the shop was filled with prom dresses. It was a sea of ruffles and lace and rhinestones and sequence. Jenny and I loved to try on prom dresses. It was the main reason we went to the mall, but we could do that at Macy's. Why would we need this place?

Is this it? Just wait. Jenny smiled as she pulled me into the store. The woman behind the counter was sewing sequins onto a hot pink gown. She had short dark hair and appeared to be middle-aged. Behind her on the wall was a row of dresses that had been pressed and framed for display. She didn't look up from her sewing as we entered. Five dollars per dress. Up front. Jenny started digging through her purse. What does she mean? It's five bucks to try on a dress.

Wait a minute. I grabbed her arm and dragged her out of the store. You want me to pay five dollars to try on a dress? Jenny, first, that's just dumb. And second, and that's all I have for lunch. Jenny smiled at me. Just trust me, okay? It's worth it, I promise. And I'll buy you lunch. I wouldn't lie to you.

You know that. Reluctantly, I allowed myself to be led back into the store. I walked behind Jenny up to the counter where I deposited my crumpled $5 bill. The shop owner didn't even acknowledge us. She just glanced quickly at our cash, and then returned to her sewing. Come on, let's find you the perfect dress. She pulled me toward a rack in the rear of the store.

What about you? I already have mine picked out. Jenny began sorting through dresses, occasionally holding one up in my direction for a moment before changing her mind and slipping it back onto the rack. After a few minutes, I began doing the same. The entire situation seemed utterly bizarre to me. But I suppose that if I had paid $5 to try on a dress, it better be worth it.

This is it. This is your dress. I walked over to her and looked slowly over the dress she held out to me. It was a gorgeous, slinky, silver slip dress. It was long and simple and perfect. And it would never fit me. Jenny, that's beautiful. but it wouldn't fit half of me. Plus, my arms would show.

You know I hate my arms. You are trying it on. You never know unless you try. Jenny sounded so sure that I didn't have it in me to argue. It didn't occur to me to wonder where Jenny's dress was as we walked to the dressing room. The dressing area was small, just two stalls side by side with a large mirror adjacent to their doors. hanging on the back of one of the doors was a flowy seafone green dress. That one is mine.

Wait, it was just waiting for you? What the hell? Oh, the owner probably snuck back here and hung it up. I've been here before. Duh? How do you think I knew about this place? Anyway, don't act so freaked out. Come on, try on your dress.

Jenny thrust the dress at me, and I took it. Then turned and walked into the stall. I made sure I locked the door behind me before I began to take off my clothes. I was careful not to look at myself in the mirror as I undressed. I hated so much about my body. My thick, frizzy hair, my large breasts and thighs, my soft stomach. I was pretty much the antithesis of Kate Moss. I unzipped the dress and slid it over my head.

To my surprise, it fell to my ankles instead of catching at my hips as I thought it would. I reached around awkwardly and tugged the zipper up. Looking down, I saw that the dress was snug from my chest to my hips, instead of draping loosely as it was meant to. I didn't bother turning to look in the mirror. I guess. Slowly, I unlocked the door and stepped out. The dressing room door slammed behind me, and I found it. I found myself staring at a row of sinks and mirrors.

I was in a bathroom. Suddenly, Jenny grabbed my arm. You look amazing. Jenny, what the hell is going on? Where are we? What the hell? What the hell? I was practically shrieking at her.

This was not the mall. I had no idea where this was. Calm down, Andrea. It's okay. I promise. Come here, look at yourself. Just look. She pulled me to a large mirror.

Jenny, where the hell are we? Andrea, look. She pointed at the mirror. I let my eyes move to the wall in front of me. What I saw caused my mouth to fall open. I looked like a different person. My face was mostly the same, only leaner, but everything else was changed.

I was at least 20 pounds lighter. The slip dress hung delicately off my shoulders and fell gracefully to the floor. My hair was long and straight. I turned to look at Jenny. She looked elegant in her gown. Her hair fell down her back in loose curls. And something else was different. It was her face.

Oh my God. Your nose! I know, right? Can you believe it? She turned to look at herself in the mirror. Her nose was perfect. It was an adorable, tiny button nose. Okay, you were right. This is totally worth $5.

How is all of this even possible? You haven't seen the best part. She began pulling me toward the bathroom door. Now, you have to promise, Promise me, you won't freak out. You have to play it cool. Play it cool for what? Promise me, Andrea, pinky swear?

She thrust her pinky at me. What am I promising? Jenny just glared at me in reply. Okay, okay. I pinky swear. I hooked my pinky around hers. Great, let's go. She pulled the bathroom door open, and we walked.

out. The room was dimly lit, but it was obviously huge. Music blared around us and lights bounced around what appeared to be a dance floor. Glittering stars hung from the ceiling and white clothed tables ringed the room. Hundreds of people moved around the room decked out in tuxedos and gowns. I heard laughter and talking beneath the booming music. Jenny, she shushed me. Two guys and tuxedos approached us. There you girls are. We were looking for you. It took me a moment to register

who they were. It was Chris and Chad are longtime crushes. We were just in the bathroom. Andrea had to fix her lipstick. You look beautiful, babe. Chad reached for my hand. I let him take it.

Too stunned to speak. Let's dance. After an awkward moment, I was able to nod a reply. He pulled me to the dance floor as the smashing pumpkin song, Tonight Tonight, began. Chad stood in front of me and placed his hands on my waist. For a moment, I stood there and did nothing. Babe? He had a concerned look on his face.

I reached up and placed my arms around his neck. Sorry. I was too confused and shocked to look at Chad for more than a second at a time. I noticed his wavy hair that hung just past his ears. I was close enough to smell his cologne and caught a whiff of mint on his breath. Mostly, my eyes darted around the room trying to take in everything that was happening around me. The lights and movement began to blur and dizziness washed over me. The song ended and I pulled away.

I need to find Jenny. But you just saw her. I found Jenny quickly. She had her back to a wall, and Chris was leaning over her, whispering something into her ear. She laughed softly, and reached out to rest her hand on his shoulder.

Jenny, I need to talk to you. Now. Jenny looked startled, but she stepped away from Chris. What is it? You know what? Come with me. I pulled her back into the bathroom.

Look, I don't know what is going on here, but I am really freaking out. I want to go. But we just got here. I need to go. No. Please. Tears welled up in my eyes and began to fall down my cheeks. Oh, sweetie, okay.

Of course we can go. Come on, just go inside the bathroom stall. Turn around and walk back out. Let's go. I did exactly as she said and found myself back in the dressing room at the mall. I quickly changed out of the dress. When I turned toward the mirror, I saw that I looked like myself again, for better or worse. Jenny and I left the store, and she called her dad to come pick us up. We didn't speak about the dresses or the store until later when we were alone in

Jenny's bedroom. Jenny, what was that place? How did you find it? I was still in shock from the experience and a bit afraid to ask about exactly what happened. Jenny took a deep breath. It freaked me out too. The first time, it was a week ago. I was at the mall by myself.

I'd never been down that hall before, but when I saw the store, it called to me. I can't really explain it. The owner was standing near the front of the store and she called me in asking if I wanted to try on a dress. She didn't charge me, didn't tell me anything about what would happen. I tried on a dress and, well, you saw what happens next. I was so confused, scared even, but when I went out and saw the dance, I stayed. It was so amazing. How many times have you done it now?

Today was my third time, Andrea. Wasn't it amazing? When you calm down and think about it, it's perfect, right? I mean, we are beautiful, and Chad and Chris are there, and they like us. Okay, so I didn't know that Chad would be there when you came, but I had a hunch, and I was right. I suppose it was pretty cool. So you want to go back? I can't wait.

It gets better than longer you stay. Jenny grabbed my hands and gave them a squeeze. Okay, okay. We can go back. I hoped my voice didn't betray my nervousness. The next day, Jenny convinced her dad to take us to the mall again. She paid the $5 for each of us, and we tried on the dresses. This time, my dress was already hanging in the dressing room waiting for me.

We took a moment to look ourselves over in the bathroom mirror before walking into the dance. There you girls are. We were looking for you. Jenny laughed and reply as Chris slipped his arm around her waist. Chad reached for my hand. You look beautiful, babe. Let's dance. Of course. I was amazed by how much more confidence I felt this time. I took Chad's hand and let him lead me to the dance floor. I draped my arms around his neck and leaned into him as we swayed to the small.

smashing pumpkins. The evening passed in a blur. We danced, then sat at a large table surrounded by friends and laughed. I had my first kiss to Mazzie stars fade into you. Eventually, Jenny whispered in my ear that it was time to go. Reluctantly, I excused myself to the bathroom again. When Jenny and I found ourselves back in the dressing room, I checked my watch to find that, Three hours had passed. Jenny saw me staring at it. Time passes the same there as it does here. I barely listened to her.

I was glowing. I had just spent the most amazing three hours of my life. Jenny linked her arm into mine and we left the store. Both of us smiling like fools. The store owner didn't even glance up at us. Like before, her attention was on the gown she was so. The dresses and prom became all Jenny and I talked about. We used every excuse we could to get back to the mall.

I found myself blushing uncontrollably when I passed Chad in the hall at school. After a couple weeks, I noticed Jenny had stopped eating. Soon after, my appetite disappeared as well. Jenny had always been thin, but now she was beginning to look skeletal. Jenny's parents stared at her worriedly as she pushed food around her plate. She always promised them she would eat at the mall, so they gave her more and more money hoping what she said was true. During one visit to prom, we discovered that a friend of a friend had a flask of cheap whiskey. After that, we spent part of each visit getting tipsy, then spinning around the dance floor laughing and hanging on to each other.

For me, the alcohol made everything blurry around the edges and somehow more beautiful. I felt bolder and more alive. On one visit, I asked Chad if he wanted to go to his car for a while. I wasn't sure if we'd be able to leave the building, but we were. I lost my virginity that night in the backseat of his old Chevy, the streetlights peeking in and out of branches and creating. dancing shadows around us. It was magical. In real life, Jenny's grades were slipping, and she continued to grow thinner and thinner. Our classmates began to whisper about her when she

passed by. I heard words like anorexia tossed around. I was losing weight too, but my parents just complimented me for finally starting to thin out. Jenny grew quieter, even when it was was just the two of us alone in her bedroom. She slipped into long, distracted silences that I was unable to snap her out of. One day at school, she walked right up to Chris. Hey, babe. At first, he looked shocked, but then he burst out laughing. I grabbed Jenny's arm and pulled her away. When I looked back, Chris was still laughing. Chad was standing next to him. He looked at me with a smile and winked. The last time we went to prom was on a Saturday night. Jenny didn't speak during the drive. I could see her father's worried eyes glancing at her in the

rearview mirror. I held her hand as we walked to the dress shop. Her fingers were colds and blue. I had read that this was due to poor circulation caused by not eating for so long. Outside the dressing-groom door, I gave her a hug. She smiled at me, the first smile I had seen from her in a long time. We went in and suddenly were back in our dream world. Jenny was healthy at prom. She smiled and laughed and talked with me. It was a beautiful night.

We drank and danced and laughed with our friends. I asked Chad to take me to his car and we made love again. At the end of the night, I had to practically drag Jenny back to the bathroom. I'm so happy here. It's everything I ever wanted. She was gone. I changed back into my clothes and opened the dressing stall door. I waited a few moments for Jenny to come out, then called her name. Jenny?

Nothing. I knocked on the stall door. Still nothing. Finally, I opened it to find it empty. No dress, no clothes, no Jenny. I ran to the front of the store, to the woman behind the counter. Have you seen my friend? Did she already leave? What friend? You came in alone?

She didn't look up from her sewing. No, I came in with my friend. The same friend I always come in with. To leave, I'm closing up. She looked up at me. Her eyes were cold and threatening. But... Leave before I call security.

I backed slowly out of the store. The woman immediately pulled down the security gate. I ran to a pay phone and called Jenny's house. Her dad answered. Jenny is missing. We were trying on dresses, and she just disappeared. Please, I can't find her. Andrea.

Calm down. I'll be right there. I sank down to the floor under the pay phone and pulled my knees to my chest. 20 minutes later, Jenny's dad found me there. I took him to the dress shop and he peered in. He managed to get mall security involved and soon they called the police. While they were talking to Jenny's dad, I looked in through the gate and into the store. That's when I saw it.

Behind the counter, framed on the wall beside a row of other dresses was Jenny's dress. I began to scream. The rest of the night passed in a blur. I tried again and again to explain about the dresses, the store, the prom. No one listened. No one believed me. Eventually the police drove me home.

They explained what happened to my parents, but I didn't listen. I just climbed the stairs to my room and fell into my bed. No one checked on me that night. Weeks passed. Flyers with Jenny's face were plastered around town. At first, there were search parties combing the nearby woods. Soon, people gave up on searching. The flyers began to tear and fall off the bulletin boards and telephone poles.

No one replaced them. I became the girl with the missing friend. People were kind to me. They hugged me in the school halls and asked how I was feeling. They complimented how thin I was becoming. I didn't care. I was numb. A dull pain the size of a fist formed in my stomach.

It became the only thing I could feel. Eating eased the pain so I didn't eat. Even after people seemed to forget about Jenny, they still paid attention to me. They seemed to mistake my apathy and distance for attitude and mystery. Suddenly, I was cool. My path eventually crossed Chad's, and he became interested in me. We began dating. He didn't seem to mind that I had nothing to say, so long as he could walk through the halls with his arm draped over my shoulder.

We had sex in the backseat of his car, and it wasn't at all like I remembered. I felt nothing save for an initial sharp pain. I stared silently out the rear window of the car and up at the full moon. I learned that Chad's older brother would get us alcohol if Chad asked, and Chad was more willing to ask as long as we had sex. I spent most of my time drinking and screaming. growing on the worn-out sofa in Chad's basement. Being drunk helped me forget about Jenny for a while. More than a year had passed since I last saw Jenny. I was a junior. I agreed to go to prom with Chad.

My mom actually drove me to the mall to look for dresses. I had become thin enough that my parents took notice and had begun to worry. My hair had been thinning for a while. My brush was constantly full of hair no matter how often I cleaned it. My fingers turned blue often. That made me feel closer to Jenny. I tried on dresses at Macy's, my mom waiting outside the dressing room door. I slipped the first one on and turned to look in the mirror. My hair fell thin and straight past my shoulders.

The dress hung from my reedy frame. I was the girl I had seen so many times in the bathroom mirror with Jenny. I had become who I always wanted so badly to be. I felt hot rage flow through my body. I hated what happened to Jenny. I hated what happened to me. I began to scream and angry guttural shrieked as I punched my image in the mirror. I hid it again and again.

Even after it cracked and splintered, even after blood began streaming from my split knuckles. My mother burst into the dressing room trying to restrain me. Store employees and security guards soon followed. I don't remember much else until I woke up in the emergency room with a cast on my hand. I was still wearing the dress. My mother went back to Macy's and purchased it. She even managed to clean the blood out. Chad and our friends thought I was badass for punching a mirror and breaking my hand.

They had no idea about the real story, and I didn't tell them anything. I saw Jenny one last time. It was at prom. I'd walked through the doors at the start of the evening and stopped short. It was exactly the same problem. Rom, Jenny and I had attended so many times. Babe? Chad had his eyebrows raised.

I laughed grimly to myself, then took his outstretched arm and kept walking. The evening felt so hollow, so empty. I danced with Chad to the same songs, but felt nothing. I was drunk halfway through the night. too drunk. I stumbled to the bathroom feeling sick. I managed to lean over a toilet just in time to vomit. I laughed to myself that if Jenny would have been there, she'd be holding my hair. If Jenny would have been there, none of this would be happening. Wiping my mouth with the back of my good hand, I stumbled to a sink to wash my face. As I looked up into the mirror, I saw her. She was reflected in the adjacent mirror,

the one we had admired ourselves in so many times. Slowly, I crossed to the reflection. Jenny was wearing the dress. She was looking right at me. Her body was fragmented like she was made of broken glass. I could see through her. She didn't speak or move, just stood there, staring at me. After a moment, I broke her gaze and walked out of the bathroom and back to the dance. Nowadays, Tavistock Galleria is a shadow of its former self. I go back now and again. I walk past the empty stores along the path of Jenny and I took so many times. The dress shop never reopened.

I can peer into it through the security gate. The rows of racks that once held countless dresses are empty. But above the front counter, the framed dresses remain. Jenny's dress is still there. It's perfect, untouched by time. I stare at it, trying to remember. Jenny wearing it, trying to see her one more time, but I never can. In the end, all I can do is let out the breath I didn't know I was holding and turn and walk away. As our service concludes, we send you away with our blessings. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program, please

visit the no sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season pass program. Over 60 hours of content for only 1999. On behalf of everyone at the no sleep podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us again next week in our sleepless sanctuary. This audio production is Copyright, 2018, 2019 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All blessed 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.