The NoSleep Podcast - S16: NoSleep Podcast - Sleepless Decompositions Vol. 6

Episode Date: October 24, 2021

Our Halloween Month of Horror continues with the second of two Sleepless Decompositions episodes this month."Moonrise" written by S.H. Cooper (Story starts around 00:03:00)Produced by: Phil MichalskiPerformed by Dan Zappulla"I Used to Work For An Extreme Haunt" written by Jon Grilz (Story starts around 00:18:00)Produced by: Phil MichalskiNarrator – Jon Grilz, Michael – Mick Wingert, Gags – Nate Dufort, Pete – Dan Zappulla, Blur – Jeff Clement, Paul – David Ault"Still Beating" written by Daniel Becker (Story starts around 00:40:30)Produced by: Phil MichalskiPerformed by Peter LewisThis episode is sponsored by:Betterhelp - Betterhelp's mission is making professional counseling accessible, affordable, convenient - so anyone who struggles with life's challenges can get help, anytime, anywhere. Get started today and get 10% off your first month by going to betterhelp.com/nosleepCaliper CBD - Caliper CBD is a fast, easy way to use CBD. With precise 20 mg doses of dissolvable powder which mix quickly and flavorlessly into any food or drink, you'll experience all the benefits of CBD without the hassles of oils or tinctures. Get 20% off your first order when you use promo code NOSLEEP at trycaliper.com/nosleepClick here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast teamClick here to for Season Pass 17Click here to learn more about the Creepy podcastClick here to learn more about our Twitch channelClick here to learn more about S.H. CooperClick here to learn more about S.H. Cooper's novel, "Inheriting Her Ghosts" Executive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone"Sleepless Decompositions" illustration courtesy of Kelly TurnbullAudio program ©2021 - 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

Hi, I'm Nicole Goodnight, voice actor for the No Sleep podcast. Health is a topic that's been on a lot of people's minds lately for good reason. When we talk about health, we often focus on physical wellness, broken limbs, cuts and bruises, viruses, and sickness. But it's important to always remember our mental well-being too. The brain's a part of the body, after all. And mental health is connected to physical health, suffering from illness or pain, or even just worrying about it can take its toll on our minds.

Even though physical ailments might seem more visible and intimidating, you can't can't overlook the need for mental wellness and staying healthy in mind as well as body. That's where services like BetterHelp come in. If you need someone to talk to or just to listen, they're a great option. BetterHelp 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. It's not self-help.

It is professional counseling done securely online. There is a broad range of expertise in BetterHelp's counselor network which may not be locally available in many areas. Better Help service is available for clients worldwide. It doesn't matter when you need help day or night. You can log into your account anytime and send a message to your counselor. You'll get timely and thoughtful responses. Plus, you can schedule weekly video or phone sessions so you won't ever have to sit in an uncomfortable waiting room.

Plus, you can even chat and text with your therapist between sessions when you need to talk about things. It allows you to take control of when you feel capable of opening up instead of being put on the spot if you're someone who finds that hard. BetterHelp is committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed. It's more affordable than traditional offline counseling and financial aid is even available. So whenever you need some help, visit betterhelp.com slash no sleep and join the over 500,000

people taking charge of their mental health with the help of an experienced professional. No sleep listeners get 10% off your first month at betterhelp.com slash no sleep. So don't forget that mental health is just as important as physical health. Reach out for a helping hand. BetterHelp can offer that helping hand. So visit betterhelp.com slash no sleep to get 10% off your first month whenever you need it. That's right, Nicole. This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp,

and No Sleep listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash no sleep. Now it's time for the horror to begin. Sleepless listeners, I'm your host, David Cummings. As you may be aware, Halloween is on the horizon. We here at the No Sleep Podcast have a colossal cavalcade of content coming for your ears over the next week. But on top of our Halloween episodes,

we're also going to be continuing our newly established tradition of Halloween live streams. Our Halloween live stream event will take place on Saturday, October 30th on Twitch.tv slash the No Sleep Podcast. Fear-laden festivities will kick off. at 3 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, where we'll spend a terrifying time hanging out, chatting with listeners,

and sharing spooky stories. Then, to take us up to the Twilight Hours, members of the No Sleep Podcast team will compete against each other in a number of multiplayer games, including the newly released Jack Box Party Pack 8. Come 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time, some of us will dissolve into the night, heading out under the cover of darkness to attend Halloween soires. But fear not, some of the more game-obsessed members of the team will be hanging around long into the night, hosting further games that invite an unholy union

between the No Sleep Podcast players and our sleepless fans. Expect such devilish delights as Back for Blood, more Jackbox, Dead by Daylight, and Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. So that's Saturday, October 30th, from 3 to 6 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on Twitch.tv slash the No Sleep Podcast, and further gaming hijinks extending throughout the rest of the night, until the treats have run out and the night draws to a creepy close. And now, on to Volume 6 of sleepless decompositions. I was warned once, you know, of both.

two moons. Where there are twin sons, there can be a lunar answer. And then again my attention was drawn to portentous reasonings. The moons rise over the 17th cycle which begins with the season of the witch. Two moons, satellites in the night sky. Our ancestors feared the darkness. It was a survival instinct, and it would be easy to assume that their terror kicked in at sunfall. That's certainly what author S.H. Cooper would have had us believe. Or is it? Perhaps what she was really trying to tell us, via the voice of Dan Zapula, is that the thing we should fear the most is moonrise. It was the smell or the sound. I don't remember which now. One of them was enough to draw me to the beach. The other, enough to keep me there.

There's a funk that sometimes accompanies low tide. Brine and seaweed, the shallow mire exposed to air. Usually I hardly noticed it. That night, though, it rolled through my ocean-facing window, left open to catch the fall breeze, and coated my home with its stench. Even after I'd shuttered up, the stink remained. Strong enough that I wondered if something dead

hadn't washed ashore. I like to think I would have ignored it. I wasn't curious by nature, especially not if death was involved and was just content to wait it out. I just had to hope it wasn't something that would stick around, decaying for a while. Living on a desolate stretch of sound had its perks. Attentive, deceased animal cleanup was not one of them. At some point, despite my better judgment, and I'd stepped on to my porch. Perhaps I was trying to see down the long slope leading to the beach. Or maybe the house had just felt too small and altogether too big at the same time.

It had been doing that more lately since the passing of my old Tomcat had left me alone. Either way, I ended up outside, and moments later, I was down at the beach. Was it the smell I was. I'd gone toward, so strong I'd finally decided to confirm there wasn't an unfortunate whale left behind when the tide went out? Or was it the hum? So low and deep I couldn't be sure if I was actually hearing it or merely feeling it traveling through the ground. My flashlight

led me along the stony shoreline. Though the full moon was bright enough, I could practically see by It wasn't until I turned back and saw the pinprick glow in my windows that I realized how far I'd actually walked. Not just down the beach, but away from it. The tide wasn't just low. It was gone. That far out, I should have been up to my knees at least. Confused, one hand pressed over my nose.

I swept my flashlight up and my knees. down, eyes narrowed against the night. If I was still and I listened for it, I could hear the gentle lap of water meeting land, but it was distant, coming from somewhere further ahead still. The hum, however, had grown louder, or more accurately, more intense. It spread up my feet into my legs, sending shivers through my chest, as if a tuning fork was being struck by each beat of my heart. Between it and the smell, my head pounded. I should have gone back. I wanted to go back. But when I looked over my shoulder again, the lights from my home had all but vanished, swallowed up by the night. As if pulled by source unseen, I was still.

still moving forward even as I willed myself to turn around. My thoughts became a distant thing from my body, urging one thing while my legs did another. The hum was in my teeth then, vibrating them in their sockets. My eyes watered at the stench. So heavy it clogged my nose and filled my mouth with the taste of rotting fish and stagnant seawater. When I saw the pillar, thin and taller than me by twofold,

topped by a bulbous round end, rising against the sky ahead, every instinct told me that this was the source of that damned hum. My heartbeat had become erratic, a small animal aware it's not alone in the hunter's wood. And with what little control I could muster, I pointed my flashlight at the Strain Jobelisk. The light detailed its surface, splotchy brown with a wet sheen, not wood or stone, not quite flesh, but living, and I was reaching for it. I hadn't registered I was at all until my fingertips brushed against it.

Rougher than it first appeared, scaly, covered in a fine layer of slimy, sticky substance. At some base level, I knew I shouldn't be touching it, even as I pressed my palm flatly against it. A cough rose in my throat. I tried to force it back down, tried to take a gulp of air that had turned liquid thick, but it quickly became a sputter. My chest constricted sharply. I attempted to pull away from the pillar, gasping desperately for breath, but my hand remained fixed to it. I yanked again, but it was stuck fast, and when I shined my light on it, I saw the slime had gathered around my hand and oozed between my fingers, holding me in place like a fly in honey.

My lungs screamed, and in a last ditch effort to fill them, I threw my head back, mouth stretched wide. The moon, hanging low and glowing impossibly bright, seemed to grow as I stared up at it, until it filled my vision and my eyes burned with its white light. I squeezed them shut, wrenching my head away from its unblinking glare. Just as quickly, it was gone, and the world beyond my eyelids darkened into black. I had become weightless, floating in such all-consuming cold. I only felt it for a moment before my body became numb. I wasn't sure if I was breathing or if I needed to breathe or if anything hurt anymore.

Only dark and then cold and then nothing at all. I only opened my eyes when the sound. started, a melancholic call that reminded me of whale songs, but was at the same time too deep and discordant to be anything recognizable. There was no light, moon or otherwise, in that void, but my mind had become too sluggish for thought or panic. A current passed to my left. I tried to turn toward it, distantly aware I should be more afraid, but it was hard when I couldn't see or think. I merely existed.

The first flash was a distant blink of pale blue against the black. That time I did somehow twist my body toward it. It came again, closer, and I became aware of the large outline behind it. Another blink, and then a consistent glow. The dim pool was cast by an array of fleshy appendages dangling in front of long, narrow teeth. The creature they belonged to was only a vague shape

looming in shadow. Thin tendrils of fear finally broke through the numbness and began to snake their way through my frozen veins. As I became more aware, more afraid, the distorted whale-like song rose into a keen

and each note was like a night. scraping across my brain, carving a message I couldn't grasp into my very being. It smoldered and sparked, burning through the cold until it felt like lightning was tearing through my body. What did it want? If I could just figure it out, just appease it, perhaps it would stop. But the more I struggled to decipher it, the more I could feel myself fighting against that understanding. This was not something for man to hear, much less comprehend. It was primordial, dredged from some hellish depths I had never been meant to descend to.

I could feel it in my bones, how the wrongness of it raked against them and tried to seep into my marrow. Pressure, built, and built, until my brain seemed crushed against the sides of the sides of of my skull and I was sure it would burst, erupting through bone and scalp as the whale song crescendoed. There came a rush of water, as if I were quickly rising or it were quickly receding and with it went the dark. And I was suddenly staring up at the night sky once more. The world was warped, though, rounded at its edges. Colors muted. The shapes indistinct. All except the moon. Not the same white orb I'd been gazing at before, although it too was still there. No, this was different. A second moon. Some impossible shade of purple red I'd never seen before, cresting the horizon. At the sight of it, A new fear started to rise in me.

Nameless and animalistic, it clawed at my insides with a fatalistic certainty, like nothing I'd ever felt before. If that thing eclipses our moon, we're doomed. As the thought formed and grew, a connection to my humanity that I clamored to hold to, my vision blurred and dimmed. I was seeing double, looking both up at the two moons and at the pillar where my hand remains stuck. The images swam together in a confusing blend that made my head throb. I was slipping between myself and this second vision, fixed upward,

and knew if I didn't separate myself from the pillar, I would become lost to it. I dropped my flashlight and pulled my arm weakly at first. but my desperation soon turned it into a wild tug of war. One foot braced against the pillar as I grasped my wrist and attempted to yank it free. The slime clung, unyielding. Tiny fissures appeared in my skin, and a pain like a hundred razor blade cuts ran up my arm. Seams of red bubbled to the surface as I shook and pulled and fought to reclaim. my limb. Blood ran down my wrist, slickened the hold of my free hand. And in a last ditch

attempt at freedom, I planted both feet upon the pillar and shoved myself backwards with all my might. My hand came away with a wet tear almost drowned out by my scream. The flesh of my palm and fingers remained on the pillar, and I couldn't bring myself to look down at the mess of of exposed sinew and muscle cradled against my chest. Immediately my vision cleared and became my own again, and the second moon had vanished. As I stumbled back, I nearly lost my footing, and my gaze went downward. Caught in the flashlight's beam was not seabed,

but the scaly side of a giant flounder-like fish, partially obscured by sand and rock. In growing horror, I traced the length of its body back to the pillar and realized it wasn't a pillar at all. It was an eye stalk, and I had been seeing the world through its single, bulbous eye. I uttered a small terrified cry and staggered off of that creature. Away from its unshifting upward stair and the horrible images it had somehow imparted,

unsure of what it was, what it wanted, where it came from. Only that it was real. That that moon, too alien for my eyes to even fathom, was rising. And that, if it eclipses our moon, we are dead. doomed. Oh, when the moons in the sky flare across a huge eye. That's a moray. Now, I trust you are all aware of the excellent horror anthology podcast called Creepy, created and hosted by friend of the show, John Grills. And with Halloween upon us, it's the perfect time for creepy and no sleep to collaborate. That collaboration can be heard here in mere moments. Well, part of it.

it anyway. Written and performed by John Grills, this story also stars Nate DuFort from Creepy, alongside our own Mick Wingert, David Alt, Dan Zepula, and Jeff Clement. The second of our collaborations can be heard over on the creepy podcast. Check the link in the show notes to find it. So listen to the second half on Creepy. But now, let's listen to our collaboration with Creepy with a creepy tale called, I used to work for an extreme haunt. I was always a sucker for anything horror. I saw my first horror movie when I was eight.

The Exorcist. Yeah, I know. Mom and Dad were pretty pissed on my aunt and uncle for that one. But what's done can't be undone. And what they'd done was plant a seed that grew into a goddamn oak tree by the time I hit middle school. Wouldn't be much of a stretch to see. I was the only kid in elementary school who'd heard of and actually seen parts of faces of death,

courtesy of a friend's older brother. By the time I gotten out of middle school, I'd seen Cannibal Holocaust and Cannibal Farrix. High school brought on the human centipede, Antichrist, and even the Siberian film. If it was intense, I wanted to see it. Not like it mattered. They were just movies. Never made sense to me how people could get so worked up over that stuff. Guess that's how I got started with haunted houses in the first place.

If you can believe it, school is responsible for that one. My ninth grade civics class required that we do community service. And one of the options that a lot of kids took was the volunteer to local haunted house. Wasn't anything special. Whoever put it on had rented out an old department store space in the local dirt mall. They hung trash bags to create walls and mazes and stuff like that. I hired volunteers from the local high school to run it. I can't imagine they felt good about that choice by the end of it.

Most of us just goofed off and wandered around the place ourselves, checking out the other rooms, switching rolls, all the stuff they didn't want us to do. Honestly, it got a little boring hiding in the shadows, weighing to jump out at some ruby wandering around a maze that could have knocked down with a good sneeze. Still, come 10th grade, I started looking at other options. Over the years, I've worked at haunted houses,

haunted hair-eyed, zombie crawls, Halloween fun runs, even a horror-themed bar for a while that kept a candle glowing in front of a picture of Laura Palmer. Eventually, I found my way into the extreme haunt scene. I don't know if it was my personality or just a natural progression of things. I mean, the people who attend this stuff are the same way, right? They saw scary movies when they were young, started going to haunted houses, eventually got tired of the same old things and wanted to push back. boundaries. They started to find the places that required consent forms. Well, those places need

employees, right? It's supply and demand. If you know anything about extreme haunts, you probably heard the stories already. Places that require a safe word. Places where the actors can touch you, and more. Places that boast no one can make it to the end. I worked for one of those. I know there are places out there with certain reputations. Places of I won't talk about here, because fuck those guys anyway. Plays with waiting lists a mile long just for people to go in and get verbally abused. But the owner of ours, Michael, he took it one step further. Guy wasn't more than 40, but had a smoker's cough like a coal miner or something.

You make it to the end, you get $10,000. You'll regret it. That's the line everyone knows him for. A sort of promo video popped up on YouTube a couple years ago, around the time I started working there. There's mostly just images of people who'd given up. Because that's part of the agreement. You gave up, you gave us permission to photograph you and film you, basically call you a piece of shit on camera for the world to see.

People would have seen that video and turned the other way. But no, lots of sick fucks out there. Our online registration doubled within a week. everybody thought they could handle it. They were wrong until one guy a few weeks ago. We were on the show most of the year, kind of on a sporadic schedule as Michael saw fit. Honestly, not having a sad schedule,

just sort of fed into the sadism and masochism that people wanted. You get to come when we tell you, as it were. It added to the mystique and really just reflected the attitude of the place. I can't say I cared much for the people who showed up. I can't say it necessarily started that way. But hang around that group of guys for long enough. And it changes a person. You start to reflect leadership and environment.

Extreme home workers aren't born. They're made. We had a rotating group of about a dozen guys. The guys who torment you, wrap your head in duct tape, lock you in a refrigerator, chain you to a pipe, that sort of stuff. They were referred to as our dog. but there was a core group of five of us who worked a haunt regularly with specific gigs. I was a driver.

I'm the guy who picked people up at the designated point, blindfolded him, drove him around off-road for a while until they were good and lost. I had most of the time worried. I was when he got him out, walked him into the haunt we had set up and started the process, handing him off to one of the dogs. Then I go and man the cameras. We filmed everything for reasons. First, there was Blur. No one ever saw him. If they did, they'd be way less scared of him.

Blur was a skinny surfer-looking guy. Never once saw him wearing a shirt. That bleached blonde hair and a perpetual tan like he just left the beach to fuck with people. I always rocked back and forth when he was standing still like he was ready to run off at any moment. Rumor was a guy was a tweaker. But if so, he's most reliable tweaker I ever met. Blur was all about the audio experience. A-S-M-R stuff.

Assuming you made it that far, and lots didn't. Most gave up with the basic shit the dogs would do. They'd chain you to a pipe, so your feet were just at their tiptoes on the ground. And he'd whisper into your right ear. Then whisper in your left. He'd move all around. It's just a game. You'll be fine.

There's no reason to... Then he'd scream the most insane shit you ever heard. in front of your mother, you dumb fuck. This isn't a fucking game. You're stuck here now. You think that safe word shit is real? How fucking stupid are you? Why would you think this was legit?

No one knows where you are. He laughed as sick, choking laugh right in their face. And just go quiet. He'd take an hour just fucking with him. Moving around, taunting him. He was equal parts of drill sergeant and sane clown. I swear most people quit there. They don't expect at all.

The shock's too much. You revert to a little kid getting screamed at. People hollering their safe word within the first five minutes was pretty common. Pathetic, too, if you ask me. Eventually, he'd get tired of his own shit. stick and let the dogs take him back for a while. We'd always work in some abandoned factory or something. Some place filled with dirt and mud and bugs.

They'd throw them down, smear their faces, whatever they wanted. After that, it was Paul. It was the first time the people would take off their blindfolds, or, if they were unlucky, have the duct tape ripped from their faces. And the first thing, they got to see what can be best described is Iggy Pop on a bad day. Paul was just about the skinny-looking hillbilly you ever saw. His ribcage was on full display, along with the rest of him. Naked as a day he was shit into this world.

The guy who was bruised and sleep-deprived. If he wasn't doing this, he'd probably be a performance artist in New York rubbing shit on himself and calling it a political statement. The dogs would tie up, sometimes hog-tied. And Paul would worm across the floor, slithering around their bodies, rubbing up against their skin. He'd make this clicking noise as he whispered to them. Can you feel me?

He'd lick him anywhere they had exposed skin. Pro tip. Don't wear a tank top there. Guy smelled like he ate shit with a constant sink of chewing tobacco and stale coffee. He'd hiss at him like a fucking snake. Stov your life. When you quit, when you cry out to escape and go home,

when you take a shower to try and wash my stench from your flesh and lay down on your bed, you'll feel me there next to you. One day, you'll open your eyes and say, I know you want me. You gave us your address. We know, you know, and you'll know me. She pried him, force his fingers into their mouths down their throats. Not enough for them to throw up.

More to prime them for gags. Guess what he did. If there was a smell that could make a person throw up, Gags knew about it. He was our Domenic chemist with the iron stomach. You can make damn near anyone throw up. Then he'd grab in his bare hands and feed it back to you. He only had one rule. You aren't allowed to throw up.

You leave here with what you came in with. You stayed in Gag's room for at least two hours. At least. And before long, you could hear him yelling. Do you dare spill that shit on my floor? Fucking eat it all. If you couldn't throw up, like your stomach was already empty or something.

Pete would join gags in the room. Pete wore one of those old World War I-style gas masks. You could hear the forced breathing coming down the hall. He'd have a double-stack metal bucket in one hand. The top one filled with water, clanging in and sloshing against the walls as he walked, and a towel in the other. Yeah, Pete waterboarded people. He basically drowned as gags held you down,

all the while channing through that mask. Chug, chug! Ha ha ha! Fucking breathe! And at about 6'5-350 pounds, Gags could hold you down. You'd force so much water into your mouth and nose and stomach that you couldn't help but throw up or piss yourself.

That's what the other bucket was for, to catch what came out of you. I already fucking told you. You leave here with what you came in with. Everyone broke by gags. And if they didn't break within two hours, which 95% of people did. Everyone except me would join them.

They do anything and everything to break them. Michael's orders. They want that $10,000. They can get it from my fucking corpse. You know those photos from a while back? Those soldiers overseas mistreating prisoners, whatever the prison's name was. I understood them.

It's a byproduct of environment. You become what you're around. After a few years of doing the haunt, we were all filled with this kind of hate and contempt. The people who came there, people actually paid money to show up and get tortured, they were the worst kind of people to us. We were punishing them for being such assholes.

We'd assault him, torture them, even bury them. No one ever collected. No one even came close until he was older. Late 40s, 50s, I don't know. I picked him up and he didn't say a word. Just sat there, big on his head in the back of my jeeps as he bounced through the woods. Wasn't anything special. I only think about it because...

Well, because. I dropped him off in the house and went to check the cameras. I watched the dogs do what the dogs do. Nothing special. I watched Blur to his routine. Guy didn't flinch. Again, not a big deal. People got through him okay.

sometimes. They convinced themselves just a game they signed up for. Some vets can handle it. They've been through worse. He moved on to Paul. Still, the guy was a statue. No matter what tricks he pulled out, the old guy barely reacted, like he was asleep or in some kind of coma. But he moved on to gags. I sat there and watched gags and pee go to town on the guy, stuff that stuff that would have crossed the line if there was a line but the guy

he didn't flinch he took it all he took the worst of it all Michael was over my shoulder at that point I could hear his teeth grinding together he was actually mad the fuck is wrong with this guy

the fuck is wrong with those two pussies they can't handle one old man they were getting dark real dark with a guy, real dark like I'd only seen one other time. Finally, I see the old guy, raised an arm real weak. He couldn't have had much left in him.

Gags' knuckles were bleeding. There were teeth on the ground. He waved Giggs closer and when Gags leaned in. The old guy whispered something I couldn't make out. Gaggs looked back up with the camera and stepped away from the old man through his side door to the control room. What did he say? He asked me if I know Alice. Who the fuck is Alice?

How should I know? What the fuck do we do now? Michael made it sound like it was that easy. I mean, it used to be that easy, but not anymore. How? I don't fucking care. Just make him quit where you two can fucking pay him the 10 grand. Michael stomped out of the room and Gags just sort of looked at all of us before shrugging and going back to work.

Three hours later, the old guy, he wasn't doing this. good, but he was still there. They did shit to him. I hadn't seen anyone else do. Finally, the guy gets one of the dogs' attention and they come into the control room, told us that he'd quit if he could see our core group. Me, Paul, Blur, Gags, Pete, and Michael. Just wanted us all to go in so he could say he quit to all of us. Didn't occur to me till later that he knew our names. Honestly, Michael was so on edge, we weren't thinking about anything. The guy was well past the seven-hour mark and making us all sweat. Michael didn't hesitate.

Rounded us all up. Us going in there hooting and hollering and mocking the guy for finally quitting. Like weed won something. He looked at us all through eyes that could barely open from the pepper spray. One by one, he looked at us real hard. Before saying his safe word, we dumped the guy where we found him and called 911 to have him picked up. I think we all knew we'd. we'd gone too far, kept waiting for the police to show up. But they never did. Michael

swore the NDA would cover us. But I don't think he even believed it. But the guy never said a peep. We heard about blur a few days later. Cops found him in his apartment. His tongue had been cut out. His surfer blonde hair shaved, a needle in his arm. The cop said he'd OD'd lost it, mutilated himself. But before that, he left a note that said, Tell Allison, I'm sorry, in his chicken scratch that barely looked human. Michael didn't say anything. Just told one of the dogs there was a new job opening. Paul didn't show up for a gig the next week. Pissing off Michael who stomped over to his shitbox apartment found him. Cut off his own cock. He was holding it in his hand. His other hand had a letter.

Tell Allison, I'm sorry. Michael disappeared after that. It's not like I was left holding a bag. Michael was the haunt. Without him, it was just over. It was all in his name. He even paid us under the table. I knew he was shady, because obviously he was, but still,

I went digging through his office. He kept files and all the permission forms and disclaimers he made people sign. I was going through him when I came across one from the year before. It's not like I forgot about her, but I didn't piece it together. She told us her name was Heather, not Allison. One year to the day, her dad came into the same haunt she died at. Their likeness was clear as day when I pulled up the old videos. Fucking criminating myself. It doesn't matter anymore. I know I'm dead anyway. She died hanging from a pipe, but it was actually caused when she was one.

water boarded. It's called dry drowning when the water gets in your lungs and you literally drown on dry land. She'd made it past the seven-hour mark. Just like her old man, Michael had his dump her body in a ditch and we circled the wagons, claiming she never showed up for the haunt. There wasn't much the cops could do, and it turned into a rumor, made the haunt that much more popular, if I'm being honest. No one really believed a girl died here, but she did. Michael told me to delete the videos and watch me do it to make sure they were gone. Didn't ask me to empty the waste basket, though. Not sure why I kept it.

Leverage, maybe? Blackmail? Neither now. Besides, that dumb paranoid fuck kept a release for him. They found gags drowned in his own bathtub. Paul was in his bed with his gas mask on. Some mix of chlorine gas in the tube. His eyes ruptured from the strength. rain. They've both had notes. Guess what they said. I don't know what'll happen to me now. Maybe I'll get hit

by a car, eaten by dogs, or something else that sounds poetic for the fucked up shit we do. But I know he won't forgive me. He looked into my eyes. He wanted to see each of us, so he'd know he got the right people. So they could see the face of the morning father who would torture the torturers. I don't know where Michael is either. For a while, I thought maybe he was involved in what happened until I saw an MP4 email to the haunt website. He couldn't see faces. But there was a naked fat man tied to a table. Parts of him were missing. You could hear him sobbing. There was a stopwatch clock in the corner of the video that read four hours. I knew he was just over halfway. to dead if he was lucky.

Seven hours like Allison. Like her dad. Maybe more. I couldn't be sure who was really doing it. Lied to myself that it was just a weird, elaborate prank from someone as fucked up as Michael. Then a voice came over the recording. Low and flat. Do you know, Allison?

We'll keep decomposing in mere minutes, but first, I want to rant about something. Even though this is a horror podcast, I really can't abide things done in bad taste. Gory, slimy, gooey, horror? Oh, that's A-OK with me. But when it comes to CBD, the last thing I want to deal with is bad taste and slimy oils. I used to do that. I'd get vials of vile, oily tinctures. Sometimes I try to put the drops right in my mouth.

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That's tri-caliper.com slash no sleep. And don't forget promo code No Sleep for 20% off your first order. And now, it's time for more creepy horror. So let's show some good taste and return to the show. As our sixth sleepless decomposition draws to a close, my mind shifts to the future. By the time you next hear from me, the season of the witch will have begun. I know there's a strange audiophile appearing in the season past 17 feed for some. I can only imagine what else might appear. Between now and the dawning of the dusk that marks the birth of the season. And now, in our final tale.

We have a tale shared with us by author Daniel Becker. It takes us from atria to ventricles. It's performed by Peter Lewis, who in the world of horror audio drama is well known for being a heart throb, which is just as well, because despite the fact that he's no surgeon, we need someone who can check if this heart is still beating. In someone still beating heart out of their chest and showing it to them before they die, it's a fascinating concept, don't you think? There's certainly no end of examples.

various media, movies, TV, video games, literature, and it's not just action and horror that broaches the topic. Comedies like to get a slice of the heart pie as well. I'm not sure what's so funny about tearing through someone's rib cage and pulling out a vital chunk of their anatomy, but it always seems to get a laugh. Perhaps it's the extreme violence juxtaposed with the comedic tone that somehow tickles our funny bones. Who knows? My own fascination with the idea began at a very young age. I was perhaps six or seven, and Indiana Jones in the Temple of Doom came out on home video for the first time. What my parents had assumed was a rip-roaring adventure for the entire family soon revealed more ripping and roaring than I think anyone had expected. I blamed the 80s. Hollywood was pulling shit like that all the time back then, slipping extreme violence into supposedly kid-friendly films.

My parents had thought I'd be terrified after seeing something like that, but they were wrong. Watching Mola Rahm plunge his bare hand into a man's chest and pull out his heart, well, it made my own heart beat like crazy. I wasn't sickened or afraid, just wildly fascinated. But the damage to my parents had been done, poor, fragile things. And so they'd kept me away from violent movies ever since. Even into my teen years, I had to go to a friend's house to see anything above a G rating. Which I did, and often I became a horror movie aficionado snatching up everything I could find. Grindhouse, art house, slasher, supernatural dark comedies.

It didn't matter. And every time a movie included that rare, elusive gem of a scene, there was I on the literal edge of my seat, my body first tensing, then relaxing in an elated swoon. It feels weird to call it orgasmic. Is that weird? I guess I'm weird then. I think it was around my junior year of high school that I started seriously thinking about medical school. I went to the library, this was before the internet after all, and I borrowed every book on human anatomy I could find.

The cardiovascular system became my religion, the body, my temple, the heart, my golden idol. I wanted to know everything I could about this marvelous organ. And of course, my obsession remained, carried a lot. long in the back of my mind, like stolen pornography, furtively glanced at when no one was looking. Heart surgeon. Naturally, I graduated top of my class, of course. All my professors wrote me letters of recommendation, saying things like, he has a passion for the field unparalleled by any I have seen before, and never have I witnessed such skill in the hands of someone so young. It is as if he and the organ were one.

I know, I know, really corny stuff, but it got me a position on the cardio team at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the country so I can forgive their laps into poetry. And anyway, they were right. It really did feel as though I knew hearts from the inside out. Not in any sort of metaphysical way, but just for years of study and hard work.

Those were long, hard years of my life. I barely had time for anything else, let alone a social life. It's a small miracle that I met my wife, let alone married her. She's a good woman, for the most part. She appreciates my skill, if not my fervor for the craft. I've certainly spent more time at the hospital than with her, the poor neglected thing. And all throughout my secret fantasy remained, the idea, the concept, the dream. It might seem a little backwards to some people, I'm sure.

The whole point of heart surgery is to preserve a patient's life, not end it. And one could argue that I've already achieved this effect through the many successful heart transplants I've performed over the years. But it's... It's not the same. True, they reap the benefits once they awaken, but during, they're asleep. They miss seeing me at my best, and that's what it's about, really, a witness, an audience, a fan. And so my research began, not with intent to actually do such a thing, of course, just scientific curiosity. I wanted to know if the thing could be done.

The first obstacle is the rib cage. Now, bones might be one of the hardest organic substances on earth, but ribs are comparatively weak. People have actually broken ribs from sneezing too hard. Can you believe it? That said, you have to take into consideration that both the victim and Victor are made of the same stuff. And bones knocking against bones is never. fun for either party. Try punching through someone's rib cage and you'll probably end up breaking every bone in your hand. I suppose you could flatten your hand and with sufficient force

slip it between the ribs, but you still have to get through thick, connective muscles called the intercostals and you're not doing that with your bare fingers. Alas, there goes the direct approach. I mean, I suppose you could go in with an axe or something. But then we're talking massive physical trauma that would likely push your victim into shock and ultimately unconsciousness followed by death. The whole point is to show them the heart before they die, so axes are right out. What about going in from beneath, I hear you ask? Well, yes, one could pierce the abdominal cavity with relative ease.

slicing through the stomach and liver with even a dull blade, piercing the diaphragm to get to the heart beyond. But then what? The veins holding the heart in place are thick, and ripping it out would do damage to the precious organ, endangering the mission. It's supposed to be still beating, after all. So what's left? Well, surgery, of course. And like with all surgery, preparation is key.

The good news is since the goal is to ultimately kill your patient, you needn't worry too much about keeping things sterile. The bad news is, unless you want to run the risk of detection and some serious jail time, co-conspirators are a bad idea. And this means doing the work of an entire surgical team by yourself. Do you know how hard it is to keep someone anesthetized but consciously aware and perform open heart surgery at the same? time. It's really fucking hard. Assuming you're able to do all of these things, both accurately and discreetly, actually getting the heart out is relatively easy. You just need to disconnect it from the venicava, the aorta, the pulmonary arteries. Once that's done, just pick it up, and there you go. Ooh, fun fact, the human heart will continue to beat independently of the body as long as it

has oxygen. So showing it to your victim while it's still beating is just a matter of keeping it wet with fresh blood. Easy, right? Of course, all of this, it was just fantasy, just conjecture, a fascinating medical puzzle to mull over in my downtime. Naturally, I was never going to actually do it until she cheated on me with you. It's funny. In a way, I suppose I should thank

you. You gave me not only the opportunity, but the motive to make my dream reality. It's just a shame. It had to come at my expense. I had honestly thought we were happy together. She'd certainly

given me no direct indication. She was unsatisfied. I'm sure I can accept a small amount of the blame. What was my work pulling me away so often and for so long? Fair. But listen to me go on about my marital problems while you are lying there barely clinging to life. Don't worry. I'm almost done.

Hold on. I just need to disconnect this last vein. There we go. No, no, no, no. Open your eyes. You can't go just yet. We're almost done. I just have to lift it out.

Come on. Damn it, wake up. Here it is. See, it's your heart. You're lying, cheating, still beating heart. Right here in my hands. Perhaps I'll have better luck with her. The decomposition is complete.

What remains is nothing but bone. Bone and something else. Something beautiful. nestled in among the dust that fills this rickety, you-wood coffin. Of course, the coffin is buried deep underground. Nobody will ever have a chance to uncover what shimmer's here. But alas, I hear there's a coming season to brace ourselves for... This audio production is Copyright 2021 by Creative Reason Media, Inc.

All rights reserved. The copyrights for the stories are held by the rest of... prospective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.