The NoSleep Podcast - S22 Ep15: NoSleep Podcast S22E15

Episode Date: March 23, 2025

It's Episode 15 of Season 22. The voices are calling with tales of doomed darkness."Fifth Curse Free" written by Amanda Liefeld (Story starts around 00:03:25)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Narrator - Mary Murphy, Adam - Matthew Bradford"Feast of the Valkyries" written by Brandon McArthur (Story starts around 00:21:20)Produced by: Jeff ClementCast: Narrator - Graham Rowat"The Lanky, Leerin' Lasso-Man" written by Gavin Cummings (Story starts around 00:29:55)Produced by: Jesse CornettCast: Narrator - Jeff Clement, Lasso-Man - Jesse Cornett, Corpses - Erin Lillis, Graham Rowat, Matthew Bradford"Darkhorse Actual" written by Yorgos Cotronis (Story starts around 01:19:00)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Claudius MooreCast: Narrator - Dan Zappulla, Shaw - Atticus Jackson. Kocher - Kyle Akers, Stafford - Reagen Tacker, Davis - Xalavier Nelson Jr., Mack - Jesse Cornett, Espera - Peter Lewis, Jackie - Sarah Thomas, Boot - Allonté Barakat"Missing Person: Angela Blake (Found)" written by Dillon D. Slack (Story starts around 01:47:00)TRIGGER WARNING!Produced by: Phil MichalskiCast: Detective Hermann - Mike DelGaudio, Eugene Blake - David Cummings, Angela Blake - Nichole Goodnight, Pastor - Peter Lewis, Townie #1 - Allonté Barakat, Townie #2 - Sarah Thomas, Captain Tillo - Atticus Jackson, Doctor Meadows - Marie WestbrookThis episode is sponsored by:Quince - Get cozy in Quince's high-quality wardrobe essentials highlighted by quality, sustainability, and affordability. Go to Quince.com/nosleep to get free shipping and a 365-day return period.Mint Mobile - Ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobileís deal and get 3 months of premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. C'mon, cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com/nosleepLiveGood - LiveGood believes that everyone deserves access to high-quality supplements without the insane markups. They offer premium products formulated by an industry-leading team of natural health experts. Head to livegood.com/nosleep to save 10% on your first order.Click here to learn more about The NoSleep Podcast teamClick here to learn more about Amanda LiefeldClick here to learn more about Yorgos CotronisClick here to learn more about Dillon D. SlackExecutive Producer & Host: David CummingsMusical score composed by: Brandon Boone"Feast of the Valkyries" illustration courtesy of Catriel TallaricoAudio program ©2025 - 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.

call you back. Bringing. Message from an unknown caller. Recognizable. Welcome, my young friends. As your host, David Cummings, I can consider my advanced years and assume that most of our sleepless listeners

are younger than me. And when I think back, way back to a previous century when I was a young lad, I can remember the days when horror for me was summed up by the idea of some monster or creature or thing that was coming to get you. It was like a schoolyard taunt. Better watch out, or it's gonna get you.

It even became a classic horror meme thanks to the seminal zombie flick, Night of the Living Dead from 1968. Remember this famous part? They're coming to get you, Barbara. They're coming for you, Barbara. Stop it! Yes, Barbara, or whatever your name is, horror is full of stories where a protagonist is faced with the dread of someone or something coming after them.

Perhaps they're cursed. Perhaps they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps they realize the danger they're in when it's far too late. On this episode, we explore the theme of people finding themselves doomed to an awful fate, that there is little they can do to avoid what's coming for them. And while we're aware that death awaits us all, this is more than just waiting for our end at a hopefully ripe old age. No, the people will meet, know that their end is coming sooner, and in ways which would hardly be considered natural causes. So keep your head on a swivel out there.

Watch your back, because something might be coming for you. Or on this podcast, it's safe to say it's comings. you. Now do you dare pick up your phone and listen to the voices calling to you. In our first tale, we meet a young woman being dragged around a little flea market by her mom. Buying second-hand clothing and school supplies meant the girl was often bullied. But in this tale, shared with us by author Amanda Leifeld, the girl discovers an odd item for sale, one that could come in handy for her situation. her situation. Performing this tale are Mary Murphy and Matthew Bradford. So be careful what you

wish for, especially if you're promised, the fifth curse free. Every year, right before school started, my mom would drag me to this gross little flea market on the edge of town, ignoring my vehement protests. On the first day of school, while my classmates were comparing shiny new backpacks, the latest jeans, the trendy new accessory, I'd be lucky if my new clothes only add a couple stains. Yet every year, my mom had the audacity to act surprised to receive a call about another bullying incident. No kidding, Mom, I'd bully me too. I trudged around the market, waiting for my mom to find me again, her arms laden with moth-eaten rags. I paused at each booth, gazing at the clutter, hoping against my better judgment to find something cool.

I stopped in front of an unguarded booth, rifling idly through the contents. I picked up a goofy little ceramic frog, examining it more closely. Kind of fun, I guess. The pile of junk shifted at my touch, and a small note card slipped out from under a moldy old paperback. The bold words printed at the top of the note card caught my attention. Fifth curse free. Below that, on the face of the card, were five empty lines. I picked it up, intrigued.

The back was labeled, instructions. Step one, online writing name of cursed. Step two, when sleeping, placing coin under pillow for results on day of waking. Step three, fifth curse coming free for you. I rolled my eyes. Not sure what was dumber, the idea of a magical curse note card, or the silly instructions that sounded like they'd been put through a bad translation app one too many times. But I didn't put the note card down.

I guess it just seemed kind of fun. I don't know. I wanted it. I looked around, searching for the owner of the booth. No one nearby was paying any attention to the cluttered table, its contents, or me. I shrugged. slipped the card into my pocket and strolled away quickly, keeping my steps casual. If they didn't care enough to watch their booth, that was their problem.

When we finally arrived back home, a heap of gross old clothes in tow. I shoved the card in my desk, feeling a little ashamed of my impulsiveness. The school year started exactly as I predicted. On a good day, I would slouch quietly from class to class, pretending I couldn't feel the disgusted glances boring into my back. Bad days. Bad days were a whole different level of waking nightmare. My first truly bad day of this year was courtesy of Maddie Walsh.

I had the misfortune of bumping into her while trying to navigate the crowded cafeteria. I tried to apologize and scurry away unobtrusively, but the damage was done. She spent the rest of the lunch period leading an increasingly raucous chast. chant featuring a creative use of my name, a few choice swears, and the phrase dirty little piggy. She was creative. I'll grant her that. The chant echoed around the school for the rest of the day, haunting my every move. In the evening, I was slumped at my desk, trying to get the catchy, mean-spirited earworm out of my head when I remembered the card. I dug it out of my drawer, feeling a little silly.

But somehow, scrolling her name on the first line did make me feel a little better. That night, I felt a bit ridiculous putting a nickel under my pillow. But what the heck? It couldn't hurt. In the morning, the coin was gone.

I didn't have time to look for where it had rolled off to. But who needs a nickel anyway? The first half of the school day passed relatively uneventfully, as well as I could reasonably hope for. I slunk into the cafeteria, my head low, trying not to draw any attention to myself. But when I looked up, Maddie was watching me closely, a fiendish look of glee in her eyes. Oh God, here we go again.

She grinned wolfishly at me, bringing her sandwich to her lips for a bite. As she bit into the bread, a shiny black spider scurried out, leaping onto her face. Before she could react, it delivered a vicious bite to her plump red lower lip and another to her perfectly smooth cheek. She shrieked, slapping it away and clutching her face. The bites began to swell instantly, and she wailed piteously. By the time the ambulance arrived, her face was a swollen red mess. And the center of the bites had taken on the dark purple shade of dying flesh. In the chaos that followed, I slid.

slipped into the background, blissfully unnoticed. For weeks, everyone was completely distracted, speculating about her fate. And when she finally returned, her face marred where the dead tissue had sloughed away. It was her turn to walk the halls with the target on her back. I had been bumped up one rung on the social ladder, and I must admit, it was nice.

No good thing lasts forever, though. Eventually I had the bad luck of being assigned, to Bobby Vera's basketball team in gym class. We lost. Bobby Vera never loses. I wasn't the only weak link on the team, but I was the only girl who Bobby had never drunkenly pawed at after winning a football game.

So obviously it was all my fault. From then on, Bobby would go out of his way to find me in the halls between classes, so he could shove me roughly into the lockers. For the time I got home, my shoulders and arms were covered in bruises and scrapes. I stalked around my bedroom, raging at the unfairness of it all. When suddenly I remembered the little card, I pulled it out, feeling vengeful but also embarrassed again.

What had happened to Maddie was a coincidence, not a curse. What kind of childish baby believes in magic? But then again, what was a harm in trying? I wrote Bobby's name carefully and scrounged in the bottom of my backpack for some spare change. In the morning, the quarter was gone, and I felt a curious mix of dread and excitement. I didn't cross paths with Bobby until after the second period. I was at my locker, trying to excavate my history homework from the pile of crumpled papers. When I looked up to see him coming up the stairs towards me, a fiendish person.

glint in his eye. Our eyes met, and I braced myself for the impending impact. And then he was gone. There was a sickening crunch as he landed on the concrete below, followed by the dull thud of the crumbling structure landing on and around him. The incident was a talk of the school for months. All anyone could talk about was, how's Bobby doing? When will he be back? How lucky was it that No one else was in that stairwell. Bobby did come back eventually. But as his motorized wheelchair whirled down the hallways, he was haunted by pitying looks

and hushed whispers of his lost football scholarship. Another bump up the social ladder for me. My day-to-day life was almost pleasant. I even made a friend. A boy in my art class, who had sat silently next to me all year, started up a conversation one day, And then we just kept talking.

I would sit, watching his dark eyes light up, as he raved about a band we both liked, or explained in painstaking detail, the plot of his favorite movie that he wanted to show me. Okay, okay, I'll admit it. I was hoping for a little bit more than friendship here. Could you really blame me for being less and pleased when Chloe Rosen,

with her perky pigtails and her perkier personality, started hanging around constantly, giggling at his lamest jokes, and yapping on about God knows what. I could feel myself gradually being pushed out of the picture as she wormed her way into his life like some skanky leech. Every time I heard her syrupy giggle, I boiled with rage.

I just couldn't take it anymore. My pen cut into the note card with the force of scribbling her name. For Chloe, I had even gone to the trouble of getting a dollar corned. I hoped that a bigger coin would mean a worse curse, something truly awful that would wipe that cute little smile off her face. I guess I'll never know, though, because I never saw Chloe again. No one knew for sure what happened to her, but I heard whispers from people who lived near her about a cacophony of sirens in the middle of the night, followed by the loud rattle of one of those emergency helicopters. She never came back to school, and her family moved away not long after that.

Their house solemnly empty until it was sold months later. I did feel a little guilty, especially because I hated to see Adam so sad all the time. But on the plus side, I got to be there to comfort him. He needed me. And if getting rid of Chloe was what it took to help him see that, was that really so wrong? If I had stopped myself there, I might have even been happy. The day that I fucked it all up was a beautiful day. One of those early spring days, where you can feel the sun soaking into the cold earth and reviving it.

We were chilling on the far edge of one of the empty sports fields, listening to music and enjoying the afternoon. After an extended silence, I impulsively blurted out a question that had been on the tip of my tongue for months. Will you go to prom with me? He looked up at me, a deer in the headlights. Oh, uh, uh. He stammered, blushing and not meeting my eyes. My heart sank heavily, and I didn't give him a chance to crush my hopes any further.

I left up, sprinting away, not stopping until I had reached my house. I spent the whole evening reviewing the interaction and agonizing detail. Why hadn't I kept my stupid mouth shut? The look in his eyes, had it been pity, disgust, shock and horror at the prospect of dancing with a loser like me? All this time, I had thought that there was something growing between us, but he was just like the rest of them. I bet he was laughing at me behind my back,

mocking me for daring to believe I'd made a friend. Gradually my sorrow transformed into bitter, spiteful rage. How dare he make me feel like this? It should be him suffering this pain, not me. I scratched his name into the cart, placed a penny under my pillow, and fell asleep basking in the warm glow of revenge. The next day, I felt a twinge of guilt seeing the coin gone.

But small coin, small curse, right? Hopefully? He tried to intercept me in the hallways several times over the coin. course of the morning, but I managed to avoid him, slipping down hallways and into bathrooms at opportune moments. But there was no getting past our adjacent to sign seats in art class. I hunched over my drawing, pretending to be so completely absorbed in my almost finished still life that I didn't even register his presence. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him glance my way. You know, you should really sign up for track.

I squinted harder at my paper, not letting myself be charmed by the familiar joking tone. He cleared his throat awkwardly before continuing. You caught me off guard yesterday. I was trying to work up the courage to ask you, but I guess you beat me too. I looked up at him in surprise. My heart hammering into my chest as I met his hopeful gaze. Before I could answer, before I could even really process what was happening, A bright red drop of blood fell from his nose.

Splattering his nearly finished drawing. As we both looked down at his ruined art, another drop fell, splashing into his upturned palm. He stood there, a desperate panicked look in his eyes, managing a few steps towards the door before he collapsed to the floor. His body spasming as blood flowed from him.

I don't remember too much after that. The only thing I remember is the vivid, inescapable image of his body on the floor. His pale, bloodless face framed by a spreading halo of crimson. And the screaming. I remember the screaming. My screaming, I think. It was weeks before the haze of grief and regret lifted enough that I could even bring myself to think of that damn card.

When I finally thought of it again, I tore through my room to find it. determined to destroy it like it had destroyed me. I was about to light it on fire when I realized, with a wave of horror, that a name had been neatly inscribed on the last line. My name. The fifth curse. My curse. Whatever it is, it can't come soon enough.

On the battlefield of war, it's difficult to imagine the horrors one would witness. The devastation done to the human body. and the soul. No supernatural elements are needed for that terror. But in this tale, shared with us by author Brandon MacArthur, we meet a soldier who is facing his demise, but death is not the only thing he fears. Performing this tale is Graham Rowett. So if the grim reaper is coming for you, you'd best hope he arrives before the Feast of the Valkyries. Listen. No, listen!

Shut up and listen! Listen beyond the screams. Beyond the gunfire. Listen and look, damn it, you can see them, can't you? The figures and shrouds, wandering aimlessly through the battlefield, like nuns or monks seeking out the dead or dying? You see it too, right? Dressed in black, billowing in the smoke and dust,

brushing gently over the blood-soaked earth without stain or mark upon them. You see it, right? No, I don't know what it is. There isn't any name for it, not that I know. It's chosen its prey. Look! It's looking right at him. That man there,

the one holding his intestines in hand and screaming, covered in gore and blood with eyes pale against the dark blood splashed across his face. The one with the medic knelt beside him, struggling to stop the arterial flow. Yes, that one. You still see it, don't you? See it creep across the shattered earth. See it passed by the medic and kneel beside him.

See how it reaches its wrinkled claw towards the dying man. But dying man reacts as a monster, draws near. Watch as it lifts its hood and bends over the poor bastard. His screams fading to whippers. You're a field medic, you've been around dying man long enough to know what he's saying. The same thing we all say as our life ebbs out. The same pathetic cry of all young men dying in a country far from home. Mother, I thought it was just a final plea for home, for love.

Watch it. Watch how the thin white hair shimmers and becomes thick and black, and how its skin shifts, becoming smooth as porcelain and white as a ghost. It changes. Which them change to any number of forms, but always the same. Always a female. Always the mother. Can you see what it's doing?

Maybe you can't. It's hard enough to see those things wandering the battle. feel drawn like vultures to carry and maybe you can't see it feed if not be thankful for years I wondered if there was a life beyond this world and now I know

and it terrifies me see how it kneels before him see how it presses its lips against his can you see the light shining pouring from his lips you can't if you could

you would see a soul you would see the light fade from his eyes and to ooze up from his mouth like a sucking chest wound. But it feed. It's not a pretty sight to see a man's soul sucked up by some demon. And I'm glad you can't see it. But you can see the result. Look at his face.

See the terror. The realization. That is not the realization that he's about to die. It is the recognition that he's about to lose everything. That there's nothing beyond this world, not anymore. that that which made him who he was, his hopes, his dreams, his memory, his life is about to be ripped from him.

And the worst violation, the deepest cut. The one stealing it is the one person he always believed loved him the most. Listen. Shut up and listen to me! I've seen those things on every battlefield in this God-forsaken war. For two years, I've watched them on to receive corpses feeding. I've seen so many souls. vanish behind their red lips.

I've seen them rot and putrify back into their original form when the job is done as they move on to the next helpless soul. I've tried to kill them. God knows I have. I've shot them, stabbed them, thrown grenades at them. I've done everything that would kill a normal man, but they are not men. They survive.

Look back at me with detached confusion. Kill them. Not with any weapon. I don't think I'm going to make it. Not this time. I don't think I'll make it. Oh, Christ, it hurts. And I don't want to die.

I don't. I'm so scared. I'm so cold. I don't want to die. But I don't want to be eaten. God, I don't want to be eaten. No, no, no morphine. Look, I'm not seeing things, damn it.

God, it hurts. Please, just a bullet in the head and it'll be over. I'm thanking you. Please. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Mommy? Many believe our dreams can portend our fate.

And if you have a recurring dream or nightmare, it's only natural you'd start to believe it could be real. Just like the man in this tale, shared with us by author Gavin Cummings. Hmm. No relation. He's stuck in a rut, not only in his waking life, but also in his dreams. Perhaps it's time he faces his demons. Performing this tale are Jeff Clement, Jesse Cornett, Aaron Lillis, Graham Rowett, and Matthew Bradford. So saddle up, cowboy. It's high noon and time to confront the lanky Leran Lassow Man.

I read somewhere that booze can inhibit the part of the park. parts of your brain that create dreams. Maybe that's a load of shit. Or maybe nightmares are born somewhere else. All I know is that I was pissed drunk when I collapsed onto my mattress tonight. Yet I'm back here now. All the same. Back in this rotting, wooden carcass.

Yellow, late afternoon daylight slices lazily through the gaps between the rotted boards. steady, continuous flecks of floating dust dance through the rays. The dirt floor around me is strewn with ancient browning hay, stale and brittle, stinking with the dried horse piss of a century and a half. It's a spacious, musty room that I stand in, probably 60 yards long from front door to back, and at least as wide. The ceiling is high and vaulted as you'd expect from a place like, this, the apotheosis of eerie, long-forsaken off the highway wooden barns.

This one sits at the top of a gentle hill at the end of a yawning, breezy field, like a decomposing specter. A pointed tower extends off the roof, sagging drunkenly to one side, curling slightly back on itself, like a giant, spindly index finger, like it's coaxing you to pull your car to the shoulder and take a leisurely jaunt across the swaying grass, like it has something to show you. Hell, I know it does. It's shown me before. Right on cue, the shadows around me are doing a different dance than before. The creaks and groans are a bit less passive, a bit more aggressive. The massive room around me is not so empty and spacious. Then there's a louder creek from above, loud enough to sound as though it's calling my attention,

and I raise my head toward the ceiling for a look able to stop myself. Bodies, dozens of them, hanging from the withered criss-crossing rafters. They're strung up and down the beams like haphazard tree ornaments. Some tight against the ceiling, some with enough slack in their fraying ropes to hang down within ten feet of my feet. head. They're in various stages of decay. I see one that's especially wilted with shrunken, black, lifeless skin. It swings inconsequentially, almost weightless. The face looks like it's sewn together from dried leaves. But there's another to its right, hanging 15 feet below it, and it's much, much newer. Bloaded, purple, and slick, ready to burn.

like a balloon and fill the air with noxious gas. The same thing would be to turn tail and run, screaming, hands over my head, out the big wooden door and back to where I came from. But again, dream logic is steering this ship now, and I didn't actually come from anywhere. Another sound joins the symphony of woody creeks and groans, dull footfalls, one after the other,

I can picture the worn down boot heels from the sound alone. I force my eyes open slowly, ignoring every fiber of my being that screams and begs to keep them closed. Nightmares don't allow for the blissful ignorance routine. The figure emerges slowly from the farthest horse stall on the left wall, sauntering more than walking. and at first I have to squint my eyes to make out any sharp lines, any defining features. But there aren't any. It's only a shadow and an impossible one at that.

There's no light coming at the right angle to create one, but it's there all the same, stretching what must be seven feet up the wall and skinny. If I were looking at a real, living person, I would think he must be malnourished. But then again, I doubt that traditional food is the kind that he's interested. The shadow's right arm swings casually at his side. His left is raised up, loosely gripping some protrusion that juts off his left shoulder.

An unmistakable shape sits atop his head, a wide-brimmed hat. The front brim bent skyward. A thin, spindly shadow extends from him. his mouth. A piece of straw, maybe. He walks slowly, paying me no mind, until he reaches the middle of the far wall. Then he stops, leans forward slightly, spits. A shadowy streak of phantom tobacco juice, splats to the glint. The shadow stands still, perfectly still, too still, until I'm almost sure it won't move again. And it doesn't move.

Not really. And what it does next feels less like moving and more like morphing, developing like a Polaroid picture from blank darkness to full vivid reality. Suddenly the shadow is a full three-dimensional figure, and the transformation was so understated and ephemeral that I didn't catch how or when it happened. It looks like a man, just as tall and gaunt as his shadow had suggested,

and dressed from head to tail and dusty, tattered clothes that have no discernible color. His forearms and face are the only exposed skin. If you could call whatever revolting membrane something like that wears skin, and they're caked and grime and soot. A large, droopy mustache sits above his lip, which is curled upward and backward

to reveal something between a sneer and a snarl. What shards of teeth exist are rotting, brown and shrunken, like cockroach soldiers standing at attention. His left eye is covered by a leather patch. His right gleams electric yellow through the dim barn. His left hand is still raised, loosely gripping what I can see now as a rope,

coiled around his left shoulder like a scaly, undead snake. I'm not afraid now. Afraid is too simple a word for it. I'm frozen, paralyzed by a cocktail of terror and revulsion that fills me from my feet to my scalp. He's almost 50 feet from me, but I can smell him anyway. Sour. Dank, alive in the most nauseating way, because he absolutely shouldn't be.

We stand there, facing each other, immobile as marble statues for what has to be a full minute. Neither of us makes a sound. Then, voices do come, but not from either of us. They come instead from those figures, swinging slowly above us, synchronized like a hellish choir, raspy and dry, not generated by moving lips or breathing lungs, but emanating from them as a collective. He's the length of his brush, his arms is easel,

and he's born for a yellow weasel. The lasso man remains perfectly still, but his yellow eye glimmers with satisfaction. His puppets are speaking on his behalf, and it pleases him. You're like you find. Around your neck and around them. You're squeal. You'll choke.

You're weak. You're soft. You're meat. Salad. You're fed it, boy. You can't make the touch. They've never won. You're lost cause, boy, and your time is done.

Now, after what feels like a minor eternity, he moves. His left hand drops to his side, bringing the coil. rope with it. With the practiced nonchalance of many years, he draws out an end, which has been knotted into a loose loop. His rope swings off and it's waiting for you to prove it wrong. It'll never happen you won't never show. You ain't a man who stand tone atone. The lasso's loop, now hanging patiently, begins to sway back and forth, slowly at first. Then it swings. faster, longer. After a few swings, he cracks his wrist, sending it up and around in a full loop.

It fires up above his head, then he brings it back around so it scrapes the floor with a meaty sound that reports violent. His eye gleams brighter. He brings the loop around again. Krusty straw scatters at the impact. A puff of dust swirls with. with it. He swings his rope. To the second

ground, remove the shame, and he swings his rope steadily, and the flax accompany the chance like the connection. Face him down and it's fucking man.

I'm just one little to watch you die. The phantom continues to search me with his singular burning eye. No visible movement but the light movement but the lazy crack of his wrist. What happens now? Renewed fright pours through me like a wave of cold water, and I decide I don't want to stick around to

find out. I close my eyes again, clench my fists, trying to will myself out from this dark corner of my subconscious. Back to the waking world and to an undoubtedly sweaty set of bedshades. Refuses to fade. Stubbornly, continue. continuing to exist around me. The bodies above swing erratic arcs through the rafters, crashing wildly into each other. The fresher ones impact with wet slaps, the older ones with dusty thuds and the clack of bones.

Now their impossible, mouthless voices are back again, not reciting chance this time, but making insane, guttural noise. Screams. I can't tell, screaming, creaking, slapping, groaning, and dull boot heels, thudding louder as they move toward me. He's done waiting. I spin around, my feet finally free of their fear-induced anchors, and run for the door behind me. I skid on hay as I reach it and start yanking on the iron handle.

At first it doesn't budge. A hundred years of grime and rust have settled it stubbornly into place. The footsteps are louder now, closer. The rope hits the ground again, and I feel a gust of air from the swing. I give the handle one last desperate yank, and the door relents. It winds angrily open, and the afternoon sun streaks in through a gap that can't be more than a foot wide. It's wide enough. I squeeze through sideways, feeling splinters tear through my shirt from both sides,

lodging into my chest and back. I try to run, but my foot catches on the edge of the door, throwing me to the ground and the heap. I'm up instantly and running harder than I have since my little league days. The 300 yards to the road may as well be 300 miles. I make my arms and legs pump together. Within seconds, the barnyard dirt beneath my feet becomes grass. Now that I've reached the field,

I feel like jolt of belated relief. A sudden, whoosh, joins the sound of my panting, and something falls neatly around my head, settling on my shoulders. Then the loop yanks tight around my neck, and I'm stopped cold. My feet kick crazily in the air in front of me as I'm whiplashed backward. My panting is stifled by a choke, and I feel my neck crack as it's yanked from its proper place. He's dragging me back toward the barn. Rocks and stickers tear hungrily through my clothes

as I grind across the stiff prairie grass. But I begin to slide more easily once I'm back on the dirt. Desperately at my neck, trying and failing to get even a finger between the rope and my throat. No use. I'm not seeing real images anymore. Just cloudy, fading shapes. The glow of sunlight disappeared.

immediately as I'm yanked back into the darkness of the barn. Finally, and I'm left to lay still for a moment. A bit of pressure is released and I manage a couple of raspy breaths of stale air, big footsteps again. They stop a couple of feet from my head, and I can feel him standing over me. I can smell him like rotting citrus and stale tobacco. He yanks me up. My neck cracks again as more ligaments are torn in the place,

and I scrambled to my knees in an effort to keep him from ripping my head clear from my shoulders. He holds me there, and after my eyes get another few seconds to readjust to the darkness, he crouches down, so we're face to face. I use the last of my strength to clench my eyes shut. I don't want his grimy skin and glowing eye to be the last things I ever see. He's close now. His nose only inches from mine, and he breathes heavily. I've never known a smell could be so horrible.

When he speaks, his voice is a humming growl, a legion of locusts, buzzing in unison. Don't you know this rope was made for the runners' boy? There's another whoosh as he casts the free air. end of the rope up into the rafters, looping it easily over one of the higher beams, and now I'm being lifted a few feet at a time. He's hoisting me up to join the others. My feet are barely kicking, and my arms hang uselessly at my sides. I have no strength left to claw at the noose. My vision fades completely now, as all the oxygen leaves my brain and the world around me grows. dim. Alu

is all feeling in my legs. Now my hands, now my chest. My hearing is the last thing to go. But just before it does, I hear his ghoulish choir begin their chant again. I finally wake up,

choking and shivering, tangled in a set of bedsheets which are completely soaked. The barn and all its horrors, are gone, but their effects linger like an after image on my soul. I sit upright, trying and failing to slow my heart. My face is slick with tears and snod. And as I catch my breath, I realize with some embarrassment that sweat isn't the only reason my sheets are damp. Not that there's anyone else to feel embarrassed for me. I feel out at the other side of the bed to confirm that

it's empty. And of course it is. Even my bunny rabbit upstairs neighbors are as quiet as church mice tonight. I'm so damn alone. And God, my place is so damn quiet. Since there's no other person I can grab onto, I settle for my old baseball bat that I always keep leaning against my nightstand. I grip its rubber handle and hold it to my chest, enjoying the cold feel of the aluminum on my skin. It's relatively small, the one I swung during my 12-year-old season. Over the next five and final years of my baseball career, I owned a variety of bigger ones, heavier ones, better ones. Still, there's something about this one that's maintained its special appeal to me, because I miss that season sometimes. I miss being 12. The year I batted 486,

pulled straight A's, convinced Maddie Taylor to be my date for the eighth grade dinner dance. That kid had an iron grip on his life, simple though it was. A future with the shine of polished chrome. What the hell would he think of the pathetic bastard he turned into? Sixteen years down the line. I throw my bed sheets in the washer and head for the living room, with my bat still in my hand. I take a few fiery gulps from the amber bottle on the counter, then slam the cork in and flop on the couch.

It's swayed this thing. Can you believe it? A guy like me, with a salary like mine, buying a brand-new suede couch he absolutely can't afford to stick in his apartment that he just barely can. Of course, at the time, she'd insisted it was the only one to get. Serious adult furniture for a serious adult couple. So I'd grinned and swipe the credit card like the dumb lovesick puppy I was.

Now, one serious adult breakup later, I'm sitting here alone, the luxurious feel of a month's pay under my ass. Time passes. Just how long I've got no idea. And my adrenaline cools. My eyelids are heavy again, and the cushion is cloud-like. I feel myself sinking, melting peacefully away. And I'm on my feet, bat raised high, my pulse jackhammering against the back of my eyeballs.

I've started to lose track of time. It's slipping away from me, bit by bit. My routine continues. Shower, toothbrush, coffee, drive to work, spray. spreadsheets, numbers, graphs, driving home. But more and more, it all seems to be happening on a sort of mental cruise control. No real active participation on my end. I'm interacting with the world through a thick, soupy curtain that keeps me sleepy, out of touch,

dulling my senses until an occasional yanks me back to reality. My days are drenched in sickly yellow, like the sun is a distant memory, and my world is lit only by his eye. And I'm lonely. I find myself pulling my phone out just to stare at her contact photo. The press of a button, and I could hear her voice. After all, what the hell are my pride and self-respect worth when I'm losing my damn mind? I hate this room. I hate this apartment.

Every corner, every crevice is decorated with knick-knacks, filled with trinkets that I never liked, never wanted. Is there anything here that was actually my choice? A nervous voice pulls me away from my brain-dead spreadsheet scrolling. Apparently, the big guy wants to see me. shitty news no doubt i trudged down the fluorescent bulbbed hallway to his office on my way i passed by a framed poster of a rock climber its caption informs me that today is the best day to be my best self the big guy is pissed that that much is obvious as soon as i settle into the swiveling chair on the receiving end of his desk Red, sweaty face, dark stains beneath his armpits.

He wants to know what I've been doing these last two weeks. If there are any figures I can show him, any concrete evidence that I've been doing something resembling work, I answer honestly. He raises his voice, trying to intimidate me into subservience. But I'm already gone again. Back behind the curtain of yellow fog. Two weeks? Is that what he said? Is that how long it's been since the nightmare started? His hand comes down on the desk. Again, he grits his jaw, verging on a full tantrum.

But he takes a deep breath, composes himself, tells me to listen. He's got a brother too, he says, an older one. And if something were to happen to his older brother, something like what happened to mine. Anyway, he guesses he'd be a little off-kilter too. But time is money, and this is a results-based business. And if I just can't find a way to snop out of this funk, well, he'd expect me, as a team player, to do the stand-up thing and take some unpaid time off.

There, he's said his piece, and he wants to know what I think. What do I think? Good question. Truthfully, there's plenty that I think about the big guy. But being the sane, self-preserving person that I once was, it had never crossed my mind to tell him. Maybe it's time I did. I tell him that a good tailor will know how to let the collar out of his shirts a bit,

because right now his looks to be choking him. He looks like a cherry push-pop squeezing out of his cardboard tube. He's upright in his chair now, stiff and straight as a tube-by-four. There's spittle forming at the corner of his mouth, but no words. Not yet. This feels good. I decide to keep telling him what I think. Where was I?

Right. What's the deal with him and Janice? from accounting. I don't think there's anything cool about infidelity. Not if you're just going to sneak around with some woman who's worse in every way than the one you've already got at home. What else do I think? Last month at that big client meeting,

I think it was total bullshit to pass my concept off as his own. It was a big pitch. The kind that really could have changed my portfolio helped me establish a genuine reputation. But he had to go and snatch it with those big, sweaty, sausage rolls he calls hands. Which was a mistake on his part. Because everyone knows he's too damn stupid

to create a pitch like that for himself. That's what I think. Naturally, he's unimpressed with what I have to say. He invites me to leave. with a voice that rattles the walls. He tells me to grab a cardboard box from the printer room and throw my things in it. I tell him there's nothing important enough to take, just a stapler, a bobblehead, and a cup of pens.

If he wants, he can try to fit them all in his ass at the same time. I really hate this apartment. It's grown beyond a laid-back, complacent distaste. and into an active seething disdain for the carpet, the walls, the ceiling, and everything in between. Now that I'm unemployed, I've got nothing to do but sit here, simmering against every little detail. Like that thing on the bookshelf across from me, that gaudy elephant sculpture. It's tacky as hell, and I despised it from the moment I first saw it in that snooty antique store she'd dragged me to on what had been a perfectly good Saturday morning.

I'd asked her how something so gaudy could be so expensive. She'd rolled her eyes, told me I had no taste. Maybe she was right. Maybe I didn't have any taste. Maybe I still don't. But I do have this little league bat. And I gotta say, that damn sculpture looks much better at a thousand tiny shards than it ever did in one piece.

What else could use some redecorating around here? How about that battalion of expensive candles lined up on the mantle? Shit. How many different seasons does this place need to smell like anyway? I wonder if I can get them all in one swing. Huh, turns out I can. Espresso machine. Bedside lamp.

That record player that had replaced my stereo. That full-length mirror that had replaced my dartboard. They all go to oblivion. A gratifying symphony of splinters, shatters, crashes. Twenty swings later, once I run out a smash-worthy trinkets, I turn my attention to that fucking swayed couch. Nothing too satisfying I can do to it with my bat. Should I set it on fire?

I'd probably bring the whole place down. Well, I'll just move the damn thing. It's a total bitch to get through the front door, but with a little creative geometry, I've muscled it out and on to the sidewalk. I step back inside, breathing heavily, surveying the new decor of my place. It's a war zone.

At least it belongs to me again. me alone. And just like that, the loneliness is back with a vengeance. My brother's gone. So is she. Hell, even Cindy from the next cubicle is a burned bridge now. And I've never felt such intense singularity. I'm still relatively young.

How long can this go on? I can see my entire future stretching out in front of me, like a parched and endless desert. One I'll have to travel alone. I'm not sure that I can make the journey. The barn, the bodies, the lasso man, they're just a nightmare, right? So why am I suddenly feeling pangs of jealousy for that version of me? the one swinging helplessly in the rafters, losing consciousness,

fading into a warm black because he had the desert behind him. That's why. Two rings, three knocks. When I swing the door open, she looks bewildered. She jerks a thumb over her shoulder, wants to know why our couch is leaning up

against the parking lot dumpster. Well, because of the, I put it there. She shakes her head, hardening into anger. Then she puts her palms up, seeming to ask for a fresh start. She asks me to listen, tells me she's been doing a lot of thinking, soul-searching, really. I ask her if she's been doing this soul-searching over at Kevin's house. She recoils at the question looking hurt, but she seems to know it was a fair jab.

She starts crying. And for a brief second, I'm almost taken by a swell of pity. All of the complications of the last few weeks can't overcome three years worth of genuine goodness. Can they? She says she messed up, says she made a mistake, and a huge one at that. And yeah, the whole Kevin thing was unforgivable, but I have to acknowledge that things weren't 100, percent one-sided, right? We weren't exactly living in a storybook.

She says I'd gotten complacent with my life, with our lives. She'd started to feel like she was drowning with me. And after so long, after so many, many months of drowning, she'd just had a stupid moment of weakness. I can understand that, right? I don't have to forgive it. But I at least have to understand it. She's missed me.

She wants to try to make things work. She can't make it all make sense right now. But can she at least come in, talk about it? So we can just... She doesn't know. Be together? I stand there in my doorway, trying to absorb the tear-laden speech,

using my body to block her from seeing the chaos that my living room has become. And God help me, I do want to let her in. I think about the endless, yawning stretch of that desert and the miserable prospect of walking the whole thing alone. The thought of her body pressed against mine is almost too tempting to pass up. And how much is my pride really worth, in light of all I've been going through. How much am I worth?

She looks up at me with vulnerable eyes, then buries her face in my chest, dampening my shirt. I hold her, and we stand there. And it feels good and warm and familiar. And I've never felt smaller, more pathetic, less like a man in my intention. entire life, even while swinging there in the barn, whimpering, spittling, begging the lasso man for mercy with my bulging eyes. I grab her shoulders, press her away as I answer her question before she can

ask. No, she can't come in. We can't just be together. Is she kidding? Does she even fathom the damage she did with that selfish, impulsive bullshit? How it felt to be torn into, at a point of my life, when I was already hanging by threads. No, she can't come in, ever again. And in fact, the thought of her showing up at my doorstep thinking, we might still be an option? It makes me sick.

I turn then. heading back to face the shattered remains of my living room. She calls out after me, tears flowing freely now. She tells me in a throaty sob, the Kevin threw her out. Where is she supposed to stay? I tell her. She can sleep on that suede couch she loves so much.

And I close the door. Passes. The big guy. is gone. The girl is gone. My brother's gone. But the lasso man is very much here. I can hear his rope. I can smell his breath. Sometimes I can see the glow of his eye in the corner of my own. He's not through with me yet. He wants to finish his work. I'm inclined to let him. My bat late. there on the carpet. It's 28 inches of aluminum giving off a friendly gleam in the moonlight. I pick it up, careful not to cut myself on any of the shattered glass and porcelain scattered around it.

I grip it with both hands, thinking back to the days when I could still stand the sight of myself. I want to hit something. Smash something. To take all of my own. all this nauseating pain, this paralyzing apathy, and chase it off, if even for just one brief moment. But what is there left to hit? All of her knick-knacks and decorations are obliterated. All her mirrors and picture frames are in shards. My work laptop is a devastated mess of splintered wires and circuitry.

All evidence of my servitude. to the big guy wiped clean. I'm the only one left. It's just me. I need a drink. I stepped toward the kitchen where a half-empty bottle of Jack sits invitingly on the counter. I pick it up by the stem,

about to twist the top off when something stops me. Maybe it was just a reflection from outside or just a simple trick of my eyes. But the bottle of amber liquid seemed to glow yellow. if only for a brief second. I think back to my first drink. I was 17 years old, flumped on a beat-up basement couch

at some house party with my brother. We were celebrating a victory. We'd played in our high school's annual band battle earlier that evening and handily secured the trophy with a pretty decent rendition of Layla by Derek and the Dominoes. We used to spend full weekends in the garage together the two of us in our guitars, melting the hours like ice cubes in the sun. Why had we never gotten back to that?

What could have possibly eaten all that time in between? Well, this bottle in my hand, for starters. And suddenly, things make much more sense. Because it takes two to tango, right? and a village to raise a child, and three strikes to make an out, and at least a pair of mice to screw in a light bulb. And now it's past time I got completely honest with myself.

Being steamrolled by the big guy, getting ripped apart by the girl, losing my brother and my absolute best friend. It's all been suffocating. Still, my life belongs to me. And since I hate what it's become, chances are I've had something to do with it. I carry the bottle into my newly spacious living room. I flip it around and catch it by the stem, so I'm holding it like a club.

Then I toss it in the air, take a quick loading step, and swing. The aluminum barrel catches the bottle dead center in its bottom. oxy body, crashing glass. Shards scatter against the walls in the window, fiery liquid showers everything. I survey the results, feeling somehow lighter and stronger at the same time. What else can go? What else has been purchasing my days on earth at bargain bin prices? I spy my monstrous self-built PC setup, glowing. LEDs on the unit, ergonomic keyboard, and a blazing processor, fast enough to take me... Where, exactly?

All the hours burned, all the money spent, all the life I've lived through that 15-inch monitor. What do I have to show for it? The sheer immensity of the frittered time rolls over me, weakening my knees. Suddenly, the glowing LEDs fade from... green to sickly yellow. A few swings and some sizzling splintered plastic later, and my knees are strong beneath me again. In fact, I'm feeling better than I have in weeks. I stepped back into the kitchen and whip open the freezer door, scanning over the frozen goodies that have made me soft around the middle, short on breath, sapped of all the energy I had when I was younger.

I bat them all like lazily hung curveballs. Frozen fries and burritos scatter across the room. A pint of cake batter ice cream takes a chunk of drywall. My cell phone, my beer stock, my mason jar of weed, dingers, every one of them. Ridiculous, wasteful, self-performative nonsense? Probably. but lately, I need all the catharsis I can get.

Soon I'm standing in the center of my living room again, surrounded by the crushed and shattered remains of my former life. It's leveled, swept away. What's going to take its place? Anything I want. My new life belongs to me. But of course, I need to put first. things first. Have I grown six inches? Or is this just how freedom feels? I smack the barrel of my

bat against my palm as I take one last look around. Then I step out the front door. My car coughed itself to death unknown hours ago. Since then, I've been taking off the highways miles on foot. But this gentle asphalt hill I'm climbing is the final one. I can feel it in the soles of my feet and the crackling of the tips of my fingers. A yellow fingernail of burning sunlight is peeking over the horizon line as I reach the top of the slope. And there it is. 300 yards off the road, it sits like a decomposing specter, as it always has. The pointed tower extends off the roof, sagging drunkenly to one side, curling slightly back on

itself, like a giant spindly index finger, coaxing me to stroll across the swaying grass, like it has something to show me. I accept its offer. Ten minutes later, the grass turns to barnyard dirt under my feet, and the building looms before me. I see it clearly. every nod in the wood, every rusty, protruding nail. There isn't an ounce of fuzzy dreaminess to cloud my brain.

I'm fully, completely here. I take a tight grip on the handle of the sliding door, fully expecting the same rusty resistance as before. But it coasts open easily, only offering a minor squeaky complaint. I step inside. Scattered hay crunches under my feet, stinking like ancient horse piss.

Bright morning sunlight glares sharply through the gaps between rotted boards. Dust flecks dance through the rays. It's a spacious, musty room I stand in, and save for the occasional wooden groan, it's completely silent. So I stand here, bat in hand, waiting. But how alone?

Less so now. The atmosphere of the barn changes. Suddenly the shadows are doing a different dance than before. The creeks and groans are a bit less passive, a bit more aggressive. The massive room around me is suddenly not so spacious. Then there's a louder creak. I don't look. I've seen his gruesome swinging choir too many times they begin their chain.

For a moment, I try not to listen, fixating on the comforting weight of the bat in my right hand. But as their raspy taunts cut deeper into my head, a sudden jolt of righteous indignation lights up in my chest. They do. Maybe that shouldn't surprise me. They are dead after fading, turning to dust. As for me, I'm alive. Maybe more so than I ever have been. They're creaking slows to a near stop.

Finally, he saunteres slowly out from the same horse stall as before, gliding slowly across the wall. This time, without the same, the theatrical aid of his choir. He reaches his spot in the center of the closed wooden door. This time, I'm not surprised by his ephemeral transformation. Now he's here in his full, sooty, three-dimensional form. Same toothy, cockroach sneer below the same droopy mustache. Same leather patch over his left eye, same crackling yellow glow from his right. His clothes remain colorless.

His snake-like lasso hangs over his shoulder in the same casual way. It's funny, though, for all the little ways he appears so identical to the lasso man of my nightmares, there is one noticeable difference. This one is a lot shorter. I shift my bat to my left hand than back to my right. He brings his lasso down from his shoulder, lets the knotted loop drop to the ground with a thump. You should have left me alone.

His taunting smile disappears. His lips tighten over his cockroach teeth. He begins to swing the rope, slowly at first, back and fold. After a few swings, he gives his wrist a hard crack, sending the loop around in a complete arc over his head. At the bottom, it slaps the ground. with the sound I now know well.

He sneers again, and his voice buzzes with new vitriol. Feeling a sudden improbable sneer of my own. Something amazing happens. That glowing yellow light in his leering left eye, the glare that has stuck in my mind like a splinter since I first saw it. Flickers. goes dim and I can see

the dark, impotent blackness behind it. He brings his lasso around again angrily this time. My sneer grows bigger and in a force of lingering 12-year-old habit

I tapped the aluminum barrel of my bat against the inside of my shoe. This bastard was pretty good with that rope when I was running. scared. Let's see how good he is when I'm standing straight. You'll swing, boy. You're a wheezer. Then you swing like the rest of them. Guess we'll see about that. I lift my bat to my waist and grip it with both hands, like a strong step forward. Guess we'll fucking see. horror stories from us. Just visit sleepless.com to learn about the sleepless

sanctuary. Add free extended episodes each week and lots of bonus content for the dark hours, all for one low monthly price. On behalf of everyone at the no sleep podcast, we thank you for taking our nightmarish calls. This audio program is copyright 2024 and 2020. 25 by Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.