This is Gabriel Urbina, the creator of Wolf 359. I'm breaking into this feed just for a moment to let you all know about my new series on Audible, Hit Singles. It's an audio fiction romantic comedy all about an aspiring DJ that comes to New York for a summer. Pretty much instantly, she meets a young bartender.
and the two of them fall into a classic will-they-won't-they situationship. In short, it's a show about that whirlwind period when you're in your 20s, and you're trying to figure out who you are and what your life is supposed to be. My team and I made up... big show with lots of jokes, lots of romance, lots of feelings, and an amazing soundtrack.
So if you want a new romantic comedy for your ears, look for hit singles on Audible. If you're an Audible Plus subscriber, you can listen to the show at no additional cost. And if you have a free trial lying around somewhere, you can listen to it for free for 30 days. Alvina! Pick up! I have exciting news! We are faking a death. Wait for it. A mysterious lighthouse keeper with a dark secret! And the only way to get there is by ship!
The Amelia Project is an agency that fakes its clients' deaths and lets them reappear with a new identity. Or rather, it's a fiction podcast about such an agency. But this May, we're bringing the Amelia project to the stage. Or rather, To a boat. Theatre ship. is a cargo barge that has been turned into a floating theatre. And we've written a new story especially for this unusual venue. Come join us at Theatre Ship in London on the 31st of May, 2025.
no previous knowledge of the podcast is necessary if you enjoy comedy mystery and immersive storytelling This is for you. Go to ameliapodcast.com and click on the Amelia Project live at Theatership for tickets. We look forward to welcoming you aboard. Cargo ship, Alvina. Bye tomorrow. We're all going on a field trip.
If you're looking for a podcast adventure, check out Dumb Dumbs and Dragons! A podcast where improvisers and comedians who've never role-played before journey into the world of Dungeons & Dragons. Dumb Dumbs and Dragons has been featured on the official Dungeons and Dragons podcast.
ranked number two of all fiction podcasts in America, and has been downloaded more than four million times. Dumb Dumbs and Dragons can be discovered anywhere hilarious podcasts can be found. It's like Lord of the Rings, if everyone was an idiot. someone just like you is a horror series we frequently feature check the show notes for episode specific content warnings listener discretion is advised
My fingers bend backward and beg me, please, let us write a story for them. Let us peel back their skin to reveal the horror lurking beneath. Pain that feels all too familiar. Torment that hits too close to home. This isn't an alternate dimension. This isn't a liminal realm or a diversion. timeline these horrors are here and now this could happen to someone just like you I've always been afraid of being attacked on the street at night.
Despite years of working in a bar and coming home late around midnight, this fear had never left me. The pay was lousy, and the boss forbid employees to park their cars in the parking lot reserved for customers. I had to walk alone for several minutes to my car. One day, as I was talking to one of my friends, she told me about this application. Don't you know this app? It's called Are You Being Followed? Or A-Y-B-F for short.
Basically, the app detects the waves of nearby cell phones, and if the algorithm notices that a signal is following you, the app sends a notification. some say it also detects ghosts and supernatural creatures that give off particular waves but i think that's bullshit to attract views I couldn't quite figure out how it worked.
But she assured me that the algorithm was never wrong, and that it had already allowed her once to be alerted early enough to be safe from a strange guy one night. I downloaded it, figuring it couldn't hurt. One evening, as I was walking down the street clutching my coat, I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket. It was the app that had sent me a notification, and on the screen simply appeared the message, You are being followed.
I slowed down and looked around. The street was deserted, only the wind sounding in my ear. Perplexed, I continued walking, the sound of my solitary footsteps echoing around me. A minute later, I received another notification. You are being followed. With no one behind me, I wondered if it was a bug, or if this app was literally a scam.
I jumped and shouted, and right in front of me was my colleague, Ian, wallowing in laughter. Sorry, sorry, I couldn't help it. Here, you forgot your tips. He handed me a few bills. Next time you do that, I'll empty my pepper spray in your face. Okay. Safe in my car, I finally managed to laugh it off and figured that at least I had proof that the app worked. The app never triggered again after that.
I had just finished a long evening and was exhausted. All I wanted to do was go home and go to bed. As I was walking alone in the cold night, with just enough strength to look at the tips of my feet without falling asleep, my cell phone vibrated. And I picked it up, thinking someone had sent me a text message. You are being followed. The appearance of the message caught me off guard and woke me up. You are being followed. I looked around. There was nothing and no one around at this late hour.
I thought back to the only time it had gone off in Ian's joke. He knew perfectly well that by now I didn't find it funny, and I had made it clear that I hoped he wouldn't do it again, or he would get his ass kicked. I stood there. Looking back, looking for someone who obviously didn't exist. Still suspicious, I resumed my walk, keeping my phone in my hand. After a minute, it vibrated again. I looked around again, but there was nothing. I was starting to panic.
I was alone in the middle of the night and I was beginning to think something was wrong. A paper cup was pushed by the wind and the noise startled me. Is anyone there? I felt compelled to say it aloud, but obviously no one answered. If there's anyone... warning you, I'm armed. I lied, trying to be as convincing as possible, out of the corner of my eye, even as I turned my head. I swore I saw something moving in the shadows at the corner of an alley.
It took me a while to process what I had seen. At first, I thought it had been a cat. No, cats don't have white eyes. I walked quickly. Behind me there was absolute silence. Was it the sound of bare feet on the sidewalk I'd just heard? I clutched my pepper spray can as I took the last few steps to my car, while looking around like a madwoman attacked by imaginary birds. I closed the car door and locked the door. Finally, I managed to exhale the air I'd been holding in my lungs.
I didn't wait any longer, not wanting to linger here, and started the engine. Once home, I took a shower and got ready for bed. It had been a strange night. The more I thought about it, the more I wondered why the application had triggered so many times. Wasn't it possible that there had been a malfunction and I just imagined what I thought I was hearing and seeing because of the stress?
After a while, I came to the conclusion that the app was bugged and that my overactive imagination, combined with my natural fear of being attacked, had done the rest. and made several trips to the kitchen to throw away the remains of my dinner. My cell phone vibrated. My breathing stopped.
I stood there for several seconds, staring at my screen. I raised my head slowly and looked around. I inspected every nook and cranny accessible to my view without making a move. The light in my bedroom was still off. I couldn't see any place where an intruder might be. I made my way discreetly towards my bedroom. Stop stressing. You said it yourself. The app doesn't work.
I continued walking slowly and put my hand on the light switch just to the left of the door. I pressed it. I took a few steps inside. No intruder, ghost, or monster had entered my room. As I returned to the living room reassured, my gaze was drawn to the window and the night outside. And there... I saw the pale face of a creature glued to the glass. staring back at me with two of the whitest eyes I'd ever seen in my life.
After a second spent trying to understand what I was seeing, I screamed in fear. The police immediately dispatched a patrol car after my panicked call. The two officers inspected the area around the house without finding anyone who resembled the vague description I'd given them. I had obviously avoided mentioning the fact that what I had seen had white eyes and skin and a bald head. After a while, they had to leave and told me to call back if I ever saw someone at my window again.
I closed all my shutters and spent the night awake. A knife resting on the living room table. When day broke, I finally got the courage to leave my house. Just below the window where I'd seen this thing, there were dozens and dozens of bare footprints. going from left to right towards all the other windows. You are being followed. You are being followed. This is Gabriel Urbina, the creator of Wolf 359.
I'm breaking into this feed just for a moment to let you all know about my new series on Audible, Hit Singles. It's an audio fiction romantic comedy all about an aspiring DJ that comes to New York for a summer. Pretty much instantly, she meets a young bartender.
and the two of them fall into a classic will-they-won't-they situationship. In short, it's a show about that whirlwind period when you're in your 20s, and you're trying to figure out who you are and what your life is supposed to be. My team and I made up...
with lots of jokes, lots of romance, lots of feelings, and an amazing soundtrack. So if you want a new romantic comedy for your ears, look for hit singles on Audible. If you're an Audible Plus subscriber, you can listen to the show at no additional cost. you can listen to it for free for 30 days thank you for listening and A vending machine appeared in my bedroom. It contains everything I've ever lost. Did you check the keyboard?
My girlfriend's question tells you everything you need to know about how often I lose things. Yes, obviously I checked the key bowl. The lie of my response tells you how confidently wrong I always am. In this instance, the keys were indeed in the key bowl. Found them! I tried to speak in a tone that didn't make it immediately obvious how stupid I was. Where were they? I had two options. Tell her where I found them and let her hold this victory over me, or...
Be more subtle about it and keep my pride. I chose the former. I'm not a liar. Other than earlier on, when I lied about checking the keyboard, that was different. She giggled. I'm not even looking for them, and I find them better than you do. She was right. I constantly misplace things. Sometimes they're found, but quite often I never see them again. lost into the void. As I'd always say, she had a much more rational belief, though, that
I'm just a bit of an idiot sometimes. It made more sense than the idea that something was out to get me, out to cause me an inconvenience. Of course, I never actually believed. that my missing items were a result of anything other than my own ignorance. It was just a fun and somewhat comforting idea that somehow it wasn't my fault. Sometimes I still wonder if it's my fault that she disappeared.
Last year my girlfriend went missing. We went to bed together and in the morning the bed was unbearably empty. The lack of her presence became immediately obvious to me. The blanket lay undisturbed with her phone still on the side. headed to the bathroom, the only logical place for her to be to find nothing. The lights in the house, all off, suggesting that nobody was here except me. Babe?
I yelled, the only response being the silence. I remembered the exact moment that a pit seemed to form in my stomach as I tried to cling onto rational thought. Maybe she was outside taking out the trash or maybe she had to go to the shops simply for getting her phone at home. This could all be a funny story in a few minutes time. Rational thought. aren't always correct, as comforting as that would be. she had vanished there's no two ways around it she was
Gone. The weeks after that were long and difficult. It hasn't gotten any easier. Sometimes I wonder what I missed when I was asleep. Was she taken? Did she hold a secret hatred toward me and left silently? her life behind could i have stopped whatever happened if i was just awake her birthday was last week i think about her every morning every single morning i wake up to the same
empty bed that I did last year, but on this particular morning the thoughts of her clung to me stronger than usual. The intense feeling of needing her by my side boiled up into a complex mix of emotion. For the longest time, I didn't want to open my eyes. For just a little longer, I wanted to pretend she was there. Next to me. Eventually, I began the same routine I do every day.
I opened my eyes turned to the empty space next to me and reach out to confirm that it's real but instead I was interrupted not by a sound or person but an object one that didn't exist the night prior as I climbed into the bed and struggled to fall asleep. At first, the unfamiliarity caused confusion. You're not expecting to see a vending machine in your bedroom. You don't see a vending machine in your bedroom. For a moment, you just see a large box, an out-of-place shape.
your room of comfort it takes a moment for your mind to collect together the context the white glowing buttons along the right hand side the wide metallic collection door at the rectangle suddenly became something tangible, something I understood to exist. There was a vending machine in my bedroom. I stood up slowly trying to explain this away in my head. I knew I wasn't dreaming. So how had this gotten here?
me hearing it who had broken in to leave this it would have hardly even fit through the door at least not without a lot of noise the machine itself was matte black all over a few dozen blank buttons I sat on the right. No glass allowed my gaze inside and no branding allowed my mind any understanding of the contents. In place of the glass taking up any space on the front that lacked buttons, words. were printed in a white, modern font.
I don't know why, but I spoke aloud for a moment. I miss you. As if this machine were a conduit to her, but do you really blame me? It had appeared just as mysteriously as she had gone. On her birthday, of all days, too. My mind connected the two, thinking for just a moment that perhaps she had left this for me. I stepped toward the appliance, taking it all in. It stood just a little taller than me. I reached out feeling its smooth, cold surface.
My fingers found their way over the lettering as a small bump told me they were slightly recessed. Eventually, my hand lay over the buttons. Without too much thought, I pressed a button. The light of it dimmed whilst the others still remained active. But worrying from within, the machine told me that if I waited, something... As the sound stalked, a clink from below suggested it was complete. I reached into the collection area and pulled out a small silver analog watch.
It took a moment for my thoughts to catch up. I had lost this same watch years ago on holiday. It was a gift from my brother who wasn't particularly happy with me for losing it. The inexplicable, unexplainable nature of this bothered me. I was happy to be holding it again for the first time in a year. I found myself genuinely smiling.
Seriously, I pressed another button. Now, two were dim with maybe 40 or so still active. The whirring sounded the same, yet the clink had become a thump. Reaching in, I took out my childhood diary. I had lost it when I was seven. I was slightly surprised I even still recognized it. However, I was more surprised at the pristine condition.
Turning through the pages, reading some of the entries, some of them even still had eraser shavings where I had taken out mistakes. It was as if it hadn't aged even a day. The third button press gave me my old wallet. The next gave me a teddy I don't even remember holding, but recognized it from my baby photos. Somewhere along the line, all the money I had ever lost... spilt out onto the floor i even got back a phone i had lost somehow not smashing as it fell through the machine
With another press it dispensed her necklace. I stood there, holding it. in a beautiful moment, holding something of hers, something she loved for the first time in a year. Right then, right there, I felt more connected to her than ever before. I held it tight as I took a short time to look around everything I had ever lost. was with me again i just wished she could have been there to witness this but perhaps she was somehow responsible
Brought me comfort to imagine that somehow from whatever she may be, she's still helping me find things. Irrational as it may have been, it's a nice thought. Rational thoughts aren't always correct but neither are irrational ones. With another press, the machine came to life for the final time. As the last button dimmed away, it seemed to work for longer than usual. I took a moment to reflect on the necklace again. She had been wearing it the night she disappeared.
I wasn't sure anymore if that made it more special or more eerie. Should that have brought me comfort or should that have been a warning? Something dropped into the collection area, yet the machine continued to whir. Another drop, and another, and another. It didn't sound consistent. Some thumped whilst others did not. I waited for the sounds to subside before reaching in. Once I finally did get to put my hand inside it felt wet.
I don't remember whether I pulled her finger or her ear first. I just remember that her fingers still wore her favorite ring. It's all a blur. My hand, covered in blood, opened the collection door slightly wider to peer inside. A collection of flesh, bones, and skin, some mangled together, some kept... pristine. There's no way I can prove all of it was even her.
Most of it a mess, unrecognizable as ever being a living, breathing person. I screamed as I mashed the buttons again. A rational person wouldn't have done this, but I was not a rational person. Did I expect these actions to be undone? The deafening silence seemed to fill the room. The machine was unresponsive. I fell back onto the bed soaking the sheets with blood. With the ring and the necklace I had previously clutched, the situation lacked the magic it had held moments prior.
The horror seeped in as I looked around for anything to offer solace. The lost items on the floor now covered in blood served only as a reminder that I was forbidden from my happy ending. The ring still attached to her finger burned into my mind. Was this a message? A warning? Was there any explanation at all? My gaze met with a photo framed by the side of my bed. It was of us.
Full of life, we took it on the day of her last birthday, oblivious to what was to come. She wore the same necklace and ring. We were happy. How much I wished to go back to a simpler time. Rational thoughts aren't always correct, but neither are irrational ones. Only the truth remains constant, even when unexplainable and rarely comforting.
Am I Being Followed was written by S.G. Woodhouse and performed by Kayla Temschiv. Vending Machine was written by Ben Wooding and performed by Joseph Rutledge and Kayla Temschiv. The Fable and Folly Network, where fiction producers flourish. This is Gabriel Urbina, the creator of Wolf 359.
I'm breaking into this feed just for a moment to let you all know about my new series on Audible, Hit Singles. It's an audio fiction romantic comedy all about an aspiring DJ that comes to New York for a summer. Pretty much instantly, she meets a young bartender.
and the two of them fall into a classic will-they-won't-they situationship. In short, it's a show about that whirlwind period when you're in your 20s, and you're trying to figure out who you are and what your life is supposed to be. My team and I made up... big show with lots of jokes, lots of romance, lots of feelings, and an amazing soundtrack.
So if you want a new romantic comedy for your ears, look for hit singles on Audible. If you're an Audible Plus subscriber, you can listen to the show at no additional cost. And you have a free trial.