The NoSleep Podcast by Creative Reason Media Inc. Sleepless Decompositions Vol. 18 I'm your host, David Cummings. Season 22 of The NoSleep Podcast launches the weekend of December 1st. And while we're composing ourselves for a new season, we're presenting two episodes of our Sleepless Decompositions series this week and next. Tales that take us off the beaten path. Tales that are offering up some decaying delights of horror. On this episode we have two tales which will captivate you.
You'll be so entranced by them that you may feel like you can't get away. We're locked in with horror. Just the way you like it. And as always, we're grateful to our amazing sponsors who make content like this available absolutely free. Sponsors like Mint Mobile. And joining me to talk about them is a Mint Mobile customer. Our very own Nicole Goodnight. You love sharing how great Mint Mobile is, don't you, Nicole? Oh, wait, she's trapped in that room behind glass.
I don't think the mic can pick up her voice. Okay, I'll try to read her lips. She's either crying out for help to get her out of that room or she's talking about how Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for 15 bucks a month when you purchase a three-month plan. And I get it. That's such an awesome deal. There's no way she can keep it to herself. She's saying that when there's a deal this good, you just have to share it with all your friends.
And unlike Nicole, you won't be trapped into getting a new phone and reconfiguring your contacts and numbers. No, she says, you use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and you bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts. Oh, and what's that? Oh, yeah, right. All plans come with high-speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network.
So she's begging you to ditch overpriced wireless with Mint Mobile's deal and get three months a premium wireless service for 15 bucks a month. Right Nicole? Ah, yes. She wants to explain that to get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com slash no sleep. That's mintmobile.com slash no sleep. Yep, I'll say it again. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash no sleep.
And I'll read this disclaimer for her. $45 up front payment required equivalent to $15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mintmobile for details. Thanks to Mintmobile for sponsoring this episode and thank you, Nicole. I'll get you out of that room eventually. Now dear friends, stop trying to escape, give in to the madness and brace yourself for these sleepless decomposition.
Ten hour first tale, we're asking you to wait. Please be as patient as you can. We know it's annoying, frustrating and even maddening to be stuck for so long, but well in this tale, shared with us by author Jonathan Hart, you'd better be content with the old magazines and the soft music being endlessly played because you're going to be here a while. Joining us now is the next one. Our next guest is the best-selling film ever. We're going to be filming this tale.
Our zalavir Nelson Jr. Jeff Clement, Kyle Acres, Jessica McAvoy, Atticus Jackson, and Mike DelGaudio. So don't lose hope. You're sure you'll eventually be able to leave the waiting room. You're in now in a room. Here's a list of the room's features. Above you is a white stucco ceiling, pale light flickers down from a recessed utility lamp. There's a row of grey interconnected seats.
A single potted plant with pointed leaves, a painting of a man smiling, a long glass window running along the wall at you face, with four divided desks on the other side. You sit on one of the seats. At the end of your row, a woman is sleeping. She snores. It is a quiet snore. It is the only sound in the room. A young man with a bow tie and combed hair sits down at the desk on the other side of the window. He just has bow tie, but his microphone. This is encouraging. You stand to approach him.
Hello? There is no seat in front of the window. This is not on the list of the room's features. He smiles. Your slight discomfort does not concern him. In that moment, looking upon his smile, it does not concern you, either. Name? You tell him. Data for? You tell him that too. Address? Yes. Social security number? A pause. Then you tell him. Mother's maiden name? A license plate number? Be a co-identification number? You failed to provide that last one. You have not memorized it.
You wonder if everyone else has their v in memorized. Perhaps you are stupid. That's quite alright. We'll just have to do a few more steps. You've set up a security question with us. Do you remember the question and answer? But both of them? The first faint surge of panic arrives. Right. Can you just ask me the question? If I set it up, I'll know the answer. I see. He does not frown. You assume that he is trained not to. In that case, we will give you a serial code to verify your identity.
Your number is 7263109. Please remember it. Place it out. Wait. Is that my code? You wiped a left palm on your right sleeve, dampening it. No. That is your number. It will be called when it is your place in line. Then we will give you a serial code and you can use that to change your password. Again, your number is 7263109. Do you have something I can write with? His folded fingers turn white. You know what this means. You are becoming one of those customers.
You do not want to be one of those customers. Yes. One moment. Please sit down. A vein appears in the snack. Then vanishes just as quickly. You step back and sit down. A minute passes. Another minute passes. A third minute passes. Three hours pass. At least you are not sure. You wonder where the bathroom is. You do not have to use the bathroom. But if you are going to wait like this, you will eventually need to use the bathroom. The woman on the far end of your row is still snoring.
She has been snoring for these three hours and three minutes, you think. You imagine strangling her. That is a funny thought. It is a serious one of course, but you insist to yourself that it will be funny later. If you consider standing up and going back to the window without being called, this however is a thing that one of those customers would do. A robotic voice calls your name. You stand up immediately. You fast walk to the window. There is no one on the other side.
The robotic voice repeats your name. Yes? We could not verify your identity. Home. You assume that you should react more to this. You do want to go home. If they cannot prove who you are, they will not let you go home. It sinks in at that point. You want to go home, just to get out of this room. Here is a keypad. A keypad slides under the window. Ten numbers including zero. Thirteen buttons including pound, star and enter. Please enter your number.
You try very hard to think back to, probably, three hours and four minutes ago. You fail. I'm sorry, I thought I was going to be given something to write down the number. There is a thirty-four second pause. You count. You imagine the counting seconds gives you some modicum of control. It helps. I see. Please hold. Can I sit down? The robot voice transforms into repetitive jazz music. It loops every eighteen seconds. You count this. You discover that it is not actually eighteen seconds.
It is eighteen and a half. If you were genius, you would use this to count the time, but the music makes it harder to do this. You were estimating a time pretty well before the music. The music begins to screech randomly and transform into a wine of one microphone over another. No one corrects this. The cheerful man's voice interrupts the jazz. Hello. Your call is very important to us. You should receive service in twenty-seven minutes. You like this twenty-seven minutes. It is a time limit.
You realize that for a moment, you did not believe that they were ever going to get back to you. You realize that you're crying. But you won't tell them that you're crying, that your feet hurt, that you want to sit down, that you cannot hear the sound from your seat and therefore cannot sit down, or that if they just turned up the volume, you would be able to sit down. When a human voice finally comes on the line, you will control yourself, because you are not one of those customers.
Presumably twenty-seven minutes pass. They must pass. The voice comes again. We're sorry, due to our new system, longer than average wake times are common. You should receive service in thirty-nine minutes. Your lip and quivers, your hands are cold. It no longer matters why you are here, because nothing matters as much as this sense of coldness that pulls out everything that is ever given you sadness and anger, and makes it pale in comparison to this.
It pulses through you, a violent energy that makes you want to smash the window, tear down the picture, uproot the plant, and smack it again against the face of the sleeping one. Not the harm any of them, just so that you will matter. You need to pace. You imagine yourself pacing, taking deep, blowing breaths that expel heat from your body. You can't actually do it, and this may be a public place, but you imagine. A newer, Bob voice takes over. Hello, listen closely as our options have changed.
What has been your impregnant numero uno? The robot voice continues. Through French, Cantonese, Japanese, it isn't an alphabetical order, or any order at all, but there can only be nine, or ten, the zero button counts. It's fine. But no, it continues to eleven, to twelve, increasingly exotic languages, none of the English, your focus waivers. For English. You freeze, it continues on to another language. For English, they listed the number first. You were not paying attention. It is your fault.
The voice continues. You do not even know the names of the languages it lists next. This is also your fault. You are dumb. You are ignorant. You let it finish. The list starts over. It's forty-seven. Four. Then seven. Then pound for English. There's a three-second pause. If you are calling for help with our appliances, press one now. If you are calling for help with our college services, press two. If you are calling for... It goes on. Every type of product, whatever can be sold.
You do not have a product. You want to know how to get out. There was no door on the list of features of the room. Didn't you notice? There is no door. You wait for it. For press number for help leaving the room. Your voice reaches nine. It continues. You want to conjure back the nice young man. That human voice, one which will understand. The woman at the end of the row snores. Perhaps you will never wake up. For the first time, you consider killing yourself. How would you do it?
For all of the concerns, press zero two six now. Follow the button. You start typing before they finish. The tones of your button presses interrupt them and then there is silence. Wait. Did they mean followed by star or followed by pound? You assume pound. You press it. We are sorry. This is not a valid request. Please listen to our options again. You press it. Zero. Two. Six. Star. Enter. We are sorry. This is not a valid request. Please listen to our options again. Zero. Two. Six. Star. Enter.
We are sorry. We require you to listen to all of our options before making a selection. So you wait. You wait as it goes over the entire list again. You were right by the way. Zero. Two. Six. Star. Enter. You press it with a victorious gasp. This will route you to a human. It has to. Thank you. We are putting you through to a representative now. Yes. Please. Yes. Your estimated wait time is five years, twenty days. Nine hours and fifty three minutes. The jazz music starts again.
That inner, all-consuming coldness returns. It overtakes you. And then it reverses into pure heat, flames from the inside out. You punch the window. It does not break. More crack. You're knuckles shatter, splitting off from each other like bloody firecrackers. Pain pulses up your arm. You welcome this, because it is a feeling. The woman at the end of the row snores. The gaze shoots to the plant. You run to it. You grab it. The dirt spills freely across the floor as you sprint to the window.
The woman snores. The music transforms to a wine. You smash the pot against the window. The window does not crack. But the pot does. More dirt spills. You smash it again. Again. Again. The pot shatters open and dirt spills across you. Your hands, the floor. The woman snores. She snores. She snores. The dirt is getting into the bloody wounds of your hands. It stinks. It joins a sensation of that thing in your lungs tearing at you. That coldness. The woman snores.
You run to the painting of the man. He is smiling. He is smiling at you. He designed a system for you because he hated you. You try to believe that you matter enough to be hated. You pull the painting off the wall. Then smash it across the snoring woman's head. She does not wake. She is not even injured. You hit her three more times. The painting breaks and still she does not respond. You fall away into a corner, grabbing it yourself to prove that you are still here. An hour passes. Five hours.
A year passes, you think. Six years, what must be six years pass? They do not call you. They extend your weight eight times. At some point, you attempt to shrangle yourself. You do not breathe for ten hours and continue to live. You pull the snoring woman's skin and finally manage to form a gash in her stomach. Still, she snores. You stretch this wound open. You climb inside of the snoring woman through the gap in her body that you have made. You wait there. Her snores mean something.
At any given moment, she will either be snoring or not snoring. This is the only difference from one moment to another that is left. Soon, it is the only one that you ever remember experiencing. Ten years pass. Twenty years pass. Thirty years pass. A hundred years pass. It passes. Passes. Thank you for your patience. Your call is very important to us. A representative will be on the line as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience. While you wait, we have a short word from my response.
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Go to shipstation.com and use code NoSleep to sign up for your free 60-day trial. That's shipstation.com code NoSleep. Now let's get trapped into some arresting horror. In our final tale, we meet Meal, a police officer in a rough situation, disoriented, lost with no memory of how he got there, even his partner is missing, a dire circumstance to be sure.
But in this tale, shared with us by author Simon Bleakin, Meal starts to understand what's going on, only the scanned answers only seem to make matters worse. Performing this tale are Jake Benson, Reagan Tacker, and Erica Sanderson. So keep looking for clues. Like Meal, you may find some in a world behind glass. I awoke on cold concrete to the shadows and silence of a frosty starlit alleyway. Rows of derelict buildings flanked me, boarded up windows and doors that offered no clue to my location.
These were homes and businesses no longer, merely crumbling shells filled with dust and fading memories, clad in scrolls of cryptography. Around me, broken glass sparkled like frozen tears. I stuck it to my feet like some old drunk, sickly disoriented, pressing a hand against my pulsing temple until the world settled that my eyes focused. Nothing was familiar. I quick check on my duty belt reveal my radio was missing. So was my baton, my handcuffs, flashlight and CS spray.
I live in my watch was gone, and my uniform was filthy, torn and street would der. Didn't even know how any of that had happened. Everything was fragmented, like a reflection in a shattered mirror. My last clear memories were of climbing to the car alongside my partner, but that was back at the start of our patrol. At first everything had been normal, routine sweep around the park and red light districts, checking all the usual haunts for those who tried to stay off a radar.
And then, the memories just ended. Jeff? I realize I had no idea where my partner was either. I looked around helplessly, squinting into unyielding blackness only to catch a glimpse of my own reflection in a surviving window pane. My face was pale, like some disembodied specter in the gloom. There was a bruise beneath my right eye, I cut to my lip and the collar of my shirt had a long smear of blood in it. Then my heart and lurched, as a second face appeared beside mine.
He told me a moment to realize it was somebody on the other side of the glass. It couldn't have been more than 20. Eyes wide and lips curl back in terror. His face was smudged with grime, his body shaking as he gulped down anxious breaths. The outline of his skull was visible beneath his gaunt, malnourished skin. He wore a filthy red sweater, worn through at the elbows and frayed into tattered threads around the wrists, and a pair of old jeans that looked held together by dirt.
He was speaking, or trying to. No sound reached me. It's alright, I'm a police officer. He pressed a shaking hand against the glass, his eyes locking onto mine for a moment before he turned and darted outside. Hey, wait! I felt compelled to help him, though I couldn't say why. I think perhaps for that one fleeting second, he was the only thing that felt vaguely familiar, though I had no recollection of ever having seen him before.
There was an hour gap where one of the window boards had been kicked inwards, but wriggled through, against procedure and common sense, mindful of the broken glass in the edges of the frame. In the deeper darkness I squinted to make sense of the space until my eyes adjusted. Felt colder here. The barmy night of the alleyway shifting into a strange or terminal chill, and there was a curiously stale quality to the air.
Moving through an open doorway and down a short corridor, I emerged atop a flight of narrow concrete steps that stretched down 20 feet into some kind of long gloomy storeroom, complete with heavy rows of rotting shelves and three sagging desks. There was a single bulb hanging from the ceiling. The flickering yellow light at cast was noxious and sickly. I pressed a hand over my mouth as I started down, a whole place reaked of dampness and mold, as if it had been shut up and rotting for decades.
I stopped up to just a few steps, suddenly overcome by a sharp sense of crippling terror that churned my stomach, turned my legs to jelly and set my nerves screaming. I was no stranger to hostile situations. In my line of work it was a nightly reality, but this place crawled under my skin. When raised her hairs on my neck and arms in a way that felt utterly alien, there was a numerous palpable fear that seemed to exude from those walls and the steps beneath my feet.
It coiled in my gut like a greased serpent on top of that. The air felt heavy and suffocating. I know why I kept going. That's the question I've been asking myself a lot. I think it was only because the man in the red sweater had seemed so oddly and maddeningly familiar. I needed answers. And this was the only way he could have gone. I was half way down those steps, my heart racing when I realised it was somebody slumped in a grimy office chair ten feet below me.
They were facing away from me towards a battered set of towering metal doors that were thick with rust. Hello? The dear, obscuring flicker of the horrible yellow bulb lay between me and the figure. So it wasn't until I near the last step that I could make anything out clearly. Only then did the lighting give up its secrets. The blood pooling at the feet of the individual, the ragged white shirt with black epilets. Then I noticed the stab vest he was wearing. Just like mine. It was Jeff.
I ran to him, fighting back as sick and panicked. He was alive barely but not conscious. His skin was yellow and puffy lips drawn back from his teeth. Strings of drool oozed from between his locked jaws. His chest rose and fell shallowly with a laboured wheeze but when I waved a hand in front of his face, those glassy eyes didn't move. Blood was pooling around his left foot from a deep laceration in his side that had slashed through his stab vest.
It didn't look like a knife with him though. Something more savage and less clean. Jeff! I checked his belt but his radio was missing too. I'll go help. I promised. No he would sure he could hear me. You can't. I know you won't remember but you can't. A span around to find the young man in the filthy sweater standing a few feet away. He was trying to shrink into the shadows in the far corner. His face a mask of anguish. He looked so lost, so terrified but all the same fury surged within me.
Did you do this? You shook his head. He died for you. He just hasn't been collected yet. He's not dead. He flinched. They're here. Who? Who else is down here? He pressed his back against the wall. His eyes wide. He was shaking. At the sight of his terror my anger ebbed. It was obvious he hadn't done this. We have to be quiet. He shot a fearful glance at the doors. They'll kill us.
I held out my hands and lowered my voice. Okay. Listen. What's your name? Lee. Right now listen to me Lee. We need to get help and you need to tell me what happened here. You won't get out. Not this time. Is that a threat? There was a low metallic rumbling and the tall metal doors started to shake as if somebody was pounding their fists on the other side. Who's out there? No, go. A look of deep and interis spread over Lee's face. But it was too late.
In response to my words, the assault on the door grew louder and more savage. Is sounded as if an angry mob were now hammering against it, all punching and kicking against the metal as they tried to force their way inside. The tarnished handles also rattled furiously and the metal panels grown as they bent inwards. What the hell? Lee gave a choked gasp and dropped to the floor, crawling into the shadows under one of the ancient shells. What? What? Just doing.
The doors burst inwards, buckling and twisting as if some intense pressure had slammed into them and ripped them from their hinges. By the room herself to the floor and like Lee scrambled underneath a heavy shell from the opposite wall, I was larger than he was, only just able to squeeze beneath. I curled up in the darkness as best I could. When I looked back out, I saw something moving in the fractured heart of that shadowed space.
I'd expected a furious mob to come pouring in, but instead, any single figure stood in the doorway. It wasn't a man though, an even human. It was black against the shadows, and it shifted rather than walked. A splintered, fragmented outline, almost as if its body were a churning mass of jagged shards. I held my breath as it drew closer. A silent predator slipped past the buckle doors. Its approach otherwise undetectable.
I felt an unaccountable sense of heart-wrenching despair sweep through me as it entered the room, as though its presence was drawing all the warmth, hope and life out of me. It moved towards Jeff, and I knew that I should do something. The hollow desolation that ran through me seemed to suck all the energy and will from a limbs.
I curled in the shadows on that cold dump floor, watching as it reached out with shifting shards that were not quite arms, and clamped them to either side of Jeff's head. My partner bucked and spasmed as if he'd received an electric shock, a low soft moan burst from his lips, and his hands clamped onto the arms of the chair, the knuckles white and bloodless. His eyes bulged as his flesh went from pale to grey.
As if the last of his vitality was being leeched from his physical form. His lips, withered, his cheeks sinking inwards beneath those glassy eyes. And his whole body seemed to be collapsing in on itself. The thing that held him was motionless now, he has still had the thousands of shards comprising its form continued to shift and move across him. Now hurry! Lee scrambled from his hiding place and darted through the open doorway gesturing for me to follow. For a moment, I could only stare.
Quickly before it finishes! That broke whatever paralysis held my limbs and I fled after him, my head spinning and blind panic guided my feet. In the darkness of the cold passageway beyond, I almost lost sight of Lee. Then I spotted his filthy red sweater as he turned a corner up ahead, momentarily spotlighted by another flickering light. I followed him as if he were a lifeline in that insane place.
But instead of guiding me to safety, we descended deeper into a maze of maddening impossibilities. We blundered through claustrophobic hallways and down clanging metal staircases before emerging into a wide, moonlit room with filthy windows and heat piles of discarded furniture. Lee had paused it to catch his breath and a half fell half leaned against the wall as my confusion and horrible up with me.
Jeff was dead. The realization brought a sick and imperceptive guilt. I had abandoned him. Let that creature suck the life out of him and even tried to stop me. I sat heavily on one of the desks, dimly aware that Lee was watching me now, probably guessing the mouse drum of thoughts and emotions churning him as skull and cramping as stomach. I wiped trembling sweating hands on my legs, trying to steady myself. What's going on? What the hell was that thing back there?
There was nothing you could have done. I fell sick to my stomach, nauseous shame rising like bile in my throat. What was it? I don't know exactly. There are a few of them in here. I don't know how many. Learned a sense when they're near. Sometimes they make this clickin' like claws on stone. But they also bring despair, crippling waves of it. As if all the suffering and anguish of the loves they've swallowed travel with them.
Best I can tell they're like broken collections of forgotten dreams given love. What does that even mean? They're kind of like star vampires. They drain everything from inside you, all the hope and experiences, all the memories and knowledge, all the love and goodness. They're the ones that will hunt you anyway, but they aren't the only things in here. Oh god, the things are that. Monsters mostly. Things that just don't belong anywhere else.
For a moment, I just stared at him. Nothing in my training or experience had prepared me for this. Not only the armed thugs, drug dealers, drunken or abusive domestic incidents or terror threats I'd faced. Those things were expected, anticipated almost. Even if you hoped you'd never have to deal with them. But silent monsters made a despair in shadow. How could anyone be ready to face something that shouldn't have been possible? I don't think it followed us. We can rest here for a while anyway.
I walked to the window, needing some air. He was sealed shut. I pressed my forehead against the grimy glass. Took me a second to realize what was wrong. But when I did, I blinked in surprise that the sight of large ships birthed in a dock with cranes and faultless, busily unloading cargo down below. We would know where needed the docks. We are now. I don't recognize that city though. It's London, obviously. He shrugged. Is it? I've never been there. We're in London right now.
He gave me an appraising glance. Yes, that explains your accent and that weird cop uniform. Look, you might have started in London, but this place isn't just any one location. It's sort of everywhere, all at once. It's like we've managed to slip down behind the sofa cushions of the world. You need to start making some sense.
Look, I already told you all this last time. You both got trapped like everyone else in this place. Jeff gave his life for you. That's how you got out. That's the only way out. Someone has to pay for you to leave. I don't remember any of that. They say this place keeps itself hidden. It stills our memories of when we escape, though. I often wondered how anyone could know that. But they must be right, or why else would you go and crawl right back in here after you only just got out? I got out.
Yes. You were supposed to try and get help. You don't remember any of it, though. I crawled in in through a broken window. That means there are ways in and out. You'll never find it again. Trust me. I shook my head defiantly. They're all these windows right here. We could smash them and climb out. But this bound to be a fire escape. The glass won't break. It never does. I've even seen Gus shooting at it. There's only one way out. It costs a lot. How can you know any of this?
He sighed, and I wondered how many times he had told the same story to disbelieve in strangers. Well, I guess I said before. I ran into a guy once, down in one of the old tunnels. He said his name was Albert. He looked about my age, but all skin and bones. You know, like one of those famine victims on TV. He told me he'd been here since 1911. He reckoned the only way out was for a willing soldier to die for you.
He never said how he knew that, but he said he'd seen others who got out. A few weren't fewer as time went on. Bullshit! It's just glass! Oh, and that creature back there? Was that all bullshit, too? Lee, glad. Go right ahead. You won't believe me till you've tried. Nobody ever does. I was determined to prove him wrong. If I could do that, I could make the world make sense again. Believe was right.
Although the glass looked old and thin, and nothing of the thruotus so much is chipped or cracked it, I even tried kicking the pains out, stopping only one elm has broke toes in the process. Lee folded his arms. See? You'd better tell me everything you know, everything I've forgotten anyway. Not now. We've made too much noise here. We'd better keep going. They're probably coming.
We left the office and found ourselves at the crossroads of narrow hallways that looked like they belonged to some ancient hospital. A way it is he carefully checked left and right, and then decided on going straight ahead. You know the way? There really isn't one, but if you stay away from the darker places, you're usually okay. This is all it is. Analyst corridors and devilic rooms. It keeps changing and shifting. None of it's ever in the same place twice.
They're old train stations, tenements, hotel lobbies, alleyways and tunnels. You name it and it's here. It goes on and on, but it's all dingy and run down. There's even a massive stairwell somewhere that goes down from miles. It's as if every forgotten or abandoned place exists here. Forgotten people too. All those who fell through the cracks of the world we came from.
We emerged at the top of a large metal ladder and carefully made our way down, descending through the thick, myasmal air into the shifting shadows of that oppressive place. Here in this forgotten realm, where everything was old and decaying, where sounds seemed flat and hollow, where the senses were muted and where the spark of vitality had been leached from all things, removed with all the substance of a memory.
I thought about what Lear told me, about the within man who'd been in here since 1911, and as reality sank in, the dusty kiss of eternity pressed close. We doomed to slowly fade away like a photograph left in the sunlight until we were too old and weak to evade the things stalking these echoing halls. Appeared into the dark openings of grimy tunnels that flanked us as we pressed on, trying to keep my mind from my thoughts and fears, I shall have my torch.
Keep what's yours real close to you in here. This place will find a way to take it from you otherwise. I thought of my missing equipment and my fragmented memories. They all in here too somewhere. Is there any food? I loot the dead when I find them, and sometimes still have things they brought in with them. Food, clothes, you gotta be quick though, this place soon takes what's left. They're plenty of bugs and crawlies, I guess they wondered in like we did, then found a way to breathe.
At least something's throven. How long have you been here? Feels like forever sometimes. I thought of Karen who would be sleeping right now, waiting for me to come home. The soldier I might never see her again. Hold her, talk to her. I pushed it from my mind. So what do we do now? Keep moving. Quietly. And so we did. I quickly learned what Lead meant about us being in the never changing maze. One section led randomly into the next with no flow of form or function between them.
There were endless warrants of concrete utility tunnels branching off in every direction. Grimmy store rooms filled with rotting boxes and wide sheets of cobweb, a dizzying maze of crumbling atrium and even ancient offices. Whose desks still had old-fashioned tie-writers sitting amidst a sea of dust and detritus.
Some rooms were so dark that we had to feel our way carefully and blindly, and others were lit by flickering electric lights caked with grime or occasionally by moonlight streaming in through ancient windows, that gave tall-mented glimpses of the outside world. Hours slid slowly into days, and those days meandered off into a haze. He very quickly became apparent to me how meaningless life was in this strange prison.
Aside from whispered conversation when it seemed safe enough, there was little else to break the long stretches of time. We spent the next week or so, walking aimlessly through a randomly changing landscape of crumbling rooms and musty staircases, creeping like mice afraid of attracting the attention of a stalking cat. Occasionally, we saw other people too, as filthier and as dishevelled as we must have appeared.
But only ever quick flashes as it ducked away into the shadows, fleeing from us as though we were as dangerous as the inhuman things that hunted us. Does this sound too different to the outside world? Guess that means you took a chance on us before I forgot everything. Thanks for that. Yeah, I'm still trying to decide if that was a mistake. Come on, we'd best keep going.
We were always hungry, and food was scarce. We slept where and when we could, usually a cold up hidden under some ancient and collapsed infurniture. There was no way to know exactly how much time had passed, or if it was day or night, with no washing or toilet facilities as soon felt itchy, unclean and decidedly ripe. But Lea assured me I'd stop noticing or caring in time. The curious thing was that my beard and fingernails hadn't grown since I had arrived. Maybe we're dead.
I suggested giving voice to a fear that had been whispering in my head for a few days now. Pretty shitty afterlife, if so. It's more like our bodies are on hold here. Could off from the normal flow of the world out there. You caught the look on my face. Listen, if you're looking for this place to make any kind of sense, don't. It has its own rules.
We stopped that night next to a wide bank of windows. I promised to take the first watch to let Lea get some sleep, and my curiosity got the better of me. I said to work cleaning a spot on the windows so I could look out. The dirt was so thick it took ten minutes of polishing and scraping before I could see anything. My heart lurched at the sight of a city beyond the glass, the dim lights of cars in the distance, and again I was seized by a mad compulsion to try smashing those windows.
Instead, I pressed my back to the glass, the view too painful to look at anymore, and slipped my wedding ringer from my finger, turning it slowly in my hands. Karen's voice echoed in my memories. I knew the risks when I married you, Neil. I thought I was okay with it. Aren't you? You're not the one who has to sit at home wondering if you're coming back. Will I awake at night trying to sleep worrying if this is the night the phone rings or I get a knock at the door?
I know it was difficult, but first I thought you'd got used to me. I never have. I said what you wanted to hear because I know how much you love the job. But it's tough. Most people go to work and only worry about missing the bus or a deadline for a report. I sit here and worry if I'm going to be a widow by 30. It is not. That bad? Why'd you wear that stab vest every night then? You know I'm careful.
I know. But sometimes bad things happen anyway. You just have to switch on the news these days and there's something terrible happening. I can't lose you. You won't. I promise. My shoulders shook as I struggled to hold back the tears that now cut a clean path through my dusty face. I curled my fingers into my palms until I felt the skin break, squeezing my fists as tightly as I could, drawing a strange strength from the pain.
It reminded me that I was alive and as long as I still drew breath, I could keep fighting to get back to Karen and the world on the other side of that maddeningly impregnable barrier. When I opened my eyes again, Lee was watching me. I felt a sudden wave of shame at having been called crying. I just saw... Listen, I get it. I bit my tongue, wanting him to go away. I breathed as a sigh of relief when he moved across the room and began watching the hallway.
We set off the next day in an awkward silence after several sleepless hours. Lee took the lead and I slouched along behind like a tightly called spring of fury and grief. Desperately needed some outlet to vent my frustrations, but having none to hand. I wasn't stupid enough to take my rage out on Lee or to risk making too much noise by trying to find some old furniture to smash. So I brooded quietly, trying to push painful memories out of my head and finding it full of nothing else.
I was so preoccupied with trying to escape the ghosts of memories that it took me a moment to realize Lee had stopped halfway down a set of wide concrete steps that opened out into the next room. The floor was flooded. The room was vast. With a ceiling that stretched 30 or 40 feet overhead, the floor was lost beneath a pool of foul smelling stagnant water. The surrounding walls were covered in rotting shells that ran high up along the walls.
Rostin filing cabinets rose like strange islands beneath them and lying atop a cluster of these. It was a young girl just in a ragged school uniform with a small satchel at her side. She couldn't have been more than 12. A dark hair tied in a ponytail. It looked to me like she had been climbing the top of the shelving to navigate the room and had fallen, breaking her neck. Jesus, she might have food in her bag.
Lee crept down the steps to the edge of the water. I looked at him in horrified disgust. You all are still from a dead child. You want a star? As revolting as the prospect was, I knew he was right. The rotten shelving was a death trap. And I knew there was no way it would take my weight. The flooded patch of floor looked shallow enough, so I took off my shoes, rolled up my trouser legs and decided to risk wading. Lee grabbed my arm as I edged past him. No, not through the water.
I shrugged him off. He said, save this way. I shelved him own holders. The foul water numbed my feet with a greasy chill as I stepped into it. It's stank like decay and flesh. And a series of large bubbles burst the surface as I started wading, stirring up whatever thick sediment lay below. The barma the pool was uneven, and several times my foot sank deeper than I'd expected, often going higher than my knees. I cut my hand at them, I'm out, fighting back a dry heave. Come back.
I ignored him. I was almost halfway, and all ready my stomach was aching with the hope that there might be food in that satchel. There's something under the water. I froze at that warning, and my heart lurged as I spotted the gray outline of something large and serpent like gliding just beneath the surface a little way ahead. I sucked in a sharpened take of breath as it swam past me less than a foot away, sending gentle ripples across the surface.
Cautiously, I took slow steps back. My pulse was racing. One more step brought me just a few feet from the edge where Lee waited. Without warning, my leg plunged into the foul liquid up to a thigh. I lost my balance crashing sideways into the pool and going fully under. I broke the surface quickly, coughing and blinking. The thing in the water was faster.
Something slimy and muscular coiled around my neck and torso, dragging me under again. I thrashed wildly in a blind panic. My fingers clawing at the leathery unseen thing, slowly constricting like a noose around my throat. White spots erupted behind my eyes and my lungs burned for air. Do not like this. Do not like this, please.
My frantic hands dug into the scales of the serpent, clawing desperately. I felt his jaws come onto my arm, two bone daggers slicing through my shirt, puncturing my flesh. I grabbed at it in a wild frenzy. My fingers gouging into what felt like eyes. For a moment, it coiled even more tightly about me and I knew the last of my air was leaving my burning lungs.
Then one of those eyes burst beneath my fingers like a right grape and it released me. I thrust my head above the surface, frantically trying to gulp down air and cough out water at the same time. The serpents slithered away under the surface, rushing and coiling. Blee plunged in beside me and grabbed my arm, hauling me to the edge of the pool. Shit! We scrambled onto the concrete steps, soaked, shivering and terrified. I fought to get my breath back, unable to argue.
Those fangs had shredded my sleeve just below the shoulder, leaving two deep puncture wounds. I touched the skin around them with a wince. Fixed it up later, too much noise. We hurried through half a dozen rooms and countless twisting hallways, choosing intersections blindly. Constantly listening for sounds of pursuit. Our soaked bodies were numb and frozen but we didn't des-stop.
The normally silent hallways echoed with sounds of strange clicking, like claws against stone. They weren't upon us yet. But we knew they were closer than we liked. After what felt like hours of scurrying through shadows we found ourselves in an old hospital ward, strewn with yellowed patient notes and overturned rotten mattresses. The sounds of pursuit had abated about half an hour earlier so we agreed to rest.
We started a small fire in a metal waste bin, huddling around it in the hopes of getting warm and dry. My arm was getting worse. The wound went to yellow fluid and the skin around it was purple and puffy. Was that infected? Poisoned, I think. I need a hospital. I'm a real one. That's dumb business, close as you're getting. Get some sleep. A shivered and hugged my wounded arm close to my chest. My heart was racing and my head was swimming. Maybe there's some old supplies here though.
You still don't get it, do you? Everything here's dead. Rotten. There's no supplies. There's nothing. The only stuff that's any good is what folks bring in with them and that doesn't last long here. Lee insisted I get first sleep that night. I think he was as worried as I was about the poison in my arm. I lay there unable to sleep, watching him pace anxiously. Well, I could think about what's home and the wife I might never see again.
I could feel the poison spreading like fire coursing through my veins. I was certain that sleep was going to elude me but the next thing I knew was Lee shaking me awake. Here, turn to keep watch. I felt a sudden burst of panic as I realized this swelling had spread down into my hand and up into my shoulder. It's getting worse. A rasp through a throat that felt full of broken glass. I guess water left if I need to get to a hospital. Good luck with that.
I mean it. This is serious. I have to get out. You understood then. Don't go getting any ideas. I'm not dying for you. I want to get out too. I have a wife. You should have thought of her before you crawl back in here then. I can't help you. If you really want to help me, give yourself to those things so I can get out. Look at you, you're screwed. No sense in us both, Dine. In that second, I hated him.
Was he selfish to expect a man to die for you? Or was it wrong to hate him for wanting to live when you yourself desired only the same thing? Something gave way within me. The longing for home and the woman I loved had become a secret obsession and I realized how much I had come to resent Lee. He had nobody who missed him. No relatives or loved ones who were wondering where he was. He only wanted to get home to carry on with his lonely life.
I was in my instant. With the poison spreading through my veins, the weight of the torment finally became too much for me. If Lee wasn't going to offer me a way home, then I was going to take it from him. Something in my expression must have given the game away. For he tried to step away as I lunged for him.
With our backwards against a rotting table crashing to the floor in a cloud of dust, he punched and squirmed as I locked my hands around his throat, finally succeeding in driving a knee up between my legs. I gassed with the sudden pain and he rigged from a grasp. I tackled him back to the ground, fighting past his flailing fists and kneeling on his legs to pin him down. It was easier than I expected, even with the agony in my arm.
It was so malnourished he simply lacked the strength to fend me off. From the corridor just outside, we heard a skitter in sound. The door to the room trembled and then shook. I'm sorry! I locked my hands around his throat and squeezed. He tried to claw at my face but I twisted my head away. His eyes were wide and bulging and his lips were moving but only a garbled weas escape them. It sounded like he was trying to say, please.
And tears stung my eyes as guilt raced through me, but the panic was stronger. The shadows were coming and I needed to get home, whatever the cost. His face contorted as my fingers tightened, turning red, and then to a bloodless blue hue as his body bucked furiously. He almost threw me off twice, but I dug my knees in and gripped as hard as I could. His hands poured in effectually at my face and chest, but there was no fight left in him.
He grabbed my shirt with what little strength remained, scattering buttons across the floor. Then his hands just let go and slip down. His body thrashed twice more and then fell still. His eyes were frozen, open. I couldn't bear to look into him. I crawled away from him, tears pouring down my face and my whole body trembling. I knew I was a traitor to everything I believed in. The door to the room burst open and a horribly familiar figure stepped inside.
The jagged form turned as if surveying the scene. Broken shards that comprised the body churning around the central mass like orbiting debris. I crawled into the shadows, trying to make myself as small and insignificant as possible. As the figure stood over, Lee's corpse and clamped the ends of its jagged hands to either side of the dead man's head. The lingering traces of Lee's essence were drawn up into the slender body of the inhuman presence. I didn't stop to watch.
Instead I ran from the room half crazed screaming. He died for me. Do it! He died for me. Let me go! As I staggered down that long empty hallway, I saw no doorways or windows to allow me to escape. Nothing more, nothing but more shadows and darkly desolate rooms. And it was in one of those rooms, far from the terrible sounds of those horrible monsters that I collapsed in a heap and let the shame and grief pour out of me. I am alone.
Lost amid these echoing eternities of emptiness and silent always as stale entropy. What I did, what I became, sickened me. I am no longer the same man that I was in the world outside. I had a sense of morality once. A belief that I was making the world safer. This place has taken both, just as it swallowed my equipment and just as it swallowed Jeff and Lee. In here, I am nothing. Nearly a ghost looking out on a world that I will never again be a part of.
Sometimes, I merely stand whenever I find one of those rare windows that allows a view of our world. I pray for a glimpse of London, my heart aches for home and the wonderful woman left behind there. How long has it been? How long since she held me in her arms and I kiss those soft lips and looked into her beautiful brown eyes? She must think me dead by now. It hurts so badly sometimes, it's all I can do to keep from screaming.
But I've seen what patrols the halls in this strange place, and I know not to make too much noise. The poison still infects my body. My whole face has gone numb and I can barely open my mouth now. My limbs are getting heavy and I no longer move as quickly as before. On top of all that, I am always hungry. And that has become a more maddening pain than the poison causing in my veins. Lee warned me that this place takes everything if you let it. Soon, it will take me to.
But I haven't lost all hope. Not yet. You see, I found that room again. The one with the dead girl. It was just a random flu, really. But this time, I got hold of her satchel. There wasn't any food in it. There was something better. Paper. And a pen. So I spent the last few hours writing down my story. This story, as best as I can recall, and I put Karen's name in a dress at the top of it. It is my confession. My sins, failings, and crimes laid bare. It is my absolution too. At least my hope so.
Even if not. Even if she can't forgive what I became here. At the very least, she will know what happened to me. I hope that makes it easier for her. Not knowing that would be worse, right? Or all I have to do is get it to her now. I know I can get it outside. If I can just find a window with the right city in time. And maybe then, or maybe someone will find it and get it to her. That's my home. The only one I have left. That's my miracle. Surely I'll hold that.
But I know at the very least, I can. Get my story outside into the world once more. I'm giving my life for it. As your time with us has come to an end. And you can now finally escape these sleepless tales. We thank you for joining us here at the No Sleep Podcast for our sleepless decomposition. Join us again next week as we decompose more tales for your nightmares. The No Sleep Podcast is presented by Creative Reason Media. The musical composer is Brandon Boone.
Our production team is Phil McCalsky, Jeff Clement and Jesse Cornett. Our editor-in-chief is Jessica McAvoy. I'm your host and executive producer, David Cummings. Please visit theno sleeppodcast.com for show notes and more details about the people who bring you this show, along with hundreds of hours of audio horror stories in our archives. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening and for supporting our dark tales.
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