Wasteland & Urban Decay

The game has only just begun. Radio Silence Directors Matt Betnelli Open and Tyler Gillette are back for Round 2 with their new horror comedy film, Ready or Not 2. Here I come. Samara Weaving returns as Grace, The Battle of Warren and Bulletin Bride, and is joined by stars, Catherine Newton, Sarah Michelle Geller, Sean Hadasey, Nestor Carbano, David Kronenberg, and Elijah Wood. After Grace marries into a mysterious family and is forced to play a life or death theme of hide and seek, she emerges victorious. But what she didn't know is that by winning, she triggered a whole new twisted battle. This time with her estranged sister-fade on her side. The duo faces a shadowy group of rival devil-worshipping families who control the world, and they must fight to the bloody death for the ultimate prize. Two times the kills, two times the Satanic rituals, and two times the human combustion. Don't miss the full tilt insanity. Ready or not, too? Here I come. When it hits theaters, March 20th. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous, chilling, and disturbing creepy pastures and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened, or simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised. Hey everyone. No updates about defeat issues, and unfortunately I'm halfway out the door right now. It's time for me to head down to camp so we can record our annual Creepaway Camp series that we post in April. Hopefully, while I'm gone, they'll figure out what's going on. The next few weeks, he'll be hearing my voice, but it will be pre-recorded. Sorry about that. I just don't trust the Wi-Fi any time I take a trip, and since we're headed back to the Bayou, well, better not risk it. Now, I got a head out to the airport, so let's get right to the sweet stories. First up, for meter John Evans, and narrated by Heather Thomas, creepy presents Wasteland. Light. Let there be light. Light stung her eyes. Sharp as a blade, it stabbed through the slight part in the curtains and directly across her face. While it was pleasantly warm in her skin, when she tried to open her eyes, it burned like hot coals. Pain lanced through them and careened around the inside of her skull. If this was a hangover, it was the worst hangover of her life. She didn't recall drinking last night, but that too was a typical symptom of waking up with a hangover for her. What wasn't typical was the feeling that something was off. It took her a while to figure it out, but when she did, it was startling. At first lying there in bed, trying to bully her foggy brain to reboot. She noticed it. Nothing. That is to say, an absence of sound. Not that everything was silent, but that the background noise was absent. That day-to-day, white noise that signifies life itself is going on outside. Cars driving, bird singing, wind blowing. Just the typical coming and goings of everyday life. Sitting up in bed, blinking and wiping the sleep crust out of her eyes, she was hit with a new realization. This was not her bed. This was not her bedroom. She didn't know where she was. Looking around, it seemed to be a low-rent motel. Everything was cheap, generic and basic. The room was simply appointed. Double bed, small table, chest of drawers. Small TV on the dresser, coffee pot on the sink counter. Open door leading to the small bathroom. Anne had no clue how she had gotten there. This was not exactly out of character for her, nor the first time it had happened. No stranger to waking up in the bedrooms of random people met in bars. More than once had she woken up on a park bench after a night of drinking. This was not that. This was different. The light felt overly bright, but there was no headache, and the inside of her mouth didn't taste like a freshly used litter box. There were also no signs of the previous night's drunkenness. No strewn about clothing. No smell of spilled booze, vomit, or God forbid how many times it happened. Soiled underwear. There was nothing. Other than the bed clothes being disturbed by her sleeping in it, the rest of the room looked immaculate, as if the cleaning lady had just passed through. Luckily she was fully dressed, except for shoes and socks. Being in full clothes was normally an annoying and impossible task. Yet somehow she had slept like a log in jeans and a tank top. A search of the room turned up nothing else. No jacket. No wallet. No phone. Or keys. Again. Nothing but questions. Biting the bullet and opened the door to the motel room and stuck her head outside. The light was blinding, but once her vision had more or less recovered, she couldn't believe what she was staring at. Outside, the desert simmered in the early morning sun. Heat waves had already started wafting off the hard pan. Scorched ground and scrub brush reached as far as the eye could see, often to the distant mountain range. This was radically new information. Considering last night she had been over 1,500 miles, at least, from what the best she could tell was the new Mexico desert. Last she could remember, she had been in myrtle beach, working her dead and waitress job at a greasy spoon diner with a lower letter grade than her cup size. Double shifts at the diner, then back to her dingy little hole in the wall. Daily infested with bed bugs. Day in and day out, watching tourists enjoy their vacations, and in the off season, what there was of it, watching locals slowly slide down the economic ladder into poverty and despair. Day in and day out on an insanely slow death march to what was clearly going to be an unmarked grave in a federal poppers lot. Seeing what little she could to stave off her inevitable suicide. Now here she was, from east coast to west coast, in a single blackout, which seemed a little unlikely. Thousands of miles from home with no money, no help, and no clue what she was going to do now. Oddly enough, this didn't feel like a new low for her. While more of a lateral step, and couldn't help but feel like maybe this was the start of something better. New life, new start. It was either look at this as an opportunity, or get into the bathtub and slit her wrists. Sadly, it wouldn't be her first time. First things first, she would have to bite the bullet and do the walk of shame to the office to figure out where she was and how she got there. The risk in this being less the shame, and more finding out that she had not paid for the room, instead having broken into a hotel room. Again, not a first for her. The walk to the office was a quick one, not just because she was only one room away, but because the sun-baked walk burned her feet, forcing her to cover the distance to the office and only six bounds. Taking a few seconds to let the pain subside in her feet, she walked up to the counter and hit the bell. No one came out. She hit the bell again. Still, nothing. The motel wasn't exactly the ritz, but it wasn't shabby enough for lot lizards to hang out by the entrance sign. There should have been an employee on the desk, disinterested in phoning it in, but still someone. Hanging around the desk and periodically hitting the button for well over a half an hour and still nothing. Once her annoyance hit maximum levels and walked around the corner and into the back office. It was empty. The soul, not even the small restroom, was barren. Where was the staff? For that matter. Where was everyone? The whole time she had been standing out there, she had not seen a single person. Yes, it was a cheap motel in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn't exactly odd that no one came in, but she didn't even see anyone drive by. No other borders waking up and venturing out. There were only two cars in the lot. One at the far end and one on the other side of the room she had woken up in. Surely there had to be people there. It was nearly morning checkout time. Testing her theory that someone else had to be there, she went down and knocked on the neighboring door, wearing flip flops she had found behind the desk. Testing on the door resulted in no answer. Either the room was empty or the person was a really heavy sleeper. Which was a shame. The vehicle in front of the room was one of those new Dodge challengers. Anyone who drove a nice car like that wasn't here by choice. And that made her feel a little better. At the far end room, same story. No matter how much she pounded on the door, there was no answer. And the vehicle out front was a piece of shit rusted out panel van. And made the executive decision to return to the office. Or after some fishing around, she found the room keys. Going back with keys in hand, she unlocked the door in front of the Dodge. And to her surprise, it too was empty. There was no indication that anyone had ever even been there. The bed was still made. There was no luggage. And even the soap in the bathroom was still in its paper wrapper. And then checked the one on the end. Same story. Vacant. Just on the off chance that they didn't park in front of their rooms, she checked all the ones in between. Less than nothing. No people, no signs of anyone being in those rooms. Within her room, none of the others were disturbed. There was no one here but her. Back in the office, she tried the phone and, surprise, surprise. Nothing. No dial tone, no static, no hum. Well, she had no choice. She would have to figure out her own way out of here. A prospect she wasn't exactly mad at. If it meant borrowing that Dodge Challenger, so be it. She was actually looking forward to it. Sure as hell was not going to take that busted old kidnap, Irvan. Who knows what unspeakable things had occurred in the back. Pulling on the door handle, she was disappointed that it was locked. Not that it stopped her. Fetching a wire coat hanger, she straightened it out to use on the door. Working the wire hanger between the door and the jam, she worked it around until she was able to hit the unlock button. The door was barely opened before she was sliding behind the wheel. The leather interior was hot and burned her bare skin where it touched. Holding her breath, she stepped on the brake and hit the start button. To her surprise, the car started up. Finally, a stroke of good luck. The key fob must have been somewhere in the car. Not that it mattered now. She cranked the AC to cool the car down as the desert heat had left her sweaty and irritable. Letting the car cool, and ran back into the office and grabbed a faded road map from one of the carousels next to the desk. Back in the now air-conditioned car, she unfolded the map. It was clearly old and outdated, but it should still be somewhat serviceable. However, none of the names of places on the map looked familiar. Even though she was not from around there, the names didn't sound right. The nearest town was El Purgatorio. Beyond that was Quad-Interra. The desert area was simply named Expansum, and her poor grade school Spanish wasn't good enough for her to translate. Not that it would have helped. The map shape was weird. It wasn't shaped like New Mexico or Nevada or Texas. It wasn't any state she recognized. The only thing she could do now was go looking for someone who could at least tell her where she was. Checking the sunglasses compartment before pulling out, she found a pair of aviators. Putting them on, they helped to severely combat the hostile sunlight assaulting her eyes. Looking out of the motel parking lot, she settled into the driver's seat as the challenger took to the lonely highway, heading north. After the better part of an hour of driving, she pulled into the small town of El Purgatorio. The drive had been quite pleasant as when the radio was turned on, and it had already been set to a classic rock station. Groving out to the best 70s and 80s had to offer, had made the trip seem to fly by. The town on the other hand was disappointing. It was just a typical dusty small desert town come into the southwest. The first sight she caught as she pulled into town was the local diner. It made her feel sick to her stomach as it was nearly identical to the one she had worked at. She flipped it the bird as she passed. So preoccupied with her disdain that she failed to notice that, despite the sparse number of cars and the lot. The diner was completely empty. As she drove down the main street, the fact that it, too, was devoid of life, became more and more apparent. Where were the people? No cops, no pedestrians, no other drivers. She hadn't even passed anyone since she started out. The streets were empty. No matter where she looked, she was alone. It made her a little giddy. The dodges fuel gauge started to read towards the low end. Pulling into the gas station, a bell rang as she brought the car to a stop next to the gas pump. Anzac for a moment in the vein hoped that some attendant would come to service her car. She knew it wouldn't happen, but for a moment she let herself believe that she was someone other than herself. Some lady with a good life that afforded her a car like this, and a carefree life where she was waited on, instead of having to do things herself. The fantasy was a nice distraction, but the reality of her situation was starting to dawn on her. She was alone, completely alone. And was that exactly a bad thing? Something gasped into the car was kind of fun. Watching the numbers go up without caring about the price was a thrill. Still minus real shoes, but other than that she was enjoying the idea of this new, strange form of freedom. When the pump finished, Anne strolled into the station and called out. Hey! Anyone here? So you know, I filled up a tank of gas and I have no money. Also, I am taking a soda. No answer. Nothing. Taking a cool bottle of coke from the refrigerator, she rolled it along her sweaty neck. It felt nice in the heat of the desert. Her stomach growled, reminding her that she had an eaten all day. Ashaka finding herself in this situation had completely driven the thought of her needs out of her mind. Grabbing a package of twinkies, she ripped them open and stuffed one after the other in her mouth as she walked down the chip aisle. Loading up a couple of plastic bags with food stuff in a styrofoam cooler with drinks into the car, she thought, why stop there? Back in the store she went behind the counter and checked the till. All the money was still in it. If the people had just left, why not take the money with them? It was like everyone had just up and vanished into thin air. She pocketed the cash just in case. One never knew what might come up. Under the counter, Anne found a loaded revolver. It was a massive 44 magnum hand cannon that had to weigh several pounds. It was in a holster taped to the bottom of the counter under the cash register. Prying at loose, she took both. Like the money, it was best to have it and not need it. Her next stop was the clothing store in town. Strolling in like she was in Sax 5th Avenue, she passed the clearance rack and on sale items, going straight for the good stuff. Picking up a large green duffle bag, she packed it with several pairs of quality jeans, tops and underwear. It was going to be a long road trip and best to take advantage of things while they were good. In the shoe section, she found the cutest pair of boots that went with the sleek leather jacket that happened to match her cool new car. Ripping off the tags and shouldering her bag as she stopped on her way out of the store and picked up a man's belt. Fitting the revolver holster to it, it now rode on her hip. A little low and heavy, but serviceable. I'm leaving and I'm not paying, but thanks for the clothes, she called over her shoulder. The store was silent, not a peep as she sashayed her way out of the building. Tossing the bag into the trunk of the dodge, everything she needed for her trip was in the car. She could set out at any time she wanted. Of course there was no rush. No reason not to enjoy this a bit longer before setting out on her journey. Besides it was getting late and had spent so much time shopping that the sun had started to drift toward the horizon. The sky had turned slate grey, tinged purple as twilight crept in. Though the heat didn't fade with the light, it remained as oppressive and present as ever. Getting out of the car resulted in her skin instantly breaking out with sweat. She had pulled in at the diner and was leading up against the car, snacking on a bag of chips, contemplating this monumentous shift in her life. Who knew that the end of the world would actually turn out better than her life had been? It was during this quiet revelation that she heard it, the first sound of life since she had woken that morning. It was faint but clearly the sound of rummaging, uneven and clunky, not the sound of a machine running or the wind moving something. This felt different. It felt alive. Stating the strap on the holster in case she needed the gun and made her way around the edge of the diner towards the back. Outback of the diner was much like the front. Largely empty, safe for a couple of vehicles that probably belonged to diner staff. Next to the back door were a single dim yellow bulb glowed above it. They're sat the diner's dumpsters. It was sitting next to them. But first she couldn't figure out what she was looking at. It was long and thin, almost emaciated to an inhuman degree. Its limbs and body were all bony. It looked vaguely canine and form, like a coyote that had been stretched over a partially human frame. Its form was made of not fur nor flesh, but living shadow. The head was long and lean, the snout somewhere between beak and muzzle. Set with six glowing red eyes, three on each side of its sorry and head. Sticking out of the top of the thing's skull were a pair of twisted antlers. Nothing about this thing seemed natural, nor did it fit the description of any animal that Anne had ever known or heard of. It was eating something. But it was, she couldn't tell, except that it was bloody and raw. She could hear the bone snap as it bit into the bloody lump of meat that it held in its clawed hands. On pure instinct, her hand fell to the butt of the revolver, but she didn't draw it. Instead she backed around the corner of the diner. Once the creature was out of sight, she ran back to the car and threw herself in. During the accelerator, the car tore out of the diner parking lot and back towards the motel. In the rearview mirror, she saw more of those things shamble from between buildings and around corners as she raced on the road. A trip that had first taken her the better part of an hour took her only 20 minutes as she ignored common sense and the speed limit. Racing the sunset itself to get back before dark. When the lit motel sign came into sight, she breathed a sigh of relief until she saw the waste several of the shadows moved in a jerky, inhuman fashion. She barely stopped the car before flinging open the door and rushing back into the motel room and bolting the door. Once inside, Anne upended the mattress and put it across the window as a makeshift barricade. The rest of the night she spent in the little bathroom with the revolver in her hand. Outside, she could hear the things moving, shuffling about in the dark. The shadows they cast as they passed the window danced on the wall as a constant reminder that just outside the motel room door lurked horrors beyond her comprehension. When sleep finally came, she slept in the cool bathtub until morning came. With the light of a new day, the things were nowhere to be found, as if they too, like the people, had never been there. After a quick shower and a breakfast consisting of snack cakes and gas station jerky, she set up to finally leave this place. Following the map in her car, she followed the highway north towards the mountains. Passing through the town once more, she filled up on gas and this time added an extra fuel can to her trunk just in case. Last night had scared her. The urge to check behind the diner was strong, but Anne managed to ignore it, staying any longer than necessary felt like pushing her luck. While she still had no clue where all the people went, she had a hunch those things had something to do with it, and she wanted to be as far away from here as possible by sundown. No, on she drove. Just her and the open highway north. Classic rock on the radio, coming in perfectly clear, made the miles just melt away into the distance, passing through more small towns, stopping only for gas and food before returning to the road. The endless desert stretched out in every direction, nothing but sand and scrub as far as the eye could see. Anne continued on like this until she saw the sun start to dip towards the horizon again, and she had to make a decision. Keep driving, or find a place to hide for the night. The anxiety of such a dilemma was paralyzing at first, but once she considered encountering one of those things on the road, the choice was clear. That night she spent in the locked apartment over a small thrift storefront. It was a good spot that allowed her to watch as they came. The creatures seemed to come out of every corner in angle where two surfaces met, as if they were doorways, allowing them to enter this world. Each one was different from the others, though all were similar. Creatures made of living shadow in vaguely terrestrial shape. Some were reptilian, others mammalian, or even bird-like. So most were a quasi-mixture of all. It was the ones that walked like people that terrified her the most. Their movements jerky and inhuman, as if they were so alien that it was as close as they could approximate to human movement. And the sounds they made, they were impossible to describe. Haunting and unlike anything anyone had ever heard on earth. It wasn't just that they made the sounds, it's that she could hear them in her head, even when she covered her ears. From time to time she would see that one had found something to eat. It was always bloody and indescribable, giving her a sinking feeling that she knew what it was. As Twilight gave way to full night, they continued to cavort in the moonlight, seemingly gathering more solidity from the darkness. One thing that did stick out was that they never tried to enter any of the buildings. They only seemed to be interested in wandering the streets. With that bit of information she managed to sleep soundly that night. The next morning when she woke, she knew that they would be gone, and they were. The next morning the sun had banished them back to wherever they had come from. This became her routine. By day she drove across the desert, always north towards the mountains. She would stop along the way for gas, food, and new maps. In the evenings, Anne would hunk her down before Twilight when they would come out. Her nights were spent peacefully reading until sleep took her. On a good night she would find an empty apartment or home where she could cook and enjoy a hot fresh meal. Occasionally there would even be a working TV where she could watch the data key channels where you could almost make out what was going on on screen. Those were the good nights. On the bad nights she would have to pull over along the side of the road and hunk her down in the back seat of the challenger. Those were the worst, even though she was sure she was safe. Still she kept the revolver in her hand. Day after day for weeks she continued her drive, but the mountains never got any closer. This new world seemed to have different rules. Aside from the horrors that appeared at night and the lonely emptiness, the world itself worked differently. No matter how far she drove, the horizon was always just something she saw in the distance. Anne began to wonder if this was really hell or some sideways dimension that she had stumbled into like in that Twilight Zone episode. Now, she had a dilemma. Driving along the highway a dirt road had come into view. There was nothing special about it, just a dirt track carved by constant use. Decades of tires cut it into the desert ground, leading away from her chosen path. Something about it felt familiar. It reminded her a bit of the dirt road that led to her family farm growing up. Exactly like it. Just as if the two roads were one in the same, only in different places at different times. The more she looked at it, the more sure she could feel that this was the way home. That this road would lead her back to her old life. The life she had hated. The in and out of misery and stress, struggling just to keep her head above water. She knew that world and understood its rules, even if they were wildly unfair. Before her was the open highway to an empty world that was hers and hers alone, saved the creatures that came at night. Anne didn't fully understand this world and its rules, but she was comfortable and free here. Anxistence of loneliness surrounded by uncaring people or in existence of loneliness on the open road. Give and take. A world where she had to give everything for nothing and return. Or a world where she could just take what she wanted. Both filled with their own dangers, both full of monsters. At least here, she could tell the monsters when she saw them. Though there was no guarantee that the dirt road led anywhere but a dead end in the middle of the desert. The sun beat down overhead as the car just sat there in the heat. Still, she couldn't make up her mind. Which way? Past or present? Old or new? What this choice really came down to was defining who she was. That's what this really came down to. Who was she? She couldn't make up her mind and so she sat until the sun went down. Anne didn't even really notice the shamblers when they emerged from the shadows to mill about in the darkness. All night she sat and pondered until morning. As the sun came up, she had finally made up her mind. Giving the car some gas, she drove off down her chosen path and into the next era in her life. The next from Reddor Scoutwells and narrated by Colbert Cart, creepy presents, Urban Decay. The gridded streets form a fractal of four-way intersections, multiplying out from its center like bacteria around a point of infection. Deep cracks run through the red brick buildings, lining the expansive neighborhood like Veritose veins sputtering through its many dying legs. The road sporadically lit by LED street lamps, spotlights shining on shady figures, menacing hooded men dressed in black and women dressed stantily. Their short skirts showing bony knees and a line of track marks stretching to their feet. The wind blew its cold air through my tattered ill-fitting clothes. I hunched it against its biting chill that seemed to blow from the heart of the urban labyrinth. My body ate as a mixture of chills and withdrawal shook me as if trying to wake me from a terrible dream. I was raised in a house at the center of this concrete web, one in which my family has intended themselves to live and die for generations. After an argument with my mother, I found myself a migrant of these streets, staying on an assortment of friends' couches, as long as they'd allow me. This place had changed a lot since I was a kid, with the number of houses left abandoned slowly overtaking those kept. Crep at Holmes covered in graffiti, with windows smashed and shingles torn, the smell of mildew reaching your nose even as you pass. Stopping under a flittering street lamp to have a smoke, I pulled out my pack and saw I was down to one. I flicked out and placed it in my mouth. As my numb fingers flicked at my lighter, I heard a shushing sound come through the shattered window of the decrepit home beside me. If there were any contents in my stomach, they would start to turn. Instead I just felt tightening against the acidic outcry inside me. I turned my head on impulse. The strobe in fluorescent light cast toward the back of the room, showing the wall was covered in obscene graffiti, backing a horrific scene. In the fluttering of illumination I saw three figures, two men crouched and looking at me, their faces partially hidden by their hands as they sturd out of view. A wetting rain fell to the ground in front of me, just as the men disappeared. The last was merely a bloated pair of woman's legs, stuck out from under a filthy tote, crudely draped over her face. Staring the house in a hurry, trying to block out my fear as I stare at my feet, the city's maddening harmony backing the beat of my panicked arithmetic steps against the concrete. The woman had probably just overdosed, I thought. It's probably best if I stay out of this. Stepping away from the house, grainy, muffled, moan, and drifted from the alley ahead, getting louder as I approached. At first it sounded like some various sex acts being performed, aphrodisiac by the stench of overfilled dumpsters and exhaust of the buildings sandwiching them. But as I got closer, I realized the sound was too gurgled, too desperate to be pleasure. These cries carried the distinct sounds of death. The fool's curiosity possessed me to glance down the alley as I passed. I saw a man draped in filthy dars with long, greasy hair and a thick, matted beard. He turned his head to face me and I saw foam rushing down his mouth, wetting the rough hair under his chin. A syringe lay next to him its needle visibly broken. The man's eyes were bloodshot and desperate. They cried to me, begged me to help. His cries turned into a dirtled shriek as his hand reached out towards me, light reflecting off a rain to me for a fleeting second. A head peered from the window I'd passed, glaring down towards me. I quickly turned my head forward. I thought about helping. I wanted to, but their situation was hopeless, I told myself, and I was too desperate for relief from the shapes and pain coursing through my body. I knew all too well that benevolence was not rewarded. As I hurried down the road, trying to escape the cold, guilt and fear, I counted the lines on the sidewalk. As I stepped off the curb and into the street, I was blinded by an overwhelming white light. The streaching of tires and the blaring horn, growing exponentially louder by the moment, muted my thoughts. My instincts kicked in. I dropped to my knees my hands guarding the back of my neck and head as I tried to make myself small. Eyes squeezed shut. I listened to the engine as it passed over me loud and horrible before stopping all at once. A moment of silent past after the engine. Still holding my head, I knew I'd looked up to see my body mangled beyond recognition that I'd been permanently disfigured. I couldn't bring myself to look. My hands groped around my head, my back and then my limbs. I anticipated feeling my wet, exposed gourd icing the pavement under me. But everything felt in order, if a bit numb, possibly the adrenaline pumping through me, I thought. When I finally allowed myself to peat up, there were no severed limbs, not even a drop of blood to be seen. Looking to my feet, I held my hand to my chest. I felt light-headed as I struggled to take in thick, gasps of air. Adrenaline still porcing through my veins. My heart still thudding painfully in my chest and my nerves tinged on edge. I dry heaved next to the road, feeling acid dimly titling the back of my throat. It took me a moment to notice the street light overhead had gone out. Looking ahead I saw none of the typical islands of light amidst the streets sea of shadow. Shit, is there a blackout? I set aloud. The words feeling thick and choking in my throat. My heart was now racing as I sprinted away. I had been locked out during a blackout before and knew the dangers that come with it in an area like this. I hurried down the road, expecting chaos to erupt around me at any moment. My mind had been expecting fenders to be in clasping at the back of my neck. I began to feel foolish as I ran from an anticipated hysteria in the dead silent streets. But no riding or looting came. Just an eerie and total silence. I stopped from my sprint and caught my breath while holding my knees. The sweat covering my body turned the light chill I had felt into a freezing sensation, but it felt deeper than frosted over skin as if my blood had iced over. However, the shapes from before were now gone. I felt steadied with a stoic panic. It took me a second to realize the completeness of silence around me. The ambient noise of the city gone. Living in a city I had never truly experienced complete silence for any time significant enough to appreciate it. An unease crept over me, a rapidly developing sense of being alone. Looking around, I realized that despite my familiarity with the area, I didn't recognize this street. It matched to the general aesthetic, but the particular layout was a foe of the neighborhoods I knew. Perhaps it was just my scrambled mind, struggling to make sense of this place in the pitch darkness. I began to retrace my steps, hoping to find a landmark. As I walked back the way I came, I looked around. The dark rendered the streets with an untanny appearance, although I had seen these streets blacked out before it wasn't like this. There were no flashlights, no buildings lit by an emergency generator, not even a headlight as far as I could see in any direction. Buildings that should be familiar lost all specificity. I had never known I should feel so lost in my own home. The dim panic I felt continued pounding against my chest as I pulled my last cigarette out of the pack. I struck my lighter once, twice, and nothing but sparks. Turning to the side to face away from the wind towards a house, I strike it once again, this time the flame lights. I looked ahead and faintly saw my lighter reflected in front of me. It took me a moment to realize it was a pair of eyes peeking at me from the dark outline of a window. My heart drops at the realization. Despite the oddness of the night, I knew better than to alarm one of the paranoid drug rattled occupants living on these streets. I raised my hand in a nervous, friendly gesture, and quickly turned to walk away. After continuing down the street for some time, the adrenaline that had porced through my veins earlier had abandoned me and left me with a feeling of exhaustion. I decided I would go to the glass window of one of the shops to see if I could recognize a name hoping that would give me a hint of recognition lost to me in the shadows. As I got closer and the text became more visible, it still became no clearer for my mind to decipher. It wasn't until I got right up at the window that I noticed the text was nonsense, a scramble of illegible letters impersonating the English. As I tried to make sense of what was in front of me, I noticed someone was standing in the shop behind the counter staring blankly ahead. His skin looked rotten, black splashes contrasting his pale, hue. His expression, a hung dumb and thoughtless, he stared blankly ahead. I tapped the glass and saw his hands start to move as if he was typing on the register. His mouth began to mouth something I couldn't make out as he continued to stare blankly ahead. The hell is going on, I thought. Maybe the withdrawals and trauma from tonight had started to mess with my head. Was I losing my mind? This couldn't be real. As I continued down the street, the fear I felt started to dull, replaced with a banal hopelessness. This realization caused my fear to suddenly, consciously, be reinvigorated. Somehow I felt that this fear was a last barrier of protection for me. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw a homeless man, clouted in thick, dirty garbs, and leaning at dense to the side of the building with his hood, blocking all of his face, except his beard, and a pair of bleeding and chapped lips. I cautiously walked to him. I tried to say something, but the words felt slippery, slimy abstractions slipping from my grip before the thought could form. He reached out his hand as if to ask for change. Without thinking I reached my hand to him. It felt like I was meant to. His grip slowly clasped around my wrist like rigid concrete, and he began to guide my hand to his lips. His lips wrapped around my finger, and I felt him start to consume it. I felt the tip of my finger start to swell with pressure before feeling the skin, burst, swells of blood moving through my fingertips in gulps. The pain was unbearable. I tried to scream and cry out, but nothing came besides breathy mones. I reached my other hand onto his wrist and pulled. I could feel the bones in my hand breaking as they pressed against his fingers. My wrist tore where I pulled at his hand while I tried to pry out of his clasp. I felt my head getting light with blood. My body was freezing now. The cold wind blowing a dense sweat on my body as it was drained of warmth. I dressed his coat with my other hand. I pulled at it. It felt sticky on his body as I yanked like it was glued onto his body. I felt it tear and listened as it sounded like old leather stuck with adhesive and staples popping from its structure. I watched blood seep from under it, and we'd end to think it was stint, not a coat. What I saw was an abomination. And red brick stretched off the wall and morphed his back into a tumorous stone mass that undulated like blood coursing under it. The lining started white at the wall, darting to a grimy black where it attached before turning slowly to a dark red where it met the human parts of his form. That trenches of crimson formed irregular squares wrapped on his flesh. The red brick slowly shaded into white concrete blending into pale, chalky skin. His eyes were open. They still looked human, and they shifted to look at me with an accusatory glance. I began to run. I wasn't sure where to go. It wasn't even out of panic or fear, I just needed to feel like I was getting away from this. As I ran, I felt the flat of my shoe rip off my foot and stick to the floor like the rubber melted onto the road, one than the other. As I ran, I recognized the house I had seen the eyes staring at me from. I waved at the man still peating from the window at a distance and saw his eyes widen in what looked like panic as I ran towards it. My hands caught me around the window as I stopped abruptly. The window was painted on the brick with old chipping paint. The eyes as well were painted on. Contrasting the paint were red veins of blood shooting through the painted eyes. Its chips rained from the eye as they shifted around, new chips forming where it moved. I stared into it, seeing the fear evident in its wide eyed look, stuck in a permanent state of panic, and despite my best efforts to feel fear or sympathy as I stared into it, I felt nothing. Looking down, I saw my feet were horrifically swollen and bright red, blood formed under them where I stood. I pulled at them, but they were stuck, locked in place. I grabbed the wall and began to rip them from the ground with all my strength. I felt my flesh tearing, but continued pulling as I saw the mushy viscera ripping and pouring thick slushy liquid beneath my feet. I once again began to walk. My swollen feet ate and melted me to the ground with every step. It takes all my strength to tear them from the sidewalk, a trail of calcified gore behind me. But I can't stop. For more information on this podcast, including how to submit your own story for consideration, please visit CreepyPard.com. You can also follow us at CreepyPard on social media and YouTube. All stories told on this podcast are done so through creative, common, share-alite licensing or with written consent from the authors. No portion of this podcast may be rebroadcast or otherwise distributed without the express written consent of the CreepyPardcast production team and the stories author.