Lucille’s Late Night Snack Shack | CreepCast

Welcome back to Creep Guest. Today we are doing a story called Don't Buy Anything from Lucille's late night snack bar. And we have been told that this is in similar vein to the voodoo shop story that we've read. Probably last year, right? Yeah, the Gypsy Rose story. That's right. The Gypsy Rose story. Very true, very intimate. It's pretty good Gypsy Rose impression. What's crazy is I think I heard your impression before I remembered what Gypsy Rose sounded like and then I saw it's unbelievable like a commercial for her TV show and I'm like, wow, that's pretty, pretty impressive. Do you think this is going to be, can we, are we going to assume that this is also Gypsy Rose's late night snack bar? What is Gypsy Rose's late night? Have you, did you, did you watch that first season of, at all of a life after a lockup or whatever the fuck it was? No, but I think Kayla did and told me it was, it was just about like relationship drama and stuff, right? Yeah, yeah. It was about her relationship drama with her, then then husband or fiance Ryan, which he begged her when she was in prison. And she like comes out and she's like basically like showing him all these prison snacks. She has, she's like, and it's like a big bowl of gruel basically. Oh god damn Gypsy. I don't know if I want to, what is this is what he did? And it was, I can't not remember the concoction, but it was so fucking nasty. And he was like, I mean, I'll try anything once from my baby. He's like fucking gagging and hurling, eating it. She's like, I think it's pretty good. So to just become like any other TLC reality show where it's just kind of like, yep, now you just sort of hang out. Yeah, I mean, no, not really. She's like in this love triangle kind of in the season one where she's like, she's like, I don't know why I can broke up with me. There's this other like really beat looking Missouri guy, which is should, it's just the absolute truth. It's just the Midwest just breeds the most heinous of all human beings, just guys like the self deprecating. He's from the Midwest. I am. Well, I did. I speak from all those Kansas people come for us. I, well, I don't blame him. And the, I, it's nothing really amounts to anything, but it's just, it's just, I don't know. It's just a wild. It's insane that they're like, we're going to give you a show. Like it's just, it's, it was wild. Anyways, I wonder. So today we're reading, don't buy anything for Lucille's late night snack bar, which like we said, it's supposed to be in the same vein as the Voodoo shop story, some guessing. I don't know. It may be like, the one thing I really remember about that one is that more so, like, fantastical, maybe is a better word for it or something like a weird, yeah, it felt very, felt very fantasy. Now, Granted, that's Harry saying that it'll be like that. So it could be nothing like that. Who knows? He has interpretation. Yeah. Could just be a storefront. And that's where he's getting that from. We have no idea. That's the only thing. Yeah. The only thing it has in common. I don't know. I really don't remember. I have such a poor memory that this is going to feel probably very new to me. But as always, guys, we don't read these beforehand. We go in blind with you. So, you know, we might say one thing and it's a complete opposite. So I don't know what I'm supposed to tell you. You want to give us a rundown on who the author is? Yeah. So this was written by Shenzi user Shenzi on Reddit. They have a bunch of posts in no sleep and the no sleep out of context. A bunch of their stories are highly upvoted, like one called the single car accident. There's another one I saw that had some attention called an even trade post posted our slash scary stories. And then this is among their most upvoted. Don't buy anything from Lou Steele's late night snack bar. Their most recent story was posted six years ago, but they still seem active on Reddit. So Shenzi, if you ever want to come back, hopefully a bunch of people go check you out from this. Now's a great time. I don't know if it's a Shenzi or how it goes today. I think it's Shazny. It is Shazny isn't it? I'm sure. Kenny Shazny. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure that's what the man is reading 11. Is that even Kenny Shazny? Shaved or what? I don't think that's Ken Shazny. Do I tell you his dad was my neighbor growing up? Kenny Shazny's dad was your neighbor growing really? Yes. Yeah. How was it? I lived, lived right up from us. Did you see he did this? I don't think I'll get in trouble for saying this. But so I only interacted with him a couple times. And this I think I've mentioned before that grew up on a golf course. So he was also on the golf course. And one day, I don't know the specifics of it. But one day, supposedly his neighbor up the condo he lived in. The dog came out and like pooped on. No, Kenny's dog Kenny Shazny's dad's dog pooped on his neighbor's yard. So the neighbor comes over. He's like, hey man, can you can you keep your dog on your side of the property? And the story I always heard is that Shazny's dad said, hold on. Let me get something to knock that chip off your shoulder. He came back with a golf club. And he says it's not out of the guy. Oh my God. Did he go to get arrested? He got arrested. Yep. I would fucking hope. This was huge drama around around town. Wow. I would hope so. My God. Let's remove that chip also always says he's from Knoxville. He's not. He grew up in Maynardville, which is just outside of Knoxville. And that matters to me. I do like that. That Kenny Shazny's dad, who I'm just going to refer to as Dennis Chazny. I like to I really like the kind of Joker aspect he took. Let's knock that chip off your shoulder. I just imagine he's in like a big purple suit. Just shit all over dog shit all over his hands. My sons. Yeah. He thinks my tractor sexy. But there were, but there would always be stories of like Kenny would show up in like a hat or something to walk the dog. And people would see him and be like, hey, Kenny and he would like scamper off real quick and stuff like that. So I don't know how true that is. But yes, but what you said, Knoxville, right? He says he's from Knoxville. He's actually from Maynardville wasn't saying he just he's he's the cockroach of Knoxville. You just you barely look at him. He just like gets on all fours and just like skitters into the into the high brush as they say. All right. Kenny Chazny. I'm you know what? Can you can you Chazny one out of 10. If you had a rank, if we're gonna rank to get each other a quick one out of 10. Like his like his songs. I just him. I guess I guess that's a full package. You're putting him as one like out of 10 different artists. You're putting him as number one. No, I'm saying ranking him one out of 10. What would you rank him? Oh, I see what you're saying. I mean, I kind of like his music a lot of his older stuff. I like the mayor of the album with American kids. I'd give him a six. You know what? He still does a lot of that. Like what I call 9/11 country music where it's very like after 9/11 all the songs were either patriotic or they were about beer and trucks, which is kind of lame. I always thought he was like one of those beach cowboys. It was always like I'm out on a beach by the ocean. Like the jacoate type kind of thing. No problem. Whatever. Like I think of that kind of stuff. You know what I'm gonna get? I mean, a three. I guess I have nostalgia for him, but I'll acknowledge that there. I wouldn't consider him one of the great country music singers. And this is a horror story podcast. This is a horror story podcast. Today we're reading. Don't buy anything from Lucille's late night snack bar credit to author Shesney will be linked in the description, be sure to show them some love hunter. Are you ready to get started? I am. And I just want to give a shout out to everyone who's listening on Apple podcast, Spotify, all the places you can listen to a podcast and shit. Thank you so much for listening. And hey, try to give us a nice rating. It really does help us out and also to our beautiful patrons who do support us and get a little free content on the side. Well, not necessary free. You are paying for it. But appreciate you. I am ready. Let's get in. Sorry content. Don't buy anything from Lucille's late night snack bar. My tale begins with the $10 lava lamp I found in a fake hippie mall store the summer I moved back to my hometown. I was getting an apartment with my fiance, Marcus, and I wanted some to core that screamed well-traveled boho girl instead of middle Georgia hospital clerk who's been to Florida twice. What is boho? I don't know, but this is just a mealy scream. Can he chance into me? I don't know. I'm literally wondering if Schnezi has anything to do with any jazz. What is boho? Let's see boho meaning short for bohemian. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I'm boho girl. Well, immediately, it's like the protagonist. I see. We're looking, this is like 2000, it reminds me like a 2011, like millennial, like a Imagine Dragons listener. I mean, not that, but like a 2000, they listen to the non-radio Imagine Dragons. Lana Del Rey fans are like a 2011. I know. Hold the, hold the, hold on. Don't, don't bring Lana into this. Don't, don't bring. Uh. For the child. What am I thinking of? What am I? Coachella, like a Coachella girl. Or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very, yeah. Yeah, yeah. That'll, that'll go with. That'll go with. I must have been in that instance gas chamber for the better part of an hour looking for something that screamed wanderlust without actually having the word wanderlust printed all over it. I glanced over the meditation bells, beat it curtains, and faux distressed world maps, not seeing anything that really jumped out at me that wasn't egregiously overpriced. I was going to call it quits when out of the corner of my eye, I saw a lava land sitting next to a Himalayan salt lamp, 50% off. I'd always wanted a lava lamp when I was a kid, and I was seized by that dangerous mix of nostalgia and financial freedom that hits you in your twenties. An hour or two later, the lamp had a new home on my nightstand, casting its soft light on my alarm clock and contact lens case. Marcus, of course, thought I was a weirdo for buying it. He thought I was a weirdo anyway, but this served as a fresh reminder for him. It doesn't even go with anything, babe. His face turned a purple-ish pink in the glow of the lamp. Besides, did you want to go with an adventure theme? I nestled my chin in my hands and watched the pink wax slumps rise and fall in the glittery violet water. Yeah, but maybe we should go with our 60s theme instead. That's fine, right? He just shook his head. Whatever theme you want to go with is fine with me. Also, if you can have a lava lamp, then can I get to- oh my god. If you can have a lava lamp, then can I get- then I get to put up my Rick and Morty poster. Oh. It says, "Whubble, love a dub, dub, babe." Can I- Can I- Can I- Can I- Can I- Can I- Can I do- Can I do- Can I do it, I understand. Sorry. It's so hard. It's so hard. Here's a hundred steps. "Whubble, girl with a lava lamp and if you are a guy with a Rick and Morty poster and you are a full grown man, you both need to re-evaluate where you are at in your lives." It's a crazy confession. If you were in a relationship with a guy, whatever, can you much get dicked down and there's a "Whubble, love a dub, dub poster"? I've got a worse one. When I started dating Kayla in college, she had a Rick and Morty poster. You know what, it was extremely popular. I will give- I will say that to people. No, you know what I mean? There's like seven years ago. Going in there and seeing that, it's like, I- This is 2025. This is in your child's nursery room. Yeah, this is right. I'm looking at a Rick and Morty poster. I think the only- I'm trying to think of the only weird poster, I ever- I- I- whenever I was hooking up with this one-girl in college, she had this like- she had like four of the - I mean, I had four of the same Jurassic Park posters. Just like the Black poster with like the emblem. Four of them. And I was like, "Oh, the Jurassic Park poster, I guess, but I wouldn't have more than one." I just said, "It's four." And they were all crinkled the hell and I was like, "Oh, you're a big Jurassic Park fan." And she said, "Kinda." And I always rubbed me the wrong way. How are you going to have four of the same poster and you're kind of a fan? How does that happen? I have a fan. Yeah. It reminds me of a- I know this guy, one of my friends went on a date with a girl lately. And I was like, "Oh, how'd it go?" And he's like, "Oh, she was just kind of boring." And I asked if she was into anything and she said, "Harry Potter." So then he asked, "Well, which of the books is your favorite?" And she said, "Oh, I haven't read the books." So when asked, "Are you into anything?" The only thing you can come up with is Harry Potter. And you're not even really that into Harry Potter. That's another thing too, man. Another hundred stipends. If you ever see a girl with a Deathly Hollows ankle tattoo, you run away from that person. That you get the hell away from that person. I'm kind of feeling that way too with that symbol. I see tattooed a lot on people that's the berserk one. I see that all the time. Oh, the curse of the son, the one that Martin had to be killed during- It looks like a Blair Witch Project, a ritual. It looks like a Blair Witch Project, kind of symbol or some shit. The face? The mark of the face? I think? Whatever it is. But all I know is that people online are like, "Why would you want to get that tattooed on you?" They even know what that means, what that symbolizes. They've got a ton of psychopath, I guess, get it? Brand of sacrifice. Brand of the sacrifice, yeah. So I'm trying to think right now. I used to just put a ton of random stuff up around my rooms when I was like middle school and high school. And I think the weirdest one I had is when I was a kid, do you remember like Junior Pro sports, like you played basketball in the summer and stuff like that? No. I played basketball in elementary school. One year I did, I probably still have this somewhere. One year I did Junior Pro at like the local YMCA or whatever. So it's like a summer basketball league. And we got pictures done for it, it was, it was me when I was like nine years old. And it was like a photo of the team. But then it was just my single photo, like full body shot, photo shot to be giant behind everyone. Like, why did you have this? It was just an option. I think I still have this. I think it was like, we all took photos, almost in like a yearbook style, you know, four matter. And then they're like, oh, you can get posters. And when I was nine, I'm like, yeah, that's cool. So my parents got it and it's framed. I'm pretty sure I still have that. I think it's in the garage or something of a giant nine year old me in front of the basketball team. Yeah. I don't know why that reminds me. I had that hung up on my wall and I just didn't think about it for years. Do you remember the, do you remember big heads? I do. Yeah. Where you could like take your head and get like the little stick standy things. No, no, no. It was like, there was a brain called big head, it was like a, it was like a decal. You could put on your wall, but it was a full-size cutout of somebody. Oh, yeah. Or whatever. My friend's dad, he gave him, the dad gave a big head of himself to his son. He like installed it in his room. See, that's good. No. I was so scared. That's the kind of thing I'm going to do. We were like nine and we would be like, I don't know, playing like the Nintendo and there's his dad embedded into the wall with like the flickering lights on his face and it's fucking horrifying. And I will say, I'm doing that. Please. I say, please, I will say to end the poster conversation too. I will say the most dastardly thing I ever did in college, I got a, I got a Alt J poster for, for the, for the lady folk. And I also bought it. I kept sealed a Alt J record. But I just look, you like old J? That was a big deal back of the day. For you, youngins, let me tell you that had a strangle hold on art chicks. Remember all J are used to how you're like, I don't, I don't even know what all J is. You know, it's like that song. I was like, yeah. What is it? It's like, uh, that song, Breezer blocks, that was like really popular. It might have told me, I should not have waited a lot of time, I had an encounter in Breezer's box. And I mean, I mean, I mean, or, uh, in your snow, it's pleasure, bruh, I'm shame, pleasure. Right. Remember that one? Have you heard it? You'd remember it? No. Whatever. No. It had a show. It came out. So this song came out 14 years ago when I was 12 years old. Oh, that should have been perfect time, did. But you have to understand I was like raised in like the religious setting where I had like sneaked, listened to music. So what I did listen to was spar so it was like my chemical romance and stuff like that. I see. I see. Yeah. Right. So Rick and Morty poster. Yeah. Rick and Morty poster. Yeah. What this is all about. I grimaced, but agreed to his terms, relationships were all about compromise after all. So the poster went up in the lava lamp stayed, illuminating our evenings with psychedelic glow. Settled into our apartment life. Once our decorations were all squared away and I started work at the same hospital I was born in while Marcus started his new engineering job. Work. I refused to believe there's an engineer with a Rick and Morty poster. I could believe it. It's a sci-fi thing. I believe Marcus is they're both educated. Work was mind numbing and my co-workers ended up being a bunch of catty shrews with nothing better to do than gossip about other people. Some days were okay, but other days I would come home at the end of the day exhausted, only able to eat, take a shower, and stare at my lava lamp before I eventually drifted off to sleep. It was on one of these bad days that a strange thought entered my mind. I was staring at my lava lamp, all ungelating, smooth wax and chandel light, and I thought about unscrewing the top and downing the whole thing. It was just a fancy soda bottle instead of a glass tube full of scalding wax and water. What? I initially dismissed it without thinking about it. it, but thought would pop up sometimes after that and frequent, but ever present. I brought it up to Marcus one day when he took me to lunch during my break one day. "I don't know. I never think about it seriously doing it, but since there's a zoning out at work and it just happens, you know, you rubbed his chin thoughtfully." "Mmm, I couldn't know what you mean. I sometimes feel something pretty similar. You said this pretty strong feeling about around kulk. Like I wanted to stick the nozzle in my mouth and eat it like easy cheese." "These are the two weird things to say. I just want to say if I was in this break room or if I was like in public and heard this, I would freak the fuck out. I mean, can you imagine hearing this like in pattern YouTube talking about the trusive thought couple is this? I understand like having weird intrusive thoughts like that, but to be like, I used to want to stick the nozzle in my mouth and eat it. I don't know. I mean, like there's been things. I mean, I know it. I think I understand they're getting at where it's like, I don't know, like a weird, like a gel pack or something. Like, oh, I just want to chew on it. It just seems like a weird thing you want to chew on there to continue it to continuously think that much and then have to even bring it up. I don't know. I mean, I think about it. It's like I really think about it. The other guy's like, yeah, I like kulk. I want to eat it like easy cheese. I think kulk would be delicious. I'd love to have some kulk. I snorted into my soda that. Yeah, better not try that unless you want to be visiting me at work in the worst possible way. Any excuse to see you in those sexy scrubs. He laughed, then boops my nose at the fry. We got a really ease up on the millennial shit here, dude. We got to kill this. I want to say right now. I think this is we have to mark this as a historic moment that this is the first time we haven't actually gotten a fucking booped in our in our reading session. Okay. We have got to we got to figure some shit out. I just don't think it's anything to worry about. It's something that happens to everyone every now and again. Like thinking about diving into the median highway or jumping out of window, what are you talking about? So that's more hold on. That's more understandable because it's like the whole thing. You think about diving into the median on the highway? Have you ever been standing on at the edge of like a railing or a high up place and you're like, oh, what if I jumped right now? And like you get the chill like, oh, man, like, no, no, I don't think I've ever no. I mean, maybe I'm in the maybe I'm in the like the, the, the, the wrong, but maybe I'm a completely normal thought people have it a lot. They talk about with kids. Like when they're holding a kid, it's like, oh, what if I dropped it right now and it gives you like a shiver like I should do that. Good Lord. Okay. There's a there is an argument in psychology that it comes from like prepping for worst case scenarios. So the idea when you're standing at a tall place, you're like, well, now I definitely need to not jump. So your brain lays that idea in your mind like, what if I jumped so that your body is like, okay, stay far away from that. Same with I'm trying to think about like an actual pulling into the wrong lane of traffic. It's a weird, it almost seems like a satisfying like painful reaction or something. Like I've heard people, I feel like I've heard people say this about like if you, if they see like a nail sticking out of a floorboard, they want to step on it. Yeah. Or something weird. Yeah. It's the exact same thing. It's like this is definitely the kind of thing that shouldn't happen. So here's the idea planted in your mind. It's called there's a term that a psychologist coined. It's whatever the French translation is for call of the void of, yeah. Maybe it's just whiplash. I don't know. They just whiplash because we went from eating calc to booping noses with fries and then on the summer diving into the media. I don't know. Yeah, that's the term for the sudden fleeting and intrusive urges to engage in self-destructive or dangerous behaviors. It's just jumping from a high place. We're steering into traffic. Yeah. Well, there it is. This episode sponsored by Lola Blankets. Lola Blankets is the world's number one blanket craft with ultra soft luxury foul fur. It's stylish machine washable and built to last for years, which is why Lola blankets is my go to gift for any occasion. Literally at all, my grandfather died. I gave my grandma a blanket. It's a curl up in this. When you give a Lola blanket, it upgrades the entire home, elevating any space it's in, making it feel warm, cozy, and styled. 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Marcus's non shelons put my mind at ease. I guess I wasn't such a freak after all. There's probably something deep in the human subconscious that made my monkey brain want to do the unthinkable. I pushed it out of the forefront of my mind after that and tried to concentrate on my garbage shop. I would have probably stayed nice and safe in my happy routine for a good number of years if it hadn't been for the snack bar. I had to stay at work late one Thursday night. While I'd been lucky enough to get a day shift, our server had gone down and we got ridiculously packed up. I felt bad leaving it all in the night shift to take care of, so I stayed until about 10-30 to help them process everything. I wobbled out on sore feet ahead of a chorus of thank yous, feeling fulfilled, but also tired and hungry as hell. A 13 hour shift can do mean things to a body. I texted Marcus to tell him that I'd be late, and then I hopped in my car and started heading home, driving carefully so that I didn't run off the road in my depleted state. I passed a few familiar sites on the way, Chick-fil-A, Chevron Gas Station, a few cowfields. I got to an intersection that I'd passed a million times before and noticed something new in the darkness. The abandoned storefront setting across the road from an Episcopal church looked significantly less abandoned than it used to. It was a rundown wooden building with one of those coke signs, usually reserved for old-timey southern general stores, or hole-in-the-wall barbecue restaurants. A neon open sign in the window cut through the darkness and nearly burned my eyes with how bright it was. I slowed, curious. It was true that I was dead tired, but my growling stomach convinced me to stop and grab a snack before I drove home and face planted it into my bed. I pulled into the empty parking lot and walked up to the door hesitantly. Signed cast enough of a glow for me to see the name of the place, Lucille's late night snack bar. It seemed like a pretty odd place for a snack bar, but it got to point across. Not many places in a small town like this were openly, so I let Taco Bell and Waffle House corner the market. Okay, first of all, we let Waffle House do whatever they want. I'm actually wearing a Waffle House shirt right now, funny enough. I walked up the creaking water damage steps and pushed open the door. Rush of cold air and the tinkling of a bell greeted me as I stepped inside. The tiny shop was filled with all kinds of snacks from all eras, kind of like the ones at those cracker barrel general stores. I was surprised at just how well stocked and organized the place was. Jars full of twizzlers, licorice and peppermint sticks lined the shelves above stacks and stacks of Reese's cups, Mary Jane's and candy cigarettes. Multicolored gum balls set in their little machines, waiting for the offering of a quarter. Gips and cracker jacks were stuffed onto shelves so tightly that it looked like the ones in front would fall over any minute. A fridge full of a million different kinds of soda hummed in the back of the room, a light inside doing a better job eliminating the snacks that the overhead lights were doing. The flame haired queen of this spoonful kingdom set at the register, smacking on gum and flipping through a fashion magazine with nails nearly as long as her fingers. She hadn't even looked up when I walked in, so I cruised through the shelves unmolested. It's an interesting adjective to apply there, but I don't know how to say it, all right. I was about to grab a moon pie and call it a night when I noticed that there was another room. It was separated from the main room by a curtain of multicolored beads that would have looked more at home in a kid's bedroom than a snack shop. Signed outside the door red, midnight snacks enter a few dare. I raised an eyebrow at that. It seemed a little cheesy, but it got my imagination going. My initial thoughts were bongs or porn, but when I pulled back the beads and stuck my head inside, that wasn't what I found at all. The midnight snacks seemed like a jumble of random objects. A few bottles of fabuloso and train cleaner populated one shelf, while the next held what looked like a few jars of human teeth. I roamed the shelves taking in everything I saw. Legos, different assortments of rocks, Plato, jars of mud and dirt, detergent and dishwasher pods, bath bombs, makeup, caulk, so on and so forth. I picked up one of the rocks, sedimentary gray and brown type deal and turned it around in my hands for a while. Felt like a rock, but at the same time, not much like one. Almost like I could sink my teeth into it and it would yield. Put it down before I tried it. I moved on instead of the teeth. I reached into one of the jars and pulled one out, expecting it. They had to be fake, but the sheer variety in detail meant that someone had spent an awful lot of time crafting these. I started to get the same feeling from the tooth that I did from the rock, so I hurriedly shoved it back into the jar. A freezer with large pictures of different types of ice cream set in the corner, but when I looked inside, I was staring at what looked like human eyes and limbs separated in little containers. I stepped away from it when I saw that the label on one of the white plastic containers said "Chubby fingers", starting to get really nervous. Was everything in here some kind of edible replica of a non-edible thing? It seemed like a pretty ridiculous business venture. This is fun. I see the similarities between this and the Voodoo shop, where it's kind of like "Oh, whatever your desire is", it feeds into it, but it's for people who want to consume random objects. I was wondering if it's random people or if it's catered to her specifically, like at the store knows. It's just like a bunch of others should that we haven't found out yet, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a pica, pica's that thing where it's like you feel compelled to eat like dirt or metal or like non-digestible stuff. If you're thinking, if you've looked at like a lava lamp and you're like, "Man, I want to drink that", you would assume that there's other things of like almost like just generalized sensations that you, you know, that you feel there's probably been other random stuff that you thought about. Yeah. It's interesting because it's almost like a story that would typically be about sex, right? Like it'd be about a woman or temptation and stuff like that, but it's about wanting to eat random things. It's interesting. I also like this idea too of it being like a on-the-way home from work. It feels like it's very much teedering towards the idea of like she's going to fucking pop in it. Just a teed on her way home and like eat a bunch of random shit to where I wonder how it's going to affect, like by the time she gets home during these things, like does it affect her physically to where even like her partner is like what the fuck is what's been going on? You know what I mean? Yeah. It also kind of makes it feel like a ghost diner, like it's just a place that appears when you're tired by yourself and there's no witnesses around. Yeah. I was about to just pay for my moon pie and get out of there when my eyes fell on a tiny shelf at the corner of the room sitting there, much like it had been in that hippie store, it was an exact replica of my lava lamp. There were a few sitting next to it that had different colors, but my eyes were locked on my purple pink bedside companion, reached over and touched the class, felt warmed at the touch. Not quite hot. It was more like the outside of a coffee mug than anything else. Figured I could screw off the top, below on the contents a little, and I wish I could tell you that I drew my hand back, marched out of that store with my moon pie and never went back to the freakish place again, but instead, a hand that may have been mine reached out and grabbed the lava lamp. Card that may have been mine, paid for it along with my moon pie. A person that may have been me, drove home in silence, moon pie in one hand, steering well in the other, hearing my new lava lamp shift around in a brown paper bag, wrapped like it was a bottle of wine, instead of tacky home decor, moon pie was gone by the time I pulled into my driveway, the lamp was all I had left. Again, the phrasing on this is so much like it's a sexual act, right? Like a sin or like a shame that you're carrying with you, and it's all you can think about walking through the door or obsessing over and stuff like that. I think it's a temptation factor that makes you feel that it gives it that. Because we've already, she's already discussed that it's just like, I don't know, I probably shouldn't, but it's actually being tempted at the store and giving in, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. It's like the phrasing with it's almost like a teenage boy who's trying to hide a porn mag from his mom, you know, like it's in the bag. I just have to get in the door, move less stuff like that. I shoveled into the house, trying to be light on my feet, so I wouldn't wake Marcus. I slipped into the bathroom and closed the door behind me, praying that he wouldn't wake up any time soon for his late night peak. I slowly took the lamp out of the bag, stared at it, a hand trembling. Even though it was unplugged, it was still warm, and the globs of wax made their slow journey from one end to the other, without the help of electricity. There was something deeply, deeply unnatural going on here. I wanted to question it, to go back to that store and demand some answers, but my desire to do my own experiment was growing by the second. I tried to fight through the urge, but I was tired and loopy, and that moon pie just hadn't done the job. I knew it was stupid, but, but it really hurt that much? Just a try? Just have one little taste? One harm could have really actually do to me, God. One second, I had to lamp in my hand, and in the next instant, it was lying on the bathroom floor, trained of its contents. An incomprehensible flavor lingered on my tongue, grape-like in nature, but so much more than that. The soft texture of the wax that had been so pleasant in my mouth felt even more pleasant nestled in my stomach. I sat there basking in that taste before I looked over at the empty lava lamp and figured I should get rid of the evidence before I got some questions. I washed it out and tossed it in the back of our closet, not wanting a risk Marcus coming across it in the trash. After I brushed my teeth and guardled with Listerine about 15 times, who even knows the sugar contents of a drink like that, I crawled into bed beside Marcus. I laid there staring at the ceiling. Taste keeping me just on the edge of sleep till the rising sun bathed the room in a pale, yellow glow. I skipped breakfast that morning. This time I could decide to ride against what I had done last night. Marcus looked at me with some concern. Are you feeling okay? You usually never skip breakfast on pancake day. I involved in with the story, but pancake day is another millennialism. Oh, I'm telling you, man. We're in it. At least it's consistent. I'll give it that. It is, it is not a temporary guest that it is here to stay. You usually never skip breakfast on pancake day, like, alright. I smiled weakly as I grabbed my keys off the counter and pecked him on the cheek. Sorry, babe. My stomach was a little upset last night and I don't want to risk anything too heavy. I'll just grab a granola bar before I go to work. He didn't seem placated, but he nodded and tucked him to his pancakes as I slipped out the door. My hands, which I had been trying to keep steady in front of Marcus, shook as I put the key into the ignition. Even after my minty exorcism, I could still taste the content of the lamp. Warmth. Grape flavor. All the undertones that somehow made warm grape flavoring not completely gross. The softness of the wax. I shuddered, thinking that maybe a pancake or two might have helped to overpower the taste, but it was too late for that now. I drove to work, blasting the local generic pop station, and trying to focus on the day ahead instead of the night prior. Again, it's so well written like a private shame that you have to keep yourself. It's about drinking a lava lamp. Well, I kind of like I'm also tasty the lava lamp sounds too. Like, I would not expect any of those tech, you know what I mean, but it's like I believe that it would, you know, it kind of just makes you question how much money would it take for you to drink a lava lamp? God, you nothing. That's like, fuck no, it's only just wax and water. Really that's it. I thought I don't know why I thought it was chemicals instead of water. The water may have some light chemicals in it for preservation, but it's nothing deadly. You'll probably get a stomach ache, but that'd be it. I don't know why my fat ass, dude, I'd feel like I would I'd buckle I'd buckle under a lava lamp. No, there's a dollar amount. So someone came up and was like, here's a million dollars to drink the lava lamp. I probably showed you that. So that means there's a price between zero and a million, I mean, like maybe maybe a thousand dollars. I get it. That is way closer to zero than a million. It still looks like my price, you would need to be at least for me to finish a lava lamp. It needs to be more than 10 grand. I feel like I, I feel like I could see you probably hidden it for a thousand. Not just even a thousand, not a thousand, no, not a thousand, no, 10 grand. Yes. Not a thousand. I like how it's like, well, a million dollars, you don't know what, one thousand dollars. Well, you said a million. I was like, we got damn it. I mean, yeah, we'll, but then I kept thinking about it. I'm like, realistically, also, I don't know the size of it, but if someone's like, I have a thousand dollars, do you want to drink this lava lamp for a thousand dollars? I mean, I think a lot of, I think, I think I might, I think I, I think I probably could, even if I would be nervous, I'd just be nervous at the wax or whatever would get caught my throat. And I'd be like, because it, I don't, it's not going to be like a smooth as like an egg yolk. Even though that's what it looks like. I feel like it get like hard. I got a lava lamp here and actually looking at the size. of it. This is comparable to a large water bottle. You know, they do just have a screw cap on top. What colors your lava lamp? That wax does look pretty. I've never thought about the logistics of eating one of these, but oh my god, are you doing it? Isaiah, are you doing it? No, I'm not, no, I'm not going to do it. Oh, okay. I'm just saying looking at it right now. Well, even if you are, even if you don't, even if you don't drink the whole thing, would you take a swig? Take a swig on camera for us, would you? No, I feel like it's bad. I think I have to break it. This is like a pop cap bottle top instead of a screw. I think I'd have to break it to do that. What? What chemicals are lava lamps? Lava lamps contain two primary components, dense colored perifin wax. This surrounding liquid usually water, propylene glycol or mineral oil. Oh yeah, you'd be fine with all those. You shouldn't take a lot of propylene glycol, but you'd be fine. Solvents. It's used in food preservative and stuff like that. Yeah, you could eat a lava lamp, no problem then. Okay, I need to stop. Okay, I'm going to continue all right. Work was a mess, which I was eternally grateful for. The servers were still acting wonky, and the ensuing chaos totally distracted me from any untoward thoughts about lava lamps. I was too busy trying to figure out how to process patient information without my computer, but trained me to be worried about weird urges. I was going to stay put, pass my shift, like last time, but my manager sent me packing, telling me that I looked like hell. I wasn't about to argue. As I drove home, I kept a lookout for that freaky snack place. I saw it just where it had been before, same rundown building and all. The open sign was off, thank god. Still, a little twinge of my gut as I passed it. Like, I would have stopped if I could have. It tasted liquid on my tongue again. My mouth started to water in response. I put my foot on the gas and sped a chickful aid to pick up dinner for me in Marcus. There's nothing quite like the sweet chicken of Jesus to cleanse a tainted palate. After that, the Jesus chicken thing, that's also millennial coated. You know what, nothing wrong with it, dude. Nothing wrong with it. I'm not saying, I'm not saying that. I'm just saying referring to it as Jesus chicken is a millennial beat for sure. After an eight piece nugget mill, some white wine and the affection of a very grateful Marcus was feeling more or less myself again, drifted off comfortably in a light haze of alcohol and pleasure around 11 p.m. Did it wait? Didn't you do a Chick-fil-A ranking and you put the fries lower, something like that? No, I put Chick-fil-A really high. I'm pretty sure. I think we haven't done it to be high. We've done sandwiches. That's what it was. That's what it was. The hunger hit around three. Felt the awful clinching in my stomach before I was even fully awake. A tossed and turned until my eyes snapped awake, forbidden taste of the lava lamp filling my mouth faster than my own drool. Marcus snored next to me, completely oblivious to my torment. I checked the alarm out of the corner of my eye. The number 213 was illuminated with the purple light of the lamp, which was doing nothing to help with my craving. Shit. So much for getting a good night's sleep. I snuck down to the kitchen and opened the fridge. We were well stocked thanks to the convenience of the croaker right across the street, but nothing in there appealed to me. I knew what I really wanted. But I attempted to silence the urge with a few cookies and a glass of milk. It made me feel okay for a few minutes, but as soon as I climbed back into bed, the craving hit me again at full force. I sat there fighting back tears as little voice in my head told me what I needed to do. I told me to get inside my car, drive to the snack bar, and get myself a bottle of good stuff. It was either that down the lamp by my bedside. I didn't want to. I really really didn't want to. But at the same time, I just knew that I'd go crazy if I didn't. So I threw on a coat, hopped in my car, took off, peeling out of the neighborhood before I had a chance to change my mind. Even as I was driving, I tried to reason with myself. Still had options. Even at this ridiculous hour, I could go to Taco Bell. I could go to a gas station and load up on regular human snacks. Hell, I could even try to hit up one of my friends for late-night munchies, although they probably wouldn't have appreciated such a late company. Anything would have been better than pulling up to that store, grabbing an arm full of lava lamps, and standing at the register in my pajamas, being judged by that bored redhead with lethal nails. You can guess, of course, which one of these things I actually did. I threw in a twinkie, like that would make me feel less bad, but instead, just made me feel like even more of a weirdo. I started to hustle out of the store with my hall, when I nearly bumped into someone on my way out. This episode's sponsored by Tushy. Tushy is the luxury bidet that your bathroom has been missing. Tushy e-bidets instantly modernize your daily routines, and bring maximum comfort during the trips to the bathroom when you're taking a stinky, stinky wet shit. I blast water in my asshole and it feels great and it cleans it. It's awesome. I like how cold the water is. I like when my asshole gets frostbite. I love using Tushy because it gives you two-in-one benefits, reducing irritation and preventing micro tears while using less toilet paper, which is great for my hemorrhoids. That's the size of a green apple jelly or a green apple jolly rancher. It's so when I don't have to press on it with my fingers, because it's hard. It's like, true. I'm in jail. 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For a limited time, our listeners get 10% off their first bidet order when you use code creep cast at checkout. That's 10% off your first bidet order at hellotushy.com with promo code creep cast. Thank you Tushy for sponsoring this episode. Now back to this episode. Startled. I looked up to see a stranger. Also in their pajamas. Lookin' as flustered and embarrassed as I probably looked. She mumbled something that might have been agreed in. Then pushed past me with her head down and made a b-line for the back room. I left the store still feeling sick but also a little bit vindicated. At least I wasn't the only person in this town with a problem. I drove home to the soft music of the lamps clinking around in their paper bag. Almost lulling me to sleep now that my panic had faded. I didn't bother bringing them into the house this time. I gulped them all down. One by one right there in the car. The taste was absolutely indescribable. Blue, red, green, purple. They all tasted vaguely a fruit but also something deeper. Like the notes in wine I've heard so much about. I never had the palette taste and the wax. It was heaven on earth. I finished all four of the lamps and wiped my lips, totally satisfied. Twinkies that abandoned, among the empty glasses. The shame that I felt that first night was weirdly absent. The first time had been a curious mistake. This time it was an active choice. I know what they're optioned to own it. You're talking about this being like a sexual kind of thing but you almost keeps reading to me like a drug use or something. It's like a drug use or like a food addiction. People who are trying to lose weight and they're really big but they hide food from their family and stuff like that. They don't eat with the family because they're claiming that they don't have a problem but then they binge by themselves and stuff like that. It reads like a lot of addiction, like a lot of addiction that derives from pleasure. I shoved the empty lamps in my glove compartment for lack of a better disposal idea than went upstairs and brushed the taste and smell of their contents out of my mouth. I crawled back into bed with a snoring Marcus and pretty soon I drifted off because he is over. I really wish I could tell you that that was the last time I went. That my curiosity had been stated and I had purged whatever sick urges I'd had for my body with that last bench but I didn't. I found myself back there again and again sometimes in my work clothes sometimes in my pajamas but always late at night and always always unbearably thirsty. I veered for my usual snack sometimes just to see what they were like. The flavors of these things were so hard to describe. Every single thing tasted like an approximation of what it would taste like in real life. Dirt was earthy and gritty. The richness of the mineral varying by type and giving each variety a depth of flavor more complex than anything a world famous chef could whip up. Clean and supplies were acidic with a sharp chemical smell capable of curling your nose hairs, but a milder fruity taste could overpower the less desirable parts of the experience not unlike strong booze. Legos were horribly bland and only fun to eat because of the colors and sizes. I never knew why those who went as quickly as they did. I avoided the teeth entirely, and I could see from the fluctuating level in the jar that they were a popular item. About my experimentation, the lava lamps, my sweet, tacky saviors were always my number one go to. I would walk out of that store with at least a couple of lamps clinking together in my brown paper bag, my satisfaction overpowering my guilt. That line right there drives home that a lot. My satisfaction overpowering my guilt. Yeah. Her also trying all the different stuff is surprising too. I almost thought that she would only stick with the lava layers, but it's almost like just testing everything now like it's just so the addiction has spread so much. It's kind of like what you said about drug addiction, like typically heavy drug addicts will try whatever they can get their hands on, right? It's weird. What do you think the psychological effect of this story so far is with because if you just did this story, the psychological effect is I am now looking at my lava lamp in a new line. Yeah. Now I'm like, okay, maybe this is good. No, I wonder what you're doing. You can do this story again. And literally it's I stopped on the side of the road and I picked up crack like you could. That would be that would be the same story. Yeah. Right. Then you go back to the truck. I was coming back from my nursing shift and I saw the crack back on the side of the road. Yeah. But you know what I mean? Like it's you could replace this immediately with drugs and it would be the same story of hiding it. I wonder what doing it to be like like it's it's very intentional being like lava lamp. It's going specifically like fabulous so like goes I'm wondering, I'm wondering does that disarm? Does that disarm the threat of what it is like it's gross, but if it's do you, is it supposed to be a thing where we're sympathizing with the person of like, well, this is just a weird take. It's not like it's bad. Does that make sense? I think the addiction metaphor is pretty fitting and I think that's what is being implied by the author, like, you know, sure, I'm just wondering if I'm wondering if the psychological thing though of just making it like normal objects has like, like I was saying, like a psychological effect of like it makes the viewer not as like, not as, not as judgmentals wrong, but you don't think it's as much of a threat, I guess. Yeah. You see it as something odd instead of something dangerous. Yeah. I don't know. Just that was interesting. I mean, honestly, the way people do food addiction a lot, where it's like, yeah, it's food, you know, like what's their problem? Just stop eating as much. But similar to any other addiction, like people would take the drugs and all the types can fall into it and stuff like that. It's easier said than done. Yeah. I wasn't the only one either. I had some company during some of my late night snack runs sometimes someone would be ringing out a bottle of fabulosa while another person picked through the rocks to find ones that looked appetizing. The sedimentary was a favorite of one of my neighbors who never acknowledged me whenever we made fleeting eye contact. In fact, no matter how many people were in the store, the place was always dead silent. The regular snacks in the front remain so unpopular, I was sure that some of those wrappers were collecting a fine layering of dust. A tea or a soda would sometimes disappear, presumably to wash whatever horrible junk they had purchased from the back down, but that was the extent of it. After at all, the cash ear with fire engine red hair and scary nails sat impassively at the register, ringing out all us freaks without outward judgement. I had begun to suspect that she was none other than Lucille herself, but I never got the courage to ask. I would just pay for my stuff, get my head in an awkward half nod and be on my way. There wasn't another customer behind me, her eyes would follow me all the way to the door. Marcus began to notice the frequency of my late night trips. He didn't say anything outright at first, but I could tell that he was regarding me with a little suspicion and more than a little concern. I wasn't ever gone long enough to justify any worries about an affair, but I was increasingly figurative and distant. I didn't want to hide it from him, but I also didn't want my husband to know I was a lava lamp guzzling weirdo. Still, wait on me, and my guilt seeped through my actions and words. Eventually, set me down after we had an unusually quiet evening of pizza and game shows. Babe. He started and then stopped looking down at his bare feet. I knew him well enough to know that he'd start and stop and start and stop again whenever he had to talk about something serious, but I didn't have the patience to deal with it. A knot of dull anger was beginning to form in my stomach right next to where my unusual hunger sat. "I know. This is about where I've been going." I snapped. As soon as I said it, I shut my mouth with an audible click, shamed with my reaction. He looked at me as if I just slapped him. "Jesus babe. Calm down." His voice wavering. I never been the type to get too upset, especially about something like this. I took a deep breath through my nose and blew it out slowly. Billing myself to calm down. "Sorry. I've just been pulling a lot of long hours at work, just a little on edge." It was technically the truth. I've been leaving later and later, but only because I was distracted and not getting enough work done on time. My manager had yet to say anything about it, probably because I'd seen her at Lucille's for the plastic bag, labeled Baby Cheeks and Black Sharpie. "Yeah. Jesus." "My gosh." "The occasional lateness of our paycheck indicated that she was experiencing the same issues I was, so she wasn't about to point the finger. Marcus seemed to accept my work explanation. Drop the subject and start talking about his upcoming business trip. I could tell that my outburst had scared him a little, and it tore me up inside to think that I made the love of my life feel that way. But there's nothing I could do about it now. I decided to quit going to the store, again, back to the addiction thing, hurting family members, your boss expecting it, but not being able to call you out, stuff like that. The connections are pretty numerous. I decided to quit going to the store, considering whatever the hell was in those lava lamps probably wasn't good for me, physically or mentally, and I didn't want my secret driving a wedge between Marcus and I. I started taking a different route to and from the hospital, so I wouldn't have to pass the store, and bought a ton of my favorite snacks from my pre-Lucille days, so I would have something to munch on in case I got cravings. I thought that it would be easier, like going on a diet for bikini season, or drinking a little less coffee. Reality was much, much cooler. First thing to go sleep, kind of fall asleep for the life of me, and when I did, I'd only get an hour or two in before I woke up and sweat, shaking. I lost focus at work and started making mistake after mistake. Makes that I took out of my co-workers due to my increased irritability. My skin had started turning dry and dull, and my eyes were constantly red. If I had been worried about my relationship with Marcus, cutting out the lamps certainly wasn't helping. We were fighting on a weekly basis about the littlest things, and I was always too wrapped up in my own suffering to realize how rational I was being. My breaking point came one day when I was sitting in bed, crying after getting into yet another fight with Marcus. Through my blurred vision, I could see my faithful lava lamp, wax floating gently through the purple glowing water. Without even thinking about it, I grabbed it, and started to undo the cap, ready to down it, like I had done with so many others like it. If the plug hadn't popped out of the socket and turned the lamp off, I may very well have attempted it. I sat with the hot, dull lamp in my hands, shoulder shuddering as I cried even harder over what had happened to me. Someone was really, really wrong with me, and I knew who might have some answers. I drove to Lucille's late-night snack bar for the first time in weeks, going nearly twice the speed limit. My rage was accelerated by a clear and attainable target, and I stormed into that dingy shop buoyed by my righteous fury. My target looked up from her magazine at me, a sort of fear or excitement registering in her eyes. She chewed lazily on what I was beginning to suspect was not gone at all. I walked up to the counter and slammed my hands down in front of her. "Tell me what the hell you're putting in those freakish snacks!" She looked at me blankly for a second, then smiled. "I don't know what you mean, honey." Her voice sounded like someone taught a garbage disposal how to talk. It set my teeth on edge and took all the way out of my sails, trying to collect myself and lay into her again. "You know damn well what I mean." She continued to smile, but closed her magazine to focus the full front of her gaze on me. "I don't make the snack sugar. I just sell them to y'all as is. Just at a discount because I'm a generous woman. I'm just trying to make a living just like anyone else, you know what I mean." She smiled wider, and I could see what she had between her teeth. yeah that was definitely not gum. I swallowed hard and considered going home with my tail between my legs, but I still wanted answers. This stuff! The stuff though! You have to be lions! It's fucking rocks and poison! No one can eat that! She talked her head to one side. But you do, but everyone does. I just make it a little easier to swallow with all. Her smile never wavered as she spoke, even though her voice deteriorated and became less and less easy to understand. The pupils of her eyes distorted until it looked like I was staring down a goat. Her nails extended and retracted like a cat's claws, and I saw the faintest flicker of a forked tongue before I backed away, certain that she wasn't human, and since I had been greedily sucking down whatever she'd been giving me, not so sure I was one anymore. Just before I reached the door, she returned to her normal state and winked at me before returning to her magazine. I climbed back into my car shaking. When I reached into my purse to grab my keys, I heard a familiar clink. Purple lamp with pink wax sticking slightly out of the paper bag with a note that read, this one's on the house. I didn't question how they got in there. I think that I had always known there was something not right about that place, but I was too driven by curiosity to listen to my instincts. And now I was paying the price, drove back in silence, knowing full well what I should do and what I do instead. I like that. Again, it's like a dealer who's like, oh no, just take another hit, just get back into it. Yeah. And it's like that last line. I knew what I should do and what I would do. Almost like, I mean, it's like a new way, like a different take on doing a deal with a devil kind of deal. Yeah, yeah. Like the Fort Tongues obviously devilish, but it also makes me think of that this is some like a, like a troll almost or there's some, there's some folklore creature I'm trying to think of that I can't remember right now, but like a shape shifter. Yeah, some kind of weird. Yeah, some kind of like not goblin, but some kind of weird, some of them kind of, yeah, yeah, I reached a kind of equilibrium after that night. I was broken. And the best I could do was work around my brokenness the best way I knew how I resume my nightly snack runs, taking care to be sneakier about it than I used to be. I just down my lamps in the car outside the store in the dead of night, looking for all the world like the attic I'd become. I chuck all the tubes in the dumpster and go on my way, leaving my crimes and my dignity behind me. My mood stabilized and I was back to my normal agreeable self with a few slight caveats. I had a bevy of excuses ready for my late night trips, not that I needed them anymore. Marcus had stopped asking. I thought that he had just let it go, but one night when I pulled up to the store, I saw his car parked outside. Just get my binge for that night. He never told me, I never asked. We shared the rest of our lives together. We indulged in our shame alone. Our relationship was a ghost of what it had been. We were limping along. That's all we could expect to do. I really like that detail. Yeah, that's yeah, that's that's tragic. But man, like, like if this is a metaphor for addiction, it's like everyone, it's like you could imagine everyone in the town visit as visits the store just a different times. And they're all ashamed of it, but everyone carries their own private shame. That's really cool. Also, and I'm able to talk also like the description that it's across the street from a church, right? It feels very much so like the heaven or hell, like the duality between the two things, you know, to give into your location or to reject it, right? I tried to tell myself all kinds of things. I wasn't actually doing anything bad to my body. I was perfectly fine, really. I was in peak physical condition other than my weird sleep schedule and my perpetually shitty mood. Besides, I wasn't like those other freaks behind teeth and other human body parts. My cravings were totally benign. There were days that I could ignore my cravings, and that allowed me to pretend I was still in total control. I lied to myself like this until the day it all fell apart. That was today that look seals late night snack bar closed down. I'd gotten off work late and was heading to loose seals to pick up my usual, but when I pulled into the gravel parking lot, I noticed that the neon open sign wasn't on. Not only was it not on, it wasn't even there. I sat in my car trying not to panic. Maybe the sign was broken or she was getting a new one. I staggered out of my car and peered through the window. Nothing. The whole store was empty. No jars of twizzlers, no gumball machines, no fridges full of soda, not even a wrapper left on the ground. The whole place was cleared out like nothing was even there. I leaned my forehead against the glass and fogged up the window, muttering, "No, no, no, no, no, no." To myself, like that would do anything to help me. I heard footsteps creaking up the stairs behind me, and I turned, see Marcus standing there. No doubt here to make his own late night run as well. I opened my mouth to speak, but the only thing that came out was a chokesaw. He pulled me into his arms and hugged me tight, and I gripped his jacket for dear life. Knowing that without Lucille's, it soon slipped away. It didn't take very long for us, the addicts, to start breaking down. We started receiving patient after patient in the hospital suffering for poisonings. They didn't just common household cleaners and sometimes even drain fluid. Some of them made it, more didn't. I heard whispers of people walking in dentist offices having broken their teeth to try to eat rocks. One report on the news said a dental assistant was arrested for pulling patient's teeth without clearing the procedure with the dentist first and storing them in a jar. The reporters said that they didn't have a motive for such a bizarre crime, but I knew. I knew it from the trembling in my hands, the bags under my eyes, and the glow of the lava lamp that I couldn't bring myself to get rid of. I remember how much I needed to. Soon, the children started coming in. You know how your creepy aunt said she wanted to gobble you up when you were a little kid? Apparently, Lucille had capitalized on that urge too. Kids with huge bite marks, some with the entire chunks of their flesh missing, started to fill up our emergency room. The number of single digit ages I was having a punch in the system was wearing thin on my already threadbare sanity. Eventually, I quit. With a little ability, I had left to do my job, evaporated. After I looked over my desk and saw my managers, catatonic husband holding an infant with half its face gone. Jesus, huh. Oh gosh. Just chewed on her child's face. Oh man. I lost Marcus one month after Lucille shut down, and one week after I quit. I came home one day to find him lying on the floor of the kitchen and nothing but his boxers, a caulk gun clutched in his blue-tipped fingers. I called 911, sobbing into the phone, but I knew there was nothing that could be done for him. I was helping to plan a funeral instead of our wedding. By the week's end, he was in the ground, and I was alone. Staring into my lava lamp until exhaustion dragged me into sleep, night after night. The only reason I'm still here is because I received a letter in the mail a couple days ago. It was from the Lucille's late-night snack bar corporate office. Apparently, despite their closing, business had been a thriving success, and they expressed a desire to open more locations in other towns. I had been a loyal customer, and since they heard I was recently unemployed, they were wondering if I would give opening a franchise across the state line shot. And of course, I would have access to all the merchandise I wanted, free of charge. I read the letter by the light of the lava lamp, and then stared at the words for a long, long time. You might be driving in your hometown one day, and happen to see a Lucille's. Might look like mine, with its rickety wooden building and the Coca-Cola sign. It might be in the shell of an abandoned windies. Might look like a bodega, or a mall kiosk, or whatever I'm assuming place one can buy cheap snack from. If you do decide to go inside, only buy the items from the front of the store. Never ever go into the back. And if you do go back there, out of curiosity, don't pick up anything. If you do pick something up, don't buy it. And if you idiot, throw caution to the wind, and buy it, and you see my face staring at you from across the counter, don't blame me. At least I tried to warn you. That was a fun story, man. What a weird sick. That impressed me. I really enjoyed that. Yeah, it kind of comes across like, you know what, you know why I towards the end? I was like, you know, like, you started to setting a set in a bit, but it's like a fairy tale. It's like a grim fairy tale. I thought it was going to go the route of like the witch who has the house made of gingerbread or whatever, you know, like the handsome grattle, whatever. But it does read to me like a warning or like a folktale or a grim fairy tale. It's like trying to teach somebody something of like, you know, this addictive habit or giving it to impulses, but I I do like this idea of very obscure temptations that get hold of you is really, really fun. But that fairy tale element, I think, works really well. I like the end. It's really cute. Like a really cute way to end it. I like the ending too. And it also to go back to the addiction metaphor, it's like they eventually become the dealer. Right? They become so sucked in by it. And they lose everything else that they had going for them in life. So might as well fully commit over to your addiction. Right. So, so quickly tragic to this story was like the, they really, they lower your defenses quite a bit with like the millennial lines and stuff and how the Rick and Morty poster mentioned and stuff like that. Yeah, I just want to throw up from how cute it is, you know, like you're booping your snoot with my fry. That kind of thing. But it just, I mean, it really does nose dive into just complete darkness. So quick. Yeah. Yeah. It takes all of that, um, all of the like apprehension we had with like the light hardness. And it's like, this is a story about addiction. And then my husband died of the addiction and blah, blah, blah. Well, I thought, yeah, I thought that was fun was like, it made me throw up from that. But then by the end of it, I was like, oh, can we go back to that? Like, I think I'd, I'd like you guys to go back to that time. Uh, yeah. It's like, where's the Rick and Morty poster? Is it still there? Do you think it was affected to bind Rick and Morty posters? The idea that it was affecting the whole community, too, is not maybe not the whole community, but enough people to warrant that many hospital visits and stuff is, uh, particularly interesting. It was a, I see the connection between this and late night in the voodoo store because it's like, you know, it's, it prays on the thing you want to do. And they're just the seller, you know, it's like, well, you ate it. I'm just the, the person providing the goods. Um, and I like how Lucille might have been like she was at some point, uh, and she's Lucille to someone else. Maybe she, like, we can't tell because the story is narrating from her perspective, but maybe she's taking on these goblin s qualities, becoming the monster and someone else's story down the road. It's a really good idea. And of course, obviously the fairy tale thing at the end that if you ever see in your town, this place, blah, blah, blah, the, uh, yeah, god, I just, I feel it just kept getting worse and worse. Like, oh my god. Do you feel like it's lowest point and almost immediately the next paragraph is like, yep. So I kept doing it and I kept getting worse and you're like, oh my god, dude, Holy hell. It just was really unrelenting in that way, which was, uh, kind of an unexpected turn that I thought that this was going to take because it really is such a, uh, I still think that there's something to the idea of just these like weird ticks, like not making it, obviously not making it so obvious. Like if it was just literally drugs and this isn't really much of a horror story or it isn't kind of weird. It gives it like a weird fantastical, like I said, fantasy or fairy tale kind of quality of almost being like, almost, you know, like a house made of candy, like it, but this is being like a room full of like obscure treats that are not traditional is just, it's a very interesting way to do a addiction story. Just wouldn't have expected that. It's just very, very, very odd. It was fun. Yeah. Yeah. I thought this was fantastic. And it was really a sleeper to me because when started I was kind of like, all right, we'll see where this goes, uh, but the metaphor worked really well and I dug it. That was a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. And everyone wants to check it out. Shesney on Reddit. Shesney. I know you haven't written a story in six years or at least post a bunch of get back to it. Come on. Shesney. Come back to the light. Shesney. Appreciate you. There's a phone one though. Nice little fun, quick story. Nice little drive by kind of story. Bang, bang. And then we're out. You know, there's a fun one. Shesney. They have a bunch of other, like looking at some of their other titles too. They have, the night my church burned down, I summoned an angel and even trade all of these. I'm down. I'm going to. I always like when, uh, when a story's called a sudden angel, it's, it's, it's never, never good. I, I would love to read a story. It's like, I summoned an angel and it was awesome. I would love one of those. It's an angel. They're my best friend. And now I believe in God and everything's great. Yeah. And then at that point on, life was pretty bad as the end. But that's our episode. This week guys, well, I'm looking at this lava lamp and it is kind of appetizing. I want you to drink it, dude. It will. Next time we see this lava lamp, it better be empty and your, your lips better be caked in wax. I mean, I get, I like it. Trust me. I, I, after reading that description, I get it a bit more, but I still wouldn't call this appetizing, especially the little wax flakes. Floating around in there. I don't know, but I, I don't know. I, yeah, especially dude, eating kulk, when it's on, when it's on, I get it a lot more when it's like moving around. Well, so you're saying whenever the, whenever the yokes are kind of dancing for us, broken up. Yeah. Whenever they're, you know, they're moving for me a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, guys, that's our episode. Thank you so much to our listeners here, especially you. Crazy sons of bitches on audio platforms, like Spotify and Apple podcasts. We appreciate you and giving us a nice rating there. And of course, got to shout out the patrons. Thank you so much. And until next week, guys, we will see you in the next one. Stay creeped. Bye bye. See you in the next one. I can, if someone gives me $1,000, I'll convince Hunter to drink this lava lamp. I think I can probably make that happen. [Music] [Music]