Ratking | Creep Cast

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He has enough of a following that there is an R/Max Voynich subreddit that people seem pretty hype about, but he has, looking on that subreddit, they have a bunch of his stand-alone stories put up. He has two of the stories we're going to be reading today, which include the rat king, and if we misbehaved, we had to stand in the shed. In addition to that, he has a ton of other cool title stories like Help, I'm trapped in a sitcom, as well as one titled Sex Cannibal Psycho Freak Killer, which sounds like the kind of story you'd be interested in, Hunter, no, no, no, then after we get done reading him, we're going to have a story from an author we've all come to know and love Dope of Bean. And we love Dope of Bean because they wrote the incredible story, what was the correct title for it? The dead girl in my yard was the best friend I ever had. Yeah. What about the Windigo thing in the backyard that like tried to lure him in, that one? So that's where he was sick, so today we're going to be reading their story. They told me I was nothing but a dog, so yeah, pretty stoked. All the titles, I mean Max's stories, Rat King is just awesome, love that. And then also even just the full title of his story is, if we misbehaved his children, we had to stay in the shed, something else stood with us. So just two fun ideas, but we haven't done a grab bag in a bit, so it'll be fun to read some shorter stories and see if in the future if we can't, we maybe have Max's longer story that we can dive into. But for all of our wonderful audio listeners, thank you for listening on Spotify and Apple Podcast. Thank you for giving us a nice rating there. You know, one of these days we're going to be number one on Spotify, boys. We've gotten, I think the highest we've ever gotten is two. No, we hit one, we hit one for a couple of days, remember that we'll, we'll, we'll get back there. We'll be up there. I think right now we're in the 40s. We need to, this is like, this is a war cry to everyone to rush over there and listen to the episode, listen to this episode on Spotify and help us out to be good or just keep watching on YouTube. I don't really give a shit. And thank you to patrons, as well, over Patreon members have been getting some livestream streams, new episodes and just exclusive episodes and stuff. Isaiah also is doing a reaction to the episode that I read. He's going to give it a nice critique, so looking forward to it. Which I know nothing about yet at the time of recording, so they'll be great, I'm sure. You'll love it. You'll love it. I'm sure he doesn't say anything offensive or anything that I would object to or no. No, no, definitely not. And so thank you for our Patreon members who are supporting the channel as well. So if you want some free content, or if you want some extra content, be sure to head over to Patreon and check out our creamcast Patreon. All right, without further ado, let's get into writing. I will say real quick while looking at Dopa Beans account. So Dopa Beans Reddit account actually got deleted. And I'm seeing a post by a friend of theirs explaining that it got permanently deleted. So they're trying to figure out where to go from here. So we'll link some of Dopa Beans other stuff in the description. They have that series, The North American Pantheon, which we talked about before seems kind of like SCP adjacent with like a society keeps track of supernatural entities. And there's a subreddit for that where like some new links have been put. So we'll link that subreddit. I think, how do they make a new account? I think they made a new account Dopa Beans. So that's clever to get around the Dopa Bean brand and now we'll be sure to link that. We'll link that and they also have a substack that has a bunch of their stories, compulsive. We'll have a bunch of places to support them because that's got to be rough to build up this much of a following around writing on Reddit. And then Reddit is just like, no, no, bye bye. Man. So we'll have a bunch of places that you can support them linked below and please do that because they're a fantastic author, they deserve it. All right, so anyway, without further ado, we're going to be getting into the first story Rat King for Max Voynich, Hunter, are you ready? Let's do it. Let's do it. Rat King. Now, a collection of rats whose tails are intertwined and bound together by one of several possible mechanisms, such as entangling material like hair or sticky substances like sap or gum, or getting tied together. Have you ever seen a Rat King before? Yeah, it's horrifying. It's pretty brutal. Seeing all their tails just like basically woven together. And they're all trying to run in tear in different directions, they're all running in different directions. It's the high pitch squealing instead. It's horrifying. Yeah. Have you done, I feel like you had an animation that had something to do with a Rat King. Like there was some visual of like people tied together trying to run away, something. I'm not sure. I don't think so. I could be wrong. I don't know. Too long. Well, funny, no, speaking of your animations, our Patreon editor and like my editor, Katelyn, was over at my place. And I was like, oh, have you seen Hunter's short, he didn't, she was like, no, so I showed her your your meet Canyon short, you know, the live action, a midway through, she was like, is he okay? Okay. You know what? The fire. You like this all that? You know what? Fucking fire, dude. All right. Yeah. That's reasonable. If any employee criticizes you in the slightest, that's what it has to be. You have to realize, you have to rule with an iron fish, I say, you don't understand. That doesn't work for me because her included every editor. I have despises me and constantly uses their platform to find ways to destroy my reputation. Oh, good. Did I tell you what Nate did? No. Okay. Don't let him edit this part because he'll edit it out. I was talking to Nate and he was like, I say, I have a confetti, Nate for those of you that don't know at its creep cast a lot. He also edits a lot of Wendigoon stuff. He was like, I have a confession and I'm like, what? He says, in most of your videos for the past year, I will add a very subtle and very quiet fart reverb sound effect. Fart? Reverb sound effect? Yes. Just enough to sound like I farted loudly, but it's not like an obvious sound bite. It's like just subtle enough to where it's like, oh, did he do that? And I remember that one time I was listening back to a video after it was posted to YouTube and I heard that and thought I did it. So from for the past year, I've been paranoid every time I'm recording that I'm going to fart too loud for it to be heard. And it turns out it was all a sly-op by him because he thinks it'd be funny if it sounded like I farted. That goes to show how welcoming your community is though. If you're just shitting your pants all the time and no one cares, and if there's no, there's no outcry of like Isaiah, my god, it's not like a loud sound effect ever on what's here. It's just enough that if it's quiet while you're listening to the video, you're like, did I maybe, I don't know, like it's, it's just the idea that I did. We welcome, we welcome people shitting their pants. That's who we welcome. Okay. That is my editors try to effectively kill me with like these Tom and Jerry contraptions with like, you know, like making me look stupid and stuff like that. So I think Kate was allowed to say that you're not okay because she's right. Well, that's, that's you and that's, this is me and fired so it still stands me or her. I don't think you can find it. It almost be both. It's almost both. I don't think you can fire me. I don't think you don't employ me anywhere. You don't employ me, you can delete the channel, you could, you could, you could sink the boat to kill both of us if you really wanted to do what must be done. I will do what must be done and I don't want to be tested. Okay. I'll keep that in mind. So yeah, Rat King. The first time he coughs like that, we're halfway through a game. It's wet and rasping and he doubles over as he tries to force it out his throat. I stop. "Are you sick?" he rolls his eyes. Kings don't get sick. I can see that look on his face, like he doesn't want the world around us to change, like he doesn't want the dragons to turn back to trees or his crown to turn from gold to twigs and string, he doesn't want this imaginary world to collapse in on itself. I don't want to stop playing either, the second cough drops him to his knees, and he has to reach a small arm out to steady himself against my leg. I bend down, pick him up by his armpits, voicing him until he's back on his own two feet and tug on his hand. "Let's go." I think Kings don't get sick, the little brothers do. I gave his hand to squeeze, and we set off home. It takes us a little while to get back. This coughs me and we have to stop every few minutes, and we have to take extra care to avoid the tunnels once it starts to get dark. I'm sure they're just rumors, just fiction, but I can't help letting parts of them take root in my mind. The rumors change depending on who you speak to, whether it's told to you by an old drunk or a cautious teacher, but I'll have a few things in common. They say that years and years ago, sometime in the fifties, there was a huge underground complex under our town, complex that spread out in all directions like a fungus. Something happened down there, although what this event actually was, changes from person to person, and it was abandoned. Some claim that a whole city actually lived down there were forced to evacuate after the nuclear reactor went into meltdown. They say that it was a huge government cover-up, and that this is the reason that strange aircraft make flybys over our otherwise boring little town. Some claim that the complex was populated by a strange cult, made a deal with something so terrible and ancient they could never see the light of day again. I've even heard people say that the junkies found the labyrinth of tunnels under the city, and used it to navigate the town and smuggle in dope, until they stumbled upon something that trapped them down there. They call the people who supposedly live under the surface rats, claim that after years without sunlight they went pale and lost their vision, that they'll chase you using only the sound of your feet if you wander too deep. Wayward little boys and girls will get chased by rats, rats with milky eyes and long fingers until they're caught and eaten whole. It reminds me of the descent. It sounds like the descent. It also sounds like that Australian found footage movie. Oh, the tunnel. The tunnel. Yeah. Yeah. There's something very like just frightening about like people who acclimate to darkness and just live down there, breed down there to where now it's like these weird inbred kind of like a new inbred species that exists underground, you know, that's just blind almost like mole people or something. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I like the idea of what's the word for it speculative evolution. I think that's where where it's like, oh, what would humanity or like different species look like given, you know, I mean, obviously this is only like 50 years. But given like thousands of years, what traits would we develop? What would be bred out? Stuff like that. I think that's a fun kind of thought process and I think that's why the mole people stuff is so scary because it's like, man, if we were in complete darkness, what would we look like? Yeah. Just an uncanny nature. Uncanny nature of like if you're walking through one of these tunnels, you need to see like it's like a bait almost entirely a regular human, but completely bald and like eyes wide open, but obviously can't see like that. It's just like little things like that, really fucking creepy. I mean, think about like think about someone born to that because you know, like babies in the womb were like in total darkness and then they're born in a total darkness and they just never developed the senses. It's like what would the rest of their body look like? I became such a fly when I was born, man, I'm sort of claustrophobic now and just think I spent nine months in a little sack, oh, didn't bat and I didn't care. So it was fun. I became a bitch. Yeah. Yeah. You can answer your question. Who do you think would be scarier bald, completely hairless, me or you? And don't you dare because you know, I know that you immediately closed your eyes and you saw my fat gut and you just saw my and you saw like a giant larva and I'm going to put I'm going to put a, okay, we just don't smile. The I'm going to say I'm going to put it at least an argument out there that I think that if you did not have a beard, if you do have a mustache or anything and a bald head, no eyebrows, your lips would be so much fatter, so much larger that it would, I think that it would offset, it would offset the folds and grundle and textures that cover my fat skin. So we're talking like alopecia, right? We're not just talking about bald on the head. I'm going to say if we're going this far, I'm going to say like alopecia, but we're also going like mole people, but we're blind. We've definitely been underground that kind of vibe. It's hard to imagine you without the beard to be honest. No, it's hard to imagine you that weird. I feel like we would both look like weird grub things because I have such a weird head. I don't think my head of us would look good. The problem with me, I think I'd look terrible. The problem with me is you at least, you ever see like a lake, like a still lake, you know what I mean? Like a still lake. And then a breeze goes by and it ripples the water. That's what like the entire backside of my leg looks like. And it's horrifying. So you're saying the body here is doing you a few favors. The body, it's not doing me favors, it's keeping me human. It's the only thing that shields anyone who sees it, even just a general public. There's times, man, where I go out in public, I'll have like a pair of basketball shorts on. I'll go to a grocery store. I'll bend down and just get like, I don't know, some cheese or something. And I just know that like a little bit of my ham hocks peaking out just from underneath, like right near my hamstring or something. And I'm like, whoever seeing this must be absolutely revolted. It looks like a beehive, just like to the text changes, absolutely unbelievable. And I refuse to make changes, which is the worst part. I'm too set in my ways. Right. Right. I need, you were talking about my lips and I need to show you this. So I was switched Dennis recently, right, because we moved and then they're like, oh, well, you need to send your records over from one dentist to another. And they, the first dentist office sent me like their records of X-rays and photos and stuff like that. And they were all X-rays and like inside my mouth pictures of my teeth, but they sent one image of my mouth. I'm going to be honest, I don't appreciate the angle. It's a delight. It's a delight. Hold on. I'm about to send it to you, I'm just going to send it to you directly. And I want you to keep in mind that we're business partners, not even sending it in the group gas server. No. This is just for you. It's going to be between me and you. This is a, we keep it in mind, we're business partners and we're professionals, first and foremost. Why the image looks so oddly sexual, doesn't it? I don't know if I'd say that. I wouldn't. I wouldn't. It looks like a fucking Sabrina Carpenter album covers on my bed. I saw that picture and I was like, maybe it is that, maybe I do have a problem. It looks like a donkey's mouth or something. It looks like it looks like a fart man. All right. I don't need to go and hold that teeth out. Oh, wow. You better show this. Something happens, so people have some context, it's good God. These are two fucking Peruvian pillows just stacked on top of each other. Good lord. Look at these sons of bitches. How is your top lip so impossibly white? It's like they trained all the blood out of your supple lip and you didn't lose any flesh ball in my face when I took the photo. Well, this and things that your bottom lip is almost blister red. And the top lip is like it's translucent white. You as the most fucked up thing, there's no blood in there. They didn't lose shape at all. You got too excited. You got too excited, you peaked. Wow. What'd you say there? Wow. I don't need to hear. It's funny. Oh. You know what? You know what? No. No. No. No. Oh yeah. I don't know. You don't know. Don't delete it. What are you doing? All right. Also, too. The file size is so small. So what are you? So what are you open it? You have to like zoom in like 400 times to even see the fucking image. Why are they giving you a higher risk deal? They sent me. Okay. It's a funny, funny image that because the new office was like we can't use any of these. And I'm like, why not? And you're like the image quality is way too small. And I pull up the email and I go to the images every single picture was collapsed onto one page of Microsoft Word. There wasn't enough ink in the printer to get those lips in there. Sorry, buddy. We have to do just teeth from now on. You're like, good. The image you're seeing now is just a crop screenshot. I took of the little. That's why it's so cool. There is absolutely no way. There's no way that your dentist doesn't use this to kiss and to and to have some kind of he, I feel like this is his just like perfect lips folder and he puts it in there and he does. Oh my God. Perfect lips. I'd go back in and I would say, what are you doing with this? I'd go back. I'd demand it. He's like, you want some floss? Like, no, put the fucking floss away from me. I'm like, what are you doing with these pictures? I'm like, I go to a dentist and there's this is 80% lip. Like, there's barely any teeth in this. Yeah. What are you getting with this picture? There's 40 x-rays. This is such an anomaly too. Your bottom row teeth, there's like four teeth there. We don't get the level of detail. I'm pretty sure this violates him. This is my God. It's never seen teeth look so big. Yes, so small. It's so uncanny. It's like a goddamn Salvador dolly painting. I'm like, all right, God Lord. All right. We got it. We're fucking reading a story. You should have never sent that picture to me. You should have never sent that because I'll tell you what, that's just my own personal hell. I'm like, I don't know what I'm going to do with that. I downloaded it too. I can't. I can't. I can't. I'm glad you're getting so much mileage out of this. I can't picture. I can't go a world without having that picture. If you deleted that, I wouldn't have. If I even deleted that, I'd freak out. Okay. Okay. Okay. Well, yeah, glad we had that aside. So the story, the rat king, I like to set up with the younger brother sick, and I really like that one line they said where they were describing like the cough and everything. And it's like, I don't want to stop playing either. The second cough drops to his knees. Things don't get sick, but little brothers do. So establishes like this very ideal world. And it's a very simple way to give us some weight to the characters and their connection. The older brother wants to be stronger for the little brother and the little brother's ill, but he doesn't want to stop like this world he has with the older brother. And it gives us a lot of relationship context very quickly. And also just like like we were talking about with the tunnel and stuff like that, the idea of people underneath the town, like, you know, subterranean people, it's just a cool idea. What I'm picturing, all I'm picturing is that big white lip flattened up and down to being able to, being able to form words to be that actually we can understand. I'm like, you must have so much muscle in your face to flap those big fucking beats around it, but when you look at me in the face, it makes sense in context, okay. It's fine. You were really, people have been like, oh, you have big lips, but you're the first person I met and it's really honed in on that. It's like it's unavoidable. You're like the kid and glad you should his pants and everyone's trying to pretend they can't smell it. I'm like, look at this. Look at these lips flabbin' around. I'm below this photo. I'm tired. I mean, it's in word February and I feel like it's Christmas. And this is on this is a treat. This is a true gift you just gave me right here. Wow. That means so much to you. I've already said it to Harry. I've done all kinds of stuff. I think this is going to pop up at all corners of the internet. It's the same invitation to my privacy. You don't even care, just set it out. It's going to show up. It's going to show up in the make-can you cartoon. It's done. There's no warning it. What have you done with it? This feature was promised to me 3,000 years ago. We're in the story. Yeah. But we're at. Are we at some? Oh, God. I was trying to get back on course. I was talking about how I like the dynamic. I'm saying where are we at on the text deal? Okay. It's time to talk about something scary. 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The link will be in the description we are now back to the episode. Whatever the truth is, there's something below the surface, something wrong, something that makes the children sick, and the adults weary and paranoid. When we get home, my parents rush my brother to the hospital, and he stays there for several days while they run all kinds of tests. I'm allowed to visit on the third day, and I find my mother is sad in the waiting room, holding his twig crown in her hands. She gestures to the crown. Contamination risk. My brother seems to have somehow shrunk in the past three days, although perhaps that's just perspective. He is, after all, surrounded by huge machines that were and beep, tubes that loop over the side of his bed. He smiles when he sees me, makes a movement to give me a hug, and a doctor calmly puts his hand on his chest. No movements. I try and hold it together to be the best big sister I can be kissing his forehead, stroking his hair, telling him he's going to be alright. I try and ignore the look in the doctor's face. At the end of the third day, they take my parents into a separate room and I can only make out their silhouettes through the misted glass. I can see my mother put her head in her hands. My father put his arm around her. They don't say anything until we get home, or my father calmly takes every plate out of the drawer, smashes them against the wall. It does impose on explosions, and it collapses to the floor with huge, animal sobs. I cook dinner and we eat it out of the pan, I understand. Our life has become a series of trips to and from the hospital, and I'm entrusted with carrying out tests that were meant for my brother. It's strange, although he was far younger than me, six years to be precise, there must have been some tradition about these falling about the man in the family. Each week I take bundles of food and water to several spots just upstream from various tunnels or sewer entrances, there I place them in the water and watch as they follow the course of the water, down and round, and eventually disappear into the black mouths of the tunnels. Sometimes, if I leave it until it gets dark, I can hear things coming from these entrances. Here, annoyed whispers, muted whales, something like coming. It says if a hundred people are speaking all at once, a thousand miles away, the echo of the echo of their voices is drifting out into the night. So, is she saying that it's part of the family, like the men are supposed to go feed whatever's down this river? Well, I think that it's saying that, well, I think she's saying that the men and the family are like ones that get sick, or the ones that are being, like it seems like men in this family are the ones, at least that's how I read it, are people that are appearing, like that's why it's affecting her brother. I know. Which I want to say, I do love that line. How creepy is that to, like, you take the bundles of food down to the tunnels, whatever, and then from there, you can hear, like the echo of an echo of like tons of people talking thousands of miles away, just such an interesting, like, like picturing that in your head, just hearing it, it's so soft and so, like, just like a, just a slight whisper into your ear. Really fun. Yeah. Yeah. I make sure that whenever I visit my brother, I bring him strawberries, his favorite food. It surely grows too weak to eat them, until I have to cut them up with a knife and fork into small, bite-sized pieces, which I feed to him. We pretend for a while that he's still the king, and I'm just denied who's making sure my king is fed and healthy, but it soon becomes too painful to remind her of the years spent outside, long summers, with the promise that we both, my someday, grow old. Around a month later, he comes home. He's almost skin and bone at this point, but we still make the effort to have a little welcome home party. My father acts strange at dinner. I can see it in the way he moves, the redness around his eyes, and that suggests he's been crying. A boy like that shouldn't have to face death. He shouldn't have to grapple with it, to try and understand it, to rationalize it. He looks to me, a boy like that should live forever. My brother was always the favorite, and I knew that. I didn't mind. It was my favorite, too. That's a heartbreaking line. That's so sad. It's heartbreaking, but sweet, given the context, but yeah, I mean, I think that it's, I don't think it's supposed to be something where it's malicious, or it's not supposed to be something where it's like the parents are obviously loving the child more. I think it's just that like this is a being that is impossible not to love to the, like you know what I mean? Yeah, also it does remind me of what is that thing with, there's a word for it, but kids who was raised with the sick sibling, while the attention was directed towards the sick sibling. So because they're kind of neglected, there's a word they have for it, but it kind of reminds me of that, which I don't know. I may be just paranoid, but something about the father's line of boy like that should live forever. It makes me feel a little suspicious. I mean, don't be wrong, it's, it's a, it's a weird line, but also if your son is dying of cancer, I mean, outside of the context of it being a no sleep story, yeah, that's perfectly reasonable. But because it's in a no sleep story, I mean, it's a red hanger, but yeah, it's a, it's a sign that's coming. That night, I hear a rustling hush whispers and the lock to the back door, spring open, curious. I pick out my blinds and see still partially illuminated by the light from inside my father and in his arms, bottle of white cloth, and a face, my brother. Immediately I get dressed and make my way noiselessly downstairs and out the house, following as best I can in the dark. I follow him down the backroads through the fields and eventually to the mouth of a tunnel. The roar of the water coming from it muffles my movements and I lurk at the very edge of my father's glow as we enter. Thankfully, it does not look back often when he does, he seems to be in a trance, eyes glazed over a grim expression on his face. It gets quieter as we get further and further into the tunnels and I have to take care not to make any sound, holding my breath, making exaggerated short steps. There are noises though. My father holds an old fashioned lantern in his hand, which casts a small sphere of light across the tunnel, and every now and again he'll freeze and hold it in front of him, as if challenging someone to come out from the dark. Whisper its bounce of the walls of the tunnel, saying all sorts of strange and horrible things. I hear the faint sound of manic laughter, over some tuneless hum. My father carries something that makes strange, periodic clicking noises, and every so often starts clicking rapidly until he moves on. There's writing on the walls, and the further we get, the more demented it gets, because from teenagers graffiti, to genuine warnings, telling people to stay away, that they must not go any further, welcoming us to hell, then smaller, stranger writing, and scrawled almost childish letters, stay awhile. I think about the rats we were warned about, managing them as a pack stalking me in the same way I'm following my father, milky-eyed and hungry, peering at me from crevices in the wall and from under the surface of the water. We start going down and incline, and I have to hang further back, trying to time my steps with my father so he doesn't hear me, crouching and covering my face whenever he turns around. Voices are getting louder now, and more manic. There's so many of them, that can hear arguments, confessions, laughter, songs, monologues. It makes me wins, sounds like all the thoughts of an asylum, and the smell, starts to reek not only of shit, but of sweat, and bile, and curdled milk. Order if it's the rats speaking, or if it's some great mind leaking, there worries and anxieties and desires spilling out into our world. My father pushes on and we get deeper, the tunnel's turned from brick to concrete and the graffiti turns to actual printed text, plaza, one mile approximately. Oh, so I guess that does point to the idea that there was a city down here at one point, right? Yeah. Like there's like road signs. Yeah. The noise starts to hit me like a wall and I grow my confident, standing up straight. There's no way you can hear me over this, incomprehensible, so many words layered over each other. It sounds like TV static, and then we emerge into this vast underground chamber, seems to be illuminated by small lights around the edge, although they're so faint it takes well for my eyes to adjust, but even in the dim light I can see how big this thing is, how massive, as if each light is a star hinting at unknowable depth and height, something changes as we enter. My clothes and skin have the texture of used gum, ugh, everything becomes sticky, like a leather seat on a hot day, my vision swims slightly. A wall of stale heat hits me, the temperature of sweat, hot breath, whatever it is it's here, it's emanating into the room and reality around us, it stinks, the voices are deafening. I can see the bundle of clothes and my father's arms start to wiggle and shake and he holds his lamp up and I can see it first as a wall, a wall the color of pallet skin, until I can make out familiar shapes, hands, arms. Paces, all coming from attached to this wall, legs and ears and fingers all bursting from this wall like spots or growths, hundreds of mouths moving, hands endlessly grasping at nothing, legs spasming and trying to move along the slick ground and some shapes are mortifying the others. You can see some bodies that are half absorbed by this wall, some that still have the shape of the human, shoulders, bellies and some that have been completely absorbed, so that all that's left is facial features spread out of a massive skin and it occurs to me that these are, were, people and the sound and the stench is coming from this thing, whatever it is, this thing that laughs and screams and whoops and mutters and spits, until it dawns on me that it's not just a wall because somehow, slowly and with great effort, it's moving. swaying and stumbling and fraction by fraction it starts to make its way towards us. The eyes that litter its surface fixed on the white bundle in my father's arms, the mouth filled with yellow teeth hollering and whaling, bingers across the surface contracting and spasming like dine insects, and frozen in horror. It's all I can do to watch my father take my brother out from the bundle of clothes and hold him out to the grabbing hands and flailing arms until they take him, pull him in and he's too weak to resist and the voices seem to reach a fever pitch united for just a second as he joins and I can hear him scream louder and louder until I lose his voice amongst the others. We watch for a while trying to keep track of my brother's body before the things shifts and wobbles and new faces appear who was once my brother disappears into the dark. My father turns around, walks straight towards me, grabs my hand and pulls. We have to go now. I have so many questions. How did he know I was here? What is this thing? It's my brother okay? But he's stronger than me and when he tugs on my hand I stumble after him. He says only one thing to me once we're far enough away for the sound to turn back to whispers. He says it with tears in his eyes and for a moment I could see that he's not just a man but also a boy deep down and they're just as scared and hurt and confused as I am. "That thing, it does not die, it does not age." A pause as he wipes the tears from his cheeks. "You will not die down here." When we return home my mother is falling asleep at the kitchen table waiting for us and we wake her. She looks at us as if we had killed them ourselves. I think of my father's words. We will not die down there. I wonder if perhaps death might have been better. "Bro, oh my gosh." Okay, we're almost over then I'll talk about. Oh man. I still do the jobs that were met for my brother. The strange rituals that were met for the man of the family. I still pack and send the bundles of food into the tunnels. But now that I know what's down there, I take a few extra steps. I make sure to put strawberries amongst the food, picking the biggest and juiciest I can find. If I've got a spare hour or so, I'll make a little crown and twigs and string and hope that it finds them somehow in the dark. And if I get close enough, close enough to hear the whispers and shrieks and laughter, sometimes I can make out his voice amongst them, the voice of my little king, my rat king. Oh, oh, oh, oh, I forgot about the title of the story. It gave me chills there at the end. Oh, that was sick. Bro, I love this. I really like and horror. You can't see this with like, I mean, like I'm a huge Kronenberg fan and with stuff like the fly and these horror narratives or these things were stories where the main character is, it's like somebody's just dying in front of you and there's nothing you can do. The kind of moral dilemma of people having of like, we'll do you, like the dad giving his son off to this creature, this thing in the sewers, this rat king itself. It's like a pet cemetery. It's just like, it's just a, it's a fun act of desperation and the unwillingness to be able to let go and be able to say goodbye is such a personal inhuman thing that I don't, I feel like everybody would have, so many people would have a different response to that, what that dad did. I think some people would be like, well, I would do anything to keep my child alive as well, but I think that like, it does, you know, even in the story, they do have a, there's literally the pet cemetery line of sometimes dead is better, you know, it's like that kind of thing. But I love that. It, I think the context is different because I agree with the sister at the end where she's like, maybe, you know, sometimes dead is better. Versus becoming a part of this amalgamation of eternal flesh, right? But I think important context is the mention that one of the theories people have around this thing is that it was started by a cult sometime in the past, right? That they conjured up something so awful and now people are trapped down there, which seems to be 100% is the lack of a new part of that cult or something. The dad's a part of that cult and the family, the family has been for generations. Yeah, yeah. The family is definitely a part of it. And I think even that's why the mom is like, you might as well have just killed them because she knows exactly what she knows what it is. I mean, they're the, it says the men of the family take the food to the river, right? Yeah. And they feed whatever's down there the whole time. So it's different for him who is a part of this cult and has seen this thing for generations possibly to be like, oh, we'll give it to the eternal mass rather than, you know, let him die, which goes back to that line. The dad's always like a boy like that should live forever where he comes to the decision of like, I guess I'm going to give him to the mass, right? But man, the opening where the sister was like, they were playing and pretend and he was a king. And then at the end, she put strawberries in the crown on the food. She says it's so heartbreaking. But that last line, my rat king. Oh my gosh, dude. What's a fun, it's a fun idea of that you're playing Dungeons and Dragons at the, at the beginning. And then you literally go into a sewer that is like a dungeon. And that's where he gets to be his king. You know what I mean? And then there's like the description where he's talking about or those sisters talking about how she was his night. She would bring him food and take care of him while he was sick in his hospital bed. And now she's continuing to do that as he's a part of the mass. This is one of those stories where sometimes, you know, after sometimes when these stories, because this was a nice short short story. Sometimes it really read these short stories. I'm always like, man, I wish there was more. But with this story, I just, it was so, I just really loved how everything was approached. You know, you got to understand that the child was sick. You get a little element of the cult. Like nothing was ever overstepping itself and you've got just enough of information to make it satisfying. I really do feel like this is just like a perfect link through this type of concept and the way that they executed. I think Max did a great job. Yeah. Yeah. This, this was, this is the first story we read by this guy. And that was a banger. Like down to the, the pacing of it and the execution. I like how the father knew she was there the whole time, but was like, I guess she has to see this at some point, especially if she's going to be the one feeding this down here, right? Well, yeah, let's her follow. I always love in these cult, like in these stories where somebody knows, somebody knows what a monster or they're dealing with a monster. We kind of had this in the story where the moth with the moth. Oh, see. Yeah, very, very similar. The, um, I love when there is, when there's a character, you know, I mean, even in the moth as the episode, it was like, there was the father who even kind of knew what the sun had to do. It's this thing of like when you have your beliefs and it's hard to swallow. And it's like even the, the dad at the end, I don't think that he's particularly stoked that his son is just a part of this monster, this amount of action now. He's not, you know, but it's a thing that they obviously still believe in. They take care of and they do that. So in a way, it's, it's, it's just, I like that because it's justifiable why he would be like, you know, it's better than death in his eyes because it's obviously something that he cares about. He takes care of. So he's still like, he can't let go of his son yet. So now he's like, Oh, well, if I do this, my son will be there in some way, right? Yeah. Even if I don't get to see him directly, I know I'm still taking care of him. I know he's still in the dark somewhere, right? I also like the subtle kind of world building stuff where it's like, they go down there and there was a plaza. So it's like, was there city down here? Is this all part of whatever this spell this ritual is? But then the description of the room where there's lights in the distance that might as well be stars because they give off impossible depth to the space. It reminded me of John Milton, not John Milton, the other John, the guy that did the paradise lost depiction. Hold on. There is one piece of art from Paradise Lost that I think about all the time. John Martin, so I'm thinking of John Martin. John Milton was the author of Paradise Lost. Yeah. Pandemonium. Okay. Hold on. Let me send you this image real quick. So when describing hell and Satan's throne and Paradise Lost, John Milton gave this depiction of it. And what I love about this image is you see Satan on the throne and then you see like the rows of people behind, but you see the lights hanging on the ceiling and you kind of have a sense of depth on the first row of how far back they go, but then there's rows and rows of lights. And it's like this room he's in is impossibly large, right? So I went, she talked about walking into the room and then seen lights that were impossible death. They reminded me of this. And now I'm thinking maybe the all because the author is Max Voynich named after Voynich main descriptor, obviously into like some weird esoteric stuff. Maybe that's kind of the idea he was conjuring the idea of this underground like circle of demons, this infinite cast of like the devil and his power and that probably ties back into the cult and like this creature is made. But all that's done. But the point I'm trying to say is, I got all these ideas off of a sign that said Plaza, and then a description of how big the room was. And it's like, oh, maybe it's this, maybe it's that. And he does so much with so little by using the time he has to get these really cool ideas across and like, maybe these cool theories, theory crafting you could do with the little pieces he gives. It's like he has a cohesive idea of where the stuff came from, how it all came to be. But he just sprinkles clues of it so you can try to put it together. And I think that's really neat. I really love this story. I thought it was awesome. The use of the body horror to at the end is awesome. I eat that shit up all day, but it's also something where it's a fine line. You got to ride because sometimes that shit just, it all sounds the exact same. So sometimes you have to just be, and I feel like it was just, it was just enough to give you a fun understanding of this like actual rat that is tied together in a literal flesh sense without just being something that's like generic, you know, it served its purpose in a great way that lends itself to the story versus trying to take the limelight and be like, isn't this crazy? It's just like a fun accent to the story, which was nice. But I'm excited that we get to read another one from him. Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, well, I have his stuff linked in the description. This guy has a ton of stories on his Reddit. It's a shame he hasn't posted in six years. I wanted to keep riding. Who knows? Maybe with some support here and maybe with once he sees this, maybe this, maybe the, maybe it couldn't be something to maybe he's cooking something huge. Good. Good. But it would be very cool if you all, if you like this, to show him some support so that, you know, gets on board. That'd be cool. Or he gets to make him more stuff or something because I want more of this. Anyway, our second story from him today is called, if we misbehaved his children, we had to stand in the shed. Something else stood with us. So are you ready, Hunter? Let's do it. It's as simple as that. The misbehaved is stood in the shed. As I've grown older, I've come to realize that it wasn't just if we were naughty, but if our parents wanted some space, some time alone, to get rid of us when they had guests over, they were always throwing these lavish and expensive dinners with services and Latin incense and all the guests massed and dressed in black. They needed us gone. The shed itself was rotting, an old wet structure that set at the bottom of our garden. Maybe three or four minutes walk from the main house. Sure, that might not sound like the longest time, but try walking for four minutes in any direction you choose and see how far you get. Go on, time it. I think you'd be surprised. So after we'd made the mistake, chewed with our mouth open, asked a root question, used the wrong cutlery. We were sent off. If we were together, Naomi, my younger sister and I, walked in seeing two long guitar, trying to check our minds off the shed, off the fact that it had its own whale, the fact that sometimes it was so dark you couldn't see one end from the other. We tried to ignore the fact that sometimes the tapping on the windows sounded less like branches and more like some form of echolocation, like some giant and curious creature on the other side trying to trow us out. We'd stand there, shake, in hand and hand. I mean, songs we could have remember whispering stories to each other, anything to make the time pass. I tried to keep her spirits up to make sure she wasn't as terrified as I felt as I couldn't let on that I felt. Sometimes she'd repay the favor and she'd tell me about her favorite animals, how big they were, what they ate, where I might find them if I was interested. It helped. The quiet, focused tone of her voice, the obvious pleasure she took in naming them all, despite our situation. I was much worse behaved than Naomi. She was all blonde air and smiles, ribbons long and looping hand riding and pristine diaries. I wasn't interested in any of that, being a boy and being so proud of being a boy, ran to sheen my scrape knees and torn clothes, refusing to bathe until my father would hold me down and force me upstairs. As such I spent a lot longer in that shed than she did. This time passed, I began to realize there was something wrong with it. Sure the air in there was colder, stiller than the air outside. Sure rats and mice slipped under the floorboards, squealing a nine and climbing over each other in the dark. Sure if you came in the daylight, you'd see a flock of crows talk to each other as you entered, trading little cause as if discussing you. But there was something else, a sense that you were never truly alone there. A sense that shivering and hidden in the dark, something was watching you. I like again, Max does a really good job and the two examples we've seen of giving you so much was so little because there's a little description of the parents where it's like when they needed, you know, they sent us out whenever they needed time to their self. And it has a mention that they throw lavish and expensive dinners with incense and all the guest masks and dressed in black. So it's like, okay, their parents are some cult, something like that. But then you have this shed that's probably related to whatever their practice is is. And there's a ton of weird stuff that happens around it like like the crow showing up and things like that. So it's like, how much of that is supernatural and how much of that is just like the eariness that he fills being around a structure like this. I think it's almost interesting how from a kid's perspective, the mask, the masquerade parties your parents throw like the ritual stuff isn't the interesting thing. It's the shed. But because of the masquerade, we're almost positive. There's something supernatural about the shed, right? Yeah. Well, coming from the perspective of like a younger kid teenager, these things that are so normalized in their life are said in such a way that seems like, well, of course, you know, they're a mass party. You know, as like it, it's said so matter of fact that it isn't drawn out to be some kind of like creepy, big thing. I just like how normalized it feels. And it just is a, it's a piece of vital information that you could easily miss, which I think is kind of fun. Yeah, yeah. I want to take a moment to think today's sponsor, Harry's razors. 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And after you're purchased, if you could let them know we sent you, we'd really appreciate it. Thank you to Harry's for sponsoring the show. Their link will be in the description. We are now back to the episode. My suspicions were confirmed when Naomi sent one evening, or had even had a chance to misbehave, and as such, I've been sent to my room preemptively. The dinner they were hosting seemed special, and my mother spent the whole week fretting about who was setting where, and what to serve, and if they'd be able to find the house, old and crooked as it was, nestled on the edge of thick black woods and had no obvious markings to tourists. Something else though, frenzy in the kitchens. My father holding a set of keys I'd never seen before, being brass, dogs locked in the kennels. My mother's hands covered in paint. They had wanted us out. Interesting. Okay. Dogs and kennels paint on her hands, or maybe blood, and then a set of brass keys. Also, when it said the house at the edge of the woods dark, and decrepit I thought of the house where I saw the K and man, God, so much more disturbing to me, or more scary. And so I spent the evening in my room, head against the window, watching the guests come in. They're long and pointed mass, lanterns they carried, and the way they bowed as they met my mother at the door. There's a goat tied to a post a few feet from the entrance, and I was trying to work out why each guest would take a moment to say something to the goat, or bend into kiss its horns. I've never seen the goat before, and I remember wondering if it was a gift, or if my parents had brought it for some sort of game. I felt sorry for Naomi in the shed when beginning to howl, which I knew brought strange lifelike noises from the holes in the old wood, made the window rattle, and the rat shelter between the floorboards. I felt sorry for howl alone she must have felt. That is, till I saw her. When Naomi came back, her hair was braided. It was tied into one long plate that curled around her head, the hair bound together by neat red ribbons, wild flowers punctuating the plate every so often, to give her the impression of a wild princess. Her nose and cheeks were flushed from the cold, and she spoke in between sniffles wrinkling her nose each time, still shaking. I asked her where she learned to do her hair. Our mother was never [BLANK_AUDIO] for anything like that, referring to either military ponytails or simply coming it until Naomi could fight back tears. And I thought perhaps Naomi had read it in a book somewhere. She'd loved books, but was clumsy, able to name all the animals of the forest, but forever scaring them off with her heavy footfall. She shook her head. "No, it wasn't me. So went at the party?" I asked, knowing full well that she wasn't supposed to attend. But that often, guess couldn't resist saying at least a hello to the little blonde girl on the stairs. She shook her head again. Something turned to my stomach, caught on my throat. "Who, Naomi?" I asked, trying to hold back the panic in my voice, pointed to herself, did this strange rasping voice, and on the in-breath, spoke her name in syllables. "Nay, me, dumb." "Dude." "Purro." Okay, imagine there is a little girl, right? And you're like, "Oh, hey, Sarah, how are you doing?" And she points herself, she's like, "Sarah." It's like, no, no, we got, sorry, hey, your daughter's name, sorry that your daughter's name. I'm leaving. I'm sorry for your loss. You should burn that thing anyway, bye. Your dress is so cute. I have to go take a shit. I'll be right back. That's where I'd run. Yep, crawl out the window. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm sorry. I mean, I have to go do that at home. I have to go all the way home, but isn't my home because I'm leaving the state now. I said it again, firmer this time, the tone I'd use when I scolded her. "Who did this? Who was in there with you? Who put the ribbons and flowers in your hair?" The reply was the same, on the un-breath. "Nee, oh me." I knew neither of us could go back, and although I was on my best behavior, Naomi didn't seem to care. It seemed to be oblivious as to what waited at the bottom of the garden for us. My mother said the party was the success that she'd be having another one. She seemed younger, I thought. Her rose feet by her eyes, it smoothed, and her mouth seemed fuller. I tried to beg for her to hold off, but she replied by looking out the window towards the shed. I have no choice but to shut off. Interesting. It seems like they're doing this as a rejuvenation spell, right? Stay on. I wonder then how old they are, and if this is even their kids, right? Because they clearly have a contempt for them, like the brush her hair until she cries, like super strict and things like that. Yeah, I mean, they almost seem like sacrificial victims or something. Yeah, maybe they're just like fattening them up, so to speak, for some eventual ritual. Might have already done it if Naomi's now possessed by a skin walker or whatever. Yeah, I asked about the goat and was told that there was no goat that I must have imagined it, and when I pushed her on this, she slapped me hard in the face until I tasted blood and said the boys who lied spent weeks in the shed and had their food slid under the door until they knew better. The shed hung at the bottom of the garden, hidden in a shadow. I tried not to look at it, terrified I'd see faces in the window, pressed up against the glass staring back at me. I thought that maybe, somehow, if I tried as hard as I could to pretend it didn't exist, I'd be safe. I was wrong. My parents were looking for any excuse the night of the party, before I even knew I'd done something wrong, I was sent to the shed. I tried to find Naomi, tried to ask if she was there, but she was nowhere to be found. My parents' patience grew thin, as if I didn't go right this minute I'd be sorry. My father's lips shook like it did when he was angry or drunk, when he wanted to use his hands or his belt of bruise. The walk to the shed had me breathless. My old body was shaking and fear, an anticipation of something I didn't understand. I can feel my knees weak as each step took me closer. The sun was beginning to set and the trees cast long shadows on the grass. Crows were quiet this evening, drowning down branches to watch. The door to the shed was already a jar, and for a moment, not I caught motion inside. I was still silent until I heard the flapping of wings, a pattern of rats. I took a breath. I was going to be okay. There was nothing in the shed that could hurt me, Naomi, and learned to braid her own hair. I decided upon entering that I would do what any boy should do, but any man should do. I slowly paced around the walls. I thought that this would dispel any ideas I had about something else being in there with me, about anything sharing the space. My footsteps were marked by the groan of old floorboards, a faint echo as they bounced from the wall. Each footstep followed by an echo. A slight delay, and so after I'd walked three paces, I'd pause and hear. Step. Step. Step. I'd walk three more. Same thing. Step. Step. Step. Except I realized it wasn't an echo. It was the sound of something behind me, something mimicking me. Following my exact footsteps for fear of being heard, I felt sweat begin to break out on my back. My mouth went dry. I couldn't breathe. Whatever was behind me, knew I'd be listening out. But Naomi startled me, made me gasped, and I realized I hadn't taken a breath in almost a minute. The window in front of me, something was tapping against it. I still had the impression of something behind me, something huge, something watching. And part of me knew I had to turn around, but I couldn't bring myself to. I think I had it somewhere in my head that maybe I could still pretend this was all a game or a mistake that by turning around, I'd somehow make my fears real, tapping on the window continued. I squinted to see better. There, against the window, was a crow. Bethers, dark BDIs, huge and sharp beak. But it seemed bigger than I thought possible, or if in my reflection, and I thought maybe it was because I was still some paces from the window, then the tapping came again. And I realized that the sound wasn't the crow. Couldn't be the crow, because the crow was completely still. And I could see it now, long and low-brains that actually was tapping. And I realized that what I thought was to crow was actually something behind. Something huge and dark and still and I turned around. It must have been about eight feet tall. Huge and with thin limbs covered in black robes, robes so dark that unless you were really looking for them, really aware of their presence, they'd have seemed invisible, and emerging from the hood, a long and pointed beak, two eyes that only appeared as glints. We stared at each other for a while. I feel my heart beating so fast, it hurt, attention in the left side of my chest that grew and grew. Slowly the bird thing lifted its hand, pointing a long and gnarled finger at me. It opened its beak to speak, and the sound reminded me of Parrot, father's friend had, mimicking human speech, uncertain, grading as if the words were not meant for it. I shook my head. It was all I could do. The thing caught in the crow's screamed in response. It asked again. No, it was all I could manage. No. Then the things seemed to fly into a panic, all limbs and frantic movement, bending itself, folding itself through the door and out into the forest. As my eyes followed, I could see the faint glow that it headed for, some glow that threw shafts of orange light between the trees and the sound of drums. Man, this dude, this is sick. All the giant progods that's friends with Naomi. The parents are like this ancient religious practice, which I also like how the thing that made the mom younger was that her crows feet went away. Ha, ha. But it's like, and the thing I said earlier, it's like, are the crows supernatural? Is that just a thing the kids noticing because the sheds creepy? But no, the crows are part of the supernatural aesthetic of this whole thing. And you have the family. It's part of the stark colds and does these rituals to stay young. And then you have this crow god and there's this group of people in the forest with drums and stuff. It's so cool. It's sick. I followed as fast as I could. My knees and shins whipped until they bled by wild grass, thickets, slow bushes, but I kept on pushing on. Something in its tone had disturbed me, some sense of panic or purpose, and I had only the safety of my sister in mind. I ran until the glow turned into a deep line that cast its own shadows in the dark, that illuminated pale figures standing in the circle around it. A fire surrounded by naked figures who wore masks made from thin branches and reeds, proved shapes who were all flesh, some with drums made from bone with leather stretched, some empty handed, some holding books and totems and lanterns. There, unconscious on a chair in front of the fire, in a red robe with a crown of wildflowers, Naomi. Some would come forward from the crowd on the beat of the drum and kiss her forehead gently, what you might do to a baby. She sat bolt upright, eyes closed, as she dreamed the figure in front of her red something from book, or voice echoed by the crowd, growing louder and louder, in a language I did not, could not understand. The drums grew faster now, as they've drawn in on something, converging, and the voices grew excited, and I saw in the figure's hands something clint in light, a knife, long and thin knife, they were slowly raising. I wanted so much to do something, to stop this, but my limbs seemed to freeze, to stop, that all happened so fast. There was a car, angry and clipped, and then the car echoed the round the woods, coming from every angle, from the roots to the bows to the tops of the trees, from behind me and above me, and then the fire was snuffled out like a candle, a commotion, screams. People began to run, only lit by the dim light of the lanterns, and I could see that somehow Naomi was gone, her robe and crown all gone. Revellers began to run towards me, heading into the forest to get away from whatever this was, faces still covered by masks, screaming, and I know their choice. I couldn't tell what they'd do if they'd found me, if they'd run past her, if they'd grabbed me too, taking me to wherever they were sheltering, and I ran until I was sure my lungs would collapse, then ran some more. I ran until the spit dried in my mouth and in my lungs, and every breath made me shake. I ran until I was two towns over, covered in blood in my feet torn. They found me on all fours in the town center, wretching onto the cobblestones. Took two days for me to finally speak. When they finally took me back, they made an effort to disprove the parts of my story they didn't believe, although, even then, I could tell they were holding back. They could not find my parents, or the guests at the party. They found evidence of a bonfire, but no masks. They could not find Naomi either, and the case would say open for years, decades. No one had seen anyone like her description come through, and it was assumed that for one reason or another, she had disappeared with my parents. They did comment on the sheer number of crows in the garden. Took me years after that to finally return to that house. Took enough time for me to have children of my own, undergo years of therapy. I found things that helped me piece together what happened. Hidden rooms, stone slabs, rooms carved wall, old books that smelled like rod and edge strange diagrams in them, but I never found her. I like to think whatever took her saved her, although, if I'm honest, I can't be sure. I like to think that she roams the forest now, with her crown of wild flowers in her red robe, passing her blessing over all the creatures she loves so much. And although the shed has been demolished now, floorboards and walls removed to reveal the bones of livestock, sometimes I'll hear it. When I'm walking in the woods, working in my room, whispered by the wind, cries of birds. Two for two, dude, yeah. What I liked about both of these two is like, well, the, it's hard to say this one seems like it has a bit of a darker ending. Well, both of them have like a darker, a darker ending, but the first one was pretty happy with the kid getting absorbed by the flesh wall. The creature, like the crow, I don't think that the eight-foot tall crow dude was like a bad entity. He just wanted Naomi and then he left. Yeah. Yeah. It's like his buddy. So the one Naomi wasn't there. He was like, wait, what the fuck? And that seemed like he went out, was freaking out. It looked like the, it seemed like the cult was going to sacrifice her. Yeah. Yeah. They're going to stab her. But then when the crow gods saw her in the chair, it screamed and then the crows came from everywhere. And the fire stuffed out and everyone ran into panic. Yeah. And Naomi was just gone is what she wasn't dead or anything. She was just gone from the chair. So it's like the crow took her. Well, I'm wondering if she. I'm wondering if she. Yeah, I'm wondering if she. It's interesting. I think it braiding her hair is a good note. I think it's the idea that it cares about her and doesn't wish her harm. The ending makes me think and it's, it feels similar to two. Well, it's interesting is it's two children that are afflicted by something in the end. It seems like they are joining in on what the cult is worshipping. To me, it seems like the, the crow is the god that this people are worshipping. The mass, I assume, I was thinking of like a plague doctor's beak kind of mask and stuff. But I do wonder if she was able to ascend like this is a happier version of the last story. Like it seems like this is like maybe she was able to join in or like maybe she was transformed in some way, that is like not in a flesh wall, but more so maybe she becomes a crow herself or does something that is acclimating her into the nature that she loves so much, you know, because it seems like the interior of the god really, she liked her a lot. Well, I will say that her life was miserable, right? Yes. Like these parents were cultist monsters and they abused her and all the stuff. So it's almost like when the crow God was probably summoned here by whatever was going on, it sees her and then it raids her hair and then it takes her away from this, right? So it's like it wanted to save her from what the parents, especially right before they were about to kill her or for her parents were about to kill her. I also like the end where it's like the sheer number of crows in the garden was alarming. It's like did the cultists get turned into crows? Is that the implication why more and more crows show up? Maybe it's just like, you know, there are crows around the crow God to that or did the or did the cultist get like did they get a come upings and that like are the crows positive spirits? Are they positive entities? You know, I mean, it's I mean, like it probably makes more sense that the entire cult got turned into crows of some kind. But regardless, it seems almost like the cult was going, it seemed like the crow God was blessing the girl and it seemed like they were going to like sacrifice her and because she was blessed in some kind of way, I mean, I'm reaching, but that's just kind of what I'm taking from it. But once again, a really fun story, Max, fun stuff, very fun. Yeah. Yeah. I think what's interesting is the similarities between both of those stories because they're both about an older sibling who is protective over a younger sibling who both of them are the victims of some cult or some practice that their parents are a part of, who their parents and one story give them over or try to give them over to these dark forces for their own gain or their own selfishness in some way, even if the first story was just a selfishness of wanting your kid to look forever. And then it ends with the older sibling reminiscing on hoping the younger sibling's okay. Yeah. It seems like the first family in the rat king story actually loved their children versus the story. I don't know if you felt it this way too, but it seemed like almost like the children were just literally a commodity to be sacrificed. Yeah, they were, they were the mother turning and not even like acknowledging the child or whatever. I was like, all right. Yes. Cool. Yeah, it is, it is, they were the fatted calf, they were saving them for the ritual whenever it was to come. Whereas in the first story, the father still did the wrong thing and he was still part of a cult that, you know, turned your kids into these like flesh amalgamations. But it came out of point of wanting his son to live, not out of like wanting to be younger. Right. Well, should we use both, those are both excellent stories. So check out Max Voynich again, he hasn't posted well. I really want to see more stuff out of him. We'll post him his account in the description and we'll also post the Max Voynich subreddit where people discuss his stories and stuff like that. So be sure to show this guy some love and Max, if you're watching this, make more stuff. This was awesome. I enjoyed it. All right. So with that, you're ready to move on to Dopa Bean? Yeah, let's finish off with the Dopa Bean story, which is they told me I was nothing but a dog. Yep. And we all, like I said at the beginning, we're all familiar with Dopa Bean, wrote the incredible story, the dead girl, my yard was the best friend I ever had, which is it might be a top 10 we've ever covered on this show, to be honest, because I think I know fans love it. I know that we had a great time reading it. So much emotional depth. It's hard not to fall in love with the character, like that girl, the character, the spirit, this entity and just kind of the, the crazy, I don't want to reveal too much in case we have it. There are new viewers. If you haven't read that story or heard us talk about it, please listen to that episode or go read the story for yourself, because it is, it's really, it's really, really fun. So I'm excited. There were so many good, like the dialogue moments where the dead girl's describing like, oh, the birds came with the trees in the first summers and stuff. It was so magical. Hauntingly, like beautiful, like tragic. In my head, it takes up the same real estate as things like Chronicles of Narnia and where the wild things are, like it's like a child's almost imagination of this world they were on. But it has such a like, like a undertone of death through, I mean, she's a dead girl, but also with his sick brother, her sick mother and stuff like that. Like gosh, she was just such a good story. But yeah, so Dopa being killed it. And now we're reading another story from them, this was supposed to seven years ago and it's called they told me I was nothing but a dog. Once again, Dopa Bean, their account has been deleted because Reddit's lame, but we're going to link their substack and we're going to link the subreddit for the North American. I was what's the name of that big series they write, the North American Pantheon, we'll have that linked in the description, all their stuff. And I'll verify that Dopa beans is their new account, but if it is, we'll link that too. So be sure to show those from support, especially now when they need it. So that out of the way, they told me I was nothing but a dog. My father named me Leica, because when I was born, my grandfather told him to treat me like a bad dog. Father, Leica was synonymous with dog, used the name to remind me of my place in the hierarchy, lesser, beneath, inferior, nothing but a dog. What is, yeah, Leica's the dog, the cosmonauts, sent up, Kayla has a Leica tattoo on her arm. What, when they were born, the father said, treat nothing but a bad dog. That's an insane thing. I need you to say, not a healthy relationship right now, no, no, no, a newborns there and your father shows up, like, treat that nothing but a dog, like a bad dog. My father met to humiliate and degrade me with such a name, when he honored me instead. You see, Leica was a stray dog from Moscow. On the 3rd of November, 1957, Soviet Union put her on Sputnik II and launched her into space. She was the very first animal to orbit Earth. The Soviets knew how to put a rocket into space, but they didn't know how to bring it back. This made Leica's mission a death sentence. Shortly after reaching orbit, the interior of Sputnik II became catastrophically hot. My father too hot for mammals to tolerate mere hours after launch, like a died in agonizing death. She perished the same way she'd lived, lesser beneath, fearier, abandoned, unloved, nothing but a dog. I spent many hours imagining her tear, pain and loneliness. I wouldn't feel, spending my last hours hurtling through divine darkness in a metal bucket. What must it be like to not understand what I was seeing, why it was suddenly so loud and so hot, what must it be like to not understand why, after being plucked from cruel streets and dropped into a bustling world of kindness, was no alone. Perhaps I wouldn't think I'd been a bad dog. Perhaps I'd think this was my punishment. Jesus Christ, I'm sad. I'm like God, I'm so sad now, I'm like God, I'm so sad now. Is this an insanely heavy opening to a story? I have to pull up the picture of your lips and there it is. Does that make you feel better? Slightly. Actually, it kind of made me even more depressed, honestly. Why did the lips make you more depressed? It's, we just got to keep going. Like, like is such a tragic tale, I think about her a lot such a cute dog is like, she was just used for, you know, our understanding of something, but she was a casualty from the beginning and that had to be so scary or, you know, little dog, I didn't know what was going on. Yeah. Traject. That made you feel better, right? Me saying that just. No, I was like, yeah, I'm really, I'm in a good fucking headspace. I'm sure everybody too is just like now just sitting here quietly thinking about existentialism as though it's pretty fun. Do you know, do you know the song, "Hall in 1945?" I love that one. Yeah. That's my favorite song. I'm not crazy about neutral milk hotel, but I love that song, but I see people attribute the end of the chorus to her all the time, where it's like a, and now she rides a comet's flame and never coming back again. The world seems better from a star right down from where you are. Yeah. I see all the stuff. He'll be like, like Kayla's tattoo is Lekha, the dog with an astronaut helmet on her. It's just, it's a sweet, what I like about Lekha so much is it was such a tragic moment and it's such a terrible thing in history where it's like, let's just, let's just kill things. Let's just ruin creation for our understanding of it, which I understand like disease research stuff like that. There's a greater purpose. There's an end. But in Lekha's case, it really was just for our knowledge, for our getting to know something. Some life was lost and it's tragic. But now there's this reinvigoration of her where people see her as kind of a symbol of tragedy and what was lost and because of that, they make her beautiful. There's drawings of dogs with helmets and floating through space and on comments and stuff like that. I don't know, I like seeing the art, like the beauty that comes out of it, you know. Now you're in a good headspace. No, no, you're really ready to go. Punishment is my mother tongue. I know what it was like to be punished for transgressions. I cannot remember or understand. We heard so badly, my heart rate triples. My mind flies out the window and soars into the stars. Retracing Lekha's doom, fly it on my husband's squirms and weeps on the floor of a dirty house 68 miles below. Even so, I adapted to punishment. As I said, it eventually becomes a language. Given enough time, anyone can learn a language, and I cannot adapt to, it was fear. As a child, I was afraid of everything. You see, in the deepest, most forgotten parts of the world, there are things that most people cannot believe, and even fewer would understand old ways, old things, old truths, old monsters. Monsters like my father and my grandfather. How can I describe this in a way you will believe? Maybe I can't. Maybe I shouldn't try. So instead, I'll describe my grandfather. He was called Pavel. By the time I turned nine, he had gone through six bodies. By this, I mean, he inhabited them, using a variant of blood magic, perfected by my forebears across many centuries. He left from body to body. Okay. He was not a spirit. He had a corporeal body of his own, twisted, monstrous thing, covered in scars and hard, cluttering skin. A body that could shrink to the size of a garden snake or expand to the size of a house. So for all its marvels, this body was weak, sunlight burned its eyes and blistered its flesh, so it entered other bodies, like a hand inside a puppet, and wore them until they rotted away. I'll never forget the sight of him, of many hymns, and different bodies, his flesh degraded and fell away in wet, discolored strings, where the way his eyes, hard, round yellow eyes, blended deep within their stolen sockets. My grandfather preferred the bodies of men, but sometimes chose women or children. Once he even wore the body of my mother, I was very young then, perhaps three, and the side of her familiar form standing before the fire sent me into such transports of joy that I bawled from sheer ecstasy. Yes, Caleb, just up to him. We're talking about Lake of the Dog, actually. This episode, can you show your tattoo? Hold it up, yeah, wait, look at that. Then she turned around, and in her bruise sockets, I saw my grandfather's eyes, flat, glittering yellow, like rotted gold. I reared back, screaming. My father, who had been stroking a pair of old baby shoes, looked at me with contempt so deep it scorched my heart. "Shut up, dog!" I cringed. This was a mistake. His contempt exploded and to disgust, he shot out of his chair and stomped upon me. Dirty, squirmy pain exploded across my abdomen, and hobbled away at whimpering and under the stairs. I laid there alone for many hours. Eventually my mind left my body and soared into the sky, or reversed dive into sea of stars. I drifted away dreaming of diamond-colored constellations and red nebula. At my side was a curly-tailed dog with striped face. My name's Seik, Leica, aww, gosh. That made me really sad, the idea of an abused kid thinking about being in the stars with Leica. That's really… I remember there was this little poem I saw where someone was talking about how Leica is up in space and serves as a river sticks figure almost for all astronauts and animals lost in space. Leica, the guardian, Leica, the guide. Gosh, that's sad. That's so rough to read about kids. Not enough. The story handles it in a way where it's part of it. It feels very respectful and like… and it understands the way to the subject matter, but still… You… Also, why would you, as a grandfather, possess your son's wife, or at least your son's like concubine? I don't know. It's very odd. Does that seem like some weird incest stuff would happen? Yeah. That seems weird. That seems very… You're just… what if right now, Hunter, Allison was like, "Hey, yesterday I was your dad." I'd probably kill myself. That's the only option, right? Yeah, which I mean to be fair, he is like a fucking immortal blood wizard or whatever. So who knows? Who knows what in the mind of a blood wizard twilight vampire sparkling guy windows? That's true. Who knows? When I woke, I felt her furry and warm, chest rising and falling under my hand, out my eyes. For just an instant, I saw her in the shadows, and she shrank away, sinking into the ground. I tried to grab her, but the floor swallowed her. My fingers closed on cold, hard floorboards. I covered my eyes and wet several months later, grandfather within mother gave birth to a child. Okay, see? Like that's weird. Right? Huh. It's a little. Hey, son, I positioned her wife while she gave birth to your child. Treat your kid like a dog and come over here and have sex with me. Treat your kid like a dog and let me birth my grandchild. I'm pregnant. Child. I'm pregnant with your baby. Yeah, this guy's a freak. This is not for being like a multi-dimensional spirit demon or whatever. He's just speared. A baby boy with yellow eyes and my father's curly black hair, mere minutes after the birth. Another picked up the baby and took him outside. He returned an hour later, empty handed. Spurred by horror, I immediately ran out into the night. The cold was brutal, and once invigorating and exhausting. I searched until I found the baby, when we were in a weekly beside a snowdrift. We were still covered in birth blood. My name was Alexander and brought him home. When I walked in, father immediately slapped me. The real back of stars rocked it across my vision. Never! He hissed, contempt tripping from every syllable. Never disobey me again. Give him to me now. He reached for Alexander, the grandfather stopped him. I looked up and swallowed a whimper. Grandfather stared back at me through my mother's rotting face, the mouth puffy and discolored with an oddly detached look, quirked into a smile. "No, let the dog keep her pup. We have other concerns." They certainly did. They worked together and they worked constantly. Father kidnapped victims and grandfather used them. Whenever father brought a new victim to the cabin, grandfather used his hands, long hideous things marked with scars and covered in strange glittering flesh to tear out the victim's tongue and crush their feet. Then, he would wait until nightfall, because remember, sunlight burned Grandfather's eyes and blistered his skin and carried them to his chapel. His chapel was an ancient stone structure at the base of a wooded hill. Within the chapel, three red windows and six rough-ewned pews. At the end of each pew set desiccated corpses, basing the altar like centuries. I hated Grandfather's chapel, the very air weighed upon me whenever I entered, crushing my heart and poisoning my lungs. The worst part was the fear, electric and paralyzing, inescapable. Luckily, I was just a dog. Dogs do not spend much time inside chapels, but dogs hear screams, even screams from far away, echoing down forested mountains long into the night. Grandfather did not often leave his chapel, but when he did, it was always in the wee hours of the morning. I know this, because my father and I were required to hold vigil till he walked through our door. Never Grandfather came back from his chapel, he looked human again, smooth skin, wide smile, good proportions, sometimes he looked a bit like father, sometimes he looked like his victim. It was as incomprehensible to me as outer space would have been the lake. The stream of Grandfather's victims never ended. Bakeryns, the elderly, travelers, orphans fleeing violence, there were so many, so, so many. You think that maybe it's saying that, oh, that's a good stretch, pop something. You think that it's saying that this isn't actually a Grandfather, this is like a demon or something that the father invited in years ago, you know, it's just kind of worshipping. It's seen, I mean, it's got to be something like that. I'm still wondering why this motherfucker even had a kid, like why, why even have, why keep one? Yeah. The only thing I'm thinking is that if during the, during the man's, when he was with his wife during the pregnancy, they had the kid, and then between that moment and when the kid was born, he had made some deal with some kind of monster tour, then the monster was just like, yeah, you got to treat that thing like a fucking dog or whatever. You know, otherwise, why would it be this generational thing? Or unless it's similar to our last story, coincidentally, the Crow one and the, they need the kid for something. Yeah. I mean, once it gets to a certain age, they need it for a ritual. Well, with the, the continuous theme and callback of Laika, I mean, it is going to be some kind of sacrifice for some kind of exploration or some kind of, you know, in this case, you know, ritual or something, you weren't supposed to give that away. You just told the audience what the theme for the episode is. I can't figure that out. Okay. Well, it's been two episodes and we're talking about Laika, which was sacrificed for science, I guess. If you want to call it that, you mean the real religion? Yeah. Well, the papers were legend. I'm sorry, I didn't post the other day, some lady posted it was in like our, whatever town she was in San Francisco, Denver, whatever. She was like, hey, my kid is really interested in Christianity and she wants to go to Sunday school. I'm not a Christian and my husband used to be. So we're just wondering if there's any churches in the area. Thanks. And the top of the floor. So what said, you should check out the local science center. Well, maybe teach your kid a real religion. Anyway, if it weren't for Alexander, I would have withered into nothing. He was more than a brother to me, for all intents and purposes, he was my son, neither father nor grandfather cared for him, and even feed or clothe him, had to feed and dress him with what little I had. Spot my best efforts, never learned to speak. That isn't to say he couldn't communicate, and he could, with gestures and facial expressions and nonsense syllables, the language alluded him, but it was all right. He grew into a sweet, curious boy with freckles, long delicate hands. Over time, his terrible yellow eyes milled to a clear bright green. He was my life, he was my heart, but he wasn't enough. One night, as a little girl's screams came shrieking down the mountain from grandfather's chapel, I finally went to my father. A late prostrate at his feet, which is how he taught me to approach him, the wooden floor was rough and painfully cold under my fingers. "Why, father? Why do you do this?" Set in his chair, watching the fire, in his hands, he held a pair of white baby shoes. Because your grandfather and I must live a little dog. "Well, I have to do this to live?" "Yes." "Then I don't want to live." "I understand." He said, his grip tightened on the shoes. "But you do not have a choice." A choke's back a sob and waited for the dismissal. I could not come to him without crawling, and I could not leave until he told me so. Steady said, "Stand up like a." Here in my name was like being doused in ice water, never used it. At that point, in fact, I'd almost forgotten I had a name. "I said stand up like a." It was a struggle to obey, fear made my bones rubbery in my muscles weak, father held out the baby shoes. "What do you see?" "Shoes?" Old baby shoes? "Those shoes, along to my sister, Alexandra." "I'd love to more than anything, more than life, more than my parents, more than your mother, more than you. She was my heart." I watched him, the firelight through his face in a relief, graiding crevices out of wrinkles. His curly black hair shifted like smoke and his long, sharp nose looked strange and monstrous. Parallel-lic-electricity swarmed my skin, so much like the chapel that I could have wept. "On my twelfth birthday, the grandfather boiled a pot of oil and called Alexandra to him. She and I were going to pick wildflowers later, so she dressed in her finest clothes, a blue dress and white shoes. These shoes, father did not speak for a very long while, she was my heart." He finally repeated, "When my heart broke, I broke it. It made me like grandfather. Someday I will be just like him. I will live forever. You will too." That night I had a nightmare of a little girl, sunken yellow eyes, melting into blisters as my mother's rotted body doused her with boiling oil. I woke screaming. Moonlight streamed through the window, drenching my room in celestial silver. My heart thumped so wildly that I could see my night shirt moving. I wanted to escape. escape. I wanted it to escape, too, because without it I would die. When I was dead, I could sell the stars with the other Lyca. Small, warm hands touched my face. I turned, expecting Alexander. Instead, I saw my nightmare. Great and flame blisters bubbled and burst sending rivulets of pus down her tiny, raw face. The skin around its mouth had burned away, leaving neat rows of milk teeth fully exposed, burned scalp and dull bone glended through black curly hair. The blue dress clung to her body, oiled tripped for them, soaking my blanket. "Don't cry," you whispered. Alexander stirred between us. "Get out!" The girl's blistered chin quivered. "But you made me come here. Please let me sleep." "All right." I whispered, because I do not know what else to say. The girl burrowed under my blanket. I watched a gased as she threw a bony, burnt arm across Alexander and drifted to sleep. That night, I did not sail to stars with Lyca. Instead, I sat awake, watching the apparition with mingled excitement and fear. Just before dawn, my door creaked open. I tried to shield the girl as my father stepped into the room. "What is that?" "Please. Please don't." The girl shifted, and incredibly began to shrink. Her body flattened into nothing, leaving her dress crumbled on the floor. That sank away, leaving the cold, empty floor in its wake. "What was that?" I saw my sleep. "Her! Her, not it!" I saw her in my sleep. When I woke up, she was here. Sweat gleamed on father's skin, reminding me of stars. "Kid rest. You must see your grandfather immediately." Felt my hands and knees and crawled to him. "No! Stand up! Bring the boy." I'll accept because they did that. I imagine now that it's time for their turn where they have to sacrifice their dirt. Yeah. The Lyca is going to have to sacrifice Alexander. Alexander wept angrily when I picked him up, ignored him and followed father into the dark forest, full glory of early spring bays the landscape, hell beams of light shafted through the canopy, cutting the thick shadows with gold, firm and crept through the undergrowth, deer watched from a distance. The forest was always full of animals. Grandfather was no danger to the birds or beasts after all. Soon the chapel came in a view, an ancient little church with a black spire, red windows, and frost encrested stones. I love, I mean, there's been a ton of videos or episodes we've done that revolve around like an old steeple church in the woods, like spying in the woods and stuff. And I always love it, especially like in deep woods, the first part of deep woods where you get the impression that hundreds of years back, there was some ritual that was performed here or there was some spell. And now everything we see is the influence of that. Yeah, they actually all began. Yeah, I love that trope. It gets me every time. Father ushered us inside. The moment I crossed the threshold, my skin began to crawl. Dread and fear swept over me. Alexander burst into tears. Father shoved me toward the altar. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the century corpses twitching. Chess rose and fell and jagged, senseless rhythms. One especially tall corpse with long copper hair turned as I passed. I covered Alexander's eyes and stopped at the altar. Chattos thickened and rised against the back wall. Back in the pews, bones clattered and dried joints creaked. Being blinked in the darkness behind the altar, great, flat eyes like cold and moons, shining in the cold shadows. Grandfather. The dark. Grandfather in town. He snarled, a deep, bound-shaking rumble that, like that of a tiger. Teeth glinted in the shadows, a shining ivory arc wider than father's entire head. A little dog is telling after all, "Our good will. If she loves her pup, do you love your pup dog?" You heard up from the shadows, twisted and sinewy and utterly inhuman. "Do you love him? What do you feel? Obligated to him?" Opened my mouth to answer. Instead, my burst into tears. Grandfather laughed, low roar that shook dust from the rapture's overhead. "Away to bitch indeed. I hope he's in the boi, McCale. It was always in the boi. That is why we made him now grow." Those great yellow eyes flicked to the pews. "I do not like to take my centuries. Not when they are hungry as they are." Bearing disbelief battled across father's weathered face. "Do you not understand what I told you? She creates life from thoughts. A poor substitute from what we were crying. Leave McCale." But Grandfather rocketed out of the shadows, a rippling mass of glittering skin and malforn limbs and knocked father to the stones. The corpse centuries uttered a deep sine, continued to twitch. "Number!" Grandfather snarled, sunlight poured through the crimson windows, imbuing him strange hide with a red blow. He looked like the sky, a starry piece of outer space. "Number! Define me!" I waited breathlessly for Grandfather's eyes to burst into skin to sizzle. He was, after all, exposed to daylight, but it did not. Many moments later, Grandfather shrugged father across the face and whipped back into the darkness. We left. Father did not speak again until the cottage came into sight, and he grabbed me and dragged me off the path. "Listen, listen Will. I can protect you from him, and. " He looked down at Alexander, eyes blazing with disgust. "When the time comes, I can protect you from him, too, but only if you help me." Why should I need protection? He's small and loves me as a mother. "Do you remember the story of Alexandra?" I nodded. "Your story is coming. Only Alexander will be me, and you will be Alexandra." My heart fell to the cold earth, carefully pressed Alexander's head into my shoulder, shielding his face from father. "Listen, dog. We're next to you, dream of my sister." His voice broke, pulled away and ran his fingers through his hair, tears shone in his eyes, tru huge and miserable over his quivering mouth. "When she comes again, bring her to me." "All right, father." I'd never seen him weak before. This time I was frightening and curiously thrilling, I will. Father nodded currently and left, and nearly followed, but thought better of it. Instead, stayed in the forest with Alexander. "Interesting, so it's like there's this discrepancy between father and grandfather, where he thinks that Alexander's not worthy, I guess, and he would rather it be his daughter, even though he hates her, because I don't know, interesting." I will say, I really love when it was describing his flesh, the red flesh, and said it looked like the nebula of space that worked so well with the Leica metaphor, the story's been chasing, where like, space was this unknowable impossibility to Leica, and now we see that same image reflected in the skin of Green and Father. As the morning brightened and bird songs swell to a symphony, I set Alexander upon the narrow path. He ran forward, I'm in a tune of his own composition. Shadow and sunlight dappled his skin, turning him into a woodland sprite. Trees weren't full bloom, petals drifted down like snow, carpeting the earth and glistening white. Alexander pulled the head. After a while, I couldn't hear or see him. He drifted away, slipping into the deep shadows. Panic overtook me. "Alexander! Alexander!" I rushed ahead, grimacing against the pain of my chest, my heart thumped wildly, so hard I could see my shirt move, wanted to escape again. "Alexander!" He darted from between the trees, I halted, overcome with relief so powerful I took my breath away, petals covered his head and shoulders. As I watched, one drifted down and settled on his nose, wide, green eyes glimmered above it, where I was the promise of spring. For the first time in my life, my heart was so full that I wept. That night, Alexandra came to me again, blistered flesh tripping down her face. Her eyes had melted away, in raw, swollen masses of flesh and her melted sockets. in my instructions, I set up. Father? Quivered, Alexandra reached for me blindly, running, ruined hands closing on shadows. "Father!" Father burst into my room, gasping. "Alexandra!" He shot forward, arms extended as if to sweep her up. She turned, Father froze. Alexandra taught her towards him. "Me kill, me kill, my eyes hurt." Her collapse and covered his eyes as Alexandra approached. She left a trail of puss and oil, shining like a tiny river in the moonlight. "Sorry, me kill, my hands hurt." Father weased miserably, "Me kill, my skin is on fire and it drips away." She stopped before him and crouched. Father whimpered and whined like a beaten dog, twisting away from her hands. She said her small hand on his cheek. Father squald and rised but couldn't break away from her. "Me kill." She wept. "You're just like him now." She jerked and began to shrink, to sink, disappearing into the floor. The moment her hand fell away, Father leapt up to his feet and ran. After that, he did not ask to see Alexandra. This is good, because I did not see her in my dreams after that. I only saw Lika. Oh, that makes sense as to why earlier in the story, she saw the vision of the dog. I didn't put that together. She'll just now. That the reason she saw the dog is because she has this power to bring life. Yeah. I spent most nights drifting among the stars with that dear, doomed dog at my side. Imagine or not, sights were glorious, incomprehensibly beautiful star formations, planets, great multicolored expanses of celestial mists. Sometimes I woke. Blyrian and coherent, built for fur against my skin. By the time I opened my eyes, there was nothing. One winter morning, I woke very early. My stomach growled immediately and no wonder, Father had it fed me for days. I fed Alexander with table scraps and tree bark. That, I decided, would change today. Encrypted into the kitchen, there wasn't much, there never was, but I scraped together where little I could and turned around. My grandfather set at the table, great, golden eyes, shimmering in his terrible face. Little bitch, what have you done to your father? He no longer hunts, he no longer eats, he no longer obeys. I felt like I was back in his chapel, crushed by darkness, heavy with dread on the verge of panic. Poor ability has not been seen on this earth for a thousand years or more. Of course the ability wasn't of earth. I no doubt come across it while sailing through space and breathing star dust. It's, it's just nightmares. No. You take the dark things of the world, the fear of the hate, the pain and channel them into physical form, and that is just the beginning. You will be able to do anything. You will make bodies permanent, perfect bodies for me and for you. Oh, I see, then why be so dismissive of her if she can make you a perfect body, idiot? I think that if you are like, this is an omnipotent being, I think he probably wants to, uh, it's kind of like Zeus or it's like Kronos being afraid of Zeus or something. It's like, uh, it's like almost like this thing is going to kill and replace me, maybe. Mm-hmm. So maybe he's just like making it, he's making, uh, like a feel lower than what it actually is. Potentially. Yeah. Because his whole thing gets absurd, I guess, so it's like, but also making a dog so it doesn't get ideas, but also he also probably just didn't know that she, that, you know, she had that power. Until now. Yeah. Yeah. The relish in his voice made me sick. He said, "A woman have always been weak and talentless, without the same of you little bitch." Tears pricked my eyes and my bones thrummed as if struggling to break through flesh and run away. It was no use. Destiny had already bloomed between my grandfather and I, heavy and foul with the promise of despair. Grandfather whispered, "Yes, and closely, for you only hear this once, or he was wrong." He left. I ran to the window and watched him hurtle through the trees a sunrise threatened, back to his chapel. I waited until the sun was up, then I ran to my room, bundled Alexander in every bit of clothing I could find and left. Followed the path for many miles, our home was hours and hours from the nearest town, and it reached into a long past nightfall. I could only hope the grandfather wouldn't notice our absence until the following day. It wasn't an unlikely hope, Grandfather spent most of his time in the chapel. The second this thought crossed my mind, a glittering dark shape left out of the trees and knocked Alexander for my arms. I caught a blur of twisted limbs and nightmarish hands, of great yellow eyes like flattened moons. Alexander screamed as a torn of blood splattered across the snow. It sank quickly, melting red canyons through the pristine white. Grandfather at me narrowing sides heaving, then he leaned down, tore out Alexander's throat. Screamed, birds took flight and mammals ran through the undergrowth, the piercing note echoed off the mountains. The pain within it should have ended the world, but there was no one to hear and no one to care. My father grand, Alexander's blood and sinews clung to his teeth, I broke. I felt it, crushing weight of sorrow, the almost physical sensation of my spirit tearing and bleeding out into my guts. I fell to my knees and cradled Alexander's head for hours. My father finally found us around nightfall, yet a heel of bread and an oily chicken leg, he pressed him both into my hands, then left. I tore the bread into pieces and dropped them, one by one, to Alexander's mouth. When he did not wake, I burst into tears and hurled the chicken leg into the woods. The moon rose into the cruel dark sky, stars glimmered through the bare branches overhead, creating a breathtaking fractal pattern. I plopped down beside Alexander, pulling him to my body. He was cold, terribly cold, I held him anyway, giving my eyes trained on the stars. My mind detached with great difficulty, like it was trapped in tar. Finally, it wrenched itself free and sailed upward, disappearing into a silvery sea of sky and stars, rocketing ever higher until I saw the earth spinning below. Like his rocket zoom passed, I reached out and caught one of the metal bars near the nose, I could sense like a within, or terror vibrated through the craft and leeched into my bloodstream. "It's alright, it's alright like I'm here. When you land, we'll help you out and we'll play together." Refere diminished and so did our pain, so did mine. Together we sailed to stars, looking upon the earth, marveling at the incomprehensible beauty around us. I woke cold, sore and a more pain than I can describe, and something about story, just the idea of a child being in such an awful, obviously this is like a supernatural abusive situation, but the idea of a child being in such a physically stressing, painful position and taking comfort in the dog who had to go through something like that too and then not only having the dog as a comfort, but wanting to comfort it. Yeah, as I say, just the idea of something being like, it's also more tragic too that it's understanding how horrible situation is, and like looking up to something being like, "Don't worry, we'll get through this and we'll play together." It's just, yeah, heart breaking. Yeah. I woke cold, sore and a more pain than I can describe. I set up Alexander Stiff Body, broke away from mine, I reached for him blindly. A thin scrim of ice covered his eyes. The wound and his throat was an open whore when I couldn't look at for long. I drew my knees to my chin and wept. After a while, something warm bumped my hand. Wet noves touched my palm, I knew what I would see long before I opened my eyes. Like a striped face and deer curly tail made me smile, even through my tears. Her arms glimmered through a fur, gently pulsing pinpricks of light. "What's this?" Grandfather's voice echoed through the trees. Rage flowed through my blood, exquisitely corrosive. "Hate," I learned then, was pleasurable. It is fury and it is the basis of power. Grandfather erupted from the darkness, scalded, skinned, shimmering like a river under the moonlight. "You waste your talent, on a mud, not even on your own pup, no matter why we'll correct you." Lake a reared up and leapt, snout piercing one of Grandfather's flat moon eyes. He screamed and shook his head back and forth, like a fell to the snow, twisting and quickly riding herself. like a butter. Lega was not large enough, her strong enough to kill him, but she tore holes in him the way a match scorches holes in paper. Soon Gray and father was on his knees, mere feet from Alexander's corpse. Lega came to me, panting and collapsed in my lap. She blooded from a thousand wounds, some small, some undoubtedly mortal. "Good dog!" My voice broke. A structure gently, willing those wounds to close. I was a monster. I used like it, just like the others had. Climb her down on false pretenses, filling her with hope, forthrowing her into the void. "Good girl." "Good, good girl." I looked up as Gray and father's good eyes slid to my dead brother, something dark blue in there, a wicked, corrupted hope. He curled in on himself, twisted body of shrinking to a withered husk, and slid down Alexander's throat. A scream was Alexander's body twitched and shuttered, then he set up, bones creaking and frozen sinews cracking, he smiled, as I shone like molten gold in a forge. Lega attacked again. Alexander's face curled into a snarl as she bit into her skin, exhibiting an energy at odds with her awful wounds. I watched helpless and hoping and hurting, wishing I could attach and fly into the stars once more, except there would be nothing there for me now. I'd called like it down from the stars and doomed her. Snow crunched behind me, I rolled around, father stood there, watching me with contempt, and his hands was asleep, gleaming shotgun. Relief and horror engulfed me. This was the end. My mind would attach, wherever this time, the fear would finally end. Like a bit down on grandfather within Alexander, who hit her, she whined, but it held fast, while their stalked past me and cocked the gun. "No, don't hurt her, don't hurt her!" Father pointed the gun at Alexander's head and fired, blood and viscera and dark glittering flesh exploded across the snow. Fired again, then reloaded and fired again and again. Alexander's head evaporated into red mist. Finally his body lurched and grandfather, small, pleading, scaled grandfather, slithered out of his throat. Like a cotton held him, father pressed the barrel of the gun against his good eye and pulled the trigger as his son broke over the mountains. Their steps back, I reached for him, drunk on a hope and gratitude, but he recalled for me. In his withered face, I saw his spare, rage and contempt. Kept his eyes trained on mine as he placed the gun in his mouth. "No!" He pulled the trigger. Half his head evaporated, leaving a glistening mass like a fleshy G out, his body stumbled forward as step and crumpled to the snow. Like a very long time for the sun to burn, grandfathered down to dirty oil, like a held on until the last scrap of skin melted, then she stumbled to me and collapsed. I stroked her until her body shrank and sank into the ground, leaving nothing but a scattering of tiny dim orbs. The stars I'd seen in her fur, I touched one, it was pleasantly hot, I gathered them up and slipped them into my pocket, I went to Alexander's body, ravaged beyond description, broken in ways that did not seem entirely real, it sat with him until nightfall. Then I stood and walked away and life went on. At first I brought them back for my nightmares, Alexander, father, grandfather, even Alexandra, but I quickly taught myself to starve and eventually kill my ability. It's not a good power, it's born of rage, despair, selfishness and fear, and I cannot tolerate fear. Besides, dogs do not have such awful powers, it is good to be a dog because they're not necromancers, they're not monsters, they're nothing more or less the simplest and most loving of creatures. That's why I'll always be like at the dog. When that is the end, wow, yeah, what a great one man, what I love about dopamine stuff is that the way that they write, it almost feels like these are like entirely fantasy, it almost feels like you're in the fucking landscape of like a jibbly film or something, we're obviously in these times where at least the Russian experiment went, so at least we're in the fifties at most sixties, but it feels like these things like just being in the woods and having the chapel, it's not like it really like addresses it, I mean, like we hear about it and we know it's there, but in my mind, the way that they write about nature, especially like the mammals and the animals that live in nature, it just makes it sound so fantastical and these stories always wind up being these kind of like grand fantastical conclusions as well. I mean, I kept picturing the grandfather as just this giant, I mean, like I kept, I don't know why I kept picturing the giant, like the, the, the bathhouse owner and spirited away, like the big nose and, you know, flying around and all that kind of stuff. Oh, the witch. Yeah, it makes me think of it. It makes me think of that. I just say it's really very interesting too. The parallels to with like of the dog and even the narrator calling the dog at the end and using it the same way that like the Russians did, obviously in a different context, but feeling that kind of like guilt and shame at the end was just so touching and also to what a fun way for the author to be able to write a way of like like a being able to come in and like bite and help kill the people that sent her out to space, you know, and a lot of ways started it. And so many different ways, this would be so hard to pull off of being like, yes, literally like of the dog shows up and helps defeat the monster, like that sentence alone sounds so absurd, but I was so bought in and I love that the way that they just set it up that yes, the persons can conjure these things from their dreams to help them. It just was just wonderful, just really, really wonderful. Don't be in has such a great way of writing and it's just such a treat every time we get to read it. I like, I like the parallels between the like a story and like what's happening here and I like Cal Grandfather's kind of standing for the Russians. Um, what was the, what was his name? Pavel of all, Pavel. Yeah, almost, I thought it was Pavel. It was, I thought it was Pavelov for a second, which I thought was like a dog. Yeah, the dog go, um, Pavel cultism. Feel like that's a name from something. No, maybe not. Um, but it's interesting. Like the, I feel like the name Pavel would mean something, but it sounds like a demonic entity. Pavel. Yeah. I, which I looked up and it's, I'm not seeing anything immediately. Well, to be fair, it's just something for a different time. I mean, it even references that, you know, this earth hasn't seen your power in thousands of years or more. So he would have to know about that. Maybe he isn't that old, but in my mind, when I read that, I was like, this is like an immortal being that has been around for thousands of years. Yeah. Yeah. Very well could be. Um, but man, there, it, it always obviously is heavy like children, you know, being put in stressful situations. But I think this was done respectfully. I think it was done with an appropriate way. And I'd like to, I mean, between like this suffering and then like, like at the, like at the dog suffering and stuff like that. Like you said, all the stuff that had to come together for it to make sense and not seem like jumping the shark to have like a show up in the story and help at the end. But it came, there was, it was set up appropriately that I think it worked. Yeah. No, I think it worked really well. I think that it handles the themes in a great way in a very influenced way. That's just a lot of fun. And I just, like I said, every time we get to read dopamine, I mean, this is just the second story, but it's just such a fantastical, big experience that they just feel so, they feel so, uh, tonally, it's own, you know, like it just feels, it just, it dives into that fantastical territory in such a way that it almost instantly. I'm just like, oh, yeah, this is a dopamine story, which I think is just really, yeah, really fun. Yeah. Like I said, it feels very, uh, like Narnia, very like otherworldly, you know, legendary journey. The kids go on kind of thing. Um, there was something I was going to say about, oh, I also kind of like how the ending of the story almost goes with what I was saying earlier, how Leica is such an interesting figure because she was one thing, but now culturally she's been made into something so different almost as a way of saying sorry to what she originally was. And here at the end of the story, we have our, we have our Leica, the person physically called down Leica, the dog, and then even then it suffers. So it's almost like a, I don't mean it may not be going for this at all, but it's almost like a statement about that, like the line at the end, um, uh, it's good to be a dog because they're not necromancers. The idea of bringing back these old tragedies for your own use or your own purpose, it's almost better to just be something that shows compassion rather than something that twist meaning. and desire for one's own purpose, even if the purpose is altruistic, uh, well, abandoning feel like there's something there, abandoning the powers and the, the, the, the line of dogs aren't necromancers to me, it just seems that dogs are the epitome of innocence and man, no matter good or bad, we'll always have corruption. Like the, the power is fueled off hatred. I think it's just another thing that just shows that like man is, you, like, it's better to be that of a dog than it is a man or whatever just because they are at, at, it's, at its core. Good, you know, I think that that's kind of the idea. But man, you know, for a theme today of being sacrifice, what a fun three stories we got to read, really enjoyed getting to get in on Max's stories for the first time and those are a lot of fun. But all in all, it's, it's always fun to do a grab bag and I feel like all of these today were just great, really, really great, especially after some last week's debacle. So, you know, nice little palette cleanser. Thank you so much to our audio listeners over on Spotify and Apple podcasts. And of course, thank you to our patrons who do support the channel as well and get a little bit of extra content on the side. Until next time guys, stay safe. And hey, pet your dog, pet your dog on the head. All right, needs a little pet. Go ahead. We'll take a little break for a second. All right, there you go. Thank you guys. And also be sure to support dopamine at the links in the description. Again, they lost the Reddit account. So support them while they need it and also check out all of Max Voynich's stuff. Incredible authors. Always like supporting people to write good stories because I like seeing more good stories get me. So be sure to show this love if you can. It would mean the world. And also be sure to not show Hunter love. And if you see the picture of my lips anywhere from my dentist appointment, go ahead and report it as an invasion of privacy under hippo laws. He can't do that. It's illegal and a federal crime. So call the police and get him reported. That would be great. Thanks. [Music] Imagine setting your makeup. Then forgetting it's even there. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all day comfy grip. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin. That still feels like your skin. Maybe it's Mavily.