The Puppet In The Tree | CreepCast

[Music] Hey! Welcome back to Creepcast! Another week of scary stories. Today we're going to be reading a story called "The Puppet in the Tree", which is uh. Yeah, where the fuck is my mouse? Yep, "The Puppet in the Tree" by Dopa Bean, who did. Is it the dead girl my yard? Right? Dopa Bean's done a few stories we've covered, so they did. The dead girl my yard was the best friend I ever had. All-time Creepcast banger, in my opinion. They told me I was nothing but a dog, which is about the one where the girl was in the house and imagined like a dog. And I clean hoarder houses for a living. So, Dopa Bean bangers. Yeah, Dopa Bean. Dopa Bean is the name that they write with online. Their actual pin name is RC Bowman. And RC Bowman has a bunch of different stories you can check out, as well as multiple books that you can get on Amazon, either a paperback or for Kindle, such as "The Monsters We Forgot" series or "What Monsters Do For Love". And I can't think of anything we've read from them I haven't liked. Yeah, I was going to say the hoarder one, I always forget. What a weird fantasy, like it dips into all these different weird things. And then I still think that the best thing we've read from them so far, at least I just say, is the dead girl my yard. The dead girl my yard. Yeah, that one was just so good. It was like, it was like a Macaw Bridge to Terabithia kind of story. It does feel like that. Yeah, like a fucking a demented bridge to Terabithia, which bridge to Terabithia is already kind of demented. Still can't lose a little girl and that dies. Falls into drowns. It just straights up. She does. And you never see it. It's so traumatic. You never see it. It's just like she's going for the best. Let's point for the best in a children's movie. If they saw it full like eight minutes scene. I'm not saying you show her dead body. I'm saying like he's not with her when it happens. There's no like, oh, it's a big tragic event. It's just he comes home one day. It's like your friend's dead. Yeah, she's dead. You're like, what? Yeah, yeah. Berger Terabithia, the most horrifying thing we've discussed on this podcast. The scariest thing we've ever covered. Yeah, it really is. But check out check out RC Bowman stuff. I will have it linked in the description. They're always a banger. And I should also mention that their account dope of being got banned off Reddit. I know we talked about this last time we covered them. It got banned because of some stupid rule or something rather. But you can still see stories that get posted by them to their subreddit, the North American pantheon because they'd have that huge series. It's like a collective lore of supernatural things in the United States. And they also have like a Twitter or Facebook and Instagram stuff like that. We'll have linked in the description. So be sure to show them some love. They certainly deserve it. Well, without further ado, as well. Be sure to check us out on audio platforms like Spotify and Apple podcasts and give us a nice reading there and really does help us. And also just want to give a quick shout out to our patrons who are listening and getting some extra content on the side. Isaiah, are you ready? I do want to mention while I'm continuing to shut out the author. Most of their stories are now posted to their sub stack. I forgot about that. Yes, we'll have the sub stack linked in the description as well. Great. Okay. Anyway, I'm ready to get into it. The puppet in the tree. Let us begin. Every elementary school has a ridiculous urban legend. My school had Muppet Man. And I hated him. Muppet Man was deformed ill-fated plastic surgery left him with the ghastly proportions of a marionette puppet. So he stole a rainbow animal costume from school theater and wore it everywhere. He lived in an ancient oak tree in the recess yard. Some kids claimed he lived in the branches watching us play from camouflage tied outs of leaves and twigs. Well, you meet it. Okay, off the jump. I want to say, I have no idea the age. I'm guessing it's a child, but I will say the. It seems elementary. I thought it was a teacher at first. I was like, my god, no, it isn't adult. It has to be because it says, you know, ill-fated plastic surgery. No, yeah. But you never know. I didn't know. It's not Muppet Boy. It's the Muppet Man. You ain't kid, neither. And I know Muppet Boy. It's a Muppet Man. Yeah. So there's. It's just jumping into the deep end. No introduction. No, my name is. It's just like. Yeah, there's a guy dressed as a rainbow animal. And he like watches the kids play from the trees outside. Which also don't like that, by the way. Grown a man with a rainbow. With like a rainbow cape or whatever. And then he's just watching people play in the trees. I'm trying to think if there was anything in my middle school where there was. Or elementary school that was. Like not in that vein, but like, you know, like a super. Like a folk lore, like a legend or something. And I can't think of any. The only thing I remember was that there was people that would. They said like, I don't know, there's like an old well near our school. And they said that that was haunted. But nothing ever. Nothing ever struck me as a kid to be like, oh my god, you know. So I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, we. I remember one time in middle school. Which I'm trying to think elementary school. We used to. I remember running through the empty classrooms and saying like, oh, there's ghosts or whatever. But I don't think there was any specific story. It was just kids being goofy. I remember middle school one day. Some guy apparently walked into the. Onto the school parking lot with a shotgun. And all the. All the teachers are like, there's a guy in the parking lot with a gun. So it was like a big lockdown. Everyone freaked out. But then it turns out he like just lived next to the school. And he's like, oh, hey, I'm carrying this from my truck or whatever. It's just like kept going. So it wasn't really a ghost story. But we used to joke that he would come back and kill us when. It's not real. Kids are pretty cruel though, huh? Kids are pretty. Well, I mean, kids will say stuff like that. And it means nothing to them. It's like, oh, what if someone showed up with the shotgun and killed all of us? Just by this teacher we had. This teacher we had in second grade. Or he was a teacher at my school in second grade. I didn't have him. But he's a leg head to get amputated. A horrible car crash, which two a second greater means, I mean, absolutely nothing. So everyone kept calling them like black beard and stuff. And people kept like drawing parrots and shit. And like all kinds of like stuff that was like all pirated. And he was like, I'm not a pirate. And he was like. He was like, he was pathetic. And he was like, oh, God. And he was so rude about it. Jesus, kids are so mean. I remember my friend was like. He was like, he doesn't even drive a car. He drives a pirate ship to school in the day. This is second grader. It's a fucking second grader. It's just finding new ways to be evil that no one would think of. God, I mean, just. I'm necessarily rude. It really does make me think at times. Or I'm like, if a fucking teacher just like decked a kid in the face, I'd be like, oh, you know what? You get one. I think you get one. You get one. You get one. Yeah. A semester. A semester. Yeah. I remember there's a guy who was a year older than me in middle school who like. His mom would just buy him all kinds of like crazy. Like he had a bunch of guns. I remember. What is up with this? You guys and guns. Did they not just get a fucking LEGO? Good God. Just Tennessee thing. I do remember, which is. This is bad. You shouldn't have done this. But I remember he brought the guns to school one time because we wanted to go shoot after school. And he was like, yeah, check this out. And just launch open his backpack. He's just like a bunch of guns. Oh my God. And ammo. But here's the thing. I remember all this going cool. No, sure. Yeah. Yeah. You're a child. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. There's nothing on toward, but just thinking about that now. It's like, yeah. Any reasonable adult would freak out. It's the only thing that. But I remember his brother like blowing up frogs with firecrackers and stuff. Yeah. I don't like that. And I remember at the time, even then, like everyone else is like, isn't this cool? Like, you know, it's like they explode and stuff. And I'm like, oh. I don't know. I like the kinds of school is fine. I don't know about the blowing up live animals thing. Should we tell someone about this? Yeah. What are you a big baby? Are you going to be a baby about it? Yeah. We're going to pat out this runtime. We can't be cutting stuff when you're talking about it. Anyway, the morbid kid said he lived in the trunk eating caterpillar larvae. Torturing the ghost of Jason Hughes. Jason Hughes wasn't an urban legend, unfortunately. He was just a tragedy. A doomed, anxious wreck cursed with ridiculously outsized glasses and an obsession with drawing. I remember feeling angry one rainy afternoon because I wanted to color with the teacher's new markers. Jason already used all the paper in the classroom. Nobody liked him much. Including me. But I don't know why. He was a sweet kid, fretful, anxious, and a little too smart for his own good. But sweet, that's more realistic, maybe not the cryptid thing, but I do feel like there's always one kid in the class who gets dogged on way too much who doesn't deserve it. Now that is true. That was me, that was me, by the way. You got dogged on, I bet you deserved it. There's the whole one of the most famous bits of this podcast is me talking about being shoved into a trash can. Yeah, listen, I'm not saying you get bored. I'm saying that you deserved it. I'm saying to get the dog. I'm saying to try what you not just to be deserved it. I don't know. I just feel like as a kid you piss me off. We probably, yeah, unironically, we would not have been friends. No, no, no, I'm a reason. No rhyme or reason. I just think about you as a child. I'm like, this fucking kid pisses me off. Get him the far away from me. It's not me. Me and you would not have been friends because like with the, with the, I guess, lateral nature of adulthood. It's kind of like, you know, whatever. But when you're a kid and you're just like really on to one thing, like I was super on to like, you know, parents, teaching, stuff like that, I would, you would have been one of the bad kids. You would have been one of the bad kids. I'm a fine child. I was a fine child. There was this kid in my school name, fourth, that was a fucking menace though. I was like, no, that, that was like one of the kids where you're like, I like to use a full name. I will, I will dox him. If you're still out there, he's got to be like in his 40s now, that child. That was, that was a bad egg. It was a bad egg because there's a lot of things we're going to have to do so far in this episode. We should just keep going. That we're going to get, we're going to do. He, it was like one of those kids where he would like free, I mean, it was obviously like, I wish you that night. I mean, like we should cut this because it's, it was like, obviously a kid who had like problems at home, you know, he would like, he wouldn't bathe. He like, he had like, airwax running down his, his face, like his side of his face and stuff. And he'd like, get really, he had like a really bad emotional swings. And he would like get up and like, throw deaths at our teacher. Like take, take the desk and throw to the teacher and scream and stuff. And as a kid, you're like, this guy's a fucking monster. Hey, sit the fuck down. Freak. You know, you can't, like that kind of thing. But obviously, it's like probably lashing out, probably has some kind of mental, like mental things going like, there's so much more to it. But as of course, as a kid, you're like, yeah, he's fucking, he fucking freaked out and hit my milk, fucking dickhead. That's all you care about. It's like, hit my milk on chicken patty day. That fucking fat fuck is what you say. You know, I'm like, look, because you're, because you're young. I mean, you're in second grade. You know, you can't read all the signs. So I don't know. That was a, those are a remarkable amount of maturity out of you. I'm proud. It was like you. That was big. Jason disappeared on a November evening in second grade. A few days later, a teacher found his clothes piled at the base of the school yard oak tree. Oh, the principal called a school assembly to make the announcement. He made it sound like the clothes had been laundered and neatly folded. My dad copped at the time. A cop with the bad habit of telling his kids things. Nobody should have to know. Told me Jason's clothes were filthy, worse than filthy. In fact, matter with urine, feces and blood. Oh, damn, dude. Oh boy, it's plucked out of nowhere. Piss his shit himself. I think it's murdered as fucked. Also, too. I, I, I, I, I was here to be like, Dad, would you stop telling us about what happened today? Yeah, I saw this crack whore with broken shorts of glass and her face. She was dead for hours and maggots. Like, eat up. Don't forget your peace. You're like, God, Dad, Dad, could you just please? I don't want to hear about it anymore. Please, Dad. As a, as the kid whose dad took him to look for a dead body, I relate to their situation. I was going to say you must feel I've, I've strong ginship to these characters. I do a little bit. I remember one time being out with my dad fishing. And while we were fishing, the little boat we were in kind of floated underneath a cliff face, uh, and just unprompted. My dad goes, I remember one time when I was about seven. I was walking home from school with a buddy of mine and we turned a corner at a cliff kind of like this. And there was a guy that lived at the top of it who jumped off. He was going through a divorce with his wife going to take any more and he just jumped off. Then I turned this corner and his body looked like a snake way the bone snapped and the way pieces of him lay it looked like he was curled in on himself. I didn't even realize it was a person at first until I got closer and saw his face. It's a great day to say if you use that top water bait, that shouldn't get the large mouth over there. What a great day to sail, Dad. It's a lovely ocean breeze out today. Thank you. It just, just stuff like that constantly. Oh, Harold here. Thank you, Harry. Hi, Harry. Uh, you know, I, um, yeah, no, I, I, I, I luckily didn't have that with my father. I, if, I, I'd like to imagine though that that cop that I just tell him horrible things that no child should hear. Yeah. Yeah. People, what? Almost people. Okay. I'm just trying to get my chicken parm. They smoke cigarettes with their buttole. Dad, please stop. I'm pretty sure they don't. I'm pretty sure I'm not positive, but I don't think they do that. They do it. It's, it's set up almost like Chinese opium dins with the calm hookal lounges and they smoke cigarettes with the buttoles. They smoke it out of the buttoles. Dad, I, I, I know what all of us means separate, I don't think when you put them together like that, it suddenly becomes this. Are you telling me this because I want to watch a lad and after dinner? Eat up, champ. I mean, it's all, he is here. Yeah. Yeah. That's the stuff. That's that good. I will say so far. This is very, we should stop sidetracking. This is, this is, yeah, yeah. We've read three paragraphs, but I like it. It's a good three paragraph. So we have been interrupting so much. I know people are going to say, I was just going to say that so far he's talking about some, I mean, I was some middle age man. Is that a tree at this at a school? And that let's the legend. That's the legend. The legend is that there's a man and the tree that Michael left or sorry, William Afton from five nights of Freddy's is in the golden monitor in the tree. Pop out and do the Freddy Fazbear screen. But it is cool that Jason Hughes is like an urban legend. He's a real kid in that they found his clothes all folded up. It was covered in piss shit and blood. Pretty brutal. Pretty brutal. He told me I couldn't repeat it to anybody. I never did. It was too horrifying to even think about let alone share. That's why I hated Muppet Man. Nobody could say his name without some snott knows little shit from behind the track saying Jason's horrifying school yard litany. That was another problem. The kids at the school knew Jason was my neighbor and they knew my dad was a cop. After weeks of hysterical interest, I was abruptly ostracized. It suited me fine. Over the past couple years, my dad had arrested the parents of at least two kids in my class and they gave me hell for it. It was alright. I preferred books to people anyway and spent every recess reading under the oak tree. Sometimes I pretended to read to Jason's ghost. Pinnets, I guess. Retreating him so poorly. Man, that's heartbreaking. No, that's sad. One day in February, I got to school two or three hours late. I don't remember why. I only remember getting to school and plodding across the empty recess yard. February is a bad month in that particular corner of the world. The sky goes from polished steel in the morning to icy steel in the evening and at night, dims to a flat, watery darkness that makes my heart ache. The plants are all dead. The trees skeletal, except for flourishing colonies of mistletoe. It looks like despair. The empty recess yard was no exception. Everything was gray and pale and somehow riddled, like it would crack and shatter if you touched it. The almost preternatural stillness turned that pale winter fragility into something sinister. Paranoia's girl threw me suddenly. What if? Just what if? It was true. What if the universe was broken? What if the scene before me was a fragile husk just waiting for a misplaced step to break it into pieces? I swallowed a surge of panic and took extra care with each step, set in my foot down with excruciating gentleness, saying crunched under my soles. Everything felt solid, but the sense of glassy fragility persisted. I found the urge to close my eyes and walk as quickly as I dared. My path took me right past the oak tree. Black, blown glass bark glimmered faintly. Branches threw spider web patterns against the grim sky. They were bare except for nests of mistletoe. The tree was infested with it. Suddenly, with the disconcerting, painfully adult burst of clarity, it occurred to me. The tree was dying. It slowed to a halt, staring at it with a kind of hushed reverence you're supposed to feel in church. The tree was scary but beautiful at the same time. More than that, it was a pillar of my memory. It was visible from my backyard. towering over the school in my childhood, like a reassuring and eternal century. Except it wasn't eternal. It'd begun someday. Maybe before I left grade school. Maybe sooner. My throat felt hot and tight. I took in the side of the bare branches and tried to mentally edit out the mistletoe clusters. It was difficult. They burst from the tree thicker than summertime leaves and they kept moving, jostled, no doubt, by the cold winter wind. Except another brutal bleak epiphany. There was no wind. Dark mistletoe rustled and writhed like a trap serpent. Cold air stung my eyes as they widened. Bright burst of color flickered inexplicably among the branches, slithering through the mistletoe like a multicolored feathered boa. Glittering in that senior srope of color. Eyes. Glassy round eyes. The color of limes. The rope of color broke into tendrils and grew, not unlike the fungus in which it nested, overtaking the darkness with eye-wateringly brilliant neon hues. Then they twined back together. Warming behind branches and mistletoe before resolving into a fluffy, ridiculously proportioned caricature of an animal. A cartoon and incarnate. A muppet. "Hello?" it said. Its voice made me jump, full and hearty and unpleasantly friendly. A cartoon voice. My lip trembled. Tears pricked my eyes, scorching and frigid at once. "You're not real. Yes, I am!" It fixed me with a sharp reptilian stare that made me want to scream. "I might need to be real than you!" The world looked glassier than ever. Vaded and brittle except for the obscenely bright monstrosity above me. I stand my foot and held my breath, praying that the world would shatter, taking the technical or monster with it. If I broke a broken world, would I break anything at all? But the pavement remained solid. The frozen chill bypassed the souls of my shoes and I leached into my feet. The creature stretched, stretched, stretched, slowly sneaking its way down the trunk of the tree. Simultaneously slothed like a reptilian, bursting with that ridiculous creole of fur. "Should've been funny. I wasn't it funny. I was I scared. I wasn't I running away. It slid down the bark until its eyes were level with my own." "Otally, really real things can hide themselves in plain sight. Real things like me and Jason Hughes. If Prince called me Muppetman, and you can too." 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And now, it's easier than ever to get started. So why wait? Right now you can get up to $200 off Square Hardware at square.com/go/creepcast. That's sqaRE.com/go/creepcast. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today back to the episode. I don't like that. I gotta say, the writing so far has been phenomenal. That description of like, I've recognized something with an adult clarity. The tree was dying. And for a moment, it was about like the realizing that your childhood isn't forever, you know, there's mortality. There's a time limit to things that must exist, which is a cool, very humbling thing for a child to thank on only then to realize that the monster from imagination that supposedly took Jason is real. I keep picturing it to almost like the synopeed in the end of the first season of Avatar, the guy that steals your face. I keep picturing something like that, but I keep picturing that mashed with a penny-wise vibe. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, he's in like a giant. It's like a very cartoony costume, but it almost looks like not to just reference something you made, but what's your dog character's name from the puppet show? Oh, Tugboat. Boat. Oh, yeah, Tugboat. That's right. It's like when Tugboat switches from a puppet to just the guy in the suit. Yeah. It's like I imagine the guy in the suit, but like the arms keep extending too long and the legs keep going too long and stuff like that. The way that they keep describing it too. I know people said that it was like a rainbow cape or whatever, but it just sounds like he has like multiple colored fur. Well, he didn't say rainbow cape. It said a rainbow animal costume. Oh, I see. I see. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just I imagine like a giant like unicorn, like bright pinks and blues. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Almost like a Lisa Frank drawing or something. Yeah. Yeah. It extended a hand long and absurdly thin. Almost like distorted frog feet except for the rainbow fur. I turned it ran into the school screaming all the way. The poor nurse tried to extract the story from me. I don't even remember what I said. I just remember hiding under a desk and sobbing. When I finally blubbed the words "muppet man" and Jason, the school went on lockdown. The cops came. My father wasn't with them. I watched through the window gagging and crying and trying to forget Muppet Man's bright green eyes. But how could I? When everything else, the oak tree and the police, the nurse and the sky in my own shaking hands looked so brittle and faded. Muppet Man was the only vibrant thing. The only bright thing. The only whole thing. The only real thing. Sometime later, maybe a minute, maybe 10 hours for all I knew, the cop came into the nurse's office. He grabbed my elbow over the protestations of the nurse and marched me outside. The world rushed past me in a grey, dead glittering blur. Tree loomed ahead. Dark and blank and terribly close. I flailed but dragged me to the oak tree and shoved me forward. I stopped inches from the bark. Dark and dead and cracked. Except for absurd, toughs for technical or fur. "Did you do that?" the cop demanded. "Do what? Do what? Did you put that?" He pointed to a particularly obscene knot of neon pink fur. "On this tree!" I told him no. I told him it was Muppet Man. That I'd seen Muppet Man. That Muppet Man knew Jason and now he knew me. The nurse sent me home shortly thereafter and my parents packed me off to my grandparents house in San Diego that very night. I stayed for three weeks. Said until I stopped having nightmares of Muppet Man eating Jason's bloody shit staying closed while I watched trapped by his bright eyes like a deer in headlights. I got home on a Wednesday evening. I know it was Wednesday because I remember looking at my mom's calendar. Big and glossy and full of beagle puppies. It always made me smile. My parents fed me Burger King and ice cream cake, then sent me to bed. When I pulled my covers back, I froze. Everything around me blanched, turning pale and classy. Everything except the dirty tuffs of neon bright fur on my pillow. My parents assumed I did it and yelled at me for almost an hour but they let me sleep in their bed anyway. It's almost like spring is an infection or something, right? What? It seems like whatever you say. like coming in contact with is like, now it seems like the, it seems like the Muppet Man is here after him or it's like he's like infected and now things that he's like touching or interacting with, right? Or what? I think the Muppet Man's just like stalking him. Oh, okay. So you're saying that he took the form of like his pillow or whatever? Yeah. Oh, yeah. I see, I see. Or like, well, maybe not the pillow. It's just a tough to first. So it's like Muppet Man's been in his room. Oh, okay. So you're saying that it's just like, it's been where he's slept and okay. Yeah. It's like stalking him, like he left a tree before the other people got there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. School was a nightmare. I spent the entire morning treading recess when the bell rang, I thought about throwing a tantrum just to stay in the classroom, but I'd get in trouble. My parents would be angry and go to the principal's office. Besides, there'd be other kids on the playground, vibrant, living, colorful, noisy kids. All that noise and brightness might be too much for Muppet Man. I told myself these things, but still ran to the bathroom when the bell rang. I threw up and sat in the stall until the teacher, someone no doubt by a tattletail, came and told me I had to go outside. I dithered in the corner by the tether ball court as far from the oak tree as I could get. Even from a distance, I thought I caught glimpses of bright fur slithering through the branches. I decided I was seeing things. When the days finally got warmer, still skies softening to rich blue in the daytime and Easter egg colors at night, bare branches sprouting buds, flowers growing in the planar boxes all around the school, I resumed my recess ritual of reading under the tree. I understand thinking that you're seeing things, but I'm not going back under the tree. You know? Yeah. Maybe another tree, but not that tree. I was cautious at first, but determined. Every adult in my life had me convinced that I was hallucinating. Every kid in the school knew I had to break down about Muppet Man. Tons alone were enough to steal my resolve. Before I knew it, I was reading under the tree like always, the glassy winter whore barely more than a memory. One afternoon in April, something pulled me out of my book. I didn't know what it was at first, maybe the kids screaming on the jungle gym, maybe the fifth grade girls gossiping a few yards away, maybe the warm breeze wrestling the leaves. I looked down and gasped, larvae crawled along my arms, yellow-white caterpillar worms that lived in the bark, the kind all the kids said Muppet Man love to eat. Maybe with the larvae you are, right? Maybe it is. I just feel like he keeps reading as like an infection or something or like, I don't, I just don't know why. It just keeps feeling like it's. There's pieces of this too that almost feel like it's like Muppet Man's representative of an actual tragedy. Yeah. Kind of like you were talking about like you talking about the kid you knew, you know, choking when you were in the eighth grade. And it's like, yeah, but the eighth graders think about like, oh, like o tires, like that's the, yeah, it's out to you. It's like this kid had the legend of Muppet Man. There was a tragedy. A kid was abducted or killed. And it's almost like they're rational, especially the part where they said that they were mean to them. So now they read almost as appinance, I mean, it does feel like it's almost like a folklore kind of legend. It almost feels like an anti-bellying kind of like tale. Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like this person is rationalizing the bad thing that happened because it was Muppet Man that did it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Actually putting like a monster, like manifesting a monster for bad actions. Yeah. Yeah. Not to draw a connection between Muppet Man and Anton Shaker. But it's almost like the no country for old men thing where it's like, it's easier to create a monster rather than to be like, yeah, this just happened sometimes. Yeah. It just works that way. Mm-hmm. I was trying to like find a rationale for how like horrible things can randomly happen. Yeah. Kids don't just go missing and terrible things happen to them. The Muppet Man did it. Yeah. You know, the monster and the tree. Yeah. It's the tether ball court and lingered until the bell rang. When I got home that afternoon, I found clusters of neon fur all over my bedroom. I ran to my mother, she lost her temper, marched me into the backyard, told me to stay until she was done cleaning up after me. When I finished crying, I settled myself under the apricot tree and got lost in my book. As the afternoon light deepened, rich day light giving way to copper, something snapped me out of my reverie. I looked down, saw white worms, soft and tiny, somehow wet, and she'd over my arms. Hello? Whispered and unpleasantly friendly voice. Sorry, it's been so long because I've been a bad friend. I'm crazy. I whispered, snapped my book shut and closed my eyes. Crazy? Crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy. Scratchy polyester fur crumbled against my skin, not crazy, but man said, "Just really, like me and Jason Hughes, what are you reading?" You reached out, blind in multicolor fur blazing in the dappled sunlight and flipped the book over. "Black beauty, is it good?" "It's great." I wanted to leap to my feet, wanted to run screaming into the house, but my bones felt watering and frozen at once. I wouldn't be able to stand up, let alone run. Love of am brush the worms off my arm, it settled down beside me. His fur made me feel itchy. I didn't look up, I heard he knew it I would see. That slothy dinosaur face dominated by classy eyes that would blaze in the dined sun. I didn't want to see it, I was afraid of what would happen if I did. "My mom will see you. You should read to me." Tears flooded my eyes. "No." "Strong, fuzzy fingers wrapped my wrist." "I want you to read to me." "No. If you read to me, I'll take you to Jason Hughes." I almost scoffed. Jason Hughes with the giant glasses in the keening voice, anxious Jason Hughes stole all the art paper in the classroom just to draw his stupid fish and stupid beetles. Jason Hughes had been reduced to bloody, shit-stained clothes at the base of the school yard tree. "Why? Because we're lonely." Clans to the house, praying my mother would look out and see us. "If he's lonely, he should go home. He can't, his mom doesn't like him." I pondered this briefly, thought of my dad. My poor dad who worked himself to death with over time. My poor dad who couldn't catch a break at work. But what if I could help him? What if I could find Jason Hughes, give my dad all the credit? "When when I see Jason, it depends on how well you read." "Oh gosh." I mean, the pedophilia undertones are very present, right? Like, I'm not imagining that. Yeah. I mean, it seems very predatory in that way or just very, but I, but I, you know, anything involving a child, like we're going to told it's going to read that way in my opinion. Yeah. That being said, in your original Pennywise, what was that? Like the original Pennywise, like the Tim Curry one. Yeah. There's much more like child predator. You're like, I'm your friend, aren't I, kind of thing? Yeah. Yeah. I think, I don't know, the whole thing that you were saying where it feels like it's a manifestation of like kids like the way that even it reinforces a bit when he's just like, you know, stupid Jason Hughes who drew his stupid birds or, you know, did that kind of stuff? It just feels like it's that manifestation thing feels more and more akin to what's happening here. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think so. It's like an imaginary friend almost imaginary foe in evil, in evil things for the bad stuff. An evil thing born from, yeah, like shitty things that people did. Yeah. Well, especially the part of dying, especially the part about like, oh, well, maybe I can help my dad, you know, maybe if I go with him up at man, it'll help out dad. You could equate to a kid feeling like maybe because they were mean to Jason that's part of the reason he disappeared and now your dad's suffering for it. So maybe if I can help Jason, I can help my dad and undo the wrong. Yeah. Multiple. It's like a child manifesting guilt. I was going to say multiple guilt factors. Yeah. Yeah. I opened my book to the very first page and began to read aloud the scrape of the sliding glass door broke my concentration shortly after looked up at some of my mom. My heart let to my throat, I spun around hopefully, but Muppet Man was gone. Next morning, I found clumps of neon fur in my dresser drawers, clung to my pants and shirts like lint. At the end of May, I found a note on my window sill, neatly folded construction paper printed with brightly colored marker. Come to the school tree tonight at 11, your friend, Muppet Man. First strands of yellow, pink, and blue hair sprinkled the note, I brushed them off and tucked the paper in my pocket. I wasn't stupid. I knew I couldn't go alone. I was terrified of Muppet Man and almost as terrified of what my parents would do to me if they caught me sneaking out. So I went to my father. I showed him the note and begged until I wept. It accused me of making it all up for a while, but in the end he agreed to take me to the school at the appointed time. What? I mean, it's got to be hopefully for an investigation. Otherwise, what the fuck are you talking about? All right, fuss. Well, it's talking about like she, he thinks that his daughter is making all this up because of the trauma of losing a kid in your grade, right? So then the daughter's like, no, he left this in my room. It's like very clear to the father that his daughter made all this up, right? But she's so desperate to go that the father's like, if this helps her get over this, if this helps her, you know, get past it. Maybe to realize it's not really there. The Muppet Man is not real. I'll go with her so that she can, you know, get past it. It does seem trauma. If that's the intention, I think that should be clarified more because at the moment, it just sounds like, all right, fine, whatever. God, your dad, her dad clearly doesn't believe in the Muppet Man. Well, no, I don't think that it's, it's not necessarily about whether to believe it, but it does. To me, that reads more like him, just being like, oh my God, stop complaining, fine. No, I don't think he's like, fine, go be with the pedophile rainbow color uniform, man. I think instead, it's just like if this is the only thing that's going to keep my daughter, you know, that may help her get past this. Then I'm going to go with her so she can realize this isn't real. If in her psychosis, she's written a letter to herself from the Muppet Man, then maybe I should be with her. I never raised, or I never, I guess I never came to that conclusion. The dad was like that because so far all they've done is yell at them, being like, why would you put this everywhere? That's all they've done. So yeah, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have guessed the dad being that Ernest or that, I guess like that. Well, the mom's been described that way. The dad's been kind of Ernest, right? With the investigation. All they did was tell them about, only did was just tell that the clothes were covered in blood, shit, and piss. That's all he's done is giving her like details and maybe to me, that's what love is. I mean, it's like, I can't do it. Don't forget the hook, a lounge. Yeah, I got it. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The ladders is dirty, happy, understand? Yeah, Prince Ali. I mean, yeah, I got it. Yeah, he's homeless, but also people. What's the deal with that? Yeah, I get it. I want to take a moment to think today's sponsor, Harry's Razors. Life is too short to let dull razors roll your life, and if your razors give up midway through a shave, you end up irritating your neck more than your trim in it. Thankfully, Harry's is here to help. 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And for a limited time, our listeners can get Harry's plus trial set for only $10 at harries.com/creepcast. That's right, the trial set for only $10. The set includes the all new Harry's plus razor, one refined five plate cartridge, two ounces of foaming shave gel, and a travel cover to protect your blades on the go. Once again, just head over to the link in the description at harries.com/creepcast, claim this offer, and after your purchase, if you could let them know that we sent you, it would mean a lot. Thank you to Harry's for sponsoring the show, their link will be in the description, and we are now back to the episode. We lived only a few blocks away, so we walked. The evening was unseasonably cold, almost as cold as the day I first met Muppet Man. I fought back tears the entire way, pledging my father's hand with both of my own. The school gates were locked, of course, but there was a small gate hidden in a passage behind the cafeteria. It had nothing but a simple latch. Kids all knew about it, but the adults never did anything. I led my father around the perimeter of the playground, keeping close to the buildings in order to hide in the shadows. Wait here. He obliged to look tired even in the darkness. I looked at the tree, but it didn't look sick anymore. Leaves to the mistletoe infestation. Looked full and healthy, eternal century once more, stood by the trunk and whispered, "Hello?" Something rustled among the leaves overhead. "Hello?" came Muppet Man's warm, full voice. "Where's Jason?" The branches rattled in a dark, furry shape slithered down the tree. Glassy eyes cut the light of the moon and blazed. "He's inside me?" Muppet Man twisted and stretched down the tree until his eyes were level with mine. No longer was he vibrant or bright. His fur was filthy, caked with mud and sand and bare. Dirty canvas replaced large swaths of the once lush neon coat. Of course he was missing fur. We've been leaving clumps of it all over my room for months. It was a wonder he had in the hair left. "What do you mean?" My voice issued a thin, wheezy vine. Love the man crept closer. Holding me captive with his glassy eyes. His long, thin fingers touched his chin, pushed, sliding into his face and pulling it up like a child moving a Halloween mask. My heart thudded, heavy and horrid as a war drum. An enormous glass is glinted at the moonlight, tragically outsized for the decayed little face underneath. Jason Hughes' rotted head was gray and so very fragile, gleaming like clouded glass under the moon. If I touched him, he would shatter. The absurd costume filled as a ground with a whisper, dull and faded. Even the eyes were dead now. Costume was dead. It had never been alive. Jason's empty sockets bulged, then broke and split apart with a series of soft, papery pops. Something roiled inside, thick and dark and gleaming with a thousand dim lights and colors I couldn't name. The world flipped and the cold playground sand dug into my face. My dad screamed shatter at the glassy silence. Perhaps it shattered Jason's poor dead face too. I crawled up and lay still as my dad screamed and sirens whiled in the distance. The ruined costume went into an evidence locker. Jason himself was laid to rest several weeks later. They held onto the body as long as they did in order to find out what happened to him. I asked my father about it, but he refused to tell me. I was disappointed, yet relieved, and I never tried to find out on my own. I did my best to forget everything, and actually came close. I might have managed had my father kept his mouth shut. He has a habit of telling me things I shouldn't know. Things nobody should know. I guess it's a personal exorcism, freeing demons that haunt you. It's just that problem with freeing demons is that demons usually go on to haunt someone else. My dad retired a few years ago, but he still has friends on the force. They get together and talk every once in a while. They had one of their visits last night, and one of his friends brought up Jason's use. Did they find the guy who did it? My dad asked. No, the costume. We had Puppa costume. It's not an evidence anymore. It's gone. Did someone take it? Did they accidentally toss it? We don't know. That alone was enough to haunt me forever, but it didn't stop it enough. Demons never stopped it enough. They ever stop it all. I know this because when I got up this morning, I found dirty tuffs of neon fur scattered all across my bed floor. What's up on my end? You know, I think that like, that's the end of this one. We have we'll do that. That was really short. We can do another one. I think that like, you know, this is one of those, this is one of those stories where it's like, I like the kind of it. I like ambiguity in stories, but I do wish that there was a bit more of like, why do you think, let me ask you this then. Why do you think that the monster chose our protagonist, especially because do you think that it just feeds on guilt? I think our protagonist was the only one who had anything for Jason Hughes, others in like a mocking tone because everyone else would make jokes about him or like the Muppetman be brought up. They'd be like, Oh, yeah, Jason's he has Jason's ghost. I like that. Our protagonist would set under the tree and read to Jason. Yeah. I mean, I like that idea of a monster that like feeds on guilt or is drawn in or almost seduced by guilt and like playing into that idea that literally by showing compassion for Jason and like reading to him was a literal calling card for this thing to come and like target the main protagonist. Yeah. So I thought that was pretty interesting. What do you think of creatures? I think the Muppetman's interesting. I do to me, it works best as kind of the metaphor thing, especially at the end where it's like he goes to or our protagonist goes to meet the Muppetman and then the Muppetman shows him the body of Jason that crumbles. So all everyone else, he's just the suit with the body in it, right? Yeah. It's almost like if you wanted to make it literal, you could imagine like maybe Jason is the one who stole the costume and ran into the woods and then both these legends. came off each other and then they just found the body one day. You know, maybe Jason took off his clothes. Yeah, I was in there. You know, whatever. I was kind of wondering if the tree's life had anything to indicate that like at first, I thought it was when Jason. So at first, I was reading that like, oh, Jason got, got abducted, right? And that the like the feeding off of Jason gave the tree like a life force like it was that it gave that much life. And then that way the tree was dying because it had like digested him. It had like used whatever he wanted from Jason. So they was looking for another host or like another kind of meal to satiate it for the time being. But I do think this idea of it just being this, I mean, it's just a way of like passing on guilt in these different ways. I mean, it's, it's, it's really interesting thinking of like a creature that that feeds on that because I think that like a one that's kind of overplayed is like, you know, something that feeds on fear or something. But guilt is really interesting because I feel like children feel guilty a lot. I feel like that over like very small things or they don't know like I feel like, you know, so many things where I think guilt hits children in an interesting way. Yeah. Yeah. I think guilt's fun, especially with childhood fear. It's also an interesting like, it's like a punishment almost like not not in the sense that like a punishment for feeling bad, but it's punishing. It's like, oh, this one child already feels bad. Well, watch how they feel now. And like it, it prays upon that to make everything worse when they were already bad off. Leaving these to me, Muppet Man. I think because Muppet Man is bright and vibrant with the tree is dime, but when the tree is alive, he's how he probably would look living out in the woods for days and days on end, decrepit, old, dirty. So to me, that's kind of like with the inference I made earlier that the tree is kind of like referencing the mortality of childhood, like, oh, the great century, the tree I love so much isn't going to be around forever. And when you have that dread, that's when the Muppet Man shows up in full force. But when the trees alive, and when there may be answers to questions you have like what happened to Jason, and when there may be closure for the family and stuff like that, that's when Muppet Man is real. And what Muppet Man actually is, is a decayed husk with another decaying husk inside of him. So to me, it's almost like the two were inverse because they represent opposite things. The tree is the protection of childhood while the dead tree and Muppet Man is the erasure of it, the death of it. So I don't know, it feels like again, I think it works best as a metaphor for grief or guilty. The element of just in terms of guilt of harbaging guilt or shame or something, having something that I thought one thing that was kind of interesting too is the having bright rainbow colored fur everywhere is just like a giant sign for something you're trying to hide or something that feels like it's like it's obvious, you know what I mean? It's so abundantly clear that it's so noticeable I guess. It feels like when you're holding onto guilt, shame, or like a secret or something that it feels like everyone knows that they can like read it, like they can easily see it past you and they can see it. And having these bundles of fur or something and like having to explain that to other people and you know, these things, these remnants left over that are kind of being left and you're being blamed for it as well as I just thought that that was kind of cool. Like that's an interesting visual. Yeah, it's similar. I mean, we made the British tear bithier reference earlier, but whereas tear bithier was kind of reminiscent of his childhood wanderlust. And then when the girl dies, he starts to see like monsters over there and scary things because now the world's soured. I feel like this is kind of similar to that, right? The tree was the safe place, you know, the the century of the playground. But then when James Hughes goes missing, well now or Jason Hughes goes missing, well, now it's scary. Now it holds the mystery of the monster, the month and man in the suit. But then you grow up a little bit, some time goes by and then it's just a skeleton and it's just a tree, you know, you think that the adults know about what's kind of well. Do you think the adults know about this creature? You think it's a known secret? Well, they know about the suit. No, no. Well, I mean, if you want to view the story literally, like it is a monster in a tree and then it goes into police lockup and the suit's kind of alive, like the suit itself is a creature. Yeah, then now I would say some adults probably know about it or there's some legend behind it. But for the sake of the metaphor that I'm into, I think that a lot of this is just kind of within the mind of a child. Like a lot of it's the way you view things like you remember, did you that Ford Chan post I sent you the other night? About the dog eating cereal. So that kind of thing always freaks me out, which we'll we may cover in an episode eventually. But that kind of thing always freaks me out like the way dogs per se or dogs, the way children perceive things that they shouldn't be able to grasp yet. Yeah, you know, trauma like traumatic things like trauma. Yeah, like a kid your age nine. It's like that's a lot for a lot of concepts, a lot of grief, a lot of heavy stuff for a kid to put up with. So it's like the way their brains make sense of it is odd. Well, that's why I think there's some really good stories that prey on that. And I think this is part of it. Like it's easier to think the Muppet Man did it, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that children will find I think a lot of people will find any way to rationalize or be able to articulate it so they can process it through their brain, which is either through sometimes it's through joking about it. Sometimes it's like literally manifesting something that might be similar to something that like your like a show or something, right? Like if you watch horror films or something, you might manifest this idea that it's like, oh, it's a creature or so. I think that just however your brain is able to articulate these things that are so uncommon, I think is. Yeah. There was this is super graphic. So like, you know, trigger warning, whatever. It's a scary story podcast. There's a story I read about one time. I can't remember. I'm pretty sure it was. It was posted as if it was real. If it's real or not, I don't know. But I remember reading about a mother who was at home when someone broke into the house and she shot, he came into the bedroom and she shot him in the head with a shotgun. So, you know, pretty brutal, right? And then she had like a five or six-year-old son who walked into the room as she was calling the police and looked at the guy that was shot and then looked at her, his mom and said, are you going to finish that? The mom didn't know what he was talking about or was going on. Well, later the police are talking to the boy and they're like, what did you see happen? And the boys like, I heard a loud noise and I walked into mom's room and she was with a guy who threw spaghetti at the wall. Oh, man. Wow. Like the kid cannot, the kid has no process, no concept of what's happened. But he can use the pieces of what he does. No, you know, that looks like spaghetti. It's gross as it is. So it's like here, that's a lot to talk about a kid being abducted, you know, someone your age being abducted by the kind of person who would keep them for days and they would soil themselves over and over and then all their clothes are found. It's easier if the muppet man who lives in the trees, the one that did it, you know? No, I think that makes sense. Very quick story too. It was like definitely like a rip at the bandaid kind of story, like damn, kind of enter now. I mean, like start off with such a crazy starting your story off with being like, yeah, there's a middle age man in the tree is quite the it's quite the bold move and I think it yeah, definitely fucking hooked us pretty good. I think we got time for another like another short one. There's another short one. I think we do. Do the other show we got recommended called if you meet me, please kill me. I thought that was an interesting title. Yeah, and it's also by someone who I think has made some bangers that we've covered on the show before. But we only covered them in one multi episode and we haven't given them a look again. So I'd like to give them a look again. The author her name is Gabby, but she goes by EAPATBP and I think I remember what that stands for. It's like EAPAT. Anyway, they wrote the stories about hold on, I got the lowest pulled up. They wrote the sugar daddy story. My sugar daddy asked me for weird favors. The one about every month, there's a parade in our town, which is a part of their point pine story series. And the man who follows me around and narrates my life, which all three of those I thought were great. Do you remember those hunter? Yeah, I know. Also to the sugar daddy one, I'm pretty sure that's the most upvoted story ever on our such no sleep, right? Yes, yes, at least when we covered it, when we covered it, it was. Yeah, it's the number one voted story about time. I'm pretty sure it still is. Yeah. And then I remember we went through this list. And then the second most upvoted one is my wife's been peeking at me from around corners. Yeah, a banger as well. But so EA has written three great stories that we've read and a ton of people recommend them all the time. It feels like we get recommendations constantly to be like, oh, they wrote this cover, they wrote this cover, they wrote it. We enjoyed it the first time. And then EA actually came to the subreddit a few months ago, when people were discussing the sugar daddy story, and she seemed super cool with it and was glad that it was covered. You know, why not check her out again? Yeah. And this is a Harry recommended this story to read with the previous one. So yeah, I'm curious. This one is so this is another short one, but I'm wondering how it fits in as well with these kind of with this other digestible story too. So let's jump in. Let's jump into. Again, of course, as with dope of being EA's information, their subreddit links to some of their other socials. I'll ask what all they want us to include, but I'll be in the description as well. Be sure to show them some love. She's a fantastic author. So that out of the way. If this was uploaded about a year ago, if you meet me, please kill me. My friends won't believe me. My family thinks I'm crazy. And if I keep trying to convince them, they're probably just going to lock me up. But I need help. And I think that strangers online are my last hope. So I'm begging, if you meet me, if you see me walking down the street and I say hello, if you meet me in a bar and feel inclined to buy me a drink, or if you match with me on the dating app and make plans, kill me. End it. I don't care how it's done. I prefer it to be as painful as possible, but I know that's probably a lot to ask. It's already a lot to ask someone who doesn't know me to commit murder on my behalf, and I'm sorry to put such a burden on you, but I truly can't do this any longer. Let me provide you with some context. I might have gotten ahead of myself, but I came on too strong. Don't leave yet. Please. Please let me explain to you what's been going on. Maybe, hopefully, once you hear this, you'll be on my side. Maybe you'll believe me. Hell, maybe you've experienced this too. I can't be the only one who's experienced this. I started two months ago at Mitches. Mitches is a small bar that my friends and I used to go to every Friday night. That a karaoke night, and everyone got free nachos with the purchase of a drink. It was a routine we had been sticking to for almost a year now. Ever since Melly moved into the apartment complex down the street and found the place. Anyway, it was a Friday night, probably around 10 p.m. Because I remember that Jonas had just arrived and he got off his shift at the hospital at 9 p.m. on those days. Melly and I had just performed a tipsy version of Fleetwood Max, Riannon, and we were giggling and stumbling back to our booth when he intercepted our path. He said his name was Tony, short Frantoneo. He said he was new in the city and had just moved here from Idaho or Iowa. I don't really remember. He wanted to talk to me. He said I had a nice voice, and he enjoyed my performance, and he would like to get to know me a bit better. I agreed because he was my type. Tarkare, green eyes, stubble on his jawline, smelled like tide laundry detergent, and something else that reminded me of my childhood friend, Isdris House, felt familiar to me. So I followed him to a booth near my friends and we talked for the entire night. Have you ever smelled someone or something and you're immediately like, oh yes, summer, seventh grade, so-and-so's house? Yeah, sometimes it's uncanny, it brings in a very, like a deja vu, or sometimes I almost think that, like, it almost makes you think that I'm like, I feel like we've met before, you know, like at this very uncanny connection. Yeah. Yeah. The green eyes thing, though, in combination with that, I feel like this is going to be like a shape shifter or something that pretends to be them or whatever. Yeah. That's my bear trap, laying it out now. Our first date was dinner in a movie, classic first date. We watched Hard Eyes, which he loved, but I said wasn't my style. We went to this expensive French restaurant after, a small place that was almost an hour away, and we had wine and ate our dinner while a woman sat in the corner of the room and sang La Via and Rose. It was Romantic. It was Romantic. It was a great date. What was your first date, Hunter? My first date with Allison. Oh, with Allison, I took her to a hockey game. Oh, that's cool. That's a good date. Yeah. Not true. We went to a Hibachi place and we meet Kale and I, me and Allison went to a Hibachi place. Do you walk? Kale and I went there. Yeah. Sorry, bud. Sorry, bud. The nerd gets the girl. And then we saw Bohemian Rhapsody, which was kind of whatever paint, what a painful first date movie. Yeah. Well, I mean, it was like, oh, Queen. I like Queen. So, you know, I mean, at the time, I liked it because I like Ramy Malik and stuff, but in hindsight, it's just kind of like, yeah, that is the band. It's a pretty shit. That's a pretty shit. That's a pretty shit song. I know. Yeah. It's kind of like, it felt, I'm already thought about it, it felt like a Marvel movie where it's like, could you get that reference? It's that song. You know. You know the song. Queen. Other music biops have been pretty shit. I don't know. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Yeah. I heard that the Weird Al one was funny because it was a spoof. Yeah. The Weird Al one was really funny. Yeah. The first bad sign didn't feel like a bad sign when it happened. You know what they say about hindsight. It started with him going by his full name instead of Tony. He said he had always gone by Tony because he preferred it. He thought Antonio was mouthful. That Tony made him sound like a fun, easygoing guy while Antonio made him sound like the opposite. And then that day, he changed his mind. You've never gone by yellow or still? He asked me one evening as we were walking through a small street fair that the city put on every year. Hmm. Nope. Just Stella. It was being completely Stella. I replied as I took a sip of my soda. Really? You've never gone by a nickname, not even as a child? I shook my head no again. I remember this conversation vividly now. I'd forgotten about it soon after it happened because it seemed irrelevant at the time, but as soon as I realized what was going on, popped back into my mind like someone had dug into my subconscious and pulled it out, projected it onto a big screen right in my face. After that, he decided he wanted to be Antonio. He wanted to be completely Antonio. After that step was done, the rest came quicker and quicker like an avalanche headed downhill until it spiraled out of control. He changed his hair, dyed it a light of brown like mine. His eyes, which I swear to all of the gods, were green when I met him, were now dark brown, like mine. He got slimmer, losing his broad shoulders almost overnight, his face got rounder, softer and less angular. He shrank three inches. Jesus. Then he took my jokes, stole my bets, started saying things that only I would say. Even my friends would comment on it, albeit in an innocent way. Oh my god. It's such a stellar thing to say. Oh, that's so cute. You guys are becoming like a, you guys are like the same person. I love when people start to adapt each other's mannerisms. Okay, first off, if anyone ever said to me, I'm like, they shrunk three inches and they're becoming a woman. Fucker. They're shorter now. Hello. What are you talking about? This is clearly a fucking demon that's around me. What is happening? Not, not only that, but like they're now your hair color, your hair length, you're like what exactly? It's like, what are you talking? He's becoming me. Yeah. Fucking soap. Three people. What do you have each other's mannerism? Hello. We're the same person. How do you, you're me? Oh, isn't that adorable? You'll get you two kids. Yeah, exactly. Oh, look, he even got, he even got eye surgery to change his eye colors. That's so romantic. So we've been dating for three weeks. This is a three week two. We're the same cup size now, bra besties. Dude, me and Allison, same cup size, rules, love wearing your, love wearing your bras. I feel so comfy, I feel so secure. You know what? So we were, this is a, this is a embarrassing story to say, well, that's not really because it was a joke, but Kale and I were walking through Knoxville one night and what, oh, I had left my gun at the house. And Kale was like, here, just carry mine. So I put her down to my pocket and I had also, I was, we were driving her car and I couldn't find a t-shirt or, oh, I accidentally grabbed her t-shirt. So we get out of the car and we go, she's like, look at us, you're carrying my gun, driving my car, wearing my shirt. And then I go, yeah, wearing your underwear and route as I said that, an old Chinese man who was on his phone and stepped out right by us and all that he caught was me going, yeah, I'm wearing your underwear and he puts the phone down and just makes eye contact with me and watches me the whole way around the corner. Well, Isaiah, were you wearing an underwear? No, no, it was, it was a joke. Would you ever, would you ever wear your underwear? No, no, no, I'm gonna, I'm definitively on the record, no, that would not happen. That was a joke. That was, it was a funny like, aha, and what if I'll tell you this thing, I'll tell you this. And then I'll tell you that. That guy and you were taking it too seriously, what? If I, I'd tell you this much, if my wife came to me and she said, Hunter, I want you to wear one of my thongs. I would do it in a heartbeat. No, in a heartbeat. It's too weird. It's too weird. In an absolute heartbeat. It's also weird because it feels like you're trying to get me on board right now. No, no, no, I don't give a shit what you do. I'm saying that. that. If I was approached, I would, I'm putting on record. I'm, I'm setting the record straight. I, if someone said here, where my, where my phone, I would say, app so literally someone, not even your wife, just anyone, you know what? Fuck it. Anyone. That's the right side. I would never wear underwear. I'd pop one of the boys out on each side and I'd have it curl up like a little, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. No. No. No. No. We only look, I could all that, all that description you gave. I would say, you know what the description you gave. I, I figured that's what, where that would be going. We don't need it. Um, maybe I want to be one of the Victoria Secret dudes, man. Well, I want to tell this, so I should have known the passing, maybe the, maybe the, maybe I'm jealous that girls get to go to Victoria Secret and they get a dig through all those drawers full of fucking different colored panties. This is all they have is something for you. For the whole of us and maybe a past monochrome to discuss this is not for me. I'm your business partner. It's boring. This is, this is a joint business endeavor. We do not need. I'm going to start working on this. I'm doing it. Well, next time you see, I'm not even joking and I want you to keep this on record because we're meeting again soon. When you literally see me, I'm going to be wearing a thong and I'm going to show you. Okay. I'm going to mentally block that. I'm not going to think about it. Mentally blocking. It's going to be, it's going to be a flashbang. You are going to see it. All right. You don't, you give our audience too much to work with. They say the most obscene things about this podcast anyway. You don't need to make it easier for them. Anyway, of what the important thing I need to make note of is bear trap. By the way, I was right. I said he's going to, like, he's going to start chameleon needing her and lizard man mimic her, whatever. So I was correct. So that's what supported it. Except we weren't doing that. He was stealing all of my jokes. He was taking all of my catch phrases. He would use my references that he didn't even know previously. He stole my style, swapping out his vans, jeans and button up shirts for thrifted boots and bantees. He got glasses even though he didn't need them and he went vegetarian. The worst part about the artist part that pissed me off the most as this was taking place was the fact that everyone, everyone acted like I was insane. They acted like he had always been like that. He never went by Tony Stella. Oh, his eyes were never green. I think you're misremembering. Maybe it was the lighting in the bar that night. Oh, he's always been the exact same height as you. It's impossible for someone to just shrink. It was such bullshit. It's making me mad all over again to think about it now. Nobody believed me. I tried showing the photos where you could clearly see the differences and it was like they didn't notice them. Like I was the only one who could see the photo as is. I need to calm down. I'm not finished telling you my story and I worry about you getting bored. I need you to believe me. So would you believe me when I tell you that about two weeks ago he became me. I mean, he literally became me. He morphed into a clone of me. He goes by my name. He wears my face and hangs out with my friends. Almost had a heart attack when I saw it the first time. It was like I was looking in a mirror, a screwed up mirror who had taken over my life. My friends acted like nothing was wrong. Like he had always looked like that. They didn't think we looked like it all. They didn't think it was weird that we had the same name. Everything was just a big, fat, stupid coincidence to them. It's so infuriating. It almost makes me laugh. So that's where we are now. He or I don't know it. It can't be human. Can it? Whatever it is has become me and it's ruining my life. He picks up my medications, takes my esthetician appointments, takes my Pilates classes, hangs out with my family, everything. I need you to kill him. It, me, something needs to die. Please. His name is Stella Kobe. I'm five feet five inches short brown hair, curly collarbone length, brown eyes, big glasses with thick red frames. I've got a tattoo of a skull on the inside of my right wrist and a four inch long scar that runs down the back of my right arm down my elbow. It's from when I fell off horses a child. I'm 156 pounds and I'm a big fan of rock music, specifically blondie. I love action movies and I'm allergic to sentiment. You might meet me out in public in the produce section of your local supermarket, maybe on Bumble or Hinge or Grindr. I'm in thrift stores a lot. Maybe watch out for me there. You'll know it's not the real me because I haven't left my apartment in over a week and I have no plans of doing so. I want that thing gone. I want it gone from this world before I ever step foot outside again. I don't know how it picks its victims, but it's quite charming. Just be careful. You can try to avoid it if you want, but your best beds to just kill it, but an end of this thing. So please, if you meet me, if you meet it as me, please kill it. And that's the end. I will say that I don't know why, but I don't know why, but at the end, it started. This is fucked up because I feel like I'm doing what she's complaining about. Why? Why does it feel? I don't, it feels like almost like it gets a fernic person and being like someone is, there's someone that's pretending to be me out there walking around. Yeah, baby, you're just crazy. No, no, you're making it up. It's not you. I don't know why it's because there was this Kronenberg short film that was on YouTube a long time ago. I don't know if it's there, but it was called The Nest or something, but it was about a woman who goes to a doctor's appointment and she says that there's like insects and her breast and she wants them removed. She wants her, she wants the doctor to remove her breasts. And it's like, you never see any of the breasts. She just says that they're there. And it's like you just can't really tell if she's telling the truth or not. Is it real? It's very interesting. And I don't know why, but this for some reason is posted so casually and it's so informal that it almost feels like a post of like somebody who has like almost mentally deteriorated. That being said, the fact that like the people have met Antonio before and stuff makes it seem like it probably is a monster, but I do like this idea. So I'm being like, I went on a date and now the person is trying to be me. Do you like it? What? Really? I don't know. I, to me, it feels kind of to tie it into like the first episode's theme of like manifesting something that almost feels like a literalized version of when people talk about in relationships that like they break up with someone and the person just keeps all their traits, you know? Or it's like, yeah, they, you know, they got the shows they watch for me and the music they listened to for me and blah, blah, blah. And the person is only who they are because of me. Yeah. Yeah. It almost feels like that, but drawn out to a very literal position where it's like he's literally skin walking me. And I'm, I'm left over here almost again, like a breakup. I'm over here a shamble. I did my apartment and they're still out there doing things that I taught them, learning things that I showed them and stuff like that. Which is a fun, that's a fun, feels like it takes a country. Yeah. Yeah. Like the mimic. That's a fun horror story concept of like a breakup that leads to being like the person that they are has been transformed because of me. Like I, I do actually like that and then people suck like, and it is funny if people being like siding against her and being like, what are you talking about? He's always been that way and like, what the fuck are you talking about? Because it's like, because you have the actual intimate relationship with that person and the other people can't see you, you know, what's on the inside. So I, I do like that as like a fun comparison. I think that's a good read that you had. Yeah. Because it feels like there's so many times like that where after a breakup, someone's like, Oh, well, no. Well, I mean, they got some stuff from you, but it's like, they always did that. They were like, it's like people gaslight you as if you weren't the one in the relationship friend groups have a phenomenal way of doing that. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, Oh, it's not that bad. Oh, you're being, you're being dramatic or whatever. Yeah. It feels like that, but literal. Yeah, especially whenever your friends become their friends too, the worst, the worst. Yeah, that's like, okay. Well, now we're, now we have a civil war of sorts. There's going to be a great divide. I'm telling you, well, shit, guys, those are both their stories. I think they're both a lot of fun. I'd like that. I like whenever we get these options, whenever there's a couple quick ones, it's always just kind of fun to see. These both these ideas just felt like a fun, like just like it's like dipping your toe into a premise that could be fun to dive deeper into, which is, I think, always a fun read. It's really easy, relaxed. And I hope that it was a good listen as well. I really, I really enjoyed both of these. And I do think I see Harry's vision. Well, I don't even know if Harry thought this, but the connection I made was that both of these are kind of like metaphors for manifestations. That really happens. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. manifestations. Yeah. Thank you so much to anyone who's listening on Apple podcast or Spotify anywhere you can listen to a podcast. We appreciate you and thank you for giving us a nice rating if you have. And also be sure to check out the Patreon. If you want some extra content, we have some more extra bonus episodes there where we talk about movies and read stories and stuff like that. So be sure to check it out. And until next time, guys, stay creeped. Stay creeped. Be sure to check out the authors in the description. And if Hunter and Allison ever break up, I'm going to gaslight everyone into believing Allison actually started the channel. I think that's the metaphor for this one.